Month: November 2021

[00:00:00] Yeah, how actually it came about, it was on a flight on a lads holiday, actually to Valencia, and we just had that sort of two and a half hour flight, whatever it was. And that’s when we had the main discussion. We thought, how can we reach the most people in a platform that obviously there’s great Facebook groups, there’s great Instagram pages and stuff, but there’s not much interaction through a page. We thought, how can we just keep it as kind of direct content? No bureaucracy, no other stuff, just content. And the way we figured out would be the best way to do that would be by email mailing list. So we thought if we make a mailing list and just put out content and then eventually build a following, we can just sort of hopefully attract more people to help put together the content and just help as many people as possible, essentially.

[00:00:50] 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.

[00:01:07] People often say content is king, and personally, I’ve been looking forward to the moment where the digitally native Dental students and dentists come through. I’ve always thought there’s going to be an avalanche of content when when this particular generation come through and it’s exciting to see and it’s exciting to see if we’ve got some Dental students who’ve got their own podcasts and all of that. And for me, it’s really from a selfish perspective. It’s interesting because I like to know what our younger colleagues are thinking, but also the exchange of ideas. And it’s become very fashionable for older dentists to think that we know it all. But the exchange of ideas often sort of spurs a whole new way of looking at things. My guest today pleased to have both Zohar and Krista Vicario on the show. They’re responsible for something called Kaizen Dental, which we’ll get into. I’ll let them explain what that is, but essentially bite-sized learning that sort of content, both a couple of young dentists who I’ve been super impressed with when I’ve talked to them, and I thought that we should have them on show just just to get some more clarity about where everyone’s at. So great to have you, Chris and Bell.

[00:02:23] Thank you so much, Payman. Thanks for having us on.

[00:02:25] Yeah, thanks, Payman.

[00:02:26] So you guys met at Dental School?

[00:02:29] Yeah. So we’re good mates from probably from Freshers Week, to be honest. So there was five or six of us who are quite close. And yeah, just kind of sort of followed obviously a similar career path since since graduating and stuff like that. So a lot in common.

[00:02:44] Where do you study? You say kings, bacon, kings, OK? And Bell, what was the first time, the first time you saw Chris? What did you think of it? What was it? I know what he’s going to say. He’s going to say, What was it? What was he doing?

[00:02:57] This is a funny one because we still talk about to this day, right? So I was with another friend of mine manager, right? And we were kind of, you know, we knew each other from we kind of, I guess, you know, grew up in the same area. So we kind of knew each other when we went to, I guess, Freshers Week at Kings and we saw Chris there and Chris was like, you know, there’s kind of six foot guy wearing shorts and like, I think it was like September where it wasn’t even hot. And me and Anish, we jokingly said, What’s this clown doing,

[00:03:23] Like, you know, saying

[00:03:25] And. And that was kind of the first impression we had of him. And then as we got to speak to him, we realised that actually he did do a year in Spain because he actually, you know, before he went to kings, he was actually in Valencia studying dentistry and stuff. So it’s funny how that actually that comment just turned out to actually be true. So yeah, it was it was weird how that look, but that was the first time I actually saw Chris. And yeah, after that, we kind of, you know, kind of got on and, you know, it’s crazy to think so many years have passed. But yeah, we’re still really good, mate.

[00:03:53] And have you done, Chris, you’ve done a year in Valencia and then the rest here.

[00:03:56] Yes, I started again. So did a year at Valencia and then reapplied at the beginning of the second. Yet because all of my mates out there, she reapplied and got a place, I thought it’s worth a shot, just reapplied, and then obviously had to start to get a kings. But it was obviously a great experience and I think well worth it.

[00:04:14] So what was the biggest difference between year one and Valencia and Year One and Kings?

[00:04:20] To be honest, it’s quite in terms of the content. It’s all. There’s not much. There’s no dentistry, and I like first year kings or first year of Lance. I think we did a bit of tooth morph and first year after our finals in Kings, which was as close to dentistry as we actually got. But I’ll be honest, I was quite relaxed in and I wasn’t doing much studying. I was just playing. I wasn’t taking seriously either. I needed to come back and I needed to be in England.

[00:04:47] I think it’s a great town for partying. Our partner, our the person who distributes the composites that we distribute is from Valencia.

[00:04:55] Amazing cigar out there.

[00:04:56] Yeah, I’ve been there. I have been there. So tell me this when you met Belle for the first time.

[00:05:04] Well, my sorry. Yeah, I can’t even remember the first I’m sorry about

[00:05:10] The first time. You must have left my mark.

[00:05:14] Do you know what I remember the most about? Bowers in Farsi is big on his bangguo and his getting my shoulders and stuff at night, so

[00:05:22] I made it through the mini smile make over. Of course, when he won a prise to do because he had the best case, I think the best shot judged the case and and he came on to meet his FileMaker. Who was he? Do you remember him as always talented and Dental school as well, like one of those kids?

[00:05:41] Yeah, he to be honest about who he’s been, I’d say it’s kind of cringe. I want to say gifted. He’s he’s he was like your president. Obviously, his work speaks for itself. I think he’s he’s different to most people in that sense, and he is quite skilled. And I think he’s got a lot of attributes that you need to be a really good dentist. So we talk about this not to Bo that sometimes baffled me and other mates talk about how you’ve got the coms, the communication, obviously the clinical skills, you’ve got basically everything you need to be a good dentist.

[00:06:15] I think you guys are making

[00:06:16] Me believe

[00:06:19] I could go on

[00:06:21] To develop as a as a talented clinician. Did you? You know, this idea that you guys came up with doing this, Kaizen, was that the idea that you were going to provide the photos? And Chris, what you get at it or something this?

[00:06:37] Yes, it’s basically that’s a we used to send each other or we still do, but more so before we used that. We’re just starting off, just starting, taking photos and stuff. We’d send each other. I work for feedback or like critiquing, and then it got to the stage where bowels work would just overshadow it. Literally look like a textbook a little better than a textbook and one time actually sat down and say, Look, this is clearer than what we have in our textbooks. You need to just put this out to people. And because he takes photos of every step, which a lot of us have started doing now since seeing his work and people other people on Instagram. But honestly, I just thought the way that the pictures are so clear and so easily laid out, it’s so it just it’s so easy to learn from and it makes sense if he’s got this work to put it out there and obviously help other people like ourselves just starting out, and it could obviously learn from that.

[00:07:30] So which year did you guys quantify now?

[00:07:33] 2018 we are. Yeah, we qualified in 2018 now,

[00:07:36] And you have pandemic to keep you out of things for a long time. So yeah, yeah. So there’s there’s going to be people listening to this, you know, who think, well, you know, if you just qualified in twenty eighteen. What more, why don’t you want to teach anything now, I mean, it’s a bit early, isn’t it, for teaching? What would you say to that?

[00:07:59] That’s a good point. Payman, I think you know what, Chris and I kind of always try and push is that we’re not really, you know, experts or trying to teach. In a sense, we’re kind of just trying to share what we do on a daily basis and kind of our mistakes or some cases that go well, I’m just effectively have like a, you know, a platform where people can kind of learn from, you know, things that we’ve learnt through failures and kind of, you know, things that have gone well and looking at other kind of courses and stuff. So I think teach is a difficult one because we don’t want to come across as we’re teachers. It’s more just about providing free content and effectively just sharing kind of the stuff that we enjoy doing.

[00:08:40] And so you are teachers, I’d say you are teachers. I mean, looking at the content or you certainly will be teachers if you keep on going. But my question is, how come you’re thinking like this? And you know, I’m sure you have people in your year who aren’t thinking like this. I mean, were you think, were you talking about it as you were coming through Dental school or how? Why is it you guys? Why you?

[00:09:06] So, yeah, how actually all came about it was on a flight and a lads holiday to actually to Valencia, funnily enough, and we just had that sort of two and a half hour flight, whatever it was. And that’s when we had the main discussion. We thought, how can we reach the most people in a platform that obviously there’s great Facebook groups, there’s great Instagram pages and stuff, but there’s not much interaction through a page. We thought, how can we just keep it as kind of direct content? No bureaucracy, no no other stuff, just content. And the way we figured out would be the best way to do that would be via email mailing list. So we thought if we make a mailing list and just put out content and then eventually build a following, we can just sort of hopefully attract more people to help put together the content and just help as many people as possible, essentially.

[00:09:55] And I think one of the key things what Chris is kind of, I guess maybe going to mention a minute is about, like both of us, we do enjoy the clinical side of dentistry. So like, you know, when you say about like, why do we take so many photos or like, you know, we don’t just do before and afters of what cases we do and we kind of do step by steps. And a lot of that is kind of just because we actually enjoy doing that element of, I guess, you know, dentistry and and then we find that, yeah, there’s value in that in terms of sharing that information with others because people can actually, in a way, see how you might approach a case without actually being, you know, I guess, in the clinic or in the surgery watching you, but they can still have that same sort of value or benefit if you like.

[00:10:34] Yeah, I see that. I see that. And and I think, you know, for my older colleagues who probably thinking, you know what’s going on here, I think there is this difference. I mean, you’re right, there’s a difference between teaching and and sharing in a way. Yeah. But for me, you know, it’s an interesting thing because I talk to a lot of younger dentists who all want to teach. You know, it’s not it’s much, much more common than that in my day. I had the guys from deciduous on here as well. That’s probably going back. So it’ll be I’ll be at the end of the 40s you called. If you want to look up that episode, evergreen Hassan and syrup from from deciduous, which are reading that busy busy who? And they were saying the same thing. As soon as they came out, they did the PPG dip thing.

[00:11:26] The reason that we both did Chris and Chris was hired on course. Oh, so we sound like we just did just following each other in circles, but we did the same called same uni. Same everything.

[00:11:38] Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Yeah. And they were they were always thinking of doing something around teaching. And it’s just it’s just to me, it’s fascinating that it’s it’s actually a thing, you know, let’s go back. Let’s go back. Go, go. I’m sorry. But what do you say?

[00:11:55] I was going to say now, I think like, you know, it’s interesting what you said about like a lot of people now kind of are thinking about teaching or sharing content compared to maybe, you know, a few years ago, right? And I feel like maybe an element of that is kind of like, you know, typically when we go through Dental School, we’re not as prepped or as experience, you know, maybe people that graduated 10 or so years before us. Well, so in terms of like confidence wise, there’s probably there’s that element where we always feel like we need to do a course once we leave them to fall, a need to learn more, right? And I guess that’s always the case and always true, because, you know, that’s the nature of the game that you always want to further your skill set and whatnot. Yeah. But I feel as though there’s obviously that need now because clinically, you know, we’re graduating with doing a handful of ends or a handful extractions and all that sort of need. But I guess also the other thing is, is the way that people in terms of our sort of, I guess, cohort learnt, we’re very kind of like, you know, digital in terms of like, you know, we want to watch short videos or we want to, you know, I guess, have things like condensed and quite brief rather than going on these, you know, we still do, obviously, like Chris said, we do year long courses and whatnot, but there is that element, whereas two or multiple ways of learning. And I think that’s kind of why there’s a massive interest in sharing content or like you said, you know, teaching and kind of learning in that respect.

[00:13:11] You know, my my thing about about this is that, you know, as long as you produce good quality content, the content will find an audience for itself. And, you know, you do your best to produce good quality content, but when you started doing this, did you have in your head who was kind of your target audience? But was it Dental students as much as dentists?

[00:13:35] To be honest, both always had a really strong following on Instagram, and he’s got really good engagement and obviously his his work and his work speaks for something. People trust his content. And so by having him on board and obviously him making the majority of the content and the pictures, that obviously lends itself well to the majority of that audience following Kaizen, I think with Instagram now, probably more so. There are students that have started to follow Dental Instagram pages and stuff. When I was at uni, I don’t think many of us, my mates would follow Instagram Dental accounts. I thought generally it was kind of when you when you start beating, you start getting into actual clinical dentistry that you start sort of looking for tips and looking for ways to learn outside of conventional routes. And I think that that reflects quite sort of accurately in our audience. It’s probably 80 percent dentist, 20 percent Dental students.

[00:14:32] So give me give me an example of one of the bite sized bits that you might send to the mailing list.

[00:14:38] Yeah. So this is what we’re talking about. So it’s kind of like it’s not it’s not teaching anything super complex. It’s something like like how to how to cure through glycerine as a question that probably gets asked once a month, once a week, I don’t know. But it’s a really simple thing, and it’s not. It’s just something that’s really easy to document, really easy to explain, and you can just write two or three sentences on it, show people how to do it, and then they’ve got that in the bank. And ultimately, the goal would be to make a bunch of these different bite sized tips how to cure through glycerine, what a line angle is, how to move your line angles, things like this so that people have a kind of an encyclopaedia as to kind of the the practical aspects of procedure rather than the comprehensive treatment planning and all of that. That’s the really complex stuff, which we sort of don’t we don’t provide tips for, but it’s just more operative procedures and really simplifying each step.

[00:15:37] Yeah, but what does it look like when it arrives? Is it a one page thing or

[00:15:42] What is it? So the glycerine ones, like three sentences, I believe it’s it’s literally it’s literally just I can read out quickly for anybody, as this is when composites like the final layer is referred to as the oxygen inhibition there. This means oxygen interferes with the polymerisation of the composite, resulting in sticky uncured final layer. There are two main ways to overcome this and remove this final layer what method is to finish and polish the composite restoration? By doing this, you will essentially remove the outermost oxygen inhibition resin layer. However, by doing it this way, the dust from the finishing polishing can be difficult to remove from the restoration. Additionally, the fund raising particles collecting the bars and discs used during the finishing and policy stage rendering them useless. Alternatively, another method is to do the final like here through the glycerine gel. To do this, place the composite as you normally would like during incrementally as normal. Once you’ve placed the final composite layer right, like you’re the restoration, then place some glitter and gel over the cured restoration. And like you again, this is the final cure through glycerine. Now, rinse the glycerine off with water and finish and polish the restoration as normal. The result is a nice surface that’s easier to polish and harder. And then just the pictures that four pictures one pre-op, one prepped one after putting the composite in glycerine on and then the post-op. So it just follows really easily. And it just kind of you can just read it and then most people will understand it.

[00:17:01] And so about you wrote that.

[00:17:03] Well, I own a mixture, so he he took all the lovely pictures and then we both worked on the actual text and referencing it and stuff like that.

[00:17:11] So that was the question I was going to ask you then. What research do you do? It’s a very simple subject, right? The the oxygen division there. But you still got to get it right. Isn’t it because this is the big issue if you if you get it wrong? Loads of people get it wrong.

[00:17:27] That’s it. That’s the danger.

[00:17:29] So, yeah, so what do you do? What’s the due diligence process?

[00:17:33] So a lot of the like the tips or if it’s a simple tip, if it’s something practical, like a lean angle, it’s obviously harder to reference. You can just show with pictures what it is and how to do it. And there’s not much literature that’s that can probably probabilities, but it’s probably difficult to get the literature and condensed into a format that people will understand. So for that practical type stuff, we just sort of show the pictures say this is how we do it. This is what it is. Essentially, that’s it for things like oxygen inhibition. Now we use generally Google Scholar read a few articles and then find the the most relevant excerpts from that and then reference that. And it’s stuff that can’t really. It’s kind of objective, like with oxygen inhibition, it’s objective stuff. That’s that’s it’s just facts, essentially. So it’s quite easy to reference something like that. But the practical stuff is obviously a little bit more difficult.

[00:18:28] Well, yeah. But you know, at the same time, if if you only look in references when you’re talking about something like simple like that, if you only try and look it up on on Google Scholar, you’re not going to get what’s the current thinking? You know, and what I would do if I were you is I would I would have, you know, mentors, essentially, people are really good at this stuff on each subject and just run it by them to to make sure you’re not missing something. You know, it’s it’s an important thing. I’m not saying you’re missing anything.

[00:19:00] No, definitely. Definitely, definitely. I think I think was really well connected with obviously, it works with George and Erin, so anything we put out generally to build a symbol for them.

[00:19:13] Yeah, I feel like, you know what, you said, Payman is true. You know, it’s always good to have like mentors and people that guide you along the way. Yeah, you know, I’m privileged to work with some really, really good need and Dental to kind of help and teach me massive amounts. But I think with like mentoring and kind of me personally, I’ve I remember when I was at uni, I had a mentor essentially kind of, you know, let me kind of shadow him whilst I was a Dental student and took me under his wing. Let me know for him and stuff like that. Whilst, you know, being a student

[00:19:42] Shot about who was that

[00:19:44] Shout about from Burzynski, who was like, you know, very, very talented, well-known dentist, especially amongst kind of the the students now who are probably listening as well because he’s involved in a lot of kind of, you know, extracurricular Dental sci fi stuff and so on. But he really kind of, I guess, changed my trajectory, you know, whilst I was at uni because it was something like, you know, you know, when you’re, you know, you’re trying to find your what you enjoy trying to find your feet and stuff. And when you’re at uni, you’re kind of drowned in all the sort of information you don’t. You can’t really gauge what you like and what you don’t like. So I was really grateful to this day. I’m really grateful that, you know, he gave me that opportunity to come over to the practise and essentially, you know, once every few weeks just literally stand in awe, actually, you know, assist with certain treatments. And it kind of changed the way that I saw things like prepping or only prepping. Or he used to do some period stuff like in terms of prior surgery and prominent. And again, it’s crazy because, you know, a Dental student who especially like now when you think about like confidence, you know, like trying to obviously be confident to take on complex cases or take on things that you’ve not done before, even if it’s like an only prep when you’ve not done it before at uni, there’s that sort of confidence barrier there. So that’s for me change when I was obviously in third year, fourth or fifth year, just going in to watch him. And that’s how my confidence grew. So, you know, you know how you asked earlier about you graduating in 2018, but you know, things are moving quick. That was kind of why it happened or how it happened is that I was already three three years in to Dental going over there once every maybe month or so, you know? So it was a big change for me in terms of what I wanted to do and what I liked and stuff, so I’m massively grateful to him.

[00:21:22] And where are you both working now?

[00:21:24] I’m based on two practises, so ones in Essex and one’s in Wimbledon. So the one in Wimbledon’s with our has been George Cheatham, who you know is known as George. The dentist on Instagram is an insanely talented dentist and all-around great guy. Aaron’s not too bad. You know they’re really good guys.

[00:21:43] That was Bell and Chris. How about you?

[00:21:46] Yeah, I’m just working in near home. So five 10 minutes from home and like a Portland practise. Weston Bromley, South East London.

[00:21:55] Ok, so let’s let’s take it back to your childhood. Normally we start with that, but in your case, I want to avoid that kind of thing, we’ll get back to Class A.. Did you grow up in Bromley, Chris?

[00:22:08] Yeah, in and around Bromley. So I was born in Dartford, so just that’s just a bit further south, east and or east, and then moved to Bromley when I was about nine 10 and then been here since.

[00:22:19] And so you grew up in Bromley, studied in kings and went straight back to Bromley.

[00:22:24] Yeah. Yeah, it’s quite boring, isn’t it? I did one year in, did well, I did one year in Valencia and then one year, of course, of course, high Wickham. So, so and I went boarding school, I went boarding school as well for like four or five years. So I’ve been a bit out of only a couple of times.

[00:22:41] How did dentistry come up? Was it your parents or was it?

[00:22:45] I have a couple of family, friends who are dentists, and they were kind of the ones who after kind of shadowing them and just watching them. When I realised it was, it was a good career that you can kind of pick your hours quite if you’ve got good control of your books hours. And obviously it’s decent money and it’s sort of all around a decent job. I’m not somebody who’s always wanted to do dentistry. I just looked at it practically sort of added everything like it looks. For me, it looked like the career that fit me most suitably and probably would have done something more sort of, I guess, rather a bit more bizarre. Well, what about this, wasn’t it?

[00:23:35] What?

[00:23:36] I would love to do something just left field or just something completely random, but obviously you can’t make money from things that you can. But it’s not as predictable to just do a random, just a random career. If I could turn back the time, I would have just done something, I would have just started a YouTube channel young and just fill an audience that way and done some of that.

[00:23:58] Well, Chris, but you’re not disillusioned already, are you?

[00:24:01] A little bit. A little bit. It’s obviously a really good career. I can’t see myself doing dentistry five days a week until I’m 60. I’m definitely not. I think I want to cut down to ideally maybe two clinical days and find something that can support me three days outside of clinical dentistry. So that would be the goal. I think it’s too labour intensive. It’s a really mentally and physically exhausting job, in my opinion. Dentistry yeah, to be able to do it a couple of days a week recoup and sort of have something else that you can do three days, that would be an ideal situation for me.

[00:24:36] Yeah. Five days a week is a big mistake for everyone, I think. Yeah. You know, there are other combinations, too. Two days I’ve done two days a week. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant because you do need another side hustle. That’s it. What about you, Bill? Where did you grow

[00:24:53] Up in boxing? So you signed it? Uh huh..

[00:24:56] And dentistry was the first time dentistry came on your radar.

[00:25:02] And you know what, I think it’s probably, you know, when it’s that kind of, you know, applying to University Farm, you’re kind of just toying up with what you want to do and what not. So I was kind of always thinking between like medicine and dentistry, as probably most people are when obviously looking at health care profession, right? And I remember I just did like working in the hospital, and I just can’t do this. Like, you know, I was shadowing a doctor on a ward round, and it just was not kind of aligning with what I wanted to do. And I just simply, yeah, you went to practise Dental practise locally, you know, stood in for about a week and kind of liked it. And I was like, Yeah, this doesn’t seem too bad. And then I remember the the principal at the time, he was just like, Yeah, if you want to make a lot of money, do dentistry, and that was it. And I was like, Okay, cool. And it was literally just that. But yeah, I don’t know how much truth there was to that in terms of, you know, now because I guess obviously times have changed. Or, you know what, I’m really, you know, I’m really happy with what I do dentistry. I really enjoy it. You know, I feel like we’re in a very privileged and lucky position to be able to treat patients. And, you know, you can obviously find what you like even within the profession. Like, you know, if it’s not kind of clinical, you can do non-clinical stuff. Even when it’s clinical, you can obviously find your niche in terms of all the surgery, restorative and whatnot. So you’ve always got that sort of variety. So I’m, you know, I’m happy with what I chose and whatnot.

[00:26:16] Yeah, yeah. And Chris, you will be too. I mean, you know, people, people don’t do what you guys have done without a fair bit of energy and, you know, inspiration and perspiration. And that’s what it’s going to take doing whatever aspect of it, you know, look at me, I don’t practise anymore at all. Ten years I stopped practising, but I’m still in dentistry. And you’re right. Well, it’s a very flexible career, and I was very interested in what you said about your mentor because, you know, I had a very similar story from Dipesh about his mentor, Louis McKenzie in Birmingham University, who gave them, I think it was nine 10 days of hands on composite to the students to to to a group of students, to a small group of students. And when you think about that, which dentists, you know, who’s done 10 days of hands on composite, these guys were getting it in Dental school and then I’m very interested in the school of social media, you know, and how much you can do from social media. And a lot of people are really, you know, think it’s ridiculous and you can’t learn from it. But some of the quality of work that I’m seeing from younger dentists like yourself, Bell for me, must have been you must have been learning from other dentists on Facebook and Instagram. Am I right?

[00:27:39] Well, definitely, definitely. I think like, you know, like, you know, George’s account, like Georgia, the dentist, that’s like one that I think everybody would say like these kids go to. Oh, for sure. Like, you know, he breaks it down and he makes it as simple to kind of just digest like, you know, topics that maybe we wouldn’t have experienced or learn about at uni or whatnot. And yeah, massively. I feel like there’s there’s so much value in accounts like that, and there’s so many of them out there. But yeah, I completely agree with you. I feel like you can learn and take information away from these sort of these social media accounts, for sure.

[00:28:14] Tell me about how it felt. I mean, what are you one year in associates now or what is it

[00:28:21] Starting a third year? It makes us that old. Yeah, I’m not old, but I sound like.

[00:28:25] No, but you had you had COVID, you had vet so.

[00:28:28] Yes, a vet. Twenty eighteen to nineteen first year associate. Nineteen to twenty. But then that was disrupted.

[00:28:34] So this is twenty first year kind of.

[00:28:38] Yeah, kind of like a second, I guess if you do the maths, probably about a year starting the second.

[00:28:44] So I remember it was the same sort of story with the deciduous guy. I was talking to them about this. I remember at that point being super disillusioned with my life, not talking about work. I’m talking about life because one minute you’re a student, next, you’re a vet, and the next minute you’re actually a real person. Yeah. And the real, real person without your sort of social support around you that you had with Dental School and straight after I found that really like, I don’t know, man, I was like in that room with my nurse thinking, What is this? What it was all about? Like this? This really and and this group of patients, you know, was the only one and all that to you.

[00:29:32] I can definitely resonate with that completely. I think for me, vet and probably my first associate job, I would agree completely. I think it’s really easy to, especially with social media and seeing people doing all these amazing cases and stuff and then seeing that sort of where you are and where you want to be. I think that is is obviously disillusioning.

[00:29:55] And yeah, why don’t you go tell me, at least at least help the audience to say Yes, BAL is you.

[00:30:01] To definitely, you know, it’s it’s true because like, you know, nothing prepares you for that Payman like, you know, when you’re in Dental school, right, you don’t learn about like how dentistry is going to be outside of Dental school, right? So you’re kind of like in a bubble. You get into vet and you’re like, I’m doing endo on like somebody that I’ve only done it on a block or something on a plastic tooth or something like that. Yeah. So then there’s that kind of bit to it. So then you’re like, Okay, all the stuff that you’re, you know, you’re so unprepared for, you’re actually doing. And then you go to like social media and you see all these other people who might be a similar age or, you know, whatever to you doing this amazing work. And then you thought, Oh crap, you know, I’m doing this and they’re doing that. So there’s that element to it. And yeah, you know, then you then you go and become an associate where, you know, luckily in the practise I work, there’s that degree of mentorship there. But if you’re not, you can end up in a completely like disillusioned or like, you know, position or like a space where you just like, like you said, you’re just questioning like, is this? Is this it?

[00:31:04] How did you get the job with your dentist so quick? How did it happen? Did you know someone who knew someone?

[00:31:10] Yeah. So how did it happen? That was so. Oh yes. So I started posting some of the work that I was doing during vet. Right. So just simple kind of, you know, rubber dam and composites or whatnot. And I remember just kind of, you know, asking George questions here and there, as you know, time went on and whatnot. And then I saw him maybe a year later or six months later or something like that put up. Remember that he’s looking for an associate, the Wimbledon practise and then I, you know, sent him my CV and portfolio whatnot. And then he just had come down for a chat. A couple of months later, I went over to the practise and it was essentially just, you know, like, I guess, speaking about dentistry and it was very, you know, chilled out in terms of that, I guess, interview, if you like. And I just met George, Aaron and they had a look at my work and that was it, really. And then obviously a couple months later, we were actually in Valencia in that time and he messaged me, So yeah, we are. We are. It’d be good if you if you want to kind of, I guess, you know, join the team. And you know, I said it would be a second think. Second, guess it or whatnot, it’s just kind of like, Yeah, it’s good. I’m very fortunate, very lucky. And I was quite surprised. Like you said, I’ve got it quite early because that was a massive learning curve for me, you know, because when you’re in a I guess, just finished vet, right? Like it was January of 2019.

[00:32:22] No, yeah. January of 2020. So I just finished Vanderbilt a couple months into practise, and then I joined them like a few months later. So in March, just before the pandemic, right? And it was like going from like mixed practise where it’s high needs to going to, you know, in practise. So it was like one end of the scale all the way to the other. So that was a big learning curve for me. So like in terms of gauging expectations, working with patients in that respect, because a lot of it comes down to communication like, you know, obviously we post work of our clinical work, but we post photos of our clinical work. Sorry, but these patients, obviously, they just want what they consider a good dentist. Obviously, some degree of it is going to be how good you are clinically and is a pain free and so on. But a lot of it comes down to communication and how they so treat it. And in that sense, so there was a bit of a learning curve for me with that. And you know, again, like I said before, I was very lucky that George and Aaron helped me and took me under their wing and they’ve always made before like, I’ve got that you were mentioning in the practise, which I’m really, really grateful for.

[00:33:20] What do you think about when, if I say to you, what’s been your most difficult case? What would your most difficult patient that you’ve had to, you know, your worst clinical call it a mistake? It doesn’t have to call it a mistake, but we ask everyone this question Can you think of something that you know people can learn from your mistake?

[00:33:42] Um, you know, I’ve got I’ve had loads of experiences or like challenging like situations right where I look back and I’m like, Oh, I should not have done that or I should’ve done it differently or whatnot. Like kind of a couple that stand out. I remember there’s one like, you know, try to take a tooth out, right? Really simple look on the x ray is like a retained root for a three molar, and I’ll get you. I’ll take these last five minutes and it will, you know, it’ll be easy. Walking apart patient wasn’t in any pain or anything like that, so it was just kind of like a finding that we found, you know, instantly finding on the checklist or whatever. And I just remember I was like, You know, when you like your trigger happy like you just kind of think, I’m going to dive in, do it, and that’s fine. It’ll be done. And I didn’t realise until I was halfway through that I kept crumbling. It wasn’t happening. That was enclosed, another crack. And it was like such a small piece that I just couldn’t get to. I just kind of like, step back. And I remember, like, at that point, the patient knew that I kind of, you know, I kind of lost her confidence, if you like. At that point, I knew as I was like, You know what? Sometimes it’s just then it’s like, take two seconds to actually like, you know, basically just assess the x rays and just kind of assess the patient.

[00:34:49] She wasn’t in any pain or anything. She just wanted to out because again, she knew the risks of it being in or whatever. But it was just like simple, basic dentistry that sometimes like you, just you don’t even, you know, when you’re when you’re in the kind of the sort of speed of no associate dentistry in terms of patient after patient, you just get caught up in it. And that was kind of just one thing that I thought, You know what, sometimes I need to just take a breath, you know, and you don’t always have to like, you know, sometimes me and Chris are talking about as recently as well is that you always feel like you have to say yes to patients like patients ask you, Can you do this or can you help with issues like Yes, yes, and I don’t know why, but sometimes it’s okay. So now you know, somebody else can do it better than me. Or I can say this to my colleagues who make sure it’s unsafe or more comfortable for you and so on. And again, that’s something that I think I’m learning now with more experience, and it’s okay to say no, you know?

[00:35:39] Yeah, but what happened? Ok, you struggled with this tooth and then

[00:35:43] I couldn’t get out. I just I said to it now I can’t get this out. She was obviously quite unhappy with that fact because she knew that I was in no pain before I came in and I was like, Yeah, I’m so sorry. Obviously, you know, the situation is that I just physically can’t do it, but I could have probably done it now thinking about it if subject to the surgical and just removed a little bit of bonus stuff. But it got to that point where she lost confidence in me. I’ve kind of lost confidence in myself where I was like, No, you know what? I need to just stop because I should have probably not started. So now at least I can stop before it gets worse. That makes sense. But yeah, you know, and that was kind of a situation where she’s probably had, you know, a week or two weeks of pain because, you know, it’s actually what I referred to on, obviously. Yeah, I referred her on and so on. But it was just that sort of, you know, while she’s waiting for the referral, that one or two weeks or whatever it was, it probably wasn’t the most comfortable for her. So that’s just one example. There’s no you know what? Touch wood, she didn’t. And you know, she had every right to, I guess, isn’t it? But she actually she didn’t. I guess I followed a lot. You know, I obviously called her a day or so later and just touched. Basically, I feel like that’s obviously what I would have wanted if I was in that situation, right?

[00:36:54] Yeah, I mean, full of so important, you know, I don’t know if you guys maybe George probably does this in this practise, but you know you should have someone call three or four patients a day. All the extractions, all the Arctis, anyone who’s anything someone should always call me. Oh, for sure, really sensitive side. But by the way, for me, the nurse should call and say, You know, doctor, so I’ll ask me to see if you’re OK. You know, for me, I should leave. Leave it up to the nurses decide who to call, but she would know she would know the right people. Chris, what about you? What’s what’s your horror story that that’s not really good enough for me, man. I mean, you telling me that’s the best, best story you got. You think you keep thinking

[00:37:35] About that one? I probably had that on a on a least fortnightly basis during vet. I just I couldn’t get teeth out. Luckily, I had one of my using really good friend now, but he was my trainer at the time jabs and I used to call him in. If he was in two days a week, every Thursday and Friday, he would get a message on it. So he set the teeth up because at the time, I’ve been lucky in my last practise that the referral pathway. So my previous practise was NHS as obviously as well as my vet practise in some areas. Obviously, it’s quite difficult to send a referral and get a referral accepted. So the vet practise particularly, I felt pressured to take out a lot of difficulty that either either I leave the patient in pain or I send a referral, which is going to get rejected, or I try my best to take the teeth out. And I knew I had that support system. If anything did go on, if it was difficult, if the tooth broke, Japs would be there to kind of get me out of a bad situation. But that happened on it, honestly, or at least once a month where a tooth would break and I try to take it. I couldn’t get it out and cause upset. He would work his magic and take it out a little bit better extractions. Now, luckily. I know those awful.

[00:38:46] So what’s your story?

[00:38:48] I thought I was going to make most mistakes that you can make I’ve made I’ve puffed and puffed through the floor of the pulp chamber during. I think the biggest thing is like, Bull said, especially earlier on to like during my VTi-L and first year associate, I would always feel pressured to do treat if a patient came in, kicked up a fuss and said they wanted this treatment. I would always feel pressured to do it. So there was one case, for example, where a patient wanted me to add some composite over a veneer where it receded slightly back basically told it wasn’t the best idea. She said she’s had it before. She really wants it to be put back. And I thought, Okay, look, if she had it before, I can explain the risks is obviously likely to fail at some point. Let me just do it. And then I did. I plan to do it. Plan that phantom some cleaning and Aristide beforehand. But it sort of printed out the plan with the cleaning and Aristide first and then the composite afterwards. And then she kind of took the plan away. Cord into reception said that I made it quite clear that you need to do the period before we can do the composite. But she called into reception and said, Look, I just want the composite. I don’t want the cleaning. And then they mistakenly booked her in. So then I turned up. She turned up on the day and we didn’t have the type of composition.

[00:40:15] It was a special type of composite that there was a pink composite essentially to cover up the reception area, and she didn’t want that composite. So we didn’t have that composite in stock on the day, so I couldn’t do it. But she really, really reacted badly to not having the composite in stock. And at that point I told Reception, I don’t I don’t think I’m gonna be able to meet this patient’s expectations. I don’t think we should be Booker. But the reception came in. Patient was obviously kicking off. She was she was really upset and then reception went and sort of booked Trimble on my colleagues without confirming or asking him. He yeah. So, so then he explained the case to him, and he’s then in an awkward situation where he hasn’t seen the patient, but he’s kind of has to see her now. And then he got pressured into doing the treatment, and I think he did a really good job. I think he did a really good job. But the patient ended up just kicking up a fuss and complaining, essentially. So just dealing with that at the moment, which is the biggest kind of stress so far. It’s the first complaint I’ve had and kind of she’s put me in there and a bunch of stuff about the exam appointment, and it’s like a really, really difficult complaint to deal with.

[00:41:25] Complaints are difficult for stop, but I mean, you didn’t do you haven’t done anything on the patient, right? So it’s always a lot easier when you haven’t done anything on the patient. But let’s go to what can we learn from that?

[00:41:37] I think you just after this, I’ve just learnt to say no now. So this was a recent case. And since then I’ve realised that even if a patient wants it, even if patients had it before and they want something that they’ve had it and they just want it put back. I just. If if it’s not the best treatment and you don’t agree with it, just say no.

[00:41:56] Yeah, but there was a failure, right? There was a failure between the fact that they booked him in. But was it her book The Patient In? Yeah, without telling you that the patient was expecting that and then the composite not being available?

[00:42:10] Yeah, exactly.

[00:42:11] There’s a couple of failures there that were not to do with you saying guests in this treatment that yeah, and that needs reviewing, doesn’t it? Definitely. And a lot of times in these situations, you know, we we like you said bell communication ends up being the most important part of it. And if if reception had said, you know what was going to happen and it did happen and then you did your bit, you probably wouldn’t have ended up as a complain.

[00:42:38] That’s it. So you’re ultimately that’s the other thing that is ultimately it comes down to the dentist. So yeah, it’s all you’re a lot of your day to day responsibilities and your day to day your work is is very heavily reliant on the full team, as it should be as it should be. But if anything ever goes wrong, it’s 100 percent on the dentist.

[00:43:00] So, yeah, I mean, look, it is. It is pretty much medically legally, but it’s a lot easier anyway to take responsibility for this sort of thing in your own head. Because, you know, I’ve had situations where I don’t know how a member of staff who I feel like I’m doing everything for this member of staff. And still, you know, he’s not appreciating it and he’s not doing the thing that I want him to do. And if you if you don’t take responsibility for it yourself, then tomorrow your happiness is based on that person, what they’re going to be like. Whereas, you know, it’s my responsibility. If I don’t like the guy, I should fire the guy, you know? You know, I’ve hired the guy. He’s still there. I haven’t fired it. When you take responsibility, I’m talking about your own head, I’m not talking about out there in your own head. Suddenly your day just becomes a lot easier because it’s all it’s only you that you have to worry about and have to worry about other people so much. That’s it. I’ll tell me that ethical extraction can’t be. I mean,

[00:44:04] I lead a very, very unexciting life Payman. That’s that is probably one of the bad ones. You know, I know. Well, recently again, Chris, as we were chatting about this last week and it comes to running on a patient, right? It was low as lower teeth like incisors, which I think are super, super tough because they’re so small and kind of managing the shapes and all that sort of stuff. So we did it and there are so so in terms of kind of what happened right is that, you know, I went through the general sort of information that you have. You got a deadline on the treatment. You want to get this done by and and she was like, Yeah, and matter of fact, I do have a deadline. And she was like, Oh, I need it done by this date. And I normally don’t work Saturdays. But because the only day I can do, I’m booked Monday to Friday. I’ll come in on a Saturday. So it’s kind of, you know, trying to get my way, accommodate everything to make sure it was done for this patient. And we did it. I came in on a day off and everything we sorted out did the composite bonding, and it looked really good. I was actually really happy. Patient was, you know, I wouldn’t say as happy as I was, but she was like, Yeah, and they always are. So anyway, she was like, You know, there’s always that little bit of suspense when you give them

[00:45:13] The Murray like, you know, I’m just going to go. It could go

[00:45:16] Either way anyway. Yeah. So she she saw it. She’s like, Yeah, it looks alright. And I was thinking, I’m a nurse was like, You know, we were like, we were awful. We did a really good job. But she was like, Yeah, no, you know, she’s like, Yeah, it looks. It looks okay. That’s good. So at the end of the appointment, I said, Oh, by the way, good luck for on Saturday. The deadline was Monday. Obviously, the next week. So I was like, Good luck for your your photo shoot stuff. One of the Monday, which was the whole point of us doing this composite bonding by this time, like we really kind of expedited everything right? And she was, oh yeah, by the way, that got cancelled, that got pushed back like three months. And I was like, Oh, okay, cool. And I was like, Oh, fine, whatever. And I remember I changed my plans that day because I was supposed to be in Birmingham or somewhere else, right? I was just outside London, so I was like, Oh God, that’s annoying. Anyway, it’s fine. Obviously, I had a booking for a review a couple of weeks later, and then I realised that I’d cut the lip whilst I was doing the treatment. So the bonding for the lower lip got cut, right? And I obviously didn’t read up on the day and I didn’t have to rub it down. So, you know, I was thinking that the rubber down would have. I didn’t see any of that sort of stuff happen. So I was I was a bit confused. Anyway, it happened, right? And then what happens is, is that obviously see a full review and everything and see that there is still maybe four weeks or five weeks later, the review there is still a bit of a mark on the lip.

[00:46:28] And obviously, at this point, she’s not very happy, as obviously you can understand, right? Happy with the bonding now, but not happy with Mitt. So I’m like, Oh crap. Like, what do I do? Right? And I remember at this point I’d done like a few extra things for in terms of the appointment, like I’d done a three, you know, clean because it was just like we couldn’t get her in for the appointments clause of the deadline under the clean and a free six retainer after the bonding to make sure the people to move and so on. And then obviously, she wanted some additions to the incisal edges at the review appointments. I did those again free of charge. Everything was fine. But again, there’s a cut on the list and I’m really kind of like, you know, you have to deal with these things. Obviously, it’s a spa on our own indemnity. You’ve got to be quite careful because it is facial scarring, right? So you’ve got to deal with this and whatnot anyway. Reviewed her again. But then everything in the room was fine. So you know me, her and my nurse in the room, we discussed it. I apologised, told her it shouldn’t have happened and everything like that. And then I thought, OK, it’s dealt with. I’m going to review again in a couple of weeks to see how the scar seating right now. What happens is she goes to the reception and she says, Oh, is there going to be a compensation for this facial scarring? And I was like, Well, and then obviously, you know that that conversation never happened with me in the room.

[00:47:43] So it was kind of something that she just said to the reception. So again, there was that element of like stress or something. And oh, god, like now, like, I’ve done so many bits in terms of the retainer, the cleans and all this other stuff, but like us now also give our compensation and stuff. So there is that element to it. And thankfully, in the end, again, maybe I don’t know. This is like eight weeks later or something. Things have settled because that’s where the bonding the scar is no longer a concern. We did give us some compensation and kind of resolve the matter, right? But that kind of a nightmare period of like stress because it was stress, it was absolute stress man, because you feel as though like, we, you know, obviously it never should have happened. I said this to, you know, the dentist and the receptionist was like, It’s obviously my error. I’ve cut the lips. I’m out. I don’t know how, but it’s how you still don’t know. I hold my hands up. I thought, I know because I checked the photos of the work in terms of, you know, I’ve had some step by step, but it was as well. And I just never where it was cut. I just never. The rubber dam in the area, so it definitely didn’t happen during that phase of the treatment, and the only time the rubber dam was off was towards the end, which was maybe 10 minutes either. It was then I must have caught it without

[00:48:51] Realising I would a burn. You know, maybe it burn. I’ve seen you on the show. And she said she had a handpiece that was not aligned perfectly and she didn’t realise it, but it was getting hot.

[00:49:04] And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that could be a thing, right? Yeah, like I always suspected, you know, we have these metallic. Yeah, we have these metal cheek retractions in the press. And when your lips dry out after a long period of treatment, right, you know, when you’re pulling them and when you’re doing the lows, it’s all like, I really pull them down to make sure there’s no, you know, you get complete exposure of the lows. And I think that that might have been a reason, but I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just speculating that, but thankfully touch with things of kind of, I guess, settled. But that phase of when you’ve got that looming over your head, man, it’s not. It’s not good. It’s a nightmare. It’s yeah, it’s not a good place to be in.

[00:49:39] Would you have handled it differently in retrospect?

[00:49:43] Yeah. Not lip. Yeah. You know what? You know what? That’s a good question, because I’m not really reflecting on it. It’s one of those like the back of my mind. So like, now you ask me, that is kind of making me reflect on it. Would I have handled it differently? I think I did all the stuff that maybe, you know, we’re advised to do about owning it in terms of apologising, accepting to it all. That sort of stuff was all done and it was done multiple times, you know? I don’t know what I would have done differently at this moment in time, to be honest. Maybe if you ask me that, you know, with more experience, I probably would say yes, because I’m sure there’s always going to be things like Dental do, right? But yeah, I don’t know, to be honest.

[00:50:21] And there are certain things I who knows. Who knows, right? Whether, you know, maybe, maybe she felt aggrieved and it didn’t matter how charming you were, she was going to, you know, get come for you. It’s possible. But you know, I was in a I was at a restaurant in summer and we were in Cyprus, and they were super strict on the whole vaccine thing. And we had none that we had a 14 year old with us and with 14 year olds, they had to test every three days. They looked at everyone’s thing and then they said, Oh, this 14 year old, he’s two hours late, so he needs another test and none of us can eat. There was a table for 14. No way no one could eat because because, you know, unless you want to leave the guy, leave the 14 or something, which I certainly thought about doing. I wanted to feel it looked like such a nice play anyway. So everyone’s everyone’s getting like, really bit het up, you know, God is 14. He had a test, but it’s just two hours later, you know, just give us a break. And you know, we’re in Cyprus. We were in Switzerland. But, you know, she was being quite strict about it and it thank God he found this piece of paper, whatever. But then she completely handled us. Here she went. It went from angry people to suddenly she went, Oh, where are you guys from? And then suddenly she was. She gave it a thorough compliment out to the women to, oh, the women from there, always so, so beautiful. And and just change the moment from the hell are you talking about to, Oh, let’s go and enjoy ourselves, you know? And I guess it comes that sort of thing comes with experience and it comes with, you know, some, some some people are good at that sort of thing and some people are now, would it would there have been something in a restaurant’s situation? It’s a lot easier to compliment the patient than when you’ve burnt their lip, right?

[00:52:18] Yeah, that’s true. And I think you know what it is Payman is all like when you when you have a complaint, right? You automatically lose like common sense and you just assume the worst like it all goes out the window. Yeah. And I think that’s like a big thing as well. Like, we just see, you know, red and just go completely like panic mode, which again, maybe it’s an experience thing. I’m sure there’s going to be people listening or dentists who aren’t like that. And that’s probably because they’ve got

[00:52:42] Everyone panics, but everyone panics when it happens, and sometimes you’ve got a lot more to lose. I know you feel like you’ve got it all to lose, but people start thinking, What if I, you know, I have to take my kids out of school and these can’t pay my mortgage, can’t pay my mortgage and have to take my kids out of school? You know what I mean for a dentist? You feel like that’s all you know how to do. So it can get super, super stressful, and we all know the stories of how stressful it can get. But what my advice to you both is that there’s going to be more and more complaints. Yeah, there is, you know, Bell, you’re such a brilliant dentist. First of all, people should follow your page. What is it, Dr. Bell?

[00:53:23] Dr. Bell, Sara,

[00:53:24] Thanks very much for the plug. Dr. Dorsey, I know the quality of the work really, really stunning for someone who’s two years out, three years out, whatever you want to call it, really, really stunning work.

[00:53:35] No, I appreciate that, right?

[00:53:36] But but but yeah, there’s loads of stuff you don’t know. You know, there’s loads of stuff you don’t know. You don’t know to quote the famous politician. And this there’s loads of bad luck in in in dentistry, you know, as well as good luck. Yeah, there’s going to be some people who are going to be unhappy and they’re going to complain. You have to think about complaints as part of the job. Yeah, for sure. These days. Particularly you can’t you can’t you can’t get yourself down over it. Easier said than done. They gave me, well, how do you guys feel about where this case education is going to go? Because, you know, the little conversation that I had with you guys was, for me, it seems obvious that, you know, email newsletter isn’t the way it should stay should. It should be more. Video And we were talking about technology. Yeah.

[00:54:33] But you’re going to be our pick up manager Payman.

[00:54:37] Yeah, I need to download TikTok. Actually, even after I forgotten to after our conversation, I need to get on that.

[00:54:43] Yeah, but you’re right. I think you know what we were talking about, obviously was kind of having more interactive, engaging content and video is obviously the key to that, right? And with what we do at the minute, like a big component of it is obviously bite size, you know, very small, digestible tips, right? And the video lends itself so nicely to that because, like we said before, it just kind of, you know, it makes it so much more engaging. So that is definitely on the cards in terms of we’ve got a lot of video content we’ve we’ve already pre-recorded, you know, a few months back and so on. So that is in the pipeline. Yeah, I feel like emailing is good. It kind of allows people to look at it at their own time and so on. And it obviously helps with other things that we do with Kazan. But the video is definitely where it’s going to probably lend itself nicely in the next couple of months.

[00:55:31] But, you know, with the email again, it’s arriving in their inbox with social and all that you’ve got to, you know, pick up loads of followers, right? That’s it. Yeah. Your page bill is aimed at Dental more than it’s aimed at patients, right?

[00:55:46] Yeah, for sure. That’s the payment thing is right. Yeah, you’re completely right because, you know, this was a Baptist and rubber dam and stuff that patients wouldn’t obviously engage with, right? Yeah. But the kind of I guess we’re not. When I started that whole Instagram page was, you know, like selling meat, and it was essentially to kind of move out of the NHS and more into a private setting. And that was kind of an obviously I like I said at the beginning, I enjoyed industry, enjoy doing, you know, taking photos of my work and so on and learning and reflecting. So that was kind of kind of a dual benefit that I wanted to also get a private job, but then also kind of just show my work and reflect on it myself and whatnot. But yeah, I feel as though, you know, potentially with time, maybe it will, or maybe it will change towards being more geared at patients. Yeah, you know, I guess it’s good to have a mixture.

[00:56:37] How about you, Chris? We we were experimenting with this question at Backhed, which was just last week when I was listening to this in three years time. And we were saying, if you can have three people at a dinner party

[00:56:52] That dentists or generally anyone

[00:56:54] Humans.

[00:56:55] Oh, OK, it’s a great question.

[00:56:58] Dead or alive?

[00:56:59] Oh, this is going to come back to that. I need to think about it for like five minutes, probably. I’ll just give you a rubbish answer. But have you got a of the stuff you want?

[00:57:09] And you know what, I’m.

[00:57:15] I’d say. This is one of these when you put on the spot, it’s so hard.

[00:57:20] No, I’d say, you know. You know, David Goggins. Yeah. Yeah, you guys are ahead of him and ready to look and whatnot. I’d probably say him. Yeah, for sure. I think that’s kind of like the never give up.

[00:57:31] You know that

[00:57:32] Guy? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly that. It’s like, you know, inspirational stuff when you kind of hack into that, that sort of mentality, right?

[00:57:39] Right. I gave up, I gave up reading the book halfway through. That’s the funny

[00:57:50] Thing.

[00:57:52] He’s a cool dude, though, because I heard him on Joe Rogan or something.

[00:57:57] Yeah, you bet you. You bet. I hope it doesn’t listen to you, your podcast mate.

[00:58:01] Yeah, I don’t think he will. But, you know, if he did, you internalise that question of once, once you’re completely, completely, you know, spent out, there’s still another 60 percent in you. And yeah, you do that for sure. Like I did that one, you know? Yes, I remember.

[00:58:24] It’s crazy because it is like, you know, my career in mind and obviously that mentality side of things, which, you know, you only think you have so much to give or to kind of handle, right? But like there are obviously layers to it, and I feel like it’s unlocking those layers and stuff. But I feel like that’s, you know, I follow them on Instagram and I always watch his videos and so on. Like, I just feel as though he’s super inspirational.

[00:58:46] Chris, you’ve got to have one is, do you know what it would be? Somebody like Jeff Bezos or somebody who’s just made it to the top, you know, somebody who’s just like, they’ve built an enterprise. And they just got so much knowledge that they can potentially share over a dinner, somebody that is probably quite a boring one. It’s not as exciting as David Goggins.

[00:59:05] So, OK, what’s been Typekit? No, it’s a business. You saying a business leader? Yeah, yeah. Get somebody to pick one that isn’t just the biggest business in the world. Yeah, because all right, we’re all going to have the biggest business in the world, but pick a pick and pick a business that you really admire in one way or the other. Like, for instance, I would have I don’t even know his name. The guy from Red Bull, whoever that is, you know that, dude?

[00:59:29] Well, why would

[00:59:30] You choose him from the marketing branding perspective? It’s just absolute genius company for me. I’m not talking about the product. I mean, I don’t. I have a Red Bull if I’ve had a super late night and I need to wake up the next day. But it’s not about the product, but it’s about the marketing. Once I was doing a lecture and I do not advise this man at midnight, I decided I was going to change the whole structure of the lecture. I was lecturing the next day and I went from midnight to four a.m., changing it all and I was speaking at nine a.m. and so I couldn’t sleep and I must have slept for like one hour, whatever it was. So I got to the lecture and I thought, I’m going to have a Red Bull. So I had had a Red Bull, and then I thought, I have another Red Bull. I had a second Red Bull and oh, my goodness me what I did. I was running so fast I could stop myself every time I started talking because I’d be so interested in. There must have been someone listening today as to who was in the audience that day because it was just obvious something was up, man. Okay. Oh yeah. So the product? Not really, but the brand gone.

[01:00:50] Chris, you know, I really about think about something. I want to say something really boring and save me here.

[01:00:58] So again, someone else?

[01:01:00] Someone else, what business wise you’re asking

[01:01:03] Whatever dinner party.

[01:01:06] And I’d say. You know what, I’m a big football fan, right? So I just kind of say as an idol like, you know, there’s just kind of somebody that you idolised would be Diego Maradona. So obviously, like if I could, I’m actually met Maradona, you know, once, right? And I’ve got I’ve got an Argentina top signed by him, right? It’s funny, actually. So I when I was in, yeah, when I was in my secondary school, I went to there, used to be this tournament. I think it still goes on, but I think they’ve changed the name, right? But at the time, it was the Barclays ATP Masters tournament over at the O2 Arena. Top eight players in the world, right? And I went watch my cousin and they had an advert on the screen, right? And they were like, Oh, we’re looking for this age range of, you know, kids to kind of be ball kids at the tournament. And I was like, I have paid no attention to them. My cousin was like, Look, you should really do this right? And I was like, No, I don’t want to be a ball kid like my mates can take the mix right? Anyway, I actually went to the trial, did it and everything like that, and I managed to get selected and I actually got into doing it for that top eight players in the world. So I met like Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, all these guys. And it was an amazing experience, right? One day, yeah, one day you know how you’ve got like courtside tickets and whatnot. We had like loads of people like, I think Kieran Read was there one day we had Kevin Spacey, one day we had it was the other one. So obviously Maradona was there, right? And when you have six people on the court at any one time, right, in terms of actually doing the ball, the ball kids sort of stuff, right? But you’ve got people that are in the same ball kids, but you’ve got a group of them who sit like in between the court and obviously the crowd.

[01:02:42] So like if the ball goes into the crowd or you retrieve the ball and stuff. So at one point I was like sat right in front of where Maradona was sat with his group, entourage, whatnot, and I turned around. I was like, Oh, my days, that is actually Diego Maradona, right? So I told my cousin, and obviously, you know, O2 Arena is not too far from us. So he was like, All right, he’s probably going to be there for the rest of the week or a couple of days. So he brought an Argentina top the next day and next day I was doing the same thing. I was sat literally where he was sat like just in front of him. So like, there’s this time where there’s like an interchange where you like to have a break and the other kids come on to like, roll on or whatnot. And at that point, I just literally pulled up the Argentina top and I just said to him, Can you sign this? And he was like, No. And then I just begged him and he was like, on it. So you signed it for me. And it was just madness is absolute madness. And obviously after that managed to see him one more time. But that was like surreal. Like, you know, when you actually see somebody that you completely idolise, especially as a big football fan. So that was that was super cool.

[01:03:40] I bet Maradona would be a fun guest at the party as well.

[01:03:43] Yeah, life of the party.

[01:03:46] How much he’s going to eat. But yeah, fungus party. Chris, I’ll give you one more chance, Chris.

[01:03:57] And I’m a leader with a similar story, but, you know, I’ve actually stayed in the same hotel is as messy and the whole of the blasted team in 2008. Yeah, if I could just sit down and communicate and have a conversation with him or Renaldo. It would be amazing. Somebody like that is obviously again just built different and made it to the top. And just obviously so dedicated and and motivated and inspiring lots of people. Well, even somebody like to be honest, somebody like like Federer or something with his branding and everything that he’s achieved outside of tennis is amazing how he’s built a whole brand. And I think he’s made something stupid, like 1.5 billion off the court, something silly like that outside of tennis and just learning how these people can can be at the top of the sport and also on the top of monetising the other aspects of it, the business side of things. It would be really cool to sit down with somebody like that and just find out how their mind works, how the brain works.

[01:04:58] I like that. But finally, we got something it something for me to do the party guys. Our time’s coming to an end. Just tell us the Kaizen Dental coordinates. But if I want to see what guys and Dental is about, what do I do?

[01:05:13] Is it on Instagram? Yeah. Instagram If you go on to the website closing Dental codec and on there you can sign up to the soon to be updated mailing list format. But for now, Instagram is obviously the main format and then soon tick. I think we’ve actually got a tick tock page, but we haven’t put anything out there, so you guys can call Payman to manage that.

[01:05:34] Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a guy managing and managing hours, and I’m still not happy. It’s interesting with Instagram. It’s obvious where Dental Instagram is, where TikTok is not yet obvious exactly what it should be. I find it super exciting because you can define what it is. You know, you can. You can play with different formats and things. So Kaizen Chi Z, I said, N, that’s it. Dental, guys. Have a look at that. It’s been a pleasure to have you. I’m not going to ask the usual Prav famous end of anything. Question puts you on your deathbed. You guys are way too young for that question. The one time I date would ask that question because usually I quite look forward to that question. But you know, the dinner party thing helped me because I know, I know you’re going to be making lots of waves in the future. And a lot of times, you know, it’s nice to when you get to that future. Yeah, I always try and help the ones below you as are. Yeah, you know, we’re professional. We were. In the end, you know, we used to be hairdressers and and what is it that apprentices and all that, but that that’s why they call it practising dentistry because we need to help each other. Isn’t it

[01:06:55] Something absolutely

[01:06:57] Lovely to have you guys on?

[01:06:59] Thanks to Payman,

[01:07:02] 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.

[01:07:18] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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

[01:07:28] Say and what our

[01:07:29] Guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:05] 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] Welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast, today is going to be a solo episode just myself talking about the topic of contextual, congruent see what it means, how it applies in everyday life business and why I truly believe is the is the essence of success in our businesses. It’s a topic that I’m passionate about. It’s a topic or a subject matter that I coach a lot of my clients of. It’s a subject matter that I seem to be having conversations with sales teams, my own sales teams and those that I’m working with every single day. And what does it mean? So contextual congruence? It’s all about communication that has context and that is congruent with previous conversations. So it’s about communication that’s easy to understand, and it’s the easiest way for me to describe it. And I’m going to follow it up with some examples and how it applies to sales and marketing in dentistry, but for just take everyday life. You know, I was sat here in my office where I’m recording this podcast now, and I was deep in some work. I was putting together a flowchart for the strategy of the exit of a dental practise. And as I was doing that, there was loads of things I was thinking about, which was finance, sales, marketing, you know, people hate chat, et cetera, et cetera. And my wife burst into the office and says to me, So what did she say? Noah painted the picture of where I am right now, and I’m definitely not in that conversation, so I look up, and the first thing that goes through to my mind is give us a clue.

[00:02:04] What did you say about what and when? Notice there was no context there, apart from the fact that she’s talking about a female and she’s asking about what she said. So I asked those questions What what? What are you talking about? Who are you talking about? Our daughter, of course, because earlier that day, my daughter had had a bike stolen at university. She was upset. She rang me. We had a conversation. We said we were going to sort it out and that was the end of that story. I haven’t spoken to my wife since then. She knew I was speaking to my daughter. So the context in her head was very much revolving around the conversation that I had with my daughter. I was in a different world. The had she walks into the office and said. Excuse me, Prav. She’s never going to say my wife’s never going to say, excuse me, Prav, who am I trying to kid? But if she walks into my office and just said, So what happened with Simone’s bike? Is she OK? Then I’ll be able to fulfil that conversation and to be congruent and context to it. Let’s say context in a different manner, we can say the same word in different ways, and it can mean completely different things.

[00:03:24] So let’s take bollocks, for example. I could be I could be referring to my anatomy. I could equally be saying, Oh dear, I’ve just messed up. I could be saying to somebody, You’re telling lies. Have you noticed all the context of just that? One word can mean several different things. And so why is it in our everyday communications with patients, with our team members when we’re talking about finance strategy, whatever that is, that, you know, the difference elements of running your business? Why is it that we don’t always communicate with context and we expect the people that we’re communicating with to be mind readers, we send emails with subject lines that are totally unrelated to the topic that you’re conversing with. You know, I always make a habit of if I’m sending an email to somebody, I always make sure it’s been a rule that I’ve set in place. Always make sure that the subject line is relevant to what I’m talking about, or I’ll change the subject line if I’m continuing a thread. Why is it that we burst into a middle of a conversation when we blurt out what’s going on in our head and expects that person to be in the zone and for that message to be totally congruent with what’s in your head? And I think a lot of this relates to sales and marketing. So let me paint a picture for you.

[00:04:56] Let’s imagine that I’m a patient and I’m going to I’m going to step into this patient shoes and describe the problem that they’re experienced and what I what I try and say to my clients or coach my clients around this whatever scenario you find yourself in. Step into that person’s shoes. So if you’ve got an issue that you want to discuss with a nurse, with an associate, with a team member, whether it’s a difficult conversation you want to have or whether it’s just a normal conversation, just take a step back step into that person’s shoes, map out the situation, and I promise you that the conversation that you have with them will be completely different to the reactive nature of what’s about to come out of your mouth. So I’m this patient, I digress, I’m this patient, I’m a prospective patient, I’m not a patient yet, right? So let’s just map this story about out about Prav, a 70 year old loose Dental euro. I’ve been wearing the same set of dentures for 15 years. Every morning, when I wake up, I whack some glue on them. I pop them in and I pray they’re going to stick in place. I hope that nobody notices my false or fake teeth, even though they look terrible. I walk around with my hand over my mouth. A dream about the possibility of tucking into. An apple. Also to food or a crusty bigot, and I know that’s not happened for a long time, and it’s unlikely to happen any time soon.

[00:06:39] So I blend most of my food. I chop a lot of it up into small pieces, and I definitely turn down every single invite to a social event through fear of my Dental slipping out. I’ve got a tube of Dental glue that I carry with me wherever I go in my glove box, in my side compartment just in case of an emergency. And every time somebody is having a conversation with me, I’m talking to myself and I’m thinking, are they looking at my dentures? What do they think about my dentures? Are they turned off by my dentures? And it is a constant in every single thought process and it creates anxiety. I lack self-confidence, and I just become essentially a social recluse. I end up avoiding situations. I say no to family parties. Have you got the picture? Do you know where I am right now? So we’ve painted that picture and we’ve stepped into Prav shoes. The loose denture wearer who’s not got a great life and it’s consumed around these loose dentures that is fearful of slipping out and its impact in his self-image. And one day Prav is scrolling through Facebook and on this feed, there’s a ray of sunshine that pops out of there. And somehow, by magic, Facebook have figured out that I’m a loose denture wearer because they know more about me than everyone else, and they’ve been spying on my conversations and through their algorithm, they’ve figured out that I’m down on my luck with my loose dentures.

[00:08:22] And this advert pops up and it says attention. Denture wearers, the Dental Sweet are offering complimentary consultations with Dr. Bahagi. Implant surgeon with over twenty five years experience in helping loose denture wearers transform their smiles, giving them the ability to bite into an apple again, enjoy life to the full with confidence. In the space of a couple of appointments, Dr. Bihari. Complaisant implants in your mouth and secure a solid set of fixed teeth in place, you can throw the denture glue away and not have to worry about that and live your best life. Dr. Behera has got over three hundred positive five star Google reviews from denture patients whose lives he’s transformed and is healing, and he is incredibly. Gentle and an expert with phobic nervous patients. Book your complimentary consultation today by clicking the Apply Now button below. So you got the picture this Prav, he’s down on his look and look, I’m going to be repeating this process all the way through. I know it sounds obvious, but it will make sense when we get to the end. So this Prav, he’s down on his luck. Is this loose denture wearer with all these problems? And he’s just seen a ray of sunshine on his phone, so he clicks the apply now button. What happens next? He gets directed to the home page of a website, and that website says the Dental Suite, we transform Smales.

[00:10:11] Here are some testimonials. Here’s our mission statement and this is everything about us. There’s a phone number at the top and these testimonials from patients who’ve had Invisalign and cosmetic bonding and blah blah blah. What’s just happened? I’ll tell you what’s just happened. You’ve lost me. You’ve lost that patient because when I clicked on that button, I wanted to do a few things. The first thing that I wanted to do was claim my free consultation. The second thing I wanted to do is learn about how you can help me. Changed my life through implant dentistry. And the third thing I wanted to do is meet my hero, Dr. Bahari, who’s got 25 years of experience and 300 Google reviews, and he’s really good with general patients. But the message got lost because you sent me to a page about your clinic that is not congruent with the marketing message. So what’s the alternative that we click on the Apply Now button and you send me to a page and that page has a picture of my saviour there, Dr. Bahari. And it says twenty five plus years experience in transforming the lives of Dental wear loose denture wearers. Below, there’s a graphic that says 300 plus five star Google reviews, and there’s half a dozen of the positive Google reviews. And every single one of those Google reviews refers to something like denture glue ditching my old dentures.

[00:11:44] I’ve got a perfect new set of teeth now I can finally buy into an apple. After 20 years, Dr. Bajaria was so gentle. It was worth every penny. There’s a concept form at the top of that page that says, Meet Dr. Bahala today and claim your free consultation invited me to input my name, my email address, my mobile number, and maybe give them a little bit more information about what it is that I’m looking for. Can you say how just having that one step thought through in terms of context and congruence, we can have a massive impact on the success of your marketing campaigns. Now, often the marketing message that somebody clicks on and where they go to next are not 100 percent congruent. The match of that congruence makes a massive difference in me as a potential patient willing to hand over my personal details of my contact information. Seeing that social proof on that landing page that. Alludes to the fact that you’ve got the reviews and things like that photographs before enough, there’s video testimonials. Let’s go back to the story. So I click. I fill out the form, I hand over my personal details and I click send and automagically my personal details now end up in the inbox of your reception team sales team TKO, whoever’s going to get that next and we’re going to go and move over to that story in a second.

[00:13:30] But as I click that button, it takes me to a London a thank you page. And that thank you post says thank you for your enquiry, a member of our team will be in touch shortly. Perfectly normal. Absolutely fine. How could we elevate that experience for me to make sure that communication is contextually congruent? Well, we could show a message on that page that says thank you for your enquiry. You have now taken the first step to getting rid of your loose dentures and having a perfectly beautiful, solid set of teeth where you can finally eat the foods you once enjoyed. Instead of a member of our team will be in touch with, you know, the team member, Becky will call you shortly to book your complimentary consultation with Dr. Bihari. In the meantime, feel free to read. Some of our Google reviews and watch our testimonial videos below. Can you see what’s just happened there? The message on the landing page? The Thank You page, the advert are all completely congruent. You have kept me 100 percent engaged. So let’s take the next step of that journey. My contact details have landed in the inbox if your receptionist. So what happens next? Your receptionist says, Oh, it’s an implant enquiry. Ok, I’m going to send him an email. Fine, absolutely fine. So what is in that email? Well. It’s a template we send an implant template to our implant patients.

[00:15:24] We send an Invisalign template to our Invisalign patients and we treat everyone exactly the same. It’s a copy paste blind process where we send the same old stuff out to everyone. And the nature of that email is something like this. Hello. Thank you for enquiring about dental implants here at the Dental Suite. We offer many different types of dental implants and treatment starts from two thousand five hundred pounds. Dental implants are the perfect solution to replacing missing teeth. And if you’d like to book a free consultation, please call us back on this number and I’d be delighted to get you booked in. And it doesn’t matter whether, if got loose, dentures are missing a single tooth. I need a three to bridge or whatever it is, we’re all getting a stock answer. Guess what’s just happened? Then you’ve lost me. Because when I pressed that button, when I read that out, when I was on that landing page, when I read that thank you message, everything was about my loose dentures. Fixing that problem? Give me a solid set of implanted teeth. Having the ability to buy into and chew into that food for the first time and rejuvenating my confidence. So what do you think that email template should say? Well, first of all, I don’t think it should be a template. I think every single email should have a template basis, should be bespoke, be written for that patient.

[00:17:03] So here’s Prof. I’ve already alluded to the fact that I’ve not chewed into whatever food, I’m nervous. I’m looking forward to booking my free consultation, blah blah blah. And the email goes out and it says. Hi, Prof. Thank you so much for taking the first step towards getting rid of your loose dentures and having a permanent set of fixed teeth so that you can finally enjoy life, get your confidence back and eat the foods that you once loved. We’re really looking forward to meeting you, and Dr. Behera, who’s got over 25 years of experience, will be able to answer all your questions and give you an indication of the approximate costs investment involved at your appointment and in that email. Guess what else is in there before and after case study of a loose denture patient? Meet Sarah. Sarah suffered from loose dentures for over 15 years and after same day teeth treatment implant assisted denture treatment. Whatever it was, she’s now finally able to attend the parties that she wants avoid. She’s got a new lease of confidence, but most importantly, she can bite into crusty baguettes again. Wow. Louis just happened. The message was totally congruent, right from the ad that let a little reassurance sunshine into my life through to the landing page through so the thank you page through to the email I received. And guess what happens next? My sales team pick up the phone because they’ve got my mobile number.

[00:18:46] When they pick up that phone, it goes straight through to voicemail and they leave a message, something like this. Hi, Prav is Becky from the Dental. Sorry? I’m just calling with regards to your Dental implant enquiry. I’ll try you again in a few days time or feel free to call me back. Both phone goes down. Perfectly polite. Perfectly normal. Nothing wrong with that communication. But you’ve lost me again. There’s no congruence. See, there’s no context. In fact, the only congruence in context is your Dental implant enquiry. I’ve got loose dentures. I want to replace my loose dentures with a solid set of fixed teeth. I want to meet my hero. Dr. Behera, who has placed thousands of implants over twenty five years of experience, has got a truckload of positive Google reviews. So let’s change that conversation, and let’s make sure that we’ve got voicemail training in our practise so that every single voicemail that is left for that patient is congruent with every piece of communication they’ve had from our practise so far. So they pick up the phone and it goes a little something like this. Hi, Prav, is Becky from the Dental Suite. Thanks for enquiring about fixing your loose dentures with implanted teeth. I’ll put your name down for a free consultation with Dr. Bahari. We’ve got a limited number of slots, but I’ve reserved you one of them and I’m really looking forward to getting you booked in.

[00:20:23] I’m guessing you’re busy right now, but feel free to give me a call back on this number and we’ll get you booked in. By the way, don’t forget to visit our Facebook page where you’ll see loads of reviews or our Google go to our Google page. We see loads of reviews. Watch some of our video testimonials and take a look at the email I’ve just sent you. Speak to you soon. Bye. Ok. Context, loose dentures, the problem, the solution, the social proof has made its way from that advert to the landing page to the thank you page to the voicemail. Ok. What happens if they picked up the phone and spoke to me? Well, the concept of sales, trading and telephone training is it’s a whole nother topic in itself. But without going into the ins and outs of the questions that you ask the patients to build the rapport and what you should say on the phone and what you shouldn’t say on the phone, the conversation needs to go a little bit like the voicemail. Hi Prav, thank you for your enquiry regarding loose dentures. I can see that you’ve suffered with this problem for a long time, and I’m really sorry to hear about it. The great news is Dr. Bahari has treated hundreds of patients just like you, and I’m sure you’ve had the time to read through, you know, several of these hundreds of Google reviews from loose denture patients whose lives is transformed.

[00:21:53] We’re really looking forward to helping you like with help lots of others bite into an apple crusty bread for the first time, but more importantly, just having the confidence to live life like you deserve to. I’m going to book you in for that free consultation, so when you come and meet Dr. Bahari, you can ask him all the questions you want. You’ll get an indication of what your costs are, Payman plans and things like that. A mobile queue in the conversation was incredibly congruent. There was no beating around the we talked about the loose dentures, we talked about the social proof, we talked about Dr Behera. Yeah. And we sell in the US in every conversation that we’re having with patients or do we try and get the conversation out of the way where we pick up the phone and say, Hi, just ringing it, just ring in regards to your dental implant. All right. Ok. Just wanted a bit of information. There you go. Whoa. Where was the twenty five years experience? Where’s the conversation about Google reviews? Where’s the, you know, we are the most caring, gentle practise in the Wild West is gone. We’ve worked so hard to get there, but we don’t use it right. And so the conversation needs to be incredibly congruent. Imagine now province booked for that consultation. What happens next? I get an email in a text message saying Your appointment at the Dental Suite is on the 16th of November at 5pm.

[00:23:25] Boom, job done. Or do I get a customised email that says something along the lines of Hi Prav, we’re really looking forward to meeting you and helping you with your loose dentures? The number of solutions that Dr. Baha is going to talk to you about on the day, but here are just the main two implant assisted removal implanted dentures or fixed teeth, permanently fixed teeth. Both of them will give the ability to be able to chew into an apple bite into crusty bread and smile with unbelievably lifelike natural teeth again. If you’ve got any questions for Dr. Behera, write him down and we look forward to meeting you soon. P.s., Please watch Sara’s story before whose life was transformed with implant retained dentures and an embed of a video. The communications congruent the Martin message is congruent the conversation about the USPS are congruent. Yeah, and it’s all these little micro details and communication that make me more likely to transact with you because believe it or not. The day that Prav jumped on his phone and looked on Facebook and saw your advert, guess what Facebook did to me? They chucked me the adverts of another five clinics because had already transacted on that. Facebook knew what my behaviour was and what I was looking for. So they gave me choice and they gave me the practise next door and they gave me another press and they gave me another practise and I filled out all those forms.

[00:25:11] But their messages weren’t congruent, their voicemails weren’t congruent, their landing pages weren’t congruent. So I’m sticking with you. I turn up for my consultation. When I’m welcomed into the practise, the conversation I have with the person at front desk relates to Dental and my loose dentures and that ray of sunshine and dots of Buhari. Does the person who walks me? From the way in area or the lounge or whatever you like, which you want to give it and escorts me into the practise. Talk about Dr. Behera. Is the conversation something like this? How are you going to be in the best possible hands? Dr. Bahari is the best around here at helping patients with loose dentures. You’re really lucky that we’re looking forward. Oh, here he is now. Dr. Bauer, there you go. How am I going to feel at that point? Yeah, I’m going to feel in awe of this person. And then this person has a consultation with me that revolves around my key issues and key problems. Where is that information? As a surgeon or a dentist, isn’t it incredibly valuable when I look in the patient’s nose before that patient walks through the door, but I’ve got an indication of what’s been discussed with that patient. What were their key problems? In fact, a copy of their enquiry from the marketing details of costs that were discussed with that patient or the consultations that had what their idea of cheap and expensive this there were all these clues that patients give us during conversations with us that are so incredibly valuable to the dentist delivering the consultation.

[00:26:56] And most of the time they do not make their way through to the surgery for that, for that conversation to stay congruent. I hope by the end of this, you guys have got an idea of why congruence, the contextual congruence is so important just in this little story. But in everyday business, when you’re talking to your accountant, when you’re giving a team member a set of instructions, when you’re delegating to a team member, you can’t just say to somebody. Go and do this because when you’re delegating to somebody go and do this, and this means I want this, this, this and this by this time. And what successful looks like is this and how I want to report, how I want you to report back to me is to send me an email on Friday detailing this this and this, this context, this controversy, it comes back to you. And we went. Now, one of the biggest problems in executing successful marketing campaigns is the lack of this congruence. And I think through numerous conversations with clients that we either just simply consult with and provide marketing consultancy, but we don’t deliver the services.

[00:28:21] Our clients and teams that we work with on a regular basis is that sales and marketing are almost like two separate entities. I mean, I’ve worked with corporates and other bigger businesses where sales are marketing live in different buildings. Now they’re so interconnected that I think it’s a crime for sales and marketing, not to be one department. But how many of your receptionists, your CEOs and your sales team have read every single advert that is out there have looked and analysed every landing page, every thank you page have crafted the emails that sits alongside those to make sure everything is congruent because often when I’m training sales teams, why tend to see is that they don’t even know what adverts are out there. They don’t know what their employment offer is. And so to expect them to have a congruent sales conversation, they’re already handicapped. And so if there’s one piece of advice I can give to any practise stroke business owner is Murray, the sales and marketing team, so they amalgamate into one. And your success will go through the roof. And I think that’s it, really, if you’ve got any questions about sales and marketing, if you’ve got any questions that revolve around contextual congruence, more importantly and how that can impact your business, feel free to shoot me a question. You can visit my website Prav. Prav. Com And just submit a question through there, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you guys have got around that subject matter or topic.

[00:30:17] 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.

[00:30:33] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] The other thing is, I’m a complete course junkie, and I never stop going on courses, and I think people sometimes tell me off, we’re going on so many courses, but I genuinely think you’ll learn something new from every single course that you go on and you get to a point where you don’t come away. Having learnt massive things, you might just learn tiny things like I remember going on Andy McLean’s course and I was probably one of the oldest people there, like it was full of people who were two or three years out of uni. But I admire his clinical skills so much and the beautiful work that he’s been like creating for years. So I was like, I’m sure there’s I’m sure I’ll learn stuff and I did, and I came away having learnt, you know, two or three kind of titbits that I then use. I still use. Sometimes I’ll, you know, I’ll hold myself, let’s discus an ankle and be like, Oh, that was that was how Andy McLean said, You should hold yourself like this. So I think sometimes people get a bit too kind of proud to carry on learning. And certainly I found it quite interesting. Like, I still go on courses even though I’m now involved. I’m privileged. I’m really lucky that I’m involved in teaching on some courses, but that doesn’t stop me going on courses and sometimes I’ll go on a course. And the people teaching, of course, are a bit shocked that I’m there and they sort of almost feel like I’m their spying. And I’m not. I’m just eager to keep learning. So I think keep learning and never be too proud to keep learning, I think is a key point. 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.

[00:01:42] It’s my pleasure to welcome Jasmine Piran on to the podcast. Jasmine, sir, actually, I’ve known her for 10, 15 years now, probably came to my attention when she became one of my good friends associates. Uchenna Okoye is associate. But since then, she’s she’s moved on and got her own private practise in the West End and become a lecturer and so forth. So lot’s happened since I first met you, Jasmine. But lovely to have you on the show. Thank you. You usually start these things with the sort of the back story. You know, how did you grow up? What kind of a kid were you? Why did you become a dentist?

[00:02:20] Ok, so I grew up in London, west London, Ealing only child. So no siblings. People always think that means I must be spoilt. I just think I just had all the pressure on me. I don’t think I wasn’t spoilt. But yeah, as as an adult, I’ve definitely got much better at sharing. So as a child, probably being an only child, I wasn’t great with sharing, but I ended up going into dentistry because my father, who is Iranian, was very kind of academically focussed, I would say. And he felt in his great wisdom that it would be a great career choice for me because it combines science and art. So he kind of decided that that was where my strengths were. So that was kind of the path that I took, and I think I kind of got into I worked with in dentistry, even as a teenager. I was working as a dental nurse while I was doing my A-levels just to kind of get into the the kind of profession, and it was going to help me get into university and things like that. So I kind of had a bit of a head start in that sense and without really knowing it at the time. That work experience throughout my kind of A-levels and undergrad years helped to kind of shape my career, I guess, and I ended up moving into private practise quite quickly as a result. I think

[00:03:37] So that dentists

[00:03:38] Know people always ask me that, no, he wasn’t a dentist. He just decided it was a good career choice. And what did he do? He was an engineer, so he was in mechanical engineering, and then he worked in I.T. and he did some lecturing at Imperial College and things like that. So he was very academic.

[00:03:55] And, you know, was there a tension with regards to doing what your dad said? Or were you always going to do that?

[00:04:01] Probably as a teenager, you know, you like to be rebellious. I think this number of years on, I have to I have to bow to his wisdom and realise that he was right. He obviously knew me much better than I knew myself. So, yeah, I think he was absolutely right. The combination of kind of science and art that we are privileged enough to kind of combine within what we do, I think is is very unique. And yeah, we’re very lucky.

[00:04:28] So what would you have done if he hadn’t have said that? What was your goal?

[00:04:31] I think I used to say I really wanted to do languages or I really liked drama like all of these sorts of things. But he was very much of the opinion that it’s a good idea to have direction and focus, and we used to play squash. So we were at the squash club quite a lot and all of the chaps at the squash club who used to be at the bar at 4pm or 5pm on Friday. They were all dentists. So my dad back then came to the conclusion. Sadly, it doesn’t apply to us anymore. But he came to the conclusion that if you were a dentist, then you’re going to have great work life balance. You can be your own boss, you can work great hours, you can go and play golf on Fridays, things like that. So.

[00:05:08] So you studied the guys I read. Yes. Yes. What was that experience like? How do you tell me about the first day you arrived at Guy’s hospital? Were you disillusioned or were you? How are you feeling?

[00:05:23] I was absolutely petrified and I was in the first cohort that was merged with Kings, I remember. So it was all really, really strange. And, you know, there was a huge year group.

[00:05:33] Yeah, how many? How many were you?

[00:05:36] I think it was about one hundred and forty five. And it was just they weren’t used to it. So the previous years had been 80 or 90. And then suddenly there were that many of us. So there was a lot of kind of, I guess, frustration amongst older groups because they didn’t want the merger. And there was a lot of kind of chaos in our year group because a lot of the kind of academic side of things was just it was just set up for smaller year groups and they were trying to send us a different sites, obviously. So we went to the Denmark Hill campus. We weren’t the guys campus, but we’d all applied to individual schools. So some of us had applied to guys and some of us had applied to kings. So that was all a bit interesting at the beginning. And guys, I’d say it was a really interesting place to train because you’ve got a lot of clinical experience compared to many of the other schools. But I actually found it really unfriendly place, and it was quite a hard place to be an undergrad. I would say

[00:06:27] Unfriendly how I mean, my brother studied there and he’s a medick, though, and he was he was a bit sort of taken aback by the sort of the. Rugby culture and this sort of thing was, is that is that the kind of thing?

[00:06:40] So it’s a definitely for medicks. I think it was. What year was your brother there?

[00:06:44] My 88 to ninety three?

[00:06:48] Yes. So my understanding is that in that area, it was very much kind of there was a very strong rugby culture. So when I went, there was still that strong rugby culture, but also so I would say, certainly for the dentist, it was very cliquey and everyone was in their little cliques and it was often determined by. And this is going to sound really strange. But ethnicity? Yeah. So people hung around with each other kind of according to where they were from, kind of in terms of their family backgrounds. And so I didn’t I never really felt like I completely fitted in on either side.

[00:07:20] Yeah, I’m glad. I’m glad you brought that up because that’s real. That’s real. We’ve we’ve we’ve actually never talked about that on this podcast, but in Dental School. Well, back in our day, who knows now, but back in our day, certainly those were the way the cliques were set up. It was along ethnic lines. And so so you didn’t fit in with the Indians and you didn’t fit in with the British. Is that what you’re saying? Exactly. So what did you do? Did you navigate both or neither?

[00:07:48] I guess I try to navigate both. I ended up into collating actually. So in my third year, I left that year group and I did an escalated B.S. in psychology, which was fascinating and life changing for many reasons. And then I joined. So then I ended up joining a completely new year that was already established. They’d already spent the first two years of their degree together. Yeah. But there were lovely people. It’s just that. I think because it was such a big year group, you ended up feeling quite isolated if you weren’t already part of a big group, I would say.

[00:08:19] Yeah, of course. And how did the psychology work sort of give you sort of insight? Did is it, as you would imagine, from from an outsider?

[00:08:28] I did my research on dealing with nervous Dental patients and communication styles and things like that. Yeah. So it was kind of relevant. And then I would say I probably used a lot of that learning on a day to day basis in my practise. Now I do see a lot of nervous patients and a lot of nervous patients refer their nervous friends and family to me as well.

[00:08:48] So I would say it helps for me. You know, if you’re good with nervous patients, that’s for me more important than if you have an MSC in restorative dentistry, from the from the from the attracting patients perspective, and I really don’t think enough people realise it. How important a painless injection is. I think as a dentist, if you can give painless injections and you can talk to people, you’ll be OK. He really will. And although they emphasise how to handle nervous patients in uni, I don’t think enough people realise how important that aspect is until, you know, when it comes home to you, when you need something done yourself. I don’t know about other people, but I’m a little bit needle phobic. It turns out I’m very happy to give injections, but I don’t like getting them, and I remember my wife’s very good with nervous patients. People travel from distances to see her, and once she gave me this ID block that I did not feel at all, at all, and I’d be in a Dental at that point, I’d been a dentist for 15 years or something and it suddenly came home to me, right? All those times do I push that plunger in and the amount of damage psychologically I’ve done? And I was one of these dentists who wanted to give the very best service and and make sure people tell other people about me and all of this. And I hadn’t realised that all I had to do was figure out how to give a painless injection, and loads of people would have told other people about me. It’s not emphasised enough. Did you go on a call or you went to hypnotherapy? Course I.

[00:10:29] Yes. So OK. So so I did my psychology degree, and then I qualified from dental school and then I, you know, became a self-confessed Dental course post-grad junkie. But then I came across something called NLP, which is neuro linguistic programming. And I found that fascinating, and it kind of linked up really well with my psychology degree. And then I did NLP and hypnotherapy, and I did a separate course in it with hypnotherapy as well, which is again, it’s just another kind of string to your bow, really. It just helps. I think it helps with your communication style, even if you’re not using kind of actual hypnosis, which I don’t tend to in my Dental appointments. But I probably use hypnotic sort of speaking patterns in terms of making people feel or helping them to feel really kind of comfortable and at ease. I would say so. It’s about a communication style.

[00:11:20] If you’re not, you’re not. You’re not saying to someone, Oh, I’m now going to hypnotise you. It’s just it’s just the rhythm of your voice.

[00:11:27] Yeah, just because a lot of it, a lot of what you learn when you’re studying hypnotherapy is communication style. So it’s language patterns and sort of tonal patterns within your voice. So those sorts of things can have a huge impact on how the person is feeling when they’re in the chair. I find anyway, so it really helps.

[00:11:46] And look, I’m no expert, but from the NLP part of things, my understanding of NLP is that some people are auditory, some people are visual, some people are. Is it feeling kinaesthetic? So that’s one thing. And there was this sort of weird thing about mirroring each other. And if you lean forward or lean forward and yeah, and your eye movements, you know, up into the right, wow. So, you

[00:12:10] Know, loads Payman. Yeah.

[00:12:12] Oh yeah, that’s quite not that. That’s all I you. I’ve just told you everything I do.

[00:12:17] So it’s about so people take it to all sorts of lengths and they do all sorts of weird and wonderful things with it. And some people are a bit unethical with it. And some people become a little bit, I would say, over the top with it. But actually, if you just take the good little bits from it, it can really, really have a positive impact. So what you’re talking about mirroring, that’s about achieving rapport. Yeah. So it’s how you can help someone to feel completely comfortable and at ease very quickly is by getting into rapport with them. And one of the ways that you can get into report is by matching and mirroring. Maybe their stance, maybe their kind of their body language, things like that, understanding how people kind of receive information from the surroundings. That’s the other thing you mentioned. So in terms of do they receive things more visually? Do they receive things more by sound or they kinaesthetic, which is where they’re, you know, for example, if you give someone explanation about things like, for example, having a line of treatment, Invisalign, right? Do they need to see a photo of how it looks on a person to understand how it’s going to work? Or do you need to give them an eyeliner so they can actually physically hold it? And is that how they then kind of like get in touch with the process and kind of start imagining it in their own body? Does that make sense?

[00:13:29] So it makes sense. But how do you how can you tell what are the clues?

[00:13:33] Oh gosh, there’s so many clues, so words that the people use. So do you see what I mean? Yeah. Solanki says that would be quite visual. Does that sound quite logical? Yeah, they might be kind of more auditory. Do they ask, for example, is the first thing they asked me, How does it feel when you’re wearing the aligners? Does it hurt? They might be more kinaesthetic. Are they visible? Is it going to show or am I going to look like a schoolgirl wearing braces at the age of 40? They’re probably more visual. So all of those things, but also I think one thing that really, really is so important with these things is not to pigeonhole people, because so often when you have a psychology background, people kind of when they find out they just think that you’re constantly analysing them. And I think the key to these things is not to be that person, so not to be constantly trying to pigeonhole and analyse people, but just to have an understanding of the fact that everyone’s different. So if you only ever use your own preferred kind of communication style, you’re only really going to be speaking to about a third of the population. You have to mix it up a bit and appreciate that people receive messages on different levels, and then you have to kind of be able to, I guess, moderate how you communicate accordingly.

[00:14:48] Well, it’s interesting. I mean, some people take it to the next level of having the the team. The staff work out the answer to that question before you even meet the patient. And I think Barry often will say something about that, which is which sounds good. But but it does. It does ring true in a way, doesn’t it? For me? I mean, this has nothing to do with it. But you know, when you read a book twice or you watch a movie twice and on two different occasions, the same person, same content, but you take them totally differently based on what you’re where you’re at in your life at that particular moment. Yes. Yeah, I can see that that that can be a big factor. All right. So you’re good with nervous patients, you’re good with people. Yeah, I know.

[00:15:34] I like to think I’m good with people. I think it’s probably one of my strengths is that I’m relatively good with people. You mentioned Barry. Barry was my vet trainer. Yeah. So he had a he had a big impact on my, especially my early career. But I still I still consider him a really good friend and mentor. He’s my patient as well, so he comes to see me through treatment. But also, like I massively respect him both clinically. He’s a fantastic clinician, but also personally, I’d say he’s a really good guy and I love. We came across an op together at the same time, so we did our early NLP training with the same trainer over here. And then later we both ended up going to the states to do our later training with the same trainer there as well. So.

[00:16:21] Wow. Yeah. So I’ve always thought your first boss is such an important thing because it really puts you on a on a particular trajectory. We had my first boss on about four shows about a goat, Nick Mahindra. He’s a great friend and he really had a massive influence on the way I look at different things now. All right, so that was your vet. What was your first real job after that?

[00:16:44] So that was beat. I stayed on part time with Barry, even though it was miles. So the funny thing is, I’ve always been very London centric and everyone makes fun of me about the fact that I’m quite London centric.

[00:16:55] So I’m proper Iranian Iranian girl, isn’t it?

[00:16:57] That’s why I don’t. Maybe, yeah, I just I don’t get a very long contract. My So Barry’s clinic was in Hazel Meir, which was a whole like 50 miles out of London. So I used to live there like four days a week Monday to Thursday. And then by Thursday I just had to come back home. So I’d be back in London. But I stayed on like a couple of days a week just because it was such a lovely practise and he had such a great team and it was just amazing. So I stayed there and then I also got a job in Bayswater, so I was working a few days a week in Bayswater for a lovely guy called Ron Dunn. He’s retired now, but he’s such a nice man. I learnt so much from him. So, yeah, I worked for him and then within a year of finishing my vet. In fact, six months after finishing Beatty, I somehow landed an associate’s position with Uchenna.

[00:17:47] So how did it come about? Did you just apply it or did someone know someone or how it happen?

[00:17:52] So Barry, being this amazing, forward thinking person that he was, we were on a we used to do loads of courses. We did Chris Barrow. We did actually later. So we were on a course that was being run by an American guy called Bill Blatchford. And so our whole clinic was there. And then you channels clinic was there as well, and someone on my table from my clinic said to me, Oh, I think Uchenna was looking for an associate a few months ago. There was there was an advert within the Chris Barrow Group. So I just went up to her and said, Hi. I heard you were looking for an associate. I’m not sure if you still are. Can I send you my CV? And then I did. And it just it was just fluke. It was luck. She needed someone a day a week because she was taking like reducing hours for a couple of months. So I just started one day a week and then I stayed there for 13 years.

[00:18:37] Wow.

[00:18:39] Obviously, not one day a week. Yeah, full time. But yeah,

[00:18:42] I mean, look, one thing I never did when I was an associate was applied, you know, send us TV or a letter to someone who wasn’t looking. And I think now when I’ve been talking to loads of dentists about it, that seems like that’s quite a common sort of I wouldn’t say common, but for the for the high flyers, anyway, quite quite a common M.O. to just contact places where they want to work.

[00:19:05] So it’s funny you say this Payman because I had a really funny chat with someone on a on a case coffee session literally an hour before this call. So I remember when I was looking for Dental nursing jobs, I remember going through the Yellow Pages. I’m going to make myself sound so old, but the actual physical yellow pages and literally cold calling every single like dental practise that look nice on the yellow pages, especially the ones that had a big advert, you know, the ones who paid extra to have an actual kind of, you know, three line out. I remember cold calling all of them, and that was how I ended up with really good jobs. I was like in private, high end cosmetic dental practises way back, you know, in the late 90s, which was brilliant. So an hour ago, I was on a call with some dentists and this guy said he was looking for an associate position. And I said, Oh, right, how are you going about that then? And he said, I’m Googling and I’m looking up for I’m looking up local clinics that have got five star Google reviews, and that’s who I’m contacting. And I thought, Gosh, how times have changed. I went with yellow or yellow pages, and now they’re just looking for Google reviews. But yeah, it’s a good. It’s a good way of doing it. I guess it’s nothing to be lost there. I think you’ve got to there’s got to be a little bit of hustle factor.

[00:20:16] I think, yeah, you’re right, you’re right. And I guess, you know, working in Dental practises before even going to dentistry, you’ve got a good understanding of what’s a successful place, what’s what’s what are the things you should? I bet you learnt things that you shouldn’t do even before you became a dentist, right?

[00:20:35] Yeah, probably. I think I was probably a dreadful nurse. If I’m honest with you, Payman, I don’t think I was a very good dental nurse.

[00:20:41] But why? Why? Why? Why would you, sir?

[00:20:43] Well, because I never had back then you didn’t have to have formal training. Yeah, it wasn’t like now. So I just got dropped in at the deep end. So, yeah, I was probably the nurse that used to just leave the room at the most inopportune moment, exactly when you need that person to be there and things like that. But no, yeah, it was. It was a great it was a great learning curve. And I know certainly when we because it guys used to start seeing patients from the second year and none of us really felt ready to be actually seeing patients, it was all quite kind of scary. Yeah, but at least I’d been in that kind of chair side environment a lot already. So that helped, I guess.

[00:21:21] And then working with Uchenna, I mean, she’s she’s one of my favourite people I spend. We have a pre-lockdown menu changes to have dinner a couple of times a year just to just to catch up. I really like it, but we’re very, very different as employers. And actually, you know, it’s one of my favourite subjects. Talking to her is and if this situation came up with you, what would you have done about it? Because she’s quite a tough boss, right?

[00:21:49] I’d say she has high standards.

[00:21:52] And and so do you first call? Let me say she has astounded me

[00:21:58] And she always inspired me. She had a massively positive influence on my career and my career pathway and the things that she’s striving for are I agree with, you know, what she wants people to do. I completely agree with whether it’s always easy to find people who will hit those standards. Unfortunately, that’s another story. It feels like they manage it really well in the states, actually, when you go over and do courses in the states and speak to the clinicians over that. They seem to be they seem to manage it. But yeah, I think I always felt really lucky. I think I spent the first few years working there kind of pinching myself that I had that opportunity to be there and I was always waiting for something to happen. I had that real imposter syndrome or, yeah, yeah, she’s going to

[00:22:43] Realise I was she. Was she peaking when, you know, as far as her, her profile back then, there was a moment there where she was the most famous dentist in the country.

[00:22:54] Yeah. So I was there when ten years younger, the first time around when ten years younger was happening. Yeah, yeah. And actually, you know, watching her do that was really inspiring because, you know, people don’t often realise that she has a very, very soft heart and she’s very sensitive as well. So she’s very driven and very focussed, but she’s very, very human and kind of sensitive as well. So I think seeing that happen and watching her be, I think, very brave in putting herself out there to do that was, yeah, it was very inspiring.

[00:23:28] But it was a bit awkward. And every time I’ve been to one of her clinics to that idea of they call them guests, then they didn’t call them patients and the huddle and the way they talk about their patients not knowing so much about them. You know, it’s she was doing that before it was properly fashionable to do. Yeah. And there’s something about her which I don’t know whether you picked up from her or not, but she kind of wants to be different, you know, like her, her angle is if everyone is using these people for their website, I’m definitely not going to use those people. You know, I’m going to use someone from completely outside dentistry, and it’s actually a good way of making progress because, you know, if we just all do the same thing, we’ll end up the same way.

[00:24:14] Definitely. I think Newton is a trailblazer.

[00:24:16] Yeah, exactly what I was looking for.

[00:24:18] I’m not a trailblazer.

[00:24:20] What makes you say that?

[00:24:23] I just I play it safe a bit more, and I’m not quite. I’m not. I can honestly say I don’t think I’m as ambitious and I don’t. I’m not seeing that to put myself down. I’m really happy with where I’m at and what I look for, but I’m not in need of that level of of achievement or kind of constantly progressing. I’m happy, probably. I’m happy aiming for perfection with within my own little world, I think.

[00:24:50] Yeah, I guess it goes down to that sort of lift to work, work to live kind of breakdown.

[00:24:57] No, yes. No, you’re absolutely right. It should do. But if what I’ve said gives you the impression I have good work life balance, then I’m not representing myself well, because I have no work-life balance. So yes, I think you’re right, it does come down to work to what

[00:25:11] Do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean you’ve got you work too much? Is that what you mean?

[00:25:14] Yeah, definitely. But I don’t know. I think we all do at the moment. I think especially since the pandemic. I think as a profession, we’ve just all entered this crazy world of just constantly working.

[00:25:27] And thank goodness for it, right? I mean, it’s

[00:25:32] Coming back to work and we just felt so lucky. I think it was a combination of we felt really lucky to be back at work. We felt kind of quite shocked. There was probably a bit of PTSD on a mild level of having been stopped from working because we could never have imagined a situation where that could happen. And it felt so precious that we and and we felt like any minute the rug could be pulled out from under our feet again. So make hay while you can. Yeah. So and I think, yeah, that’s probably how it’s happened.

[00:25:59] Going going back to that, your dad thing. So did you ever live in Iran or no? I visited, but I’ve never lived there. Yeah. So I remember when my parents kind of I don’t want I don’t want to sound bitter about it when they made me become a dentist. Yeah, they didn’t. It wasn’t. It wasn’t like that.

[00:26:17] But they have is, though, is it? But it is.

[00:26:19] But it is. Yeah. Well, you know, the argument they used was, look, if we were back home, then we wouldn’t be saying this because back home we were fully stable. We knew what we were about. We we were fine. But now that we’re here and I guess it goes down to the same immigrant sort of culture, the notion that people will always need a doctor or dentist or whatever it is. And it’s interesting because I always used to think that, OK, that that didn’t play out in my life until the pandemic when the pandemic happened. Then, 40 years after they. Suggests that it actually came home, that people do need a dentist more than they need a dry cleaner. Yeah, yeah. Or whatever else I would have become. But you know, it’s a funny thing because what you choose to do. What would you would you would you have any kids? But would you tell your kid to become a dentist?

[00:27:16] Oh, that’s a really tricky one, because I really want to say yes. I really want to say yes to that question, and I have to be honest, I think I would say no because I. Shame. I feel like and I hope it passes. I feel like we’re we’re going through a period in our profession, which in some ways is incredible. I think we’re so privileged to be in a situation where we’ve got great technology. You know, digital dentistry is phenomenal. We’ve got great material sciences. You know, the things we can do artistically, aesthetically for patients without, you know, very minimally invasively. I, you know, I get such a kick out of that side of things. I absolutely love it. So that side of things is amazing. But then you look at the kind of the litigious ness of the population that we’re living in. You look at the lack of support that we get, I believe from our regulators the way that that all plays out. I just think it’s become quite difficult. And certainly, I feel so lucky that I managed to kind of pave the way for myself within dentistry into the types of clinics that I worked at. Because, you know, I read on these forums that the kind of the situations that a lot of associates working in very busy NHS practises are going through, and I just think that must be so hard. And we we need that to be going on because we need the NHS Dental system to be working and we need patients to have access to that care. But working in that way within that system, I think, is really hard. And if somebody came into the profession now, they’d have to work through that first before they could get to a point where they’re not having to do that anymore. So that’s probably why I would have reservations, I think.

[00:29:00] I don’t know if you’ve seen that British Dental Action Group

[00:29:04] Have, and it’s it’s a little bit soul destroying. And I read the post and I sent this such a kind of there’s a bit of a seminar between associates and principals and. Both sides seem to just so often see the worst in each other, and I’m sure there’s reasons for that, but I find that really sort of disappointing because ideally if you’re in a situation where you’re either a principal or you’re an associate, it should be based on a place of trust for either your associate or your principal. And I think not being able to have that and feeling like. You’re kind of constantly being screwed over for want of a better word. It’s just really sad and it’s a horrible kind of environment. It’s a bad energy to be working in. I would say

[00:29:52] Stephanie got worse since the pandemic, for sure. But you know, the funny thing is, you know, it feels like now the balance of power has shifted towards principles. Well, I guess now there’s a shortage of associates, and so it might come back. But you know, if you could someone someone somewhere could make the argument for, listen, you’ve got to put in your years as an associate and eventually you’ll become a principal and your benefit from all of that. But it misses a whole massive group of the profession who don’t want to become principals. You know, they want to just be associates.

[00:30:27] So interesting. So I was an associate forever.

[00:30:31] Thirty years. Yeah.

[00:30:32] Well, I became a principal sort of by accident. When you’re an associate, you have your own set of kind of things that you’re aware of that feel quite full. You’re full up, you’re your day is full of the things that you are fully aware of. As an associate, you already feel like you’re having to take on quite a lot of responsibility and you know you’re having to do a lot. So it’s quite easy as an associate to completely miss an entire kind of dimension of stuff that you’re not even aware of that the principal is having to think about. And I think it’s that’s where the problem is. There’s that lack of understanding between the two sides, I think.

[00:31:11] Yeah, yeah. And look, we see it on the courses where it’s time, you know, obviously more associates come to the courses than principals. What’s the reason for that? But there is that when it comes to, OK, what are you going to buy? There are some people who will not buy anything because that’s the that’s the principal’s job. And although I even though I get that, you know, when I was an associate, I were buying whatever the hell I wanted. That was, it was. It was a one thing. I wanted a control camera when I bought it. You know, I was going to go ask the principal for it. That said, that said, when you’re getting screwed over, the last thing you want to do is put your hand in your pocket. And my advice to young dentists who are in this situation tends to be think of your associate years as education is not as business is. You know, of course, it’s your livelihood and you’re, you know, you could be paying for your kid’s school or whatever it is. But think of those years as education, but it still misses the point that there are plenty of people mothers who want to work part time, just people who don’t want to be business owners. You know, not everyone has to be a business owner. Plenty of people who will never be principals. And if we have it skewed too much against associate, you’re going to have some people whose their whole working lives will feel like they’re being screwed over. And that’s a real shame. Real, real shame. I agree with you.

[00:32:36] I think in reality, you said, you said you wonder why there’s more associates that come on the courses than principals. It’s because there are more associates than principals. That’s true in number. And I think you need both.

[00:32:47] There’s kind of a scramble for private jobs as well as in there. So there’s people going on courses to try and get the good jobs and so forth. So let’s move on and talk about some clinical bits. So you’re a great proponent of minimally invasive cosmetic dentistry as well as, I guess, eugenics practise was a lot to do with veneers for some veneers, right?

[00:33:14] So you tend to famously doesn’t like prepping tea, so she’s always been minimally invasive from that perspective. So we were never a heavy prep type clinic. I also worked at a clinic which ended up closing down, which is why I ended up starting my own clinic. But I worked at another clinic that did a lot of cosmetic dentistry, and it was all we did. So we did lots of veneer cases and lots of Invisalign and fixed race cases. So I would say that it’s about you can still be minimally invasive. It’s about how you plan your treatment. It’s about kind of designing the small addictively so that you can be minimally invasive in your approach. And it’s about doing pre restorative alignment wherever it’s necessary. Whenever you can kind of educate the patient to understand that that is a much better way of kind of moving forwards in that in that kind of treatment phase, if that makes sense. So yeah, I would say I’ve always been a fan of minimally invasive.

[00:34:13] Yeah. Although some people will argue that there’s a there’s a time for not being minimally invasive and, you know, prepping properly and all of that. But give me one or two tips one one one one tip from the sort of the patient management side when you’re treating cosmetic patients and then one sort of clinical, you know, Yasmin tip. Jasmine. So Jasmine gets hit on whatever aspect of clinical dentistry, something that you can sort of.

[00:34:42] Yeah, I think one thing I’ve learnt is that communication is so important when you’re dealing with patients who say, OK, so one thing is, isn’t it a privilege that patients come and see us for elective treatment? So the whole the whole kind of like mood changes when someone comes in and you have to tell them they need a root canal treatment or they need an extraction versus someone comes to you and says, Please help me. I want you to help me improve my smile. So already, that’s just such a great energy space to be in. It’s wonderful, and it gives you the opportunity to kind of achieve something wonderful for that person and actually really see how it’s going to change their life for the better. So I think it’s a huge honour that anyone that’s able to do that sort of work, I believe is very lucky. And I think one thing I’ve learnt over the years is all about communication because you have to understand what the patient wants and try and avoid yourself from kind of prescribing what you think they should want. Because when you look at their smile, that’s what you see and stay focussed on what they don’t like and what they’re trying to improve, because then you’re much less likely to end up over treating or overpaying or, you know, complicating things, I would say. So from that perspective, I think that has a huge impact. The other thing is, I’m a complete course junkie and I never stop going on courses, and I think people sometimes tell me off. We’re going on so many courses, but I genuinely think you’ll learn something new from every single course that you go on and you get to a point where you don’t come away having that massive things.

[00:36:18] You might just learn tiny things like I remember going on Andy McLean’s course and I was probably one of the oldest people there, like it was full of people who were two or three years out of uni. But I admire his clinical skills so much and the beautiful work that he’s been like creating for years. So I was like, I’m sure there’s I’m sure I’ll learn stuff and I did, and I came away having learnt, you know, two or three kind of titbits that I then use. I still use. Sometimes I’ll, you know, I’ll hold myself Lex disc at a certain angle and be like, Oh, that was that was how Andy McLean said, You should hold yourself like this. So I think sometimes people get a bit too kind of proud to carry on learning. And certainly I found it quite interesting. Like, I still go on courses even though I’m now involved. I’m privileged. I’m really lucky that I’m involved in teaching on some courses, but that doesn’t stop me going on courses and sometimes I’ll go on a course and the people teaching the course are a bit shocked that I’m there and they sort of almost feel like I’m their spying. And I’m not. I’m just eager to keep learning. So I think keep learning is and never be, never be too proud to keep learning. I think is is a key point.

[00:37:28] Sure, sure. And you know, I remember when you came on on ours as well and you’ve been on a cheese course, I think you said, was it? Yeah. And I would say to you, Well, OK, hopefully we’re going to make you happy.

[00:37:46] But Dipesh is a fantastic clinician and you guys won an amazing course, and I’m always advising people to come on your course. That doesn’t matter. I teach composite bonding courses. That doesn’t mean I don’t think that your course was phenomenal. And some of the things you know that you guys teach on that course are brilliant. And you know, the other thing is a lot of people will say the same thing, but it’s like you said about watching a film or reading a book for a second time. Like I’ve been on many of today’s courses, I’ve been on many of Newton Files courses. Sometimes you do the same course twice and you get different things out of that time. So I think there’s there’s no harm in in hearing something twice and hearing something twice from two different people just reinforces that it’s the right thing to do, right.

[00:38:31] So I think it’s a good point. You know, we encourage people to come back and observe on us for that very reason. You know, when you try and put it into action, then you’ve got totally different questions to before you’ve even properly tried to put it into action. Tell me about teaching. I mean, you teach on Invisalign and you line a line of consulting and you teach on the brilliant small parts of the programme. Give us some clues on Invisalign to start with. I mean, are you a super duper diamond plus plus whatever?

[00:39:05] No, I’m so, I’m not. So I work. I don’t. I’m not involved in anyone else’s account. I just take my own account. I’m a single handed practitioner, so I’m platinum elite. And for me, actually, I limit the number of cases I do because I don’t want to be overwhelmed with cases. I want to have complete control over my cases and my case planning. So I first started Invisalign back in sort of 2008, 2009, and back then it was a great idea, but it wasn’t anywhere near as phenomenal a system as it is now, and the teaching wasn’t as structured as it is now. I mean, the way that we teach the programmes now, it’s so kind of structured and methodical and. Safe as well. Rahman Rahman Olark is an incredible specialist, orthodontist. He’s amazing, so he’s incredible clinician and an incredible educator. So when I did his post-grad diploma programme on clearer line of therapy, that was where I kind of suddenly thought, Wow, this is amazing. This is an amazing system and you can use this within your kind of small design principles and your veneer cases or bonding cases to really get great results completely, minimally invasively. So I think it’s that’s another thing that we’re so lucky to have in our industry right now is these kind of systems that we can use and work with to achieve such great results for people, you know, without having to take a bar to their teeth. It’s brilliant. Yeah.

[00:40:27] Do you do you plan the Invisalign, the clinics yourself or do you

[00:40:31] 100 percent, 100 percent, I think. I think that’s really important. Yeah. I know lots of people outsource and you can outsource, but it’s half the fun for me. I actually love planning clinics. That’s what a lot of a lot of the time that I spent helping other dentists is, you know, doing case cafes and things like that, you know, helping to plan their cases. It’s great fun. You know, you’re looking at the smile within the face and then looking at how you want to move the teeth safely, you know, within the kind of the biological parameters that that individual has. It’s brilliant.

[00:41:03] But where did you learn that? I mean, was that on Roman’s course? Because.

[00:41:07] Yes. So yes, I learnt I probably felt way out of my depth for many years before I realised that there was a system to use. And then, yeah, I learnt it via the diploma, and then I just carried on learning after that. Really, that just kind of sparked a huge interest for me. It must just play into the way my brain works. I might. I think I have quite a mechanically minded brain. So the concept of the fintech and planning just sits quite easily within my mindset, I think.

[00:41:34] It sounds like you enjoy it. But but if it was me, if it was me and I haven’t got the skills you’ve got in orthodontics, but if it was me, I would think, well, I could outsource this to an orthodontist. And you know, that would be the safest thing would be a real proper orthodontist doing the the planning part.

[00:41:57] I think it’s about case selection, isn’t it? Because you’re absolutely right. You touched on a really interesting point there. So there is definitely a very important place and need for specialist orthodontics. And just because general dental practitioners can do alignment treatments doesn’t mean that orthodontists are obsolete. We have to know our place and we have to know our limitations and our safe parameters. That’s probably I think that’s why Invisalign developed the Invisalign go system, which is kind of more restrictive in the types of movements and the number of teeth that can be moving things like that. So that was all brought about, I think, as a result of, you know, wanting to kind of rein things in a bit and make things as safe as possible. But as long as you’re working within safe parameters, I think I don’t think it’s purely orthodontics because you’re doing small design, you’re looking at the full face and actually planning that person smile within that facial kind of set up. I think so.

[00:42:51] Is that orthodontic?

[00:42:54] I mean, it is orthodontics, but it’s also aesthetics and cosmetics, isn’t it?

[00:42:57] So everything. Well, what I meant was what I meant, though, was if I was a general dentist carrying out Invisalign, I would outsource the clean check to an orthodontist.

[00:43:07] I think I’m too much of a control freak Payman. I don’t think I could do that. I would want to know what’s happening in the city. Yeah, but the thing now is that there’s so much support available that anyone that needs that support or wants that guidance or wants to understand things, they can access that support quite easily. Yeah, there’s all sorts of forums and case cafe support that they can access. So I think the help is there. It’s just about making sure that I think people need to stay within their comfort zone and within their scope of practise. And things go wrong when people start stepping outside of that. I think, are you?

[00:43:42] Are you a control freak? Generally. Probably.

[00:43:48] And I think my my good friends and colleagues at small force would say, yes, definitely.

[00:43:53] Maybe. Yeah. Well, it took took it about talking about things that go wrong. We ask every guest this question. It’s a question around clinical errors. Can you think of clinical errors? You’ve made something something that the audience can learn from some people can learn from. Can you think of a situation?

[00:44:13] I think if I if you asked me for it to remember my most stressful ever clinical situation, it would be a case where the lady came in. She’d had veneers, so she had up to 44 veneers. She’d had them done by her previous dentist and she was in tears. So she was in tears on the phone before she even came in. She was in tears on the day that she came in. And, you know, she was in an absolute kind of state about these veneers that she’d had done, and she was literally begging me to help her, begging me to help her, begging me to change the veneers. And you get drawn in because there’s a human being in need crying and you look at the veneers and you think, I mean, they’re not awful, but they’re not great. And I think you just get dragged down this awful path where you’re kind of being dragged along by the patient and the patient’s putting all this pressure and demand on you to do things that you perhaps don’t necessarily think are right, or they might be putting time pressure on you to kind of get things done within certain time frames that aren’t relaxed enough or realistic enough to allow due diligence and due planning and everything. And. And so this particular patient managed to convince me that her veneers had to be changed and it was affecting her life. And she was in an absolute state and she’d got the previous dentist to give her a partial refund. So she was, you know, she was getting me to kind of supply the treatment plan so that she could get the other dentist to contribute. And all of these things, and

[00:45:47] You get

[00:45:48] This feeling like something doesn’t feel right from the absolute outset. It doesn’t quite feel right, but you get kind of railroaded into it and you get guilt tripped and emotionally blackmailed and you just get drawn in. And I think it turned out, you know, we gave her some veneers. She was absolutely adamant that she wanted a particular shade. We tried to talk her out of it because it was a ridiculous shade. We tried it. So we were like, Sure, this is too bright. You’re not going to like it. What about the lower teeth? It’s not going to match blah blah blah. No. Absolutely adamant. Signed off on the consent. Absolutely adamant. Explain to her at the time. Once you choose the shade, there’s no going back. You can’t suddenly change your mind. If you want your veneers, you’re going to have to pay again. So she picks that shade and then of course, she signs off on having them fitted before they’re fitted. She looks at them. Yes, I’m happy. And then of course, she comes back like three weeks later in tears, begging ask, No, they’re too bright. Everyone’s making fun of me. You’ve got to change them. For me, they’re affecting. When I’m having a nervous breakdown, you’ve got to help me, please. You’ve got to help me. So of course, what do you do? You change them again, even though you try and convince her not to? You tell her she has to wait a period of time because she’s going to potentially damage the nerves of her teeth, exposing them again. So this whole drama, this long, drawn out drama is like going on for about six months. Eventually, you replace the veneers again and you go for the shade that she should have gone for in the first place.

[00:47:05] Without without charging her more without you paid the whole second lab for yourself.

[00:47:11] Ok. And of course, I was working at the time from many corporates, so I paid that now and then, so we fitted them, she said. She loved

[00:47:19] Them. The second, the second one,

[00:47:21] The second time she gave me a bottle of Chanel perfume, she gave me a card saying, I’m finally happy. Thank you so much. And then a month later, I was actually at Leaders Clinic in Geneva when an email came through, and she said, I’m just not happy. I’m still not happy. I’ve been to another dentist and I want I want a partial refund from you so that I can get a couple of them replaced. I know you’re going to tell me to come and see you and you’ll do it for me, but it’s just too far for me because she lived like 100 hundred miles away. So she was like, I’m just going to go somewhere local. After all that,

[00:47:56] Well, do I have to stay for a full refund?

[00:47:58] I gave her a full refund and I said, Don’t don’t, don’t ever contact me again. I’d do anything to do it like the full refund. But my point is I knew that first, that first, that first phone contact with her was so erratic. And so, you know, extreme emotions that I had that gut feeling then. But I got drawn in and I think my biggest learning experience from that and the biggest take home and the biggest thing, I want to help other dentists avoid, especially younger dentists who were likely to get sort of taken on that sort of minefield is trust your gut. And when you when you see red flags at the very beginning, stop their red flags for a reason. Passed the person on, you know, refer on to someone who’s more experienced or somebody who, you know, maybe won’t get as emotionally drawn in as you might. But yeah, that would be that would be my biggest kind of learning point because that was so stressful and unnecessarily so.

[00:48:52] Yeah, I think you know what it is that some people have this natural ability to trust their instincts and they know something feels right or doesn’t, and they can’t even articulate why that is. But they trust their instincts for other people. People like me, I don’t know if people like you, but it takes some years of living and experience before it gets proved to you that you should trust your instincts. You know, I’ve had that situation as well with, you know, we used to do this thing. We were say, refer your very hardest whitening cases to me so that we can try, you know, the next version of Enlightened on them. And you know, there’ll be some really proper difficult cases of cases of patient would put the tray in the mouth without any gel and massive sensitivity, you know, patients with severe tetracycline staining, very thin enamel bruxism. And then there what they thought they could get out of it was totally unrealistic. And as a younger dentist, I’ve fallen to, I’ve fallen down that trap as well. But you know what interests me about that story that you just told is the psychology? What do you now think was going on? Do you think that she was putting, you know, like she had a psychological issue and she did. She’d given the name to her pain was her teeth.

[00:50:20] Yeah, I think I think she was unhappy and she felt like the teeth were going to be the secret to make everything better. And they weren’t. And she had other issues. And I think also I was at fault because I allowed her to kind of manipulate me. And I’m just sometimes I especially I used to be a little bit too soft hearted. So I would kind of, you know, feel really bad for this person. That’s crying. And I guess I used to feel bad for not helping people because I thought, you know, we have this, we have this skill and we’ve, you know, we we have an almost like a the Hippocratic kind of oath and, you know, a responsibility to help people. So I should be helping this person. And in reality, you’re probably helping them more by not getting involved, but you’re definitely helping yourself move on, for sure.

[00:51:06] I mean, out of your content, I’ve noticed over the years that there’s this sort of ethical dimension to what you say online and on the forums and all that. Am I right? Yeah. Well, I mean, look, I mean, so everyone says I’m ethical, but but I’ve noticed in your in your content there’s a there’s a focus on the ethics of kind of kind of the thing you just said that the the privilege of treating a patient and and helping people. Where do you think this comes from?

[00:51:38] It’s my upbringing. I think that I have a very strong sense of, I guess, right and wrong. Yeah. So I didn’t grow up with a religious kind of upbringing at all, but I think it was the obviously having a Middle Eastern father like the principles of his own kind of upbringing as well as very strong. So I think I have quite a strong sense of right and wrong, and my values probably are quite strong in that sense. So I probably from there, I think,

[00:52:03] Well, then you find yourself constantly judging people being disappointed by people. What’s the downside? What’s the downside of that?

[00:52:12] I don’t judge people at all. One of the things we say in NLP is that everybody’s doing their best. And honestly, that’s one of the core principles. And it really helps stop you from being frustrated by people or disappointed in people is that everyone’s doing the very best that they can with the resources they have available to. At any given point in time. So, yeah, if they’re not doing something well enough, they’re doing their best for whatever reason, they might have all sorts of limitations on them at that point in time that you’re completely unaware of. So they’re doing their best. So except that that’s their best, even if it’s not as good as you want it to be. Yeah. And then, you know, go on from there.

[00:52:51] What’s been your darkest day from a network perspective? Was it was it that patient

[00:52:58] That that period of time because I take everything so personally? That’s one of my downsizes. I take everything personally. So if something, if someone isn’t happy, I kind of tear myself up inside thinking, what could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? How could I fix it, which in some ways is constructive because it means you can move forwards and think, OK, how would I do that differently next time? But equally, you can kind of tear yourself up inside thinking, taking full ownership for things, I guess in that sense. So yeah,

[00:53:28] But this combination of high ethics? Control freak. It was. It must be a nightmare for you. You know, I noticed on my husband the book when I was going to say was, you know, like that perfection paralysis that some people sort of suffer with. I notice on your on your Instagram, which is a lovely kind of page. You’ve got, you know, before and after whatever. And then before and after somebody else. I up before and after there’s loads of cases on there. How how do you deal with worrying? You know what, you’re going to think about these cases?

[00:54:03] And so I have massive issues with that. And what I have to do is someone has to post it for me and sometimes. So I have a lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely colleague called Rachel. She’s actually Chris Burrows daughter, so she manages my social media for me. So I send her cases and sometimes she’ll post them and I have a complete freakout and I go on and delete it. And I’m like, Sorry, I just I can’t. So, yeah, it is an issue. I think the thing with Instagram is you have to decide if you’re patient focussed or dentist focussed, and mine’s always been more directed towards patients. I never intended to kind of end up being in the educational side of dentistry. I love it, but it was never my plan. So it wasn’t how I set my Instagram off or anything like that. So the thought that other dentists look at my case is actually fills me with dread if I’m honest with you. But my wonderful team and Rachel just kind of push me through and go, Nope, just post it, just post it. It’s fine. And to be honest, it’s it’s it’s kind of business, isn’t it like you get patients kind of contacting you via Instagram or because of what they see on your Instagram? So it kind of it’s practise building at the end of the day. So I have to it has to be about more than me or my kind of insecurities or my ego has to be about the the bigger picture, I think.

[00:55:18] So you’re saying because it’s a necessary evil, you just make sure it happens. You don’t enjoy doing it.

[00:55:25] No, and I don’t do it, she posts it for me.

[00:55:27] I mean, you said you said you had you were interested in things like arts and performance and all that. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

[00:55:37] I think I was an extrovert as a teenager, and then I became quite introverted. And now, since I’ve started teaching and stuff

[00:55:45] That sides come

[00:55:46] Back, I’m rediscovering that extrovert side.

[00:55:49] Tell me, tell me about teaching on the small first thing because you know the number of courses those guys are running. Yeah, it’s just insane, isn’t it?

[00:55:59] It’s been amazing. I feel so

[00:56:01] Lucky. Was it like they did 15 in a row or something? No more

[00:56:05] Than that. So in March? Yeah, March or April, from March to April, we had, I think, twenty eight days. I was at like 14 of them.

[00:56:16] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:56:19] Yeah, it’s been. It’s been amazing. It’s been an incredible journey.

[00:56:25] Yeah, they were a great team. I was going to say that, you know, Thomas Thomas, obviously clinically excellent. You know, I don’t know. He sees himself as me in the mini smile makeover scenario. I don’t know. I’m not sure what think. I don’t know. Is he the? Does he give clinical input or not? Or who is he

[00:56:46] An amazing clinician?

[00:56:47] I know he is, but in the teaching and the teaching of it?

[00:56:50] No. No. Massively. Yeah, he’s like, Yeah, he’s like clinical lead. He’s he’s very, very involved. Very, very much so. So we just launched the indirect course a couple of weeks ago. And yeah, we would we were doing, you know, lecture slides, obviously, Tom being the clinical wizard that he is massively involved. And then Mindy and I were kind of going over slides until one a.m. several nights over the last few weeks on Zoom. So no, he’s very, very much so. He’s they’re lovely, lovely people, actually. So the interesting thing is that I’ve always kind of used to drive you mad, but I just used to always kind of shy away from Dental circles. I never really mixed with dentists and I never put myself forward for things. I just kind of on purpose. Yeah, I just kept my head down. I used to find, you know, like the Facebook forums and things where people post things and then everyone kind of erupts. And there’s all this kind of, you know, not very nice behaviour, to be honest with you. I just used to stand back and just kind of avoid it all. I wasn’t even in a lot of the groups, to be fair. And so I’ve always kind of avoided mixing with other dentists and doing anything kind of with other dentists professional, really. So this kind of came as a surprise. But yeah, they’re such lovely people. The smart fast guys are just lovely. It’s a lovely, lovely team of people and it’s been a real privilege.

[00:58:04] Yeah, and are you wish? Which bit of it do you do? Do you actually stand up and be the lecturer or are you also? Yeah. So what piece do you teach?

[00:58:12] So the on a small, fast direct. Yeah, I teach on that and I’m not teaching on the indirect as well. So yeah, I’m one of the main speakers. Oh, nice.

[00:58:22] Yeah, it’s fun. And how often are you doing that now?

[00:58:26] So probably a few days a month, a few days each month, like weekends and stuff? Yeah.

[00:58:31] Would you say funny to me?

[00:58:32] Are the dentist as well? Yeah, it’s actually really fun meeting all the dentists and kind of sharing knowledge and sharing experiences you learn from each other. I would say I

[00:58:42] Enjoy it a lot. I enjoy it a lot. But there’s an aspect of I don’t get out enough with, you know, as a dentist, you don’t realise it. You meet loads of people as dentists. Okay. It doesn’t quite feel the same as meeting someone in a non-clinical environment. But you know, when we go on slameka or whatever. I love being out and meeting people because I don’t meet that many people because we’ve got the same 40 people in my office. You know, what do you prefer? Do you prefer a day of teaching or a day of clinical?

[00:59:15] I’d say I love both. You know, like in the second lockdown, like in January to March, April when everyone was locked out, yeah, I felt so lucky that I was seeing human beings every day at work and I was watching my patients come in and sort of especially like Invisalign people that you see once a month, I was kind of watching them kind of just disappear into themselves each month. So just that 10, 15 minute chat that we were having, I could really feel it was helping them. So I feel I love that. And then I love teaching. I don’t know. There’s there’s just something about the energy in the room that you get when you’re teaching and watching people learn, especially, you know, like you’re passionate about composite bonding, like, you know, when you watch people and you know, you’re looking at, I don’t know, we’re showing them how to do line angles, let’s say, and suddenly that light bulb moment when they get it and you’re like, Wow, you get it. Like, I remember how long it took me to grasp the concept of line angles and how many different people. Maybe I was just thick and slow on the uptake, but how many different people had to teach me that for me to finally grasp it and to be involved in that? I just, I don’t know. I just it’s the simple things. Maybe I’m a geek, but I really enjoy that.

[01:00:25] I think it’s fun. No, I think you’re right. I think you’re right. For me, it’s the key thing. And you know, I do this in my time of my training, which is, yeah, you did mine. I did. I did. Yeah. So yeah, I do that a lot. Yeah, I do that. I know sometimes three times a week, four times a week, sometimes depending on, you know, my my movements. And, you know, if we’re totally frank about it, if we’re really being honest about it, there’s an aspect of that which is sales. Yeah, but if it was sales and I thought it was sales, no way would I do that three times a week. I mean, I would spend my life being a salesman. I just, you know, I’ll hire salesmen salesman to do that job if you want.

[01:01:07] But it didn’t feel sales when you were doing it, if education.

[01:01:11] That’s what I mean. That’s what I mean, because it feels like education. I’m happy to do it again and again and again and again and and not get bored by it and be energised by it. And in a lot of ways, these sort of things end up being how you feel about them, don’t they? Because I was honest with my brother, he was having a rough week. He’s a he’s a hospital consultant radiologist. He was having a rough week and he was saying, Oh, I hate this hate that, you know, they have a lot of internal pressures amongst between doctors themselves, right? And and I said to him, Well, what if I told you you were being paid a million pounds to do this? And and he was like, Well, then if you write it, then it would be OK. And I was reflecting on the idea that it’s actually the same thing would have happened to him all week. No different. But now, because there’s this million pounds, suddenly, suddenly it’s all good and it’s understandable. I get it. But the way, the way you look at things, it really changes your experience of them. You know, that’s that’s the take-home message, I guess.

[01:02:13] Hundred percent. It’s about how you frame it. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

[01:02:18] What do you do outside of work? If Jasmine had a weekend to herself or whatever, what would be your

[01:02:24] What’s one of those Payman?

[01:02:26] Well, we were like, All right, good morning. Good morning to yourself. What would you? What would be? Yeah.

[01:02:32] Well, like one of my hobbies, I like art. So I was when I when I had more free time, before I started my clinic, when I when I had that, the work life balance, I would say I used to do painting classes. There’s a lovely guy that does. It’s called cheese in one painting club and you go along in the evenings and there’s a nice group of people and you he teaches you how to paint a painting so that I quite like painting. I used to do a lot of music, so I used to play the piano. Oh yeah, I know. And but classically so my my main thing I’m trying to learn is jazz piano now, because growing up I did classical, which is great. It’s lovely, but I’ve always envied the kind of the freedom and the creativity. I feel like I’m not creative enough. So I think if I was to learn jazz piano, that would open up that channel of creativity, maybe. So, yeah, I dabble in jazz piano, I would say.

[01:03:22] Have you got a piano at home? Yeah, yeah. It’s similar. I’m in a similar situation with piano. I never got very good at it, but my brother did get into jazz, piano and wow and the beautiful bit about just making it up on the spot. Yeah, and it’s actually all only about the scales. You know, it’s only about understanding which notes to avoid

[01:03:42] When you’re when you’re cleaning, when you’re classically trained. Yeah. So I did great. I did. I did all the grades. Did you? When you’re classically trained, you don’t think in chords.

[01:03:50] Yeah, yeah.

[01:03:51] So you think in kind of daunting chords and that’s what you need to be able to do is thinking chords to do jazz. So it’s a complete paradigm shift. It’s different.

[01:04:00] So, OK, art and jazz piano? Ok, what if? What if I said you could? You could go anywhere. Money’s not an object, and time is not a problem.

[01:04:12] I’d love to go to Cuba. I haven’t been to Cuba yet, and I’d love. You go to Cuba.

[01:04:15] Yeah, me too, me too, although I hear the food’s not great. I’d only go places where the food’s great. What’s the best place you’ve been to? What’s your favourite place you’ve been to? Some of them, some of them I’ve

[01:04:29] Been to, I really liked Mexico. Oh yeah. I enjoyed the Maldives, although I is going to sound sacrilegious. We went the Maldives for like four days and I felt like that was enough for me.

[01:04:44] People say that it quiet. People say I’ve never been there for

[01:04:48] Four or five days. I think with that five days. So yeah, they’re probably my two most favourite places. I used to love visiting Iran, actually, but I haven’t been for over 10 years.

[01:04:57] Me too. It’s a bit of a mission.

[01:05:00] It is. But then when you’re there, I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I’ve never lived there. I’m only half Iranian, but there’s something about like you just the air, something. It just feels like home. I can’t explain it.

[01:05:11] It’s strange. All right. Well, we tend to finish these things with the same questions, and I don’t know if you’ve heard them at Prav. Prav can’t be here today, but they called Prav final questions. And the first one is you on your deathbed? You’ve got your nearest and dearest with you. What are three pieces of advice you would leave for them

[01:05:37] And for the world?

[01:05:41] Um, I would say don’t stress about the small things.

[01:05:46] Even though retired, even though you do, even though you do know,

[01:05:50] I wish I didn’t. Yeah, there’s just about small things because they actually don’t matter. I would say always be honest. And always be kind.

[01:06:02] Yeah, very nice.

[01:06:04] I think if you can do those things, then you’ll have a an easier life.

[01:06:09] Very nice. Very nice.

[01:06:11] That’s what I would say.

[01:06:13] And what about the Prav next final question is how would you like to be remembered? Jasmine, was it doesn’t have to be one word doesn’t work well.

[01:06:24] Kind. I guess kind and honest. And kind, honest, strong. Capable. That’s probably a kind, honest, capable

[01:06:37] Are you to, for instance, what kind of a boss are you in this practise?

[01:06:43] Oh, I mean, I would hope I’m kind and fair.

[01:06:46] Yeah, yeah. But, you know. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you try, right, everyone tries to be kind of no

[01:06:52] Pushover like I want things done correctly. I want standards to be, you know, at a certain point. Yeah. But I’d like to think I’m fair and kind. So when I see the human being, you know, like I try and be really try and be reasonable and I try and put myself in their shoes.

[01:07:07] And how do you navigate the question of, you know, you want to be best friends with you, nurse, but you can’t be best friends with your employee? Well, can you?

[01:07:19] I don’t try and be best friends with my employee. I think the only time I almost got too close to my nurse was when I was a vet and I just had an amazing nurse. She was incredible and we were very close in age and we were just really good friends and I used to find it hard to ask her to do things because we’d become friends. So I think I think with experience and with age, you grow in confidence and you grow in your ability to be assertive without being bossy or mean or overly demanding, I think is the key. I think the thing with us is with dentists, we couldn’t do what we do to the best of our abilities without a really, really good nurse supporting you. And it’s, you know, there’s two people involved. And I think that’s the key is to always remember that fact and to never think that you’re better than the nurse because you can’t do what you need to do without them.

[01:08:12] Well, you lived all those years as a nurse yourself, right? You know, for me, I’ve never been a Dental nurse, but I feel like the Dental nurse is having a rougher day than the dentist on most days. Am I right or wrong on that?

[01:08:27] I don’t know. You know, Payman. I think we have a lot of pressure on us. I think when I was a nurse. The things that I thought were really difficult for me. It’s a bit like the associate and the principal discussion, isn’t it? Like you always think that you’re having the hardest time, but then the other person is having a hard time for their own reasons, I think, you know. Yeah, I wouldn’t say they’re having a harder time, necessarily. They shouldn’t be. And if they are, then something’s not going well, like you should be working. I think in such a way that they’re not having a harder time than you. You should be sharing the load, even though you can’t share it necessarily completely equally because you have different responsibilities. But I always think as well, especially with nurses like they’ll be one or two small things that if his dentist, we just did it slightly differently would make their lives so much easier.

[01:09:11] Like what? Simple things like make them a cup of coffee,

[01:09:14] Putting things down in a certain

[01:09:16] Way. Oac little thing making clear up easier.

[01:09:20] Yeah, but that’s such a simple thing. But when you’re rushing through the day, if you always make that effort and I’m not suggesting for a second that I always remember to do this, you know? In fact, I’m glad you asked me this question because from tomorrow again, I’ll remember this, that I’ve said it. So now I have to do it. But you know, I think it’s about making things simpler for each other.

[01:09:40] But yeah, I was always used to make make coffee and tea for my nurse because I always used to think that I had time to and they didn’t, you know, people used to get very surprised by it. Sometimes I couldn’t believe it. And then I say thank you to my nurse and the get surprised by that as well, like the number of dentists who don’t say thank you to their nurse. Amazingly, you know, I just couldn’t couldn’t understand, why would you not? At the end of the day, say thank you.

[01:10:13] I’m so lucky at the moment. I have such a lovely nurse. She’s wonderful, she’s amazing and I couldn’t do what I do that her. And yeah, I feel like I’m very lucky. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. You have to say thank you.

[01:10:26] I said, obviously, but but I do suffer with trying to be the best friend of all my people. And, you know, maybe it’s just sort of, you know, we’re all living out different sort of ideas of who we think we are, right, the lies. We’re telling each other ourselves, you know, Oh God, I want it to be like enlightened to be like a Google place where everyone’s having fun. And where’s the reality of it? Probably is that no, you know, people are working their butts off in Google. Yeah, that’s like, you know. But I’ve got it in my head that everyone’s playing ping pong and being creative. So, so I’ve always wanted that for for my office. Along with that goes. I sometimes do get too close to my team, you know, and then when there’s a disciplinary issue or something, it causes a problem. I’ve got I’ve got a partner who’s who’s very good at that sort of thing, but it must be lonely as a principal of a small practise, insomuch as you’ve got all the decisions on you and no one to, you know, talk to you. So have you got a group of people that you do talk to people like, you know, or.

[01:11:28] Yeah. So I talk to Janet. In fact, Barry’s great. I still hear Barry. Barry recently came as a patient, and then we ended up going for dinner offers, and I felt like it was a therapy session. It was brilliant. He just gave me a full on unscheduled coaching session in like 20 minutes, and I was like, Wow, this is what it’s like to kind of share things, but I probably share. I talked to my small force colleagues as well. Like, I talk to Mindy quite a lot about clinical staff and clinic stuff. We’ll we’ll share kind of experiences and kind of war wounds, I guess in that sense. So that’s quite nice because you’re white, you can get quite insular, but I’m in a building with other dentists. So there’s a there’s a partnership within my building that separates me, but they’re lovely.

[01:12:09] So I talk to them and they say, What’s that?

[01:12:11] Call and ploughman and partners are in my building.

[01:12:14] So whereas it now? Yeah.

[01:12:17] Yes. So that lovely. So, yeah, they use enlightened, I think.

[01:12:22] Ok, one final question. Dinner party. Three other guests. Dead or alive?

[01:12:35] Tony Benn,

[01:12:35] Tony Benn got a great answer.

[01:12:38] I treated him once. No. He’s the only famous person I’ve ever treated and I just couldn’t contain myself. I was like, Well, giggling. Yeah. So definitely Tony Benn.

[01:12:49] Have you got a left wing bone in you? Yeah, a big bone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:12:55] It’s a bit challenging when you’re working in private practise.

[01:12:58] Well, Bollinger is right now.

[01:13:00] I don’t charge enough. That fee setting is an issue with me. Everyone always tells me off. But anyway, yeah, so Tony Benn. Chandler, as Chandler

[01:13:14] As Chandler, yeah, definitely,

[01:13:18] Chandler, who make me laugh, um, I’ve heard my third person be. I’m inspired by can I just have her to sing? Of course, Amy Winehouse.

[01:13:32] Oh, nice. Well, you don’t talk to her.

[01:13:36] Maybe, maybe if she’s like a bit older and yeah, maybe, maybe. But more to sing. Have you seen the movie? Amy? Yes. Yeah, multiple times. Yeah, I found

[01:13:47] I found it very interesting.

[01:13:49] She is. No, no, no. You’re absolutely right. She’s very interesting. I guess I would want her to talk. Ok, so it just not high on stuff like just her as her. I’d find her interesting. And as long as she could sing for us a bit as well, that would be good.

[01:14:02] What about if we had to throw in three dentists?

[01:14:06] Oh, three dentists for dinner, yeah.

[01:14:10] Dead or alive? Hmm.

[01:14:14] It’s hard to pick three Payman why? I don’t know so, but do I want to have dinner and talk about teeth?

[01:14:22] Not to, you know, so I’d have Larry just because he’s so much fun, not because I want to talk about teeth. Ok. I mean,

[01:14:30] I’ve never like. Present company excluded. I’ve never really thought of dentists as being like fun people to hang around with. It’s a recent thing for me that I’ve started having fun with other dentists.

[01:14:43] All right. Well, you know, give black. Professor Brennan, Britomart was incentives, was he? Well, you know what I mean? Doesn’t have to be.

[01:14:53] I’m drawing a blank. I’m actually thinking, Dipesh, because he seems like a really lovely guy.

[01:14:58] Tv black dipesh.

[01:15:01] No, I don’t give you black at my dinner table. Gary D-word is really lovely, and I haven’t seen him in ages. Gary DWORD from SPIR, he’s lovely. Excellent.

[01:15:12] Excellent. So the post, Gary didn’t do it and

[01:15:16] But they’re a random combination. I’m not sure they’d be great. I’m not sure. But yeah,

[01:15:21] I see your control freak this coming out in full effect right now. Right? Why? Because you just want to get this right? You don’t. Yeah, yeah.

[01:15:29] Because I love throwing a dinner party.

[01:15:31] I love cooking.

[01:15:32] I love. I love entertaining. We like we throw great parties. So I like having a good party. But you have to get the mix right. It’s got to be wine.

[01:15:40] Yeah.

[01:15:41] So I haven’t seen Gary do it for years. So maybe him and Diddy is very interesting, did you? She’s very interesting.

[01:15:49] Is he funny?

[01:15:50] He is on his partner’s lovely. So there are lovely. They’re a lovely pair. So yeah. Because I’m guessing they’re couples. They come as couples, right?

[01:15:57] No, I wasn’t thinking that. But you can have that if you want it.

[01:16:01] Because Gary David’s got a lovely wife as well. You see, this is what I’m thinking.

[01:16:04] So you can have it that way if you want. But I wasn’t. Ok, OK. I mean,

[01:16:08] I’m thinking about the table setting Payman and like, And

[01:16:11] What would you cook Iranian food? Oh, really, you could Iranian? Good on you. Yeah, like, that’s hard. It’s hard, isn’t it? No, it’s much

[01:16:20] Easier for a party because you can cook en masse. Oh, and then when you cook and then it just, you know, it works out easier, I think.

[01:16:26] Nice. Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure to speak to you today. Likewise. Thank you so much for taking the time. And you’re going to be at backhed.

[01:16:36] I am. I will see you there.

[01:16:37] Oh, amazing. I’ll see you at my party Thursday night. Well done. Perfect.

[01:16:40] Looking forward to it.

[01:16:41] Thank you so much.

[01:16:42] Thank you, Payman, John. Thank you so much. 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.

[01:17:02] 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

[01:17:08] Pay for actually sticking through and listening

[01:17:11] To what we’ve had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] And that’s the way I describe it, when patients come in and and request the treatment. I say to them, actually, what you’re paying for here isn’t the white braces, the aligners, it is the end result, the tools. The brace is just a tool that I use to get you there, you know, and and the pathway might not be straight. It might be a bit windy. We’re having difficulty moving teeth. We might have to go back to the drawing board and make more aligners. We might have to change things. It’s a learning curve. But the beauty of orthodontics is it allows you to navigate through that path. And if things don’t go the way you had initially planned, teeth might move differently. Then you can always move things back usually. So again, that’s I like to think that orthodontics is quite a safe profession.

[00:00:42] 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,

[00:01:00] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Josh Rowlie onto the Dental Leaders podcast today. Somebody who’s recently burst onto the scene, certainly in the social media feeds doing a lot of teaching for various aligner companies. And more recently has joined the US Academy, heading up and spearheading our clear aligner programme. Josh is somebody who I define as an ortho dentist, although he’s a specialist orthodontist. His work sits in that meeting place between restorative dentistry, cosmetic dentistry and specialist orthodontic treatment. Somebody who just recently burst onto the scene of orthodontic teaching. And certainly when I saw some stuff on Facebook, I thought, There’s no way he’s a specialist orthodontist. He looks far too young, but he is. And, you know, having spoken to people like TIFF and Ross who’ve seen and heard him teach. We’re all very impressed. And so, Josh, we usually start these interviews by just asking a little bit about your background, where you grew up, what your schooling was like and then how you finally got into dentistry.

[00:02:06] Yeah, yeah. I mean, grew up not far from where I’m living now in Perth, in Scotland and went to school in the same area. And then I went to high school in Dundee and we always get asked, you know, why did we get into dentistry? And it was actually through more personal experience. You know, I’ve got this spiel in my head from seeing it so often now. So it comes naturally in this situation. But it it comes because when I was younger, you know, I bumped my front teeth. It needed some work done Root Canal Crown, things like that. Well, H, was that Josh. So that would have been probably about 14, maybe 15. Of was, it was taking a bite of the school railings. You know, the the hands go through the railings, but the teeth don’t go on to the railing kind of situation. And I had a very good dentist at the time, Dr Adela Laverick. And I guess you can fix me up and I was a bit kind of like, Wow, that was just amazing. And I guess I must have shown some interest at the time because she invited me back in and to kind of shadow just the tree for an afternoon, a bit like work experience because I was kind of coming up to fourth, fifth year at school and I was already thinking, you know, jobs wise, we need to really think about what I want to do with my life.

[00:03:14] So very grateful for her, her reaching her hand out and kind of offering me a chance to kind of over what she was doing. And yeah, I guess it was like a natural progression that I really enjoyed it. I’m a very kind of manual person in the sense that if I wasn’t doing dentistry, I think I’d be like a mechanic or something like that. I would want to work with my hands in some way. And I guess dentistry for me, because it kind of bridges the gap between, you know, medicine and almost art in a way can be quite creative. And now with orthodontics engineering, you know, forces vectors, things like that. And also the materials. I mean, you know, Ross, he’s he’s a materials man. You know, he’s the scientist. Yeah, but you know, I like working with intricate things. And for me, that’s why I orthodontics as well. I went to university in Dundee, a five year course there. I then did, you know, as everyone does, you’re a vet quite close to home. Actually, I moved home for a year to do my bit and again it was. I kind of went to my family dentist at the time and worked there for a year. And then even from university, I got into the backhed. I was quite involved in a lot of post post-graduate kind of associations and things like that.

[00:04:25] So it was that whilst he was a student, Joshua, he

[00:04:28] Was a man of the when I was in my fourth year, I was the student representative for the BCD or kind of Dundee University. And again, you know, I owe a lot of thanks to the BCD as well from kind of offering me an opportunity to get involved with them at an early age. You know, it kind of set me apart from my peers when applying for VTT positions and jobs because of the BCD, I met Elaine Halley, who a lot of people know her industry. Yeah, yeah. When I finished my vet, you know, she knew that I wanted to do cosmetic work. She I had a good understanding of smell, design, getting an understanding of, you know, at the time, you know, one of the buzzwords was kind of minimally invasive dentistry. So she kind of knew what my ethics lay and she offered me a job. So she offered me a kind of a two day a week position in her private practise in Edinburgh. I took it on and was under her wing for a year and a half, and it was great. It taught me a lot. It kind of set my ethics and dentistry really well. You’re probably going to ask me this later, but I’ll probably jump in now. And it was predominantly because I’ve heard that I am doing what I’m doing now because of the fact that it was a very, like I said, minimally invasive ethical ethics.

[00:05:34] In that practise. They did a lot of Elaine bleaching and bonding, particularly with Invisalign. So I started my orthodontic career with Invisalign. And as you said before, it’s a bit like that kind of black box situation sometimes whereby I was doing a lot of cases and I was I had a basic understanding of what what was an. Involved with that, you know, you put you take your records, you do a treatment plan and you kind of you send it away and you get your aligners back. But there were still very much a black box. It was still very much this area of sometimes unknown. And I guess, you know, one of these people that if I want to do something, I want to do it properly when I understand it. And it got to the point where I was taking on some difficult cases and I thought, OK, so it seems to be working, but I don’t quite understand the full picture here, and that’s what led me to then want to do what it takes to go back and do a three year master’s course so I could actually understand what’s in the box. Yeah. So that’s a very quick kind of run through of my career so far. Kind of a couple of shout outs in there to those that have influenced me and kind of pushed me in the right direction.

[00:06:40] Absolutely. And as I’ve got so many questions based on what you’ve just said there, so well, I’ll just I’ll pepper my way through them. But one of the things is that as a young, newly qualified dentist, you’re getting the opportunity to work at Cherry Bank, which I assume where it was that you got you got the job is like a one in a million shot, right?

[00:07:02] It was, yeah, it was almost at the time. You know, I was so grateful for just being offered, even just a two day position. You know, all my friends were leaving VTE and they were getting, you know, five days a week, you know, sometimes 50 hours in an NHS mixed practise, you know, and here’s me just thinking, right, I’m going to just take a chance here and start with whatever patients. They give me just two days a week and actually within about four or five months, I was up to three days. I was getting busier. They were giving me new patients, which is fantastic. You know, I was getting good case acceptance, you know, because of the fact that I had more time, I could spend that time planning cases, really getting to know my patients well, and they were agreeing to some bigger plans not going to lie. It was at my depth in some cases, but that’s how you learn. I had good mentors, so although there might have been cases that I found difficult or, you know, there for someone young in their career, you think, OK, taking on some of that’s quite big. But when you’ve got someone there to guide you, it’s not as scary and you do have to go out with your comfort zone to develop in a great, you know, I say that to everyone. It’s important to understand what your limitations are by having good people around you is massive. You know, it’s the biggest thing for progressing your career.

[00:08:16] What advice would you give to a young UP-AND-COMING dentist who wants that one in a million job? You know, you obviously put yourself out there, you know, put yourself forward. As the representative for the BBC, was that the decision that you made that led to you get in that role there? Was there an interview process with Elaine?

[00:08:37] There would have been at the time, I seem to recall that I remember getting an email from the BBC. I’d sign up for the newsletter and they were they were just about to start doing student representatives. I think they might have actually been the first one and they were offering positions to students in their fourth or fifth year. I think it was to come on board whereby you’d have to be a member first and then they wanted to spread, you know, the mantra of the BCD within the Dental skills, which is still what they’re doing now, and I’m still involved in that. But it was that decision that me kind of applying for that, handing in a CV kind of telling them kind of what I want to get on my career. And I seemed to recall it was Richard Field who is also, I think or has been a mentor in the IRS. He interviewed me, actually. I remember kind of speaking to him on the phone and, you know, probably all credit to him as well for giving me that position. I never mentioned that up until that point. That’s it. Yeah. And and I met him at the BCD conference, which would have been in London. I think that year. I honestly don’t know what year that had been, maybe 2012.

[00:09:44] And so, yeah, that decision then led to me meeting the right people at the OECD, and it led to me then kind of knowing if I should actually point out bringing the story way back that I actually made my mum and myself and my brother. We went to Elaine’s practise in Perth, our hometown, when she opened it, and that was when her practise was. I think she lived above the practise. It was like a detached house and she built it and she lived above it. Now is the same practise, but she’s she’s moved out and it’s a bigger, more surgeries. And yeah, we used to go there. I used to go there as a child. I think she sent me, you know, to the orthodontist and she couldn’t do the work and things like that. So it was almost like full circle again when I met Alan again at the BCD conference in London. And that’s where it sparked that she was like, Oh, this guy, you know, I know of him, I know his family and and yeah, and just me being there. She was almost like a wow, you know, this guy is a bit switched on. He’s here already. He’s only in his fourth year. And then again, you know, yeah. So sorry, I’m going off topic.

[00:10:44] No, no, no. That’s cool. It’s my story. It’s like seven minutes, isn’t it? That’s getting it to you. Yeah, it’s like pure serendipity. Like. This is the I can’t remember the name of the movie now, but it’s it’s something that you do as a child or something you do earlier on in life that impacts what happens. The butterfly effect. I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie, it is.

[00:11:05] Absolutely. Yeah, no, it’s exactly that. Actually, it’s making me think about, yeah, this is like the way it works is so strange.

[00:11:12] Yeah. Yeah, so, so so just just going back to earlier life. And what was your childhood like growing up? Were you a geeky student kid? Were you excelling at school sports, that sort of thing? What memories have you got to be childhood

[00:11:27] Going deep here or going deep? The, you know, as a primary child, if you’re going that far back, you know, probably misbehaved on almost all of my school report. So it was, you know, needs to concentrate more and I could try harder. I think that every single plate on the fridge at home, you know, all my reports, they all said the same thing. Yeah, and I was quite young for my year. I was a January birthday and one of the youngest in my primary year, and actually I repeated primary seven in two schools. So my primary school and my hometown, I did seven eight and then I repeated P7 again when I went to Dundee High. They have a junior school in a high school, and actually that was probably one of the best decisions I think my parents ever made for me was that I was just too early. I hadn’t matured enough and if I had continued along that timeline, where if I hadn’t repeated a year earlier instead of my exams a year earlier, the I just feel like there became a point where I just knew that I needed to switch on. In my third fourth year, I was like, If I don’t buck up here, you know, I’m not going to lead to much. So, yeah, the extra year help, for sure. And you know, I had some great friends at school and actually some of my friends moved with me, and I think that was also part of the decision my parents made.

[00:12:38] They wanted me to be with people who I knew and I played tennis with, I don’t know, younger, so I was going into their year. So I had friends in a new school already and then high school thinking back, Hey, you remember like first, second, third year in high school. I remember the exam years, the kind of the crucial years. And but mostly I remember the sport, remember the rugby rugby at school. You know, that was that was the I enjoyed was going up to the games and playing on weekends and hockey and things as well. And then, yeah, I never did that well in the prelims as it were and leading up to Christmas, always, you know, got C’s B’s if I was lucky. And when it came to the exams at the end of that academic year, I guess I just kind of matured in that very short space of time and and I did well in exams. I don’t think that I had my eyes set on dentistry when I did my fourth year exams in terms of the standard grades, but certainly by my hires. I knew I was aiming for that position of needing five A’s at higher to go into the dentistry or medicine or potentially veterinary. I knew I want to do something like that. So. So that’s that’s my story in terms of kind of early to late teens.

[00:13:51] So growing up. Obviously, your inspiration for dentistry maybe started as early as, you know, being a patient at Cherry Bank right through to having the work experience as a 14 year old. Was there any other influence from your parents or did they come from a medical background or anything? What what, what? What was their profession?

[00:14:09] I mean, good question. You know, you find that in our industry, it does kind of stay in the family. But no, my my family or even extended family are not medical in the slightest. My mom worked in a solicitor’s office and my dad was a commercial diver, so he worked offshore. When you mentioned about my background and things. Yeah. And yeah, as when I was younger and my dad used to go away for a bit of time. You know, sometimes two or even three months at a time and came back, it was just fine. You know, my mom worked, you know, in a job that allowed us to do that. And I was we were at school. She could still take us dollar sports and things. So yeah, I mean, you know, big credit to to my parents for for for helping me in younger years and everything like that. But when a lot of people say, Oh, so your dad was away a lot when you’re younger, but actually when he was at home, you know, he was at home. So like summer holidays and things, he would try and work his shift patterns around holidays. And it’s, you know, he wasn’t nine to five. He was always there. When he’s at home, it’s like, that’s sometimes one thing I a bit jealous of is those that work offshore or have jobs where you’re on a shift pattern like that is that, you know, when you’re away, you’re you’re at work and things like that. But when you’re home, work is, you know, you don’t get contacted, you know what I mean? Whereas sometimes with dentistry, you can take a work home with you. And I do sometimes find it hard to switch off. And there are things that you know, sometimes are always in the back of your mind. But yeah, maybe that’s something I need to work on.

[00:15:29] You and me, both Josh, you and me both. You know, it’s it’s one of those challenges that you know when when you’re a somebody who works incredibly hard or, you know, takes your profession seriously that it ends up becoming consuming, right? And as you said, your dad was away a lot when you were younger, but when he was in the room, he was in the room and

[00:15:49] He told me so.

[00:15:50] Yeah, and and. When you know, when we’re at home with our kids and we’ve got social media on our phones or we’ve got all these other all these other distractions, we’re there, but we’re not really there.

[00:16:02] I was going to say, I remember because my dad used to being a diver, you’d be, you know, in the bell, you’d be in the chamber for that time that you’re working. He’s the phone home, you know, with a very squeaky voice, you know, the helium voice. And you know, he’d be on the phone for an hour, you know, every other night, you know, and he’d be trying to try to understand them. And it’s sometimes quite difficult. My mom is very good understanding what you’re seeing, but even as a child, I was, I was kind of my mother, would you see? But yeah, it’s funny, but it’s been. He’s been out of that for a while now. He retired a few years ago now. He never wanted me to do that career. He was in the Navy, and that’s how we kind of led to him to become a commercial diver. And he never wanted that for me and my brother. I’ve always, I’ve always said was like a bit of a joke if all else fails. And for any reason, I would get struck off or candy dentistry. I’ve always got. I’ve always got commercial diving. I could fall back on just riding my my dad’s coattails. Maybe it’s hard and very fickle industry that now, funnily enough, my brother is an engineer and he’s almost superseded my my father in the sense that he works for a company or not anymore, actually. But he used to work for a company robot called who design underwater equipment robots essentially to kind of do the job that my dad used to do. So there’s there’s less of a need for people to be at the bottom of the seabed now.

[00:17:16] We’re going to we’re going to start. We’re going to talk about that later in terms of robots that are taking over our orthodontist jobs as well later on, when we when we talk about direct to consumer orthodontics, but just just going back to where the inspiration from your father, which is, you know, he didn’t want you to do what he was doing because either it was a hard slog or he wanted a better life for his kids, right?

[00:17:36] I think I think I think it was just too dangerous, I think. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the BBC documentary. I think it’s called Last Breath worth a watch. Okay. You know, I think it’s an hour long and it just tells you the story of a commercial diver who was at the bottom of the sea bed, his umbilical, his lifeline got tethered and snaps, and he was at the bottom of the sea bed for about 20 minutes with no oxygen. And it just told the story of how it happened, how we survived and stuff. It’s amazing the story, but worth worth an hour.

[00:18:07] I’ll give. I’ll give that a shot. So moving on from there, Josh, were you inspired to do something different? Were you encouraged to go towards the medical sciences? And was education a big thing for your parents? Were you pushed in that direction at all?

[00:18:22] I mean, they obviously sent me to private school is a private school, and I think just being in that kind of environment environment. Yeah, I think that it was never a push to, you know, like you have to go into medicine. It was very much my choice, but I just feel like the way that the school was aiming and they have numbers and they have their things they have to reach. And, you know, a lot of people in my year, you know, they went on to do medicine, particularly a good education that people in my year went onto the medicine and there was two in my year. Funnily enough, it was my girlfriend at the time. We both got into dentistry at the same university and and lawyers and things like that. So I guess it’s just the funnel effect of kind of the education at private school education that they try and get you into these university programmes. Yeah, no. It was completely my choice. And you know, looking back, you know, so glad I did that, you know?

[00:19:15] Yeah, yeah. So fast forward in now back to where we left off, which was, you know, the black box trying to figure out the mechanics of these teeth shifting around and how they move. And almost like the engineering, you wanted to know the ins and outs of it, right? And so what was what was your next sort of Segway into? I’m now going to spend what is it, three years full time of your life chucking yourself back into education? Or is it for?

[00:19:44] It’s three years. Yeah. And a lot of people ask, You know how I did it and things. And it’s it’s a it’s a bit of a funny topic, actually. So let’s just call it the more traditional routes into orthodontics. So an orthodontic specialist would be to do your VTE. You probably work in practise or you do your core training. A lot of the time you would probably have to spend two or even three years in hospital rotations doing different clinics. You would maybe do core training one to maybe apply for orthodontics, maybe not get in that year and then you’d maybe do core training three and the need apply for a residency. And throughout that whole process, you are interviewing every stage. You are not really guaranteed where you going to go. You know, you apply to national recruitment and you might not interview well and you get ranked 30th of how many species there are. And you might be going down south or going up north to to do this. And I guess having and was working with Cherry Bank with Elaine at the time, you know, I just wanted to know how to do orthodontics. I never went on this master’s course knowing that I was going to get a speciality status afterwards.

[00:20:49] That’s not what I did it for. I did it because I just wanted the education I wanted to know. What I was doing, basically, and they even told me when I joined the chorus, you know, we can’t guarantee you will be on the specialist list, and I said that actually isn’t a big deal for me. So I didn’t do it, the traditional route I should point out. I didn’t want to go back to do clinics in oral surgery, in peace or even to a certain degree. I didn’t want to almost the skill I’d spent all this time with mentors learning how to do some work, learning how to to have the patient experience the patient journey. It wasn’t really the kind of dentistry I wanted to do. Hospital dentistry is very, very different from practise, especially private practise. And it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I didn’t want to take a step back in a way, both financially as well. And so it came about that I went into the Edinburgh University Dental School just to enquire about how I go about doing this, you know, and I got shown around and the consultant, Dr McGuinness at the time, he kind of talked me around and he said, Yeah, if you want to kind of apply for a post, it can be very difficult because of the nature of the fact that if you’re only applying for a master’s course university, you know they will favour overseas students because of the fact that they pay more.

[00:22:04] So it’s very unlikely that you will apply for this role and get in because the only UK positions are those that are taken up by the NHS pathway, those that are doing it, the more traditional route. And what happened was about two weeks after I’d gone in to enquire about it. They had someone pull out, so they had an overseas student, I believe, from Malaysia, who pulled up quite last minute. And this would have been in about kind of August time. And the course was due to start in September, and they had exhausted their lists of people who who were backups. And I was like the only one having never interviewed in the first place, but sure that I wanted to maybe interview next year for it, and they literally phoned me up and said, We’ve had this person drop out. Do you want an opportunity to do your three years training, you know, now? And it was like, you know, one in a million, you know, it’s like the scratchcard scenario.

[00:22:55] And then,

[00:22:57] Yeah, you know, they literally told them that. And they’re like, Absolutely. Even though I had so many unknowns in terms of money, in terms of finishing where I was at that time and yet and it was just one of these, you know, right place, right time situations like, you know, speaking to you today, Prav, I’m just realising, actually, I’ve been very lucky with citizens for a number

[00:23:15] Of years to connect the dots, Josh.

[00:23:18] I said, Yeah, and and yeah, and the first thing I did was obviously phoned home and from the bank can be like, Can I afford this? And then the next day, you know, I had I sat down with Elaine and I said, Look, I’ve been given this opportunity. You know that I enjoy my orthodontics. Can we work something out here? And she was very positive about the whole thing, which really kind of pushed me into doing it. And she was very, you know, very grateful for the fact that she almost let me terminate my associate contract a bit early to start this course. You know, usually you’d be tied in for, say, three months, which is understandable. But she said, right do a month or two and then maybe work the evening weekend just to finish off some of your bigger cases. And, you know, basically give me a phone when you’re finished, you know, and we’ll be back in the thing. Yeah, and and yeah, so that is how I got into the orthodontics, the master’s programme. I’m not going to lie. It did make waves. And in fact, that I do believe that the door for that entry is no clue. So I don’t think if you were to apply now for a master’s programme at universities and certainly in Scotland, I don’t can’t really say about England.

[00:24:22] You’d be you’d be looked at because they would just favour overseas students paying more and things like that. And and even to a certain degree, the GDC, you know, I feel like when I first went on that programme, I was a bit of a pariah. I was like that person that I who’s that guy doing that orthodontic? You know, I was a very standalone and it was a wee bit lonely at that time. I was thinking of why are people picking me out? I just want to know more. You know, I have not done anything wrong here, but it felt like I was doing something wrong actually at the time. And like I said, you know, I went to the whole programme, you know, did well. I think in my in my final year, I got like a distinction for my research and things. And and, you know, I really did enjoy my time, my three years in the hospital, some really nice staff there. We got we got to know each other really well and really nice patients.

[00:25:08] And unlike those that are doing the NHS pathway, whereby when they finished their specialist training, they automatically get put on the specialist register, I essentially had to apply for equivalence. So as if I was an overseas student applying for GDC less. No more specialism, no in the UK, I’d have to show off my work, show off my experience, and that’s what I did. I just made a portfolio of all the cases I did all the research, all the work that I’d done, literally a pile of paper about this big. It’s just such a such a fast. But you know, a sense it took a long time. Covid slowed it all down. But but yeah, eventually I think it was about a year and a half ago. Yeah, got got that magic letter and just said, Yep, you’re on the list. Thank you very much. And, you know, it’s good to open a bottle of champagne that you think it’s kind of it was almost like the final hurdle in a way, but I never intended to get on in the first place. But as I as I happened, you know, it became apparent that I could do that. And so why not?

[00:26:06] And you’d done the graft to get there, right? So well, that’s it.

[00:26:09] Yeah, yeah. It was never after the title or the names or the letters. It was more just the education. But having is a cherry on top and as as I was going to go. I know you’ve got lots of questions. I was going to kind of go into a little bit that from a patient’s perspective, I don’t honestly think that being having a title such as consultant specialist, even to a certain degree, you know, general dentists with an interest in I don’t know how much the general population really know or understand that, to be honest with you. And in some cases, if you call yourself an expert and something, someone who isn’t then orientated might think, Oh, they probably did almost rate that as higher than someone who would maybe call themself specialist or a consultant. Because in some industries, if consulting, you don’t really do anything, you just consult on work. So sometimes you can go too far. And from a marketing point of view, actually, patients might think, Oh, I’d rather go to that expert over there.

[00:27:00] So it

[00:27:00] Doesn’t really make a difference for them, actually, as what I’ve found, you know,

[00:27:03] You’ve hit the nail on the head. Josh, I was I was speaking to one of my one of my, shall we say, sales team or treatment coordinators in my own clinic last week and I overheard her on the phone. Now one of our clinicians, stroke co-owners of the practise is a clinical dental technician, right? And a clinical dental technician is somebody who can treat patients as well as manufacture the dentures, right as long as it’s affordable. So he was she was speaking to the patient and saying, Oh, well, you know, Mark, he’s he’s a clinical dental technician and, you know, he’ll make your dentures and this that you overheard the conversation. And I thought to myself, what will the patient derive from the fact that this person’s a clinical dental technician? So. So we sat down and said, OK, yes, Kerry, I think it would probably be better to say Mack is a denture expert. He’s got over 30 years of experience hand crafting these dentures, placing them in people’s mouths so they look unbelievably natural and fit perfectly. It’s just like, Yeah, you’re right. But sometimes we tend to use terminology lexicon that perhaps either confuses the patient or they don’t understand the importance of the specialist title. What that means, the work that’s gone into it, that you’ve just shared with me that, you know, going into that situation where you were the black sheep, so to speak. And you know, and then getting towards the end of it and then struggling to get the title and finally getting it there. So yeah, I truly believe that from a marketing point of view or even just basic patient communication, the words that we use or choose to use are so important. So just just on that topic, Josh, when you’re speaking to your own patients or having conversations with them, does the specialist title come into play and sort of how do you articulate that? Not at all.

[00:28:51] No, I mean, I generally patients, I mean, I I could do a lot more in terms of marketing myself, actually. Sure, we’re busy in practise and we get a lot of patient referrals, you know, self referrals they’ve had. I been doing a while now in the sense that the cases I’m finishing a lot of the time when the patient comes in or see on the screen. This is a word of mouth referral, which is great because building a clinic, that’s they’re the they’re the ones you want. Yeah, you want the ones that I’ve had a friend who’s had orthodontics and says, I want the same as my my friend that they look fantastic. Can I please have that? They’ve already sold it to themselves. They’re aware of the costs. They’re aware of what’s involved already. It’s a case of this is what we need to do. And you know, there’s not much sales involved in it, really. They’ve done it for you. But because I’m a bit more at the moment, I’m a bit of a one man band in the sense have therapists and nursing team and the staff surrounding me.

[00:29:43] But it is very much myself as the orthodontist and I see myself. Maybe in the future, when the clinic grows a bit more, I will need help to do marketing and it might be that I hire someone or, you know, work with people a couple of hours a week to do more of that. Sure, it’s I’m not a businessman. I am a wet fingered dentist slash orthodontist, and I enjoy what I do. I understand that nowadays you have to market yourselves and it is almost a job to do your social media, to do your website. And I’m not a jack of all trades. I’d rather, you know, the best person for that job should do that job. I’m not that person, but it’s time consuming. You know yourself, you know, having an active social media, it’s time. I don’t know how people do it. If I’m perfectly honest. Some of the, you know, the stars in our industry that would call themselves influencers. I hate that term. But yeah, but they call them this. Yeah, they must hire people to do some of that work.

[00:30:38] And it’s a whole it’s a whole conversation in itself, Josh, that yeah, I know we’ve had a few of these people on the show incredibly successful in marketing themselves. But you know, along with that comes things. Like, you know, trolling, you know, the constant distraction of dealing with messages and DMs and things like that and trying to emotionally detach yourself from that.

[00:31:02] I think that’s a big problem in our industry now. I try and stay clear of that, but I understand it’s a necessary evil. You have to do it the way now, and I’d be the first person to delete all my social media, you know, if I if I could, but it’s almost like, you can’t. Now that there’ll be Facebook money next, you know, and it will be you’ll be paying for things with your with your coins online and it will all become this big thing. I mean, again, I’m not going to go into too much about where the world is going, but yeah, it’s one of these things I like. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any, but there’s a Netflix series as it Black Mirror, and that kind of delves into the problems that kind of lie in what you’d think could be like a simple, a better technology, but it almost immediately goes into the dark side of it, which is fantastic to so true.

[00:31:49] Blows your mind. And so, Josh, you got the the badge and the letters after your name. What happened next? You fast forward to your in practise. Now, just tell us a little bit about where you practise in what you do in the.

[00:32:02] At the moment, I work in between two practises. I work in South Side Dental care, particularly the clinic that I run is the South Side Orthodontic Clinic, which is its own clinic within a practise. I worked for LeAnn Brunson, who is the practise owner. I did some part time work with her while I was doing my three years training just in the evenings, and it just led to me taking more hours as I got busy. So when I finished my my full time training, I took on more hours at that clinic. The other practise I work is bite dentistry. I work with Ima O’Connell, who’s an implant dentist. Some people would have heard her lecturing on implants and fine things. And again, you know, a lot of credit to demur. I worked with her both before and during my time training, and again it was a natural progression to take a more hours with her when I’d finished. So my working life is quite different in the two practises in the sense that I am not a traditional orthodontist. I still do a lot of restorative dentistry and and bites dentistry. You know, I I do orthodontic Dental, so it is actually slowly building up into almost a purely orthodontic clinic. But for instance, yesterday I had a gentleman come in and we prepared up two to two veneers. My background has always been in restorative dentistry. I went on Christopher Orr’s year long course when I worked, when I was just out of it, and then I enjoyed that so much and I gained so much from that.

[00:33:29] I then went on and did. His is kind of like a more advanced course in a way where it really delves into occlusion. And one thing that is not taught at any level in academia, you know, in the hospital situation is occlusion, really. And you’d think that as an orthodontist, you would be the one to know occlusion the most. But actually, I learnt occlusion from Chrysler, actually. And, you know, and feeding that into the orthodontics, it was just piecing all the pieces of the puzzle together, but going back so to to to my practise. So I work two days a week out, bites Monday and Friday, and I work two three days a week at South Side and at South Side as a fully orthodontic clinic, we accept NHS referrals and private referrals. I’m slowly gathering a good network of Dental dentists around Edinburgh who we work with and about dentistry. It is very much a very solid patient base that have been with the practise for a very long time, and I provide general dentistry and cosmetic and orthodontics for them. And it’s I enjoy working at both for both, for very different reasons. And I would say I enjoy the restorative part just as much as I enjoy the orthodontic part. And there’s probably very few orthodontists that do drilling and filling in on layers, veneers and things out there.

[00:34:46] It’s really, really interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an orthodontist who does the ortho, the whole ortho restorative piece, which now sort of make sense while your alignment with sort of teeth, creches philosophy with the whole AB minimally invasive. And you know, TIFF has said some quite bold statements in the past when, when, when I’ve spoken to him and one of them is if you’re a G.D.P. and you can’t do Ortho, I will not sit in your chair. Yes. Yeah. And it’s a pretty bold statement for him to make. But I understand why. And you know, if you’re doing it, if you’re the guy who is the reverse to you. So was that all the restorative training first and then doesn’t have a true understanding of the, you know, the continually shifting teeth over time, that teeth move? I know that from personal experience, I’ve developed a gap in my tooth that definitely wasn’t there four or five years ago, right? And I’ve never had Ortho as a kid. So there is that continual tooth movement, and if there’s a restorative dentist, you ignore Ortho. You’re doing your patients a disservice, I believe

[00:35:55] It’s it’s a topic I quite enjoyed talking about because of the fact that, you know, it’s more and more industry is going into like an amalgamation of everything in the sense that I’m the first to say you shouldn’t be a jack of all trades, but you should have a general view of all the specialities. That’s that’s my opinion. And when a patient comes in your chair, you definitely don’t ring fence them into a certain category or you in a way you don’t limit what they can have. So everything should be dealt with in the beginning when a patient, when the chair from a comprehensive point of view, you know, looking at where they’ve come from, how have they got into the situation that they’re in now? I think when when I was talking on the on the level to a line, of course, when you were there, I had a slide. It was like the what’s it called again, like the five W’s and an h like the where, how who kind of, you know, as a dentist, you have to be a bit of a detective in the beginning to understand where they’ve come from, because only once you know where they’ve come from, can you then work out where you want to get to in a way. And yeah, I understand what you’re saying about the fact that there was dentists that maybe don’t do orthodontics. It’s a whole different mindset. Then it’s an understanding that it’s very different from some general dentistry, drilling and filling. And yeah, if you’re not doing that kind of work, there is very much again like a limb missing in your, you know, your bag of tricks that actually, yeah, I get what you’re saying in terms of statement as a bold statement, for sure. But I do. I do agree, actually in the sense that everyone should have a good understanding of all the specialities, but not necessarily doing it. No, certainly be able to understand when it might be needed and then make the appropriate referral if they’re not comfortable doing it themselves.

[00:37:34] Absolutely. And so these two statements that work really well encompass all of that. And there’s this tiffs, which is, you know, if you don’t know how to or you can’t, you don’t have the knowledge to be able to sort of say, Look, this patient treatment plan should be a little bit of pre alignment before us stick some porcelain on there or Ross’s. You know, Ross’s saying there’s always coming out with which is you don’t know what you don’t know, right? And yeah, and so if you don’t know that orthodontic, you don’t know what’s best for that patient, right? And so you end up doing a disservice to your patients. But flipping that around, you know, it’s rare, that rare. I’ve never come across an orthodontist who will do also restorative dentist. You talk about sticking veneers on patients and stuff like that that you’ve got you’ve got you’re providing the complete treatment for the patient. So what proportion of your dentistry would you say is strictly ortho versus sort of restorative as well?

[00:38:35] I would say it’s probably 70 or 30 restorative prosthetic. Actually, almost all my adult cases have some form of research development in them, and I work a lot with my referring dentists in the sense that when they refer a patient to me, I don’t want to just be that person that takes the case and sends it back to see. Right. Thank you very much. That’s them done. You know, I sit down with a patient and I plan only for the orthodontics. I plan for the restorative the cosmetic part. And so I would I really enjoy sending almost work away if a patient has sent me a story of a dentist who sent me a patient and the patient has said, Oh, I want some my lower teeth straightens, you know, a very commonly seen, and then I sit down with them. I look at the models, the photographs, and we say, OK, so this is how your teeth will look when they’re straighter. But you’ve got some way around your teeth, you’ve got a, you know, some discolouration on some of the teeth like that crown up there. I take the time, even though I don’t have to, in a sense, to show the patient the complete overview of their case. And it means that I build a nice relationship with them. They’re, you know, confident in the work that I’m about to do. But also it means that when I’m finished the orthodontics, I put the teeth in the right place and I send the patient back to the dentist. And the patient has already agreed to some whitening, replacing a crown. They’re actually wanting some composite bonding, you know, have that back, you know, I’m making some money from this. You’re making some money, the patients happy. We have given the patient a complete plan.

[00:39:58] The dentists never sent the patient to me knowing that that was going to be done. But I like to give back and using the the way that I work is very much it’s a it’s a comprehensive view. We look at doing small designs for every patient, if not like a mock up in the mouth. I mean, a step too far for some patients, but certainly doing a 2D smile design when we’re just working with keynote or PowerPoint templates to work out where the smile should be. It’s a starting point in any and any treatment, orthodontic or restorative, and we we just take the time to just help the patient understand what they might need. And a lot of patients might not agree to the full plan, and that’s fine. But they are fully aware and they’re fully consented to what would be a gold standard plan. And we work backwards from that. And a lot of cases and a lot of adult cases, there are compromises, whether that be aesthetically inclusively, but they are well aware and it’s mic my working life so much less stressful. Because of the fact that there is less mistakes, there is less excuses because of the fact that we finished at the end of the treatment and the patient says, Oh, I didn’t realise this because they knew about it in the beginning. You know, it’s like if you tell them at the beginning, it’s starting excuse in the end, you know what I mean? So that’s the way that I like to work. It’s something I enjoy working with my colleagues and finding that when they realise that they’re getting work back and they’re enjoying sending patients to me and it keeps me busy as well, so.

[00:41:19] And then there’s your marketing strategy itself, Josh. You mentioned you need to work harder on your marketing, but I think you’re actually doing it. You know, the fact that you’re treating these patients comprehensively, if I was your referring dentist, if I was referring to you and I sent a patient over and said, Look, this patient wants to align their teeth, I know you’re the guy to do it. And then it comes back with a whole bunch of restorative stuff that you’ve treatment planned. You’ve pre-sold. And then that patient lands back in my chair and I get to do that work correctly. I’ll make sure I send you more patients, right? Well, that’s yeah.

[00:41:51] And it’s I mean, you might know of the digital small design. Sure, kind of. With Christian Coachman, you know, having having really got on board with that quite early doors, even when Elaine was teaching on it back in the day when I was still an undergraduate, you know, I was really kind of hammered into me that every patient should have this ideal plan and you work backwards from that. And you know, the way that I would really love to work in the future would be to have almost educate in a way by referring dentists to be the quarterback. So, as you said, they have an understanding of all the areas of dentistry and they know what the patient needs. They are the quarterback, kind of managing everything they say, OK, so you would need a bit of orthodontics. We need some. We need this implant. And they send out. If they can’t do that work, they would send the patient to me, perhaps with a wax up that I can kind of go by. I can move the teeth within that wax up. You know, I’m working for my prescription at the moment. I’m a little bit like quarterback in the sense that the patient comes to me not knowing I work out and I say, OK, so actually, I’m going to do this part and I’m going to send you back for this work with your own dentist again. So I would love for that rule to switch and almost have the, you know, I’m almost like a pawn in the the game. But at the moment, I’m finding that I do a lot, I do a lot and I’m not doing it for personal or financial gain. I’m doing because that’s the right thing to do, and it helps me to send, you know, some work back to my dentist.

[00:43:17] You can only do that, Josh, because of your education, your background. I don’t think there’s many orthodontist who’ve done the year long. Chris, of course, done the DSD stuff and you’ve you’ve you’ve engrossed yourself in all that education. And I think in a similar way, TIFF’s argument always revolves around as GDPs. We should be well-rounded, right? We should be engrossed in ourselves in education that revolves around at least being able to do G.D.P. also and understand where our limitations are. Yeah, yeah. Knowing what we can and can’t do. But moving on from there, Josh, obviously you found yourself now having, you know, working in these practises, you know, treating patients, doing a bit of ortho restorative dentistry as probably termit. And how did you break into the scene of teaching? Because for me, this young and you know, there was absolutely no way that I thought you were a specialist because you look far too young to be a specialist, right? And so all

[00:44:17] The degrees are showing what kind of haircut to kind of get rid of them.

[00:44:20] At least you’ve still got some hair, mate. But this young kid breaks onto the scene and you see him all over social media teaching, and you certainly caught our eye. How did you first get into teaching? Was it that influenced from back right at the beginning or yeah,

[00:44:38] I would say so. It was never something that’s come natural to me, and I still do get nervous when I’m talking. I would say that before lockdown, I did do a lot of work with the BCD on like a Saturday morning. If they had an event on a kind of a regional meeting, let’s just say or a study club, I’d be involved in that. I might speak at things like that. After and during lockdown. I got into webinars, as I’m sure we all know. I think we’re all webinar about. And and I guess my my main drive and I don’t know if it’s a selfish thing or not, but my main drive for lecturing isn’t so much, you know, from a financial point of view, it is very much that by lecturing and teaching, you know you do one, so you watch one, do one and teach one. It’s helping me understand. My case is more you spend the time kind of critiquing yourself more and you look and you see sometimes the mistakes that you wouldn’t have seen by looking back and kind of building your slides and things of that. So in a way, I kind of do it for myself in, you know, helping me kind of get better what I do. I also do it in a way, and lockdowns kind of put a bit of a halt on that. But you know, I I want to be able to see a bit of the world and lecturing it can be a very lonely.

[00:45:51] Place, you know, in your four walls and your surgery. I don’t want to just lock myself in my surgery, I want to get out and see the world and lecturing gives you an opportunity to do that as well. Going to conferences, meeting people as well. So in a way, from a selfish point of view, that that’s why I do lecturing for my own gain from that perspective. But I really do enjoy, you know, helping others. I mentor a lot of dentists, but only with a line of treatment and looking at their orthodontic setups, their clinics and just, I guess, in the position that I’m at being a dentist who receive referrals, you know, I help out my colleagues and doing and doing what they do. You know, I’m more than happy for for them to tackle difficult cases that they may have otherwise referred to myself to do. But with my help, they can do it themselves and their own practise because they have the reputation and they’ve got the relationship with that patient, you know? So yeah, I do a lot of mentoring. I get a lot from the fact that actually, you know, those that I teach, I like to think I inspire them and I’m making their lives better or easier. I should say I’m helping them not make the mistakes, perhaps that I made and everyone wins.

[00:46:59] So how did you break into it? Was it a conscious thing that I want to become a lecturer? You know, something that we asked people who sort of speak their, you know, how did that journey happen? You know, a bit like your journey into dentistry. The 14 year old kid who went for work experience and then was treated by Elaine Halley as a younger kid and all the rest of it, and then ended up, you know, connecting the dots. Was there any particular moments or events that triggered and inspired you to get into sharing your knowledge?

[00:47:27] Sure. If it was like a particular event which kind of kicked it off in the sense that, as you said, I have, I have invested a lot of time and money into training and early, and I kind of wanted to get under my belt and and I guess because of the fact I’ve done all this education, people wanted to know if people wanted to be like, you know, know, so what? What do you know? And so I guess I got invited to do smaller things, you know, just an hour here or there webinar. I, you know, I was very grateful for for TIFF and Rossin yourself kind of kind of opening the door within the Ice Academy. I mean, that’s almost like the biggest thing for me actually now. Up until that point where I came down and did the full days course on aligners, I had never really done a full day before, actually. All right. I had actually I’d done a deal with the Backhed actually once before, but mostly smaller power here and there, or or webinars. And it’s just kind of a bit snowballed quite quickly, actually. And thinking about it now, because I has really just been just before and during lockdown that I would call myself someone who does lecture. And yeah, I’m just kind of reminiscing here thinking it’s been quite fast.

[00:48:34] And there’s something really been about two years, and I’ve come a long way in that in that time where I think it will go. I mean, I’m quite comfortable with where I am now with it. I don’t know how much further I can take it, but certainly, I mean, I certainly with the Ice Academy, you know, it’s great to get the feedback from the delegates who’ve been on their early courses and are hoping to inspire, you know, those just like in practise, you know, patient self referrals, you know, Dental referrals say, I went on this course, I learnt a lot. And you know, when I get more people through the courses and help them kind of understand my way of, you know, tackling a minor cases, a slight change in mindset when it comes to orthodontics as well. So that’s where I kind of want to take it. I’ve got no aspirations of being a keynote speaker at, you know, the American Orthodontic Society Congress. I’m not that level and I probably will never be because I think the next thing I need to do is not so much CPD and Dental related things. It’s probably more about marketing and lecturing, actually. So that’s probably where my next videos will go.

[00:49:37] Funnily enough, Josh, you say you don’t want to be that guy and, you know, whatever. There’s so many barriers in the way, but it sounds like listening to your back story from, you know, these moments of, you know, connecting the dots with various people, mentored people who have inspired you. You’ve just you’ve just hopped from one to the other. And I think a little bit of work, but a little obviously a little bit of luck, but I think you create your own luck. Yeah, Josh, you really create your own look. And I think, you know, taking up opportunities like, you know, running this course and whatnot puts you in front of people, right? And, you know, meeting the right people, meeting the right people. And so with the next question I actually had for you was related to the clearer line, of course, or courses that you run in at the academy. And you know, I think I already know the answer to this question now because I know about your background. But what’s the difference between coming on a clearer line aligner course that say Josh teaches versus, you know, the standard, let’s say, Invisalign course or, you know, whatever all these on the clear line of courses are. And for me now, like my one, take away from this is you are a dentist and an. Orthodontist and everyone said that everyone is an orthodontist, is a dentist, but for me, you’re a practising dentist, and when you teach these GDPs, you do in the restorative stuff, you’re thinking about the occlusion and all of that, and

[00:51:05] You’re not just orthodontist second.

[00:51:08] Yeah. And it doesn’t seem like you just right. I’m just shifting these teeth from here to and I’ll show you how to do it and all the mechanics and whatnot behind it. So just talk me through your approach. I’m I’m a clear correct user, a sure smile user in Invisalign user, a smile and user. You know, I’ve used a whole range of clearer liners. And you know, the whole premise of your course is it’s purely Open-Source, right?

[00:51:30] So yeah, it does not understanding the tools, really. That’s what it is. Sorry to jump in there. Go for it. What is the difference? Yeah. And having having done initially the Invisalign course, see fast. A lot of these kind of bracket them as almost like weekend courses that you would do. It is very much to learn a system in the sense that there is a black box in the middle there that isn’t top because you cannot always teach someone how to get into C Invisalign or sure, smile in a day. And so it’s almost like this idea of, you know, teach people how to put the records in to get the aligners out and maybe go over a little bit more about the practicalities of things like fitting attachments, what IPR is, but you’re not really having spending the time to learn intricacies of how the mechanics work, how the teeth actually move. And you know, that’s that’s the biggest thing for me. And I guess I like to think that when going on a course with myself where I have that experience of using multiple different systems and knowing what I gathered from these courses before, yes, I learnt certain things, but I didn’t really understand what was underneath. And I guess with the certainly the clear aligner level courses run by the U.S. Academy, and I like to think that I just kind of delve deeper and I open that black box.

[00:52:47] I help people understand how the teeth actually move, what movements would work, what don’t. So it’s not just a case of get your set up back or you’re clench it back and saying, OK, the teeth have moved. I like that. Look, let’s go for this to prove it. And someone told me what it was like. 90 percent of all Invisalign cases get approved on their first clean check, but you’ve got to remember that the technicians on the other side, they’re not always dentists and orthodontists. They they are, you know, guys that are very good or girls that are very good at a computer game. In a sense, you know, yes, they have parameters to work from, and the artificial intelligence within their software works very well. Yeah, but it is not the be all and end all, you know, and there is there is mistakes that are made and it’s about understanding how to combat these difficulties and tooth movement with aligners having an understanding not just about aligners, but also just how teeth move in general with braces as well. It is all much of a muchness and you know, when I always say to people, you know, teeth are stupid, you know, if you pushed on them for hard enough and for long enough, they will move.

[00:53:49] They don’t know if they’re being moved by a bit of plastic or a bit of wire, you know, so it’s trying to just take away from this mindset of, you know, I’m only an Invisalign provider. That’s all I can provide. And a bit like the dentistry, you know, having an opening the floor to actually a greater depth of understanding. But what would be best? You know, what tool is best for the job here? And that’s the way you describe it. When patients come in and and request a treatment, I say to them, I you what you’re paying for here isn’t the white braces, the aligners. It is the end result, the tools, the brace. It’s just a tool that I use to get you there, you know, and and the pathway might not be straight. It might be a bit windy. We’re having difficulty moving teeth. We might have to go back to the drawing board and make more aligners. We might have to change things. It’s a learning curve, but the beauty of orthodontics is it allows you to navigate through that path. And if things don’t go the way you had initially planned, teeth might move differently. Then you can always move things back usually. So again, that’s I like to think that this is quite a safe profession.

[00:54:49] Go go. Going into that black box that you spoke about earlier, that opening that black box for four GDP’s and passing your knowledge on, you know, the whole concept of the black box thinking theory is that as health care professionals, we rarely share our mistakes with the community. But the airline industry by default has to go through that black box. Any mistakes that are made are shared industrywide, and that’s why it’s such a safe mode of transport because we’re all learning industry wide from the mistakes. So if you could share some mistakes that you’ve made either your biggest clinical mistake or just during your time of practise in what mistakes have you made that maybe our audience could learn from?

[00:55:31] Yeah, I mean, I know that before this, we had a bit of a brief chat, and I’m actually going to bring up two facts. Okay? One is very much clinical, which I’ll probably go into after. But the first one, I think probably the biggest mistake in my career was just about how I communicated, I think, with my patients. And, you know, I was young. I was eager I wanted to do the treatment, and I was going about my second consultation, sometimes all wrong, where I was very much using Dental lingo and I would talk to the patient as if they knew what I knew and it was and it was. Looking back, it was wrong, and it’s off-putting actually as a patient being almost talked to. And one of the biggest things that I’ve learnt in my career is, you know, just learning to listen to the patients and let them do the talking. A second consultation, I think, should be 80 percent them talking and 20 percent. You actually, you know, get them off and get them to understand what they want. Almost make let them have these light bulb moments. And then they say, Joshua, I want this, you know, before you’ve even talked about pricing and things.

[00:56:35] And so for me, one of the biggest mistakes in my career was just about how the patient journey went and how I communicated with the patients. You know, you’re, you know, more more than most how important that is. And so I probably did myself a disservice early on in my career where I could have had a much better case acceptance and done more dentistry when actually I might have sometimes been a bit off putting. And patients are a bit overwhelmed by some of the terminology and some of the things I’m presenting to them. So but it is a learning curve, and I suppose some people might see it as a mistake. Some people might see it as it was just your development. You know, everyone is never going to be the magical person in the very beginning. But but I look back on that and think, Yeah, you know, it wasn’t as good as I could have been. And then, but yes, so you can talk a bit about that if you want to.

[00:57:20] Was there was there a course that you went on or a light bulb moment or somebody that you shadowed at a certain point in time where it just clicked and thought, Crikey, this is how I should be speaking to patients? Well, did it just evolve?

[00:57:32] Yeah, I would say that actually going on the digital smile design courses where they they do focus a lot on the patient experience and the patient journey. They helped me, I suppose, understand a little bit more from the patient’s perspective because you’ve got to understand that they don’t know what you know. And I was too busy focussing on the the problems, I suppose, or the the facts when actually it’s what what patients want to hear is solutions and not sometimes the solutions to what they initially have in their mouth. But but then the benefits that it brings to them with the dentistry, you know, talking about more about the confidence that will bring, you know, because like, for instance, I had a patient last week who’s getting married in six months. And yes, you know, I talk about how the treatment will go through. I’ll talk about how the teeth will move, but then they’re not investing, that they’re not investing in, you know, just that treatment. They’re investing in the confidence that bring them in their wedding photographs, for example, there’s a there’s a deeper level of understanding in a way always is that that’s it. And it’s it’s about bringing it back to that root cause of why they want to have it done. It was almost a little bit of for myself how I got to that stage where I guess I’m more aware of that now. It was almost just threw a bit of trial and error mistakes. Kind of navigating through that consultation with the patients and getting to know them. I have done a lot of work in a way with kind of with Dental sales training and in a way in marketing to patients. And it’s just been an amalgamation of think of of all of that, can I come together that I guess it would have been a bit of a light bulb moment at some point? I don’t know when that was, but I do feel like what I’m doing now is working for me. But yeah,

[00:59:11] Before we go into your second mistake, Josh, take me through your your patient journey. Me as a patient comes in to see you with that problem. Let’s say this gap in my tooth that’s been that’s been getting bigger and bigger over the years. What’s the tell me about the journey I come in? I see you. What’s the investment to come and see you and have an assessment? All the rest? Just take me through that A2Z journey because I know it’s completely different for everyone, even though we sit in our isolated four walls and think everyone does it like this. So just share that with us, please.

[00:59:42] I mean, it all starts before the patient is really even coming to the practise. It starts by your presence online. It starts with the emails, the communication that you send to the patient and, you know, trying to make them feel while one confident and coming to see you like sharing with them, your experience, your reputation so that when they come in, they’re already that you’ve set the bar for success almost before they’ve come in. But certainly, you know, in terms of the in the practise, it’s they would use a patient would come in. It would usually be a 15 or 20 minute point with the treatment coordinator or myself to just get an understanding of what they’re wanting from the treatment. They would then come in to see myself again to just elaborate a bit more, you know, ever meet and greets to work out what their concerns are, what their expectations are in a way. You know, what is it they’re wanting from the treatment we run through our clinical exam, we gather the records sometimes when the first visit or if the actual discussion is taking a bit longer because it’s really important to sit down and chat with your patients and can’t emphasise that enough actually, to all younger dentists, just take the time to talk. Actually, we’re two to. Focussed on just rushing in there and having a look, you know, just chat to people. And if we can, we would take records at that first visit, which would usually be filled with records. It could be x rays might even be 3D x rays sometimes and orthodontics as well now. Scans of the patient’s teeth and photographs.

[01:01:06] We would then let the patients head off, and the investment for that first consultation is usually just £200. Mm hmm. Because I don’t want to make the finances become a barrier to, you know, allowing me to present a plan to a patient so I don’t charge the world to to for my time. My initial consultation and I would then gather the information and I would either lock in sometime during my clinical week where I would do treatment planning letter, writing things like that, or I would actually just do that work at home. Know, I’ve got some cases I’m going to be going through probably later on this afternoon and and I sit down behind the scenes and I and I plan what I’m going to do, how I’m going to present that to the patient. And I actually use almost like presenting a slideshow. I use keynote. I put the patient’s photographs on the presentation. I might annotate those photographs using my iPad. I draw a line. I arrow and I say the key here. Or, you know, there’s there’s a problem here. So it helps them visualise it because they look at an x ray and you point to something and they see a black and white mark. They sometimes know what that means, but if you cannot test it, then great. And then during a second consultation, I sit down and I book about half an hour for a second chat and we run through it. We might get up Invisalign or a smile tooth movement simulation as well, so they’re visually seeing what it is that people look like. I also have the ability to then take that and then do a bit of a restorative work.

[01:02:28] So I might say to the patient, after we’ve moved your teeth, you can see that actually, it is highlighted more where there’s it’s where before your teeth was rotated, when you turn it, you can actually see there’s a bit of a chip off that tooth you might not have been aware of. And then we can actually have those discussions at that second consultation about the restorative part to to follow the orthodontics, you know, almost that day one. And so the patient has a lot better understanding of what they might need. And, you know, hopefully, you know, because I’ve shared the time and you know, we’ve invested in them that they are more likely to see, you know, Josh. Let’s go for it or if now isn’t the time. And I very much I do highlight to the patient, actually, there is no rush. You know, we could wait some time. It has to be the right time for them. More often than not, they will come back because they will be confident and the work that you’ve done, and even if they do a bit of shopping around, there will be no experience, hopefully like the one that we’ve given them and they’ll say, Well, actually, you know, I want to go and see just because I, you know, I jelled with him. So and that’s how the patient experience goes and the journey through the clinics that I work in. And then after we do, we get the acceptance and the patient goes to the treatment just as anyone would so. So, yeah, that’s how we did it.

[01:03:36] It sounds like you’ve got that process buttoned down. So in summary, the patient will come in, maybe see the TCO for 10 15 minutes. They build up a bit of rapport with that with that patient. And I’d almost like to sell you right the concept of having that full assessment with you.

[01:03:52] It kind of makes me cringe a little bit.

[01:03:53] But you know, that’s what it is, right? They settle the concept of your expertise, the you’re the right man for the job. They come in and you spend a lot of time chatting to them, getting to know them, do a comprehensive assessment and then invite them back for a second consultation where you presenting almost like a keynote presentation with their photographs and stuff.

[01:04:14] Yeah, wow. Yeah. And I’ve got templates that I use, which makes that work a bit easier to drag and drop them. We have members of staff that we’ve trained to do things like that as well. So it’s a it took a while to get a nice, streamlined way of doing. It seems to be working quite well now. You know, everyone’s playing their part, which is great. And yet it is like presenting it every time a patient comes in. But the beauty about that is along with and I don’t usually write very long and drawn out treatment plan letters explaining all the risks and benefits. So so what we do is I then get that keynote put into a PDF and send up to the patient. They have their actuaries have their photographs annotated. They’ve given that all information. So actually they are they are much more aware than if I’ve just kind of talked them through it as if they’re just sitting in a chair and then said, here’s the bit of paper sign at the bottom. You know, I know that from a professional point of view, we do have to get the sign on the dotted line, which we still do. But realistically, no one reads the T’s and sees no no giving them the photographs. They’re going to go home, they’re going to look at it. They’re going to show their friends, look how much effort, you know, this dentist has made and to help me helping me understand what my smile can become. And yeah, it’s not the right time for them to start now. I can guarantee they’ll be back within the next year because they’ll they’ll have that on their phone and they’ll, you know, every time they think I’m a tooth and then they’ll look at their photographs and they’ll see the kind of smile design that we’ve done for them and think that does look good. So, yeah, it’s the way that I would want to be treated, you know, never, never treat someone like yourself.

[01:05:39] Yeah, it’s funny, Josh. Earlier on, you were talking about, you know, you need to help your sales and marketing game. I think I think we could all learn quite a lot from from just your process that you’ve shared there. Because you know what you’re sending them out there is with a full blown personalised brochure of them for them, right? Instead of handing over, well, this is what Invisalign does, but this is what your smile does are clear, correct or whatever.

[01:06:05] Yeah, it’s encompassed everything, really. And I don’t ring fence the patients in the beginning. I actually don’t give too much away in that first visit in the sense that I might give a bit of a hint to say, Have you like, have you considered moving your teeth or have you considered doing a bit of whitening or reshaping? I generally don’t really give away too much in the way of a price in the first visit either, because I say to the patient, if I was going to go for scans at at the hospital, you know, I wouldn’t expect to get a diagnosis that day one. And I do feel that as a as a dentist going through the educational pathway, you are kind of led into almost giving an answer immediately. You know, when the consultant comes around and they say, what’s going on here, what you’re doing and say, Oh, this patient has this, this, this, you know, they have a beeper of three here, you know, you know, you don’t you don’t need to to rush, you know, take your time. And it makes for a much more comfortable working environment, for sure.

[01:06:53] And you get them in to present your treatment plan to them, right? She got them back in.

[01:06:58] I do, yeah, I like that personal, and I know that with COVID and things at the moment, you know, people are doing things a lot more virtually. And yes, I have done second consultations virtually, usually for patients that are further away. They might not travel in for a chat and you can do that. And by getting the presentations ready like I would do anyway, it’s very easy to share. It was actually had dinner last night with a dentist to a group of dentists, ultimate implants or do a lot of implants. And they were saying that they do struggle to do zoom consultations because it’s very difficult to sell, but it’s quite an expensive treatment just by saying I can replace that tooth, you know, whereas you know, with orthodontics, you have the ability to show them a clincher. You have the ability to show them maybe before and after. It’s very difficult to do that with with implants. So. And so they’re finding they’re struggling a little bit with that, whereas I actually have embraced it and I quite like doing it. But I do like the personal touch. I like inviting people in and taking that time. But if they travel or they find it difficult, we will organise it and we’ll do it that way as well.

[01:07:56] Yeah, yeah, it’s surprising how many dentists and I’m sure a lot of listening to this they’ll may have. Maybe having a light bulb moment is they just email the treatment plan and then wait for the reply

[01:08:07] And you’ll be waiting a long time to be waiting. Personally, and I think I think you might have heard me say that, you know, as human beings, we never we never buy things rationally. We will never buy things emotionally. If you buy a new car, you’re not buying a car because you want to be going to work in this car. You foresee yourself sitting in the nice seats. You’re you’re envisaging what others see of you sitting in that car. It’s an emotional response. So you’re not buying it for the practicalities of getting from A to B because you could go and buy a scooter. You know, if you if that’s what you’re after. Yes. So you know, it’s a very, very not the best terminology in terms of describing that. But hopefully you understand what I mean.

[01:08:45] No, absolutely. So. Moving on to your second clinical mistake or mistake that you. What? What what’s that, Josh?

[01:08:53] I guess my mindset has slightly changed, actually, in terms of where the biological boundaries lie with orthodontics. So as an example, I had a case where and the patient came in. They were a Class two Division One Dental relationship, and the patient wasn’t interested in doing any surgery. So we knew that we were going down the road of camouflaging this, and so we decided to take out our proprie molars very commonly done. But my mindset has shifted now because in that case, we took out the teeth, we lined up the teeth and we thought, OK, so everything’s looking pretty nice and we’ve got quite nice occlusion. But I’ve got these huge spaces to try and close and it takes a long time, especially in an adult. So clinical mistake number two was that, you know, we we’ve taken our teeth in some patients that maybe ought to maybe not have teeth. You know, we could have treated this patient in a different way, and the patient’s treatment time could have been maybe half that could have taken maybe a year as opposed to two or longer. And yeah, and now I am more of the of the mindset that actually I would perhaps do a bit of alignment. First of all, for those that you know, I’m thinking in the beginning, well, we could be taking teeth out here.

[01:10:01] But if the biology allows for it and I’m not going to expand or I’m not going to cause any recession or distance from doing that, then I’d be much more inclined to actually line up teeth first, reassess after that alignment phase and then decide at that point, but the patient would be consented to the potential need for extractions later on. So sometimes, though, we’re just kind of saying no, now we need extractions. This it’s a case of, you know, we’ll let things work out a little bit first and then we’ll decide. But also actually and kind of just slightly branching off from that. The integration now with 3D rays or combine x rays with an orthodontics where you can visualise the roots within the bone and things like that. And you kind of it’s a bit of a mind shift from me actually understanding where the biology is and understanding how much we can expand, how much we can proclaim teeth. And so now I think compared to myself last year, we were always learning. I am more inclined now to maybe do extractions sometimes or doing a bit more IPR between the teeth because I look back to the case and I think, well, actually, I might have pushed some of those routes out of the bone and I might have cost them recession there.

[01:11:05] So as technology advances, as I had developed and as everyone develops as an individual, you’ll look back on case you did last year and think, what was I doing? Why did I do it that way? Yeah, your whole career, you’re evaluating things you’ve done. And so I guess that’s mistakes that I’ve made in the past where it might have been a bit gung ho with extractions and it’s almost come full circle again now where? And it’s like that in orthodontic as well. We were very pro extraction. We’re very not extraction and we’re kind of coming to terms with a bit more extraction now. It’s going round and round in circles. Same in my own short career so far. I’ve kind of gone both ways and and learning from the mistakes. So yeah, that would be my second mistake that for any individuals who are planning to do cases whereby they’re they’re thinking and they’re planning to decide to take teeth out. Think to yourself, can I maybe line this up? Does the biology allow for it? And if it does, then consider me, Blaine, first of all. It might save a lot of time later on. Yeah, in terms of, you know, maybe I didn’t have to do that.

[01:12:01] Yeah, yeah. And and then moving on, you talked about, you know, the technology in our game massively improved and given us access to see things visually do things visually, the whole clean check or the equivalent thereof of these two simulation movements. And along with that, you know, has come direct to consumer orthodontic. So you rock up in your local shopping centre, get scanned by a non Dental professional and pick up your reminders and do it yourself. Just give me your thoughts on a direct to consumer orthodontics and be have you had conversations with patients about direct to consumer orthodontics and what’s the narrative of that conversation that you have with them when they ask your opinion?

[01:12:50] So I mean, great. Great question, and I’m sure you get a lot of different responses from a lot of different dentists regarding that. My overall view is that it is and I know you might be a bit shocked by this, but it’s probably a little bit good for our industry, actually, that they’re there. And I do think that they have brought a lot of awareness within the general public about orthodontics and about aligners. I would actually argue that I’ve had more patients come through my door because of the adverts that people see on the TV. So I am not anti direct to consumer aligning because I think actually it does suit some patients. Actually, you know, for those patients that have had orthodontics as a child, they’ve lost their retainer. One tooth is a little bit out of alignment. They’re actually, you know, why sometimes are you paying for my services when sometimes actually it could be dealt with with a couple of aligners and and things? And so you can save money there if that’s what the patient wants. The bit that gets me really is the fact that there is no clinical exam sometimes, and there’s a risk it is very much a risk. And you mentioned about the question two there about, you know, have I had chats with patients and I’ve had patients that have had SmileDirectClub and then come to see me because they only got a little bit of the way there.

[01:14:08] So because you haven’t had an orthodontist riding on their back and because it is not as expensive, there may be a little bit less likely to wear them as well. And my experience of these liners is that no one ever gets to the end result that they want, but they may get 80 percent of the way there that might make them happy enough. So it serves a purpose, but it is not comprehensive treatment by any way. And I’ve seen patients that have had that, and they want that little bit more to come and see me, and I finished the job off, actually. But on the other end of that scale, I’ve also seen cases and one particularly brink comes to mind. A new patient consultation just found us through the website, essentially, sure, women with a bit of paper essentially wanting signed off for. And it was SmileDirectClub, and they came to me and I was a bit shocked. I was like, Well, we want to. I had never heard of them before, and the patient came in and I just sort of feel orthodontic exam. They were a class three, quite heavy crowding, very bad peril caries in the teeth and a and I thought to myself this this patient is borderline orthographic surgery patient. And at the very least, they need to be taken out to a line. They see there is no way that these teeth can be lined up.

[01:15:17] Now, I don’t know what the SmileDirectClub Plan would have been, but they wanted me to essentially sign off this patient as being fit for orthodontic. And I said, I cannot do this. And if I give you one take home message, here it is, you know, don’t do that. You know, I would happily give you this treatment at cost price because I worry for you. I don’t need to go down the road of doing this and please understand that you need teeth out. You know, you might actually consider doing jaw surgery to get your jaw in the right position and get your teeth straight here. And so that concerned me a little bit. While I say a little bit a lot actually, that I worry about patients that might have this kind of work done that have got active disease and it might be leading to problems. And we’ll never hear of these problems because it’ll probably get squashed a certain level in the legal term. They’re a big company. I’m sure they can squash these things by giving money back and giving away things. I’m sure they keep the patients happy in the end, but I think of an overall perspective. I think that direct to consumer lighting has a place, but the fact that there is not a clinical exam, sometimes it kind of worries me is the take home message from that.

[01:16:26] It’s an interesting take on it, Josh. And I think, you know, I can sit back now and just listen to your perspective and I can see I can see how it’s been beneficial to our industry because it’s created more awareness, right? And it ends up creating more work for us. And I think my concern around it just revolves around even if that patient just needs one. So we’ve shifted. Do they have the knowledge to make that decision that direct to consumer orthodontist is right for me? That’s my story.

[01:16:54] No, no, I agree. I. Surely it’s a very tough question, actually, isn’t it, because patients don’t know what they don’t know and they just assume teeth move and and things and and yet am, I’m sure, out there there’s a lot of patients that wish they hadn’t done it because they probably call themselves more harm than good. But it serves a place, but I think the overall it has not taken away patients from our chair. I do think it has actually put more bums on seats, actually. But yeah, there are patients that are being treated that that are entering into a risky situation. Yeah, absolutely. They don’t have all the information, they don’t have the X-rays. And sometimes what I worry and I’ve had to chat to patients before is that if they’ve had other people before, you know, we don’t always take X-rays because we wanted to see how this has any decay or how the gums are. But actually, orthodontics causes resorption. And if a patient has had two, sometimes three years of quite hefty orthodontics, their roots might be a bit shorter, and that can cause problems that they wouldn’t be aware of if they were to go down the road of orthodontics without having that information first. So again, there’s a lot of pitfalls with direct-to-consumer lining, and I wouldn’t say that I tell. I would never say to a patient, go and have accepted it, you know what I mean? I would go and do it, but I like to just educate people and patients on.

[01:18:11] So just on on another topic very similar to that, that we that we asked a lot of dentists. And I may not necessarily ask this question to a traditional orthodontist, but I’m going to ask you, OK, which is cosmetic dentistry abroad, which we often refer to as turkey teeth. What is your advice to someone that comes and asks you about that? And also, what’s your opinion on it?

[01:18:34] Yeah, I would say I’m quite liberal about it. As long as the patient understand what they’re what they’re getting into, it’s it’s OK. I like to. I think that I’m a minimally invasive dentist and the line bleach and bonds way of thinking that I try and conserve as much enamel infrastructure as I can. If I can move the teeth and just add to them, then that is better than drilling them down, for sure. But you have to remember that with orthodontics also comes a contract of lifetime retention as well. And some patients, they might not want to wear retainers. They, you know, they aren’t. They say to me, Well, actually, Josh, I don’t want to wear these retainers for life long. So actually, I might go down the route of veneers and and it’s easy to the room. And as long as the patient is educated that once you go veneers, you cannot go back. If they’re understanding that, then that is their decision to make. I would honestly say that my Dental hat on here that as my career has progressed and as I have done a lot more cases with porcelain and composite and understanding occlusion that actually I was maybe too minimal in the beginning, actually with a veneer prepped and things like that. Now I’m probably a little bit more. I wouldn’t say the word aggressive, but certainly I’m much more aware of, you know, sometimes veneers that need a little bit more a grip in a way, and that’s relying so much on the adhesion and the bonding, and more so that I actually want the veneers to just have a little bit more of a wraparound effect.

[01:19:58] So I would actually say in the last couple of years, my veneers prepping has become a bit heavier. Actually, I don’t know if many would agree with that, but but from that perspective, you know, that’s it’s my learning curve. But going back to your original question about the turkey teeth, my own barber, I just because I had a haircut yesterday it in from my mind, but he told me he had booked in to go to. I can’t remember the Seville Smile Club and it is in Turkey. I’m pretty sure to have his teeth then. And I said to him, You know, David, let me do it, please, you know, because if you’re going abroad, you have the risks of having it done all in one week and that something might go wrong. And and if everything goes wrong in your home, you’ve got to fly over there and have it fixed. And there can be a lot of pitfalls financially to having that done. But let me do it, and I even said to him, I will match their quote money wise. You know, I will. I will take the money perspective out of this and just let me do it for you, please, because you know, I wanted, you know, and I wanted to do it for him, actually. He still turned me down. Anyone over there had it done because actually people sometimes want the well they’ve been to Turkey as well. So for him, he wanted that look and it is a little bit of this awesome how he turned down the offer. And and funnily enough, I’m now fixing one of those videos for him, and

[01:21:08] He’s fully

[01:21:08] Paying. Funnily enough, he’s paying half the price that he paid before to have one or two repaired. But yeah, again, you’re asking some tough questions to do. I like it there. I imagine there are some very good dentists abroad that do this work, and if you pick the right clinic, then you’ll get very good work done, if not something better than some of the work that I’ve done here. But there are pitfalls like the travel, the expense, things like that if things go wrong.

[01:21:36] Really interesting perspective there, Josh. From your barber is that actually, you know, he had he had the possibility of and obviously having listened to about you, about all your training and education and all the rest of it out of reach, hand off rather than rather than flying over to Turkey. But I think

[01:21:52] People, people want

[01:21:53] The holiday, right?

[01:21:56] He wanted the holiday, actually. You’re right, you wanted the holiday. You got picked up in the hotel was part of his cost of his treatment of things. And some people want the fact that they’ve been abroad to have their teeth done. They want to be able to tell it to their friends. And and I know it’s a hole to our conversation in itself, but you know, the appearance, how appearances have changed without our awareness of celebrity social media and things. And I am well aware that people want the I wouldn’t the term by someone who uses the false look or the veneer. The look in a way. But a lot of the time when I when I sit down with patients, I say that that’s not what I go for. If you come to see me, I would much rather give you a natural aesthetic, one in which where if you’re having a bit of work done, I almost want it that when you go away, your friends, colleagues say, you know what’s different about you? Something something’s changed. Something’s improved. Something’s, you know, you look nicer. You look more confident. I don’t want them to be like, Oh, you better treat them, you know, because yeah, it’s almost a in my opinion, because I have made it too obvious. That’s the jargon that I use with my patients, and I let them sit there and they’re nodding like, Yeah, no, you’re the one for me because and people don’t want that. And I have turned down treatment in the past where someone has said, I want to come in and have veneers, and I said, I’m not prepping those teeth, actually. And I and I don’t know where they are now, but I don’t refused to do it because they were about 23 and I was like, You’ve got your whole life. You’re not going to have any teeth left by the time you’re in your 50s.

[01:23:20] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[01:23:21] I do refuse. Sometimes if someone is wanting that kind of appearance, it’s not something that I really want to want to go for it in my practise and career. Sure. And I understand it’s a big work and I might be missing a trick by not doing it. But, but, but no, I think that there are there are places in which people can have that done.

[01:23:41] I think we all have our own values in our own standards. And that’s not to say that your values and your standards are any better than anyone else’s or vice versa. Right. It’s just it’s just your philosophy and what you believe in.

[01:23:53] It’s also where you work and things as well, kind of how you marketed your practise. Have a lot of respect for a lot of these very good dentists. You know that we see these kind of celebrity dentists. They’re very good at what they do, and they have just marketed themselves so that that clientele. It’s just not the clientele that I you deal with. So it’s everyone’s different, really.

[01:24:11] Yeah. You serve a particular audience and they tend to want a particular thing that you do very well. And then there’s another group of patients who are probably better served by someone else because they’re not your audience, right?

[01:24:25] And I was gonna say, going back a little bit about the turkey teeth in terms of the prepping of them, yeah, that’s kind of where my ethics lie in terms of their age, how restored their teeth are. There’s so many factors at play that actually, it’s hard to answer that question in the sense that, yes, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t go, you know, just blindly in with the BR and prep the teeth. But there are some patients that have had very heavily restored teeth that do require that at the same time.

[01:24:49] So yeah, just this brings me on to you. Haven’t listened to this podcast? You don’t know what’s coming next. So if you think the questions have been a little bit tough so far, we’re going to finish off with a couple of sort of questions. But these are not not dentistry. You have another coffee. Not necessarily dentistry. So we always like to finish off the podcast with a couple of questions, and one of them is if it was your last day on the planet. She’s OK. And you were surrounded by your loved ones or your future loved ones, whoever they are. And you had to give them three pieces of life advice or wisdom.

[01:25:37] What would they be? Three. I was going to say I’m struggling to come up with one, but three as oppose. The first one would probably just be three others as you would like to treat yourself. And that comes from a personal or, you know, practising life as well as, you know, just the way that you would want to be treated. And that is that’s probably the first one, I would say. I don’t really know if this is advice, but I would say that it’s OK to make mistakes because we learn from mistakes. And I’m very kind of kinetic learner whereby if I listen to something in a lecture, I sometimes don’t pick up as much as I would like to. But if I’ve done it and I’m doing it hands on, I remember it. And so I would say, and if you make the mistakes you learn from them and you can critique yourself as well, embrace them so that that would be maybe my second bit of advice, I suppose, is, you know, just saying it’s okay to make the mistakes, learn from them, carry on. And and hopefully they haven’t been too hard hitting mistakes financially or anything else. But you move on from their third bit of advice just out of interest. What have others said for these questions?

[01:26:48] I think, you know, a lot of others just focus on that. Let’s, you know, and I guess it comes down to the way you live your lives. If you think about right, I’m Josh and this is how I go about my week. Yeah, well, my life is, you know, what is important to me, you know, children, this, that and the other, what would you what would you say to your son, your daughter? You know, when you’re passing on some knowledge and you saying, Listen, son, make sure you go out there and do X, Y and Z and don’t don’t be a knob because no one, you understand what I mean. It’s.

[01:27:24] I mean, just from what you’ve said there, actually, and in terms of where I am in my my life and career at the moment and having just bought a flats and and things, I would say, maybe my third bit of advice is just don’t don’t sweat the small stuff, you know, don’t let small things get to you. You know, there’s there’s a bigger picture, you know, petty things just let them go. Things like that that actually, I I would say in the past, I was maybe a little bit more, you know, and maybe take these things to heart or maybe think of an example. But yeah, it’s just life’s too short. So just don’t sweat the small stuff and any little things, whether it’s financially, whether it’s a little petty arguments, things like that, just just let it go. And just kind of, yeah, yeah. And again, you’re asking me some questions that are making me kind of think almost quite deep into my own subconscious feeling. So it might not be the best advice, but that might be the three.

[01:28:25] Oh, that’s cool. It’s absolutely cool and all make sense. And Josh, so. So if that if that was your last day and someone was to make a comment that, you know, Josh was dot dot dot. Mojo, Legazpi, how would you like to be remembered?

[01:28:45] Wow. Yeah, that’s a tough one. What would my obituary say,

[01:28:53] I feel I feel like I feel like you’re too young. I feel like you’re too young to even be answering this question. We always like to just get a bit of perspective from everyone.

[01:29:04] That’s a tough question, actually. I suppose going again back around, I’d like to think that people think I was I like to share things, you know, I was a giving person that whether it comes down to, you know, sharing knowledge sharing experience just in a way kind of helping. That’s what I’d like my obituary to see, actually. You know, almost shedding a tear here, getting emotional. I suppose that’s what I would like to be remembered for is not so much for an individual thing or but just being someone who was there to help others make their life easier or to help them through experiences, things like that. Maybe it’s sorry. It’s maybe not cancer

[01:29:53] Here, Josh. It’s absolutely spot on what you

[01:29:56] Like to be remembered. You know nothing. Nothing fancy. Just Yeah.

[01:30:01] And it doesn’t have to be. You’re racking your brain try to think of some of it. But actually, you’ve just said that Josh was a very giving individual who helps others. I was actually an all around nice guy that didn’t really fall out with people, pretty much.

[01:30:15] You summed it up,

[01:30:16] And that’s pretty much what you said. And you know, we’ve had some guests who said, Is it all right to say, I don’t care, I don’t care what anyone thinks because I’m comfortable the world, you know? And so there’s been a range of, you know, different. There’s no right or wrong answers to these questions. That’s true. And the final one, which I think you’ll probably find a little bit easier if you had 30 days left and you had your health, no financial drawbacks or anything like that and all your loved ones that you could tap into, what would you spend that time doing?

[01:30:49] I mean, I would definitely kind of get away from it all. I mean, work work life. No, not not people, I should say, but in terms of like work, we get away from it all. It’s almost the same question. Obviously, if you won the lottery, what would you do in the sense that you would take your your, your friends, you take your family as much as I could treat them, you know, I would, and you would get away and just, you know, enjoy the time together. I feel like sometimes career can get in the way of relationships and and you know, if if you didn’t have that as a barrier, then you would get to know people a little bit more and build stronger relationships and things that I guess 30 days, that’s the word I would probably try and do.

[01:31:31] You wouldn’t do that last veneer case or just finish off some edge bonding.

[01:31:39] I would like to think that I wouldn’t leave people in the lurch, so I would probably put a plan in place that I would make sure that everyone was looked after. But I come back and lift the drill if I had 30 days. I think there’s priorities in those 30 days that outweigh that. I would make sure that my that no one was left in the lurch. First of all, you know, I wouldn’t want to just run away like that, you know, but certainly I would want to get away and he would go and live on a desert island for that time with your closest friends and family, for sure. And yeah, just enjoy, you know, do extreme things. I’d probably take some more risks knowing that I only have 30 days left. I would go skydiving. I’d do things like that, you know, trying to make the most of it. Sorry to bring it into it, but I suppose it almost be the same if there was ever any terminal illnesses and things. You know you’d think, Well, if I’ve been given these five years or something like that, then you know, would I pick up the drill? I would probably make sure I would finish everyone off in that initial time while I was contemplating how to use the rest of the time. Yeah. And then and I would just try and, you know, just use that time as best I could.

[01:32:43] Yeah, brilliant. Josh, thank you so much today for sharing what you’ve shared with us is going

[01:32:49] To bring it up again at the end of that conversation. But I don’t

[01:32:54] Know. It’s been great, Josh. And it’s been really interesting learning a little bit more about you, your philosophy on treatment, but also for the first time, speaking to someone who is a ortho dentist. Is this hard to put behind you as a terminology? Because I don’t see it as a without any disrespect meant Josh. I don’t see you as an orthodontist. I see you as a as a guy that’s very, very good at moving teeth, but also an all round dentist. Cosmetic dentist that takes a very realistic view.

[01:33:28] It’s kind of the way I sometimes describe it. I hybrid or a bridge the gap, sometimes between the different specialities. But yeah, really? Niche.

[01:33:37] Thanks for your time today, Josh.

[01:33:39] Oh, Prav, it’s been a pleasure chatting. It’s helped me understand a little bit more actually about what I’ve done and where I’ve come from as well, so I have very much business experience. Thank you very much for that. And yeah, if you need me to to do anything else like this, or if anyone has any questions after listening to this, more than happy for anyone to get in touch with me if there’s any information that anyone wants for me as well, and I’m happy to share anything, whether it be the slideshow that I present to patients, the templates, things like that. Just ask and you shall receive.

[01:34:10] Brilliant. Brilliant. Thanks, Josh. Thanks for your time today.

[01:34:14] 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.

[01:34:30] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.