Month: July 2021

[00:00:00] This is Dental Leaders podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders and dentists, treat your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:17] It’s my pleasure to introduce the new episode of the Dental Leaders Bulletin in time for the PTA elections. What is the media pick? Why should you be interested in it and who’s standing? Well, there’s nine candidates today I thought would be useful and a bit different to get two of the younger candidates who are deciding to throw that in the ring, I guess, to provide an alternative to to what we’ve seen so far. I’ll let them speak for themselves on that subject. We’ve got Jemmy Pallay, who actually has been on our podcast before you wet fingered. You heard his story with the new season and many practises, mixed practises that he’s running, as well as the LDC work that he’s done. And we’ve had a woman who’s an associate and again, refreshing to have an associate lady who’s so involved politically. Let’s start with this. Do you want to just introduce yourself to tell us how you got here, OK?

[00:01:29] Oh, it’s quite a convoluted story. And so practise wise, I started off I did my job search, went on to get an NHS associate job, as most of us do, and didn’t really like it because it was kind of hectic and not particularly rewarding and very treadmill. So within a year, I decided to broaden my horizons. I went and got a job working a couple of days a week and community a couple of days a week and mixed private and NHS practise and then ended up working in the prison service for a year, which was brilliant. My favourite job ever working for the out of hours as well. So I just did lots of different jobs for a few years just to find out what I actually enjoyed doing and then settled working as a predominantly NHS associate and good practise really enjoyed. It was a training practise, so I applied to be an FDA trainer, did that for a couple of years and then one of our local TPD jobs came up. So I did that, which I love. That was such a brilliant job working with new graduates all the time. I did that for about six years, ended up doing some work with the PLB Abe Fortas Foundation, but experience stuff as well for the local area in the last year or so of that job and left out a couple of years ago. And now I’m just working in private practise and also doing some Botox clinics, a physiotherapy practise, just to occasionally work somewhere where I’m a dentist, which is really quite nice.

[00:03:02] So that’s my kind of personal clinical background. But while I was working in H-E, so first as a trainer and then as a TPD, these jobs kind of snowballed a little bit. So you end up going to the LDC because you kind of have to because they need to know what’s going on with H.E. and then you end up being sucked into the LDN. And because the big you had multiple Elden’s, I ended up as LDC chair. I then got involved with the BDA stuff because it’s always the same people that do everything. So we ended up chairing and being the treasurer for the Suffolk section of the BDI, the treasurer for the local branch branch president a couple of years ago. And now I’m treasurer and secretary for Branch. And these things just sort of go hand in hand and national media stuff. I was elected for GDP six point six six years ago or something like that, and did a TransAm as a GDP representative, the east of England. And that was really, really interesting. And I got to know what happened at the Beadie. I was going down to the head office where I could see the G20 meetings, meeting people, talking to people, finding out what they were doing. I mean, it’s just fascinating and it just gets you out with your day job. So, yeah, I got very sucked into it. End of that triennium. I stood to be the English Council representative for the east of England and was elected and then subsequently elected as chair of that committee, which is the position I’ve held for the last now three and a half years would normally be three years.

[00:04:42] But because I’ve covered all the elections for pushbacks, I don’t much like three and a half years, which involved a year is being the UK council chair. And for those that were unfamiliar with the structure of the British Dental Association, you’ve got the board of directors, the PAC, what the current election is for 15 seats. And those people run the business, we then have the cross committees and things like general practise, community community services, hospitals, armed forces, and they deal with the issues specific to those crafts under the umbrella of PTA. And then we have the country councils. And what they do is they basically try and feed into the media to make sure the media are doing the right things for the members. So we sort of hold the board of directors to account with regard to what they’re doing with their business day in, day out to make sure that it’s meeting the needs of the membership. So that’s that’s the job of the last three and a half years. And because I work quite a lot in head office and I work quite a lot with the pack and I kind of I know what it’s about and it really interests me. I thought, yeah, we’ll go for it. We’ll put our hat in the ring

[00:05:51] Before I come to Jemmy. What time frame between starting the first thing in politics and now how long is that?

[00:05:59] I think so. I graduated. So it looks like I’m really, really grateful for that. But we just some of the talking and I so I graduated in 2006, so it’s 15 years since I graduated. And I think I first started going to things like ABC meetings I’m getting involved with actually about 10 years ago. So and it started off quite gradually know just attending the board meeting. As I say, these things tend to snowball, especially if you live in rural areas where we find it really difficult to recruit somebody to come and do a job at the LDC. No one wants to hold a chequebook. So if you’re willing to get involved in any way, you sort of end up getting sucked into it and just being given more and more responsibility. Because, you know, if you’re interested, I mean, it’s interesting. It’s not lumbered with jobs that you don’t want to do. It is interesting stuff. It’s just finding people that have the capacity to deal with that. And I think in our profession, there are lots of people who are really, really worn out with everything they’re doing. And the thought of asking them to go to a meeting at the end of an evening of full clinic day and talk about dentistry even more, that that can be quite an ask. Well, it’s

[00:07:11] It’s really cool that energises you. I like that. Jemmy, how about you give us give us a summary.

[00:07:18] Well, thanks for having me on Payman. And you know about me anyway and did a podcast in the past. So I’m not going to rehash old old footage I qualified in 2004. So again, I’m no spring chicken either to be honest. But yeah, basically what more in general practise I would say associate FDA trainer when it was when it was called after trying to eat after the beep trainer. But you know, after training hours. Yes. So did that it take a bit more into the TPD role, much like kind of for a period of time I started chairing the LDC in Nottingham in about 2016. And then from there sort of I’ve done various positions at quite rightly said, you know, you get sucked into various roles. So, you know, quite a rich job chairing the LDC. Quite, quite a lot to do. Also worked and it NHS England again doing Pardeep. So performace. This decision panel now disciplines specific practitioner for NHS England. So, you know, a lot of pastoral care, a lot of working with young dentists, lots of kind of developing dentists and and working with them fitness wise. I’m clinical director of the Group of Practises Small Group with my wife.

[00:08:40] So kind of embedded in that sort of GDP world, you know, like family deal with about probably about 30 or so associates working with us. And so, you know, really kind of well aware of all the foibles and the issues that they’re having on the day to day basis. Quite, quite obviously, you know, I can see first hand the impact of the decisions that trickle down from that from the BDA on the sort of boots on the ground really not so embedded in the b’day. I think my motivation is to really expand a lot of the regional work I’ve been doing on more of a national platform. I think I’m used to dealing with multiple work streams and sort of, you know, lots of lots of eggs in lots of baskets and, you know, having to juggle all those different ideas and organise time and et cetera, et cetera. And I think that that sort of skill set, I feel that I could extrapolate that to on a more of a national platform, hopefully for the betterment of my fellow colleagues, various places. I suppose in a nutshell,

[00:09:47] Do you guys, you know, I guess maybe how do you have a lot of experience of this working with the different committees? But you’ve got an idea, let’s say. And then and then you’ve got. Navigating that massive organisation and trying to get that idea through that organisation, you know, what are the chances, let’s say Jemmy here had a fantastic idea with the chances of getting that idea onto a strategy of the media, even if he did get elected. How do you know how to navigate that system or.

[00:10:25] I mean, to be honest, if if he were elected as one of the 15 board members of the media pack and he had a good idea that he wanted to bring three and the media were capable of doing, I think this is the thing that we’ve really got to remember with the limitations of this job. This is what the media can do. And sometimes it gets confused with what we can do with their negotiations with the Department of Health about the contract or the work that happens with the CDO, about meetings or if it’s an idea that is something about the way the PDA functions as an organisation to support members from one of the board of directors comes up with the idea and brings it up at a board meeting. Absolutely. If it’s a good idea and everybody thinks it’s a good idea, crackle with it. You know, they are the people that set the strategy. It’s not sensible and it’s helpful. I mean, obviously, it’s a weird idea when the rest scratching their heads and going, well, that’s not really going to work, then it is going to get anywhere. But, you know, if it’s within the remit of what they can achieve as an organisation, then absolutely, you know, the world is you and you are one of the biggest voices in quite a small room at that point when you’re part of the pack.

[00:11:42] So, you know, if you can get your other pack members on board with your idea when it makes business sense, I mean, that’s the key. The critical thing. You have a responsibility for the media as a board member. You are running a business. You cannot do something that is going to put the business at risk of failure. You have to make sure that it’s financially viable. So as long as your ideas aren’t completely wacky and actually they would benefit the organisation, then having people coming onto the pack with ideas of how to change things for the future is what I feel really needs right now. Somebody driving forward. I think it’s very easy to get into a bit of a rut with the way things have been done a certain way, like things a certain way. And, you know, these are real primary membership categories that we need to be and all this sort of stuff. But, you know, it could do that, but it could do the bit of shaking up. I think it could be going to watch this and think about.

[00:12:48] Jemmy Jemmy with you.

[00:12:53] Yeah, I would agree with you. I think that, you know, injecting a little bit of, you know, indisciplined to the actual committees. Definitely, you know, I’ve been going to LDC conferences and, you know, being in multiple committees over many years. And I think that, you know, you’re right, you can gain you can get, you know, somehow handle it with a passion. You know, at the end of the day, regardless of who gets that vote today, I think if you can vote some end that’s got that, you know, sort of drive to, you know, shake the tree a little bit, see what falls, I think that’s probably a very sensible move, you know. Well, you know, existing infrastructure and, you know, only repairing the ship a slight direction here or there is probably not as exciting, in my opinion.

[00:13:41] Well, then, OK, let’s talk. What are the what are the why is this particular election an important one? I mean, well, it goes without saying we’ve got all the things that have happened over the last 18 months. But what are the key issues that you guys would like to discuss and, you know, ideas that you want to bring to those issues? Jemmy.

[00:14:02] But I’m not going to use the word unprecedented again. Yeah, this is again, you know, they basically basically the you know, I can’t remember everyday life. I think on a tipping point here, I feel that we’re on a tipping point. You know, when you go into forums, when you speak to young Dentists’, you know, when you speak to even the other end of the spectrum, they’re kind of planning their retirements a little sooner than what they thought. You know, it’s a b’day basically saying that 28 percent of registrants haven’t gone back on the GDC. I would say the tipping point, a huge tipping point. And I think that steadying the ship at this particular period is going to be probably have a knock on effect for years and years to come. I’ve certainly not seen anything like this before. And I think that the whole I think industry is going to look completely different in the next four to five years. I can already see huge changes happening. And, you know, there are lots of push and pull factors going on in the background. And it’s almost like the whole thing is coalescing and morphing at the moment. And I think that, you know, this is that’s why I think it’s important. I think it’s probably the most important one I’ve seen so far.

[00:15:09] Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s inevitable. You know, it’s not just dentistry. The society has changed the expectations of a population with regard to their safety, the everyday behaviours that work, life balance, everything has fundamentally changed. And I think we need to be respectful of what we need to be responsive to that one thing that really and this isn’t a new issue. This is always kind of got to me a bit over 80 percent of registered dentists or associates. That is not the reflected characteristic on the board of the BDA directors by a very significant margin. So I worry, looking at the media pack, that they’re safe members who pay the bills, who pay for the staff, who pay for everything, all the designers, the people that are running the business, the practise owners. And there’s a potential for it to be. And I mean, I am privy to the workings of the media in that I see it from the roles that I have within it. And I know that they’re trying not to be, but I think we need significantly greater associate focussed membership support because I can see increasing I mean, that’s been a huge increase in the number of people that are setting up squats. And I think that’s a really interesting development for dentistry. I’m really interested to see what happens without people leaving a licenced practise left, right and centre and either going just in private practise or setting up. We are seeing a real change in it. But also one thing that we’re definitely going to continue to see is the high level of associates, nonpracticing individuals who have no intention of owning a practise.

[00:17:01] You know, it’s not that we’re talking about young people at the beginning of their careers. There are plenty of people like myself. You don’t want to own a practise who want to develop other skills, who want to invest in themselves as individuals, who don’t want the responsibilities of running. A day to day business premises, and those people equally need support and they have had, I think, a pretty tough time in the last 18 months. I think there’s a lot of them questioning whether or not the jobs that they’re in are right for them, but they feel quite stuck. And I feel that as a union and as a as a professional body to be, they could be doing a lot more to help those individuals make those decisions, be it negotiating better contracts as an associate or setting up a school practise or going into a partnership or whatever they want to do with their careers. But I worry that because of the diversity with regard to profession or professional status, with regard to job role on the pay is so off kilter before we even get involved in personal characteristics like gender and ethnicity and everything else. That’s my major concern, really, the change in the last particularly the last 20 years. I said, you know, we’ve seen it a seismic shift and I don’t think it’s going to completely turn around. I think we need to be focussing more on these issues.

[00:18:23] Well, I mean, you’re right. Is play a massive, you know, percentage role in in the workforce. But, you know you know how that thing where we say, you know, look after dentists and dentists will look after patients, you know, that that idea. So are we now seeing that looking after US principles doesn’t mean that you’re going to be looking after associates. And I know it’s a it’s a divisive question because, you know, we like to sort of pit principals against associates, private against the NHS or whatever. But Jemmy, sitting here with 30 associates. Yeah. You know, what’s good for his associates is good for him and vice versa, because they’ve got multiple relationships outside of. I know there’s been abuse. Yeah, I know that we all that we all heard those stories and we’re going to have some of those people on, you know, then, you know, of course, that’s an issue. But Jemmy, is there a more pressing issue, in your opinion?

[00:19:24] Well, that is a very pressing issue. I mean, there was obviously this associate principal, you know, widening of the chasm, shall we say, between between the two parties over the covid period. But fundamentally, that was because everything was written so quickly. And when it was, you know, when when this wording and, you know, and you could arguably say it was a b’day responsibility to a certain extent. But some of the wording when challenged legally was difficult to actually, you know, you know, to to, you know, utilise or interpret that in a very sort of fair way between the two parties. And I think that was part of the issue. You know, in that role, the hopefully going forward, there’ll be a bit more to do, a bit more time and a bit more due diligence on that sort of wording. You know, hopefully they can come up with a solution that’s beneficial and that’s better for anyone. As Payman said, what’s good for an associates, good principal and vice versa? I strongly believe that. I think, you know, ultimately we have to work together in that respect. I mean, there are other pressing issues. I mean, the big issue is PPA. And, you know, what’s going to be the fallout ultimately, you know, we know something has to stick after the seismic events.

[00:20:39] It always does. You know, mad cow disease, whatever, prions in something have to stick. You know, we had companies already tying themselves up for single use, you know, high speed and et cetera, et cetera. They were making the packaging even before we knew anything about it. You know, lots of things go on in the background and, you know, some bits stuck in some bits didn’t say postdebate. You know, some parts will stick. So let’s hope the ventilation is actually beneficial. I’ve got some window surgery and I’m quite like the ventilation systems. They work quite well. It’s a much a pressure experience for everyone. But I don’t want my paper to stick for another day if I can help, you know. You know, that’s basically getting people down, getting it. I mean, that’s probably part of the reason why this 28 per cent of people are leaving the register because they’re stuck in these feet. You know, dentistry is a communicative profession. You’re basically communicating with people. That’s a different thing. You would get in a complaint and not most of the time. And actually, if you stuck behind at 53, especially if the evidence base is not that strong, it’s more of an insurance based issue or a kind of, you know, indemnity based issue rather than, you know, you’re not following the science.

[00:21:43] Basically following we’re running scared of the lawyers and the insurance. You know, that’s always the case, isn’t it? And I think that’s what’s. Yeah. So I’d say that’s probably a pressing issue. Boots on the ground type issue. I certainly want him to associate him. We want to get out. Now, that time is one thing that, you know, this is really sort of fucking us down. So I think there’s some immediate sort of, you know, pressing issue that need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. And then obviously some more medium term issues like, for example, societ the FSA issue and also. You know, you touched on the private nature issue as well. I mean, let’s face it, the private sector is going to grow and grow. As we can see, it may be a bubble. It may be just because the energy demand is so low. You know, I know a lot of people are setting up spot practises and we hear that a lot of daily fees and we speak to other practitioners as well. But, you know, is it the right time? Who knows, really? You know, is it just a bubble? Would you normally take a business decision in such an uncertain period? You know? This is all questions that would, you know, are worth exploring, definitely worth the media having some input on that and maybe giving a fair and balanced viewpoint on what people are making these quite sort big decisions in their lives and things like that.

[00:22:54] So definitely worth inputting there. But that sort of balance between private and I think will change fundamentally. I think, you know, the attitude, the aptitude to do need to undergo NHS care to work in the NHS. I mean, I’m a big fan of the NHS. I favourite you know, I worked in the NHS, were privately, you know, been around the block, really. And I think that, you know, they’ve got to be an NHS system. I fundamentally believe whether it should look like it does. Now, that’s the question, isn’t it? And I think, you know, it will all be kind of touched on. It’s all about the budget, isn’t it? All about the money that’s available. It’s all about how they want to spend it and what the priorities are. But I think that’s also a huge sort of medium to long term issue that needs to be addressed, the nature of the NHS contract, the balance between private and NHS and also how the associates and the principles fit into that.

[00:23:47] I mean, I have to absolutely. I think what’s going on at the moment with the is a response to cultivate is he’s going to have a huge impact on what happens long term with conjunctural effectively what we’ve seen over the last 18 months is the NHS becoming an urgent cancer. It’s the remit of the NHS has been enormously reducing the majority of areas to the majority of patients to something that deals with basic, urgent Dental need and not an exhaustive service that covers the whole population. Not that it ever really managed to achieve that despite its best intentions. So we are now in a really good position to be able to come back and say, look, if we need more money to be able to provide a better service to more people, there is absolutely no doubt about that. And it is really put the squeeze on the funding that’s available to be able to provide that care. And there’s no part of the country that has escaped that at all. So that’s utterly crucial that this is really pushed through at this point.

[00:24:58] Sorry to interrupt more money. I mean, do we seriously believe that more money is going to come into dentistry?

[00:25:04] No, I mean, I, I, I have always been of the opinion that we should have a core NHS service that is funded sufficiently to provide basic service for everyone. As we all know, the government currently only provide sufficient contracting needs to cover just over 50 percent of the population. So even if everybody wanted a Dental something simple, that’s just not the funding. That one thing that’s always really upset me is the fact that we would go to these LDN meetings. We’re talking about commissioning for advanced services and our millions are getting all geared up and we’re doing X, Y and Z to improve the services for things like, you know, especially since downticks. Yeah, 40 miles away, we’ve got patients queuing up outside an access centre, you can’t get a tooth taken out. Not to me. You know, we’ve got a finite pot of money. You need to be careful with how you spend it. Yes, we all want to live in a world where we can commission specialist services for everybody, regardless of their financial position. But until we’ve addressed the fact that we’ve got people walking around with swollen faces, it can’t have their teeth taken out because the access isn’t available.

[00:26:26] We’ve got a fundamental problem with our Dental contract. So I, I, you know, I think we need to readdress it. I think we need to fundamentally shake it up. I think we maybe need to stop worrying about some of the more advanced services and focus on the basic care of the people in our society who don’t have the option. You know, and yeah, there’s been a boom in private Prav, but that’s what people that have an option. There are plenty of places in the country where we don’t have and I, I think it’s I think we need a real shake down of the entire system, which is a controversial view, because I know there are plenty of people out there that will say to me that you absolutely should be able to have your office having retreated the NHS, although I think, well, patients should have an old D.C. meeting about it. And she felt very strongly about it to me.

[00:27:19] If you were the king of the NHS, what would you do? What you know, the budget let’s imagine the budget isn’t increasing. Is that two and a half percent of health care budget or whatever it is, how would you allocate it?

[00:27:33] Well, the king of the NHS and I care. I’m okay. The health secretary. I think you know the OK, so I agree with that. I think that I’m not I know people say I mean, I don’t think I agree with, of course, over so much. I think that it just has to be a defined offer. At the moment. All the risk is on the shoulders of the associates and involvement in the service. So if you’re a get, you have to be the gatekeeper at this present time and all the rest of you all. And and I think that is not and that’s not a favourable position if a tenable position, you know, the government likes to shift because the risk is on you and not them. And, you know, they continue and everything takes over. But but it got to be an NHS offer. It’s something that’s been, you know, a defined NHS. But this is what you can have on the NHS and this is what you can’t I don’t think I would go so much into whether I think it should be core or advanced, but really, it should be this is what you can have and this is what you call them at the moment. It’s a great it’s just a grey area.

[00:28:39] And that really does need to be addressed in have a future commissioning occurs. I think once you’ve addressed that and obviously we’re clever, people will work around whatever whatever is on the table. I agree that, you know, we know that the Dental budget is only suitable for of population. You know, in the last LDC conference, you know, sorry. And he was pressed on that, you know, and she didn’t answer the question, quite frankly, because, you know, it’s a difficult thing to admit that really their only budget in the country is not politically palatable. You know, that’s our position, but that’s what’s going on. So, yeah, I possibly a bit less on everybody, but I don’t know. You know, you have to be clever bit of research. It needs to be done to work out what’s most suitable for people. You know, with that with that part, essentially, I think that, you know, part of the issue with what Hannah said in terms of, you know, there’s lots of people with fat faces and and giving up for, you know, urgent dental care. And we see that it’s urgent that we run UDC. But one of the major issues is workforce, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve got to find the associates that want to do that work.

[00:29:49] Quite frankly, everybody wants to just put biotoxins in people’s teeth and that’s what they aspire to. They don’t want to sit there and do the, you know, take people’s teeth out, you know, the people that run around the block. I think that’s a problem. I think that’s not an ideal situation to be in. But, you know, there’s a lot of people with, you know, a vested interest, the kind of a cohort of new graduates are coming through. And that’s what they want to do, is to beautify teeth and beautify the population, you know, and yeah, there will be a finite amount of work available. Yes. But there are if there’s a fundamental need for, you know, for patients to be seen and people that are disadvantaged, we’ve got to be responsible. And actually, you know, also explain that the need for population have to. And that should be something that people aspire to also, because I think that, you know, if you present it in the right way, there will be people that will aspire to that sort of thing and to really make that difference. So the media should be pushing that as well. You know, make the counternarrative to some of that, some of the ideas

[00:30:48] You talked you talked about risk there. And, you know, we’ve got. What just happened with the court case, that vicarious liability with the associates, how does that make you feel as a principal to me? And how does it make you feel as an associate, Hanna? Because on the face of it, you might think, well, that’s great. I’m no longer responsible. You know, all the blame with the principal. But as someone someone who was I was an associate myself for a few years. The last thing I wanted was my principal sticking his nose into my treatment plans and hassling me about the clinical side. So I expect that would increase if the principal felt like they had the legal weight of the world on their shoulders. How do you feel?

[00:31:34] Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think I can completely see why the vicarious liability element of indemnity is increasingly important. The case we’ve had, particularly since the Brexit, we’ve had quite a lot of overseas dentists leave the UK. Now, I have to say, if I left the UK and was signing it up in Argentina, I would not be answering any letters from the Dental partnership. And so I have say, you know, if I don’t eat or, you know, anything else has happened and I just wasn’t responding, I think it is important the patients do have somewhere that they can still go. And I think having a vicarious liability element to indemnity is increasing. But, you know, it’s only recently this has become apparent. This is going to be a thing. And I think it is important if you were practising that you have that because otherwise you can be stung for some hefty payout. And it’s on you is a practise that, you know, not through your indemnity. So absolutely. I mean, the bidet included a standard when they launch their indemnity products, they included that standard. And at the time I thought, you know, you could do it as a bolt of I think now everybody’s going to be doing the same thing. And that is, you know, it’s just part of the professional environment that we work in. You know, if you’re also associate disabilities, you need as a practise owner a way of managing that situation as an associate. I have no intention of leaving the country. I have no intention of stopping working as a dentist. So I’m still going to need my my indemnity. My indemnity is going to rebuild on as much as it ever was because I cannot foresee a situation unless I did die that my previous practise owner would be asked to fight that battle for me.

[00:33:28] I just can’t foresee it. So as a UK living, no intention of ever leaving associate, it’s made no difference to the way that I view my own indemnity. As you quite rightly pointed out, you could make every difference to the way that I actually work in practise day to day if I have principals who are concerned about the vicarious liability aspect. One thing I love about my job is that I have complete political freedom. I can turn to what I can do my job. I can see the patients that I want to see, the way that I want to see them, sort of the patients I want to see, the patients that want to see me. I treat them the way that I want to treat them. We develop that relationship. We do what’s best for them and me is a professional relationship going forward. And that’s why they see me, is because they like me and they like the way that I do my job. And I feel like that would be seriously compromised if everything that I did was justified all the time. And if that was the way that it became, then actually I probably wouldn’t have any option other than to set myself up. So either to go into a partnership or to start a school to do whatever I needed to do, because I can’t I mean, I am not good at being an employee or an opinionated individual, so I think I’d struggle with it. Having been autonomous for so long, I don’t think I would. I don’t think it would sit well with me.

[00:35:00] Jemmy. Jemmy, how does it make you feel? Thirty associates. Now you have to worry about each of them.

[00:35:05] Yeah. I mean, obviously it can be you know, this case is a very interesting one. I think some of the more cynical, probably a little bit, to be honest. But it was just testing a position, wasn’t it, to see what the outcome would be, much like this associate principal malarky that’s gone on over covid. You know, the fact of the matter is it’s poorly written. And when it was scrutinised, it was torn apart and they couldn’t go any further with it. And this is a test case that they put the wording in the tested that b’day contract. And, you know, some and some of the outcome has been quite damning on that on that particular contract set up. So so. So, yeah, it is concerning. I think that we have an idea we Payman why don’t we give Crown indemnity to NHS practitioners? If you want people to stay in the NHS, if you want to incentivise NHS to work to be done, if you want these cases to be seen, why not give associates and principals Crown Indemnity much like their GP colleagues, so that we can be treating the faces and the other part of the week they could be doing all the beautification, you know, give them some incentive to stay in the NHS? It is a no brainer in my mind. So so, you know, for something, you know, that should be what Dental NHS Dental should strive for. And then if should have a top up privately owned private practise, most of the and most of it by a GP background indemnity.

[00:36:22] They do need to top it off. Quite frankly, it’s not sufficient for most of the work that they do. But why not have the same support? Why not push it out? I think I would feel strongly about that. The other thing is the outcome of this is not the vicarious liability issue because we cannot ensure our selves about this. I think what I think when needed to sort of employ stated the NHMRC taken up the final word on this. If the outcome from the HMRC, it doesn’t make a difference whether it be dental or partnership, have found this waiting to be flawed or etc, etc. and then we all have to suddenly high koppa indemnity in order to cover all sorts of like areas. Ultimately, HMRC are going to determine where their associates are self-employed or employed and that will be the biggest concern for both parties, because then you’re going to have to rewrite the rulebook, you know, between principles and associates. If you think that the covid, you know, widening of the gap, you know, you ain’t seen nothing yet. If everyone starts to have to become employed, it’s fundamentally going to shift. And so, you know, that said, you know, I said, yeah, we’re we’re at a crossroads. You know, lots of things are coming together. I think, you know, it will be interesting to see what comes out the other end. Yeah.

[00:37:32] Can I just I think I absolutely 100 percent agree with the Crown indemnity for the NHS work, and I think it was thrown out in the past. They looked across the border into the GPS and they decided it was too complicated because GP’s were quite separate. NHS and private work that they do, they tend to run an NHS clinic or private clinic. And obviously with dentists, it’s more complicated than that. But I think there was to be honest, I feel like it’s a bit of a copout. It’s too complicated. So we’re not going to bother. And I think absolutely, if we’re doing particularly things like access, we should have Crown indemnity for that. You know, I’ve known people that have been dragged to the GDC because they took a cheap for a patient with a massive face, really neglected dentition, didn’t talk to them about the option of an implant before they took the teeth out as an emergency appointment and then got drawn to the GDC for not informing the patient that an implant could cost that much. You know, we need somebody to to provide that to to give a little bit of support to people so they can quite comfortably go in. And you know what? These guys were great. I’m going to do with this coming back to the whole beach vacation thing. As I said at the beginning, the favourite job I’ve ever had ever was working in the prison. And all I did there all day was twenty four. It was a great job,

[00:38:56] Also good about it.

[00:38:57] And I was helping people who were in genuine agony. You know, prisons are a horrible place to be. You get shipped from place to place to place. And the waiting list is so long for any medical care that you’re just about the top of the list and then they’ll leave you with no notice and then you go back to the bottom of the list. So the people that I was seeing have been in agony for months, years, really neglected dentition. Most people that I saw had drug, alcohol, mental health. Really, really severe problems. And it was as simple as taking the teeth out and then they were not in pain for the first time in two minutes, and that’s a brilliant job. I was working in Clwyd through community at the time, so I had the support of an organisation. You know, it worked well. And because it was the prison, there was a danger money. So I had a slightly inflated pay for the day that I gave. I was a little bit nervous the first few days, but you got used to it. So it was well paid. I was well supported and I was doing something that I genuinely thought it was valuable to a population of people who were genuinely grateful for the help that I was boarding.

[00:40:12] And I would do not all day, every day, rather than put Botox in people, if it were appropriate, even didn’t support it. And that’s the problem. I look at it now, you know, it’s more than 10 years since I did that job. I can guarantee to any prison job going at the moment is on less money with less support than it was when I was doing it. And therefore, it’s you know, it’s not peeling is not going to be drawing in those new graduates. I went in as quite an early dentist. I’ve probably only been working for about two, three years. I’m good at taking teeth out. And the reason I’m taking teeth out is because I spent 18 months working in a prison and there’s no one to help you. And if you refer them to the surgery, the waiting list is six months. So you pretty much figure out how to get it out. I learnt so much from that job, but it comes down to having a job that is appropriately supported and appropriately funded so that people can really just get on with.

[00:41:16] Yeah, I mean, it’s what you will be outside of the Dental, what was your your feeling on prisons overall? I mean, give me that’s a big question. Yeah, but can you give me 10 seconds on it?

[00:41:30] Since I was really nervous about going in first time, to be honest, they were really, really short staffed and they kind of asked me what I know, but I was OK. So I probably went in when I was about twenty five and I, you know, classic pretty Frenchwomen, pretty privileged white girls with nice, nice home and nice, you know, well brought up and didn’t really know what I’m going to meet in that. I was a bit, you know, very, very out of my comfort zone. And the thing that fundamentally struck me is that the majority of the people that have been that are really, really young. And they’re basically just kids that are caught up in stuff that we should never be grew up in and we’d see their rap sheet. So if you were firing somebody out of the hospital, when they’d go off to the hospital, they’d have all of their information, their medical information, all of that criminal information, and goes with the guards that are going with them to the hospital appointment. And you’d skim through it. And you’ve got these guys are in there who are 19 years old and they’re from a rough bit of London. They’ve been in a gang. Their rap sheet is carrying a weapon, carrying drugs, driving without insurance, driving under the influence of drugs, you know, driving the age of 15. Well, if you’re 14, 15 years old and everybody, you know, carries a weapon, pretty much everybody takes drugs.

[00:42:55] Nobody has insurance. Everybody drinks and drives and you get caught doing all the right things, which is completely normal for you. How are you not going to get in trouble? So it really opened my eyes to the absolute disparity in in our society. You know, we have gulfs between different communities in this country. And, you know, it really does show you again then why we have such a see dentistry. You know, you can walk two miles down a road and you will walk past a beautiful private practise of really lovely things. And then you walk two miles on the road and you will be in an area where there is massive deprivation, huge health inequalities, just literally nothing there. But the statistics show that 10 miles away, there’s an indigenous dental practise. It’s full. It’s always been full. It never will have taken any of these people. And we have these issues scattered throughout society with regard to, you know, basically it’s demographics and there are things that we can do to help within dentistry. You know, inevitably, there are things that we can be doing that can make things better for some people. But, you know, it’s I think everybody needs to go and work in these places. They need to work in acceptance or in a prison or in a homeless centre or or something just to give them a little bit of an idea as to what our situation is like in this country.

[00:44:31] Look, it’s a it’s a feature of the UK that we’ve got the very best of staff and the very worst and the middle sort of not so well serviced, you know, we have the best universities in the world and then we’ve got those who never make it to university. We’ve got the best restaurants in the world and then we’ve got some pretty crappy food places. And then, you know, how do you address that? You tax people more and then again and again and again, people vote not to have that. You know, this division Jimmi division, I’m reading your manifesto. Anything to mend the cracks in our profession. I can do that in the end. That’s going to take ideas. I mean, you know, you said Crown Indemnity. That’s going to cost money, right. So where’s that money going to come from? From patient care, for instance. It’s always a bit more complicated, isn’t it, than you think. But tell me some of the things you’ve done in your LTC job where you feel like you’ve done you know, you said you you want to you want to do on the national level what you’ve been doing on a local level. There were some clues. How are you going to try and mend all this?

[00:45:45] We hit the nail on the head of funding the you in terms of, you know, ultimately, you know, I’ve written business cases before for the NHS, managed to get funding into the region, you know, for projects, for dentistry, you know, fighting in the corner to sort of I think we want to want to manage this fundamentally. We need if they were taking a huge clawback, huge amount of clawback, you know, money. And I think that, you know, staggering about 19 million pounds don’t quote me on that bit of something similar to that kind of figure and year on year to be getting that money back. So in our region, I think they were I think there were eight million short or something like that in our region. And we managed to sort of negotiate, not meet personally. But, you know, by putting pressure and by saying that we need these services and working with the NHS, really working with the infrastructure, managed to get three million pounds back, you know, from from from that amount. So to actually redistribute back into our increased access in the region. So I do I’m a way to do it, to actually make a business case, really crunch those numbers and actually explain the fact that it’s actually not it’s a false economy sometimes to save money.

[00:46:52] And actually you’ve got to spend the money to save a bit money in the long term. So you’re right. If you just say we want to bang the drum and bang the table and say we want grant indemnity, that’s going to go in one ear and out the other. But if you say, look, we want indemnity because it’s costing the NHS this much money to basically defend these cases and, you know, apologise to these patients, this much manpower is being wasted trawling through, you know, hours and hours and hours of complaints that, you know, it’s probably worth your while just to cover up a little bit, just throw these things out. I mean, we saw it recently with the complaints. I think there’s a form that we send out. Again, don’t quote me on the name Chayo something or other Cayo on AIDS or something. And, you know, during the pandemic period, they basically told us not to send them. And I thought that’s ah, you know, declaration of all the complaints we’ve had that you, you know, doing Pandemic said don’t bother us anything, you know, and I know they don’t have the manpower to actually look through that plethora of stuff that’s pouring through as a result of it, you know, so there are means and ways to make an argument.

[00:47:51] I think that’s probably what I’ve been doing through the LDC and the LDN because about the funding as well over the years, you know, asking us what do you want to spend the excess money on and off? And there’ll be a case where, you know, they say we’ve got this much money, there’s 100000 pounds or something like that. If we don’t spend it in the next month, it’ll go and we’ll never see again. So then you’d have to think of a business case very quickly to spend. They’ll say, you know, maybe spread it out there, peer review, CPD, you know, a project in a care home, etc, etc.. So, you know, I think, you know, I think that’s the approach that you would need to take in this situation. And I’m sure the media well versed on, you know, you know, these negotiations. But definitely that would be the way that it would mend the cracks. You’d have to you’d have to have quite a compelling argument to actually, you know, attempt to attempt to loosen the purse strings, I think.

[00:48:43] Guys, you know, we were discussing before I started recording that there’s not massive engagement with this media process and, you know, the were voter out there that had come out and vote that the members don’t come out and vote for it as it is to younger members of the profession. And I mean, listening to you guys and you’re so well versed on these issues, you know, from from the outside, you’ve got to remember, you know, just just the acronyms are confusing. You know, the for you guys, you’re so in it. How are you going to engage the younger generation? Being I know, I know you are saying you’re no spring chicken, but you’re certainly not at the end of your careers. How are we going to do that? It’s important and I’m guilty of it myself. I’ve never voted in a in a PTA election. I have voted that. But generally with the election, I’ve never thought to vote. But then I thought about it and I thought, you know, I’ve been a critic of the PTA enough. Yeah, it’s a vocal critic sometimes and sometimes on this platform, sometimes on social media particularly. I wasn’t very happy with their communication strategy during covid. But what’s the point of being a critic of it if you don’t even vote, let alone stand like you guys do? What are the ideas for engaging the professional?

[00:50:14] So my my fundamental issue with. With the way that sports represented the way that the communications run is that you’re not going to engage with something if it doesn’t look like you. You know, you can’t get people to get excited about a conversation a bunch of people are having, if you cannot see yourself ever being involved in that conversation and the way that you need to see that is because you can see people like you who share your vision and share your experiences, who are involved in that conversation, and they are engaged with it, you know, so with myself or with Jemmy, you know, if we were then part of that conversation. We do have people younger than even myself on the pack ready for this one. But it is a case of having those people that having that conversation in a forum that other people can see, the other people that can potentially engage with, you know, doing things like this, your viewers who normally potentially wouldn’t be involved in everyday stuff, who wouldn’t normally be interested me something. Oh, actually, you know what they’re talking about something that does annoy me. Maybe I’ll read what the media are doing about it. You know, having this conversation, this debate, you will then increase interest. And that’s what we need to do. You just need to increase the interest and then make the information readily available and then it’s there. If somebody is actually to know, I am a bit interested. I would like to know a little bit more about that as long as it’s readily accessible. It looks like you then it’s something you’ll get involved in.

[00:51:59] And I take issue with it looks like you a little bit. Yeah. Because I of course understand what you mean. Of course I understand that. But, you know, not much of the country looks like Boris Johnson, but he managed he he he managed to pull it off. Right. He might pull it off in a big way. OK, you know, there was a little this disorganise and all of that. But, you know, you don’t necessarily have to look like the person you’re voting for. Jemmy, sorry.

[00:52:30] Yeah, I mean, I agree. I mean, obviously reaching out to, you know, people like yourself, you know, ultimately you’ve got a big reach. There are other people in the Dental industry who have a big reach. And you can imagine that most of your audience is the younger end of the spectrum, people engaging in social media. We see how hot all of these forums are. We don’t see any of this stuff really pouring into the forums. And I think if people really understood that, you know, the gravitas of the conversations are being had at that level, you know, every facet of their working life to a certain extent is going to be influenced, whether they’re private or energy to a certain extent, by some of the decisions made in those boardrooms. So I think you’re only going to get some proportion of people that are going to be fundamentally interested in the politics side of it. They are. They just buy why it that way. But I think if the general populace or the younger a younger colleague, if they were basically aware of the mechanics and the fact that those mechanics affect their day to day, when the patient sits in the mouth with the head back and open their mouth and what their work experience is like, that kind of talking about leaving prison at work.

[00:53:30] But basically it’s just not feasible anymore. It’s not feasible because of some of the decisions that maybe could be influenced in that boardroom. So, you know, if you really want to make that change and you’ve got to be engaged in the process, I think also we have a very niche market. You know, sometimes we just get absorbed in ourselves. But, you know, we’re a tiny market, you know, really. And so these decisions can be quite close to home. You know, we’re not the government. It’s not like, you know, voting in a general election. You know, your vote yes will have an effect. But he has to go through layers and layers and layers of pogson, you know, to have any you probably won’t see the ramifications of your vote, you know, immediately. But in dentistry, it’s a pretty niche. You know, I think that you if you actually put your vote in, I think you will see some effect that will affect you quite quickly.

[00:54:20] You know,

[00:54:21] Having cesta these elections before I can tell you, it comes down to a handful. So five people watch this tomorrow and vote. That will change the outcome of the election, though, right? Yeah. So the numbers are tiny and it is just about you don’t have to do it yourself. You don’t have to want to be on the pack. You don’t want to have to go to the ABC. You don’t want to. Yeah, it’s costumey. Says you just need to have an awareness of the fact that these things do impact you. And regardless of where you’re from, what you do, where you are in your career, what your aspirations are, having your vote is your fundamental rights. To influence the way that things are going to turn out, so my absolute message would be if you were a member, you will have had the stuff through the post with everybody statements in it. If you’ve thrown out, you will still be able to read the news on the website and then you need to find somebody that shares your values. You can fight your corner if you don’t want to do it yourself, invite them.

[00:55:26] Your PDA to org slash elections is where you can find that. Um. Well, it’s, I think it’s been really fascinating. Really has. And you know, I wish we had others on here as well, but it was very short notice for most. And I want to thank you guys for for coming on and giving that fresh sort of angle on what could be the future for our profession and for the younger audiences that we were talking about. And then just generally, I mean, the actually before we close it down, let’s talk about, you know, your purely private Narnia. All right. Yeah. Jimi, I know you’ve got all sorts of private and NHS things going on with these new organisations that have come along during covid the baptism of those other independent groups. Do you think I mean, I thought there was there was a good reason for those to come along, but trying to sort of do it in six weeks was taken 60 years or 100 years of the b’day. You know, it’s not going to happen. So are we going to get a more inclusive, private focussed angle from the media or is the media, not the organisation? And and these other organisations should grow and take that space?

[00:56:53] I think I think the media does a huge amount behind closed doors for everybody. And I think people that are vocal critics of the media, I mean, we often find people that are vocally critical of the media aren’t members, you know, so they don’t know what’s going on. And I think one of the biggest issues is that it does not blow its own trumpet anywhere near enough. And if we went back 15 years and we had lived the last 15 years without the constant negotiations of the media, with all of the various powers that be and all of the influence that it has and all the good that it’s done, you know, yeah, we’ve got a terrible contract. But can you imagine how awful it would be if the BDA didn’t exist? That’s that’s the issue. And you’ve got these new organisations who are saying, well, we need this, we need this, we need this now. Well, yeah, but we tried to do that already. And these are the 10 years worth the various battles that have been fought on various fronts to achieve this. And we’ve realised that, you know, things are more complicated than they initially appear. And I think this is the is very easy as an outsider to go, well, they’re just not doing the job properly. They’re just not doing it well enough with that because you don’t know each single one of those staff members is doing day in, day out in their full time job to protect us as a profession because they don’t tell you unless you ask. But, yeah, I mean, you can rest assured without the work that the BDI does, the profession would not be in the place that it is right now.

[00:58:32] It would be significantly worse off. And I know that sometimes seems hard to believe. And we can all have a bit of a woe is me moment about how terrible things are. But trust me, it would be worse. I’ve seen some of the bullets that have been dodged because of the work of the work that goes on at the V.A. and we need to be grateful to those colleagues. And it’s not necessarily the pack. It’s the staff that are incredibly hard working. A lot of the positions that are held within the media, the craft committees, you know, they don’t pay for these jobs. You know, everybody’s probably heard of Charlotte Waite’s, who’s the chair of the Community Centre Services Committee, and she’s regularly in parliament and she’s doing all sorts of things, promoting dentistry for marginalised groups like Community. She’s paid to do that job. The PTA support her as a professional to be able to make these big, big impacts on the profession. And, you know, a lot of the people that are involved in the PTA do it voluntarily. They do it because they love the profession and they are doing a good job. It just doesn’t always necessarily publicly appear to be that way. I’d like to help them improve their public image, because I know that they’re doing great job, so I read some of the stuff that’s going on is amazing to me.

[01:00:02] I kind of had to be honest. You know, the media has to be everything to everyone, really. To be honest, it is representing the whole profession. So, I mean, Simon is not going to mind me saying I’m a doctor who is my sister, my oldest sister, not going to mind meeting me, saying, you know, during the open period, I think there was a lot of a lot of people that felt quite helpless, a lot of Dental helpless. Alfer. And quite sort of in the way that we’re wired. And I think that we felt quite helpless, you know, people shouting or practises or telling us we can do this or that. We might send you to a Nightingale hospital, etc., etc.. And as you said, you know, we. And that’s a natural reaction, isn’t it? You band together. We need to form some kind of power base. And so all of these organisations pop up to come for you know, some of it comes from a sort of business element, from a monetary element. I think it’s important to keep those ones out. And a lot of them have got some good, you know, you know, some good contribution to make. So I don’t think you can immediately say they’re sort of not relevant in the space, but I think fundamentally happened because of that sort of crisis situation and people felt underrepresented.

[01:01:15] And I think that social media gives a lot of people and I a chance to be a keyboard warrior. You see a lot of the same people popping up on social media, you know, voicing their opinions. And then when you have a look at something like Valpak or you look fat in the Aldiss and, you know, the actual established infrastructure, these people are nowhere to be seen. So it’s very easy to say in front of a, you know, in front of the keyboard and just punch away your opinion and you see in all spheres of life then you. But actually, you know, sometimes I kind of say you don’t have to blow by blow your own trumpet. You’ve got to be judged on your results. And actually, you know, you don’t have to sit there screaming. You can just be judged on your results and people should just judge them on the results. If you don’t think the results are good enough, then be a vocal critic, but really do sort of understand that it’s quite a large infrastructure and there’s a lot of cogs in the machine.

[01:02:07] You know, the there’s one thing getting involved and just voting, whole other thing standing and getting involved with all of these, I mean, and both of you, you know, Jimi, you’ve got is it four or five practises? You could be focussing on your next four or five practises. But, you know, you’re spending your time in these committees. And Hannah, I’m sure you can find many things to do as well in your spare time. So, you know, the degree of service is admirable. I think I think we should point out there are other candidates, apart from Hannah and Jim, there are seven other candidates, Marc Newsome, Sarah Campbell and Jillian Cottam atop the car, Marion English as the category, and Chris Morris, the other candidates for completeness. I think that that we should say that it’s been lovely having you guys and it’s really piqued my interest. And I say that for it and certainly try and have more on this on this platform. And I wish you both the very best and really lovely to see to see people like you guys so engaged in the process. Thanks a lot for taking the time to discuss.

[01:03:19] Can I just ask one really quickly before we go, though? The BDA runs elections every three years for GBC Aldergrove Committee so that the country councils JPC, which is a general dentist, can use Dental services. If you in any way even vaguely interested in getting involved, just put yourself forward because we struggle to get people wanting to just do it. So you don’t feel like you’re not experienced enough or you’ve not got the right background or you don’t know the right people. Just put your name forward because that is the only way that you’re going to get involved in it and you would be welcomed with open arms, trust me.

[01:03:57] Paula, any closing comments for you, Jemmy,

[01:04:01] What you’re saying, just engage with the process? I think that’s the key. Just to gauge, you know, for the sake of you’ve only got a couple of days now to get your votes. And I think you should really, you know, get on the computer, punch, punch it in, and then basically have a look at the statements and get a vote and just get something in and hopefully Payman your supporters over the years, because I’m sure this will crop up again and again. It has been over many years. You can get more even if it’s just a win at this time. And we can engage on the next you know, the next election, for example. At least you’re starting the process.

[01:04:30] Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys. Well, thanks a lot for taking the time and good luck to both of you. Voting ends on the 30th at noon. It is opposed to vote. You would have been sent your your postal ballot at wherever you could receive your BTG. Thanks. Thanks a lot for taking the time.

[01:04:50] Thank you. This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental Street. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:00] One VTE lecturer called me a cowboy because I turned up in a fancy car that I’d managed to pay for by doing day trading in the stock market in the 4th and 5th, it used to bunk lectures and go do day trading. And then he called me a cowboy and I was like, why? And that was the thing that really annoyed me was why should I hide success? Why? What’s the reason? Or if you want it, you don’t need to hide it. And it took me a long time to get that into my head. And I think that’s what you touched on before. To me, if you’re successful and you worked for it and if you like X, Y, Z, there’s no harm in having what you want and being happy for yourself. I think rewarding yourself and setting goals are really, really important, especially in the profession that we’re in.

[00:00:53] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental Street. Your host, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:11] It’s my pleasure to welcome one of dentistry, sort of more prominent characters that have been around Nilus Palmer, who kind of for me, I remember UNILAG coming onto the scene around 10 years ago or something. And I mean, you’ve become a highly accomplished implant surgeon now. But back then, I mean, I know you were doing implants, but you were kind of famous for being famous back then. It was an interesting thing that you started and really turned on its head. The thing that I obviously visit a lot of them to see in order to talk to a lot of dentists turned on its head. That thing that you see with dentists where, you know, he’s driving a Ford to work. But but. Whispers You know, I’ve got a nice car home or something. You turn that completely on its head, not only not hiding the nice car from the staff, but telling the whole world about it. Lovely to have you on. But so this podcast generally starts with where were you born? Why did you become a dentist? All of that

[00:02:14] High. I pay high Prav. Thanks for having me on. I’ve seen this advertised for you guys. I’ve been doing it for a really long time. It’s a great original idea. So I’m really pleased I’ve made the cut to be asked to be on the famous podcast, you know. So I was born in Essex in South L.A. and I never wanted to become a dentist, as you guys have. I know you’ve met my dad, Prav, I think you might have and maybe my dad did. He is a dentist, an orthodontist, general dentist, studied in India and then came over here to this country many, many moons ago. And I had a paper round when I was, I think, 13, 14. And I see a Saturday morning paper around. And I wanted to become a detective because he’s such a Miami vice. And Don Johnson had a white Ferrari and he used to wear suits and things. And I thought, you know, that’s a bit of me. I’d like to do that. And then I went from that to watching E.R. and I wanted to be like Benton, the cardiothoracic surgeon. I wanted to be a doctor because he was really cool. People listen to him. And I used to get all the girls as well. So you can see my priorities were pretty clear when I was young guys.

[00:03:29] Exactly what do you what are you watching right now? But later are

[00:03:38] So my dad said to me and my mother wasn’t happy with me doing a paper and she said, you know, my son will get kidnapped or whatever is quite dramatic to the Indian series that mothers watch. So my dad was like, look, I’ll give you a job in the Dental practise. You can be like the odd job kid. I was getting like three pound fifty for Pat Brown and he would give me five pounds to work on Saturday morning. Plus we started at nine and finished that one. Plus I would get driven to the practise and driven home. I didn’t have to walk around in the rain to win win, so I started out being the shed boy. I remember Dad being an orthodontist used to keep loads of study models and he had a huge shed at the back of the practise. And my job for like the first six months was to organise all these models. And you had like spiders and you had these moths and all this stuff in the shed. And I went from that to being the tea boy to developing the x rays in the darkroom, where I’m sure probably carcinogenic material into my eyes. And then I used to work on reception. I was like the main receptionist on the Saturday, did a bit of nursing, wasn’t very good at nursing. And then it was through that that I thought maybe this is the profession for me. So it was a slow burner. But then once I decided to do it and that was it, I was pretty much committed.

[00:04:53] How old were you?

[00:04:56] Well, back then, teenager, 13, 14, minimum wage.

[00:05:03] And then you went to London Hospital to study?

[00:05:07] Yeah. So my my pathway was always very difficult. So I wasn’t very bright at school. I was never in the top set of anything then. It was real hard to even be allowed to apply for dentistry. I didn’t get any offers. Nothing took my levels, got the bare minimum and then got in through clearing to the London and I got declined from every other university it was. And ironically, I’ve got a degree from every university that declined me in the beginning. I got declined from everyone

[00:05:37] I didn’t feel we had. I mean, I don’t mean being rejected. I mean being a small town guy from South End and turning up in London. Did you know London quite well at that point?

[00:05:47] Oh, no, no, no. I remember going on the tube and being really terrified of being being like an Asian kid. You had fairly sheltered upbringing, right? You’d be home at a certain time. You could go out on the weekends, but, you know, come like ten, eleven. Your mum was finding you. I mean, my mum would stay up. Until I came back home, so coming to London was a real shock, but I really enjoyed university, I think it was great. What a good bunch of friends. I’m still very close with and I think it was a big, big turning point. Gave me a lot of confidence actually getting into university.

[00:06:20] So did you go nuts when you went to uni having that sort of I think your upbringing was probably similar to mine. You know, there’s that protective Indian instinct of your parents. You said obviously your mom didn’t want you to go in the paper because my kidnap, you get an automatic. And then when you had your freedom, did you go nuts at uni?

[00:06:40] No, not really. I was always I’ve always been quite a calculated individual. And I would never it’s very rare that I mean, we’ve got we guys have been out together. We hold it together. I don’t think you’ve ever seen me exceptionally intoxicated. So I’m always a very calculated individual. I mean, I had fun. Don’t get me wrong, but never went to crazy.

[00:07:00] So as a Dental student, did you find that you were then good and you know, you said you weren’t the top kid in your class as a as a as a student, as a Dental student. Did you pick it up or not yet?

[00:07:14] You know, I found the practical stuff easy. Practically the work with the hands was easy. I could see something once and it wasn’t a problem. The academic side. I had to work hard. I would say I was working harder than my peers to get the same results. I don’t think I excelled, but I think I did enough to go under the radar. Basically, that was my thing. Just getting get the degree, get out. And and that’s the advice I give to all the young Dental is listening is you don’t need to be the best of the best. You just need to get in. I get out, get that beats nobody cares if you go first or on honours or a gold medal or whatever. I mean well done if you do. But I don’t think it has any impact in your long term career.

[00:07:55] I mean, you’re quite right. Some of the some of the guys we’ve spoken to in a bathroom is right. He said he wasn’t great and Dental School and Darwiche that he was almost almost didn’t get through Dental schooling. So it sounds like all of you cats become in-plant guys, pretty much all competition. That’s what it is,

[00:08:17] A hole whole other way.

[00:08:19] Like you had Milada New Years.

[00:08:20] Ah, yes, I did. Yes, I did.

[00:08:23] And you were close then as well.

[00:08:25] You know, Millette and I weren’t that close at university. He was it wasn’t around a lot because he was deejaying and emceeing and he’d come in and do this bit and then he disappeared. So socially he wasn’t there. He he was well known for being the Joker. He was well known for being the guy. He dressed up as Aleg a lot and came to like events and stuff. And and then he’s probably got to kill me. And then I we we became very close when a good friend of our John Paul, who also qualified with us, was getting married in Malta and then Milan and I went together with a room and all that sort of stuff. And then we just got along really well. And then since then, I’d say he’s one of my closest friends, then closest, closest friend.

[00:09:07] So did you start thinking at that point planning out what kind of career you were going to have? I mean, we’ve spoken to other people who have parents who are dentists and, you know, how much of an advantage that is when you’ve got someone to go to with a question, for instance, just from that very basic position. But, you know, what were you thinking back then when you think you’re going to take over your dad’s place? Were you thinking you’re going to do something different?

[00:09:31] Implant’s so my thinking was I would qualify. I’ll take over Dad’s place. I would work three days a week. I would play tennis and golf and go skiing, have an easy life. I would drive a Mercedes. Being Indian, I wanted a Mercedes and that would be it. That would be me done. And but I never intended to do any postgraduate. Never, never intended because I didn’t like being examined. I didn’t enjoy the university sort of regulated learning that we had to have, you know, because I’d question everything and they’d say, do X and Y and I’ll say, why? Why don’t we just do X, Y, Z? It’s easier, it’s quicker, it’s smarter. And I always had a financial edge. I would always say, why are we doing this? How much are we charging for this? How would we do this? What’s the hourly rate? I was the one who was asking in the lectures. So if I do this procedure, what kind of hourly rate should I be charging? What do I need? The lecturers used to look at me like I was a nut case on at VTI. I remember one VTE lecturer called me a cowboy because I turned up in a fancy car that I’d managed to pay for by doing day trading in the stock market in the fourth and fifth. It used to bunk lectures and go do day trading. And then he called me a cowboy and I was like, why? And that was the thing that really annoyed me was why should I hide success? Why? What’s the reason for? If you want it, you don’t need to hide it. And it took me a long time to get that into my head. And I think that’s what you touched on before to me. If you’re successful and you worked for it and if you like X, Y, Z, there’s no harm in having what you want and being happy for yourself. I think rewarding yourself and setting goals are really, really important, especially in the profession that we’re in. What was what was the

[00:11:20] First and second of that?

[00:11:23] So I qualified and I had about 40 grand. And then I worked as a vet for six months and I saved up about 50 K being a complete moron, I thought, I’m going to buy a Porsche 911 is what you do. So I walked into the Porsche dealership and I and I look I mean, I look quite young, maybe not anymore, but back then I looked like a kid. I walked into a Porsche sent to East London. And I remember the sales guy called Brian Jones. I still talk to now and I’m poking around the 9/11. And then you had, like, you know, the little paper brochure of the cars and you’d looked at it and you’d highlighted what you want and you’d read and you knew every option. And I walked in and he said, Can I help you, young man? Is your father with you? And I was like, no, I’d like to buy Porche. And he looked at me and he goes, What do you do? And I said, Oh, I just recently qualified as a dentist is I step into my office and talk to them. And and I remember I turned up everyone in VTE was turning up in three or six and all that sort of stuff. And I used to rock up in the nine eleven and being a complete douchebag, I used to park it right out the front of the lecture theatre because I thought I was a clever guy. And that’s when I understood that if you are successful Asian guy as well, let’s not beat around the bush. You will get flak for it. And I’ve been used to that ever since. Ever since I’ve been used to it.

[00:12:48] So interesting. We’ll get back onto that because, you know, we’ll talk about social and all of that. When did it switch from being, you know, the guy who used to do just enough to get through to the guy who’s done more degrees than Brixham? I mean, it’s like you’re constantly getting a degree and, you know, always looking for excellence. And when did that switch happen?

[00:13:16] I tell you what happened was I did my VTE. I find it hard to get a spot because my dad was a vet trainer and he’d stopped being a vet, trying to. But all the other trainers around Essex knew him and none of them wanted me because I thought I’d be a bit of a problem. If your father’s a vet trainer, they couldn’t pull the wool over my eyes and I got a vet position and I wasn’t very good at taking time. I mean, I couldn’t take teeth out to save my life. So on a Saturday morning, I used to work for my dad and he would book in the most horrendous teeth Tiko. And I’d be hacking away, trying to get these to about half an hour. Forty five minutes now, you know what it’s like. And my dad would walk in after about an hour with some old cria from my 1987 flick The Tooth Out and be like, oh they don’t teach you properly anymore and then walk out. And it really used to piss me off not because he he said that what I could do it. So I was like, right, I’m going to Max Fox job. I need to a job for a year. I need to learn how to take teeth out because this is ridiculous. And I applied for my local district hospital and I didn’t get in and I was really surprised I didn’t get in. But I managed to get into the Kings College six month rotation programme, which was like six months of surgery and then six months of restorative. And then I worked with Richard Porter and I was Martin Kelleher’s.

[00:14:43] And at the end of the six months with Martin Kealoha, Mr Kaye, who was the best guy ever? Best. Best, the two mentors I have, mentors I’ve always had with my father. And after the six month rotation, he sits down and does the interview. And people used to crap themselves because you’d sit down and he’d say, what do you want to do? And somebody says, I’d like to end the downticks. And he’d say, No, you can’t. You can’t do up. Sorry, just become a general dentist. Or somebody would say, I want to be president. He’d say, no, you don’t have the talent for that. I’m very sorry. You can’t do it. Just don’t even bother. So I sat down and I was like, he’s like, what do you want to do now? It’s not all going to get Jack here. It’s I was like, I would like to go into dental implants. And he said to me, good, because I think you need to specialise and do some postgraduate, your your you have a good set of hands. OK, fine. So I phoned up these two men and I was too late to get in to the Eastman post graduate programme. They only offered me a masters in prosthetics for a year. So dentures for a year, like the least sexy part of dentistry for a whole year in the property, not the CPD and the hard core. And multicolour, my dad were like, you know, just do it. You don’t have a job after this. You might as well just get on with it. So I went on and I did that and it was the best thing I ever did.

[00:15:58] What was that? Was it like a full time programme? Hello?

[00:16:02] Yes. So we yes. Basically, they they call it the The Widowmaker because you’re there seven days a week. You don’t work. You never leave. I sleep in the lab and all sorts of crazy stuff there. Seven days a week. You see patients you would have like a ham journal club. Right. And you’d have like seven PM journal club. Then you’d have to do a master’s thesis at the same time. It was the most hardcore year I’ve ever had. But you learn so much from it, like so, so much.

[00:16:33] But you rose to it didn’t it didn’t break you you like it made you you decided that’s what you like now. Education.

[00:16:40] Yeah. Yeah. So for me it was a question of I’ve decided to do it and my dad’s famous quote was like, just get on with it, just do it, stop procrastinating, just do it, don’t complain. Why are you complaining? Just do it. Get on with it. Don’t say to me you’ve got so much work to do, you’ve got so many lectures to read or whatever he goes by the time you’ve complained, you could have actually started doing it. So that was it. Just gone with it. Head down, carry on. And that’s such a fantastic team, these men. And unfortunately, a lot of the consultants and people who we worked with have now retired. But yeah, it was a real special place. I really, really enjoyed my time there. I wouldn’t want to do it again at this stage of my life. But it was it was impressive. And once I did that, I applied for the machine implants that guys now guys only took four people every two years and they must have had like a thousand applicants or two thousand applicants. The reason why it was so popular this was the Masters and Implant Dentistry guys was they provided all the patients.

[00:17:43] So you turned up you had restorative cases, employment cases, not like the implant causes, which we run now where dentists have to bring their own patients. You know, they have to ferry them over here. It’s really hard to get those cases here. It’s all paid for by the trust. So you additional implant patients, you know, so, so good. So I didn’t get into that programme. I go in because somebody flunked it. Somebody couldn’t get the visa to come over or somebody comes the phone me and said, look, you’re the first person on the list. Do you want to do this degree? So I was like, oh, God, I’ve just done one master’s. Am I going to go and do another master’s straight after? I must be insane. So again, with advice from everyone else, I will just do it as a two year part time programme. So I just jumped in and did it and that kind of made my life. If I wasn’t doing implant work, I wouldn’t be where I was today. No chance in hell, never.

[00:18:36] So we’ve had the Paul Palmer on the podcast. He teaches on that, right? Yeah. Yeah. And he says it’s not running anymore. That’s a damn shame because several of you guys I know Zachy, too, came from that programme. But so what would you say to a youngster who wants to get into implants? Would you now say MASC or would you say go find some courses, long courses, short courses?

[00:19:06] It’s it’s a hard one, isn’t it? What I’d say is, where are you in your career path? Can you do surgical? Can you take teeth out? If you can take teeth out, then consider implant work. If you can’t if you got that whole in your repertoire, you need to plug it restrictively. Are you competent? And then it’s a question of doing a course and then finding a mentor the mouthes that are out there. I don’t have enough experience of them to comment on whether or not they’re good or whether or not they’re bad. But I know that there’s nothing as good as the guys programme anymore. I mean, you have people getting messages from certain universities only doing like five implants or something, and we must have done twenty, thirty loads. But you need a good mentor. So some of the guys who I work with now did my course mind. And of course I still mentor them. And it’s nice to see that they’ve progressed. But he’s taken three, four, five years. So it’s a really slow burn. But you have to be all it. You can’t be doing implants and then also be doing this and that. And that implant is the one where you just need to dive in and really go gung ho into it. It’s it’s a hard discipline, but the rewards are very good because there’s not enough dentistry. And to me, to any youngster, I wish I would only be a youngster to any like young younger dentist. And this is from the financial side, if you want to learn, if you can open up a shop, right, let’s say you open up a shop and the shop next to you is selling coke and the shop on the other side is selling Coke.

[00:20:35] Why are you going to open up a shop selling coke? Only going to do is be a price war. You’re going to have to sell the cheapest Coke Pakhtun if you are a dentist. Why are you learning Invisalign, Botox, lip filler composite restorations when every other dentist is doing the same thing? Why don’t you offer a different service? So who’s not offering anything? And it’s hard to come by nowadays and implants. So if you differentiate yourself from the early days, your market share by default would be bigger. Because if you’re in a town and there’s 10 dentists incompetence in one dentist implants, guess who’s going to be the busiest guy? And then you can almost set his price, right? So that’s what I would say is the speciality that is the least service in your area. And then go and implants, I think, is is an amazingly rewarding area of dentistry to do it. And I would like more youngsters. And I think definitely we need more women in dental implant surgery because those even women and Implant Dentistry Foundation and we had a female president of the Aidi. And I think it would be great to have some more diversity in implant industry. I’m sick of going to implant conferences and just seeing bald heads in the audience and present company excepted. Is this all you get is another go

[00:21:56] And this your room? Is your practise now limited to implant dentistry? Hello. Do you do all the bits and pieces?

[00:22:03] I’m I’m getting there very limited. So I have a few other bits and pieces that I like to do. Just because I’ve had training in various stages, about 80 percent of my work is implants. I’m looking for another dentist, fully private to work with me to just do the basic restorative stuff so I can just do the the surgery. Basically, that’s the plan at the moment.

[00:22:25] And then on the implant side of things, are you sort of a same day kind of guy? I hear that this is like quite a big trend or, you know, some dentists to believe in that philosophy and then some dentists or surgeons who sort of believe more on a on sort of the longer sort of delayed loading protocol. What would you say to that?

[00:22:46] It depends upon the case, depends on the patient. I mean, to put a patient through a same DLT is quite an ordeal. They’re pretty messed up by the end of it. I know on on the shows and everything, they get their little glass of champagne and they are trying to drink it. It’s it’s not it’s not all roses. Right, is you need a pretty hard patient for my default is delayed. But now with the implants that are getting better and better, do we have an onsite lab as well? We do do the same that it it’s also patients needing to pay for it. Well, because it does jack up the cost a fair amount. And if we get patients who are paid DONTAE compromised, etc., sometimes it’s just not we’ve been there, have been burned by it. You pick your battles, you know, so some people, you do it and some people you don’t. It is variable. But I’m I’m open to anything.

[00:23:34] But it’s funny. Paul Thomas said exactly the same thing. All depends on the patient.

[00:23:40] Depends on the patient, and I think when you have those patients, you keep for life. As for large implant patients, the ones you do one, two or two to three pretty, they can go elsewhere, etc. But the four large cases, you keep them for very, very long time. So they’re sussing you out. And I also them out.

[00:23:59] Now, what would you say is what does it take to be a great implant surgeon

[00:24:05] Need to suture properly? That’s the one thing we struggle to teach is how to suture properly. And I’ve worked with Specialist Periodontist. I’ve worked with Allsorts, and they couldn’t suture properly. You’ve got to practise, practise, practise. Aside from that, it’s having a good restorative background, having good surgical skills and just being competent. Planning things properly and having really good patient communication is the main thing which is so hard to teach. Right? Talking well to a patient and getting a patient on the side who’s right. Right. And you said that, you know, I just don’t care what you do here. I just care how you make them feel. Very true. And we’ve all seen work where we’ve thought, oh my God, that work looks so crap. And they put it on Instagram and you think, oh, my God, these teeth look horrendous, but the patients love it. Why do they love it? Because they love the dentist and the dentist giving them what they want. So it’s the whole experience. And for me, it’s always just sussing them out of the consultation process. And do you exude confidence and do they believe that you can give them what they want? And that’s the key thing, which is so hard to teach. Some people just have it and some people don’t know

[00:25:19] What’s what’s the outlook. Maybe forgive me for not knowing the answer to this question yet, but we’ll see what’s the pathway? I guess you start with maybe a couple of, like, single lower tooth, then eventually an A.. And the soft tissue situation, when does it get to grafting sinus lift for all and for what’s the other one? The long one that goes in the. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Yeah.

[00:25:49] Yes, zygomatic Østergaard, is there a

[00:25:51] Pathway set in that sense? I mean, like how far how far along are you on that path?

[00:25:57] I think we’re all still learning. I was on a surgical crout soft tissue grafting course on Friday with Hatam. I think you’re always learning. You know what I really like. And my niece is a.. Cosmetic implant, doing single central incisors, doing a few teeth. So getting it to look so that people can’t tell it’s a fake, too. That’s where I get my soft

[00:26:20] Tissue around that. The fall of the eye.

[00:26:24] Exactly. So my thinking is putting a picture up on screen and saying to dentists, which one is the implant? And if some of them get it wrong, then is very real. I’m on cloud nine. Right. I’m loving life. Right. My ego goes through the roof. But the four large cases I like because it’s proper surgery and there’s lots of blood and the nurses like it’s a big challenge to the patient, but the pathway is so variable. I mean, most upper molars that you do usually need an internal sinuses or L.A. cases. In my opinion, most of them will need some form of guided bone generation. So you can get the simple primally cases where you just put the implant in and there’s nothing else to do. But a lot of times they need a bit of extra work, an extra bit of Build-Up, or they need sedation or they want to one or they need to do this. We need to whip out wisdom tooth at the same time is you don’t always get that one in that one implant case, you say I need this one lower molar tooth sorted and then that’s it. You don’t get those very often,

[00:27:22] You know, about the practise. Well, what did you bring to the practise? I mean, I noticed you did the massive sort of overhaul of it kind of soon after. Well, when was it? When I came when I came to the practise, I was amazed at the size of that thing. I mean, it’s it’s the size of maybe Prav used to be the size of maybe three practises stuck together just keeps on going.

[00:27:48] So we were really lucky that the building next door came up for sale. And I was I was treating somebody in the council. I was doing a mayor or something. And I said, you did. The building next door was coming up for sale. And so we bought it and it was really dilapidated. And we spent over a year just joining the two buildings together and had this vision. And we had some really good designers. And I said, if Iron Man had a Dental practise, what would it look like? And that’s kind of what we went for.

[00:28:18] Iron Man, Iron Man, the cartoon, the the Disney Love.

[00:28:23] Tony Stark. Yeah. See, Prav knows what he did.

[00:28:28] I’m telling you the other.

[00:28:30] I am sorry, but I thought you meant Iron Man running Iron Man. That thing, the traffic stress. Then we got go. Sorry. Oh right.

[00:28:43] So yeah. So, so we got that bill and yeah we learn a lot and it was nice because in that clinic I have everything I could possibly one of every toy. The surgeries are set up for me. And you know, interesting. Before Prav came online I was looking at dental practise that I just had a bit of being renovated, etc. And I always look at these dental practises and the waiting rooms are beautiful. They’ve got all the lights and the greys and the gold trim and all that. But then they show the surgeries and the surgery, the sheet, because they’ve not been designed by a proper clinician, there’s not enough room the too small. I can see that there’s not enough room between the chair going back and the wet top behind the dentist. This is where all these companies, when they design it, they give like one point two metre5s behind the head of the chair to the countertop. And it should be one point eight, one point nine metres. I look at, my God, guys, these people are not clinicians, right? They don’t know how to design the surgery properly. So when I did mine, I made sure that it was designed by a clinician so that it was efficient. The workflow was there. It was just so that’s why I’m so in love with my clinic, because it just works properly. And it’s something where I think maybe I should do like a design consultancy, just design and say, guys, look, you can’t have that there. You’ve got to move this here. When you turn around to get your excavator, you’ve got to do a 180 degree turn. You should just be doing a thirty degree turn right. And the other thing is that it rose and the trio says, no, these dangerous as we keep buying the damn things take up so much space, we’re going to park them. Right. It’s like having five cars in the driveway. You go park them somewhere. Right. So I think said you design is something where we are lacking at the moment. You know, I think there’s a real opening for a disrupter into the market.

[00:30:31] Yeah. Although, you know, space is at a premium sometimes. Isn’t that I mean, those are the practise in Bristol last week. And, you know, they’ve just got spaceman. The rooms are so huge that that building in London with. Been like a six million pound at this. There’s no way you’ve got the space is a problem.

[00:30:52] Yeah, true. But then when you look at these this and you can be a bit more ingenious about the design.

[00:30:57] So I’m sure you see it sometimes.

[00:30:59] Yeah. See all the time. But yeah, it is what it is.

[00:31:02] I mean what you said interests me because a lot of times people used to ignore the waiting room and it seems like now it’s kind of gone full circle with the everyone understands the waiting room is very important. The the back in my day, people used to just get this funky chair. And the way to me was to look terrible, like, yeah,

[00:31:20] It’s the whole aesthetic Instagram generation right now. You see, Dentists’, you’ve actually got a banner and they take pictures of all the patients with the little Invisalign back and they stand in front of the back in the banner. Right. How things have changed. Yeah, it just like before they GP now they have like those flower wars that these girls take pictures of when they go to, like the fancy London restaurant. And we have like neon lights and all this. And then the dentist takes a photo with the patient in it. So it’s changed completely the way we design it. And I think it’s great that we’re becoming a lot more aesthetically driven. And as a result, the design of the surgeries has changed. But I don’t want people to lose the importance of the clinical aspect of it. So.

[00:32:05] So when did you start switching from Mr Mercedes’s to Mr Racecar Driver? When did when did the whole car things become costing?

[00:32:15] So I’ve always been mad on cars when I was a kid. You can ask my parents. I just had like toy cars and I still have the toy cars and now my nephew plays with the toy cars that I used to play with. As always, into Porsche was my dream car. And I remember watching Bad Boys when I was younger, like when I was doing my level. And Will Smith was just the coolest guy. You had that 9/11 turbo. I thought, wow, one day. And that was my dream. And it just kind of developed from that as I was doing better and better. And I always wanted to raise my goals. I was also taught to say, look, just because you have this, you need to go after this. Once you get this, you go for this in suits. When Harvey Spectre goes like this, like this, I like this. That probably spoke to me. So I’ve always tried to develop. And the whole thing came about when I used to watch Formula One with my dad, used to watch Michael Schumacher just win. Everything in this red Ferrari would go without only wheels, just used to win everything. And it just kind of got ingrained in my head.

[00:33:13] And my dream was to become a racing car driver. And I had a patient. I’m a very wealthy patient. He used to race customs and he said, you know, why don’t you come along and try to try to out really loved it. And then financially it was viable. So I just took the plunge and. All right, well, become a racing car driver. We start racing. I got my backside handed to me in the first year because I just thought, yeah, well, I’ve done track days, I’ve got fancy car. I’ll be amazing. I’m really could drive. I play Red Racer and Cicarelli as a kid. I’m wicked. Right? Go to the race. Got destroyed and then it took me two and a half years and I don’t know how many hours of training, simulator training, personal training, having a similar home walking race tracks, learning the cars, having a full team around me. And then we started to do well. Then I was in the top ten, then in the top five, then I was on the podium. Then I got asked to race with other teams, did endurance racing. Twenty four hour racing raced all over Europe. It was amazing. Was actually amazing. What’s the what’s

[00:34:15] The process of getting involved in in racing in terms of, you know, somebody wanted to stop, start and get involved in it? What’s the process?

[00:34:23] You just need loads of money. It’s such a money pit. It’s the it’s a scary. So there’s so many race theories out there. The Katrín race series is very good because I came from cause I just unstable. There’s no way there’s no power steering. It’s all manual. You don’t even get a limited death in the first cause. So the car itself is about 30 grand. And then if you really want to comment for the whole year with full team support, you’re probably looking at about another 30, 40 grand on top of that to cover it since about, what, 60, 70 grand for the for the year. And then obviously in the second year in the third is a bit cheaper because you’ve got the helmet, you’ve got the gear. You don’t need to buy the car, but the car gets upgraded every year. So it is it’s like having two kids going through private school, which is what I’m told. I would have not. I’m you guys do that’s a cost implication behind it.

[00:35:14] Which brings us brings us neatly to the why is it you’re not like every other good Indian boy when it comes to getting married early and having kids? Whoa. Oh, that’s what what is it? What happened? It was about you because I’ve come across a fair number of of of of young boys who just almost programmed to follow the parent’s position. Something kicks in.

[00:35:41] I’m a black sheep the of our black sheep. So I would. Say, you know, in your sort of mid to late 20s is when that sort of magic happens, you meet the girl of your dreams and you settle down or see your you’re both happily married. And in my thing, I was doing NMC. Then I did another MASC. Then I was doing an also programme, then I did an MBA and I think really hard degrees. These were not degrees where I would give it everything. So some of my friends wouldn’t see me for a year because I was a study. And I would say to people, you know, I sacrificed a lot for the academic credentials. And I think part of that was probably relationships. I think they all probably struggled. I mean, if you don’t, you’re going to see me for an hour on a Sunday and I’m falling asleep. That’s not really a sustainable relationship. Right. And then plus, I was pretty much not broke. I mean, my father was made sure I had a roof over my head and etc., but I didn’t have any money, really. I was I was working I was doing out of hours emergency service for Essex and I would get 400 quid on a Saturday to do it. And I do like two days a month or something. So I didn’t have boiler money or anything. So it was it was hard. And yeah, I sacrificed all of that just to get to where I am now. And I think now, you know, things have changed. And I am in the position where, yes, I think settling down is something where I’m able to joke about it. And I know my dad active on Facebook with everyone likes to take the Mickey, etc.. But yeah, it is it is something which let’s say it’s a work in progress. So what do you what do you

[00:37:26] Look for in a woman? No one’s listening.

[00:37:33] You know, what I look for now is somebody who’s kind of a good person and who understands that if you’re with somebody who’s very much committed to their career, there’s always going to be allowances made on my side and on her side as well. So you need somebody who’s who’s got some understanding. I mean, we treat a lot of older patients, right? Implant dentistry, just old patients. All my patients are all none of them use Facebook, Instagram. They’re all 50, 60, 70. Whereas if you look at the cosmetic guys, if you look at Rhona Simon, all those guys, all their patients are young. So we have a complete dichotomy of who we treat. And I see them and a lot of them coming together and say, look, you’ve been married for 34 years. What’s the secret of a happy marriage? And they all say compromise, it’s compromise. You have to work at it and it’s always compromise. And I think once you get close to 40, your habits and your patterns are pretty much ingrained in you. And it’s quite hard to become to adjust your life a little bit. So I think for me, I’m looking for somebody who would have that ability to compromise by want to travel and do the things I do and also take into account that I do do crazy stuff every night. I wake up soon to be a racing car driver, wake up. So I want to become a pilot. I want to do everything. I want to do this. I want to be go to space with Mr Branson. It would be nice for somebody who can humour me and take all my craziness into account is what I’m looking for. You guys know anyone mean I

[00:39:09] Tell you,

[00:39:10] This year in

[00:39:12] The studio we discussed a bit before about being out there with the Ferrari’s and the watches. And you know that I see you know, you’re kind of a bit like what’s that thing Chris Burrows, as MA might do to the Dental audience, that there are these people who love you and then there are people who don’t love you. And I break it down. I was thinking about it this morning. There must be a young group of dentists who want to be like you. Right, because who would want to fly planes and drive Ferraris and all of that. And then there’s this other group and I guess a small group of older than this generally, correct me if who don’t want younger dentists to want to be like you. What’s going on? What’s what’s what’s the story? And tell me about that. I mean, we discussed it with Ronan as well. So the trolling side of it. And it’s difficult to manage, right? Difficult to manage.

[00:40:10] Yeah. I think, you know, I started to experience it from VTE days. It’s always a question of the more successful you become, the more people who will dislike you for it. It’s because not because of what you’ve achieved. It’s because you achieving that reminds them of what they haven’t achieved. Right. I like to think and one of the key things for me is when I usually the icewind parties or will be doing another one soon, hopefully. One of the things was if I was really disliked for being who I am, they wouldn’t be three hundred and fifty people turning up to an event that I run on my. But you’re right, it’s a very small area of clinicians, older clinicians, not younger, older, who troll anyone who is a bit of a maverick. And I know I have had it. Rhona’s had it. Simons had it. Sheraz has had it. We’ve all had it. But I like to think I was the first pioneer of the original trolley, trolley and trolley. And then why is it is it is it because I’m brown and I do. Well maybe. But some of the trolls are Asian as well. Is it because I never respond to them? I never give them the satisfaction. They’ve never got anything out of you.

[00:41:27] Sometimes you sometimes take something on your stories, though. I seen that.

[00:41:31] Yeah. I think sometimes I might get the odd kind of when when I don’t get any trolling, I think, well, maybe I’m not significant anymore. I need to do something else to wipe them off the right actually. Exactly. Upsets me. I feel, I feel insignificant but it’s ok.

[00:41:46] Ok. Do I hear you. I hear you. But I just, I just see it as my duty to put this, this idea over here that I think anyone who listens to this will think of you as this is why I wanted you as a sort of a thoughtful, intelligent, considered person. But if I flick through your Instagram or whatever, whatever it is, you could come across as the do to keep showing me Lugo’s Jeremy Ferrari, Rolex, Richard Millais, whatever. And so, by the way, by the way, by the way, I don’t know how I come across and what we don’t know how we come across. But what I’m saying is one of the way you come across is different to who you are. Yeah. So are we going to. Is that the reason for it, that the polarising content.

[00:42:36] You know, the the thing is, I like cars, I like watches, I like all those things and I run to social media accounts. I’ve won Dental one, which is all teeth and all that sort of stuff. And then I have one personal one. And over the years, the personal one has matured slightly. Right. But we all have goals. And when you achieve those goals, you share that goals. And the great thing is my parents, my mom, my dad, my friends, my family was very proud of everything. And to me, I would like to think from if you if you rewind it the short if you said to the 12 year old she was very chubby, had no muscle mass, got bullied when he was younger, had a stammer that, you know, in your late 30s, you’d be doing this, this and this and you’d be going and you’d be doing the Gumble Carelli and you’d be being on this TV and all that sort of stuff. I wouldn’t believe you. I’d say you’re lying. There’s no way you could have it. So if I share all of that, what I’d like to say is to the young guys, gerente guys and the Indian guys, so you can achieve anything you want as long as you’re willing to work really, really hard for nothing comes easy. But you work your arse off. And if you want to buy a Ferrari, you but if you wanna buy a four million pound house, you buy four million pounds, it’s entirely up to you. So for me, if it helps one kid believe in himself, then I don’t give a shit or these heightism because they’re insignificant to me. And as I get older, the more my thing is to mentor and help the younger generation be the younger Asian generation achieve and not be ashamed of their achievements. Because when people meet me, you know, when you meet me, I don’t get high on the list I asked you for. That doesn’t even come into the question right now.

[00:44:31] When you meet me online. That’s how it feels.

[00:44:34] That’s the that’s how it is online, right? Yeah, that is on luff. And I think also, listen, you

[00:44:41] Don’t have to justify it. You don’t have to justify it to me. Look, we’ve got Prav sitting here. Yeah. His own brother was was brought up in the same house as him. Yeah. The same parents, the same situation. And Kailash is more like you and Prav is nothing like you guys give the exact opposite.

[00:45:00] If if if you flick it around to Kailash. Right. Kailash was somebody who did all that before me and I used to see Kailash. I just think, wow, look at this guy. He must be really good. And then he was only once I met him and he came to one of the practises I went to and he gave a course and I saw him do a prayer. And I think he’s actually really good. Not easy or fancy. Fancy, but the guy can cut teeth, you know, he’s really shrink. And then I partied with him once and we got we got really drunk. And I think I had is like really fancy jacket, took it by mistake or something. But these really sound gone and it just goes to show that even I can have preconceptions about someone. But until you meet them, you don’t realise. And for me the amazing thing was just how good he was at dentistry. I mean, a really skilled set of hands. So for me, it was almost like a benchmark, I guess. Is that never much anymore? Yeah, it was almost like a bell.

[00:46:00] He’s too busy sticking implants.

[00:46:03] Yeah, I know. Yeah, you’re too busy.

[00:46:07] Tell us about your MBA. Do tell me. Tell me. Tell me where it came from. We didn’t cut a lot of the people we’re talking to saying I want to do an MBA,

[00:46:14] You know, is the hardest thing I’ve ever done was an MBA. If I fall, Eastman was hard, MBA was hard to another level. And I got into it because I always had the financial side of things right. You draw the financial side, would always look at profit loss accounts, etc.. And then my dad, we read the F.T. and see what he does is he reads it on a Sunday when I’m not at home because I’m getting home in my parent’s place of two nights a week. On the time I’m in London, he put like the paper on my desk. I need highlighted like some NBA fare. And he said, you know, you talk about doing an NBA is an NBA face. You go to it. So I went to this NBA and got chatting to them and Harvard University were there. You could do like a distance. Of course. I remember sitting down with the Harvard University women, and before I even sat down, she said, our programme is one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. If you can’t afford it, I suggest you throw it is like nothing, not even a hello and nothing. Just one twenty grand. You can’t afford it. Magariaf, you look poor you capital. So then I went to the. OK, fine. Yeah. I’m really glad that because go that. So I went to the Imperial College people and the guy and the girl was so nice and they were talking about my dentistry and this that and they said look we really want you on our programme. You need to send in a video recording of.

[00:47:35] Yourself as to why you want to do it, so I did this video recording, which is really cheesy centre in and I’m still in two minds sent in. And then they they accepted me and offered me a scholarship for it is about 40 grand to do an MBA and it was subsidised. So then you can’t really say no, you kind of got to do it to two executive MBA started it and then see Sharma was on it with me as well. Totally out of the blue coincidence. And then we did this MBA. And I tell you what, the problem with dentists is we’re so obsessed with this, so obsessed. We don’t think about the big picture. And the MBA gave me an understanding of the bigger picture of the world. And we looked at innovation. We looked at how to be an entrepreneur. And also so interesting looking at profit and loss accounts, understanding what the corporate world is about, understanding how the credit crunch happened. It just kind of changed my mindset. And it was hard. It was really we had really difficult corporate finance and accountancy modules. I had to get a tutor to come in on the weekend and go through with me because I was so dumb I couldn’t do the maths properly. I could count the money. But you can’t do the maths. It was so hot. So, so but to this day, again, it was an amazing thing to do and I’m so, so grateful for having the opportunity to do it. And I’d recommend it to any contacts.

[00:48:56] Did you did you make contacts in the world outside of the world of dentistry?

[00:49:03] Yeah, loads, loads and loads and loads, because everyone was from a different aspect. You had people from oil and gas, people from the media, people from all sorts of contact wise. It was fantastic. And also when you go to like an event or a dinner party or whatever, and you meet someone and he goes, Oh, I work in MNM before Eminem, he makes chocolate sauce or whatever. And then, you know, he doesn’t mean Eminem means Eminem. He was seven, eight. And then now I’m like, wow, you work in him and tell me about this. And it just kind of broadens your horizons a little bit. And I think it makes you a better dentist because your brain sort of works in a slightly different level. Some people can do that without having to go through the didactic teaching. The good thing about the Imperial College one is we had so many hands on and practical experiences. It was amazing. We do negotiation. We see all sorts. And I excelled at negotiation. Apparently that was like my thing about I was really underhanded and lethal in negotiation and get told off. But everything I’ve come across respect, if you’ve had to see

[00:50:08] That,

[00:50:13] I would say, is to be in a place in your life. I mean, for me, I could do all this stuff because I don’t have a life. I don’t have a kids. I come back to my place. There’s no one here is dead quiet. I can Sunday’s is my day of study is Jim what’s the Formula One? And studied the whole day. I have that benefit. If I had a wife and a kid and everything would be really difficult to compartmentalise the time. It’s if you are going to consider it, just be aware.

[00:50:41] What are the key takeaways from you from the MBA? Anything changed in the practise conversations with patients? Was it just sort of more organic and holistic? I mean, can you can you step back now and say, actually, you know what, the business has changed because of this, this and this, for example? And are there any sort of key tangibles?

[00:51:01] Yeah, a few things were don’t be afraid to talk about money. Right, so many dentists that would be like, well, it’s going to cost them 13000 and then put their head down, some dentist won’t even talk the money. They get the t shirt for me. More now. Now that we went through, the whole negotiation module changed. It’s so easy for me to talk about the money side of things with patients. And we all have our own way of doing the way about what’s your USP as a dental clinic? What’s your USB? For me, it was always a question of if I was doing implants, I’d say, look, and I’ll intro myself. I’d say, my name is PAMA. I qualified from the U.K. I’m a dentist by master’s degree in prosthetics and implant dentistry. This is my practise and I’m planning on being here for a very long time. So if you have any problems with your implant work in 10 years time, I’m still going to be right. And it was just trying to put yourself in the patient mindset. What are they concerned about? They’re not concerned about that one point, two mil margin when you’re not they’re just concerned about what’s going to happen in the future. Are you going to guarantee stuff with them? We’re going to be the ones that fixes. But the other thing was analytics, looking at data. So working out how much we spend in the practise, working out who comes to the website, who leaves the website. If I make a post about implants on my Instagram, how many more consultations do I get? If I put a surgical case on my Instagram, which is aimed at dentists, how many more referrals do I get the next week? I’m just looking at data and understanding that data is key for any sort of business and there’s loads of other things that that we don’t. But those are probably my two main takeaways from.

[00:52:43] Did you do your MBA thesis on something social media as well?

[00:52:47] Yeah, so mine was the industry and social media. I was lucky because because I’m one of the admin for for D was able to capture a lot of data from dentists. And it was a questionnaire based thesis looking at how do dentists see social media. And then we flipped it to patients. How do patients perceive dentists, social media? How many patients search for their dentist on social media? How many patients search for your private Facebook profile on social media? And the numbers are pretty impressive. I’m giving a talk on it with Philips and FMC next week. Tuesday. It’s my little plug.

[00:53:27] Let’s go. Let’s go. You must get approached all the time by manufacturers, implant companies and toothpaste people. And especially I mean, I don’t know if to going a little bit more quiet, I’d say now. But back when you were peaking, when you were Peking Duck a couple of years ago on Social, but you didn’t get involved with that many different companies, but now you’ve got yourself involved with this indemnity thing. Does that us about the whole thing? And and.

[00:54:00] Yeah, yeah, I was doing a lot. I think my programme was, first of all, to become known, to become known in the industry. And I went through a period where early on in my career I got in trouble with the GDC, had some disciplinary issues. That was about 16 years ago, I think. And then I went quiet for a little while. And then after that, I thought, you know, well, we’ll make mistakes, let’s bring ourselves back up. Started developing, Louise, from Mannan, who, you know, we still work together, and she helped build some brand recognition for me. And over lockdown, I set up a health care consultancy firm. And the idea behind that was to try and leverage what I know about health care with the MBA, to do work with certain Dental companies or health care companies, be it pension funds, be new products coming to the market, the Internet offerings, et cetera. And through that, I go approach to be on the executive committee of a new indemnity product, and it’s called the Dental Defence Society. And you’ve got big names. You’ve got Professor Stephen Dunn, Lauren Birnbaum. And we basically designed because obviously on defo on for. And despite that, this is one of the biggest questions we get is who’s your endowment, which indemnity Friday used to after moderating that forum for about twelve years. I know every question everybody wants to ask. I know what people are worried about. So using that knowledge, we designed a product for dentists and it’s a really exciting offering which aims to provide reasonably priced indemnity covers all aspects. And most importantly, every case is serviced by practising or former practising dentists. And we have a really aggressive legal team. So the idea is we’re not just there to settle for the time. We’re trying to take the dentists side. And I’ve learnt a lot about indemnity through developing that package. And it’s just being launched now and it’s going to be quite an exciting few years. I think we’ll be up there in the top four or top five quite quickly. I would have thought

[00:56:09] That was a bit more about indemnity, because I speak to a lot of dentists to probably similar to, you know, do sort of high end maybe what’s considered to be higher risk work and volume of that. And the clothes that come back just to keep them protected are insane. And they’ve gone up a lot. So first of all, I guess there’s a couple of questions about the are the right standard across the board about who you go to. You’re going to pay similar. And then what about the level of protection of that?

[00:56:41] Yeah, so the rates vary immensely, immensely. And a lot of it is if you claw it back to an underwriter. Right. So if you approach and underwriter as an indemnity company, you’d say, right, we’ve got five hundred dentists and we would classify half of them as doing high risk procedures and the other half is low risk procedures. But we’ve got four thousand cases ongoing that underwriters are going to say, well, here’s your premium. Right, is if you approach the underwriter and you say we’re going to only provide cover to dentists who we prevent. So we interviewed the dentists, we talked to them. We assess their risk profile and then will apply a fee to their indemnity and we will educate them with X, Y and Z. The underwriters say, OK, that’s a better offering increase. They’ll offer you a lower rate for that person. That’s why the prices are so different, which is why the newer companies tend to be able to offer a lower level of premium than, say, Dental protection or you’ve got. Are claims going back a long, long time and the other thing is having indemnity, which is not always settling right. You need a legal team which look at Dental Law Partnership. They single handedly increased premiums for every dentist in the country because of the things that were doing. But if you look at them now, they’re quite disorganised in the papers that they submit in the allegations that they put forward. A lot of the companies are settling these claims just to get them off the books, just to clear them off. Whereas if you’re a younger, more agile company, you’ve got the benefit of actually being able to fight and look at these claims very carefully. One of the thing that shocked me is one indemnity provider was asking the dentist to write their own letters. That’s not me going to pizza, ordering a pizza. And I go go in the kitchen and make it yourself. Right. So I think there’s there’s an area for a new competitor to enter the market, which is what we’re doing. And Touchwood, it’ll go very well.

[00:58:42] Name one more time to.

[00:58:44] Dental Defence Society, yes.

[00:58:48] And what was the name USPI then? Is it that you’re preventing the dentists? And almost like I guess the way I’m thinking about my daughter’s just started driving and the insurance company put a little box in the car, so a premium comes down. So if she drives like a wolly, they’ll know about it. And so is that your version of what courses have you done, how many failures that you have, cetera, et, and you’re doing that pre-screening and then that is the right thing. Is it the fact that you’ve got a young team of lawyers who want to fight and not settle? What’s the difference? Correct.

[00:59:24] Yeah. So we have quite an aggressive legal team very keen on fighting and not settling. The organisation actually also started out by covering GPS, which I think was twenty seventeen. It was started out by some GPS who wanted to provide indemnity for GPS and now it’s just sort of evolved into dentists. And one of the things was when you have a conversation with somebody on the phone, I mean, we’re all dentists. We can we can figure out what dentist is like after talking to them for me. Let’s say if I’m with dental protection and my indemnity to do implants was twelve thousand pounds or ten thousand pounds a year, how much of my indemnity premium is going towards backing up the dentist who doesn’t write notes properly or is backing up the dentist who’s done no interest in the dental clinic? And it’s then the am I subsidising those clinicians? I don’t want to subsidise those clinicians. So our idea was we’d we’d have a chat with you and we’d say, right, tell us about how you work, what you do, where have you trained so we can get a feel for it. And then we’d say, OK, this is your premium and move from that. So I think it’s a clever way of doing it. And also we’ll run the Dental forms. We know what everyone’s dentistry is like, right? You kind of get a feel for me after talking to them. So I’m excited to see how it how it develops.

[01:00:41] Interesting. Now, let’s take us back to the GDC case. I’ve spoken to quite a few dentists who had that letter, that moment it lands my brother, many of my clients, and there’s nothing quite like it. You know, the sleepless nights tearing the world upside down, all those years of study and all hanging on a thread. Right. Terrible, terrible feeling of just just talk me through the feeling that you went through and how you dealt with it.

[01:01:10] You know, from a from a mental health perspective. I think if you are not mentally strong or don’t have a good support base, I think it could ruin you completely. I think that’s something that you need to understand, because if they’re trying to protect the public, I think they’re also mentally hurting the dentist that they investigate. And it’s almost like you feel like you’re being done for murder, right? You feel as if you’ve done your criminal when you get that letter. Yeah, it’s and it comes to these beautiful brown envelopes, brown envelopes and never see the parking. Fine, speeding fine. Inland Revenue GDC. When I see a brown envelope in the thing, I’m not know what is it. Great TV licence. Fine happy thing. So I messed up many, many years ago and got into trouble with them and had all the letters and all the stuff. And I think it, it makes you question where your life is going to go. Let’s say you can’t work as a dentist. You’ve trained for so long. You’ve done I mean, I haven’t done any postgrad at that time, but everything you planned in your life. Right. Would would shatter and is really, really scary. But I think at the time I saw Dental protection. You were excellent, you know, and I think you need that support network, which is why I think being on a on a legal team, on executive committee now will eventually be helping dentists. Having that insight into what the dentist is going to I think is really important mentally. I think it can be you can go into depression, to be honest with you.

[01:02:49] You can just become depressed and you can not want to do dentistry anymore. But I think the way the market is now or the profession is now, I think many of us will have that letter at least one point in your life. Now, for me, if I got another letter, touchwood, I won’t. I don’t think it would freak me out as much because you’ve been through it already. Right. But it’s something where I would and I’m always so cautious on, especially with social media and the younger dentists, you qualify and you think you’re untouchable. And the one thing I was warned that especially in the social media lecture, I don’t swear on social media. Don’t throw on any platform where your patients to be. You can’t be doing this. You can’t be doing that. You need to be careful as to what you say. If you have any strong viewpoints which divert diverse from the normal, need to be very careful as to how you share them, where you share them. Because Big Brother is always watching and it’s something I wouldn’t want anyone to go through, but interesting you talk about the trolls and the Mai Mai fan club, as I like to call them. Imagine 14 years later, Payman. I’m on the executive committee of a new indemnity organisation, somebody anonymously emails the organisation saying, do you know Neelesh Palmer had an issue with the GDC 14 years ago? Well, imagine imagine what level of human being you have to be to do.

[01:04:17] That’s a special kind of thing.

[01:04:20] And and the thing is, they already knew I’m not hiding anything. They already knew. They think it’s good. They think it means I know what to do. And the thing is, when you haven’t met these people who just have it in for you, no matter what you do, you kind of just get used to it. It doesn’t really bother me anymore. I think my friends, some of my friends get even more excited than I do because I think we know who it is. It’s quite easy to tell by something. You just have to live your life and just carry on. And the higher you fly, the more people will try and bring you down. But you just have to try and fly so high that they can’t even see you anymore. And that’s the ultimate test.

[01:04:57] Takes us nicely onto other errors. We ask everyone about clinical errors and Prav seems to like the one about, oh, I drilled the wrong to my hand slipped. But but I’m not interested in that one. I’m interested in something, you know, decision you made that was incorrect or after reflection, you would have done it differently. Something we can all learn from the market, can learn from the people listening to learn from touchwood.

[01:05:28] I’m not had to drill the wrong tooth to count a wrong to moment touchwood. It’s all been OK. There’s a few patients whom I wish I hadn’t treated right because my ego said and that when you say ego is the worst thing in the world. And those a few, the dentist, X, Y, Z has tried it, I’m better than them. I’m going to fix your problems because I’m the top dog. Woof, woof. And then you try and fix it and then you cook it up even more than the other guy did. And then this patient becomes your problem. And not only does it take time, it gives you a bit of anxiety. And when you see that name on your list, you think, oh, God, no, not this past. And to me, it was always a question of select your page. Don’t be afraid to say I’m sorry, Mr. Patel. Oh, Mrs. Battal, I can’t fix this problem for you, but I’ll refer you to my friend X, Y, Z up the road just to somebody you don’t like. He will look into it for you. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong just to put your hand up. That’s too complicated for me. I can’t do it. And that’s a key thing to understand.

[01:06:42] But your instinct told you not to treat this patient. But your ego,

[01:06:47] My ego, my ego said I can’t do this. You can do it. You’re the man. You can do it.

[01:06:53] Some on the buttocks. Expand a little bit on it. Don’t just a little bit. As far as you know, what was it was it was that the patient was never going to be happy, whatever you did. Personal.

[01:07:02] Yeah. So it was a TMJ case. Had had Crown’s done the occlusion was off one of the crowns to be redone. Fairly straightforward, but there’s something about her that was an edge to her that now it would the alarm bells would be going off. So I did it. And then she would talk and talk and talk about 20 minute appointment to become a forty five minute appointment. I think she would just be and she’d be telling you what she wants you to do. Right. So she will

[01:07:31] See you

[01:07:32] Always a time. And I was like, yeah, I’ve got fancy scanning machine. You know, we can digitally articulate your jaw and do this and do that. And then as soon as I put my fancy restorations into it, it’s wrong. Just it it’s absolutely wrong. It is very bad and so, so bad. And I was like, where do I go from here? Like, what do I do now? Right. Where do I go? And is one of the ones where as soon as that moment happens, your brain, your ego just goes into his little hole and then the other side your brain goes, I told you and now you’re in the the crap. Right? So that’s something that you learn. And now I think maybe every couple of months I’ll turn a patient away. I just say, look, I can’t help you go see a specialist or whatever because I can’t do it. I’m just a kid. I don’t know. I don’t know a very simple man. I don’t want to do that. So you kind of have to play to your strengths. I think that’s the key thing.

[01:08:32] Any influence is.

[01:08:34] Yeah, loads, loads. If you do enough, you get loads. I do about three hundred a year now and I’d say I probably get recently we’ve had a lot more failures on the implant groups and stuff we think is vitamin D. We think it’s cortisol levels. Stress levels are all having effects on implant success rates. Sent a few patients out for blood tests off. The implants have failed for no reason whatsoever. And we found that vitamin D problems have had high cholesterol. Lockdown has affected. I mean, we not really touched on it, but lockdown has has affected the health of our patients in a way that we don’t know and they don’t. And for implant Dental. Yeah, big, big issues, I think. And we are seeing clusters of failures where five, six years ago, no issue whatsoever

[01:09:20] On what you do as a clinician in that situation.

[01:09:25] Take it out. Send them off for bloods and then try again and nine times out of ten second time round, about one patient at the moment who we’ve tried three times, had these bloods done, had everything done, still doesn’t look, I’ve noticed an increased failure rate in penicillin, allergic patients, penicillin, allergic patients. The biology seems to be somewhat different. The oral microflora because they’ve never had amoxicillin or penicillin is different to somebody who’s had penicillin in the past. And they have a high incidence of dry socket and a high incidence of implant failure. And there is some literature coming out to support it now.

[01:10:05] Where’s the less PAMA going to be in five years time? We’re talking retired to two kids and a Tesla and then forget that that figure for career wise, career wise

[01:10:20] And career wise, buying buying another clinic at the moment. Oh, in London, expanding now in Essex and Essex nearby. There’s there’s two more in Essex I’ve got my eye on. And the owners are coming close to retirement. So one hopefully soon and the other one maybe in the next three to four years. And then basically between the three, I’ve got Essex kind of cornered. I’ve got no interest in central London. There’s too many sharks in that tank. For me, Essex is my area. I like it works well for me and to me, I think it would be less clinical because at one point I was in six days a week, six days a week clinic,

[01:10:59] Non-stop NHS and everything. I don’t remember

[01:11:02] And NHS employment. I remember you saying to me, you’ve got Kameda, this is too much. You’re stressing me out by what I’m about. You know, I had, I had a figure I wanted to achieve. I wanted to get to a level and then ease off a bit. I think I want to cut down to maybe three, three days a week I think, and have and also just concentrate on the consultancy business and more on some of the charity charitable endeavours that I’ve been involved with I think have been right. I think you’re

[01:11:30] Always blessed when you’re doing charity, but you’re always best when you’re doing charity really suits you. And it’s interesting, isn’t it? On one side, you’ve got the trolls saying, you know, Ferrari, and then on the other side, your best friend, you’re doing charity. We’ve got it. We’ve got to shut it down. But Prav always ends it with the same question.

[01:11:51] Somebody, as I know, is a long, long way away because you still spring chicken, but imagine it was your last day on the planet and you were surrounded by your nearest and dearest, your loved ones and those who you hope to inspire. What three pieces of wisdom would you like to leave them with?

[01:12:13] For life alone, no one would be you can achieve anything you want as long as you’re willing to put the working. Number two from an uncle of mine, he said to me, the more you have in life, the more humble you must become. A number three was whenever anyone asks you for help, even if you don’t know them but you think it’s justifiable, do what you can to help them. So help people where you can. And those be my three final words before.

[01:12:53] And how would you like to be remembered? There was. Dot, dot, dot.

[01:13:01] And dentistry, just it just

[01:13:03] In general, whatever

[01:13:06] I would say, he lived to his full potential because I think not exploring your full potential is a crime. I think you need to do everything you’re capable of doing and push yourself to the limit.

[01:13:22] We didn’t we didn’t we didn’t get to the bottom of it, you know, but you are that confident, dude, you do what you want to do. But that’s not the picture you drew of when you were a kid. Something clicked. We didn’t get to the bottom of party. Going, go.

[01:13:40] Finally, we have 30 days left and you had all your house intact. What would you do for those 30 days?

[01:13:48] And I’ll spend I think I’d probably have to liquidate every asset so I could set up some trust funds for my two nephews and spend as much time as a kind of my family and friends. Lovely.

[01:14:02] Yeah. Yeah. Where how would. Holidays, what’s your favourite place you’ve been to

[01:14:12] Italy,

[01:14:13] Really?

[01:14:14] It’s all over any part of Italy I love, it is great. And in Venice, I really liked by Italy, Milan around there with the driving ideology, driving trips, and each year I got to Europe and then we drive around and I do them, but do them as a drivers club. We have about 10, 12 cars. But I’m in the car on my own. I don’t I really don’t bring anyone with me. And that’s my time. That’s my time to think and reflect and then decide what goes I have for the next six months. So that time is really important to me. I love Italy and Payman to what clicked. What changed was getting into Dental school when all the odds were against me and then getting my implant masters and realising there’s a moment in every dentist’s life where you think, you know what, I’m actually good at what I do. There’s no ego. It’s not cockiness. You just think, you know, I’ve done this and it works. And I think that gives you that confidence. And for me, I always had my biggest fan club was always my parents. So as parents yourselves, if your dad says you can do it.

[01:15:19] You go and you do it lovely, really lovely. Thanks so much for doing this. Thank you.

[01:15:26] My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[01:15:29] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental Street. Your house, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[01:15:45] 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

[01:16:00] 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.

[01:16:10] And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] And when I realise people like me and they are happy to be my patients and I’ve been a dentist for 22 years, why not? I can to Klondyke. So why don’t I just find people that are like me, you know, like me, have things in common. So that has been my secret until now.

[00:00:28] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental Street. Your highest Payman Langroudi, I’m Prav Solanki.

[00:00:46] It’s an absolute pleasure to have you go through the multi award winning Bishopsgate Dental. It’s lovely to have the chance at this podcast all about kind of the back story, trying to get the journey along the way, how you got to where you got to to start us off like that. Where were you born? How did you grow up? Why did you become a dentist? All of that.

[00:01:10] Ok, well, thank you very much for the invite, guys. I’m really, really excited to be talking to you today. Well, as you may have guessed from my accent, I am not an English speaking country. I’m from Mexico, so my mother tongue is Spanish. I was born in Mexico City and my childhood was a very happy one. And when I was eight years old, I decided that I wanted to be a dentist. Don’t ask me why I think it was. I’m almost sure it was the smell of the dental practise that my mom used to take, because when we were children and I just like that that smell that now I know is oil. So I fall in love with that. And I decided that I was going to be a dentist. There was something that changed my mind. So in nineteen ninety eight, I was very fortunate to to become qualified dentist in Mexico City from university. That’s got to make it difficult.

[00:02:16] Is it difficult to become a dentist in Mexico, like to get in?

[00:02:19] No, not really. The biggest difference between university here and in Mexico is that the majority of the universities have private universities, so you have to pay for it. They are obviously they are universities that are state universities, but they don’t necessarily have the taxes or the of the Baker commission. So normally you if you can afford it, you will have private education all the way through university. So the reality is that if you can pay, you can get so. So, of course you do have to pass an exam is not that everybody can go through. And then the thing is, of course, if you’re not good enough, I’m going to stop talking. Oh, so so I think that getting into your knee is not the thing is keeping in and finishing the degree, raising

[00:03:24] Your parents feel that they do.

[00:03:26] Well, my mom when my my mom was very, very, very young, she was only when she got married to my dad that was ten years older than her and that is ten years older than her. My dad worked as a self-employed salesman, selling many, many things through his life. But at the moment he’s basically doing selling of lighting systems and things like that. So, yeah, a businessman, a salesman, really. And my mom had a degree to be a secretary when she was in college. And later on in her life, maybe in her early 40s, he decided to go back to work. And she was also saleswoman what she was doing, advertising and things like that. So, yeah, the two of them. Very good work ethics now, I think involved in the need to be on me. So so, yeah. Trying to follow the steps

[00:04:29] Of what was what was university life like, the balance of academic, social, all that sort of stuff.

[00:04:36] Yeah. Well I, I love it. I absolutely love every minute of it. We cut. This is quite bizarre because from from the first semester you actually start with two patients. We have we will go through medical history with them. I think in the first year you start doing the prophylaxis scale and polishes. So it was a very good practical academic and practical, was very much together. And we used to finish uni probably about. Three or four pm, and then after that, and we will go out and have big parties, I love parties, people that nobody will know that very well. So since I was a teenager, obviously I will go and socialise and go to big parties. We used to go to uni even on Saturday as well. So we were all very tired in the morning. It was the hangover. Sometimes I feel like I have to agree to it. So now what? It was really good. The balance was great. And in Mexico, we don’t tend to leave our homes to go to uni. So I was still living with my parents through all my university and my my colleagues, my friends the same. So, you know, many of you are let’s say if you live in London, you go to London at uni. So it’s very different in Mexico. If you’re in Mexico City, you go to Mexico City or in the other place. So that also helps by keeping good relationships with your parents? I think so. We are very family oriented country. So. So, yeah, it was great.

[00:06:38] I’ve never been to Mexico City. I’ve been to Mexico, but never been to Mexico City. But you hear the stories of it being one of the busiest cities in the world, but super fast moving, high population and over. What would you say that you’re working right in the middle of London now as a vibe, as the city would say? The biggest differences? I mean, is it a fun place is a dangerous place? What’s it like?

[00:07:04] Well, Mexico City, when I was growing up and when I lived there because actually I’ve been here in the UK for 20 years, so I have lived longer in London and in Mexico when I was growing up. And it was always B.C., it was always dangerous. He has always been dangerous. I think one of the biggest shames in Mexico is the corruption. And unfortunately, corruption brings a lot of crime with it. So 80s at the moment, a very dangerous city, but it’s a great place to go and have fun. You know, I have loads and loads of my patients going to Mexico and they always come and ask me for advice. I actually even have text that I copy and paste because I’ve been asked so many times about which restaurants to go to try. I have it already. So when anybody asks me, I just copy and paste what I always said to them, do not do anything that the hotel people tell you not to do. You know, like always use certified taxi. Don’t be walking in silly places by yourself. You know, all these things that we probably do here in London as well, taking a lead to be more more care on that. But I love the vibe in London. I love London is so it’s very sexy. Mexico City is also so huge that you only really get to know the place that you meet at the place that you that you work. You don’t really know too many of the places because it’s so big. So. Yeah, but London is great. I love it.

[00:08:52] General, what was the what was the transition like. When did what when did you decide I’m going to go to London. What sort of motivated that decision and what was the difference in culture. Was was there a culture shock or did you celebrate instead? What were the biggest differences that you noticed?

[00:09:10] Well, and I moved over here because actually my husband, I met him when I was travelling in Europe, backpacking in Europe, and so we basically we fall in love. And he came to visit us to Mexico. And then I came to visit him and I never left after that. So he was he was fine with me here in London. So what one thing that was very clear for me is that because I always wanted to be a dentist since I was a little girl, that was something that was never going to stop me from doing. I was going to come to London and I was going to be here on my own merit. That was something that we always focus on from the very beginning, because he said, well, stay stay with me. And I say, well, I will stay. If I find myself a job and a visa, I’m not going to get into a marriage just to stay in this country. So I was very, very fortunate because at the moment, well, maybe we’re coming to the same. But it was a shortage of nurses at the time and some nurses and dentists. So I basically find a job very straight away. The first interview I went, they offered me the job as a Dental. Then they offered to sortable my visa on all my paperwork.

[00:10:37] So at that point, I had already I was very fortunate that in Mexico I learnt English as I was privately educated. They wanted to do English. I was not fluent. I would defend myself. I wasn’t fluent, but allow me to work. So. So that was very good. And I don’t think I found a shock culturally at all because I have always been the only thing I will say was different things that I didn’t realise or not different. I didn’t realise that the Mexicans and the British people had a very similar sense of humour. You know, that was something that I absolutely loved from the very beginning. We like to say things sometimes. We give it a second sense. We we joke about things. We we do know that banter that that’s that kind of relationship between friends and sometimes people, colleagues and things like that is great. And I absolutely love that. So, no, for me, I don’t think that was a shock at all. I fall into it quite happily and I have always been very fortunate to have friends around me that like me the way I am. And sometimes I can be very Mexican in my way of thinking or saying things. But yeah, I have always been accepted the way I am one because some Mexican as well.

[00:12:14] So you would Dental nursing while you were studying to do this? Conversion exams.

[00:12:20] Exactly, yes.

[00:12:22] Exams. Right.

[00:12:23] The ones that were very hard at the more of the time that it was the international qualifying exam, which is I worked as a Dental for two and a half years. Well, that that if you ask me now, I think it was one of the best things that could have ever happened to me, because is the way that I get to understand how dentistry was done here in the UK. I and then many times that I didn’t know because obviously I studied in Spanish and actually I think it makes me the better now that I have my practise because I understand where the nurses are coming from. I, I know the jobs they have to do. I sympathise with that. So yeah, for me was one of the first things that we have ever done.

[00:13:25] And so you went from nurse posture exams, qualified as a as a dentist. And then what happened next? Did you carry on working in the same place or find your first job? And then I guess you migrated the story of becoming a business owner of the what was that journey?

[00:13:42] Well, I when I qualified, I worked for a year in an NHS private practise with a lot more, and it was probably about 80 percent NHS and 10 percent private school, because at that point where I decided to move over here, I then requalified two and a half years later. I was already so ready to be a mom, to have a family. So after the first year, I had my first child and after my maternity leave, I didn’t go back to that job again because I I wasn’t very happy with the practise, to be honest. So then after that, this practise was and in. And then after that I went to work all the time, which was in the south. East. Exactly. And I worked there for three years. And for just as for curiosity, I because I was doing more private work there in Tunbridge Wells one day I just became curious and started looking around to see if there was something else it closer to home because I was obviously a Mormon and having to drive to Italy. So it wasn’t that bad. But I was still trying to find something closer. And I was very, very fortunate that I found a lovely private practise just two, three minutes from my house where I worked for two years before buying Bishopsgate.

[00:15:30] So you live as a dentist in Mexico. Was it more like the NHS practise or more like the private practise? Is it all private in Mexico?

[00:15:41] The majority of dentistry is private, so it is. Regarding your previous plans, do they send you shock? The only shock I found is that when I start seeing a lot of NHS dentistry and of course, please don’t take I don’t want to be rude or anything. I haven’t seen any dentistry for many, many years now. But when I arrived to the country, I used to say, wow, I thought I was going to give a step forward and two or three steps backwards. Know all my dentistry in Mexico. I only practise in Mexico for three years. And that was privately.

[00:16:20] But was it similar to private practise here in so much of materials, you were taking time with patients and all of them?

[00:16:29] Yes, yes, yes. The advantage that Mexico has with the country is that we are neighbours with America, with the United States. So therefore, the majority of my lecturers, for example, had postgraduate degree from the materials were all readily available. We always had excellent materials. For example, since I started, I had a very good brand everywhere in the world. I have never, ever worked within the company that hasn’t been applied in Mexico, for example. So the materials were always very good that the quality of dentistry very good. And the great thing about dentistry is in many other degrees too. But they are so obviously very difficult for you to understand, to do dentistry in the in in London. And I will say of course not, because the teeth are the same, that the treatments are the same. So no, it was just basically learning the names in aviation and then they get the name of the instrument that is the same dentistry suit.

[00:17:47] Get on to Bishopsgate. Was it a squat? Did you open it or did you buy it?

[00:17:54] No, I bought Bishopsgate dental care in 2010, but I bought it and it was done in practise. The previous owner’s heart was not in it until it was a very neglected practise in every sense of the word. So, yeah, about the practise

[00:18:21] That appeal to you. What’s the potential for turn around? Was that something that you wanted specifically?

[00:18:29] No, not at all. When I started working the the practise that was June. It was May or June 2010. I didn’t know that the practise was bankrupt. And Dow probably about. A month before I signed the contract, it was, wow, I was basically lied all the way. So, no, it was a big shock for me was the biggest shock because I could see potential when you were in there. And I would agree area. Right is a beautiful area is amazing on the ground floor. So people walk around and we are there. So that was

[00:19:22] What about what about you? Were you even qualified to understand the spreadsheets and the profit and loss? Was that part of the problem?

[00:19:32] Well, the part of the problem, yes, of course. I didn’t know anything about numbers and profits and then profit. So anything I was it I was I was very naive at the time. So I think it was the very handy work of my husband because he was always saying no, not because this guy was signing the sign. The contract signed the contract. My husband was not all. We have to see what the solicitor says and we have to say what the accountant says, you know, so he was always the more sensible part of the equation, because my heart immediately I fall in love with the practise. I fall in love with every area, everything about the practise. And my husband was the sensible person. We have to look at the numbers

[00:20:26] To see do what does your husband.

[00:20:28] And if was in with I.T. consultant, but actually I know when this is going to change because I have never understood what he does for a living. I know he’s very good at it.

[00:20:49] So so he was more of a detail orientated person. So then you signed up and you bought the thing. I mean, I went I’ve been there quite recently. There’s been a pandemic, but it’s a huge practise now. It couldn’t have started like that. You didn’t know what was it? How many surgeries was it?

[00:21:11] What we only had to surgery. It was it was basically at some point it was the myself was a dentist, two part time hygienist, receptionist and a nurse. That seems that was only the four of us were actually only three of us. The nurse, the receptionist. The night there all the time and two part time I do this. So knowing was very different from what is now. The good thing is that I think when when you are determined to make something a success, when you have a Dental dreams and say, well, I want to do this, I want to achieve these, I it took me a long time to do to achieve what I have achieved. And fortunately, I inherited a terrible receptionist manager that they almost made it doubly hard for me to succeed it because she was in her old ways, she was not open to do anything that was not typical of the telephone booking appointments. So so that was really, really hard. But within a couple of years, we managed to settle another surgery, also build a room on by two thousand. On 14, I managed to find what is my my well, my back. She holds my back. That is my manager. She’s amazing. And she’s one of the reasons that we have achieved so much, so much in the last few years.

[00:23:01] Geeta, what was your process of trying to find the person that your backbone, as you described, of the practises of your manager? She had someone who was a roadblock that was getting in the way. And I think you probably identified early on that, look, if I want to progress and build this the way I do, the person needs to go, I’m assuming, and be replaced by someone better. And so what was your process about finding that the individual, because of me being involved with a few practises your practise manager can make or break the success of the practise that they they are literally the backbone. And the way I see it that the delay between you. The rest of the problems in the practise and having that layer allows you to focus on what your vision is and they can help solve the problem. That’s my experience anyway. So just talk me through the process. If you went on this mission to find this person, did you interview lots of people? Did you know straight away when you found this person? This is the one?

[00:24:02] Well, I think I did actually know after interviewing many, many, many people. My main objective was to find somebody that was going to be open to do two new things that at that time in 2013, 2014, there was the pain advertising starting to happen. There was D social media starting to be a little bit more portable dentistry. So that was it was something that I wanted to go into. So I knew that they had to be it has to be somebody that will be happy and open for new ideas, because my receptionist that was the manager previously was so poorly motivated and was like she wasn’t the right person for me. When I was interviewing and practise managers, I actually realised what actually a practise manager does in a job. So I learnt from those interviews what type of person I wanted to go for and what type of questions I needed to ask was for me was also a learning process when I met Amanda. She was always very, very accommodating of my ideas and we had a really good chemistry between the two of us in that interview that I didn’t wanted to let her go. So I offered the job and I’m so very happy that she said yes. So she’s been with me for close to seven years now and we are a great team. Together we call each other. We are almost like sisters. You know that. We had a really lovely relationship. So, you know, I’m very happy with you.

[00:26:00] When you visit your practise, that seems to be a real vibe about the team. The know everyone seems so happy to be at work. And I know I know you’ve won a bunch of awards on the subject as well. But so would you put that down to, you know, you were saying before your experience as a Dental nurse yourself. Oh, what else? I mean, the way I see it when I come back, Gina, it feels like you’re the host of a party, the hostess. It just feels like it’s a good time being had in general. What is the comfort you?

[00:26:37] Well, I think it comes from a lot of work on finding the right people to work. For me, my biggest advice to anybody starting or buying a new practise is get surrounded with people that think like you. And we are all very similar. We we like to do a job well done. We are also very social people. So we we chat about many things. We go out for drinks. We are very, very nice team. So but also is exactly as you said, because I was already I worked as a Dental for two and a half years. I didn’t want to have people working with me just to suction that thing. It needs to be a to be more more opportunities for these people to to to to get better in their jobs. So I have always pushed my staff to to do what they like the most. And if they want to go in courses, we have to pay for the courses and we are happy for them to get more from the job they do. And I think that also makes them happy, because obviously, if you are growing, if you if you if you are not, you know, if you are not, let’s do what I want to use it. Exactly. You need to keep moving and but also people that they need to be recognised for their worth.

[00:28:16] So so then give us some top tips. You know, you said one, they try and get them, get some career development, some some tips, things to do and things not to do. Mistakes you’ve made on team.

[00:28:29] Mistakes, I made those mistakes myself and forgive me, I have already thankfully those mistakes are not with me anymore, but it was I think it was those hiring too quickly. I think for me, the main thing to do is to have a good interview with that person and also have a trial day and see actually whether they are they walk the walk. They sometimes talk and talk and they have to talk and walk. They have to do it properly. And I think that is the main thing that you need to have them see what they’re doing, how they’re doing, how they relate to the people. I have always asked advice for my most trusted staff. How do you see her? Do you think she will be part of our team? You know, I always ask because at the end of the day, they’re also going to be working with them. So I want them also to be happy. And they are very good judge of character. So they will say, yeah, actually I think it’s fine.

[00:29:50] You talked about keeping them happy with education. All I could do to incentivise the team financially as well.

[00:29:58] I do. I think I paid very good wages. But just we don’t do bonuses or anything like that. No, no, I what I do is I give them the good lessons. I take them out for dinners, dreams. I have to leave. If I have to go to having a drink or something, I’m happy to leave my card number with the restaurant. They come, I’m doing whatever they want. So no, I think. No, we have, according to witnesses or anything like that, any more incentives apart from partisan games and having a good salary? I think sometimes I’ve mentioned this other stuff to all the colleagues of this. Oh, my gosh, you’re paying too much. But I don’t think so. I think you pay for what you get. I want to make sure that my staff is happy. At the moment. We’re approaching a very difficult situation with so many nurses or staff available to hire. So, of course, you want to keep your doors happy.

[00:31:15] Now, Gina, tell us a little bit about your practise, the type of practise type of treatment, so, you know, for certain types of treatments, like, for example, you know, you Invisalign, diamond provider, the platinum or whatever that is, do you do a lot of whitening? Is it mainly cosmetic or you just give me a brief overview of some of the stuff

[00:31:37] Does a lot of whitening

[00:31:41] Whitening? I, I was I always had that. I practise. We do absolutely have a little bit of everything. Yes. But what we also do is every single dentist that has a special interest. OK, so for example, in general, especially in the one so I’m now I’m why that point is the line. I have the cases, I am on the line. So I have a good reputation for the. Then with that type of treatment, the results of the after that. Why do you say Payman we do it in Lightsey who like all the time. So it is something that we are approaching from the patient’s going to be the one to have poisoning treatment. Then I have another dentist that she is also a general and she does a lot of cosmetic as well. But she also knows that she is only having an extended day. So she does a load of patients that so therefore for the campaign and especially interest. And then I have another dentist called Nicole. She’s also good, very good dental dentist who has special interest. So she does that. And I have a dentist, Brianna, I know you know, has well, Payman. And she is basically my do to help rely on this saline, but she’s also Dental. So she also to stop between the four of us. We kind of cater for the patients, the patients, and they have to leave the practise and to have different treatments. Our hygiene is that excellent hygiene. They do a very good Aryal treatments as well. So we have to be fair. We have a very good practise. Very close to where we find your speciality is

[00:34:03] To take you to take me through your Invisalign process. I know. For lots of dentists to speak to, they do it in so many different ways from that patient having a video consultation, seeing the treatment coordinator, having a scan, then seeing the dentist, and then things like Dental monitoring, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, in thing at the moment is how many Invisalign cases do you do a year and trying to trying to match that Oprah, you see that all over social and everyone has their own sort of approach to it. What’s the typical patient journey for you if a if a patient wants Invisalign?

[00:34:42] How do you find the patient in the first place? Let’s start with

[00:34:46] Where we are very fortunate that we have a very good reputation in the area. So there is a lot of warmth of mouth so they can be fed by friends or family or I do pay for the Google advertising on the moment. We just about to launch a Facebook campaign as well. Oh, yes, I’ve Google. A lot of the patients find us through Google and then have the option to have a video consultation or they have the option to go to face to face. At the moment, we are seeing the video consultations numbers go down. Will more people be happy to come for a face to face consultation for something that is very, very interesting? Is that because our website is very clear on how much money you would charge? What is my expertise? The cases I have done, the majority of the patients that come to us is because they are going to be paying the deposit on that appointment when they come for the consultation. So what we normally do, they if I have a special day that is only for consultations. No, all the treatment can be booked in that in that day.

[00:36:10] And basically, I welcome the patient. I like to be present. I am a very selfish person and I like patients to know, to get to know me and to comfort me, to get to know them. So I will say hello. Explain the procedure. And then I leave the room on my forty nine to the minute. She will then get on, take photos, take a stand and then answer any questions that the patient has. Then I come in and basically close the deal and then after that my if they don’t need approval going that they go ahead with a treatment, they basically go through my physician co-ordinator and she will do follow ups and e-mails and calls, you know, the normal thing. But one thing that is really, really good is that actually my present co-ordinator, she she takes pride on her numbers. And every month she goes, we have done lots of these numbers or that number. So she’s also a very enthusiastic part of the process. So that’s quite a lot.

[00:37:19] We do us very, very similar, actually. We have these are almost called like a pilot, co-pilot. The easiest way of post consultation consultations will be dentists. The nurse hand over to nurse, nurse takes over. So every nurse is like a mini TCO, right. Rather than there being just a specific tyko. So each nurse has the ability to be able to graduate, like you said before, that not just doing the suction. Right. They’re involved in the whole process in terms of that process. So when you leave the room and it’s just the nurse and the patient, what are you doing at that point? Do you see another patient with another nurse?

[00:37:57] So, you know, I don’t really have the availability to do that because are fully involved. You know, I get on and do my notes or my work with my ex. Oh, yes, definitely. I utilise that time to get on with things.

[00:38:18] Yeah. So when you say close the deal. I know what you mean by that, but how do you differentiate yourself from the next Invisalign user? Because for me, the stronger the brand is, the harder it is for the dentists to differentiate themselves. And you said you’ve got a great reputation. I know just by being in that building with you guys once once someone’s been in there and all that, they get that magic. I get that. But what do you say to your patients about the difference between having Invisalign at your practise or having it somewhere else? I mean, for instance, what’s the deal in the first place? Is it a budget net? Thing is the quality level. How do you think it

[00:39:02] Is going to do it? You know, I have patients coming and saying, oh, are you going to give me whitening with it? And I said, no, I’ll give you a discount. Like we give them 20 percent discount to white to me. And I said, what? We don’t need to give you any extra because we know the quality of service. We will provide you as simple as that.

[00:39:25] People thinking Invisalign is Invisalign. It doesn’t matter that we know me and you get me. The dentist makes a massive difference, right? The plan makes a difference. Everything makes sense. But but you must get patients coming in saying, well, it’s Invisalign.

[00:39:40] It’s all. Yes, of course. They come and said, oh, well, but you only have to press that button on, send it to know five hours for an hour and a half an hour. And I think I’m very fortunate. I count my blessings because when people come to see us, they know who we are. They have already Google. They have already seen our reviews. They have. Right. We don’t need to sell them anything at that point. And that’s why I feel so fortunate that we have done all these job work beforehand. You know, that is I mean, I’m going to be there for a long time, probably since 2000, only six years. And we’re very fortunate.

[00:40:38] So let’s let’s get onto your plans for the future. I mean, for me, you’re a very driven leader, right. Business leader in so much as you’re one of the top Invisalign users in the country, you’re you’re I can see from my enlightened members, you’re one of the enlightened users. You said you do a little bit of everything. Seems like you do a lot of everything, but just a little bit. What are the plans for the future? Are you thinking, look, this is it. I’m happy with the way it is. And I can see you’ve expanded the practise to to the two floors and, you know, it feels maxed out now. Is that it? Or do you feel like you’re going to try and do a few more of these or how are you going to go?

[00:41:23] And no, I am very happy with the way things are. I have achieved a lot. I have no plans to open another practise. I do still have a little bit of room for growth within the practise. Now I’m going to try to to execute them. They’re trying to expand that part of the business. But I, I have always something on the minds of, you know, I have a moment on my speakerphone. So I now I have done a few webinars. I’m going to do another webinar and soon I’m also at the moment and working with as part of the educational committee, obviously the goal for me that that is something that I want to explore a little bit more. So personally, I think the moment I only work three days a week of the practise, I don’t have any more intentions to work for days until the fourth day. Is my hands doing my thing today? I’m doing my paperwork. I mean, I’m actually July is my first month that I’m not working on Fridays. I’m not even answering emails finance anymore. So I have decided to do that because of the pandemic. We were working 12 hour days and it is killing us. So we have change. And that’s why I think at the moment I want to be more of a work life balance. I want to spend a little more time with my family. I want to spend more time in my house because I enjoyed it when we were in the lockdown. So so now for me definitely is growing a few to maximise the space of depravities. So growing my my name as a speaker, as you know, and things like that,

[00:43:31] Tell us about the family.

[00:43:34] Well, I have two children, as I mentioned before. They are amazing. You know, my son just sees me. I’m very, very proud of him because we tell him that he had to find that he was going to have a summer job and he’s embracing it with both arms. He is doing some gardening two to three days a week and he’s loving it. So he has his first job. I mean, he’s amazing. And my daughter, Sophia, she just finished senior school, junior school. She just that was the last day of school. She had her party and now she’s going to seniors black. The big time has gone.

[00:44:26] So she’s 12

[00:44:28] Yet, but she will be 12 in September. She’s one of the oldest. Yes.

[00:44:33] Yes. I like what you said about your son and him getting the the job because of his parents, especially parents who can give their children who have got the means to give their children everything they want, not necessarily everything I need. I’ve often find myself having conversations with people of how do you keep them grounded and how do you teach them the value of money? Because often you can say, and I’ve had these conversations, go and get a job. Well, and then this book, if I can just ask you for everything. The thought process done through your head and is that part of the motivation around this is just to sort of give him the the I guess to learn about the value? Right.

[00:45:27] Yes, no, definitely false has been it, I didn’t want him to be all, so I’m just sitting there doing nothing I wanted him to on the stand work ethics. You know, one of the most important things that somebody can do, and I find it myself when, you know, when you find a nurse or a member of staff that they don’t know how to work hard because they have never done it. I want him to be able to to to to work hard and recognise he’s worth of money because money is everything what it used to be. And you have where it takes you most likely going to succeed.

[00:46:21] Where did your work ethic come from, Gino?

[00:46:24] Oh, definitely from my parents for sure, because they were the ones that that they that, you know, my dad, he wasn’t able to finish his studies until he had to go to work when she was old. And and he never will. Now, he has not stopped working. He is seventy eight years old, but he still works fine. And when we were little, I remember he used to come away with sacks of sweets on a little table outside the house and what people will buy sweets from us. So we have a lot of that also happening in our house. So yeah, I think even with this will not take anything for granted.

[00:47:16] So when we ask, we ask everyone this question and it’s a question around failure, around errors, clinical errors. Can you can you think of some clinical errors, some things that stand out in your head that you can share with us and something, you know, what did you learn from them? Because you a lot of times in medicine, we don’t we don’t discuss our errors.

[00:47:41] And he is one of my biggest errors when I started this, the line was to expect the human body to behave as. You know, you’re working on your phone, your paintings and your videos and you press a button on the computer. So easy to manipulate. So predictable. And then you go into the patient. I’m just thinking, why is this not moving? Why is this not happening? And it comes a lot of frustration with them. Then when you go back to the X-ray, you see go back to these close. And I didn’t notice that. So some time for me, some of my errors have been ignored when I started taking X-rays in a big tensing, that everything was going to be moved because they said they were going to be moved. So now something that I’ve always said to the patients, is that your plan, your treatment, when you are not a complete predictable is easy to manipulate. Your body is not. So we are going to have to, you know, not not bring the expectations down with not building them too high. I think, for me has been the biggest thing that I have learnt from my failures, because I always say, oh yes, I’m twenty five and we finish and then twenty five animals from my, you know, weight close to finish at all. So I think it’s managing the spectators. For me that has been the most my biggest learning

[00:49:23] Anything like, you know, drilled the wrong to so called the wrong to anything like that at all.

[00:49:31] It’s just not so far. Well yes. Yes I know what I have put anaesthetic on the wrong side. Yes. Yes. You know, what you do know is to seek to find if you are feeling want to see. And then I got turned around you to talk to the patient. OK, pay attention. Then I suddenly put the anaesthetic technological impetigo. Oh, my God. That happened once and I couldn’t believe it. I was so ashamed of myself that the patient was OK. And he said, Oh, well, at least you didn’t do the feeling given how long that has been. Yeah.

[00:50:19] Gina, what about what about being a woman in a juggling family life? Is it a coincidence that every single person who works in your practise is a woman? Is that on purpose or by mistake? I mean, you’ve got some wonderful women. I know Ali. I know Rihanna, your manager, as you said, Amanda, just special. But is it something you’ve done on purpose or.

[00:50:42] No, it just happened. You know, I always said to people we couldn’t do it. Sometimes it just happened. I personally think that I’m here is that we had made a big a big hit. If the patients like me the way I am, the way I treat them, I want them to experience that with every single member of my team. Yes. So therefore, I try to find people that are caring that are so Shuba are going to give them that experience and that it turns out to be women, you know, and. We haven’t done anything, we actually we were so close to hire a male, this didn’t work out for him, but we were going to break all female team because it was amazing. Dental less well, but he hasn’t happened yet. So I’m not saying he’s going to be forever. But we you know, we love being a women’s team. I’m very proud of who we are. Together, we empower each other. We can change in the changing room without any male coming to the room. We can talk about periods, menopause, so many things without any reservations. Guess we are very, very happy as we are at the moment.

[00:52:21] Have you ever had a man?

[00:52:23] Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, good. I had one dentist that worked with me for I that if you work with me for about four or five years and then after that, I have had you few male dentist, but he just it just didn’t work out. You know, when you try to I’m sure you have heard she came to train my team a few times to hospitals. I think through the year we went a year programme on actually many things I learnt from her kind of pointed to make big changes of the practise and is when I one day I said, you’re going, you’re going, you’re going. You know, it was just like, I’m going to change this and I’m going to make the most of this advice. And when I realise if people like me and they are happy to see my patients and I’ve been a dentist for 20 years, why not? I can apply myself. Why don’t I just find people that are like me, you know, like me, have things in common? And yes, that has been my secret until now,

[00:53:48] Gina, during the pandemic, we were donating to space to hospitals and all that. And you did a delpit. And I particularly remember thinking someone is as busy as you in the situation that you are with a family and all that, and you got in your car and drove and found the right place and all that. You get involved in charities or giving or volunteering or anything like that.

[00:54:15] Yes, yes. Many, many years we have had our charity of the year and we have donated a lot of money. And I’m a little bit biased here because I have done a lot of charity for Mexico. We have been to help children in poverty. Also, we help to rebuild some shelters after the earthquake in 2019. And now the one the charity that I really, really like very, very much is well on wheels. And that, I think, is one of the most amazing charities that I have I have spoken to with just about and we are getting involved with. So, again, that we like to do a little bit.

[00:55:10] That doesn’t come from if you get up and go, is that like in Mexico where everyone has to come and come together to solve a problem?

[00:55:19] I don’t know where it comes from. To be honest, because I never done any charity in Mexico. I never did when I when I was living in Mexico, I never thought. But I don’t know. I think when when I started in official state, I also started getting very involved with the Mexican Chamber of Commerce, the Mexican embassy and councilmen. So through them is what I have seen the need to support all this on. So I have done that. I have.

[00:55:59] What does that mean? Involved with the Chamber of Commerce, other business owners in the UK from Mexican origins?

[00:56:08] Exactly. That is this is basically Mexicans in the UK that are promoting Mexico in some ways and also people from the UK that support businesses in Mexico. So Mexican Chamber of Commerce is very equal number of British Mexican people coming together. And, you know, I’m very proud to say that I want the Mexican Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2017. And it was great and it was all because of the charity work that we’ve done through Bishopsgate. That’s OK.

[00:56:49] Oh, is that right?

[00:56:51] Yeah. Amazing.

[00:56:53] You’ve won a lot of awards in the past. You know, if you like, figured out how to do the entries. How does that work? You want to know how many of you won? Loads and loads, right?

[00:57:03] We have won. We have won best practise in London. Best patient care, best team London, best in National Wide. I have we have been finalist in many awards. I, I don’t know, we’ve been knocking

[00:57:24] Just the winning. Did you do you find that the process of getting entering.

[00:57:29] Oh. Is very hard work.

[00:57:31] But does it somehow. Somehow it can’t just be. Is it just for the, for the, for the prise or is it. The process itself is useful to the team

[00:57:40] I think and well this is the thing we were very because we are a team of its own and do things, you know, we do the McMillan-Scott thing morning and they the some that they all that and I always take photos of it. So when, when, when we decided we were going to apply for these work, we have done all the work already. You know, I was just putting things together and the same happens when I do the static Dental awards. I’ve been very fortunate to be a finalist for a few. I’m hoping this year something nice will happen in September. But I never, ever said a case, for example, thinking I’m going to win an award winning not until I finish a case. And I think, wow, that was a really good case to talk to was an award or because of that, I always, always document everything. I take photos. I’m kind of prepared without knowing I prepared myself. So, I mean,

[00:58:49] The clinical sites, the clinical side there. But I hope that it’s somewhere in your education career that sort of seems to be starting and you’re lecturing. I hope you do include something on managing teams because it sounds like it comes naturally to you. And in a way, you sort of you don’t know you’re doing it the way you think about it. But, you know, when I come, there is something special there. Yeah. From the dentist to the receptionist to the to the manager. Everyone’s super happy moving in the same direction. And that itself is a massive skill that’s lacking in our industry, in our profession. You know, I mean, Prav and I talk to hundreds of dentists and it’s missing in most practises, most practises it’s say. So I would if I were you, I would include that in you in the education piece. Don’t just talk about moving about the other side of it, too.

[00:59:49] Sometimes it’s it’s hard to. But Little Junior, because I speak to a lot of practises who has perhaps the follow me though. The code is the place where you’ve got a super happy team. You know, it’s running like a well oiled machine. And when you ask them to break it down, what is it? Yeah, the majority of people say just be nice to people. Right. Just to treat people the way you expect to be treated, et cetera, et cetera. And I think. Times it’s just inherent, it’s in your DNA, right, and it’s coming from your upbringing or your family or the way you’ve been treated or the fact that you, a nurse, if you could bottle that oil and distribute it in a way that was it could be replicated. I think that would be the most valuable thing any practitioner could could get above and beyond is where you stick your attachments. And this is how you see your line is

[01:00:46] Definitely one of the things that we’re always talking about. One thing that I wanted to mention is that at the moment I am in that we I would you know, we would discover or reinvent ourselves a few times like this as a business is no fun whatsoever. And after winning so many awards, we still have a very nice core team together. But unfortunately, after the pandemic and I was I was saying before having made bad decisions, at the moment we are struggling to find two good lessons to come and join us and put us in a lot of stress on the other team members because they have to be working doubly hard because we are working with temps and they don’t care about protocols or how to, you know, that they come and go without any regard or consequences the next day, know whether or not they don’t care. So at the moment, we are we are suffering that kind of situation where I talk to the team a few months ago and said, OK, I’m going to be a very hard ride because we need to find the right people what we have done before we can do it again. And I’m sure we will do it again, but is not rushing to find somebody just for finding it needs to be the right person.

[01:02:31] I’m seeing this nationally, yet every practise, most practises, I’m speaking to the same getting hold of a nurse and there’s less availability right at the moment. And the biggest problem, if I speak to any practitioner that I’m coaching or helping with business development, the one thing that they’re struggling with is the most common problem is at this moment in time, getting a nurse, let alone a good one, is difficult, really, really difficult.

[01:03:07] It’s it’s a double whammy, not only the pandemic and I mean, it’s it’s a lot more difficult being in this post pandemic than prevent panic. Right. Not only that, Brexit as well. I mean, we’re hiring and this is nowhere near the same number and quality of people. I’m not looking nursing. I’m thinking about the customer care that I’m hiring for. There’s just the number. And the quality has gone down since Brexit. I think there’s a bunch of people who’ve decided either not to come or will leave. And one of the Jena.

[01:03:44] Yes, I think one of the important things we have heard, such as Prav said, is not only the suffering, the bodies and many, many passages from the same, the same, but one I’m actually one of my nurses that she only started with me in July last year after the pandemic. We lost because one of her friends decided to do temp nursing until is a lot less work is easy money, so on to temping. So that’s why they doing. But it is a shame because I know that that’s what’s going to be excellent if she being young, I’m just qualified. What had that quality is in the right place to go to next week. But then I think what if I’m going to have to use this stupid mask and I’m going to have to do all the paperwork and I have to I find myself a job that I don’t have to do that or work. If I’m going to have to do it, they’re going to pay me three or four pounds more than pay now. And so fortunately, they but it’s happening at the moment.

[01:05:11] We like to. And this costs the same question

[01:05:16] That I’ve got. One final question before we before we move to the the big question, which is a conversation around exit. Gina, I’m speaking to a lot of business owners who are sort of transitioning to that stage of their career where they’re looking to exit so that practise selling to millions whatever and disappear into the sunset or stay in the practise and reduce their that time. There is something that you consider to be thought about what what is the big dream, the big exit strategy. If you could wave the magic wand and say, if I was living my perfect life and maybe were already doing it, what would you be doing? Like working one day a week and spending four days with family? What have you thought about exit strategy?

[01:06:05] I have thought about what type of exit? No exit. Yes. What I want to leave often. Yes. And I have always worked since I was in uni. I had a job and I don’t think I will be a happy housewife only I think I will be very happy working two or three days a week talking for a company or doing some volunteering or things like that. Because I am that type of person, I’m always wanted to be involved in things. You know, as you said, I’m a very busy woman, but how I did it, I don’t know what I organise my thoughts as he was fighting for yesterday. And, you know, I still find time to do so when I decide to sail the practise. I think I would like to have a similar number of days working to me. But then that means that I will not have to do that for me to feel like weight off my shoulders. And no, I think I will always be busy anyway. Working.

[01:07:26] Your dad’s working into his seventies, right? And it doesn’t sound like there’s any signs of stopping, so I’m sure you’re taking inspiration from there.

[01:07:34] Anyway, it’s been a lovely story, Gina. Love you. Story, your passion, the excellence part of it, the joy you get out of it and put it into it. It’s it’s just palpable. Have you that it’s a privilege to know you. Prav has his final questions. Dental happy questions.

[01:07:59] Oh, am I in trouble?

[01:08:02] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just just some questions for reflection and, you know, imagine, imagine. It was your last day on the planet. And you had your loved ones around you, the people that matter the most, and you were going to leave them with three pieces of advice. What would those pieces of advice be?

[01:08:30] Well, I think the first one will be, no matter what job you do, do it properly. That would be my first one. My second one will be. No matter how much money you get paid or do what you want to do. I’m so fortunate to be a dentist and love what I do, what I couldn’t imagine doing something I don’t know. So for them, I would like that to be happy with what they do. And the third one will be. Enjoy. Enjoy life with friends, with family. Say yes to going out and say yes to staying at home if that is what you want to do.

[01:09:25] Lovely, lovely, Jane. Thank you for that. And how would you like to be remembered? So Gina was.

[01:09:34] I want to see a crazy Mexican dentist if they

[01:09:42] Really, really and just one final question for fun. Let’s say you had one month left. How would you how would you spend that month? What what would you be doing in those last 30 days?

[01:09:58] I will probably recreate one of my best holidays with my family that when we went to Cyprus, we didn’t leave the hotel in 14 days and we have the same routine every day. I think it was 12 o’clock at sangrias time and maybe now will be 12 o’clock and we will be our time or something like that. But I will spend it with my my two children, my husband, my mom, my dad, with just doing that, you know, like enjoying some music. Food brings happy memories. Yes, definitely.

[01:10:48] How often do you get back to Mexico? You know,

[01:10:52] Normally about every year and a half to two years when the kids were little younger. I used to want to be there every year, but then you realise they. So that’s nice destinations to go. So again, every year and a half to two is a good balance for us.

[01:11:11] It’s been so lovely having you. Thank you so

[01:11:13] Much for keeping it, and I might ask you to copy and paste that text message to me for when we make our trip to Mexico.

[01:11:20] Oh, I know. Thank you guys for having me. I really enjoyed talking to you.

[01:11:27] Thank you.

[01:11:30] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental Street. Your house, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[01:11:46] 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

[01:12:00] If you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

[01:12:11] And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] This guy pops up on my Facebook news feed story feed, call it whatever you want, and it’s it’s boxing bouts. After bout training, they started the other. And, you know, one thing that I took away from this was was not just know skirt over the discipline, the training, the hard work, the physical enjoyment and all the rest of it while I was away from here is that, you know, we’re completely different human beings in the sense that he’s going to stand in front of someone he knows. This guy wants to knock seven bells out of Ymir. But there’s no fear. Yeah, I would literally be at that point knocking my knees together, trembling. Yeah, but boxes are built differently. Yeah, and that was clear from that conversation with him is like there’s an element of anxiety and adrenaline and all the rest of it. And that’s the healthy piece of the build up to it. Right. But actually, he’s not scared. There’s no fear. This is Dental Leaders,

[00:01:12] The podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders history. Your host’s Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:27] Welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast for this episode. This is Prav hasn’t been with me for a few months. We decided just to sit down together and and and go through some of the things we’ve learnt from the guests in the past few episodes since our famous Queen’s Speech episode that we had when Boris shut the whole country down. And, you know, some of this has been people who’ve we’ve known, some of them been people we haven’t known. What stood out for you Prav in that in this period between the last time we spoke and Christmas when there was that shut down till now, was supposed to that for you? I think to me there’s been an overt bit taken away from like what stood out in terms of individual stories and things like that. Much more to do with the overall feeling of returning back to normality with you. You know, the conversations I’m having with people, certainly when, you know, when it comes from a business perspective, was really stood out for me, has been this acceleration, right. This growth that a lot of practises and a lot of our clients are experiencing also how to deal with that and coping with that overwhelmed. I think what was really stood out is the people who grabbed that opportunity by the horns and run with it, making hay while the sun shines type scenario. And then the individuals or business owners who say, hey, this is too much, I need to calm down and step back from those opportunities.

[00:02:56] Right. And thus, you know, those are the two main camps that I’m seeing at the moment, people who are grabbing and running with it, and people who are just sort of saying, hey, this is too much, we’ll create a waiting list. We can’t cope with growth. We won’t scale. We’ll just deal with it. And they will be the same people maybe in 12 months time or whatever. We’ll be picking up the phone saying I need more patience. Yeah. Although, you know, the natural history of a practise can be many things, can’t it? It doesn’t have to be in a particular particular path. I mean, I hear what you’re saying because I hear stories of people who’ve taken taken whatever reserves they had or some people obviously did quite well from the overpayments over the lockdown period and have invested and grow growing. Their businesses mean growing their premises and and growing their marketing budgets. And I learnt that from my side. I can see the the bleaching and the composites side of it more clearly. I guess you’ve got a good view on the Invisalign, although the implants and all of that. But all of it seems to be going through the roof, not just high ticket dentistry. Right. So the big ticket items starting from the smaller big ticket items like GDP also. Right. Starting from around, say, three and a half or whatever people charge all the way up north of, you know, 30, 40 K for immediate loading implant dentistry.

[00:04:21] We’re seeing that going through the roof. Right. But just going back to what we said earlier, there is no right or wrong way of navigate in this scenario, OK? Because some people during, say, the lock down before this whole thing took off, I’ve actually had a reassessment of the life. Right. You don’t want to work as hard. Yeah, they’ve sat back and appreciated whether it’s time with their family taking their foot off the pedal, reducing their stress levels. And these opportunities come and they decide actively not to take it. I’m not saying that’s wrong. But then there’s the others who have got this almost like energetic growth mindset mentality who just say, hey, there’s an opportunity here. The sun is shining and it’s going to go down one day. I’m going to make the most of it. And we’re seeing we’re seeing from the patient perspective, I think we’ve spoke about this in the past, the the this overwhelming demand, an interest for patients wanting to spend money on their teeth. Right. Put things right. Whether it’s functional or cosmetic. And where is all this money come from? Is it the Furlaud fund? And we could argue that perhaps, you know, there’s been the fact that, you know, people haven’t been able to spend the money, go on holidays, blah, blah, blah, and they’ve accumulated some savings. But we’re seeing loads of older people. Right, retired people who are, you know, or pensioners and that sort of age.

[00:05:44] Well, you know, I don’t think their spending habits have changed much, but we’re seeing a larger influx of those people who are saying, you know what? I’m going to invest 15, 20, 30, 40 calientes now, and we’re getting less knows or we’re getting less maybe or less. I’ll think about it more. I’ll go for it. And in your business, you’re seeing record winning numbers, right? Yes. Through the roof is through the roof. I mean, if you told me we were going to be this busy now back in the shutdown period, I wouldn’t have believed you at all. But back to what you were saying. I think there has been any way to spend your money as well, Prav you literally flow out of it. If I was an older person, a 60 year old guy who’s got a bit of cash in the bank, whatever, haven’t been able to go to restaurants, haven’t been able to spend it on holidays, you know, you might even be putting big purchases like car purchases and things to one side in this period where, you know, you’ve been focussed at home. I think the home DIY kind of spend. I speak to people in that area who are doing very well, but also, you know, you haven’t got anywhere to spend the money. So probably where it is, there’s only there’s only so many capacity’s and digestives you can get through a home. And that’s not going to cost you a fortune, right? A lot of our own.

[00:07:00] So should we go through some of the episodes or should we now continue talking about this? Yeah, let’s let’s go through this. Since we did the which was it? I think it was episode sixty three. Sixty sixty four. Where. Bloody hell. Sixty four episodes. Does it seem like yesterday we started this right. Yeah. I mean I was in sixty four episodes. Right. But looking back it and say hey let’s go back to episode sixty four. So episode sixty five was with Nic and Sanjay Sethi. I mean Nic said to me, is this almost a newcomer because we’re getting older. But Sanjay said he was one of the first people who really inspired me in composites. It was before we were selling composites. We were only doing whitening systems at that point. And I clearly remember the first time I saw a composite that was in a completely invisible and completely polished was the lecture that he gave at, I want to say maybe two thousand four, 2003 around then really beautiful. And he really is one of the top dentists in the country, does a lot of implant work and at the Square Mile clinic that they’re both that they’ve been joined by a couple of our other other guests on the show, Elaine Moe and now Amit Patel as well. But I was really interested in and in the way that Nic was talking about how Sanjay mentored him into that practise and what he had to do in that practise just to just to make just earn his stripes, you know, before they sort of he’s gone off in his minimally invasive direction.

[00:08:45] So what do you think of them Prav you know them? Well, I don’t. But, you know, the one thing I’ll say is that, you know, brothers, brothers in arms and all the rest of it. Right. Being inspired by your older brother and working with your brother, the only the only parallel I can draw to that is me and Kailash. Right. And for those that have heard the episodes and those that have heard me speak, I think it’s pretty clear we’re like chalk and cheese. So if we were brothers in arms, working together in the same business, I can tell you there would be fireworks, right? It just wouldn’t work. We’ve got different values, different dynamics. And we love each other to bits. Right. But we couldn’t work together. And so so in this in this relationship, what did you notice from the did we have the situation where younger brother was looking up to Big Brother or what was the biggest difference really between them and you guys? This is a massive age difference between so a bit more like father and son than than brother and brother. I think Nic really always looked up to to Sanjay and, you know, what a great example to have for him. Essentially, for the first two years, maybe do everything

[00:09:57] I have to learn it the way Sanjay understood it, and I have to then obviously bring on what I knew from courses and learning and I was say the end those areas. I was doing everything that I did. And then before I started getting into surgery and implants, I suddenly thought to myself, well, I’d love to be a partner in this grandma one day. I mean, I love the practise dearly. It’s been such an instrumental part of my life. I love the team. I love everything about practise. And I thought, well, if I’m going to be a partner here, it doesn’t make sense to be exactly the same as Sanjay because Sanjay says he’s got his patient base for 20 years and it be exactly the same.

[00:10:38] And so we then have a good discussion.

[00:10:41] And I decided, well, I’m not going to go down the implants route, know never say never. Right. But Sanjay’s I’ve never I’ve got a good night with restorative dentistry. I’d like to think I can produce some nice results now, always learning.

[00:10:55] But for me to then get to that next level to where Sanjay’s surgically, that’s a whole nother career. And what Sanjay has developed with his handling of soft

[00:11:06] Tissues, it’s not just placing an implant in his vision or his handling of soft tissue is grafting.

[00:11:12] It’s such a niche that I think he’s so good. Why do I want to go down that path when he’s the man? He is the man. Let’s talk about Episode 66 with Max, Max, Max Basini bazoo, Quini Basuki. You know, when I’ve spoken to Max, right, I said, listen, your first name is really easy, Max. It’s my you know, I think it’s your Starbucks name. Right. And I sometimes you have my name right. But how do I how to pronounce the surname. Right. And he says, just think about zucchini and stick a bat in front of the rights of Basil Keaney. But, you know, a guy who’s got some serious Italian flair and has come from, you know, his early days, his background is, you know, learning how to sell businesses. I think he started off in in the health care, selling a gym right back in the early days and then moved on to dentistry. And the conversations I’ve had with this guy is that he really does know the buying and selling of practise business really well. And more importantly, he’s very, very much geared towards maximising value for clients. Right. He recently sold and I’m sure and he’s happy for me to say this, but he recently helped to sell and the most beautiful practise in Essex advanced Dental. Oh, yeah, both of our favourites, fair practise and human being. Right. What a great guy. Right. But, you know, he sold on this practise and I remember this conversation and, you know, and they would pick up the phone to me and he says, Prav, I think now is the time. And then and then we spoke numbers and he said it’s a pretty good number that I’m happy with that. And and we had the conversation.

[00:13:09] We said, look, should you hire somebody to sell? You practise or shouldn’t you? And my answer to that was, look, we don’t do this for a living. You do teeth. I do marketing, business coaching, whatever. Right. And you need a professional who does this day in, day out. And their value add is whatever number you’ve got sat on the table today, they need to elevate the whatever deal you’ve got on the table today. They need to elevate that and whatever their fee structure is, needs to be a no brainer. Yeah. And it’s it’s one percent. Right. It’s nothing nice in comparison to the big picture. It’s nothing. Right? Yeah. I think there’s a lot of people all he has to do is get two percent more for the practise and now it’s been worth it. Right. It’s absolutely nothing. And I think I come across and I have numerous conversations with people who were going or who are having conversations where the buyer has gone direct to practise on, OK, they’re a little bit wet behind the ears. They don’t know how. They’re not professional negotiators. They may think they are because they’re selling treatment every day or whatever. Right. But but I think it’d be very naive for somebody to sell their practise without at least speaking to a broker and seeing what’s possible. So when when a client comes to me and goes, you know, what is it worth me paying somebody to do this? No. One, they take away the pain and the unknowns of that. But number two, it’s a no brainer because whatever their fee structure is, they should be they should easily be able to earn that out in the price structure.

[00:14:43] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like to say I have a good relationship with with most of the groups and the. Titian’s team and Yamane guys and ladies working in the groups when they see May involving involvement, my involvement instantly become aware that it’s going to be a tough negotiation and it’s not always the case if you go and approach them direct. Most of the time at Prav persona, we do this once in a lifetime that we said they practise and they will, and we only have one opportunity and they get an offer and then maybe think that’s the best and final and maybe they don’t. You know, they might be great clinicians by the grace and negotiating. I don’t know what buttons to push in my experience and my background. Obviously spying practises. So I know what buttons to push in order to increase the value. You know, what can improve evaluations and negotiation. I know we know what we can we can achieve. So sometimes we see an initial offer and it’s not just about the price, but also about the terms and the amount of the UK on the deferred basis. In terms of example, I can give you an example, which is quite exceptional, really. There was the practise in Buckinghamshire who came to us with an offer on a table for one point eight million.

[00:16:05] So I analysed the figures and then of course, we can talk about how we value and prices in a minute. And then I thought is a good offer, but I think we can improve on that offer a one point eight. And the way that you can improve is by creating a nice competitive tension, not just with that group by introduce either two or three potential buyers that you think that a good match. And we did so. So the consequently we started to get offers and the same group who offer one point eight and it was the best and final couple of months later they offered two point four. So obviously wasn’t the best and final. But then eventually the deal closed at two point seven, which I was very surprised by. I think with it, I think I’m pleased with what we did there and the clients will play. So you sold ultimately ended up selling to another group, not to the same group. So your one and a half percent save, I would say, is more than justified by involving someone like us that can introduce and bring to the table different groups and sometimes also trying to maximise on the current offer that you might have from from the same group.

[00:17:16] So even if you may deal with a corporate or a buyer, it’s still not too late to engage a professional like yourself.

[00:17:25] Now, it’s now obviously you need to trying to find the balance in not to upset the buyer, but in your best interest, you need to maximise your chances, your opportunity, and is probably once in a lifetime opportunity. And it’s an exciting time to sell your business. And you want to make sure that you, especially if you ended up working with the group, there is not a sentiment in the time in the way that you value that you got. So you need to make sure that you get the right value before you sell, realising it after by talking to your friends and say, actually, I could sell for more or my conditions could have been better. So you get to explore all avenues and make sure you get a good deal in terms of value and in terms of terms.

[00:18:10] So what’s not for me? I mean, if you remember, we had and the acting as well from Frank, their associates. But what stood out for me with Max was there was the thing he was talking about, like a beauty parade way of selling a practise, of bringing in lots of different interested parties and getting a better price for it that way, which was which is an interesting thing. And the other thing that you said, for every pound that you save, that can translate to seven pounds extra on the value of the nine or whatever, whatever online. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that starts becoming an interesting conversation. I mean, I’m speaking to now probably half a dozen of my clients who have reached that point where they’re ready to hang up their drills. Right. Or at least transition towards that point. And it’s funny they’re having conversations about should I put the staff wages up because it’s what I’ve always done. Right. But if I let’s let’s say the staff wages go up by. Ten grand. OK, I’ve I just lost. Eighty eight, yeah, yeah, I’ve just lost eight to 10 times that, yeah. My advice is. When you’re selling your business, the deal isn’t done until the money’s in your bank to carry on running that business as though you would be ruining it to grow it, because if that deal doesn’t go through and you’re building that excitement and that hope up to the point where you get to the last point and then the rug is pulled, there’ll be so many business decisions you would have made where at that point you’ll be better off.

[00:19:52] But you kept holding yourself back for that potential sale. Do you know of any stories where people sold their practise and then gave a bonus to their staff at that point? No, no, no. I don’t know any stories about that. But to be honest, I don’t know a lot of people who have sold their practise. I think I think the clients that I’ve been working with for sort of north of a decade, between 10 to 15 years are currently at that stage where they’re considering exit or working towards that or planning towards that or having those conversations. And so it’s all it’s all quite new to me. Right. I’m learning a lot along the way. And I think it’s very exciting and interesting, just the psychology that comes around. Except what does that mean? What does retirement mean? How does that affect your family dynamics? Right. Having, you know, meeting up. I met with Andy Moore and went to his house shortly after he sold and had some really interesting conversations with him about what, you know, you sit down and say, Andy, what’s it feel like now not to be the boss? OK, what does it feel like to have the extra lump sum sitting in your bank account, in the security and everything? And do you feel like you’ve achieved the dream? OK, and it’s really, really interesting conversations I had there where sometimes you know what you expect and the reality is quite different, you know? Yeah, I think.

[00:21:25] Well, Andy, Andy achieved the dream many years ago. The first that’s a very, very, very different you know, I’ll tell you I’ll tell you what Andy said. I’m sure you won’t mind. I won’t go into detail on everything. But, you know, he shared with me that you get to the point where you sell your business for for a sum that is life changing, OK? And your friends tell you, you know, when you sell the business by a drinka. Yeah, buy your dream house, yeah, yeah, do all these things go on an amazing holiday, right? We’re talking about Andy Moore. Here he goes. He goes to Necker Island on holiday every year. Yeah, he’s got a beautiful home. Yeah. A beautiful, beautiful home is the dream home. Right. And he’s had the dream castle. So so for him, it’s like, well, what’s next? But I think, you know, the one thing that I walked away from that conversation, he says he said he felt a sense of security for him, his family, his life, the hard work he put in.

[00:22:32] Yeah. For many generations and generations ahead. Absolutely. Absolutely. For those interested Episode 10 with Andy, Andy Moore, one of the best of whatever, both of our favourite people. And you know, it’s a good one to listen to Episode 10. Let’s move on to the next episode with the shoddy, shoddy, managerial, shoddy and interesting person. She I’m very much in touch with her now, but she did this very interesting thing where she started social media during lockdown and she didn’t have an Instagram account or not. Not a proper one. Not Dental one anyway, before before lockdown. And she certainly didn’t have a ticktock. And I guess she’s one of these sort of high achievers and she’s decided to overlook town to start making content and interesting Prav. The numbers are probably different now. But when when I spoke to her, her ticktock following was over one hundred and twenty thousand, but her Instagram was around twelve thirteen thousand and she was doing similar work for both goes to show the reach of the different platforms. She’s definitely now out there. But so interesting to see that within such a short period you can make a name on the platforms with a bit of focus. She lucked out a little bit with some of the sort of more, you know, with the way Tick-Tock works. If it’s a juicy headline, sometimes people follow it in the turkey teeth and the the one the pegs that they were showing and all of that and just the great conversation with the young dentist going places.

[00:24:07] I feel. I feel with Chardy. What do you think the future for her is? I think that, you know, she’s she’s one of those she’s taking it in her, taking the time, trying to do the jobs that she wants to do rather than what she needs to do. She’s working two days a week and focussing on the content side a bit more. And in the conversation, she said, look, I’ve got a practise in my head that I want to one day do. And, you know, what I’m interested in, though, is, you know, we own many small Makov when Kunal does his marketing, but he always asks who he is, go to Dental account, and generally less than half the room have a Dental Instagram account. And he’s like, oh, why don’t you should know. But what I’m interested in is in, what, a short period of time? I mean, look down a year ago. Yeah. And what a short period of time. You can make a massive impact here. If people find your content valuable, your valuable content. It’s not it’s not just about consistency, Stephanie. About consistency, but not but not only about consistency is about engaging with people.

[00:25:15] I think you have to spend enough time consuming the platform to learn what works, what doesn’t work, the trends. I think it’s important to jump on the trends and that kind of thing. But, you know, I found that I was spending like two or three hours a day on that anyway, so I might as well be creating because if you see enough tick tock videos, you’ll want to create one. If you see the same trends, you’ll think about your take on the trend. So, yeah, definitely. I don’t think

[00:25:41] I know this is a million dollar question,

[00:25:44] But

[00:25:44] What would you say makes a video go viral?

[00:25:49] Yeah, I’m OK.

[00:25:50] I’m asking you for the answer, but what would you say from what you’re learning?

[00:25:55] Yeah. So I think you see

[00:25:58] Title seems to work well.

[00:26:00] Do you see a title works very well. I think, you know, I think even I don’t think anyone fully understands how the platform works. So one video could go super viral, but another similar video could not say. I think a lot of it is down to luck and it’s about producing enough content consistently for one of them to inevitably go viral. But with me, to be honest, the first video that I thought had gone viral was 80000 views and then that the ultimate was the eight million views. But the crowd’s opinion is one. But I think you need to be divulging some sort of juicy information. You need to grab people’s attention. And it’s about, you know, with ticktock, it’s about retention of the viewer. So it’s about time. And how long they spent viewing that video, how many times they watch it, whether they send it to other people, how many people like it commented. That kind of stuff plays a big part in how viral that video goes. So, for example. That video is incredible video, it was filmed for and will give you analytics that will tell you how long they’ve spent, people have spent watching that video. So a lot of people had shared it with each other. They sent it and that’s how it went. Stupefy. It was on every kind of, you know, like like Beigel, all these kind of external places as well. A lot of

[00:27:14] You on the news,

[00:27:15] Right? Yeah, I was in Russia TV as well. I don’t know how I would like to instead look

[00:27:21] For people who don’t know, just go through what happened with that, because that was like a Katie Price turkey video thing was.

[00:27:27] Yeah. So it was a on ticked off. There is one of the trends. So I’m ticked off for people who aren’t familiar with the platform, a lot of content is for entertainment and a lot of content is for hacks and DIY kind of stuff. So, you know, cutting hair recipes, that kind of thing. And a trend with regards to teeth and health was that people were going to turkey, shaving their teeth down and saying these are videos, and then showing that before and after and their sharp teeth. And this wasn’t anything new. It was on Instagram for a while before it went on on ticktock. And I had seen a lot of people kind of comment on this. A lot of dentists were rightly speaking up about it, saying, look, these are these are not many of these are crowds. But I was kind of very apprehensive about talking about it because I didn’t want it to sound like I was saying, you know, dentists in certain countries were bad and they didn’t want to sound like I was promoting, you know, a line bleach and bond kind of protocols. So I was quite apprehensive about it. And then I came across this video and I’ll take a lot of my photos with in videos that are about to you to get my opinion on it. And if a video goes viral and everyone sees it and more people are attacking you in that video.

[00:28:31] So I came across this video of a girl who was very young and she had she actually had beautiful, perfect teeth. They were lying. They were very, very white and they didn’t have any major issues. And she had gotten all of them shaved, though, I think at least five to five and had crowns on all of them saying, look at my opinions. And a lot of people were commenting, saying, oh, that is great, but you get this done. And it was really scary to see young people looking up to these in quotation marks, influences and wanting to do the same thing. So I made a video saying, look, these are not videos, these are crowns and these are the risks. You know, you can get nerve damage. You’re going to need root canal treatment. You’re going to need to replace these. And I think, you know what you were saying about juice juice content. I said you might end up needing dentures by age 14. And I think that’s what it took to kind of make people realise that actually. Yeah. That actually this isn’t like just getting false things is actually a big deal. And I got loads of messages from people like loads and loads, like hundreds of messages from people on Instagram saying I had no idea. I’ve been thinking of doing this. Thank you for sharing this. I was literally minutes away from booking my flight to go to Turkey to get this done.

[00:29:41] And there was one message from I think it was over Christmas. There was one message from this girl who was actually in Turkey, and she said, look, I’ve come here with my boyfriend to get our teeth done. And they’ve just told him he needs four root canals before he gets his crowns done. I’m really panicking. I’m really scared. What should I do? I treatments tomorrow. And I was like, there’s literally nothing I can do for you. Now you’re in Turkey, you’re already there. Like, this is the kind of stuff you should be thinking about before you go over there to get your teeth done. And the maintenance like who’s going to who’s going to pay for the maintenance? Do you understand? Do you realise this may need to be replaced? And so it went viral, shared on every kind of platform that I can think of. It was one of the trending news articles on Apple News. My dad actually was going through avenues and he was like, this is where you are. My brother came home. It was like like your like lad Bible. So it was my five minutes of fame. But I’m glad it got the attention that it needed because it made people realise that these aren’t just, you know, stuff you get done and just forget about it.

[00:30:42] Look, look, just just take a step away from from Shaddai produced an amazing concert. Right. And let’s focus on Meenu. And I’m not trying to blow smoke up either of our backsides at this point. Right. But the content of this in the content that we produce on this episode, which has got very little to do about me new but more to do with the stories that we pull out of the guests. OK, and the stories that they share has been so impactful for so many individuals. So, you know, there’s a number of dentists who’ve taken their time out to just send me a direct message and say, Prav, you know what? I listen to you and pay on my, you know, weekly whatever run and the morning walk, whatever. Yeah. I’m thank you so much for sharing that pull up to one side. Right. The purpose of this podcast has never been commercial. Payman, when we started this for Dental Leaders, we decided right in the beginning, no advertized, we weren’t going to market enlightened, we weren’t going to market me, et cetera, et cetera. And we just let the conversation flow around the guests. However. What has come as a result of that is I probably get the vast majority of new business coming towards now right through the podcast, and it’s because we’re producing powerful content. Yeah, yeah, I think it’s on this platform, it for me, it seems easy to produce good content, but personally I find it very hard on on Instagram, you know, it depends how you weigh it.

[00:32:26] Right. I made an Instagram content, all the rest of it. I don’t have the patience and all the time and I don’t have the skill. Yeah. Then you look at someone like Shaddai, you look at someone like Rohner who can just pull out a phone and produce 20 stories a day. Whole different skill sets talent, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there’s no way I can do anything like that. But sit here and shoot the breeze with you or another guest. It’s it’s just part and parcel of easy work. Yeah, other uses were episode 68, what’s driving Dev Patel? Do you know? Definitely I do. And I’ve met him several times. And the one thing that I’ll say is that Dentists’ doesn’t really scream out to me. He’s more businessman, entrepreneur, you know, and, you know, from from the early days of, like, broche link raising funding. And then, you know, this group has come out of nowhere. Right. It’s Dental beauty group that started off and then came out of nowhere. Nothink, which one of our guests had landed in his group? Several. Several. So they had only opened one. They must have only opened one with him. Yes. I think Nick Sethi’s done one with him several. The thing about Dev is I’ve known him since the early days of Dental circle and when I get near to when he qualified and I’ve always done him as a fun guy and all that, but I was really, really impressed with him on the podcast.

[00:34:01] I mean, it’s that thing that you say Prav about how you know, someone for years. And then on the podcast platform, you kind of really get to know things about them. You never knew before. And I was very impressed with him, organised. You know, he doesn’t come across as a super organised, ambitious, consistent. And, you know, he tried to take brush linked to the US and literally sat down on LinkedIn and contacted every CEO of every major Dental insurance company in America again and again and again and again until until some of them got back to him. Pig headed, real pig headed, basically. Yeah. Know, the one thing I get from from him is sort of high integrity businessman. Yeah, I mean, talking to everyone who’s worked with him, the thing they all say is that, you know, he looks after you, he doesn’t even sort of mess about. But, yeah, I like that. And I was I’ve always liked him, but I was very impressed with him talking to him at the podcast. I love that story because when you told me before that you were looking at American insurance companies. Yeah, I thought, wow, that defs really connected man. I mean, he’s got a friend in America or whatever, you know,

[00:35:19] I wish I wish I knew. She just just called emailing. So February twenty nineteen started emailing every single insurance company to possibly think, got a list of them online and every company us Dental emailed them all, messaged him on LinkedIn, linked in a message when I was called, did that constantly and I mean I collected enough to like send a message for five times just to get attention. It was like that, it was actually just for cold messaging them. I sometimes even wait until they were like, just so I can see, that’s how invaluable I got to the point about how to do it, because that’s the only time you get attention about these guys are pretty busy guys anyway. They know what time to be wasting money on things. And then I was sick of tell

[00:36:04] Me this, tell me this. Some of this studio, when you’re when you’re doing this, you’ve got to know you’ve got a piece of paper. You’ve got you’ve got a list of names and and and you’re going through that. You must be quite an organised person to to keep up

[00:36:17] That number one.

[00:36:20] And number two, I’d like to know what was the driving force when you’re doing that? Is it that sort of are going to succeed come what may? Is it spending other people’s money and I can’t let them down? What is it? What is it what is it driving you?

[00:36:35] I think it’s a combination of three things, that the first things you said is obviously definitely there. The third thing I would say is that I generally believe, especially that time when you got product that can work, they’ll be interested in it. Like I knew in my mind, if I was in front of any of these guys who have these insurance companies, I would be almost. Not stupid, but like it will be very difficult. And I know you don’t want your advice because actually this is what I need in my life as an insurance company. I can save you hundreds of millions over the next 10, 20 years. Why would you even have one compassion? That’s why I was in my mind. I was thinking like a lock.

[00:37:14] And was that your pitch? Was that your pitch when you were when you contacted them, were you saying I can save you millions?

[00:37:20] It was not. You know what it was. I’ve got a lot of these companies already were looking at innovative ways to promote or help coming a more like some value based industry. So I will look into it wasn’t like we’re the first ones about doing. I mean, a company called Payman in America have already five years ahead of us. They already created to foster had that to that company offer that once they buy their insurance company that would buy like a billion dollars within like five years. They’ve already kind of a competitor to always go to a company, try to change the model for 30, 50 years. So I think we already had a bit of a kind of a step forward. It wasn’t like completely out of the blue. This new thing has come out. It was new in terms of technology, what we offering attach to the whole us. But it wasn’t the first time a concept was out there. So I think I had that already, that first step to get this guy’s attention. But I generally believe that if I had an mean, I would see that as some balance and some some need for this product, for their company. And luckily, that worked out really well. So I would say if I had the top 15 companies, I’ll hold them. Maybe eight of them got back to me, maybe 10 them go back to business, actually free to them, go back to me. And then I would say I had meetings with six of them within a month.

[00:38:39] Wow. Let’s get to number sixty nine. Best in the world. I mean, he’s certainly one of the best. One of the best. There’s no doubt about the for me, what really impressed me about the conversation was how open and Frank he was about everything. I mean it definitely wasn’t that he was sort of sort of presenting an image. He definitely wasn’t. And I said to him, what do you love about teaching? And he said, look, let’s face it, there’s a certain pleasure when you put a case up and and people go, wow, there’s a certain ego in it for a teacher of his standing to admit to. It’s something he went through. His whole process is three appointment process before he even gets to to drilling. And it’s a real privilege to have someone of his amazing calibre sit there and just say, as it is, you know, I mean, Prav you talk to a lot of high end, highly street dentists, but Parcel’s the one that they go to when they’re in trouble. You know, you mentioned his name and people just aspire to either be like him or be taught by him or whatever. Right. And and whenever his name’s mentioned, the reason why Stagg often said best dentist in the world question. Yeah. Yeah. It’s because that’s what I tend to hear. Yeah.

[00:40:05] Who am I to judge who the best dentist in the world is. Right. This is what you hear. Right. But the thing from know, I wasn’t present for that episode, but I think you mentioned that he was he was quite humble and sort of real and open about his own shortcomings. Right. And where he felt that, you know, he could improve or where were you know, I don’t know, maybe you want to expand on that. Yeah. Yeah, he was he was talking about how he handles his his his team and and how he’s always kept it very small and and, you know, going from South Africa, where he was trained to the US, where he did his postgrad and the Qinsheng on one of the top dentists and the whole Jerrard, she’s just a beautiful story. But what I really for me was the thing that stood out was how open he was about you. What do you enjoy the most? What’s the bit of it? Is it the treatment plants, like the sort of zoomed into the tooth? Is it the planning part? Is it the social part of actually talking to the patients and getting to that? Is it the teaching or is it the light bulb moment when the students suddenly gets what you say? What was the thing that you love

[00:41:19] The most of your

[00:41:20] Things, all the things that you do?

[00:41:22] And at the end of a big case and the cement, everything that’s always the and off of working and everything goes in, we get to the end and zoning out and making a lasting peace building half an hour myself, Tayside is working with my hands, making a percent joy. That’s probably why sometimes I go overboard, because it’s just that I get into my own world meditating and teaching a lot and it probably feels the ego a little bit. I like the adoration you get from the students when you say things and they look up and say, well, that’s amazing. It does make you feel good that it all

[00:42:02] This and

[00:42:05] A lot of what we do is self-fulfilling.

[00:42:08] Let’s move on to Episode 17, Richard Field. Richard, we both know very well you’ve known him for many years, Bayona and me too. Right. You know, the Academy, he’s been involved in teaching there. We’ve been away to Dubai together and met him at various events and courses. What really stands out about Richard is his quest for perfection. OK, and just producing beautiful dentistry. And I mean, this is not in terms of what I’ve seen with my own eyes, but what will the dentists tell me about his work? Generally, the dentists that have employed in in in their clinics. And the one thing to say is, you know what, with Richard, I can leave him with any patient. And I know he’s going to do a fantastic job. I know it’s going to be properly treatment plant. And I also know that it’s going to be incredibly ethical. Yeah, I know. I can just leave Richard to handle it. And the work is the work is, et cetera. He’s a great young dentist and that’s enough. And that’s what I come away with when I think Richard Field, he’s the kind of guy that you would send your family member to be treated. Yeah. You know, you’d have no qualms about it, even though even though he’s so young, you know, there’s a few of the young ones that Richard Depeche Meely now live, I can see is a few, the young ones where, you know, people say, look, I want a good dentist, but I don’t want to pay Harley Street, although I wish it is always cheaper.

[00:43:46] But, you know, people say, I want a good young dentist. Definitely. He also went through some of his problems. He has, you know, someone like is working with staff again. And he said he would never open a practise, which surprised the hell out of me. He said, I’ve just not made for it. So it’s good that self-awareness goes a long way, too, doesn’t it? But yeah. Yes. And you know what? Some people are blind to all of that. Right. He’s obviously seen the other side and made that conscious decision himself that this is for me. Some people on the other side are blind, completely blind to what was involved. And then it’s sink or swim right when it happens. And look, luckily, a lot of people get through the other end and make a success of it. Right. And it’s how a lot of lot of us have done it as well. You know, you can to that sink or swim. And I’ve been there. You’ve been there. Right. And it’s character building, so. Yeah. And what aspect of it is what drives you? I mean, some people love the planning, but some people loved my car, loved I love the planning part because it makes me feel safe.

[00:44:52] And like you say, I’m quite a defensive dentist. I want to make sure what we’re doing is right

[00:44:59] And it’s explaining that to the patient. Or they might come in

[00:45:02] And say, I want these teeth fixed and we look at the planning so we can fix these teeth, but we need to fix these nine other issues as well. We need to move this here and there. So again, it is maybe

[00:45:13] The Meccano making things fit together,

[00:45:15] But I wouldn’t claim that I know inclusion. But I it’s I really find it satisfying to see things fit together and just see that how how this truth will change this tooth.

[00:45:28] And I sometimes, even

[00:45:29] Though we’re looking at this tooth, we need to sort of involve other other aspects of the market as well. I find that quite satisfying when you when you sort of put together in all the red dots in the right place, I find that quite satisfying.

[00:45:44] Let’s move on to the hit man, Daniel artist. This guy pops up on my Facebook news feed story, feed, call it whatever you want, and it’s it’s boxing bouts. After bout training, they started the other. And, you know, one thing that I took away from this was was not just, you know, skirt over the discipline, the training, the hard work, the physical enjoyment and all the rest of it while I was away from here is that, you know, we’re completely different human beings in the sense that he’s going to stand in front of someone he knows. This guy wants to knock seven bells out of him. Yeah. But there’s no fear. Yeah, I would literally be at that point knocking my knees together, trembling. Yeah, but boxes are built differently. Yeah, and that was clear from that conversation with him is like there’s an element of anxiety and adrenaline and all the rest of it. And that’s the healthy piece of the build up to it. Right. But actually, he’s not scared. There’s no fear and no walks away with completely different human beings. And, you know, I admire that. Really? Yeah. Although although, you know, the head injury part of it is important and it’s not like you didn’t know about the head injury part of it.

[00:47:09] He knew. Well, he knew. He knows. He knows better than all of us what it can happen. But when when you say so, doesn’t that scare you? Is like, I wouldn’t be a fighter if that scared me for the other thing that I walked away with on that episode was a sort of sense of ethics, you know. Yes. I don’t know whether it’s to do with his faith or whatever it was. He seemed to see things in a very sort of simple, I wouldn’t say some simplistic, simple way. And the ethics that he seemed to bring to every situation really impressed me. Really impressed. Yeah. And the thing, you know, stemming from his dad younger days and then his faith, I think his faith plays a big faith is important. But it wasn’t like he was shoving it down your throat or anything. It just the way it felt to me was you say, look, here’s problem X, what do you reckon? And and he would he would just come out with a beautiful way of looking at it, you know, really impressed me, really impressed me. And how much does faith feature in boxing you in belief in thanking for having the opportunity and before you go out there and after you win and the gratitude

[00:48:22] And stuff just just told me about you sort of mindset and beliefs. Yeah. Ah, you know, it definitely I mean, I always believe in being grateful to. Oh my God. And, you know, that’s where I get a lot of my strength, patience. And, you know, you’ve got to be strong not just in boxing, but in life in general. We all have our ups and downs. So, you know, I’ve got a lot more strength through my faith. And any time we have if we go through difficulties and, you know, and boxing has been some things that even for example, I mean, my record is seventeen wins and three losses. All three of my losses were under very controversial circumstances. Is boxing is one of those things. But you’ve got to be strong and rise above it. You know, you’ve got two choices when you get hit with something, you know, with adversity, it’s all about how you respond, you know, if you’re going to be weak to overcome you, you know, and that’s going to be your choice, then you’re not going to be able to propel any further if you’re going to just take on the chin. But like, you know, OK, I’ve been knocked down. I’m going to dust myself off and get back up and push on. And that’s what makes champions.

[00:49:38] That’s what makes people great. People always remember Thomas Edison for inventing the light bulb. How many times did Thomas Edison fail? Countless times, countless times, you know, you know, you will remember that, you know, when you look at an iceberg, you know, destruction beneath the sea, you know, it’s huge this year. It’s almost like a triple what you see at the top. And this all the underneath and all that sort of hard work, dedication, the difficulties that people don’t see through it. Maybe there’s earning is billions today. That is billions. He grew up in a room. He grew up in a place. It’s like, you know, just a small room. There’s about ten people in there. You know, he didn’t grow up with a silver spoon. You know, he worked his way hard in order to obtain the success and earn all that success and wealth that he’s done. And I’ve been very fortunate where we started late, late night sessions with Floyd Mayweather. So another thing that I sort of picked up from him and Danny Williams were doing my fight times close to my fight times. I’ll train at night. So mirrored the time of my fight for circadian rhythms and to develop your timing with boxing. And that’s something also I picked up my school science back as well.

[00:50:53] So in that time. So Floyd Mayweather, he you’d be training at night and then there’d be times where he’d just sit and talk with us to sunrise, you know, just giving us pearls of wisdom, you know? So it’s about how you respond. And faith has given me just the ability to look and analyse things, not just think, you know, look at things beyond what they are. And it’s like when I had my last controversial loss, I was six and three, six wins, three losses, you know, and I remember people looking and thinking, oh, yeah, you know, maybe you know that. So, you know, he can stop. You can carry on. How are you going to carry on someone to carry on? You know, all thanks to God today I’m seventeen and three. You know, I didn’t look back. So I get a lot that, you know, faith strength through, you know, through my faith, you know, and, you know, I get a lot of that strength, you know, through God. And I always pray I’m not I’m not a perfect person. I have my mistakes. But I always I’ll do my prayers and I’ll do my prayers a day, you know, just takes five minutes of my schedule to draw, you know, to just thank my creator remember him and just gives me that moment of just coming out this quick, such, you know, life is so fast, it’s so dynamic.

[00:52:15] And you just get like five, ten minutes out. You just stand before you create. It’s just you and him and you just talk to him, you know, and he just, you know, gives you that solace, that tranquillity, that sort of serenity. And it’s, you know, I you know, that’s why I’m one of the advantages I’ve had been pleased with my and I’ve been able to travel, you know, I love travelling. I love seeing the world. I love nature, you know? And again, you just look at all of those things and you just kind of you know, you remember God, the creator of creation. Just think of, you know, wow, what an engineer, you know, space star, not, you know, not astronomy. And I look at these things and it just it just, you know, it just allows you to have a moment of time and it just gives you just gives us strength and it gives you that, you know, that mental strength that we talk about in boxing, which which you really need. So it plays a big, big, big, big factor in my life and my career for boxing for sure.

[00:53:16] Let’s move on to the next one, which is Elaine Elaine Hally, president, ex president of the VA, in many ways, one of the mentors of lots of people in the Digital Theatre, DSD kind of world. If what stood out for me was just the story of starting a practise in a town, in a town in Scotland and coming in and saying, I’m going to be private from from the beginning and and having this sort of the the the grit to keep on going in that situation back in that day. And if you remember, Prav opening a private practise wasn’t a thing. No. And I think, you know, what I walked away with from that was her against all odds attitude. Yeah, the. I’m not trying to paraphrase, all right, but it was like, screw him, I’m going to make a success of this, right. I’ve got so much conviction in what I want to do. It was it was inspiring. Right. And then and then, you know, being one of the one of the very few women in dentistry at that time who went on to, first of all, open a practise and a practise with a difference. Right. Against all odds. Then go on to become president and then lecture and then teach and act as a you know, be an inspiration to to lots of people, male or female.

[00:54:45] Right. Let’s not try and sort of. Boxer into well, you know, she’s she’s a female Leaders she’s inspired many, many dentists, right? Not not just yes. I mean, it came up then it came up in conversation. The one thing I’d say about her is she carries often the really feminine way. Yeah. Because, you know, it’s possible to be trying to be manly about things, even if you’re a woman. But that wasn’t that where she was coming from at all. You know, it was she was an inspirational leader coming from the other side of of things and sort of the collaborative kind of way of looking at things. But I really like Elaine. She’s she’s one of my favourites. So it was lovely to have her on. So take us through the opening as Scott was quite innovative thing to do. But when people didn’t really open sports, I mean, of course, some did take us through that. I mean, are you the kind of person who jumps into things with full confidence or did you have anxiety about it using your parents money?

[00:55:50] That I didn’t use my parents money,

[00:55:54] Not that they offered, but

[00:55:58] What we did want to do

[00:55:59] Is guarantee. So they had the guarantee, you know, they had to act at the guarantee for the loans from the bank. Yeah. And do I jump into things? I think I think I logically look at the pros and cons. I had a plan and I just took it step by step and kind of didn’t. I’ve never particularly worried too much about what other people think, although then sometimes it comes as a shock when I realise people do think things. And so I got a lot of a lot of stick for opening a practise in a city where I wasn’t known. And I actually got some quite nasty letters from some of the dentists. I was quite naive, I suppose. I did write to everyone saying I was opening a practise single handed practise. I was going to be charging privately for the first examination. It was just the contracts. I’ll change the year that I graduated. So there was a big move in England where I had worked initially for dentists coming out the NHS. Scotland wasn’t moving in that way. So before that you weren’t allowed to mix private and NHS. And I, I started by charging for the full examination and then giving people options. And that was practically I would be really angered a lot of people by doing that. But I just I kept my head down and stuck to my guns and realised very quickly I wasn’t going to survive and an NHS environment because I wanted to be able to offer my patients the best the density had to offer. That’s always been I want my patients to have the choice of the of the best not to say that I’m the best clinically. That was never my that was never my goal. But to make sure that I understood all the different options and to be sure that people had choice, that’s what was important to me.

[00:57:46] Let’s move on to episode seventy three Jazz Jazzy Gulati. What an inspiration. I mean I’ve just joined his telegrammed group Telegram on Telegram. Now because it’s WhatsApp groups completely full, there’s not enough space for it. And while we’ve been talking on this podcast, but there’s been maybe 40 messages on the telegram route, I mean, is someone who’s leading a tribe of geeks. Yeah. And how amazing that he’s managed to sort of package Dental education in this beautiful sort of he he’s so into it and the people that are into him are into it. And there’s a group of dentists out there who I would put them in all of them, and that the sorority royalty is what they call them, who aren’t worried about getting sued. Of course they’re worried, but that’s not their number one thing. The number one thing is getting better, finding out what’s what’s what’s the sort of the latest thing. And and what do people think of this? How do we attack that? And Jazy himself, just his attitude is so, so sort of inspirational. So he’s got me back into dentistry, did whatever the merits of good. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m not. But he makes me want to pick up a drink. Yeah, yeah, yes. You know what? The thing the thing that I walk away with when it comes to jazz is his delivery.

[00:59:14] He delivers with humour. Yeah. As well as well as well. It’s not only humour though, dude. It’s not like it’s not a comedy show. No, I don’t know. But you know, the thing that I walk away, he delivers with humour. It’s not always with humour. Right. And he’s a he’s a real geek. Yeah. Real geeks down on everything. All the all the little bits and pieces he speaks about. And he’s just popped out of nowhere, right. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a household name now. Right. But he just sprung out of nowhere. Right. Just this guy with a with a beard and. A turban popped out of nowhere and then all of a sudden he’s got a show, he’s super geeky, he’s funny. I don’t know if it’s you know, I tend not to follow his Dental geeky ness because there’s no way I understand it. Right. But he’s comical videos that turn up on my Facebook stories and all the rest of it will always tickle me. But I’ll tell you something from on the content story, he’s he’s managed to sort of in business, we would call it vertically integrate so many who are doing a podcast. His podcast turned into a community.

[01:00:23] The community is turned into a course, the course. Now there’s a telegram group, there’s a WhatsApp group. And again, another one who I said to him, tell me about practise. Are you going to open the practise? Because he’s the kind of guy who would do very well opening a practise. You know, he’s good. Good at good at people. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, I’m not going to do a practise, definitely not yet, because I’m fully focussed on the produce Arati and he should be too. But he’s got a long way to go. Got a massive audience in the US now, and I love the fact that that we’re now morphing Dental education into this, you know, this way of doing it. You know, the guy seven years out of Dental school doesn’t have another qualification. And yet he’s inspiring thousands of dentists in all over the world to get better, you know, more power to him. Really like the this of infectious enthusiasm that you’ve got for dentistry. I mean, did you were you a good speaker before? Did people come to you for advice or I mean, you seem to like take it so naturally, you talk to people and you say enthusiasm. You have where did this start? I mean, were you one of these people? I was talking to Basil, he would say, no, he wasn’t top of his class and Dental school, were you? What was your story? Um, well, I was president of the University Dentistry Insights.

[01:01:48] I was always very active in that. I was very used to speaking and something that I was very much involved in. I don’t do the whole I was Mr Basils said I stay away from politics. Are the only two things I don’t talk about in my podcast is religion and politics. I stay away from that stuff. Everything always goes in the fashion industry, but I guess so. I was also without blowing my own horn, I was top of class. I was the first person before. I was very embarrassed in a way to say this. I was like I was very egotistical, but I’ve since had some sort of mind training to to change the way I perceive it, which is basically I was the first person in the U.S. to get one hundred percent in a clear and a final exam. And now I’m proud of the proud to say that. And it was a real something I really worked towards. So I was always aiming to be competitive and top of the class and aiming

[01:02:33] To be one with the community

[01:02:34] In a voice, a leader of some sort. Where did you qualify in Sheffield. Sheffield? You were you were you top of your class in school as well? Like before before I like sex and stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was always what I was thinking about the origin because I knew come the podcast, where does it all originate from? And I can pinpoint it to when I was six years old. So if you go back far enough, I’m sure I’m a refugee. I was born in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. I came here when I was six years old in a word of English, and my earliest memory of achievement was in year two at the time. And there was this massive board at the front, the class with everyone’s name on it, and who got 100 percent in the spelling test. So everyone had all these stars every time you get the sense that you get a gold star. So obviously everyone had all these stars and I was the only one without a star. And it went on week by week by week. I never had a star and I just made it my mission that one evening to practise writing these three and four letter words, cat, home ball, that kind of stuff, practise, practise, practise all night. And I’ll never forget that moment. I got my first gold star at age six and from there it was I was addicted. I was addicted to achievement. And that’s been a big driver for me. I just want to constantly do things. I’m one of these guys who has this massive to do list. I’m like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. If I’ve done something I wasn’t on the to do list and put it on the list just to take it off, just get that feeling I’d done something. You know, this is Dental Leaders the podcast where you get to go one on

[01:04:09] One with emerging Leaders history. Your house, Payman,

[01:04:16] Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.