Month: July 2020

Zaki: To young dentists, I would say life is like sliding doors. The film where you either enter the tube and your life goes in one direction or another. Life, for me, is like that, because if my mom didn’t have that chat with my dad, we would have been in the Middle East and I would have not been a dentist and I would have ended up… If I didn’t have that chat in the lift with Richard Palmer, I wouldn’t have been where I am. If I didn’t do Newland Pedley Prize, he wouldn’t have thought this guy is good and I wouldn’t have been accepted on the MSc. If I didn’t get all those knockbacks from the interviews to get into private practise, where I thought what’s the quickest thing I can do, diploma in sedation, I wouldn’t have been in that lift. Everything you do leads to something else.

Speaker 2: 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: So, Zaki, nice that you came in. Unfortunately, it’s just me today, no Prav.

Zaki: Yeah. I was looking forward to meeting Prav.

Payman: Have you not met him before?

Zaki: I have.

Payman: We go back a long way, all the way to VT, and I remember at the time, even, [inaudible] were pretty ambitious VT. It’s a bit interesting actually, what I remember about you and what you remember about me. I remember you being quite an ambitious guy.

Zaki: Do you want me to say what I remember about you? Yeah, ambition, I suppose everyone needs to be a bit ambitious, don’t they?

Payman: Yeah, but out of the 12 people or whatever in the group, I felt like you stood out as being ambitious. I don’t think at the time you were talking about implants.

Zaki: No.

Payman: No, I remember you saying, “I want a multi-surgery clinic.” The funny thing is, you didn’t open a clinic for years and years after that. But, let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? What kind of a kid were you?

Zaki: I was born in Beirut. My dad, back then, had the choice of… He was working in a bank in Lebanon. He had the opportunity… Two choices, either to go to London and start working in the bank that wasn’t even set up yet, back then in the 70s, or, just, to take the easy route and go and work in Amman in Jordan. He chose the easy route. He said, “No, I’ll go to Jordan. I don’t want to go and set up a new bank in the UK,” and he chose Jordan. My mom, at the time, said to him, literally, the night before we were going to fly to Jordan, or a couple of days before… she said to him, “Listen, there’s so much opportunity you hear about in Europe and all that in London.” Actually, my parents got married in London. They had to elope, but that’s another story. She said, “Let’s go there. If it doesn’t work out, we’ve always got this option.”

Payman: How old were you at the time?

Zaki: Three. So, we came to the UK when I was three years old.

Payman: Okay.

Zaki: He just looked at her and said, “You’re absolutely right,” and that’s what we did. Two days later, he phoned up and told his bosses at the time and said, “Actually, I’ll give London a go.” We never looked back.

Payman: Do you remember?

Zaki: I remember-

Payman: Your first day in London?

Zaki: I do remember London, but I don’t remember Beirut much.

Payman: Oh, you don’t remember Beirut at all?

Zaki: Yeah. The only things I remember from Beirut were the times, all the-

Payman: There was a lot of trouble.

Zaki: Bombings and-

Payman: Which year was that?

Zaki: We came ’76.

Payman: It’s the middle of the civil war.

Zaki: Yeah. So, there was a lot of… I remember the sounds, and my parents have photos of us… whenever the bombing came and we had to either go to a shelter or lock yourself in the house. We’d hide in the bathroom. We have photos of me and my sister with my mom, literally, curling up on the floor of our bathroom, just to hide from all the sound and everything. So, I remember the sounds from those days, but I don’t remember anything else from Beirut. But, I remember our first flat when we came here and where we stayed and all that. Yeah.

Payman: Where was that?

Zaki: Marble Arch.

Payman: The same one you-

Zaki: No, we rented when we first got here, just to suss the area out. It was a small flat. My sister was two, I was three. Literally, every time we moved or bought another flat, it was in that area. My parents still have a flat in that area.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: They just got used to it. That’s where I was brought up, basically, in around Marble Arch and Mayfair and that area, yeah.

Payman: Then, as a kid in school, were you a swotty kid?

Zaki: I don’t think I’m a swotty kid. I was never a swotty kid, but I always seemed to have pass all my exams-

Payman: Hard worker?

Zaki: Yeah, I used to work, but nothing excessive. I wasn’t super intelligent. I wasn’t back then and I’m not now. But, I seem to get through the exams and somehow get through anything that was put to me.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: But, I wasn’t swotty. I wasn’t a geek or anything like that.

Payman: So, what do you remember as a kid? What were your highlights? Were you a sporty kid? What kind of kid were you?

Zaki: Yeah. I was quite sporty, but not in the mainstream sports. Not rugby. I was okay at all those things. But, racquet sports, badminton and squash, and that sort of thing.

Payman: Tennis-

Zaki: I used to love that. Tennis was the weakest one out of them. But yeah, I used to love badminton, squash, all the other… table tennis, all that sort of thing.

Payman: We’ll have a game upstairs now, we’ll see.

Zaki: We will. I have one at home, so-

Payman: Me too. We’ll see how well you do. All right. Do you remember when you decided to do dentistry?

Zaki: Yep.

Payman: What was the story of that?

Zaki: I like the sciences. I remember, at my careers day… GCSE, I got an A in French. I did French a year early. I got an A in French. My sister went to the [lycee] so I was-

Payman: Like my kids.

Zaki: Yeah. I was all right at French. Funnily enough, my parents sent her to the lycee when she was three, or four. Then, they put me in an English school and said, “Oh, boy has to go English school, girl goes to French school. Then, they said, “Wow, she speaks fluent French, let’s put Zaki into French school.” I went there when I was older, maybe, about six or seven and my French wasn’t good enough, thank God. Because, otherwise, I would have ended up in French school. So, I stayed in English. So, my career’s advisor basically said, “You got an A in French, A in Spanish, an A in Arabic, English, you need to do languages.” I just said, “Well, what am I going to do with languages?” He said, “You could work for the United Nations, you could be a translator, you could”… I just thought, what am I going to do with my life with that?

Zaki: Languages is good to have, and it’s very useful, but it wasn’t a career. I liked the sciences. That was my thing. I said, I want to do the sciences. Then thought about medicine. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a doctor, but my dad didn’t want me to do it. So, he just spoke to me and he said, listen, why don’t you become a banker like me, do business, something like that. Something general that you can find your way. I didn’t want to do that. I had a bad experience that put me off banking when I was much younger, and I said, there’s no way I’m doing banking.

Payman: What does that mean, bad experience?

Zaki: So, when I was about 9 or 10, he took me into his bank. Now, if you Go to Kensington High Street, there’s a store Massimo Dutti.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: That was my dad’s bank. Literally, that corner plot was… it was called Arab Bank Limited. I used to get picked up from school. We had to a driver back then, that was with the bank. He picked me up from school, we went and picked my dad up from work, and, sometimes, if I’m early, I’d go in, I’d sit on his desk in his big armchair, swinging around. I just saw this red button under his desk, and I didn’t know what it was. I was just messing about on his computer and stuff. So, he went to get his coat and whatever. So, I press this button, nothing happens. It wasn’t one of those buttons, like a click button, it was just one that went in.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: And, that was it. Thought nothing of it. Anyway, he gets his coat, we’re walking out the door, and it was, literally, like those movies, the doors opened and police cars came from everywhere. Not with guns, but almost… as a kid, I thought they were holding guns at me.

Payman: It, literally, scared you so much you didn’t want [crosstalk 00:09:09]-

Zaki: All these police cars came and they’re asking my dad, was there a burglary? My dad just says, no. Then, literally, one minute later, I was just standing there-

Payman: It clicks.

Zaki: Imagine, five, six police officers and my dad, everyone’s face just turned around and looked at me and I went bright red, didn’t know what to say. So, that put me off banking.

Payman: It would have been interesting. You could have done so many things around business. Medical and science, did you have anyone in the family who was a dentist or doctor?

Zaki: No, not at all. Not a single-

Payman: It was off your own back, you were saying, I want to be a doctor.

Zaki: Not a single person. I just knew I loved biology and physics and that sort of thing, chemistry.

Payman: Which school were you at?

Zaki: I was at [Dulwich] College.

Payman: Oh, yes.

Zaki: Yeah. I was at boarding school as well. I didn’t need to be, but, funny thing is, I actually said to my parents, I wanted to be a weekly border because it’s not far. We were living around Marble Arch area, it’s not far, but I was too lazy to carry my bag for sport every day. So, I asked them to be a weekly boarder. So, I’d come back home on Friday and go back on Sunday night. Yeah. You know what? It was the best times for me because the people I… it’s like a family, boarding school.

Payman: Boarding school, some people love it, and some people hate it. Do your kids go to boarding school?

Zaki: No, that was a big debate with that.

Payman: Would you?

Zaki: Well, I think it depends on the child because, for me… and also the age. I know some people put their kids in when they’re seven, which I think is too young. But, I went in at 13, and best years of my life. 13 to 18 at boarding school. It was nice because it was weekends, I could go back. I’d have my Middle Eastern friends that I’d hang out with and go clubbing and stuff. Remember the Henry J Beans days? You know those days.

Payman: Yeah, man.

Zaki: Yeah. So, I loved it.

Payman: How old is your oldest now?

Zaki: 14.

Payman: This is what I mean, if he was in boarding school now, that would be… My oldest is coming up to 13, I’m already aware that we’ve only got another three or four or five years with him. We’ve only got another two or three years where he’s paying any attention to us.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: So, if you ship him off to boarding school… ship him off’s the wrong word… If he goes off to boarding school now, you’ve lost those years with him.

Zaki: Yeah, there was a big debate with my wife, Dominique. I said, I want him to go… I’ve got two boys. I want them to go at 13. Not before, I wasn’t even thinking before, but she just said no. I said, “Why?” She goes… Exactly, the reason you said, “I want them around.” When they’re 18, they can go off. I want them… you know?

Zaki: So, it’s a big debate and, actually, boarding schools so expensive now anyway. I was, “Okay,” when I saw the fees. I backed down pretty quickly. But, no, they’re happy where they are now. I wouldn’t change it actually. I think it’s good being a day boy. Yeah.

Payman: Then, you decide dentistry. You applied to all London places?

Zaki: No. I applied-

Payman: There was only three in London at the time, wasn’t there?

Zaki: Yeah, I applied to Kings and Guy’s, and I applied to, actually, more outside. I think it was Manchester, Liverpool.

Payman: So, why did you decide on Guy’s?

Zaki: Well, I actually decided on Kings first, because one thing I hated about Guy’s, when I went, was the 30 floors. I just thought every single day. When I went for the interview, and when I went to look around, I was waiting ages for that lift. I thought, if I have to do that several times a day, it actually put me off. I don’t know, I can’t remember what it was, I actually didn’t like the Kings Campus either, Denmark Hill and all that.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: I got an offer at both, and, in the end, I just chose Guy’s. I don’t know why. I just liked the location more-

Payman: What were you like in dental school? Did you have a great time? Well, going to dental school in the same town as you live, for me… by the way, I tried to do that. I applied to Guy’s and the London-

Zaki: I know you ended up in Cardiff.

Payman: Ended up in Cardiff because I didn’t get the grades, as it happens. But, I was really happy, now, in retrospect, that I left home for university. But, at the time, as a kid that I was, I definitely didn’t want to leave London. I was a Londoner, and I wanted to go out with my buddies and all of that. But, did you end up spending more time with your existing friends, or did you really get into the university?

Zaki: So, no, I actually didn’t get into the university life as much as I should have. That’s one regret I have. I think, definitely, if my son, even if he was in the university next door to where we live, I’d tell him to stay in the halls or something, which I didn’t do.

Payman: Oh, you lived at home.

Zaki: I lived at home.

Payman: [inaudible 00:14:03].

Zaki: Yeah, it was a massive error. But, you know what, I lived behind Selfridges-

Payman: I would have done the same. If it was me, I would have been the same because I loved my life as a 17 year old. I thought I was the bee’s knees. I had everything I wanted.

Zaki: Yeah, I had my car, I had everything done for me. It’s, just, a bit of a mistake, actually, because I… and don’t get me wrong, I went out, I was in the bar with everyone and all this but not as much as I should have.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: So, that’s a bit of a regret but I’m still very friendly with all those people at Guy’s to this day. But, yeah, I wish I was there more.

Payman: At Guy’s. What kind of a student were you? Did you take to it like a duck to water?

Zaki: Yeah, I did. The thing with dentistry is that, if you don’t like it, you are a bit stuffed. If you don’t like dentistry while you’re studying, you’re, what am I going to do? But, I liked it. I never ever thought, no, this isn’t what I want to do. But again, you’re probably going to ask me, how were you at uni in terms of, were you a swot. So, I got through all my exams. I was never the brightest guy in the year. I wasn’t the bottom of the year either. I just got through all the exams. I didn’t fail any. I passed everything first time and that was it, just by doing, maybe, a little bit above average work at home, got through.

Payman: It’s an interesting thing, when you look back on your year now, did you think the people who were top of class are the top dentists? I don’t think so.

Zaki: No.

Payman: Some are, by the way.

Zaki: They’re probably going to listen to this, so I’ve got to be careful. No, honestly-

Payman: We were talking, what does it take to be a great dentist? What are the key skills? They’re none of the ones that get tested in college, really.

Zaki: No.

Payman: The key skills are humans skills. Like, soft skills.

Zaki: You learn that afterwards. A lot of what we did, whether it’s clinical and non-clinical, what you learnt and what you did at uni, is very different to when you leave.

Payman: What advice would you give now, someone who’s in undergrad?

Zaki: The main thing is, you have to like it. You have to have a passion for this sort of thing.

Payman: You actually interview as well, don’t you?

Zaki: Yeah, I’m there in a couple of weeks.

Payman: Would do you look for?

Zaki: As an interviewer, you can either be like Simon Cowell, a Mr. Nasty sort of thing.

Payman: Yeah, you try and put people [inaudible 00:16:31].

Zaki: I’m Mr. Nice Guy. I, sometimes, interview with Dominique.

Payman: Oh, really.

Zaki: It’s multiple mini interviews now.

Payman: Oh, really.

Zaki: So, I’m in one booth and then she’s in the next. I often make a joke and say, she’s a bit stricter than I. I’m Mr. Nice Guy, I want everyone to pass. So, I suppose, I’m not the best person for the job. Yeah.

Payman: Is it the same at home? Is she the bad cop and you’re the good cop?

Zaki: Oh, yeah.

Payman: With the kids?

Zaki: Yeah, you know Dominique, but she’s very… I couldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for her, without a shadow of a doubt. It’s probably like that for a lot of people you’ve interviewed. We qualified together, we studied together, we qualified together. We should be at the same level in terms where we all but you get married, and, inevitably… this might be a bit cliche, or I don’t know, anti-feminist, I suppose, but she took a step back, she looked after the kids. Her career took a step back, that allowed me to continue and do the BACD stuff that I did and be on the board for 10 years and become president. That’s allowing me to sit on the board of the ADI. All these things take time out of your family time, work time and all that, and I couldn’t do it without her.

Payman: Sure.

Zaki: You said you were ambitious even back then when you were younger. You thought I might have multiple practises, multiple surgeries. It’s hard enough. I go into my practise, and it’s a small practise… I go in and she does everything. I go in like an associate. I do my work-

Payman: It’s her practise more than yours, right?

Zaki: Yeah. I do my work, I leave, I don’t get paid, she pays herself, but she runs it. She hires, she fires, and it’s the same thing at home. A lot of a lot of us couldn’t be where we are now without them.

Payman: That’s a team. I was talking to Jenny [Pinda] this morning and asking her, is it harder to be a woman than a man in dentistry? She didn’t seem to think so. She doesn’t have kids. Kids, in the end, are going to slow down a career, for sure. But, for me, dentistry is one of the best careers for a mother.

Zaki: It is.

Payman: Because, you can do part-time. The relationships with the patient and so forth. But, you’re right.

Zaki: I lecture, actually… sometimes they do careers days, BDA do one and some others, where they get a dentist and they get a doctor… they get various people in healthcare and each person gives like an half an hour lecture to sixth-formers. Some of them come with their parents. The case for dentistry is compelling. The parents come up to me, saying, my son or daughter really wanted to do medicine, but after listening to you, they want [crosstalk 00:19:34], or they’re thinking about it.

Zaki: So, the case is, like you said, it’s such a flexible job, and it’s a really nice sort of… if you’re into medical, it’s a great profession to be in.

Payman: Do you reckon either of your sons are going to-

Zaki: I don’t know.

Payman: Would you like them to?

Zaki: I don’t know. I wouldn’t put them off if they said, look, I want to do it. I’m not going to say no. Definitely, dentistry is very different now to how it was when we qualified. A lot of people say it’s not a nice profession to be in anymore and there’s so much litigation and you’re always worried when GDC… all those sorts of things. But, I still think it’s a great profession. I’m still glad I’m in it.

Zaki: Whether I’d encourage my kids to do it, I don’t think I’d say, I want you to do… you know. But, if they wanted to do it, I wouldn’t stop them. But, I’d be happy if they wanted to do business and something broader that they could find their way.

Payman: It would be a massive advantage, though, to them, with both of you.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: I think about this all the time. Does it make sense or doesn’t it make sense? This question of, push them. No, I don’t want to push anyone to do anything that they don’t want to do. The other thing comes along of, maybe, you want your kid to do something grander than being a dentist?

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: If such a thing exists.

Zaki: Yeah. If you said to me, what your preference is? Dentistry is very… it’s a narrow field. Like I said, if you don’t it, you are a bit stuffed, you’ve got to like it. I see a lot of people that just do it because that’s all they can do. That’s all they’ve been taught. It’s hard to just change to something left field. Some people have done it, but it’s hard. So, I’d prefer them to do something much broader that gives them the opportunity to do various things, and then they can find their way.

Payman: You do so many different things. You work as an implantologist in lots of different practises. That roaming-

Zaki: Yeah, peripatetic.

Payman: Yeah, is that what it’s called?

Zaki: Yeah. I used to do that. I don’t do that… not much anymore. But, funny story, is that, when the recession kicked in 2009 and I’d meet a lot of my friends that did implants, and they’d be, yeah, it’s a bit slow, it’s really hit us and I’m not doing that many, how about you? I’d be… I was busy as hell. I was, “No, it’s great, it hasn’t affected me at all.” The difference was, is that they sat in one room in one location in one clinic.

Payman: That area-

Zaki: That area, yeah. Whereas, with me, I got off my ass and actually found the work. A lot of people said, Oh, yeah, do you like what you do, going around, whatever. Like, you know what, at least I was busy, at least the money was coming in, and I made lots of connections and networks. Then, we opened our practised up, I started reducing all that. I didn’t want to travel so much. Back then, I used to even go up to Scotland. I used to do all on fours.

Payman: Really?

Zaki: Yeah. Even, Fairlie, [inaudible] up there in Cherrybank, when I was… we go to Gleneagles every year. We’ve got one of these timeshare things up there. Even, once, I was there for a week, she’s, can you come over?

Payman: I was just going to ask you though, you visited lots of practises, you can see lots of different ways people work, what are some of the takeaways? What are some things you learned that you then put into your own practise?

Zaki: Well, one thing I learned was, the bigger the practise, the harder it is. It’s, obviously, just common sense, but it was exponentially harder because you’d have to keep everyone busy and you’d have lots of staff turnover. It just seemed a lot harder. On the face of it, people look at these practises from the outside and think they’re running smoothly and whatever. However, when you’re on the inside, it’s not always like that. That’s why we did something small.

Zaki: So, when there’s a recession, when times aren’t great, or there’s less patients coming in, I don’t have to worry. I still remember, shortly, after setting up my practise with Dominique, my dad got ill. I had a phone call from my sister. I was actually at a BACD Board Meeting. I had a call, she said, “Zaki, you got to come right now.” I, literally, took the next flight out. I was away from our new clinic for seven weeks on the trot. All I was thinking about is, God, what’s going to happen? I’m the one doing the high-end implant treatments, thousands of pounds, and I’m not there. The nice thing was that the rent is low, it’s a small practise, there’s not a huge monthly expenditure on staff wages and all that. There is, but it was manageable.

Zaki: Now, if I had a much bigger set up… and I remember talking to several people, and they’re, you know what, you’re so lucky, you’ve done something small. Whilst, you say I was ambitious and wanted to open up multiple surgeries, that’s my comfort zone. I’m happy like that. I’m happy, also, working and placing implants for other people, which I still do to this day.

Payman: Tell me about when your dad was ill? Where was that?

Zaki: He was in Amman, in Jordan. December, we have a BACD retreat, the two-day retreat that we always do just to plan the year ahead. Yeah, my dad was a smoker his whole life until he was around mid-50s, where he actually had a heart attack while we were on holiday in South of France. He had a triple bypass then, and the doctor said, he’ll have about 18, 20 years max after this. So, when he got to mid-70s, in my mind, I was thinking his heart would go, but, actually, what it was in the end, was lung cancer, which was missed. He was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, just fibrosis of the lungs. So, whenever he had a symptom of coughing or whatever-

Payman: Autoimmune thing.

Zaki: Yeah, it was just idiopathic. They didn’t know the cause. He had difficulty in breathing but he was carrying on as normal. But, the problem is, when you get diagnosed with something, every time you cough or… Oh, it’s your fibrosis. So, the cancer was missed. I remember I got really upset about this, that he went to his GP, my mum told them that he was coughing blood last night, oh, it’s his fibrosis. Now, all I remember from dental school when you learned medicine and all that, if there’s blood in your urine or stools or coughing, it’s serious. You need to… and they didn’t, they just said it’s the fibrosis, and it was missed. They said he’s got a week or two and he lasted, maybe, six or seven weeks, which is why I was there for that long.

Zaki: Yeah, it was a tough time. It’s funny, when you lose someone, you realise what you’ve lost, and you think, I wish I did this, I wish I said that, and all of that. So, tough time for me and my sister and my mom. But, yeah, life goes on.

Payman: The regrets you’re talking about. Do you mean, things you wish you’d said in that six week period or things you wished you’d done?

Zaki: Things I wish I’d done. We had a fantastic relationship with my dad all along. But, there’s always something-

Payman: Regrets are a feature of grieving.

Zaki: Exactly. There’s always something [crosstalk] I wish I did this, I wish I did that. I wish we went out for… I was going to say, I wish we went out for dinner more, but my dad was a-

Payman: A foodie.

Zaki: He would have gone out every night to a restaurant. He used to go to Nobu every other day. Nobu, Zuma, Chinese.

Payman: Sounds like a real [inaudible 00:27:39], your dad.

Zaki: Yeah. He really was. He loved that sort of thing. Every summer, we’d go to South of France and he loved it. He loved that life, going out and restaurants and stuff. Yeah.

Payman: Do you feel now that he’s gone, more responsibility with regards to your mom or…

Zaki: Definitely. My dad was a banker so my mom never had to-

Payman: Take care of paperwork and things like that.

Zaki: Never. She never had to pay any bills. It was all done by him. So, yeah, when my mom is here, I look after her and do all that side of things. When she’s in Jordan… my mom just goes back and forth, which is what my parents used to do when he retired. Half the year here, half the year there. My sister would look after my mom in Jordan because she lives there.

Payman: She lives there right now.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: [inaudible] about BACD, ADI, why are you the kind of guy who ends up on these boards? Do you enjoy that?

Zaki: You know what, I do. I wouldn’t be doing it, because when I finished the BACD presidency, why would you join the board of something else and do the same thing in a similar organisation?

Payman: But, what is about it? Is it knowing what’s going to happen before it happens?

Zaki: No, I just love being part of something. I love-

Payman: Contributing to-

Zaki: Yeah. I love contributing. I love teaching. I love imparting-

Payman: Your experience.

Zaki: My experiences over the years. I just love that sort of thing. A lot of people, even, think that we get paid being on these things, we don’t. It actually reduces our pay because it’s time out of work, time out from family. So actually, you’ve got to want to do it. It’s not because you want to be president of something. You don’t go in there and say, right, I’m going to start because I want to be president. I never thought that when I first joined. You just want to be part of something, and I really enjoy it. It’s like another family, BACD family or ADI or whatever. It’s just something I enjoy.

Payman: I think, being a dentist, one of the things that we all suffer with, is that Four Wall Syndrome. It’s one of the reasons I stopped doing dentistry. I was young and stupid, really. But, one of the reasons I stopped doing dentistry was, because I thought, was my whole impact going to be in these four walls, and four miles around the practise. I felt like, I got to do something bigger than that or something. I could have done 100 practises, right? But, at the time, I wasn’t thinking that way.

Payman: But, the question, I’m sure you enjoy going out to an ADI meeting and talking to people and whatever it is. But personally, I feel like I’m an outsider kind of person. I don’t enjoy those sort of meetings and preparing for them and talking in them and so on. So, what is it about you? How come, when we were in VT, there was 11 other guys and us… how come those other 10 are drilling, and you’ve gotten teaching, you’re doing the ADI thing… what’s this London fellowship thing, by the way? What’s that about?

Zaki: London Dental Fellowship. London Dental Fellowship is just an old organisation that, basically, a group of dentists set it up. There’s two things, London Dental Study Club and the London Dental Fellowship. London Dental Study Club used to meet on a first Tuesday of every month at the Saville Club. Then, as people got a little bit older, a couple of them veered off and started the London Dental Fellowship for the older dentists. In the end, it just became too similar but separate organisations. All it is, is that you meet six times a year, every month at the Saville Club. You have a three course meal, a speaker is invited to give a lecture so it counts as CPD. But, the main thing is, apart from learning a little bit, just the networking and being around other like-minded dentists and stuff. But, yeah, that’s-

Payman: You’re the most connected dentist I know. You really are though.

Zaki: I know it seems like that.

Payman: You definitely know more dentists than anyone else I know.

Zaki: The reason being is-

Payman: It’s the social animal.

Zaki: Yeah. The reason being, like you said, dentistry is boring, otherwise. If you’re just in a room with four walls and-

Payman: Some people are [inaudible] dentists, aren’t they? They love that. By the way, I’m sure, being an implantologist, you are that cat, too, right. But, different things, get us in different ways, don’t they?

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: What do you enjoy the most? You enjoy the patient piece? The clinical piece? The teaching bit? The president of the board bit? Travelling and teaching?

Zaki: I’ll tell you something, a little bit, which I’m not sure if I should say, but you said about the patient bit, about the building up rapport. The one thing I love about doing implants is the rapport. Is that I like going in, placing the implant, and then leaving, and that’s it. Then, someone else restores or I restore. I got a distinction in orthodontics, finishing dental school, so I thought I was going to be an orthodontist. Two things that put me off that. One thing was, back then, there was no such thing as adult orthodontics. It was kids. So, I thought, can I go through my whole life treating children? My whole life. I love kids, but I couldn’t do it the whole time. So, that was the first thing.

Zaki: The second thing was, it was this every month for a year or two or three, I’d have to see the same patient. Look, I like building rapport, but it was that sort of thing, every month you see the same person and it was making chitchat. It was too much. That’s what I like about implants, is that it’s far fewer appointments. I love the patients and all that. But yeah, that’s not the thing. I like doing clinical dentistry. I like them coming in and you transform things which, I suppose, a lot of dentists say.

Payman: No, not everyone says that. Some people say the treatment planning bit, is what really gets them, some people want to actually drill. But, implant work can get hairy as well.

Zaki: Definitely, yeah.

Payman: Speaking to Andy [Moore 00:34:14], he was saying, he does 750 implants a year, and, yet, he still needs to sleep early the night before he does a big case and he still got to have his wits about him.

Zaki: Yeah, definitely.

Payman: For me, it takes a bit of a… again, it’s a funny word for it, adrenalin.

Zaki: The funny thing is, if tomorrow, I had a whole day of patients, whether it’s single tooth implants or a full mouth case, or grafting or whatever, it doesn’t faze me, I’d be fine with the next day. If I had the next day of root canals or… I’d be sweating the night before.

Payman: Because, you’ve become an expert at it now. But, there was a time, wasn’t there? You chose to go into that surgical bit. I was scared of blood as a dentist.

Zaki: I didn’t think of implants at all. So, the story is, I finished dental school, I did VT and I was applying for… I wanted to do private as everyone does. I just thought, let me get a day a week or somewhere private. I applied to so many places, I got knocked back every single time. They just looked at me, they’re, you just qualified, you’re only a year out, you’ve got no further qualifications. So, I, basically, just thought, what am I going to do? I thought, the easiest, quickest thing for me to do, was to get a diploma in dental sedation. It was basically one day a week for six months at Guy’s hospital with David Craig and Mike [inaudible 00:35:50]-

Payman: Just to get something-

Zaki: Just to get a few letters. Yeah, just to get a slight difference to everyone else that qualified at my time. So, I did the six months. I got the letters. I kept on applying and went for interviews. Then, I started getting phone calls to say, I heard you’ve just done this diploma. If I give you a job, would you do the dentistry on your patients, but would you sometimes do some sedation for me? I was, yeah, of course. That was my foot in the door to get into private practise. I got phone call after phone call, saying, oh, you’re doing sedation for so and so, could you come and do it for me? I’ll offer you one day a week. That was my way in.

Zaki: So, it’s the best thing I did. I did a diploma in sedation shortly followed by a diploma in hypnosis. Because, I was just fascinated by… I wasn’t sure if I believed it. I don’t like doing the weekend course or whatever. I like to get a diploma or something or learn a lot about the subject, which is why I did an MSc in implants. I didn’t want to, just, do one of these-

Payman: That is the right way to do it, isn’t it?

Zaki: Definitely.

Payman: The people I know who’ve done the MSc, seem to be the ones who-

Zaki: What I was getting at is, the reason why I went into implants was, actually, while I was doing my diploma in sedation, I bumped into Professor Richard Palmer, who’s now retired… he taught me as an undergrad. He said, “Oh, what are you doing back here?” I said, “Oh, well, I’m doing a diploma in sedation.” He said, “What are your plans for the future?” The good thing about Guy’s, is that you could have a proper conversation in that lift because it was-

Payman: Such a long way.

Zaki: It’s a long way. So, we had a full-on conversation in the lift. I said to him, I’m thinking of going to the Eastman to do an MSc in [inaudible 00:37:40], crown and bridge. He said, “Well, you already know how to do that. Why do you want to do the same thing?” I just said, “Well, I want to do an MSc. And, secondly, I’ll just get better at it.” He said to me, “You know what, you’ll get better at crown and bridge, by just doing it in practise. You know how to do it, you’ll get better. Why don’t you think about doing implants?” I said, “I don’t know, it’s surgery”, and, like you said, “blood and all that.” It was not on my radar.

Zaki: He said, “Are you going to go through your career with referring every single patient that you see with a gap, whether it’s one tooth or more or whatever, to someone down the road, for them to do the implant and to get all the money from the implant. And, every single case you’ve got to refer out, why don’t you do it?” Anyway, I went home and I thought about it. I thought, actually, you know what, he’s right. It’s going to open up a whole new avenue for me to be able to do. In the lift, I said, “Look, I qualified ’96”, and this was ’98 when I was doing the diploma. I said, “I don’t have FDS, I don’t have anything. I’m going to have a diploma soon. But, I don’t have any qualifications, I probably won’t get accepted.” He said, “You never know, just apply.” Wink, sort of thing.

Payman: He had an MSc to fill.

Zaki: Yeah, probably. Back then, it was expensive at the time.

Payman: The best thing he could have done for you, right?

Zaki: But, it was oversubscribed so I applied and I got in.

Payman: Amazing.

Zaki: So, that was my foot in the door.

Payman: When did you go from scared of blood, and I would really love this? Was it during the course, was it afterwards?

Zaki: Okay, so, the reason why he liked me is because, at Guy’s, there was something called the Newland Pedley, [Madeline] Prize. There was a lot of prizes that students could enter in their final years. But this one, I suppose, is the most prestigious one because what it involved was, you had to write a 10,000 word thesis. You also had to treat a very complicated case that involved multiple disciplines. It had to involve dentures or crown and bridge or surgery or root canals, several different things. So, I remember Bernard Smith at the time… I think it was him, yeah. He said, “If you can treat this case for this prize, I think you’d do well.” So, I looked at it, it was crown lengthening. Imagine, as a student, doing surgical crown lengthening, because this guy ground the hell out of his teeth, and involved crowns and it involved dentures, bit of perio, involved quite a few things. He said, “If you can pull this off, you’d get it. I wasn’t even thinking about it at the time.

Zaki: So, I used to spend hours in the lab. I still remember, all my mates would go down the bar, and they’re, come on, Zaki, come, and I had to finish the lab work.

Payman: You did all the lab work for it as well?

Zaki: You do the lab work yourself. All the lab work was done by you. I did crowns, I did my own denture.

Payman: All of that work, or just on this case?

Zaki: No, no, just this case. If you’re going for this prize, you had to do the lab work.

Payman: Bloody hell.

Zaki: I used to stay till eight o’clock at night, and all my mates drinking in the bar. There was so many times I gave up… well, I was about to give up, and someone would come in… the guy who won it the year before me was James [Invest 00:41:11], fantastic dentist. They’d come in and people would see you, the year above, and say, stick with it. If you get it, it’ll be good. Luckily, I stuck with it, and I got it. Richard Palmer was one of the examiners.

Payman: That’s how he knew you.

Zaki: So, the sort of lesson in life is, that you’re always going to meet people who you’ll meet later on in life and he remembered. He thought, this guy’s got something. I suppose, it was that chance meeting in the lift while I was doing a diploma in sedation, and it was the Newland Pedley, so one thing leads to another.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: Yeah. That was it.

Payman: Very, very true. Tell me about the first time you met Dominique? Was she in your year? Was it first year?

Zaki: Yeah. You know when you don’t do biology or chemistry-

Payman: An extra year?

Zaki: No, she did an extra week.

Payman: Okay.

Zaki: So, she had to just get a bit of an orientation or something. So, she was there a week before me. So, when I came in, she was there for a week. She had met people already. So, when I go into my freshers week, I saw this girl and she knew everyone. She was smiling with them, laughing, joking and all that. I thought she was the year above. I thought she was older. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything if that’s what you’re thinking, but it was just, what a fantastic girl. She knew everyone already. Then, at Guy’s, because there’s 100 students per year, they split you into groups of 10. I was K… and O. She was Dominique O’Leary. We were in the same group. So, we practised injections on each other, cleaning, hygiene, all that. We’d practise on each other. She actually became my best friend in terms of just friends. We never dated while we were there.

Payman: For the whole five years?

Zaki: For the whole five years.

Payman: Oh, really?

Zaki: Yeah, we never ever… we were just friends. But, she was my good friend. If I wanted advice about girls or something, I’d asked her. She knew me backwards. Yeah. That’s how we met.

Payman: So, when did it go from friends to friends with… Yeah.

Zaki: So, what it was, is that, you know when you’ve seen someone for five years and dentistry is an intense degree-

Payman: So, this was after [inaudible] now? VT, was that when you…

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: Oh, really.

Zaki: So, it was during VT, when I thought, I’ve seen this girl every day of my life for five years. All of a sudden, she’s gone. She went down to do VT in Brighton and I was in Kent, Northfleet. Do you remember? Anyway, so I thought, actually, I miss this girl. So, I gave her a ring, months into VT. I went and said, can I come and see you, and went with a friend as well. Went down and visited her. I don’t know, that’s when I realised, actually, I do like this girl, and that’s when things started.

Payman: How long after that did you ask her to marry you?

Zaki: Well, qualified ’96 and we got married in 2002, engaged in 2001. So, I suppose, started dating ’97. I can’t remember when I actually proposed but it must have been 2000. Something like that.

Payman: Dominique’s half-Irish.

Zaki: Yeah, her dad’s Irish. She’s an O’Leary and her mom’s Iraqi, actually.

Payman: Okay.

Zaki: She’s more in touch with her Iraqi side.

Payman: Okay. So, you asked your parents or you told your parents? Well, how did that go?

Zaki: Yeah, when I started thinking, actually, this might be the one, obviously, in the Arab culture, you speak to your parents and say, look, what do you think? I told my dad, I still remember vividly… my dad was Muslim. He said, “No, I don’t think she’s the right one.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I prefer you to marry a Muslim girl.” I said, “But, why, mom’s Christian?”-

Payman: Maybe that’s why.

Zaki: Yeah, maybe. So, he said, “No, my preference is”, and you know. Actually, you do what your dad says in that Middle Eastern culture. What your dad says, you do. I didn’t question it, I just said, “Okay.” I remember, I went out with Dominique that night, and I told her, I said, “I really like you, but I don’t think we can go that way. But, I’d still like to go out with you.” She just looked at me and said, “Get out.” That was the first and only time I ever saw Dominique cry, or had tears in her eyes. She’s got very nice green eyes, and I saw her well up, and I left, and the whole way when I was driving home, I made a promise to myself… I was gutted, and I made a promise to myself that I never ever want to see her cry again, or have tears in her eyes. And, touch wood, she never has.

Payman: What did you do next? Did you tell your dad, forget it, I’m doing it.

Zaki: No, I went back, I was just upset. My mom, day in, day out, for that next week, she said, “What’s wrong?” I said… I spoke with my dad, not my mom. She said, “What’s the issue?” I told her. She said, “He said what?” I said, “Yeah, he said, he preferred me to marry a Muslim girl.” She goes, “After what we’ve been through?” Now, what my parents went through… my mom was Christian, my dad was Muslim. He loved my mom at university and he wanted her but the Christian side, her family, weren’t happy. They said no. To the point where she actually set him up with one of her friends and they actually got together and all this. He kept coming back saying, “I want you.” He even got engaged and married for a very short time.

Payman: What do you think was going through his head then?

Zaki: I don’t know.

Payman: Was he living out his duty to-

Zaki: I don’t know what it was. So, in the end, my parents, actually, did get married. They had to come to London and they had to elope, get married here.

Payman: Back there, there’s no civil ceremony.

Zaki: Yeah. So, they got married here. So, having run away to London, back in those days, to get married, and then he’s saying no to me, I didn’t get, and my mom didn’t get. So, in the end, she talked him round. The funny thing was, is that, he ended up loving Dominique, as much as my sister, as much as his own daughter. He made sure she knew it, because he knew he… I think his mistake was that he wanted me to marry someone that was, maybe, same culture. Actually, Irish people are very homey. They have that tight family-knit community. That’s what he wanted, it wasn’t the Muslim-Christian thing.

Zaki: But he said, Muslim. When we spoke about it later, that’s what it was. She’s very much like that. She’s very in touch with the Middle Eastern side and all this. He made sure that he told her all the time that, I love you like my daughter, and everything was fine after that.

Payman: Nice.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: Tell me about your week. Now you’ve moved out of London. How does that feel? From a central London guy. Where are you now?

Zaki: Weybridge.

Payman: Weybridge.

Zaki: When I went from living at home, behind Selfridges, to Fulham, I thought that was far enough. So, when I had to move to Weybridge, that was… It’s bad to think but my son… The teacher said to us, do you want us just to choose London schools that are suitable for your son or should we choose somewhere… we said, “No, choose somewhere outside but not too far.” They said, St. George’s College in Weybridge would be fantastic for him. So, we took him around all the schools, St. Paul’s and Kings, Wimbledon and all that. Then, we took him to St. George’s College, and he loved it. He saw 100 acres of land. Out of all the schools, immediately, looked at us and said, “I want to come here.” He thought, at the time, that we’d just pay and he can get in. We said no, you got to pass an exam. So, deep down, it’s bad to say this and I hope he doesn’t listen, but I thought, I hope he doesn’t pass to get in here because I wanted him to stay… well, I wanted to stay in London.

Payman: He will listen to this, you know?

Zaki: He probably will. But, he passed. We did 11-plus and he got into a few and he chose St. George’s. It was a bit of a shock to think, oh God, I got to leave, but, you know what, I actually love it now, because, as you know, there’s more space and all that, and I love living there. It’s a bit of a hassle with the commuting, but it’s not too far.

Payman: Much bigger place and all of that.

Zaki: Yeah, a little bit bigger.

Payman: It must be. In London, we’re so squashed, aren’t we? We’re so squashed, we don’t realise how squashed we are.

Zaki: Yeah, look, we had a five-bed house in Fulham, which, when we moved, I said to Dominique, I’m keeping this because, as you know, in London, once you sell, you can never buy because it just gets, exponentially, more expensive. So, I said to her, I’m keeping the house, because, in 10 years time when they finish school, I think I’m going to come back. So, we kept it and we rent it out now. But, actually, you know what, I can’t go back because-

Payman: Once you spread out-

Zaki: Once you’ve got the size, and you get used to… I like the lifestyle there. You can’t go back to having a smaller place. Yeah, I think I’ll probably sell it.

Payman: What do you miss the most?

Zaki: London. It’s just that ease of, just, staying out till midnight and not thinking, is there a train to go back or having to catch a cab back or whatever.

Payman: What about things like restaurants and things? Are they good ones out there? Not enough. When I lived outside London, that was the thing that used to bother me. Not enough.

Zaki: There’s a lot of nice gastropubs. When we first moved there, every Sunday we were trying a different… roast beef and all that sort of… I love that. But yeah, you can’t compare London. But, we still go out. It’s half an hour on the train. At night, when there’s no traffic, it’s a 35-minute drive. It’s not bad. So, we still go out for dinners.

Payman: It’s a nice area, man. It’s a nice area.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: I was there recently, actually.

Zaki: You should have called me.

Payman: Yeah. It was our anniversary, I didn’t want to call you.

Zaki: No.

Payman: Tell me this buddy, if, say, your kids says he wants to be a dentist, what advice would you give him regarding career? Would you tell him to go into implants? Do you think implants are a good way to go?

Zaki: Yeah, definitely. I’d say to him, now, that there’s adult orthodontics, I’d say orthodontics is good. Dominique loves doing orthodontics. She’s not a specialist but that’s what she likes to do. She got a bit disillusioned, actually, with just doing general dentistry. She went on Anoop Maini’s course, and, God bless him… she went on his Six Month Smiles course at the time. She did that and she came back and she said, that’s what-

Payman: Invigorated.

Zaki: Then, she became a Six Month Smiles mentor and, all that, and she found her mojo again. She loves doing Invisalign and braces and stuff. But, yeah, I’d tell him to do something like that. I don’t like endo and that sort of thing, but just ortho, implants or general restorative work.

Payman: Tell me about when you got into whitening? It was surprising. [inaudible] surprising because you used to do thing in Selfridges, right?

Zaki: Yeah. Selfridges, was great working there. We worked there. It was only open for three years, but it was fantastic.

Payman: You and Chris [Haw 00:53:33].

Zaki: Well, it wasn’t Chris Haw to start with. Sorry, it was [Aura 00:53:40], owned by Julian Perry at the time. He then sold to [Dentix 00:53:43], and then it went on to James [Holland 00:53:46], and all that. But, when it sold to Dentix, Chris Haw was clinical director of dentists. So, his course, which is a fantastic course that every young newly qualified dentist should do, by the way… If anyone wants advice, to do his course because it’s a very nice, broad, well-researched, well-structured course that I recommend every new graduate to do. But, at the time, we were his guinea pigs because when he was starting to do the course-

Payman: He started in Dentix, didn’t he, teaching the associates?

Zaki: Teaching the associates. Since, we were just bought by Dentix, we did his course, which was obviously much smaller.

Payman: Yes.

Zaki: Yeah, so that’s how it started.

Payman: But, then, getting into whitening as a teacher?

Zaki: This is the thing, a lot of people think that, why is someone with an MSc in implants doing whitening? It’s just two things that are far apart. But, what it was, remember in 2008 when hygienists and therapists were allowed to do teeth whitening, there was no courses.

Payman: That’s right. [inaudible 00:54:50].

Zaki: Exactly. So, the hygienist that started working for us said, there’s no courses out there for us. So, I said, Well, look, I’ll train you. I said, look, I’m not going to just train you. Get some of your friends and she got together five or six hygienists. In our practise, we had a screen, I did a lecture for them. Me and Dominique did a hands-on you course of, even, how to make the trays-

Payman: Suck down.

Zaki: Yeah. Not as good as your tray.

Payman: Cheers, buddy.

Zaki: How to make the trays, how to put it on models, how to do the whitening, A to Z of whitening, and they loved it. Then, their friends start saying, can you do a course for us? We thought, actually, we could do business out of this. So, we started K2 dental seminars. We started doing a lot of courses for hygienist, hands-on courses. Then, we were working with Discus Dental at the time which was, as you know, Zoom and all of that. Discus Dental then got bought out by Philips. Philips knew nothing about teeth whitening and I thought the courses were going to stop. Because, we used to do our own courses as well as all the courses for Discus Dental. But, then, we stopped our courses because it was so busy with Discus. I thought that would fizzle out. We’re going to stop because we used to do our own courses and as well as all the courses for Discus Dental, but then we stopped our courses because it was so busy with discus, and I thought that would fizzle out.

Zaki: But then, got a phone call from Philips to say, could you do the courses for us because they literally knew nothing about teeth whitening. That’s how it started. So, I started doing all the courses and lecturing for Philips, and actually-

Payman: Still teaching hygienists, or had you moved on to dentists by now?

Zaki: The whole thing was set up for hygienists but, all of a sudden, people that… even consultants in hospitals, who were so experienced in crown and bridge and doing restorative and occlusion and all that, knew nothing about teeth whitening. So, some of them started doing the course as well. So, it became hygienists and dentists. Then, it just continued.

Payman: You’re at the Enlighten office now. Is it as good as the Philips office? I’m joking. Don’t answer that question.

Zaki: The Philips office is a bit bigger.

Payman: We don’t do tickets to Wimbledon either.

Zaki: That was a nice thing. They had a box at Wimbledon and a box at Royal Albert Hall.

Payman: It was a weird thing when Philips bought Discus, man, because I thought… this is a massive brand, right? So, on its own, it’s a good enough reason to buy it.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: Because, it was a huge brand.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: But, I got a feeling it had something to do with the fact that they’re light bulb manufacturers, and Zoom is a light.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: I thought, back in the day, before was in business, I thought these sort of decisions were highly researched. But now, as you get further on, you realise, a lot of stuff happens because of this sort of thing.

Zaki: It wasn’t the light. I thought the same as you, but it was, just, they wanted something-

Payman: The sales team or something.

Zaki: They’d go to these dental trade shows that you go on, and they just had toothbrushes. They just thought-

Payman: Complimentary.

Zaki: Complimentary. They actually bought Discus Dental, which was not just whitening, it was impression material… a whole load of things. They sold all those off and just kept… they bought it for the whitening. They just saw that it was a good fit and that was it.

Payman: So, you carried on working with them all that time. How long was that for?

Zaki: It was meant to be a one year deal, one year contract, and, actually, it went on surprisingly, because I was actually on their payroll… I kept thinking year-on-year, I’d have a meeting with Mary [Cotton] at the time… she was in charge of… between the dentist, she’d be the link between us and the company. Every January, we’d meet and have brunch. Every time, I’d think, she’s going to say, that’s it. It went on for six years. So, it was good. It was good while it lasted. But, I’ve cut back from the lecturing side because my son’s doing GCSEs now and you need to spend more time with them.

Payman: Lecturing takes it out of you. Not that I’m a lecturer but I hang around a few lecturers. Then, the nature of it is weekend work. It tends to, just, do the family side in.

Zaki: Yeah, I used to see you on social media… you’d see all these guys, yeah, I’m flying off here, I’m flying off there, and I thought… before I started lecturing properly, I thought I want a piece of that. I wanted to travel around and the thing is, you start doing it and, as you know, I used to do a lot of it, but then you realise it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. The pays never enough. You could earn more, probably, working doing your day job. By the time you left your family… there was times where my two kids, my two boys, would, literally, one would hang on to each leg, when I’d say, guys, I’m going off tomorrow morning. They’d say, not again. When they hold on to your leg and you look down, and you start realising, actually, you got to be at home more.

Zaki: So, it’s glamorous when you don’t do it, and it’s nice… every now and then I accept a nice South Africa or something that I’ve never been to. It’s lovely, and you meet people and you’re saying, how do you know so many people? That’s how you know. But, there gets to a point where you need to actually calm down and I’m at that stage now where I’ve cut all that out. You need to be more with your families, better work life balance.

Payman: Do you work five days a week as well?

Zaki: I do, Monday to Friday, don’t do weekends. I used to do a one-year implant course teaching, which was literally Friday, Saturday-

Payman: Oh, you don’t do that anymore?

Zaki: No, because, again, for the same reason, Dominique would say, oh, in September on that weekend, can we do whatever and I’d be, look at my calendar, implant course. Then she’d say, oh, March, that weekend. I’d be, implant course.

Payman: That’s me with Mini Smile Makeover.

Zaki: Yeah. The thing is, by the time we do other… That was just the implant course. By the time you lecture on teeth whitening for Philips… and you attend courses because learning never stops-

Payman: You’re gone more than you’re there.

Zaki: You look at your year and you think, how many weekends have I actually spent with my family? I used to do it with [Kori] and [inaudible 01:01:32]. It was a great course-

Payman: Feedback was very good from that course.

Zaki: Yeah, I love teaching. I love doing that. But yeah, well, something’s got to give. So, I cut that out and, actually, work-life balance was restored after that. So, I couldn’t do it for a long time.

Payman: What would you say motivates you now? What gets you out of bed?

Zaki: My kids. You do all of this for them, really? Because, I do worry about how my kid’s going to afford a flat? What job are they going to get? So, I’m doing everything I do now for them. What gets me out of bed is I still, actually, really, enjoy what I do.

Payman: I remember asking you once, I said to you, if you had a billion dollars, what would you do every day, and you said I’d still include some element of implantology.

Zaki: Yeah, I love it. A lot of people say, what’s your exit plan? What’s your exit strategy?

Payman: You want to just keep going?

Zaki: When do you want to retire? A lot of people say, yeah, I want to retire at 55 or whatever. I wouldn’t do five days a week but as I get older, I’ll always do two days a week, even when I’m in my 60s or whatever. I just enjoy it. So, I can’t see myself retiring fully. I think with my dad, I saw that he worked every day and then one day he just… at 68, I think it was, he just stopped. So, it was full week to nothing. I don’t think that’s good. I’d taper off and I’d always have my hand in there at least two days a week.

Payman: Prav’s not here to ask his famous question, but I’m going to ask you, what would you like your legacy to be? What would you like people to say about you once you stop?

Zaki: Look, the things that you want to be remembered for… obviously, you have the family side. So, you’d always want to be remembered for being a good husband and a good father to your kids. A good role model. So, all of that, I’d love to be remembered as being a good sort of family guy. Yeah. So, that’s one thing. I’d also love to be remembered for being a good clinician. You hear a lot of people that have now retired or are not with us anymore… Yeah, he was a fantastic dentist or fantastic educator, like [inaudible 01:03:59]. He was one of those, and Mike Wise and all this, he’s retired now.

Zaki: So, you’d love to be known for being a decent clinician. I’m not saying I’m at their level by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d like to think that, hopefully, people would see me as, actually, Zaki, was one of the decent dentists out there. So, that’s the other thing. Hopefully, along the way, you’ve also inspired some people to find their passion in dentistry, whether it’s encouraging them to go into implants or to go in a certain direction. Hopefully, along the way, I’ve achieved that. So, I suppose, those three things.

Payman: Nice. Interestingly, the definition of being a professional is, what you do when people aren’t looking? You know, [Depesh 01:04:55], who does the [inaudible] for us? His associate passed away, unfortunately. He’s 40-something. He says that, now, he sees his patients. He says the quality of the work is just superb, absolutely superb work. That notion of, this cat wasn’t a teacher or… no one outside of his patient group knows him, particularly, but he was telling this wonderful work when no one was looking. It’s a wonderful idea, isn’t it? It’s a wonderful thing.

Zaki: There’s a lot of those out there.

Payman: Of course.

Zaki: A lot of people that we know that are on the lecture circuit or high-profile-

Payman: People we don’t know, right?

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: People we don’t know who are amazing.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: Then, someone like Andy Moore, yeah, not high profile at all, really. I asked him to lecture for us about 15 years ago, and he said, it’s just not me. I don’t want to do that.

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: But, putting the quality in.

Zaki: Yeah. No, he’s a top dentist. I know him. But, yeah, he likes to keep a low profile, and people do what they enjoy. I enjoy lecturing and all that. I enjoy going to functions and stuff. I love meeting people, that’s how you’re saying, how do know so many… I love networking. If anyone wants a bit of advice, it’s, just, surround yourself… there’s a term where they say like-minded. Surround yourself with like-minded people.

Payman: Yeah.

Zaki: In a way, yes. But, you shouldn’t surround yourself, just, with like-minded people, surround yourself with-

Payman: Diversity.

Zaki: Diversity, and people that are higher achievers than you.

Payman: To inspire you.

Zaki: People that are at a different level to you, as in, they’ve achieved the knowledge-base. People that you can tap into their experience and their knowledge, not like-minded like you. Otherwise, it gets very, well, how are you going to progress? What are you going to get from them? I always say surround yourself by people that you aspire to be like or that you are motivated by?

Payman: Tell me about some of your mentors. Prof. Palmer.

Zaki: Yeah. I don’t think I had-

Payman: By the way, a mentor doesn’t have to be someone who’s literally your mentor. A mentor can be someone whose book you’ve read. Who would you say are some of your people that inspired you the way you’re talking about?

Zaki: Yeah, look, my dad, definitely. Professor Palmer. Someone, anyone who, like you said, doesn’t have to be a mentor that guides you-

Payman: Day to day.

Zaki: Yeah. But, someone who’s actually given you that nugget of information to steer you in a certain direction. Richard Palmer was one of those and, obviously, my dad, so I don’t think there’s been one person. A lot of people say, oh, yeah, he was my inspiration or he taught me everything I know. For me, it was just-

Payman: For me, my VT boss, [Nick Mahindra 01:07:59].

Zaki: Yeah.

Payman: Made a massive difference in my direction. First boss is sometimes… sometimes does that.

Zaki: Yeah. No, I didn’t have that during VT or whatever. But yeah, just people along the way. When I give these lectures to sixth-formers, or to young dentists, I always say life is like sliding doors. The film where you either enter the tube and your life goes in one direction or another. Life, for me, is like that, because if my mom didn’t have that chat with my dad, we would have been in the Middle East and I would have not been a dentist and I would have ended up… and, also, if I didn’t have that chat in the lift with Richard Palmer, I wouldn’t have been where I am. If I didn’t do Newland Pedley Prize, he wouldn’t have thought, this guy’s good, and I wouldn’t have been accepted on the MSc.

Zaki: If I didn’t get all those knockbacks from the interviews to get into private practise, where I thought what’s the quickest thing I can do, diploma in sedation, I wouldn’t have been in that lift. So, everything you do, leads to something else.

Payman: It resonates with your kids, you’re always trying to protect them from pain. But, actually, pain is what defines them in the end.

Zaki: Yes. Yeah.

Payman: It’s an interesting, weird thing as a parent, you always try to mollycoddle them in a way. But, actually, when you look back in your own life, it’s the bits that were really painful or difficult that actually-

Zaki: It moulds you-

Payman: Moulds you into the character that you are.

Zaki: Yeah, yeah.

Payman: It’s been lovely having you, man. I’m sorry about Prav today, but it was a last minute emergency.

Zaki: Understandable. I’m flattered that you-

Payman: It’s been an enjoyable conversation-

Zaki: Inviting me.

Payman: Of course. You’re a lovely conversation.

Zaki: Thank you very much.

Payman: Thanks.

Speaker 2: 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: Hey guys, and thank you for listening to today’s episode of the Dental Leaders podcast. A vision that myself and Payman had over two years ago now. If you have got some value out of today, just hit the subscribe button in iTunes or Google Play or whatever you’re listening to. Let us know in your comments what you actually got out of the episode because we love sitting back and reading those reviews. It really does make our day.

Payman: It’s a real pleasure to do this. It’s fun to do, but I’m really humbled that you’re actually listening all the way through to the end, and join us again. If you got some value out of it, please share it. Thanks a lot.

Visal: Well the mum actually said, come on kids we’ve got to go swimming. I don’t like swimming, I’m scared of the water, this and that. I turned round, why are you scared of water? I turned round to the mum I was like, look I used to swim, here’s my achievement scrap book and it had all my certificates for swimming in Kenya and stuff like that, and I showed it to her, she goes, you can swim? I said yeah, I said how do you think I got here?

Speaker 2: This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Payman: It’s my great pleasure to have my good friend Vishal Shah on the show, thanks a lot for doing this Vish.

Visal: Ah it’s a pleasure, thank you for inviting me.

Payman: I don’t think you and Prav have met before, have you?

Prav: No.

Visal: No.

Prav: You’ve met my brother, right?

Visal: Yes, absolutely, great fan of him [crosstalk] good guy.

Payman: So Vish we met each other long time ago, when you were building Dentality, I think when you were putting the thing together. How long ago was that?

Visal: Well the new site was actually 2013, so that’s when we properly met.

Payman: All right, but we met once before that.

Visal: But we’d bet a few times before then yeah.

Payman: But let’s go from back … take us back to where were you born, what was your childhood like?

Visal: I was born in Kenya, a little town called Nakuru, it was a little village town sort of thing, grew up in a … to be honest I think was a very, very privileged environment, I went to the equivalent public school there, all my teachers were from England. But the thing was, there was … my dad’s got a joint business with his brothers, so there was nine kids to pay school fees and all the rest for, so it wasn’t a plush as you’d like it to be because obviously you were in one of the best schools in the country, even in the region, sort of thing. And we had students coming from all over Africa and everything, but paying for nine students at the same time is a big, big ask on the family business.

Payman: Did all nine of you go to the same school?

Visal: Yes we all went to the same schools, yeah. But my fondest memories, by dad he never missed a school day, he was the one who was up in the morning and we do the rounds of all the family houses, so me and my brother would get into the car first, go to my uncle’s pick up two cousins. Then go to my grandma’s and pick up three cousins, so it was lovely like that. I was very, very lucky, my dad and my mum as well. My mum would be at every single sports match, cheering me on the sideline, and stuff. And I played a lot of sport, that was my main thing. So from an opportunity point of view I can only thank my parents for where I am now, they’ve been every reason why I am where I am. Because I was a bit of a lazy so and so.

Payman: Were you?

Visal: Yeah.

Payman: You’re not lazy any more.

Visal: Well no I think I’m paying for me issues from before but generally it was all fine, I was a mediocre student, I was one of these kids who just always wanted a bit of acceptance, because I used to be the short, fat kid who used to get bullied at school.

Payman: Same as me.

Visal: You don’t look it [crosstalk 00:03:17]. You look amazing man. So there’s always this push to try and prove myself and all the rest of it, and I suppose that’s where a lot of the drive comes. But again none of it would have been possible if it wasn’t for my mum and dad, they did everything they possibly could to give me what I wanted, within reason. Nothing was every easy, I couldn’t just say yeah, can I have this or can I have that, and it’s done, absolutely not.

Payman: So when did you move to the UK, how old were you?

Visal: So I was 18, I moved in 1998, and literally just got a place at university, I actually missed my grades, I actually got, I missed a grade for my original place that was offered to me, and I actually ended up getting into dentistry through clearing. So at the time, it was Bart’s in London, they weren’t necessarily the best placed university in terms of the rankings and stuff. But I was just happy to have a place, and do what I wanted to do. And yeah, got the place, I think it was first part of August, and in September I moved to England.

Payman: As a foreign student. Paying those fees.

Visal: As a painfully paying those fees [crosstalk 00:04:26].

Payman: How much was it, do you remember?

Visal: Yeah, so the first year was 12 and a half thousand pounds, that was just for tuition, and then you had accommodation and living expenses on top. The second year was roughly about 15, 16 thousand pounds. And then after that it was 25 thousand a year, 20 thousand a year.

Prav: Just going back to growing up with nine cousins, brothers … what was that like in terms of family community spirit, all the rest of it? Because for me it was me and my brother mainly that were brought up, and I just wonder what it’s like growing up with nine cousins and having that where you’re just always thick as thieves together, lots of fun. A really good family community spirit, and are you still close to each other?

Visal: Yeah I mean, growing up it was awesome, we didn’t need friends as such. On my mum’s side of the family there’s 81 cousins. [crosstalk 00:05:24].

Payman: … massive.

Visal: So my mum’s one of 10 kids, and my dad’s one of eight, so times were fantastic. Wherever we’d go so it would always be a family affair, and one thing I really admired from about my dad was, he was one of the go getters, he’ll push the boundaries and he didn’t care what people thought or how he had to go about doing things, if he wanted to do something he’d go find a way to get the job done. So a lot of his push for me personally was didn’t want me to do what he does. I’ll come back to that later if we’ve got some time, but he always pushed me to do other things, and sport was a huge part of it, so we all used to … all of us cousins, we’d go to our grandmother’s house on Sunday or Saturday, or whatever it is. We’d all sleep over, so the girls would do the girls things, the boys would actually do whatever they’re doing. So a typical day would be, we’d play cricket during the morning, and then have lunch with the whole family, so literally 40, 50 of us sitting down together, plus family friends and stuff would just come in.

Visal: And then in the afternoon we’d play hide and seek and stuff like that. And then once we got a little bit older and stuff, it was great community, it was a great environment because we never, ever needed money. So if I wanted something, if I wanted to buy my school uniform for example, dad would just go, oh go to that uncle’s shop. And I’d just walk in, and everything’s done, and I walk out. And initially you think you just think okay fine, dad’s told you to do that, so go and do it, and then you come back home. But then when you get a little bit wiser, you think hey I can get a way with a bit of stuff. So I just used to go to the shop and like, yeah put it on my dad’s account. The uncle would be like, yeah no problems, he knows he’s making money out of it anyway. So round about the age of about 14, 15 it got a bit out of hand, especially going to the local club because again everything there was a chit system, so you just sign your name on it, dad’s membership number was there and everything else.

Visal: All the waiters knew us because they’d seen us grow up, so it was quite easy. And one memory that actually comes up, me and all my friends we were actually at the club, so our routine weekend would be, Saturday morning get up, we all get dropped round to the club by all the mums. Mums going to whatever they’re doing and dads would go to work. My dad however, he was nicknamed like the CID officer basically because he’d keep an eye on everyone, and he’d come to the club every day at lunchtime. So he’d come to swim, obviously, but the plan was that we’d be swimming, and then we’d have lunch together et cetera, et cetera. And the funniest story is one of my friends who actually moved back to Kenya, but he came here to study as well and he ordered 20 samosas between four of us. And that was just the starter, and when my dad walked in, he just like, what is this? [inaudible] you’ve got to sit right there-

Payman: Eat them all.

Visal: … and if you don’t finish them, I’m going to actually stick them up where the sun don’t shine. But it was really, really nice because it wasn’t a situation where these are my kids and those are your kids, or whatever it was. Everyone’s parents were all disciplinarian in their own right. My best friend for example, we got up to a little bit of naughtiness, when we’d just finished our O levels, our GSCEs, and we decide to go out and we wanted to go and have a couple of drinks and celebrate. And his car broke down and in the end we had to actually call his dad up to say, look the car’s broken down, what do we do? And he’s like, where are you? We’re actually in the next town, but we’d said we were going to play golf. So his dad dropped everyone off and obviously I lived closest to Ricky at the time, and got home and he turned round to my dad and he goes, listen, don’t give him a hiding, give my son a hiding because he’s the culprit.

Visal: So it was really nice in terms of community feel like that, and to a certain extent it kept us all in check, because you couldn’t do anything naughty anywhere without-

Payman: Without someone finding out.

Visal: … without someone finding out you know? I was 14 years old, we all went to the nightclub in the city, and we bribed our drivers and everything else. People were in the club, and I remember seeing one of my dad’s mates, and he was being a bit naughty himself, so I was just like, right uncle, you’re going to buy me a beer-

Payman: Got one on you.

Visal: … and none of this is going to go anywhere, because I’m going to put you into it as well. And I remember coming back the next day and we were all excited and I was just like, I don’t know how my dad, the CID officer, hasn’t found out. And he was sat in the living room, reading his paper, and I just walk in, hi dad. I was probably stinking of booze or something, or at least my clothes were, and just as I walked into the corridor to go into the part of the house where all the bedrooms are, he was like, so what was Carnivore like? Because Carnivore’s the name of the club. And I was just like, oh crap I’m in so much trouble you know. But he let me push my own boundaries to a certain extent, but education was a huge thing to him. My grandad passed away when my dad was 14, so he started working from that age, so he’s seen a very, very hard life, helping to look after the rest of the family and all the rest of it.

Payman: How did it feel when you then arrived in the UK without all of that massive support structure, by yourself? That must have been a big shock.

Visal: Do you know what, it was to a certain extent, but it wasn’t. Growing up in Kenya, anyone from England was the coolest thing ever. They got the nice trainers, they’ve got all these things, and we’re walking around and begging and pleading to dad, dad can we just buy one pair, we keep it as best as we possibly can. So I was really excited-

Payman: So you were ready to leave at that point?

Visal: I was ready to leave to a certain extent. I didn’t realise how ready I wasn’t until I got here. But one thing that always sticks in my mind, was as I said, my mum and dad were real hard core disciplinarians, and I vividly, vividly remember the night before I left, and my bedroom wall and my dad’s bedroom wall are the same wall, right? And normally it’s just like [inaudible] things, you just knock on the wall, that means get yourself into my bedroom, and he’d be like, give me the remote. I’m like, seriously? What the hell yeah? But on this day, his exact words were, you packed? Yep. You done? Yeah. You ready? Yep. Excited? Yeah. Sit down. And I was like, dad what did I do? And he goes just sit down, I said but dad I’ve been at home all day, I’m thinking I’ve done something wrong, not knowing [inaudible] something wrong. And I sat down, and I said, dad I didn’t do anything wrong. And he just said, quiet.

Visal: He goes two things. The first thing is, never ever go back on your word or break someone’s trust. And if that happens, doesn’t matter what the world thinks, doesn’t matter what you do to actually regain that, the fact is you broke it the first time. It’s never going to be the same again. And I was just like yeah, I understand, didn’t really. And the second thing he said to me, which actually makes me realise now, and it makes me realise every day what he actually meant, and how incredibly wise he is. And he said, you’re leaving tomorrow as my son, but when you come back I want to be known as your dad. And I was just like dismissive, I was like yeah can I go now? The typical teenager [inaudible] yeah all right dad, you’ve done your thing, now let me just go. But I got onto the plane, and that’s when it hit me. Because my dad is … as far as the town’s concerned, we’d been in that town since … well in Kenya since the 1800s, late 1800s, so we were one of the first Asian families to colonise that town, and everyone knows by dad. Literally the priest has a weird bowel movement and my dad gets a phone call.

Visal: If someone’s murdered, my dad’s the first one there on the scene, and the police are letting him through the crime scene and all the rest of it. And it just made me realise that, my dad is actually an absolute super hero, this guy is there for everyone and anyone. Middle of the night he gets a call, and he’s out. He negotiated … where we are, the town we are, between that town and the two main cities either side which is Eldoret and Nairobi, is part of the trans African highway, and there’s no intensive care unit. And in Kenya a huge amount of road traffic accidents, just huge amounts. And dad actually negotiated from a charity in Salt Lake City in America to donate us an intensive care unit. And just to see stuff like that and the impact that he’s ended up having on other people’s lives. The friends that we’ve made, I’ve got people I call God Parents in Canada, these guys were our neighbours and he just emptied half our house of all the furniture when they move in because their furniture was lost on a shipping container somewhere. I haven’t come across many people who do that.

Visal: He is truly selfless, and am I ever going to say that I can go back and be known as his son, I don’t know about that. He’s a true gem.

Payman: So then you weren’t with him, you were by yourself. Were you a good worker in college? Did you go crazy partying? [inaudible] new found freedom, or were you one of those swotty kids because you were paying, right? You knew how much it was worth.

Visal: No, not at all, I do remember that we had a little bit of trouble with the finances and stuff initially, because there wasn’t only me, it was myself and two other cousins who came over, so they were paying overseas fees as well. So one was doing engineering, and the other one did actuary, and then there was two in the pipeline the following year who were coming. So I actually remember asking my dad, I said dad can we actually afford this? And he goes, you go what you need to do, I’ll sort out the rest. But I knew that it was going to be a tough time, so despite that, I was not a swotty guy, I was always late for lectures. The tutors used to actually get one of the students to come in and actually wake me up in the halls and stuff. But a lot of it was to do with what unravelled throughout the university experience. But I partied hard, I had this new found freedom, okay I have a lot of family here. The majority of my mum’s side of the family live here, and a few of my dad’s family live here.

Visal: But one person that was actually instrumental was my dad’s eldest sister’s husband, and he was an amazing gentleman. He was going through his own stuff in his life, and whatever he did, always said do it four times. I remember my cousin was actually out in Dubai and he was buying a stereo system, and at that time there was these tape decks with the CD on top, do you remember those?

Payman: Yeah, I remember those.

Visal: And he phoned up and we were all standing in the kitchen and he goes … because my cousin, so his daughter was going to university as well. So there was his daughter and three of us, and my cousin phoned up and he goes, dad this is a really good one, but there’s a better quality one. And he goes, buy the best one, and buy four. My cousin’s flying in from Dubai, and I could hear him on the other side of the phone saying to his dad, are you mad? He goes, there’s four kids here, no matter what happens … and the way it all started out was, there was four piles on that kitchen floor every single week. And not many people get that man, so I’ve got a lot of love for a lot of people.

Payman: That’s lovely man. So then you told me the money dried up coming from Kenya.

Visal: Yeah so it was quite a difficult time, so this came towards the end of my first year, and it was difficult because the way things work in Kenya is very different to how it works over here. And in Kenya you’d be just like look, we’ll pay you next month, we’ll sort out it, we’ll clear it out, and we’ll barter here, and barter there sort of thing. The money just dried up. Now initially we didn’t know anything about it because what was happening is that my uncle started funding all of us, but when it comes to 20 grand a year-

Payman: Each.

Visal: … as well, well at that time it was coming up to the 16 grand. That became quite difficult, because it becomes an embarrassing situation, for everyone involved. If dad’s looking to borrow something and my uncle’s got his other kids and this that and the other. So it can create a little bit of discomfort as well. It never did, everyone pulled together.

Payman: In the third world, one of the characteristics of it is, you can make a lot of money. But another characteristic of it is that instability where you can suddenly lose. It’s one of the characteristics of living in the third world-

Visal: Absolutely, and this-

Payman: … both sides.

Visal: Yeah, when the banks collapsed and stuff, like BCCI and all of this. That really hammered us, we lost a lot of-

Payman: So you were left having to pay the school fees yourself?

Visal: Well I was actually left with no idea what was going on.

Prav: End of year one or …

Visal: Well, end of year one, start of year two, so the first instalment was due for year two, and it came to December in my second year, and I started getting letters from the university saying, you haven’t paid your fees, what’s going on? And I’d be phoning dad, and he’d be like yeah, we’re sorting it out, we’re sorting out. I was just like, dad these guys don’t wait yeah? And he was like, look just tell them, just explain to them that we’ve got a little bit of a situation and we’ll sort it out, don’t worry, we’re good for it. And I said, dad they don’t care who I am, there’s about 50,000 students here you know? But eventually it dawned on me that, holy crap this is serious. And didn’t know where to go. There’s no support for international students at all, nothing at all.

Visal: I did something about it later on, I started the ball rolling for overseas students afterwards, but it was scary. Because you just think, 16 and a half grand, plus whatever your accommodation is costing, plus your spending money and stuff.

Payman: So what did you do?

Visal: Found ways. So there’s loads of things. At the time when I moved here, and at the time of this crisis when it started, we weren’t allowed to work as overseas students, we just didn’t have right to work.

Payman: Permission.

Prav: Permits, or whatever it is.

Visal: There was nothing.

Prav: Nothing.

Visal: And it only changed about two years later, so when I was coming into my fourth year that all students were allowed to work 16 hours a week, and you can supplement your income. Didn’t have any of that, I started doing all sorts of stuff. I remember going into the university and just thinking, what sort of job could be … this is not going to go to revenue is it?

Payman: 25 years later.

Visal: But it was just like, what sort of job can I get a bit of cash in hand for? And I remember seeing this advert, and I’ll never forget it, it was on a yellow piece of paper, and it was a lady who was actually looking for someone to tutor her son, teach him how to read and write and all the rest of it. So I phoned her up and I said, look this is me, I’m at the university, I’m studying dentistry. She’s like, oh cool let’s meet up, and stuff, so I met up with her. And didn’t know what to expect. Had I done tutoring before? No, could I get cash in hand? Well do what you have to mate, just get on with it. And I went to meet her and we got on really, really well. So she goes, okay, fine how much would you like? And I said, I charge £8 an hour, and that’s what I do. So she said, okay fine. Every Sunday come in here for an hour. So I said, brilliant.

Visal: And then slowly, slowly what happened is, she started introducing me to all her friends, and all the rest of it. So I had, and she was ferrying me around to everyone’s houses, so I had about five hours during the morning where I was tutoring the kids. Well probably about six, six and a half hours if you include travel time and everything. And then one day one of the kids turned round and said, well the mum actually said, come on kids we’ve got to go swimming. I don’t like swimming, I’m scared of the water, and this, that. I turned round, why are you scared of water? And I turned round to the mum, I was like, look I used to swim, here’s my achievement scrap book, and I had all my certificates for swimming in Kenya and stuff like that. And [inaudible] she goes, you can swim? And I said yeah, I said how do you think I got here? No I’m joking. And yeah so I said I’ll take all the kids swimming. So we’d actually get dropped off at York Hall in Bethel Green, and I’d take nine … Health and Safety would have gone absolutely crazy to know me.

Visal: But I had nine kids in the swimming pool at any one time, and that too was £8 an hour each, and we only swam for an hour. So that was good-

Payman: Good earner that one.

Visal: It was a really, really good earner. And then slowly, slowly things started changing. Oh there was another place actually-

Payman: So you earned all the money to pay your tuition fees and … no.

Visal: No it wasn’t enough.

Payman: Your dad came through?

Visal: So dad borrowed and people who we thought would help, didn’t. It’s often the case, you do find that, that you have expectations of people and you get let down. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, or it’s a common thing, or people will always disappoint you, but people have their own issues going on too, and it happens, it’s life. But there’s some people who came across, who I never ever in my life imagined. Some people I’d not met. My mum’s sister in law, so her brother’s wife, sorry her sister, she just came in and just yeah, here’s 10 grand. And I was like … the guys I call my god parents in Canada, they sent me money. And I was just like, how is this working? And all along dad’s just trying to … he’s obviously trying because he’s got to pay for all three of us as well. Uncles were trying to help and stuff, but dad generally had more sort of connections, in Kenya and stuff. And somehow it came through, we paid off that first … sorry second year, and just as you thought right breathe. Boom, another letter from the university.

Visal: Because you were late, we want the payment up front.

Payman: Oh dear.

Visal: And I just thought to myself, how am I going to do this? I can’t ask dad … I know what he’s done, and I know how much he’s had to go through to just get this year paid off, what do I do next? So I thought okay fine, well work more. So there’s this place I went to in Farringdon once, it was after a night out, it’s a little place called Tinseltown, a lot of people know it.

Payman: Yeah.

Visal: But at that time they actually were nothing, like literally it was a basement little café where they used to give the cab drivers teas and coffees and stuff, and they used to get it for free so long as they brought customers with them. And the waitresses were quite hot, so I was like, I want a job here. And I just went in there, I was like, look guys have you got any cash in hand in jobs? And he’s just like, what?

Payman: Did you say it just like that?

Visal: Yeah, I just said look, come on have you got any jobs going? And they go-

Prav: Sure.

Visal: … no. And I was like, come on man, I’m sure you do. You’re open at four in the morning, I’m sure there’s plenty of people coming in pissed, I’m sure you can sort me out. I said, anything, I’ll take anything. And he goes, look you’re not going the like but if you want it you can have it. And I said what? And he goes look, exactly what you said, people like you students come in here pissed, and then they create a mess sometimes, so if you want to clean it up, you’re more than welcome to. I said, done, when do I start? He goes when do you want to start? I’ll start now, I don’t mind. And me and the owner, who was an elderly lady, she was lovely, she was like, everyone used to call her mum, so I just jumped on the bandwagon and started calling her mum too.

Visal: But we started establishing quite a relationship and the youngest guy, there’s two sons, Sahil and Shiraz. Sahil was quite militant, he was quite strict about everything, so we’d all stay away from him. But Shiraz was the young guy, he’s got all these ideas. He just set up a business to recruit actors and actresses over the internet, and he goes yeah, I can phone Steven Spielberg and this that and the other, and I was like, really? But we’d sit there at five, six in the morning when it’s all quiet, and we just talk about our dreams, what we want to achieve and stuff. And believe it or not, Shiraz is actually in Hollywood doing what he dreamt about. It’s beautiful, and Tinseltown became something huge, and I was like, Shiraz why don’t we do this, I’ll get … why don’t you guys get some leaflets printed out, Farringdon Station, the market’s open early, all the city workers are coming in. I’ll hand out flyers from four til eight in the morning, and I’ll go to Uni from there.

Visal: He goes that’s a bloody good idea, okay fine. So I used to hand out flyers as well. I never threw any away, never ever threw any away, because it’s about trust. And it was an idea I gave him which was my responsibility so effectively I had to show him some sort of return on interest, on investment and stuff. But it’s great, many, many years later I went back with a few of my friends, just nostalgia sort of thing, and this guys, Sahil, the elder brother, the really militant one just stopped me and he goes, hi. And that was it. I was like, what did I do to this guy. And I think the last time I’d actually turned up to this place I was pissed, so it wasn’t nice. And he then just pulls up a chair out of nowhere, turns round to all my mates and just pointed at me and he goes, you all know what this guy’s been through to get to where he is. We love him. And just walked off. What’s wrong with this guy? First of all he just completely blanks me. But there’s a lot of instrumental people, there’s a lot of instrumental people.

Visal: I ended up actually curving my way through negotiating a professional studies loan as well, I wasn’t allowed it, but when I went to the bank, I still remember the name of the bank manager, his name’s Adrian Tourer, and I walked into the bank and I said, Adrian I want a professional studies loan. 25 grand’s a lot of money, I thought, that’ll sort me out for the next year at least. And I walked in, and I just looked at the form, and he goes yeah go and fill out this form, and I’ll fill it out for you. And it came out, taking out details and it says nationality, and it thought Adrian, what’s wrong with your tooth? And I kid you not, this is a true story, right? I said what’s wrong with your tooth? And he goes, I know. I said, it looks horrible, and you’re a manager. I said listen, let’s fill this form out in the dental institute while I do your tooth. I’ll just fill it all out.

Visal: So I took him across to the emergency clinic, sorted his tooth out, and he skipped that. Because I was quite well spoken, having had an education in a British school effectively. He just assumed that I was English. Ticked that, and I got a professional studies loan.

Payman: Nice.

Visal: So a lot of wheeling and dealing-

Payman: So I’m thinking back at my college days, where it was free, and then-

Prav: We got a grant.

Payman: … well I got money from my dad, and much more money than everyone else around me anyway, and how carefree I was regarding that whole side, and then to listen to you every year, struggling. And I’m sure it made you, shaped you as well, right? Because they say adversity shapes you, but it’s admirable-

Visal: Do you know what? The thing is, if you’ve got to get somewhere you’ve got to, by hook or by crook you’ve got to get there, you’ve got to do whatever you’ve got to do. And if you sit there, I think, feeling sorry for yourself, everyone will feel bad for you, but everyone’s moving one. And it’s up to you what you want to do.

Payman: So then when you finally qualified, that must have felt like an amazing moment.

Visal: The day I actually qualified I actually … I remember sitting in my room and I’d done all right in all the exams, and my biggest nemesis was oral medicine, I was so weak at it. And I just thought, man if that one hasn’t gone right I just hope the ortho side of it, because it was ortho, peds, oral med together, I thought hopefully I’ve aced the ortho and the paediatrics and that’ll cover up what I’ve done, what I’ve messed up on in oral med. And I just stayed in my room, I was too scared. Because it was like, having been through all this, and at any one time at university, because I didn’t know where my next money was coming from, I had no idea, I had five jobs at the same time as full time university.

Payman: And call me a conspiracy theorist yeah, but they like to fail foreign students so that they another year.

Visal: No, not really actually. Not really because of course they like foreign students, but I think at the time when I actually joined, there wasn’t that much of an emphasis, they actually upped I think their intake of foreign students because they saw the money coming in. But for me I wasn’t turning up to college, I got myself into a lot of trouble, I almost didn’t get signed up because I got into a fight at the halls of residence just before the exams and stuff. And so I was in front of the disciplinary committee, and all sorts of stuff that happened. I missed a meeting with the academic registrar for Queen Mary’s. And obviously Queen Mary’s have come just put their stamp on Bart’s in London, I was just like, I don’t care who you are, being quite laddish as far as the university’s concerned, and I went into his office. I said look I’m really sorry, this is the situation, he goes sit down. What happened? So I told him what happened, my version obviously, and he just pulled out this massive thick pile of paper, saying well according to this report, that’s not true.

Visal: So I said you think I’m lying then? He goes, yeah. I said you’ve already made your decision before I’ve walked into your office, tell you what we’re done with this conversation, and I walked out. And as I walked out, and I didn’t know what the academic registrar is, as far as I was concerned the guys at the dental school were my teachers, tutors, heads, whatever bosses, whatever you want to call them. And I slammed his door, his door was made of glass. Smashed.

Payman: Oh bloody hell.

Prav: Oh dear.

Visal: I just kept walking, I just kept walking. And then I went back to the university, I saw one of the tutors who I was quite close to, and was, you never do anything half way do you? When you mess things, you really screw it up. And I was like, yeah I’m sorry. And he goes, look you’ve got to go and tell the secretary of the dental school, everyone was scared of her. Everyone was scared, and I was like, I ain’t telling her, you’re telling her. He was like, I ain’t going anywhere near that, and we had a little [inaudible] on the clinic, and he goes okay let me go and speak to her first, and then we’ll take it from there. But I think they saw what I was going through, the amount of hell that was there, but eventually I wrote 400 letters, I wrote to David Beckham, I wrote to Mike Tyson, I wrote to anyone who had money.

Visal: Even students who were within the university and I just said look man, you seem to be pretty well off, would you mind helping me out? I didn’t care about being embarrassed.

Payman: Do or die.

Visal: This is do or die you know. I’d saved up £500, which is the cost of the ticket back home, and I’d given it to one of my friends, and I said, keep this. He goes, what’s this for? And I said I don’t know when I’m going home, I have no idea, but it could be tomorrow, I don’t know what the university’s going to say. I said I don’t want to phone home and ask my dad for that money, I just can’t be doing that. So it was stress, but do you know what, I had a bloody good time too. I had a really good time.

Payman: So then you qualified, where did you work?

Visal: So I qualified and again, most people were doing their vocational training, which was at the time, I had to pay 25 grand to do it.

Payman: No way.

Visal: So I’ve just come out of university, I’ve paid up all these fees.

Payman: And not earned anything.

Visal: Nothing.

Payman: Blood hell, I didn’t know that.

Visal: Yeah, and I just thought to myself, there’s no way. Now basically what happened, through a person at university, a university contact I found out that this guy [inaudible] in fairly well to do circles, and I talked to him and he goes, tell you what I’ll go and speak to my dad. And he spoke to his dad, his dad spoke to his friends, and turns out that one of his friends was married to someone from the same town as me in Kenya. And he decided to help out and pay my fees. So what happened was, when I actually qualified, the idea was not to actually to go into vocational training, it was to actually go in and join on as an assistant under his number, and then I get grandfather to cross in due course. I only found out that you actually need that VT number when you’re actually registering as a performer, but they grandfathered my across on everything, so when I bought my practise, this is actually when I did my VT equivalences, seven years after qualifying. So I was doing VT equivalence then.

Payman: How funny.

Visal: But yeah, so qualified 110 grand in debt, no place to stay, didn’t know where I was going, and ended up in a practise in Clacton on Sea as an assistant.

Payman: Assistant being, [inaudible 00:33:45]? [crosstalk 00:33:45]-

Visal: You were an associate effectively,

Prav: You didn’t have a-

Payman: Because you don’t have that number.

Visal: Yeah, but my bank accounts were frozen, I was already threatened by HMRC to have a deportation, I’d no work permit, so for six months I couldn’t work, and you had to advertise the job in the papers for there months beforehand, make sure there was no one in the UK who could actually apply for it. So I’m sitting there man, and I’m going to and from Clacton to London working as a medical-

Payman: Did you consider going back to Kenya to be dentist there?

Visal: No.

Payman: Why?

Visal: I’d fought too hard to be here. And it just never … it was just not an option. Sometimes I do think, why didn’t I just do that? Because there’s a lot of dentists that do very, very well out there. Funnily enough my own dentist, he’s done exceptionally well, but-

Payman: You were a man on a mission.

Visal: But yeah, that was it, you had to get there, and I became quite tunnel visioned about it, because I hate the idea of someone saying you can’t do that. Because [inaudible] question in my mind innately that comes up is who are you to tell me that? You haven’t even see me try yet.

Payman: Do you think that’s some sort of reaction to the bullying and all that?

Visal: Absolutely, I think every single experience in life shapes us to a certain extent, I think recognising it is important, you’ve got to recognise where you’ve come from, what you’ve been through, why you are like you are. None of us are perfect-

Payman: Self awareness.

Visal: Absolutely.

Payman: So fast forward to when you bought a practise.

Visal: Yeah so the guy I was working for in Clacton, he decided to sell up, the new guys came on board, they were very business orientated. I was the lead associate so … and I could do anything that I wanted, why? I was doing 17,000 UDAs a year, so that’s just on my own. The average I think is about 6,500 if that, per person.

Payman: Wow, bloody hell.

Visal: So when I actually left, they had to actually replace me with three dentists.

Payman: Were you working ridiculous hours?

Visal: No, basically every single appointment I had was effectively 10 minutes, and then you catch up on the time and make it up somehow. So my days were between 50 and 70 patients a day.

Payman: Bloody hell.

Visal: Every day. And then at the weekends, I’d actually all the nursing homes in Tendring, in the whole of Tendring District Council, I did every single nursing home, 32 of them. Dentures, extractions-

Payman: Visiting?

Visal: Yeah, from one to the next to the next to the next, yeah.

Payman: So then you saved some money by this time so you went to buy a practise?

Visal: Yeah so mum and dad came home obviously for graduation and stuff, and that was really, really nice. That’s when I actually … again it was that second hit of, and wave of the love I’ve got for the university now, because I walked in and remember the Dean of the dental school, in the last six months he said, right Vish, we’re going to give you £150 a month. I looked at him and I said, what? And he goes, well you’re going to tell me what you’re going to use it for. I said oh, I’ve got this to pay for, that to pay for, that to pay for. He goes give me the cheque back. He goes I want to see you in the Student Union every Friday having a couple of drinks at least. That’s what you start off with, whatever’s left you can do what you want with it. And that was lovely. My graduation, I didn’t have the money to pay for it, so the guy who was running the whole graduation thing, he said, we just forgot to charge you. I went in the day after, to actually say to the guys at the accommodation office, that look guys I haven’t got the money, but here’s a self-filled affidavit, I’ll pay it as soon as I’ve got the money.

Visal: No, it’s been comped. And I just thought wow. Mum and dad were here, my friends gave me their credit cards, just spend whatever you want, man, it’s fine, we’re all doing this together, you know. So it was fantastic, it was absolutely brilliant, but when mum and dad came, I took them over to Clacton and said look this is where I’m going to be staying, and funnily enough I was staying with the boss, and I stayed with him for three years, and I just saved. Saved and saved and saved. So within four years I actually paid off the 110 grand, and I bought two houses.

Payman: Paid off all the cousins, and people who-

Visal: I had a ledger, actually and I paid off every … in fact funnily enough one guy, he gave me £80 and I phoned him six years later. I just happened to remember his number of the top of my head, and I phoned him, I said hey buddy how’s it going? He goes, Vish? I goes yeah. He goes how the hell are you man? I say yeah I’m just glad you’ve got the same number, and we had a bit of a catch up and he goes, what’s going on? And I said listen I’ve called you for reason, he goes what? And I said I borrowed £80 of you in 2000, and this is like 2008 or something like that, and I paid him £80 back. So I don’t forget, if someone helps me out, if someone does something for … it doesn’t matter how big or small, that’s not what I’m about, it’s more about the gesture, the thought, and being human.

Prav: I guess the message is from your dad right? That last day?

Payman: Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking, that right now.

Visal: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Payman: So then the Dentality that I saw being built, this state of the art private looking thing, was when you’d moved site.

Visal: Yeah that’s right, so I-

Payman: The previous one wasn’t called Dentality-

Visal: No so it was called Hogs Hall Dental Practise.

Payman: Nearby it, wasn’t it?

Visal: Yeah it was just around the corner sort of thing, it was the usual dental practise setting, estate agent downstairs on one side, funeral directors on the other. Hairdressers behind them, and through a dark deep corridor you go up to the dental practise which just stinks and looks horrible. So I left my associate job because I didn’t like the way things were run. And it was no fault of the guys who took over, they were there to make money, which is fair enough. Some people do it for business, some people do it for the love of dentistry. And I just thought, I’m going to be horrible here, and I’m going to fall out with these guys big time, so before that happens, just go. Because they’d paid their good will, and at the end of the day they don’t need crap off any associate. So I just thought, off I go. And the only practise that I could afford was this one that I bought. I always wanted to be in Hertfordshire. Why, because I’ve got family in East London, Surrey and mum’s family’s all in West London. So I thought nice half way house, I could go and keep in touch with everyone.

Visal: So moved there, when I bought up, and the change in name was very, very personal to me. Because I’ve been through a lot, through university and all the rest of it, spoken to a lot of people who are just … they’re just disgruntled, they’re just unhappy with dentistry, and I think generally that’s the way the feeling is. Dentists are not generally a happy profession. And I just thought, do you know what, I want to change the way people think. And not only patients but your team, and your peers and your colleagues and other dentists, because everyone has something that goes not according to plan at some point in their lives. I said, I just want to change the way they think. And the word mentality came up in my mind-

Payman: Interesting.

Visal: … so I actually just took the M off and put a D on it, and that was it, and that’s how Dentality-

Payman: So when I saw it, it was a triple shop front.

Visal: I remember that conversation.

Payman: Like the biggest shop I’d ever seen, on the high street, and like super modern, and there were people drilling away, people working, and I said to him, wow look at this man, I said you’ve really gone out of your … you’ve gone for it, man. And he goes, have I? I say yeah, yeah, you’ve definitely gone for it. And he goes, ah you know I just thinking I should build it and they’ll come.

Visal: I remember exactly what your words were, actually.

Payman: What were they?

Visal: So Payman actually said to me, he goes, I don’t mean to be … I care, I’m here to help you. I remember you had your six series BMW that you drove into and parked half of the back. And you said, Vish with all due respect, you’ve got a corner shop, you could have just bought a freaking Tesco Extra. What are you doing? And I said, yeah I know it’s big, but there’s a reason for this. And he goes, yeah you but you know that Tesco Extra needs to be stocked, you can’t have an empty Tesco Extra, with newsagents five foot by five foot, right and you just put everything in one place within arm’s reach right? He goes you can’t just have a dedicated corner and this open shop floor for the rest of it.

Payman: But to your credit, how long did it take before you filled it up? It was full, properly fully running within two years or something?

Visal: Yeah so it just, you know what the practise went from strength to strength, and it was all to do with just being open and honest and trustworthy, you know?

Payman: In a small town, good news travels fast.

Visal: So does bad.

Payman: We’ll come to that. Vish tell the story of the receptionist who came for a job, one of my favourite stories, even though I’ve heard it before, I want Prav to hear it.

Visal: So I had a girl came I for interview, and I spoke to her for a little while, and I was just like, realised actually she’s a very, very bright young lady.

Prav: She was interviewing for reception role?

Visal: Yeah, she was interviewing for a reception job, and I said, so what made you drop out of school and decide that you want to start working? And she said, I just wanted to go to university but I’m not sure about it, et cetera, et cetera. And said, well what are you interested in? She said to me, I’m interested in forensic medicine. I said, that’s amazing. Anyway we carried on talking and all the rest of it, and at the end of it I actually said to her, I’m going to be completely open and honest with you, and she goes, what’s that? And I said look, I’m not going to give you the job. And she was like, what? And I said, please hear me out. And I said to her, I said if I gave you the job, which I know that you’re more than perfectly capable to do, every time I say hello to you, or every time I walk past you I’ll feel guilty. She goes why? I said, because you’re better than this, and I don’t denigrate a reception job or anything like that.

Visal: My receptionists are like my … the front of house, they represent me and my brand and my vision, but I said you can’t quit now. You’ve got to go to university. And she goes, what? And I said yeah, I said who have you come with? Who’s brought you for your interview? She goes my mom, so I brought her mum into the surgery, sat her down in my office. First thing I did was I congratulated her, she’s a single mum, she’d done so well to bring up such a lovely, well mannered girl. And just said to mum, look support her and if there’s anything I can do. We’re in the community here at the end of the day, and I said anything I can do. Whatever it is, if she wants to sit down and revise biology, I’ll do that with her, it’s not a problem, but make sure she studies. And about a year later I got an email, and she goes, I don’t know if you remember me, I’m the girl who ended up crying at the interview. I’ve got into forensic medicine. And that was cool, that was really nice.

Prav: Amazing story.

Payman: And did you see yourself in her? That you had these opportunities, and you had people who could have helped you on that journey along the way, and thought this was your time to-

Prav: Give back.

Payman: … give back.

Visal: I don’t ever think honestly speaking, this is without sounding too righteous, I never think about giving back or taking, just give. It doesn’t matter. Time, a lot of people say, I’ve not got enough time, sometimes that is the most important thing that you can give someone. And it always leads back to my dad, I used to go to the shops, all my cousins used to go to the shop, the boy cousins, go and see how your dad earns money. See what he has to go through, to put you through school, this that and the other. And I turn up to the shop, and my dad would send me home. I walked three miles, by the way to get to the shop, and dad would say, off you go. Can the driver drop me? No, he’s busy, so I’d have to walk back. And one day I got really peed off, and my dad said to me, I said to dad, what’s your problem? I’m trying to come in and help you. And he said, you’re not going to do what I’m doing. You’re going to be better than me, not going to happen but … and those sorts of values.

Visal: He believed in me, yeah I am his son, but everyone needs a little bit of a push. A lot of people helped me, one guy helped me with food, I didn’t have money for food, and his son is now a dentist and works in the practise. We’re great friends, his mum came over to the practise. I’ll never forget them, and it doesn’t matter what you do, if someone was there for me. That lady the Jamaican, well she’s from Guyana, she comes to the practise even now. I don’t know if you guys watched the [inaudible] livestream yesterday with the magic trick. Okay, that lady is the one who gave me my first ever job, was in the dental chair. She doesn’t pay. And money is not my driver, it’s not my driver.

Payman: It’s funny you said something that my dad said to me, and it got me a little bit emotional.

Visal: I noticed, sorry.

Payman: Which is, he said to me, son the reason I work so hard, is I don’t want you to do what I do, I don’t want you to suffer, I don’t want you to be a shop keeper, I want you to be better than me.

Visal: You know these sorts of things are things that I think in nowadays, in this world, because of the sacrifices that our parents have made, we generally take for granted, and my friends have got kids, it’s just the norm. [inaudible] get an iPad for Christmas, it’s like … or the right colour of iPhone or whatever it is, and my dad is just, he’s the king man, now Payman you’ve met him.

Payman: He’s a lovely guy, I don’t actually recognise this disciplinarian that you’re talking about, because he seemed like a very sweet, lovely guy to me.

Visal: Yeah, we’ve become really, really good friends and-

Payman: Is he back in Kenya?

Visal: Yeah he’s in Kenya at the moment, yeah, he’s in Kenya. But you know as the years go by, he turned from the disciplinarian to my friend and he used to always introduce me as his brother and all the rest of it. And then it turned round to I’m the guy now that he talks to and stuff. You’re talking the surgery and [inaudible 00:48:10], my dad never had the opportunity to see the old surgery, the only time he came to see the old surgery was when I was opening the new surgery. And they were always nervous, when I bought my first house, I phoned my mum, and mum, guess what. She goes what? I said, is there an echo there? She goes what? Is there an echo? She goes, I can’t hear anything. I was like oh sorry it’s on my side, guess where I am. She goes, where are you son? I was like, I’m standing in the living room of our first house in England. And she was just like over the moon, you know how Indian mums get, oh my son, all that sort of stuff you know?

Visal: And then a week a later, I completed on another house. What I’d done is, I was saving up and I wanted to buy a really nice big house so that all the family could come over, because people mean a lot more to me than anything else, you know. And I thought, split the deposit and just have something there. And the following week, called her up again, and I was like mum, [inaudible] literally, because it was literally a week apart. And I phoned mum again, and I said, mum hi, how you doing? What you up to? And she goes nothing. I said mum, what’s this echo thing, man keeps happening? And she goes, I don’t know, what you talking about? Ah I know what it is mum, guess what? And she goes what? I’m standing in the living room of the second house. And she’s like, did you ask your dad? First thing she said, did you ask you dad? And then a week later I phoned her up again, and I was like hi mom how you doing? And she goes yeah I’ma all right. And I was like mum can you hear echo? And she goes, don’t bloody tell me [crosstalk 00:49:42]. I said no, no mum, you’ve got to hear this one out.

Visal: I’m standing inside my safe deposit box at the bank, there’s an echo here now. There’s no more money left. But it’s all about being together, and it’s the same thing, it’s about, if you have the opportunity to get or help someone along their way to better themselves, not to say they’re bad as a person, but to better themselves in terms of career prospects et cetera, then it means a lot man. When I qualified in my first year, obviously the money situation was really, really dire. My brother actually ended up going to South Africa to study at university, and one of my friends in the year above at university gave me the money for his fees. And he came in, funny enough, end of last year, November, and I do a lot of [inaudible 00:50:30], he goes I just want to learn all this stuff, and I don’t know which one to invest in and all the rest of it. So I said, look come over and stuff, and I told him literally everything, including stuff that people don’t say, like literally you know.

Visal: And he sent me a text that evening saying, Vish, why did you do this because people don’t … and I didn’t only tell him about that, I told him about how exactly I run the business and how I make things turn and all the rest of it. Because no one shares that information, why did you share it with me? And out came the ledger. And from 2003, I took a photo, a screen shot of him, and I said, that’s why. And it said his name with the money that he gave me, and I said, you helped me pay my brother’s fees. I’ll never forget that.

Payman: And so during this whole process, relationships? Women?

Visal: Yeah, came and went. I had a great time at university, I did some really stupid stuff. We all do our laddish things and all the rest of it, and I moved into Clacton, the only brown guy in the town, sort of thing, which was quite a novelty to everyone. But the nice thing was, the majority of the people, because by the time I left Clacton, because I started List Build, because I was sitting on reception during the week, and on Wednesdays I book in patients for myself. And that built up over seven years to over 10,000 patients, everyone knew me. To the point I walked into a nightclub and I just hand the keys to the bouncer, and he drops me home. I order a pizza but I get the pizza delivery guy to come drop me home, pick up chilies and then go back to the pizza place-

Payman: Those little towns are good for that, you had little town mentality from Kenya. Those little towns are good for that sort of thing, man.

Visal: Do you know what, I just recently went back to Clacton, my ex boss passed away in 2018, so I thought, I’ll go back. We didn’t finish on the best of terms but he started me, and that doesn’t matter what happens, that won’t change. And I owe him and I always will. And I went back to Clacton to do [inaudible] cases and stuff, and I thought let me just go and see a few guys and see if they’re around. The guy from the local kebab shop put on a spread that I’ve never ever seen in my life, walked into the local restaurant that I used to go to, the chef came out. This restaurants packed with people, it’s on a Friday night, right? The chef came out, the owners came, we’re all dancing around in the middle of this place where people are waiting to be seated and stuff. Walked into a pub with the guy I used to play golf with, and he’s just like, bloody hell man, the legend returns. And it’s just lovely having stuff like that it’s-

Payman: Proper community.

Visal: Yeah, and you know what, sometimes you’re so embroiled in your own stuff that you don’t actually understand or realise what impact, positive and negative that you can have on people. And the past two years I’ve had to look at that very, very closely.

Payman: Take us through it bud, so Dentality was going super, super well.

Visal: Yeah, it was yeah.

Payman: Tell the story bud, a disaster happened to you.

Visal: So in November, 6th November 2018, everything changed, well actually before that, December 17 I and my wife ended up separating. We’d had quite a rocky relationship throughout, these things happen.

Prav: When did you meet you wife in the whole journey?

Visal: So I actually met her in 2008.

Prav: Which was when in terms of qualifying, buying a practise, what sort of-

Visal: So I qualified in 2003, met her in 2008, bought the practise in 2010. We got married in 2009, so very shortly after all the practise and stuff. So that comes with its own complications obviously, but it is what it is. So yeah we just sort of met, got married very quickly.

Prav: How did you meet?

Visal: Just, well we met in August, is it August, yeah I think it was August, by August, we’d met in August and our parents met in December for the actual engagement ceremony. We got engaged in April, in Kenya, and that uncle I was talking to you about, he was very, very ill. And he was one of my heroes, but I was a bit of a hero for him as well because I’d made it through so he was very, very proud of me. And he said, Vish whatever you need, money, don’t worry about anything, it’ll be fine. And literally about a week before he’d gotten admitted into hospital, and I went to see him, something I’ll always feel sorry for because I just said, man the traffic has taken me six hours to get here. Because I drove from Clacton to the hospital in … called now Mayday hospital in South London in Croydon. And I remember sating that and do you know what, I’ve never ever felt more guilty saying that, every time I think of it it makes me feel guilty. Because that’s the last time I saw him.

Visal: And he promised, he goes Vish, I don’t care what the doctor says I’m coming to your engagement. And he died on the night of my engagement. So in the morning when everyone was ready to go excited for the engagement and stuff. Yeah, I knew what had happened.

Payman: Grief and guilt, grief and guilt always go together well.

Visal: So yeah, so got married in August 2009, and-

Payman: When did it go wrong?

Visal: Before we got married.

Payman: [inaudible 00:55:46].

Visal: Yeah, do you know what, it’s-

Payman: In retrospect you’re saying that, right?

Visal: Absolutely, absolutely, and I think-

Prav: Was that an arranged marriage, or …

Visal: It was an arranged meet, so my mum’s cousin lived in the same town as her parents and yeah basically it was just like [crosstalk] this guy, yeah it was an introduction thing. And I was always very, very focused, I think in fairness to me, to a certain extent I always had my goals set out. And I said, look this is the sort of guy I am, these are my goals, this is where the goal posts stand. And it may seem harsh now, but they’ll never move, so what you see is what you get.

Payman: And those goals were what? Business?

Visal: Just ambition-

Payman: Ambition, relationships.

Visal: Relationships, principles, family values. I’m quite old school, elders, respect. Even now when an elderly patient comes, I’m not going to call them by their first name there’s no two was about it. They get called Mr or Mrs or Sir.

Payman: Sure.

Visal: I’ll always do that, and part of that actually stems from my grandad. A lot of people get asked, when you’re a kid you get asked, if you’d like to meet someone who would you meet? I never chose a celebrity or any of these politicians or … I wanted to meet my grandad. Because every single time he’s been brought up in a conversation, the people that actually say, gentleman, and they actually salute. And he wanted my dad to become a doctor, and he sadly passed away in a car crash. So yeah we went through a lot, even in final year of university I lost my uncle and my auntie, both in a week, they died in a car crash as well. And my cousins were in the car at the back, so we’ve been through a hell of a lot. I know it really still stings my dad whenever he thinks about it, all these years ahead.

Payman: But you were saying about the marriage breakup, the disaster was more than that.

Visal: Yeah, so anyway me and the soon to be ex wife, should I say we split up in December 17, January 17 I almost lost my mum, she went to India for a hip operation and we almost lost her, so I had that going on, and obviously the whole emotional side of it, it slows you down, and fast forward November, and we had an incident at the practise the hygienist was actually working there, wasn’t sterilising instruments between seeing patients.

Payman: How did you first find out about that?

Visal: So it was one of my nurses, she went in to update day list or top up surgery whatever it was, and she just happened … the eyes of these girls man, you just admire them for what they actually do. And just happened to glance in the sink, and the scaler tips didn’t match the number of hand instruments. She just picked it up like that. Out of nowhere, so then she went and told the head nurse, and the head nurse said, right you keep making excuses to go into the surgery, and I’ll keep an eye on the de-con room. And no movement. They went and told the practise manager-

Payman: Why was she not sterilising? Because she was lazy? What-

Visal: She’s in a better place to answer than I am, mate.

Payman: Yeah but what do you think? You have no idea?

Prav: You pulled her in or [crosstalk 00:58:57].

Visal: What actually happened was, they went and told the practise manager, so the practise manager went in there and she was, oh yeah I’m sorry it won’t happen again, I’ve just been rushed all morning, blah blah blah, and she brushed it under the carpet. My practise manager wasn’t a clinical background person, she had no nursing degree or anything like that. So she just left it, and she went back to the head nurse, because they were all saying what did you say, what did she say blah blah blah. A little bit of banter around and chit chat. And my head nurse said, you’ve got to tell Vish. I don’t expect anything less than 110% in my practise, which makes it very hard to work for me, or with me. And my practise manager’s very words were, he will murder her, I’m not saying anything to him right now. Keep an eye on for the rest of the day, I’ll talk to him this evening, I’ve got a meeting with him this evening. And I remember 6.30 in the evening, I’m standing outside having a cigarette, and my practise manager came up to me, and she said, I’ve got to talk to you.

Visal: And I said, what you leaving? Ha. And she told me. And that … the only way I can liken it to is if any of you’ve watched the Lion King, you know when there’s that stampede and Simba [inaudible] just go whoa. And that happened, and I was just like, holy shit. What do I do? And I was straight on the phone to a few people I knew, what do I do? And I was getting mixed messages. Don’t follow it through. And others were like you’ve got to report it. I knew what I was going to do anyway but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. Bottom line is it goes back to what my dad said, don’t ever break anyone’s trust. And the patients is all I could think, they’d seen me come into Hoddesden not knowing a single soul in the town, slowly, slowly building my reputation up, they were referring their friends, their families, their kids. Everything was coming together. When I started off, the practise had 1400 patients.

Payman: But you pulled her up on it?

Visal: So I pulled her up on it.

Payman: What did she say?

Visal: I’m sorry, that was it.

Prav: Did this date back to … did she try and say it was just one off, or …

Visal: So I asked her that, but the thing was we had CCTV in the hygiene surgery. The day she got caught she was working in another room, and just all hell broke loose. I reported it to the GDC, I spoke to someone at the GDC and they basically said you’ve got to report it through the website. I said where? And they go oh where the illegal practise section is. I goes like that’s for tooth whitening, and they go yeah report it through there. I said okay, so I sent it off, got an acknowledgment, reported it to NHS England, NHS England got Public Health England involved, CQC got involved, obviously the Indemnity Organisations got involved, the BDA got involved. Ultimately the papers and the press and everyone got involved, now there’s lawyers involved. And I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Do you know what, it actually … with what’s actually happening, because nothing’s sorted out yet, but it actually brings in the huge question, what the regulatory bodies surrounding our profession are actually doing.

Payman: And the awful thing is that you did the right thing, and doing the right thing destroyed your life.

Visal: Yeah.

Payman: If you’d brushed it under the carpet, and just slap on the back of the hand, and don’t do it again.

Prav: Could have destroyed his life.

Visal: You know what, one particular person actually said to me, nothing’s going to come of it, here’s the statistics, gave me some papers on it and all the rest of it. And I was like, but that’s still betraying trust, and if I let her get away with it this time, she’s going to do something else, there’s going to be another short cut, and eventually there’s only so many short cuts you can make before you actually genuinely hurt someone. I can’t have that on my conscience.

Payman: So what happened to your patients? What happened?

Visal: All hell broke loose.

Payman: Go on.

Visal: 563 patients were written to. And they were offered blood tests for blood born viruses.

Payman: Wow.

Visal: So Facebook … we were in the papers in China, we were everywhere, literally blasted over the entire media, social … you name it, and everyone knew.

Prav: News travels fast in a small place.

Visal: Exactly what we said earlier on. But it wasn’t even a small place, even within the dental community. I had loads of mixed things being said. Some of my associates they got told, I wouldn’t stay anywhere near that man, move. Don’t be affiliated with that. And do you know what, hands off to the associates, solid.

Payman: But the backlash then, the patients started blaming you.

Visal: Yeah.

Payman: Because at the end of the day it’s the practise, you can’t say it was her. Or how did it work?

Visal: What actually happened was one of the patients who attended the practise, attended to see the hygienist through direct access. Happens to be a lawyer who owns his own medical negligence law firm. So he jumped on the bandwagon. How the details got leaked out, and how these lawyers got their hands on it is beyond me, because currently we’ve got 30, 35 lawsuits. It’s gone all the way round, so basically what happened was, the lawsuits came in, the hygienist got her indemnity organisation, the indemnity organisation said they won’t support her, so then she did the right thing, I thought and got a firm of solicitors who generally deals with these cases for the indemnity organisation. And just literally last week, everything … the patients there, I don’t know exactly what’s been said, but those lawsuits are now coming directly at me.

Payman: When they tested these 565 did they find anyone had been-

Visal: No.

Payman: So then the lawsuit, doesn’t someone have to be damaged in order for a lawsuit to stick.

Visal: I think the biggest thing for me was to actually try and reassure people. It was very difficult to do that, I had people coming in, screaming down the surgery, walking into my room, following me through the back doors, and just literally just barging into the … it was horrible. I lost staff as a result of it as well. But it was the barrage of paperwork, I had to provide a serious incident report, then a 72 hour report, then a root cause analysis. I did six weeks, because I had only six weeks’ worth of CCTV, so I’d already preemptively been through it, I went through every single patient record card, and no one was allowed to do it, I was doing it. I went through every single one, and this that and the other. We had one patient who was HIV positive, who we know, who’d told us. But we’d actually offered him to have appointments either at the end of the session before lunch, or at the end of the session in the afternoon, just so that we can take that little bit of extra time, clean everything down. I got accused of being discriminatory. Every single time I said anything, the CCTV in the hygiene room, oh you’re going against GDPR. And there were just constant fights about it.

Visal: I even asked to put a letter to the patients from the practise, because NHS England and Public Health England jumped onto it, and asked to put a letter in, and two days before they send me the proof and they’ve taken out my letter.

Payman: It’s like a chain reaction.

Visal: Wat are you guys doing? And they said, well we’ve spoken to our legal team, they don’t think it’s a good idea that your letter should go out in the same envelope. And I said so you’re going to post this out without my letter in it? And they go yeah, but you’ve still got the opportunity, you’ve got a couple of days, so you can post your own letter out. And was like, all right let’s get shirty now. If I threaten legal action … it wasn’t a nice time, and people who are in the regulatory profession who are actually collecting a salary should really, really look at themselves, and stop being a jobs worth. Honestly and I mean that. If that person listens to it, I hope they’re listening to it because the way they dealt with it was absolutely wrong.

Payman: And in that profession, I’ve treated lots of medical negligence lawyers, because I used to work next to a law firm, their whole thing is that you’re taking it personally. Don’t take it personally. In our world we’ve just been through the struggle to get to this point, personally it’s like 81 people supported this project in the end. So of course we’re going to take it seriously.

Visal: That’s what the BDA told me. Don’t get me wrong, the BDA were fantastic. They really did come in, but the crux of the matter is, this is the situation, take it on the chin, today’s news, tomorrow’s fish and chip shop paper. Take the hit. And I just thought, really?

Prav: And during all this, were you going through the divorce at that time?

Visal: Yeah, still going on, yeah. Still all going on.

Prav: So you had that at the same time.

Visal: Mum falling ill, almost dying. My dad, my brother. My brother had twins as well. He’d moved to America, he wasn’t allowed because he lived in South Africa, he had one of the typical robbery stories and moved overnight. So he couldn’t work. Then they were looking for a house because he was living with his sister in law, so I helped him with the mortgage payments just to get him on his feet until he started working and stuff. That’s my job, I’m big brother.

Prav: Where’s the practise now? What’s the state of play? Are you still open, are you still trading, or …

Visal: Yeah we’re still open-

Prav: But the damage.

Visal: Do you know what Prav, honestly it’s been hard, it’s been hard. If one thing comes out of this, we’ve heard over the years so many colleagues have been in horrible, horrible circumstances. And a lot of the youngsters they’re so passionate but one thing will happen and they’ll just completely break them, and we can’t let that happen.

Visal: And it is just one of these things. In fact you’ve triggered a memory. I used to pray, I don’t play anymore, I used to pray every day, and I never asked for anything as such.

Prav: Why did you pray? And who did you pray to?

Visal: So god? When I left home my dad gave me a little photo of one of the gods, and I still have it.

Prav: Same one yeah?

Visal: Same one, in fact funny enough the last time he was here I reframed it, and everything else. I’ve got that, and there’s like three tiers to my little temple at home. Obviously god’s at the top, my grandad’s on it, and so are mum and dad because they’re my world. And every day I pray for the same thing, every single day, and that was, there’s a lot of problems in this world and you’ve put me through experiences that’s made me thick skinned so I know I can take some, I know I’m resilient. So if you’re going to give a problem to someone, that’s going to push them over the edge, don’t, give it to me. In return just give me the strength, but as a compromise you’ve got to look after my family, because I’m not near them. I think that prayer was answered pretty damn well.

Prav: So you stopped praying.

Visal: Well sometimes-

Prav: Did you lose religion? Is that what you’re saying? Are you religious?

Payman: Well to some extent right?

Visal: Well not exactly because-

Prav: No but you used to pray then you stopped praying-

Visal: It’s not about religion, it’s more about discipline, it’s more about respect, it’s more about-

Prav: Why don’t you pray any more then?

Visal: I’ve got nothing to ask for mate. I’ve got no expectations. Everything I’ve done in my life to date I have fought tooth and nail for, and sometimes I’ve paid the ultimate sacrifices for it. Ultimately in my eyes, nothing’s ever been easy. All my mates say, nothing’s easy for you Vish, everything single time you do something it’s just hard way round. It’s always, always something else, and no it’s all right, I don’t want anything [crosstalk] work for it.

Payman: I’ve been through one legal process and it almost broke me, one, and your strength to handle 35 at once. I only-

Visal: That’s plus the divorce lawyers-

Payman: Yeah, yeah. Last year we moved house, and I threw away the paperwork from this legal thing that I was in. And that one thing was a huge box of papers, that had to be read and all of that pain, but it makes me think that you were prepared, made ready for this challenge by your previous …

Visal: I think everything does come to a head sometimes, and I’m not saying that I’m the strongest guy, and look at me, superman, ha ha. No not at all, I’ve got huge kryptonite, my personality, I’m so driven, so focused that I often forget about how other people feel, my staff. The amount of crap they put up with.

Payman: One thing I remember about you is, I’m one of these late night guys, Prav wakes up at 4 am, we laugh about it. I kind of go to bed a 3 am-

Visal: Yeah, I do both.

Payman: Bit like Drew. But you used to call me at one in the morning, talking about work, and I used think, oh isn’t there someone else awake at this time of night.

Visal: That hasn’t changed, not changed for 20 years, maybe more.

Payman: Focused.

Visal: You’ve got to do it, I’m comfortable, I haven’t made an empire or anything like that, but you know what, whatever it is, it’s mine, well half of it.

Payman: Vis you’re handling it yeah, but this amount of stress, this amount, it’s a lot of stress man. This amount of stress is going to hit you somewhere, and so be careful of that. The not sleep and stress together, that’s a big combination.

Visal: Do you know what, Payman it’s a very simple rule I follow. Give it all you got.

Payman: I can see that.

Visal: Because at the end of the day, when it comes to … forget judgement day, forget a higher power asking you. The first person’s going to ask you is you. What did I do? And if you have, yeah but I did this, but … because of this I couldn’t … you’re making excuses-

Prav: Kidding yourself.

Visal: … and no one really cares, no one cares. If I said to you, oh Payman I’m really tired I’m sorry I missed today, can we organise another time? You’re like, yeah don’t worry about it. And then you think well, I’ve allocated time for him I’m not going to do it again. That’s my fault. So if you commit, you’ve got to do it. I told you about what I’ve done in the last 24 hours, so for me no, every single little thing resonates back to my dad.

Prav: So when you hit rock bottom, when you were in that hole, and I’ve been there a few times, be it through health, or relationships, whatever that is, we all have our way of coping with it. Right and I struggle to believe that when you are really deep down in that hole you just say, hey I’m strong, I’m just going to be superstrong and be true to myself. Ever have any doubts? Do you ever start talking yourself out of things, or …

Visal: I think we all talk ourselves out of everything all the time, just to-

Prav: Or think, what the hell is this all about?

Visal: Yeah.

Prav: What am I doing?

Visal: But the thing is, if you actually analyse it, it’s a way that we as humans just break it down into small sizeable chunks.

Prav: Is that what you do? Analyse it?

Visal: No, because I don’t get a breather, I honestly I don’t get a breather. Last time I had a holiday was July 2018 and I’ve worked seven days a week since.

Payman: Seven days a week.

Visal: Seven days a week since. I’ve got my divorce coming up, I’ve got to do a massive payout, that’s the law of the land, that’s the way things go. I’ve got to afford it.

Prav: Sure.

Visal: Or I’ve got to be able to be in a capacity where I can actually be lendable. So that’s a big worry, and I constantly … I did used to ask myself, why me? Why me? I’ve never ever done anything wrong to anyone, I’ve never stolen off anyone, I’ve never … yeah I can be a bit of an arse sometimes, I can be a real piece of work at times, but you generally do that with the people that you’re closest to, because-

Prav: So true.

Visal: … you’re hoping that they’re going to understand who you are, because they know who you are. But in fairness to my ex, she may have had enough too, and you can’t knock anyone for that. There’s a lot of stigma, especially in the Asian communities that still hangs about with the idea of divorce, but she said something to me which was, it’s a failed relationship, nothing else. And there’s a lot of things I have and there’s lot of deceit and contempt that I have but the bottom line is that that’s going to come to anything. It’s not going to help anyone. A lot of people said, oh watch you know, you’re such a nice guy, she’s … I was like, I don’t want her to suffer. Don’t talk about stuff like that, just make sure I don’t suffer, in whatever shape way or form. But the last two years have taught me a lot of things, it’s taught me about who my real friends are, and people I thought were my friends were actually not. Quite a few examples. But [inaudible 01:16:29]-

Payman: Give us an example, don’t say who it is, but an example of what’s happened that made you think that. Or the other side, so what happened that made you think someone really is your …

Visal: I had a friend who’s just about an acquaintance, maybe at bit more, and phoned me up and said, Vish I’ve just sold my flat, and I’ve got an extra 10 grand, do you need it? And I was like, wow! I’ve got another friend of mine at university who honestly I’m really proud to say he’s my friend, because we hardly ever talk. Once every three to six months, and he phoned me up and he said, I’ve just sold my practises for an absolute frigging fortune, how much do you need? And I said, what do you mean? He goes, whatever you want. You can have whatever you want. I was like, what? He goes, I mean it, whatever you want you can have.

Payman: Amazing.

Visal: There’s always a way, there’s always, always a way, you’ve just got to see it. And when you’re down, Prav, like what you were saying, it’s okay. Take that time, because you need it, but no one’s going to judge you for … and even if they do, they’re not really your friends, they’re not the sort of people who matter. I mean in conferences a couple of years go, I’m standing there and someone behind me says, you see that guy, he’s down and out. You know what, phoenixes do rise, and they only rise from ashes. So everything around me can burn down, but I’m here to stay for as long-

Payman: Yeah, I tell you what bud, you know they say that thing, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, but yes, but also if anyone’s going to get out of this, and be victorious at the end of it, you will. Because you’ve got some drive man.

Visal: Yeah well the victory, it’s not about victory Payman, it’s if I can actually just help a few people along, just people who are actually feeling a bit down, say do you know what yeah, let’s do it. Brilliant, brilliant, that’s the sort of thing my dad did, and you’ve got to be able to do that for people. And I don’t know, I’ve had people come up to me and say, wow [inaudible] posts on Facebook and this that and the other, and I’m just like, I’m just a regular guy man, I’m not anything special at all. I happened to fluke one or two composites or a few crowns or whatever it is. But I’ve worked as well, I have worked hard, I’ve put in the hours. I was never naturally artistic for anyone who knows and see me, I’m just like a bit gorilla sort of thing. You don’t get very many arty gorillas, but you know what, one thing I’ve got, and that is buckets is love for people. And love just for the idea of being a human being.

Visal: It doesn’t matter what you have, I don’t care. Are you hungry? I’m hungry, let’s eat, simple, doesn’t matter where you’re from. We’re both hungry, we’ve got something in common, get on with it.

Prav: What’s next?

Visal: What’s next?

Prav: Get divorce over, the whole lawsuit thing disappears.

Visal: Do you know what Prav, I’ve realised that my love for dentistry is so deep, my love to actually … it’s almost like to prove to myself, there’s things that you see, a lot of people slag off Facebook and say, this has become the university of Facebook and people are saying stuff without even noticing, or people are posting stuff without even noticing. But that was one of my biggest teachers, because it would be the big guys who are actually saying stuff, or wouldn’t bother or whatever it is. There’s some people who are haters, and have their own little digs and stuff.

Payman: There’s massive down sides, but there is massive upsides too man.

Visal: Do you know what, it is honestly … that made me up my game. And the courses I go on and all this sort of stuff, there are a lot of inspirational people out there. And funny enough, I actually got told about the podcast through someone else, before you told me about it. And the amount of people who listen to it and stuff, and I think that you guys are doing is absolutely fantastic, because this is not just about enlighten or what you’re doing or anyone else is doing. This is actually about bringing community together, and a lot of people talk about it, very few do. So I’ve got a lot of respect for you guys, when you said me come to this. I was like, why? I’m nobody, you know? This is Dental Leader’s podcast, I’d like to be a leader, and I’d like to be a good leader. I think I’ve got a long, long way to go. I’ve got to work a lot on myself, in terms of what next as a person, in terms of actually being a little bit more aware of how I actually influence the interactions that I have with people.

Visal: Because if you actually genuinely want to help people, you’ve got to have a pretty good idea of what you’re like yourself, and there’s no ifs and buts. You can’t have any excuses, so you’ve got to work a lot on yourself. So that’s the first thing, which I’ve been doing anyway.

Prav: What do you mean by working on yourself?

Visal: Just little, little things, little lessons every day. Just I had on my phone as my screen saver for a long time, was if you constantly compete with others you become bitter, but if you compete with yourself you become better. I think it’s beautiful, beautiful saying. And you’ve just got to find inspiration. No matter what it is that you want to do, find some sort of inspiration, someone to push you. And it doesn’t have to be someone who’s better at you than doing something. To someone just say, go do it man, come on, let’s go.

Payman: I love that out of adversity you’ve come out there with this beautiful things like you’re saying now. Anyone else could have been bitter about what’s happened, and I would be absolutely understanding of it if they were.

Visal: Who does it affect ultimately though?

Payman: Oh I get it, dude I get it. But you’re a very, very special person, that’s why we asked you on the show.

Visal: I don’t think so, I think I’m quite regular.

Payman: [inaudible 01:22:26].

Visal: But thank you.

Prav: I think I know the answer to this question already. So we ask everyone this, and you’ve listened to the podcast, and if it was your last day on the planet, what advice would you leave the world or your loved ones with?

Visal: Be who you are, get to where you want to get to because you want it. And don’t let anything stop you. Because anyone who says you can’t do it, is another human being, they ain’t perfect either. Give it your best shot, if you fail, you know what? You did what you could, and there’s a little bit of self respect and dignity and humility in that. You just sit there saying oh so and so said I didn’t do it, you’ve lost me already. Just change the way you think, and just stay strong, things will come. Everyone has a bad day, everyone has their own kryptonite, and everyone’s is different. What may be kryptonite for you may not be anything for me. But keep going, we’re a great profession, we’ve got people like you guys here, there are people out there who inspire so many. So yeah, just keep going, be the best that you can be. Whether you live once, or you reincarnate, it doesn’t matter what your religious belief is. Get better every day.

Prav: Beautiful man.

Payman: Thank you, thank you so much.

Prav: Thank you so much, thanks for sharing that today.

Visal: Thank you.

Speaker 2: 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: Thank you for tuning in guys to the Dental Leaders podcast. I’ve just got a little request to make, if you’ve got a suggestion of somebody else who we should be interviewing, or somebody who’s got a really strong story, powerful story to share with us, please send us a message and help us connect with that individual so we can bring their story to the surface.

Payman: Thank you so much for taking the time guys, if you got some value out of it, think about sharing it with your friends, and subscribing to the channel. Thank you guys.

Prav: Don’t forget that six star review.

Sofina: We’re so busy with our lives sometimes that we don’t sit there and take some time out and think okay, that person needs them, but I haven’t got time to deal with that. It’s like, no, what is the point in being successful and being where you are if you can’t even do that as a human, like, take some time out for someone else?

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

Payman: It’s a real pleasure to have Sofina Ahmed on the podcast. Hi, Sofina. How you doing?

Sofina: Hi. Hi. How are you doing, guys? Hi, Payman. Hi, Prav.

Prav: Hey, Sofina.

Payman: So, Sofina, we met, what was it, three years ago?

Sofina: Yeah. So-

Payman: Something like that.

Sofina: I met you just when I opened the first clinic that I’d set up.

Payman: Yeah.

Sofina: So you were one of the first people to come to the clinic, I think. So-

Payman: And a very cool clinic it was too, but very interesting clinic and it was a nighttime only practise at the time.

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: And then fast forward three years, I see you on one of the dental groups talking about your four practises in Yorkshire.

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: And I was like, “What? I thought you were in Birmingham.” And then it became 12 practises, so it’s a lovely story. And really willing to get into your background, first of all. Where did you grow up? When did you become a dentist? Where did you become a dentist? That sort of thing.

Sofina: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I became a dentist in Birmingham, so I qualified in Birmingham, went to university in Birmingham, was born in Birmingham, lived in Birmingham my whole life. So that part is probably very standard, but obviously what I’ve done is very out of the box and out of the norm and I think that comes a lot from my parents’ past and where I’ve come from, where they’ve come from. And I think that probably is more to do with where I am now is more to do with that backstory than my own backstory as such, and I think that is a big part of where I am right now, my parents’ journeys and where they’ve come from.

Payman: Well, tell us about that.

Sofina: Yeah. So it was my grandad actually who came to England, so he came to England in the 1950s and ’60s. And he was a West Midlands bus driver, so he was a bus driver, he started off as a bus driver. And he was in the country to, as immigrants did back in the day, they’d come in without a family, work, send money back home and try and forge a path and a way for their family. And I think in those days, it was a lot of young boys were sent to different countries to set up and set their roots and that’s kind of what happened with my grandad. From there, it was basically my dad who … He went back to Pakistan, got married and then they had my dad. And this part of the story, I think, is a little bit sad and a bit confusing for me and especially us with our modern heads, we don’t understand this part.

Sofina: But when my dad was born, he was born in Pakistan and then he was, at the age of four, put into a boarding school for until he was about seven, while my grandad was still in England. And he was in a boarding school in Pakistan and he didn’t really have much. He was kind of left there, if you like. And my grandma came to England as well, so my dad was kind of left there for quite a few years. And then when he did eventually come to England, he was seven years old. He was there in England and he was here for a number of years and he was very much … He was the eldest in the family in terms of the brothers and he was kind of left a lot. So my grandad would go back to Pakistan and my dad was left here a lot. And when he was about 15, 16, went to school here and didn’t do very well and he was just trying … And he got left by himself again at the age of 15 as … Again, alone, here in the country while my grandma, my grandad and all the kids went back to Pakistan.

Sofina: So he was left and he had to fend for himself, so he had to fend for himself. So the way he did it was he used to … He was going to college and school and during the week, he had a briefcase, he used to go around, door to door sales, and he used to sell door to door. And when I speak to my dad now, he goes that’s where he learnt the most skills was those door to door sales, those early years when he was a teenager. And during the weekend, he used to wash dishes in restaurants. And when he was left, one of the things that he did have was a Greek family that really took him in and they were like his extended family, and those are still his closest friends now, he’s still very much in touch with that family. And they had a fish and chip shop and he really learnt a lot of business skills from them. So, my dad really forged himself and forged his own path. And he didn’t do well at school, he didn’t study and he didn’t do well and obviously had a lot going on.

Sofina: But he learnt those life skills, he learnt negotiating sales and all those business skills himself and he forged his own path. And I, being, basically, my dad’s daughter, picked up a lot of my dad’s business skills and I think that’s where I’ve kind of got to where I am. I mean, he used to do things like, even when he was 12, 13, he was … Where they lived was near Birmingham City football ground and he’d go and you had the fans and they’d come and drop their cars and they’ll say, “We’ll look after your cars. Pay us.” And so they’d pay him money and he’d … So he’d have all these little entrepreneurial business skills that he used to do and he used to … He really made himself. He worked himself as a postman and he just had that drive that he wanted to do more, and the big break for him was video shops.

Sofina: So he saw an advert for a video shop … Sorry, a shop to let and he was like, “Yeah, I’m going to take this out.” So he went up to the landlord and he said, “I want to take this agreement.” And they were like, “Well, what are you going to turn it into?” And he had no idea at the time, he was just like, “Oh, I don’t really know.” He liked to rent out VHS’s, so he said, “I’ll turn it into a video shop,” and that was his big break. And he took £500 loan from the bank, set up this shop and stocked it up and it took off and that was really where he took off from. He ended up growing that business and having a chain of video shops and really went from there. I mean, my dad was Del Boy, so I’m literally Del Boy’s daughter. He was such a wheeler dealer.

Sofina: And it’s really funny because we’re massive fans of Only Fools and Horses and we literally … There are scenes in Only Fools and Horses that are literally our lives, they’re literally … I watch it, I’m like, “Oh, my god, dad, you used to do that.” At the time, he didn’t really acknowledge it when we were growing up and sniggering about it, but now my dad’s older, he’ll go, “You know what? I used to do that. I used to have a council flat full of a café that had closed down and all the bits from there, and LPs, and all those things,” and think he’d sell them. Our house was always full of those kind of things and he really … Rags to riches kind of story and he really learnt. There’s a place of it’s quite sad that he was left, et cetera, and this and that, but when we do discuss it, when I talk to my dad, I’m like, “That’s life skills that you learnt and because of you learning those skills, you passed them onto me.” And it shaped who he was and, as a consequence, it shaped who I was.

Sofina: So, I was always really into business and I always really wanted to do something and wanted to do something different. So when I wanted to set up, it had to be different, it had to be. And I was working as an associate for quite a while before I decided you know what? I want to go down, I want to try, give it a go, but I knew it had to be different.

Prav: Sofina, growing up, a lot of those stories resonate with me, my dad and what we went through. So I grew up in a corner shop, my dad was driving taxis. On the weekend, I’d be cleaning the taxis, et cetera, et cetera. Were you engrossed in the video shops? Were you heavily exposed to all of that? Were you sort of working for him-

Sofina: Yeah, absolutely.

Prav: Whilst you were growing up?

Sofina: Definitely, much more than my siblings. I used to work a lot with my dad. So in the summer holidays, I’d spend the three months with my dad at his shop and I’d be there going, “Dad, you could do this so much better. Why don’t you do this? And why don’t you do that?” And I’d give him so many … Try and push those ideas out there and I’d want to grow my dad’s business, and there was so many ideas I’d want to bring to the table, I’d be like, “Oh, Dad …” And he’s an ideas man anyway, so he had loads of his own ideas. And there were so many things, like, “Oh, we could make this so much better, Dad.” And I loved that and I really had a buzz and out of all the siblings, I was really into that. I always said that I would go into some form of business, so I always had that business mind-

Payman: Was the business still around when digital took over and messed it up?

Sofina: See, this is the thing, this is where I think my dad is kind of like a genius in business. What he does do is gets out of the right things at the right time, and I think that is really clever thing to do. It’s not just being there on the up, but knowing okay, this ship’s about to sink, so we need to jump. So I think it was before, even in the ’80s, I think he started selling when he realised okay, things are dipping. And my dad puts it like the water will just kind of start coming, seeping in before he jumps ship, so he knew when to cut. And I think that is a really good business skill, to know when to cut your losses and to know when to cut out because I think that was really what he did, that was really key to him staying successful was the fact that when the video shop started going down, he knew okay, moving on. There was no clinging on or anything like that, he’d just cut and jump and went onto the next thing and I think that’s really important to do.

Sofina: And I think when I see other people who have made mistakes in business, I think a lot it I see is people not letting go at the right time or throwing good money after bad money. When things are going wrong, they just throw more money at something and it is literally throwing good money after bad money, and those kind of things that I’ve learnt. And when I did set up, it was a massive risk and a lot of people did say to me, “This is not going to work. This is not going to work.” And instead of going right, yeah, in my head, it’s going to work, that’s it, I was very risk-averse, I was like okay, yeah, there is a chance this can’t work, I might be completely clouded in my judgement and in my idea that I might not see the risk.

Sofina: So I planned for, I had contingencies there for it to not work and I had it fully planned for it to not work. And there was a lot I put in place for it to not work. So I set it up as a three surgery, but I didn’t get out the three surgeries. The wiring was there, the plumbing was there, but it was like right, I’m not going to put any of the extra equipment or materials in there until the first one’s made enough money for the second chair-

Payman: Sofina, go through the idea. Go through the idea because people may not know or understand the idea and why was it that it was nighttime?

Sofina: So it was a couple of different factors. I mean, one of the key factors at the time was the fact I had … This was quite … I was into my career and me and my husband were both working nine to five, nine to six and I had a young daughter at the time. And we literally were putting her in nursery all day and she was only just less than two and it was heartbreaking, it was heartbreaking that she was in nursery, we’re working full day, we’ll come back at six o’clock and I was just thinking there must be a better way. And the thing with business is you can control things a lot more, so I was just like, there must be a better way. So I wanted to do something that suits me. I’m extremely nocturnal, I’m so nocturnal anyway, my brain is so much sharper at nighttime, I don’t know why, but it must be an innate thing. But I’m very nocturnal, I’m sharper at nighttime. I just thought it works out so much better.

Sofina: And there was loads of other factors, like the fact that this is a property that was actually my dad’s property. But I was obviously going to rent it out and I could’ve rented it out off someone else, but I thought if I’m going to invest £200,000 of our savings, our life savings into a business, I don’t want to invest into a property that I’m renting and then it flops and then that money’s gone, at least I’m investing in my dad’s property. And it was a warehouse that I had to turn around, so it was a complete squat. So I had that property and that property has no parking during the day, so I thought okay, there’s an issue there. I’m such a problem-solver, I love solving problems, so I was like right, that’s an issue, there’s nowhere to park. We work during the day, I’ve got a kid, at least this way, he works … We can tag-team, he works during the day, I’m at home with the kid, he comes home from work, and then I go off to work. It just worked out very good for us and our personal circumstances. And there was all the other things of that, like it’s a niche market, not many people do it, it suits us, got the parking issue sorted and it was just like a multiple-

Payman: What time were you opening?

Sofina: Tick, tick, tick, that this is … So it was 6:00PM to 12:00AM, so it was full on evening. So it was literally like okay, so you’re going to come home and then I’m going to go off to work. And that way, it really did suit us and it was great. Thing is, we were talking about this the other day, that I don’t actually do that much clinical, but I love clinical. I really love clinical. I do love clinical dentistry. I do love my job actually. And it is something that I really enjoyed working there myself as well, so it is really good. And like I said, it suits me because I’m so nocturnal, so it fitted in really well with all that. But yeah, no, it went really well and it did take off for us and, obviously, there was a few things that I did to help that and-

Payman: What did you do?

Sofina: So it was marketing, SEO, advertising, word of mouth. And one of the key things that I do, which is probably different to others, is I don’t really … I know I could charge more for the fact that it’s in the evening and there’s no-one else open, but for me, I have a very ethical side to what I do and it’s very important for me to be an ethical businesswoman. And that’s one thing I really want to promote, the fact that you don’t have to … When you do business, you don’t have to screw people over or cheat people, you can do it in a very ethical … And that’s something I definitely learnt from my dad.

Sofina: My dad was so ethical, he never ever cheated anyone and he did business in a way that was very honest and that was very important to me as well. And a big factor for why I did what I did was because there was very little provision for people out of hours, there was very little provision for people out of hours. And by skyrocketing prices and I could’ve seen less people and made more money from less people, it was very important for me to see more people and charge less. And that was-

Payman: Sofina, I hear you, I hear you, but that’s not a question of ethics. I understand what you’re saying, but the price you charge is the price you charge for your service-

Sofina: No, but if-

Payman: That’s positioning.

Sofina: Yeah, but my drive is accessibility and having more access and-

Payman: But that’s not an ethical question, that’s a positioning-

Sofina: Yeah, no, it’s not … Yeah, absolutely. And thing is, this is what it is, it’s like-

Payman: But I get it. I get it. I get it. There’s some profiteering when someone’s in pain at night, you could, you could charge a hell of a lot more.

Sofina: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Payman: I do get that.

Sofina: But yeah, no, it’s not to say anyone who doesn’t do that is unethical, absolutely not. There’s a whole package involved. But that was the way I did it. And that was, I think, a good success factor because I would get a lot of repeat customers because of that and I would get people coming back and that was … Whereas there were dentists that I had who worked for me who were like, “Oh, we can charge so much more,” and it was like yeah, but then you won’t get people coming back to you. They’ll come and they’ll-

Payman: And I think what really interested me was you used to blow their socks at 11:00PM with customer service knowing that then they would come back eventually and be real patients-

Sofina: Absolutely.

Payman: Rather than just emergency patients.

Sofina: Absolutely.

Payman: A really interesting-

Sofina: Yeah, that’s what it is. I mean, I sit there and I’m chatting … And I had a consultation room. The way I’ve set it up is there’s a consultation room and before you’ve even gone into the dentist chair, you sit there and you chat to the patient for half an hour and that is really important to me. You sit there, you create that, forge that relationship and then patients … They completely … And there’s nothing like helping patients in pain. I mean, I used to do a lot of Invisalign, I started Invisalign back in 2008 and I went down the cosmetic route and I love that side of dentistry as well.

Sofina: But the reward you get from taking someone out of dental pain is just so satisfying and the patients were so grateful. Taking people out of pain is such a satisfying thing to do and I really love that. I really love that about urgent care and I really love about emergency dentistry, the satisfaction that you get from taking people out … Getting the gratitude that they have for you to do that is just … It’s really satisfying and that is a big factor, you have to feel good about what you do, I think.

Prav: And was that the main emphasis of what you opened up for? Was it mainly to treat emergency patients-

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Or was it more cosmetic and emergency? What was the idea?

Sofina: It definitely was more emergency care and then building our client list, but what is really important for me is because we do have people referring to us, but I’m not … We are very much … We take people’s patients and we look after their patients and we try and do our best at looking after someone’s patients and returning them back to them. So it’s not about competing as much and it’s not about trying to be better than others, but there is an element of taking on someone’s patients and looking after them, making sure that they’re looked after and return back, and we do encourage patients to go back to their clinics. And especially when the other clinics open and they are urgent care and we don’t actually take on any follow-ups, so they are … We literally do look after other people’s patients and they do go back.

Prav: As a patient walking into your practise, I’m in pain, I walk in, is Invisalign on the menu? Is cosmetic dentistry on the menu? Is there any point of sales literature for me to access that type of private cosmetic, or are you there to serve as a function to get people out of pain and send them back to their own dentists?

Sofina: See, now I don’t have just the one clinic, I have, like, 13 clinics now and they all do completely different things.

Prav: Okay.

Sofina: So, many of them are actually NHS urgent cares and we absolutely don’t do any private in them at all, so it depends on the clinic and it depends on the service and it depends on the dentists as well. So some dentists and some clinics, they take on patients and some, they don’t and it is that tailoring to that clinic and that need and it isn’t just one situation now anymore. Yeah, I mean, there are clinics that do Invisalign, there are clinics that do whitening and there are clinics that don’t offer any private or cosmetic dentistry at all.

Payman: I mean, the one I came to in Birmingham, is that still your flagship?

Sofina: That’s my baby because that was my first one, but yeah, that is-

Payman: Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful practise.

Sofina: Yeah. So that one is more the private and they do do other stuff there as well, so they’ve got dentists that do Invisalign and aesthetics and-

Payman: So is that one open all day now?

Sofina: That is open during the day as well now, so that does do multiple hours and that has grown as well. And that was the other thing as well, we opened up a select amount number of hours and then when we do have sufficient business, we can open up those daytime. We’ve got a client list we can open up during the day and that’s what that one operated on-

Payman: So it’s open from when to when now?

Sofina: It’s open till 12 still and opens at eight, 9:00 AM. But it is-

Prav: Wow.

Sofina: Varied on days. But yeah, it’s pretty much full days. And like I said, with the other clinics, we’ve got services all over Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield, Hull, East Anglia, Cambridge, Peterborough, King’s Lynn and they’ve got all different operating hours. We’ve got services open 8:00AM to 8:00PM, seven days a week in many sites, so it is … Yeah.

Prav: How do you manage recruitment for that beast? Because especially when you’re asking people to work, let’s say, typically unsociable hours, maybe people are similar to you where they want that work/life balance where they want more time at home during the day, but then finding lots of people like that? I mean, in my own practises, I struggle to get the right people in, what we consider to be, normal working hours. How do you deal with that? Have you got a great HR manager or is it something that you are involved in?

Sofina: Yeah. You know what it is? This is what you probably find in most people who do business is I do try get involved in-

Prav: Everything.

Sofina: Everything. And that is an issue. But yeah, I do absolutely get involved with the recruitment. We actually are at the point where we can’t take a lot of dent … Or we’re completely fully subscribed in all our Yorkshire clinics, so we have about 20 dentists on waiting lists that want to pick up shifts. A lot of it is word of mouth, so word of mouth is a big factor of people working for us. But we advertise, especially in the early days, we had to advertise through Facebook and Indeed and all those kind of channels, normal marketing. But-

Payman: Sofina, how many people is there overall?

Sofina: So we have over 130 staff. 70 dentists who work for us. So we have-

Payman: And this happened all in three years? So-

Sofina: This happened in three years.

Payman: Tell us the story from when did night dental number one go to number two?

Sofina: Night dental.

Payman: Was it all the urgent care thing that suddenly-

Sofina: It was the urgent care. Basically, I felt like I could offer so much to so many more people and I’ve loved urgent care, like I said. And I am very overly confident, so it was very much like … I’ve got a lot of ambition and I was like right, I can do more, and I did go for a bid on contracts and I had some hits and some falls and I did make some … With Yorkshire, I went for that, but I had so many plans there and I really executed a really intense plan there. And I did so much research and I did so much planning, and I really looked at the area, what the area needed and all that and I did get that and then from those … I mean, it wasn’t even from that, actually, at the same time, I got the East Anglia ones as well. So I think it was my vision-

Payman: It just doesn’t sound like a risk-averse person that you just described yourself as and this sounds the opposite, adrenaline junkie, risk-taker.

Sofina: I’m not a risk-averse person, no. I think-

Payman: A minute ago, you said you were.

Sofina: No, but I try to be as risk-averse, but I’m totally … I’m not risk-averse at all.

Payman: At all.

Sofina: I fully take on risks. No, no, not at all. I’m the complete opposite, but-

Payman: Sorry to use the word, how did you have the balls to do that in a different part of the country?

Sofina: Yeah, absolutely. This is what it is, I’m overly confident. I’m supremely ambitious and I … Yeah, I’m totally a risk-taker. I mean, we put our whole savings into a clinic, but at the end of the time, I try and minimise the risks.

Payman: You calculate it.

Sofina: Yeah, calculator. I minimise the risk, but there’s always risks, you have to jump. Without the jump, there’s just … And that could completely fail, but I completely accept that there’s-

Payman: What’s it done to your work/life balance? Because you told me you’re doing night dental because of your work/life balance, right? What you described before, you were going to look after the kid, now 150 employees, 13 practises-

Sofina: And three kids.

Payman: And three kids now.

Sofina: It was one then.

Payman: I take my hat off. I do take my hat off to you.

Sofina: But you know what it is? As a business person, you can really revolve your business around you. Long before COVID, I was working from home. I worked from home and I have really good managers in place, it’s really important for me to … And I am very heavily involved with the managers that I recruit. I don’t get involved with most of the HR that I recruit, but the managers, I’m very involved with and it’s very important for me to have really good structure and people that see my visions. My managers are amazing, they’re just … My staff are fantastic. My staff are so good. And a lot of it is having a really good support network. I’m going to be at home, I will visit the clinics, I will try and do, but my business has to revolve around my family and that is very important. I have a two year old at the moment and I do a lot revolving around my house. So I’m always working, so I’m constantly got a laptop there, but at the same time, I’m at home and I’m mostly at home and I do a lot from a laptop and a phone and-

Payman: When you’re recruiting a manager, what are you looking for? And by the way, do you have systems that you spoonfeed into each manager? Are they all running exactly the same way or are you leaving it up to them?

Sofina: I do let them have a bit of a … I’m going to let you make that decision. And what I like is them to make their own decisions and I’m like, I don’t care if you make mistakes. I’d rather you make a decision, make a mistake and yeah, I will say no, you shouldn’t have done that, but I’d rather them do that and they know that about me. I look for someone with initiative, someone who can just go right, I’m just going to try this. And yeah, they make mistakes, everybody makes mis … But I’d rather they do that and make mistakes than keep coming to me for things, and that’s really important. And I had an issue where I was saying to them, “Don’t come to me, but here’s a solution.” And I’m a big problem-solver, I love firefighting. And when you’ve got 77 eight to eight clinics, open seven days a week, there’s always issues, there’s always issues.

Sofina: And they would come to me and it’s like … I’m very much a fixer and if there’s an IT problem, I’ll be like well … I like to know how things work and that’s … And even when I set up the first squat. And this is one of the reasons I think I moved from one practise to the other is when I did my squat, I wasn’t just paying people to do it, I was involved in every single aspect of that clinic. The way the plumbing went in, you’re using solvent bonding, you’re not push fitting the plumbing in, you’re doing the first fix at the right time. And I was involved with every single aspect of that set up, like what paint are you using? What tiling are you using? And every little detail, I was involved with. And I needed to know how everything worked, I needed to know how the water goes through and the type air gap and things like that. I needed to understand it.

Sofina: And because I did that is why I was so successful with the bids as well because I really understood. And I wrote every single policy in place, I put them all in place, so I needed to understand all the compliance. And because I do understand my business so well, they do come to me with problems. Like the other day, they called me in Birmingham, “Oh, the software’s saying that they can’t open our Ghost because they can’t open the saving drive and you need to log into the google,” and all this stuff. I like to know how things work. But that is an issue, that is my own vice because then they’ll call me for those issues. But I’ve kind of now done the thing where I’m like, you know what? We’ve got great continuity in place, like this goes wrong, this is who you call. So I’m like, “You have to start not calling me about these things and just figuring it out yourself.” And that’s what it is and that’s one of-

Payman: Have you got a head office now? Are you still running it from your kitchen? Is there a team, like a centralised team?

Sofina: There is a team.

Payman: A centralised team?

Sofina: There’s a localised team, so there’s regional teams and there’s … So it’s more regional, so I think that’s quite important with the size of those clinics and the difference in the clinics and the way they run, they run completely different so we can’t do everything … One size definitely doesn’t fit all. And patient areas are different, patient needs are different, demographics are different and it all affects the service that we provide, so it’s very important for them not to be too centralised either in our service. And the other thing is I do have a lot of flexibility in the service and I love, like I said, problem-solving, which is why what happened with COVID happened and how we responded to it really well was because of our flexibility, our problem-solving and the ability to adapt and change and think of our feet on things. So-

Prav: So, Sofina, what’s the big vision? You’ve gone from zero to hero in three years, what’s the next three, five years going to look like? What’s the big vision that you’ve got for the crew?

Sofina: See, this is the thing, I’m not someone who sits there and does those long-winded business plans and I constantly have people, like accountants and stuff, telling me, “No, you need to plan this out.” And I think one of my successes is the fact that I’m not too rigid on how I’m going to do things and I do go with the flow because that flexibility and that has allowed me to respond to situations. Because if I had all my money tied up into one thing, I wouldn’t be able to be flexible and [inaudible 00:29:40]. But one thing is really important to me is having not all my eggs in one basket, trying to spread against the business and having different security. And this is what it is, I try to be logical and sensible and proactive on things that will help and support my business and me and my career.

Sofina: One of the things that our flexibility really kicked off was during the COVID period, so what happened there for us was we … Because we do urgent care and it’s a really important service, what we do. So we have 111 referring to our clinics, we’re all urgent care in Yorkshire and Humber, and it’s really important that those patients are constantly looked after and there’s no block in service or drop in service and continuity is so important there. Because I’ve got 70 staff, dentists working for me, we get a lot of information coming in, so when the information comes in, and there was a lot of people talking about COVID back in February, March, so I started putting those questions to the NHS, like what are we going to do about this? And there wasn’t much planning. I mean, there was a lot of planning for hot sites, which is where COVID-positive patients go, but I was saying to them, “Look, there are a lot more people that don’t have COVID who have got urgent needs than people with COVID with urgent needs, so there needs to be more attention here.”

Sofina: And, again, I just planned and I thought you know what? I don’t know what’s going on, wasn’t getting directions, so I got all the PPE sorted quite early on in March. And my husband’s a doctor, so he’s … He’s got nothing to do with the business, by the way, he doesn’t get involved, he doesn’t really … The only thing he does do is he does the interviews for the dentists. And I look at every dentist that we recruit, so that’s something that I do get involved with. Every dentist, I do have a governance side to that as well, so I do take a big interest in who we have working for us. What happened with the masks, the FFP3 masks, and my dentists were talking about this in March and they were asking us about it. I didn’t even really know about these things, so I looked into it and then tried to source them and I knew sourcing was a difficulty back in March. My husband had this friend and he’s like, “Oh, look, he’s working as an ITU consultant and he’s had those masks fitted.” And I was like, “Ask him where he got those masks from and who fitted him,” and I got the details off him and got my staff fitted, I think, on the 23rd of March with masks. And they had the masks and they had the PPE.

Sofina: And then when the announcement came out that surgeries have to shut, I called up the clinical leads from the NHS and I was like, “Well, what do you want us to do?” And they were like, “Well, do you have the PPE?” And I said, “Well, we’ve got this, this, this.” And they were like, “Well, then continue your face-to-faces.” At the end of the day, I’m responsible for my staff, so my primary concern was keeping my staff safe. So I was like okay, I’ve got this responsibility to look after my staff, to look after patients, so I had to make some calls there and I was very much like, use your own initiative, use your own clinical judgement on what you want to do. But here’s a PPE, use it and do what feels right to you. And I gave that to the dentists and I gave that control, and they were very grateful that we got them the PPE. And they all stood up to the plate, no-one backed down, everyone wanted to work.

Sofina: We had some vulnerable shielding staff that we obviously protected and looked after and that was really important to me because at the end of the day, I wanted to be able to sleep at night, I want to know my staff are safe and they’re looked after. And it was like no, I don’t want you compromising yourselves at any point, so if you don’t feel safe at any point, don’t work. And if anyone wanted a break from COVID, I was like, “Have a break.” There was no pressure for anyone to work and I think they really appreciated that. And they all stepped up, they all picked up extra shifts and the NHS were just like, “Can you do more? Can you do more?” And they kept asking us to do more of the service and we got to the limit where it was like okay, that’s all our surgery spaces used up and all our hours are used up because they’re doing extended hours. And then they were like, “Well, the 111 service is being completely overrun, what can you do to support that?”

Sofina: So at that point, I thought right, what can we do? We’ve got enough clinics, but all our clinics are used up. I know what we can do, we can get some triages. So I recruited for triaging dentists, got about six, seven dentists across the country, because I thought there’s loads of dentists out there who have got nothing to do. Gave them the option, if you want some extra money from home, set them up with rental laptops, phones, did a training presentation with them all within a week and they were ready to go within a week, seven days. And then we had a team of triaging that will help the 111 service and our triaging will do more AAA for patients. So I think having flexibility and having those kind of quick problem-solving tactics have helped me be successful in ways, in the services and the urgent care and being successful in my business as well and I think that’s really important for me. And that is constantly what I’m doing, I’m constantly thinking okay, let’s figure out … There’s a problem, how can we solve it?

Payman: Extraordinary. Extraordinary.

Prav: Gobsmacked.

Payman: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So okay, you’re saying you haven’t got an exact plan of where you want to go, but are we talking Empire Building? Are we talking exit? Are we talking-

Sofina: Okay.

Payman: What are we talking?

Sofina: So-

Payman: Sorry, sorry, sorry. No, before you go, how did you raise money?

Sofina: It was completely our savings. As an associate, my husband’s a GP, it was literally our own money. I didn’t take a loan out. One thing I don’t do in business is risk other people’s money. I’m a bit uncomfortable with people risking other people’s money and taking investments. And investments are good and especially if they’ve got … But I’ve seen so many people take other people’s money and risk it and then lose it. For me, it was really important that I had to put my money where my mouth is and put our own money at risk. And no-one had faith in me, by the way. My own dad, who’s an avid businessman and my husband and they were like … They kind of just go, “Yeah, yeah, just do it. Do what you want.” But my husband wrote off the money, he really thought okay, you know what? Whatever.

Payman: Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. You know that classic cliché about every time you want to start a business, everyone tells you not to do it kind of thing?

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: Yeah?

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: And it necessarily has to be that way, yeah? Because if I say hey, Sofina, I’ve got this great idea for a business, it does X, Y, Z, and then you and Prav both say, “Oh, that’s an amazing idea, do it,” there’ll be enough other people saying that and it’ll be enough of an idea, but there’ll be so many competitors. Yeah? Whereas when you have a business and everyone says don’t do it, then you end up being one of the only ones doing that business because of the barriers to entry. So if everyone says-

Sofina: Yeah, and that’s exactly-

Payman: Do it, it’s actually a bad sign.

Sofina: Absolutely. And that’s the thing with my dad, he was saying, “No-one’s doing it, so there must be a reason,” and that was my dad’s-

Payman: There is.

Sofina: There must be a reason why no-one’s doing it. And I said, “Maybe there is. Maybe I’ll find out the hard way,” but if I don’t get this out of my system, I’m going to … I was Del Boy’s daughter, I had to get it out my system. I had to give it a go and give it a shot. And there was a risk that I could’ve lost all the money, all our savings. But the advantage with us compared to other people who do this is I’m a dentist, my husband’s a doctor, we could just pick it up and just do extra shifts and work the rest of our lives and we have that security that other people don’t have. Whereas my dad, when he put everything into it, he would’ve been in debt and he would’ve been in a massive situation. So it was our own money, but at the same time, I’m very privileged, I feel really-

Prav: Did you-

Sofina: Guilty-

Prav: Did you leverage one practise to buy the next to buy the next to buy the-

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Next?

Sofina: Absolutely. I’m very good with money. I’m very, very sensible with money. I’m the kind of person who, if I have £10, I’ll spend £5. So there was a lot of financial planning to plan everything and everything was very much … This is where I am risk-averse, I’m very good with money, I’m very sensible with money. And the numbers were really important to me and I was really logging out the numbers and looking at the numbers and how it’s going to work. And obviously, with those contracts, they are funded in a way. I mean, they were leased properties, those properties that I took out, so they were leased. I had three months to set up four clinics, by the way. I had three months to set up four clinics. And because I’d set up the one from scratch-

Payman: Jeez.

Sofina: I knew I could do this, I could do this all right. And, again, I was like right, I’ve got three months, I have to use D1 properties, I have … And I did my first planning permission myself as well, so I really knew the ins and outs of planning as well. So I had to set up four clinics within three months, but because I knew every single aspect of it, it was just the same thing on speed. And it was a challenge, but then, again, the sensible things, like taking out the equipment on a 12 month lease or it was a 24 month lease programme and things like that. So where I can, rent where I can and doing those sensible things to save that capital investment as much as possible. And I’m someone that … If it’s not profitable, then it’s not viable.

Prav: Cut the losses.

Sofina: Yeah, cut the losses. And that’s what it is, don’t throw good money after bad money. If it’s not working, if an idea isn’t working, try and change it up. If that changing up isn’t working, then you just have to cut your losses and move on.

Prav: Any other practises failures that haven’t worked or you felt that do you know what-

Sofina: So far, it’s good and I think I’m still in early days, things will go wrong, I’m sure they will, but they, for me, are learning curves. So I take all criticism, all failures as okay-

Prav: How can you grow?

Sofina: Yeah, how can I grow? And we’re always learning. And with my dentists, one of the things what happened with COVID was … I take a backseat with my dentists normally and they all wanted to hear from me. They all wanted to hear, so at first, I put out a memo and the managers went, “No, they literally want to hear from you.” So what I started doing was weekly webinars with my dentists, which they really appreciated. So every week now, I talk to the dentists and I speak to them directly and they really love that. And I tell them the clinical basis, because I was talking to Health Education England, Public Health England and quite high up people in those departments about right, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it? The urgent care. What’s the latest guidance? I had people that had seen guidelines a couple of weeks before they were published, so I was asking them about what’s going to be in there so I could plan for that, and then I would inform my dentists and give the evidence base.

Sofina: And the other thing I would say, the things I would want to see, is clinical staff and clinical people should be definitely involved more within business. And I don’t think in undergrad, we’re taught enough business at all. And I think it’s really important we have so much more business because everyone’s in a business when they come out. And when I go to some of those meetings, the amount of bureaucracy behind it, the amount of people who have got no clinical experience or background making decisions and it’s such a shame, and I think so many more people need to be involved in the business side of dentistry as well. And there’s something that we can bring to the table that definitely others can’t, with our clinical background and our evidence base and our understanding and our ethical.

Sofina: I mean, dentists in the UK, we are some of the most ethical in the UK, in the world and we can bring that ethics to the business of dentistry that I think other people don’t lack when they [inaudible] or when they’ve got no healthcare background and they work in healthcare, make judgments on healthcare. You can see the difference, you can really see the difference between someone’s opinion who’d been in health than someone who hasn’t been in healthcare. And that patient comes first attitude that we have, everything has to revolve around the patients and I think from that, everything else organically grows. So for me, the two things that I would say are the key to my success are that patient first attitude and staff.

Sofina: So one of my things that I was thinking was why didn’t I go into business sooner? And that was a big question mark. I could’ve done this sooner, why didn’t I do it sooner? And that was thinking what if I did it sooner? But what sitting back did was allowed to observe and watch other practise owners and business and learn from them. And I think one of the key things I learnt from watching other people, other dental clinics and the tips that I learnt, one of the key things was the way they treat the staff and the staff ethos and staff mentality. I watched how a staff in a happy environment, how they were willing to work extra hours and they weren’t clock-watching and they were doing beyond their normal … What they’re contracted to do and they’ll do it for the business and they care about the business. And then I worked in practises where there wasn’t … People watch the clock, it’s five o’clock, that’s it, I’m off, I’m signing off. And it made such a difference in the success of the business.

Sofina: And also, when patients go in and they see a smiley, happy dentist and staff and it makes such a difference to their experience. And they go into a clinic and the people are miserable, they’re on their phone, they have that … It reflects their mentality. I mean, we had CQC inspection in Leeds and one of the things that really came back, and even the CQC inspectors were like, “Your staff are so happy.” And it is really important for me to create happy environments for my staff and I really care about my staff, I genuinely care about my staff. And they just go above and beyond and they’re just so amazing, my staff are so amazing and that is definitely a key part of the success of the business. And I don’t have to be there as much because my staff are there. And-

Payman: Sofina, have you studied entrepreneurship, leadership, any of that? Do you read books or is this-

Sofina: No, I don’t read any.

Payman: Are you just purebred?

Sofina: I’m more streetwise-

Payman: Because you are definitely a purebred entrepreneur, you’re 100% entrepreneur. It’s so in your blood.

Sofina: I observe. I observe. I observe and I take everything in and I look at what other people do-

Payman: And you didn’t start late, I mean, how old were you when you started? You were young.

Sofina: 33.

Payman: Yeah, young.

Sofina: I wanted to start when I was 24, what you talking about? But yeah, no … Yeah. Yeah, I guess-

Payman: So go on, what’s your dream come true outcome-

Sofina: I don’t know.

Payman: Going forward-

Sofina: See-

Payman: Like, three years’ time?

Sofina: I’m not going to-

Payman: Because we saw you did a lot-

Sofina: Lie-

Payman: Yeah.

Sofina: Yeah. I’m not going to lie, I have sliding door moments where I’m just like, you know what? Instead of just spending £200,000 on a dental practise, I could’ve just sat back. We were making decent money, my husband was making good money and I could’ve just spent his money and been a housewife and bought shoes and handbags and gone to coffee shops with my friends. I do think wouldn’t that have been a better life? I’m not going to lie, I have those moments where I think what is this for? And is it worth it? And-

Payman: For why.

Sofina: There’s nothing … Why, the why. And-

Prav: Go on, carry on.

Sofina: And I’ll be honest, maybe I will have more of an answer in five years’ time, but I do go through those. So I do go through those moments where I’m thinking oh, goodness, what have I done? Why do I do this myself?

Prav: What-

Sofina: But I guess … Yeah.

Prav: What do you think you’re trading in for business in your life?

Sofina: Well, you know what? My kids are still at home, I’m with my kids, I don’t have a nanny, I don’t have home support-

Prav: Amazing.

Sofina: I do have family support.

Prav: Yeah.

Sofina: So I do look after my children myself-

Payman: You don’t have a nanny either?

Sofina: No.

Payman: What the hell?

Sofina: I breastfeed my children, I’ve been there for my children. That is really important to me.

Payman: You need to herd one more person, you need to get 151 people-

Sofina: But you know what I hired? Do you know what I hired? I hired a personal assistant. So I hired a personal assistant and I thought … You know what she does? She filters my calls. So she filters things like … She’ll say, and she’s very ruthless, so she’ll just say, “No, Sofina doesn’t need to deal with that.” And she’ll just make those decisions for me, which is really good. It’s exactly what I needed and that’s made a big difference to me. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having a nanny, by the way. I know people who are homemakers and they have nannies and it’s completely fine. It’s what suits me and that suits me and it was really important for me to not … You know what it is? There’s that mom guilt, like I don’t want to feel what I’m doing is compromising my family and my children. I think-

Payman: Do you think it’s harder being a woman-

Sofina: I overcompensate.

Payman: Do you think it’s harder being a woman than a man?

Sofina: Absolutely. No, not woman generally, but maybe a woman in the field that I do. Absolutely. Definitely.

Payman: Why?

Sofina: Being a woman and business owner is tough.

Payman: Because you’re a mother?

Sofina: Because I’m a mother. And you know what? I have faced so much vitriol. I mean, the things people have said about me and the-

Payman: Yeah, but you don’t look the classic entrepreneur, the young-

Sofina: Exactly.

Payman: Guy.

Sofina: Exactly. And-

Payman: Yeah.

Sofina: And I get so much backlash from … And I did. I mean, I think things have definitely settled down, but especially at the beginning, I had people causing me so … People trying to sabotage me, people badmouthing me, people judging me before I’d even started. And there was a lot of horrible, horrible things being said about me and it was all … And I was trying to figure out where it came from and a lot of it was because people were generally scared, they have a stereotype of a girl. And I’m an Asian girl, Muslim girl, female, wears a headscarf, if someone sees me, they’ll think she’s not capable. They stereotype me into being that placid, timid, can’t think for herself kind of person and she-

Payman: Is that part of your drive, to try and prove that wrong? Is that part of-

Sofina: Absolutely.

Payman: Is it?

Sofina: Definitely. Yeah. I love proving people wrong-

Payman: Maybe that’s the why, that’s the burning ambition-

Sofina: That might be the why. I want to prove that-

Payman: To prove that wrong.

Sofina: Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe it is proving that we’re completely capable and we are completely … We can do this and we’ve got this. And we’re intelligent women, we’re independent, we think for ourselves, we’re not press, we’re not … And I think there is definitely an element of trying to prove people wrong, it does drive me. Because I have 70 dentists and pretty much all my dentists have another job because of the hours we work, and they’ll come back and I hear what’s being said about me and people don’t realise when things are being discussed about me that it does come back to me and it totally drives me. It completely drives me.

Prav: Sofina, what’s been the lowest moment during the last three or four years of this short journey to success, where you’ve been in the bottom of the hole really-

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: During all this?

Sofina: It’s not actually that long ago, it was about six, seven months ago, I had a really, really tough time. I had someone who was really abusing their power, really, really abusing their power to put me down. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, it was someone senior to me who was really going through a lot of extent to try and sabotage me. And they caused me so much stress, it caused me so much stress-

Prav: Someone senior to you in the business or are we talking life now in general?

Sofina: Yeah, it was in dentistry.

Prav: Okay.

Sofina: I can’t-

Prav: No, no. Yeah.

Sofina: It went down a legal road and I did come out quite good on the other side of it, but it had to go down that road. And I do have this, I’ve had people writing to MPs, I’ve had people … I had a local dental committee hold a vote to collect negative feedback about my organisation.

Prav: Jeez.

Sofina: That actually went to a vote. It wasn’t collect feedback, it was specifically collect negative feedback only, so obscure patient feedback. And thankfully, it was voted against. So this is what I mean by ethical den … Majority of dentists are very ethical, this is a loud minority, probably people with power minority who do abuse that power. I don’t really go to mentors and stuff, but I just thought I need to speak to someone. And I managed to call Eddie Crouch, he’s the lead of the West Midlands LDC and he’s also the-

Payman: [inaudible 00:50:34].

Sofina: Yeah, vice pres. I called him and he was fantastic, he was just like, “Look, I know who you are because I’ve heard about you.” And he goes, “You have to understand, you’ve pissed people off. You’ve pissed people off and they’re not happy for you and this is what they’re going to do.” And he’s like, “You just have to …” And he kind of gave me that drive to fight and to just defend my corner. He goes, “Yeah, I’ll treat you fairly,” but it is what it is and those people are going to be … They’re not going to be happy for me, are they? So he gave me that little bit of a spur and that fire and I thought you know what? I’m just … What really drives me, like you said, it really drives me that I don’t want this happening to someone else and I have to … It’s easier sometimes just to let things go, but then you think if I don’t fight it, someone else will go through this and this change won’t happen that I need. And I think that was really important for me to say right, no, this is unacceptable.

Sofina: And the other thing is, I’m very … People take my niceness and my quietness for weakness and they realise the hard way that I have a fire. No, no, that’s not going to happen. And I think now when people do say stuff, it is like right, defamation, legal letter, da-da-da. I’m a little bit confident. I never got a lawyer previously at all, but now I’m a little bit more confident on that and a little bit more like, right. And I don’t take crap. I don’t-

Payman: What about your happiest day, professionally, in the last three, four years?

Sofina: Oh, there’s so many. I love what I do. And I have to say I was just … You know with this COVID, it’s so sad what’s happened, but I’m so proud of the way my staff came together and the way we did things and I just … I think that was really, for me, something that … Basically, what happened there was the NHS were like, “If you don’t have PPE, you don’t have to,” and I spoke to my staff and I had to reach out to my staff and I said, “Look, we have a duty of care. We have the urgent care contracts, we can’t sit back. And we can sit back and not do anything, but those patients will end up in A&E and we are going to be increasing traffic to A&E, so we’ve got to sit down and think we’ve got a responsibility here. We’ve got the PPE, we can do this,” and they all were raring to go and that was such a proud moment for me, for my staff and having that ethos and everyone had the right attitude, creating that. And I would say that was a real, for me, really buzz moment for me.

Prav: So, Sofina, it seems like during lockdown, the majority of dentists and dental business owners have had a nice holiday and has it been the opposite for you, you’ve been working harder?

Sofina: Non-stop.

Prav: Yeah?

Sofina: Literally non-stop. All our clinics have been operating 8:00AM to 8:00PM, seven days a week. It’s been non-stop. I closed the private clinics, I didn’t feel right with those. Again, I understand why people had to and did and I really sympathise with those private owners that really got affected by it. And for me, I just thought you know what? We’ve got the NHS, we’ll cover the NHS, I’m not going to keep the private open, so we closed until last week was when we open those back up. But we closed the private side of things, but other than that, we’ve been operating and providing that service.

Sofina: And what happened was in around about mid-April, we … And I did, quite early on, I said okay, once we had it under wrap, I said to the NHS, “Look …” The commissioners, “Look, we can offer more.” So what we can do is where you’ve got A&Es, if they have patients in urgent needs, they can refer to us and they said, “No, no, we don’t want to overwhelm you.” And then the other thing they did suggest was would you … Well, the clinical lead suggested, “Would you be able to take on referrals from clinics?” And I said, “Yeah, I mean, we could do that.” And then the commissioners were like, “No, no. Again, we don’t want to overwhelm you.” But then what happened was there was a communication that came out and it said that we were the referral for all dental practise in Yorkshire and Humber for … Or for West Yorkshire and Hull, sorry, for urgent needs. So if they had a patient that needed face-to-face, to refer to us. But we weren’t even informed about this. One day, we’re working and my manager’s calling me, like, “We’re getting hundreds and hundreds of referrals from dental clinics,” and she was like, “What’s going on?”

Sofina: So I phoned the NHS and I was like, “What’s going on?” And they were like, “Yeah, that kind of communicate came out, can you do it?” And I said, “A heads up would’ve been nice, but we got it. We got this.” So then we had to restructure everything and figure out how we were going to do it and get those extra patients in, and then we became the hub for all referrals for urgent care in West Yorkshire. And so all dental clinics referred to us and we tried our best. And, again, we’re looking after the people’s patients. Before we took on 111 patients … Commonly, patients that can’t access … They don’t have a dental clinic and they don’t have access to a dental clinic, so we now were looking after other people’s patients, there’s a massive responsibility with that and it was really important for us to do, again, look after those people’s patients. And that responsibility that we can do it, so we should step up to the plate and try and help where we can, and hopefully we did make a difference. It was very tough.

Payman: Sofina, talk us through a day. What time do you wake up? What do you do with your kids? And then when do the calls start, the emails? And then what time do you go to bed?

Sofina: So the thing with me is I get the most work done at night, I’m still nocturnal. And managers will get emails at 3:00AM and this and that and people will commonly get majority of the emails when I really get that sit down time, when my kids have gone to bed and I can concentrate. The real things where I have to think happen when the kids are asleep because you just can’t … But the other thing is, one thing I think that’s happened from COVID which is a positive from a really, obviously, a dark time for us is this whole working with kids in the background. I always work with kids in the background, my managers know. I have serious conversations with a two year old jumping on me and everyone has to accept that I have a family and that’s my reality. So, all my managers know, all my staff know that.

Sofina: And even when sometimes when I do my webinars with my dentists, there’ll be kids and they’ll come in and they’ll talk and they’ll … I’m very unashamedly a mom. I don’t have to be ashamed about being a mom and having my kids out there. I don’t hide that and I do really … I take my babies to clinics and I remember having a serious meeting with one of the builders and had my two year old with me, and those are my realities and I will comp … I’m not ashamed or embarrassed and I don’t feel that women should be embarrassed, even dads, should be embarrassed about things like that. So I think that is really important to me as well.

Payman: How much sleep are you getting? What time do you go to bed and what time do you wake up?

Sofina: I don’t sleep. I’ve not slept for months, honestly. I go to bed late and then my two year old’s wide awake and dive bombs on me and that’s it, I have to wake up. And I nap when I can and yeah, that’s-

Prav: Wow.

Sofina: It really. Yeah, so-

Prav: Going back to my question about trading in for business, certainly one of the things that I find is that, with me working from home quite a bit, more so obviously over the last 10, 12 weeks, there’s certain moments in time where my head is in the workspace and my three year old just wants her daddy. And so she’s having a conversation with me, I’m kind of having a conversation with her, I’m sort of trying to keep my head in work and there’s that being in the room with one or the other. Do you ever-

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Struggle with that?

Sofina: Absolutely. Definitely. I mean, you know what my two year old does? He picks the laptop and takes it off me, and then your heart just sinks-

Prav: Yeah.

Payman: Yeah, but you shouldn’t feel bad about it. Look, look, look, look what you learnt from your dad. Yeah?

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: And look when that three year old becomes a 23 year old, he’s going to say, “I sat there and my mom looked after me while she built this empire.” And what he’s learning by looking at you doing what you’re doing is amazing itself. It doesn’t have to be either/or, you know?

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: My kids know more about Enlighten that-

Prav: Than my kids.

Payman: Than your kids. But I get it. Of course, I understand the thing you guys are discussing, but you’re teaching your kids something by creating-

Prav: Yeah, but it’s-

Payman: Something huge while they’re there.

Prav: You know what? I think I can resonate with you, Sofina, in the sense that my daughter hasn’t taken my laptop off me, but she grabs my phone and says, “Put your phone away, daddy.”

Sofina: Aw.

Prav: Yeah? And snatches it out of my hand because she wants-

Sofina: And then your heart just-

Prav: Just goes, right?

Sofina: Sinks, right?

Prav: Just goes.

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: And at the moment, what we’ve done is I’ve taken dedicated time out of my work day now, so I’m locked away in my office now, but between three and four o’clock, it’s just me and the girls and my phone’s nowhere near me, right? And then we have slots throughout the day. It’s still nowhere near enough time-

Payman: It’s your brain, it’s not the phone, bud. It’s your brain. Yeah?

Sofina: Yeah. But that’s also what my personal assistant’s done for me. So she’s like, “Right, I’m scheduling time.” Because I have to be a teacher, by the way. My kids are at home, so I have a seven year old, a four year old and a two year old, and I have to, all of a sudden, be a teacher to those kids as well, which is just impossible. And I find that much tougher than running the empire-

Prav: What they doing now, sat quietly behind you?

Sofina: No, my husband’s home, thankfully, and he’s very flexible. He’s totally the opposite of me, he’s got no-

Payman: What kind of doctor is he?

Sofina: He’s a GP. His dad is from Kenya and they’ve got a very different background from me. They’ve worked hard. They were sent to different countries, again, as young boys and they were … One was sent to Kenya by themself, in Nairobi, and the other one was … Two of them were sent there, one was sent in England and working in factories as a 13, 14 year old. Really young boys sent by themselves and they carved the way. But Fiza’s family are very … They don’t have that business mind. They stay in the dark job, they want stability, they like to be organised, they like having everything …

Sofina: And Fiza’s dad, bless him, is 86 years old and he’s just only retired, like, three, four years from his job that he worked. I mean, my in-laws are so lovely. And I have to say, having an extended supportive family is just massive important to what I’m doing. My mom helps me out, my sister-in-laws help me out, my father-in-law’s just amazing. And he’s so worried about me all the time, he’s just like, “Are you okay?” And they don’t get what I’m doing and they don’t understand the drive behind it and they worry about me and I totally get that.

Payman: It feeds you, doesn’t it? That’s the thing, it feeds you.

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: I’m 100% sure, if we come back to this interview in another three years time, I’m 100% sure it’s going to be a much, much bigger empire. How much to walk away? I’m not talking about a financial figure here, but that’s something that you need to look at. Is it a business you want-

Sofina: Think it’s-

Payman: To exit or do you love it so much-

Sofina: This is what it is. I realise I do it for the buzz and the drive. And I look at my dad and I just think my dad makes a lot of good money, but he just doesn’t stop. It’s the whole Del Boy thing, honestly, it’s like the Del Boy thing and it’s the buzz and the drive and he’s not stopping and you’re like, “Dad, you don’t have to anymore.” And it’s like yeah, but he couldn’t cope with not doing things, and I don’t know if I’m going to be like that or if I’d go back to clinical and just do some clinical and take some time. I don’t know, I can’t … I think I’m too much still up that hill to know what I’m going to do in five times, but I know the answer will be probably a little bit more different.

Prav: If you weren’t doing dentistry, what would you be doing?

Sofina: That’s a very good question.

Prav: You’d be in business, right?

Sofina: I’d be in business. 100%, I’d be in business. I’d definitely be in some kind of business. So yeah, definitely some kind of business if it wasn’t den … And actually, the first business ideas I had weren’t even dentistry, they were completely different, they were internet, website. I love graphic design and I don’t know if you saw … One of the things that we were getting all this information and guidelines during COVID, so what I did was I tried to … And I have to try and direct my staff as well, so I have to say, “Look, use the Scottish Clinic Effectiveness Programme for your guidelines, for urgent care and got a great toolkit.”

Sofina: And I know they weren’t doing it, so I thought the way to get them to do it is by having a place where they can just get all the information for. So I created that portal for them and just went on Webflow, put it together and tried to collate all the information to one portal for them. And that was, I think, really good for them, but it is something that hopefully collects all the information. But it is … I forgot even what my train of thought was there.

Prav: Imagine there’s, obviously, some younger dentists listening to this and they want to get into business or open their own practises or have got ideas, et cetera, et cetera. Obviously, you’ve got in your blood and a lot of it comes from that and your upbringing. What advice would you give to them?

Sofina: I mean, there’s so many tips and there’s so many things that I would advise, but it’d be try and not throw all your eggs in one basket and listen to … You have to listen to the people that are telling you you can’t do it, you have to listen to some of the things that they’re saying and the reasons they’re saying it. And you have to plan for those … They’re all people that care about me, so the people that said it’s not going to work, people that care about me and they were worried about me. And some of the advice that they were saying, I was like right, so I’m going to plan for that. You’re saying this might happen, so let’s plan for the fact that there might be no patients through the door and things like that. So, I think plan, try and plan for the risks and try and think about … Don’t get too blindsided by your idea and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t put everything you’ve got, remortgage your house all for one thing. Try and think about what if things don’t work out and do plan that and have a plan B. Always have a plan B. So I think that’s really important.

Sofina: I know I’m not really the best place … And this is something that I’m going to talk about my webinar tomorrow with my dentists is I know I’m not the best person to be discussing these and there probably are so many people that are better place to be discussing, one thing that really concerns me, especially … I did listen to some of your podcasts, is the mental health and the wellbeing of some of the people, the young dentists. And I don’t know if you watch Bollywood or if you’re aware of this guy that, unfortunately, has taken his life in the last … And that’s really affected me. And what I do really worry about is young dentists and young, male dentists feeling … I see him and I just think he was a successful Bollywood actor who had everything going for him and at 34, what made him go to that head space where he felt that he had to take his own life?

Payman: A dentist committed suicide yesterday in London.

Sofina: I-

Payman: Do you hear about?

Sofina: I mean, that’s just heartbreaking.

Payman: It is.

Sofina: That is so heartbreaking, and I think we need to do more to sort that and I know I’ve got responsibility because I’ve got so much staff working for me now. And one of the things I do want to bring on the webinar, now you’ve told me that, it’s just things like that really affect me and I think we’ve got a big responsibility to look after those people that are going through those things. I’m worried about the fact that private had to shut up shop for three months and so many people living on the next pay, and they’ve been so badly struck and what is this going to do to people’s mental health and the stress of this? And I think what we need to do is look out for those gateway messages. This guy, the Bollywood actor, he sent a message about his mom had passed away the week before, so I think it’s really important for us to look out for gateway messages, support, listen to people and ask how people are.

Sofina: I’ll see on Facebook, so many of my friends, their fathers have taken their lives and brothers have and people have lost a lot of people to this and so much talent. And we just have to, I think, take some time and look and see what we can do to support, mentor. And I do want to be someone who can support others who do need advice or do need that thing, and what I would say is try to minimise that risk and that pressure. And I see so much pressure, especially in our industry. I mean, dentistry is a high pressure environment and so much stress is involved and I think it is really … And that’s why when someone goes into the business, they have to really evaluate that and their mental health and the consequences of what they do.

Sofina: And like I said, I’ve had some real tough times and people do really attack you and that’s going to happen to some people. And people have to think twice as well when they attack people, I think that’s really important as well, when they attack others. There’s advising and then there’s just being a bully, and I think it’s really important for people to ask and to take some time and call someone up. We’re so busy with our lives sometimes that we don’t sit there and take some time out and think okay, that person needs them, but I haven’t got time to deal with that. It’s like, no, what is the point in being successful and being where you are if you can’t even do that as a human, like, take some time out for someone else?

Prav: And I see it happen a lot in dentistry, online. You see these wars on Facebook between people and openly, face-to-face, they’d never say these things, right? But I’ve also noticed that that’s calmed down a lot over COVID and there’s been a lot more unity and people come together. I don’t know if you’ve seen the same, Payman-

Payman: Yeah.

Prav: That people who would-

Payman: Definitely.

Prav: Definitely not-

Sofina: Absolutely.

Prav: Talk to each other or there’s been a joining of forces and I hope that really is here to stay.

Payman: I mean, it’s human nature that it goes in both directions, right? But I’m interested in what you’re saying about the gateway signs, Sofina, because every time something like this happens, people say they didn’t see the signs. And I know with bereavement, guilt is a almost intricate part of the bereavement, isn’t it?

Prav: Without question.

Payman: Everyone thinks why didn’t I see it? But …

Sofina: Yeah. I mean, what must the families be going through right now? I mean, they’ll be tormented for years to come about what could they have done? I was asking my husband about some of those gateway signs, because he’s a GP, and he was saying isolating themselves, going through that gateway of sadness, of exhibiting that sadness. And you could see he was in the head space where he was getting sad by putting those posts up about his mother and it’s really important for men to talk, I think. Speak to someone. And that is something that, I think, we definitely do need to do more to support the male dentists as well as …

Payman: We’ve got to realise as well, there’s almost a chemical side to it. You know what I mean? It’s not just about oh, life is getting on top of me.

Sofina: Yeah, sometimes there definitely is a chemical aspect.

Payman: I mean, look at the chemicals in you, you haven’t slept, you’re running at 1000 miles-

Sofina: Absolutely. I think we need to, as a community, pull together and really support each other. And if someone’s already there and then they have a chemical added to it, whether it’s lack of sleep-

Payman: Yeah, no, but what I mean, the chemical is just a biochemical-

Sofina: Yeah, biochemical, lack of sleep or those kind of things and it’s just going to heighten everything. It’s going to absolutely heighten everything. And, Prav, I think you’ve got medical background, so you probably-

Prav: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sofina: Fully understand all this. And-

Prav: And I think, putting everything to one side, I think everything has a chemical basis. You’re talking about there’s probably a chemical element to it, I think it is the chemical element, whether it’s cortisol flying around your system or adrenaline or whatever these hormones or signalling molecules are that are flying around, endorphins, lack of, that are causing you to feel that way, right?

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Depression is chemically driven.

Sofina: Yeah. Isolation is a big factor as well, so people that are isolating.

Payman: It’s not linear because if you want to think linearly, if you’re like so and so has got X, Y and Z wrong in his life, so he’s going to be sad. But actually, sometimes when things are wrong, that’s when you’re at your very best. And then you’ve got the Bollywood guy, on the surface, looks like he’s got everything-

Sofina: Yeah. And sometimes it’s the-

Payman: But he’s gone and-

Sofina: Drop from that buzz. It’s the drop from the buzz and you just, all of a sudden-

Payman: That’s a chemical thing too.

Sofina: Yeah. And all of a sudden, you’re really famous and everyone wants you and then you drop, and that must really hurt people and upset-

Prav: Must do.

Sofina: People. And that, again, that’s that biochemical aspect to it as well, so we need to just … I think we’ve all got a responsibility there.

Prav: I think he’d have pretty much every film producer pull their contract or something like that with him to say they’ll never feature him in a film, or words to that effect. And then he could only star in low rate movies or something like that. I don’t know the facts behind it, but imagine-

Sofina: It’s bullying.

Prav: Going from the peak-

Sofina: Yeah, it’s bullying.

Prav: The peak of Bollywood stardom to saying hey, you can be in a sitcom now and that’s the best you’re going to get.

Sofina: Yeah. I mean, I used to love Bollywood. Back in the ’90s, I used to watch Bollywood loads and I haven’t watched Bollywood movies in ages, but I watched his film and he was amazing. And I can’t even remember the film that much, but I just remember seeing him and thinking what an amazing actor, he’s got such a talent. And that’s why it’s really saddened me, so sad, he had such a talent.

Payman: You set your own cornerstones to this. So I had a friend, his dad committed suicide and the reason … I mean, who knows what his real reason was? But the reason he committed suicide was he didn’t win the Nobel Prize in whatever field he was in. And, again, on paper, you think well, the guy’s contending for the Nobel Prize for something, he’s amazing, he’s got the best life ever, but he’d set his sights on that. It’s terrible.

Sofina: And I think that’s where … If he’d let it out and spoke to someone, then people could’ve just gone, “Oh, but you’re amazing,” and, I don’t know, positive reinforcement.

Payman: It’s good that people are talking about it now though. This is really-

Sofina: Absolutely.

Payman: It’s like, in the last two, three years, people are talking about mental health much, much more.

Prav: Mm.

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: I think that can only be healthy.

Sofina: Yeah, definitely. I think that’s what it is. I think-

Payman: Men definitely.

Sofina: Men have a superhero mentality that they have to be perfect and strong and they can’t show this weakness, and I think that superhero mentality is what sometimes … They don’t talk and they don’t let it out and that’s why they do get hit by this.

Prav: Yeah. I think it’s the old-school mentality that the man’s job is to hunt and gather and protect, right? That instinct. And then there’s this whole bravado and macho thing and whatever comes with it and things happen or things go south or whatever it is, and then men get into this depressive state over whatever it is, whether it’s putting weight on or whether it’s not doing as well at work or then taking a downturn in work and I guess it affects some people more than others.

Payman: By the way, we should point out there is Confidental, which was set up by Lauren Sparkle and Jenny Pinder.

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: Call up any dentist, call up Confidental and just chat.

Sofina: I think that needs to be really promoted more. And you know what? I would actually put that out to my dentists and I would love details about that actually. But, Prav, do you have-

Prav: What were you saying, Sofina?

Sofina: Yeah, I was just saying from your healthcare, do you recall the gateway signs? Can you just share some of those?

Prav: I think, whether from my healthcare background or not, it’s … I’ve got a … Well, he’s my wife’s cousin who committed suicide about four years ago and he threatened to do it about three times, but never did. And that was a cry for help and once he got a … He tied a sari around his neck and jumped off the bannister and that was the end of that. And they found him and … I think one of the biggest gateway signs is that conversation, they open up to some people and talk about it. And I think speaking to people now or relatives, it always revolved around the boy who cried wolf, right? He said it three times, if he was going to do it, he would’ve done it by now. And he left a note and he said, “I told you I’d do it.”

Sofina: Oh, god.

Payman: God.

Prav: But nobody listened, right? And he was a super good-looking, happy boy. He got engaged a month before, so his fiance had lost him. And then there’s those things … Some of us only have a handful of friends. I, myself, I’ve probably got … I can count all my friends on two hands, that’s it. 10 people. If I had a problem, I’d be speaking to one of those 10 people and opening up to them. But what about that person who-

Sofina: Doesn’t have that.

Prav: Doesn’t, who becomes introverted, who starts withdrawing from life and hiding away, right? And just having that person to ring you up when you’re in that situation.

Sofina: There’s a pers-

Prav: And put you in a positive state.

Sofina: There are people that don’t even have one person. You’ve got 10.

Prav: No.

Sofina: It’s not a big number, but there are people that don’t have that one person. And-

Prav: Are single. Yeah.

Sofina: And I think it’d be really good for us to know what to do and if we come across someone who’s in that state, what can be done?

Prav: And I think a lot of the time … It’s hard to generalise if you’ve not been in that position, but I think the people who do it have been thinking about it for a while. It-

Payman: Sometimes. Sometimes, Prav, not always.

Prav: Not always.

Payman: Not always.

Prav: Not always.

Payman: Stories I’ve heard.

Prav: You don’t know. You just don’t know, do you?

Payman: No.

Prav: You simply don’t know and-

Sofina: I think what we can do as a profession is just be more supportive. And you’re right in the fact that COVID did bring such a comradery and I hope it lasts. And I even, for me, the negativity stopped for the last three, four months and we got a lot of positivity from everyone and everywhere and I just hope that lasts and for all of dentistry and especially young dentists. And when I was listening to some of the podcasts, I could hear young dentists being attacked by their own peers and other young dentists and other … And you just think … I’ve not had that, luckily. I have had it for more senior, but I’m a bit … I’m a positive person, so I always put a positive spin on things and I always kind of thing … But there’s people that would really be affected by that. And if I maybe was of a different personality, then it would’ve really affected me. Everyone’s got a story where they’ve been attacked.

Prav: I do strongly feel that social media has a lot to contribute to a lot of the negativity that people are feeling. And from my perspective, the majority of people that put stuff out there just paint the positivity. So if you look at somebody’s feed, you just see this person is living an amazing life, right? And it’s positivity, positivity, positivity. And then if you were in that zone and comparing yourself, and I do think it’s got a lot to answer for in that sense, but there’s lots of positives-

Payman: What, social media?

Prav: Lots of positives that have come out of there as well, right?

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Education-

Payman: It’s the whole world.

Prav: Yeah, yeah. But now-

Payman: It’s everything good and bad together.

Prav: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But if you look at-

Sofina: It’s heightened everything. Yeah.

Prav: Yeah.

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Absolutely.

Sofina: If you put a magnifying glass-

Prav: Absolutely.

Sofina: On everything, hasn’t it, I guess? And … Yeah.

Prav: Totally.

Payman: Sofina, I don’t know how you were as a clinician, but both me and Prav are no longer clinicians, but when I was a dentist, there wasn’t this GDC nightmare that everyone’s under right now. There wasn’t writing essays in the notes. And certainly, I think, for the mental health of the profession, the number one thing that would improve the mental health of the profession is sorting out that-

Sofina: That threat.

Payman: GDC, DLP, the ambulance chasers-

Sofina: Absolutely. No win, no fee.

Payman: And Dom was writing something about it. Now’s a great time for us to come together and say listen, let’s do something about the GDC.

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: Because I think that’s the single thing that would save the mental health of the profession more than anything else.

Sofina: We definitely need someone to rub … A lot of those ambulance chasers, they need to be told for what they are in terms of we need a defence or maybe a defence that actually says no, I’m sorry, no. That’s just what it is. And I think with advice on that … So I have a lot of dentists, obviously, now and when they do have something like that, I say to them, “Look, don’t lose sleep over it. Don’t lose sleep over it. Give it to your defence, they handle it, they do it. This will happen and it will happen and it’s such a part of our, now, lives and it is what it is. Try and document, try and do the best you can and just leave it to your defence. Don’t lose sleep over it. Don’t think about it. Don’t”-

Prav: It’s easy to say that.

Sofina: It is. It really is. I had a dentist who’s quite senior and he’s been a dentist for so many years and he was just so … And he didn’t do anything wrong, he didn’t do anything wrong, but he passed to defence, but he just wouldn’t sleep and he was having anxiety attacks from it and panic attacks. And I was just like-

Payman: He would take it personally. Yeah.

Sofina: Yeah, they do and it’s so … Especially when they put their heart out there for a patient and they turn around and they get this, and it’s very heartbreaking for dentists to get this. But I think we can choose how we react to it and I think it’s just making it … I think for our dentists, what I try and say to them is, “Look, learn from it.” You can sit there and say that oh, I didn’t do anything wrong, but there’s probably something that you can learn from it, maybe whether it’s spending longer, talking to that person or explaining things better, and what could you have done to stop that complaint happening? And there is always some kind of learning outcome.

Sofina: And I get some dentists who have literally come out dentist school and they don’t think they need to learn anything and they’re there and they can’t self-criticise, and I’m just like, everyone should be self-criticising and thinking right … And I welcome complaints because I’m just like, a complaint will tell you right, what can we fix? What can we do better? And as a problem-solver, it helps me go right, okay, so this is not working, we need to do this and right, okay. So, using it as a tool to improve or learn and not taking it so personally. I think that’s what I can do sometimes, I can very much-

Payman: That’s not the human nature, Sofina, that’s the thing.

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Mm. I get that call maybe six, seven times a year from a dentist who will say, “I’ve just had a letter from the GDC or Dental Law Partnership or whatever,” and their world is upside down because the first thing they think is it’s an immediate threat to their career being over.

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Irrespective of how rational or irrational that complaint is, that’s what’s going round and buzzing round in their heads. And my role, as somebody who’s guiding them, is just to give them from my experience. Look, I’ve spoken to 30, 40 people in the same situation. From what I’m hearing, and I’m not your legal advisor, I think you’re going to be all right.

Sofina: And that’s what they want to hear and that kind of reassurance that’ll stop them losing sleepless nights up until it does get thrown that. And it’s just a shame, people can spend months stressing over something that’s just going to be thrown out anyway and it’s just-

Prav: Yeah.

Payman: The system needs reforming though.

Sofina: Definitely.

Payman: Yeah?

Sofina: Definitely.

Payman: The system needs reforming. I put something out on Facebook saying, “Why don’t we all pay ARF twice?”

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: Pay a second amount and set up an organisation to lobby the government and get lawyers and PR. Didn’t prove very popular, people didn’t fancy paying a second-

Sofina: Yeah.

Payman: ARF.

Sofina: You involve money-

Payman: But something you’re doing-

Sofina: Yeah, people don’t like paying for things.

Payman: Yeah, but something does need doing is what I’m saying, you know? We’ve complained all day, I would say-

Sofina: Well, you’re better off-

Payman: Put your money where your mouth is.

Sofina: You know how you’re going to get people is if you say it’s a voluntary or you can donate, and then people are like, “Okay”-

Payman: There you go.

Sofina: “There you go.” And that’s it, the attitude changes completely. It’s a donation, it’s a voluntary thing.

Payman: But my view on it was you pay it double for one year if you thought that you were going to get a GDC that’s fit for purpose. Now, of course, we don’t know, even if everyone does pay double for one year, that that’s what’s going to happen, but something needs to happen. You saw Dominic’s post, Prav, obviously-

Prav: Mm.

Payman: And you saw how much support he had, he was absolutely right. There’s four or five institutions that let us down over this last period, completely, and now’s a good time to come together and try and change some of those.

Sofina: And that’s what it is, we need-

Payman: And for me, number one, GDC.

Sofina: Yeah. I mean, that’s what it is, dentists that put all this energy into attacking other dentists, put it into attacking those who attack us. That makes so much more sense. You want to attack someone, use your energy. If that’s the kind of person you are, we could use that as a tool, just use it the other direction. And I think that’s where the vocal people will actually be very good, but we could use them. Turn it around.

Payman: Prav, do you think Sofina’s too young for your final question?

Prav: I think so, mate. Far too young. Still a baby.

Payman: No, I think she’s got an old brain, man. I think she’s got a good wise brain. Sofina, what would you like your … Forget the funeral, but what would you like your legacy to be? What would you like to be remembered for?

Sofina: I don’t know. I think that … What it is is we’re all going to go, okay? So I could go tomorrow, it’s never too young to ask that question because I could go tomorrow. But I would want to think that what I did, and this is what it is, when I’ve done business and what I’ve done is I’ve made a difference to people. So the kind of dentistry I’ve done and the kind of business I’ve done is one that has actually helped our community and helped people, and I have made that kind of difference. And also, your kids. Your kids are the future. We’re going to go, we’re going to go, they’re going to go and the things that does live on is the values we teach them. So I think it’s really important to make sure that my kids are good people and they do good and they pass that on and they learn those good life lessons and keep that going, and I think that it is what is.

Sofina: I mean, what I set up, the money I have is going to go. It’s not about that, is it? But it’s making a difference in the business that I do and making a difference with my children as well. I think those are the kind of things that do live on when you’re gone. And I have to keep coming back to why I do and it is always important to ask why you’re doing what you’re doing, and are you just getting too involved and not actually thinking is there any point to what you’re doing? And I think that always has to come back to people’s minds. You’re never too young to ask that question because we have no guarantee on life or length of life, so we have to think about that all the time, I guess.

Payman: It’s been a wonderful conversation-

Prav: Thank you.

Payman: We’ve gone in lots of different directions. I know you must be busy, Sofina. You must be busy right now.

Sofina: I don’t even want to look at my inbox.

Payman: I’m really, really glad that you [crosstalk 01:27:16].

Sofina: But yeah, we’re good. All right, no problem.

Payman: Thank you so much.

Prav: Sofina, thanks so much for your time.

Sofina: No problems.

Prav: Really appreciate it.

Sofina: No, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed it actually. Absolutely.

Payman: And we should do this again.

Sofina: Absolutely.

Prav: For sure.

Payman: When the empire’s tripled.

Sofina: We’ll see. I might have just wound down instead, I might have gone a complete other direction and taken up that position as the … Yeah.

Payman: Somehow the-

Sofina: Yeah.

Prav: Having sold everything and driving around in your Lamborghini.

Sofina: Yeah, going for coffees with my friends. I miss that life, I really do miss that life. It’s a good life, and what am I thinking?

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

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

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

Prav: When I was at Oxford, my gym mates were on the door, and there’s two things that they used to tell me. They used to get in a lot of trouble and they used to get all the chicks.

Payman: I generally stayed away from both. I had no luck in either way.

Intro 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: It’s my pleasure to have Andy Wallace on the Dental Leaders podcast today, Andy welcome.

Andrew Wallace: Hi.

Prav: I think we first met, through IAS, was it?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, actually we first met in Mumbai.

Prav: Yeah.

Andrew Wallace: Coming up to your wedding. That was a trip and a half.

Prav: Yeah, I remember that. Before my wedding we had to go out and do some wedding shopping and we were on, was it an IAS course?

Payman: You took Andy with you?

Prav: [crosstalk] Yeah, but it was around the same time. Was it you and James Russell running the course or yourself?

Andrew Wallace: Me and Santosh Patel, and we met with Caroline, and the guys from the lab in Dubai.

Prav: It was a good trip, really nice food, and I was on these crazy diets.

Payman: Surprise, surprise.

Prav: I so regret it, mate. I so regret it. We went to this amazing restaurant. Probably one of the best Indian restaurants I’ve ever eaten at.

Payman: The Spare Kitchen.

Prav: Yeah, that was it.

Andrew Wallace: That was fantastic.

Prav: They had these amazing desserts and, me being the idiot that I was…

Payman: Didn’t touch them?

Prav: …passed it all by. I regret it.

Payman: Were you eating meat at the time, at least?

Prav: Yeah, I was, but the thing is, after that I got fat. So I looked back at that day and thought, “I should have just bloody eaten it.”

Payman: Yeah.

Andrew Wallace: You were in full prep mode for the wedding.

Prav: Yeah, but then after that I got fat, because I got married anyways.

Andrew Wallace: Those days are passed as well.

Prav: Yeah, this is not about my wedding, mate. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Andy. Where you grew up, what your upbringing was like, and just a little bit about your backstory.

Andrew Wallace: I don’t think it’s anything particularly unusual or special. Grew up in Northern Ireland. My dad worked for one of the banks at that stage, Allied Irish. Partly because of The Troubles, we kind of moved around a little bit.

Prav: Mm-hmm

Andrew Wallace: So we grew up in one little small town, then moved to another one. Then we stayed there for a few years. Then we moved to a larger, well it’s a city, Derry/Londonderry, and my dad finished his career there and took early retirement, so I suppose that’s what I would have called home as a child.

Prav: You moved around a lot as a kid?

Andrew Wallace: Up until 18 we lived in three different towns that were quite far apart. Far away from sort of family support and cousins, and aunts and uncles, and that sort of thing.

Payman: Did it make you good at making friends with people?

Andrew Wallace: I don’t know actually. I’m kind of a very shy sort of a guy.

Payman: Are you?

Andrew Wallace: Actually, yeah.

Payman: Yeah me, too.

Andrew Wallace: I can believe that.

Prav: You can be at times, it depends. It depends on the vibes you get from people, right?

Andrew Wallace: Some people are a lot easier to engage with than others.

Prav: Yeah.

Andrew Wallace: In terms of making friends, I remember my first day at my primary school, when we moved to Derry. I have a twin sister. I was seven years of age. It must have been the end of P3 or something and these two weird looking kids turning up. We didn’t have any of the school uniform or anything, so we turned up to school in matching, hand knitted, white, Aran jumpers.

Payman: So you used to wear the same clothes as your sister, even though you were a boy and she was a girl?

Andrew Wallace: I’m not sure if that was a thing, but we certainly did that day. That’s something that tends to stick in the mind.

Payman: How about The Troubles? What’s your memory of The Troubles in Ireland at that time?

Andrew Wallace: My parents were actually fairly good at kind of insulating it from us. Us from it. Despite it impacting on their lives and impacting on us in general. My parents were a mixed marriage, Catholic and Protestant, which in the ’70s was pretty unusual. It wasn’t sort of accepted and I know certain members of my father’s family didn’t speak to him for many years after my mom. The Troubles impacted him from work, as well, because being a bank manager, it was a well known thing that the paramilitaries would turn up to your house in the middle of the night and take you into the bank and empty the safe. That aside, my parents were very good at giving us the best upbringing they sort of could and insulating us from that. When you see The Troubles and you think back, it doesn’t make you very fond of religion and things like that. How religion can separate communities and separate families.

Prav: Did the relationship between your dad and his family, did it ever affect the relationship between you and your grandparents or uncles?

Andrew Wallace: Not really, so my dad’s parents passed away before I was born.

Prav: Okay.

Andrew Wallace: It was more the sort of distance of we lived the other end of Northern Ireland. Also, his family was kind of spread out, so it was the fact that we moved around for my dad’s work that kind of kept us away from aunts, and uncles, and cousins. Seeing his family and my aunts, and uncles, and cousins from that side was fairly unusual. We would have seen more of my mum’s folks, because we made a point to go up and see the grandparents, once a month sort of a thing.

Payman: I’ve been to Belfast a few times and it’s a fun, fun town. I go to Beirut a lot and they’ve had troubles there since the ’70s, as well. It’s a fun, fun town and it’s almost like, if we’re alive, let’s party. Do you recognise that about Belfast, because I don’t know, I’ve had a lot of fun there. Maybe that was just coincidence.

Prav: You have a lot of fun wherever you go, but you’re the commonality there.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, there’s definitely fun to be had in Belfast and Ireland in general.

Payman: You know, because of The Troubles. Do you know what I’m saying? It’s literally like that in Beirut. They used to make a joke. They’d say, “During the day we’ll shoot at each other and then at night we’ll drink with each other.”, like a crazy thing like that.

Andrew Wallace: I’m not sure. It’s certainly within communities there’s always a lot of fun to be had, but they were very, very separate.

Payman: Irish people generally have fun, don’t they?

Andrew Wallace: I think so.

Prav: Moving onto school, Andy, were you a swot, clever kid, grafter? What about your sister? What was she doing?

Andrew Wallace: My sister and I, so we went to the same primary school. Come the 11 plus time, we both went to single-sex schools, because those are the sort of grammar schools in the area. I certainly wasn’t one of the most intelligent or gifted students. That’s for sure. I got through most of the time. I certainly remember having great difficulty focusing and doing homeworks and things. There was a period of time I used to give my mother such grief for not doing my homework. Actually, at one point I had to go into the bank, to my dad’s office and all right, you’ll sit there, you’ll do your homework. I was so bad.

Payman: These days you’d be on ADHD medicine or something.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, so I kind of got through school.

Payman: Do you remember the first time where dentistry came on the radar? Do you have family? How did it happen?

Andrew Wallace: I have no family connection to medicine of dentistry at all. My dad, the only real instruction he said was, “Don’t get involved in the bank.” That’s how parents tend to do. I do remember, we got very little in the way of formal careers guidance in school, so it was off to the library and grab a careers book and just flick through stuff. I enjoyed science and maths, so one of the things that came up was medicine, and pharmacy, and optometry. I had an uncle who was an optician, so that was kind of on the radar. I had a cousin who was a vet. My sister was leaning more towards that, but I kind of just looked up dentistry in a careers book.
Well actually that sounds interesting. There’s no working weekends type of a thing. It’s a much more stable job. On my application form to uni I put down dentistry as number one and pharmacy and optometry. I kind of wanted to stay in Northern Ireland, so dentistry in Belfast at that point had the highest grades to get. It was a bit doubtful that I was going to get there, so when I did I was kind of very thankful. [inaudible]

Payman: Good school. Good school. No?

Andrew Wallace: It was okay, it was okay. It was a very small college.

Payman: Trinity’s a good school.

Andrew Wallace: My old VT trainer went there. He seemed to enjoy it a lot.

Prav: What was dental school like? Did you party hard? Were you a quality student. Somewhere in-between?

Andrew Wallace: Dental school was again, I kind of got through. I did enough to get through. I generally did party as much as I could. All the way through school and all the way through uni I had a series of part-time jobs, so I was always working at something.

Prav: Because you had to or because you just wanted to earn some extra cash?

Andrew Wallace: I wanted to earn some extra cash.

Prav: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Wallace: All the way through secondary school I was working in a petrol station. We wouldn’t be allowed now. Twelve years of age out pumping petrol and delivering papers and stuff. When I hit uni, I had a series of bar jobs, carrying glasses, washing glasses, working behind the bar. Then, sort of towards the end of uni, realised it was a lot easier working on the door than working behind the bar.

Prav: Oh, nice.

Andrew Wallace: That was so much more fun. Much less hard work.

Prav: When I was at Oxford, my gym mates, who used to train at the local town sort of town gym, were on the door. The two things that they used to tell me about being on the door is they used to get in a lot of trouble and they used to get all the chicks.

Andrew Wallace: I generally stayed away from both. I had no luck in either way. I kind of got into it.

Prav: You must have some stories for us.

Andrew Wallace: I kind of got into it through friends. Some of them were working on the door and I ended up sort of doing a lot of martial arts. A lot of the martial artist that I were working with were working in the various bars and I started working with them in some of the same bars I was actually working behind the bar, so it was a bit of a strange transition. I must say, I did enjoy it. I just love people watching.

Prav: Especially when drunk.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, absolutely. We had some fun nights out afterwards. Some of the bars we worked in, we genuinely had a great time while we were working. It was such a great, fun atmosphere and we were the dancing doormen. Come certain songs, we’d kick everyone of the podiums and all of that and the door staff would get up and dance. It was great fun and I made some fantastic friends.

Prav: That was throughout dental school you were on the door, right?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, right the way up until several months into VT, I was still working on the door.

Prav: Were there ever any moments on the door where you felt uncomfortable, threatened, or you thought, “Crap, things are going to kick off today?”

Andrew Wallace: There was quite a few. The student union ran a nightclub outside of the normal student hours, Friday night and Saturday, and that was called Shine. That was sort of a dance club. There was always issues trying to keep certain people out.

Payman: Which year was this?

Andrew Wallace: ’97, ’98 sort of thing. There was issues trying to keep certain people out and then when I left shine, I was actually running a door team in another student bar. Again, during the week, lovely place to work. Come Saturday and Sunday night, it was a very different clientele and again, there were some moments that you think, “What the hell was I doing even getting involved in any of that? Why didn’t I just walk away?” I was about to graduate in dentistry, why am I putting myself and my career by getting involved? Having to tell very unpleasant people that they weren’t coming into a pub.

Prav: Yeah, and being in it. Were you just confident in yourself, because of the martial arts. Were you operating at quite a high level in that sense? How long had you been training for? Had you competed?

Andrew Wallace: We did a little bit of martial arts when I was a kid. Shortly after we moved to Derry, my sister wanted to do Irish dancing and I wanted to do karate. I had to do about six months of Irish dancing as a kid before I was allowed to do karate, that was the payoff.

Prav: Did she do the karate, as well?

Andrew Wallace: For a little while. Then, at uni I was sort of training a couple times a week. We were doing sort of inter-varsity competitions both in Ireland and the U.K., but at that stage I was never competing at any great level. What we were doing was a very practical based martial arts. We were taking lots of different aspects from different martial arts and putting them into what would have been a practical application. Myself and my sensei would have travelled around to various other universities teaching other martial arts clubs the sort of practical applications of the stuff we’re practising . After uni, we did kind of ramp it up a notch. At one point, in 2007, we went over and we competed in Jersey in the World Jui Jitsu Championships.

Prav: Oh, so you were at quite a high level, then?

Andrew Wallace: It wasn’t the top level of martial art competition, but I must say I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the experience. It was a great lesson in discipline in that we sort of set our sights about two years out from this competition that we were going to do well at it. For about 18 months I was training a bit like you.

Prav: Every day.

Andrew Wallace: Every day, sometimes twice a day. At that point, I was practising and I had my own practise at that stage. I was taking my eye off the ball, with regards to the practise.

Prav: So you owned your business at that point?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah.

Prav: You were doing training for this competition every day.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah.

Prav: How did you handle that? Were you training in the morning, practising during the day, training after work?

Andrew Wallace: Most mornings there was kind of spinning before work, three or four mornings a week. Then, three or four evenings a week we were doing general karate type training and then Saturday, Sunday was more specific training for this particular competition.

Prav: How did you do?

Andrew Wallace: We didn’t do so well that year. We came fourth overall. The team as a whole brought back a couple of gold medals, a silver, and a bronze, but we weren’t brilliant. The guys went out and kept up, the rest of the team, kept up the training and three years later they actually won the whole thing. That was in Vegas.

Prav: Andy, would you say that discipline that you get from training for something like that, you apply to dentistry, as well?

Andrew Wallace: I should say yes, but personally I’m not a very disciplined person.

Prav: You must be to train like that. That’s a disciplined person. That’s not a non-disciplined person.

Andrew Wallace: I suppose if I have a specific goal, I can be very focused on getting what needs to be done for that specific goal, but I’m not very good at setting goals.

Prav: Some people are disciplined when there’s other to please. If you’ve got a team, you’ve got to turn up for the team, but if they’re on their own they’re not.

Andrew Wallace: One of the things, last year a few of us said we were going to run a half-marathon for the [inaudible] Foundation, so I found that very motivation, that I would actually go out and do some miles. Get up on Sunday and do a dozen miles, just to make sure that I wasn’t going to let anybody down. I was going to be able to do what I said I would do. This year we said we’re going to do a full marathon. Now we haven’t actually set the goal yet. We haven’t named the date. I’m struggling a little bit to keep the motivation going, in terms of getting the miles in and getting the cardio done. Yeah, when I have something specific in mind that I need to work for, I can be very, very oriented, but I’m not great at setting goals.

Prav: Andy, so what was the transition from qualifying to owning your own practise? Time scales and what happened in-between your first job?

Andrew Wallace: I did my VT about two or three miles actually from Queen’s Dental School. I got the job almost by luck. My first interview that I went for the guy offered me the job on the spot, but it was back home in Derry. I thought, I’m not sure I really want to go home. I said, “Listen brilliant. Can I have 24 hours to think about it?”, and he said, “Yeah, absolutely.” I called them up the next morning and said, “I’m going to take this job.” “Sorry too late. I’ve given it to somebody else.” Oh my god. All other interviews that I came in for; “Sorry we’ve given it to somebody else.” The last one that I had to hear from I managed to get. It was a massive stroke of luck, because he still is a brilliant chap and he was a great mentor. He was very giving of his time and his knowledge.
The practise was in a very high needs area, a place called Ballymurphy, which is the highest DMF in Northern Ireland, or was at the time, which has the DMF in the whole U.K. It was a very high needs area and this guy, Pearse Stinson, had carved out his own little private practise for himself within this big NHS practise doing almost exclusively implants. So in an area where most of the patients were exempt, they were paying nothing for their dentistry, he was providing a service and having patients travel from all over to have him do the treatment. For me, while it was a great practise, and a great team, and Pearse was lovely, it wasn’t the sort of dentistry that I thought I’d signed up for. It was high caries rate. You know these apple core type teeth were just rotted away by coke. You’d fix everything and then you’d come back in six months time and you’d have to do it all over again.
For me I found that very challenging. I’m spending more time in one appointment fixing a couple of teeth than they were spending brushing their teeth in the entire six months. I vividly still remember the day I spoke to Pearse and said listen, “This is not what I thought dentistry was going to be.”, and he said, “If you want to grow yourself, do it through education.”, and he gave me the name of a chap who’s running restorative courses over in London, Harris Sedelsky

Prav: Oh yeah.

Andrew Wallace: So as soon as I could I signed up for the course. Travelling back and forth to London every couple of weeks to Harris’ practise and it was a very old school. Sort of restorative course. Harris did his prosthodontic training in The States. It was all about pantographs and very high end, very occlusally driven. I learned a lot.

Prav: He was minimally invasive guy, wasn’t he back then?

Payman: That’s exactly what I said when he mentioned Harris to me, but apparently not back then.

Andrew Wallace: What he was teaching us was classic prosthodontics. Classic preps, how to take impressions, silver dyes, you know we took such a long time talking about occlusions.

Payman: He’s a super knowledgeable guy. Super knowledgeable.

Andrew Wallace: Absolutely and certainly at the time he talked through the very specific protocols he head in his practise for managing people at risk of caries and perio. Way ahead of the time. Lots of stuff about risk assessment and things. I suppose one of the most important things I learned in that course was, there was a half a day on cosmetic dentistry and it blew my mind that this is something that I’d never really heard anybody speak about. You kind of assumed, because you knew what a veneer prep was that you knew what cosmetic dentistry was. It opened my eyes to what I didn’t know.

Prav: It woke you up.

Andrew Wallace: I really did and that kind of set me down the path of cosmetic dentistry route in education and that side of things. After that I took lots of FMC courses with Anthony Zybutz, Mike Zybutz, and then I first heard Basil Mizrahi speak and thought, okay hold on, this is the guy that I want to learn cosmetic dentistry from. This was 2004, 2005 and his level of precision and a real want to do things as minimally invasive as possible. When I eventually did Basil’s course, which took a couple of years, I remember him showing a little orthodontic appliance that he had said he had kind of made up himself. That he would move a tooth by a millimetre or something, just so he didn’t have to prep into the pulp, but yeah that’s the sort of thing.

Payman: He’s at the very highest level, isn’t he?

Andrew Wallace: He is fantastic.

Prav: You did his whole course? The year course thing?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, he was teaching aesthetics as part of the course in The Eastman. The Eastman wouldn’t let you sign up for just the cosmetic course. He said, “Listen hold on. I’m going to be running this outside of The Eastman in a couple of years, so I held on and we did the first course form, which I think was in a hospital in Elings. That was another sort of trips back and forth to Northern Ireland over an easy jet.

Prav: You’re used to travelling aren’t you, Andy?

Andrew Wallace: Little bit.

Payman: How many times do you travel out of Ulster?

Andrew Wallace: I have little app on my phone which tells me about all my flights.

Payman: Oh yeah?

Andrew Wallace: I managed 55 flights last year.

Payman: Bloody hell.

Prav: I don’t know how you do it, mate.

Andrew Wallace: There was a time towards the end of last year that it was getting a bit much.

Payman: Is it every other weekend you’re away?

Andrew Wallace: There’s lots of times in the year when there’s loads of stuff going on in dentistry. From now coming into sort of May and then the other end of September, October, November, flat out stuff. Thankfully last year I specifically took a bit of a break in November, December, because my daughter was sitting her 11 plus. My job was to look after the younger brother and make sure she could focus in on the exam.

Payman: When was the first time you came across Tif Qureshi?

Andrew Wallace: I saw an article written by Tif on the Inman aligner in one of the dental magazines. I don’t remember which one and again I had al this knowledge and skills about how to prep. I wasn’t having the patients. The patients who were coming in for me for cosmetic dentistry were all patients who had malocclusions, they had malaligned teeth, and I just wasn’t comfortable doing the preps. I sent them off to the orthodontist. Of those that went, nobody ever had the treatment, because the orthodontist that we’re referring to is very much an NHS based orthodontist. This was the early 2000s and they were very much getting the standard orthodontic treatment plan or nothing, so most people were having nothing.
I was kind of stuck. I’d done all the training in cosmetic dentistry and wasn’t doing very much.

Prav: He wasn’t that dentist who prepped the hell out of teeth and veneered them and crowned them?

Andrew Wallace: Very, very few, because personally it didn’t sit well. Tiff did that, didn’t he, back in the day?

Payman: I did that when I was a dentist back in the day, but you’re right. I had the opportunity to do only that and it didn’t sit well.

Andrew Wallace: I was taking all the courses, finding the best education that I could in it. Then I was sitting down in my own surgery going, “I can’t actually prep into. I can’t do this elective endo.” As a general practitioner, you spend most of your day preserving teeth and saving teeth and preventing decay. Then all of the sudden you flip a switch. Now I’m a cosmetic dentist and it doesn’t matter how much enamel was up the suction. I read an article from Tif on the Inman. It took me about six months to go on the course, because they were only rolling them every now and again.

Payman: You read that article. Did you there and then recognise what it was saying?

Andrew Wallace: I thought, “This is my way into doing nicer dentistry.” The sort of dentistry that I’ve spent all this time and money getting into and I personally haven’t been able to do it. I though, “This is for me.”, so myself and, I rang about a colleague of mine who I went to uni with and I convinced him to come over to London. It was later on in the year and we did the course. In fact Tif had come over to do a PACV study club in Belfast on the Inman aligner a few weeks before the course, so I actually met him before the course. In all honesty, in all the courses that I’ve done, just the amount of stuff that was in that course and the application of it has had more impact on my own practise. Not just the whole teaching stuff, but my own practise more than anything else.

Prav: Andy, just tell us this, because I’ve been and Tif’s lecture and the teaching behind the academy has changed somewhat. I would say it’s just evolved over the last 18 months or two years, just in terms he’s delivered the emphasis of the constantly moving teeth and all of that. One of the things I’ve noticed that in front of a new audience there’s a moment during that talk that jaws drop, light bulbs go on, and they think, “Jesus I’ve got it now.”

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, I knew that exact moment. It’s that moment when general dentists who’ve maybe signed up for course thinking it’s about cosmetics, or it’s ortho, and they realise that it’s actually about all of my patients. This is about almost everybody that sits in front of me every day of the week.

Prav: Was that the same thing on the first course that you went on with Tif?

Andrew Wallace: Absolutely no mention of any of that. At that stage, Tif hadn’t been the BAC president at that stage. James I don’t think had his BAC accreditation that long, so it was Tif with James Russell and Tim [inaudible] taking the course. It was very much along the lines of well you’re going to have all these patients coming in for veneers and here’s how to do alignment, and bleeting, and there was maybe a little bit on bonding. How to do that instead. There was no real thought at that stage of general patients and general dentistry.

Payman: I remember Tif saying it was saying it was for lowers.

Prav: Well yeah, because you couldn’t veneer lowers. It started out as that.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, and that was I think the first case I saw. His article was on lower arch and a lot of the cases he talked about in the early ones were doing the lower arch, still doing the veneers in the upper. I was there at a cosmetic dentistry meeting recently and some amazing dentistry done and they look at the lowers and hold on. You’ve done all this work on the upper teeth and the lower teeth are still crooked. What’s going to happen to those are they going to stay there? No they’re not. They’re going to keep moving. It totally changes your idea on the patients that sit in front of you and it requires you to change your conversations in surgery as well. One of the best tools I’ve found for doing that is the intraoral scanner. We’ve had an intraoral scanner in the practise for over 10 years.

Payman: Have you?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, we had a Cerec 3D and then we got an omnicam about four years ago, but I’ve recently bought a Trios.

Prav: Is it that thing where it can lay a scan from two years ago to the scan now?

Andrew Wallace: Exactly, the patient monitoring.

Prav: Amazing. Tell us about that. Just go on, spell it out. Just spell that out.

Andrew Wallace: One of the great things about the newer scanners like the Trios is that they’re so fast you can take a scan. Upper and lower full out scan while you’re doing a check up.

Payman: So you do it on every patient?

Andrew Wallace: Almost every patient. I can have a scan done before my nurse comes back from the next room having scanned in the bitewings. It’s 45 seconds upper and lower and then a couple of minutes to process. In less than five minutes you can have the scans. You can then show to the patients on the big screen what’s going on in their mouths and in a more dynamic way than you can with photographs. They can really see the change in the shapes and the size of ledges. They can see those little points the contacts have slipped.

Prav: It’s not just communication is it? It’s also diagnosis in a way.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah and you’re putting up in front of the patients. They go, “Wow, what’s going on there. I didn’t know that was like that.” I’ve been able to manipulate on the screen and show them, “Okay so you’ve got this wear. See how those two bits of wear match up? The chiselled edges, that’s called pathway wear and that’s generally caused by a certain relationship of your teeth and that relationship can get worse over time.” Since we’ve kind of changed our focus, but I’m catching up on Tif. I’m now having different conversations with patients as well and the number of patients that are going ahead now with bonding or alignment for more functional reasons. For a long time we were having new patients come into the practise and they were having align, bleach, and bond. That was all well and good, but then they were off and going back through practises.
I’m in my own practise now, 16 years, and patients that I’ve been merrily seeing for 16 years, who have no interest in the aesthetic side of things, once you’re explaining what’s changing in their mouths, they’re going, “Hold on. What do I do to get this sorted?” You don’t even have to talk about the alignment. They want you to provide solutions for them, because they now know they have a problem that is likely to change over time.

Prav: So similar to Tif you’ve seen long term follow up.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah.

Prav: Same practise for a long time.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah, saw it again and again. IT’s a powerful thing, seeing your own work. Just very recently I had to replace the first impress posterior crown that I’d ever done. It was about 15 years old. It just got a little chip on it, a little crack. That’s brilliant to be able to go back. We did this and this and you know the patients. You know the family. It’s great seeing your own work over time. It’s a great way to learn about things. I’ve done a lot of composite rehabs in the past for tooth wear and things like that and it’s great to see those last and wear. Eventually having to redo it, but it’s great redoing it now with the skills, and the material, and the better techniques that we have now. You see a lot of younger dentists moving practises fairly quickly. How do you judge your own work if you’re not seeing how it lasts over time?

Payman: I get that thing that tiff explains so well about that and you’re doing too, but there is also that thing when you’re a young dentist that you don’t have this feeling. You did right? You moved from that high needs one. That feeling of being exposed to a couple of different bosses. A couple of different regimes makes yo understand more about dentistry, about running a practise, that sort of thing you know?

Andrew Wallace: I suppose if you always do what you always did, you’ll never do anything differently and you’ll never get different results.

Payman: True.

Andrew Wallace: So you do have to see what’s out there. When I moved practise and bout my own, it was partly because I wanted to do a particular type of dentistry that wasn’t possible where I was. One of the great things about Harris’s course was he did talk a little bit about practise management, and how to build a private practise, and communicate with patients. I felt more comfortable after the getting the education part of that.

Payman: Is your practise quite high end?

Andrew Wallace: It’s a family practise. We have lots of generations. It was a family practise that I bought over along with a partner. One of the partner stayed and the other one retired, so I bought over the retiring partner’s portion of the business. It was older folks, generation, generation, kids. It was a properly private family practise. Lots of plan patients and nothing particularly special. I’ve been there for 16 years.

Prav: You’ve owned the practise for 16 years, so you worked there for a bit?

Andrew Wallace: No I bought it. I bought it almost unseen, so I didn’t really know what I was buying.

Prav: How does that happen?

Andrew Wallace: There was no real due diligence done then, in terms of buying a practise. You got to see the books. You called in once or twice to meet the staff, and that talked to a couple of patients, and there you go. There wasn’t a great deal of choice private practise in Northern Ireland. At that stage they were kind of few and far between. Most practises were NHS. You know they’ve been talking about changing the NHS system in Norther Ireland for like 20 years and I saw 16 years ago that I don’t want somebody else having such control over what I do.

Payman: Yeah.

Andrew Wallace: I don’t want to be in a system where the NHS can decide to change what they want to do and that’s me locked in, because I’ve spent a fortune on an NHS practise.

Prav: What was the one thing about practise ownership that you were totally unprepared for. It sounds like you just thought, “You know what, sounds like a good idea. I want to do this type of dentistry. I’ll just buy a practise. Those books look good. Let’s get stuck in.”

Andrew Wallace: That was pretty much the thought process. It’s definitely managing people.

Prav: Yeah.

Andrew Wallace: That’s the hardest thing, managing staff. Trying to see things from their point of view can be challenging. We’ve had some brilliant members of the staff in the past. We’ve a great team right now. We went through some challenges with the team in the past, like every team does.

Prav: Sure.

Payman: Is there still the other partner in place as well?

Andrew Wallace: He retired about 10 years ago.

Payman: Just you as the owner now?

Andrew Wallace: I’ve since had another partner.

Payman: Oh a different one.

Andrew Wallace: He did an amazing thing last year. He emigrated to Australia. You talk about big changes. After VT he worked in Australia for a year with his wife and they’ve gone out there on holidays a few times and they decided we want to give it a try. The way the Visa thing works in Australia, if he hadn’t done it last year, it wasn’t going to happen. So sold his practise, sold his house, off to work as associates in Australia. Another chap bought in, so it’s been a bit of a transition, the practise in the last six months, but Killian seems to be getting on great.

Prav: Is that like a due diligence process? Did you vet this guy before he bought in?

Andrew Wallace: Actually yeah, Craig, my partner who just went to Australia, he was very open about the whole thing. Essentially him and I sat down. He didn’t advertise the practise. He spoke to his accountant. We had the same accountant. He said, “Well I know this chap who seems like a nice guy. Wants to buy a practise.” I happened to mention to another young dentist who’d messaged me about what sort of private practise were looking for associates at that stage and between us we kind of decided who would be the best fit for the practise. He was absolutely brilliant through the whole thing.

Prav: Were you given first refusal? Did it cross your mind?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah I had refusal, but I must admit, Craig did a lot of the running of the practise.

Prav: Okay.

Andrew Wallace: Particularly with me travelling a lot. I work in a referral practise one day a week as well. So my focus isn’t always 100% on the practise.

Prav: Got it, so you need someone else.

Andrew Wallace: I do, I do. Somebody who has a vested interest and wants to see the practise do well.

Payman: What is your role in the practise though? Do you have a role? Are you the ideas guy or something or do you do the hiring and firing.

Andrew Wallace: I try and just do the dentistry. People make me do other things. I definitely don’t enjoy hiring and firing and certainly the firing. Thankfully I haven’t had to do very much of that. The running of the practise I find challenging, because I really enjoy dentistry. I love dentistry. I love the technical challenge of it. I don’t really enjoy running a business, doing the books.

Payman: I’m the same.

Prav: So firing, talk me through.

Payman: He’s not had to know how to do it.

Prav: No, he has.

Payman: He doesn’t like to do it.

Andrew Wallace: Just the once. I’m not going to say a lot about it, but it was very challenging time for the entire team. Ultimately, it had to be done and the team came out of it much better as a result, but it was a very challenging time.

Prav: I’ve found it the hardest thing to do. It’s the hardest part of my job is firing someone.

Payman: That notion, yeah. I really believe in this, that if you’re going to fire someone, give them four months pay to sweeten the pill. The reason is if you don’t, they should have been fire four months ago, but you stretch it out. You know what I mean? You’re going to pay them for four months anyway.

Prav: No.

Andrew Wallace: One of the dental gurus calls that a well poisoner.

Payman: Oh is that right?

Andrew Wallace: So if you have them there you’re better off just getting rid of them.

Payman: Yeah just get them off. Just get them out. What I’m saying is, just to make it easier for yourself, give them a load of pay, because I’ve been through this situation where we haven’t fire that person right and just stretched it out.

Andrew Wallace: You’re just prolonging the pain yeah.

Payman: With this particular person, how long extra was she there that she should have been out?

Andrew Wallace: There was a degree of challenging and difficulty going on for this particular person. There was one particular incident which brought everything to a head and we had to involve and HR consultant. The first decision that they made was, okay she can’t be on the premises. I had to walk in and say, “You’re leaving now.”, and I went through the whole dismissal process and partial things.

Prav: You had to deliver the news right?

Andrew Wallace: Yeah.

Prav: When did you find out that you were going to deliver the news. What was the time delay between you saying, “I’ve got to do this job.”, and doing the job.

Andrew Wallace: It was within 24 hours.

Prav: Oh okay. Did you have the conversation with yourself a few times in your head?

Andrew Wallace: It was a fairly abrupt conversation.

Prav: Was it?

Andrew Wallace: It kind of had to be…

Prav: Because of the situation.

Andrew Wallace: This was one of the times where I couldn’t lean on Craig, because he was actually off in Australia on holiday. It was one of the few times I was left flying solo. There was lots of messages, and emails, and phone calls, and things, but it was down to me to deliver the bad news. It’s definitely not I thing I’d like to repeat.

Payman: That’s life.

Prav: Payment. Four months pay for anyone you’re going to fire. That will help when they listen to this podcast.

Payman: I’ve never done it, but I’ve certainly had people stick around for four months longer than they should, because we didn’t get around. We started making excuses.

Andrew Wallace: We’ve had some great team members and we’ve had some not so great team members. I’ve never been one to try and change somebody’s mind if they decide they’re going to leave. I wish them the best and I hope they do well. Often times if somebody’s not flourishing in your business, it often takes a change of situation for them and they’ll flourish somewhere else. I won’t try and convince somebody to stay if they’ve made up their mind to go, I suppose.

Payman: I’ve done that too. I know you said you were really interested in the technical side of the work.

Andrew Wallace: Not lab work.

Payman: Of course, but doing the dentistry.

Andrew Wallace: I really enjoy endo.

Payman: Really? That’s what I was going to say, specifically, you actually like the [inaudible] or the treatment planning aspect, or the people aspect, or the teaching? Which one of those do you like the most?

Andrew Wallace: I enjoy doing it all. I generally love all the parts of dentistry and I love the variety that I have. Three days a week I’m mostly doing general dentistry and doing align, bleach, bond. In the referral practise I’m doing profs, and endo, and implant dentures, and rehabs. Then one or two days a week I’m teaching. I really enjoy the mix. There’s no doubt that the teaching part of it is the most fun day of the week. You can get such a buzz from that moment when you see something just go, “Holy crap. This is the way forward. This is going to change what I’m doing.”
I suppose the downside of that is sometimes you see those moments, but the people don’t take it forward. There’s that resistance to change, both in themselves and within their practises. Change takes effort.

Prav: Time.

Payman: We said that on our course as well. From the people who’ve come on the course, some take it on and on and others, nothing. We see that too.

Prav: Andy, what do you think is the difference between people who come on one of your courses and action takers and those who just carry on doing the same thing, although they’ve been inspired by your teaching or training. What is it about those people who actually do something and then go on to treat patients the way you’ve taught them?

Andrew Wallace: There are some people that will take a good idea and will run with it, no matter what it is. They just see the value in it and they’ll take the time to do it. There are some people that kind of fall into it accidentally. We see if people aren’t starting to change what they do within the first couple of weeks, they start doubting themselves. They lose confidence. They think, “I must have forgotten something. I couldn’t do that.” Even if it’s just having a conversation with a member of staff, treating a team member, treating a family member, it’s getting going early on.

Prav: That first case.

Andrew Wallace: That first case.

Payman: I said exactly the same thing. Treat the team member.

Andrew Wallace: My first few Inman aligner cases I did for the lab, just to get going. Then the next few I did for half price. I had done lots of cases before I was starting to charge full price.

Prav: Then you’re off to the races right?

Andrew Wallace: Absolutely. You know the protocols. You know how to do it. You are quicker at it and you’ve ironed out a lot of the bugs now. When I started doing it in whatever it was, 2008, there was no forum. There was no support. It was, “Come on the course. We will cram as much knowledge onto you as possible and then you’re on your own.” I think how I got into the teaching side of it was torturing Tif and James Russell. I got Tif’s email address, I was firing him photographs. I was turning up at the BACD with photos on my Ipad, with story models in my bag. I’d ask Tif, “Come on, we’ll grab a beer. I need to talk to you about this stuff.”
My early case was kind of trial and error. Now it’s so much easier for people to integrate this into practise, because I’ve made all the mistakes already. You can learn from my mistakes, instead of having to remake those all over again. That’s one of the best things about starting off in anything new in dentistry now. You have access through the internet, through forums, through Facebook to so many people that are absolutely at the top of their game in this stuff. But one of the challenges also is there’s a lot of Facebook dentistry. How do you work out who is at the top of their game and who’s bluffing?

Prav: Andy, how did you get into teaching. You went on Tif’s course and then you wound up teaching.

Andrew Wallace: I was doing quite a few cases and I was pinging the odd email to Tif asking for help. He said at one of the BACD meetings, “Come on, we’ll grab a beer.” He said, “If we need somebody to teach a course or two a year over in Ireland, would you fancy doing it?” I thought not really. I am genuinely quite a shy chap and he said, “Come on the course a couple of times. See how we do it.” I said, “We’ll see how it goes.” The initial thought was we’ll do one or two courses a year in Ireland too and I’ve a couple of dozen courses a year maybe, travelling to The States and Africa.

Prav: You’ve taken 55 flights a year.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah. I used to think when I was going over to Harris, like 10 flights or 20, I thought that was big deal.

Prav: Jeez.

Payman: We’ve been asking everyone regarding clinical mistakes. The reason we’re asking is because they tend to get hidden and no learns from them. Black box thinking type thing. Would you share with us what’s your biggest clinical error?

Andrew Wallace: I suppose the one that springs to mind is me maybe showing off a little bit. I think we had a new dentist or somebody with work experience in the practise with a patient in pain. I was busy chatting through what I was doing with this potential new dentist, had a patient in pain, made the diagnosis of irreversible Pulpitis. I put the rubber down on the tooth, opened the access cavity, and went, “Hold on. Wrong tooth.” I was supposed to be opening the sixth and I opened the seventh or vice versa.

Prav: Took a deep breath.

Andrew Wallace: Took a deep breath. You know sucked in the pain, set the patient up, and explained my mistake. “I’m terribly sorry. We’ve opened the wrong tooth. Totally my mistake.”

Payman: Longstanding patient or…

Andrew Wallace: Longstanding patient. I see the whole family. I see the mom, I see the dad, I see her, I see her kids. Another good reason for building relationships with patients. Who was it? I think it was Steve Hudson told me ages ago, “Never treat a stranger.” That’s one of the problems again with a lot of the way that we market ourselves as dentists. You’re inviting strangers in and you’re doing invasive treatments on patients that you’ve built up no relationship with. That’s sort of a mistake and someone that you don’t have a relationship with, that could be a major issue in your career.

Prav: So what happened?

Andrew Wallace: She was totally fine about it. We ended up having to do the endo on both teeth. Didn’t charge her for either. Crowns in both of them. Didn’t charge her for either. That was maybe seven or eight years ago and she’s still a patient. I still see the family. It’s one of those things. Mistakes happen.

Prav: Andy, you said you’re quite a shy person getting up on stage for the first time, public speaking. I know the first time I did it I absolutely crapped my pants. It was just that fear, that racing heart, all that moment. Did you get that?

Andrew Wallace: You get, what do they call it, Imposter Syndrome? You think, “Surely they shouldn’t have asked me to do this.” You’re right. The heart races and the tunnel vision. I’ve developed certain strategies to help me with that. The first bit of a presentation I did was I was just presenting a little tiny part of one of the big courses and it’s just grown and grown. I still get very nervous coming up to bigger podium type presentations, where you have 100, 200 people in the room. The hands on courses I just enjoy start to finish now.

Prav: Do you ever get a little bit nervous just before them or is that now almost like second nature.

Andrew Wallace: It comes and goes. I suppose now we’re delivering them every couple of weeks not so much. I hadn’t done one since November there, so when we did one in January I was like, “Hold on there. The hearts going again.” One of the things I’ll do is I’ll do an introduction and then I’ll put up a video. Tif has done some amazing videos highlighting the change in philosophy. You put the on for a couple of minutes, people get engaged in that, you get your heart rate down a little bit, and then when those finish you can relax and you can start off.

Prav: What advice would you give to somebody who is about to step on the podium for the first time in that position of suffering from Imposter Syndrome or thinking, “Bloody hell, I’m just about to wing it now.” What advice would you give to somebody who’s been in that position before?

Andrew Wallace: I suppose the only reason that I feel I can stand up and talk about anything is because I’m passionate about it. When you have a passion for something it makes it much easier to talk about. Still that first couple of moments on the stage is challenging. You’ve just got to try and rehearse what you’re going to do.

Payman: Prepare.

Andrew Wallace: Prepare. Anytime I’m doing a podium type presentation, where I have to do I knew presentation for it, I’ll always go back and listen to a book called Talk Like Ted.

Payman: Is it a good book? I’ve always wanted to read that.

Andrew Wallace: Carmine Gallow was the guy who wrote the book. He goes through some simple steps of how to build a presentation. If you can then build a presentation based on that and you know it really well, then you will be a lot more comfortable going up and presenting that. I still get caught out. You get asked to do presentations at relatively short notice, you will sometimes use other people’s content, which you don’t know as well as some of your own. You know at the end of a presentation whether you’ve done well or not.

Payman: My top tip for presentations is a strong start and a strong finish.

Andrew Wallace: Absolutely.

Payman: Let the bits in the middle work themselves out. So me and Prav were both lecturing on the same stage and I said to him, “Guess what, dude. The first two slides and the last two slides, I’ve learned those by heart, word for word.” He goes, “I’ve learned every single word by memorization.”

Andrew Wallace: That’s what Prav’s like, isn’t he? That just highlights if you can stick a video in there as your second slide for a couple of minutes.

Prav: Happy days.

Payman: When the videos on do you look at the video or do you look at the audience?

Andrew Wallace: I look at the audience. There’s one particular video that we do as part of the ABB course and it’s a video of two separate parts. One bit is just everything that’s wrong with dentistry. It’s poor planning. It’s poor execution. It’s dentistry done for dentist by balance rather than help the patient. Then the second one is all about minimally invasive cosmetic surgery; align, bleach, bond. Just really good planning. Simple dentistry done really well. I just love watching the audience watching that. You see the change in how they look at things. I genuinely love that.

Prav: Andy, talk to me about work life balance. For me, I work incredibly hard and often it’s time away from the kids, time away from the family and it can take its toll on your personal life right? You more so than me. I get a bit of a hard time at home. Sometimes I go home and Prav’s not there. He’s there, but he’s not there. He’s not fully engaged, because I’m walking in with my work hat on or I’m walking in with my problems from work or whatever that is. What’s it like for you at home and the reality of the relationship with your wife, your kids?

Andrew Wallace: Thankfully my wife’s a dentist as well and she works in Cranmore in the referral practise where I work doing general dentistry. She is fantastic. My work life balance isn’t as good as it should be. I haven’t found that sweet spot yet, but no matter where I say I’m going to go or what I’m going to do…
I have a tendency to say yes. Somebody offers me something to do or gives me an opportunity, I generally say yes and then work out a way to do it. That way generally involves lumbering my poor wife. She’ll have to do extra pick up. She’ll have to take time off from work. She’ll have to take the kids to rugby while I’m off who knows where.

Prav: He is the yes man at the IAS Academy. “Who’s going to do this course?” Andy sticks his hand up. “I’ll do it.”

Payman: It’s a successful way of being, but we’ve all been at that engagement where it took hours to fly there, hours to fly back, and it wasn’t worth the journey. You get an upside from it, but you get a horrible downside from saying yes to everything as well.

Prav: Yeah, you do. You’ll fly for hours to give an hour long presentation.

Payman: Delayed flight or something. Especially when you’re taking 55 flights a year. You’ve must have hit a few airport situations.

Andrew Wallace: Actually thankfully very few.

Payman: Really?

Andrew Wallace: I’ve only ever had one sort of aborted landing. There was a bit of chaos in Heathrow last week with an IT failure. I was actually over with my son.

Prav: For pleasure?

Andrew Wallace: So in terms of work life balance, I’m not great. I say yes to things and I work out how to do it. I really should have been home with the kids or taken them here, taken them there.

Prav: How old are they?

Andrew Wallace: I have a daughter who’s 11, so she did her transfer test last year and a son who’s eight. He’s a bit of a live wire, but there doing a project in school about Egypt, so when I heard there was a thing on the Saatchi Gallery I thought all right let’s go over.
Him and I just spent last weekend cramming as much kiddy stuff in London as we could in two days and we killed it.

Payman: Did he enjoy the Tutankhamun?

Andrew Wallace: He did. We did the science museum, we did the natural history museum, we did the London Eye, visited the aquarium. Basically I put a post up on Facebook. “What to do with an eight-year-old in London?”

Payman: Right.

Andrew Wallace: I fit as many of those things in those two days as possible and it was fantastic.

Payman: It’s my top tip to parents to take one kid away or one kid out for dinner.

Andrew Wallace: To gather my two are very challenging. They fight and they wind one another up.

Prav: If you think back to when you were a kid, if your dad took you somewhere, that would be a major moment in your childhood.

Andrew Wallace: I can’t remember who said to me recently, you don’t remember the things that you get bought as a kid, but you remember experiences.

Prav: Sure.

Andrew Wallace: Think back yourself the things you remember. Going on holidays, going on trips, going away with your folks. I don’t often get enough time to do that and you’re absolutely right. Together my two are challenging. Props to my wife.

Prav: They’re totally different on their own.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah. They’re like little people by themselves, but together they’re just bouncing off one another.

Prav: Your sister, did she become a dentist, too?

Andrew Wallace: No, my sister works in admin in the hospital in Derry. She still lives in Derry. She still lives in the family home. I don’t think I could go back and live there. It’s very insular I suppose. Everybody needs to know everybody’s business and I’m not like that. She absolutely loves it.

Prav: What’s been your darkest day in dentistry?

Andrew Wallace: In dentistry? I don’t think I’ve had anything terribly dark, but I’ve certainly had some challenging patients. One springs to mind in particular. She came in looking for align, bleach, bond and some of the things she said, “Well hold on. This is maybe not the right patient.” My alarm bells are going off now. Generally my reception team’s alarm bells are much better than mine, but this lady happened to be friends with one of the receptionists, so those alarm bells were switched off. She was by far the most challenging patient.

Prav: Psychologically?

Andrew Wallace: Psychologically. Every time she would come in she wanted something different. She’s a female body builder and she wanted to look like Cheryl Cole.

Payman: Oh.

Andrew Wallace: I was like, “Hold on.” When I’m talking to patients one thing I’ll tend to ask them is, “If you had six months and a magic wand, what would you like your smile to look?” I’m looking for patients that want, “I want my own teeth looking as nice as they can.”, and that for me is gold. These are the sorts of patients that I want to help. When they say I want to look like a celebrity, I think, “This is a person that doesn’t have realistic expectations. How am I going to meet these expectations?”, and she just bore that out. Yeah plenty of sleepless nights over that.
Every dentist has had that. Every dentist has had that.

Payman: Yeah.

Prav: How do you spot a dangerous patient. What do they come in requesting? What’s on that radar.

Andrew Wallace: One of the things is unrealistic expectations, but again one of the things I have found it is often times the patients that flatter you.

Payman: I’ve heard you’re the best.

Andrew Wallace: Yes they are the dangerous ones, because they’ve already been to a number of dentists before and they’ve already told them those same stories, “But I know you can fix it. I know you can do it. My friend saw you.” It’s about unrealistic expectations of you and what is possible for them and they become more and more challenging and they get focused on smaller and smaller details. I’ve always found that more with clear aligner treatment that as you towards the end, they get more and more focused on finer and finer details.
Use something like fixed appliances, you use the Inman, things are going so smoothly so quickly. They get such a dramatic change that they’re over the moon, but with clear aligners often you do find that sort find them more and more focused on tinier and tinier aspects.

Payman: Yeah.

Prav: Often I hear from dentists is they forget where they came from right?

Andrew Wallace: Absolutely. I do quite like having pre-op photographs on the screen when they come in, os they can see where they’ve come from. I used to have a screen in the chair and whenever they sat down, “Oh I don’t want to look at that.” New chair took that screen away, so it’s not quite as prominent anymore.

Payman: Looking forward, digital dentistry is changing everything so quickly. Where do you think we’re going to be in 10 years time?

Andrew Wallace: One of the things I did relatively recently was a talk on the future of dentistry.

Payman: Oh really?

Andrew Wallace: I didn’t focus so much on that side of things, but it was kind of where I.A. is in dentistry. Growing teeth and growing bone and things like that. I don’t think I’m going to see to much of that side of things in my practising career. The other day I was listening to one of your other podcasts with Robbie Hughes and he was talking about the newest concept in TNST where the veneers are pre-made and you have a prep jig. You’re taking so much of the skill out of dentistry, but you’re also making it more predictable. That’s probably where the digital side of things is going to improve. It’s only in the last few years that the technology has been there. The mechanics of the scanners, the Cerec’s been out for over 30 years now. It’s in the workflows and it’s on the software the at the development is really changing.
You have this patient monitoring ting from 3D. It’s just unreal and it’s the ability of being able to integrate those sort of things into general dentistry. When I was taking a full out scan with omnicam, the most accurate way to do it was with Cerec ortho and that takes 10 or 15 minutes to do start to finish. That’s by already lifting the scanner and doing it. With the likes of Trios and some of the other scanners, you can lift it and you can have the scan done in less than a minute. Two minutes and it’s on the screen in front of the patient, so you can generally integrate that into your practise.

Payman: My friend Chanel Patel, he markets the fact. They call it a 3D check up or something.

Andrew Wallace: Yeah. It also means that you can do things worldwide. You can have a dentist in one place and a technician somewhere else. In the past, the best dentists always had technicians on site. You had Mike Wise and Harris Sedelsky and his technician on site. There was that level of communication, but you can get that level of communication digitally know. I think it’s less with the fancy stuff and more about what general dentistry is going to be able to do with digital dentistry.

Prav: Andy, you know what question is coming.

Andrew Wallace: The one that I haven’t been able to think of an answer for.

Prav: You know what’s coming next, buddy. You’ve just spent a day with your son and I’m sure that was great, away from work and all the rest of it. Imagine it’s your last day on the planet. You’ve got to leave him and your daughter with a message. Three words of advice. A bit of wisdom to take with them for the rest of their lives. Guiding principles, if you want. What would you say to them?

Andrew Wallace: I suppose surround yourself with good people. Surround yourself with people that are nice to you and that are good people. That are decent, and ethical, and do the right thing. You’ve got to work hard for whatever you want. If you sit back and expect things to be handed to you, that’s not going to work. Be a decent sort of a person.
One of the other questions that you normally ask is, “What would you like people to think of you?”, just be a decent bloke.

Prav: Just a good all around human being.

Andrew Wallace: I think that’s a good thing to try and live by.

Payman: That’s lovely.

Prav: Thank you, Andy.

Payman: Thank you so much.

Andrew Wallace: Thanks, Pay. Thanks, Prav.

Intro Voice: This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you et to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Prav: Thanks for listening, guys. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you tune in for future episodes. Hit subscribe in Itunes, or Google Play, or whatever platform it is. We’d really appreciate it if you would…

Payman: Give us a six star rating.

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

Payman: Thanks a lot, guys.

Prav: Bye.