[00:00:00] The moment I graduated, I knew that the moment I graduate people would be like, You know what? He’s just come out of Dental school. He needs to just kind of go into any old job and just he needs to spend five years just upskilling. And I knew that would be the argument because it’s the argument in other sectors as well. Like, you come out of doing an economics degree and people are like, Oh, you’re only a year out, like just, you know, grind or work hard for a bit. And I think for me, it was not. It wasn’t that, oh yeah, I’m going to get a private job straight out Dental School, but it was more just I want to be that or knowing as that person who works really, really hard on their dentistry and wants to get better and better and better. And I think that was the priority for that was, first of all, to prove that to myself that like I’m putting in this work and to feel good about myself that, you know, I’m putting in those 10000 hours that you hear about sort of thing. And then I think, yeah, my hope was that at some point somebody would come along and be like, You know what? That Zane, he’s been doing this since Dental School. Like he he’s got his head screwed on. And I know that if I take a punt on him, he might not be the finished project project product yet. But eventually he will get there because he’s got the right attitude and that’s the most I can offer when I’m one year out of Dental school. There’s not anything else that I can guarantee.

[00:01:11] 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.

[00:01:28] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Zain Risky onto the podcast. Zain first came on on my radar when I randomly watched a YouTube interview with him. I think I think you were just a Dental student at the time saying, Yeah, I remember thinking this kid’s got his head screwed on. And then later on, I saw you win some prise as I don’t know what it was like. Top Dental student in the world twice and then again at BCD wins some prise. And then by that time it was I was paying attention. And so I do see your feed. And, you know, just as so many things that you’ve done in such a short period of time. So it’s it’s it’s a massive pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for doing this. But how are you?

[00:02:14] Thank you for having me. You know, I’m good. Thank you.

[00:02:17] So then you said you listen to this podcast. We usually start with the back story. Yeah, kind of kid. Were you?

[00:02:25] I was critical, cripplingly shy, to be honest. I was like the kind of kid where someone, you know, when I was like five, six years old, someone would come up and say, hi to me and I just hide behind my mum and like, grip her very tightly because I was just very, very shy. Always quite kind of cautious, well-behaved, never really got in. Much trouble growing up. Yeah, quite quite quiet. Kept myself to myself. I would describe myself as introverted, whereas I feel like when I tell that to my friends now, they’re just like, No, that’s not true at all. You do so much kind of in the in the public domain and with people and that sort of thing. But I would say, yeah, quite a shy child and grew up in a very kind of loving, well supported sort of family environment. My parents, both very dedicated to their kids, kind of weak.

[00:03:09] What do they do?

[00:03:10] So my dad qualified as a chartered accountant, but he’s he’s got a very interesting career pathway because it’s a little bit like me where he kind of I don’t know if it’s kind of impatience and boredom, or if he just likes to do lots of different things. But he actually quite early. Early on, he left chartered accountancy to basically start running his own businesses. So part of the reason I actually grew up in Leicestershire, I was born in London, but when we were seven, we moved to Leicester. And the reason for that was because my dad took over a failing hotel, which is kind of so outside of what his comfort zone was. And he took on this hotel and he ran it for a couple of years, and that’s why we were based in Leicester. And then because we were quite settled, we stayed there because of our schooling. And he moved on to different things. So like nursing home restaurant and they weren’t all at the same time. It was kind of periods of five to six years, but in a way I kind of got exposure to like lots of different industries and businesses and how they run, you know, good and bad and the kind of life involved. So a lot of that kind of location and relocation revolved around my dad’s work. My mum kind of she’s she didn’t go to university. She kind of left school after A-levels, and she was very good with people. So she took up a lot of jobs in kind of in banking as a cashier. She used to work at Heathrow Airport with Singapore Airlines as well. So she’s always been quite customer facing. Currently she works. She’s still at NatWest, so she’s a cashier there at the moment.

[00:04:34] So as a student, as a child, I mean, as a as a school person, we always like top of your class and all of that.

[00:04:42] And I wasn’t ever top. I was in that kind of really frustrating zone where I was good and I never really was kind of bottom of the class or there was never any concern about me failing exams and stuff. But I was always in that kind of good, but not amazing or not perfect. And whereas my sister was in that kind of top of the class perfect type child, so I was kind of that middle ground. But yeah, never really any concerns. My mum and dad never really had a problem with me at school. Neither the teachers they just used to say he needs to come out of his shell a bit, which was always kind of on the report card.

[00:05:12] So do you do you remember a moment where you came out of your shell because you’re definitely out of your shell right now? So yeah. What was the inflexion point?

[00:05:20] It was really distinctive, and it was really interesting because my parents had such different views on my kind of lack of confidence. So my mum was always really worried that, oh, like, what if he never comes out of his shell? Like, it’s going to impact him a lot. He’s so shy, and my dad was like, He’ll grow out of it. Like, Don’t give him space, let him develop, let him explore, you know, just protect him, basically and support him. And then when I was, I think in year six in my primary school, I got appointed head boy just out of the blue because again, you wouldn’t think this shy child would be the one that would be appointed head boy because he doesn’t have any kind of speaking skills. Or, you know, he doesn’t seem like the guy that would volunteer to do a speech at speech day or whatever. But I don’t know if it was the teacher that I had at the time or what, but they saw something clearly and that year that I had as head boy, I was doing every kind of couple of weeks. I was giving a speech on a lectern in a cathedral or a church to a bunch of parents and students and stuff.

[00:06:14] And I remember being so terrified, but again, like my dad, you know, it sounds kind of a little bit lame now that I think. Actually, it was so important as growing up, like my dad and I would kind of rehearse at home for the speeches that would be coming up and he would, you know, if I mumbled or stumbled or wasn’t speaking loud enough, he’d be like, Right, start again. And we kind of practised and kind of almost moulded me into someone who was quite comfortable, public speaking. And I know for a lot of like my friends, for example, public speaking is like one of their biggest fears, whereas for me, it’s just like, Yeah, I’ll go, I’ll go do it. I’ll go say it. Or, you know, if someone needs to be a spokesman for something, I’ll do it like, I have no problem with it. Just kind of water off a duck’s back now. Whereas I think at that time it was like, Oh my god, I can’t do this. My knees are shaking. Voices kind of trembling, that sort of thing.

[00:07:04] So then tell me about university, you’re a grad, so you did a degree before dentistry.

[00:07:10] Yeah. So at school, I was again had like a couple of options available to me. I was really into politics, kind of English literature. I was really strong at probably my best subject. I really wanted to do. Journalism really followed a lot of journalists as well at the time, and I think combination of kind of like gentle advice and counselling from my parents about kind of like, right, what are your career prospects going to be if you did something like English or history? Like, do you have an actual plan or a route? We’re happy to support you to do it, but do you know what you’re going to do? And I was like, No, to be fair, I don’t. I just know that I’d enjoy studying the subject, and then I guess I’d just go from there. But I was also really strong in science and biology, chemistry, that usual sort of thing, and I could see quite a tangible pathway into dentistry. Medicine was on the cards, but I think I was more keen towards dentistry and I knew we had family, friends who were dentists. And so I kind of from a complete picture and I’m not really shy of saying it. But like in terms of kind of financially work life balance, I was someone a bit like my dad were like, I have a lot of interests outside of my immediate career, and I knew that medicine was never going to cater to that. I was going to have to be all in. So dentistry was kind of that, that balance where I could, you know, pay the bills, enjoy it. But then also, I could do so much more outside of it if I wanted to.

[00:08:22] So that was always on the cards. The reason I went and did Biomet Imperial actually was not because I applied, didn’t get into dentistry. I had the grades at A-level. It was mainly because I was playing cricket to a really high standard at school, and I actually my dream was to go and become a professional cricketer and play for England. So the way I saw it, I was like my kind of peak where I can enter into the professional set up would be about 21 years old, so I need a degree that will just get me out of uni at twenty one and maybe whilst I’m at uni, if I got into Oxbridge, for example, they have a set up at certain unis where you can actually study but but play full time as a professional as part of the university set up. So it’s kind of like a pathway that England have created so that you can actually get a degree and become professional and you don’t have to sacrifice one over the other like they used to in, like the 80s and 90s. So that was what I was aiming towards, ideally at Oxford, but in the end I ended up going to London. Imperial was great and I really did explore that kind of non-clinical side of things, the interest I had politically and all of that stuff. So I think when I got to the end of that, I was like, Right, I think, you know, cricket’s not going to go where I want it to go.

[00:09:32] So now when was the moment when you realised cricket wasn’t going to be the thing?

[00:09:36] I think I always there was a part of me that knew, deep down that look like I’m I am good relative to your average club cricketers like amateur amateur players. But when I would on the occasions that I’d be playing against boys that were playing for England under 15s in England, under 16s, there was like a big gulf between me and them. And I was like, OK, maybe if I work hard, if I keep training, I will get to that point. And it kind of just never came. And it was always that kind of hope inside me that, OK, I’ll trial with this academy or with this county, and I was still doing that at university. I was trialling with Surrey, and it just never would get past that point where I’d always be on the fringe, but I’d never be someone who’d be the first name on the team sheet. So my dad always used to say something to me. He’d be like saying, like, as much as you love cricket, I’m here to support you. There’s only 11 people that get on the teamsheet. No one cares about the 12th person. So you know you might well be that 12th person, so you should have a backup for being that 12th person if that comes, if it comes to that, and that is kind of where it was at. So I think when I got to the end of Imperial, I was like, Look, I’ve spent three years in London. London’s got a big cricket scene. I’ve been playing for my club. I’ve been in contact with certain counties and it’s not really gone anywhere. I think now at 21, you know, I’m young enough to still do a career and thrive within it. So let me turn my attention to dentistry.

[00:10:55] And so what is it? What does it involve if you’re if you’ve got a degree in biomedical? Does that mean you don’t do the first year of dentistry?

[00:11:02] Yes, they drop you into two straight away if you get onto a grad programme. So I was fortunate that I got into a four year grad programme at King’s, so I just got really hard to get on to. Yes, so I can’t remember the ratio. It was something crazy and I didn’t actually. I didn’t even know that that was how competitive it was until we got there. And it was kind of like we had a talk by the dean and it was kind of like a back scratching exercise, although like you’ve done really well to get here. And, you know, don’t don’t mess it up, basically because you’re one of 20, you know, who have gotten in. And there were, however, many I don’t know the actual figures, so I’d be talking, but there were a lot of it was very, very competitive. And then I think once I got in, I was actually very grateful and thankful that I don’t know how I kind of managed to get into this, but I better make the most of it now

[00:11:46] And in university and imperial. Your political. Sort of mindset. I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it, when you go from school to university that there’s this sort of you’re not quite a man? Yeah, you’re certainly not a boy anymore. Yeah. And you sort of have the opportunity to redefine yourself that you just sort of there’s this moment where they’ve got all new people. Yeah. And so did you. You defined yourself as a sort of political guy. It’s a guy who’s going to be on beyond boards of things.

[00:12:17] No, it wasn’t specific to political, but I agree with you. I think I got because I was also living out. I was my family home was in Leicester and I’d come to London to live out and study. It was like a big city. First time I’ve lived out in London, all I knew of London was like when my cousins were in Hounslow and it was just like, That wasn’t really London. So living out, yeah, like I remember Freshers really distinctly. I was so far out of my comfort zone, but I was like my parents. My dad is very kind of growth mindset orientated, so he would almost be like, You’re not coming home or like, he discouraged me from kind of coming home in the weekends like some of my friends used to. They just used to go home after on Friday night. But I know, like, live out, make friends, do you know? And the temptation is when you’re outside of your comfort zone, I just want to go home because I just feel a bit, you know, shy. I don’t really know anyone here, but I think within three months to kind of just forcing myself to stay there and kind of embrace the change. I then just started thriving and just I joined so many different clubs and societies, even ones that I thought I could never see myself doing this long term.

[00:13:16] Like, I started playing hockey as a sport, and I got really good at it because I don’t know if it’s hand-eye coordination or whatever, but I got involved with like a really large, large type hockey crowd, which I never would have associated with before, you know, going to sports night and doing tables and all this sort of stuff. And and I was just like, This is so not me. Like, I don’t drink. I don’t I don’t really go out and do all this stuff, but I can still thrive in these types of environments. I can still make friends with these types of guys, and I still kept in touch with a lot of these guys and I still play well. I used to play hockey a lot more than I do now, but it was like it just gave so many different strings to my bow. If that makes sense and politics just became one of those things I explored and it went somewhere. So yeah, I think that’s what Imperial was grateful for. It was just kind of exploring,

[00:14:00] Where did it go? What did you do?

[00:14:02] So at Imperial I in my second year, I ran like a really big campaign where there was there was a position of open for student trustee of the student union. So it’s basically an elected student who sits on the board of trustees that governs the whole of the student union. Most of those people on there are like the union president and then there’s like appointed board of trustees who are usually, you know, people in their forties and fifties managerial roles who kind of govern governance the way the union works. So I ran a campaign against, I think it was ten other people. And I guess like in the context of a whole university, nobody really knew who I was. I ran. I remember the campaign. It was quite it was like a very kind of tongue in cheek, quite kind of social media savvy, quite visual type campaign with a bit of kind of seriousness to it in terms of promises and all that sort of stuff. But I think I kind of read the room quite well in that most students, they they are interested a little bit in student politics, but not too much the kind of vote for the guy that’s quite quite funny, quite entertaining. Yeah, you know, makes them laugh. And they kind of like, that’s the kind of person that actually gets voted in, rather than maybe the person who is the most clued up on political issues. Yeah. But I think for me, I always knew that I could deliver in terms of being clued up and I could always go, do my research and make serious arguments and that sort stuff. But I didn’t think the campaigning and the election was the place to be doing that, necessarily because the larger proportion of the population just wanted like memes and, you know, funny quips and quotes and that sort of thing. So, yeah, I got like,

[00:15:31] You calculate you calculated all of that, did you?

[00:15:34] I didn’t calculate it. I think similar to the way, like I run my Instagram. I think I just know exactly what people who follow me are looking for naturally. Yeah. And I think I just use my brain. I’m like, OK, what do I? What would I like or what would I vote for realistically? And I’m quite realistic. I’m not like idealistic or, you know, this is who I want to be, and it just kind of completely far removed from what most people think is normal. So, yeah, I think I just kind of thought, OK, this is the way to approach it. And you know what? You have fun doing that kind of thing, like making funny posters, posting them on your social media, people liking it, commenting on it, sharing it. You’re kind of it makes you feel good and you enjoy the process and kind of just kind of snowballed from there. And then I actually ended up winning, which I didn’t. Obviously, I wanted to win and I believed I could win. But, you know, to run against 10 people in the whole university, you never think that it’s actually going to be you at the end of the day

[00:16:22] Because it gives you sort of I would never be that cat. Yeah, I would never go and try and do something. But it must give you some sort of experience in sort of running stuff, right?

[00:16:34] Yeah, I think at that stage, it was like the biggest thing that I’d done from a like an election or political scale. I was just like, I almost took myself aback when I thought when I think about it in terms of I just kind of jumped into it, and I’m someone who generally to most opportunities, I would just kind of say yes without kind of. Thinking and then afterwards, I oh, that was a bad idea, or that was quite a good idea. So I’m never I’m always open to an idea or like a proposal if someone comes to me with it and then I’ll think about it and go, whatever. So yeah, I think it gave a lot of skills that I didn’t realise it would at the time. And in retrospect, all of this stuff kind of makes sense. And you know, I got this and that from it. But at the time, I was just like, Oh yeah, I really want to do this and see what it’s like to be on a student union and be elected and to run a campaign and it be really cool if I win it. That was probably the most thought I gave it, really.

[00:17:25] So then, OK, you finished biomedical. Did you already know you were going to go to dentistry after that?

[00:17:30] Yeah. So so I knew, like when I in my freshers at Imperial, I was like telling people that, you know, people would ask, like, What are you gonna do with biomed? Like, you know, you can do medicine or did you want to do medicine? I’d be like, No, I’m going to do dentistry. I’m going to apply for a grad course and also to TA. I went into dentistry straight after finishing at eight p.m. There was no break between the two unis, so in order to do that, I had to apply in my second year of Imperial’s so pretty much a year after my first, you know, a year into my degree, I had to start getting UCAS references, all my applications, ready interviews, all of that sort stuff was happening in second year to start in September, finishing after finishing my third year. So I always had that plan and that was always my plan. And people always used to be like, Wow, like, you really know what you want and what you want to do. And I was like, Yeah, like, like I said, I always wanted to do dentistry. It’s just that because of the cricket thing. And I did buy it because I wanted to juggle a couple of other things just to see where it goes. So I was pretty kind of, you know, head screwed on in terms of looking towards dentistry.

[00:18:30] I mean, someone’s looking at your Instagram and the first post on your Instagram is as your fourth year dental student. Yeah, yeah. On this on this account, anyway. Yeah, yeah. And it’s like a phantom head post. Yeah, well, the first few are phantom head posts. Yeah. And it got me thinking, you know, there’s so many dentists out there who would never. Yes. And yet there you were in the fourth year posting your phantom head. Yeah. Is that because because you’d had the experience in Imperial that you were so comfortable?

[00:19:06] No, I actually don’t

[00:19:07] Think you should be wearing.

[00:19:09] I think it’s is. It was so much easier at that point than it is now, because now there’s like an expectation or, you know, and also because I’m now in the actual Dental world, I’ve got something to kind of lose if I’m posting rubbish stuff. But back then I was like, No one knows who I am. I’m I think I don’t know how I started following Dental stuff on Instagram because it’s not. You don’t really know how you get into it, but you just start following pages. And then I made a separate Dental Instagram, not with the intention to make it my Dr Zain Rizvi account. At some point it was more just okay. I want to pick up tips and tricks that I’m not learning it. Dental School Bad was actually the kind of entry into that, but that’s kind of a separate, separate sort of story. But off the back of going to a couple of those events and the young dentist sort of days, I started following a lot of these people and it start off by being like, OK, how can you improve your rubber dam stuff like really simple stuff that we were already doing at Dental School, but we’re just struggling with and we had so much time to practise it. And then I think aside from that, I got into this mentality a bit like I do with sport where I was like, right, in order to be good at dentistry and get better at dentistry, I need to put in more hours and work harder than anyone else to get to a level before anyone else. So what I started doing was in dental school, it’s a bit of a joke. You see so few patients because people don’t show up or someone’s not booked in because the admin staff didn’t book them in whatever you’re, I think 50 percent of the time you rock up to clinic, your patients are not coming.

[00:20:33] And most people will just go home, have an early kind of afternoon off, or they will go to the go out with their friends or whatever. I still used to do that stuff. I still had friends and I’d still be going out and doing those things. But during the nine to five, if my patient didn’t come in the morning or didn’t come in the afternoon, I’d be like, Well, this is the time for me to be working and practising. And so I kind of almost got known to be that guy in my year who just be carrying a phantom head up and down the lifts in Guy’s hospital, because more often than not, these patients wouldn’t be showing up. And I’d just be prepping teeth like I’ve been doing rehabs, full house rehabs on these phantom teeth like like almost every week, to be honest, because at some one or two of my patients wouldn’t show up on it, even if it was a Perrier clinic, I’d still be prepping and doing composite work, and I think I just used to post it to keep myself accountable, to get some feedback, that sort of thing. And also, to be honest, to show people that I was doing this in dental school so that I’m actually I’ve been putting in this work since day one. I think knowing that I am working on my dentistry rather than just kind of cruising at dental school, I think that was also something that I did consider at that point. I remember when I was when I was posting. But yeah, at that point,

[00:21:39] People, which people were you hoping to potential employers?

[00:21:44] Yeah, potential employers, to be honest, because I knew back then, yeah, because I knew what would happen, but I’m not. Yeah, the moment I graduated, I knew that the moment I graduate people would be like, You know what? He’s just a dental school. He needs to just kind of go into any old job and just need to spend five years just upskilling. And I knew that would be the argument because it’s the argument in other sectors as well. Like, you come out of doing an economics degree and people are like, Oh, you’re only a year out, like just, you know, grind or work hard for a bit. And I think for me, it was not. It wasn’t that, oh yeah, I’m going to get a private job straight out Dental School, but it was more just I want to be that or knowing as that person who works really, really hard on their dentistry and wants to get better and better and better. And I think that was the priority for that was, first of all, to prove that to myself that like I’m putting in this work and to feel good about myself that, you know, I’m putting in those 10000 hours that you hear about sort of thing. And then I think, yeah, my hope was that at some point somebody would come along and be like, You know what? That Zane, he’s been doing this since Dental School. Like he he’s got his head screwed on, and I know that if I take a punt on him, he might not be the finished project project product yet. But eventually he will get there because he’s got the right attitude and that’s the most I can offer when I’m one year out of Dental School, there’s not anything else that I can guarantee. So I think for me that that was what the attitude was and that came from seeing

[00:23:03] My questions a bit. My question is a bit rubbish. Yeah, because in these situations, you get the sort of the hard benefits of that sort of behaviour. But the soft benefits of it is where it’s really at. You know, the things you don’t even realise, you know, I mean, for all we know, you’re you’re sitting here in this podcast right now because, you know, because of some of that work that you put in. Yeah, now there’s no way that you were sitting back then thinking, I want to be on the know some podcasts, right? But the soft benefits and it’s not only like this sort of benefits that going to push you forward benefits of people, you talk to things you learn. Yeah, I’m quite interested, though, saying it’s kind of obvious what what the upside is of this sort of thing. You know, competitiveness. Yeah. What’s the downside of it? Did you suffer with the down? Right on this as well.

[00:23:54] Yeah, I think I feel like most dentists say this, but I’m quite hard on myself more than like when things have gone wrong and obviously they have gone wrong in the past with patients or whatever. I’m actually harsher on myself than the patients ever been, to be honest. Like, like the patient can say, OK, I’m not happy, whatever. And yeah, that will get me down and I’ll be like, really apologetic and I’ll manage the patient fine and you’ll make me feel bad for a little bit of time. But I think the lingering feeling of disappointment, humiliation, frustration that comes from me. And the only way I can kind of compare it or express it is like when I’ve been playing cricket, for example, and I’ve made a mistake in the match and it’s made us lose the game or it’s a team member down. And the thing in sport is, is that people let you know quite directly that you’ve you’ve messed up. It’s not kind of like patting each other on the back and being like, You know what? Don’t worry, it’s better. You’ll get someone literally shouting and swearing at you and being like, Why did you do that? And obviously it’s just a game at the end of the day, but no one says that in the moment, in the moment, it’s like the worst thing that could have happened, and you kind of just have to face that humiliation. That’s shame and also make a promise to yourself that, OK, that won’t happen next time. And then, yeah, at the end of the game, you’re like, OK, fine relief. It’s not. It’s not anything that actually matters. And I think those are the soft skills that I’ve taken forward, not just into dentistry, but just into any area of my life where as soon as you have any kind of upset, you kind of just manage to absorb it.

[00:25:22] Yeah, but I’m talking about, you know, the downside of it. So, you know, are you are you over competitive? Yeah, we worry about other other people’s achievements, that sort of thing. I’m not saying it’s necessarily going to be that right? Yes. The best way of being good at something is not to worry about other people’s achievements.

[00:25:40] Yeah, yeah. I think I think I I wouldn’t be being honest if I didn’t say that. Yeah, I think there’s I’ve trained myself and I counsel myself a lot better now than I used to. But there’s definitely a part of me that’s like, I want to be the best at amongst my peers sort of thing. And there’s that’s never going to be something that I will like necessarily always be content with, and that will never have only an upside that will have inevitable downsides. And I think part of part of making it a healthier dynamic is to be like trying to kind of be happy for other people’s success, but also using it as motivation to push yourself on rather than resenting or being jealous. At the same time,

[00:26:19] At the same at the same time, yes.

[00:26:21] And so I would say that definitely is a downside. But like, like you’re saying, there’s never really only an upside to any kind of personality trait. There’s always anything. Yeah, it’s always a double edged sword.

[00:26:33] Very interesting, man. So tell me about the seed, how that affected you.

[00:26:40] So this was a really interesting one. So in third year of Dental School, we had a consultant called Rupert Austin, quite a young consultant at King’s really forward thinking, and he organised like a careers day and Dental school. And I remember when we got the email about it, it was kind of compulsory for everyone to attend, but it was a bit like lectures where some people rock up and some people don’t. So I went to that and I was like, OK, let’s see what this is about. And it was all about kind of alternative careers with your Dental degree, which was really cool to me because I was like, Yeah, that’s what I’m about, you know, politics, cricket, whatever. And there were people who came from like, I think, GDC, some defence organisations just kind of talking about that kind of stuff. And then Samir Patel from eleven, he rocked up and he gave a talk on the business of dentistry. So it was nothing clinical and

[00:27:26] That crickets are two

[00:27:27] Massive crickets are obviously straight away. When he mentioned his cricket like he like he always does, my ears kind of perked up and I was like, Right, I’m missing out. And he gave such a good lecture at such a good talk. There was so many takeaways he gave, like a reading list that I remember reading every book on that list that he recommended rich dad, poor dad, financial freedom type stuff got really into investing into stocks and shares off the back of it. Obviously, at the end of the lecture, I was like, I really cringe with networking in the concept of networking. I’m just do want to ask anyone for anything. I want to be my own. I want to achieve stuff on my own merit. I hate kind of the concept, but because his talk actually really spoke to me, I was like, I need to say hello to this guy because it was actually such a good talk. And I just introduced myself and I was like, Hi, I’m Zane. Got talking about cricket, obviously. And then he was like, Oh, why don’t you come down to 11 sometime and we’ll just spend like a day together. He’s really generous with his time, and I know he does it with lots of young, young dentists. So we went I went to that. It was amazing Clinic’s beautiful event

[00:28:27] That blew

[00:28:27] You away. It’s so nice. And I was like, Wow, like, this is high end stuff like like

[00:28:31] Surgery of his upstairs.

[00:28:34] And he’s so casual as well. And I’m like, He’s so, you know, if you go into that kind of surgery and you’re met with someone who’s quite pompous and like, you know, I am the best dentist in London, that type of personality puts you off a little bit, whereas he’s so laid back, so chilled out, so calming and so good with his patients that I was just like, Wow, like, if he can do it like, so can I sort of think it was like properly inspiring and off the back of that, he was like saying, You need to get into the back, like get involved with them and kind of the way things work timing wise. They just launched their young dentist day for the first time ever because it used to just be kind of conferences and kind of study clubs. So they launched like a young dentist day that I went to, and I remember Richard Field getting up. And obviously he’s he’s a phenomenal dentist. And the lecture that he gave like full of tips and tricks like stuff that I was like, right on Monday morning, this is going, you know, I’m putting my rubber down on this way. This is how I’m doing this. This is I’m doing my composites. And that really gave me the bug because I think prior to that point, I was just like, Oh yeah, dentistry is going to give me a chilled out life, and I can just kind of do whatever I want with it. I wasn’t really that into the clinical stuff. Obviously, in the third year, you barely have had any clinical exposure anyway, but I think it just everything just timed itself really well. That backdoor educational stuff tied in with my first couple of patients or clinic. And then I started really like right, I need to get better and better and better and better. And my focus became really clinical and becoming the best clinical dentist I could be.

[00:30:01] For what? So you started attending Bhakti as a student?

[00:30:05] Yeah, I mean, I mean, to be honest, there was that young dentistry and then that was kind of it for the kind of short to term. And then I started applying for that kind of some of the awards that they put out for students. And I won the essay competition, which then meant that I went to the conference and again, that blew my mind like. I saw, you know, Maurice Semenza, the guy who perhaps like his hands, are like a milling machine, like, it’s crazy how nice his work is and you just see so much quality dentistry that you are just like so inspired by the time you leave there. And obviously, coming back to a Dental school environment, that kind of stuff, only a very small percentage of people are kind of interested in it or aware of it exposed to it. And so you already feel like in that kind of elite sort of group. I wasn’t in an elite sort of group, but I just felt my mentality was such that, Oh, I’m going to be that kind of dentist, like, I’m going to be in that top one percent in the UK, in the world, whatever. So it kind of sets your sights quite early doors more than any. Very good

[00:31:02] Point. Yeah, it’s a very good point. I mean, if I was going to give advice to a student, it would be to go to a proper conference and see, you know, the kinds of presentations that are out there. And I mean, it’s not not to say that in Dental school, you don’t have great teachers. You do, you’ve got some of the top people, right? But it’s just a different sort of way of presenting. Yeah. And because in Dental school, you’ve seen it, you’ve seen that. You’ve seen that one side, the the other side. I know, you know, Dipesh Palmer, who I work with a lot. One of the reasons why he was so good, so early is that his mentor, Louis McKenzie in Birmingham, put put some of them through nine days of hands on composite. Yeah, during Dental school, you know, and then you think, you know how many dentists have had nine days of hands on composite? And I remember when I met him, I was giving him a prise for best composite and he was in VTi. And I looked up at the case and I just couldn’t believe a vet had done that. He remembered what I was doing a vet. So you’re right, early on, being exposed to high level stuff for the right person at least is going to is going to inspire them.

[00:32:20] I remember I remember sitting in on a Tony Rotunda hands on. I don’t know who the hell Tony Rotondo was. I remember sitting in the room going, I think he’s pretty good. Like his composites look pretty good. And I remember like trying to note down tips and stuff, but I was just like, Oh, this is just one of those little workshops. He’s just a dentist like from the UK or something, just kind of quite good. And then later on, I was like, Oh my God, I was setting this workshop with him, and I just didn’t pay enough attention, like it was just so good. And it’s that kind of stuff where you just don’t realise how, how much exposure you’re getting.

[00:32:50] So then I noticed you wrote a book. And published it the day you qualified.

[00:32:56] Yeah, right. That was a lockdown project. When I say it like that, it sounds it sounds very like presumptuous, but honestly, it was it was just it was again like a timing thing. We were gearing up to sit our finals when COVID hit in March, and we got an email like a week or two after lockdown being like, Yeah, your finals have been pushed back to like the end of May. And I was like, Well, what am I meant to do now because I was like, are gearing? We were all in full revision mode and we were ready to set it, to be honest. And then I was like, Right, I’ve got like two, two and a bit months just sitting around. And the way the first lockdown was, it was just like, you could do whatever you want with your time. I was like on the PlayStation. I was watching webinars like it just felt a little bit unproductive. And I think that’s a negative trait that I have, which is that I have this like urge or constant need to kind of somehow feel like I’m being productive, which really does hinder me because you can’t always be productive. And sometimes it’s downtime is good. But I think in that first lockdown, it was always going to exacerbate that tendency that I have, which is that, oh god, I’m not really doing much here am I? I’m just wasting wasting hours in a day, and it just felt like Groundhog Day, like every single day.

[00:34:03] And then I thought, Oh, a little bit like a lot of stuff that I do on social media is that I was like, Oh, like, there’s a lot of people that I’m speaking to younger than me, my age that, you know, they’re asking for help on this specific topic here or there. And I just thought, Oh man, like, I’ve really always been into English and writing, I really love writing, why don’t I publish a book like that? Be such a cool thing to do to, like, actually publish a book and be an author? Because that’s like a dream of mine that I probably won’t achieve being a dentist because, you know, I’ll be doing Dental stuff. So I was like, OK, I’ve literally got two and a half to three months. I can write every day like five hundred words, maybe a thousand words every day. That’s not a big deal like for me to do because I enjoy writing. And also, when you’re writing about a topic that you’re passionate about, i.e. you’re giving advice to people, you know you can you can write for ages and ages and ages. Whereas if it was like a literature review or something like boring, you struggled to get to the word count.

[00:34:56] But so I kind of just set myself this goal, which was more for me than anything else. And I was like, Write, I want to write at least 500 to 600 words a day. I’m going to keep doing it until I cover all these topics that I’d kind of outlined very briefly. And then it became like, you know, like one hundred and something page book. And I was like, Oh, I’ve actually got something quite special here. And even if I hadn’t published it, I would have been quite proud of what I’d put together. And then Amazon is amazing. Like, I self-published it via Amazon, and the process could not have been easier. They have like a publishing self-publishing house, and I did it and I also had lost my uncle like very recently. So I actually made it into like a charitable project, which also really meant a lot to me. So, yeah, it kind of tied up really nicely, and I actually coincidentally finished it shortly before I got my results. So I thought, why not just publish it on results day? Because it will. It will. It will break up the kind of monotony of, you know, doctor’s own reality. You know, I graduated, I

[00:35:56] Think, did you get that confidence from year to think that you could write a book and put it out there? I mean, like, did you have had you already won the prises? I never said that you. I never said it was a good one when you did. Yeah, but then but then but then like, if it was me, I’d be even if I was as good as you, which I definitely wasn’t. Yeah, but even if I was as good as you, I’d worry that, you know, maybe I don’t know enough about this. And yeah, what will people think? And yeah, how come you haven’t got that voice in your head?

[00:36:26] Yeah, my other half is very similar to you in that sense. Like she always she’s so good at her job. She’s she’s a medick, but she’s always got kind of this imposter syndrome, which a lot of friends that I have also suffered from. I think for me, I don’t think I’m perfect. I don’t think that what I’m doing is is amazing or special. I think for me, I’m just like, You know what? Let me just push it out rather than get paralysed by this perfection. Someone recently when I published this online course was like to me, Oh, you know, you’re a really good example of this concept that I’ve read in this book called Show Me Your Work. And the point was, it’s just to put stuff out there, even if it’s not the finished product, because it eventually will become the finished product through refinements, through feedback and all this sort of stuff. I’m sure running a course is a bit like that as well. You kind of just get it out there first. The first cohort is not going to be, you know, the most benefit like the best one or the most perfect one, but slowly you just refine it over time. And I think everything that I do is like that. Like, I know my Dental work, even the stuff that I post now, people my age might be like, Oh, that’s great. But I know dentists who are like five, 10, 20 years older than me are thinking, Wow, that is rubbish. Or, like, you know, he’s missed a spot there or he’s missed this. And I know that people are thinking that it just doesn’t bother me because I’m like, I’m not going to learn or improve if I don’t push this out there. So I don’t have that fear of failure because the way I see it, it’s more of a failing to not get it out there in the first place, because then you’ve definitely failed, whereas at least putting something out there, you know, you’re definitely right about that.

[00:37:48] You’re definitely right about that. That paralysed by perfection is one of the worst things in the world. And, you know, looking at your output, the idea that when you say when you say I qualified during. It just makes me laugh. It’s a it’s a it’s just unbelievable. You know, someone who’s qualified then is producing this stuff now. It’s kind of beautiful, dude. I mean, I kind of love that stuff, you know, because back in my day, man, there was no way there was no way this could have happened in that time frame. I mean, you know, do you agree with me about social that we learn a lot

[00:38:21] From that 100 percent hundred percent. I I remember at uni we used to get people like professors, lecturers being like, Oh, like, don’t don’t, don’t do Facebook dentistry, don’t do Instagram dentistry. And I’m like, I’ve learnt half of my content from these places. And it sounds trivial because it’s like, Oh God, what is a professional health care professional doing learning from YouTube or Instagram or Facebook? But actually, it’s just we’re so connected that I’m learning from people in Australia. You know, there’s just so much sharing and stuff that you pick up. And to be honest, I view the onus to be on me, the student to like but verify if this works or look up the evidence behind it. You know, I’m not dumb enough to just look at something on Instagram. I think, you know what? This is going to work perfectly in my hands tomorrow. Like, I’ll look into it, but I plan around it. But you’ve got to try at the end of the day as well. Like, I’m not afraid to try things. It won’t always go to plan, but sometimes it will. And you’ll be like, Wow, I’ve just figured out an easier way to do something.

[00:39:15] Tell me about number ten.

[00:39:17] Yeah, this is. This was probably the most surreal experience I’ve ever had, to be honest. Like, probably meant the most to me from a career point of view as well. Long story short, I did another thing that I just applied for, and I thought, why not in my first year of dental school? I came across this programme called this young Muslim leadership programme. I posted about it recently and basically initially I was like, Oh God, I don’t want to go on this. It sounds like a faith based retreat and like, I am practising and I do believe in practising faith, but I just didn’t think that I wanted to go on this sort of cap for two weeks. But then I looked into it further, and it was actually not really much to do with Islam, apart from the fact that they were looking to get people into public sectors like politics, like journalism, traditionally underrepresented sectors. They wanted more Muslims to be involved in these sectors, and they were happy to facilitate that. And I was like, That’s right up my street, like, that’s what I want to do. I’m going to do politics. I want to harbour political ambitions. So I went to that for two weeks. It was amazing. I don’t know why this has happened, but someone from number 10 came on one of those days and she kind of said, Oh, I worked for the Cabinet Office didn’t really specify exactly where in government she worked, but made it out. She was for civil service and we had like these little small breakout rooms of discussions around health care, infrastructure, housing, education and what our opinions and views on these things are.

[00:40:44] And I remember just again, like not afraid to speak up. Just thought, you know what? Let me get my opinion out there because I’m in this room for a reason. I’m not going to sit quiet and not say anything, because what’s the point? So said a couple of things. Not by not. I wasn’t dictating the conversation by any means, but I just said a couple of things that I thought were true, in my opinion. And then she came up to me and she was like saying, Do you have an email address or something like that? And I was like, Yeah, like. And that that whole two weeks was so it was all networking, like my worst nightmare, but I was OK. Another person that probably just wants to send some sort of something over to me gave her my email and got an email a week after finishing the programme being like, Zane, can you send a CV? Because I’m based in number 10 and we we’ve got some policy making roundtables that we might want you to get involved in. And I was like, Right, that’s cool. So obviously put loads of work into that CV that I sent over and had nothing to do with dentistry on that CV as well. So obviously, try and tailor it towards politics. And then she was like, Why don’t you come to number 10 and we’ll just have a coffee? And I was like, Oh, that’s so cool that I’m going to number 10.

[00:41:46] And that first that first meeting was just unbelievable. I was just like, we discussed nothing to do with the actual job at hand. It was just like a tour around number 10, and I was like, This is even real. Like, I was just kind of blinking, you know, I couldn’t even believe my eyes and had a coffee in the canteen downstairs, got a picture by the door. You know, all the kind of stuff that you think as a tourist, I’m going to do when I go to number 10. And then then had radio silence for like two months. And I was like, Well, that was fun whilst it lasted. And then I got another email being like Zane were meeting on December. Whatever, whatever, twenty seventeen you and a couple of others we’ve picked out to basically have some discussions around Theresa May and her policymaking unit, some of their decision making and policies around young people, especially at university. Also, like young Muslims and that sort of thing, as well as component of that to it. And we’d like to be involved and I was like, Great. Yeah, and we kind of had six or seven of these types of meetings throughout the year. So there would be times where I’d be at Dental School and I’d have to leave clinic like a couple of hours early because I had a meeting at Downing Street at four or whatever. It was crazy.

[00:42:51] But what do they want? What do they want with you? I mean, what was it? Yeah.

[00:42:54] So I mean, technically, technically, I’m not meant to go into specifics, but I didn’t sign anything either. So it’s not necessarily completely forbidden. But it was effectively they just wanted. It was like a focus group. They had some ideas and they wanted to know what young Muslims and students in healthcare and other sectors, depending on what the policy was, what they thought of it and what other people in their demographic might think of it. Objections, arguments against arguments for I think it was more of like reaching out to people that were trying to target with our policies and get some feedback before we introduce this policy. So that was basically the job description. And then eventually, I think that contact that was facilitating it, she had to rotate into a different part of the civil service, so she actually had to leave the policymaking group. And also, I think there was a change of government. So I think Theresa May left and Boris Johnson came in or whatever. So obviously with the new new prime minister comes new staff and infrastructure, and so the whole thing just changed around. So that’s kind of where it kind of tailed off. But I still got an invite to their like ed reception or whatever that they have once a year. So that’s where I got that picture with Theresa May and, you know, talking to her and stuff like that because that was quite cool.

[00:44:03] And what are what are these people like in in government? I mean, are they like, vastly impressive? And we, you know, on on on the outside, you just get the sort of salacious headlines. Yeah. Or is it the opposite? They’re not as impressive as you might imagine.

[00:44:18] I imagine. Yeah, I think I think they’re quite ordinary in terms of like when you speak to them, it’s just like speaking to any other person, even Theresa reason. Just like very I always said that she she reminded me of like a secondary school teacher, like that’s the vibe I got from her. She was just so yeah, it was just like non non intimidating it, which is like I’ve been speaking to like one of my history teachers or something. And yeah, super normal. Super nice. I think they do definitely have this sort of bubble mentality. So like I remember in a couple of discussions, I was like, Do you guys not see this? Because it’s like really obvious on the outside. And for them, I don’t think they do, because they they’re obviously I think the diversity of thought isn’t always there. Sometimes a lot of these people are from the same sort of backgrounds, and so they think in very similar ways. On that note, there’s actually I actually once did an internship at the Bank of England in like a finance capacity. And one thing that they were really big on in their hiring process was to employ people from different unis, different backgrounds, different ethnicities. And the whole point of that was to try and avoid a financial crash again, where all the economists are just thinking like each other because they’re all Oxbridge educated, think exactly to avoid groupthink. So I think sometimes in that specific situation, there was a little bit of that which was like, Yeah, this must be a great idea or a great policy, because for all of us who have been working on it for six months to a year, it makes sense and we’ve covered all bases and I’ll be like, No, you didn’t cover this. Like, how are you going to address that? So I guess that was the point of us being there.

[00:45:45] That’s the reason you were there.

[00:45:46] Yeah, exactly. So so they were addressing it. But as to whether they took our feedback on board or not is another story.

[00:45:52] You don’t sometimes get the feeling that you want to get involved in dentistry, politics,

[00:45:58] To be honest, not really. Of recent. I think most of the stuff that I see about dentistry politics is like on Facebook forums and CDO did this and this statement by the BDA or whatever. And I think it’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s like dentists have kind of I don’t think they’re apathetic about Dental politics, but I think they’re very cynical and they have good reason to be. And also, I think they just have given up on elected representatives actually having their back. And so I think that kind of also just makes you lose interest as as a young dentist because you’re just like, well, a lot of these people aren’t very interested in being political and the ones that are kind of again in that sort of bubble mindset where like, I think I’m important, but actually in the grand scheme of things, I’m not making much difference at all. And the people that are having a say are usually not within dentistry, and they actually view dentistry as a very small proportion of the NHS. So, you know, I think I get frustrated when I see people making a lot of effort and there’s very little impact. And whenever you’re in politics, bureaucracy is something that you will obviously red tape and that sort of stuff. You struggle with a lot whenever you’re in any kind of like leadership role. And I think that really turns me off quite quickly, which probably isn’t the best trait if I wanted to go into politics. But I’m quite impatient as well. And I think right now, when I look at dentistry and dental politics, I’m a bit like, Oh, this is really frustrating because it feels like people are banging their heads against a brick wall. Having said that, though, I think if I see an opportunity where I feel like I can actually make a tangible difference, I would 100 percent get involved with it. It’s just that at this point in time, I haven’t really seen that sort of opening or that opportunity. I would I would see it as more token, which I don’t particularly feel like I want to do.

[00:47:48] Indeed, you’re right about apathy because, you know, we’ve done a couple of episodes where it’s been, you know, the elections or something, and that the episodes that are least listened to. Yeah. So you’re right that a lot of dentists aren’t interested, but at the same time. We need people who, you know, have got that sort of experience and the energy and that sort of ideas, fresh ideas to get involved and have a go. Yeah, it’s all well and good for me saying teeth whitening company, why am I getting involved, ED? You know what I mean? I get it. I totally get it right. You’ve got you’ve got a whole lot of stuff going on, but something needs to happen in the industry, man. And and you’re right. You’re right, you’re right. The impact question is a very important one. Mm-hmm. Would you say impact is a big factor in your life? You want to leave a legacy, leave an impact, have an impact or change things?

[00:48:49] Yeah, I haven’t thought too much about legacy, to be honest. I think it comes into the question when you think when you talk about impact, I think I think just in general in my life, I think I want to only kind of commit my time and effort to something if it’s going to have an impact and it doesn’t have to be like, I have to change the whole world’s thinking or actions, even if it’s just one person I help out. But if I help them out in a useful way and actually a way that’s made a difference, I’m happy and it’s really satisfying. And that that is the kind of stuff that daily on my Instagram, I’ll get a DM on a story that I posted, and it will be it’ll be a Dental student. It’ll be a dentist in my year or whatever, and they’ll be like, Oh, how do you do that? Or like, what do you mean by that? And I just do this, this and that, and they’ll be like, Oh, thanks, that’s really helpful. And I’m like, That is satisfying. It’s a buzz. Yeah, it’s a buzz. And sometimes with less people, you get more fulfilment from it. Whereas if you’re trying to, like, put out a generic message to hundreds and thousands of people, there’s less of that kind of tangible impact that you have sometimes. So, yeah, I think for me, that’s the buzz, just helping someone actually properly.

[00:49:52] Yeah, but when I say impact as well, you know, going forward, it feels to me like you’re going to be the kind of guy who’s going to choose career paths that have some sort of I don’t want to make it sound like, you know, in a way, like you said, look, I thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to be an author. Yeah, because I’ve always want to be an author, so I’m going to write a book. Yeah, so so career wise, you know, what are the things that are you think are going to be a good idea? I mean, because, you know, from where I’m sitting, it would be great idea of saying, got involved in politics, you know? Yeah, it really would in Dental politics. Yeah, but but but I hear what you said about that. So where do you see yourself going in the next, you know, short, medium and long term? As far as you know, you seem like a guy who wants to make impact.

[00:50:44] Yeah, someone someone asked me recently on my Instagram like an old dentist actually said, Where do you see yourself in 10 years? And I was like, to be honest, like at the moment, my focus is very clinical orientated. Like for me, as loftier goal as it is, I want to be the best dentist in the world. Like, I know it sounds ridiculous, but like that’s when I say best. It’s it’s a very generic term and whatever. But clinically, I want to be excellent and in that kind of one percent like that top sort of dentist. And that’s like where my passion and my ambition is at the moment. And I think when people start talking about like Dental politics or, for example, buying a practise and becoming a practise owner, all of those to me at the moment just seem like distractions which may not always be the case. Like, I also don’t see myself necessarily being a dentist at 60. I don’t see myself retiring in dentistry, necessarily. But at this point in time, I see myself as like, OK, I want to be the best clinical dentist I can be. The people that I look up to right now.

[00:51:39] I like the basil Mizrahi is like, you know, those kind of elite dentists that even dentists think, Wow, like, that’s someone who I would I would have my teeth done by like, that’s kind of where I want to head towards, at least in the mid-term long term. I don’t know what happens. Like, I remember listening to your podcast with Tom Youngs, and he kind of talked about like, when you get there, there’s just like that come down where you’re like, what now? And I really agree with that. And and that’s something again that I’ve experienced through sport, which is like, you work towards this goal and the journey is actually the satisfying part. And when you get there, just like this is this actually isn’t that great of feeling. And so I don’t know, like if I ever get to that point where I’m happy with my clinical skill and my clinical ability, then I guess I’ll just turn my attention to the next thing that interests me. But at this point in time, that’s kind of what I’m heading towards. I may never get there, but that’s kind of makes a lot of sense.

[00:52:29] It makes a lot of sense at this early stage in your career to be thinking that, yeah, for sure. But you know, you’ve got so many strings to your bow. I mean, there’s definitely I feel an entrepreneurial side to you as well. And in so much as you know the impact you want to have impact, you want it, you want to talk to people, you want to organise things. That’s that’s that’s that’s running a business, you know? Yeah. And it’s so and you know, you said your dad had this sort of, I guess, entrepreneurial journey as well, and he seems to be a big influence on you. Have you done anything entrepreneurship before? Yeah.

[00:53:07] So have you. So, yeah, I mean, a couple of things I did because I’m more out of desperation. So being a grad, your finances are so limited because you do get student finance and it’s just bursary stuff. But it’s not enough to be like putting yourself through four more years of Dental school, like you’re always living kind of penny penny. And I didn’t really want my parents to help me out, even though they they they would happily, but I was like, Come on, I’m twenty four. Like, Come on, I need to, like, support myself a little bit here. I can’t just be asking mum and dad for money. So I was like, Right, how am I going to make money? I need to basically launch some sort of business that gets me some passive income whilst I’m spending my day at Dental School. And it sounds great. It sounds cute, but execution of that kind of thing is obviously really difficult. So I started off doing what most Dental didn’t seem to do nowadays, which is just sell loops from from eBay or Amazon, did you? Yeah. And I made and to be honest, that taught me how to build a website. It told me how to, like, put an online store via a website, take transactions, taught me how to import stuff and dropship it, that sort of thing. So I started doing that and that was decent, but it was never going to, you know, sustain me in terms of it was kind of margins of like a hundred pounds here or a hundred pounds there.

[00:54:17] So I thought, right, I need to do two things. One, I can’t do this all by myself because like even website designing and launching a website takes so much time up. And I was like, Even I don’t have this time and I’m a student, so I was like, Right, let’s do something teaching orientated because I really like teaching, tutoring a lot of my friends used to tutor, and it’s quite lucrative in terms of your hourly rate. As a student, you can charge, you know, 20, 30, 40 quid an hour in London quite comfortably and you’re even A-level kids. Yeah, I didn’t do this, but that was my thinking of going into a business to do a teaching. So I spoke to a friend at uni who was my age and I was like, Right, why don’t we launch a taste? Of course, for people thinking of studying dentistry at Dental School because you’ve got loads of these kind of CV, apply UCAS type courses for school students where like, you know, we’ll make your we’ll check through your personal statement, we’ll interview you whatever. And I was like, That’s a saturated market. So why don’t we do effectively like a two day work experience, but in like a hotel room or a conference room, and we’ll bring like a study models will bring to waxing. Equipment will bring composite, you know, stuff like that and just show them a good time like this is what the industry is, because when you’re applying as a student, you just think, Oh, dentistry, yeah.

[00:55:23] Good money, good work life balance like I did and you go into it. And then maybe in third year, if you’re lucky, you’re still there and you’re still interested and you’re like, Oh, actually, this is what dentistry is hands on and patients and all that. So I was like, why don’t we just do that for these 16 year olds? And it was really popular. It took off really well. I don’t know how we managed to do this, but we hired out the University of East London, one of their rooms, and they never charged us a room fee for it. And then overcovered, they kind of went bust, so they never really got back to us. So we basically didn’t have any overheads apart from equipment, which was like from eBay. So and really the biggest struggle was just marketing it. And we would me and my friend Tariq, who launched it with me. We’d go we made T-shirts which literally had like, ask me a question on and we stood outside the universities on their open days. And obviously people would ask us thinking, Oh, they’re from Barts or they’re from kings, whereas this building? And we were like, It’s over there. But have you heard of our course like blah blah blah? We’re doing it for people are replying and thinking of studying of dentistry dentistry at university, but we’re not affiliated with the uni. So like, we made it clear that we aren’t affiliated with them.

[00:56:29] So you knew you knew it was the open day for dentistry.

[00:56:31] Yeah, we found out. We looked at up

[00:56:33] And you go and stand outside and say and talk,

[00:56:37] Yeah, leaflet, talk to people. We’d have these big, bright blue T-shirts with a question mark on it.

[00:56:41] So audacious. Yeah, audacious.

[00:56:44] Yeah, we needed the money. So.

[00:56:47] So then you filled the course up doing that.

[00:56:49] So we did one course in the first January, so within three months of setting the website up, we had a full course of twenty five kids, although admittedly the last sign up came the day before the course. So we were very much, you know, full just about before the first course.

[00:57:03] And then were you charging? What are we charging for it?

[00:57:05] So we started charging something ridiculously cheap, like 60 quid for two days, something something really cheap. And then anyways, we then that. Then we did too. We did it the course as well, which was in March and that filled up within a month of finishing the January within a week of finishing the January course. So we were like, Wow, this demand here. And then what we did was we started, we increased the price to £120 per kid and then it kept on filling up. And so we ran two courses on in Easter. We ran, I think, a two more in summer and it just kept going and we were actually making really good money because, like I said, there were very little overheads. And if you got like 30 kids each paying, you know, wherever you can, you can do the maths. It’s not a bad take home for two students, basically. And yeah, and like that, actually you. I bought my loops with that money, to be honest.

[00:57:50] Well, did you not continue with this business?

[00:57:52] So we did. And then COVID really screwed us over a little bit because obviously couldn’t run anything over COVID. It meant that also the traction that we were getting, which was like a snowball effect of people recommending to the year below them and people showing interest that kind of stopped for a good year and a half to two years. And then we recently did another course, I think, last January and the summer before, and they did fill out, but it was really a lot. There was clearly a lot more effort that we needed to do in marketing to get them full, and we’d also both start jobs at this point. So there was definitely less time in our hands. And then also the money started becoming less lucrative and attractive because actually working as a dentist for a day, you probably make more than you would doing this weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and there was a lot of organisation and stuff. So really, what I was looking for was someone to do the marketing and also so much the logistics. And we did actually get some Dental students to help out and we pay them a carton and that sort of thing. But I think because of COVID, it just kind of backtracked everything quite a lot.

[00:58:50] I wish it still exist in my notes and my 15 year old, because he’s saying, he’s saying I’ll do anything but dentistry.

[00:58:57] Oh, well, we’re still we’re gauging interest. We’ve got a couple of people on a waiting list. We might do something in Easter, but we’ll see what.

[00:59:03] You’re not charging enough, dude. That’s your problem. Yeah, it’s the positioning. Yeah, yeah. You need to charge for this course. You need to charge £250.

[00:59:12] Yeah, we had there was like a competitor who used to charge about two hundred, but they definitely had they had like a ten year track record compared to us. So. But yeah, because,

[00:59:20] You know, if I want to get my kid into Dental School, £250000, nothing, right?

[00:59:25] Yeah, I get what you’re saying. I get what you’re saying. To be fair, though, we would. We had a big we had a lot of kids coming from low income backgrounds as well. So we actually introduced a bursary scheme and that sort of thing. But yeah, it’s about kind of catering for everyone at the same time. Like, there’s a lot of widening participation arguments I actually agree with to a certain extent to get kids from low income backgrounds into Dental school and not unfairly disadvantage them. But yeah, you know, it’s a point. It’s a point because it doesn’t make it worth it, in our opinion, if we’re not charging enough,

[00:59:53] Just, you know, stuff has a price, right? Yeah. Yeah, the correct price. Let’s move on to darker days. Yeah. Tell me about your dark, stained industry.

[01:00:04] Oh, there’s been so many, but when I say dark days, I mean, I don’t mean like like, really, really ugly. But I mean like mistakes like humiliation, frustration, like the kind of stuff that everyone goes through. And especially when you’re young and you’re a student, you’re still learning, so you make so many mistakes. But one example that I really remember was. And so I was in final year and we did like we do outreach firms and final year. So you actually just go to a clinic and you actually have your own room, you have your own nurse and you’re very minimally supervised. And I remember this guy came in and he just had Kerry’s everywhere and I was like, great, like composites everywhere. And I’ve got like my whole year sort of doing composites on this guy. And I was like, Right, let’s start with the worst tooth, which was like his low left seven or something. And I was like, look, you know, steep filling and might turn into a root canal. But you know, I’ll try my best setting all those expectations, doing everything that we talk to. And he was like, Yeah, cool, really chilled that guy. So started put rubber down on drills basically found it was so deep that it was it was an exposure. And so it was going to become an endo. So I was like, All right, let me just temporise this.

[01:01:06] I extirpated put some ihrem in and as I took the rubber dam off, so I released the clamp from from the tooth. I heard this massive crack. The whole tooth just basically collapsed because it was so undermined with caries. And so we went from a situation where and this was dead on lunchtime, so I had no time to rectify the situation. Everything that was going wrong could have gone wrong. And he was like, What was that? And I was like, Oh, like, basically your tooth is, you know, how I said that it might be deep and you might need a root canal. Yeah. Well, right now it looks like the tooth is actually split in half, so we actually really need to take it out. And at this point, I was already feeling like really humiliated because I was like, Wow, like, I didn’t even tell him about an extraction. And for a lot of people, including myself, taking a tooth out is a big deal. Losing your tooth is a big deal, and he came in for a filling and he’s losing his teeth. Yeah, so started on the extraction in lunchtime. So I’m running over. I know I’m not going get a lunch break, my tutor or we’re also understaffed at this point. So we usually have two tutors between like 10 or 15 students. At this point. One of them’s sick today, so we’ve only got one tutor.

[01:02:05] He’s busy with someone’s endo, so he’s not even in the room. Start trying to take the tooth out. Obviously, the tooth doesn’t move at all. I’m just like crumbling and crumbling and crumbling. It’s breaking everywhere, and I’m just sweating and sweating and sweating. Tutor comes in. He tries to take it out, tries to section it, and he’s like, Right, Zane, it’s pretty much the end of lunch time. I’ve got other students to go to. We’re going to just have to send him to Denmark Hill, and he’s going to have to go to oral surgery there, and they’re going to have to take it out. So I literally left this guy with like a mess of a tooth crumbling everywhere. He was still in pain and I was like, I’m going to have to basically ring up oral surgery at another site and be like, Can you please see him today and not make him wait the weekend? It was a Friday. Can you please see him? He was. The patient was so chilled out, so calm was really not bothered. And I was like, I don’t know why he’s not more bothered, but whatever. Like, I got away with one here because if this was like someone who was really agitated and really nervous, I’d be in a lot of trouble. But anyways, yeah, he he went on his way and I think they took it out and he was fine in the end.

[01:03:04] But he obviously cancelled his next appointment with me, which was also a bit of a like punch and punch in the gut. But I remember after that, after that day, I went home and I actually bawled my eyes out. I was so upset. I was like, It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve cried and I was I was really, really upset. And it was nothing to do with the patient and their reaction because like I said, he was so chilled out and he really didn’t. He wasn’t even bothered. He didn’t. He didn’t mind. He was like as long as it comes out at some point. But it was more just how much I messed up and I was just so humiliated that I was so close to graduation and I couldn’t even tell if a tooth needed to be extracted or if it just needed a filling. And I was like, What would have happened if I was on my own here in practise? And I remember just thinking those thoughts being like, I’m going to be on my own next year. What is going to happen then? And I’m protected right now because I’m in dental school. But what if I was in practise? This person would have sued me if they were like, you know, all these thoughts to start running through your head? And I was just in a really bad way.

[01:04:01] And I remember like thinking that, wow, this kind of thing. I think my dad said this to me to be on. I don’t think I should cancel myself. I think he was like, This sort of thing could put you off doing this procedure for life because you’re so you’ve had such a bad experience the first time you’ve done it. So. And he was like, The thing is, though, you shouldn’t be, you shouldn’t be scared of failure and you shouldn’t be afraid of failing. And the only way to get better is to go back outside your comfort zone and put yourself in this kind of situation again and just try not to make the same mistake twice. But but don’t be scared of the procedure or the actual situation. And that was really good advice because even now, when I mess up and I’ve done stuff even in the last like even recent history, I’ve done stuff where I’ve made mistakes and I’ve just been like, All right, saying it’s annoying that you messed up, but just don’t make that mistake again. Learn from it, and then that’s an acceptable failure for me if I’ve made that mistake once. Ok, fine, I’m learning. But as long as I don’t make it again or I approach it differently next time, then I’m happy. Well, yeah, that was.

[01:05:03] Well, first, the first of your dad sounds like a very cool dude, man, because everything you’re saying about him. He seems like a really good, good dad. Good, good guy to know. But when you reflected on this situation, was there something you did wrong? Because, you know, all of this could have just happened?

[01:05:20] Yeah, I think I think for me, it was like stuff like not treatment planning properly. So first of all, like if he’s got carries everywhere. Why am I going in and just drilling and filling everything? First of all, let’s get his carries. Let’s get his diet under control. Let’s get his gums under control. Let’s stabilise the guy because his that was anything. Don’t own your patients problems like he’s come in in this situation. I’m here to help. But his problem is not necessarily my problem at this point. And so I shouldn’t I shouldn’t make it my problem. I shouldn’t be more invested in his teeth than he is. So that was the first thing. Second thing was stuff like reading radiograph like, you know, assessing the fact that this tooth is hopeless prognosis. It’s not set. It’s not salvageable in the first place. So don’t say to him it’s fulfilling. Be like, Look, this needs to come out. And that should be the starting point, really. But those things do happen even now. You know, you look at something and you think, Oh, I might be able to save this and you

[01:06:06] Can’t, but you’re also so inexperienced to that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many times did you even seen a tooth that needed to come out? Yeah, yeah. Nice. Yeah, it’s better, isn’t it?

[01:06:17] Because because when you speak to someone older, they’re just like, Oh, that’s just water off a duck’s back. It’s not a problem, but when you’re in that situation, you’re like, Oh man, like, I thought I was getting better. I thought I was on that trajectory going up, actually. It’s that kind of slope that you see, like a line going up and then you go down, then you go up and then you go down. So I think it was just coming to terms with the fact that like, I’m not as good as I think I am. And even now, that rings more true than ever because on on Instagram, no one ever dislikes your stuff, even if they think it’s crap, they never really messaged you being like, that was awful work. They just they just like it, or they just scroll past it. And so you get this positive reinforcement. So I never like get lulled into this false sense of security. Well, yeah, I’m so good because I’m one year out and I’m doing on and overlays everywhere, and it’s like, it’s looking great because I know it’s not. And I also know that I have failures. I just don’t share them at this point in time because I’m so young because, you know, you don’t want to build a reputation or whatever. But yeah, that was an important take home, which is that you’re not you’re not as good as you think you are, and you probably never will be because there’s older dentists I speak to who are amazing, but they even think, God, I’m not as good as I could be. Like, You know, I’ve had a failure after 15 years. What am I doing? Sort of thing?

[01:07:20] I mean, listening to you, talking about that case, I stopped practising 10 years ago, and it just brought back a PTSD sort of moment for me there. But when we did dentistry, when it goes wrong, it goes wrong. Some know the time pressures. Yeah, keeping your cool. You know, it’s a big thing when it when it goes or your dad’s advice is absolutely right. It’s a bit this thing you said about, you know, not as good as you think you are. It reminds me a bit about, you know, like driving. Apparently, everyone thinks they’re better than average driver. Yeah, 100 percent. They think they’re in the top 50 percent. And and then she probably suffers with that. And you know, you don’t know what you don’t know. Famous cliche. And and and definitely the thing that TIFF talks about, you know, failures, seeing your own failures, learning from those because you know exactly what you did on that patient and then watching it fail. Yeah, I remember I remember smoke, you know, staining on composites and, you know, seeing how early it can come on if you don’t do it right? Yeah. On A.. All right. Well, that’s all good stuff. I think we’re coming near to the end of our time. We tend to finish these with the same sort of questions, which I’m sure you’ve heard before. Let’s start with perhaps death bed. I know it’s a bit unfair for someone your age. Yeah. Friends and family all around you. Yeah. Three pieces of advice.

[01:09:09] And so I have thought about this, obviously, because I listen to the podcast, so I’ve got I’ve got three that I thought about, I think. And these are things that I think I try and live my life by. So like one thing for me is I always I always try. I always try to do the right thing, and I always think that’s a really good bear. It’s always a really good rule to keep in mind when you’re confronted with the situation where you’re not quite sure what to do. There’s a lot of grey. I always I always say to myself like, OK, what is the right thing to do here? It’s not. It might not be the easiest thing. It might be really difficult. It might be self-sabotaging. But like, what is the right thing to do? And nine times out of 10, choosing that option means that there’s less repercussion for myself more often than not, and you generally kind of are better off for choosing that option. So that would be my first piece of advice. I think my second piece of advice comes back to that kind of thing that we talked about, like with impact, which was kind of being the change that you want to see in the world. And it sounds cliche and it’s like a very common thing. But I think a lot of people and sometimes myself included, I think we’re quite happy to kind of sit back and just complain and criticise and just be like moaning, moaning, moaning about X, Y or Z.

[01:10:20] But I think very few people actually just get up and do something about their situation. It’s all very well complaining about the state of the practise that you work in or the NHS or whatever. But it’s like, Well, OK, if you’re unhappy, then you know, try your best to do something about it. It’s not always possible, but, you know, try and be the change that you want for yourself. So that’s that’s the second. And then finally, this is it’s a really famous saying in Islam, it basically translates to from Arabic, it translates to be like the flower that gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it, which it sounds very elaborate and very poetic. But basically what to me, what that means is that there will inevitably come times where other people try and drag you down, or you get into a situation where you know you’ve not come out of it very favourably, but a lot of the time the way that you react in the way that you respond to a situation that’s often most reflective of your character. And so if you can try and react as you know, politely manfully respectfully in these sorts of difficult situations, I think that goes a long way in terms of the reflection that other people have of yourself and your character. So I think that would be my third sort of piece of advice, which is, you know, be like the flower that gives us fragrance even to the hand that crushes it.

[01:11:44] It’s a beautiful thing. Yeah. Do you mind talking about religion? Yeah. So a two questions for you. Ok. Number one, where do you see, you know, it looks to me like you’re at the sort of the evolution end of Islam here, where it’s Islam, by its nature, isn’t supposed to evolve. It’s it’s the word of God. So, you know, it’s a bit stuck in in those in those words. How do you I mean, it’s clear that you’re on the evolution end of it. You know, you’re trying to see different ways for how do you how do you square that circle and where is it going to go with a religion? And when is it going to go to another place, in your opinion?

[01:12:30] I think the biggest problem or misconception with faith generally is that obviously the faith is the thing that we’re told to follow and the lessons that we’re taught to take from it. I think unfortunately and understandably, the followers of the religion don’t always do justice to the actual faith itself. And that’s the same not just with faith, but with any kind of concept that you’re trying to adhere to. No one ever follows it perfectly. And so what the outside world sees is kind of these followers of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, whatever you want to call it. And so that’s one portrayal of the religion, but actually distilling and taking the time out to kind of learn about the religion itself to me anyways, the way I understand Islam is that in a society and that is always changing, it’s very fluid. Things are always going out of fashion and coming into fashion for me. Faith provides that kind of anchor that you can hold onto, even when everything around you is changing day on day on day. And that doesn’t always have to be controversial issues. It can be non-controversial issues, but it gives you a little bit of a blueprint. My dad always talks about blueprints when it comes to faith. He’s like, Faith is a blueprint. It’s not a script that you need to go, you know, line by line to adhere to necessarily. There are things that you know, you should your advice to practise. But the beauty to me about my faith is that it’s it’s it’s very logical to me and the way that I understand it, and it’s very a lot of the rulings and decisions that are in place. They are quite understandable and there’s very, very specific nuances and context to them. It’s not as simple as do this, don’t do this, it’s not.

[01:14:09] It’s never black and white. If there’s something that someone’s situation, whatever, I can give you a good example, I think it will make it more tangible. We’re told to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, for example, in your lifetime, you need to do the Hajj now that’s prescribed on every Muslim. And initially you might think, right, well, I haven’t got the money to go to Mecca. Like, you know what, if you’re really poor, you’re from a really low income background. You can’t afford the plane ticket and the journey and the cost associated with flying to Saudi Arabia doing your pilgrimage, which is really, really expensive. But Islam has nuances to that. That ruling where it will say, Well, obviously, if you’re someone from a poor background, then it’s you’re exempt from this, this condition that’s been imposed upon you. It’s not that you know someone’s going to be waiting for you at the gates of heaven, cracking a whip on you because you did do this or you didn’t do this. It’s a blueprint by which to live your life. And obviously, there’s nuances to around it, and no one is perfect. But forgiveness is a big part of religion as well at the same time and compassion and love. So without trying to give you too wishy washy an answer for me, the way I summarise it is that for me, religion is a blueprint. Obviously, everyone takes it in a different direction and people agree and disagree. But that isn’t the central central tenet of of the faith. The faith is there to guide you and guide your life and add meaning and purpose to your life. It’s not there to be like a script that you just kind of stick to and don’t deviate from at all.

[01:15:35] I get it from a personal perspective, but, you know, from a macro macro, you know, I don’t know, you get you get some, some places where or where is it Turkey, where Islam is translated in one way and then you get the the hardcore somewhere in Saudi, some Wahhabi guy, which it’s not. But. So they’re right. There is two different versions. Yeah. And and you know, it takes it takes these little changes for things to move along. Yeah, but but with Islam, you’ve got we’ve got this basic tenet. You know, it’s evolving within the book, you know, and it’s a super interesting thing because the second question I was going to ask you, how do you feel? You know when? How old? How old are you at nine 11?

[01:16:25] I was six, 21 six.

[01:16:28] Ok, fair enough. I remember this is before before. Yeah. Well, yeah, of course you were. But, you know, since since 9-11, the way the way Muslims have been portrayed. Yeah, maybe the whole reason why you were invited to number 10. Yeah. To make this thing to square that circle. You know, the pendulum swung a bit too far one way and they were trying to bring it the other way.

[01:16:52] No, I actually think that that was a big component to it as well.

[01:16:56] Yeah. And, you know, some of the stuff we’re seeing about Ukraine today, and people have been pointing out, you know, why, why, why weren’t you outraged when, when bombs were dropping? Yeah. Tell me some of your tell me some of your thoughts around that.

[01:17:12] Um, yeah, I think I think double standards exist everywhere. I. I these sorts of arguments about kind of Ukraine versus, you know, Syria versus Palestine-Israel or whatever. I view them very much through like a political and geopolitical sort of lens rather than a religious one, but there are overlapping things. If, for example, the whole argument about Muslim terrorists versus like extremist or right wing extremist, for example. But yeah, yeah. Lone wolf. Yeah, Lone Wolf. And you know, you see that Family Guy graphic where they’ve got different shades of skin colour and determines, you know, who’s going to be a Muslim terrorist versus just an extremist or a lone wolf. But no, there’s a valid arguments, and I actually do I agree with them. I definitely have personally. I do think there’s a time and a place in which to raise these things. Personally speaking, I’ve always, for some reason, I felt uncomfortable that, you know, if there’s been a really big atrocity in Ukraine, for example, for me in the acute period, my priority is like empathising, supporting the actual people affected in that specific conflict.

[01:18:20] I don’t. I don’t know. I don’t know why, but I just feel uncomfortable with like using that as an opportunity to point score about my own agenda elsewhere. That doesn’t mean that Syria, Palestine, all these places aren’t important. But I just think maybe I know what the rebuttal is, which is people will be like, Well, if this isn’t, this is a good time to discuss that kind of thing because it’s prominent in in topical news and stuff. And I get that. I do empathise with that. Personally, just my own opinion is that I don’t find that that’s the right opportunity to show what my agenda is. I prefer just to show through my own kind of human kindness that this is what my faith truly is, that I am capable of showing kindness, support, love towards these people. And I want people to be like, Oh, you know what? Zayn’s a really good guy. Zayn is really supportive. He’s really loving Dental also Muslim, and he’s really normal. So I think that’s how I try and spread faith rather than,

[01:19:12] Like, actually be detached. Like you said, Yeah.

[01:19:15] Be the change rather than I think a lot of these things are implicit. You know, people looking at you and how you behave and then drawing comparisons to your face from that.

[01:19:26] I mean, do you have a Twitter and you. You know, I say what you think

[01:19:29] About this stuff. I was more I was more vocal on Twitter at school and stuff. I do have a Twitter, but now it’s just looking at memes following cricket, following current affairs. I don’t actually, I don’t actually use it how it’s meant to be used. Like most people my age, I just use it for like a newsfeed and finding funny content like Tik Tok. That’s kind of what Twitter’s like at the moment. So. So yeah.

[01:19:52] Let’s get back to a final question, yes. Diversion pace, final question. Fantasy Dinner Party three guests dead or alive?

[01:20:00] Yeah, I know everyone really struggles with this. I did, too, but I’m going to keep it topical because this is in my acute period of time. This is what I think is my my choice. So I’ve recently finished Will Smith’s book his autobiography, and it’s really, really good. And also from reading it and also knowing and having watched Will Smith growing up like he would be a great dinner guest. So Will Smith be my first one second one? I don’t know if you’ve come across him, but Imran Khan, he’s the current prime minister of Pakistan Cricket X cricketer. So currently Prime Minister, a big hero of mine and my dad’s growing up, literally, to be honest, my passport growing up was like, I want to be like him, you know, do do biomed at Oxford, become a cricketer and then go into politics. You know, that was my do philanthropy that was like my goal. And I’m not shy of admitting that because I think we all have role models in our life that we look towards to kind of emulate. So he would be great, I think, because I follow followed him so much over the years, and the third would be obviously Muhammad Ali. I think just kind of loads of people would say that he’d be a great great then, I guess. And I think also those three would interact really well with each other, which I think is important. So that would be a cool dinner party. I’m also excluding family members from this because there’s so many relatives that I would love to have there, but this is non non-family.

[01:21:20] So, well, it’s been it’s been a wonderful conversation, and, you know, I’m particularly impressed with how frank you are, thanks open, you know, with yourself, honest with yourself. It’s a it’s a trait a lot of people don’t have, or even if they have it, they don’t say it. You know that that takes a degree of confidence, right? To say, if I’m being honest and it’s absolute pleasure to talk to you, and I’m sure we’re going to be seeing a lot more of same people, whether you become the best dentist in the world or whichever way you end up spinning it. Yeah, I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more of you. So thanks. Thanks a lot for doing this, buddy.

[01:22:03] Thanks so much for having me.

[01:22:06] 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.

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