Jana Denzel says his work ethic was informed by his parents, who fled civil war in Sri Lanka to make a new life in London. 

He developed his marketing and social chops while running a fashion brand to fund study at dental school in Valencia. And, since graduation in 2019, he’s already made waves putting AI to use in radiography diagnosis while also finding the time to be named London’s Best Young Dentist.

Jana explains how all the hard work is his way of proving himself to mum and dad (and how his efforts to pay them back resulted in perforating mum’s tooth). Jana also talks about the value of networking, working with the legendary Miguel Stanley and how running with the wrong crowd almost ended the dream before it started.

Enjoy!  

 

“The reason why I’m doing so much is because I really want to give back to my parents and to my family for everything they have done for me.”

In This Episode

02.00 – Backstory and the immigrant experience

11.23 – Study in Valencia

16.03 – Ambition

18.44 – Into VT and beyond

21.30 – Diagnosis AI

37.34 – Collaboration, communication and networking

41.14 – Work ethic and clinical practice vs entrepreneurship

47.15 – Best Young Dentist

54.06 – Black box thinking

01.01.09 – Miguel Stanley

01.07.50 – Last days and legacy

01.09.48 – Fantasy dinner party

About Jana Denzel

Before graduating in dentistry from Universidad Europea, Valencia, Jana Denzel studied biology with psychology at the Queen Mary University of London. The twin areas of study led him to explore the link between dental, physical and mental health.

He is the clinical director of Manchester Imaging which develops innovative AI-based early diagnostic tools for dentistry.

In 2021, Jana was awarded the Dentistry Awards’ title of Best Young London Dentist.

[00:00:00] Now, a lot of what I do in all of my drive is, is because, you know what my parents have gone through to get rid of today. I can never match up to that, no matter how good of a dentist I become or how much I achieve in my life, nothing’s going to be harder than what they’ve gone through. What previous immigrants and refugees have gone through when you go to war, seeing people get killed or all of that horrific kind of moments and took your life, it’s when you’ve gone through that and you come into a new country and given a second chance, you embrace it and do the best you can do to be the best you can be. So although these people at the moment right now, some may have education, some may not. I’m so sure that the ones without education when they come here, they’re not going to be sitting on their homes watching TV or anything like that. They’re going to be working as hard as they can because they know they’ve been given a second chance in life and they’re going to work as hard as they can to to be able to provide and give back to the country they’re in and also to provide a better life for them in their families.

[00:00:55] 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.

[00:01:12] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Janet Dental onto the podcast. Jan has been on my radar for a while. One of these guys who’s got the sort of burning ambition to make a difference in the world is the way I see it. This young dentist who’s already achieved so much content creator. I’m pretty jealous about some of the people you’ve interviewed, actually, but people, people who didn’t respond to

[00:01:38] Me

[00:01:40] On your show. Award winning young dentist of the Year London marketing expert will get into that digital marketing done a lot in your in your young life. Jenna. Lovely to have you, Payman.

[00:01:54] Thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of you, your work and your podcast and truly humbled to be here with you.

[00:02:00] Cool. Jenna, you had a very unconventional childhood. We were talking about it before. Tell us about, you know, your early life and how you ended up as a dentist.

[00:02:12] Sure. So my early life, I probably have to start with saying that I was born here in London, UK, but my parents, they actually come from a little island off the northern coast of Sri Lanka. It’s a long story to to get to where I am today, but their journey is much more interesting than mine. They both come from different socioeconomic classes. My my mum was actually born in a mud hut and raised in a very big family. It’s kind of like one of those movies you see where you see these villages and tribal people. When I went back to Sri Lanka and she showed me, it was pretty much just like that. So my mum was born there. My dad was born in a slightly wealthier family, actually. His dad had grocery shops in the mainland of Sri Lanka. And when my dad’s dad had my dad being the oldest of the sons of the family, his job was to look after the shops and he was doing very well and he was living life enjoying it over there. Unfortunately, however, in the early nineteen eighties there was a civil war in Sri Lanka, and when the war happened, the Sinhalese mobs and governments they attacked, burnt down and killed Tamils and Tamil Tamil owned businesses in the process. So everything my dad’s dad and my dad had was actually burnt down to the ground. He lost everything. Thankfully, thankfully, he wasn’t hurt, but a lot of other Tamil people were killed. But the situation of my dad was he was left with nothing. Didn’t have any education because he dropped out of school to look after the shops. So when both my mum and dad were caught up in the Civil War on CROSSFIRE, it wasn’t safe, and they both seek asylum to move outside of Sri Lanka and both ended up in London.

[00:03:45] How was the story of how did they actually get to London?

[00:03:48] That was a very long story, you know? My dad was like, Don’t tell people how I did it because I didn’t think was most to do so. But my dad had to come to to France and then from France to London like he was, he was homeless in France. He was sleeping in temples. My mother went through with her family. It was all you know, in the eighties, they all you can ask any refugee from the 80s, there was a very long kind of process to do so. But you know, thankfully both of them ended up in London. They both met here, and that’s when they started their journey. They didn’t know the culture, they didn’t know the language, but they both, you know, worked hard to get to where they are now.

[00:04:25] China, in the era of Boris Johnson and Trump and all that, it’s fashionable to sort of knock refugees a lot. But when you when you see pictures of of people on boats trying to come over the channel and all that. Yeah. Well, how does that resonate with you? And you feel like your experience gives you a different outlook? You know, I mean, today, today it seems like it seems like, of course, there are economic migrants. And for me, whether you’re running for your life or whether you’re running to make a better. The life for your kids shouldn’t be such a big distinction. Of course not. How do how do you feel about it when you see these pictures now?

[00:05:07] I completely agree, as in, you know, my my whole family, my two brothers, a younger brother, works at an Afghan resettlement scheme where he’s dealing with, you know, people like you said, from boats and stuff coming into the country, trying to help them out, trying to provide them shelter and care and stuff, and something that’s very close to our hearts because our parents have gone through it ourselves. And I think it’s a bit of a shame when you do have people like like Trump or Boris in power who can stop people who are fleeing a war that are fleeing a war where they’re fleeing to provide a better life for their family. Why wouldn’t you if you’ve got the resources there to be able to help them, why wouldn’t you do so? You know, and a lot of people complain, saying there’s not enough space, there’s not enough resources. But you know, at the end of the day to make someone live as just a normal life providing, you know, just basic shelter and food. Of course, there’s space for that. You know, I don’t I don’t think there’s there’s an argument there at all.

[00:06:00] And you know, look, we’re going to get to you what you’ve achieved through this podcast. But you know, you can you can look at a human being coming across the channel as a drain on resources. But then, you know, you can look at them as someone like you who’s who’s now contributing so much to society. You know, I can see, you know, your burning ambition that you’ve got. Do you feel like that’s where it comes from? It comes from that sort of almost like repaying your parents, are they?

[00:06:34] Oh, of course, I’ll get to that later on. But you know, a lot of what I do and what my drive is is because, you know what my parents have gone through to get to where they are today is is going to be completely. I can never match up to that. No matter how good of a dentist I become and how much I achieve my life, nothing’s going to be harder than what they’ve gone through. What previously are immigrants and refugees have gone through. When you go to war, seeing people get killed or all of that horrific kind of, you know, moments into your life, it’s when you’ve gone through that and you come into a new country and you’re given a second chance, you embrace it and do the best you can do to be the best you can be. So although these people at the moment right now, some may have education, some may not. I’m so sure that the ones without education when they come here, they’re not going to be sitting on their homes watching TV or anything like that. They’re going to be working as hard as they can because they know they’ve been given a second chance in life and they’re going to work as hard as they can to to be able to provide and give back to the country they’re in and also to provide a better life for them and their family.

[00:07:30] Yeah, for sure. And you know, it’s not only people running away from war, right? I mean, we’ve we’ve got a bunch of, you know, people, people from the European community working in Enlightened and you know, these these people for the same pay as we’re giving someone might come at school. Leaver might turn up who is here, someone who didn’t even finish school. I’ve got someone who’s got a master’s degree from Romania or from Lithuania or whatever, and that the basic point of someone who’s got get up and go to go leave everything like you said, your dad, that a number of shops and the successful life to leave everything and go to the other side of the world is a person who’s going to contribute once they get there. Of course, what’s what’s your dad up to now?

[00:08:22] Well, both my parents, from the moment they’ve got here, they’ve always been kind of just working these odd jobs. My dad’s been a postman Royal Mail for about 20 years, and my mom works in the supermarket as a cashier. So day in, day out. They both work extremely hard their day, even though they had their retirement age. They don’t want to stop.

[00:08:42] So go and tell me about your childhood so you could at school?

[00:08:46] Or what was your story? Yeah, as in some of my parents came here, they met and married and we lived in Wembley, Albert and North West London. We lived in a house that was full of people. It was a three bedroom house. One of the rooms was by another family. We had the downstairs room and it was another room where about seven refugee men were sleeping on the same bed. The house was always packed or was full of people, and it was me and my older brother and my parents. At the time, we all slept in one room and one bed as well. And at the time, you know, it was, it was. I loved it because the more the merrier. I always thought, and you know, I always had good moments. We didn’t. We want we want to be a wealthy family or anything like that. We we didn’t come from much, but I had an amazing childhood thanks to my parents. They worked really hard to be able to provide what they could. My older brother was always very academic. He’s a doctor. I studied in King’s College London. A journalist, a humanitarian, does amazing work. So to live up in his footsteps was was quite hard for me. At school, I was doing OK. I always wanted to do dentistry. When I first applied, I got my offers from Queen Mary’s and Manchester. However, I was very, very much into my little bubble in London there. Growing up with all of my friends and stuff, I really wanted to stay in London and all I got was a. A B from creameries, Mary’s and AB from Manchester and end up getting AC, so Manchester still accepted me, but because I was just one grade or three Mary’s, I thought to myself, No, no, no, I don’t need to break out this London bubble.

[00:10:12] I can reapply. I can get the three A’s and go back into Queen Mary’s. I carried on doing my arse day and I ended up getting three days in a bee. Queen Mary still said No. There were no. I said, Well, it’s just wasn’t it? So unfortunately, I took a gap here do a B or C and drop my B or C. When I was living in London, I was very impressionable with people who who had had the, you know, the money, the success, that life at such a young age. And it wasn’t always the most legitimate things they were doing. And I was so impressed by, you know, how much, you know, one day someone could acquire a young age. So when I started to hang around with them, I got pretty much into the wrong crowd and my parents were like, You know what? Your this is not going to happen here because we just had my younger brother and younger sister as well. And to be a role model for them, my parents were like, No, you’re not going to be living here anymore. And they actually went to go, send me to go live my auntie. And when I went to go live with my auntie, you had to go, wake up, call there. I’ve been given a second chance and she really took me in, took care of me, gave me a strict timetable when I worked really hard after it, I see my options are very limited as well. I decided that I had an offer from Valencia, Spain, and that’s when I went to go study dentistry.

[00:11:23] There I studied in Valencia.

[00:11:25] Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:28] Amazing. Amazing. Coming across quite a lot of people is telling us it was. So do you learnt Spanish as well?

[00:11:33] Yes. Yes, the course was the first year was in English and then after it just progressed onto just studying in Spanish. So my final exams or essay questions of Spanish lectures in Spanish. So it was it was very nice to be able to learn a second language, but very difficult to to learn that second language and to learn dentistry in a second language as well.

[00:11:51] Were you there the same time as the twins from Yorkshire Dental?

[00:11:54] Yes, they were my class. Yeah, both of them.

[00:11:57] Yeah, I’m going to have them on at one point. Were they? Were they busy doing Instagram from college? They were telling me,

[00:12:05] Yeah, as in, I think I actually at the time, I had a clothing brand that I started in my while I was doing my university there, so I knew how to work with Instagram and social media influencers. So I worked with them and I was like, You know, it will be amazing if we could use this element of social media influences into the Dental world. And they started doing it with influencers providing them free teeth, whitening this and that to be able to, you know, post about the page and about the clinic. And, you know, their dad was an incredible surgeon set up, you know, did a really good job with it. And yeah, really, really good guy. And you know, he’s been able to to provide them with a huge, great platform and opportunity to to be there are today.

[00:12:45] Tell me about the clothing brand.

[00:12:47] Yes. So when I was in university in London, I studied biology with psychology and the PSC here in London. I used to work in a clothing store called Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch. And a lot of people in that store were all kind of like even models or into fashion and stuff. So when I started, you know, networking with them, I learnt a lot about fashion in London. There are much bigger brands like Trap star Michael Spinelli. They’re quite unique, kind of these street urban wear and the kind of learning the process of it and learnt how to set up myself with one of my friends who’s been very successful with his own clothing brands. So we set up a company in Valencia. We launched events as well. So we had like, you know, different nights out and we’ve done really well the first couple of years. We have people from Australia and New Zealand, America, big names Chris Brown with all of our stuff and promote it and stuff. So it was really, really good. But it’s very hard to run. It’s it’s it’s been where we have kind of waves, where it peaks, then it goes down like fashion, you know, there’s always ins and outs. And I realised that the margins from the money I was making, I’ve probably made a better living. If I just focus entirely on dentistry,

[00:13:56] One degree, that takes a lot of confidence to do that, right? Yeah. If it was me and I was in Valencia, that now we’re talking like in a way, I know you were born in the UK, but we’re talking like third country from Sri Lanka. I put my head down study what I probably wouldn’t even study. I’d go out, have a good time or whatever, but there you are, making a fashion brand while you’re at it.

[00:14:23] Yeah, as in, I was in a very different place too to pretty much most students in Valencia, Spain. Like, you know, you spoke with the twins earlier and spoke of a lot of people in my class. They come from wealthy families, they come from dental clinics or dentist and stuff. Both my parents are refugees who work in minimum wage jobs. So what are you

[00:14:41] Trying to pay your way through? Was that what you were trying to do?

[00:14:43] Of course. Of course. Hollister transferred me over to one of the stores there. I worked in residency. I went to nightlies. I had to be able to pay for my education at the same time and studying so most. When I finished university, I went straight to work and after work from the restaurant I worked in. That nights is run in different bars and stuff, so I always had to be extra and effort, and I had to because I realised how much my parents were sacrificing to be able to send me there because I didn’t have the money. Something I really pursue my dad with. I was like, Dad, look, this is something I really want to do. I promise you that if you send me, I will graduate or become a great dentist. This is something I can’t let go of. And it was really hard for him because he we have a younger brother and younger sister as well, and he doesn’t have the finances at all to support everyone. So for him to take that stake, to be able to remortgage the house that he finally purchased after a very long time to use all that money to send me there, I wasn’t just going to stay there, just study and show, you know, I had to study and work as hard as I could to be able to help pay for my tuition fees and my living costs. Now the reason why I’m doing so much is because I really want to give back to my parents and to my family for everything they done for me.

[00:15:53] An amazing, amazing story. It reminds me a bit of that sort of Gary Vee narrative of the incredible advantage of being an immigrant.

[00:16:01] Yes. You know,

[00:16:03] Of course it’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? You imagine? I don’t know. I’m trying to build a life for my kids of stability and good schools and all of that. But I already noticed, you know, that the burning ambition piece that you seem to have. My kids haven’t yet got that. Yeah. Now let’s say, let’s hope. Fingers crossed they get it in a different way or they learn a lesson or whatever it is. But what a beautiful, beautiful story. I’m interested in one other question. Jenna, when you were hanging out with those, what were they drug dealers or whatever they were? There’s unsavoury? Yeah, of course. It’s clear that the downside of that, yeah, but was that sort of, you know, seeing what it’s like to have money and all is that? Is that something that’s helped you as well seeing what that life was about?

[00:16:54] Of course, as in, you know, this is when I was a teenager, so I was very influenced and be able to see the luxuries they had to be able to wear nice clothes, go to restaurants, be able to provide for their families in the ways that they did. It’s something I wasn’t. I’m never I don’t live in fancy means at all. I don’t ever wear any fancy clothes or anything like that. But to be able to be financially secure, something that my family never had and you know, with respect to my parents because they provided so much love, time and affection to me. And you’ll see wealthy families where parents have the most money in the world, but they don’t necessarily have the same amount of time and love and affection from their parents. So although people could say that I was disadvantaged in some ways, I don’t ever see myself as that. I see myself from, you know, my parents did the best that they could provide for me and did everything they could for me. But when I saw that financial side to me, I was really intrigued. And I really wanted to be able to have that. Not for myself, but for my parents.

[00:17:54] Hmm. Well, you know, in life we chase things, don’t we? Yeah. And that piece, you just said you need the self-awareness to sort of understand that things aren’t going to make you happy, you know, security? Yeah. You know that notion of security?

[00:18:12] Definitely.

[00:18:12] You know, if you if you if the ground under you is constantly shaking, you want it to stop shaking you.

[00:18:20] You know,

[00:18:21] I do get that. But a lot of times we chase things. And once you get a few things, you realise God, things don’t make you happy at all. Experiences, memories, you know, that sort of thing. I still buy into that a little bit since. So where did you study? Where did you say, which year did you qualify from Valencia

[00:18:41] Qualified in 2019?

[00:18:44] I mean, so then tell me about your first actual was it Viti or how did it work? Yes.

[00:18:48] For my later. So, yeah, yeah. As in, we were still eligible to apply for the foundation scheme there, and it’s just to set up over here. So in it, I did my S.A.T. and my interview and stuff. And frankly, in Spain, I scored the highest ranking from there, so I was able to get my first choice in Essex. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, when COVID hit in March 2020, a lot of Dental practises had to close. So, you know, I was halfway through my year where I kind of had to stop practising and start telephone triaging, which was useful, gave me a lot of good skills, but I really, really wanted the hands-on element from it. So from then, I kind of took a bit of a break, worked on my Dental marketing company that I set up in university as well. I worked on that for six months, and eventually I had a good relationship with some people in the NHS that were able to give me another year in a UDC site in Nottingham. And that was very intense. But it really skilled me up to a point where I learnt so much in that year more than the whole five years. And Dental school.

[00:19:57] Yeah, you need that. You need that. So, but so the digital skills came firstly from the clothing brand and the events in Valencia. And then you started, did you start going, you know, approaching dentists saying, I can help you with digital marketing?

[00:20:12] Yeah, as in. No, that didn’t really happen. I think at the start, while I was doing my clothing brand, I also had a bit of a personal page as well where it kind of posed some fashion stuff and things from there. And people just saw that I was good with social media. They saw like that I was implementing like, you know, all of these things, giveaways, flies and stuff. My clothing brands and I had Dental friends, so I helped them with their dental practises. They did really well. And then for me, I just kind of had an idea, you know, I can branch out and work with different Dental training facilities. We work with Dental training consultants Shobana Anand. She’s good friends with one of the co-founders of my Dental marketing company. Then we worked to have. We were talking about more than about 20 plus different Dental groups like clinics, training facilities and individual Dental say in the UK. And it just kind of grew from there. So it was started in Dental school, but it really kind of took off in that year when COVID hit.

[00:21:11] Wow. So recent all of this to me, it’s a testament to your, you know, influence here that I feel like you’ve been around a while, but it’s actually so recent. It’s just the first pandemic. So, all right, so you did the bit of vet the UDC job? Mm hmm.

[00:21:30] Then what? Yeah. And then after that, after my UDC? Yeah. Well, during the weekends of my UDC, I started working in a private practise in Harrow. Here, I kind of just started to hone on a little bit into more of an industry that I wanted to do, which was, you know, dentistry that every young dentist wants to do these days, which is, you know, the whole composite bonding porcelain veneers and Breslin’s and whitening stuff. But it also kind of opened my eyes to different needs in a different sector, which was the private sector and the NHS sector. So it kind of made me think about what else I could do. And another thing that was also doing in Dental school was the use of AI in dental diagnosis. So one day in Dental school, in clinics, I had a treatment plan for one of my patients that I wanted to get an opinion from one of the professors teaching me. So I showed him the radiographs and told him about my treatment plan, and he looked at the ready world and he was like, You know what? I think you should do this instead and gave me a different diagnosis with a different treatment plan. The next day, I reconfirmed it with another person who gave me a different diagnosis plan.

[00:22:38] And finally, I realised that the diagnosis of radiographs and dentistry, they are subjective and they can always change based on the person who’s reading them or, you know, based on, you know, the level of the experience with the clinician or whatnot. So my cousin set up a company which was medical diagnosis using AI algorithms, and it was one of the first people in the world to do it. And I told him, You know what, as dentists, we take more radiographs than anyone. So with that, I kind of set out to build up my own algorithm using Dental radiographs. And now I built something where once you put a radiograph into the system, it will highlight all abnormalities to you. And now I’m working with a company up in Manchester Dental School for Manchester Imaging Ltd, and I’ve just been appointed their clinical director. And in the team, we also have someone called Ben Atkins, which I’m sure you know, yeah, he’s in a clinical team as well. And you know, it’s just we’ve just kind of joined the team and I think this year you’ll be hearing about it very soon as well.

[00:23:36] So look, the idea of machine learning on radiography, on radiology. You know, it’s actually it was one of the first applications of of IBM Watson, wasn’t it? The fact that the reason I know this is my brother is a radiologist and he’s he’s been talking about, Oh, well, computers are going to take over. We’re going to lose our jobs for the last three or four years. He’s been talking about that, but you can’t be the first ones doing that, but we’ll get onto the competitive nature of business later. How does it work? Do you do you want you want to teach this machine different diagnoses? Is it literally a case of putting in loads of images? What dentists thought about those images is that it?

[00:24:24] Well, what we have to do, first of all, is we have to have a large collection of of a database of different radiographs, highlighting different realities. So let’s take the Class one cases, for example, what we need about 20000 images of a class one carries, you know, from 20 to 20000, the more the better, I’d always say. And then we need to have expert annotated. So we’ve got professors from all over the world who Dental maxillofacial, all surgeons who diagnose red equals, and they’ve been doing so for decades, right? So once they’re at the highest level, we had about six of them go all the way across and annotate exactly what’s wrong with the graph and

[00:25:01] Finally get the radiographs from,

[00:25:03] Well, we got it. They got it from Manchester Dental School. I got it from where I was in Valencia, a network of dentists. You know you’ve had them on here, small clinic group, kitchen gin. So, you know, we’ve had a lot of cross and a lot of different places. Feed it all in. Have these expert annotators labels one and then put a machine to then start learning exactly what is what? And then it’s a long process. It took about a year to really develop something really solid. I’ve been working on it for so long, but then after every time it’s annotated, you can then see when you put a radiograph in, it highlights what you what is a class one carries. And it’s not to replace dentists or not to replace radiologists, but more to act as a second opinion as a safety net. Because sometimes when you’re seeing X amount of patients per day, you might look at a radiograph and miss something right. And when you do miss something maybe like in a UK. Get in trouble later on. The patient might be unhappy later on that didn’t pick it up and improves the diagnosis and treatment planning, and it builds more trust to the patient as well because they can exactly see where the algorithm is highlighted. Areas of abnormality. So it’s not just you saying, Hey, hey, I need to do five fillings. There is no actually, you have a look at this. This highlights ray abnormalities. You need to have five fillings, right? So it’s good in so many senses. But my favourite one is just building trust with patients and patients understanding their treatment needs better.

[00:26:23] Sure, sure. But tell me about some of the speed bumps along the way. I mean, there’s. Does it get it wrong and or did it get it wrong? And you had to change the algorithm or.

[00:26:33] Yeah, well, there’s been many speed bumps along the way. One of them was the NHS Health and Care AI Awards. That was something I submitted my work into. So with it, I did it alongside my cousin’s company who do lung X-rays and CT X-rays as well for the brain. So we all kind of worked on it all together and they had the application and have applications. Exact same principles. Pretty much the same kind of methods of using it. Everything was pretty much the same, but when we submitted it, they all got the grant and I didn’t and I worked on it for months. I spent so many nights just, you know, going over it and really put my passion into it. And I said, How are they getting it? And I’m not getting it. This is in my head revolutionary. This is going to help and change. It was going to help with the NHS backlog because we can prioritise which patients from based on existing radio whilst we have which patients need to be seen that haven’t done treatment on reduced the NHS backlog, improve patient care. So many things. And that’s when I realised, you know what, a lot of people, including the NHS with the long term plan, they don’t see all health as important as systemic health, even though it has been many studies that provide the link between the two, right? And that is a speed bump that I’m still working on today, and it’s been many dentists around the world that have, you know, put a lot of research into the topic. Dr Maguire Stanley, for example, there’s a lot of work between linking oral health and systemic health. Does another doctor called Dr Dohme in Germany? And the more and more I’m kind of looking at reading networking with these guys to really try and bring out that link into dentistry because I’m hoping more and more people will see it. And when they do, I’m hoping the NHS will end up giving me a grant one day.

[00:28:15] Hmm. Yeah. Don’t hold your breath, man. Tell me about the sort of So what is the corporate structure? I mean, are you working under your cousins now or have you set up a new

[00:28:29] Company and these guys are they want a whole different, whole different league to what I am now. They met really, you know, Boris and Rishi and stuff, and they they’ve done great work across the UK. They’re all in all the hospitals in India, America and stuff as well. And they really want to focus in on the what the work they are doing right now. So I decided to take it as a solo project. I was I got a call. You guys do that. I want to do this by myself. I then had a clubhouse. I think as Clubhouse is it the the application we speak? I think it was Robbie and Millard hosting it with Ben Atkin’s on Dental technology, and I so I joined the call and I started speaking with them as the first time I actually spoke with Ben. And Ben was like, You know, he’s heard about this Dental diagnosis using AI. And I said, Well, I’ve got a lot of experience with it. Let’s catch up. I had a call. He introduced me to these guys in Manchester University. There was a professor called Professor Hugh Devlin, who’s an international known dentist in Dental research in a lot of books and other research papers. And he had developed something similar to why I had. So when I spoke to the CEO and the team over there, we decided to collaborate, join forces and really are going to be able to provide something for UK dentists that were great. And at the time, Hugh Devlin was about to retire. He was right of clinical director. I was able to step in, spoke with these guys, got Ben Atkins on board and now hopefully the CEO Payman. I’m going to ask you to try it and tell me what your thoughts are on it.

[00:29:55] Amazing. So how far, how, how far away are we from a product ready to buy?

[00:29:59] So we have a product at the moment right now. Right now, we focussed on inter and animal only caries, which are probably one of the most difficult things to spot in a radiograph. But it’s like, you know, one of the things we put out right now and right now, we’re kind of marketing it as prevent preventable profit. So, you know, dentists who are looking at it can pick up on it and take their patients, Hey, listen, you’ve got early. And now more and more care is here. You need to go see your hygienist and use for toothpaste. Here’s kind of the work you need to do on it. We’re also developing things that we can pick up from calculus, bone loss, different stages of of of caries and all kind of abnormalities that would hopefully be ready by the later part of this year.

[00:30:37] And physically, how does it work? How how do you put it into your software that, you know, is that simple thing to do?

[00:30:43] Yeah. So right now, it’s a standalone desktop application, so you install it, you have it running there onto your desktop and what you do is once you’ve taken the ready. At the moment right now, we haven’t had an integration to the specific software you’re using. We’re hoping to get that along the way as well. But as soon as you take your radiograph, you can run it through the desktop app and in about five seconds, it will highlight all abnormalities for you so you can have a look with or without your patient to be able to see what treatment needs to be done here. And then you can relay that back onto your patient and then formulate a treatment plan accordingly.

[00:31:15] Have you raised any money?

[00:31:17] Yes, we raised about two million so far. So it’s going well, not as well as the big boys in the US, but where we’re hoping to raise more.

[00:31:26] So how long do you reckon your runway is? With that, I mean, how long are you going to be able to keep going?

[00:31:32] Well, we look to that. We’re aiming to get around five hundred Dental clinics by the end of the year using our software. And I think that’s a really kind of realistic target that we’re hoping to be able to achieve. You know, we’ve got a lot going on this year. We’re in talks with Health Education England. We want to speak to Dental schools to be able to get them training the Dental students with it. We’ve developed something called the Gap Tool, which is a general assessment portal to where when I give, I give you six radiographs and you’re meant to diagnose them individually by yourself. And then I want to give you six radiographs with the algorithm called Assistant, and it highlights all areas of abnormalities in the sexuality class. And at the end, you see a result of what you achieved by yourself. And then what you achieved using what we call assistant. And in it, we always see a huge number of increase detections using Assistant. And when he’s looking at the second time, you’re like, Oh, wow, can’t believe I missed that. I can’t believe I missed that. And we’re using it to train foundation dentist from the start of the year, we’re going to see how good their diagnosis skills are. And then we’re going to see which ones need more work. We provide them more training with and then more and more at the end of the year when they finish the training. Hopefully, they can go out to the real world and be able to diagnose and treatment plan accordingly.

[00:32:40] Doing a lot, man, a lot. How did you raise the two million?

[00:32:44] So this was this was Tony Travers and Craig Gardner. So these guys have decades of experience in business, finance, research and stuff. So there’s loads of venture capitalists and programmes set up to help UK based companies to be able to grow from there. So I’ve got to give my thanks to them. These guys have done a great job doing so.

[00:33:05] And so who’s calling the shots? Is it you or is there like a different CEO?

[00:33:08] So are we. I’ll be the clinical lead. So the clinical director, certainly from clinical base, I’ll be calling the shots. We do have someone called Craig Gardner, who is responsible for the commercial success of the business. By being honest with me, we all work as a team, as in Ben Atkins has decades of experience every time I talk to him. You always have challenging conversations. We always disagree like, you know, argue our points across. But at the end of the day, we come to a solution and it’s great to be able to walk in and sit into a room where everyone around me has decades of experience on what they do, right? So I always have to bring my A-game when I’m walking into today because I only graduated in 2019, but they don’t ever see me like that. They always see me as someone who’s got a wealth of experience in what I do. And so with it, I just make sure that I bring my A-game done, my research done, my studying know what I’m talking about, research all of the competitors and know what’s good. So it’s collective team that I ended today calling the shots.

[00:34:03] I’d get a CEO.

[00:34:05] The Yeah, we do have Tony Travers

[00:34:08] Used to get me.

[00:34:11] The thing about collective team calling the shots is, you know, it’s all well and good, but you need one guy. Yeah, that’s cool. By the way, in my company, it’s not me, you know? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:34:23] So how does your work?

[00:34:25] My partner, Sanjay is the CEO.

[00:34:28] Ok, OK.

[00:34:29] Yeah, no, no, I’m not. I’m not the right person,

[00:34:33] But

[00:34:34] I don’t know. Maybe one day interesting question about competitors, then. Yes, I mean, I said to you before I get, I get a little newswire thing from from some, some accountants. And they said, Yeah, investor holdings are doing this. And if you’re aware of them, they own everything they are. Buy buyer care and cur, and they’re probably the biggest. Maybe after Invisalign, the second biggest company in all of dentistry, billions and billions and billions that were How are you going to go up against those guys? I mean, look, I’m doing it myself, right? We’ve got we’ve got competitors that many, many, many times our size. Yeah. And my advice to you is you’ve got a niche out here. So with Enlightened, we’ve called we said we’re going to be the world’s best teeth whitening system. And that’s our niche. Yeah, not the cheapest. Not, you know, whatever. Not not the most distributed. Yeah, but you you’re going to have to niche out and maybe what you said, the education angle. Yeah, because it’s the kind of thing that you know, if just for that example, if if if investor comes up with something in two years time which completely nails this and they’ve got billions right, they could they could. They could get a team of hundred people working on it. If they completely nail this and your system doesn’t give the same accuracy, then your system’s got to nail something else. It’s got it’s got to be something, something neat. But you know, it’s super, super impressive, dude. Super impressive. And the speed that you’ve done it in as well.

[00:36:10] Definitely. Yeah, there’s this huge competitor. There’s a lot of people in America. They’re there, they’re a lot more open to this new technology and new advancements in the field, so they get a lot of funding for it. One of the ways that we decided to niche out was definitely through Health Education England, for example, we just had the Oxford chess game kind of trial, a gap tool and. Notice an increased number of findings using Assistant. So we’re just hoping to be able to start them young when they’ve come out of Dental school, familiar eyes themselves with the software as well. We’re also working with other dentists who are trying to get input from UK dentists at the moment. Right now, we’re not trying to conquer the world with this thing where UK company based in the UK is helping with the NHS backlog. Let’s help with our students over here and help with the dentists over here.

[00:36:55] So that’s the most niche right there, right? The NHS. Yes, the nice thing is right there, you can dominate the NHS with this.

[00:37:03] Yes. Yes, definitely. You know where

[00:37:05] The nice niche right

[00:37:06] There? Yeah. So that’s the plan. I’m still, you know, going around the world trying to meet Leaders and the Dental field, get their opinion on it, find out what they’re doing. So I can use that information to be able to put it on here because in the UK for dentistry is great, but we need to look elsewhere as well. How are they doing things in America? How are they doing things in Portugal? I’m going to Cancun to meet some dentists over there after, so I’m always trying to learn from world leaders around the world and try to implement it back into the UK and into my own practise as well.

[00:37:34] But you’ve definitely got a talent as far as collaboration. And you know, why is it that you can get Miguel Stanley on your little live thing and my cap, her and Dr Saleh? And you know, when you contact me, I want to talk to you. You know, you’ve definitely got a talent in that collaboration area. Communication and collaboration with this. Where does that come from?

[00:38:00] I think that comes from a young age. You know, when I was 15, I always had a job. I started working when I was really young in Valencia. I met this person, called his name was Jay-Z. He was responsible for all of the kind of elite events in Spain. And I was working in my retail store then and he met me. I got to know him. And then he started taking me out to all of these private events where we met footballers and all of these really, really cool people and that opened my my kind of communications because he was he taught me so many things, you know, when you were at a party, when you were somewhere, don’t stand with your arms crossed or you stand open, always go out and talk to people, get people’s phone numbers because we want to invite them for events and be able to make a living from it. So I got it. From then from a from an early age, I made friends with this footballer who played for United called Louis nanny. He opened my doors and a lot of senses. He actually asked me to do his veneers for him because I was introduced to him as a dentist when I was getting a dental student, and it would have been a great opportunity. But I was like, No, I’m not. I’m going to sit myself out this one because, you know, you don’t want to mess it up. So I think from where

[00:39:07] You naturally, naturally that way inclined. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever done one of these personality tests. You know, we do it for people who who are applying for a job like 16 personalities. I mean, everyone should, should, should have a look at that 16 personalities dot com. But it was these simple questions like if you go to a room full of people, do you stand at the side which you stand in the middle? Yes. And me, I’m completely the other guy. I’m completely people believe I’m very, very shy.

[00:39:34] Oh, I think you’re very particularly.

[00:39:36] No, I tell you, what do you do when I know someone, I’m too much the other way I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them secrets. I’ll tell them, you know too much. Yeah, yeah, I’ll say inappropriate stuff. But but when it when I’m when I don’t know someone if I haven’t met someone before, I’m very, very, very, very shy. And I find it particularly hard to approach Tom Dick or Harry and say, Hi, I’m Payman. I just can’t do it now. But but it sounds like you’re not that guy at all.

[00:40:05] I don’t know, as I like to think that, you know, obviously I still feel uncomfortable when it’s a new person and I’m trying to like, you know, introduce myself and start a conversation. But because I literally work from Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and even Sunday nights in Valencia and my job was to go out and network and build communications with people. I was

[00:40:22] Just kind of, as your job

[00:40:24] Is here, it’s got to change into me now that I just find it naturally, be able to do it. Mike, I’ve known for a very long time for like 2016. Got to know McGregor’s and Mike Appeler? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:40:34] I’ve got to know I’ve known him since 2007.

[00:40:36] Wow.

[00:40:38] I didn’t reply to my my my message

[00:40:43] As he showed me, he’s the hands.

[00:40:44] You get something out there. But when he first started with Larry,

[00:40:52] I know they’re they’re incredible guys. And I’m just I’m lucky, I guess, because to be able to network with people as you know, you inspiring

[00:40:58] You, you know, it’s important, you know, it’s an important skill that I think people should be good at. I’d love to learn, like if it was teachable. Yeah, I’d love for you to teach me that.

[00:41:07] Yeah, definitely.

[00:41:10] I can get it. I wasn’t born there, you know?

[00:41:14] But but you know, a lot of times what we’re really good at, we take for granted because we just comes naturally. Yeah. So now, you know, unbelievably in the middle of all of this, you also become. Best young Dental in London. I mean, where do you find the time, dude? Are you literally working day or night?

[00:41:38] Look like I said my parents work 11 hours a day, right? Nothing I do is going to be harder than what they do. Ok, so yes. I feel really humbled and lucky to have won these awards and be doing this. But I’ve got I’ve got big shoes to fill and I need to give back, you know, I feel personally that my parents have had a very difficult life. And at that stage of retirement now, and I need to work as hard as I can, not in 10 years, not in five years right now. So my parents are still healthy enough to be able to reap the rewards of what I can provide for them. So winning best young Dental is it was great. I never really showed my cases outside of like a judging panel to have a dentist on Instagram and stuff because I only qualified since 2019 and I’m super critical of my own work. I always look and review all of my cases after and, you know, just really think, how can I get better or what am I doing wrong? The little, little adjustments I can make, you know, I went to Portugal when I shadowed Dr Miguel Stanley, and that was very lucky to do so. He gave me like a private lecture and private seminar, and I showed him my work and he started posting my workout or my my clinical work, and I told him to delete it because I’m still super critical. I don’t think I’m the best dentist in any way. I’m not the most experienced, but I really want to be, and I really want to be able to learn from the best like, you know, you’ve got an amazing course as well for composites, and I really want to go on as many courses as I can learn, as much as I can and become the best dentist I can be.

[00:43:01] But I think do you think it’s possible to become the best dentist in the world and develop this AI system? You know, maybe, maybe it is studio. Maybe it is.

[00:43:12] No, no, no. I have no for me.

[00:43:15] For me, this AI thing, yeah. What it needs is to go into an incubator and have proper business people on it and raise, you know, around a round, be round, see and go and, you know, exit strategy. And you know, you’re far enough in it that if you if you turn around to me tomorrow and said, Listen, I’ve decided not to be a dentist, I hope your parents aren’t listening to you. If you turn out to me tomorrow, say I’ve decided not to be a clinical dentist to pursue this air thing. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t think that’s a bad idea, dude. I don’t think that’s about it because because because let’s say it goes nowhere in two years time. Yeah, OK, go become a dentist.

[00:44:00] Yeah.

[00:44:01] Listen, I’m not giving you that advice. I’m not giving you that advice. You know, everyone’s got to do their own thing. Yeah, but I definitely gave, you know, Bryant, Connor Bryant that advice. Yeah, he he was already the business was already happening and then he started doing his vti, and then he was looking for a job. I asked him, What are you doing, man? You know, the like. His business was on fire already. And I don’t know whether he took my advice or not, but you know, he put 100 percent, 150 percent into Bryant and you can see what’s happened there.

[00:44:36] Of course, I completely understand what you’re saying and what you’re saying is true. When you really want to be the master at something, you do need to keep it one hundred percent attention. For me, though, from such a young age, I’ve always had a passion into creating beautiful smiles working on the industry, and it’s not a job I don’t ever see it as a job. I love going into work. I love taking clinical photography to my step by step, learning and improving every day. It’s my hobby. It’s not really my work. So for me, you just give up the industry and do that. It’s giving up something I enjoy doing. I didn’t go to work ever thinking it’s a day of work. I really enjoy doing just the niche that I’m doing. You know, when we talk about endo or implants, I’m never going to go into it. I’m never going to specialise into it. I know, like, you know, personally, I can tell you, I’m not the greatest. And I don’t think so at all. And I stay away from it and focus into what I am good at. So despite what you’re saying, it’s something I do in my free time. You could just say, I say my, I want to be my job. My dentistry is kind of my passion in my hobby.

[00:45:30] I get it. But the reason I say it is because seeing what you’ve achieved at the same time as being a dentist, yeah, makes me think if you had time, yeah, you could really achieve amazing things. It’s a bit like, do you remember during lockdown? Yet suddenly all this amazing content started appearing. Yeah, yeah. People were interviewing Miguel, and there was all sorts of things coming out and people were. I remember Monarch suddenly had Coachman, you know, come on. And you know, when dentists have time, they can do all sorts of amazing. Then lockdown ended. Everyone started drilling again and the content just died. Completely died. Of course, because because it’s it’s time. It’s time. Yes, I understand what you’re saying. It’s a bit too early. It’s a bit too early to to say give up dentistry. You know where in the industry it is a bit too early. But do you understand what I’m saying to you that the main reason I’m saying it is because you’ve achieved so much while still being a dentist that I’m a bit worried, a bit like, you know, not worried, but excited to see if if Jana had seven days a week with no patients. What would happen to this, to this AI thing, you know, and it will take. But believe me. Yeah, and Mr holding the missal around. Yeah, yeah, let alone your other competitors. Yeah, I’m sure there’s six or eight other very serious competitors.

[00:46:56] Yeah, of course we go big players. We know we’ve got forty million pound companies from the US coming out over here. And, you know, I completely understand the competition we were up against, and it is definitely about finding your niche and just homing on on it. And for us right now is definitely the hub we have here over here in the UK.

[00:47:15] Tell me about winning this award.

[00:47:18] Wow, winning this award. Look, I know a lot of people don’t understand it to be like, you know, it’s just an award for me to get to this stage, to even become a dentist from when you’re looking at me. When I was 19 and hanging out in the streets all day, not having a good education, getting kicked out my family house, going to go live with my auntie, it’s kind of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, kind of, you know me?

[00:47:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:47:43] So to go to that and a lot of people didn’t think I was a dentist and for my dad to go off and we mortgaged the house and send me abroad, a lot of people were like, What are you doing? Are you crazy? You’ve got a younger son and a younger daughter to look after your postmatch. Don’t have the finances to be sending a kid to a private school in Valencia. Have you lost the. Especially this kid, this kids on the streets all day, he doesn’t do anything like, what are you doing with me, right? And my dad did raise those concerns to me, and that’s when when I was at my auntie, so I was laser focussed, you know? I’m not going to do the industry. I’m going to become the best I can be. And I want to really, really do well. And as a Dental student, you see these Dental magazines, you see these Dental awards and had it in me when I was a student, I was like, I want to get there one day, you know? So I didn’t realise I didn’t think to myself, I’m going to achieve it, you know, a couple of years coming out, you know, when you’ve got so many people who have won this award beforehand were amazing dentists who have been in the field for so long. So for me to have won it, it’s it’s something I envisioned and I manifested when I was a student. I’m going to get up there, I’m going to get the stage, I’m going to bring this award to my parents and I want to make them the happiest parents there could be. I was like, I was almost in tears, you know, and I know what people will be like. Beautiful, calm down. Calm down. It’s an award, but it’s not just an award, it’s just what it signifies to to me that I managed to achieve the dream of being a dentist and to win an award like this as well. It means a lot to me.

[00:49:02] It’s beautiful. But tactically, what did you do to win it?

[00:49:07] Tactically, what I did to win it. So of course, clinical content I submitted to my son, my clinical cases, my baseline, my small, my curves.

[00:49:14] Listen, I know nothing about it, except what happens. They say, OK, send some clinical cases. What else do you have to do clinical work?

[00:49:19] Is there some work for what you’ve done to become a dentist? What you do outside of dentistry, what you do for charity work? I was talking about my clothing line earlier before we donate all of our profit to the climate reality change. So we do all of that as well. And just, you know, overall what you are. So funnily enough, Ben Atkin’s I found out after we got him as a team was actually one of the judges for the dentistry judging panel. When I asked him, Ben, why? Why my application? Why did I deserve to win it? Because there were so many great people that fly in this category, and it was because you’re doing something different. Your dentist who came out from Valencia, you’re not doing an ordinary ninety five Dental job as many people do. You’re outside air, you’re building Connexions, you’re doing this, you’re doing that and you’re doing clinical dentistry as well. So I feel as long as you can show that you’re a great dentist, but also outside you doing other things as well, that makes you different from the knees, from the normal and have your own niche. I think that’s what we’ll take you to in it.

[00:50:11] So I take it. This was before you were partners.

[00:50:13] Yeah, yeah. Before, before I.

[00:50:19] Yeah, tell you what we to.

[00:50:23] I won in November and we joined in

[00:50:25] January of the following year. Yeah, yeah.

[00:50:32] Amazing. Ok. It’s interesting, dude, because they get a lot of bad press, don’t they? The awards?

[00:50:38] Yeah, that’s the thing a lot of people look like. This is just, you know, whoever buys the most tickets, whoever does this and whoever does that. I didn’t even buy a ticket, you know, are going by it, by the small clinic group, Jen, in case you won the war before as well. And then great dentists, great training academy, great group of clinics and stuff. They always do bad press and I understand the bad press completely. Even, you know, when we have these top implements of dentistry and stuff like that, I get it all. But for me, it just means something a little bit different, just simply because of where I came from to get to even become a dentist. That’s why I find it really special.

[00:51:09] Yeah, yeah. Know your story sounds great because you know you thought about this when you were a dental student.

[00:51:15] Yeah, not so much that award, but just where it signifies to me in my life to be able to prove people who doubted me wrong before they could never make it to become a dentist and to work as hard to just provide and give back to my family.

[00:51:27] You know, on these things a lot of times sort of trying to get to the sort of the core of, you know, what’s driving someone and how those things happened. And you know, yours, I can see, is a very clear of often have these things and we feel like we didn’t get to it. Whereas whereas with yours, it’s so important for you, it’s like such as such as shining light that you’re following a particular goal of making your parents proud. You know,

[00:51:57] That is number one to me. Look, look awards at the end of the day. As long as your patients are happy and as long as you’re you’re being a good dentist, that’s what matters. You being ethical, your patients are being happy, you’re doing the right job. Awards don’t mean anything.

[00:52:07] I want to have this more happen, dude. If your dad sits, you down, says, Listen, Jana, I’m so, so, so proud of you’ve achieved way more than I thought was possible. I’m proud of you. And would that extinguish you?

[00:52:22] Well, I mean, those words to me is making me emotional as in Oh, it’s so beautiful.

[00:52:28] I say, I tell you where it goes for me. Then it ends up saying, I want to make my kids proud of me. You know, setting an example for them.

[00:52:37] That’s why I’m against people who who don’t come from my background who already had because a lot of people get sick to people who have had their parents that their Dental clinics and they take over the Dental clinics and they look all. They were born into a rich family or they were already dentists and stuff like that. Listen, I’m trying to do the same for my kids, right? I want to become a good dentist and provide them in future as well. There’s nothing wrong at all with your parents being successful in which and you’re blowing into that. You still have to work as hard. Not taking any credit away from them is what I’m trying to provide for my children as well. But my number one priority is always to give back to my parents.

[00:53:09] Yeah, I mean this thing about being born into it. So what

[00:53:14] That’s like, isn’t it

[00:53:17] Exactly that likely

[00:53:19] That? And anyone, anyone who thinks a successful rich people are happy that doesn’t know many successful rich people, you know, like this massive pain and having a super successful father, you know where you’re always having to live up to that, where you’re always compared to that person, even within yourself, within yourself, where you feel I’ve got friends. The father’s got a massive global conglomerate of companies all over the world. I went to school, went to school with the guy. And, you know, he can’t point to any achievement and say it was his own because even by himself, he knows he was put on a pedestal, you know. And you know, life life’s hard in many ways for many people. Of course. Let’s move on to darker days. Yeah, it’s weird asking someone as positive as you, but I do. I do like to in your darkest day in dentistry,

[00:54:18] My darkest day in dentistry. Wow. I think as a student, one of my darker days was when I when I developed this idea and I put it forth to my my teachers and they they laughed at me that I was wasting my time and it’s a joke and no one’s going to find it useful. That was a bit difficult to kind of overcome because when you think you have a great idea and you hear people who teach you dentistry, I tell you it’s no good. That was pretty dark for me, but I kind of just carried on working away on it, on silence.

[00:54:51] So you didn’t lose confidence or you did. You questioned yourself?

[00:54:55] I did question myself, of course, because these guys have been in the industry and teaching dentistry and know dentistry for four decades more than I have. It was very upsetting to see, and a lot of students were laughing at me as well. Stupid ideas, never going to work like he’s wasting his time in dental school. I wasn’t like, you know, I found it hard in dental school because for me, I was always working and I was working with be honest with you. I was working with restaurants and I was working in nightclubs as well, right? And the reason why I was working in nightclubs is because the guy I met knew I was working retail, so he’s going to pay me more to work in nightclubs. And I did it and as a student and not respected if you’re working in nightclubs. So sometimes when you see my professors coming up into the nightclubs and partying and stuff, they’d often see me being a VIP host and they often thinking ahead of that student doing a VIP. Or you must be a spoilt kid from from London and spending all this money is wasted, all of the VIP. And but no, actually, I was working in the club. And I come close to that. So as a student in school, kind of always kind of found it a little bit hard to tackle that angle. But I was a student president for the first few years, was trying to do the most I could for my students and stand out into that crowd as well.

[00:55:58] But I definitely did say once I graduate and came back into the UK, the community here has been great. The platform from seed energy to to UK, of course I work closely with the team and they’ve always been so positive and welcoming and pushing my ideas every time I want to. I want to write an article about I or I want to like, you know, other dentists from their platform because I think one of the things we do in the UK is we have our own community here, right? We have it’s really kind of like home and hub, but we don’t really look outside what’s going over in all of these different countries? What can we bring over from all of these different professors, right? So one of the things I’m talking, working with and with some of Dental academy, let’s be more professors from overseas. Great UK. You guys are all fantastic. You know you’ve got the masters of what’s happening in the UK, but what about this guy from this country, this guy from that country and bring them all in? So trying to work on that, I’d say my darkest days were when I was a dental student, but that came to light once I graduated and stuff started becoming part of the community in the UK.

[00:56:54] What about clinically,

[00:56:56] Clinically, clinically? Yes, so when I graduated, of course, my family were very happy and my parents wanted to have all the treatment they’ve been putting off for the last decade or so because all the way to save their money so I could do anything for them. I think my mum came into the clinic and I had to. Yeah, a lot of work to deal with her from from the background she comes from, which clearly wasn’t taught how to brush their teeth. So I need a lot of work with her and I’ve been one of her three molars. I thought would have been a simple end, though, and I ended up just doing the treatment on the trip, ended up pursuing the tooth.

[00:57:39] And it’s my own mum, my own mum.

[00:57:42] Yes, mum’s promoter. And from it, I.

[00:57:48] What’s happening? Okay.

[00:57:52] Oh my god, how am I going to tell my mum I failed to finish it?

[00:57:56] And what did he do?

[00:57:58] Did you brush it under the carpet? This chief has to come out. Sorry, bye.

[00:58:03] Yeah.

[00:58:04] Well, don’t worry,

[00:58:07] I’m

[00:58:07] Going to get you to the best bridge. I want to take you things like, you know, that was probably my my biggest mistake, and I realised I told my family from then on Mother’s Anatomy, You guys give me a couple of years and let me know what I’m doing. And that’s why. Now, for though, I don’t do any endo refer out, and there’s a lot of people who do a lot better than I do, and I just focus on what I’m good at. So that’s been my worst clinical mistake so far. And know, try to justify it to my mum was the car. Yeah, but you know, the crown on it wasn’t very good. Didn’t have the 2mm around it. But at the end of the day,

[00:58:39] It’s funny a perforation will do that for you. I think it was a mainly said this to me as well. I had a perforation in dental school. When you when you see when you see that blood coming through the through the end, it just keeps on coming. It just affects, you know, any pathway. And I remember Anoop bless his soul. He said there was one perforation that that then defined the rest of his career, that you just stayed away from endo. Oh, I think I think it was, he said.

[00:59:08] As probably to me,

[00:59:10] Yeah, you know, it will do that. It’ll do that because it’s such a horrible thing to happen. You spend your whole life trying to save stuff, right?

[00:59:17] Yeah.

[00:59:19] So I think that my dog is kind of cool moment.

[00:59:22] What about have you never had a situation where like a patient management? Error patient management when you haven’t been in it for long enough, maybe for

[00:59:30] Long enough and you’ve got to realise I’m not an undergraduate, I’m a postgraduate who studied biology with psychology. So with it, I’ve always kind of learnt about Dental.

[00:59:37] I’m good at communication communication.

[00:59:39] That’s the kind of home. And that’s why I’ve actually given lectures on my university to congresses around Europe and stuff. And I’ve been invited to talk about Dental psychology and Dental anxiety. So I feel that once patients there, once we were in the chair, once we were talking and everything goes smoothly. It’s great because, you know, I heard this quote where a patient will never sue a dentist that they like no matter what they do wrong as they light them. Hey, listen, don’t worry about it, you know? So I think that’s the most important thing above your clinical skills is make sure you’ve got a good relationship with the patient. Make sure that you know you both like each other, treat them as a partner rather than a patient. Feel like you’re both in it together. You do this work at home. I do this work in the clinic. Together, we’ll come up with a dream smile.

[01:00:19] So would you say, Janice? Big tip in dentistry is on that communication and communication.

[01:00:26] It’s definitely that. Don’t even see the patient as a patient, see them as a partner. Understand that to be able to achieve the results that you’re going to do clinically, it’s 50 50 because the patient has to make sure they’re all hygiene their foundations, their guns are as healthy as they can be for you to do the work. And so it’s always a 50 50. They have to be making sure that they’re not smoking their oral hygiene routine and everything is good. And once you establish it, as long as you do, you keep your end of the bargain. I’ll keep my end of the bargain. Always communicate. Always get proper informed consent. I’ve been lucky enough to become an honorary global ambassador. So dentistry ambassador before we kind of preach is one is informed consent sterilisation.

[01:01:09] What was it? Was it like being around Miguel with his patients? Oh no. How did you know? Yeah.

[01:01:16] Tell us the stuff I seen there. If I say to you, you wouldn’t believe it. You can never happen in UK dentistry and I’m white,

[01:01:24] White, white going to as an example,

[01:01:26] You’re going to find it crazy. You’re going to find it as in. I was really lucky because I he was doing a course there. I was planning to do a course there, but I think there was too many applicants that came to be able to control it under the coronavirus restrictions wasn’t possible, so I ended up going anyway. I was like, You know, my friend Nani’s from from Lisbon, Portugal, I went to go stay with him and stay with his family there. He’s recently moved into Italy to play there. So I stayed

[01:01:49] In town as well. Lisbon isn’t

[01:01:51] So beautiful. Love Lisbon. First time I’ve been there and it was. It was so nice. Yeah, I recommend everyone listening. Go check out Lisbon if you haven’t already. It’s really beautiful. The White Clinic for Moto Clinics I’ve been to in Lisbon, Portugal, is probably the most advanced Dental clinic I’ve ever seen. All the latest technology there. He does a high level of dentistry. There was a patient that flew in from Australia, right? She flew in from Australia to come to the Lisbon clinic to see Dr McGirr Stanley, and she had pain in her arm. She couldn’t move her arm. She went to see the doctor, went to see whatever dentist, and she had loads of implants. So loads root canal treaty teeth, crowns on not implants and went to go see it and was like, You know, my dentist says everything was fine. My doctor says, nothing is wrong with me. I don’t feel well. My my my brain is all clogged up. I can’t move my arm. I’m thinking of ending it all. This is my last resort. I’ve come over here. I want to fix it right the way I say it, like, you have to be there to really understand how it went and I looked in and stuff and he was like, cool. He did like a 3D CT scan from the x rays. I couldn’t really notice much wrong. But then after when you look to the CBD and saw all these habitations and who’s talk to me about Jawbone detoxification, they’ve never heard of it before.

[01:03:08] And the true pathological dentistry. So it came out there and he pretty much did a full mouth extraction and taking out on these teeth and is going into these competitions, I saw lots of pus coming in from the jaw stuff I’ve never seen before, right? And after he kind of cleared it all out, did ozone therapy do or less? The next day, the patient was like, my mind is becoming clear, and immediately after she stopped moving her hand, moving her arm. And that’s a question most is like, how does this all work, right? And he was talking to me about all of these like, you know, old Chinese traditions where you link all of the teeth to different organs and parts in your body and stuff like that. And as with the clinical evidence to this, like, you know, I’ve never really looked in any studies, anything like that, but the stuff he saw in between relationship was given me and stuff. It’s it’s something we don’t practise here in the UK. And it’s it’s not just one patient, it was another patient with trigeminal neuralgia who had all these headaches and stuff like that came in a similar kind of treatment and after I was able to be just fine. So it is truly life changing. I can’t really explain into that much scientific detail because I’m still learning about it, and I don’t really know the ins and outs of how even works. But it’s some dentistry that I’ve never seen before.

[01:04:18] So, so on the CBC. He could see something.

[01:04:21] Yeah, because doing some habitations in the Jawbone and some great nuisances that. Want a present one won’t want you couldn’t see in an RPG properly.

[01:04:29] Ok. And then he extracted the teeth in front of you. Yeah, pus started coming out

[01:04:36] In these habitations as you went down. Dig deeper than passed out. Coming out decapitations. Well, never seen it. I even spoke to Dr. Kahn, who’s an implant geologist here in the UK. Tpd of what’s interesting told him about my experience, and he was like, Wow, never would happen in the UK. We would. We wouldn’t be doing this type of treatment here at all. And the moment I was really lucky, he’s not.

[01:04:56] He’s not he’s he’s not like a, you know, a quack, is he? He’s like, he’s he’s an evidence based guy.

[01:05:03] Yes, definitely. Yeah, yeah, he’s on all of these papers research for me, he’s he’s definitely one of the best, most respected dentists in the UK. I was lucky enough because he actually took me to a room alone, and they seminar and presentation was meant to give to 500 students. He gave to me one on one and I was so lucky to be able to sit there and experience that with him. And you know, you taught me through everything, went through my clinical cases and.

[01:05:25] But listen, when you say when you say this could never happen in the UK, do you mean because it’s it’s on the edge of of, you know, evidence base and we would never risk it? Yes, based on GDP and all that.

[01:05:37] Mm hmm. Exactly what you mean. Exactly that,

[01:05:40] Exactly. Interestingly? I mean, we’ve talked I talked to TIFF Qureshi about this. Yeah, when TIFF was was was pretty much developing a lime bleach bond. Yeah. And you know, when we were developing enlightened, we did things that, you know, weren’t in the literature here. And we were saying

[01:05:59] About that when you kind of risky about the GDC and how tight we are here, did you

[01:06:03] See wasn’t the problem back there? I’ll tell you what, when any time I thought it was super risky what I was trying, I would try it on myself. Oh, wow. Yeah, we do a half and half on myself occasion. And then and then I would rope in my staff, my team and I’d say, Look, I want to try this on one half and try, and people really worry about one half getting whiter than the other or whatever. But that wasn’t my worry. My worry was always, am I going to hurt? So. But you know, at the end of the day, when you want to move something forward, you have to try it eventually, you know, eventually you have to try it.

[01:06:37] Of course.

[01:06:38] Of course. Very interesting, man.

[01:06:40] Yeah. But it was the experience I recommend. Like, you know, when we ever have the time, go check out White Clinic, it’s

[01:06:46] I would love to very often I met him once years and years ago when he was, he was actually in whitening. Back in the day, back when we started in 2001, we were doing light activated and he was representing bright smile in Portugal. Ok, but bright spark was a was a light before before Zoom, but he was clever enough to get out of it. I stayed.

[01:07:11] Oh right, OK.

[01:07:14] It was a new range from. You must have had a high smile, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s right. So like a professional product range, and he was talking to me about it because the CEO got in touch with them and I was like, Isn’t the same guy approached me and I did try of projects. But out here in the UK, even though Ha0 have their own professional package now, if you promoting high smile at a lot of dentists that will look down on you and say it’s wrong, yeah, so I’m a little bit careful with what I do. You have

[01:07:45] To. It’s the social media age man

[01:07:47] For social media.

[01:07:50] All right, buddy. I know time is limited, so let’s wrap it up. We always wrap it up with the same two questions. Prav ones and my ones, perhaps final question. Sure. You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your friends and family and parents and children and all with most important people to you in the world around you. What’s what’s three pieces of advice you would leave them with?

[01:08:21] Wow! Three pieces of advice I leave them with. Don’t chase money. Do what you’re truly passionate about. I think a lot of people in our lives do just chase the money and find what brings them the most money, spend all their time doing that. But, you know, if we spoke before, that’s not there. The materialistic things that really bring us true happiness. It’s the people in the memories that we cherish with them. So definitely spend more time with the people you truly love and create memories with them. That’s something I really want to do with my parents and my fiance and my family now is, you know, have that good balance, which I’m learning from a lot of people who are a lot older than me in the field to say, don’t be a workaholic, spend time while your while you can, but the ones you love. I think that’s one piece of advice I’d have. The second one is be kind. Everyone that you meet in your life has a journey that they’re going through what they present and their outlook might not be what’s going on truly inside them. So always be kind. Be with everyone you meet. And the final one is be generous, always try and give something back to people or just give something to people. Don’t look for people with opportunities and that were really what you can do for them because you realise that once you provide something for them and give something for them, whether it be your patients, whether it be your colleagues, you really try and true happiness in their happiness.

[01:09:48] Very nice one. It’s very nice. And my final question, sir. Fantasy dinner party. Three guests dead or alive. Who do you have?

[01:10:03] Oh, wow, that’s that’s that’s an interesting question. Well, it’s going to be a little bit controversial because although there’s been so many rumours about him, I can’t I can’t deny that I was a huge fan of him when I was growing up as a child.

[01:10:19] I think Michael Jackson again.

[01:10:22] Yeah, he’s coming up, man.

[01:10:27] People said him before.

[01:10:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s what I

[01:10:31] Was scared to say out loud. You know, despite everything that’s happened, but it was a huge influence on me, not just his music. But listen, when I say this, I say it carefully. But the person he was or portrayed out himself, right? Always being journalists was given to children in need, making the world a better place. All that stuff I loved as a kid, I loved watching him perform. I love the person he was. I don’t necessarily believe all these rumours and stuff and these allegations. But you know, that’s up for debate and a whole different podcast episode. But Michael Jackson will be one of them. Another one would be Steve Jobs. True visionary love this journey. Being able to, you know, come from nothing to get kick back down to, to do it to to what he achieved. Steve Jobs him and the third one would probably be Elon Musk or Walt Disney, one of those two guys, because truly, because of their entrepreneurial spirit, something I resonate with. I watch all this stuff. And you know what Elon Musk is doing with ideas as well? You know, self-driving cars coming up and all. It’s something that I feel was really cool. And I feel like in dentistry, in our profession, we can also use AI to take us to new wonders as well.

[01:11:43] Get cheap focus, but

[01:11:46] I’ll allow

[01:11:47] It. I think Michael Jackson can hang out with Walt Disney. And then, yeah, Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs give Michael Jackson a hard time.

[01:11:57] Before we wrap up who you are, who would you say

[01:12:00] I have the guy from Red Bull? I don’t even know his name.

[01:12:04] Okay.

[01:12:06] But in a way, I don’t want to find out his name because I like I like the fact that I don’t know his name. You know, like, it’s Red Bull. It’s what he’s done with Red Bull. This amazed me. Not not the drink, by the way, through the positioning. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The reason I laugh at Michael Jackson because I was a big Prince fan. Oh, Prince, which was if you once you once you get a bit older, you’ll realise Prince was definitely much better than Michael Jackson.

[01:12:33] It’s all that

[01:12:37] You know when you know Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. There was no Billie Jean. Yeah, there was no Billie Jean. Billie Jean didn’t exist. Yeah, there was no kid. Yeah, he’s just it’s a cartoon. He’s drawn his prince. Everything he sang. There was,

[01:12:50] Yeah.

[01:12:54] And then my grandmother and you, grandma.

[01:12:56] That was classy, OK?

[01:12:59] But he’s been lovely. A really, really, really enjoyed it. And I just know going forward. Janet Dental is going to be on on, on our lips and you know, you’re going to be impacting the world one way or the other. And I know I’m sure your your parents are already very, very proud of you. So, you know, I hope your drive keeps going as well.

[01:13:19] Thank you so much, Payman. It’s been a pleasure and I’m a huge fan of yours and thank you so much for having me on. It really means a lot.

[01:13:25] I really enjoyed it. But thank you.

[01:13:26] Thank you. This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this 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

[01:13:59] 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.

[01:14:10] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

Comments have been closed.
Website by The Fresh UK | © Dental Leader Podcast 2019