To suggest to a patient that I think you should speak to a psychotherapist as the dentist. That could go only two ways. One could be positive. They could be open to it, or one could be like, What are you saying? I’m crazy? You know, It’s like and I guess I had to use various communication techniques to introduce that. And when I introduced that, she said, I’ll try it. And I always I said, I’ll pay for the first consultation if nothing comes out of it. I’m happy to remove everything and restart or let’s see what to do right. And she goes, okay, she did. He called me the next day and said, She’s giving me consent to speak to you. There’s nothing dysmorphic. Everything is fine. There’s no trauma in the past. There’s nothing going on. But I suggest you don’t do anything for three weeks. And she’s agreed to that, too. So she woke up in the middle of the night after having had the therapy about two weeks beforehand and realised that actually she just was seeing getting the emotions of her dad, losing her dad every time she looked in the mirror. And because the only thing she changed about herself was the teeth. It had to be the teeth.

Crazy man.

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 selling cake.

I think, look, the real worry is there was a time where the man in the street, like the cab driver in the street, would say, I’m going to get my teeth done and I’m going to put crowns on all my teeth. And he’d be the 60 year old guy who mistakenly thought that was the right move. But at least he’d be a 60 year old guy. Exactly. Now we’re getting 21 year olds.

Yeah.

You know, and I think Shorty said something on Tick Tock about you’re going to end up with dentures. You know, I mean, she just said like that. Yeah. She said she essentially said, look, you’re saying whatever you’re saying and you’re feeling whatever you’re feeling. But also consider that you’re likely to end up with dentures now because of this. And we are, as a profession, guilty of not getting that story out enough.

There’s a restorative cycle, Right. And patients need to know that. And then the sooner you start that restorative cycle and the more irreversible, irreversibly you start that cycle, the fewer options you have. So it’s not even that you have to replace it. Some report saying, oh, you have to replace them every ten, 15 years. You’d be lucky to get ten years out of this dentistry. You’re lucky to get five years. We have people coming in, sitting there with little to no tooth left and nothing we can do about it. And then 2123.

So tell me. But when I asked you about the sort of the talking about it. So I wasn’t, I wasn’t really asking why I get why, but how I mean, what you do marketing wise. Yes. You treat people really well. Yeah, I get it. But you have tactics. Do you do you like. I see. For instance, I’m on your site right now. You’ve got these amazing basically the blog posts of questions that people probably asking on Google. Right. What are possible? Some veneers. I bet that works well. I bet these come up well when people.

Wish I knew which one works, which ones work well, and which ones don’t.

You can find out, right? I have no idea.

Because.

Oh, that’s the technophobe. When you call yet.

Again, this is something that I don’t know many people know, but Bespoke smile is owned by me and my non clinical director.

Okay, so he takes care of that.

She she takes care of all of that, which means my focus is clinical dentistry, BCD and Bespoke Design academy the dentist I’m a spokesman academy are my big huge passion and really the dentistry that I do now I do so I’m still in practice, I’m still learning and I’m still every day picking up different things in every case, thinking we could have done this, done this, done this, and breaking it apart so that I can bring a better level of education.

And I take it your business partner isn’t in this photo. The clinical team.

Very well respected in her field of management consultancy and has turned a lot of businesses around in the past and dentistry was new for her. Actually, I’ve known her since we were kids since we’re about 14 years old.

I mean.

And it’s scary to go into business with someone that you have known that long. It is. Sometimes these things don’t work, but we took the risk and so far so good because we have very, very different passions and different skills. What you’re looking at those blogs and the marketing is all her. I just get told what to do. I get emails that write this article for this so-and-so magazine or write this blog, or we’ve got this blog writer who is like 17 and in school holidays and writing blogs and things like that. Can you double check it? I get sent all sorts of things and I just get corrections and things like that. It’s a daily thing. The strategy, the decisions, the what we do, what we don’t do is really not me. What you will what you should know is that everything on my Instagram is 100% me. So any of the video content, what I put on my page, that is, there’s no strategy there. It’s what comes into my mind, what experience I may have had on film and that will go out there and that’s it. So I don’t have any managers who run that for me or anything.

And so, so do you do you do have a master plan that you’re going to should we go all Robbie Hughes You’re going to stick one in every world capital.

Um.

Oh.

Yeah, that. By the age of 30, I’d have ten practices. I’d be playing golf, I wouldn’t be working. And then I see people like you play who’ve done very similar things to that, except not with practices. You know, you’re not having to go into them, not having to see patients, having to go, you know, you’re working on exciting parts of dentistry that need people like you to be to be in the lead of. And I always thought that’s where I would be. But I still loving my clinical dentistry and I’m loving my academy dentist and I’m growing that side a lot. That is really my focus the last year or two. I’ve been growing the academy. I’ve been offering more of what I’ve been asked, asked being asked for, and how we can deliver education. We’re now international. We’re seeing dentists put up on my Instagram all the way from Botswana to come to the training.

I know.

That that was a huge privilege for us to host her and dentists from Ireland, Scotland.

And we have long courses and short courses.

We had we had two courses and I scrapped those courses because it was a little bit of information that was that was actually a bit scary to leave people with. You can’t just show someone in two days how to do veneers and then and then not give them the occlusion and the treatment planning and the psychological assistance with the patients and the emotional side. And you can’t do that. So I got rid of it. And so my focus really is not on practice growth or more practices. Yes, that is in our mind. And that is that is possible, but it’s not where my headspace is right now. My headspace right now is how do I deliver the best education for the First Man Academy and answer more of the questions that our delegates are asking for? And in what? In what way? Is it online? Is it is it in-person? Is it hybrid? What is it? And that’s where my focus is right now, is I really want to grow that that side of things.

So I want to talk about your back stuff a bit more, but. I’m very keen on the dark side. We hear about errors.

Errors. The device.

No, no, no, no. We’ll come to back later. Okay. Errors, clinical mistakes. Times where you’ve you know, you talked about the psychological side of it. Just something tells me you learned that the hard way. Yeah. Even even with my limited experience, I fitted veneers or whatever, and the patient was over. The moon, went home. Best friend said something, came back in tears. That whole thing. Tell me about things that have gone wrong.

Things go wrong. Things have gone wrong. Luckily, I would say now. Through all those mistakes. Things are very, very slick. So if something happens, it’s almost a shock to me that this has happened and then we’ll see why. But we have the answers to why, because we now know we’ve made nearly every mistake. But big mistakes are managing patients expectations. That’s why I talk about the emotional side and the management of the side management side of the treatments. Specific reason do attract patients who have high expectations. Definitely. And that is especially at the level that I’m at. Right. Or let’s say a central London high street veneer practice might be that things are going to be attracting patients who have either existing veneers. And I see patients who have had veneers by the top people that you and I both know, and they’re coming to me and they’re asking for things to be changed. And it’s like, you know, there is a there is a psychological element to this. I don’t look at my teeth as closely as these patients do. And so we’re dealing with people who have very critical eye. But a lot of the time it’s about accepting things, but educating the patient in order for them to accept it. So I call it trade offs. This is the number one mistake I used to make. I never talked about this.

I was taught really to sell a dream and I wasn’t really skilled in any way to manage what happens if that dream doesn’t come true? Beautiful. And that was the biggest problem that I had to fight through. And now I call it trade offs. And I have this conversation with my patients. Some of them do think that I’m a little bit I mean, you talk about communication and you mentioned I’m a good communicator. Some of my patients don’t necessarily like. How direct I am sometimes about some of these things. But what I think they do trust is they trust where it’s coming from in terms of they know I’ve done this enough times that I can say confidently, you will not like that because of this factor. So, for example, a simple one is colour and my Instagram, I’ve talked about this again and again and again. People will come in wanting white straight teeth, but I want them to look natural. That’s the add on bit that we now have, right? And then it’s sort of they know that my vibe is not super white teeth. So we get to my whole process is about creating a set of temporaries that are absolutely diagnostic, whether it’s functional, whether it’s looks. I make so much effort on the temporaries, sometimes the temporaries to the finals let live up to it. We have a process with the lab technician where they should live up to it like they absolutely should.

I approve every single veneer that I fit. I will not let one come out of the lab unless I’m happy with what pictures I see in the lab. So that process is really strict. But in terms of the patient, they don’t necessarily know all that if I’m going to. All they care about is are they going to get what they wanted. And sometimes patients will want everything, but they don’t know that they can’t have it all or they don’t want to hear it. So how do I explain to a patient that usually doesn’t want to hear it in a way that will help them to understand and accept it to make them happy? It’s not about making an excuse for something because I can do pretty much what they want, but I know that there’s some aspect of it that they won’t like, for example, colour if they want it really white, but they want the teeth to look natural and they want the teeth to look small and they want the teeth to match with the lower. And then you have the added issue of what’s behind it. So obviously they’ll be enlightened beforehand to death and they have no more yellow ness and all that stuff. But that understanding of the patient, I’ve now done it.

I’ve made teeth that are too white and they’re thicker because the technician had to have to layer more porcelain. How do I do that stuff and then say to the patient, Yeah, you can get some more teeth? So I now have a trade off conversation and if a patient says to me, I want X, I want longer teeth, it’s that. Okay, let’s break that down. You want longer? See? What does that mean? What is it you want to lengthen? And then they’ll and usually it might be that the laterals are too. Too long. Too long. Right. And essentially, they may not be. They need longer teeth. So you need to deconstruct everything the patient sets and then say, okay, you want longer teeth, what can you handle? Because there’s no point making you something that’s going to break. So let’s add some length. Let’s test it out and then let’s see. And they say, right, if you have these longer, the side effect is going to be that that one is going to look shorter or your canine guidance might go, well, what is the next step? It’s not just about saying, oh, yeah, we’ll give you that. What is the side effect of that? That is where I made huge mistakes because I was led by the patient way too much. And I didn’t I was too scared to.

Explain the trade-offs.

Or explain it. And there’s another video that I put out. You can see I went through a lot a few years ago when I made a video because one of the videos is called saying No. Right? And I start that video by saying I’m saying no in order to help you to say yes. And the reason is that I know they’re going to love it, but I have to get them out of the frame of mind of what one, one, one, one, one, one. There’s an understanding. And those communication things, that understanding things I learned the hard way because I had to redo a lot of cases. I had to figure it out because by spending time at the lab, Why is it that when I ask for this, this is what’s coming back? I just did pop ups at the lab. I used to just turn up randomly to see who’s got my case, which lab technician is working on it, What is their technique? Why is there no consistency? And then I learn a lot about how the materials are used, and that’s when the trade offs thing started.

So, look, the I think when we’re younger, sometimes the thing you said about selling a dream, it’s almost a conversion. That’s the most important thing, right? Because you haven’t done any. You’re thinking that’s what the goal is. Then as you get older and I guess to be blessed, be let’s call it what it is, you’re, you’re more secure in yourself, you’re more secure financially, you’re more secure reputationally. You know what you can and you can’t do. Yeah, I was having this conversation with Andrew Dorward and he was saying, Yeah, look, people mistake talking about complications as something that’s going to lose you the case. But actually, if you talk about complications with authority, the people think, well, this guy knows what he’s talking about. They actually trust you more. So so I get the conversation piece, but I still want to explore the moment something went wrong. Like a God moment or a patient who went berserk psychologically.

I’ll give you an example. Where no matter how much communication, no matter how many trade-off conversations, no matter how much evidence, I have to show that we did everything correctly the first time. The second time. The third time. And the fourth time. The problem that the patient was going through is not going to be answered by dentistry. That’s what the conclusion in my mind is when things now with our workflow and everything that I know now and mistakes, if something gets to that stage, I know that it’s not the dentistry. So I have to now learn to. Well, we have to all as cosmetic dentists learn to pick that up early. And so this case was a case where we had a couple of veneers. She had existing on the front teeth, very old veneers, slightly canted. We agreed to less units than I would have agreed to do now, because I know that wasn’t the right number, because it’s never going to look right on the right hand side. And so we did that, and they looked pretty good. They were a copy of the Temporaries. So fine. Then the patient was going into BCD meeting a few years ago, and I was late because I was on the phone to the patient because the patient was really panicking that she doesn’t like them, doesn’t like it, doesn’t like or do not like about them.

You just got to get used to it. It’s very new, but there shouldn’t really be that when you go to the final set because the final fish should be a copy of the temporary. So the shock factor should really be had been earlier. So that was a bit of a concern. But I thought, okay, some people do just take time. There are groups of people that take a lot longer to get used to things. So then we left it for a bit. Then she sent me another. I can’t get used to it and need to discuss it. Come in. Fine. We decided to change them with some changes. Some corrections didn’t like them. Same thing happen again. And then it was a case of you were happy with the temporaries? Yes. Let’s make an exact copy again of the temporaries, which we did and then still doesn’t like it. And like for different for the trade off reasons. Right. So, for example, I want I want that bit cut. I want she had a bit of a counter smile so we.

Had to cut it. I get it. I got it.

One side had to be longer in order to straighten out the arch, Right. So to do that we had to make one side longer. But I think it’s too long. If you bring it up, we can do it again. And it’s like a back and forth back. But what is the trade off? You either have a candid smile or you have one side longer than another. The fact is it doesn’t actually look longer. It looks correct. So that’s the thing. And I’ve been through this scenario more than once, but it’s just a rehash unless we get into the tiny nitty gritty of like the expectations.

No, no, I get it. I get it. Do you now have a spidey sense for it or is there a process like do they fill out a questionnaire that.

We started the questionnaire. I don’t know what happened. It just kind of didn’t didn’t stick. What I do have a sense now, I do and I can sometimes get it wrong, you know, sometimes it’s still a skill. It doesn’t quite work. There’s still someone who doesn’t have the right expectation at the end, and I can’t really work around it most of the time. No, but I now work with a clinical psychotherapist.

To you.

Who is actually a patient of mine, and he has been through the treatment. So there’s no one better to help people than him is also, he’s professionally trained to deal with people with dysmorphic tendencies or difficulties. Difficulties adapt to change. I have an incredible story about a patient of mine that we treated, and she had a lot of things we could correct. My wife did some gummy smile. Botox. We raise one side of the mouth with soft tissue laser. I placed some super minimal prep, no prep on the size veneers case was stunning. The really beautiful. Couldn’t get used to it. Couldn’t get it can get used to it. But very, very lovely, very understanding patient. The best things go wrong and the patient is on your side with you, you know, that’s the that’s the we’re so lucky when that happens because we’ve got to work together with the patients and that’s what we always try and we don’t want to be fighting with them about it. So this was one of those cases and we had a WhatsApp group, me and my wife and the patient. We’re trying to figure out what can we do with this? And I said to her, and this was this was really to suggest to a patient that I think you should speak to a psychotherapist as the dentist, that is, you know, but that could go only two ways.

One could be positive. They could be open to it and one could be like, what are you saying? I’m crazy? You know, it’s like and I guess I had to use various communication techniques to introduce that. And when I introduced that, she was she said, I’ll try it. And I always I said, I’ll pay for the first consultation. Nothing comes out of it. I’m happy to remove everything and restart or let’s see what to do right. And she goes, okay, she did. He called me the next day and said, She’s giving me a consent to speak to you. There’s nothing dysmorphic. Everything is fine. There’s no trauma in the past. There’s nothing going on. But I suggest you don’t do anything for three weeks. And she’s agreed. That, too. And then he then he called me and said how she spoken to you? Because she said she’s going to she has discovered that she had the veneers done because and this was in the back of her mind, she was nursing her sick father for a year before he died. And he died soon, soon before she came in to see me for a consult.

And she has grown up in a society that’s abroad and another kind of Switzerland where they’re very polite. There’s a big divide with respect of a professional. And so there’s that slight issue. And then it’s the case of she never really had a concerns about her smile. She didn’t reach she wasn’t really that bothered. Someone had said to her once, Oh, you’d be really pretty if you had a nice smile. Sad, but we hear that a lot. And she did her teeth because she thought that that would solve the grief and things like that. And it wasn’t that she didn’t because she was very vague about what she didn’t like, which is when when I start thinking, is it something else? So if anyone wants a tip, I would say someone is not specific about it or they can changing what it is, then sometimes it’s not the teeth. It could be something else going on. So she woke up in the middle of the night after having had therapy about two weeks beforehand and realised that actually she just was seeing getting the emotions of her dad, losing her dad every time she looked in the mirror. And because the only thing she changed about herself was the teeth. It had to be the teeth.

Crazy man.

And she ended up continuing the therapy with with the therapist for a while, quite a few months about other aspects. And a lot came out that was not the teeth were just the just one of the things.

The name she’s given to her pain the.

Facts of the issue. So she she feels still patient about and she’s fantastic. And we removed the veneers and only the front teeth with Canted Midline had the contact opened, so we did some composite veneers for her on those. All the rest are her original teeth because there were no prep veneers. And this is why I mean, this is not that you’re going to have to take them off for every patient, but we took them off. Our teeth are exactly the same. Just super happy. All that emotion she felt. She said to me, I feel like in the chair a weight has been lifted. It’s like release. Soon as the veneers just had to go.

It’s a beautiful story, man.

And that was because a patient was open to me, suggesting, talking to someone else about it and had another patient last week who said, I’ve actually start not she’s just got it’s veneer related but it’s not really it’s it’s and she said I’ve started therapy because this is not about my teeth this is something else. And I think now it’s not as much of a taboo thing. And I have suggested it to many patients sometimes before they start. And it’s some people just say, No, that’s not for me. Okay, fine, maybe come back to me in a few months or some say, Yeah, okay, that’s interesting. Then we do that. And I think that we should, as dentists, be really working collaboratively with people like that, especially at this level of cosmetic dentistry.

So it’s such an interesting learning thing that you just said. Although I think my idea of dark and your idea of dark is slightly different because that seems like a success story to me. I’m looking for a failure story. I’m like, Oh, shit, man.

Um. Clinically, I guess clinically it’s. I don’t think there is one. I’ve not taken out the.

Wrong ID You never did. You never fit, fit the teeth and just somehow you are unhappy. You’re.

Yeah, but that’s not so. This is a good this is.

I don’t know. I’m making it up as I go along. I, I am.

I believe that a case is only successful if I’m happy with it. If my patients happy with it. That’s a base level of success for the case. Yeah, that’s not enough for the case to be successful. It should be both. And if I if I listed every time I was unhappy with the case, we’d be here that you’d never finish.

So, Matty, you know Matty Parsons, he lectures on our composite course, and.

He actually did our training a couple of years ago. 2020?

Yeah. Yeah, he said, he said he he talks about with composite veneers, the most difficult patients being the ones who say, Listen, I trust you. Leave it up to you. You decide because. Because you don’t know what they’re thinking at all. And in a way, you’d think that’s a really good idea. Right? Because give Sam carte blanche to do what he wants to do. But actually, he says they’re the hardest patients when they say white and straight and blocky. At least he knows what thereafter.

Of my workflow is allows them to experience it before they have made. Yeah, yeah. Made the commitment on the shapes and the size and the colour and.

Compared to composite.

Which is the difference. So that slightly is on our side. So if we do get it wrong, which we very rarely do now, right, but we might get it wrong in terms of some of my one squarer look or some of my white teeth, and they’re not honest about it initially because they don’t want to put me off. Sometimes it’s not about us getting the case conversion. They want to get us to convert to good.

Yeah, yeah.

And so and so sometimes you get that wrong, but there isn’t that permanence in our process, so it gives us that flexibility to adapt.

Well, why did you choose Marlowe? I mean, I know it’s a beautiful part of the world. Yeah. There’s there’s, you know, I’m sure there’s well-to-do people there. But nonetheless, you could have gone to central London. You could have.

Yeah. I was never drawn to central London for my first practice because I was nervous about it. I was really, really scared about doing it because I had been told by someone I really respect in the profession that I have what looks like. I have the skills to make a really good associate, and they could see that I probably am a good associate, but not the skills to be a principal and run my own practice or build a brand or. Or be a leader. Because it’s a different set of skills and it’s not for everyone, which is true. It is not for everyone. Right. But I always thought I did have those. So to be told that I don’t have those was really upsetting because I was kind of craving their support for the next step. So what happened was it drove me. I was that I have to have to like if anyone tells me I can’t do something, that’s it. Basically that’s the end. I will. And I have I have to because I have to prove them wrong. But I almost have to prove it to myself that I can, because now they’re putting doubts in my mind that maybe I can’t do it.

So I was in that frame of mind, and so I actually looked for practices that were not in London because I knew would demand something different of me. And maybe I don’t have that. And so I looked for small practices where I could keep my associate position because if everything went wrong, I’d be okay. I’d be able to pick up more days again or something. And that is really that’s how not confident I was to do that. And it’s one of the reasons I even brought on a non clinical partner because I was like, I have an associate job, I can’t run stuff, I can’t decide marketing, I can’t do that stuff as well. So that was how Marla was born, because it was a two surgery practice in an area that I had only been with my with my family for picnics and stuff. It’s a really, really beautiful part of the world, but I didn’t know it well. I knew it was affluent and I knew there’s a lot of Michelin starred restaurants in the same high street.

It’s a beautiful And.

I thought, Well, it must have something about it if, like all these celebrity chefs want to be.

There. Sure.

So that’s that’s why we chose that. And it was affordable to me that it wasn’t a huge financial risk for me and my wife. So it was really about mitigating risk. And that’s how we ended up in Marlow. There was no thought other than that. And then I heard that there were eight other practices in and around the high street, and I started learning all these things and people like, Are you sure? And you know what? The people the clients are like this and that. And at this point it was too late. So it’s just like, well, we just have to we have to make a success of it. That’s not an option.

And say you would have done differently. As far as the practice.

I would have got a bigger site because we have that problem.

You’ve grown into, you’ve grown out of it.

But you know, what would I’ve done differently? There’s not a lot actually. I’m very comfortable with what we’ve achieved, but I am craving a little bit more in terms of space and in terms of being able to house a little bit more for the facial aesthetic side. To my mind, if you.

Don’t do the teaching at the practice, would you do it somewhere?

Yes, we’re lacking a bit of space for that. So we do it at local. Local. We have like a mini conference for the first weekend of the six day course. So it’s all in one site, a really nice hotel nearby, but it would be great to have our own facility for something like that so that there’s that kind of thing that I’m missing that. But it doesn’t impact anyone’s experience of the course. But from my personal, it would be it would be nice. And yeah, I guess it would be nice to be in London, but I’m again, not craving that. I live in London. It would be much easier for me. But you could.

You could move to Marlow.

Know.

It’s an amazing place to live. Now.

This is slightly too far out for me. I need to be on.

It to be half an hour from the restaurants of Mayfair.

By the tube like tube. And my wife works in central London. And she said as she walks to work, both sides park in Hampstead and she she needs to be accessing town. So no, not too far. And I love my patients, but I’m sure they don’t want to be sitting at the Ivy next to me on a Friday.

Or you do. Let’s finish it with back again, back to where we started. What can we expect from a sound presidency? By the way, When when will you be the best? Is it.

Before me? You know, we don’t get ahead of ourselves. We have to celebrate Simon’s year. He’s going to be amazing. Then we’ve got Luke Hutchings. Who?

Oh, it’s Luke. And then new.

President elect this year. And then I’m VP this year. So there’s a two year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s going to happen? I have absolutely no idea that I’ve got. We’ve got two presents. We’ve got, we have two boards and we have new people every year joining the board. And so the direction the book is really set out for that year as our strategic planning weekend, which is this weekend for Simon’s. Yeah. So we just don’t know. We are thinking of ways ahead in terms of conference. As you all know, we start talking to you guys for our conference site years in advance. Right. And we have to plan ahead. But other than other than that, the direction we really listen to the members and we really try and give the members what they feel they lacked the previous year. So feedback is so important and we want any members who are listening to this. I really would want them to come and even just even just DM me or whatever, just.

Say, can I say my pick and I say my bit. Yeah. So, so yeah, I’m thinking this like sort of like a warehouse. Yeah.

I love that. So, hey, this is interesting. Wow. We have to select somewhere for 2025, which will be then I think it’s the 2025.

Hopefully by that, by that point I’ll be sitting with your friend in. The Cayman Islands.

But for two years time, I don’t care if the conference is going to be open.

They call it in event terms, they call it blank canvas.

Yeah, a blank canvas. Yes. I would love something. I would love something. I think that is something really cool and I would love to do something like that. I’m not the only person that makes decisions.

And so now that you youngsters are coming through now, maybe there’s a blank canvas. We’re talking gigantic single screen, not not three small screens and then bar bean bags, neon food while you’re watching the lecture.

I think there is there is definitely a lot that can be done. And we’ve got to we I don’t know if you’ve noticed the production level stepping up a little bit every year.

I did.

Yeah. So there’s little things that have been happening, which for me I love, like the lighting and that opening ceremony and the smoke and the music and the really top production filming that we have and all that stuff I think really is necessary and I want to keep building on that. And every year I just push for a little bit more so. So who knows by then? Who knows by then we may have sort of a warehouse project situation, I’m not sure, but I definitely not the only decision maker. And of course, we all know Susie Roland’s the queen of CD. And if she’s happy to run a conference in the warehouse, then then maybe it can happen.

I think I’ll have a little chat with you. Yeah.

Definitely. Listen to you.

Let’s finish this. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, man. A long time coming. So let’s finish with the usual questions that we finish with. Are you ready for fancy dinner party?

Oh, God, no. Fancy dinner party?

Three guests.

I didn’t want to be, like, obvious, you know.

Dead or alive.

That’s on Olivia. You know, I’m so bad with celebs, you know, I don’t know any celebrities.

Doesn’t have to be a celebrity. It could be. It could be Einstein. Your grandfather.

Yeah.

Jesus.

Yeah. I don’t really want to have dinner with my granddad. I never knew him, but I kind of don’t. I didn’t really want just.

I just threw that out.

I was like, Yeah, I do.

And then we had Jesus the last. Last time. Last kiss.

Really?

Yeah. So don’t say Jesus either.

I’m not going to say Jesus as long as they’re Barack Obama.

Barack. Yeah. Well done. Well done. Nice.

You’ve got to respect. Why have they gone out of my mind in terms of like people that have done amazing things? Oh, I got one that is actually really out there, which I definitely want to go, but only three.

Good.

Oh, can I say one? Have you sent the question?

Oh, no, no. You’re not coming in with a third guest?

No, I’ve got one so far.

And you got Barack. You got Barack and Eleanor. Oh, oh, oh. Are you saying. No, I was just saying that the cliches.

Then they are. I’m sure many times before.

We’ll come back to them later. All right. Deathbed.

Deathbed.

You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your nearest and dearest around you. Three pieces of advice. You’d leave them and the world.

Three pieces of advice. Number one, life is all about relationships. Because relationships can make or break your emotions, but also where you go next. So be nice to people on the way up because you might need them on the way down. That is definite, number one. And I really believe that a lot. Number two would be don’t rely on anyone else. Be your own person and and keep going in the face of adversity. Never let anyone else tell you that you can’t do something. Learn for yourself whether you can or not. Then let someone else make that decision for you.

That is nicely put.

Now, that could have happened to me and I didn’t let it happen. And I’m glad I didn’t. And what else? Find a suitable partner. If you want one, because. I could not be sitting here at 10 p.m. and I’m sure you would not be able to be sitting here in 10 p.m. if it wasn’t for the significant others in our lives who accept us for what we want to do, sometimes put themselves second for what we want to do. And that is. Is the number one thing. For me, I’m extremely lucky that I found Natalie, who supports me in everything and Will. I’m present. A lot of the time, but I’m not present. I’m pretty much never not in front of a screen or doing something. Either writing courses or something to do with the practice or something. Or I don’t go to social events. She has to sometimes go on her own. And those are things that are a huge sacrifice that not every partner can handle and that could make or break, I think, a career. So that would be the third thing.

Very well said. Very well said. But when when when you chose to ask the big question, I asked her to marry you.

Yeah.

I’m quite interested in this year because what happened to me was I’d been going out with my my girlfriend for ten years or something. And then at one point I said, Right, I’m going to ask her. So what was it that made me do that? I had a moment of clarity regarding a wheelchair, regarding like I was I was going through something. And I thought, who do I want to push this wheelchair? And I thought, Oh, it’s her. Like, I wasn’t going to call my brother, my parents. But but, but, but with our government asking to marry me. And it is an interesting situation, right? Because, you know, life, when life’s good, it’s easy to enjoy it, right?

Yeah.

And we and we all have wheelchairs, whether they’re real wheelchairs or not.

Absolutely.

Are you going to tell me or.

The three guests? Yeah. Could you see that? I was noting something down.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, when when me and Nat decided to get married, we had a lot of adversity to fight. It was a year of absolute hell. And that, I think, has made us a lot stronger.

Because you saw what you saw. You saw what each other is like when the chips are down.

Worst of the worst. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s helped us. Who knows? We’re going to be married four and a half years, right? But there’s a lot that I’ve done in my career in four and a half years, and I would not have been able to if it wasn’t for her letting me do that. Three, three people. First would be Jeremy Clarkson, because, you know, it would be an absolute laugh.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And he’ll say something outrageous and it will be funny.

And which is I hate to admit it, you’re right. It would be a good party with him.

It would be it would be worth listening to. And I’m sure he has got some incredible stories about guests.

And stuff.

And trips, and I think that would be great. The second I think is probably a bit cliched, but I would I would actually love to learn a little bit more about Richard Branson. I think that I remember as a as a child, the air balloon ride thing and nipping that first kind of slightly outrageous entrepreneur in my lifetime. I think that’s quite interesting putting yourself out there so much and having that confidence.

But, you know, interestingly, interestingly, we think that sometimes with entrepreneurs. But but, you know, the guy who owns, I don’t know, like. I know he’s written a book and all that, but he’s not out there as easy. No, it doesn’t have to be that way. But you like. You know, I almost started Enlightened because of Richard Branson, not just because I remember buying this ticket for Virgin Atlantic. And I was going to fly a Virgin Atlantic and I wasn’t going to fly any other plane. And suddenly sitting on this plane and thinking, what the hell did that guy just do to me? You know, why was it I was insisting on it and not that I was having a bad time, I was having a great time with it was it was it was delivering. Yeah. But I felt that he had done it to me. Yeah. It really sort of woke me up to this idea.

I’m fascinated by entrepreneurs who have fingers in many different industries because in dentistry I definitely feel that we and I definitely I feel that I don’t I don’t know where to even begin. If I was in a different industry. I have a huge passion for property and development and I love that sort of thing. And we do a bit of that here and there. Definitely not in terms of a business, but that is a huge passion of mine. I don’t really know where to start to turn that into a business or even other things I would love to do, but I just don’t really know and I would love to learn from someone who is who’s been in so many different industries when how do you get the right people and how do you how do you branch out just from whether it’s something we do or we don’t do? But it’s just really I would love to know that because I feel like that was a. When we have a vocational qualification.

If you read his books.

Yes.

Yeah. Excellent.

And then the last person, which is a little bit random is Kris Jenner.

Kris Jenner of Of the mother. The mother? Yeah. Yeah. She’s a genius.

Exactly.

She is a genius.

I really do think that she is a genius. Whether anyone respects them for what they’ve achieved or not, it really doesn’t know.

She’s a genius.

You’re right. I would just love to know.

She reminds me of that guy, the wife of Ozzy Osborne.

Sharon Osbourne.

Yeah. You know, like that genius media person, because, you know, you got Ozzy, right? Yeah, she turned that into me.

And I used to watch The Osbournes as.

Me, too.

We do TV, and it’s incredible. And I don’t watch the Kardashian stuff and my wife watches bit in there and whatever. Like, I’m not into that.

I get it. I get it, I get it.

I just think to create a business out of that, I’d find that really interesting to to hear from.

It’s the same way, I guess it’s the same thing. I really, really admire Red Bull, the company, but I don’t drink Red Bull.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It’s the same sort of story. Amazing. So one final. Final. Who would be your dream guest on this podcast?

I think we’ve got to get I would love to hear Larry Rosenthal on here.

He’s been on. He’s been on.

And he said, watch that.

It’s unfortunately, the sound quality wasn’t amazing, but he’s been on.

Okay. So scrap that, then. Yeah. It’s got to be someone you can get on. Is that.

No. But the show is called Dental Leaders.

What’s the name of that lady? Yeah. Not really. Who do I love to listen to in dentistry? Um.

I’d love to have Caleb, by the way.

Have you done it? Has someone asked you the questions?

Yeah, that’s happened. That’s happened.

I would love that. Because you are one of the people that, again, industry I admire hugely. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve always been so supportive of young talent, and you always used to give me words of wisdom and things like that at conferences. But it’s the.

You execute it. I remember I remember telling you, Hey, become a veneer guy. I don’t want to take I don’t want to take the year.

I remember having that conversation with you. It was hands on day on Thursdays outside Amanda’s session. And that’s what you said to me.

It’s Sandra who’s a veneer kind of person, right? She had a great tip on veneers. She said that she can still hear me. She said she. She said to you that she tells all her patients that if if it fits and it’s right on the first go, then it’s very, very rare. It could be the second or the third. So it’s all all veneer patients says to them what she would say to a single, single veneer person so that when it works, it’s great. It’s amazing. No one, no one has a problem. And people are like more appreciative.

Yeah.

On the first.

Interesting, I have the entire opposite conversation.

I said perfect first pitch.

Perfect first time in terms of fit and the copy of the Temps. And if it’s not, then there’s something I have not done right.

Oh, that’s nice.

Too, because the process should not we should not be having surprises on the Fit Day, and I’m not familiar in other people’s workflows, but.

I don’t think she has that many surprises. But she was saying that to have that. So the patient then is doubly, doubly happy when it’s.

Yeah, I can see I definitely the single Centrals is like, yeah, it could be eight times. So not eight. But, you know, that’s I mean we all have our workflows, we all have our way of playing things. In my mind, I always say it should and it very rarely isn’t. And if it isn’t, then I’ll make it right. Because it should.

Be.

It should be. Who would I. Who would I want on here, though?

Yeah. Who do you own?

I would love Gallagher. I would love to hear him because I would. I would love to hear how he feels. Veneers have changed because I definitely have seen that, right? I’ve been in practices where it was the old way and the new way, and now it’s different. And I’d love to know that. I’d love to know how the practice still works and is successful after so many years. And I would also love to hear his take on the dental tourism and how he feels. Yeah, one of the world’s best dentists in a country where this is going.

On and a great speaker. A great speaker in a second language, right?

Yeah. And so I’d love to I’d love to hear I’d love to hear him speak.

But it’s been lovely talking to you. Really has. I’ve really, really enjoyed that. Thanks a lot for doing this.

Thank you. Really, really nice to connect with you.

Okay. I’m going to see you again in real life.

Yes.

You’re going to parties anymore. Any more events you’re going to this year?

I don’t know what’s on. No idea. If it’s in the calendar. I’m there. It’s not.

Thank you so much, bud.

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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