We sat and we wrote down systems before we even opened and we thought, okay, this is how we would want to be treated if we went to like a high end five star hotel. So we kind of just dragged that kind of service into dentistry because patients want to feel special. They don’t want to feel like a conveyor belt when they come in. They want to feel like they’re the only people there. From day one, when we hired people, we would train them and say, Look, when someone comes in, greet them, call them by the first name is say anything You can remember. They said to you last time, jot it down. Talk about the next time. So little things can go a big way. And you know, if you go to a lovely hotel, everything can be amazing. You’re not going to remember the 99% of things that are good. You’re going to remember that 1% like someone didn’t say hi to you or someone didn’t pay attention to you quick enough. That’s what patients will go tell their friends about. Yes. Obviously it’s important. That clinic looks good. It’s important the results are great. But the experience, I think, is the most important part of the pathway for the patient and for us. That’s what’s been our biggest success, is that word of mouth. And I think that’s got a big part to play in it.

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

It gives me great pleasure to welcome doctors Ramtin and Damon Tahiri to the podcast. A couple of orthodontists are a bit different to to the norm when it comes to orthodontists. I’ve had the privilege of visiting their extraordinary practice near Sandbanks for Dental on the banks, one of the most beautiful practices I’ve ever been to. Really stunning and sort of aimed more at direct to consumer, not aimed at getting ortho referrals. But they’ve been incredibly successful there. I mean, just by looking at your enlightened numbers, you’re you’re busy doing all sorts of work, not just orthodontics. They also run a very successful course. Some of the feedback I’ve had from delegates who’ve come on to your complete aligner programme and people have been completely blown away by the amount of content, number one, and the quality of the content. Number two And so we’ll definitely get into that. So it’s a massive pleasure to have you on the podcast, guys.

Thank you, Payman Thank you so much for having us on. It’s we always listen to Leaders podcasts and we’re so happy to be on. It’s it’s a real pleasure.

So guys, I met I met your mum as well. Your mum’s a dentist. Were you two always going to be dentists? I mean, was that was that I mean, it’s funny because I can’t get my kids to say they want to do dentistry. Was that was that always going to happen or was it something that happened later in the day? It Rampton You’re older, right?

Yeah, I’m three years older than Damon, so I’m yeah, three years older. And yeah, for me it was, uh, I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything else. You know, I remember, like, going to Mom’s practice when I was young, when I was, you know, going to school. I would come into the practice after school. And it was there was always classical music playing, and it just seemed really calm and relaxed. And I was like, you know, this is something that, you know, and I wrongly thought that this is the way that dentistry is. You know, Mom wouldn’t tell me the bad things about it. It was all, you know, good and fun and everything else. So I was always sort of influenced into it.

And where was Mom’s practice?

Where was this in Bournemouth. So it’s like five. Yeah, ten minutes from our current practice. Yeah.

Okay. So you guys grew up in Bournemouth?

We have a long story Payman. So we. I was born in Iran. Yeah, moved to Sweden when I was a year old. So Damon was born in, in Sweden. Okay. We lived there for the first 12 years of my life, the first nine years of Damon’s life. And then my mom, you know, had a lot of difficulties. You know, my my mom was doing dentistry in Iran, had to leave Iran, you know, the circumstances there and got to Sweden. Redid all of her exams. She did everything, got back into dental school, you know, with two kids. And, you know, she would travel an hour and a half on the train every day to go and study, go to the University of Stockholm, come back to our town in the south, which is a little town called Uppsala. And yeah, and then she became a dentist, so she became a dentist when I was 12 years old. And then there weren’t that many jobs in Sweden for dentists. There was a lot of jobs in the UK. This was around 98, 99. So she got a job here and we all moved here. So that’s that was our story.

So then, Damon, you saw Rampton going to dentistry and what were you always going to become a dentist or how did it play out in your head?

I wanted to be well, I wanted to go down the law route initially and then did I remember? I did two weeks of work experience in a solicitor’s firm and I hated it. It was so much paperwork. It was all reading, writing, and I was like, I quite like being hands on. I hate reading and writing. So I was like, This is not right for me. And then Mum was quite clever. She always, like Rampton said, she always brought us in the days look really calm. I was like, you know, sit on a chair, drill a few tea, everyone’s happy, Listen, some nice chilled music. So this sounds pretty good. And there was nothing. I wanted to be a tennis player, but apart from that, there was nothing I really wanted to do. So I thought, you know, this. This looks pretty good. Mum can always help us when we when we go down that route. So why not? Rampton was already in. He was enjoying it, so I thought may as well do the same. And yeah. Haven’t lived to regret it yet. Which. Which is good.

So you studied in Bristol?

Yeah. Correct.

And Rampton. You were in Czech Republic. Yeah.

In a town called Pilsen, which is like an hour south of Prague, I think.

And what a massive experience you’ve had, man. It’s Iran, Sweden, Czech Republic. Yeah. Back to Bournemouth. You know, I’m quite interested in this question of let’s start with Sweden versus the UK as a, as a firstly, as a society. And then secondly, Dental training. What’s, what’s your reflections?

Yeah. I mean, Sweden. Sweden is. Have you ever been to Sweden?

Yeah, have.

It’s a very unique culture, I don’t think. I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that has that specific culture like Sweden. It’s really hard to explain unless you live in there. But I think anyone that goes there can. The one word you would use to describe Sweden, I think, is calm. There’s there’s no one honking. The horn could literally park the car in the middle of the road, cause heavy traffic and no one would honk the horn. It’s that it’s that kind of place. So it’s a very calm way of life, which, you know, we had a great upbringing. I can’t remember anything negative about my upbringing. And yeah, considering if I have a kid to go back to Sweden and bring him up there because it’s such a good quality of life. When you growing up for the first ten years, I would say. But then there’s a lot of issues. I think 10 to 20, I think, you know, very dark quite a lot of the year and very cold depending on where you live as well. So that’s kind of the downside of it. And also. Sweden has not not direct racism, but there’s a bit of indirect racism that you don’t. I never I never really picked up on it when I was there, when I was younger, because I think when you’re when you’re ten, you don’t really realise it.

But when I went back to specialise, I really saw that kind of undertone where it’s not like they would say anything to you, but it’s very hard to integrate into Swedish society. Not because they don’t like you, because you’re from a different country. It’s just they have such a specific culture. They only get on with their own kind of culture, so it’s really hard to integrate. So for that reason, I think England always feels more home than Sweden to us now, because here I don’t think anyone looks at you and say, When I first came, when I came out of Sweden, everyone’s like, Where are you from? And I was like, I’m Swedish. And they’re like, Oh no, where you’re actually from, you don’t you don’t look Swedish. Whereas here if I say if, anywhere I go, if I say I’m English, okay, great. And so I feel this is more home for us. And yeah, England has its positives and negatives like any country, right? But yeah, Sweden is a great quality of life, but as long as you like it really calm and yeah casual Friday get get some sweets, get some drinks, relax watch a movie. That’s pretty much it. England I think there’s a lot more. It’s a lot more alive.

Crampton What do you think?

Um, I would, I would agree with Damien Payman. I think generally like the way of life there is much calmer. It’s, you know, our days where, like, our work days at uni were, you know, you start at eight, you have, we call it a fika, which is like a break at like 930. We all sit together and have a coffee. We did another hour of, you know, clinics of theory and then hour and a half, then lunch and then another break an hour after. Then we had clinics up until, yeah, about 330, 4:00 and then, you know, everything’s relaxed after that. There’s no one’s really chasing here. It’s a bit of it almost feels like everyone’s competing a bit. Everyone’s trying to get like to the next step, to the next step. Whereas in Sweden everyone’s very content with being at, you know, the, you know, the level that they’re at living, living life, you know, the simple pleasures, one holiday a year, you know, going to the woods and stuff like that. So the way of life is a lot simpler. In Sweden, it’s a lot more calmer. You know, I’m more relaxed in Sweden, but I also like the grind and the and the murkiness of, of, of, you know, of, of of trying to, you know, get to that next level as well. So I guess I’m a fan of fan of both. But when you look at the Dental side of things like maybe it’s better if you answer the Dental side because I didn’t study in England. But let’s let’s.

Let’s let’s stick to the country, though, because, you know, it’s such an interesting country. I guess the reason you guys were in Sweden was because Sweden was the only country letting people in at that time. That’s that’s why so many Iranians ended up in Sweden. I know that for a fact, right? Yeah. War in Iran or whatever it was. They did the same thing with the Syrians. Yes. And then, you know, you think that’s a really sort of liberal culture that does that and accepting culture. And at the same time, you can understand that, you know, the people, the Swedish people themselves, they’re trying to protect kind of their way of life. And then you get this constant influx of of foreigners. And you’re telling me the indirect racism question that you’re bringing up. It’s a really interesting society to me. And then also you’re saying relaxed and at the same time super successful in business. You know, like some of the biggest companies in Europe are coming out of Sweden. Who is it, Spotify or whatever. It’s a really super interesting country. Yeah, but let’s let’s go, let’s get on to Dental. They do have a reputation for teaching sort of prevention. I’d say they’re a little bit, a little bit better teaching than than we get here. Would you agree with that or not?

Depends. I don’t want to upset anyone.

We’ll just say it how.

You see it, though. I mean. I mean, compare my undergrad and my grad. My undergrad in Bristol was amazing. I had a great time. I think the teaching was very good. And then obviously I know Mom did her undergrad in Sweden and when I compare, they’re both excellent, I would say. But I think Sweden is a little is a couple of steps ahead. A lot of Swedish based teaching is not expert opinion. It’s very literature based, which it is in England as well to a big extent, but they’re very, very literature based there and so they do things by the book. So I find that’s probably the biggest difference. And when I now compare my colleagues that studied orthodontics in England compared to kind of what we studied in Sweden, again, we’re quite blessed and privileged to be able to study in that university. It’s it’s a pretty decent one we can say. And some of the stuff like for example, using mini screws, like I know my friends have studied, I think it was in UCL, they never were allowed to use mini screws for, for their orthodontic treatments.

So we had access to pretty much whatever we wanted. We were allowed to do aligners post-grad. We’re allowed to do a lot of lingual braces and it wasn’t like one professor telling us what to do. We would have, you know, weekly literature meetings critically appraise all the literature that’s out there to see what they recommend, and then they would actually teach you based on that. And all the all the treatment plans would be based on that as well. So I quite like that side of it and it’s very. Is now hierarchy in Sweden. There is no Mr. or Mrs. to go in and the Dean of the university will be sitting there, you know, having having coffee with us. And then he would clean up the dishes afterwards. That’s one thing I really like about Sweden. There’s no. You don’t feel like you’re you have to suck up to anyone which is which. Sometimes there is a bit of hierarchy in medical and the dental profession in England and that’s that was the big positive for me. I felt really comfortable to learn in that environment.

Do you think the NHS has something to do with the quality of teaching? I mean, does does the UK health system, does it produce NHS orthodontists? Is that or am I wrong about that?

Yeah, I mean, it’s hard for us to comment because we.

Haven’t done.

The ins and outs of how the teaching is here. But of course it’s very you know, me and Ramzan have both worked in the NHS as orthodontists and it’s stressful, you know, lots of patients. It almost feels like a conveyor belt, so. It’s very hard. No ransom when he when he graduated, all the stuff that he was excited to do when he finished in Sweden. I remember you telling me when he came back and you started working in England, all of that kind of passion and flair kind of got dulled away. And then he was doing that same treatment, you know, extraction, all fours, fives, no mini screws, no medialization, no cool stuff. It was very much, you know, one size fits all, mostly. So I think that’s it’s hard to avoid that with the NHS and that’s one of the reasons why we quickly tried to get out of that so we can do things the way we want it. And that’s when I saw, well, especially Rampton, I saw his kind of flair and excitement for for orthodontics come back.

And when you guys decided to specialise, did you decide on purpose to go to Sweden because you thought it was a better course? Or why didn’t you specialise here? Why did you specialise in Sweden?

And it was it was it was just it was like the timing of it. So I was working. I just finished. I just got into my third year of working after graduating as a dentist. And one of my friends who’s an orthodontist and I knew I wanted to do Ortho since since the day I graduated as a dentist, I would be doing I would do half a day a week in an ortho practice, you know, it wasn’t really a lot of work. It was mostly theoretical. I was going through some of the basic books that we use in Ortho, so, you know, I would go to school. He graduated from Sweden and he was, yeah, someone that we knew from before. And he messaged me one day and said, Brampton, they’re, they’re doing an intake at Gothenburg University. I don’t know like what you’re thinking. And for me it was a, it was a way out of dentistry, to be completely honest with you. Payman wasn’t it was very hard for me. You know, the, you know, constant, you know, full days of, you know, different types of treatments that wasn’t particularly efficient or good at, you know, like I wasn’t good at root canal treatments. I wasn’t great extractions. I didn’t enjoy it. So for me, it was a place where I was really just enough. I had enough for dentistry. I really liked orthodontics. This came up and I was like, you know, I don’t even know how the process works. I was doing my clinical attachment one day a week at the hospital, so I kept all my options open, you know, like Max fax and everything else. But it was just the right time. It was a cold winter day. I remember he messaged me. He was as an intake. I sent the message, you know, I got the message. I sent an email and then everything just cascaded from there.

Is it competitive like it is here to get in?

Yeah, very competitive and very, very competitive. I think they they take on they took on two people that year when I applied and there was a lot a lot of people remember they were applying from all over the world. So it was very competitive multiple we had multiple exams, written exams. We had, you know, wire bending exercises. We had psychological testing. It was a full on two days before.

You got in.

Before we got in. Yeah, just just the interview. Yeah. So we went down and then not only that, they were in Sweden, they’re very much about like, will you fit in? Like, will you be nice to staff, will you be nice to other people? So it was two days of the nurses and other clinicians seeing what you’re like, are you a nice person? Do you get on with people? So it was it was very hard, very hard, but it was well worth it. Well worth it.

So did you did you prepare? I mean, how is it that both of you managed to get in if it’s so, so difficult? I mean, okay, your your top your top notch or whatever? No, no, no, no. What did you do? Did you know that it was going to be.

No, it was just practice Payman. So we. So do you remember I said I was doing the, you know, one day, half a day to one day a week since three years. So I already knew how to bend wires because we used to practice it.

You had a basic idea.

The basic idea I’d read like the MBti, which is like the, the basic book of orthodontics in terms of, you know, the bracket types, wired sequences we use. So for me it was a case of I was already really well into it. And then for Damon, he you wanna explain how you sort of, uh, yeah.

I mean, yeah, Rampton was definitely it was definitely a positive having Ramzan there because they love Ramzan when he left, they were, I think they were all, um, I think they were depressed for a few months. And they call me Ramzan for the first six months, and I was there as well. I just, I just took it on the chin. But it was, yeah, a great help having Ramzan go through because they knew he was capable and what he could do helps. He’s a nice guy as well. Very polite. So they all got on with him really well. So that was a good starting point for me. And then obviously had a lot of experience because when Ramzan was studying and he was coming back, he was seeing patients in the weekends. So his whole first year he was flying back every weekend and working on Saturdays in Mum’s clinic. Back then, not sure how he managed it because first year was intense and then when he was there would come in and basically I was his therapist when he was coming in, I was changing wise. I was getting used to working with that stuff already.

And then sometimes he would forget to wake up so I would see half the patients that day. Um, so I got a lot of experience that way. So then when I went and did my interview, obviously it had some indication because Ramzan had done it once already. But yeah, I had a few. There was a few steps ahead compared to the other people that are there getting interviewed. So for me it was probably easier than most. Ramzan But again, we had wire bending. We had, yeah, they gave us a whole, a whole research paper, yeah, a couple of case presentations where like we had a psychologist that was with us the whole two days just watching how we interact because it was strange. It’s very important for them how you get on with the team, how you work with your nurses, how you talk to your friends. So yeah, guess they liked us and then they, they liked our wire bending as well. And that’s, that’s how I got in. But yeah, it definitely helped that Ramzan pave the way and I slotted myself in there as well. I think.

I think I think that he’s been a little bit like too positive on that aspect. I think he knew a lot. Because he was we were seeing patients every week and he was doing most of the work. And I think, you know, a testament to that was he really took me Payman. I know. You know, this comes down to, you know, the way like authors taught, but it took me about a year and a half at university, up to two years even until I understood it was one day because in the beginning they just tell you what to do. They change the link, change this wire, you know, okay, it’s a quarter class two and class two elastics. You sort of just do it. It took me about close to two years for it to finally one day just go. Okay, That all clicks in. I understand. Now we need the class clicked. It clicked. But for Damon, I remember it was nine, ten months into the first year where all sudden he was telling me this stuff that I learned at the end of the second year. So I think. Is it a.

Two year course?

Three years?

Three years? Full time? Three years?

Full time?

Bloody hell.

Yeah.

But it was it was a good three years wasn’t it. We missed.

It. Yeah. It was fun.

And did you have to pay as well. Where? How much? Ballpark. Uh.

I think it’s around. I think it’s slightly more around 30,000 a year. Euros. €30,000.

Did you get a loan? What did you do to pay that?

I worked every Saturday. So every every Saturday I worked. We got some loans as well. Mom helped out a little bit as well. And then. Yeah, and then when I came back, I sort of supported Damon as well. You know, loans. It was a mix of everything. Everyone sort of just helping each other to get there.

Mum has always been very big on. She doesn’t care if you spend, but it involves your getting a degree or education. Education then we’ve never really held back with that. You know, that always pays itself tenfold down the line. So it’s kind of whatever it takes to get through the few years and then just, you know, make up for it later on in life. And it worked out pretty well in the end. But Payman, do you want to hear.

You want to hear a funny story? Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Do you want to hear, you know, the reason? When I decided to become an orthodontist, You have something to do with it. You don’t even know this stuff. But yeah, so we were. We. I was in a course. I was not a course. It was a it was like a dental aesthetic. Dental, you know, there was like a yearly course.

World aesthetic Congress.

Something like that. Payman And you and you organised the course with it was like a posterior composite or something like that. And. Jason Smithson And yeah, and, and I sat and I, I knew you because I knew you were the guy that, you know, ran enlightened, owned, enlightened. I was sort of in awe. Anyway. But I remember Jason came and everyone was doing composites and I was so like, I had no talent when it came to like composites and stuff like this. And I remember he was like walking along and he was like, Great work, great work. And he came to me. He looked at me and he just smiled and just walked to the next one. And for a second I was like, Yeah, this isn’t for me. Like, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, I need to find some other avenue. So yeah, Thanks, man.

That’s funny. That’s funny, man. So tell me this. How long after you qualified as an orthodontist? Both of you did. Did you open dental? The banks?

I think I was I was just I had just graduated. And then obviously you were. How long for you? Three, four years.

It was 2019. We opened it. It was end of 2019. It was it was the year before Covid 19. So yeah.

So, yeah, pretty for me, it was quite good. I went pretty much straight into it. We did, I did a bit of locum with the NHS, but Rampton did a good two three years.

In three years? Yeah.

So tell me. Take me through the thought process and the process, the process itself of opening that clinic, because it’s definitely different. And, you know, the I mean, I’ve been to a lot of clinics, man. I must I must have been to a thousand clinics, maybe more. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve been to loads and loads and it definitely it’s up in the top, top 3 or 4 that I’ve ever been to. Thank you. Um, what was it, What was, what was the thought process? Were you always going to do something different? The architecture, the way, the way that people the training of the people, just extraordinary. And then the marketing and then the way you went sort of more direct to to patients rather than looking for referrals. Who was what were you thinking? I mean, take me through some of the thought process and the process itself.

The whole process was very, very organic from our side. Mum had just sold the clinic or Mum Rampton.

No clinic was sold for four years before them, four years before we sold it.

Yeah. So the money was there. We didn’t we didn’t know what to do with it. We don’t like working for people either. So that’s a that’s a Persian trait. Yeah. Um, so we thought, you know, three of us in the family have some sort of Dental degree, so we needed to do something with that. And then, um, yeah, the space camp we came across, it was a bank. It was. They were closing it down as a pretty nice street and we thought, let’s go see it. And then saw it. There was about 20, 30 people trying, trying to get this one place. Somehow we managed to get it. I don’t know what the word in English in Persian, we say it was it was meant to be for us to have that fate.

Fate?

Yeah, exactly. And it’s never felt from day one. It’s never felt a struggle. Everything’s kind of just clicked into place organically. You know, we saw the space and then actually the whole thing started from we all had a vision of kind of what we wanted to create. There was nothing in our area where there was that kind of high end look with also high end dentistry and orthodontics. So we thought, okay, this this could work. And then it.

Doesn’t feel like the inspiration is another dental practice, though It feels like the inspiration is a, I don’t know, a nightclub or a hotel hotel or something.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we’ve travelled a lot. Yeah. We’re blessed to travel a lot with with mom and dad. So we’ve seen some nice places around the world. So we definitely took some of that when we used our inspiration to create Dental on the banks. But it all started from the logo actually. And I would, I would recommend that to anyone opening up a squat or their own clinic. Start from the logo because everything goes for that. The colour, the branding, the kind of feel of the logo kind of already could then envision. What? Because I designed most of what the clinic would look like with ramped up obviously in the family as well. But we we threw the ideas to the interior designer and then they kind of made that come into life. But yeah, it all started from the logo, then the website, and then it kind of just snowballed every year into this bigger and bigger thing.

But the, the process itself, by the way, in marketing terms, probably the logo, they say the last thing you should design, not the first thing. But but, but. Great. It worked. It worked for you. It worked for you. I mean, where did you find the architect? Whose idea was the lighting? The way you did it? The. It’s just a stunner, man. It’s one of those, like, take your breath away kind of practices.

Yeah. And I think I think there was a big part of it was we were in, we were in Los Angeles and it was, you know, we were in a hotel as this Waldorf Astoria, which is stunning. Payman And and we went in there and just the smells and the and the the, you know, the flowers and the lights and everything. And and we sort of went in there and we’re like, this would be beautiful. Like, this is exactly, you know, we need to have this feel and, and you know, it honestly, it was Damian like, he took some inspiration from that. Like, if you ever go to that, you’ll see it looks nothing like a practice, but just, you know, the feeling. Yeah, the feeling. Like the, you know what colour things are supposed to be. The lights. It was like a evolution. We started off with like, like glass. Like it was going to be like layers of glass that were, like, lit up. And then that would cost us like £50,000. So, okay, what’s the what’s like a more efficient way of doing this? And okay, let’s do like strips of lights instead on the wall. So there were a lot of adjustments along the way. And and, you know, I think it just came, you know, everything was right. It was never a struggle for this one. You know, we have, you know, other practices that we we’ve opened and it’s never been that natural. Whereas with this, it just felt like, you know, it was just everything just worked the way we wanted it to. But it was Damian that was responsible for 95% of the the way that practice looks.

And then, okay, so you know, the way it looks and actually getting the work done and I’m sure you had your own issues with builders and in the UK we have that problem right So then day one it’s done. I’m sure you were, I don’t know, a bit over budget. Everyone always is, right? No patience. Yeah. And then by the time I came to see it was maybe, I don’t know, one year or half a year after that. It can’t have been that long after because we had pandemic soon after that. So you were packed, busy, like within within months. You were you were you were completely busy. What did you do? What does one do? I mean, all of us have a dream of opening a squad. Even I haven’t I’m no longer haven’t been a dentist for 12 years. I still got this feeling of, hey, great to do a squat. You know, we’ve all got a thing in our head. But that. But that idea that, okay, go spend the money, do the work. And then on day one there are no patients. How did you know what to do next?

It wasn’t, you know, it was a scary time. It wasn’t, you know, you know, I said everything came naturally. It wasn’t like we finished. We sat down. It was great. We spent like this much money, this much above budget, like life is good. It was a stressful time payment. And the the advantages that we had, I believe and I always say this, is that we lived in this town since we were very young. We knew where people went. We knew where people go to do this. We know where people go to party. We know where who does this, who does the beach parties, you know, So we we use that, you know, from from our earlier years in our life where we used to go clubbing every every weekend, you know, like we spoke to that guy and he now has an events thing. So we spoke to all the right people and got Dental on the banks in the like environments where, you know, those types of patients at 20 to 40 year old women, you know, that, you know, do care about the way they look. Et cetera. Et cetera. So that was a big one for us.

So that’s amazing advice, man. That’s amazing advice because some people some some, you know, it’s a whole industry now about start up practices, you know, and some people will give the advice of, you know, go find the area that hasn’t got any dentists in it or something and go put it there. But what you just said there, like local knowledge, really knowing the area, I’d say, you know, like opening in the in the town that you grew up might be the most important thing because you know you even know the when a patient I remember I used to I used to work in a practice in Kent and the guy the guy used to say stuff some stuff to his patients and say, Can’t believe you just said that. But he knew. He knew. He knew what to say. Yeah. Better than I mean, it would be the equivalent of me opening a practice in, I don’t know, Saint John’s Wood or Highgate, where I went to school or whatever, where I knew the people. Yeah, So that’s a great point. So. So you went and spoke to to the movers and shakers?

Yeah, that was it. Payman Then we the area that we’re in is like, we’re all the like footballers live and everything else. So it’s kind of.

Well-to-do, right? Sandbags is kind of a well-to-do area.

It’s a really affluent area. And, you know, they started the footballers started coming in, then the other players started coming in. Patients saw these players coming into the practice. And then we.

Didn’t just walk in, though, did they? You must have done something to get footballers in. Not talking to your. No, it was club promoters.

No, no, no. It was literally Damon walking outside going, Josh, how are you? I’m Damon. I’m the only come in. Like, come in, let’s have a chat. That was literally yeah, that’s literally how we got the first 1 or 2. And then, you know, we started heavily, you know, investing into Facebook ads. We got, you know, Derek that, that everyone knows. And Derek was, you know, he was a big part of our success, big part of his success. You know, he has been running our ads ever since. And we started seeing this flow of patients into the practice and word of mouth Payman once once we started and we bonded and our experience, you know, the experience was so refined, like the whole thing was, you know, someone comes in for Invisalign, we’re not going to put suctions in and polish and, and have them, you know, operate optic, whatever it’s called mouth thing to keep the lips out of the way to cotton rolls, lips out of the way. 15, 20 minute fits, you know, gorgeous experience. You know, first investment was like a machine that prints your face on a coffee. You know, we got that from Simon Orient in Los Angeles. You know, just all those little small things. We’re talking points between people. So word of mouth took over and. And, yeah, off we went.

Damon Tell me, tell me about the whole patient experience piece, because it was that was a real standout thing for me, the way, you know, dude, sometimes I walk into a dental practice and no one even looks up, you know, it happens and and often it’s not. It’s not even the staff’s fault sometimes. Yeah, sometimes it’s actually always it’s the. It’s the principal’s fault. It’s the lack of training. Right. Lack of training, lack of lack of hiring. Enough people, man. Sometimes you’ve got, you know, this practice thousands of patients and one poor receptionist typing away hasn’t got time to even look up. But so tell me, tell me, dude, when I walked into your practice, someone, someone jumped up, opened the door for me. Dr. Langroudi, we’ve been expecting you. How are you doing? The, you know, cappuccino or latte? You know, I was like, hello? Tell me. Tell me more about it. That didn’t happen by mistake.

No, I mean, from day one, for us, the most important thing was not the clinic can look good, but that’s just to get people engaged, Right? But once they actually step inside it or even from lifting the phone, I think that’s kind of like step one. Every single kind of avenue of contact and the whole journey for the patient. We kind of we sat and we wrote down systems before we even opened and we thought, okay, this is how we would want to be treated if we went to like a high end five star hotel. So we kind of just dragged that kind of service into dentistry because patients want to feel special. They don’t want to feel like a conveyor belt when they come in. They want to feel like they’re the only people there. So we were very big on that and we still are. It’s the. Little bit harder as the business has grown to have that kind of personal, personal touch. But we still do our best to give them that experience. But from day one, when we hired people, we would train them and say, Look, when someone comes in, greet them, call them by the first name, say anything you can remember they said to you last time, jot it down. Talk about the next time.

So little things can go a big way. And unfortunately, we’re only as strong as our weakest link. So we always had to work hard in every avenue of the clinic, not just the receptionist, but the nurses, everyone, the dentist, to make sure that they have that kind of five star experience throughout. Because all it takes, you know, if you go to a lovely hotel, everything can be amazing. You’re not going to remember the 99% of things that are good. You’re going to remember that 1% like someone didn’t say hi to you or someone didn’t pay attention to you quick enough. So we still are very strict on it. That’s probably the only time me and Ram to lose a temper is when that patient experience has been affected. Because I think that’s what that’s what patients will go tell their friends about, you know, Yes, obviously it’s important. That clinic looks good. It’s important the results are great. But the experience is, I think is the most, most important part of the pathway for the patient. And for us. That’s what’s been our biggest success, is that word of mouth. We don’t get any direct referrals, so all of ours is from word of mouth. And um, and I think that’s got a big part to play in it.

Come on, give me a couple of tips here on number one, on recruitment of the right kind of staff member, because it needs to be the right kind of staff member to deliver that. And number two on training. I mean, it’s not a one time event to train people. It’s a constant thing. Give me some tips. What did you do regarding recruitment? Did you actively recruit from outside dentistry? What did you do?

So our core team had kind of been with us from from the previous clinic. So the manager at the time was Mom’s best friend and she used to be the manager in the old clinic.

Was the old clinic anything like this one?

No, no, no. It was okay. It was it looked like. Like someone’s living room, but like, a warm, fuzzy feeling. But it wasn’t the way we wanted it because we Mom and Ransom bought it from someone else. So it was quite an old clinic, slightly, slightly renovated. But yeah, no, nothing like this. But yeah, no. Recruitment has always been difficult. You know, it’s hard to find the right people and no one’s going to start with all the skills straight away. You have to really be patient. You have to give them the guidance, you have to give them the tools so they can learn and be able to. There’s no point saying be give them a better experience. You have to break that down for them every single bit. Almost need to spoon feed them, say this is what you need to say and then you just need to be patient with them and see, I wouldn’t be so quick to fire anyone. I mean, I always want to give people at least three, four months and then you can see if the potential is there, if they’re showing that spark and especially like reception, we want them to be quite chatty. They want they need to be more extroverted. So when you start seeing that and you see the potential, then you can you can build on that. And a lot of staff now, I mean, the staff we have now are fantastic, but they didn’t always start fantastic and we had a lot of ups and downs and normally if they stick with us, which most do, then by the end of it they’re fantastic. And yeah, our team now is, yeah, we’re blessed to have them.

So what about the training?

Well, I mean, there’s no specific training, is there? Emptiness more.

And we have on the job. Yes. Yeah. We also have we have. So me and Damon aren’t really involved as much into the daily running of things. You know, we we focus more on like the clinical side and the and the other stuff around it. But we have a business manager who’s great and generally what we tend to do, she tends to do is we, we, we listen back to calls. That’s a big part of each week is listening back to phone calls and you know don’t think that the you know experience is always perfect. There’s a lot of hiccups. There’s a lot of, you know, issues with things on, you know, the standards aren’t kept, but we pick up on it almost weekly if there’s problems. And then business manager Rachel will then spend an hour or two hours a week with that specific person and go, this is how we’re going to do it different. And then the next week it’ll be someone else. So we’re constantly, week by week, analysing everything that’s going on. Or if I see, for example, that my nurse, when the patient gets up to leave my nurse doesn’t turn around because she’s writing a notes, write her backs, turn against the patient.

She doesn’t turn around and say goodbye. Then that’s something that I will either say straight away there, and then once the patient leaves, I go like, could you, you know, pass an X? Could you, you know, next time when they say goodbye, it’s important that we turn around and we say goodbye. You know, it doesn’t look good if you don’t turn around. Or I will then delegate that to Rachel, who then will have, like, a joint training thing on a lunch break with the nurses talking about, you know, not just that, but there’ll be a point. So every little small thing that we see, we don’t let it slide. That’s the thing. Every single thing that we see, we pick up on immediately and is brought up and we check back to make sure that that stand is being kept. But even so, you know, things don’t always go to plan. But that’s the way I think that we’re that we’re maintaining the standard somewhat.

Look, it’s a funny thing because we try really hard at Enlightened with this as well. Yeah, but you can’t. You can’t sort of force someone to be happy. You, you can’t. You can’t for the sake of the argument. If someone calls up Enlightened now. Yeah. Someone will pick up the phone. If that person who’s picking up the phone five minutes ago was shouted at. Yeah, they’re not going to now be super happy picking up the phone. Yeah. And so it’s a weird tension isn’t it, between sort of almost I find the best way to address this issue is to give the final goal. The final goal is we want delighted, delighted patients, let’s say. Yeah. And then let each person work out their way of doing it. And and almost I find it’s almost like, you know, they call it culture, don’t they? After a while culture builds so that if you’re not doing that, everyone else kind of calls you out on it. Yeah, you know, that’s not how we do things here, You know that. But it takes a bit of time. I’ve noticed. It’s not as simple thing. No, it’s an.

Excellent point, Payman. That’s the way it has been for us. You know, it’s sort of like, you know, we know what we want the culture to be, but it’s taken us time where the people that haven’t been yeah, the way that, you know, the practice needs it to be have sort of left new people have come in and eventually it’s got to a point where everyone’s on the same wavelength, you know. So I agree with you. It does take time. It does take time. It’s not.

Something. So how do you how do you split the responsibilities between the three of you? And you said you’ve got a business manager as well. So is there a practice manager as well? Is that different person or is that same person?

No, it’s a different person. Payman So we have a we have a practice manager that does all the stuff and all the, you know, stuff to do with the practice, like rotas, whatever. And then we have a business manager who deals with, you know, staff training things that affects the business, right? Sort of what the income of the practice is like, what we need to do to adjust and things like that.

And the social media, Lee was kind of working for you guys for a lot of time, wasn’t he?

He still is, yeah. So Lee Meta does our social media, so Instagram and then we have we had so we have all the like all the guys, everyone know. So Shaz and his team do our SEO and website. Derek and his team do our Facebook ads and Google ads as well. But we’ve, we’ve delegated Payman, so anything that like we like our mom does, like the, does the, you know, does the wages and she does little things here and there like double checks. Everything me and Damian are mostly on the, you know, working with our business manager you know. Yes. And clinical So we’ll be clinical. They’ll also be like these numbers we need to look at you know why you know these leads we need to nurture this way. So it’s a constant discussion between us, but we’re more the clinical side and the income side as it was.

And how many days a week are you dentists, orthodontists and how many days a week are you not?

Yeah, I mean, it’s a bit like Monday’s a half day for us. Tuesday we kind of mix and match a it’s a Tuesday for example. I start late, I finish late. So I start at like 12, I finish at seven ramp Ramp2 starts and nine finishes at five. Wednesday we swap that around every other Friday. One of us is off. Thursdays is half day. But that’s not how we always was. We obviously recently expanded, so we’ve got two more surgeries, but prior to that we had two surgeries and we had me and doing quite a lot of numbers with Invisalign. And then we had dentists, we had hygienists, we had laser hair removal at one point as well. So we had to really saturate every minute of every day. We’re working Saturdays, working Sundays at one point every day we’re working 830 to 7, no lunch. We’re doing virtual consultations as well. At that point, we pass that on to Rachel now. But at one point, yeah, whilst one of us is working because we only had one room between us, the other one will be doing virtual consults and as soon as we finish we swap over. So that just wasn’t sustainable. We we knew we needed to do it and it probably went on for about a year, year and a half.

Probably took about five years off our life. But now we’re in a situation where, you know, we have a therapist working for us now. Obviously we have someone else doing the virtual consultations and also the In-clinic consultations. So me and Ramsden have managed to really take a step back and we love delegating. So our nurses bless them, they’re amazing to do everything for us. They do the scans, photos, all the chatting and we come in and do our bit and then we bugger off again. But yeah, I think the delegation’s been been key for us to be able to cut down our hours whilst still growing the numbers, which is took a while to get a head around that. We always felt you know, it’s directly correlated so the more you work, the better you’re going to do. But it’s actually the more time we’ve taken away, the better the better we do with other stuff. So yeah, we’re gradually stepping down, better quality of life. I think that’s quite important for us now as well, but also so we can focus on, for example, the complete Aligner program. Obviously we have a clinics in the north and we’re planning a couple of new things as well.

And tell me, tell me about the for the positioning perspective. So when when, for instance, you said Derek Otterburn does your ads are the ads are you guys positioning yourselves as more expensive than the practice down the road because you are specialists? Or are you just saying we do Invisalign or how are you how are you making that distinction between being an expert and just an Invisalign provider when you’ve got such a strong brand like Invisalign where people think it’s the same wherever you go?

Yeah, we’re, um, so we, um, it’s a great question, by the way, and it’s one of those things that, you know, a lot of people actually, you know, discuss all the time about how, how you should present these. But for us, I think we, we don’t charge huge amounts more than our competitors. I think we’re just above everyone else cost wise. But we do push the fact that it’s done by, you know, two specialist orthodontists. We are we recently, you know, because of the number of cases that we do, we were invited to this thing where the top 300 Invisalign orthodontists in the world go to this meeting. It was like a, you know, like a masterclass thing where we all sit down and discuss with each other. So, you know, being recognised as one of the top providers in the world is something that, you know, we always say that we want to top users of it.

Are you mentioned that in the, in the, in the blurb.

Yeah we do. Yeah we do. Yeah. Um, but it’s mostly the fact that, you know, it’s like the things that we offer, like bonded retainers for example, where a lot of other people don’t. But honestly, I think people have heard about us by now, and when they see the ad, they just press the ad because they know of us. So I think, yeah, you know.

And how how wide do you cast your net regarding marketing? Do you mark it way out of Bournemouth and Sandbanks or just in that local area?

Yeah, we’re like Bournemouth and Poole. We don’t, we don’t, you know, go all the way out. We don’t go like all the way to Southampton, anything. We’re, we’re within probably about eight miles, nine miles from where we are, something like that really.

Okay. Yeah. That’s interesting. Okay, man. Now let’s let’s move on to you’re going to you’re going to gather very quickly. I’m no expert at orthodontics. But but but, you know, I run courses. I run courses. And as I say, I had amazing feedback from from people who’d been on your course. Tell me this. Let’s just start from the very, very beginning of it, right? My first my wife is, is a is a dentist. She she does quite a lot of Invisalign. Yeah, but when it came to treating my kids, she said, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I’m going to take them to a proper orthodontist. And the proper orthodontist charged double what my wife charges for Invisalign. And it suddenly made me realise, yeah, that of course there’s a market for more expensive Invisalign. You know, there’s, you know, there is. Now, what are some of the things that most GDPs get wrong about clear aligner treatment that, you know, you wish they didn’t. But, you know, just just what comes to mind. I know that that’s saying, hey, give me the whole of orthodontics in one. Say what comes to mind. I mean, is it is it that they think clincheck is going to happen for real? But Clincheck isn’t going to happen for real? Is that is that part of it?

I think yeah. I mean, you can add it to it as well, but I think sometimes what what you don’t know, you don’t know. So kind of ignorance is bliss. So you the more you know and that’s one thing we talk about in the course is the more you know, the less you realise, you know. And it’s almost you’re starting cases and like you said, the clincheck comes back or whichever system you’re using, and then you take that as the Bible, you think, okay, that’s, that’s exactly how it’s going to turn out. And then, you know, everyone starts off really excited, as we did when we first started with Busline back in the day. And then and then your results starts coming back and, you know, every case gets better, but it’s very hard to get things. It’s easy to get it to like 60 or 70%, but it’s that last 30%, which is the hardest and the most important. So I think that’s where then people are like, Oh crap, I don’t know this enough. And then they maybe stop using Invisalign. They’re like, The system’s not very good. So I think that’s the biggest pitfall for a lot of not just GDPs, but also specialists. I mean, it’s yes, once you understand the biomechanics are both very, very closely related, but it’s very different to what orthodontists are used to with their training. I mean, a lot of our training was with fixed braces, so it was quite a big gap to to bridge. So I think the biggest pitfall is definitely that you take you know, you simplify it too much because it’s it’s only simple when you when you understand it, but before that it’s very easy to go wrong.

Yeah, I’ve noticed that talking to orthodontists, talking to very seasoned orthodontics orthodontists that the we were we were going to distribute that product. Do you remember? What the hell was it called? It was like this thing that vibrated makes makes ortho quicker. What was that called?

The question.

Acceledent Acceledent. We were looking at that. We were looking at. Oh, should we do that? Is that like the zoom of orthodontics or something? You know? And thank God we didn’t. But, but, but when when I started talking to a bunch of orthodontists and I noticed the more senior the orthodontist was, the more they were talking about things that could go wrong. Yeah. And it was such a strange thing because, you know, you think someone’s a senior orthodontist, you could do it with eyes closed here and they tell you these stories. And I remember one in particular, proper old timer, one of the top guys who’s ever come out of the UK. I don’t want I don’t want to tell you, but he said to me, look, even if he wasn’t even arguing with whether it works or it doesn’t work, he said, even if it speeds things up, that means you get into trouble much quicker. Yeah.

I couldn’t believe it.

Yeah, I couldn’t believe it, man, because I thought, Hey, he’s the top orthodontist in the country, right? He never gets into trouble. Yeah, but. But trouble happens, right? I guess sometimes you guys tell me, right? I guess sometimes you push. Push the tooth too near to the outside of the bone and, you know, you get fenestration or whatever. All right, so your course. Complete aligner program. Two days? Yeah. And is that it? Or is there a continuum? Because, you know, Rampton, you said to me it took you two years before it clicked. Damon It took nine months before it clicked. You reckon you get these guys to click in two days? Is their follow up? What is their.

Yeah. So, yeah, so it’s two days Payman like you said. And then we have a Facebook group that we have that we add everyone to that comes on the course and then we do monthly, you know, sometimes five weeks we do webinars which go on as long as needed. You know, it’s pretty cool that we start like seven. Sometimes they finish at 830, sometimes they finish at 1030. Depends on what people want to ask. But it’s a case of, you know, learning by doing. And the way that we’ve made this course very different is that we provide very like step by step protocols. It’s not a case of, you know, in a deep bite case, you need to be looking at the inclination of the teeth. You need to be looking at the curve of spee, which is like the arc of the lower jaw, the cover. Wilson Which is like the transversal in the lower and upper. We don’t say, do these, and then we tell you, listen, if you want to set it up, if it’s a deep bite in an adult case, for example, with spacing, these are the things, four things you need to look at. This is how you set up your to correct your cover speed. So correct your cover. Wilson ET cetera. Et cetera. So that’s the way that we feel like that’s what we feel like. We’ve broken.

It down.

100%, and that’s what we can get a specialist to come on the course. Because when a special we get a lot of specialists that come as well, but when they come, they will understand like the theory of a lot better. So they will understand it from that. Whereas the dentist might not get the exact understanding of why are you correcting the curve of spee, but they just go step by step, setting it up and then it ends up exactly where it needs to be. And then, you know, 98% of our cases, that’s the way there needs to be set up. And then we’re giving generalised rules. You know, of course there’s exceptions and there’s certain bigger movements that need to be done sometimes, but it gives them a really good starting point as it was.

When one guy I spoke to, he told me, he said, Look, they taught me to do stuff with Invisalign that I didn’t think was possible to do with Invisalign. So what are the boundaries of Invisalign? Are you guys now saying you can do anything with it or what’s the story?

I think it depends who does the Payman I think. I think you guys.

You guys. Yeah.

Anything we can do with fixed braces? We can do with Invisalign in our hands. Really? Yeah.

So that’s certainly new, isn’t it? When I. When I studied, I didn’t study when I, when I did the Invisalign two day course, they thought you had to use the software. Yeah. There was, there was all these situations that Invisalign couldn’t do all this stuff it couldn’t do. So now you’ve kind of it, it’s not only you, right? It is the, the system has evolved as well, right?

The system is great. The system is great. It’s a great appliance. It you know, it doesn’t have to be Invisalign. You could use Spark to do this. You could use, you know, other companies to do this. But if you have a if it’s not even about the Invisalign is a brace, that’s all it is. It’s not a it’s not you know, it’s a a type of brace that we use. I always say to the basis like, I’m an orthodontist, I specialise in braces. Invisalign is a type of brace and it’s more about understanding orthodontic principles. That’s one. And then understanding how you translate that from fixed braces, where there are certain strengths and weaknesses into what you do with aligners to compensate for. So anything you do with Aligners, you have to account for the side effects and work on those into your clench checks as well. So as long as you understand the concept, it doesn’t matter what you’re using, it will work. So that’s the way that we’ve got it to work. But more importantly, we’re you know, the nice thing is that I’m confident because if something goes wrong, let’s say I promise that I’m going to do something that I’m not able to do. Let’s say I’m going to close a space on an extraction, and for whatever reason it doesn’t quite go to plan. I can put a sectional brace on and fix that problem. Do you know what I mean? I have the backup to get myself out of any problems that might happen. So that’s the luck that we have. Being orthodontics is that we understand these things. I would say probably a little bit quicker. But the GDPs, I mean, some of the GDPs that come on our course are exceptional. They really are.

And so take me through it. I mean, are you are you completely doing a different thing to what the planners give you from Mexico, wherever it is? Is it a completely different plan? Are you changing the shape of the attachments and different eyepieces? And I’m being very basic here. Like, tell me, tell me, tell me what you’re doing differently. What are you doing differently?

Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is pretty much top to bottom is quite different. We take we have what’s called clinical preferences, so you can get a decent baseline now based on your preferences. But when it comes back, we go through that same methodological step by step. Look at the arch, the, you know, the transverse. Then you look at there’s a lot of 14 different steps that we give our delegates as well. So you go through those steps and yeah, like you said, you change, you change the level of expansion, You, you change the level of overbite correction, attachment choice, attachment shape, attachment thickness, attachment. Bevel Oh, really? Where to do when to do it.

How to do.

That’s that’s a big thing that unfortunately is not taught. Like if you go on Invisalign certification course, they’ll they’ll say you add on the software. But what about when it comes to real life? And I think there’s just a lot of confusion out there. There’s a lot of there’s a lack of resource when it comes to understanding Invisalign. Everyone’s kind of learning how to get more Invisalign cases in. They’re learning how to submit it, but then it kind of stops there. And that’s that’s kind of where this all started from because it was a long journey for us to get to where we are now. You know, when we initially started, it was I thought Invisalign was rubbish the first year when using it because all my results were coming out subpar. And that’s the difficult thing for an orthodontist trying to go into Invisalign because we have I’m not saying dentists don’t, but as a specialist you need to have a perfect standard, right? You can’t go for something that’s not going to give you a perfect result. So that’s quite hard bridge to kind of go across. And I’m not sure how we’ve managed it, but we have managed to squeeze it all into literally two days. But it covers not just the theory side of it, it’s not just how to manipulate your clench, it’s also the clinical side. So how to do how to fit attachments quickly and efficiently.

The guys I spoke to said you could have it could have been a one week course. The amount of material you put into that two days. Yeah. No. And we made that mistake too, dude. Yeah. Like, sometimes it’s better for it to be a longer course, you know? I know why you do it, right? You want to just get as much, get it all out there as quickly as you can. I know the reasoning. What other things? What? I’m quite interested in this question of what are the other things that people get wrong. So let’s talk about yeah, people. People create sort of black triangles with their don’t they.

That’s that’s the lack of that normally causes a black triangle. So it’s. Yeah. Again I won’t bore you with it too much we know do do we’re talking about IPR and its uses but we.

Want it to be I want it to be a bit of a bit of value for, for someone who does Invisalign. I mean I know I don’t, but someone who does might be interested. Exactly what we’re talking about.

Black triangles is a huge thing and it’s something that’s not always treated, which I think is a shame because it makes a huge difference to the final result. And it’s a lot of cause of black triangles. One could just be the shape of the teeth. If you’ve got triangular teeth, then obviously your contact points are more incisal and the further away you are from the alveolar bone with a contact point, you get a bigger chance of a black triangle. So when you’re using using it to actually improve the shape of the tooth, but also you improve the contact points, for example. But then you’ve got, you know, angulated teeth that causes a more incisal contact point. You’ve got that crossed over the propeller’s never formed. And then when you align those teeth, you find you get black triangles. Hereoh That’s one of the biggest causes. Obviously the bone receded. So again, that distance increases to the alveolar bone. So it’s very hard to sometimes avoid black triangles in those cases. So we go through these kind of step by step what can cause black triangles and then obviously how to fix it as well. And you can’t always fix it. There’s only so much you can do. And again, obviously you can do more than you actually realise. Sometimes people think that 0.5mm is the limit. It’s, it’s not. Obviously there’s a lot more to it. Yeah. But yeah, no it is, it’s the biggest tool that you can use in Invisalign. I would say without IPR we wouldn’t be able to do probably 50% of stuff that we do.

And Anchorage is, you know, Anchorage is a big issue in ortho anyway, right? But with Invisalign, it must be a bigger issue, right?

Think Anchorage comes into play. You can talk about it as well. But Anchorage comes into play when you when you go down the extraction route a little bit in sequential distalization as well. But I find my extraction rates have definitely reduced compared to what was in university. Yeah, but then again, university you get a lot more complicated cases, right? I find a lot of the cases we treat now are, you know, adults with mild to moderate crowding. Some people are severe, obviously. Then we need to extract. But definitely, I would say our extraction rates are extremely low. I would say probably 5%, 10%. Is that right? Ramsey Would you say.

Down down from down from about 35%? I would say before, yeah, before. And a lot of that is.

Yeah, a lot of that is just due to how how we can stage the movements. It’s very important. A lot of people are, for example, scared of round tripping. You know, that’s the big, big no, no. You hear a lot, a lot of people talk about. But actually round tripping is probably the most important part of any clear aligner is actually round tripping but in the correct way. So you don’t end up getting, you know, gum recession and all the things that come with that. So I think there’s a lot of bits and bobs you got to understand to avoid the pitfalls. But that’s what we try to give to our delegates. So when they leave, they feel confident from day one when they go into the clinic, as long as they follow the protocols, they’re going to be safe and they’re going to get more predictable results.

And I guess because your practice isn’t only orthodontics, you get to see the restorative side of it as well, Right? Because because it was it was quite siloed, wasn’t it? Orthodontists. And then you’ve got restorative dentists. And the ideal treatment is both, isn’t it? It’s both together.

Yeah. Yeah. We’re quite blessed when we have two soon to be three prosthodontic specialists in the clinic. So the guys are three specialists. Yeah. Well, one is like a double specialist or triple specialist. I’m sure it is. Yeah. But very talented clinicians. We were lucky to work with them. So it is a multidisciplinary clinic, so if there’s any gum issues we we send to our chap who specialises in gums, get that all kind of stabilised and then back to us and then the implant then is placed in, there’s another chapter does that so we can all work together and create the plan together. We’re quite lucky on that side of things. And like you said, it’s really important that you plan it from all approaches, you know, not just alignment, but the occlusion, the space you need, the route diversions you need for the implant, for example, the occlusal clearance. We do a lot of tooth wear cases where we have to, you know, build up space anteriorly so we can do the composite work or whatever needs to be done. So yeah, we we love that part of it. And the guys that were quite young and quite driven as well. So we work together in a lot of cases to kind of get the results that we that we are achieving at the moment.

Where did you guys meet? Elias Marinopoulos. Was it on your ortho course?

No. So? So, Elias, I met I was at the American Association of Orthodontics meeting in Philadelphia, and I was there with one of my supervisors. So from Sweden, every year they would send us on one course we could choose, they would send us and A0 is where I went. The American Association of Ortho and I met Elias there he was, he was a past student of the same university. He finished 2009, I think. So he, you know, and he, I met him in Philadelphia. We clicked straight away. Similar, you know, way of thinking, of doing things. And, you know, he’s he’s someone that’s really, you know, taught us a lot about orthodontics as well. It’s been a real good mentor to us. And he’s a fantastic clinician. The guy’s brain ortho brain is something I’ve never seen before. He knows everything about everything. You know, if I’m not sure about something, he’s the guy that I’m asking to go like Elias. Can you explain this, like, biomechanics to me? I don’t understand what happened when this tooth does this, and he will. He knows everything about it. So we’re very close. Me and him. We did a lot of lingual as well. We did a university. We did afterwards. We were doing some lecturing for three M, We were doing some in Sweden and some here. And Elias always does huge numbers of Aligners. He does huge numbers of.

Because he’s one of the biggest aligner providers in Europe, right?

He’s the biggest provider of Invisalign in Europe. Yeah. Africa and Middle East. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the number one in the whole world, actually, to be completely honest. Really? Yeah. So, yeah. So the guy is a fountain of knowledge and we. Yeah, it was just before it was, it was beginning of 2020 and we sat together and honestly, the, the thing for me was the fact that I just, you know, I see certain things on social media and the cases that people were showing thinking these are great results. And I was looking and I was seeing so many faults with it. You know, the explanation, I would listen to some podcasts where, you know, they were giving advice and I was saying, God, like, this is completely wrong. You know, you know, this is not correct. And I was getting a little bit agitated by it. So I sat with the guys and said, Guys, why don’t we do something where we can? And this was honestly the reason initially was why don’t we just raise the standards? Like, why let’s let’s not just sit in all practices. Let’s have something where we can meet up a couple of times a year together. We can, you know, we can. You go somewhere like, let’s do it in London.

We’ll have, you know, a couple of days together. We’ll teach. We’ll go for dinner together the first night. Like, you know, let’s sit down and do something. And then it sort of it lost its way. We sort of you know how it is. You go back to your work and you’re focusing on cases. And then Covid happened. So we sat down together, guys, just sit down and do it now. And then literally for the next like six months, we started creating this course like, okay, let’s what do we want to talk about here? How do we do this case? And the nice thing for us is that we record every one of our cases up to a really high standard. So all our cases have really good starting photos, progress photos, end photos, so everything’s meticulously recorded. So we had all the we had, you know, 500 class twos, we had 500 class threes, we had 200 extractions. We had this for expansion. So everything was ready. We sat down together, put it together, Payman And then, yeah, you know, it’s a constant work, but it’s, you know, we’re constantly updating and changing and putting new evidence in and everything else. But it’s based on all together, probably about thousands of cases. Thousands of cases. And, um.

And who teaches what on the course the three of you teach on the course?

Yeah. All three of us. All three of us. So it’s just divided like what we like and what we what we’re passionate about and what bits we prepared. So like I will do bits about like attachments. That’s my subspecialty, which is a whole like two hour lecture. You know, you talked about attachments. Yeah. But actually there’s like, there’s optimised as conventional attachments. Conventional attachments are at a certain degree angulation like Damon said, Bevel there there’s specific time you shouldn’t have the optimised attachments specific times we have the conventional it’s a two hour thing. And then I talk about open bites. Damon goes more into deep bites. Elias goes through the open. Everything’s covered based on our interests and what we have a lot of knowledge in. But all three are working through the two days.

And is the course agnostic or is it Invisalign? I mean, do you talk about Clearcorrect and. Sure, Smile and Spark and Reveal and 32 and all 100 other things.

Um, Damien, do you want to maybe take this?

Yeah. I mean, it’s called the. The complete alignment program, because it’s not. It can be used on any system that has a system like Clincheck where you can basically you can adjust your attachments, you can adjust, adjust the tooth positions. So as long as you can do that, you can ask for specific movements, then you can use it whichever system is out there. It just happens that we we use Invisalign and it’s very easy to use. We’ve never used anything else. Well, we tried a couple of them, but Invisalign seemed a bit easier and a little bit ahead when it comes to the software and they’re always kind of taking steps forward. So for us, that’s where we put most of our eggs in. But it can be used for any system as long as you’ve got a way to manipulate your clincheck or whatever system that is. But yeah.

It’s a funny thing here because the way the way it works out from one from one point of view, you’d say, look, you’re an expert and people come to you. You have to know about all the different systems. You know, like you should know. What is it about spark that’s worse than clearcorrect? Or what is it about? Whatever. That’s better than whatever. But. But listen, the thing the way it works out, though, is you become an expert at the thing you go most deeply into. And, you know, it’s like it’s like a composite course. You know, there isn’t a composite course that talks about all different composites because the guy ends up learning one of them and going into that one. But, you know, the market cap of Invisalign is so gigantic that there’s going to be so many different, different copycats coming along. But tell me, what were you saying, Ramtane?

No, I agree with you completely. And I think there are there are products in the market. Remember, for us, it’s not just from the material itself. I mean, Invisalign. I would say spark is probably right up there with it. There’s three Em has their own aligners now in the US, which hasn’t come across yet, but it will, so that’s all pretty safe for us. The extra things that we get from Invisalign is things like the, the brand, the brand name, right? Like, you know, everyone knows Invisalign. They come in and they go, I want don’t go, don’t want clear aligners they go, I want Invisalign, we’re on there you know doctor site. If someone searches, we’re right at the top of it. You know, we had a huge influx of teens coming in and kids coming in because they were doing they’re spending a lot of money doing ads on Facebook for teen and child. And then when they find a doctor, we’re at the top. So there’s this whole we almost digging into their marketing side and using their budget to sort of, you know, for our benefit. So it’s more than just a material. I think for us, it’s and listen, we’re not sponsored by anyone. We don’t get paid a penny by Invisalign. We don’t have any. I remember, you know, three years ago I messaged you remember Payman, I messaged you and said, Hey, we’re doing a course.

Everyone was doing sponsorship at the moment. At that time, do you remember? Everyone’s doing course. We’re getting like and then whitening brand and you know, I said to you and you said, Yeah, we’re interested. And we had, we had probably about 10 or 15 different people that wanted to be involved. And at one point we said, You know what, Invisalign wanted to bring their scanners in. And we said, you know what? No, let’s let’s do a course where we’re actually use Invisalign using lighten for the whitening. Let’s be genuine about it. Like if we’re using this, we’re going to talk about just that. I’m not going to talk about something that I’m not using just for the sake of whatever money is being paid to being sponsored. It’s fine. You know, a lot of people do, and it’s absolutely fine for us. We like we don’t want any sort of influence outside of what we’re actually doing ourselves. So we don’t have any connections to Invisalign we could use. You could use Spark. It really doesn’t matter for us. It just works because of the fact that we’re familiar with the software now, super familiar with it, you know, the advertising side. But I could achieve exactly the same results exactly with Spark. You know, if I if I if I were to. If only.

You’d figured out the software.

Software. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

I’ve downloaded stuff. Yeah, definitely.

So tell me this, guys. You do this other service where you actually plan out the clincheck for dentists is that if I if I’m if I’m that dentist who wants that service, does that mean I no longer need to come on the course? Because you’re just doing everything for me and I just pay you per case. Is that how it works?

I mean, yeah, we don’t really advertise that so much because we have so many of our own clinics to do that. Whatever one pops up at us, we got to do this one. It’s just there as an aid. If anyone needs that kind of helping hand. But it’s not such a big part of what we do, I would say it’s probably a few percent of what we do, but it’s just an extra thing that we initially when we start out, we had both. What normally happens is dentists will start using the Clincheck assistance service and then they start seeing the clinics coming back and they’re like, What the hell is this? Like, I need to understand how this works. We give a little explanation as well about what we’re doing, and then when they start seeing the results, like, okay, cool, this works. It’s weird, but it works. And then they want to find out more about it and then they normally come on the course. So hopefully someone comes on the course. Should have need to use it afterwards. Some people still want to see what we talk about in action, so some of them do for the first few months.

And then the amazing thing is then everyone starts doing their own thing and we got the Facebook group as well. So once you’ve come on the course, people put the clinics on there. I mean, probably today it’s been about 4 or 5 posts with clinics where me or Ramtin or Elias will will give a feedback. The other delegates, the, you know, the ones that have come from from day one, they’re given the input because they’re, they’re all pros now as well. So it’s an amazing kind of support. And I think that’s the most important thing. Probably the most important thing about the course is actually not during the course. It’s to support afterwards because there’s so many courses I’ve been on and then it makes sense on the day you leave and then a week later it’s gone. Yeah. And that’s why obviously we have this big handbook with all the protocols in it for them and they’ve got the support afterwards so they can ask even a simple question and they can answer on there. We’ve got, you know, the webinars where they can ask questions on there. So it’s a good, good kind of 360 support system I feel.

What about the mix between being a clinician and being a teacher? You if you could have it your way, would you do less treatment and more teaching?

Personally, I’m not a natural speaker. So for me, it’s it’s quite a tiring two days. I’m a little bit on the I would say I’m an extroverted introvert. So for me, it’s quite tough two days and it’s very intense. Not because we need to spread across more days. It’s just there’s a lot of new information and it’s very important for us to bring that cross in the easiest way possible. And that takes time to teach.

It’s tiring for sure.

It takes a lot. You have to give out a lot of energy to to make sure it comes across. And we want it to be amazing for everyone. So everything has to go well for us to be kind of happy with it. So yeah, it is tiring, you know, we’re kind of drained for a few days afterwards. So we said this Do we want to teach more? Yeah, we can probably do a little bit more, but I really enjoy the clinical side, so for me it’s a good mix. I don’t think I would do much more teaching, but think, Rampton, maybe you’re a bit different. You prefer more the teaching side than the clinical? No.

No, I agree with Daemon. I think for me as well, I think those two days are super. Even those three of us Payman and we divide everything up those two days. It’s still hours of work and, and you know, for us it’s like on the breaks and in between, people are bringing their own checks up. So for us, it’s really a, you know, we get there seven, we leave probably about 7 p.m. after answering all the questions. And throughout, like we generally tend not to eat anything during those two days. It’s just constant, non-stop. And so it’s very tiring. It takes me it probably takes me. I’m not as young as Damien, as fit as Damien. It probably takes me about a week to recover. That’s what we’ve kept. We have three, sometimes four a year, and we’re thinking of maybe even reducing that by one next year, maybe just because it might be just a little bit too much, I feel. But I think we.

Like have helpers as well. Or is it just the three of you? Do you have other people helping?

Yeah.

Yeah. So there’s us three and then we have we have one of our treatment coordinators at the practice too, that comes from the practice. And so she, you know, you know, a business manager that was talking about from the beginning. So she’s the one that deals with all the cool stuff as well. So she does all the organising, she does all the like sending the welcome packs out, doing all the stuff, everything. So yeah, we literally just come in like she books everything for us. We literally just come in and we focus on the author and she’ll be like, you know, ten minutes to break or whatever. So she’s on top of everything else. It wouldn’t be possible.

Is there is there a dinner as well or no?

Um. No, there’s no. Everyone asks about this. Everyone asks about this, you know, thing for us. Payman. We’re like, we’re introverts. We really are. And it’s.

Yeah.

Am I am. I know. I’m on seem like it right now talking a lot, but it’s one of those things in a group like I’ll be very quiet and on the side and it’s hard, you know, like it’s a whole day of being under scrutiny. So we’re very tired generally the first day. And then we generally we generally tend to get together over dinner and be like, okay, this went this went well, we need to improve on this. You were speaking a bit too quick. Let’s slow this bit down so we change things even the night before. So it just gives us time to deload and to plan for the next day and take on some feedback as well.

Let’s move on to darker areas. My favourite piece. Let’s talk about mistakes. Tell me, each of you. Give me a clinical error you made. You said you listened to this podcast before. So we try and we try and share our mistakes so that we don’t all have to make them ourselves. Yeah.

I do my cases, too. Well, no, I’m kidding. That’s. Yeah, that’s not the case.

Yeah. So.

Yeah, so I had a, I had, I had a situation where I was in my last year of university and in the last year you tend to do things unsupervised unless you need specific help. And it was a, we used a lot of tags and we still use a lot of tags for temporary Anchorage devices like little mini screws, seven millimetre six or.

Like a little implant thing.

Like an implant. Yeah. So we place it to provide this Anchorage that we were talking about. So if we have, for example, a case where I need to, let’s say nasalised back segments for, let’s say the lateral size is missing, it’s a 12 year old kid. I can’t open up a space for a lateral because from the age of 12 to 18, those roots might converge again. It happens in about 10% of cases. So I want to do something where I can close the gaps, but I don’t have an Overjet so I can’t afford to have reciprocal space closure where the uppers go back and the back come forward. I need the front to stay with it. I need the back teeth to move forward fully. So I was using an electric handpiece with the tag on it, a palatal placement. So it goes on the sort of in the palate next to the premolar, but sort of on the palate, on the rouge, on the number three. And, and I place the first screw. Absolutely. I placed two one on either side of the midline. So you can then place like a superstructure on it. And as I came to place the second implant, I sort of went up to the I was holding the handpiece. I went up and then the screw wasn’t fully I wasn’t fully in the bone, but the instrument hit because the palatal vault is very deep. The my the handpiece hit the teeth and it sort of angled just a bit like that. Oh, and that was all it took for the screw just to break. So the screw fractured in the palate. It was the first one to ever happen at the university, the first one to ever happen. So I was panicking. I had I had a great supervisor. You know, we she came in, we discussed it. We went up to the Brunnermeier Clinic, you know, the, you know, the inventor of implants. They have a clinic there named after him. That’s where he worked. And. Oh.

Yeah, you said that in Swedish.

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

Yeah. And, uh.

And that’s pretty much the only thing I can say. Swedish. And then we went upstairs, you know, and they looked at it and they said, okay, you know, we found out the material. It’s. I can’t remember the details like a grade four titanium or something, which means you can theoretically keep it in and just leave it. But the patient was adamant and the parents that they wanted it removed. So, you know, the supervisor was was, you know, I didn’t have a lot of experience. You know, I was three years in, but I was still a newbie. So we went to the surgery. I was there for the surgery to take photos and like, you know, take pictures of all the procedures so that we had that at the university. And, you know, they they made they cut parts of the palate. They, you know, opened a opened a flap.

There and there. And then or another day, it was.

Like two days after I think two days after. And they opened up a flap. They, you know, they looked for the screws. A tiny they removed a lot of bone to get to the screw, found the screw, removed it, sutured it together. And then two days later, she comes back and there’s a massive hole in her palate, big infection, massive hole in the palate. And, um, yeah, so had to heal. It took, you know, two, three months for it to heal. But, you know, they were lovely patients. We had a lovely patient. We had a good relationship with a family. Anyway, you know, the supervisors were supporting me, you know, fully. And we finished a case. It went well. We changed the plan. We decided to to teeth out instead and do a know different plan. It went well. But that was a that was something that stopped me from placing tats for about, I would say for about a year. I didn’t place another tag, you know, anything that needed doing, I would get a demon to do until I finally got over that fear of, you know, it’s fine, I do it. And then I just went for it.

On reflection, was there anything you would have done differently?

Um. Yeah. My planning should have been a bit different. I think I should have. I should have accounted for the fact that there was going to be a little, you know, movement where it was. I could have used a bigger light, like head on the electric handpiece. My planning could have been more accurate. It was one of those things where up until that point we’d been supervised up until 2 or 3 months before that on everything we did. And it was a point to almost trying to prove that I could do it. Like I don’t need, you know, someone to tell me what to do and I’m going to, like, show them. And, and I was doing a lot of tabs at that point. So even to the point where I’d supervisor like to the, to the younger students, the ones that were like year 1 or 2 like go and see Rampton does it. So I had that little point to prove and I sort of did a little bit quicker than I should have. So it was a big it was a big learning experience for me and it definitely sort of scared me away from doing them. It became a big thing for me where I just wouldn’t do them. I would literally get Damon to come in and do them for me and um, yeah, but then after a year, I was like, You know what? I’ve got to do it. At some point you go, I’m not. I’m going to plan properly. It won’t happen again. Never happen again.

And do you think in the management of it, like if it was your kid or whatever, would you would you think it would have been the right thing to leave it in?

It’s a great question. I would have probably left it in in in hindsight, I would have left it in. But if I was there and it was, you know, a small bit of screw and theoretically should be an easy procedure to remove it, I might have probably removed it, but I don’t know. The answer is the question is difficult because knowing what I know now, no, I wouldn’t with all the things that happened. But if I if I didn’t know, you know, everything that could go wrong and everything, I would have probably just, yeah. Asked for it to be removed. So this time, if it happened, I would say don’t remove it, just leave it in and just accept it where it is.

That’s a great story, man. Thanks for sharing that, buddy.

Sure.

Time and you’ve got a lot to live up to now.

Yeah. I haven’t had anything.

Up to the family.

Yeah, no, it usually makes the mistake, so don’t need to. So I’m quite lucky in that. And I haven’t had really anything crazy go wrong. Obviously. Back in back in Dental school days, you know, creating an extra canal when you’re doing root canal treatment. We’ve all been there and I’ve done some silly things. For example, I remember I did Invisalign and a patient completely didn’t even see it, had a bonded retainer on and they came back after four months. Patient was super happy. She was like, my teeth were looking a lot better. Death hasn’t moved at all. Lovely patient, thankfully. But yeah, I mean, that’s happened once. Never happened again.

Then the number of invisaligns you guys have done, you must have had the odd patient who just became ultra picky and just would not be made happy.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s a struggle. It’s take, it’s taken a while for us to know how to handle every patient. I think we pretty much have that covered now. We’re also good at kind of weeding them out from the start. You know, when you get that that kind of alarm.

Spider sense. Yeah.

And we send in the clincheck if they start sending back emails with like drawings and you know, this upper left six.

Is they get more.

And more picky as they go, don’t they.

As.

You just got to expect that to happen.

Exactly.

Exactly. And that’s the problem because we’re quite OCD ourselves and we set high standards and that’s why a lot of our results look really nice on Instagram. And that’s what brings in these kind of patients as well. So it’s tricky. We kind of victim of our own success because if we create really good results, that’s what they all expect and that’s what we expect ourselves as well. But rather me tell them, this is what you need to do, rather than them telling me, you know, Oh, this one needs a bit more rotation. But yeah, they do become very picky and that’s why it’s very rare for us to do one jaw because I’ve treated, for example, one jaw before and then halfway through the treatment, the lower jaw, for example, that didn’t bother them suddenly becomes a big problem and then they have to pay the whole fee again. So yeah, picky patience is definitely a tricky one. Fortunately, we we get good results. So it’s not a big thing. But we’ve had actually there’s one patient that springs to mind and we did for her and I think I did about 0.2mm more on one side compared to the other. And then I don’t think our result was a problem and I think there was other issues at hand. But yeah. And then she started sending emails every day saying I can’t sleep at night.

I’m crying myself to sleep because this tooth is a little bit bigger than the other tooth. And to this day, that’s the only patient we’re given the money back for Invisalign to this day, and that’s because it just wasn’t worth the headache. So we said, you know, here’s your money back, Go somewhere. She was asking whether we could put fixed braces on, open the space up, put composite bonding on. You couldn’t tell the difference. Okay. I’ll show you the pictures after this chat. Perfect results if anyone looks at it. And then she went somewhere else and then they fixed braces for her. I don’t know why, because her result was finished. And then she complained to them as well, saying her head had got bigger after the fixed braces. So you’ve got to be careful. I think patient selection is probably the most important thing for us now if we feel that they’re going to be picky or if the teeth look really good, there’s not a lot to improve on. Like very little. We don’t take it on because those people, the expectation is already so high that there’s not a lot of improvement you can gain for them to make them happy. So yeah, we’ve had a fair few of those, but touchwood a lot less now. All right.

Guys. So it’s been a wonderful conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it and I knew I’d be out of my depth when it came to Invisalign and Alina, she was at one point I was going to ask you about, uh, what’s it called? Bolton discrepancy. But I don’t know what that means. Don’t want don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to talk about it.

But not in the way. So it’s all good.

So we always end it with the same two questions and I want both of you to give me the answers. Number one fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive? Who would you have? Damon?

Um, well, I’m a huge Formula One fan, so I think Lewis Hamilton was the first name that popped into my head. It’s probably not the most inspirational one out of everyone that you can choose from, but I just think it’d be really cool to see, yeah. How his life is here. Some stories get some inside gossip with Formula One. Not sure how much I would learn from it, but just a cool, selfish guess I would say. Second, I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, so J.K. Rowling would be my number two.

Who’d a thunk it? Who woulda thunk it?

I mean, me and Madison are a bit obsessed with it. I grew up with the books. And whenever the book when he was like 12 in the book, I was 12 in the book, and I went to school with their houses. They had house competitions. So, yeah, pretty much felt like I was in their world. In a sad way, I still still watch the movies and read the books. So yeah, definitely a good number two. Just to see She’s cool, though.

I like J.K..

Rowling. She’s cool. She is.

Just want to see how how it all came to be. And number three is a tricky one. But I like music. I like a lot of modern music, old music. And I’m a big fan of the 50s 60s. So it’d be nice to have Frank Sinatra there to kind of hear his stories. I’m sure he has a lot of.

He’d be he’d be a fun guest.

He’d be a fun guest.

A fun guess.

I don’t know if it’s good or.

Bad, but yeah, that’d be pretty awesome to hear.

Last year, Lewis.

Hamilton would have much to say in that dinner party, but.

Yeah.

What you got, Rampton?

Um.

Yeah, I, um. I had. I had a few that I sort of. I thought, no, actually, not those guys, because, yeah, we’re going to keep it non-political. So I thought for me, Neil Armstrong I’m a huge fan of SpaceX, huge fan of SpaceX. Like, it’s my thing and and I’m a massive geek when it comes to it. I was at the I went to literally went to Houston just for the space centre. So um, Neil Armstrong, I think, yeah, just to hear the stories and you know, you know what, how do they, you know, how do they feel? Were they, were they nervous? Like, you know, all the different steps? There was an Iranian guy who was the head of Mars exploration for NASA who just died. Yeah. Firouz. Naderi Yeah, exactly. And he, um, he was, I listened to one of his lectures once. He did it for the, you know, the British Iranian Dental Association. And it was just, it was such a fantastic lecture about like, our place in the universe and how small we are and, you know, how insignificant we are, whereas we think we’re super important. So he was just that lecture was 45 minutes long, but it’s still with me now, so I would love to just sit down and talk to him because I think the stuff that he could talk about and you know what he did and you know what NASA does and everything would be amazing.

Yeah. When he when he passed away, I actually looked and looked up a YouTube lecture. He brilliant, brilliant speaker.

Amazing man. He was he was he was fantastic. He was fantastic. And I haven’t thought about a third one. I think I’m a huge, huge fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, so that would be a cool third person, just someone to sit down with and, you know, just just, you know, his motivation and his, you know, wins and losses and hear about his story, that’d be cool.

So before we move on to the final, final questions, who are your heroes in dentistry who, like the question would be who? Who would be your dream guest on this show?

I think mine would be again. All our teaching was literature based on orthodontics. So the king of literature really is Kevin O’Brien, and we’ve had him on. Have you had him on?

How have I missed that?

I need to go back and listen to that. And he’s just an amazing guy. Like he’s so chill but so witty, so comical and so knowledgeable and knows his stuff. He would be amazing. He would be amazing. Yeah. That’s Martin who you got?

I was going to say Professor Ryan as well, but Damon took.

I.

Like Simon Littlewood. He’s a he’s an orthodontist, a really good lecturer. He’s he talks a lot about retention and, you know, things that happens after the orthodontic treatment. Very knowledgeable guy really knows his stuff. You know, everything he does is literature based. So that’s someone that I would love to hear, you know, his his thoughts on on, you know, the current situation in in ortho as it was.

Amazing. Let’s end with the final question. It’s a deathbed. Surrounded by your nearest and dearest. What a three piece of advice you’d give them for life.

Am. I think I’m a big believer in saying yes. So. There’s a lot of know people in life. And I think the more you say no, the more doors you’re closing. You might say, yes, it might turn out bad, but it might turn out good. So, yeah, life is a bit of an adventure. So the more you say yes, the more the more experiences you’re going to have. So I think. If I can give any advice to my kids in the future is. Yeah, live a little bit. You know, don’t. Life is not linear. You can take think when you’re 18. You think I’ve got to go on to the next step. I’ve got to do the next step. In retrospect, if I could go back in time, I would have taken a year out. I would have gone travelled. Very difficult to do now. But yeah, enjoy life. Say yes. That’s definitely point number one for me. And point number two is. Always be yourself. Don’t ever compromise your integrity for whatever reason, just to get ahead and get an opportunity. I think if you will stay true to yourself, then things will work out a lot better in my experience. And lastly, just just be a good person, you know, treat others the way you want to be treated. I think from day one, mum always mom and dad always brought us up to be very polite. Treat others nicely because it always comes around. If you give out positive energy, positive energy will come back, right? Yeah, Those are my three.

Hampton Um, I think for me, I think empathy and kindness, I think, you know, I think I’m a real believer in the fact that, you know, you don’t know what people are going through. I think showing kindness to everyone is the way forward. What else? Um. Don’t shrink to make other people more comfortable. Don’t know if that makes sense or not. Don’t make yourself like if you’ve achieved if you achieve certain things in life, don’t belittle those things just to make people around you comfortable. You know, keep your head up. Be confident with what you’ve done and think lifelong learning for me, like, you know, always keep learning and always keep, you know, improving and better yourself because I really think a sort of growth mindset in that way will lead to like a long and and fulfilled life.

Because, you know, the kind of the thread that that’s gone through this podcast and, you know, would look at you two. There’s a there’s an element of doing things differently. And there’s an element of doing things better, you know, like the excellence sort of mindset. Where does it come from? You can you can fall into that danger of thinking, Hey, you two are the same. And I know my brother and I are nothing like each other but you because you’ve got the same beard and you do the same course and the same in the same practice, you know, you could you could fall into the trap of saying that. But where does it come from that that, you know, excellence being the thing and doing things in a sort of looking at things in a different way, looking outside the box.

Think Rampton is probably the source. I mean, we’re both very ambitious. Rampton is just on a whole different universe when it comes to kind of hard work and ambition and kind of just get dragged along with it, whether I like it or not. But we complement each other well. I think sometimes I, I bring us back down to Earth and then Rampton takes us back up again. But yeah, we’ve always, I think, pride. We take pride in what we do. And Persians are very proud people. So maybe that’s kind of spilled into, into our work. And yeah, we’ve always wanted to kind of, you know, what’s next. What can we improve on? What can we do? You know, we’ve done the clinic, let’s open another one. We’ve done clinics, now let’s go into teaching. So I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but we do get not bored, but we get we don’t like getting complacent. We always feel, you know, life is short. Make the most of it. Push yourself, get uncomfortable. Like this podcast. We’ve been dreading it for a week and but yeah, glad we’ve done it. Yeah. And.

Sideman can add something to that as well. I think for our source band, I think the main thing for us is that we’ve always, you know, like from, you know, the way that we’ve been brought up. Like, you know, we, we had parents that came to another country when they were, you know, you know, as adults. And there’s always been this feeling that maybe, you know, we need to do really well to be seen as equals, maybe something like that. I don’t know if that that tends to be something that, you know, you know, people that, you know, come into other countries feel like you need to you can’t just be, you know, doing things the standard way. You have to do better so that people see you. So for us, it’s one of those mindset where we’re like, you know, we can’t be just someone that does, you know, dentistry, okay, We need to be someone that does orthodontics to a standard where really we’re we’re no one can come to you and, you know, say, no, you’re not doing this right. You know you’re doing this wrong because we’re like our harshest critics. We really are. So it’s just one of those I think, you know, some things that we picked up on growing up, you know, just needing to just be that one step above just so that we’re seen in these environments from what we’re seeing. Our parents maybe I don’t know. I don’t know. Does that make sense?

Yeah, of.

Course, of course. But, you know, it’s a funny thing that we set ourselves these sort of targets, right? I mean, someone could say, Hey, by becoming a dentist, you did that in the first. Someone else, you know, might say that. The next guy might say, Oh, by becoming an orthodontist, you next guy said, Oh, by becoming a teacher. The next guy wants to become the Nobel Prize winner. You know, like it’s we we end up. Yeah, everyone sets a standard and they of what? But I can just see you guys are always trying to do things like to the top even even just looking at the hotels you pick for your course you know I know what it costs and takes to do that. I know what it does. You know, you can see you’ve covered every aspect. The AV is good, the the food’s good, let alone the teaching, you know, let alone the teaching. So that’s a pleasure to have had you guys really proud of what you’ve achieved. I’m sure you’re going to go much, much further. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. If people want to get to you, what’s the best way?

Email info at aligners. Without a.

Aligners. Without a g.

Confusingly yeah. Info aligners.co.uk or just go on our Instagram complete aligner program and you can message us on there as well to get a hold of us.

But that’s with a G. That one.

That’s with a G. Yeah. We got a real problem, man.

Oh yeah. We’re not helping ourselves completely.

Like, go, go ahead. Any other way to get.

To, you know, that’s pretty much.

It. I think our brand is not on point when it comes to the complete Aligner program.

But of.

Course it’s pretty okay though the course.

Is pretty okay.

Aligners Aligners. Without the complete aligner program with the G.

Brilliant.

Exactly brilliant. Thank you so much for doing this, guys.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Everyone.

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.

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

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