Month: February 2022

[00:00:00] So there was two life events around that time that that really hit home to me. There’s a road in Doncaster where all the car garages are on and mum took me up there one day and she said, Look, if you don’t start working, you’ll be driving up and down this road and you will not be able to go into any of these car garages and buy it. The car that you want. Will just go up and down, and you will not be able to go inside and afford something. If you not working, you can go inside any of these car garages and buy what you want.

[00:00:28] That was one life event, and then

[00:00:30] I’m not sure what we’re talking first. But then that also said, Look,

[00:00:34] I’ve got money. You haven’t got a penny.

[00:00:36] If you don’t start working, you will have nothing. So those were the pretty much the two life events that really gave me the kick of the backside that I needed to start to work.

[00:00:51] 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

[00:01:08] Gives me great pleasure to welcome Professor Hussein onto the podcast. Afsar has been dominating in Doncaster with a couple of practises. He’s achieved a very high level of Invisalign Dental implants, facial aesthetics, Doncaster not really the in my experience, the kind of town where you would expect this sort of high end treatment to take off. See as officers worked out a nice way of, you know, capitalising in that market. So we usually start these things by talking about the backstory your Doncaster born and bred, but that’s about your childhood, about, you know, when did dentistry first come onto your radar? What kind of a kid were you? That sort of thing.

[00:01:56] I’d like to think I was a good kid, but by my report to say otherwise, really, I was a pretty average student. You know, CS and DS and BS.

[00:02:06] All my reports said if

[00:02:08] I tried harder, he could be something. Or if I have to try tried harder, you get better grades. Movies come home crying after every single parent evening. So I was always one of those kids where,

[00:02:21] Yeah,

[00:02:21] I was I was quite naughty. Actually, it wasn’t until I got to make, you know, 15, 16 years old where I started to settle down

[00:02:28] And thinking, You know,

[00:02:30] I probably should stop trying to work because I need to, you know, get get somewhere in life. So that’s a dentist. That’s a dentist. Yeah, that’s a dentist. So, yeah, he has a practise in Doncaster after.

[00:02:44] Were you always going to be a dentist? Was that always the plan?

[00:02:47] I think what I was growing up, obviously with the Asian community, we know there’s our doctors and dentists around, and obviously I saw my dad and I saw my other friends, parents who were GP’s and doctors. And it’s probably thinking and I’m like, I kind of like the lifestyle that we have. You know, dad always pick me up from school. He was always at my place and always at my sports events, you know, never was on corny nights. And I think, you know, I kind of like that, you know, children, lifestyle. He was never, you know, it was always home with me. If I need something, he was always there. You know, work never got in the way of, you know, anything like that.

[00:03:26] So I kind of wanted, you know,

[00:03:29] That sort of more chilled out lifestyle I could, you know, I could dictate where I wanted to do really.

[00:03:35] So I’m quite interested in, you know, someone who’s come from that background of dentistry. What was dentistry actually like compared to what you thought it was going to be like, you know, observing your dad?

[00:03:47] I thought it would be easier

[00:03:50] Than it is.

[00:03:52] I thought, you know, you could just do whatever you want to do, whether you want to survive that.

[00:03:56] But that obviously

[00:03:57] Did turn out to be case. But yeah, it does take a lot of hard work

[00:04:00] In that that

[00:04:01] Did work kind because he’s had his own practise for a while. So now I’m kind of experiencing what he actually went through with, you know, dentists, patients, staff running practise management practise. So yeah, the the reality quickly dawned on me that it’s not all, you

[00:04:19] Know, easy,

[00:04:20] Easy life, easy money. It takes, you know, a lot of work, you know, work starts when you wake up and work finishes when you go to sleep.

[00:04:29] Going back to when you were growing up and you say you see your DS bit of a naughty kid or whatever based on your report, did you kind of know you could just pull it out of the bag when you were 15 and 16 and just switch it up a gear? What happened around that time?

[00:04:43] So there was two life events around that time that that really hit home to me. There’s a road in Doncaster where all the car garages are on, and mum took me up there one day and she said, Look, if you don’t start working, you’ll be driving up and down this road and you will not be able to go into any of these car garages and buy the car that you want to just go up and down, and you will not be able to go inside and afford something. If you start working, you can go inside any of these car garages and buy what you want something that was one life event. And then I’m not sure what we’re talking first. But then that also said,

[00:05:16] Look, I’ve got

[00:05:17] Money that

[00:05:18] You haven’t got a penny.

[00:05:19] If you don’t start working, you will have nothing. So those were the pretty much the two life events that really gave me the kick of the backside that I needed to start to work. But life wasn’t easy in the sense that

[00:05:32] I couldn’t just, you know,

[00:05:34] Shape up and turn up because I’ve not I wouldn’t say I’m really Booksmart. So I did just miss out very marginally on my ability to get into Dental for first time, so I did have to do a reset. So I took a gap year, worked hard and then reset and then got into Newcastle University second time round. So then, yes, I had to take a year out to basically work hard and study. I got a job over at Staples, you know, working and then. Wow study and then got in second time around.

[00:06:05] What was the car that inspired you to say, I’m going to drive that car when,

[00:06:12] When I can? So on my wall, I had a picture of

[00:06:16] A Ferrari F430 and that was

[00:06:20] That was that was a car basically that, you know, that was, you know,

[00:06:23] Every every every guy’s everybody’s got a car in his bedroom wall and that was the kind that I had the Ferrari F430. So that’s the kind of that’s what drew me to. Well, what about drive? I’m quite I’m quite blessed. So I’m quite blessed now. I’ve got a few cars. What few track cars, a few supercars, so. So what do

[00:06:47] You drive now? Do you drive a Ferrari?

[00:06:49] Yeah, I do.

[00:06:50] Amazing. So you actually got your girl? Very good. Nice. Well done. So yeah, so we make, you know, we make goals for ourselves. And, you know, I’ve some thought in my life that, you know, if I get such and such, I’ll be happy. And then you never it never actually lives up to that, is it? Especially not with things, sometimes with the experiences. But you know, now that you’ve got that Ferrari that you dream so much about, does that sort of sort of take away from your motivation to keep on doing more things?

[00:07:22] Yeah, I was quite fortunate to a few years ago, be able to buy a Ferrari. And then after

[00:07:26] That, you don’t

[00:07:27] Get bored of it, but you kind of realise that you have achieved that. I’ve done it. And so I needed some sort of new motivation, new motivation. So nowadays it’s just, you know, building my practise and because my practise is my baby. So I’d like to see it develop like to see it, just be able to get better and better off a wider range of treatments and formula.

[00:07:47] That’s, you know, good clinicians, good stuff.

[00:07:50] And that’s that’s what makes me happy.

[00:07:52] Do you see those things as almost like rewards for achieving what you’ve achieved and doing really well? And the reason I’m bringing this up is, is my brother, right? He’s a Colima car guy or whatever a thin guy, right? But you know, without without putting too fine a point on it, right? He sees these as almost like milestones of rewards for the hard work, the effort, the energy, everything that he’s put into it. It’s just like a treat to himself. Yeah. Is that how you see sort of the cars, the truck cars, the sports cars and things like that, almost like a reward to yourself to say, Hey, you know, I was going down that road in Doncaster one day and I’ve proved it to myself now.

[00:08:35] Yes, I think I think definitely like, you know, I’ve been qualified 11 years now. So, you know, about eight years ago, I thought, you know, life’s good. I mean, I’ve got a decent cup, but you know, I could definitely never, ever, ever afford a Ferrari or fodder, you know, something like that

[00:08:53] What these other dentists drive

[00:08:54] And then. But no, I kept plugging away, kept working hard and then saving up and developing my business. And then all of a sudden, you know, I found myself in a position where I could do it. So that was, you know, quite a good milestone, really. Where yeah, because right, you know, I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve all those years ago. But then I didn’t want more, but I wanted to achieve something else. Mm-hmm. So I’ve got to another milestone now where

[00:09:21] I can probably just

[00:09:23] Start relaxing a bit and not working so hard because I’ve got, you know, five or six associates. I kind

[00:09:29] Of do the kind of work

[00:09:30] That I want. So I’ve cut down my NHS work and started to do a lot more Prav work, a lot more implant work. We do a lot of investment. So all this stuff that I enjoy, I really enjoy facial aesthetics. So I’ve got into a phase of life where I’m doing what I want to do with the I’m doing all the dentistry and aesthetic work that I want to do, and I kind of don’t do what I don’t feel comfortable doing, like fillings and things like that. I kind of grown away from that sort of work and go on to the Invisalign and facial prosthetics and implants of work now.

[00:10:06] And it’s there. Is there another milestone that you’re looking at ahead of yourself? You know, sometimes I speak to either a lot of my clients or friends, right? And often we look ahead of ourselves and we think, Crikey, I’m just x amount away from there. Whether it’s a financial target, whether it’s it’s a thing or whether it’s a business milestone. And often we’re looking at that gap that’s in front of us. But sometimes we forget about how what we’ve achieved, which is the gain that’s sat below us. What is that gap for you? You know, the next step, the next milestone, what you want to achieve. Is it more of a work life balance thing? You know, it looks like you’ve achieved the pick your battles in terms of dentistry and pick and choose the type of patient you want to achieve. Is there something else ahead of you now in terms of what you what you’re striving towards?

[00:10:54] Yeah. So my life has kind of been crazy up until last year where I’ve been working long hours, you know, literally 12. Thirteen hours a day for, you know, for six days a week, and currently we’ve got a couple of projects going on, we’re extending the practise to add on a few more surgeries. We’re currently renovating the other practise to become more of a, you know, like a hopeless visual aesthetics

[00:11:16] And more complex

[00:11:18] Work. So that’s

[00:11:20] The milestone for

[00:11:21] Me. Next is to get all those completed and get all the chairs filled. But I think this year I’ve also had a lot more of a I know it’s really January right now, but I’ve never had more of a work life balance, which is what I wanted to achieve because for the last 10 years, it’s literally has been work, work, work, and now I’ve just started to like, calm down a bit and say, you know, my kids are actually grown up and I need to start being

[00:11:46] There for, you

[00:11:47] Know, more for them. So I’m spending a lot more time with the wife. I spend a lot of time more, a lot more time with the children, you know, going to see the place doing the school runs, which I never did before picking them up. So, you know, I’m enjoying

[00:12:00] And really enjoying that aspect

[00:12:02] Of it at the minute. So I’m taking a bit more of a backseat role in my practise. Now I’ve got a good team. I’ve got two really fantastic practise managers who can oversee everything and make sure that the practises don’t be so happy and I can take a bit

[00:12:17] More of a step back. And you know, for

[00:12:19] Me right now, it’s all about Work-Life Balance now.

[00:12:22] That’s lovely. And me and Piers spoke about this even with with guests in the past that, you know, we can look at this work life balance doing those 14 to 16 hour days. I’m putting that grafted and something has to give right, whether it’s that, you know, missing out on part of the kids situation, right? Or those situations where children are two and go, why you never hear daddy or there’ll be little conversations that happen that kind of pull on your heartstrings. But you know what? You just crack on and do what you’ve got to do because you’re a man on a mission, right? And then you get to a point like where you are today, where you can talk back in. Have you ever been any conversations like that that you’ve had with your kids?

[00:13:03] Definitely. Definitely. So. Two months ago,

[00:13:05] I came home and it must have been around 6:30 in the evening, something like that. And one of my kids said to my wife, I was just in the car pulling up. So she told me afterwards. But one of the kids told my wife that, Oh, that’s human. We’ve not even started eating dinner yet. So which basically kind of means that I’m always home after they

[00:13:26] Finish eating dinner,

[00:13:27] Or I’ll get home when they lie in bed trying to go to sleep. So there’s been multiple occasions over the last couple years where the kids have just kind of said that, you know, I’m home early because I’m eating dinner with them or I’m, you know, playing with them just before bedtime. So, you know, work wise. My wife

[00:13:46] Was getting worse

[00:13:47] And worse as the years went by because the practises were getting busier, so work was very good. But then my home life started to suffer like that. So and I kept saying to my wife, You know, I’ll get better or get better or we get better, you know, I’m, you know, I’ll be able to cut down and cut down. But as things got better, the practises, we got busier

[00:14:08] And busier, you know, through

[00:14:09] Word of mouth, and

[00:14:11] There wasn’t

[00:14:11] Just any given in the system for me to slow down.

[00:14:14] Do you think sometimes that perhaps on occasion, that’s a positive example for your children? Because, you know, I look at my dad when I was growing up right, and it was all gruff, gruff graft. He didn’t have time to play with those kids, right? But he taught was the art of graft and the value of hard work. Payman brings this point all the time. It brings us all the time and says, Actually, don’t beat yourself up about it, Prav, because you’re setting an example for your children and they’re learning by what they see and what they witness day to day. Ok, dads occasionally holds the dinner, but is working bloody hard, is not out partying, is he? Or, you know, he’s down at the local boozer or watching football or something like that, right? He’s out working hard and they see that as a big sample. But your thoughts on

[00:15:00] With no matter is never that, that

[00:15:02] Actually that was a

[00:15:05] I’m content with what what he had. So he has a what it was like a one to one to two serve practise, and he’s never had the drive or, you know, the

[00:15:16] He never wanted to make it

[00:15:17] Grow. He was happy to content with his with him and one of the associate, maybe a hygienist one, you know, one day a week. It was always fun for lunch.

[00:15:27] So, you know, he

[00:15:28] Always came home for two miles away from home. So and he was always

[00:15:32] Home,

[00:15:33] You know, 5:30, five, 5:30 at home. So and eventually, you know, we had a comfortable life. We had nice cars. We always went on holiday. You know, he had a great work-life balance. But, you know, I guess you just had no desire to, you know, expand his practise.

[00:15:49] So sometimes we kind of are the same as our parents and then sometimes we’re the exact opposite of our parents. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Did you always have that plan? Did you look at your dad and think, Well, I’m when I become a dentist, I’m going to have multiple practises? Or, you know, was this a planned out thing? Did you know years ago that you were going to do that or not?

[00:16:09] So what I was, you know, growing up when I was 17, 18, when I was in Dental school, I always wanted a big practise,

[00:16:17] You know, five

[00:16:18] Six surgeries. I thought I was advising myself having one practise, five six surgeries

[00:16:22] And you know that be that.

[00:16:24] So as I started a period before this one surgery practise came up after eight as an associate, and that was, I think you should buy it. And I’m like, No, you know, it’s got a very smart contract. It’s wonderful to practise,

[00:16:38] You know, seeing 100

[00:16:39] Percent don’t really work. You know, that’s kind of, you know, the mentality.

[00:16:44] So I can’t

[00:16:45] Do anything with, I can’t expand it. It’s can be too difficult. It’s just a way somebody I’d rather just wait for something bigger to come up that I was like, No, no, no, no, you should definitely have a look into it. So after most discussions, after much deliberation, I ended up buying this practise and it was one of those, you know, rundown onesies practises where, you know, wallpaper on the walls. And it was just very rundown and very, you know, it’s not been touched for 25 years, really. And then a few words then I’m like, What would I have taken like a 50 percent pay cut on what I was, what I was earning? And I need you to live with this practise, realise that it’s just going to, you know, bankrupt me and I’m just not going to enjoy my life. So then I started to think about ways to develop it and you got developed, you know, developed started to increase the turnover.

[00:17:32] So what do you do?

[00:17:34] What? What did I do? So when I bought it, it was a hundred percent NHS, so there was no private work offered you or they’re owed or if you did this, Udas and he just, you know, whatever, basically. So I started offering, you know, whitening crowns, veneers, you know, all the all the little private add ons, composites, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s how it kind of grew.

[00:17:57] And then when you existing patients, yeah, yes.

[00:17:59] I went to the existing patients and then through word of mouth, did did more patients come? And then I started to do facial prosthetics, which obviously added support to that. And then the next practise came up for sale. So I thought, OK, this is a great opportunity. So I bought that or that was not a single surgery practise, no next door. So then I did some better work and enjoyed those two practises together to create a three surgery practise. And then things just got better and better, better. We started to get into Invisalign and composite bonding and, you know, more and more cosmetic work. We’ve got a couple therapists on board as well, and that it just it just grew, grew and grew. You know,

[00:18:39] After you set up your practise pretty soon after VTi, you know, it’s not a joking matter, sort of eight months after vet to start a practise. And you know, it’s obviously gone very well now, but they’ll take us through some of the mistakes that you made along the way, things you would have done differently. So anything you would done differently.

[00:18:58] Mm-hmm. So mistakes that are made or made plenty of mistakes, you know, I’m sure we’ve all been there riveted, you know, to through crowds and we’ve know off some good pat on the back. And then they’ve come back six months later, a year later, with one of them fractured.

[00:19:13] And what about from the business point of view,

[00:19:16] From the business point of view? Mistakes wise, I’ve hired. You know, staff or associates

[00:19:22] Or whoever who haven’t really

[00:19:24] Had the same philosophy as, you know, as I’ve had, so, you know, we’ve not really

[00:19:29] Gone and you know,

[00:19:31] You know, you could see that as a as a bit of a mistake. Mistakes wise, well, sort of.

[00:19:36] I thought you talk about growing the business word of mouth, but you know, what was it about those early patients? What were the early tactics that you used or how did you treat those early patients differently to get the word of mouth because you’ve always done something right to grow practises so quickly?

[00:19:52] So there’s two distinct patients where I can

[00:19:55] Remember doing

[00:19:56] Work and then then personally

[00:19:58] Over Facebook and

[00:20:00] Instagram, and it just going crazy from there. They weren’t influencers. They weren’t, you know, some celebrities, they were literally one person was a semi-permanent makeup artist near me and the other person who was she did nails. So, yeah, I gave one of them some composite bonding. And then the other one had in mind that composite bonding.

[00:20:21] And then literally just from those two, there

[00:20:24] Were probably a few years apart. It just went viral. It just went crazy.

[00:20:28] And so interesting. You know, Prav, you remember we talked to Payman Sobhani and he said his whole business was built on one patient, one Qatari patient. And the difference that that, you know, one or two patients can make, especially in this day and age, it’s really interesting to see that, you know, at the beginning, you need spend time treat people really well. You’ve got the time to treat people well. You never know. One or two patients can make the difference. So interesting.

[00:20:56] Yeah, totally. Ed, I I can think clearly about these two, and I think it’s it’s all hinges on these two patients that we treated.

[00:21:05] And it just went crazy.

[00:21:07] And so and you know, there were there were influences. There weren’t celebrities, there weren’t royalty. There were just, you know. Yes, definitely.

[00:21:16] They yeah. So I’ve got a couple of questions because I often get people booking calls with me 100 percent NHS, right. And the first thing they say is, look, I’m doing 100 percent NHS. I want to start private, OK? So the first thing I advise them to do is they need to cut the cord with the NHS in any way, shape or form, whether that’s wholly an associate to take some of that slack, to make it so it can free them up to do the private right. That bit they really struggle with, right, emotionally, physically, mentally because they feel a degree of loyalty to those patients whose check-ups they’ve been doing. And they and their rebuttal to me, when I say that is this they won’t go to anyone else, right? So I want to learn how you switched pivoted from that. And then the next thing is, you know, pay mentioned, you know, you’ve got apex Invisalign, right? That’s no joke, right? This practise isn’t businesses out there who are saying, Hey, we’ll take you to apex in 12 months or whatever, right? We’ll show you the secret sauce. I want to know what your secret sauce was in getting it going from from, you know, two patients, one of whom you did Invisalign. And now you know, you do it pretty much as much as the biggest players in the

[00:22:29] Apex just means that you in the top one percent of design providers in Europe.

[00:22:35] Just just yeah, yes.

[00:22:38] How many Invisalign cases do you actually do a month?

[00:22:41] We, I think we do about 30 or 40 a month new ones.

[00:22:46] Absolutely. You mentioned you had some practise managers. What’s the relationship with them? What are they responsible for? And you know what you do? Do you have a meeting a week with each of those or how does it work? How do you run it?

[00:22:57] See, this is the thing I I had no idea because, well, let me go back to Prav questions. First of all, so and then we’ll then we’ll come on to that. So I’m literally now going through the phase of,

[00:23:10] You know,

[00:23:11] Let’s say, giving up my own NHS patients, which I’ve treated it for 10 years to other associates and recruiting new associates to do it. And it’s still, you know what I see my patient

[00:23:22] Went through, but to me,

[00:23:24] It just, you know, I get that that feeling said, you know, I want to go say hi to them. I want to say, Hi, how’s life?

[00:23:31] How’s work? Because it’s even

[00:23:33] Now. It’s hard for me to see that patient, which we really are. That patient’s not seeing me, you know, like all my patients, they’re all really nice patients. So it is. I get it. That’s really hard to give up that sort

[00:23:44] Of those

[00:23:45] Patients because, yeah, because you’ve got that good relationship with them. And I’m quite, I mean, quite an affluent area. So it’s not it’s not a high area. So you develop is quite high.

[00:23:55] And so the associates

[00:23:56] Get paid a good, you do it as well. So yeah, so that is how I try

[00:24:00] To put the bit

[00:24:02] Aside and go more towards the private

[00:24:04] So. So the conundrum here is the let’s say you’ve got eight hours in a day and I know you’ve got 16, but let’s say you only had eight, right? Yeah. And in those eight hours, you have literally got your hands in an NHS patients spouse. Yes. Seven. Point, nine hours of that day, but you need to free up four hours of that day to do to start delivering your apex dentistry. Yeah. What do you do with those four hours of patients? What’s your what what’s what’s the communication that has been sent to those patients to say, Afsar can’t see you anymore or is that how you deal with it goes from eight to 16 hours.

[00:24:43] So the way that we’ve dealt with it is that we’ve obviously we’ve had new associates to really tell these patients that, you know, you don’t see after today

[00:24:52] Or really, really going to be,

[00:24:53] See, you know, this is a date. So some of them are OK with it. Some of them are not OK with it. So I have seen a few. I’ve seen a few patients on VHS, but the vast majority, I’ve kind of, you know, passing to two different dentists. But yeah, so that’s how we’ve done it. We’ve just explained to them that, you know, that my eye is a bit

[00:25:17] Focussing

[00:25:18] On this side of the true

[00:25:19] Eye that

[00:25:20] Decided dentistry. So most of the care that person will understand that. But I do go out in the kitchen and say hi to them and you know, so and I think the correct comforted knowing that I’m around still that I’m still in the building. So, you know, if they need me, they know exactly where I am.

[00:25:37] So what did you find these practise managers? Were they people who, you know, work for you and you sort of elevated them up into that role? Or did you advertise for them and ask around, how did you find them?

[00:25:47] Yeah. So I’ve got to execute practise matches.

[00:25:51] So is there an element of performance related compensation and you know, bonuses are the managers particularly are they are they the ones who get bonuses or does everyone?

[00:26:01] So yeah, so. So we do have we do give bonuses. We do give. I got to give generous bonuses because my staff all work hard. You know, we are very busy. They all work hard. And, you know, they’re great, I think, and they do get bonuses and they do get incentives if we do hit certain targets. So, yeah, I’m very big on, you know, rewarding staff. Just, you know, for me to give your example,

[00:26:27] Must

[00:26:29] Not last year, the year before for Christmas. I want more, more and more big handbags for, you know, for the bonuses. So, you know, it’s just nice to look after them. And because, you know, they really do have to be,

[00:26:40] You know, they, you

[00:26:41] Know, they buy me lunch, they make sure that I’ve got, you know, coffee and, you know, I’m well looked after.

[00:26:47] So, so other managers also responsible for the, you know, the hiring and firing on the non-clinical team.

[00:26:55] If we need extra members of staff, the practise managers will come to me and say, you know, I think we need to take on an actual member of staff, whether it be a nurse receptionist or we, you know, we to a place where someone is leaving.

[00:27:06] So they kind of put the

[00:27:08] Ad out and then we interview them together. But ultimately, I’d like to give them control. You know, the decision? The decision is yours. Who do you want to take on and for what reasons? And then we can have some sort of agreement. So yeah, they so they kind of do the hiring and the firing, let’s say,

[00:27:25] What are you looking for in associates?

[00:27:28] So an associate, I’m looking for someone with great work ethic. I think having a portfolio is, you

[00:27:34] Know, a very good thing to have.

[00:27:36] And that’s pretty much where I look for in this area because obviously in an interview, you can’t really get to grips with

[00:27:43] How they

[00:27:44] Are with patients and how they are with, you know, others because there’s very little you can ascertain

[00:27:49] From a 10 or 15

[00:27:50] Minute interview because these warheads are desolate. So we have tragedies in the past with them. So, you know, after, you know, a day or two of doing a trial date, you kind of

[00:28:00] Know how they’re going to be.

[00:28:02] So that

[00:28:03] Gives we we we

[00:28:05] Do that as well.

[00:28:06] Sometimes look, when we look for associates, you know, there’s it’s a multifaceted job, you know, there’s obviously, you know, it’s got to work for the business. They’ve got to be clinically good. There’s the sort of the chair side manner, part of it. Obviously, in private these days, I find the chair side manner. But even the most important thing, what do you think?

[00:28:27] Yeah. So obviously there’s a whole bunch of tickets, so there’s a money making side of it. But I like associates who were, you know, on time the punch punctual or associates were on. We had a really nice level. We can just talk to each other like Fred said. We can look at cases and we can, you know, call each other out on things which aren’t quite, you know, road stuff. So that’s that’s really good. Yeah, there’s you know, there’s bedside manner there’s but they’ve got to be clinically good as well. And they’ve been, you know, continuing on courses and, you know, just try to keep up to date. So that’s kind about what I look for.

[00:29:03] How do you triage the word when it comes through? So, you know, I’m assuming you’ve got you’ve got a certain amount of NHS dentistry coming through the door and then a certain amount of private dentistry going through the coming through the door and then your various associates. Is there any kind of triage process in terms of will this? Typekit patient with this clinical need goes to me, this patient with certain clinical needle go to associate one to three and how will the team informed about that whole programme?

[00:29:32] So we’ve got quite we’ve got quite a nice setup now after obviously much deliberation and Typekit. So yeah, we’ve got A. Payman before we got to therapists who do all our composite bonding. So all the money goes to that. So they’ll do the consultation

[00:29:49] Because

[00:29:50] We’ve looked at the therapy. So it’s good practise. They can do x rays, they can true partner, they can do, you know, bits and bobs. And then if they want to check that with it, I can

[00:29:59] Also check

[00:30:00] The pan over so it copies. A bundle goes to the therapists.

[00:30:03] So how do you find therapists who are up to doing composite bonding? And how do you know patients take the fact that the therapist is going to do the composite bonding?

[00:30:15] And I don’t think coverage of bottom is quite an art, actually. So, you know, we’ve had therapists who were self-taught and they are literally self-taught, but they are so, so good at it. And we had some therapists on training courses and, you know, it’s also good. So yeah, it’s all about finding the right therapist, which can be very difficult.

[00:30:36] So if you’ve treated a patient, let’s say you’ve prescribed AB for a patient, would you do the alignment alignment and then the rest of the case moves over to the therapy? Yeah.

[00:30:47] So I do the hybrid that obviously which is an herb and then the the bonding part goes to the therapist. Yeah, my therapies are on a percentage just like my associates

[00:30:58] Are your therapist on a percentage or do you pay them on an hourly rate?

[00:31:02] Yeah, I find that that’s the best way.

[00:31:04] So how do the patients take the fact that it’s a therapist and not a dentist? I mean, do you do you explain to them the difference before they go ahead?

[00:31:12] Yeah. So, yeah, good question. So what? I first started out, you know, the dentist did everything, and then when we started to move to a therapist model, patients used to ask me, Well, why aren’t you doing it? You know, what’s the therapist? And I told patients, the therapist is as good as me, if not better, better than me. If I was to give my if I wanted my mom to have treatment, I’d send my mom to this therapist and not be because they’re better at it than me. So, you know, 10, 10, find that works. And you know, a moment like this. The therapist is so much better off than I am

[00:31:43] That, you know, you get far less

[00:31:45] Complications, far less fractures, forest issues with it. So I think what we need to tell patients that they’re more happy with it because they do trust me. So it’s kind of it works.

[00:31:57] Just some of your associates do AB.

[00:32:00] Yes, so my associate also does. And so we got kind of like a set up where, you know, we’re trying to split up the clients half and half. So one could still do one that I’ll do one procrastination and then we’ll look at the numbers because it’s all about. And then if I’m doing more, then we’ll try to push more of it to him or his mother, and we’ll try and push forward, be to try to equalise it. He’s done some bonding, but

[00:32:24] Again he he has sent

[00:32:26] His to the therapist as well because he’s got a few and he likes it. But then I don’t think he’s that keen on it, which is which is fair enough. So we’ve got therapists who can do it.

[00:32:35] It’s an interesting dynamic because, you know, I’ve spoken out and works with a lot of associates and, you know, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, right? So I can I can very much imagine having a conversation with an associate who’d say, Actually, do you know what? I’m keeping that bonding for myself. You understand where I’m coming from because they think, Well, I’ve solved the case, won the case, blah blah blah, so on and so forth. I’m not letting this go to a therapist. Yeah, but I guess, you know, you know, from my perspective, I look at it and think, Well, you know what? They’re going to be busy doing more Invisalign or doing more, whatever. It’s not going to be sat there twiddling their thumbs. But sometimes you know, you do get some associates who feel they’ve got a sense of ownership over this patient and want to do that. Have you ever come across that?

[00:33:20] So, yeah. Oh, definitely. I’ve had one of my associates I’ve had I’ve had since he left FD, so we’ve kind of grown up together and we’ve kind of moulded each other. So back in the day, he was like, You know, we’ve had our fights say, you know, all you do more than me and stuff like this and you know, and all that kind of stuff. So we’ve had our issues, but we’ve kind of as time has gone by, we’ve kind of iron those out and we’ve got some sort of structure and some sort of system in place now where it’s more equalised.

[00:33:48] And you know, he has full freedom.

[00:33:49] If you want a Bundy case, he’s very he can do it. If he doesn’t want it, he can pass it off. So I don’t force my associates to pass off

[00:33:57] Or the body, you know, is

[00:33:58] Their patient. He can do as he pleases.

[00:34:01] So he’s got

[00:34:03] Full force for freedom.

[00:34:05] It’s actually quite interesting. You know, we’re getting a lot more therapists on many spas, makeover on the composite course and, you know, they often do some of the best, best work as well. And, you know, maybe, maybe it’s self-selecting, right? Maybe someone who’s. Finds the money for a composite cause the therapist provides money for the cognitive course might be really keen one or whatever it is, but I’m quite interested in this question of, you know, as the pendulum has swung

[00:34:31] One way or

[00:34:31] The other, you know, in in in the favour of principles, then in the favour of associates, you know, with lockdown and then with a shortage of associates, is this therapist model going to actually, you know, be something that we’re going to see a lot more

[00:34:45] Of? What do you think, Prav?

[00:34:48] You know, the way I look at it, if we just take it right back to brass tacks, it comes down to the values of your practise, right the way you treat the patients, the way you want to deliver that treatment. And we talk about pendulum swinging associate to to to principle and all the rest of it, right? Ultimately, if you’ve got some values in

[00:35:09] Place are

[00:35:10] There and you understand your associates. So, you know, often I have conversations with our associates and said, What do you want? I think it’s a really important question that principals don’t have with their associates, right? What do you want? Ok? Is it money? Is it work life balance? Is that these high ticket cases? Is it a mixture? And just asking them what they want and get into the bottom of that and delivering what they want? So if they want a flood of Invisalign patients, they want a flood of implant patients or a particular type of patient. If you deliver that, there’ll always be give and take right. This is not a case of without putting too fine a point on it. Screw you, associate. I’m going to replace you with a with a therapist or after.

[00:35:54] What do you think about the therapist model? Do you see that side of your business growing and associates getting

[00:36:00] Less or or what?

[00:36:03] We’ve definitely got a good therapist model going on. And I think my practise is very therapist heavy, let’s say, and then do the practise, which is which was, you know, which is predominately private. That’s very dentists heavy say, you know, the associates don’t want to pass off the work to the therapist, which is which is also, you know, fine. They’ve got freedom. So if the therapist is there, if they don’t want to do it, if they were to pass off, if they do want to do it, then it’s then it’s what are there for them. But I might to

[00:36:33] A whole team.

[00:36:34] So we’ve got because we do something. And for example, we’ve got very cyclic process. So, you know, I don’t do any of the scans. So the patients don’t see me for the scans. They see the nurse with the scans. So the nurses do all the impressions, the nurses do all the oil scans for the patients.

[00:36:51] So do you scan all patients, every single patient?

[00:36:54] So we scanned all the evidence on patients.

[00:36:57] Ok, so not not every single patient.

[00:36:58] No, not all patients.

[00:37:00] So I think the nurse who does it,

[00:37:02] I think she sees about a hundred patients a month, whether that be for the white impressions, whether that be for

[00:37:07] Every 10 compressions, whether that be

[00:37:09] For scan. So, you know, I had to use a whole team because it just creates a better patient journey and everyone gets involved.

[00:37:19] So after what you put it down to, you know, being this apex predator Invisalign guy, it doesn’t happen by mistake. How have you grown it so quickly?

[00:37:28] I’m not actually too sure how we’ve got this big within design. And I could I could answer your question, probably. But it’s just somehow it’s just it just happened. We do. We do. We advertise very

[00:37:41] Minimally.

[00:37:42] But just recently we’ve been advertising using Ignite, where we do get quite a lot of leads. But maybe I think it’s it’s just through word of mouth and Facebook and Instagram. So the patient requires one, whether we give them the price and et cetera, they come in from the consultation.

[00:37:59] And then, you know, so what about follow up? Do you follow up the ones who don’t go ahead?

[00:38:04] So I should say we do, but we don’t

[00:38:07] Because I don’t actually speak without B.S. that we don’t need to follow people up. I think I think we do do a lot wrong. We don’t follow up, you know, we don’t follow leads in this. But I think what?

[00:38:17] But what I’ve

[00:38:18] Always done quite wrongly, O’Reilly is I’ve always kept stuff when I first get into keep stuff cheap. And then as the years go by increasing an increasing increase to what we call an acceptable amount. Just to give you an example, when we did composite bonding, I used to do it for £80 a tooth,

[00:38:36] £80 a tooth. Oh my goodness. No, no. Don’t do that.

[00:38:39] Yeah, yeah. So and now and you know, and now we quote people two or different parties, do they don’t even bat an eyelid because we’ve got the reputation to do it? So I think it was only two years ago where we were doing it for age partners tooth.

[00:38:53] And I thought now that we’ve got the

[00:38:54] Reputation, we increase it. So we’ve been increasing it twice a year. So now we’ve clawed through what we call a normal, acceptable amount.

[00:39:02] What’s your pricing model for Invisalign?

[00:39:05] Yeah. So we used to charge the design research charge two thousand five hundred for pretty much four go, which is not bad. Actually, it’s not cheap, but it’s not expensive and three thousand three hundred four four, which is on the cheaper end of of it.

[00:39:21] But now we’ve, you know,

[00:39:22] Increased to a more normal amount.

[00:39:24] Does that include whitening, including whitening? Do you have that upgrade conversation with a Prav? Prav, an expert at it, will let Prav have to tell us about that

[00:39:35] In my practise. So we looked at the business model of every patient comes through the door, right? And without putting too fine a point on it, how can you increase the amount of money that you take? From every patient period, right? You analyse every treatment, every patient is, how can you maximise the revenue from that patient, right? So let’s say someone comes through the door, keep the numbers simple. You charge someone four grand for Invisalign and you say includes whitening and retainers at that point. If you were to say that conversation, if you were to say to that patient for an extra two hundred and fifty quid, you can get enlightened with it. So it’s now four to 50. Yeah. The level of trust is somewhere on the floor at this point because you’re a salesperson, right? Yeah. That’s not the right time to have that conversation. Yeah, by the time they’ve been through their treatment and they’ve had, I don’t know, 10, 12, 15 appointments, whatever it is, the level of trust is through the roof. Even when I speak to some practitioners, they say their patients are starting to feel sad about the fact they’re not going to see them again because they’re coming towards the end of the treatment.

[00:40:41] You’ve probably experienced that yourself, right? Yeah, yeah. Ok, now at that point where you’re handed over the whitening or you’re having that conversation, say, look, you get in this free whitening with the treatment and b that, you know, boutique Phillips or whatever that that lower rate whitening is. Yeah. And then at that point after that, we have the OK great conversation say. But if that’s worth three hundred and fifty quid for an extra two hundred and fifty quid, we can upgrade you to enlighten. We find that ninety five percent of our patients go for that. But you can go for this. It’s still a high quality premium whitening. Now what usually happens in that conversation? You think about the psychology. Do you want to be in the five percent or the ninety five percent? Yeah, OK. So that’s that’s one point. Yeah. The second point is that the level of trust is so high at that point.

[00:41:35] The patient doesn’t forget this, not just about the trust. It’s also that the hassle, you know, you’ve just been through the hassle of Invisalign, if there’s a real commitment. Yeah. Of course. Of course, my wife had it done. It’s a difficult treatment.

[00:41:48] Yeah, yeah. And so what we found is we increased the value that we were getting or the revenue we were generating out of the patient. By having what’s called that whitening or great conversation, you can have the same retainer or great conversation. And naturally, if they haven’t even considered bonding at this point, they’re definitely going to get a conversation about that. And the majority of them look great. So we end up in a situation where the, you know, the value or the revenue per patient goes up just because you make a conscious effort to have a business discussion around it and then put the process in place.

[00:42:24] Yeah. So we definitely have spoken about O’Grady whitening, but very few talk about Great Rivera’s, which, you know, processes that we should be having with these patients. So again, we’re not we don’t do things right sometimes. And, you know, we should be something that will we could be looking at the future to try to get increased revenue from each patient.

[00:42:46] You know, you talk about mistakes, but you know, you’ve definitely done some things right. You know, you don’t you don’t go from one surgery to Ferrari, but without doing something right? Yeah, you’re obviously very good with patients. And you know, the kind with patients or something you’re bedside manner must be good. Your patients have built up trust in you.

[00:43:07] Yeah, it’s been. It’s been a very surreal journey. But you know, I’ve had I’ve had one thing I would say I’ve had good people, you know, beside beside me, whether it be product to love a good people, mentor me, that you know, yes, he’s got one to celebrate, but he’s got, you know, the ins and outs of business. He’s made the mistakes, you know, even now he’ll say, What are you doing? You know, this is what you’re doing is not right. You just change this. I’ve had good mentors throughout my career. You know, when I was in FDA, my trainer was, you know, a good guy. That’s no was he was from salary Dental care. So and then and then my other two jobs, my service jobs, you know where sedation in for them undivided from death. So these guys taught me, you know, very skills, which obviously it’s all part of the journey, isn’t it? Really? And then then you might know Sheriff Card from Rockingham House.

[00:44:02] Oh, great guy. Sheriff Kern, one of my favourite people. Really, really

[00:44:05] Visionary. Great guy. So yeah, I’ve he’s known me since I was maybe one years old and he did work experience for my dad. So, you know, we’ve. So yeah, we’re grateful. We’re friends. So he’s, you know, he’s been a good mentor as well.

[00:44:17] So he’s a he’s a top

[00:44:19] Guy as well. So I’ve I’ve had really good backing.

[00:44:22] Let’s get on to darker days. What’s been your darkest day from a business perspective?

[00:44:29] Parker said, business wise. So. It was obviously the big, mysterious financial.

[00:44:37] I literally had maybe

[00:44:39] A few thousand in my business account because a big Payman went

[00:44:43] Out and I,

[00:44:44] You know, I just got my my numbers wrong and I think, you know, crap, I need to run a business on

[00:44:50] This. And it’s not, you

[00:44:51] Know, it’s not sufficient. So it’s at a good few sleepless nights thinking, how can I rectify this? How I need, you know, I need some buffer in my account. So, yeah, so that was quite quite a dark day. And so Agnihotri had just had to put some more hours in at work and tried to work the weekend just to just to earn some just to get that money back in.

[00:45:13] Was there ever a moment where you thought to yourself, shit has seriously hit the fan? Now, what have I done or something imploded? Maybe it was the work life balance situation and you just felt, Oh my god. Yeah. Has there ever been those ever been those moments where you’re so down in the dumps where you think, How the hell am I going to dig myself out of this? Not just like, I’ll just put a few more hours in and I’ll lock it from 16 to 18 or whatever, right? Well, real dark hole where you think, actually, you know what? I don’t know how I’m looking up out of this hole, and I don’t even know what the way out is, whether it’s, you know, work life balance, patient can play everything, all sort of coming in at once. Have you ever had that sort of moment in business where you thought, this is it so?

[00:46:04] Oh yeah, definitely. I’ve never had had one of those. It was a couple of years back, actually, where

[00:46:10] I started on my implant journey

[00:46:12] After graduating from Sheffield doing the one to one course, and I started to place implants and then I felt, you know, actually this patient, everything looked OK. And then when it came out, she’d done four surgery breast implant. And I think something’s not right here, but I breast implant, you know, just took a leap of faith and close it back up and then a couple of days later, severe pain. And I’m thinking I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just I should have

[00:46:44] Took a step back,

[00:46:46] You know, no breast implant

[00:46:47] Cause I

[00:46:49] Just thought about it. And yeah, so that patient went went on

[00:46:53] For a bit, but we kind of got

[00:46:55] It resolved. But yeah, that was a I had a good few sleepless nights a weeks about that.

[00:47:01] Just a painful implant. That’s such a difficult thing as such a difficult problem to solve.

[00:47:07] No, no. And I’m the Typekit guy where I just jump in and I’ll just do something, you know, because as I say, you know, new shit is fun. So just jump in and, you know, go ahead at eight

[00:47:19] And just do it.

[00:47:19] As example is, is beside, you know, after the trade cos people either jump in and they do it or they get scared of it and they kind of, you

[00:47:28] Know, don’t do that.

[00:47:29] Many cases where I just kind of jumped in, I just went for it. And, you know, I probably shouldn’t have, you know, doing this on people that I should have thought about it but

[00:47:39] Know I miss that type of

[00:47:40] Guy. Just sometimes I just go for it. Yeah. So most times it works out fine, but you know it can go wrong.

[00:47:50] So, so what did you do about it? What did you do with that patient?

[00:47:53] What I do. So it’s all about obviously patient correspondence and just talking the patient around and in the end, I taking out, but just just leaving it and just refer to the patient. And I just, you know, it just kind of resolve that way, really. But yeah, I should have. It’s one of those where there was there was all sorts of red flags and I didn’t listen to it and I just I just did it. So, yeah, the resolution was actually quite simple, but it took a bit of time to get data together.

[00:48:23] What about what staff have you had any terrible things that have happened with staff over the last 11 years? Must have been some stories over staff.

[00:48:31] So I think the documentary staff was when I first bought my first practise. You know, it was very, you know, they’ve been there for 30 years. You know, they were the type where the waste, where those, you know, those white dresses. So they’re very old school, you know, they weren’t really in tune with the modern way of thinking, you know, you know, cosmetic work and private work. So I think and then a couple of them were our long term sick with stress, and then I had to go through all the hate child complications. And that was very, very stressful because that was, you know, I’d only been there for probably four or five months or six months. So I was in a new practise, very young and having, you know, all these staff issues and, you know, had the thing of, you know, are they going to contribute or are they not going to a tribunal?

[00:49:17] So that was,

[00:49:19] You know, that was not not good stuff wise, but at the end, it took months for that kind of like, write this off. But that was not a fun at all.

[00:49:28] After now, in retrospect, when you look back on your career, yeah. Do you think you jumped into early to practise ownership? And you know, is that some advice that you would give to a young dentist now to, you know, start as quick as possible, make mistakes as quickly as possible? Or would you wait?

[00:49:46] I think I think I did it because I knew that I had good backing. You know, my dad has a dentist and, you know, he’s only a few hours on the road. So it kind of was that. But yeah, I mean, you know,

[00:49:58] My income dropped and

[00:50:00] I was like, You know what, I’m going to do? But no, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t

[00:50:03] Do anything anything differently

[00:50:05] Now if I had to again. But now I would say to anyone, you know, take it, just take a leap of faith that you’ve got to you’ve got to. It’s all about comfort zone. A lot of people had to stay within their comfort zone. If you take that faith outside your comfort zone, it’s just, you know, walk away is something good. It’s all about leaving your comfort zone.

[00:50:24] So, you know, the plans to make more of these and keep on dominating South Yorkshire. Or have you had enough and you know, you’re now going to focus on the work life balance?

[00:50:35] So currently, I’m trying to extend my foster through practise into a service as you practise. And then and then and then renovating my dad’s practise to have five surgery this far with beauty. But after that, I think I’m done.

[00:50:51] Have you thought about an exit plan? I mean, I know, you know, you’re quite young. How old are you?

[00:50:56] Thirty five.

[00:50:57] Yeah. So it’s a bit strange to talk about an exit plan at that age, but you know, the valuations are high right now. So, you know. Has anyone offered you an exit? And you know, what are your thoughts around exit? Are you planning that?

[00:51:11] So actually, in August last year, I was actually thinking about retiring. I was thinking about this,

[00:51:18] You know, selling up,

[00:51:19] You know, I got offered, you know, I got offered good money by a couple of corporates and I thought, You know what, if I do this, I can just do it and work one or two days

[00:51:29] A week and just have a

[00:51:31] Have a chat. But then the more and more I think I thought about it like, you know what my brain is, were that way. I’m not going to. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to end up doing that for six months.

[00:51:40] And I just, you know,

[00:51:42] Go buy cigarettes and build them up and drive my wife crazy once again by working dots and trying to, you know, build that up. So I decided not to do that. I just kind of steadied myself where I am. I mean, you know,

[00:51:57] Obviously when you exit at the end of the day, you’re working for someone else and you have to do what they say in the end. So, you know, maybe you’re at this point of contentment where you’ve got complete control over your practise. So, you know, keep going. Keep going. Why not?

[00:52:12] Yes. Yeah, I mean, I thought about this and I thought, you know, it’s it’s it’s the fact that where we do now, I’m really comfortable with because what I’m doing now, I could not do it if I was an associate or if I was working for one or two days a week because

[00:52:26] I have literally, you know, I’m

[00:52:28] At the place where I can kind of do what I can see, the patients I want to see. And if I don’t want to, if I don’t, yeah, if I don’t want to

[00:52:33] Do so, I just pass it off to a

[00:52:35] Therapist or pass off to associate who does want to do it and where. If I work for someone else, I just cannot do that. So.

[00:52:42] So I’m sorry. You know, Guy, like you must have been, you know, you must think that you’ve got a number, a number that you would exit for the number in your head that you would exit for. Do you think of it that way?

[00:52:53] No, we don’t need to know what that number is unless you’re comfortable show.

[00:52:58] I do have a number and you know, I do have it and I got offered it last year, but I just think I’m just too young. I just don’t, you know, I’m just I’m just too young. Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think I think my age is, you know, get to be. I think I’m just too young to be doing that.

[00:53:17] So I’d rather just own this for a bit longer.

[00:53:20] You know, raise car a couple of days a

[00:53:21] Week and work, you know, two

[00:53:23] Or three days a week. And you know, I’m

[00:53:26] Good for now. So there’s that. What’s your magic number? You know what your magic number is. You’ve been offered it and you’ve walked away from it. Right? And the narrative may have been that flippant. If I want to shoot this off to a therapist now, it’s not going to happen under new ownership.

[00:53:38] Yeah, yeah. That’s the thing I’ll do to yeah,

[00:53:41] That’s there is a strong case that there are people out there that would buy. It would let you carry on running and operate in exactly the way you are today. The reason I know that is I’ve just exited in December and nothing, absolutely nothing has changed. Right? And that was one of our concerns. That’s not to sort of say, look, change your goal or whatever your mindset. Just be aware there are options out there that enable you to carry on and get your magic number and have a whole stack of every single colour of those Ferraris that you you right? But but that’s being put to one side. You know, my dad would always say to me when we were younger, everything is for sale. Son just depends on the price. Yeah, it depends on the price. So, OK, so what’s the plan? What’s that? You’re thirty five now, OK? You’ve obviously thought long and hard about this because you came across that crossroads, you know, however long ago it was and hit that thing. So where we go in next and what is your exit strategy if there is one?

[00:54:46] So right now, my main

[00:54:48] Thing is to, you know, I’ve

[00:54:50] Got a nice

[00:54:50] Practise, I’ve got I’ve bought

[00:54:52] His baby. You know, he’s had it for 30, 40 years, so I’ve now got his baby. So my main concern is to make him proud and see, you know, let’s see, see what I could do with his business and how I could make his business grow to the next level. And, you know, even even, he said, you know, once you’ve grown it, I don’t mind if you sell it.

[00:55:12] I just, you know,

[00:55:12] Just just do good with it. And, you know, put your spin on things and, you know,

[00:55:17] Do what you’ve done to your

[00:55:19] Your business. You know, my first, you know, my first practise and then, yeah, so that’s my big thing. So over next, probably two or three years,

[00:55:28] We’re going to

[00:55:28] Develop that. But, you know, it’s probably three or four years. I’ll be looking to take it, you know, a bit more of a backseat. I think that’s that’s that’s where I’m heading at the minute.

[00:55:39] Really, really.

[00:55:40] Continue.

[00:55:41] Continue what I’m doing. But you know, you know, basically my parents proud of, you know, of just cherish their baby.

[00:55:50] Yeah, they they say behind every successful man is either even more successful or crazy woman, right? And if so, tell me a little bit about your family.

[00:56:02] Yeah. So yeah, we’ve not we’ve not talked about family yet. So yeah, I’ve got, you know, an amazing family and amazing wife.

[00:56:09] So I actually

[00:56:10] Qualified the week later got married.

[00:56:12] So she’s been with me, you know, every step of the way.

[00:56:16] She’s seen the darkest day. She’s seen the good days. You know, when we were younger, I was working four days a week as an associate for eight months. So, you know, we were just loving it. And then we kind of obviously what the practise together. She was a practise manager, so we helped develop the business short term and then she got pregnant so that she stopped being at work actually for the past eight to nine years of that. So but you know, she’s she’s taken care of because I’ve been working crazy hours and it’s been getting worse and worse. My work, my work life balance was getting worse. So she’s taking care of all the home life and, you know, making sure that it’s done. And so, yeah,

[00:56:55] And actually on the weekends,

[00:56:56] You spend a lot of good quality time. But yeah, she’s she’s put with, you know, me not being at home, basically. So she’s an amazing woman. But now I think it’s time I said I give take a bit tired out and just spend some time with him and the family say, I said, I’ve got a daughter who is eight years old, their son, who’s six, and a daughter who’s three.

[00:57:17] So, you know, it’s time I just spend some time

[00:57:20] With them helping with the homework, tried to get home before they start eating dinner. You know, all these all these things notice small things where the kids notice.

[00:57:29] And, you know, because

[00:57:31] This is where, you know, I don’t need no need to don’t need money. You know, we’ve got,

[00:57:35] You know, I think, quite blessed.

[00:57:37] So now it’s just a case of showing the kids that, you know, you can have a good work balance. You can spend time with kids and you can have a nice house, some nice cars. But you know, you can have both

[00:57:49] What you like in terms of switching off when you get home. So I used to struggle with it and still do actually is that you get home and it’s, you know, the ideal scenario is that work just flies out of the window when you pick it up the next day. What’s what are you like with that?

[00:58:06] So, yeah, so no, I’m really bad at actually. So in the sense that, you know, I’m always taking work with me, work or whatever will be. So I’m always, you know, even though, for example, I pay one of my staff to do the social media hours so they get paid, you know, between two and semesters. So I’m always checking and making sure they’re getting done. And so I’m quite controlled in that sense, which is obviously not good because when I’m at home, I’m always checking things and making things again done and the way I like it.

[00:58:37] But I guess, you know, one or two months

[00:58:39] Are, you know, two wait trade to have started to just come out, you know, things are fine. They, you know, I is taking care of, you know, they can do it, they can do it to a good standard. Just let them do it. So. So now you know

[00:58:54] What kind of a boss are you?

[00:58:57] I’d say that I’m quite demanding, but my staff will probably tell you that I’m quite laid back

[00:59:02] Because I’m kind of,

[00:59:03] You know, it’s all stuff gets done as long as we’re busy and stuff gets done always well. And it’s when stuff doesn’t get done, you know? You know, if a patient complains, and that’s when I start to take, you know, get a bit angry, decide, say, right, why this happened, how can we fix it? So I’m quite laid back, actually. So I’ve heard, but I can be demanding if if stuff does get done.

[00:59:25] How have you developed as a leader? I mean, obviously, it takes different skills to to be the

[00:59:31] Leader, you know, to be the sole

[00:59:32] Practitioner in a single chair practise compared to, you know, the number of people that you’re having to lead now. How have you changed going in these 11 years

[00:59:42] As I kind of think I’ve done the same thing always.

[00:59:45] And it’s just it’s just

[00:59:46] All everything’s just falling into place. I wouldn’t say that I’m any different that, you know, to always tell you to to our now, I think it’s just to say I’m laid back in. It’s all about I think it’s all about hire the right people just getting along with everybody, making sure everyone knows what they’re doing. And you know, everyone has a certain skill set just utilising that skill set.

[01:00:07] What’s your favourite clinical treatment? Do you have one that you know you like the most?

[01:00:11] What do I both?

[01:00:13] I would say

[01:00:14] In this world and in parts that’s my, you know, interest at the moment. I really, really like, enjoy this ride because it’s, you know,

[01:00:22] I really reside and

[01:00:24] I presume practising talking to patients through the whole journey. And because it’s that that’s kind of, you know, those two things are quite life changing.

[01:00:32] So with with implants, though, it’s one of those things that you have to sort of super focus on, you know, and do that and not do anything else. And that’s what I understand anyway. We’re talking to lots of implant soldiers on this, this this show, you know, how have you gone into that, you know, by dabbling a little bit and how far in it are you?

[01:00:54] Oh, definitely.

[01:00:54] Literally. Just last week, I showed it to my practise man and say, You know, I need it or my my came because, you know, I think I’m still quite basically, I need to be ready to start doing more courses that get you bought into that. So literally last week, I was told my practise manager about it. So yeah,

[01:01:10] It’s a very the switch. You can work,

[01:01:13] You know, in practise soft tissue surgery and,

[01:01:16] You know, grafting

[01:01:17] Inside have said on for this. You know, it’s it’s endless, isn’t it?

[01:01:22] Isn’t it is an interesting question. So someone in your position who has got a certain level of implant experience, but you know that there’s a lot more to learn. How on earth do you go about finding the right course, the right person to train you? What do you look for? You know, I have this conversation with what? Well, several clients that I work with who do this right, you’ve got Hassan, we’ve got Alfonzo. We’ve had first hand on year loan to different people out there. My brother. Yeah, loads of different people who teach implants. What is someone like you look for?

[01:02:00] So I went of the Sheffield. What one course and there. And then from there I met, met a few people and then, you know, they’ve been helping me and mentor me from there. So and then I’ve also asked, you know, some good advice from it, from Sheriff Carter, who

[01:02:15] Is obviously very good at it.

[01:02:17] So I’ve had I’ve had kind of good mentorship from a few directions, you know, whether it be restorative or implants. My my dad’s always had, you know that he’s always had some good contacts. So I’ve always gone to them and they’ve always helped me out. So I’ve had good backing right from the start. So, you know, it’s all about contacts, really, you

[01:02:39] Know, word of

[01:02:40] Mouth. What about

[01:02:42] Them? It’s like that thing you say Prav about the the who, not the what,

[01:02:46] The who, not the how they the who, not the

[01:02:48] Have the who, not the how. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re coming to the end of our time now. So I don’t know if you’ve heard this podcast before, but we always end with the same questions or the same two questions now. Mm hmm. I’ll let Prav kick off with his.

[01:03:03] So after, you know, imagine it was your last day on the planet and you’ve done you’ve done all your graphs and you’ve made your dad really proud and you’ve grown his practise into into something similar to yours, if not better. And everything is great. You’ve you’ve sold them and achieved everything you wanted to in life, but it’s your final day on the planet and you’ve got your three children around you, your wife, and you need to leave them with three pieces of parting advice. What would those be?

[01:03:38] So it would be do what you enjoy.

[01:03:44] Don’t don’t get

[01:03:44] Forced into doing something that you

[01:03:46] Don’t want to do,

[01:03:48] Do what you want to do in life and enjoy

[01:03:50] It and, you know, just be happy in

[01:03:52] That sense.

[01:03:54] Second, what

[01:03:54] Would probably be have a good work-life balance because I’ve never been there,

[01:03:59] So have a good

[01:04:01] Week apart.

[01:04:02] Will you just be happy?

[01:04:04] Your family will be happy, your wife will be happy?

[01:04:06] And then I’d say, just

[01:04:08] Just look after your family. Just be there for one another. Help help each other out because family is family at the end of the day, so that those would be my advice.

[01:04:18] That’s a bit of a cheat. The second or the third one with a saying, we, you have to do one more.

[01:04:24] This is keep one more, make one more.

[01:04:26] Well, I have to think about that. I’d always have enough, always have enough money for a rainy day because I’ve been there. I’ve I’ve run out of money. I’ve had to go to a bank of mum and dad and ask for a loan for a new surgery.

[01:04:41] Okay. And how would you like to be remembered after there was? And then just finish that sentence?

[01:04:51] I’ve had to think Elizabeth herself is a kind, caring,

[01:04:56] But also hardworking

[01:04:59] After and now pays. Final question! Fancy dinner party? Three guests. Dead or alive? Who would you pick?

[01:05:09] So would they be the power of a cabinet by childhood hero back with you, back

[01:05:16] At the centre

[01:05:17] Because he’s just a legend and the old Doncaster guard Jeremy Clarkson is

[01:05:22] Here. Don’t call us the guy, Jeremy Clarkson. He is, yeah. I never knew

[01:05:25] That he went to the same school as me. Yeah. Jim Clarkson before he got expelled.

[01:05:30] Jason Smith is a Doncaster guy who is he is. He is a three car guy. You love your cars, man.

[01:05:37] I like that very much. I do. I do other cars. I do have a cars.

[01:05:41] Well, Gandhi is not getting much of a look in these days, though, with the car.

[01:05:44] No, no, no. He’s not. And actually one one one final question, which is, let’s say you have 30 days left and you could do anything you want. You had all your health and wealth intact. What would you do, mate?

[01:05:58] No, I definitely I’d actually travel the world. My aim, my aim is, you know what? I want to, you know, I get my time with the kids, get older because hopefully my my kids will be older and I’ll be still relatively young to, you know, take the wife and travel the world because we’re actually we’re not forwarded enough.

[01:06:16] And yeah, don’t go

[01:06:18] Places closest from Los Alamos, you know, safaris, et cetera. So that is that is

[01:06:24] If people want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

[01:06:28] They want to. They can always email me

[01:06:30] Or Facebook me,

[01:06:32] You know? Yeah, I’m always open to a chat. So, you know, I’ve get people come up to me and say, You know, how to do this? Or What have you done to do this? And I’m happy to chat with anyone about anything, really.

[01:06:42] Well, I want to thank you both. It’s been a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you.

[01:06:47] It’s been great. Nice to see you both. Really, really good.

[01:06:51] 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.

[01:07:07] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it.

[01:07:21] If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

[01:07:32] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] I never hated dentistry.

[00:00:01] No, you love it, you

[00:00:03] Love it more than I loved it.

[00:00:04] I will never be able in my life to hate dentistry you love. I will never be able to do that. I love dentistry and I think it’s it’s. Other dentists probably have. This, too is not that you hate it or you don’t want to do it. Is that that concern that you might hurt someone, you know? Yeah. And you don’t want that because you care too much.

[00:00:27] You know, I think

[00:00:29] The person I like, I like, I like where you’re coming from, Alex. You’re a very special person to be with thinking like that.

[00:00:34] I think thank you. Think, you know, I’m not sure if it works like in my

[00:00:38] Advantage, but I’m just

[00:00:40] I’m just saying like probably my fear was coming from. But what if I really make a mistake like and I hurt someone, you know?

[00:00:53] 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

[00:01:11] Gives me great pleasure to welcome Alex Luzinski onto the podcast. The reason for this conversation is that I saw a couple of posts by Alex on the Dental group that is for people who want to leave dentistry, and some of our listeners will remember. Episode 60 one with Tom Youngs, who wrote, My great good friend who left dentistry after only one year as an associate, and I felt like it was such a massive loss to the profession. And then we heard his story and you know what he was doing. So I wanted I wanted to speak to Alex because her post really touched me. It was a very gentle post about how it’s gone. She hasn’t completely left dentistry as of yet, but the journey and the first steps and often those first steps of the hardest steps. And so I really want to hear it from her. Lovely to have you, Alex.

[00:02:00] Thank you for having me and thank you for, you know, inviting me because I never

[00:02:05] Thought that post

[00:02:06] Will have such an impact. I’m happy and I’m also nervous because I don’t do podcast. You know, I’m my mom, I do lunch, dinner, breakfast and stuff like that, and

[00:02:16] Then I go to work. So this is really fancy for me.

[00:02:19] I thought, if I if I’m not,

[00:02:21] If you listen to any rules, that’s your job to like, tell me when to stop. Do you listen

[00:02:27] To some podcasts?

[00:02:28] I do. I do listen to podcast. I find it very soothing, you know, especially I always like the radio voices. They give me peace and quiet. And yeah, I do listen to funny

[00:02:40] Because sometimes I invite guests onto the podcast and they say, What’s the podcast? And then you have to say, it’s just a conversation. That’s all it is. You? Yeah, yeah. And because they’ve never listened to one, they get really worried about it. But, you know, I was really happy. You accepted.

[00:02:53] Thank you so much. Alex, tell me

[00:02:55] Some of your back story. You know, I’m very interested in, OK, we’re going to get onto the point of you decided dentistry wasn’t 100 percent for you. We’re really interested in as a kid or just when you were about to go into dental school, what you thought dentistry would be.

[00:03:12] And and by the way, I think all of us find it, you know, different

[00:03:16] To what we thought it was going to be. I found university itself completely different to what I thought. I had a picture of university from a, you know, an American movie with one people playing guitars, you know, just ridiculous, childish vision, let alone dentistry and what that was going to be and what it’s going to be like to be a dentist. And even though I spent some time watching a dentist, you don’t get anything from that to tell you you don’t really understand what, what the hell is going on or the struggle is going through in the mouth. It was a different world. What was it different? I mean, tell me about what you thought it was going to be, what it was in dental school for you. And then when it started, you know, feeling like it wasn’t right or whatever.

[00:03:57] So I don’t think like as a kid, you know, when when you start thinking, Oh, what am I going to do with my life?

[00:04:04] I don’t remember

[00:04:06] Me ever thinking, Oh, I want to be a dentist, because in Romania, especially like during my childhood, yes, your thought how to take care of your teeth and stuff. But it’s not something as important as other things, you know? So I wasn’t paying very much attention to dentists and clinics, and I wasn’t in the right, you know, environment to to meet those people until one day when in my block of apartment, there was this young lady with great energy, a fantastic energy like he impacted me the moment I saw her, you know? And later on, you know, it’s like whenever someone moves in your neighbourhood and in Romania, we’re very friendly. So we we all jump to help her and stuff like that. So I started talking to her and she was studying to be a dentist in Romania, in my city, in Yash. And it was very interesting because she was practising. Obviously in Romania, we are allowed to practise starting year for we are allowed to practise on patients as long as you find someone willing to, you know, work in your mouth with their mentor and stuff. And I said, Yes, absolutely, you know, and obviously I had I had some problems. Obviously, I wasn’t brushing my teeth properly and she was extremely gentle, but at the same time, very, very passionate.

[00:05:30] And she asked me to be that patient for her. Yes, yes.

[00:05:33] But also, we were kids, you know, it’s like nine difference between me and her. So she wanted also to help me. Like her goal wasn’t to OK, I want to show you, you know, about this profession and stuff was, come on. You have this opportunity to have your teeth fixed and you can help me as well. So it worked both ways. But you know, I got my teeth fixed and much more than that. They got like, I want to become a dentist, and I stuck

[00:06:02] With her until

[00:06:03] She. Completed her studied and studies, and she became a dentist and she opened her clinic because in Romania, it’s it’s a bit easier. I mean, you need to do a lot of sacrifices, but it’s a straightforward situation if you have some parents that can support you to open a clinic. And I was in high school and I remember going to school and then after school, I was going into the clinic because they were very close to each other and helping her out, you know, like a like a shadowing or stuff like that. And I loved it. I mean, the interaction with the patients, you know, all the interesting things. The x rays do impressions. For me, it was, whoa, this is like something that I definitely want to do. And that was it. I never thought about other career or something else I want to do, and I just went for it. That’s why I became a dentist, and I’m still I think she’s my mom. She’s my godmother. You know, in Romania, we have a godfather and godmother when you get married. So like witnesses here, yeah, so so she’s she’s my godmother. So we we’re still in touch and she still has the same clinic and stuff, and it’s fantastic. I think it’s quite quite amazing.

[00:07:13] So, so when you went to dental school, then what were you like as a dental student and what were you? What was your impression of dentistry and dental school?

[00:07:23] I think I loved it. I loved it, and I struggled at the same time because it’s a lot of volume, as you know, it’s a

[00:07:30] Lot of things to

[00:07:32] Learn. In Romania, we have like three years of general medicine within the dentistry faculty, basically. And after that, you start studying like teeth, basically with morphology and everything else that comes with it. So starting year four and until the year for I wasn’t like, OK, do I like it? I don’t like it. But it was OK. I was. I was going through it quite easily. It wasn’t difficult for me to pass the exams and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. But I wasn’t like obsessed with it, you know, like I wore, this is really my passion. The moment I started to to, you know, to

[00:08:08] Get into

[00:08:09] The dentistry field more, I started to see that I like it, you know, and I found a really good mentor, my prosthetic. He was fantastic and I again, I stuck with her because it was the passion that I was seeing in these people. This is what attracts me to it, you know, and I stuck with her and she helped me graduate, you know, and she helped me with the disease, and I had my disease in prosthetics and it was very nice. I really enjoyed my last two years because we did a lot of hands on. We have a we have like a part of the university has like a little clinic. When people with, you know, that are not very well financially, they can go and have their teeth fixed there by students while the mentor is there. So it was it was an amazing opportunity and I was there from the morning until the the late evening. Always, always, always. At some point there were some people like throwing me out, you have to go home. I mean, there are other people that need to study like, it’s so much, so much. So I enjoyed it. I really, really like it.

[00:09:16] I mean, you qualified and did you work in Romania at all or did you?

[00:09:19] I didn’t work in Romania. I told my teacher actually was a little bit upset with me because she was hoping to become her assistant, you know, to go into the university and to teach as well eventually. But I always wanted to come to to England because I said, I need to. I need to give my family a better education. We had, you know, Romania is it’s a good country, but also we have some problems. And I said, my kids needs to have better educational system than this.

[00:09:46] Did you have kids already or you said your future kids?

[00:09:49] I my future kids. I had I had my first kid in my last year of university. Ok, so while I was doing my thesis and stuff, I also gave birth. Like two weeks later, I had the exam and stuff, and it was fantastic. I loved it.

[00:10:03] So when did you get married in 2012?

[00:10:06] Year five, we do six years in Romania of university. So Year five I got married. Year six I had a kid and then next year we moved to London.

[00:10:17] Is that is that common or is that uncommon? Because that seems uncommon for me. Someone in middle of Dental

[00:10:23] School getting married? I don’t know.

[00:10:26] We had other colleagues getting married, so I was the only one. But I understand what you’re what you’re saying. Yes, it’s it’s again, it’s a lot of volume to deal with my husband. He was studying general medicine, so he finished medical studies. So maybe that’s why we did it.

[00:10:46] He was a OR.

[00:10:48] Yes. No, he’s actually smaller than me. He’s younger with two years and he had to. I had to leave him behind and we moved here and then he kept travelling. Romania, U.K.

[00:11:00] So find the process.

[00:11:01] Yeah, yeah. Well, you know the life of an immigrant. I was I was telling you before, we’ve got eight Romanians working at Enlightened, so yeah, I think we’ve got, you know, living in London, working in London, we’ve got more more immigrants than than than local people. But the question of when you came over, what were your initial impressions or had you been before or what was the story?

[00:11:22] So I’ve been in 2011 for three months and I did some shadowing on Harley Street, believe it or not.

[00:11:30] Well, it was fantastic.

[00:11:32] I loved it. You know, I mean, I was from Romania and I never left the country before. So you need to give me a bit of credit that, you know, everything was fantastic. You could have sent me to any country and I would have loved it. But I really had this connexion with this, with this country and with London, and I liked it. And I said, I want to come in practise here,

[00:11:58] You know, get up and go to sort of leave. A lot of people associate that with people who, you know,

[00:12:04] I don’t know, desperate or

[00:12:07] Or whatever. I mean, you said, OK, you wanted just a better education for your kids. But as a dentist in Romania, you could probably be one of the highest up people in society, and you could probably put your kids in very good schools. You know, the education system in Romania, it’s pretty good. So what was was it? Was it more to do with exploring and seeing the world? Kind of.

[00:12:27] Oh, I wanted something different. You don’t want to open the clinic at the ground floor of my apartment building and have everybody come to me because I was seeing Angkor, my godmother. You know, that was having the cleaning and she wasn’t like the happiest person ever. Like, every single day when she came back from work and stuff. But I wanted something different. I always want something more, you know? And if I could make a change to achieve that, I would do it. And we had a small baby. I mean, Sophia was like, probably if it wasn’t even a year old when we moved here, we just took suitcases. And that’s it. We just came in, Wow. And I never regretted it.

[00:13:09] Tell me about your first job, first job interview in the UK. Did you have to give it as well? Oh no,

[00:13:15] No, because I always work in private field. Ok, so it was it was. It was a very gradual. That’s another thing I would like to talk more about. Actually, maybe other people will learn from it, not people that study here, because I think you have a very good way to teach your students what to look for and what to be careful of when they take a job. But for people that are coming from other countries, it’s a bit more difficult to get to the bottom of those kind of informations. And whatever is official there, it’s not enough to be honest with you. So the first job I had I had it was with I was like, I was hired like a Dental nurse and it was a fantastic dentist. I’m not sure. I mean, I was, I will say

[00:14:03] His name, but Dr

[00:14:05] Jerome Siba, he has a he has a clinic, a fantastic clinic in Rochester Ro in Victoria, and he was opening it up and he was looking for a Dental nurse. And I said, Listen, I have

[00:14:19] To get into a

[00:14:20] Clinic at least to see things, and I’m happy to work as a dental nurse to get things going and for me to get used to the, you know, well, the terms and all the processes and everything you know is you English

[00:14:32] With your English? Pretty strong at that point, you know?

[00:14:34] Yeah, I think it was good. It wasn’t like fantastic. I mean, it’s not fantastic now, but it was OK. You know, it was it was quite okay. And he was happy. So the first job was with with with him as Dental as his Dental nurse. And and he was very supportive and extremely kind, and I learnt so much from him.

[00:14:53] And while I was

[00:14:54] Doing the Dental nurse, I was still applying, you know, because it’s that circle like, no experience, no job, no job, no experience, right? So nobody would take a risk to hire me as a private dentist, you know, just to start working without prior experience in this country. So I said, Well, I still have to do something, and I was never afraid to to start to the bottom. I mean, for me to get somewhere, you need to start somewhere. So I would just do it. So I did it. It was fantastic. I started applying for other jobs and I stumble upon Harley Street whitening clinic job that was hiring dentists to do whitening, cleaning, whitening, treatment and stuff and say, Yeah, well, I think I can do that. I was I was aware of all the, you know, the whitening problems and that only dentists can do well. I’m a dentist. That’s a good thing. I can do it. You need to have I have insurance so I can do it. That’s fine. The clinic is on high street, so it’s a clinic. It’s, you know, it’s out there, so it’s OK. So I went on and do it, and I did it like for a few months only.

[00:16:01] What was that called?

[00:16:03] It was a state is something with. Well, I have it because there’s a big story about it. Oh God.

[00:16:12] Just tell me this story is bad

[00:16:16] Because that’s where all my, my, my fears about dentistry started. I worked just for it from August until February because I was keep applying for jobs because I was wanting an associated job in a clinic, you know?

[00:16:32] What was it

[00:16:33] Like? Light activated? Exactly.

[00:16:35] Yeah, yeah. Like, we still have them, right? But I was I was. I took with my. I’m very I’m very reluctant to anything to anything. So I remember, like yesterday, I put on my insurance I was with, did you at that moment I said, I’m working this time in the clinic because I was doing some hours as a dental nurse with Jerome. Yeah, yeah. But also I’m doing a non-clinical hours and I wrote it down and I send it to them because I want to make sure everything is OK. You know that I’m allowed to do that. Yeah, I said

[00:17:12] Non-clinical treatments

[00:17:14] Of whitening, you know, like I have, I have the papers and everything, and they said they’d find the words. They didn’t tell me anything or ask questions. What what kind of clinic is that? So I start doing that. I did it for for six months, August until February. Centre for Dentistry. That is gone now. They gave me a job in south and central, spent it in Sainsbury’s. Yes, I worked for them four and a half years. It was amazing. Which practise? Oh, I worked in a lot of them. I worked in Chichester and rusting down in Brighton. I’ve been to

[00:17:46] All of those. I’ve been to all of

[00:17:47] Those because I was happy to travel. Listen, give me a one. I’ll do it. You know, I’ll do it. It keeps me busy. I was like, that seven, maybe not seven, but six days a week. I’ll do it. I was hunger for dentistry, for teeth.

[00:18:02] Yeah.

[00:18:02] So March eight, March 2016, I went to take over my my first real job, you know? And a month later, my manager, my manager from the whitening clinic called me, Well, Alex, we have a problem because we have some patients that complained about some problems, you know, whitening and stuff. They said, OK, I’m calling the insurance. I kept it cool. You know, I freaked out on the inside, kept cool on the outside, and it was really ugly. It was really ugly because obviously the manager disappeared. Not just that, but he tried to offer money to those clients. Meanwhile, obviously I called my insurance. They said, Send us anything you have, we’ll take care of it like always happens. And it was good. It was good, but it kept going for four years.

[00:18:52] Bloody hell, what was GDC involved?

[00:18:55] No. Wow. Well, yes.

[00:18:57] Four years at the very first. Well, it wasn’t the first job, but it was the second. But my real job was the dentist. Yeah, and if if there wasn’t written in my insurance, the clinic name and what I was doing there, they wouldn’t have fought for me.

[00:19:16] But what kind of complaints were they

[00:19:19] That they had burns and stuff?

[00:19:21] Oh, did they have burns?

[00:19:22] They had a little bit of burns. That’s true. But you know, I didn’t know you need to put the badge number. I didn’t know the clinic was like I was a dentist. I was insured and I was everything was in order with me. But the way the

[00:19:35] Manager was dealing

[00:19:37] With everything else, it wasn’t okay and nobody told me that because obviously I had an induction and I was inducted by a fellow Romanian dentist that could have told me, you know, listen, you need to be careful of this and this and this and take as many notes. We didn’t have a system, we didn’t have a software. They were only like some, some forms they were signing. And that’s it, you know,

[00:20:00] And you was right. You were going to place on Harley Street as far as you were concerned, so that it must be

[00:20:05] Exactly because when I did the shadowing, it was a proper clinic, you know, and with with dentists and with nurse. And when I saw the job, I said, Oh, I know that place. It’s a really fancy place, so it must be regulated and stuff. And it wasn’t so I it was the big, you know, bump in my face SoC. But you know, it was very interesting because I had to make a decision like, what do I do? I took with a really good friend in dentistry, and she said, You need to tell everyone, Alex, you need to stay because it’s a real thing. Your mental health will be affected. And I don’t think if you will be able to work, you know, because it’s always at the back of your mind, oh my goodness, I have this claim. And it wasn’t one. So it was three patients complained. All of them had the treatment at the same day in my very last day at work. Wow. So it was it was unbelievable.

[00:20:59] I thought, did you have a

[00:21:00] Bad day or do you think they set you up somehow?

[00:21:03] Listen. Two of them, they are doctors, the patients, so the the patients, yes, they were doctors, not dentists, doctors. Wow. And they were having. They were having the wedding. So two of them are connected. But the third one is not. But it was the patient before them.

[00:21:21] It just seems like too much of a coincidence isn’t there?

[00:21:24] I don’t know.

[00:21:24] What was it.

[00:21:26] But listen, it freaked me out for four years.

[00:21:29] I wasn’t. You know,

[00:21:31] It’s it’s a I want to talk so much about this because I think so many dentists and I had, like my case wasn’t like, you know, really serious damaging with long term problems. You know, it was something cosmetic. And you know, you have all these physicians that analyse your patients and they are telling you if there really are problems or not and stuff like that. And most of the time, they were not. None of their problem was my business, my negligence. Let’s say yes, but the powder was that I ruined their wedding.

[00:22:06] Yeah, so they

[00:22:08] They kept pushing that. And then they they accused me that they had to split up because of I ruined their wedding and stuff like that. So it was so it was so ugly. It was so ugly. But eventually, after four years, I think it was May, May 2020. So it’s very fresh for me. I’m still celebrating, you

[00:22:26] Know, when everything

[00:22:28] Was cleared out and the insurance pay and you know, they had to leave the country for whatever reason, and that was it. But for me, I was. It will always stay with me. You know, it will be you.

[00:22:40] Let me tell you, because you know, I started we’ve been doing whitening for 20, 20 years now and we started with light activated whitening and and it wasn’t at all your fault. Yeah, there’s there’s some system, some situations and some viscosity of gels. Yeah, when it’s a very watery gel and particularly, I’m sure this guy was giving you something, something really cheap and nasty. He was he was supplied.

[00:23:05] Obviously, it was all eBay stuff because I did my

[00:23:08] Research afterwards, you know, I mean,

[00:23:10] Powder powder gel mixed with liquid. That’s such a watery thing that it seeps under any damn that you put there. And and the thing is, as a dentist, do you think it’s protected? You put the stuff there and then it’s been seeping under. Yeah, I know the situation you’re talking about,

[00:23:28] But not

[00:23:28] Just that the guy the manager was, you know, they were selling because after that I heard that they were selling the packages with the treatments on Groupon. These Groupon, I think the green thing and you know, if they bought a certain package, they would send them whitening kit for home. So all these three patients had the home whitening kit as well. Yeah, but how how do I prove? Because because I didn’t have any notes, I didn’t have any system. I did. I mean, he he did provide some things that the consent form I took from the patient and stuff, but that was it. There was nothing written about, Oh, they use the home kit whitening like we do in a clinic. You know, this patient will follow like after the surgery enlightened, for example, they will sleep with it at home as well and stuff like that. And you take the batch number and you take, Oh my goodness, I wasn’t aware of all that. So obviously it looks like it was my fault not knowing all these things and and asking things, because if something doesn’t look right and you don’t ask, it’s as much as your fault, right? Yeah.

[00:24:35] So Typekit a while to get over that trauma, I’m sure I bet you still still feel it a little bit right.

[00:24:41] I feel it 100 percent. I don’t think you can ever, because it’s not even I mean, then I worked and I continue this friend of mine. I was telling you, she said, maybe you should not work. And I understand her advice because it wasn’t easy to go every single day in a practise and see people with the same confidence. And, you know, with the same, well, even later,

[00:25:06] Are you talking about later in centre for dentistry?

[00:25:09] Absolutely. You would never know

[00:25:11] How I mean this. All these complaints ended in 2020. The Payman. This all finished in 2020. So all these years, if I would have listened to some people, I wouldn’t have worked. Which doesn’t, doesn’t make any sense, but I I fought through. So I fuelled through this years like whenever we had even a system in the family because I was so stressed out whenever I was. You know, you get this when the insurance people send you stuff from the solicitors and stuff, you need to put the password in and then you open the document. And my husband was doing it for me, reading it. And then when I was getting home, telling me in a very soft, kind, gentle manner, what’s going on? Because the moment I would see that I got an email from these people, I was like, Oh my god, oh my god.

[00:25:59] Oh, what a lovely guy he is. What a lovely thing.

[00:26:02] Amazing. It’s very it’s very important to have a support. I don’t think it’s

[00:26:07] Right to tell

[00:26:08] Someone that deals with a complaint or you need to stop working because I mean what that would do to them, you know, just what? Stay at home. I would stay at home, like for four years, and during this time I had a second baby. But still, you know, I try to keep it cool and just go on with it. And I was what gave me confidence, obviously, was dentistry because my patients were fantastic. My manager was fantastic. I don’t know. I don’t know what the successful dentist is. Maybe you do. I have no idea. But whenever my patient lived, like whenever someone leaves the clinic happy, I think that’s a success. So I never, ever, ever since that whitening complaint had another one, like in a proper clinic that has a complaint system, you know how to manage the complaints whenever they happen and stuff like that. And that almost I had to prove to myself that, you know, you actually can do it. And that was just like a

[00:27:08] Hiccup

[00:27:08] Early on in your career to have.

[00:27:10] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:27:11] And yeah, the fact that you were coming to a new system where you didn’t know. I mean, if, for instance, if you said to me whitening clinic Harley Street, I would immediately say, be careful. Because a lot of those are run by non dentists that are owned by non dentists and people who think whitening is whitening. And like you said, they go for the cheapest product. Maybe they could at internet marketing to get people in. They are, but but that’s about the end of it, you know, and to put it on Harley Street to make it look like it’s, you know, the people, the kind of person who comes to Harley Street thinking they’re going to see a top end person and a top end clinic. And then the clinic is run by a non dentist and it’s using all the cheapest stuff. And procedures aren’t right. It’s, you know, you walked into that from not knowing the situation. In the same way as if I turned up in Romania tomorrow to set up my whitening company, I’d end up making a whole lot of big mistakes that you wouldn’t make. Yeah, because you know, the system, the

[00:28:11] Exact and that’s the awareness I would like to raise, you know, for a lot because maybe I mean, I think, as you say, if you’re here, you know your stuff, you know, especially in London, it’s impossible not to learn these things. But when you come from a different country and you see someone willing it to give you a job and you see that you tick all the boxes that you’re actually allowed to do, the job said, why not do it? Why is this people operating a business if I’m not supposed to work there, you know, then tell

[00:28:41] Me, Look, you should, you know, on the face of it, you start working in centre for Dental Street, you start getting happy patients, you start doing the kind of work that you were trained to do. Yeah. What went wrong?

[00:28:52] Nothing.

[00:28:53] But then why we leave

[00:28:54] It was always, I mean, my mental health completely changed. I don’t think I mean, I really hope whoever is listening this podcast and dealt with some complaints, I would really like them to send me a message to tell me if they 100

[00:29:11] Percent got over it. I hear you. I hear you because

[00:29:15] I didn’t, and I don’t think I will ever do. Listen, I

[00:29:19] Still want this, Alex. That’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to say it’s ridiculous because

[00:29:24] It’s it’s not like

[00:29:25] It’s still reality. It’s your reality. The other means

[00:29:28] The word was wrong.

[00:29:29] Ridiculous is the wrong word.

[00:29:31] But but but you will get over there. Yeah, I mean, you know, I know people in much worse situations and gotten over it. Yeah. And you know, I don’t know you. I don’t know

[00:29:43] Exactly whether you will or

[00:29:44] You won’t. But my point is, you know, it’s like, it’s like, I don’t know, like like a like a death.

[00:29:52] Yeah.

[00:29:53] You’ll never forget it. Hmm. But in the end, you know, you move on from it. You know, well, if God forbid someone

[00:30:04] Close to you passes

[00:30:05] Away, I’m not going to say you’re ever going to get over that because, you know, that’s that’s a that’s a thing that you know, you’re never going to get over, but you can get back to the person you were. I wouldn’t write yourself off that quickly, you know what I mean? Very lucky to do

[00:30:21] That, I think. But look at you, you’re very wise, right?

[00:30:25] I probably you lived

[00:30:26] Like four times more than I lived so far.

[00:30:29] So that’s my job to tell you these things, then.

[00:30:32] So it’s it’s it’s amazing that you tell me this and I think you’re absolutely 100 percent right.

[00:30:38] But it’s like being scared

[00:30:40] Of heights, you know, you can’t really control it. And you know, when we will go to like my transition and stuff and when I took some space out of it, I started to miss it. And I understood going back in the clinic to get them actually doing a brilliant job. Of course, I’m not, you know, like maybe a good cosmetic surgeon kind of dentist that does impeccable bonding techniques and stuff. But the way I treat a patient is always fair. And it’s with gentleness, and I think fair is the most important word here. Yes. And I do what’s right for them, and I understand that and I feel it every single time I’m in the clinic. But somewhere, you know, deep inside, it’s always that very bad memory. It’s not just what happened, but how long it took to clear out, and it’s a reliving. Every time you get to go through this process, you understand that it’s an ongoing feeling that you’re experimenting. Basically, you’re you’re feeling basically and maybe it’s something, you know, maybe I need to educate myself, I need to

[00:31:52] Talk

[00:31:53] To in this country. We’re going through a nightmare

[00:31:56] Legal situation

[00:31:58] As dentists. Yeah, in that, yeah, more dentists are getting more complaints and being sued by more patients than than in every other country apart in New Zealand, apparently so more than America, you know, which is, you know, we were always used to look at American dentists and laugh about how they’re getting sued all the time. But it’s happening more here. And I know this isn’t helping your little,

[00:32:20] But it’s very encouraging.

[00:32:24] But but the thing is talking to you, I can see you. You’re one of those dentists. We need more dentists like you. Yeah, more people who

[00:32:32] Are doing it for the patient

[00:32:34] Fair. You know, you’re obviously you’re an enthusiastic person. The profession needs more people like you. And it’s a damn shame of people like you who someone who’s gentle and responsive. You know, the problem is someone who’s gentle yourself. I’m not talking about with your hands, but a gentle person gets hurt more by this sort of thing than someone who’s hard and just shrugged it off. But you know, I know dentists just just to help you out. I know dentists have been sued every year for the last four years.

[00:33:02] And you know,

[00:33:03] The more it happens, the less they worry about it. Because they figure out, they figure out the system of what is what is a real complaint brokers and so forth. And, you know, complaints they shouldn’t happen. But but you should think of them as part of the job. Now in UK dentistry, it’s easy for me to say I’m not practising anymore.

[00:33:26] And not even fair. Yeah, when I

[00:33:29] Was practising, when I was, I stopped practising 10 years ago. But when I was practising it, just this thing just wasn’t a big issue. You know, it wasn’t as big an issue as it is right now, and I know a lot of the younger dentists are stressing a lot and we’re about to do a whole mental health month invited talk to people about I know the number one cause of mental health problems in dentistry is patient complaints, so you should join that little walk we’ll talk about.

[00:33:55] Absolutely.

[00:33:56] So, OK, so you decided it damaged you. You thought irreversibly and and you decided you were going to pull away from dentistry and look at other avenues. Yes. Tell me about that story. So how did it, how did it? You know the confidence it takes? You know, we’ve only ever done dentistry, right?

[00:34:15] So that’s the hard part of it, because I ever I mean, anything I read in anything I learnt was for dentistry, for teeth, and I have a very good friend of mine, a very good friend of mine. Her name is Alex. And she she always says, like, but you have transferable skills, you know? I mean, I hear this so many times. I’m a bit tired of it. And she has a very good heart and she’s amazing and she’s very, very important to

[00:34:49] Me,

[00:34:50] But doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t want you content. No, she’s not the dentist, she’s a she’s a she’s she’s practising. She she worked for Facebook and now she’s on Amazon. Well, she’s a very good. She’s practising now to be a coach and to help you understand some like not a coach, like old coach, but like a really important one. She she helps people like high level CEOs and stuff to do.

[00:35:18] You do you believe that there aren’t some things about them to help you?

[00:35:22] Absolutely, they are. But tell me, because I applied to many jobs, especially when COVID hit, hit and stuff. Yeah. Who cares about them and who takes two three minutes to understand what my transferable skills are?

[00:35:39] You know, it’s a matter of marketing, though. Yes. Yeah. You know, I could put someone in front of you who will say stuff like, you know, as a dentist, I’ve had to learn complex things being under pressure. Yeah, exactly. Make people happy.

[00:35:53] Time management,

[00:35:54] You can, you know, the waste

[00:35:56] Management? Yeah.

[00:35:58] Although I can see you being the sort of very in the short time I’ve had with you, I can see you being this very sort of honest, to honest person.

[00:36:06] Maybe that’s my problem.

[00:36:07] Yeah, yeah.

[00:36:09] And you know, marketing is about first lying to yourself and then telling other people that lie

[00:36:17] Like,

[00:36:18] You mean, like, fake it until you make it kind of thing.

[00:36:21] But lying to yourself, you have to. You have to believe and in this new thing that you’re saying. And so that takes a degree of confidence. And, you know, I mean, lying is the wrong word for it. But it’s this present presenting it, presenting it to yourself in in in in a way that that makes sense to you. And then you can you can sell it to other people. Yes. But you know, again, in Dental school, we weren’t taught marketing either.

[00:36:47] So go on. No business skills, nothing but how to

[00:36:52] See what happened, what happened? Where did the flower thing come from? Had you done anything like that before or did you always want?

[00:36:58] Okay. So listen, I didn’t give up on dentistry very easily. I did. Well, first of all, with me, I didn’t give up at all. I haven’t given up yet, but no more than that. So I had another baby. I kept going. So I worked until I was pregnant. I went to work from London to Chichester on my eighth month of pregnancy every day for I love it. You know, I didn’t care. Yes, I didn’t want to leave my patients. I knew it was time for us to come back to London because things weren’t very good with my husband job. And we said, if we need opportunities, you need to be in London. So that was the reason it was a good choice for us. But that meant for four, until I got to my maternity leave, I had to travel. I think it was seven months, four days a week, sometimes

[00:37:45] Five London to

[00:37:47] Chichester, back and forth. But I loved it. It was home for me. You know, I really like that clinic. The staff was fantastic. The people at the CEO and stuff, amazing. I liked it. It worked for me. I had some, some freedom to learn stuff to use some materials. You know, you can’t as an associate, you don’t really have that all the time. So when I moved to London, I said, give please give me the opportunity to work in Fulham, in the Sainsbury’s one. And they they said yes, of course gone. I went not full time because, you know, I learnt my lesson. Let’s do it a bit more part time. I had a baby at home as well. So I started with two days. Of course I loved it. I always loved teeth and see patients, and I think talking with them and making them feel a bit better. It’s something that I really, really enjoy. So I start working there and at some point I think maybe they felt they have a little bit of problems with the with the overall organisation and they will have to sell. So they they wanted to sell the practise to me and I was I was ready to buy it. We started the papers. We’re starting everything, everything, everything and then the COVID hit

[00:39:00] And my

[00:39:00] Lawyers, I had a very nice lawyers and financial advisors was telling me, Alex, I do appreciate your enthusiasm to close this deal.

[00:39:10] But if

[00:39:11] Bigger

[00:39:12] Names in the

[00:39:13] Industry don’t buy that, they don’t buy anything at this moment, I can’t let you buy. It’s just not a good move for you.

[00:39:21] Well, that was bad advice. But yeah,

[00:39:24] I don’t know. You know, listen,

[00:39:27] Because I heard they heard about the prices that some of those scientific entities went it and they were bargains bargains.

[00:39:36] Yes. But there are many things that,

[00:39:38] You know,

[00:39:40] They aren’t out there. You can. You can, you can. I can

[00:39:44] Take you in private

[00:39:48] Because I was I was I wasn’t given a bargain deal. Yeah. I wasn’t I was I was given like a real deal, like call all your friends and family and borrow money to make this happen, and I was ready to make it happen. I almost did, but then I didn’t. So later on, they went into administration. I think that’s not a secret anymore, right out there.

[00:40:10] I guess it was after they went in administration that the bargains started happening.

[00:40:14] Exactly. Yeah. And I didn’t have a seat at that table, a death round table. There wasn’t a chair for me, so I didn’t. I didn’t get. But they understand. I mean, again, punched in the face takes some distance. You’re fine. And you know, everything stopped because COVID happened, so we couldn’t work anyway. Lockdown full time. I moved my mother in law. Bless her heart from France here to stay with my kids while I was taking over the clinic. I moved in freaking Chelsea. That is so expensive from Greenwich, so to be close to the clinic. So I I was motors on, you know, everything was on. Then everything

[00:40:55] Stopped backwards.

[00:40:57] Pay the lawyers, pay the financial advisers paid the family and friends back and stuff like that. And what do you do now? And I said, You know, my goodness, I’m sick of it, that I need something else, at least at least for for some time.

[00:41:10] And was in lockdown an opportunity to think?

[00:41:12] Yes, exactly.

[00:41:14] And were you in Chelsea at that point? I was.

[00:41:17] I was in Chelsea in a flat marina point in a flat

[00:41:21] Looking fantastic

[00:41:23] Flat. I mean, so expensive.

[00:41:25] I live in Fulham myself.

[00:41:27] Oh, I know, you know, I mean, yes,

[00:41:30] I’ve been to that

[00:41:31] Practise many times.

[00:41:32] Yes, it’s beautiful. I mean, I’m

[00:41:35] In North London now. So it’s like, whereabout in in W2, whether

[00:41:42] It was in your Hampstead. Oh, I yes. Yes, yes, it’s very near.

[00:41:46] I’m not in there. Yes, people don’t think I live in Hampstead. It’s not. It’s just like for you to know where is on the map

[00:41:54] Because I was

[00:41:54] In that one before I was, I was in Primrose Hill before.

[00:41:58] Oh, OK, so that’s that’s quite close to us. Ok, perfect. Perfect. Yes, so it’s a beautiful area, but you know, I turned my life upside down. My life gets my mother in law, kids, everybody likes to because they wanted to buy that clinic. It didn’t work out. Fine, move on. I was always very creative in my life. I do stuff every single day. I always tell my husband I need to do things with my hands. If something doesn’t come up from my

[00:42:24] Hands every day,

[00:42:26] Something is not right with me and I always like flowers and I always do nice arrangements, you know, for various and I said, Just go study them when you staying home anyway, just do something. So I went and did a florist design course with Judith Blacklock in Knightsbridge. I think it is, and I loved it. It was fantastic and I said, Well, maybe I can do something with it, you know? And slowly, slowly I started to understand the business and to see if I can do it. I don’t know yet, you know, if if I can do it, but I’m just doing it and we’ll see what happens. That kind of person is very,

[00:43:07] Very talented at it.

[00:43:08] I mean, I can’t I can’t just wait for having everything perfectly aligned for me to do something. So I just need to do something, you know?

[00:43:17] But I looked at your page and I’ve got some history in flower. My my mother did some flower arranging for a while, so I know it’s it’s much more involved subject than people realise.

[00:43:26] Oh, no,

[00:43:27] But your page is called flower sorry and

[00:43:30] Consultant

[00:43:31] Alex and Flower Land on Instagram. Everyone should go and have a look at that page because some of the work on this is really stunning. I mean, it’s I think as much as I’m telling you, don’t leave dentistry, I love what you’ve done on that in that area.

[00:43:44] Thank you.

[00:43:44] Thank you very much. I definitely found something there. You’ve definitely got some inspiration there. So as a business, as a as a job, I mean, it’s weird because

[00:43:53] There’s one thing you could the

[00:43:54] Job of being the person who puts the thing together. That’s one thing. But running a whole business around that is a whole other thing.

[00:44:02] Yes.

[00:44:03] So how far are you in that out?

[00:44:05] Are you just the person fixing the flower? Like doing the design?

[00:44:08] So I’m the person fixing the flowers. My husband is the person delivering the flowers because he knows how to drive. So he works. He works, he works from home now. He might travel soon. Like with his job, he works for Amazon, but he’s the my delivery guy. You know, I.

[00:44:23] So it is a business that is a business. It is not working for someone.

[00:44:26] It’s a no, no, no, no, no, it’s my business. I just need to to put more time and money in it just to to to grow it a little bit.

[00:44:37] So how are you getting customers from from that page,

[00:44:40] From that page, word of mouth, word of mouth? And they have some really nice neighbours around here that you know, Oh, I forgot this my my wife’s birthday. Can you bring me some flowers like and they.

[00:44:53] Yeah, and it’s very

[00:44:56] Nice, you know, it’s amazing, it’s tough, but it’s nice. So when I applied for the role at the Dorchester Hotel, I was really impressed that they called me for an interview, actually, because I have no experience in the proper floristry field. I just did some, I did some, some courses and I worked on my portfolio. Basically, I wanted them to see that I do stuff and it’s all my stuff, everything. It’s on Instagram. It’s my stuff. And it was fantastic. I mean, for me, it was like, Whoa, I can actually do something else and people do listen to me. But it’s it’s such a big shock when people ask me what I want. Why do you want to leave the industry? You know, because I mean, as you said, problem a bit too honest. Yeah, I can’t be either. I mean, I can’t fake anything, really. So, you know, I said, Well, I’m not really living like forever because I will always stay registered just in case, you know, something happens and I need to go back to it. But I would like to explore this part of me as well. And why not have something on the side? Because later on in my life as a dentist, I was educated at Listen, don’t put all the eggs in the basket. I don’t have the power to go on the estate and bitcoin and stuff like that, like all the wise people do, because I know zero about that stuff.

[00:46:18] But I said, I know

[00:46:19] Flowers now, so why not explore this part? So they took me on. It was fantastic. I did three months with them just because now I feel like I want to concentrate more on other things I saw behind the doors, you know, of a business of a luxury business, VIP clients, how to deal with them and stuff like that. It was a very enlightened experience for me.

[00:46:42] But also what you might find is that one day you open some very high end Dental clinic and the the the reason why it’s so high end is because you on the flower side, you you figured out some new skills around, you know, high end clients and making things beautiful and service. And you might it might end up that way. But I remember telling my parents I was going to stop being a dentist and they nearly had a heart attack. I mean, my my mom was particularly sad. I mean, almost like I was,

[00:47:16] I was sort of, you know, all the

[00:47:18] Work she’d put

[00:47:19] In. It’s almost been like a failure.

[00:47:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then there was I had this and I understood it and I and I was worried about it. And I always thought, Oh, I better just keep on doing. One day a week here, or two days a week, that still still continued. Being a dentist and then I had this sort of moment of clarity about, you know, it was actually my co-host was not here today, Prav, he said to me, Look, if you’re going to do this teeth whitening thing, you’ve got to really commit to it psychologically. And an I can’t see you committing to it psychologically until you stop being a dentist. And and he was a doctor himself, a top doctor. He was top of his class in Oxford, but he stopped doing that and he’s now doing marketing for dentists. And so because I trust him, I suddenly thought I had this moment of clarity that wait a minute if it all falls apart. Just go back and be a dentist.

[00:48:14] Yeah.

[00:48:14] And as a dentist, I can put food on the table for my family, even as a, you know, associate, you can do OK as an associate, right? You can, you can. You can do very well as an associate, by the way. So that’s something gave me the confidence to say, well, what is going to really just go for it? Yeah. Of course I’m

[00:48:32] Still in dentistry. As you can

[00:48:34] See, I’m

[00:48:36] Quite left dentistry now. I tell you what I’m very interested in. I gave up dentistry for five years. Then I went back and like you said, I really appreciated dentistry when I went back to it. Yes. And there was something about, you know, in outside, in this job, you know, selling stuff to dentists is a lot harder than selling stuff to patients. You know it by its very nature that the patients sitting in your chair. It’s already saying, I trust you. You know, whereas dentists, you know, we’re trained to say, Hey, why? How, you know, just be sceptical about.

[00:49:13] Yes. Like, make me buy it. You know, the prove it to prove it.

[00:49:17] Yes. Where are the papers? Yeah. Where are the

[00:49:19] Papers?

[00:49:20] And so just the more difficult I found it more difficult anyway. Right now, I don’t. But back then, back then I definitely found it more difficult. So then when I went back to being a dentist again, the relationships, meeting people, the number of people you meet as a dentist,

[00:49:37] You know, 10 or

[00:49:38] 12 or 15 people a day you meet. Yeah, when you’re in it, you’re like, God, I wish there were less of them here. But when you when you’re out of it, when I’m in my office, the same 40 people, by the way, we’re all working from home now. So I don’t see those people even know. I don’t have the same sort of influence, the same influences coming into me. Yes. And then from the work perspective, when I went back, I sort of was just sticking to the bits of it that I really liked. You know, I didn’t do any endo didn’t do any kids. No, no full mouth stuff. You know, I was basically preaching and bonding. So I’d like to hear your your reflections when, you know, does it make dentistry more attractive once you left a little bit?

[00:50:25] I wasn’t I.

[00:50:26] I was the kind of general dentist. I have a very active conscience, so if I know I can’t handle 100 percent a procedure, I won’t offer it myself. Yeah. So the way I work as a dentist and I’m very serious about this was multidisciplinary with Centre for Dentistry offered me that I had a fantastic indoor guy, a fantastic pathologist and the surgeon, of course. So I basically I was like this dentist that was orchestrating all the treatments. Yes. Discussing with the patient because my appointments were generous enough to offer the patients all kinds of information they needed. So they will go and see Dental guy and see what he can do and then see the pathologist and then decide what’s the best approach for him financially and not just financially to do the treatment. And because I did this kind and it’s not a defence defensive, I think it’s called yes, dentistry, it’s what I think it’s fair to offer to my patients. Yeah, the Pennsylvania. Yeah, in Romania, we have a you can be a specialist in cardiology, and I think kings are doing something now like a master.

[00:51:46] She’s doing it. Yeah.

[00:51:47] Yes. So I might look into that. But in Romania, I was always fascinated about these professors that was teaching us how

[00:51:55] To deal with with the

[00:51:57] Dental decay, which was the number one disease at that time in the world, affecting so many people. And I said this, and I’m happy to do that. I’m comfortable

[00:52:06] In this, in this seat

[00:52:07] Where I am. And I was always telling my patients, do I know how to do an end or treatment? I do. Do I do it better than a specialist? Never do. I want you to have the best treatment I do. So if you want and if you trust me, you need to go and see a specialist for this treatment. So we’re friends until the end of the treatment and afterwards.

[00:52:28] And it was working

[00:52:30] Fantastic and this is how I work now. Every time I see a patient with a very difficult case, but I always bring all the team in. So I send them everywhere and they send them back to me and said, OK, now we can do this and now we can take the. And I love it. I think this is beautiful. And just like you, I enjoy what I’m doing. So I didn’t change anything. What I did before because I was scared or is just is the bad memories that are keep coming back to me. But when I’m with the patient, I don’t know if you have this. I always tell my husband, like when I’m thinking about something I need to do, I always find it difficult in actually doing it. Yeah, I don’t know if I’m funny or other people. That’s true. But when I’m in the clinic, that’s it, I’m I’m like someone else, you know? I know exactly what I need to do. I never let my patients, you know, Oh my gosh, she’s not very confident on that kind of, even if I’m not confident in what I specifically tell them like about the diagnostic and I, I always talk with them like, Listen, I know what I’m saying, and then I send them to other people to to take them out and stuff because I think that’s very important. So I don’t have a problem with that. But I think probably I

[00:53:44] Was working a bit

[00:53:46] Too much and I was always afraid that I would do a mistake, you know? Of course I did mistakes. I mean, yes, I did. I mean, at some point there was I was working without. I was polishing feeling on a patient and I touched the sublingual mucosa. And it just, you know, it opens up like beautifully, like a big mouth. I said,

[00:54:08] Ok.

[00:54:09] And I said to the patient, I was very calm. I had the brilliant nurse and I said, Can I have some stitches, please? And I just ditch it out. And I talked to the patient. I said, This is what happened. It can happen. I’m sorry for it. Next time, I will be more careful. Put it in the notes and everything was fine. She was very happy. She never even thought because she was still numb, you know? But you need, you know, do you take out the rubber? Damn, you want to do your fantastic polishing and stuff? And that happened. Whatever. So I do mistakes. I do mistakes. But having always a team in the support system at home with the clinic anywhere I am, that helps me the best because I don’t think we can do anything by ourselves, really. So that’s why that’s why I went on Facebook and wrote that post. Because I want people, because I’m I’m I’m very lucky to have people to talk with. I’m very I’m very grateful for you to take time to talk with me right now. But somewhere, somewhere in the house in a flat, there’s a dentist dealing with so much trouble. There’s nothing to talk with. And he said, or she says, Well, who I am to, to ask Payman to talk with me or Alex or whoever that is. You know,

[00:55:19] You make a brilliant point. You make it pretty important. I mean, I’d say the number one learning from all of this is talk to someone. Yes. And by the way, if you don’t feel like you know anyone these days, at least we have things like coffee Dental. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that.

[00:55:34] That’s that’s the thing I never heard of.

[00:55:36] That dentist can call up and talk to another dentist, and you know,

[00:55:40] It’s brilliant

[00:55:40] Going. If they’re going through something we know in our in our profession, it can get stressful beyond stressful, stressful to the point that people do the worst things, you know, and it’s something that we need to always look out for. And you had your husband and you talk to people, but you know, I just talking to you. I just think it would be a real shame if you if you don’t practise dentistry. I think, like I say, I think we need more dentists like you. People who are enthusiastic want to do the best for the patient. And I think so. In your case, you should wait until you kind of get over that,

[00:56:16] That trauma that you have. Yes, I’m I’m much better now.

[00:56:21] Keep going. Like, like, I gave up dentistry by mistake, not on purpose.

[00:56:25] You know

[00:56:26] How damp it’s like, how do I still work,

[00:56:31] Dentist? I adore being dentists a lot,

[00:56:35] By the way,

[00:56:36] Now that I’m not a dentist, there are some things that are much better about not being a dentist. Things like that. I don’t want to turn up, you know? Yeah. Turning up is a real pain for me. Like I like to some nights like tonight, I might decide to stay up till three a.m.. Yeah, if I had an eight o’clock patient tomorrow morning, that would be impossible. But but where I am at right now, I could do fine.

[00:56:59] We can talk until tomorrow.

[00:57:03] But what I’m saying is I definitely wasn’t one of those guys who hated dentistry and had to find something else to do and found this. And then I left it. That wasn’t my situation. My situation was this. This opportunity came along. It suddenly became so busy that there was no way of being a dentist. So, so, you know, I had to pull out of it.

[00:57:21] I never hated dentistry.

[00:57:23] You know, you love it.

[00:57:24] You love it more than I loved it.

[00:57:26] I will never be able in my life to hate dentistry you love. I will never be able to do that. I love dentistry, and I think it’s it’s other dentists probably have. This too is not that you hate it or you don’t want to do it. Is that that concern that you might hurt someone, you know? Yeah. And you don’t want that because you care too much.

[00:57:49] You know, I special

[00:57:51] Person I like, I like, I like where you’re coming from. I like, you’re very special person to be.

[00:57:55] I think I think you think, you know, I’m not sure if it works like in my

[00:58:00] Advance, but I’m just

[00:58:02] I’m just saying like probably my fear was coming from what? What if I really make a mistake and I hurt someone

[00:58:10] That’s a medical.

[00:58:10] That’s a medical thing anyway, right? Fear of messing up, I mean, I used to have that fear when I did my oral surgery job and I really wasn’t qualified enough for the job, but they throw you in and suddenly you’re in A&E stitching up someone’s face for the first time in your life. And, you know, like, that’s a child or whatever, and you’re stitching it up, you know? Yeah, but but medicine is that way inclined. You know, we learn by

[00:58:34] Doing a lot of times,

[00:58:36] You know, that’s what it is. You love dentistry. You love dentistry. So obvious. You love dentistry.

[00:58:42] Yeah. I wasn’t expecting.

[00:58:44] I wasn’t expecting this conversation at all. I was expecting to say, I hate it.

[00:58:48] No hate is not a word in my vocabulary. I don’t think I hate anything. It hate is a very strong word for me. It needs to be like, maybe I don’t like guns. They might say, I hate guns, but the way maybe we use it, because guns doesn’t have to be all negative, you can still have some fun with them. You don’t have to point them another person. You know, it’s the way you use what you have, and I will never be able to hate dentistry. But what I what’s the point I really want to make and to stress out is

[00:59:21] That I really

[00:59:23] Need I mean, I was fantasising when I was dealing with this complaint. Having like because I wasn’t like, you know, new to Dental is being sued and stuff. In your case, I wasn’t like a snowflake that doesn’t know that I was aware of that. However, I didn’t see any movement towards changing that in the profession, and I apologise if there’s something happening that I’m not aware of. Moving into that direction, I really apologise for that if I’m not educated enough. But I didn’t feel like if I would speak up at that moment because I was frustrated and I didn’t want that to happen to me. You know, it was my very first job and nobody freaking told me that I need to be careful of that. I was so upset, you know, and I feel like, OK, if I go and speak out, they will back up. But I didn’t feel like it, you know, because I was reading like for dentist by dentist and all these groups that are fantastic.

[01:00:22] It wasn’t.

[01:00:23] It was never a follow up. You know, you hear like, complain, complain, complain. But what happened? I mean, how did you deal with like in a really good movie and the power cuts out, you know, and you’re like, come on.

[01:00:35] Like, what happened, you know,

[01:00:37] To to give me the confidence to give me the confidence,

[01:00:41] You know, to

[01:00:41] Come, OK, listen, people, this happened. Like, What do I do? Do you have that kind of attitude towards it? And I think this is this is what I did know how to do it, but hopefully I will be able to do it at some point to to raise some awareness. Yes, if you want to leave the profession

[01:00:58] Because you don’t like

[01:01:00] It, fine, just do it. But again, awareness that is tough is tough to go and start from the bottom. In any other profession, it’s tough to take that pay cut. It’s tough because it it will affect your family. If you have one it, it will affect you if you have one. Because if you if you’re used to a big income, if their realities and I feel like sometimes we tend to make everything like to sugar coat like Willy Wonka, you know, we don’t get to do really discussions and conversations from the heart like, what do you really feel without,

[01:01:34] You know,

[01:01:34] Without being judgemental and stuff?

[01:01:38] So this is this is what I

[01:01:40] Would like at some point. I mean, you’re much more experienced in denial. I mean, podcast and stuff like this, you know, like, I mean, if you would see everybody, if you see my on my tablet is sitting now, you will like, laugh out loud like it’s ridiculous. So obviously you have the gear and you have everything you need to make this happen. But I feel like there’s a there’s a need for this kind of this conversation. More Dental. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And even publicly, because sometimes I mean, I had patients, I was telling them, you know, I might leave patients that are closer to me, like, but why? I mean, you’re so good. You don’t seem like you’re stressed. Like, Well, of course I’m not. I don’t want to show you that because you wouldn’t

[01:02:21] Open your mouth. No, I come on. I don’t want to waste my time.

[01:02:25] But still, it’s a stressful job. And you know what? I think most of the people complaining about dentists have no idea what this profession is like.

[01:02:36] Alex isn’t flower arranging a stressful job?

[01:02:39] Oh, it’s very stressful. I mean, mess up a bride’s bouquet at that time.

[01:02:45] We go back to messing up weddings.

[01:02:47] But yeah, exactly.

[01:02:48] But different because it’s something that you can easily replace. But if you affect the person in in an appearance and we work with mouth, we work with teeth between your heart and your brain and it’s in their in their face. It’s so much personal, you know, it’s you can’t hide from it, you know? I mean, you need to have a vocation. You need. It needs to be your vocation to be a dentist. So I think, like you said, maybe you think I’m a brilliant dentist? I might be, but

[01:03:20] There are so thousands

[01:03:22] Of them out there saying like, but I’m not good enough, especially if they have complaints that went on and on and did involving and stuff like that. I think we need something to support these people, you know,

[01:03:34] To to

[01:03:34] People for these people to understand. Listen, you’re not alone. It’s messy. It’s ugly, but you are not alone. And look, this is a system to help you deal with

[01:03:45] It and stuff

[01:03:46] Like that.

[01:03:47] I think the thing about making mistakes here is that, look, I’m not the best dentist. You’re not the best dentist, right? Yeah. Then there’s the guy who’s better than me and you. Yeah, I don’t know. Tiff Qureshi, whatever the famous dentist. Yeah. Then there’s a limit to his

[01:04:03] Understanding here,

[01:04:04] So he could do something that the guy above him would say was a mistake. Yes. Yeah. Basil Mizrahi. These must be the top dentists in the UK. Yeah, yeah. But there’s a guy in Switzerland somewhere better than Basil was right? And he’ll say what he’s doing is wrong. And this this notion of making a mistake. Yeah, there’s one type of mistake which is like, OK, your drill drops and and hits one of those sort of incidents, which is, you know, that’s irrelevant type of incident, right? There’s another type of mistake, which is a decision making mistake. You know, you decided to go down this plan and it was the wrong thing decision to make, which I say a more serious kind of mistake. But nonetheless, I’m at my level. You’re at your level and it goes on and on and every single person has a dentist better than them, you know? So it’s just the reality of of life.

[01:04:58] And then the main mistake?

[01:05:00] Yeah, it’s like a patient management mistake. Yeah, where the patient lose this trust and it’s been shown a million times know the patients who sue are the ones who don’t like their doctor. You can make massive mistakes on people. If your patient likes you, he’s not going to sue you, for instance. Yeah, yes. Well, any sort of management mistake.

[01:05:24] The problem is

[01:05:25] When when it goes to a complaint, it starts to question, I can see someone like you like. You’re not your typical kind of, you know, trying to buy your

[01:05:32] Ferrari dentist

[01:05:34] Here. Someone like, you know, who’s giving, you know, who wants to be someone who contributes, who wants to be someone who, you know, you said fairness is your number one thing when a patient comes with a problem. Most dentists think, Well, that problem is worth to me

[01:05:47] £2000 or twenty three

[01:05:49] Thousand pounds. You’re thinking, who’s the best person for the endo? The best person for the Crown’s the best person and just orchestrating that that whole thing?

[01:05:58] Yes.

[01:06:00] So you know, what I’m saying is most, most times people, people like you shouldn’t be leaving our profession. What should it be leaving our profession? Should I be leaving our profession? I keep coming back to that. Yeah. But but you know, a management mistake can can do that. We shouldn’t, shouldn’t focus on mistakes, you know, although by the way, this podcast does, this podcast has that question. What was your biggest mistake? But I guess you’ve answered that for me. Let’s let’s move on. Let’s move on because I’m very interested in everything that you said there. Do you now feel more confident as

[01:06:38] A human now that you’ve learnt

[01:06:40] A second skill? Or do you see it like a hobby?

[01:06:47] I think like another passion of mine. I don’t see it like a hobby. It’s more than a hobby because it’s like it’s other things involved in it. You know, you need to to. I mean, I guess you put money in hobbies as well. I don’t usually do that unless it’s like, I

[01:07:02] Don’t know, going to a good music

[01:07:03] Or something, which I think it’s something I enjoy as a hobby, you know? But I think it’s more than that. I don’t know if learning a new skill made me confident,

[01:07:15] But the new

[01:07:17] Skill took the attention away from the initial skill, which helped me cleared my mind. So when I went back to it, I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, everybody. I’m actually a good dentist. And when I went back in the practise and my good friend, I work in a clinic in Watford. Now it’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a very nice clinic, quite new one. And I saw that OK. And the patients are it’s like for me, they’re all the same. I never think like these patients like that. These patients like that when someone comes in, I just I’m the same with everyone, you know? And I think that whenever the fog goes

[01:07:55] Away and you go back

[01:07:56] With, you know, a new fresh, it’s like coming back from the holy day. It’s everything changes. Yeah. So I think it’s very important to have something else. People are running. I don’t run. People are going to the gym. I don’t do that. I do I’d like to do yoga and stuff to relax myself, you know, but that didn’t help me mentally to maybe I’m not, I’m not doing it right, you know, mentally didn’t

[01:08:22] Help my heels. I needed help. You not breathing, right? Yes, I wasn’t breathing right. I wasn’t sucking

[01:08:29] My tummy or something like that, but focussing, OK, I need to do that to get better. I need to learn about flowers. I need to. When I went back to dentistry, it was, Oh, I know so many things about this and I’m so good at it. You know, back

[01:08:44] In your comfort zone again, wasn’t it?

[01:08:46] Yeah, it’s like a comfort zone, but not just dad, but you want to improve it, you know when you’re enjoying it more? Yeah. So I think the best advice that I got was like, Don’t do it full time because you’re going to get burnout, especially when you’re when you’re just entering it. You know, you want to do everything. You want to please everyone. You don’t want to say no to no patients and stuff like that. But now I do it and enjoy it at the same time, you know, I never, ever and never in my life. I hope I won’t ever think, Oh, OK, this patient has this problem. So that means two pounds and stuff. I’m not built that way. Probably that’s why maybe I’m not a good business person and stuff, but I can’t, especially when it comes with someone that is in pain, that heaven has teeth that can’t smile properly. It hurts my heart that my goodness, I have everything. I need to fix it and I can’t because they can’t pay it. You know, it’s ridiculous that I find ridiculous.

[01:09:44] So I can’t

[01:09:45] I can’t think about patients like money providers for me. Of course, I’m not a pretty naive, you know, to see like, OK, I’ll do it because it’s not my clinic. I can’t do that. And if I would do that, it’s not OK. Even if it’s my clinic, you know, because you still have some, some responsibilities towards your family and to yourself, right? And it’s not just right to to give people something just like that. We all do charity stuff because, you know, it’s in our human nature to do it, but it’s impossible to do it all the time. So I will never think about dentistry like, Oh, I can make so much money, I can buy a Ferrari or stuff. I don’t even try, so I don’t need it. But I want to help people and I want to help dentists. And I just wanted to talk with people, you know, to make them understand this is not the end of the world. And even if it is, it’s fine. It’s, you know, I have a really favourite thing like if I reached the bottom, it’s the best place you can be because it’s just like in a particular way. You just put you just, you know, go towards the surface with like more speed than ever. It takes more to think. But when you get, you just go out there and it’s not going to happen overnight and stuff. But it’s going to happen eventually

[01:11:03] To some advice to someone who’s now looking at going out of their comfort zone into another profession or another area, and it’s lost for confidence.

[01:11:18] I think they should try it. We always think like, Oh, I can’t

[01:11:23] Do it, I can’t

[01:11:25] Do it, I can’t do any, I can’t do that, I can’t do that. You can do it if you want to do it or if you really, really want to do it because I I don’t miss doing an end or treatment. I don’t even want to hear about it. You know, I’m happy when the patients come back and it’s done and dealt with, and it’s beautiful and you know, it’s microscope and stuff. Fantastic. I mean, I can talk about it with the patient. It’s like, Whoa, my gosh, this is the best treatment ever, you know? But if you want to do something and you don’t have confidence, just do it. And you see, because this friend of mine, Alex, is really good, I don’t know how she put it, but she said it’s not even confidence. It’s all the layers underneath, right? It’s like to educate yourself is to push yourself. Because if you ask, Oh, please, I want to have like more confidence, OK, how do we get confidence? Will you put yourself in uncomfortable situations? And if you get that, OK, I did this and then I did that, and then I did that. You get more confidence. Well, maybe the fourth thing you’re going to do is not going to seem as hard as the first three ones.

[01:12:30] And I mean, going for your first flower job? Hmm. Did it feel the same as going for your first Dental job and sort of know not knowing?

[01:12:40] Absolutely not, no. How did

[01:12:42] It feel?

[01:12:43] No, it feels. It feels nice. You know, it’s I don’t like this word nice because it’s so vast. I mean, I don’t know what knife is. It feels it feels good when you complete a work. I mean, I did a waiting for a friend and she was very happy. It was very you take that. It’s very rewarding, you know? But what what dentistry gives me is amazing because you have all these yet like you spreading yourself, you know, to all these people that and if you help them and most of the time you do, some of them are very grateful. Some of them are grateful, but they don’t show it. Some of them are grateful and don’t want to show it. It’s still happening and it’s still coming back to you in in a way or another.

[01:13:27] So I think I always tell

[01:13:29] My husband because every time in December, you know, since everything is like, Do I keep on the register? Or I don’t? I always stay on the register, you know, but it’s always that question. And I think I read about other people having that dilemma, too every December. But I always stay on because, you know what? I always want to be able to go back to it.

[01:13:54] I stopped 10 years ago, and I’m still on the register. Good for you. I even paid my my indemnity for like maybe 15 years after I was like, Wow, it was weird. I was like, OK, just in case.

[01:14:07] Kind of just in case.

[01:14:08] Yes, yes. But then it turned out I didn’t need to. So I wasted a bunch of money there. Yeah. All right. I think we’re coming to the end of our time, but we always end these podcasts with the same two questions. Yeah. The first one is. You’re on your deathbed. You’re surrounded by your kids, which I should have asked about your kids, but you’re

[01:14:37] Fine, you’re

[01:14:38] Surrounded by your kids, your loved ones, your parents, whatever you loved people, people that you love most in the world. What are three bits of advice you would give them? And the world

[01:14:48] Does stuff I never thought about my deathbed.

[01:14:51] Ok, don’t focus on the death part. Just the three bits of advice.

[01:14:58] Two, I want them to be happy to go do stuff and like to travel. Travel not to get stuck. I have a thing I don’t get attached to, I don’t miss. I mean, I’m sorry for all the Romanians listening. I don’t miss my country because if I have my family with me, you know, my kids and my husband, my husband is my soulmate. We are together since forever 20 years, married for 10. I have my support system with me. I don’t need anything else so I can

[01:15:32] Move on and don’t get

[01:15:35] This stuff. I do know things that

[01:15:39] You know you don’t want to wait you down.

[01:15:41] Yeah, yeah. I don’t get attached to things, but I love having an impact on people. So I think invest in people and travel to meet those people that might need your help and just try to be happy and enjoy this life, you know, because it’s just I know it sounds like a cliche, but just enjoy it every single day. Try to do something new and a little bit to to push yourself, you know, to to do something new and just just enjoy the rewards. You know, that comes with anything. Just enjoy it. I think that’s really important.

[01:16:15] I love that. I love that. And the final question. Yeah. Fantasy dinner party.

[01:16:25] A fantasy dinner party

[01:16:28] For three guests. Yeah. Dead or alive.

[01:16:33] Who would you have?

[01:16:38] Yes, tough.

[01:16:40] And so he’s just me with three people that I want. Yeah.

[01:16:44] You want your husband that, you

[01:16:46] Know, just, yeah, your husband’s your husband’s around, OK? He he he’s busy.

[01:16:53] Yeah, he’s working also.

[01:16:56] I would love like I would love maybe a celebrity, but I don’t have any ideals, I’m not crazy about people.

[01:17:01] What about when you were a kid? Did you not have like an idol, Celebrity Idol?

[01:17:06] I did not. Oh, I see. That’s sad, right? No, I don’t scream when I see a band I don’t get nothing sad about. Hmm. It’s very tough for me, I don’t know.

[01:17:18] Definitely, definitely a perfectionist.

[01:17:21] No, no, no. You don’t have to give the perfect answer. Look up to people.

[01:17:25] It’s not because I don’t look up.

[01:17:26] It doesn’t have to be an idol. It could be. But you know, it could be, you know, Shakespeare, your grandmother and you know what I mean? It could be. It could be anyone.

[01:17:36] Ok. Well, I don’t want anyone in the family. They know a lot about them. I would think maybe someone with a lot of influence like someone.

[01:17:49] Like. Obama. No, no.

[01:17:55] Well, I would like. Listen, I

[01:17:58] Would like to have dinner instead of three people, maybe I would like to have dinner with. I mean, it’s a stupid answer, but please forgive me. I would like to have dinner with Kate Middleton.

[01:18:10] Sure. Why is that stupid?

[01:18:12] I don’t know. I mean, it’s a cliche, right? I mean, with all this royal drama and stuff, but I would like to have dinner with someone that has

[01:18:19] Why you want to actually find out what it’s like in the palace or whatever

[01:18:22] What it’s like, but only if she’s allowed to talk stuff with me. You know, like, she’s like, Yeah, yeah, I would definitely

[01:18:29] Like to to have

[01:18:31] Because Dorchester was the same, you know, a very interesting world for me with the luxurious VIP people and stuff like that. I want to be a fly on the

[01:18:42] Wall like in that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:18:45] Like ta ta ta. Yeah. And I think she’s quite a decent person and she’s like a nice, you know, I wouldn’t feel I mean, again, I don’t want to sound stupid. I wouldn’t feel intimidated to have a conversation with her. You know, I

[01:18:59] Think she was a regular person before she married the

[01:19:02] What’s his name? No, I think she’s she’s quite she has Royal

[01:19:07] Connexions, maybe, you know, but you know more about it than

[01:19:09] I do. But yeah, I think she seems like a normal person.

[01:19:12] Yeah, yeah. Well, she’s coming from a very rich family. So obviously the royal family, it’s better.

[01:19:19] But you know, she was used to do the good stuff.

[01:19:23] But what I always fantasise about is not like dinner or talk. It’s just I don’t even want to do to have conversation, but to be a fly on the wall like when something important happens to see.

[01:19:35] Even because I’m going, I’m going on a podcast, coming up and reactants podcast. I’m the guest. And he’s already told me that one of his questions, his final question is Where do you want to be a fly on the wall? During which? Which situation? Yes, I was thinking, You know, Cuban Missile Crisis. You know that the guy who was ordered to shoot to kill JFK, you know that guy, that moment,

[01:19:58] You haven’t worked

[01:19:59] It out yet. That sounds like boyish stuff.

[01:20:01] I would be like, it’s like. Of course.

[01:20:04] I mean, I would like to be more like, you know, like a little dramatic situations, you know, like at the palace or when something really exciting happens

[01:20:13] Like,

[01:20:14] You know, Harry’s wife, Markle. What’s or something?

[01:20:17] Meghan Markle? No, I’m not interested.

[01:20:20] No, no. When there was that little argument between Kate and Meghan, that’s the last one.

[01:20:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:20:26] So that kind of things I would like or, you know, it was always fascinating about even dentists. I’m I’m following a dentist in Boston.

[01:20:36] He’s very good,

[01:20:37] And I always look at her and I, you know, she’s with this Instagram and stuff. Everybody has a lot of stories where they share a lot of things. Oh my gosh, I’m like, I’m I’m drooling over those stories because it’s fantastic

[01:20:49] To to

[01:20:50] Be able to be there. And during COVID, even in here in UK, I had so much access to see what other people do and even people like you, you know, that had so many experiences chose to open up those doors. You know, it’s like, I don’t know, very exclusive

[01:21:08] Clubs where you don’t

[01:21:09] Get in, you don’t get it. And that’s it, you know, so being able to get, you know, get into it. Yes, I would like to.

[01:21:18] Definitely I’m not letting you off with that. You need to continue and give me two more.

[01:21:22] Two more people. Yeah. Wow.

[01:21:26] Hmm.

[01:21:28] So, Kate Middleton.

[01:21:32] Was Ceausescu’s wife called she used to?

[01:21:35] Yeah. No, you I don’t even know, but no, I mean, are you taking anything before your time? Maybe I would manage co-manage.

[01:21:50] Nadia Comaneci

[01:21:51] Yeah.

[01:21:52] Know before you type, I would get all these people before your time. But.

[01:21:58] Maybe I would go with like I would like to meet and have dinner with Celine Dion. Oh, I think, yeah, I think she was one of the artists that I was. Oh, Celine Dion, you know, I would get a bit nervous if I would

[01:22:11] If she was her. Yeah, yes.

[01:22:13] Exactly what a policy Kate Middleton, Celine

[01:22:16] Dion and I definitely need to choose a man, so we balance it out with balancing out.

[01:22:21] Well, it can be one of those sex and the city like girly parties, you know, it doesn’t have to be a man.

[01:22:26] Oh, the Parker. I never watched sex in the City

[01:22:29] And it’s like, you know, for women, whatever.

[01:22:31] Oh, I know who I want to meet and I want, you know what? I don’t want to meet Celine Dion.

[01:22:39] I changed my mind. Well, you can have me.

[01:22:41] Oh, good. I want to meet and to have a conversation with Jerry Seinfeld. I am upset a bit with Jerry Seinfeld. Did you watch the sitcom?

[01:22:52] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness.

[01:22:55] Like when me and my husband and we have a conversation like about kids, it’s always lines from Jerry Seinfeld. We can have a full day conversation only using lines in Jerry. It’s amazing. So I love that show. I would, because he’s fantastic. I think he’s very smart. He’s a very good businessman, is an extraordinary businessman. He did coffee. Comedians in cars getting coffee. Did you watch that on Netflix? No, you should. I mean, when I used to

[01:23:24] Watch kerb your enthusiasm a lot and that had something to do with Seinfeld.

[01:23:28] I didn’t watch that. Wash it.

[01:23:30] What’s it? You like it? Ok? Or maybe you. Or maybe you were. But what’s the coffee? One celebrity is having a coffee.

[01:23:37] Comedians in cars, getting coffees. Getting coffee with Jerry Seinfeld. So he chews. He choose a lot of celebrities. He they he chooses a car based on what I think their personality is, and they go and have coffee. And it’s hilarious. I mean, it’s just jokes and sarcasm and stuff, which is fantastic. So that’s it, I.

[01:24:00] Well, the good news is you can have all three because it’s three guests.

[01:24:03] Yeah, OK. But just in case someone pulls out, I’m fine. If Jerry Seinfeld

[01:24:08] Comes,

[01:24:10] We finally found your idol.

[01:24:13] Yeah, yeah.

[01:24:14] I wouldn’t say an idol, but definitely something I look I would like to meet. I don’t know if I would be able to have a conversation with him.

[01:24:23] I know you’ll be fine. You’d be fine. I could see

[01:24:25] Very

[01:24:26] Smart and he knows so many things and he’s has so much money. Oh my gosh, he’s so I think he’s the richest comedian ever.

[01:24:33] Well, you picked three very, very, very rich people.

[01:24:36] So that’s Google. Yeah.

[01:24:39] So if by any time you know in your life, if you ever get to meet Jerry Seinfeld, say hi.

[01:24:47] I mean, I’m sure you

[01:24:51] Have better chances than me. You know, funny story. When I did my shadowing in Harley Street and this dentist I worked for, she used to see Jo Martindale, which is like a it’s like a D.J.. It’s called like when you do this music for crowds and they just dance like for many, many hours on the same tune or something. And he wasn’t famous. I don’t know if he’s famous here, but on his Facebook, like he’s exploding and stuff. And I said, Listen, Joe, please, like whenever you become famous, you know, because I was, it was asking people coming on Harley Street in my naivete and people that were having conversations with me like how

[01:25:30] Famous I feel.

[01:25:31] And he was like, No, I’m not famous yet, but listen, I’m doing this music and I’m going to sonic stage and stuff in the US. And I have like a tourist. Whenever you become famous, please remember me because I was here when you had your treatment done and stuff, and I was like sucking your saliva out and stuff. And later on, he became famous. Know, sometimes occasionally I have patients that they work with, like a little bit of people, high end people, you know, and say, Listen, you might get famous because I had people that got famous before,

[01:26:02] So it remembered me, you know? Yeah, they never do. But you know, it’s funny. Yeah, he’s very funny.

[01:26:08] It’s like when when my friends are looking like their companies are about to be sold, you know, I mean, I remember me,

[01:26:17] So I’m happy. I’m not the only one.

[01:26:20] It’s not because they want their money. Just to make sure you remember me. I had something to

[01:26:24] Do with you eventually. You know, I want to

[01:26:26] Be I want to be at that party, that first party after they’ve sold their companies. I want to be.

[01:26:32] Absolutely, absolutely.

[01:26:34] But it’s been absolutely lovely having you and

[01:26:37] Thank you for having

[01:26:38] Me. Something different, actually, because normally we’re talking to dentists about their careers and how they’re going to make their careers better and all that. But I would say we’ve done, I don’t know. I think we’re on 112 episodes. I talked to a few dentists now,

[01:26:52] Maybe

[01:26:52] The one that I would say is the best. Then the one. The one, the one who. I would like to be a dentist more than anyone else. Honestly, I mean it. I mean, I’ve been interviewing something that the top dentist in the world, but it’s really beautiful, really refreshing to hear it from you the way that you said it. So thank you for taking the time and

[01:27:13] Thank you so much.

[01:27:16] 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.

[01:27:32] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] Now, a lot of what I do in all of my drive is, is because, you know what my parents have gone through to get rid of today. I can never match up to that, no matter how good of a dentist I become or how much I achieve in my life, nothing’s going to be harder than what they’ve gone through. What previous immigrants and refugees have gone through when you go to war, seeing people get killed or all of that horrific kind of moments and took your life, it’s when you’ve gone through that and you come into a new country and given a second chance, you embrace it and do the best you can do to be the best you can be. So although these people at the moment right now, some may have education, some may not. I’m so sure that the ones without education when they come here, they’re not going to be sitting on their homes watching TV or anything like that. They’re going to be working as hard as they can because they know they’ve been given a second chance in life and they’re going to work as hard as they can to to be able to provide and give back to the country they’re in and also to provide a better life for them in their families.

[00:00:55] 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.

[00:01:12] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Janet Dental onto the podcast. Jan has been on my radar for a while. One of these guys who’s got the sort of burning ambition to make a difference in the world is the way I see it. This young dentist who’s already achieved so much content creator. I’m pretty jealous about some of the people you’ve interviewed, actually, but people, people who didn’t respond to

[00:01:38] Me

[00:01:40] On your show. Award winning young dentist of the Year London marketing expert will get into that digital marketing done a lot in your in your young life. Jenna. Lovely to have you, Payman.

[00:01:54] Thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of you, your work and your podcast and truly humbled to be here with you.

[00:02:00] Cool. Jenna, you had a very unconventional childhood. We were talking about it before. Tell us about, you know, your early life and how you ended up as a dentist.

[00:02:12] Sure. So my early life, I probably have to start with saying that I was born here in London, UK, but my parents, they actually come from a little island off the northern coast of Sri Lanka. It’s a long story to to get to where I am today, but their journey is much more interesting than mine. They both come from different socioeconomic classes. My my mum was actually born in a mud hut and raised in a very big family. It’s kind of like one of those movies you see where you see these villages and tribal people. When I went back to Sri Lanka and she showed me, it was pretty much just like that. So my mum was born there. My dad was born in a slightly wealthier family, actually. His dad had grocery shops in the mainland of Sri Lanka. And when my dad’s dad had my dad being the oldest of the sons of the family, his job was to look after the shops and he was doing very well and he was living life enjoying it over there. Unfortunately, however, in the early nineteen eighties there was a civil war in Sri Lanka, and when the war happened, the Sinhalese mobs and governments they attacked, burnt down and killed Tamils and Tamil Tamil owned businesses in the process. So everything my dad’s dad and my dad had was actually burnt down to the ground. He lost everything. Thankfully, thankfully, he wasn’t hurt, but a lot of other Tamil people were killed. But the situation of my dad was he was left with nothing. Didn’t have any education because he dropped out of school to look after the shops. So when both my mum and dad were caught up in the Civil War on CROSSFIRE, it wasn’t safe, and they both seek asylum to move outside of Sri Lanka and both ended up in London.

[00:03:45] How was the story of how did they actually get to London?

[00:03:48] That was a very long story, you know? My dad was like, Don’t tell people how I did it because I didn’t think was most to do so. But my dad had to come to to France and then from France to London like he was, he was homeless in France. He was sleeping in temples. My mother went through with her family. It was all you know, in the eighties, they all you can ask any refugee from the 80s, there was a very long kind of process to do so. But you know, thankfully both of them ended up in London. They both met here, and that’s when they started their journey. They didn’t know the culture, they didn’t know the language, but they both, you know, worked hard to get to where they are now.

[00:04:25] China, in the era of Boris Johnson and Trump and all that, it’s fashionable to sort of knock refugees a lot. But when you when you see pictures of of people on boats trying to come over the channel and all that. Yeah. Well, how does that resonate with you? And you feel like your experience gives you a different outlook? You know, I mean, today, today it seems like it seems like, of course, there are economic migrants. And for me, whether you’re running for your life or whether you’re running to make a better. The life for your kids shouldn’t be such a big distinction. Of course not. How do how do you feel about it when you see these pictures now?

[00:05:07] I completely agree, as in, you know, my my whole family, my two brothers, a younger brother, works at an Afghan resettlement scheme where he’s dealing with, you know, people like you said, from boats and stuff coming into the country, trying to help them out, trying to provide them shelter and care and stuff, and something that’s very close to our hearts because our parents have gone through it ourselves. And I think it’s a bit of a shame when you do have people like like Trump or Boris in power who can stop people who are fleeing a war that are fleeing a war where they’re fleeing to provide a better life for their family. Why wouldn’t you if you’ve got the resources there to be able to help them, why wouldn’t you do so? You know, and a lot of people complain, saying there’s not enough space, there’s not enough resources. But you know, at the end of the day to make someone live as just a normal life providing, you know, just basic shelter and food. Of course, there’s space for that. You know, I don’t I don’t think there’s there’s an argument there at all.

[00:06:00] And you know, look, we’re going to get to you what you’ve achieved through this podcast. But you know, you can you can look at a human being coming across the channel as a drain on resources. But then, you know, you can look at them as someone like you who’s who’s now contributing so much to society. You know, I can see, you know, your burning ambition that you’ve got. Do you feel like that’s where it comes from? It comes from that sort of almost like repaying your parents, are they?

[00:06:34] Oh, of course, I’ll get to that later on. But you know, a lot of what I do and what my drive is is because, you know what my parents have gone through to get to where they are today is is going to be completely. I can never match up to that. No matter how good of a dentist I become and how much I achieve my life, nothing’s going to be harder than what they’ve gone through. What previously are immigrants and refugees have gone through. When you go to war, seeing people get killed or all of that horrific kind of, you know, moments into your life, it’s when you’ve gone through that and you come into a new country and you’re given a second chance, you embrace it and do the best you can do to be the best you can be. So although these people at the moment right now, some may have education, some may not. I’m so sure that the ones without education when they come here, they’re not going to be sitting on their homes watching TV or anything like that. They’re going to be working as hard as they can because they know they’ve been given a second chance in life and they’re going to work as hard as they can to to be able to provide and give back to the country they’re in and also to provide a better life for them and their family.

[00:07:30] Yeah, for sure. And you know, it’s not only people running away from war, right? I mean, we’ve we’ve got a bunch of, you know, people, people from the European community working in Enlightened and you know, these these people for the same pay as we’re giving someone might come at school. Leaver might turn up who is here, someone who didn’t even finish school. I’ve got someone who’s got a master’s degree from Romania or from Lithuania or whatever, and that the basic point of someone who’s got get up and go to go leave everything like you said, your dad, that a number of shops and the successful life to leave everything and go to the other side of the world is a person who’s going to contribute once they get there. Of course, what’s what’s your dad up to now?

[00:08:22] Well, both my parents, from the moment they’ve got here, they’ve always been kind of just working these odd jobs. My dad’s been a postman Royal Mail for about 20 years, and my mom works in the supermarket as a cashier. So day in, day out. They both work extremely hard their day, even though they had their retirement age. They don’t want to stop.

[00:08:42] So go and tell me about your childhood so you could at school?

[00:08:46] Or what was your story? Yeah, as in some of my parents came here, they met and married and we lived in Wembley, Albert and North West London. We lived in a house that was full of people. It was a three bedroom house. One of the rooms was by another family. We had the downstairs room and it was another room where about seven refugee men were sleeping on the same bed. The house was always packed or was full of people, and it was me and my older brother and my parents. At the time, we all slept in one room and one bed as well. And at the time, you know, it was, it was. I loved it because the more the merrier. I always thought, and you know, I always had good moments. We didn’t. We want we want to be a wealthy family or anything like that. We we didn’t come from much, but I had an amazing childhood thanks to my parents. They worked really hard to be able to provide what they could. My older brother was always very academic. He’s a doctor. I studied in King’s College London. A journalist, a humanitarian, does amazing work. So to live up in his footsteps was was quite hard for me. At school, I was doing OK. I always wanted to do dentistry. When I first applied, I got my offers from Queen Mary’s and Manchester. However, I was very, very much into my little bubble in London there. Growing up with all of my friends and stuff, I really wanted to stay in London and all I got was a. A B from creameries, Mary’s and AB from Manchester and end up getting AC, so Manchester still accepted me, but because I was just one grade or three Mary’s, I thought to myself, No, no, no, I don’t need to break out this London bubble.

[00:10:12] I can reapply. I can get the three A’s and go back into Queen Mary’s. I carried on doing my arse day and I ended up getting three days in a bee. Queen Mary still said No. There were no. I said, Well, it’s just wasn’t it? So unfortunately, I took a gap here do a B or C and drop my B or C. When I was living in London, I was very impressionable with people who who had had the, you know, the money, the success, that life at such a young age. And it wasn’t always the most legitimate things they were doing. And I was so impressed by, you know, how much, you know, one day someone could acquire a young age. So when I started to hang around with them, I got pretty much into the wrong crowd and my parents were like, You know what? Your this is not going to happen here because we just had my younger brother and younger sister as well. And to be a role model for them, my parents were like, No, you’re not going to be living here anymore. And they actually went to go, send me to go live my auntie. And when I went to go live with my auntie, you had to go, wake up, call there. I’ve been given a second chance and she really took me in, took care of me, gave me a strict timetable when I worked really hard after it, I see my options are very limited as well. I decided that I had an offer from Valencia, Spain, and that’s when I went to go study dentistry.

[00:11:23] There I studied in Valencia.

[00:11:25] Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:28] Amazing. Amazing. Coming across quite a lot of people is telling us it was. So do you learnt Spanish as well?

[00:11:33] Yes. Yes, the course was the first year was in English and then after it just progressed onto just studying in Spanish. So my final exams or essay questions of Spanish lectures in Spanish. So it was it was very nice to be able to learn a second language, but very difficult to to learn that second language and to learn dentistry in a second language as well.

[00:11:51] Were you there the same time as the twins from Yorkshire Dental?

[00:11:54] Yes, they were my class. Yeah, both of them.

[00:11:57] Yeah, I’m going to have them on at one point. Were they? Were they busy doing Instagram from college? They were telling me,

[00:12:05] Yeah, as in, I think I actually at the time, I had a clothing brand that I started in my while I was doing my university there, so I knew how to work with Instagram and social media influencers. So I worked with them and I was like, You know, it will be amazing if we could use this element of social media influences into the Dental world. And they started doing it with influencers providing them free teeth, whitening this and that to be able to, you know, post about the page and about the clinic. And, you know, their dad was an incredible surgeon set up, you know, did a really good job with it. And yeah, really, really good guy. And you know, he’s been able to to provide them with a huge, great platform and opportunity to to be there are today.

[00:12:45] Tell me about the clothing brand.

[00:12:47] Yes. So when I was in university in London, I studied biology with psychology and the PSC here in London. I used to work in a clothing store called Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch. And a lot of people in that store were all kind of like even models or into fashion and stuff. So when I started, you know, networking with them, I learnt a lot about fashion in London. There are much bigger brands like Trap star Michael Spinelli. They’re quite unique, kind of these street urban wear and the kind of learning the process of it and learnt how to set up myself with one of my friends who’s been very successful with his own clothing brands. So we set up a company in Valencia. We launched events as well. So we had like, you know, different nights out and we’ve done really well the first couple of years. We have people from Australia and New Zealand, America, big names Chris Brown with all of our stuff and promote it and stuff. So it was really, really good. But it’s very hard to run. It’s it’s it’s been where we have kind of waves, where it peaks, then it goes down like fashion, you know, there’s always ins and outs. And I realised that the margins from the money I was making, I’ve probably made a better living. If I just focus entirely on dentistry,

[00:13:56] One degree, that takes a lot of confidence to do that, right? Yeah. If it was me and I was in Valencia, that now we’re talking like in a way, I know you were born in the UK, but we’re talking like third country from Sri Lanka. I put my head down study what I probably wouldn’t even study. I’d go out, have a good time or whatever, but there you are, making a fashion brand while you’re at it.

[00:14:23] Yeah, as in, I was in a very different place too to pretty much most students in Valencia, Spain. Like, you know, you spoke with the twins earlier and spoke of a lot of people in my class. They come from wealthy families, they come from dental clinics or dentist and stuff. Both my parents are refugees who work in minimum wage jobs. So what are you

[00:14:41] Trying to pay your way through? Was that what you were trying to do?

[00:14:43] Of course. Of course. Hollister transferred me over to one of the stores there. I worked in residency. I went to nightlies. I had to be able to pay for my education at the same time and studying so most. When I finished university, I went straight to work and after work from the restaurant I worked in. That nights is run in different bars and stuff, so I always had to be extra and effort, and I had to because I realised how much my parents were sacrificing to be able to send me there because I didn’t have the money. Something I really pursue my dad with. I was like, Dad, look, this is something I really want to do. I promise you that if you send me, I will graduate or become a great dentist. This is something I can’t let go of. And it was really hard for him because he we have a younger brother and younger sister as well, and he doesn’t have the finances at all to support everyone. So for him to take that stake, to be able to remortgage the house that he finally purchased after a very long time to use all that money to send me there, I wasn’t just going to stay there, just study and show, you know, I had to study and work as hard as I could to be able to help pay for my tuition fees and my living costs. Now the reason why I’m doing so much is because I really want to give back to my parents and to my family for everything they done for me.

[00:15:53] An amazing, amazing story. It reminds me a bit of that sort of Gary Vee narrative of the incredible advantage of being an immigrant.

[00:16:01] Yes. You know,

[00:16:03] Of course it’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? You imagine? I don’t know. I’m trying to build a life for my kids of stability and good schools and all of that. But I already noticed, you know, that the burning ambition piece that you seem to have. My kids haven’t yet got that. Yeah. Now let’s say, let’s hope. Fingers crossed they get it in a different way or they learn a lesson or whatever it is. But what a beautiful, beautiful story. I’m interested in one other question. Jenna, when you were hanging out with those, what were they drug dealers or whatever they were? There’s unsavoury? Yeah, of course. It’s clear that the downside of that, yeah, but was that sort of, you know, seeing what it’s like to have money and all is that? Is that something that’s helped you as well seeing what that life was about?

[00:16:54] Of course, as in, you know, this is when I was a teenager, so I was very influenced and be able to see the luxuries they had to be able to wear nice clothes, go to restaurants, be able to provide for their families in the ways that they did. It’s something I wasn’t. I’m never I don’t live in fancy means at all. I don’t ever wear any fancy clothes or anything like that. But to be able to be financially secure, something that my family never had and you know, with respect to my parents because they provided so much love, time and affection to me. And you’ll see wealthy families where parents have the most money in the world, but they don’t necessarily have the same amount of time and love and affection from their parents. So although people could say that I was disadvantaged in some ways, I don’t ever see myself as that. I see myself from, you know, my parents did the best that they could provide for me and did everything they could for me. But when I saw that financial side to me, I was really intrigued. And I really wanted to be able to have that. Not for myself, but for my parents.

[00:17:54] Hmm. Well, you know, in life we chase things, don’t we? Yeah. And that piece, you just said you need the self-awareness to sort of understand that things aren’t going to make you happy, you know, security? Yeah. You know that notion of security?

[00:18:12] Definitely.

[00:18:12] You know, if you if you if the ground under you is constantly shaking, you want it to stop shaking you.

[00:18:20] You know,

[00:18:21] I do get that. But a lot of times we chase things. And once you get a few things, you realise God, things don’t make you happy at all. Experiences, memories, you know, that sort of thing. I still buy into that a little bit since. So where did you study? Where did you say, which year did you qualify from Valencia

[00:18:41] Qualified in 2019?

[00:18:44] I mean, so then tell me about your first actual was it Viti or how did it work? Yes.

[00:18:48] For my later. So, yeah, yeah. As in, we were still eligible to apply for the foundation scheme there, and it’s just to set up over here. So in it, I did my S.A.T. and my interview and stuff. And frankly, in Spain, I scored the highest ranking from there, so I was able to get my first choice in Essex. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, when COVID hit in March 2020, a lot of Dental practises had to close. So, you know, I was halfway through my year where I kind of had to stop practising and start telephone triaging, which was useful, gave me a lot of good skills, but I really, really wanted the hands-on element from it. So from then, I kind of took a bit of a break, worked on my Dental marketing company that I set up in university as well. I worked on that for six months, and eventually I had a good relationship with some people in the NHS that were able to give me another year in a UDC site in Nottingham. And that was very intense. But it really skilled me up to a point where I learnt so much in that year more than the whole five years. And Dental school.

[00:19:57] Yeah, you need that. You need that. So, but so the digital skills came firstly from the clothing brand and the events in Valencia. And then you started, did you start going, you know, approaching dentists saying, I can help you with digital marketing?

[00:20:12] Yeah, as in. No, that didn’t really happen. I think at the start, while I was doing my clothing brand, I also had a bit of a personal page as well where it kind of posed some fashion stuff and things from there. And people just saw that I was good with social media. They saw like that I was implementing like, you know, all of these things, giveaways, flies and stuff. My clothing brands and I had Dental friends, so I helped them with their dental practises. They did really well. And then for me, I just kind of had an idea, you know, I can branch out and work with different Dental training facilities. We work with Dental training consultants Shobana Anand. She’s good friends with one of the co-founders of my Dental marketing company. Then we worked to have. We were talking about more than about 20 plus different Dental groups like clinics, training facilities and individual Dental say in the UK. And it just kind of grew from there. So it was started in Dental school, but it really kind of took off in that year when COVID hit.

[00:21:11] Wow. So recent all of this to me, it’s a testament to your, you know, influence here that I feel like you’ve been around a while, but it’s actually so recent. It’s just the first pandemic. So, all right, so you did the bit of vet the UDC job? Mm hmm.

[00:21:30] Then what? Yeah. And then after that, after my UDC? Yeah. Well, during the weekends of my UDC, I started working in a private practise in Harrow. Here, I kind of just started to hone on a little bit into more of an industry that I wanted to do, which was, you know, dentistry that every young dentist wants to do these days, which is, you know, the whole composite bonding porcelain veneers and Breslin’s and whitening stuff. But it also kind of opened my eyes to different needs in a different sector, which was the private sector and the NHS sector. So it kind of made me think about what else I could do. And another thing that was also doing in Dental school was the use of AI in dental diagnosis. So one day in Dental school, in clinics, I had a treatment plan for one of my patients that I wanted to get an opinion from one of the professors teaching me. So I showed him the radiographs and told him about my treatment plan, and he looked at the ready world and he was like, You know what? I think you should do this instead and gave me a different diagnosis with a different treatment plan. The next day, I reconfirmed it with another person who gave me a different diagnosis plan.

[00:22:38] And finally, I realised that the diagnosis of radiographs and dentistry, they are subjective and they can always change based on the person who’s reading them or, you know, based on, you know, the level of the experience with the clinician or whatnot. So my cousin set up a company which was medical diagnosis using AI algorithms, and it was one of the first people in the world to do it. And I told him, You know what, as dentists, we take more radiographs than anyone. So with that, I kind of set out to build up my own algorithm using Dental radiographs. And now I built something where once you put a radiograph into the system, it will highlight all abnormalities to you. And now I’m working with a company up in Manchester Dental School for Manchester Imaging Ltd, and I’ve just been appointed their clinical director. And in the team, we also have someone called Ben Atkins, which I’m sure you know, yeah, he’s in a clinical team as well. And you know, it’s just we’ve just kind of joined the team and I think this year you’ll be hearing about it very soon as well.

[00:23:36] So look, the idea of machine learning on radiography, on radiology. You know, it’s actually it was one of the first applications of of IBM Watson, wasn’t it? The fact that the reason I know this is my brother is a radiologist and he’s he’s been talking about, Oh, well, computers are going to take over. We’re going to lose our jobs for the last three or four years. He’s been talking about that, but you can’t be the first ones doing that, but we’ll get onto the competitive nature of business later. How does it work? Do you do you want you want to teach this machine different diagnoses? Is it literally a case of putting in loads of images? What dentists thought about those images is that it?

[00:24:24] Well, what we have to do, first of all, is we have to have a large collection of of a database of different radiographs, highlighting different realities. So let’s take the Class one cases, for example, what we need about 20000 images of a class one carries, you know, from 20 to 20000, the more the better, I’d always say. And then we need to have expert annotated. So we’ve got professors from all over the world who Dental maxillofacial, all surgeons who diagnose red equals, and they’ve been doing so for decades, right? So once they’re at the highest level, we had about six of them go all the way across and annotate exactly what’s wrong with the graph and

[00:25:01] Finally get the radiographs from,

[00:25:03] Well, we got it. They got it from Manchester Dental School. I got it from where I was in Valencia, a network of dentists. You know you’ve had them on here, small clinic group, kitchen gin. So, you know, we’ve had a lot of cross and a lot of different places. Feed it all in. Have these expert annotators labels one and then put a machine to then start learning exactly what is what? And then it’s a long process. It took about a year to really develop something really solid. I’ve been working on it for so long, but then after every time it’s annotated, you can then see when you put a radiograph in, it highlights what you what is a class one carries. And it’s not to replace dentists or not to replace radiologists, but more to act as a second opinion as a safety net. Because sometimes when you’re seeing X amount of patients per day, you might look at a radiograph and miss something right. And when you do miss something maybe like in a UK. Get in trouble later on. The patient might be unhappy later on that didn’t pick it up and improves the diagnosis and treatment planning, and it builds more trust to the patient as well because they can exactly see where the algorithm is highlighted. Areas of abnormality. So it’s not just you saying, Hey, hey, I need to do five fillings. There is no actually, you have a look at this. This highlights ray abnormalities. You need to have five fillings, right? So it’s good in so many senses. But my favourite one is just building trust with patients and patients understanding their treatment needs better.

[00:26:23] Sure, sure. But tell me about some of the speed bumps along the way. I mean, there’s. Does it get it wrong and or did it get it wrong? And you had to change the algorithm or.

[00:26:33] Yeah, well, there’s been many speed bumps along the way. One of them was the NHS Health and Care AI Awards. That was something I submitted my work into. So with it, I did it alongside my cousin’s company who do lung X-rays and CT X-rays as well for the brain. So we all kind of worked on it all together and they had the application and have applications. Exact same principles. Pretty much the same kind of methods of using it. Everything was pretty much the same, but when we submitted it, they all got the grant and I didn’t and I worked on it for months. I spent so many nights just, you know, going over it and really put my passion into it. And I said, How are they getting it? And I’m not getting it. This is in my head revolutionary. This is going to help and change. It was going to help with the NHS backlog because we can prioritise which patients from based on existing radio whilst we have which patients need to be seen that haven’t done treatment on reduced the NHS backlog, improve patient care. So many things. And that’s when I realised, you know what, a lot of people, including the NHS with the long term plan, they don’t see all health as important as systemic health, even though it has been many studies that provide the link between the two, right? And that is a speed bump that I’m still working on today, and it’s been many dentists around the world that have, you know, put a lot of research into the topic. Dr Maguire Stanley, for example, there’s a lot of work between linking oral health and systemic health. Does another doctor called Dr Dohme in Germany? And the more and more I’m kind of looking at reading networking with these guys to really try and bring out that link into dentistry because I’m hoping more and more people will see it. And when they do, I’m hoping the NHS will end up giving me a grant one day.

[00:28:15] Hmm. Yeah. Don’t hold your breath, man. Tell me about the sort of So what is the corporate structure? I mean, are you working under your cousins now or have you set up a new

[00:28:29] Company and these guys are they want a whole different, whole different league to what I am now. They met really, you know, Boris and Rishi and stuff, and they they’ve done great work across the UK. They’re all in all the hospitals in India, America and stuff as well. And they really want to focus in on the what the work they are doing right now. So I decided to take it as a solo project. I was I got a call. You guys do that. I want to do this by myself. I then had a clubhouse. I think as Clubhouse is it the the application we speak? I think it was Robbie and Millard hosting it with Ben Atkin’s on Dental technology, and I so I joined the call and I started speaking with them as the first time I actually spoke with Ben. And Ben was like, You know, he’s heard about this Dental diagnosis using AI. And I said, Well, I’ve got a lot of experience with it. Let’s catch up. I had a call. He introduced me to these guys in Manchester University. There was a professor called Professor Hugh Devlin, who’s an international known dentist in Dental research in a lot of books and other research papers. And he had developed something similar to why I had. So when I spoke to the CEO and the team over there, we decided to collaborate, join forces and really are going to be able to provide something for UK dentists that were great. And at the time, Hugh Devlin was about to retire. He was right of clinical director. I was able to step in, spoke with these guys, got Ben Atkins on board and now hopefully the CEO Payman. I’m going to ask you to try it and tell me what your thoughts are on it.

[00:29:55] Amazing. So how far, how, how far away are we from a product ready to buy?

[00:29:59] So we have a product at the moment right now. Right now, we focussed on inter and animal only caries, which are probably one of the most difficult things to spot in a radiograph. But it’s like, you know, one of the things we put out right now and right now, we’re kind of marketing it as prevent preventable profit. So, you know, dentists who are looking at it can pick up on it and take their patients, Hey, listen, you’ve got early. And now more and more care is here. You need to go see your hygienist and use for toothpaste. Here’s kind of the work you need to do on it. We’re also developing things that we can pick up from calculus, bone loss, different stages of of of caries and all kind of abnormalities that would hopefully be ready by the later part of this year.

[00:30:37] And physically, how does it work? How how do you put it into your software that, you know, is that simple thing to do?

[00:30:43] Yeah. So right now, it’s a standalone desktop application, so you install it, you have it running there onto your desktop and what you do is once you’ve taken the ready. At the moment right now, we haven’t had an integration to the specific software you’re using. We’re hoping to get that along the way as well. But as soon as you take your radiograph, you can run it through the desktop app and in about five seconds, it will highlight all abnormalities for you so you can have a look with or without your patient to be able to see what treatment needs to be done here. And then you can relay that back onto your patient and then formulate a treatment plan accordingly.

[00:31:15] Have you raised any money?

[00:31:17] Yes, we raised about two million so far. So it’s going well, not as well as the big boys in the US, but where we’re hoping to raise more.

[00:31:26] So how long do you reckon your runway is? With that, I mean, how long are you going to be able to keep going?

[00:31:32] Well, we look to that. We’re aiming to get around five hundred Dental clinics by the end of the year using our software. And I think that’s a really kind of realistic target that we’re hoping to be able to achieve. You know, we’ve got a lot going on this year. We’re in talks with Health Education England. We want to speak to Dental schools to be able to get them training the Dental students with it. We’ve developed something called the Gap Tool, which is a general assessment portal to where when I give, I give you six radiographs and you’re meant to diagnose them individually by yourself. And then I want to give you six radiographs with the algorithm called Assistant, and it highlights all areas of abnormalities in the sexuality class. And at the end, you see a result of what you achieved by yourself. And then what you achieved using what we call assistant. And in it, we always see a huge number of increase detections using Assistant. And when he’s looking at the second time, you’re like, Oh, wow, can’t believe I missed that. I can’t believe I missed that. And we’re using it to train foundation dentist from the start of the year, we’re going to see how good their diagnosis skills are. And then we’re going to see which ones need more work. We provide them more training with and then more and more at the end of the year when they finish the training. Hopefully, they can go out to the real world and be able to diagnose and treatment plan accordingly.

[00:32:40] Doing a lot, man, a lot. How did you raise the two million?

[00:32:44] So this was this was Tony Travers and Craig Gardner. So these guys have decades of experience in business, finance, research and stuff. So there’s loads of venture capitalists and programmes set up to help UK based companies to be able to grow from there. So I’ve got to give my thanks to them. These guys have done a great job doing so.

[00:33:05] And so who’s calling the shots? Is it you or is there like a different CEO?

[00:33:08] So are we. I’ll be the clinical lead. So the clinical director, certainly from clinical base, I’ll be calling the shots. We do have someone called Craig Gardner, who is responsible for the commercial success of the business. By being honest with me, we all work as a team, as in Ben Atkins has decades of experience every time I talk to him. You always have challenging conversations. We always disagree like, you know, argue our points across. But at the end of the day, we come to a solution and it’s great to be able to walk in and sit into a room where everyone around me has decades of experience on what they do, right? So I always have to bring my A-game when I’m walking into today because I only graduated in 2019, but they don’t ever see me like that. They always see me as someone who’s got a wealth of experience in what I do. And so with it, I just make sure that I bring my A-game done, my research done, my studying know what I’m talking about, research all of the competitors and know what’s good. So it’s collective team that I ended today calling the shots.

[00:34:03] I’d get a CEO.

[00:34:05] The Yeah, we do have Tony Travers

[00:34:08] Used to get me.

[00:34:11] The thing about collective team calling the shots is, you know, it’s all well and good, but you need one guy. Yeah, that’s cool. By the way, in my company, it’s not me, you know? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:34:23] So how does your work?

[00:34:25] My partner, Sanjay is the CEO.

[00:34:28] Ok, OK.

[00:34:29] Yeah, no, no, I’m not. I’m not the right person,

[00:34:33] But

[00:34:34] I don’t know. Maybe one day interesting question about competitors, then. Yes, I mean, I said to you before I get, I get a little newswire thing from from some, some accountants. And they said, Yeah, investor holdings are doing this. And if you’re aware of them, they own everything they are. Buy buyer care and cur, and they’re probably the biggest. Maybe after Invisalign, the second biggest company in all of dentistry, billions and billions and billions that were How are you going to go up against those guys? I mean, look, I’m doing it myself, right? We’ve got we’ve got competitors that many, many, many times our size. Yeah. And my advice to you is you’ve got a niche out here. So with Enlightened, we’ve called we said we’re going to be the world’s best teeth whitening system. And that’s our niche. Yeah, not the cheapest. Not, you know, whatever. Not not the most distributed. Yeah, but you you’re going to have to niche out and maybe what you said, the education angle. Yeah, because it’s the kind of thing that you know, if just for that example, if if if investor comes up with something in two years time which completely nails this and they’ve got billions right, they could they could. They could get a team of hundred people working on it. If they completely nail this and your system doesn’t give the same accuracy, then your system’s got to nail something else. It’s got it’s got to be something, something neat. But you know, it’s super, super impressive, dude. Super impressive. And the speed that you’ve done it in as well.

[00:36:10] Definitely. Yeah, there’s this huge competitor. There’s a lot of people in America. They’re there, they’re a lot more open to this new technology and new advancements in the field, so they get a lot of funding for it. One of the ways that we decided to niche out was definitely through Health Education England, for example, we just had the Oxford chess game kind of trial, a gap tool and. Notice an increased number of findings using Assistant. So we’re just hoping to be able to start them young when they’ve come out of Dental school, familiar eyes themselves with the software as well. We’re also working with other dentists who are trying to get input from UK dentists at the moment. Right now, we’re not trying to conquer the world with this thing where UK company based in the UK is helping with the NHS backlog. Let’s help with our students over here and help with the dentists over here.

[00:36:55] So that’s the most niche right there, right? The NHS. Yes, the nice thing is right there, you can dominate the NHS with this.

[00:37:03] Yes. Yes, definitely. You know where

[00:37:05] The nice niche right

[00:37:06] There? Yeah. So that’s the plan. I’m still, you know, going around the world trying to meet Leaders and the Dental field, get their opinion on it, find out what they’re doing. So I can use that information to be able to put it on here because in the UK for dentistry is great, but we need to look elsewhere as well. How are they doing things in America? How are they doing things in Portugal? I’m going to Cancun to meet some dentists over there after, so I’m always trying to learn from world leaders around the world and try to implement it back into the UK and into my own practise as well.

[00:37:34] But you’ve definitely got a talent as far as collaboration. And you know, why is it that you can get Miguel Stanley on your little live thing and my cap, her and Dr Saleh? And you know, when you contact me, I want to talk to you. You know, you’ve definitely got a talent in that collaboration area. Communication and collaboration with this. Where does that come from?

[00:38:00] I think that comes from a young age. You know, when I was 15, I always had a job. I started working when I was really young in Valencia. I met this person, called his name was Jay-Z. He was responsible for all of the kind of elite events in Spain. And I was working in my retail store then and he met me. I got to know him. And then he started taking me out to all of these private events where we met footballers and all of these really, really cool people and that opened my my kind of communications because he was he taught me so many things, you know, when you were at a party, when you were somewhere, don’t stand with your arms crossed or you stand open, always go out and talk to people, get people’s phone numbers because we want to invite them for events and be able to make a living from it. So I got it. From then from a from an early age, I made friends with this footballer who played for United called Louis nanny. He opened my doors and a lot of senses. He actually asked me to do his veneers for him because I was introduced to him as a dentist when I was getting a dental student, and it would have been a great opportunity. But I was like, No, I’m not. I’m going to sit myself out this one because, you know, you don’t want to mess it up. So I think from where

[00:39:07] You naturally, naturally that way inclined. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever done one of these personality tests. You know, we do it for people who who are applying for a job like 16 personalities. I mean, everyone should, should, should have a look at that 16 personalities dot com. But it was these simple questions like if you go to a room full of people, do you stand at the side which you stand in the middle? Yes. And me, I’m completely the other guy. I’m completely people believe I’m very, very shy.

[00:39:34] Oh, I think you’re very particularly.

[00:39:36] No, I tell you, what do you do when I know someone, I’m too much the other way I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them secrets. I’ll tell them, you know too much. Yeah, yeah, I’ll say inappropriate stuff. But but when it when I’m when I don’t know someone if I haven’t met someone before, I’m very, very, very, very shy. And I find it particularly hard to approach Tom Dick or Harry and say, Hi, I’m Payman. I just can’t do it now. But but it sounds like you’re not that guy at all.

[00:40:05] I don’t know, as I like to think that, you know, obviously I still feel uncomfortable when it’s a new person and I’m trying to like, you know, introduce myself and start a conversation. But because I literally work from Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and even Sunday nights in Valencia and my job was to go out and network and build communications with people. I was

[00:40:22] Just kind of, as your job

[00:40:24] Is here, it’s got to change into me now that I just find it naturally, be able to do it. Mike, I’ve known for a very long time for like 2016. Got to know McGregor’s and Mike Appeler? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:40:34] I’ve got to know I’ve known him since 2007.

[00:40:36] Wow.

[00:40:38] I didn’t reply to my my my message

[00:40:43] As he showed me, he’s the hands.

[00:40:44] You get something out there. But when he first started with Larry,

[00:40:52] I know they’re they’re incredible guys. And I’m just I’m lucky, I guess, because to be able to network with people as you know, you inspiring

[00:40:58] You, you know, it’s important, you know, it’s an important skill that I think people should be good at. I’d love to learn, like if it was teachable. Yeah, I’d love for you to teach me that.

[00:41:07] Yeah, definitely.

[00:41:10] I can get it. I wasn’t born there, you know?

[00:41:14] But but you know, a lot of times what we’re really good at, we take for granted because we just comes naturally. Yeah. So now, you know, unbelievably in the middle of all of this, you also become. Best young Dental in London. I mean, where do you find the time, dude? Are you literally working day or night?

[00:41:38] Look like I said my parents work 11 hours a day, right? Nothing I do is going to be harder than what they do. Ok, so yes. I feel really humbled and lucky to have won these awards and be doing this. But I’ve got I’ve got big shoes to fill and I need to give back, you know, I feel personally that my parents have had a very difficult life. And at that stage of retirement now, and I need to work as hard as I can, not in 10 years, not in five years right now. So my parents are still healthy enough to be able to reap the rewards of what I can provide for them. So winning best young Dental is it was great. I never really showed my cases outside of like a judging panel to have a dentist on Instagram and stuff because I only qualified since 2019 and I’m super critical of my own work. I always look and review all of my cases after and, you know, just really think, how can I get better or what am I doing wrong? The little, little adjustments I can make, you know, I went to Portugal when I shadowed Dr Miguel Stanley, and that was very lucky to do so. He gave me like a private lecture and private seminar, and I showed him my work and he started posting my workout or my my clinical work, and I told him to delete it because I’m still super critical. I don’t think I’m the best dentist in any way. I’m not the most experienced, but I really want to be, and I really want to be able to learn from the best like, you know, you’ve got an amazing course as well for composites, and I really want to go on as many courses as I can learn, as much as I can and become the best dentist I can be.

[00:43:01] But I think do you think it’s possible to become the best dentist in the world and develop this AI system? You know, maybe, maybe it is studio. Maybe it is.

[00:43:12] No, no, no. I have no for me.

[00:43:15] For me, this AI thing, yeah. What it needs is to go into an incubator and have proper business people on it and raise, you know, around a round, be round, see and go and, you know, exit strategy. And you know, you’re far enough in it that if you if you turn around to me tomorrow and said, Listen, I’ve decided not to be a dentist, I hope your parents aren’t listening to you. If you turn out to me tomorrow, say I’ve decided not to be a clinical dentist to pursue this air thing. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t think that’s a bad idea, dude. I don’t think that’s about it because because because let’s say it goes nowhere in two years time. Yeah, OK, go become a dentist.

[00:44:00] Yeah.

[00:44:01] Listen, I’m not giving you that advice. I’m not giving you that advice. You know, everyone’s got to do their own thing. Yeah, but I definitely gave, you know, Bryant, Connor Bryant that advice. Yeah, he he was already the business was already happening and then he started doing his vti, and then he was looking for a job. I asked him, What are you doing, man? You know, the like. His business was on fire already. And I don’t know whether he took my advice or not, but you know, he put 100 percent, 150 percent into Bryant and you can see what’s happened there.

[00:44:36] Of course, I completely understand what you’re saying and what you’re saying is true. When you really want to be the master at something, you do need to keep it one hundred percent attention. For me, though, from such a young age, I’ve always had a passion into creating beautiful smiles working on the industry, and it’s not a job I don’t ever see it as a job. I love going into work. I love taking clinical photography to my step by step, learning and improving every day. It’s my hobby. It’s not really my work. So for me, you just give up the industry and do that. It’s giving up something I enjoy doing. I didn’t go to work ever thinking it’s a day of work. I really enjoy doing just the niche that I’m doing. You know, when we talk about endo or implants, I’m never going to go into it. I’m never going to specialise into it. I know, like, you know, personally, I can tell you, I’m not the greatest. And I don’t think so at all. And I stay away from it and focus into what I am good at. So despite what you’re saying, it’s something I do in my free time. You could just say, I say my, I want to be my job. My dentistry is kind of my passion in my hobby.

[00:45:30] I get it. But the reason I say it is because seeing what you’ve achieved at the same time as being a dentist, yeah, makes me think if you had time, yeah, you could really achieve amazing things. It’s a bit like, do you remember during lockdown? Yet suddenly all this amazing content started appearing. Yeah, yeah. People were interviewing Miguel, and there was all sorts of things coming out and people were. I remember Monarch suddenly had Coachman, you know, come on. And you know, when dentists have time, they can do all sorts of amazing. Then lockdown ended. Everyone started drilling again and the content just died. Completely died. Of course, because because it’s it’s time. It’s time. Yes, I understand what you’re saying. It’s a bit too early. It’s a bit too early to to say give up dentistry. You know where in the industry it is a bit too early. But do you understand what I’m saying to you that the main reason I’m saying it is because you’ve achieved so much while still being a dentist that I’m a bit worried, a bit like, you know, not worried, but excited to see if if Jana had seven days a week with no patients. What would happen to this, to this AI thing, you know, and it will take. But believe me. Yeah, and Mr holding the missal around. Yeah, yeah, let alone your other competitors. Yeah, I’m sure there’s six or eight other very serious competitors.

[00:46:56] Yeah, of course we go big players. We know we’ve got forty million pound companies from the US coming out over here. And, you know, I completely understand the competition we were up against, and it is definitely about finding your niche and just homing on on it. And for us right now is definitely the hub we have here over here in the UK.

[00:47:15] Tell me about winning this award.

[00:47:18] Wow, winning this award. Look, I know a lot of people don’t understand it to be like, you know, it’s just an award for me to get to this stage, to even become a dentist from when you’re looking at me. When I was 19 and hanging out in the streets all day, not having a good education, getting kicked out my family house, going to go live with my auntie, it’s kind of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, kind of, you know me?

[00:47:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:47:43] So to go to that and a lot of people didn’t think I was a dentist and for my dad to go off and we mortgaged the house and send me abroad, a lot of people were like, What are you doing? Are you crazy? You’ve got a younger son and a younger daughter to look after your postmatch. Don’t have the finances to be sending a kid to a private school in Valencia. Have you lost the. Especially this kid, this kids on the streets all day, he doesn’t do anything like, what are you doing with me, right? And my dad did raise those concerns to me, and that’s when when I was at my auntie, so I was laser focussed, you know? I’m not going to do the industry. I’m going to become the best I can be. And I want to really, really do well. And as a Dental student, you see these Dental magazines, you see these Dental awards and had it in me when I was a student, I was like, I want to get there one day, you know? So I didn’t realise I didn’t think to myself, I’m going to achieve it, you know, a couple of years coming out, you know, when you’ve got so many people who have won this award beforehand were amazing dentists who have been in the field for so long. So for me to have won it, it’s it’s something I envisioned and I manifested when I was a student. I’m going to get up there, I’m going to get the stage, I’m going to bring this award to my parents and I want to make them the happiest parents there could be. I was like, I was almost in tears, you know, and I know what people will be like. Beautiful, calm down. Calm down. It’s an award, but it’s not just an award, it’s just what it signifies to to me that I managed to achieve the dream of being a dentist and to win an award like this as well. It means a lot to me.

[00:49:02] It’s beautiful. But tactically, what did you do to win it?

[00:49:07] Tactically, what I did to win it. So of course, clinical content I submitted to my son, my clinical cases, my baseline, my small, my curves.

[00:49:14] Listen, I know nothing about it, except what happens. They say, OK, send some clinical cases. What else do you have to do clinical work?

[00:49:19] Is there some work for what you’ve done to become a dentist? What you do outside of dentistry, what you do for charity work? I was talking about my clothing line earlier before we donate all of our profit to the climate reality change. So we do all of that as well. And just, you know, overall what you are. So funnily enough, Ben Atkin’s I found out after we got him as a team was actually one of the judges for the dentistry judging panel. When I asked him, Ben, why? Why my application? Why did I deserve to win it? Because there were so many great people that fly in this category, and it was because you’re doing something different. Your dentist who came out from Valencia, you’re not doing an ordinary ninety five Dental job as many people do. You’re outside air, you’re building Connexions, you’re doing this, you’re doing that and you’re doing clinical dentistry as well. So I feel as long as you can show that you’re a great dentist, but also outside you doing other things as well, that makes you different from the knees, from the normal and have your own niche. I think that’s what we’ll take you to in it.

[00:50:11] So I take it. This was before you were partners.

[00:50:13] Yeah, yeah. Before, before I.

[00:50:19] Yeah, tell you what we to.

[00:50:23] I won in November and we joined in

[00:50:25] January of the following year. Yeah, yeah.

[00:50:32] Amazing. Ok. It’s interesting, dude, because they get a lot of bad press, don’t they? The awards?

[00:50:38] Yeah, that’s the thing a lot of people look like. This is just, you know, whoever buys the most tickets, whoever does this and whoever does that. I didn’t even buy a ticket, you know, are going by it, by the small clinic group, Jen, in case you won the war before as well. And then great dentists, great training academy, great group of clinics and stuff. They always do bad press and I understand the bad press completely. Even, you know, when we have these top implements of dentistry and stuff like that, I get it all. But for me, it just means something a little bit different, just simply because of where I came from to get to even become a dentist. That’s why I find it really special.

[00:51:09] Yeah, yeah. Know your story sounds great because you know you thought about this when you were a dental student.

[00:51:15] Yeah, not so much that award, but just where it signifies to me in my life to be able to prove people who doubted me wrong before they could never make it to become a dentist and to work as hard to just provide and give back to my family.

[00:51:27] You know, on these things a lot of times sort of trying to get to the sort of the core of, you know, what’s driving someone and how those things happened. And you know, yours, I can see, is a very clear of often have these things and we feel like we didn’t get to it. Whereas whereas with yours, it’s so important for you, it’s like such as such as shining light that you’re following a particular goal of making your parents proud. You know,

[00:51:57] That is number one to me. Look, look awards at the end of the day. As long as your patients are happy and as long as you’re you’re being a good dentist, that’s what matters. You being ethical, your patients are being happy, you’re doing the right job. Awards don’t mean anything.

[00:52:07] I want to have this more happen, dude. If your dad sits, you down, says, Listen, Jana, I’m so, so, so proud of you’ve achieved way more than I thought was possible. I’m proud of you. And would that extinguish you?

[00:52:22] Well, I mean, those words to me is making me emotional as in Oh, it’s so beautiful.

[00:52:28] I say, I tell you where it goes for me. Then it ends up saying, I want to make my kids proud of me. You know, setting an example for them.

[00:52:37] That’s why I’m against people who who don’t come from my background who already had because a lot of people get sick to people who have had their parents that their Dental clinics and they take over the Dental clinics and they look all. They were born into a rich family or they were already dentists and stuff like that. Listen, I’m trying to do the same for my kids, right? I want to become a good dentist and provide them in future as well. There’s nothing wrong at all with your parents being successful in which and you’re blowing into that. You still have to work as hard. Not taking any credit away from them is what I’m trying to provide for my children as well. But my number one priority is always to give back to my parents.

[00:53:09] Yeah, I mean this thing about being born into it. So what

[00:53:14] That’s like, isn’t it

[00:53:17] Exactly that likely

[00:53:19] That? And anyone, anyone who thinks a successful rich people are happy that doesn’t know many successful rich people, you know, like this massive pain and having a super successful father, you know where you’re always having to live up to that, where you’re always compared to that person, even within yourself, within yourself, where you feel I’ve got friends. The father’s got a massive global conglomerate of companies all over the world. I went to school, went to school with the guy. And, you know, he can’t point to any achievement and say it was his own because even by himself, he knows he was put on a pedestal, you know. And you know, life life’s hard in many ways for many people. Of course. Let’s move on to darker days. Yeah, it’s weird asking someone as positive as you, but I do. I do like to in your darkest day in dentistry,

[00:54:18] My darkest day in dentistry. Wow. I think as a student, one of my darker days was when I when I developed this idea and I put it forth to my my teachers and they they laughed at me that I was wasting my time and it’s a joke and no one’s going to find it useful. That was a bit difficult to kind of overcome because when you think you have a great idea and you hear people who teach you dentistry, I tell you it’s no good. That was pretty dark for me, but I kind of just carried on working away on it, on silence.

[00:54:51] So you didn’t lose confidence or you did. You questioned yourself?

[00:54:55] I did question myself, of course, because these guys have been in the industry and teaching dentistry and know dentistry for four decades more than I have. It was very upsetting to see, and a lot of students were laughing at me as well. Stupid ideas, never going to work like he’s wasting his time in dental school. I wasn’t like, you know, I found it hard in dental school because for me, I was always working and I was working with be honest with you. I was working with restaurants and I was working in nightclubs as well, right? And the reason why I was working in nightclubs is because the guy I met knew I was working retail, so he’s going to pay me more to work in nightclubs. And I did it and as a student and not respected if you’re working in nightclubs. So sometimes when you see my professors coming up into the nightclubs and partying and stuff, they’d often see me being a VIP host and they often thinking ahead of that student doing a VIP. Or you must be a spoilt kid from from London and spending all this money is wasted, all of the VIP. And but no, actually, I was working in the club. And I come close to that. So as a student in school, kind of always kind of found it a little bit hard to tackle that angle. But I was a student president for the first few years, was trying to do the most I could for my students and stand out into that crowd as well.

[00:55:58] But I definitely did say once I graduate and came back into the UK, the community here has been great. The platform from seed energy to to UK, of course I work closely with the team and they’ve always been so positive and welcoming and pushing my ideas every time I want to. I want to write an article about I or I want to like, you know, other dentists from their platform because I think one of the things we do in the UK is we have our own community here, right? We have it’s really kind of like home and hub, but we don’t really look outside what’s going over in all of these different countries? What can we bring over from all of these different professors, right? So one of the things I’m talking, working with and with some of Dental academy, let’s be more professors from overseas. Great UK. You guys are all fantastic. You know you’ve got the masters of what’s happening in the UK, but what about this guy from this country, this guy from that country and bring them all in? So trying to work on that, I’d say my darkest days were when I was a dental student, but that came to light once I graduated and stuff started becoming part of the community in the UK.

[00:56:54] What about clinically,

[00:56:56] Clinically, clinically? Yes, so when I graduated, of course, my family were very happy and my parents wanted to have all the treatment they’ve been putting off for the last decade or so because all the way to save their money so I could do anything for them. I think my mum came into the clinic and I had to. Yeah, a lot of work to deal with her from from the background she comes from, which clearly wasn’t taught how to brush their teeth. So I need a lot of work with her and I’ve been one of her three molars. I thought would have been a simple end, though, and I ended up just doing the treatment on the trip, ended up pursuing the tooth.

[00:57:39] And it’s my own mum, my own mum.

[00:57:42] Yes, mum’s promoter. And from it, I.

[00:57:48] What’s happening? Okay.

[00:57:52] Oh my god, how am I going to tell my mum I failed to finish it?

[00:57:56] And what did he do?

[00:57:58] Did you brush it under the carpet? This chief has to come out. Sorry, bye.

[00:58:03] Yeah.

[00:58:04] Well, don’t worry,

[00:58:07] I’m

[00:58:07] Going to get you to the best bridge. I want to take you things like, you know, that was probably my my biggest mistake, and I realised I told my family from then on Mother’s Anatomy, You guys give me a couple of years and let me know what I’m doing. And that’s why. Now, for though, I don’t do any endo refer out, and there’s a lot of people who do a lot better than I do, and I just focus on what I’m good at. So that’s been my worst clinical mistake so far. And know, try to justify it to my mum was the car. Yeah, but you know, the crown on it wasn’t very good. Didn’t have the 2mm around it. But at the end of the day,

[00:58:39] It’s funny a perforation will do that for you. I think it was a mainly said this to me as well. I had a perforation in dental school. When you when you see when you see that blood coming through the through the end, it just keeps on coming. It just affects, you know, any pathway. And I remember Anoop bless his soul. He said there was one perforation that that then defined the rest of his career, that you just stayed away from endo. Oh, I think I think it was, he said.

[00:59:08] As probably to me,

[00:59:10] Yeah, you know, it will do that. It’ll do that because it’s such a horrible thing to happen. You spend your whole life trying to save stuff, right?

[00:59:17] Yeah.

[00:59:19] So I think that my dog is kind of cool moment.

[00:59:22] What about have you never had a situation where like a patient management? Error patient management when you haven’t been in it for long enough, maybe for

[00:59:30] Long enough and you’ve got to realise I’m not an undergraduate, I’m a postgraduate who studied biology with psychology. So with it, I’ve always kind of learnt about Dental.

[00:59:37] I’m good at communication communication.

[00:59:39] That’s the kind of home. And that’s why I’ve actually given lectures on my university to congresses around Europe and stuff. And I’ve been invited to talk about Dental psychology and Dental anxiety. So I feel that once patients there, once we were in the chair, once we were talking and everything goes smoothly. It’s great because, you know, I heard this quote where a patient will never sue a dentist that they like no matter what they do wrong as they light them. Hey, listen, don’t worry about it, you know? So I think that’s the most important thing above your clinical skills is make sure you’ve got a good relationship with the patient. Make sure that you know you both like each other, treat them as a partner rather than a patient. Feel like you’re both in it together. You do this work at home. I do this work in the clinic. Together, we’ll come up with a dream smile.

[01:00:19] So would you say, Janice? Big tip in dentistry is on that communication and communication.

[01:00:26] It’s definitely that. Don’t even see the patient as a patient, see them as a partner. Understand that to be able to achieve the results that you’re going to do clinically, it’s 50 50 because the patient has to make sure they’re all hygiene their foundations, their guns are as healthy as they can be for you to do the work. And so it’s always a 50 50. They have to be making sure that they’re not smoking their oral hygiene routine and everything is good. And once you establish it, as long as you do, you keep your end of the bargain. I’ll keep my end of the bargain. Always communicate. Always get proper informed consent. I’ve been lucky enough to become an honorary global ambassador. So dentistry ambassador before we kind of preach is one is informed consent sterilisation.

[01:01:09] What was it? Was it like being around Miguel with his patients? Oh no. How did you know? Yeah.

[01:01:16] Tell us the stuff I seen there. If I say to you, you wouldn’t believe it. You can never happen in UK dentistry and I’m white,

[01:01:24] White, white going to as an example,

[01:01:26] You’re going to find it crazy. You’re going to find it as in. I was really lucky because I he was doing a course there. I was planning to do a course there, but I think there was too many applicants that came to be able to control it under the coronavirus restrictions wasn’t possible, so I ended up going anyway. I was like, You know, my friend Nani’s from from Lisbon, Portugal, I went to go stay with him and stay with his family there. He’s recently moved into Italy to play there. So I stayed

[01:01:49] In town as well. Lisbon isn’t

[01:01:51] So beautiful. Love Lisbon. First time I’ve been there and it was. It was so nice. Yeah, I recommend everyone listening. Go check out Lisbon if you haven’t already. It’s really beautiful. The White Clinic for Moto Clinics I’ve been to in Lisbon, Portugal, is probably the most advanced Dental clinic I’ve ever seen. All the latest technology there. He does a high level of dentistry. There was a patient that flew in from Australia, right? She flew in from Australia to come to the Lisbon clinic to see Dr McGirr Stanley, and she had pain in her arm. She couldn’t move her arm. She went to see the doctor, went to see whatever dentist, and she had loads of implants. So loads root canal treaty teeth, crowns on not implants and went to go see it and was like, You know, my dentist says everything was fine. My doctor says, nothing is wrong with me. I don’t feel well. My my my brain is all clogged up. I can’t move my arm. I’m thinking of ending it all. This is my last resort. I’ve come over here. I want to fix it right the way I say it, like, you have to be there to really understand how it went and I looked in and stuff and he was like, cool. He did like a 3D CT scan from the x rays. I couldn’t really notice much wrong. But then after when you look to the CBD and saw all these habitations and who’s talk to me about Jawbone detoxification, they’ve never heard of it before.

[01:03:08] And the true pathological dentistry. So it came out there and he pretty much did a full mouth extraction and taking out on these teeth and is going into these competitions, I saw lots of pus coming in from the jaw stuff I’ve never seen before, right? And after he kind of cleared it all out, did ozone therapy do or less? The next day, the patient was like, my mind is becoming clear, and immediately after she stopped moving her hand, moving her arm. And that’s a question most is like, how does this all work, right? And he was talking to me about all of these like, you know, old Chinese traditions where you link all of the teeth to different organs and parts in your body and stuff like that. And as with the clinical evidence to this, like, you know, I’ve never really looked in any studies, anything like that, but the stuff he saw in between relationship was given me and stuff. It’s it’s something we don’t practise here in the UK. And it’s it’s not just one patient, it was another patient with trigeminal neuralgia who had all these headaches and stuff like that came in a similar kind of treatment and after I was able to be just fine. So it is truly life changing. I can’t really explain into that much scientific detail because I’m still learning about it, and I don’t really know the ins and outs of how even works. But it’s some dentistry that I’ve never seen before.

[01:04:18] So, so on the CBC. He could see something.

[01:04:21] Yeah, because doing some habitations in the Jawbone and some great nuisances that. Want a present one won’t want you couldn’t see in an RPG properly.

[01:04:29] Ok. And then he extracted the teeth in front of you. Yeah, pus started coming out

[01:04:36] In these habitations as you went down. Dig deeper than passed out. Coming out decapitations. Well, never seen it. I even spoke to Dr. Kahn, who’s an implant geologist here in the UK. Tpd of what’s interesting told him about my experience, and he was like, Wow, never would happen in the UK. We would. We wouldn’t be doing this type of treatment here at all. And the moment I was really lucky, he’s not.

[01:04:56] He’s not he’s he’s not like a, you know, a quack, is he? He’s like, he’s he’s an evidence based guy.

[01:05:03] Yes, definitely. Yeah, yeah, he’s on all of these papers research for me, he’s he’s definitely one of the best, most respected dentists in the UK. I was lucky enough because he actually took me to a room alone, and they seminar and presentation was meant to give to 500 students. He gave to me one on one and I was so lucky to be able to sit there and experience that with him. And you know, you taught me through everything, went through my clinical cases and.

[01:05:25] But listen, when you say when you say this could never happen in the UK, do you mean because it’s it’s on the edge of of, you know, evidence base and we would never risk it? Yes, based on GDP and all that.

[01:05:37] Mm hmm. Exactly what you mean. Exactly that,

[01:05:40] Exactly. Interestingly? I mean, we’ve talked I talked to TIFF Qureshi about this. Yeah, when TIFF was was was pretty much developing a lime bleach bond. Yeah. And you know, when we were developing enlightened, we did things that, you know, weren’t in the literature here. And we were saying

[01:05:59] About that when you kind of risky about the GDC and how tight we are here, did you

[01:06:03] See wasn’t the problem back there? I’ll tell you what, when any time I thought it was super risky what I was trying, I would try it on myself. Oh, wow. Yeah, we do a half and half on myself occasion. And then and then I would rope in my staff, my team and I’d say, Look, I want to try this on one half and try, and people really worry about one half getting whiter than the other or whatever. But that wasn’t my worry. My worry was always, am I going to hurt? So. But you know, at the end of the day, when you want to move something forward, you have to try it eventually, you know, eventually you have to try it.

[01:06:37] Of course.

[01:06:38] Of course. Very interesting, man.

[01:06:40] Yeah. But it was the experience I recommend. Like, you know, when we ever have the time, go check out White Clinic, it’s

[01:06:46] I would love to very often I met him once years and years ago when he was, he was actually in whitening. Back in the day, back when we started in 2001, we were doing light activated and he was representing bright smile in Portugal. Ok, but bright spark was a was a light before before Zoom, but he was clever enough to get out of it. I stayed.

[01:07:11] Oh right, OK.

[01:07:14] It was a new range from. You must have had a high smile, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s right. So like a professional product range, and he was talking to me about it because the CEO got in touch with them and I was like, Isn’t the same guy approached me and I did try of projects. But out here in the UK, even though Ha0 have their own professional package now, if you promoting high smile at a lot of dentists that will look down on you and say it’s wrong, yeah, so I’m a little bit careful with what I do. You have

[01:07:45] To. It’s the social media age man

[01:07:47] For social media.

[01:07:50] All right, buddy. I know time is limited, so let’s wrap it up. We always wrap it up with the same two questions. Prav ones and my ones, perhaps final question. Sure. You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your friends and family and parents and children and all with most important people to you in the world around you. What’s what’s three pieces of advice you would leave them with?

[01:08:21] Wow! Three pieces of advice I leave them with. Don’t chase money. Do what you’re truly passionate about. I think a lot of people in our lives do just chase the money and find what brings them the most money, spend all their time doing that. But, you know, if we spoke before, that’s not there. The materialistic things that really bring us true happiness. It’s the people in the memories that we cherish with them. So definitely spend more time with the people you truly love and create memories with them. That’s something I really want to do with my parents and my fiance and my family now is, you know, have that good balance, which I’m learning from a lot of people who are a lot older than me in the field to say, don’t be a workaholic, spend time while your while you can, but the ones you love. I think that’s one piece of advice I’d have. The second one is be kind. Everyone that you meet in your life has a journey that they’re going through what they present and their outlook might not be what’s going on truly inside them. So always be kind. Be with everyone you meet. And the final one is be generous, always try and give something back to people or just give something to people. Don’t look for people with opportunities and that were really what you can do for them because you realise that once you provide something for them and give something for them, whether it be your patients, whether it be your colleagues, you really try and true happiness in their happiness.

[01:09:48] Very nice one. It’s very nice. And my final question, sir. Fantasy dinner party. Three guests dead or alive. Who do you have?

[01:10:03] Oh, wow, that’s that’s that’s an interesting question. Well, it’s going to be a little bit controversial because although there’s been so many rumours about him, I can’t I can’t deny that I was a huge fan of him when I was growing up as a child.

[01:10:19] I think Michael Jackson again.

[01:10:22] Yeah, he’s coming up, man.

[01:10:27] People said him before.

[01:10:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s what I

[01:10:31] Was scared to say out loud. You know, despite everything that’s happened, but it was a huge influence on me, not just his music. But listen, when I say this, I say it carefully. But the person he was or portrayed out himself, right? Always being journalists was given to children in need, making the world a better place. All that stuff I loved as a kid, I loved watching him perform. I love the person he was. I don’t necessarily believe all these rumours and stuff and these allegations. But you know, that’s up for debate and a whole different podcast episode. But Michael Jackson will be one of them. Another one would be Steve Jobs. True visionary love this journey. Being able to, you know, come from nothing to get kick back down to, to do it to to what he achieved. Steve Jobs him and the third one would probably be Elon Musk or Walt Disney, one of those two guys, because truly, because of their entrepreneurial spirit, something I resonate with. I watch all this stuff. And you know what Elon Musk is doing with ideas as well? You know, self-driving cars coming up and all. It’s something that I feel was really cool. And I feel like in dentistry, in our profession, we can also use AI to take us to new wonders as well.

[01:11:43] Get cheap focus, but

[01:11:46] I’ll allow

[01:11:47] It. I think Michael Jackson can hang out with Walt Disney. And then, yeah, Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs give Michael Jackson a hard time.

[01:11:57] Before we wrap up who you are, who would you say

[01:12:00] I have the guy from Red Bull? I don’t even know his name.

[01:12:04] Okay.

[01:12:06] But in a way, I don’t want to find out his name because I like I like the fact that I don’t know his name. You know, like, it’s Red Bull. It’s what he’s done with Red Bull. This amazed me. Not not the drink, by the way, through the positioning. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The reason I laugh at Michael Jackson because I was a big Prince fan. Oh, Prince, which was if you once you once you get a bit older, you’ll realise Prince was definitely much better than Michael Jackson.

[01:12:33] It’s all that

[01:12:37] You know when you know Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean. There was no Billie Jean. Yeah, there was no Billie Jean. Billie Jean didn’t exist. Yeah, there was no kid. Yeah, he’s just it’s a cartoon. He’s drawn his prince. Everything he sang. There was,

[01:12:50] Yeah.

[01:12:54] And then my grandmother and you, grandma.

[01:12:56] That was classy, OK?

[01:12:59] But he’s been lovely. A really, really, really enjoyed it. And I just know going forward. Janet Dental is going to be on on, on our lips and you know, you’re going to be impacting the world one way or the other. And I know I’m sure your your parents are already very, very proud of you. So, you know, I hope your drive keeps going as well.

[01:13:19] Thank you so much, Payman. It’s been a pleasure and I’m a huge fan of yours and thank you so much for having me on. It really means a lot.

[01:13:25] I really enjoyed it. But thank you.

[01:13:26] Thank you. 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. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it

[01:13:59] If you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

[01:14:10] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] You don’t need to be special to be successful, and I will say that this guy is probably my most successful client. He runs a practise that doesn’t turn over a great amount of money by any by any measure of this, whatever yardstick you use. But you came to me and he said, Prav, I’m working five days a week. Yeah, I’ve got a practise that I’m incredibly busy and and I’ve got some twin boys that I want to spend time with and I don’t want to miss them growing up. Ok. Fast forward 12 months later, we’ve got him into a position where he’s working two days a week. He’s the fittest and healthiest he’s ever been. Yeah, and he’s spending loads of precious time with those boys. Yeah. And in my mind, he’s my most successful client. He’s defined what success is, and it doesn’t have to be driving these flippin super cars and, you know, living in a mansion.

[00:01:00] 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

[00:01:17] Today on Dental Leaders, it’s going to be just the host me and Prav having a little chat. Shooting the breeze the thing that sort of spurred this conversation is that we’ve both been hearing and it’s all over the Dental forums and all that people who want to leave the NHS system and, you know, move to private. And the very common question that we’re getting is, you know, what course should I do? You know, like that as if that’s the the key. And, you know, I’m sure there is some upskilling that needs to be done, and it depends on who you want to be as a private dentist, obviously, which kind of private dentist you want to be. But what we thought was, you know, let’s have a chat. As you know, both me and Prav are very involved in private dentistry. And you know, one thing we should say is neither of us know much about what it is to be an NHS practise. I did one year of it before I moved out. You know, VTE, that was it. And, you know, Prav access all your practises and your clients are all private only Prav.

[00:02:20] Yeah, on the whole, you know, I have a few clients who are who are mixed. I’m getting more and more requests from clients that I’m coaching on. How do I transition? So there’s two main questions. One of them is how do I exit from NHS to private? And then the other one is, Well, how do I hold onto that NHS income whilst going private, right? Because a lot of dentists are scared of letting go of that contract, that income, that is a shocking the but also backing up the valuation of their practise. They’ve probably paid for that goodwill.

[00:02:54] Yeah, yeah,

[00:02:55] That has a value to it. And and you know, I work with a couple of guys at the moment that I’m coaching at the moment who are struggling to let go. The solution is really simple when you look at it from from a logical point of view in terms of what needs to happen next, right? Whether your goal is to retain that NHS income and just put someone else in that driving seat to deal with those patients, allowing you the freedom to be able to say, OK, I can now do private right and always talk about buying time. Yeah. And when I put it like this and I say to that client, Look, how much is this NHS dentists dentistry generating for you? And we lay the numbers up, OK? And then I say to him, Would you like to take four days off work and buy yourself out of that? And it will cost you a percentage of what you’re generating right now? And when you put that number in front of them, they look at me and think, Well, that’s a no brainer. Well, that’s that’s the solution. Ok? Is that you pay someone else to deliver that now you’re sat there with the other problem, which is, I need patience, right? I need these private patients through the door to fill my book. And I have very similar conversations with fully private patients that want a transition out of check-ups.

[00:04:14] Private dentists?

[00:04:15] Yeah, yeah. So there’s a lot of private dentists out there who’ve built their practise up over, let’s say, a decade, and they’ve built this loyalty with patients where they’re doing check-ups for 45 50 percent, even 70 percent of their time and then doing the high end work for the rest of it and they want to transition out of that. It’s a similar case to transitioning out of NHS without putting too fine a point on it. They need to let those patients know they can no longer provide that service so that they can then pivot their time into doing the higher end stuff and have that handed over to an associate. So from a patient communication point of view with that one person. The conversations are very similar, but there’s obviously a lot more nuances when we’re talking about transition of different types of private services versus transitioning from NHS to private. But the key problems that I see is I want to hold on to that income. I want to hold on to that goodwill. I don’t want a kiss all that goodbye because that’s the valuation of my practise. But I do want to spread my ring wings now and do the private stuff. But then comes the confidence thing, right? They’ve not done the right courses, they’ve not had the right education.

[00:05:26] And often as a marketing guy, it’s pretty strange, right? So people come to me and say, Hey, you know, run a Facebook campaign, do this, do that, you know, help us get more patients through the door, help us manage the workflow of the follow up, blah blah blah. And then they say, What sort of education should I do? They’re asking me that you’re not a dentist. I’m not a clinician. Yeah, but but there’s that position of trust where they said, Well, what should I do? And and I guess the question they’re asking me is, Well, what are your clients do and how did they get educated? You know, what courses did they do? And you know, my opinions are always incredibly biased, right? Because of who I’m involved with and so on and so forth. But I’d like to think that the people or the courses that I recommend generally. And a down the line of delivering excellence and ethical dentistry, right about Payman, you said earlier. Depends who you want to become, right? What dentist do you want to be this guy who’s smashing out loads of ab? Do you want to be a dentist who just provides a high level of private general dentistry? And I’ve got clients who are incredibly content on doing their private fillings, their private ndo, their odd, you know, restorative cosmetic units here and there, and they’ve got absolutely no ambitions of doing, you know, these high ticket cases or taking that risk that’s associated with those and are just happy.

[00:06:51] Go lucky. Transitioning from what used to be NHS dentistry to now just a steady, a way, comfortable way of doing private dentistry where they just provide a general level of dentistry. And for that, those patients right, those dentists who are used to seeing the same patients day in, day out, developing relationships with those patients, then the course that you should really go on is one run by Test Qureshi because his ethos and his his sort of teachings revolve around that everyday check-up, right? What you should be looking for in that patient, what you should be monitoring and then how you can from that loyal private base of patients generate some higher end dentistry that doesn’t involve any sexy sales skills or convincing or persuasion because you’ve built that trust with those patients, right? Pay what? What are your thoughts in terms of if we just think about education?

[00:07:52] I mean, look, I’m getting I’m getting two types of conversations. One is the first one that we just discussed. I’m leaving the NHS. There could be an associate, by the way. So you’re you’re kind of mentioning the the principal sort of thing on the price valuation. But I’m talking to a lot of associates to leaving the NHS. Not sure what to do next from the course perspective, from the treatment modality perspective, that’s that’s one. And then I’m also getting another interesting one, which is I’m already a private practise. There’s lots of new private practises about to open. How do I become the best private practise in my town? And we had that conversation, you know, with with we have the conversations all the time, but you know, let’s say you’re in a little town, like, where should we say Doncaster? Yeah, there’s there’s maybe four or five fully private dentists. Just I don’t know how many there is, but let’s say there is four or five fully private dentists. Now, if it’s true that a bunch of the NHS ones are going to become private or, let’s say, independent, then it’s up to the incumbent ones to become very private. You know, and I’m having that conversation, too. You know that conversation? How do I up my game? But you know, it’s interesting because for me, the soft skills are probably even more important than the clinical skills because it’s not magic, is it? At the end of the day, there’s a patient with a problem.

[00:09:22] And you’ve got to deal with it. You know, whether it’s private or NHS, that problem needs dealing with clinically, but the soft skills, I mean, when I was a dentist. No way would I ever, for instance, ask the nurse to go and get the patient from the waiting room. Never, never, never. Because that moment of going to the waiting room saying the guy’s name, acknowledging the guy I contact, maybe a tap on the shoulder. The conversation starting. How are you doing? What’s going on? That moment that walking from the waiting room to your surgery sets you up sets up the situation for how it’s going to go next. And then I would spend at least five minutes chatting before, you know, starting to look in the mouth or, let’s say, an examination at least five minutes. And for me, actually, that was my favourite time as being a dentist was talking to patients, just talking to them about what’s going on in their lives, their jobs, their families, which, you know, in NHS. There is definitely no time for that. And then, you know, OK, let’s let’s let’s let’s talk about the clinical side of things. Even then, there’s this soft skills, you know, painless injections. And they’ve being just generally being gentle, generally being gentle. There’s no time for that in the NHS.

[00:10:45] But even during that, let’s say we talk about soft skills, the gentle, painless injections, the soft touches, the pat on the shoulder, letting them know, Hey, you’re in control. You know, if there’s anything that you feel uncomfortable, just raise your hand and all that right, you’ve got no. But even then, right, the chit-chat is so important. What I’m going to do next? Yeah, the conversations, the dialogue between you and your nurse whilst being inclusive of the patient might all of us so important as part of that private journey. You know, you just mentioned one thing that just brought a little memory back to me, which is the first time I met my current personal trainer. Yeah, there’s the gym, OK, there’s the environment. There’s the glass doors that slide open before you step into the gym, right? But it’s an unfamiliar territory for many people who maybe have never stepped into that gym ever or has never stepped into a gym, ever. And the one thing Craig did is as I pulled up, he came and met me at my car. Had I had the five minute chit chat with me, walked me into the gym. Yeah, and then we went in and started talking about stuff, right? And all of a sudden, if you had any kind of anxiety or any phobia or anything like that, right, you’ve actually forgot that you’re making that transition from outside to inside. Same situation with you. You go and greet your patient in the waiting room. Yeah. Before they know it, they’re in your surgery. But they’ve not made that mental shift because you’re you’re distracting them with your conversation. That’s so important.

[00:12:23] Let’s not forget receptionist skills as well, you know, because, you know, I must have visited at least 500 probably more Dental practises in my time. Yeah, and I’ve had it all right. I’ve I’ve seen all different situations and it ranges all the way from you. Walk in the receptionist doesn’t even look up, just doesn’t even acknowledge you exist. Yeah, it’s busy on a computer, you know, like clicking away, which, by the way, not necessarily the receptionist fault. Yeah, there’s a there’s a massive sort of shortage. The staff shortage. Maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, know there is that. Yeah, well, you know, it could be the principals not staffing the desk enough, right? So the receptionist was super, super busy. I mean, I don’t know about your GP exactly the same, you know, vibe from when I get to the GP, she doesn’t even look up. Yeah, eventually looks up. Sort of like what you want. Who you? Hi, I’m Dr Langroudi from Enlightened. I’ve come to see Doctor Thing. Yeah, kind of shows you the chair to sit on. Yeah, you sit there and that’s that’s that’s one end. Yeah. And then I’m thinking the best one that I remember is finish where Gillies practise natural smiles, where, you know, before I’ve even walked in, receptionist gets up, opens the door. Dr Langroudi, we’ve been expecting you. How are you doing? Come take a seat. Would you like a coffee latte? Or, you know her cappuccino asking me questions? Nose knows about me already. Yeah, and you know, we know, we know the name of every person who’s going to walk into a dental practise because they’ve got appointments. Yeah, that’s not magic.

[00:14:10] You know what? It’s it’s it’s literally one of the first things that I teach when I’m working with clients, right? And it’s usually a, you know, a moment of clarity or whatever. And I say, OK, so let’s look at your day list today. There’s a 45 year old bloke who’s coming through your door for an appointment at two 30, and he’s probably going to come a little bit earlier or a little bit later. But the odds are if a forty five year old looking bloke walks through your door at two twenty five, yeah, his name is probably ninety nine percent Prav. Yeah, I think it’s worth you taking that risk and potentially getting the name wrong. Yeah, yeah. I’m working on that piece and just greeting that person by the first name. You know, one of the questions I always ask is that we’re all sat in a room and I asked them, asked everyone, What’s your favourite word? Yeah. And let me tell you, it’s the same word for everyone. Yet it’s different for everyone in this room and there sat there scratching their heads. Yeah, yeah. And your favourite word is your first name, OK? What is the word that you and you know, sometimes I take that a step further and say, if you were out in the street and somebody shouted that favourite word, you would immediately turn around now, do you know what it is? And sometimes they sit there sort of still scratching their heads and then they come out with some rude words, which is always, always amusing. But when they. Are actually, you know, when you’re having a conversation, you read Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence, right? There’s a big emphasis on using that person’s name frequently. Yeah.

[00:15:50] Have you found an America? They’re really good at that. Aren’t they brilliant? I remember every time I go to America, I make a mental note. God, I’ve got to really listen out for first names. Yeah, and it’s actually the reason you must have some cousins or whatever in America. I’ve I’ve got a cousin. Manu chair is his name. Yeah, but actually in America, he’s max. Yeah. And in in in America, the first name is important. That’s why they changed their first names when there are difficult foreign names so that everyone knows them. But the number of times I’ve been in a meeting in America and I’ve just shaken someone’s randoms and not not even a meeting, I’m on a on a stand, on a Dental show and the guy says, What’s your name? I go Payman not. Not exactly an easy name to remember. And then five minutes later, he says, Payman, what I want to tell you is this is this is this. And it just makes you feel special. Just makes you feel special.

[00:16:42] Absolutely makes you feel special, man.

[00:16:45] I mean, I don’t know about you, Prav. When I take my call for service, the dude comes over and greets me by my name because he’s got the he’s got the car number plate, isn’t he? Yes.

[00:16:57] I had this. I had the same.

[00:16:58] Exactly how he’s doing it. Yeah, but I still love it. I still adore it.

[00:17:02] You know what? It’s because we’re trained to recognise these things, so we appreciate them more, right? I stayed. But just it’s

[00:17:08] Just lovely, isn’t it, when the guy comes to Dr. Langroudi welcome? Yeah, it’s just it’s just lovely. There’s nothing magic about it. He knows my car number plate. He knows what time I’m coming, you know, know exactly what’s going on.

[00:17:19] I got collared with that over. We hadn’t been away anywhere for ages, right? And so me and my wife booked a couple of nights at a place called the Gilpin in the Lakes. Really, really lovely place. My wife booked it. I didn’t know how much the damn thing was going to cost until I was checking out, but that’s another story. But as we pulled up in the car, the lady walks out of her little cabin. We wind the window down and she said, Mr. and Mrs. Solanki and I was like, What the fuck? Yeah. Then it clicked straight away. No play. Then she walks us over to our parking space. Everything that you can teach about customer service, every little step that I’ve spoken to my clients, that was executed to perfection. And because we know it and because we talk about it, you just appreciate it that much more.

[00:18:08] Yeah. But you know, if I’m an NHS dentist, yeah, and I’m scratching my head thinking, how can I improve customer service for my patients? I mean, NHS dentists earn well. They go to these these hotels like like you do, like, well, they they they take their car for service like me. Yeah. So it’s not there’s no magic in customer service. Customer service is about treating people well as individuals and, you know, being off service. The question I’ve got a good question for you, Prav is it is it teachable or isn’t it? Because definitely when you’re hiring, you want the kind of person who’s got that attitude already. Yeah, you don’t want to have to teach that. And I think, you know what? The first thing you said really rings true. We’ve got this. The major difference between private and NHS is that in the NHS, there’s an abundance of patients. Sure, customers in private. It’s the exact opposite. Most private dentists that booked maybe one week, two weeks ahead. They are, of course, the the super successful ones who have booked longer. But you know, there’s a there’s a shortage of patients. And so the mindset in NHS ends up being whoever you are, whether you’re this customer centric person or not, the mindset ends up being me. I am doing you the patient a favour by seeing you because there’s an abundance of patients. There isn’t an abundance of NHS dentists, you know, could taking patients. So I’m doing you a favour. You’ll do as you’re told, you know, if I if I run late. Yeah, if I run 15 minutes late, yeah, you should still feel lucky that I’m seeing you. Whereas in private institute, I used to work in the city. Yeah, once I never used to run late, ever. Yeah, I used to just have massively long appointments and just to have breaks, coffees and all that in between patients.

[00:19:58] Some things never change.

[00:19:59] Yeah, yeah. But but the reason was because once I ran five minutes late, the guy got up in a pissed off, left the place, got back to his office, sent a complaint, an email. Yeah, and and in a way, I get it, man, because you know, when I go to the GP and it makes me wait 45 minutes sometimes. Yeah, even though I know, I know the reasons why they’re pressurised and all that, it makes me a bit angry. Not that I get angry here. Not that I show it. You know, I’m still sweet as pie, but inside it makes me a bit angry. You know, his time is more valuable than my time. Sure. You know that thing.

[00:20:41] Yeah. And that mindset, you know, the the what you said, there is something I talk about, which is with the NHS patients, OK, they’re coming through the door anyway, OK? If one cancels, you’ll get another one through the door or whatever. Yeah, with the private patients, it’s a complete shift in mindset. You’ve now got to earn their business. Yeah, they’ve got money in their pocket and they can choose to spend it wherever the hell they want. Ok? And the fact that they’ve chosen you is the fact that you’ve earned it. Ok, but you still need to keep earning it by either delivering service. The little touches, right? The you know, on whatever whatever your equivalent is, you’re you’re welcome. Yeah, of how you greet those patients. You know, we’ve spoke about this the the Hilton DoubleTree cookie. Yeah, yeah, that’s my thing that, you know, I go in there and I know I’m going to get that cookie and I’m a complete mug. Yeah, so I’ll book there again without going to TripAdvisor or the price comparison sites because I’m going to get a cookie that’s probably worth two quid. Yeah, but it’s that it’s that experience that drives me in their right. And, you know, often often we speak about, Well, what’s your cookie? Yeah, yeah. What is it? So, you know, there’s a lot around those soft skills, but let’s go back to that. There’s an NHS dentist now. He’s got a truckload of patients that he or she is in fear of losing that income. Or, let’s say, the associate who wants to break free from NHS. That’s a different scenario, isn’t it, because they’ve they’ve got to pick a different job, right? You can’t just go up to your, well, maybe you can.

[00:22:19] But but well, no, you’re right. In general, and this is why all our courses are full, you know, your courses are full. There’s associates looking to upskill or to get CV fillers in order to go and get private jobs is is the reason why they go on is courses. They come many smile. Make over why? Because they want to show that to to to the private principal. For an associate, though, you know, these days there’s going to be such a lot of competition for private jobs and always has been. But these days, even more because people don’t want to be in the NHS system for any of our listeners abroad, they probably thinking, What the hell are they talking about? Yeah, yeah. But you know, we’ve got our state system that’s very, very broken and now a bunch of dentists who want to leave it. Yeah. So for instance, it ends up being about courses, but, you know, equally important, Prav and you know, you’ll be an expert. Instagram, you know. Yeah, you know, I’ve spoken to principals and we’ve spoken to principals on here who say if the dentist has a strong Instagram, the associate, that’s a really good, good thing for them. Of course it is. And in a way anyone can pay to go on a composite course. But anyone doesn’t have a strong Instagram presence in a way that actually does show you something, doesn’t it? And then on your side, Prav, you get people who’ve never done advertising before coming in and thinking that you know they can throw money at a problem. And that will be the end of it. And, you know, that is as much about what happens to those leads that come in. In fact, more about what happens to those leads that come in. You can deliver 50 Invisalign leads to them. What happens in the practise if we’re still in that NHS mindset of there’s going to be patients forever. They’re not going to be followed up.

[00:24:16] And, you know, I think yesterday one of your colleagues who who you referred to me, right? And he’ll remain nameless. But but you know, the conversation that we had on Zoom was, Hey, I want to go to Diamond Invisalign. But you know, whatever that tier is, they point to the apex predator, whatever, right? And and he has this ambition. And so I just have a little diagnosis. Call with with anyone, right? And we talk about, OK, who’s answering your calls? What happens next? If I delivered X number of leads, when were the calls be answered? What’s the nature of the communication through text, WhatsApp, email frequency follow up? And we we just we just go through this logical structure that I’ve got in my head, right? And more often than not, I tell them before anything happens, they need to fix what’s already broken. Because let’s say whatever marketing strategy you put into place, whether it’s delivered by my team and other agents, it actually doesn’t matter. There’s cracks in the wall, right? And all I am going to do or another agency is going to do is make that crack wider and longer. Yeah. And until we until we fix that crack, there’s no amount of marketing that’s going to give you what you need and that what you need, maybe growth, maybe different types of patients, maybe more revenue, whatever your lofty goals are, right? We need to take a step back and say, Well, guess what? In an NHS practise, no one’s ever tried to fix that. Or at least you know, that’s not.

[00:25:49] There’s no need to is the only constant supply of patients.

[00:25:53] There’s not that focus on fixing that right. So then it becomes a whole learning and unlearning process, right? So, you know, take you back to the question you asked me earlier, Is it teachable Prav? Yeah, it just depends on whether your team are coachable. And often the conversations I’m having with with principals is this that that person needs to get off the bus. That person is absolute gold. Yeah, this person, we can develop and grow. And I know that right. And however, you know, I’ll go in with a completely unemotional attachment to any human being in that business, and I will no have to spend in an hour or two on Zoom speaking. You know, sometimes we we do like a full practise audit where I interview team members in isolation

[00:26:43] And I’ll know with a

[00:26:45] Pretty clear degree of certainty because I’ve owned practises myself. I’ve worked with lots of practise owners. That person ain’t going to change and they’re not interested in change. And I’m doing this for four years. Yeah, they’re getting to the end of their career. Yeah, they don’t want to start skipping when a patient walks through the door and start asking them which type of mocha chocolate they want. Yeah, they’re not interested. Yeah. And so and so some people, unfortunately, if their goal is to reach whatever that goal is, some people will inevitably have to get off the bus and that becomes a hard, soft pill to swallow for the principal or or they move them to a different role within the practise. There’s always a solution. But yes, it is teachable, but it depends how coachable those those team members are and how excited they are for the vision, right? What that means

[00:27:37] Is the principal has, you know, has to take some, some some responsibility as well. Prav, right?

[00:27:43] Or listen, I believe all the responsibility, right? So, you know, when some people are looking at this and saying, Oh, OK, you know, this person’s not doing this or this person didn’t answer the call, this person didn’t follow up three days after, right? So they’ll say to me all this stuff, and I always turn around and say, You’ve got to look in the mirror mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because all of these things that are happening are down to the person that I’m looking at right now on this Zoom call. Yeah, it’s our failure, either in leadership, not knowing what we don’t know. So lack of knowledge, right? We can’t just say it’s our fault and I’m out to blame because sometimes they just don’t know, OK, and then it’s an education for them. But ultimately it falls flat on its face with whoever’s driving and steering that ship.

[00:28:31] I mean, the thing is Prav, even from a, you know, I’ve learnt this kind of hard way, even from a day to day management perspective as the principal. It makes a lot of sense to blame yourself and take full responsibility. Because otherwise, your day is determined by that other staff members mood. Yeah. You know what I mean? You know, at the end of day, if she’s if that person is wrong, you hired her, you can fire her. You know, taking responsibility is really important. But the other thing is, you know, people look for tactics, don’t they? So let’s say a tactic could be have a team meeting once a week or a team huddle once a morning, once a day. Yeah. Mm hmm. The me and you know the idea that when you have your team meetings with your team? Mm hmm. That’s a whole different thing to when I have team meetings with my team. Completely different situations, totally different things come out of it. You know, it’s it’s to do with what that meeting was. Well, some people think, Oh, OK, a meeting. That’s that’s an important thing. And as if as if just having the meeting, it’s you know what goes on in that meeting.

[00:29:40] And it’s, you know, that’s one of my pet hates meetings for the sake of meetings. Yeah. And for me, I always like to come out of the meeting with just three things to action. That’s it. Yeah. Anything more than that and anything longer than that for me personally and for my team that I’ve worked with for many, many years. Yeah. Anything more than that. All that happens is we come back to the next meeting and say, What about the other twenty six things that didn’t get done? Yeah, let’s focus on the three crucial results, right? The three actionable things and meetings. And you know, that’s the topic of a whole different podcast where we can talk about meeting rhythms, huddles, what KPIs are what you should be measuring. And I’m passionate about that, right? Because a lot of people sit down and and come out with a list of twenty seven or 50 KPIs, but then you ask them the simple question If that KPI goes north or south, what are you going to do as a result of that? And they look at you staring at you with rabbit in the headlights and you think, Well, are you measuring it then? We’re measuring something that you’re not you’re not going to take action if it moves up or down, right, the whole point.

[00:30:43] Maybe we should go, though. But I wanted to ask you something else before we go there. Tell me some of the horror stories.

[00:30:50] Would you be?

[00:30:52] Patient calls, upsets, do you do Invisalign, do you do enlighten? What happens next, I mean, have you seen some examples? Oh geez, man, just completely waste that leader, though.

[00:31:04] Oh listen. More often than not, yeah, my own clinics included, right? We’re not. We’re not immune to all of that right. People have bad days. Yeah. And also, you know, you know, it would be a big part of when, you know, when we grew our practise and practise growth right, without putting too fine a point on it. Yeah. Marketing strategy, this that and you get the get the enquiries through the door. It’s what happens next. Ok? And a structure and a process that we went through religiously. Week after week and month after month was auditing inbound and outbound phone calls. Yeah. And it tells you so much about your business. Yeah, you

[00:31:47] Have your team listened on times to, right?

[00:31:50] Yeah, yeah. But we’ve we’ve I reckon. Me and Joanne sat down probably about a year ago, and between us, we’ve listened to in excess of 10000 phone calls between patient and reception, TCO or whatever. Right? We’ve heard it all right. Everything from munching on a bag of quavers while they’re talking to the patient slurping tea. Yeah, right down to almost like the the pissed off police, right? That what the hell are you doing? Calling me disturbing me? Yeah. Oh yeah, you want Invisalign? It’s five and or the pre judgemental thing where a patient asks, Oh, you know, how much is this that and the other and the receptionist was, We’re a private patient. We’re a private practise, you know, and the patient goes, I know that that’s why I’m ringing you, and it’s almost like they prejudged them, right? And sometimes it comes down to accent and dialect, right? Internally, some of us are very pretty judgemental. So I’ve heard people with like, let’s say, an Indian accent or whatever foreign accent, right? And and the receptionist on the phone sort of prejudging that patient. And we’ve had training calls around that where we where we essentially at random, we pull 10 calls a training session. We’re always revolves around ten calls, right? So we pull ten calls randomly random. It has to be random because when you’re training the team, you got to take the rough with the smooth. Out of those 10 calls, there’ll be some really juicy golden stuff where they’ve done stuff, right? Ok. You don’t just want to pick out the bad stuff, right? That training session has to have positives and it has to have all positives, right? Even if they’re negatives there and how you frame that when you’re sat in a room with those people and they’re listening anxiously, right? Wondering if their voice is going to come up next and then amongst their team shitting themselves, right? So you’ve really got to explain to them the reason we’re doing this is so that you can all get better.

[00:33:47] And if you’ve got some mistakes and you’ve caught up and you’ve had a bad day or whatever, it is brilliant, we’re going to fix that today as you want to listen to the mistakes so you press, play war or sat round, and sometimes the phone rings and rings and rings and rings and rings, and then eventually someone picks up and you’re like, Whoa, OK, the phone’s ringing for too long. Maybe we need a call answering service. If that’s happening too often, then the next one is it rings and rings. Patient picks up. How are you for it to get done? How can I help you? And it’s like, Sorry, where? Who? What’s your name? All right, let’s get this first part of the call. Tell them your name. Clearly who you’ll speak the very basics of telephone, right? Then we move on to the next step and the patient says, I’m looking at your Invisalign offer and of notice. You given a free way, free way. And the receptionist on the other end goes really doesn’t know the offer, doesn’t know the offer. So then there’s an issue between marketing and sales, right? And we need better communication. Already, we’re figuring out just by listening to the calls what’s broken in in the systems of the practise, right? And then we go on further and the patient doesn’t realise that the receptionist doesn’t realise that this patient’s main issue is phobia, not the cost or the price. So we pick up on little cues.

[00:35:02] Yeah, but you don’t come down. You don’t come down on the individual who took the call. Oh God, no. You’re very sensitive to that.

[00:35:10] You have to be right. And look, I did do at the beginning with my own team, and I was the worst human being in the whole business. Yeah, and then realised very quickly when I had a lot of negative feedback that hold on. This needs handling a little bit more sensitively, right? And I just did my tact right. I coughed up at the beginning, but listening to your phone calls? It’s a great thing it teaches you so much about your business and having somebody like us. Listen, there’s probably about six or seven coaching points on every call, right, that you may or may not pick up. But the most important thing is doing that regularly. You do that as a one off event. Once a year. You don’t even bother. Forget it. Right? Were you doing it once a month?

[00:35:55] So were you shutting the practise once a month for a couple of hours to do that?

[00:36:00] No. So what I do is I would be at the practise. We don’t. We now do it with with our clients over Zoom, right? But what we do? We would just splinter off into mini groups. So it’s really easy. Ok, so we’d have like three nurses, two receptionists upstairs with me. We’d go through the same coaching course, right? They’d go down, swap over three nurses, blah blah blah, so on and so forth. So we do two three sessions, OK, which meant we didn’t have to shut the practise down in my own clinic, and we had the luxury of me being able to go there and spend a full day, right? It’s not obviously not practical for for all of my clients, for me to do that and for them to be able to afford to do that. So often what we’ll do will arrange coaching calls over a lunchtime in an evening or whatever, maybe go through five calls instead of 10. Prior to doing that, we download those 10 calls. We then listen to those calls and we create some coaching notes and then we play them back. And the one thing that we’re trying to do during this whole period is have the team coach themselves, if that makes sense.

[00:37:04] So by the time we get to session four, we’re saying, OK, what were the good points? What the positives, what the negatives, what could have we done better here? Bom bom bom bom bom. And then I just chip in with my this just one little thing I would have done differently just to make this better. And look, even if you know we look at it and say, what’s the aim of that phone call? It’s to get a booking, right? Book a consultation. That’s what we’re trying to do. Half the calls where they book the consultation could have been handled so much better, right? Whether it’s that that was a 20 minute call, that could have been five, whether that’s it could have been delivered in a better way, whether that’s they could have mentioned the USP of that particular dentist, surgeon or whoever it is they’re trying to sell to the patient. Yeah, whether it’s telling them about what’s going to happen next, whether it’s saying good bye in the right way.

[00:37:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It reminds me of I mean, it’s nothing to do this, but it reminds me of, you know, like you go to Marks and Spencer and pick up a tub of vanilla ice cream. Mm hmm. Doesn’t say vanilla ice cream? It says Madagascan vanilla

[00:38:11] With frickin pods,

[00:38:14] Vanilla or something? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what that’s the description of it. Yeah, yeah. So when you when you’re saying, oh, when the the patient calls up and says, I want to talk, I’m thinking of having a consultation with Dr. O’Hara. The receptionist is trained to say Dr. Bahar is one of our top implant surgeons or whatever.

[00:38:33] Let me just take this a few steps back. That patient we went back to has got money in his pocket and can choose wherever the hell they like to spend it. Yeah, and they may ring three or four practises,

[00:38:45] By the way, including not a dentist. They could. They could book a holiday in Thailand instead of turning this year. That’s important. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:38:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. But let’s say they’re on that journey of exploring. They ring three or four places. The one of the things I tell my team is this I want that patient to get off the phone and think, Crikey, that was memorable. Yeah. In comparison to the other three calls they’ve had. Yeah. So I want that to leave lasting impact for them to say well. That person’s been doing it for a decade. They train other dentists, whatever those usurps are those two or three little points, right? They also said they offer this Dental monitoring products where they allow me to take pictures from home and beam them across to them on whatever, right? So whatever all those usurps are the dentist, but

[00:39:39] You’ve trained,

[00:39:40] You’ve trained the star hundred percent me otherwise

[00:39:43] Trained the staff to say, Look, Cow Pressure’s USBs up A, B and C the next dentist.

[00:39:47] Us yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And every call and an implant call an ortho call, a general dentistry call, a cosmetic call about veneers or composites or whatever. The call is identical. Their patients are greeted in the same way they treated with the same respect. All of them may have phobia irrespective of treatment modality, right? And this just that little bit in between. Yeah, do you know what? You’re in the best possible hands here? Yeah, you’re going to come and see Dr. Behera just to let you know he’s been doing this for 20 years now. He’s done X number of cases and there’s other dentists in the local area that choose to refer their complex dentistry over to over to Dr. Behera. So you’ve come to the right place. Yeah, you could be difference to a massive difference.

[00:40:37] It makes a massive difference, you know, because the next call? Yeah, we’ve got time at 12 o’clock.

[00:40:44] Yeah. Can you tell me about your Invisalign? Yeah, it’s a clearer line that it’s straight into. It starts at three and a half thousand pounds. You get free whitening underneath a £35 deposit to book the appointment. Would you like to book? Uh, no, I haven’t got my card on me. Ok, see you. Bye! Bump down. I got one more paperwork. Hmm. Yeah. And sometimes I listen back to those calls with the principal, with the T, and I asked them, Can you just give me commentary on that call? I cast no judgement at that point. Yeah. And they say, Oh, well, that was good. It was really good. Yeah, yeah. They gave the price. They did this. They said, we got availability, blah blah blah. And they say, OK, let’s try and elevate that experience now. And let’s try and think about the three calls

[00:41:26] Costing my mind back to when I was a dentist. I would, you know, defensively, let’s say you were coming to my practise and you start saying this stuff. Yeah, defensively, I would probably say something like, I’m not interested in the kind of patient who goes around calling six practises, and they’re probably a price shopper and all of this. But. If you’re looking for massive growth, massive growth comes with taking care of all of these different things, isn’t it? It does, but

[00:41:54] The point you make there is really important because it’s valid, right? So I’m not interested and I say the worst thing that you can possibly do is stick a patient in front of a dentist who thinks they can get their teeth straightened for a thousand quid. Yeah, because you’re wasting, you’re wasting the dentist’s time, you’re wasting the patient’s time, and no one’s going to get any benefit out of this. So, yeah, not interested in these patients who were shopping around or want the cheapest price? That’s cool. So we make sure that we say something or the narrative that is explained to the patient repels the sort of patients we want to repel and attract the sort of patients we want to attract. There’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah. So I work with some clients who who are at the upper end of the price scale. The ad campaigns point to the fact that we’re at the upper end of the price scale. And if you’re a discerning patient, this is where you should be enquiring right now. And then the conversation revolves around that, OK? A lot of people say you shouldn’t talk about price on the phone, and I totally disagree with that. Yeah, me too. I think you should be giving at least an indication. We have conversations with clients all the time and they’ll say to me, So are you going to write to me? You’re going to give me a proposal of costs and this that and the other more often than not, I said, Listen, I’ll give you a rough ballpark.

[00:43:15] Now this is why it’s going to cost to work with us. Yeah, X, Y and Z. I will write to you. I’ll put it all in black and white, and it will vary, you know, 10 percent in either direction, roughly. This is what you’re looking at. And and at that point, you know, at least you’ve managed their expectations and they realise, OK, you know, we’re out of price bracket here. This ain’t working or, OK, I can afford that. I’m willing to invest that into my business. And it’s the same with the Dental patients, right? Is that be transparent upfront about your prices when it comes to talking about price. I believe that you should believe that what you are providing is exceptional value because if you don’t, that will come across in your voice, in your explanation, in the words so that you choose to use. Yeah, it’s going to be about three and a half grand. Is that OK? Yeah, versus a more confident delivery of that.

[00:44:09] So, you know, I know, I know on this podcast, we’ve been through this sort of thing before, but I think we should we should continue. The Leaders called the receptionist has done. That bit, she’s big up the dentist in the practise. Mm-hmm. Either the patient has booked in or the patient has, and then there’s a follow up process that you’ve you’ve trained the practises on and and that’s a deep thing. It’s not just a call. Once again, there’s an email, you know, depending on what, what the what the objection was. If if the guy said, I’m looking at Turkey, you’ve got you’ve got something to send a video, but

[00:44:47] I’ve got a video of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:44:51] So then let’s let’s fast forward, you know, obviously the systems need to be right. We’re talking about this in private practise. There’s there’s a shortage of patients, so patients are absolute gold. To follow up with patients is absolute got, let’s say the patient is booked in. And then I set the bit about the receptionist the first impression of the practise. Not to mention, you know, we forget this when we’re dentists here, that the patients got no idea what’s going on in his mouth, no idea what’s going to. Then he has to go on is the deck or the people. Yeah, that’s that’s what he’s got to go on. So if your front door is peeling, the paint is peeling on that front door, the patient’s going to make more decisions about the kind of dentist you are from your front door than from the filling you put in his mouth because he’s got no idea what’s going on in his mouth. He doesn’t know you used the right matrix and wedged it properly.

[00:45:47] And you know, I’ve got a story for you about that, right? When I first got into this game, yeah, I went to a new practise in Manchester Square and near Manchester Square, central London, and I consider this part of my training. He said to me, Prav, I want you to sit in every chair in my practise and have a good look around and tell me what’s wrong. Cracks in the ceiling, whatever you see, just call it out. Yeah, then I want you to go and sit, recline in every Dental chair and tell me what’s wrong. Ok. I thought, bloody hell. You know, you’re right, yeah, because while I’m staring up there with these orange glasses on or whatever right, I can see every crack in the ceiling, every cobweb, every little bit of dust. Yeah, and that’s a that’s a reflection, right? You go into a restaurant, you know, what do you do when you go? You go through wigs or whatever, right? You go to the toilet. And it’s like. Yeah. You may judge that restaurant based on the on the pre-dinner, you know, toilet break you took

[00:46:57] In the restaurant, you’re eating the food so you know what the food is like in a dentist. You have no idea, you have no idea what you need doing and you have no idea whether the guy did it right or not. No idea at all. This is really particularly cat candidly like causes pain sometimes, but sometimes the best dentists are the ones who do. They’re not particularly grateful. Yeah, because there are certain things in that where you have to push hard and you have to, you know, wedge it properly. In all these things, you’ve got no idea, but no idea what’s going on. So all you have is everything else and that goes down to people. And then, yeah, buildings.

[00:47:34] Yeah, yeah, right. But but but the whole beautiful thing, right? You don’t have to have a beautiful practise for it to be incredibly successful. I’ll hold my hands up and say, Look, our practises in terms of décor and beauty. Yeah, are probably right down there. Yeah, I’m not. I’m not saying that, you know, you’re walking into a pit, right? Nothing special about, you know, this is not a Gucci boutique hotel, five star hotel like that you see on Facebook and Instagram these days where dentists have elevated that right? And I often get asked the question, Does it need to look like a hotel? Do I need to spend this much? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because what’s more important than all of that is that initial conversation they have with the team, the rapport that they strike up with you, right?

[00:48:27] People are as important.

[00:48:28] Yeah, yeah. And and then you know what? They’re a bit more forgiving about the little cracks in the walls and things like that that’s, you know, less important, right, that you can put as much paint and polish and plaster on your walls as you want, but you’re never going to cover up that human touch.

[00:48:45] Let’s get down to we both know there are some dentists who will see you can probably think of in your own practise. Yeah, if the same patient in front of one dentist and in front of another dentist. Mm hmm. And the examination, the treatment plan, the case acceptance. We haven’t yet got to. He started doing any treatment. Mm hmm. Just that we both know there are some dentists who are particularly good at, you know, and I think it comes to, you know, how good you are, what you think you can deliver. You trying to do comprehensive dentistry to try and do single tooth dentistry, single arch dentistry. You know, what is it that you can achieve at the same time, though? I don’t think we need to worry if you’re an NHS guy going to private, and I think you need to particularly worry that I haven’t got skill because everyone has a level of skill above which they they can’t go. And one of the nice things in dentistry is you can either keep it very simple, you know, don’t go into the whole full mouth thing. If you don’t, you totally feel like you’re you’re up to it or you can refer for that piece. So the anxiety that people have about I don’t have the right skills. I think that’s a bit over edge. But the first question about showing patients what’s possible, getting them to accept, do you think that’s teachable? I think, you know, there are courses, the whole courses on that actually, after all that stuff,

[00:50:11] Without question, without question. And yeah, and look, I’ve seen associates principles just accelerate their their treatment plan case acceptance, right? Just by adapting a logical, structured approach until they find their own groove. Naturally, there’s people out there who who are just they’re born to sell. Yeah, yeah, without putting too fine a point on it that the way that they can communicate things and are really easy to understand way the rapport that they build up and the energy between them and the patient. You can’t teach them anything, man. It’s just their right. They just deliver and convert and whatnot. And you know, there’s there’s very few of them, but they’re there, right? And then the rest of them, things can be improved. I can sit in the consultation and say, Listen, mate, you know, all that stuff. You were talking about osteo integration, doing a stance this that and the other, the angle of the implant, all that sort of stuff. I stick it in your consent form or something, right? But that that conversation that you’re having with the patient right now? Yeah, Johnson, about the human impact of what you’re about to deliver, how it’s going to affect your husband, wife, children, social life, the foods that you have access to now. Yeah. And the happiness, the confidence that we’re going, whatever those little bits and pieces

[00:51:37] Are peace of mind. You know, a lot of times in Leinster, you’re selling peace of mind. Yeah, we don’t. We don’t even realise it. When you’re selling that crown, you’re selling peace of mind.

[00:51:45] Yeah, we are. And confidence, right? So other patients is. It is a big thing, right, and one of the things I’ve spoke to a lot of my principals and associates about is you use the art of storytelling is really powerful, really, really powerful, right? So if a patient comes in and you say to them, Do you know what you remind me of? Sure, I remember Sean Wright is an ex pro boxer. He came into our practise. He used to be full of confidence bouncing around that ring gear. But years of boxing took his toll. Dental neglect call it whatever you want hides in the corner, smiles with his mouth closed. Definitely doesn’t turn up to any dinners. Always walking around with a stick of glue in his pocket, running off to the bathroom, trying to fix it back in before he mumbles under his hand. Right? And that confidence he used to have in the boxing ring, he turned into a little mouse. Yeah, and it was awful to see Sean in that position. And when we implanted those solid set of teeth into his mouth, just look at this photograph. He’s right in the front beaming, Yeah, look at his social media. Phe is actually showing his teeth. He’s got that confidence back. And now he’s running boxing classes, teaching youngsters how to build their confidence. Yeah. And that you remind me of Sean. When he first came to see me,

[00:53:04] I think I take it Sean existed. He did.

[00:53:06] He did. No, no. Let me go. No, no. I didn’t make it. Or make sure sure I’ve got Sean’s video because anyone here who wants Sean’s video sent me a message. I’ll send you the link. I’m not that good.

[00:53:22] Yes. So that story piece important.

[00:53:25] Really important, really?

[00:53:27] Did you have associates that weren’t very good at this, that you trained into being very good at this? Yeah. Yeah, important. Ok. We move on. So case acceptance or not? Yeah. And then, of course, the follow up of not OK, the training of that, yeah, dentist then starts starts the actual treatment, and I can’t emphasise enough painless. I think if as a dentist, if you can be painless, if you can be nice and if you can work hard, you’ll be fantastically successful, fantastically successful. You know, you don’t need to be a super duper dentist, but painless. It was really important, the gentleness, super important. You know, I think more important to be a gentle, painless dentist than to have full mouth Dental skills. You know, that’s how important I think it is. But let’s talk about getting becoming a better dentist, choosing the dentist you want to be and then getting the education. So, for instance, if you want to be a full mouth dentist, then I would certainly look at know some of those courses. What you guys is has a bunch of courses on that, right?

[00:54:44] Yeah. Look, I think choosing the right course provider comes down to a few things like, you know, I could step into a dentist shoes and say, Well, who would I choose, right? And anything that the IRS is delivering, I’m I’m 100 percent biased. Ok, but let’s talk about, you know, let’s talk about courses that the IRS doesn’t offer, right? So implant dentistry, for example, right? Let’s say you want to do, you know, sticks and metal rods in someone’s mouth and transform them in the day? Yeah. Whose course would you do? What research would you would you undertake to figure out whose cause you’re going to do? Are you particularly married to a specific implant system? Is that the thing? And then you look at the providers in that in that area. Do you want to take a course where you can you can actually practise live on patients under guidance and mentoring? Is that your thing? Yeah. Do you then get additional mentoring outside of that classroom where you can pay for a mentor to come into your clinic and, you know, deliver some kind of hands on training for you? You need to figure out what is it and what your pace of learning is, right?

[00:55:54] You don’t Prav Prav not to mention that the two dentists on the same course. Will some of them will take totally different things from it and totally. I mean, you do that simple thing about if I’m going on a course, contact the the organiser or the lecturer before I get there. It happens occasionally, you know, on on, on on most Vamika, I think we we teach four hundred people a year. Yeah, three or four times a year, someone contacts me or Dipesh and says, Hey, I’m coming on the course at the weekend, really looking forward to seeing you. I mean, it’s just you imagine that’s like such a simple thing, but that guy ends up becoming like, like getting more attention when he walks in, Hey, you know, remember me? I contacted you. Oh, yeah, of course he did. Then during the course, you know, we already know each other and then post course and and all it was was just one email, one one text, social interaction. I’m looking forward to coming to the course, of course. You know, I had a conversation with Matty Parsons. Yeah, and I asked him, You know, why is it, you know, he came on our course and then went on to become one of the top composite guys in the country? Why is it that he did that and accelerated like that? And then there are other people who come on on our course and never put it into practise and depression. I actually, you know, really, we feel really bad about it when that happens, you know, the person came and we didn’t give them the confidence to go ahead. But my point is it’s not about what course you do, it’s about what you get out of the course that you do in the practise that you put in. And the course is the beginning of the journey, not the end of it.

[00:57:40] And and a lot of it comes down to, are you are you and execute, sir? Yeah. And now you’re in an environment that facilitates you to be able to, first of all, practise, deliver and hone that skill. Yeah. Ok. So I go on day purchase course, I learn how to do these sexy composites, right? But the next patient walking through my door, who needs that? Yeah. Or who desires that or who wants that? It’s going to be in two months time? Mm hmm. Yeah, I can’t execute it. And so, so you know, one of the things that we advise is that have these patients lined up before you go on the course? Yeah. Whether you’re doing it at a discounted rate to start with friends, family members, nurses, whoever it is, get your hands. You know, get your hands stuck in to practising what you’ve learnt in the shorter space of time between when you left the course and when you start practising.

[00:58:40] Yeah, so true. And when you

[00:58:42] Start delivering volume, you get more confident and then you’ll go back to you guys on your forum. Ask Dipesh a question or you a question or whatever, and you get a bit of feedback and then you’re off, right? They’ve had that little push and then they can come back and watch the course again, right?

[00:58:57] Six months later, they can, you know, Matty put it down to two patients. One, his nurse. Yeah, but his nurse said to him, Can you do composite veneers for me? And he said, Sure. And he tried to do it over a lunchtime and totally messed it up. And and so he had to fix what he’d done. So he came on the course and then he had to go and replace the work. Yeah. So he had his first case done already. And then the second case was the friend or family. You know, those two cases, he puts down his whole success to that. So, yeah, OK, so what you get out of the course important. So don’t just think course, which costs think about what you’re going to get out of the course. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, we go, we move on, right? I used to tell my nurse to call up three or four patients every day and just say, Dr. Langroudi wanted to know if you were okay. Yeah, yeah. And she would say, Oh, who should I call? And I say, you know, work it out, man. The one who had the C.T., you know, the one and the fact that I used to leave it up to her, she used to quite enjoy that fact.

[01:00:05] And the first few days she would tick them and then she would check with me, say these right? And after a while, it was like obvious she would deal with it the amount of pleasure my nurse would get from the good vibes that the patients would send back. Hmm. She she was actually it was actually like a nice thing for my nurse. You’d imagine it’s a chore, right? She’s got to call these four patients every day, but she’d come back every day. She’d tell me, Oh, Mrs. Mrs Smith was so lovely on the phone and you know, people don’t expect that call, you know? And then the patients would think, you know, Dr. Langroudi asked me to call you so that would make them feel good. Such a simple thing, right? Such a simple thing, but important important. These little things are important in private industry. Next time you go to a high end hotel like Prav was saying, or a place, any place where service feels good. Obviously pay attention to what was it about that that made it feel good and then be of service to your patients in private. Then you’re going to be of service to your patients.

[01:01:03] Yeah, yeah. Without question and just just, you know, I often sit back and just pick little things up, right? Sometimes a little notes tell. You know, I’m that guy who sort of says, OK, when I went to that restaurant and this guy came in, he told me this story about this and maybe I’ll go away and write a blog post on it or something like that, right? Just just on reflection. But I do take notes when when I experience exceptional customer service and try and figure out what’s going on, what did they do? What were the little words, you know, that made you feel a little warm and fuzzy, that ready break feeling where you start glowing inside, right? I notice these things right, because because we’re in that game.

[01:01:48] All right, man. Well, we’re coming to the end of our time. Just three questions for, you know, so I mean, I’m sure we haven’t covered it all. But you know, if you do want to contact us about anything that we’ve said on this? Feel free. It’s becoming a hot topic, becoming a hot topic. It is people deciding to leave and I get it, you know, I get it. I remember when I did my VTT, the idea that a third party was had any sort of influence on my relationship with the patient. That idea used to piss the hell off me that that’s I hate that idea. Yeah. And and now nowadays, the idea that such a big part of our workforce is figured out. It’s become a specialist at how to handle that third party. Yeah, like more than half the workforce has become specialists at how to manage the NHS system rather than taking time doing these courses and things that we’ve been talking about making their practises better. Yeah. So for me, you know, much as much as it would be nice if there was a lovely working NHS, there hasn’t been for the last 20, 30 years. And so it’s, you know, it’s time that people now think about what they’re going to do next. And of course, some will stay. Some will go over and there’ll be the sort of the independent, cheaper, private and then some will be those other ones that I said that would be up. They’re going to want to be the best practises in their in their town.

[01:03:25] Yeah, look on that note. Final closing note, right? A what is the best practise? And B, where do you want to go? Right. And I’ll I don’t. I don’t. I don’t really want to name this client simply because he’s not on social media and chooses not to engage and is not a super duper dentist, right? We spoke about this last night, but that you don’t need to be special to be successful. And I will say that this guy is probably my most successful client. He runs a practise that doesn’t turn over a great amount of money by any by any measure of this, whatever yardstick you use. Yeah. But you came to me and he said, Prav, I’m working five days a week. Yeah, I’ve got a practise that I’m incredibly busy in and I’ve got some twin boys that I want to spend time with, and I don’t want to miss them growing up. Ok, fast forward 12 months later, we’ve got him to a position where he’s working two days a week. He’s the fittest and healthiest he’s ever been. Yeah, and he’s spending loads of precious time with those boys. Yeah. And in my mind, yeah, he’s my most successful client.

[01:04:34] Yeah, he’s mine. He’s defined what success is and he’s achieved, defined

[01:04:38] What success is. And it doesn’t have to be driving these flippin super cars and, you know, living in a mansion. And, you know, he doesn’t even have a Facebook profile, right? And that’s my that’s my closing note.

[01:04:53] That’s beautiful, buddy. That’s beautiful. Yeah. All right, man. Where are you on the other side?

[01:05:00] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry.

[01:05:10] Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value out of it.

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