Month: April 2021

[00:00:00] You can buy companies which mine Krypto and own crypto, and those prices tend to rally and fluctuate with the crypto bull market. So one that there’s been a lot of hype around is one called Argo Blockin. And I wish I would have bought this thing a lot sooner because it’s went up a thousand percent since about six months ago, which is crazy. OK, I still don’t think the bull market for crypto is over personally. Quite a few reasons that are not for people with. But suffice to say, I still think it’s got some leeway to grow.

[00:00:30] All right. I’m not a financial advisor.

[00:00:32] By the way, this is Denzel Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in history. Your highs and lows include Saline King.

[00:00:58] It gives me great pleasure to introduce James Martin to the latest podcast and a different twist on dentistry today. It’s all about investing. James Martin is set up a group, what was it, six months ago?

[00:01:11] Yeah, well, I don’t even think it’s six months quite yet. And yeah, it seems to have somewhat expanded over time. And it’s all centered around dentists and their finances and investing, just as you touched upon there a minute ago, is still sinking in for me. This is quite got to the level that it has. But I’m loving. It is great.

[00:01:31] So dentists who invest is the group and I think we could all do with a bit of advice or help or direction in how we can make our money work a little bit harder for us. So, James, we usually start this off by just sort of asking how you where you grew up, but in your background, how you got into dentistry and then let’s go onto the investment path.

[00:01:51] Totally. Guys, thank you so much for having me. First of all, I’m looking forward to this one. I have my own podcast, but it’s nice to be to show you to be on the other foot a little bit and not take the lead for once and just speak a little bit about myself and get to know you guys. But yeah, sure thing. So I don’t know if anybody’s detected the accent or not yet. I think it’s somewhat when since time. But I am originally from Northern Ireland, so I spent the first 18 years of my life growing up over there. And I then came to Leeds in England when I was 19 to study dentistry. I’m not one of these people who how can I say I don’t know if it was my calling to be a dentist, or at least I didn’t at the time. But I do really like it. And I must say, but I have had this strange journey where it’s kind of ebbed and flowed. I’ve been the guy who loves it. I’ve been the guy who’s less enthused about it many times. But I’m happy that where I am at the minute in life, I do quite like it. But yeah, I came to Leeds in I think it was two thousand and eleven and I don’t actually ever really been to England once before that. So it was a bit of a leap of faith for me. But best decision I ever made, you know, coming to England, seeing it’s quite a different culture from Northern Ireland. I think the people are quite different. It took me a while to adapt. Most definitely. When I go back home, I speak like the queen, according to my granny. But I think that accents are all relative, you know what I mean? Whereas over here I’m like definitely a foreigner. So it’s a bit of a curious one.

[00:03:20] Is that outside of the accent? How do you how do you see a difference through the cultural differences between one hundred percent, the sense of humour, one hundred percent, a sense of humour.

[00:03:31] You know, Father Ted. Yeah. Yeah. That is like the zenith of comedy in Ireland. OK, and whilst I’m not saying that people in England, you know, they don’t get it or they don’t like it, but I don’t know if you quite call it the pinnacle of comedy, this very there’s other things like I don’t really know. I think I really like Peepshow. I think that’s the pinnacle of comedy. I think that’s awesome. But I also like only fools and horses. And to me, that’s the quintessential idea of British humour. And maybe I think that I’ve evolved a little bit as well, because I’ve been over here for so long and I used to not really get only fools and horses when I was I lived over there and I find it quite funny. I’ll put it on just out of interest just to watch it.

[00:04:19] And then also, Yorkshire is the Texas of Britain.

[00:04:23] Yeah, it’s definitely got its own kind of. Yeah. Culture and what have you. Do you know what I found out about Yorkshire culture the other day of what that cheese called? Oh my God. I’ve had a lot of drawing a blank that cheese. And you eat it with the Christmas pudding. Yorkshire cheese.

[00:04:42] No, no, it’s it’s got wensleydale. Yes.

[00:04:48] That freaked me out. That freaked me the hell out. When I find out that you eat that with you with Christmas pudding. I’ve never seen it in my life before.

[00:05:00] It’s not a thing outside of Yorkshire, listen.

[00:05:04] Wow, I thought I thought I understood you guys and then I saw that and just go right back to square one. Back to square one, hand on heart. I’d never seen that before. And maybe that’s me. I don’t know.

[00:05:18] Or maybe that’s just Yorkshire people saying, I really, honestly don’t know that the funny thing about accents, then you go, oh, in the same spot like the Queen. So I grew up in a place called Lake Fiqh, Mancunian accent and then go off to uni, come back and I’m chatting away to my brother on the phone to one of my mates to Oxford and turn to like posh individual. Right. So super posh accent. And then at home, like, I’ll speak to Peyman quite a lot at home. I’m speaking like this, I don’t know Mancunian of whatever I speak to penlight. You turn into a posh you know what, and I’m like a chameleon to my accent, just sense to change. And even on this podcast, you’ll probably find there’ll be some very posh prep and somewhere is Northern Trust. So it’s these things all a bit odd for me.

[00:06:08] It happens. We all do th=at to a degree. I’m with you on that one. I do that to what we like. As a dental student, I was not that committed to dentistry. I was very much the archetype of a student and not I like to go out. My main priority was on the academic side for the first three years. And then I really realised that when you hit fourth and fifth year, the work goes up quite a big notch. And I recognized that I needed to up my game and then I just became fully embroiled in it. And that was the point where I started reading all our books about dentistry, going to extra lectures where there’s opportunities to have them. And maybe I got I got loads more interested in it towards the end. Where are you right now, your associate? Yes, that’s right.

[00:06:57] Ok, so tell us about how this investment so the journey started.

[00:07:02] Yeah, cool. Sure. So I probably did investing the wrong way round in that I traded before what I tried to trade didn’t go very well before I actually started thinking about long term investments, which is the clever way to do it. But that was born out of my total fundamental lack of knowledge about what I was even doing. Quite so. Quick question that James trading long term investment. Just break down the basics for me. Yeah, sure. So I guess an investor is someone who seeks to tie up their money in some sort of asset and look to the very, very long run to gain their profits and accept that there’s a possibility that it may go up and down. But their fundamental philosophy is that most assets go up in value over time for reasons we can go into later if you if you’re interested, so that that is their fundamental philosophy. And people will do that with index funds, bonds, gold, stuff like that, crypto less. So it’s less well established, although I think with Bitcoin it is possible to do that. But anyway, that’s the story for another day or perhaps later on for interest. And then the other thing I was going to say, trading is someone they basically seek to increase their capital over a very short space of time. So you’ll invest with the idea that something is going to go up or if you’re going to short something that is going to go down in value maybe quite soon. So if you’re a day trader, maybe it’ll be the same day. If you’re a swing trader, maybe that’ll be over a few months, or if you’re slightly more a long term holder, then maybe that’ll be a few weeks or so. Maybe that’ll be a few months to years, maybe something like that.

[00:08:41] So you started off trading. Did you lose some money? Did you get any highs? Lows? Did you think you.

[00:08:49] Yeah, well, there was there was a big low. There was a there was a I got into crypto when Bitcoin was on the news the last time it got really big and there was a massive bull market which was towards the end of twenty, seventeen early twenty eighteen. And my story was that I’d heard of Bitcoin. My friend had it in university in twenty twelve and I think he regrets that he didn’t hold it. I think that was one of his biggest regrets in life, that he didn’t hold it because I remember it being two hundred and fifty quid and I remember we were all laughing because we just thought that was extortionate to mean. And yeah my friend had it in university. That’s when I first heard of it and I first heard of the price and it going up and I didn’t really know that much about it or what it was and that tickled my pickle or that kind of got me thinking about it. And then I didn’t really think a whole lot about it for a long time.

[00:09:46] And then when we got to twenty seventeen, when there was this massive bull market and it basically culminated with Bitcoin being on the news quite often being on BBC and people saying things like. It started out in January that year, I think it was about eleven hundred dollars, twelve hundred dollars and it became twenty thousand dollars before the end of the year. And people were saying things like, how much can this thing continue to go up? It’s insane. It was in the newspaper. It had reached that peak saturation where it had culminated in general retail buying. So people who don’t necessarily know that much about investing were getting in. So even at the time, I knew it was a bubble. I knew that it was going to pop basically, and that it couldn’t continue to go up a lot more than what it had done already. So I thought to myself, OK, I know this is a bubble. I’m smarter than this, right? I’m smarter than this. OK, so I’m going to wait for the price to go up a lot.

[00:10:42] Then I’m just going to let it go down and then that’s when I’m going to get and I’m going to buy. OK, but the trouble was I had no idea how long the bear market that follows a bull market in Bitcoin is, and it’s usually about three or four years. OK, so I just thought, yeah, a few months will be all right. So I kind of bought this and I didn’t quite buy it at the peak. Then I held on and I held on and I did everything wrong that someone who’s trading it will try to do. I didn’t put a sale order in. If the price went past a certain limit, I became too attached to a particular crypto because I got emotionally invested in it. That crypto was XP and also another massive red flag about a newbie investor is if you know even a tiny amount about crypto, you’ll also know that XP is not really a project that a lot of people trust. So as far as the rookie mistakes go, it was like I had a big lesson. I was just taking them all off. But I didn’t even know that at the time. And I wish I would have just sold it, to be honest, if it’s a total waste of money in the end.

[00:11:49] And then I wound up transferring most of it to the wrong wallet and I lost it basically. So, again, another huge a huge no no. Another huge mistake. So that kind of got me thinking. And I thought, what separates these people who know quite a lot about crypto and they’re able to make money versus me is obviously a knowledge gap. I’m not inspired this journey into reading and learning about what money is and what crypto is, because if you know what money is, crypto starts to make a lot more sense. And then it just went from there. And I don’t just buy crypto. I don’t think that everybody should put their life savings and crypto. I do enjoy trading it, but that’s just my inclination or proclivity, I suppose. But what I do is I do some investing as well. I buy indexes, bonds and gold, OK? And those are things that you can seek to increase. You can seek to use to increase your capital over time and possibly act as a pension fund. But again, it all depends on your beliefs in the market. Hope that was a good answer I found, because I felt like a wall of water down there.

[00:12:52] When you said you went from being a total amateur to it sounds like you kind of know yourself. Now, if I was a total amateur, I wouldn’t get involved in investment. Have you got a few resources like books and things that you should read?

[00:13:07] One hundred percent, one hundred percent, and you’ve hit the nail on the head when you asked me about resources, I think books are the ultimate resource because of how much information that is condensed into. It’s basically distilled knowledge from an expert. And yeah, you can watch YouTube videos, but you’ll never know until you start reading a lot of books. But it may maybe your knowledge just won’t be as farsighted. I think personally and I like physical books as well, because what you can do is you could put Post-it on them and then what?

[00:13:36] What are some books like? What would be a good starting point was a good book.

[00:13:39] Yeah, sure. So yeah, one of my favorite books. I like the physical books because you can actually put posters in it and my favorite book of all time, people are going to start thinking that me and this guy have some sort of business arrangement because I talk about it so much. But It’s Hard on the World by Andrew Craig. And the reason why that is such a good book is that it presumes that you have no knowledge beforehand of what investing is, what money is. All of these things it talks about what the limits, why there are massive drawbacks in keeping all your wealth in cash, which I was one hundred percent that person before. And it talks about how the stock market and certain investments because of high cash is created and printed over time. They’re inherently predisposed to go up in value. And you can take advantage of this effect to multiply wealth and have a pension pot when you’re older and it’s hard to do it safely. And he actually makes the point in this book that it’s actually safer to diversify than it is to keep all your money in cash, which kind of flips on its head when most people look at it. And that was a mind blowing thing for me.

[00:14:47] So I’m going to ask some silly questions because I’m totally cool. People always say diversify your portfolio to limit your risk.

[00:14:56] Does that not limit your upside to a can?

[00:15:00] But I think you have to look over what time frame you want to draw profit. OK, so someone might come get me get rich quick.

[00:15:08] Yeah, yeah. We’re on the same page. Nice one.

[00:15:12] I think the thing with that is the problem is you have to have a plan before you go into it and you have to think to yourself, over what period of time am I likely to make some money or over what period of time am I expecting to draw some profits? It so let’s say if you’re someone who’s a trader to actually create something, I don’t think a lot of people realize just how much time you have to spend monitoring it and setting trade alert. And it’s basically a black hole for your time, and especially for a lot of a lot of people listen to this will be Dentists’, OK? And we’re already time per people the number of hoops we have to jump through just to be a dentist. And when you kind of keeping patients happy, et cetera, et cetera, it’s very difficult to do, I think, personally. So I think what you have to do is you have to say to yourself, over what period of time am I looking to draw a profit? And if you’re not thinking about doing that in the short term, it’s easier to spread your risk and diversify. Does that make sense? And yet you might be the person who buys a lot of stocks and you might get very wealthy.

[00:16:13] But it makes some sense. It makes some sense. But let’s say I let’s imagine I think Bitcoin is the thing to invest in. Yeah. And this AFCO one hundred thousand dollars to invest and you come to me say the whole hundred thousand in Bitcoin, thirty thousand in Bitcoin and then spread to other seventy thousand of course homes and stocks and properties or whatever. Yeah. It’s my information was right that Bitcoin is going to go up. Only thirty thousand of my cash is going to understand the downside risk. But surely the upside is.

[00:16:43] Well it is, but then it’s about capturing the right train at the right time, you know what I mean? So you’re quite right. I think Bitcoin is probably going to rally for a few months more. But the bear market that follows Bitcoin, it usually draws down 80 percent in value. So, yeah, I do see I do see entirely where you’re coming from. I think at that point you have to a know a lot about the particular asset that your investment and know when to get out, which not everybody does. And B, also just cross your fingers a little bit because investing is a bit more of a well, there’s there’s a risk to that, isn’t there? It’s not a guarantee. Whereas if you if you spread it across other things, then you don’t have to be that involved with how you manage it. And that’s why it can be beneficial for most people. And remember, the goal is the goal is just to make money overall long enough over a certain period of time. The goal is not even to be the best. The goal is just to be better than cash. Does that answer your question? I hope it does.

[00:17:41] Yes, I think it does, and I’d like to just dig a bit deeper into Krypto James because until I read, I read a book called The Bitcoin Standard, and until I read that, I thought crypto was some darker a load of bollocks, basically. Yeah. And then I read that and the whole money story as well. Right. How it was the value of money, how you print more, you devalue fiat currency, et cetera, et cetera, and how valuable something like Bitcoin could be. Now, to me, I’m one of these people who super detailer and say I’m not the sort of guy who’s just going to chuck a hundred grand into Bitcoin without knowing it inside out, or at least so. So I’m spending a lot of time now reading books, watching things, etc., but I’m still incredibly wet behind the ears. What I’d like you to do is just give us a give us a summary of, first of all, what Bitcoin is, why it’s going up in value. And then also just a bit of insight into these old coins, so to speak. So all the coins and I’ve heard people do in 10x hundreds on these other coins, but everyone’s just talking about Bitcoin.

[00:18:52] I think the biggest to answer your question, I heard a really nice description of how Bitcoin works the other day, which ties in the fundamentals of what it is, but also it’s in a kind of a way that we can relate to. So if you think about a bank, a bank has a ledger in it. And let’s go back to what the sixteen hundred is. When we had Italian banks that were first kind of gaining traction, whatever. So in the bank, you’d have a big book called A Ledger, OK? And in that ledger there would be a scribe. Maybe there would be a back up of the ledger. I don’t know, something like that. Just so that they could compare it. You’d have a person who would write down Mr. Jones or is this much money? He’s just given someone else this much money. Now he has this much. All the transactions were held in there and there needed to be a record of that because no one could retain that information. All right. Now, imagine a modern bank that stored in a computer, OK? The transactions, the how much money there is in every according to what, et cetera, et cetera. It’s all on a big computer. OK, now what Bitcoin is take that computer, make it into many computers that are spread throughout the world that are all talking to each other and confirming this ledger at the same time. And also that no one owns because it is decentralized, of course. And that’s what Bitcoin is. I hope that does not make sense for of people. And I think that’s the nicest way of explaining it succinctly.

[00:20:19] Yeah. From from what I’ve read is that the block chain is essentially the ledger. Yeah. Which is a record of every single transaction that’s there for life, as I understand it. Yeah. And the whole decentralization of it is basically you’re not tied down to NatWest or whoever it is, it’s and it’s run by an open source community of miners or computers or whatever you want to call them.

[00:20:49] So there actually is a five man team that the guy, Satoshi Nakamoto, the alias of the individual or people, group of people who created it, passed on the rights to OK, so but the miners have the say as to who implements the software because it’s and it’s just it’s consensus. So you’d have to get the majority of miners to agree to a change as well. Makes sense. Yeah.

[00:21:17] So I think to answer your question, the most amazing thing that I learned about money that allowed me to make a lot more sense of what Bitcoin is, was the fact that money only so money when I spend money, I mean pawns on a currency, not gold and silver, which can also be money, but I mean specifically currency. Once upon a time, you could trade your currency. A British one British pound is a pound of gold. That’s what it was. OK, they changed that in nineteen fourteen. They unpegged the value of the point to the gold to fight Germany. They needed more money but they didn’t have enough gold. So when you know that, that only retained its value because people after that the pound meant nothing, OK, they had Bretton Woods, which was something slightly different, but that’s now gone.

[00:22:07] But after that point, there’s no actual value that that has, apart from the fact that other people agree that it has value. Do you see what I mean? Because if you go to a bank, you can’t get gold. Gold is the fundamental money. And again, people only think gold has value because it looks pretty. It actually has very limited use. So value is something that’s actually more of a consensus in society. And when you know that when you know that value comes from consensus, why can something like Bitcoin not have value as well? Which is suppose? To be a in a deflationary inherent store of value over time, do you see what I mean?

[00:22:46] Because no one can arbitrarily created Silver Strip from understand obviously with gold scarcity as well, I assume plays a big role in its inherent value. And then, as you mentioned, with the gold standard that you used to be able to assume and walk into a bank and say, I can have my gold worth in this right.

[00:23:05] I promise to pay the bearer on demand the value of one pound of gold. That’s what it said on British banknotes. But it doesn’t anymore.

[00:23:13] Yes, but it doesn’t. And so you could back that up. And then. And now. Now it’s like you say, it’s been unpegged. And what is the value in Bitcoin? It’s scarcity as well. The fact that there’s only, say, twenty one million coins.

[00:23:28] Partly, partly so.

[00:23:30] There is five things that people attribute its value to. So scarcity is one of them previously speed of transactions, cost of transactions because it’s cheaper. And then you might also say, well, scarcity is the fifth one tied on talk our store a store of value. OK, so those are it’s five use cases as such.

[00:23:54] What about crime? About crime with the with this digital currency? I’m sure this is it’s a really good way to wash money.

[00:24:03] Yeah. I mean, ultimately, bitcoin is only psuedo psuedo, private, OK, because you still have a publicly available address, which if someone takes hard enough, they can find that it’s linked to your IP address. So then you have to get into virtual private networks and things like that. Inevitably, there is going to be some people who use it for that means because it’s a peer to peer system. But I think that with dollars as well and porns, you’re always going to get those bad actors no matter what I feel like, because Bitcoin has been around for so long, it legitimizes itself longer and longer as time goes on. I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to have some bad actors involved with it just because of what drew you back to.

[00:24:58] I’ve never invested in have a list of no investment.

[00:25:03] Now, what do I have to do but just break that down for someone who’s never done it before.

[00:25:10] What does someone like me. Sure, sure. Sure, sure. So I think the first thing to do is, is to work out how much you are prepared to invest just broadly, not just in crypto, and then only attribute a small portion of that to crypto because no one ultimately knows where it’s going to go. And it’s best to diversify, of course. So a rule of thumb, just shooting from the hip. Maybe you might like to have six months to a year off cash reserves that you can use should there be a rainy day, should you lose your job, et cetera, et cetera, just so that you’re protected? I mean, even though cash has all these issues and problems that we that people in the Bitcoin community philosophically disagree with, the fact of the matter is, if you go to the shop, they don’t ask for Bitcoin, they ask for points, you know what I mean? At least for the time being, and spread your risk, of course. Then after that, you might say, alright, well, I’ve got my cash reserve, my emergency fund. Maybe I’ll look to invest and grow my money over time, which is fine. And then you might like to say, what’s my risk profile like? What am I expecting to get out of crypto? Am I someone who’s going to go in and get when I think that the the bull market is over, which it probably will be in about six or seven months, it usually rallies for ten months after it breaks its all time high.

[00:26:28] We’re already about two or three months into that. OK, so are you someone who’s going to be monitoring it and try to take some of your money off the table when you think it comes to the end of the bull market? Or are you someone who wishes to buy it because you believe in the long run that this is going to be the global reserve currency? This is going to be something special, and you wish to own a part of that and you wish to protect your wealth in that fashion. There’s a really interest not to go off too much of a tangent. There’s an interesting website called Block Fine, which you can get a loan in cash, OK? And you can use your Bitcoin as collateral. And because it’s a loan, there’s zero tax on it.

[00:27:08] So say I put up one Bitcoin, I get forty thousand dollars for it. That’s my loan. Obviously I pay that back with interest on it, but pay it back with interest on it. I still have my bitcoin, OK, and then I can just use that bitcoin as collateral further down the line, which is really interesting. So this is something that’s quite ushe. I only became aware of this about six months ago. So you might say to yourself, actually, I want to hold Bitcoin long term and use it as collateral for loans. I really I don’t know or you might like to say, actually, I believe in this as a pension. I wish to hold part of this on this for for this.

[00:27:42] I’ve decided I’m going to buy some Bitcoin. I’ve got my 50 grand. What I do next.

[00:27:47] Ok, fair enough. The kind of meat and potatoes we actually logistically do. OK, fair enough. So I would first of all, find a reputed website on which to buy it. I personally like the website Cracken, so it has a UK based, has got a UK outlet or branch or whatever, and you can send Pynes to it, you can buy Bitcoin directly in point. What I like as well is that when you take your money, your bitcoin out of the exchange you pay for, well, you don’t pay a percentage, you pay 10 points and it’s capped at that limit. So if you’re putting over a Grendon, then you begin to benefit from that arrangement at that point, because normally it’s only one percent are normally they will charge you one percent to withdraw or not point one percent in those realms. So Coinbase is like one percent, which is quite high finance and things like that are usually like point one percent to withdraw your Bitcoin. So your benefit from an economy of scale at that point. And then you can just put your Bitcoin on a wallet.

[00:28:50] What does that mean? It was actually a wallet. Yeah. So a wallet is just a digital literally just a digital wallet, a digital kind of place that you can access your bitcoin from, which only you have custody of, not the exchange, because there has been cases in the past where exchanges get hacked. The reason I recommend cracken is because it’s never been hacked and it also has bank tier level security. It’s recognized as a bank and you US law. You can only get this legal status when you have a certain level of cybersecurity. I don’t, to my knowledge, know of any other exchange that has not and therefore it is to surface. Some people are content to leave it on an exchange. That’s that’s just a philosophical kind of maybe like a difference there. Some people the true the hardcores on the people who, while they see Bitcoin more from the point of view, have taken back control, those people will never be content to leave it on an exchange. So then that’s a USB drive, then a cool wallet is a USB drive. Yeah. So that’s considered the highest level of security because from your public address there is another sixty four digit on letter Freers, which is your private key. You can turn a private key into a public address, but you can’t figure out you can’t unscramble a public key to figure out a private address.

[00:30:17] OK, so this private key that you have, this is yours. You never share that with anyone. And that is your password to access the block chain where your crypto is stored. And the reason people really like called wallets is because those are not private key. That never leaves that wallet, whereas most wallets, the private key is actually stored on the computer. So if someone has is able to hack your computer and you don’t have a strong enough security suite that can, in theory, take your Bitcoin. What happens if you lose your wallet as long as you have the private key, which you would always back up? So what they want most wallet providers do is to give you a 20 forward seat phrase. You write that down because otherwise is just sixty four letters and numbers of gibberish, you know what I mean? It’s just something a bit more tangible. And then from that, they make you calculate your private key on the wallet. But it never it never leaves this little USB drive. The computer just uses the wallet to access it. It doesn’t actually ever get that information. And that’s why it’s called wallet. And they’re considered to be the safest.

[00:31:26] There’s some examples of questions you’ll get you get you must be getting a lot of questions from Dantas, right? Yeah, and I noticed you said, of course, for Bitcoin buying Bitcoin as well.

[00:31:37] Yeah, that’s a work in progress. Is that one of the first two making, of course, is a lot of work.

[00:31:43] Well, I kind of I realize now I have maybe bitten off a lot more than I could chew.

[00:31:48] I think as well as just when I want to make it of a good standard that people are going to actually learn. And it’s kind of one of those things. It’s almost like a black hole. And I think I’m in danger of maybe putting too much information in at this point. So I need to just figure out how can I make this really useful, but also make it still accessible to most people. And it takes time. It really does.

[00:32:12] What would you say? What would you say the most common mistakes that people make when it comes to investing?

[00:32:18] I would say so. Broadly speaking, investing, trading, investing, whatever you like. I would say the very first thing is to have an idea of what sort of time frame you want to get your money out, OK? Because if you go into something and you know that you believe that inherently it’s going to go up over value over time. The S&P Five Hundred Index in America created in nineteen fifty seven on average, went up by 10 percent every year on average. All right. Now there’s going to be Dawna’s obviously, but on average, it went up 10 percent every year. So when you know that piece of information, you are so much more immune to the negative, the negative press and the negativity that’s chucked at you because you’ll go into something and you’ll say, OK, I have a Daunia, OK, is two in it. And Wall Street went went to pot, whatever.

[00:33:09] But you’ll know that if you wait a long enough time, you’ll be able to increase your money. So for me, if I go into something and I know what I’m investing in and I know over what period of time I want to draw money, then I can draw a lot of.

[00:33:25] Yes, I won’t lose any sleep at night. And those mistake people make. What you’re saying is, first of all, is to define that period of time. Definitely. Absolutely.

[00:33:36] Yeah. Time frame. Biggest mistake, I think, as well as that is not being prepared to understand just how much you have to monitor something to understand its daily price fluctuations and maybe expecting that you can be ready to make a quick buck. But again, not really having an idea of how much you have to know about something to do that I think is all about picking one asset class and just learning the absolute hell out of it to make money and having an idea of just how much time you have to spend front of the computer to do that.

[00:34:05] And if it’s a dent, if you’re a dentist and you probably don’t have that much time, then understanding that I’m not trying to be that person.

[00:34:13] And I can imagine moments where you’d be caught in the middle of a long ground threat and missed some moment in the market, also some lawsuits.

[00:34:25] And I recently read a story from Robbie Burns Naked Trader book, the one about spread betting. Spread betting is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you that. Oh, my God. If you have a professional account, as they’ve recently changed the rules, but you used to be able to do this with an amateur client. No, it’s just a professional. So it’s a little bit more ring-fence. But when you trade on leverage, your risk is unlimited. Your risk is not just the money that you put in. OK, so if you if you buy 10 grand of shares and you have 10 leverage, then if that moves 10 grand against you, then you’ve literally you’ve lost 100 grand. And yeah, they’ll collapse your trade after a while, but not before you have a lot of money. OK, now I was written about some that it actually was a dentist as well. He specifically mentions his friend who was a dentist in his book, and he managed to lose something like 70 grand after a one hour dental appointment because it moves so fast against him and so hard that his stop loss, it didn’t even trigger because there wasn’t enough buy, there wasn’t enough buy orders in the market, which can hardly be guaranteed. Well, yeah, that’s it. Apparently you can take a box to guarantee it. And he didn’t take it out, but it’s safe to say he did take that box. And while that’s the sort of stuff that I don’t I don’t have the nerve to do stuff like that, monist Brad Batton is probably not for me, really.

[00:35:55] I mean, the clues, the clues in the name, like betting.

[00:35:59] Betting. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, that’s it.

[00:36:02] So listen, but if you you’re an associate now and most associates would be I mean, let’s face it, no one in investing is have some money to invest. Right. Spend spend less than you earn most to be doing fine. You, the ones who invest will be doing that number to someone like you. OK, most associates would be looking to start taking practice or whatever. And have you had to look at that? I mean, you know, looking at the way you’re thinking now, starting the practice is going to take a lot of your time. And I guess it’s a risk return kind of question I’m asking. But, you know, if you just say you’ve saved two hundred grand, you could put that into practice. You could put that leverage it onto the property, you could buy some Bitcoin or whatever. Have you thought to yourself which way you’re going to sell?

[00:36:57] It sounds like you know why it’s so curious that you asked me that? Because I was just thinking about this yesterday. I personally don’t think I would like to own a dental practice. And it’s something I’ve been weighing up in my head for quite a while. And I think if I was to look at things in terms of return on investment over a long enough period of time, I first of all, don’t think that that would be the most effective place that one could put it for a lot of people. And I think that they’d be surprised to learn that once they start reading just what you can do with it, when you have a little bit of knowledge and good on an expectation of what to what might happen. Now, that’s just for me. Other people might be different, I think, as well as that. When you run a dental practice, the people management side, there’s so many moving parts in a dental practice.

[00:37:52] It just seems to me like it would be very frazzling for someone who owns it. You have to keep all the dentists happy people. The nurse is happy and you have to keep your patients happy. And by the way, there’s thousands of those, OK, you know what I mean?

[00:38:04] There’s so much regulation. It’s like it’s like a hand on your neck. It’s like I can’t see that getting better any time soon. And I just think even if I could and let’s turn that on what it’s head turn on its head. What I was saying just a minute ago, even if I could make less money from investing versus owning a dental practice, I think the lifestyle than investing really sensibly in stocks and things over a long enough period of time and having an understanding of that, the lifestyle out of Fauji is there’s a big argument to be made about that in itself, you know what I mean?

[00:38:40] Taking back your free time, et cetera, et cetera. And these are just conclusions that I’ve come to. People might be listening. I’m I might even be wrong. I don’t know. I just think from the lens and perspective I have on it at the minute, I just don’t think it’s for me. I’m always going to be happy. I’ll be a dedicated associate, you know. And honestly, I really love dentistry. I love it. I love doing a good job.

[00:39:03] Almost like two, three years out of university.

[00:39:07] Just over five, actually. No, no, I beg your pardon. Just coming up to five.

[00:39:10] Just come over up. That might change for you as well.

[00:39:15] Thank you for the journey back. The journey, isn’t it? And I might look, I might change my opinion totally six months time.

[00:39:21] The reason why a lot of associates become principal example is to do so little time to control. And if you’re happy, you also settle in long term associates. Sometimes we’ve seen on this podcast about the superstars who want to do their own marketing and control their own destiny in that sense. But I mean, I’m interested in this journey that is gone down now that you’ve decided to become an expert so quickly. I mean, as far as I can remember, last time Bitcoin was a twenty thousand day before yesterday. Yeah. Are you that kind of person that you jumps deep into things?

[00:40:09] Yeah, I am. I am. I think I feel like for me, I’d rather concentrate on the two things that I’ve spent most of the last three or four years learning about or dentistry and investing know. And I feel like if you’re going to for me, if I want to do it because I realize the power of it, I know if I put a lot of effort in that, it’ll be worth it on my behalf. And I feel like as well, for me personally, I’m very conscious that I’m only twenty nine and there’ll be people listening to us who are old, had no say. What does this guy really know about investing? I know what the books say, but have I been investing for so many years that I’ve made millions from stocks and shares. I can never say that to someone, but all I can say is that I have met people who’ve used these principles who are much older than me, and they have got to where they want to be in that respect. So if we can’t go off evidence like that, I don’t know what we can go off. I feel like the crypto thing is when you’re maybe someone more of my generation being my age plays into your hands a little bit more because you’re perhaps portrayed to be more ofay with computers. And that’s not why I went down that path, persay. But I feel like maybe that’s why that my who I am, it’s sort of helps in that respect a little bit about knowing things, about crypto and trading it and et cetera, et cetera.

[00:41:42] James talked to me about portfolio or what you would consider to be a safe spread of portfolio. And I want you to talk particularly about tax wrappers as well, because Dentists’ right. No matter what gains you’re going to realize, more often than not, the top end of the of the tax bracket. Right. As as a practitioner or as an associate, you’re going to be paying at the top end of the market with tax. So just talk to us about how you can sort of maximize those gains and minimize taxes in the best possible way. But also as a modern portfolio, let’s say you had 30, 40, 50 grand a year to invest. What would what would be a safe long term portfolio look like percentage so much in stocks and shares in the S&P 500 and how that can be maximized so that any gains that you get, you minimising the the downside on the tax code.

[00:42:43] Fair enough. So first of all, if we look at what a portfolio is, different people, different people will want different things out of it. So let’s look at someone who’s my age, who’s twenty nine. My priority is to grow my capital because I haven’t worked for as long as someone is 50 and 60, I won’t have as much money as someone like that. And as well as that, I’m able to take more risk even over a period of the medium term, maybe five years, 10 years. So even if there’s a crash, chances are my money is going to recover because of what we said earlier about the S&P. Five hundred it increase in 10 percent every year over time. What if I buy in at two thousand and it you know, it didn’t recover again for however many years after that. So for me personally, my portfolio might be geared, geared a little bit to more towards risk than someone who’s a little bit older than me. So there is a rule in investing. Now, this is just a broad rule. It’s called the rule of one hundred. So you might say you take your age and you say my age is the point of the percentage of assets that I want to put into lower risk investments and the number that’s left over from deducting it from one hundred. That’s the figure that I’m happy to take more risk with. So for someone like me, it might be 70, 30, and I’ll say, OK, 30 percent in bonds, 70 percent in stocks, something like that.

[00:44:04] Because stocks can fluctuate more in the medium term. They still go up in value long over long enough periods of time. The. Don’t forget, you also get dividends from stocks as well, which you can reinvest to OK, and bonds, maybe I’ll just want to preserve my capital a little bit. So, again, I feel like that’s something that we could go into a huge amount of detail about. But I’ll draw a line under that there and just say that for people who wish to invest, it’s more by having an idea of what you want to get out of it, bearing in mind and bearing in mind your risk profile and bearing in mind your age. I hope that was sufficient for that one, because I feel like I could I could talk a lot more on that. But there’s two other things that I want to flesh out there. You’ve asked about tax wrappers in the U.K. We have this amazing, two amazing tax wrappers called a sip called and I called ISA accounts. OK, now there’s different types of ISA, but I think that one that everybody should own is a stocks and shares ISA or maybe most people should own stocks and shares ISA and a stocks and shares ISA. You get taxed before you go in because it’s your income tax and what’s left goes into your cash, goes into your stocks and shares.

[00:45:20] Isa, you can put up to 20 grand a year in ISIS. Anything you make in that isa you can make wild profits, you can make a million and that isa and it’s all yours because it’s all free. OK, I don’t know if you guys have an ISA. I do. Yeah I’m afraid so. We NICE’s though. Can you you could buy exposure to crypto which is something slightly different but you cannot anymore. OK, so recently there’s been a ruling by the FCA on something called Contracts for Difference, which is owning. It’s equivalent to saying I give you something that is imaginary. And that used to be how people get exposure to crypto through those ices. You can’t do that anymore. So to my knowledge, there is no way that you can gain exposure directly to crypto through an ISA. However, you can buy companies which mine crypto and own crypto, and those prices tend to rally and fluctuate with the crypto market. So one that there’s been a lot of hype around is one called Aagot Block Blockin. And I wish I would have bought this thing a lot sooner because it’s went up a thousand percent since about six months ago, which is crazy. OK, I still don’t think the bull market for crypto is over personally. Quite a few reasons that are not for people with. But suffice to say, I still think it’s got some leeway to grow. All right.

[00:46:46] I’m not a financial advisor, by the way.

[00:46:49] There’s no dispute on that.

[00:46:52] But I’m just saying there is another one called Riot Block Chain, which is a similar company. They don’t have quite as much as Aagot. And there was another one I was on I that I only learned about the other day. But the name escapes me, but I haven’t actually invested in Riot. I have got a little bit of Aagot and I was slightly late to the party, but I still have some money.

[00:47:13] I do plan to get out of Aagot before that becomes well before the end of the bull market. I am very conscious that I’m not actually buying Bitcoin, I’m buying a company and to put a lot in any one company. Well, what if the company goes to pot? What if something goes wrong there? I’d be I’d be very careful about that, you know what I mean? But it’s a nice way to spread some risk, definitely. So that’s one thing that I hand on heart think that most people should own a stocks and shares ISA as a first port of call us to invest in. On top of that, you do get twelve thousand three hundred capital gains allowance so you can always invest and take advantage of that. And until you make twelve thousand three hundred in profit, then you won’t owe any tax. OK, and then after that you do have something called a sip self invested personal pension, which is something that it’s got a slightly different erm compared to a stocks and shares isa, because the idea is that it’s supposed to reduce your tax. So when you get into the additional rate tax band, which is like one hundred and fifty grand, it becomes a lot more efficient to own that. However, there is something where an accountant will have to, you’ll have to ask your accountants on this one. But when you earn I think it’s roughly one hundred and twenty thousand, I can’t remember the exact figure. Something weird happens that your personal lines diminishes. And when you get to that point, you actually only for every point that you earn, you only get thirty three P someone told me. So if you’ve got your SIPP because you can use your SIPP, you can put money into your set and it reduces your, your tax band or how much you’re expected to pay in tax, then it becomes that much more efficient to use it at that point than it does prior. So again, something to talk to your accountant about, definitely worth thinking about. I think a stocks and shares ISA for most people is your first port of call.

[00:49:08] And then when it comes to stocks and shares, the average Joe, even me. Exactly what I’m doing right, so well, what do you invest in? You get lucky and stick your shares in Taslim about a year ago. I wish, I wish a lot of people I know go to I can try and get them to run a portfolio for them. What do you do, the same James or you at that point where actually you’re savvy enough to know the highs and lows and make your own decisions and be in control of that?

[00:49:42] There are some people there are some efface that I’ve come across that have this really nice arrangement where you just pay them upfront and then they kind of make a set and forget portfolio, which is a nice arrangement, by the way. And will I ever know as much as someone who does it every day? No chance. OK, so those EFAs are right there. Some of them I have met personally. I do believe they’re very knowledgeable and would probably do a good job and they might save you a little bit of the legwork. OK, the more traditional arrangement is, as you’ve said, they charge you a percentage, OK? Now, the problem with charging somebody a percentage is due to the power of compounding over time. This adds up quite a lot. So there is some I believe there was some figures that I had that I recently was looking at. And it’s something like if you have 20 grand, if you invest 20 grand into your stocks and shares, ISA, you do that for 20 years and you have the power of compounding it is like 12 percent.

[00:50:44] Ok, don’t forget, you reinvest in your profits so you’re making more profits from your profits. And apparently if you do that from your profits and from the 20 grand that you’ve put in, you’ll have one point seven million if you add that that a 12 percent return every year. And let’s say you have an efface figure in there and the EFAs figure is like one, two percent, something like that. If you take that down to 10 percent, then after those 20 years, you have one point three million, which is still nothing to be sniffed that, you know what I mean? But it’s quite a market difference in terms of money there. So all I’m saying is that you can get an IFA. A lot of them do struggle to beat the market. OK, so if we look at managed funds versus active funds, people who add the funds that collections of shares that are controlled by some individuals that make decisions on buying and selling, you’d be surprised at the number of those that actually can’t beat the market.

[00:51:38] So I believe in America, if you have ninety three percent of active funds cannot beat the S&P 500, which is just which is basically just the market over a certain period of time. And it’s because of their fees. And we could draw a parallel between that and a financial adviser. Now, again, again, some people will just be more comfortable with offloading that on to someone else. But it’s less that I think that I know more about that. I think that’s slightly an Oregon thing to say, but more that I think that the cards are stacked in my favor myself. I hope that makes sense. Yeah.

[00:52:14] And the compounding argument definitely holds in that sense.

[00:52:18] And having the knowledge obviously, as well on this on this podcast, we kind of ask the question sometimes about these clinical mistakes for you kind of want to hit you is the best thing to say to me.

[00:52:30] Oh, man. So I don’t want to have a fair amount of money in that krypto that I told you about earlier. XP sent it all to the repo. Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, it is. Repo. I sent it to the wrong wallet and that’s a synonym for saying in crypto that basically I’m never going to see this money ever again. And I realized that I’d done it and I just I just closed the laptop and I didn’t mean crypto. We weren’t friends for about a month after that. I just I couldn’t even bring myself to look at it. I was so upset. It was quite a it was a fair amount of money. And what you have to bear in mind is the money that you lose is also the gains that you miss out on further down the line when it does start going well. So maybe you can tell my voice. I’m still getting over it a little bit, but it’s OK.

[00:53:23] It’s OK. Is there somebody out there with a wallet that just got out there for free, but that went up in the precise amount that I that I sent to them.

[00:53:35] Their balance went up that day by that precise amount. Yes, there will be. There will be. So, as I said, possible you go wallet address. Yeah. So I know because so you’ve got a wallet address, the wallet addresses. Sixty four characters in numbers. OK, so if you send it to an invalid wallet address it’ll just get bounced back to you. OK, if you send it to an address that’s valid then someone’s balance will go up so you won’t get it back and it’s gone. Are you with me. Yeah. So I didn’t I know that someone has this because I didn’t get it back.

[00:54:13] How did you even stickied a valid wallet address that belonged to someone else and wasn’t yours?

[00:54:21] So what I did was I copied it and I pasted it into my finance account. But I can only theorize that I must have hit a key at some point or I must have copied and pasted the wrong address, just not really paying attention. I usually do a small task transaction nowadays to understand that I’ve got the right address before forwarding more money to it. But this was when I was a little bit more naive, a little bit went on the years I knew last about what I was doing. This was a few years ago. So yeah, it happened. I learned the hard way. I hope I’ve actually had a few people contact me before who’ve done it. Or you can. What you can also do is you can also send it on the wrong network. And then again, it can while it’s gone really at that point. So anybody is listening. By all means, crypto is a fun thing to do. Please, please, please send a test transaction every single time until you know that that wallet works, because I could have saved myself a lot of hassle if I would have done that in the first place. Or this is why a lot of people don’t like to take the picture off the exchange because they don’t have to worry about transferring it around.

[00:55:37] What about the opposite? What about once when you did a great Trigorin percentage gain that you’ve had on something?

[00:55:45] My best friend, I’ve had a few things do ten times before, a few things. It’s kind of time frame. Yeah, well, see, this is something that I was going to say. So in crypto, I think a lot of people hear about the monumental overnight games, but this was over the course of about two to three weeks. Actually, it was it was Bynum’s coin. It was on the edge of anybody’s listening. If you follow crypto, you’ll know that it’s just went monumental. So I got finance coin when it was thirty dollars and I sold it at three hundred, so I was pretty happy with that. But the key is this is another thing about crypto that I just know when you’re going to get it because that sort of growth is never sustainable. There’s even another one called Cordano or other. And bear in mind, this is one of the biggest cryptos and it’s done close to like a 15 X or even in the space of a few months. And I think it was a 50 X since the start of last year, which is just insane. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that because I didn’t think it was going to go up in price. But it just shows I don’t always have the answers.

[00:56:47] You know what? It it’s always a guessing game. It’s about dentistry.

[00:56:52] Yeah. What kind of dentistry are you, general? Dentists, obviously.

[00:56:57] Yeah. So I am a general dentist. I, I like everything about dentistry, but I hit root canals with a passion. I just hate them so much. I just really, really struggle with them. I’m OK. I’m average at them. I wouldn’t have bothered them to mix practice. So the proximity the minute is private. There is. I’ve been doing a little bit of NHS work just to see their contract on, but they had I think they had a contract for about two thousand Udai. So it really it wasn’t big and there was that was between me and about four other people. So yeah, it’s mainly private, mainly private.

[00:57:38] What kind of work do you do? You do this line. I don’t do one liners. You have never know.

[00:57:45] I’ve always thought to myself, I don’t know enough about ortho to kind of take the plunge, although I did read. Have you read that book, Introduction to Orthodontist Orthodontics by the Yorkshire guys named Simon, something I read that a really good book actually of No one. If anyone doesn’t know the first thing about, although I read that and it gave me enough knowledge to know that I don’t know what I’m doing, OK, so I would be prepared to have a clearer liner’s case. I’d be happy to do that. I made the right patient and I need it to be something really simple so that I can gain a little bit of experience doing it. And we have a guy in our practice and he’s he’s just single handedly taken the practice to Invisalign. Diamond, I think is it is at the top one single handedly. OK, so so needless to say, he gets all the clear eyeliners referrals.

[00:58:45] Sounds like you need to go on. Perhaps. I guess it’s not a sales pitch. It actually is a ball of wax lyrical now. Very well. We’re talking about invested and invested in your career and. No, no, no. I’m quite passionate about the fact that a lot of dentists are scared about. So because it’s no. Like investing. Right. And if I give anyone some. I asked advice about learning also guarantied Crash’s Abebe course and just learn the basics of alignment, Bletch and Bond. But more importantly, one of the key things they talk about, which is something you’ve just touched on now, is case selection is so important. And we interviewed an infant that is still today. And that was one of the things he was talking about as well. That was that was key, right. Is choose your cases to know where your comfort zones are, know what you should be for and what you should do. This is it.

[00:59:44] I just think I’m waiting for that right. Patient and yeah, I’m sure that they will come. I mean, and I like to learn I like to kind of push myself outside the comfort zone. Can I just say one thing about payments in line while we’re on the show?

[00:59:59] And I promise, as I said this, I said this off camera before the show, but I just could enlighten.

[01:00:07] Enlighten. You actually won’t believe your eyes until you see it with your own eyes. I watched those teeth go. I didn’t think it was possible. OK, so on the payment, hats off to the guy is hand on heart is going to sound like you’ve paid me to say this, but I think that you should go. Why? It’s called payment.

[01:00:25] The money. The money. Yeah. I’m going to come to you for advice on honesty.

[01:00:31] Honestly, it really is. It really is something special. And I didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes. They’ve reduced whitening to science.

[01:00:38] And anyway, I’m going to shut up now because I agree with you. It’s an amazing product. But the toothpaste is even better. It’s yeah. Anyway, I’m going to stop this because it’s a non promotional podcast. Otherwise I could watch the recall about and James just say it’s been it’s been great spoken with you. We’re learning from you about investing. If people want further advice or further information they’ve heard of you, why can they look you up? Where can they find your podcast and start getting into this journey of figuring things out?

[01:01:18] So originally, this whole journey started from a Facebook group that I mentioned earlier, the one that I mentioned earlier, which started about six months ago, and that Facebook is called Facebook group is called tend to invest in a community group for dentists who enjoy trading. So the idea of it is that it can be a safe space. The dentist can talk about all things finance, whatever aspect that might be, whether you’re into stocks, whether in crypto, whether it’s even while there’s a lot of content on there that just focuses on running a dental practice, how you can make that more efficient, et cetera, et cetera. It’s all aspects of finance within dentistry as well as that. It’s mainly UK based, which no one has ever actually quite done before. So a lot of the content focuses on people from the UK and specifically, there’s no reason why anybody who is not necessarily from the UK can’t come on there as well. But all I’m saying is that if you’re from the UK, it might resonate and be a lot more interesting to you, because if I’d tailored the content is, as I say, I think what a lot of us dentistry and I’ve been there before when someone who is a financial guru starts talking to me, I almost have my back up a little bit at the start because I know that their interest may not be aligned with mine.

[01:02:36] So providing somewhere that dentist can have this discussion for no other reason than everybody benefits and learns, that is what makes it unique. And if anything, I’m just surprised that we didn’t have something like that in UK dentistry before, because it just seems it just seems obvious and so necessary to me. And I’m going to realise that now three point three, which is crazy. And honestly, I just I actually hung on hard not to get sentimental. I actually blessed that people have decided to come along and use this group in this way. And it’s become so many more other things than I ever thought it would have been at the start. I really didn’t put any more thought into it other than why don’t we have a group where we can talk about finance a little bit and now it’s just evolved.

[01:03:23] And it does seem obvious, isn’t it? I mean, it’s weird that there wasn’t one really.

[01:03:28] Yeah, honestly. So strange. Really strange.

[01:03:31] I’m to start because then I just want to talk about politics and religion.

[01:03:38] Yeah. I think you get what you get. A lot of members are not. I’m trying to ponder me and Domenico who I don’t, I don’t know Dominic but is a good. Well OK.

[01:03:51] Fair enough. Fair enough. And the other thing I was going to say as well. Yeah there is, there is a podcast too and that was born out of the group. And what I’m very careful to do is, is to present information from people that I know that are good and know what they’re talking about versus all the the static or the. Background noise of people who are perhaps involved in finance, but maybe not as good or maybe not that knowledgeable, and it’s a created safe space for dentists who are interested in finance.

[01:04:26] That podcast is called Dentists to Invest as well.

[01:04:28] Yes, you’re quite right. Yet dentists who invest available on Apple, Spotify were also on Buzz. If you Google Dentsu invest, you can find it as well. Posted by myself with various people from finance who are dentists, but also not dentists. And we actually have an interest in coming up called Plan Your Way to Financial Freedom for Dentists, which starts as of yesterday, actually. And we’re making content which focuses on dentists themselves or from dentists themselves who have achieved a degree of financial freedom outside of dentistry.

[01:05:00] And also there are people who are businessmen, etc, etc. just explaining some of the things that they’ve learned through time and a lot of them to be so successful. So it resonates specifically with dentists.

[01:05:13] You know, the podcast, I’ve yeah, I’ve listened to a few episodes, there was a chapel and there was a young guy, he was twenty eight and he’s starting his own tech firm. What was his name? Alex. Was it Alex? It wasn’t that long. It was only about four or five episodes ago.

[01:05:32] Alex. Yeah, I might have I might be totally wrong with the name. I might have sent you on a bit of a wild goose chase, but I definitely remember the guy.

[01:05:43] And well, our podcast always ends with the same question as before.

[01:05:48] Before that question because because it’s been about finance and heavily crypto thing. It just for a bit of fun, James, and no financial advice. But imagine you had a hundred grand. To invest in Krit, so give me the portfolio spread that you’ve got now for the upcoming bull market.

[01:06:13] What would you say to me personally, like a little bit of risk and I’m more into trading it? OK, so I actually really had an interest and I’ve had a few interesting people approached me from the group who without giving too much away, they’re involved in the financial sector and trading crypto professionally.

[01:06:36] And because of that, I’m privy to a few telegrammed groups that they they keep people up to date with what they believe will happen next. And because of that, I’m able to align my trades with those people. Now, if we look at the patterns of where crypto is at the moment, traditionally what happens is Bitcoin rallies and Bitcoin is harder to rally. Bitcoin is not cooling off a little bit. What tends to happen is Ethereum follows and the coins follow after that. Now, yes, we have seen a lot of old coins value over the last few months.

[01:07:07] I still think they’ve got a lot more head space to go. There’s usually two rallies to massive Bitcoin rallies in each kind of bull run. We’ve just seen the end of the first one. In my opinion, Ethereum should follow. If everything goes to script, Ethereum will follow and then the old coins will follow after that. So my portfolio looks a little bit something like this. I think I’ve got twenty five percent Ethereum. I can actually get it right now. I’ll call you some of the good ones out. Let me just see here.

[01:07:36] So one which is a real short term trade and I only want people to get into it if they’re prepared to get it over the next few months because it’s not a crypto that I particularly trust in the long run is called Tron. Tron Network. Look a little bit into that. A lot of other projects which are trying to do smart contracts or rallying a lot. That’s why we’re seeing at the pump a lot. Trone is trying to do something similar. They also basically have a PR hype man who runs the whole project, and he is someone who loves to hype his project. He knows how millennials work it. It fits a narrative does that. It fits a narrative. And also, as an aside, I was looking at the chart not that long ago and I could see that something fishy was on the chart, that it had this massive volume Kandal. And usually that suggests that someone is modeling it with a little bit.

[01:08:27] So that is my top tip.

[01:08:29] Again, just to emphasize what I’ve said, no financial advice. That is one that I’m following closely. I’ve got quite a fair bit of money on that one myself. Other projects that I like. Let me just see. I’ve sold most of my my finance coin. So if anybody still in that, it might be a good time to get on, because I think that it’s hit the peak of its market cycle personally, maybe keep a little bit in and just see how it goes. A few of my other favorite ones. I like Dot. I like what they’re trying to do. I like fat, fat, I can bridge company. There is another one called Corti, which is a payment program that is aligned well. They use their used by World of Warcraft.

[01:09:11] I can see that getting much bigger after that.

[01:09:14] There is a lot of the rest of the more on this tier. Those are my favorites.

[01:09:18] So I think that if you want some good tips, I know the one Archdale throw in there and can you kind of network again if you’re going to very much go into them with the idea that they’re going to be a punt and be prepared to sell up when it comes to the end of the bull market? I reckon we’ve probably got about six, seven months bull market left.

[01:09:38] So we’ll check back in six months time and see how many dentists they should have, because I know they’re very scared that I might have to rely on my absconding already to the Caymans.

[01:09:51] I should get to work on that strictly strictly not financial advice. Take risks, guys. Totally. I think the final question for you, I think the most interesting one is to imagine you’ve got thirty days to live and you know, you’ve got thirty days to live. What would you do without thirty days?

[01:10:10] Oh, man, that is a great you ask this at the end of every podcast. Some I like it. I really like it.

[01:10:16] Thirty days left to live, you know.

[01:10:20] Root canals.

[01:10:23] Yes. How did you know I was going to say that.

[01:10:25] I think, I think the very first thing I’d have to do is I’d probably go and get a really good sun rose because I haven’t had one in ages. And then I would do my very best to just go out somewhere in the world. I really want to go to Japan. I really, really always wanted to go to Japan. I spent every penny I have. I’m just going out there.

[01:10:45] I travel is a short answer. I travel, how often do you get an answer? That is probably a really boring answer.

[01:10:51] Now, that’s kind of a common one where you travel and who is that sort of thing? You said the other one is travel.

[01:11:00] All right. Maybe. All right. Let’s do it to young man. It said a final down the planet. You’re surrounded by people who are closest to you, your loved ones, nearest and dearest. And you’ve got to leave them with three pieces of advice, stroke, wisdom.

[01:11:24] Good question.

[01:11:25] So I would say throw my positivity into the world because the positivity makes its way back to you. And that is something that I’ve this whole journey like six months ago. I those words resonate with me so much more after that, because I’ve seen how that can work first hand and that selflessly helping people, even if you go into it with you don’t want anything back. And I never do. It does make its way back to you. OK, that is huge. Yeah. I would say work hard, work as hard as you can. Just see each day as a gift, see each day as an opportunity to grow and do your best to push yourself outside your comfort zone. And I would say stay true to yourself. Stay true to your goals.

[01:12:14] Was that too sentimental? You know what, that was me. That was me speaking from the heart right there. That’s what it should be, man.

[01:12:20] Yeah, it could be. James, thank you so much for your time today. Imparting some wisdom on us and dentists. If you’re into investing or want to learn more, check James’s podcast out, join his group and find a safe space to learn to ask your questions. Thanks a lot.

[01:12:38] Absolute pleasure, guys. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a lot of fun. Take care. Cheers, guys. Thank you.

[01:12:47] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders on the street.

[01:12:58] Your house payment, then Groody and perhaps Celenk. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it.

[01:13:19] Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] And I remember laughter during the trial, me and my dad and my brother were sitting in my last year and we couldn’t let it get a happier than what we do don’t want to do anything to they want to do medicine or want to do dentistry. And I still remember that day I called my mom while I was there and I said, Mom, we don’t know what to do. And it’s your mom that is wanted by one sort be engineer and part of it. But the rest is up to you. It’s up to you. You know what?

[00:00:33] No pressure.

[00:00:38] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental Street. Your heist’s Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki

[00:00:56] Is my absolute pleasure to welcome Sandeep Kumar onto the Dental Leaders podcast. Sandeep’s the guy I’ve known for a long time. And if you look at his empire that he’s built up now, you can see that he’s definitely got the bug for scaling businesses. But this podcast is all about, you know, your origin story. What drives you. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:20] Thanks. Thanks. Pleasure to be here. And good to see you. Prav after a long time.

[00:01:24] Likewise, Sandeep. Likewise. Do you mind just taking us back to your origin, your roots, where you grew up, and then moving on to how dentistry featured in your life? At what point?

[00:01:37] Just to cover that, you’re asking my 23 as in like and like to summarise in two minutes, but I’ll do my best. But you don’t

[00:01:44] Look a day older than 24 Sandeep.

[00:01:48] Well, that’s good to know. But I was born in India, in Punjab, in this small town, small family. I have one older brother and my mom and dad, both the teacher in the school, even though we are a small family. But I’ve been brought up in a big family, you know, cultures in India, how their uncles and aunties. So my dad had four brothers, so it was like a gated entrance. And behind there there was a four families, four uncles and then grandma and lots of cousins. So, yeah, it was it was not a lot of fun living living together.

[00:02:31] And then what was schooling like,

[00:02:33] Our schooling is a very, very strange and it’s a very deep cost, but I’ll try and get you there and tell you where it all started. So I did my up to year 10 in in the town where I was born. And I think my dad was a teacher and my mom was a teacher. And they could see that the signs are not looking very good. This guy is not good at studies. God knows what we’re going to do with him. And so, my God, that very he was very well connected. He was very social, so he started speaking to people and stuff. So a couple of years before my brother went to do engineering in Maharastra, they have me remember. So my dad used to go and drop Payman lot of stuff and all that. So somehow he found that out and master that stuff. In those days, there was lots of Dental private schools are opening a lot of stuff, not only in Lancaster. So my dad figured it out that if you do, you’re 11 and 12 and you can get into a Dental school or engineering school in a private school without paying any donation. So one day he went to see my brother and he came back and I was 14 years old at that time. And he sat me down with my with my mom and he said, I’ve got something to discuss with you. And he said, how do you feel that if you have to go where your brother is doing it? And that was like thirty six hours plane Germany. And I said, what options do you do? I said, you know, you can do this, the band BSE or whatever, but if you want to go in dentistry or medicine or law, then that that’s the only option you have. So here I go. You’re not at the age of 14. Pack my bags in the train. Thirty six hours billion with my dad. And he dropped me last. But luckily, my brother was there, so I did my year level in year 12 of that time.

[00:04:30] So I bet that made you very independent, very young,

[00:04:34] You know, looking back, you always find strength from from, you know, where you have come from and and leaving home at such a young age was not easy, but it did work

[00:04:46] Well. As a 14 year old, what was your day to day? As you know, that’s completely foreign to me. You know, it would be looking after you. Who’d be cooking for you? Where where would you be living? What was the secret that led Sunday?

[00:05:00] Yes, the script was my brother was as I said, he was doing engineering in Maharashtra in that time. And he was as if he was living at somebody’s house as a paying guest and they had an extra room. So I went and lived with them and I was a paying guest. So they were cooking for us and we were paying them a pandemic. But that’s how it was. That’s how it all started.

[00:05:24] And then from there on to Dental school.

[00:05:27] Yes, so I did my year 11 and 12 and I did both maths and biology, so if you want to go in medical field, you do biology. If you take you take maths by I took both of those days, you could take both. And I remember after doing 12. Me and my dad and my brother were sitting in my raza and we couldn’t really get it on. But we do not want to do anything. They want to do medicine or want to do dentistry. And I still remember that day I called my mom while I was there and I said, Mom, we don’t know what to do. And mother was wanted by one sort of engineer and part of it. But the rest is up to you. It’s up to you. You know what?

[00:06:15] No pressure

[00:06:16] Or something. You know, I never, never enjoyed medicine. Dentistry is not a bad idea. And that was really never preplanned. I think the only thing I can say is what persuaded me towards that was when I was really young, I had a massive accident and I broke a couple of my front pages and I had to visit the dentist quite a few times with my dad and the way he looked after me and, you know, put some sort of teeth in it so I could live my day to day life. I think that was back of my mind and that was the turning point for me. So I decided to go into dentistry.

[00:06:56] What’s the education like?

[00:06:58] Education, so that was a that was a private school, so first couple of years, we had a lot of the anatomy and physiology and yuzo usable stuff. And then I think the the the syllabus was pretty, pretty similar to what you do here, but not probably in as much depth. And then in the final year, we had a lot of clinical work. And, you know, you can imagine in rural areas in India, the demand for Dental, Solanki is very high. So there was a queues outside the clinical sessions. So, yeah.

[00:07:37] So did you get a lot of hands on experience as a Dental student right from the early days? Were you getting through a lot of volume and and building up those clinical skills?

[00:07:49] But let’s be honest, but if people want to do it, then there was plenty of work to do. But I wasn’t in one of those. I was lucky to get away from it as soon as I could. Yes, I did. Had enough. But yeah.

[00:08:05] What type of student were you? The sort that tries to get away with the least possible work your way through and just just Skyview way through. Get your qualification and move on to the next step

[00:08:15] And you have to nail on the head. Explain to me exactly the people who are close to me. It was like, how can I get away with minimum possible that that’s how it was. And, you know, my my dad always used to come home twice a year during my during my dentistry days. And, you know, living in Maharastra so far away, my expenses were pretty quite a bit and all the time I used to come home and I used to ask Dad, Hey, Dad, I did some more money. And he will say, you know, I give you so much last time all that go on. And by the time I explain to people that maybe Dad’s right, it never, never let me deprive from anything. It gave me an opportunity to say me one thing before I go back to my uni son. Never come home with you know, it’s very hard earned money just about managing that. What we are doing is half of our salary is going into your education to whatever you need to do, but do not come out of the field. And you know, that always, always stuck with me. So I studied enough so I can just possibly

[00:09:28] Just suck it right to the edge. Actually didn’t quite fail, right?

[00:09:31] Yeah, that’s

[00:09:33] What she did. You come to the UK Sunday,

[00:09:35] So I came to the UK in nineteen ninety eight.

[00:09:41] So what was the story as far as dentistry.

[00:09:44] Yeah. So you know when I finished my Bettina’s OK, this is what it was about. You know, I never said how I got into dentistry in that school. There was a 50 students, there was a twenty five of them were local who was born in Maharashtra who live in a lot of stuff, like literally half an hour away. And twenty four of them came from Punjab, who came from a wealthy family who had money, the son of doctors and gynaecologists and all that sort of money. And there was a me ventrilo. So now I have to manage my lifestyle working with these guys who come from a very, very large family. So I managed to get through dentistry, found my money wherever I could from that time, and came back to Punjab after doing my videos. And I came back to my town. And now I have seen the life of Mumbai and life of big city, and there’s no way I’m going to settle down in my time. So that that is that what you want to do now? You’ve just finished exams, now the next step. So there was the college open in my time, not too far away from my town. And I went there as a teacher. So I started teaching one of the Dental subjects. And I think it was a couple of months after I have this thing in my head, I said, this is not for me. And I literally decided to give up their job and I went to China. I’m sure you guys must have heard about it.

[00:11:12] So my brother used to live there and I told my dad, like, there’s no way I can settle in the city. Can I go and try and do MBA? Sounds like a postgraduation and knowing I was not very good at education, that was another challenge on the song. But I left that job, went and studied for the whole year, like literally every day. That’s what I did. No work at all. And guess what? After one year I sent about nine exams for different states, different countries, and I failed all of them miserably. I know in me. And I could get an envious. Came back to town and came back to town again. Their dad was and that’s about it not look. And I said, you know what? The job which I chucked away, that I left and I went to. Let’s go to that college and get me that job. And I’ll because I’ll live happily ever after. So we went back to college and there was a principal, the guy who gave me that job. And as soon as he saw me and he said, you know what, buddy? You chuck that job on me and I, I have not forgotten that nobody’s ever done that to me. I am not giving you this job. And that was the only Dental college I had in town. So the situation was, you know, kinda envious clinic because I don’t have enough money to college, which was nearby, was not willing to have me back as a teacher. Where did you go? And honest to God, that was like the time that I was very, very lost, didn’t know what to do.

[00:12:47] But, you know, Dad was very supportive. Mom was very supportive. But Dad will always ask me so, you know, you can’t live your life just walking around and sitting in this shop and sitting in that store. What do you want to do with it? And I was just getting in that not not depression, but a stage where I don’t know what to. But, you know, that would be bad, and he has said to you earlier, he was very social and he had his own connexions. So he was speaking to his friends and this and that, and then he said, if nothing else, why don’t you go and get married? And I said that let me just build something, you know, have got nothing at all. And then through one of his friend, he introduced me to this girl. And that girl now is my wife, and later that time was Dad’s friend’s daughter and visiting India. That time she had no plans. I had no plans leaving India. We met once and there was there were some issues on my Punjabi family that was from originally from Punjab amongst us from Punjab. We met once and then thought nothing of it. And then we met a couple of times again. And it was, you know, yeah, there is something in there. And that’s what that’s how it went, really. So we decided to get married and a couple of months after that, I mean, you can.

[00:14:07] Sundeep, how many days did you go on before you agreed to get married or you decided to get married? But that, I

[00:14:14] Think was around two months.

[00:14:15] Three months. Yeah. And then so you started your new life together in the UK? Yeah. What happened, what was the. I remember having a really I think it was a jaw dropping conversation really with you and you can fill us in on the Sunday book. There was conversations I had about your role in the Dental practise and what you were doing, not as a Dental practitioner. And we had that conversation. I think it was in your practise when it was booming and it was jaw dropping from where you came from to where you were then and where you are now. So I won’t spoil it. Tell us a story.

[00:14:56] Well, first of all, Prav well done. Don’t you even remember that?

[00:15:01] How could I forget? How could I forget?

[00:15:04] Yeah. You know, it’s it’s landed in the U.K. The biggest thing was I could not speak English. Turned up. As I said, it was not like you had been planning for six months before or trying to find out what the dentistry systems are going to be in that country. It just happened to be the very word of English. But you know what? I will have to get a lot a lot of credit to my amazing wife. She was like a rock, and she still is. She supported me like, you know, it’s OK, it’ll take time. You’ll get there. I could not even pick up a phone and call a Dental Prav is to find out, you know, how the system works. And I couldn’t pick up the phone and call GDC to find out to work. What do I need to do? So the pull of those days, you had to go to work and then I will get a chance. We’ll call the disease and hospitals and this and that to try and find out, you know, what do I have to do to, you know, start working as a dentist here? So we tried that for about a couple of months and I was not getting any of it. And I thought, you know what? I had enough.

[00:16:08] There’s no way I’m going to sit around a bloody hole and keep calling ten practises. And I couldn’t speak a word of English. They couldn’t understand what the fuck I was talking about. And I came home one day and I said, Do you know what? I’m going to get a job. I don’t give a shit. What shall I get? So I’ll go to the job centre near where we used to go to the job centre. And there was a job available in a factory and in the factory, they used to print like a cardboard boxes, they used to print labels on them. I applied for I got the job. And two months after I came to you, OK, that was my that was my first job. So then they said they will be about three pound twenty an hour at that time. I said, just give me whatever money I just need to get out of the house and do something. So I started that and I did that for about six months or so. But, you know, I was so happy I was meeting people, couldn’t really speak to them or communicate much, but I had somewhere to go. I get up in the morning, shower, dress up somewhere to go, and that carried on for a bit.

[00:17:14] And after a couple of months, I remember one day my wife went to see her GP just for a normal, normal routine, Check-Up or whatever, and she told him that, you know, I got married and he was a family doctor. He knew everybody very well. So he just asked us about your husband, too. And she said he’s a dentist from India, but obviously he can’t get a job at the moment. And he said what he asked us, what he is doing now is that he’s working in a factory nearby. And he got so angry on my wife. Why didn’t you tell me? You know, I’ve got Connexions. I could have done this come that for you. So he gave her this business card and he said, go home and call this a symptom of the look out for you. So if I came home, we sat down and she said, you know, that’s what Dr. Venugopal. That was his name. And Dr. Vinegar gave me a card, which my wife called. And that guy was the guy who was a dentist. And he is still very good friend and is still my mentor. And we still stay connected. So I called him and, you know, obviously and she just told you that you asked me to give you a call.

[00:18:23] That’s the situation. Can you have. So he gave my wife somebody else’s number and he said, call this guy and will have. And that guy’s name was Sam. And my wife called them and we then turned up at the practise, went to see him and he said, Are you OK? OK, yeah, that’s fine. So he just explained to me everything he said. This is very common. Lots of people come from abroad and only processes you have to do and you get to do that. Yeah, I said, yeah, that’s fine. And so I said, when can I start? Actually, my wife was talking on behalf of me and start whenever you want and he said, yeah, come tomorrow. And honest to God, guys, you know, I can still looking back that day, that was the happiest moment since I landed in UK just because I was in a an apartment, which I know I know dentistry. I know the smell of the drill and the materials. So I don’t have to go to that factory and print that stuff there. So that was it. And I started working as a as a Dental said that practise and some other some people unfortunately passed away a few years ago. He was the legend. And my feeling was that.

[00:19:40] So then what, you were studying exams as well.

[00:19:44] So from then on, this is what happened. So I used to work as they used to go there as a work, as a Dental from nine to five thirty six. But there was a guy, there was a dentist and who came through the same group as I did. So he came from Pakistan, he worked as a dental nurse and he qualified as a dentist. And that gave me a light at the end of the tunnel. Now I can follow his footsteps and if I do the same thing, then one day I’ll be dentist as well. So. So this is my routine. Like, literally every day was mine to catch a bus, come to city centre Dental Hospital Library used to be up until eleven o’clock. So from six o’clock, eleven o’clock I sit in the library because I couldn’t afford books that time. Library used to close at eleven. I was the last one there always to pick me up every time, so took time to go home.

[00:20:37] And I saw Birmingham.

[00:20:38] Yeah, yeah. All in Birmingham, Birmingham, Dental Hospital. So we had to come back home and go to bed and stuff the same, same to again. So there was those days called statutory exams and nowadays it’s called a lorry or something. After that it takes to like an old lady. So MIT is used to be called the exam. So I passed my first century exam and guys hospital after about a year and I was getting more and more excited. It’s just one step away from the dream. And then I carried on the same. I carried on my nursing. I carried on my studying in the library on the way. For the second part, you have to do a lot of practical work. So I was collecting those expected, mounting them in the plaster of Paris. And then after the clinic was closed, I have some balls and just starting to do the cavities. And that’s what I did that I think it took me about six months or so. And then somebody told me that if you really want to pass this exam, you have to give up this job about at least a couple of months and focus on the central studies. That’s what I did. I spoke to that guy some time and I said, you know what, I’m going to have to stop now because my exams are still months away and I’m going to go and take that exam.

[00:21:53] So I went off event and I took that exam and unfortunately, I failed. The part that was that was tough. That was the that was the lowest of life. Sometimes it can take, given the game myself. And to see someone said this is a situation I failed, unfortunately. And he said, yeah, don’t worry, man. Come on, let’s get back to this thing tomorrow. And that’s what I did, you know, with my pride, with everything. And that started the process again. And then it was, OK, this is what what happened that time. There was statutory time. He was only allowed to take twice. If you failed seven time, that is it. You’re not allowed to do. And just plain you. OK, well what pressure chase about pressure. Yeah. You know, came home and spoke to my wife, discussed about what shall we do. She said it’s entirely up to you. There’s no pressure on me. She was working, she was earning enough to support both of us that time. And then in the year 2000, my wife was pregnant and she was successful. And I said, I cannot wait for another year or two years for my exam. I’m just going to go for it and see what happens. So I applied for the part and the part of that time was in Manchester. And I knew this is the only the only time to have if I fail, that’s a Dental those things for life.

[00:23:20] And that was a calculated decision I had to make. Part of the process was you do it on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and you examined Thursday and your result was on Friday. Compared to what they did was exam was on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and your results was on Thursday. So I knew this is my only attempt I’ve got left. I knew my wife is pregnant and I knew this is this is this is it. So I did not tell anybody and my wife did not know that this time my result is going to be on Thursday. So on Monday morning, I went to Manchester, did my three exams first and only took a train from Manchester, came to Birmingham. I that is the day I started. No, nobody in this world knew that my result is coming today. So I came back to the Langroudi came in a taxi well, somewhere where I had a bit of a pop and I took that. But I made a brave go to GDC. And after a couple of minutes of going around in circles, you know, you did well in this. You did well in that, but you didn’t good in this and you didn’t get in that. And I and then this lady said, you passed your exams, resolutions, talking to you. That is back

[00:24:38] The most have been the second happiest moment of your life and coming to the UK, right?

[00:24:43] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. And then, you know, that just took a taxi and went straight to me and my wife was working on that day.

[00:24:56] Did you have a plan? Do you have a plan in case you failed? What were you going to do?

[00:25:00] Filled with hundreds of things I have planned, and I honestly do not want to tell on this platform, but could I have those things from anything to anything to anything? God knows what I would have done on that day. I don’t know if. So then I got my mother took a taxi and a little event took place, I was working at that time and I literally went and that’s what she was know. Like I said, we’re doing my best to make all the good luck and everything on Thursday morning, expecting that I’ve got another exam today and. Yeah, that. There you go. And then we left from there and came home. And, you know, what I learnt during these two years is a really spend time understanding the ins and outs of dentistry, even though it was tough for me to sit on the other side of the Dental. And this little boy, I was speaking to the dentist, trying to really understand how this works, how this works. How can you do this? How can you do that? How do you do this? How do you do that? And, you know, that happened in 2000. And we get the guy who I met first time he gave me a job as a assistant. So you have to work as an assistant after that year. And he was a great mentor, great teacher, taught me everything, which I didn’t learn before. He was just such a smooth operator, you know, mother. And I was like, yeah, and I’m doing it. I thought a very fine but cannot come up with a way to go. But he taught me all that and it was it was good. And that was it. That’s how the dentistry started.

[00:26:46] And so from there, when did it practise ownership or business ownership featured in that journey

[00:26:55] That you did you buy your first practise?

[00:26:58] So I qualified in 2000. Then I had to work one year in the system. So that brought me to two thousand. One time my mentor, my principal and I decided to move from where he was to a new new premises. So in 2002, we moved from his old premises to the new premises, and during that time he started a private practise in Birmingham and he was spending a lot of time there. And I was literally working six days a week in December just like this. And then as he was focussing more and more, building his his private practise is just, you know, there was a conversation one day. What do you think? If I buy this and we had a couple of discussions and he said, yeah, why not? But he said, why not? No, but none of the bloody banks are ready to give me a loan. I think you know what? You’ve already passed two years ago, Yanofsky, for a couple of hundred grand. How are you going to pay you to just finish your Dental system? And I remember that time there was a guy called Roger Upton. He used to run these courses called Setting Up Your Own Practise.

[00:28:08] So I turned to one of his calls and I just told him to rise and say, hey, if I introduce myself and say, you know, this is this I am, what should I do? And it happened to be people just like you who, you know, in this world isn’t that’s how it’s done in life, is all about who you know, not what you know, larger than give me this business card. And he said, speak to this guy. And he was a manager at NatWest, called him and he looked at my account and he said, Are you serious that you want to buy this practise is expensive practise from where you are. And I think about it all this these progenies probably gave a good recommendation. And I still remember his word. You know, he said sometime very early and we put the money on the jockey, not on the horse. And he said, I’m going to put money on you. And he gave me every single penny to buy that practise, bought two thousand pound. Well, and that’s it. So, you know, came back, bought the practise in 2003.

[00:29:09] But why didn’t you just associate for like three years? Why what were you in such a hurry? Because because of the time you’d wasted or your entrepreneur. You knew you were that guy.

[00:29:20] I think it’s a good very good question. You know, the reason I can say that, you know, I think I was getting to about 30 years old, you know, not a penny to my name

[00:29:29] Kid on the way.

[00:29:30] You don’t have a wife done enough of supporting me for a couple of years. You never said a bad word. But she’s looking at me and say, you know, look, come on now. And not a house, not a car to fly. You know, sometimes you get to look on your face, look in the mirror and think, you know what, that’s enough. I think I’ve faced enough shit in my life. Let me go out there and really express myself. Without worrying about will I be able to pay those bills, will I be able to pay those loans, let me just go out there. What I’ve got to lose. Let me just go out there and try it and see where I end up and do how did it go? I was I was it so I bought that first practise in 2003. And then we had our second child and we had a daughter in 2004. And at that time, I still remember. I think that’s a very significant event. My daughter was born with living in a very tiny house. And initially then I then I qualified. So obviously I wanted a bigger house. So we bought a bigger house and we got a dental practise. And the loan is like, I’ve never heard of hundreds of thousand.

[00:30:42] How the hell are we going to pay for it? Because I haven’t got a penny. And I sat down with my wife and I said, you know what? We’ve got to think this will buy you this house from here on. Let’s sit down and make an argument. And that argument is you will never, ever stop me going off of. If I say I’m doing 20 hours, I am doing 20 hours, if I turn up at home at 11 o’clock. I won’t go out clubbing and I want to go out dancing. But if it’s work, then please don’t question me because we are taking on a huge responsibility. And us. It’s been a partnership is equally part of I’m responsible for where we are. She played her side of the cards and I did bloody hell. And I did some of those days as well. The 2007 I bought this 2003 about this practise literally every month I was adding a soldier and I was adding a staff and I was adding a dentist. And two and three is up to two thousand six. I call triple the size of that business and then we turn the contract change into Yoda’s. I had a solid and this today’s date is one of the biggest entities practise in Birmingham.

[00:31:55] So how are you how are you adding value to that? And it just blacks back then, could you do it?

[00:32:01] So back then it was a fee for service, like there was no Yoda’s or anything. Like you just do you just do the work. And I was became a workaholic even at that time. So it was literally my principal and my philosophy those days was same and even today is the same. Do not say no to the patient. If somebody turns up in a practise in Payman, my simple instructions to my team was to not say to the patient that we can see you as long as they’re willing to wait. We will see them before the end of the day what time they cannot promise and pay. I still remember before we opened for lunch, there was a 220 people standing outside sometime. And in 2003, I was the only one dentist. In 2006, there were six dentists in the face just to you still learn that practise. So how many? That is my background.

[00:32:54] Is that now? Is that the same six six

[00:32:56] Six six six surgery and it runs beautifully. I still take a lot of pride. I go there every week, I feel home and I go there.

[00:33:07] Ok, so let’s talk about when did you decide to go for number two?

[00:33:12] So number two was 2006, the contract changed to UDS. So from 2000 to 2006, for me it was you know, I never came out one day, but I’m going to do this, this, this and this. It just happened. But 2006 contract, the growth was literally stopped. You can’t go out of business. And I’m sitting there thinking, that’s no, I’m used to what I’m doing. Anybody can come into. And that’s when I started exploding, you know what’s happening outside in the dentistry dentistry board instead of that, my boastful dental practise, let me just go out and explore what’s going on. So I still remember I joined this battle programme that time. I think he used to run some clubs or something. And I speaking to Chris and I said, you know, I’m thinking about to open another practise, but I don’t know what to do. And they have to go. And I still remember he connected me with Zach. And I Kanzaki and Chris was good friends, so I think Chris called, Zacchaeus said, you know, this guy going to you want to have a look at what’s happening in private industry. Can you can you have a quick chat? Cause I went to London one day and I thought, you know, I’m going to go to his practise.

[00:34:28] It’s going to set me in his office and he’s going to tell me a little bit about private practise. That was a compliment. I still remember that day I turned up. He said something. Give me half an hour. Just wait here. Let me just finish what a fun little thing was around lunchtime. And that guy has taken the rest of the day off for me. And he said, let me show you how the private flexes, Bob. So they took me to Dental, where he used to work. It took me to London smiles, took me to blame. And I’m thinking, wow, this is another side of dentistry, you know, which I never, never leave. All I know is. All I know about is about is that it’s so Suzuki spent literally or five hours with me on that day and told me everything introduced with these guys. That’s the first time I met a new and a couple of other guys that time, and that was it. So I came back and I got a bug and I said, you know what? I’m going to need to find a dentist who can do what I do.

[00:35:35] So it wasn’t that first practise is your only NHS one.

[00:35:39] Yeah, it still is. Is it just not we don’t do anything with that.

[00:35:45] Number two, was that small stylist or wasn’t it? Wasn’t it Branden’s that now?

[00:35:50] So in 2007, we started a practise called New Street Dental. It was the central centre of Birmingham. It was one sided like this and again took old ideas from the practises in London to set up a single solitary practise, went on lots and lots of courses, just learnt about smiled Makos and let it all. Some days I’m talking about here sixth, I

[00:36:18] Think I’ve been there that become your my small office.

[00:36:22] That’s been very nice. So that was that was a cyclical factors which I started in in 2007. And then that’s when really these things started to skyrocket. Business was doing well and the businesses started doing well because of Invisalign. That was the first time I introduce Invisalign. So this is how it happened. I opened the practise waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for people to turn, started from zero, started on spot. I had no knowledge about anything. This guy turned up. So somebody called. He wanted to arrange a meeting. So I’m not going to mention his name, but that just came from London. And he wanted to share. He wanted to have a surgery in my clinic and he was happy to pay me about five, six and defence. And I said, what do you want to do? And he said, I want to do Invisalign first time ever. And he said, I’ll bring everything in a suitcase, I’ll come with my nurse. I don’t need anything from you. And I want to do Invisalign. I said, let me have a think about this. Let me get back to you on that. He left those days. I had plenty of time, nothing to do. I just spent on the computer and type work that Invisalign got onto the website. And just looking through the process, there was of course, a couple of next week.

[00:37:39] And oddly enough, the Dental that cause. So let’s give it a go. What’s there to lose? I took a couple of cases with me to show these clinical guys and they said they can be treated, came back, started my starter two or three cases in 2007, still, when they are convinced that this plastic is going to move. But I thought, you know, I don’t have any other patients anymore. So let’s be let’s let’s try and see how this works. And, you know, but then I started seeing those patients and they were coming back and telling us about quitting and they were tracking really well. And I said, you know what? I’m not good at anything else, but let me see if I can be good at this. And just for whatever reason, it just that literally clicked. And in 2008, I end up going and next year literally nearly a hundred cases and just love everything about Invisalign, love everything about the workload blown everything about the happy, the patients. And obviously that was the revenue in the business because everything was worth three, four thousand those days instead of the feelings in the general dentistry. So things started to work really, really well that at that time. And that’s where we started.

[00:38:56] So then what about then when when we met was maybe a year or two after that, when you done the deal with all the House of Fraser’s, how did that come about?

[00:39:08] Yeah, so House of Fraser was literally across the road from the nearest clinic is like one hundred metres of a house, a place that had this. A medical company called Clearwire started doing teeth whitening and like a pool table, teeth whitening centres and all house of places. So one week and they were in Birmingham one week and they were in Manchester, one in Glasgow. So they were in Birmingham one weekend and they did lots and lots of things. But determining whether that time, like you can know, back to the dead, lots and lots of data. I mean, and one of my patients, both her sister and she said, can you have a look what’s wrong with her teeth and her teeth looked like it’s been patched. You know, there was no mama was completely damaged. And I said, what happened? And she said, you know, we’re going to have to pay that. We paid nine pounds and they had teeth whitening. But so the same thing went completely wrong on that one with her. And I treated her as a teacher, her sisters. And we had a very good rapport. And she said, can you fix it? I don’t know if I can fix it, but I’m definitely going to find out a way if I can, so those days I used to do a fair bit of it. We’ve discussed the Dental and all that. So I reached out to those guys on the set and I’ve got a case like this, what to do. So they got me in touch with a couple of people in USA, speak to them, and then they all, you know, they all said to me that we need to bring that back to where it was and slowly the nominee will start to recover.

[00:40:43] But it can take up to six months or 12 months, six, six, six, six, six or 12 months. I have no idea. But I had a bit of idea. Just make the phrase give these jobs and slowly they will recover. So I told the patient, you know, I can fix it, but it’s going to cost you about six grand and it might take about 12 months because I didn’t know what I’m but I’m getting into. And she said, yep, that’s absolutely fine with me. I’ll come back to you. She went to House of Fraser, spoke to herself as a manager and said, give this guy six grand or I am going to slaughter house appraiser anyway. And she was a journalist. And what there. But is that either I put six thousand pound or I’m going to talk about what you have done. And the next thing I know is also business store manager calling me at my clinic and say something. What’s the deal here? And I said, you know, this is what it is and I can give my best. And he said, please, I take full guarantee that I will pay you all the money. Please look after that lady. And that was it. And so I fixed her teeth. Everything went well. And I stayed in touch with the store manager and everything was fine. And then I have a coffee in my shortly before and after this, a bloody hell. He said we need to do something about a little something here with us. And that was it. So in two thousand nine, we opened the first house of Fraser store in Birmingham,

[00:42:07] Which was a beautiful, beautiful place.

[00:42:09] Absolutely. But that’s not a first time, isn’t it?

[00:42:13] What a beautiful thing. You make it sound like it’s all sort of sliding doors, you know, like you bumped into Zachy. And I’m sure there are other points in life where these sort of inflexion points happen. But at the same time, you could have just been an associate in the NHS and you’ve gone and done taking that one surgery place turned into sexology place. You’ve come down. I mean, you know, the next man might have gone and seen poulain in London Smile’s clinic and, you know, just just just started doing some private on the NHS. But you’ve taken these big steps forward, and I’m sure we’ll get to the next ambition. Was that come from that that confidence studio? I wouldn’t like get up. I mean, forget me, but I to get up, go to another country one year after qualifying, go buy a practise there and then it’s a big thing to do by itself. Was the ambition and confidence come from is that from that 14 year old story.

[00:43:19] You know, looking back, I think, you know. I just don’t want to be poor again. I know how that feels like at the age of 30 years old and you can’t fucking afford a McDonald’s for yourself that bloody hard. And you know what I said to you before that when I qualified, I thought it’s time for me to go and play and see where life takes me. And, you know, bullshit. Once I told you about this practise that became the backbone I was not worried about. And you know how I’m going to feed my family, how I’m going to pay my mortgage, I’m going to pay my rent and everything else just became a playground. I was just, you know, bring it on. Bring it on, bring it on. That’s save it then. You know, I didn’t get up one day and say, you know what? And even today, if you ask me something about your dream, I don’t have any dreams. I don’t get up and say I’m going to take over the world and I’m not going to fix it. My dream is I want to enjoy each day and let me see where this takes us. And that’s always been the attitude attitude since then.

[00:44:25] So when did my smile come along Sunday.

[00:44:28] What was the jump in you jumping them and your jumping? Because because that one one practised in the House of Fraser became seven or something, right?

[00:44:37] Yes, that’s right. So I started in the place. Then there was a couple of pandas going on in and adjust just that time in 2009, 2008, 2009 time. And I want to tender’s. So in 2010, I was building three Dental practises at the same time. One man’s house place on the hill and to those tenders, one. So by that time I had a fight and then we opened another one in Manchester in 2012 because we had a system. You know, I still remember people talk about, you know, it takes two years before you make a profit on this and that. I had a formula. I worked out that formula and then Birmingham and in year one month, three months just did a huge open day due to retirement in year one. We did me the hundred plus cases of Invisalign so that a lot of love and have that. So yeah, it was it was the coming to a stage where outside London I was becoming the go to guy for the misalign.

[00:45:50] And what what were you personally doing at this time, were you running around all these clinics as a practitioner? Would you step back from clinical before? What was your role in all of this, the NHS practise you were telling your wife? I’ll see you next week. And I’m working. So.

[00:46:10] So I think, you know, the one thing I’ve done after all this is I so those days are working seven days a week, then down to six, then down to five and down to four. So by this time I think I was working about three days a week and two days a week managing, managing the business. And yes, that that that that’s where that’s where it was. And then a couple of years after, I’m sure we’ll get there. And then I decided to quit dentistry.

[00:46:36] Sometimes some tips for managing multisite practises. You said you said systems, but for me, that must be it must be people

[00:46:47] Must be key leaders. Just only one one thing I run my business based on, and that is it’s all about people. I manage people. People manage the business. It’s as simple as that. I am not good for them. And I know that I can’t put the associate together. Have you ever seen an email from me? More than half a paragraph. I know what I’m good at, but I surround myself with some amazing people who get these things done. And it’s it’s all about people.

[00:47:20] So do you think you’re a good judge when when you meet someone, you’re a good judge of character was

[00:47:25] Fucked it up many times you can imagine. But overall, overall, I think I managed to get it right. I’ve made so many mistakes, made so many wrong judgements, but I don’t beat myself up for it, you know? You know, sometimes you have a bad day. I just to get somebody handed in a notice and they want to leave and somebody made a complaint. I used to get really worked up about those things. Now it’s just part of the business. That’s what business is. And I remember this scene from Richard Branson. I went to one of his life lessons. I would just pick one thing. And I still remember that, you know, when you’re running a multi size, get comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, I honestly don’t get up every day in the morning where everything is smooth sailing. There’s always something going wrong somewhere. But what I do is I backed myself and I back. My family supported me and back the people I have with me that no matter what happens, we’ll find it. And it’s just it’s just that confidence, you know, it’s OK. Things will go wrong. But look.

[00:48:39] When did the digital marketing start sending

[00:48:42] Digital marketing, so I’m sure Prav Prav know much better that better than I do on this subject. You know, when I started on the estate like this. Now, believe me, this note, guys. I can see the bullshit because I know inside out about Edwards, I spent like months and months understanding about this Google AdWords and my first account on the street Dental I set up myself personally and I ran that. And I used to have these, you know, the bits and pieces you want to show, you know, Dental that I used to manage all that about myself. Obviously, you know, things have changed and it’s a lot more algorithm driven and all that. But I had a very, very good, good understanding because, you know, I got to the stage where I started to think, you know, there’s a lots of good then disappear, lots and lots of good dentist. And I employ more than 20 dentists plus across the business. Can somebody do what I’m doing? And this is a way of bringing people in. The clinic is the art and science on its own. And Prav Prav knows that better than anybody else. If clinical dentist is allowed on science, I’ll tell you, man, this bringing these people and setting these systems and patient journeys is an art and science on its own. It’s just about what what you what we do and what you what you like to do, really.

[00:50:14] And so Sunday, what what was it that moving on from there inspired you to sort of create the Invisalign beast that you have to the day? Was there a was there a turning point in what you were doing where you thought, you know what, I can I can take this turnkey operation that I’ve developed, a smile stylist or whatever and apply that elsewhere. And let me see. Did you I’m assuming you didn’t have this huge vision because you just said that you take one day at a time and you just want to enjoy yourself. Right. So how did it all come about?

[00:50:48] Maybe start by telling

[00:50:50] Someone who doesn’t know what my mom is. Yep, I think I’ll finish it what my smile one, let’s start with a journey started from 2014, as I said, a new clinic. I was doing more and more of Invisalign by 2014. So my overall revenue of the business was more fun than everything else. And when I looked at those papers, I said, guys, this just speaking by itself, why don’t we focus on what we got? And that was the time I made a decision that nobody has done that before. Lots of people were talking about it. And I said, you know what, I’m going to turn this into an Invisalign on the clinic because consumer demand at that time and consumer brand awareness was getting to a stage where people were calling and say, hey, can I look at the phone company misalign instead of going to book? And what is frightening and that was the level I spoke to. And I don’t think there was a single person who said to me, that is a good idea, except one. I still remember that. And yeah, I went ahead. I just called it a Invisalign on the clinic. So that started in 2014, obviously in aligning technologies. Eco-System, they must have heard or, you know, some DEPREZ took a plunge and started in the clinic so that somebody from Aline’s head office in Amsterdam that time came to visit and came to see the clinic. And we went out for lunch and we just having a discussion. And those days I was doing like, you know, outside London.

[00:52:18] I think over the last ten years, I’ve been the biggest provider by and by long, long mile. I was doing those days about three or four hundred cases every year. And, you know, we sat down at lunch and he asked me, you know, what do you do differently compared to everybody else? And I still remember I said, yeah, but that’s my mostly what you find is that, you know, there must be something we can do. Right. And this is where this idea of my social network came, that why don’t we create a platform where I can openly share all my years of learning, all my years of understanding this Invisalign business and help people to grow there in this business. And that’s where this idea came from in 2014 and 2015, in April. So I remember from January, you know it now it looks easy. Everybody looks at it in my mind is a big beast now. It is a beast. It is, you know, with nearly 80 prospectuses. Now, what I remember can you imagine going out and telling people about the this never been done before. You’re going to have to pay five grand just to be part of this. And then on top of that, you’re going to have to pay a grand a month and we will try and grow your investment business. So they’re competing for 17 grand. So, you know, I went up and down the country, travel up and down that lots and lots of people.

[00:53:45] Did a line help you with that? That they say, you know, give us some perspective.

[00:53:50] One hundred percent, 100 percent. So whatever I have done, I’m not going to take all the credit for it. And where I am today, it is in collaboration with the line technology from day one. I had to put a business plan together. I have to show them the concept. I have to show them what it could potentially become and how we could support people. So they dedicated somebody alongside and me. We used to travel together. So one day I will be Newcastle, one day in London, one day in Manchester, trying to introduce the concept to these guys. And in April 2015, we had about 12 people who placed their hand up and say, yeah, we will we will start and see. See, that goes no. We started at twenty people at that time and twelve out of those twenty are still part of the most fun network.

[00:54:43] And the, you know, it’s a it’s a beast of a company to work with. There must be loads of others who’ve tried something like that or are trying something like that. You just really get on with that dude from Amsterdam.

[00:54:58] No, not on. Not only in.

[00:55:00] And I guess I guess you know your priority to them as one of their biggest users. Yeah. But still, you know, dealing as a as a as a dentist dealing with this slow machine. Did you did you find it easy working with them or was it too challenging?

[00:55:18] To be honest, the simplest way I can explain to you explain to you this is there’s a one thing about me. I am a very, very people person. I work with Payman. I don’t work in my team. I work with my accountant. I don’t care about company. There’s about 200 accountants. I have one lawyer. If there’s any question, I pick up the phone and talk to him. And same thing with a line, even though, you know, even at that time the line was a big company and now it’s a massive, massive company. It’s all about people. And because I was. Lots of cases that time they felt it was important. So they did whatever they had to do to look after me and I’ve been hand on heart, I’ve been 100 percent loyal. Lots of people have tried and say they’ve come and do this to us. And that’s how it’s it’s been it’s been it’s been about people. And even to this day, I still speak to all the lying team from a territory manager to the senior vice president. And we work together. It’s a collaboration. I can’t do this by myself. And obviously they see the benefit of it. So you asked me, can I explain to people what my smile is? This is a way to look at this like this is a win win win.

[00:56:36] There’s a three stakeholders in this business, there’s a dentist who joined the Misbah and there’s a spot and then there’s a of technology. Until this doctor or the dentist joins us, does the case, I don’t get anything, the line technology don’t get anything. So it’s in our interest to make sure that we send them as many leads as we can. It’s in our interest to make sure we train them really well so they know how to set the patient journey in the clinics and they can come out those. Customers into treatment. It’s in our interest to make sure that we set up the plate checks in the best possible way so they can treat more and more cases confidently. And finally, we help them to become a commercially viable model by giving them extra discounts. So if they are willing, they are happy, allowing technology is getting more and more cases, you know, now we are doing like the record currently a record month after month after month and the start of this year, I think this month we are on target to do so. Nearly 700 cases, one. So the bogus adopters do have beelined technologies. And then I have a commercial relationship that the more they do, the more the better it is for my smile. So it’s it is a win win strategy for everybody with.

[00:58:01] That’s beautiful, man.

[00:58:03] And so having grown the My Smile network to, what is it, 80 around 80 practises

[00:58:11] And the 80 plus nalliah.

[00:58:13] Was the academy all about the only reason I learnt about that is I saw a video of you on Facebook talking about sort of handing over the keys to your success. And then I came across the academy. So is that a is a training and education sort of platform? Is that centred around Invisalign only or general business development? Just tell us a little bit more about this and where that idea came from.

[00:58:41] Yeah, absolutely. It’s a good question. So part of my small network is everybody who joins us, they get the exclusive. And that is if the contract and my guarantee to those guys is as long as they stay in the NFL, I will not have anybody in those territories. Now, we dropped this contract in 2015 and those days, I think a line used to do about five thousand cases a month to nearly a hundred thousand now. But the contract is still the same. So say take an example of knowledge. So not if there’s a guy called somebody. He’s been part of my contract for the last six years under the contract with him that as long as you stay with the network, I won’t have anybody else in your area. And he’s still there. But there’s a lot of other people who are doing Invisalign now who want to join my mom, but they can’t because their territory is locked down. So the whole thing about Academy is I said, why did I started my school network so I can go properly, go out and share my knowledge, my experience and help people to grow their business. So my small academy is purely Invisalign. It’s done in collaboration with them as a nine. It is about teaching people. Why they should focus on this line and what they should do. We won’t be doing anything for them, we won’t be doing the things we want to be doing, the treatment planning. So this we won’t be going into their practises to do their training. But this is an online education programme so that I can share, you know, does it not only mean I think there’s a lots of other people who are doing exceptionally well in the network so we can collect additional knowledge with these guys to help them more.

[01:00:35] So today it’s all online, is it not? It’s not liveable

[01:00:39] At the moment, it’s all online because of the current current status, things may change. And if they do change, you know, we will look at changing those labels and the platform, how we do it. But right now, well, this quarter is starting on 1st of April. We are going online.

[01:00:57] Is it open to my small packages or they already getting all of this?

[01:01:00] So my small practises, you know, it’s it’s all about you. I have a relationship with them. They will get a free access to this because of our relation with them. So everybody else is not part of my spine that they are paying for this. But my network members will get free access to us.

[01:01:19] Was a costed.

[01:01:20] It’s seven thousand pound for three months.

[01:01:24] Or and so is it an on demand platform so so everything is pre-recorded and you can just access it back, or is it like things are released at certain times and live webinars and things like that? What’s the what’s the former.

[01:01:39] So the formula is 12 weeks, like one hour sessions with different industry experts at the back of that, we will have a WhatsApp and a online platform where people can ask us any questions they want and they can reach out to me directly. And we will be preparing them to do them every day at the end of three months so they can feel they can implement all the strategies which they love and as they go along and implement that and do the things and this is this is this is this will be a rolling Kodaly programme moving forward. So the first one is first of April and then into Q3 and Q4. So, yeah.

[01:02:30] We ask everyone this question, Sandy is around clinical errors,

[01:02:39] If you remember which one

[01:02:44] Look, we did another search to cover those errors,

[01:02:52] Errors funny because in medicine we tend to hide them. Whereas if we can learn from each other, can you think of any mistakes you made,

[01:03:02] Your life changing and life changing? I’m going to say with you asked to ask me it. So it was somewhere around in twenty, seventeen, forty six, twenty, sixteen, twenty six to business was crazy busy. My school network was growing phenomenally practice’s was doing well and I was doing clinical dentistry. But I was mainly focussing on two big cases in the news and stuff like that. One Friday, I have this patient walked in and was on the chair of those, they are supposed to fit them and but on the back of my mind, my laptop was open. My phone was there because I was expecting a very important goal. And by four o’clock, I have to transfer some money to my lawyer so we can get that deal done. So the patient is on the chair. I can’t say no because I booked all afternoon on the back. I’m keeping an eye on my phone and my laptop and that email is going to the phone is going to ring. So I started prepping this case and then was just about to put those videos on and the phone rang and my half of the focus was there. The focus is the finish the case. Ask the patient to set up just before I give up Amida. And I want the. Dos Santos about just nowhere near where they’re supposed to be.

[01:04:20] There was a count in the red line and I was absolutely speechless. So what I have done the. And you know what? I was very honest with the patient and I said, you know, something has not gone right. You need this. Let me fix it for you. Your appointment next Saturday. I’ve booked a whole day off. I’ll get my life to redo this business and sincerely apologise. And, you know, with time, I built a good rapport with the lady and she said, you know, it’s not ideal. I am a little bit upset about it, but I completely understand this and that, blah, blah, blah. So she came told us that Saturday we have 10 minutes to give us some discounts, give us some freebies. And that was the time I sat down. I think, you know what that’s enough clinical dentistry for. I am not giving my patient. So they come to me, they put a lot of trust and they pay me a lot of money and they expect a service, and at that time was the crunch time I decided I’ll focus on running the business. And that was it. So since twenty seventeen, I have not picked up a girl. So it’s going into four years. And that was a very tough decision, you know,

[01:05:36] Even Invisalign as well. But not everyone either.

[01:05:39] I don’t do anything for them.

[01:05:42] Welcome. Welcome to you

[01:05:48] Both. Now, both of us,

[01:05:50] Both of us, a failed clinician.

[01:05:53] This was your defining moment, quite similar.

[01:05:59] Yeah. Yeah, it was. But it was. I took these two these two temporary crowns off and both of them had the cause inside them both. There’s a horrible moment

[01:06:14] Right after that.

[01:06:18] So how many employees do you have now? I mean, as we’ve mentioned, all your businesses or is there a couple of Indian takeaways?

[01:06:26] You have a couple of Indian takeaways and a couple of partnerships and this and that.

[01:06:32] But the employees, if you go in.

[01:06:35] I think including everybody, I think we are close to 80,

[01:06:38] All the people that a lot of people,

[01:06:42] But, you know, the business is all about people. We touched on that before. And I’ll be very easy for me to take a pride and do take care of everything. It’s not my it’s not it’s nowhere near that for people.

[01:06:56] And so how much do you enjoy it, Sandy? I mean, like, if I was your friendly corporate who said, you know, Sandy, I’m going to take this off your hands, you know what I mean? Like, if we could value the thing, whatever you want to walk away from. But how much do you love it? I mean, would you do something? What would you do? This is to say I came along, gave you your father, how much you value. This is

[01:07:22] Enough

[01:07:22] Money, enough money to walk away. What would you do next? I mean, is that a plan is a plan. You think five years. What do you think? What do you think?

[01:07:32] Good question. So this is what I can tell everybody right now, I am loving it. You know, considering that I was 20 years ago from today, like every day is a living bonus, I never, ever, ever dreamed in my life that what I’m doing right now. Right now, I love so, you know, people talk about hobbies, but you enjoy it. I love work. You know, you’ll give me a problem for fact. I’m going to go out for a walk and I’m going to mull over it most often. I’ll get an answer. I get on my meditation routine in the morning. And I’ll think over it after that and see if I can find it also, if I don’t, it’s OK, I’ll do that next day. So I find this a very challenging I have got lots of ambitions, but what I’m enjoying is in the process, what I am becoming. And the first thing is, I can barely speak English now.

[01:08:29] I know I’ve noticed with you, too, that since I’ve known you a good 10 years now, your smile just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

[01:08:37] And we enjoy what you do, man. I think it’s a it’s a it’s tough out there. You got to enjoy what you do for those sun.

[01:08:49] Give us a typical week of how your week pans out day in the life week in the life. What are you doing?

[01:08:58] And day in the life, I am probably the most autopilot person you’ll ever meet, and I really mean. Five days a week, my alarm is set to for 30. I am the bed by nine, nine thirty, get a professional, I was looking at my app this morning, I use this app called Mieux. Two hundred fifty fifty three days of running straight on meditation. Never miss a day. I’d like to grab a cup of coffee after that and just mull over something that is bothering me. What is the big decision I need to make? And I have a really, really, really easy start of the day. My son’s going to uni now, and I told my daughter to come home, go to the gym, spend some time with the wife together, and then she’s working as well. So she’s managing, managing quite a quite a bit of the business. So she goes out a couple of times. And you know what? Every day is dependent. Who needs me there and what needs to be done. I have if I if you ask me what I have owned on freedom of time and I want freedom of choices, I can sit there and decide what my next week need to look like. And I’m there for people, there for my team, then I believe the meeting and I don’t have total responsibility of any of the department. There’s somebody else looking after them. Think that somebody is looking after that, that somebody is looking after the operations. Yes. Ultimately, I have a helicopter view of everything, but I don’t the business does not run because

[01:10:41] You haven’t got any deliverables.

[01:10:44] Looking at me and said, you know, Friday, five o’clock, it is that stuff with is supposed to deliver.

[01:10:52] Have you always woken up at four thirty in the morning since 2013? What happened? It just read a book.

[01:11:06] So I’m thinking about that time of 2013 at the of the work. And I think one day I was just walking out in a very cold, sunny day, cold day minus temperature, and I was sweating like a pig. What the hell is what the hell is going on? And by that time I would drink every night and eat whatever comes in front of me was about thirty six, wasted that time and never really looked after myself. And it was all about business, business, business. So I went to see a doctor and I did all the tests and they said there’s nothing wrong, you’re fine. But I knew deep down that you know what? I pushed and pushed the board bit too far this time to rein it in. And that was it. Since then, to change the lifestyle, I started cycling, started doing gym, started doing little and not eating consciously. I still have you know, we still have a pizza on the weekend and I have a bottle of wine some time. But being conscious of what you watch it on Sunday.

[01:12:06] I speak to a lot of people, a lot of successful individuals who start off life sacrificing healthful career or health, wealth or whatever you want to call it. And then there’s often a turning point in their life where something happens and events or they start thinking about their own mortality. Right. And then health starts featuring this as a priority. Is is that that event for you when you take a

[01:12:37] Million percent health and family is right at the top and everything else is is there but is far below that close to party’s? No compromise on those two things.

[01:12:52] And it is such an inspiration really

[01:12:56] Coming from you, that means a lot.

[01:13:00] So we tend to finish this podcast with the same questions like legacy based questions. We call it Prav. Final questions.

[01:13:12] I mean, I’m just sat here pretty much like I was when when

[01:13:16] I met you in in Birmingham, jaw on the floor, listening to your journey from where you’ve come, where you are today. So still the same person. You know, it’s bloody hell, it’s inspiring you really that that means a lot coming from successful guys. And, you know, you have you both have done phenomenally well. And I’ve got a lot of respect for you guys coming from you that that really means a lot to you.

[01:13:43] And it’s amazing to, you know, when we sit back and you say, right, well, what’s important to you is family and health. Right. And everything else is second best. It’s it’s lovely to hear that. Really, really lovely to hear that. And so moving on from that sun connexion, we’re not all immortal. And that day is going to there’s one thing that’s guaranteed in life, and it’s our last day on this planet. Right. And imagine it was your last day on the planet and you had the important ones around you, your loved ones around you. And you had to leave them with three pieces of wisdom. What would they be?

[01:14:21] Yeah, it’s it’s a very deep question, but it’s you got to really think about this, so this is what of my mind both. I spent a fair bit of my life feeling unnecessary things. Which didn’t really mean a lot. And my first piece of advice would be face your fears. There is a beautiful, amazing life on the other side. And so I think what would be wrong, you’re always. What I do, nobody else is doing. I have no competition. I’m not looking ahead and I’m not looking backward. I’m running my own race. And I think that that is that means a lot when we start to compete and compare and this is where we start cutting corners. This is a bit of a service of both. You know, we are all individuals and do what you what you enjoy doing. And, you know, you have to as you mentioned earlier, that you saw my video recently until December 20, 20, I’ve never done a video. And now I’m doing it like literally every big. And that’s the third message is express yourself. We all got a story to tell. We all maybe one or two people can learn from this, you know, what we’re doing today or what I have done only to inspire one or two people. You know what? If this guy can do it. Let me give a. And, you know, we can change one or two people’s life by doing that. It’s been.

[01:15:56] Racing and Sundeep, how would you like to be remembered so if you were to repeat and complete the following sentence, Sundeep, was that well, how would that read?

[01:16:07] But I will complete that and I’ll come back to that in a second. But here’s the reality. As I said before, I don’t get up in the morning and I’m how I’m going to change the world. I’m going to buy 20 practises. I’m going to do this. None of that. I want to be remembered. Somebody was a great dad, a great husband, a good boss, a good son and a good friend. Beautiful, but that’s about it, you know, it’s not it’s not changing the world, it’s about small, small, small changes and just making sure be kind to yourself, but be kind to the world. Lovely. And Sunday, if you had 30 days today

[01:16:52] And you knew that in 30 days time it was your last day on the planet, what would you do in those 30 days?

[01:17:00] I think what was I’ll probably carry on what I’m doing, probably about 20 percent of what I’m doing, and I will spend a lot of time with my family, with my kids and my wife. And I will make sure that I leave everything in good hands. I’m very, very confident if I’m not here in 30 days, the businesses will carry on. Kids will be look after. I won’t be happy, but I’m sure she will get used to because kids will be there to look after. It’s about leaving the world and my my little place at a better place than being is today. That’s what I’ll focus on the next 30 days, Sunday.

[01:17:48] Thank you so much. It’s Saturday with my jaw on the floor and I’m inspired and in the same respect, so many values that we share that revolve around family and health and that sort of happiness. It’s been such a lovely conversation.

[01:18:06] Thank you so much.

[01:18:07] We thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. Really appreciate that. And there’s nothing else you got to go to catch up with. You guys got to this fast paced world of sit down and talk about for an hour. What we have done these days means a lot.

[01:18:23] The funny thing, you know, did you know each other all these years? And then you realise

[01:18:26] There’s so much you don’t know, so much you don’t know about the lovely times. I think I should ask you for interviews next time on your inbox. I may reach out to you guys

[01:18:39] In three years time. He’s going to have a podcast network

[01:18:48] That makes a lot of money. All right, guys, thank you. Thanks for your time. Really appreciate the

[01:18:54] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders history. Your house, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[01:19:10] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it if

[01:19:25] 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.

[01:19:35] And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] Stick to your protocol, stick to the way you do stuff, and again, all of these are just learning lessons. You know, when you’re in it, you feel, oh, God, what a helmet, why do I do that? But then you realise actually stick to your protocol, stick to the system, stick to what you do and try not to go out of that too much, because actually that’s when you produce the best clinical dentistry.

[00:00:26] This is Dental Leaders the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders and dentistry. Your heist’s Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:43] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Sameer Patel onto the podcast. Samir is now principal of one of the highest profile prices in the country, 11 Dental with his wife, Sheibani. But to me, it’s great to have you. This podcast is about trying to get to the person behind the persona, and we tend to sort of start with the same question and the same question. But the first question generally is how did you grow up? What kind of kid were you? How did you get Stenstrom?

[00:01:14] Yesterday, she was not even on the horizon, I’m from a family of doctors and some dentists in there, and it just grew up with a passion for cricket. And everything I did was about being out there, being playing sport. And that’s all I wanted to do. And so that’s what I did. I just remember growing up playing cricket almost every single day and fortunately I was OK at it. So I then got into the county teams and had some great coaches and mentors that then took it to a level where it became quite serious. But growing up, everything was driven just all about cricket. And I remember I was I went to private school as a young boy and then went to Selective Grammar School. And I was struggling academically in this year of one hundred. And I was like between nineteen ninety five. And we had our headmaster meetings and he said and I said, he said, if you’ve got anything to say, I said, I think I’m struggling. And he said, but no one else plays for the first team in cricket, hockey and rugby and captains them. And so I think you’re doing OK. Keep going. And for me, for the first time growing up, that was the first affirmation that I had had because I’d grown up in a household where, you know, Dad would work, mum would be at home.

[00:02:32] And often, you know, I think Indian or all across the board, but we’re just not given many compliments. And I remember also winning a game. I was forty five out. We’d be in this really tough school and again dropped into the car is like, why did you get up? You could have. I mean, I was like, so I grew up with very few affirmations and my sister was really bright and she was academically driven. And so I just think that I was a really happy child, don’t get me wrong. But what I look back there was never that much well done. Well done. There was a lot of love and there was a lot of love because we had a huge family and that was amazing. But I grew up in a very happy household and I was told that it was okay to play cricket and do some stuff. I suppose as I got older, there was a little bit more pressure from parents to do some studying is I think a lot of Indian parents do. But it wasn’t until the age of 15, I think I had a self realisation and I walked into a pharmacy again, Dad had picked me up from school and we were driving back home and he had to go pick up some medicine from from the chemist.

[00:03:38] And the pharmacist sat me down and he was OK as a bloke. So we used to see him a lot because I used to go and pick up the medicines with Dad and he just said, where are you going to end up? And I said, I just want to play cricket. And he said, What happens if that doesn’t happen? And for that, I mean, I don’t know where it came from, but I just knew at some stage I wanted to be successful not in cricket, but have to be able to do stuff that I want to do. And I knew that I had to study. And thankfully, I was in a school that was so academically driven that actually just to turn that on. And when I turned my mindset, I just naturally had affinity to maths, chemistry, biology, and I was being successful. And then again, it felt good to be successful and like anything. And the thing I learnt with my children is they will do what they enjoy. So let them enjoy stuff and let them be good at it and they will then be successful. So I then did my GCSE and did my A-levels. And as I was doing my A-levels, it was then what am I going to do still? And I still want to just play cricket because at this stage I was now playing for Berkshire.

[00:04:40] I was playing the first team at Redding and I still knew I had to do a degree and must do a degree. You got to just go play cricket. So then I was playing, I was playing cricket and biology was the quickest way I could get in and out of university quickly. And then I started doing some. They set us up for work experience and solicitors and dentistry. And actually dentistry was OK. It was it was a complete there was a game for every single patient. You have to win the game every time. It was great feeling, great import, whatever. And just in the side where I did my work experience in early and reading what a great bloke just set me on as a mentor to say you will be great at this, you are great with people. You love all your handi stuff. This is all we do. This is what you should do. And that gave me the impetus to change my whole UCAS form at the age of 17 from biology through to dentistry. And I would say that would be my childhood. In a nutshell.

[00:05:40] It was Jackson who convinced you that dentistry was the right career. You were going into Solicitors’ wherever, doing a bit of work experience here and there. And what was it during that work experience that made you think this is really what I want to do? Was it was it that parallel to the games in cricket that, you know, you’re winning at this, you winning at that? Or what was it about that work experience that made you think what this is what I’m going to focus my UCAS problem?

[00:06:05] You know, probably it was very much the people you were with people the whole time, and it didn’t feel like an office and it felt like it was practical. And, you know, dentists have this sort of feeling when you’re looking at them. They’re always on holiday. They drove nice cars and and it all just seemed about right. But the fact that I was with people and this list of three holidays a year minimum and I was like, oh, that sounds OK as a profession to go into. And in those days you needed BBC or BBC. I definitely won’t get into dentistry now, but I mean, thank goodness, you know, we could get in and then start our undergraduate.

[00:06:47] And so what school were you what sort of student? Where were you? Swati Smart kid. Top of the class somewhere in the middle.

[00:06:54] No, I definitely started. I was OK in primary school and we were all doing our stuff. And then as soon as I hit, I would say a medium to large pond. I became a very small fish and I knew I was a small fish and that was OK because in the sports world I was OK and everything sort of balanced. And I sort of felt I was I was appreciated and I had my place and sport kept me afloat, I would say at that time, because, you know, to be in that sort of percentile the whole time through your school thinking not that clever, not that clever. And then when the headmaster says, you know, what is the point, one percent in the country that go to these type of schools and you just so happen to be in the 90 percent, it’s OK. So I don’t think I was. I just think I had potential, but I just wasn’t interested in exploring that. But then when I did and I found some sort of form and some sort of rhythm in terms of studying, and then you got rewarded for it, it felt pretty good. And therefore, I would say I’m very much driven on target driven and rewards. And I would say that that hasn’t changed to some degree. I love applying for these awards that are there in dentistry and things have now sort to calm down a little bit because Shivani is now a judge within the private industry awards. That’s my life. So I just feel like, you know, achieving something. And now it’s now in the business world. It’s just that I would say I’m a achiever and I like setting myself my own goals. I definitely wasn’t a swoll. I didn’t spend much time studying, but I did enjoy learning at that stage when I then found out it was interesting. And you honed in to maths, chemistry, biology, A-levels, and I say that’s when it changed. I enjoyed learning

[00:08:40] Something. You said, you know, you were talking about Asian parents not giving compliments. And I can relate to that obviously was a different time back then, but you turned out really well from it. So then with your own kids, did you feel the need to be the same or did you feel the pain of that and want to address that? Because I remembered the first time my dad telling me he was proud of me was when I fitted eight veneers on him twenty twenty seven years old or something. But because he’d never said it before, I really felt it. But then as a reaction to that, now I tell my kids I’m proud of them all the time. And my feeling is maybe, maybe I’m overstating it and. Well, how do you handle your kids?

[00:09:28] Yes. And so, look, I have three kids, 11 year old, and my twins are five. And I think the biggest thing I try and do is provide a home with a lot of love because I think life is hard. And that’s the bit I figured out. Life is hard. And actually to come back to a loving environment is so important. And so that just allows your child to then be who they want to be. But when it comes to disciplining, definitely I have discipline and I think that’s part of growing up and understanding rules and pushing boundaries. And I am very much I’m proud of you, but I sometimes do feel a bit like you, I would say, because I knew now I would have perhaps had not got to where I am today if I hadn’t wanted my parents adoration. And so I think there is a fine balance between giving them love and telling them I’m proud of them. And I don’t think I’ve found that, by the way, because I’m a big softy with my three girls. And but I just think there is that line and there’s that line of making them feel their loved, but actually understanding this discipline and wanting them to be the best they can be. And I think that’s what our parents wanted. You know, there was no mollycoddling. We just had to get on with it. We never saw our parents. They never helped us with our homework we just sat at, whereas now it’s so different. We’re so involved in our children’s lives. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? Again, I don’t know. I don’t know

[00:10:58] If it’s it’s funny. When you when you were speaking about your dad, it just reminded me of mine, the accident, everything made Be Gone book. But the interesting thing is, you know, I’ve come home and say I’ve got ninety seven percent in a maths test. And he said, what happened to the three.

[00:11:14] Yeah, I mean, we’ll all about first.

[00:11:21] So I do really resonate there. And I do think that that for me growing up I had a point to prove right. And it was well how do I get that extra three percent, how do I make my dad proud, etc., etc.. And there wasn’t a great deal of confidence back then. But I do think to me it was a driving force. But in answer to your Payman question question, I’m the total opposite. So loads of loads of hugs, loads of well done, proud of you. Compliments, blah, blah, blah. But you do you do kind of sit back and sometimes think, are you overdoing it? Is everything an achievement? You know, it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is, right?

[00:12:00] Yeah. Prav I just come one other thing. I mean, I was one of three Asian people in my school. You know, I’m born and brought up in Redding and the other two were brothers of half growing. So they were really English actually. So, you know, there were very few ethnic people in my school and then there was somebody that they enjoyed. And actually I look back on it and I think, well, that was quite tough. But I think sport cut through everything. And I never had an issue with any of that. And I then look, here are the stories. But I think it’s harder for me to know that actually I’m comfortable in my own skin and I felt I had to. Through just because I had to prove and I think there’s no hardship in a difficulty that you go through as a child because that hardship allows you to become the character you’re going to become. And actually, I’ll share with you, my daughter has some difficulty at school from a couple of the other girls. And I sort of dealt with in a way that what have you learn rather than I’m so sorry.

[00:13:05] I was like, I’m so sorry you went through that, obviously. But tell me what you’ve learnt and how you’re feeling and how would you do that next time. And I didn’t make it a big issue. And my parents definitely didn’t make race a big issue for me growing up. And it was never a big thing. And I would say, as I tell you a little bit more about me into cricket and then becoming a member of the AMCC and then a committee member, I would say all of that background of any all of that is to do with the fact that race was never a thing and I never saw me as a colour. And I think that more that we can make our children feel multicultural from whatever background you’re from. I think that would be a great thing. And I think there’s too much emphasis put on race and the differences that have been achieved. That’s not looking at a thing going forward, which actually then makes the child feel like he’s got to act like something or somebody some.

[00:14:00] You may be lucky in that where you were in reading, there were so few Asians that you were a curiosity. You know, if there were loads of Asians taking the jobs of people, you might have felt it more. Maybe, but but let’s move on from from race, because we talk about that too much, like you just said. Tell me this to me. You sound like a proper competitive person. And, you know, competitiveness has its massive advantages because you set goals. You get that dopamine rush when you win and all that. But I want to hear about the downside of being a competitive person. I mean, do you end up sometimes comparing yourself with others too much or or being really down when you don’t win, when you get in cricket or whatever?

[00:14:46] Yeah, look, I do self isolate if I wasn’t to win, but that’s more just retrospection of what I could have done better. And again, that works on a day to day basis in dentistry. You know, you can have a great day, but you know that you could have done that implant a bit better or finish those veneers a bit better. And so, again, the photography, such an amazing thing, because that’s my teacher on a day to day basis, when I’m doing my dentistry, the patient will walk out saying, well, thanks so much. But actually my will to want to get better is inbuilt advantage.

[00:15:25] Again, I’m sure that was a disadvantage.

[00:15:27] Yeah, but I don’t see us disadvantage at all because actually if I’m competitive, I’m just trying to self improve myself the whole time. And I’m not one to compare from a very young age. My dad being the doctor, he was set one thing straight, really early. Don’t compare yourself to anybody. It just make you unhappy. And actually that’s where my line is actually. For me, it’s just it’s about me and it’s about me and my family. And so obviously we all were different hats at different times. Once as a dentist. One’s a husband, one’s a father, one’s is a friend. And all of these things, it’s I’m wishing well. And so when you wish well for people, I believe that people wish well for me. And that’s karma. So I actually, you know, you asked me, is there anything downside about this? Well, I’ve been trained that there isn’t a downside to being competitive. It just means I know myself and I just would self isolate for a period, make sure I understand. Maybe it might be the drive back home, maybe cricket. I’d probably go in my room for a little bit. I was never a tantrum person. And those that, you know, I don’t shout don’t get angry like I’m not an ant, that is. So there’s no angst in me and I’m wishing well. And so there’ll be times that you actually say, God, that team played really well. And I would then draw on how that team played so well to improve myself.

[00:16:46] So an advantage.

[00:16:49] I hope that I’m not a question, but I don’t see is that.

[00:16:53] Yeah. So tell us about then why did you come work for Jackson as well, or does that just work experience.

[00:17:01] No, like he stayed in my mentor. Even today we speak and we meet and and we. What a great guy. Yeah, exactly. And he I would say he’s firmly one of my mentors that seeing me to my point now in my journey hasn’t finished. But I think that everybody needs mentors in every shape or form through through their life. And I love the fact that clubhouse has been able to access everybody. Now, you can access all these people, you know, these podcasts. You can access people and understand them better. When we were growing up, there was none of this and everybody was seen as an isolated entity. And I think the community. Dentistry and the difficulties we face in isolation in our surgeries, as well as the mental stresses that we take. I would definitely say all of this is positive. If you could keep the barrier of comparison to yourself, to others is a wonderful place because we get isolated. And the fact that you’ve had so many great people on your series so far. And thank you so much, by the way, guys, for having me. That’s really amazing. But I feel honoured to be on here because the people you’ve had on before. But all of this leads to it’s it’s individual, your journeys individual. But I still believe that you’ve got to find your own true north. So tell us about your first practise.

[00:18:24] I’ll tell you quickly, my dad was quite funny. So I went straight from there into VTE from university and VTE was brilliant. I had a mentor again called Pip Gary while in the high street of Slough. I would see everybody in anything and everything was OK if I got it wrong, it was OK. It was all about numbers, except he never came in to teach me dentistry. It never came in. We would have a meeting once a week and it would be on the business of dentistry. He loved the business of dentistry and I’d have to go to the associates to find out how I did that. Could I improve on that? What material using for that. And again, we’ve talk about mentors and people have influenced you. Massive influence on me. He made me understand from an outset the business of dentistry is a business as well as the dentistry. And so therefore, you’ve got in my life two great dentists or business people giving me advice. And therefore my shortfall was very much. Now the clinical side of it. And I felt at the end of that year I wanted to learn more about dentistry and I went to become a house officer, guys. And that’s an interesting story in itself, because they hadn’t had any non graduates. And I’m a Birmingham graduate, be a House officer in the hundred twenty years or whatever at guys.

[00:19:42] And because of this Europe and now they’re becoming kings, they had to invite other people from outside. So they said, OK, the first 12 generally get selected in the year guys to be house offices. So the first 10 did. And they offered to sell and they didn’t even apply for it. Just somebody on my VTE just said, listen, you might want to apply. I know this is going on. It won’t go to the market. And I applied and Nigel Fisher, who was selecting who got it, who got out, I went to see him speak and I said I sent my application and there’s my name, Samir Patel. And he said, Yeah, you’re the cricketer. And I said, Yeah, I’d love to come and be on that team. And then that was the end of that. And I met Shivani, that guy. She was in my group of house officers. And so we had such a phenomenal group that year. We were out a lot and we had a lot of fun. And then dentistry from there was I was still playing a lot of cricket. I was playing England amateurs. I was playing Minor County Cricket Worcester for a little bit with when I was at university and I wanted to go and do a season in Australia playing cricket. And Fraser McDonald, who’s a guy’s in charge of orthodontics, sounded a bit like that.

[00:20:50] Don’t be silly. You can’t go and just give up that issue and go and play cricket because you’ll get crap on your CV. So the next day turned up with a fax, with a job interview and and so what a great bloke. He sort of piece it altogether, new someone out there and had this job for me. So I rang this dinner at 12:00 midnight, say, look, Frasers said I should ring you. I’m coming out to play cricket. I’d love to come and work. She said, just come out and we’ll give you a job. I said, Don’t you have to sponsor me on that? I just come out and give you a job. So did my MSDS at the end of that House of the year and I flew to Australia and I went the next day to go and see Donna. I should I got a job for you. Like, okay, so what do you recommend we do? She goes, Well, I’ve got somebody finishing two and a half weeks. Maybe I could offer you that post, but you’ve got lots to do with registration. And anyway, it all worked out really well. I worked at United Dental Hospital for six months, played cricket for University of New South Wales. And again, we won the great championships out there.

[00:21:58] So we had a phenomenal group of players. And I came back and by that time I met Shivani and we’d got married and I landed a job with Oasis in Twyford, which is again near where I live, near Redding. And again, there was a lot of emphasis on understanding the business. So again, I was just trying to find my form and I did Krystle’s course. I did the stuff of implants. Eastman again, I was thriving knowledge because I feel I was being given business of dentistry, knowledge and understanding how that was. But I was still thriving of now having to understand dentistry. And the one thing I would say that we talk about children earlier, the one thing I’ve learnt from that journey to that point was don’t put your kid out. I was so not burnt out the age of twenty three that I was so thirsty to educate myself at that stage on what I wanted to educate myself on. And I would say that would be a big thing that I’ve learnt from my experiences and I’m passing on to my children, that let’s have a lot of fun. Let’s find out what it is that you’re good at. And as a dad, my job is to get the best out of you and for you to enjoy your life. So, yeah, that’s that’s my point to the oasis.

[00:23:19] It seems to me that your your education is almost like back to from when it comes to practise owners. So a lot of practise owners dive into a practise or a squat. They don’t know what they’re getting themselves into. And by default, they have to learn the business of dentistry. It’s, you know, live or die. Whereas for you it seems like your first job, it was all about the business of dentistry. And the clinical thing was a side thing that you have to find, seek help from other people. And then once again, to Oasis. Do you think that’s the secret to how you’ve been so successful in business with your practise? And also moving on to you’re going to tell us a little bit later on about your business courses. Do you think do you think that has been the key? And do you think dentistry should include a bit of business as part of the curriculum?

[00:24:10] Yeah, I mean, the course is really an understanding of that. We’re not taught it. And I think in dentistry, it’s very much your training, your time for money. And so when we move forward, if there’s anything I could teach younger dentists is invest early and if you invest early, the compound effect of your investing early will mean that you can make the decision whether you work or not when you’re older. And understanding that, as well as the right investments, obviously, I think takes a lot of pressure. And I speak to a few dentists about ethical fighting and making sure we stay on the right side of dentistry and doing it properly. Payman knows me very well in the way that I work in my practise as one of the most clinical awards for any practise. For me, that is the most important 11. So, you know, we have Richard Fields, Shiraz Rollcast, Shibani Patel and Antilla, all these superb clinicians, and it’s all about the quality of dentistry. And therefore, if you’re doing quality dentistry, you will be looked after and it will look after itself. But if you can augment here with investment and the understanding of financial intelligence, I believe that you can make clearer decisions on your life, on how you treat the patient and having them at the primary interest of what you’re doing. And it all comes together and your energy will flow a bit better and your karma will be a bit more relaxed as well, because I think it’s a very stressful environment otherwise piecing it all together.

[00:25:50] So what you’ve what you’ve just said there really makes sense in terms of everything that you’ve put together. But you came from this cricket playing dentist who’s worked in a few practises, has been given a bit business knowledge. What was the actual journey to get from an associate oasis to having this multi award winning practise with super talented clinicians? If you just put that out there and you think about another dentist out there listening to this is such a lofty goal, how do you how do you recruit these super talented people? What is it that you attract them with? And then how do you get to that point? What was your journey from the point that you were an associate to where you are now?

[00:26:32] So from Twyford, again, I believe networking is so important and thankfully I enjoy networking. I said to you earlier, you know, the people side of things I really enjoy. And I went to the PTA local committees and would listen to the lectures in the evenings and ended up being the chairman and the chairman for the GDP. A guy called Steve reduced our practise in Henley and he approached me and he said, look, you’ve got a good reputation. I’m looking for somebody to take over my practise and the partnership. And so I went to see him. And it’s this wonderful Georgian building in the middle of Hanalei High Street. It’s a beautiful building, great you listed. And I was just blown away by it. And then I walked in and it was just, do I belong here? This is so nice. And my two partners were 10 and 12 years older than me respectively. And I thought, well, this is going to be a great training ground for me to to work and and now go to the next step. And I was so excited to own a practise. And I remember Shivani, who always so supportive. It’s like, how are we going to pay for that monthly expenditure that we have to put in the fall? And I said, you know, I think you’ll be OK and you have to take that leap of faith. And then I joined it.

[00:27:47] But interestingly, when I joined it, it was actually very difficult because the vision of my partners was not my vision. And so finding true North had not been found at this stage. It was a tough and quite a few years where I was in this place. The vision of where bit, how they were working, where I was working, the way I wanted to work, the way I want the practise looked like I was I was a little bit claustrophobic. And at that stage, I had now given up playing county cricket and I was just playing club cricket for Ealing, which was great, but I was training quite hard still. And then Anthony, who’s my partner up in London, and he’s an orthodontist. I really respect the way that you talk and the way you work and the way you’re doing stuff. And I’m an orthodontist. Would you I’ve got this. Would you like to do something together? I said I loved doing something to the because I don’t feel I’ve really found what it is that I want to find here. And it was I hadn’t found my true north. And at that stage I didn’t know what it was. And he had found an orthodontic practise in the West End. And when we did all our due diligence, it was very clear that 90 percent was coming from the Internet and 10 percent was referral.

[00:28:57] And so I said, come on, let’s give it a go. So we remortgaged our houses, we put all our savings and we put it into eleven. And we were both had our own practises and we started. So Shravani nice and Anstee started that two days a week and so. Well that’s grown now. Then it was then I brought the then this building blocks, this is all building blocks. So then it was about general dentistry in and then we brought another orthodontist. Since they were busy I brought Peter in who’s my first associate. I brought in there’s a general dentist and now were eighteen of us. But that’s grown just three blocks of getting busier. And if I can share with you how we started at again, it started Prav. As you said, it didn’t start with clinical dentistry. It started with Accenture coming in to come and tell us how a business should run before we started it, so we had capabilities and the orthodontics was divide, it was they were given three options. You can have a match at that stage with metal, metal, metal, ceramic, ceramic, ceramic. And that was their option. And he said, Starbucks, do it. You give them three options. They’ll pick the middle one 80 percent, pick the middle one. So now what you want is 80 percent. Pick that middle one. So we were like, OK, that’s what we’re going to do.

[00:30:10] And then we built in what our overheads were and then we built in how many patients we want to see how we were going to market, how we had to increase our marketing to get those numbers in. And then we achieved the target. And, you know, a lot of it is knowing your numbers as a leader. And from the beginning, I knew my numbers and so happy to say we’ve grown that business 600 percent since we’ve owned it. But it was from understanding that my staff this is my numbers, this is what we’re doing. And then having a plan and having a name. And every year we would have an aim of this is what we want to try and do. It doesn’t mean that we’re selling more stuff. It just means we need to open the top on marketing a little bit more now because that’s not happening. And again, talking about where that comes from, it comes from us being stable and having incomes from our other associates, our other partner jobs, basically. And so therefore, there’s never drive to make 11 a money spinning machine or it was just about having dentistry. And we tore down the whole of dentistry and made it the most remarkable customer experience that we we thought was possible. And we did that with Accenture. To start with

[00:31:22] A couple of questions. When you say CPI’s OK, we’ve got, I don’t know, top line. Bottom line. Did you focus on one of those two? Firstly, no. Well, which one of those two?

[00:31:34] We basically had KPIs. Just understand what our aim was as a

[00:31:38] Company backing key KPIs that you were looking at a

[00:31:41] Large number of bonders, for example, because it was all it was just orthodontics at that stage and that’s all it was. And then we got the lease for upstairs. So at the same time of our profits were trying to refurbish upstairs. And you’ve been upstairs to my room and that space there. And again, it’s it’s an environment where it’s conducive to people wanting to have dentistry and opening their mind of seeing what is possible. So CPI’s a number of bonds, number of new patients seen. And it was very simple. No leads, number of new patients booked in. A number of people went ahead with treatment. That was the journey at that stage.

[00:32:19] And what about what about that sort of, you know, looking at your place and the way you’re discussing it, you’re trying to create sort of raving fans out of your patients instead of just patients. So what are the things you do to to make that happen with a few tips you can give us?

[00:32:37] Yeah, I’d love to share that with you. The first is all receptionists are trained. If somebody asks for money, just ask them about where are they travelling from and if they’ve got if they need a crown and they’ve got a broken tooth. I’m so sorry about that. Are you in any pain at the moment? It’s the whole deflection is not money, because I don’t want to trade money. I want to trade a feeling. So the journey will start from the beginning of somebody feeling well, they’re a bit different. They might make three calls and they’ll say four hundred pounds. Six hundred pounds. And I’m so sorry that you’ve got this problem. Can we get you in today or tomorrow? Is it sharp? How do you know which I mean regarding the Crown I can’t tell because we’ve got a variety of crowns. But let Sameer make the decision which is best for you because that’s, that’s his job. And that would be my job. Your job.

[00:33:31] So the interesting thing is a simple thing, you’re absolutely right. I’ve got a broken tooth that I’m so sorry from the from the receptionist is actually the first thing I’d like to hear is

[00:33:45] How can I help this, my name. And so and then at the end, when you were 11, if any of you want to call calling. I would want your feedback. They should say, is there anything more I can do for you at the end of the call, even with me when I ring? Is there anything more I can do to me? So therefore, you’ve got a concierge at the end of the line for you. So therefore, now, really, money is not the number, it’s oh my God, I’ve got somebody looking after me. And then it’s about when they turn up and the feel of the place and the balance of what the website looks like and the aura and the colour of your surgeries and your waiting room. And the trust starts from there of like you’ve walked from your website into the waiting room and they’re feeling this is OK. This is exactly what I thought it would be. And trust starts there. And then they come and see you and you just want to know about them. And we use photographs, we discuss what their concerns are. But when we do it, I always say that if Henry and Henry Ford did market research, they wanted faster horses and he built a car. So when you come and see somebody who feels they can look after you and who’s done all these years of training, it shouldn’t be the passion that drives the treatment plan. It should be the dentist to educate the patient. And this is what it is. And at that stage, we then click how we make the plan and then taken away by a treatment coordinator. And I don’t really talk about money at that stage because my job’s health care driven and therefore often we didn’t have the treatment coordinator and sometimes we still don’t.

[00:35:22] But I think that’s a really important side of it. If you want to convert large treatment plans and make people have comprehensive care dentistry. So a lot of what we do is at 11:00 is when people have that single to dentistry for many years and they’re now looking for somebody who can take care of them for comprehensive care, they often see us. But actually, in your own practises, I would love you guys to be saying what I’ve been doing, single tooth dentistry. A lot of it’s going on. Let me take some photos and let me show you what I think we should be doing to take care of your mouth, to make sure you have less emergencies. And that style of dentistry takes a lot of pressure off your staff yourself. Everybody has a role. One of the I mean, I have so many mantras, but one of the thing is leave your jersey in a better place. And I don’t understand why people work for somebody for 20 years. I mean, like, what are you doing? That’s funny, but I’ve had four CEO roles of eleven Dental. I don’t want the same people working for me. You know, my receptionist who’s now my practise manager. I have a dream coordinator who is my receptionist. And it’s like we want everybody to keep getting better, learn more, learn more. It’s just not me. It’s not my clinical team. It’s everybody. So when I started in the practise managers I had, they would not be my practise manager. I want today. My treatment is not the same treatment coordinates and how

[00:36:39] Much training do you do for your team? What’s the what’s the sort of you know, because these are Prav knows this better than anyone else. Right? You can you can talk to a team about phone manner once, and they might do it for a couple of months, but it needs constant training. So what would you do? What sort of training regime for these people?

[00:36:59] Yeah, I think I just trying to get them passionate about their job and passion about their job means that they will over deliver to you as your principal and macro manager. Don’t micromanage at all. I said you earlier, I’ve got very relaxed demeanour about myself. I tell them I’m there, but I’m not interested in micromanaging. And there are just a few ground rules and don’t come to me with a problem. Come up to me with a solution because I’m employing good people to have the solutions. And it might be I change those, but then you will understand what it is that we want to try and achieve after a few times. You’ve got it wrong. And I would say meeting after meeting after meeting, you know, there’s a lot of meetings and there’s an understanding of culture. That’s the thing I set within the practise. So then when somebody joins, they’re totally understanding. So at the moment, the reception was just taken on a buyer for River Island and she’s got no experience in dentistry. However, she’s a buyer for River Island, who is great at customer service and the ability to understand finance and tracking and following up and all the rest of it.

[00:38:05] So I think trying to identify really amazing people who have a growth mindset similar to you. And I’ll give you an example of my practise manager. She came as a receptionist with a bit of accountancy background, and now she’s my practise manager. So everybody will grow and you want them to grow. And Richard Branson’s thing is we want my I want my staff to grow because they are looking after my business. And, you know, I’m only there one and a half days a week in London. So they represent me the whole time. And sometimes that’s a disadvantage because I would love to get more time and more training and and more influence. But actually, I think sometimes it works as a positive because they can just get on, not have the pressure of the boss. And I think the way that one leads in is a reflection of you. If you are comfortable, you will let them be comfortable. And I think that’s the place that we want to try and make Dental take them to a lot more and put them in a place that they feel more comfortable.

[00:39:09] Now, you keep referring back to True North. Just tell us a little bit more about what that means to you and what your true north is.

[00:39:18] True north is when you you’re doing something and you just go to sleep to refresh and go again. And so that’s true north, that’s where we all need to be, that’s where everybody wants to be, where you just go, you’re doing something. So I got a nice bedtime. There we go to sleep, go to bed and then wake up next morning. And I’d have no alarm clock for four years. I’d wake up at five, 30, do my yoga meditation, write down my list of stuff I got to do, play with the kids. I’m out the door. Go again. So true north is when you find something you’re so passionate about that it’s not a work. It’s not a job. Of course, everybody has days that they don’t feel the need or it’s a job. But actually, once you find something that you’re so passionate about, actually it doesn’t become a job and therefore life becomes very easy. And all the energies within you flowing and your energy level and your and your the whole movement of you is feeling great. It’s not feeling tense. It’s not feeling stress. It’s not feeling worried. And a bit of it’s finance in today’s world. I’d love for people to understand how to invest better as an example and books they should read and all of this education. I generally have three or four books on the go the whole time. You know, wherever I get a chance like that or even if I’m having a massage, I’ve got an audio book on like it’s going in in the car. It just clicks in. There’s no second that we’re not listening to an audio book or thirsty for knowledge or understanding. Now, not everybody is going to be is wired like me, but thirsty for knowledge means you’re growing yourself. And I suppose that comes through Payman to earlier my staff. I want them to feel that as well. I my job is to make them the best they can be, not hold onto them for ten or fifteen years in a practise because my practise then becomes stale.

[00:41:16] What are some of your favourite books, books that changed your

[00:41:20] Books that changed me? I think the telomere effect fairly recently is a wonderful book about health and it’s written by Nobel Prise winner. And it makes you understand how you can change yourself very quickly. The telomere effect. So that’s health. I love legacy. And it’s all about why the All Blacks have a success rate of 80 percent and the next best team is in the 60 percent. And it’s because they have a great culture and it me and it’s the most to most experienced team members will clean down the dressing room and leave it as they found it, regardless of wherever they play. So, again, that’s a great book for culture. I think Richard Khordad, to make people understand money and being financially free and just simple sort of understanding of finance, I think that’s a great book. I could keep going. I missed a great book, Just Understanding Business. And again, I love Simon Sinek and his mentality to infinite business mentality. Same in myself. It doesn’t stop. Why should it stop? Why should we finish? Nothing should finish. Everything should be infinite

[00:42:32] And do so in all of this. What you’ve been talking about, it sounds super successful. You’ve started off this journey. We mentioned in business from day one as an associate right through to having probably one of the most successful practises in the UK. And what really rings true there is you spend one and a half days there. So it really is a true business, right? It operates without you. What have been some of the darkest moments during that journey where you’ve really hit rock bottom? Can you share some of those with us? Because there must have been, even despite having all these advantages of being tuned into business from job number one, it must have been some big mistakes or some dark moments that you can share with us where it just it wasn’t quite going to fun.

[00:43:17] Yeah. First of all, I have made a lot of mistakes, and I think you speak to anybody that’s successful, they’ll say that they made a lot of mistakes and therefore I am happy to try them. And if you’re happy to try stuff, of course, you fall over. So I would say I think I probably would have made more mistakes than most, but that’s part of just giving it a go and then having that confidence. I hope it works and put my energy into that. And I would say constantly we sort of get it wrong and we’ve got to readjust it. Even the other day with one of my reception team, I sort of said we’re going to change things around. And then she came to see me and told me her point of view and I realised now I got it wrong. Absolutely, I got it wrong. But I would say my hardest days were definitely when I became a principal in a practise and I knew there was no direction, which was similar to where I wanted to take the practise. And I was being told that my style of Dental was different to theirs. And the comprehensive approach is not the right way.

[00:44:20] So I would say that that was very difficult because I was going through a period of playing cricket three or four times a week and working three times a week and then going to working five days a week, as well as being an owner, being a principle, being aligned with my partners that weren’t aligned with me. And they are great people, by the way. They’re really lovely people. It’s just they weren’t aligned with me. And I’m still here. I’m here in Henley giving this interview and I’m great friends with them. We are now a lot of water under the bridge with no recourse of what happened then, because I’ve learnt from it and often my tormentors have become my mentor. So I love the fact that it was so difficult then and I became even thirstier to become better as a dentist. So I would say they were definitely my hardest days. And also when we took over 11, when we had sort of roll the dice of Prav putting everything in and I will still go back to none of the three partners got paid for one year and only Shivani got paid the second year. And then we started drawing in the year three.

[00:45:28] So again, there were times where we had our principles in place and we weren’t drawing any money, but we were fortunate that we had other businesses where we could live from. But they were not easy days because you’ve taken over this massive seven, four, seven business in central London and you’re young and everybody’s older than you and everybody appears very established and very confident. And I haven’t even got any grey hairs. And and it was just tough. But I suppose my network at that stage, they were all entrepreneurs and they were going through the same thing. And I would say that I had a lot of solace in hanging out with friends that were going through the same as what I was at that stage, especially when we took over 11. And it was really struggling to get off the ground with this big jumbo jet. And I just think it was great having people around me going through the same stuff. So I would say they would be my darkest or hardest days. But but saying that Prav, as you know me, a very positive, they became the most important days for me to be who I am today

[00:46:36] While we’re on it. What’s been your biggest clinical mistakes and what have you learnt from those?

[00:46:43] Yeah, I think the biggest clinical mistake is to treat anybody. And actually, I’m such a big believer in treating people that you want to treat and have the same values and have come to see you. And so I’m lucky enough now. A bit more experience that often happens as it comes to recommendation, but when you start, you want to treat everybody and if I can make a big sort of shout out to people starting their careers or starting their practise, I would say just make sure you’re comfortable with everybody, Yewtree and some you might not get right. And you can sort of get through it, but don’t treat everybody because they’re going to be some people you can never, ever satisfy. Even if you did the best dentistry that you could do and you can get you know, you could get the ball out the ground six out of six and they would still not be happy. And I think preparation of having a good team

[00:47:37] Is a particular episode that you can

[00:47:42] Tell the wrong to perforate the canal, that sort of thing.

[00:47:45] No, I go back to when I think guys, we used to drink so much like it used to be a concern to these students, these White House officers. And I remember who I used on PEDs and this boy, 16 year old boy, came in for an extraction of a lower left six. And I had had a skinful the night before and I was wearing my mask and I said to my nurse, can you call the patient and sign the consent? He’s 16 from the parents. And please don’t bring the parents in because I stink of booze. And he came in and I stop giving the local on the opposite side, just put the needle in and I came out straight away, going up the wrong side, put it in the other side, gave the local and the poor kid said to me, why don’t you put it in both sovereigns? I said, sometimes as we cross over nodes. And I said, from that day, I am not. So that was the end of me boozing or having more than a couple of glasses before I work. And so that was it. I would say that that was not a good place to be. And I learnt my lesson very quickly.

[00:48:55] That lesson is kind of obvious. What the previous thing you talked about, was there a patient that you couldn’t please or you didn’t judge them? Right. We had Paul Pomerol and he said the lesson he had a massive situation with his brother, with being sued and all that. And he said the lesson you learnt from that was that even the people you really, really, really get on with could turn. So you advised that you don’t treat everyone. So he was saying sometimes you think the person is absolutely right and it could turn ugly. So did you have one of those episodes

[00:49:33] You saw the lady of 11, about 20 percent fly in to see us. And there was one time a lady had come in from Jersey and she was a lovely Indian lady. And I think I even said, I’m going to treat you like I would treat my mama. I think I said that she brought up later on and she had some concerns and we got along so well and it was orthodontics followed by four a.m. and it would seem like that was the plan. And at the end of orthodontics, she was super happy. And the Provisionals, she was super happy. And always after I was on, I see everybody for a review to check the colour, to control everything. And that’s my protocol. And I went against that protocol because I rang her and said, how is everything? She said, everything’s fine about this one. Maybe we can make that bit short and rotate it. And I said, okay. And she came back and she wasn’t she wasn’t the phone. And she signed the disclaimer after we call them, and she was happy. And in the end she went to five consults to see if it was OK.

[00:50:41] And I paid for those consults and all those all the Dental said it was absolutely superb. Yeah, she wasn’t happy. And in the end, she came back and said, actually, I’ve now had some time. I think it looks really good, but I want half my money, otherwise I’m going to kick up a stink. So what do you do? You then manage it to say actually, well, you’ve reached it and I won’t tell you what I did because I don’t think it’s relevant to the whole thing. But what it means is stick to your protocol, stick to the way you do stuff. And again, all of these are just learning lessons. You know, when you’re in it, you think, oh, God, what a helmet, why do I do that? But then you realise actually stick to your protocol, stick to the system, stick to what you do and try not to go out of that too much, because actually that’s when you produce the best clinical dentistry and the most effective.

[00:51:34] And I mean, look, you put the final videos on. You said you liked it, then you cemented it on his face. You didn’t like it. Is that what happened?

[00:51:43] Yeah, pretty pretty much. I came back for the review and then said, no, I’m not that happy with it,

[00:51:48] Because if you had followed your protocol, you still would have probably ended up in the same situation in a way.

[00:51:53] Perhaps, perhaps. But again, when I look back at myself and said, where did I go wrong? Because I. And again, you know, the sports mentality is you could try to control the bulls. That’s what happened. But then you do. I gave the money back. That’s not the right thing to do because I didn’t want the hassle. But I don’t I know you so well.

[00:52:14] And this is supposed driven person. Let’s talk about the courts. Well, it’s interesting, man. It’s interesting. Sometimes you have to buy your way out of this sort of problem, even if it’s a good idea, it’s your principles. Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Tell us about the course. But because it’s a very interesting idea, it’s a year course for purely non-clinical stuff, including some clinical as well.

[00:52:44] Yeah. And so, look, it came from lock down.

[00:52:47] And I mean, it’s got a name.

[00:52:50] Yeah, it’s called the Dental Entrepreneurial Programme. And you’ll find on a Dental Leaders dotcom elite Dental Leaders dot com. And the programme is called Dental Entrepreneurs Programme. And it’s very much for people who are interested in the non-clinical side of things, but also how to marry that up into the clinical side. And the whole of the first. It’s a module, it’s over one year. So so we’re all together. It’s only a small cohort of limited numbers. And we then go on this journey together like an MBA style. And so the first two days will be all about finding your true north, understanding what good leadership looks like, because leadership varies for everybody. It’s not the same leadership for everybody and understanding yourself. And we’re so lucky. We’ve got a Harvard Business School graduate and an educator coming to run that Hassan Khan. I mean, obviously, I’ll be sharing a lot of my stories in dentistry, but almost he is going to take care of that and say what they learn at Harvard Business School about running a business and what tips that they can give. The second module is about brand and team and culture and so on, brand, again, I’ll share with the delegates exactly what we have done at 11 and why the brand is so important rather than the individual.

[00:54:16] Obviously, you’ve got to have a brand yourself as a dentist, but the brand individual is very important. And we have the GM of Nike UK coming to tell us about how they have literally pivoted from being a consumer business into a virtual business, but also what Nyaka doing to maintain their presence as a high performer. So I’m trying to bring the elite of both in business and in sport together to allow us to all understand where we’re headed because our journeys are all different. And then the team and ship is going to be run by the Clive Woodward who won, who was the leader when England won the World Cup and how he put his whole team together and the mantra of being together and how he dealt with difficult individuals and how he put them within the team and how the team planned and how they did it all together. And it’s the DNA of a champion is his lecture.

[00:55:12] And this is what all these guys will patients

[00:55:14] Know they’re either friends or people that I now know well. So, again, I’d ask them to be involved with this and so lucky that they’re open to helping people go to the next level of the third module. It becomes a little bit more clinical and understanding how we do on new patient appointments at all, the way from the phone calls, how we answer them to treatment planning and how to change single tooth dentistry to comprehensive to Dental, which is what we do every day as dentists.

[00:55:43] So that if it is, I guess maybe from the clinical aspect, most valuable piece is that

[00:55:50] I mean I mean, it’s going to it’s so exciting because that’s when we’ve now found what you’re all about. You found it. Identify where you’re going to go. But actually the clinical side is what we connect us. And so I will share with you how we convert those single tooth dentistry patients into comprehensive how we do a new patient appointment and how important photography is. And Menasche Patel from Focus is going to come and do the whole photography side of things to me on that. And then finally, it will be the fourth module is about financial intelligence, how to understand your business, but also to create wealth. And my mantra on that is most dentists are one step away from being wealthy and it’s this financial intelligence module that’s going to help you to do it.

[00:56:38] Well, of course, so it’s eight days,

[00:56:41] It’s eight clinical days, obviously, there’s a lot of reading that goes alongside the this of Harvard Business School myself, we’ve put together during these three months times your way. But there will be meetings for the cohorts through that period on their commitments through that phase. It’s going to be held at Lord’s Cricket Ground, which is the home of cricket, which is, you know, and so that really brings it home for me as well. And if you want to know more, go to Dental, Leaders dot com. And we have sold half of the course at the moment and there’s an application form on there at the moment. But I’m sure if it’s successful, we will run it another cohort in the year to come.

[00:57:19] And just what’s the investment for that programme?

[00:57:22] It’s twelve thousand pounds for the full year.

[00:57:26] So moving forward, what’s the plan for whether you’ve grown sevenfold, six fold, six fold, you’ve grown six fold. Is there an exit strategy here? Is it now a business that just sort of looks after itself? You there are one and a half days away. Is there another practise in the pipeline?

[00:57:45] And there’s a whole chain coming. Isn’t going to go now.

[00:57:49] Look, I think it’s a very boutique practise. And the people we found that work within it, we work really well. We love creating high quality dentistry. And I get a lot of joy from my dentistry there. And so there’s no plan at the moment. We there is still space to grow. And so, as always, there will be a three month board meeting with action plans in place and we will hopefully just continue growing that

[00:58:20] The practise looks. Did you change that or did it look like that when you when you bought it?

[00:58:26] I’d love to share with you those pictures of before and somehow try and get them to you. It used to be reception. There was a there was a chair in there that had no spittoon and no sink. The lounge was blue carpet with four yellow stools. The bathroom had a baby changing area. And the ladies, it was horrific. There was one nice room at the back and upstairs was just a derelict shell where a paediatric doctor used to work.

[00:58:56] Oh, so you did all of that yourself. And so did you have an interior designer and architect? And so we had an architect.

[00:59:05] And I have to say, Shivani has been instrumental in the way that we have managed that. And so I would say the architect with Shivani, because, you know, your practise is an is an extension of you and we always wanted it to be asked that was doing that. And I would say that that is one of the whole things we say. We build trust as dentists. It’s got to go from websites to the way it looks, to the way you talk and the way you present and all your literature and everything. It’s got to be on

[00:59:33] Point because stunning building. Tell me about Shibani 11. Does she have only a clinical role or does she have a management role? And how many days is she there? And where are you the rest of the week?

[00:59:46] Yes. So Shivani is a clinical partner at eleven and she said two days a week and she comes from a background of being a hospital consultant. So she very much is in charge of the day to day the systems that are put in place and the way we run the practise from a clinical side, almost bringing that that from the hospital environment. This is how it was done, this how it should be done. These are the standards. So we all have very different roles as partners at the practise and we don’t try and overlap. I don’t try and get involved with that. Yes, I’ll have input. I’m obviously running the business marketing and I’m in charge of recruiting and actually looks for technologies and how we can become more efficient in the practise. So we all have very different roles and I think that’s symbiotic relationship is is is one of the success.

[01:00:32] What you do? The rest is on the one half days you’re there, where are you?

[01:00:35] The rest from two and a half days clinical in Henley and I have Fridays nonclinical and I try and get all my letters, all of the things that you need to run a practise. But I have a lot of people around me that help me run this. So I’m a firm believer of having the right people. You can delegate to that you can trust, which allows you to then to take stuff to the next level, because if you’re in the weeds, you really can’t then start planning for the rest of it. So having good team around you to start taking stuff off of you is a critical thing I would recommend to any leader out there as well.

[01:01:11] Good questions. I go to a lot of practises where there’s no element of performance related incentivization. Do you believe in that or.

[01:01:20] No, we have never performance driven our staff because we’re a health care business. But what what they do know is that there is a target in place at the end of each month that they are not privy to. And I believe they don’t need to know it, because if they do their role right, the practise will achieve that. And so once we achieve that, we do things that I think quite extraordinary, like we have closed down June shoes and gone in and allowed the girls to pick any shoe that they want with champagne in their shop. We Nike have given us vouchers that we can pick any shoe that the girls want if they achieve that target cocktail making evenings at a local place in Mayfair around the corner. So I believe in bringing the team together on a deeper level than a financial level is actually keeps your staff and keeps them loyal. But I believe paying good staff the right amount from the beginning. So therefore, that’s not the issue.

[01:02:26] If I was an associate and I want to be ambitious, I want to work in the West and I want to maybe work at your place. Would you look for would you look for an associates? You look more for the attitude than for the skills, because I’ve talked to a lot of associates and they go, well, I’ve been on this course. I’ve been on that course. Of course. Then I talk to you cats, the owners of these big private places. And a lot of times you guys aren’t looking for that. You’re looking for the patient management more than the clinical.

[01:02:55] Yeah. I mean, we’ve never gone to market for any of the associates. They’ve all been referral recommendation to date. Yeah. So that for me is a really important part of bringing culture in, because then they’ve got they’ve got I’ve just sort of said this is how we work, this is the way we want stuff. And then I totally get it. I want to be on board. And so when you set a culture from the beginning, people then will then align to that. But I think the big thing that I look for is people are a bit like myself, absolutely committed to excellence in clinical dentistry. And so they’re always self improving the keeping going. They’re keeping learning. And I think more than ever, the quality of their photography and perhaps an Instagram account allows me to see how good they are. It’s not that Instagram is important, because if they showed me a good quality photographs of what they do, I can understand that that’s the type of person I want. So I would say clinical photography and good records and a good story book of who you are as well as well presented and the ability to be able to educate patients and speak to them and communicate with them and and engage with them. All of that is what I would be looking for. And if you’re not able to engage or be able to be with anybody like that, you’ve got to learn how to go and understand how to put yourself on, not Dental course on how to how to read course.

[01:04:16] But it’s interesting, you know, I mean, look, I don’t really practise Prav you do that. If two associates present and one has fifty thousand followers and the other doesn’t, you’re going to go for the one with fifty thousand followers on you. Why? Because he’s going to bring in patients

[01:04:32] If that’s what you want. Patients. Yeah. Or the right type of patients. Right.

[01:04:37] Do you. Well do you think so.

[01:04:41] Yeah. I think you want both of those actually I think are still on the fence that you want the right type of quality patients, you want a lot of them. But I think somebody that could that’s going to do the wrong type of dentistry is going to ruin your brand as well. At the same time, you want to feel that trust and perhaps a few meetings and getting them to spend time with you or everybody will spend the day with me before they would start anyway. So again, they know the way the practise works, that it should be as much they choose you as you choose then.

[01:05:10] Yeah, but I could imagine, for instance, if you have one or two years out of university or even five or six years out of university, coming to work at yours is one of those things that a lot of people would like to do. I mean, it’s a great position, I guess I’m saying that right. But what I need to do, it’s interesting. You know, I’d I’d say to a young guy, you know, learn Instagram and learn digital marketing before doing that. MSE Yeah. Because in our world there’s loads of people with messages. Yeah. That’s not the thing that’s going to actually put you above. It’s an interesting world we live in. I mean, I find it amazing that I’m even saying this, but things are moving quickly now. The real

[01:05:51] Issue for sure, I mean, Prav you made the point earlier that it’s that all roundedness that you want,

[01:05:56] Right.

[01:05:57] Erm actually I think there’s some practise will be dying for that and there’ll be other principles that will stay clear of that. And so that would be definitely driven by the principle and the way that that practise was run. Mm.

[01:06:11] Who does the firing. Does that.

[01:06:13] You me talk to me about that night because I do it, it never gets easier and I have that conversation with myself probably ten, fifteen times, probably more. The words I’m going to say how I’m going to do it. My heart rate’s pounding and then you just get it out of your system and it’s like a massive weight off your shoulders. But you just talk us through that, the whole process of fine and maybe an experience where you’ve had. To do it, and it’s been a little bit easier.

[01:06:39] Yeah, I’m just really open on this. It’s not quite working. These are the reasons you’re a great person. If they are, and I wish you all the best, that’s it.

[01:06:49] And it is your approach to it in the build up of it. Is it totally unemotional, just facts driven. And this is what it is. Or just you get

[01:06:59] A little bit if you got to when you know you’re I mean, you guys know me, but it’s the businesses first. It’s not me. So therefore, for the business, this is the right thing to do and therefore it’s not difficult. Yeah. And also, I’ll give you one example. We had four staff, 11 this, this. And I say this was this was D-Day for us. And I went in I fired three on one day and we had one staff because the culture that was being created was wrong. And we’re going to rebuild from here. So don’t be frightened to do that, because if the culture is wrong and somebody being the bad, get rid of them soon. I mean, I generally I would say now with experience, I would get rid of them sooner rather than later. So therefore it doesn’t become difficult.

[01:07:45] And thus I like I like that because on the one side, you’re coming across all soft and touchy feely, but on the other side, you know, you’re strong on the things you believe in. You’re strong for doing it. It’s been lovely having you know, we’re pushed for time now to Prav Joona.

[01:08:07] Yeah. Yeah. So, Semir, imagine it’s your last day on the planet and you’ve got your loved ones around you and you’ve got you’ve got to leave them with three pieces of life wisdom or they’d be.

[01:08:26] Three pieces of life wisdom have infinite spirit, don’t think it’s ever going to end. Just keep going, keep going and have that infinite spirit, I think treat life like a game. And actually, it becomes really fun. Everything is like a small game. And you either win some, you lose some. And it’s OK. Don’t be hard on yourself. Worked hard enough out there. So don’t be hard on yourself and love and not hate, because actually, you know, that’s what’s going to come back to you. And if you’re somebody that enjoys love, then love back and it will come back to you.

[01:09:03] Worked love game for you guys.

[01:09:07] And how would you like to remember you spoke about legacy? What would you like your legacy to be? Samir was finished the sentence.

[01:09:18] Semir was very keen to help and was there when I needed him. I believe there’s lots of friendships out there, but I also know that we all go through ups and downs and great friends turn up when you need them the most, not when they’re superficial.

[01:09:37] So true. And if you had a month left, what would you do with your time? Play loads of cricket.

[01:09:43] Now I’m done playing cricket off now, so I’d probably be playing golf. But I would say with this infinite spirit, I would still I love travelling. I would continue to travel and go to somewhere where I hadn’t seen and explore that area and find a coffee shop and write about that in that area.

[01:10:04] Where’s your favourite place that you have been?

[01:10:07] I would say Australia is very close to my heart with with the stuff I did, but we were very fortunate. We got away before lockdown at Christmas and we probably had our best family holiday in Antigua just this Christmas. Yeah. And the girls are growing up and we would never go away for too long. Obviously, the business and the rest of it and Foreston said we’re going to lock down. So our original 10 day holiday turned into three and a half weeks out there. And that was a wonderful break and a wonderful time with the family with no agenda because we knew very little was happening when we came back.

[01:10:42] I love that, I love that. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much on the show.

[01:10:50] Thanks, guys. Appreciate you having me on

[01:10:53] The course at Lord’s, you know, our offices around the corner. So they pop in and say, hey, I would love that. Thank you so much, but thank you. Well, yes,

[01:11:07] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders history. Your house, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

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