When you have something produce something like, for example, an email, whatever it might be, ask ChatGPT to carefully critique the above. And rate it out of ten for its effectiveness. And what it does is it says it will rate it out of like, oh, and after that prompt you can say and then provide me with a list of improvements to make it ten out of ten.

And then execute it. Right.

So then it really looks it. Yeah. So if you’ve got like a sales letter for example. Yeah, you could say critique this as Alex Hormozi critique this as Grant Cardone critique this as ex sales coach.

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’s my great pleasure to welcome Adrian Dray to the Dental Leaders podcast. This podcast has been a long time in the making. Adrian Because guess me and you’ve been messaging through whether it’s social media or WhatsApp or whatever, and there might be a bit of GDPR advice I’d reach out to you for, or, you know, we’d shoot the breeze about AI and how amazing this thing is, but we’ve never actually really connected. And there’s loads of questions that I want to ask you. And I thought, what better way to do that? As have you on our Dental Leaders podcast as a guest. So Adrian, welcome to the podcast. I just like to start by I always do this. Just tell us a little bit about your backstory. Adrian where you grew up and what growing up as a kid was like for you. Adrian.

First of all, thanks ever so much for inviting me here and it’s great. Great to chat with you now. And my, my background. I mean, I think I probably won the birth lottery, as they call it. You know, I’ve heard this this concept today on on another podcast. I’m born into a middle class family in the south west of England in 1986. And white, like, everything is just like kind of okay, right? You know, And my parents were, were, were a little bit older, but I was the the big surprise, as they call it, you know, which is like hashtag accident. And, um, and I had a I had a brother who was ten years old, have a brother who’s ten years older than me, and my sister was 14 years old on me. So my parents had like some, you know, some help. My dad was in his 50s when when, when I was born. Um, but it was, it was nice, you know, I actually live in the house that I was brought up in. I’ve gone back, back to my roots and currently it was lovely living out in the countryside. Yeah. Yeah. Right now. Oh, wow. So I came back to this house was sort of keeping it as a as a family home. And it was amazing. You know, I’ve still got this can see from my office window the trees that I would climb up, you know, coming back from school, it’d be like 30, 40ft up in the air. And I look now like I would never I’d never let a kid go up those. Um, but it was fine for me back then. My mum and dad didn’t see, but it was good, you know, I bounced between, you know, state schools and private schools and had a pretty good education, lots of family holidays a year and it was good.

And my, my parents are sales people. So I think for me, learning like customer care, persuasion, not manipulation, I suppose negotiation more so was kind of built into me. And I remember when I was about 13, 14 years old as that my my dad wanted me. I never, never like a pocket money kind of family, you know, It’s like you have to earn your own. So. Yeah, yeah. They used to sell three piece suites, sofas and stuff. So used to bring back the old ones from the customers and I’d have to clean them up and put them in the free ads. Right. And sell them and get like a couple hundred quid. But 1314. That was great. You think I’d have that money to spend on myself? No, that went on my private school education fees. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, classic, like World War Two, Father, you know, but that’s when he was brought up. So yeah, it was, it was interesting. And, but I was, you know, I’m very, very fortunate. I haven’t got an X Factor sob story when it comes to my my childhood in terms of my family life. I think probably what would what was difficult I was bullied quite a lot in school. Massively. Um, and I think my parents struggled to deal with that. And I think I certainly had a massive effect on my life now and how I treat other people. And for good and for bad. It’s taught me. It’s taught me a lot.

So so just just a couple of things there. Adrian, you mentioned you were bullied. And I’d just like to just tap into why and how did that manifest itself? Right? I was for completely different reasons, mainly for the colour of my skin. Yeah, but for yourself, Um, why were you bullied? So what was the reason behind it? And then how did that manifest itself? Was it verbal? Was it physical? When did it start? How often was it? And how did your parents first find out about it? It’s one of the questions around that.

Yeah. No, it’s and it’s so weird. I expect you had the same thing that you can like flashback straight there like you can. I can picture the little school library. What was up on the walls The teacher like everything what the kids looked like and it was verbal, mostly verbal. And it was because I think I was I shown sensitiveness sensitivity. I was a sensitive person. I was. Quite defensive with things. I was a happy little kid, you know, And some kids just don’t like that. And when they just start picking on that, I should have just ignored it and walked away. But you don’t do that when you know you have a sense of injustice and you want to kind of defend yourself. And then sometimes that turns into tears, which is like, you know, throwing the throwing gasoline on the fire for those kids. They’re just going to keep going more and more and more. And then when I got a little bit and that started when I was probably about 7 or 8, I was I started off in a private school, was about three years old when I went to went to school. So between I was in private school between like three and five, six. And I went to state school and it started in the state school. And maybe it’s the fact that I was a private school kid. I don’t know. I can’t remember that far back. But it wasn’t easy at all. And I was kind of the reject.

But you say, you know, you can almost like visualise and take yourself back to those moments, right? Whether, you know, it’s the pictures on the walls or whatever. I remember. I can take myself back to primary school and I remember a little plastic paint pots and the brushes and the and the a board and stuff like that. The visions like that come back to me. But yeah, if we, if we go to like when you were seven, right, and you sort of close your eyes and you take yourself back there moving from private school to the state school and you say, okay, it was because I was a sensitive kid. And then and then tears came out. But Adrian, what were the specifics? What were they saying to you? And was it was it just 1 or 2 kids? Was it a lot of kids? Did you have some friends that stuck up for you at that time? What the words.

I remember one kid called Andrew. No, I can’t. I can’t necessarily remember the words. But I remember the exclusion. And I remember the fact that for me, even now. I am a pleaser. I like to please people. I like to motivate people, comfort people. I like to be part of something. I’m an extrovert. And from my up my whole life, I was involved with things family, friends. It was it was an alien thing concept for me to be excluded. And so I was excluded for that or things particular things were picked on and I didn’t feel like I belonged, even though they I had a lot in common with the people that were the picking on me. And, you know, these sorts of things with people with bullies and stuff going on in their own life. But I did have a kid that that stood up for me called Andrew. And he was I remember him just saying like in in the park or the school playing field, like, this isn’t right. This isn’t right. Which is great. You know, I’ve never seen him since. Yeah, but I remember that quite clearly.

And then so back in the day, then when you when you were seven, eight years old, how did that make its way to parents? Teachers? Did it I mean, I know today, you know, the amount of support kids have got in and around those sort of issues that someone would pounce on that straight away and it would be dealt with, stamped out, maybe even an element of counselling involved. Or there’ll be there’ll be older school year prefects or whatever who’d get involved and give the kids some time. Right. Was there any of that knocking about back in the day and how did you deal with it?

I remember. I remember this. I’ve never actually said this to anyone is that I remember going to the Headteacher’s office. She was called Mrs. Postans. I think she’s dead now. But she wouldn’t listen to us anyway. And she. She did see me by myself. She saw me with the other kids, which I think is not the way to do it like that. That puts I mean, I used to be a teacher. Like, that’s not the way you do it, right? To begin with. You want to hear kind of both sides. And she, for some reason kind of agreed that I was being oversensitive. And probably I was right. But like, don’t don’t say it in a way that kind of backs up the bullies. And she gave this illustration, this example of like her husband, he had a big beard and whenever he had an ice cream, she would she he would have like ice cream all over it, which I get now having a beard. And she used to have a code word for him, which was aeroplane. Right. And if that was, if she said aeroplane, that was the signal for him to clear his beard. Right. So she said that what we’re going to do is that if the teacher think you’re being a bit sensitive, they’re going to have a word. What do you think the word should be? Right? And I’m like, I don’t know what what it was, but what I do remember is guess what the bullies were doing for like the next year after that, running round with the.

Cold word.

Going round aeroplane aeroplane. And I was like, Thanks a lot and I can just picture them now coming down the corridor, three of them, William Michael coming, the other one. And I did get my own back on one of them, by the way. But about ten, six years later, um, which I’m not particularly proud of, but sort of proud of. But, but yeah, it was like it wasn’t handled very well and it got really bad for me. And I, I say this with appreciation that the bullying that you went through is, was very severe and I’ve never been subject to racial bullying or anything like that. For me. Is that that kid? I. That was my biggest that was my Goliath. That was the thing I really struggled with. And I’m trying not to tear up now, but I remember sitting at three rooms across me now, sitting on the ledge of my windowsill, thinking about jumping into a 30 foot conservatory that’s just in front of me.

Because at about you did.

7 or 8 years old because just.

Because you didn’t want that anymore.

So what’s the point? Yeah. Kane came back home really upset. Really upset. I didn’t think. Anyone properly understood me now? I don’t think I would have done because I’m a heck was scared of wasps and all sorts Prav. You know, I don’t think I would have done it, but I had enough like understanding of what that would. And I think not. I’m not saying I wanted to do it to to kill myself. I think I wanted them to feel something. And maybe it was a case of, oh, Adrian’s hurt himself and that’s the way they would understand. That’s the way that they would know that they can’t talk to people like that. Yeah, yeah. Obviously didn’t do it, but I remember it clearly. I look out that window. Actually, my office used to be there and I flashed back to that. At that point, being a seven year old, blonde, curly haired boy.

But you thought about it, right? There was a thought process going through your head that, you know, whether you’d have gone through with it or not. There was some kind of thought process going through your head. And then and then so that happens. And did you go home and speak to Mum and dad or was was there a conversation that was had about the bullying, the aeroplane, the, you know, the code word or whatever, and what impact this was having in your new school?

I think there was I don’t know whether I have blocked it out, but I don’t think it was it. I don’t think it was seen as a as a big deal. I never told them about what I’ve just told you. There never did that. But I, I, I don’t think it, I don’t think parents or teachers really knew what to do in the mid 90s. You know, this is all before like ADHD and you know if you it was hyperactive remember that. Oh it’s hyperactive. Yeah. Yeah but that was that was the thing. Yeah. So I, I, I don’t think they really know what to do, but then I think I might have blocked a lot of it out. I remember secondary school, it was taken a bit more seriously. But when I was, when I was in primary school. No, no, not at all.

So as you did this. Carry on?

Yeah. So I went to so the primary school I went to, which is my local town, everyone goes to the like the local state school. And my parents thought they didn’t like that state school because actually my my sister had been bullied there 14 years previously. And, um, so I went to a private school next town across. And a lot of those, I didn’t see the same kids anymore. Right. One of those bullies, he actually he was kind of not the main bully, but he was sort of part of that group he came across and. He kind of started it again a little bit in this completely new like group of kids. And it was then it became a bit more physical because you’ve got this. It was a boarding school and you’ve got the boarding school kind of hazing. I wasn’t boarding. I was called a day boy. So you go there for the day. And yeah, I started to get I started to get picked on and they’re being a bit more it was becoming a bit more violent now. The thing was I was getting a bit bigger myself and I think my housemaster pictured it and he was a big guy. I actually look like him now, but big bearded guy, six foot, you know, big as a broad. I’m not I’m not ripped, but I’m big that way. And he got me into rugby and I think he used to intentionally wind me up so that I would basically just. I used to be called the Hulk. Yeah. And I would, I would I couldn’t be tackled. I was really good at rugby at, you know, year seven, year eight. And I taught those kids a lesson and they did not didn’t mess then. I don’t I don’t you know, I don’t say that. Proudly. I used my strength to my.

To your advantage.

My nice Frank.

So I’ve got. I’ve almost got a rocky moment.

Oh, yeah.

Of something similar that happened to me. Adrian and I can. Do you know what? I can remember it as clear as. My morning routine today, and I was getting bullied constantly by a couple of kids. And, you know, it was the usual packy, this packy, that, so on and so forth. Right. And, and but it was, it wasn’t just it wasn’t just verbal, it was physical. It was taking my lunch off me because we were, we, we came from a corner shop, right. So we had access to chocolates and sweets and all of that. And we could just help ourselves from the shop, right? So that was, that was getting cleared from us. And I remember and we didn’t have much money back in the day. And I remember getting this poster tube, I’m filling it full of sand and hiding it under my bed. Right. And I would I would curl this poster tube, do some do some presses and and literally hundreds. Right. Hundreds. But almost felt like during that period of time I was in training for something. Right. And there was going to there was going to be a reckoning. Right. And and I remember, like every day when I’d get on the school bus to go home, I’d walk past these kids, I’d get a little bit of a pasting, and then I’d go and sit at the back and then get off.

And that would be the end of that, right? And there was just this one day and I’d got myself a hell of a lot of confidence. And what happened? I got to the back and the kids were and I said, Right, you’re going to get it today. And I remember if you if you stood in the middle of a bus aisle and you can see the seats on either side, right, and you can stand in between them. And I literally put my hand on on on both of their hand seats and I pushed myself up. But as I did that, I clocked this kid under the chin with my foot, and he was out for the count. Right. And from from from that moment onwards, I did not get bullied. Right. But but it was all it was all the sand in the tube and the training and all of that. That was the build up to it to get the confidence right. But can you take me back to your moment where you where you gave your bullies a good pasting and what happened after it?

I remember once that and it it kind of it kind of proved it to the rest of them that were there. So the kid, one of the kids that were that bullied me in primary school, he was at the the other school, you know, the one I said that people usually go up to from primary school. And we played we played them in rugby, which was quite unusual because usually private schools play other private schools and they will play in a state school. And he was in the scrum and in the scrum I was the tighthead prop and where he was was opposite me. And we’re in a second half. We had had many scrums, but where I was, my right hand was was free. And basically what you can collapse the scrum. And I was really good at making it look like they had collapsed the scrum. But as we did it, I just I just went and I clocked him lots and lots of times to the to the point he was taken off and he knew he realised it was me. Yeah. After, after I did it because I don’t think it even I changed quite physically change quite a bit and this is a good sort of few years afterwards. And I remember just looking around and seeing the other kids and they’re like, okay, that we’re not going to we’re not going to mess with, mess with him. And I, I think I realised at that point I was like, I and I’d done a few other things that I’m not now not proud of.

Yeah. Is like I need to control that. I need to remember that it’s just the wrong. And I remember there was like a news story at the same time where someone had like, punched someone in a in a in an aisle at the Tesco’s or whatever and like killed them with one punch. Like wasn’t even that big of a guy just managed to hit the right place. And I was like, oh, flipping heck. So it actually helps me in a way because I got to a point that even though I was still getting picked on, that I was much better in my my comebacks and my words. And I would actually, you know, they say like the bullied becomes the bully. I was doing that. Yeah. And so these bullies would come at me and my retorts would absolutely just I would just go straight for the sucker punch. Like just that their biggest insecurities went straight there. Like I didn’t care. And I’d sometimes I’d like re lyrics songs about them. Yeah. Then then the whole class is kind of singing these, you know, re lyrics of Fresh Prince or something about these kids. So I didn’t go physical anymore, but I went quite nasty the other way with with my words. So I’m like, now I look back, it’s like, yeah, I, I have to work on the virtue of, of holding my tongue.

Yeah.

Difficult though, when you’re really, really want to so close to doing it some days. Prav.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, fast forward to today, Adrian. How what do you think the impact of that has been on you as an adult in your relationships with, with people, family, friends and, and how it’s manifest itself in just yourself as a person?

It’s taken me a long, long time. I’ve still I still have. I’m getting better at it, but I still have that sensitive nature. I still can become quite defensive and indignant and not always righteously and. It often comes out because I feel that. Majority of my time. I try my best to be kind and caring and comfort people and help people. And when that gets misunderstood and people see that as me being manipulative or stupid or whatever it might be, and it’s usually for their own agenda. I don’t know. It brings back this. These dark, dark thoughts. And I think I don’t deserve it. Right? I really don’t deserve. This is not who I am. I’m. I work on being a nice person. And I’ve only recently felt that it’s okay to be misunderstood. That’s what it boils down to. It’s alright to be misunderstood.

And when it manifests itself today, Adrian, like when you sort of you’re either misunderstood or people misinterpret or you find yourself in that situation, does that take you straight back to where you were as a kid in terms of emotionally the feelings that you were experiencing back then?

I’ll be honest with you, it doesn’t. And maybe that’s because of years of working on it. But what it does, what it does present is a lot of frustration and confusion, and my head feels almost heavy with that. So perhaps I’m perhaps my brain is fighting those impulses, those flashbacks. But I thankfully have a fantastic network of very close friends, particularly in dentistry, where, you know, I’ve had it in dentistry that right? I wouldn’t say like, call me down, right? I’m not I’m not that bad. But people I trust who are like, just ignore them like or let let them let them be like that because they’re only there’s a wider audience that are on your side and it makes you look look okay. So that’s that’s where I get to look.

I think our our industry can be can be fucking brutal, right? Absolutely brutal. I mean, if we fast forward to today, right? The sort of shit I see on Facebook groups, the sort of conversations I’ve had with either clients or not necessarily clients, but dentists or individuals who, you know, happen to put out their point of view or push a piece of educational content out there or whatever. And then it’s it’s just the one, right? It’s that one person who ruins their entire day week, whatever it is, and causes them to have some sort of anxiety or palpitations or however that manifests itself. And it’s usually the minority. Right? But you know, dentistry is fraught with that. Right? I’ve seen it so much. There are there are bullies in in our industry and they will hide behind a login and and mouth off or direct message or perhaps form small groups and stuff and make certain people who are trying to push positivity out in this world just feel so shit and look as as people who push content out there. Do you know what sometimes the stuff we put out there is wrong, incorrect, perhaps not accurate or whatever, right? Nobody’s infallible to this, right. But there are ways to challenge people in a public environment.

Yeah. And and shooting them down is definitely not one of them. Right. Certainly there’s been times where I’ve noticed some of my colleagues have pushed some info out and I’ve thought, hmm, maybe that is incorrect. I’ll send them a message and say, Listen mate, I know you have just created this Facebook post about attention to detail and how that’s really important, but there’s a spelling mistake on there and you may just want to re-edit that or whatever. Do you understand what I mean? But there’s there’s more sensitive ways of dealing with stuff like that, or you can just publicly shame them or take the piss or whatever it is, Right? But dentistry is fraught with that, I think. And I’ve seen it. I’ve been on the receiving end a couple of times, but I think I’ve got thick enough skin to just realise, do you know what, Screw him. And I remember actually it was a business coach of mine who taught me this life lesson and it was simply this, that the opinions of those that matter are the ones who will turn up to your funeral. And so when I think about that.

Wow, that’s very that’s that’s really powerful.

Yeah. So when I think, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. But it is for me, it was so profound, right? And, and so the moment I thought about that and then I think about the impact that these, that certain individuals will have and the comments of, of other people. Right. Actually, the only opinions that really should matter are those of those who are closest to me. But what do we normally do? We normally push them to the side and we let these other, less important people take over our emotions, our well-being, how we’re feeling and what happens. We go home and we take it out on on the ones who would be there at the funeral by not giving them the time, the energy, the attention, not being in the room when you’re in the room and and all of that stuff. Right. And so so the moment that struck a chord with me, Adrian, I just stopped giving a shit. Yeah. And, and that’s sort of a piece of advice I’ll give somebody if, if they’re caught up in that place where, you know, if we sit down and think that person who’s just who’s just shot you down publicly, do you really care about what what they think and what they say? Well, yeah, because they offended me. And tomorrow, if the world was to end and you were in a box or however you would go out in this world, do you think that person would give a hoot or turn up to you? Absolutely not. And so why let it bother you?

It’s I think that that is so powerful. And I’ve really I’m going to nick that off here. I will credit you if I ever use it publicly.

But whatever.

Steal.

Steal it. Right.

Um, but I would say that I mean, I’ve worked in a lot of different industries and dentistry is, is very unique in and I don’t want to be all doom and gloom. And I think maybe when we talk about like my Covid stuff, there’s a lot of positive stuff that came out of the community which blew me away. But when I compare it to a lot of the other other industries that I’ve been involved in, it can be very dark, nasty place to be. And it’s a small world in dentistry. And I think that these tiny individuals I’m not going to name any names and people listening, you can make your own connections on who this is. I don’t particularly care if they get upset and I’ll probably get a WhatsApp or whatever about someone saying, Did you do you mean about me? I really don’t. I’m just saying, you know, I don’t care what you think. The but the reality the reality is, is that they don’t understand that, especially when they’re quite public with this, is that just because you might have a few people that like your comment or whatever it might be, the general audience think you’re an idiot. Yeah. And I’ve seen this and I’ve heard I actually got fat shamed by a dentist about a month ago. And I had 3 or 4 people message me. One, call me and just say, that is it wasn’t it wasn’t explicit fat shaming, but it was implied. Right. And they just said, look, he does that. That person does not have a good reputation. Right.

And is this a dental professional?

Yes. Then professional one. Dental. Professional. I just thinking like I have for me, I’ve got to a point where. I have a lot of. Care and time and love for dentistry and my dental friends and people I really look up to. Including yourself. And I love being part of that community, but I have made it a kind of community that I could say goodbye to it in my life. I could say goodbye to it tomorrow. Yeah. And I could leave quietly. Or I can leave loudly. And the thing is, is that whilst I work on the virtue of being self-controlled, I think people forget that I know a lot of where the bodies are buried in dentistry. I know a lot of this kind of stuff. And as Jordan Peterson says, be formidable, be dangerous. And I think some of the top people in dentistry who have a tremendous amount of respect for are like that, who I see as and I mentioned, for example, Andy Acton. I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this. Andy Acton has been such a caring person to me, you know, personally and to my family during very dark times, always got time with me. He is the last person I would ever want to upset because I realise that that man has got he’s a very powerful person and he has nailed it. Absolutely nailed it. Is he is not his opinion online. I would take very seriously and I’d never want it to be against me. And I don’t think it would be. But he that’s the person I want to kind of be in this community. There’s too many people who don’t think like that.

If we look at Andy, right. And you know, we’re digressing here a little bit, but he is just a lovely human being to be around. Nothing but positivity comes out of him. You know, there’s a lot of people in the dental industry. I’ve never heard a bad word about him, though, right. So, yeah, you know, there may be, but but it’s certainly you know, I’ve been in this game for 16 years in the business of dentistry, right? As long as Andy’s been in this business, I’ve never heard a negative word about him. Right. So, um, and it’s lovely to hear that he’s been there in times of need as well, Right? It’s it’s true to his character. Yeah.

But I never want to. I never want to go against. And that’s the thing. Like it’s almost this respect, this fear of like, you know, ever and I’ve never seen him ever doing it. But I could just imagine if if he ever kind of like, Right, enough’s enough. Here’s what I’ve got to say.

He’ll fuck you up.

People be like, Whoa. Okay, okay. And I think that we have now we’ve got people that have these characteristics where they are just this kind of like, stop negative. It’s like, you know what? They’re going to come back or they’re just so inconsistent, you know, they’re like, Oh, I’m your mate. One second and then I’ll destroy you, the others. And then they’re like, Oh, you know, I hate bullies. It’s like one of the biggest ones, mate.

Yeah.

It’s just like people see it. It catches up with you.

I think I think in our industry a lot of is driven through jealousy from from what I’ve observed and seen. Right. And I think also, you know, having just sort of discussed the doom and gloom of it, I think the positives in our community, in our industry outweigh the negatives. Right? Whether we’ve been subject to it or not, and even yourself included. Right. There’s so much positivity in our community. There’s so many nice people. The relationships I’ve developed with my clients, some of them who’ve become incredible friends, right? So, you know, Payman Langroudi, who’s usually the co-host of this podcast, is someone I’d consider to be like a brother, right? And so I’ve made some wonderful friends through this industry, right? Um, and a similar relationships with some of my clients as well. Right. But, but it is, but it can be toxic at the same time. Right. But but let’s, let’s move on to more positive conversations. Adrian And talk to me about life before dentistry. Adrian So I know you as the GDPR guy, the AI guy, the Google Review guy. Yeah. And and the guy on social media is just happy and comfortable recording videos about whatever. Yeah. And just sharing content and positivity. Right. And also just, just very comfortable with creating content, right. And pushing it out there. And we’ll talk a little bit more about public speaking a little bit later. But what was life before dentistry? What was your career before dentistry? Um, Adrian, what were you doing?

Is paint like proper varied I think to bullet point lists was left school at 16 didn’t go to university. Dad was like get a job worked in an animal feed mill about seven miles from my house now hated that went into working for the police because my sister had a job. There was an IT support, became a telecoms engineer then thought flipping it. I’m 22 now. I don’t really like England and I think because I worked for the police, I was kind of subject to stuff that freaked me out. So I was like, Right, I’m going to move to Sweden. So I moved. I lived in Sweden for three years. I was a teacher in an international school, came back because for lots of different reasons. Family was a big draw. My dad was getting quite old, then went into a family business, part of my family that was in insurance and that didn’t work out. I won’t go into details why, but it just didn’t work out. And it got to a point. It was just after my dad had died. So I was in a in a bad state and I basically had a breakdown. So I lost it and I couldn’t.

And was that because your father had passed away or the whole combination of the job wasn’t working out and everything or everything was combination?

A realisation? Yeah, a realisation of a lot of, lot of stuff. And it just it hit me in a weirdest way. My dad had died about a year earlier than this particular event. Like I think exactly what it was. I was on a call to a client insurance client and I was actually wearing my dad’s dressing gown. I still have it now. Right. And in the pocket was a little thing of rescue remedy. And I would have rescue remedy when I was nursing my dad when he had cancer for a month. And I saw him decline. And when I was really I would take this to kind of get me through. And I was feeling not very anxious on that particular call. And I took that rescue remedy and I just burst into tears because the last time I had that was when my dad died. So I just had a flashback to my dad, you know, in this in in a horrible position, yellow, skinny, couldn’t talk horrific and didn’t work for three months after that thought, that’s it, I can’t I can’t do this. I sat.

After that call.

Watching cartoons. Yeah. Yeah. And about a week previous to that call, I was with a friend of mine. He’s very successful and he’s telling me about GDPR and he goes, he goes, One of the career change. You want to get into this? He goes, We just we just paid someone £1,200 a day just to advise us. And she said she’s only done a course like a month previous. She’s a business consultant now, knows a bit about GDPR. So I distracted myself. By learning GDPR. I read that law. I stopped watching cartoons. Rick and Morty stopped it, and I just read every article, commentary, website, webinar, you name it. That was my distraction and I thought, I am going to know this thing inside and out. By pure accident. I came across dentistry because I wanted to join a group of other privacy professionals. I hadn’t even done my course at this point. And I’ve put in GDPR and the first thing that came up was a Facebook group called GDPR for Dentists. And it was run by Derek. And I joined Derek and Peter and I rang. I messaged Derek and had an hour long call with him. And now we’re very, very close friends. And I started helping dentists with GDPR stuff. And I’ll be honest, I can say it’s now Prav. I was no expert. I was a few pages ahead of everyone else. Well, maybe quite a few, a few pages of webinars ahead of everyone else. But I learnt GDPR there and I did my course and I it saved me in a way because a few months later I got my my first job in GDPR. I was actually on more money than what I had just come out of as a GDPR consultant.

Just before the whole GDPR thing. You’re in a you’re in a really dark place. Adrian, you said you said you had a breakdown, right? There Was that there was that phone call to the client when you took the rescue remedy. And then there was all that time that you were just sat on the couch watching cartoons, probably not feeling very good about yourself or life. What what was going on there? What does it mean to have to have a breakdown and how the hell did you get yourself out of it? But how did you find. Did you have any motivation at that point? I’m assuming very little. What was going on in your life at that time? Adrian.

I was. I think the only way I can explain it, I’m quite a visual person. Imagine you’re up in the attic, right? And you’ve got boxes of all stuff that’s happened in your life, and there are boxes which are full of very. Dark, sad thoughts, and particularly around losing my dad and things that were happening in the business that I was working for at the time and. Lots of other stuff that I’d obviously compartmentalised and all of a sudden it was like those boxes have been. Untaped and cut open and the contentious thrown to the front of the room. And the front of the room was the front of my brain. So I had all of these thoughts that were just floating around and I. It was chaotic. I struggled to find the comfort in that chaos. And I, but I knew I had to get out of it. I just didn’t know how. But that’s that’s the is the confusion that the loss of clarity, the fogginess, what you want to call it. With the emotion that comes with it as well.

What was the day in the life like during that period of time? How long was it? And if you were to sort of describe to me typically what a day in the life would be during that phase?

In my pyjamas, in bed, wearing a red hat. A red beanie, which is kind of like sometimes my signature. That red beanie and watching, watching Rick and Morty cartoons. And that was it, being very, very quiet. Not really wanting to see anyone. Crying. I cried a lot. And I cried because I felt I had needed a release. And that was it was almost like a drug, like the cathartic nature of it.

And. And was there anyone that you were speaking to at the time? Were you were you just sort of going through this by yourself with a friends with a with a colleagues, a counsellor, anything like that? Or did you just have to pick yourself up?

I had I had a close, very close family member that was helping me with it. But I hadn’t really been through anything like that before. And obviously I told you when I was a kid, but I. I didn’t think about getting counselling. I think I was on antidepressants. I think I went on to some. Some kind of medication. But I realised that because of like responsibilities that I had, I needed to find a way out. I needed to get out of what I’ve got. What position I was in at the time. And, you know, it’s I don’t even know Prav where the breakdown is the right word for it. And I haven’t been diagnosed. I just felt like I broke down like on the motorway of my mind. Yeah. So, you know, I’m no clinical specialist on that.

But you were broken, weren’t you? That’s for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. It really. It’s. And I think, you know, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this where you have kind of you’re you’re down and you think, I’ve got so much stuff going around, I’ve I’ve got tremendous privileges and treasures, material or friendships that are around me. I really have no reason, reason, proper reason to be upset. Upset. There are people in far worse situations than me. And I’m feeling like this. And that thought in itself is, is, I think, the most dangerous. Because your self-talk is so critical. It’s like you’re not helping yourself.

Been there a million times. Yeah. And and, you know, especially in what you’d consider to be our Asian community. Right. The the recipe for success is this. Yeah. You’ve got a great marriage. You’ve got a healthy children, you’ve got a nice home, and you’ve got a great career and you’re doing all right financially. Yeah, all of that doesn’t mean you’re happy. All of that doesn’t mean you’re internally content. And there are so many people I know that have got all of that, plus ten have got my level of success, however you want to define that. Times 100. Yeah. And are right at the bottom of a fucking big hole. And and sometimes it’s very it’s very, very difficult to climb out of it. And for a lot of people, you’re constantly climbing out of it, constantly climbing out of it and just popping your head back up and then and then nipping back down again and dealing with your demons. So I do know exactly what you’re talking about there, Adrian. And, um, yeah, you know, I guess what got you out of that hole at that time was GDPR, right? Was that the motivation?

That’s so weird, isn’t it?

Yeah. No.

Tony Robbins.

No, no, no.

It was no hot coals. Yeah, it was. You know, I think probably what came from it was the fact that I like teaching people. You know, I had this opportunity of being a teacher out in Sweden, you know, it wasn’t I wasn’t a proper teacher, but I loved inspiring, motivate and taking these boring concepts and being able to present it in a in a way that was good. And I had been a sales person and I kind of started to realise like I was, I was thinking of what’s this 31 or something that now I’ve really got to nail these soft skills, these talents that I’ve got like talents, nothing unless you put action behind it. And I kind of just relied on a bit of talent before, you know, this confidence. And I used to be the lead singer of a rock band. So like, I kind of if I needed to, I could put on that performance. Yeah. But I, I realised with something like GDPR is like, heck, if I can, if I can teach people this and in engaging way, heck, if I can even sell it. Then if I to ever want to move out to something else. I have literally gone to the boot camp the hardest. The Iron Man, what do you call it? Of selling? Because if you can sell something as boring as GDPR, you can sell anything.

Sell anything. Yeah.

So it’s yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of what it was. It wasn’t a case that I’m a massive fan of privacy law. It’s just a subject. It’s all of the, it’s all the skills around it. That’s what I needed to learn. And it just happened to be that. That was the hot topic at the time.

Right? And so who was your first gig with?

It was the first. If you look me up now, who paid you?

Who paid you your first quid?

Who paid me my first quid. What? Oh, sorry. I thought you said first gig.

As in Dental. Gig As in. As in Sorry. As in GDPR gig rather than, um. Yeah.

I suppose directly, because I was working for a consultancy at the time. Can’t remember exactly which which clients we had, but I would say properly, me for my GDPR stuff was when I became the data protection officer at. And that was a massive triumph for me because I’ve been a GDPR consultant for six months. I got told about this, um, this position to be the data protection officer, which is a, you know, quite a high level for 600 practices. And I thought, I’ll go for it. Screw it. I am literally this, this role is three, four, five years away from where I am at the moment. Yeah. But I had to two interviews. I was grilled by two lawyers and it was in Manchester, so I’d have to relocate and I got it and I was DPO for two years and I found out that I was the data protection officer for more companies than anyone else in the country. I’ve been through multiple investigations, not just. A particular corporate, but with, you know, data breaches and stuff in dentistry. So yeah, my day probably paid my first quid. And since then I’ve had lots of lots of engagements with dentists on a retainer and, you know, an ad hoc basis. Yeah.

And so sort of fast forwarding from there, how much of your life now does GDPR consume?

A lot. So a lot. I actually yeah. So my, I actually work in financial services now as my full time job. So dentistry is kind of my. I don’t want to say like side hustle. I’d probably more say passion project because as you mentioned earlier, there’s other things which I’m trying to use these skills which I’ve built up to not just be talking about GDPR but other things. And I’m kind of using it as a bit of a dentistry. I don’t want to say playground in a derogatory way, in a disrespectful way, but I feel like, well, I can, I’ve got this kind of footing already and I can try different things out in dentistry without. And I know people and respect people’s opinions and I can deal with the idiots that say stupid stuff. So yeah, GDPR takes a lot of my time at the moment with that with that job, but I am starting to look at look at probably peeling away into doing doing other things. And it all comes down to helping people. That’s what it is. Just change the subject. You know, that’s GDPR is one subject out of lots that are coming through.

So Adrian, let’s help some people. Let’s let’s let’s do a mini masterclass on GDPR right now and let’s say, you know, dental practice audience. You know, I get a lot of people asking me all the time, you know, about about GDPR. I remember when this first thing when it first kicked off, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you a little story about what it did. There’s a lady called Julia Furley, I think her name is. And she’s a Yeah, Boris Love.

Julia Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Senior barrister. Yeah, yeah.

So what, what happened around that time was that, um. I knew bugger all about GDPR. Apart from what I’d read, but it had come out and literally every single one of my clients was asking me for advice. Right? So I thought the sensible thing to do was to pay Julia for an hour of a time, but go in armed with a shitload of questions. I got a value for money out of the hour. I kid you not. Adrian. Right. And then I recorded a social media video. I recorded a social media video as Prav asking those questions and Prav answering those questions and just pushed it out there.

I remember that video. I remember it so well. It was brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. And it’s like all this GDPR stuff about.

Yeah, yeah. And so, and I had to record it straight away because I didn’t want to forget any of it. Right? And it was very clear in my mind I’d taken loads of notes and I remember it was she charged me, whatever her rate was for an hour. And I think we got it done in 50 minutes. And I told her to keep the change it was.

She’d love that.

Because you know how lawyers are with their time, right? So, um.

But yeah, yeah.

But if we, if we sort of fast forward to today, Adrian, what are the, what are the things that, that a practice owner and then an associate needs to be aware of in terms of the movement of data and GDPR. So I guess, you know, we’ve got patient data, we’ve got staff data, we’ve got associate data, and then how that’s stored, how that’s moved around, who’s responsible for it and and who can. And I know this probably be on the scope of today’s podcast, but I’d just like to get some nuggets really, if we can just assimilate some key things that could that could help our audience, whether they’re an associate or a practice owner. When it comes to GDPR, what have you got to have buttoned down?

I think that there are some there are some key takeaways. I wish every practice owner knew. Okay. And it’s not going to cover every part of GDPR, but these are things that I say on a regular basis and I would try and make it quite punchy without going into the weeds of the law. What I would say is that GDPR is is a principle based legislation which is good and it’s bad because it’s bad because in dentistry we’re quite used to very prescriptive legislation like health and safety, which talks about measurements of time or units or whatever it might be. You’ve got to do this and this person has got to do that and that kind of thing. Gdpr has a bit of that, but it’s basically principle based and it’s based around human rights law and also security, which is constantly changing because the threats are changing. Now, the first thing I would say to a practice owner is you will never become 100% compliant and any compliance solution, provider system, whatever, whoever they are that says they’re 100% compliant with GDPR, I usually run a mile because it means they don’t understand GDPR is. Yeah. Um, but if you’ve got worries, contact me. So I would say that’s the first thing. Now that means that when it’s when you’re not 100, it’s not really possible to be 100% compliant and run a business.

Then you have to have a risk based approach to certain things. Now, this is always difficult because I think a lot of dentists don’t understand what kind of the risks are and therefore they can’t really show the right level of accountability for it. So the question is like, well, what really, Adrian, are the main risks? What are you what do you see are the issues from a privacy perspective and a security perspective? Okay. So from a privacy perspective, I think what I would say is that you’ve got to be really aware of people’s rights when it comes to their data. And this can really catch out businesses because it can waste a lot of their time if they don’t a are aware of it in the first place or deal with it properly. So people’s information rights, let’s call it, are, for example, how they’re informed about how their data is being processed. This is called a privacy notice, and there’s lots of privacy notices out there. And there probably never be read by anyone. But you need it to be your sword that you go into battle with and your shield when you’re dealing with complaints. So I’ve actually and I can give you a link to this, a free copy of the privacy notice that I’ve written up for dentists practice owners.

And it goes basically, I’ve adapted it to deal with a lot of the complaints and rubbish that patients can throw out. So you can basically, as per our privacy notice, if you’d read it, you would have known this already. Now that’s one of the main ones. It’s quite easy to sort out. One of the ones it’s probably a bit more difficult is around people. And I would say we often only think of patients. But you I’m so glad you said like staff and associates data and that’s their right to access a copy of their personal data. So you have no hope. They don’t inspire inspire anyone here. But if someone leaves a practice under a bit of a cloud, right. And they say, Right, I want every piece of information about me in WhatsApp. Messages, emails, recorded calls, voice notes. Minutes of meetings, that kind of stuff. It. Most likely they’re entitled to it and they can take hours and it can cost you so much in legal fees if you get it wrong. Don’t ignore them. Don’t start deleting the data. So I would say is that once you know that people can do that, when patients do it, there’s a bit of a pain in the bum.

But you can at least the data is in one place when staff do it and you’ve got practice. Practice owner who’s been slagging off whoever nurse practice manager over email, whatever. And that comes out. That can be very, very uncomfortable. Now there are exemptions available. But what I would say is you’ve got to be really careful with that. With that in mind, Prav and obviously cut over me if I’m going into the weeds. Cctv Gosh, CCTV is is a data protection nightmare. Because practice owners. I don’t know why. You know, Rob Moore always says like, never insult your client base. And this is I’m saying that because I say this with respect. I don’t know why you guys are obsessed with CCTV. I have never known anything like it. You’re quite happy to spend thousands of pounds on CCTV. But not in other areas with the practice really needs helping. And yes, I guess, you know, there’s security reasons. And if you’ve had a receptionist that’s been spat at, punched, you’ve been broken into. Totally makes sense to have CCTV in relevant places. But putting CCTV in surgeries in where the people are getting changed in the staff room, listening in to conversations, covertly recording people’s conversations, you are you might as well just get a blank cheque out. And those individuals who get caught up with that and they get told, oh, well, we got a recording of you.

Guess who they come to? Me. Guess who writes a subject access? Request me. Guess who helps them put massive complaints into the ICO? Me. Because I know it’s wrong. And I fight for those associates rights on a you know, I bet everyone and people who are under my retainer are spared of this. But I’m saying that because it is getting ridiculous some of the stuff and no wonder there’s such a lack of trust not to go negative. But remember that when you’re when you’re using CCTV, you have to justify the reasons that you’re doing it. Going back to the principles. Why have we got this? Oh, because we have broken into and we’re trying to, you know, detect and prevent crime. Excellent. Is it to monitor people and spy on them? Really don’t do that. That’s not there’s no justification an try saying that with the words you’re on or after it because that should be your test. So I would say that when you become more aware of people’s rights over their information, you’re a bit more careful about how you handle it. So that’s more the privacy thing. I don’t know if you’ve got any questions on that before I go to security.

I’ve got a few questions I’ve written down here, but I’d like you to go through it all and then I’m going to layer on top a couple of questions that I’ve got that I think would be quite interesting.

Cool. So with security, what I would say is that. You’ve got, then just need to realise that they’re more at risk and they’re more of a target than they realise at the moment. And I had an opportunity of, of talking about this in Nashville at the Dental Festival last year and I gave the story of a practice owner who gets hacked by a teenager and they deploy ransomware that makes them lose all of their data. And this this happens quite often. I think the statistics are a new business gets hit by ransomware, a virus determined to lock up or delete your data, a new business every seven seconds. So. A dental practice. Dentists. If you’re listening. Do you need your information? Can you go more than a day without your information? How much does it cost you to be without your systems for a day in production time? Right. So there are practices, and I don’t know why. I do know dentists who are getting hit by ransomware all the freaking time who are losing months of data. And maybe the ice is not going to find them. But, man, that hits your reputation that your production time, everything. And how could it have been prevented? Maybe give you a receptionist some training so that they can know how to pick a suspicious email? Yeah, right. And updating your software and whatever it is and having firewalls and this kind of stuff and blocking your access to your business WiFi and having your own guest Wi-Fi is another good one.

All this kind of stuff. And making sure you know exactly where your data is, if you need to back it up and how long it takes for you to get backed up and to make sure those backup backups are complete because people only find this out the hard way and they’re blaming everyone else but themselves. Maybe it’s the IT company’s fault. You should know, as a practice owner, you should. And I think as well with with AI coming out, you’ve got to be really careful. You know, banks are having people their voices are being cloned and they’re getting through past that. My voice is my password. Security. And that’s been done by listening to less than 10s of someone’s voice. Yeah. So we you know, you got to be suspicious. Don’t demonise. That’s what I always say. Suspicious people. But not everything is a hack. But train your staff. Get the right security in. Make sure you can get your data back to all of your data, back to the core data backed up and recoverable within a day because it’s going to cost you a heck of a lot of money otherwise. So that that those are my main things of practice owners. Associates I can come on to in a second. Unless you want to.

No, go for it. Go for it.

Any questions on the practice? Go for it with associates. You are what’s called a data controller under GDPR. That means you got responsibilities. Now you might thinking, Oh, that’s okay. I’m registered with the ICO. Brilliant. You’ve done about 5% of your compliance. That’s like me saying, Oh, I’ve done my taxes. My proof is I’m registered with HMRC. Tax return. What? Right. Yeah. So dentists have got some other things which are, you know, privacy notices and some other responsibilities. So especially when you’ve got like these, what do we call them, like super associates where they’ve got their own website, they’ve got their own chat bot, they’ve got people email addresses, marketing to them, DMS. Is the practice responsible for the data protection on that? Nope. It’s you guys, the associates that are responsible to that. So when you’re. I love it. Prav you ever see when people on Facebook like, oh, don’t accept any messages from me, I’ve been hacked?

Yes.

I was like, okay, what does that mean? Like, are they they they read your messages, right? So all of your patient messages, are they in your Facebook accounts? Manager Like, what does that mean? Do you really want to be advertising the fact that your work could be holding quite, quite sensitive personal and business data has been hacked. So with associates, you really need to just understand that you’re responsible for the security of that. But also when it comes to like using patient data, particularly images for advertising, marketing and research and training purposes, lecturing purposes, you need to get that patient consent. You cannot just piggyback on the practices for that. They have got the consent for the practice to use it. You want to use it on your social media. You need to get your own consent.

As an.

Associate forms and of course on that and that can as an associate.

So let me give you a couple of a couple of caveated examples here. I’m just going to sort of spitball with you with with some examples that are real life examples, right? So an associate comes to me, they’ve got their own website, they’ve got their own Instagram presence. And what happens is a patient inquires with them, they then via the associates website fill out an inquiry form and that the details of that inquiry form go to practice A or practice B where they’re an associate, depending on what location the patient prefers. That data then goes into the inbox of the practice, but it has filtered through the Associates website, so sat in the back end of WordPress somewhere that patient data on the Associates website is living there. Right? So now this particular associate wants to open his practice one day and has got this plan of sort of, well, those are my patients, so I’m going to send an offer out to them and market to them in the future saying. Dr. Smith has now moved and opened his shiny new practice here. Talk to me about who owns that data because is it is it the associate that owns that data because they filled out a form on the associates website? Is it the practice who now owns that data? Because that data went to the practice. The practice called that patient booked them in with that associate or maybe even someone else, and now they’re a patient of the practice. Who what’s what’s the situation there?

So you remember. The first thing I would say is that if, let’s say, for example, the practice engaged me and said, we’re really worried that Dr. Bob, whoever it is, has done this. The first thing I’d do is like, okay, what I need to look at is your data sharing agreement with Dr. Bob. And does Dr. Bob have a does Dr. Bob have a privacy notice? Because his privacy notice, as I said earlier, the right to be informed, will set out how he controls that patient’s data. And if he’s control of that data, whether it aligns with his associate contract or not. Okay. But if he’s the controller, it should say that I can market to you. Now, if he hasn’t got that and if he hasn’t got the consent for it, then he’s up the creek, right? The practice that probably got a bit of leverage then to say, you know, your data controller, blah blah blah, you’re in breach of your contract, this kind of stuff. So the associates against the wall with that. Now, what I would say for an associate say if Dr. Bob wants to prevent that from happening is he would. He would need to understand contractually. And I think there’s a there is a self employment matter that comes in this as well.

The worker status issue is whether the practice have engaged him and his lead collecting abilities, let’s call it, on the basis that they have to come to them. Or is it a case that because he’s a self-employed dentist, he can collect his leads and he can see whoever he wants and he is basically just passing that and the practice are just fulfilling their part of that license fee, that agreement to book in patients. Because if it’s the latter, then that’s what’s called a data controller to a data controller relationship. Right? I get the leads and you’re going to book them in and we’re going to we’re going to treat this patient together. Yeah. Yeah. Now, if if it’s a former and he’s just doing it on behalf of the practice, right then he’s got called a data processor. That means if he’s a data processor and he signed a data processor agreement which is required under GDPR, Right. Then it means he can’t use that data for any other purpose than pretty much collecting it and sending it to the practice. Of course, you’ve got all the caveats of the of the of the associate agreement and I’m not a lawyer.

And that’s really interesting. And does the associate need to take explicit consent from the patient in order to be able to market to them in the future or is mentioning it in the privacy policy enough?

Has to be explicit consent.

Has to be explicit.

So with that, yeah, can’t be covered off in the privacy notice. So for example, I see this with a lot of like chat bots and like the, uh, like the clinic, um, what it’s called now. Well, let’s start small assessment things that you can get. You can’t remember the name of the company now, but where they’ll get all the information for a lead. Right. And they’ll be like, can we get your consent to store your data, which you don’t really need that, right? But they don’t get the consent for ongoing marketing, right? So you’ve got obviously the implied implied consent of someone filling out that form or going through that chat bot and therefore you will respond to them for in relation to that lead. But that’s a. Yeah, exactly. But you don’t know where that person is definitely going to go ahead. Right? So you can’t just keep marketing them on the basis that they’ve they’ve had treatment. The bit which they should be doing is they should be saying somewhere in that chatbot flow or form or whatever it might be is Would you like to hear about our upcoming giveaways? Competition offers free deals and other offers, right? Like where it’s like the person and they they have a yes or no, so they can’t they have to select either yes or no. Don’t default to yes, but just, you know, the.

Make them make a decision.

Yeah, exactly. Before they can go. Before they can go ahead and. If you’ve got that, then it could be that it’s on the on that associates website. Then that’s where I would put in it not to collect the marketing consent for the practice. They can do that on their own time. But for me as an associate, I want to have that so I can start sending a newsletter out. So that means if I go somewhere else or there’s Dr. Bob’s now got his own practice, just letting all my subscribers know about this, Of course, check out get legal advice on your associate agreement. But from a data protection perspective, Privacy Notice, you’ve got that consent. You can do it.

Yeah, perfect.

Now hate me for that.

But I think it’s important, right? Whether you’re an associate or a practice owner, just make sure you make sure whatever your plan is for that data, you’ve got your shit covered off in whichever direction you want to take it, Right? So if you’re taking explicit consent from that patient who’s inquiring because they found you on Instagram, they landed on your website, they filled out a form and you say to that patient, Hey, you are a patient of Prav Prav is going to get in touch with you in the future and market to you, but I’m going to pass your data on to the practice where I operate from now so that I can treat you. Are you cool with that? Yes or no, or words to that effect? Right. And then and then whatever the agreement is with the practice is another, another conversation, agreement, whatever that goes on. But I’ve got a question because you alluded to it about the contact forms, about continuing to market to these patients. I’m an implant patient and on average it takes about 12 to 18 months to two to convert me. And the reason being is I could be at any stage in that funnel and I could be early consideration.

Where do you know what I know I’ve got a missing tooth, but I’m not quite ready to part with three grand but want to learn about what the options are and this, that and the other. So screw it. I’ll fill out a form on Facebook. Someone will contact me and I’ll ignore the calls. I’ll get a few emails. I might respond to the odd one, but I’m definitely not ready to buy today, but I might be ready to buy in 6 or 12 months time. And the data in the practice is really clear that we have a ton of implant patients. Over 50% of the inquiries that come in today will convert in 12 to 18 months time. Right? So we know that that data exists, right? And so this theoretical question to you, Adrian, is this that I have inquired about implant treatment and that practice is going to continue. To communicate with me for 12 months or 18 months only about my inquiry and nothing else. Because of legitimate interests. What are your thoughts on that?

So I would say that. I think if if the communication is quite specific to that person and about their particular needs rather than a kind of a mass message, then you could rely on legitimate interest. Now, the thing about legitimate interest is that the law says you have to have a legitimate interest assessment, which is looking at the purpose, the necessity. I can’t remember the next one. Done one today. But effectively what you’re trying to do is saying, look, we this is how we’re going to grow our business and we don’t think that this is going to really hit the privacy rights or is going to have a negative impact on the individual. And you know what? Any time they say that we can, they don’t want it any more. They can opt out. We can take them off our list. Now, in that particular legitimate interest under necessity section, I would be saying that based on our statistics, the relationship goes on for at least 12 to 18 months. So checking in with that person is is because of the nature of that particular procedure. It’s it we’re kind of given the green light that it’s okay, but we’re making sure they’re not happy with it. They can unsubscribe, they can tell us, don’t call me anymore at any point. Now, what the what the practice can’t do. It’s just on an add on to that is automatically add that person to their their general Invisalign bleaching that kind of marketing this that was.

Exactly that was exactly my next point Adrian that look if I’ve got a missing tooth and I’ve inquired about implants, do not send me your latest Invisalign open day promotion, something that’s totally irrelevant, Right? So, so my argument here is that and look, I’m no expert, right? I paid Julia fairly a few hundred quid for 50 minutes of a time a few years ago. But, but, you know, I sort of exercise the right of common sense as well. And and I think, you know, I think I think what’s really clear is the nature of the communication, the the specificity of it, the preciseness of it is very much tailored towards the nature of their inquiry. And what else you mentioned, which was and they should have the ability to tell you to get off on the next bus whenever they want. And that should be very easy for them to do that. But then don’t take that as a license to then go, right. We’re running a hygiene offer today. I’m just going to send that out to everyone. Um.

Yeah, but, you know, you could have something where and I mean, obviously this is not formal advice, but I would feel that if you’re, if you’re, if you’re nurturing that relationship with a potential implant patient and you have an implant open day. Yeah. Go to them first. Absolutely. And just say, look, I know I know you’ve said recently that you take your time. This is not to press you at all, but we’ve got you might you might see it on Facebook that we’ve got this open day. So we’re not releasing it yet. Yet we’re giving people who are still talking to us about it sort of kind of first refusal. Explain what the open day is. And, you know, it’s not interesting to you. Then I’ll give you a call in a few months to check in like we usually do. That’s fine. I don’t know Prav people doing that. People thinking about that or they just putting all the money into a Facebook ad and not thinking about their current pipeline.

My, my, my, my thing. Adrian, is this. So we we get a lot of people coming to us and saying, hey, we’d love you to run some Facebook ads, Google ads for us, whatever. Right. And our Mo is this what’s your sales process? And if your sales process is broken and you’re not willing to invest in that broken sales process, we ain’t running ads for you.

Yeah.

And we walk away from it. Right. And, and the main reason for that, Adrian, is this because I know what will happen is in six months time or three months time or whatever that period of time is that we’ve been taking that retainer from that client that they will then start pointing the fingers finger at us. Right. And and I know from doing this for many years that marketing is about sales and marketing and more so about sales than marketing and the different techniques and the strategy and the communication and the nature of that communication, the different communication methods and the timing of it. And and so much more than, Hey, here’s an ad, I’m connecting it to a patient who’s got a problem. They’re going to fill out a form. You’re going to get the details. Now the uphill battle starts and so many practices don’t understand that, that it is is more sales than marketing. And so and so we see a lot of that.

It’s convincing. It’s convincing.

Yeah. We see a lot of that Adrian our dentists.

To persuade people.

Yeah, absolutely. Adrian And your question, our dentists just throwing more and more money at Facebook. And I think on the whole the easiest solution is to do that. The hardest solution is to train your staff and continually train your staff and investing them and yourself as a leader and find those holes and continually improve your consultation technique or your delivery of consultations or your sales approach. And all of that is so much easier just to say, you know, just to stick another £1,000 a month into Facebook. And we see that all the time.

Boost the post.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’ll work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Absolutely.

So it’s interesting. It’s interesting you say that. And I think that the GDPR is annoying. I totally get that. But I think because there’s been so much misinformation that’s been pushed a lot of industries, but particularly dentistry, there’s so many opportunities that are being missed out. You know, they’re kind of like hacks in a way to think, okay, how can I totally maximise and utilise this data by actually being comfortable with what the law says and what the law permits me to do. I remember when GDPR first came out and people were like, Oh, can’t send appointment reminder to someone unless I got their consent. Yeah, I was like, You you can. People still call me now and say, Oh, it’s been a real tricky position. We’ve got, you know, a hundred patients coming in this week. We’ve had to close down the practice, but we don’t have their consent to send them an SMS. Reminder, I was like, You don’t need that consent, mate. No, no. You could just send it, you know, just don’t put any marketing stuff in there.

Look, I have this I have this conversation with clients a lot, which is this, that if a patient fills out a contact form with their details, their phone number and their email address and the nature of their problem. Do you do you need.

That consent.

To respond to that email or pick up the phone and talk to them about their problem?

No, you don’t. No.

Absolutely not. And this is a common conversation that I have with dentists is this that we need this tick box and they need to consent to being contacted about the specific nature of that. If you want to send them some marketing shit down the line and offers and all the rest of it. Yes. Tick that tick box in. Don’t have it pre-ticked. And either make them tick it and don’t have it so that they can’t submit the form unless they’ve ticked it. Yeah. Then you’re golden, right? But. But to actually just respond to a question they’ve asked you and pick up the phone and say, Hey, I’ve got your enquiry, I’d like to help you. Fair game, right?

Exactly. Because it’s like me asking you a question now and you saying to me, Is it all right if I respond to that question?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Right.

Is it 100%? That’s the same thing. 100. 100%. It’s like it’s like.

Me saying Prav, could you could you do my website for me? Yeah. And are you going? To is. All right. If I just. If I just. Okay. Can I get your consent for me to answer that question?

Yeah. Well, just. Just while we’re on this topic, just to cover. Just to cover things off, Adrian, because I’m speaking to a professional, do I have your consent to publish this podcast online?

No, of course you do.

There we go.

Could you imagine what, an hour and a half in? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m sorry.

Mate.

Yeah. I withdraw my consent. Um, but, um. What what what I’d like to do is just take this conversation to a more recent conversation that we’ve had, Adrian, which is, um, revolving around AI. And it seems to me that you, I think you are using dentistry as your playground, Adrian, because you’ve smashed it with GDPR and then you’ve found a piece of technology that. I think we’re just scratching the surface with. And you’ve thought to yourself, well, how can this apply to dentistry? And then you’ve led by writing the book or the guide and pushing that out there. So give us some of your best nuggets when it comes to AI technology and how we can apply it to dentistry today and where you think the future’s going with it.

Wow. It’s it’s a it’s a question that the answer will change probably every month that someone would ask me it because it’s it’s growing so fast and I’m obsessed with it. But I have to limit how much YouTube that I watch on I at the moment because it’s just it’s fall down the rabbit hole and I don’t have enough time to test all this stuff out. I would say and I don’t know if you know, I don’t know his last name is a dentist, but he’s based out in Portugal. Yes. And he and Pierce Linney have got a company called Implement. I certainly followed them and they’ve got a great podcast as well. It’s not dental related, but you know, Alec has got the dental background and um. Puts it in the best, best way possible. Like I has been around for ages, but our actual kind of like hands on it right now is the fact that we are at the the Nokia snake level of artificial intelligence and that is blowing us away like our minds away just that. So we are only getting a glimpse of what is possible now. I think that’s really important because dentists need to be very, very care. Careful of the there’s lot going to be a lot of snake references. Now the snake oil sales which is going to come through I, I see us now as like oh this thing we’ve got AI eyes included in it. And I asked like the person who’s like, who’s who’s selling this software was like, okay, what what do you mean by AI? They can’t really articulate it. It’s like someone releasing a software product now and saying it’s got the Google in it, you know, because.

The Internet for them is Google. Yeah. So it’s got the Google. Yeah, yeah, it’s got the Google.

So I think that you’ve got to be you’ve got to you’ve got to be opportunistic. You can’t the subject is not going away. Yeah. And I think you just need to be very efficient and economic with your time and your thoughts around how this can help you in lots of different ways. So first place to start off with would be ChatGPT and alternatives like Claude to which in some ways is better in Claude to is actually free now as well. Right. And what you want to understand is prompt engineering. So prompt engineering is your ability to talk to the chat bots or the artificial intelligence where you want to call it in a way that it can help produce and generate the best types of responses. And there are certain tricks and tips on how to do this. And I would say the best way to do it and I’m going to nick this from Pierce Linney. The best way to think about this is that imagine you have got an expert that’s sat in your practice surgery room and you’re going in there and you’re asking it to do something right. So and it’s never met you before, doesn’t know anything about your practice or anything like this. And you go in there and you’re like, write, write me a blog about teeth whitening and that’s all you give it.

Now, it might be able to do it. But it doesn’t have the necessary context. Or how do you win that in American English or British spelling? English spelling. How do you want that formatted? Do you want it to be about you? Do you have any stories? Are you a private practice? Your practice? Like all this kind of stuff. So when you when you talk to the chatbot in chatbot and it’s very difficult to explain this without actually showing it, but you want to be thinking, okay, I need to give it necessary context for it to understand what kind of output I want. Also, I want it to be able to take on the persona of a particular expert, which is for the desired outcome. So, you know, blogging is not particularly the best one to use, but then we can say something like social media content, right? So you want to have someone who’s a copywriter that specialises in writing compelling content or captions for Instagram for dentists, blah, blah, blah, this kind of stuff. Now, when the when the when you put that into chat GPT or Claude, it’s like, okay, I know where to really focus my amazing computer power and the outputs that you would get are much, much better. Now once you know, those fundamentals are really, really good tip to use.

That I’ve found has worked massively for me is to use words like imagine at the beginning. So imagine you could blah blah, blah. Imagine you could make this better. Yeah. Imagine you have a magic wand and you could do anything you want. Okay? And and use that kind of thing. Another one is use the words carefully. Consider in caps for some reason really loves that. And it goes just deeper. Think about. Another one is let’s think about this step by step to make sure we get the right answer. Now something I’ve done. I wish I flippin had like a YouTube channel and published this because no one really tapped into this until like three months after I’d tried it. But something that works really, really well, especially with Chat GPT four, which is the kind of more clever version, let’s call it of ChatGPT, is that when you have something produce something like, for example, an email or whatever it might be, ask ChatGPT to carefully critique the above. And rate it out of ten for its effectiveness. And what it does is it says it will rate it out of like, oh, and after that prompt you can say and then provide me with a list of improvements to make it ten out of ten.

And then execute it, right?

So then it really looks at it. Yeah. So if you’ve got like a sales letter for example. Yeah, you could say critique this as Alex Hormozi critique this as Grant Cardone critique this as ex sales coach.

Yeah, really? We did. We did a bunch of, um, we’re going to, we’re going to release this as a, as a blog post. Our copy copyright. Bob came up with a bunch of ideas of writing something in the voice of and then he was like, Snoop Dogg, Samuel L Jackson, blah, blah, blah. Right. And it was hilarious. What, what, what came back out. Right? And that and I’ve been looking through the article, but just as you were sat there, I went into ChatGPT and I said, Write me an advert for Teeth Whitening in the Voice of Snoop Dogg. Yeah. And it’s brilliant what it comes back with. Right. And it’s just captured his persona. Yo, yo, yo. What’s cracking? Beautiful people? It’s your main man, Snoop d o double G here to drop you some knowledge on how you can take your smile game to the next level. Picture this. You stroll into a room, everyone stops and says, Damn, that smile is fly. Well, guess.

What? I just got.

The thing for you, my friends. It’s time to unleash those pearly whites and let them shine like never before. Introducing Snoop Dogg’s teeth whitening the dopest way to. And anyway, it carries on like that. Right?

And it love.

It just carries on. And it ends with, you know Snoop Dogg’s teeth whitening. Let them, let them teeth sparkling and them smiles popping bow wow wow Yippie your pearly whites unleashed all day. Yeah just think how.

Cool is that.

To market to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How cool is that.

Yeah it’s it’s it’s.

Brilliant and it’s, you know, it’s. And then in that same, the next, the next prompt you could say is like right now do it as a verse from the King James Bible right. Completely.

The other Yeah. The other spectrum.

Of this and it’s it’s very, very it’s very, very clever with that. And I think now I would say too, because I’ve been holding off from providing any more sort of content around ChatGPT and I because I’m just trying to see like the dust settle and it’s like regulations that are coming out and, you know, just it’s becoming quite divisive. Um, I’ve seen one company, they said they’ve got rid of 90% of their support centre by now using AI. So like that’s, there’s going to be a bit of a culture war around this. Yeah. But what I would say is that get now understand how to prompt engineer wait for Microsoft and Google to really battle it out. I wouldn’t be buying any fly by night companies that are saying that we’ve got I kind of in it and you know I can’t give too much away on this Prav but I’ve just literally before our call, I have seen an AI element which is going to be introduced into a dental practice management system which is going to be launched in the UK very soon. Okay. Which is phenomenal. Right. So this is a behemoth company that’s going to launch in the UK. I’m helping them with lots of different stuff integration, that kind of stuff.

Wow.

And I mean, you know, I would struggle for anyone when they see this to think, Oh yeah, but I still like so I like what that button is. Yeah, but can it do any of this stuff? Like, no. And that’s the exciting stuff. So I would say like, let the big boys now take the reins and to really because they have to adapt, like they have to be able to show it and they’re not going to buy these little small companies. They sell, you know, CRM, chatbot, whatever you want to text a video, whatever it might be, companies, they’re just going to do their own one because software can write software now. So it’s not about acquiring small software companies. These big boys will just destroy them. It’s as simple as that. They’re not going to buy them. They’re going to get rid of them.

Yeah, very quickly.

There’s stuff coming.

Yeah.

Stuff coming, which I’m very excited about.

So you can’t talk.

You can’t. You can’t. You can’t talk about the who’s and the wherefores and stuff. But what about the when? When’s it happening? Adrian. Or you can’t even talk about.

I would like to say.

Well, I’m I’m quite a conservative person with stuff like this. And I would say. By the end of the year, conservatively speaking, that this would be available. Now, of course, if you’ve got a US, a US product that’s coming to the UK, you’ve got you’ve got GDPR stuff, you’ve got so much to consider. But the dentists who are involved in the pilot with this are exceptionally impressed by it. And I’ve picked people who are, you know, critical, objectively, constructively, but they’re thinking this could actually save the NHS dental crisis, I think in some ways. Not completely, but it would go. I was listening in to the parliamentary discussions on the stuff today because I’m a shadow and I’m like, Yeah, a lot of the problems is data, right? This is the issue. People not turning up for appointments and that kind of stuff. There are ways to be able to use the right technology to be able to sort that out. But the problem is we have these legacy systems that are not ready for it. You bring an AI, you bring in proper systems. It’s going to I hate the word the term game changer, but it’s the one that fits. Right.

Interesting. I want to I want to move the conversation to a conversation that me and you have been having more about, which is not eating food. So, you know, I think offline we had a little bit of a conversation about health and mortality and that sort of thing, Adrian. And, you know, I’ve been on my own journey really, and, you know, I’ve realised that the older I get, the friends and colleagues and loved ones around me are now sharing with me that they’ve either got mental health issues, physical issues or a combination of them both, or have just been diagnosed with diabetes or worse still, they’re no longer here. And you know, myself, I’ve always had this constant battle with weight body image. Definitely 100% suffer from some kind of body dysmorphia. There’s no question about that for myself. Right. And I’m a complete all or nothing kind of guy. Adrian, I don’t do moderation. It just doesn’t exist in my world, Right? So I’m either all in one direction, so I’m either not eating, let’s be honest, I’m either not eating and I’m fasting or I’m eating once a day, or I’m trying to see how many Mars bars and pizzas I can get through in a day. And there’s no there’s no in between. Prav doesn’t exist. There’s no moderation. Prav And so and I’d hate for somebody to follow exactly what I do because I think it’s not healthy. And from a from a, I think from a mental point of view, I don’t think it’s healthy to fast for ten days and then eat for two and then fast for three and so on and so forth.

But I’m working on my own goal and my own mission. But while I’m sharing that journey, I have inspired a few people at least if they just decide, you know what, I’m going to skip breakfast or I’m going to think more consciously about what I’m eating. And what’s happened with me now is I’ve started thinking about food as fuel or nutrition and what’s in it and what I put in my body first. So the other day I went out for a nice meal, but before I went for that nice meal, I stuffed myself with broccoli and some salad and stuff like that so that when I went out for that meal, I wasn’t as I would normally do in a restaurant, say, Right, those three starters look really good. And instead of deciding which one of those I’m going to have, I’ll order all three. Thank you very much. Yeah, and that’s me all over. Right. And so I can control that now by actually, you know, slamming a load of broccoli and veg down me before I go out to a restaurant and then making a normal decision as people would and just picking one starter and maybe a main or something. But but Adrian, you shared with me that recently you started fasting and but you also shared with me that you had a tough time with Covid and health and stuff like that. So I want to learn about your journey in terms of health and where you are with that, where you were with it and what you’re working towards.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Prav And thanks for sharing what you said as well as there’s a lot of similarities there. I don’t think I’ve ever had the body dysmorphia thing. I do catch myself in the mirror sometimes and I’m like, Oh man. Like I look a lot better when I’m stood up and when I’m sat down, you know, and I it doesn’t get me, get me down. And I would never begin to say understand, but be able to put myself in the shoes of someone who suffers with that. But I think for me, I’ve really had to change my my view of health. I’ve never been particularly athletic. I was good at rugby, but I was an impact player. I was big and I could push to my my shoulders blades, you know, And I’ve enjoyed the moments when you can achieve something physically. I remember when I did my first chin up and thought that was like amazing, you know? I was like flipping after that chin up, right? But for to, to bring it back to where I am now as a 36, 37 and September adult, I got Covid July 2021 and I was a big guy, overweight. I had one vaccine in me. And whilst, you know, we talked about the the birth lottery, you know, I lost it when it came to the vaccine because I was literally like white male in his 30s. I was the last on the list to get the vaccine.

If I’d had that second vaccine, the doctor said it might have, you know, prevented you from getting so sick. But I got to I had to go in hospital and I had severe pneumonia. And I just managed to dodge the ventilator. But I was I my stats plummeted massively. And it took me about six months to recover. And I was walking a bit more. I didn’t really I didn’t really see the problem with diet, to be honest. I never really count my calories or anything like that. But I thought, I’m walking around the garden, I’m keeping active now. Now I know is certainly not enough. And then I bounced around different ideas and watching videos. And, you know, I’m a little bit like that obsessed with like certain people on YouTube that I watch about the keto and all this kind of stuff and fasting. And then it, you know, you go on holiday and you just kind of forget it. And then I got Covid again in March. And I was actually I just found out I got Covid before I went on Justin Lee’s podcast. And I could, um, I thought, I’ll be all right. I’ll be all right. And I nearly went into hospital again. And I was like, crap. And about a month ago. I thought I really. I’ve really got to sort myself out now. This is. You’ve had a good innings of, like, eating what you want and not exercising and stuff.

But what that just goes to show is a lack of discipline. And if I want to be in ten years time someone who can identify me as an approachable, lovable, confident person. Right. These comforting people. But, man, that guy is disciplined. Yeah. And I’ve never been able to have that as part of my identity. So I started a version of 75 Hearts. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across this. It’s a 75. 75 hard. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m doing a version of of that. It’s still pretty difficult, but part of that is is fasting and keeping to a diet. And I’m I am I’m tweaking it a little bit now. You’re not supposed to be supposed to start again if you don’t follow what you set out to. But I’m taking a bit more of an interest in fasting and I’m being very careful where I get my information from. And I’ve realised that when you look at the science behind it, when you actually experience the satisfaction of discipline, which I’m sure you’ve had, Yeah. The also the focus that you can have from not eating like I haven’t the last time I ate was 9:00 yesterday. Right. What is it now? We’re coming up to 7:00. Next day. Yeah, like I feel a bit hungry. I’m starting to feel a little bit light-headed. Right. Okay. But I’ve got to a point now where I can comfortably do this and then realising, looking at the science of how that is affecting your physiology and how that can improve your metabolism is brilliant.

And one thing that really stood out for me, I don’t know if you’ve come across this doctor called Dr. Gundry. He wrote a book called Unlocking the Keto Code, and he admits that as one of the pioneers of the Keto diet in the mainstream, he got some of that wrong. And he says, you know, you need to think about other stuff, not just ketosis. But one of the things is fasting. And one of the studies that he did was just a very quick one. Italian cycle team. Yeah, I think for about three months they had the same feasting table, so they ate the same stuff and they did the same exercise. And but one of the group one. Group B, they could only eat in a six hour feasting window. And they performed much better than group A who could eat whenever they want. And I was like, that really piqued my interest. And I’m thinking, But the way I have to look at this is not that I want to lose weight. It’s not that I want to look better. It’s because I want to be able to say that I am a disciplined person and a great way to see the measure of discipline is your diet and your exercise.

So I’ve got I’ve got a few questions that come out of that. Adrian And, um, I guess one of them is just if we just go back to the point where you were sort of very ill, at any point, did you think this is it?

When you were watching.

Those O2 sats go down and you thought, shit.

They wouldn’t even let me look at them in the end. Prav They wouldn’t let me look at them.

Right?

My heart rate was going so far up, they turned the monitor away. And I remember I was taken out to a what’s called a high flow room, high flow oxygen room.

Yeah.

I don’t expect him to be there for an afternoon, by the way. Right. So this is day four. Yeah. I get put into a high flow oxygen room. I had two Filipino nurses. I love those nurses so much. All the nurses, I watched them get spat at, swore at by other guys in my ward. I made sure I knew them by name and I said hello to them. And you know, much, though possibly had baked goods brought in for them and had visitors, the whole shebang. But I remember this particular point where I was really getting down. They wouldn’t let me look at my stats and they said they’re going to put me into ICU. And these two nurses were so wonderful and they were washing me down. And one of them said to me, she said, I shouldn’t be saying this, but try to mentally fight that. You do not want to be on a ventilator. You do not want to be on a ventilator because that’s where you’re heading right now. Right. And Prav that I took a picture of myself as what I thought would be my last selfie. Not that I take selfies all the time. Not that kind of guy. But I took that picture thinking this might be the last photo of me. And that night I prayed and I. All I thought was, I don’t want to be on a ventilator. I don’t want to be on a ventilator. I don’t I don’t believe in like like mind over matter, psychosomatic, whatever the word is for that. But to answer your question, to face my immortality. Yeah. That point, I thought, this is it.

So, so my question after that, Adrian, is this is then did you pull your finger out at that moment or did you come out of there at that point, things got okay. You thought, fuck it, I can have a pizza now. I’m okay. I didn’t pop my clogs. We’re all good. And then did you have to find a second wind or were you 100% tunnel vision at that point and said, Right, I’m going to save my life now.

No, I let myself off. I let myself off by thinking I need to rest. But take I mean, to put this into perspective, I’m not usually quite open about this, but six months before I just finished my job at my dentist. Right. And then I was starting up my own consultancy in dentistry.

And.

I was building that up slowly. But that’s a tough, tough gig, right? Even with the fact that I have one word equity in dentistry. And I’ve just moved the other side of the country. Right. And I get sick. I can’t work for six months. I blew through my savings. Yeah. And my job was to try and support myself and my family and people who depend on me. So if that meant that we have, you know, we’ve got to eat fast food or whatever it might be, that was it. Because you know what it’s like. Even though we fast like when we do eat, we eat well and that’s quite expensive. Right. So I focussed on that and I got, you know, I managed to bounce back with my job and financially. But then you easily just slip back into normality, you know, and like Covid is like my X Factor sob story when I speak to people. And, you know, it’s it’s interesting people. Oh, I never met anyone who’s gone to hospital. That’s the kind of thing and that’s how it reserved itself in my life. And I kind of I always thought that when I was in hospital, there was people I never thought I was in there because I was overweight. I thought I was in there because I just unlucky. And I was people next to me that were much fitter.

There was a guy who was like semi-professional rugby player. There was a kite surfer there and I just thought, Oh, I’m not here because I was overweight. It probably was a factor. I don’t really know, but I never thought. I just thought, well, I’m confident. Like this is my personality. I’m big. Like sometimes, you know, when I go to a shop and I want to put a suit on, I’m thinking, Oh yeah, I’m a size whatever, and I’m not that I’m still big. That gets me down. I feel a bit rubbish, but nothing really pushed me until I started to think about I need to get better control over my thoughts, not just like negative thoughts that I get so distracted. And I was there was regrets that were starting to pick up opportunities that I’ve missed, things I’ve missed out of. And I started to read, read and it’s just a compound effect of so much other stuff that may be brought to the point, like health is the foundation. Physical health and emotional health is the foundation for any other success. I’m going to see over the next few years, the only way that I can get there is to be disciplined. But that is the fuel discipline is the fuel for this, and the outcomes will just flow from that. Yeah.

Interesting. You know, you mentioned that, you know, you have one of these life events where you sort of see your life flash in front of you. You take your final selfie and then you give yourself a bit of a break and you don’t go tunnel vision, all the sort of, you know. Goggins On it is probably the easiest way to describe it, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Watch so much. Goggins Right now. Yeah.

If you want to give yourself a bowl full of motivation, just just listen to both of his.

Audio.

Books and and you’ll push through whatever pain barriers or mental barriers you’ve got if you believe in it and you get sucked into it like I have. But, you know, it took something else. And that’s something else for you. Certainly was. You want to be you want to develop your sense and feeling and achievement of discipline. And the consequence of that will be a fitter, stronger, healthier, more successful businessman, partner in life, whatever that is. Right. And that will all stem from this one thing called discipline. Right? And we all have different, different things that drive that. And you mentioned to me now, right, you’ve not eaten for whatever, nearly 20, 22 hours, something like that. Yeah. 22 hours since your last eight. And you say you feel a little bit light headed now. Right. Can I ask you, have you had any salt today?

Yeah. I just came home at. When was it? Around 3:00. First thing I did was have some water, a bit of salt in it. But what I probably should have done is had another one about two hours ago. But you are right. The salt thing is important.

The reason you’ll be feeling light-headed is definitely the salt thing. I’ve done this so many times. I know. Kind of know my body and now I know how to remedy it. Right? So I will have two salt capsules probably every four hours while I’m fasting without other than other than when I’m sleeping. I’ll have my wake and sleep and all the rest of it. And that keeps me in check, gets rid of all the headaches and stuff. But I’m going to ask you another question now, Adrian. You’re probably going to eat after this podcast, right? I’m guessing, but. If you were to not eat after this podcast and eat tomorrow on Saturday. Yeah. How hard do you think it would be to do that?

Mm.

Hey, it’s just a decision, right? So I think that. I think I probably need to have the salt just to probably give me some sort of electrolyte and and probably push off this slight headache that I can feel just pulsing, you know, every 30s. Um, but I think from a mental, the mental toughness of it would not be would not be a problem because you know what it is, man. I don’t know how you get this stuff out of me but the when I feel that hunger, you know, I picture, I picture someone mining for gold. Right? And it takes like it takes energy and pain, right? The reverberation of the axe going against the rock. And I make that feeling. It’s like little man just mining.

In my stomach, you know?

And he’s looking for success.

Yeah, Yeah. It’s interesting. We all create these little, little, um, images in our minds, right? We all have these different ways of coping with it, right for me. And I don’t know where I first heard this, but hunger is just a temporary state of mind. Right. It is just a temporary state of mind so I can think my way out of hunger. It’s really easy to do. Yeah. And so, listen, I’m not trying to at this point convince you to not eat tonight, but just I’m just having this conversation with you. Because if we were talking about it and you said to me, Look, Prav, do you know what? I’d be really cool if I could go to breakfast tomorrow, right? But there’s some barriers in the way. And I’d say to you, well, what what are these barriers? Because between now and when you sleep is the only thing that you need to overcome. Right. So then I’d be asking you, well, how many hours till you sleep? Adrian, what are you going to do to preoccupy your mind between now and sleep? What makes you really sleepy? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Right. And we figure out how you get through the next few hours of your day. And then by the time you nod off, it’s morning time. Fasting while you’re sleeping is really easy. I’ve never I’ve never thought about that.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a quick.

It’s like a shortcut in it.

It’s a hack, isn’t it? It’s a quick win. And your minor, your equivalent of your minor hack. In a way, when I feel like I want to give up or I want to fail or I’m feeling hungry. Yeah. And look, we don’t we don’t come up with many explicits on this thing here. But, but I literally say to myself, Fuck you, Prav.

Fuck you.

Right? And that takes me out of it. Yeah, right. And. And I do a lot of self-talk, right when I’m in the gym and training. Or during these things we need to get. And those are the words I use. Right. And they get me through. They get me through. And part of that, you know, it’s I guess it’s layered on with, you know, some of the concepts from Goggins where he says, you know, when you’re at your tether and you feel you’ve reached the end and you can’t go any further, you’re only 40% of the way there. And that resonates with me. So then that gives me a mental pickup. It flicks a switch, and I say to myself, f Prav you’re better than this and motor on. And so, yeah, I guess, you know, that’s where I am. And so, and so if we talk about your fasting journey. Adrian, what, what are you going to do? What’s the plan? You’re following this 75 heart or whatever it is. You’ve tweaked things a little bit. Talk me through your protocol. How how long are you going to fast for? Is it going to become a regular part of your every day? You’re going to is it a 16 eight? Are you trying to shortcut something and you’re going to do a period of intensity and then revert back to. What’s the plan?

So my plan is at the moment I need to have a plan. But what I’ve been following, following at the moment is keeping to a kind of a six, seven hour window. I eat usually around my first meals around 1:00 and that is and I’m keeping my diet wise is is quite heavily protein good good fats I eat a lot of goats dairy goats products. Okay. Because they just it’s just brilliant you know they they have all the lots of nutrition and polyphenols and all this other stuff that you need to have that’s in there. And I actually quite like it. I used to hate goat’s milk, but the new stuff is pretty good. But in terms of the, the fasting, I’m because I’m seeing Mike like I’m losing weight and I’m not losing muscle and I’m feeling more focussed and it’s helping with this whole discipline journey. I’m intrigued to research it more. And I catch I caught a, um, a podcast episode, just a bit of it with Diary of a CEO. And it was this this lady who’s written a book called Fast Like a Girl. I think it’s fasting for women, by the way. But she says that there is a scientific fact and you might know it scientific backed fasting schedule that you can follow, which kind of varies the fasting. So your body isn’t just used to like, okay, Adrian doesn’t eat between 8 and 1 the next day. Yeah. So the variation of the fast is actually something which is quite, quite good in terms of weight loss, the focus and the other benefits that you can get from it. So I’m going to look into that.

Keep your body, keep your body guessing. So if like some of the best stuff I’ve heard on fasting is from a guy called Dr. Satchin Panda and another guy called Dr. Walter Longo, and they lead the research in fasting. So well worth looking at that. But you spoke about keto earlier and I think there’s one piece of content that you will find really, really interesting. And I have listened to this podcast 2 or 3 times and it’s by Andrew Huberman and he interviews a guy called Dr. Chris Huberman. It’s his interview with Chris Palmer, and it’s about the ketogenic diet and its and its impact on mental health. And the evidence is so compelling for treating depression, schizophrenia, psychosis. It’s insane, right? You know, the reason why the ketogenic diet was initially developed was for epilepsy treatment, right? But then they looked at, okay, what, what, what, what does epilepsy, what are the brain patterns and the neurone firing and all that have in common with other disorders of the brain. Right. And this is where this Chris Palmer talks in an incredible amount of detail. You will really enjoy that podcast, I’m sure you will. And the knowledge I got from that and the information, it was so inspiring about the ketogenic diet. And I’ve noticed whenever I’m in ketosis, I am mentally in a much happier place. But I hadn’t connected the dots until I listened to Chris Palmer’s podcast so. Well, well, well, well worth a listen there. And and.

To feel this.

This is not.

Come on.

But do you feel like your skin is better from being on keto? Because mine is.

Right. Let me.

Tell you. Let me tell you, as a bald guy. I have dandruff.

Okay.

I used to. If I take myself. Eight weeks ago, I had dandruff. I had dandruff falling out of my beard and I had itchy what I would consider to be mainly inflamed skin. It’s the easiest way to describe my skin. Right after my ten day fast, I realised that I no longer had dandruff. Which means when I scratch my head, it stops snowing. Or when my daughter scratches my beard, it stops snowing. And I can now wear black tops because they don’t get covered in snow. My skin is so much better and so much clearer. Yeah. Funnily enough, just before this podcast, I recorded a little video on my phone about what I’ve been the side benefits of fasting right? For me, this whole journey I’ve been doing, you know, probably for the last eight weeks, eight, nine weeks ago after my ten day fast, right. And I brought that up. So one of them was clearer skin, no more dandruff. I deliberately don’t weigh myself, Adrian. And the reason being is the scale just plays fucking tricks on you, right? So especially if you’re doing a bit of training, if you put on a little bit of muscle or you’ve drunk a bit more water that day or whatever, or you know, you’ve, you’ve not taken a crap or whatever it is, the scales tell you a story and you interpret that story the way you want to. So whenever I’ve wanted to lose weight, I never step on the scales, right? But the last time I weighed myself, I was 11 kilos heavier than today.

And that’s about eight weeks ago. Right. So I’ve lost about 11 kilos. Wow. I think I need to lose about another eight kilos for me to be in a happy place. Right. With my with with with where my weight is. Right. But for me, it’s it’s that whole body dysmorphia. Right? So then then there’s actually muscle tone because I’ve lost ten kilos, but I’ve got the physique that looks a little bit like melted cheese at the moment and I don’t quite like that. And so that will figure itself out over the next few months. Right. And and I’ll work on that. And so, yeah, I do do honestly believe that the benefits beyond weight loss, mental clarity, skin inflammation, achy knees, achy joints, all of that just gone. I’ve got an l5-s1 disc tear, so I get a lot of sciatic pain, so I just need to walk 100m and I get this intense foot pain. It’s not gone, but it’s better. Do you know what? When I see these benefits, Adrian, they motivate me further. Yeah. And that’s what’s keeping this thing going. And my plan is at the moment that I have no plan. So I’ll know that during the week I might just throw in a little two day fast, but the maximum that I’ll eat is once a day. But occasionally, if I want to treat myself, I might go all out and eat twice that day. And that’s it. Right. And you know, you just said earlier that your plan is that you need a plan, but maybe you don’t.

I feel inspired by that because I think the the idea of keeping the body guessing is good.

Absolutely.

When you have the knowledge, like when you mean Andrew Huberman, man, like I got a guy crush on that guy. Like, he’s super smart. He looks like he’s Sons of Anarchy.

Like he looks good. Very eloquent. You know, just awesome bloke. And like, listen to him for days. And, um.

I think being able to get this knowledge and having it explained to you in such a, like in a such a clear way makes you realise, okay, this isn’t someone who’s trying to sell me some weird eight week plan and I got to pay him like hundreds of pounds. Like, this is person’s like open source their knowledge so that I can feel like when I’m going.

To.

A social gathering or whatever that might be, I don’t have to explain myself. Like, I just like, you know, I’m, I’m on this, this thing at the moment and it’s really good because I’m, I want to stick to it and disciplined with it and that kind of stuff. And I’m not doing it because I want to lose weight. I’m just doing it. I want to be disciplined. And I think it’s really good to have that. And but still having the flexibility of like because the knowledge I have, like I can kind of move around it and I can enjoy it because that’s what drive and motivation is about, not your outcomes, but actually enjoying what you’re doing. And that’s the first time I’ve actually enjoyed this, even though I do go a little bit. Goggins And I’m having a lot of this talking like I’m, you know, you know, I’m being a bit of a was he saying you’re being a bit of a bitch?

Yeah, kind of thing.

And it’s like, just use that, use that as if you’re talking to your best friend and you are telling them this stuff to save their life because that’s effectively what I’m trying to be doing to myself right now. So what would I say to someone else? Say that to myself.

Say it to yourself, right or the other. You right that Goggins talks about in his second book. He talks about there being a second persona. Right? There’s there’s David, there’s David Goggins and then there’s the persona. Goggins And Goggins is one mean mofo that you don’t want to mess with or compete with. Yeah. And when, when he unleashes. Goggins God help anyone, right? And whether you’re self-talking to that. But, but, but the one thing about being relaxed about not having a plan and I’ve done this before is that I see the fruits of my success in terms of like, let’s say, fasting and stuff and thought, think, Oh, can I have a bit of a break here? I can let myself go here. I can do this. For me personally, it’s such a trap to fall into and I’ve done that so many times. Look, I mean, I did a 21 day fast a few years ago, right? And I still managed after that. I was I was fit as a fiddle. I was lean. I was happy with the way I was. And then do you know what I did? I let myself get fat as fuck again, right? Why? Because I fell off the wagon. And then. And then these things just creep up on you. And then you make excuses. And then you get busy at work, and. And your thought processes run away with you, and you make up excuses for yourself. And then you stop being that. Let’s say in your world that’s super disciplined human being or in my world, you know, you know, tunnel vision and challenged and obsessive in that way. And then and then you go into self-destruct mode, right? Which is what I went into and then had to pull myself out of it. Right? And that’s where I am today. And so it’s for me personally, it’s a very, very fine line. Adrian And so it’s really interesting to just shoot the breeze with you in terms of like, you know, why you decided to do this. And, and the core driving factor is discipline.

Yeah. And I think the thing is, is that. We need to we need to look at what our self-talk is. And sometimes our self-talk can be very critical, but actually it needs to be more compassionate. The problem is, is when we hear the word of like self-compassion, it sounds all like bit cheesy and like all be nice to yourself and affirmations and all this kind of stuff. No, because there is a you have to you have to think about what what is the actual kindness to myself right now? Yeah. And sometimes it’s a little bit cruel to be kind, right?

Without question.

To not being horrible, not being, you know, persecuting yourself, but a case of like what is kind to me right now for the bigger picture and how can I help that guy in as much that I would if I had an overweight friend who was diabetic or near to it and I’ve got a piece of cake, am I going to offer it to him? No way am I going to do that. That’s not kind. I’m going to encourage him like, Hey, man, I won’t have one with you, you know? Yeah, that’s the that’s the kind of self-talk I need to be having with myself.

100%. 100%. And, you know, there’s this there’s this concept of know if you’ve come across the concept of it before or internal family systems as a sort of psychological, should we say a coaching, but also a therapy, a practice of therapy where you actually take yourself to a place of your younger self. Okay, so let’s say, let’s say we took ourself to that point where Adrian was that 710 year old boy who wanted to jump. Yeah. And hurt himself or whatever. Right? So we take ourselves to that bad place that that really, really bad place. But, but what we do is we close our eyes, we take ourselves there. But you’re now Adrian the in his mid 30s and you sit next to that boy and you look over to that boy. Right. And you really vividly visualise and, and you talk to him. And what would you say to him at this point? Right. You know, what would you tell him? What were the words you would tell him? And and if that boy was to now look up at you today. What would he be saying to you? Right. And I think that that practice of ifs where we just touched upon self-talk now, Adrian, and this is self-talk in the present.

But if we were to exercise some self-talk in the past, I think that’s where our compassion would really come in, where we’re going back and potentially healing. What? We didn’t have the opportunity to heal or close the book on. Right. Many, many years ago or whatever. Right. And I think in in all aspects, Adrian, whether it’s self-talk today, right now, this evening or whether it’s self-talk and having a chat with Prav or Adrian when they were ten years old. Yeah, I’ve done a lot of that. It’s a really, really powerful way of healing yourself and moving on or motivating yourself. And I think as you said, right, it might sound cheesy, but I think compassion is really important. Really, really important to to to give yourself, you know, and in your self-talk. And there are lots of people I know. Adrian, who I would talk to about self-talk and mentioned self-talk and they just think I’m fucking cream crackers, right? Because it’s off their radar, right? Having that, that having a word with yourself, having a conversation with yourself. But do it all the time.

But I think it’s because our what you’ve just said there, that reflection, that emotional intelligence, that ability to embrace our regrets, our failures. Daniel Pink talks about writing a failure resume and looking at that about all the things that you got wrong, that you missed out on, that you didn’t take or the things you shouldn’t have taken. On one side of a piece of paper and then what you’ve learned and what you’ve built from that. Because I think that seven year old Adrian did not have a clue about what other failures and issues he was going to have for the next ten, 20 years.

But the thing is.

I would pick that chaos to colour my life because I learned so much from it. And I’ve got plenty of mileage left in me. You got plenty of mileage left, left in you.

Absolutely.

And that’s the thing. It’s like embrace it, grow from it, find strength in that regret because you’re going to have it one way or another. You might as well use it.

100%. 100%. Adrian I’ve really enjoyed this evening’s conversation. I knew this was going to be a long podcast. Yeah, I just knew it. And whether it’s the energy between us that we’ve had when we’ve been communicating or what, we had so many topics to cover, right? And I feel we could carry on going on, right? But I think we’ve come to the point where I’m going to ask you perhaps a final question. Okay. And perhaps final question is this, Adrian, that imagine we get to the point where it is your last day? But you now 125 because you’ve you’ve nailed your self-discipline and you’re fasting and you’re a super athlete and you’ve been successful in business and but you’re surrounded by your loved ones. Adrian Whether it’s, um, you know, friends, family members, whoever it might be. And you had to leave them with three parting bits of advice or wisdom. What would they be?

I would always say that. Have a bias towards action, even if it’s a slight bit of action. Always a bias towards action above me. Don’t think you can see it, but there’s this light. It’s a shark that’s holding that light.

Ah, okay.

Sharks don’t stop. Right? I know people can’t sit. They’ve seen this. But you see that? I love sharks. Slipping Jaws is my favourite film, you know. And sharks never stop moving. And I have stopped moving so many times in my life and suffered the penalty for that. So have a bias towards action. But when you’re doing that action, always look for kindness, for comfort, for compassion, for patience. Look for virtues in your action. And I think the last one that I would tell my seven year old self. Is. It’s okay to be misunderstood. Because if you are built your character on all of those other things and you’re confident in that. You understand that? And the ones that matter, whose opinions matter, whose opinions have actual consequence, they understand it. And that’s fine if other people misunderstand it. Whatever. That’d be my three bits.

Okay, beautiful. And then it wasn’t actually my final question. Tell a lie. Adrian, is that is that after you’ve passed, how would you like to be remembered? Adrian was complete the sentence.

I’m not going to say GDPR guy Adrian.

I would say Adrian was a kind and confident man who found comfort in his chaos so he could comfort others in their chaos.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Adrian And then this payments final question, which is fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive? Who would they be?

Johnny Cash. Jim Morrison. Frank Sinatra.

Lovely. Lovely. What an evening of entertainment.

Yeah. Dinner and a show.

Yeah. Yeah. Happy days. Happy days. Adrian, It’s been a blast. I’ve really enjoyed shooting the breeze with you. It’s been a really comfortable conversation, and it’s gone in many different directions. But I think I’ve got as much out of it as I’ve put in. I’ve got a lot out of speaking to you today. Um, it’s been it’s been very open and thanks for sharing your stories with us. Yeah. And look forward to having your next meal, I guess, after, what, nearly 24 hours of fasting?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not going to be Domino’s.

Good.

I’ve made that mistake before. For those of you who’ve listened to the end, if you check out our podcast show notes, you’ll be able to access some free gifts from Adrian, who kindly donated some content for us that he usually charges for. So you’ve got his chat GPT Guide, essentially a Dental business game changer. I actually purchased this and it’s incredibly valuable. It gives you a good insight into how to use ChatGPT as a dental professional and how to squeeze the most out of it. And so if you check out the show notes, there’s a free version of that for the first 100 listeners. Then you’ve got this Privacy Notice template for practices and his Privacy Notice template for associates, and you can download those free of charge, but they are limited to the first 100 Dental Leaders listeners. So race in there. Check out the show notes and download your free goodies from Adrian and Adrian. Thank you so much for your generous gift to our listeners.

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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