I said to Dad, I want a computer. And he was like, What do you need a computer for? I was like, I want to play games. And dad was like, okay. He was like, Well, which one do you want? He looked at it and he was shocked at the price. Yeah. And he turned around and he said to me, he said, Listen, he said, I’ll do you a deal. He said, You’ll learn to read Punjabi and you read two pages of Punjabi to me from my paper. He said, that weekend I’ll go out and I’ll buy, I’ll buy you a computer. And the mistake that my dad made is he thought it was going to take me about 6 or 7 months for me to do this. It took me a week. So literally, he made that promise on a Sunday. The following week on the Saturday, I sat down and I read two pages from it from his paper to him. My mom actually said to me, she goes, she goes, We were. She goes, We were a really tight for money. But for two months after that. But she goes, Your dad made a promise. She goes, He wasn’t expecting you to do it in a week. It’s all these little things that that you know, over time you build up a memory of and these unshakeable memories from when you were a kid. You know, they do shape you as you get older now, you know, like the time when I learned to read Punjabi. Even now I love learning Prav You know, I’m. I’m obsessive about it. I will sit down and I will read articles. I was critically praised them. I’ll try to get new information because it’s a never ending game in any aspect of life. As soon as we think to ourselves, that’s it. I know enough. We do ourselves a disservice and we do those around us a disservice. That’s it. Just stay curious.

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 introduce Parth Kaira onto the podcast. We probably go back 15 years or so in terms of when we first met. It was probably around the time of when you’d launched or around the time you were considering launching Red Sky Dental Spa. That was my earliest memory of you Prav and I have witnessed I have seen your entire journey from those early days successes, failures, ups, downs, pitch black, dark holes that you’ve had to pull yourself out of. And I think I can confidently say that there’s definitely lots of light in your life right now, and I can see the positivity oozing out of you. Prav Welcome to the show. And I’d like to start by, as I always do, asking you about your backstory, where you grew up and what your upbringing was like.

Yeah. Prav Thank you for having me on. And you’re absolutely right. We go back a very, very long time. And it was just just as I’d started Red Sky Dental Spa, all those all those very, very many years ago. So, I mean, growing up, I had the typical Indian upbringing. You know, I remember even from a very early age, my dad turned around and said to me, Son, you’ve got one of three options of a career where you can grow up. He was like, You can be a dentist, you can be a doctor, or you can work in the shop with me. And I’ll tell you what Prav he was hell bent on proving to me that I did not want to work in the shop with him. So, you know, a lot of my youth was spent in Dad’s shop helping him stack the shelves, going to cash and carry, lugging the trolleys around. And he made sure that I hated it.

How interesting. Prav I’ve known you for 15 years. We both grew up in the shop. We both did cash and carry, and this is the first time I’m hearing it. Yep. That’s amazing. And where did you grow up? Have.

I grew up predominantly in East Yorkshire, in and around Hull. I wasn’t overly keen on it at the time. I felt isolated from a lot of my family, although I did have some close cousins there, but most of my family were elsewhere. So growing up it was quite insular for me. And in fact when I went to university, that was the first time that I was living away outside of Yorkshire and I loved it. Doing the typical thing racked up too many student debts and ended up having to move back home with mum and Dad and then ended up staying there for a lot longer as well. Yeah.

Tell me about the shop and how that shaped you as long as you remember. Did you grow up in the shop? Did you live in the shop? Did you commute to the shop? What? Just describe the setup for me and I’ll tell you a little bit about mine.

Yeah, so it was all aspects really Prav You know, there was there were certain times where Dad ran certain businesses such as a newsagents and we lived above the shop. If we weren’t living above the shop any half term holidays, any Easter holidays or summer holidays, it was like, you know, go help your dad in the shop. And I hated it. You know, It was so it was so mundane for me. And again, I think dad was deliberately doing that to prove to me that, you know, this is not the type of life that you want. You know, it was it was his way of showing love that, you know, I want you to to to do better in your life than than to do this, really. And even when I was older and, you know, we’d go to the cash and carry, I remember there was one shop that dad had was it was really, really busy, mate. And I remember this summer holidays, I think it was just before I started university. So it was a long summer holiday as well. Every single day Dad and I would go to the cash and carry.

He would load up 15, 16 trolleys worth of of goods. And he was like, Right, I’m going to pay for it. Put it all through the tills you stack, you stack the van up and every single day I’d have to stack up a pallet of beer and this, that and the other. And dad would ironically come back with the last trolley, all the light stuff that didn’t want to get squashed. It was like crisp boxes. That’s the Chris boxes, the sweets, the ones that go right in the corner. It was like, I’ll load this up. You can sit, you can sit in the van. It was like, okay, thanks for that, Dad. So that was that was a lot of my time bringing up. So from an early age, my mum and my dad pushed very much on the you have to educate yourself. You need to get yourself into a profession. And as I said, it was very much a case of we want you to be a doctor, but a dentist is acceptable as well. So that was that was kind of like that was my upbringing effectively.

Any siblings?

Prav Yeah, I have one sister and in fact, some of the earliest memories that I have from the shop is when my when my sister would come home from nursery and my dad had made a little bed for her where she could sleep in the stock room. And I remember the smell and it was smell of tobacco because it was literally where he kept the cigarettes, cigs.

Yeah.

Stacks, stacks and stacks of cigs. And then he’d, he’d made like a little bed there for her. And I used to sit there reading comic books thinking what’s that smell. Because you know, when you’re five years old you don’t know any better. What’s that smell? What’s that? My sister would be asleep. So my sister is about three years younger than I am, so. Yeah, close. Close family.

Was she a partner in crime in the shop? Did she help you in the shop or was it was it just you that was roped into that?

Not not as much. She helped out on the till more than anything else. I was roped into the heavy duty stuff. And to be fair, when I went to university, she helped out in the shop more than what I did, and I think a big part of that was just because she didn’t for a little bit. She didn’t quite know what she wanted. To do. Some of them died like, cool, you can help us out in the shop. So she then got roped into it and she hated it as much as I did.

You know what? I loved it and I hated it at the same time. And I’ve got so many fond memories of the shop like you. We grew up my my bedroom was above the shop. Our living room was behind the shop. Yeah. And, you know, our garden was right at the back. And we had a stock room next to our living room. And I remember the cash and carry trips, loading the stuff up. I remember the really, like, crisp boxes. I remember. I mean, this this takes me back a long time, right? But I remember, like, a business move my dad made, right? What I consider to be a business move now is that when you got the announcement that cigarettes were going up by £0.07, he would go to the cash and carry take all the money he had physically had and just stock up on as many cigarettes as he could because he knew he’d make an extra £0.07 profit per pack of fags and he knew that it would shift quickly, right? So it was a very easy investment for him. Didn’t realise it at the time. But but, but looking back now. But my memories very much are behind the till. Speaking to lots of customers, learning communication, not knowing I was learning communication and bagging £55 bags of spuds into £5 bags in any moment of spare time. And in between that, have you got any memories that you can share? Prav of things that sort of stick out from when you were in the shop and perhaps how that shaped you today?

Yeah. So I mean, there was there was a transition from when you’re really young that when you go to the cash and carry with dad, you know, before you’re big enough to pull a trolley, it’s, you know, you get to sit on the trolley, you know, there’s trolleys with the springs on it and you sit there, you’re like, Oh, I’m having a ride. And every time you go out, it’s like, Dad, I want a toy. And I’d always get it. So one thing about my dad, Prav, is that my my mum and dad struggle at that point financially when they were growing up. But if my dad had made a promise to me, he kept it no matter what. And I remember once, I can’t remember how old I was, but I wasn’t very old. It must have been like 8 or 9 at the at the most, maybe ten. This is when computers were becoming much more mainstream. It’s when Amstrad and Atari and stuff like that were out. And I said to Dad, I want a computer and he was like, what do you need a computer for? I was like, I want to play games. And dad was like, okay.

And he was like, Well, which one do you want? He looked at it and he he was shocked at the price. Yeah. And he turned around and he said to me, he said, Listen, he said, I’ll do you a deal. He said, You’ll learn to read Punjabi and you read two pages of Punjabi to me from my paper. He said, that weekend I’ll go out and I’ll buy, I’ll buy you a computer. And the mistake that my dad made is he thought it was going to take me about 6 or 7 months for me to do this. It took me a week. So I literally made that promise on a Sunday. The following week on the Saturday, I sat down and I read two pages from it from his paper to him, and my mum was in hysterics and at the time it didn’t register why? But she told me afterwards, like when? When, when I got older, she was like I was in hysterics because your dad was panicking, thinking I can’t afford to get him this computer, but I’m going to get it for him somehow because that’s the love that that that my parents had for me.

And he made that promise, right?

He made he made that promise. And you know what? To be fair, mate, he’s he stuck with it. Mum, mum actually said to me, she goes, she goes, we were. She goes, we were really tight for money but for two months after that. But she goes your dad made a promise. She goes, he wasn’t expecting you to do it in a week and, and she goes, Here he is. And then another time when that kind of worked in my favour as well is when I was 17 and I passed my licence and it was a bank holiday. I turned round and said to Dad, I want a car. And dad goes, Tell you what. He goes, You open up the shop. It’s a bank holiday. I don’t want to go in. He said, Whatever money you make, you can put in towards the cost of a car. He doesn’t. He didn’t know it was going to be like the one of one of the busiest days we’d ever had. We took nearly £2,000 that day. So again, afterwards, I came home and I was like, Dad, we take in £2,000 today. And my dad’s face just dropped. And my mum was in hysterics again. So it’s all these little things that that, you know, over time you, you build up a memory of and these unshakeable memories from when you were a kid, you know, they do shape you as you get older now, you know like the time when I learnt to read Punjabi.

Even now I love learning Prav you know, I’m, I’m obsessive about it. I mean, you know, part of my story that, of course it’s, it’s that got me through some very dark times as well. But even now that, you know, I will sit down and I will read articles, I was critically praised them. I’ll try to get new information because it’s a never ending game. As soon as we think to ourselves, not just in implants, but in any in any aspect of dentistry, in any aspect of life. As soon as we think to ourselves, that’s it. I know enough. We do ourselves a disservice and we do those around us a disservice. So the game is really, really simple. Stay curious. That’s it. Just stay curious. And if you remain curious and keep asking the right questions, sometimes the wrong questions can lead you to the right questions. If you keep in that habit and just stay curious, magical things can end up opening up. And that’s that’s what I love about, well, everything about life, about dentistry, about, you know, family, about learning, and just. Just apply that principle to everything. Stay curious.

So any lessons from from dad? Right. I’m hearing the same lessons from both of our fathers. Right. And one thing that my dad always said to me, and it was almost like a mantra by the time, you know, I took my path that I took. But it was these words, son. I am working so hard doing a job that I don’t want to do. So that you don’t ever have to do this. Yeah. And that was that was a consistent mantra for me. Is that the reason I’m doing the shop? You better not end up a shopkeeper. Yeah, that was my. That was the overriding message from. From Dad. What about you?

It was. I’d say it was exactly the same, you know? So Dad used to turn around and said, Say to me. He was like, I don’t want you doing this. He said, You don’t have to do this. He said, I came over from India. I had no choice but to do this. He said, I’m giving you the option that you don’t have to do this. But that means that you’ve got to do your part and you’ve got to study hard. And he was like, If you study hard and get a good business, you can have a better life than than than what I have. And I think as well Prav is, you know, when you hear parents talk about kids and they turn around and say, we always want our kids to be better than than what we are. And because I didn’t have my daughter until later on in life, I was in my 40s. So, you know, I’ve got people that I graduated with, You know, their kids are like 17, 18 now. Yeah. Whereas I feel like my life started at 40 and I never understood that principle until I had my daughter. And then now everything’s like, you know, I just want Suhani to have a better life than what I do. And any way that I can sacrifice of my own on whatever level to achieve that, that’s what I’m going to do. So actually, those those lessons that Dad taught me, which stuck with me, but probably didn’t fully understand until I had my daughter and when I had my daughter, it just helped me appreciate more how much my parents sacrificed for me to be in the position that I am now.

What do you what do you take away? Really interesting here. So what is it that you want for Suhani that let’s say you don’t have now or you didn’t have? What? What is that thing? Is it is it a different type of career? Is it materialistic? Is it opportunities? What Like what’s your dream for? Suhani?

I think the opportunities that I had in terms of education and schooling were very, very good. But what’s come to be quite obvious more recently is that getting a high paying job, being in a profession and having straight A’s at GCSE and A-levels or whatever they’re called nowadays, that’s not necessarily the best way to generate wealth and income. So whilst I had that whole academic background, I want Suhani from a much younger age to learn about how money actually works, how investing works, you know, the more worldly stuff. I want her to understand communication, persuasion and influence from a much younger age because I think those soft skills play a massive role and it doesn’t matter in what aspect, whether it’s work or personal life. If I can get her to become a very, very, very good communicator and to understand how money works, then I think there will be even more opportunities for her than what I had. And I think the other passion that I have for her as well is. For myself, it was very much you have to get into a profession. You have to be you have to be a doctor, you have to be a dentist because they earn the highest. And it goes back to that whole we want we want my parents being like, we want you to have a better life than what? Than what we did. Sure. My approach for Suhani is whatever your passion is, chase it, but aim to be world class in it. You know, it doesn’t matter what it is. If she’s got a passion for languages, be a world class communicator in multiple different languages. You know, whatever it is that she wants to do, I don’t think it’s necessary. You have to have you have to have a specific professional job. But whatever your passion is and you have to find that passion, the aim is to become world class at that. And how do you become become world class at something? You stay curious. You keep asking the right questions. So that’s what I want for her.

Amazing. Amazing. See, for me, growing up the way I did. Right? It’s probably similar to you, right? It wasn’t easy. Probably pressurised into the career choice, but at the same time, you know, for the right reasons from our parents, right? At least, you know, they did what they thought was best. And so I look at my kids, I look at my upbringing, my childhood and how all that went and what do I want for my kids. It’s not financial. It’s definitely not financial because, A, I think it will come. And B, I look at I look at money differently from the point of view that, look, you can either earn more or adjust your lifestyle or a combination of the two. Right? And and I know very well that it’s not the derivative of what I’d consider to be happiness. Right? And so, look, if I get to the age of 65 and my daughter still wants to hold my hand and still wants to hang out with me because she wants to hang out with me. A fucking smashed it, mate. Yeah. Yeah. And that that that is what I’m aiming for. Right. And the other stuff, it’ll figure itself out. That’s, that’s just sort of my. And that’s changed over time. It has changed. And at the moment my, you know, six and seven year old, they can’t get enough hugs from daddy. They can’t squeeze my hand hard enough. And my God, I’m going to cash in on that time of all those hugs and holding my hand and squeezing my hand as long as I can get it, because I know one day they’ll be embarrassed. And hopefully that’ll come full circle. And that’s that’s, you know, that’s that’s sort of my take on it. But but listen, moving on from there, Let’s let’s let’s talk about obviously your dad wanted you to be a doctor stroke dentist. Just give us a whistle stop tour of school right through to university.

So whistle stop, tour of school. In fact, I remember. I remember even at. Nursery pre-school. But I had a habit of being disruptive because I got bored very, very quickly. So I would do whatever I needed to do and then I’d just disrupt the rest of the class. And this is a conversation I was having with my mom a few months ago. She was like, How do you remember this? And I said to her, I said, In fact, I remember at nursery that I was put in an inverted commas special class where like, I think there was ten, 12 of us with the headmistress and it was just basically an advanced class. But I used to finish the work so quickly, I used to disrupt everybody there as well. And the head teacher used to say to me, she goes, Look, just walk up and down the school. Just don’t go into any classes. Don’t go off to school. And I just used to look into appear into classrooms and stuff like that. And so I’ve always learnt fairly quickly. And then once I picked it up, I just when I was younger, I just used to disrupt. I had a natural infinity for sciences at secondary school.

I wasn’t strong in the humanities or arts or anything like that. And I’m wondering now on reflection, whether I had this natural affinity for sciences, because I knew that my dad wanted me to be a doctor and I was like, okay, to be a doctor, got to do you got to do the sciences and all the way up till GCSEs, I wanted to be a doctor, medical doctor. And then I did work experience in a hospital and it was the most boring thing I’ve ever done in my life. And then I entered A-levels and A-levels were way, way, way harder than what I originally anticipated because I walked through my GCSEs and A-levels hit me like a ton of bricks. And that first year, I think I think my highest grade in that first year was an E or a D minus because I just didn’t do any work because I’d lost that direction. And then in the in the summer holidays of that first year, because this wasn’t modular A-levels, this is you sit exams at the end of the end of the two years I did work experience in a dental practice and I loved it because I was like, hang on, Not only is this like medical stuff, but you get to do cool shit with your hands as well.

I was like, You know, you actually get to do some some really cool stuff. And there was actual, like diagnosis, treatment, planning and execution. So I went back to school and I said to my teachers, I was doing A-level physics, chemistry, biology. I said to them, You need to predict me, three B’s for me to get into dental school. And they turned around and said to me, Not even you can do it. They said, You left it too late. Not even you could do it. But my chemistry teacher knew that because I just lacked direction. That’s all that it was. And he was like, Let me speak to the other teachers. He said, I will get them to predict your three B’s, but whatever you do, do not let me down because they’re going to kill me. So he he bent their arms, twisted their arms, and in the end I got an A in physics and a B in chemistry and biology. And that’s what led me to go to the only university that actually gave me an offer, which was Guy’s Hospital.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was one of those ones. You had six spots on the form to apply, but you can’t apply to six. They’re like, you know, when you do medicine dentistry, you can only apply to five. So I applied to five all in London because I wanted to get out of Yorkshire. Yeah. And the rest of them didn’t even have interviews. I just had an outright rejection. But I got in that guy’s and I went there. There were good times, there were bad times, but I failed my finals first time around and on retrospection it’s probably because my ego wasn’t big enough to graduate from guys because this is back in the days it was just like, Oh God, graduating from Guy’s ego has got to be like this. And even back then I was just like, I’ve had enough, I can’t do this. And I went to one of my professors that I was quite close to, quite pally with, and I just turned around and said to him, I said, Mr. Cab, I said, I can’t do this anymore. He said, What do you mean? I said, I’ve given it five years. I said, I’ve failed. I said, I’ve, you know, I hate this. I don’t want to do this anymore. And he just turned around and said to me, You’re not the man I fucking thought you were.

And I was like, What do you mean by that? He said, You’re giving up now. After you put in five years of effort, He said, You’ve got another three months. You’ve got to hang out around here. It’ll be the easiest three, three months of your life. And he goes after that. He said, a year, two years down the line. He says, it’s not even going to matter that you were here for an extra three years. And you know what? He was right. So, again, you know, I owe him a thank of gratitude as well that, you know, he he had that reality check conversation with me. And then what ended up happening, Prav, is when I was younger, I was really close to my grandfather as I was growing up. My dad’s the youngest in his family. He’s the baby in his family and he’s quite a big family. So my oldest uncles actually old enough to be my grandfather, so my grandfather’s quite a lot older still. And. In fact, I remember a trip when he came over to the to the UK for my cousin’s wedding. It must have been about summer of 94, 95. And he was just sat minding his business, laying on the floor, watching TV, and he was watching the news and I was bored. So I sat next to him. I gave him a little poke, a little prod, and he didn’t say a word, but he glanced over at me and then looked back and I knew what it meant.

It meant pack it in. But I was like, Yeah, whatever. So I gave him another little nudge and a poke. And without breaking his gaze off the TV, he just grabbed me and he put me into a headlock. And I laughed because I was like, You know, this old man’s got. I was like, I’m going to break this in a second. He just laughed back at me and he just turned round and said, he said, If you can break my. Break my grip. He said, Feel free to try Prav for 20 minutes. I tried to break this one for 20 minutes. I was sweating. The only sweat on my grandfather is was what I’d left on him. Other than that, he hadn’t broken a sweat. And that’s when my dad turned around. So my grandfather said to me, he said, All you have to do is admit defeat and I’ll let you go. And I was like, okay, cool. You win, you win. And my dad turned around to me afterwards and he turned around and said, You’ve got to remember, your grandfather’s a farmer, right? He’s got like manual labour strength. He’s doing 75 years. You know, he’s, he’s, he doesn’t look big, but he’s, he’s like, he’s like Iron Man.

So for me, that closeness with my grandfather and I had so much respect for, for, for him. He was like my Superman growing up and when I graduated. It was about a year or two after I graduated. My grandfather was in his twilight years. And I was speaking to him on the phone. And this is going to sound really selfish, but my dad was saying to me, You need to go see your grandfather. And I couldn’t handle it Prav because I knew he was working with walking with a Zimmer frame. And in my mind, this is the same guy who had me in a headlock. And if I’d just seen him in that Zimmer frame, there would have been that real disconnect. And psychologically, I couldn’t get around it. And when I was speaking to him on the phone, that’s when he said to me after a few minutes, he said, If I come to see you, he said, Can you fix my teeth? And I was like, What do you mean? He said, My teeth are loose. Can you can you fix them? I knew he wore dentures, but this was before I was placing implants. And I turned around and said to him, No, I don’t know how to do that. And he just went quiet. Which was only for a few seconds, but when he spoke.

The hope had gone from his body and from his voice. And that’s when he turned around and he said to me, he said, Listen. He said, I’ve had a long and blessed life. He said, But I can’t eat with these with these teeth. He said, when the rest of the family eats at the table, I’ve got to go into my own room, take take my dentures out because I’m so embarrassed to anybody, see me, see me eat with them. And I never got to help him. Prav And that hit me like a ton of bricks that I was in a profession where I had the potential to impact people and I wasn’t. I was just doing fillings and and fissure sealants and all this other stuff. And that’s what started me down my implant route because in my mind, the promise that I made to myself is I will help as many people as I can have fixed teeth in his memory. That’s the reason I’m so passionate about implants. That’s the reason I’ve you know, I study so much because for me, it’s it reminds me of that fondness that I had with my grandfather. And it reminds me how I wasn’t able to help him. So, you know, I’m in a profession where I had to learn to help as many people as I possibly could.

But Prav, even if you could press a button and go back in time, right, in a time machine or whatever. What what have you done differently? When he asked you that question.

There’s no point reminiscing about that Prav, because it’s not going to happen. I couldn’t have done anything. No. You know, and even, you know, I’ve I’m at peace with the fact that I never went back to see him because again. You know, these the life lessons have taught me that, you know, holding on to the past too much. It’s like it’s like holding on to a red hot iron poker. And going, why is this hurting? Why is this hurting? Well, all you have to do is let it go. So, you know, it’s the the past is the past. You know, there’s no point. We learn our lessons and move on, you know. So although I regret it, it’s I’m at peace with it as well. So.

Yeah. So talk to me how how things moved on from there. You qualified. You became a dentist. Take me from first job. Through to Red Sky Dental.

So first job. My. I didn’t particularly like it, to be honest with you. My trainer wasn’t particularly supportive and most of the training I had were because there was a practice with five dentists in there. Most of the support and training I had was from the other practice instead of my actual trainer. And. At the end of that year. I remember it clearly turning around and said to me, he said, You’re never going to earn money. He said, You’re too slow. And in my mind, I immediately thought to myself, because you’ve not taught me anything all year. And I decided at that point I was close to giving up dentistry. But I thought to myself, you know what? What am I going to do is I’m going to give it another year. I’m going to do a year long course and I’m going to see if I find my passion again. And that’s when, as everybody does, do Chris Orr’s course, right? Course it’s like you graduate, you do your bit or whatever it is there, and then you do. Chris. So yeah, I was.

If you can get on it.

If you can get on it, yeah. This was back when it wasn’t as busy so and I just fell in love with dentistry again. And after that it was just once I did Chris Hall’s course, then I did. I was fortunate to have done Mike Wise’s course as well before he retired because he went through a spell of bad health. And then after that Prav it’s, you know, I worked in a couple of different practices, and once I found out that the contract was coming, I went to my primary care trust, as it was called at the time, and I said to him, I’m still because it was it was done on a historic list. So I said, I’m still building my list. And I said, I know I’m capable of doing the work, but I need this contract. And they basically said, Fuck off. And I was like, Cool, I’ve got no other choice other than to either find another position or go private. And that’s when Red Sky Dental Spa came up. So it was an established practice. The guy had been there 20, 25 years and he lived above there as well. And I was young, naive, had no clue about business. And this was back in the bank. This was back when the banks were just like, Oh, you’re a dentist. How much money do you want to do? You want to borrow? So I borrowed the valuation of the building and the goodwill and another 20% on top of that as well to do some renovations and stuff like that. So I was leveraged up to here.

So just just before we talk about that, right. You saw this practice was for sale. Did you know anything about buying a practice? Did you have anyone advise you on the valuation negotiations, any of that? And why this practice in Doncaster? What was it what was it about this practice that you thought it’s the one?

Uh, so firstly, no, I didn’t receive any advice. I didn’t look into it. I didn’t know how to run a business. Prav in my mind, I’d done Chris Hall’s course and for me it was just like, as you know, the old saying, if you build it, they will come. And in my mind, if I just execute the very best quality dentistry, I’ll have a line around the corner and people will pay whatever I want them to pay. That was my mentality moving towards it. And the reason why we looked at this practice is it was commutable distance from from home. That’s it. That’s all that I knew about it. And when we took it over because it was an established practice, the guy had been there for for a long, long time. I’d say between 25 and 30% of the patient list just disappeared because they were just like, we were coming here for the old guy. Now that he’s not here, we’re going to move somewhere closer. So I took a kicking in the shins right from the start. This is before I had any type of communication training. This was back when my ego was still high and I thought I was the best at everything. You know, I saw Mike Wise do a case and I was like, Yeah, I can do that.

I can copy that, you know, because you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t understand what your skill levels are. You just you can do these things having done a course. And that is one of the things that started me down this route of learning so many different things, mate, because I had this practice which was failing and I was propping it up with my money, my parents money, credit cards, all sorts of stuff like that. And in my mind, the more that I studied, the more things I could bring into the practice that the more strings in the bow that I could have, that it’s just going to bring in more revenue stream for the practice. And by this time you were already engaged with me, you know, and if you’re a member, I was one of the one of the first in the UK to be doing six month smiles. And in fact, what was it? It was it was Carl, wasn’t it? Carl Barrow who said, yeah, he was on the he was the first to do the six month smiles course. No, he was the first to put it on his website because I was on that course with him.

Yeah, I remember that. I remember that course because, um, I invited Ryan Swain from the States. Yeah. To deliver the first course here in the UK. Right, but. But put all that to one side. Forget about six months miles. Prav. When I first saw your practice course. It was almost like you were trying to. Create an environment that didn’t exist in dentistry. And so I remember the couches. I remember the lounge. Yes. Yeah. And I just remember looking at this and thinking, Fucking hell, this guy. Yeah, he’s thinking differently, right? And I think it was back then where, you know, things like offering teas and coffees and a drinks menu to patients and stuff like that wasn’t the norm. Right. And, and you were bringing that to the table in Doncaster? Yeah. And I was just blown away with, with what your vision was at the time. Yeah. Like you say, you were one of the first guys to be doing, you know, a particular, you know, fixed brace treatment. And to ask you a very blunt question now.

Go for it.

What went wrong?

I think it was a multiple of different things. I think firstly I was over leveraged. Secondly, I had no clue about business. And thirdly, I was I was trying to do the right thing. In the wrong town at the wrong time. Because, you know, we talk about these drinks menu. I don’t know if you ever saw, but I had whisky and wine on the back as well for anybody who wanted that. You know, we had the we had these 50 inch TV playing. Yeah. It was it wasn’t playing these loop adverts. It was playing Fawlty Towers and you know, like TV. And I remember one one, one patient came in and said, oh he said as a joke, all I need is some ice cream and it’ll be like I was in a cinema. So when he came back the next week, you know, we had a little tub of Haagen-Dazs for him and he was like, blown away, you know? So I think I still think the concept was right because other people were kind of like starting to do it, like these spas, these boutique type things. But I think it was the wrong type. It was it was the wrong time. And I didn’t understand the population of the time who couldn’t necessarily afford that type of stuff. Back then, Prav was charging £800 for a crown, you know, in the middle of Doncaster.

In the middle of Doncaster?

Yeah. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not having got Doncaster. It was, it was some of the greatest times of my professional career. There was, you know, it was a lot of fun, but I didn’t respect the disposable cash that people had in that area. And effectively what ended up happening is I was just treading water for for eight years. And after eight years, it got to the point where I had to go into an I.V. because I had all these bad debts chasing me. And then it was about a year after that that things completely folded. And we ended up folding them deliberately because I ended up with a patient. I can’t remember how she found out about my I.V., but I think we were just talking. And, you know, one of these patients I was, you know, comfortable with and stuff like that told her I was in an I.V. And she goes, Why? And she goes, You got this. She goes, How are you not making money hand over fist? And I said to her, Look, I said, I’ve got a handful of patients. You know, they’re very, very happy for me to do treatment. I said, But you know, my overheads are very high. And on top of that I haven’t got enough patients. So she was like, Let me look at your books. And she looked at everything and a week later she came back in to see me and she goes, You’re not going to like what I’ve got to say. But she said, I have to tell you, she goes, You’re you are trading Insolvently.

And whether you want to admit it or not, this place is going to go. And she said to me, Why have you not bankrupted yourself? I said, Because the practice is secured on our home. So if you lose the practice, we’ll lose the house as well. And because we were in the middle of a recession back then, as we were, we were in so much negative equity. I was just trying to tread water. And, you know, the practice had been on on for sale for 2 or 3 years, but it just wasn’t because I wanted too much more than what it was worth to try and break it. And she turned around and she said to me, she said, look, she goes, What’s going to happen? She said, You can either bankrupt yourself. And have some sliver of control or the banks going to do it for you. She goes, I promise you they’re going to do it within the next six months. Then she goes, They’re all really kind of like sniffing around the edges. They know that something was wrong because they had me on like this special support where they were charging me like £500 a month for. And I was just like, Hang on, are you charging me £500 a month? You know that my business isn’t doing particularly well. And she was like, They know they’re just trying to get as much money from you as what they possibly can.

And under her advice, because I was I was I was separated at this time under her advice, I decided to pull the plug. And it was it was really difficult. So I paid somebody to come in and speak to them, to speak to my staff because it was too traumatic for me to do it. And effectively, they, you know, they we closed the practice. Now, what I had is I had a guy who was a couple of miles down the road. It was a big thing for me is that I didn’t want my patients to be out of pocket or anything. And I had a lot of patients who had paid up front for their treatment. So I negotiated with him that for £1 he took over my list. And for him it was a bargain because he just got all of my list. And I said, The only thing that you have to promise is those patients who are in credit remain in credit. And and he was like, Yeah, cool. Not a problem. So that’s that’s that’s effectively what what happened. And I’d been chased for a long long time by so many different creditors by you got to the point where you know, when you get letters coming in and you get phone calls on a daily basis and you just ignore it and you have to ignore it for your mental health. And it did play on me psychologically very, very, very significantly. And then what ended up happening was even when I went to I remember because I bankrupted myself, I borrowed money from my dad to do it because it’s like £700 to do a bankruptcy.

And I went down and booked a date with my local court and they say, right, you’ve got to you’ve got to fill out all of these. You’ve got to fill out all of these papers. And it’s basically, what’s your situation? How much do you owe? How much do you earn? And filled out the papers. And I went to the court and the bailiff came, took my papers to the judge, and they said the judge may or may not need to see you. Let’s take a look. So he comes back out and he said the judge is happy with this. He’s about to rubber stamp it. But he’s just got one question for you. This £700 for the bankruptcy, where’s that come from? I said to him, My dad’s loaned it to me. My dad’s given it to me. And he was like, okay. So I went back to the judge, Judge rubber stamped it. And then what happened is. I didn’t. Then once that bankruptcy happened, what was really nice is I got a bankruptcy number and all of these 20, 30 phone calls a day, all of these, you know, 20, 30 letters a day, you know, we’re going to take you we’re going to send bailiffs. We’re going to do this that, you know, we’re going to repossess this. We’re going to repossess that. They just went silent. And it’s it’s really weird Prav that when you’re under that much pressure to have that silence.

After years of pressure was. It was. It was almost unnerving because what had happened is whenever these creditors would call or I got a letter, I’d just call them back and turn around and say and they’d turn around and say, Are you ready to pay? Can we take your card number? And he just said and I said, Him, I’ve gone bankrupt. Here’s the bankruptcy number. They’re legally they’re not allowed to chase you after that. Yeah. And then what happened was I had a review with the court every three months. What’s your financial situation? Just because you’ve got bankruptcy, if you earn a lot of money, they can make you pay it back. I still wasn’t earning a lot just because of my situation. So I was cleared from the bankruptcy after a year. And during this time as well, that’s kind of when my separation and divorce happened as well. So mentally, I wasn’t I wasn’t in a fit state. And all of a sudden I’d had this pressure for eight years and the pressure valves had just been released entirely. And so because I was back with mom and dad, I wasn’t under any pressure to earn because I didn’t have any loans, no credit cards, nothing. It all just fell silent. So for my own peace of mind, my own mental well-being, I had to take some time out and take my foot off the gas because I needed that silence and just.

Just take us back to that dark place. You know, I’ve known you all of these years, both personally and professionally, as a client and a friend. And I remember speaking to you around that time, and you’re in a fucking hole, mate. Yeah. You know, you were either going through a separation or a divorce at the time, certain details of which you shared with me. Yeah. And if I’ve ever known anyone to hit rock bottom, mentally, I would say it was then for you. I don’t know how comfortable you feel sort of sharing what happened around that time and how you felt. Um, but. But certainly just, just just share what you feel comfortable sharing and just talk me through how the hell you crawled back out of it.

Yeah. So I, I am comfortable with this again because I’ve made peace with my past. And the reason why I speak openly about this and I don’t try to hide anything just in case there’s anybody listening who’s kind of like in a similar situation. I want them to hear that, Holy shit, this guy’s been through some really, really dark, dark, dark stuff.

Really dark.

And you know what? He’s in a really happy place at the moment. So if he gives a little bit of hope to somebody that that that’s. That’s the only reason why I’m open and honest with this type of stuff. So within the space of about 18 months, I went through the separation, losing the practice and going bankrupt as well. And then and then and then getting my divorce finalised as well.

I’m moving back in with Mum and Dad.

I’m moving back in with Mum and Dad. If it wasn’t for my parents, I would have been homeless. And then God knows where would have been now. So, you know, because my parents had loaned me a lot of money to prop up the practice. Well, they lost a lot because. Because, because I said to the judge said, Can I pay my mum and dad back? They said, no. Said legally they’re creditors. He said, if I catch you paying them back, he said, you’re bankruptcy is null and void, then you’ve got to pay everybody back. And, you know, so Mum and Dad was like, I’m sorry. All that money that you loaned me is gone. It’s just gone. And. That led me to a point where I was suffering from. I want to. It wasn’t quite depression Prav. Okay? It was despair. Okay. And the difference between the two is really simple. With despair, you feel like there’s nothing left worth living for. Okay. It feels like you’re waking up every single day and it’s just like it’s never going to get better. Despairs. It’s just like this empty feeling. It’s like you’re. You stood on the edge of an abyss and you’re just looking down and it’s almost like there’s no need for tomorrow. And I couldn’t deal with trying to think about a day at a time because it had become overwhelming. So I just focussed on the next half an hour or next hour and next half an hour, next hour. One of the ways that I do that is because of this promise that I made to myself in my grandfather’s name that I’d learned to place implants. So I just immersed myself in implants so I’d get books, I’d get textbooks from the library, and I’d read a 1000 page textbook over a weekend. Next weekend, next textbook. Then I’d get papers, then I’d be researching on the Internet. It was just study, study, study. And that. That. That immersion helps the time pass. Effectively, what I was doing is I was hitting flow state studying so that the time would pass, that I wasn’t thinking about the rest of the stuff.

You were reading your two pages of Punjabi so you could get your computer?

Pretty much. Pretty much. And what ended up happening is there were the worst point was I was suicidal.

Yeah. Remember?

Yeah. And the doctor, because I went to him and said, I can’t cope, you know, I’ve got all this going on. It was like, Oh, take these pills. Oh, by the way, have you ever had thoughts of killing yourself? Yeah. He’s like, okay, cool. What we’ll do is we’ll call you every 48 hours to make sure you’re not killed yourself. I was like, I thought that would be a bit more to this, but literally that’s what it was, is call every 48 hours. And it was a sequence of questions. And, you know, there weren’t flippant about it, but it wasn’t as much support as what you’d think you’d need for somebody going through that effectively. And the worst point it got to is when. I was sat at my desk with multiple bottles of paracetamol open in front of me and two bottles of whisky, and I was like, This is it. And I looked down and I saw my dog Archie, who sat by me, his still now he’s an old boy now, but he’s still here with me. And. He hit me and I was just like. If I do this, Mum and Dad are going to give Archie away. Who’s going to look after him? That’s why I say that my dog saved my life. That’s why. That’s why she saved my life. Because I was. I was on the abyss. I was right at the edge. And. Um, I’ll look down and I was just like, I made this commitment to Archie that I would look after him throughout all of his life. And I had to see that commitment through and. That snapped me out of it. And by this time my divorce was being finalised.

And I was I was I was moving on quite quickly. And what I would say to. Anybody who’s in that dark position now, having these bad thoughts, it feels like there’s no sunshine tomorrow, but the sunshine will come. You just need to find the right support and hang on. That’s it. That’s all that you have to do. You know, Daylight for Daytime follows Night-Time. And you know what follows? Daytime Night-Time again. You know, that’s that’s just part of life. And as I said, the reason why I’m open and honest about this is in case there’s anybody listening, I just want them to understand, Don’t do it. There’s no need because. I’m now the happiest that I’ve ever been from that really dark place, that despair, that depression, that anxiety a few years ago. So the place where I’m now just loving life loving, you know, I’ve got. Well, my wife and my daughter, they are everything to me. You know, it’s I’m not the easiest of people to get on with. I can be quite abrasive because one of the things that happened is after my previous marriage is I just got to the point where it’s just like, I don’t have time for shit in my life. I’m just straight talking and to the point. And that’s with my wife as well. And she knows that. But she’s the type of person where she can turn around and say to me, You can’t speak to me like that. You know, And she’s just incredible from from the moment that we spoke to everything. She’s just you know, when people say when you meet the right person, you’ll just know that’s exactly was with her, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And funnily enough, when it when it happened to you, I knew. And it’s not because I was there, but I could see it on your face. I could hear it in your voice. Yeah. You completely changed, right? And I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you go to hell and back. And it’s just so lovely now to see how fulfilled you are, not only in your personal life, you know, but also I see you thriving in your career now. Yeah, it’s just taken a bloody long time to get there, right? Yeah, it really has. But I see you now sort of thriving at the top of your game, teaching others is passing on that knowledge, you know, And it’s great to see. Right. So look, you sort of were in that whole what, what? Just. Just talk me through then. Then Archie saves your life. Yeah. And then take us to today.

And then effectively what ended up happening is. After that point, that’s when I started to, like, get back into the dating scene. I was dating for about 18 months before I met Gus. Yeah. And, you know, I was. I was. I was happy. I was, like, quite comfortable being by myself again. And I was just like, you know what? If I don’t find anybody, that’s cool. If I find somebody, that’s cool as well, but I want it to be in a relationship. There were some girls that, as always, it just it was just wrong. There were others that it fizzled out with and others where we just couldn’t get it to work. And even all those times, it’s just kind of like, you think he’s just hot for you. You know, it’s, you know, am I going to find the right person? Am I going to find the right person? And then so what happened is because I was on these on these dating apps. Shaadi.com. Right. That type of stuff. It was the same handful of girls that you were attracted to and all of them. My dad said to me one day he goes, he goes, he goes, I’m fed up with you. So what do you mean? He goes, You’re always on these stupid apps. He goes, You can’t. He said, You know, you date these girls for a few months or several months and then, you know, nothing happens.

He goes, he goes, I’m going to. He goes, there’s a temple where they’ve got like they do like a matrimonial type service because I’m going to put your name in there. And I was like, No, don’t do that because this is one of these ones. Prav You know, when you go to gurdwara, you open it up and it’s a list like, like my line in there would be, you know, male dentist, 510 divorced. It was like, how can you build it? So the, the deal that I brokered with with my mom and my dad is like, okay, cool. This is the route that we’re going to go down. I’m not speaking to these girls until you get me a photo of them. My mom was like, okay, that’s fine. Uh, deal. And so about a week later, my mom comes to me and she goes, Oh, she goes, I think I’ve found a nice girl for you. I was like, Where’s the photo? She goes, Here’s the photo. And I was like, Yeah, can you get me her number, please? I’m proud of it. So when I first spoke, it was a it was a Tuesday. It was a Tuesday. Yeah. And in fact, the five year anniversary of us first speaking was yesterday. Congrats, man. Thank you. So it was. It was a Tuesday and we just hit it off.

We spoke for an hour and a half, two hours, and we decided to meet that that Sunday. And groups like Let’s Go out for a coffee. And I was just like, I’m not coming all the way to London just to go out for a coffee. I was like, Let’s, let’s do a full day. She was like, okay, cool, let’s do that. And we started off with brunch at Ivy Brasserie. We went to Natural History Museum, walked around for a bit, and then and then we ended up having dinner at Dishoom. And then it was, it was like a perfect day. It was fantastic. It was a really hot summer and I was sweating like a pig underneath. It was so bad, but fortunately I was wearing black, so you couldn’t really see too much of it. And it got time where it was like, you know, time to go home. And but there was a problem with the trains. There was like train strikes and stuff and got so like, oh, you know, I’m going to go it’s going to take me a couple of hours to get home. I was like, Why don’t I drive you? And she was like, No, no, no, it’s okay. You know, typical polite thing to do. Plus, you know, I don’t know this guy. Is he a stalker or is he this that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I said to her, Listen, I said, it’s going to take two hours to get home or it’s or it’s half an hour, 40 minutes in the car. She can’t make this look. It was just like I could see her thinking, should I, shouldn’t I? You know? And she goes, Yeah, okay. Then I ended up driving her home and we got around the corner from her house and she went, Oh, my God. And I was like, What? And I was like. And she said, she said to me, That’s my dad in the car in front of us. And I said, Are you joking? She goes, No. And he clocked us. By this point, he was waving like this. And she was like, Oh, she was like, Do you want to meet him? And I was like, Do you want me to meet him? And what I didn’t know about her at the time, she’s useless at making a decision. We still joke about it now. She’s really bad at making decisions. And she was like, I don’t know. And we were literally two minutes around the corner from my house. I said, Listen. I said, If you want me to drop you off at the drop top of your road, that’s fine. If you want me to meet your dad, that’s fine as well. And she was just like, I don’t know.

I don’t know. She goes, Well, he’s seen you now. You may as well meet him. So dropped her off outside of her house and I met him and she asked me politely, which I later found out wasn’t a genuine invitation. It was just a polite conversation. She was like, Do you want to come in for a drink? And I just said, Yeah, cool. All right. And so I went in, opened the door and met her mum as well. So on the first date, I met both of her parents. Wow. And, you know, it was second date. We went to see Aladdin. You know, we just we just met up every single week and Prav. You know what? To be honest, on that first day, I was like, I remember driving home thinking to myself, in fact, I said this to my mum on the drive home. Mum calls me up. She goes, How did it go? I said, There’s something special about this one. The radius. And I knew. I knew by day 2 or 3. Know, by day two, I knew. I knew that I wanted to marry her. By day three, I was like, I know that I want to marry this girl. I just. I just knew. Wow. But because she doesn’t make up decisions quickly, she needed a bit more time.

Kept you waiting?

Yeah. And then she’d never been to Italy. She always wanted to go to Italy, and she was just like, Oh, well, you know, I want to be proposed to in Italy. And I thought at first it was just kind of banter because I was like, You know what? Indian parents can let their daughter go to Italy and kind of like started, you know, hinting at, at at, at, at at an engagement and stuff like that. And she was like, ha ha. Have you booked tickets to Italy then? I was like, You really want to be proposed to in Italy? And she goes, Yeah, of course I do. And so I asked her parents. I turned around and said to her that I said to her parents, Um, you know, is it okay if I take her and propose to her in Florence? And they gave me a blessings and that’s effectively what we did. So on the day we were going to the airport, I got her parents to meet me at the airport and bring brought all of her stuff and my stuff as well. And I told her that we were going to the airport to pick up Prem. You know, everybody knows Prem, right? Prem So he said he’s a good mate of mine.

He’s flying down from and he wants to take us out to dinner. He wants to meet you. And we got to. And I could see her eyeing me up like this, like she knew something was something was up. But also it was just like, well, we haven’t got any clothes or anything. And then when she saw her parents at at Gatwick waiting for us, that’s when, like, the penny clicked and yeah. Flew to Florence and proposed there. And it’s just the whole, the whole time it’s just been a dream. And then we both wanted kids and now we have Sahani who is she’s coming up to three years old, mate. And she is. She’s incredible. You know what I do in terms of business? What I do in terms of work is in their service. I don’t need much. You know, I don’t back in the day, I needed to have a big sound system. I needed a TV, I needed this, that and the other. Whereas now I don’t need much. I just need I just need them. That’s it, you know? And so as long as they’re happy, as long as they’re provided for, I don’t need much above and beyond that. And then.

So happy for you, buddy. So, so happy for you. And having seen that over the last, you know, decade and a half, it’s it’s just so lovely to see. Right. And then from there onwards, you’re today. I know, I know. We’re running short on time and path, but I just want you to talk about your teaching, right? Because, um, I guess I’ve popped into your life at various moments, right in and out of when you had the practice and and then at other stages. And then. And then more recently, you know, we’ve. We’ve been talking about your academy, right? And, you know, when people come to me and say. I’ve got the best course on the planet. Yeah. Yeah. This course is unbelievable. Prav and delegates love it. And I just need you to help me market the shit out of it. Yeah. Yeah, that happens on a regular basis. But let me tell you, there’s a couple of occasions. Yeah, there’s a few occasions where that’s been true. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and I will say the very, very first time that happened that this person didn’t come up to me and say, I’ve got the best course on the planet, you need to help me market the shit out of it.

It was when I met Tiff Qureshi and we got into business together, shall we say. Yeah. And and I actually saw Tiff speak in front of a lot of people. And when I saw the impact of the jaws dropping and all the rest of it, I thought, fucking this guy is changing the game for a lot of people, right? So I saw that. Then along comes Jaz Gulati. Yeah, with his occlusion course, and he says it’s the best occlusion course on the planet. Yeah. And I’m like, Yeah, yeah, pull the other one. So then I. Then I, then I pull my ace out of the sleeve and I say, Hey, Tiff, check this guy out. And Tiff comes to me and goes, Guy’s the real deal, right? And then you come along and tell me you’ve got the most comprehensive implant course there is. Yeah, Yeah. And I think, Fucking hell, here we go again. Right?

I remember this conversation.

Yeah. Um, but then I see the curriculum and you just send me, like, loads of bullet points, right? Of the curriculum and thinking, All right, so he covers all of these things over thing, and you’re like. And then we get to the point and you tell me every bullet point I’ve sent you. Prav is a whole module.

Yes.

And that’s when I realised the enormity of this curriculum that you’ve put together, right? Yeah. Then I’ve heard. From your delegates and what they’ve had to say about it. The way you teach, the way you explain, the way you bring stuff across. And then more recently, I’ve seen you on social media doing videos and that is just so not you, Prav. Yeah, because you’re. That you’re a natural introvert. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re coming out your comfort zone doing all of that. So I’d just like to learn a little bit more about what are you trying to do with this academy? What’s your goal? Where are you now in your career in terms of delivering clinical dentistry versus delivering teaching? Which ones you like more? I mean, the last conversation we had, you were going to take a bunch of people to Brazil and was it Brazil.

Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.

That’s what we’re.

Doing. Oh, we’re going October.

Are you taking people to place implants in Cuba in October? Right. And yeah, and that was I think you sent me a WhatsApp message and said, Hey, Prav, what do you think about me taking people to Cuba and us placing like 15, 20 implants over the thing? I was like, Yeah, cool idea. And then the next thing you say, I need a page on my website. We’re doing this. Yeah, yeah. So I can see everything coming together. Prav But, but just tell me what’s what’s going on career wise for you now? Are you. How’s your time split? Delivering dentistry to patients. Teaching dentists on. Where’s this all going?

So I do two days a week in clinical practice placing implants and the other three days a week I dedicate towards the Academy and mentoring. And the reason why I do that is I see a lot of people, whether they’ve done other courses and they’re like, we can’t get a mentor in because their mentor is in surgery five days a week. So to get a clinical day with them booked out where they can come to the practice, it’s like six, seven, eight months ahead. And for me, I’m just magnifying that promise that I made to myself and my grandfather’s name. Hang on. It’s one thing if I place the implants, if I teach ten other dentists how to place implants, all of a sudden I’ve magnified it by a factor of ten. I’m impacting more patients, albeit indirectly, but I’m impacting more patients. Yeah. The other thing, the other reason why I wanted to start the Academy was because I’d had my fingers burnt several times and I see other people where they have this issue where they don’t have enough information. So even if you start as a very even if you start as a beginner, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? So even if you’re not capable of doing that complex level stuff, you should be able to identify the patients which are complex. Otherwise what you’re going to have, what’s going to happen is you’re going to end up thinking it’s a straightforward case. Execute straightforward treatment in what is actually a complicated case, and then when it goes wrong, that’s when the solicitors get involved or that’s when complaints happen.

And for those who start to run with implants, you find that you hit a clinical ceiling very, very quickly because it’s just like, okay, well, I’m doing the basics, but now I’m limited by the sinus, Now I’m limited by this, now I’m limited by that. So the whole theory aspect, everything that I wanted to do with the Academy was take all of my knowledge and put it and put it all into one course. It’s modular. So there’s three modules the Sensor essentials, advanced and mastery, and we cover everything from what is an implant all the way up to this is how you do full arch, this is how you do sinuses, this is how you do immediates, this is how you do query plating, this is how you do everything. So I wanted it to be as comprehensive as what I could make it. And then on top of that, because of that, studying that got me out of these really bad places. I’ve got a lot of knowledge to give, and I like teaching other people, particularly people when they’ve done a diploma or a master’s degree already, or they’ve been placing implants for 20 years and they want a challenge and then they enrol into the academy and within about 3 or 4 lessons they’re just like, Why is it that we’ve learned more from you in 3 or 4 lessons than what we had done on the entirety of this course or that course? I was like, Because I’m not holding back. I’m dumping all of my knowledge out there. So from my perspective, all I’m all I’m doing is all of these courses that I’ve learned from, and I’ve put about 250 K of my own money into learning how to place implants.

I’m just distilling it and saying, Hey, this is the way that I do it. There’s loads of phenomenal people out there that I’ve learned from. There’s loads of phenomenal people that you can learn from, but effectively this is all of my knowledge distilled, and the reason why I put it online Prav is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, you can revisit it time and time again because if you do a live course, once it’s done, you’ve just got your notes, that’s it. Whereas if it’s online, cool, go back to it time again. And the other thing as well is to gain my knowledge, you don’t have to be taught by me. You don’t have to go on any course. You just need to know which textbooks to read and which papers to read. That’s going to take you a long time. And if you want to learn the theory of it, well, you can do that in person or you can do it online. And you know, when you do it online, you can sit there in your PJs at home and think. It changed everything. You know, every everybody now is used to learning online, doing it comfortably at home. When I did it, I had to take three days out from surgery because I had to travel to London the day before, do the course, and then get back as well, you know, Whereas now it’s just kind of like, yeah, do it online.

But you are mixing it up with hands on experience, right? Like the days in Cuba, the bone grafting days and things like that. Right? So there’s components of online mixed in with, with, with hands on.

Yeah. So, so there’s two aspects of it. There’s the theory aspect of it and there’s the hands on. So the hands on everybody’s different because I’ve got some delegates who are implant surgeons, so they’re like, We just need the theory, we’ll implement it ourselves. Other dentists, they’ve got mentors already and other delegates are just like, I haven’t got a mentor, can you come to my practice? So that’s the reason why I’ve not lumped the the practical all in all in with the theory because everybody’s in a different stage in their career. Everybody needs a different level of support. So I’ve kept that aspect as flexible as what I possibly can. But yes, it’s two sides to the same coin. There’s a theory, there’s the hands on, you know, if all you do is hands on, you don’t understand the theory. You’re not going to get great results if all you do is theory and you don’t do the hands on, well, you’re not going to be placing implants. You need to do both.

Sir Path. How do people find out about your offering, your mentoring? Let’s say somebody wants you in their practice to do a complex full zygomatic case, whatever that may be, or somebody just wants some advice, mentoring one on one or wants to jump on your course. How do they find out about it? Path.

So very simply, you can go to the Academy of Implant excellence.com, get in contact with me there. I’m on Instagram a lot as well, because as you said, I’m doing a lot of social work and a lot of that is just, you know, taste as to the course, you know, what type of stuff am I putting out there? Send me a message. I’m quite responsive because, you know, that’s what I do now. And, you know, even if you want hands on mentoring, even if you’re not a delegate of the academy, I can still help you because that still falls in line with the promise that I made to myself to help as many patients as what I possibly can. So, you know, I just I just love seeing dentists where light bulbs go on. You know, I’ve got one guy at the moment where I’ve done several days worth of mentoring and he’s been placing implants for 20 years. And all of a sudden he’s just like, Prav, I’m really busy with implants. I don’t know what’s happening. I said, That’s because your skill levels increased and you’re diagnosing things differently and he’s loving it and he’s just like, I can spend more time with my family now because the amount that I’m generating from implants, I don’t have to do as much general dentistry. And you know, hearing that you can have impacts like that for people’s lives is it’s priceless.

Amazing. And you know, you know, one thing I know very little about clinical dentistry, but one thing I do know, right, is if all you know how to do is place a bridge, all you’ll see is bridges. Yeah. And if you know how to identify and diagnose, then you place implants, right? And then, you know, funnily enough, in our clinic, the clinicians got better at identifying those patients who were zygomatic cases. Right? So we do a lot more zygomatic cases now, but prior to knowing how to identify them rather than saying, Hey, I’m sorry, you’re beyond help. Yeah, we didn’t do any right. And then you get the surgeons in who can do the zygomatic piece and you can help more people. Right? And, you know, I think one of the strongest messages that you’ve got across today, Ross Hobson, says it a lot. You don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s so true. It’s so, so true. Prav Um, I’ve got a couple of final questions for you before I can let you go. And the first one is, um. Look, let’s imagine it’s your last day on the planet, and you’ve got Suhani by your side, and you’ve got to impart her with three pieces of wisdom or life advice. What would you say to her?

Always find. Enjoyment in whatever it is that you’re doing. Be present in the moment. The next thing that I would say is. It doesn’t matter. How hard life gets. There’s bright days ahead. You just have to weather the storm. And the final thing that I would say to her is. Follow your passion with passion. Now, whatever it is that you’re passionate about, doesn’t matter what people say. It’s, you know, imagine if. Imagine if Michael Jordan had, you know, imagine if his dad turned around and said to him or his mom, turn around. I said to him, stop playing basketball, You know, go do your homework. You’re out in the you’re out playing basketball too much. Go do your homework instead, you know? Or what if you know what if you know, Christopher Nolan was told by his parents, you know, you’re never going to be a Hollywood director. It’s not going to happen. Or Hans Zimmer was told, Why are you into music? You’re never going to earn any any money playing music. You know, it’s just following the passion, staying curious and and and trying to be world class. You’re not competing with anybody else other than yourself.

Beautiful.

You’re going to be a little bit better than what you were yesterday. That’s it. That’s what the game is.

Fantasy dinner party. Three people, dead or alive, who would they be?

Oh.

Oh, nah.

I wasn’t expecting that. That’s a good one. Uh.

Bruce Lee.

Nice one.

Number two. Marcus Aurelius. Assuming that I could either speak Latin or understand English, whichever way you want to do it. Um, and the last one. Last one in my grandfather Moon. That’s what will be my grandfather. For sure. Just so I could see him that last time and say to him. You know what? I’m doing the best that I can.

I knew you’d say that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thanks.

Thank you, mate.

Thanks for being so open.

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’ve had to say and what our guest has had to say. Because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

If you did get some value out of it, Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

And don’t forget our six star rating.