Month: October 2019

Transcript

Payman: Hey, guys, welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast. Today’s guest is Mahmood Mawjee, who has given up dentistry to become a motivational speaker coach.

Prav Solanki: Yeah. Coach, speaker, motivator and-

Payman: And super interesting to hear his story on how and why he did that goes deep into his relationship with his parents and known him for a long time. I’m really happy to see his progress, and I can see he’s going from strength to strength in that coaching business of his that he’s in. But you could tell that he’s really passionate about it, is much more to him than business. It’s even when I was talking to him right after the thing he was coaching me. He just can’t help it. It’s like he’s bursting with that information.

Prav Solanki: I think the best way to describe it certainly my own words is aggressively passionate.

Payman: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Yeah? The story of why he flipped and does what he does now but just follow him on social media, see the content, see the passion that he speaks and why in the purpose with it all. What an inspirational guy I mean there’s lots of lessons from here about life, family enjoy.

Prav Solanki: Enjoy it. Did you have that feeling of leaving dentistry or wasted your family say, “Hey why did you go and study all these years, and it’s a waste?” That thing.

Mahmood Mawjee: 100% right.

Prav Solanki: People must say.

Mahmood Mawjee: Asian community?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mahmood Mawjee: You either doctor, a dentist, accountant, or failure. That’s it.

Payman: Taxi driver. Shopkeeper.

Mahmood Mawjee: That’s actually what it is.

Speaker 3: This is Dental Leaders, podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Payman: So we’ve got Mahmood Mawjee with us today. And it’s an interesting story, having spoken to him a little bit, and I’ve got some history with you Mahmood. Give us a summary. Just to start with, just give us a summary of the quick 30 second roundup of where you came from, what you did.

Mahmood Mawjee: I was born in London. Nothing amazing after that. But I mean, the bit, which I guess you interested in, where am I right now? And where did I come from?

Payman: Yeah, what kind of a kid were you?

Mahmood Mawjee: Had a lot of fun. A lot of friends understood that, I had everything kind of I wanted to. Didn’t kind of miss out on anything. I looked at the people around me, and I saw a lot of people who didn’t have things. And a lot of people who did have more than I had. And it kind of grounded me. Well, I guess I didn’t have too much, I didn’t have too low. So yeah.

Prav Solanki: Any siblings?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes. Two sisters.

Payman: You the older, younger?

Mahmood Mawjee: Middle.

Payman: You middle?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah. It was fun. It was crazy being the middle one, because obviously the little one doesn’t get in trouble. The older one doesn’t get in trouble. So kind of you get everything, which is cool. But yeah, no regrets was fun, got great relationship with them right now.

Payman: What did they say about middle kid syndrome? It’s like attention seeker? Is that what they say? I don’t know.

Mahmood Mawjee: I think some middle kids kind of miss out on things. Because they’re in the middle, at the top and the bottom get it.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, sure.

Mahmood Mawjee: I didn’t feel that, had a lot of fun. A lot of friends understood that, had everything kind of I wanted to. Didn’t kind of miss out on anything. I looked at the people around me, and I saw a lot of people didn’t have things. And a lot of people who did have more than I had. And it kind of grounded me. Well, I guess I didn’t have too much, I didn’t have too little. So I guess what you make of it.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Payman: What kind of school did you go to?

Mahmood Mawjee: Went to public school, just normal school. GCSE, A levels, during A levels that’s kind of when I met my wife. And so yeah didn’t do too well in my A levels then and then kind of added one year top up and then kind of got what I wanted to.

Prav Solanki: Did you fail your A levels or?

Mahmood Mawjee: No, I just didn’t get what I needed to … I didn’t even want to do dentistry initially. So I wanted to kind of I was thinking of doing business. And then when I kind of realised what I really want to do is either medicine or dentistry. Why? Because from early on in my life, I knew that my gift was built to help people. But when you’re so young, you don’t know how that’s going to play out. So for me, it was helping people in that way.

Prav Solanki: So an example of like, when you were younger, you said your gift was to help people. Example from your younger life, where you sort of realised that, hey, I’m good at this.

Mahmood Mawjee: I guess back then you kind of don’t realise is happening. But when friends come to you for some problems, and kind of they can’t see what you can see. And where you can make a really difficult situation quite easy that if you do this, this and this is going to work out. So that’s kind of where it was.

Prav Solanki: So I find that, certainly for me a lot of my … Especially when I was in the university a lot of my friends would come to me when they really hit rock bottom. And I just be a sounding board or near to listen to. And did find the same with yourself that people felt they could just gravitate towards you when they have problems?

Mahmood Mawjee: Later on? Yes, early on one thing I had is I’ve got a really bad starter, it doesn’t come up because obviously there’s ways in which I have dealt with it. And that’s the journey, which I’ve why I’m kind of where I am now. But early on there was like that part of me where you’re quite embarrassed because of that. And there was a little bit of bullying and now, which comes with that. But looking back on it. That was kind of my growth, that was a journey. So yes, there was that. But there also was the other part that once I managed-

Prav Solanki: And then just growing up, what sort of parents did you have? Me growing up I was brought up by my dad, he was very strict. There were certain things we weren’t allowed to do. I thought he was the biggest asshole going.

Mahmood Mawjee: Okay.

Prav Solanki: Until I realised when I grew up that he was the most amazing father in the world. And had he not steered me in the direction I wouldn’t have ended up where I was. So just tell me a little bit about what your parents were like.

Payman: By the way also did they have an influence on you doing medicine dentistry or not?

Mahmood Mawjee: No, my dad actually told me, “Yeah why the hell are you doing dentistry? Don’t do it. Why didn’t you come into business?” And my thing was this actually what I want to do. And so I went and followed what I wanted to do.

Payman: Was he businessman himself?

Mahmood Mawjee: He was, yeah. He was very successful at what he did. He was extremely driven, habits down to the tee. He wanted how he wanted and actually went out and got it. At that young age, you don’t realise how it’s influencing you. But now I can see a lot of his traits are in me. And I looked up to my dad a lot when I was younger, because he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. And on his terms, he had a lot of respect as a speaker as well. And yeah, so yes, my dad is usually driven-

Payman: The speaker?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Payman: In where?

Mahmood Mawjee: On business and on religion.

Payman: Really?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Payman: I didn’t know that.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Payman: I guess that that’s a big influence. Because that’s kind of where you are.

Mahmood Mawjee: But I’m not there because of that. And so, two years ago, my father passed away, and my whole journey has come through his death. So that my whole story of why me right now, it’s all to do with kind of my father passing away. But I don’t think that I’m a speaker, because my father was a speaker. I’m a speaker, because I feel is right for me.

Mahmood Mawjee: But I feel when you’re younger, there’s so much you want to do that you don’t realise you can do it, you got those little voices in your head, know when you’re really young, because when you really young you see … We’re only born with two fears in life, falling down and loud noises, the only two fears was born with all other fears are put in us.

Mahmood Mawjee: But as you grow up, because of what people say to you, a lot of voices in your head, I’m not good enough. Why? These people better out there than you. So they were governing me a lot. That why should you be a speaker? Why should you do this? Why should you do that? And then later on, when you understand yourself and you can break that and then I think you fly.

Payman: Your dad passed away. What was it about that that made you change your course? Was it like you wanted to live out what is dreams for you? Or was it that life is too short and you want it? What was it about it?

Mahmood Mawjee: 2016 out of dental practise, which had gone for about seven years. And then it was actually on the tender, and I lost the tender. And I lost the practise had built up for seven years. And through that it was my father, who told me that don’t worry, things happen for a reason. And the dots will connect down the line. And I didn’t want to make of it at that time. But I kind of got into health and fitness to kind of allow … I got into running and that allowed me to cope with the loss of the business. About six months after my father passed away. And on the day my father passed away, he told me he was going to go that day.

Mahmood Mawjee: He knew he was going, but he had no regrets. He lived life on his terms. When my father passed away, that was the day when I said that I’m not going to let anything hold me back. And I’m going to guard and do what I want to. Not live life in anyone else’s terms. I started looking into the regrets other people have in their life. And the biggest regret in the world is that I wish I lead a life on my terms and life true to me. Life not governed by the people, and I realised on that day that I was totally governed by the people, what they thought about me, what they said.

Mahmood Mawjee: I didn’t like the sound of my voice, the way I look, I didn’t like my style. And on that day I said it’s going to change. In the first talk, I gave was in my dad’s funeral. And that was the day was changed all for me. And then looking back, my dad was right. Because the dots did connect. But if I didn’t lose my business, the coping mechanism to cope father’s death came through losing my business sort of never have got that.

Mahmood Mawjee: But if my father didn’t die, I wouldn’t be here right now having this interview doing what I’m doing. So life’s a gift and life’s a journey. And sometimes when you’re in it, you can’t see it. And for me, that was the biggest thing for me. Pain and suffering isn’t because of the event. It’s because of what we make of it. And like-

Prav Solanki: True believer in that.

Mahmood Mawjee: When my father passed away for about a year or so it was about his anger why he passed away so young, and there’s so much I need to do, and there’s so much unfinished business. And then when I shifted and realised that his death was a greatest gift he could give me because that allowed me to flourish. Had a great life with him. But maybe he realised that some … So I realised there’s a lot more to it than just that. And when that changed, when my focus changed and everything changed, because you’re not focused on what he gave me rather than what he took away. And that was the beginning of my journey.

Prav Solanki: So I remember I was at school at the time. And I was brought up primarily by my granddad, was my dad was driving taxis when I was younger. And I remember vividly the day my granddad passed away. And I could recall every single step of that day, what happened, how we arrived at the hospital. It was an hour too late, we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, etc, etc. And it was really painful. I was young, it was hard to cope. Can you take us back to the day that your father passed away? And just explain to me what your … Because that to me is your point in life where you pivoted.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah, that was-

Prav Solanki: Just like to understand a bit more of the breakdown of that day. What happened on that day? The emotions, the conversation-

Payman: And the time leading up to it, was it sudden or was he ill?

Mahmood Mawjee: So as I mentioned, my father was a speaker. And so this is on May the 10th, my father was taken to hospital on May the 10th 2016. Three months before that my father started getting a really bad cough. No one knew what it was. And so we were with my dad at the consultant. The consultant said, “Look, there’s nothing we can do. We don’t know what it is. But it should be okay, come back in July.” So on the 10th of May 2016. I clearly remember because it was a Tuesday, my mom called me. My mom doesn’t normally call me on a Tuesday because she knows I’m at the clinic. My mom called me said my dad’s been taken to hospital.

Mahmood Mawjee: So I knew it couldn’t be that bad because I was just with my father a few weeks ago at the consultants. So I rushed to hospital, and my father is lying there on a stretcher with oxygen mask on. But he looked ok, so I wasn’t too worried. As the evening progressed, it was just me and my dad in the room, everyone else … My wife and my mom, my sister had gone home to actually get my dad’s clothes because he was going to stay the night. And the consultant comes up to me and I remember vividly, big guy, long hair.

Mahmood Mawjee: He looked like 194 years old, this guy. And he comes up to me, and he goes to me, “Mahmood what’s the pathway?” I’m like, “What you mean?” And he said, “You know, what’s the pathway? What are your thoughts?” And as I was saying that he interrupted me, and he pointed, and he goes, “Come outside with me.” And I took the journey to walk outside with him. And that journey from kind of where we were now to that door. That’s kind of how long the journey was, like just a few steps. We seemed like forever. And I got outside, I remember the consultant told me clearly.

Mahmood Mawjee: He said, “Mahmood your father is very sick man, things have changed. And you know that kind of there comes a point in your life when you go to have your near ones around you, those last conversations, go to have them.” And for me, it was like I kind of came out of my body. Have you ever felt that you’re kind of looking at yourself, and that’s how it felt. And I was like, “Wow!” I couldn’t believe this. So I got my mom, and I got my sister and got my wife, and I sat down and said to them, “We could be losing the rock of our lives.” Because my father was kind of the rock of our whole family. And that night when I went home I started running as my coping mechanism. So that night, I just ran and ran I didn’t know what to do.

Mahmood Mawjee: And the next five days after that, the running allowed me to focus on my dad rather than on me. And on the 15th of May 2016. I woke up in the morning and something didn’t feel right. Just knew something wasn’t right. Went for a run and I rushed to the hospital. And the nurse said to me, “Mahmood, happy you’ve come, I know it’s not visiting hours yet, but come in, because your father hasn’t had a great night.” So I went to see my father, and he had c-pack mask on him, it blows really crazy air on you so he can’t speak. It’s like sticking your head out of a car window. Get on the motorway. So my dad said to me, “Bring me a piece of paper and a pen.” So I’ve got him a paper and a pen. And I’ve got this page at home right now.

Mahmood Mawjee: And he writes on there that Mahmood is my time to go. He goes, “It’s my time to meet my Lord.” And I said, “No way.” I said, “There’s so much that we got to talk about, so much I got to tell you about me.” And he goes, “No, time’s over, there was time for that not anymore.” And my dad said to me that I give you to 4:00 then I’m out of here. 4:00 I’m out of here. Because he was in ICU, he had loads of pipes coming out of him. And so he didn’t want anyone see him. From that day he said, “Bring anyone you want, I’m out here at 4:00.”

Mahmood Mawjee: And he died that day at 6:00. And when he passed away, all of our family members are there holding his hand while he passed on this world to the next. But on the day he died, I realised is that my dad lived a life of no regrets. A life true to him. And I said, that’s what I want. Because up till then life was all about me. Without what I could get out of life. It was all, and I realised on that day that I could have anything in my life if I help enough people get what they wanted.

Prav Solanki: So when he was writing note on the piece of paper what was going through your mind?

Mahmood Mawjee: I just didn’t know what he was writing. I had no idea what it was going to be. And then when I looked at it, it was in the moment. And the emotions kind of come later.

Payman: Did you believe him? I mean, how would you know?

Mahmood Mawjee: I knew that wasn’t long. And everyday we knew from before, those five days, and we just happened that it was a downhill, but we still had hope. They still said if things turn around. But then the night before things started going really bad, his kidney started failing, things like that. So we knew that we’re on borrowed time. So it may have be Monday, may have been Tuesday, but he knew that day that it was going to be, and he said 4:00. And it was two hours later he passed away. And as I said for me, like normally is really emotional about that but talking right now I’m not because I realised the biggest gift that was to me.

Mahmood Mawjee: That through that, I realised that I’ve got to that … I remember coming home once from the graveyard, it was a work day morning, and I was just really upset. And I spoke to someone on that day they said, “Make a goal, which is bigger than your Dad, give yourself something.” And so that’s why I said that said, that’s it. So I decided I’m going to create this machine which is me. Which is going to be so big that is going to do anything in this world, I know that I’m going to go out there and impact people, thousands and hundreds of thousand people. I’ve got a goal before I die to be a billionaire.

Mahmood Mawjee: But it’s not to have a billion pounds it’s change a billion lives. And like being here right now, you’ve kind of give me two extra people to add on that. Thanks very much. So that’s actually my goal. That before I die, I want to impact a billion people. And that’s the day when I said I’m going to grow this mission called Mahmood, I’m not going to care about what people say about me, I’m not going to care about I think about myself. I’m just going to go out there. And I don’t really care. Because I never want to turn around on that day and go I wish, I wish, I wish. And that’s what most people are riddled with.

Payman: And now you’ve given up dentistry. How long was it after your dad passing, that you-

Mahmood Mawjee: Exactly two years.

Payman: Well that you decided you were going to stop? Was it two years? Or was it there and then and it took two years to watch.

Mahmood Mawjee: About five years ago, I wasn’t enjoying it much anymore. I’m very gifted as a dentist, I was very good at what I did. I made people look very good on the outside. But you know when people are lying on your chair they’re very vulnerable. They talk to you so much, tell you so much. You can see through their eyes, there’s so much more in a person than how they look. The last five, seven years of dentistry even when I was in dentist school I was fascinated by psychology and human behaviour, why people do what they do? What make someone angry? What make someone happy? Why is it that everyone says that money doesn’t buy happiness or money does buy happiness is not true.

Mahmood Mawjee: Because I’m sure you know people who have a lot of money and happy who have a lot of money and who are not happy, vice versa. A lot of people who don’t have much money and happy not much money and very happy. Thing is happiness has no link to money. The only way happiness is a link to money is when you spend on other people. Then that creates happiness. And as I realised that I wanted to be able to impact people more. So for about five years before that I realised density wasn’t for me, I was very good at it. But I couldn’t imagine living the same year 60 times, I wanted to live a different year for the next 60 years. And I used to trade a lot, very successful at that.

Mahmood Mawjee: I used to have a social media marketing company called Zigzi that was very good. I tried lots and lots of things, had my hand in a lot of affiliate marketing, did a lot. Just trying to find that thing was really clicks with me. And then it kind of came through here that on the day my father passed away, I stood up and gave a talk and realised, wow, I can impact people.

Prav Solanki: What did you say on that day? Give me the essence of what your talk, and the message was to everyone at the funeral.

Mahmood Mawjee: Mine was about regret, that the biggest regret in life, is I just mentioned, that living life on other people’s terms. And it’s I wish, and most people, no one regrets the things they did, they always regret things they never did. And that said, whoever you go and speak. Most people at 70 that all the bitter, they’re not happy. They’re always complaining, why? Because there was a time in their life when they could have done something they really wanted to do. But they didn’t, Why? Because society didn’t allow it.

Mahmood Mawjee: Because it wasn’t the right thing. Because, why would you leave dentistry? I was being paid six figures on three days, it was my own clinic, yes. And I was doing very well. And I always thought that I could leave dentistry when I had the money. But I realised I got to leave dentistry to have the money. And when you so believe in what you’re good at. And you put everything into that, like Steve Jobs said that you got to love what you do to make a success, why? Because to be able to win in life, you got to be working like crazy. And if you don’t love it, you give up. So this is a simple reason.

Payman: You’re a young man who’s bursting with information, bursting with life lessons that you’re giving, and I’ve seen some of your content is why there’s so many different stories and lessons that you’ve got inside you. When did you realise that … I mean, I can understand someone who’s got so much to say, isn’t going to say it to 12 patients a day. And wants more impact than that. But when did you realise that? Was that after your dad’s passing? Was that been something that’s been in you for longer?

Mahmood Mawjee: It’s been there for long. So as I said, when I was younger, I realised that there was a lot of people who used to come to me for help. Then when I was in university, more than anything was really intrigued by is human behaviour and psychology, why people do what they do?

Mahmood Mawjee: And I mean working with thousands of patients as we do along the way, I realised that a lot of my time was spent talking to people, a lot of time was spent talking to people about money, about divorce, about business, about fears they have, and a lot of my work was actually helping people with their mindset, and motivating them to do the things they love.

Mahmood Mawjee: Nothing about dentistry, yeah, I fixed their teeth, and had a better smile. And they were happy on the outside. But a lot of my dental is fixing people from the inside. And also you know what, that’s fine, but only a very small part of my life is spent doing that part, and I want to spend more of it doing that part.

Payman: I mean, I left dentistry, probably I left medicine, so it’s interesting, and the thing I miss most about dentistry is that people, not the teeth once in a while I go to a lecture and someone I see something amazing on the screen, and I feel like I wouldn’t mind trying that on teeth. And generally that’s when I think that’s a great lecturer. But Prav left very early on. One year in was it bro?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mahmood Mawjee: Okay.

Payman: I left … Will listen to that story, I’m sure many times. I left I think five years in and people used to say to me the waste. You went to university, you had this education, what a waste. I think for me at one point for some reason. It’s switched from a waste to an opportunity in the thinking if we start this business, and it all goes pear shaped I can still feed my family as a dentist. I suddenly saw it as an opportunity. Did you have that feeling of leaving dentistry, ways did your family say hey, why did you go and study all these years, and it’s a waste that thing?

Mahmood Mawjee: 100%. Asian community, you either doctor, a dentist, accountant or failure. That’s it.

Prav Solanki: Taxi driver, shopkeeper.

Mahmood Mawjee: That’s actually what it is. And so yourself I’ve always admired what you’ve done, because you’ve created the business out of dentistry. So your journey, that if you didn’t go through dental school, you wouldn’t be here where you are right now. Okay, because your business is about dentistry. For me a lot of people, have met someone said, “10 years, five years, whatever is what a waste.” I said, “No, that was a journey for me.” And if it wasn’t through that journey, I wouldn’t have been here where I am right now, 100%.

Prav Solanki: It shaped you?

Mahmood Mawjee: 100% it shaped me. So no, I haven’t … Things happen at the right time. And I’m actually feeling goosebumps when I say this, because it’s so true things happen at the right time in your life, that this wasn’t meant to happen to me 10 years ago, I wasn’t the person I needed to be. But through the hard ache of dentistry, through actually … I’ll tell you the story. I hopefully, my practise principal ain’t going to hear this later. But anyway, there was a time few years ago when I … No, it was about one and a half years ago, where there was one day when I was going out. And I had a coaching client in the afternoon.

Mahmood Mawjee: And I had to go to the practise in the morning. And there were times when I really didn’t want to go in, and I used to feel sick and I just hated going in. And I’m not going to get to how horrible it felt. But can you imagine something you really didn’t want to do, and I was going in, and the times used to be really emotional actually going in, because I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. And I knew I was wasting my time. And all he was doing was putting money in the bank, which is important, but it’s not a life.

Mahmood Mawjee: And I remember one morning, I actually called up my practise manager and I told my practise manager, “You know what, I’m not well, I can’t come in, I’ll come in for half the day. But then we need to leave home at lunch time.” She said, “Okay, that’s cool.” So she cancels my clinic for the afternoon. And I went in the morning. And because I’d get everyone to believe I’m sick. I faked idle hands on most of all, really bad stomach. So my nurse really believes me. And I really believed I was sick. And when 12 o’clock came and left the practise, do you know happened, had a stomach ache, and I was sick. And I was in bed all day. And I realised that from that day that the mind is so flipping powerful that if I can fool myself into making myself sick, most people do.

Prav Solanki: I’ve done it a few times mate, trust me it’s possible.

Mahmood Mawjee: Imagine what else you could actually convince yourself you are successful, happy, healthy. And I said that’s it. There are these few click moments. That was a click moment when I said you know how powerful the mind is. And so no regrets about the journey of come on, it’s shaped me. Exactly, you’re in the right time where you need to be right now to be doing this thing you’ve got to do.

Payman: I mean, it’s a lovely story. Now tell me you can’t be without a bit of fear giving up this income, are you?

Mahmood Mawjee: I’m super fearful. Truthfully, I’m super, super fearful. I’m just telling you-

Payman: You stopped very recently.

Mahmood Mawjee: I stopped four weeks ago.

Payman: Four weeks?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah, four weeks ago.

Payman: Are you worried about the mortgage?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes, 100%. I sold my clinic, which gave me enough to keep me going for about a year. And every day is one day less that year’s there. But I know that, and it’s flipping fearful. I’ve got three kids, a wife extended family, a lot of commitments. And yeah, I am. But I also know how good I am what I do. And there’s a fine line between being so fearful letting it paralyse you or using fear as your power. So yes, I have a network of people around me on days, which are bad I’ve coached I’ve got a mindset coach, a business coach, speaking coach, I’ve surrounded myself with people who can push me up on that level.

Mahmood Mawjee: And when I’m having a bad day, I can get someone to call and they can get my mindset right, just as I do to others. If I’m a coach, I would have coached myself on good walk the walk. So yet, a lot of days are really, really tough. We have no idea. But each and every day, which goes on. There’s more people know about me. There’s more people to listen to me. There’s more place I’m speaking up on my network grows and my coaching clients grow and my business grows. Where will I be in a year? I know where I’m going to be in five years time. I know I’m going to get I just don’t have no idea how I’m going to get there.

Prav Solanki: So just talk to me. The people out there listening, I know there’s a burning question on their mind, which is, you left a practise three days a week, six figures. You’ve now left all that, the time’s ticking. You’ve got a year’s worth of income, that you can rely on to feed your family, right?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yep.

Prav Solanki: What is the income look like as a coach and a speaker? And what stage are you going to get to where you were in practise?

Mahmood Mawjee: If I use my barometer of dentistry, the income as my barometer for this, I think I’m going to be thrown off path very quickly. Because we all know, dentists earn pretty well. And so say for example, you’re making 10 grand a month, if I’m looking for this to bring in 10 grand a month before I kind of wish happiness or whatever up, it’s never going to happen. So I know that I can make 10, 20, 50 hundred times more than I was doing in dentistry doing this. I just have no idea how I’m going to get there.

Prav Solanki: Okay.

Payman: Yeah, I mean, everything looks a lot easier than it is. And we lost money for three, four years, of course. And it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy giving up dentistry and losing money at the same time. So look, looking at you. I feel like you seem very happy doing this. And you’re talking obviously to the right teachers. Where were you lecturing in America recently?

Mahmood Mawjee: So last week, I was in New York, there was a fundraiser. And then I did a fundraiser here recently about two months ago, where we raised about half a million pounds. And that night was most I’ve ever raised. And so they asked me to come to the keynote. And so I didn’t even know I was in New York, I got a phone call while I was in a family holiday in Dubai. And they go, “We’ve got a fundraiser, we want you to come and give a 20 minute talk.” I’m like, “Okay, cool. Where’s it?” It’ll be in London, New York. I’m like, “Okay, wow, brilliant.” But the fact is, I got paid more for 20 minutes, than I get paid three days in dentistry for that one talk. But on that night, we raised $1.2 million.

Mahmood Mawjee: And they got to do what they needed to do. And being up there with like, 23400 people, we having to speak and touch the hearts and making them cry and making them realise the value of giving was amazing. And so I know every day is not going to be like that. And everyone even you said you had years worth of maybe when things were going down. Everyone looks at you and everyone looks at me now everyone looks at you now. And everyone says, “You know, I wish I could be where you are.” But not many people can. Because like Usain Bolt got this great interview where he says, “You know what, the race is the easy part.

Mahmood Mawjee: It’s the work behind the scenes. And the work behind the scenes is what’s going to kill you every day.” Imagine waking up every day not knowing where the mortgage payment’s going to come from next month or next year, not knowing if you’re going to make it wherever you go people saying you’ve left such a great job, why? Not knowing where things are going to go. And the way I kind of look at it is life’s up and down. Up and down, up and down, up and down. It’s like if you walked into a hospital here, and they put ECG lead on you, what would your heartbeat look like? Your heart rates would go up and down.

Mahmood Mawjee: Most people want a flat life, it’s dead. Most people want a flat life, and they do live the dead life. A lot of people can go through this, why? Because no one understands what it is behind the scenes. Yes, so it looks really nice flying around the world coaching, living life on your terms giving up which most people want to give. But the truth is behind closed doors, it’s tough. But sometimes it’s better people don’t find out how tough it is, because then they won’t appreciate.

Payman: I heard Jeff Bezos said that as well.

Mahmood Mawjee: Is that what he said as well?

Payman: He said if I knew how hard Amazon was going to be I would have never have done it.

Prav Solanki: What’s the hardest part about flying around the world delivering your message? What do you give up?

Mahmood Mawjee: Family. I sat down with my three kids yesterday, my oldest is turning 16. Then my next one’s turning 15. And the next one is turning 10. I sat down with them yesterday, actually. And next week, I’m away kind of teaching for a week election for weekend and the week off from lecturing in LA, it’s like for me to be away from my kids for two weeks is for me just finding the toughest thing ever. And I sat down and said, “For the next two weeks, I’m not going to be around, but when I come back from I’m yours again, for the next two weeks, I’m just not going to be here much.” And that was tough. Because for me, family’s everything. And right now this journey, I’m seeing a lot less of my family. But I’ve gone to the quality over quantity, but I’d rather spend half an hour and really give them me no phones or anything. Just half an hour of me. Then three hours of me while I’m distracted.

Prav Solanki: Do you check in on FaceTime and stuff like that while you’re away?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah, so I make sure that I speak to family once a day, especially. I do a lot of relationship counselling as well. And so one of the things which I tell everyone, which I kind of live by as well, that one of the biggest things you need to do is make sure that the biggest part of your life that thing you’re going to feel in life is your one main relationship. If there’s anything wrong with that, I’ve been married 20 years now. Okay, so I want year 20 to be like year one. Okay, but if it’s not, then something’s missing. And a lot of people as they go on their own journey to find what they love, that really gets messed up. And that’s one thing, which I said I could never ever want to compromise that to get this.

Payman: When you most in the zone? Would you say on stage?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes.

Payman: Yeah?

Mahmood Mawjee: 100%. Yeah.

Payman: Have you ever bombed on stage?

Mahmood Mawjee: So last year, I got invited to business summit in Davos where the World Economic Forum was held at a net worth of about 15 billion in that room with a B. And that’s where I picked up my first billionaire coaching clients. I was great. But on that I got up on stage, I was giving four talks, I forgot my lines. Because back in the day, then I used to memorise everything. And I used to know exactly what I’m going to say because I obviously I never had paper. It’s all in my heart. Everything and I lost it.

Mahmood Mawjee: And that day, I realised I hold on. I know enough to just stand up and talk without having prep. And that was a big day for me. And since then, yeah, when I go up on stage, I’ve got a thesis, I’ve got something in my head. And if it doesn’t work out, if I forget something, that’s cool. I got more than enough in my head, I can talk for a day, you could probably say I can for a week. If I’m giving-

Payman: A lot more flexibility.

Mahmood Mawjee: If I’m giving a content presentation, then it’s easier because you kind of know one thing comes up and he’s asking a trigger one thing, but a lot of my talks like when I went last week to New York. So the only slide I had because I was playing music. It was a story which only to give it the right time with everyone’s eyes closed. And I don’t want anyone else to be able to press that. So I turn it on when the right word comes on the right music. Yeah, Eli Robbins does. Yeah, and so it was just a slide, but it was just a quote. And as you click it, then the music comes on. So now I don’t use any sort of presentation except when I’m doing like if I’m doing a dental talk, for example, I’m doing a health and wellness talk. And I’ve kind of got certain slides with certain trigger points, which I know what’s going to come out of what time. But otherwise, it’s just open.

Payman: Do you still get nervous?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes, 100%. So like, I remember when I was in New York last week, my wife was on the table next to me. She was on my table because I was on the front, and I messaged her on WhatsApp saying I’m feeling so nervous today. Yeah, I don’t know why, but I think it’s great. Because a moment that goes away is the moment you become too comfortable.

Payman: When I’ve had speakers on and they’re nervous. I tell them, it would be unnatural not to be nervous.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Payman: That I would be more worried if a speaker said to me, I’m on in five minutes time, and I’m not nervous. I’d be more worried if he was nervous, because it’s not the normal thing. And perhaps coded himself into speaking recently, and become a seasoned professional overnight.

Mahmood Mawjee: Awesome.

Prav Solanki: It was hard. Because before, like, the first talk I gave was at Payman’s event. And before I did that, I was quite literally shitting myself. And just like you did, I found a couple of speaking coaches. Because I thought if I’m going to do this and stand up in front of 100 people, no problem, I’ll make an idea myself. So I’m going to find someone who does this for a living, take advice from them, and do the best I can possibly do. And then continue on that just like you have on your journey.

Prav Solanki: And I truly believe that if you want to Excel or do something, go to someone who’s done it before. Naturally, that must be why people are coming to you, as a coach or consultant, like you just mentioned, your relationship coach, how do people learn about you? How do they find out that, hey, I can approach this guy, and he can coach me and whatever it is, whatever area of my life. So how is it that people would reach out to you for particular service? What would that service be?

Mahmood Mawjee: Most people find out about me through two ways, one way is social media. And then the other way is through my actual speaking events. So when I’m travelling, obviously, people hear me on stage, they know what I do. People and obviously-

Payman: Spell it out, what’s the deal they get if you’re their coach, what’s the deal?

Payman: Or do you tailor it for each person?

Mahmood Mawjee: There’s one thing initially was holding someone back. So you’ve got one thing in your life right now that if you could change your whole life will change. I change that for you, end of story. 100% guarantee that I change it for you, I will get you more results in six months than you’ve got in 20 years. I take you on a six month journey with me. And I break your life down. And I find out everything which is holding you back from getting to where you want to be.

Payman: Let’s say hey Mahmood I want to be coached by you. What happens? Do we meet first?

Mahmood Mawjee: Understand. Yeah, so I would normally speak with you for half an hour session on the phone to kind of understand your questionnaire, find out exactly what is it that you want to be? Where is it that you want to get to, where you are in certain parts of your life? I kind of break your life down into five, seven parts. Where are you there? What are your goals, dreams, ambitions? Where is it that you want to be and then I kind of see if you are … Most people are coachable and if they’re not, and I can break them down to become coachable. Some people a lot harder than others.

Prav Solanki: Do you get that all in that half hour call?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes.

Prav Solanki: You do?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah. I can do an half an hour.

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Payman: Okay. Now you know who I am. Now you know what I want. What’s next?

Mahmood Mawjee: What’s the one thing in your life right now that if you could have, if you could do, if you could become life will be different. Yeah. What’s the one thing? So say for example, in your business right now. I don’t know, for example you in ten star. There’s something, we haven’t got that much time for me to go into that. But there’s one thing holding you back, is that because you are the captain of your ship. And if you are not at eight, nine out of 10 in five areas, for example, your mindset, your motivation, your relationship, your health, and the reason why when your business to be there, then you’re going to find it very tough to get there. I want to break down and see for example, what time you waking up in the mornings?

Payman: Late.

Mahmood Mawjee: Okay, what’s your first half an hour every day?

Payman: On the mobile.

Mahmood Mawjee: But Okay, fine. What if I could make sure that you’re awake at 5:30am every single morning with more energy than if you woke up at nine? What if your first half an hour every day was full of gratitude and exercise and you are pumped up by the time six o’clock came. You’re ready to fly. I am sure because I can see smiling right now, with that level of energy within a year, your business would have done double, triple, quadruple, whatever. And that 10 x journey starts there.

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Payman: Amazing. Sounds a bit like Prav’s morning routine. But no, I mean, what’s interesting is you’re talking about mindset and motivation. You get people saying, “Hey, what makes you think you could 10 x my business? When you haven’t 10 x your own business?” Do you get that? Or is it just about me, mindset.

Mahmood Mawjee: Most people know what I can do. So I know that I’ve quadrupled the turnover in my business within one year, okay. I know that in a certain couple of the other businesses that I’ve led. I have 10 X. Say for example, you’re turning over a million-

Payman: Let’s say I was saying something that you hadn’t done before. You’re saying you have this billionaire coach?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes.

Payman: He’s always done things you’ve got. And yet he is coming to you. So is it about that mindset thing? Can you switch someone’s mindset consistently? Not just for the five minutes after the coaching call?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes. Let me-

Payman: What’s the key to that?

Mahmood Mawjee: Let me tell you about … You mentioned this billionaire coaching client, so when I sat down with this billionaire coaching client, is the first time I’d ever met billionaire. And when I thought a billionaire would kind of go in my head, that there would be like, suited booted, and all this and, and he wasn’t. And he just seemed like an average person, which is great, because he’s very humble. But I sat down with him. And he said, “I want you to come and speak to my company.” And I said, “Look, I think you need me more than your company needs me.” And I tell him where are you in life right now?

Mahmood Mawjee: Like I dream, a scale of one to 10 and I said life’s totally about energy level 10 and one is where most people live. And where are you on this level? I expected him to say nine 10 I’m a billionaire. He said, “Three.” I’m like, “Wow, three.” He goes, “Yeah, I’ve got no more drive. I’ve got the business. I’ve got the family. I’ve got everything I wanted to do.” And he was 52 and I’m like, “You’re a half time in your life. The second half is the best.” The game is won in the second half, the second half has to be the best. So I sat down with him and I tried to find his “why” I feel that everyone’s got a why? Or they should have why by what the things I don’t have why in this someone. When you can find it, when you can leverage that and everything changes.

Mahmood Mawjee: So this billionaire coaching client of mine he was a polo player, okay. And he used to spend a lot of money every year on horses. But he wasn’t able to as I spoke to him more and I kind of saw his body language his eyes, I realised there’s something wrong here. Why? Because he told me that he wasn’t able to play a full game of Polo for the last few years. Why? Lower back pain. He was getting out of breath. I told him what if I can get you back on a horse to play a full game of Polo within six months. Do you know what he said? I’ll pay you anything. He became a first billionaire coaching client, within six months, he was back on the horse playing a full game of Polo.

Mahmood Mawjee: After he won competition within two months was running more than he ever did, you see and then from there, he went on to launch another multi million dollar company. I think he’s launching in October in Europe. And why? Found his why. So his mindset I got him to realise. But it was because I found what was important to him, which was his Polo, it wasn’t health, it wasn’t wellness, the vehicle is health and wellness. But his why? His results, see people buy based on result, they don’t buy based on product.

Mahmood Mawjee: For example people buy white teeth, they don’t buy whitening, massive difference. So when you can sell the result, and you don’t sell the product and everything changes. So everyone even myself, we all need better minds every day. You need to grow. So yeah, everyone can be doing more becoming more, doing more.

Prav Solanki: So someone approaches you there the half hour call, you’ve got like assuming like a six month programme they initially enrol into, what’s the investment?

Mahmood Mawjee: The investment? It depends on who I’m seeing? What they’re doing? And actually, whether it’s one to one? So a lot of my clients are overseas. So I have some clients who actually fly in to actually meet me once every six weeks. But other than that, is if you’re meeting me, they’ll obviously be different fee scale. So if it’s over phone, WhatsApp, Zoom.

Prav Solanki: Give me a ballpark. What does it cost to work with you? There’s people out there listening. Maybe some of them, I’m certainly inspired by your story and I think to myself, can I afford him? Can’t I? What’s the minimum engagement to get involved with you?

Mahmood Mawjee: Let me turn the question back on you. If you’re making a million quid at the moment, your business making 10 x your business in one or two years, how much am I worth to you? How much would you pay for me? If I can get you in your life where you need to be? How much would you pay me?

Prav Solanki: I get where you’re coming from. But ultimately, there’s people out there. Who may think you know what, I wouldn’t mind six months with this guy. But I just want a straight answer. You go to a dentist, and-

Payman: How much is a beautiful smile worth?

Payman: Yeah. And they say, you’re going to get a new career, you’re going to get a new relationship, blah, blah, blah, how much is that worth to you?

Mahmood Mawjee: My fees range from about three and a half grand to about 10 grand over six months.

Payman: Okay.

Mahmood Mawjee: Okay, depending on how often I’m meeting you, what I’m doing, what your goals are, where you want to be.

Prav Solanki: So it’s really affordable. I mean, I see that as you start from what, 500 quid a month?

Payman: Yeah.

Mahmood Mawjee: Around that.

Prav Solanki: Which is affordable for most certainly the audience that we’re speaking to. And that’s all I wanted to get a gauge for is that and by the way, in three years time, it could be five times less, because if you’re the right cat, if you can move the right people in the right direction. Why not?

Mahmood Mawjee: And it will.

Payman: Yeah.

Mahmood Mawjee: And so right now, this is kind of where it is. But in the future. Just like anything, we’re all growing.

Prav Solanki: Going back to something that you said earlier, which really resonated with me is that you said your father passed from this world into … Was it another world you said?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Just talk to me more about your belief system around that. Do you believe in reincarnation? Or he’s somewhere else in heaven? Or?

Mahmood Mawjee: So I’m a Muslim. Okay. So I believe that once you die, obviously, you’re two parts as your body and as your soul, your body goes away, your body disintegrates, but your soul is present. And then your soul enters another realm until a later day, when he gets pulled back up. And that’s kind of the Day of Judgement . So for me that I know my father is there. I know he’s around. But in that new world, there’s no concept of time, there’s no concept of anything. It’s totally different world. But I know he can see me.

Mahmood Mawjee: And when my father passed away, one thing he did is he left me a letter. My dad was a great organiser, okay, he left a letter for each and every one for me, my sisters, for my mom a separate letter, he didn’t know he was going to pass away. But obviously, and then he updated his letter every year. And the last thing he wrote in that letter is, wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I will be looking over you and all the best. And I feel emotional now, that will kind of me in the next world. And so yeah.

Prav Solanki: What do you think your dad’s thinking looking down upon you right now? I don’t mean this podcast, whatever. But I mean, just generally. What do you think he’s looking down on you and how is he feeling?

Mahmood Mawjee: I think he’s super happy with me. Because I found me. I found what I love to do, and I’m having an impact. And I’m doing what I really wanted to do. So my dad never wanted me to do dentistry, because he was always into business. But my dad always realised, which is something I talk about a lot right now, that it’s unfair for any parent to push their agenda on their own kid, because most parents use their own insecurities on their children.

Mahmood Mawjee: So for example, it’s nice to go out and tell my friends and my son’s a doctor why? Because I feel good. Maybe he does want to be a doctor. And the way that plays out in the long run, I just put a video on Facebook about this, the way it plays out long term, is the kids not happy, and he wants to change. And he said yes to his parents initially, because he was young. And now he’s not happy. And what happens in relationships with parents and child breaks down, but what if we could have those conversations early on? So my dad told me what he felt I should do, but he didn’t tell me what to do.

Prav Solanki: Your dad was very forward thinking for someone from his generation, especially in Asian community, you find that a lot of people get pushed into, like you said earlier medicine, law, dentistry.

Payman: Do you find it easier to coach Muslims?

Mahmood Mawjee: Find easier? No.

Payman: Harder?

Mahmood Mawjee: Harder, no.

Payman: So is there a spiritual dimension to your coaching or not?

Mahmood Mawjee: There is, depending on who you are. So if it a-

Payman: It’s important to someone.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah, see, so those five things I mentioned. So for example, I saw our mindset, motivation, relationships, health, and business. Each and every person is different. There’s like this two things on there, which are probably the most important to someone, they have kind of two on there, it’s really important. The funny thing is what you think you need and what you actually need are two different things. So for example, you may come in thinking you need help to grow your business. And the truth is because your relationship suffering, that’s where you can’t grow your business.

Mahmood Mawjee: So my thing is to kind of bring you in on what you want, but then give you what I know you need. So do I prefer or do I? Yes, spirituality comes into it. But some people don’t have religion, and some people are interested, that’s fine. So then we’ll come up, in other ways, whereas some people feel that, so I was having a conversation with someone just a few days ago, they were like, well, I’m trying to grow my business right now. But I’ve got x amount already. And if I want any more, and I think I’m being greedy, and it’s because we’ve been conditioned, maybe through the people around us, religion, whatever that wanting more is not good. But that’s not true.

Mahmood Mawjee: Because the difference between gratitude and kind of what you want see, because gratitude, being thankful for what you have, but if you don’t do anything, if you don’t do it, because you think it’s wrong, and that’s wrong. Let me kind of explain what I mean. That maybe, I don’t know, again, maybe right now, your business times over a million argument’s sake, the say you have the potential to have a 50 million business. And you’re thinking, Well, you know, what I’ve got a million already, people out there don’t even have 100 grand.

Mahmood Mawjee: And have two months to survive. So by me wanting more, that means it’s wrong. But it’s not because life’s about growth, or maybe the next 49 million is there to help the world, it’s not about you. And we need to get out of that mindset. Sometimes religion plays a big thing in that and the people around us, that we think that we should be satisfied. Be grateful, but never be satisfied.

Payman: Yeah, I was looking at your content that gratitude is a big part of-

Mahmood Mawjee: Massive.

Payman: Value, certainly, I find it difficult times that certainly the best place to go for me.

Prav Solanki: Absolutely.

Payman: We’ve all been through difficult times in our lives, but I like your content. Tell me about the production value on it. Just talk us through that.

Mahmood Mawjee: What do you mean?

Payman: Well, perhaps putting out some content, personal brand type content. You’ve been doing it a little while I’ve noticed. What does it take? Was does it take if you got a guy filming you the whole time? What have you got?

Mahmood Mawjee: My son does-

Payman: Is it? Is that right?

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes, he’s the guy behind the camera. But now he’s doing his GCSE’s. And I just advertised someone to actually … I want someone to be able to follow me for a few days a week with a camera everything I do-

Prav Solanki: Document.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah, like Gary V had a massive influence on my life, massive influence-

Payman: Does your son also edit and produce the music and all of that stuff on the videos or that’s you?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yes, he does all that for me. He doesn’t offer himself, he does it for me.

Payman: But those videos that we put out, he hasn’t just done the filming is he’s put the whole thing.

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Payman: 16 year old?

Mahmood Mawjee: 15 turning 16. So he does all of that. But I want to put a hell of a lot more content out there. We’re living in a day and age right now, where attention is everything. That we’re so lucky to be in a time like we are right now, 20 years ago how did people find out about you? Right now people in the slums don’t have food, but have phones, and you know that you can touch someone’s life out there? And if you don’t, I honestly feel like … I mean, I really feel that when I die and I go into the grave, I’m going to be questioning certain things. I’m going to be questioned on, me as a person what I did, but also my potential that did I leave potential?

Prav Solanki: You spoke earlier about your father’s soul go into Judgement Day.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: What is that? What is Judgement Day? What does that mean?

Mahmood Mawjee: So there is a journey. So from the moment you die, that’s it. That’s the end of this life, you get questioned on how you are as a person, what you did, what value you brought into the world, whether you’re good or bad person, how much money you had, did you spend on the right stuff? Did you live your potential? I feel that if I stayed in dentistry, maybe I would have been, had a lot more questioning after because, the thing is that being in place I was, I was held back by myself by the voices in my head. And so then from there, then kind of Judgement Day is when you just kind of question about everything. And then there’s a eternal place you go to heaven or hell.

Prav Solanki: So your transition from-

Payman: Do you believe that?

Mahmood Mawjee: I do 100%.

Payman: Tell me about hell.

Mahmood Mawjee: Hell, is a place you probably wouldn’t want to be.

Payman: Fire and brimstone? Is that what you saying?

Mahmood Mawjee: Fire? Yes. What else is in that? Don’t know. Yeah. It is. And then this life? Is your testing place with the kind of person you are.

Prav Solanki: Do you believe other animals have souls? A donkey, a cow, pig. The fly I just killed?

Mahmood Mawjee: They don’t have intellect.

Prav Solanki: They have souls. So we talked about the body being a carcass.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: And then your soul existing within both separated death. And then you got Judgement Day? What’s a Judgement Day for a monkey or a cow? Or-

Mahmood Mawjee: Within the monkey’s remit, did he do the best? Did he look off his family the best? That’s it within your own-

Prav Solanki: Do they go to the same Judgement Day? Listen, I know. You don’t have the answers. But I’m trying to understand what your belief system is.

Payman: I didn’t think the conversation was going this way-

Mahmood Mawjee: I don’t know will there be-

Payman: Free will is a big factor here?

Mahmood Mawjee: We the only species have free and no other animal has free will. A tree has the ability to be a tree, a monkey commenting more than a monkey will because we have the ability to be anything.

Payman: I don’t know if you’ve heard any of Sam Harris. Other particular like everything he says, but this question of free will. He says there’s no free will in the humans either. And the question of even take it as far as, say the murderer, murdered because of the consequences of everything that came. And he’s by no means a bleeding heart liberal about it. So there’s a lot of conversations about that now. What would you like to be remembered for? We just said, the day you die regrets and all that. What would you like people to say about you? What are the three things that your legacy?

Mahmood Mawjee: Do you know that one thing which you said before about free will? See, the way I look at that is that if we didn’t have free will, then we wouldn’t be answerable for anything we did. Which then doesn’t make sense. Because then if your life is pre determined, then you can really just sit back and it’s going to go on that course. And then whether you do right or wrong isn’t about you, it’s about someone else. So the way I look at that is I think we’ve got total free will.

Payman: Well, let me explain it to the extreme example. And I don’t know extreme examples don’t always pay out here. But the extreme example is, there was a guy and he had a family, he had a wife, he had a mother, he had everything he needed. He loved all those people. One day, he starts feeling like he has to kill his mother and his wife. And that feeling is encompassing him so much. And he actually kills his mother and his wife. Then they go and find him. And he’s written a letter. And he says in this letter, he has written, I don’t understand what’s happening to me, I’m hearing voices in my head, I want you to look into this and look at my body and see what’s happened.

Payman: They take an X ray, and there’s a giant tumour in his head, that’s pushing on whatever that is. Dr Prav will tell us.

Prav Solanki: The brain. The brain.

Payman: Decision centre for his whatever brain. And it was that tumour that was causing him to think these things. And so now that’s an extreme example, we’re talking about tumour. But I see my kid and I love my kid, at the end of the day, that love is a chemical going through me and so forth. And so I’m not saying I have the answers, but that’s where this kind of question comes up. If that guy, let’s say we knew, let’s say he hadn’t killed himself or whatever. And let’s say, now he’s in front of a judge, not God, but judge, and should he go to prison? Or shouldn’t he?

Mahmood Mawjee: He should.

Payman: Medical complaint, tumour pushing on this.

Mahmood Mawjee: I see but the way I look at this, is that what I feel we all need, the two biggest gifts that you can have. Number one, health and number two, self awareness, understanding. Gary Vee talks a lot about self awareness, understanding yourself when you know that there’s something going wrong. So for example, that guy you had that that wasn’t him. At that point. He knew there’s something wrong, go and find out about it. Don’t just let it play out. He’s not the guy to normally have those kinds of thoughts, I want to kill someone.

Payman: I’m driving a car. I have a heart attack, swing by and hit someone, someone dies. I recover from the heart attack. Do I get done for dangerous driving?

Mahmood Mawjee: Well, no. Because you had heart attack.

Payman: Yes, you know what I mean?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah.

Payman: There are situations where it’s not free will. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Mahmood Mawjee: No, maybe there is free will still. Yeah. You didn’t choose to have thoughts that contact came because of kind of what you’ve done in the past. So what I’m saying is everything plays out. That maybe if you did any McDonald’s or you would have had a heart attack. The biggest killer we have within dentistry is cardiovascular disease. The amount of health issues we have as dentists, massive. I know, so are not familiar. I know, dentists are over 60. So many who’ve had heart attacks. Why? Because we’re in a place where we can’t look after ourselves, and what I want to do for dentistry I want to change that. I want people to be able to have a better quality of life. Do more, give more.

Payman: I’ve got a very good question for you. Sorry to interrupt you, Mahmood. But there’s plenty of dentists you can see for dentist by dentist group, for instance, there’re loads of dentist with the current situation with the litigation and all there who have had enough, let’s say they’re in a NHS practise, where it’s hard work, loads of patients, litigations, risk and all that. We’ve had enough. And every time it comes up, loads of dentists come up and say, “I’m feeling like giving up, but I don’t know what to do instead of dentistry.”

Payman: What’s your advice? I mean, you’ve got this coaching career, you’ve got this burning desire to push you. What’s your advice for regular dentist who’s maybe interested in whatever they’re interested in, it could be interested in sports or interested in cars or whatever. Should they think about the classic Gary V side hustle, start talking about cars and sports on the internet, make a business out of that and go into that? Or should they find a coach? Or what should they do? What’s your advice to that person who doesn’t really know what else they can do?

Mahmood Mawjee: I think the way I kind of look at in dentistry, there’s that one type of person who knows that they don’t do dentistry, and then they just went out. Okay, there’s the other type of person who’s within dentistry. But for example, they’re in the NHS right now. And they yet know they want to go into private practise, but they just don’t feel they’ve got the skill or a case, there’s that person, then there’s another person who kind of an associate who wants to be a principal, and they don’t have to make that journey. I think generally, it’s kind of around those three areas for the person-

Payman: Want to get out. I’m asking you, because you’ve got out recently.

Mahmood Mawjee: For the person who really wants to get out. What are they good? Find out about yourself? What is it that you love to do? How can you add value into this world? Because it’s all about value. That if I can add enough value into your life, okay, then I become very important in your life, how is it that you can add value. And the way if you reverse engineer that the way you can add value is by finding out what you love to do and what you’re good at. And if there’s a market for that, okay, like if you’re good at making paper aeroplanes , I don’t know, maybe there’s some sort of avenue you can pursue there.

Mahmood Mawjee: But generally, like most people will have something that they really would like to do that they’re good at, but they just don’t have the confidence to know that it’s possible. And what I would say is, I would say start it. And you’ve never lived in a day in an age when it’s easier to start a business. You’ve got YouTube, you got Instagram, you got Facebook, you’ve got Snapchat, you got Pinterest, you got LinkedIn, it never been a better time to start.

Mahmood Mawjee: Get someone to help you, see how it goes and then slowly tailor things off. But don’t just carry on in dentistry because you have to, because you feel is the only way, because it’s not the only way. Just because you think is the only way it’s not. Get someone out there. Get someone who can show you what’s possible. And go like I’ve done it and if honestly, I could do it and-

Payman: I’m an associate lets say. I’m the main breadwinner. So I’m paying the mortgage and all that, can’t sell out like you did and have a year’s buffer. I’m hating my job, I’m hating my nurse. I’m hating my patients, litigations on me all the time. What’s your advice? Your first bit of advice? What should I do next?

Mahmood Mawjee: If you really wanted to get out like so bad as me. Had two options like the summer practise or remortgage my house? I went to the practise, you know why? Find the way, because I had to burn bridges. Because I knew that if I’m still attached to practise, I’ll get calls and I’ll get this. I had to burn my bridges. Okay, so there was that option, or I could have tried to remortgage my house. Whoever owns a house right now they’re more than likely going to have enough equity that they can pull out for KV. Yeah, that was okay.

Mahmood Mawjee: And then you’ll find a way to make it back later. My thing is find a way. You’re an associate, you’re working. So I’ve always worked. I’ve never worked more than four days a week, why? Not because I spent one day chilling. Because I always knew that I need if I wanted to do something else, I got to be in a place where I’m able to receive that. If I’m in a clinic for five days, and then two days my family, where am I going to receive that? Where am I going to get it from? I use the extra one or two days in my week to try new things either social media agency, I was trading on trade, Forex, commodities options, I used to do a lot. And I still got loads of training courses, seminars, meeting people why?

Mahmood Mawjee: Because I realised that in order for me to find what I really wanted to do, I got to be out there being ready to receive. So the best advice I can give is knock a day off. Everyone can afford to knock a day off. Why? Because they can work an extra one hour, two hours on the other days, they can make it happen. If you had to slice part of your income of say, for example, you are take 20% haircut in income, you’d find a way to survive. So okay, yeah, so just imagine that.

Payman: And anyway, taking a day off doesn’t necessarily mean earning less.

Mahmood Mawjee: Exactly. It just means working more efficiently.

Payman: I have five, four, three, two and one, I’ve never done six days.

Mahmood Mawjee: Okay.

Payman: As a dentist, whenever I hear anyone who does do six days, I think it’s an error. But it’s right for some people I guess.

Mahmood Mawjee: But if you took a day out, and you solely use that day to just put yourself out there to think to listen, you go YouTube man. My parents came from Uganda when Amin chucked them out. They had no choice, exactly. And then my dad had something about I think 10 quid or quid something in his pocket. And he built up a massive business from that. I imagine if they had the gift of YouTube, imagine they had the gift of what we have. It’s laughable that our parents never had what we had, but yet they managed to do so much. We don’t have to work in a shop seven days a week to feed our family. There’s other ways we can do it. So I think there’s so many ways, cut a day out. And just start without-

Payman: I totally agree with you that now’s the best time to do something other-

Mahmood Mawjee: 100%.

Payman: With so much resources these days out there, whenever we were talking with Anil Shrestha and he was saying that it’s harder for new graduates now. At the same time new graduates have got the internet. When we qualified-

Mahmood Mawjee: It wasn’t there. And you got that side where it is tough in the dental market at the moment, because there’s so many graduates, so few jobs. There’s a lot of apathy in dentistry as well. But then on the other side, you have so much opportunity if you’re willing to go out and grab it. So both sides of it.

Prav Solanki: Mahmood? You’re on the same bed, you’re writing that letter, but this time you’re writing it to the world before you leaving, what would you like that letter to say, Mahmood was …

Mahmood Mawjee: I want people to remember me by someone who had an impact on their life, who gave a better life by listening to me. But I wouldn’t be the first person you listen to when you wake up in the morning. And I want to be able to start your day, I want to know that I made your life better. That I gave you see people who are looking for two things in life, hope and leadership on a provider. I want to create the best leaders and only give people hope to know that there’s a better future than the present. And that’s what I want to do.

Prav Solanki: Earlier you alluded to you want to be a billionaire, right? You want to impact a billion people in that way. That’s your mission. That’s the journey?

Mahmood Mawjee: Yep. 100%

Prav Solanki: Beautiful.

Payman: I do like that. I do like that.

Mahmood Mawjee: Yeah. Everywhere I go, people after that, so how many people listen to us right now. That number is got bigger.

Payman: Hope so anyway.

Mahmood Mawjee: I’m sure.

Payman: Who’s giving you the best advice in your life? Your dad? Someone else? Who’re your mentors?

Mahmood Mawjee: My mentors. I’ve got mentors who I don’t meet, people like Anthony Robbins people like Gary V people like that. Who I consume a lot of information from every single day. And then I’ve got my mentors who I actually meet. Okay. So what’s the best advice I’ve ever been given? I heard this thing once from the Navy SEALs, where they said, “When you think life’s over, when you think that’s it, you’ve only given 40% you’ve got another 60% left in you.” I use that every single day. Because when things are tough, I know there’s something waiting. Yeah, to actually go in there and grab the other 60%. And for me, that’s super, super important.

Prav Solanki: That’s powerful.

Payman: It’s been lovely to speaking to you.

Mahmood Mawjee: Thank you very much.

Payman: Inspirational.

Mahmood Mawjee: Thank you.

Prav Solanki: Very inspirational. Thank you so much for your time.

Payman: Thanks for sharing so much about especially talking about your dad that way. So openly.

Mahmood Mawjee: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me man. Thanks guys.

Speaker 3: 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.

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 for me and Pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we say and what our guest has had to say because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

Payman: 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 much for listening. Thanks.

Prav Solanki: And don’t forget our six star rating. Cheers.

 

Transcript

Prav Solanki: Hey guys, welcome to the show and thank you for tuning into the Dental Leaders podcast. Today’s interview is with Anil Shrestha, another super cool guy, always immaculately presented and dressed but, so many stories from being a dentist to some very high profile individuals being at the top of his game and one amazing story about being invited to purchase his existing practise from the famous Mike Wise.

Payman L.: Yeah, so a story that goes from house officer to clinical director of a giant corporate to filling some of the biggest shoes possible in dentistry and again, a super cool dude as well with it.

Prav Solanki: And also a ninja.

Payman L.: Yeah, also martial artist and I think we asked him about that too.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman L.: Excellent.

Prav Solanki: All round. Super Cool Guy.

Payman L.: Enjoy it guys.

Prav Solanki: Enjoy.

Anil Shrestha: And then I became a Geordie. I remember my grandmother being aghast at the fact that I could speak English so well, or speak Nepalese with the English accent. And then she was aghast at the fact that I could actually speak Nepalese with the Geordie accent as well.

Speaker 4: 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.

Prav Solanki: Ladies and gentlemen, today we have Anil Shrestha with us today. Anil, thank you so much for joining us today-

Anil Shrestha: Thank you.

Prav Solanki: … really appreciate that you’ve taken the time out of your busy schedule to spend some time telling us about your story.

Anil Shrestha: Thank you. I’m very flattered to be here.

Prav Solanki: Anil, I’d just like to go back in time and just tell us about your childhood, how you was brought up and what your story was before you came to the UK.

Anil Shrestha: Well, I came to the UK when I was about four just before I reached my fifth birthday and raised by my grandmother back in Nepal, had a relatively privileged existence. My father was away from us studying in the states. He was a doctor, he was at Johns Hopkins and then he came over to the UK on a sabbatical. They asked him to stay. My mother came over, my brother and I were raised by our grandparents back at home. I would have had a completely different upbringing and childhood if I had stayed in Nepal I have to say, and I don’t think I would have been in dentistry.

Anil Shrestha: I think it was, opportunity, especially with the family background to gone into a business and tourism, et cetera. But my mother persuaded my grandmother that we should come over. She had slightly different ideas and was slightly concerned because she didn’t really like Britain as she thought, it was a backward nation, which, I have to say now, I regard myself as a British and I love this place, but, I could understand much later on what she meant.

Payman L.: The first day you got to Britain.

Anil Shrestha: Yes, I literally arrived. It took me two days to fly over. My grandmother, for the first time I saw her cry. She had a very regal presence about her and everyone was afraid of her. She literally ran the household and all our servants and my uncles, they dropped me off at the airport. I was taken by an air hostess and it took me two days to fly over. I couldn’t speak English. I remember being on the plane, being uncomfortable. I remember stopping over somewhere in Europe and then flying over again. And then I arrived at Heathrow airport and there were a group of four men and I was pointed towards them and I realised that one of them was my father. That was the first time I met him that I can remember. And then I came back to be raised in [inaudible] Suburbia.

Prav Solanki: And you are how old when you first met your father Anil?

Anil Shrestha: Four maybe, I wasn’t five.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Anil Shrestha: And then I went to school, I couldn’t speak English. I remember Mrs. White, my first foreign teacher wouldn’t let go of my mom’s hand back and she was upset. Anyway, I finally ended up there and they had concerns about me because I wasn’t speaking to anyone, et cetera. Now, six months later, express concern again. And I was brought in front of the headmistress with my mum and my dad and they were complaining that I was talking too much. And, I’ve just always been very gregarious and I’ve loved company and I got on very well, so I just adapted, I suppose. Had an interesting childhood.

Payman L.: How old were you, when you went to Newcastle then?

Anil Shrestha: I started Newcastle in 87, so I’d finished my first degree in Chemistry and Physiology in Sheffield and I didn’t know what I wanted to do to be quite honest.

Payman L.: Oh so you didn’t live in Newcastle? You weren’t brought up in Newcastle?

Anil Shrestha: I was brought up in Newcastle, I went to school there, I went to-

Payman L.: So how old were you when you went from [crosstalk]

Anil Shrestha: I think, 12 or 13.

Payman L.: 12 or 13.

Anil Shrestha: Yeah. And then I became a Geordie. I remember my grandmother being aghast at the fact that I could speak English so well or speak Nepalese with an English accent, and then she was aghast at the fact that I could actually speak Nepalese with Geordie accent as well. And it just came out, I love the northeast but, I live in London now and my regret always is that I couldn’t practise what I do in London. Sorry, what I practise in London up in the northeast anymore.

Payman L.: I love Newcastle.

Anil Shrestha: Yeah, I know you do.

Payman L.: I loved it a lot. I love how the people are so interesting there and the geography is interesting too.

Anil Shrestha: Oh it’s a lovely place.

Payman L.: Around the-

Anil Shrestha: I love just north of Newcastle in Northumberland. I love just south in the North Yorkshire as well, It’s just an amazing place, and I love the sea. I miss that.

Prav Solanki: Does your Geordie accent ever come back?

Anil Shrestha: Yeah, If I’ve had a drink, definitely [crosstalk]

Prav Solanki: I’m the one who stressed Geordie, this is going to be on me.

Anil Shrestha: Oh you should see when I meet all my Geordie friends, It’s amazing. You couldn’t tell the difference honestly. It’s fun. But London is my home now.

Payman L.: Do you remember the first time you decided you were going to look at studying dentistry? Do you remember that?

Anil Shrestha: Yeah, no, I was actually in Sheffield at the time and did well, I did Chemistry and Physiology just do an honours degree. There were only two of us on the programme and I realised that as much as I loved Chemistry and Physiology, I had all the grades to get into everything, but I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So, then met a whole load of dental students and dentists over that three years and I thought, “You know what, this is actually really interesting.” So I went over to the Charles Clifford dental school.

Anil Shrestha: I was always very good with my hands, loved artwork. I loved making models, carving wax. I used to like painting, et cetera. All came from my mother, she was an artist and musician and everything and academic study, I just loved reading. So I applied to do dentistry and I got four offers and one of them was in Newcastle. So I decided to take the one in new castle, went back up there and the five years, like for all of us, it’s not easy. You think dentistry is easy. It’s not, it’s extremely arduous. And the course only.

Payman L.: But you know mature students tend to handle it much better. I think I was still such a child when I went into dental school, and I remember a couple of mature students in our year, definitely got the more out of it than I did, because I was just playing out my childhood.

Anil Shrestha: Absolutely. But in reality, the difficulty of the programme is actually the same for whether you’re relatively mature or not because-

Payman L.: It’s a tough course.

Anil Shrestha: … If you’ve been on the programme, then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. And obviously most of the audience listening to this are probably dentists anyway. But mature students are the ones who’ve already decided what they want to do and they’re more probably focused on completing the programme and they know pretty much where they want to go to and aspire to even though, at the end of the five years you have so many opportunities, especially now.

Anil Shrestha: By the time we graduated over 20, 25 years ago. So, the options there were relatively limited. Specialist Dentistry hadn’t really developed, there was only Maxillofacial Surgery or Orthodontics or Hospital Service and most people went into general practise, and quite literally, we were all thrown out into general practise before VT. We didn’t know how to set up businesses, we didn’t know anything about what we need to know about now. Marketing, social media, et cetera, the things that you’re experts at. And we just learned as we went along.

Payman L.: So what was your first job?

Anil Shrestha: A house officer. So I did my house officer jobs in Newcastle. I had a real skill with my hands, so Conservative Dentistry just came very naturally to me. I won medals and things, but equally, it was a difficult academic programme for me and I failed exams as well. But it wasn’t till I actually qualified paying that suddenly light was like 1, 000 light bulbs came on at once and everything made sense and that’s what makes that passion really ignite for me.

Anil Shrestha: Seeing dentists who don’t quite get it yet and they don’t realise how to integrate everything from anatomy, to pathology, to operative dentistry, to understanding how [inaudible] work, to understanding how displays years occur, what try radiant nuclear actually mean, how they develop. These are things that you just read about in pathology books, but nothing makes sense until you’re actually in practise.

Prav Solanki: And do you think there was a moment in time, like a defining moment when that all just came together? I even in my own life talked about my own education, I draw the analogy to learning how to drive. At some point you’re putting the clutch down-

Anil Shrestha: And then it becomes so instinctive.

Prav Solanki: … then it just all falls into place and it happens. Was there a time during your career where you thought, well it’s all come together now, It all makes sense.

Anil Shrestha: Yeah, when I was pushed away from Conservative Dentistry and the dean said, because I always wanted to train to be a Restorative Consultant or go into academia, and he said you need to do maxillofacial surgery now. And I thought, I really just want to do conservative dentistry and cut teeth beautifully and make crowns bridges. I used to do all my own gold work and everything, it was amazing. I was doing gold work and casting, I’d cast all my ex-wife’s in laser non lays by third BDS when everyone was still finishing, learning how to do MOD amalgams and things.

Anil Shrestha: Because when you had an opportunity and you had people like professor Ian Bonds who would see that you wanted to see how cohesive gold work, when everyone else was playing with amalgam and you’re in the back of the cupboards there, getting out of the cohesive gold Kit, and he’d said, “Do you know what that is?” and I said, “No, but I’d really like to learn.” And then you tell them a bit about the history of lost wax technique, et cetera. He can see. And that’s really incumbent upon people like us to see that spark in somebody and then to give the opportunity for them to learn.

Anil Shrestha: And as I said to you earlier, people can open doors for you, but you’ve got to want to really go in or people can have a door that is there, and you can burst the door open or you can find another door, but you’ll get to where you want to be. And so I was doing all of these things and I thought that’s all I wanted to do, but I didn’t realise, going back to your original question, what dentistry really meant to to start my maxillofacial jobs. And then you started to see accident emergency traumas coming in, you were suturing things, you were seeing pathologies, you were doing radical neck dissections and everything started coming back.

Anil Shrestha: And then I started reading, and I started reading so prolifically. Things just flowed literally like learning how to ride a motorbike for the first time and then instinctively letting go the clutch and accelerating, pulling wheelies, getting your knee down. When you get to that level, you think, wow, even now I’m starting to learn. So at that time I decided I was going to start testing myself. So there were lots of different exams and I’d always been encouraged by some very good general practitioner tutors to sit the MTDS exam, which you may recall was regarded as the gold standard in general practise.

Anil Shrestha: My perception of it is that it’s, I’m a member, is that it’s an elitist organisation of self-selecting, exceptionally good dentists that understand dentistry really well. Now I see this in the younger generation. I see it in people who are teaching fantastic courses. Now I see it in people who are working in practise and producing the most amazing work from just simple fillings to doing block burn graphs, et cetera.

Anil Shrestha: You see this, and this is a way of testing to a level of knowledge and for this group to come together. And so I sat that exam, passed it first time, did very well, and at the same time I decided to do the MFDS. I decided to do GDP, et cetera, and I thought, well, why not sit them all at the same time because they can only ask you certain things. And the reality is, you know you’re going to be sitting in, I’m an examiner now for different royal college exams. You know that they can only ask you certain things.

Anil Shrestha: So when you’ve learned Sjogren’s syndrome, all the signs and symptoms and the pathology behind it. Then not unusually, you’ll find it asked in three exams in the same year or something in different exams and things. So it’s simple. And I just became very adept at doing this. But the reason I sat all these exams is because I wanted to test my understanding. It wasn’t to prove to anything, anyone anything about me other than I actually understood this.

Prav Solanki: Let me ask you a question, It might be a difficult one for you. You’re obviously an incredibly successful dentist as well as an academic.

Anil Shrestha: Well that’s what your perception is, yes thank you.

Prav Solanki: You love learning, you have a passion for learning.

Anil Shrestha: Absolutely. Definitely.

Prav Solanki: And, there’s a quote by a guy called James Dyson who is the guy who invented the Dyson hoovers and then the hand dryers and so on and so forth.

Anil Shrestha: Oh, I know.

Payman L.: Of course you do.

Prav Solanki: And his biggest thing is that we can all learn from failure. What’s the biggest mistake that you’ve made in dentistry so far?

Payman L.: The other thing is that he’s talking clinically.

Prav Solanki: It could be.

Payman L.: Could you be willing to discuss that?

Anil Shrestha: Probably not having started it earlier. But then again the course of our lives is such that you take different steps that it leads you to where you’re eventually going to end up. And my belief is that if you have a particular passion and you manage to find it, then you should do everything to excel in it, and like cream, you’ll always rise to the top. Opportunities will open for you.

Anil Shrestha: If I had an opportunity to do dentistry early and had found that calling earlier, than I would have at least another five or 10 years to give to the profession. I don’t think anything is a mistake. I think everything is a learning opportunity and it’s part of your life pathway. So I don’t think anything I’ve done is a mistake. There things that I may have thought, well I could’ve done that better at some point.

Payman L.: What was your lowest point in it, especially your lowest point?

Anil Shrestha: Probably going through divorce whilst I was still a dentist.

Payman L.: What stage was that dentistry wise, where were you?

Anil Shrestha: I’d qualified, I’d joined James Hull, basically just after I finished the Eastman. In fact, just before I went to the Eastman, I knew the relationship was breaking down with my ex wife Noelle, who I’m still very good friends with now. And it’s hard because every successful dentist that you ever meet in your life, you think, “Wow, they’re doing so well.” What you don’t realise is every single one of them, though unknown, have had a really difficult period in their lives. You don’t understand what they’ve gone through. You can never understand it. You can see it and you can maybe empathise, but we all have a story. That part for me was actually going through that divorce and still managing to stay focused.

Prav Solanki: Do you remember the day when it became a reality that you were going to be divorced or perhaps you were going through a time where you were trying to convince yourself things were going to work out and everything was going to be all right and there was a defining moment ways or actually, do you know what? This is all going to end, however that was. Can you take me back to that moment, what you were thinking, what you were emotionally going through and how you managed to keep your head above water at the same time?

Anil Shrestha: That was a very dark time for me. Say this is for anyone going through that sort of thing. It’s not something I would wish upon anyone and the relationship naturally was coming to an end. But it’s always emotional, especially when there’s a child involved. My daughter, Maya, who is 21 now was about two or three years old at the time. And used to remain focused through the day just making sure that I was focused on my patients. They were always the priority. My personal way of coping with it was after work, I would always train. Before work, I’d always train.

Anil Shrestha: I’ve been doing martial arts since I was five. I was a gymnast, the county level for teens. And then I went into martial arts which came relatively naturally for me. And it was a way of spending time focusing on not the bad things but actually managing to get through rather than falling into depression. And I would train all the time. I was not bad, I wasn’t great. I could have been a lot better, especially if I didn’t, I could spend more time doing a training. But it’s always been a focus for me. And the key thing for me, because everyone is slightly different. The key thing for me that’s taken me to the levels of success that you perceive is that I mastered the art of self-discipline from a very early age.

Anil Shrestha: And for me that was a natural revelation. So I defined self-discipline. When people ask me how you become successful, how you remain focused or how you get over difficult things, as being self-disciplined is the ability to get up and do what you need to do, when you need to do it, even when you don’t want to do it. Get up, do what you need to do when you need to do it, even when you don’t want to do it. And when you can do that, you remain focused on an end objective. The end objective is always to make everyone happy, to do the right thing, to be successful, to fulfil your potential.

Anil Shrestha: And that’s what I’d like to see, when I see people, other professionals, younger professionals, if I see a spark in them, it’s almost incumbent upon me. It’s like a duty for me to help them to fulfil that potential, whichever direction it may be.

Payman L.: I feel that way too. Do you feel like you are good at seeing that spark in-

Anil Shrestha: I think it comes through empathy and I see it, and when I do see it then, if my help is called upon, then I will always do whatever I can to help people.

Prav Solanki: It seems to me that, just from the short time I’ve spent with you that, a lot of what you’re about is getting your happiness by doing things for other people and fulfilling your happiness through that.

Anil Shrestha: It’s sharing passion, Prav. It’s sharing my passion, because having found it myself, and you read about it and there are a lot of things that you can see in self help books and things and I read them and I think, “Oh, I realised that myself a while ago.” If you’re going to be successful in life, you need to find a passion. There are certain things and certain rules in life that I’ve learned. One is that, find something you’re really good at, something that comes naturally. But when it comes naturally, you should, like I tell my daughter, just because she’s a gifted artist, she’s been selling her artwork online since she was a teenager. She’s in a college now where they’re at least half a dozen people that she thinks are better than her, but she’s now in the right peer group because she’s being pushed. So find something that you find that you’re very passionate about, but you must commit to excel in it. You must excel and you must push yourself. And when you do that, then it doesn’t become a job.

Anil Shrestha: Dentistry for me is not a job. I’ll tell you a story about when I went to my 25 year reunion a year or two so ago, and about 50 out of the class of 70 had turned up. It’s quite a tight group in Newcastle. And we’d booked this Boutique hotel in Jasmine Dune and the whole of the bar was overtaken by us, as you would imagine the whole hotel was in fact, and it was about maybe two, three o’clock in the morning and we’re all sitting in our small groups in the different sofas and things. And it just struck me that it was like the canteen at Newcastle, all the little cliques are sitting next to each other again.

Anil Shrestha: I was talking to a good friend of mine, and I noticed just sitting across was, two of my friends, Adrian O’Malley and one of the other guys, I forget his name now, but they’re just sitting there laughing at me. I said, “Damn, WTF, what are you laughing at?” And again, they were just looking at me saying, “Anil,” they said, “Every five years we come here, and you’re the only one that’s talking about what your passion in Dentistry,” because I was talking about my new scanning and cad cam milling technique.

Payman L.: Talking about T.

Anil Shrestha: We’re all sitting here talking about retiring, how tired we are and our kids and everything and you’re the only one that’s getting enthusiastic about it. And I said, “Well that’s because it’s just so exciting.” And that’s why I said if there is a regret, I wish I’d started this five years earlier. So when you see it in somebody else again, then it’s fantastic.

Payman L.: What I’ll say about that, about you, is firstly, you’ve got the humility at the level that you’re at, to show up at courses like [inaudible 00:20:37]-

Anil Shrestha: Oh, but you’ll lean so much there.

Payman L.: … student courses all over the place and often when people get to a certain level, they don’t want to be seen to be at courses. But that’s one point. But the other thing is, I was watching you during that course because I thought it was with one different-

Anil Shrestha: During the fresh commerce course?

Payman L.: … yeah.

Anil Shrestha: Oh my God. Amazing [crosstalk]

Payman L.: One of the first times I think we met each other as well. So I was excited to meet you. I was watching and you were just taking notes.

Anil Shrestha: Yeah, always-

Payman L.: Throughout the whole, taking solid notes.

Anil Shrestha: With my apple pen and my iPad.

Payman L.: With your iPad on the thing. And I was watching the notes you were taking and there was, it’s funny because I’ve told Depeche, there’s gotta be learning points on the slide and I think you took 60 pages of out of it. And I thought, this guy loves teeth. The room was full of dentists, but you’ve got to where you’ve got to and still fully engaged in it.

Anil Shrestha: Always. So, I remember Kanaan Elias who taught me at the Eastman and he’s still practising now. He’s one of the most gifted operators you’ll ever meet. And every year at the Eastman, there’s always an amazing gifted operator. You see them now teaching courses and things, but, a lot of them will just go off into academia, et cetera. And every year there’s a gold medal winner. In my year, had a class of six, four distinctions. And I was-

Payman L.: Wow.

Anil Shrestha: I felt great but, and it’s rare to be given, but, I was just like everyone else. And every year there’s somebody like that. And these are exceptional when it’s outside of places like the Eastman. But we’re actually quite common. You’ll see a lot of people like this and all of us have something to learn. And Kanaan Elias was one of the old guard at the Eastman. And he became my mentor and I would always see him at things like section 63 meetings or some postgraduate meetings. And he’d always be sitting in the back just nodding his head, maybe taking one or two notes.

Anil Shrestha: And I’d always go and see him pay my respects. And he would say, “Oh, you are Anil.” And he’d ask me about my family, et cetera. And I remember one of the first times I saw him at this relatively in a section 63 meeting and I thought, really learned much but at least I met that few people. And I said, “Why do you keep coming to these?” And he said, “Anil” He said, “You always learn something in a course like this, even if it’s how not to do it.” And this guy was the most humble most gifted operator and one of the most inspirational mentors I had and I thought, “Yes, you’re right.”

Anil Shrestha: And so when I do current courses, I’ll pick them and I see the work, I sought to pass your stuff on social media, you know the power of social media. I’d never met him before, but I knew about him from Louis McKenzie and a few other people in the West Midlands when I was there. And I thought, yeah, this guy’s supposed to be very good. And you start to hear about them. So when I started to see his work, immediately I could see that spark we’re talking about, I thought, “Whoa, this guy is passionate.” He has the hands, he has the eyes, he sees it and he knows how to teach it. And maybe it was because of some of the refinement from you, but those lectures were good. That lecture was-

Payman L.: I know, he’s brilliant. [crosstalk] I’m not taking credit for the lecture at all.

Anil Shrestha: But this isn’t just about the enlightened. There are other-

Payman L.: Of course.

Anil Shrestha: … very good operators and I see them. And so whenever I see an opportunity to go, especially when it’s somebody younger, then I’ll go. And the funny thing is I get the same reaction, you’re absolutely right. [crosstalk 00:23:56]. Yeah, I’m telling you, invariably people always say, “We’re really honoured.” I remember Ratik, I went on his position cutting programmes and he introduced me as being part of dental royalty, he was very humbled, et cetera. And I said Ratik, just get on with it mate, because I actually deserve it.

Payman L.: [inaudible 00:24:17]. Tell me about the day you eventually went on to become the clinical director at James Hull Group.

Anil Shrestha: I was clinical lead-

Payman L.: Clinical lead.

Anil Shrestha: And then there were four clinical directors and then after they [crosstalk]

Payman L.: And you set up those iced two nationals-

Anil Shrestha: There were two practises, one in Birmingham, one in Eastman, so.

Payman L.: Before you talk about that, let’s go back to the day you met James Hull.

Anil Shrestha: Oh that’s an interesting story, and then we’ll go onto that if you wish, because they’re quite interesting stories. So [inaudible] in Newcastle, did my house jobs and then I was told I needed to go and do maxillofacial surgery. It’d be somewhere rough where, you’re actually going to get a lot of experience.

Payman L.: [inaudible]

Anil Shrestha: So I ended up just near you, where you qualified mate. You know what Newport’s like, it was amazing. I was in there and he’s stitching out faces all the time and then I’d meet the same people at the nightclubs, working on the doors and things and they’d let you in and they’d had bandaged faces. I’ll fix you up, anyway, so I ended up there and you learn so much. In one year of residency in maxillofacial surgery, everything. Like I say, it all came together suddenly, all of the academic stuff, all of the clinical staff came together. You are responsible, you just got on with it and it just really just ignited my thirst for knowledge. And within about three months I was starting to miss holding a handpiece.

Anil Shrestha: So I remember sitting there clocking in patients and I’d just been speaking to the policeman who was trying to deter me from going to the local boxing gym down the pill, which is the roughest area there. So I said, “I need to learn how to box.” And he said, “Oh, don’t go down there dock,” because I’d just been doing a report for him and I thought, “Why not?” And he said, “Oh, it’s full of the roughest people here.” And I thought, “Yeah, that’s where I’m going to go.” I used to train there literally everyday, they used to love me. Anyway, next door, or just a few doors down was a practise that was owned by James Hull.

Anil Shrestha: And as I started misusing the hand piece, I thought, “Do you know what, I’m going to get myself a Saturday job.” So I started ringing on the yellow pages. Yellow pages was before google. I had a list of about 10 practises in and around the Rogue [inaudible] where I was resident, at the hospital. And I came up to number five and it was James Hull. And every time I picked up the phone in between seeing these patients, I’d say, “Listen, I’m the maxillofacial SHO up the road, just looking for a Saturday job or an evening job just doing routine conservative dentistry.” And they’d all say, “I’m sorry, no.”

Anil Shrestha: Picked up the phone to James Hull practise and, lo and behold, James Hull answered the phone. So I went through the same spiel expecting a no, I think, I’m the maxillofacial SHO up the road, I’m looking for a Saturday job or an evening job, wondering whether you’ve got an opportunity and I don’t have an NHS number, et cetera. I was expecting, no thank you. There was just the pregnant pause and he said, “Actually I don’t have a job, but I like your attitude.” He said, “Come down and see me, where are you now?” And I said, “I’m up the road.” He said, “Come see me, I’m here at the Practise and Pill, do you know it?” And I thought, “Yeah, it’s next to the boxing gym. I see all the people coming in and getting stopped or selling drugs.” And so I went there after work and I met him.

Payman L.: [inaudible] was it just that one practise?

Anil Shrestha: Oh, he had about three practises.

Payman L.: He had three.

Anil Shrestha: It was the smallest, just before he bought the Wolverhampton practise, which gave him the corporate licence.

Payman L.: And what was that thing called? The corporate body thing?

Prav Solanki: Corporate body. Yeah.

Payman L.: I remember there was a limited [inaudible 00:27:34]. If you didn’t have one, you couldn’t have a large number of practises. Anyway-

Payman L.: So he met you?

Anil Shrestha: Yeah. And we got on really well. He said, “I don’t have a Saturday job, I don’t have an evening job, but I’m going to open one for you.”

Payman L.: Wow.

Anil Shrestha: “Apply for your NHS number,” et cetera. So during that week, I made all the applications, literally bigs doing the sedations and extraction of wisdom teeth up the road on the NHS. Then I’d walk down, have a cup of tea with him, his nurses, et cetera. And I’ll be doing the same thing from six o’clock in the evening till nine o’clock except we’re charging, I think 175 pounds. Remember this is back in 93, 94 plus sedation fees. And I started making money and I was happy, I was doing fillings, et cetera. I was doing crowns, so they had a lab upstairs, I was doing my own gold work, waxing, et cetera. He just let me have free reign of the place, and it came up to Christmas and I said, “What’s the matter James?” And he said, “Bloody dentists, none of them will do the on call.”

Anil Shrestha: And I said, “Listen,: I said, “I’ve got the consultant’s bleep, I’ve got the hospital bleep, I’ve got a pager and I’m up the road and all I do is I just stitch up faces, go on a theatre or read for my FTS.” And I said, “I’ll do this for you.” And he said, “Great.” He gave me a phone, mobile phone. Very first one, a Nokia. He said, “This is yours.” He said, “Use this for your own calls, use it for anything else you like,” and I’m telling you, I didn’t give up that phone or that phone number. I had a new one every year from that year until I left James Hull in 2011.

Payman L.: Wow.

Anil Shrestha: And I remember that the new directors, they would come to me and maybe three, four years before everything sold. And they’d say, “How come you’re the only dentist with a director’s phone and who do you call with it? I said, listen, “I had a phone bill.” And I said, “I’ve been using this phone case since James gave it to me for all the on calls, et cetera. I ring my mum in Nepal, I ring people overseas, I ring whoever I want, I don’t abuse it, but I use it for all the on calls and I’ve always done the on call centre.” So, I did the on calls for him and then he gave me the keys to the other practises. So I’d either go to the Gare, which is a nicer part of Newport, or I’d go to Pill, which was the sort of place where you didn’t really want to be.

Anil Shrestha: I remember one afternoon in the summer, okay, in the spring, I was with a nurse and we were just standing outside the door and we heard all these police sirens. And then suddenly I saw this guy running down the road, the middle of the high street, legging, and then suddenly two policemen running down the road again. And then there were cars coming and the sirens and everything. And we just had a cup of tea and thought, “Yeah, normal life around here.” Anyways, so I used to get paid about 53 pounds, I think for every time I opened up. And then for emergency fees. And at the end of it, we were paid, I think as SHOs about 26, 27, 000 pounds a year. And I made more than that from doing all the jobs on the Saturdays and the on calls, et cetera when I came away, plus my FTS and everything. So it worked. And then I went to the Eastman. Before I went to the Eastman-

Payman L.: No, wait. At what point did it turn from being, It sounds like you were pretty energetic young house officer willing to work all the time. By the way, I did the house job. I was in for a minute consider working on top of that house job. So well done. But no, at what point did you realise that this James who is my boss has actually a lot more going on here than just, he’s got three practises within, when did the funding round start? Were you involved in any of that acquisition?

Anil Shrestha: Oh yeah, we were involved. We were entertaining all of the venture capitalists, we were entertaining the [inaudible] bank.

Payman L.: When did it go from being the guy who covers the phones or drink-

Anil Shrestha: When I saw him again next. So I left the job in South Wales, went back up to the northeast, spent six years in NHS and private practises, did all my exams, et cetera. I’d applied then to get to go and study in the states and I’d got an offer to go to Ohio to study prosthodontics. So I was in northeast and so during this period I lost contact with James and when I got the offer plus an offer for application for a scholarship from the dean in Ohio, I told my wife and I remember, and this is an important lesson in life actually, I remember saying, “Oh my God, we’re going to go to Ohio.” I’d saved up 60, 000 pounds and which is more than enough, back in the mid nights working, I was always very good at putting money away, et cetera, and I knew what I needed to plan for.

Anil Shrestha: I remember she was a bit upset. So I spoke to her about an hour later. I said, oh, she was happy, but I knew that something’s wrong, when you know somebody really well. And I said, “Listen, what’s the matter?” And she said, “I’m pregnant.” And it took me too long, one second. It took me one second to say to her, “Fantastic.” Because she said, sorry. I think just going back a step, she said, “I’m pregnant, but I don’t want to go to the states and have the baby.” And I knew that she’d be alone there, we had everything here, and that one second was that one second too long. And I said, “That’s fantastic, we’re not going to go to the states. Never mind.” Because I realised then family and babies and everything else are more important. And like I said to you, cream’s always gonna rise to the top. And I thought I’m going to have to another way. And I just literally gave up the idea of going to the states.

Payman L.: But there was a piece of you that was shattered there.

Anil Shrestha: For a split second. This was because what I realised, and I learned this a while ago when I went to Nepal, I trained with the Nepalese police forces and I spent several weeks out in the forest fighting ex Gurkhas, learning not how to fight, but learning to control anger and fear. What I mean by that is I learned to create a distance between an action and a reaction because that’s small space between an action and reaction is the time you need to think rationally. It’s a split second and it allows me to keep composure. So going back again to how you deal with problems in life, you mustn’t react. You must create a distance because that defines how you think.

Anil Shrestha: And so that’s what happened when I took too long to allay my wife’s fears, we had the baby and you just find another way. You don’t be despondent, you don’t think, “Oh, I’m shattered,” because that’s not the way to react in life. And, so I found a way into the Eastman, went to the Eastman, started a programme there under Derek [inaudible 00:33:52]. Did very well, and within the first few weeks, James Hull appeared back into my life because he was there sitting at Derek’s office, in the process of buying Eastman ICD one, two, three down the road.

Payman L.: Oh, I see. So you went with him throughout that process.

Anil Shrestha: So, that was when he first bought the Eastman ICD. This was before, then escalated and you’re talking about when it really paying big. And so I said, “Hi, how are you?” Et cetera. And I remember Derek was a bit suspicious of him. He said to me afterwards, he said, “listen.” And he said, “Well, if Anil thinks you’re a good guy, then there must be something about you.” He still thought you was not to be trusted. And James approached me and he said, “Listen,” he said, “I’m pleased to seeing you again.” He said, “I’m about to take over one, two, three.

Anil Shrestha: I want you to come and work for me there.” I said, “I haven’t finished my programme yet.” He said [inaudible 00:34:42], and do you know what he offered me? He said, “I want you to do the on-calls there, because we’ve just started [inaudible] probably, I’m not kidding you man. He gave me a mobile phone. He paid me 50 pounds a week I think it was. And actually it was more than that. Let’s not talk figures anyway. He paid me to hold on that phone, take emergency. Do you know how many emergencies I saw in my one year when I was doing my MSC?

Payman L.: Go on

Anil Shrestha: One, and that patient still comes to see me now. So I was paid to hold his phone. I was able to then use it to call anyone I wanted to, but I didn’t overuse it or abuse it. And I never let go of it-

Prav Solanki: We used to have [inaudible] phone back in the day.

Payman L.: [inaudible]

Prav Solanki: Remember those?

Payman L.: No.

Prav Solanki: No?

Anil Shrestha: The old Nokias.

Prav Solanki: It might be another thing. You basically, you go and pick, buy a phone off somebody, you’ll never get a phone bill, but you [inaudible] it.

Anil Shrestha: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: [crosstalk]

Payman L.: Right, fair enough.

Anil Shrestha: And then, the funny thing is that, I was in touch with him then and I watched this when ICD struggled to develop and before I qualified at the Eastman, Crispin Scalia called me into his office. I barely knew the bloke obviously, but he was an awesome figure. And he said, “Anil.” He said, because there are only few people in each programme. He said, “Have you thought about having an academic career here?” And I was very flattered and honoured and I had, I thought that’s what I wanted to do. He offered me, he said, “When you finish,” and this was before I even finished, he said, “Of course you’ll have to work as a lecturer, build up to senior lecturer within five years you could be a senior lecturer and then PHD et cetera. He was trying to accelerate me onto a PHD programme, get your chair. And I went back to James Hull because I saw him later on that week and I told him about this and he said, “No.”

Anil Shrestha: He said, “Listen,” he said, “I need you to look after the Eastman private practise.” He said, “I’m going to offer you substantially more, five times more. As a retainer and I’m going to offer you 45% of all your specialists fees and anything else that you need.” And he gave me some things which weren’t on offer to anyone else like removal fees, paid for rent for a flat for a year, offered to gite my wife [crosstalk]

Payman L.: Made you an offer you couldn’t refuse basically.

Prav Solanki: Really [inaudible]

Anil Shrestha: Absolutely, he did, because he knew how to look after his best guys. And there were a small group of us that he looked after very well and he was a difficult businessman, but he was also very generous and very, to the few of the people that he knew. And that’s the way that you needed to be. And I stayed with him from 2000 to 2011 until he sold. And during that time, within the next few years, he then opened up the specialist practise in Birmingham, which was supposed to be a mirror of the Eastman ICD in London, and he couldn’t find anyone to look after it. So, again, I said, “Well I’ll go up there.” I was going to be at Eastman ICD in London for two years. I was going through my divorce at this time.

Anil Shrestha: Now I see this, this is the [crosstalk 00:37:48]. And so, I ended up spending two, three days in Birmingham, two, three days in London. I had a place in both. I was going through a divorce. And within the first year we made the Birmingham and practise, which was his biggest concern because it was going to be a big white elephant. It literally was a bicycle shop before he converted it. We had no presence there. I knew no one in the West Midlands. But he thought, good, industrious, young Asian Guy, a cake gregarious, go out, go and meet everyone. And I did, I started writing to everyone, I started to meet loads of people. I’ve got so many friends in the West Midlands now and they started referring to me.

Anil Shrestha: They could see my work, and now that’s really the crux of a good referral practise. That you produce work, you communicate with your referring dentists, they see the work because it always has to go back here. And then, it just built up in the first year, it became the most successful practise in the James Hull Group. Because it went from zero to a profit. It really proved my worth in the company and I stayed there and it became part of my own character within the company. So I’ve always realised that even if you work for somebody else, whether it’s an associate like I did, whether it’s private or whether it’s NHS, the most successful people in practise are the ones that take responsibility.

Anil Shrestha: The most successful associates are the ones that treat the practise as if it was their own, as if they actually owned it. That doesn’t mean usurping whoever’s in charge, but actually taking ownership. I would clean toilets, I would dust, I would do the maintenance, take apart chairs, et cetera, whatever it needed, even if it wasn’t for my own patient. The associates that didn’t do well and the ones that we had difficulties with, because I used to troubleshoot for the group for, a few of us did but not just clinical cases but also, having mentors as well.

Payman L.: How many practises were there?

Anil Shrestha: I think ultimately there were about 86 at the peak, and there was a big process of acquisition. So I think really the group grew organically until about 20, 25 practises when I believe that the business direction probably changed and James was then ready to sell. And up to that point it was actually one of the best practises, best groups to work for. And James Hull Associates was always known at that point as being the corporate-

Prav Solanki: The private corporate-

Anil Shrestha: The private corporate that really pushed quality and comradery and everyone loved being there.

Prav Solanki: Going back to your divorce, it was one of the lowest points in your life.

Anil Shrestha: Protracted lowest points. It took years.

Prav Solanki: And you said, you mentioned earlier that it naturally came to an end. [crosstalk]

Anil Shrestha: I think the relationship, yeah.

Prav Solanki: And you both knew that at the time or?

Anil Shrestha: Yeah we did and we both tried to make things work but you see when a child’s involved, then that puts a completely different perspective on things.

Prav Solanki: And so I come from, my parents divorced from a young age, and I think certainly learning from that, I know that the biggest impact is on the kids. You really feel it. And for me, my parents weren’t amicable. That made things even harder. What was your thought process going through all of that and what have you learned about relationships since your divorce that you could maybe pass on to people like?

Payman L.: Yeah, how have you managed to stay amicable?

Anil Shrestha: It wasn’t amicable for a year or two.

Payman L.: Oh, It wasn’t.

Anil Shrestha: But, every divorce goes through that. No divorce is easy. Both our priorities were for Maya. Ask me to give you advice, then I can’t. And I never give advice, especially on relationships. The reason is that everyone has their own perspectives on, and their own emotions that no one else can understand-

Payman L.: Totally.

Anil Shrestha: … not even their closest people. But what I do do, is people know what my experiences were and how they interpret that is up to them. And there’s always a lesson that can be learned from things like that. So it was just a tough time Prav. It was difficult because, my daughter appears to be well balanced. I speak to her every day. I speak to my ex wife every few days or so. We get on, I keep a distance, a respectful distance obviously now because I’m remarried. But my daughter is still my primary concern as is my new daughter now who is only 10 months old.

Anil Shrestha: So you learn to prioritise and as in where they are in their different stages of life and you’re still there as a father, you’re still there supporting them. But for both of us, it was important that she was fine. And it’s just really that the relationship between us is ex husband, ex-wife, and finding a happy medium in between where we could both get on again, but with separate lives, that took a while to establish.

Prav Solanki: Did you ever have any period of time where perhaps you went without seeing your daughter when you wanted to or anything like that or was it always only amicable from that front?

Anil Shrestha: Maya was always accessible to us both. And the reason that… re married or got into any serious relationships over a period of 17 years while she was growing up and to the point where I met Ana, was because I felt a real sense of duty to her. And people that are very close to me know that because they’ve known me during that period. Even some of my referring dentists while I was in Birmingham, and I’m a private man. You’re asking me some very intimate questions today. I don’t mind relaying this to you and your listeners because I think there may be a lesson for people to take from there, what they interpret from it is up to them. But I don’t mind opening up to you because you know, this is my story.

Anil Shrestha: It was a time that, I’ve been through many times in my head now and I’m happy that my daughter is doing very well. She’s always kept a good relationship with both of us. There was never a time when she was pulled away from either us because we both had our priorities for her. So in that respect, I’m very grateful to my ex wife and I can only remain as a father that will always support my daughter and give the kind consideration to my ex wife.

Prav Solanki: Very admirable of you to shape your life around your daughter’s future and age because I don’t think many people would. A lot of people live lives for ourselves. And I think what you’ve done there is really special and I just want to say thank you for sharing that story with us. It really is.

Anil Shrestha: It has been my pleasure.

Prav Solanki: Yeah. Because having been through that myself as a child, I wasn’t exposed to that. And it does impact the way you grow up, your perception, your outlook of life.

Anil Shrestha: So you see this will resonate with you then, you’ll understand this. See I’m sure as a father you understand how I feel as well. But I’ve never let it deter me from my passion, which has always kept me focused. I’ve learned a lesson as I told you earlier on, on how to remain focused with my way of remaining [inaudible] which is self-discipline, I hope people pick up on that. And it will not stop me in the future because, I’m still passionate about dentistry, I still want to continue doing what I want to do. And, sharing this passion, and I love seeing people around me just share that same passion and develop and opening doors for them as I say.

Payman L.: So we can’t have an interview with an old Chester and not talk about Mike Wise’s practise. It’s amazing It’s taken this long to get to this point. But the undisputed top dentist Britain’s ever produced-

Anil Shrestha: Well I’ll tell you a story about-

Payman L.: How do you go about buying up, I’m guessing it wasn’t on the Frank Taylor.

Anil Shrestha: Absolutely not. People that knew Mike Wise, and I didn’t know him, I have to say came. I got to know him very well, to people that knew him knew that he wouldn’t sell to anyone. I know James Hull offered him a big seven figure sum and he laughed at him because he knew that he didn’t want to taken over by corporate. And what actually happened was in 2011 after James Hull had pretty much been out of the picture for a few years and we’d left the company taken over, I thought, well I thought I’d go back into academia. I thought I’d go either back to the Eastman or go abroad or go and study again because I just wanted to get back into teaching and research, which I had a real passion for.

Anil Shrestha: And about four months after leaving James Hull, and I was comfortable. I’d looked off for money and I’d made sure that everyone was well looked after and I thought, “Yeah, I’m happy.” I was always going to do okay. And then I’ve got a phone call representing Mike Wise, met up with them and they said, Dr. Wise wants to meet you. And I thought he’d had already retired. He was literally out of the picture. I remember he was ill for a number of years and his practise was literally folding because he was only there part time to meet him. I’d only ever seen him lecture once. I’d read his book obviously. His lecture showed some great but exotic dentistry and I thought, “Yeah, it’s interesting.” I liked the kind of work you did because it really reflects what I do, which is complex remedial rehabilitation work.

Anil Shrestha: Said my wife Anna tells me that I’m a troubleshooter in dentistry. I deal with complex remedial rehabilitations. I do all of the restorative, I do all of the surgery, all of the grafting, et cetera. And I work on really difficult patients who have emotional issues as well as complex written or restorative issues. So that I knew it was very similar. But other than that I didn’t know the guy. And within about half an hour of sitting with him in his office, So I really liked this bloke. I couldn’t figure out why immigrant from Nepali couldn’t speak the language and had studied dentistry and is passionate about it, could have anything in common with who I regarded as a god of dentistry. We spent a lot of time talking about family. We spent a lot of time talking about music, about lives in dentistry and very little talking about actual dentistry, and very in fact, almost nothing about buying and selling the practise.

Anil Shrestha: And I thought I liked this bloke, but you know, the interesting thing was I was thinking, “How does this guy know so much about me?” Because as you will know, I keep a low profile in dentistry, you find it very difficult to find out stuff about me. People in dentistry that know dentistry and know me, know me. This guy was asking me things about myself that you just couldn’t even google. And while he was sitting, he’s a tall guy, he had a thin file sitting on his lap and I realised that was on me. And that reflected the way that he was because he was so meticulous about everything. He researched everything. So we came to the point where he was discussing selling the practise and he basically asked me if I would consider taking over the practise and it wasn’t a thought that I’d had in my mind.

Anil Shrestha: I’d never really knew the west end apart from when James took over Lister House. I didn’t even know that Mike worked on the fifth floor and I had no intention of becoming a western practitioner. I literally intended to go into academia to find a place in the Eastman. I’d run a Master’s programme at University of Central Lancashire, developed and written arts certificate and diploma programme. Therefore, when they asked me, I had a bit of knowledge about these things and-

Payman L.: What’s it that made you flip your decision from becoming an academic to buying this practise? Did you think [crosstalk] this opportunity’s never going to come again?

Anil Shrestha: That’s a very good question but, as I was leaving the practise, he was at the lift and he asked me a question, which I knew that he’d definitely done research on me. He asked me what my experiences were in treating the Nepalese royal family, and I couldn’t talk about that because they’re not my patients anymore because they’d been deposed. And I thought, “Where did he learn this from?” And within about half an hour of me leaving Lister house, a phone call from one of my old tutors who I knew was one of his close friends, he said, “How did it go?” And I said, “How did you know I was here, Malcolm?” And, he said, “Oh.” It became obvious that he had obviously contacted people who had taught me, who knew me, et cetera. And he had done his background checks. And then I went away, thought about it and actually rang my ex wife who’d known me since before I was a dentist, and told her what had happened and said you can’t turn it down. Really can you? When God offers you his a practise, you shouldn’t say no.

Anil Shrestha: So, I went back, saw him again a few times and the interesting thing about him is he insisted when I agreed, that I spend three months with him. He did a proper handover. It wasn’t just a case of, yeah, take over and sign here and I’m off. He said, “I need you to see these patients care.” And he would call patients from all over the world. I met [inaudible] came from India, from Saudi, from parts of the country, et cetera, from Europe, Geneva. And he would call them over and we’d spend about half an hour talking a case. He would introduce me to the patients. I remember he introduced me to a patient that I don’t see, a young Saudi prince and the prince said, “But Dr. Wise I want to see you.” And Michael put his arm around me and in front of him and his entourage and said, “But this is the next Michael Wise.” And I thought that was a real honour and never looked back after that.

Payman L.: Good on him.

Anil Shrestha: You know he’s a real gentlemen, absolutely.

Prav Solanki: What I find amazing about that story is whenever you buy a business, you do the due diligence on the business. But Michael Wise was doing the due diligence on you. It was almost like a privilege-

Anil Shrestha: Oh it was absolutely a privilege, I was honoured.

Prav Solanki: Buying his business, unbelievable.

Anil Shrestha: That’s exactly what it was and-

Prav Solanki: Unbelievable.

Anil Shrestha: … I tell you, I met a few people who had been in negotiations with him and Michael, his primary concern was finding somebody who would look after his patients the way he wanted. He spent four years trying to find that person-

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Anil Shrestha: … and he would quite literally have just folded up shop as my accountant said, because he deals with a lot of world-class doctors and dentists up and down the Holly Street area. And he says there are some people who they can’t find somebody to look after their patients the way they want to, just like Michael. And it’s literally a case of, “Okay, thank you. Elvis has left the building.” And they just shut up and they just think, “Great. I’ve had a wonderful career. I’m off now, and to let the patients fend for themselves. Michael’s main concern was always looking at finding somebody to look after his patients and he felt that I could, very honoured that I’m in that position-

Payman L.: Does the practise have regular patients like as we would think of them, six months, three core regular people or Is it all?

Anil Shrestha: Yes, but there are patients that have been there a long time or there are patients that have seen me from places and I see patients that have come, followed me from-

Payman L.: [crosstalk] people who have Mike Wise as their six month recall dentist that used to go for examinations from him.

Anil Shrestha: Many of them actually left with the [inaudible] because many of them used to see the [inaudible] more than they saw Michael. So Michael would only see them maybe to year or so. So when she left then many of them followed on. But, as I’ve always firmly believed, a good dentist is always busy. The patients recognise you, your peers recognise you. And so, I’ve attracted, I’ve always been busy there and many of his patients have left, a number of state, quite a significant number and prominent people as well. And the practise has grown through word of mouth. So, I’ve always been-

Payman L.: If you had to split your work in percentage terms, how much of it is, implantology, how much of it is straight aesthetic dentistry, how much of it is, restorative rehab type stuff or I know it’s all mixed together as well in some cases but-

Anil Shrestha: So that’s a good question as well. So last year, because I audit every week and at the end of every year, it’s [inaudible 00:53:36]. Last year I started 19 full mouth rehabs. That’s enough to keep me working for at least another, in fact you’ve been to the practise, you’ve seen my lists. I’ve actually, that’s enough to keep me working for another two, three years and I get new patients with stuff like that. I have to pick and choose very carefully. I teach at the Royal London, I teach in the prosthodontics specialist training programme as one of the clinical tutors. And I say to these guys, “Listen, you really need to learn all of the academic stuff as well as the clinical stuff in the clinics very well, but what you learn to be able to work, people like me being able to rebuild a whole mouth, reconstruct a whole mouth, not just anterior cases, not just beautiful preps, but rebuilding a whole mouth and reorganising inclusions, including doing the grafting and the implants, which is the majority of my work.”

Anil Shrestha: Restorative in implants, it’s only 50% of what you actually need to master. The other 50% is being able to be empathetic and looking after these patients because I have patients who have certified post-traumatic stress disorder, several of them. I have patients who are incredibly difficult to manage who you just have to understand them, you have to be empathetic, but you also have to be in command. I have patients who’ve walked out the door who’ve had so much trauma that they’ve become alcoholics from the previous traumas they’ve had. I’ve had a patient who I had to [inaudible] because she literally left and she was so emotional, revisited past traumas that police had to take her into their custody.

Anil Shrestha: 50% of that work is not actually clinical dentistry, It’s the management of the patients. And I think that reflects what Michael was saying. His patients were not easy. He used to pick and choose his patients. I’ve heard it said that he used to say, but he didn’t say it to me. His practise was based not on the patients he used to treat, the very famous ones, et cetera, but the patients he didn’t treat, because he knew how to select them.

Payman L.: Yeah, well I was gonna ask you that question. So in your position, you must come across a bunch of people who their problem is more, let’s call it psychological than dental.

Anil Shrestha: I’d say it forms a significant part.

Payman L.: Yeah, the question I was going to ask is how often do you refuse treatment based on those grounds, where you can tell this person’s thinking, the treatment you are going to provide is going to be the answer to all of their problems. Whereas their problems are actually nothing to do with their mouth over all, their problems are deeper. Do you have to refuse treatment, could you spot those patients or have you had the-

Anil Shrestha: Yes.

Payman L.: … one way you didn’t spot it and it came back to bite you?

Anil Shrestha: And yes. But-

Payman L.: Does it happen a lot?

Anil Shrestha: No.

Payman L.: No?

Anil Shrestha: No, you know to do the work I do, you actually have to have a particular character. This is what Anna says. My wife Anna has own practise in Holly Street and she is very astute, she has been in the west end for 13 years, 14 years now. And she says, you need to be very careful about who you take on. And she also says the work you do, you have to have a particular character because there are at least three, four people that I know very well who can do what I do technically. But we all have our own characters. And so we all attracted different types of patients. And again, another thing that I’ve learned is that you attract the patients that you deserve-

Payman L.: That’s true.

Anil Shrestha: … It reflects you.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Payman L.: That’s very true. Yeah.

Anil Shrestha: And so, I’m very careful, but you still-

Payman L.: It’s something that you got to look out for-

Anil Shrestha: Absolutely.

Payman L.: … In your position particularly.

Anil Shrestha: Very much so.

Payman L.: A lot of people will gravitate to you thinking you’re the answer to their problems.

Anil Shrestha: Yeah. And you need to know what your limitations are. I work with people, when I need to refer, I refer, believe it or not. I’m not the answer-

Payman L.: That’s interesting. Go on.

Anil Shrestha: Oh no, I have people-

Payman L.: In the first year and then you refer on a bit of it that you know.

Anil Shrestha: As in part of the overall holistic specialist programme of treatments. So if there’s a case, one of my very good friends and mentors is Mr Stephen Dover, who if you’ll know, very famous craniofacial surgeon in the West Midlands. He handled some of my most difficult to grafting cases, he is maxfax surgeon, very famous. And if i feel that somebody will be better managed in his hands, then I will ask him to do that part of the treatment. I’ll be there with him and he does it. And he says to me quite often, he says, “Anil you could do this.” I said, “Yes, I know, but you’ll do it better, even if it’s only 15, 20, 30, 40% better, but you’ll also be able to manage it better.” It’s only sharing the responsibility. If I think that somebody can do better ortho-

Payman L.: Yes, you can’t be a master of everything and-

Anil Shrestha: Absolutely not. And it reflects back again to the point about, what I learned from going on other courses. I learned a lot, and I’ll see people and I think, “Yeah, great.” But I have a multidisciplinary approach to all my treatments, so I’ve got a great orthodontist, a few good endodontists-

Payman L.: What made you think you could fill Mike Wise’s shoes?

Anil Shrestha: I didn’t.

Payman L.: I don’t mean that, I’m not saying the audacity of it, but-

Anil Shrestha: No.

Payman L.: But a lot of people would be scared of-

Anil Shrestha: I got that a lot.

Payman L.: … I would worry myself. I’m by no means that doctor, but if I was that doctor, I would worry that the referring dentists who used to refer to Mike Wise, will now compare, and of course I’d worry that I’m not going to be the same as [crosstalk]

Anil Shrestha: After I tell you what my biggest worry was-

Payman L.: What is in your character that made you handle that?

Anil Shrestha: I’ll go back slightly. My biggest concern about taking over the Mike Wise practise was, not the fact that I couldn’t do the work. He didn’t worry about it, I didn’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have been there if he thought that I couldn’t clinically do the work. My biggest concern was could I run a single handed practise having spent almost all of my professional career working in hospitals or working as an associate, admittedly in one of the best corporates at the time. I’d never done that before-

Payman L.: Interesting that that was your worry.

Anil Shrestha: No, it was. And I told my accountant the same thing. I said, “Listen, I have a five year plan. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll have burnt this money and then it’s fine.” I’ve still got plan B et cetera, I can go off, I can pay the whole practise off through return of all of my income within three years. My accountant couldn’t believe he said in the first year he said, “I’ve very rarely seen a western practise turn a net profit in year one, let alone year three, four, five and six and seven.” And it’s always run well. I’ve always done well, but that was my biggest concern. Would it work or wouldn’t it work? And again, I planned for it, I thought, well, okay, maybe it won’t work.

Prav Solanki: Anil, you’ve gone from employee to business owner overnight and become a success. How? What’s your secret? Is it just pure graft like from your earlier days, James Hull gives you a phone, hands you a set of keys and between doing martial arts and running your day job, weekends and nights, you’re just grafting, grafting, grafting. What is it within you that enabled you to, there’s people out there who are seasoned business owners with multiple practise, couldn’t achieve what you’ve done. But how did you do it?

Anil Shrestha: I’m passionate about dentistry and I’m focused. There’s always a structured plan. If you ask James Hull’s wife, she always used to laugh and she said, “Anil, you’ve always got a plan A, B, and C.” I always do. And it’s like a matrix that keeps changing. So when something comes up, you need to change it. It’s like when I was very young when I first came to this country. I would see, and it wasn’t a pleasant time at the time, when you’d come from the background I had to suddenly being one of the only immigrants in the school or whatever. And basically, you knew where you wanted to go. You’d see glass ceilings or you’d see doors that were shut. So the glass ceiling, I’d either swim around it or I’d go through it.

Anil Shrestha: I’d always make sure that I was focused to go through it or find a way around. I knew where I wanted to be and I always knew that if an opportunity, if a door shot like Ohio, that I would not take it personally. I would just think, “Okay, what’s the way around it? What’s plan B?” And the self discipline that I mastered from a very early age allowed me to focus, like you Prav. I tell you why. I know a bit about you. A lot of people do. Every morning I get up at five o’clock, I’m out of bed by 5:15. I’ll meditate for half an hour. Then I work for about an hour or so. And then I go to the gym, I go to a boxing class, I go to Anthony Joshua’s gym, if you’re going to learn something, you’re going learn it from the best place. Admittedly, it’s the Marylebone gym, but these are already, it’s not for the fainthearted.

Anil Shrestha: And then I get to work. And then when I’m at work, I work. If somebody wants to have a chat with me, if somebody wants to waste my time, then don’t. When you’re at work, you work. Then I get home and I spend time with my baby, put her to sleep. Then I work, then I sleep and I’m usually trying to get to bed about 10 usually get, realistically, I’ll get about five or six hours sleep. And I need to make sure that I feed well, I sleep well and I’m focused-

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Anil Shrestha: And so maybe that’s what it is.

Prav Solanki: Discipline, structure, yeah.

Anil Shrestha: But you see I’m passionate about it and that’s the key. There’s no point having discipline and structure unless you found something that you really like. So when I see it in younger dentists, then all I’m trying to do is just push them in slightly the right direction.

Payman L.: If your daughter was a dentist qualifying now, what advice would you give them about [crosstalk] which way to go?

Anil Shrestha: It’s a fantastic profession, especially for women. We talk about how dentistry has changed and it’s not the same as when we first qualified 20 or 25 years ago. We say it’s harder and these are the golden days. But the reality is 25 years ago, it was bloody hard then as well. And it always is, and that’s why you’ve got to keep a reality on, a reality check. Because everyone’s saying, “Oh, it’s so difficult now,” et cetera. We are regulated now beyond reason so we say. But it’s a natural evolution of the regulatory process and we say that social media has now become evolved to the point where everyone needs to Instagram, et cetera, cane. And you see people that do extremely well out of it. People like the lovely girls that you’ve had, that are instagraming all day-

Payman L.: Slay [inaudible 01:04:01].

Anil Shrestha: This [inaudible] is amazing. She’s literally got it, so she’s super bright. I remember speaking to [inaudible 01:04:10], another person I really admire, she came to see me just after she qualified. We were put in touch by somebody mutual and she was asking me for professional advice and it was a bit like talking to [inaudible] as well. Lovely meeting you and all. What advice can you give me? And you very quickly see through both of them that not only are they passionate, but they’re creating a pathway that I could never imagine. I said to both especially [inaudible] “Listen, you’re going to be doing things that I couldn’t even think were possible or have been given an opportunity to do.” She’s become an amazing superstar so is he. Who ever thought that, being able to sing as a dentist and rap et cetera would bring him to the kind of for that he was having-

Payman L.: Like what we’re doing right now.

Anil Shrestha: Podcasting, what’s this about-

Payman L.: Was this even possible when we qualified, was it?

Anil Shrestha: I’ve done so many interviews and everything else. I’m sitting here with you two guys and I know we’re having such a great time talking about, quite deep things actually. I’ve just realised that what you mentioned the gotten me, you guys, man.

Payman L.: Just, I’ve got a question for you. Your last day on this planet, there’s three things that people can take away about you. What three things do you want to leave behind as your legacy? Three pieces of advice, three things that you want people to remember you by. What are those?

Anil Shrestha: Okay, so two of them definitely relate to dentistry. One of the things as well, but find your passion. Commit to excel. Don’t ever let anything, this is all part of the same point. Don’t ever let anything hold you back. Nothing in your past should hold you back in life to be an up and down all the time. And find peers that will help bring you to a level that you want to be at. And if you ever see things like doors that shut or glass ceilings, find a way to break through or go around. The second thing is learn how to control yourself and remain focused. Learn the art of self discipline. Self discipline is the ability to get up and do what you need to do when you need to do it, even when you don’t want to do it. The third thing, last thing is, man just enjoy yourself. So short is life. And-

Payman L.: See for me this self discipline thing and the enjoy yourself thing don’t seem to work together.

Anil Shrestha: Oh, they do. There is so much about, no. [crosstalk] That’s a good point. You may get the impression that all I do is work and train. No. Again, especially since having found love again, and with my beautiful wife Anna and for her to say to me, “Look, let’s go and explore.” We travel all the time. We go to see different art galleries, we read history together, go to the ballet with the opera. She just shows me a different perspective in life. And now we have my beautiful baby Nika that’s 10 months now. She just brought another flower into my life. It’s just amazing.

Prav Solanki: How is it different second time round?

Anil Shrestha: So much more in control. So it’s so much more settled. Everything is, it’s not easier because having a child is never easy. But it’s almost like a having a gift again, it’s almost like somebody saying, practise is going to be left to you from Mike Wise’s. It’s just like being, “Wow, you just won the lottery” and it’s-

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Anil Shrestha: And you create these opportunities. I’m telling you, this isn’t the case of me being lucky. I remember where I came from. I remember everything is taken away. You’ve recreated all of this. Nothing I’ve got up to this point in my life has been just handed to me. It’s all being created and you can create that.

Payman L.: What’s suppose the best advice anyone’s given you and who was that person?

Anil Shrestha: Very interesting. Astute question. I’ve always realised that I don’t actually have real mentors in my life. I’ve had people who I’ve admired certain facets from and everything that I am now is just a-

Payman L.: Amalgamation.

Anil Shrestha: … amalgamation of everything. I couldn’t answer that simply.

Payman L.: [inaudible]

Prav Solanki: So back to my last question, which was if today was your last day, something to remember you by, what would that be?

Anil Shrestha: Live by my motto or at least take a lesson from it and that’s it. You should squeeze the life out of life.

Prav Solanki: Beautiful.

Payman L.: I had to know if it is but [crosstalk 01:08:30].

Prav Solanki: That’s nice. Anil thank you so much, so much.

Anil Shrestha: It’s been a pleasure. Honestly, I’ve really enjoyed today, thank you.

Payman L.: Thanks for sharing with us what you did.

Speaker 4: 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.

 

Transcript

Payman: Hi Guys, welcome to the Dental Leaders Podcast. Today’s guest is Simon Chard, a real rising star. I’ve known him since he was undergrad, Prav.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Payman: Yeah. Student Rep at PACD and even then, he had a presence, but so lovely to see him go from strength to strength and now becoming an international lecturer coming from a family of dentists and how he’s taking his practise to the next level. Just a super impressive guy.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, I mean, my takeaways from this was that you see Simon on Instagram and there’s this persona that’s built up about this guy-

Payman: You hadn’t met him before, had you?

Prav Solanki: I hadn’t met Simon before, no. So I really wasn’t sure what to expect, and I truly believe this in person, right? You have engagement on social media with somebody, when you meet them, it’s completely different to what you expect, right? And that was also the case with Simon. He’s very polished, he’s incredibly well presented, he’s always immaculately groomed, right? But, underneath the depth of that, what a lovely person and he let into some of the things that worry him before giving a presentation and how everything that he does is built out of practise, practise, practise and perfection, and the tweaks he makes to his presentations and the way that social media’s affected him as a person, right? The comments, the things like that.

Payman: With someone like Simon, just because of the way he comes across and the way he looks and dresses, you could be forgiven for thinking he’s an arrogant person.

Prav Solanki: Far from it. Far from it.

Payman: But he’s actually the opposite, really actually a really humble, down to earth guy you’d want to have a beer with, and that’s always lovely to see when you’ve got one view of what the guy’s going to be like, but as I say, I’ve known him for a while, so it was interesting to see your reflections on it first time you-

Prav Solanki: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect, right? And you always build up these preconceptions. What a lovely, lovely guy. Guys, you’re going to really enjoy this interview.

Payman: Yeah, enjoy it guys.

Simon: I remember seeing her, she was in a blue shirt, black waistcoat, glasses and pigtails, and yeah, I spotted her out of the crowd and then actually we went out that night and we started chatting and the rest is history.

Payman: Wow.

Simon: And, I had a girlfriend at the time.

Payman: Oh!

Speaker 3: 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.

Payman: It’s good to have you, Simon. Thanks for coming down. Been looking forward to this one, and Prav’s been particularly looking forward to-

Prav Solanki: Absolutely.

Payman: … talking. You guys ever met before?

Prav Solanki: No, first time.

Simon: First Time.

Payman: It’s all right.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: How have you managed that? You stopped coming to events, obviously.

Simon: I have, I have.

Payman: He was a regular, he used to be an absolute regular at-

Prav Solanki: Every event.

Payman: … of the ACD, AC.

Simon: Yeah, yeah. Then I got married and that was it, Game over.

Payman: I think we met at the ACD once.

Prav Solanki: I think we met at showcase.

Payman: RAD?

Prav Solanki: Showcase.

Payman: Yeah. So it’s actually really nice to have you here rather than that one of those events because, wanted to have more of an in depth conversation. Your persona, your status in Dentistry’s just going from strength to strength. Is that something that you’ve been working on actively or feels a little bit about that. I mean, you’re only, what, qualified?

Simon: Six years.

Payman: Six years, and I came to you and when was it? We talked recently and I said, “it’s interesting you won the generation.” I said. Not that it’s a competition, but it’s very impressive, very impressive where you’ve come. I mean, it feels like you’ve been around for ages and then that’s a compliment, I guess to it, but that’s an active process.

Simon: I guess it’s a bit of both. I think that I have a very Type A driven personality and that pushes me to just say yes to everything, and I think the more things you say yes to, the more opportunities come your way and that just will naturally, I guess increase your profile. I think I got lucky in a few things. I got lucky in the fact that I was thrown into Digital Dentistry as soon as I got out of VT, became my niche. I got lucky that I was exposed to Tif Qureshi on dentaltown.com when I was a third year undergraduate and I’ve got him into uni to do a lecture and then he pushed me into the BACD and that’s obviously been a big part of my career.

Simon: But yeah, I mean certainly it’s something that I worked very hard on and as the social media thing has become bigger and bigger and bigger, again, that’s something that has always been a part of my career for better or for worse. It’s certainly something that I think is a double edged sword, but it’d been a big part of my career to date and it’s something that I’m putting a lot of effort into now because I see that it’s going to continue to get bigger and bigger, whether it’s the platforms that we’re currently talking about or whether it moves into a different space, I don’t know, but I do know that it’s the modern arena, both within professionals and also with regards to how we communicate with our patients.

Payman: Yeah, but I mean, from my perspective, there’s people who qualified with you in your year who are busy being dentists, treating patient and you’re looking at teaching, you’re looking at influence the work, the keeping a leader work and so on. Is that something to do with the fact that your dad was a dentist and you try, and move it forward from there, or what is it about you that makes you look at that sort of stuff at such a young age?

Simon: Well, yes. I think my parents both being dentists means that I can’t, and I didn’t go into Dentistry to start with, I just did a degree before Dentistry, so a lot of people realise. I actually didn’t want to do what my parents did because someone told me when I was 16 that you should do with your parents do, and that stuck in my head. We can talk about that later, but I think since getting involved with industry, it’s become a complete obsession for me and I was chatting with Prav before, I’ve got quite an obsessive personality.

Simon: When I get into something, I get into it, I’m watching 18 YouTube videos a day on that specific topic and Dentistry is, luckily for me, one of those things that I am very obsessive about. I do love it and I know that’s really cliche by genuinely do love it and so that side of things, people have the misconception about me that I’m never in the clinic, I’m never doing any work, I’ve never seen my patients.

Simon: In general on a normal week, I’m in the clinic four days a week, but outside of that time, I like to diversify my career and just keep things fresh, I guess, and doing the lecturing is really fun, it’s something I love doing. I love sharing my passion with other dentists. It allows me to travel, it allows me to interact with other professionals and the influence of stuff is just something that’s just happened, really. It’s not something that I’ve actively engaged on. It’s just a product of the environment that I operate in, I think.

Payman: Yeah, I feel like you’ve carried off well, and I’m the first one to say that age isn’t a concern. We’ve been working with Depesh for five years now and only eight years out of university, but you carried off pretty well and it feels like you’ve thought of the I’s and crossed the T’s and it doesn’t feel like you’re still a young dentist, and sometimes I have to remind myself.

Simon: Yeah, I’m not that young anymore, mate.

Payman: Yeah, yeah. That’s because you did that, the degree.

Simon: I think the key thing for me, that the most important characteristic that I’ve tried to push out into the social environment is humility because I’m very aware of my inadequacies and the fact that I am young and the fact that I shouldn’t be out there saying I’m God’s gift to Dentistry or anything. So I think trying to be humble is the most important thing in the way that I carry myself, specifically online, and that’s why I never engage with anyone who wants to engage in a negative way on social media because there’s plenty of people wanting to engage with you negativity on social media. I’ve had people call me out for wearing too much Brylcreem and stuff like that. Dentists I’m talking about. Yeah. Not even just randomness, but-

Payman: I used to get that.

Simon: … but, yeah, I think that’s been the main pillar of, if you’re saying, how do I want other people to, I would like them to view me as humble because traditionally I’ve had a lot of people, for whatever reason, assume that I’m arrogant without actually giving me the opportunity to engage with them and interact with them.

Prav Solanki: I think you put yourself out there, no matter who you are, whether you come across as a Polish character, you’re obviously very successful at what you do, and people are going to take shots no matter you are or what you do and why the business you’re in. From your perspective, you say that what you want to get across is humility. What would you say your biggest weakness is, Simon?

Simon: Okay. My biggest weakness for myself is my thin skin. We talked about it before.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Simon: My anxiety, for me, is my weakness and my inability to control that because I’m a complete control freak. I like everything to be exactly where it should be. I like every element of my life, whether it be family, work, how I dress, how my health is, I want everything to be perfect, which is completely unrealistic and that drives me to be better in everything that I do.

Payman: Sure.

Simon: But naturally failure is present in everything, and so that generates a lot of anxiety for me at the same time in the fact that when things don’t go right, I get very anxious about it.

Prav Solanki: And so, have you got a particular example that you can share with us that has made you feel particularly anxious, maybe a comment on Instagram or on your social media that fired you up, or like you said earlier, you don’t respond to negativity, you hold back and cope with that in a certain way?

Simon: Yeah. I think the main negativity that I receive on social media is very rarely from the general public, even though I’m quite present with regards to the general public with a number of followers I have an Instagram and that sort of thing. I try to target my posts and my communications both towards professionals but also to the general public to help with communication with dentists and patients, but the main negativity that I’ve experienced on social media is from all the dentists trying to cut me down, I guess, is the best way to say it, for whatever reason.

Simon: There’s been, I can’t remember an exact specific right now, but whether it be my treatment planning, doing lecturing from such a young age was a big one, when I first started, I started lecturing on CyraCom Digital Dentistry after using it for two years full time. That wasn’t enough for some people, at that point, I was teaching on it in a very basic level.

Payman: Sure.

Simon: Basically this is how you use the machine, but-

Payman: How many years did you do get it, because one worries about two years out teaching.

Simon: Absolutely. I mean… I’ve been offered so many opportunities to talk on stuff that I don’t have sufficient knowledge on and my anxiety would not let me do that because if someone was to call me out… my constant worry is I’m going to get called out for not knowing enough.

Payman: Yeah.

Simon: Which is why I put so much effort into every single lecture I do, that if you speak to Megan, even now, every morning, if I’m lecturing on the day, I mark at 4:30 in the morning, put in the finishing touches to my lecture because I don’t think it’s good enough. I don’t think any of my lectures are good enough.

Payman: Even if you’ve delivered the same lecture before.

Simon: Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously the ones that I give more frequently, I’m much more comfortable with, but anything that is called advanced or, yeah, basically all the advanced stuff that I do because I now teach every single level to do with Digital Dentistry from non-user up to very, very experienced users.

Payman: Sure.

Simon: Especially when there’s an advanced element to it, even though I’ve given that exact lecture God knows how many times I will always be up adding a little bits, making sure everything is current, making sure everything’s fresh, because I’m constantly concerned that I’m going to get called out for not knowing enough.

Prav Solanki: Do you think you suffer from imposter syndrome where basically you feel that similarly, someone’s going to call you out and say, “Well, such a body does this better.” Or, “You’re inexperienced at this.” And so the typical example is you put a piece of content out then someone says, “Well, that’s not original, somebody else has said that, somebody else has done this.” And so you get up on stage and there’s that inbuilt fear that I’m actually a poster and somebody is going to catch me now.

Simon: Yeah, yeah. No, I definitely think like that from that. It’s not the way that I’ve looked at it before, but it’s definitely, that’s exactly how I feel.

Prav Solanki: Sure, and I guess that my take on that is certainly from your perspective as well, there is only one Simon Chard and there’s only one way that you deliver your content and there’s no one else who can deliver it the same way that you can, so.

Simon: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: I mean that’s my way of coping with it. When someone says, “Well, Prav I’ve heard such a body talk about customer journey or customer experience and this is my angle on it.” There’s only one way that this brown baldheaded Mancunian guy can deliver that, but there’s only one way that Simon Chard can deliver Digital Dentistry. No one else can deliver it like you.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely.

Prav Solanki: So that’s what I use as a coping mechanism, and I had the same fears and anxieties, right? Sometimes people say, “Oh, Prav, well, I’ve heard that before, or that’s not original and that’s not new, and that’s a way for me to cope with it.”

Payman: But we think about this a lot with Depesh’s course and Depesh has never been on a hands-on course himself.

Prav Solanki: Ever.

Payman: Yeah? And we’re now saying ever go on a hands-on course so all the content is his own.

Simon: Wow.

Payman: This is an interesting idea because often, even though you think it’s your own-

Prav Solanki: You’ll pick it up by osmosis, right?

Simon: Naturally.

Prav Solanki: Of course you will.

Payman: Not that it’s a problem, of course, but that’s the whole point of going, of course, and learning and everything.

Simon: But nothing is new, mate.

Payman: Of course.

Simon: That’s the concept that I always live by, it’s that.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: Of course.

Simon: Yes. Anything that you see, you say, “Oh, wow, that’s awesome.” You can guarantee that person-

Payman: Of course.

Simon: … saw that somewhere else either directly, unlikely directly, copied it, but probably just put their little tweak on it and then redirected it and it might just be that last little 5% that makes it amazing, whereas before it was just average.

Prav Solanki: Or just people resonate with you as a human being, right?

Simon: Yeah, exactly.

Prav Solanki: You might deliver exactly the same content and you just connect with someone a little bit better and you may not be for some people and you may be for others.

Payman: You seem so comfortable on the stage. Did you do any drama, or?

Simon: No. Well actually I think I was a lead in a play at when I was about 11. I’ve got memories of me with actually similar hair to what I have now. I had curtains at the time because they were cool from Backstreet Boys, so I think I was the lead, I was the circus master or something like that. But no, I’ve never done any drama. I was petrified of public speaking. Now I absolutely love it.

Prav Solanki: Just to get nervous before you step on stage? Any butterflies, or?

Simon: Only about the same stuff that we’ve already talked about.

Prav Solanki: Okay.

Simon: Not about actually the delivery or what I’m going to say or anything like that. As long as I’m comfortable with the content that I’m delivering, which by that point I will be, because I would have been through it about four times the morning off. Whether it’s ten people, or a thousand people, I’m not fast as long as I am comfortable with the content I’m delivering. I think that’s the key thing.

Prav Solanki: True.

Simon: And I mean… Dentsply Sirona sent me on a public speaking course and naturally I was the one that went up to the front to do the training in front of everyone else, and that was really interesting actually because it made me realise a few things, a few little tells, almost, that I was giving out without thinking about it, and I try, and do those. It’s very hard though when you’re doing public speaking to get out of your old habits of how you deliver.

Prav Solanki: What are your top three tips for public speaking?

Simon: Number one is just blind confidence, and I don’t mean that like fake it till you make it, don’t know what you’re talking about.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Simon: I just mean just go up and just be as confident as you can be because one thing that I realised very early on was that if I stutter or stumble, I did a live news interview on Channel Five News, 6:00 PM news on kids’ teeth, on the epidemic of decay in kids, and it’s not my main topic. I’m not a paediatric dentists, I’m a cosmetic dentist, but they wanted me to do it, and because I’m a yes man, I said yes to it. So I was speeding off to the Channel Five News Centre and I was there doing it completely live, and I know they told me they were going to tell me the questions before, they didn’t. So I just went straight on national TV, no idea what they were going to ask me and I thought, when I came off, I was like, “Oh, that is just so embarrassing. I’ve completely embarrassed myself.” I was nervous, I was stuttering.

Simon: Then I watched it back, and I was like, “No, actually it looks all right.” And everyone, all my family were like, “Oh, you did so well. It was amazing, I can’t believe you didn’t know the questions.” So I think that you’re your worst critic when it come to public speaking would be my number one tip, and then the other ones are just basic ones really like try and avoid pacing around too much. That’s what I used to do a lot. Be Confident in your own skin and just hold your ground, and then obviously just eye contact if you can do and, I mean, there’s just obvious things, but I’m no expert. As I say, I do it really like most things just on the fly.

Prav Solanki: I’d like people to get an understanding of who Simon Chard is, right? They see this persona on social media, and just tell us just a little bit about your childhood and growing up and just what that was like.

Simon: So I had a great childhood in many ways. I’m one of three kids. I’m the oldest. Neither my brother or sister have gone into Dentistry but obviously both my parents were dentists, so I was surrounded by that from an early age, I had a mirror and probe in the cutlery drawer at home. I went to a private school, had a really good education, wasn’t really, I was not a high achiever at school anyway, I got ABC in my A levels, went to boarding school and yeah, I just had a great childhood, really, loved my sport, loved going out with my mates. The main negative through my childhood was my sister had cancer when she was seven. So luckily in many ways she tripped over at school, over a paving slab, landed on her knee.

Simon: They thought she’d broken it, took her to hospital, she had Osteosarcoma of the knee bone. So incredibly fortunate that she tripped over, otherwise she probably wouldn’t be here today, but that in essence meant that she had to go through radio, chemo and surgery to remove the knee. So she got a metal prosthesis in her knee even today, which she had to have extended. She had, I think, 25 operations from 7 up to 20 as she grew because obviously the thing had to grow with her. So that meant my mum was in hospital with her for six months up at Stanmore, the Orthopaedic Hospital, and my dad was like, “Hold it, they practised in stains, driving up BM 25 at 7:00 till, and then being there from 7:30 till 9:00 then driving back to Walton to see me and my brother. So yeah, that was rough-

Payman: That’s an incredible strain on the family.

Simon: Incredible. I mean, I don’t know how… being a parent now, I genuinely don’t understand how they did it, but it’s just a testament to their relationship and them as people that they just cracked on with it, they’re such grafters, the two of them.

Payman: One of my previous bosses, he had a sick child, and they were in Great Ormond Street all the time, and he said to me that the number of split families at Great Ormond Street because-

Simon: Of massive pressure.

Payman: … of stress, because of the stress of it.

Simon: Yeah. I think the thing for us, it went the other way. It actually pushed my family together and we’re such a tight knit family now, like me and my brother and my sister, my parents, all of us were so, so close and we still go on holiday couple of times a year together as a family.

Payman: Wow.

Simon: We’re all very, very emotional and my family is the most important thing in my life, Megan and Thea included. So that’s what everything is for, for me and then, yeah, I think that what my sister went through certainly posters together. Thankfully now she’s actually pregnant herself and so she’s going to have a little baby a year younger than my Thea, and so yeah, so a positive happy ending but could have been a lot worse.

Prav Solanki: And how old were you around that time?

Simon: I was nine.

Prav Solanki: Was nine. All right, okay.

Simon: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: So very young.

Simon: Yeah, but I had to be the mature older brother at nine and hold the family together at home with my dad, so.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Simon: So yeah, how that’s impacted on me from the personal level-

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Simon: … I still don’t really think I’ve unpacked all of that baggage. Not that I have any, I think I’m relatively well rounded as I say, apart from a little bit of anxiety now and again, but it’s, yeah, it was-

Prav Solanki: It’s a lot for a nine year old to take on.

Simon: It is, yeah.

Prav Solanki: It’s a lot for a nine year old to take on.

Simon: Yeah, exactly.

Prav Solanki: And so then moving on from there and growing up, at what point did you know you wanted to go into Dentistry? You said earlier on you didn’t want to do what your parents did and then at what point did you realise I want to be a dentist?

Simon: So I went to Bristol University to study Pharmacology and got there, absolutely love Bristol, amazing place to go to uni. Lots of partying.

Payman: Great town.

Simon: Yeah, really lovely place. My next door neighbour in my halls was, my mum spotted him actually when she was dropping us off at halls and she said, “Oh, what about that guy? He looks cool, why don’t you mates with him.” Turns out he was my next door neighbour in my hall block, a guy called Tom Crawford-Clarke who pay well know, and Tom trained to be a dentist, and I saw the community that Tom had, how much he was enjoying what he was doing, and I just thought, why not then Dentistry?

Simon: So at that point, I spoke to Bristol, said, “Can I transfer?” They said, “No, you have to either drop out and reapply or complete your degree and then come on the fast track course.” So basically it meant an extra year at Bristol and an actual qualification. So I thought I might as well complete with my colleagues, get that degree sorted and then go to do Dentistry, but decided in the end to go to Kings to do Dentistry because all of my mates were moving from Bristol to London, most of them working in the city and that sort of thing.

Simon: So it made sense for me to move into town and what that meant for me was, as I view it, very much as a positive because all of my colleagues at dental school were mainly on undergraduate, so they were on a jolly still but I was really there to work and was very, very grateful for the position that I’d been offered because getting a two-one in Pharmacology was probably the hardest thing I’m about to do, and getting an offer from Kings, again, I had a lot of tears when I got that offer through.

Prav Solanki: Can you just talk us through the day when you found out that you’d been accepted?

Simon: Yeah. I was at my parents’ villa in Cyprus as always, we’d been going to Cyprus for 25 years every single year, every summer we’d be in Cyprus. So I found out my GCSE results in Cyprus, I found out my A level results in Cyprus and coincidentally the application process for the dental schools or the notification process was at the same time that I was there as well.

Simon: So I was sitting in the living room on my laptop, everyone else’s outside and yeah, notification came through on email. I can’t remember exactly now, I think it was some portal or something that you logged into and it would just say accepted or declined or something like that, and yeah, when I saw that green accepted pop up.

Payman: Yeah.

Simon: I mean, yeah, there was a lot of tears. I’m quite a crier so it didn’t stack much for me to cry.

Payman: You’ll cry today buddy.

Simon: I cried on videotape before, but yeah, no, that was a very, very emotional day because as I say, the Pharmacology, Maths is my big weak point from a academic point of view and Pharmacology had a lot of Maths in it from a Chemistry point of view, and so I really had to graft hard to get that two-one. Game changing for me, life changing.

Prav Solanki: So then you went into Dentistry as-

Payman: What were the choices?

Prav Solanki: … to be a mature student? And I’ve got actually a very close friend of mine, Danny Watson.

Payman: Yeah. Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Not quite what you’d name, and he did the same thing. So I’ve seen him through that journey and what I noticed about him was he’d always comment to me, “The rest of the guys are turning up to lectures unprepared or they turn up to clinic half cut…

Payman: And children?

Simon: Pardon?

Payman: Because they’re children.

Prav Solanki: Because they’re kids, right?

Simon: I mean there was a bit of that for me as well, so yeah. I was in town and fabric was the colour of the day.

Payman: In Oxford, did you have any mature students on your course, probably matured students didn’t get Oxford?

Prav Solanki: I can’t remember. Not that I recall.

Payman: We did, we had one in particular and he was very serious about the course as well. Mark, he was just-

Prav Solanki: Post grad, we had a lot of mature.

Payman: Yeah. But it’s a bit like a year off or something. Then you grow up a little bit and then when you come to do the course, I remember asking, I was, asking my parents for a year off A Levels. Year off what? Year to do what? I didn’t get it at all. Yeah?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: And I wanted a holiday to be fair, but if I’d had my holiday, I would’ve taken Dentistry much more seriously, I think, because I had a holiday doing Dentistry.

Prav Solanki: It depends on your upbringing, doesn’t it? Certainly for me growing up in the environment that me and my brother did with dad was a shopkeeper and everything that he did was driven towards getting us into university…and so there’s nowhere to run to so I can have a holiday. Well it wasn’t even in my head.

Payman: Yeah, you valued your life.

Prav Solanki: So there was that side of things, but also because he’d taken us to that point and put everything into our education. We did take it very, very seriously, but it was the first time that we were let loose.

Payman: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: We were not going out clubbing at 16, 17, anything like that. So we lost it a uni.

Payman: That’s what I’m saying, that’s my point. I was in a boys’ school.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, yeah.

Payman: Didn’t know anything about anything.

Prav Solanki: No, no. So that’s the time you go and enjoy yourself, if you did have the option of, you’ve done your three years of partying doing your-

Simon: I did a gap year as well. Yeah. I owe my parents a lot. Still paying them off now.

Payman: Let’s talk about that then. You’ve recently taken over their practise.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: Did you pay for it? Did they give it?

Simon: No, I paid market value for it. My parents have always been very keen that me and my brother and my sister, everything is equal in the division of wealth, I guess and everything really, and love, and everything and that comes from money issues in the family before. So I think they were very keen that there was no undue preferential treatment to me because obviously they’ve given me this practise. It’s an incredibly successful practise that they’ve grown from a squat practise for over 35 years. It’s in essence their fourth child, and so for them, just to give that to me would have been very unfair on my brother and sister.

Payman: Sure.

Simon: So it was, don’t get me wrong, it was incredibly stressful to buy it off them because the moment you have to bring in accountants and solicitors and all of that sort of thing, I mean, until 18 months. Me and my dad were like, “Let’s just do this on a handshake.” And everyone who got involved seemed to want to add another layer of complexity to it. So by the time we got to the end of it, we were all at our wits end. We actually completed on the practise two weeks before Thea was born. So then me and Meg just dropped in like, “You’re the bosses now and you’ve just got your first baby.”

Simon: So yeah, 2018 was pretty intense, but I think me and Meg have come out the other side now and the practise is going really well, I mean, sorry, I forgot to say, at the same time as buying it off my parents, we’re extending it simultaneously. So we grew up from a five to a seven surgery practise, but yeah, so now all seven surgeries are running five days a week plus Saturdays. So it’s going really well.

Prav Solanki: And was it a transition, did you just buy him any walks or did your dad stay on and practise?

Simon: My Dad’s still working now.

Prav Solanki: He’s still working?

Simon: He’s a great associate.

Prav Solanki: Yeah? Did he negotiate his associate rate?

Simon: Well, I was his associate before and I don’t think I was a great associate, there’s a lot of holidays and a very good associate percentage. So yeah, no, he’s being well looked after, but no, it’s great to work with him.

Prav Solanki: What’s the dynamic of that role reversal like?

Payman: Has it changed?

Simon: Oh No. I mean me and my dad are very chilled in the fact that I’m not, although a lot of people might think I am, I’m not the big I am, I’m not my dad so, although in essence my dad is still the boss, really, I mean he’s not officially, but he’s not now, yeah, just dropped down to associate position. I mean, for example, the other day he was out the front sweeping up the leaves. I mean, I haven’t met any other associates sweeping the leaves, because he loves the practise and he loves his patients and he-

Prav Solanki: Well, you stood at the front door telling him how it was.

Simon: I mean he just, he loves what he does and he loves the relationship that he has with his patients.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Simon: He loves the relationship with the staff… 75% of the staff have been there for 20 years so they’ve all grown up together and I would never want to take that away from him.

Prav Solanki: Of course.

Simon: My mum has retired, she works part-time already, two days a week doing a lot of the back room admin type stuff, doing all the staff wages and everything, which Megan’s not taken over but I think my mum wanted to get more into grandparent mode. So she’s now looking after Thea.

Payman: Do you feel the weight of following through on what your dad started. Do you feel that?

Simon: Yeah, it’s a very complex emotion taking over your parents’ business, I think, because there’s so many layers to it, you don’t want to mess it up. You don’t want to offend them in any way in anything that you change but at the same time you want to be your own person, you want to put your own stamp on it. Certainly for me, I mean, I’m so obsessive about being as up to date, as current as I can be in everything, whether it be the technology that I bring into the practise or the way in which we market ourselves.

Simon: I want to be cutting edge, leaning edge of everything, and so stuff like Instagram, how amazing that’s been for me with regards to new patients coming through because of that, my dad doesn’t really understand. He thinks that I’m just doing what I’ve always done, which is being lazy and just watching TV. I think that’s in essence what he thinks I’m doing and he’s like, “Why?” The cold face grafting and getting the job done because that’s what he did, and he’s done it very successfully and he’s built natural word of mouth, but I’m very keen not to be Toys R Us. I don’t want to just rest on the laurels of the business my parents have built.

Simon: I want to be one of the best practises in the world and one of the best dentists in the world, and so the way in which I do that, while still maintaining the tradition that my parents have built is something that I’m very delicate about, and that goes to how the patients perceive me as the boss or Megan and I as boss and also how the staff perceived me as well. All of those things, I would hate to sully anything that my parents have spent their whole lives building.

Payman: And when I think of friends who have gone into the family business, one thing they suffer with is that they maybe always thought of always having been put on, having an unfair advantage, and then also that the idea that you know their achievements are never their achievements. That’s what they’re going to be thought of. Society will always think that they had an advantage.

Simon: Well, I don’t really care. I did have an advantage, obviously, because both my parents had dentists, so if I had a dental question, I just ask my dad. He’s like a walking encyclopaedia.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: Yeah.

Simon: But at the same time, that’s why I’m so aggressively competitive and driven because fair enough, both my parents are dentists, so I had an advantage in that regard, but I’m still going to smash in everything else and that’s got nothing to do with my parents being dentists, it’s just, that’s who I am, and if anything, it drives-

Payman: You’re going to apologise for it.

Simon: No, hell no, and if anything, it makes me want to be the best that I can be because I have to get away from that.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Simon: I guess that’s what one of the things that drives me is that I feel I have to put my own stamp on things and so that pushes me to go a bit left field and that’s I guess why the currency of what I’m doing with regards to going into digital so heavily and going into social so heavily because I believe that they are the two futures of our profession.

Payman: Its interesting because Christian Coachman comes from a dynasty of-

Simon: Yeah, exactly.

Payman: … dentists and Linda Greenwall, she’s, the fourth generation-

Simon: Really?

Payman: … son is the fourth generation, so she’s third generation.

Simon: You see a lot of the people who I interact with internationally, online, in the dental profession-

Payman: It’s quite common abroad. Yeah. Yeah.

Simon: It’s very common to see that they come from a family of dentists. Whether, or not that’s just the competitive advantage that they’ve been given by having parents that are dentists or-

Payman: There we go.

Simon: … it’s the fact that it pushes them to go next level, I don’t know but I don’t care.

Payman: I like that.

Prav Solanki: What’s the most challenging aspects of running a business and being a business owner?

Simon: Staff. Staff every day and I have the best staff as well, so it’s nothing to do with how good my staff are but I mean we have a practise, our staff number now is 27 so there’s so many dynamics going on within that. I mean, a lot of these guys have been working together for 20 years and they have their own little dynamics, that’s the dynamics of me and Meg being the young upstarts, there’s the dynamics of being my parents son, and yeah, you take it really personally.

Simon: I mean, me and Megs have… we’re aware of wholly, we’ll get a message about something going wrong in the practise and you just have to deal with it, you have to fight those feelings, and that’s just part of being a business owner and they happen a lot. There’s always something going on and I mean, one of the big things that I’m working on is trying to get systems in place so that things run themselves efficiently, and that’s one of my big goals. Before I move into adding more practises to my portfolio, I want to make sure that our practise is running like the slickest machine that ever could be.

Simon: And so me and Megs are working really hard on that, just every little area, just systemizing, systemizing, systemizing, try, and improve on that but yeah, certainly that’s the thing that hit me in the face with the most impact over the last year is just, right, the Dentistry’s the easy part now, actually managing the staff is, and when people leave and when people don’t do what you’ve asked them to do and yeah-

Prav Solanki: It’s so frightening.

Simon: … it’s complicated.

Prav Solanki: And so, you talk about putting systems in place, so I guess you’ve put together workflows or whatever of patient journeys or how they answer the phone, et cetera, et cetera.

Simon: I’m trying.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, but then how do you, this is something that a lot of business owners struggle with is how do you get them to implement, execute, and follow through on that? Do you have a certain team member that oversees and it’s their responsibility or is that your responsibility or is it someone else?

Simon: Well, I think everything is my responsibility, number one, but I have certain team members that I can lean on more and I try to allocate specific roles to give responsibility to team members because I think that’s a net positive for everyone. It’s a net positive for them when they feel that they can be relied on and they are responsible and it’s a net positive for me because it means it takes something off my shoulders, but I think I’m guilty of wanting to control everything myself, which I’m sure is a very common trait for [crosstalk ] owners and I find relinquishing that control very difficult.

Simon: Perfect example is the fact that I replied to all of my own, so I have my professional email address on my Instagram and I get God knows how many DMs every day. I’m replying to all of those.

Prav Solanki: Personally?

Simon: Personally. And a lot of them, the majority of them are just the same question. How much is bonding? How much is whitening? Why do you recommend Enlighten?

Prav Solanki: I’m assuming you’ve got, have you got canned responses for quite a few of those, or?

Simon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously. I mean, as I say, the majority, I mean my prices are set. I mean it’s an easy discussion to have. I just, I’m yet to relinquish control of that act, which takes a lot of my time, but I feel that if I relinquish it, then I might lose that patient and so that’s the trade off.

Prav Solanki: Because they may not answer the question in the right way? What-

Payman: It’s perfection paralysis.

Simon: Correct.

Payman: That’s what it is. That’s what-

Simon: Correct. We’ve now got to two points of my personality that are incorrect, impostor and perfectionist. It’s like therapy for me, this-

Payman: Listen, everyone or a lot of people suffer with it. I’ve suffered with it and the funniest thing is sometimes you’ll find that person is actually better at it than you are. Believe it or not.

Simon: Agreed. Agreed. No, I do believe it.

Payman: I don’t think you do believe it, but-

Simon: Because you haven’t done it yet?

Payman: Yeah. Yeah. It’s only when you do it but look, I was doing Lara’s job.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: That’s ridiculous. Yeah? Lara’s I’m marketing person, if anyone does know her, I talk to Depesh about this all the time regarding posting. I mean, how should it, how can it, is it possible to post every day the way you do and be a perfectionist at the same time?

Simon: Well, I try to. I post every day and I don’t let anything rubbish go through. So, I mean, it takes a lot of work though. I mean-

Payman: It’s a lot of energy, you know?

Simon: Yeah, but it’s worth, it’s free marketing. I mean, you can’t.

Payman: Yeah.

Simon: If you’ve got… I feel like I have a savvy enough knowledge of the platforms that I’m working on, well, mainly Instagram, and I have a creative eye that works enough that I can put those two skills together and output good content on a daily basis. I don’t know who I would outsource that to.

Payman: I don’t think it’s wise to, but it’s something that we’re running right now, four pages, yeah? There’s no way one person could run the four pages.

Simon: Yeah. Absolutely.

Payman: It’s one of those things.

Simon: I think a personal brand and a business are different.

Payman: Yeah. Yeah.

Simon: I’d happily let one of my team run my business account, but my personal brand I’m afraid.

Payman: The longer you keep that yourself, the better.

Simon: Yeah. Exactly.

Payman: Absolutely right.

Simon: I mean, Gary Vessel does his own personal account to a large extent, he’s still replying to DMs and stuff like that, just only about 1% of the ones he gets.

Payman: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you like the title of Instagram famous, Insta famous dentist? How do you feel about that? I mean this let’s talk about, there’s been a lot of talk on-

Simon: Facebook.

Payman: Yeah. Yeah, and isn’t that ironic? A lot of talk on one social platform about it in another social platform.

Simon: That’s because all the trolls are on Facebook. That’s why we’ve all moved to Instagram. I have no trolls listening to this.

Payman: Let’s talk about that. I mean the criticism, I guess, is that Instagram’s promoting a kind of Dentistry that’s bad for the patient, and a lot of these youngsters in the verticals are upstarts and I don’t agree with it. I think that every situation has good and bad in it.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: But what’s your feeling on it? Because I’m not out there, I’m not posting everyday. I’m not building a personal brand. So a lot of times when people are talking about these things, you might think they’re talking about me.

Simon: Yeah. Well that’s always what I think, and any time I see Insta dentist or anyone slating dentist suppose cases on Instagram, on Facebook, I assume they’re talking about me and actually when they tend to follow, we’ve had some incidences in the past of people writing lists, actually, of dentists who you should follow to, in essence, troll, I think.

Payman: Wow.

Simon: And I was one of the people that was followed by that specific account, but anyway, I think my feeling on it is that, as you say, like with anything, there’s always practitioners who are going to be doing things correctly and doing things incorrectly. There’s obviously cowboys in every profession. I don’t think there’s any more cowboys on Instagram than there are on Facebook or just in general public but for me Instagram is just a way that I communicate with my generation. It’s as simple as that, that everyone who is 20 to 40 is on Instagram whether they be a dentist or a patient and so that’s where I hang out, and that for me has been incredibly instrumental in me building my business, in finding patients who are after the sort of work that I provide, which is minimally Invasive Aesthetic Dentistry.

Simon: Normally things like ABB, as Tiff taught me when I was undergrad, Align, Bleach and Bond, mainly small make-over stuff and that’s just, it just is what it is. I think the reason why some people have an issue with it is that there are certain individuals who are doing the same treatment on every patient or that’s what they’re posting. They may not be, but that’s how it comes across, and anyone who’s doing the same treatment on everyone must therefore be incorrectly prescribing that treatment, if they were doing it on everyone, which they probably aren’t, those are just the cases that they’re posting, because if they were, Dentistry’s not one size fits all. You can’t do the same treatment on everyone.

Payman: Well, or there are specialists. I don’t mean the actual meaning of the word special, but that’s the kind of work they do.

Simon: Yeah, exactly.

Payman: There’s nothing wrong with-

Simon: But, if that was to be the case, then they could only do that procedure on cases that were suitable, and I think that’s the concern from some people. I don’t know, it’s a weird environment. I think the most important thing for me is that the profession just needs to sort itself out with regards to the negativity because you can’t judge someone on a case they put up as to, that’s what they do for everything or that’s who they are as a person.

Simon: You don’t know the ins and outs of the situation, and I think everyone’s just so keen to slate each other and that’s why we’re so weak as a body against things like NHS Dentistry and that sort of thing, which has the potential to be such a positive for the general public and that we’ve allowed the government to just cut the budget to do that and now it’s in such a state of disrepair that it’s very difficult to work in.

Payman: So what? We need to be more united?

Simon: Absolutely, but there’s so much negativity. I mean, it’s horrible. The way in which individuals, dentists specifically I see speak to each other on the main dental forums on Facebook is just horrible. I mean, I’ve just stopped watching them altogether because it’s just atrocious the way that people treat each other. It’s so funny.

Simon: I mean, we have a WhatsApp group with some of my dentist mates and you can actually see when the trolls have broken up for Christmas because you could do all those forums where they were just slating other dentists, Instagram dentists, young dentists, whatever, whoever you take your fancy, Snapchat dentists, I don’t know who the next one’s going to be, but it was as soon as they broke up for Christmas, they obviously didn’t have anything else to do and so they just started, just keyboard warriors going ahead and I’m calling that negativity on social media.

Payman: Sad.

Simon: I don’t see what point it is to be honest.

Prav Solanki: I know, certainly with my brother Kailesh.

Payman: He gets an ear full

Prav Solanki: Oh, he gets a lot of shit, and I heard on the grapevine, there was a private closed Facebook group that is focused on him and a couple of individuals and they just let loose in there.

Prav Solanki: Well here’s the thing, you know how these people got the time to do what they do and put the energy and the negativity into something like this rather than improving their own Dentistry or-

Simon: Absolutely.

Prav Solanki: The people who are trolling people like yourselves or other people putting cases up, never put cases up themselves.

Payman: Indeed.

Prav Solanki: So…

Payman: But… I think understanding is more important than anything else. Yeah, and so if we were to understand it, I think what you said was very valuable. The thing that they don’t like is your example.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: Doing one tool to treat all diseases but what are other things that they are-

Simon: No, the other thing they’re unhappy about is, the main problem that dentists have as far as I’m concerned, is they lack an abundance mentality. Dentists as a general rule, are so scared that their patient’s going to be taken away from them or they’re lecturing position’s going to be taken away from them by the young upstart or the Instagram dentist or whoever the flavour of the month is to be targeted. That they feel the need, they become so incensed, they have to vent on social media, and I think it just comes down to insecurities. I mean that’s what the majority of it is.

Payman: Screwed up.

Simon: I agree.

Payman: I think there’s an element of that, but I don’t think that’s the main driver. I don’t think that’s the main driver. One of the main drivers, I think, is to do with the… you know what? Tiff was saying, regarding seeing your own failures, and these younger dentists haven’t seen the failures. They don’t know what they don’t know, and yet they go out there and tell the public they are brilliant and that’s-

Simon: That’s fair, and that comes down to being humble and knowing your craft that you’re presenting but at the end of the day, you can’t buy experience. I mean, they can’t pull out of thin air. Would they rather they didn’t post anything until they had that experience? I guess that’s a fair point but I think-

Prav Solanki: Everyone’s got to start somewhere, right? And ultimately the way I look at this, I’ve experienced this because I’ve worked with, over the last 10, 11 years I’ve been in business, I’ve seen young dentists grow up and I’ve seen them at their time, either be whether it was back then at the top of Google, how does he deserve to be at the top of Google? I’ve been qualified 10 years. Yeah?

Payman: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: I’ve seen that with the guys in Newcastle, I work with, right? And then right through to yourself and younger people and I think, I truly believe there’s this high level of jealousy here and the fact of this fear of, they’re going to take my patients, and also I consult with all the dentists and the conversations that I have with them is, I am a specialist or I’ve got these qualifications, I’ve been doing this for so long, why is it that Joe Bloggs is getting more patients than me? Why is it that that person’s getting more patients? They don’t deserve the patients.

Prav Solanki: I have those conversations with more senior dentists, but I’ve also witnessed on the other end of the family side with my brother, and clients who I’ve seen grow up to become more senior dentists over the last 10, 11 years experience that people having a pop at them or referring practitioners, sending various emails that I’ve been privy to that are pretty nasty and a lot of it revolves around, I think personally jealousy.

Simon: I think at the end of the day, I agree with Tiff in some ways. No one wants young dentists and I’m sure the young dentists themselves don’t want to be promoting treatment that would not be to the benefit of their patients. I think that’s not the angle that anyone’s coming at it from. I think it’s a very multilayered debate, but I think that the key message at the end of it is, come at it from a positive angle. If you do feel that young dentists need… like tiff is one who will always come at it from a positive angle and he’ll work to try, and bring those young dentists on to improve their knowledge. I love the stuff that he puts out on social media.

Simon: He’s not coming at it just trolling the people who are doing the stuff that he doesn’t agree with. He’s just showing his work and saying here’s my 5, 10 15 year reviews and when I see that stuff I’m like, that’s just amazing. I mean he’s so talented but to show that sort of stuff in this arena is not seen enough because the majority of the dentists that are on there are young because they’re native to that platform.

Payman: But do you not think that just like you’re entitled to your voice on Instagram, talking to your patients and the profession, these guys are entitled their voice on Facebook talking about what we should all be worrying about sometimes?

Simon: Mayor, it’s freedom of speech at the end of the day. I personally don’t push negativity out into the world. Even if I don’t agree with something or I don’t like a case or I don’t like the way that someone’s handling themselves, I don’t think that having that discussion on social media or setting up groups to discuss it or having people who you want to actually troll. I mean, I just, I don’t think that’s the way that you should operate. If you have an issue with something, speak to someone about it. I mean, if you feel that you’re the person to be having that conversation. I just think that the way that people present is trolling. I just think it’s just pure negativity.

Payman: Yeah, look, it’s a nuance of the time we’re in, but in the long run, just like there was a discussion recently about some dentists buying some piece of equipment off of different dentists and are in the money or whatever it was and social media has brought it to a conclusion, all of this in the end, will be harder to lie, harder to hide in the end.

Simon: Well that’s a positive, sure.

Payman: Yeah. That’s the positive, and in the meantime while we get to that point, there’ll be nuances, which people worry about but when you compare it to back in our day when there was, no one was policing anything, no one could police anything anyone was saying or doing, that wasn’t any better, I mean, the net, net we’re in a much, much better place, and for me the fact that Dentistry resonates, photographs resonate is that the absolute win for the profession. I mean we could’ve been in a profession which didn’t have that sort of resonance on Instagram.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: It’s only a few things, it’s fitness, cooking, beauty, that really resonated and what a giant opportunity that is for the profession and a bit of a risk. That’s-

Simon: Yeah. That’s why I said it’s a double edged sword-

Payman: Yeah. The nature of things. Where do you think you differ from your dad in your management?

Simon: Well, that’s tough, eh? Certainly, I’ve seen a lot of my parents patients and I’ve had a lot of dialogue. My patients and the staff themselves say that I am a 50-50 split of my mum and my dad. My dad is very much a scientist, very logical thinker, doesn’t understand when things aren’t done logically and is quite one dimensional in that regard sometimes, whereas my mum has more of the soft touch, amazing with kids, that sort of thing. Amazing with nervous patients. So, I guess I’ve got a bit more of that softly, softly approach from my mum. I think where that falls down for me is that I want to be everyone’s best friend and that doesn’t always work when you’re the boss. So I think I don’t know where I fit in the hierarchy, I guess, and going from an associate to the boss, you’re still at the associate level.

Payman: You’re going to end up good cop, bad cop and Megan being the bad cop. Is that-

Simon: Maybe, maybe.

Payman: Is that how it’s going to be?

Simon: Yeah. That would work nicely for me.

Payman: Thats how its going to be

Prav Solanki: So tell us a little bit about your family life, Simon. You’ve got a daughter Thea. Tell us a little bit about how you manage the work life balance of lecturing, running your own business and then being a father and a husband?

Simon: Probably badly. Well, my day to day is I wake up and go to the gym before work, so I’m up at 5:00. I actually started journaling this year, which has really helped with my mental state at the start of the day, then I go to the gym workout, which again helps with my mental status as I don’t get to see the family in the morning, which is a shame but my first patient’s 8:15 anyway, so I probably wouldn’t show. The main time on my work days I get to see Thea is when I bath and I want to get in work, which I love.

Simon: And then me and Megs, we’ll have dinner together and chat about those events. I mean, I’m very lucky with Meg. She’s honestly, she’s amazing person. We laugh so much together. We have a spectacular relationship I’m so grateful for, and so we’re very, very solid and she has taken to motherhood incredibly well. Thea has not been a great sleeper and Megs and I both really can’t asleep, so that’s been tough.

Simon: The difficulty I’m having at the moment is I’m getting so many opportunities with regards to international lecturing opportunities and that sort of thing, and learning how to balance that with my family life is something that I’m trying to keep under control, which is quite difficult because, again, I’m a yes man. So I like to say yes to everything, but what I’ve realised quite quickly is that saying yes to a lecturer in Germany means that I don’t get to see my family for four days and so that’s a bit of a negative for me.

Simon: So that’s something I’m learning at the moment but I’d probably say that I work too much, every evening after I had dinner and bath Thea, I’m there on my laptop planning cases, planning, marketing for the practise and Megs is the same to be fair because, I mean, last night she was doing staff wages and that sort of thing. So, being in a relationship with someone who understands you a professional basis as well as a personal basis is actually amazing. I love the fact that me and Megs are both dentists. We try to keep our dental chat to a minimum when we’re at home, but it’s definitely a net positive I think.

Prav Solanki: And so how long have you been with Meg? When did you meet?

Simon: First day of dental school. So that would be 10 years ago now.

Prav Solanki: First Day of dental school?

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: The same year? Yeah.

Simon: Yeah. So she was undergrad and I was a post grad, so, we did a little three week post grad thing and then the undergrads and the post grads were put together for the first time in the lecture hall, and Mark Wolford was giving a lecture about how, it was something very negative, and Megs, I remember seeing her, she was in a blue shirt, black waistcoat, glasses and pigtails and yeah, I spotted her out of the crowd, and then actually we went out that night and we started chatting and the rest is history.

Payman: Wow.

Simon: And I had a girlfriend at the time.

Payman: Oh!

Simon: But we were our last legs. We were on our last legs.

Prav Solanki: Great story.

Simon: Shouldn’t have said that.

Payman: So Tom Crawford-Clarke wasn’t even in that year.

Simon: No, Tom Crawford-Clarke was merrily continuing his degree at Bristol.

Payman: Oh, I see. I thought you were in the same year as well?

Simon: No. So Tom-

Payman: You and Tom-

Simon: … Tom qualified-

Payman: Pharmacology work.

Simon: Two or three years before me. Guy Lafan was in the same year.

Payman: That’s Tom?.

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: Oh.

Simon: So, me, Guy and Tom lived together and Bristol in our last year.

Payman: Nice.

Simon: Proudly.

Payman: Lakota.

Simon: Guy’s a big Lakota fan, yeah.

Prav Solanki: So then you went on to have Thea. Just talk to me about the day she was born, the feelings that went through, me and Pave spoke about this at depth, haven’t we? In just that instant feeling that you get when you see your child for the first time, and some people get it, some people don’t.

Simon: I mean it was amazing. Megs was induced, so we weren’t expecting, Thea came two weeks earlier, so we went to the hospital, just thinking it was a routine check and then didn’t leave basically, so we were there for, I think 36 hours, and yeah, I mean, from my point of view, 90% of it was amazing. The Term Centre was awful, well seeing Megs in so much pain but, again, she’s an absolute trooper, she did so well and yeah, when Thea came out, I mean obviously I cried, I mean that goes without saying. Yes. It’s definitely one of the best days of my life, it’s absolutely incredible feeling, and I mean even now it’s just a whole, it’s a whole new thing.

Simon: I mean my whole drive in life has been shifted away from purely selfish activities to, right, we’re going to just grind this out, grind this out, this is for Thea. It just completely changes your mindset on why you’re doing what you’re doing, and obviously I filmed the whole thing so, I mean, that’s the sound of me. We watched it back a few times. Yeah. Yeah. Not from the business end but from the whole set. I just stuck it on a tripod.

Payman: Oh, dear. What was I thinking?

Payman: It’s funny because you described very similar experience. I’m not just talking about the day about your whole mind-

Simon: Just the whole thing. Everything, right? Just from the moment she came out was-

Payman: But very different for me. Very different, and I love my kids. Can you guys love your kids more than I do? But very different. I didn’t get that feeling on the day. It didn’t shift my mind regarding, I’m doing all this for the kids for years, for years and years and so it is different for different people.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: It’s those things.

Simon: It’s certainly, I mean it’s hard work man. I mean-

Payman: What do you miss most about not having kids?

Simon: Just freedom. Freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want. I mean, I love just booking around on holiday or just randomly decided to go out for dinner and everything now requires a lot more planning but the one thing that is great about me and Megs is, Megs mainly because it’s harder for the mum, I think is that we just said right from the start we’re just going to carry on living our lives not exactly the same but as much as we can do, so, I mean we were out for dinner with Thea the day after she was born.

Simon: We’ve taken her out to Duck and Waffle and Michelin Star Restaurants and she’s been on about six holidays since we’ve had her, so we’ve tried to continue living our lives as much as possible, which is, yeah, it certainly makes it harder, but doing that I think has been really positive for our relationship.

Prav Solanki: And just your perspective on light as whole, like you said you’re less selfish now, right? Is that how you described it?

Simon: Yeah. I think my central drive has always been to be successful.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Simon: I guess for me, for my own ego, I guess and now it’s very much building the future for Thea is at the epicentre of my drive, I guess.

Prav Solanki: Did you have any plans for any siblings?

Simon: Yeah, yeah. Well Megs is Irish, so she originally wanted four, I’ve now taper it down to three now, but yeah, we’ll probably at the next couple of years we’ll probably start trying it.

Prav Solanki: Cool.

Simon: But I’m using that to my advantage, I managed to squeeze a holiday to the Maldives because we can’t go next year, so.

Payman: I know it’s a bit early to ask but would you want your kids to be dentists?

Simon: I think there are easier ways to make money, especially in the modern Internet era. I mean, I personally love it, but as I say, it’s the source of a lot of my anxieties, so I wouldn’t wish that anxiety on my child, and when I say anxiety, I mean we’re all constantly have this looming negativity of when we’re going to get sued? When is the GDC going to come knocking at our door? When is the letter going to come through the door.

Payman: It’s the thing I don’t miss, since I stopped…

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: … all this stuff started.

Simon: If I didn’t have that looming over my head, then I would say 100% yes, because the ability to change someone’s life and generate, I mean, the classic mini smart maker everything, I put a video up on my Instagram recently of this lovely lady who I did just some cosmetic bonding, a bit of whitening. She turned the mirror around and just immediately burst into tears and the ability to have that in that positive impact on someone’s life, you don’t get that in the majority of jobs.

Payman: No.

Simon: And so, that feeling is why I would want for my child because it’s amazing and and I do genuinely love what I do, but the counter argument is that looming negativity which is stressful.

Payman: If I give you a billion dollars, would you still drill teeth?

Simon: Yeah, I’d like to say that I would do, it’s very difficult to know how you’d actually react. I wouldn’t be working four days a week. I’d probably be working two days a week and taking more holidays, but yeah, I think Dentistry is good in some ways because it grounds you and it keeps you in a strong relationship with other human beings, seeing the general public, which is a positive-negative flip depending on who comes through the door, but-

Payman: Which do you enjoy more? The practise side or the teaching side?

Simon: Treating my patients, I enjoy more.

Payman: Than the teaching?

Simon: Yeah.

Payman: Really? Okay. We’ve been asking everyone what would you want to be remembered as? Your legacy, what do you want that to be?

Prav Solanki: Last day on the planet. Imagine finishing the sentence of Simon was…

Simon: I mean, I’m just going to say exactly what came into my head, and the answer’s passionate. I don’t know why that’s come into my head, but I guess I try to be passionate about everything that I’m doing. The most, as I said to you before, the most important thing for me is my family and expressing that love that I have for them in whatever way I could do in that last moment would be what I would wish to do.

Payman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s beautiful.

Simon: I think that’s all you can hope to do, really, but yeah, it’s a difficult one to answer. What would your answer be?

Prav Solanki: Oh Gosh. You got me with the complicated question. I think quite similar to yours, so a great father, husband and overall nice guy.

Simon: I thought were in one word.

Prav Solanki: When did I say one word? I said finish the sentence.

Simon: Oh, I missed the bait on that one.

Prav Solanki: You can have another go.

Simon: I’ll take mine.

Payman: That’s brilliant. Thanks a lot man.

Simon: Thank you.

Payman: It was a lovely conversation.

Simon: Thanks.

Payman: I enjoyed that. Thanks.

Speaker 3: 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.

Payman: Well, thank you for listening to the dental leaders podcast. If you listened to the end, then hopefully you got some value out of it. If you did, please subscribe to the channel and share it with your friends. Maybe think like, give me some five star review. Thanks so much for joining us.

Prav Solanki: Thanks guys. Massively appreciated and this is all about creating a community where we can share the depth of every individual interview. So thank you for taking the time out to-

 

Transcript

 

Prav Solanki:
Hey guys. And welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast, and today, we interviewed probably one of the most famous dentists in the world, making a huge movement in tooth preservation dentistry, the king of align, bleach and bond, Tif Qureshi. I’ve had the pleasure of working with, alongside, and knowing personally him for well over a decade. There’s one thing that he’s very, very clear about, Tif. He is aggressively passionate about the actions he takes in terms of treating his patients and doing the very best for them, but more importantly, creating a movement that educates dentists in doing the same, right?

Prav Solanki:
I’ve had the pleasure of being in a lecture room or a presentation or a board meeting presenting to corporates, and Tif gets up, and he does his thing. Jaws drop. Light bulb moments are created, and it’s just spectacular to see. You’re going to learn a lot from this thing. And we go into his personal life and how he grew up. So, it’s all very, very interesting. Lots to learn. Pay, what’d you take away?

Payman L:
I mean Tif’s one of those guys, he makes me proud to be a product of UK dentistry. He’s a private practise guy, and yet, if you had to point to one person who’s changed the future of UK dentistry the most, I’d have to say it’s Tif Qureshi. I mean the whole market, the whole every single dentist, young dentist, out there now is looking at minimally invasive dentistry because of Tif Qureshi. It probably would’ve happened eventually, but you can see the UK now is right at the top of that because of Tif really.

Payman L:
There’s of course a bunch of others before and after Tif, but what really impresses me about Tif is just the common sense approach to just the way he looks at things. With everything’s he achieved, you’d imagine he could be arrogant with it, but not at all. Just very simple, common sense answers, and it’s just great to see the approach of looking at patients long term from a practise perspective, and to me, it shows that there’s so much knowledge out there in practise. It’s not all with researchers and university teachers. In fact, most of the knowledge out there is in practise.

Prav Solanki:
With GDPs.

Payman L:
With GDPs. And when you see one like Tif, who can actually, from his base in Kent, make such a big impact on the world of minimally invasive dentistry, I think it’s inspirational. And I love the fact that he’s a product of UK dentistry, and he’s on the world stage. Super nice guy with it. Enjoy, guys.

Prav Solanki:
Enjoy.

Tif Qureshi:
I took them once in Norway, but they were only 6 and 10 or something, and this old dentist leaned over to them both. We were sitting on a bus going somewhere, I think from the airport to the hotel, the Solstrand. It was a Swedish Academy, which I mentioned. And this chap leaned over to my son and said, “You should be happy, proud of your dad. He saved a lot of tooth.”

Speaker 4:
This is Dental Leaders, podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Payman L:
It’s a real honour to have the great Tif Qureshi on the podcast. Thanks a lot for doing this, Tif.

Tif Qureshi:
Thank you.

Payman L:
We thought we were going to have some big hitters, but you’re the biggest one so far.

Tif Qureshi:
Oh, no.

Prav Solanki:
For sure. And I’ve probably known you for about 10 years, Tif.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, that’s right.

Prav Solanki:
And I’ve seen you create various movements in dentistry and pioneer techniques, and you’ve got this whole following behind you. And I think we’re going to go a little bit deeper on that and learn about how you came to discover these things and the story behind it. But before we do that, can we just go into your backstory, where you grew up, your childhood, parenting, and all that side of things? And just tell us a little bit more about that, Tif.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, I mean most of my life was spent growing up in Kent near a place called Rochester, where I went to school. My parents are both GPs, as many from my background are. And pretty much like many of us of that generation, we got told whether we were doing medicine or dentistry. Generally preferred to do medicine, and then if for any reason you weren’t quite there, you were doing dentistry. I had the grades to do medicine actually, but I chose dentistry fundamentally because of a cousin that I knew that was doing dentistry at the time who really, his name’s Mantu Qureshi, who people know, a lovely guy. And actually his influence on me really made me think, “This is something I want to do.” Looking at him, he felt a lot more free than my parents looked. And so, that’s one reason why I did it.

Prav Solanki:
And just in terms of your upbringing, was it quite a strict upbringing in a typical sort of Asian environment, similar to what I had really. When I was growing up, I wasn’t going out, mucking around with my mates and stuff like that. It was literally dad was working hard, and the whole focus was education, education, education, and folks know my dad’s message to me was, “I want you to be better than me.”

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah. Very much so. I mean my parents were… They may have been a little bit different to the norm at the time because I think they wanted me… I mean they sent me to, and my brother, to a quite a unique sort of public school down in Kent, which had an interesting reputation. I was literally one of one or two non-white faces in the year for many, many a year. But they just wanted me to go there to kind of integrate into this country I think. I could speak our language a little bit, but I have to say, now I can’t really speak much at all. I can understand a little bit, but they were more keen that I kind of integrated and worked well.

Tif Qureshi:
They came here, and my goal was to live here the rest of my life, not to then move away somewhere else. While I was still, you know, you’re still massively proud of your heritage and where you’re from and your cultural background, I think the goal, I always feel, if you’re going to move somewhere, you’ve got to be part of that country and contribute towards it. So, they had that attitude because where they grew up and where they came from, they had a, all those years ago, a love marriage, which was quite an odd thing as well. They met at university, and they kind of got together, and their parents were quite liberal. I mean my mother’s father was an ambassador for another country, so he’s kind of travelled around quite a lot. And so, one of my dad’s brothers was living here in the early ’60s and married an English woman back then. So again, you can kind of imagine what it’s been.

Tif Qureshi:
It’s been a bit like that, so they were quite happy for me to sort of integrate here. And they wanted me to sort of be here and be part of this country. So, it’s a bit of an odd thing to say, and I know there’s some people who actually look badly on that. And I’ve met people who don’t think that’s a good thing, but the reality is this is where I consider my home, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Prav Solanki:
So, go back to I went to a school. Me and my brother were at a school where we were the only two brown faces in that school. Just talk to me about your experience at that school, and I don’t know. Was it similar to mine, or just talk to me about what that was like.

Tif Qureshi:
It was called, it was King’s School, Rochester. And I think, quite oddly for a while, yeah for a while, it was what you’d expect, and every day was an interesting day. And every day somebody came up to you and gave you a dead arm and called you this and called you that. But then, actually there were a lot of great people there as well. So, I got on pretty well with everybody. A strange place in that it was very eccentric.

Tif Qureshi:
But what’s interesting is I left there 30 years ago, and yet, for my year of people that I spent 12, 13 years with that at that time, I still know at that year, at least 75% of the people extremely well. And we had our 30 year school reunion, and literally more than half the people in the year turned up. So, we have a very kind of strange really tight sort of friendship, and not a lot of people I know have that. They don’t really know many of their people from school.

Tif Qureshi:
So, there’s definitely something unique about our school, our year, I don’t know. I think we all went through a very interesting time in the ’80s. Interestingly, one thing that everyone was talking about recently when we had our reunion is what changed in the ’80s? And what’s quite topical is Live Aid changed people’s attitude. It was quite odd. I mean I remember, and one of my other friends who’s a sweet chap there, he’s one of my best friends, who’s now a doctor, both of us have often said, “After Live Aid, all of a sudden, it seemed like the racism stopped,” which is quite a strange thing, isn’t it? And talking to some of the guys I know now, they say, “Yeah, it was one of those things that made people kind of realise why we’re behaving in this way and what our life is actually about. I’m not saying Live Aid was a massive enormous international success. You can sort of see all the problems that still go on, but it was a massive exercise for conscience I think.

Prav Solanki:
You noticed a difference.

Tif Qureshi:
I noticed it literally. I literally walked into school on the Monday morning, and school was a different place. And that’s because all of the people at the time that we all kind of worshipped , be it David Bowie or it could be U2 or Queen and all those people suddenly made a statement that actually… I think it moved people on. I think Live Aid is not remembered for that, but it actually is one of the most important moments in the history of this country. I think a lot of people don’t appreciate that. A lot of people who also think this country is racist, and no country is perfect, should have tried living here before then because it was quite different at that point. It wasn’t perfect at all, and as I say, I think after then, things changed quite a lot. And why it’s topical because of course, that Queen movie came out recently.

Prav Solanki:
Of course, yeah.

Tif Qureshi:
And not just enjoying that film, but one of the bits that I found extremely kind of emotional was watching that whole section because it kind of took me back 30 years. And suddenly, you thought, “Wow, now I remember what was so great about that day that really I don’t think anything has come near since.”

Payman L:
It was a big day.

Tif Qureshi:
It was a big day.

Payman L:
Do you remember?

Prav Solanki:
Yeah.

Payman L:
How old were you?

Prav Solanki:
Child.

Tif Qureshi:
Child.

Prav Solanki:
You’re younger than us.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I was-

Prav Solanki:
I ran the world, that one.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, we’re going to have to ask, Pay, how old are you?

Prav Solanki:
I think I’m a couple years younger than you. I’m ’72, I was born.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, I was-

Prav Solanki:
But it was who? Your mother?

Payman L:
At dental school, yeah.

Tif Qureshi:
Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah. I just met her the other day.

Payman L:
When did you qualify?

Tif Qureshi:
Well, I qualified in ’92. So, I-

Payman L:
With Anoop.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, so, I’m ’69. So, how old would I have been? 16. So, at 16, that was a time when I was discovering music and all that sort of stuff and realising what I wanted to listen to and what I wanted to hear.

Payman L:
And in dental school, were you one of the top kids in the class or not?

Tif Qureshi:
Absolutely not. I just kind of melted into the background, bit like Anup really. I was certainly not one of the standout people. I didn’t fail anything. I didn’t have to retake anything, so I kind of got through it. To be truthful, I can’t tell you I enjoyed dental school. I made a lot of friends there, had some good times, but I didn’t enjoy a lot of the components of learning dentistry. I loved the first year. That was brilliant, being on the Strand with all the medical students and everything.

Prav Solanki:
That was where you felt like a student.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, you felt like a student. But second year, for us, it was the second year, it was just like work, work, work.

Prav Solanki:
It’s a tough course.

Payman L:
It’s a tough, tough course for sure.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah. There’s some great people, though, who taught me at King’s. And some of those have shaped my career, no doubt.

Prav Solanki:
Who are those people?

Tif Qureshi:
Well, yeah, people like Martin Kelleher, Brian Miller, Brett Robinson, Steve Dubb. Those guys, work I do now, when I’m working, I’ve still got them in my mind. So, that’s quite a powerful statement.

Payman L:
Yeah.

Tif Qureshi:
I’m still thinking about what they said and what they instilled in me. Equally, there’s probably some people I shouldn’t mention, who I probably didn’t learn anything from. So, it was kind of quite polarised there, but certainly I think that was also quite a special place actually, not that we see that many people from my year at reunions anymore. Certainly, I still know quite a lot of people from that year of course.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, I mean, when you look around at all the people in dentistry now who are, whether you consider them to be the superstars of dentistry, who are teaching or inspiring other people or pioneering, there are a lot of people from your year who are part of the who’s who of dentistry today, right?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah. I mean a who’s who is always a bit of a weird one, isn’t it? Because you can be who’s who by just having a huge amount of Instagram followers, which actually is a skill in itself, and not to disrespect anyone that does. You can have a bad reputation, you can have a good reputation, be an academic. But certainly, there was definitely a few people in my year who are high profile, use that term. And I think there was definitely an element of being in King’s in that year and just getting a slightly different sort of feeling perhaps that went on in other years. I don’t know. But yeah, there’s a few of us. There’s Anoop, James Goolnik and Nav Kharia. There’s actually a few guys years above and below who are quite well known, Asif Chatoo, Paul Baker. So, all these kind of guys are quite well known. And they’re all King’s. So, King’s is clearly the best university, obviously. I don’t want to finish off now.

Prav Solanki:
Was it known as a notoriously tough course at King’s? Clinically, were you expected to do more than other schools? Do you know anything about that?

Tif Qureshi:
Not that I remember. Back then, I think we didn’t really appreciate it. Now, I think we all look back from whatever university you’re at, and you sort of hear these common comments that a lot of the younger dentists aren’t doing anywhere near as much as we were doing back then, which does seem a shame. We’d done several hundred extractions and all these root canals and all these crowns and everything by the time we’d left, and you hear these anecdotal stories. I don’t know how true they are, but you hear these anecdotal stories of people could leave university without doing more than two or three root canals or a couple of crowns. And it seems strange.

Payman L:
I’ve got a question for you. I did VT in Kent, and in my VT year, there was three King’s people, three Guy’s people, three London people, and me. And interestingly, I found that my teaching, I was from Cardiff, my teaching was stronger than them on some aspects. But the area that was weaker from my course was ortho as it happens. We learned ortho class 1, 2, 3 was, and that was basically it. We didn’t do… Was there ortho in your undergrad? Is that where this comes from?

Tif Qureshi:
No, not at all.

Payman L:
Not at all.

Tif Qureshi:
But there was some. And yeah, to be fair, we made-

Payman L:
Did you do rotation?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, we did. We used removal appliance. We’d do anything other than removal appliances, and we made ortho appliances as well on a kind of ortho clinic type of technicians clinic as well. So, yeah, we did, I wouldn’t say we did a huge amount of it. I don’t think we were encouraged to do a huge amount of it, but it wasn’t excluded at all. I have to say I think the whole idea… I made a joke about King’s being the best. I think the whole idea about any university being the best is just bizarre because the reality is you learn everything as soon as you leave dentistry. It’s actually when you start treating patients you start to learn dentistry.

Tif Qureshi:
So, yes, a university can certainly guide you at the early stages, but fundamentally, it’s then what you do after in your post-graduate years. What course you take is one thing. But then as I commonly say is treating your own patients and staying in one place teaches you more than anything can teach you. So, that may be why a lot of the super high flyers at King’s are the people who kind of won all the awards and everything, you don’t really see much of them now. And people like myself perhaps, and neither of us were particularly fantastic at university, but we’re on the international circuit lecturing. So, I don’t think there’s any correlation between your university and how you then come out. It’s then what you do with yourself after, I think.

Payman L:
And so, did you have VT in your day?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, we did. I think I was one of the first years that did it. I think we didn’t have to do it. But I think we had the first options.

Payman L:
Yeah, I think we were the first year who absolutely had to do it.

Tif Qureshi:
Had to do it, yeah. I was very lucky. I mean younger people listening now probably would be quite sickened by the fact that I just picked the place nearest to where my parents lived, called them up, and got the job immediately.

Payman L:
Yeah, it was a different world.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, it was a different world.

Payman L:
But one of the biggest influences of my career was my first boss, my VT boss.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, my VT boss was a great guy actually. That was the only other practise I’ve ever worked in, so I did VT there.

Payman L:
Is that right?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, I did VT there for one year, but then I needed to move closer to London for kind of personal reasons. And so, then I picked a job in a practise that I’m now as a one year-

Prav Solanki:
Christ. You’ve been there more or less since you qualified.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah. So, did my one year VT, and then I’ve been at that same practise ever since.

Payman L:
And it is gold, that thing that you sort of popularised the idea of you learn by looking at your own patients. It’s absolutely right. I mean I only practised for five, six years overall. But even within that five, six years, I saw some things that I should… Veneers, I’m sure we’ll be getting onto veneers, the staining of veneers at five, six years old. Five or six years, not much, and learning that oh, maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do. And the lessons you must have learned in 25, 26 years.

Tif Qureshi:
Definitely.

Payman L:
I mean there’s a very interesting point. And the other really interesting thing, I mean you’re a teacher, so you’re going to have 100 different things that you’ve learnt and you teach, but we were discussing this before. The amount of knowledge that there is out there from people who aren’t necessarily famous or teachers or on the international lecture circuit who’ve had that experience of treating the same patients.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I do make these statements, and I post them. And you have a bit of a following on whether it’s LinkedIn or Facebook, whatever. And if I make the statements, people will read them. But what’s interesting is that I get a lot of nice comments from other dentists, all been there, 25, 30 years, “Couldn’t agree any more. This needs saying, etc, etc.” Because I don’t think it is said enough. And I think one thing it’s concerning me over the last few years seems to be the kind of devaluation of what being a GDP is.

Tif Qureshi:
I actually think the GDP is the most important person in dentistry full stop, in the sense that we need specialists, and specialists do an incredibly important job obviously. But what a GDP can do is just incomparable because a specialist very rarely ever get to see their treatment again. Certainly don’t see it regularly. GDPs will carry out treatment, and then be able to monitor it and intercept and prevent and do whatever they need to do, and that’s far more valuable than perhaps anything else we ever imagine. Plus, you have the ability to build a relationship with a patient, which is over many years. And that’s again something I’m finding is quite devalued nowadays. People seem to be more bothered about getting new patients in through the door than necessarily treating the people that are sitting there already.

Payman L:
Yeah, I remember it was World Aesthetic Congress.

Prav Solanki:
Whack, whack.

Tif Qureshi:
Real good memory.

Payman L:
Yeah, if Ken’s listening, good on you, mate. But the World Aesthetic Congress of it was maybe 2003, 2004, you were very a very junior member of the BACD.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah.

Payman L:
Nowhere near president of the BACD, and you came over to me, and you showed me this model. And on the lower, there was some sort of Inman device on it. And you said to me, “Hey, you know all these veneers we’re doing, the upper, of course we’re going to veneer those, but the lowers, the veneers on lowers are quite hard, aren’t they? I mean we shouldn’t really be doing that. So, what I’m thinking is, maybe you can just straighten the lowers with the…” So, when did that start? I mean when did you bump into, is it Mr. Inman?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah.

Payman L:
How did that happen?

Tif Qureshi:
I would say probably even a couple of years before that, I was fiddling around with the little mini ortho appliances with Z springs on them.

Payman L:
How? Why?

Tif Qureshi:
Fundamentally why, because I felt wrong about doing what I was doing. Fundamentally.

Prav Solanki:
Can you remember that moment where you thought, “Shit, I shouldn’t be doing this?” Was there a defining moment?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, actually, on one of the veneer courses I went on. The first veneer course I sat and watched, I just thought, “Mm. I’m not totally comfortable with this.” Let’s not mention the name of that course, but certainly, I sat there and I thought, “Okay, there’s a lot of great stuff going on here. This is life changing. I’m learning how to do impressions, and I’m learning how to do preparations. I’m learning how to handle patients in a very professional way I’ve never learned before.” But the flip side of that, I was looking and thinking, “I wouldn’t have that done.”

Tif Qureshi:
So, it made me feel uncomfortable, and it didn’t mean that I didn’t do any of it. What I would commonly do is refer the patients to the orthodontist. And very typically, at that time, where when only really comprehensive ortho was offered, the patients would just say, “Forget that. I’m coming back and having this done.” So, you did it. And upper teeth, because you could kind of build them out a little bit, you could try and not to prep them heavily, you still occasionally had to do that, were easier to treat. But a lot of it, as you say, Pay, were almost a nightmare to do. And if you often didn’t treat the upper teeth and didn’t treat the lowers, you just treated the uppers, you actually created this kind of two tone syndrome, which looked bloody awful. Let’s face it.

Prav Solanki:
And bleaching back then wasn’t up to much.

Tif Qureshi:
Bleaching wasn’t good, and people take it for granted. And what’d tend to happen was you’d sort of watch these extreme makeover programmes on telly, and even my own patients would look at them and think, yeah, while you smile, it looks okay. But for the rest of the 99% of the day, let’s face it, England, that’s the way it’s going to be, when you’re not smiling, you’re actually going to be just seeing the lower teeth, which look worse and actually create this horrible contrast. And that made me feel quite uncomfortable. So, I started looking at other ways of just trying, and I was using a lot of composites as well. I have to say, a lot of composite to try and mask it as well. But then I started thinking about minor ortho, and Inman Aligner came along because it was in… The irony of the Inman Aligner was it was in the AACD journal, the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry journal, which I subscribe to-

Prav Solanki:
Is that where you came across it?

Tif Qureshi:
That’s where I came across it. And I open it up. I think I’d stumbled on it before once in something else, but I sort of read it there again. And I thought, “This is fascinating.” These teeth, one and a half, two millimetres of crowding being moved in what seemed like a short period of time. Of course, they’re just moving that small amount, but I thought, “Okay, if I only focused on the front teeth, so no moving everything. So, I wonder if my patients who are currently booked in for veneers over the next few weeks who went to the orthodontist and said no, I wonder if they’d have this done.” So, I actually got one of them back or two of them back, and literally, this is no joke, probably over the next several months, I’d had 10 to 15 patients scheduled for veneers. Every single one said I’ll have that done instead because they could see it was only going to be there for a few weeks. And they could see that it meant that we wouldn’t have to then prepare their teeth or prepare their teeth less. They wouldn’t need an endo etc.

Tif Qureshi:
So, that then made me realise there is a place for this. That was just the start because of course, then the whole concept of progressive smile design and bleaching and bonding, that came in later. But just as a beginning, it was that kind of moment where I read that. Now a couple of years on, and this is the sad part, Don Inman once said to me, I mean it may be an anecdotal comment, but he did say to me what was interesting about that article, he said, “I put it out, and I was so excited when it went out to 10,000 people.” But he said, “You were the only person in the whole world, as far as I know, that’s contacted me referencing that article.” And I don’t know why. It was probably because everyone else was too busy with the veneers at the time. I was in a practise where people didn’t have that much money, so it kind of always was making me think slightly alternative ways of doing things. Obviously, I’ve never been in central London, so that may have been a reason for it.

Payman L:
And then, how did it move on from okay, you started treating those lowers, then started treating the uppers?

Tif Qureshi:
Started treating the uppers. And actually, then what happened was, I started sending some cases that Don said to me I couldn’t do. And these were just like one and a half, two millimetre, three millimetre cases. And he kept saying you can’t do it, you can’t do it. But what I started to do was develop a kind of protocol of space evaluation and space planning, and where I was doing the IPR. And I kind of explained to him this is what I’m doing. Now, he’s a technician, so he kind of listened to me. And I also created this sort of attachment sequence protocol as well.

Prav Solanki:
Were you talking to some orthodontist at the-

Tif Qureshi:
Not really. I have to say not at that point. A little bit later I did.

Prav Solanki:
And it was probably the biggest advantage was that you weren’t talking to ortho, you know what I mean?

Tif Qureshi:
But I wanted to. I did want to early on, and I did. And actually, funnily enough once of the first people I consulted with this was Asif Chadi.

Prav Solanki:
Oh, right.

Tif Qureshi:
And the great thing about Asif was he looked at what I was doing totally, and I’m like maybe some others at the time, was totally open-minded to it in saying, “Look, I can see what you’re doing. You’re just moving the front teeth, and if those patients have come to see me already and have refused, this has surely got to be the best thing to do.” So, he was really quite instrumental in at least making me feel, “Okay, this is the right thing to do if we do it correctly.”

Tif Qureshi:
Another person a year or two later who I started to sort of bounce back some ideas from as well, and I was very lucky, and this is an amazing person to have mentoring me briefly, was someone called Bjorn Zachrisson, who’s one of the greatest orthodontists ever to have lived. Still around today.

Prav Solanki:
How did you come across him?

Tif Qureshi:
Again, this is thankfully through the BACD, and that’s one of the big things about BACD. You get to meet people like that, and he focus spoke many years ago. And then I stayed in touch with him after. And they came on the stage, spoke, and then afterwards I sort of talked to him about what I was doing. And again, he said it makes perfect sense. I was trying to learn a bit more about IPR and the limitations, and he’s obviously written tonnes on it.

Payman L:
Where do you have confidence to go up to the world’s top orthodontist as a GDP and say, “I’m doing this. What do you think?”

Tif Qureshi:
I mean that’s again, that’s where you got to thank people like BACD. You get the opportunity to, and that’s a lot of what of… You’ll always be grateful for that in reality. But the fact is I was thinking that way, and I was thinking that way in an environment where others weren’t. And so, yeah, to be fair, I’m not saying that it would’ve been exactly the same, but I was heading that way anyway. So, I would’ve spoken to one person or another. I just wanted to validate it and make sure that this was something that was I was doing as well as I could.

Payman L:
Have you ever thought, or maybe I’ve even heard you, write or read about you saying this. But today, it would be impossible because you’d be so scared of legal ramifications of being the only one doing something.

Tif Qureshi:
I think you’re totally right, Pay. And I think that’s actually quite a sad statement really. We’ve all being lucky to a certain degree for the times we’ve lived in. But nowadays, yeah, you’d probably would fear it. However, I’m getting to the point where I’m just turning that argument around, where I used to hear, and I still hear people say, “If a general dentist does ortho, it’s dangerous.” Well, actually I flip the argument around now and say that, “A general dentist who doesn’t do ortho is dangerous, okay?”

Tif Qureshi:
And I can justify that based on the fact that a lot of dentists don’t understand the concept of constricting envelopes. And why do envelopes constrict? Because teeth move. And how do you fix it? Not restoratively. Yeah, you can do some restorative, but you need ortho. And there are probably, I’d estimate, millions of patients around the world who have a repeatedly chipping front tooth. It keeps chipping. The dentist’s solutions is another composite, another composite, or a splint, and a lot of those patients end up with crowns. Actually, the dentist understood that they needed a little bit of ortho to get the right, overjet the right overbite, bit of bonding to improve the overbite. You’d probably find that actually a lot less people would have anterior veneers or crowns. I’ve seen that. It’s absolutely clear, and I think it’s a really strong part of the message now.

Tif Qureshi:
So, I think general dentists have got to… Here’s something I would say controversial, if you’re a general dentist, and you’re my general dentist, and you couldn’t do any ortho, I wouldn’t even sit in your chair. That’s just what I would say. I wouldn’t even sit in your chair. If you needed to do my endo, I’d be all right with that, but if there was some anterior, and your solution for my front tooth that kept chipping was a crown, no way am I sitting in your chair. So, I know it’s a powerful comment, but-

Payman L:
The thing is, saying it now with your record, then you can basically say what you like, and everyone will pay attention.

Tif Qureshi:
Back then of course.

Payman L:
Saying stuff like that as a GDP from Kent, I find it super interesting.

Tif Qureshi:
Well, I was saying stuff. And actually, we stuck our neck out, and we were showing what we were doing. And I’d say there were, you’d stick your head up, and again, you’d get people in wanna shoot you down. And I got a couple of invites to places where I was terrified, an audience of orthodontists and all sorts of stuff. But the reality was when they sat and watched what we were doing, many of them have come up to me after and said, “Actually, you’re doing just the front teeth. You’re looking at what’s actually going on.”

Tif Qureshi:
So, the key part here, and this is where people like Ross Hobson have actually made a huge difference is actually to validate the fact that what we’re trying to do is make sure the patients understand the difference between comprehensive treatment versus the compromise. That’s the key. As long as you can diagnose the case completely, and you’ve got to diagnose it, not somebody else. This is really important. And you can explain to the patient why doing just the front teeth is okay versus actually what the patient may really need, which is have the full mouth done. It really shouldn’t be a problem at all. And once we brought that message in, I think it’s made it clear that there’s nothing wrong with doing this. And that actually, you’ve got to start thinking about doing it if you’re not doing it already.

Prav Solanki:
So, we go from you found this appliance, you made it work, you started shifting teeth, doing less veneers. And fast forward, you assembled an academy.

Payman L:
Straight talk seminars, I seem to remember.

Tif Qureshi:
It was. And that’s a good time to bring in James Russell and Tim Bradstock-Smith because they were two of the first people who were part of the… They were actually at the first study club in inverted brackets, where it was just them and me. We had our own little study club, and one week we would talk about a different subject. And I think by the time we got to the fifth subject, which was just Inman Aligner, so I’d done composite, and Tim did occlusion, and James did temporary veneers. So, we were just lecturing to each other. A bit sad really when you think about it.

Tif Qureshi:
But when Inman Aligner came along, they were like, I don’t want to swear, but their jaws were on the floor, like, “What the hell is that? Wow.” And all of a sudden, they wanted to start to learn how to use it. And I kind of coached them on it a little bit. They didn’t need a lot. And then, before we knew it, we were just running a course as a bit of a experiment for a few of the people and a few of the BACD guys wanted to know, and then it just suddenly went from there. But it was very rough and very innocent. And we were trying to do the right thing, but equally, the way things have changed now, we really developed it to do everything in the right pathway.

Tif Qureshi:
The good thing about it you can’t really do that much with it. That was probably the best thing about it. It wasn’t a treatment that could treat a lot of teeth. So, you could see well, if the back teeth need treatment, it’s not treatment for it. Simple as that.

Payman L:
Do you remember the point where you thought rather than this being a treatment modality, this could be a business?

Tif Qureshi:
I think there was never a contrived pathway for that. And that’s probably a weakness in itself in that we could’ve been much further ahead than we are. But the truth is I think a good few years ago, maybe five or six years ago, I think once we started running courses… In fact, it’s longer than that. We’ve been running courses in Denmark for nearly eight or nine years now. But once we started going abroad, and of course, a lot of that was just you get an invite, and it’s a bit of fun and that sort of stuff. But once we started going abroad and you started to get a lot of feedback from dentists who were just saying, “This has completely changed the way I’m doing dentistry,” I think we realised that we kind of almost had a responsibility to do something and set something up more official. So, we set it up, set the forum up, the support forum, all that sort of stuff. And yeah, it just grew from there.

Tif Qureshi:
Now it’s a business. Yeah, I mean it is a business, and we have to make sure it runs and operates correctly. But there still is very much led by dentists, so we’ve got our ethical hats on the whole time. Sometimes, we probably do things which are hardcore Hard business would say, “Don’t do this, do this instead.” But we can’t. We just have to do things that might hold us back in the long run. But ultimately, I’ve got to stand up and look in the mirror, and I know the other guys need to as well. So, that’s kind of why we’ve taken it the way we have.

Prav Solanki:
So, ethics above profits.

Tif Qureshi:
I think that’s always been a good message, not just in what we’re doing, I think in dentistry generally, a lot of people believe that and want to believe it and want to say it louder. It’s the old cliché, if you do the right thing, the money will follow. And it does.

Prav Solanki:
Of course.

Tif Qureshi:
It does. I think we’ve got to be thinking about patients over a much longer period of time rather than a short ticket, a quick ticket to success. It’s a relationship. You look after them, and you do the right thing for them all the way through. That’s kind of our goal.

Prav Solanki:
So, now you’ve assembled a team as part of IAS Academy with different people, with different skillsets, doing different things. What is the overall validation of that message because, let’s be honest, there’s loads of other ortho companies, teaching institutes out there. What differentiates the academy? I look at it, and I’ve got friends who’ve just qualified. And they say to me, “Prav, what course should I do?” And the first thing I’ll tell them is, “You need to take ortho.” And I’d suggest they’d come onto the IAS Academy pathway. But why the IAS pathway instead of any other pathway?

Tif Qureshi:
Well, there’s lots of different things that I think we’re a little bit different in many ways. Firstly is the type of mentoring we do. So, what we want to do is just make sure that no one gets on board without having all the right images, the right records, and then they’re guided all the way through. So, that’s really important from one aspect.

Tif Qureshi:
Another thing that I think is different is that I don’t actually think of us as an ortho company. So, that’s different. So, there are people out there that teach ortho. That’s fine. We teach ortho, but it’s actually part of a whole restorative process of thinking. But also, it’s a lifetime view. So, there are a lot of people out there that teach ortho, and we teach ortho. We want to teach you how to move teeth correctly and sensibly. But we also want to teach you how to restore cosmetics and function, but the real kind of for me, the kicker, is we want to teach you how to communicate with the patient and maintain things and retain things for life. And I don’t think anyone is really doing that.

Tif Qureshi:
The whole concept of retention for life and what that means, I’m not just talking about having a retainer stuck on the teeth for life. It’s actually to observe the patient and see how their occlusion changes and the movement changes and the function, the guidance changes. Those things are actually immensely more valuable than one single kind of… To me, the kind of work I do is never just ortho. It’s always ortho restorative functional occlusion. That’s what it is. I think the only people that are just pure ortho really applies to is probably children in many ways. Once you get to an adult and your teeth have been around for a while, you need to make sure that you’re going to end up in a better situation, certainly not a worse situation after having some orthodontics done. And usually there can be some restorative element of that.

Tif Qureshi:
So, those are the things that are a bit different. I think we try and move on what we do. A lot of it is based on because the fact we’re all practising , and we look at stuff, and we change stuff. We’re never going to just sit there and do the same thing. But to me, I think where dentistry is going to move in the future is ortho restorative, and I think that is almost a new subject in itself. And it’s so powerful because it can really change the way people think about what they’re doing every day. And very importantly, the communications in your daily examinations are very different once you have that sort of thinking as well. I hope that answered your question.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, it did kind of. So, what about if I’m a Invisalign Diamond practitioner, and I’m married to Invisalign? Can I still come on one of your courses? Is there a conflict there at all?

Tif Qureshi:
No, not at all. I mean what we’re trying to do is be system agnostic, and that’s the whole idea. I know I can help anyone doing anything, get a better result. That’s kind of the way because actually when you start applying those correct ortho principles and ortho restorative principles, and very importantly, you start thinking about a load of different things up front, you can put into any case. And it doesn’t matter what you… One thing I would say is I think too many dentists are sucked into brands, and they say, “Oh, well, the power of this system, the power of that system.” It’s just not true. It’s about what you’re doing as a dentist. I actually don’t want a patient to ever come into me and say to me, “I want you to give me that.” I want them to come in and say, “I want to see you.”

Tif Qureshi:
I appreciate that younger dentists kind of, or maybe some dentists, need a brand to work with. And I think established brands are always good things, but I think the more we allow brands to take over the value of dentistry, the more danger we’ve got of actually losing control. And so, that’s where all of a sudden, do it yourself style treatments come in because then, it’s the system that becomes more important than the actual dentists. That’s what I would worry about. And I certainly don’t want to mention any company names here because we know how litigious this whole area is, but I think it’s really important that as dentists, where we can, we make a stand to control our profession. And the minute companies start coming in and automating stuff so that patients can just literally get their own aligners to their door, or you know what I mean? I think we’re in danger.

Prav Solanki:
Which is huge, right?

Tif Qureshi:
Which is huge. If it could be done and delivered perfectly safely, which I just cannot imagine it can, great. But it’s not going to happen.

Prav Solanki:
In this case, we’re talking about orthodontics from a vending machine.

Tif Qureshi:
Potentially, or a scanning centre, or something. But see, the problem with all of this is even if there’s a dentist involved, doing the base creation or whatever, what I can see from virtually any orthodontic plan that’s put in front of me that a lot of guys talk about, I can say, “Well, you know what? If you’d done a couple of little bits and pieces up front, which I won’t go into, a couple bits and pieces up front, you could get a much better result.” And actually, the problem is people take the scan. They take the scan, and they think that’s it. Someone else is going to now sort me out. And actually, a lot of cases you could stop yourself getting in black triangles by just doing a couple little minor things first. And my eyes can see that, but the computer’s eyes can’t. And certainly, someone in a high street scanning your teeth won’t be able to. So, by allowing brands to take over, we devalue dentistry. It’s so important.

Prav Solanki:
So, am I correct in understanding you could teach dentists how to do Invisalign better? It’s not the system that matters, but it’s the approach.

Tif Qureshi:
I don’t know want to talk about one particular brand like that, but-

Prav Solanki:
I’m using that as an example.

Tif Qureshi:
I know anyone who’s got a kind of ortho restorative style case, I know that if I look at the case up front, there’s lots of little things that we can see and we can teach that actually would make the dentist think, “Yeah, you know what? I realise that tooth’s the right functional tooth. This tooth I’m going to start to change the shape of.” If you’re taking a scan and you haven’t looked at those things, you’ve already missed an opportunity. Do you see what I mean?

Prav Solanki:
Yeah.

Tif Qureshi:
The standard orthodontic assessment and diagnosis is extremely important that everyone should be able to do. And I think a lot of people, again, they get sucked in because a third party is designing the plan for them. They think somehow they’re safe. They’re not. You have to come up with that plan. It’s your plan. You’re responsible. So, you need to do the assessment, diagnosis, the plan. So therefore, you’ve got to spend that time, you can still take a scan, but what you put into that treatment plan beforehand could literally save your career later on. Plus on top of that, you get a better result. It’s simple as that.

Payman L:
But it must keep you guys up at night, that their AI or something will get to the point where-

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, I’ve got no doubt that algorithms, things will go… The reality is I think there’s nothing that can ever replace a human brain, and maybe we’ll get-

Payman L:
But maybe there is.

Tif Qureshi:
Maybe there will be one day. I don’t know. But think of like-

Payman L:
My brother’s a radiologist. In their world, it’s one of the use cases for the IBM Watson thing was radiology. And they’re all very, very worried that they won’t be needed to-

Tif Qureshi:
But I mean, would you step on a plane? I mean planes can fly themselves completely automatic now. Would you step on a plane knowing there’s no pilot? It’s kind of that’s the way-

Payman L:
I would step in a car knowing there’s no driver.

Tif Qureshi:
I’m worried about that. I’m worried about that.

Payman L:
But the point I’m trying to make is I completely get it. We have it in whitening. I completely get it. But if the AI can be shown to be safer than an orthodontist in its treatment planning, of course you can’t do IPR and stuff. There are limitations.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, it may be robotically done.

Payman L:
It’s going to be the same thing as Uber, right?

Tif Qureshi:
Potentially.

Payman L:
At some point they’ll say, “The self driving car is safer than a human being.”

Tif Qureshi:
But the power is in the knowledge. It may not necessarily be in the gathering records and the execution of a procedure. It’s actually in the knowledge, and you still need to have somebody who could actually overview it and look is this going well? We may end up doing dentistry hands off completely, but I still, until the day I die, I’d still want a dentist looking at what I’m doing and not a robot. I mean in 100 years or 50 years, it might be completely different. I don’t know. But where we are today, I think you can show, but I would imagine that patients who certainly don’t have the correct orthodontic planning and assessment and diagnosis, I would imagine certainly those cases are far less likely to actually be satisfactory.

Payman L:
So, you coined the term ABB. Aligning existed, bleaching existed, bonding existed, but you kind of brought them together and sort of popularised that idea.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah.

Payman L:
And certainly I would say you’re responsible for the fact that the UK went from being pretty much a second division player as far as minimally invasive dentistry was going, and to make us we’re really up there now. And you were definitely the key person behind that.

Tif Qureshi:
I wouldn’t say key. I was born of the people. I mean there’s a lot of guys out there who moves things on me, Jason Smithson and Dipesh now is just doing amazing things. I mean there’s lots of people. We could actually look at what’s coming out of the UK and be really proud, right?

Payman L:
Yeah.

Tif Qureshi:
When I go and travel abroad, people are talking about UK speakers now. There’s usually two or three on most international lectures, whereas in the days, it would always be full of Americans or Italians.

Payman L:
Yeah. It does feel good, doesn’t it?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah.

Payman L:
But you were the first.

Tif Qureshi:
One of the first, yeah. One of the first, yeah.

Payman L:
Do you think about that?

Tif Qureshi:
It’s a nice thing. It’s a nice thing. I don’t think you can ever get… You sit there focusing on it too much. It’s there. It’s something you can be proud of I suppose.

Payman L:
Listen, I’ve come across young dentists who don’t realise.

Tif Qureshi:
Well, young dentists all listen to Instagram, don’t they? That’s probably a bit of a generalisation. But I think it’s easy to get an idea from Instagram of what everything is going on. Yeah, you can’t expect to be known for stuff. Look, put it this way. One of the greatest dentists ever to have lived died about five or six years. That was Ferker. His work still goes on now unappreciated, and it probably will carry on going unappreciated. So, people should be looking at that, I think, rather than swiping up. And they’ll probably learn a lot more about sort of the battle of trying to change thinking.

Prav Solanki:
But I think you’re using social to change thinking, right? I see posts that you do, Tif, and you post a 15 year follow up case on there, and that’s a game changer, right? Because there aren’t many people out there who have been in the same practise for 15 years.

Payman L:
You’re not saying you’d rather Instagram… Dentistry doesn’t resonate with Instagram.

Tif Qureshi:
No, no, no. I think Instagram is powerful and useful. It’s powerful and useful, but I think what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to be very careful about what we put out there. So, we’ve got to be very careful about what we put out there because it’s very easy to start to create this idea that you’ve got to be a certain way. You’ve got to have this many followers. You’ve got to post this regularly. And one thing I do find, I’ve made posts actually recently saying, “Don’t get sucked into the whole Instagram thing.” And I posted that on Instagram, but I’ve had a lot of private messages from young saying, “It’s so good that you said that about not having to get new patients all the time.” Because actually, I think there’s a lot of pressure to get new patients and distinguish yourself and get a brand and all this kind of stuff.

Prav Solanki:
This fear of missing out, right?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah. People do seem like they’re in a big rush, and you don’t need to be in a big rush. You’ve got your whole career ahead of you. Just take your time. Just take your time.

Prav Solanki:
What advice would you give someone? You’ve come from a general dentist in Kent to being probably one of the most sought after international speakers. If somebody else wanted to follow in that sort of footstep or wanted to get involved in teaching, speaking, and that side of things, what advice would you give a young dentist?

Tif Qureshi:
I think I’d just say take your time. Don’t rush. I mean it goes back to what I said earlier. See the same patients. There’s people out there posting composite video cases who actually haven’t even seen their work a year later or two years later. Okay. And they may post it, may be proud of it. There’s people teaching it who actually haven’t seen their work three or four years later.

Prav Solanki:
You must get people approaching you saying, “I want to teach.” Why? That’s what I always ask someone who comes to me, saying, “I want to teach.”

Prav Solanki:
“You want to teach. Have you got something to say?”

Tif Qureshi:
I think you’re right.

Prav Solanki:
But wanting to teach for wanting to teach on its own, it’s a bit mad.

Tif Qureshi:
You’re right. But again, that’s what you said a bit earlier. I think people are actually a little scared of dentistry, and they’re kind of trying to find another thing to do, and teaching does look like… It looks glamorous. It looks like you might travel here or there or have another alternative income. But the reality is-

Prav Solanki:
There’s no money in it.

Tif Qureshi:
There is no, yeah. But the reality is you’d be better off spending six days a week just working your surgery. That’s the truth of it. I mean people build companies up and all sorts of stuff, and they’re very lucky. And I’ve been lucky.

Payman L:
If you’re the best, of course there’s money. If you’re the best pin maker in Europe, you’re richer than all of us, right? If you’re the best, of course. But there is this thing of I want to teach, and it’s interesting. I always ask those people to look at their motivations. On the other hand, there are people who really should be teaching, like you. And it’s a funny time we’re in from that perspective as well. But what do you think about this sort of… Do you not agree that there’s a bit of millennial bashing in terms of, look, I think they’re better than us?

Tif Qureshi:
Oh, do you know, this is a joke. There was actually a good post on it the other day, and I think actually the standard of work that you see from young dentists now is clearly higher.

Prav Solanki:
Much, much higher.

Tif Qureshi:
Oh, yeah, yeah. I think the fact is the courses are accessible.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, there were no courses in our day.

Tif Qureshi:
No, there weren’t. The techniques, the materials are just on a different plane.

Prav Solanki:
And social too.

Tif Qureshi:
Social helps, absolutely.

Prav Solanki:
You get inspired early.

Tif Qureshi:
And a lot of people are buying cameras standardly. They’re picking up cameras and looking at… Picking up a camera and looking at your own work is not just about taking a nice photograph. I’ll tell you what, a little tip is take a close photograph of something that looks rubbish. You’ll learn more from that than you will from ones that look good. So, I try and take dry photographs of every single case I do. And yeah, sometimes they look rubbish, and I actually put those up in my lectures, okay? Because I say to people, “You need to look at it like that. You need to look at it, and that way you kind of learn.”

Tif Qureshi:
So, I think, going back to your point, I think they are. And I think there has been a bit of millennial bashing probably because you do see, as you get older, sometimes it is harder for dentists to swallow when they’ve been around for 25, 30 years. And suddenly, you see someone with two years experience posting stuff up that looks better than you. However, I still do think what’s extremely important is to look at what it looks like in a few years to come. Before and afters are all very interesting, but they’re not really that interesting until you can see it again. And even a year can actually give you so much information, and it might not look perfect.

Tif Qureshi:
But in a way, if it doesn’t look perfect, learn from it because it’s actually a valuable… I’ve always found there’s a bit of a thing in dentistry where you sort of stick something in a tooth and turn your head away immediately. That’s what it kind of used to be like when we were back in the old days. Now I’d say, “Look at it, analyse it, swallow the fact that it could look pretty bad. And actually, now you had to do it again better.”

Prav Solanki:
You touched upon the BACD earlier. You’re a ex-BACD president. Can you just talk to me about what influence that’s had on your career? And prior to being president, what it was like being president, and what influence you had then, and then since as well, the direction they’ve gone in?

Tif Qureshi:
I mean I’ve got a lot of friends in the BACD. I’ve had a lot of friends, and I’ve still got a lot of friends. And I will have friends to make there, and it was probably a really key part of my career. There’s no doubt about that. You get to meet. You get to stand up on a stage and lecture. You get to go to places that perhaps you never would’ve done before. I think for my own personal view, I probably realised at one point that what I was doing wasn’t necessarily the same thing that what they were aiming for. Now, it may well be that they absolutely are now.

Tif Qureshi:
But I think for a period of time, I just became a bit less interesting cosmetic dentistry, okay? Because I’m even saying it now, and I’m sort of saying it when I’m lecturing that when I look back on my own cases, and this has come from my own embarrassment of what I’ve done in certain cases where, I used to act like a typical cosmetic dentist, in that you would market to people. You’d bring them in. You’d smile design them up. You’d wax them up and take pictures, and we were doing a version of DSD 20 years ago quite frankly. It’s a bit different but-

Prav Solanki:
It’s DSD

Tif Qureshi:
Well, it was digital. Believe it or not, it was digital. 1999 piece of software called DICOM imaging.

Prav Solanki:
I remember that. You’re right, you’re right.

Tif Qureshi:
And actually, do you know what? It isn’t that different. The DSD now is something on a much higher level. But we were doing that sort of stuff, and I would see the patients, do the treatment, finish the case, good-bye to the patient. They’d go back to their dentist. And we all did that, and lots of people still do that today. I’ve actually now realised that’s completely irresponsible because I don’t see patients that come back 10 years on. And actually, I would look at the patients, and I once or twice came close to welling up with tears in my eyes, thinking, “What the hell have I done?” Okay, the patient’s not sitting there in pain and complaining, but I’m looking and seeing teeth that I veneered, and have now moved back to the position that they actually were originally. And so, what I kind of realised is lots of things can change. Lots of things can change, the occlusion, the function. Tooth position can change, and if you just palm a patient back off to a general practitioner who you don’t know very well, you have no idea how that patient is going to actually be managed.

Tif Qureshi:
There’s a few other things that really made me think very hard about the whole concept of cosmetic dentistry is that there’s this thing called the replacement event. I sort of use this term quite a bit. And the replacement event is something that when you go and watch a lecture on cosmetic… I’m not talking about the BACD here. Just generally, when you go and watch a lecture about cosmetic dentistry, very rarely does anyone ever stand up and talk about the replacement event, as in the three little fundamental factors that I’ll give you. There’s others.

Tif Qureshi:
Number one, will the patient be able to afford it again? So, we would take the money off the patient, and he could be their 30s, even 20s. I mean thankfully, I didn’t do many like that, 20s. But you don’t know, 15, 20 years on, the patient now needs something done, and they can’t afford it. And there’s no contingency for that. The minute you start doing that sort of work, you’re kind of responsible for it.

Tif Qureshi:
The second thing that I’ve found is that patients have got to the point where actually they could afford to do something again. But you know what? They can’t be bothered, and they literally cannot… For whatever psychological reason, they cannot be bothered to go through that process or even part of that process again.

Tif Qureshi:
The third thing, and this is the real killer, and anyone that does this sort of work, and it doesn’t get talked about a lot, is veneers don’t all fall off, I mean doing a one go. What usually happens is 10, 15 years on, one fails, okay? Upper central, upper left lateral. No one tells you how hard it is to match a brand new veneer to a set of eight or nine that have been sitting there for 10, 15 years.

Payman L:
That’s a good point.

Tif Qureshi:
Absolutely a nightmare. And you’ll end up doing three, losing half the hair on your head, and feeling ultra stressed about it as well.

Prav Solanki:
Is that something that you would personally struggle with, somebody with your skill as well?

Payman L:
Anyone would.

Tif Qureshi:
Anyone, yeah. I’ve got a great technician. I’ve been working with Luke Barnett and Tanya Knight for years. They’re excellent, but I know when that happens, my heart sinks because it is just… You know, eight years on, when an aligned, bleached, bond tooth chips, and the edge chips, there’s no stress at all. Just shrug my shoulders. Just trim that off, rebuild it. It’s a totally different kettle of fish. That’s the thing that people need to hear when they’re thinking about cosmetic dentistry. Now, I’m not saying of course that the BACD’s all about doing veneers. It clearly isn’t. It moved on a lot, but my goals are now not cosmetic. Actually, I’m looking at functional treatment on patients long term.

Prav Solanki:
Do you think their definition of a cosmetic dentist is different, the results that you’re giving your patients? Because in my mind, as a non-dentist, I look at cosmetic dentistry as just improving somebody’s smile so that they’re happy with it. That’s what I would consider in my own head. And I’ve just heard you talk about, it was almost like, you talk about a cosmetic dentist being different to what you’re describing. Is there a definition of a cosmetic dentist that’s popularised maybe amongst the BACD or the dental crowd that’s very different in line with what your philosophy of-

Tif Qureshi:
That’s a really good question. I don’t think you could certainly say that everybody in the BACD is a certain way because you’ve got a whole mixture of general dentists. And you’ve got some people that just do cosmetic dentistry, and some people do a lot more and a lot less. I think what I’ve realised is I don’t want to be this sort of pseudo-specialist that just tries to pull people in and treat them and do big cases on them. I’ll do big cases on patients, but generally, I’ll want to have known those patients for a period of time and do it for the right reasons at the right time.

Tif Qureshi:
Now, I’m not saying that the BACD doesn’t believe in that message. They may well do, and I know a lot of the guys. And I think they are totally open-minded in everything they do. I think John Kois, from what I understood, stood up on the stage and said pretty much the same thing the other day. And he gave an amazing lecture. And it’s not about the BACD. It’s about cosmetic dentistry in general that I think that it’s made me reevaluate my goals slightly. I won’t take a case on unless the patient understands they’re going to come back and see me. Simple as that, but it changes the dynamic because that might not fit into everyone’s cosmetic dentistry’s business model, where you see you’re doing big cases, and then you palm them off back. I’m not saying that that is going to end in disaster, but for my personal feeling, if I do something like that on a patient, I want to make sure they’re okay. I want to see them again. It’s as simple as that.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Tif Qureshi:
But you can apply that thinking, I mean this is where it gets controversial, you can apply that thinking across the board in specialism.

Prav Solanki:
Any industry.

Tif Qureshi:
Any specialism, any dentistry. If you do something, you’re doing ortho, well, you damn right should see the patient again, you know what I mean? And that goes across the board, general dentists, specialists, and all the rest of it. You cannot pretend everything is okay. Things change, and everything changes.

Prav Solanki:
Why are most of the cases that you face here relapse? Because there’s no long term follow up, right?

Tif Qureshi:
There hasn’t been. And I think it’s a very difficult one when it comes to actually being what a specialist is because you haven’t got any there. It’s impractical to keep seeing those people, but I do think that there hasn’t been, certainly in this country, I don’t think we’ve had enough coordinated retention strategy in this country. So, what’s happened is we have a lot of people doing very high quality orthodontics perhaps, but then, general dentists who are then looking after those cases aren’t really fully aware of what happens when a retainer’s failing, what to look for, changes in the anterior function and guidance and all of those things. So, I think there’s a long way to go still on getting the whole ortho and maintenance retention kind of protocols right. I do think the BOS are doing a good job in trying to raise everyone’s attention to understanding what retention is. But the reality is that the evidence has been there for years, and it just does feel like it’s been brought up recently, when really, it should have been there 10, 15, years ago.

Payman L:
So, is that a UK problem?

Tif Qureshi:
Oh, it’s global.

Payman L:
So, how come orthodontics hasn’t worked this out?

Tif Qureshi:
I think this is probably always one of the issues with the concept of specialism. It’s got nothing to do with the patients. This is actually because of how dentists want to change their careers. So, we sort of change our careers to suit us, and specialism is great. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. But again, one of the biggest sort of problems with specialism is you don’t really get to follow up. I’m sure some do. Actually, perio specialists certainly often do.

Tif Qureshi:
But unless you’re in that environment where you are going to be closely communicating with the dentist who are looking after the case, who knows, in 20, 30 years time, it probably should be standard that every patient… Right now, patient has ortho. They finish the ortho, and the general dentist should be then sending a full series of clinical photographs back to the orthodontist every year to review. How hard’s that? You see what I mean? And that should be built in to the programme. Actually, it should be built into the NHS programme, and there should be some funds that pay for that. But will that happen?

Payman L:
No.

Tif Qureshi:
I don’t know.

Payman L:
What is your week look like? How much work do you do?

Tif Qureshi:
For quite a long time, it was three, three and a half days of clinical practise. More recently, I’ve gone to two quite long days. Partly because I kind of find myself teaching virtually every week or doing something virtually every week, and that sometimes is going to involve travelling. So, if I have to travel on Thursday, I don’t really want to be working Wednesday or Thursday and then travelling in the evening. Otherwise, I just don’t see my family. So, the swings and roundabouts of it are yeah, I might do a bit of travelling every now and then. But then, if I’m not actually doing a lot of teaching, I’d be finished on Tuesday night and back at work on Monday. Having said that, there will be a lot of work from home and a lot of meetings and phone calls with all the people in my business. So, it’s busy.

Payman L:
How many events do you go to a year? It’s a gigantic number, no?

Tif Qureshi:
I think we probably do at least 50 in the UK, don’t we?

Payman L:
5-0?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah. And probably-

Payman L:
Jesus.

Tif Qureshi:
Probably double or triple it if we look at all the different places we’re in, yeah. So, there’s a lot going on. And the thing is, we’ve got a big group of people. Now, we’ve talked a little bit about the team that we’ve assembled. But I think it’s important to mention them because all of these people are people who have… They’re friends. They’re not my friends previously, but they’ve become friends because they were people who believed in what we did, and then went on to teach. Many of them never taught before at all. Now we’re actually international lecturers. Nobody’s come into this in a kind of contrived, planned way. It was all people that believed in the concept.

Prav Solanki:
Tif, I’ve known you for years, and all the time I’ve known you, you’re incredibly passionate. You’re hard working, and you put a lot of physical time into what you do. How does that impact your work life, family balance, and what impact does it have on your relationships with your kids and wife?

Tif Qureshi:
I think I’ve got a very understandable wife. I mean she’s lovely.

Prav Solanki:
Understanding.

Tif Qureshi:
Understanding, yeah, sorry. Understandable, yeah. Understanding, yeah. I mean she’s lovely. She understands what I do, and she understands the pressures you get if you get put under. She also understands what it’s about. I’m not out there just having a laugh.

Prav Solanki:
She’s a dentist.

Tif Qureshi:
She’s actually a dental technician. She was trained at King’s. We actually met at King’s. We weren’t together then. We kind of met a few years after.

Prav Solanki:
You met at uni?

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, we met at uni, but as I said, we weren’t together at the time. But she was at Kings. She’s a northerner. She’s from Preston or St. Anne’s actually. I like to say it’s Blackpool, but it’s near there or thereabouts.

Prav Solanki:
Manchester mate.

Tif Qureshi:
Somewhere out there, yeah, basically somewhere out there. But no, I like the place anyway. But no, she’s very understanding. I think, looking back, there’s things that I regret where there were times where I was flying off to the States and doing this and that, and part of it was just kind of not being able to say no and not being able to balance out what was worth doing and not doing. And I look back at those moments and times that I think I really missed out on certain things. I mean I can’t believe I missed her 40th birthday to do a lecture in the States. And actually, it kills me thinking about it, particularly because of what a waste of time it was. It went well, but for one reason or another, things didn’t quite work out the way I wanted them to work there because of some of the people we were working with. And we never had problems filling courses there, but there was some issues over there at that point. And you know, I just sort of look back and think, “That wasn’t wise.”

Tif Qureshi:
And now, I think because I’ve sacrificed the practise, if anything, so, the practise ticks over. I do what I need to do, but I could be doing a lot better with me there full time. We’ve got a great team there. But I’d rather sacrifice that than my family. So at the end of the day, I get to spend a lot of time with them. I’ll be at home five days on the trot sometimes, and then the odd week, I’ll be away for two or three days. Very rare now that I’m flying every single weekend for three or four days. I probably fly maybe once a month and maybe have something in the UK one weekend as well.

Payman L:
So, every other weekend, you’re away?

Tif Qureshi:
Every other weekend, I would probably say I’m doing something, but that could be in England.

Payman L:
But away?

Tif Qureshi:
But away, yeah.

Payman L:
I think Jason has a similar situation.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, yeah. I see his feet up on the platform. I don’t think my schedule is as intense as Jason’s looks right now.

Payman L:
But a big shout out to the partners. We do once a month, and that seems like hard work. Away, you know.

Tif Qureshi:
That’s why you have to sacrifice week time. You’ve got to. I could be in the practise making a bit more money, but I’m not going to because I want to be at home. I want to be able to pick my kids up from school. Literally, it’s actually quite nice to be able to do that. And you get to a point in the week where they get sick of your face, and that’s definitely when you know it’s probably good that you’re away the following week. So, it is swings and roundabouts. Last summer, I only did two days a week even though I had no lecturing. Imagine how wonderful that was, and I was literally off five days a week. So, I’m not going to feel too sorry for myself.

Payman L:
But no, the sacrifice is real though. You must’ve missed… Even I missed, I don’t work, I’m not a dentist at all, but even I miss some key events, whatever it is, carol service or whatever you want to call it. There are some things you’ve missed out by-

Tif Qureshi:
Definitely. And occasionally it gets thrown back at you by your kids and by your family. And it gets quite hard to try and-

Payman L:
There’s no defence.

Tif Qureshi:
There’s no defence. It’s so difficult to balance it out.

Prav Solanki:
What’s the most painful thing that you’ve missed, kids-wise?

Tif Qureshi:
Oh.

Payman L:
You bastard. What a question.

Tif Qureshi:
I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever missed their birthdays, although actually I missed my daughter’s last birthday, but that was only because she was away in Malta, so that was her own fault, on a basketball trip. But that was quite painful actually. But no, I think there’s been times where I just wish I’d been at home where things were going on. It might have been a friend’s birthday or-

Prav Solanki:
Just an event.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah. You think, “Why am I here doing this?” And I think that’s why I’m much more picky about what I’m doing now and just not necessarily saying yes to everything. It’s like you were saying, people want to learn and teach. If you’ve got that attitude and all you’re thinking about I’ve got to learn and teach, you’d say yes to everything. And you just shouldn’t. You’ve got to peg it out.

Prav Solanki:
I’ve met your son, Aidan. And he’s quite interesting because he’s doing a little bit of work for the academy now. And it’s only recently I think he’s just started to understand why Dad’s putting all this sacrifice in.

Payman L:
What’s he doing?

Prav Solanki:
He’s doing a bit of social media work for us and helping us out.

Payman L:
How old is he?

Tif Qureshi:
He’s 17. He just posts stuff that we’ve checked. It actually makes it a lot easier because he’s next to me, and he can show me and say, “Before you, just to make sure it looks correct.”

Prav Solanki:
But more recently, he’s seen you lecture on a big stage as well, the whole family and stuff. And they know now. I mean he’s spent some time with us, came to Manchester, and even he said to me, “When I saw Dad up on that big stage, it made everything real and really made me understand.”

Payman L:
Yeah, so last time we were in Birmingham, I brought Depish’s whole family in at the end. And just to see that this is why you’ve lost your son.

Tif Qureshi:
It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do, and that’s probably one of the… I mean when they came to New Zealand with me, and we did this big event, the New Zealand Institute of-

Payman L:
They all went there?

Tif Qureshi:
Well, we are very lucky. I had an invite in Singapore and New Zealand all over two weeks, which just happened to be the Easter break. So, basically they were coming whether I liked it or not, they were looking at the flights, and they were coming. So, we went to New Zealand, spent a bit of time there. I did this big lecture of about two or three hundred people, and it went really well. I mean I love all the people there. I think I got on with them very well. But the kids came and watched the last bit and came up on the stage with me, and that was a moment that I’ll kind of always look back and think that was great. And whatever happens to me one day, they probably will see a picture of that and think that was a nice time.

Payman L:
They’ll be very proud.

Tif Qureshi:
Yeah, I think so. I think so. I think they’ll understand what it’s all about basically. A few years ago, I remember we were going in Norway. I took them once in Norway. But they were only 6 and 10 or something. And this old dentist leaned over to them both, we were sitting on a bus going somewhere, I think from the airport to the hotel, the Solstrand. It was the Swedish academy, which I mentioned, and this chap leaned over to my son and said, “You should be happy, proud of your dad. He saved a lot of tooth.” But my son just rolled my eyes, didn’t even have a clue what he was talking about. And I almost wept at that point. But anyway, it was a nice-

Prav Solanki:
What would you have done differently, if you could go back?

Tif Qureshi:
I think even though I look back at some of those cases that I wish I hadn’t treated, obviously there were a few. The weird thing about those is they’ve taught me so much, and I’m hoping to teach other people so much. So actually, it’s a good thing. Probably from a business point of view, there’s probably certain things we wouldn’t have done, maybe one or two people we wouldn’t have worked with, and places I wouldn’t have travelled to that I just didn’t need to go to. I don’t want to name names and stuff, but certainly there are things I wouldn’t have done in that respect. When you’re a dentist, you’re not a hardened businessperson. It just doesn’t work.

Prav Solanki:
Have any of your cases came back to haunt you? The ones that you feel now you wouldn’t have given them that treatment today, right?

Tif Qureshi:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not to the point where patients have come back in screaming and crying, but I think the haunting I find the fact that when I see a case that I veneered 20 years ago for crowding, and the patient just never came back, and then came back 18, 20 years later. And then the teeth are as crowded as they were when I veneered them. That’s quite haunting, and it’s a really powerful lesson. The photographs are hugely valuable in that it’s an education that’s cost somebody. And I’ve made that mistake. I’m lucky enough to have the relationship with the patient. The patient’s certainly not complained, but I’ve explained what’s happened. And these people have been okay, but I think now, knowing what you know, that’s not a great thing to-

Prav Solanki:
In today’s world of litigation, you do something wrong, a patient sues you. But you talk about having this long term relationship with your patient. What impact does that have on a patient even if you do screw up, right?

Tif Qureshi:
I think that is such an important question, and I think it’s a question we need to be talking about a lot more. We need data. I haven’t got it, but I’d love to see data that highlighted what the demographic of patients were who made complaints, how long they’d known the dentist for.

Payman L:
I think there is a lot research for that.

Tif Qureshi:
Is there?

Payman L:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tif Qureshi:
I’d love to see it. I can only imagine from my own experience that you seem to be far less likely to get into some kind of dispute or argument with a patient if you’ve known them, if you trust that they trust you, and you’ve gone through things with them. Something’s worked, something hasn’t worked. You fix it, you know what I mean? I think compared to this rush to treat new people. I thought we were talking about it a little while ago. That’s what worries me a little bit about the whole kind of Instagram thing. It reminds me a bit of Groupon. Remember those days a few years ago. Am I allowed to say that? It reminds me of some of the online purchasing, where people were self-diagnosing and having stuff done. I think that just seems to be fraught with risks. You need to get the patients in and get to know them before you start something. If they push you that fast, I probably would walk away.

Payman L:
I mean it’s very interesting. I used to work in Kent in a-

Tif Qureshi:
Where were you by the way?

Payman L:
In Ashford and in Folkestone.

Tif Qureshi:
Oh, right.

Payman L:
My VT job was Ashford. I did most of my veneers in Folkestone.

Tif Qureshi:
Right, right.

Payman L:
But the type of people and the type of practise that you had, actually you’ve got a much less stressed situation. It’s all well and good to say some young associate, “Don’t go looking for new patients.” But there’s some young associate in the city right now, and the only option he’s got is to find new patients. But what I’m saying is it doesn’t make your point any less relevant. Your point’s right. When people trust you and you know them, you can give them appropriate treatment, and if things go wrong, they’re going to be much more forgiving. It’s absolutely right. But the reality for people is very different sometimes.

Tif Qureshi:
I get that. And you’ve got to build a list. You have to build a list. But I think the key thing is you’ve got to look at what you’re doing for these people, and don’t let get yourself pushed into doing too much too quickly. I actually like to put barriers up in front of people. I like to push them off to the hygienist. They often need that anyway because you want to make sure they’re completely… The perio is looking really good. The hygienist is an excellent way to start. You push them into them a couple of times, and then I’ll actually have a conversation with the hygienist, like, “How did you find the patient?” And if it’s negative, we’re going to hold off a bit more. Do you kind of get my point? There’s little things that you can do just to make sure things are a bit… It’s a safer approach.

Tif Qureshi:
Doesn’t mean you don’t ever see new patients, of course. But I think we need to focus more on who’s there already as well, and look after those patients. And actually, look at what happens to them because people don’t look at actually what’s going on long term. We tend to look too statically at dentistry, rather than long term. It’s a snapshot.

Prav Solanki:
Got two questions for you, which relate to legacy and advice. So, it’s your last day on this planet. And there’s just one piece of advice that you can leave the world with.

Tif Qureshi:
One dental advice?

Prav Solanki:
No, any, any.

Payman L:
Just have both.

Prav Solanki:
But one of each, right? So, there’s one piece of advice, dental and non-dental life that you can leave the world with. What would that be?

Tif Qureshi:
Okay. Before we started, I said no religion. No talk about religion.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, of course, of course.

Tif Qureshi:
But I’m going to bring it in now.

Prav Solanki:
Okay.

Tif Qureshi:
Which you guys are probably happy with. But I’m not going to make any comment on anything other than that. But one thing I do always believe and I think is extremely important that I think every religion has it totally right is that you just do unto others as you’d do unto yourself. And it’s not a difficult… It’s the Golden Rule. It applies in so many areas of life. And if you just put yourself in the position of your patient, the person you’re talking to at the supermarket, the person you’re maybe having a go down the phone, who’s in the bank, I think it helps you hold yourself back slightly and just think about how someone else is feeling. So, that’s probably one thing I would do.

Tif Qureshi:
Do you know that applies in dentistry as well? It’s exactly the same thing. I think it’s interesting. Like I said, I think if every single dentist on the planet subscribed to that, it would be a quite different profession to a certain degree. England, I honestly think is one of the most ethically orientated countries in the world. I travel quite a lot. I don’t want to point fingers at anywhere else, but there certainly are some places I’ve been to where you could tell the difference between what a healthcare professional is and what a businessperson is. And I think fortunately in England, and certainly a lot of Europe, we start off as healthcare professionals. Yes, we have to bring the business in, but that’s not what’s leading us there.

Payman L:
You mean America?

Tif Qureshi:
I’m not, no. It sometimes is like that, and I think they are more interested in businesses, no doubt. But equally, I know they’re interested in this-

Payman L:
But the public expects it there too.

Tif Qureshi:
I think they do. But when we started going there, I have to say I thought we would never have anyone come to our courses. They were always full, always. So actually, I think there’s a really strong demand for this kind of process. In the institution and the traditional look at cosmetic dentistry or whatever may not make you think that, but actually I think people do want this kind of thing done. So, I think it’s an approach basically.

Prav Solanki:
And my final question, Tif, that day’s past, and your legacy, Tif Qureshi was… Finish the sentence.

Tif Qureshi:
“An all right bloke” would do me, quite frankly. But a normal bloke who you could have a chat with and isn’t going to judge you and all the rest of it. That’s kind of the way I like… Yeah, all the dentistry stuff is nice, and if you get known for doing this sort of thing, but I just want people to feel that I was approachable and easy to speak with and I listened. That’s kind of… And I’ve listened to myself and the thing in my head, telling me that things I did were wrong, and we changed them. So, that’s kind of the way I’d like to think about it.

Payman L:
That’s really lovely to hear that from someone who’s had as much impact as you have. Thanks a lot for that. Cheers.

Tif Qureshi:
That’s all right.

Prav Solanki:
Thank you, Tif. And very good, thank you.

Speaker 4:
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.

Transcript

Prav Solanki:
Welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast, and today’s interview is with Anoop Maini who sadly passed away since recording this interview. Just saying these words as I’m sat here recording this intro, I’m still in utter disbelief. You know, sometimes I think he’s still there and he’s still here with us, influencing us all. His loss has left a massive void, not only in the world of dentistry, but for a lot of individuals personally and especially those who he was closest to, like his wife Neera, his daughter Nikita, and his son Rohan. But in his absence, his legacy lives on to continue through all of us. His passion for dentistry, teaching, and if you ever had the opportunity and you were lucky enough to strike up a conversation, you’ll remember those conversations where he just injected tonnes of humour into it, never, ever, ever noticed a day in the decade that I’ve known him where he was stressed or anxious or anything like that, and always took life in his stride, or at least he didn’t show it. He was always so selfless and so giving with his time.

Prav Solanki:
But guys, I’m just struggling to find my words, which is really unusual. Yeah, I think it’s just because I can’t believe that he’s gone. So, I’m just going to let you kick back, listen to the interview and get what you can from it, but there’s some really key messages here. If you’re a business owner, a dentist, and you’re working your socks off, just sit back and appreciate the messages from Anoop, especially those relating to family, how important and precious that time is.

Prav Solanki:
We really all do miss you Anoop. I know you’re up there, I know you’re looking down, and I know you’re smiling, I know you’re laughing, and I know you’re up there looking after everyone. And through us all, I promise you mate, your legacy is going to continue and be much, much stronger than when you were here mate. We’ll make you proud buddy. Listen guys, enjoy the interview.

Anoop Maini:
I just shoot from the hip sometimes.

Payman:
You don’t mean fire people?

Anoop Maini:
Well, not fire people. I can be-

Payman:
Fire ideas.

Anoop Maini:
Fire ideas, positivity, but I could also, if someone did something wrong, I’ll tell them.

Payman:
Who does the firing? Who does the firing in the practice?

Anoop Maini:
My wife.

Payman:
Who does the hiring?

Anoop Maini:
My wife.

Speaker 4:
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.

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, I think I’ve known you for over a decade and it’s a pleasure having you here on the podcast. I’m sure you’ve got lots of lessons to reveal to dentists and other people listening to this podcast, so let’s just get started. I’d just like you to take us back to your backstory, where you were born, where you were brought up, what your childhood was like growing up. So yeah, just kick things off Anoop and tell us a little bit about yourself and your upbringing.

Anoop Maini:
I was born in Kenya, Nairobi, where we had four siblings, mom and dad. In 1973 we left Kenya and we came to London. When we came to London we moved to an area called Mill Hill, which is North London, and we were probably the first Asian family actually in that sort of area.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
It was most immigrants sort of settled in sort of like West London, but we actually emigrated in North London.

Payman:
How old were you?

Anoop Maini:
I was three years old.

Payman:
So, you don’t remember?

Anoop Maini:
No, I do remember.

Payman:
You do remember?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, three years old. I remember because I remember going to school. At that time I was fluent in Swahili, I didn’t speak English.

Prav Solanki:
Jambo, Jambo, Habari Ghani.

Anoop Maini:
Jambo bwana. So, in terms of fluency and obviously having to deal with the culture difference, the food differences, et cetera, it was quite a learning curve at that time. Obviously I don’t speak Swahili now. In fact, I think you know more than me at the moment. But in terms of the initial integration, it was a little bit difficult.

Anoop Maini:
In those days, fortunately the area we were in, they were pretty accepting of an Asian family. We were almost like a novelty factor, you know, so it wasn’t that difficult. I didn’t experience a lot of racism, as such, directly. They were pretty nice, English accommodating sort of families. Also, a lot of Jewish immigrants in the area as well.

Prav Solanki:
So, my parents came from East Africa as well, and my dad always tells me stories about coming into this country. He always tells me this story, that the only thing him and his family had were the clothes that they were wearing and three gold bangles. Yeah? Three solid gold bangles. My dad’s brother was wearing those bangles way up his sleeve so nobody could see it. At the airport, he was shaking his hand and the bangles fell off his arm onto the floor and they were confiscated.

Prav Solanki:
So, when they came into this country, they had nothing but the clothes on their back.

Payman:
Where were they from?

Prav Solanki:
Tanzania.

Anoop Maini:
See, my dad, we had to emergency sell our properties, et cetera, the house, so trying to get money out of the country, there was a lot of … You almost had to go through the back road. When you did that, a lot of the administration charges consumed the vast bulk of it, so he didn’t come here with a lot of money, as such. But for my father, he was like the father to his own siblings as well.

Prav Solanki:
Got ya.

Anoop Maini:
Because he lost his father quite young. Most of my uncles went onto university. They became solicitors, they became surveyors, et cetera. They were all pretty educated.

Prav Solanki:
Was your dad the oldest out of them?

Anoop Maini:
Second oldest.

Prav Solanki:
Second oldest, right.

Anoop Maini:
And the first oldest was actually studying in Oxford at the time.

Prav Solanki:
Oh wow.

Anoop Maini:
My father was due to come to London to study law, but my grandfather passed away and no one stepped to the plate, so my father stepped to the plate. So, he took over the running and the education of all the siblings, so the income dropped. He actually used to work too, so he was like the second father for the family.

Anoop Maini:
He looked after brothers and sisters and raised them. They call him papa, they call him dad. He’s been someone who’s always put everyone else before him, and that’s always been his culture. So, even my grandmother who always lived with us, he always looked after her. So, I’ve always been brought up in a very family-orientated closeness.

Prav Solanki:
I think a lot of people listening here, especially if they don’t come from an Asian background like we do, sometimes don’t have an appreciation of what that culture is. And so, living with extended family, being surrounded by uncles, cousins, all within the same house, right? Am I right in saying that?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah. Can you just talk to me about that environment and the pros and cons of it while growing up in that environment?

Anoop Maini:
I’ve got two sisters and one brother, and I remember we all lived in one room. So, we had two double bunks. My sisters are almost eight years older. A joke in my family is that I was a mistake, because-

Prav Solanki:
I can understand that. Kidding.

Anoop Maini:
No, I said, “I’m the loved one. I was planned.” Right? You know, the other ones were mistakes. But anyway, my brothers and my sisters are quite close to each other by like one year apart, and then there’s a four, five year gap between my brother and me.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
But you imagine, we’ve got quite age differential and we stayed in this one room for most of our lives up to about 16 to 17. So, we’re not a family that was very fortunate in any way. You know, my father had pretty down to earth jobs. He was very working class. He worked in a motor company selling parts and things. Then he worked for Sainsbury’s, he worked in the car park.

Anoop Maini:
So, it’s very humble character, but I never actually went without. He provided me with a car. My brother got a car. He put me into private education, although it was with a scholarship, but it wasn’t a full scholarship, it was still 50%. And when you’ve got school fees in those days, which we 14,000 or 12,000, even with a scholarship it’s still a lot of money.

Prav Solanki:
A lot of money.

Payman:
Was that Mill Hill School?

Anoop Maini:
Mill Hill School.

Payman:
Was it?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, yeah. Went to Mill School on a scholarship. So, you know, my father was always. My brother went to a private college. He really just went without. We didn’t have family holidays. Our family holiday may have been Blackpool, but we didn’t travel abroad. I didn’t travel abroad until I actually got married. You know, it was my honeymoon was my first holiday.

Payman:
You know, a lot of people, they look back at that hardship and they say it kind of defined them and gave them what they have today and so on. Do you feel that way?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, because you know, I look at anything in life and I can live with or without money. I don’t worry about taking risks because I’ve spent most of my life without much.

Payman:
So, you know you can always get back-

Anoop Maini:
I can always fall back to-

Payman:
My actual question is, your kids are obviously much more fortunate, in inverted commas, than that.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely.

Payman:
Do you worry sometimes that your kids have never seen hardship, and so they haven’t got that inner strength?

Anoop Maini:
I think that is one of my errors, in a way, because where I experienced the hardship and sacrifice in a few different ways, I didn’t want them to, and I had the means and ability to provide them with a slightly more cushioned environment. I don’t think they’re so streetwise, or they’ve grown up in a very protected environment, so I think they would not have the same type of motivation that I probably had in terms of taking risks or advancement or taking challenges or being entrepreneurial.

Anoop Maini:
I’ll give you a perfect example. My son, the other day, my wife said to my son-

Prav Solanki:
Rohan?

Anoop Maini:
Rohan.

Payman:
And how old is he?

Anoop Maini:
He is now 16, just about to do his GCSEs. My wife said to him last summer, “Right, I’ll tell you what, we’ll pay you £50 a week if you do all the chores of the house. Right? You can buy your games, whatever.”

Anoop Maini:
And he goes, “Why would I do that?” He goes, “I’d just take it out of dad’s wallet.”

Anoop Maini:
So, you know, this is times we’re in, because they’re not in that sort of bit of-

Payman:
Did he not know your wallet had a padlock on it?

Anoop Maini:
But the problem is, he knows the combination.

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, you talked about that being one of your biggest mistakes, right? You said that giving him that, but what could have you done differently? Like if you could turn the clock back now, what would you change?

Anoop Maini:
I would have taught him the value of work, value of money, because I think I would have, from an early age, I would have encouraged them to not just get things for nothing, you know? To try and work towards it, maybe in more like a reward, whereas I was in the habit of constantly just buying stuff for him.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
You know? If I saw something, I just bought it for him.

Prav Solanki:
You wanted the best for your kids, right?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely.

Prav Solanki:
You wanted to give them what you didn’t have.

Anoop Maini:
You love them, you know? You love them and you want them to enjoy life and to have things that you didn’t have. Again, it’s quite interesting because they’re used to travelling in quite a few exotic places, like from a young age to Mauritius to the Far East to South America. If you talk to them about their holidays, it’s all a blur, because they don’t have that sort of value on these holidays.

Anoop Maini:
My son will say to me, “Are we going business class?” And that’s the most important thing to him. You know? So these value issues, which I think they will start to face. My daughter’s now doing dentistry and she’s second year at King’s, and we’ve made the decision now that we have forced her to start taking loans rather than me funding her.

Prav Solanki:
Chopped her arm off basically.

Anoop Maini:
We basically have, because she was spending beyond belief. She was forever calling dad up and saying, “Put another £200. Put another £100.” She was having £12 cocktails up The Shard.

Prav Solanki:
They’re a bit more than 12 quid up there mate.

Anoop Maini:
Well, whatever it was, it was quite big by the end of the week. So, now we’re sort of trying to reeducate her.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
We forced her to get a job over the summer, so she worked as a receptionist in a school. We’re trying to encourage the work ethic for her, and I think that is a mistake from our behalf because I think in dentistry as well, you’ve got to have that slight value for money and the entrepreneur aspect, especially in general practice as well. I think she won’t have the same drive I may have had to try and achieve things, where things may have been more presented to her on a plate.

Payman:
I mean, I hear you and we all understand that story, but you can’t also ignore the fact that she’ll have something that you didn’t have from the privileged upbringing that she’s got too. There is that too, we can’t ignore that. She might think a lot bigger than you, you know? She might open a giant chain of dental practises, whereas you were always one at a time, for instance.

Anoop Maini:
Correct.

Payman:
I don’t know for sure.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. She may surprise us.

Payman:
True.

Anoop Maini:
She may be a totally-

Payman:
Did she say she wanted to be a dentist, or did you guys kind of put that in her head?

Anoop Maini:
You know, I’ll be honest, from a young age I was trying to influence her.

Payman:
She’s going to listen to this, you know that?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I know she is. From a young age I was trying to influence here, and I would have bought her the Play-Doh, the dentist Play-Doh. I bought her a Barbie doll which was a dentist, so I was trying to get this little influence in then.

Anoop Maini:
But actually, most of her while she was growing up, she was saying to me, “I’m never going to be a dentist.” Actually, she’s a terrible dental patient. I remember I tried to treat her, I couldn’t treat her. I passed her onto Neera, my wife, couldn’t treat her; she’s a dentist as well. In fact, we had to refer her to a pedodontist, a specialist pedodontist to treat her. She’s coming from that environment. She’s not naturally tuned into dentistry.

Anoop Maini:
So, as she grew up she just went, “I’m not going to go into dentistry. I don’t like blood, I don’t like that stuff.” She was thinking about studying history, going off to Cambridge or Oxford to study history, and that’s the pathway she was going to go down. And then she just surprised us one day and she came back and she said, “I’m going to do dentistry.”

Anoop Maini:
I think what actually fueled that up is actually I sent her on work experience. I sent her on work experience on several different journeys. One was to a law firm, one was to a financial institute, and I also sent her to a dentist called Koray Feran. So, I will thank him or not thank him, because she went to his clinic and he absolutely wowed her. Absolutely wowed her and totally motivated and inspired her. She came back to me and said, “You know what? Out of everything, I now want to do dentistry.”

Prav Solanki:
Do you think he’s the reason why she’s at dental school today?

Anoop Maini:
I think so, because I think the problem that we have from having a husband and wife team who are dentists is when we come home, we never talk about the positivities of dentistry. We always talk about the problems we have with the clinic, or the profession, or the day-to-day issues we have. So, when we go out for dinner the dentistry topic keeps coming up, so they never get that positivity, as such. Whereas when she went to Koray’s, she actually saw the real dentistry. So, I think that trip to Koray was actually very important.

Payman:
You know, with all respect to your dad, the question of your dad was working in Sainsbury’s and then you became a dentist, a step-up, let’s say, let’s call it that.

Anoop Maini:
Yes.

Payman:
Did you not feel like, “Hey, my daughter should step-up from where I am at,” or is there no step-up?

Anoop Maini:
You know, I’ve always … My son, my son’s not heading towards dentistry at the moment. I think he’s going to end up … He’s not very scientific orientated, he’s probably going down the financial road, so he’ll probably do economics or finance. I’m happy for them to do whatever they’re happy with. I think the worst thing I come across, especially younger dentists, is ones that don’t love their job, or got into the job for the wrong reasons, or maybe financial reasons.

Prav Solanki:
Life’s too short man.

Anoop Maini:
You know, they may have been peer pressured into it, or family pressured into it. If they don’t enjoy this job … Because whatever you do, if you’re good at it, it can be any field, you’ll make money. That’s what my father used to say to me. “You’ll make money. Just get good at it.” It could be in any field. You know? You can’t setup any company. Whichever field your forte is and your passion is, the money will come in some shape or form. You can set up an online business.

Payman:
The problem is, the system here … My kids are in a French school and it’s a totally different system. The system here, you almost have to decide at 16, sometimes even younger than that, of what you’re going to be later on.

Anoop Maini:
That’s very true.

Payman:
And who knows at 16?

Prav Solanki:
It’s tricky, right? So my daughter now is going through that whole choice of choosing options and things like that. She hasn’t got a clue what she wants to do. She knows she loves art, and that’s about it. “Oh right, well I might become an architect because it’s loosely related to art. It’s seen as a professional thing.” But, you know-

Payman:
What is she? 16?

Prav Solanki:
15.

Payman:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
But here’s the thing; at that stage in your life, unless you grow up in the environment what we did where it was almost drilled into you, “Unless you’re a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer or a banker, you’ve failed in life,” right? That was my perception growing up.

Payman:
The thing is, that immigrant, you know what I mean, that first generation thing-

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, it doesn’t exist anymore, right?

Payman:
What I would like to see is in the second generation, the next generation, that they’re talking about, I don’t know, writing a movie, or being something evolved on-

Prav Solanki:
A step-up?

Payman:
Call it a step-up if you like.

Prav Solanki:
Whatever.

Payman:
But an evolution from the doctor, lawyer, engineer thing. By the way, I see it. We all see it. Some young kids now doing interesting things like that, but it’s interesting. It’s an interesting question. My kids are a little bit younger than that, and both me and my wife are dentists, and actually it does make sense for one of them to become a dentist because they will get some advantages from it. But I also worry sometimes that … All three of us here are immigrants … That we don’t evolve the immigrant story out to more interesting things than the obvious.

Anoop Maini:
I know where you’re coming from because what also affected me was I heard a story about a dental student who was, I think, second or third year who committed suicide. Now, when you get to a stage where you’re committing suicide at that young age because you’re doing something you don’t love, that is a problem.

Anoop Maini:
I heard that story quite early on. My son, people may or may not be aware, he loves football. He’s an Arsenal supporter. Very early on he wanted to be a footballer. I took him out for trials, for the Arsenal Academy. He obviously wasn’t good enough to get in, but the thing is, had he been good enough I would have supported him. I would have carried down that road.

Payman:
For something you would have never been able to do.

Anoop Maini:
Never been able to do. I’m quite open on him. He doesn’t want to do dentistry, he said that to me. He’s a different kettle of fish, mentality, to me. He’s very astute, he’s financially astute. He’s a bit entrepreneurial, bit of a wheeler-dealer type mentality, so he’s someone who probably wouldn’t be happy in dentistry in that sort of clinical type environment. He’s a different kettle of fish. He’ll make his way somehow in the world doing something, but as long as he’s happy.

Anoop Maini:
Me and wife are always saying, you know, “How big does your house need to be? Enough to have one bed to sleep in. And how many cars do you need? One car.” You know?”

Anoop Maini:
I see a lot of dentists, even people outside the profession, buying material things, material goods. One thing that you soon get with material goods is instant gratification, but actually, that gratification disappears very quickly. If I bought a Porsche tomorrow or a Tesla, you would get some joy from it initially, but that soon fades. You get bored of it and then you think, “What’s the next thing?”

Anoop Maini:
So, if you’re looking at material goods to fill a hole in your life in terms of providing you with enjoyment, I think you’ve got a big void. I think you have to look at things that also fulfil you in different ways. You can’t just rely on … Money, to me, is not my primary goal in life. You know? The money that comes by doing what we’re doing is important, but I don’t do everything purely for the dollar. I’ve never done things purely for the dollar. I’ve made business decisions which also I could have done better with had I stuck with them, but I moved away because I was happier moving away for my own personal development.

Prav Solanki:
Are you happy to talk about how your son spent his first £10,000?

Anoop Maini:
My son’s first … You mean my £10,000?

Prav Solanki:
Absolutely. Happy to go there?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I’m happy to go there.

Payman:
Know the story already, do you?

Prav Solanki:
Fill us in. Fill us in. It’s a great story. You talk about your son being financially astute and entrepreneurial, and this story’s amazing.

Anoop Maini:
Right, so my son, he’s a bit of a gamer and he likes playing these games.

Prav Solanki:
Computer games, right? Xbox, that sort of stuff.

Anoop Maini:
Computer games, yeah, absolutely. You have to buy these credits and things, and he quite enjoyed doing that. But he used to ask me, “Dad, can you buy me some?”

Anoop Maini:
I said, “No, you can’t. What a waste of money.”

Anoop Maini:
I didn’t do that, so he thought, “I’m going to raise some money.”

Anoop Maini:
So, he decided to open up accounts, multiple accounts, PayPal accounts. So, he accrued about three or four PayPal accounts using some of my information, and in the end, he was buying things through PayPal.

Prav Solanki:
Just before we go there Anoop, opening a PayPal account isn’t easy, right? Because you register and then what it does is it charges your credit card like 3p, and then you need to read the credit card statement and put that transaction into PayPal to prove that you own that credit card before you can start spending money on it.

Anoop Maini:
That’s right, yes.

Prav Solanki:
How did he get around that?

Payman:
He figured it out.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, he figured it out because actually, my password was pretty unanimous across multiples, so he could access virtually anything. So, he got into my bank statements, he got into-

Payman:
So, he spent £10,000 on buying uniforms for fighters?

Anoop Maini:
Credits. Yeah.

Payman:
Ten grand?

Anoop Maini:
So, when I picked it up, I saw my bank statement and I thought, “Crikey,” because it was starting to increase. When it’s a bit under the radar, you sort of miss of it. And this accrued over a few months. By the time I picked it up I rang up PayPal and I said, “Crikey, there’s fraud on my account.” So, there was an investigation, they blocked the account, and then they wheeled it down to my son’s email address.

Payman:
How did you feel at that moment?

Anoop Maini:
Well, he got a bit of a thick ear, but apart from the thick ear I was actually quite impressed by what he did in a way.

Payman:
Were you?

Anoop Maini:
I said, “You’ve just got to rechannel this sort of innovation and the way that you worked around it into other ways.” It was quite interesting when he did that, because I was giving the option of prosecuting my own son, which obviously we didn’t do.

Payman:
Tell me about working with your wife. I’ve worked with my wife before. Did you guys naturally fall into that?

Anoop Maini:
It’s really interesting because actually, in the workplace we don’t actually cross each other very much. It’s a bit like when you have associates, you only sort of slightly cross each other at lunchtime maybe.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, having the wife in the practice, I don’t really see her technically from that perspective, but having someone who’s very similar to yourself, thinking about the business from the same … I find very useful and a lot of support. You know?

Anoop Maini:
I know people go into businesses with other partners, and you know, I’ve seen partnerships break up where sometimes the spouses interfere, et cetera, but actually being in business with your spouse … Because my wife is my best friend, so if you’re in business with your best friend, and that’s going to go live, yeah? I hope she hears that, and I love her.

Prav Solanki:
Anything else? Any other messages to Neera here?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I’ve loved her all my life. She’s been the most important, and I’ve never cheated on her, she’s beautiful.

Anoop Maini:
Right, so anyway, coming back to where we were, so working with my wife has been very useful for me because she understands what I’m doing. I develop myself inside the clinic, I’m technically, currently an associate for her because I sold my clinic a few years back. Even being an associate, technically, for her, I’m allowed to develop my dentistry, I’ve been able to buy technologies. I’m currently quite fascinated by digital dentistry at the moment, so I’ve bought a lot of digital equipment for the clinic. And you know, she’ll be quite understanding about it because she knows what I’m like as a dentist. When I get passionate about something, I immerse myself and I get really into it. That’s obviously a very expensive to do, especially in the digital world, so she’s been very accommodating.

Anoop Maini:
She also understands when I need to, when I’m travelling for courses, when I have to cancel days down in the clinic because I’ve got a business meeting, or I’m lecturing, or whatever. She’s very understanding from that. She understands where I’m going and what drives me, so having her on board has been very useful, because if I was with another employer, they probably wouldn’t understand that.

Prav Solanki:
I have quite a few business relationships with various different people, and those relationships are very different in many different ways. But the one thing that I really understand about being in business with other people is that you have different skill sets that complement each other. So, I know what my strengths are, I know what my partner’s strengths are, and luckily they don’t overlap, which works to our advantage. With you and Neera, how are you different? And where are your, what I would consider to be, zones of genius?

Anoop Maini:
Well I think people who know me sort of find that I’m someone who’s almost a little bit of a perfectionist. I’m a little bit too demanding on people. I’m quite demanding of my staff as well. I’m quite quick to fire. I don’t process a thought.

Prav Solanki:
Shoot from the hip.

Anoop Maini:
I just shoot from the hip sometimes.

Payman:
You don’t mean fire people?

Anoop Maini:
Well, not fire people, I can be-

Payman:
Fire ideas.

Anoop Maini:
Fire ideas, positivity. But I could also, if someone did something wrong, I’ll tell them.

Payman:
Who does the firing? Who does the firing in the practice?

Anoop Maini:
My wife.

Payman:
Who does the hiring?

Anoop Maini:
My wife. It’s quite interesting because this-

Payman:
So, go on, you shoot from the hip, and she considers things?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, she’s much more considerate. So, in the practice her strengths are that she’s far more relaxed, she does all our staff issues, manages the clinics from that perspective. I’m probably more involved with sort of the marketing aspects, the business development, that sort of side because I can make decisions quickly, I have a vision. I focus on the vision. But in terms of dealing with people, she’s far better than I am. We complement each other that way.

Anoop Maini:
So, she’s a great person to have in the practice as a team. The team love her, they support her. She’s great from that way. Whereas I’m someone who sort of rolls in and I expect everything done to perfection. My staff always know I’m like that, and that’s quite a … I’m a difficult person to work around from that perspective, so having my wife in there who steps in between, to make them understand when I get upset when something hasn’t gone right, rather than me shooting from the hip, she intervenes. “What can we do next time to make this go a bit more smoother?”

Anoop Maini:
That’s the sort of personality I am. They call it like D type personality, or A type personality they call it. It’s someone who just comes in and it’s like, “I want X, Y, Z done like yesterday.”

Prav Solanki:
So, is she your calming influence?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Both in life and business?

Anoop Maini:
She is, but in the home life as well she’s very good with the children. She’s more of a socialite as well, so she’s very good at keeping our network with friends and family, whereas I’m probably so busy and immersed in my own little world, I forget to ring up people, et cetera. She’s quite good for bonding and also, relating to the kids and looking after the kids. She’s been brilliant. She’s a very good communicator In terms of encouragement for my daughter and my son, whereas I’m more directive.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
It’s like, “Son, what are you doing? Why aren’t you doing this?” Whereas she is much more … She spends a bit more time, involves it, and has longer conversations with them .

Prav Solanki:
Coming back to your dentistry, what would you say your biggest, and I mean your biggest, clinical error, mistake, has been in your career so far?

Anoop Maini:
I think when I qualified, quite early on, I did these veneer courses. It was quite a thing at the time, to be a cosmetic dentist you’re doing veneers. So, that was the perception in those days a long time ago.

Anoop Maini:
I did some courses learning how to slap on veneers for patients, smile makeovers, and generally the profession, a bit like you have social media today where people post up cases about the before and afters, how good you are, how brilliant you are, in those days we had the sort of media articles about … People used to post cases about smile makeovers, and success of clinics was about how much sort of advanced cosmetic dentistry you were doing. I engaged, I remember, a business consultant many years ago, and the key was to do elaborate smile makeover dentistry, so there was a lot of this push to do that sort of work.

Anoop Maini:
I remember even … Which I would never do today … I remember generating PowerPoints of patients. It’s like almost selling. You used to take pictures, you need to do imaging, and these patients didn’t actually come in asking for that. We were doing it as a, “Here we are. This is what you are. This is what you could be. These are all your problems. This is the beautiful result that you could get.”

Prav Solanki:
I remember those PowerPoints. They were generated by a specific consulting company.

Anoop Maini:
Correct.

Prav Solanki:
That a lot of people from that generation just adopted. Was that almost like the default treatment for any patient that walked through your door?

Anoop Maini:
It was, because at that time, I thought cosmetic dentistry … It was the persona of being in cosmetic dentistry, it was like an awe. It’s like the successful practises were called spas or they were cosmetic clinics.

Payman:
To be fair, the only options you had for cosmetic dentistry back then were train tracks for three years, or that treatment. I mean, I didn’t a lot of them too. I did a lot of them when I was a dentist. But where was the clinical error?

Anoop Maini:
The clinical error for me was, obviously getting involved in that sort of dentistry, is I didn’t learn the comprehensives of other facets of dentistry which underpin that. So, getting the occlusion right, getting the periodontal aspects right, managing wear, patients with wear issues which cause the demise of their teeth in the first place. Not understanding, just slapping on these porcelain veneers.

Anoop Maini:
I had cases, and there’s one case that rings in my mind. A patient would have spent 14, £15,000 with me, and I watched four, five years later, things smashing up. It’s very embarrassing, it’s very expensive, you have unhappy patients. I remember a negative review from this patient. That was a turning point; realising that the dentistry I was performing wasn’t as long lasting as I thought it was going to be, and understanding that I needed to learn more.

Anoop Maini:
I think a lot of problems that a lot of dentists have currently is they don’t have the longevity of looking at their work. So, once you’ve done a restoration, it might look great for the post-op, but what will that composite look like? What will that veneer look like? What will that crown look like in ten years time? Or that implant.

Payman:
And so how did you handle this patient?

Anoop Maini:
How did I handle that patient at that time? I think that particular patient, in the end, I had to refer for remedial treatment, a more experienced colleague.

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, so we’ve talked about the biggest clinical mistake, and in that particular patient who made a complaint, but that was a clinical mistake that you realised, say, five, ten years after making the mistake, right?

Anoop Maini:
Correct.

Prav Solanki:
Have you ever made a clinical mistake where in the moment you think, “Holy shit, what have I just done?” In your younger years, less experienced years, anything like that ever that sort of brings back memories?

Anoop Maini:
I remember during my VT year when I was doing a root canal and I completely missed the canals.

Payman:
Perforated. I’ve done that.

Anoop Maini:
It completely perforated, absolutely perforated. I remember just finishing off the root canal and I remember looking at it afterwards, it looked like an octopus. You know? And none of that GP was inside the tooth. It was all outside the tooth. And you think, “Oh my God.” So, that was probably when you’ve done something and you just-

Payman:
What did you do?

Anoop Maini:
Well, we had to take the tooth out. The tooth had to be removed. Fortunately, it was in a time where the patient didn’t value that tooth, as such, an exempt patient. So, it didn’t have any long term financial repercussions for me, but today, that would be totally unacceptable.

Prav Solanki:
And just take me back to that very moment that it first happened. What was going through your mind? How did you feel? How did you react?

Anoop Maini:
Well, the first thing is you feel sorry for the patient.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
You are trying your best. It’s not like you intentionally try and do something badly.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
No one’s trying to do things badly. Mistakes do happen in dentistry. I’ve had things where I’ve put a crown, six months later the crown’s dislodged, or a veneer’s chipped, whatever. Things do happen, but when you’re doing something that has caused irreversible damage to someone and that patient’s come and bestowed their faith in you, trust in you, and then you sort of don’t deliver, I mean, it doesn’t embody what we’ve taught. We went to dentist school because we were there to try and improve health, maintenance and preservation of dental health, and if you’ve created a problem yourself that’s subsequently led to the loss of the tooth, it’s not a great motivational thing for you as a dentist. It doesn’t build your confidence up.

Anoop Maini:
I remember … It probably had an impact, because actually, I haven’t done a root canal for probably about 12 years. I’ve always referred out root canals.

Payman:
And you’re saying it goes back to that moment?

Anoop Maini:
It probably goes back to that moment. It probably wasn’t straight away from that moment.

Payman:
No, I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Anoop Maini:
But now, I’m not that confident in root canal work, you know?

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
I just think, “This is not my forte.” That probably goes back to that stage.

Payman:
I want to ask a question about, you know, you’ve developed, what, three clinics now?

Anoop Maini:
Yes.

Payman:
And, what, all from scratch?

Anoop Maini:
It’s quite funny, the first clinic I bought. I came out, when I qualified, being a typical Asian I was trying to follow my peers which was, “Let’s own lots of practises.”

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, I remember I did my VT in Luton, and in Luton town which is like 90% exempt NHS dentistry, I didn’t actually enjoy working there at all to be honest because it just wasn’t the style of dentistry I wanted to do. But when I was there, the first thing I was thinking was, “Well, I’m going to become an entrepreneur. I’m going to be an entrepreneur dentist and I don’t really have to work then. I’ll just have a whole chain of practises and then just work like shops and businesses.”

Anoop Maini:
So, I was going to go down that pathway because that’s what my peers were doing. So, I thought, “Okay.” I looked in the back of Frank Taylor’s magazine and there was this practice in Luton town centre. I said, “Right, I know the area, I’ll buy that clinic.” So, we bought the clinic. Little did I know, with my lack of due diligence, it was a POGO clinic. Now, if you remember the old POGO, they were GA clinics-

Payman:
You didn’t even realise that before you bought it?

Anoop Maini:
No, because I didn’t do any due … I was young. I was so young. You know? So, I was so young, inexperienced, didn’t really know. Didn’t have guidance from any-

Payman:
So, four clinics then? Because there was Edgware Road I heard on the podcast.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, no, no, I had one in Luton.

Payman:
And then there was Aqua, and then there’s a new Aqua, so four?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, one called Confident Dental Care which we opened up.

Payman:
So go on, what happened with the Luton one? How quickly did you manage to-

Anoop Maini:
So basically, I got this clinic which was a POGO clinic, and the reason why these POGO clinics were for sale is because POGO, the change in The Poswillo Report, meant you couldn’t do GA-

Payman:
You needed an anaesthetist.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. You couldn’t do it in a general practice environment.

Payman:
Yeah, that’s right.

Anoop Maini:
So, this clinic became worthless. I was wondering why it was cheap. Now I know why it was cheap. So, I bought it. Me and my wife walk in, and we suddenly say, “Everyone wants a GA.” We thought, “Why do they want a GA?” And we didn’t kind of offer anything, we’re just local. Right?

Anoop Maini:
So, we very quickly … We started from the practice, it almost collapsed overnight. We had to very quickly go and learn sedation, intravenous sedation. There was a lovely guy called Michael Woods who sadly passed away. He was in Dunstable and he had a big sort of GA clinic quite close to Dunstable hospital. So, we did mentoring with him, and we did some cases with him, so I started offering IV sedation.

Anoop Maini:
Once we took that clinic, because I didn’t enjoy NHS dentistry, I decided I was going to be a private practice. It was the seventh surgery at that time, seventh surgery NHS clinic.

Payman:
Oh bloody hell.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. But it was all Poswillo. There was no patients left. By the time we finished it was like two or three. But you know, they’re all GA patients and they were mostly referral. So, we decided we were going to open up a private practice. I was living with mom and dad. Overheads weren’t there.

Anoop Maini:
So, we decided we would set up a private practice. We then moved across the road, we set up a new building, I bought … I still own the building today. We set up a clinic called Confident Dental Care. So, it was one of those first practises that got branded. So, Confident Dental Care, everything was branded. That’s the first time I brought in DDPC, Gary Bettis, that was my first project with him.

Payman:
So, wait a minute. You bought the GA clinic and that was a financial failure.

Anoop Maini:
Total failure.

Payman:
Where did you have the money to open the second place? Did your dad let you have it?

Anoop Maini:
No, no, I didn’t have any money from dad.

Payman:
So, what did you do?

Anoop Maini:
In those days, banks were stupid enough to lend to you.

Payman:
So, they saw your first failure, and then paid you for the second?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, because you’re a dentist. In those days, because you’re a dentist they would lend to you. I mean, there were people lending 150%.

Prav Solanki:
It’s true.

Anoop Maini:
So, I just borrowed money again. We didn’t, fortunately, pay too much for The Poswillo Report, that’s why it was cheap. But we just business proposal, and most banks were looking for your business. NatWest, Barclays, et cetera, Lloyds, they were looking for your business, so they would court you almost, buy you lunch, because you’re deemed probably someone who wasn’t going to fail.

Payman:
A good risk. Yeah. Even though you’d just failed.

Anoop Maini:
Even though we’d just failed. So, we set up Confident Dental Care, and actually, we got it up to three surgeries. We got it up to three surgeries, and we sold it as a fully private practice.

Payman:
How many years later was that?

Anoop Maini:
It was about six or seven years?

Payman:
And that was a squat?

Anoop Maini:
That was a virtual squat.

Payman:
So, that’s what I’m quite interested in. You know the idea of, you build it and they will come? Seems like you’ve done that a few times. But in that moment of waiting for people to come, some of the steps, some of the steps or some hacks that you would suggest for people that are going to do this again and again, set up practises from squat and have no patients. What are some of the tricks, some of the things you should look out for, cash flow questions? Give us some insights, because you’ve done this a few times now.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I’ve done it one, two, three times.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, in terms of my recommendation to people, one is controlling the overhead. Be very careful on overhead control. Control your expenses. Especially you’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices in your own personal life as well, you’ve got to control you own expenses because there’s going to be no income coming through.

Anoop Maini:
What’s very important in any, if you’re starting up from squat, is what is your USP? What is your differentiator compared to your locals? You know? That’s going to be so important in terms of your marketing, because you can’t put blanket marketing out in terms of, “I do X, Y, Z,” because every other practice does X, Y, Z. You need to have A, B, C that no one else has got, and that’s so important.

Anoop Maini:
I think from a very early stage I’ve always done lots and lots of courses. I did a lot of courses, even from an early stage. I think that’s important in building skill level that your local peers can’t deliver. I still get, even-

Payman:
And you were marketing that fact, is that what you’re saying?

Anoop Maini:
We were marketing techniques that they weren’t doing. So, you know, implants, smile makeover type dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, tooth whitening procedures.

Payman:
Back then that wasn’t … And interesting, Confident Dental Care was which year?

Anoop Maini:
That was probably about 2000.

Payman:
So interesting, marketing back then was a totally different thing to marketing today.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. Different. We had a website.

Payman:
Did you?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we had a website. So, we had a website that time. I’m not sure, Prav did that.

Prav Solanki:
We came in shortly after that, but you still had the practice then.

Anoop Maini:
I did, yeah.

Payman:
Go on, some of the hacks. Some of the hacks, some of the marketing hacks. Go on. So, the first one you said was don’t overspend.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
Keep your eye on money.

Anoop Maini:
Keep your eye on the… Now, the keys for me was to have at least one patient a day, because that patient’s journey, because you’ve got all the time to devote on them, just make sure that that patient’s journey is exemplary. Go OTT on it, to the point of … You know, when they come in, the way they’re greeted. Obviously we had tea, coffee, the drinks et cetera, we had the fridge. Find out a little bit about them.

Payman:
I mean, you say obviously but there’s lots of practises today that don’t do tea, coffee and drinks. It seems obvious to you back then.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, it’s important to differentiate.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
The USP is not just your clinic, it’s the differentiator on the clinic. You know, we had a clinic that you walked in. There was no corporate dentistry as such in those days, so having a brand, having a logo-

Payman:
That was a thing in itself.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. Having a clinic that was designed, you know, I had an interior designer come in. No one’s doing interior designing, you would just put Mongolia up. So, we had colour themes in there. We looked different, we stood out. And as someone said to, “Wherever there’s dirt, there’s always money.” So, even though we were in Luton, a lot of people who had money, had cash money. We had a lot of travellers come to see us preparing for their weddings. That was quite a big part of my market. We had a lot of people who used to run the local businesses, or car boot sales. They were coming in asking for certain treatments that they weren’t getting within the NHS services.

Payman:
But were you leafleting, or?

Anoop Maini:
We had the website. We used to leaflet market. We used the Arndale Centre, which is a shopping centre, so we used to distribute leaflets there. We even had a little stand.

Payman:
So, you went and bought a stand in the Arndale Centre?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we had a little stand in there. There weren’t dentists doing this at that time. It just wasn’t being done. So, we got patients coming in. We offered the free consultation.

Payman:
Back then as well?

Anoop Maini:
Back then.

Payman:
And it was fully private from day one?

Anoop Maini:
Fully private.

Payman:
Nice.

Anoop Maini:
Fully private. And things like hygienists. In those days as well, we always saw hygienists as being the rock in the clinic. I measure how successful my clinic is by how busy my hygienists are because they’re the barometer. If you’ve got patients return regularly to see a hygienist, you know you’ve got a healthy clinic, so that’s always a strength. When I see quiet hygienists, I know my business is in trouble. So, that’s why we always had hygienists from day one, because they develop rapport. They develop the maintenance, the loyalty.

Anoop Maini:
The other thing I would recommend is try and develop some sort of practice plan. So, you know, you get patients encouraged to join the clinic under a membership scheme, and it just helps them to maintain their loyalty and make it sort of worthwhile. It’s a benefit for them, it’s cheaper than if they paid outside. But again, it’s just that experience thing.

Payman:
And when it came to selling this clinic then, you’d decided you wanted to sell it? Did someone approach you? Who was it? Who bought it?

Anoop Maini:
We sold it to a colleague of mine, a guy called Hitesh Gohil.

Payman:
I know him.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah? We sold it to Hitesh. He was also at King’s with me qualifying. He was about two years below me. The reason for selling it was actually, at that time, I was starting up Edgware Road because I wanted to head more towards the West End because in terms of my dentistry. So, by opening up Edgware Road, it then became a problem of logistics.

Payman:
Being in two places?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, because you get two types of dentist basically. You get the entrepreneurial dentist who can own multiple clinics and slightly sort of detached from the clinical environment, more like the business environment. And then you get the dentists who’s vocational, so like the Koray Ferans, shall we say, who dentistry for them is so hands-on and they’re so involved with the business on the clinical level, that they can’t leverage themselves into multiple clinics. I can’t have a clinic run by a … I’ll get too involved in how it’s being treated, the standard of care. So, I can’t run multiple clinics.

Anoop Maini:
We had one in Central London, we had one in Luton, and I always had problems with the associates at the other end, concerns about the clinical output, the patient journey, the receptionists not performing. I have to be too hands-on, that’s my problem. I think I’m too much of a perfectionist.

Payman:
Do they call that perfection paralysis?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. So, I can’t take a laid back approach, which I know some colleagues do. They just worry, “As long as I get the bottom line, I don’t care what happens.” Whereas, for me, I need to get involved with each step off each business, and I couldn’t leverage that up. I think it’s my personality type. So, for me, it was about the dental practice was the opportunity for me to perform the dentistry I wanted to perform.

Anoop Maini:
So, we opened up at Edgware Road. At that time my daughter was born.

Payman:
Which year was that?

Anoop Maini:
That was 1999.

Payman:
Oh. So, which year was Confident?

Anoop Maini:
Confident, well my daughter was growing up, that was the problem. So, there was the problem with things like childcare, then my second son came in 2003. So, my wife had to pull back from dentistry a little bit to look after the kids, so we couldn’t support the two clinics. I had one clinic, virtually run an associates in Luton, and I just couldn’t manage it.

Payman:
And actually, from a business perspective, you don’t make that much money from an associate-led practice.

Anoop Maini:
You don’t.

Payman:
If you’ve got loads and loads of them, I’m sure it’s great, but from a single one …

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. And especially when I’m in my practice in Hatch], which again was virtually a squat, is they’ve very time intensive, so you couldn’t share yourself across.

Payman:
Why was it you kept doing squats? Why didn’t you buy existing practises? What was the thinking?

Anoop Maini:
For me, I found whenever I bought any clinic which had a patient base, like the one I bought in Edgware Road where it was actually not a true squat, it had a very small patient base, none of those patients are with me today because they are not the patients that I-

Prav Solanki:
It’s not your philosophy, is it?

Anoop Maini:
They’re not my philosophy. They’re not my sort of patients. They’re not the sort of dentistry I want to do. So, you know, I’ve worked out wherever I’ve been, I’ve developed a whole new patient base. So, rather than then buying something and then trying to convert those people across, I’d rather develop my own patients, my own personality, and my own style of patients. They always say that patients reflect the dentist that they go to.

Payman:
Yeah, that’s true.

Anoop Maini:
So, we’re all very different. So, I couldn’t see buying a clinic from someone else and then have to deal with their methodologies, philosophies and approaches and have to reeducate patients. I might as well just get a squat, and that’s always been my philosophy.

Payman:
But it’s not for everyone.

Anoop Maini:
No.

Payman:
I mean, from the risk perspective and the marketing. These days particularly, right? You’ve got to have your marketing game right on.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely.

Payman:
So then, okay, tell us the difference between starting and making that first one thrive, compared to the last one. What’s changed in you?

Anoop Maini:
The recent squat I set up, which was Aqua Dental Clinic in Hatch End, which is now five years old, that was probably the easiest because we-

Payman:
Because your life didn’t depend on it.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, my life didn’t depend on it, but number two, it was easier in a way because we were already very experienced. You know? I qualified in 1992, so I’ve got 25 years of experience, 26 years of experience. My wife’s very experienced, so we know how to manage staff, we know how to control businesses, we know about expenses. We know marketing things that have worked for us before. You know, we engaged a marketing company that looks after us. So, we’ve made all the mistakes before so we can have the protocols in place to elevate the clinic quite quickly.

Anoop Maini:
And we had skill sets. We’ve moved into an area where it’s quite … When I was looking at the present site, we were looking at all the other practice’s websites. They’re all out of date. All out of date, very basic. It’s almost the basic standard you require from CQC, rather than having a proper thing. Now we have like infusion sort of type software inside the clinics. So, we have follow-ups, maintenance-

Payman:
Do you run ads as well?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we run ads. We do newspaper adverts, we do a lot of online marketing, a lot of social media marketing. So, we’re very more forwards compared to our local competitors in terms of what we’re doing.

Payman:
Where is it? Hatch End?

Anoop Maini:
Hatch End, absolutely.

Payman:
Where’s that?

Anoop Maini:
Hatch End is North West London, quite close to … Not far from Stanmore.

Payman:
Okay, yeah. Nice area.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, it’s not far from Stanmore. Yeah. It’s a nice area. For me, the reason why I chose this clinic as well is because it’s quite important to pick an area that can support the type of clinic that you want to be in. You know?

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
It was a very middle class area. The average property price is-

Payman:
High.

Anoop Maini:
They start for 800 grand upwards, so they’re about 1.2 million for a house there. So, it’s in the area, it’s a very established area, so it’s a lot families. You’ve got private schools in the area, nice high end restaurants.

Payman:
Do you live there too?

Anoop Maini:
I do. I don’t live very far away, so I’m literally now five minutes away from work, which has been a blessing. But in terms of that environment, the most important thing I would say to someone else in terms of looking for clinics is location, location, location. The clinic that we’ve got at the moment is on a roundabout. It’s a corner property on a roundabout, a three bed semi. Directly opposite is Morrison’s, so everyone who comes out-

Payman:
Sees it.

Anoop Maini:
And we’ve got a massive sign up. We’ve got a huge sign. It’s a disproportionate sign, you know? No one can miss it, and we make sure that sign’s changed every month with a different feature.

Payman:
Really?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we change it every month because other people get … When you’re in an environment and you keep seeing the same things again and again, you sort of switch off.

Prav Solanki:
Call it banner blindness.

Anoop Maini:
Banner blindness, you stop seeing it. So, by changing it and even changing the colours, people retune to that banner. “What is that?” As they come around this visual roundabout, people see our sign. So, our number one-

Payman:
What are you most happy doing? Are you most happy drilling teeth, talking to patients? Are you most happy working on the business, or are you most happy teaching? Because you do a lot of that too. If you had to give one of those three up, which one would you give up?

Anoop Maini:
Business, if I had to.

Payman:
Really?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
Because it sounds like you’re pretty into the business.

Anoop Maini:
I’m into the business, but I love patients the most.

Payman:
Oh, really?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, my key is, I couldn’t give up the patients, because you said give up something.

Payman:
Yeah, yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, there’s no way I’m going to give up patients and stop clinical practice because I love clinical practice. I love being a dentist, I love working with my hands. I’ve always worked with my hands. From a young age I was always making things out of math sticks, playing with Lego. I just love doing things and being creative, so working with patients is very important for me.

Anoop Maini:
In terms of teaching, I love teaching because one thing I’ve learned about teaching, it really makes me need to learn more.

Payman:
Yeah, it’s the best way to learn.

Anoop Maini:
Because to be ahead of the game, or when you’re teaching and someone asks you questions you can’t answer, you have to go back and learn it and it raises your game. So, I’m a much better person through teaching than I would have been on my own.

Payman:
Tell me, let’s talk about teaching a little bit.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
I obviously work with a lot of teachers. For me, the voice that you have on stage, or whatever, is something that I’ve seen develop in a lot of people. Your value add as a teacher compared to the next, what would you say that is?

Anoop Maini:
Someone’s remarked upon-

Payman:
I mean, you’re very funny I’ve noticed.

Prav Solanki:
Entertainer.

Payman:
Yeah, he’s an entertainer.

Anoop Maini:
Well, actually call me Edutrainer.

Prav Solanki:
Edutrainer?

Anoop Maini:
Edutrainer.

Payman:
Were you a funny kid and all that, that whole thing? You know what I mean?

Anoop Maini:
No, I think I take on a different personality a little bit.

Payman:
On stage?

Anoop Maini:
When I’m on a stage, when I’m in front of people.

Payman:
Do you get nervous?

Anoop Maini:
I do, 100%. I get nervous every single time.

Prav Solanki:
Every time?

Anoop Maini:
Every time.

Payman:
You know, when I speak to speakers, the one thing I do say to them, “The moment you don’t get nervous, that’s weird.” Getting nervous is actually normal. It’s a nerveracking situation.

Anoop Maini:
I just did, probably the largest event I’ve done myself now, which is I spoke for the Dutch Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry.

Payman:
Just recently? I saw that.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, that was a three hour continuous lecture, which I’ve never done to a static audience.

Payman:
That’s a long time, yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, you know, we had two, 250 in the room, and I was following up Eric Van Dooren and people like Pascal Magne had been on this stage, Paolo Canno. That’s the guys I’m following up. Then Annop Maini from Harrow, Hatch End turns up.

Anoop Maini:
So, I was absolutely bricking myself for that one. Absolutely was bricking myself. I remember just literally-

Payman:
Heart racing, sweaty palms?

Anoop Maini:
Heart racing. Almost where you’re almost nauseous, like you’re going to be sick. So, I do get that stage fright, but actually, that’s what drives me. The adrenalin’s up.

Payman:
It’s normal. That’s what I’m saying; it’s normal.

Anoop Maini:
It’s normal. And when I come out, the way I relate to audiences whether it’s one person, or a 100, I try and connect with them. I do sort of tune into the audience a little bit and I can joke with them, but I’m careful how they respond back to my jokes. So, my entertainer bid. I find that people listen better and they understand better or get educated better when you make it a little bit more entertaining, rather than being a very dry production. If you make it a bit more fun, a bit more excitable, and you get the whole audience involved-

Payman:
The thing is, if that’s you, if that is you, I think the authenticity piece is huge, you know? The biggest error would be if that’s not you, thinking, “Hey, people like a funny guy,” and trying to be funny because of that. It obviously is you.

Anoop Maini:
I think I am. I think I get into a lot of trouble half the time because I just come out with stuff which I thought about. I think you have to be.

Anoop Maini:
For me, being on a stage is about, when I talk to people, it’s like how I probably would talk to you and Prav. You know, if we joke, et cetera. Actually, when I’m in front of an audience, I just relax down. I reckon all that adrenalin, all that buzz is gone within the first two minutes and then I settle down.

Payman:
I don’t know about you two, I mean, Prav’s going 0 to 60 in three seconds, he’s becoming an extraordinary speaker. But I don’t know about you two, but one big issue I’ve got about stage, it’s definitely not a natural siltation for me, is I never know how I’m coming across as a speaker. You know? Particularly you realise it when you watch videos of yourself thinking you know how it felt to say what you were saying, and then you’re watching it from the audience’s perspective and-

Prav Solanki:
It’s not what you thought was happening.

Payman:
It’s not necessarily what you thought was happening. I see this with speakers, I see it with Dipesh, I see it with a bunch of speakers, is they don’t necessarily realise whether they did well or not from the stage. I’ve got a big issue when I’m on stage, I almost focus in on the one person who’s not looking engaged, which is probably a big error. Speak to that. Have you ever noticed that? Have you videoed yourself?

Anoop Maini:
I try and avoid watching videos of myself.

Payman:
It’s useful though.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
It’s very useful.

Anoop Maini:
Because most people will send me the video if something’s happened, like a good friend called Prav. I think when I’m in that environment, I can listen to the sound in the room. I can listen to if there’s chatter.

Payman:
So, you’re saying you’re pretty good at figuring out whether it’s a good performance or not?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. You can tell by the silence of the room. You can tell by if people are talking, about the noise level in the room. When you can hear a pin drop, you’ve got people listening.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
And if people, if you’ve said something that’s humorous or whatever, and they’re laughing-

Payman:
That feels good.

Anoop Maini:
And you see the energy coming up in the room. You can feel the energy in the room.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
I’ll know by the end of a presentation if I’ve done well or not.

Payman:
Really?

Anoop Maini:
I don’t need to look at feedback form. I will know because I can tell by the energy of the room.

Payman:
I can’t. You?

Prav Solanki:
I think I can.

Payman:
Yeah?

Prav Solanki:
I think I can, yeah. You look around, you see a few smiling faces, you see a few people who are not engaged or whatever, but you know when you do something and you’re expecting a certain reaction, I got that reaction. So, yeah, I think I do have a feeling, but to be honest, I don’t think I’ve spoken enough to really know, right?

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, I want to take this conversation somewhere else now if that’s all right with you.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, that’s fine.

Prav Solanki:
Talk to me about that ring you’ve got on your right hand.

Anoop Maini:
Right, yes.

Prav Solanki:
Where did it come from?

Anoop Maini:
This is my father’s ring.

Prav Solanki:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Anoop Maini:
So, my father passed away in May of this year. He had two rings on his hand, and I’ve got one and my brother’s got one. So, we got it engraved with my dad’s name because I wanted to keep him with me at all times. He was an absolute rock for me throughout my career. You talk about confidence, and to be successful in anything, you’ve got to have someone behind you. I’ve always worked out in business, you need consultants, you have to work with marketing companies. You always need someone. You can’t do things on your own, there’s always support.

Anoop Maini:
Moralistically, my moral compass was my dad. You know, a lot of these bits you say to me, “Why did you open it?”

Anoop Maini:
Dad said, “Just open it. Just do it.” He would say to me, “You open that clinic up. If it goes down the drain, what difference does it make? You’re living with me, you’re upstairs, you get your food, you get your clothes, I put petrol in your car, so what’s your risk?”

Payman:
Was it a sudden illness, or was he ill for … ?

Anoop Maini:
He was ill for about a year. He had Hodgkin’s lymphoma which then became aggressive. He did suffer quite a lot in his last few years. The hardest thing for me was you were talking about training, and in the end, he died from water on the lung, emphysema. I was out in Copenhagen doing a course. On the Friday I was out with the colleagues. It was a two day course, Friday we’d go out for the dinner. And then at 11 O’Clock at night, I then got a text from my wife saying, “Dad’s really unwell.” She said, “I’ll let you know how he is in the morning. I’ll keep you posted.”

Anoop Maini:
So, I was saying, I sent a message and I said, “Can you find out when the next flights are? Et cetera.”

Prav Solanki:
So, you knew it was that serious at that point?

Anoop Maini:
It was very serious at that point. So, all of my family members had congregated and I was in Copenhagen. When I woke up in the morning, I looked at my text and it said, “Dad’s passed away.” This was 7:30 in the morning. I’m going to hit the lecture stage at nine to do a course.

Payman:
Wow.

Anoop Maini:
So, at that moment, I had to make a decision. What do I do? I just thought to myself, “What would dad want me to do? What would dad say to me?” I know what dad said to do … He always said stick by your responsibilities. I couldn’t turn the clock back. So, I delivered the course and got the first flight out back home.

Anoop Maini:
But one thing I really regret was not being there for my dad when he passed away because I know my dad had asked for me. In inverted commas, I was the closest son to him, because I’ve always lived in and around my dad. I lived four or five miles away from my dad. My brother’s moved to South London, my sisters had gone up to Nottingham, et cetera, so I’ve always been in and around dad being the youngest son. So, not being there for the final moment, and I know he was asking for me, is probably the hardest thing.

Anoop Maini:
Like they always say, you never get the opportunity to say, “Dad, I love you and thank you. Actually, more than love you, thank you.” And I never got the opportunity to do that. That was the most painful thing for me. And going through that course in Copenhagen, holding that in and still delivering the course-

Payman:
One of the hardest things you’ve ever done.

Anoop Maini:
It was a very hard thing to do. It was a really hard thing to do. But I had … You had 18, 20 people in a room, paid their monies, you know? I had a responsibility to them.

Prav Solanki:
Most people would have walked away Anoop. I know I would have done. If that happened to me, I’d have gone and I wouldn’t have been in an emotional state to even contemplate that.

Payman:
Well, you don’t really know what you would have done unless that was happening to you, to tell you the truth.

Prav Solanki:
Well, no, but you know if … Yeah.

Payman:
But, I hear you. In the moment, he did it for his dad.

Anoop Maini:
Well, I thought to myself, “What would dad say?”

Prav Solanki:
Dad would want you to do it, yeah.

Anoop Maini:
I would run back, dad would say, “Look, you don’t run away from your responsibilities.” At the end of the day, I had a responsibility to these dentists who have taken time off, paid for this course. How would I benefit them or me by rushing off now? My dad’s gone.

Prav Solanki:
So, what’s your dad’s legacy?

Anoop Maini:
My dad’s legacy is the people he left behind because I think dad still lives in all of us. His legacy is he was someone who embodied, like you said raising people to the next level, he got all of us educated. We’ve all been to university, we’ve all, in inverted commas, been successful. My brother’s an optician, I think he’s got six practises or clinics. We’ve all reached our own level of success, and we owe that all to dad, because dad was the one who always was our driver, he was our business consultant, he was our energy. You know? Like I said, he got me through private school, he put my brother into a private college to get him through to his A-Levels because he missed a grade for him to get into Aston University to do Opthalmics. He missed a grade, he had to repeat a year, so my dad put him into a private college which was quite expensive. It was about £10,000 or whatever.

Anoop Maini:
Dad was a chap who just did it. Somehow he found out a way of doing stuff. I’m sure his credit card bills were huge, but he never … We always used to say this; my dad only had … Sorry, I’m crying. My dad only had two sets of clothes. My dad had two sets of clothes, that’s how much … He always said to me, “Why do I need so many clothes?” We bought him suits and stuff, he never wore it. He only had two sets of clothes that he wore for years, and that’s how he was, because he always didn’t spend on himself. He was always looking after his family. His family to him was everything. Raising us up and taking us to the next level was the most important thing for him.

Anoop Maini:
And he did that also not just for his immediate kids, he did it for his brothers and sisters. He set them all up. He got them all married, he helped with their wedding costs. That guy was working hours.

Prav Solanki:
He was the dad to them, right?

Anoop Maini:
He was dad to them. My dad was working 18 hours a day. So, you know, he was someone who went without. He didn’t have anything. He just didn’t have anything. He had two sets of clothes, I will tell you that now, even now. We bought him suits and stuff and he never wore it. He just said, “It’s not me.”

Payman:
Wow. I’m sure he was very, very proud of you.

Prav Solanki:
And I’m sure he still is. I’m sure he’s looking down, if you believe in that.

Payman:
What do you believe in that sense?

Anoop Maini:
I think he’s with me. I think I am dad, and I think my brothers and sisters, we’re all with us. You know? Parts of it, his personality is embodied with us. My biggest priority at the moment in my life is obviously looking after my mom, because obviously he was a big guidance for my mom as well. My mom’s not tremendously well, so our priority is obviously to make sure my mom’s well looked after. My responsibility to my dad is to make sure she’s fine.

Prav Solanki:
On the … Payman just touched upon it then … You know, we all have different beliefs, life after death, religious, non-religious, whatever. Do you believe he’s somewhere up there, looking down, as a guiding spirit? Is that within your belief system, or is it something else?

Anoop Maini:
Me and religion is a funny little game because I’m quite scientific in my … I’m someone who needs to reason and understand, so religion’s been an unknown. I don’t necessarily … I wouldn’t quite call myself an atheist, but I don’t sort of akin to a particular religion as such. But I believe dad is in my mind. With the spirit, I think he lives with me, having his ring on me. Like you said about his legacy, his legacy for me is to make sure I carry on his virtues into my children.

Payman:
That’s a beautiful thing, but an atheist could believe exactly the same thing.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
Do you believe in God?

Anoop Maini:
To be honest, I don’t really-

Payman:
Think about it? Do you believe in karma?

Anoop Maini:
I think there is karma. See, the God, I think to myself, “If there was a God, why would there be so much suffering?”

Payman:
I guess he’s not into …

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. Why would there be so much suffering? Why would people starve in the world? Why would a four year old kid who’s done nothing wrong just not have on the food on the plate?

Payman:
I think the official answer to that, well one of them, is that if that kid has done nothing wrong, he will go straight into heaven, but his plight will show you how lucky you are. Something like that.

Prav Solanki:
I don’t know.

Payman:
Do you know?

Prav Solanki:
I don’t know.

Payman:
It depends on what religion we’re talking I guess.

Prav Solanki:
It depends on what your belief system is ultimately, right? That’s what I was interested in. Moving on from there, you spoke about your dad’s legacy. Fast forward, you’ve got your last day on this planet-

Payman:
Your funeral.

Prav Solanki:
Your funeral, right? If there’s one thing the world can basically remember Anoop Maini by, it’s this sentence; Anoop Maini was … Finish that sentence off for me in terms of your legacy. Anoop Maini was …

Payman:
And not what it will be. What you would love it to be.

Anoop Maini:
Anoop Maini was a great father, husband, family man and an inspiration to others.

Payman:
Thanks a lot man. It’s been lovely having you.

Speaker 4:
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.

Prav Solanki:
Hey guys and thank you for listening to today’s episode of the Dental Leaders podcast, a vision that myself and Payman had over two years ago now. If you have got some value out of today, just hit the subscribe button in iTunes or Google Play or whatever you’re listening to. Let us know in your comments what you actually got out of the episode, because we love sitting back and reading those reviews. It really does make our day.

Payman:
It’s a real pleasure to do this. It’s fun to do, but I’m really humbled that you’re actually listening all the way through to the end. Join us again. If you got some value out of it, please share it. Thanks a lot.