Month: September 2021

[00:00:00] Here’s the thing. Not once, not once did I ever think, nor do I think, no, actually that would be fortunate enough to be working where I was. I had no dream of. I want to be working on Wimpole Street at one point in my life. I want to share a podium with X. I didn’t even really know about lecturing very much. I didn’t know about awards very much. All I said to myself was, write the best version of yourself, whatever it takes, drive to that. Just drive to that. Don’t worry about what other people keep an eye on on the sphere of the industry. What people are doing. Give yourself some inspiration to try and achieve certain things. Absolutely. But focus on the inner. The best version of you that you can be.

[00:00:48] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:06] It gives me great pleasure to introduce probably someone who I’d consider to be the best dressed man in dentistry, always standing out when he’s lecturing on the street and puts most of us blokes to shame. Dr Shiraz Khan, who’s also an instructor and an incredibly talented dentist. Shiraz We normally start these podcasts by just asking a little bit about your backstory where you grew up. What school was like and generally your upbringing. So do you want to just give us a bit a bit of background information about yourself? Sure.

[00:01:41] Hi, guys, hope you. Well, thank you for inviting me along to do this lovely webinar podcast. Yeah, so my name’s Shiraz Khan. I qualified in dentistry in 2013, but I’m from the west of London. So bitter backstory. My father worked at Heathrow and he has done for his whole life and we’ve lived pretty close to Heathrow, which incidentally later on in life turned out to be a fantastic thing anyway. But I went to school local the areas known as Hounslow or Felten, where I went to school. And yeah, from very, very a working class family, humble beginnings. My parents worked as hard as they could to get me and my brother and my sister through education, but education was really important to them. So I went to school in Elsworth and Zone, and that was a boy school, which is basically slightly towards huge, costly type area. That’s fantastic school. Probably quite a challenging school because while there were people that were very, very high achievers, there were also people that weren’t. And the paradigm of those two in the same place can be sometimes a bit challenging. And then, yeah, then I went off to University of Birmingham to study medical sciences first because I knew something medical was what I wanted to do, but wasn’t quite sure where I would go with it. So I did three years. Medical science worked out the dentistry, what I wanted to do and build 2021. A few pandemics later. We’re here.

[00:03:08] Sure, I just just take take you back to growing up. Really? What was your childhood like you mentioned? Obviously, you came back came from humble beginnings. Education obviously featured quite heavily in terms of your influence from your from your folks. What was that like was it was the pressure on you to to sort of perform well at school? And what type of a student were you? Were you in that camp that was a natural high achiever? Or were you someone who had to really work hard to pursue exams?

[00:03:37] Yeah, definitely the latter. I mean, I think with my parents so quite openly, you know, my father works as a cargo supervisor for for Kuwait Airways at Heathrow, and he wanted to study to be an architect in his early years. But his familial situation didn’t actually allow for further education to be a prospect. So he had to get work, and he had to provide income for the house to keep the house running. In essence, obviously got married to my mum and just continued on working since so a lot of doors were closed for my parents in the sense of this was what was required at the time. I never really have been a natural high achiever or naturally gifted or naturally intelligent in any way, shape or form. One thing that I’ve certainly learnt from my parents, particularly my father as well, is the work ethic and hard work, you know, grinding hours in putting time in putting effort energy in to achieve something. And you know, my father, having worked nights, full days, double shifts over time, all of the above really put into place a mindset mindset or a mind frame where you want to try and emulate that whatever it is that you’re doing, if that makes sense. So yeah, definitely pushed it to work hard, but not in a not in a inflammatory way, if that makes sense.

[00:05:01] No, totally. Totally. Get it, mate. And just so I mean, some things resonate with me there. I mean, my my dad, you know, when we were younger, did everything from working in the factory to drive in taxis to, you know, running a corner shop. And one of the messages that I got from him was that the reason I’m working so hard is I don’t want you to do what I’m doing, right? You know, an education was a huge thing and always gave us the freedom and the space to study. And I feel very grateful for that. And was it similar for you in the sense that, you know, your dad saw what he was doing and he wanted something better for you, wanted you to progress? And was it the same for you? I know you’ve got a brother if you’ve got any other siblings you’re at. Yeah, I’ve got a

[00:05:51] Brother and a sister.

[00:05:53] We were all pushed in in the sort of direction of towards education. I don’t mean pushed. Like you said in the inflammatory way. That was a big sort of core family value in that sense.

[00:06:06] Yeah, it was. It was, and I wouldn’t say that I was given ultimate freedom as to exactly what I’d want to achieve. That wasn’t exactly what it was what. As long as it was something professional based, my parents were happy. But there was an ultimate driving force that was, you need to achieve X. And to do that, you need to do this. And the reason that we’re working so hard is that you don’t have to live this life. And, you know, an incredible background to who you are as a person because you don’t forget things like not being able to, you know, maybe have not so new clothes or trainers as kids do in schools. And well, now it would be the latest iPhone or whatever. But that wasn’t something that I ever aspired to have, either, you know, so.

[00:06:57] Mm hmm. And those so, so fast forward. You went on to do do medical sciences and then dentistry. What was your Dental inspiration? Was that was there a moment or someone you went to do some work experience with where you thought, You know what? This is what I want to do? Or was it part of this whole journey of becoming a professional individual?

[00:07:22] No. So once I finished medical sciences, my parents were quite quite keen for me to do medicine because it seems like the logical step, obviously. And that’s something that I feel that if you’re going to commit your life to, you need to give your your life to it. You need to be committed to it. You know, if you’re if you’re protecting people’s lives, you need to want to be there for sure. And I must admit that my my aspiration for for life wasn’t necessarily drawn to that. If I was fortunate enough to to have done it, I think I I’d apply myself as best I can, but that’s not where my heart was. So as part of me being who I am, I decided right only I know health care science is where I want to go. The only way I’m really going to tell is by doing all of the work experiences. So I did optometry. Physio Pharmacy did my medical work experience again. I worked in a lab to see if a PhD is something that I wanted to do, so I did all these things compared to back to back and dentistry. Just dentistry was the one because you were establishing relationships with people for years to come. You were able to be manually dextrous and creative with your hands. The job was what it felt like was a nine to eight where I used to work anyway. But it was you finished work, pretty much. You go and all of a sudden and there was all these multiple facets within dentistry. So if you really like surgery, that door can open up if you really like aesthetic. Dentistry wasn’t necessarily a big push in 2007, but if that was something you were into, you could push down that road. And it was the sheer variability, the sheer ability to establish relationships over a long period of time and there being a manually created part that stood out to me was like, Whoa, this is this answers all the boxes in a way. And so then so then I applied 2007 2008. I started and fortunately made it through with quite a lot of work.

[00:09:17] So where did you where did you go to Dental school?

[00:09:21] Birmingham as well, incidentally, University Birmingham. Ok.

[00:09:26] Cool. What was what was university life like for you, because obviously just checking out your Instagram and stuff, you’re always throwing shapes and moves and dancing and mixing that up with with your thing. And I’m just envious of how you can balance on on one hand and hold your body in that position, right? But is that something was that was that like a childhood thing that you just grew up with? And I’m assuming it was with your brother as well? Right? Because he’s he’s he’s quite quite a mover as well, right?

[00:09:57] Yes, he is. He’s quite a competitive chap as well. No. So putting it putting it in perspective, I hadn’t ever danced, ever moves around, never done any form of shows or anything until about 2007. So I went to university or just before university muscle, some local guys doing some doing some stuff, and I was like, Oh man, I mean, you know, it was, it was. It was purely the curiosity of it all. It was like, Sure, how where do you learn to do that? It’s not like, it’s not like you’ll go to like, you know, this syllabus or a curriculum or, you know, like what we’re used to is that this is this is really out there. And the physical element was really amazing. And I thought, not, what would you? So then I started researching locally in Birmingham. At the time, I found the classes went to a couple of classes and then just got immersed and I loved it. I loved it from the beginning. And having had no experience in dance or anything like that before, I mean, it just it just opened your eyes to a whole new side of the world because where we’re, as you can hear from, actually, I was always into sport. So, you know, it’s cricket quite a lot. Football. Basketball. Reasonably competitive. Local club type level. And then you go to university. And yeah, patterns probably change a little bit, don’t they? And I don’t really want to compete at the level because it’s quite serious at university level. But I was still in search of something and then this came along and I thought, Wow. And I just entered as deep as I could. I was like, Yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s let’s learn this craft and then you make it your own, don’t you? Then it’s a form of expression. And for someone who’s doing work science, medical type related life, it’s a really nice getaway. You know, it’s a completely parallel universe to to to the medical world.

[00:11:58] So, you know, I see it seems like when I was about to ask you the question like, you know, some people when they want to switch off from the stress of work, they go, meditate or go for a run or whatever. Is that your thing to just escape? And yeah. Do your own thing, and it seems like, you know, when you’re posting your videos and stuff of just little snippets of what you do, right? It almost seems like you are escaping and you just getting yourself into another world, right? You know, you know, I see that, you know, if I go while ago, go, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, really. And so do you compete now in in that arena dancing? And how did your brother get involved? Was it around the same time or a little bit later?

[00:12:46] Yeah. So me and my brother are, I mean, we’re pretty much joined at the hip. Anything that I’ve done, he’s done anything. He’s done, I’ve done. We’ve all kind of stayed on the same vibe for many, many years. We basically just carbon copies of each other. I mean, he’s infinitely more handsome and probably in better shape than I am. But other than that, where I was the test dummy, he’s the two point, oh, isn’t it? So. That’s right. But when we started, we started. We started together, we started together and he was training. When I was at university, we were training together and competition was was where where it was at. This sort of two ways you can take dance, really start either performing and, you know, pretty little talent or that type of style of thing or theatre performance type stuff, which we’ve actually done as well, funnily enough. Or it’s the competitive side, and it was always the competitive side. Maybe. Driven by my nature as a person. That was what I was really, really attracted to. I like the idea of bringing your straight stripes to the table and just seeing how you fare. I love that side. Obviously, last year and a half, two years, it’s probably gone, gone down a lot because travel has been significantly inhibited. All these other things. But at the same time, I think it’s been a it’s been an incredibly, incredibly eye opening opportunity. And you know, this is the thing that I said before was all someone else Prav that if when you stand up on the line, your name gets called or whatever, you could be standing opposite a painter, a barber, a policeman, a teacher. A student, a kid, and it’s nothing to do with your CD. It’s about in that moment on the moment who had more stripes, and that thing is a thing that takes me away from this very insular profession that we’re in, actually, isn’t it? And sure, it gives you a bit of humility as well.

[00:14:46] So, yeah, it’s brilliant. Was brilliant. And so do you still compete?

[00:14:52] I haven’t recently, but me and my brother actually just talked about one that’s coming up in October. So I’ve still been training reasonably, reasonably, regularly, probably not as bad shape as I’ve been in my, in my career or my life, but definitely want. I think the competition side keeps you pushing to to want to stay in shape as well. So, yeah, I’m going to we’re going to be entering that, hopefully in October.

[00:15:13] Wicked, wicked. Let’s move. Let’s move back to dentistry. So you you qualified from Birmingham? And then what was your first job? What where did you work and who

[00:15:24] Did you work? Qualified in 2013. I was very fortunate to work for. A colleague was akin to Corrie in Gravesend, which is in Kent. So I live on the west of London and I got a job in the east of England almost, and it was a bit of a commute. But the person I work for was so, you know, you talked at the beginning with the people who inspired you or people who have been considerable to your career. This individual ActionScript was an absolute gem. He saw what I wanted to do. He saw what aspirations I had, and you really tried to allow me to be as free as possible. He realised that, you know, I’m not someone who’s just going to throw, you know, throw myself around and do inappropriate type things. But we did sit there and say to himself, Actually, look, do you know what? Yes, you want to try this? Go for it. You want to do this. Go for it. You want to learn this through it and really gave me. I suppose freedom is not the right word autonomy to make my own decisions and referred to when I need advice. And that was a fantastic year. Really, that was a fantastic year for us. He he still keeps in touch. We still speak. And he was a great man. He’s a great. He’s a great individual, really helped me during my foundation year as well.

[00:16:41] And so how did you how did your career progressed from there? Sure. So, you know, you qualify for Birmingham, you do your first year and your foundation year. And then, you know, fast forward a few years later, you’re speaking on the international stage, you’re passing on your skills and you know, you’ve recently started teaching, you know, a range of courses, but you know, alongside the likes of Tift Qureshi as well, you know, on composite dentistry, how do you get from there to there? And you know, also, you know, you’ve managed to secure some pretty cool jobs as well, working in some pretty prestigious practises with some with some high flying dentists or some well-respected dentists in the industry. So how do you do that? How do you go from like qualifying to say, did you have an ambition and say, Look, I want to work for Kerry or I want I want to be mentored or, you know, work alongside these individuals. What was your journey and what was your thought process along that journey?

[00:17:43] You know, no one’s really ever asked it to me like that actually Prav. So thanks for the question. It’s quite insightful because you don’t even think about yourself. Sometimes you just always looking forwards, and sometimes you don’t really get the chance to look back. So when I finished, I ended a year in hospital because I wanted to have more exposure to surgical side of the industry and very specialisms. I got offered the next year to do DK2, which was it was called at the time, which basically meant another year in hospital. I decided to get married that year and the thought of staying in dorms with my my lady probably wasn’t what I was aspiring for. So it was a purely social reason why I decided not to pursue further hospital engagement and and training, really. So then I got a job in London. And here’s here’s here’s the thing. Not once, not once did I ever think. Nor do I think, no, actually, that would be fortunate enough to be working where I was. I had no dream of. I want to be working on Wimpole Street at one point in my life. I want to share a podium with X. I didn’t even really know about lecturing very much. I didn’t know about awards very much. All I said to myself was write the best version of yourself, the best version of yourself, whatever it takes. Drive to that. Just drive to that. Don’t worry about what other people keep an eye on on the sphere of the industry. What people are doing. Give yourself some inspiration to try and achieve certain things.

[00:19:10] Absolutely. But focus on the inner the best version of you that you can be. And I can promise that I never thought about working. I never even knew that like teaching was a thing. I never knew that. You know, choro would be looking for an associate. I never even I never even thought about those things. Teaching opened up when the first opportunity for that was my educational supervisor, what they call training programme director. So there are people that run your scheme in foundation training. Sure. He said. I’d love for you to come back and share with the colleagues, your your juniors from your year as being a foundation trainee in camp and tell them what you did. And you know, I think they’ll learn a lot from you. Was that his name should be a fantastic, wonderful head of white hair. Very charming man, but also is able to identify those who want to achieve anything specific, just achieve as a blanket point. Sure. So he’s the first person who gave me my first opportunity to speak, and it went down really, really well. The people got the feedback. They were like, That’s the best thing we’ve had and edited it or whatever. And I don’t often like referring to myself in that context, but whatever. And he then said, Right, so everyone enjoyed it so much. I think we should get you back to the whole scheme, not just our group. So it went from 12 DFIs, then the next one was, I think, 90 FTEs. And they were like, Share, just like that you’re doing at the moment.

[00:20:52] Let me ask you a quick question there, you know, standing up in front of, let’s say. A hundred people and lecturing, talking, sharing your story, whatever it is, did you at any point find that nerve wracking or did it just come naturally to you because you were used to performing and all the rest of it that actually getting up there and speaking and sharing your story was? Was it easy

[00:21:19] At that point? It was still OK? I mean, this probably comes down to underlying personality traits of you as who you are as a young kid. But even when you do, you know, assemblies at school, you know, when you, you know, you act basically do a theatre show for school. I was always the narrator, but I didn’t realise that I wanted to do that. I just always was naturally the narrator. So there was always this natural ability to be able to share or learn or speak or whatever. But you didn’t really have a chance to put it into practise, I guess, right? Because where are you going to do that? And then the doorway opens and you realise, Oh, I’m actually really relatively comfortable. It did get nerve wracking, though, because after that I got the call for the BDA. So there was a few things on on the way. And then I got the call for the BDA to do it. The BDA conference in Manchester. Twenty. There I was that and I was like, OK, this is like national scale and clinical work is going to go up and there’s going to be people that are junior to. They’re going to be people that are senior to you. And it’s all out there. And it was it was lovely. It was. It was a pleasure, and not one part of me ever felt like that was ever owed to me. It was always a privilege. It was always a privilege to share. And to be able to talk and to inspire those that really want to chase what they want to do. I didn’t realise there were so many people that were like me that really wanted to do something, but really struggled because they didn’t have the energy or effort or whatever. And yeah, that was nerve wracking, but there’s been nerve wracking steps along the way as well since.

[00:22:53] Sure. And I guess as you progressed to different levels, the intensity steps up, I guess. But you know, it’s interesting because they’re a big team, the narrator right at school because, you know, when I first stepped in front of however many people it was and gave my first talk, I absolute inside. I was shaking like a like a dog, go into the toilet, mate. I was really nervous, right? And if I compare that to my daughter who who would get up in front of all the kids at assembly and wax lyrical and not even bat an eyelid? Yeah, it’s almost like that that getting up in front of people, there’s no fear ingrained in it because she’s used to doing that now. As a kid, I never did that as a kid, and I think that probably stands. You in good stead should just have that, just that confidence. You know, there’s several elements to public speaking. Part of it is, you know, people are going to look at my stuff and think it’s shit, right? Or people are going to fall asleep or some people not going to listen to me. And there’s all these different, you know, conversations you have with yourself. But in addition to that, there’s there’s there’s the fear of just getting up there and presenting yourself, right? That’s that’s the other thing. And I guess you don’t have that because you’ve done that as a kid, right?

[00:24:12] But I think there’s another facet to that, actually Prav. I think the other facet is if definitely if you have, you have certain genetic traits that are just predisposed for you to be the way you’re going to be. My daughter is two years old and she will get angry in a second. She has not learnt that from someone that is just ingrained to. She is going to be for the rest of her life, you know? But the other the other side of that is if you’re just working honestly for bettering yourself at all stages, not trying to cut corners, not trying to expose yourself, not trying to overly market yourself. If you’re just trying to be the best version of yourself, what do you really have to be scared about? Because immediately, if you if you’re trying to be the best person of your version of yourself, you’re doing that for yourself. And if you’re up there, once you’re sharing to others, you’re doing it for you. So actually, it’s not really about necessarily wanting to impress anyone else. It’s just about sharing your journey. And I think provided you’re not doing anything hugely incompetent or whatever or pretending to be someone you’re not, and I think that’s another important thing. I think there’s nothing to be scared about. It’s just you’re sharing your journey, and some people might really enjoy it. Some people might really not. And it’s just being okay with that flavour of the month, I think.

[00:25:34] Sure, sure. So having the opportunity to get up and teach and share your work, does that make you up your game in the clinic? I mean, knowing that you’re going to be sharing that with other dentists, does does that help you take things up a notch? You kind of like, you know, when you surround yourself in an environment with with high performers, you naturally elevate or levitate towards that level, right? Because you’re surrounding yourself, by those people, by getting up there and sharing your work is, you know, when you get in the clinic, are you doing work where you think I want this? To share with my colleagues, and so I’m going to raise my standards or does that just happen anyway because you want the best for your patients, because I’ve spoken to some lecturers and funnily enough, some will say I’m doing a portfolio piece for my lecture. Yeah. And some people just show everything right and it’s funny. So I’ve had numerous conversations with TIFF and whether TIFF’s going to photograph a piece for a lecture he’s giving or whether he’s just doing that in clinic and he’s in, he’s never going to see the light of day. The standard of work is always the same. Yeah, there’s no sort of two standards or whatever, whereas some lecturers, they create the piece to show to others. What’s your take on that?

[00:27:02] I’m going to turn again. I’m going to send the hourglass upside down. And I’ll say, rather than it being you wanting to showcase your work, it’s the fact that you’re documenting it to a certain standard. That means that you get to reflect on the work and then drive your standard up. So it’s kind of an it’s tomato tomato a little bit, but it’s kind of like because you’re taking the time to document on that level. Yeah, you’re seeing all of your imperfections and you sit there and say, Alright, for the next one, I’m going to make sure I don’t do that and I can, you know, on my composite courses and whatever I show the first ever composite I did, I show it. Because what? No, no, that’s not. That’s not strictly true. The first composite I ever photographed. Okay. Sure. And the reason I love doing that because it brings me back to level pegs, but also it’s like, Okay, whether you think the work is a good stand or a bad standard, there’s no denying that there’s progress along the way. And it’s the fact that there’s progress that allows you to share more openly. Personally, I’m very much against the idea of trying to create showcase pieces for lectures. If you’re doing it for an award or a publication or something like that, maybe slightly different, maybe slightly different. But I want this general standard of my work to be at a level that you see on the screen, and I’m quite happy to share ideas. I’m quite happy to share. If things didn’t quite work out why they didn’t work out, what did I do wrong? What did I do to correct them? Because rather than just showing a portfolio of your holiday snaps that show the day to day, you know of how it works, I’m I’m in complete agreement with you should push your standards up so that anything you photographed you could share.

[00:28:48] Brilliant. And so what are your top tips to somebody who is, you know, because I speak to a lot of dentists and in the marketing arena, documenting your work is really important as well, not just so that you can learn and progress from it, but so that you can demonstrate to patients. This is what I’m capable of, even if it’s just during a consultation and you’ve closed that central diastole for a patient and someone walks in for a central day with a central to when you say, Look at this, I did this two weeks ago, two months ago, whatever. I’m confident and you can give that patient that confidence, right? There’s several reasons for documents and but dentists on the whole, in my experience, are very poor at documenting their work. Yeah. What are your sort of top tips on on advising dentists on how to get started on, on on documented their work?

[00:29:46] I mean, I think, you know, I probably agree with you, Prav, because fortunately, we may only have access to three percent of the profession. There’s 97 percent that are generally not doing it or not document on a regular basis. I think not everyone wants to lecture, so you don’t take photos for that. Everyone does want patients to see that they can help them. So my advice would be get yourself a get yourself on a course, right? So get yourself on a course that teaches you the bread and butter basics of this is a camera. This is how you change aperture. This is the mirrors that you need. This is the equipment that you need and just start taking photos. There’s lots of online versions of that. You can do it online, one to start with just so that you know the brief idea. Then get yourself a hands on one where you actually just taking photos and most of the day, because what that will do is then it will translate everything you know, theoretically. And if there’s a the greatest thing that I find about hands on stuff is if there’s a problem that you get, you troubleshoot it on the spot, you’re going to find yourself being a lot more successful in that discipline or practise because you’ve worked out what the issue was going to be already.

[00:31:00] So having hands on support and troubleshooting and taking shots and small things like where you stand with the patient, which positions you hold your mirror, how is your assistant going to help you and getting the photos? All those little nuances, once they’re tapped in, you know, you’ll start doing a full set of clinical photographs for orthodontic or restorative records three minutes, four minutes Max. Wow. Yes, there might need to be some post-processing to straighten the images and all this other stuff. But if you can get into the habit of doing that for most patients, you’ll be you’ll be laughing. And I think the key is I understand that there’s going to be limitations within certain health care systems and so on. But I think the key is to be photographing as regularly as possible to make it so part of your day to day that you won’t ever not pick up your camera. So that makes sense. And then it becomes second nature.

[00:31:52] I’m going to give you a little plug here because you’ve been so humble about this, but you have got an online photography course and this is hosted by the IS Academy. But I know several dentists who have given so much positive feedback about that course because they can jump on pay fifty nine quid, which is an absolute bargain and get access to everything that you’ve just said there. How the settings on your camera, how to hold it, the angle, where to put the mirror and all of that. And I always say to my clients, you know, the best piece of education that you can get if you haven’t already had it, it’s just learn how to hold this camera and show your work off, even if it’s just for reflecting back and saying, Oh, I did this case before, but this is how I’m going to do it better, I think.

[00:32:45] Yeah, thank you. Thank you for suggesting that Prav. I mean, you know, I’m I’m quite open and I think there’s lots of people that do let us do great work so you can find whatever suits you, whatever suits you. But at the same time, I think there’s an opportunity for things to be broken down in a relatively simplistic way. You know, and in a way that’s digestible, and it’s not not trying to show that, oh, guess what, you can do this. It’s more just like, look, guys, take photos or make your practising life a lot easier. And ultimately, everyone wants pictures for their cases, for their website. You know, it’s something that patients go to. Instagram is on such a rise. It’s a photographic social media platform. So it just it just seems to make so much sense for a lot of people.

[00:33:31] Sure. And we spoke about mistakes, right, so you say you can look back at your photography and see your work and stuff like that. And one of the questions we ask and is, you know, what was your biggest clinical mistake if you reflect back on your on your what is a short career, what would you say your biggest clinical mistake was?

[00:33:56] That’s an interesting question. Probably have an answer that in a while, probably my biggest clinical mistake is OK. So I had a patient who had some crowns on their front teeth. And one of them had chipped. I think one of them are chipped and we’d gone through the process, and it seemed like replacement of the crowns was the ideal method to do so. Please, the crowns made contemporaries and this is relatively early in my career, and I hadn’t really quite estimated how much preparation would be required because they had crowns before and I hadn’t done a wax up his. Here’s the key I hadn’t done a wax up and so I took the cards off, used this index to make the new crowns, and the cement I used was temp bond, which is yellow in Q OK. So then I polished them as best as I could. Similarly, the one and they were these big circular yellow spots on the front of this patient’s crowns like massive. I mean, it was like you saw two in a big yellow because obviously I’m prepared enough or whatever and patient sat up and he’s like, Oh, is that what crowns? Yeah, the crowns. We’ve got some more work to do and is that but these are these look really bad and when you’re when someone’s facing you saying that? You sit them really question whether what you’re doing is the right thing or the wrong thing, you just question it all, don’t you like, do I know? Do I know? What’s the right thing? Is this the best thing to do anyway? So it turned out that I was getting lab made provisionals meat, which ended up looking much better.

[00:35:43] We cemented them two weeks later. But that moment in my life, that moment in my life, I was like, Okay, so what? What went wrong here? You thought you knew what you were doing, but you didn’t. You didn’t have a lab man made wakes up, you didn’t have a guy to know how much preparation was needed. The patient set up and could see it wasn’t what they were hoping for. Did I manage the expectations correctly on the discussions beforehand? Listen, you’re going to have some temporaries. They’re not going to look great. But the idea for them is to build you to the next phase so that we can get the trial made, sheepmeat cetera. Had I had that conversation and it’s moments like that where I was like, Wow, well, you know, you really get put on the spot as a clinician. Sure. And I vowed to myself, look right. So the standard that I’m going to push for the Stanley I’m going to push for is going to be beyond what most patients will be able to see. Necessarily standard I’m going to go for is to the standard that I would want them done. And then that just changed. That changed my career. That was that was a pretty big moment, a hairy moment where I was like, Oh, no, no, no.

[00:36:46] And more importantly, how did you handle that conversation with the patient? Because there’s that moment of embarrassment, right, where the patient says, Geez, what the hell have you done to me, right? I don’t like this. You kind of know what the hell have I done to you? I didn’t know what I was doing or it was. I went beyond my knowledge or whatever, right? And from that point on, you decided to get educated or whatever and take things to the next level. But there was that moment where you kind of just step a little bit beyond your capabilities. But more importantly, how do you handle that conversation with the patient? Because I think personally put the mistake to one side. The more important thing is that communication with the patient now, right? You know,

[00:37:34] It’s kind of like you need your head, your eyes in the headlights before you really see if that makes sense. And you need to be put into that position to say to yourself, I really wouldn’t like to be in that position again. During the conversation, it was more of a discussion about actually, we all know that this is a temporary phase. The temporaries are often not as realistic or mimic the nature that we’re going to do because I’m going to make you love me temporaries, which I had thought about that will give you an open opportunity or open arms to allow us to trial the new shape of the teeth. So whilst it looks like this now, I’m very, very confident it will look better in a couple of weeks time. And lo and behold, the new technologies go on and it’s like, Oh my God, you’ve changed me, you know? So I think it’s just about being quite clear and quite quite open and saying, Well, actually, these aren’t. This isn’t exactly how I would have wanted the temporary look as well. And if I thought about it a bit more, I would have used unclear, which is a clear cement, not a yellow basement, which wouldn’t have made it look as bad. You reflect on these things as you, as you, as you grow. But just knowing that you’ve got certain things, I think we’re in a day and age of, you know, patients are very aware. Social media has made patients extremely aware and potentially, you know, there’s there’s opportunities for people to see you down a path or patients to you down a path. And actually, I think it’s about remaining confident in your skill set. And if there’s things that you want to do, appropriate training and education and support and mentoring and from whatever to get yourself up to that position, don’t feel compelled to provide that earlier outset. That makes sense.

[00:39:18] So then how did you get the job, Cory’s place? How did that come about? You know, probably one of the most prestigious practises in the country, but more importantly, we’ve we’ve had him on this show. And my God, you know, if after listening to it, if I wanted a check-up and if I wanted to know what was going on in my mouth, there is no way of the dentist that I would go to because I know he would look at absolutely every little detail. Yeah. And you know, it blew me away, just just listening to the process he went through, right? So he must be pretty picky. In terms of, you know, who he allows to comment and, you know, see his patients, so to speak or patients under his umbrella, right? How did that opportunity come about?

[00:40:11] So, so this is I’m not sure how many people know about this, but this would be really insightful for a lot of people on a number of levels. So 2017 Corey Farran puts up a job up job advertisement in Facebook and in typical Quora fashion, you know, it’s it’s like a 5000 word job description.

[00:40:30] Of course,

[00:40:32] Of of the things that you need to have what you what you need to do, how you need to aspire and whatever all these things. So the type of person I am is like, I’m definitely not getting this, but I’m just going to throw it in anyway, way I’ll throw my CV in. I think he was asking at the time he’s asking for five years experience, at least one teaching master’s degree, copious employment experience. I mean, the list went on and on and on, and I submitted my CV and I think quite a few people did in that in that ring. And I got called in for an interview and I was like, Oh, yeah, OK, great, let’s just go along to the interview. So I went along to the interview and the first stage, by the way, first stage is that you meet each other, you talk about things and you need to present some cases to him. And I was like, Oh, well, I’m sort of presenting quite regularly. I think especially go, all right. Like, yeah, obviously not compared to some of the other people that are probably applying, but let’s go for it. Did it go along like a house on fire myself, his practise manager at the time and cry, and he was blown away by some of the case and documentation, which for me was the biggest comeback from that was getting approval from someone who is so incredibly well known in that way. And then I went to the second stage. So let’s go. Let’s let’s take the journey back to the beginning.

[00:41:58] Sure. I’m going to throw in my CV because I’m blatantly not going to get this job. Oh my God, I got an interview. Oh my God, I’m into the last three. That’s the that’s the journey. Anyway, so there were two other individuals that were that were shortlisted with me to be the final stage. I went through a planning exercise. That’s when I knew I was out of my depth because the level of intensity of planning and occlusion and all that stuff was knowledge I didn’t have. So I fell short at that stage and knew at that point, probably I was too junior for the role. So at that point, I was three years qualified. Right? Mm hmm. And that was on the Monday night, Friday night. I get a call. I sure as hope you well. I didn’t want my PA to call you and I didn’t want you to get any. I wanted to speak to you in person. And by the tone, I was like, Oh, it’s not. I didn’t. I didn’t get it right. And he was like, The reason I wanted to call you is because I think you’re a fantastic young man with an incredible future, and I’m not going to offer you the job yet. That was his words. Uh huh.. And you know, you know, like, it’s a funny, emotional, emotional cauldron, isn’t it? It went from I’m not bothered to then when you get to the final stage, you’re almost starting to plan your route to work kind of change. Your human mind is unable to remain an emotionally engaged, right?

[00:43:26] You know?

[00:43:28] And all of that then dropped as as a heavy weight on your chest. And I was like, Oh, and he’s like, I’m following everything you’re doing. I just want you to know you impressed me. Incredibly so golf. I was extremely distraught because despite knowing it probably wasn’t right for me, you’d really hoped it. You could, because I know the sort of person I would make whatever I could to learn as much as I could, so I wasn’t concerned about not knowing it. I was concerned about having the opportunity to grow and learn. And you know, when someone tells you bad news, the best way to do it is sugarcoat it at times, right? So I thought, Oh, you’re saying all of this just because he’s not giving me the job and all this stuff. And afterwards, so all being that, I was like, I’d love to come in shadow. You want to see how you do things. I’ve not got the job. Yeah, and I’ve gone into shadow. It stayed there for a day and I was like, Wow, the level that he’s working to or the patients and the demands and the expectations on you, I probably would not be able to do okay. Fast forward two years to 2019 December, we exchanged a few messages. I was like, Can I call you on a Sunday morning? I was like, Yeah, go for it.

[00:44:41] So I’d love for you to come work with me. Was that what is that? If you remember, if you remember the call? I said, I’m not offering you the job yet. And I was like, You did say that to me. And he’d been following everything that I was publishing and presentations. I was. He was keeping an eye on the sorts of work I was doing. And yeah, he decided to give me the job, which was incredible. I didn’t expect it. I hoped for it, I suppose, but I finished my masters at that point in 2019 as well. And yeah, it just seemed to gel as a perfect match. And having worked there for the last coming up, it’s nearly two years, really, you know, at the end of 2021, just coming up to two years. I very much agree and stand by the process that he puts in place because I understand the fallback if they’re not done, if that makes sense. And I’m the sort of person who wants to learn all of the rules to start with to know when it’s appropriate to not have to follow every single step of the rules, not just no rules one, five and seven, no one to 10 and then know that you need to only choose one, five and seven. That makes sense.

[00:45:49] Absolutely. Was there any communication between 2017 and 2019? We are in touch or was just silently stalking you or just seeing what you were up to? Yeah, we.

[00:46:03] Well, he probably was certainly stalking me, to be fair. But we did go. We would go for dinner once in a while because me, him and Dr. Nassif chat to another fantastic gentleman who’s also part of that is can be what an absolutely the most charming gentleman I have ever met in my life and myself. Life and career would go to dinner once every so often to just catch up, talk, you know, have a chat about the world, everything really sure. And I made that thing. He would say that let’s go, let’s go for dinner together. And you know, it wasn’t me trying to impose myself into his world. I was very much of the vein of I’d love to spend time with you if it suits you, not please meet me, you know? Yeah. And I think eventually over time that you can tell that, can’t you? Really? Yeah.

[00:46:54] Brilliant. Lovely story. Lovely story.

[00:46:57] Yeah. So despite not getting the job, you all of a sudden did.

[00:47:00] Yeah. Yeah, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. I want to. I want to dig more into sort of your overall philosophy in dentistry, your teaching and stuff like that. And I just want to start off with, you know, you run, you run a composite veneer course, nail a composite course, not a composite veneer course. That’s a whole different topic altogether. And actually, let’s go there. Ok? What are your thoughts on composite veneers versus porcelain and then composite veneers versus edge bonding? What your your overall thought on that on that piece?

[00:47:37] So for me, composites an incredible material. It has come along leaps and bounds over the last decade, particularly maybe two decades, and the ability to mimic nature is incredible. It’s unreal. It is still a far inferior material compared in terms of biomechanical properties, structural rigidity, strength aesthetics compared to porcelain. Okay. The disadvantage with porcelain is in thin section. Invariably it’s going to fracture. So you can do this veneers and they last very well. If they’re bonded very well, but extremely thin section they can, they can fracture. Okay, so there needs to be some form of margin. Sometimes you have to do some form preparation. So my point here is is okay with composite veneers, you’re still araby the service. You still etch the surface. Okay, you’re probably air the surface with porcelain. Maybe you need to have a bit more thickness of porcelain material, but the outcomes long term of the porcelain veneer are going to be far better than the composite veneer. So when it comes to post composite hand on heart, porcelain will win every time over the longer period. The conversation about edge bonding versus composite veneers is a very, very close one tomorrow. And as you know, I’m sure it’s got a very strong point on this. We haven’t spoken about it actually in too much detail, but I’m pretty sure I know what his view is on it. At the end of the day, if you are going to volumetric it and adhere to the whole surface of the tooth to mask your ability. I don’t think that’s the right thing. I think there is a place and I do composite veneers, by the way I do them. I think there is a place for composite veneers. There is certainly a place, but every case does not need to be a composite veneer case if you have good bonding protocols, if you have strong material, if you have measured the occlusion appropriately, if you’re not creating large overhangs, if your error of reading the surface pre treating, if you’re doing all of these things.

[00:49:44] Edge bonding can last an incredibly long time, and I think we are taught in dental school that not one size fits all. So not everyone needs be there. In fact, more people than not will need aligning their teeth to a certain degree, get the constricted envelope of function improved. So there’s a more harmonious sliding sliding pathway create cani guidance and edge bond. And all of a sudden you have got a case that you’ve done what’s in the best interest of the patient. They’re delighted because they think it looks great. And guess what? Adding to it is so simple. I’m sure you haven’t. But if anyone has tried to remove a composite veneer in the past, it is an absolute travesty. It’s so stressful that last layer that you’re removing, you’re like, OK, stop, let me have a look. Change your view. Look at with your light. Turn your light off. Comes it light on? I’ve tried to it. Yeah, there’s a little bit there. Correct stop. It is so complicated, Prav. And you know, if you’re if you’re truly trying to do what’s best for the patient, obviously, you know, if everyone can just take a know, fattest big Bertha, you take it all off. Loads of all got sucker as well. I’m not a fan of that. So my view on edge bonding is, when appropriate, age bonding should always be used as a first line of defence if that doesn’t quite get to composite. If that doesn’t quite make it porcelain for this. That’s my view.

[00:51:16] So I’ve spoke to quite a few dentists to do a lot of composite veneers, and some of them who are on the main teaching circuit as well will tell me that it is a disaster waiting to happen. Right. That three years to five years from when all these composite veneers would be in place. And look, I’m not a dentist, so I can’t pass any judgement here or I’m just going off what have been conversations I’ve had that all of this work is going to come back somewhere. To be replaced either with the porcelain or go through the go through the pain that you’ve just described there of removing composite, which is sounds like it’s bloody hard work, right? And a lot of people say it’s a ticking time bomb waiting to happen. Maybe I’m over exaggerating the conversation that I’ve had, right? What’s your take on that that, you know, if we’re unnecessarily, as you’ve said, to mask their ability right or whatever, that whatever that thing is that do you think we’re going to be going to end up with this huge surge or wave of patients just coming into the clinic saying, What do I do with these now? They looked great the day they were put on. They look great for 12 months, but now I’ve got three teeth knackered. Yeah, against these other eight. Can you? Can you match these up? What? What’s your take on that?

[00:52:41] I mean, inherently, I think there’s the problem Prav. I think it’s I don’t think it’s going to be a disaster. I don’t think it’s going to be a disaster because we’ve always got something that we can do. But is it going to require more work? Yes. Is it going to invade more to structure? Yes. Is it going to mean the patient will always be on a cycle? Yes. And. You know, working with Kheri, for example. He’s got a guarantee process for all of the work that’s done. Now, if you’re compromising that actually you start having to pay for it yourself. Quite frankly, the practise and it’s not justifiable to say to a patient, I mean, personally, I don’t think it’s a person I wouldn’t feel right after three years being like, right, here’s another bill for another eight combativeness. Again, that’s just not right, because by that point, they could have paid for porcelain. They could have after one replacement sets. That’s it. You’re already opposing it anyway. I think it offers to those that would suit the needs. In general, it offers a fantastic, cost effective medium term measure to be able to provide the patient with something that will make them more confident, that will give them the ability to smile and be happy. I think there is a very, very good place for it. I think everyone needing commitment is eight to eight is not appropriate. I don’t think it’s appropriate and the replacement event is going to come to talks about that a lot. The replacement event is going to come and it’s going to be incredibly challenging. And the trouble is, no one will really know about it because we’ll just put composite over it again. The only point is when someone else will have to deal with it, and then you go back to the original to structure and you know how much has been evaded because it’s like putting a plaster, take the plaster, put another blast from the past, put another plaster on, and you’ve never really seen the skull underneath.

[00:54:47] Quick question about that plaster. If one composite veneer gets knackered, right? Two years later, how hard is it to match that composite veneer to the exact quite a straightforward process?

[00:55:01] Incredibly difficult. I mean, so there’s studies that prove that the same shade of composite in the same syringe from a different batch can have up to 12 to 15 percent variation in chroma value. And the same manufacturer are the same people the same batch. They’ve got quality control. Of course, yes, you can have variation, even in the same thing. So. I suppose what I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult. I suppose what it comes down to is how close you can match. It is sufficient enough for the social distance for it not to be, you know, visible. Yeah. But of course, it’s of course, it’s particularly Prav. If you’ve done a really delicate layering protocol where you’ve used a few shades, a few tints, you’ve used a few things to enhance the size of it. When it gets to that level, that that’s almost impossible to recreate. But yeah, yeah, we’ll find out if it’s probably next year.

[00:56:00] So talk to me about the replacement event. Do you have conversations with your patients about this? Do you do you talk to them about how long they’re going to last and when they should expect to replace them, for example? And then I’m interested to hear about your guarantee. How do you guarantee your work and how long do you guarantee it for? And do the patients have to play by certain rules in order to exercise that guarantee?

[00:56:25] Yeah, yeah. So so the replacement event is something that needs to be talked about from the get go. Despite using gold standard protocols and procedures, nothing’s going to last forever. Nothing’s going to last forever. And I think the most important thing from my perspective as a clinician is making it clear that I’m going to do the best that are in my hands and the technology we have now. But it’s going to be, you know, require replacement and regarding, and that falls into discussions with the guarantee in the service. So we’ve all got a car. We’ve had it a hundred times before. I’m sure you take that to get service right. You change the all, you change the filters, whatever it is that needs to be done on the car. And that’s to keep it going and performing highly. Well, actually, for us that seeing the hygienist to come and see us once a year or once every six months so we can see things if things are starting to look like, they might becoming a problem. Is there a way that we can do a chair side repair or a polishing of that restoration just to make sure it stays in perfect shape? Of course, that doesn’t always apply. People move. People have families. They’ll move to different countries. Life takes over. Not everyone can make it all the time. But our our guarantee process is placed on stipulations that we’ve done baseline records for you. We’ve done baseline end of treatment records for you. You’re seeing our hygienists every three to six months, according to your risk profile, and you’re coming in for your check-up and provided that’s followed. We will go into your restorations.

[00:57:53] Cool. Cool. Talk to me about your course, your anterior posterior composite, cos there’s so many composite courses out there. If I was a dentist, I would literally be confused as to which course I should take, right? And and I think some of it may be based on the individual right. So I may resonate or, you know, towards you more than one of the other speakers, stroke lecturers and so on and so forth. And sometimes, you know, you look at some of the stuff that some dentists are doing anything. How the hell am I going to take that back to my clinic and do that on Monday morning? Like it was great and inspiring watching how you flick that thing, that tool and that and that paintbrush and whatever it is you, do you expect me to do that on Monday morning? You’re having enough sunshine, right? And so a bit of ice cream, a bit of training, right is, do you know what trains a day practise tomorrow? You know, I’m a big believer in, you know, you need to be able to replicate what the guy is is teaching you. So tell me a little bit about your course, how you teach. Is it replicated all? Yeah.

[00:59:09] Firstly, I want to be very, very clear about this. I think there are some incredibly talented clinicians in this country. We have some world leading clinicians that are are sharing their expertise and knowledge, and a lot of them have already been on. Funnily enough, I’ve supported all of these individuals because I I think the point at which you think, you know, all is the point at which you’ll always decline, you know, and supporting your fellow peers and colleagues is important. So there are a number of choices that you can make, all of which will probably be fantastic. So that’s the first thing I want to say about our course. Fantastic thing is, I’ve been teaching A.P. Stories for at least about four or five years now, and I’ve done I’ve done tests. You know, dentists is course, reverse triangle technique and all this stuff. And you know, I think I guess for me, my course is made in a way of what I would want to know if I was because I’ve done probably Prav no exaggeration I’ve probably done about. Maybe 15 comes in courses, 15 after the first five. You’re probably not learning anything new, you’re just getting a chance to practise. Mm hmm. But here’s one thing that I’ll give everyone for free. Any course that you go on, you’ll probably be on a Friday or a weekend that Monday morning. That first patient you’re going to book in on that day is to do the thing you practise on the weekend.

[01:00:36] So you’ve got absolutely no choice but to put those habits into practise. Totally agree. So that’s the first thing I’ll say. Just do it. Plan the course and your patient. Move people around if you have to get that person in. You’re doing an to a composite course. Get that to your competition for the Monday. Do it. No questions. The fantastic thing I personally feel about. Yeah. Yeah. The fantastic thing I feel about my the thing that we’ve been able to do is I’ve taken lots of information, lots of knowledge from lots of companies, from lots of individuals and have been able to synthesise it into a relatively pragmatic and realistic pathway that most people will be able to apply on Monday. So having done style Italian and having done various things in the UK and having done stuff in the US and having done stuff in Japan, I basically what I’ve tried to do is left that altogether irrelevant or system irrelevant or material irrelevant or instruments and give a dogmatic type pathway for clinicians to be able to reproducibly predictably bond layer, restore, create anatomy polish without having to. You know, how many courses do you go on Prav that you see if that, oh, we can use this material and this is the result you’re going to get today? Everyone takes it, puts on the Instagram hashtag, blah blah blah. And it’s like, Yeah, to get that, you need to buy this kit and you need to buy this kit.

[01:02:02] You buy this and it’s like, Yeah, yeah, but I’ve spent, you know, one half thousand pounds on. Of course, I’ve got to spend another two to get all the stuff. Just to do it for Monday is what I want to try and show is, I mean, of course, we support it, of course, is supported by the company because I work quite closely with them anyway. And in fact, with drugs, I’ve been responsible and part of the design of the material, actually, some I believe in it quite a lot, but hopefully what I’m going to be showing you is principles irrelevant of the system, and I’m driven by principles as such as opposed to materials or companies. And I think that’s really, really key. I’m fortunate enough to have learnt from quite a few people. I’m fortunate to have been got a lot of feedback, positive and negative, and I’ve incorporated that over the years, so I hope it’s for everyone. Honestly, for me, the biggest honour was to be invited to do it alongside you guys is because I’ve looked up to it since I qualified. You know, I’ve looked up to TIFF Qureshi, particularly since I qualified, and to be able to share for him to open up that that opportunity for me to share on on. In essence, his and his team’s academy is a very big privilege. So I’m really honoured, really, really honoured.

[01:03:20] Really, really, it’s great to have you just talk to me about your checkered process and know we’ve been through it with Cary Wright and what he goes through and stuff. So if I am the patient, let’s let’s forget check-up consultation, whatever, right? What’s your style? So I come in as a patient and say, Hey, Shiraz, I want, I want. I want to improve my smile. Right? What is that process I come in? I have a consultation. Is that a paid assessment? Have I seen a treatment coordinator beforehand? Take me through your journey.

[01:03:55] So my journey is slowly become Khurais journey because I really believe in the process. I really believe in the process for a new patient. You’ll be sent a pre-medical questionnaire and you will come in for a 90 minute appointment. Okay. Well, that 90 minutes. We’re going to do a full assessment. We’re going to check your glands, your jaw, joints, your muscles. We’re going to tick the teeth, how they meet together, occlusion. We’re going to check the soft tissues. We’re going to do an aesthetic assessment which really forms part of everything as opposed to it being an individual thing. We’ll take four for four radiographs. We can take a full set of photographs. I’m going to get all of the information I need, and I’m going to say show probably a few things and say I’ll reserve to make any judgements on what we’re going to do after this data collection appointment. So that is a data collection point with all the information that I need to start creating an understanding of what the patient’s aspirations are and how we can parallel a plan to suit those aspirations. And we’ll spend two or three hours, maybe going through the photos, going through the X-rays, writing a letter, creating a presentation for the patient. As you know, from from Kuris, it’s basically exactly the same, and they will get a very detailed letter and set of their own photos and X-rays and explain to this needs to be done because of this what the options are, what the, you know, sometimes it’s a bit more complicated.

[01:05:19] So we have, you know, multiple options which ways we could go down. And the principal of the clinic is it is a comprehensive assessment. Nothing is left. No stone is left unturned. If we need to do a sectional CT scan or a CT scan to perform, part of our treatment planning will get that done before we make a plan for the next phase. So they’ll be given an interim treatment letter. But we’ll probably know where we’re going. Given that we’re asking for that scan so we can start creating a rough estimate and if, as all things, if treatment plan changes, we’ll send them an interim report or an updated report explaining that the following needs to be done because of X, Y, Z, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there’s a lot to it. But the idea is that every possible outcome issue problem is assessed, sometimes run through by colleagues. Had a discussion about with colleagues, then an appropriate plan is given. And incidentally, I’ve stopped working at certain places because they didn’t allow for that process to exist because of time. It was just impossible. If you’ve got eight new patients in a day, you cannot spend twenty four hours writing letters and doing photos. It’s incredible. It’s difficult. It’s too difficult. So I’m in a situation where I’m trying to build that plan as being my base and then modify accordingly as and when it’s needed.

[01:06:45] How would you? You mentioned you send letters out to the patient, is there a point in time where you invite the patient in and actually present that plan to them and explain it to them? Or do they do they call and speak to a TKO about that? What’s what’s the process? Because I’ve come in and met you? You’ve done the full works, you know, a whole sort of assessment on me. And now I get this letter, which, you know, if it’s anything like some, you know, job advert, it’s there’s going to be quite a bit of information in there for me to absorb. Intense. Yeah. Yeah. How is how is that distilled back to me as a patient?

[01:07:25] So, so a part of the so treatment coordinate is key because the letter is talked through with the treatment coordinator. So the treatment coordinators on side with what’s going on, what are we proposing for this patient? They’ve got the treatment. Coordinating certainly always worked with us. At some point they’ll come in and watch procedures that are so they know what’s informed. They will then have in-depth discussions and we will invite them if they wish to, to have a Zoom chat, to cover certain things or come in to cover certain things, to have a discussion if something wasn’t made clear or or whatever. I had a patient coming in for a second opinion about something, and we had about a 30 minute phone call about all of the different aspects or nuances within the letter. So by and large, it goes to the treatment coordinator. They will discuss and see why and what and what is the options and so on. And then the next stage is either coming to meet us, doing Zoom or doing a phone call, whichever suits the patient. And by and large people that we treat the practise are really quite busy. So it’s almost like they’re trying to minimise the number of points they’re having anyway. But often we will we will exchange directly. But the treatment coordinator is key. It’s key in the smooth process.

[01:08:34] Yeah, I’ve got a couple of questions. I want to ask you around sort of a couple of topics that come up a lot when I when I speak to dentists currently now, anyway, very topical. And one of them is direct to consumer orthodontics. Your thoughts and opinions, which are which you can probably guess. But how do you handle that patient who comes in and says, Hey, I’ve been told I can go and get my teeth straightened in the supermarket or whatever, right? And then there’s a follow up question after that, but I just want to hear your thoughts. First of all,

[01:09:08] You know, I think it’s incredibly difficult, isn’t it, to not slap people down when they come with this? Yeah, with this outcome, you know, it’s like, Oh, what was that your your plumber can also be a plumber, can also do heart surgery a wicked go for it, you know, like that kind of principle. It’s like, Oh yeah, I don’t know. I’ve had patients who have come to me specifically because they’re like, I’ve heard, you know, how to do X, but relatively well. And those like, yeah, they’re like, Oh, I’m doing ortho with with X, a company that you can see on, on and out of it. All right, that’s fine. I’m just making it clear that any problems that have happened because of your orthodontics, I’m going to pick up and whether you do something about them or make an impact on whether we can continue treatment or not. Yeah, sure. Do you think like any type of 3D printing or scanning material is going to check for your constricted envelope function is going to check your excursions, make sure you’ve got balance protrusion, posterior dissolution on A. Gut, it’s not checking any of that.

[01:10:06] It’s not checking any of that. So anyone that tries to see to me that there’s a system that can do all of that great whatever. Moving on. When I write to them, I will say. No indication responsibility or long term maintenance is taking any responsibility for when it comes to this position. And if it turns out that your position movements that have happened are going to compromise my outcome if I’m not going to treat X. So I think when people come in, these guys have got an incredible marketing machine, you know, they’ve gone direct to consumer. A lot of people are trying to do that model anyway. Good on them for being able to crack the market, but unfortunately it needs to be regulated. And if it’s not being regulated, just like the, you know, the catastrophe event, that’s going to happen seven, eight years, 10 years down the line. Are you going to go to Ghostbusters? Probably that’s as realistic as it gets. There’s no one else is going to help. So, yeah, that’s my view on that. See a professional. You pay for what you get for, isn’t it?

[01:11:12] Sure. Do you think the AI technology will ever get to a point where they can just stick a scanner in your mouth and it can just handle everything? You’re in your protrusion, you’re constricted envelope of function, blah blah blah, the whole shebang?

[01:11:27] I don’t dispute at one point that we’ll be able to happen, you know, if you can create an artificial articulator. Yeah. If you get a reproducible CONDOLA guidance angle into the distance and and no scanning tiff knows about this very, very well. You can record video record protrusion excursions. If you can record those things, you can record how they change when the teeth change in space. So I don’t think it’s not something that you can’t do. I think at the end of the day, that’s health driven, not business model driven, and that’s why it won’t be invested in by a bunch of people who only see numbers. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah,

[01:12:06] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the other thing that’s very topical at the moment, Shiraz is turkey teeth. Yeah, go into Turkey to get your teeth done. I can. I can get these done, you know, and get a holiday and some change and all the rest of it and a lot of my clients and dentists, I speak to come up against this all the time. Ok, the you know, what are your thoughts on me getting my teeth done abroad? And I spoke to Ian Buckle about this at length, and he gave me a really interesting, interesting and very direct answer to this question. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think about dentistry abroad and what would you advise a patient if they were considering to get their teeth done in Turkey, for example? I mean,

[01:12:58] I think it really, really simply. Ok, so let’s start with the first point, which is I’ve got some colleagues at work in Turkey as an example. They’re incredibly talented, gifted and skilled individuals that will lecture worldwide and probably wouldn’t do this sort of treatment, frankly. And so, you know, going abroad, there are still some incredible conditions abroad firstly. Secondly, it’s quite clear that if you’re going to have every tooth in your mouth drilled down right and you get it crowd stuck on them, they might look great. They might look fantastic if they’re going to fall off on the plane on the way back. Where are you going to go? You can go for another holiday just after you’ve had a holiday. I know for a fact I’m not going to touch anyone’s work unless it’s to replace all of it, which has significant financial impacts, right? And whilst some of these people may be incredibly skilled, I’ve seen I’ve seen immediate posts Prav have come in to me that, you know, the teeth arrived before they do kind of scenario, and there’s no such thing as prototyping. There’s no such time as provisional. There’s no such time as trial smiles, occlusion. And now they’re getting TMJ issues because the posterior occlusion has been managed properly.

[01:14:12] There’s no on working side interferences everywhere, postage chipping off just three weeks of being in there. You’re paying what you get, you’re paying for what you’re getting. So I very, very much disagree with it. But again, I think people have already met when people make a decision like this, they’ve already kind of made their mind up, haven’t they? And I’m not in the business of requiring to have to justify why I am going to do what I can do. I’m going to give you my options. It’s up to you if you’d like to find second opinion. I think that’s very healthy. But if you want to try to achieve X, this is what I think I can do. By all means, seek further opinions if you need. And you know, we’re really fortunate to not be in a situation where we need to treat people. We’re quite fortunate, extremely fortunate to be busy anyway. So if someone would like to continue on with us, we’re more than happy to treat them. If they want to go and find an alternative that probably is much more economical and cost efficient. Go for it. But as soon as you start skimping on things, you start skimping on quality. So, yeah, that’s my view. Very clear.

[01:15:15] Sure, sure. I’ve just got a couple of final question. I’ve got about so many questions loaded up Shiraz, but I know we’re I know we’re running short on time, and so we’ll probably have to invite you back.

[01:15:28] Maybe I’ll be more than happy to be more than happy to.

[01:15:31] So a couple of questions that we always end these podcasts. So one question is Shiraz. If it was your if it was your final day on the planet and you were surrounded by your loved ones, namely family, because you know you’ve already spoke about your close relationship with your family. And if they were with you on your final day, what three pieces of advice would you leave them with?

[01:16:02] So family is incredibly important to me, really had the chance to mention, but I’ve got a fantastic daughter who’s two years old, I’ve got a wonderful wife who’s supporting all of my aspirations within dentistry, and that’s incredibly difficult when your time is limited. Invariably, she’s been an incredible support. Three pieces of information that I’d say is always remain honest and humble. You never know what who you may be speaking to. You never know their story. You never know why they might be lashing out at someone who always try and remain honest, humble and considerate to others. Because we’re in a day and age where psychological complex has become incredibly, incredibly tender and uncomplicated. It’s not as as black and white. And if you think someone’s being an idiot and you say you’re an idiot, that’s almost frowned upon now. So just always be considerate to others. So having that as your core being. I think the other thing would be live every moment as if it’s your last and be grateful for any extra time that you get. You know, we’re incredibly fortunate to be part of this fantastic profession.

[01:17:12] To have family around the health can health can sort of evade us tomorrow. So if every moment like it’s your last and. I suppose the third thing would, and it probably sort of stays on the same theme is always spend time looking after your family and your loved ones, so you know and shout out goes to all of the mothers in the world because you know you carry this human being inside you for nine months. You get lethargic, you become sick, you lose. I mean, your organs are moving out the way for someone else to grow. You know, where else does that happen? And you know, mum’s really go through a lot through through the birthing experience, but also the years to follow. And also things like changing of careers and how you have to manage those sorts of things. So always, I mean, always be there for both parents because they’ll all but always provide. But mums, mums are the ones. Mums are the ones. So look after you, look after your parents and always give back.

[01:18:21] And how would you like to be remembered? Shiraz was finish the sentence.

[01:18:27] And. Himself. Shiraz was himself

[01:18:32] Short and sweet,

[01:18:32] Beautiful. Yeah, I do not try to appear as if I am someone or someone. I definitely don’t try to dress to impress anyone else. It’s some people’s taste, not to others. I am working hard to be the best version of himself and the time energy effort I give to those around me, those that are friends or colleagues, those at my family, all because it’s key to who I am as a human being. So I just want to be the best version of myself and not try and necessarily imitate and imitate anyone, but also be inspired by those around you. So, yeah, brilliant.

[01:19:11] And if you have 30 days left, Nate, what would you do with it?

[01:19:15] From 30 days left, I’ll probably fast to try and try and get into that leadership. I’ve always been. I’d I’d I’d go and help. This is really, really close to my heart. I try and do charity project. As you know, I lost my hair because I had such shaped cystic fibrosis trust. I’d probably dedicate a lot of that time to trying to help the refugees that are suffering in Afghanistan right now. If that was the next 30 days that I’d give a significant portion of my time, and on a self-indulgent note, I’d go and do motor racing and take my family around for the ride. So there are three things that I’d do.

[01:19:54] Beautiful, Shiraz, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been an absolute pleasure and we will have to get you back.

[01:20:01] Thanks again, Prav and keep up your great work and you’re doing you’re doing great stuff within the profession. So you know, we in the profession certainly appreciate your honesty, integrity and helping us grow as clinicians. So thank you as well. Very much.

[01:20:14] I appreciate that. Thank you.

[01:20:18] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

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[00:00:04] This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders and Dental Street. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:22] Hi, guys. Today’s episode is the second part of our social media Leaders hopefully listen to the first part last week. This is a continuation of the best bits of the social media journeys of our top guests. Thank you so much for listening. Canis Solanki Prav brother Kailash has always dominated in every form of media, but that there’s been including social. But I remember before social, he was dominating in print and dominating in Google. And then when it comes to social, he’s got he’s also there.

[00:00:54] I didn’t have a mentor like me, so I had to do things myself and everyone. Not everyone. It’s fair to say that. But a lot of people saw this young kid. He’d open this cosmetic clinic, try to go for all the awards, tries to do all this. All these dentistry goes on every cost under the sun and just thinks is going to be here today, gone tomorrow. Him, you know, his fly by. And, you know, we’re 15, 16 years on. Castaños got a massively great reputation in the northwest. You know, we get patients now from all over the. Our Instagram following our social media presence, our you know, just presence just generally is super good. And that is testament to what’s holding our ground. All kids Dental hold its ground and saying, listen, we’re here to stay. You know, from my point of view and now I think moving forward, long term plan is to ensure that, you know, maybe I can be a mentor for some people. I do it now in my private vitis. And, you know, they do super well. You know, I’ve got my private veti that’s going to be made from fee to fee, writes him just in the next coming month.

[00:02:09] And before that, he’d study dentistry in Latvia. So he’s not like he had experienced the UK dentistry. So like his mom and dad with dentists. It’s not like, you know, he’s grown up in the professional. He’s like he was wet behind the ears. He had no idea of dentistry. And for him to safely dance is the key to safely providing very good quality dental treatment, not rushing. And his kid doesn’t. Roshe, he still shadows me one day a week. So he still only dream four days. Clinical dentistry a week of the Hintz a gross 100k in one month before he goes Ebright great for me, great for my business. But that’s not the reason I’m doing it, because I’m producing I’m hoping not lots of mini mes, but I want to produce people that are not scared, that understand dentistry is something that needs to be provided past the basic level. But happy to provide it because he knows I’m his mentor. I will help him. I will go through that with him and I’ll go through every journey with him. I check his preps, I check his EMFs. I check his final fix.

[00:03:15] We used to talk about treatments to talk about this. Yeah, we should talk about is, you know, Prav and I have talked about you. I mean, you introduced me to Prav. Let’s start with you. Leaders, Prav and Prav. And I have talked about you a lot. And, you know, Prav does marketing for hundreds of dentists. And and he says that in the end, you are the one of all of his clients who converts the most. Richard Field, me from my memory, the first dentists who had a logo of himself as an associate who was very involved back in the Facebook days, less so in the instant Instagram days. So, listen, both I remember back in the day well, I don’t know how many years I’m talking about, maybe seven or eight years ago, maybe. Maybe a bit after that. You were the original social media dentist. I remember you. You were the first one to have your own logo. And I remember you getting quite a lot of chip for it. I remember you getting attacked quite a lot for it. Maybe because you were the first and it wasn’t a thing. Right. But then you kind of withdrew from social media quite a lot. Tell me tell me about it first.

[00:04:32] Yeah, I think social media is something that I think is really important to talk about. So I was the first, though, logo, my friend at uni, and he made me a logo as part of his university course. Actually, I still use the same one today and logo stuff on Facebook when Facebook was the thing. And people comment is not always for the best. And you’d have to you’d have to build quite a thick skin quite early. And there was a couple of things that happened a few years later that I don’t really want to massively get into, but it really left it really sour taste in my mouth. I was like, I don’t need that in my life. And maybe to my detriment or not, I haven’t fully embraced it again ever. And I know there are people are building businesses on Instagram who feel they’ve got some months in advance from Instagram years in advance. There’s people that have no other marketing olad Instagram. So I think is fantastic. But it’s also quite dangerous not only for dentists, but potentially for patients as well, especially the younger ones wanting Instagram smiles. And to sort of put that in perspective. I have a very secret and I’m not going to tell you what it is a secret pizza Instagram where I post on my pizzas that I make in my home oven. And I sent a picture of my smile from that Instagram to a dentist. And I have a small garlic and a small darst on my upper right lateral. I’m ecstatic conclusion. And I said, well, what do I need? A nice smile. And the answer was 20 zirconia Crohn’s.

[00:06:25] Was this dentist in Turkey?

[00:06:26] It was a. It might be well, but the reply I go as far as the counting of cranes and as I OK, sometimes Steve asked me about bonding. And he said, no, that won’t work. Cranes is better. It’ll be 3000 pounds, 20 units of two points and sent me loads of pictures. And they looked from a lay person is really good. And that’s what we’re up against. We’re up against dentists. And the general public who doesn’t know anything about dentistry sees the nice smile for a nice price, and it’s very difficult to compete with. And on the flip side, in the UK, there’s a lot of very careful what I say. It’s a lot of make overs with composter. And I love composite. I think it’s fantastic. But I don’t think what these patients are being told is the maintenance, the long term. So you’re seeing a lot of people with big competence. Smiles on Virgine teeth, very young. Not knowing the maintenance for the future, and I’ve already had a couple in. You’ve had these sort of fool my continues on for a very small amount of money. They’ve already started to fail and can’t afford to fix it. And I’m not saying this is every dentist there are Dental. They’re doing phenomenal work with concept that will last years and years and years and years. But there’s also a lot. There aren’t. And I think we’ll be in a very interesting position in three or four years time when all these sort of influencers or young people want influence or teeth. Need it redone. And I wonder who’s going to do it? Yeah, it’s definitely an issue, although I don’t know how, you know, that

[00:08:21] People aren’t telling people of and you’ve spoken to these patients, but you can’t always trust patients about that. But but but I get I understand where you’re coming from. I mean, sometimes, you know, the trend picks up and it has its own sort of legs. And then I had qadi manager you on the podcast. Right. And she was talking about tick tock as she’s massive on tick tock, you know,

[00:08:46] And I know nothing.

[00:08:49] Well, yeah, this is the thing on on tick tock. The things that trend like they have juicy headlines and so something something really like, you know, the turkey things trended on on tick tock, the people going to turkey and having their teeth. And it is problematic with composite because it can go very wrong very quick if it’s not done very well. You know that the the problems are amplified in these tiny little scratch in the composite as a big fail later on. So I do agree with you on that.

[00:09:23] I think with or in script done is they’ve made they’ve taken the medical aspect away from dentistry and it’s more of a beauty treatment. So people out there, hair who have was done Baltistan and I think it is important that the public and the patients understand that what they’re having done, it might be minimi invasive, but it’s not reversible. And I think that the side of it which broadcast or understood

[00:09:55] Rupert Monkhouse is in question live so beautiful that the zigging when they zag, talking about them, just making them just cool on Instagram, which is a wonderful achievement. And so what’s what’s been the reaction of young dentists, you know, putting these beautiful pictures on Instagram and it’s the last place. I mean, you know, these platforms sort of, you know, develop DNA. But if three years ago you told me the going to be a guy who’s going to be taking pictures of complete dentures and making them exciting and sexy on black with with reflections, I would I would believe that, you know, what’s been people’s reaction? I mean I mean, you must have inspired a bunch of people.

[00:10:44] I think so. I think I get a lot of a lot of really nice feedback. I do see a few people doing a few pictures. And I it it’s quite, quite similar. That’s cool. No one’s no one’s original show. Someone was doing the same kind of things as well that I haven’t seen. So, you know, nothing. And it’s all about the photos of it. That’s all just what Menasche teaches on his boat. You know, when did that course? Two years ago. And thought, well, I’m going to do it for what I want to do that again. I’ve had really, really nice feedback. And I think more people just obviously people were doing Dental cases. But I’m seeing more maybe I’m just following more people that I’m definitely seeing more people who are doing on the page sort of composite work and actually posting the odd Dental case, which is almost that people weren’t thinking that, oh, let’s not show the Dental cases, but. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And more more of it coming up, which is which is cool. Yeah.

[00:11:37] I mean, the thing is, we were all trained in that much more than we were trained in composites. So it kind of it kind of takes you back to that whole whole bit of Dental school. Right. But at the same time, it’s interesting, you know, that that is still the case. I really didn’t think that. I thought I thought by now the Dental course would be much more sort of digital planning and none of that. Right. Scanning was scanning involved your coastguard.

[00:12:04] So you knew it existed. You knew it existed. But we didn’t we didn’t have a scanner on the postgrads to the postcard. Obviously, they have scanners and things of that, because they have to do all that side of it, that we didn’t have anything outside that that maybe it’s changed in the last four or five years, but it’s still not not there

[00:12:26] To even even in the last four or five years. A lot’s changed and scanning is definitely penetration market penetration of it. Yeah. What else do you get up to? Outside of work? What what’s your biggest interest piece?

[00:12:41] Well, I was doing a bit of coaching still for the swimming stuff. The Covid sort of killed that off to do normal photography, not adventures. But again, Covid sort of cattail that a bit because it was more when I would travel, I’d try and go away sort of two or three times a year and do photography that obviously living and living in London, you can still go and do some some nice photography. So I spend spend most of my time doing doing that. And just sports in general. What you better watch a bit of cricket. Maybe I might get roped into a Sunday game next week. I in the shower with some players, so I’m not going to go into the arm over. But yeah, photos, not adventures, is usually what I’m doing. But I found that I’m just doing more and more of the work work photographers. I need to bring it back the other way, I think.

[00:13:26] So were you a photographer before you were a Dental photographer?

[00:13:32] Yeah. So I’ve been doing sort of photography as a sort of serious hobby for about five years, mostly stuff. But I would be in London at uni and going round and then travels and sort of landscape photography and cityscape photography and things like that. So I knew I knew my way around a camera before I went on. Yeah, that’s homophobic scores and stuff. Yeah. So it’s more than that. That’s the beauty, of course, is that it’s still had so much so much to offer because you have the full range of people on that course. And still some people don’t even know how to, you know, which we tend the whole day on sort of thing that catches up on. But the beauty of that is that the whole black backdrop, things are so simple to do once you know how to do it. But it just until you know how to do it is a little crazy, but says I still enjoy it. And that’s why I think partly I do these do all these Instagram photos, because it’s just it makes me enjoy the work that I’m doing. I enjoy the sight of is making a nice picture, whether it’s over a mountain range somewhere or more of an impression. I just enjoy the process of actually producing producing an image.

[00:14:48] Robbie Hughes, a real social media powerhouse since that interview, he’s done so many other things as well. The clothing line, that’s the concept avant garde system that he’s doing. But again, one of my favourites to listen

[00:15:07] To starts as a little bit about that. And we prior to this podcast, we said a little thing that shocked me, which is you probably run one of the biggest or most successful practises in the north and you haven’t spent a penny on marketing. Exactly. How did that happen?

[00:15:23] The power of Instagram, power of no influential people. And like like you say, I am fortunate. I’m very fortunate that, you know, influential people don’t have to beg beg influential people to help me out or offer, you know, freebies and all these things. I know a lot of influential people and all to sort

[00:15:42] Of I think that combined with the power of providing the amazing experience, because, of course, it’s impossible to grow a business at the rate you’ve grown your business,

[00:15:51] Because without you’re going to force, you can’t force people to shout from the rooftops about what you’ve had done. You can’t force people to do that regardless of what I think it’s the

[00:15:58] Combination of those two together.

[00:16:00] The experience is everything. Yeah, the experience is everything. So you want to provide an experience. You want to create this sort of lifestyle brand where people want to boast about being in the building. And that’s exactly what they do. Even the celebrities do it now to celebrities. Come pay for the teeth. Do you mind that we with you? And so Cam certainly was a was a prime example. Ken paid for his teeth and Cam was offered free teeth. But he wants to come to us and he let me video the whole experience and use as much as he wants because he knew what he wanted. He knew about the experience. He knew about what we can deliver on. And we get that all the time. We haven’t done a single sponsored post. Yeah. So I haven’t paid for anything. Now, when I’m ready to scale my business, we have the content, we have the content. They will obviously all those options we have my websites, I still get built is not even optimised. So if I can build a business of this scale on Instagram only, that’s what really excites me, because I’m not going to be sort of put all my eggs in one basket. I’m just going through the process and being so busy and do not that we do need to have all the channels and all the avenues final, all cylinders, and then we’ll see how far we can really take this business. And that’s what that’s that’s what that’s the desire inside me now is I think I want to know how far can I take it?

[00:17:22] That’s really key will be because, you know, you could say right place, right time, Instagram, you know that your reputation in the town. Yeah. Is it let’s say Instagram day after tomorrow, isn’t the platform that, you know, we can see what happened to Facebook and reach and all that. And then we’re talking to Newtown. What are the what will it take to to replicate? And I’m not asking you to answer me, but that is the that’s the big, big ask. Because because I believe in Liverpool. You’re a mini celebrity before any of this started. And Instagram, I guess you got on it at the right time and did the right thing. But what’s going to happen next?

[00:18:02] I believe I believe we have we already have a brand established well enough now to grow in any city. And the awareness is there. I know that because I know the amount of enquiries I get through every day from different areas of the country. So, again, my next stage is going to be a very, very logical decision based on where the most of my enquiries are coming from, from the right demographic and type of people and where my highest conversion rate is. So I know of I’m already very highly in that area. That’s where I need the clinic. That’s not rocket science. If Instagram falls off tomorrow, I’ve got my brand and I’ve got a good enough business brain, you know, advertised on MySpace before so I can advertise and anything. And that was free as well. So, yeah, plus we’ve got all the old marketing methods is not that I’m not not aware of. I’m just saying I’m not at the point to use it or need it. Yeah. And both scalability is common. And that’s why I love digital dentistry, because I don’t believe that’s been scalable before. Same way in the same way. But now with scalable, we can centralise a lot of things and sort of have different satellites very easily.

[00:19:06] I believe Prunus Skanda probably in the profession right now, the most influential social media queen there is. Enjoy it. One thing I quite admire about the way you’ve done Instagram is you’ve brought what you’ve brought Anna Middleton along with you. And now the notice.

[00:19:25] You’re also done tonight, babe. It’s like Charlie’s Angels and you come to see Dental.

[00:19:30] Yeah, that’s that’s quite a nice thing. You know, that’s quite a nice thing. It’s like empowering women in. So we go on to the okay, go for it. What do you feel about this wave? Why is it that now there’s so many women’s groups?

[00:19:43] Ok, so the really interesting thing is that people see me as a strong female figure, which I’m so grateful for. But as a result, they want me to be at the forefront of a lot of speaking events that are just inclusive to women. And I have actually made a decision in the last year not to accept any of those invitations, not because I’m not here to support other women. It’s because I think that this is basically a trend and people don’t understand what it means. I think that women should have a voice. I think that women should be empowered. But I don’t actually think separating men from women on any platforms is the way forward, because I think it’s all about diversity, inclusive koussevitzky and not about separation. Now, my business partners are male. I work with males all the time. I get on with them. I have never felt intimidated or disempowered by men. So actually, I don’t think that this whole wave, which kind of tries to display men as being the enemy and, you know, suppressing women is something that I relate to. And I think it’s all about integration, to be honest.

[00:20:56] Do you think it’s harder to be a woman than a man?

[00:20:59] Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, that’s true.

[00:21:03] Then then there’s nothing wrong with Empower. You know, I mean, the.

[00:21:06] Yeah, but I think. No, but that’s why.

[00:21:07] Is it harder to be a woman than the man?

[00:21:08] I mean, for me personally, somebody that’s built that profile on career and has lots of dreams and aspirations that I want to fulfil. I’m also very much aware of the biological clock, frankly.

[00:21:18] I get I get somebody inside of that. Outside of that, of course, of course, having a kid and I love it. But outside of that, I mean, you haven’t got a kid yet, you know.

[00:21:26] Okay. My father keeps reminding me so.

[00:21:30] So in your journey from, you know, from zero to now. Yeah. You think it’s harder to be a woman than the man?

[00:21:36] Yeah, for sure. I mean, like I think that there has been elements of in my industry, which I’m not going to go into in detail. There have been elements of also like I sometimes certain men have wanted to help. And then it turns out they actually wanted to try and get physical and then you’d go, no, no, no, no. This is like a purely business thing. And I’ve I’ve experienced some of that. And then they lose interest in trying to help you. So I think there’s definitely a little bit of that, that Harvey Weinstein culture that still goes on in every industry. But having said that, I think that if you assert yourself in a certain way, you can get the respect from both sexes, to be perfectly honest with you. And the reason why I say that is because I did assert myself and behaved in a certain way that gained respect. And I think women for some reason don’t feel like they have a voice. They don’t have the confidence to speak out. It’s not that men are saying you can’t speak out. It’s because they just don’t have that maybe that ego like men do. And I think that’s a problem with women. And trust me, more women have said negative things about me online, behind my back and so forth than men. And I don’t think that says a lot, because I think that’s pathetic that some securitise projects. Does that make sense? You know,

[00:22:53] If you were born a bloke, would you be most successful?

[00:22:56] If I was born a bloke, would I be more successful? No, but I definitely I’d have no idea how to answer that question. But I definitely think that I would nail being broken.

[00:23:06] It’s a strange question, but it isn’t. It’s a strange question.

[00:23:09] No, I understand what

[00:23:11] It

[00:23:11] Relates to your question about.

[00:23:13] Yeah, I mean, it’s a strange one to answer, but.

[00:23:15] Yeah, but I mean, but

[00:23:16] Tell me about these terrible things that these women have done to you. Are we talking, trolling?

[00:23:21] Yeah, I think that. So, for example, I’ll hear from some of my peers that certain female dentists, for example, that have never met me will say things about my persona or about my clinical work. And I find it very strange because I’ve never even met them. And sometimes on Instagram, I have had to deal with comments of trolling. But to be perfectly honest, there have been male trolls as well. As we know. There’s forums that I think I think it’s just awful that a group still on Facebook that allow dentists to publicly within the space of the forum. Shame other dentists and troll them. And, you know, to be honest, though, Payman, some of my male friends who are Dental has also suffer from anxiety about these groups talking about them. Screen shots thinks that things about them mocking them. And this happens for males and females. But I think that it’s just outrageous that we allow it. We were allowing it. I mean, with what’s happened with Caroline Slark recently, can’t people understand that the power of words can have on you? You know, like it’s so real that people say you have to develop a tough skin and just get on with it, because if you put yourself in the public eye, you’re just going to expose yourself. But I’m like, I don’t. Want to live in a box, you know, I mean, in this like security thing, but I don’t think that gives people the rights to think that I’m invincible or any of my friends are invincible.

[00:24:44] Does that. Does it hurt then? Is that what you’re saying?

[00:24:46] Hundred percent. A hundred percent.

[00:24:48] What’s your deepest, darkest moment in social media, whether it’s a comment that someone’s made or content that someone’s published or a screenshot that you’ve seen where you’ve just, oh, holy crap, you know, it has sunk in. And he said and he sent you into spiral of, you know, on depression or sleepless nights. What if they that may be.

[00:25:10] So when I was on it, I got asked to be on TV. And then the second time that I was on there, I posted about it. And someone with zero followers, zero posts. And this is the interesting thing, right? Because these trolls, sometimes it’s such a it’s obviously made up of people hiding behind a mask. They don’t have the guts to tell you to your face, have basically told me. But the PED attacked the way that I speak, my accent and the way that I looked. I’m totally matrixx at my eyebrows. And I was like, they are my signature. Thanks very much. Leavening is all over. But, you know, it’s the way that I looked and I just deleted it, obviously, and tried to ignore a few weeks ago, I had a Dental student, female Dental student that tried to attack one of my photos about being in the Telegraph. And I ended up having to disable the comments on the photo because all these other students were like jumping on the bandwagon. And I just don’t have time to deal with that when I’m dealing with patients on a busy day.

[00:26:11] Majin, that happens first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Awful. You come into work the next day, you’ve got a day full of patients. How does that affect your day and your interactions?

[00:26:21] You just really can’t focus the neck. Going back to Caroline flap thing, because I think it’s just such a prominent thing that’s happening. And I think it shows the way we have to change like behaviour. A lot of my patients are very good friends with Caroline and had come in and they had confirmed to me that she really, really suffered with the things that were being said about her constantly. And again, I just don’t know why people feel that they have the right to really attack people on a personal basis.

[00:26:50] People definitely do. Do you remember there was a picture of what’s the name? Posh Spice. Yeah. On She’s gone to America to have her teeth done and even dance with jumping in. Yeah, making making. Somehow you feel like you have licence with with famous people. It’s a weird thing. Yeah, it’s a weird thing, isn’t it?

[00:27:07] No, I mean, a hundred percent. And I think like on that note as well, is that the influence the world has also sort of affected me. I have some influences are extremely loyal, and we formed a very strong bond on the treatments that we’ve done. But influences now because I was one of the original Dental his treating influences, remember, like now everyone’s doing it, but I was one of the only ones if the only one. And now everyone’s doing it and they’ll jump from person to person. Right. And now Dentists’, I find gloat when an influence that change dentists’ because amongst the dentists, I wonder why she changed dentists. Obviously Dentist X did a crap job or, you know, didn’t fulfil their needs.

[00:27:49] You know, you alluded to earlier when you when you gave you a little intro, I’m an OK clinical dentist. You weren’t blowing smoke up yourself. You weren’t saying I’m the best clinical. Don’t talk to me about why patients come to you and what it is.

[00:28:03] Yeah. I mean, you even notice one of your stories a couple of days ago, and it was someone famous, I guess. And she said, I went on Twitter and asked who’s a good dentist? And it just all stormed in as many as Rúnar.

[00:28:18] Yeah. And that, you know, that really shocked me, actually, because I had no idea who she was initially. And then everyone was like, she’s a really big deal. She’s one of the most armloads, dentists, mostaghim like, oh, my God, you’re treating this person like. That’s amazing. I’ve been following her for ages.

[00:28:32] But what is it about the way you make people feel that?

[00:28:34] I think it was it’s just that it’s about the way that I make people feel now. I think that I never realised about the interaction, but I always think it’s such a cliche saying, but treat your patients as you would your friends and family. And I always have that in mind. I actually am really excited to treat a case of a patient who’s was going to come to me. And she had messaged me saying that she had gone through a massive surgical process and that she wanted to talk to me about the feminisation as her teeth. And I thought, what does that mean? And I looked further and I realised that she’s transgender. And when I responded back to her, she was her immediate response was, oh, my gosh, you’re the nicest person. Your energy is so warm because I’m very much about all inclusive party. And again, like Payman, if you ask me now, like you did a few years ago, what’s my vision is to show the world that you can be anyone you deserve to have good teeth. Our people now are like, oh, yeah, I want to try and influence, I want to be a famous person that’s going to like show everyone, I’m like, you know what, I want to take a step from that because I want to show that no matter who you are, what you look like, where you’re from, male, female, transgender, you know, access to you have access and you deserve a smile.

[00:29:52] And that’s kind of like my next vision, you know, for the public. So stay tuned for how I’m going to be doing that. But I think that that feeling, as you said, of making them feel comfortable. I’m very good at gauging body language. I’m very good at gauging fears. I’m very good at gauging, you know, how people feel from the moment they walk into that room. And my job is to make them feel comfortable. And I think that and personable and that I really care about everything they’re going through. And I think that’s why that word of mouth has spread, because what dentists don’t realise is, is clinical dentistry is so important, but patients don’t really know what’s going on in their mouth. Of course, they want a nice result. But at the end of the day, if you make them feel good in that chair and Brady Show, all your passion.

[00:30:38] Jason Smithson, I’ve known Jason for years, but he really did build a very unique teaching platform, if you like, on social. He came from from before Facebook was around the Dental town, had a massive presence there. And then on Facebook, you know, one of the most talented teachers around and one of the biggest names that’s ever come out of UK dentistry.

[00:31:04] So, Jason, going from the point where you beat on all these various courses, you’ve been doing a lot of invasive cosmetic dentistry and then shifted over towards this thinking go rather than doing one. Maybe we can do a load. Yeah. How did you transition from that point to being known as one of the world’s, if not the world’s best at the technique that you teach today? What was what was that transition? And in terms of just going from someone who practises dentistry, who then teaches on a global on a global stage.

[00:31:41] So I think payments heard this before. But I’ll tell you, I work in a practise a worked with a with a guy called Jeremy Harris, who was a very strong early mentor for me. But his thing is really fixed. Prostate implants, very good at Balga Carving as well. Indeed, I still work with them. They still work for the practise a day, a week. It’s nearly retired, but there we go. But he’s not interested. By his own admission, he could do good composites, but it’s not really a massive interest. So I wanted to get some feedback on it. So I started to post my cases, which were mainly at that point posterior composites, which were quite unusual at the time. Maybe what Payman would it be 12, 13 years ago in so much as I used to use, attend to the phishers and stuff like that. So they were quite what might be called now hyper realistic. So I, I posted them on on a website which is still around called Dental Town, really just for feedback. It wasn’t with any ambition to do anything other than to communicate with other dentists who were into composite resin. And it got mixed feedback. You know, it’s a fairly American dominated website. And some people were saying, oh, why are you putting all that ugly? Keri’s into your teeth. I had to restorations and some people were saying, wow, that’s really cool.

[00:33:05] As it turned out, again, there were so so but they were perhaps quite revolutionary for the time. I was the first to do it, but one off. And after a while, a guy called Lincoln Harris, who is still a good friend of mine. In fact, I had dinner with him in Sydney about three months ago. Good guy runs a group called Right on Facebook. He called me and he said, Do you teach? And I said, no. And I don’t have any interest in teaching, because at that time, and to some degree now, I’m quite shy in some environments. And I at that point, I would be quite nervous to give a presentation in a practise meeting if I was asked to give a present a short presentation to practise to me to be up all night with diarrhoea. At that point. So it was a definite no no for me. So I listened to him and he said, well, we have this business model. It’s called Aesthetics in the Alpine. I live in Australia. My wife is Canadian. We fly to Canada, to Whistler once a year. And we have a Dental meeting that’s mainly geared up to skiing. And we have three speakers. One kind of world known expert is the year I did it was actually a guy called Gary Wood, who I’m really good friends with now, who’s very prominent in the Spirit Institute, really decent guy.

[00:34:36] There is a guy who’s kind of regionally, nationally known, I was a Canadian implant ologist the year I did it. I don’t recall their name, his name. And we have a guy or girl who is who’s never liked her before. And all you’ve got to do is to go over, come over. We’ll pay for your fly economy class flight will pay for your hotel for a week or pay for Iski, a ski pass. And all you’ve got to do is give a one hour lecture. My response to that was, thank you very much. No thanks. I’m not interested because I had several barriers. The first barrier is I didn’t really like public speaking at all. I was quite shy. My second barrier was I have absolutely no IT skills, and that hasn’t changed much. So I didn’t have a I had a Dell computer with two keys missing, and I had absolutely no PowerPoint. So I said, thanks very much, put the phone down. And he said, we’ll get back to me, you know, if you change your mind. And so my wife, who was into SKEER said to me, who was that? And I said, well, it’s this guy from Australia. And I just explained the situation to her. And then finally, we have got to go make myself a cup of tea now acts. And she said, what you bring up straight back, this guy has just offered you a free holiday.

[00:36:04] We didn’t have kids. Actually, we did have one card at a time. It’s just offered a free holiday for for you to speak for 60 Minutes. And you’re saying no. And I said, yeah, I don’t want to do it. My wife browbeat me over the evening into doing it. We’re all married. So you know how that works. What she made that decision, that was it. So I rang linked the next morning and I said, look, I’ve had I’ve had a chat with my wife and I’ve had a change of heart and I’m going to do it. I say, OK, fine. So we agreed to do it. Luckily, I had about nine months of notice. So my next challenge was I have no technical ability and no computer. So luckily, Stuart, who was is has been my best friend since I was 11, am teaches computer science as a teacher. And I called him and I said what I do. And he said, don’t worry, just send me a desk. And we were at desks at that time to send me a desk with everything. You need to go on a PowerPoint and I’ll make it for you. I’ll make a really simple five four PowerPoint and just advance it with one button. Don’t press any other buttons and you’ll be fine. Just talk about slides. I didn’t even know how to put anything on a desk.

[00:37:19] I couldn’t even copy paste at that time. That’s how bad I was. So what are you going to laugh at this? What I did was my wife put all my pictures on a desk. All right. Think she labelled them a figure? One figure to figure three. And I got a 100 page flip top reporters pad page one. I wrote slide one. And then I drew where I want to the picture to be. I wrote the reference underneath it and I wrote the title of the slide and I put the floppy disk and the reporter spots. Young adults are going to be absolutely to this. I put that in a bubble wrap bag and sent out to Stewart, who lives in London, and he called me a day later. I said, what is this? And he made me a PowerPoint, which I still have. I look at kind of grounds me when I look at it with my pictures on the titles, and that actually that lectures changed quite a lot. But the backbone of that lecture is still the backbone of my posterior composite lecture. Just my first lecture. That’s how I did it. And I went on and I had no clue what I was doing. I had no. At that point, no public speaking training. And I kind of bumbled my way through it and it kind of worked.

[00:38:37] Qadi managed Shehri more recent arrival on the social scene, but the super, super successful at it, particularly on a tick tock with thousands of followers that she’s got. Now, how many followers do you got on Instagram?

[00:38:52] I think it’s nine something. Nine point three K or something. Yeah.

[00:38:57] And on top of

[00:39:00] Get one hundred twelve thousand, I think

[00:39:05] Under twelve thousand.

[00:39:07] You’re writing it down.

[00:39:08] You know what’s amazing? What’s amazing is last time I looked at your tick tock. One hundred and one thousand or something. That was like. It was a lot.

[00:39:17] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:18] So, you know, just to show the difference in the reach reach of the platform, doesn’t that.

[00:39:23] Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:39:25] And so do you feel comfortable, more comfortable on tech talk than on Instagram?

[00:39:31] I think they’re very different platforms. So it depends on what I’m doing to be. Honest because Instagram is very planned, very polished, very you know. Yeah, just planned generally. But Tock is more spontaneous. It’s a question of five minutes between patient cell family tick tock video. I used to you know, when I was in lockdown, I had days dedicated to tick tock filming. And I think to be honest, I think that kept me going because it was an excuse to dress up, you know, shower, wash my hair, put makeup on, that kind of thing. Whereas now because obviously I have less time to dedicate to it. It’s just whenever there is time. But I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it.

[00:40:09] For you, it may seem spontaneous, but for me it seems like you’ve got a plan going to plan ahead. You got a plan where you’re pointing and well, you’ve got a plan. Tick tock. Seems more of a headache to to post on Instagram. Maybe my Instagram as as produced as they should be. Right?

[00:40:28] I think it’s

[00:40:30] Quite a hard platform. I find it hard to produce something when. Even though it’s

[00:40:34] Difficult. Yeah, it’s really difficult. 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 I you know, I found that I was spending by two or three hours a day on that anyway. So I was I might as well be creating, because if you see enough tick tock videos, you’ll want to create. If you see the same trends, you’ll think about your take on the trend. So, yeah, definitely. I don’t think

[00:41:02] I know this is the million dollar question. Right. But what would you say makes a video go viral? Yeah, I’m not asking you to for the answer, but but what would you say, you know, from what you’re learning?

[00:41:16] Yeah, I will say,

[00:41:19] You see, title seems to work well.

[00:41:21] Juicy title works very well, I think. I think even I think anyone fully understands how the platform works. So one video could go super viral, but another similar feature 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 the ultimate was the eight million views with the crowns of as 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 tick tock, it’s about retention of the viewer. So it’s about time and how long they spend viewing that video. How many times they watch it, whether they sent it to other people. How many people like it comment at that kind of stuff plays a big part in how viral that video goes. So, for example, that video is incredibly video. It was viewed for a Tick-Tock. We’ll give you analytics. It will tell you how long they’ve spent people spend watching that video. So a lot of people have shared it with each other. They tend to. And that’s how it went super fast. It was on every kind of, you know, like light Bible, all these kind of external places as well.

[00:42:35] You were you were on the news like you.

[00:42:37] Yeah, I was in Russia TV as well. I don’t know how I was actually Reistad.

[00:42:42] Look for people who don’t know, just just go through what happened with that, because that was like a Katie Price Turkey video thing, wasn’t?

[00:42:48] Yeah. So it was an on on ticked off. There is one of the trends. So I’m ticked off with people who aren’t familiar with the platform. A lot of content is for entertainment and a lot of content is for, you know, 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 then shock teeth. And this wasn’t anything new. It was on Instagram for a while before it went on on Tick Tock. 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 Menez, these are crowns. 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, you know, I’ll take a lot of my photos with Tagame and videos that are about to to get my opinion on it. And if a video goes viral and everyone sees it and more people attacking you in that video.

[00:43:52] So I came across this video of a girl who was very young and she had she actually had beautiful, perfect teeth. They were aligned. They were very, very white. And they didn’t have any mood issues. And she had gotten all of them shaved down, I think at least five to five and had crowns on all of them saying, look at my penis. And a lot of people were commenting, saying, oh, the requirements to get this done. And it was really scary to see young people looking up to these in, you know, quotation marks, influences and wanting to do the same thing. So I made a video saying, look, these are not anaesthesia 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. Juicy content. I said you might end up needing dentures by the age 40, and I think that’s what it took to kind of make people realise that actually. Yeah, actually, this isn’t like just getting false names 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.

[00:45:02] And there was one message from I think I 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 full root canals before he gets his crowns done. I’m really panicking. I’m really scared. What should I do? Our treatment is tomorrow. And I was like, OK, 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? Like, do you understand? Do you realise these may need to be replaced? And so it went viral. It was 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, OK, this is where you are. My brother came home and he was like, yarn, like Wlad Bible. So it was my five minutes of fame. But I’m glad they got the attention that it needed because it it made people realise that these aren’t just, you know, stuff. You get done and just forget about it.

[00:46:02] So that look, that was that was a trending thing that you jump on the majori video about. Right.

[00:46:08] So I don’t think it was a trending thing. It was just it was video. It was a trend of people showing their teeth. And my video was just saying, look, don’t do this. So it was an anti trend, if anything. Good to see you. That’s why I was surprised when it went viral, because it wasn’t anything like everybody else was doing. And then once I made my video, then everyone else, all the other Dental started talking about it as well. So that was good to kind of echo the message and get it out there.

[00:46:32] So I’m still trying

[00:46:34] To get to the bottom of, you know, why is it you’re so confident talking to the camera? And we had you filming it and listen.

[00:46:40] Yeah, that was fun.

[00:46:42] You were you were like a total match, like most people sweat.

[00:46:45] And, you know, I did if I listened, I said, no, I stutter at some point, you

[00:46:49] Know, that like, believe me, you’re one of the better one of the better ones. Where does that confidence come from?

[00:46:56] I you know, I think I put myself out there a lot. I’m not naturally super confident. I have a you know, I have my own reservations. But I think once you start doing stuff and you get used to it and you realise that it’s actually working, that gives you confidence. So, you know, with the social media platforms, the way it all started was, you know, when I was at the at my toxic dead end job, I think I was doing a hygiene. And I was like, OK, this clearly isn’t the answer. You’re working six days a week, 12 hours a day. So I’m going to take some time off. I’m going to spend some time working on some sort of creating some sort of a brand, get my name out there and then I’ll go from there. And I’m pretty proud of myself for that, because, you know, I chose to not work six days a week. And that takes a lot of think that it takes guts to say, actually, I don’t want to do this, I’m going to go do something else.

[00:47:44] Instead, say shake ru Dental. And what they do with social is it’s a real lesson to all of us on brand fun, always, you know, doing new things, novelty and their approach, and in a completely obsessed with branding and getting things right.

[00:48:06] And we help them grow their Instagram as well. It looks like, you know, the content you’re creating for them. And the

[00:48:13] Only brand that we drew is that part parcel of the day as well, that you

[00:48:17] Will help them grow their social presence if they want to.

[00:48:21] Yeah, I mean, we want to grow our social presence. So our marketing is very strong and they are our brand as well. So all marketing is based around them. Video creations for the Dental is video creations for the staff, but they then utilise that content on their platforms is absolutely fine because we want to have a synergy we don’t have. We don’t want to say that you can’t grow yours and not grow ours. You know, one of my closest dentists to me and she’s grown with me, Slaney, she is a strong Instagram Dental. But when we both when she started out, we were both growing. She was growing in her Instagram platform and we were growing in our brand. And we’ve always said to her, we’re not against each other and we have a synergy. And that was so different for her. Harvey, she said, majoras, the principles are that same to me. You can’t do this and you can’t post this about us and you can’t post that. And you have to write our logo on that and our logo on that. And I was never like that. I just said to her, will grow you in your day. And she ended up being full time with us. And she’s dihydro now.

[00:49:22] And it’s interesting. Caslen is lecturing for me tomorrow. I see. It’s a small makeover for for amazing on marketing. Amazing. But you know what? What impresses me, Zabor, is that you? Imagine this. There’s a degree of vulnerability in having your associates having such a big presence because they could take they could take their patients away with them. Mm hmm. But you didn’t see it using that as an opportunity?

[00:49:50] Yeah, I don’t. Yeah. And I always say to residents, well, we don’t ever see it that way. We always say that we just have confidence. And also there is a confidence in what we do and a confidence in our brand that we’ve seen that the dentists, once they’re in and they experience and touch and feel through and experience the journey with me. I mean, a lot of them I just feel like the journey is a long term journey that they’re and they’re both in and they feel that it’s not fake and they know that. And the ones that have left or you know, I’m not saying everyone stays with us. It’s all been positive. Those freedoms, they want to grow in a different direction. And we’ve been there. And I haven’t said or felt, you know, your patients are going with you or our patients. I’ve never felt that. I always feel that that’s enough for everyone. And I don’t need to no one needs to step on each other’s toes. You know, I just have never needed to to feel that

[00:50:48] New performance for one of the original social media guys even did a dissertation on social media seemless on the platforms now than before. But the quality of content is always, always there. You did did you do your MBA thesis on something social media as well?

[00:51:08] Yeah. So mine was dentistry and social media. I was lucky because because I’m one of the admin for Defour PhD. I 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 proceed? Dentists, social media. How many patients search for their dentists on social media? How many patients search for your private Facebook profile on social media? And the numbers were pretty impressive, actually giving a talk on it with Phillips and PHMSA next week, Tuesday. It’s my little plug.

[00:51:48] That’s cool. That’s cool. You must get approached all the time by manufacturers, implant companies and toothpaste people especially. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve kind of gone a little bit more quiet, I’d say now. But, you know, back when you were peaking, when you were a Peking duck couple of years ago on Social, but you didn’t get involved with that many different companies. But now I see you’ve got yourself involved with this indemnity thing to say about that. Does this about the whole L’Ecole thing and and indemnity?

[00:52:23] Yeah, I was doing a lot. I think my 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 all make mistakes. Let’s bring ourselves back up. Started developing Louis’ from Mannan, who, you know, with a lot of 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, pension funds, be new products coming to the market, the Internet offerings, et cetera. And through that, I got approached 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 in defo D on for dainties by Dental is one of the biggest questions we get is who’s your endowment? Which indemnity Friday using Dental. To ask the moderating that forum for about 12 years. I know every question everybody wants to ask, but 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 all 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

[00:54:28] Five quite quickly. I would, of course.

[00:54:31] And finally, Prav himself a bit of a social media. King marketing king, for sure. Enjoy. All right, but so I’ve got a website, I’m really good at sales because I know how to sell. And it’s second nature now. And I’ve got a good team that you’ve trained for me and I’ve continued training. I’ve got the software. I’m now I’m looking to massively scale because I want to buy practises around the corner. And I want to I want to be like, you know the guy now then what’s what’s what am I thinking now as as the thing turns into like a scaling story? Let’s talk about ad adverts, social media, Google. What’s the split, would you recommend between social ads and and pay per click? Does it differ depending on the location, this sort of thing?

[00:55:20] And this is the biggest misconception that most dentists have, right. Is the statement that you’ve just made. I want to scale. How much do I need to spend on marketing? How much on Facebook, how much on Google, blah, blah, blah. Right. Scaling in itself is a business problem that you need to solve before marketing. Ok. That involves people, processes, execution, strategy and marketing. All right. So that what you just said, that is literally classical everyday conversations I’m having with potential clients or existing clients or I want to grow on a scale. Ok. So the question I ask them is this. Tomorrow I’m going to deliver a hundred new enquiries into your practise. Talk me through who’s going to handle them, how they’re going to be handled. On average, every enquiry is going to involve 15 minutes to 20 minutes of processing time. Have you got the human power to do that at the moment? Ok. And then how many more patients do you want? How much time do you have? Do you have the dentists to deliver that in the right treatment modalities? And then once we fixed and figured out that piece, OK, then we go back to the marketing piece and say, right, OK, so we need to do we need to fill six hours of implant dentistry chair time. How many consultations does that look like? How many enquiries do I need to generate to deliver that, how much talk time have we got with the team, the CRM team in managing them? And then work backwards, OK, and then we can then we can confidently say, do you know what, if you want to send 84 cases over the next two months or three months or whatever, whatever that number is and time period is, this is what we need to do to deliver it.

[00:57:21] It’s very interesting, man. So each each person is a totally different answer to that, to those questions, depending on their sort of bandwidth, basically completely.

[00:57:31] And look, as an agency. If I turned around and said, hey, no problem, I’ll deliver you 50 enquiries. Yeah, your team can handle it. That’s your problem. Yeah. Shit leads, good leads, whatever your problem. And then they get to the other end and say, well, how many more S.A.T. cases have you done over the last three months? That it’s like two. Yeah. And I turned around what was delivered to 300 leads. Where the hell have you been up to? Yeah. Whose fault is that? Where did that go wrong?

[00:58:02] So you I remember having this conversation with AEGEE Devout seven, eight years ago, and you used to blame the dentists at that 100 percent. But it seems like nowadays you’ve taken on that mantle yourself. You know, when someone says to you, I want a website and you say it’s a lot more involved than that. This is the kind of thing you’re talking about, right?

[00:58:28] Because I’m a practise owner now. Right. And seven, eight years ago. Was it? Yeah. So I’ve got an appreciation of what happens in the black box, you know, when those clogs are turning. And I feel a sense of almost feel a sense of responsibility for delivering success. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to be more involved, you know, that that’s part and parcel of our unique difference in the way that we operate. And and all of that has come through in education, being a practise owner, seeing those problems, making lots of mistakes and trying to fix them.

[00:59:03] And even so, even to

[00:59:05] Present day, we’re tweaking things and making mistakes all the time and fixing them and then passing that on to our clients where we can

[00:59:15] Based is Dental Leaders, the podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry.

[00:59:26] Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys.

[00:59:33] 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

[00:59:45] 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.

[00:59:56] And don’t forget the six star rating.

[00:00:01] Next up,

[00:00:04] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:22] The world has changed because of social media in many ways, it’s changed more than most of us care to admit. It’s had its effect on dentistry, too. Some people love it, some people hate it. For me, it’s a reality. What we’ve done for this show is to compile some of the best bits from dentists who really used social and used online reputation to enhance their careers. We’ll be hearing from the late, great and Máni, who was very loved on social and very loved in life. So that’s what I’m quite interested in. You know, the idea of you build it and they will come. Yeah, seems like you’ve done that a few times. But in that moment of waiting for people to come and some of the steps, some of the steps or some hacks that you would suggest for people who the people are going to do this again and again, set up practises from squat and have no patience. What are some of the some of the tricks, some of the things you should look out for? You know, cash flow. Give us give us some insight, because you’ve done this a few times. Yeah, I’ve done it one, two, three times. Yeah. So in terms of my recommendation to people is one is controlling of overhead. Be very careful in overhead control, controlling expenses especially. You’ve got to make a lot of sacrifice in your own personal life as well. You could control your own expenses because it’s going to be no income coming through. What’s very important in any if you start no score is what is your USPI? What is your differentiator compared to your locals? You know, and that’s going to be so important in terms of your marketing, because you can’t put blanket marking now in terms of I do X, Y or Z, because

[00:02:09] Every practise does X, Y, Z.

[00:02:10] You need to have A, B, C that no one else has got. And that’s so important. And I think from a very early stage, I’ve always done lots and lots of courses. You know, I did a lot of courses, implement anything. And I think that’s important. Building up a skill level that your local. Piers can’t deliver. You know, I still get even. And you were marketing that fact is that it is that in techniques that they weren’t doing.

[00:02:35] So, you know, implant

[00:02:38] Smarmy Covid type Ventry, cosmetic dentistry back then, that was. Yeah, tooth whitening procedure and interest in confident dental care was which yeah. That was probably about 20 or so inches of marketing back then was a totally different thing to different to today website. We had a website. We had a website. So we had a website at that time. I’m not sure. Prav, we we came in shortly after that. Yeah. He still had the practise then.

[00:03:04] I did.

[00:03:05] Yeah. Well, some of the hack smacks some of the marketing, so that goes on. So the first what he said was don’t overspend. Yeah. Keep, keep, keep an eye on keep your eye on the growth. Now, the key for me was to have one at least one patient a day. You know, if because that patient’s journey. Because you got all the time to devote them. Yeah. Just make sure that that patient’s journey is extempore. Yeah. Go ojito on it. To the point of view, you know, you’ve you know, when they come in the way they’re greeted, the way

[00:03:37] That we see we had tea, coffee and the drinks, et

[00:03:41] Cetera, we had the fridge. You know, find out a little bit about you. I mean, you say obviously, but but there’s lots of practises today that don’t do coffee and drinks. It seems obvious to you that it’s important to differentiate. Yeah. The USPI is not just your claims. It’s the differentiator in the clinic. You know, we had a clinic that you walked in. There was no corporate dentistry as such in those days. So having a brand, having a logo that was a thing, and having a clinic that was designed, you know, had an interior designer coming that was doing interior design. I mean, we just put Mongolia

[00:04:11] Up, you know,

[00:04:12] So we had colour themes in there. We had we look different. We stood out. And as someone said to me, wherever there’s dirt, it’s always money, you know. So even though we were looted, you know, a lot of people who had money had cash, money, and we had a lot of air travellers come to see us preparing for their weddings. We had that was quite big part of my market. We had a lot of people who knew how to run the local businesses or Covid sales, you know, so and they were coming in afterwards and treatment that they they weren’t getting within the unintrusive system. But were you leafletting or. We did. We had the website we used to leaflet market. We need to the Arndale Centre, which is a shopping centre. So we need to draw a district leaflet said we even had a little stand. So you even bought a stand in the on this little stand in there? Yeah. So and we were the one dentist doing this at that time. You know, it just wasn’t being done. And so we got patients come in. We offer the free consultation back then as well. Back then. Back then, I was fully private from day one. Fully private. Nice. Pretty private. And weird things like hygiene is in those days as well. It was we always saw the hygiene as being the rock in the clinic, because I measure how successful my clinic by habit’s my hygiene is. So because they’re the barometer, because if you got patients return regularly to see a hygiene issue, you know, you’ve got a health clinic.

[00:05:32] Yeah. So that’s always a strength. When I see quite high Jenice, I know my business is in trouble. So that’s why we always had hygiene is from day one, because they develop rapport, they develop the maintenance, the loyalty, you know. The other thing I would recommend is try and develop some small practise plan. So, you know, you get patients encouraged to join the clinic and a membership scheme, and it just helps them to maintain their loyalty and, you know, make it sort of worthwhile. It’s a benefit for them. It’s cheaper than if they paid outside. But again, it’s just an experience thing. You know, then when it came to selling this clinic, then you decided you wanted to let someone approach you. Who was able to. We we we sold it to a colleague of mine. Can I quickly just go here? Know. Yeah. We sold it to Josh and his associate Kings’ with me. Colophon is about two years below me. And the reason for selling it was actually at that time I was starting up Edgware Road. So because I wanted to go head more towards the West End because my dentistry. So why open up Edgware Road with them became a problem of logistics, just like being in two places. Simon, chod. Maybe the sort of the poster boy for for young, energetic dentists that really everything he touches seemed to seems to work. And then particularly, you know, he works hard on keeping his online reputation. You know, just perfect.

[00:07:01] The most important characteristic that I’ve tried to try to push out into this social environment is humility, because I’m very aware of my inadequacies and the fact that I am young and the fact that I shouldn’t be out there saying I’m God’s gift to dentistry or or anything. So I think trying to be humble is is the most important thing in the way that I carry myself, specifically online. And that’s why I. I never engage with anyone who wants to engage in a negative way on social media because there’s plenty of people wanting to engage with the negativity on social media, I’ve had people call me out for wearing too much Brylcreem and stuff like that. Dental I’m talking about here, not even just random us, but I used to get that. But yeah, I think that’s been my my the main pillar of if you’re saying how how do I want other people to I would like them to view me as humble, because traditionally I’ve had a lot of people, for whatever reason, assume that I’m arrogant without actually giving me the opportunity to engage with them and interact with them. I think, you know, you put yourself out there no matter who you are. You know, whether you come across as a polished character, you’ve obviously very successful at what you do.

[00:08:16] And people are going to take shots no matter who you are or what you do and whatever business you’re in. From your perspective, you say that, you know, what you want to get across is, is humility. What would you say your biggest weakness is? Ok, my my biggest weakness for myself is my thin skin. We talked about this before. My anxiety for me is my weakness and my inability to control that because I’m a complete control freak. I like everything to be exactly where it should be. I like every element of my life, whether it be family work, how I dress, how my health is. I want everything to be perfect, which is completely unrealistic. And that drives me to be better in everything that I do. Sure. But naturally, failure is is present in everything. And so that generates a lot of anxiety for me at the same time in the fact that when I when things don’t go right, I get very anxious about it. And so if you’ve got a particular example that you can share with those that made you feel particularly anxious, maybe a comment on Instagram or on your social media that that sort of fired you or like you said earlier, you don’t respond to negativity.

[00:09:26] You hold back and cope with it in a certain way. Yeah, I think the main negativity that I receive on social media is very rarely from the general public, even though I’m I’m quite present with regards to the general public, i.e. with the number of followers I have on Instagram and that sort of thing. I try to target my posts and my communications both towards professionals, but also to the general public to to help with communication with dentists and patients. But the main negativity that I’ve experienced on social media is from older dentists trying to cut me down, I guess is that is the best way to say it. For whatever reason, there’s been I can’t remember an exact specific right now, but whether it be my treatment, planning, doing lecturing from such a young age was a big one. When I first started, I started lecturing on on CEREC, on digital dentistry after using it for two years full time. That wasn’t enough for some people. I was at that point. I was teaching on in a very, very basic level. But I think this is how you use the machine. But if you do get it, I get on

[00:10:34] Worries about the teacher. Two years of

[00:10:36] Teaching. Absolutely. I mean, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t. I’ve been offered so many opportunities to talk on stuff that I don’t have sufficient knowledge on. And my anxiety would not let me do that, because if someone was to call me out, my constant worry is I’m going to get called out for not knowing enough, which is why I put so much effort into every single letter I do that if you speak to Meghan every even now, every morning, if I’m lecturing on the day, I’m up at like four thirty in the morning, putting the finishing touches to my lecture, because I don’t think it’s good enough. I don’t think any of my lectures are good enough. Even if you’ve delivered the same lecture before. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, obviously, the the ones that I get more frequently I’m much more comfortable with. But anything that is called advanced or. Yeah, basically all the advanced stuff that I do, because I now teach every single level to do with digital energy from non-user up to very, very experienced users, especially when there’s an advanced element to it. Even though I’ve given that exact lecture, God knows how many times I will always be adding little bits, making sure everything is current, making sure everything’s fresh, because I’m constantly concerned that I’m going to get called out for not knowing enough memory.

[00:11:46] Baloji, who left dentistry and then got into heavy content creation around the personal goals and development. What’s your advice? I mean, you’ve you’ve got this coaching career. You’ve got this burning desire to push you. What’s your advice for a regular dentist who’s who’s maybe maybe interested in, you know, whatever they’re interested in? It could be interested in sports or interested in cars or whatever. Should they think about, you know, the classic Gary V side hustle? Start talking about cars and sports on on the Internet. Make a business out of that and go into that. Or should they find a coach or. What should they do? What’s your advice to that person? It doesn’t really know what else they can do. I think is the way I kind of look at in the industry, there’s that one type of person who knows that they don’t know dentistry and then they just want out. Ok, there’s the type of person who’s within dentistry, but like, for example, there in the NHS right now, and they want to yet and they know they want to go into private practise, but they just don’t feel they’ve got the say they can. Yeah, they’ve got the skill or there’s that person. Then there’s another person who’s kind of an associate who wants to be a principal and they don’t know how to make that journey. I think generally it’s kind of around those three areas for the person to want to get out. Yeah. I’m asking you because you’ve gone out recently for the person who really wants to get out work.

[00:13:07] What are they going to find out about yourself? What is it that you love to do? How can you add value into into this world? Because it’s all about value, right? That that if you can I can add enough value into your life. Ok, then I become very important in your life. How is it that you you can add value and the way if you reverse engineer that, the way you can add value is by finding out what you love to do and what you’re good at. And if there’s a market for that, okay, like if you were to making paper aeroplanes, I don’t know, maybe maybe there’s some sort of avenue you can pursue there. But generally, like most people will have something that they really would like to do that they’re good at, but they just don’t have the confidence to know that it’s possible. And what I would say is I would say start it. And you’ve never lived in a day in an age when it’s easier to start a business. You’ve got YouTube, you’ve got Instagram, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got Snapchat, you’ve got Pinterest, you’ve got Lington. Never been a better time to start. Get someone to help you see how it goes and then slowly tailor things off. Yeah, but don’t just carry on in dentistry because you have to, because you feel it’s the only way, because it’s not the only way.

[00:14:15] Just because you think it’s the only way to not get someone out there. Get me to someone who can show you what’s possible and goes like I’ve done it. And if honestly I could do it, then you could do the same. And I know that’s a cliché thing to say. I want to associate let’s say I’m the main breadwinner, so I’m paying the mortgage and all that. You can’t sell out like you did and have a year’s buffa. All right. I’m hating my job. I’m hating my nurse. I’m eating my patients. Litigation’s on me all the time. What’s your advice? Your first bit of advice? What should I do next? If you really wanted to get out like somebody gave me two options, OK, it is summer practise or remortgage my house. I went to the practise, you know, find a way to find a way because I had to burn bridges, because I knew that if I’m that if I’m still attached to the practise, I’ll get called and I’ll get this. I had to burn my bridges. Ok, so there was that option where I could have tried to remortgage my house. You know, whoever owns the house right now, they’re more than likely can have enough equity that they can pull out for Guinnevere. That was OK. And then, you know, you’ll find a way to make it by reason why things find a way that you’re an associate, you’re working, you’re working. So I’ve always worked. I’ve never worked more than four days a week.

[00:15:23] Why not? Because I spent one day chilling, because I always knew that I need if I wanted to do something else, I got to be in a place where I’m able to receive that. If I’m in a clinic for five days and then there’s my family, where am I going to receive that? Where am I going to get it from? I use the extra one or two days in my week to try new things on a social media agency. I was trading on trade forex commodities options. I used to do a lot, and I took the training courses, seminars, you know, meeting people. Why? Because I realised that in order for me to find what I really wanted to do, I got to be out there being ready to receive. So the best advice I can give is knock a day off. Yeah, everyone can afford to knock a day off. Why? Because they can work an extra one hour, two hours on the other days. They can make it happen. If you had to slice part of your income of, say, for example, you had to take a 20 percent haircut in income, you’d find a way to survive. Right. So, yeah. So just imagine that. And anyway, taking a day off doesn’t necessarily mean earning less. Exactly. It just means working more efficiently on the other means. Five, four, three, two and one. I’ve never done six days. Ok. As a dentist, no. And whenever I hear anyone who does do six days, I think it’s an error.

[00:16:25] But it’s right for some people like this. But if you took a day out and you solely use that day to just to just put yourself out there to think, to listen, we you Tuman, you know, like, you know, parents like my dad came my parents came from Uganda when I mean, chucked them out. They had no place. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, and then my daughter. So, yeah, I think that Tancredo liquid something in his pocket and he built up a massive business from that. I imagine if they had the gift of YouTube, imagine they had the gift of what we have. You know, it’s laughable that our parents never had what we had, but yet they managed to do so much. You know, we don’t have to work in a shop seven days a week to feed our family. There’s all the ways we can do it. So I think there’s so many ways, so many ways cut a day out and just start with totally agree with you that now is the best time to do something of a 100 percent. You know, with the with with just out town, so much so much resource these days of that that thing from olis million. One of the first places to really get on the social media wave with Facebook. So what was the first thing you did marketing wise to get some first few patients to do so?

[00:17:37] I think we did. We were looking at. I think we looked at radio ads as a great way to look at trying to bring people in

[00:17:44] At the at the get go.

[00:17:45] Yeah. From the get go. So, yeah, it was them into. I mean, you have interest. We had interesting conversation with various different people and actually. No, sorry, let me liar. I did we didn’t do radio at the beginning. We did that a little bit later. And what we did do is we just did some simple stuff, which was just basically a little bit of brand awareness around where we were. Do we just had a few posters lined up. We decided to do some stuff with the train stations and things like that around it as well. And that’s yeah.

[00:18:06] Leaflet drops. Yes. If you apers.

[00:18:09] We did a little bit of newspapers. Not as much as we hoped we would. But then I think when we did our first Invisalign open day back in January 2009, that’s what we use when we use railyards for the first time. And that was that was

[00:18:22] What really kicked us off after that.

[00:18:24] We’d opened in November 2008 and we had a beaver. It’s been a bit of a soft opening for two or three months leading up to that. But then after that January, it’s just kind of been we just went pretty much for a lot.

[00:18:34] Which station was it? Station called Radio City. The one with the tower? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what was it? It was it was it just like as you would expect anything?

[00:18:43] No, it was just when we when we did it, it was like a very specific advert for Invisalign Open Day that we were going to do business in a certain price and it was going to be on this day at this time. They wanted to come in and they had to sort of they had to call up and make an appointment to come

[00:18:56] And see us on that day. But you still do. Radio advertising went on

[00:19:00] Sporadically, sporadically. I think that, you know, there’s better ways to look at trying to spend that kind of car.

[00:19:05] Does it cost to advertise on the radio in Liverpool? To be honest. And cost as much

[00:19:09] Or as little as you want. All right. It’s like if you had a budget for five and upon a month, even going out for five in Panama, you want to spend a million quid, Amanda. They give you this as well to that as well. So, you know, it comes down to sort of it comes it just comes down to sort of how much you really want to look at trying to spend. It’s great for creating awareness. You know, we because we’ve been doing it for so long, you know, people do kind of recognise us on the radio.

[00:19:33] We have a jingle. Yes. Go sing it. No, I’m on a landline.

[00:19:40] Absolutely.

[00:19:42] Just it’s not happening. What’s your tagline? What’s your tagline? One smile at a time

[00:19:46] Where individual smiles have started. So we just rewind a little bit. The name Holly and I only she found out about this. But 10 years later, where it

[00:19:54] Came at the minimalist humans.

[00:19:56] Yeah, I think it was then. So I’m sure a lot of our listeners are in the same position as me. Would you just like to enlighten us? Yeah. Straighteners? Yeah.

[00:20:05] Is there a tag line to follow? No. No. Okay.

[00:20:08] Well now. So the name only. Words that come about. So my real name is Harambee. Very few people can really say properly first time around. And it’s easy to get this question. Sorry. Say that again. So what happened was, is that when I first when I was first born, my sister can say my full name properly. And I still blame my sister to this day for this. But so she read all the toys at the time and she started calling me all of them. So for my entire family, all I heard him call me Ali. And it’s just it’s just name. That’s the name that state. When I went to the school in Saudi, my name was Oliver saying it was just basically that’s what it really is, is like my yearbooks all have all of this thing and it’s quite something. But then when I when we moved when we moved back to England, I was like, you know,

[00:20:47] All of this thing does have a printer. Yeah, you’d be surprised.

[00:20:50] Right. But, you know, it’s when we moved back to when we moved back from Saudi, I moved into you moved back to Yorkshire. You know, it was made aware to us, as I maybe should start using a real name now and then. So I use my real name. And then that eventually just got shortened down year after year, down to like three letters does. So I went through sort of school and uni be known as dads, and that was fine. I had no problems about. But we’re coming up with names at the clinic, Sudar. She’s my business partner. Naturally, her nickname is Dosch and Expense. Yeah. So that made sense.

[00:21:19] How did you meet us? Again, we used to work in the same clinic together. She was OK. Yeah, she was.

[00:21:23] She was working in another clinic at the time, and it just came to a head where we just felt that we just need to do our own thing. And it just you know, we we have a great business relationship and it works really, really well. We’re business partners first and then we’re friends seconds, which I think works quite well for both of

[00:21:38] Us, to be honest. You must be nice before she does exist, right? Yeah, she does.

[00:21:43] She’s there on our website for those of those. Yeah. No, it’s it’s quite it is quite interesting. I get called Ohly and also some sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing that I have seen

[00:21:53] Ulda, Colonel Sanders of the brand somehow here. And listen, I’m the sons of Enlightened. I’m astonished does more than I do in light of the Prav world will

[00:22:03] Attest to that. You play more table tennis. Yeah.

[00:22:06] Somehow I didn’t do it on purpose.

[00:22:08] Now, did you say. No, it’s definitely it’s definitely you know, it’s you know, we both have different lives. You know, now she’s she’s got a lovely husband and she’s got two at the time. When we first opened up, she had two really young boys. Karen, her youngest had I think was probably less than a year old, I think, when we opened up. So her time, I mean. Her time she wanted is maximise between her family and the clinic, so she had no time for any other opportunities that all dash may have looked to try and afford. And so basically, I was just you know, it was just me. I didn’t I don’t have any sort of dependents. I don’t have any family. And it was just basically, you know, whenever one of these things kind of came about, when an opportunity came about, I’m like, yes, I’ll just say yes. And we’ll work out how to do it later. Which is kind of when it’s happening

[00:22:48] In the middle of the Suzzy, sort of the suzzy takes care of the staff. Yeah. Issues. She takes care of a lot of the patient contacts as well. Are you involved with the staff matters? Does she was literally handle that? You know,

[00:23:00] One of the things that one of the challenges that we’ve had as a business, as we’ve grown, is that we’ve grown from an idea into an actual business. And, you know, the process of being a business is this is that you need to be able to look at delegating things in and amongst yourselves and

[00:23:16] James Golnik and see how much on social anymore. But at the time when when Facebook started, he was maybe the most influential dentists’ on there. He was all over it. I think he made an active decision to step back.

[00:23:31] What was your first marketing campaign that drove patients through the process? Ok, so I’ve done a few done lots of different marketing campaigns, some of which didn’t work. I actually had a good majority to work. I mean, the the best one that’s worked is actually going around to every single local business in the area and just saying hi. So I went to every single business in the area and went to I went to the hairdressers. I might see beauticians. I went to the investment bankers and said, just to let you know, I’m James. Are local dentists around the corner? I’d love to take care of you. You get 10 percent off any treatment if you come see us, come and say hi. So I got to know the community as close as I could do. And at that stage, there were less big chains. There were still big chains like Starbucks and stuff, but there were less big ones. So I went in everywhere. And so they got to know us. We also put the best investment ever had in marketing. It sounds a bit crazy as a board. It’s been a broad industry. We’ve got a really narrow street in Berlin, pedestrianised tree, and at lunchtime it’s heaving. So we just put an abort out with that. And it was easy stuff to try and stop people going. Have you had your mouth checked for mouth cancer? And it’s like were was enough to stop them. Yeah. And the other thing that worked really well is apples. So we used to give our apples with stickers of bolade on.

[00:24:50] So it was a theme which is there at lunch time, we gave out 250, 300 apples all for free. And it was just awareness, OK, I’m getting an apple. Why am I getting apples? They stop and they look at us taking as a dentist. They are in my head. This dentist is purple. It’s called Bolon Wambo Lane. And then six months later, they break it to the guy who wasn’t there, then to somewhere, and then they remember it all. So it’s just getting them to know about their local area. Do you remember patients walking through your practise and saying, you were the guy that gave me the apple or. Yes. Yeah, it was it was brilliant. And it was also at that stage, every new every patient. I knew all their names because they only had six. I know all about them. But it has been brilliant. And there was one great thing about being somewhere for so long is that I get I get to see them when they were new city, really vibrant, excited, happy about their life, get to see them. And then I see their partners and then I see their kids. And then sometimes then I see the girlfriends and then I see the second partners. And there’s one patient. They’ve actually seen all four of his wives now. So slowly, they obviously gets divorced and each one and then the new one comes along. So I get to see them all. I make sure they’re healthy.

[00:25:58] Talking of divorce. Ok. Ok, Mara Khawaja, I have a lot of respect for she’s started a mental health sort of content and something called the mental health ninja. I believe on most of the platforms you can find her. So did you find yourself in a position of overwhelm and had to implement some of this stuff? And that’s why you want to now talk about it. So what happened?

[00:26:30] Yeah, definitely. I would say it’s a journey, really. So my first couple of experiences straight out, V.T. were really negative. I was working in toxic environments

[00:26:43] And

[00:26:43] Expand OLMA. So the first couple of principles, I had really focussed on teaching in a shaming way. So they’d come and they’d watch my crown, perhaps, for example, and then they’d criticise the crown Prav in front of a patient. Yeah. And they’d take photos of my work, but not just mine, you know, the whole team. And and then they’d be criticising those those things in front of us. So I went into work feeling very panicked and feeling very uncomfortable and already not really knowing my place when I’d come out of Dental school and really. You want your point anyway?

[00:27:29] Exactly.

[00:27:30] You know, you’re not quite sure where you fit in, what can you give to your patients? I’m not quite sure yet because you don’t have the experience. So it was it was really negative. I’ve call it bullying and harassment, but that’s how I would label it now. But at that time, actually, I normalised it so well. You know, they’re trying to help me. But, um, and maybe this is normal. This is how how people are taught.

[00:27:56] So I Dental school that that the that’s that way, too, isn’t that.

[00:28:01] Yeah. To an element of 2010 from

[00:28:04] Kenya writes a bit different to when they call for armament than school. That being a

[00:28:09] Teacher came

[00:28:10] From some of the teachers anyway. Yeah, I can think of. Do you think the bullying.

[00:28:15] Directed to you in particular, is it because you’re a woman and were they any other sort of male vitis at the time or associates that were treated any differently? Did you feel like you were singled out at all?

[00:28:30] In my experience, so personally, there were a few other men there, but they were senior. So the conversations were different them. So I think in part, perhaps me being female and younger, that the principal could felt the authority to speak in a certain way. But I think it goes to show it really reflects the principal kind of attitude and his own psychology. And, you know, someone who wants to be little, who wants to tear someone down probably has been torn down as well. You know, and he’s got an interesting psychology as well. So that was my first few experiences of coming out of Dental

[00:29:14] School at the time and recognise it for

[00:29:16] That. I didn’t recognise. And actually I stayed in that position for a cop for about six months. This is after V.T.. And looking back now, I wouldn’t bet I felt that I had a job and I felt I wasn’t really sure if there was much else out there. And like I said, I normalised a lot of this toxic behaviour. And then I went from that to a marriage as well. That was like psychologically abusive. And I came out of that just feeling, not really feeling lost, not really knowing who I was and really looking inwards to find ways of progressing and to become a, you know, more calm, peaceful person, to reclaim that I feel like I lost.

[00:30:13] Zainab Al Mukhtar, one of the people who does beautiful composite work, beautiful, you know, facial aesthetics. What I love most about her is when she got onto social without an agenda, without reading up all about it. And, you know, the authenticity so often the thing that works best on social media was the thing that that, you know, shone through.

[00:30:37] But you’re right. You know, social media and it’s had a huge influence. And I would say that it is put the word out there is it has essentially been a huge source of advertising. That’s it really. That’s been huge. People that know where you are, who you are, what you’re up to, the quality of your work, and it reaches far and wide. So definitely has been a big influence. I didn’t start it thinking it would be, but it has.

[00:31:02] When was the point? What was the like, the turning point where you thought, crikey, this Instagram stuff is really working? Was it was it after a month, a year, six months? What was the

[00:31:13] Point where

[00:31:15] It was about two years ago? So I first started my Instagram about five years ago, four or five years ago or six. Maybe now I’m losing track of time. And but I think two years ago, when I really noticed and I just I started posting more. So when I first started, I was just posting sporadically here and there. Nothing really consistent. It was making a bit of a difference, but it was a small circle that it was exposed to. And then the following slowly, slowly grew. And as it grew, the enquiries grew. And I got busier. I found it harder to post, but because I saw that it was helpful and because patients would come in and say, I’ve seen this photo, can you tell me more about it or I’ve seen what you wrote in your caption? It was actually really informative and I hadn’t ever come across comfortable. And I thought, OK, captions make a difference. Let’s explain this properly. And I felt quite responsible about what I was sharing. So it just started to think more about what to share. And I’m doing it whenever I could. And I just gradually noticed that it was working. You know, patients would come and mention it. And we have a feedback. We have it in our registration forms and the practises. Where did you hear about the practise? I’d see Instagram a lot. And I thought, well, actually, this is actually really influential. So, yeah, about two years ago.

[00:32:30] And did that change your focus of how he was going to approach Instagram? Like if you got a strategy, hashtags of pictures, right hand side dentistry, middle column life style, that sort of thing.

[00:32:42] Have you got a strategy or. I know that’s like noses and lips, left hand side and things like

[00:32:50] That just come about by chance or review the craft of Instagram and hacked the algorithm?

[00:32:57] I definitely haven’t had any algorithm. I’ve been hearing that there is an algorithm and I don’t quite know what it means. But what happened is I was just posting without any themes, and I had a lot to post, lots of content. And I sit there and think, oh, I don’t know which one to push. I post this one on this one and I look at my page. It just looks a bit messy and. You know, being a being an aesthetic dentistry or aesthetic medicine, you are all about being visual about things. And I thought, I really want to make this look neat. So and I’m doing lots of different things. And I don’t know how people will understand really how woman and posting teeth in the next minutes a nose and then the next minute something else. And then randomly I’ll put something miscellaneous. And I just thought, why don’t I just do a column one to beach and actually looks nicer? And I just carried on doing it.

[00:33:44] Wow. And in terms of business now, where does the majority of your new patients come from?

[00:33:50] They still Instagram

[00:33:51] Word of mouth. So families now. So it’s the sisters and the moms and, you know, and it’s it just grows like that. Instagram is still been a big part of it because it’s reaching people further out who live far away. But I’m now seeing lots and lots of siblings and friends of friends and so on. And as far as even, which is really nice, if a Dental student comes in shadows, they’ll bring their mom next time. And it’s really nice. It’s just growing in that way.

[00:34:19] And how much personal content do you put on there? Like real life stuff? Do you do? Do you put your personal life what you’re up to going here, here on holiday shopping there?

[00:34:29] Sort of. I didn’t used to. I thought of it as this is just a professional page. I’ll just show my professional aspect and nothing really personal. And then friends of mine said, you know, it would be nice if you just shared a bit about used. I think people would like to see it. And I ask patients if they’d come in and I’d get to know them a bit, etc. They’d mentioned Instagram and then they’d say, Oh, I saw you were doing this or that. And I thought, yeah, what do you think about do you think I should share more personal stuff? And they’d say, Yeah, I think it’s really nice for people to connect and see what you’re about. So I had the encouragement and just thought, right, I’ll do a little snippets. I’m still quite reserved. And it’s just still very much little snippets. But I think slowly, slowly, I’m willing to share a little bit more with time, but it will always stay. It still is predominantly a professional page, and it will always, I think, just be snippets

[00:35:16] To show built a whole tribe online and on social Dental Dental tuples is bigger than most other things. And these people who sit and say actually we’ve asked the government are they’re not listening. Listen, government’s never going to listen because it’s an extrinsic problem. We as dentists have super values within us. We want to deliver top quality care for our patients. We want to look after people. Ultimately, that’s why you went to dentistry. And the money comes as a side effect of that, because you do this, you’re building trust with another human being. All these things. Right. I want to build a community of the right values, people, people who want to help each other, because you know what? That community of dentists in the future is going to go out to the public and engage with the public to change the face of dentistry as a profession, to say we are not the money grabbers and fast car driving people. We are interested in you. There’s a whole you know, we’re building this pathway. And if we can engage the public, guess what’s going to happen? A real momentum boost for the profession. But you need a really powerful community. So beyond education and motivating people, it’s a bigger picture thinking. Why do you think why do you think dentistry suffers with the disunity that we sometimes see? It suffers from the disunity that we see now and then is because we’ve never touched down to the values.

[00:36:38] If you think about dentists. Dentists were taught to deal with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And ultimately, they think like that. They think small, they think detail. They think that bigger picture thinking is missing. True leadership in dentistry is thinking leadership is here’s a vision, here’s a vision. Let’s go towards it. What’s his name? I have a dream. Who kind of sat there? And that was the King Luther King. And there were thousands of people there. Do you think those thousands of people were there because they saw Martin Luther King’s dream? No, they were there because they had the same dream as him and their values aligned. And he said, you’ve got that dream I have here. I have a vision. This is where we will go. Dentistry needs that. Dentistry is disunited because all these people with different values are not being brought together under one vision, under one mission. And that vision is very clear. It’s we’re looking after patients. How we look after them is different. And what people end up doing because of the detail. They start looking at how you do something and what you do and how you do something and what you do and what house maybe different or what’s maybe different or why is the same. And there’s nobody who has worked hard enough to bring that y together in one side of it is because we’re interested in patient care and we seem to be interested in patient care, sometimes gives you the licence to be rude to each other because we’re so worried about the patient.

[00:37:58] Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, but that’s the how. Yeah. I’m rude to you because you’ve done patient care y the way I wouldn’t do the patient. Yeah. Yeah, right. And then I think you didn’t skin the cat the way I skin the cat. But if I sit there and say, listen, help inspire connecter with three powers are I’m going to help that. And I’m going to inspire them and motivate them to look after their health. And I’m going to connect them with other patients who are like that. I mean, how now we’re thinking from the same hymn sheet, and if we sing from the same hymn sheet, we’re going to say it’s fine. You scan that a different way. But you know what? Brilliant. And obviously, I think UK society doesn’t celebrate success as much as I do an American or Indian or other societies. If you’re doing well, UK society likes to almost bring people down who are rising up. I’ve seen this differently. And do we celebrate success better? Do we celebrate that someone’s done something well for patients? Is this an initiative we should take? In fact, I’ll put it out to you, your products and lighten the composite use with the enamel.

[00:38:59] They’re going out to changing patients lives, aren’t they, all day long? Can we use this as an initiative to say, how did this change a patient’s life? I don’t know. But we think there’s some power amidst all this. You know, certainly with tubules that purpose driven endeavour. Yeah. People can see when something’s purpose driven, New Jersey well with the concrete with the turbine group. Surprising, correct? You know, there’s so many niches that social seems to fill. Women make babies. They have a connexion with human beings that no man can ever have, you know, no matter how good a father you are. I’m sure the connexion with in utero is, you know, surpassed and they’ve created something. We don’t create a lot, really, apart from this. So actually, we probably look for mechanical things to nurture. Yeah. So whether that’s a or a car or aeroplane, we want to have something. We want to have a relationship where they want to have experiences with it. I mean, I put my car into its pyjamas at night. You know, it’s almost like a child, you know, the car Covid goes on, really? And I know people who kiss their cars goodnight and you niftiest fixing cars. And now I’m terrible. I like engineering. Yeah. And obviously, you know, having placed a few implants and stuff, you understand the thought of that side of it.

[00:40:20] And I try and watch YouTube things, but I know there’s lots of people who are much better at it than I am and understand it more. Luckily, electric cars are quite easy to understand without an internal combustion engine. But no, I’m not tinkerer changing gears. I remember, no pun intended. The first time I met you, I think, was at Perry’s practise, I think in and go in cities nearby. Yeah, he’s just bought a new car, which I helped him with a 911 GTZ. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying so. You really worked hard for that lovely car, whatever. But be a nice guy. What I remember about you back then was and I see it, it’s common practise now. But back then you had you you would talk to your patient and your nurse would be typing, typing away. And I remember even back then thinking this guy is going to be really good as a boss. He’s going to be able to inspire his people because he was so into what she was doing. Remember that? Are you’re the boss. Am I good boss? I think the boss being a leader has so many facets to it. And that’s what we’re looking at nowadays. And, you know, we’re talking through quite a lot about leadership skills. And, you know, we helped grow the study club from one to 50 and we created Leaders within those groups and leadership.

[00:41:34] I mean, you must do it with enlightened is about passion. And you’ve got passion. You’re halfway there if you believe in what you do, if you’ve got a it’s a mission statement or something in your mind that you want to do, which is, you know, we want to really help people. We want the best practise in England. We want to do things really well. I want my team. People are rewarded and everyone to be happy. You know, it’s a basic kind of premise of what we’re about. People can get behind that. Yeah. Who doesn’t want to be happy, you know? And I’d love to, you know, double my nurse’s wages and give them a great life and be a successful practitioner and and change lives and smiles, you know. But then, you know, we’re all human beings and we all falter. So sometimes we better than others. And I noticed the really successful Dental, if they’re so disciplined, I wish I was a bit more disciplined. But people like Mark Hughes and Rajul and Jobar, you see these guys and all you had earlier on, they get up in the morning and they do the work that they’re machines. Yeah, I’m probably having not been married and no kids. I’m still probably an overgrown teenager a little bit.

[00:42:31] And, you know, and haven’t had that drive. I think when you have children, the drive to kind of do something better for them comes in. So I think I’m a reasonably good leader, but I could be better. You practise in in village. It is, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s our old well, it’s sort of a it’s a Roman little village. Different dwelling on city. Yeah. Well, and gotten sort of a come about from the new town, the old Whelans really charming and full of history. Right. I remember when you open that and I remember the early days, you were you were very worried and quite rightly so. We were all. How far in was it when you thought, I don’t need to worry anymore? Three years. Three years? Yeah. I think the you know, again, you know, we’re dentists. We’re not really business people unless you’ve got that kind of family background, which I haven’t had. So you naively go into it thinking, I’m just going to make a nice practise and be nice to people. I know how much it’s going to cost to build. I know much I need to earn to live, which was not a lot for me because on my own. And I thought, right, this is going to work. And it did work, but I didn’t realise it was actually that overheads. And you and if you talk to associates now and you show them the overheads, which I like to do, because it’s good that they know about these things, but they’re shocking our roads.

[00:43:46] A shocking in dentistry and whether that’s VAT, whether it’s the exchange rate, whether it’s staff costs, whatever, you know, pensions. So it really had to borrow my way out quite a few times in the first two years just to keep going. And I was fortunate, again, whether it’s friends, family, banks, whatever, to to have the opportunity to do so. But if they hadn’t supported me, the business would have gone. And you didn’t go in with a giant building and, you know, no small place. The two surgeries small little place bought the freehold wasn’t. Expensive. Well, you can you can see where, you know, some people overstretch on, you know, on size and on. Yeah, I think we all should. We have our dreams of what we want. But actually, sometimes you have to break down the dream into little pieces sometimes. And there are huge risks in running a private practise. There really are. You haven’t got squat from school as well. And what would you say? What would you say are your top tips, like if someone was going to do that? Some of the thinking about doing that right now, what are your top tips? I think one is have a good surplus of money in more than you think, probably double more than you think.

[00:44:48] I think look after your health, because when everything goes to pot and being men, we just throw ourselves into it. So, you know, the week goes on eating badly. You don’t exercise because you feel a bit of a martyr to it. Interest you away people money. You think I can’t I shouldn’t be happy because, you know, I’m not in the place where I should be. So you sort of demonise yourself. Yeah. So I spoke for two years. I was just my worst enemy and didn’t look after myself and still, you know, has effects. Now, I’m not super healthy yet. And I remember going to speare and sort of nicking the bread from lunchtime to have it dinner, you know, and getting buses and paid for a year. I paid for. And on the overdraught, I had to steal the bread. I know, but it was priorities and I speare changed my life and it without speare that practise wouldn’t have succeeded for social. Baylee, today’s dentistry updates. I know loads of people enjoy those daily updates that that he does. His podcast is one not to be missed. Trials and tribulations that you go through with that podcast. One of my personal favourites. But so fast forward to when you bought a practise. So yeah. So the guy I was working for in Clacton, he decided to sell up.

[00:46:03] The new voice came on board. They were very business orientated. You know, I was the lead associate, so, you know, and I could do anything that I wanted. Why? I was doing seventeen thousand years a year. All right. So was just on my own. The average, I think, is about six and a half thousand per person. Me how when I actually left, they had to actually replace me with three dentists. Were you working ridiculous hours? No. Basically, every single appointment that I had was effectively like ten minutes. And then you just catch up on the time and make it up somehow. But yeah, my my days were between 50 and 70 patients a day out here every day. And then at the weekends, I’d actually do all the nursing homes in Denver in the whole of Dental District Council. I did every single nursing home, 32 of them. Danger is extractions visiting. Yeah. Yeah, from one to the next to the next next. Wow. Yeah. So then you save some money by this time, so. Yeah. So I buy a practise. Yes. Mom and dad came over obviously for graduation and stuff. And that was really, really nice. That’s when I actually you know, again, it was that second head and wave of the love I’ve got for the university now, because I walked in and I remember the dean of the Dental School in the last six months.

[00:47:19] He said, Right, Baish, we’re going to give you a hundred and fifty quid a month for the science of war. And he goes, well, you’re going to tell me what you’re going to use it for. Is it? Oh, I’ve got these two people that to me for that to pay for it. He goes, give me the check back because I want to see you in the student union every Friday. I’ve been a couple of drinks. At least that’s what you start off with. Whatever’s left, you can do what you want with it, you know? And that was lovely. My graduation. I didn’t have the money to pay for it. So the guy was running the whole graduation thing. He said, we just forgot to charge you. I went in the day after, you know, to actually say to the guys that the accommodation office said, look, guys, I haven’t got the money, but here’s a self-willed affidavit, you know, appeared as soon as I got the money. Now it’s been comfortable and it just, you know, and I just thought, well, you know, mom and dad were here. My friends gave me their credit cards, you know, just spend whatever you want. But it’s fine. It’s fine. We were all we’re all doing this together, you know, so it was just fantastic. He is absolutely brilliant, you know, but when mom and dad came, I took them over to Clacton and said, look, this is where I’m going to be staying.

[00:48:22] And so funny enough, I’m staying with the boss that I stayed with them for three years and I just saved, saved and saved and saved. So within four years, I actually paid off 110 grand and I bought two houses, paid off, paid off all the cousins and people who everyone had a ledger, actually, and I paid off every year. Funny enough, one guy, he gave me eighty pounds and I phoned him six years later. I just happened to remember his number off the top of my head. And I phoned him. I said, Hey, buddy, how’s it going? He was Daesh. And I was like, yeah, you know, how the hell are you, man? So, yeah, I’m just glad you got the same number. And we had a bit of a catch up. And he goes, What’s going on? I said, listen, I’ve called you for a reason. He goes, well. And I said, I borrowed eighty quid off you in two thousand and this is like eight or something like that about the trip back, you know. So, you know, I don’t forget if someone helps me out, if someone does something, it doesn’t matter how big or small. That’s not you know, that’s not what I’m about. It’s more about the gesture, the thought, you know, and being human.

[00:49:28] I guess the message is from your dad, right, that last day.

[00:49:30] Yeah, that’s what I was just thinking about right now. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So then the Dental ity that I saw being built, the state of the art private looking thing was when you’d moved site. Right. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So you had it. Yeah. That wasn’t the previous one wasn’t called Dental that, you know, so it was called Hawksbill Dental practise. It was nearby. It was just around the corner sort of thing. It was the usual Dental practise sort of setting the stage and downstairs on one side, funeral directors, on the other hairdressers behind them. Through a dark corridor, you go up to the Dental practise, which just thinks it looks horrible. So I left my associate job because I didn’t like the way things were run, you know, and it was no fault of the guys who took over. They were there to make money, which is fair enough, you know, for people to have a business. Some people do a lot of dentistry. And I just thought I’m going to be horrible here, you know, and I’m going to fall out with these guys. Big task before that happens. Just Gole, because they paid their goodwill. At the end of the day, they don’t need grapple thing you associate, you know. So I just got off I go. And the only practise that I could afford was just one that I bought. I always wanted to be in Hertfordshire. Why? Because I’ve got family in East London. Sorry. And Mum’s family’s all in West London. It’s a little nice halfway house sort of thing going, you know, keep in touch with everyone. So I moved there when I I sorry when I bought up.

[00:50:55] And the change in name was very, very personal to me because I’d been through a lot through through our university and all the rest of it spoke with a lot of people were just just disgruntled Leaders, unhappy with dentistry. And I think generally that’s the way the feeling is. You know, dentists and lot can be a happy profession, you know, and I just thought, you know what, I want to change the way people think I want. And not only, you know, patients, but your team and, you know, your peers and your colleagues and other dentists, you know, because everyone has something that goes not according to plan at some point in their lives. So I just want to change the way they think. Word mentality came up in my mind because I actually just took them off and put a D on it. And yeah, that was it. And that’s how Dental. So when I when I saw it, it was a triple shopfront. Yeah, I remember that. Like the biggest shock I’d ever seen on the High Street and like modern. And there were people. Drilling away to with people working, and I said to him, wow, look, as far as I really know, how have you let you’ve gone for it, man? I guess have I? I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve definitely gone for it. And he goes, I you know, I just think you need to build it and they’ll come around. I remember exactly what words were. To the Payman actually said to me, close. I don’t mean to be OK. I’m here to help you.

[00:52:23] Yeah, I remember Yadu six years BMW, they drove into a parked off at the back and said, Vash, with all due respect, you’ve got a cornershop, you just got a bottle of freaking FESCo extra. How are you doing? And I said I said, yeah, I know it’s it’s big, but that there’s a reason for this. And he goes, yeah, but you know what? This question needs to be stocked. You can’t have an empty desk, extra newsagent’s like, you know, he’s about five foot by five foot. Right. So everything in one place within arm’s reach. Right. He was you can’t just have a dedicated corner in this open shop floor for the rest of it. But to your credit, how long did it take before you filled it up? It was full properly fully running within two years. Yeah. So it just you know, the practise went from strength to strength, and it was all to do with just being open and honest and trustworthy, you know, in a small town. Good news travels fast. So does bad. Know, I think you could look Veliko to the psychic and that maybe the best connector in the whole profession. And a big part of that is his online presence and reputation. The guy who knows more dentists and than anyone else that I know I had the privilege of being in veti with Saki’s have watched that journey from the beginning of his, you know, post qualifying career. It is so many different things. You you work as an implant ologist in lots of different practises. The drop in that brooming sort of.

[00:53:56] Yeah. Peripatetic. Yeah. Is that what I used to do that I don’t do like not much anymore. Funny story is, is that, you know, when the recession kicked in 2009 and you know, I’d meet a lot of my friends that did implants and they’d be like, yeah, it’s a bit slow. It’s really hit us and I’m not doing that anymore. How about you? And I’d be like, I was busy as hell, you know, I was like, no, I’m it’s great. It’s you know, it hasn’t affected me at all. The difference was, is that they sat in one room, in one location, in one clinic area. That area. Yeah. Whereas with me, I was like I got off my arse and I actually found the work. And a lot of people said, oh, yeah, you know, do you like what you do going around, whatever? It’s like, you know what? At least I was busy. At least the money was coming in and I made lots of connexions and networks and. And then when, you know, when we opened our practise stuff, I started reducing, although I didn’t want to travel so much back then. I used to even go up to Scotland. I used to do all on fours. Really? Yeah. I did a couple of even Fellin Haly up there in Cherry Bank when I was you know, we go to Gleneagles every year, one of these timeshare things like that. And even once I was there for a week, she’s like, can you come over?

[00:55:16] So, you know, I was going to ask you, though, you you you’ve visited lots of practises. You can see lots of different ways people work. What are some of the takeaways? I mean, what are some things you learnt that you then put into your own practise?

[00:55:29] Well, one thing I learnt was the bigger the practise, the harder it is. I mean, it’s obviously just common sense, but it was exponentially harder because you’d have to keep everyone busy and you’d have lots of, you know, staff turnover. It was it just seemed a lot harder. And on the face of it, people look at these practises from the outside and think they’re running smoothly and whatever. However, when you’re on the inside, it doesn’t it’s not always like that. And that’s why we did something small. So when there’s a recession, when times aren’t great or there’s less patients coming in, I don’t have to worry. I still remember shortly after setting up my practise with with Dominique, my dad got ill. I had a phone call from my sister. I was actually at a bank board meeting. And of course, that’s like you got to come right now. I literally took the next flight out and I was away from our new clinic for seven weeks on the trot. And I was all I was thinking about is like, God, what’s going to happen? I’m the one doing the high end implant, you know, treatments, thousands of pounds, and I’m not there. The nice thing was that the rent is low. It’s a small practise. There’s not a huge sort of monthly expenditure on staff wages and all that. There is, but it was manageable. Now, if I had a much bigger sets up and I remember talking to several people and they’re like, you know what, you’re so lucky you’ve done something small. And whilst you say, I was ambitious and wanted to open up multiple surgeries. That’s my comfort zone. I’m happy like that. And I’m happy also working and placing implants for other people, which I still do to this day.

[00:57:14] Nicole Sondergaard, Sa’id Hashmi. You know, Nicole and she’s been involved in so many different things in the treatment, particularly strong on the social side and side to this pretty easily, you know that the charity work around the industry. The boy who went to being a dentist, I mean, what is it about you that, you know, I didn’t stick to be an artist either, but what is it about you?

[00:57:41] I think it goes back to Prav. First question to Nick. What’s your background? My my family been in business for a hundred years. My granddad was a banker. My father was was a banker is he’s retired now and not the banker in the sense of in this country. So they were in the exchange of currency and business. And I grew up in meetings in our living room that was always meeting and variety of people coming and going and asking questions about, you know, business and doing business. I have a passion for that. I definitely have a passion for business and I love dentistry. I’ve got so much respect for dentistry. Dentistry has given me so much that any other occupation wouldn’t have given me otherwise. And I wouldn’t for a second say I wouldn’t stop being a dentist. I love doing dentistry, but I like to do dentistry while I’m enjoying it. I like to have financial freedom. I like to go to the clinic, do the treatment, just because I enjoy doing that, not because I’m dependent on the money that is going to be made from that that treatment. Not everybody has to have have that luxury. And it hasn’t been easy for me. I’ve been working seven days a week for the past 15 years to to achieve that. I auditioned recently, cut down on my days. You can tell he’s a grafter because he says work four days a week and then you’ve got another three days a week to work.

[00:59:02] But to be honest, if I gave you a billion tomorrow, would you still draw teeth?

[00:59:08] I would and you know, and I tell you why one of my cousins is actually a fine, you know, son of a billionaire family in Iran, and he’s a dentist. He’s one of the reasons I actually do dentistry. He does still practise. They’re all over 50 factories. He’s still practise. And I saw one of his patients recently in London because he would only send his patient to me because they moved to London. And I was up my hands were shaking, just amanat not to make a mistake. I had to do a you know, a very deep feeling. So, yes, because, you know, it’s not about the money. I definitely know from my background I know more money does not bring you happiness. Hundred percent. It just doesn’t. If I do have a family, I’ve got kids. I would never, ever work seven days. And I don’t recommend anybody doing that. But in the same time, everybody’s different. I’m just not going to sit there every night watching Netflix until I fall asleep. It’s not my character. Some people like that. And they might they might do that. Nothing wrong with it, you know? Everyone is different.

[01:00:08] Victoria Holden, one of the best moderators out there. I’ve been moderated by myself. Very fair. Definitely involved and interested.

[01:00:19] I limit the time I spend on social media to about 15, 20 minutes a day. I don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook for various reasons. So that part of it doesn’t take an awful lot of time, really. Like you moderate that forum in 15 minutes a day. Yeah, well, people might say that it’s not maybe a very well moderated forum. I know the criticism that comes up, and that’s maybe the reason why. But yeah, I mean, I’ve done a lot of moderating since about 10 years ago, because that’s not how moderate the GDP you pay for it. So I’ve been involved in that for quite a while, actually. And I think generally people behave OK on forums. There’s not that much stuff that needs moderated. You might get an expression upset that somebody is offended by a post or something that’s inappropriate for the self, promoting their own causes a bit too much or whitening is getting promoted and in fact, et cetera. And we tend to deal with those and then and then move on. Really? Yeah, it doesn’t it doesn’t take a lot of time. Not really wants to sit down on Facebook, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through the threads. I’ll go on and have a quick look, see if anything’s been selected from the forums and then all.

[01:01:36] Well, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode of our social media Leaders, the compilation of the best bits that we could gather together on their social media journeys. The next part will be next week. We broken up into two episodes. I hope you look forward to that season. This is Dental Leaders,

[01:01:56] The podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry. Your host, Payman Langroudi, I’m Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys.

[01:02:11] If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both for me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it

[01:02:23] 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.

[01:02:34] And don’t forget the six star rating.

[00:00:04] This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:22] We’re really lucky in the UK to have some of Leaders of

[00:00:26] The invasive industry coming from here and

[00:00:30] Increasingly on the sort of the global lecture circuit. Minimally invasive dentistry seems to be something that’s really resonated with the UK dental profession. So we thought we’d put together some of our favourite bits from some of the interviews that we’ve done over the past couple of years on minimally invasive Leaders.

[00:00:49] Let’s start with

[00:00:51] None other than Tife Kareshi, maybe one of the most influential people in the field. The father of Aibi Kareshi enjoy.

[00:00:59] But what I started to do is develop a kind of protocol of space evaluation and, you know, space planning. And where I was doing the IPO and I kind of explained to him, this is what I do now. He’s a technician. So he kind of listened to me. And I also kind of created this sort of attachment sequence protocol as well.

[00:01:17] You’re talking to some orthodontists. No, not

[00:01:19] Really. I have to say, not that point. A little bit later. I did.

[00:01:23] And that’s probably the biggest advantage was that you weren’t talking. Well, I mean, I

[00:01:27] Wanted to I did want to early on and I did. And actually, you know, funny enough, one of the first people I consulted with this was was actually chatty, passive aggressive. You know, the great thing about passive was he looked at what I was doing, totally unlike maybe some others at the time. I’m totally open minded to it and saying, look, I can see what you’re doing, it just in the front teeth. And if if those patients have come to see me already and have refused, and this is surely got to be the best thing to do. So he you know, he was really quite instrumental in at least at least making me feel like, OK, this is the right thing to do if we do it correctly. Another person, you know, a year or two later, who I started to sort of bounce back some ideas from as well. And I was very lucky. And this is an amazing person to have. Mentoring me briefly was someone called Bjorn Sacristan, who’s, you know, one of the greatest orthodontists ever to have lived. Still, I was still around today. And I’ve come across him. You know, again, this is thankfully through the BBC day. And that’s what that’s one of the big things about Bastida. You get to meet people like that. And he and he and spoke spoke many years ago. And then I stayed in touch with them after. And I sort of they came on the stage, spoke, and then afterwards I sort of talk to him about what I was doing. And again, he said, you know, it makes perfect sense. And I was trying to learn a bit more about IPR and limitations. And he’d obviously ready we have

[00:02:43] Confidence for to go to the world world’s top orthodontist as a GDP and say, I’m doing this. What do you think? I mean.

[00:02:50] Well, that’s again, that’s where you got to thank people. Do you get the opportunity to and that’s you know, that’s what I’ll always be grateful for that in reality. But but the fact is, I was thinking that way. And and I always think in that way, in an environment when where others words. And so I got I was lucky. To be fair, I’m not saying that it would have been exactly the same, but I was heading that way anyway. So what I’ve spoken to one person or another, I just wanted to validate it and make sure that this was something that was.

[00:03:19] Have you thought, well, maybe I’ve even heard you’ve written. Right, or read about you saying this, that today it would be impossible because you’d be so scared of the legal ramifications of being the only one doing something.

[00:03:32] And I think I said I think you’re totally right that. And I think that’s actually quite a sad statement. Really, I think we were kind of we’ve all been lucky. To a certain degree for the time we lived in. But nowadays, yeah, you probably would fear it. However, I’m getting to the point where I’m just turning the argument around where you used to. I used to hear I still hear people say if a general dentist does, although it’s dangerous. Well, actually, I think the argument around now and say that a general dentist who doesn’t do all those dangerous. Okay, and I can justify that based on the fact that a lot of dentists don’t understand the concept of constricting envelopes and why envelopes constrict because teeth move. And how do you fix it? Not not restorative it. Yeah, you can do some restorative, but you need also and there probably I’d estimate millions of patients around the world who have repeatedly chipping front tooth. Keep it. If it keeps shipping, the dentist solution is another composite, another composite or splen. And a lot of those patients end up with crowns. And actually, the dentist understood that they needed a little bit of ortho to get the right over the right over by a bit of bonding to improve the overbuy. You’d probably find that actually a lot less people would have a.. Veneers or crowns. I’ve seen that. It’s absolutely clear. And I think it’s something it’s a real it’s a really strong part of the message now. So I think general dentists, you know, I’ve got to. Here’s a here’s something I would say controversial. If you were a general dentist and you were my general dentist and you couldn’t do any ortho, I wouldn’t even sit in your chair, not suggest what I would say, but wouldn’t even sit in your chair. You know, if you needed to do my endo, I’ll be right with that. But if there was something anterior in your solution for my front tooth, the chipping was a crown. No way am I sit in your chair, you know. So it’s quite a and it’s a powerful thing.

[00:05:08] Is seeing it now with your record, then you can say what you know, you can basically say what you like and everyone pay attention back then. Back then saying stuff. Like that as a as a GDP from Kent. Well, I find it super interesting.

[00:05:21] I was I was to stop and actually, you know, we stuck my neck out and we were showing what we were doing. And and I’d say there were, you know, you stick your head up and again, people initiate them. And I got a couple of invites to places where, you know, I was terrified and, you know, audience for the orthodontists and all sorts of stuff. But the reality was when they when they when they sat and watched what we were doing, many of them have come up to me after and said they said, well, actually, you know, you’re doing just the front teeth. You’re looking at what’s actually going on. So the key part here, and this is where people are, Ross Hobson, have actually made a huge difference, is actually to to validate the fact that what we’re trying to do is make sure the patients understand the difference between comprehensive treatment versus the compromise. That’s the key. As long as you can diagnose the case completely, you’ve got to diagnose it, not somebody else. This is really important that you can explain to the patient why doing just the front teeth is okay versus perhaps the patient may really need just having the full maths done. It shouldn’t really be a problem at all. And what if you brought that message in? I think it’s it’s made it clear that, you know, there’s nothing wrong with doing this and that actually you’ve got to start thinking about doing it if you’re not doing it already.

[00:06:29] Nick Saidy, brother of Sanjay Sethi, the minimally invasive brother in who’s in the square mile Dental practise. What do you think it comes from? I mean, both of you’ve got this sort of excellence idea, like

[00:06:42] You want to be the best. And you know what? I’ve even spoken to you on this course of yours that you guys will get to it. But this aesthetic thing. And I was saying, well, you know, how you making the numbers work and all this and you were getting the numbers. Not really what we’re interested in,

[00:06:58] Interested in the learning for ourselves, you know. What do you think that comes from? Is that like

[00:07:04] I don’t know. Is it your dad? Is it where does it come from? Why did you want to be the best? Not the Jarno, the biggest, the richest or whatever it is, whether the quality thing come from. I think if you have it not well, we’ve got amazing family of people around us. But I think that actually comes a lot from Sanj. I’m certainly down naturally. I have I’ve got a good brain. I’m quite academic. I love reading. But Sanjay’s passion to just be the best he can be, and not just for the sake of being mad to deliver the best for his patients. And he’s one of these people that he may not and he won’t mind me saying this. He may not get something as quick as maybe I do academically, but no one will work harder than him to them. Practise, practise, practise, practise. There’s no secret whenever people say, oh, how do you do this? How do you get your constant looking like that Alja? As you know, Payman, there’s no secret. You’ve got to follow protocols meticulously. You’ve got to time things. You know, if you’re told to do something for a certain number of seconds, get a timer and time it. And this is what Sanjay did. He took every little part of the protocol and just practised it religiously again and again and again. And he was breathing down my neck when I first tried to, you know, and every day I’d have to show him before and after he’d have his nurse, I’d have my nurse spying on me to tell him where I was going wrong. And that’s honestly the kick up the butt. I needed that. It’s how he lives literally every single day, just learning, practise, practise, practise, practise.

[00:08:39] Payman Sobhani, who I really enjoyed talking to you, just a great guy to have on the show.

[00:08:46] He’s built a

[00:08:47] Whole practise based on memory based, and she’s got a beautiful concept

[00:08:50] Work that he does. If you ask me what I’m supposed to be learning in the role that I’m in as a clinical director as opposed to Dental, I mean, I’m more of a management position of managing the clinical aspects of that business, but also I’ve got to be there for the staff. And you know, that that aspect, I think, is probably what I’ve gotten the most about what I’ve done. And, you know, this actually came from is how much I suppose I’ve listened to this podcast. A good sign. I think it was Mark Hughes. He said, I’m quoting this podcast. Dental Leaders. Covid hearing previous

[00:09:28] Episodes keep coming

[00:09:29] Up. You like to use back in November 2010. We should create a

[00:09:37] Citations list at the end of every

[00:09:39] Podcast. He said he said that he wished he did an MBA. Right. So I was like, oh, that’s interesting. I’ve always thought about doing an MBA. I mean, I’ve just put a practise. And, you know, he said that that would have sped things up for him so much. So it’s like, OK, so first thing I did, I bought the personal movie, a book that I could tell you, a very good book, recommend, highly personal and B, I can’t revetted Cognise Presynaptic. It’s really good. But then I also start searching Ambus and I not the LSC, do a short course 10 week MBA essentials. And I’m seven weeks into that now. And I’ve just signed on to that six and seven weeks of it. And a week soon is it’s intense because this is

[00:10:24] As it help with the Dental practise.

[00:10:26] So again, first week was the whole leadership management influencing all of that sort of stuff. Then it’s going to go and then he goes on to, you know, reading, finance, reading, accountancy, all of these sort of things that are the essential things that you need to know. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know. Maybe some people will say you need an MBA is Dental practise. I think probably that you don’t. But I think it was good to do that and to be in the process of it, because I’m I’m just relating everything back to the practise and being, you know, at the beginning, where I’m just kind of looking at it like, OK, so this means this, this means this. I can relate this to this. I can go in and start doing this and try this out as made an impact. I think I think that it made me more confident. I think I felt like a bit of an imposter.

[00:11:10] The thing is the thing is, did we as dentists, we think we need to do a course for everything?

[00:11:14] Yeah, I mean, some of the to

[00:11:17] Some of the top business people in the country of corner shop owners. Yeah. Yeah. Then in the

[00:11:22] Course. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:25] Listen, man, I’m no expert, but business is looking after your customers, looking after your people, looking after your suppliers. That that that is the. That’s it. Absolutely. Do do an MBA. Sure. Do an MBA. Yeah, but but, you know, it’s not going to be the answer. They’re the answer you’re looking for as dentists. We just think we have to keep doing courses like if you want to do bone grafting to go do a bone grafting course. You know, when you look look on the High Street, man, there’s a restaurant. That guy didn’t go on an MBA to run.

[00:12:02] His restaurant is all right. So whatever whatever you’re learning, you have to apply it almost immediately.

[00:12:10] But it seems like it’s a massive change for you to go from being an associate at your brother’s place, a tiny place like that, to basically the principal at this huge place.

[00:12:22] Yeah, I mean, we need to pay for staff. Yeah.

[00:12:25] What about the practise manager? Is the practise manager an incumbent or is that someone Dental beauty of imposed?

[00:12:31] Yes. And she she came she joined with us, basically say, yes, she is. She we added her. But I have kind of to I guess I have I have an existing practise manager that was there before. And so all the staff

[00:12:44] Issues she deals with, as I write

[00:12:47] This, I mean, don’t go through hard times at times. Come through through. I think we do it all together. You know, I think it’s um I kind of had a meeting with everyone today even just to say that I want everything to be done together. This is not just me telling you guys how my vision is for this practise. You’ve been here for this long. You’ve been here for a long time. Me and Sophie, who’s the practise manager, have have just come in here. I want suggestions from you. I don’t just want problems. I want solutions to those problems. Are you going to give me a if you have a problem with something, I would like to know what your opinion is, how to sort it out. And I’ll give you my opinion on how to sort it out. And then we’ll get to some sort of middle ground that we both understand and then we can move forward from it. I think that’s how I’m trying to deal with it. And that’s how any staff issues or anything at the moment. I want to try and deal with as we as we go ahead. And these are things, you know, I’m learning these things that I’ve picked up that it doesn’t work for me just to tell you this is how it’s going to be done, because that’s not going to make you committed to making anything changes, is going to make you complain. It’s going to make you say, OK, but, you know, and then go away and then actually make a change, you know, and do things for the practise, for that for the benefit of the practise field.

[00:14:02] Old friend of mine known him since two years before he qualified than straight real expert, but particularly in in this area. So tell me this. But I mean, it’s got a lot of like I’ve I’ve only worked in my whole career and

[00:14:18] Not you know, I gave up dentistry, but but I worked only in three practises and each one taught me

[00:14:25] A bunch of stuff. And by the way, some some

[00:14:28] Stuff, you know, things not to do. But but if you had to

[00:14:32] Distil, you know, you’ve worked at these places where they’re like right at the top of the field, if you had to distil some nuggets

[00:14:41] On

[00:14:42] How to run a practise, I know you’ve always been on the associate side in these places,

[00:14:47] But what are what are the key things you’ve learnt about practise management, patient management, team management

[00:14:54] Products, whatever, whatever it is.

[00:14:57] I think well, if you take Andy for for an example, I was there, I think I was there two thousand and twelve. Two thousand and fifteen. And if you look at who is still working there in terms of staff, is everyone bar people who’ve retired? So I think the first thing is keep your staff happy. Because you screwed without them, really treat your stuff well and keep them happy. And I know I’ve I’ve there’s probably people listening to this and work with me thinking, what’s he talking about? I know I can be quite difficult. I know I’m difficult to work with. But I think in the last few years for sure, it sort of hammered home that definitely keep keep yourself happy

[00:15:52] While you difficult to work with. But what you have very high standards and someone does something wrong.

[00:15:57] I have very high standards for myself and very high standards, I suppose, for the people around me. But I think the big thing is I get very tunnel vision when I’m working. Nothing else. Nothing else exists. Just the just the teeth. And I think if you don’t know me, I can potentially think I’m just you might come across as quite I could come across you come across as quite stern or I get very focussed and I go very quiet. And a lot of our appointments are two, maybe three or four or five hours long. It’s like I supposed to be quiet, sort of intimidating sitting next to someone who doesn’t really speak for for that much time.

[00:16:40] How did you stop that spilling over into the patient

[00:16:43] Pool to me? I mean,

[00:16:45] You’ve got these high standards of bedside manners. Definitely part of that is that for sure.

[00:16:50] I mean, a lot of the time before these big, long appointments, I’ve spent a lot of time with these people, with these patients building up trust, building up sort of conversation by the nurses that I work with are very good. And they’ll they will. Talk to the Payman, obviously, I’m not going to be silent for that long, but there’ll be portions of time where I’m just sort of looking and I’ll put my hand out for something and. Most time,

[00:17:16] If that thing doesn’t doesn’t fall into your hands now, you’re really pissed off.

[00:17:20] I never I never I mean, on some of these gross things around. I’m not someone who shouts. I’m not. So does any of that. I just think it’s because I am silent that it comes across as quite like I’m angry. I’m never I don’t get angry with any surgery. I don’t get. I know a lot. I don’t know a lot. I know of dentistry through things are that’s not what they one that’s not me. I’m just I’m just quite a focussed person. And if you if it’s new to working with me, I suppose that can come across as either rude or indifferent, maybe. But certainly there’s no intention behind if I ever work with someone new, I always say to them when I work, I can get quite tunnel vision. Nothing’s ever personal. I get quite quiet. But it’s it’s it’s just the way I work.

[00:18:13] Tell me other stuff you’ve learnt from these prices.

[00:18:16] Okay, so treat your staff well restaff. Well, I don’t know if it’s what I’ve learnt from these products is something that I’ve often talked about from with newer qualified dentists is don’t make the patients problem your problem. And I think I think it takes a good few years to. Acknowledge that because you haven’t given the patient to say you have an. You have been sort of given them, Perio, you didn’t do the last bad Crohn, don’t internalise your patient’s problems, you’re there to help them. Don’t get stressed about January. I think it takes three or four years to get around that way of thinking. And that’s something that I think is very important in terms of from these practises, is it’s because it’s a difficult one to answer, because I don’t really. I don’t really know any different,

[00:19:17] But how about the differences between them, I mean, to some of them have morning Huddle’s and some of them don’t.

[00:19:22] Yeah, I’ve only worked in one practise. Is that a morning or two? And actually, that was that was very good. That was fifty two the morning Hodor. It was what we said yesterday. How did it get sorted? Hoover got in today. Do we have any VIPs? Do they need to do any special things? Have we got Lopper going out? Who’s dealing with the Laborde? Who’s going to the post office? That was very useful. And I know that taking 50 minutes out of the morning of your day with getting all of your staff together can be quite challenging. I was 52, I think the day the first patient was a half nine in the morning huddle. I think it was a nine until nine 15. So everyone was in even the dentist’s half an hour earlier. And it was that’s a weird way of as a self as a self-employed dentist having to be in half an hour before your work. It is a different way of thinking. But actually, so many problems were avoided from that morning. Hudl ice is worth its weight in gold, for sure.

[00:20:32] Hughes Houston powerhouse. Rob is from Liverpool. You see, since the interview with him, he’s promised into so many different areas with his avant garde stuff, the medy form stuff. One of my favourite interviews actually really worth listen to the whole thing. What gave you the foresight to, you know, go to dentistry? I mean, a lot of a lot of young kids would be good at sport and have that foresight to take care of what happens after. Yeah, the sport finishes. I mean, you know, getting footballers doing it well, dentist

[00:21:06] Dentistry for me was always a career kick. Boxing was never career a horrible

[00:21:10] Because it didn’t pay that.

[00:21:11] It didn’t you like like like I said earlier, I had had I’ve always had a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset and found ways to make money in income through kickboxing and through teaching seminars and making a nine volume DVD set that I sold relatively well. But it was never going to be a career for me. And what attracted me about dentistry was, you know, I was always good at sciences, at school biology, at the general interest in the medical fields. But dentistry, for me, again, it allowed me to to have a mindset and a vision that I knew that as soon as I qualified and knew the type of dentist I wanted to be and I wanted to get quickly into my own business with my own stamp on things as quickly as I possibly could.

[00:21:52] But just take me back to the first time you thought dentistry. Why dentistry? Was that someone, a dentist?

[00:21:58] It all started with school, like careers, conventions, as the. Do you go to these topics? We advise you to go for these. You go for a week’s sort of training on the chose a local dentist. The good relationship with my dentist, because he used to make me go shields for me sports. Oh, yeah. So I had a good relationship with him. It was it was it was a guy called Dr. Khan in in Liverpool. Oh, yeah. But at the time, he was he was the cosmetic dancers. The celebrity

[00:22:24] Celebrity guy. Right? Celebrity Dental. Yeah.

[00:22:27] So he was quite influential to me as a 15 year old boy.

[00:22:30] And he liked his Mercedes or whatever, of course. Is that what it was? Yeah. You know,

[00:22:36] I’ll never remember. I’ll never rimma. I’ll never forget. He said to me, what college I want to drive, Rob. And at the time, I think BMW was released the next five, and that was like the car for me. So I’d love to drive and next five. And he said to me, you want to be a cosmetic dentist, that you only said aim higher. You can have a Ferrari if you want for that. That’s never really been my my drive. And listen it listening to people in business and I have got a massive interest in business, how businesses grow and evolve. And I believe that if you provide the right level of service or nowadays experience, I think is the buzz word. That’s the big with what people want find value in in a brand. It’s about the experience. Then the pennings will come your way. If you focus on the money, then you focus in the wrong place and you’re going to start upsetting people along the way. That’s that’s the way the way I think.

[00:23:27] Just tell me, sir, how you first got into business. You mentioned earlier you were selling DVD courses and stuff like that. So naturally, you know, being an entrepreneur is in your blood or part a part of your DNA of who you are. Just talk us through your very first business idea and what your vision was and what you drive was behind the.

[00:23:48] Yeah, we’ve Dental Street. You know,

[00:23:50] Before the general the first of my first foray into business was cleaning my dad’s taxi and then his taxes and finding money under the max in the car and, you know, ripping the CS up and all the rest of it. And I can just almost relate to you. When you said when you were younger, you just started doing seminars and stuff. You know, our typical kickboxer would do.

[00:24:08] Is it I wouldn’t say it was typical, but there was. But there was a market for it. So, again, quite cleverly, just using a business mind like I know we used to travel a lot to compete. And when you compete, there’s thousands of people in that area for that tournament, usually on a Sunday. So I used to Soyland sort of let people know that I’ll be there on a Saturday, go daily and will teach us and we’ll teach a seminar. So the numbers weren’t difficult to find people going there anyway. And and then obviously you have a centralised place with these people from all over the country coming to one place. I was a relatively big name in the sports at the time. You know, you could get 100 hundred people in the room. Twenty five pound the pop of his walked away with two and a half grand and 14 years old. So it was it was it was it was just that was probably the first sort of business idea. And this was before the Internet was was big. You know, I remember advertising on MySpace for this. So that’s how long ago it was. And then on the back end of the the DVD series come to mind. So we’ve recorded for like four days flat out, and we call it nine volumes, which is basically that was basically the whole syllabus of techniques that we teach are my dojo and tips and tricks from, you know, for competition and all and Buffalo as well. So then we used to sort of like set up like a little mini stall at the tournament’s and sell the DVDs, some sunshine.

[00:25:27] Great friend again known him since before he qualified. We make your name in digital industry and particularly minimally invasive cosmetic dentistry. It just seems for Simon, whatever he puts his mind to him, he does it 110 percent. Let’s talk about that. I mean, the criticism, I guess, is that Instagram is promoting a kind of dentistry that’s perhaps a patient. And a lot of these youngsters, in inverted commas, are, you know, upstarts and. Yeah, and I don’t agree with it. I think that, you know, every situation has good and bad in it. Yeah. But what’s your what’s your what’s your feeling on it? Because, you know, I’m not out there. I’m not posting everyday. I’m not building a personal brand. So a lot of times when people are talking about these things, you might think they’re talking about me.

[00:26:15] Yeah, well, that’s always what I think. And any time I see insta dentist or anyone slating dentists who pose cases on Instagram, on on on Facebook, I assume they’re talking about me. And actually, when they tend to follow, I’ve had we’ve had some incidences in the past of people writing lists, Ashleigh, of dentists who should follow to, in essence, troll, I think. Wow. And I was one of the people that was followed by that specific account. But anyway, I think my my feeling on it is that, as you say, like with anything, there’s always practitioners who are going to be doing things correctly and doing things incorrectly. There’s obviously cowboys in every profession. I don’t think there’s any more cowboys on Instagram than there are on Facebook or on in just the general public. But for me, Instagram is just a way that I communicate with my generation. It’s as simple as that, that everyone who is 20 to 40 is on Instagram, whether they be a dentist or a patient. And so that’s where I hang out. And that’s for me, has been incredibly instrumental in me building my business, in finding patients who are also the sort of work that I provide, which is minimally invasive aesthetic dentistry. Normally things like AB as as Tife told me when I was an undergrad and I’m Beachum Bond, many small makeovers stuff. And that’s just it just is what it is. I think the reason why some people have an issue with it is that there are certain individuals who are doing the same treatment on every patient or that’s what they’re posting. They may not be, but that’s how it comes across. And anyone who’s doing the same treatment on everyone must therefore be incorrectly prescribing that treatment. If they were doing what everyone, which they probably aren’t as it is the cases that they’re posting. But if they were then not was not, then she’s not one size fits all. You can’t do the same treatment on everyone.

[00:28:06] Well, or there were specialists. I don’t mean the actual meaning of the words, but yeah, that’s that’s the kind of work they do.

[00:28:12] Yeah, exactly. But if that was to be the case, then they would they would have to they would they could only do that procedure on cases that were suitable. And I think that’s the concern from some people. I don’t know. It’s a weird environment. I think the most important thing for me is that the profession just needs to sort itself out with regard to the negativity, because you can’t judge someone on a case they put up as to that’s what they do for everything or that’s who they are as a person. You don’t know the ins and outs of the situation. And I think everyone is just so keen to slate each other. And that’s why we’re so weak as a body against things like NHS dentistry and that sort of thing, which has the potential to be such a positive for the general public, and that we’ve allowed the government to just cut, cut, cut the the budget to do that. And now it’s in such a state of disrepair that it’s very difficult to work in.

[00:29:07] So what we need to be more united.

[00:29:10] Absolutely. But there’s so much negativity. I mean, it’s horrible the way in which individuals Dental specifically I see speak to each other on the main Dental forums on Facebook. It’s just horrible. I mean, I’ve just stopped watching them altogether because it’s just atrocious the way that people treat each other. I don’t I don’t it’s so funny. I mean, we have a WhatsApp group with some some of my dentist mates. And you can actually see when when the trolls have broken up for Christmas, because you could do all those forums where they would just slating other dentists, Instagram, Dental, his young dentists, whatever. Whoever you take your fancy Snapchat dentists, I don’t know who the next one is going to be, but it was as soon as they broke up for Christmas. They obviously don’t have anything else to do it. And they just started just keyboard warriors going ahead and pulling that negativity out on social media. So I don’t see what point is, to be honest.

[00:30:00] Seinabo Mukataa, one of our earlier guests, beautiful comments at work. We talk about the devoted herself to be becoming patient centric within minimally invasive dentistry. What about talking about your composite work? Because in the end, just right now, you are here because of the fact that you’ve come up on our on our radar on the many small Makov radar of really beautiful composite bow. Thank you. It really is. Do you feel like that can be taught? Do you feel like there’s a there’s a. Talent there?

[00:30:32] Yeah, I’m sure

[00:30:33] We can grapple with this a lot. You know, we teach 30 dentists a month on this subject. And some people are scared that I don’t have the talent. And we’re always saying if you follow the simple steps, you can get there. But what was your journey from the composite perspective?

[00:30:49] I’ve always had a background where my mom draws paintings and she’s encourage us. And, you know, and art was always something we just found really fascinating. And we’d love drawing. And we were quite particular

[00:30:59] About some of your first Instagram posts. Yeah.

[00:31:02] Yeah, I saw that. So we I’m quite particular about how things are done in my hands. You know, they need to be a certain way. So, you know, when it came to composite, I think that it was literally just practise, practise, practise. And then I’d look at pictures, look at what’s this beautiful smile, what’s desirable. I look to eye shadow the dentist in Beverly Hills, Dorfmann, Dr. Dorfman. And, you know, he had photo, he had wall pictures like you’ve got smiles here. He had lots of these. And I look and just really absorb what was a beautiful smile and then just try and recreate it. And I had a slightly, you could say, OCD approach towards a composite. So if I was doing it, too, I wouldn’t let the patient leave until I was really happy with this that set them up. Have a look. Check with the lobes. Check with everything. Sorry. Can I just sit you back down? Can I just push that bit? And and that was kind of how I was doing. And then and then rewarding feeling of their reaction. And it’s addictive when patients are that happy, you know, about something.

[00:32:08] Andrew Wallace, one of the teachers from the IRS Academy, talking about his practise in Northern Ireland and teaching

[00:32:17] Evolved the practise of 16 years or you worked there for a bit?

[00:32:20] No, I bought it, I think, and I bought it all moved on scene, so I didn’t really know what I was buying. How does that happen? It was kind of there was no real due diligence done then in terms of buying a practise. You got to see the books. You put call in once or twice to meet the staff and a couple of patients. And then you go, you know, there wasn’t a great deal of choice, private practise. And then more than a dozen these were kind of few and far between. Most practises were NHS. You know, they’ve been talking about changing the NHS system in Northern Ireland for like 20 years. And I saw, you know, six years ago that, you know, I don’t want somebody else having such control over what I do. Yeah. You know, I don’t want to be in a system where the NHS can decide to change what they want to do and not be locked in, because I’ve spent a fortune on an NHS practise.

[00:33:08] What was the one thing about practise ownership that you were totally unprepared for? It sounds like you just thought, you know what? Sounds like a good idea. I want to do this. Open-ended still just by a practise. But those books look good, but they get stuck in.

[00:33:20] That was that was pretty much the thought process. What was definitely managing people. Yeah, that’s the hardest thing. Managing staff, trying to see things from their point of view can be challenging. We’ve we’ve had some brilliant members of staff in the past. We have a great team right now. We’ve been through some challenges with the team in the past, like every team does. Sure. But is there still the other partner in place as well? So he retired 10 years ago. So it’s just you and Fiona now. So I’ve thought since had another partner. Oh, a different guy. He he he did an amazing thing last year. He emigrated to Australia. Oh, so you very Celler, you talk about big changes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he did after Vht. He worked in Australia for a year with his wife. And they’ve been out there on holidays many times and they decide they want to give it a try. So the way the visa thing works in Australia, if he hadn’t done it last year, wasn’t going to happen. So this practise, Salz, Heiss Afterwork Associates and an Australia team, another chaperone. So they’ve been a bit of a transition in the last six months for killing. Seems to be coming on Covid.

[00:34:29] And was that like a due diligence process, did you that this guy before he bought in or.

[00:34:33] Actually, yeah. Craig, my partner, just went to Australia. He was very, very open about the whole thing. And yeah, well, essentially him and I sat down. He didn’t advertise the practise. He spoke to his accountant. And we are pleased with the same outcome. And he said, well, I know this chap seems like a nice guy wants about practise. I happened to mention to another young dentist, good message me about sort of what sort of private practises were were looking for associates that at that stage between us, we kind of decided who would have been the best fit for the practise, I think. So he was obviously brilliant with the whole thing.

[00:35:08] And what were you given first refusal to do across your mind? Yeah, I think

[00:35:11] Fusel, but I quite I, I must have met Craig that a lot of the running of the practise. Ok, particularly with me travelling a lot. And I work in a referral practise one day a week as well. So my focus isn’t always on 100 percent on the practise. So you need some. I do. I do. Somebody somebody there was a vested interest wants to see the what is your role in the practise that you have other ideas, guy or something, or the other day, or you do the hiring and firing or what do you do? I try and just do the straight people make me do other things. Yeah. Essentially, I don’t particularly enjoy the I definitely do enjoy hiring and firing and certainly the firing. Thankfully, I haven’t got to do very much of that. The running of the practise I find challenging because I really enjoy them straight down the barrel of the the tactical challenge of it. I don’t really enjoy running a business doing the books. I’m the same

[00:36:15] And so firin talk me through

[00:36:18] Is not even about how to do it. Now we have to do is just the once etwas. I’m well, I’m not going to say a lot about it, but it was a very, very challenging time for the entire team. Ultimately, it had to be done and the team came out of it much better as a result. But it was a very, very challenging time.

[00:36:39] I find it the hardest thing to do is the hardest part of my job is firing some modelling.

[00:36:44] We had that notion, you know, I really believe in this. Now, if you’re going to fire someone and give them four months pay. Yeah. Because if you know, to make to to sweeten the pill. Yeah. But the reason is because if you don’t, what you do is performance you. They should have been fired four months ago. But you stretch it out, you know what I mean? You going to Payman performance anyway? Oh, no, no. One of the Dental gurus calls that a well poisoner. Oh, is that right? If you have them there, you’re better off just to just get them out, get them out. But what I’m saying is just to make it easier for yourself, give them a load of hay, because I’ve been through this situation where we haven’t fired that person. Right. And just stretched it out, stretched, you know, how long would this prolonging the pain with this particular person? How long extra was she there that she should have been out, you know? So there was there was a degree of challenge and difficulty going on with this particular person. But there was one particular incident which brought everything to a head. And we had to involve a huge consultant. And, you know, the first decision that they made was, OK, she can’t be in the premises. So I had to, you know, walk in and say, OK, you’re leaving now. And I went through the whole dismissal process and impartial.

[00:38:00] So you had to deliver the news, right? Yeah. When did you find out that you were going to deliver the news from all the time delay between you saying, I’ve got to do this job and doing the job?

[00:38:12] It was within 24 hours. Ok, did

[00:38:14] You have the conversation a few times with yourself in your head?

[00:38:17] It was a fairly abrupt conversation, was it? And kind of had to be because of because of the

[00:38:22] Because of the situation. Yeah.

[00:38:23] And this was one of the times when I couldn’t lean Craig because he was actually off in Australia on holiday. So it was one of the few times that was kind of left flank, sort of. Well, you know, there was a lot of matches and emails and phone calls and things, but was done to me to deliver the bad news. And it’s definitely not a thing I’d like to repeat. But, you know, sometimes that’s life to somebody that’s not

[00:38:49] Payman performance pay for anyone you’re going to fire. They’re not going to lie. And they listen to this podcast.

[00:38:56] I’ve never done it. But what I’m saying, the idea I’ve certainly had people stick around for four months longer than they should because we didn’t get round because making excuses, la la la la, la, la. You know, we’ve we’ve had some great team members and we found some not so great team members. I’ve never been one to try and change somebody’s mind if they decide they’re going to leave some of the best. Yeah, well, not hope to do well. And oftentimes, if somebody is not flourishing in your business, it often takes a change of situation for them and they they’ll flourish somewhere else. So it’s I try not to I will try and convince somebody to stay if they’ve made up their mind to go, I suppose. And you did an interesting one medical doctor, the one he focussed in on, you know, facial aesthetics, young guy who’s already gone a long way in that in that field, going for the dentist as well, to open a practise either as a boy or something. You’ve never been a boss. I guess you’ve had people about

[00:39:58] To manage people. Yeah, but never been a true

[00:40:00] About what kind of boss do you think you’re going to be? I do.

[00:40:03] No, I’m actually really looking forward to that. I think I’ll be fair. I want to be fair. I want to be inspiring. And I want people I want to help people achieve their goals in work and outside of work. You know, one of the nicest things I’ve heard within my industry is a clinic owner. Whoever comes in for whoever she takes on, one of the first things she asks is what is you would like to achieve outside of work? Came in and said, you know, I want to buy my own. She goes, okay, we’re going to work towards that, you know, get help. And she did she helped to achieve a dream by helping us structure things financially. That’s the kind of direction I want to go in

[00:40:39] Fernholz

[00:40:40] When it’s needed. Yeah, I think come back to that patient experience if there’s any compromise on the quality of delivery of anything to the clinic. I think that’s what would be fun.

[00:40:51] About this being Prav, we talked about the differences between the way he runs his people and the way I run my people. Sure. And, you know, I think actually when I really come down to it, I’m probably better employee than I am as a boss. I agree as as an employee

[00:41:07] Stepping into a community

[00:41:08] To say I simply know it’s just kind of having someone to report to. Yeah. By the way, I love being, you know, my own boss, but not having someone to report to the external, you know, someone checking up on me is actually good for me. Yeah. And I’m very close with my team. But at the same time, when you’re very close with the team is hard to tell them off. Yeah, of course. And we were talking about hiring and firing. Very difficult thing. But it’s interesting because it’s very different working with people when you’re all working for someone else. Yeah. And you think you’re great. You know, even though it might be your nurse or your at the same time, you’re not the boss. Yeah. And actually being their boss.

[00:41:49] Yeah, I can totally see that. No, it’s stepping into new water for me. I’m fully aware how I like to think about it in my head is, you know, I do want to be a bit like, you know, friendly, you know, uninspiring form, you know, my employees. I think the one thing the one thing

[00:42:11] I want to be is

[00:42:14] Like I just have to laugh, though, when you said this is so inspiring.

[00:42:20] I came here from Manchester this morning. I was at Payman office before he was. He lives three minutes away.

[00:42:26] Yeah, but I went to bed before you woke up. I just woke

[00:42:31] Vinicio the tennis table. That’s great stuff that the employees. Right. But yeah, I guess, you know, like you both got your own business. I think I see this fledgling business is like another child. I think when anyone messes with that, I think that. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Bug hell out of me and I’ll protect that little child as much as I can.

[00:42:50] But you know how sometimes your kid does something silly and you and you start making excuses for your kid?

[00:42:55] Well, see, I don’t do that well.

[00:42:57] Oh, it’s a friend or, you know, some some. You end up making excuses for your business as well. Yeah, it’s true. I catch myself doing it all the time. Yeah. Well, if you got a longer term plan than this one clinic, you’re thinking lots of them might. Yeah, well, you know.

[00:43:11] No, no. That’s the ambition. I’d love to. Yeah, I’d love to. You know, if the brand works, if the patient journey works, yeah. I’d love to take this to other sites 100 percent. That would be the dream. But I want to make first one work.

[00:43:25] That thing from all these barsh. Good friend of mine for years and years. Real trail blazer when they open that practise, funny, brandied loads of Invisalign, you know, I still think they did huge line open days. Yeah. So what was the first thing you did marketing wise to get some first few patients to do so? I think we did. We were looking at I think we looked at radio ads as a great way to look at trying to bring people in at the at the get go. Yeah. From the get go. So, yeah, it was a mentor. I mean, you have interest. We had interesting conversation with various different people. And actually. No, sorry, let me liar. I did we didn’t do radio at the beginning. We did that a little bit later. And what we did do is we just did some simple stuff, which was just basic, a little bit of brand awareness around where we were. Do we just had a few posters lined up. We decided to do some stuff with the train stations and things like that around it as well. And that’s. Yeah, flipflops. Yeah. If you apers we did a little bit of newspapers, not as much as we hoped we would, but then I think when we did our first Invisalign open day back in January 2009, that’s what we use when we use railyards for the first time. And that was that was what really kicked us off after that. We’d opened in November 2008 and we had a. It’s been a bit of a soft opening for two or three months leading up to that. But then after that January, it’s just kind of been we just went pretty much for.

[00:44:43] On which station was it? Station called Radio City. The one with the tower. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what was it? It was it was it just like as you would expect anything was. No, it was just when we when we did it, it was like a very specific advert for Invisalign Open Day that we were going to do business in a certain price and it was going to be on this day at this time, they wanted to come in and they had to sort of they had to call up and make an appointment to come and see us on that day. But you still do radio advertising went on sporadically, sporadically. I think that, you know, there’s better ways to look at trying to spend that kind of. How does it cost to advertise on the radio in Liverpool? To be honest. And cost as much or as little as you want. All right. It’s like if you had a budget for five in a month, you can get out of for five in Panama. You want to spend a million Kutiman. They they give you this as well to that as well. So, you know, it comes down to sort of it comes it just comes down to sort of how much you really want to look at trying to spend. It’s great for creating awareness. You know, we because we’ve been doing it for so long, you know, people do kind of recognise us on the radio. We have got a jingle. Yes. Don’t sing it. No, no. I’m on Invalidly. Happening, what’s your tagline, what’s your tagline? One smile at a time where individual smiles must deliver.

[00:45:58] So we just rewind a little bit. The name Ollie and Dash. I only she found out about this, but 10 years later, where it

[00:46:04] Came off the minimalist humanity.

[00:46:06] Yeah, I think it was then. So I’m sure a lot of our listeners are in the same position as me. Would you just like to enlighten us? Yeah. Straighteners? Yeah.

[00:46:15] Is there a tag line to follow? No. No. Okay. Well, Nowata. So the name only Joshua. Does that come about? So my real name is Harambee. Very few people can really say properly first time around and it’s easy to get this question. Sorry. Say that again. So what happened was, is that when I first when I was first born, my sister can say my full name properly. And I stood by my sisters to this day for this. But so she read of a choice at the time, and she started calling me all of them. So for my entire family, all I heard him call me Ollie. And it’s just it’s just that’s the name, that state. When I went to the school in Saudi, my name was Oliver saying it was just basically that’s what it is, is like my yearbooks all have all of us together, but it’s quite something. But then when I when we moved when we moved back to England, I was like, you know, all of this thing does have a reinterred. Yeah, you’d be surprised. Right. But, you know, it’s when we moved back to when we moved back from Seattle and moved into you moved back to Yorkshire, you know, it was made aware to us, as I maybe should start using a real name now and then. So I use my real name. And then that eventually just got shortened down year after year, down to like three letters does.

[00:47:15] So I went through sort of school and uni be known as dyes, and that was fine. I had no problems with that. But we we’re coming up with names at the clinic, Sudar. She’s my business partner. Naturally, her nickname is Dosch and Incense. Yeah. So that made sense. How did you meet us? Again, we used to work in the same clinic together. She was OK. Yeah, she was she was working in another clinic at the time, and it just came to a head where we just felt that we just need to do our own thing. And it just you know, we we have a great business relationship and it works really, really well. We’re business partners first and then a friend seconds, which I think works quite well for both of us, to be honest. You must be nice before she does exist, right? Yeah, she does. She’s there on our website. Sorry. The size of those. Yeah. No, it’s it’s quite it is quite interesting. I get called Ohly and there’s some sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing that I have seen. You’re the Colonel Sanders of the brand somehow. And listen, I’m the sons of Enlightened. I’m astonished does more than I do in light of the Prav Prav world will attest to that.

[00:48:14] You say more table tennis. Yeah.

[00:48:16] Somehow I didn’t do it on purpose. No. Did you say? No, it’s definitely it’s definitely you know, it’s you know, we both have different lives. You know, it’s she’s she’s got a lovely husband. She’s got two at the time. When we first opened up, she had two really young boys. Karen, her youngest had I think was probably less than a year old, I think, when we opened up. So her time I mean, her time, she wanted to maximise between a family and the clinic. So she had no time for any other opportunities are all in. Dyche may have looked to try and afford. And so basically, I was just you know, it was just me. I didn’t I don’t have any sort of dependents. I don’t have any family. And it was just basically, you know, whenever one of these things kind of came about, when an opportunity came about, I’m like, yes, I’ll just say yes. And we’ll work out how to do it later, which is kind of when it’s happening. And the mother of the Susie Susie takes care of the staff. Yeah. Issues. She takes care of a lot of the patient contacts as well. Are you involved with the staff matters that she was literally handle that? You know, one of the things that one of the challenges that we’ve had as a business, as we’ve grown, is that we’ve grown from an idea into an actual business. And, you know, the process of being a business business is that you need to be able to look at delegating things in and amongst yourselves. And Elaine Meaux, I really enjoyed this conversation in in talking about Haitian’s experience and what she learnt from the restaurant business,

[00:49:36] What you think and working in the restaurant taught you about dentistry and working with patients. While the parallels there in terms of when you were 14, you were there? I was brought up in a typical cornershop environment. I was serving customers from the age of 10 and 12. I was telling people they were too young to buy cigarettes and alcohol. Yet despite being 11 years old myself, and that taught me a lot about communicating with people of different backgrounds, ages and everything and to become a good communicator. Can you draw some parallels from what you learnt growing up in the restaurant business industry, family business, and how that’s helped you to become a bad thing

[00:50:16] Is definitely mould that it’s not particular as a dentist, but as a person in general. It’s all about service at the restaurant is the same as a patient journey. And at the end of the day, you want are making customers feel special just as you make your patients feel special. I mean, for me, if I go into a restaurant, they can have the most amazing food, like just like a dentist can have the do the most amazing feeling. But at the end of day, it’s a feeling the food’s food. And actually what MOZA is the experience itself. If you’ve had a bad experience coming in, people and your waitress isn’t addressing you. And not not there to serve you, then automatically you’re a negative, and it doesn’t matter how good the food is that you serve. Always the customer service ranking. And you know what? The other day for my patients is we there are a lot of dentists out there who we even though we’re at the same level, we can provide the same filling. But what makes it different is asking the patient how they are their family, making them feel at home and actually being a being a person rather than your dentist and being someone that you can

[00:51:20] Actually if you want one big differences within a restaurant. You can see the food, taste the food. Often the patient has no idea what’s going on in their own mouth. So the communication service side of it is even more important than it is, because, you know, my personal bugbear is when you go to a restaurant, beautiful décor, excellent service, average food, that really, really pisses me off. I draw that was good food and terrible service, to tell you the truth, if I had to choose between those two. But in dentistry, the people who got no idea whatsoever what’s going to be really going on in them, they

[00:51:50] Really don’t know. And I think this is why photography and people say, oh, take photos for, you know, protect yourself against them if you can’t see them. But actually know the most important thing is for me is patient education and seeing, because for me, it’s kind of if you take different pictures of difference that show them exactly what you’re doing. Actually, even if you’re not, it’s not the proudest thing you’ve done. You’re willing to show the patient which to them means. Oh, wow. She must be. If she’s taking pictures, then it must be going to show people. Yeah. Which means that it must be at a certain level. Yeah. And there’s nothing to hide. And patients just I mean, they don’t know what they’re looking at, but they pretend they do. When you show them, what’s the point?

[00:52:30] So what’s your philosophy like? If I was to come for a consultation with you? I think I’ve sat in probably a hundred plus consultations with dentists, just observing, advising and all the rest of it. Everyone’s different. So if I was to come in and have a consultation with you, what would that experience be? If you can talk me through just from start to get a

[00:52:49] Whole half day lecture on this if you want.

[00:52:52] Yeah.

[00:52:53] So and while I worked on patient experience quite a bit, and I developed a protocol over kind of twenty four months of trying to kind of work what works in my hands and being systematic and doing the same thing over four different patients that time with them and went in my latest practise. One of my principal sat me down and was like, do you want to do it, Half-Day and my course? Because actually we can teach the clinical side, but we need people to actually take up that treatment. So what I think nowadays people are is the communication and the soft skill side, because we can do courses on every single clinical part. But what’s the point if you can’t get that procedure in your chair? And so for me, my focus is not on actually educating the patient so that they understand what we are looking for. I can tell you, you need a feeling. I can tell you you need a client, but why is it important to you? And I think it’s important for the patient to realise why we’re doing it rather than what they need to be done.

[00:53:55] Gina Baker, one of one of my favourite people, Invisalign Diamond, Super, plus whatever they call that. And it’s just a really good approach to to managing patient experience through that sort of Abebe approach

[00:54:11] To take Geneina, take me through your Invisalign process. I know for lots of dentists I speak to, they do it in so many different ways from, you know, that patient having a video consultation, seeing a treatment coordinator, having a scan, then seeing the dentist, and then things like dental monitoring, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the in thing at the moment is, you know, how many Invisalign cases do you do a year and trying to trying to match that up. Right. You see that all over social when everyone has their own sort of approach to it. What’s the typical patient journey for you if a if a patient wants Invisalign?

[00:54:48] How do you find the patient in the first place, you know, to start with that?

[00:54:52] Well, we are very fortunate that we have a very good reputation in the area. So there is a lot of what a mouth. So they can referred by friends or family or I do pay for the Google advertising. And the moment we just about to launch a Facebook campaign as well. Well, yes, I Google a lot of the patients find us through Google. And then what happened? The option to have a video consultation or they have the option to go Face-To-Face. At the moment, we are seeing the video consultations numbers go down with more people that have been to going for a Face-To-Face consultation or something. That is very, very interesting because our website is very clear on how much money we charge. What is expertise might. The cases I have flown, the majority of the patients I’ve come to most 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 I have a special day that is only for consultations. No other treatment can be booked in that in that same day.

[00:56:16] 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 me to get to know them. So I will say hello. Explain the procedure. And then I leave the room on my feet and coordinate Savi’s mind that she will then get on to take photos, take a scan, and then answer any questions of the patient has. Then I come in and basically close the deal. And then after that, my if they don’t approve of that ahead with a treatment. They basically go through a mindfreak lymphoid. And she will do follow ups and emails and calls, you know, the normal thing. Well, one thing that is really, really good is that actually my is uncoordinated. So she she takes pride on her numbers, you know, and every month she goes, Jeena, we have done that. So these numbers or that numbers. So she’s also a very enthusiastic part of the process. So so that that helps quite a lot.

[00:57:24] Generally, we do ask very, very similar, actually. We have these what are almost called like pilot, co-pilot consultations, easiest way or post consultation consultations will be done since the nurse handover to nurse nurse takes over. So every nurse is like a mini teco, right. Rather than there being just a specific teco. So each nurse has the ability to be able to graduate. Like you said before, they’re 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? Are you seeing another patient with another nurse or

[00:58:04] Are you guys considering this? No, I don’t really have the availability to do that because we’re fully involved. No, I get on and do my notes or work on my eggs. Oh, yes, definitely. I utilise that time to get on with things.

[00:58:24] Yeah. So, Gina, when you say close the deal. I, I know what you mean by that, but but how do you differentiate yourself from the next Invisalign user?

[00:58:35] Because for me, the

[00:58:37] 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, you know, 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? That thing? Is that the quality? Like how do you think of it?

[00:59:08] For us, it’s like quality. You know, I have patients call me and say, or are you going to keep me whitening with it? And I said, no, I give you a discount. Why do we give them 20 percent discount on whitening? And I said, what? We don’t need to give you any extra because we know the quality of service. We will provide you funny. As simple as that.

[00:59:31] People thinking Invisalign is Invisalign. It doesn’t matter that we know me and you

[00:59:35] Know, right? Yes. I mean, you know,

[00:59:38] The dentist makes a massive difference, right? The plan makes a difference. Everything makes sense. But you must get patients coming in and saying, well, it’s Invisalign. You know, it’s like,

[00:59:48] Oh, yes, of course. They come and said, oh, well, you only have to press that button and send it to. And I know right now it’s an hour and a half months, and I Prav Payman. 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 those. They have already seen our reviews. They have read. We don’t need to sell them anything at that point. That’s why I feel so fortunate that we have done all this job work beforehand. You know, that is I’ve been I’m going to be there. We love doing this alone, probably since 2000, the four of six years. Well, we’re very fortunate in that like that.

[01:00:45] Jason Smith and I had the privilege of knowing Jason since its very early days in teaching and such a pleasure to see him popping up all over the world on the latest lecture circuits, just this. So one of the loveliest things about my book is seeing people grow. And Jason particularly is granted one of the most famous names in the industry.

[01:01:09] I tell you what, I did this and I always say this to people I meant to. I’ve come to the conclusion right there for somebody in dentistry, and this is only for dentistry. This is probably one of my most profound thoughts. And if you want to be successful in dentistry, you have two main things, and that’s your self, your own mental and spiritual and health, well-being and your own interests and hobbies, which is on equal par with that of your family. Staying married, which is important. One of the most important things. And and giving your kids a significant part of your life and good mentorship, bringing up your kids properly as it used to be called. All right. So those two main things and then you have the little add ons, which may be a lecture career in dentistry, may maybe a practise. Right, but not both, but not both. You can’t shoot well. You can choose. There are four. You can have three.

[01:02:18] Right.

[01:02:19] So choose three out of a four. Now, I’m not saying which is right. Which is wrong is not for me to decide. Some people have chosen then to have a really strong practise, a really, really strong electoral career. And unfortunately, they for me, with my life view, they’re either no longer married to their wives or they haven’t spent a lot of time on themsel, you know, and they’re ill or they can only go out for dinner with American Idol. But industry, in a way, is sad as well to me, but it doesn’t make it wrong. I chose to have a lecture career and spent time with my kids and family and to spend a little bit on myself, because I do have my own hobbies and not have a practise. So that’s basically the highest honour. But I think people who try to do all four might be disappointed because I’ve never yet met one person who has had or for truthfully they might tell you they’ve had or for an on the lecture circuit on the stage, you might see a big even a video or or a big present. Patient about that person having all four, but it’s not true, it’s not authentic. I’ve never met anybody who’s had all four. It certainly isn’t me. If I’m very honest, I probably only have two. And I do neglect myself a bit. I spend a lot of time of my family, a lot of time of my career. And in a way, I neglected myself. You were Prav, probably a little bit inspirational with your weight loss and fitness thing recently. And actually, I well, I’ve been following that. And actually, that’s kind of inspired me a little bit. And I think. You know what? Well, yeah, I think you know what? I’m getting to nearly 50 now. I maybe should think about doing some pull ups because I don’t think I could do one. But yeah, so maybe I only got two out of four Crawfordville.

[01:04:15] Good friend of mine, Lisy, a big proponent of what he calls the ABC concept Love Teeth. I think that’s going to be many more of those. So go ahead with that. Thinking that you were thinking about buying a practise, what were you?

[01:04:30] Yeah. So I want this topic close because I’m always been a family guy. I’ve been away for so long. I just wanted to be at home. I wanted to be back home. So I didn’t want a clinic far away. I looked for a clinic close by, but something that can grow in and being a local boy in the area. I for four years, I knew what people were wanting, but being an associate, I couldn’t change my principal in such a way. I changed him in many ways. And, you know, we still are very good friends. But I couldn’t because he was the content. It was content with what he had. It was happy and, you know, have a great family, a nice home. He was happy, go lucky, whereas I was I’ve always been a bit more of an ambitious guy. And so a clinic came up for sale close by, and it was on the same road as his clinic where I was an associate. So I had that difficult conversation. When I spoke, John said, look, there’s a clinic that’s come available. I managed to find my cousin off from buying it and they did not buy it. True. Yeah. Hundred percent. I went for the viewing and as I was leaving. Now, as me and my mum arrived, my cousin was leaving that viewing of the. And so he was nice enough to let me have the clinic and yes. So long on her because there’s just look is down the road.

[01:05:58] I would love love to buy it. Can I? How do you feel if you said, no, I wasn’t going to buy it. And he goes, me love canal. If you don’t buy, someone else will. So if this is what you want, go for it, because I would love if it wasn’t you, that boy, because I know your vision. I know what you’re capable of, because I was his biggest growth and I was working part time. My not not saying once my cousin did find out, I was making a lot of money for doing that. He did offer me a job and I did take it. So I was working part time at one of his clinics at the same time. And then what do you say you learnt from your cousin? Yeah. So the clinic I was working out for him. I was more or less running for him because, you know, have many clinics that manages I let business alone in. I used to run a clinic which was a mine, right? Yeah. Yeah. I saw the difficulties of management staffing. You know, I was there and because I had invested because it was my cousin’s clinic, if something went wrong, I was treated like my own right. Yeah. You know, it was the best experience I could receive. So I had one guy who was like a mentor to me, taught me everything that I didn’t get from university. And, you know, how NHS worked.

[01:07:17] It was he had no idea. But what was different for me is what I found as I go when I got to know more dentists in the UK is that is UK had more of a fear of dentistry, which was drilled into them possibly from university. I didn’t know. We went talk there. So we when people say to me now, you know, how are you doing root canals in a week? You know, my first year I did X number of crown prince. I just didn’t have any fear in me at the time. Maybe I was, you know, so stupid of me or whatever about that word. Nothing came of it. And one of the teachings I do and I have young dentists and other colleagues come to speak to me, speak to you to speak to your old self. Yeah. You know, I say, look, guys, just have confidence. Don’t be worried. So much know is one is the worst thing I’m seeing in dentistry is the confidence, isn’t there? And that’s what I’m really feel is if all the questions I get from dentists. They’re second guessing themselves, and my hunch is, yes, that’s right, what you’re thinking is right, go ahead of you go. And he said, because I feel as if we could have achieved so much in UK is that as Dental America, you know, we say is five years ahead. But I think our confidence has held us back here

[01:08:36] In the greenwall in that we literally wrote the book on teeth whitening that she doesn’t need any any present day for me. Linda really has been on the most influential people in our industry and still there, you know, for the 20 years that I’ve been in this industry. Linda still right at the top of that industry until you say two dentists who say, you know, whitening isn’t rocket science and it’s not a subject that anyone should, you know, choose to focus on because it’s not real dentistry. I mean, I know what my response is to this with what’s what’s yours?

[01:09:11] So the first thing that the biggest issue I have when I teach dentists is they’ve never bothered to learn about the science of they never bothered to learn about the science of widening the evidence of research or whatever. They do not know whitening. They make it up as they go along. They make random facts and new associate will join the practise. The principal hasn’t learnt whitening. They give them fake news. They say, well, this is what’s done and nobody’s the wiser. And then whitening programmes are not successful because they’re just making it up with random nonsense. But there is a lot of as we know, there’s scientific evidence and there’s certain protocols that need to be followed. So if the dentists take the time to learn it properly themselves, they can be a better teachers for their associates. And the hygiene isn’t everything else. And the biggest problem is that just making it up as they go along.

[01:10:04] So it’s more than just taken an impression and whacking some gel in there and telling the patient to go home, because I speak to a lot of dentists about different whitening products, just mainly from a marketing perspective. Right. And it’s the same attitude that Payman has just said there is that they don’t differentiate between products apart from price. And they say, oh, well, this does the same as that, just the same is that all you’re doing is sticking bleach in there, selling them home, and it’ll do the job. And their results tend to be variables to get some cases that were really well. Some cases my personal experience from whitening, using Payman stuff. And it’s a good free because it’s free. Yeah. Yeah, there is there is that. But only need to wear my tray for a couple of nights and they glow. Yeah. And that’s as far as I need to go, even though the instructions say, you know, 40 nights or whatever.

[01:10:57] The funny thing with in our industry, the weird thing about it is everything’s nailed by percentage. Yeah. And a lot of people like to think they know what’s going on. And so they think, well, sixteen’s that’s like Nurofen. Two hundred milligrams, the same as ibuprofen 200. But you know, the whitening situation is so flexible because you’ve got a physical situation with a tray and then you’ve got a chemical situation with the chemical

[01:11:20] And you had a patient with anatomy and

[01:11:21] You’ve got a patient with a battery teeth or trauma and bruxism. And, you know, the difference in the physical things are going to happen there. And and a volatile liquid. The whole point about it is it breaks down. And so it’s very, very different to, you know, even a composite restoration is much more understandable than lightning. But for me, when someone says it’s not rocket science and all of that stuff, generally that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But but secondly, we know humans know not just us. Humans know the colour of teeth is the number one concern of our patients. Absolutely. By far, it’s way bigger than orthodontics care is buried. That’s what they care about the most. Absolutely. And often you see, you know, these full examinations that the practises, you know, the salad market or our examinations an hour and a half, two pages on the Internet about what’s covered or we look at the TMJ lymph nodes or manifestation. All of this is good stuff. And yet Shade’s not mentioned in any of them. So the primary concern of our patients isn’t culturally in our examination, and it needs to be. And so lightnings be talked about more, not less. Obviously, I have a got a horse in the game. Right. You know, I’m biased. But this idea that it’s not real dentistry. Well, you’re not treating real patients. If you if you think it’s real dentistry, it’s good

[01:12:46] To listen to all the objectors and the objections, because from hearing all that stuff, you can have a strategy to change to to move forward. So here’s the thing we say. Number one, make it take a shit on every single patient. It’s a science, actually. And that’s part of your exam. That’s the first thing. Why do you do that? And we teach the dentist to just start with basic sheild, which is called A3, just have loads and loads of A3 shades and measure every single patient. Patient wants to know, is that a good thing or a bad thing to start the opening discussion some day and to say, oh, I’m not really I’m not good at selling, so I can’t sell wine. This is not a sales thing. This is a scientific measure. It’s a service, but it’s a scientific measure of measure the A3 or their light or darker than AIDS. You recorded the patient goes, can I see the shade guide? What’s lighter than A3? So my teeth are a three. And the dentist goes, well, 90 percent of patients may have that shade and they go, what’s lighter? And they go, aione. Well, that’s quite a nice shade. Can I have that? Would that be appropriate for me? This is Dental Leaders, the podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry.

[01:14:03] Your host, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys.

[01:14:10] 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

[01:14:23] 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.

[01:14:34] And don’t forget the six star rating.

Ian Buckle: If you ask me what’s the most important thing that we all do every day is managing expectations.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: Full stop. All right? And there’s all sorts of potholes to fall into, et cetera. But managing expectations is the most important thing. If we look at difference between a bit of whitening and bonding and maybe the most beautiful veneer, I do get patients who are looking at moving a tooth and sticking a bit of filling on but they expect it to look like the best looking veneer. And there’s a gap in there. And I got to try and make sure that I don’t fall into that gap with them.

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

Payman Langroud: Hi guys. Welcome to part two of Ian Buckle’s two and a half hour epic conversation with Prav. If you haven’t listened to the last part, it would probably make sense to listen to that part first. But in the last part he went into his early life, why he got into dentistry in the beginning of that treatment planning piece. In this part he goes much more into how to go from being a single tooth or single quadrant dentist into a full mouth treatment planner. One of the more educational ones on the ones that we’ve done. Enjoy it. Bye.

Prav Solanki: So Ian, take me through. Curious to learn about what it’s like being a patient of yours. So, my mouth is knackered, yeah?

Ian Buckle: Yeah.

Prav Solanki: I walk in and I meet you for the first time. What happens next?

Ian Buckle: What happens next? Well, one of the things that’s absolutely pivotal to what we do is the complete examination, which is why it’s the first part of the course. And one of the … Pete always used to talk about patients … you talk about trying to set yourself aside. One of the things that will set you aside is if you examine people properly, they’ll say, “No one has ever examined me like that.” And it’s not because it’s [inaudible] Tuesday or whatever it might be but because it’s a thorough examination and it’s what we call a codiagnostic examination. And these days as well it starts even before they’ve entered the practise because how we ask people about what it is they’re looking for, again, we could go on for a lot of time with this stuff. But we have to remember that the patient’s experience is usually dictated by the experience that they’ve had with other dentists. And so they don’t know what to expect from someone like us who we think because I think I’m different.

Ian Buckle: So, we have to let them know that we’re different. But the problem arises when the experience they receive does not match their expectation. And so we don’t want to put people off because I’m a firm believer that hopefully if they come here and they see what we do, they’ll start to get interested. And again, this is not about getting someone in the practise and doing stuff to them. This is about being on their side and it’s a lifetime experience. Again, another reason why Tif and I get on. It’s about being there when the teacher is ready, when the student is ready the teacher appears. I always think that when the patient is ready the dentist appears.

Prav Solanki: Right.

Ian Buckle: And so there may be some patients who are more what we call biologically driven, that they’re mainly, oh, I just want to get a couple of fillings done. Whatever else. Okay. That’s no problem. We’ll get you in. This is what we’ll do for you. This is how we handle it, okay? And then we also get the other ones who are driven by different things and we want to find that out before they come in. However the complete examination is pivotal to what I do because we want to find out what the patient wants and what they expect from us but we also want to find out what they need. That’s my professional duty, I think. And we find out what they want by asking them.

Ian Buckle: And then we find out what they need by examining them properly. And again, a lot of the time, I mean you go to an endodontist, you get a root filling, you go to an implant guy you get an implant. What we’re looking at is what does the patient want? What do I think they need? How can we bring this all together to create a lifetime treatment plan that’s going to keep this patient healthy and well and looking great for the rest of their life?

Prav Solanki: Quest question for you, Ian, right? If you’re a GDP and you don’t have experience in implants or ortho and all of this stuff, how can you possibly give that patient a complete approach? So I understand you’re saying, “Look, if you send them to an ortho,” they’re just going to look through tunnel vision and say, “I need to move your teeth from here to here.” And if you send them to an implant guy he’s going to say, “Right. I need to stick an implant in here and fill that gap.” I guess what you’re telling me is, actually I’m the guy who sort of brings it all together and it’s sort of like the football manager, so to speak. And how do you get all of that knowledge with a level of confidence to be able to do that? Because [inaudible] and I’ll save that question for later, but how would you do that piece?

Ian Buckle: So, let’s just think a little bit differently about this because what you’ve just said is you sound very much like a dentist, Prav. You’re obviously spending too much time with them.

Prav Solanki: [crosstalk].

Ian Buckle: [crosstalk]. So everything tends to be driven by procedure. So what I’m thinking is and I’m a little bit more driven by design, and think about where do I need to get these teeth to make them healthy, work well and look great?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And then how we do that depends on what the patient wants, what you can do, whatever else. So you might not know how to place the implants as such but if there’s a space there one of the potential options is to provide an implant. So if we understand where that tooth goes and there’s a space, these are the options that we could provide for you whether you work with someone to do that or whether you do it yourself. If you can understand, let’s say the teeth are crooked and we realise that it’s going to be better to get them aligned and we can understand that, we can work out where those teeth need to go, all we’ve got to understand is where the teeth need to go. Not actually how to do it. And then we can either learn how to do it ourselves or we can work with someone else who likes to do that stuff.

Ian Buckle: But it’s all within the framework. So I see my main part of this as a diagnostician to work out what’s needed and then a treatment planner to design where everything needs to be and then we choose the most appropriate treatment options based on what the patient would like and their budget and all those different things. So, it’s also a very valid question what you ask because particularly from less experienced perspective it’s thinking, it’s too much, where do I start with all this? You have to start somewhere. And one of the things that Tif’s been big on and again I’m big on is to be there as a mentor for you and if you [inaudible] off and you’re thinking, “I know what to do but I don’t know what to do with it after that,” we’re here to help you.

Ian Buckle: And that again has always been one of my big things because I come across a lot of people where it’s like, okay, this is what to do and then you ask the question and no one helps you. So I think it’s super, super important that we have this mentoring and support network which I know [IES] do very well so that we can help with that. And it’s a tremendous way of learning as well.

Prav Solanki: So I’m a big believer in like I think the easiest analogy for me is you take driving lessons and you learn how to drive. When you get on the road by yourself, you learn how to drive. That’s when you really learn how to drive. And so I turned up to a one day course, a two day course or whatever, and go back into my clinic. I pull a patient in. Totally different scenario to the X number of cases you showed me in the course and it’s that one-to-one mentoring where I can take that patient’s records, send them to Ian on the platform, and Ian can say to me, “With all my years of experience, this is how you should do it, kid.” I just think that that’s when the learning really starts.

Ian Buckle: Yeah. Well, [inaudible] exactly. And I was, again, there’s that gap. I mean, I see two sorts of people. There’s the ones who they go on a two day implant course and then the next week they’re putting implants into people’s zygomas and God help you. You know?

Prav Solanki: Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And then there’s most of us who go on a course and then we go on another course and then we go on another course and we’re waiting for the perfect patient to come with the perfect treatment before we do anything about it. Patients love the fact I’m not encouraging you to do anything to … because we don’t do anything until we’re sure it’s going to be okay, you know? Patients love the fact that their health professionals are lifetime learners, you know? They love the fact that you’re constantly trying to find out more and they’re more than willing to be involved in those situations. So for us it’s like when you come on our first course, we’ll teach you the overlying concepts. We’ll teach you how to gather the information. We’ll teach you how to do some of the diagnostics. And then the next course, you’re going to bring that stuff around and then we’re going to work out how to put that through the [inaudible] process to be able to get to the next stage.

Ian Buckle: And like you say, we’ve got a platform that’s there as well. So certainly people that came on the last course, they’re able to put stuff on there and let me see what’s going on. I can give them some advice and then they can start to move their cases forward. And the safety net is there for them to feel as though I’ve got someone with me that can help with this.

Prav Solanki: Brilliant. One thing that Tif’s quite big on and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this is the replacement events. You place a unit on someone’s tooth or you do some bonding or composite or whatever. I guess the first question is, what do you say to the patient? So do you education them about the fact that this thing isn’t going to last forever and we’re going to need to replace it in the future? Question one. Question two, does that fact determine what you’re going to do for that patient?

Ian Buckle: Yeah. It’s a big question, isn’t it? So the answer is … let me try and get this into two pieces for you. So do we tell them? So managing, if you ask me what’s the most important thing that we all do every day is managing expectations.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: Full stop. All right? And there’s all sorts of potholes to fall into, et cetera. But managing expectations is the most important thing. If we look at the difference between a bit of whitening and bonding and maybe the most beautiful veneer, I do get patients who are looking at moving a tooth and sticking a bit of filling on, but they expect it to look like the best looking veneer. And there’s a gap in there. And I got to try and make sure that I don’t fall into that gap with them. They need to understand what they’re getting. And I have a lot of bad analogies that I use for people but sometimes we just have to explain clearly.

Ian Buckle: I mean, I’m fortunate because I’ve got lots of cases that I’ve done. I can say, “This is one we did with bonding. This is one we did with this. This is how it lasts.” I explain to them that nothing lasts forever and that we want to get them through their lifetime with a healthy, happy, functional good looking mouth, not through a wedding. People who have heard my stories, I always say because we get a lot of people for wedding smiles is though well, I want you to look great for this wedding but I want you to look great for your next wedding too, you know? And I say, “Okay, it’s my way. It’s a bit of humour.” But what I’m trying to say, “I know it’s a big day for you but soon enough it will be gone and we don’t want to have damaged anything between times.”

Ian Buckle: So if we understand where the teeth need to go, then we can choose the most appropriate options, okay? Now, there are a lot of times when moving the teeth and then whitening them and bonding is going to be a great way of doing things. I also see lots of patients where, and I’ve done this, so I’m sorry to whoever it is, I’ve spent three years moving teeth and then I had to restore them anyway because they were structurally damaged and everything and I probably didn’t gain any great benefit from it.

Prav Solanki: Right.

Ian Buckle: But it’s that understanding about where’s it going to go in the end? What is it we’re going to do? And that goal, we talk a lot about goal oriented dentistry which is the goal is for me to help you keep your teeth looking great, working well for the rest of your life. And so we need to understand the restorative cycle. Patients need to understand that if we’re going to place restorations, particularly crowns, that they’re going to last a certain length of time and I always tell them that they’re two parts to treatment. One is doing it and the second part is looking after it. And we have patients, I’ve been in this practise 15 years now, so we’ve got patients, I’ve actually got patients who come from our previous practise.

Ian Buckle: We’ve got patients 15, 20 years who are doing great. And they’re doing great because hopefully we did a good job and secondly they come regularly for hygiene. And any little bits and pieces we get to fix them and it’s a lifetime, lifelong relationship. And that’s true whether it’s composite, porcelain, ortho, any of those things. It’s a lifelong relationship, you know?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: But we have to think very carefully about that restorative cycle and what’s appropriate for them. And then we also have to think about matching their expectation. The patient may want something and we also have our own line in the sand that we can draw, which the patient may want great big white veneers that stick out but you don’t have to do that. Let them go somewhere else if that’s what they want. So you can have your line of judgement that you think is appropriate for them but certainly if I’ve got a younger person, the less dentistry and the more enamel that I can preserve, the better it’s going to be. But there is a big misconception with patients and with dentists as well that as soon as you mention the crown word, that you’re drilling the bajebus out of a tooth. Most of the crowns that I do are on structurally damaged teeth or teeth that are small that need to be made bigger.

Ian Buckle: And I can do crown preparations without doing a lot of drilling on the tooth. I’m still trying to maintain as much of the tooth substance as possible. So I think the answer to your question is yes, it makes a big difference to me how we go about that. We explain to patients very, very carefully. And I have my, well, my eldest will be 31 next week which makes me feel really old and so a lot of people I see particularly in that era where maybe things are starting to go wrong and they’re looking for veneers or we can talk about composite bonding in a bit, hopefully, but whatever it is and I go, “Well, you know what? Because one thing is when you walk in the door, I’m going to treat you as if you’re my pal or in your case I can actually say, ‘Like one of my children.'” And that’s not something that I would do to them.

Ian Buckle: And okay, maybe you would do it. But certainly back in the cosmetic days, I used to see a lot of dentists who were placing veneers and walking around with braces on their teeth themselves. Be honest. We talk about the daughter test and patients will often ask you, “What would you do?” And I think that question is extremely valid and puts a lot of trust in you. And I think you should be very, very honest about what you would do. So, what we do is based on managing their expectation, the condition of the teeth and also the fact that this is a lifetime venture that we’re trying to get through.

Prav Solanki: We will come to composite veneers. That was the question I was saving, actually, that I mentioned earlier, Ian. But before we jump into that, what’s your biggest clinical mistake? Where you’ve looked back and though, “Oh, crap. I’ve really mucked up there” If you look back over your career, what would you say your biggest clinical mistake is?

Ian Buckle: Oh. Gosh. We haven’t got enough time. Yeah. Anyone that tells you, “Everything is great,” isn’t doing dentistry, I think. This is probably not the clinical mistake but my biggest mistakes are probably being in managing expectation or not managing expectation. My biggest mistakes have probably been and me being much more enthusiastic about their treatment than the patient was. Clinically I remember one case where I got really caught out and it’s someone came in with a lot of old crowns on their teeth and this is why diagnosis is so important and how diagnosis can be really difficult. But someone came in with a lot of crowns on their teeth and they were real ugly crowns. And I did some restorations for his sister and [inaudible] quite nice.

Ian Buckle: And actually their 15 years old now. So it’s a 15 year old story. And I definitely didn’t know as much as I know now and I didn’t know … I probably wasn’t as good at handling things as I was back then. But he wanted them to look like his sister and I was thinking, I saw it more as a mechanical thing. And I did my due diligence but there was old crowns on there. They were deficient, et cetera, et cetera. And I set up pretty well and he continued to destroy them. And the reason why and you can make me feel as bad as you want about this but the reason why that I later discovered was a drug habit. And this was a patient who was mainly noncompliant with a problem. And I didn’t find out about his problem, which maybe is defensible. But I also just thought that if I fix the mechanics, well it’ll be good enough to sort this guy out because whatever.

Ian Buckle: And actually, you know what? If your patient doesn’t clean their teeth or doesn’t come regularly or doesn’t do those things, you are cruising for a bruising. You know?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: So that was one of my biggest mistakes. Another one that springs to mind was actually something similar in some ways because it was a daughter. Not a young daughter but someone in their 30s. And they had some issues. And as a part of it was that their teeth were awful and we went in and we restored them as nicely as we possibly could. But there was all sorts of issues between the daughter and the mother and whatever else. And sitting in the middle of that was not a pleasant place to be, particularly when their relationship fell apart. And guess who gets the blame when that happens?

Prav Solanki: [inaudible].

Ian Buckle: So, we can teach you some great dentistry but I also think when we come back to that complete dentistry thing, the complete examination, it’s about getting to know your patient. And these things, it looks like a long process but you can actually squish it up quite a lot if you’ve got someone who is ready to go, understands all those things. You can get a lot of stuff done quick. But there are sometimes and some people when you want to take your time. And you want to take your time because you want to get to know them. So, this is not about … I mean, I know I’ve heard Tif talk about it which is it’s fine if you leave the practise after two years. That’s fine.

Ian Buckle: I see my patients in the gym. I see them in Tesco’s. I don’t want to be hiding behind the Corn Flakes because something went wrong. So, it’s a different perspective. So get to know them. Date them before you marry them. Probably someone told me a long time ago. I think that’s a good expression. And you don’t have to jump in and do everything all at once. Having said that, if the patient is ready and everything is good and everything is in place, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be moving forward.

Prav Solanki: So how long do you guarantee your work for, Ian? Someone comes in and has some units fitted for example. How long would you guarantee that for? [crosstalk].

Ian Buckle: [inaudible]. Well, okay. So I’m glad you said that bit at the end. What do I tell them? So what I say to them is, “Why? What are you going to do to them?” All right? And the reason for that is it depends. I have some patients who think that we’ve made them stainless steel super reinforced teeth that now they’ve spent all this money they can do whatever they like with them. And that is not the case. So, I tell them that the second part of their treatment is looking after it and we will be fair and reasonable about anything that happens in the first five years provided they keep up their schedule. You know?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And if they don’t keep up the schedule [inaudible] better off. And also as well things with composite and bonding, I usually tell them, “It’s going to last a few years. Maybe three to five years with porcelain.” I think we’re supposed to say, I don’t know five years or something. But I usually say five to 10 years or something like that. But I also tell them that I have cases that have lasted 15, 20 years because we did the post-operative care.

Ian Buckle: And in reality, and again I know it’s a problem with people and I know you want a straight answer, so that’s what I tell people. Why? What are you going to do to them? Are you going to be out on the street fighting? Are you going to be eating treacle toffee the whole night? Are you going to take on this programme? Are you going to be sensible? Are you be careful? Are you going to let me know when there’s a problem? Because if you are, then I would expect composites to last three to five years. We’ve got some that last a lot longer. Porcelain, certainly five years plus but we’ve got stuff that’s lasted a lot longer. In reality, I got a lot of great patients where [inaudible] don’t get too many problems.

Ian Buckle: But there’s patients that I’ve helped out more years down the line. Maybe their situation has changed and they need the bit of help. And then there’s patients that come in, haven’t been in a fight three weeks after you fixed them up and that’s not my responsibility. So it’s different things. But I hope that’s a straight enough answer to your question.

Prav Solanki: No, it is. And actually what you said was actually really useful which is qualifying that by, well, what are you going to do with? And educating them. Well, if you look after them, then this is what it is, really. Let’s move on to composite veneers, Ian. It’s a trend at the moment. A lot of dentists are very good at them. Some look better than others. But what I really want to get from you, Ian, is patient comes in and they want to improve their smile, and there’s a lot of dentists doing full coverage composite veneers. And that almost seems like for many a default go-to [inaudible] treatment.

Prav Solanki: And what’s your take on that and where do you think that is going? I’ve spoken to numerous dentists at length on this topic, Tif included, and then some people who teach this, people like Dipesh Parmar who produces some excellent work. But even he himself says that, “These things are not going to last forever and also it’s a helluva a job to put them right if things go wrong.” So give me your thoughts, Ian, in terms of what your feeling is on this movement and where you think it’s going.

Ian Buckle: So, okay. So let me try and [inaudible] perspective then. So nothing is better than health. And the best thing that we can do is to stop people getting mashed up in the first place. Unfortunately the main part that I do is fix people up when they’re damaged. So, helping younger people keep their teeth healthy and looking great I think is super, super important from a very early age. So I mean a lot of the people that I treat are more my sort of age with mashed up teeth and whatever else. So there’s more things that need doing. But we also, you see this age group where we see a lot of this [inaudible] composite veneers or whatever.

Ian Buckle: So to give a perspective over the years, years ago we started off with composite bonding. That was what people did. That was the aesthetic solution. But it chipped and it didn’t look great and whatever else. Then that’s when the cosmetic wave came in and we were able to change that over to porcelain because we could make these beautiful pieces that we could stick on that lasted longer, that look great and that moved to another level. And composite bonding sort of disappeared a bit more. And porcelain took over. And now we’ve got this resurgence of composite. And the question for me is why is that? Well, certainly composites have gotten to be a lot better. That’s for sure. And what we can do with them is great. And as you say, you mention people like Dipesh who are phenomenal with what they can do. But I think there’s also a lot of nonsense talked about these things.

Ian Buckle: So, when you glue something to someone’s tooth, you’ve altered that tooth. And they’ve then got something to look after. And one of the things, I always talk about health and function and aesthetics. And if you make a bad restoration of any sort, and you can’t clean it, you’re going to make problems. You’re going to have … then we’re going to start to have [inaudible] issues. And then like I say, nothing looks better than health and we don’t have health anymore. We’ve then got a composite that’s chipping and breaking because we just did it because that’s what’s in my toolbox. But I didn’t understand the aesthetics of the functional side of things.

Ian Buckle: I see a lot of patients that are having stuff done and the story is, this is chipping and breaking and this and this and this. And a lot of it is because the function isn’t correct. And that’s not just because I’m a functional guy. It’s just a tooth. If you think about it, someone comes in with worn teeth and they go, “I want a nice looking smile,” and you make their teeth longer, you alter their guidance, you alter their envelope of function and we usually recreate the problems that they’ve had maybe even more and they’re just going to break things off.

Ian Buckle: So, this is where it comes back to this idea of complete dentistry. And then once we understand the design of the tooth, so if we need to provide something to make it look nicer, where does it need to go? Is it going to be healthy? Is it going to be functional? And then what’s an appropriate way of doing it for the patient? The simplest way might be to move the tooth, bleach it and bond it. That would be a phenomenal way of doing it. Sometimes the teeth are not in great shape and we need to put a laminate over the surface and the laminate on the surface could be composite or it could be porcelain, and that can depend on the situation. It could depend on the budget and the patient needs to understand what they’re paying for and what they’re getting and what they’re not getting.

Ian Buckle: Or it could depend a little bit on the age of the patients, et cetera, or their expectation. So these things don’t last forever. The underlying principle should be tooth preservation because whatever it is we do is going to need something [inaudible] into it in time. So there’s two aspects that I’d like to stress for this. One is the planning. I always say two and then I’ll probably give you about six, by the way. So one is the planning. So if we understand where the teeth needs to go, then we can choose the most appropriate way. Not just go, “Oh, you want a nice smile. I’ll give you this.” Okay?

Ian Buckle: Yeah. I’ll give you a nice smile. I’ll give you Invisalign. You want a nice smile? I’ll give you veneers. I’ve even seen, you want a nice smile? I’ll take your teeth out and give you an all-on-four. Some of that stuff is disgraceful.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: So it’s about the design. It’s all about the diagnosis. It’s all about the treatment planning. It’s all about getting to know the patient and then working out what it is we need to do. Where do these teeth need to do and what’s the most appropriate way to get them there? And if composite is a good way, perfect. If porcelain is a good way, perfect. But we have to know that our goal is to preserve the tooth underneath, okay? And if you’re going to do a veneer of any sort or any sort of adhesive restoration, there’s one thing that will make your work last longer than anything and that’s preservation of enamel, okay?

Ian Buckle: So, there’s two ways of preserving enamel. One is not to cut it off, all right? Which I strongly recommend if we can help it. And then another way is, oh, well, we’ll just make your teeth bigger and it’s now there, but that is not aesthetic in my opinion. It is not healthy because it’s usually difficult to clean and it’s often not functionally correct either. So it’s ticking my boxes as you can probably tell.

Ian Buckle: Now, if I’ve got a tooth which has lost the volume and we need to recreate that volume and maybe recreate a little bit of length, I could do that with porcelain, the composite, anything you’d like. And that’s going to depend on maybe the budget of the patient, maybe what other restorations they’ve got lying around. All sorts of things like that. The expectation of the patient. So, again, too often we’re given a procedure and then that’s all that we see when the patient walks in the door. And how do I … I’ve got the hammer, show me the nail. You know?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: What I’m trying to say is, “Let’s think about why this happened in the first place.” Let’s think about what we need to do to correct this. And then once we’ve decided what it is we need to do to correct this, then let’s think of the most appropriate way of doing it for this patient. Not for patients but for this patient who is sitting in my chair right now. I got patients where actually they may be better off with porcelain but they’ve got a lot of issues going on. Maybe they’ve got a lot of functional issues. Maybe they’ve got some [inaudible] issues. Whatever.

Ian Buckle: And we’ll restore them in composite because we want to make sure that everything is going to be okay. And they also know that we can always move forward to porcelain later on, because composite is not going to last as long. It isn’t going to look as great, but it’s relatively easy to fix up if something goes wrong with it. Porcelain is much trickier to fix up if something goes wrong with it. So, I do have patients … I mean, I’ve got patients where two of them spring to mind straight away where they’re big functional cases, a lot of wear. We’re probably both a bit frightened about doing porcelain which is actually more suited to them. And we built them in composite and they come regularly for hygiene and 10, 12, 15 years later they’ve still got the composite in there because it’s doing well.

Ian Buckle: But it’s doing well because it was done in the right place with the right function and the right health and the right aftercare. And I think one of the things, oh well you can have this because it’s reversible. Reversible? If I stick a composite to your tooth, I’ve reacted the surface. If I stick a piece of porcelain to your tooth, I’ve reacted the surface. What’s the difference? I don’t know. The mistake that people think is oh, with a veneer or a crown I’m going to chop your tooth up. Actually, most of the time if you’ve lost tooth surface I’m actually going to put stuff on. And this is the importance of what we call the solution-driven preparation.

Ian Buckle: So if we understand the design and we understand where the tooth needs to go, I then understand what it is I need to remove or what I need to add to bring the tooth back to full aesthetics and full function. So a lot of the teeth that I treat have lost length, they’ve lost volume. And so we’re mainly adding things on. And if I’m adding things on, I mean to be honest with you whether I do it directly or indirectly is based on whether I’ve got a path of insertion. So I mean composite is out there. It’s a great material but it’s just got to be used in the right circumstances.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And people have to understand the limitations of it. Given a choice, I’d always keep a healthy tooth but some of the teeth that I see, particularly worn teeth, all the enamel is crazed and you can bleach it and bond it as much as you like. It’s going to look like a clean kitchen tile. You’ve made the effort but it still looks a bit average. And that’s when you need to put something over the surface to make it look nicer, and that could be composite or porcelain. But we are reacting the surface and we’re usually recreating volume. What I want people to think about because I think this is mainly what you were asking me about is a lot of the sort of Love Island type stuff which is put this in, put it on top of your teeth. Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And I say it doesn’t usually fulfil functional issues. If the patient likes it … well, I see a lot of things and I don’t understand why people do those stuff to themselves. But if the patient likes it, okay, that’s cosmetic. It’s not aesthetic but it’s cosmetic. If it doesn’t work well it’s going to break down and if it’s not properly contoured, you’re going to have biological issues. So, I hope that’s some sort of answer.

Prav Solanki: [crosstalk].

Ian Buckle: So I think it’s a great thing. And composite, I love composite. It’s a great way of fixing things. But it’s just not the answer to everything. Everything, it should be taken on its merit.

Prav Solanki: I was fortunate enough to visit your practise. I think it was pre-pandemic, Ian, and there was a couple of veneer units sat on your lap. Well, on your bench, shall I say. You picked them up and you showed them to me. I was a little bit frightened to touch them because they looked so fragile. They were absolutely wafer thin. But beautiful as well and looked so natural. So, I can say that I’ve definitely seen the work that you do and deliver and it looks fantastic. But I was very surprised at how thin they were.

Ian Buckle: Yeah. The thing is, I mean again, I mean you see some of these things I was going to say take your teeth. I’m not going to say that, but-

Prav Solanki: Why not?

Ian Buckle: There’s some great dentists in Turkey as well. But what I was going to say is a lot of the time when people do a veneer, they don’t have … if you said to most people, “Do a veneer,” they’ll do a preparation that’s out of the book. The preparation that we need to do should be based on the final design. And talk of Turkey teeth, Galip Gurel, great dentist in [inaudible] in Turkey. Fantastic dentist. Anyone who wants to know about veneers, look at Galip’s book and take his courses, et cetera.

Ian Buckle: But he came up with this approved … he’s just good at coming up with names as Tif is. He came up with approved pre-evaluative temporary restorations. And so what that is, if you’ve got a patient and they’ve lost volume and maybe length from their teeth, we make the wax up and then we can put the trial smile over their teeth if you like. And this is not a new thing. This is not something that [DSD] invented by the way. It’s been around for a long, long time. And you put that over their teeth and then the patient can approve them before we’ve done anything, okay? And then we can also treat them as well to make sure that we get everything just right.

Ian Buckle: And then that temporary restoration is actually going to be our guide for the preparation of the tooth because we’re going to prepare through the temporary as if it was the tooth. And very often when we do that, we end up doing very, very little preparation for the tooth at all. And these are all things that we teach on the course as well. We talk about the design and we talk about this [inaudible] temporary way of doing it. We talk about how to do it in composite as well. But that’s how you get engagement with the patient. We can work out some of the features of what I would call key diagnostic reference points. Bless you. Which is putting side ledge, lower incisor ledge and vertical dimension.

Ian Buckle: But we can actually prepare through them and that way we make sure we get the most minimal preparation as possible, that we preserve as much enamel as possible, and that way we’re going to get a much more longer lasting restoration. Very quickly just as a throwaway, you might want to cut this out later. But it’s always a story that reminds me which a few years ago I was at an Indian restaurant.

Ian Buckle: One of my daughter’s gone to the cinema so I went to the restaurant with my wife and my other daughter. So there was three of us in this little booth for four people. And there was a table of guys, a little bit younger than me perhaps sitting on the other table and they kept glancing across.

Ian Buckle: I’m a bit of an old style male. So I’m thinking, “Well, you can take your eyes off my daughter. If you’re looking at my wife, we can come to a deal probably.” And anyways. So this happened. And eventually we finished our meal. And as we finished our meal, one of the guys slid over into the booth, into the spare space and he’s sitting opposite me. And he says, “You don’t remember me, do you?” And I was thinking, there’s two very distinct parts of my life. One is dentistry which I try and be reasonably professional. And the other part was rugby which is a different sort of thing.

Ian Buckle: So some people it’s because I stood on them and some people it’s because I helped them. Anyways, he was very good at it because he left it just … he had perfect timing. He left just enough time for me to start sweating because I couldn’t remember him. And he said, “You see these? You did these 25 years ago.” Best thing I ever did.

Prav Solanki: Wow.

Ian Buckle: [inaudible] he actually called me back. It’s not often that I get lost for words but I sort of didn’t know what to say. And eventually I said, “Well, that’s good.” Because I didn’t know 25 years ago I had no clue what I was doing. So, but the reason why those stayed on was because they were glued to enamel. So even though I had much less idea, there’s a little story, a little anecdote that maybe will help people remember the preservation of enamel is crucial to the success of these bondage restorations. Making [inaudible] restorations makes it much easier for you and the technician.

Prav Solanki: Yeah. Well, we touched on the topic of Turkey teeth. A lot of the clinics that I work with, Ian, they get patients coming through the door saying, “Oh, well I can get that done for five grand in Turkey and I’ll get a holiday. Blah, blah, blah.” And also a lot of the clinics that I work with fix that sort of work as well. So tell me about your thoughts on and I don’t want to generalise. Like you say, there are some very good dentists there as well. But you know what I’m talking about. When people go in there and get in god knows 12 units of whatever for bagging price under holiday all baked into one, what’s your thoughts on that? And I’m actually curious to hear what you would tell a patient if they said to you, “Well, I’m thinking of getting my teeth done in Turkey.”

Ian Buckle: Well, one of the … as I say, we don’t want to [inaudible] everyone with the same brush but I think everyone knows what we’re talking about. And you see, this is like we’re talking about someone who just does implants or someone who just does this, the problem is when you go to those things is they think this patient wants to come and get a smile and wants to leave a few days later with the smile and that’s that. And so there’s already a sort of unwritten agreement between the two that this is what’s expected. And actually I think a lot of the time patients don’t really realise that.

Ian Buckle: And it’s always after the event that they realise what it is. So that’s one thing. I think some of these times they’re just looking to do whatever because it’s going to be done in three days and see you later. And also as well, it’s like a restaurant in a holiday place. Maybe they don’t really care because they’re not going to see you again. So it doesn’t matter. But from a patient’s perspective, what they’ve got to understand is exactly what we spoke about before which is step one is doing it. Okay? And step two is taking care of it. And you and they are not taking care of it.

Ian Buckle: And I’ll tell you [inaudible] my perspective you come to me afterwards, I’m not that interested. I don’t want to take care of stuff that other people have been doing. I like to take care of my stuff and the people that I respect. So that’s one aspect. The other aspect is that in order to make things fit and get the appearance that often it’s much easier to make a big preparation than a small preparation. There is no room for getting things wrong. So they’re much more likely to do that. And cut more of your tooth away.

Ian Buckle: So this is about giving you a good smile, hold the mirror up, see you later rather than show me that in five, 10, 15 years time. So, I don’t think that the patients realise that they’ve now entered the restorative cycle where they will need to get this replaced five, 10, 15 years time and that they may have problems. And we do get patients ring up and say, “I’ve had my teeth done.” So you ask the question, “What would you say to someone?”

Ian Buckle: I say, “Well, this is what I would do for you. This is how I go about it. And this is how we’d look after you afterward. And this is what it would cost.” And then you choose. And one of my good pals and practise advisors [inaudible] told me years ago and I didn’t do it for years because we all know best, but he said to me, “Ian, just talk to the believers.” If someone wants to go and do that, knock yourself out.

Prav Solanki: They’re going to do it. Yeah.

Ian Buckle: I’m looking for the patients and we get them all the time. You say, “You know what? I looked at that.” And the thought of going there and then not being able to take care of things, it frightened me to death. That’s why I come to see you. [inaudible]. Because that’s what I’m looking to do, too. So you might cut down your market a little bit, but I’m not in competition with [inaudible], you know?

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: It’s not what we do. I mean, just as a little aside sort of there’s a question that might have been in there which is what do you tell someone? Because I get people who say, “Oh, I had my teeth done in Turkey. I’m having this problem. Would you take a look? And this, this and this.” I always say, “Well, the first thing that I’d do is I’d say this to anyone who is coming to me from another dentist is the first thing that I’d like if anyone has a problem with my work is for you to go back and get it checked out.”

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And if anyone persists, then there’s a nice big bill that goes with it. Because I always remember again slightly a funny story or anecdote years ago, perhaps [inaudible] back in the old NHS days, this guy came in. Got a denture. Crappy little denture. I kept telling him, “You should replace this because it’s not good for this, that and the other.” And it was in the NHS that you can imagine it was about 35 pounds or something to fix this. Didn’t want to do it. Wouldn’t do it. Whatever else. Cut a long story short, several, a couple years later he comes back in and we’re doing an exam for him. Takes this denture out. I’m thinking, “I’m sure that … Isn’t he the guy that I keep telling? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep telling him to fix this.” And he says, “Oh, this denture is rubbing me. Do you think you could fix it for me?” I go, “Well, did I make it for you?”

Ian Buckle: And he says, “No.” He says, “Actually,” he said, “I was on holiday in India and a guy made it for me there.” I said, “You know what the best thing to do is take it back and get it fixed. I’m sure they’ll do a great job for you.” And that was the first time I thought of that comment and I’ve been using it ever since. Because the truth of that story is as soon as you touch their denture, you’re not responsible.

Prav Solanki: Of course.

Ian Buckle: And that’s a problem for you. So there is a serious side to that as well, I think.

Prav Solanki: Yeah. And I think the takeaway for me from that, Ian, is that part and parcel of it is an education of the patient. Making them understand that doing your dentistry is only part of the journey, right? It’s looking after it as well. And informing that patient and making them aware of things don’t last forever and they need maintenance, right? And it’s a bit like your car. Get it serviced.

Ian Buckle: Yeah. Yeah. Well, [inaudible] I mean as I say, we’re very keen on treating patients for a lifetime.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: And I say, I don’t think that, can you imagine? I mean, how interested I’m going to be if you went and had it done somewhere else. I want to take care of the people who have commitment to me, you know?

Prav Solanki: Sure. Sure. So Ian just to sum up, I’ve got a few final questions that I ask every guest. One of them is that if it was your last day on the planet and you had your loved ones around you, what three pieces of wisdom would you leave them with? Life advice. Call it whatever you want.

Ian Buckle: That’s a great question. [inaudible] talking about dentistry and then you said that. Okay. Ah. So you’re getting me all teary eyed now. So choose carefully.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: In everything that you do. Be kind. I think be kind to each other is important. And always realise, always keep an open mind. I think there’s so many problems get caused because our mind is closed. Our mind is closed to other people’s ideas. And religions and cultures and everything else. And you know what? There’s actually, if we keep our minds open there’s so much we can learn from each other and life would be so much richer for the experience.

Prav Solanki: That’s brilliant, Ian. How would you like to be remembered? Ian was …

Ian Buckle: A pain in the ass.

Prav Solanki: [crosstalk].

Ian Buckle: Well, he tried his best. He wanted to help other people. And it actually probably comes back to what we were talking about before. It was like probably [inaudible].

Prav Solanki: Yeah. Yeah. I think you have, mate. I think you’ve definitely made [inaudible] proud. Without question mate. Without question. Seeing where you’ve come from. And similarly, I share a similar story as well. From humble beginnings. You only connect the dots later on in life and you only begin to realise what they did and why they did it.

Ian Buckle: Yeah. That’s right. It certainly is. It’s one of those things. I mean, fortunately I’m 59 going on 12, so that’s sort of a good thing.

Prav Solanki: Yeah.

Ian Buckle: I try and keep myself fit and well so I can keep annoying people for a bit longer yet.

Prav Solanki: Of course.

Ian Buckle: But there is that perspective that you get as time goes on. It’s, for me, it’s been … it’s really only happened in these last few years where you sort of get this perspective on life which I think is important to us all. And one of the things that we sort of haven’t spoken about too much but I try and talk about it in the course as well and particularly with younger dentists is to encourage them to put some money away and invest in their education and do all those things because I mean, again I know lots of people who have said it before. No one ever goes to their grave when you ask that question. No one ever goes to the grave thinking, “I wish I done another veneer prep.”

Prav Solanki: No.

Ian Buckle: It’s about all the other stuff that happens in between. And it’s about being able to do your dentistry as predictable and efficiently and as profitably as possible so that you can go and spend your time doing the things that you like with the people that you want to spend time with. Too many of us take our holidays 20 minutes at a time because we don’t organise the schedule properly or we spend all our time chasing our tail and then not being present when we got time with the people that we care about.

Ian Buckle: And I think I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the years and I’m more than willing to share those as well with people. But I think dentistry is a tremendous profession. I’m in the practise at the moment and the school that my children went to is just back there and I used to be able to drop them off at school and pick them up from school and they’d come here and then I was pretty much always home for bedtimes and reading stories and doing all that stuff. And they remember all that stuff.

Prav Solanki: Of course they do.

Ian Buckle: And they remember all the cool things. And then again, life changes. As they got older, they needed less of me and more of my credit card. And so we tend to have … we still have time together, but we tend to have instead of having a lot of evenings together, maybe we have chunks of time on holidays and things.

Prav Solanki: Sure.

Ian Buckle: And for some reason they still want to spend some time with me and I’m grateful for that. And you never get those things back. So dentistry is a tremendous job if you use it as tool rather than letting it be your master.

Prav Solanki: Yeah. Yeah. And one final question. I promise you it won’t make you teary. And that is that if you had 30 days left, how would you spend it? How would you spend it?

Ian Buckle: 30 days.

Prav Solanki: 30 days.

Ian Buckle: Oh god.

Prav Solanki: Do whatever you want, Ian. You’re not going to say veneer preps and all that.

Ian Buckle: Well, it’s an interesting thing. We move to the things that I like are probably illegal or immoral so I probably can’t mention any of those. But it might be that [inaudible] but I always remember somewhat of a story and I can’t remember who it was. Some monk or whatever and they said, “If it was going to be the end of the Earth, what would you … ” And he was digging the garden. He says, “What would you do?” And he said, “I’d probably carry on digging the garden.” And actually the reason he said that was because I’m actually quite comfortable-

Prav Solanki: Content.

Ian Buckle: … and content with what I’m doing. And yeah. I think I’d do that.

Prav Solanki: Nice. That’s lovely.

Ian Buckle: [crosstalk] not digging the garden, though

Prav Solanki: No, no. [crosstalk].

Ian Buckle: I’m not digging the garden. No. But I carry on doing what I’m doing. I’m lucky I’ve got a great family. I know some great friends. But yeah. There’s lots of nice things spending time on holiday. It’s great to be in different places. But one thing I’ve learned over the years is it’s not about where you are, it’s about who you’re with.

Prav Solanki: Totally agree, Ian. Totally, totally agree. Ian, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time.

Ian Buckle: [inaudible].

Prav Solanki: Yep. It will be a good episode, this.

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

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

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