Know, dentistry is expensive to deliver. There’s there’s no two ways about it. And equally, I think the one the one thing a dentist can do, the probably the most important thing any dentist can do is the relief of pain. And I think that’s probably our most important skill we have, is to be able to relieve somebody of pain. And I don’t think that should be denied to people that people must be able to access that. So I do think there has to be an NHS dentistry for that reason. Now does it need to extend to things like cosmetic dentistry and, you know, different types of cast materials? I think it probably doesn’t, but equally in terms of those things might be appropriate for somebody to prevent a problem.

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 Stuart Campbell onto the podcast. Stuart is a practice principal at Loanhead Dental Practice in Edinburgh. He teaches on the MSC in Edinburgh University. He’s a specialist in Prosthodontics, someone who came to specialising a bit later and fixed brows and an avid collector of football shirts. Stuart lovely to have you, mate.

Great pleasure, Payman. Thank you very much for having me on. I’m thoroughly looking forward to this. You and I have had a recent conversation on my podcast and I’m thoroughly looking forward to another long Ramble chat with you. So I’m excited to see where this might go.

Yeah, I should. I should have mentioned the co-host of One in the Chair and two Waiting podcast. I’ve just been on and we’re going to do a simulcast of that podcast with ours. Go ahead, Stuart. So welcome to the to the show. Tell me about your hobby, your your football hobby.

Well, yeah, you probably see here I’m wearing one of my my football shirts. This is a Bayern Munich shirt from 1999 I’m wearing. So, yeah, I’m an avid collector of vintage football shirts. So one of the many things that brings me enormous pleasure in life, and I’ve been collecting them probably, you know, since I was probably a teenager. I used to get them when I went on holidays with my parents and things, and they were probably the naff ones that were all fake, you know, the ones you get that, that look like they’re made out of polystyrene bag. And then it went. When I went on holidays myself, I would whatever I was, it might be, let’s say a weekend in Munich. I’d buy the Bayern Munich shirt. Weekend in Amsterdam. I would buy the Ajax shirt, that type of thing. And then I just started getting more interested in buying more obscure shirts and an older shirts. And this became a thing. And this is now, you know, because of e-commerce, this has become quite easy to do. Whereas maybe 10 or 15 years ago you couldn’t do that. Know, you were limited to what was in the shop. And it’s I suppose it’s a way of of recapturing those fond childhood memories about things. It’s not the shirt so much as the memory that almost brings and probably up to about 300 shirts. Now, if my wife’s listening, sorry, I’m up to three shirts now. Um, but it’s very addictive, but equally very satisfying. It’s the thrill of the chase as well when you think what I want to do is get the Fiorentina 1999 shirt with a Nintendo sponsor and the Batistuta name set and trying to find that in mint condition in your size at a price that’s reasonable.

Is it important that it’s in your size? Do you have to be able to wear it for.

Me, I have to wear it, Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people say they don’t wear them, so I’m now I’m now involved in the football shirt community. Yeah. And a few of my football shirt co collectors. Some of them would never wear them. They say no, absolutely no, you should never wear it. You should keep it pristine, hang it up, put it in a frame, whatever. I don’t agree with that. I think they’re meant for wearing and I enjoy wearing them. You know, my wife says all our holiday photos are ruined because I’m standing there in a, you know, a fluorescent yellow Borussia Dortmund shirt or something like that or or a or a bright orange Dundee United shirt. And but, you know, I enjoy wearing them. And it’s a little bit like in the States when you go to Hawaii, the minute the plane lands, you see all these guys. I don’t if you’ve been to Hawaii, I was there on honeymoon. And you almost see as the plane lands, it’s almost like the entire plane throws off their clothes and puts a Hawaiian shirt on. And that’s the mentally that’s them. I’m on on vacation. And for me, it’s a football shirt. As soon as I get on holiday, I put a football shirt on. That’s me. That’s my Hawaiian shirt.

I bet you get I bet you get quite a lot of love, right? Like you probably get some Galatasaray fan coming over to you and shaking your hand if you’re wearing that shirt in some way.

It drives my family mad. I’ll tell you, we were just in the States last week. It was in Chicago, which is a favourite place of mine. And I was wearing a Roma shirt from 2019. And it’s a it’s a quite a some of these shirts, even the recent ones can can become what we call in the community Grail shirts. So Holy Grail shirts. And you would think that that’s going to be limited to say, for example, a 1986 Maradona shirt. But no, no, it depends on on demand and scarcity and things like that. And there is a Roma shirt was produced by Nike, which is a beautiful shirt, Navy blue, almost looks like a polo shirt. I convinced myself you could wear it out. My wife says you couldn’t, but I convinced myself you can. And it was wearing this in Chicago, and I got about three compliments. Guys, love your shirt. That’s amazing. My wife just said, Look, I didn’t say anything. She was looking at me as if to say, you set that up. You encouraged him to. To to give you a compliment. But no. And it is a conversation starter and you get the knowing nod from people and, you know. But that’s what makes it all worthwhile. That and the thrill of finding one to the specifications I’ve made mentioned.

And if there was a if there were, God forbid, a fire in your shirt cabinet, which is the one you would jump to first to save like the one you’re most. When I say valuable, it doesn’t mean price value, but you’re the one that you value the most.

Only 100. Only one. The one. Two. Oh, right. I would say then I’ve got a Bayern Munich 1999 shirt that they wore in the Champions League final where they were cruelly robbed by Manchester United and it’s a silver colour and it was only worn in the Champions League. And this particular one I have has is a player issue one and it has the felt Lothar Matthaeus number ten name set on the back and that’s a I would struggle to get that ever again. I think so that’s a real favourite. The other one, the Roma one I mentioned, is certainly up there, but I think the other one would probably have to be a USA one from 1988, which uses what we call in the shirt community the Ipswich template. Now I don’t know if you know this, but football shirts, designers, they all use templates. So there’s a number of designs per season and they just alter the colours. If you happen to be an elite team, you know, In other words, if you’re likely to sell lots of football shirts, say like Bayern Munich or Real Madrid, they’ll design, you’ll have your own template.

But if you’re a team, let’s say like, I don’t know, let’s say like Crystal Palace or Norwich, you’ll be given a template that’ll be similar to another team’s template. Just the colours will be different. So the Ipswich template was a famous template that was created in the 80 seconds for Ipswich football team, but it was never used by them because they changed their sponsorship. They were with Adidas who designed it and Adidas had designed this template for Ipswich, and Ipswich then decided they didn’t want to use Adidas anymore. So Adidas gave the Ipswich template to Holland. So if you can imagine 1988 Holland won the European Championships. They beat the USSR in the final and they had Hewlett Van Basten right guard. That shirt was actually designed for Ipswich and they just changed the colour and gave it to Holland. And so the USA actually used the same template that you could imagine that template but in blue and it’s a beautiful shirt and you know, I’ve worn it in the USA twice and I’ve received zero compliments, zero. Very disappointing, very disappointing. But that would be the second one. I would say.

It’s getting in America. Soccer is getting quite big, but nowhere near as big as their own sports. Right. You just came back from Chicago. Did you go on business or pleasure?

Pleasure. Pleasure. So Chicago is a is a one of my favourite places. The reason I originally went to Chicago was that a friend of mine growing up in Dundee, his dad was a lawyer and he ran a fairly big law practice. He was a great guy, larger than life, and he was involved in the Law society, and the Law Society had said to him, Look, we’re looking for hosts for law students from the United States. Would you like to be a host? This guy is going to come over and just observe our practices and whatnot for for eight weeks. Would you put him up? Would you would you have on your practice? I’ll do better than that. I’ll put him up in my house. So he had this guy who was a Harvard Law student who came across a lovely guy, met a number of times because my friends and friend’s dad, we went out with them. He was a great guy and this guy had a great story. His story was that while he was in his latter stages of law, Tom Cruise was in their dorm because he was filming the firm. Tom Cruise is a method actor, and he wanted to spend time seeing what a Harvard lawyer would do. So they met Tom Cruise and all the rest of it. There’s some great stories. But anyway, this guy was from Chicago and he he really should have been the tourist officer for Chicago because he really painted a great picture.

And I kind of thought Chicago is a bit rough. Is it not A bit. Kind of. I don’t know. Um, I don’t know if a fancy kind of anyone going there and and when my friend Gordon then in 1994 he went to the World Cup with his dad and Scotland didn’t qualify, but they went anyway and they booked the trip and they were going to New York. All the greatest hits, New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami. And this guy said, You’ve got to come to Chicago and visit me. All right. Okay. We’ll go to Chicago. So they went to Chicago and when he came back was saying, how was your trip? You know, it must have been amazing. And the place he just couldn’t stop talking about was Chicago. So have you been to New York? You’ve been to Miami, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. So anyway, when I went to do I did my elective at Dental School. We arranged to do it in the States. We did a bit of travelling around and we arranged to and Gordon, my friend, was saying, You’ve got to go to Chicago. I said, We’ll go in December. It’s freezing. So I’m telling you, you got to go. So we went and I absolutely loved it and I’ve been back. This is the. Visit number four. 4 or 5 now. Absolutely. Love it. Great city. So friendly. It can get.

Brutally cold, can’t it? That’s the thing. Have you been during mid-winter, Chicago? Mid-winter. You’ve always been on pleasure.

I’ve always been on pleasure. I’ve been there in December. And I’ll tell you, the cold freezing. It doesn’t mess about, is it that wind? Yeah. But yeah, it’s interesting, though.

Because I’ve been that’s the city I’ve been to the most in America as well. Why? Because two of my suppliers are based there and and the Chicago midwinter as well. And in summer it’s lovely. Beautiful. It’s the weather weather wise. And then I don’t know if you’ve ever been outside. I used to go to a place called Naperville quite a lot. Really, really beautiful. Totally different to to the feeling of Chicago. But you’re right. There’s something special about that town of the US cities. Each of them has their own little twist. Right? But I find it one of the easier ones to like in America. Yeah. So tell me about childhood and, you know, in Dundee and why you decided to become a dentist.

Yeah, it’s. Yeah. So Dundee’s, if you don’t know Dundee, it’s a small city. It’s about an hour north of Edinburgh. It’s on the East Coast and it is about ten miles from Saint Andrews and about five miles from Carnoustie. Two world famous golf courses. It’s big university town in the sense that they have a large student population and, you know, small city with a large student population, essentially two universities there. So growing up, there was, you know, as a kid, absolutely fantastic. We had a great lifestyle and great, you know, safe place to grow up, lovely part of the world. My parents lived in Dundee, beautiful views over the river and my dad saying, this is as good as it gets. You know, we’d be saying Dundee, as good as it gets. Geez. But it just doesn’t have. What it doesn’t have is a young professional population, You know, it doesn’t have that wealth from disposable income because the young professionals finish university, then they go to another city, you know, so it doesn’t have that. So it doesn’t have your restaurant culture and your cafe culture. It has a pub culture, which is great when you’re a student. But in terms of growing up there, yeah, it was great to go to school there, but it tends to be a dentist and things. To answer your question, I probably came to that fairly late about maybe about 15, before I decided I wanted to do that. My wife is a dentist and she knew from the from primary school that’s what she wanted to do.

I wanted to be a journalist and my school in Dundee was right opposite DC Thomson and you’ll know DC Thomson because they published the Beano and The Dandy, but they also published some some newspapers, some local newspapers. And that’s what I wanted to do. But I was given very little encouragement to do it. Teachers at the time had said, There’s only so many jobs there. These are life or jobs. You’re not going to get in very easily unless you know somebody or, you know, obviously they didn’t predict the Internet coming along and it was kind of pooh poohed was, you know, at school, I was good at writing essays. It was good at English, it was good at history. It was good at, you know, those kind of documentation style subjects. So I was kind of put off that. And my parents are both medical. My dad’s are he’s still working actually. He’s a professor of surgery. He doesn’t operate anymore, but he’s still actively involved in research. My mother was a was a nurse, a sister in a ward. And they were dad was very pro medicine. You should, you know, great job. He loved it. Getting paid for him is a bonus. You know, he would done it for free and quite often did you know in terms of number of hours he put in quite often did but loved it. It’s like a duty a calling for him, you know.

And I just thought there just he doesn’t he just has no balance. You know, There is no balance. It’s all one way and not the other. And I just don’t want I want to balance and I didn’t see medicine through the prism of looking at what he did as having that balance. So it didn’t appeal to me. So my mum set up by this time she was working at local GP’s practice. She set up a, you know, a work experience there. I just didn’t find it very exciting, you know. And then she set up one with the local dentist and local dentists seemed to have the balance. You know, his practice was essentially separated by his house, from his house, by his back garden. And, you know, he was popular in the community. And his waiting room had loads of pictures of various exotic locations he’d been to, and he seemed to have a 9 to 5 job, seemed to probably didn’t behind the scenes, but it seemed to and seemed to run a successful business. And you know, as well as doing the clinical aspect, I quite like the fact you had some involvement in the the business aspects that then appealed to me. So that was about 15 going on 16 when I thought, yeah, this, this kind of seems like quite a good option. And that was really when I decided I wanted to, to be a dentist. So quite late, really.

How did you find Dental?

Loved it. It’s fantastic. I went to school, which was pretty strict, actually. Private school. Private high school. Went to state primary, private, high school. Pretty strict. There were, you know, I was pretty cheeky. I, you know, like to make, you know, jibes and jokes and have a laugh. And it just it just didn’t didn’t appreciate that really at the school I was at it was not encouraged but it that way at Dental school it was just so you were very much not so much pigeonholed, but you were you were your wings were clipped a bit in school whereas university you it was the complete opposite. So absolutely loved it. Absolutely loved it. And at Dental School in Dundee, it’s a bit like just being in school again with small class sizes. 40 I think we had and the Dental school is kind of skyscraper building. It’s in the university campus. But all your all your lectures are in that building. You don’t leave that building. So it’s almost like being in high school again. You don’t really see an awful lot of other students. You don’t have the free time the other students have, so you’re always together. So yeah, I thought it was great, loved it.

But did you love it as well as from the social side? Did you love it from the, you know, learning the clinical side? Did did you find it easy? Were you one of those types who passed everything with flying colours or did you struggle with like me with pass fail? Vivas And how about the technical aspect? Did you take to that quickly or No.

No, I found it very difficult, I think in pre. So we did six years. I did pre Dental, which was essentially a repeat of the end of school exams you just done. So that was, that was, you know just rocking up to sit the exam, basically a year of a year of partying. So that was fantastic. First, and I still maintain this. All the exams I’ve done in my life, I don’t know how many it must be well into God knows how many, but the hardest exam I have ever sat is physiology for speeds. It doesn’t get any harder than that. And you come to that as a teenager and they’re talking about starlings curves and all that. You know, what the hell is this? And the textbook is bigger than a Yellow Pages. You know, I’d have to probably explain to to younger listeners what Yellow Pages is. But, you know, isn’t it? And you’re like, this is just how can you you’re starting in September and you’re thinking, how am I ever going to learn this? And you know that I found very difficult. I had a reset in that, and I still don’t know how I passed that reset, to be quite honest with you. Payman But I got through it. And then second was, okay, I worked I worked a little harder on that because I was so scared by having the reset and actually got a bollocking day one back by one of the the she was the year the head of the year called me in for a meeting day one and a bollocking you got a reset last year you know and and that that kind of gave me a kick up the arse and yeah.

Past that no problem. The second year you know I wouldn’t say no problem but I passed it, you know, I got through it there was no resets involved and the clinical stuff I found difficult, you know, I found it difficult. I think it’s hard to explain it clinical concepts to people who know what they’re doing. You know, I think what you’re trying to explain clinical concepts to people who have never done it before is it’s difficult for the educator, but for the person trying to grasp it, you just don’t you don’t have the experience to allow you to say, well, that’s what this is. You can’t relate it to anything else. In dentistry, you haven’t done any dentistry. And there is, you know, from some clinical, you know, guess the way it’s taught. They are some assumed knowledge and rightly or wrongly, I think, well, no, you must assume no knowledge. So I found it very difficult, actually. And I think, you know, I became a trainer after dental school and I don’t think it was just me. You know, I think a lot of the young graduates do come out and think, I just never got that. I never understood this. I never understood occlusion. How many people have said that I never understood dentures? How many people have said that, you know.

Boring, boring. From your podcast, you asked me the question about Rishi Sunak and how you would change the NHS. Let’s let’s ask the question of how would you change the Dental course, the undergrad course? What would you do? Because I’ve got a few ideas. You know, I think the number of hours we spent doing things that didn’t end up being important in at least in general practice. What do you think? Yeah.

I think at the end of the day it is a practical job. It’s a skills based job, isn’t it? There’s no doubt about that. And I think there are various things you can do in dentistry, and there’s no doubt about that as well. You can become a teacher, you can become a writer, you can become, you know, in a non-clinical managerial type position. But I think fundamentally most people go into clinical dentistry and that is a skills based job. Therefore, I would say it has to be skills based from from day one. Now, maybe some dental schools are doing that, but in my time it was non clinical, non clinical. Non-clinical at a pre Dental. So three years of non-clinical then clinical, you know, and I think it has to be clinical from the outset. Me Why not get people doing phantom head work from day one? You know, you’re not going to do any harm in a phantom head. So I think that’s what I would change. That’s the fundamental thing. I would change, number one. Number two, what I would do is I’d have younger students on the clinic from day one as well. Why not have them assist Dental students who are clinical? You know, why not have that? Let them look at you know, let them see how things work. Let them see how our fillings done. Let them see how people interact with patients and so on. So those are the two things.

But then obviously, you know, it was a busy course. Something is going to have to give. What would you not do to make those time for the things you just said?

Yeah, I.

Don’t think we any longer have to make full dentures out of wax. Or do we? I mean, it’s a skill that needs, um. What do you think?

I think I think of all those things, I think. Yeah, I see your point. Feel dangerous. But in reality, you know, I understand that the pre-clinical stuff is quite important, but do we really need a full year on physiology and biochemistry? Do we need that? You know, how many times have you used physiology and biochemistry? You know, probably never a sense I’m making that assumption, but I can tell you I’ve used it in some exams. You know, I’ve had to relook at some of the stuff, but not in great depth. And I just wonder a full year of that. And you think, is that just because it’s easier to house the students that you need to house in a non-clinical lecture room than it is to accommodate them in a Dental school? So I think those subjects can be trimmed. I think, you know, I can understand their importance and certainly they they they become important if you’re going to become a Dental scientist, but maybe become a Dental scientist after your dentist.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, funny you you say that. Yeah, I’ve been thinking. I was talking to my son about this. He’s just doing his GCSEs, and I was telling him I wish I paid more attention in chemistry, chemistry, A-level. It would have helped me a lot. It would have saved me a lot of money. It would have helped me a lot in my job, right? In my job, I did Chemistry A-level. And it’s just interesting, isn’t it, that if we took out that stuff about, I don’t know, those experiments in biochem that we used to do. Yeah. What would be the, the push on effects of that? Are they going to be some, some cat who doesn’t become an or a maxillofacial surgeon because he didn’t have that. I mean I think I think you’re right. I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, we only have to look at therapists, right? They teach them quite quickly, quite quickly how to do some, you know, operative dentistry that that could be taught to first years and second years.

Well yeah, I suppose. Yeah, absolutely. And statistically I suppose the numbers how many people will go into clinical practice after they finish. It’s 100% you have to do at and if you want to become, you know as I say a researcher and that’s, you know, fair play to you, you need to know statistics and things. But I’ll tell you, you know, when I was doing Mscs and Specialist, I never looked at the statistics. I was taught at Dental school. I didn’t remember any of it, you know, to go and relook at it all again. And it still didn’t make any sense. So you kind of wonder, is that absolutely necessary? Is it just box ticking and. Yeah, okay, I understand you need to know a bit so you can make decisions on articles and things that you read. But yeah, I think sacrificing clinical practice for those things is, is a difficult one. I think it should be heavier on the skills base.

And then you eventually went on to do MSC specialist training, but not in the, in the usual way where people do that sort of sort of soon after qualifying, you bought a practice and was there a moment where you suddenly decided, No, I’m going to get really, really good at something after being in general practice for a bunch of time, or was that something that you were always going to do? What switched that on for you?

Well, when we bought the practice, very busy practice. It was actually my wife’s wife was a patient at the practice. It was her own dentist and they were a really huge number of patients. And the dentist, lovely guy, was kind of NHS dentist, you know, good guy, did his best for the patient, just kept things going. And then we took over and you started to see things. At the point I actually thought, I just don’t know how to fix this. I just don’t know how to do it. I can see what needs done, but I don’t know how to approach it. Don’t know what sequence to do it in. I just don’t know. So I thought I’d go in some courses and from there just sparked an interest and I went on Paul Tipton’s courses. That was the first kind of cluster of courses I went on and I just thought he was a brilliant speaker, you know, brilliant, brilliant speaker, and could explain things that I thought, Wow, I’ve just never been explained in that way before, you know, I get it. And he often referenced the guy called Mike Wise. He talked about Mike Wise being an influence on him. So I thought, I’m going to go and do as Mike Wise still around.

So did you do the Mike? Wise Course.

I did. Mike for it was with Mike for about 3 or 4 years. Oh, wow. And he was just absolutely brilliant. Really enlightening guy. Inspiring guy. Yeah. And I got chatting to Mike said, you know, I’d love to have done Prosthodontics. And he was like, Well, why don’t you? I said, I’ve got a practice. He was like, So go and do it. I said, I don’t know. I’m not you know, I’ve been out of it a while now. And he was very supportive, you know, you know, big, well-known guy like that. And he took time and he made I spoke to him on the phone and he sent me a couple of emails and he said, I really think you should do it. And he kind of, you know, was that encouragement from someone like him thought, well, you know what? I’m going to go for it. And yeah, that then led to me to start looking into it and start applying and getting rejected and applying again and eventually getting in.

And when you got in, were you older than everyone else in the class? Yeah.

Yeah. So I was funnily enough, I would say I was older. It was quite, quite bizarre. I was older than a couple of the consultants that were on the team on, on air. So that was a bit difficult. But yeah, it was fine. It was good. I did it in Edinburgh. Great bunch of people there, you know, all of whom have become friends. And you know, it was, it was. And you know what? They didn’t make anything of it. It was just you were treated, you know, as a peer. As a peer. Yeah. Yeah. So it was great.

And did you do it full time?

I did it full time. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Full time.

Yeah. There wasn’t the option to do it part time. So three years, full time, and you kind of look back and think, how on earth. But yeah, we had. How did you fund.

It and all that? Like, you know, obviously the loss of earnings beat your wife wasn’t too pleased about you deserting her at that moment.

She was pretty supportive, actually. Was she? She kind of initially was, because I think because I was chatting, because I was chatting to Mike and Mike was like, just go and do it in the Eastman. He’s the Eastman. Would you go and do the Eastman? And I was like, Yeah, I’ll do the Eastman. And I say to her, If we could just rent a flat, you know, above a shop or something. And she was like, What? And then got, got an offer for Edinburgh. So that was an upgrade on, on renting a flat above a shop and, you know, middle of nowhere in London. So she was actually you know, when you paint the picture of how bad it could be, you know, when it’s not quite as bad as that, it’s an upgrade.

So that’s called anchoring.

Correct? Yeah. So she was she was pretty supportive, actually. So we had the practice. I worked in it year one, I worked in it and I went Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday night after I finished in the hospital. And then a Saturday morning. And you look back and think, what the how the hell did I do that? And as the as time went by, we managed to I managed to negotiate a little bit of compressed time in the final year so I could go and work a day in the practice. But it was tough. It was.

Tough. But is there an aspect of, you know, your dad’s a professor, so you wanted this sort of these these letters after your name because, you know, three, four years of Mike Wise to me seems like more. Complicated. More, more, more learning than than an MSC or a or specialist training. Am I wrong about that? Am I?

No, no, I think I think Mike is is is and was absolutely superb. And, you know, his textbook, which I remember, failures. I feel you’re in the restored dentition. Um, brilliant. Brilliant. What a great textbook. I think I spent about a month salary buying that when I was when I was going through the training. And it was worth every penny, I’ll tell you. Yeah. And I used that and everything he had taught I used in the specialist training. And you’re quite correct. You said, you know what, you know people who’ve done Mike for 3 or 4 years and do a good standard of work would sail through it. They would sail through it. And no, there wasn’t really an aspect of of kind of becoming a professor or, you know, doing what my dad did because I just always thought I would I would it would just allow me to do clinical work as well as I could possibly do it in in a practice setting. That’s what I wanted to do. And just do a high standard of care for people. And knowing you’re doing the best thing, knowing you’re doing the right thing. Yeah, that was really the reason for doing it. And it was Mike. My dad didn’t really have, you know, he was encouraging. He’s great. If you want to do it will help you. But, you know, he wasn’t like you Think about it, you know, it’s not, you know, you’ve got to practice. Do you really want to? My dad was pretty much. You’ve got to practice. That’s great. You, you know, fair play. But you know, coming out to that to do this, he was like, you know, not sure. But then when he was maybe he could be a hospital consultant. That’d be good, you know, like me. But I didn’t I didn’t really want to do that.

And what’s one thing that stuck with me when I saw Mike Weiss lecture was this notion of excellence not being a technique or a product, but a but a state of mind. Yeah, And so very true. You know, so very true. Especially these days with digital. We all jump at, you know, a new way of doing something, you know, a brand name or a protocol or a course you’ve been on. And I was lucky to see him when I was just one year out of dental school, I think. And it always stuck with me that that notion, especially in dentistry, where most of the time no one’s looking over your shoulder, right? Yeah. And that doesn’t mean that, you know, we’re going to do something we’re not supposed to do. But, you know, since we know about failure and we know it’s I think we’ve been we’ve been doing this series on mental health with dentists. I think it’s actually one of the reasons why dentists suffer with mental health issues and have always suffered. You know, people say, oh, it’s the GDC. But, you know, dentists 50 years ago in Kansas were having trouble with mental health is because of this sort of failure of the work and having to keep on thinking In 15 years time when this fails, how will it fail? Yeah, it’s a stressor. You know, it’s a stressor. I don’t think surgeons have that same mindset. You know, you do better.

No, I think you’re right. Um, yeah, My dad’s a professor of surgery, and.

You know.

Everything has to comes across. Certainly everything has to be perfect. No corners should be ever cut and everything has to be absolutely just so. But, you know, he does kind of think, you know, I’ve done my best here. I’ve done my best. There’s nothing else we could do. That’s I’m satisfied with that. Whereas at a case today, Phil Arch case five implants in the maxilla, two of them didn’t get the talk, wanted to load so didn’t load them. And I gave the lady a denture and it’s about the lowest I’ve been for about, you know, I don’t know. Just couldn’t believe it. I just, I just was so upset that I couldn’t let her walk out with a fixed bridge. And she was okay about it. But you just think, you know. And looking back, is there anything I would have done differently? No, Just, you know, we just didn’t get insertion talk into the implants and it wasn’t really scoped to to to change the size particularly and thought. And my dad would be we’ve done everything. Nothing has gone wrong here. We’ve done everything right. Um, why beat yourself up and you do beat yourself up. I don’t know what it is. I think it’s because. Is it because it’s a small team? Because you’re in one room, you kind of feel you’re solely responsible because, you know, I guess with a surgeon is a bigger team involved. Sometimes the surgeon doesn’t have that close connection with the patient because they’re rocking up for the procedure. They haven’t maybe done the consult or someone else has done the consult. You know, dentistry, you’re you become more connected to the patient? I think so, yeah. It’s you’re absolutely right, though. And you tend to, you know, these these these little hiccups tend to, you know, you dwell on them and you overthink them.

Yeah. And here we’ve got a situation where no one complained. Yeah. Then you compound on it. Let’s, let’s compound a complaint just to make things really uncomfortable and then a breakdown in relationship and the patient sort of when you were doing your utmost right, you were you you were working so hard to get it right that you’re depressed that something hasn’t gone 100% perfectly. And then someone implies that you were doing something wrong. Yeah. And you can you can see how the stress is compound on each other. And it’s actually giving me PTSD thinking about this stuff because I haven’t I haven’t treated a patient for a long time. Let’s move on to teaching. Yeah. Tell me about teaching and the buzz you get. And, you know, is it is there an element of paying it forward? You know, what people taught you and, you know, that sort of thing.

I think absolutely. Yeah. I think I think you take a little bit from everybody who you’ve you’ve influenced you. Certainly. Certainly I do. And the way that Mike Wise will go back to him again, what a brilliant teacher he was. And I remember amazing, you know, Dental school, you might ask a question and it would some ways you might be ridiculed for asking it, you know, why are you asking that? Come on. Everybody else knows or Mike would never do that. And if somebody he wouldn’t stop until you understood and he would say, look, I’m going to explain that a different way. Do you need me to explain it a third way? Because I’ll explain it a third way. And you’d say, you know, but you wouldn’t be doing that in a in a derogatory sense. You’d be like, you know, you need to understand this concept. And does everybody understand? Because it can’t just be one person here. He’s obviously the bravest one that’s asked, but everyone else, you know, is anyone else on? Sure. So he was very inclusive and I thought that was a great way to teach. So certainly taking those things from him and, you know, the terms of teaching. Yeah, I do. I do really enjoy it, you know, really enjoy it because it’s interacting with people. It’s, I suppose it’s being a wee bit of a showman as well, isn’t it? And it’s testing you, you know, you’re testing yourself as to what do you, you know, so real measure of what you know, your knowledge and your, you know, clinical skills and hands on course. And some of the courses we run, we have a live implant patients.

I’m placing the implant in front of 10 or 12 dentists. So you kind of think in my head could be in my hands in about five minutes time here, you know, But it is a good way of testing yourself, I think, you know, not, you know, showing that you don’t cut corners, showing what you know and explaining it in a in an environment that is conducive to learning. You’re not one that’s conducive to speaking at people, learning you want everyone to because you might learn from the people you’re teaching. You know what they must know. You know, there are things that they will know that you don’t that they can bring to the table. If you have that that that environment in place and a lot of courses we’ve run, people have come up with things or said things or given you tidbits. So that’s a good point. Yeah. And Mike was like that as well. You know, people would ask questions or they would challenge him on things. You’d have to know your stuff. Are you going to challenge Mike Wise? But sometimes they would challenge him and they’d be absolutely right. And he would then change his viewpoint and said, You made a good point there. Have you got some evidence to back that up? And they would and he’d say, Right, okay, I’m going to look at this. And then he’d come back to the next meeting and say, You know, I’ve looked at that. You’re absolutely right. Now, that’s very interesting, You know, and that’s you have to do that as a teacher. You have to, you know, you know, your students can teach you as well.

100%. I think a large part of being a teacher is that you’ve been asked so many different questions and, you know, you’ve learned yourself from answering so many different questions. That ends up being an expert, right? So it’s one of the ways you get expertise. Yeah. So you teach both highly sort of clinical subjects and then some of the sort of more soft skill subjects as well. Yeah. Which do you prefer teaching?

Um, I think the, the clinical stuff I think is, is probably easier to develop a framework for. Yeah. Because you know, it’s a well tested framework isn’t it. It’s a little bit of theoretical knowledge, hands on, supervised hands on feedback, you know that that works very well. So the framework for that is tried and tested and it works well and, and I enjoy doing that. The communication skills stuff that I teach is I think can be more difficult because it doesn’t have the same type of framework. If to create that framework, you’re right in a in a soft skills in that type of if you want to call it soft skill, it can go off at tangents. And the communications course that we do. I have an actor that comes along and we do mock consultations and things. Sometimes the actor will go off on a tangent and sharp and and you really have to be on your toes for that. So yes, I find that I enjoy them both, but I think that, you know, both have different challenges. But I think the soft skills and particular communication, one can put you a little bit more out of your comfort zone, but and you try to develop a framework for that as much as is possible and I think have that down now. But it is a good one as well.

What’s the basis of your communications course? Give me some some highlights, because we all we all suffer with not all of us. But but, you know, as a profession, we tend to have trouble on the communication side. I find my personal bugbear is the dentist speaking out loud. Everything that’s in his head. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And you know, your patient’s not interested or needs to know everything in your head. They need to know another thing, which is, you know, the bit for them.

Yeah. So a lot of the that you illustrated that as a fairly common thing that we see. And when I was a trainer, you would you would sit in on the consultations or, you know, doing these assessments for your vet. And that’s exactly what they would do. They would almost exactly just splurge at the thought process like they were splurging at an exam answer and you’d see the patient becoming confused and the basis for it really is something called patient related outcome measures. And of course, to make that’s an important thing. And we know it’s important because it has its own acronym, and everything with an acronym must be important. So it’s proms and proms are the way the way I would approach proms is I might say to the patient, Payman, nice to see you today. Um, are you in? You’re in to see me for an oral health assessment. Is there anything you’d like me to look at in particular? And if you said, Well, yeah, you know, I’ve think I’ve got broken tooth rather than launching into any options, I’d say, okay, you know, examine your mouth. I might say, look, can I just ask you out of ten we’ll come to deal with that. Can you just give me a list of your priorities? I’m going to ask you to score this out of ten for me, if you don’t mind. Longevity of what we do, you know, invasiveness of what we do, cost of what we do, the time and how good it looks, something like that. And you might then give me some scores out of ten. That’s okay. Based on what you’ve told me. Sounds like the appearance and longevity are important to you. If I got that right and you say, Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Cost is less of an issue, you might say, Well, cost is always an issue. Okay, well, but it’s not as high as those priorities. Am I right in thinking and scoring out of ten and getting a priority list, I think are really important ways to to essentially create a shared treatment plan with your patients. And when we were doing a specialist training, they brought up a consultant from London called Peter Briggs, who came to speak to us over over a couple of days and he was absolutely fantastic. Speaker Have you ever heard him speak? Be really first rate speaker And he was talking about just this, the communication. He spent about half a day talking about proms and how we communicate to patients. And really it’s a combination of things, like I’ve just said, but also having a database in your head of survival data. So if someone says, I want to last as long as possible, okay, well, you know, you don’t have to quote the paper, but you might say these you know, given the condition of this tooth, you might expect this. The last X amount of time given the condition of this too. So given the condition of the environment in your mouth for a resin bonded bridge, you might expect this to last, you know, 80% of these last five years. So there’s a four out of five chance this will last for five years, you know, and so on. That’s the way they want it explained rather than, you know, getting really boiled down to nitty gritty. And, you know, that’s what we try to instil on these communication courses and it works well.

So when you ask for these out of ten scores, do you not kind of get the same scores from everyone?

Not, not, not always, no. Or some people might be hesitant. They might say, oh, I don’t know, but you just use.

It as a framework to get that feeling of both parties being involved right.

Out of ten is an easy thing because you don’t have to say how is important? Is this to you? I don’t know. I’m not sure. Give me out of ten how important. And they might say, look, most people will actually will will play. We’ll play along. They’ll say seven, nine, whatever. Um, or they might say, look, I don’t know but that’s important. That’s see, So you then stratify it for them and say, look what you’ve told me. The hierarchy appears to be this. Have I got that right? And based on what you’ve told me, the important things to you, this is what This is how I plan your treatment. Because you’ve told told me these things are important to you and I’m giving you a solution to make sure you get those important things that are important to you. And that then means they’re like, Well, yeah, that’s reasonable. That’s not like you’re trying to convince me to have this treatment done that I don’t need done.

The other thing, dude, I think gets ignored quite a lot is that an expert talks about things in a different way to someone who’s not an expert. And by the way, an expert doesn’t have to mean, you know, Mike White. You could be an expert at Invisalign. Yeah. When you when you talk to the patient about that because, you know, you can deliver you talk to them with authority in a relaxed way, in an in an educational way. And the link between clinical expertise and communication expertise, we haven’t really we see them as almost two separate things. I mean, the way I framed the question was exactly that, wasn’t it? Do you prefer the clinical or do you prefer? But actually, when you know you really can deliver, you can relax in the communication piece? Yeah, for sure. And it’s a good point because, you know, when when I was thinking about what you do, it sort of felt like they were opposites. But in many ways it’s one in the same thing, isn’t it?

Absolutely. I think you make the point very eloquently there. Yeah. And of course, you’ll you’ll communicate confidence when you’re confident in what you do. You know, you will. That happens at any walk of life isn’t it? You know you will and you’ll have doubts and things like that. Everyone has doubts. I was listening to if you’ve seen that Boris Becker documentary, it’s on Apple TV right now.

I’ve heard about it. No, haven’t seen superb.

Yeah, but Novak Djokovic is interviewed on it. He was coached by Boris Becker. And, you know, Novak Djokovic looks like this kind of tennis cyborg. Completely unstoppable, isn’t he? But he basically talks about having doubts and he says basically, you have as long as you’ve done something enough and you’ve got the expertise, your self-belief overcomes the doubts. And that’s kind of what you’re describing. And you’ve done things enough, you know, the ins and outs, you know the pitfalls, you know what can happen. That then comes across as confidence and in your communication. So yeah, you’re right. It does go hand in hand.

How much of your work is by referral now? Fixed pros is a funny it’s a funny thing. You don’t get enough referrals because everyone thinks they can do it themselves.

Yeah, it’s. Yeah, I know you should have gone into Endo or you know, probably the vast majority of it is referral. Is it? Is it? We do, you know, work hard with local practices to support them. And you know, we put on various courses and educational events and and whatnot in an effort to do that and that, you know, they don’t send us everything, but they’ll send us some things. And that’s that’s usually enough. And then those patients that come through word of mouth, you’ll get other patients. So in a referral you get and it might be safer, let’s say make a michigan splint. You’re like, Oh God. But actually, you know that Michigan splint, you deliver that well, you know, communicate well. Patient has a good experience. They’ll tell somebody and someone else will come to you for something else. And we’ve seen that time and time again. So, yeah, we do work hard. You’re right, it’s harder to get the fixed prosthodontic referrals because as you quietly say, you know, Prosthodontics is probably a little bit like it’s like a it’s like a like a general practitioner on steroids a little bit, isn’t it? You know, it’s like it’s probably the speciality most connected to everyday dentistry in a way. That’s probably why I went into it, because it felt like, you know, the problems I was seeing the. I wanted to be able to solve in my own clinical practice.

And do you do you sometimes I bet you sometimes get sent patients who are just difficult to manage from the psychological perspective.

Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, you do get those. And they’re challenging. There’s no easy answer to those patients. And sometimes you you think, Oh, I don’t know what the problem is here before and you’re halfway through the treatment before, you know, flags are the flags are hoisted and you think, oh, God. But yeah, you do get the challenging patients and all you can do is, you know, communicate well and offer solutions. And if they want the solutions, do the best you can. And if you don’t feel you can help the patient, then I think it’s important to say that I think a lot of people are guilty of that. You say, look, I don’t think I’m the best person for this because of X, Y, or Z. And, you know, people might get upset with you better getting upset at that time than than, you know, once you’re you’re in there in the midst of treatment, you know, and often yeah, we’ll have that conversation. So like you know your particular problem is this and I just don’t think I’m the best person for this and the best person for this would be Payman a great job.

You know, and you’ve got guess you’ve got a couple of guys who you can send those to. Yeah, the hierarchy of body dysmorphic syndrome.

We have a local, a local network where we helpfully, you know, send a pre-warning text. Listen, I’m sorry apology first, but I’ve just let you know I’ve sent you this patient. Um, but yeah, yeah, we have a little, a little a local group who could probably, you know, probably call my colleague up and say, Would you help me out with this or would you be keen to see this person and go from there? Yeah.

So you seem like a bit of a super dentist, dude. You know, you’ve got the clinical side all sewn up, but all sewn up. You’ve got a lot of a lot of experience and qualifications in that area. You’ve got the communication side. Tell me, tell me what you’re really bad at. Are you bad at running a practice? Are you bad with people? Tell me. Tell me you’re bad at something, right?

Yeah. No, I’m well and I’m about to end. You would not want to see me, Fernando, The.

How do you how do you like employing people that whole running a business?

I find it difficult. I don’t think it’s an easy thing. I think it’s a very challenging thing. We do some work with Chris Barrow and he’s he’s helped us out enormously. And the reason that we need Chris Bowers, we needed help. And it is difficult because, you know, it’s a busy job and you’ve got to spend, you know, running the practice’s a busy job and working working. The clinic’s a busy job. How do you do both? How do you do them both? Well, So it is it is a challenge running a practice. I would say we we do our best. We try to follow Chris’s guidance. We implement his things. But, you know, it’s not it’s not it’s not plain sailing. Anyone will tell you who runs a practice, runs a business. You all know yourself, you know, managing people, you know, managing everything. Seems like it’s going smoothly. And some, you know, suddenly, you know, you get a unexpected blip on the horizon occurs and that’s you could be it’s like the Baz Luhrmann song you could be sitting on set. You’re worrying about what’s going to happen. And then on a Tuesday, I don’t know where you get blindsided by somebody crashes into you. You know, that’s that’s kind of what it’s like, isn’t it?

But you’re right. You’re right about the question of working in the business and working on the business question, because it’s very skewed in the industry. You’re very much not working on the business. If I think about my day, it’s very much the opposite way around that I’m working in the business for a very minority part of it, but on the business much more. It’s problematic in the industry, but it’s not the first time Chris Barrows come up, did you did you find yourself thinking, We’re in trouble, we need help? But what was it like that, or was it an optimisation story? Like was there something that was really culturally wrong or, you know, can you do you want to tell me about that or no? Was it like trying to make yourself the best you can be like you’re doing with your pros?

Well, it was actually just after after we finished Pros, I kind of thought, well. Just on this training, I think we’ve got a decision to make. We’ve had a practice that, you know, as I’ve been working in bits and pieces while I’ve been doing my training, and if I want to make it a specialist practice, I’m going to spend a lot of money on it, you know, buying the equipment that I’ll need, refurbishing it because it would need a refurb at that time. Or I could just sell it and I could just go and work in a referral clinic. And that’s kind of what I wanted to do. So we brought Chris on board with a view to doing that, and I did work in a referral clinic and had a great time there, fantastic bunch of people. And Chris just kind of said, okay, here your brief, your brief is you want to sell this, you want to go and work in the field, that’s fine, you said, but have you totally lost interest in having a practice? Well, no, no, I quite like the idea. Well, why not grow the practice, you know? And then his his advice to me was, you know, the best thing you can probably do is grow this practice yourself. And then, you know, the, the remit we gave him was, you know, something he said he wouldn’t recommend. So we kind of changed that and we decided to, you know, develop the practice and go from there.

And so that’s kind of how it how it went. And, um, yeah, running the practice, having Chris on board. Yeah, it’s you just don’t really, you just don’t know what you don’t know. It’s one of those isn’t it? And he comes out, you know, he’s got all these frameworks and he’s probably the market Leaders and he for Dental business coaching and you just think, my God, you know, this, this is just, you know, we haven’t been doing any of this. This is horrendous. No one teaches you any of this. And then when we started implement it initially, we implemented it with a view to saying we are going to sell this, but then we start implementing it and putting sweat and energy and, you know, money into it. You think, well, actually I don’t want to sell it now. Um, and Chris’s advice was, No, I don’t think you should. And my wife still wanted to and was still really keen to have this job at the other clinic. And it was a good job and a great team there. And um, but then you start putting all the effort into that, your, your original practice, you’re to get it into a position where you think we could sell this now and then you think, well, I don’t know now. And I’ve spent all this energy and time.

Now. It’s a much better business than the one you wanted to get rid of.

Yeah, absolutely. And you really enjoy working there. We’ve got a great team, lovely people.

Is it no longer a mixed practice or is it still.

It’s a little bit of a mixed bag. So we’ve got we’ve got meself we’ve got a clinical dental technician. We’ve got one of my associates who’s does a lot of implant work, and we’ve got two general dentists and a hygienist. So you have a busy little team.

Are you doing all on floor as well?

Yeah, Yeah, we do.

Oh, nice.

So, yeah, it’s a it’s a busy little team and it’s a it’s a good team. And we do, you know the approach we want to we hope we have is open door. You know we work as a team. You know, like today, for example, this case myself and my associate both working together as a pair. And we do that a lot and it’s a nice way to work. It feels a bit more like a hospital, you know? Kind of. Yeah. You’re not stuck in one room with one person, so we’re kind of in and out of each other’s rooms. One of our new dentists that’s joined us semi recently, she was actually a delegate, one of my courses and she does she’s a general dentist, but two days a week she just comes and sits with me nurses or carries out some some stuff under my supervision sheet. And that’s you know, she’s enjoying that I think. I hope. And but it’s a nice way, you know, you kind of working you’re doing a bit of teaching as well then, you know, so you can have it. I guess you can create the practice you want. And that’s kind of the environment I want.

And do you bother with marketing or not?

Do we don’t we don’t spend a lot of money on it.

Consumer marketing. I’m not talking about professional.

We don’t spend an awful lot of money on it. Chris Barrow’s approach is that he’s he’s a big advocate of low cost marketing, you know, market to your existing client base market to your, you know, social media. Yes. Newsletters. Yes. You know, business cards. Yes. Ask for referrals. So we do all that, of course, in terms of like a marketing campaign on the side of a bus. No, in terms of TV adverts, radio adverts. No, we don’t do that. We’ve never done that. Chris You know, as I say, you have to take you know, you’re paying an expert to listen to the experts advice. His advice is it won’t give you a return in his experience. So we don’t do it. And his view is very much you market to your services to referring dentists and you do those things that we’ve previously described study clubs and engage with them and newsletters and help them out with things that they don’t want to do, do those horrible stuff that you don’t want to do either but do to help them. And we do that and we do the other things. I mentioned the low cost marketing, but we don’t do big campaigns.

What about the podcast? How did that come about? You seemed like a busy guy.

I tell you, it came it came about because of this low cost marketing. I read a book called Dental Practice Hero by an American guy actually from Chicago called Paul Aitchison. And it’s, I don’t know, Paul Aitchison. I’ve never met him. I like the fact he’s from Chicago because I love Chicago, but he’s a what a brilliant book that is. And he has a podcast as well. And he has struck home with me, was doing these little talks. And actually I would encourage people to do this. I did a talk to the local Rotary Club, okay, but 25 people and just went talked about implants and some of the digital stuff we were doing and they’re all kind of sitting there. I thought, God, I’ve bored the you know, they’re really bored with this. And it was just kind of open mouth. Any questions? They were like, Yeah, it was all about cost, you know how much it cost, how much. Out of that meeting, we probably got about 4 or 5 full arch cases. And then from that, the friends and family of those patients 100% worthwhile. So I kind of thought, yeah, this is a great idea. And I was reading Paul Aitchison’s book and he said, You know, one of the biggest things you can do is public speaking to boost your business. He said, Just think about it. You give a good public speech or you do a good lecture. What does everyone want to do at the end? They want to come and speak to you and chat to you, you know, in private say, Oh, that was great, thanks. You know, exchange details, that kind of stuff.

Yeah. And he was saying the best way to do that today to a large audience is a podcast. So from there I thought podcast, I’m going to do a podcast and Chris Bauer did one. So I asked Chris and said, You know, you do two reds and how do I how do I start this? He’s like, You got a laptop? Said, Yeah, you got a microphone? Yeah, that’s it. It’s all you need. I said, Well, how do I even edit it? Is it just, my daughter will do it for you? So Rachel did it for us and yeah, we just started from there and it was basically we just thought, you know, and Paul Aitchison was chatting about what do you want to do your podcast on, you know, and his view was do it on anything, just do it on something Dental But don’t you know it doesn’t need to be groundbreaking, just be a chat. But it’s, it’s, it’s you being a good speaker and getting your, you know and, and. Hopefully entertaining people that they might then think, yeah, quite like that. Wouldn’t mind chatting to this guy or whatever, you know. So that’s how it came about. And I found a good friend, Michael Tang and I were actually at Hattem. We were at Chatham’s Perry Academy. Course we all started chatting about it. I said, Gonna do a podcast? I need a co-host. Michael’s our co-host. And we’re like, Who? Who gets guest one atom? So, yeah, that’s how it all came about. Yeah. So now, so. So Michael is currently taking a bit of a sabbatical from it, so Hatem is now my co-host.

Yeah. So how many episodes do you do with Michael before you start?

We we did about 25. And then with Hatem, we’ve done about five now. I think so, yeah. We took a break and the reason for that break was, um, I did a big, big running challenge so that, that kind of, that, that resulted in me taking a bit of a sabbatical off the podcast by the time I was ready to redo it. And Michael was, was, was up to his eyes in various ventures he was in. So he’s going to come back. But um, yeah, we’ll get that sorted out at some point soon.

And so now, okay, I understood the reasons why you started the podcast, but has it evolved from that now? Because my, this, this podcast certainly has. I mean, yeah, I started with similar, you know, selfish intent. Yeah. And, and now it’s the closest thing I’d put it to is like a hobby. Yeah. You know, like. And what is a hobby? You know, something you enjoy doing. Yeah. Something you’re trying to kind of get better at, you know? Um, and whatever comes from it after that, it’s almost like saying, Hey, let’s, let’s play. I played tennis for a hobby. Nothing needs nothing else needs to come from that. I can just enjoy playing tennis. So, you know, I’ve always thought that, you know, you mustn’t even think that the audience I’m talking to the audience at all. Me and you are having a chat. It happens to be recorded. Yeah. And of, you know, simple. Simple as that. It doesn’t always turn out that way, right? Because, you know, sometimes you have chemistry with with a guest and sometimes it’s harder. It’s harder. I find the situations where I’m absolutely sort of love stories of people who get up and leave one country and go to another country and set up practices in those countries. But talking to those people on Zoom is not necessarily as easy because often English isn’t their first language. And so, you know, even though I can connect with someone like that really well, I found on Zoom where you lose that slight, you know, you know yourself, they’re never as good remotely as they are in real life, right? No, that’s a challenge.

Yeah. We our first cluster were all done live. Actually we, we got some, some really decent, some nice equipment actually kind of mixing deck and all this kind of stuff that I have no idea how it works. Michael sort it all, kind of plugged it in and set it up, just spoke into it and it was great because you had the person in the room and as you say, you forget you’re doing a podcast because you’re just having a chat with someone in the same room as you, and then someone will say, Listen to your podcast with with Payman. Did you? Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Um, so we’ve never done it for any commercial interest. It probably would never be any commercial interest in it anyway. Although I did get a message from Buzzsprout, our hosting site, to say you now qualify for advertisements paid. Would you like to? But I don’t think that’s for us. But yeah, you’re right. It’s just part of the attraction. It is a hobby and part of the attraction is you’re chatting to people real. I love chatting to people and getting to know people and just, you know, chatting to anyone. And, you know, I that’s probably why I love America so much because there’s so yeah, people are so willing to talk, aren’t they? You know? Yeah. Everybody is happy to have a conversation so it seems and there’s I love that forward aspect to the states. You know you can just start someone will like you were asking earlier about football start telling you a bit of football shirt here you’ll get a knowing nod which is good as well. Yeah but they’re they’ll say nice shirt is that the and you’ll have a chat and it opens up a conversation which I just love that and that’s really the attraction to the podcast for me is chatting to people, getting to know them, having some banter and, you know, get to hearing their story because you think, Oh, that’s interesting. That’s kind of inspiring what they’ve done. I might steal a bit of that for myself, but, but like your teachers, isn’t it? You know?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we’re on the subject. I need to ask you the questions you ask everyone. Oh, yeah. On on your podcast because I’m sure everyone wants to know your answers, the classic questions. Let’s. Let’s start with your favourite movie.

Yeah, that’s.

Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on. We’ll leave that to the end. We’ll leave that to the end. Let’s let’s ask about your best and worst day in dentistry.

Best and worst day in dentistry. Um. Yeah. I think my best day in dentistry was probably when did the exam finished it, and I met one of the examiners in the hallway who was actually a local specialist exams all finished at this point and she said. I don’t know if I can I’m not going to say anything. But you absolutely nailed That was brilliant. Thank you so much. It just felt good. You know, just it was a culmination of all that, you know, meandering path I took towards specialist training and, you know, the apogee of of all of that and what it involved. And then I felt I did well. But sometimes you always have a little bit of doubt, don’t you? But when somebody else and this person I really respected when they came out and said that it was on top of the world. So that was that was a great day in dentistry, lowest day in dentistry. I’ll tell you, it was probably not long after I qualified being in vet and just feeling totally out of my depth, just thinking. I’ve just spent six years in dental school and actually came out in final year with distinctions in my final kind of thought, yeah, I must, I must know all because I got distinctions in my finals and got into practice was just out of my depth. And I just thought, this is this is when you’re out your depth, you.

Weren’t comfortable with that feeling really.

Painful. It’s miserable and you’re also lonely because it was a, you know, you’re in one room with a nurse who probably hates you because you’re running late all the time and you think, I’ve got there’s nobody around me here and I’m out my depth that that was my worst day in dentistry. And yeah, that was it was a fairly shortly after I think I had. A relative of Sean Connery. Happened to be a patient at the practice, and he came in with a lost post crown, and he asked me if I’d re cement it. And it was obviously a root fracture or something, and I put it back in for him. And, um, but 30 seconds later, he came back with it out again. People waiting like, Oh, my God. And this guy is probably VIP and what have I done? And you know, Truman wasn’t there and it was just a two surgery practice. I just actually thought at that point, this is I’ve had enough. This is not for me. So that was that was my lowest day.

It’s a very difficult year. That first year after or I suppose you were in. But when as you say, you’re very inexperienced and you’re you’re thinking to yourself when things like that go wrong or something happens with the nurse, you keep on questioning whether this was the right career or not because you’re just there. You just got there. And people, people you know, they underestimate that pain. Every I’ve spoken to says it to You were a boss for years, haven’t you? How long how many vets did you have for?

I did. We had a scheme locally called LDF. I’m not sure if that’s across the UK or not. Probably is or something similar will be where I had two trainees at the same time and they both shared the week. And there are other they did half the week with me and half the week in the hospital and we had some exceptional people. We had four of them. There was one girl. She was exceptional, her dad was a dentist and she had done lots of, you know, kind of work shadowing with him and worked in the practice. And she was just brilliant. And it gave her a real head start, I would say, really, because she she knew things. She could visualise things. And that’s probably going back to what we were saying about dental school, how you can’t visualise those concepts and you’ll be asked to understand really complex, complex concepts without any prior knowledge of them. And I think because she was in a dental practice from probably God pro from a toddler, she really got it. And she was really ahead of the game and she was fantastic. And another chap from Northern Ireland, equally brilliant, really good guy. He’s now an oral surgeon down in Bristol. He was brilliant, great guy, really good laugh. Go for a beer with him.

Really got it as well. Just just got it. And the other two I had were, you know, I would say were also very good, not nice people in different ways and have different skill sets and so on. But I enjoyed it, you know, I quite enjoyed it. And they were they would push you, you know, these I would always try and go for the best people, you know, who I thought would get on with, but equally who I thought, this person is going to be pushy. And I thought a lot of people say, why are you taking them? They’re a nightmare. They’re going to be a nightmare. I said, Actually, I kind of want them to push me a bit. I kind of want that challenge. And, you know, they did push. It actually does make you better, you know, for sure. So yeah, I usually went for the ones who the other trainers would say, I’m not taking that one. They’re going to be you’re never going to be at your room and never going to be out. So that’s kind of what I want. And maybe, maybe not, you know, But three months in, you think maybe not. But actually, no, it was the right decision and it was good to do that.

And the there’s a pattern emerging here for me of sort of pigheaded determination coming out of you. We haven’t discussed ultramarathons yet, but when I first heard that, I thought this is a special kind of person whose hobby is ultramarathons. And then I ask you, what’s your favourite day in dentistry? And, you know, qualifying, getting, doing an exam well is good, but you know, it’s that pigheaded determination to get that done and get that guy to say and now this, this that you’re telling me.

Yeah. No yeah the, the old I suppose there is a bit of that bit of self-flagellation, you know, make it difficult, you know. Um, I don’t know. It’s actually funny. Again, we spoke about it earlier, that Boris Becker documentary, he was talking about the same thing. He was almost saying that, you know, he would be playing a match and he’d be playing an opponent who was probably ranked significantly below him, and he wouldn’t kick into life until things got difficult. And you’d be two sets down or you’d make life hard for himself almost to spur himself on. He couldn’t get the adrenaline rush until it was difficult. Yeah. And yeah, that kind of chimed with me a little bit. Sometimes you need that push or that challenge because I just go for an easy life and I just I’ve tried it. I just can’t do it. I can’t sit by a pool for two weeks. It’s just I just can’t do it. It just get annoyed or bored or just irritable, you know? It’s got to be challenging. Then when it’s challenging, you think, Oh, God, if I could only just sit by a pool, love it, you know, can’t win. Um, but that’s probably where the ultramarathon thing came from.

Were you running a lot before you started doing your first ultramarathon, or did you suddenly decide I am going to do ultramarathons?

No. Um, I didn’t really know about ultramarathons. I started doing it was 2008. I taken over a practice in 2006. I was not a fit person. I would probably struggle to run a mile and my dad had taken up marathon running some marathon running about five years previously and he was looking really fit and he’s, you know, 25, 26 years older than me. On November. Obviously I’m going to be staying with me came across for a weekend or something, he said. He said, I’m going to go for a run. I said, All right, I’ll come with you. He’s like, you, you won’t manager. So that was it. I said, Really? Um, and I said, Right, okay. So I went out for a run. He was right. Didn’t manage it. And then I said, Look, when’s the marathon? He’s like, It’s me. I said, I’m going to sign up to that marathon. He said, No, I’m not joking. You won’t manage it. So I then just got myself in shape and did the marathon and beat him, which was great. Um, and people say I met my nurse at the time. She was from Berlin and her brother had just done the Berlin Marathon and she said, Oh, my brother did the marathon. And as soon as he crossed the finish line, he said, Never again. She said, she’ll do it, do it and that’ll be it. And I crossed the finish line and I thought.

Is. I am not seeing that to be big headed here. I just thought I need, you know, enjoyed it, but want to do another one now? I want more. And it was people kind of running around with their medals on and stuff. I don’t know. I just thought I’d put them. I just put the medal in a drawer and I don’t know. I’m not saying that in any way. It’s just what I did. I’m not saying it. I don’t know if it means anything or whatever. I just put it away in a drawer and I want to do the next one. Now I want to sign up to another one. And it’s probably a fear. I think it’s probably a fear of going back to being unfit. That spurred me on. I thought, I’ve done that now. Feel good being fit. It’s not so much the marathon. I don’t want to go back to being unfit, so I’m going to sign up for another one and then another one and have them in the diary and keep doing them. But how often? At least twice a year to like big city ones. And I kind of thought that was the distance. That was it, you know, that was the that was the benchmark until I started hearing about these ultra marathons. I was like, well, that’s that’s madness. That’s not really, you know, which is how.

Many miles.

Technically, it’s anything over a marathon. But in reality they tend to the entry level ones. 50km would be if you’re going to an organised event, 50 k’s would be an entry level and you’ll go 75 k’s will be quite common, 100 k’s, 100 miles, that type of thing. 100 K Yeah. And you think it’s you actually think what you say out loud. That is insanity. You know, how can people do that? Is it even possible? It is possible.

So what’s the longest you’ve done 100 K one?

Oh, I’ve done 100 K one. Yeah. And that was it wasn’t supposed to quite be a hundred K, but I took a wrong turn. And this kind of happens in ultra marathons because a very niche events, there’s sometimes nobody around and it’s not like the London Marathon, you know, the guy putting all the signposts out. And one of the ones we did, I overtook him. This is a guy who’s putting the markers out. So I’m like, where do I go? You know? And you’re asking people, Oh, go left. So he took a left. And then of course, you’re like, Wait a minute, I’ve seen that hill before. They’re like, No, you must go to go, right? Oh, my God. So yeah, it’s full of pitfalls like that. But it’s, um. How long does it take? 100 K one took me about. Oh, I think it’s about ten hours, something like that. Oh, my.

Goodness. Yeah. And what do you do? You stop.

Well, you’ve got to. Yeah, you have to. You have to. Yeah. I mean people have said it’s like an eating contest as much as a running contest. So there are food stations and you have a meal I you properly pasta, lasagne, pan of chocolates I love. I stuffed them down my face as I’m doing ultramarathons. Um, so I did three events like that after COVID and I’ve got chatting to a couple of dentists who kind of did a couple of things with me and I said, Why don’t we? I said, I’ve been watching this documentary on Amazon Prime. This guy called I forgot his name. Sean. Sean Conway. Sean Conway is a guy I think he was a comedian or something, but he became a kind of endurance athlete. And he did this run across Britain and it was Amazon filmed it. It looked like it was good fun, but the Scottish bit looked amazing. I said, I’d love to do that, run across Scotland. So I set up a zoom call with these guys that run with and I said it was this was during lockdown. I said, Who are you? Fancy? And I was actually half hoping they would say, You’re off your head. So I said, Guys, what I’d like to do, who would like to run the length of Scotland? And then the I’ll give you a minute.

So we did a few of these ultra runs, a couple of other dentists. I’ll give a shout out to them. Derek Marner. Ryan Stewart, my associate, and Patty Watson, good friends of mine. And we set up a Zoom call and I said, Guys, do you fancy doing something a bit different? They’re like, And I’d watched this documentary with this guy called Sean Conway, and he’d done a run the length of Britain, John O’Groats to Land’s End and Amazon had filmed it, and it was over two episodes and actually looked actually the Scottish part. Episode one was Scotland and it looked amazing. The English part is probably the route, just didn’t look that good. He was running on motorways and past service stations would look terrible. But the Scottish part, the bit they captured anyway in the film, I thought, that looks immense. So I said to the guys, Look, I’ve been watching this. Who fancies running the length of Scotland? And I expect them all to say, beat it. But surprisingly, nobody said anything. So I thought, Well, that’s a good sign. And before we knew it, we did it. We announced it on social media, we got sponsorship and we we did it. We got coach and we got these guys who supported us, a company called Sandbaggers.

And these are guys are survival experts. And just by luck, they happened to be available because normally these guys are involved with high profile things. For example, the comic relief did the trek across the Gobi Desert. They they organised that. So that’s the kind of level these guys are at. And because COVID had happened, they were available and because COVID had happened, they were also cheap. They were like, Yeah, we’ll do it. We’re free, we’ll do it for you. And they’ve become lifelong friends. And so we did this run from John O’Groats to Gretna Green over ten days, and that is the toughest challenge I’ve ever done. And it was the best challenge I’ve ever done as well. Just, you know, the funny thing was actually when were the times I tell you when the times were getting difficult, when we were really under the cosh, you know, legs falling off, knees exploding. I had to go up two sizes of shoe. You know, I’m a size nine. I had to go up to a size 11 to fit my feet in. And so to buy new trainers size 11 and despite swollen it was so swollen it was the swelling was incredible.

You just carry on running, huh?

It’s funny. Your body is a remarkable machine. You know, you kind of think there’s a threshold, but actually the threshold you think there is, you can go way beyond that, you know, way beyond it. And there were many times we wanted to quit. Many times we thought, this is it. We’re done, all of us individually. And, you know, the rain chucking down on you and then you suddenly get a second wind, You get this kind of endorphin rush. And the last day, which you probably thought would think would be the worst day was the best. We all ran. Well, you know, I think it was our quickest time. And we were all strapped up with tape and bandages and knees all taped up and ice packs. And we we were like greased lightning in the last I don’t know quite what happened, but it was funny. And I’m not saying this to be negative in any way, but when it got really tough, all of us said, You know what? It could be worse. You could be working in a dental practice. But you know what? That that did get us through because it is a tough job. It is a tough job. And doing that run actually, when you come, it teaches you so much about adversity because when you come across a tough time, tough challenge, be it in life, in your clinical practice, whatever, you can draw on those experiences and use them. And that was really why it was hugely worthwhile for for me. But yeah, it was a it was a fantastic thing. I’d love to do something like that again. So if any of the guys are listening to this, I would suggest running Holland next because it’s nice and flat. So we’ll do that next running.

Holland But you are. Nutter You are Nutter Like, I get that from my two minute cold shower. Yeah. Honestly, it’s been difficult to build up to two minutes in a cold shower, but get some sort of resilience out of that. Yeah.

Yeah.

You’re running How many miles? How many miles? I’m sure you’re more resilient than I am, but how many miles did that come to? Ten days, more or less.

500 miles. Oh, my God. So, yeah, more or less. 500 now. But it introduces you to people who are I mean, these guys sandbaggers. Just these guys are unbelievable survival experts. Some of the stories they had, you know, digging out snow holes in the Antarctic, you know, they were both ex-military. And you think these guys have really seen some some action in life. And we were also coached by a guy called Donnie Campbell. He’s no relation to me, but we were put in touch with him. He was in the mainstream media because during lockdown, I don’t know if you know, in Scotland there are hills called Munros. Monroe is a there’s about 4 or 500 hills in Scotland, and they’re measured to a certain height. And if you reach that height, you become a monroe. And people make a lifetime’s ambition to try and climb all the munros. There’s there’s hundreds of them anyway. Tony did every single Munro up and down and he got between them on his own steam, either by bike, by running or by kayaking. He did it in 30 days. Wow. Unbelievable. This man is a. So you’re trying to talk to him about your running across Scotland? And he’s like, Yeah, come on, guys. This is a, you know, a piece of piss, you know? And that’s kind of what you needed someone like that to say, This is a piece of piss. Get your ass in gear, you know, and would say, I can’t fit into my shoes here. I’m going to get you a bigger size. Shut up. Put the bigger size on. Just get going. Yeah, he was it was great. Great to be around these kind of people, you know, just. Yeah, totally different, you know, into what the type of people you encounter in your day job, you know. And it was a great, great, great adventure. I’d love to do it again and probably will do it again, but I’d like to do it with a group again. The same guys would be great if I can convince them.

I think the closest I’ve come to anything like that is, you know, skiing when you go off piste and all that. And there are moments where it’s dangerous. There are moments where you’ve hurt yourself and all that, but at the end of it, it just feels so great. Absolutely. It just you feel alive.

You feel alive. You a sense of danger. You need that to make you feel alive.

Yeah, I ride the electric bikes in London for that reason. Because it’s funny. You risk your life quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And. And it’s the only time I’m fully alert is when I’m on an electric bike. During a normal day. You know, a normal day. I’ll take an electric bike anywhere or sometimes in a circle. Just that feeling. Yeah. There’s a bus coming, there’s taxis going, and then the acceleration you get from it. I don’t know if you must have ridden them when you, when you the little bit of acceleration you get from it just reminds you of when you were six, when you know a normal bike was exciting.

This could go anywhere here. Yeah.

Let’s get back to the let’s get back to the Rishi Sunak question then, which we should give. We should we should give a history of what that means. Go on, mate. Explain to the listener what that means.

Yeah. One of the questions that Hatem and I ask in our podcast is that we are not blowing our own trumpet, but Rishi Sunak is a is a huge fan of my podcast. And he often he often calls me up and says, Listen, can you ask your guest, you know, payments coming on? Can you ask Payman how he would fix NHS dentistry? So that’s that’s the Rishi Sunak question on our podcast.

How do you do it? What I do to.

Fix NHS.

Dentistry.

So my answer on your podcast was give everyone a money voucher that they can use at any dentist. Not everyone means test that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

I think it has to be means tested. You’re right. It does have to be means tested because dentistry is expensive to deliver. There’s no two ways about it. And equally I think the one the one thing a dentist can do, the probably the most important thing any dentist can do is the relief of pain. And I think that’s probably our most important skill we have, is to be able to relieve somebody of pain. And I don’t think that should be denied to people that people must be able to access that. So I do think there has to be an NHS dentistry for that reason. Now does it need to extend to things like cosmetic dentistry and, you know, different types of cast materials? I think it probably doesn’t, but equally in terms of those things might be appropriate for somebody to prevent a problem such as, you know, it could become a more expensive problem. So I think you’re right. I think a means testing thing is certainly going to be important. I think having the relief of pain and the prevention of disease as the two core principles are also things that should be the pillars of it. But I do think it needs to be stripped back, and I think it’s going to be very difficult to keep pace with the technology. I mean, you look at the way the industry is going, you know, who’s the biggest player in the dental industry? Is it struggle? Is it is it reshape? Is it Invisalign? It’s probably one of those, isn’t it? It is.

None of that. None of them. Yeah. And none of them are going to be involved in the NHS any time soon. And if they’re the biggest players they’re going to drive the technology. And if they’re driving the technology, that’s what people are going to use to deliver the care. So how do you then, you know, provide care using technology that’s been driven by the private sector? In a state sector, it’s very, very difficult unless, as you say, you means test it and unless you stratify it to to being principle based, it’s relief of pain, it’s prevention of disease. Anything up and above that? Well, you know, it’s either, you know, apply on the basis of exemption or, you know, it’s not available. And in Germany, you know, they have to have their check up passport signed. So I had a number of German patients and also Japanese patients and they would have to get a little book signed like a little passport. And I said, Why do you need this signed? You need to sign this to say that I’ve come for my check-up and I’ve had my teeth checked and you say it’s okay and it’s because if I need to make a claim, I can show that I have done all my everything I can to prevent disease, not just rocked up when I have a problem. And I think that’s also something we should implement.

What do you think, though, Stuart? I mean, maybe, maybe I’ve got this wrong, but you tell me. Scotland people are more sort of socialist is the wrong word. The sort of more aware of their social benefits, more more up for preserving their social benefits than we are down here. Yeah. How do you think culturally this country, Scotland, the UK people are going to be persuaded to save up for their teeth? The ones who are not not going to get the means tested? Benefits of your Rishi Sunak NHS system. You know, like how dear do do people hold their rights and how easy is it to explain to people that it’s actually doing harm?

Yeah, yeah, it’s very difficult. And you’re right, it’s it’s.

It’s a belief. And when something’s a belief, it’s very hard to change that. And yeah, you’re also right. Scotland does have a fairly strong socialist kind of background and there is that.

Good too, right? Good. You get your good university for free or whatever it is.

Yeah, you do. If you’re Scottish and you go to Scottish University, you don’t pay anything. But equally that’s harmful as well. Because where I live in Edinburgh, we’ve got a world class university here, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh doesn’t admit it emits significantly fewer Scots than the other ones, the other universities in this country. And why is that? And it’s because you want to get paid. They want to get paid. Yeah. You know, you’re not, you know, and that’s the danger, the situation, if that’s what the universities are doing. And then you then can’t get the education. You have to go somewhere else to get it. England or and you have to pay. How can you then once you’ve paid into it, how can you then come back and provide this, provide a service for, you know, government issue fees if you’re out of pocket significantly by carrying out your training, it’s going to be quite difficult to reconcile that, I think. But yeah, I mean, I think explicitly, if the University of Edinburgh said we’re no longer going to accept Scottish students, there would be uproar, of course, but.

They’ve just you know, it’s.

My daughters go to a school right opposite. And we see the figures. We see the statistics. How many people get to the university across the road from you. And it’s in the it’s less than double digits, you know, from that school is across the road from the university. It’s a good school. To be fair.

We have that problem with any university that’s got a global name ends up going a little bit in that direction. My friend works at LSC. It’s more than half foreign students now, so I hear you. Can we stay on the Scotland point for I don’t want to get political.

Yeah but.

Brexit. Yeah. And Scottish people and the latest thing that’s happened with the with the whole SNP thing.

Yeah.

Do you see Appetite for Scotland that’s actually an independent and do you see it as as I mean I see appetite for it and listen listen to people but do you see it as something that could actually happen or is it more like a historical sabre rattling I think.

I think it was pretty close.

The last time. Pretty close. Personally, I wouldn’t have been surprised. I actually thought it would have happened personally. I just think it’s, you know, the credibility has been undermined by the fact that we’ve had a number of scandals now associated with the the the SNP who.

Are the ruling party.

And that certainly, you know, from my point of view, that’s that’s tarnished the credibility of them. I’m not a supporter of Scottish independence at all. I think far better being part of the UK, far better being part of the EU as well. But is it close to happening? I think no, I think is the answer. I think it will. You’ll still get there’ll still be a significant minority that will vote for it. But you might be looking at I think last time it was 46% or something that said yes. And I think it’s going to be less than that this time around. I think Nicola Sturgeon is was a very good politician, you know, spoke very well, you know, presented herself on camera very well. But things that put me off a little bit were it was Andrew Marr she was talking to and she said, I despise the Tories. Well, wait a minute, don’t you despise them? You just do. You despise, you know, Rishi Sunak, who gave us furlough payments, You know, that was pretty helpful, actually. Do you despise Winston Churchill, who guided us through a world? You know, you can’t say you despise them. And equally, if you say that your job is to negotiate with them, you know, as the as as the leader of Scotland, you’ve just come out and say in a public forum, you despise the people you’re supposed to negotiate with. So I thought that was poor.

Were you alive? Were you were you awake and alive to the Thatcher years?

Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. Yeah.

That’s really when the Scottish and the Tory party ended up having their sort of massive rift where it felt, it felt like or think the charge was that Scotland was being used as a sort of a testing ground for, for, for policy.

Yeah, I think.

But I’m interested in the conversation that happens in Scotland. In Scotland. Do you do you guys is the conversation saying that I mean there’s £600,000 thing that they’re talking about, right? It’s nothing compared to some of these scandals that’s being I mean, government is about corruption in the end.

Yeah, that’s that’s.

True. Yeah. I mean, compared to me But I suppose it’s it’s been that’s one aspect. But then you had Alex Salmond who also a great politician and a good public speaker and probably very entertaining on something like Have I got news for you that’s kind of what I see him but you know some you know some fairly strong accusations against him which tarnished his credibility and then their fallout. The trouble is, I just don’t think they have anybody credible beyond those two. You know, you look to the wider parts of the SNP and I just don’t see any real statesman there, I have to say. So the other arguments that you often had were, you know, this this stats that got bandied about that we should be the same as Norway, you know, or we should the same as Denmark or Denmark just across the North Sea. We should be Denmark. And the reason we’re not Denmark is because of England. The reason we’re not Denmark is we don’t actually manufacture anything. Have you seen all the things Denmark manufacture? You know, and it seems that the economy here is based on you work for the state, it’s service provision. And if you’re going to be a successful small country, I think you need to manufacture or have some form of investment coming in, not be you know, the economy can’t be state, you know, state services, which it is largely. And the other aspect is my mum’s Irish. And if you look at Ireland, I think there was a similar situation with the history of Ireland whereby they wanted to remain.

And despite the fact they.

Are independent, they wanted to have some connection to the crown. You know, in a union of sorts. And they would they were they were essentially denied that the ruling powers didn’t want them, so they had to go off on their own. And now Ireland is a pretty successful small country now, but it’s taken a hundred years from the time they were cut off. Really 100 years and 100 years is quite a long time.

But dude, how how does it break down? Does it break down in families? You get one brother who does want independence and one brother doesn’t. Or does it break down along political lines or social lines or like how like, what’s the inside track and what’s the conversation going on? Is it like Brexit was here where you literally get arguments over the dinner table? Because I’ve never met a prouder nation, you know, of people than the Scots. The Scots are proud. And so in my head I would have thought, you know, that they would be going for independence. But but it’s such a it’s such a the thing is, it’s such a a bond that breaking the bond is going to be so painful.

Yeah, Yeah.

That’s the narrative that’s portrayed. I mean, the SNP, to my mind, have used some fairly aggressive tactics, these kind of rallies they host. And if you’re not an SNP voter then you’re not, you’re not real Scots.

You’re is that is that is that is that like a subtext?

Yeah, it is a subtext.

You know, and people carrying signs to, you know, I don’t know probably blown out proportion a little bit but the media was covering these these SNP voters who were standing at the border and telling people to go back to England, all this kind of stuff. You think that’s almost Trumpian? You know, I don’t want to be part of that. That’s not acceptable. And, you know, I’m Scottish. Like Scotland, patriotic, you know, ran the length of the country. Love it. But you kind of want what’s best for it. And I just don’t think that being governed by the SNP is a separate country is best. I just don’t think that. But yeah, to answer your question, there are arguments over dinner tables. I mean my uncle is a believes we should be independent. You know I’m very close to my uncle. Good guy. We meet up a lot. I can’t talk to him about it. He’ll just argue with me. So we don’t we don’t talk about it. And he knows I’m totally opposed to it. And, you know, equally, you know, he’s a bit like that. There is a bit of a division, but I think now it’s it’s probably getting to the stage where it’s it’s in favour more of of union I hope. But I think the thing is the union, the people who are in favour of the union don’t shout and scream about it. The people who are in favour of as much as loud.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We should bring it to a close. I still got some questions. Your questions that need answering. Oh, we have. So who’s your biggest influence in the industry?

Mhm.

Yeah. Um, I probably have to say in terms of. Yeah, we’ve talked about Mike Wise, I think Mike was a huge influence because the, you know, I mean, I was just, you know, I went to, to do Mike’s courses really, I was just a. Gdp from from from nowhere, really. And, you know, I was saying I’d love to have done specialist trainings first thing in the past and. He was like, You should do it and you could do it and it’d be very encouraging and just give you a belief and was gave up his own time. He wrote me a letter of recommendation, had a couple of phone calls and a couple of emails with him. Hugely helpful guy. And you kind of think when somebody as influential as that tells you you could totally do this, you believe it. You know, before that you think times past, I can’t do that. It’s not, not for me. So he Mike was a real huge for younger for.

Younger dentists who might not have heard of him. You know, arguably the best dentist this country has ever produced.

Credible, credible. Some of the work he.

Was doing, just the attention to detail. And, you know, the fact that, you know, just, you know, everything, he just he just everything was connected and you had to do it all. And he was a specialist in restorative and a specialist in oral surgery, for goodness sake. I mean, to.

I didn’t know that. Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, the work he was carrying out was just ahead of its time, wasn’t it? It was mind blowing stuff. But equally he would put the same effort into doing a simple filling. Yeah. You know, and he would talk to you about how to do this properly and you’re not, you know, because I’m doing an occlusal composite, I’m still going to do it properly. I’m still going to understand the bonding. I’m still going to research it. I’m still you know, he was unbelievable, really. And his knowledge of all the studies, his knowledge of the, you know, up to date stuff, the classic stuff, really phenomenal. So, yeah, he was he was a big, big influence. And during the specialist training, yeah. A lot of the guys have mentioned there, you know hugely helpful to me, big influences and chuckle Graham Lillywhite, who was a consultant that supervised our training, again, hugely knowledgeable, hugely skilful, but took the work seriously but didn’t take himself seriously. And that was, you know, great guy. Yeah, brilliant. Um, so yeah, they were, they were big influences on me.

Your favourite movie.

Favourite movie. I’ll tell you what it is. Would just come back from Chicago. So I’m going to give you this. This is probably my favourite movie. Changes a lot, but always come back to this one. It’s called Hoop Dreams. It is a phenomenal film, great film. It’s a documentary and it’s incredible how they made it set in Chicago. And it follows two young high school students from fairly rough neighbourhoods in Chicago. One’s called Arthur Agee and the other chap, I forgot his name now, but they are budding basketball stars and they’re their documentary filmmaker follows them from at the age of 9 or 10 up until they’re about 20. And, you know, they both have the talent to become basketball players professionally or at least get to college on a basketball scholarship. And essentially, it’s about that journey. And despite the talent, despite everything, if the environment is not there to support you, you can become, you know, chopped down to nothing. It’s a great movie. As I say. It’s incredible how they managed to have the, you know, I guess persistence and discipline to follow those guys over over almost a decade and make this film, which is it’s a great movie. Hoop Dreams.

A beautiful movie. Last time we spoke, you were talking about the Muhammad Ali one I forget the name.

Yes, I do like documentary films. I do like sports. Sports documentaries? Yeah.

When We Were Kings was Muhammad Ali. One When we were kings.

When we were.

Kings. Again, just could watch that every day. Great film. It’s essentially about Muhammad Ali in the lead up to his famous world title fight against George Foreman. And if, you know, people wonder about other people having doubts and they wonder about the best people having doubts, I mean, this guy was called the greatest, Right? And this captures the doubts and almost how he talked himself out of the doubts to achieve probably to my mind, what’s the greatest sporting achievement of all time? Because George Foreman was unstoppable and Muhammad Ali was past his best and he just spent three years in jail, you know, because of his you know, he wasn’t he didn’t he didn’t want to go to to Vietnam, quite rightly. And he was jailed for it. And he came out of jail having not fought a fight. And this is not the same fighter. And he was beaten up by, you know, the guys who George Foreman had eviscerated. And it was, you know, just the magnetism of Muhammad Ali, the lead up to it. You thought you could see his camp. They thought this guy is just the most magnetic personality and we’re actually sending him to his death here. They feared for his life. Yeah. And he had the belief and the you know, what he calls the repetition of positive affirmations to believe that it doesn’t matter, I’m going to beat this guy. And equally in the ring, his tactics went out the window because he tried to go for a quick knockout. And George Foreman just kind of looked at him to say, is that all you got? And he said, right, I’m going to have to just get this. This guy’s gonna have to punch me now. I mean, he must have taken some punishment in that fight. My God. But what a great film that was. So, yeah, when we were kings, Fantastic.

The favourite album.

Favourite album.

Yeah. Should have the answers to these on the tip of my finger. Shouldn’t I tip my tongue? Right. And probably the first album I bought, which I convinced my mum to buy me, which was Appetite for Destruction by Guns N Roses. And I still listen to that and I can still play it all the way through. And it’s one of those ones that you just think brilliant. And I remember playing at the primary seven disco and the teacher sort of agreed because Welcome to The Jungle was in the charts and that was okay. And then the second song came on, which is called It’s So Easy, and it has an F word in the in the in the chorus. And everybody in the class is like inanely giggling. Mrs. McIntosh, my teacher confiscated the tape. Oh, got it. Um, but yeah, that’s certainly still a favourite album. But alongside that, I do like, um, Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street. I could play that start to finish, um, quite like a bit of bluesy music. And also Ice Cube, the Predator is another one could play Start to finish. Got into a bit of Ice Cube when I was in high school and I do like him. Um, that’s a good album, that one.

Very nice man. That eclectic choice. Our final questions. Fantasy dinner party.

Oh, free game. Yeah.

Dead or alive?

Dead or alive? Yeah. No, I kind of thought you might ask me this, so I decided I would. I did think about it, so.

So I’ll tell you.

I’ve just come back from Chicago, so I would have Michael Jordan there and I’d have Michael Jordan there. Just because you’ve probably seen The Last Dance, which is the documentary on Netflix about Michael Jordan’s last season.

I’ve heard. I’ve heard.

Phenomenal. But I just love to ask him just to chat to him about his essentially discipline. You know, this guy was he just he never let up, even when he was so far ahead. He just didn’t let up and practice games. His team-mates kind of hated him because he was so tough on them in practice. And as well as that, just the foresight of the guy. I mean, Nike, Air Jordans for a start. I mean, he negotiated that. And you know, if you read about how he negotiated the Air Jordan thing, he knew what he was doing, you know, and he knew that was going to be successful. And equally, the other thing I’d love to ask him about is at the height of his fame, at the height of his success, he took two years out to go and try and play baseball.

You know, I wasn’t aware of that. He sacked it off. He went to play for the Chicago White Sox and.

He he wasn’t Michael Jordan in basketball. He was not the Michael Jordan of baseball.

I’ll tell you. So, yeah, to have the.

You know, the, I guess.

The.

The determination.

Or humility.

Humility. Right. Humility to start again in another sport.

And he was playing in what they call the farm leagues at the time. And I remember it because I was into basketball and I would read we had actually basketball on Channel four, if you remember that NBA stuff we had on Channel four. And as a result, you get a bit of coverage in the paper. And remember, Michael Jordan quit the Chicago Bulls after they won what they call the three peat. They won three NBA titles in a row. And they said, oh, Jordan, just unstoppable. And he quit to go and play baseball and was what? It’s insane. And because he thought he could be a he at one time, he thought he could be a professional baseball player or basketball player. I wasn’t sure which. And as you say, to go from the heights and the fame to essentially taking the Chicago Bulls actually kept his contract going. So they still paid him. So he was still getting paid. They paid him in the hope he would come back, but he said he wasn’t going to come back, but he was playing for a farm league, you know, with guys who were, you know, part timers who were actually quite keen to injure him and show this guy, you know, and as you say, interesting just to know about that that that get a bit of chat about that and I’d love to ask him about all that And then the comeback after a bit like Ali after two years he was out you know the bulls had been overtaken, other teams had won. And he came back and said, we’re going to win again. And it was a bit motivating himself and the team to do the same thing again. So, yeah, Michael Jordan would be in their second, I’d have to say Barack Obama. Yeah. Chicago guy again, my cousin. Hello, Ollie, if you’re listening, is my cousin’s American. He lives in Seattle and he worked for the Obama administration.

Oh, really? Yeah, he’s got some fantastic photos.

Yeah, my aunt has a great.

Our Facebook profile is her meeting Obama.

It’s brilliant and all. He just tells me what a guy you know, he’s he also has done some work for the Biden administration currently and he worked a bit for Gore. But some of the things he says about Obama, he’s just, you know, just a great, great guy. And I just love to love to chat to him. No, you’re right. So I think I think he’d be a good dinner guest.

What an orator. Have you heard the podcast of Obama and Bruce Springsteen?

No, I have not.

Oh, excellent. Dude, it’s Spotify only. It’s called. It’s called Born in the USA. It’s like seven episodes. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Obama just talks the best. I think he talks better than anyone else in the world.

Yeah, he’s amazing. Amazing. And, you know.

His knowledge of history.

And.

I know he obviously history.

And you would.

Think the knowledge of history and geopolitics has probably comes with the territory, but probably doesn’t, you know, we’ve seen that. So yeah, he just came across as so knowledgeable and love love to chat to him. So he’d be number two. Number three, if we chatted about Muhammad Ali and what an enigmatic personality. And I think, you know, we’d love to have Muhammad Ali there, but the problem is I’d never get a word in edgeways. And so instead of Muhammad Ali, I would say Larry David kerb your enthusiasm.

Oh, he’s.

Emma’s number three.

Amazing.

Because don’t you don’t you find yourself.

Nodding in agreement with Larry?

All the scrapes he gets into, You kind of can’t help but think he’s quite correct.

Um, so I’d love to actually be the guy that says, You know what?

You’re quite right, Larry. I agree with everything you say.

So, yeah, I’d love to get Larry David.

On and.

He’d probably fall.

Out with Obama and.

Fall out with Michael.

Jordan in quick succession.

But yeah, so I’ve just realised all the guys have given you a live. So maybe that dinner party could even happen.

You’re a massive fan of Americana, it seems, huh?

Yeah. Love it. That’s my favourite country. It’s just, I suppose.

Growing up in the 80 seconds, America just seemed like the epicentre of everything. And my cousin, who I’ve mentioned, grew up in Southern California in the 80 seconds, and he said to me, It was as good as it sounds.

Um, and you know, you grew up with.

All the movies and all the culture was American and, you know, all the things you coveted, like, you know, Nike, Air Jordans and, you know, Eddie Van Halen’s guitar.

Chicago Pizza Pie. Exactly.

It was all from the States. So, yeah.

Absolutely Love America. And I’ve got some good friends now who are American that I visit regularly. And I just never had a bad time there. It’s such a great place to be. And probably, as you can probably gather, because we’ve been chatting for ages. I love chat to people and.

Yeah, they’re good at that. They love it. Yeah, and it’s great. You know, my.

Understanding, my understanding of that, talking to my American cousins is that they’re very quick to get to a certain point, but then very slow to get past that point, whereas we’re the opposite. We’re very slow to get to that point. But once we decide he’s all right, we’ll talk. We’ll throw everything at it. That’s the way she was explained to me. And that’s a good.

That’s a good.

Explanation. I like that you think you’re quite spot on with that. Yeah.

And I’ve sometimes I’ve been sat on a plane and talked to some guy sitting next to me and. And like, you know, in America it could be a 6 or 7 hour flight. And I think I’ve broken new ground, found a new friend for life because, you know, we just spoke for seven hours here. And then the guy will say, okay, see you later. Bye. Just walk off. You’re like, what happened then? Because we’re so not used to having those conversations so quickly with a stranger, you know? Yeah.

That’s fine. Yeah.

Let’s get to Prav final deep question. Deathbed. Surrounded by your loved ones. Okay. Three pieces of.

Advice. Three pieces of advice I’d give to my loved ones.

On my deathbed. Okay. I think when it comes to a challenge and I think this is the greatest.

Slogan in marketing.

It’s just do it. You know, think Nikes. Just do it. When it comes to anything that you.

Find a challenge.

Or you think is going to be a challenge. I think just.

That’s what I would say. Just do it. Jump.

Go for it. Yeah. The number of times.

The things I’ve done that have been most.

Worthwhile have been, you know, things I could.

Have quite easily.

Avoided and no one would have criticised me for.

It.

But because I’ve done them, you know, I think the hardest part is doing it is is just doing it. Once you do it, you’ll do it. I think generally you’re right.

I find that the cold shower, the longer you think about it, the less you’re going to do. You just jump in. You just do it. You’re quite right.

And it’s like going for a run. The number of times I walk past my trainers in the morning for, I physically have to actually put them on myself and push myself out the door and lock the door behind me with no key. And then once you do it, you’re like, you know, you never come back and say, that was a bad idea. I’m glad I did that, you know? Um, yeah. So just do it would be that would be one.

And I think the second thing I would say is I think you have to practice.

Practice and practice some more. And I think the.

Reason for that is that, like we alluded to earlier, everybody has self-doubt. And to make sure that your self-belief.

Outweighs your self-doubt, you can only do that by practice and practice and practice and practice.

So there can never be.

Enough practice or whatever you choose to do.

And that can be an.

Expert for sure. For sure.

Yeah. In anything, if you want to get good at anything.

Whatever it might be.

Practice. And I suppose the last thing would be.

And I wish I would do this myself, is. In the good moments that you have not only enjoy them, but be present in them. Don’t think about the next thing you’re got to do. Don’t think about once I’ve got this, I don’t want to think about the next thing. Just enjoy the moment which I’m guilty of not doing.

So yeah.

That would be my three bits of advice.

Have you read The Power of Now or listened to it or anything?

I have not. No. No. Very good. Very good.

Very good. Very good for that. Really. But I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I mean, I don’t really suffer with looking backwards, but I just can’t stop myself from looking forward. Yeah, that’s my problem. And you’re right. It does ruin now.

Yeah. Yeah, it does. I think I’ve just got myself this 1999 Bayern Munich shirt and I’m already looking for the.

Next thing I can.

Buy. Then I’ll be happy. No, you won’t. That’s.

That’s the nature of dopamine.

Yeah, very true.

Buddy. Thank you so much. It’s been a massive pleasure. Really, really enjoyed it and enjoyed it. Great considering we had a two hour conversation a week ago. Yeah, it was. It was refreshing. It was refreshing being on this side of it. Really, really very much enjoyed it. Yeah.

Next time you book a transatlantic flight, I’ll.

I’ll book the seat beside you. And we.

Can. We can. Yeah. We can get a seven hour one.

Thank you so much for doing this, man. Pleasure. Pleasure. Inspiration. Thank you. My pleasure.

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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