Month: November 2019

Transcript

Prav Solanki: Hey guys, and welcome to the Dental Leaders Podcast. Thanks for tuning in, and today we had the pleasure of interviewing Daz Singh, or Ollie from Ollie and Darsh, as he’s otherwise known, guy who set up retail dentistry in the heart of Liverpool. Way before it was on anyone else’s radar, whose then gone on to teach at an international level, but certainly from close conversations with Daz, it’s very clear that he’s massively passionate about delivering an amazing patient experience, but also helping and mentoring younger dentists to do the right thing. Biggest take away for me was when Daz revealed what an associate needs to do to stand out and work for him.

Payman: One of my favourite people in the profession. Really honest, open, fun guy and if I was a young dentist who wanted to find out the inside track on high streak practise, I would be straight down to Daz because he’s just, I’ve never asked him a question that he didn’t over answer, you know? Unlike some people who hold stuff back, the guy’s just totally open about everything and the super interesting hearing about his early life in Saudi as well.

Prav Solanki: Hmm, very interesting conversation. You’re going to enjoy this guys.

Payman: Enjoy.

Prav Solanki: So between the three of you, what would you say your key strengths are? Ollie you should pick your unique abilities, Sudarsh’s and then naturally Suzy’s.

Daz Singh: My unique ability is being able to delegate things to Suzy. That’s easy, that’s my unique ability.

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: Daz it’s really good to have you here. Thanks for joining us and taking out the time in your day to come and spend with us and join us on this podcast.

Daz Singh: I appreciate you inviting me over to be honest, Prav. It’s very kind of you guys.

Prav Solanki: Daz can you just sort of give everyone a background of just your upbringing, your backstory, and just what it was like growing up.

Daz Singh: Yeah sure. I was born, my parents were 1st generation out of India and my dad came over to the UK to become a surgeon and part of that process ended up having me in a place called West Bromwich, and when I was about 3 my dad got offered a job in Saudi, so there was a new hospital being built in Riyadh and dad had an opportunity to do some teaching and to do some clinical work there. So when I was about 3 we moved to Riyhadh and then yeah, we spent the next 7 years there. I went to an American school, got a really nice thick American accent, which is a bit weird when we move back in about ’91 after the first Gulf War. Yeah so lived in Yorkshire for a few years then we settled in Darby, and then I came up to Liverpool to study, and then just been there ever since to be honest.

Prav Solanki: Wow. And what was it like moving around as a kid from school to school? I remember, gosh I reckon I certainly primary school I must have changed 4 times, and for me there were times when it was quite upsetting. You know you’ve got some friends like, I was part of the football team or whatever and then you just gotta say goodbye and move on to your next group.

Prav Solanki: Do you have any memories like that?

Daz Singh: Yeah, I mean of the international school, because it was an international school I went to in Saudi, and part of when dad was working there, he was quite fortunate in terms of our school fees get paid by the hospital, so we were part of the American school at the time and yeah, it was you know we were there, I mean, the time I spent in Saudi I just remember being at that school to be honest and then we understood though you know, dad wanted us to move to the UK because he actually wanted us to have an education. Which was interesting because when we moved back to Yorkshire I realised how uneducated I really was to be honest. But when we moved back to Yorkshire my dad’s closest friends were in Yorkshire at the time, so we went to the same school that they did. And then dad would sort of, kind of go from, would kind of go from one job to another, but we were fairly settled there to be honest.

Daz Singh: And then it was when dad finally got his GP posting in Darby to do his, to build a practise there. Then we moved down there. And I actually – what ended up happening – was that we had a really happy coincidence. Moving close to some really really close family friends of ours back from Saudi as well, so they were going to a local school so yeah they just made it all really easy for us. For me I just found it as like part of the process. It wasn’t sort of a major issue. It’s sad that I lost a lot of touch with a lot of friends from like, probably back in Yorkshire, but yeah. Things like Facebook and Instagram and things like that it’s great for keeping in touch.

Payman: Where you good in school?

Daz Singh: I wouldn’t say, I mean I probably be classed as probably a hard worker. I don’t think I was like, I don’t think I was like the most academically gifted person at school. I don’t think that that would be the way I’d probably describe myself. It was, I used to just put the graft in to be honest. What was really interesting was going from one curriculum to another, so when we were at the American school in Saudi, I had no concept of what an exam was or anything.

Payman: It was very different.

Daz Singh: It was. They just didn’t have any so, you know, it came back. When we moved here to the UK as 11 year old I was this fat asian, pudgy, sort of kid in like this broad town in Wakefield. And so they’ve just given this exam. I had no idea what was going on here.

Payman: That was a big culture shock to go from Saudi to Wakefield. 2 of the worlds nicest places.

Daz Singh: From you know heat, and so you know, desert to sunny, snow. I remember the first time I saw frost and I thought it was snow. I thought it was the most amazing thing on Earth. It was great. I’d never seen it before. So.

Payman: What are your memories of Saudi? Is it as people imagine?

Daz Singh: The time when we were there was during the 80s, sorry. It was a really nice time. I really enjoyed it while we were there. There was none of this, I mean, the idea of having a Middle East in conflict didn’t exist at that point in time.

Payman: Yeah, yeah.

Daz Singh: We were there during the, the fir-. I mean we were there during the Gulf, the First Gulf War. That was an interesting point in time. And as a kid trying to experience all of that was quite interesting. It was just, it’s something I reflect on now that I’m older, but at the time you just, you know what. You’re 10 years old.

Payman: Was your dad the doctor of a oil field or something?

Daz Singh: No no no. He was a general surgeon and he was working one of the university hospitals. And then he went to work for military hospital towards the end before we left, before we came over here.

Prav Solanki: When was the first time you decided you wanted to be a dentist?

Daz Singh: It’s a good question Prav. There was a time when I was at school and you’re having to make decisions about sort of, what type of career path you wanted to go down. And I’ll be honest with you, you know I wanted, I thought that medicine was probably the best way to go down. And initially I had applied. It wasn’t, it didn’t have the greatest amount of success for it. When it came to sort of rethinking an reevaluating I was everything, you know I’ve got a lot of friends who are medics, my par- y dad’s a medic, you know, my brother who is now a medic. And you know what, I just, I would- I didn’t really find that anyone was really enjoying the career as much and getting the same satisfaction and then I thought that, you know. I just wanted to have a career that I thought, you know, ironically that I thought you know, between 9 to half 5 and have a life afterwards.

Daz Singh: And you know, I used to dad having to do these massive on calls and sort of you know, being called out in the middle of the night to do some surgery and I’m like, you know I don’t think that’s going to fit for me. So I had a little look and I thought you know dentistry seemed the best fit for me. So, I had a friend over in Darby who I went to over to shadow for a few days and I thought, you know this sounds about right. So I thought, you know, let’s reapply and let’s do it for dentistry this time around.

Prav Solanki: Growing up in an Asian-Indian cultural environment with parents who, well every parent wants the best for their kids, right?- but I certainly had the pressure that you know, doctor, dentist, accountant, lawyer, was any of that sort of influenced? You mentioned medicine earlier obviously, your dad. Just talk us through that in terms of your, the values and the cultures growing up and what it was all like.

Daz Singh: I think that’s really interesting. I think that you know, from a very early age, you kind of, it’s kind of instilled, well it was certainly instilled into me that you know, there’s this idea of success. There’s an idea of sort of having a career. There’s a reason why you should go to school. There’s a reason why you need to university, and this idea of sort of you know, building yourself up and being able to become successful, so to speak. And our parents ideas is my will to do something sort of around that sort of medical, dental sort of field because at that sort of time it was quite given that you know, it’s a straightforward career, it’s a straightforward education path and you know if you work hard you will earn well, you’ll have a good life, and you’ll have good money. Which is probably what sort of I’d imagine any parent would instil into their kids anyways, so it’s not, it’s something I’ve always had more of an interest in.

Daz Singh: I’m never really, I don’t really have an artistic mindset. There are things that you know, I’d just, I wish I did. I can’t play a musical instrument or anything like that, but it’s something that, it’s something where I think both of our values kind of lined up well towards. It’s something I felt that naturally that’s a trajectory I wanted to go down. I don’t really go down to experience other things. I don’t think I was gifted enough to do something like law or some, or any other career. I think it was always gonna be around this sort of, sort of this medical dental mind. Sort of career path for me to be honest.

Payman: Did you study in Liverpool?

Daz Singh: Yes.

Payman: And wha- how was undergrad for you?

Daz Singh: Loved it. Loved every minute of it, yeah. It was just great. Absolutely loved it. Yeah, it was great. I just really really enjoyed it. I went to, I was a day pupil at boarding school before and it was ironic.

Payman: Where was that?

Daz Singh: It was a school called Repton. In the Midlands. Yeah it was really interesting. That was a really interesting experience. But yeah.

Payman: Why why why?

Daz Singh: It just well, I mean, I was going from like a, sort of… different schools I was at was you know, there was an international-American school in Saudi, which is interesting because you meet characters and people from all different environments, so all different sort of fields. I remember, I think it was the Ecuadorian ambassador’s son who was in my class, to somebody, just like a maid from around the corner, whose dad was a medic as well.

Daz Singh: And then we went to Yorkshire, I mean we went to a place called… When we moved back to like Yorkshire, went to a school called Queenswood with grammar school and that was a proper grammar school, Yorkshire grammar school. So, that I got taught a lot more about British education system, values of the British education systems, and learned some instant truths, shall we say. And then, when we moved to Darby, we had some -I had some- one of my best mates was going to a school called Rapton, and dad thought it’d be best for me to go there as well. And that was a really interesting thing because this is where you go to school. It’s like 6 days a week, and you have 3 half days during the week. And you’re meant to be in school from 10 to 8 or 9 o’clock at night. And as a day people and so we went to university we actually ended up doing less hours, I loved it.

Payman: Lots of sport?

Daz Singh: Yeah, there was lots of sport. Very very sports orientated.

Prav Solanki: Are you still buddies with your friends from Saudi?

Daz Singh: Do you know, recently I’ve come to, I’ve come to meet people who I haven’t seen in like 15-20 odd years, but that being said, we just chat over Facebook because you know, life gets in the way of everything else. But if the opportunity ever came, then yeah, there’s the odd person that we try to keep in touch with.

Daz Singh: My dad has a close group of friends who obviously, they kind of developed a relationship while they were working over there and they get to see each other talking about once or twice a year.

Payman: So would you say you were in the top of your class in dentist school, or near the top, or no? Middle?

Daz Singh: Nowhere close, man. Not close. Yeah, no. I was – there were more people who are by far in a way more gifted academically then I was. I am not at that mindset at all you know, I’m more of a grafter than I am more academic. I can definitely put the hours in library and things like that.

Payman: Prav was top of his class.

Daz Singh: Was he? That’s no surprise. But no, that wasn’t me though.

Payman: So then ok, you got out of dental school VT?

Daz Singh: Yeah. VT was I mean.

Payman: Do you have the same, I thought when I got out of dental school I actually preferred work to education. I mean, I know, by the way, it’s not easy leaving university because you’ve got your friends, you’ve got your thing and then first day of work is weird. But overall I think I do prefer working to studying.

Daz Singh: Yeah. With paycheck.

Payman: Well Prav might not.

Prav Solanki: Well, when I finally sat my PhD viva, I swore that that was the last exam I was ever gonna do because for 10 years previous to that I was doing an exam every 8 weeks. And then, just happened to be that I got the bug that I wanted to ride a motor bike. So I sat my theory, because I’d have my driving licence but you have to do the theory -whatever- driving licence, the flipping driving theory thing? Anyone could do this. Didn’t look at the book, didn’t revise, failed the damn thing didn’t I. So that was my last exam. But I preferred university life to working. Best years of my life for sure. Even, with the study included right to the working.

Payman: Yeah, of course.

Prav Solanki: Freedom, the flexibility, the lack of responsibility, the health. You’ve got everything at that point, right? But you’re, compared to now.

Payman: Because you’re young.

Prav Solanki: ‘Cause you’re young, you can just do more stuff, right? You can get away with drinking 4, 5, nights on the trot. You know?

Payman: I’m sure Oxford was a quite different experience. But it is a different experience.

Daz Singh: It is, no I know, I’m pretty sure it is. My best mate was a medic at Cambridge and you know, some stories he tells me about like, I mean, we might have a party or something like that. At like a house, I mean the parties that the colleges would throw would just be a mess.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, just hot air balloons and all sorts of crazy stuff.

Daz Singh: I love the sense of, I love that sense of history that those colleges have, the traditions, traditions the word I’m looking for. That you know, you kind of buy into.

Prav Solanki: It’s nice.

Daz Singh: And I love that. Yeah, it’s really really quite cool.

Payman: So Daz, what was your first job then?

Daz Singh: So after I finished uni, did VT, got a, it was ironic actually, it was probably, I was quite kind of late to getting the job but it was a place called Colby Dental Practise. It was up in north Liverpool. It was social economically probably quite depressed area, Colby, but you know it was a great place to learn. Amazing place. And you know, I was very fortunate that people I was working with were great people as well, people I kind of, I’d already got to know through university so guys who I’d play football with and stuff like that as well, so there were some great guys who were already there.

Payman: What about the influence of that first boss VT trainer of yours?

Daz Singh: Yeah, so I mean I worked with a guy called [inaudible] who was my VT trainer.

Payman: Oh was he your VT trainer?

Daz Singh: Yeah, he was my VT trainer and it was, yeah, and do you know what, we did some really really great stuff, and one of the things though, one of the things I particularly remember was, I think I was, I’d only been there for a few months. And you kind of leave university with this kind of insipid idea what dentistry’s all about. You have this idea that you know, you’ve seen a composite, you’ve seen like what a crown prep is, you’ve seen and a… And then I remember that he took me down to a bard meeting in London. And I’d, and then [inaudible] was the keynote speaker there. And this was like me being a fresh eyed sort of dentist and I’m like what is this guy on? He’s like, what a presentation. To this day I think it’s the best presentation. It’s just unbelievable presentation and I had no idea grasp this sort of, this is how people can do dentistry. I had a mindset of sort of you know, is like you know, you have 2 up 2 down kind of practise in like a suburban area, and then you’re gonna be sort of dummy dentistry for the rest of your life, and then this idea that there’s this gentlemen who was doing some phenomenal dentistry and-

Payman: So that kind of inspired you?

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Payman: To go that-

Daz Singh: Well it’s certainly opened my eyes in terms of what was really possible there. You know, again my rents had organised for like Ash and Rahul to come up and do a small design course up in Liverpool. And I was very lucky to be able to go and become a participant in that as well, so.

Payman: Early on, huh?

Daz Singh: Yeah, so I’d had a lot of experience from all of that sort of stuff. From very early on and I managed to catch the boat from there on in. At the time there was a company called independent seminars who I think were part of FMC at the time.

Payman: Still, are?

Daz Singh: Yeah, under a different name. Again, they were bringing in a lot of guys in from around Europe. Who would be classes probably be influences now, but these are the guys who were doing lots of the solid dentistry from around the globe. And whether they’re coming from the US or from Europe and just fascinating listening to a lot of those people. And you know, again to meet and sort of network people in that sort of, in that environment that I’m kind of still quite close to now, to be honest. It was quite phenomenal sort of experience to be able to do so.

Daz Singh: For sure I mean during VT its was like for me a lot about VT was this, was that I felt that I needed to put the hours in so I can actually do the simple dentistry well. Should be able to sort of you know, how to do an MOD amalgam or how to sort of spot caries or how to sort of do a root canal too. I felt that you know, part of being a dentist is that you need to be able to do those simple things really well, and often being an environment [inaudible] you know, there was no pressure to sort of produce, there was no pressure saying you have to do this, this and this. It was much more self. I had a lot more pressure on myself just to make sure that, I felt the need to be a natural graduation in terms of how I produced.

Prav Solanki: Was it high volume dentistry that were doing in that, say, first year or two?

Payman: I remember that practise, I think. Like examining patients and things?

Daz Singh: Yeah. It’s a lot of exam patients and yeah, volume, I think is one way to put it.

Payman: Yeah.

Daz Singh: Lot of high volume.

Prav Solanki: So, you can now just not do a VT, right, and go straight into practise?

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: So straight into a private practise?

Payman: Didn’t know that.

Daz Singh: Yeah it just means that I think you can’t work in the NHS if you go away from-

Prav Solanki: You provide a number or something like that?

Prav Solanki: What’s your take on that in terms of your experience and the grounding that’s giving you to be able to perform the type of dentistry you do now? What’s your take on not doing VT and just going straight into it and just learning on the job so to speak?

Daz Singh: I think there’s an element to that but I think that for me when I have conversations with young dentists, especially this sort of time and place, I think that there’s an element where I don’t think people do the simple things well enough to be able to go away and then to do the more complicated issues. And it’s that sort of all at it, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think VT’s a great place to sort of learn the stuff you don’t already know. Or the stuff you need to understand that I need to work harder on this. And you know what, it’s that aspect of it.

Payman: I love it an enjoyable year of VT for me. I loved that year.

Daz Singh: Yeah, I loved it too.

Payman: I was with Zaki.

Daz Singh: Oh really?

Payman: Yeah, a guy called, I don’t know if came up with a Majid Shahab.

Daz Singh: The name rings a bell for sure.

Payman: But yeah VT’s great because you’re protected, you’re in the real world but not really, and then you’ve got that 1 day a week where you see your peers.

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Payman: I enjoyed that year. It’d be a shame not to do it to tell you the truth.

Daz Singh: I’ll tell you what I did. I made, I probably in hindsight, I probably made a mistake. I was like, I was adamant that after I left uni I was not gonna rent anymore. So I made the mistake of buying a flat probably about 3 months after I finished uni.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Daz Singh: So I think we finished in July and I was bumming around on people’s floors until I actually managed to get this flat over the line. In like, I think it was November I finally moved in. I lived there for about 10 years, but it was just one of those where buying a place, everything I had could fit in like one corner of my living room at that point in time. So all I, so it’s just like slowly but steadily buying a sofa, buying a TV, and buying all of those other things as well .

Payman: So what was that you would literally wanted to accumulate wealth?

Daz Singh: No, it wasn’t about accumulating wealth I just felt that you know.

Payman: You’ve rented long enough.

Daz Singh: It was, you know, going back to it, one of the things we were talking about was this. Was that you know, for me it was, well we’re talking about success and we’re talking about sort of you know family sort of things, you know? For us it was all about you know, make sure you pass your exams, make sure you pass exams, and I was always adamant that you know, dentistry finals was going to be the last exam that I ever wanted to take. I’m just battered that’s the only way I can really put it.

Daz Singh: And after that, I was kind of quite liberating because you know, your whole sort of as you grow up, you start thinking that you know, what’s the next stage, what’s the next step. And once I had my dental degree, it was like well the rest of the career is mine now. I don’t really have anything. There’s no sort of presets, sort of pathway that you need to go down.

Payman: You didn’t have to do anything.

Daz Singh: Yeah in medicine you have your junior, you have your junior house officer years, then you go into your reg positions and ultimately becoming a consultant. So that kind of pathway is all kind of led out in dentistry. We didn’t really have that, so when I left, when I finished uni the only thing I was really about was that I was not gonna go back to Darby because if I did then I knew that’s where I was going to be living for the next 20-30 years of my life. I loved it in Liverpool, I wanted to stay there as much as I possibly could, so one of the things was that I thought “You know I’ll buy a flat.”

Daz Singh: It was just interesting trying to do that from VT wages while at the same time. But yeah, it was good, it was good fun. But it just meant there was some things I kind of missed out on which I kind of regret. Things like a lot of the guys all went off to Chicago midwinter meeting because you know, they could go off. I just couldn’t afford to do it at the time, so it was just one of those.

Daz Singh: But, yeah.

Payman: And then you stayed on in the same practise as an associate?

Daz Singh: Yeah, we stayed there for about, I stayed there for about 2 and a half years or so.

Payman: And then you set up Ollie and Darsh?

Daz Singh: Yeah and then…

Payman: Is that all it was, 2 and a half years?

Daz Singh: Yeah, so I was about 27 when we set up Ollie and Darsh.

Payman: Bloody hell.

Daz Singh: Yeah it was just, I mean at the time we just seemed like the absolutely right thing to do. Between sort of finishing VT and going off and opening the clinic, it was just you know, going from all these forces and then you know. There was some guys who particularly made a massive influence in terms of what I – in terms of how I do things – clinically. Just listening to people like John Hammond and Ian Buckle. From the Dawson Academy. Suddenly started realising that actually, you know what. They exposed me to sort of saying well you know this is how you can look and try to formulate how you should go about trying to sort of set up and how you go about trying to do dentistry.

Daz Singh: And then it came to a point where I was like, you know, there was a situation where somebody became that I had to go in and I was doing a lot more NHS then I would’ve done privately. Just a career decision in terms of you know you spend so much money investing in yourself, if you don’t go away and create your own environment to be able to go and do that kind of thing, then you know what, how much is that investment going to then sort of tail off year after year after year.

Daz Singh: We become habitual in terms of how we sort of do things and I find it far better to be my own boss then to be told what to do.

Payman: Yeah okay. But, and Ollie and Darsh really is one of those very branded iconic high service. I would actually go there. It’s funny because every time they make an announcement of our 6th birthday or something, it feels like it’s been much much longer. Is it 10?

Daz Singh: Yeah, we’re into our 11th year now.

Payman: Yeah it always feels like they’ve been there much longer than they’ve- the year of their birthday that they announce. But, what is it about you that made you wanna open that sort of shop front branded. Was that what- I mean from my own experience, when I first did my first VT job, I was a bit shocked. Wow, is this what dentistry is? Like, is this the kind of place you work in and the way that people are and all that? And my boss was a great guy, but it just, the surroundings I mean. Look at Ollie and Darsh I mean there’s a lot of them around now. But back then it wasn’t as common.

Daz Singh: Yeah I mean I suppose, you know. There’s a lot of things that kind of led up to sort of how we set that up. It’s true to say that Ollie and Darsh is a vision of not just myself, but you know I have a business partner, Sudarsh Naidoo and you know a business manager Suzy Gorman as well, so it’s like as much as I want to try and take credit for all of it, it’s not really fair, but you know the 3 of us kind of came up with this idea that we should look at trying to do things and in some ways it’s the simplest thing to do.

Daz Singh: Because, when you have a blank piece of paper, and you sat there and think “I need to open up a dental practise, what do I need to do?” I’m kind of really glad I don’t live in this Facebook and Twitter environment right now because when it’s just 2 or 3 people and you sat thinking “Well what do we want to do?”, and we first focused on what experience our patients are going to have. What are they going to do. What are we going to do that’s going to be so different to people. And we say right.

Daz Singh: You know, every time someone comes in they’re gonna meet Suzy for a free consultation. We’re gonna show them around the clinic, we’re gonna show them exactly sort of what we are, what we do, how we go about trying to do it. That’s something we still do to this day, you know. All these patients come and they still see Suzy or they’ll see one of the members of our team to look at trying to come in and sort of see exactly sort of what we have to offer here in the clinic.

Daz Singh: And then from there on in it’s like we were then getting patients in for full clinical consultation. So there was an element where we felt that we had to be a little bit retail in terms of trying to trap patients in. And then there was going to be an element of clinical where we’re trying to be sort of where we need to sort of separate ourselves from the rest. It wasn’t just going to say “Yep, you can come in go yeah we kind kind of, you know, we can kind of do this, we can kind of do that. And then we can kinda”…

Payman: Remind me the street name?

Daz Singh: We’re on Dale St.

Payman: Dale Street, so must have been quite a big thing to take a shop on, on a major major street in Liverpool.

Daz Singh: Well it was one of those that we were looking around and…

Payman: Yeah tell us the process of it, how did you find the space?

Daz Singh: So, I mean, we were fortunate. We got in touch with a few different sort of agencies and stuff like that. And what, I mean, our clinic, I know you’ve down payment, and I think you have as well Prav, is that you know we’re based underground, so we’re…

Payman: Not anymore right?

Daz Singh: Well, kind of. We’re making our way up literally so to speak.

Payman: Had you decides it was going to be a high street shop front?

Daz Singh: I think we were just you know, going back to the original question about O and D was this, you know if we’re going to open up a dental practise, well you know, in Liverpool. At the time, there were maybe 1 or 2 sort of high street practises in the Liverpool city centre so to speak. I mean one of the things I was doing was that at the time I spent doing like the year long restoring course with Paul Tipton. And you get the, you go to Manchester about once a month every month and I forget the name of the square.

Prav Solanki: St Anne’s.

Daz Singh: That’s right and next to his practise was another practise and before him was 2 or 3 more practises. So I’m like, why is it? That in Manchester you can have 5 dental practises that are literally less than a stones throw from each other?

Daz Singh: But in Liverpool, we struggle with having dental clinics. So we’re having a little look to see, well what is it that people were doing or weren’t doing in Liverpool. And actually, for us I thought it was something as simple as they just wasn’t a dentist at the practise, every day of the week. I figured that you know if we’re gonna have a dental practise, we need to be, you know even if we couldn’t actually, if I couldn’t be there 5 days a week, we’re always going to have people there.

Daz Singh: We’re always going to have somebody to call up and say “Look I need to see a dentist.” “Okay, sure come on in.”

Daz Singh: And it’s not that we’re closed for this, this and this day, we’re gonna be sort of open Monday to Friday which is like normal business hours. Come in, come and see us and we can then go from there. And then that’s how I think we kind of built from there on in. It was just more about you know what people are still going, people are still wanting to have that solid dentistry done. It was just the mishonor of people thinking you have to go all the way up to Manchester or you know you have to go to places like ‘chester to do it.

Payman: So okay, you obviously spent a lot of money, the design element, setting this thing up. Did you set it up with 2 chairs to start with for you and Sudarsh?

Daz Singh: Yeah, the money thing is quite interesting point. People look at it from the point where we feel like we spent a lot of money. I look at it a bit differently. When I was looking how much valuation of practises were, I was looking at a practise that’s valued at like 1 million pounds, and I’m like but you’re just doing like 800,000 pounds of turnover. But you want me to spend a million pounds to do that. And I’m like I just don’t get that. Whereas if I spent a fraction of that and spent the time to build the practise, then I’d have a practise worth 4 times the investment.

Payman: But what I’m saying is you spent a lot of money, you found this place, spent a bunch of money, day 1 there are no patients.

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Payman: What did you do?

Daz Singh: You just call squeaky bum time isn’t it?

Payman: What?

Daz Singh: Squeaky bum time, mate, you just gotta.

Payman: Is that a Northern?

Daz Singh: Yeah, it’s like you know it’s just one of those mate.

Payman: So what did you do? There’s no patients, what did you do?

Daz Singh: Well you know, we had we- from the outside we knew that we needed to market the clinic out. We knew that we needed to be able to look at trying to have some sort of form of campaign to tell people about who we were, what we did.

Payman: And you started before you finished the building?

Daz Singh: So we did a little bit of that, yeah. So you know we, I mean this is, remember you, this is 2008 so this is pre- sort of- Facebook. Pre crash as well. So all of our ideas were formed pre crash. But, the interesting thing was is that when we were creating a budget for the clinic, we budgeted a marketing spend for it? So we still have that even though the crash happened and then some ways when the crash happened it worked well for us because what ended up happening was that all the other people who were advertising at the time just stopped. And we just and so we were able to get much more beneficial rates, much more beneficial sort of ad time that you could’ve-

Payman: You’re working somewhere else and doing 1 day a week or how?

Daz Singh: Yeah so I’m still working the Colby practise for a short period of time and then I got a great piece of advice by a guy called Barry Alton. I met him at a dentistry awards dinner. He was like “Look, this is your practise and this is where you’re going to be for the next sort of however many years. However much you’re earning from your other job, I mean what do you need to do to spoil yourself?” At that time I just had a car and a flat and that was about it. So then you know he was telling me “Look it’s your time not better invested in just spending your time in your own clinic? What else do you need to do?” I don’t have a family that I need to support or anything else like that. You know it’s literally just car and a mortgage. So, and he was right so shortly afterwards I just made the decision I was just going to go into the clinic full time and then you know what we’re just going to build things up…

Payman: Yeah, so what was the first thing you did marketing wise to get some first few patients through the door?

Daz Singh: So I think we did, we were looking at, I think we looked at radio ads as a great way to look at trying to bring people in.

Payman: At the get go?

Daz Singh: Yeah, from the get go. So, yeah it was some intro, we had interest conversation with various different people. Actually no sorry, let me lie, we didn’t do radio at the beginning, we did that a little bit later, and what we did do is we just did some simple stuff which was just basically create a little bit of brand awareness around where we worked, we just had a few purses lined up. We started doing stuff with the train stations and things like that around it as well. And ads yeah.

Prav Solanki: Leaflet drops, papers?

Daz Singh: Yeah, a few. We did a little bit of newspapers. Not as much as we hoped we would but then I think when we did our first Invisalign open day, back in January 2009, that’s when we used radio ads for the first time and that was what really kicked us off after that. We’d open in November 2008 and then we had a bit of a soft opening for 2-3 months leading up to that but then after that January it’s just kind of been, pretty much full on.

Payman: Which station was it?

Daz Singh: A station called Radio City.

Payman: The one with the tower?

Daz Singh: Yeah, the one with the tower.

Payman: And so what was the ad, was it just like as you would expect?

Daz Singh: No it was just when we did it, it was like very specific advert for Invisalign open day that we were going to Invisalign at a certain price and it was going to be on this day at this time. If they wanted to come in then they had to sort of call up and make an appointment to come in and see us on that day.

Payman: Do you still do radio advertising?

Daz Singh: Sporadically. Sporadically, I think that you know, there’s better ways to look at trying to spend that kind of capital.

Payman: What does it cost to advertise on the radio in Liverpool?

Daz Singh: To be honest it costs as much as low as you want.

Payman: Alright.

Daz Singh: It’s like if you had a budget for 5 and a pound a month, you can get ads for 5 and a pound a month. If you wanted to spend a million quid a month they’d give you – they’ll take that as well. So you know it comes down to sort of how much you really wanna look at trying to spend. It’s great for creating awareness, you know. Because we’ve been doing it for so long you know, people kind of do recognise us on the radio.

Payman: Have you got a jingle?

Daz Singh: Yes.

Payman: Go on, sing it.

Daz Singh: No I’m not, no chance.

Payman: Come on.

Daz Singh: No chance man.

Payman: Ollie and Darsh.

Daz Singh: Absolutely not. It’s not happening.

Payman: What’s your tagline? One smile at a time?

Daz Singh: Where individual smiles matter.

Payman: That’s the one.

Prav Solanki: So we just rewind a little bit, the name Ollie and Darsh, I only actually found out about this like 10 years later where it came-

Payman: At the minimalist. [crosstalk]

Prav Solanki: Yeah, I think it was then so I’m sure a lot of our listeners are in the same position as me. Would you just like to enlighten us?

Daz Singh: Yeah sure. Is there a tagline to follow?

Daz Singh: No, so the name Ollie and Darsh, so my real name is [inaudible] very few people can really say it properly first time round and it’s usually got this question “Hmm?” So I say it again. So what happens is when I first born, my sister couldn’t say my full name properly. I still blame my sisters to this day for this, but so she was reading Oliver Twist at the time and she started calling me Oliver. So, my entire family, all of her call me Ollie. And it’s just the name that stick.

Daz Singh: When I went to the school in Saudi, my name was Oliver Singh. It was just basically that’s what it was. My yearbooks all have Oliver Singh in them. It’s quite something. But then when we moved back to England, I was like you know.

Payman: Oliver Singh does have a ring to it.

Daz Singh: Yeah, you’d be surprised, right? But you know, when we moved back from Saudi and moved back to Yorkshire, it was made aware to us that maybe you should start using your real name now. And then I started using my real name and that eventually got shortened down year after year down to like 3 letters. Daz, so I went through sort of school and uni being known as Daz and that was fine. I had no problems with that. But, we were coming up with names at the clinic and Sudarsh is my business partner and naturally her nickname is Darsh, and-

Prav Solanki: Makes sense.

Daz Singh: Yeah, so that made sense.

Payman: How did you meet Sudarsh?

Daz Singh: Again we used to work in the same clinic together.

Payman: But she was-

Daz Singh: She was working in another clinic at the time. And it just came to ahead were we felt like we just needed to do our own thing. And it just, you know, we have a great business relationship and it works really really well. We’re business partners first and then we’re friends second, which I think works quite well for both of us to be honest.

Payman: You must’ve been asked this before, she does exist right?

Daz Singh: She does exist. She’s there on our website mate, she’s there.

Payman: Sorry Sudarsh.

Daz Singh: It is quite interesting when I get called Ollie and Darsh at the same time. It’s like some sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing that I have seen to happen.

Payman: You’re the Colonel Sanders of the brand somehow yeah? And listen, I’m the Colonel Sanders of Enlighten and Sanj does more than I do at Enlighten that the Prav will attest to that.

Prav Solanki: Without a doubt. You play more table tennis than me.

Payman: Yeah, but somehow, I didn’t do it on purpose.

Daz Singh: No, its the same. No it’s definitely you know, we both have different lives you know. Sudarsh is, she’s got a lovely husband and she’s got -at the time when we first opened up- she had 2 really young boys. Keiran, her youngest was probably less than a year old I think when we opened up.

Daz Singh: So her time, I mean, her time she wanted to maximise between the family and the clinic. So she had no time for any other opportunities that Ollie and Darsh might have looked to trying to afford. So basically it was just me, I don’t have any sort of dependence, I didn’t have any family. And it was just basically you know whenever one of these things kind of came about, when an opportunity came about, I’m like “Yes”. I’ll just say yes and we’ll work out how to do it later. Which is what kind of ended up happening.

Payman: And the model of Suzy, sorry but Suzy takes care of the staff?

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Payman: She takes care of a lot of the patient contacts as well. Are you involved with the staff matters? Or does she literally handle that?

Daz Singh: You know, one of the things that, one of the challenges we’ve had as a business as we’ve grown is that we’ve grown from an idea into an actual business and the process of being in a business is this, you need to be able to look at delegating things amongst yourselves and I realise that when I try to meddle myself into different things that I shouldn’t be meddling into, things end up going p tong. And so well for me it’s just a case of you know we have a brain trust between the three of us and we sit down regularly, we have meetings were we thrash a lot of these things out. But Suzy’s pretty much the day to day running that clinic.

Daz Singh: She’s definitely the point of contact for patients, for staff, pretty much everyone else. She’s pretty much the all round go to person in our clinic. If it’s a clinical issue it goes to either me or Sadursh. But otherwise it goes to Suzy.

Prav Solanki: So between the 3 of you, what would you say your key strengths are? Ollie you should pick your unique ability, Sudarsh’s, and then naturally Suzy’s.

Daz Singh: My unique ability is being able to delegate things to Suzy. That’s easy, that’s my unique ability. Suzy’s great ability is that she’s a very personable person. She’s extremely, you know, the way I describe her is that if you cut her in half she bleeds orange and blue. She like bleeds more of the brand then I do. And you know, for me it’s like the brand was never meant to be about me or Sudarsh or Suzy. The brand was just meant to be, it’s a clinic that we do some, we’re hoping to do some really exceptional stuff that people wanna get involved with. It’s not designed around me it’s not like this is the Daz Singh brand or the Ollie Singh brand.

Daz Singh: It’s just not that. It’s meant to be around Ollie and Darsh, that’s the way it was created. But, Suzy’s the one who sort of, you know we have, we might have ideas in the clinic and I call it the tip of the sword, where she’s like you know we could have great ideas but Suzy’s the one who just basically goes in and makes it reality. We can sit down, have an idea and then before I know I sat back at my desk and what we’ve talked about is you know, here’s some quotes, here’s this, here’s that. Which one are we going to do? And how do we get on with that.

Daz Singh: Sudarsh’s ability to deal with all my tantrums without a doubt. Sudarsh is a phenomenal clinician. And she’s great at what she does. And again it’s just our ability to be able to kind of bounce off each other, to kind of work from there.

Payman: You’ve got you know a super successful clinic. The numbers of treatments that you do, of course success comes more than number of treatments, but who’s responsible, who’s sort of the growth engine on that? Was that you?

Daz Singh: I think we sit back and we’re always looking at numbers and you know for us you know we’re always looking year on year to try and push and be better than we were the year before. That’s how I- that’s how we define success. We’ve kind of settled for the same as the year before then we’re looking like you know what this is fairly easy to do, this is like you know, this isn’t hard. And that’s what my challenge is. My challenge is to say right okay how do we look at trying to move things forward. How do we look at taking things plus x plus 20%. It might sound like I’m motivated by money, I’m not it’s that I’m motivated by looking trying to push the clinic to a place where it can’t – where we didn’t thing it could – go.

Daz Singh: You know, it’s not about, I’m not interested in sort of pushing a thousand veneers out of the clinic or a thousand in Invisalign. I’m motivating by doing things for the first time if that makes sense. I’m motivated by doing something a bit different. I’m motivated by looking trying to say well can we do this, can we do that, and how do we go about trying to do this.

Daz Singh: In amongst the way that we want to try and get things done.

Prav Solanki: What other key metrics that you look like when comparing year to year? I mean I speak to a lot of clinics who use lots of different metrics, whether it’s conversions, if their consultations or new patients, or turn over profits. Do you have a set key metrics that you guys look at?

Daz Singh: Yeah for me it’s kind of comes down to profit at the end of the day. The rest of its all [inaudible] Yeah it’s just you know, if we’re making more money than we did last year, then that’s great. And the question is that why are we making more money? And I try and work it backwards from that. There are things that are designed in a particular way so that we have certain things that are designed to bring more people in to see us, so not necessarily a loss leading product, but something, a product that doesn’t actually bring us a general amount of revenue, but actually gets people away talking about us so that they can then bring in more people who might then come in for other things as well.

Prav Solanki: For example?

Daz Singh: For example, like whitening. For us, it’s not the most, especially in a place like Liverpool, you know, there are many different ways of being able to go off and do whitening and you know I understand that why some clinicians and why some clinics price whitening the way that they do. But we do it very much like milk in a supermarket where we just, we need people to come in at the beginning and you know when they did, we kind of go from there.

Prav Solanki: You were the guys who started ‘Whitening Wednesdays’ is that right?

Daz Singh: Yeah that’s right.

Prav Solanki: Does that come from Orange Tuesdays by any chance?

Daz Singh: Well, do you know, it was when we first opened up, you know, it was, everyone was worried about credit crunch and everything else like that and people are starting to make these credit crunch offers. And that’s just the most savage way to try and market a clinic personally. I thought that you know, I would not. Could you imagine trying to go into Subway and thinking “Here’s a credit crunch sandwich.” Here’s half the bread and here’s everything else. Just didn’t make sense, so it was our challenge to say well you know how, what are we going to do, how are we going to market the clinic, what can we look at trying to have a tag. And yeah, just like you know, just like orange had orange Wednesdays, we suddenly came up, well I say we, Suzy came up with the idea for having whitening Wednesdays.

Prav Solanki: Cool.

Daz Singh: Yeah and what we did when we first started off was that if you wanted to come in on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Friday, for whitening it was going to be double the price. So we could then, we basically led with this idea that all our whitening, whether it was gonna be, we did and we still do, zoom, sorry Payman. And enlighten and we still have our home whitening as well and when it was just me, Sudarsh, there at the time, we knew that on a Wednesday, we were gonna be pretty much full pump, just doing some whitening. That’s something that steadily grew overtime. The real archetype behind the idea was Suzy to be honest.

Prav Solanki: Suzy. Just talk me through how that ended up creating more work, because like you said it’s a loss leader. Milk or bread in a super market, and did that often lead to other treatments or discussions around different treatment plans?

Daz Singh: I think that what we try and do is this. When we look at patients who come in. Often I think that we sometimes have the wrong focus. We look at the patient, they’re coming in for a particular product. You know they’re usually a little bit sort of price sensitive about things like that and I get that. So we weren’t necessarily looking to try and market to them. What we wanted patients to do is this. Is that I wanted them to come in and see us. I wanted them to have the experience with us. I wanted them to go away talk about the experience they’ve had with us to their family and friends, so the knock on effect would be is that we then had their families and friends who have been told that you know this person’s had a good experience at the clinic.

Daz Singh: Why don’t you go see them about your teeth or you know the problems you’ve been having, so forth and so on. And that’s kind of how it went about. I think that for all the marketing we may ever do, Prav, is that the one thing that’s always consistent is that word of mouth marketing is by far in a way, the best thing that brings people in. So the more, if we were to have that the more people who come in and see us the more people who’re gonna go away ‘n talk about us.

Daz Singh: Hence, we would then get more follow through from things like that as well.

Prav Solanki: So, just talk to me about numbers here. I mean I’m huge on that. And I truly believe that the first marketing strategy that any practise should ever have is a word of mouth strategy. And not enough practises focus on that. It’s the cheapest form of marketing. Patients who come from friends and family. Know you’re pricing structure, know your service, and then know that you’re gonna deliver the goods, right?

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: What strategy do you put behind your word of mouth to generate patients that way. You know you talked about putting a blueprint together for you know the experience, the service. Just talk me through your, what you would consider to be your word of mouth blueprint strategy.

Daz Singh: So, you know for us it was at the time, we probably didn’t realise this heavily, it was you know, we knew we just needed to get more people through our doors. That’s how we first started. After that, after we started building up a database, after we had people starting to come and see us, I read a book and it was about word of mouth marketing. I’m not- you know what? There was a line-

Prav Solanki: What was the book?

Daz Singh: I can’t remember. I really can’t remember the name of the book but it was, there was a line in the book that basically said that if you look through all your marketing, you’re going to find that however much you spend on all your other bits of marketing, you’ll get a certain return on investment. But then you look at the top and you’ll see word of mouth is probably the most number of patients. But then if you look how much you spent on it, you’ve spent probably almost nothing. Which then you know, for me it’s just one of those liable moments you have been practising.

Daz Singh: Well you know we’re spending x amount of money on trying to bring new patients in. Why don’t we just look at trying to do something for the patients who do something for us? For us it was just like you know let’s have a little bit of fun with this you know for us we’ve always been, you know we’ve always had chocolates out.

Daz Singh: So we used to use local, we used to use a local chocolatier who used to sort of hand to deliver some chocolates and then recently we started using Hotel Chocolat because it’s just become easier to do so.

Prav Solanki: Just talk me through that process so you decided to hand chocolates out to patients. At what stage in that patient journey did you decide to do that?

Daz Singh: So, anybody who basically, any referrals that came in from patients would then get a box of chocolates from us, as long as we knew where those patients come from, so you know it wasn’t sort of on the say that would then go ahead with treatment or anything like that, we just felt like, you know, we’re happy to send chocolates out and this sort of day and age with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and things like that, it’s just nicer, you know. You can get like a box of chocolates and patients are quite happy to put a post up on Instagram and just say look what my dentist just sent me, my dentist just sent me some really nice chocolates.

Prav Solanki: And 9 times out of 10 it always comes across as a surprise, right?

Daz Singh: Yeah it does, and you know some people quite like it to be honest and for me it’s like you know we just want to say thank you to our patients for referring people on and you know if they’re referring people to us on then you know for me it’s our job to them to try and translate that into sort of hopefully looking, trying to bring business into the clinic, but you know, patients have done really great in terms of referring our name over anyway.

Payman: Daz, you know what I find interesting about your clinic that you manage to combine being a high end clinic as well as being an offer-led clinic. A lot of high end clinics can’t get their heads around offers. Is it a Liverpool thing?

Payman: That the people always looking for an offer? How have you managed to sort of square that circle?

Daz Singh: I suppose that the dynamic of how clinics sort of really comes about. I think that, you know, we don’t have offers on a tremendous amount of things. But I’m also keen on understanding where sort of patients are in terms of the dynamics of trying to go ahead and have treatment done, you know. Some people are sort of – some patients who wanna go off and have treatment aren’t necessarily offer-led. So, you know, some people will go away, will do all their research and then come and find us it’s like, you know it’s one of us being most experience Invisalign providers in the northwest. And they’ll come and see us because we want you to do it for us. And that’s fine.

Daz Singh: But then somebody will come to see us because you know, actually we’re one of the most economically right for that patient as well.

Payman: Yeah.

Daz Singh: So, the whitening Wednesdays, you know, has always worked well in terms of trying to bring patients and sort of, more whitening patients interests as well. And, you know, it’s for us I think that some people get bonked down by the simple bits of dentistry to start looking at so that slightly larger impact of certain things and you know, for us the way we look at it, we offer free consultations so that somebody could just go in and have a chat with us.

Daz Singh: There are more offers. I think that you know, I think that one of the things that people are doing at the moment which is like a package of everything else, which is kind of nice, and I can see how the appeal of it is, but then on a clinical level, I see where sometimes I can sort of fall down as well, so. It’s just about trying to combine everything together that works well for patients.

Payman: When you say package as in one cost for Invisalign, whitening, and bonding, that?

Daz Singh: Yeah so I mean one of the great things about doing something like that is that you can then resonate with the patients because then they understand what the fixed cost of are up front. And then they can relate that back into payment schedule that they can then kind of go from. X, Y, and Z. You know, I mean.

Daz Singh: But it’s one of those as well where you know, depending on where the clinics can be you know. I might be in Liverpool where we do tremendous amount of Invisalign, or you know, liners or something like that. Or you know, you meet other clinics who don’t have the same success but have that with implants. And we don’t have the same sort of impact with that.

Daz Singh: Predominantly because we’re not as price competitive as some of the other clinics around us as well. And so, it just really comes down to some people. I think, not necessarily just looking for sort of value in terms of what they’re having done, but just I think some people can work out what they thing is best for them.

Payman: With the Invisalign, well actually your – most of your work – how much of your work is done on finance? Liverpool is a big finance city.

Daz Singh: I mean.

Payman: Have you got a number? Like what percentage.

Daz Singh: Do you know the top of my head, I couldn’t say, no. I couldn’t say that I have a number, but it’s certainly a tremendous amount. It’s you know, it is one of those things where you know, it’s certainly finance driven. Especially a lot of our sort of liner market, fixed simple braces market, or sort of any…

Payman: Even whitening, no?

Daz Singh: Well, whitening is something that has to be fixed. It’s fixed fee so they generally tend to pay it on their card. But, you know, we don’t do it in terms of finance for that but you know. It becomes part of a bigger package so they’re just happy to go ahead and have it done.

Daz Singh: I think for us the magic number seems to be somewhere around about 3-6k. And they’re just you know, they’re just very happy to put it all in finance and just go from it. That’s not a problem.

Prav Solanki: And so when you do your open days, your off days and things like that, is the cost of finance factored in? Or do you add that on top when the patient comes in?

Daz Singh: No, no, no. Well, you kind of, yeah I mean, slightly. I don’t even sort of add it on top, but we’ve had it factored in from the start to be honest.

Prav Solanki: Okay.

Daz Singh: For us it just, you know, we… We’re very happy if something, if somebody wants to come in and have a dental finance piece predominantly that’s where a lot of our treatment comes from.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Daz Singh: If there’s a number, probably about around sort of 70-80% is probably where that really…

Prav Solanki: And so I guess there’s somebody comes along and pays cash, it’s just a bonus, right?

Daz Singh: Yeah, that’s right.

Payman: Your associates.

Daz Singh: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Payman: I know Chiggs. How many associates have you got?

Daz Singh: So in our clinic we have… There’s myself and Sudarsh who are both principal dentists and then Chiggs has been, Chiggs is our first associate who came to join us about 2 years ago.

Payman: Oh really?

Daz Singh: Yeah, and then we have now 2 therapists and a hygienist as well. To this day we just only have 1 associate. We’ve tried to be as therapist and hygienist led as we possibly can be. We had looked at the scope what some DCPs and you know, some of our clinical assistants can look at trying to do. And they can take a load of burden off us so that we can then try and focus around that and so, it’s much more in terms of a didactic model where you have a dentist and you have a patient. The dentist does everything for the patient. We look at factoring in what the other team members can really look at trying to do.

Daz Singh: A lot of the stuff is that actually I might see a patient once to do clinical consultation and then the plan gets executed out by the rest of the team. Which tends to work out really well for us.

Daz Singh: But yeah, Chiggs has been our one and only associate since he joined us a couple years back. He’s been great for us. Really really good for us. Just great to have a nice young lad with the right type of energy, the right type of attitude who wants to come in, who wants to learn. And just wants to try and do things as well.

Payman: He’s a good boy.

Daz Singh: He is.

Prav Solanki: If you’re looking for an associate in a practise like yours, right, there’s loads of dentists out there would give their- chop their right arm off to work in a practise like yours. What advice would you give them to set themselves up, just coming out of dental school and saying “Do you know what? My dream would be to work in a practise like yours?”

Daz Singh: Yeah, I find that I’m having these conversations a lot more with younger dentists and you know, one of the things we’ve looked at is this, is that we weren’t have a dentist who could have, had the right attitude had the right, good level of hands with a right sort of mental energy to really come into a practise like ours. So it’s like you know, one of the things about being a day pupil at a boarding school is you kind of grow up with that kind of mentality in terms of you are sort of, you’re given a job to do. You go off, you get it done. So you work out how to do those sort of things.

Daz Singh: And sometimes I find that, you know, you can get people to go off, and under pressure to do their own thing, but if they want to come in and work in a clinic like ours, I’m gonna need them to expect them to do other things that might go around what they think that they need to be doing.

Payman: Like what, like what?

Daz Singh: You know just like just trying-

Payman: Communication.

Daz Singh: Communication, just doing a lot of the simple stuff. Just doing a lot of the sort of nitty witty sort of stuff there as well. Just going through the same similar sort of journey that sort of myself and Sudarsh went on because I know that when there’s a lot of young dentists who seem to be coming out of university at the moment and they’re being blitzed. In the media by everything that’s going on about all this fancy dentistry that seems to be going on. And you’re starting to see some of the the things that some people are doing.

Daz Singh: Especially on things like Instagram. And you’re looking and going “I get where they’re coming from with all of this, but…” You know? And I get that when you have a patient who just says “Yes, I want to have this done.” And they go off and they do it. I understand that. But it’s about them looking, trying to lean on each others’ experience, look at trying to say what the right thing is.

Daz Singh: But, going back to your original point there Prav, it’s that, you know, what kind of advice I’d look at trying to give it’s about what kind of attitude do you have to look at trying to get something like this done.

Prav Solanki: Number one, right?

Daz Singh: Yeah, attitude for me is the most important thing. It’s about, you know, it’s like if you don’t have the right attitude, if it’s all about sort of, you know, my principle’s this or you know, the team are doing this and I can’t do this. It’s about how you’re gonna fit. There’s gonna be good days there’s gonna be bad days. And you know for me it’s just about if you have the right attitude to come work in my clinic because you know, one of the things I don’t wanna be hearing is “I don’t think this is for me.” And I’m like okay, well you know, I think this is not going to kind of work out.

Daz Singh: Which is what’s kind of feared me. I’ve had this sort of fear about taking an associate on for so long as it was. But, we still could like with chicks so I can’t really say.

Prav Solanki: I do want to steer this conversation direction of Daz’s teaching because as well as being a clinician, the clinic owner, he has lectured and talked. And, but I’ve got one more question about your clinic which is: What’s the lowest point you’ve ever reached in running your clinic where you’ve hit absolutely rock bottom, and how did you pick yourself up out of that ditch?

Daz Singh: Yeah, I mean, it’s an important point and so, you know, there are moments or times when you look at things and you know, for me it’s always almost been probably financial more than anything else. On a clinical level I can accept when things don’t go well and you know I can appreciate that that doesn’t happen, and I look at those moments and I think you know, there’s something to be learned from that and I think that you know, if I made a mistake on a clinical level I’ll put my hand up and I think you know, I want to make this right. That’s just, you know, that’s just on me.

Daz Singh: It’s probably come down probably on an economic level where sometimes you get like a perfect storm suddenly hits the practise like you know you might have an open day or you might look at trying to do a marketing plan that just doesn’t work. Or you know, suddenly you’re looking at the back end of you know, on a financial level in terms of where are we right now? How do we look at trying to move ourselves out of this? And sometimes you just you know, for me it’s just, I go home and I need to go away, have a shower, trying to think about things and think you know how do we look at trying to move forward with this? How do we look at you know, we can’t sort of, I have my pity party for about 20 minutes and think how did this happen to me or how could this have happened to us? And then you know, how do we look at trying to move forward?

Daz Singh: But almost always it’s almost been on an economic level where we’re looking once again…

Payman: Are you saying that a cash crisis?

Daz Singh: Yeah, so sometimes.

Payman: You owe more than you’re thinking early on when…

Daz Singh: Yeah. Still going to be earlier on, it’s so early on. In the first couple of years when you’re looking at this going “Wow. Where are we going to get the finances to do all of this stuff?” You suddenly, you know. A lot of this stuff that we’ve been talking about has been a slow burn. It’s like we’re in this for the long game. And, you’re looking at this and we’re thinking about you know how do we look at trying to make…Not how do we necessarily look at trying to make ends meet, but it’s just like what do we need to do to try and take things up to that level?

Prav Solanki: And the thing that’s important because people always see the glamour, the shop front, the retail, the ads.

Daz Singh: Yeah yeah.

Prav Solanki: The Instagram feed, the Facebook feed, but behind the scenes they don’t see the fact that you’re going home, your heads exploding, team members handed the notice in and say somebody’s turned up late. You know, something’s happened in the practise or a patients put a complaint in and all of that comes with the territory right?

Daz Singh: Yeah, I mean it is one of those. I mean because you know I remember I had, we were treating a PI lawyer in the clinic once and she said something to me which was quite interesting because she said to me goes “Look, you know” because for them it’s their job that’s what they do. And it’s quite interesting looking from their point, and they said to me they said that “Look, whenever we do this with a clinician or anything else like that you go, you guys take it really personally.” And I go “Well, yeah. Because, you know in its essense you’re saying that we’ve done something wrong and we’ve done it intentionally? In that sort of aspect?”

Daz Singh: And so it was kind of eye opening for me in terms of understanding where they’re coming from from that aspect and I’m like going you know it is just one of those moments. You know what you’ve you know, the anxiety builds over certain patients and you’re starting to look you know is this going right, is that going right, am I gonna make them really happy with what we’re trying to do here? And those are the things you take home with you.

Daz Singh: And you know, on a financial level you’re there going making sure you know, I wanna make sure that everyone there is looked after, everyone is well paid, everyone’s sort of making sure that you know for the next day that you know everything’s going to be fine. We’re still going to have a solve, a business and things are going to be going well.

Daz Singh: That’s my challenge. That’s the reason why we try and do things. For me it’d be really easy to have a free surgery practise and you know, just have me, Sudarsh, and a hygienist and we could just wandering off and just you know we can do everything else. But the challenge is that we want to have the fully functioning sick surgery practise. And then go from there.

Payman: What about, we’ve been sort of asking this sort of black box thinking question about what’s the biggest clinical mistake you’ve ever made? So, going back to that thing where in dentistry everyone or medicine dentistry no one likes to talk about their mistakes but then we never learn from each other’s mistakes then.

Daz Singh: I think that you know, I certainly think that when I first started using braces. As a general dentist, you know, there have been moments and there have certainly been 1 or 2 patients where I look at it and think, you know yeah we could have done this a lot better.

Daz Singh: You know, there are these sort of things that we look at and we go you know.

Payman: But did you have a situation, like a clinical situation did a tooth go out of the arch or something…

Daz Singh: No, it’s just you know, we had 1 case where you know the patient was, postures into a class 1 position. And then, this is again in my earlier days, and the patient came in and he’s like you know really low in confidence, really sort of you know, nobody’s prepared to help him out, no one’s prepared to treat him, no one’s really looking at trying to say you know let’s see how we can try and help you out. And we’re really low down on confidence and things, and you know, we say oh you know what, I’m sure we can look at trying to make some movements here and we can look at trying to, this looks a little bit more straight forward. With experience I look back on it thinking you know, I know where we made our mistakes.

Daz Singh: But basically what happened is we tried to give him aligners and he slipped into a class 3. So he started looking a whole lot worse. So his alignment had improved, but because now his mandible relaxed in the condyles. He’d slipped further into a class 3 position and to try and salvage that and bring that back was going to be a much, a really really tricky position.

Payman: So it was because he was posturing into the class 1? You weren’t aware of that?

Daz Singh: Just wasn’t aware if it. And it’s just one of those sort of things that when you take some initial photos, you’re having a look and you realise that you know, he’s looking fine, he’s looking edge to edge. I’m sure we can just try and improve the alignment, and then all of a sudden we put some aligners in I mean just slips into a class 3. And we’re like “Wow. What’s going on here?”

Daz Singh: I remember once we treated one patient and you know it was the very first time and the only time that this really happened to us where we gave some patients some of this set of aligners and patient had [inaudible] and we gave her some aligners. The condyles slipped into, I’m sorry, the mandible slipped. The mandible condyle slipped more into the eminence. And to some tissue. And it’s just piping hot, and she couldn’t bare with it literally.

Payman: The pain.

Daz Singh: Literally just yeah. Just massive massive massive pain, and this is like within the first month.

Payman: Feels like you caused that pain.

Daz Singh: Yeah, I mean the patient was really great about it.

Payman: What could you have done differently? Could you have known that?

Daz Singh: I think yeah, you know what? I think my examination process could have been a whole lot better. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I think that you know, it’s just it could’ve without a doubt been a whole lot better.

Daz Singh: And you know, when I look at things we’re doing back, you know, 9-10 years ago compared to how we’re doing things now, you know our processes, our clinical processes have changed dramatically since then.

Payman: How do you feel about the, you must have cut quite a lot of porcelain veneers right?

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Payman: How do you feel about those, you must see those patients, your early ones. How are they looking?

Daz Singh: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think that you know, I think we have this, you know we have this ethos that you know, we understand now that porcelain veneers aren’t probably the best wear, the only way to look at trying to fix some patients problem.

Daz Singh: 10 years ago though? You know I didn’t really see very much other options that we could look at trying to do.

Payman: No no, I’m not saying that – how do they look?

Daz Singh: Well, they look like they could have had ortho. And some bonding, to be honest. But you know, it is, we’ve, I’ve been fortunate enough that we’ve been in the same place for 10 years and we will look after and maintain. Yes we have the odd factory, yes we’ve had some that you know we look at them staining, margins need to be replaced and sorry. There’s definitely some margins staining they’re just looking now that they need to be replaced and so forth and so on.

Daz Singh: But yeah.

Payman: Tif talks about this a lot about being in the same place for a long time and seeing… absolutely makes a lot of sense doesn’t it.

Daz Singh: Sure. Yeah yeah, I mean it’s quite humbling you know. One of the interesting things was when we first opened up people were talking about so what’s your exit strategy. And I’m like what’s one of them? I’m like what do you mean an exit strategy I’ve just opened the clinic up with my – why do you think I want to leave? And it was quite interesting that some people think you have a 3 year, 4 year exit strategy, you meet people who have opened up multiple squads and things like that.

Daz Singh: And I’m like that’s…

Payman: Have you thought about doing another one?

Daz Singh: Yeah. I have, I have. And then something happens in the clinic and I’m going “I’m glad I don’t have 2 of these now all of a sudden.” But you know the idea of opening up your squat is quite interesting. If only for the reason that I want to see if we can try and do it all over again. It’s a different market, it’s a different dynamic. I wanna see can we look at trying to do something differently, and how do we look at trying to go about it? I think that there’s things… the market is… the market for cosmetic dentistry 10 years on from 2008 is massively different to where it is, where it was back then.

Daz Singh: And you know, I think that there’s a lot more to go for we can look at trying to do. It wouldn’t be, it would be something completely different.

Payman: Oh really?

Daz Singh: Yeah, it’d be something that.

Payman: But you’re such a strong-

Daz Singh: It is but you know, I think that the market is just slightly different. I think that, you know, there are different things there we can look at trying to do. I think that if I opened up- I mean, there’s potential where we can look at trying to take Ollie and Darsh and use it as- and open up multiple clinics all the way around.

Daz Singh: But I’m also looking at them in terms of thinking you know, what if we just did something completely separate? What if we did something completely different? What if I just wanted to leave Ollie and Darsh the way that it is?

Daz Singh: The things that make, the things that I know that make Ollie and Darsh what it is now, I find are going to be hard to translate if I do it in a different business. If that makes sense, because a lot of the things that we do can be quite personable, can be sort of very boutique kind of feel.

Prav Solanki: You’d lose that.

Daz Singh: Yeah. You don’t wanna have- I mean the thing is about… You get to Hilton you know exactly what you’re going to expect, and you just really just wanna go, sort of a nice rest, you kind of, you want a good customer service, you want to go from there. And I’m like that’s fine. And I’d be kind of depressed if that’s what Ollie and Darsh really became, you know and use that as a sort of personal outcome, that sort of personal feel.

Daz Singh: If I wanted to open up a multiple clinic sort of squat clinic with a relative sort of boutique feel to it, it’d need to be completely different. And, you know there are things and processes out there that would just change completely

Payman: Liverpool’s such a great town for cosmetic dentistry.

Daz Singh: Yeah.

Payman: I mean, Enlighten’s top user was from Liverpool from 2001, why is that? What is it about Liverpool people? I mean it’s certainly not the biggest town, it’s not the richest town.

Daz Singh: No, I think that there’s now a way, you know. There’s a lot of people that who want to look good and feel good to be honest. I think that you know, I think that there’s definitely an element that, you know, people like to look after themselves. People like to sort of want to be able to sort of feel better about themselves as well and just like to have that element of extra confidence in themselves as well, to be able to do that.

Prav Solanki: You get that feels working around like Liverpool one or whatever. People make an effort. Real effort, and you know dress up and look – you see it.

Daz Singh: Certainly much more than me anyways for sure. I walk around in a baseball cap.

Payman: But what a good town it’s become, I mean I remember when the first few years when I used to go there, I still loved it by the way, sorry Prav, but I prefer it to Manchester personally.

Prav Solanki: For your own body.

Payman: Yeah, but what a different town its become now to what it was maybe 15 years ago.

Daz Singh: Yeah, I mean it’s definitely a sign of progress. I mean my dad did his, so if our family has a little bit of history in Liverpool. My dad did his VT training in Liverpool during the mid 90s, GP training, sorry. He did his GP training over in a place called Hunter Cross.

Payman: Oh so he’s a surgeon and then became GP after that.

Daz Singh: Yeah so when we moved back from Saudi, there were 1 or 2 issues that dad had with his surgical training and they weren’t gonna give him the same years that he had over in Saudi when he moved back to the UK.

Daz Singh: And so that became a bit difficult and at that time he just figured that it would make more sense for him in terms of the family if he decided to go off and do chief general practise. And so, yeah he’s like a overqualified GP at Darby at the moment but so he did his GP training in Liverpool then my sister went off and she did study pharmacy there and then bout a year after she did that then I went to the proper university to go study dentistry.

Daz Singh: And it’s interesting to see because you know there are areas that dad talks, that I drive dad through in Liverpool and he’s going you know when he was going around doing the rounds as a GP trainee going to his houses like in Toxteth or on Crown street or like in some of these areas that-

Payman: Toxteth riots I remember.

Daz Singh: Yeah well it’s just those areas where people just wouldn’t go into if they could, but I mean that’s all changed now.

Daz Singh: And Liverpool one is like you know, it’s really interesting to see what it’s become. But it’s a double edged sword because you know I took a walk around Liverpool one, just for the first time in a long time actually, around Liverpool and it’s sad to see you know with Liverpool one the way that it is, what it has done is taken a lot of business away from a lot of the other streets that really existed.

Payman: That happens. Same with Westfield in London, you can see that what it’s done to other streets.

Prav Solanki: Daz, tell us about your teaching career and where it all started, where you’ve been, and where you are now.

Daz Singh: Yeah, it’s really interesting for me because you know, it’s not something I really thought that I’d ever kind of get into to be honest. I thought it was for people far more clever than I am to be honest, but it was one of those where I got invited to do the odd little seminar and talk. I think stuff that we were doing with Invisalign very early on. They wanted to try and replicated that through different other various sort of places.

Prav Solanki: Just stop you right there Daz, public speaking. How did you feel at that point when you’re invited for your 1st talk to give a seminar in front of people. Does that bother you?

Daz Singh: I was scared. I was scared.

Payman: Yeah, few years ago you gave one for us, independent seminar. Years ago.

Daz Singh: Yeah yeah. I mean the very very 1st one I remember we did, the very 1st speech I did I think Chris had invited us to like the state at the fmc where he was doing, he did a day.

Payman: I was there in the audience.

Daz Singh: And it was just that was me that was my very 1st public speaking gig. And it was meant to be me, Sudarsh, and Suzy. Sudarsh bailed 1st, then Suzy bailed the day before, and then it just ended up being me so. You know, thanks Suzy and Sudarsh. But, it was just basically yeah just that was it. I just kind of talked and mumbled and droned on things like that.

Prav Solanki: Very nerve-wracking.

Daz Singh: Yeah it was really really nerve-wracking. At the same time, I was really quite glad to be there but, yeah. Just kind of from there I’ve just always taken it as an opportunity that you know, if somebody’s given me an opportunity like that, I’ll take it.

Prav Solanki: You’ll take it. Does the nervous go away?

Daz Singh: No, not really. I think there’s always in there there’s always a nervous energy that you know, I’ve been that guy in the crowd and you’re looking at it thinking you know you really hope you got to you know you paid some money to be there and you really hoping to get through enough moments out of that day.

Daz Singh: To be able to take away and think yeah that’s what we need and you know that’s what I’m always conscious of. I’m always conscious that whenever I go up and you realise people have spent money to go off and listen to you. But you’ve got to suddenly realise that actually not you need to give them something credible. You’ve got to give them some credible advice you can’t just – I’ve been to the worst worst worst meeting I’ve ever been to was when Tom Warrant came to do a talk.

Payman: I was there. 1,000 gems.

Daz Singh: 1,000 gems which I think he missing sort of 3,000 of them in the bank. But what was really interesting is that I remember I went there with Suzy and we were sat about 3 rows from the front. We were just listening to the guy. And I didn’t realise that there were like 20 rows behind us and they’d all been leaving 1 by 1 by 1 behind us through the day, yeah it was awful.

Daz Singh: One of the worst days. But what was really interesting is actually I picked up some of the, because I took the, I still have all of the FMC stuff. I still have all of the little booklets so I would refer back to them every now and again. Because you never find you know a gem that you didn’t realise about 10 years ago, something starts making sense now. But it was one of those sorts of things that you – there was still some good information in there- but yeah it was a shocking day.

Daz Singh: So I’m always worried that I really don’t wanna be that guy. Don’t really wanna be that guy who’s sort of you know he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.

Daz Singh: For me it was just a happy accident to be honest and it’s just been kind of you know I’ve had someone like – I knew because kind of dragged me along by the scruff of the neck said “You’re coming to this, you’ve got to do this, you’ve gotta do that.” And you know, I used to be involved with some of the stuff that he used to do and then yeah.

Daz Singh: It was just kind of being able to be put up on a podium and do some teaching was really great.

Prav Solanki: So how did it evolve? So you did it, did a little bit of stuff through Invisalign some small seminars and then…”

Daz Singh: Yeah, so it started off by just doing the odd little study club and doing some little bits and pieces for Invisalign and then I started going of and doing some stuff with Six Month Smiles. And when we started doing some more of those cases and things and you know I remember Anoop asking me to come down and sort of help him out 1 or 2 courses.

Daz Singh: And then there was a natural progression to go from being helper to being instructor. And I did that for a couple of years and that was really really good for it, really really enjoyed that. And it was just you know, for me it was really eye opening in terms of seeing how that side of sort of being for the presenter and so being able to look at trying to make sure we being able to be, give some really good information to the dentists who are going on. You really want them to sort of take up on it.

Daz Singh: I’ve always been conscious that I don’t really wanna just teach something I don’t really kind of believe in. If that makes sense.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Payman: Six Month Smiles, were you not giving their presentations?

Daz Singh: Yeah you’re giving their presentations but the focus is on me to make sure I deliver it in the right quality. You know, I’m not an Anoop, I’m not as energetic as that guy.

Daz Singh: You know, It’s just for me you know you have to be kind of believable as well to do it. You know you can’t you know somebody said to me you know go off and give that seminar. If I don’t believe it I just won’t do it. That just doesn’t make sense.

Daz Singh: You know if Payman, like you know if you asked me to come do a talk for enlighten, I’ve always been happy to do it because you know its something that you know we always have done and you know anyone could do and we could talk about that until Kingdom come. In 6ms you know I did that for a couple years and there things that were changing within that company that I wasn’t completely comfortable with and you know there were things there that they were asking us to do that I just, it was going against some of the values that I had. I really enjoyed the education side of it, the sales side of it was just becoming a little bit overbearing on me, should I say.

Daz Singh: So I was like you know, I think they need someone else to look at trying to do that for them.

Prav Solanki: Time to move on.

Daz Singh: Yeah. About a year after that I got a message from Invisalign to come and do some talking for them in terms of the eye ghost after they were doing. Which I thought, I still think is a really really good product and it was a really interesting insight in terms of how Invisalign wanted to look at trying to grow the line on this side of the market as well, and how that kind of carried on.

Daz Singh: But then, yeah it kind of came to a point where again it was just you know they had some great guys, great people involved in it, but then you know they don’t really need me to do that kind of stuff so I figured it was just time for me, it was the right time for me to sort of bow out at that sort of point as well.

Daz Singh: I need for – because I really wanted to spend time focusing on the clinic of the last 2 years and I figured that you know the energy I was giving to all this teaching, if I put into the clinic it was gonna be even better.

Payman: It’s clear you enjoyed the running side of the business, but hands on what’s your favourite kind of dentistry?

Daz Singh: Hands on what’s my favourite type of dentistry?

Payman: Is it Invisalign or that sort of thing? Or is it… Would you prefer other?

Daz Singh: Well, Invisalign’s great. Invisalign for me is about a bunch of stuff. If that makes sense you know.

Payman: Because you do so much.

Daz Singh: Yeah I mean. We just do so much of it. It’s just for me it’s… For me genuinely I enjoyed treatment planning. That’s where I really really enjoy. I really enjoy problem solving. I enjoy getting patients coming in, coming with complex issues and being able to see the pathway in terms of okay, I have now people in my clinic who can look at trying to do this, this, this and this, we’re gonna do stage 1 this, stage 2 that, stage 3 this, and stage 4 that. And you know that’s how it’s all gonna kind of revolve.

Daz Singh: Whether it’s like a mixture of a hygiene pro-dental therapy coming to just simple coms to sort of doing implant work with ortho and then just doing, finishing off with the aesthetics stuff. The stuff that I really like to do is where you know patients can come in and see us. And the idea is to leave them like they’ve not been touched by a dentist at all. That’s the stuff that I enjoy doing. I want patients coming in and saying to me they’ve had compliments on how nice their smile is not how much they’ve spent to have it done. That’s kind of the stuff that I like to do and for me a lot of that comes from the treatment planning side of things as well.

Prav Solanki: Your latest move to teaching. You’ve started working with the IS academy.

Daz Singh: That’s right.

Prav Solanki: And you’re now teaching in Dubai, is that right?

Daz Singh: Yeah, and so I was, I’d been invited to talk at the cap meeting I think that’s in April, so I’m really looking forward to that. So, I think it’s one of the first bits I’m going to be doing with the IS guys and its going to be quite a fascinating thing to be looking at trying to do to be honest. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to just giving a couple of talks out there and we’re running a seminar out there as well.

Prav Solanki: Excellent. Excellent stuff. If it came to the end of your career and time and you were sat there on your bed and you wanted to leave the world with your legacy, Daz was … Finish the sentence.

Daz Singh: Yeah. Daz was here probably, to be honest. But there you go.

Prav Solanki: With a W. UZ.

Daz Singh: But no, it’s you know I think that I’m not motivated by what I try and achieve, I’m motivated by well what kind of the things that I can look at trying to put my fingerprints on. If that makes sense. I’d be much happier you know, if you know I’m a much happier guy knowing that Ollie and Darsh has the recognition that it does. But not me necessarily. If that makes sense, you know? There’s a lot of, you know I think that for me it’s you know if we can have, if we can look at trying to put fingerprints on just being able to look at tryna get people to more the style of dentistry that I like to try and do and people get it then you know that’s gonna be a great thing as well so for me it’s just things are just up on that sort of level. I think that, I’m not the kind of guy who likes to sort of put my name up in bright lights and stuff like that.

Daz Singh: It’s not about that it’s like you know, looking and working with guys I like, I ask for example you know they’re people that are who are far smarter, far better dentistry then I am, it’s just… I like being in the organisation looking at trying to work with these people to see you know where can I push myself to go that I couldn’t go before.

Payman: The other thing Daz, the thing I know about you, your relationship with suppliers I mean at the end of the day I’m a supplier to you, it’s very unique. Very very unique, I mean I don’t know if you’ve ever had this from a customer, but you’ll say I don’t want the discount.

Daz Singh: No, I’ll have it from you mate.

Payman: Yeah yeah.

Daz Singh: I’ll have it from you.

Payman: He’s actually said that to me once. He said look you supply this thing we use it we make plenty out of it. I wanna pay the right price for… I’ve never heard that before.

Daz Singh: You know, for me it’s… you know I meet a lot of dentists and I see a lot of conversations go on Facebook and often when you have conversations on value and price dentists sit on both sides of the fence. They’re like well why does my patient not understand, why does my patient want to go off to Turkey and pay 40 quid when I can charge them 700 pounds. And then you get the same dentist complaining about sort of, how much their gels cost. Well, I mean I get that but I’m like you know either your sort of the sound business interest in terms of what you’re tryna go about and how you’re tryna go about getting things done and I can understand that people wanna keep the costs as low as possible to be able to look at trying to get things. To try and maximise their profits.

Daz Singh: But I’m like if you’re becoming a value, you’re either value based or price based clinic and if you’re a value based clinic then you’ve gotta work with people like yourself. I have a great relationship with the guys at [inaudible] as well. Less so now that I’ve started using a scanner rather than impression material, but you know it’s one of those that I know it’s better for us in the long term if I work with someone like yourself Payman.

Daz Singh: And then you know you build up a brand and my conversations I have with you Payman are not like how do I get this as cheapest, like how do we do more of this. What can you do to try and help me to do more of this?

Payman: I wish I had more conversations like that because its not about the price of that product its about talking, moving the conversation on from price.

Prav Solanki: You get more out of your supplies as well right, you know more for less but certainly a lot more in terms of that relationship value. I know, look I work with a lot of clients there’s those who just pay the going rate and there’s those that’ll negotiate. I know the ones that do try and negotiate if we ever do crack , which we used to back in the day less so now, it was a pain in the backside, yeah? And the ones that value you? You give them 10 times back.

Daz Singh: And I know that. Payman and I have known each other for years now to be honest.

Payman: It’s a unique way of thinking pattern, you actually explained it to me. I never heard a dentist explain it to me that way.

Daz Singh: Yeah and you know I think that probably comes down to the fact that you know I’m 27 I was naïve and you’re probably taking advantage of me at the time.

Payman: What’s that on the ground?

Daz Singh: It’s like you know it’s one of those sort of things where you know but if you come in and you have a piece of paper and I’m like you know my sole focus is not.. when you have an NHS, I get it when you have an NHS clinic and I get it when you have a sort of amount of funds that come into a clinic and you basically have this amount of money coming in and the you’re like well how do I reduce the amount going out to maximise my profits.

Daz Singh: Which is where traditions are, these conversations come from. I’m the other side where I’m looking at I need to get more patients in. So I’m like Pay, how do you help me get more of these patients coming on?

Daz Singh: That’s where we worked on people who looked at this centre of excellence that we do in Liverpool. Is that you know we do some PR-

Payman: It was our first [inaudible]

Daz Singh: Yeah the 1st one. Which is why I still have the whole of Liverpool right now.

Payman: We’ve got Robbie coming in next month.

Daz Singh: What?

Payman: Not to Enlighten, the podcast.

Daz Singh: Oh okay, but its one of those. My question to people is that how are you guys going to help me get more patients? Because then that’s a mutually beneficial thing. Because then that just works out better for us all.

Daz Singh: If I try and hammer you for like 5 pounds less or 50 pound less or-

Payman: The other thing I ask dentists lots of times about lots of things. I found your answers always very open you know no trying to hide anything and at the end of the day you’ve done a lot of interesting things and very interesting for me you know you set up the practise.

Payman: You know when you set it up 10 years ago it was leaflet drops and radio ads. Then you did that wonderful bit on SEO and the social came and you guys dominated social and its that open mindedness and that openness that makes you while you’re not trying to hide what you’re doing, you’re open you re asking people a lot of questions and I’m sure going forward whatever the next thing is, snapchat or whatever you’ll dominate that too. Its an important thing.

Daz Singh: Well it’s one of those you know there are certain things out there that I think people do that I think people do better than us out there than we do you know if you’ve got robby coming in next week or whenever he does this a whole lot better than we do and I get that.

Daz Singh: What’s interesting is that-

Prav Solanki: He does instagram better than anyone. He does instagram very well.

Daz Singh: Yeah and do you know fair play to the guy you know its one of those. The challenge for us is that you know we’ve had to sort of challenge and adapt what was right 10 years ago isn’t right to do now. its about how do you look at trying to move things forward and you know one of the things we’re kind of excited to do is we’re gonna be working a little bit with you Prav on some of the patient follow up marketing as well. Which I think is going to be a massive part of how you look at trying to… It’s just you know I see it more and more and more and I understand the power that something like that can have and you know its… Instagram’s great but what I’m learning vastly and quickly about all of these is that it will go away and something will take its place.

Prav Solanki: So true.

Daz Singh: And you know it’s we will see at some point within the next 2 or 3 years something else trying to dominate the market.

Prav Solanki: Word of mouth will always be there.

Daz Singh: But yeah, some you can’t change.

Payman: I really enjoyed that.

Daz Singh: It was a real pleasure.

Payman: Thanks for coming all the way from Liverpool for this.

Daz Singh: Nah it’s a pleasure. I haven’t been to London for a few weeks so I thought you know I needed an excuse to come back.

Payman: It’s a real honour. Thanks a lot.

Daz Singh: My pleasure.

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.

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 feedback, give us a 5 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 we interview. So thank you for taking the time out to-

Transcript

Prav Solanki: Hello listeners, and thank you for tuning into the Dental Leaders podcast. Today’s episode, we are interviewing Dr. Adam Thorne. What an interesting conversation we had with this guy. So many lessons from business, life, the ups and downs, both personally, in business, and so much we took away from today’s conversation, Pay, wouldn’t you agree?

Payman: Yeah. So, going from an associate to principal at one of the biggest practises in Harley Street, and then the personal nightmare that he went through-

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Payman: …and came through. So, it’s a really interesting episode though. I think everyone’s going to enjoy it.

Prav Solanki: Yeah. I think it’s going to be a great episode, guys.

Payman: Enjoy it.

Prav Solanki: What is ‘Adam time’? If you’ve got an hour to yourself or a couple of hours to yourself, what is it that you like to do?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Emails.

Recorded Voice: 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: Really good to have you, Adam.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Thank you.

Payman: Thanks for coming. It’s been a while we’ve been thinking about having you, and I’ve known you for years now. Prav, how long have you known him?

Prav Solanki: 10 years.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Something like that, yes.

Prav Solanki: About 10 years?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: But for me, I’ve only ever known you as a Harley Street dentist, and so there probably was a bit before that too. So that’s what this conversation’s going to be about, the story behind you, so we all know sort of the basics of it. So I’m going to start with some quick fire questions, just to get to know you quickly-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure.

Payman: …for whoever’s interested in that. So it’s either-or.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Okay.

Payman: Google or Facebook?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Google.

Payman: Minimally invasive or traditional?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Minimally invasive.

Payman: Treatment plan or execution?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Execution.

Payman: Endo or perio?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Oh, tough one.

Payman: Hate them both.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Perio.

Payman: Do you hate them both?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I refer out.

Payman: Both?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Both. Yeah.

Payman: So, perio you prefer.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Perio, prefer. Gums are the foundations.

Payman: Here’s another good one, CQC or GDPR?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Whoa. I don’t really understand either.

Payman: Two loves.

Dr. Adam Thorne: They both benefit, but I’d say preference is CQC.

Payman: Prav, what’s your preference? CQC-

Prav Solanki: GDPR, just because I understand it more.

Payman: Because you’re an expert.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. It’s giving you more work.

Prav Solanki: Overnight expert.

Payman: Spiritual or practical?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Practical.

Payman: Trump or Farage?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Oh, good one. Trump.

Payman: Brexit or Remain?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I was a Remain, but now we’ve got Brexit. You’ve got to deal with it and do it.

Payman: I was going to say: Brexit or Ramone?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Right.

Payman: AI or VR?

Dr. Adam Thorne: AI.

Payman: Restaurants or cooking?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Restaurants.

Payman: What’s your favourite restaurant at the moment?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I went to Sabor last night.

Prav Solanki: Oh yeah?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, the Spanish place. It was good.

Prav Solanki: Yeah?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Very nice.

Prav Solanki: First time?

Dr. Adam Thorne: First time there, yeah.

Payman: So is Spanish-Mediterranean your favourite sort of cooking?

Dr. Adam Thorne: No, I like Asian fusion, you’d call it.

Payman: Yeah?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. That’s my favourite.

Payman: So Nobu in that lot?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Nobu in that lot. And there’s a nice one in Chicago called Japanese.

Payman: I don’t think anyone pays for their own meal in Nobu, do they?

Dr. Adam Thorne: No, no.

Payman: That’s the thing. Only Fools and Horses or Ali G?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Ali G.

Payman: Skiing or summer-

Prav Solanki: Is it because I is brown?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yes.

Payman: Skiing or summer holidays?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Skiing.

Payman: Paralysed by perfection or minimal viable product?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Minimal viable product.

Payman: Rubber dam or rubber neck?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Rubber dam because I’m a dentist.

Payman: Flossing or TePe? By rubber neck… I mean some people, they want to see.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: I know that those two things are opposite but… some people want to see everything. They sort of put their head back and-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Payman: …see. Are you that [crosstalk 00:04:02], are you?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I mean now… I mean mostly… I don’t know if you know those OptraGate dams.

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: You can get some good isolation-

Payman: Without the-

Dr. Adam Thorne: …without getting the full rubber dam and tying it all around with floss.

Payman: Four-handed or lone wolf?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Four-handed.

Payman: Flossing or TePe?

Dr. Adam Thorne: TePe.

Payman: Oral-B or Sonicare?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I’m a Sonicare man.

Payman: Me too.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: Me too. What are you, Prav? You don’t care?

Prav Solanki: Sonicare, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Payman: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: It’s sort of better [crosstalk 00:04:23].

Dr. Adam Thorne: Which end do you use?

Payman: I like that. Patient or customer?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Customer.

Payman: Cosmetic dentistry UK or US?

Dr. Adam Thorne: UK.

Payman: Scorsese or Tarantino?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Good one. Tarantino.

Payman: Authoritarian or touchy-feely?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Touchy-feely.

Payman: Prince or Michael Jackson?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Both legends. Prince.

Payman: Rolex or Apple Watch?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Go Rolex.

Payman: Dyson or Hoover?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Dyson.

Payman: Samsung or Apple?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Apple.

Payman: Yeah, I’ll end on that.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Okay.

Payman: I’ll end on that one. I’ll end on that one. So yeah, we got a little idea about who you are.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Okay.

Payman: Okay, let’s go back then. Lats talk about… all dentists have an idea that they’ll maybe own a practise.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Payman: Did you always think you were going to be sort of a Harley Street dentist? Or when was the first time that came into the equation?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, I qualified a few years back. You then do VT which had changed now, but it used to be sort of a year, and I think when you qualify it’s almost like passing a driving test. You’ve got all this knowledge but you haven’t really applied it just yet. Yes, you’ve been on clinic, but you don’t know a lot. And I was lucky to be placed in a VT practise which was mainly private, and that sort of set my focus on what I wanted to do.

Payman: Which town was that?

Dr. Adam Thorne: That was down just outside… well, between Poole and Bournemouth, a place called Ferndown. So, I did that for a year. The guy there I owe a lot to because he sort of set my mind straight and said, “Look, this is private dentistry,” and he knew guys who did a lot of NHS dentistry, had multiple practises but if you… He set my philosophy straight and set me on the right career pathway.

Dr. Adam Thorne: From then, I then spent some other time in some other practises, worked for big corporate, but what I really enjoy is I enjoy the treatment planning and seeing the different cases. And I think basing myself in Harley Street was… you attract a customer who wants to have a smart makeover or you’ve got a look… You take a step back as opposed to sort of… I don’t want to sound patronising, but suburban dentistry where it might be sort of a… you have your regular patient base and you just do a filling or two or a couple of crowns. And I prefer to actually sort of think, and take a step back, and do sort of the holistic treatment planning with a multi-disciplinary team.

Payman: And then even people who decide to go down that West End route, a lot of them are sort of single-handed.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: And you guys were really were the sort of… for me, maybe I’m wrong about this, but the pioneers of the sort of associate led Harley Street practise.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: So what was that? Well, did you guys start… did you start with you and Mark, Mark Hughes?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, so Mark originally was based in Harley Street and I joined him just over about sort of 10, 12 years ago, and we decided to sort of expand. But we both did a lot of work with Pankey Institute in the US and we worked in multi-disciplinary care, that’s what we sort of looking at.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And I think as you become time, you become more niche, that’s your sort of niche or your special interest, you can’t say ‘specialty’ but that’s what you tend to focus on. So you can’t do everything, and I think that’s where we sort of said, “All right. Well, we’re going to build up a team of multi-disciplinary associates that we can sort of then in-house refer,” and patients or customers do like that. They sort of like to go to one place.

Dr. Adam Thorne: So I might say, “Right, Payman, you need to get your gums sorted and a couple of endos.” And then they’re like, “Oh, can I do that here?”, and yes, and then they’re familiar and it’s a familiar environment, with a lot of great support team and they’re familiar. So although they might be seeing a different specialist to do the actual work, they feel more comfortable and relaxed because they know where they’re going and the patient flow.

Payman: So how many years with just the two of you, and then when did it become this huge building at number 52? You’ve got a beautiful place.

Dr. Adam Thorne: This tanker. Thank you very much.

Payman: Don’t get me wrong, a beautiful place, but how do they go from the two guys to such a giant thing? It was in stages, right?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. Oh, totally. So we had a sort of two surgery practise. So 10, 12 years ago we had a couple of specialists who worked for us, plus the dontist and the periodontist, Federico Tinti, who’s still with me.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And from there, we sort of were running out of space. And I don’t know how many people know the West End, but it’s all owned by one family, so the de Walden family. So we needed more space, so I ended up acquiring another practise over the road which is on the same sort of philosophy but not fully utilised. So from then we went from two to four chairs-

Payman: Was that the Umbrella-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Umbrella Smiles. Correct, yeah.

Payman: …Smiles. Yeah, okay, I remember that. Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, we were at 42 and this was number 11. And then from there… But it was a bit inefficient because we were at two physical locations-

Payman: Two sides, right.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. I then took another lease on, on the building. We took another chair on, so we were five chairs, but again, at two physical locations. And then my lease was expiring on one of the premises, so that’s when I sort of approached the estate and said, “Look, come on…” And Mark and I had this vision to be able to control the front door, should we say. So, a lot of Harley Street and the old-school kind of practise has that sort of barrier almost with-

Payman: That first receptionist.

Dr. Adam Thorne: The first receptionist. So it’s not controlled by you, and it can be. That’s your first impression and it’s true, first impressions last. So we all needed to have something where we could control the front door, who came in, and then we moved to the new site, 52, in 2013.

Payman: Has it been that long already?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. So-

Payman: Wow.

Dr. Adam Thorne: …I only know that because the leases are coming to expiry.

Payman: What are the common myths? I mean, a lot of people think Harley Street’s the place you want to end up. What’s the best and the worst thing about being there?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So the best, as I say, is the… I mean the location, it’s a fantastic brand. It’s world renowned. As I say, we attract the patients or the customers who want to have the multi-disciplinary care and really, they may have done a bit of research, their dental IQ is quite good, so you’re already… you’re doing the dentistry you really love doing, and you can find your niche.

Dr. Adam Thorne: The downside is the competition. The competition is huge. Marketing, you have to market yourself very well. If you ever walk down Harley Street all you have on your front door effectively is a plaque with your name on. So you-

Payman: Yeah, and de Walden’s quite strict on that, I remember. Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: De Walden’s very, very strict, yes. So you can’t put things up in the window, A-boards out, so it’s tricky. And with competition being fierce, you often get sort of price wars and various other things.

Payman: So we’re talking online competition, then?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Online competition, but… yeah.

Prav Solanki: So, Adam, in terms of your online strategy, what’s your big one thing that helps you drive the majority of patients through the door?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So it’s the website.

Prav Solanki: Okay.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Undoubtedly. I mean, I’d say having been established for sort of 12 years, we do get a lot of word-of-mouth, but still, 60-70% of our customers come through the website.

Prav Solanki: And what do you think it is about your website, or about a website, that makes you more attractive to say, customer A than your competitor’s website?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, information. And that’s in two sorts. It’s the written information. So, it’s how they can find out about what certain procedures are, and then case studies or pictures. Pictures do tell what you can deliver.

Prav Solanki: Do you ever get patients coming into practise referencing or quoting specific case studies off your websites or sort of saying that they saw this case, it was similar to theirs and that was the reason they came in?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, we do. We do get a lot of that. So, “I like the case you produced or showed.” In fact, I’ve got a story of that. So, I mean I did an extension on my property at home a couple of years ago. Well, it’s still sort of on-going. But I live in a Georgian house in South West London, and when I wanted to do this I looked and I chose my architect for… in Google Images I sort of typed ‘the extension to Georgian houses’ and went thorough it and sort of said, “Oh, I like that one, like that one,” and sort of narrowed it down to three architects, one who’s with me now. But it’s… people do sort of reference and say, “Have I got spaced teeth or have I got sort of crooked teeth?”, try and find similar cases and then say, “Well, if Adam can deliver it, I’ll go and see him.”

Payman: Maybe you guys can both put me right on this, yeah, but is it not a vulnerability if your website is your brand that someone can just do a very similar website to you and… you know?

Prav Solanki: So, my take on this is the one thing that’s unique about everyone’s website is their ambassadors, and those are the patient stories, and the individual stories about your case studies. Everyone can say: look, a veneer is a wafer thin shell of whatever that goes over the front of your tooth that changes the shape and the colour of it. You can copy that. You can re-invent it. You can make it sound a different way.

Prav Solanki: But the unique thing about Harley Street Dental Studio when you go online is the depth and breadth of cases on there. You can see the quality of the work. You can see the transformations, the quality of the photography, the emotional videos, all of that’s your intellectual property, and that’s the difference between say, your website and your competitor’s websites.

Prav Solanki: So there’s always that balance of keeping that vehicle moving, right, and making sure that you’re consistently adding to it, that you’re always shooting new videos, you’re always creating new stories, and the great thing I think about the Harley Street Dental Studio website is that you were doing this way before people even had websites.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: And you’ve continued that, and you’re building up this huge portfolio which I believe is the real reason why patients are saying, “I’ll go and see Adam. I’ll go and see Mark. I’ll come see your clinic and I’ll pay a little bit more than anyone else.”

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Just on that note, does price ever become an issue at the practise? Is it less of an issue because you’re in Harley Street?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think that’s a great question though. We look at prices and do a competitor’s price search quite regularly. There’s some products that… it’s a difficult situation. From the supplier they’re trying to push their name out, so for example Invisalign or even Enlighten. And then people compare those products, your price against my price. And that’s the problem.

Dr. Adam Thorne: So if I just take Enlighten, you want to put it out to consumers: the best whitening system, and I whole-heartedly believe that, but… So one may say: well, how can you justify charging X for Enlighten when the guy down the road charges Y? And Invisalign is a big, big thing right now as well.

Payman: Yeah, it’s a difficulty because the bigger the brand the more that’s likely to happen.

Dr. Adam Thorne: That’s certain.

Payman: And I guess for the dentist, trying to explain to a patient that there’s more to it than the brand and all of that, you can’t do that easily online.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: So I do hear you on there.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: Okay.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I mean, it’s sort of going around, so whether someone just throws out that specific treatment or when it’s sort of looking at the whole picture, so we sort of say, “Yes, Enlighten…”, then we sort of spend some time with them and we sort of say, “Well, look [inaudible] whiten then you’ll have some white-spots we can treat,” and so on.

Payman: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: So Adam, I’m a patient and I want to get my teeth straightened.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Prav Solanki: I want to go from A to B.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Prav Solanki: Why should I pay you two grand more than the guy down the road?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, how I’d justify that is if you are in the chair, I mean we try and give immense value and I really do instal this in all my clinicians for that initial consultation. So, we show what you’re getting, so it’s not just the product of Invisalign or another type of brace. We’re seeing you through from A to B to deliver results you want. It’s a very hard conversation for my inquiry handlers initially, but we’re quite competitive in our pricing.

Prav Solanki: And do you come across that quite often, conversations with patients where they’re saying, “Look, there’s a practise down the road doing this same treatment for a thousand pound less than you.”? How do you deal with that conversation when you’re dealing with, well, it’s a product. When you’re dealing with big brands it almost becomes commoditized, doesn’t it?

Dr. Adam Thorne: It is. And-

Prav Solanki: Where it feels like a… How do you deal with that difficulty?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So we try and… building rapport is number one with the patient. So, we’ll try and engage and say, “Okay, look, you may have had that. Can we maybe have a look at the quote to sort of open it up?”, because often some practises, and I think we’re quite competitively priced, but some people then bolt on various bits on top of there, whereas we say, “Well, that’s included.” So it’s to make the patient aware of all of that.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And then it’s just showing the value that we’re going to give them. So it might be that, again, some practises tend to delegate to more junior members of staff. And we’re… so, well, no, you’re seeing your senior clinician or the clinician you’re seeing all the way through with the experience, and we will work until we get the results you’re after.

Prav Solanki: Cool. Do you mind if we take you a few years back? At one point you were a qualified dentist working as an associate in someone else’s practise.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: At what point in your career did you sort of know, “I’m going to be a business man now.”? At what point did you make that transition between: I’m a clinician working for someone else; I want to run and own my own business?

Prav Solanki: Because running a practise is a bit more than being a good dentist, and so just talk to me a little bit about the thought process that went through it, where maybe you had a defining moment where you knew, “I’m going to be a dentist.”

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure. So I suppose three or four years out of practise is you’re finding your feet for doing the dentistry, but then you obviously have some sort of frustrations because you’re in a practise which is designed by another guy who has their philosophy or goals. So that probably then harboured that, if I want to go and do dentistry in a specific way then I need to go off and do it on my own. I then worked for a corporate and-

Payman: Which one?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So I was [Dencare] originally, but then Dencare got purchased by Oasis.

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: But I was on the clinical and operating board for Dencare and then onto Oasis. So that was a really good experience in terms of I could see sort of how practises ran and different styles of practise, because sometimes the problem with dentistry, I think, is sometimes you’re in a room and you forget, you don’t really open your eyes and you guys might see this, going round to different practises there’s a whole range of practises, whereas working and going round to other practises, and I was sort of a mentor for young dentists, is I could then see that actually there’s a different way to do it, I learnt different management styles, how to read a PNL, how to sort of… [crosstalk]

Payman: Systemize stuff.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Systemize stuff, and that’s key, especially in the big practise we have now.

Payman: Would you say as a recruiter of dentists, would you say you’re a good judge of character? Do you think you’re good at recruiting dentists? I mean, when I think about the people who’ve worked at Harley Street Dental Studio it’s a long list of the famous… our things, don’t you?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: You’ve kind of been there. So, go on, would you say you’re good at that? Or are you the one who does that, or is Mark, or perhaps the both of you?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. No, we both do it. So, I mean I think dentistry’s a sort of small world and there’s all the jokes there. And you tend to know who’s who in a lot of ways. We’ve, again, like any sort of thing, we’ve now systemized and we’ve got a… quite a methodical approach to our recruitment process and interview process and how we deal with the applicants in that way. But a lot of it is still through word-of-mouth.

Payman: Really? Okay.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: So, let’s say there’s a young dentist who wants to work at your place.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Payman: You’re telling me it would be better for him to get to know you than apply for your job?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Well, get to know us, but also-

Payman: I guess that goes without saying overall, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I mean, you have to work together at the end of the day as well, so it’s what do we look for is someone with sort of a friendly rapport-building ability, clinically very able, diagnosis is very good as well because that’s key, but obviously the clinical, that’s good [crosstalk 00:20:27]-

Payman: But do you test that in the interview process, any of that stuff, or what do you do?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So we tend to look, and again, with the small world of dentistry is you tend to know that if they’ve done this course with this person or that course then they’re probably got their mind in the right sort of frame, and then we do our sort of portfolio of work which nowadays I think every dentist needs to have.

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And you can’t really justify not having that with sort of digital cameras and so on. So… But we tend to look at that in how we appraise it.

Payman: What’s your pet peeve? What’s your pet peeve about an associate? What the thing that drives you crazy about some associates?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Good question. With people who are just pure specialists is they tend to sometimes get a little bit blinkered on the whole picture. So nowadays patients are very discerning, they do a lot of research and they say, “Right, I need an implant,” or, “I need braces,” or some ones they go specific to the specialist and we have that.

Dr. Adam Thorne: But sometimes the specialist is so focused on the implant, but they’re not looking at the other side of the mouth which might have other bits going on. And I think that’s where Mark and I are in the same boat of how we treatment plan and plan it. And we have looked at maybe a triage system once where they could see us first then we could farm them out and say, “Go and see the gum guy,” or, “Go and see the endodontist,” and then-

Payman: But you didn’t do that?

Dr. Adam Thorne: We didn’t do that because, again, we also… we can deliver the dentistry.

Payman: Yeah. I know. Fair enough.

Prav Solanki: Going back to the question about owning a business.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure.

Prav Solanki: You worked in a few private practises, you were on a board. At what point did you think to yourself, “Right, I want to own my own business now.”? And when that happened how different was it from what you expected and in what way?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So I think the tipping point is you lack a bit of information so you sort of say, “Right, I’ve learned various skills and now I’m not really advancing myself.” So you need to be able to push yourself only, and I got to a certain point where I sort of said, “Right, I’ve done the board. I’ve done the young dentists. I’ve done the mentoring. I’ve looked after sort of other practises, and I’m not really going anywhere now. I’m almost sort of hit a bit of a ceiling. So now the next step is, let’s make the leap and actually own a practise.”

Dr. Adam Thorne: The difference from how I thought it would be to actually sort of running it is there’s always… being in the service industry there’s always little issues going on. So you try and sort of systemize it. You think, “Right, I’ve got great managers in place, I’ve got great support staff. This ship should just float easily and I can go and not have a week away, a holiday.” But there’s a thing, “Oh, what’s going on?”

Prav Solanki: Do you find yourself constantly fire-fighting?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Not necessarily fire-fighting but there’s always a little issue. “Prav Solanki’s on the phone and he’s bust us up with cuts. We’re really pissed. What are we going to do with it?”

Payman: I’ve got a friend, he’s looking at opening a nuclear power station and he was telling me that’s less complicated than dealing with people.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: People in the end, there’s such a vast range of things that can happen, and that, we’re talking patients and staff.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Patients and staff.

Payman: How many staff have you got?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So there we’ve got about, well, 14 staff but then about the same number of clinicians and five or six hygienists. But-

Payman: That’s a lot of people.

Prav Solanki: A lot of people.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, it’s a lot of management. But again, this is being a service industry and you’re very focused on the patient. If, in another industry, if someone’s off sick you just leave the work on the desk and they can deal with it tomorrow. Whereas when you’re sort of hands-on and we need the nurse, you need the coordinator and someone’s off sick it stresses everyone out and then that’s when it all sort of… mini eruptions happen.

Payman: And 14 clinicians, not all there the whole time, right?

Dr. Adam Thorne: No, no.

Payman: They’re part-time?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: How many dental chairs have you got?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, eight dental chairs at the moment. We’re about to put a ninth.

Payman: Wow.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. So, over six floors.

Payman: For anyone who’s never been there I would definitely go visit if, I don’t know, if Adam’s cool with that.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. No, no, that’s… Just inviting people in, lining up at the door.

Payman: Just visit and have a look.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Like one of those NHS… I’ve just opened an NHS list and they’re queuing round the block.

Payman: Visit and have a look because it’s just-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Thank you.

Payman: …beautiful. I mean I stopped doing dentistry and every time I go there I feel like, “Oh, I want to be a dentist again.” It’s like one of those feelings. And you get all the clichés about Harley Street being an address instead of a qualification, but it’s nice. It’s nice to see someone who’s gone for it in such a big way. And whenever I go there I always think you’re obviously reinvesting hugely.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: Have you got a five year, ten year plan, or did you have? Or… Tell us about that. Are you a big planner?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, yes we are. I mean, we sort of tend to look at sort of three to five years of where we are. I mean, I’m early 40s now, so I’ve still got a few years left doing this. So I haven’t got necessarily an exit route. I mean obviously if someone came with a big check I might look at that. But-

Prav Solanki: Just for our listeners out there, if you have a big check and you want a lovely practise in Harley Street.

Payman: Any Russian billionaires.

Dr. Adam Thorne: No, we tend to look at that and obviously you have to keep up with where we are and where we position ourselves on the market, you have to keep ahead of the game, so we do have to have the latest technologies.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Again, consumers and patients are discerning with the internet. And the internet’s a double-edged sword because people research things so they have a… what we call a ‘high dental IQ’ which is good, but then sometimes they have the horror stories that go along with it. So you have to allay those fears. But people love new things as well and new ideas so as a clinician we have to juggle that it has the justification behind it that will deliver those results but have the new technology to go alongside it.

Payman: What was your answer to my question about touchy-feely or authoritarian? Did I ask that question?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Touchy-feely.

Payman: So, go on. How do you manage teams? How do you manage people? It is you, isn’t it? You’re kind of the person looking at your practise, you’re the person handling that side of things.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, so communication’s the key. And the problem I have with so many clinicians and someone may be in there for two days, someone may be in for four days, is how you roll out the information, whereas as a small practise, when I’ve had small practises it is you can sort of get the team together over a lunch time and say, “Right, this is our plan for Monday. We’re going to roll it out.” Whereas ours is a bit of a tanker, to use a cliché.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And then you have to sort of roll the information out and then there’s an email goes out to everyone, and then someone answers back to ‘reply all’ saying, “I don’t like it,” and then you’re batting against it. So… But that’s key.

Dr. Adam Thorne: The hardest thing I find also is time, being able to sort of support staff members. So you have to sort of be aware, be available to staff or team members. But they do value that. So if you give them support and you’re quite humble and you sort of say, “This is how I’d do it,” So, people make mistakes and I’m happy for people to make mistakes just as long as they admit to it and then they correct it. So I don’t mind if that happens, and then I can try and just train them and show them how they can learn from experience.

Prav Solanki: Adam, if you could turn back the clock and do Harley Street all over again what would be different?

Payman: That’s a great question.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Good question. I suppose I’d have probably gone bigger earlier, okay.

Prav Solanki: How?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Just I mean, we sort of expanded and we sort of waited for a lease to expire and just carried on and I think we lost some efficiency by having two sites, or definitely did that. So I’d have sort of jumped in. Obviously when you’re a bit younger you’ve got a bit more energy so you can do things and really drive it forward.

Prav Solanki: And just, did the reason you didn’t push big earlier, is it because you’re risk averse or Mark’s risk averse or you were being cautious?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think it’s more just sort of… you get to a certain stage and then you sort of find your feet, and then you like to sort of have some stability and then you sort of grow on there.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Especially managing a team and when you’re managing or treating people you need to have some stability, so you can’t be so reckless but also you have to have that growth in mind.

Prav Solanki: So you wanted to scale up faster, ideally, if you could turn the clock back, knowing what you know now you would have just gone for it big time?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: What advice would you give to somebody who’s just bought their first practise, has got visions of growing, scaling, a little bit wet behind the ears when it comes to business systems, processes, what’s the best bit of advice you can give, not from a clinical but from a business perspective of growing a practise?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure. I’d say find yourself a mentor who’s done something very similar and that doesn’t necessarily have to be in the field of dentistry. Business is business and there’s a lot of sort of parallels with other…

Dr. Adam Thorne: I’ll tell you actually, correcting myself, service industry business because there are a lot of parallels and you can find that and people… we make mistakes on a daily basis but we correct them and learn from them. And experience is key.

Payman: Did you have a mentor?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Not a one that’s seen me through, but at different stages I had sort of-

Payman: That first guy in Poole.

Dr. Adam Thorne: First guy in Poole.

Payman: What was his name?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Kevin Durant.

Payman: Shout out.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. And then one of my business partners now, [Jacksy 00:29:27], has come on and he’s 10, 12 years ahead of me, and he’s very good on managing operations and cost control and he’s come from an NHS background and running practises, but that’s helped with nailing down sort of costs and so on and so forth. So, that helps and we now tend to have a set up where I tend to do the front end, some of the marketing, bringing the patients in and clinicians and he tends to do the sort of… shall we say the backend, and looking after the figures, and monitoring suppliers and so on.

Prav Solanki: So what would you… you’ve got obviously different team members, business partners, you’ve got yourself, you’ve got Jacksy, you’ve got Mark. What would you say each of your unique abilities are?

Prav Solanki: Because one of the things that I find especially being in business with different business partners in different businesses, I feel we’ve all got unique abilities that we excel at. Let’s start with what you feel your unique ability is and then onto your business partners and how you all contribute to the running of the business.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure. Yeah. So my skill or what I have, what I bring to that, is growth. Initially it was sort of acquiring other practises. We’ve had other practises alongside Harley Street, as you know, in London that we’ve bought and sold. And so it’s growth, bringing the team together, the marketing and the planning or sales of dentistry, as in our dental products and treatments, [inaudible] the team along.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I’d say Mark is a fantastic clinician and he is also very good at the sales, but he tends to focus a little bit more now on the clinical ability, his clinical work. And then Jacksy, who’s come in, tends to be a little bit more on the operational, handling suppliers and so on, and sometimes you need to be a bit tough with suppliers.

Prav Solanki: So would you say in summary you’re more of a nurture people type person who can help nurture all the relationships in the practise with a focus on marketing? Mark is more sort of clinical or clinical lead, would you say?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. Clinical lead, yeah.

Prav Solanki: Clinical lead. And Jacksy’s more sort of in the background, getting the cost down from various suppliers and stuff and running the financials of the business, almost like a CFO.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Correct, yeah. No.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, cool.

Payman: How about clinically, what kind of dentistry excites you and doesn’t?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I love treatment planning.

Payman: Oh.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I love… yeah, yeah, the initial consultation and being able to take a step back and saying, “Right, that’s happened because of this,” and then how we can sort of plan it and pull everything together. It’s almost like a conductor. Hands-on wise I like doing… I do a lot of Invisalign and do a lot of veneers and bonding.

Payman: How many days a week do you actually practise?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So I’m between three and four clinical at the moment and that sort of tends to vary with numbers of associates that are in or… and so on, or filling spaces. I mean with a large team you do get people away on holiday, so I can sometimes step up and step down.

Payman: How long ago did you go to three or four?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Well-

Payman: Ever worked six days a week?

Dr. Adam Thorne: No, no, no, no. So every time we take on a new premises or growth then you-

Payman: Then seven days a week?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, seven days a week, and then you try and scale it back a little bit.

Payman: Because as a dentist I remember when I cut down from five to four I actually became a much better dentist, enjoyed it much more and didn’t see any drop. I know it’s become a bit of a cliché to say this now, but I see a lot of people working long, long hours.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: [inaudible 00:33:00].

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: 9:00 till 9:00 and so forth. But how do you feel? I mean because you’ve recently cut down so much or…

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, I mean I’ve cut down sort of a couple of years ago, but I think it’s time and like you said, I think you were going to say that you didn’t necessarily see a drop in income-

Payman: No.

Dr. Adam Thorne: …and it gave you a time and you do need time to sort of sit back and think and that’s true from the initial patient consultation as well, and I think a lot of people try and rush and see as many patients and it’s almost like a badge, “Hey, I saw 40 patients today.”

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: But you’re actually more productive if you see maybe between five and eight, spend some time with them. People want to be understood, be heard, and they feel if you’re spending time with them then they’re more likely to invest in their teeth and take up the treatment.

Payman: What’s a mistake you made that you would give yourself… like if you were giving a talk to someone else who’s going into this process. I know he’d be your competitor, strictly, but what’s a mistake that you made that you wouldn’t make again?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think sometimes we’ve been too ambitious and sort of take on a bit more and I think when we moved into… we had this great vision, and it was a vision, to move into this new site in 2013.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And we spent a lot of time planning it, but we were in sort of almost like you see, you try and work to a budget and then that sort of goes out the window. And I think we should have been a bit more focused and strict on nailing down the costs initially with that.

Payman: On the building costs?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Building costs and leases and squeeze suppliers a little bit more, because I think we overpaid on some things. It was almost like sort of when you get married you have a budget and then the last week you’re like, “Get out the check book, I don’t care, just get it done.”

Payman: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: I mean, the building’s such a pain, isn’t it?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: I mean, there’s always something.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: That’s whatever…. And okay, and what’s the best decision you ever made in your professional life?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Going out on my own and building a practise that I’m really, really proud of.

Payman: In the West End?

Dr. Adam Thorne: In the West End, yeah.

Payman: Yeah. So you’d really say that, would you, if someone was thinking about it now, would you say, “Yeah, the West End’s a good idea.”? Because I speak to people on both sides of that coin, people who say it’s actually one of the hardest places to make a success-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: …and kind of what you’re saying.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I would just take a step back and say: what kind of dentistry do you like doing? And if you like doing the complex cases like we do and we get, then pitch yourself in the West End or in maybe a large city centre, say the centre of Manchester, or centre of Bristol, or Edinburgh. If you prefer to maybe just run the business and have your own business and that’s a sort of… almost a lifestyle business, shall we say, where you’ve got a nice three or four chair practise, maybe look at sort of a location you’re more familiar with outside of London.

Prav Solanki: Adam, let’s talk work-life balance-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure.

Prav Solanki: …and switch off. I’m a big believer that switching off both physically and mentally from work enables you to accelerate quicker, but how hard do you find it to switch off when you go back home at the end of the day? Or your emails are coming through to your phone or your Facebook messages from patients or associates, just talk to me about it. Do you find it hard to switch off and do you switch off?

Dr. Adam Thorne: It is very, very hard, especially and like you said, with the size of the practise and then being in the service industry there’s always something that’s going on. I find the easiest way to switch off is doing… I mean, one of your quick-fire questions was: skiing or summer? And I love a summer holiday, but skiing because you actually… you’re just-

Payman: You’re going to fall.

Dr. Adam Thorne: …there for skiing. Yeah.

Payman: You’re going to fall if you don’t pay attention. Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Because, yeah, but you’re focused on, “I’ve got to get down this mountain,” and you can just forget about everything, and it’s one of the best ways to switch off and that’s why I love it.

Dr. Adam Thorne: But otherwise some sort of sport or doing those, and as we get older it gets harder because recovery times are harder, but that’s the way to sort of almost just release it. But it’s totally true, if you can clear your head you think a lot more freely and then it gives you more opportunity.

Prav Solanki: Have you tried or looked into anything like meditation or something, any techniques for clearing your mind, just sort of switching off in the moment, so to speak?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, I mean I tend to… I try to run a couple of times a week and try and do that, and maybe one or two yoga sessions I try and do, to sort of just… which is like meditation-

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Dr. Adam Thorne: …but again, just focusing on something else so you can just try and put away things. But with a couple of young kids it’s quite hard.

Prav Solanki: Sure. Tell me about your kids. Just describe them to me, personalities.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure. So I’ve got two young boys aged now two and seven, so they’re great. I think boys are easier to handle than young girls, but you might correct me on that.

Payman: Hmm, yeah. Well, yeah, my boy is easier to handle than my girl, but I don’t know if it’s a rule.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think boys, if they’re hungry or they’re tired, then they’re grumpy so you just… And it’s the same as we get older.

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: So no, they’re good but, no, I lost my wife just a couple of years ago to quite an aggressive cancer, so I’m looking after them, bringing them up on my own. But they’re doing well. They keep me focused, they keep me grounded. So, that’s quite hard.

Prav Solanki: Do they motivate you? Are they your reason for your ambition and your drive?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, I think so. I mean, at the moment it’s helping them sort of develop and grow but obviously I do want to sort of give them something that they’re proud of.

Payman: I think, I see you were pretty ambitious before they came along as well though-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: …that’s from what I remember.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, yeah.

Payman: And I was laughing a bit when you said ‘risk averse’ because that’s the last thing I would describe you as, risk averse, but with Melissa a couple of years ago how did you handle it? Did you throw yourself into work? Or…

Dr. Adam Thorne: No, I tried to keep some normality going, and it is almost like an escape. So I tried to keep the schools going for the boys. I mean my youngest was only seven months when she passed away, but my oldest boy Jack, he was five at the time, so I kept that normality going.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And then for me it was almost some sort of… it was a focus, so there was a benefit to doing it. I mean things went through my head of, “Do I sell up and focus on the boys for a few years?”, and then I thought, “Well, actually, I’ve spent a lot of time building this thing and kids will grow up and then what do you do?” And you… Oh, I didn’t really want to start back from square one, but it gave me a good focus and helped keep my sanity almost, sometimes.

Payman: That’s interesting, isn’t it? That work, which is the thing you’re running away from sometimes, can actually keep your sanity.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: And the kids, do you talk to them about Melissa or not?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, oh, regularly. I mean, my eldest, he has some sort of therapy sessions as well to try and… We all deal with things in different ways and being a bit older and a bit wiser, you can sort of handle maybe things, and I don’t know whether I’ve handled it correctly. I mean I feel I’ve stayed quite focused and quite positive, but I don’t want to put the way I deal with grief or other problems, expect my son to do the same. So I’m trying to explore all opportunities or options for him. But no, we regularly talk about it and keep up memories, and there’s a memory box that we have and we get out occasionally and talk about things and remember the good times.

Prav Solanki: What’s the toughest thing about being a single parent bringing up two young boys? Because I know if my wife goes away for the day, leaves me with the kids, [crosstalk] it’s a hell of a lot harder than going to work. It’s challenging. It’s so hard.

Prav Solanki: So I couldn’t possibly imagine being in your position and doing what you do, running a successful business, doing the best for your kids and balancing the two. I mean, what’s the hardest thing about bringing the boys up?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think it’s the planning. Yeah, well two things actually. The planning, you have to be super slick with the planning, especially I mean we’ve just come off the back of summer holidays and it’s sort of like, wow, we’ve got through it and I feel like we survived. As any parent out there knows.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, any parent knows that.

Dr. Adam Thorne: So that was a logistical challenge, and then the second thing is to sort of… switching off and like you mentioned earlier, sort of I might finish and leave the office at sort of 5:30, 6 o’clock.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Get back home. I have sort of a day nanny at the moment, but get back home at 7:00 and then the kids are sort of so pleased to see you but then you’ve got to sort of do all the story time and so on and spend… They take… and I love giving the energy to it, but then it’s 9 o’clock before you actually get any ‘Adam time’. And then you’re up again in the morning and dealing with it.

Prav Solanki: So what is ‘Adam time’ if you’ve got an hour to yourself or a couple of hours to yourself, what is it that you like to do?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Emails. No, joking. No, again, a bit of sport, I think.

Prav Solanki: Okay.

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, doing that. So just to sort of get out there and I think it’s the only time I can really switch off, is when you’re sort of on a run or something or doing some gym or something like that.

Prav Solanki: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Payman: What would you have been if you weren’t a dentist?

Dr. Adam Thorne: So, if I could be anything I think probably a professional footballer or professional sportsperson but-

Payman: Sure, but if you didn’t have that particular talent. I don’t know. I mean-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Very diplomatic.

Payman: …it’s a valid answer. It’s a valid answer.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. So, I’d run a service industry. You could run… you know what, there’s a lot of parallels to things like hairdressing.

Payman: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve always thought that.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And I think hairdressing’s almost dentistry without the equipment.

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And our equipment is so cost heavy.

Payman: As dentists came from barbers-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: …back in the day, really.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Exactly. So you could almost run a chain and I’ve, as you guys know, I had some practise in London, so Mark and I were looking at running a group of practises and then with my personal situation we scaled that back. But you could run a successful group of hair salons, I think, and without all the sort of expense of equipment.

Payman: I was listening to an interview with the guy from Zappos, you know the online shoe…

Dr. Adam Thorne: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Payman: They’re obviously famous for customer service and all that. And he was saying he doesn’t like shoes, he doesn’t know anything about shoes but he knows all about customer service. And it’s really interesting, isn’t it?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: I mean the service industry, I find that one of the challenges of it is recruitment for it, because it’s hard to know for sure if people want to give service.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: And it’s a state of mind that I’m not sure you can instil, like it’s and attitude.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Exactly, yeah.

Payman: But some people want to be of service and they’re happiest being of service and others aren’t.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Payman: And finding those people is the key thing, I’ve found, in the service industry.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I like people who are humble and they listen, and it’s the old cliché but you have two ears and one mouth and not try and sort of state their case and push it forward. And they tend to make, as long as they can deliver the dentistry, they make very, very good dentists because they get to know the patient, they build the rapport and then there’s a great relationship from there.

Payman: What was your hardest day in your professional life? I’m sure there have been a few.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think sitting finals is not a great experience.

Payman: No, [inaudible 00:44:31]. But any stories where you’ve… practise stories, of course you had Melissa and all that, but I’m talking about when you’re building a business or something, something went wrong and… terrible moment-

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think when we moved into the new site and we were quite heavily geared up at that stage and then we had a flood and the whole sort of… everything goes out of action. You think, “God, I’ve just bought that server and I’ve just bought that [Telecom] system and now-”

Payman: It all got ruined by the flood?

Dr. Adam Thorne: All got ruined.

Payman: Oh!

Dr. Adam Thorne: And then you’re chasing it and then you’re fighting insurance companies and you think, “I’m up against it already and I’m now another 20K potentially in [crosstalk 00:45:08]-”

Payman: I haven’t even started yet.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Exactly.

Payman: Yeah, that would qualify. What are five things you wish you knew earlier? Forget five, just a few things you wish you knew earlier.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Sure. Slow down to be more productive.

Payman: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Adam Thorne: When you’re treating people. So it’s not the numbers you get through it’s spending some time with them and building it. Occlusions obviously a big key. You’ve got to get your occlusion right and for longevity. Touch wood I haven’t had to-

Payman: Occlusion’s a funny thing, isn’t it? The more you go into it the more questions.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, yeah, I know. I think people make a sometimes a bit too much of a call on it.

Payman: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: And then maybe from experience you learn sort of what works and what doesn’t work.

Payman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Adam Thorne: But that’s key to [crosstalk 00:45:55].

Payman: But yeah, you’re right, not knowing about it is a giant error. That’s the thing. Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah. I’d say orthodontic approach, I wish I’d done a bit more orthodontics initially. I’ve done a lot now but-

Payman: You studied in Bristol?

Dr. Adam Thorne: I was in Bristol.

Payman: Was it strong on orthodontics?

Dr. Adam Thorne: It was strong on orthodontics but again, that may be the way the market’s changed now. So I mean, I, gosh, 10 or 15 years ago we used a prep tooth till the cows came home. And now there’s a lot more orthodontic and people are happier for conservative treatment even if it takes a bit longer, and wearing braces is much, much more acceptable among the adults.

Payman: Yeah. That’s about it?

Dr. Adam Thorne: That’s about it. I mean, my tips would be: make sure you have loops, a light, camera, photograph everything. Photographing is key, if you photograph it’s really… you can really sort of self-appraise. You can put it up on the screen. It’s a great education tool to the patient. It obviously helps you ethically sell things, you don’t need to sort of… I sometimes put some photographs up on the screen of an occlusal shot of their teeth and then they say, “Oh, I don’t like that. Can we change that? And I don’t like this. Can we change that?” And you’ve already sold some dentistry there. But yeah, but also photograph after and then you can sort of say, “Well, maybe I should have moved that a little bit more or polish that a little bit more, or maybe that veneer’s just a little bit too off.” You learn from that experience.

Payman: If you met your 23 year old self, the day after finals self, what would you tell yourself? What sort of…

Dr. Adam Thorne: I’d say go and do a year sort of learning the industry in the right practise like I was lucky to do, and then from there do a nice balance of courses, but again in the experience maybe for about three or four years and then look at where you really want to go, what kind of dentistry you want to do, and if it is in the West End treating complex cases then take the plunge and go for it because you’re young.

Payman: So what, you’d tell your younger self to do exactly what you did?

Dr. Adam Thorne: If he wanted to do that!

Payman: But I mean-

Dr. Adam Thorne: Train to be a footballer.

Payman: Yeah. No, with a bit of hindsight is there anything that-

Dr. Adam Thorne: I think obviously-

Payman: Would you just say, “Listen, go for it.”?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, it’s going to be all right and get yourself a mentor. Just go for it and build that big practise earlier on.

Prav Solanki: We’re all here for a short period of time, right?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Life is short.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: What would you like to be remembered for?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Clinical, in terms of professional here, nationally famous for the clinic that we delivered fantastic care to the patient in terms of dentistry and fantastic sort of team environment.

Prav Solanki: So, you’re on your death bed and someone comes up to you and says, “Adam, you had a renowned nationally recognised clinic.” Is there anything else?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Me?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Personally?

Prav Solanki: Personally. How much does that mean to you in the whole-

Payman: Your legacy.

Prav Solanki: …picture?

Dr. Adam Thorne: The legacy.

Prav Solanki: Yeah, your legacy.

Dr. Adam Thorne: I mean that’s my professional… I’d like to mentor people as well. So, a great teacher, supporter and obviously just the boys, my kids have done well for themselves and, yeah, I think that’s it.

Prav Solanki: Cool.

Payman: How much of progress do you think is down to luck and how much is down to effort and intelligence and all of those?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Splitting the three. So, I mean I think you have to be switched on, especially in our field, you have to be able to multitask. So, and what I do, you’re treating patients and they’re demanding patients, and they’re quite rightly, but because of where we put ourselves, but then you have a sort of five minute space between them and someone comes and says, “Oh, Enlighten Smiles are on the line because he was less sore,” or something.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Yeah, to sort be able to switch and juggle between suppliers and pushing things forward. So, multitask is a big thing. So you have to be intelligent and we’re able to do that. But then hard work. It’s hard work, and there’s no short-cut.

Dr. Adam Thorne: A bit of luck, yeah, I mean I think you make your luck and it’s also finding the right people at the right time. If you sort of want to go and do something, you give yourself a goal, that person will come into your life. And that seems a bit sort of spiritual, but you do find that, I want to go and do stuff and you’re researching things or looking at different things and then someone pops up and then before you know it you’ve got a mentor or sort of a guide.

Payman: Let’s finish it off with like a Desert Island Disc type question type thing. If your house was on fire and you had your family and all that, what’s the one thing you would rescue?

Dr. Adam Thorne: Probably a laptop.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Payman: Not bad. Not bad. It’s been brilliant.

Prav Solanki: It’s been great.

Payman: I enjoyed it.

Prav Solanki: It’s been great. [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it has.

Dr. Adam Thorne: Thanks for inviting me.

Payman: Thanks a lot for coming in [inaudible 00:51:00].

Dr. Adam Thorne: Appreciate it.

Payman: Thanks, Adam.

Prav Solanki: Thanks, Adam.

Payman: It’s been brilliant. Thank you. Bye bye.

Recorded Voice: 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. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you tune in for future episodes. Subscribe in iTunes or Google Play or whatever platform it is. You know, we really, really appreciate it if you would-

Payman: Give us a six star rating.

Prav Solanki: Six star rating. That’s what I always leave my Uber driver.

Payman: Thanks-

 

Transcript

Prav Solanki: Hey guys, and welcome to the Dental Leaders Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. And today we have the pleasure of speaking to Mark Hughes, a guy who needs no introduction, a guy who founded Harley Street Dental Studio, probably one of the most famous practises in the UK. Interesting conversations with him of how he first started out in cosmetic dentistry in the early days, what it was like back then, getting married, a real family man, really resonates with me in terms of we … We’ve had conversations about the relationship he’s got with his kids and I’ve got with mine and they really ring some trees. I’ve been working with Mark for well over a decade now, so I know him really well. But I think as we’ve said before, you truly get to know and understand the inner values of somebody when you sit down and have an hour long conversation with them over a table like we did today Pay.

Payman: Yeah, for me, it just shows the power of the format. The free format. We go into these conversations without any agenda and so what comes out of it is lovely. Both of us have known Mark for 10 plus years and had dinners with him, had been to his practise and all of that. But when you just sit and just talk you find out all sorts of things. I had no idea by his history in Australia, so many things. Lovely guy, lovely conversation. Enjoy it guys.

Prav Solanki: You’re going to enjoy this one guys.

Mark Hughes: I have planned all weekend, I was carrying a little bottle of champagne in my pocket, it poured with rain the entire weekend. So all of my hotspots to go down on one knee were just totally ruined. The end of the weekend was coming. I was panicking more and more and eventually managed to get down to the river side to the side of the sand and she literally turned around and said, “Get on with it. Please.”

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.

Payman: Mark, thanks for doing this. We’ve known each other a while, long while. It’s good to have you. The conversations we’ve had so far have gone into motivations behind the things you’ve done and so on. But let’s just start with the backstory, where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where did you qualify? All of that.

Mark Hughes: So I was born in Derry in Northern Ireland, right at the turn of the decade, 1970 in the middle of all the troubles, and my parents at 10 years old decided enough was enough and off we went to Dublin. So I went to secondary school there and I went to Trinity College in Dublin and did my dental there.

Payman: It’s cool.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, it was. And a fantastic place for fun and games. So life at Trinity was wonderful, right in the heart of Dublin. After five and a half years I didn’t really want to leave, and in those days everybody went to the UK. So it was over to England for a job, work on the NHS, earn a bit of money, come back home at some point. That was the plan in 1992. It was before the Celtic Tiger, so there wasn’t even that incentive to come home based on economic welfare, but people still usually came home at some point. And a few stayed in the UK.

Prav Solanki: So just going back to your childhood Mark, just like your earliest memories being brought up, mom and dad, what was being a kid like? What were your memories of being brought up like if you can?

Mark Hughes: My first memory was my brother being born, I was two and a half. The very next one after that was literally avoiding an explosion in the supermarket by about 20 seconds. So we left our local supermarket, my brother was in a pram I was four, next thing we’re flat on our faces and we just left the building that the IRA put a bomb in.

Payman: Jeez.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. So I had an interesting childhood but surrounded by guns and the army.

Prav Solanki: Was that a constant theme growing up, did that become normality?

Mark Hughes: Until the age of 10, 11, yeah, absolutely. My primary school was located in no-man’s land between the British Army checkpoint in Derry and the Irish border checkpoint, a lovely little town called Muff. And we had to cross the British Army checkpoint every morning to go to school.

Payman: My dad studied in Belfast, in the 50s. And he became the president of the students’ union because he was neither Catholic no Protestant.

Mark Hughes: He fell between two stools.

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. So that was an interesting upbringing. My grandfather was in the judiciary. So, while he was still in active service, he had police guards and police radios, and then the hunger strikes happened and all the violence reached a peak and my parents just said, “Look, this is too risky for your future and why would you want a teenage life surrounded by this where you couldn’t go anywhere or do anything or have any freedoms?” Cousins lived in Dublin. So off we went.

Prav Solanki: Oh, and just a one brother?

Mark Hughes: One little brother. He’s in Australia.

Prav Solanki: Okay.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, like you.

Prav Solanki: So you were Catholic?

Mark Hughes: Yeah. But my father was a Presbyterian. So my parents were mixed religion. And we were sort of raised Catholic, but we sort of were allowed to be a bit Protestant at the same time. One brother the question my father had contraception.

Payman: And were you a swotty kid.

Mark Hughes: I wasn’t so swotty. Certainly not in primary school. But I managed to get through quite well. I think when I ended up deciding I wanted to study for something like trying to get into dental school then I did become a bit swotty. Although, like most teenage boys in Ireland at the age of 14 and 15, you end up in your first pub. So there were distractions from 15 onwards, and I guess I didn’t study as hard as I should have done or could have done when I got into dental school at Trinity.

Prav Solanki: So what? At the age of 14, 15, were you pretty much clear in your career path that you wanted to be a dentist? What was the thought process? And the influence that-

Mark Hughes: The why dentistry?

Prav Solanki: -you had at that young age.

Mark Hughes: So again, it’s like everything in life, you’re a product of your upbringing and your environment to a certain extent. And in those days, the equivalent of a grammar school in Ireland, there were schools that were run by priests, nuns or religious orders, and they were in essence factories to get working and middle class boys into professional life. So you were either going to be a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant, something professional. And if you were the younger brother or the youngest brother, you’re probably going to be pushed into the priesthood. I looked at all the options and in those days as well, I was young. I was a late June baby. I was very young for my year, especially when we transition from Northern Ireland to Southern Ireland, five years secondary school, I was doing my Leaving Cert which is the equivalent of the A levels at 16.

Mark Hughes: So I had to decide at 15 what my pathway was. I looked at the perspectives for Trinity for medicine and dentistry. I looked at the long term career pathway in medicine and I went, “No, way.” I liked the idea of being independent after undergrad, being able to go out into the working world and do something for yourself. So I chose dentistry.

Payman: Pretty young age to have to make these decisions.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, it was and I think there … I had a conversation with my mother at 19 where I decided I wanted to go down a different pathway. And that was an interesting conversation. Because in those days, going to Trinity you had to pay fees. My parents were paying thousands of pounds for my education, whereas in the UK, it would have been free.

Prav Solanki: How did that conversation go?

Mark Hughes: I told her at 19 and it was dental school, medical … Sorry, clinical started and it was all getting a bit much for me and I was only a child really.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mark Hughes: And I had fascinations to be a filmmaker and a screenwriter. So I came home, told her I wanted to quit. I’d had enough. And instead of me being the one upset, she completely burst into tears and said, “Look, this is something that we were very proud of you for and we’re more than halfway there and you’re really good at it, don’t throw it all away.” So I came to my senses. And the interesting thing about that was, I think, creative juices that weren’t developed at school, because like I said, we were on this professional factory pathway. My art teacher at school was a nun and art was a drawing, and if you weren’t any good at that, that was it. So there was no other real sort of creativity left side of the brain discussions. But dentistry, I figured out and there was one person that taught me who showed me the aesthetic aspect of dentistry and using composite and all that kind of stuff.

Prav Solanki: Who was that?

Mark Hughes: Her name is Ailbhe McDonald and she’s head of department of restorative for the Eastman now. So she opened my eyes up to possibilities and actually applauded or recognised my sensibilities and we spent time polishing and doing incisal edges and that kind of stuff and everybody else in the class was, “Do fillings, get paid, go home.” And then the entrepreneurial aspects and adding in creative touches like how you design your practise, your practise logo, how you do the interior. So the entrepreneurial business owner thing, I was aware of that quite young and every dental practise I went to I absolutely hated, but I had visions and ideas about how cool we could make them.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mark Hughes: So that satisfied some of the arty side, [inaudible] was satisfied, obviously by Cosmetic Dentistry and so on. I went from there, I decided to finish.

Prav Solanki: And so going through your dental career at university, did you have any like real low points where you thought, “You know what, I can’t do this anymore, there’s too-”

Payman: When you wanted to be Tarantino’s around that.

Mark Hughes: Well, that was in essence not really a low point, it was more an awakening. So that actually felt quite positive and then actually reassessing the situation and moving on. I guess, the low point for me, I mean, I never really struggled with the academic side of things. I guess I should have done better. I mean, I was late teens, early 20s, all the way through Trinity. And it was a great place to be. So I loved my university life I didn’t actually want to leave. So I contemplated doing post grad and staying on.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mark Hughes: I was only 22. And I qualified. I guess the low point at uni. I think it was just having no money. It was the early 90s. I had a large student loan and I was paying 19% interest. So the banks were prepared to keep funding that student loan because they knew what I was going to do afterwards. Yeah, you were just broke all the time, but enough. It was a great life. I was very, very happy there. The prospect of then moving to the UK actually filled me with somewhat with horror. And I wholly expected to last nine months and be home.

Payman: Where was the first place in the UK you touched down?

Mark Hughes: Whitford in Essex was my first practise.

Payman: Right.

Mark Hughes: And you know what, it wasn’t too bad at all. Back to low points. I played basketball for the university and we were league competing in those days. And I tore my cruciate ligament in my final year at the age of 20 … Just turned 22. So that was tough because the rehabilitation and the surgery had to be put off my exams. So actually I didn’t have the reconstruction done for about eight months. That stopped me short in terms of a lot of my sporting ambitions. Then I missed the boat. I was in hospital having an operation when everybody else was doing the first round of jobs on offer, flew over, met our representatives here and got offered positions as associates. So I kind of missed the boat a little bit and missed all the good London practises. So I ended up in Essex and I thought, “This isn’t for me.”

Payman: Was it mixed or?

Mark Hughes: Yeah, it was a mixed practise.

Payman: Back then there wasn’t much private going on anyway. Yeah.

Mark Hughes: It really was sort of NHS with a little bit of private. It was still in the pre ’92 contract.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. And it was just a slog. It was a slog, slog, slog, slog.

Payman: [inaudible] wasn’t it right.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, exactly. And I guess I miss … What I did every weekend was … Afternoon on a Friday, I’d jump in the car and I drive to see all my mates who lived in Ealing. And I’d spend the whole weekend in London and I hated getting back in that car and driving at the eight, I think it’s the 827 or something to Essex … Not that it was an awful place to live, but it just wasn’t for me.

Payman: It actually wasn’t in London.

Mark Hughes: I grew up in cities. I’m an urbanite and for me, London was the place to be. So I decided to quit that after six months, I got a job in a practise in Stratum with a really cool guy who knew everybody in town and had a cool associate I work with called Mamaly Rashad, some of you may know. And Mamaly introduced me to the nightlife and the wild life of London. So, I found myself and then I called my mother and said, “I’m not coming home after nine months.” I found a great flat through a connection that I had at Trinity on the Kings Road, really cheap rent, friend of a friend. Was a connection through our Boat Club. I’ll explain more in a minute if you want, but basically I had a flat on the Kings Road in Chelsea 1993 that’s paying 50 quid a week. So, happy days.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Payman: And go on what were some of the places Mamaly was taking you?

Mark Hughes: Oh, you might remember [inaudible 00:13:41].

Payman: [inaudible 00:13:41].

Mark Hughes: Yeah. Let me see where else.

Payman: Followed by Maroush.

Mark Hughes: Followed by Maroush. And do you remember Po Na Na?

Payman: No.

Prav Solanki: I remember that.

Mark Hughes: Po Na Na was a little bar on the Kings Road basement bar and it was the hottest place.

Payman: We used to go to a place it was a few years after that, Crazy Larry’s it was called.

Mark Hughes: Yeah Crazy Larry’s was on Lutz road, so yeah, all of that stuff but the concept of going out to a nice restaurant and then going out for the night, Mamaly is like “Come on.” And he called me Dr. Irish.

Prav Solanki: Dr. Irish.

Payman: So then Okay, this job in the Stratum-

Mark Hughes: Yes.

Payman: -who was the boss?

Mark Hughes: The late Mark Spurway. Very interesting character. Again, knew everybody who was anybody in London and all of a sudden Art Gallery openings, cool restaurant openings, he knew everybody and he had a fleet of classic cars. And he was like one of the coolest guys in town. So, I would meet people like Simon Le Bon at dinner and all of his mates would come to the practise in Stratum. We were sort of, all the trendies of London. So, again, opened my eyes up to a world of possibility and introduced me to a lot of really cool people and I felt really at home and it was-

Payman: So interesting, that must have been a big sort of milestone in you ending up in the sort of a high end world that you’ve ended up in.

Mark Hughes: 100%. Because Mark had a … And Mark unfortunately passed away scuba diving, I think he was 36 at the time. So Mamaly and I were his two hot associates for about three years. And I think yes, it was Mark-

Payman: It was your working day when he passed away?

Mark Hughes: I just left. I took some time off and I got a call when I was in Australia to say that he hadn’t come back to work from the receptionist, “What do I do?” And I had left about a year before that. But Mark had a, I think he did one day a week in Devonshire Place, and the last time I’d been into Harley Street was to sign up with the GDC. And so would go up and check out his room that he rented one day we can always really cool patients on Devonshire Place and he take out the fancier cars and park them in Harley Street or in Devonshire Place. So, again, it was like, “All right, this feels like home. Not a practise in Stratum.”

Mark Hughes: But I decided having gone all the way it’s like from school at 16 turned 17 started uni, five and a half years at Trinity, straight over to work on the NHS. I needed a break. So I took nearly two years off. Worked really hard for a couple of years on the NHS, saved up a lot of money had bought a flat at that stage in Battersea. So I had an investment I was really proud of. It was the beginning of the turnaround in the property situation in the 90s. And all of my mates said, “You’re mad.” Because there had been a property crash. So bought that flat, rented it out, went off to Latin America for nine months.

Payman: Wow.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, so it did that, worked in Australia, worked for the Flying Doctors for four months, worked in Sydney, another six months in Southeast Asia and then was about to head to India for-

Payman: Working in each of these places?

Mark Hughes: No. Just having-

Prav Solanki: Having fun.

Mark Hughes: -having fun and pretty much everywhere, including Australia working because I was flying to Aboriginal communities in New York.

Prav Solanki: And were you like young, free and single at this point?

Mark Hughes: For some of it.

Prav Solanki: Yeah?

Mark Hughes: Yeah. No. I left with a partner and came back-

Payman: Alone.

Prav Solanki: With another one?

Mark Hughes: No. With the same partner, but we’d figured it out on the way that it wasn’t really going anywhere. And that was … My friends tease me about that. God hope she isn’t listening to this. But they said I had to take her around the world for two years to break up with her. And what happened was, when I worked in Sydney, I was exposed to a few practises that in 1996, 1997, had screens on the ceiling. They were really coolly designed. They had graphic designers work on their logos, their buildings, their colour schemes. There was one guy, he was known as the dub dentist, because he had a really great sound system and all his patients loved listening to the house … He would play all this soft house music, and Sydney was really cool at the time. And they were 90% private. So I was determined then to come home, find a practise, do great stuff to it. And that’s what brought me back.

Prav Solanki: So was it at that point, you realised, I am going to own my own practise, run my own business and create something special, that no one else has ever seen in the UK?

Mark Hughes: Hundred percent. Because I’ve been exposed to what it was like to work for somebody else. And you get frustrated when you want to do things and you can’t really do them. Then being exposed to some cool innovative stuff going on, that nobody had in the UK. And then I came back. And actually some people were starting to do it. There was one practise in particular, in Covent Garden.

Prav Solanki: Who was that?

Mark Hughes: James Green had a practise on Endell Street and he had this really cool coloured logo in the window. And I ended up working as an associate around the corner. And I ended up buying the practise. And it was on Drury Lane. And at the time-

Prav Solanki: I remember that.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: I remember that clinic anyway. Not that time. But yeah.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. Well, it still has the same logo that my mates designed in 1997. The current owner still has it, hasn’t changed it.

Prav Solanki: Amazing.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. And these were guys that I played football with, played five aside with. They worked for companies like EMI and Euro sport. And they were starting out their own businesses, and they wanted to help and put their graphic design team together. And we just were mates just helping each other out and built a website, which was awful.

Prav Solanki: Well the fact that you had a website though right?

Payman: It would be like having an AR studio now.

Prav Solanki: You get to a point where you’ve been an associate for a period of time, and you say, “I know I’m going to own my own business and have a practise.” And I’ve experienced this before starting a business or before taking that leap. There’s a load of fear that kicks in, real load of fear that kicks in, and then you start doubting yourself. And so you have the ‘Yeah but’ conversations will do this, yeah but, what about that? Yeah, but what about this, and that? Can you just talk me through, like your fears that you had before starting your first business or buying that practise, or even going through that process of saying, “I’m now going to be my own boss.”

Mark Hughes: So I think the fears I had were not necessarily the traditional fears, like the level of investment, and the borrowed money, I was really keen to get the money and buy the cool equipment and have the eye track cameras and all that kind of stuff, location that I ended up buying was terrific. What I found out was that there was a huge gap in my learning. So we had very little of computer knowledge and skill training, certainly not through dental school, zero. And school, I was pretty poor. So, everybody was getting computerised to create nice letter heads. So I had to basically teach myself how to use Word. And that’s what I spent more time doing than anything else was trying to figure out how to use a computer. And it actually wore me down for a while. And the skill set to manage staff, to look after all the non-clinical aspects of the practise, that was the hardest bit. Because I had no training in whatsoever, no experience in it.

Prav Solanki: And it was a complete unknown, you went in blind?

Mark Hughes: Totally blind. I remember in the early days, and you recruit people, and you think you can trust people implicitly and I arrived at the practise, the patient was waiting outside, nobody had opened the practise.

Prav Solanki: Oh dear.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, and so those kind of things happen. And I think those kind of things, were the hardest part of it for me. But I wasn’t fearful of doing it. It was when we got into it. And I realised, “It was a bit more to this than just turning up everyday and doing nice dentistry.”

Prav Solanki: And having owned multiple practises now and starting up from scratch and going through that process several times with different business partners, et cetera. Someone listening to this podcast now. And if you could give them a bit of advice about how you just said you went into this business unknowns about managing staff, about computers, et cetera.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: What three little tips would you give them about taking that first step and trying to avoid these situations that you’ve been in?

Mark Hughes: So number one on the list, absolutely clear my mind, find a mentor. Find somebody who’s done it and done it well before, who embraces you as their … Somebody that they want to help develop them. Because both on a clinical level, but even more, so managing staff, managing your team, training, your tax situation, your investment situation, all of that kind of stuff. If you have somebody that you can trust that is prepared to help you along that way, it’s saves so much time.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mark Hughes: People like me made enough … I made an awful lot of mistakes. I didn’t have anybody to guide me, well, virtually nobody to guide me. So I would have progressed far quicker, with far fewer bumps along the way had I had somebody like that. So that will be number one. And I think training programmes that develop those skills as well, and not just how to do a great copacetic would be number two. So the biggest thing that happened to me in dentistry, was being encouraged to go to the Pankey Institute. And I put it off for a number of years, not only because it was expensive, but it was far away. And I heard all sorts of weird rumours about these strange American courses and what was involved there. But the best thing hands down, I ever did in my career was go there and spend six trips at Pankey and invest the money in not only my dental skills, my knowledge of occlusion and function and high end dentistry.

Mark Hughes: But that place also taught me how to communicate better with patients, build a team better and it’s soft skills that came around that and that were embedded in that and they have people that come, give up a week of their time for free to help young dentists, that for me was absolutely crucial in my career. So go to the Pankey Institute, it’s the most unique, wonderful, fantastic Dental Training Institute in the world. And I would encourage anybody to go there. The third thing would be develop some of those soft skills. If you’re going to run a business, you have to learn how to manage your books. And the numbers are everything. You know this Prav.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mark Hughes: Not only stats, you’ve got to learn how to look at stats, but your numbers and your management. If your numbers in your business, allow you to reinvest, allow you to employ better people, allow you to take a week off and go to the course that you want to do and still be able to pay your bills. So I think that’s one of the major things that’s missing in dental education at an undergraduate level and definitely missing at a postgraduate level. Why does everybody want to go and learn how to do an implant when really what they should be doing, if they’re going to own their own practise is learn how to be a businessman. Now, in hindsight, what I would have done would have been an MBA.

Prav Solanki: Interested.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. I would have spent a couple of years if I’d had the cash somewhere like Harvard, London Business School and learned about economics, learned about businesses, how they run, and then apply that with the dental skills. So those would be the three things

Prav Solanki: Having done the MBA, let’s imagine that happened. Do you think you’d still be where you are today? Or do you think you’d be a little bit further ahead?

Mark Hughes: I think if I had, well exclude the middle one, because I went and did it. But if I’d done it earlier, and I’d had the other two things, I’d be way ahead of where I was.

Payman: Sure.

Mark Hughes: Because my ambitions in my mind were always held back by either my lack of knowledge of certain things, or I had to learn by making mistakes. I would have been way further on. Life teaches you so many things. And it’s easy to say in hindsight, “I wish I’d had that hold.”

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: But if I’d hold those three things early on, I would have been far further on I think.

Payman: And it’s also the question of do you work on your strengths? Or do you work on your weaknesses?

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Payman: And for me, I think working on your strength is probably better than working on your weaknesses. Like, I don’t know, I’m disorganised, you could buy me the best diary in the world. Still, I not going to be a more organised person.

Mark Hughes: I tell you, the one thing I did learn though, was that, I thought I wanted to be a businessman. And a lot the things I’ve talked about are about learning business skills. But what I realised was, the further I got away from the clinical dentistry, which I ended up being quite good at, the more I realised that was the most comfortable place for me to be, because I was ok at it. And I could put my hand to it. And actually, when I refocused on actually trying to be as excellent as I can, I enjoyed my life so much more. What I would have needed, though, would have been support, people to defer to or to take over the management role of the business. Being the clinical lead of the business, and having the ideas were really where my strengths were.

Payman: So when did it go from that clinic to the Harley Street ones?

Mark Hughes: So I realised, and spent a lot of time re-educating myself on aesthetic restorative treatments because I wanted to do Cosmetic Dentistry and in the late 90s, that was when that boom was happening all over the world. And it was trickling into the UK. People like Mervyn Drury and invited Larry Rosenthal over and a lot of us flew off to the States to do courses. And that was exciting dentistry. I realised I wanted to do that. And I figured out that where I was, and the type of practise I had, wasn’t going to allow me to take it to the next level, or the level that I wanted to take it to. So the premises were wrong location wasn’t bad or was probably wrong. And the practise was so embedded with general dentistry, that it was mixing up my day.

Mark Hughes: So I decided, and was lucky enough to come across a great premises in Harley Street, and I thought, blank canvas, put in everything now that I would like to put in. Build it and design it in a way that I would like to, that I feel will be appropriate for me to start treating very … Doing very high end cases and very high end dentistry and attracting patients who wanted to invest in that. So the next step was Harley Street.

Payman: So the partnership with Adam, was that right then? Or was it a bit later?

Mark Hughes: No, a little bit later on. So that was 2003. And that came much later on.

Prav Solanki: And so Mark, I remember starting my business back in 2005, 2006. And when you start your business and you think, “Who would I love to work for or with?” Yeah, “Who would I aspire to work with?” Right? You were number one of my hit list.

Mark Hughes: Really?

Prav Solanki: Totally.

Mark Hughes: Tell me why.

Prav Solanki: Because the research that you do and the profiles that you see, there was only one guy who was pioneering in terms of the look, the aesthetics, the guys who were taking full face photographs, lifestyle photographs of their patients. Even today, I encourage my clients to do that. And say that telling stories through those pictures, are key to getting more patients through the door. You were still doing that 10 years ago, 12 years ago, right? So I saw that, and it was just inspirational. And then you see the education that this guy’s gone through, that he’s got this place on Harley Street and you were number one on my hit list.

Mark Hughes: That’s very kind of you.

Prav Solanki: And so what was going through your mind at the time when everyone else had these, what I would consider to be normal cosmetic private practises. But you sort of went above and beyond and said, “I’m going to create something on the most prestigious street when it comes to the Medical District in the whole world. And I’m going to do it different to everyone else on this street.” And ultimately, you ended up having an entire building, which is crazy, unheard of right? Like just talk me through those thought processes, because I speak to business people all the time looking to start their own practise. Well, their mindset is so far away from what yours was when you were setting that up. Some of the listeners here, I’m sure they’d be interested in hearing what your thoughts were.

Mark Hughes: So it’s 2003, you’re absolutely right. Nobody was doing it. Or they were doing it in still shop front practises. So I had a shopfront practise, I had a on the street practise. And that’s great. But for me, the things that I really like to do and I was prepared to spend a lot of money on were, when I went travelling, and I had stayed in really lovely, unusual, not necessarily expensive, but great hotels, because it was about the experience. And part of that experience was just being completely blown away when you walked in by the decor, and the space and the way it was laid out. Part of it was the greeting. Part of it were the services. But it was overall the whole experience how the team who greeted you looked after you, how people greeted you in the bar and the restaurant, and you went away a few grand lighter after two days, and you felt like a king. So it was immediately apparent to me that what dentistry needed at the high end was something like that.

Mark Hughes: So the first practise, the reason I took it on was because it was actually a flat. The Harley Street area had for over 150 years a special lease called a reside and practise lease from the 1800s. And it was where a country doctor or a doctor who might have had a home in the countryside could have a room or rooms in Harley Street, but had a place to live. So you basically had a little flat, a little bed set, and you had your rooms downstairs and you went home with the weekends. So this was one of those old leases. So it was basically a two and a half three bedroom flat had a dental chair in one of the rooms, and one of the rooms is very spacious, had a beautiful bay window. The dental chair that was in there had all the piping running across the floor and it just looked absolutely awful. But I saw the space and went, “This is going to be cool, what we can do here.”

Mark Hughes: And the artistic side came out. I was always into colour, design, going to stay in nice hotels, having an interest in that. So I put all the elements that I found in those places into the design of the dental suite. So it wasn’t blue and white and red and orange. They were really soft tones of colours. We spent a lot of time really carefully choosing all the corian and all the cabinet colours and we used a dark chocolate brown. I don’t if you remember, back in those days.

Prav Solanki: I do. What you’re describing there is the experience when stepping into a boutique hotel.

Mark Hughes: That’s right.

Prav Solanki: That is my first experience of walking into your practise.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: And it’s still the experience today.

Mark Hughes: And in those days, the boutique hotel was where my mindset was, and I just done up my flat. The flat that I bought in Battersea all those years, I had a girlfriend who was an interior designer, she studied at Inchbald London, one of the most famous interior design schools in the world. She introduced me to two of her buddies, one of whom now I’m godfather to his kid, we’ve been friends for years. It was Christopher, everyone calls him Chip and they done up my flat and I was like, “Next, the practise.” And so Ninya was her name she helped me with the Covent Garden practise. We completely really redid that. Did up my flat and I thought, “Right, the next thing is now the new practise.”

Mark Hughes: So it was designed like a boutique hotel, you wouldn’t get away with some of the stuff that we did, these days CQC put an end to soft furnishings and in some places in the practise and you’re limited by all sorts of different things. But at the time, it had that really, welcoming, warm, I’m staying in a cool hotel feel, and then it was all about training the team, it was all about the customer service experience. So that was back in 2003, 2004. And ever since it’s been working on and developing versions of that and improving on that.

Prav Solanki: So Mark, you still got that amazing practise. People talk about Harley Street Dental studio, they know what that means. There’s a new chapter coming in your sort of business evolution development, called define clinic I believe.

Mark Hughes: That’s right.

Prav Solanki: Would you like to just tell the listeners a little bit more about that. And once again, innovating the market and being ahead of the game. So just tell us a little bit more about define.

Mark Hughes: So the concept of define is initially bringing together an expert in cosmetic dentistry, and an expert in the field of aesthetics and plastic surgery. And the reasoning behind it was, certainly from my own perspective, a smile is not teeth, it’s certainly not teeth and gums. And it’s actually not even teeth, gums and just lips. It’s a whole face and a whole persona. And facial aesthetics is becoming more and more prevalently mixed with dentistry, a lot of dentists are doing it. The procedures are becoming much more accepted by patients, they are becoming much more predictable, and they’re actually becoming much more natural. So I met my wonderful partner Benji Dhillon, who’s younger than me, far better looking to me too.

Payman: We’ve had him on the podcast already actually.

Mark Hughes: Have you?

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Oh, he’s a great guy. And we were introduced by a mentor coach that we both share. In fact, I met Benji at school, what I mean by that is his youngest daughter and my daughter are in the same class at school together. So we met at a kids party. My wife-

Payman: As you do.

Mark Hughes: As you do. And when we got on and boom, we have the same mindset and philosophy. And we started referring patients to each other. And the more I referred patients to him and got his feedback, the more I started to look at the whole face of a patient. Even after 25 years of doing teeth and smiles and knowing a bit about aesthetics, and facial aesthetics and all of that kind of stuff. It just took on a whole new meaning. And then the possibilities, for example, patients with quite severe gummy smiles we were talking surgery, or two years of ortho plus surgery plus perio surgery. And nowadays, you can do lots of contouring and softening techniques that may not require the patient to get the result they want and have to go through all of that. And there’s more to it than that. And it’s about preservation.

Mark Hughes: The Fountain of Youth, for me is the next great thing in dentistry. And if not medicine, now, that might seem silly. Everybody’s been chasing the Fountain of Youth for millennia. But actually, I think we’re getting close to being able to provide that for people, or at least allowing longevity of the facial structures and of the teeth. I was at a lecture recently where somebody said that, “From a paleontological point of view, the teeth are only meant to last 30 years. They’re not designed to last 120 years and by 2050, some of us will be living to over 120 years old.”

Payman: Sure.

Mark Hughes: So Fountain of Youth, preserving youthfulness, for me, the two together absolutely go hand in hand. So define is all about enhancing the natural you, preserving the natural you with a smile in the face. And that’s the concept.

Prav Solanki: And your business partner, Benji, you were certainly at the top of your game when it comes to dentistry in terms of the education that you’ve had, that you’ve put yourself through, you’ve invested in, and the resource that you deliver to your patients. And equally, you’ve picked a business partner who is also … Just tell us a little bit about his credentials, and how they complement yours.

Mark Hughes: Well, so Benji, firstly, I mean, I’m touching again, on the fact that a lot of dentists do facial aesthetics. Now, I’ve never really got into it myself, I’ve dabbled in it. For me, I was never going to be good enough at it to call myself an expert. And I always think to myself, if my children, my mother, my wife wanted to have something done, would I do it myself or would I send them to somebody else? And this is a very clear thing I learned in Harley Street, why try and build a facial aesthetics business on Harley Street when you’ve got some of the top dermatologist in the world next door? And so Benji was clinical director of Allergan at the age of 30. He’s from a medical and plastic surgery background, there is nobody that I would want more to inject me in my face than somebody who’s gone through that level of training. So that’s why we’re doing it together.

Mark Hughes: Now, we truly believe in teaching dentists to be excellent at cosmetic dentistry and facial analysis and facial enhancement. But for me, the educator has to be the person who’s of the highest level of qualification and experience. He’s a dynamic, fun, friendly guy. And that to me goes hand in hand with the person I want to do business with.

Payman: Sure. Is teaching going to be part of it?

Mark Hughes: Most certainly. And mentoring as part of teaching, live patient teaching will be part of this. That’s something that very few actually do where the candidate, the mentee, the students will actually get a chance to do dentistry that they want to do with me sitting next to them, or Benji sitting next to them as part of their experience of learning.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Mark Hughes: So hands on is great, but hands on a patient, million times better.

Prav Solanki: Different experience. And then going back to Benji injecting you.

Mark Hughes: Yes.

Prav Solanki: Has he done it yet?

Mark Hughes: No it’s coming soon.

Prav Solanki: You would have that done?

Mark Hughes: Well, I tell you why. Yes. And I put it off for a number of years. Because I thought I was getting away with it. To be honest, when we shot the latest round of videos, and I’ve got this Indian Cary Grant next to me and a young Cary Grant and we’re both on the video together, I could see that certainly, I should have done something about prevention many years ago. I’ve got a lot of sun damage to my skin. I like to laugh. And I’ve been very stressed in my time. So I got a lot of wrinkles. And what I saw was something that really should have been intervened in 20 years ago.

Prav Solanki: So just tell me what what can you do? There’s guys out there listening to this, ears are pricking up. What are the options out there? Because all I know is Botox and fillers, right? That’s all I know about skin and stuff. I don’t use moisturiser, I never have done it. And I’m sure that I probably shouldn’t do. Has Benji educated you on what the sort of-

Mark Hughes: To a certain extent, yes. But that whole world is opening up to me. And in fact, we are working very hard at the moment to build an educational programme for dentists. So I am the prime candidate for his side of the educational programme. But there’s lots of amazing stuff out there in medical aesthetics, there are amazing machines that can be used to actually deliver certain results. As a medic, he can use those. A lot of us even as dentist can’t have some of the stuff in their clinics that we’ll be able to have. I see a time coming when dentist will. Especially if they reach a certain level of qualification. And I do see that coming. I see more and more regulation coming. So I think there’s an awful lot for me to learn. And that’s actually part of why we’re doing it together. Because he has an awful lot to learn or has learned an awful lot from me because I did his teeth.

Payman: What made you decide to move away from the West End for this project?

Mark Hughes: Two things. I live very close to the area and children are now five and a half and nearly three. And some days I’d spend four hours commuting backwards and forwards. And that’s four hours, not with them. It’s four hours, not enjoying leisure. It’s four hours not with my wife, it’s four hours sitting on a train, walking in the rain. And I just wanted to do something closer to home. So that was the motivation. The second was to build the kind of clinic that we’re building, which is similar in size to my Harley Street clinic.

Payman: As big as that?

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Payman: Really?

Mark Hughes: Yeah, it’s going to be over four and a half thousand square foot. Yeah. So again, it’s back to the experience. You can haven’t met a dentist doing aesthetics and maybe a dentist who brings in a doctor one day a week to do facial aesthetics in a high street practise. But for me, if we’re going to build something especially where we’re going to be teaching, it’s going to look the part and it’s really going to provide an experience.

Prav Solanki: Are we going boutique hotel again, or something different?

Mark Hughes: Well, I think the boutique hotel concept is almost died out. I think now it’s more about experiential stuff. It doesn’t have to be boutique. So yeah, it’s going to look fabulous, I hope. Why there? Why not the West End? it’s going to be easier for us to do it. Benji lives in the area, we see clientele travelling somewhere close to Heathrow. And the idea may well be that at some point, this concept could be replicated, could be taught how to be replicated. But I think primarily both of us wanted to be closer to home.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Mark Hughes: I’m not leaving the West End. And so I’m going to see all my patients there and continue there. But I will spend a couple of days a week at the new practise and build a team like I have done before. We’ve already recruited a lot of the key elements, one of whom was a young dentist that I took on and have mentored. And that’s something I find really rewarding. I really enjoy. And it’s an opportunity for me to pass on the things that I missed or didn’t learn. Because I didn’t have one.

Payman: What do you looking for when a young associate is looking for a job in a high end places that you’ve had and they haven’t worked in the West End before? What are you looking for? Do you look at their CV much? Or is it about them, the way they come across? What are you’re a couple of hacks you can us?

Mark Hughes: So it’s definitely both. I think it’s all about the person and their willingness to learn. But they must have a certain skill set, as well. So, when I’ve done this very successfully before and the person is completely under qualified, but I don’t mean under qualified in terms of personality and desire. I mean unqualified on paper, is giving them a shopping list, and say, “Go away and come back to me in three years, four years when you’ve done this.” And the most successful of those thus far came back in nine months and had done the entire list. So I had to talk to her again. And then we together developed a log book, like a mentor, like a scorecard.

Payman: Was that [inaudible 00:45:27]?

Mark Hughes: Yes it was. And so it had to be supervised and in a big practise I was able to bring somebody else in and slowly but surely allow certain treatments to be passed on to her under my supervision and that in a way is something that’s going to be part of a new clinic is actually developing a programme of education that has that built into it. If they haven’t got the shopping list go and get the shopping list and for example top of the list for me it was Chris Orr course certain others I still want you to go to Pankey, will get round to that.

Payman: What others?

Mark Hughes: Look I think-

Payman: Or does it depend on the person?

Mark Hughes: No I think fundamentally if you want to be an aesthetic restorative dentist there are certain places you have to go and certain boxes you have to take especially if you want to do the full compendium of treatments. So Pankey or alternatively if the focus is occlusion somewhere like Spear or a course in the US, you’ve got to learn how to prep teeth properly. So either one of the courses at the Eastman Pankey teach fantastic prep courses. So the Spear, Chris Orr course in the UK, for me hands down is one of the best in the world for introducing dentists. Yeah.

Payman: Yeah it’s a great course. Did You do that course?

Mark Hughes: I didn’t actually. But you know what, I probably would go back, I’ve been tempted to go back and do it again, just to refresh everything. And because Chris is such a great educator, but Chris and I are contemporaries. So he was building that business as I was building my practise. And I was going to the State’s an awful lot and spend an awful lot of time at the AACD, and did all the hands on courses like possibly could. Great value for money if you’re a young dentist, and it sounds expensive going to America but the hands on experience at AACD is second to none. Started the accreditation programme at AACD, started at BACD. Managed to get that this year.

Payman: Yeah, congratulations.

Mark Hughes: Thank you. So the willingness of a student or a young dentist to do all of those things, or at least begin them and to follow through on them. So it’s not just about saying it’s about doing. And I think to be successful, you have to care about people in dentistry. And for me fundamentally, kindness and a desire to help people overrides everything else you can possibly do.

Payman: Very true.

Prav Solanki: Let’s talk about the real Mark Hughes.

Mark Hughes: Oh dear.

Prav Solanki: We’ve heard about dentistry, we’ve heard about the businessman, the innovator, pioneer more about the family man, just talk to me through like the first time you met your wife, can you take us back to that?

Mark Hughes: Yeah, very much so. I met her in a great pub in Wandsworth called the Ship. And I was nearly 40 at the time, if not 40. So I hadn’t come close to getting married at any stage before that.

Prav Solanki: Just not met the right person.

Mark Hughes: Just not met the right person. Absolutely. And I think within minutes of meeting her I thought, “Whoa, this is definitely somebody I’m interested in seeing again.” And then we went on our first day to the Connaught hotel. And she looked absolutely drop dead.

Prav Solanki: Can you just go back to the Ship?

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: First time you laid eyes on her.

Mark Hughes: Well, she was gorgeous.

Prav Solanki: Wait, when I first met my wife I was like, she’s super hot.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Is that what was going through your mind?

Mark Hughes: Exactly the same thing.

Prav Solanki: And then you spoke to her?

Mark Hughes: When you look at somebody and you think all the opposite of actually what they’re going to come out and say?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: And she was a very successful musician, classical musician, highly skilled at that. And she’d had many different sort of variations in her career, was learning to become a jeweller. So I just found her absolutely fascinating, really interesting. And she was charming, and delightful and warm and friendly. And yeah, I think I pretty much decided on our first proper date that this could go somewhere.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: You had your first date, was it Connaught?

Mark Hughes: Connaught. Yeah. It’s a favourite of ours.

Prav Solanki: And then just obviously carried on meeting each other. And-

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: -what point did you pop the question?

Mark Hughes: In Paris about nine months later.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Payman: That’s pretty quick.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. You’ll laugh at this. So I had planned all weekend, I was carrying a little bottle of champagne in my pocket. It poured with rain the entire weekend. So all of my hotspots to go down on one knee were just totally ruined. The end of the weekend was coming. I was panicking more and more and eventually managed to get down to the river side to the side of the sand. And she literally turned around and said, “Get on with it. Please.” So down on one knee popped the question. And the rest of the weekend could continue. But that’s her all over. And that’s why I actually really why I married her.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: She’s strong willed and does not suffer fools gladly. And sometimes you just need somebody to support you in other ways. And yeah, so she certainly sorted me out, that’s for sure. Yeah. And then we got married quite soon after that, I have been married seven years now with two beautiful children.

Prav Solanki: Tell us about your kids.

Mark Hughes: Girl firstly, all right. She’s five and a half. And she’s an angel. I always thought growing up, “I want to boy, I need to have a boy.” My wife was, “I definitely don’t want to have a boy.” And this gorgeous little girl came along. And she’s total daddy’s girl and I’m a total daddy’s girl, daddy. And then we decided to have another one. And our son came screaming out, and he’s been full of laughs and a barrel of fun, but two totally different personalities, and both absolutely adorable. And now life has a completely different focus. You’ve been through that Prav, I’m sure.

Prav Solanki: Sure. And so let’s just talk about that, prior to kids. Like you go from prior to kids, and then you have kids and life takes a huge shift. It certainly did for me in terms of priorities, and just what I think about the future and everything, right, and they become my all important thing.

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Just talk to me, how did Mark Hughes change?

Mark Hughes: In all of those ways. And I think the strangest thing about becoming a parent is that you have absolutely no idea what’s coming, you might have an idea about it. But you absolutely have no idea how unconditional your love for that little person, and how it brings you and your partner, your wife together, how that suddenly changes everything and every aspect of how you think. And it’s sort of reinvigorated me in a way and made me reassess a lot of other things that I had made decisions about and realised, actually, you know what, if I’d had this influence 10 years ago, things would have been a little bit different. And again, maybe even better, in some ways, or the focus would have been slightly different. That’s my be all and end all now.

Payman: But did you have that moment of first moment you held a child you felt there and then?

Mark Hughes: Yes. And my wife had a very difficult labour and ended up almost having caesarean section. We were touch and go for a while as to whether or not she was going to breathe when she was.

Payman: Your wife?

Mark Hughes: No. The baby when she was actually forceps delivered. And I think it was something like a day and a half we were in hospital. And she was tiny, she was only six pounds. And my wife had been anaesthetised, she was behind the screen as it were and daddy has to go over when they’re cleaning the baby up and put the little girl under the heat lamp. And she was not breathing. And there was a difficult labour and there was that risk. And it was our nearest NHS hospital. There wasn’t a specialist on board, our gynaecologist wasn’t there, our obstetrician wasn’t there, it was whoever was on call that night, and they were this junior doctor was 15 years younger than me. But they were amazing, actually. And the hospital was fantastic. God bless the NHS, it was absolutely wonderful.

Mark Hughes: And they did everything that they could to help us. And she breathed. And I wasn’t overcome with floods of tears, or that kind of Hollywood type emotion. I was incredibly relieved. And the relief passed instantaneously. And then there was this overriding sense of joy and love for this creature that looked a little bit like my wife and looked a little bit like me. And then it’s almost as if you can see your future. But you can’t see it. You know that all you have to do now is look after this little person. But as to what road you’re going down. And that’s an adventure greater than any educational adventure, any business adventure. You asked me earlier, why Beaconsfield, I want to be close to my kids and have them be part of the practise as well. And we are going to treat children and do orthodontics and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it’s become everything in my life.

Prav Solanki: That’s great. And just quick question. Are you a celebrity dad? So you walk through the door and the kids come running and screaming and throw their arms around you?

Mark Hughes: Absolutely. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And that’s the best feeling in the world.

Prav Solanki: It is.

Mark Hughes: And my wife hates it. Especially when she’s been choring with them.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, totally. I know that they’re amazing. They’re fantastic. But yeah, so there’s some days I just can’t wait to get out of the practise, especially in the West End. And I’m like, “It’s time for me to get on the train, get home, catch them before bed, do bath time.”

Payman: Are there any days where you can’t wait to get back to the practise?

Mark Hughes: Yeah, Mondays? Two three days with the kids at home?

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Oh, yeah. I’m up at six and off we go. Yeah.

Payman: Do you relate to this idea yet. At the weekend, you’re working for them?

Mark Hughes: Yeah, absolutely.

Payman: Whereas during the week, you’re working for you?

Mark Hughes: Yes. And it’s far easier working for you.

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. Well, I’m in control of that situation.

Prav Solanki: Totally.

Mark Hughes: Mostly. For the most part. I’ve had 25 years experience of it. I can think I can handle most of the situations that are presented to me, whereas with children, no-

Payman: Yeah, but loads of people hate Monday morning as well, you know about them, too.

Mark Hughes: I love going to work because I love my work. Working for the accreditation and getting back into clinical dentistry made me fall in love with it again. And so yeah.

Payman: What’s the biggest clinical mistake you’ve ever made? We were asking everyone today.

Mark Hughes: I had to think about this for a while now. But I know what it is. I put two central incisor veneers on the wrong way around.

Payman: Cemented them?

Mark Hughes: Yeah. And had to immediately apologise to the patient. Re prep them, re temporise them, put all the others on. And got them remade.

Payman: They actually fit kind of?

Mark Hughes: Well, they sort of fitted in a mess of cement.

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: And then you realise on clean up when they’re being tacked in.

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: What can you do? When they are tacked in, you probably can’t get them off cleanly. And yeah, so it’s either go for it or not. Thankfully, I noticed. They were quite symmetrical teeth.

Payman: I mean, how about a clinical tip that you can share?

Prav Solanki: Like a hack.

Payman: A hack, your hack, you?

Mark Hughes: Okay.

Payman: You found it out?

Mark Hughes: It’s not necessarily directly clinical, what I would say to everybody is get in an hour before your first patient every single day.

Payman: An hour?

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Payman: Oh nice.

Mark Hughes: Now because you need time to wind down, you need time to check what’s coming in through your door. In fact, you should have already done that days before. I’m constantly updating and talking to my nurse about what’s coming in the next week. And we always go through-

Prav Solanki: Oh wow. That far ahead?

Mark Hughes: Yeah. Because sometimes the patient that you wanted to have an hour and a half for has been given 30 minutes, if you find that out the minute they walk in, you’re either rushing, apologising, and somebody’s going to be upset, either you, the patient or your nurse. And for me, preparation is everything. So get in early, get ready for the day, plan start to finish the day. Make sure everything’s ready.

Payman: Do you guys have one of those daily huddles?

Mark Hughes: Absolutely. It’s one of those-

Payman: And you go through individually, each patient that’s going to come in?

Mark Hughes: Hundred percent. It’s the most important thing in all practise organisation and business organisation you can possibly do. There’s a great documentary about the Carriages hotel, and-

Payman: Yeah, I saw something on that.

Mark Hughes: Right.

Payman: Excellent.

Mark Hughes: Did you see their morning huddle?

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: So all the senior management team get together in a room, they’re all standing, nobody’s sitting down drinking coffee, papers out, plan for the day, who’s coming? What are we doing? Now when the Emperor of Japan, is due in your dental practise, you got to be ready. And sometimes we have royalty and leaders of industry and politicians that have ended up at the practise. We have to know if there’s five security guards coming. We also have to know if there’s a lady who’s coming who’s unwell and needs a wheelchair and we have to be ready. So I mean, those are obvious things. But for me getting in early, reviewing your day, not leaving the practise until you’ve at least reviewed your next day, if not your upcoming days. It’s so important to be ready for people and to be ahead of the game. I check my lab work if it arrives a day or two before the patient’s due for the seating. I’ll take it all out and have a look at it on the models. I can’t tell you how often we’ve had lab work that belongs to a different patient.

Payman: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: Now you don’t want to find that out when you’ve given them local and taken their temps off.

Prav Solanki: So, how far in advance do you check the lab work? As soon as it comes in?

Mark Hughes: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Mark Hughes: So we have a system and especially when you work together with an assistant, a really good assistant who’s on board with that. We just have a routine and she chases me up and I chase her up. And that teamwork is absolutely crucial to getting fantastic results for people. So yeah, I mean, I did one today, there’s a guy coming on a Wednesday. I was coming to see you guys this afternoon. So I had to be ready, have all my stuff sent to the lab. So I’ll send PDFs and descriptions and photographs to the lab for wax ups and how I want the veneers to look all has to go out before I leave. Yeah, so I had a look at the crown, made sure it was the right … We had the right screwdriver ready on Monday for the type of abutment channel, for the implant crown, all of that kind of stuff’s really important. It’s more important than people get credit for.

Prav Solanki: Mark, you spend a lot of your time changing people lives, creating emotional stories, or that big, can you remember one particular patient that you’ve had the biggest impact on their life, what you did and what that impact was?

Mark Hughes: So yes, I can. So she’s a lady who came to me in her 60s, she sucked her own fingers for her entire life, not a thumb a couple of fingers. So she had managed to orthodontically extrude and procline all of her anterior teeth over a 50 year period, from the time that she had her incisors. And she basically had this gigantic overjet teeth splayed and her whole face had changed because of her lip contour, over 50 years of this changed. And she had been told in many practises that she needed to have orthodontic surgery, or extractions of all those teeth. And the placement of implants or all on fours and all of these sort of somewhat popularised treatments. And what I figured out having run a few diagnostics, she had healthy teeth, you could align them back into position. Yes, it wouldn’t be a perfect orthodontic result, and she would still have an overjet. But what you can do sometimes simply can have such a massive impact. She had no idea that this was possible.

Mark Hughes: So when I showed her her clinCheck simulation for Invisalign, for example, she was totally blown away, she cried, broke down, cried that she hadn’t done something about it 15, 20 years ago, because she thought that she didn’t have any options. And I think that’s a really important lesson for young dentist, is that some people are given misinformation, and they don’t know what’s out there, and what the possibilities are. And to find that something out 20 years later, that could have been dealt with, it must be heartbreaking for people. The plus side is then you go on and you do it and you deliver the result. But she has been given an idea of what it would look like and then you deliver a result that’s even better than what you had anticipated. You’ve changed somebody’s, not only their life, I mean, you change their confidence, you change their ability to eat, you change what they wear, you change how they dress themselves, how they put their makeup on, how they live their life.

Mark Hughes: So it’s not just about confidence about how they engage with other people. And if you can revolutionise or develop somebody’s confidence to such an extent they almost become a different person. The person that they are with their family that they’re not ashamed of, they can now present that to the rest of the world and that is an extremely wonderful gift for somebody like me and my colleagues to be able to do and that’s really the motivation that’s a very special experience.

Payman: Do you also get emotional?

Mark Hughes: Yeah. Occasionally when Liverpool lose.

Payman: How did you become a Liverpool fan?

Mark Hughes: Well, like I was a child of the 70s there were no other teams.

Payman: They were doing well.

Mark Hughes: There was no other team

Payman: Well, thanks a lot for doing this.

Mark Hughes: Pleasure. I really enjoyed it actually.

Payman: It’s been a lovely conversation.

Mark Hughes: Yeah. Interesting, I’ve known you guys for years and we’ve never really had this conversation.

Payman: Yeah, I was just thinking that.

Mark Hughes: It’s great. Thank you so much for the invitation. I really appreciate it.

Payman: And really good luck with the event. It sounds really exciting.

Mark Hughes: Thank you so much. Yeah, it should be good. It should be fun.

Prav Solanki: It will be great.

Mark Hughes: Cheers guys.

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.