So how about you send it to us? We’ll come to your practice. We’ll do. We’ll do the end in the house. Patient as well. We’ll go anywhere. You send us the X-rays prior, and then we’ll send the patient back to you for the crown. And we’ll pay you a percentage of what we were collecting and, you know, fairly decent fee. And we were doing that. And I remember the first session finished at 1130 at night with the last patient. And then, you know, the the guy always a practice came. He goes, Oh guys, we’ve had a great day. And I said, Yeah, it’s a great day.

So what went wrong? What was wrong? What was wrong with that business?

Well, I’m not that honest. That’s what was wrong with it.

That’s what was wrong with it.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Sandeep Sadhana onto the podcast. Known to me anyway as Sunny. Dr. Sunny To some people. Sunny I met first on Many Smile Makeover, and I even remember that course just because of Sunny. He’s got a way of holding the attention of a room. You know, it’s funny. I sometimes think it might even count against you. How how how much you can do that. You’re so good at holding the attention of a room that sometimes you think, well, this guy’s a performer, and then you’re talking about composites. And Sunny’s got a very interesting course the composites composite, the new matrix, the greater curve matrix, and wondering if sometimes people think, do they take you seriously or not? Because I remember when you started telling me about the course, I think, Oh, Sunny’s that funny guy. He’s that funny guy, you know? And then when when you started talking quite serious, is this for real? So, Sunny, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Hi, Payman. Thanks for having.

Me. It’s a massive pleasure. When was the first time where you thought in your life that I’ve got the gift of the gab? I can I can keep a room, you know, I can keep people completely enthralled in what I’m saying. Because every time I’ve been in a room with you, you’ve been centre of attention The first time when that happened.

And you’re making me think way back now. Right.

But really childish ones.

Ones Well, probably, but ones that stand out to me. I actually. I was a salesman in PC World for a while. Yeah. You know, I was, I was working from quite a young age before uni. Before uni. Yeah. Yeah. I actually got my first my first job was selling double glazing on the phone and I got I got promoted in two weeks to confirm, so. So I thought, yeah, there’s something good. And then yeah, the I just did a succession of jobs. My family are certainly big on, you know, go and work and some money and so yeah the PC world thing, I was a top salesman like two years in a row, just consistently being one of my friends. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I wasn’t really trying to sell or anything. I just like to talk to people. So that one kind of resonated then I think that kind of I think it all comes from I grew up in a shop similar to kind of business. Yes, I grew up in the shop, so I watched my two uncles be very, very social every day, day in and day out from six, 8 to 9:00 every day. And they never got hired. Right. So certainly rubbed off on me.

Where was the shop.

Was in Walthamstow, south east.

London. So you born and bred there?

Yeah, I was actually born in Hackney but grew up in Walthamstow and just always in and around the east London, Essex now.

And so. Okay, so you went out and worked and you know, we don’t realise the value of that. Like the same thing. Talking to the public before you first time talk to the public as dentist, you already had loads and loads of experience of that. Did you work in that shop as well?

Yeah, for sure. I mean that’s a child labour, right? That was.

Normal.

Me, me and all my cousins.

And then when, when was the first time that dentistry came on the scene as a, as a career prospect. How old were you. Do you remember.

I was probably quite young but again it was just a family thing. See, one of my uncles had this in my head, right, because they used to open the shop at 650 and shy at nine. He had the dream for me that I should get a nice 9 to 5.

So.

So that was what they they actually looked up to, right? I’m not sure a lot of people think a 9 to 5 is the jackpot anymore, but they certainly did. And yeah, typical typical Asian family might be be a doctor, be a lawyer, be it this better and then yeah, it just kind of fell into it. It was going to be one of those three things. And I couldn’t see myself through medicine, couldn’t see myself doing in law. So dentistry just became the thing. I landed in my my grades were good, so I applied for it and got in.

And where do you study Queen Mary? But how will you how will you, as a dental student, the class clown? That’s how I imagine you.

I’m not sure I was class clown. I did like a joke. I did like her. I mean, I do enjoy, but I do like I do like having fun. But I actually found I found uni quite tough. I find duty really quite, quite tough. I find it to be a little bit prison esque, you know, like, not especially dental school, you know, first year people are out going out, you know, and we’re doing those course assessments every six weeks. So that was that really hit home that this wasn’t going to be a jolly.

Yeah, Yeah, I know. I know what you mean, man. Because you get to uni thinking you’ve got like some some American college life sort of dream that you’ve seen in the cinema and in dentistry particularly is is quite hardcore course. So did you find that Was it, was it academically you weren’t happy or just taken out of your way like where, where you’d grown up and all of that sort of thing?

I’m not too sure. It was like the people there. There was some cool people if people got on with Ice Bowl or football. So that was, that was, that was fine. Five and I didn’t really mind the people so much. I think it was just that it was pretty, pretty structured. It wasn’t you weren’t that free, you know, It just took up a lot of lot of time. You spend a lot. And so I’m slutty. So I think I just. I think I’m a free bird at heart. Right.

Q Did you live out the whole time or did you live back at home at one point?

Both. I did. I did both.

So what did you the first year you live out?

First year lived that and then. And then I think off the second year. Then I moved back home, which they were both equally as hard, by the way.

Yeah. So don’t you feel like you missed out a bit on the uni experience by doing that?

Well, I reckon actually by the first or second year I was, I think I just made up my mind that I was just going to get through it and do the degree and get the education and that was it. It wasn’t. I was getting my sort of extracurricular stuff fulfilled elsewhere. The things actually stimulated me.

So go on.

Well, I mean, I was an Army reservist, so that really fulfilled me. I really enjoyed that. Always wanted to do it. And then uni was just logical. So I think I was more enthusiastic about that than I was actually the degree itself.

So it’s like, you know, they can’t be that many Indian boys in the Army Reserves.

Or I wrong. Am I wrong about that? There’s not lots. There’s not lots. But interestingly, there’s there’s a regiment G company now, actually it’s got loads of Asians. It’s like East Arnhem, I believe, somewhere around there. One of my family is actually in that regiment now. So yeah, he says there’s loads and apparently it’s the most diverse regiment in the, in the army. But mine was, was, was, was not that mixed but it wasn’t that big of a problem really.

What was the drive like. Why, why the army.

Well again my, my two uncles, they were cadets and they had really fond memories of that. And they were growing up in a difficult time. Right. They were they were in the east end of London, where they were the only two the only two Asian guys, full stop, you know, let alone having turban and beard. And they had really fond memories and said that it was a good experience. By and large, it made them who they were. And then there were other people. My family had done reserves as well. My my stepdad was in the reserves as well. So yeah, I was just kind of influenced by I was always pretty active. I was always pretty physical. And yeah, just it just attracted me. I just like the challenge.

So, you know, you’re one of the more engaged than this I come across. You’ve really engaged with with each part of dentistry. Were you that way throughout, or do you remember a time where you suddenly switched on to wanting to be the best at dentistry itself?

Well, I actually think I just did. My heart wasn’t totally in it during the degree. I just. I just did enough. I just I just wanted to do it right. And I think I was a little bit miserable in uni, actually. I think a lot of people that knew me at uni, you’ll probably say I was pretty miserable and but later on, you know, I did vet, vet was cool. I had a really fantastic trainer and that really rubbed off on me. And he was very giving and sharing and, you know, really proud of the things he used to do for his patients. That really rubbed off on me and I kind of followed suit. But then when I got into mixed practice, you know, the two positions I had after that, like predominantly nurse, I’d left the army at this point, obviously, and I, I’d always been part of a team and I just want to be part of a team. I’m quite a team player and it wasn’t like I was just in my room and everyone else was in their room and maybe I’d have a few hours at lunchtime. It was pretty, pretty boring. So I’d just go for a walk instead. And yeah, I was just lacking. I was just lacking that. Right? And then in 2016, a friend of mine from uni calls me up and says, I’ve started a private practice, I’ve got another chair, it’s a squat, there’s no patients you want to come down. And I just bit his arm off. I did it and then never looked back.

How many years after qualifying was that?

That was about six years.

So then are you saying that up to that point you weren’t really looking at improving? And then from that point on, you really started?

Well, I mean, I like improving in general, right? So at least I’m certainly sort of self-reflective. But at that point it was improving, meant doing more. So then my highest accolade was like, oh, did 8000 UDAS one year like. But as we all know, that’s hardly an accolade, right? But then when I got into that private practice and then there was very few patients, and then I really realised how many of those patients actually wanted to come back and see me and how much my work was actually standing the test of time. Yeah, I probably wasn’t as good as what I thought I was. Right When you’re doing Udas doesn’t make you good. So then that was a rude awakening for me. I just realised why I’m actually really rubbish. So then so it was a little but prior to me wanting to improve, I tried to just skip the whole dentistry thing completely. Right? So actually, comically, you know about this, But I actually tried to become a professional bitcoin trader.

Oh yeah, I do. Go on, tell the story, man.

Well, so, you know, I’m in this practice is private practice. First year is just staggeringly difficult not many patients and my that year the take home was just terrible, worse and way worse than just what I would earn on the NHS. But the year after that 2017, I learned about Bitcoin. I don’t know how I did and I just got curious, got interested in it, started playing around and started putting on trades. Some of them started working out, some of them didn’t, but I was learning in the progress in the process and then I just went really deep into that. Like when I get into something, I really get quite deep into it, right? So I just took a deep dive into it. And 2017, I made like a quarter of a million very quickly and I thought I was a genius. I thought I was ready to walk off or I could do this all day, sit on my computer, just do this, look at charts. I thought I could do it. And then the following year I lost it because I didn’t know I was doing right and. Brutal crash of 2018 happened. And then I realised that actually, you know, maybe I am a dentist after all.

And then I.

And then I just did so much CBD because it just hit me. I thought, you know what? I’ve worked so hard to get to this point. You know, I didn’t really want to disappoint my family in that regard as well. I’m typical Asian females and yeah, I did about, I think 200 hours of CBD in person in 18 months. I just really went really went hard. I feel I’m not just I’m not going to waste this opportunity. Right. Because I didn’t give it a good crack. So that’s when I really got serious about the industry.

It’s what did you, which courses did you do?

I did loads of the jaws. I did all of the Lundbeck courses. I did the Fusion, the rest of the ones I did. Endo I went to Egypt to place implants. I did many small makeup. I do money for science. I did was I’m trying to think what else was popular at the time. I was going to do small fast, but I backed out at the last minute. Yeah, I can’t remember, but I did a bunch of bunch of courses. I did loads.

So what stood out for you apart from ours? Obviously.

Well, all right. What stood.

Out? Yeah.

That’s a good question.

Look, if you if you if a young colleague came up to you and said, look, I want to immerse myself in CPD, what would your advice be?

What first hospital we had. First, we ask them what they good at, what do they think? What are they relatively strong at now? Because I don’t think you need to go and plug holes everywhere. Sometimes you can just double down. Look the things that you’re actually really quite good at.

Yeah.

So that’s probably a good starting point because what I did, I just did loads of CBD. I just went online. What can I book? You know, not not wanting to be a failure, but I’m not sure that’s the smartest way of going about it. You know, I’ve said this before, actually, I think it’s better to have a have a group of friends that you’re close with dentistry people, and you can all collaborate and say, Look, how was that? Cause what do you think? They’re a bit hive mind there. But group group intelligence probably get you get you further than just trying to just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Which is what I was doing.

So you wouldn’t have a device if the guy said, Right, I want to get better. I want to get into private dentistry. What would be your advice.

To do my course first?

Am I? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what I did. Really? That made me good from being this rubbish. Or I say good, right? Just better than what I was. But what I did. So. So this didn’t really cost anything. I actually had a spreadsheet and I put every single complication I ever had in the spreadsheet, and every quarter I would review it and I’d even categorise them right? Whether it was like a restorative problem was in the problem. Was it a communication problem, Was it a pricing problem? You know, I even included that because actually sometimes we’re weak on the communication front. We think we’re going to say, you know, actually let us says this all the time. He says, you know, you think you’re going to save £500 and then three, 350 comes out your mouth. So that’s happened to me a good few times. So, you know, I had loads of those sort of pricing issues or where I hadn’t been clear with the price and whoever else. And that really made me better because then I realised I didn’t have that many, you know, the bigger problems I had were with crowns not fit in or in those failing or stuff like that or restorative. I wasn’t having loads of loads of problems, so I started to think like perhaps this is, this is a strength of one. And then I suppose that’s when I really said, yeah, many times carbon monoxide, severe bandages do all of those and went, Well, those are the ones I suppose I was more interested in, you know, those are the ones I was taking notes pretty seriously.

And then, you know, you go from being a course delegate to someone who’s got your own course now. And with I mean, I’ve got to hand it to you in the short time that you’ve been doing the drill course, you’ve made quite a lot of waves and you’ve made loads of content as well. I mean, I remember it for myself when I went from someone who used to go to courses, to someone who used to set up courses and organise courses. What surprised you the most about that?

About change in courses. All the.

Change? Yeah, we’re putting on courses. Yeah.

Well, I suppose it’s natural rights only have a little bit of imposter syndrome that now you are going to see these guys and learn from them and now you’re imparting knowledge on other people. Yeah, I don’t really feel that actually, because the for this particular course I think I’m the best man for to do this. I’m the best man to share this information. I’ve been using the system since 2018. The event the brand’s been mentoring me since 2020. I’m not an expert at dentistry, but I’m certainly an expert in this system. I started off using it so pretty, not really don’t really have the imposter syndrome regarding that. But I think sometimes, you know, people will ask, you know, they expect you to have all the answers to everything. Right. I I’ll tell you a really funny story. Actually, I the gentlemen reached out to me pretty well. Well, no then is nothing against me or anything. But he said to me that you didn’t want a lunch and learn with me because he had studied implants, prosperity, all this postgraduate stuff, and I hadn’t. And he thinks that people who are going to teach should have a complete understanding of all of dentistry before they could teach one subjects. And I just felt that that was like a bit of a like a gatekeeper ideology, you know, the gatekeepers to knowledge. I’m not saying I have any secret sauce, so to speak. I just I’m the best man in place to teach this particular program, right, because of my experience. And it’s the only thing I use and I can manage to solve most problems. And I’ve gone from NHS to solely private and now being a private associate to running an in-house referral service while I go to other people’s practices and do referrals in their in their place just for stories. So I’m not I’m not saying I’m the best dentist up far from it, but I can handle most problems now.

So no, but that surprised you, right? That surprised you? The guy didn’t want to be taught by someone who wasn’t. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It totally that surprised me because actually there are problems that I know, you know, we can solve really easily compared to any other method. And in fact, some methods are popular, like sectionals and stuff. There are certain situations. They just don’t work. So you can be in a sticky situation. But that gentleman just doesn’t want to know about it because I wasn’t as qualified as him. So that was. That was quite surprising. You know, I also found surprising. Yeah, I found surprising that dentists can be quite brutal. Then it’s like.

When they’re talking about it.

Actually sometimes just at these luncheon ends and stuff. Obviously not to your face. Everybody’s quite polite to you, but I mean, I’ve had it where some of these luncheon we filmed, you know, like we’ve had we just had a mobile phone filming. And then when I’ve watched them back, you know, like we’re just making content out of it. Whatever else, I can see slips, you know, perhaps I was too informal or something like that. But then I can see in the clip, like the guy cover his face and snigger. Oh, I could see it. You know, if I do a lunch and learn with a practice owner and his associates. And then I’m trying to make it slightly interactive and say, has anyone had this problem that nobody answers? And then I could just see him cover his mouth and snigger. That’s fine. I quite that was quite surprising, right? I thought, man, I’m just trying to share some stuff with you. And so that was a bit surprising, but I’m pretty used to it now. I’ve got quite a thick skin.

Yeah, look, I find I tell you, what I found difficult was I felt like I was quite good with patients. I could I could talk to patients, I could sell to patients quite well. And I felt in my zone when I was talking to patients. But at the beginning, when talking to dentists, you know, there’s an inherent trust in a patient sitting in the chair, dental chair. But with dentists, you know, there’s an inherent distrust. We trained to distrust, aren’t we?

Yeah, well, we’re analytical, right?

Yes. Part of our job, right? It’s part of our job. Right. Where is the evidence? Right. For whatever someone’s saying. And, you know, the sort of, like you say, the brutality of that response that you’re talking about, It’s it’s almost like the difference between b2c and B B2B B, and we’re talking business to business. People sort of feel like they’ve got the right, whereas they might not be like that about their dentist, you know, the guy who’s looking after them.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. You know, else is surprising, you know, when we do the in-person lunch, unless, you know, obviously we take food racks, we take some pizzas and stuff. I think it’s probably about two practices. I remember that actually said, thank you for the food. So I find that surprising.

Some people seem to say thank you for food for me. Maybe, maybe, maybe the piece I bought was terrible for.

The dietary requirements.

Wrong. Yeah. All right, so there’s that. But. But these are. These are luncheon loans, right? So these are. What are you doing? Are you sort of people people are showing an interest and then you’re saying, I’ll turn up at 1:00 and you and bring lunch. What about the courses themselves? Do you find it hard selling tickets to courses?

I don’t find it hard. I mean, at the beginning it was hard because nobody knew I was right. Nobody knew us. So imagine, like you’re your first cohort for a hands on program. Nobody knows what this is. They don’t know. They don’t know who I am. So why the hell should they give me money to show them something? To them, I’m a nobody. So, yeah, yeah, that was kind of tough. But then again, you know, you have the early movers, you have the early adopters or early people. Yeah, you have the early adopters who perhaps a little bit more open minded or they’ve personally seen the stuff I can do or they refer the case to me and see like, Well, how did you do that so easily when I couldn’t do it? And so those early adopters got on board and, and, you know, like I said, that first one was when I knew I was onto something because it was a slam dunk. Like they were all pretty happy. They were all Monday morning putting into use, sending it in the WhatsApp group. You know, it’s pretty unfulfilling to see people come on to something and then leave with skills that they can put into practice straight away. Right. It’s not like some fancy thing that they’re going to have to wait three or four weeks before they’re going to have a case and be able to be able to actually use it. This is bread and butter stuff all the way to to more tricky, tricky things.

So we might as well go through what is it, what is the greater curve matrix? What situations does it really come into its own? What are the downfalls of sectionals and the traditional matrices that this this manages to get over? And then and then I do want to talk about how did you come across it? Yeah. Yeah.

So what a great curve is. It’s been around since 2006. So in America is pretty well established. Obviously, they’re old school companies, so their socials aren’t like massively strong. But at the same time, I’ve learned that just because you’ve got a really good social following, that doesn’t mean your KPIs in the business are in sync with that. Right? Just loads of followers doesn’t mean loads of business. So they’ve got loads of business but not a lot of followers. So I’d rather have that problem then I’d rather have that situation then than the other. But yeah, they’ve been around for a long time. Dr. Brown actually came up with the idea in 96 and then just tinkered around with it for ten years before he was only using it for one situation. Classifiers You just wanted a better way of doing that. And then it evolved into being able to do class two and then class two, three, four, five and eight on it can do it, can do everything right. And he kind of ran like a bit of an impromptu clinical trial, so to speak. So like 96 to 2006, it was just his friends and people he was speaking to online on dental town and they were using it and really liking it and was getting really good feedback.

So it wasn’t just him. And yeah, there was so much demand that 2006, that’s when they became a proper company. So but so like I said, it can handle pretty much any of situation and where it really shines, you know, those really difficult sub jingles like I’ve had that before, where I’ve been super frustrated, I’ve done loads of restorative courses, all revolved, all revolving around sectionals. And then I have this ridiculously deep sub gingival and I just didn’t have a way of dealing with it, you know? And then I’m just hitting and hoping and hoping that it’s isolated and hoping that it’s bonded. And people say. Robert Yeah, of course. Fine, I get that. But the rubber dome can’t isolate a really substitutable right. So it really stands out in those situations. You know I have I’ve got this case, this gentleman comes to see me and he had been told he needed a lower partial clearance. And the dentist said, go and see Sonny. And if he can do something, maybe you can keep it safe. So he comes to see me. And by the time I’d excavated all of caries, obviously warning him that this might may not be possible.

And he had been applying for two implants and a breach for eight and a half. K And then I cleaned up all the caries for my client when I was a lower level for all the way to lower three and the caries was sub Gingival Class five, Class three. You know, he’s just an absolute mess. And, you know, three and a half hours later he had restored teeth and he, you know, happy to pay four in half thousand for that in that time. So it’s not just a way of solving problems. It’s quite a profitable way of treating problems, too. We can quickly place restorations are well bonded and, you know, it’s a bit contentious, but if you use rubber down, great, you’ll enhance your isolation. But if you don’t use rubber down, it also isolates at the matrix level. So we’re using a a 38 micron sheet of stainless steel or brass to hug around the tooth and not let anything in, whereas somebody else might want to use a sheet of rubber. Right. So it’s pretty damn flexible as well for your, your particular perspective I suppose, on how you approach.

Them and what is it? What is it about it that makes it better for such gingivalis? Is it literally the curve of the band that goes down a bit deeper? Is that what it is?

Yeah, well, in a nutshell it’s they’re basically curved bands, right, with this modified top of my retainer. Like that’s its core level. But what makes it super special is like, you don’t even need to use wedges if you don’t want to. Like, you don’t have to force the tip apart. So it’s a restorative framework as well, like it’s techniques that brands sort of refined over this period, right? So it’s almost coming up to four years almost, Right? So in that time, you just got a real solid way of approaching any situation. Right? And whoever you’re doing, all units, single unit quadrant, it doesn’t really matter. Just anything anywhere, you know and it’s a little bit efficient to like if you’ve got like an mod and a bottle, we can do it all in one go, right? Because it’s a curved circumferential, so to speak. And yeah, it’s just really easy to use.

Could you come across it.

Yeah. Well after I was, you know, got tired of crying myself to sleep after losing that money, the money side I had, you know, I reflexively kept going on the computer because that’s what I’ve been used to doing. And then I just started I started doing these courses, as I mentioned, but they were all teaching sectionals and that was fine. But like, I just couldn’t get them to work as well. Like, I didn’t really love them. I just something about them just didn’t resonate with me. I just found it really complicated. I thought there must be a simpler way and even like closing black triangles and stuff and using various strips, I just didn’t find that too simple. I was just like, I’ve got one hand tied up, blah, blah, blah. So I went on Dental town as well and I just came across a curve and there was like so many posts, so many cases then just, just loving it. And I just got my hands on it, started using it. But yeah, I was doing all right. But there were still situations that I didn’t really fully understand how to use it, and they’ve got loads of videos online. But again, sometimes it just wasn’t watching the video and having someone explain it to two different things. So in 2020 I heard Dr. Brown on a podcast and he just really down to earth old boy, probably doesn’t care about impressing people anymore and just openly said, Look, I do most of my sort of dentistry what I’ve done.

And that’s like, nobody says that. And even Howard frown on that show goes, you know, a 30 year old dentist would never say that because even if he did, he would never say it because of obviously the the community view overall. So I was listening to him. He’s just very frank. He just talk about how, you know, sometimes get rubbish contact areas. Such tangibles were difficult. No real predictable way of doing class. Five’s just really went into just everything I was thinking and feeling. So I actually emailed him and just reached out to him and just said, Look awful, well done for saying all that stuff. Super impressed, Love your system that are there. And then he said, Look, let’s do a zoom. So I did a zoom slide show in cases and then he said, Oh, you know what you got to do there is turn the retainer this way and then you’ll get more flair. And that’s what I was. Oh, so I’d write that down. And then every time I’d be doing these Zoom call sharing cases, I’d be writing all these notes, and then I’d have pages and pages of notes about his framework. And yeah, that’s, that’s how I saw the mentorship with him, so to speak, which is still going on, which is cool.

And so did he not have a representative in the UK at the time?

No, they were selling direct. But then obviously selling rights is problematic because there’s you can get import import charges. Obviously, it’s got to come from America and then it’s the last minute. Sometimes they just want to order something today and get it tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, you know, the whole process of becoming their distributor, minimum order quantities. Am I ever going to be able to sell the stuff that I buy That must have all been new to you, right?

Yeah, for sure. 100%. 100%. And, you know, I had had friends who who are involved in distributing products, Dental products into the UK as well. So I, you know, I pick their brains often and then, you know, they were really quite helpful about it and kind of approached that beginning, that beginning sort of stuff, trying to understand it with them. But then it’s a steep learning curve. You’ve got to learn. You’ve got to learn, right? If this is what I want to do, you know, I had faith in the product. I had faith in the system. I had faith in the framework. You know, I said to Dr. Brown on a call last year, at some point I said to him, look, man, you know, we’ve got teachers. I want to teach this. And he said, Yeah, I always teach it. And I was like, Wow. So from that point, I knew, right, this what I’m going to do now, just share this with as many dentists as possible, because there were a lot of people that aren’t doing really well on the restorations and they’re just living with that subpar restorations, but they don’t ask to do it, and sometimes they haven’t got a place that they can go and ask for help because if they go to their principal, say, I can’t do a class five, you know, it’s not very becoming, is it? So yeah, it’s not like and if you go online as well, if you go on these Facebook groups and just present like a really, really fundamental problem, I’m not sure people are that helpful when I use a rubber. Damn it is do that. Do this. You know, there are other people that just want a different way. Like they just want a simple framework that works every time.

Well, I noticed Greater Curve is coming up as the answer to some of these questions these days. And I know how hard it is to even get the name of your product recognised. It takes years sometimes unless you do, you know, there’s there’s different ways of of getting the word out there. I notice you using to sort of getting yourself involved in all the different groups and all of that. But I remember when we started maybe the first seven, eight years, the most common thing I would hear from people is I’ve never heard of you. And it took seven, eight years before someone would say, Oh, yeah, we know. And I remember, you know, we’ve always overspent on marketing, you know, compared to how much we were making. And I remember thinking, you know, there I am a receipt, my whole mortgage, my, my family. But by buying these extra ads and then the Dental magazines, and yet everyone I meet says they’ve never heard of us. And it can be soul destroying. It can be soul destroying. So I think you’ve done quite well. I mean, how many years this has been? Even two years? Yes, one year.

Not me. Not even. Not even a year.

Now you’ve done well. You’ve done well. I mean, maybe I’m paying more attention because you’re my buddy. But in a year, you’ve done well to get it out there and. And people bring it up in comments.

Yeah, Appreciate. I appreciate it. I’d say 40 marks, by the way. So 14 months to be super accurate.

It’s tough. But I mean, look, there’s there’s different ways of marketing, right? You can you can go down this sort of content approach, a kind of you’ve gone that way. You’ve got some some videos and all that you can you can do gimmicks in has been a master of that right You can you know whatever you think about dressing up at a trade show you know he accelerated accelerated how quickly people knew about his product by doing that. And then you can buy ads. You can become become a teacher. But either way, today, there’s so many different things. And you know, what I’ve noticed about your product is the people who use it kind of evangelistic about it. You know, they they’re happy about the fact that they’re using it. And you’re right in that sometimes the sort of sexy side of dentistry is what everyone wants to talk about. And yet the day to day today, a dentist would have done a sub gingival class teeth that would have really gotten in his, you know, on his nerves. Tomorrow, tomorrow there’ll be another one. And the next day there’ll be another three. You know, anything that can make the day today a bit more, a bit more predictable needs to be talked about. Right.

For sure. So I mean when I gave, I gave a talk at the Scottish dental show and it was called How to Reduce Your Blood Pressure. Blood pressure as a profession.

It was, yeah. Yeah.

Because it really does, right. So now like those, you know, you’ve just, you’re able to just put that part, that problem that you’re having, just put it to bed like you’ve just got this predictable way of approaching it. It’s just done. I don’t have to worry about those things. Right. So that’s supremely freeing. It frees up bandwidth to say, I want to spend more time on X or I want to, you know, just I just I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. You know, you can you can you can do anything. You can’t do everything. So you can’t worry about every, every single problem. Right. So try and get as many of those things on automation or systematise as possible. Right. So obviously our business is very small. It’s a start-up, it’s a lean start-up, you know, a small team, lots of automations, lots of systems, lots of processes, lots of things so that I don’t have to think about. And they’re being built every week. So dentistry I think is much the same way, you know, how can I systematise things? How can I make my day to day workflow super predictable? You know, we had we had a delegate on the May one, one of the earlier doctors and he said, Look, I’m challenging you. I don’t think this is going to touch back here and I don’t think this is going to touch Garrison. That’s what he said to me when he walked on. Can you imagine? So no pressure. And then that same delegate, he came back his second time on the course that we’ve just run. And he said to the other delegates while they were talking, he said, Yeah, it’s the only thing I use now, you know, and it’s easy. I love it. And I’m I’m charging 40% more for everything I do because I’m confident enough to do that. I mean, that was powerful stuff. I mean, not really. That’s really quite fulfilling to hear.

For sure. For sure. And then you get the question of where is it going to go from here? What I mean, I know we’re very early days, but have you decided that you’re not going to open a dental practice and you’re going to follow this as you become a more supplier and educator than a dentist? Or have you not made that decision yet?

Not definitely made my mind up already. That’s where it’s going.

Really? Yeah. It’s a bit of a shame, man. Deliver shame. You love teeth, man.

Well, I still practice what I was doing.

Today, but that’s my question. That’s my question. Is the practice side going to go down? You’re going to do less dentistry?

Well, I only do two sessions a week anyway. So.

Two sessions, is it?

Yeah, two sessions a week I do now. And like I said, they have referrals, so they’re always pretty challenging. Pretty interesting, little bit spicy. So yeah, I mean, that’s not going to change. I’m going to continue to do those work and just do this for the rest of the time. I mean, I live and breathe this now.

So the two sessions means basically one day a week.

Yeah, like 4 to 6 hours every time I go, you know, I don’t really do more than nine. I go.

Yeah, So I did that. I did that for a long time. I found it very difficult, though. I found that I didn’t I didn’t get into the rhythm of dentistry. I don’t really care if the nurse did something wrong or if the lupus, the battery of the lupus wasn’t working. You know what I mean? Because it was just one day a week. So I felt like I wasn’t engaged. Now, maybe you all do, because your job is the same as your you know, you need the cases or whatever. It’s for your lectures. But I found it. Not enough. I found two days a week better, three days a week, kind of a bit too much. If you’ve got another project.

I think this is just. This is probably like my sweet spot. You know, I could probably do another session and, you know, not detract from things. But I think, you know, there’s one place, again, they send me referrals, I’ll go there twice a month, you know, and it’s always quite a good day. That’s a full day, but that’s twice a month. So and that’s just my staple stuff. But in terms of like what you said, not getting into the swing of things again, I just got systems around that right? So I’ve got someone that will charge my battery and make sure my like you’re charged and tested and all of that stuff’s pretty on autopilot, which is really nice. And that’s something I’ve had to learn this year a lot because, you know, I’ll just get on with things, you know, whatever needs to get done, I’ll just do it. But I can’t do everything right so I can do anything but not everything. So being able.

To.

Get people on board to help, you know, that’s that’s, that’s something I really picked up this year, you know, and that’s helped a lot.

What do you mean? Employees?

Yeah.

How many people you go?

I was think about this number this morning, right? Because some are like just ad hoc in a sense, you know, So like when we run a course, I’ll have one of my assistants come and he always does it. He he always helps run the course. So he’s one guy in total. I mean, we’ve even got that same Jen I was talking about, the one who’s charging 40% more. You know, he’s helping out on the courses now, what have you for him to become a trainer to because you just got the framework down. So I’d say seven in total.

I remember when we got our first employee, it was a good six months in. And it’s funny man, because some people think of hiring. As a natural move and other people don’t. And I wasn’t I wasn’t that cat. We think I need to hire someone. But then the further you get into it, the more you just understand that that’s the right thing to do. Sure. And then as the numbers increased, the management headaches increased, too, Right? You get you get let’s say you get a team of five. They need their own little boss now. They need their own little leader. And, you know, it’s interesting. It’s interesting that the way the way these things evolve, you must have hit some crises in this period. Tell me about some of those dark times of business.

I certainly will. But just quickly, just on point of what you just said as well, you said about the team stuff. Something I’m a big, big fan of. Right. Is like horizontal structures rather than just traditional hierarchical ones where everyone needs to come and report to you and say, I’m doing this. I’m doing that. Yeah. Now I’m a big fan of getting people who are internally motivated. You know, they see division as as I do. And, you know, they’re all on the same page and I don’t need to nudge them. They’re nudging me, you know, 7:00 in the morning. And I wake up and my phone’s got like six messages. Can you do this? You do this, you do this. And 11:00 at night, it’s the same thing. So, you know, I really try and stick with people who are internally motivated, not just not just skilled. And people have got integrity as well. But yeah, that’s how I’m kind of getting around this stage. But yeah, go on the dark. The dark moments. Yeah, the dark times, Yeah. In this venture or just in general, because I’ve had some other dark times.

This is not the first business. I’m happy to hear both.

Well, you know, this is not my first hand at business, you know? So when I was doing the whole NHS dentistry stuff, like, I was pretty damn depressed, you know, like I was heavily drinking on the weekends, just drowning my sorrows. And that was no way to live, you know, like I dreaded Mondays. I just, you know, still be, you know, still not be feeling great for the weekend and then it’d be a drag and it gets fired and I just want to go out and just became this little party boy and it was very vapid, you know, It’s very, very superficial. That’s pretty dark, actually, because I was like very little meaning to anything I was doing at that point. You know, drinking, driving a flash car made me something special, but definitely didn’t. So that was that was actually a dark, dark time. And then only when I really took a took got serious about my life and I was funny, I really got serious. I was like, No, I’m not going to do this. You know, I’m really going to give life could go start digesting any any. I was just reading loads, listening to loads of podcasts.

I was listening to Macro Voices, which is a podcast about oil and gold. You know, I just like really go deep dive into everything and anything, just trying to develop as a person, you know, realise that maybe some of the problems in my life were not others and maybe they were mine to do with me. And then I tried to, you know, try to apply a practice that fell through because of COVID and thankfully so that I think my heart would have been in it. Try to run a facial aesthetics business for a while and teach in running courses on that. But the model was just completely flawed. So yeah, the courses would be good, but you know, I could get people to do techniques, but the financial model was just rubbish and there was no longevity to it. And just like for like everybody else was running their courses, we were pretty much the same thing by a few differences. So no USP there as well, ran a private referral and those areas that didn’t really work out, the numbers didn’t stack, you know.

Just lots of lots.

Of lot taking, lots of swings, you know. But that’s all quite depressing when things don’t go your way.

Well, yeah, of course. But just tell me about the private referral lender. What, refer to you. Yeah. Yeah.

So I wasn’t bad at it though. I was actually alright and I. And then I got a really good rest though. So it was okay. Yeah. Then. Yeah. So this, this practice in Essex, they would somehow propose this to them saying look you’re sending your referrals out and you’re not getting any remuneration for it so how about you send it to us, we’ll come to your practice, we’ll do, we’ll do the in-house patient as well, We’ll go anywhere. You send us the X prior and then we’ll send the patient back to you for the crown and we’ll pay you a percentage of what we were collecting and, you know, fairly decent fee and we were doing that. And I remember the first session finished at 1130 at night with the last patient. And then, you know, the the guy always a practice came. He goes, Oh guys, we’ve had a great day. And we said, Yeah, it’s a great day.

So what went wrong? What was wrong? What was wrong with that business?

Well, I’m not that honest. That’s what was wrong with it. That’s what was wrong with it. So yeah, that’s what was wrong with it. You know, I was not playing to my strengths. My strengths are anything completely related, you know, presenting treatment plans, presenting large treatment plans. Even if I do these referrals for practice, not only will I treatment plan what I need, but if they need like indirect work or bridges or implants, I’ll treat them, plan that and I’ll give that to the practice too. And patients pretty much take it on board. So certainly articulating my ideas was a strength and certainly doing restorative stuff as my strength and I’m quite creative person, right? So this whole project is quite cool because I get to get to express that creative side a little bit more than I would do as an associate.

But you must come across this problem all the time. Yeah, that a referral to you is something that dentists kind of feel like they can handle themselves. So why would they refer to you? How do you explain it to them?

Well, there’s loads of dentists like that. There’s a practice that refers to me and, you know, the four associates.

They’re.

Three do and one doesn’t, because he just thinks. I can do it once. That’s normal. This part is par for the course. But what they do for me is the things that they can’t do. Right? So not only do I.

Do it like. Like what? They just.

Just like, ridiculously general stuff. Like, typically, like I get a lot of that, you know, amalgam overhangs that have destroyed the other tooth as well or say like a like a tooth and an amalgam and then one of the cusps break off and then the, the amalgam just in and there’s just one more remaining and the patient doesn’t want to do, you know, post or crown and the dentist isn’t confident that is going to work and they’ll send that to me for like a direct composite crown, which is one of the things that we touch on in the course. But we’ve got we’ve got that plan actually, how we do that with no post, no ribbon, just a direct composite call. I actually got the the initial time, the first time I ever saw that was severe. Balaji He was showing that at Lundbeck. Right. And that really just caught something, you know, it just triggered something in my brain that he showed me these big, long recalls of these teeth that have been restored with no post, none of the stuff that we’ve been taught that we need to do, you know, And they were working. And he’s got like 20 year recalls when composite wasn’t even that good, you know.

So it certainly works. But then I just adapted it using great curve and now like a bit of a technique, just using it. And I mean, they work, right, And they work in situations where the alternative is thinking. And I actually advocate you should charge the same as an indirect prime for that because it takes 9 minutes. Meticulous work, you know, it takes a bit it takes time and effort to get nice contact areas and all the rest of it in the mouth. But it’s a viable treatment for a lot of patients and not just because of the price point. I don’t think we should see sometimes if you have a treatment that costs X and then you have a treatment cost, why, You know, we’re humans, we got biases, right? You lean towards one that pays more per hour, right? So I just whatever I do pretty much pays the same power. So I don’t really have that conflict. I just for whatever the treatment is, it would be right for the patient. They can pick it and I still get paid the same. I maintain that rate meticulously.

Okay, So take me through other other. You mentioned the drinking. Yeah. Do you remember a moment thinking this is like getting out of hand?

Yeah, probably quite a few. Probably quite a few. There’s probably quite a few, actually, I reckon. Well, I’ll tell you one that stands out to me straight away and obviously I was not drinking at the time when this happened, but certainly, you know when you’re, when you’re in a, when you’re in a I suppose. Yeah. You in that mindset. I was in that place Right. So at this at it’s mixed practice. You know one of the principles he was he was from the Middle East, he was serious. You know, he was a he was a very, very macho, you know, liked, very hierarchical and all the rest of it. Right. So if he says something, you need to go running type of deal. That was your style. And everybody used to be quite scared. And I remember like joining the practice and people say, oh, no, he’s calling. He’s calling. I said, What you mean he’s calling? Slow down. What’s wrong? No, no, no, no. You just have to go. And then so anyway, long story. Lunchtime. I’m having my I’m eating my food. And then one the nurses comes up and says, Are principals calling you? I said, I’ll just let him know, I’ll finish my food and I’ll come straight down.

And he did not like that. So he comes up the stairs stomping big, big dude, you know, boom, boom, boom. But up the stairs, you, when I tell you, come, you come down all this year and he’s spitting into my food and everything. And I was just just biting my tongue and I just went in the mood for it. And then he just he just kept piping up and saying, You have to call me a little girl. He said, You’re a little girl. And then that’s when I kicked off and I stood up and just, you know, profanities got exchanged, told me to leave. So I did. You know, I’m not going to take that rubbish, but obviously I’m level headed now. I certainly wouldn’t have wouldn’t have swore back at him. I walked out. But at that time, yeah, it was just, you know, you just don’t have the patience. You just I just didn’t have the patience and it’s just was not it was not a smart move. It was not a smart move. But things like that could happen, right? You make just stupid decisions. Well, you think you know, you think Bitcoin is going to save your life.

You know, I’ve been there. I think. Look, I go to quite a lot of mixed practices. Yeah. And I kind of almost see burnout on people’s faces sometimes. Not just dentists, you know, that the whole team. There are some practices where I guess it’s to do with patient numbers. Where it’s properly tiring working in that practice now. It’s such a long time since I’ve been in that situation. I think. I don’t think I’ve ever been in that situation to say the truth, because I did vet and then vet. It’s never the pressure’s never proper. And then after that was in private practice. So I never worked in a place where it was volume and speed. And these days, angry patients to boot know almost, almost. It’s the worst of all worlds. Right? You’ve got, you’ve got the the pay side of it, which is poor, but then you’ve got on the other side the expectation side, which is sometimes just as high as a private patient or even more like, you know, people what they’re entitled to and what a greedy dentist you are. And I see it. I see I see a lot more of just dejected faces in practices. What do you think about this sort of mental health sort of thing? Know now? Now people are talking about it a lot more. Yeah. Do you think these days there’s more stress on a dentist than before or not?

Yeah, I think so. Obviously. So it’s hard, right? It’s not getting any easier. It’s certainly not getting any easier. And what I found terribly stressful was being in a mixed practice and saying, you know, I can do this for you in the NHS and I can do this for you on private like that. There’s just.

Like there’s a.

Massive disconnect. Yeah, that’s just, that’s stressful. And then, you know, if you haven’t got like really strong communicators already and then now they’ll be like, oh, you know, the patient just hounds them. Like, why can’t you do that? And then they just end up doing a composite for free. Udas Or something? No, like I can easily see how all of that just how many, how many fires can they put out, Right? So you’ve got the clinical needs, then you’ve got the sub after lunch that you’re not looking forward to, you know, then you’ve got a private patient booked in for composite bonding. The last time you did it, it was like six weeks ago. If you’re not doing something weekly, how good are you really going to be? Be I mean, I used to struggle with at doing NHS dentistry all the time, and then somebody comes in and they want to do.

The odd private thing here and there.

And I weren’t doing it enough to actually be proficient in it. Right. So that’s pretty damn stressful. Yeah, I think it is. It is a stressful environment and one of the main reasons I kind of left why I just had to be bold, You know, sometimes you have to be bold and do what’s right for you.

And the whole note keeping side. I don’t know if you saw the the was it Grant? I don’t know who it was. Someone posted like, here’s some notes from 15 years ago and here’s the same thing now what he showed the notes 15 years ago. I was like, Yeah, that’s what I write, you know? Yes. Because I haven’t been in the game for such a long time. It’s been like, Oh no, it’s been 11 years or something since I was a dentist. Yeah, but sure. What’s the story? What’s, what’s the, what’s the note taking side in those heavy full on NHS practices. Do people just copy and paste and do their best, Right.

Yeah. I mean it’s a little while ago for me now, Right. But yeah, I certainly just copy and pasted and did the best way. But you know, I didn’t rely on the notes. I never did. I always relied on, you know, at least having some, some little chit chat with the patient prior. Right. Just people people come in there defensive. They don’t like you anyway. You’re going to put needles in their mouth. Who likes that? Doesn’t matter how nice you are. Doesn’t matter how good looking you are. And nothing’s going to really combat that. Right. And especially someone who’s scared about it. But if you can actually listen to them, really listen to their needs. Yeah. And you know, you know, you’ve listened to them, right? There’s a lot of people that don’t listen to, you know, sit down, open your mouth. Like if who wants to do that? Right? So even though it’s NHS and it’s low, low pain, I always took the time to and I still do obviously, but I always sit aside to really try and speak to them about something, find out what they were interested in. Just, just, just be a human man, you know? I know that’s cliche, right? But just be a bit of a human. And I always banked on that, you know, them not wanting to take things further or make complaints. Obviously, it’s not foolproof, you know, but certainly I’m a fan of probabilities. And I just thought my probabilities of having problems were going to be far lower so long as I respected that person, you know, and not make snap judgements. Now, I think that that really robs us of the opportunities where we make snap judgements.

Well, I mean, it’s a good point, right? It’s a good point to to I mean, people stress about the legal side so much, understandably. And it’s a good point to say, look, I’m going to I’m going to have just a good relationship, a better relationship with my patients than most, and rely on that to be the thing that keeps me out of trouble for sure. It’s an interesting way of looking it, right, Because you know who who has got a set of notes which are 100%, you know, and it’s so interesting because I speak to friends who’ve been through some GDC problems and they’ll say, Yeah, I was 100% sure about those sets of notes about that patient. And I think it just took just to make that happen. You’re having to write paragraphs and paragraphs, right? It’s become a difficult world. It’s become a difficult world.

It is indeed, isn’t it? And I think patients, you know, to to to win a patient over now, you know, it takes a lot more to write. So I mean you just see it with the with the Internet, right. You know, look at how people present their their stuff. Now, no longer can you just have a good product or a good offering. It needs to have the bells and whistles and it needs to have a book accord with me. And all this is it’s the world is not slowing down. It’s not slowing down.

Tell me about clinical mistakes.

Clinical mistakes. I’ll tell you about one. This one I remember. Right. So it was a year off the vet. I remember this fondly. This lady was getting married in a few weeks and she hated her front tooth. And she said, Can you do a bridge for me? She’s. She had a mishap, Something like that. Something. I remember doing the bridge, right? I did this bridge for her and she needed an end of. I thought a.

Wedding. Yeah.

But I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done it. But, you know, pulling the heartstrings a little bit and I did it. And I think I did it for 12 years.

So.

So she did that at the end of through the through the crown. I wasn’t very good at end at this point. Anyway, long story. I think it was in 2015, the British snaps, but I wasn’t at this practice anymore and they didn’t really deal with it so well. And I don’t even think I found out about about the situation to kind of like remedy it. And anyway, it went, it went back and forth with her going to practice. It didn’t really go anywhere. And in 2019, I get a letter from a lawyer, you know, saying this this is this is the issue. So that was that was a sour one and one that I only realised a lot later. Right. So not all of our learning is immediate, right? We don’t have this like immediate feedback. Sometimes things are really late, you know, you learn about yourselves yourself as well. Things that you’ve done, you don’t learn about yourself until five years later when you see the repercussions. I mean, that happened to me quite a bit. So that was that was one that stood out. And then funny enough, when I went to the practice to go get my notes right, because I just thought it’s just going to be a headache to send in emails and all the rest of it.

I just went down there. So look, this place has got a problem. Can I have the stuff? And then one of the staff there said to me, Look, this other lady came in this week as well. I think you might want to look at her notes. So I did. And it was just luckily that I did. And she had an endo that had at the end. That was why I did the end. I was okay, but it had an infection. But the patient did want antibiotics. And the other thing is they didn’t want to touch it and all the rest of it. You just so I just got in touch with her and just said to her, Look, whatever you want to do, I’ll pay for it. And so that’s kind of the difference between when you know about a problem, When you don’t know about a problem, at least you can address it, right? And you can stop it from going from going quite far. Right. And I’d happily give a little bit of money back, considering we’re not we’re not poor. It’s not for professional. Mike.

Did you never have like an Oh, shit moment? I have. I had the no shit moment. Sure. We’ve all had them, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I must have. I lose. I should open my spreadsheet and look.

Of course. Yeah. Have you, have you never broken a tube porosity. I have, I have indeed I have indeed. That was a no shit moment for me.

Moment for me as well. That was definitely an ownership and it was an shit moment because it came up with the tooth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then there was, there was tissue hanging off the back and luckily I’d done an oral surgery job, so I kind of thought, Oh, I can stitch this up. But it was far more complicated than I thought it was going to be. And then It’s funny, isn’t it? Then from then on, every, every seven or upright upright seems to be such a such a joy. Yeah. Suddenly you realise it’s that sort of not knowing what you don’t know sort of thing isn’t it.

Exactly. Exactly. And then you get PTSD.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what’s yours. Go on up any, any more anymore. This is my favourite part of the show because you can tell I.

Trying to think. I think.

I think, I.

Think I remember. Oh I remember one. I remember this lady. She was, I was replacing her upper central crown like a hero. You know, only a hero would do that. And she wanted it to look better and all the rest of it. And when I went to cement it, the core broke the cover. So I tried to repair the core and then cement the crown.

On that visit. Yeah. Yeah.

And schoolboy error. Yeah.

I know.

And this patient was watching everything I was doing in the the light, the reflection.

Of the mirror. Oh, yeah.

And when I did it, when I sat her up I said that as I stand she said to me she goes, you haven’t done that properly. I say well she goes, yeah I saw it. Break was like, Oh shit. So that was an absolute moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then she came back with her boyfriend and he started kicking off. Then I had to call the principal and then he said, Look, you know, sometimes these things happen. That’s what we do. But she wanted my blood. She wanted my blood. And you know what the funniest thing was? She let me do it. It’s not like she said, Oh, look, it’s broke. What are you doing? She just let me do it.

I know when you’re a patient, I can understand you. So just. Just watching. So what happened? What happened?

I see you think it didn’t go too far for you? Just refunded refunded treatments. You just wanted the money back and a free night. So that was that. But I’m trying to think, man, I’m trying to think.

End of story. That was the end of story.

I mean, that was in the story.

I’m sorry to sound disappointed you.

Would you want hear the whole legacy, the whole saga? I’m trying to think of one now.

I mean, you know, it’s a case of something people can learn from, really.

Something that people can learn from. Looking like a very poor teacher right now.

Have you lost, lost, lost, lost the confidence of a patient. And I guess that one.

Well, this ain’t our shit moment. But you’re talking about losing confidence. Yeah, I’ll tell you this one. So when I first started private, you know, one of the. You know, at this time, I’m only getting a handful of patients. So I say every one counts. And this guy I came in was Australian and he had a full show, and I still had like, my nice hat on the football jokes and all of that. So he walks in, it takes his jacket off, I see the football shirt and I go, Oh mate, I said, There’s the exit. And I pointed to it and he just looked at me like, What are you saying to me? Who are you? You know, he just looked horrified.

And I was he didn’t understand, but he just.

Thought I was I don’t know what he thought he was. I was just telling him to get out. I just brought him into the surgery and then I told him to get out. You know, it was just a massive miscommunication. But, you know, you just you’re fighting now to save the interaction, the how, the very supplicating money. You know, like, you know, this is what you can do and really trying to pander to this man. And he was not having it had the whole appointment. You know, it wasn’t happy. He complained about it, still wanting my treatment plan, had emails back and forth. But yeah, I really put my foot in my mouth with that one.

And that’s just just talk me through it. You’re an Arsenal fan and he walks in with a Spurs shirt or something. One of those sort of things.

Yeah, one of those, Yeah. So.

Yeah, it was so funny. It was. It was. It was just.

Something and all I thought it was it’s just a little bit of a poor banter, but yeah, just a bit of it. Yeah. This guy did not like banter and all the rest of it, but yeah, I mean, you learn, you learn from those words.

So now the thing is, dude, I said I introduced you by saying you’re a master at holding the attention of people. Yeah. So, you know, obviously most of the time this sort of thing doesn’t happen to you. You’re quite the opposite. You’re building amazing relationships with people. And I’m even thinking back to that day when you popped into our studio shoot, the whole there was 15 of us just surrounding you, listening to your stories, right? So maybe, maybe that’s why you’re having trouble remembering these, because you’re generally quite good at this sort of thing.

Maybe. Maybe, you know, who knows? Did you get talking Bitcoin?

Did you invest after the lockdown that after after COVID, that that little one? Or did you not wear that like given up well?

Well, this is it, right? Ptsd is a very real thing, you know, and I’m sure it applies to loads of things, but you are just kind of traumatised by like, Oh, like what the hell? Right. So imagine I actually I actually puked everything. I sold everything at three K, Right. And for people who don’t know, Bitcoin went to 69 K you know, not too long after that. And I only really switched my bias like after 20 K, But then at that point, you know, a lot of, a lot of the meat of the move that kind of happened right so like from three to to 60 is like 20 X right from from from 20 to 60 to three X. So I mean it shouldn’t be greedy. Three X is still amazing. But yeah, I mean now I just now I just keep it safe. I just automatically buy every month, you know, it’s just like an investment dollar cost average every month. And if prices look really juicy, really good, then, then I’ll just put a whole chunk in. But yeah, I don’t really talk about it too much anymore because I remember when when Bitcoin went to 69 K, it felt really toppy to me.

You know, I’d seen this show a good few times and had little group of my mates and that and, and some of these guys are making really good money in this cycle. Like they made ridiculous money. I said, you know, it just takes them off the table, you know, just lock in some of those gains. Right. And nobody listens to me. And I had a sound thesis. I said, look, it’s tried to break out all time high twice. It’s trying to go up there twice. This is the third time, probabilities wise, it’s very unlikely to fail. The third time I’m going to punt it. I did. It failed. I got out, I sold everything, and then I just watched a shit show after that. So I’m just only slightly blind recently. Really just started really nice getting some nice chunks again. But yeah, we’ll see. I’ll come back on this show in a couple of years if I am not doing dentistry or anything anymore.

I mean, after that FDX debacle, I felt like it was it was all on a discount. And I felt like that was it was it was a good time to buy. So and and yet and yet some people I know gave up the whole idea that crypto was ever going to be a thing after that because it’s FTC’s the second biggest exchange or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but that’s just perception, right?

Yeah.

Perception because they were in it and now they’ve lost X percentage of their equity. But if they weren’t in it and they missed that cycle, now they’d be looking at these prices licking their lips. So it’s just perception, right.

No, but it’s like what I’m saying is they lost confidence in cryptocurrency.

Oh, why, why, why.

After after FDX went down. Now, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that. Yeah, but I know some people who did, you know, and and I guess that’s that’s, that’s the arbitrage, right? So I’m saying that was a good time to buy. Yeah. Yeah. Because there was enough people like that. But it’s a funny one. Yeah. Because you know if in 2000 you said Yeah, the Internet. Yeah. Then you sure that’s a good idea. But if you were invested in some crappy thing that went under in 2002. And Google didn’t even exist at that point. You know, we’re kind of at that point with crypto. It could be that Bitcoin is the Google or or whatever, Etherium or, you know, what’s it going to be, Matic or something? Or it could be it could be that there’s one that we still haven’t heard of. Sure. Or one that’s like. So, you know, a and it’s something that’s so, so, so small right now that we haven’t put enough money in it. It’s a funny thing. Investment. I bet you there’s loads and loads of dentists who’ve lost loads and loads of money on stock markets and cryptos. So I think it kind of relies on that idea of that sort of. Gordon Gekko I can I can do better than the prose here, which, which you can’t.

I’m telling you.

Firsthand, you know.

These guys have been doing it for 24 years professionally, live and breathe it. And then you think you’re going to step in on the on a recreational one and you’re going to do better than those guys, I think. You know, that’s the thing as well, because we’ve got a decent level of education. We think that level of education is transferable. No, it’s very specific. You’ve learned a very, very we’ve learned a very specific trade wire, and it doesn’t transfer that well to many other things. But we I think that’s a bias of sorts. I can’t remember the name, but it’s a bias of sorts where you’ve gotten to a certain level in a pursuit, then we think that we’re at that level for other pursuits as well. But it just certainly isn’t what we.

Think we can get. Which is which is which is actually why we asked you that question at the beginning about the difference between being a dentist and being a dental supplier. Because, you know, if you look at some of the best supply, I don’t know. I’ve always sort of really admired the guys from the guys from Kohl’s. I’ve always really admired those two companies, the people they’ve always hired. There’s loads of others that missing. But, you know, let’s just take those two companies, right? When you look at people who are really good in that business, what they have isn’t necessarily what a great dentist has. It’s a different thing. It’s a different thing. So and, you know, so so that’s what I meant about the. What have you found surprising? Because I clearly remember thinking I could sell because I was selling veneers, veneers to patients, and then later on realising I can’t sell them. I’m not a sales. Sales isn’t my forte. You know, when when we first started talking to dentists about it.

Well, certainly about again, the adoption curve and then you learn a little bit about your market as well, just because you’ve got great products and you can present it and say, look, it’s a really cracking deal. Best Buy, you start it on the market, for example. It doesn’t mean people are going to buy it. So that was a bit surprising because I thought, look, man, I got this great thing, you know, transfer transform me from like zero to, like, mildly better. But like.

Just it.

Transformed me. So you think it can do that for everybody else and you think that it’s just a no brainer, right? But then there was a there was a maturation phase for me becoming all in on this. And there’s a maturation phase for them, too. Like, they’ve seen it like, you know, I’ll give an example. As a guy who came to our first talk, the first talk like the premier, kind of like the story of how I got involved with Growth curve and that whole thing and then that giant for six months, you know, conversations back and forth. But nothing. No, no purchase, no advancement, no like talking about, yeah, let’s do something. And then six months down the line says, Yeah, can you come to my surgery on a book to train my associates? So, like, I’ve understood that, you know, people aren’t on your timeline. They’re on their own, you know? So you can’t, you can’t rush things. You can’t be trying to shove things down their throat. Like people are ready when they’re ready. Right.

Can I have talks about this with patients? He trains practices about the slow, medium and fast lane in the middle lane fastly buyers. And it’s very true. It’s very true. He said something like a third a massive chunk of the of the of the market will take 18 months to decide whether to buy something or not. Something like 30% of the market will be like that. And all of our follow up processes, both in dental practice and I don’t know what your follow up processes are at great curve, right? But at enlighten, you know, the salespeople after they’ve harassed the practice for six weeks or something, they said, Well, this guy’s not interested. Yeah, but, but sometimes it takes 18 months, you know? So it’s a funny thing. Tell me about what you learned from the military.

I learned in the military, I learned that sometimes you’d be part of a team and there would be people in that team you don’t like, but you’ve got to get the job done. And so you find ways to do that. You find ways to do that, not kick up a stink, not kick up a hissy fit. Sometimes it end up in a scrap, but in that kind of environment, that’s alright. But yeah, that was a good thing. You know, just not everyone’s going to agree with you, but people will. People can still follow your orders If you’re respectful and you’ve got a sound thesis, know people can trust your judgement and not have to like you. But yeah, it’s obviously it’s easier if people really like you because then they’re much more likely to kind of go over the hill with you. I learnt I learned a lot about physical challenges. You know, when you’re stressed and you’re, you’re going through a bad patch. Whatnot. You go do something physically demanding, and I’m talking really physically demanding something cold where you can’t think about your worries. Or you can just think about how cold you are and how tired you are and how hungry you are. And how vicious is this wind right now. Now it teaches you a thing or two, right? You know, I don’t think I was the best risk manager, however, you know, because I want to do some parachute jumps with the army.

And that was a bit like everyone was buzzing to do it, all young guys wanting to do it. So I learned that even the most steadfast of people, you know, people who are so like, Oh, I’m going to be a paratrooper. Like, I’ve got friends of mine who really just want to be paratroopers from the beginning, and some want to be Marines and all that. And one of my friends, I’m still really good friends with him now. He’s actually a captain in the parachute regiment now, but he was so steadfast about it. And then we go on this. I do my first jump, and the probabilities will suggest this is supremely unlikely, but my parachute malfunctioned as I jumped out the plane. So it’s basically a ball of washing as I’m falling towards the ground and I’m falling pretty damn fast and I don’t really have that much time to get rid of that one and deploy the second one. Now, this friend of mine who was really steadfast, he was on the ground and he could they obviously knew what was happening, Right. That there had been a malfunction. And then I don’t know. I don’t know if he knew it was me or not. But obviously he knew when I landed. And then that evening we had our next jump plan the next day. He just didn’t want to do it, you know, He just he lost.

He lost his cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was that was really interesting. You know, like, like sometimes, you know what people present and it doesn’t take much sometimes to just derail someone, you know? So and that taught me, you know, if I’m going to do something, I can’t let somebody else’s wobble affect me all my own. You know, if you’ve got like. And anyway, he didn’t. Right. But I remember saying to him, like, look, we’ve got to do this jump now, because if we don’t do it, we’re never going to jump again type of deal. So yeah, we did, it worked out alright. And, but I take that really ironic that same day, the next day where we did a jump, somebody else had a malfunction as well, which is like really improbable. So talk about the heebie jeebies.

With with with the army and stuff like that. You get the sort of from the outside, you look at it like a cliched sort of ideas of, all right, so, you know, they’re they’re the best friends you have or whatever, because you’re going to look after each other. And if it came down to it or I don’t know the transferable skills between leading a battalion of men or leading a company, you know, so. All right. There’s the sort of the sort of from the outside, the obvious stuff here. But what are the nuances? What are the things that I wouldn’t know about that are interesting about being in that group of like in the extremes must bring out things in people. So there’s one that you just mentioned, the this guy losing his cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the extremes. Well well, I mean, I love that stuff too. I, I remember I remember that there was once Army versus Navy Rugby match. Right? And people came to our unit and I just bought these brand spanking new army boots. Right. These lowers the business. The business. And then when I came in, you know, on drill night, my locker had been busted open and so had everybody else’s. And it was this like visiting unit. They came and just ransacked everybody’s stuff. Right. And that was, I suppose, something. You just think that just doesn’t happen. Right? And there’s there’s other worse things that happen that these are soldiers, you know, like, yeah, they’re professional, they’re professional soldiers, but they’re lads at the end of the day and they’re very laddish and like there’s horrendous things that have happened in units, you know. And then there’s, there’s things like, I know if you’ve ever heard of deep cuts, have you had a deep cut? It’s like a, it’s like a place where loads of people have died on training and they don’t think it’s a coincidence. Yeah, they don’t think it’s a coincidence. You know, like there’s lots of and we’ll probably never know. No one’s ever really going to know. Right. So there’s stuff like that that goes on and then there’s things that leak out that, you know, do the rounds on WhatsApp and then everybody does their best to kind of just put it away. And and even they get told if anyone’s caught sending this stuff around, you know, they’ll get punished and all the rest of it. But yeah, I see my fair share, these kind of funny things. I can’t say too much about those things, but yeah, shocking, shocking things, you know, like sneaking girls into the place and much worse, much worse to the human.

The human. And what’s then bullying and much worse.

Yeah. Bullying. Bullying is a thing. Bullying is a thing, but bullying is a thing in lots of places. Bullying sitting in lots of places. But that’s an environment where actually like. You can kind of stand up for yourself a little bit and it’ll probably be respected. You know, you’ll probably be respected. So it’s maybe a test of sort sometimes as well. It’s a different culture.

And were you were you known as the funny guy in in the military as well?

Well, no. I was definitely a joke. So, like, when they when we used to have, like a drumhead service before going and going off on, like an exercise, they’d be like two or 300 people there. And one of the sergeant majors would ask if he wants to tell a joke while we were waiting for the padre or something, you know, and somebody would come up and tell a rubbish joke and somebody else would tell a rubbish joke. And then he’d ask for me by name and say, Where is he? Bring him in. And then I’d step up and make everyone laugh with a good old like I’ve got three really good ones in my head that I just keep right for those really important situations. But they’re not. They’re not fit for air or they’re not fit for podcast, I promise.

Oh, but tell me this. But, you know, when I look back on Enlightened and I think of regrets I’ve had and I don’t I don’t want you to have those same regrets or any regrets. You of course you have regrets, right? Whatever. Whatever you do in life, you know, you can look back and say, I could have done that differently or done that better. But I feel like one sort of regret I had was early on. We didn’t sort of go down that raising money, entrepreneurial sort of angle. And I remember in the first year we turned over like 80 grand or something and the whole year and I think I remember I think I’d made more as a dentist or something. I remember I remember the number being just really bad, really bad. And then maybe in the second year, I don’t know, maybe it was 140 grand. And then in the third year, maybe it was 160. It wasn’t like it wasn’t an upturn up into the right in the way that people talk about businesses now. And we were we had several cash crises and moments that the whole thing might have just gone away.

And, you know, we’d put our houses up for just to get these silly tiny loan from the bank. And then these days, you know, talking to some some young dentist, he started a company and he said, yeah, you know, we just got £1,000,000 for a first round of finance and now we’re looking at a £4 million round to order, you know, series A and all this. And I sort of thought, you know, I think it took us five years before a total of £1,000,000 had come in. Maybe longer than that, you know, cumulatively five years of pain and risk. And this guy on day one had raised £1,000,000. Have you thought about I remember you came on that show where we were looking for for investment. But if you thought about the differences between, you know, the sort of the corner shop way of doing it, which is the way we did it organic. Or, you know, the more entrepreneurial way of doing it, of bringing in partners, bringing in a CEO, a CFO, bringing in investors. Do you think about those two?

Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. Interestingly, you know, I’ve got like a bit of a bit of an angle at the moment that we’re just exploring, which is this bottle that we’re we’re rolling out here, which is people can buy the product directly if they, you know, they can just use the products. We can have like an online offering. So they could do the online course where we go through all the techniques and all the stuff that I’ve learnt and Dr. Brown’s developed and they’ll get the starter kit included in that. So that’s like a really low entry. Then we’ve got the hands on, then we’ve got the in practice. So this kind of framework and I suppose the social data, the WHO resonates with our message most, who do we help most? Who are the people who have benefited the most? And distilling down into all of that kind of stuff allows for us to reproduce this model. You know, we’re scaling it to the point where we’re looking to add trainers very, very quickly. Because just to prove I mean, this one is guys, his name’s Ford. You know, he he came and did the program in May, and he’s just flying, you know, some of his works better than mine, hands down.

Like just beautiful stuff. And so we are exploring how do we how do we not only scale that, but how do we make sure everybody’s got upside and is motivated to do that. But then also look at how we could then move that distribution and education model to other places, you know, so bringing in other people to kind of expand it to other regions as well. So yeah, certainly considering that and in terms of in terms of like having an executive board and all that kind of stuff, right now, it very much is like the Lean Start-Up model, you know, it very much is. Take this as far as it can go right now. And for us, it’s not incremental gains. You know, it is like it was quiet then. It’s less quiet. And then now there’s is somebody reaching out every day, you know, like it’s just building and building on that. So it feels like it’s going at a pace where, yeah, we can still manage it because lots of automations. But yeah, there will be a time where we’re going to have to really structure it.

No, but I mean investment. Yeah. Because once, once you get investment, then you get other people telling you what to do as well. Yeah, but are you going to look for investment or you’re not? Because at least you know, we didn’t. We didn’t. And I regret it. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying to you. It doesn’t. Doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for you or whatever. Right. We were in two totally different times 20 years ago. You are now and you know. But you know what? I wanna reflect on it. I think. Listen, man, you live in London, right? Just the investment capital of the world. I mean, if I was living in some town outside, wherever, then fine. But I’m living in London. I went to school with a bunch of investment people I know a bunch of investment people who are kids, parents or, you know, investments. A huge thing here. Yeah. Yeah. And yet we didn’t do it. We didn’t. And so, by the way, who knows if we’d done it, they might have shut us down five years ago, ten or 15 years ago or whatever. Yeah, but I don’t know, just a bit of unsolicited sort of advice for me, from me to you isn’t go get investment. But consider, you know, be purposeful about whether you are or you aren’t getting investment because, you know, when this kid this kid told me, look, yeah, we raised £1,000,000 on day one, I literally felt those five, six years of pain and suffering that you’re probably going through right now. On day one. This guy brought in that much money with no business. It was a business plan. Yeah, you know, think about it.

Okay? It’s something. I mean, just a tangible. I mean, I understand your angle totally, but we do have two strategic partners now that are. You know, we’ve had discussions about funding from there. And, you know, because we’ve got a bit of synergy, there’s a lot of overlap between their aims and our aims. And some of the conversations we’ve had recently have been, Oh, look, if this goes to plan, we’ll certainly consider funding you because it will help their business for us to do well. So yeah, not totally averse to the idea, but yeah, of course. Just a step at a time, isn’t it?

True? True. All right. But you will. It’s been a massive pleasure talking to you, man, as usual. And I want to. I want to have you back in a couple of years time and know that you’re, like, way forward. Because considering it’s your first year, you’ve done very, very well with this. And if someone wants to learn more about DRA, where do they go?

Yes, I trade directory sort of. Excellent. You can learn more at w w w dot dre composite dot com and the social media is at the same Instagram composite.

And your thing is Dr. Sunny, right?

Yeah. I mean, who wants to look at me.

Now that you said that. Let me, let me, let me take a picture. We always finish with the same two questions, buddy. Let’s start with my fancy dinner party question Fancy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive, Who’s going to be really?

Just list them. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, tell me. You won One by one.

One by one. Marcus Aurelius.

Oh, yeah. You know, stoic.

Yeah. The Emperor.

Stoic.

Good. Yeah. The last good emperor.

Okay. Why? Yeah.

Just what a life. What a life. One of the most powerful people ever in history and chose to be a man of honour and virtue. You know, very, very, very interesting. I find that very, very interesting. Where many people would just succumb to desire and everything else. He chose not to. Had a hard life.

Don’t. You’re a fan of ancient history.

I’m a fan of history. I’m a fan of history. Yeah, History. History. Say, history doesn’t repeat by often rhymes.

Yeah. So Marcus Aurelius.

Number two would be Thomas Sole. Do you know who that is? Thomas Sole?

No. Who’s that?

He’s an economist slash historian, but just a very, very pragmatic thinker. And his books are the ones that really make me just stop and just realise to myself, Man, I’m not as clear as I thought I was. I don’t even understand this page, you know.

So well with the W.

That’s correct.

So what’s the name of the book?

The one I’m getting stuck on right now is a conflict of visions.

I’m on the Wikipedia right now. Just checking him out. But. But go and say something about him. Say something you learned.

So he’s he’s just very, very interesting guy. Like he’s a Harvard professor, Stanford professor. You know, he just he’s an old boy. I really enjoy the company of old boys because they just don’t need to impress anybody anymore. So they just tell you how it is. And this guy is very factual, but also challenges some of some of some of my own beliefs and I suppose many, many people’s beliefs. Right. But you would just certainly challenge it in a very fact based manner, very evidence based. So, yeah, he’s just he’s a breath of fresh air.

Well.

Finally, I love Satoshi Nakamoto.

The guy who made Bitcoin.

And I get my money back.

Could get more money. So, Toshi, whoever that is, right? Yeah.

Or they could be a they could be multiple.

Good answer, man. I haven’t heard that one. That one before. That was a good answer for obvious reasons. Right. So what about perhaps final questions on your deathbed? You got your nearest and dearest around you. Three pieces of advice. You would leave them.

For a moment. Keep it short and sweet, Right? So I’d say to.

Them, No, no, no, no.

All right. Well, I say to to be patient with with others, but strict on yourself.

Mhm.

I let them know that real education happens. Yeah. Real education happens out of the classroom. And they are solely responsible for their education. They can’t rely on other people to teach them. It’s up to them what they learn and how they learn and what they learn. And then I’d say, make time for your wellbeing or be forced to make time for your illness. As I or my dad for different from an alcohol overdose.

And there is one final question that I asked on the on the latest podcast hasn’t gone out yet, but I kind of interested in what you have to say about it. Who would be your your dream guest for this podcast.

Dentist. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the show is called Dental Leaders.

Dentist. Who’s my dream dentist? Having a show. That’s a good one. That is a very good one.

About your guy. The greater curve guy.

Yeah, well, I was just about to say that it.

Has to be.

Dr. Dennis Brown.

Perfect match.

Yeah.

Any others come to mind And the others come to mind?

Any of that? Well, I’ll tell you who’s an interesting person who I’d love to see on this. Who I know, right? And this gentleman is a lab technician.

Yeah.

And he’s a lab tech. And he used to have a lab in Cornwall, and he had a bit of land as well. Long story. He’s got his own story. I won’t spoil it for you, just in case you do get your money. And then he set up his own practice on that same land, became the owner slash principal as a technician and as some of the most top spec dentists.

Working when Jason Smithson worked there. Yeah.

Martin talking. So he’s he’s a quarterback guy.

The practice is a stunner.

Beautiful. I’ve been there. Oh, yeah. I went to go see him.

How do you know him? You just reached out.

Well, of.

Course.

Simon. Of course. He seemed like a really interesting guy because, yeah, he was kind of challenging the lecture, which was interesting. And then so at lunchtime, I just said to you, Can I sit with you? And he said, Yeah. And then we started chatting, start telling me about it. And then he said, Just come see it. So I did.

It. As beautiful as it looks.

Oh, stunning. Beautiful, Beautiful place. Beautiful, lovely people. Lovely people, Lovely culture. He’s a great guy as well.

Brilliant, buddy. It’s been. It’s been a pleasure. Pleasure’s all mine. I hope to see you soon. Are you exhibiting any of the dental shows?

They will be at the. The media.

What do you do?

Yeah. And we’ve got another one that will be at this this month. But this is not to the public. So I’ll tell you about earlier.

Call me. Call me about the media. The first. The first time you do media, it’s a bit of a massive shock. Why has that happened? Oh, really? Yeah. Call me. We’ll talk about that, buddy.

Oh, lovely. Appreciate that.

I wish someone. I wish someone had done that for me. First PDA I went to.

Oh, really? I appreciate that.

Yeah, Well, thanks so much for doing this, buddy. As always, such a such a pleasure to spend time with you. I’d love to see you soon. In real life, for sure.

We’ll make it happen.

Cool, Betty.

Take care.

Hey.

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

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