Neil Gerrard got an early start in dentistry, helping out at his dad’s lab, where he first started making models aged just 13.

But after spending some time as a clinical dental technician, Neil enrolled in dental school to scratch his itch to work more closely with patients and see the fruits of his labour pay off first-hand.

And dentistry is still very much a family affair for Neil. He now practices alongside his wife and brother, who continues their dad’s CDT legacy.

Neil chats about how it all started, the origins of his hard work ethic and gives his perspective on technical and clinical dentistry drawn from his years of unique experience in both disciplines.

Enjoy!

 

In This Episode

02.55 – Backstory and work ethic

12.39 – Switching to clinical

24.50 – Business culture and structure

31.57 – Team training and motivation

42.53 – Neil’s patients

52.55 – Clinical-technical tension and tech

01.05.50 – Guarantees

01.13.41 – Surprise and delight

01.19.21 – Black box thinking

01.26.47 – On employees and associates

01.39.54 – Charm Vs clinical skills

01.44.37 – Fantasy dinner party

01.47.39 – Last days and legacy

 

About Neil Gerrard

Neil Gerrard is a former clinical dental technician turned dentist and one of only a handful of UK dentists to hold British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD) accreditation, for whom he is also an examiner.

Neil is the author of There is No Perfect Dentist—a consumer guide to choosing dental professionals.

 

[00:00:00] But I must admit, without sounding too pious, I do try and sort of keep true to myself. I only talk about things that I use in practice, and I only talk about things that I know work. Because if I don’t, if I talk about a product that I haven’t got faith in and then somebody buys that product, uses that product, and then they don’t get the outcomes with it. Again, nobody’s going to listen to me again. And, you know, I’ve been lucky. You know, I’ve never been good enough to work properly with with Enlightened.

[00:00:34] But 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.

[00:00:59] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Lewis Mackenzie onto the podcast. Louis is a long time friend and mentor of mine, educator, general dentist, now ahead of head dental officer Dan Plant, Clinical Lecturer at Birmingham and at King’s and General General good guy on the lecture circuit, someone who probably is the most entertaining lecturer out there. Every time I’ve seen you lecture Louis, the crowd’s been in stitches. And in my story, most notably, the person who introduced Palmer to me. You didn’t. You weren’t quite the person who introduced the poem. But as soon as I met the Palmer, you called me and we knew each other, I think from the Manchester MSC, we were supporting that and you know, the best lectures on our many smile maker, of course, I think, you know, Lewis certainly. And I would agree, a once in a generation talent found his start in Birmingham Dental School, where Lewis was putting on hands on days for the students. And he always mentions you, Lewis, as his key inspiration. Well, lovely to have you, buddy.

[00:02:13] Well, thank you very much. It’s a very nice sir. That’s an excellent introduction. And pretty hard to.

[00:02:17] Pretty hard to live up to. All right. Well.

[00:02:20] All I can say is we’ve all got a similar haircut. So we’ve got something in common, haven’t we?

[00:02:29] Lewis, we’ll get back. We’ll get to the back story in all of that. Yeah, but just just on that Depeche front and I was thinking about this, the number of others you must have inspired. I mean, I know a few of them. You know, Millie Morrison, live scorer who introduced to me people like a few I know a few of a few of your graduates, but you must be responsible for so much good dentistry coming out there. Do you feel the weight of that when you have a new class?

[00:03:01] Not not really. But those are those names that those names that you mentioned are sort of extraordinary talents. I would say of all the things I’ve done over the years, one sort of skill that have got is being able to recognise this sort of unique you I think you said it sort of once in a generation talent. Depeche was definitely the first. And I remember I met him during the final year in 2009, and I run a special study module, run it for nine years. And Depeche was the first ever year and. He came on the he came on the course, and the first exercise I ever got him to do was just some occlusal composites and just to sort of set the set the bar. And when I looked at these composites, I thought. Shit. I’ve got to improve my teaching here. This. This bloke. This bloke is an absolute genius. And. And as you say, Millie. And we’d live again. They’ve just got this unique talent, and I’m not sure you can teach it. My. My role really was them was just to put the materials in their hands and just just just let them go with it. But but, yeah, they don’t come along to too often. Another one that comes to mind is Richard Lee. He just just emigrated to New Zealand, actually. But again, when you when you when you’ve I think now I’ve done over 1000 hands on courses. And so so you really get you really get a feel for somebody who’s just just way, way out of the ordinary. But Depeche was the first for definite and he definitely made me realise I need to up my game on a teaching point.

[00:04:49] And at the time you were a general dentist, you used to visit the dental school for hands on sexual for what was that was what it was.

[00:04:58] Yeah. I was a part time lecturer. I started, I’d been in practice for about ten years and then I’d always had that sort of little itch about doing a bit of teaching. I’ve done a couple of courses myself and sort of really enjoyed them. And yeah, just started doing a Thursday afternoon on clinic, did clinic for many years, probably about eight or ten years. But then I found a real passion for Phantom Head teaching. So I like it because it’s a level, level playing field, everybody starting with the same cavity and you get a really good opportunity to sort of rank the students and identify those who have got weaknesses. And so this special study module that I put on and ran for nine years, Depeche, as I mentioned, was that was the first year. And yeah, just, just really, really enjoyed that sort of aspect of it. But yeah, sort of clinical lecture is the title nowadays. I don’t do any undergrad teaching. It’s just purely postgrad working on the working on the master’s at Birmingham and the Maths and a couple of master’s courses at King’s. But I do quite a lot of, as you know, hands on courses around the country all the time. Anyway.

[00:06:04] What is it that makes somebody stick out, Lewis? Is it is it generally how inquisitive they are? Is it does it just come down to you, look at the work and think, crap, that looks amazing. How did that happen? What is it that is there a like if you could bottle that up and put it into a formula, what would it be for these super successful delegate guts that you’ve had?

[00:06:27] I think it’s when they do something that hasn’t been taught, they’ve just got that eye for it. They can just see something, explain something, but then take it to the next level. So one, one of my mentors, Adrian Shorter, we might chat about him later on. He, he said to me, don’t, don’t be upset when your students are better than you are. Take, take, take pleasure and pride in it. The thing is, with people like Depp’s Millie, Liv, Richard, they were always already better than me before they started. So. But I think it is that just that unique sort of X factor, whatever it is. And if you could bottle it then, then it’d be worth a fortune. But I don’t think you can. I think we can all. I mean, you’ve only got to look on Instagram and Facebook now to see the you know, the beautiful, beautiful quality of dentistry that is literally within anybody’s grasp. But then you’ll see the others who just take it up to the sort of the next level. I think one of the first contemporary couple of contemporaries that I saw of my sort of era were Jason Smythson and Tiff Qureshi, where I just thought, Wow, that’s a bit special. And then I mean, the nice thing about the people we’ve talked about as well is that they’ve gone on to become really great teachers as well, because that for me is an extra skill. You know, there’s plenty of people doing extraordinary dentistry nowadays, which is brilliant, but to be able to communicate that to us mere mortals, I mean, I go to to the enlightened course. I go to Dipesh lectures now and I’ve got my notebook out because he’s constantly pushing, pushing the boundaries when it comes to teaching and practice, because he’s just got that eye for aesthetics, that eye for colour, which, which, which I haven’t got.

[00:08:10] It’s interesting what makes a good dentist and then what makes a good teacher? Let’s agree firstly, two different things. You know, there’s many good dentists who aren’t great teachers and but I think with I think you gave Dipesh the advice that he shouldn’t go on any composite hands on courses so so that all the ideas would be original his own. He wouldn’t feel like he was taking an idea from someone else or something like that.

[00:08:41] That definitely wasn’t.

[00:08:41] Me. Sure that you don’t like my advice is going as many course.

[00:08:49] So yeah. Absolutely. There might be. There might be. There might be crap courses, but.

[00:08:55] You will always.

[00:08:56] You’ll always pick something up off them. And and of course he did. Chris Of course, there’s another legend. He did. Chris all year long course. I mean, he was only in fact, that was that was actually a really nice sort of bit of feedback that I got that Christopher has always had. I don’t know what the rules are nowadays, but it used to be you had to be graduated, I think, for at least three years before you could apply to go on Chris’s course. But then he made an exception unless they’d done the special study module at Birmingham Dental School in their final year. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So Dipesh and Emily got on their lips, done it as well. And of course, Millie now is one of Chris Christopher’s associates. So he knew what he’s talking about.

[00:09:41] And the teacher herself, not in composite, but more Invisalign. But but it’s interesting, you know, because we were doing a little series called My Mini Tip and we had dentists and I took it for granted. Every dentist has got one or two tips and they probably do and maybe camera shy at that moment or whatever. But I guess the difference between a teacher and a technician is a teacher has more tips that came from them. You know, that that things they do slightly differently to the rest of us need teaching.

[00:10:16] Doesn’t that’s true and but I think we all fall down the same holes anyway, don’t we?

[00:10:23] Yeah, that’s true.

[00:10:25] And that’s how we learn by by sort of reflecting. And I think in the let me use the term old days, we’ve probably the first of several times this evening, usually it was sort of ten years or so before you did any sort of postgraduate qualifications. Now, obviously, dentists are doing it a lot earlier and, you know, certificates, diplomas, even mscs on our MSC course, we’ve had some literally sort of first year, first year graduates. I just wonder whether actually doing these courses earlier on actually reduces the risk of you sort of falling falling into the regular sort of pitfalls. Or again, the old fashioned mantra is you need to make a few mistakes and then do the course and then learn basically based on your experience. So I don’t know what it is, but certainly there’s as you know, there’s a trend for courses a lot earlier nowadays.

[00:11:23] Yeah, I think in the US it’s slightly different, you know. When you talk to the academics out there, they haven’t got that mantra of become a generalist first. You know, they. Well, some do. By the way, I don’t think it’s the right or wrong. You can’t say one is right and one is wrong. But but you’re right that the sort of the general thing that people have been saying here is you learn a lot of things first and then go and specialise into one one area that you like to see, try a lot of things. But I remember when when I did my elective in the US, the advice wasn’t that it was, it was, you know, as quick as possible, try and get into something. And and I’ve given that advice to a lot of people as well. Louis, you know, because people asked me, Hey, what should I do? My answer is, pick one thing and just run with it. You know, get really, really good at something. You know, if you want to if you want to do something, pick pick one, pick one and go. But, you know, you’ve seen so many students come and go. Would you say that specialising these days is a good idea? Or would you say that general practice where you’ve thrived if creches thrived, crystals or ideas? Which way? Which way would you advise someone to go?

[00:12:41] Often down to the individual person. But don’t forget, whatever you choose, you’re going to be doing it for the next 30 to 40 years. So you’ve got to make the right decision. I wouldn’t close certainly early in your career. I wouldn’t close any doors because once it doesn’t take long in dentistry to sort of do skill, not necessarily skill, but lose confidence. And then you’re kind of you’re going down that one little route. And of course, obviously no perio. You can just do that all day long. But certainly when it comes to sort of aesthetic restorative, is it something that’s going to sustain a sustain for for 30 or 40 years? One interesting thing I’ve noticed, talking to a few young dentists and even a few lecturers recently is is just focusing on front teeth. And which is a bit of a worrying, worrying situation when we’ve got, what is it, a year’s missed missed appointments due.

[00:13:38] To.

[00:13:41] Due to the pandemic. And obviously 70% of all problems occur on molars, which they’re not as they’re not as instagrammable. But that’s where most of the most of the trouble is. So yeah, it’s I mean, you must see it a lot on your courses and of course it’s lovely dentistry to do, but is it sort of sustainable for that length of time? I don’t know. Certainly just don’t know whether obviously every restoration is going to fail and are these almost sort of aesthetic cosmetic specialists. Their whole career is going to be about replacement of existing restorations or management of of marginal stain and stuff like that. So it’s down to the individual. But certainly I would say early in your career, don’t, don’t narrow it down too early. That that would be my advice.

[00:14:36] Not.

[00:14:37] You know what? What you’ve just been saying there, Lewis, in terms of how long these restorations, every restorations go into eventually fail, etc., etc.. Right. There’s two bits of, I guess, information I’ve received from from. So TIFF has always pushed the you know, you don’t really know how good a dentist you are until you’ve seen how long you work lasts and you’ve got that long term follow up. And he always talks about his ten, his 15 year follow ups and he knows how long he’s dentistry lasts. And funnily enough, I had the opportunity to interview a guy called Daniel Boozer. I think his name is he’s an implant guy over at the ADA. According to everyone who I spoke to, he’s he’s one of the gods of implant dentistry. Anyway, cut a long story short, when I was interviewing him, I asked him about what advice he’d give to new students who are getting into wanting to get into implant dentistry and how would they know how good they are? And he said exactly the same thing as TIFF, that it’s about this long term follow up that he’s got cases. 35 years ago we placed an implant and they’re still stuck there in somebody’s head. And he felt that that was the true measure of somebody who was really good. What do you think are the concerns with all of this? A lot of front teeth, dentistry, composite veneers and things like that. Now, obviously, a lot of the courses are teaching that. And then the longevity of that in terms of, I guess how long these are going to last. How is it? We’ll see. Easiest way to describe it. Is it a huge problem waiting to unfold and happen when all of these, you know, composite veneers sort of mature in 5 to 6 years time and they need redoing with either more composite or porcelain. And then something you just mentioned, which I hadn’t given any thought to, is that are these dentists reskilling by just focusing on that?

[00:16:37] Really good questions just to sort of start at the beginning of that. You made a really good point about the longevity. I’ve worked in only one practice, the same practice for 30, 31 years. Wow. So so you know what works, but equally, you know what doesn’t work.

[00:16:54] Yeah.

[00:16:55] We’re in the kind of the infancy with composite veneers at the moment. Obviously, the materials have come along massively. Again, advertising payments wonders there. When I started using enamel, really, that was the first time composite veneers actually became a thing for me because of the Polish and. Composite versus versus porcelain. We could do a whole whole hour just on that. Composites got its disadvantages with regard to sort of technique, sensitivity with regard to surface lustre. That’s that’s where enamel works because obviously it’s a microfilm that keeps it keeps it shine. But the way that aesthetic restorations usually fail, where they’re direct or indirect is usually marginal stain. They don’t usually they don’t usually drop off certain materials. They will composite materials. They will lose their surface lustre. So it will be interesting to see exactly, say Prav a few years down the line. Payman to remember exactly the same thing happened in the nineties with the with with porcelain veneers. Well, that was very much that was very much the the thing the thing to do. All the courses were based were based around that. And then if you choose the wrong patient, if, if you’re not bonding to enamel and people, people came unstuck and I think probably moved away from that. But you know, either restoration, if it’s done well, it is going to last for years. But again, you also make a very good point that doing dentistry for the second time is is is a challenge because you’ve got to you’ve got to take it off.

[00:18:32] And, you know, when you’re cutting, whether it’s ceramic, whether it’s composite, are you in material? Are you in dentine? Are you in enamel bonding resin? So yeah, it’s a real it’s a real challenge. So but I would say just to add to that, the foundation of skill with not necessarily young dentists is some amazing, stunning older dentists as well with composite is because the foundation of skill I don’t think really we know yet they might just literally just need polishing. I know I’ve got I’ve got re enamel cases where where the composite veneers still again as you say in my latest anterior composite lecture, I’ve got a re enamel veneer at ten years. Tiny bit of marginal stain, still shiny, absolutely never been republished at all. So I think now because they’ve got the skills, you’ve got the the bonding techniques, you’ve got the material technology, they’re going to last longer. And of course, as every generation goes, they’re just going to get better and better and better at them. So maybe it will be the treatment of choice. I know Dipesh is sort of now he’s sort of half and half isn’t. He loves he loves composite, obviously, but I’ve seen him lecturing more and more on ceramics.

[00:19:49] Now.

[00:19:50] Do you know when you talk about restorations lasting? So the purpose of which let’s say somebody has a composite veneer is less functional and protective and more cosmetic when you refer to them lasting. Do you mean just staying in touch or do you mean lasting in a in a cosmetic way?

[00:20:09] Yeah. I mean, they’re not going to fall off. You know, you might get a little bit of chipping, but of course, that’s that’s easy to repair. But yeah, it’s really a patient factor. Is the patient you’re happy with them? And and I think that I think that’s the main thing and that would that would probably drive the replacement. Yeah. They’re not, they’re not going to drop off if they’re bonded to enamel I think Trevor Burks who did this massive study millions of restorations that have been done on the NCE and and labial only veneers came out tops. They last longer than at any other restoration in dentistry, so they’re not going to fall off if they’re bonded to enamel. That’s the best bond in dentistry. So they’re going to last. But yeah, so it’s going to be cosmetic. It’s going to be cosmetic failure before before anything else.

[00:20:53] Which which year did you qualify this?

[00:20:56] 1990 graduated with a with a marvellous four four, four years in one term.

[00:21:01] Course Payman not not missed five years.

[00:21:05] Yeah. The good old course. And so I was, I was going to say you’re not old enough. Right. But when did like your composite come.

[00:21:15] Well like your has been around it thinks is the since they on the first composite that was out. I’m trying to think I’ve actually got a picture of Trevor Burt with with one of the original curing lights. It was probably I would say probably the seventies don’t know for certain.

[00:21:33] We have Wilson on the on the podcast and he was talking about when they were developing it with Eisai and it was.

[00:21:39] Yeah.

[00:21:40] It was one one shade only. Right.

[00:21:43] Yeah.

[00:21:43] Yeah. So yeah. And then there was a clues in of course the first composites you have to mix yourself and there was no polymerisation shrinkage issues because you had so much air in them that the material just didn’t cause any problems. But yes, so light curing really sort of probably sort of seventies, it sort of kicked off.

[00:22:03] But you know, people like to say that the current day dentist, I mean, even outside of COVID, that, you know, the newer, younger generation don’t have the skills that that let’s say our generation had because they didn’t they don’t drill enough teeth. Do you have another side to that story that says they’re they’re a lot better than us because of whatever other you know, whatever other thing they do have that we didn’t have. You know, they get taught patient management or, you know, what are they being taught while we were drilling teeth?

[00:22:33] Well, I think it goes further back than that. They’re just really, really clever.

[00:22:39] You know, I thought, yeah, I.

[00:22:42] Want to know when I it was a B, it was a B and to CS to get into dentistry in 1986, I smashed that with the two B’s and two.

[00:22:53] Sees. It was.

[00:22:56] In those days you buy three, you get one free with.

[00:22:59] General study.

[00:23:02] So yeah, I mean they’re superintelligent. You’re absolutely right about the undergraduate experience. You know, they’re going to do a lot less than they did with regard to everything, you know, particularly amalgam skills, you know, some dental schools, they’ll almost do non extractions again depending on where depending.

[00:23:20] On the why is that because enough patients to have their teeth extracted.

[00:23:25] Just I mean we work Birmingham’s fluoridated so even back then my oral surgery experience was was very limited and so I had to sort of learn those skills kind of on the job.

[00:23:39] So are you are you Birmingham born and bred? Were you born in Birmingham?

[00:23:43] Staffordshire. I’ve my my quest through life has taken me about 25 miles.

[00:23:48] From.

[00:23:50] From from Staffordshire. I went to Birmingham Dental School because it was the only place that gave me an offer.

[00:23:57] Birmingham at the time my dentistry did.

[00:24:00] Oh, well, now you have asked a good question, and I had to actually do some research for this because I always was certain that I was 11. I was 11 when I decided I wanted to be a dentist. And I was absolutely certain I could remember where I sit in, in a science class who was sitting next to my mike Dean. But my auntie has always, always said, No, you are much younger than that. And so I thought, No, no, she’s making this up. And but then I went up to see one of my uncles in the Lake district and I asked him about this and he’s in his nineties and he said, No, no, you’re about six. So then I went back to my auntie and said, Come on, tell me this story. Then she said, Do you remember you’re in the car? And I said to you, What are you going to be when you’re older? How about being a doctor when you can look up, look after your Auntie Lillian when when she’s old? I said, and apparently I said to her, Now I’m not going to be a doctor.

[00:24:51] I’m going to be a dentist. And I was standing up in the back of a Fiat 127. So so no seatbelts in those days. And obviously so I couldn’t have been very tall. So I think I was about six. So I decided I wanted to be a dentist. I have absolutely no idea why. I never, never changed my mind. I remember when I went to Careers Day and I told the careers advisor that I wanted to be a dentist and her advice to me was, You don’t want to be a dentist. That’s a terrible job. Then when it came to A-levels in those days, you had to fill in, fill in a different form for a polytechnic. Picasso’s Picasso art form. So as you. Cassin Picasso, it’s all on one form now. And I refused to fill in the the whatever it was going to be, whether suggesting pharmacy, pharmacy or something like that. And so I refused to fill it in. I only wanted to be a dentist, but I don’t know why. And I’m just glad that chose chose a career that’s worked out for me.

[00:25:55] What did your parents do?

[00:25:58] My dad was was a draughtsman and my mom was she was well, her final job, she did lots of sort of secretarial jobs. Her final job there both passed away, unfortunately. But a final job was once she really loved and she was she was a medical secretary. That was that was the last job that she did. But my parents, if I was the first person to go to to uni in my family. So there was.

[00:26:25] Is there a, you know, like the how the that that part of the country was very industrial and you know, our stories in your in your family about the black country and everything everything that goes with that. And did you sort of see that change in the area?

[00:26:39] You’re such a Londoner, you’re such a London.

[00:26:45] Gossip bullshit.

[00:26:46] Stuff, which is no way stuff is just north of Birmingham.

[00:26:50] Oh, is it?

[00:26:51] So I was so romantic about this story. Like your granddad works in the mines and then, you.

[00:27:00] Know, my grandma.

[00:27:01] My granddad, we are going back now. I had a granddad, this is on my dad’s side and my granddad from the Isle of Skye, Isle of Lewis and my grandma from the Isle of Skye. They both left to find work to go to Glasgow. And then once they’d sort of become a couple they walked to Liverpool too to find a job. So my, my grandfather on my dad’s side, who I never met was an engineer by training.

[00:27:29] So Dad’s Scottish.

[00:27:31] My dad’s. My dad was born in. My dad was born in Liverpool. So but my grandparents are Scottish and my on my mom’s side they’re more sort of midlands based, more sort of Brummie Brummies but. Right. Proper Birmingham.

[00:27:45] Yeah. So if you, if you were an Indian they’d say you’re Scottish because you know you’re Scottish, you’re a Scottish guy.

[00:27:52] Like I was Scottish.

[00:27:59] I’ve got Scottish ancestors, so but I’ve got loads of Scottish relatives, loads of loads of aunties and uncles and cousins.

[00:28:09] What would you like? What would you like as a dental student? Were you really into it or.

[00:28:13] Oh, really?

[00:28:14] Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:15] Yeah. I really was. Yeah, I kind of liked it away. I mean, I must admit, it was pretty tough at dental school. We were lucky, actually, that we’d just been sort of a change in sort of management, if you like. Birmingham had always been sort of known as kind of the cotton school. I think the Cons department at one stage had about 30 members of staff. So when I started, we used to hear the sort of horror stories from the previous, the previous tutors, one that’s always stuck in my mind. And I sometimes remind the students when, when they’re being a little bit, a little bit soft, that one of the tutors apparently used to say to when he was checking a cavity or something like that, he’d stand over the with the with the patient and the student and he’d say to the patient, he’d look at the look in look at the in the cavity. And he’d say to the student, I wouldn’t trust you to cut my lawn.

[00:29:14] So.

[00:29:15] So fortunately, we missed we missed that sort of era. And we had really fantastic young lecturers at that time, Phil Lumley, basically God have ended antics. And Ian Chappell was a junior lecturer as as well. And obviously they were both my bosses, Phil and Phil and Ian and Trevor Burke came to to Birmingham as well via, via Manchester and Glasgow and he Trevor’s been really instrumental in my career and Damian Walmsley was, was head of sort of head of prosthetics or fixed removable prods. And so we were really lucky that we had all these young legends basically want to do things differently. And so the teaching we have interesting actually the there are a significant number of people in my year who have actually gone back into dental education and my four and a half years sorry, four years and one term were yeah, I must admit I really enjoyed it. I think I was one of those lucky students who kind of on the practical aspects, sort of picked it up straight away. You know, I’m quite a sort of, you know, used to like playing with Lego, fixing my bike stuff, stuff like that. So, so it’s quite lucky I sort of picked it up straightaway. And of course in those days is you’ll remember the course was very practical. And now going back to your other point, I think now there’s so much new stuff that you’ve got to learn with regard to, you know, I mean, there were no posterior composites. Molar endo was kind of in its infancy. And so the course now is so packed that the students are doing less practical work than they would have before. But with regard to talent and skills, I would say, you know, the future is most definitely so. These these young dentists are going to be awesome and and they’re going to take dentistry to the next to the next level. You know, I hope I can hang around for long enough to to just to see where it goes. Obviously, the digital revolution is finally has finally arrived. So yeah, I mean, that is really, really exciting stuff.

[00:31:33] I feel like the, the newer ones, they’ve got more AQ than, than we have sort of more emotional intelligence. At the same time though, maybe it’s just they admit to it more, they seem to suffer with more sort of mental health crises and issues. Is that your feeling?

[00:31:55] It. Maybe it’s it’s an excellent point. And obviously there’s loads of evidence to back that up. But I just wonder whether we all always had those issues. But it was just a case of.

[00:32:06] Talk about it.

[00:32:07] Get on with it, and suffer and suffer in silence. And that’s the way of the world. Maybe it is the fact that they’re they’re more sort of more sort of people of the world. They’ve got access to everything when it comes to sort of social media. The Internet, obviously, the Internet didn’t exist. So just maybe they’ve just got a better sort of perception about what their part in the world. And obviously they can be a little bit emotional at times and sort of older sort of dentists. That takes a little bit of getting used to, but I think they’re probably going to get a much better life work balance than maybe the dentists of yesteryear did when it was very much sort of, you know, five days a week, full days of NHS dentistry and then look sometimes look forward to retirement, which is, you know, you’ve got to enjoy the ride. I would always say, I would always advise and whatever you doing just enjoy your dentistry. And if you’re in a if you’re in a situation where you’re not enjoying it, do something to to change that.

[00:33:18] I mean, there’s a lot of people who aren’t enjoying it. There is.

[00:33:23] Yeah.

[00:33:24] Absolutely.

[00:33:24] And I mean, at the same time, there’s loads of people who adore it and love it and can’t stop talking about it. And, you know. So what do you reckon is the difference? Do you think the difference is staying engaged and trying to improve the whole time? And why is it some people are in such a bad state about and I think the GDC whatever has has a role to play but it’s always been like that. Even before the Dental Law Partnership came along, there were some dentists were really into it and others who hated their lives. What’s the difference in those two characters, do you think?

[00:34:01] Well, it is such a good question. And if you actually love the physical act of delivering. Doing a filling or something like that, if you if you really, really enjoy that, then nobody can take that away from you. You literally just you know, that’s a that’s a big chunk of your life on Earth that you’re actually enjoying. But when you’re working in a situation where maybe you’d really enjoy that feeling, you know, it’s going to take you a 45 minutes to do it. But you’re working in a clinical situation where you’ve got 15 minutes to do it, then you’ve immediately got that. I think the textbooks call it that moral, moral tension, haven’t you, where you know you know what’s best, but you know, you’re working in a system that’s not allowing you to to do that. And I think that’s probably at the heart of of mental health issues in dentistry, which, as you say, have been around literally forever. I mean, the good thing is now mental health is most definitely on the agenda in dentistry. You know, the regular report coming out, looking at the profession, looking at the causes. Remember the BDA did did a massive one, thousands of dentists in 2019, just just before the pandemic. And, you know, they listed the top ten stressors in dentistry, and most of them were systematic problems and regulation was one of them. There was I read I read a nice article by Martin Keller, I think it was in the BDA, actually. And he said, nowadays it’s like practising clinical dentistry is like being in a lift with a wasp. And I think it’s a good analogy. The only way that that analogy falls down is if you’re in a lift, you can get out of the next floor.

[00:35:52] If you’re if you’re a dentist, you’re in the lift for 30 to 40 years. So I think there is obviously the dental legal stuff is never is never going to go away. But nowadays that’s that’s a separate self sustaining industry. But I’ve had I’ve had second year dental students literally just started on Phantom Head say to me that they’re worried about graduating because they don’t want to get sued. So, so, so second year, Joe so this stuff, this stuff does starts does start early and it can do but need to be prepared. That’s the way of the world. It’s not going to go away and just do your best for every patient as long as as long as that’s the sort of philosophy. And if you are in a situation that’s compromising your ethics, your standards, then do something to change it. And I know obviously Prav does loads of work with dentists and with whole teams to create the right environment. In fact, I think I listen in preparation for this. I did some revision, I listened to one of you, did an excellent talking heads when it was just the two of you. And Prav made the point that he felt that at that time one of his favourite clients was a bloke who was just unhappy in his job and he just needed to change. No, change was not an option for this bloke and obviously he did perhaps training and sounded like it all. It all worked out well for him. Prav is that correct?

[00:37:21] It’s Lewis. But you’ve just got me thinking about another thing, which is, you know, what is the reason some of these guys, especially what I’m seeing and it’s not you know, I’m not speaking for all the younger dentists, but I have a lot of younger dentists who come to me and say, I just want to make X per month. That is that’s the overriding thing that they come to me for. But they’ve not been they’ve not done enough dentistry, if that makes sense. So when you look at them from an I’m not the one to judge them clinically, but you know, they’ve been out of dental school for 18 months, two years and they’re both their prime motivating factor is I want to make X per month. Right. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about dentistry, whether we’re talking about a career in marketing or whatever it is, I think you need to earn your stripes first and get some experience under your belt before that. Becomes your sort of number one motivator. And I do say to them, look, my first bit of advice is get on these courses, right? And these courses happen to be courses that people that I respect that pay more respect probably yourself as well. Or is that that you just think that let let them get this solid, grounded, and then the money will come.

[00:38:41] But I do think that if finances that number one motivating factor from a very young age, I do think a lot of these dentists will start becoming unstuck later on because they siloed themselves into I am just going to be an Invisalign doctor. I am just going to press the button on this program and get this treatment plan done for me and I’ll finish it off with a little bit of edge bonding or whatever. Right. But it’s a bit like becoming a marketeer and running Facebook ads. But you don’t know the first thing about the problems of the people that they face that you’re marketing to. Right. So so how can you how can you market to somebody who needs a full arch of implants if you don’t know the problems that a loose denture wearer goes through and the fact that they can’t eat steak or the fact that they they cover their hands or they walking around with a tube of fixed it in their pocket all the time and so on and so forth. And I feel really strongly about this and I feel as somebody who helps practices grow, there’s a bit of a pressure on sort of them coming to me and saying, Well, I want to make loads more money. And my advice at the moment is get strikes first and the money will come.

[00:39:54] I couldn’t agree more. I mean, you’re giving absolutely spot on advice and I’d give exactly the same advice. I think in dentistry, if you put finances first, it’s doomed to failure because you’ll always be chasing something over the horizon, which is which never actually arrives. And you’ve got to obviously be constantly chasing repeat business over and over again. If you’re looking from a financial point of view, from a financial point of view, the best way to achieve that goal is is family dentistry. And look, I think TIFF talks about this, the lifetime patient. It might sound a little bit sort of old fashioned, but yes, the see the grandparents, the parents and the kids and sometimes even their kids. That’s from a business point of view that is the foundation of any successful practice. Also, when finance is at the fore, I’ll be careful. Our phrase this there is a danger that it affects your treatment, planning and and if you’re not looking at the whole patient and the whole patient’s needs and maybe just focusing maybe just on the anterior teeth, it is that old classic that if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So everybody gets the same treatments. They all look pretty much the the same. And yeah, you get on a OCH, it’s not an NHS treadmill, but it’s a different treadmill. And so I think I think a balance between I think a balance between that where it’s lovely to do the aesthetic stuff, but of course it.

[00:41:30] Is.

[00:41:31] Patients demands. Now patients are so well educated that, you know, they know what, they know what they want and you’ve got to be able to deliver on that promise. So going back to learning your getting getting your stripes, getting your hours in, I think it is like any sort of it’s that 10000 hours, isn’t it? What if whatever whatever you do and if you’re going to become an expert in it, 10000 hours a mate of mine or shared an office with Charles Perry, he actually worked it out and he reckoned it was about ten years, ten years of of of sort of four, four and a half, five days of dentistry. That’s about 10000 hours of practical dentistry. In that time, you’ve probably you’re probably made most of your mistakes, not all of them. Unfortunately, you’ve learnt what you’re good at, you learnt what you’re not good at, you’ve learnt your patient communication skills. And it’s why in the again using that old phrase in the old days it usually was ten years was kind of a turning point where the where you maybe think, right, I’m going to buy a practice now or maybe I’m going to go on a, you know, I’m going to learn how to do implants.

[00:42:39] I’m going to be an end to dentist, that sort of ten year apprenticeship, for want of a better word. But I think that’s certainly come forwards now. Certainly young dentists seem to be a lot more business minded in a good way. You know, they seem to sort of grasp that it’s not something that’s ever taught at a dental school, but they certainly do seem to have a grasp of of what they want and the vision that they want. But again, I’ll mention this possibly when you ask me those questions, which I’ve prepared for at the end, is from a financial point of view, just just enjoy your dentistry. Just do do what feels right for the patient, what feels right for you. And the money will will will sort itself out. No, no problem at all. And use the team as well. You know, use your specialists, use your technicians and just become a whole little sort of industry. Yeah. Look, for me, looking after looking after families is the key and then the aesthetic restorative stuff. That’s, that’s the icing on the cake.

[00:43:42] Yeah. Not, not to mention Prav. Yeah. The best way of not making that money is to focus on making that money. But I wonder if people say that to you because they see a marketing guy before them and they feel like that’s I’m allowed to say this to, to, to the marketing guy. And so they come across as that guy, you know.

[00:44:03] Possibly there’s an element of that, right. And they probably see that I’ve worked with a lot of successful dentists who’ve who’ve done really well, both clinically and financially, but a lot of these dentists who have done really well as a stripes. Yeah, they’ve got the decade well and truly under their belt. Yeah. You know, and then they’ve done well however you define doing well financially right. We all have different I guess set points, call it whatever you want. Right. Well our definitions of success are and some of them are spending more time with your kids or whatever, and some of them are driving fast cars and going on luxury holidays, whatever that thing is. But, you know, people do come to me and they associate me with with those individuals who’ve done well, let’s say, for example. And then they come to me and say, hey, well, you’re the. That drives the patients through the door and then can give me advice on conversion and all the rest of it. So Prav bring me some money, right? And, and for me, whether I’m giving advice to somebody who comes to me for career advice as a as a, as a young marketeer or someone or somebody comes to me for career advice as a dentist. Yet I say, you’ve got to be able to do the shit that you can say you can do. Then we can market that, because if you end up marketing something that you know you can’t do, you’re only going to end up in trouble. And this comes down to my involvement with the IAS Academy has taught me a lot about how I guess you should operate as a dentist.

[00:45:39] Right. And case selectivity. Knowing your limits. Right. Knowing when to say no. Really, really important. Right. And so marketing can put you in trouble because it can deliver a patient that you have absolutely no chance of being able to treat because you don’t have the skill set of doing it right. But you decide, okay, I’ll be Mr. or Mrs. Brave and have a crack at that. So, you know, I’m a I’m a big believer in making sure that we market appropriately at a skill set and at a level that we can deliver because it will be short lived otherwise. And even with my clients, I want to build long term relationships. I don’t want to I don’t want to put someone in a position where they become unstuck. They’re up in front of the GDC, you know, and there’s I guess there’s a sense I feel like there’s a sense of responsibility on my behalf. It’s not just about an exchange of service for money, but I think I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I can actually say, Look, if that’s what you want to do, there may be another agency out there that could help you do that. But this is my advice, and I think what weighs on me is having business partners like Tiff Qureshi, who’ve got a very, very high moral, moral, ethical, high ground for me to sort of say, well, okay, well, this is this is the route I think you should go down.

[00:47:05] Yeah. And Tiff’s always had that as me and just I mean, that’s such an excellent point that if you are going down that you’re almost always treating strangers. And I’m sure obviously you’re a medic by training as well. Never treat a stranger. Get to know the patients before before you jump in because you don’t know what they’re like. And and you made a really good point there that really sort of rang a bell rang a bell with me is asking saying to patients not to treat them. I would say some of the best clinical decisions you will ever make in your practising career are the patients you choose not to treat. And you know, you don’t have to be rude. You know, send them on the road. You need a you need a better dentist than me for for for this. And certainly if I think back, those had been some of the best decisions I’ve made. As you get older and more experienced, you see the warning signs, but obviously you can’t be expected to do that when you’re just starting out. So yeah, just earning your stripes exactly as you said it, doing that apprenticeship for a few years, just getting a feel for the and then decide what you want to do.

[00:48:21] Louis If that’s the best decision you’ve ever made, what’s the worst decision you’ve ever made in a clinical dentistry class?

[00:48:31] In clinical dentistry.

[00:48:33] With patients, whatever you said, some of the best decisions you’ve ever made is is actually having the courage to say no. I guess what what are some of the worst?

[00:48:43] What’s gone wrong? What’s gone wrong?

[00:48:45] Yeah.

[00:48:46] Well, perhaps question first of all would be those ones I’ve learnt from those learning patients where I’ve got into something, whether I don’t know whether it’s an endo or an aesthetic case or what or an extraction that I think I really wish I hadn’t started this. But but then you’re on, but then you’re on that, then you’re on that conveyor belt. To answer page question, you know, it’s a long list of nothing, nothing catastrophic pain. I’m sorry to see frozen.

[00:49:24] Or I’m just.

[00:49:25] Is just really good at sitting still. Nothing, nothing catastrophic, but a few a few learning experiences, which I think made me a better dentist. I’m more cautious.

[00:49:41] Yes. Which ones will happen?

[00:49:45] I knew you were going to make me be specific.

[00:49:48] Because.

[00:49:49] You’re not going to leave it like that.

[00:49:53] Far too vague.

[00:49:55] I’ll give you I’ll give you two. I’ll give you two of of many. Listening to a few of these podcasts previously I noticed quite a common theme is people’s worst day at work has been sort of Dental legal problems. And and as you know, sometimes this can be sort of a year of their lives with with a with a cloud over their careers. And for me, I would say it was probably it was probably the same. But I’m embarrassed to say that mine only lasted for 48 hours. And it was it was an end and end case which didn’t work and tried to it was one of those ones. It just on the x ray, it just looked absolutely perfect and it didn’t didn’t settle. So chats with patients said, I’d like to retreat this one. And she said, I’d rather just have it out. So we had the discussion and I took it out and then months down the line just got a letter, the clinical negligence letter, taken a taken a tooth out that didn’t need to be extracted. But I was just, you know, whether it’s luck or whether it’s judge judgement, did what you’re supposed to do, phoned up the one with the d-do they were brilliant. Just send us all the the x rays, send us, send us the radiographs and we’ll get back to you. So did that posted them off in those days and then it was I think it was Rupert Hoppen and Brewers at two days later he phoned me up.

[00:51:28] He said, is that Mr. Mackenzie said, We don’t usually do this but don’t worry about this, this will go away. He said about one in 5050 cases they get to actually make that call to say, don’t worry, this will disappear. Don’t give it another minute’s concern. Your notes are fine. You’ve done everything that you should have done. And sure enough, I got a letter again months down the line. We’ve decided not to pursue you on this, on this, on this occasion, but there’s no question about it. That experience. The wasp came into the room and the wasp never left. You know, it was. It was. It was in the corner. It never formed a hive or anything like that. But it did make me because that surprised me. It really surprised me because I had tried my best. Still, to this day, I’ve absolutely no idea why it failed. I’d actually saved the tooth to try and section it and work out why, where, where I’d gone wrong. And then you asked for two. So I suppose I’ll give you another one. Was again, just a mistake. I was I was finishing finishing a composite and sort of Class five composite adventurer and they hadn’t put the burr in into the handpiece. Burr fell out. The handpiece patient literally swallowed just at the, just at the wrong time and so yeah what can you do.

[00:52:51] So I again, this had a happy outcome as well. I said to the patient, we really need I don’t know where that’s got, where that’s gone. We really need to have a chest x ray. That was the was the that was the guidance. And so drove him up to the local, local hospital. He had a chest x ray. He had swallowed it. He hadn’t he hadn’t inhaled it. And the weird thing was that it was he was an elderly patient who’d retired. And based on that experience, he actually became a volunteer in the X-ray department, which he did for years and years and years. And I saw him for years afterwards. You know, every time I saw him, I just felt, you know, felt really, really bad about about making that making that error. But I certainly certainly learnt from it, but nothing too catastrophic. And I know I really feel for some colleagues who have got cases that have been hanging over them for years in some cases, and I had a very, very short experience of what that felt like. And it was, Oh, that’s great, my career is over. And it happened to me fairly, fairly early on as well. But everything, my note making just hopefully really, really improved by that. So so those are two that spring to mind. I’m sure I’ll think of some more.

[00:54:21] When you said there was a happy ending, I thought he was going to say fish the bear out and brought it back for you.

[00:54:38] I was just waiting for.

[00:54:39] I was waiting for the punch line.

[00:54:40] Louis I don’t know. I mean, I don’t mean to sound disappointed, Louis, but in a 30 year career, those don’t sound like really hard stories to me.

[00:54:52] Yeah, but they impacted. They impacted on that. They certainly had an impact on me.

[00:55:01] But have you never had a situation where the patient’s lost trust in you, you know, like that sort of situation or you took on a case that that went wrong in the wrong direction for a long period or even in my short. I mean, maybe you’re just a much better dentist to communicate to that. Yeah, but even my short five years at the the BR front, I did have a few couple of cases like that where, you know, like cosmetics is awful, right? Patients says it looks great, goes home, comes back because I don’t like them anymore. You know, you’re in a terrible situation just there on a matter of opinion, you know, does that never happen?

[00:55:44] Were fortunately not with regard with regard to that, because forcing I’ve done the course is when I started doing aesthetic dentistry. Fortunately, I’ve done some good courses and they the thing that I always bang into is, is make sure the patient knows what it’s going to look like at the end. So there are no surprises at the end because, I mean, there is nothing and I say this in lectures all the time, there is absolutely nothing worse than, I don’t know, some veneers on or something like that. And the patient, either immediately or after they’ve seen their family saying, saying, I don’t I don’t like them because there’s no plum. These are, you know, okay, if they’re too long, you can shorten them. But that’s all you can do. And then obviously redoing stuff like that is, is, is an absolute it’s an absolute nightmare doing redoing dentistry that you just did.

[00:56:44] Yeah.

[00:56:45] Really is is, is literally is your worst day at work isn’t it.

[00:56:50] Yeah.

[00:56:50] So I think it pay, I don’t think it is judgement. It is, it is just luck but I certainly and maybe, maybe it was, maybe it was that early on end of case that really made me choose, choose my battles and be able to deliver on, on whatever I, on whatever I promised. But I’m sorry to disappoint you.

[00:57:15] I can’t think of.

[00:57:17] Anything anything cut to catastrophic for you in my professional life.

[00:57:23] You mentioned Lewis. The conversation I had about the NHS and leaving the NHS and what people are saying about that and what worries people have about that. But now in your role in dental plan, that must be a daily occurrence. I know your role isn’t specifically to talk about that dentist. I mean, you’re more on the education side and so forth, but what stories do you hear or what concerns do people have and are they the same concerns every time? And then the solution’s a similar solution all the time, or is it different in each case? Tell me some stories of NHS to private.

[00:58:01] It is it is it.

[00:58:03] Is the similar it is similar all the time and it’s always and they’ve always been the same stories. I mean I’ve I say I’ve done a 1000, so I’ve been teaching for about 20 years. I’ve been doing hands on courses for getting on for 20 years as, as well. So I’ve spoken to thousands, thousands and thousands of dentists and that’s, you know, me, we’ve been on courses together, you know, and I know you’re as well. You like chatting to chatting to the dentist, you know, good. Good to chat to, good company, entertaining people. And so, yeah, I’ve got a whole list. In fact, I did a webinar last week on this exact subject. It is the same things that come up every single time people have transitioned from NHS to private all report. Same thing. Number one is always time, more time, more time with the patients, more time for your for your for your private life, for your for your life work balance. But it’s it’s never money. Money is always the absolute bottom of the list is it is clinical outcomes, it’s job satisfaction. It’s developing good relationships with your patients. It’s using good materials and equipment.

[00:59:17] It’s having the time to go on courses and upskill. It’s working with technicians who share the same philosophy that you do. It’s you know, I’ve spoken to dentists on courses, a hands on courses. And this is this was not an uncommon occurrence. I do I used to run a series of ten hands on courses on various different restorative subjects and be quite a common one. When I was just started to push the envelope with, with big composites and almost without exception sort of every month somebody, an NHS dentist, would come on the course and I’d, you know, and we’d do a, I don’t know, mode b build up on a pre molar, take about an hour or something like that. And a dentist would say, you know, you know, this is all well and good, but I can’t do this on the NHS and I used to quite commonly get into this discussion and I said If you don’t mind me asking, how many patients do you see per day? And I would say almost without fail, sort of definitely a few times a year the dentist would say eight zero 80 patients per day.

[01:00:32] Oh, my goodness.

[01:00:33] Wow. To which to which I’d say, well, no, no, you can’t. You know, what’s what’s your what’s your appointment time if you’ve got to do this if you’ve got to do this in 10 minutes. You might get the first one right, but you’re not going to get the fifth one right. You’re not going to get the 10th one right. And what I did want to see, I didn’t believe it, actually, but I actually went to went to the went to the practice. I once knew of a dentist who had 100 patients booked in every day. I didn’t believe it, but I actually saw the daybook. It was a pencil, a pencil day book. And there were there were 100, 100 patients booked in in that day.

[01:01:13] The interesting thing is, if you if you said clean up time between 100 patients.

[01:01:18] Is.

[01:01:19] Just just be really kind of say 5 minutes to 3 minutes clean up. That’s 300 minutes of clean up time, which is 5 hours of clean up time.

[01:01:33] It’s not terrible.

[01:01:34] And you would occasionally see dentists who would get themselves into this sort of. This treadmill of multiple surgeries.

[01:01:45] On the.

[01:01:47] On the go. Well, but then.

[01:01:49] What are the barriers? What are the barriers? I mean, why don’t people want to leave? I mean, there’s the obvious financial sort of, you know, with the the system is that you’re sort of assured a certain income per year. There’s that. And then and then there’s another one talking to people who are thinking about it, the people who are eminently more qualified than I was when I decided to leave the NHS, worried about their skill set and worried about whether they can pull it off or not. And I say, you know, it seems to me so obvious. I will just keep it simple. Refer. Simple as that.

[01:02:24] You’re absolutely right. Confidence is the number one. You know, they don’t feel they don’t feel like a private dentist. To which I always say.

[01:02:31] What is that private?

[01:02:32] Exactly.

[01:02:34] I’d say, went to dental school. You weren’t trying to be an NHS dentist. You were. You were trained to be you. You were trying to be a dentist and to do whatever that particular patient needs are still to this day, do a lot of hands on courses with foundation dentists. And so I really, really notice that they really, really feel going from the, I don’t know, safe environment of, of the dental school scene to maybe four patients a day or something like that. And then working to an environment where obviously you’ve got to speed up. But that sort of tension with regard to sort of clinical decision making they they a classic one would be they they know that a direct composite online is the best treatment for that particular tooth. But working in a system, I don’t know. Take the UDA system, for example, where you’d be pushed to do an indirect restoration and that tension, a chrome denture or something like that. So you know that a cobalt chrome denture is the best thing for the patient. But when you factor in the lab bill, you would know that you do too many of those. Your business is your business is going bankrupt and and where cases in the in the UK system as well. So I mean the system does need to the system does need to change and it needs to change rapidly. I mean only in the last couple of weeks we’ve seen the, the Parliament Sean Smallwood talking to the health, health and Social, Social Care Select Committee. Things have to change and they have to change. They have to change rapidly.

[01:04:15] But you know at then plan what was the USP of that organisation is is it that they, they’re good at helping people go from one to the other. Is it, is it that they good at managing the teams because there are there are those concerns aren’t they. You know, what will my team think? What will my patients think? Am I up to it in all of this? Does Denton hold the hand better than the next company? I mean, they were certainly one. They were the first, weren’t they?

[01:04:43] Yeah, 1986 den plan was set up was set up with with three goals. It was set up by two dentists in the mid eighties. Eighties was a was a nightmare time anyway record unemployment record inflation. Falklands War miner strike it was it was it was a nightmare time and it was a nightmare time in in dentistry as well. And so these two two dentists came up with this idea for a basically a new system, a capitation system that was something to do instead of NHS dentistry, which was, which was the only game in town, you know, in, even in the nineties. I remember at the time somebody said there there are around about 500 private dentists in the UK. Now there’s 26,000. So plan was set up with three goals and those goals have remained the same throughout right up until today and they’re just as relevant as they were before. The first thing was professional control, getting control of your own career, which is what we’re talking about. The second was to create an environment outside the NHS where you could do quality dentistry. And the final one, which is even more relevant now, was to align the patient’s wishes with the dentists philosophy, which is prevention. Prevention patients don’t want dentistry. And so if if a capitation system works really for me, it’s perfect. It’s the perfect practical situation in clinical dentistry because you’re getting paid to keep people healthy rather than getting paid to find things to do and do things.

[01:06:32] And so having that balance of private fee per item and loads of patients on a plan just gives you that sort of clinical freedom to to make the right decisions every time, because your clinical decisions are based on, on what the patient needs. And obviously, I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of dentists and it’s the reason that we’re really quite evangelical about them plan is it because it was the first and it. It changed my professional career because when we went private, we weren’t completely private with them. In those days, you couldn’t you couldn’t have a children’s only contract. So basically it was, it was, it was private and and we didn’t retain any NHS within the practice. So in those days it was a leap of faith because there was no blueprint, big practices hadn’t done this before. But of course now there’s, you know, there’s a, there’s a blueprint. And, you know, thousands of dentists have already made they made that move. But so if you do chat to them plan dentists and I’ve heard this time and time again is that it changed it changed their professional careers even further. It changed their lives. And that is why that we’re so passionate about them.

[01:07:53] What is what is your actual role there? I mean, I know you were in charge of the education side for a while, but now now your new role.

[01:08:01] Yeah, well, the head dental officer, it’s actually the job that the original head dental officer is Roger MATTHEWS, who was one of my mentors, who is an absolute legend so far of ahead of his time. It’s really is a it really is a multi factorial role. Difficult to describe it in in just a sentence. The education side is still a big part of it. And one of the things that I’ve been really lucky to do is be involved with a big project to create our state of the art online education, to go along with our life courses. Our live courses have been incredibly popular for.

[01:08:42] Just summarise summarise the size of that that unit. I mean, I remember someone telling me, well, maybe it was you. It was like they do something like 500 days of live courses a year or something.

[01:08:53] Yeah. Yeah, we have way over 500 or 500 courses. I mean from, from hands on courses. I mean dipesh you, you kindly helped us out. I think that still remains our biggest ever hands on course. I think we had something like 40 dentists in the room, but you got good value out of Depeche that day. But we do in practice training that’s super popular. We do all the compliance subjects. We have ski conferences, cycling conferences, hiking conferences, and we just actually we’ve just finished actually, we’ve done our first four national forums. These are our sort of flagship events. And so so far we’re up in Scotland, in Blaine, Cambridge, Chepstow, and then we’re in Belfast the week before last. And so basically this is a full day study day with a nice meal and a stopover as, as well. And we’ve had Simon Chard lecturing for us on digital, doing a doing an hour and a half session. And he has been absolutely superb the den plan audience because you know is quite a tough audience. I say it’s it’s you know for for lecturers it’s a good rite of passage to to lecture to them to the dental plan dentist because, you know, you’ve got a lot of mscs in the room. You’ve got a lot of experience.

[01:10:14] Simon is a talented speaker, talented, very, very talented speaker.

[01:10:18] He is very, very polished. And but it does go beyond way beyond the clinical excellence, which he most certainly has. But it’s the whole sort of the the marketing, the use of social media. It’s his feedback has been off the scale. It’s been absolutely superb. So so those those are flood control.

[01:10:41] Have you got if let’s say you want to come up with a new course in Panama. Whatever.

[01:10:51] Well, like.

[01:10:52] You know, if you come up with a new idea, who does it? Is it you? Is it. Are you the last person who has to say yes to things? Or is there this other person who has to.

[01:11:02] Through.

[01:11:02] The process? What’s the process of if a new idea comes up, how does it work?

[01:11:06] It would be really lovely if that was if that was the case. My boss, Catherine Rutland, who’s another? Another and dentist as as well. So she would be the first person I would. In fact, literally, this actually happens only last week. I’m putting together ideas for the programme for 2023. So I’ve literally sketched out this is for me, this is the ultimate programme of live events and online online training events. And then we literally just go through the process with regards to funding budgets, manpower and workouts, work out what what we’re going to do for the next year. So we try and work kind of a year ahead. We’ve got an events team. The events team are amazing and we do lots of charity events as well, but not sort of CPD involved as well. You know, marathons, conferences. Our parent company, Simply Health Sponsored, The Great North is sponsored all of the great runs for a few years. So yeah, it’s just sort of because for me and I’m sure you’ll say exactly the same thing with your courses pay and even with your courses as well. Prav is for me some of the best little nuggets of education don’t come when you’re sitting in front of the lecturer. They come, they come in the breaks they come when when you when you’re having lunch, when you’re on a ski lift or.

[01:12:35] Wherever, the gin and tonic, man, you know, people underestimate that. It’s not it’s not the gin and tonic. It’s the different sort of sort of the barriers of the classroom situation. And then the barriers and the real conversations do tend to happen outside of the classroom situation. And for me, you know, the other thing is the delegates learning from each other totally. It’s a key point. It’s not just from the teacher, it’s a key point. They’re all going through the same things.

[01:13:09] Certainly from a practice management point of view, and I was really lucky I got into them quite early. I think it was about 93, although we were mixed for probably 15 years. Yeah, probably about 15 years. I was lucky, I think. I went on the first ever Dem planned golf conference and just sat down. My golf’s never never been any good and it it never it never will be. But I remember sitting down with some of the original Bampton dentists and they were really sort of saying, you know, from a great tips, you know, categorise your patients and correctly to begin with, equipment, materials, loads of techniques, loads of courses. Again, you know, I’ll go on one course, I’ll get a tip to go on to go on another one. It’s much easier now because obviously they’re all advertised on on social media, but it was very much a sort of a word of mouth who are the good speakers, who are the good mentors? And I was just really, really lucky that in the early, early years of my career, I just bumped into some just really, really influential people who transformed my career.

[01:14:18] Were you always that funny guy on stage? Because you are.

[01:14:27] Obviously, this is a fantastic opportunity to go into a Goodfellas moment here and, you know.

[01:14:34] When you have. But you could be a funny guy.

[01:14:41] Entertaining that entertaining style you’ve got. I was not from the first time you lectured. Was it like that.

[01:14:49] Style over content. I think that is.

[01:14:53] It is.

[01:14:53] It is. I’ve got a message that I want to get across. When I first started lecturing, I watched it before it started. I’d watch some really good lecturers and and you’d notice the ones who kept people sort of captivated. Trevor would be a really good. Trevor would be an absolute classic example of that because no matter how good your how good your, your content is, if people are asleep. And I’ve had plenty of people fall asleep in my lectures, they are going to learn nothing. They, in fact, just digressing from my worst ever. It wasn’t even a heckle in a live lecture. There was it was I don’t know. There was an audience of about I don’t know, about 40 or 40 or something like that. So it was a small it was a small seminar and there was a bloke in the front row and and he came in and he fell asleep almost immediately.

[01:15:49] And.

[01:15:50] And so that was a bit I was still introducing myself. I was still.

[01:15:54] I don’t have a long I don’t have a long I don’t have a.

[01:15:58] Long this is me intro but but he fell asleep during that. So then without a word of a lie, I kept going. I kept going. And then after a while his phone went off. It got off, it stood up. The group was in two, it was in two halves. So there was there was a sort of an alleyway down the middle. He walked up the alleyway, he answered his phone. And I.

[01:16:22] Don’t know what.

[01:16:23] I don’t know what the conversation. Nobody said, no, I’m in a lecture.

[01:16:27] No crap. And he walked.

[01:16:33] Out and he never came back.

[01:16:36] Wow.

[01:16:39] So that’s so that was my worst. So that was my worst sort of experience. But I think public speaking, I went to I went to a lecture the other day from somebody, a similar sort of vein to Prav. And it was people’s worst fears. And I think I think the worst fear this bloke was talking about was I think it was death of a relative public speaking and then being buried alive. So so when it comes to public speaking, I don’t I don’t I don’t mind. I never I never have.

[01:17:14] I think if you pull it off, you put it off so well with with the with the I don’t want to call it comedy, but the sort of the humorous side of it. And I always think if you if you say something funny, I never I never try it by person, because what if what if no one gets it or no one laughs? So and I find people do laugh in my lectures, but at points where I wasn’t expecting it. So it’s like they’re laughing at.

[01:17:38] Me so.

[01:17:39] Wisely. But but you put it off like a master, like a king.

[01:17:43] Give us an example, Payman. Give us an example.

[01:17:46] But he just. He can’t help himself from the first moment. Yeah, he’s talking it’s he’ll say a self-deprecating joke or something, but the audience will just get behind him straight away, you know, like, like what you said. You say, let’s say you can say something about your hair being a bald guy or whatever I’d say. And the room would be a room would be silent and worried. Yeah, he’ll say, and the room will be bursting out laughing. Yeah. And it goes on and it’s not like it’s only a comedy show.

[01:18:18] I’m not.

[01:18:18] Saying that.

[01:18:19] I’m going to say that at all. No, not at all.

[01:18:22] I was just about to ask Louis to tell us his favourite joke.

[01:18:26] It’s just. It’s just. It’s just.

[01:18:28] The content. The content is, is, is punctuated with some entertainment bits here and used to talk about different people, you know, good old and new places. So the way he would do it, I don’t know, Louis just carries it off in a really sort of for me, effortless is the way I would. I would describe it.

[01:18:50] That’s extremely nice of you to say. And it’s it’s not something I mean there’s certainly that. Edutainment as my my predecessor before Catherine Henry Clover he was my boss at Dental and he was the he was the head dental officer after Roger he said edutainment you know, you get you get you get your get your content across but it’s got to be entertaining. Otherwise, why why is anybody going to when when is anybody going to sort of actually come to your next lecture? But it’s not something that I sort of sort of script in really sort of I don’t know, they sort of I’m kind of lucky. It kind of sort of comes to me. I mean, I went to a school, a pretty rough school in those days. You didn’t have you didn’t have social media, so you had to go to school to be bullied.

[01:19:40] So I think.

[01:19:48] You have to be either really tall, which I wasn’t, or you have to be you had to be a clown. And so I suppose I learnt those skills from school. I remember my dad was always an entertaining bloke, but perhaps just made me think my my favourite joke. It was anything that I come out with a things that that please me are things that are thought of on the spur of the moment and and dental wise again probably 2 to 2 boring too late but I’ve been lucky enough probably because I’m I don’t mind public speaking I think I’ve been best man 11 I think it’s 11 times.

[01:20:31] Ten or 11.

[01:20:32] Times. And for me, my, my best adlib happened in a best man speech. And it was it was quite an awkward environment because the vicar had been drunk during the during the ceremony and it hadn’t gone disastrously wrong. But everybody, you know, it was it was one of those things, if you put it on telly, you wouldn’t think it was you wouldn’t think it was believable. So I was just getting nervous because I always do get a little bit nervous before certainly before speaking. And I thought, what am I going to say? I’ve got to kind of refer to it, but how can I refer to it? The vicar wasn’t in the room, but fortunately, but how do I refer to it without sort of embarrassing him and embarrassing everybody else? So I just I thought.

[01:21:19] Had.

[01:21:20] And so literally just it just came to me. I said, I don’t know about you, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had a wonderful wedding today, a fantastic service. And I don’t know about you, but in church today, I really felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.

[01:21:36] And and for me, that is just.

[01:21:41] I enjoyed the fact that I managed to think of something under those sort of those circumstances and, and, and pull it off.

[01:21:51] I’ll tell you my favourite joke. What did you call a man with no shin?

[01:21:56] No shin.

[01:21:57] Notion.

[01:21:59] No idea.

[01:22:00] Tony.

[01:22:07] Wow. That’s my number.

[01:22:09] One. That’s my number one.

[01:22:11] Dad joke.

[01:22:13] Highbrow Oxford.

[01:22:15] Educated medic.

[01:22:20] Another one. When you go to Footlights on.

[01:22:22] A similar sort of play, we go. Yeah.

[01:22:27] This one always, always makes me laugh. Is mango’s into a fish and chip shop and says Fish and chips twice, please. And the bloke says, So I heard you the first time.

[01:22:45] Louis. Out of your different things you do general or done general practise teaching. Have you done some research as well?

[01:22:54] A sort of ad hoc research, I would call it. I started I started teaching a Birmingham dental school in 2003. And so we had a fantastic faculty. But as soon as I went on clinic, I realised that the students were asking me questions. I just didn’t know the answers to, you know, how does how does bonding resume work? You know, and you get different colour composites just using those, using those as examples. So I really had to sort of go back to school and and then I was I was equally lucky. At that time, Janus Davis approached me and asked me to write write a paper on post era composites. And so I spent three months right in a write in a long draft of, of, of this paper on Post Composites, which is my sermon on Post Composites. This is how you do it. And then a sense the I think probably had to print it out and and take it to. To Adrian Shortall, who is the head of head of comms. He’s my sort of main sort of mentor. And I gave it to Trevor as well. And they were very, very polite with me and said, Yeah, come. Come back, we’ll have a read through this. Come back. Come back in a week. And and we’ll give you some advice. And and I went back into to Adrian’s office and he said, yeah, you know, it’s it’s it’s fine, but but this is this is going in a peer reviewed publication. Everything that you’ve written is your opinion, and you haven’t backed up any of it with evidence. So he said, to help you out, I’ve printed you out a few things to read and I can still see it to this day.

[01:24:48] There was a stack of papers and abstracts. There were over 100 papers on post. I mean, Adrian always knew the key references and still does. And so for me, I think basically that was I don’t know whether they were throwing down the gauntlet. I think most normal people would have walked away and said, Right, I’ll, I’ll give up on my academic career. But I read all the papers. I realised what I’d written was just purely an opinion piece. I rewrote it. It took me three, three months to write the first draft, six months to write it properly, and then that was the first paper I ever published. In fact, in preparation for this, I actually looked it up of of now I’ve got 30 peer reviewed papers and four textbook chapters and those are all those are all written on subjects. Quite selfishly, that interests me. You know, posterior composites, anterior composites, clinical photography caries, bonding amalgam, indirect restorations. So for me, the learning has been my research, my postgraduate education. I’ve got well, I say, in fact, I’ve tripped myself up there. I used to have no postgraduate qualifications when I put my pen down and I made a promise to myself in finals. When I put my pen down and that final exam, I promised myself that I would never do another exam, and I haven’t. But in 2022, a colleague of mine, Steve Bonzo, who’s a who’s a brilliant bloke, material scientist, he proposed me and Ian Chappell seconded me for a, for a PhD from Royal College in, in Glasgow. So, so, so I have got.

[01:26:42] An honorary one.

[01:26:44] I’ve got. Yeah. But by accident not by exam. That’s why so, so yeah. I just didn’t want to do any more exams. What about.

[01:26:58] Lewis? Your relationship with manufacturers is is awesome too. I mean, you seem to know everyone in that side, you know, the trade side as well. You know, for instance, how do you how do you keep a clear head if unless Davis are paying you or or sponsoring you to to write about composites, not to sort of get their one as the main one or, you know, how do you keep a good reputation amongst lots of different manufacturers? Because you really do have a great reputation out there. And how is it that others sort of sometimes fall over on that front? I mean, what’s what’s there one called clear fill?

[01:27:39] Phil Yeah, clear from my aesthetic, which is.

[01:27:43] It’s an interesting.

[01:27:44] Which is an amazing comedy. It’s, I mean, so it’s a really good point. But I must admit, without sounding too pious, I do try and sort of keep true to myself. I only talk about things that are used in practice, and I only talk about things that I know work because if I don’t, if I talk about a product that I haven’t got faith in and then somebody buys that project, product, uses that product, and then they don’t get the outcomes with it. Again, nobody’s going to listen to me again. And, you know, I’ve been lucky. I’ve never been good enough to work properly with with Enlightened.

[01:28:24] But I think you did lecture at the minimalist event. But I can’t call that work.

[01:28:34] Talking paid work. Did you get paid? I’m still.

[01:28:39] Waiting. I played.

[01:28:40] A gin and tonics that.

[01:28:42] I needed. He certainly did.

[01:28:44] But he’s got to believe in it first, right?

[01:28:52] I mean, the nice thing is that the companies that I work with, I’m doing quite a bit with opted in at the moment. I love most almost all of the opted products, but in a lot of work with with Coeur. I was really, really lucky that my my kind of if you like sort of lecturing career took off when sort of bulk composites came in. So I did. I’ve done a lot of work with Dentsply Sirona over the years. And if if somebody gives me a product that I don’t like because I’m lucky that I’m on a number of key opinion leader groups. And so there’s a group of us do get sent off before it goes to market to test it out. And I love doing that. And it doesn’t take long, does it, for an experienced dentist to know, is it better than what I’ve got before? Is it worse or is it insane? And then I’m just I’m just totally I’m just totally honest. I would never, ever say anything bad in public or any anywhere else about about a dental product. Because, as you know, there’s millions gone in to the investment.

[01:29:54] And I have pulled out of lectures. It’s I remember when I started lecturing one of my colleagues who’d been doing it for a while, and our lecturer said, I said, How long does it take to write a lecture? Because this is taking me hours and hours. And he said basically the industry standard for an hour lecture, you’re looking at about 50 hours of preparation and and development. And to be honest, I’ve never got it down much below that that 50 that 50 hours. So I can only ever remember happening once where I’ve delivered one lecture once. And this was on a product that I started using. And really I’m a real early adopter. I like trying out stuff straight away. But then the patients were coming back and it wasn’t really working out as I hoped. So I actually had to sort of hat in hand, go back to the manufacturer and say, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull out of this lecture lecture series because I don’t feel that so. And again, if you’ve ever seen me do a lecture, I get like way, way, way too excited about dental materials.

[01:31:02] And I quit and.

[01:31:03] I can get excited about matrix bands wedges. That’s probably one of the worst bonding lessons because if I really, really like them, because these these materials are designed to solve problems. Literally, the first time I used enamel was on. I remember the world of aesthetic Congress.

[01:31:26] Yeah, yeah.

[01:31:29] That’s what I was one of the mob down.

[01:31:32] Buddy, buddy, buddy, Andy. Son. What was his son’s name?

[01:31:35] Robert. Robert.

[01:31:36] Robert. That’s it, Bob. So that was a real turning point for me. I can’t remember what year it was, but Buddy Moffatt was doing 2 hours of lectures and.

[01:31:48] Yeah, that was the year we started with Cosmo then because we, we brought him over because of that now. Right. That would have been the 2008 I want to say.

[01:31:58] This, this, this all this all fits fits in nicely then. So so I don’t know you obviously you were in the room. There were about eight or 900 dentists in that room. And Buddy Mock was doing this presentation on composites, anterior composites, posterior composites. And I’ve never seen anybody do it before or since he had cases up on the screen and he basically said, What should we do? Do you want to do a posterior? Do you want to do an anterior? And basically his lecture could go off in any direction.

[01:32:30] Yeah.

[01:32:31] So now this was in the nineties, so this was in the era where porcelain was king. You couldn’t go on any other courses. Porcelain furniture causes the world aesthetic. Congress was basically a porcelain veneer course. And so I sat there watching Buddy Buddy Mapper, and it was showing case after case after case of these amazing composites used in using cosmetic products and how to build up composite veneers, taking crowns off, replacing them with composites. And it was absolutely groundbreaking. But then the thing that got stuck in my head, then he said, Oh, and here’s the ten year record. Going back to what you were talking about, there is your 15 year recall and thought, Wow, this stuff works. But the thing that the thing that really, really stuck in my mind is the lecture was in two parts and there was a break in between. And during the break, everyone went outside and everyone’s chatted. And the you could just hear these people just say, absolute crap. Worst lecture I’ve ever seen. Just, you know. And so when we went back in, there was still hundreds and hundreds of people there, but there were probably about 300 less people. They’d all gone off to a porcelain lecture from somebody else. And one of the first things Buddy said when he got back up on the stage wheel, he said, I won’t try and do his accent. People will say that you can’t do these things with composite as he does it.

[01:34:04] Combined composite.

[01:34:07] People will say that you can’t do these things with composite. And he said They’re right, they can’t. That just literally just stuck in my head that, you know, of course you can do it, but you’ve just got to dedicate yourself to the materials, the bonding, the know, the tooth anatomy. And so that was a real pivotal moment for me because they were doing stuff like you just, you know, in the States that you just wouldn’t believe and so much so that basically then I started using re now I did the hands on course with these with Robert is Bob is his son and the minute the minute you should have polished it. I thought, this is different. This is something that’s better than I’ve ever used before. And so I’ve used enamel on my hands on courses ever since. Because from a polishing point of view, as you know, and as dips, delegates, it’s one of those things that the delegates go away from the course with a nice feeling that they’ve done something that they.

[01:35:11] Yeah, they’ve seen something new.

[01:35:13] They never did before. Which is, which is what I tried to do as much as possible.

[01:35:18] Crazily, we’ve been speaking for an hour and 40 minutes now.

[01:35:21] Oh, my God. It feels like we haven’t scratched the surface.

[01:35:24] Maybe we have. Haven’t even said, who is your first boss? Where did you go from there? So we’ve. We’ve reached our limit already. Can I have to do it?

[01:35:32] Round two? I’ve got more questions, guys. We follow slogans.

[01:35:39] Don’t ask it, ask. Well, we caught another guy waiting, but there we go. We’ll have to do part two.

[01:35:46] We’ll have to do part two, man. There’s a whole bunch about public speaking that I wanted to ask you were saying you were comfortable and then you mentioned you get nervous sometimes. And then does that ever go away? And there’s so much buzzing around in my head. Right. So we’ll have to come back for round two.

[01:36:03] But sorry. So I hugged him. So let’s finish. Let’s go with the final questions, too. Let’s go with the phone. Let’s start with the fancy dinner party. One fancy dinner party, three guests, dead or alive. Who would you pick true to?

[01:36:19] Alive. Quentin Tarantino. Massive, massive movie fan. Come back. I’d be happy to talk about movies for for 2 hours.

[01:36:29] I’m not a massive fan. Massive, massive. Quentin Tarantino fan.

[01:36:36] Alex Higgins, the the ultimate the ultimate snooker player who still probably has got one of the best ever sporting quotes in history. And then the final one, I couldn’t decide either be Ricky Gervais or Frankie Boyle, because it would be an evening of absolutely zero political correctness.

[01:36:58] And.

[01:37:00] Talking about films, talking about snooker, talking about the, talking about the world. And then and then a game of snooker and getting drunk.

[01:37:07] After that.

[01:37:09] Whilst that sporting quote Lewis.

[01:37:12] Well, it’s been I read his autobiography years ago, and this quote has been has been given to lots of other sports people. George Best included. But I think the actual truth is it was Alex Higgins who said it the first he was asked in an interview quite late on in his career, you know, it made millions. He’d lost millions. And he was he was basically penniless. He was having to be crowdfunded. And he went on an interview. I don’t know. It might have been Parkinson not as good as U2, obviously, but he said in this interview. Over the years. All my millions. When I look back, I spent half my money on booze, drugs and women. The rest are just wasted.

[01:37:59] Squandered it.

[01:38:03] So I thought it’s a great a great sport. But he was a legend. He was an absolute legend.

[01:38:09] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:11] And the final question, Lewis, imagine it was your last day on the planet and you had your loved ones around you. And you had to leave them with three pieces of wisdom. What would they be?

[01:38:26] Well, I thought about this in advance as well. None of them. We’ve talked only about dental and teeth tonight. But, you know, that’s only half the equation. You know, we spend a lot of time at work, but it’s all about the rest of your life. Dentistry gives you the opportunity to have the experiences that you want. So I would say my first advice would be whatever experience is, whether it is travel, whether it is learning something, whether it’s a new opportunity in business or in practice or in any field of life. Don’t wait, do it. Just get as many experiences as as you can and just enjoy, enjoy every day. The second one is a practical one. This was advice that my dad gave me. He didn’t actually put a number to it, but he said, But, but I’ll sort of extend them the best bit of advice my dad ever gave me, which was be debt free by 4000 percent. Debt free by 40. No mortgage, no loans, no car loans. And then I’ll extend that live within your means. You know, I’ve got quite a few friends who’ve got ten watches and, you know, they haven’t even got long arms and, you know, multiple, multiple Ferraris. So, yeah, just because the minute you mean coming back exactly to what I’ve said at the start, the minute you’re not chasing finances, it’s all gravy. You you just your job is basically funding.

[01:40:01] Enjoy your job. But it’s funding the what you do in the rest of your life. All the other things you want to do, your family stuff and your relationship stuff. So if you can take that financial pressure off as soon as possible then and obviously in dentistry it is possible to do that fairly rapidly. And then the final thing would be just just enjoy yourself. I’ve got no sort of particular sort of sort of religious faith. You know, I’m just going to make sure that I enjoy sort of every day, every opportunity, enjoy every day. And if if you’re not doing something to change direction, that that would be the that would be my advice to, you know, I’ve given to my kids. Obviously, they’re just coming to that stage where they’ll actually listen to me again. Now, though, there was a protracted period of time when they fought and they knew everything already. And and I just didn’t understand. But I think they finally realised now that I probably have got something to, to offer them. But yeah. So that would be my advice sort of experience as much as you can out of life, get rid of the, whether it’s debt, whether it’s any other things that are bringing you down and just enjoy every day and, and do do what you want to do. Whatever, whatever is your passion, whatever drives you do that.

[01:41:28] I’ve messaged, I’ve messaged the next speaker so we can go to your final, final prayer, which is.

[01:41:35] Good.

[01:41:37] The final, final.

[01:41:38] How would you like to be remembered?

[01:41:40] Oh, of course.

[01:41:41] Of course. Louis If so.

[01:41:49] How would you like to be remembered if. If the following phrase was. Was said about you? Yeah. Lewis was. Finish the sentence. How would you. How would you spell loss?

[01:42:13] I. Go on.

[01:42:15] It’s it’s something that’s never really I’ve never really thought about. I’ll have to think about it if you do ever drag me back. But it’s not something that worries me at all. When I’m gone. Once I’m gone, I’m gone. I just, you know, just try and make the most of.

[01:42:33] Of my.

[01:42:35] My time on earth and good friends, good family and working in an absolutely fantastic profession.

[01:42:44] I’ve got one more question for you, Louis. Imagine you had 30 days left. No. Imagine you had a week left. Do whatever the hell you want. You know you’ve got a week and you’ve got all your health and no financial constraints. What would you do in that week?

[01:43:00] It’s not long enough, I’m afraid. I mean, it would be something crazy, you know? Keith Moon Sort of level heroic dose.

[01:43:15] That’s not long enough.

[01:43:18] I mean, for me, the I’m not frightened of Crikey, this is getting a bit deep. I’m not frightened of of death at all. But a couple of, I suppose, melodramatic to call them near-death experiences. But it doesn’t it’s not something that frightens me at all. It would be I think it would be what I sort of miss out on and seeing the kids grow up. And, you know, Tarantino said he’s going to direct ten films and he’s on nine at the moment. You know, you know, he’d have to get a I’d probably go I’d go and visit him and just ask for a screenplay on his. He’s currently undirected film. I’d probably give him a few tips, actually, and then I’d be happy to happy to pop off. But yeah, not planning on going anywhere too soon, but you never know. I mean, look at I mean, I’m 54 a few incidents that have happened recently in the public eye. You know more Shane Warne, he was one of my heroes. I’m a massive cricket fan this week. Ray Liotta, you know, he’s going to he’s going to live forever because the Goodfellas back to Goodfellas pie. But but yeah it doesn’t do them any good does it. So, so yeah. Just, just got to make the most of it because you never know when that, when that number is coming up.

[01:44:43] It’s been a pleasure, buddy. We’ll have to see.

[01:44:46] 100%. Part two.

[01:44:47] Yeah, that flew by.

[01:44:49] I certainly looked at the time. It was like, wait a minute. We’ve been talking for 2 hours.

[01:44:56] I know. I know. We’ve been talking for a while because my message is probably a couple of times it’s getting cold.

[01:45:05] Thank you so much, buddy.

[01:45:08] 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.

[01:45:24] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

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