Month: July 2022

[00:00:00] There is almost like each practice as go. A story. A story is not been something where we’ve done try to approach. Even one of the last one in wings or we bought through common friends with the previous owner. So we often find that our way of getting contact with the practice owner is through recommendation word of mouth. So we’re going back to what we were discussing at the beginning is the personal relationship that creates that strong bond that probably for people that are like minded, the mind is more important than £20,000 more.

[00:00:42] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:00] So Alfonzo, just to introduce yourself and tell us about your upbringing, where you grew up and what your childhood was like.

[00:01:07] So my name is Alphonso and I’m a dentist in Bristol, althought I’ve got other practice. I was in Bakersfield Windsurf and different partners and different rangers. I’m also the co-founder of Delta Dental Academy. That is a teaching academy that is based in Bristol, but we run courses also from other parts of the UK. So going back to your question, I grew up in Italy in Caserta. That is a town about ten miles from Naples. I’m the only child and both my parents were working. My dad is a doctor. He’s an eye surgeon. And my mom, she was a teacher. She just retired a couple of years ago. So I had really, I would say, an happy childhood growing up with all my cousins and with the family around. And I always knew that I want to do medical or dentistry something. I always had a passion. And one of the my vocation was for health care.

[00:02:06] And is that because of your dad? Because your father was into the medical sector eye surgeon, and was there an inspiration from his friends, colleagues, him or.

[00:02:18] I think, yeah, definitely it was I mean, it was not one of those things that, you know, he’s never done anything to force me or to to try to push for one in the direction. I mean, all of my family, there are a lot of doctors and medical in the family. So probably was what I saw almost as normal. I think I was telling earlier that like I go for tuna. My daughter, she was with us a couple of weeks ago doing the surgery and we joke together and every delegate that was on that day, they were shocked because then I was playing a video where I was doing implant surgery, so there was blood and Fortuna was just watching and say, Are you not going to screw?

[00:02:58] And she’s she’s eight years old. She’s six, six, six years.

[00:03:01] I think it’s just one of those things that, you know, I’m not doing anything to influenza, but she’s coming in my office in a while. I’m preparing a presentation or I’m editing a video. She obviously sees me doing those things and she just probably wants to spend time with her dad and start. Question And she’s interested. She’s at that age where she’s asking questions about everything without doing anything to influence. But you often have got your parents as role model. And if you see what they are doing and you you like what you’ll see, I think that probably become an an unconscious influence that then when you are in the stage where you need to make the decision of what you want to do, become okay, I know that I’m quite shocked of that. I often see that people, they, they either hate the parents of doing because they might have seen the stress or the negative aspect or whatever or they can be quite shocked. And in my case, I think I was attacked, but I wouldn’t say that was done anything from their side to push me in that direction.

[00:04:04] And as the only child growing up, you mentioned you were with your cousins and this and that. So was it like quite a big family network that you had where where you didn’t feel you missed out because you didn’t have brothers or sisters because your cousins were your extended family anyway?

[00:04:22] Yeah, correct. So then for me, you know, like I always felt that I had the best of both the world because I had like kind of like a brother said, then you can return in the evening.

[00:04:32] So, you know, having fun.

[00:04:34] We were playing together, but then in the moment they were start to fight with each other. Everyone was going back to his old man and was fine. And we’ve kept a really close relationship, especially. I mean, I’ve got a lot of cursing, but I’m really close roughly. I mean, I grew up with my mum’s brother, family close, so we were both living close to my grandmother and they are three. So we basically grew up, all four of us. We were every afternoon my grandmother was kind of picking up us from school and we stayed all the afternoon together and then I’ve got probably another seven or eight girls in the Caserta is a relatively small place, so we were kind of seeing almost each other every day playing football, especially, you know, about 13, 14 years old, really nice. The things, for example, when you grow up in Italy, I think we were speaking about that earlier about like the public school is that you grow up in an environment where you’ve got really huge variety of personality, social classes all together. But I felt that that was really beneficial for me because I really feel that I’ve learned to deal with all sorts of people, and I think it’s something that I quite enjoyed at the time. And I’m still. Good friend with a lot of my friends from schools that they’ve done completely different careers. So there is someone then they’ve got their own shop. There are people that they are successful solicitors, but there are people that are really humble and they might even work in a farm. And, you know, like I think it’s nice, we all we grew up together, so we respect each other and really what we’re doing or the amount of money that we’re making doesn’t really make any difference. And when we manage to catch up, usually once a year when we’re all back home for Christmas, we still have a really nice time together.

[00:06:33] It’s lovely. And then sort of growing up. So you’re talking about around 13, 14, you know, with your cousins and your friends and all the rest of it. So just in terms of your education, how far did you take it in Italy before coming to the UK?

[00:06:50] So I graduated in Italy, so I did the high school up to 18 in my own town, and then I did university in Katy Pescara that is about 3 hours away. And that was already quite big things because in Italy again, often people tend to do university in the city where they grow up as long as there is university close by. So I think that out of all my school group, I think was probably three out of 30 that we went somewhere else to do the university. But that also was really valuable experience. When you’re when you leave home at 18 and you learn how to survive, manage yourself, you know, you can do all those things. So that is also been a really positive and important experience I think for my development. And then I moved to UK one year after. So after they graduated I worked in Italy for a bit and then I moved to UK when I was 24. So I got really young. I was the youngest of my year so I got it kind of two years earlier than the average.

[00:07:59] And moving from Italy to the UK, just in terms of the difference in the dental system and all of that, did you have first of all, do you have any exams or anything to transfer or.

[00:08:12] It was the only time that I actually at the time was an English exam, so it was like kind of language proficiency exam. But I did the University of Bath and it was a specific sermon on dental, and that was relatively easy at the time because obviously, especially a lot of the dental worlds, they are similar anyway. Yes. And then I had to do all the GDC application with the CPD, good standing and things like that. But the system obviously is completely different because in Italy it’s all private. And I remember when I first moved here was really difficult for me to understand the NHS, how they work, the UDA and all that aspect. But yeah, it was quite steep learning curve because we moved first to London really to improve the English and to finalise all my applications. But then my first job was in Lincoln, so I went from living in Rome, London to Lincoln.

[00:09:09] And what was the what was the difference in culture like for you? So you go from Rome to London. Was it was there a big difference in culture for you?

[00:09:19] I mean, you know, probably at that time was as my English was not great I that in London probably they were more Italian than in Rome.

[00:09:29] So I was.

[00:09:30] Not speaking in Italian, probably more than I used to speak at home. I mean, obviously London was completely different in terms of size of the city, cost of living and everything compared to Italy and completely different lifestyle. But London was still obviously a big city where everything was open at every time. I then for me, moving to Lincoln was really the biggest shock because, you know, in Italy we used to go out for dinner at nine, 10:00, especially in the south in Naples, where I come from, because otherwise it’s too hot. And in Lincoln, I remember that at 5:00 all the shops were closed and most of the kitchen, and after 8:00, probably they were not serving any food. So for me, like 8:00 was not even the time of an aperitif at that time. You know, going out and don’t be able to get anything at the beginning was a bit strange. But then obviously Lincoln was the opposite than London because there was no one else speaking Italian I think was just me and the bottle that we were Italian in there. So then I had to learn and practice English, which was kind of one of the main reasons, also because we moved there.

[00:10:37] So when you moved from to the UK, where was your first dental job? Was it?

[00:10:43] Lincoln was my first dental job.

[00:10:45] So when you were in London, what were you doing? Just finding your feet.

[00:10:48] Yeah, yeah, it was finding the feet and studying English. Because when I moved to UK. Again, I had to obviously see to that exam, but my first class was like a beginner. I was not really able to speak English. And as you can see, after 12 years, I still not improved as instructor. I still have the need for every word that I’m saying with my Italian accent. And at the moment, I’m sitting on my hands, don’t move the hand. And no, but leave that aside. Yeah, it was really an experience. I mean, I’ve never had like a gap year and as I mentioned earlier, I qualified really early. So I quite enjoy to say, okay, I’m going to have a three or four months of break, I’m going to study English, but I’m also going to just take a bit of time off for myself as well. And that was useful.

[00:11:36] And you moved here? We were already married before you came to the.

[00:11:39] No, I move. I moved with the genes that it obviously is now my wife, but at the time was my girlfriend and she was the one that really wanted to move to UK. So we’ve met in Italy and we were, we stayed together one year before move together to UK and she always was really keen to do postgraduate education in UK. She really liked the idea of a university here in the UK and that was kind of the drive that really took us to. To relocate. To relocate. Yeah.

[00:12:11] So then you moved to Lincoln?

[00:12:14] Yeah, Lincoln. And then after Lincoln, she then basically also shattered to get the eias. So the English test, that is a lot more difficult, especially if you want to do to some of the most prestigious university. They tend to have quite high rank. And so she hated the the states she passed. So she was studying in Lincoln. And then she got what we said at the time and said, look, if you want to apply for university, try to apply to a city, wherever. I also can get a job and as a city where we can stay at least for four or five years. And then she applied Leeds, Lincoln, but York and London. And I think she got the offer from Leeds, York and Bristol. And then we decided to stay in Bristol as there was one with the the closest airport to Naples.

[00:13:03] So when you first came to this country, you were just figuring life out as a couple, getting to grips with English. Yeah. Willing to take any job that life threw at you because, you know, you think, oh, well, I’ll take a job in Lincoln. Fine, we’ll go to Bristol now. Follow where my wife wants to go, that sort of thing. But there was no there was no inkling or thought of building this empire that you have now. Was that ever in your sights? Was it just about I just want to get a job as a dentist and be able to speak English to my patients. What was going through your mind then?

[00:13:36] Afonso Yeah, I mean, I’ve always kind of no, I’m not a type of person, but like a long term plan. I always like to live my life thinking about what I feel that is the right thing to do and what make me happy at the time and obviously within respect of my family, my value in all those things. So even like when at the moment I think we were chatting last time about how do you decide what you want to buy a practice or not? I still strongly believe on my vibe. So when we’re going to say a place, if I like the practice, if I like the team and I feel that is a team that I want to work together, then I might consider if there are the right conditions then to buy as well. So it’s never been kind of something planned on the offset to say, okay, my five year plan is this, I want to achieve that by the age I’ve always lived life based on what life was throwing me and and try to do the best in every occasion.

[00:14:33] So what was your first job like in Lincoln?

[00:14:35] Terrible.

[00:14:37] So basically what happened is.

[00:14:41] I remember that.

[00:14:42] I was with one of these recruitment agencies and they said, look, we’ve got this perfect job for you is really, really nice practice. And I didn’t know anything because I didn’t have any opportunity to compare. So I’ve got this couple that they had. This practice was actually not even in Lincoln, was in Louth. That is a small town outside Lincoln. And I remember that mean at that time I didn’t have any money and I was like, try to look how to save money living in London, that is expensive. And I remember they sent me to pick me up in London with a mercedes to take me to Lincoln for this job interview. So they took me and my wife there, really nice hotel. They took us for dinner and was a lovely couple. And, and I really didn’t thought much about the fact that they didn’t show me the practice.

[00:15:34] So I signed the contract.

[00:15:36] I had this conversation with them about all those things. We don’t even see the practice.

[00:15:40] But you were blown away by the Mercedes and the fancy.

[00:15:43] Like, you know, look like that is.

[00:15:45] Really they really want me there. They really look after me. So I felt important at the time. And then when I went in there and that was like another fun experience because by then we bought a cat.

[00:15:58] A cat, a cat.

[00:15:59] So, well, this cat is really and we went in there and the estate agent because they use an agency to arrange all our move, they forgot to say to the landlord that we had the cat. So we arrived in this house and they said, No, you cannot get in with the cat. So he had the man with the van.

[00:16:19] In the.

[00:16:19] Car park. We don’t have luggage. We changed my life crying with this cat because she didn’t want to give this cat away. And that was like my first day in Lincoln. And then I remember that the landlord actually then was there, worked, and he then started to speak to us and he said, You know what, I’m fine. I have the cat anyway. So we kept the cat.

[00:16:41] On the day he said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:16:43] After 5 hours in this car park and we try to finding another place in Lincoln where the cat was allowed.

[00:16:50] And chinchilla crying.

[00:16:52] She’s crying on the other corner.

[00:16:53] I don’t want to be here with other cats. So.

[00:16:57] And then what was it? An NHS job.

[00:16:59] Was an NHS job. So basically when I went there the first time, I didn’t really understood like the NHS system and I remember that I went in there and there was no dentists allowed or there was no any other is there for many years. So my first day I think I had like 40 patients booked and they didn’t really understand the UDA and everything. So I didn’t last long because there were other issues as well. So coming from a really high end, nice private practice in Italy, Naples and Rome, where I used to work, I was not too impressed with some of the level of the, let’s say, decontamination cross infection control. As I remember that surgery. And at the time they had like the autoclave, which was one of these old autoclave in the rooms. In the while you were trying to speak with the patient, the autoclave was tough to steam out. Pain was, you know, the nurse was never been a dental nurse was someone round up. So it was a it was a bit different than what I thought. So it was a little bit of a shock at that time. I say, look what I’m doing in Louth in this in this condition. But then I found another practice in Lincoln that was a really nice practice. And I remember that there was the other associates that working in there. They were really nice and kind to us a bit older. There was there were an Indian couple, Kapil and Becky, and they really helped us to settle in Bristol. They helped me to guide my career. You know, we were discussing about postgraduate, so they really inspired me to try to improve and do better and better. And also I’m not in touch with them as much as I would like. I still got really nice memory of all the help that we had from there.

[00:18:47] And so your first job in Bristol, where was it?

[00:18:50] First job in Bristol was a mixed practice not far from where we had dinner yesterday. So Gloucester Road, Home Field, really nice practice. There are quite a lot of funny stories about that practice as well because there were three expense sharers and that was working for associate of one of these expense sharing and they had argument between them and I turned up to work one day and Nadia actually she probably remembers that. And the night one of the partners, he removed the dental chair in the surgery.

[00:19:23] So I went to work. It was an empty room with nothing.

[00:19:28] In that and I think we had a patient booked and then I think it was the time that it was also staff. Placing implant implant kit away so that Nadya at the time, she led me one of this trauma kit alone. And then we’ve placed the implant on that week and then obviously they got things sorted between them. But yet there are quite a few funny stories about the practice as well. But again, was another really a good learning experience because it was a mixed practice. The target of patient in Bristol, really different than the type of patient in Lincoln. So that was also something that really helped me to understand a lot more or of the patient management, probably more than anything else.

[00:20:09] And so moving on from there, what was your next what was your next move from that practice.

[00:20:15] To at that point? I I’ve kind of I’ve lost faith in the NHS. So one of the things is when I moved to UK at the beginning, I really liked the concept of, you know, like the NHS healthcare for everyone, whether needs. But then I realised that there were a lot of things in the system that were not really allow me at least to perform high end dentistry within that system. So then I’ve quit the job without even having another job. And then I started to work as a visiting implant ologist placing implant for Jim’s heart. At the time, he was still the owner of Jim Sally’s group. So they also helped me quite a lot to try to get into the implant world. And then one of my friends, Joe, that is the orthodontist, that is my business partner as well. He was working in Green Square and unfortunately the previous owner, he went off sick and they needed someone to try to cover almost as quick as possible. And because I could get a job, I was free. So then that is how I started in Green Square. And then the previous owner then decided to take longer time off and offer me to to buy the practice.

[00:21:34] Knew owning Queen Square was a complete sort of mash together of consequences. It wasn’t a plan right at that point. You’d left that job and in your mind you didn’t think, right now I want to go and open my own practice? No, no. You went and took this job as a almost like a part time locum cover for someone who’s ill.

[00:21:55] Yeah.

[00:21:56] And then as you were covering, the guy had sent a message to you. I’ll let you know that. Do you want to buy it? Is that right? He approached you. Do you want to buy it? And at this point, did you think, well, I’m not a business owner, I haven’t owned a business before. You just shrugged your shoulders like you do with most things and say, Why not?

[00:22:14] Yeah, exactly. So as you can see, like the theme from everything you were saying is that there is nothing that has been planned. You know, I went to Lincoln because they sent me a cup to pick me up and then they left the job because I felt it was not the right things for me to stay there and in the same way about the practice. So yeah, it was really kind of why not? So I often like, I think about like, why not?

[00:22:37] Could you afford to buy the practice?

[00:22:39] That was tough. But I have to say that at the time the bank was really supportive. I had a an existing relationship with the bank manager, and I think that they were seeing that as an associate. I was doing quite well and they were quite relaxed because I was already in the practice. So that was one of the criteria at the time that they felt a lot more relaxed because it was kind of a smooth transaction from their side. And the other thing is that when I bought Queen Square, the practice was obviously not what it is at the moment. So it was only two surgery was only open three days a week. So that was a squat with the previous owner set up like four or five years before. So it was never really been pushed to the full potential as yet. Also the practice so was relatively affordable obviously with the support with the support of the bank.

[00:23:35] And what was the deal back then was was it is it a leasehold building freehold.

[00:23:40] So was really a good deal that I did again another unconsciously again like you know one of those things because was a leaseholder but it was owning the freehold as well and we’ve managed to agree a first refusal of the freehold. So then a few years later, then we decided to sell the freehold and I had the first refusal on the job. So then I was able to buy the field as well. But that worked well for me because I wouldn’t have been able to afford the freehold at the beginning. So I was only able to just with Stretch and with the support of the bank, just to get enough to get that goodwill. That was not really a lot, a lot at a time.

[00:24:21] So had you been offered the freehold back then, someone else would have become your landlord and you probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get it right.

[00:24:28] Right? Yeah, probably.

[00:24:29] It’s funny how these things work out, right. In terms of. I mean. Yeah, stuff. So it was a couple of surgeries. Did you like build it out into more surgeries at that point? We renting the whole building and oh, did you expand up and take more of the building to build more surgeries?

[00:24:46] So basically what was happening is that we were only on the ground floor, first floor, and then there were offices upstairs that he was renting to other businesses. Sure. And then when there was the opportunity to buy the freehold, which was like I think three years later, the turnover of the practice was already triple what was when I bought. So then we were in a much stronger position. So then that was the time where then I bought the freehold and then expanded and the surgery and the teaching centre were Delta started at the beginning on, on, on that top floor.

[00:25:21] And so initially from you taking over three years time tripled the turnover. And where did that tripling of turnover come? Was it from purely from your own hands or or an associate led initiative.

[00:25:34] Was mainly my own hands. However, I already had that kind of a vision at the time, which was one of the first leaders in this area of the multi specialist approach. And again, I think, you know, been doing more postgraduate education in the meantime, the Eastman or other international courses, I’ve seen a lot of other successful dental business practice offices that they were working with that multidisciplinary approach. And I strongly believe that if you want to do something at the best of your ability, you often need to focus just in one sector and try to do as good as you can. So that was one of the first practice that was run almost as a multi specialist approach. So we were having different specialists or people with special interests coming to the practice and working. And that was difficult because everyone at the beginning I remember said that was a concept that could work in London but cannot work in Bristol because the people in Bristol, they want to see the same dentist that does their end and then does their crown and then does their implant. And then that’s the barrier. But then I remember that, you know, explaining to people the benefit of that type of approach to that. A lot of patients, they really bought in that concept and they were seeing that we were able to offer a better quality of care than some other practice where there was one associate try to do a bit of everything and I think that really helped a lot growing because if you remember the first few years we’ve never had any marketing agency, we were not doing anything was really word of mouth the way the practice was growing.

[00:27:18] But when you’ve got a practice, you start it off essentially as a as a small squat, right? Like how do you how do you go from that to attracting the group of specialists to then deliver that higher level of service? If you don’t have the patients to serve them, you might like you’ve got one, probably one of the world’s most experienced and sought after end dentists, right, working at Queen’s Square. Massimo Right. And how do you attract someone like him when you don’t have a line full of.

[00:27:51] The secret is get them for dinner and get them drunk.

[00:27:55] And take them to dinner in a mercedes.

[00:27:56] Yeah, I think now I think again, like I said, that I’ve always been quite persuasive in terms of I don’t like to have a promise and I think that I’ve got the reputation over the years that if I had a vision and I worked out, then ultimately that worked and it worked in the best interest of everyone. I always try to be extremely fair with all my associates and really understand from their side what they like, what they want. And I always try to don’t limit their growth or expansion. And I often find that every person is different, that there are people that they like to just get the 95 job. There are people they might want to feel that they are part of the decision making. There are people that they might want shares. So I think it’s really there is no one set approach that works for everyone. But I find that probably the personal relationship that was the motivation at the beginning to create that. And then as we’ve thankfully been successful with a few projects like that, I think now is a lot easier for other people to believe that I’ve done that over a few times and we hopefully can try to do this again with some of these new practices as well.

[00:29:19] Sure. And so you grew Queen Square and that was the first practice, right? And then you started doing some direct to consumer marketing, growing the practice and. From there. When when did the vision come that you were going to have practice number two, three, four or five? How did that all come about? So what was practice number two?

[00:29:41] So finally, number two was this one so High Street Dental Clinic, and again was another one that, as always, I didn’t really thought about. So basically what’s happened is that the previous owner of this practice, one day they’ve just turned up in Green Square and they say yoga, go practice close by. Would you like to buy us out because we want to retire? And I thought, okay, you know, I mean, do I really want to practice close by? But then at that time, I was also thinking there were not many practices in the city centre of breeze. And for me, buying the second practice relatively close was also from a strategic point of view, an opportunity to stop some competitors to come. And I felt that obviously the two different practices had different strengths and probably also different target of patients. So I didn’t really feel that there was something where it was in conflict but was more like complementary. So I guess why not that one? And then number three is up and in a similar way that an agent approached me and said, I’ve seen that you bought to practice in Bristol. I’ve got the practice in Portishead. And at that time, me and Joe, we were discussing the idea of potentially opening a practice together. So again, we said, why not? And we bought the practice in Portishead. So there is almost like each practice as go a story. A story is not been something where we’ve done and try to approach even one of the last one in wings over we bought through common friends with the previous owner. So we often find that our way of getting contact with the practice owner is through recommendation word of mouth. So we’re going back to what we were discussing at the beginning is the personal relationship that create that strong bond that probably for people that are like minded, the mind is more important than, you know, £20,000 more.

[00:31:43] And so when did the teach in actually feature in all of this? Alfonzo You come into this country, you can barely speak a word of English. And fast forward to today. Yeah, you’re teaching Native dental students how to place implants, right? Talk me through that journey. Is that another? Why not.

[00:32:08] Another? Why not? I mean, I always had that. I always enjoyed the teaching side. So even at the university I was involved with with the oral surgery department, doing some teaching for the undergraduates.

[00:32:23] Well, how did that come about? So you came to this country, you were working in Lincoln. At what point did you get involved with the Universities University graduate?

[00:32:30] No, that was my faculty. So I always had that kind of passion. I always kind of enjoyed the teaching side and the opportunity to really learn from each other. Because I find that I think the two nice things for me with the teaching is one I often have. I have got the opportunity to audit my own work when I prepare representations or I’ll view the literature. So I find that I learn a lot, just even preparing the lecture or preparing the course. And the second is that I always find that, you know, even when people say, okay, you’re going there, you’re teaching every day, you learn from each other. So I feel blessed that I’ve got delegate. They come here and we all learn from each other because I don’t know, everyone does something slightly differently or from the other of the coming year. And I think as long you’re open minded is always nice to pick like things that people are doing slightly differently, that they can improve your daily practice. The way that is happening UK was that I did an implant course at a time and one of the the person that was in charge of the course then asked.

[00:33:34] Me.

[00:33:35] Would you like to to work with us? Would you like to stay with us? So it, it’ll be more and in that way then I’ve been with them and then slowly start. I was more like mentoring more than teaching properly.

[00:33:49] So you were on a course and they asked you to help assist teaching on that course.

[00:33:54] Start with these things. And then I think what’s happened is that they were opening, they were increasing the number of courses. And obviously in the meantime I was doing also the diploma instrument. So they said, why you don’t work with us a little bit more? And then that is the way that it started.

[00:34:12] I think I think I remember we spoke about this around that time.

[00:34:16] Yeah, that was the time when we spoke.

[00:34:18] Only when we met. And I think if the conversation serves me right, you were like, Hey, prof, these guys are teaching. They’re getting patients in to have implants done on the, shall we say, at a discounted rate. I think it’s a good idea. Yeah. What do you think? Should. Should I give it a go? Why not?

[00:34:39] Yeah.

[00:34:40] Was it again like another thing that is up and it was kind of almost. Why not? Because it was not just that, but was also that at that time. Then that was start working with trauma and I was approached by Strawman UK, although it was an HQ project and that was the time that they were running the first smart course, which was the the course that and was planning to run in a lot of different countries with the standard format coming from University of Zurich. And they asked me to be one of the pilot to do the course in UK, but then we had a terrible course in UK. It’s unlikely that is going to work because there are a lot of really well structured university course. So why someone should come to a private course? That is just a theory. So then I suggest a strawman. Great idea about why I cannot have the clinical aspect of treating the patients, which was the part that I was doing with the other provider. So I’ve kind of merged these two idea, of course, and that is how then we started. So is another thing that is often because.

[00:35:49] Strawman approach to trauma has to be at the right time.

[00:35:52] Yeah.

[00:35:54] And I say, why not?

[00:35:58] And so was that when Delta was born, or is that something you just did independently with? Was that a strong and branded smart course and you stuck live patients on the end of that course? Well, how did I vote?

[00:36:10] Yes. So that at the beginning was again, was a pilot. So within the pilot, we were able to just tweak the course based on the need of the country. So the education measures trauma. At the time when I suggested the option of treating life patients, either there was great idea. So the first few smart calls, we run as a trauma branded course. So that was of course where technically was a strawman, taking the booking, taking the delegates, and I was just kind of looking after the. The running of the course more than anything else. And then when? Then Strawman decided to dismiss the course. In the meantime, me and Massimo, we were also starting to think about this concept. It was working really well of treating life patients and really show the delegates how to implement whatever is possible. We done zone with life surgery and new skills on the patients and then is something we saw was working well. Feedback from delegates was great. So then we say why not doing alone? And that is how we started us.

[00:37:17] And so Massimo, was he already working for you in Queen Square as an end? Adonis Then, was he already teaching somewhere else as well or.

[00:37:26] Yes, so Massimo was I think is Massimo has been teaching postgraduate at King’s for quite a while and he was also having a lot of other project with the style Italian or I think it was with University of Moscow, Spain. So we’ve kind of both had our own pattern of education. I mean, I was doing things for strongmen and for other companies as well. Massimo was doing his own things and we were obviously working together, but also good friends. So then we say why? We don’t join that together and start that also using our Italian connection to bring more speakers or to try to do something slightly different in terms of education, at least in Southwest.

[00:38:11] And so Delta was born. Yeah. And what were the first courses that you that you launched obviously and then didn’t take one and implant one.

[00:38:19] So we started with the implant and within the course again at that point, we basically part of the conversation with trauma was that they were happy for us to rebrand the course, which was the is how implant fundamentally started. So that was like our own version of what was the math course from from strawman with few other change. So that is, is a course that is evolved a lot over the years. So I feel that it’s getting better almost every year. So I was looking after that aspect and then Massimo started using similar setting to do the implant based course. And so in the course.

[00:39:02] And then as time has gone on, you’ve not only gone to launch your own Andela courses, but you’ve become a key opinion leader. And I see your photograph on randomly on social media that you’re doing this international lecturer or that lecture for this company and that company. How do all these opportunities come along?

[00:39:24] Again, I think it’s still a lot about relationships. So there are kind of all things that have happened randomly, relationships that I had. So for example, we guys in specific and the person that I’ve met, it’s trauma. He left trauma and then a few years later he joined Guy’s Village and we stayed in contact because we had like a few nights out in Basel when I was going to HQ to prepare. This is my of course, and then when you join guys a few years later we got in touch and say, you know, I’m head of education of guys teaching these, this, this country. Would you like to. We work together. And again, I think because when we were working with trauma and we did the two or three project together, and I think one of the the things that I’m often get as a feedback is that I’m relatively easy to work with, so I’m not too precious. I’m really committed. So if I say to you that I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. Otherwise I rather don’t say it at all. And I find that a lot of companies, they really value that, like a non diva approach and quite proactive approach as well. So yeah, I think with a lot of companies has been building a relationship and I think it’s important also to try to get a win win situation where again myself and the company we feel that we can work together and have a mutual benefit I think is also lot about be credible. So if there is a company or if there is anyone that offered me a product that I’m happy to try, but then if I don’t like it, they know that I will not be able to talk or use that product because I will only use and will only promote a share whatever I feel is the best for myself and for my patients.

[00:41:19] And then moving on from that, like doing the dentistry, the teaching, which one’s more fun? Which one? Which one’s? Where is Alfonso? In his zone of genius. The absolutely is in his element and loves doing it. Is it the treating patients or is it the teaching?

[00:41:36] Lecturing side of things is difficult because I think like they both find each other. So I. That I would probably get both to do only one without the other. So in order for me to be able to do the teaching, I feel it is essential for me to treat the patients. And I still love dentistry. I always say that I was still happily due for free. If someone said, Look, I’m looking after all your bill, you just go there and work. I would happily do that still because I really enjoy the aspect of helping patients and to see sometimes with some of the treatment that we offer, how we can change and improve their life is really emotional and is really rewarding. But then at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, I really enjoy the teaching element. I really feel that when I’m with delegates, with I’m a dentist, and often a lot of the delegates are even people older than me. When they’re coming to the course, I really feel that I can learn and almost punch their brain and try to get things. And I think that is really stimulating because I think one of these dentistry and again obviously is not my case but can be a little bit like a lonely job. You know, you get isolated. Isolating, yeah. You can be in the room and do some sort of dentistry day in and day out. And this is often when I get that say, okay, I hate this job, but I don’t really find the motivation. I think it’s because, you know, they’ve been doing the same things all the time. They are probably fed up to be disliked by patients because let’s be honest, a lot of people don’t like to go and see the dentist, and that is just creating a pressure that I think if you are able to largely change and tweak your routine and your working life, I think that is a lot more sustainable in long term and is a lot more interesting. Yeah, of course. Of course.

[00:43:33] And so do you think you’ll always do both what you want, move over just to solely teaching later on or.

[00:43:40] I mean, I have to say that obviously, you know, he is a tough to try to get the balance because then on top of that, I’m probably also I’ve got the old the business side because with all the practice I’m in daily contact with all the different practice manager or, you know, with yourself discussing the marketing. So I’m also need to try to get that side of the business as well, which I also enjoy a lot. You do? Yeah. You like that side as well. And then obviously there is all the the family balance that is important as well. So again, I’ve got two young daughters that I want to spend time with. Why? So I need to the parents so that they are still in Italy. So I need to try to get that balance where I try to spend my free time as much as I can with the people that they love and the things that they enjoy. But then at the same time, when I’m at work, I’m not shy to work as hard as I need to be and and at the same time try to do things that I enjoy more than anything else.

[00:44:42] Tell us about the kids.

[00:44:44] Yeah, they’re great. So it’s amazing, like how different they are. So 4 to 6. And Victoria, she’s three and four two nice is really similar to her mum. So he’s a little bit more introverted, he’s a little bit more shy, but she’s really bright and she’s really, really funny. But she always takes about the first half an hour just to warm up so everyone knows that it’s cool, you know, like it’s you’ll drop out of school and the first 5 minutes she cry or you know, the teacher needs to say she has to be the special, but then as soon as she goes there, then she enjoys and she likes the other one. She’s she’s the opposite and it’s probably a lot more similar to me is a lot more extroverted, a lot more friendly. She’s completely fearless. So as we were speaking, she was definitely at the moment with my wife, they start already the holiday and I enjoy them like soon. And they were just playing in this farm with the horses and then she decided to jump on this horse without telling the horse and she’s been beaten. So my wife just sent me a photo of a bruise that she’s got lying on her leg because, you know, she was not even scared of this horse that was probably six times taller than her. And she’s always she’s the one, you know, like she’s she’s a trouble maker. Like last month, she cut her fingers. The months before, always something happened to her. Yeah, but she’s really positive, really smiling, really friendly and confident. But it is great to be able to spend time with them. And it’s amazing how you’ll see their personality development and you really realise that they grow so quickly that you want to spend time with them.

[00:46:29] Yeah, so quickly. I remember, you know, it only seems like yesterday that Fortuna was born, right? How have you changed since becoming a father? So you can pay yourself like six, seven years ago before for. Sheena was born. And then what? What changed for you? Can you remember? Can you remember the day she was born?

[00:46:49] Yeah. Really? What? I remember the time. One thing I have to say is that go memory. That is not extremely useful. But I remember everything. I remember how I was dressed a patient ten years ago. Like all of my staff is amazed now without reading a note. You know, I said, I remember when I saw you ten years ago. You are going on holiday to Canada. How was it? And the patient looked at me and said, This is a bit spooky.

[00:47:15] I really don’t remember going at all.

[00:47:20] I remember everything. But obviously something like the day that your first child is born is obviously unforgettable. I would say that is really the biggest change, at least for me, has been the big changes in life. You know, getting married is great, but we are living together for many years. So that was not really you choose a lot of then, you know like obviously have to have another person in the world that you need to look after. It really changed the perspective. I would say, like I’ve definitely changed a lot and with whoever knows me well, they say that especially over the last couple of years, I’ve changed a lot and I think as being locked down, that helped me from that point of view because again, I’ve got really busy life and even when my daughter was born, I took the time off and I always tried to spend my free time with that. But I think what was happening was that I had my working life, which obviously I’m doing because I enjoy, but also to look after them. And then I had my family time, but then I really put myself almost like at the bottom of the list of the priority without really realising, because I think sometimes in life you do things without really sitting and say, okay, I’m going to do this.

[00:48:31] You don’t plan it.

[00:48:32] I don’t plan anyway.

[00:48:33] So, you know.

[00:48:36] And then know during the lockdown, I think it’s been one of those times where, you know, I’ve been spending a lot more time with them and then realised that I had to make few changes in terms of my priority and try to get a different life.

[00:48:48] Work. What instigated that, Alfonso? So, you know, sometimes it can be your kids or you know, for me there’s some moments of realisation when your kids can vocalise themselves and how they feel about you. You know, like I’m here today on a Saturday, right? Yesterday, Friday I was in Surrey teaching my course and Thursday afternoon I left the family home. Right? And my two girls knew I wasn’t going back till Saturday night. Yeah, as I said goodbye. And as I’m leaving, they run into the garden and both give me a hug. And they both squeeze me as hard as they can possibly do. Right. I’m going to miss you, Daddy. I’m going to miss you, Daddy. Don’t go right. And you know it pulls on your heartstrings, right? I love it. Makes you feel great as well that I’ve got two human beings here who want nothing more than to spend time with their daddy. Yeah, it’s an amazing feeling, right? Even as you’re leaving, it’s a wonderful feeling. But it pulls on your heartstrings and makes you realise. Actually, for me, you know what? If you invest in your children at a young age and when I mean invest in them, I don’t mean that. I mean send them to private school and buy them nice things, but just give them that. Yeah. That you’d like to think when you get to older age. Yeah. That investment in that relationship with them when they’re younger is a much nicer relationship when you’re when they’re adults. Right. That’s, that’s my dream anyway.

[00:50:19] I don’t know, like if maybe it was you that didn’t, because that is exactly my thought. You know, like you is the point where you realise that, you know, you can buy them a bike, you can buy them clothes, what they want, especially at that age, they won’t spend time with you and you realise that if you don’t do that, that distance between you and them is going to become greater and greater and then will become a lot more difficult to get that. So yeah, for me it is something similar and it’s amazing. You know, we can say kind of similar story. I mean as you know now I’m with defined and with Ben in Beaconsfield and what’s happened is when I go to working there, I usually leave the Tuesday night and I stay there on the Tuesday night and then I work Wednesday in Beaconsfield with Benji and last time Fortuna stopped me and say that they I don’t really think that is fair that you are going to Benji all the time. Why Benji doesn’t come to Bristol now.

[00:51:10] So, you know, like these are doesn’t understand.

[00:51:11] She doesn’t.

[00:51:12] Understand. So she say, okay, you are going there, right? So now is his term. You stay home and Benji come to stay with us. So but that kind of really shows, as you said, he’s the same than the alpha that you were mentioning a minute ago.

[00:51:25] Yeah, yeah. It’s so powerful, right. That what that balance is. And then and then what is Alfonso, what is the definition of success? Right. You know, is it the money? Is it the nice house, the nice clothes, the fancy cars, the. Ability to go and eat in any restaurant that you want and all of that. Right.

[00:51:46] Is that success for me? No, but that is the reason because like, you know, when people tell me, you know, success successful, I don’t feel that it’s not because I think, like, you know, success is be able to reach your goal in life. And the goal in life doesn’t have to be financial. I mean, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or I’m grateful for what I’ve got and I’m really happy and grateful for everything. But ultimately, for me, it’s not the main goal. So, you know, if if tomorrow I cannot afford a watch, a car or the Vespa is not going to change. My personality is not going to. You know, these are things that come and go. So this is is the same way. Like, I try to enjoy what I’m doing and and what I’ve got. So people say, okay, but are you wearing your watch? And what happens if you get scratched? And but it’s an object that is made to be used and to enjoy the people that they, they, they prove an enjoyment just owning something and they want to keep the safe. And I respect obviously that as well. But for me, if I got something, it’s because I want to enjoy it and we only live once, so why not?

[00:52:59] And so what is the what is your definition of success, Alfonso? You know, you say you’ve got you have a goal and you achieve it or whatever. But take yourself, cast your mind, you know, what are you 38 now? 58, 48, 58. Let’s take you to 68 now. Fast forward 30 years. Yeah, if you could if you could look back 30 years from today, what must have happened in that time for you to be happy both professionally and personally?

[00:53:30] But, you know, like I think again is be happy more than anything else. And, you know, if you ask me, how would you be happy? I mean, in the personal life, obviously, you know, hopefully health of the family and all the people that I love comes first. So be able to stay with my daughters and make sure that everyone is happy and healthy and.

[00:53:53] Well at this point, Fortune is 36.

[00:53:55] Yeah, I know. So she will probably still live with.

[00:53:58] Us.

[00:54:00] Like proper Italian style.

[00:54:04] And cooking for.

[00:54:06] Now. So, you know, like again, hopefully, you know, they will have fun. They will find someone that they love and they can build a family. So that will be something that will be great.

[00:54:16] The dad approves of.

[00:54:17] Of this. Yeah, of course.

[00:54:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:54:19] I think there is still like at the moment the granddad needs prefers I’ve got my dad that is more jealous than me and, and then like, you know, like professional, for example, you know, we are going back to the point that you often tend to your role model that can be of parents. And I was chatting with my dad a couple of days ago. He’s 68. So first you mentioned in his head of consultant, he’s been successful in his profession. He’s got great reputation. A lot of people respect him a lot, asking advice and he’s always helped everyone. So it’s quite nice that wherever we are going, I’ve got a lot of people, they say, Oh your, that was great. You did this for me, did this for that. And I think it’s quite nice. And I say that why you don’t retire. I mean, you know, like in Italy as a consultant, you can retire.

[00:55:07] Still working?

[00:55:08] Yes. An extension. And you say, but I enjoyed work so much, so why should I retire? So from a professional point of view, I don’t know what is going to happen in the future. And I have to say that I’m slightly concerned because the dentist treated are living at the moment in UK. I don’t feel that it’s the dentistry that I signed up for, but if in 13 years in the future I can do something that I enjoy, I think professional will be happy.

[00:55:38] What did you sign up for?

[00:55:40] I signed up for that to see where I was more like about a health care job. So where we were there to help patients and help patient doesn’t mean obviously only get them out of pain, but was really kind of to fulfil their expectations or improve the quality of their lives, give confidence back with a smile other than at the moment. I think after COVID, the things that change a lot is getting really litigious. There is a lot of defensive dentistry and it’s really sad, especially when we do this course that I speak with young dentists that they don’t want to work full time anymore. They find that it’s too stressful and they only want to do certain type of dentistry. And the type of that is they want to do is what they find is the most rewarding, probably financially or socially on social media, rather than really caring and helping patients. So I’ve seen dentists that they don’t do root canal anymore on a molar because they see that it’s something that someone else has to do. And if the patient is in pain, they don’t even know how to open a tooth anymore. Some of the of the new generation and I think that is a bit sad because ultimately from my point of view, if you signed to be a healthcare professional, your main duty of care is to make sure that you look after the patients. And if the patient is in pain, you need to try to help them. You need to do whatever is the right things for the health of their mouth before then. From your financial gain or from cosmetic, whatever, then I’ll see that there is a lot of shift toward the cosmetic. The I mean, I would say this is a generation of these Invisalign bonding and whitening is what, eight out of ten dentists now they’re interested, which nothing wrong with that, but it’s hard work. There are no people keen to, I don’t know a patient who is go paleo or even diagnosed with repair or an end, which I think is the foundation of the dentistry, really.

[00:57:50] But it seems to me like there’s this new generation of younger associate dentists, right, who want to be you know, there’s this term of super associates that you hear a lot, right? And all they want to do is the sexy dentistry. Right? Right. And even in our practice, we see some associates join us. And as you don’t have this, the full restorative skillset to do everything in a patient’s mouth. And so they’re just treating the the doing the AB or the edge bonding or the composite veneers and all the rest of it. But when that patient needs maintenance, a tooth fails or something like that, it ends up becoming someone else’s problem.

[00:58:32] Yeah, they really struggle. And the other thing is that also is everything about the short term gain. You know, often there is not, you know, you’ll see a lot of dentists interested in the sexy dentist, as you say it is that they tend to move from one practice to the other. But then I think for me was extremely important to be in the same practice for ten years and really learn from my failure of my mistakes. And that is one of the things I was mentioning with the teaching. You know, when they review a case that I’ve done ten years ago, I look and I say, God, why did I do that incision in that way? Why did they do that in that way? But dentistry is changing, and I think the only way to improve is to be critical with yourself and try to.

[00:59:16] To push.

[00:59:17] It to improve all the time. But there are not many people prepared to do that.

[00:59:22] And so speaking about errors and mistakes, Alfonzo, can you can you think of what your biggest clinical mistake was? You know, one of those moments where something happened in the moment and you thought to.

[00:59:35] Yourself, shit. I mean, I’ve got quite a lot.

[00:59:39] Of.

[00:59:40] Those. I mean, especially with the courses. So for example, talking about courses and being here, we did the course once on immediate placement and to join the course, the dentist had to have quite a lot of experience already and we were working and basically the dentist was trying to place this implant and I don’t know how because again, he’s an experienced dentist, he just dropped the implant into the sinus. So then it was one of the moment I said, Oh shit, with life surgery, with everyone around. So then we had to retrieve Yeah. Vision out and then open and then social design is back and then thankfully everything was fine in the end. But this was one of the time where, you know, like you are on the course lasting, you want something to go wrong and then have old people around. But as I said earlier, that is part of dentistry. Things can go wrong and you need to deal with that. I also feel that sometimes. And I feel that probably about a year ago I was a little bit more. I always struck all of my patients and they will review failure, success, conversion rate and all those things.

[01:00:51] So again, I’m really keen on audit my work from all the point of view and never noticed, like an increase of failure and problems. And I remember like all these people on Facebook started speaking about the level of stress, the vitamin D, which I’m sure they will also go like a part and and a role on things that we might not know. But then I really start to kind of analyse myself and say, what’s changed? And what’s happened is that I was getting more and more confident and I think I was push the boundaries probably a little bit more than I should have done. And then I realised that there were things that I said, okay, let’s go back to some of the basics and let’s maybe start to to play safer, whatever. Then sometimes you’ll do a complex case and everything goes well and you say, okay, I can do something even more complex next time. I can do something even more complex then I think is important to understand your limit and and step back.

[01:01:47] Just gives you that false sense of confidence that, yeah, I can keep and keep doing more, right? Correct. Have you ever had a moment where it was just you in the patient and you did something wrong, you know, pulled the wrong tooth out, perforated yourself when doing a root canal or whatever.

[01:02:07] Yeah. So I think like the biggest mistake that I did was many, many years ago where I still remember like, like really when you say like shit and then like become like to be paid. I was doing root canal for this patient and I didn’t need this endo on the side and I didn’t realise, I mean there was wrong chart or something like that. I’m not making excuses, but basically at the end of the eighth thing it was the last tooth. And then when I took the X-rays, the PR, I mean I was like really tricky and I said, This patient has got really strange anatomy with this. So I did all the angle. And then when I took the pay, then I saw three molars. So I said, okay, so that is not a seven something. So because all my x rays were on the last one and sometimes after you put the rubber down and if you have not really looked properly, which tooth you are treating, once that is in there, you just carry on treating the tooth. So, you know, from that I’ve learned a lot, you know, I’m I don’t do any more.

[01:03:17] So that’s the lesson, right? Yeah.

[01:03:19] But I remember like, you know, like, as you were saying was, was difficult to have that conversation with the patient to say, look, I’ve done I mean thankfully was an eight that was not something was so crucial obviously we had to do everything we had to do to put it right. And the patient in the end was like he was try to cheer me up, said.

[01:03:40] Well, you know, these things can happen. So no, no, no.

[01:03:43] I was I was so upset when that happened because I really felt that, you know, I’ve caused damage to someone. But I mean, unfortunately, it is a part of the risk of our job where sometimes we can do things and things can go wrong. And, you know, we’re human. We may all make mistakes.

[01:03:59] And so, Alfonzo, let’s let’s cast life much, much further ahead to the time where perhaps it’s your last day on the planet, you know, all being well, your loved ones are around you to spend that last moment with you. And what would you say to the girls? The last three bits of advice for you all for your girls from Teddy.

[01:04:21] I mean, definitely will be, you know, like on the theme of why not live your life with no regrets? And I think, you know, that is is really, really important because we really we only live once and we need to try to enjoy as much as we can and do the best that we can do. I think that is definitely one of the things, one of the most important point that I’ve learned second probably will be really give the right importance to the right things. So there are a lot of things where we might get to stress so upset or nervous that, you know, if you really take in the grand scheme of everything in life, probably they don’t really deserve so much importance because there are a lot of things that they are that are more important. So live with no regrets, get the right priority, and enjoy every minute that you’ve got on this right.

[01:05:18] Brilliant. Thank you, Alfonzo.

[01:05:19] You’re welcome. Pleasure.

[01:05:24] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

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[00:00:00] One of my favourite things which I don’t often see, because normally I must admit I’m out the door to get the kids from nursery at 5 to 6. But I happened tonight because I was, you know, staying around to speak to you guys. Was that all of the staff? Not all of the staff, but at least five members of staff, they park about two minute walk from the practice in a car park, which we rent some spaces. They all got changed, sat in reception and they wait for each other. The five people who are in that day parking together to make that two minute walk together and they could be rushing to get off. But, you know, five or six, you know, and I just thought, that’s so nice to see that, because they could go one by one by one, but they all wait and then they all walk over together.

[00:00:39] I was like.

[00:00:40] That actually kind of shows that it’s not that there’s a social, it’s not that the boss is buying drinks. It’s it’s nothing.

[00:00:45] It’s just that the family have that. That’s what they do.

[00:00:54] 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] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Katie Blake onto the podcast. Katie is a practice owner implant ologist, which is really the reason I wanted her on the show today, because if they get enough, enough ladies going in to implant ology and figure out what it was about her that got her into it. Mother of two young kids. And when I went over to the practice in Witham, I just got a general feeling that this lady, whatever she takes on, is going to be a massive success at it. I mean, every question I asked the answers were all brilliant, better than I would I would have normally expected. And just a great pleasure to have you on the on the pod. Katie, how you doing?

[00:01:50] Thank you. Good evening.

[00:01:51] Welcome. So, Katie, this this podcast kind of like your life and times and so let’s start there. Where were you born and what kind of childhood did you.

[00:02:02] Yeah, I grew up actually not far from where I am based now. So over in Suffolk, pretty normal upbringing, lived in the country, nice house, pretty good school, then ended up studying up at Barts in London for dentistry, toyed with a few careers engineering, veterinary, something like that, but ended up with dentistry as my first choice and it kind of went from there, I guess.

[00:02:26] Why dentistry?

[00:02:27] Well, one of my dad’s best friends, who was our family dentist growing up, really good guy, very enthusiastic about his life, his patients and that work life balance, which I’m sure a lot of dentists have at the forefront of their minds at the moment, is getting that balance right. And he was very enthusiastic about someone in our family going into that. He tried my sister and she devoted over to medicine and then had a go at my brother and he ended up in sales. And I guess third time he tried me and I said, okay, sounds great. So did the classic work experience. But I think at any point in your dentistry career, it’s really about finding somebody who can inspire you, who likes their job, and meeting that person at that key point, whether it’s as a 15 year old, making your GCSE going into GCSE as A-levels or whether it’s later on in your career, I guess people call it a sliding door moment, get get the right connection at the right time, and that can just send your whole life in a different direction, essentially.

[00:03:31] What was it about this person that inspired you that sort of changed that direction for you? Was there a moment or was it something sad or something that you observed or.

[00:03:43] I think, yeah, probably more the the key ethics in in their practice, the enthusiasm. And like I said, I’ve always known that there needs to be this work life balance. And he certainly demonstrated that that was possible. There’s definitely an entrepreneurial background in my family and I guess all these kind of factors tied in together to make dentistry seem, and I still think it is a great option for bringing those aspects in together. I think there was negatives playing against the other career options at that point. You know, I love animals. I would love to be a veterinary surgeon, but I think there’s things about it that wouldn’t have suited me. So I think I’m in the right place.

[00:04:30] When you grew up in Ipswich.

[00:04:33] Yeah, exactly. So yeah, only about 40 miles from where I am now. But good thing about that, it’s just such a lots of friends and friends and family. My husband grew up not far who would sit for them together. Just took about a decade before we dated. So, you know.

[00:04:48] It’s a slow burner. What was.

[00:04:50] It like? What was it like arriving in London to study after growing up in Ipswich? I guess you’d been to London several times.

[00:04:58] Well, London.

[00:04:59] East London, you know, it’s kind.

[00:05:01] Can be a bit of a.

[00:05:04] Shock. It’s actually, I think, you know, alluding to being a.

[00:05:08] Third child again, I drove myself to university with my big brother who lived down the road. He’d just graduated from city uni and then he helped me unpack and parked the car by his flat. So I think there’s always been a fairly strong level of independence in my life, so I guess that kind of made it less of a scary step than it might have been for others.

[00:05:28] You know why, Katie? Did your parents encourage that somehow?

[00:05:33] Yeah, for sure. So grandparents and things, they have always travelled the world. Both my parents lived abroad when they were younger. We were very much kicked into being independent through travel and things from a young age. Age 16, I went out to Japan on a youth exchange program for the summer and we went and stayed in people’s houses and my Japanese.

[00:05:54] Is virtually.

[00:05:56] Non-existent as it was then. But really you can learn like we will find with patients who we don’t have the same first language with. You don’t need to speak the same language to. Communicate with people. I can’t remember the statistic. I’m sure one of you guys know.

[00:06:08] What’s the how much is nonverbal? Yeah. How much is.

[00:06:13] It?

[00:06:13] It’s an actual amount. Is it?

[00:06:15] It’s a lot.

[00:06:17] So. So, you know, I think going.

[00:06:21] Through experiences like that, great experiences when you’re younger, suddenly means, you know, turning up at university, you know, an hour’s train drive from where you live, you know, not maybe as intimidating as some sort of country bumpkins might find it.

[00:06:36] And what was uni like for you, Katie?

[00:06:39] Yeah.

[00:06:40] Uni’s great. I played a lot of sport, which I’ve always loved. It’s a great way to meet people, play clubs, club hockey, know it’s great, it’s great uni, lots of good education, not campus uni which you know, young people looking at universities. I think that would be really the only negative I can think of to to study at a London university. But it was great fun. You know, you can’t fault it. Whoever wants to university to work hard, play hard, I think is how we got through most.

[00:07:09] Of our dental dental degree.

[00:07:12] What about when you qualified, Casey? What was it when was your what was your first job?

[00:07:17] So I ended up down in.

[00:07:20] Fulham.

[00:07:20] For feet with a paediatric, one of the paediatric tutors from university. Just thought I’d try the other side of London for a bit. It’s really great. He taught me great key messages to deliver, which really said today to to kids. I then went on to Kings and did Max. Max, which was an induction of fire, I guess, is how I describe it.

[00:07:44] Great experience, you know, being chucked it as a.

[00:07:47] As a dentist alongside half the team, being doctors and nobody nobody else in the hospital knows.

[00:07:53] What you are.

[00:07:54] Means. You really just have to learn on your feet, which I think.

[00:07:57] Did you enjoy?

[00:07:58] You enjoy, Max?

[00:07:59] Max absolutely loved it. Yeah, loved it. And it was it was a strong consideration. But I think this draws back to what I said already in terms of that work life balance, you know, and and I don’t know how doctors do it. I have a lot of friends, obviously, from uni who are doctors. I’m sure you guys do as well.

[00:08:19] Probably as a.

[00:08:19] Doctor, you just work all hours. Why?

[00:08:26] That’s why he’s no longer a doctor.

[00:08:28] No, never done it. Never done an honest day’s work in my life. But yeah, a lot of my friends who I was at uni with as well. Right, is the work life balance is non-existent. You’re right. Yeah. I don’t know how they do it, but I guess you know what? It’s because we know a different life, right? We don’t know any different and and that’s all they, they normalise with. Right. So yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s easier to make that statement when we’re on the other end and you have and we’ll talk about work life balance later, Katie, because obviously we’ve had discussions where you took a bit of time out of your own practice and your situation allowed you to step out of dentistry, step out of your business. Yeah. Go and have a kid come back and start smashing metal rods in people’s heads again. And you know what I was I was quite impressed with because obviously, you know, I’ve got four kids. I’ve worked with numerous associates, some who have taken longer time out of dentistry. But you were very clear. You was like, okay, so Prav, we’re going to we’re going to tailor the implant campaigns down because I’m going to place my last implant on this day. Then I’m going to have X number of weeks off and then we’ll just it and then I’ll start doing some simple cases and then and then I’ll go straight in.

[00:09:52] Yeah. I mean, what’s stopping you? Save your baby.

[00:09:55] People being babies for centuries all over the world.

[00:09:59] And do you do you think do you think it’s harder for women to do dentistry?

[00:10:04] I think well, I listen to one of your other podcasts. I forgotten the lady’s name. Who was you were just discussing.

[00:10:11] A lot about about women.

[00:10:12] In dentistry. Forgive me for not remembering. And and I think, you know, like you said, that it’s a great career choice for women. You’ve got that flexibility, you know, to be in and out you trousers and things like that. I think the only difficulty somehow is when everybody tries to do everything, you know. And of course, I feel the pressure is the same as anyone else. You know, owning a business, having kids, you know, some something’s got to give somewhere. But children are resourceful things, aren’t they? They just get on with it. I think my opinion is that sometimes we’re all a bit too led by children and they just have to get on with it. But you know, they’re only little, so we’ll see how they turn out.

[00:10:53] Yeah.

[00:10:53] I mean, it’s an interesting point, isn’t it, to be led by your children or to lead your children in different directions. But there must be a tension, right, between the amount of time you’re spending with them and the amount of time you’re spending at work. And do you do you feel that you don’t feel like others do the guilt and all of that?

[00:11:13] Yeah, I think it is sometimes stressful. I’d say the thing that does often give is having any time for yourself, which I know is is a challenge. You know, there’s obviously been a lot on social media in the news and stuff recently about this kind of, you know, burnout stresses, mental health and all of this. I think it’s a really interesting point I’m very good at. I personally think compartmentalising things so I can go home and not think about work for a whole evening, you know, which can be a negative, I guess can be a positive. But it does mean that for me, at least when I’m not at work, I feel I don’t really get too involved. Not like I do occasionally wake up early and think about it, but I don’t struggle to get sleep at night, you know? So whether that’s a good or bad thing, it probably is what allows me to be very busy at work and then go home and be a mother and there isn’t much crossover between the two. I’ve got a great team at work, makes a big difference. You know, occasionally I can think of even a couple of weeks ago my husband was away skiing in February. Very important to go skiing even with a newborn baby. Home and I had a late patient. And so I sent the treatment coordinator to go and pick up the kids from nursery down the road and she brought them back to work.

[00:12:25] Because I.

[00:12:26] Can get there. So I think everything. You can’t do it all by yourself, can you? So, so having that, that support team, whether it’s for childcare, for the house, for the business, it’s, you know, it’s a team.

[00:12:40] Effort.

[00:12:41] Okay, Katie, your husband’s your right hand man, not just in life, but in your business as well. Right. So just before we get into that, you mentioned you met at sixth form.

[00:12:54] Yeah.

[00:12:54] Ten years later, you got together. Just just how did that just tell us about that? That I’m just curious.

[00:13:04] Maybe just a slow burner. I think I in a big.

[00:13:06] Group of friends, you know, and I think it’s a case of. Right, right person. Different time, right person, right time, everybody. Sometimes you think what would life have been like if you’ve recognised age 18, whatever? We met over 14, you know, but actually all your experiences make you the person that you are. So, so we got there in the end, you know.

[00:13:30] And yeah.

[00:13:32] So did did you have a ten year gap or were you in touch with each other?

[00:13:35] We were in touch, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we’re still friends over the same group of friends. Yeah. Oh, cool. So, so, so yeah. We’ve, we’ve essentially grown up together, but, you know, it means you know each other, each other’s families. So bizarrely, my parents didn’t actually realise his first name for about the first two years that we were dating because we all call them by surname, which is Blake.

[00:13:58] And they realised it wasn’t two years into the relationship because they never had anything else.

[00:14:05] Blake. Blake So Katie, how far did you go in or surgery? Did you just do the one little house job or did you take it further?

[00:14:14] No, just the one house job. Yeah. And then a moment of clarity that although.

[00:14:18] I loved the job, I needed a life.

[00:14:20] So I actually tapped out of London and went down to Cornwall and did a few locum jobs, took a bit of time out. You know.

[00:14:27] Having done London and.

[00:14:30] London for seven years, you know, I wanted to go get a bit of bit of headspace, which is a great thing to do.

[00:14:36] You know.

[00:14:36] Lovely area bit, the back and beyond. So I thought I’d come back up for work where I came from.

[00:14:42] But then, so your oral surgery job didn’t particularly help with being a implant surgeon. You didn’t you hadn’t had enough experience of cutting people.

[00:14:51] And I think.

[00:14:53] Was it one of those jobs that you did jump in and take wisdom teeth out and all that.

[00:14:58] A bit? Yes, I think that the most important thing and why I would still always say to new graduates that doing a job like that is great is after you’ve been the on call person for a trauma centre in London.

[00:15:12] And your first person.

[00:15:14] Nothing fazes you. You know, so and I distinctly remember my last day on the job being on call and being called to the neuro ICU and they’d hit something was doing a tracheostomy. And I was the person they called to stop to stop the bleeding out of a hole in the neck. So having having had that as your kind of you are the person that they call for those sort of issues, really, you know, teeth are just teeth.

[00:15:42] Which, you know.

[00:15:44] So.

[00:15:45] I think can.

[00:15:45] Put things into perspective a bit. Not saying that it could make people blasé because I think there’s obviously we all know there’s risks of everything, but it certainly makes you think, okay.

[00:15:56] You know, it’s going to be okay.

[00:16:00] So then you decided you’re not going to go down that path and then what’s a general practice became a goal.

[00:16:07] Yeah. General practice. I was in a busy NHS practice in Essex, called off an old union, said, Can I have a job? And they said, Yeah, there you go. Which in that is a practice. You know, in retrospect, at the time I thought, wow, I must, you know, they really, you know, really good friends. In retrospect, I think if someone like me called me up now and said, Can I have a job? I would say yes. So I can.

[00:16:33] See see.

[00:16:34] Where it’s where, where they were coming from. So did a bit of that and then went up and did death tells in part course at UCL and it carried on from there really which is a great, a great foundation interest and course taught me a lot, exposed me to a lot of interesting lectures and things like that and was a pretty robust course. I found it robust, let’s put it that way.

[00:17:01] Take us through the decision making process. Because, look, the vast majority of men and women, by the way, don’t go to implants. What is about you that made you want to go that way? Did you decided from the beginning that you would be doing implants? Was there a particular patient, a conversation, someone you spoke to, a mentor? Like what? What made you make that call to go on Deaf Patel’s course, where so many people don’t like me as a dentist? I’d never even considered it for a second.

[00:17:30] Yeah. I think for me it was being in the right place at the right time with the practice principle at the time was quite enthusiastic about implants and supportive of somebody who wanted to do that.

[00:17:43] Was he placing himself being.

[00:17:46] Yes. So you were watching.

[00:17:47] Somewhere where your boss sent messages through. Oh, I’m just about to do this. Do you want to come and watch? And the answer is always yes. Go and have a look, see what they’re doing. So, you know, not an academic high flying guy, but just, you know, a decent dentist placing decent implants, you know, that I think is important. Obviously, that or surgery experience has always been really interesting, which I think actually stems from going out on a few charity projects. I’ve done a few over the years, sort of bridge to aid a few other of the Ugandan projects and Europe, Central America, things like that. So the doctors in the surgery had come from a few of those experiences over the years as well. So for me it seemed like a natural step. You know, how can you make.

[00:18:31] Or some.

[00:18:32] Kind of surgery sit in with general practice? I think for me that was the obvious way to go and looking around at courses, probably I should think still at that time. Definitely. You know, UCL is one of the reputable ones as far as I was concerned.

[00:18:47] Anyway.

[00:18:49] Let’s get back to implants a bit later. Tell me about the charity work. How did that come about and what’s the feeling of it? Do you feel helpless when you’re out there? There’s so much a mountain of work that needs doing and.

[00:19:01] Well, yeah, I think.

[00:19:03] Probably quite.

[00:19:05] Naively, maybe I think I went between like the second and third year of I think second and third year of uni. Out with Christian relief Uganda they called and that was just by chance finding them online I think I think always the heart’s always in the right place of all of these charities. They are trying to help where they can. Subsequently, having volunteered with British Trade, I know they’ve had a little bit of a change in the direction of the charity, I think, in the last year or so and caught up with them fairly recently. But I think anything like that, the idea is always, isn’t it, to train the people out there, you know, because there’s only so much that you can impact as a single dentist going out to the country and pulling out teeth for three weeks. Yes, you help some people, but where’s the long lasting help? So I think for me it was a good experience. It certainly made me realise how lucky we are with the provisions and things we have in the UK and the practical side of getting out there and getting on with clinical stuff compared to the limited clinical experience any undergraduate degree.

[00:20:09] Can can.

[00:20:10] Give you probably they gave me a leg up. You know, you get back to union, you can put up teeth better than the other fourth year student. So you get given the harder ones and you get given the harder ones and it carries on from there. So I guess that spirit of adventure instilled in me as a as a teenager probably. Maybe do that. Maybe do that. You know how life goes on.

[00:20:30] And Katie, you mentioned earlier when you were younger, sort of being an entrepreneur or businesswoman and was kind of like destined for you. It was it was in the blood for from a young age. When when did you decide that? Right. I’m going to be a practice owner. And what was your journey from where you were sort of in your journey? Learning to place implants, doing some work in your mates, practice and whatnot, and then and then moving into making that jump into practice ownership. And do you know what? It’s it’s a topic of conversation. You jump on Facebook and everyone’s opening in a squat, buying a practice, thinking of doing it, asking 101 questions. Just talk us through your journey and your thought process. Even before you you talked into being a business owner.

[00:21:17] Yes. So I was. Selling eggs at the end of the farm drive in age 12 on a business loan from my parents buying the chickens, I then have to pay back. So, you know, from that perspective.

[00:21:29] It’s all learning, isn’t it?

[00:21:32] The practice ownership part. I had a fairly strong idea of what area of the world I was going to live in. Family is very important to me. We still live next to my parents. You know, we had a bond. So for me, there was only a finite area and a finite size of practice, I guess, that that my budget could afford at that time. So essentially keeping an eye on the marketplace for, I think almost three years before this one came up. Half an hour drive from where you want to live, in my opinion. And you know, you have this much money. I want you to mix practice, wants to own the building. So really a combination of those things. We looked at a few, but I think it’s just waiting for the right for the right time, right time, right place.

[00:22:20] To cater you. Other criteria like right at the start mix practice have to own the building half an hour from home. To half an hour from home again. Yeah. Really easy that you just. You just want a smooth commute, right? And close to home. That makes sense. Yeah. And the mix practice and the.

[00:22:41] Building and.

[00:22:42] Owning the building. Yeah. What is it about owning the building?

[00:22:45] Well, this is something which I’m reconsidering. You know, if we do move to sue practices, would I do the same thing again? I don’t know if it’s naivety in business. I mean, it still kills me as it ever has when I’ve rented properties to think that you’re paying off someone else’s mortgage. And it’s basically the same thing with a lease. Oh, right. Yeah. So and I guess for me the, the other time I’m a is because of what a mixed practice. And the reason that was one of my criteria assessing when I.

[00:23:15] Bought.

[00:23:16] Would I buy a second mixed practice? I don’t know. I guess we’ll wait and see if.

[00:23:21] If, if what.

[00:23:22] The new NHS contract when it’s a whole different topic for debate. But you know would I think it does give a good security, it does give a solid patient base to somebody opening or taking over a practice. At least you know what you’ve got and you’ve got some patients to play with to start with, you know. So for me it was that.

[00:23:45] And what are your tips for converting NHS to private? So a lot of mixed practice owners will, will say actually I’ve got, I’ve got a, I’ve got a list of patients here that some of whom will convert straight across to private duty. Do you have any tips yourself in terms of converting any NHS patients to private?

[00:24:05] I think it all lies at making sure that you as a practice are making that patient feel valid, listening to them communication when they feel that they can trust you as a clinician. Yes, but the whole team, because the goal of any practice in my mind, practice ownership is to get to the point where you don’t have to work in the practice, you know, or at least at least the practice isn’t 100% reliant on you, but you’ve got to build the trust. You know, I don’t think it’s the same as sales techniques. I think it’s it’s a it’s a communication in a trust communication. And that will build a practice.

[00:24:44] Tenfold over all of.

[00:24:46] The marketing.

[00:24:47] And has has has the split from the NHS private split changed since you took over the practice and in if so, how.

[00:24:57] Yes. So we have very small NHS contract. Ace. We’ve had the practice coming up about two and a half years now. And in the last two and a half years, we’ve. Tripled the private coming through the practice. I think about five or six times the practice plan we have here. Now, some of that is covered. Yes. How much? I don’t know. I guess that will all come out in the wash in the next few years and we’ll find out. So I think it does help. I wouldn’t say we convert that many people because we don’t really try to to to flip the NHS over. But for me we get a lot of word of mouth, new people joining us and and mostly that’s through an experience a helping out. For me if a patient needs seeing that day they need seeing that day if it means, you know, I don’t have a hold out, I never have a whole life lunch, who does?

[00:25:51] You know, I help I have people.

[00:25:53] That you’ve got to care about people fundamentally. It’s a caring health care profession.

[00:25:56] You know.

[00:25:58] Perhaps you’ve never been there, although you’re more involved in in their business than than I’ve been. But when you go there does not feel like an NHS practice at all. Not one little bit, you know, the smiling people, the surprise and delight gifts calling patients before, before they even come. For the first time, there was some other amazing stuff. Little, little, little, little cupboard with with goodies for the patient that they just hand out whenever there’s a situation. And and very strong on the marketing side, which I guess you need to be in private practice. You do need that. But, but I’m quite interested in this sort of your vision. You, you seem to have a very sort of simple way of looking at things. And but I’m saying that with in I don’t mean simplistic. No, no, I mean simple. Did you have a vision for it when you when you came and saw the practice, are you thinking about buying it apart from it had those different criteria. Could you see that there were things that you could do better? And what were those things and how soon did you start changing things? Because it doesn’t make sense to day one stock going berserk. Changing things is that you don’t want to annoy you don’t want to disturb the patient base or the staff or anything. So what was that? What were the things that you saw about it that you thought there’s extra potential here? And then how long was it before you put stuff in place?

[00:27:25] Yeah, sure. I think a lot of things we have done and we’re not there by any stretch of the imagination. I’ll put my hands up and say, we don’t know all the answers. We’re just learning like anyone else is. We’ve spent a bit of time still going into other people’s practice. Whoever will have us to spend days with people, I try and do at least sort of two different practices a year. And it’s it’s it’s been really refreshing within the profession to call up people who we know or connect through other people and say, listen, can I come down to practice for an afternoon sitting with you doing clinic because you always learn from other people. I don’t know at all by any any stretch. So to have found that I think if you can come away from an afternoon with another clinician or another practice manager and pick up one tip that you then take back to your practice, you know, multiply that by hundreds of days, hundreds of tips, and that really does help a practice grow. I think when I took over the practice organically, we wanted to see where it goes. It was sort of still in parts, a little bit scruffy, but that has meant that it’s retained the sort of non-clinical family environment family feel to it. Lots of my patients now, the kids know the babies and all of this and it wouldn’t necessarily surprise them and hasn’t surprised them when they’ve come in for treatment. And there’s one of my babies in a pram asleep in the waiting room, which maybe isn’t the kind of slick London experience you’d get. But we’re not.

[00:28:49] In we’re not on Harley Street, you know, and I think when people know you as a.

[00:28:54] Person, they maybe trust you more, you know. So I think that that’s helped as to the vision, that’s something I have up here. We’re working with Mark Topley to try and get some of this stuff that’s in my head, my husband’s head down on paper so that we can kind of work on what it is that makes the practice what it is in order to help other staff recognise it. Get the message across on social media website as we expand, rebrand things like that. But I think you’re right that you don’t want to change everything at once. You don’t want to scare off that core of patients, you know, so and a lot of it we don’t see occasionally a patients say, oh.

[00:29:38] Looks a lot.

[00:29:39] Smarter than a few years ago and you have to pause and go, thank you.

[00:29:42] It’s very difficult for people.

[00:29:45] It’s very difficult to take praise, isn’t it?

[00:29:47] You know.

[00:29:48] So I think it’s very nice when you suddenly hear that recognition from a patient very, very different and able to accept that praise and think, oh, actually we have done a lot. I have a to do list as long as my arm. But actually to say, okay, well we’re getting there, you know, it’s two and a half years.

[00:30:05] Well, ten years is nothing. Yeah, it really is nothing at all.

[00:30:09] It’s.

[00:30:10] So considering that you’ve done a lot already, that’s that’s kind of the crux of my question, you know. You must have started pretty soon after buying it, making changes. Yeah. What were the first changes you made? I mean, what was what was glaringly obvious to you that needed changing at the beginning.

[00:30:29] Taking receptionists out of the back corner and put them up front so patients can see them when they’re walking through the door. Lovely receptionist she’s on maternity leave but comes by every month with her baby for lunch until she comes back, you know? And and everybody knows that. Everybody, like, say you’d walk in through the door and you have to look around a post into a back corner to find her. So why would you hide someone like that who’s who’s a great person in the back corner? So who pulled her out the back.

[00:30:54] Corner for the.

[00:30:56] Reception at the front? You know, it’s simple. Changes like that, I think, make a big difference. You know, refurbished, smart art, fresh coat of paint, even if you haven’t got the budget to, you know, if you haven’t got the budget to re plaster, don’t re plaster, but, you know, put some new lights.

[00:31:12] In the.

[00:31:13] Put a smelly thing into it doesn’t smell like a dentist. As soon as you walk in, it all builds to helping patients relax a little bit more, doesn’t it? Nobody really likes going to the dentist even. I don’t.

[00:31:24] Know.

[00:31:25] And from the treatment perspective, was that was that was there any implants being placed at that practice? Was there any Invisalign going on?

[00:31:32] There was no Invisalign. So we brought that in. Arturo, we brought in a CBC that there was some implants being placed, not any of the full.

[00:31:40] Mouth stuff, all.

[00:31:41] For type stuff I’m doing. It was sort of single implants, no marketing going on. So a few, what I would call relatively easy fixes have been done. The harder ones, the planning permission, the rear extension, they are still a work in progress, but we’re.

[00:31:57] Getting that.

[00:32:00] To Prav and I both know the area kind of a little bit from. We both worked with Andy Morpho for years and years and you look at Chelmsford, you think, Well, that’s a major hub, right? So there they will need all of this stuff. But, but I don’t know, maybe, I don’t know Witham very well. Yeah. So, but when I look at Sleepy Witham, yeah. And then I just don’t imagine that a town like that would have as much invisalign in it as, as you guys are obviously doing or enlightened or all on for or did you realise this anyway because you’re from the area or did you say, I’m going to be the one because it’s inevitably going to happen in a town like this or how? Tell me about that.

[00:32:43] I think. Well, I’ve never been to Western before. Bought practice here to tell you just drive past it on the A12 you know. Great has a train stop.

[00:32:51] Yeah yeah we did obviously.

[00:32:53] Look at the potential the new development.

[00:32:55] There there was a lot of housebuilding, there’s a lot of housebuilding going on.

[00:33:00] But in essence, a lot of people, particularly with more working from home, I think are moving slightly further out of London. And that’s I think is is giving either the new builds or the villages. You know, there’s some really nice areas around here, villages where all the houses are sort.

[00:33:17] Of tied.

[00:33:18] To 1.5 mil, you know, so so there is the money around here. And I know it’s not all about money, but you’ve got to have people who want to spend money to have a business 70.

[00:33:31] So I think that.

[00:33:31] There’s a wider draw. Yes, I think that’s the answer.

[00:33:36] Interesting. Prav What about your journey in marketing best practice. What did you do? What did you think? What did you how did you start?

[00:33:46] I think we well, I initially spoke to Alex, right. You’re at the house and I think you were having some challenges. It might have been with another agency or something like that. And and for me, with whatever practice it is, right. It’s just understanding the sales process. That’s the first thing. Because if you’ve got a terrible sales process, that doesn’t matter what marketing you’ve got going on, it’s not going to work. So understanding the sales process was really important and I think I believe I met your TCL stroke lead ninja at the time and it was clear to me that their sales process was good. The follow up systems, we had a couple of conversations around how that could be elevated a little bit and improved, and then we just kicked off with the basics, right? And when I speak to clinicians, you know, the first thing is, okay, you want me to market implants, know, the first question I ask is, Well, give me your clinical remit. What can you do? And the conversation with Katie was more about what she couldn’t do. There wasn’t very much so. So, you know, often to have that conversation, it’s a bit like, what are you are you are you a single implant, a multi implant, ones and twos or full arch and cases like everything. Send me everything.

[00:35:04] Right. So we so we kind of know what we can push, right? You can push the marketing that focuses on the identity patient focuses on the loose denture sufferer, all that sort of stuff. So that makes our life super easy, right? Because if we’re driving inquiries that come through and unfortunately either the clinic don’t have the ability to to service that from a clinical perspective, then then you’re struggling. And it’s the same with orthodontics, right? But you know, there’s there’s a lot of volume for children’s orthodontics and stuff like that, but we’d never dream of targeting that for a practice that focuses on, let’s say, invisalign or clear aligner treatment or whatever, unless it’s specialist service. So a big part of it is understanding the sales process. And then, you know, I think the benefit that you’ve got, Katie is having Alex there, who can keep an eye on things, who can respond quickly, who can monitor things. Do you see what I mean? And if things you know, if things are not quite going to plan or whatever, pick up the phone, reorder, adjust things, make some adjustments, and then away we go. And for you guys, I found that because your sales process was pretty robust, it’s is pretty straightforward. Generate the leads, they’ll convert and then away we go.

[00:36:22] But why is that? Most practices you go to or you work with, you’ve got to fix the sales process, the follow up and all that, I think. Katie, did you did you know this? Did you know this was key and you put that process in place or was it already in place when you bought the place or.

[00:36:37] It was not in place when we bought the place.

[00:36:39] I think there’s a lot a lot.

[00:36:41] Of things go on in the background. You know, a lot of different courses we’re sending. The TSOs just finished a course of Lord Horton, who does all of the course, stuff like that, even though she’s pretty confident at what she was doing already. So like I alluded to, already tweaked lots of things and suddenly it all comes together. Spend time on training so that it’s all the elements because they might not get it eco knows or the training they might get the girls second week at reception, you know. So I think you’ve got to make sure that everybody understands and everyone’s singing from the same same songbook, isn’t it?

[00:37:18] I think the thing is, though, Alex knows his onions, right? When it comes to processes and systems and stuff like that. And that’s that’s a massive plus, like having somebody in the business that knows their shit.

[00:37:31] What’s his background, what’s his what was Alex doing before he was doing this?

[00:37:35] So he did a maths degree. He taught maths head of department at a high school for nine, eight, nine years, something like that. The police for a year. Then I bought the practice, we bought the practice and and I suddenly thought, oh Christ. Luckily at the time he wasn’t decided that the police wasn’t for him. So we did a rapid, rapid conversion over into the practice just at the right time because.

[00:38:02] Because.

[00:38:03] As you said, Prav, there’s no chance I could be doing this by myself. I don’t know what I was thinking.

[00:38:07] Thinking I could.

[00:38:08] Which means that’s allowed. That’s freed me up to focus on the surgery, focus on the implants, and focus on the clinical side. He is non-clinical he knows a few dental words now, but that means anything.

[00:38:22] That’s not anything that’s not clinical.

[00:38:25] It goes to him both in terms of managing the staff, in terms.

[00:38:28] Of all of the.

[00:38:29] The marketing, the finances. There’s quite a clear delegation.

[00:38:35] On paper, though. That’s not a great background for what he’s doing. I mean, maths teacher and police expertise, did he did he do a lot of reading or going on courses or does he take a massive interest in businesses now? How does it work?

[00:38:49] Yes. So I think I think two things. One is that actually being in a managerial position within the teaching role meant that he didn’t know how to manage people. So I think the that side of things, yes, the massive business, I think actually do go quite hand in hand understanding the numbers. All of that he loves. And we actually he took advantage of the complete back catalogue of Chris Barrows stuff he put free online during COVID. So for most.

[00:39:18] People.

[00:39:19] Yeah, for most people, COVID was this lovely period of relaxation. We literally put our heads down for eight weeks, which couldn’t have come at a better time for us, to be honest with you. Would have the business got the business in the August, had a baby in September and COVID hit was it February, March and at that. So we suddenly we had our six month baby at home, which was fine, because that meant I got booked on maternity leave, in essence, and, and did half days of work and half days of childcare and got through.

[00:39:49] A real, real lot.

[00:39:50] Of vision for the business. So I think for us that worked that worked well and we learned on our feet what we don’t know, we ask. Lots of people will answer if you ask.

[00:40:00] And we do.

[00:40:02] It’s true. So tell me about the moving from single tooth implant. A couple of implants to full arch.

[00:40:10] Yeah.

[00:40:10] How long? How long did it take you to go from never having put an implant in to becoming an all on fall chick?

[00:40:18] Well, yeah, I think a couple of years. It’s. It’s the thing. Yeah, you just got to do the right job in the right place, you know?

[00:40:27] If you’ve got.

[00:40:28] I think if you’re in an environment with any aspect of dentistry, if you’re somewhere where you’ve got somebody who will help you, you can nip it and ask a quick question in the room next door. Then. Then I think you will naturally try.

[00:40:41] Things.

[00:40:41] Try things.

[00:40:42] More.

[00:40:43] We see it.

[00:40:43] But the course in UCL, the Dev Patel course, did that cover all four as well or not?

[00:40:48] No. So I went out and did some work at the Mala Clinic in Lisbon.

[00:40:53] Oh, did.

[00:40:54] You? And that opened my eyes.

[00:40:58] Yeah. So I thought, well, you want to.

[00:41:02] Learn about dentistry? Why not go to the people who invented oral? Four Kind of make sense in my mind. So went out there, looked at a lot of their processes. Yeah. And for.

[00:41:12] Me, the skyscraper.

[00:41:13] Thing.

[00:41:13] You don’t know it all by spending a few weeks at a place like that, but you can see an awful lot.

[00:41:19] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:41:21] What’s it like in there? Like, literally a 15 storey dental hospital. That’s what it looks like from the outside.

[00:41:28] Yeah. I can’t think about Florida.

[00:41:30] It’s like.

[00:41:31] It’s like floor 12 or something like that. Absolutely.

[00:41:35] I mean.

[00:41:37] They really have got their processes sorted. You know, patients do X, Y and Z. They’ve, you know, so I think, like I alluded to, you see different things. You take different things away. Their processes are.

[00:41:49] Phenomenal.

[00:41:50] So slick, you know, they just every little step is made to make the patient experience better in the clinical outcomes better, which is all we can try and do in dentistry is, is work against the, against the negatives. Keep things.

[00:42:04] Keep things high.

[00:42:06] Success rate as possible. And that’s what they do there, I think, in my limited experience.

[00:42:13] So clinically, who would you say are your sort of dental inspirations or mentors or even people you haven’t met before who’s really like, who do you look up to in dentistry?

[00:42:23] What I think obviously there are the Dev Patel’s and the public Mallory and things like this. You know, these are people who who are leading the industry as far as I can assess. Obviously, there’s a lot of people on social media and things like this nowadays. Very interesting. I follow people like some chart. I think what he’s doing is, is, is great. All of the AGI crowd when I was doing my implant diploma, I was with Wael Girgis, his Devonshire house practice over in Cambridge. His stuff is is really good. The ethics are just phenomenal. And again, that’s the type of place I haven’t been there for a few years now. But you go there, you see what they’re doing and you.

[00:43:02] Think, Oh, I like that.

[00:43:04] I wonder if we can just just work that into what we’re doing. So I think for me, it’s about having an open profession, you know, help each other out equally. I would say people want to come down to us and see what we’re doing. You know, everyone’s.

[00:43:17] More than welcome.

[00:43:18] I like having people around. I like talking clearly.

[00:43:21] So I recommend it. I recommend it. You’re going to get a bunch of people calling you now, you know that. But I recommend it because what I got from it was from I walked in from the outside, looked like an ordinary practice, quite charming, ordinary practice, you know, old building and all that. But when I went inside, extraordinary things going on in this ordinary town and and that if you could bottle that then then I’m sure. I’m sure people people will love to drink that sauce, that special sauce, because really, really a special feeling in that practice. And I remember at the end of the training for your team, I just turned round to you and said, I know this is going to be a massive success because sometimes you can just tell that you’re in front of people who are going to implement stuff. And the other lovely thing was how happy you were your team were, you know, because sometimes in that high stress environment of high turnover of patients or whatever it is, that sort of kindness can fall off, fall off the edge. And it felt like a family, you know, it felt like happy people who are happy to be there with each other. Do you work on that? Who works on that side of it or does that just come naturally?

[00:44:36] Well, I think it’s I’d hope not chance but put people in the right environment. Maybe it recruiting the right people. One of my favourite things which I don’t often see, because normally I must admit I’m out the door to get the kids from nursery at 5 to 6. But I happened tonight because I was, you know, staying around to speak to you guys. Was that all of the staff? Not all of the staff, but at least five members of staff, they park about two minute walk from the practice in a car park, which we rent some spaces. They all got changed, sat in reception and they wait for each other. The five people who were in that day parking together to make that two minute walk together and they could be rushing to get off. But, you know, five or six, you know, and I just thought, that’s so nice to see that, because they could go one by one by one, but they all wait and then they all walk over together. I was like, that actually kind of shows that it’s not that there’s a social, it’s not that the boss is buying drinks. It’s it’s nothing.

[00:45:29] It’s just that the family have that. That’s what they do.

[00:45:33] You know, which is so nice. And you can’t I think maybe you can build that. Maybe you can lead by example. I always say when we recruit or sometimes interview, I just don’t want bitchiness. It’s such a female dominated, you know, the risk of it being a bitchy environment with lots of nurses, lots of female dentists. I’m not saying guys can’t bitch, but you.

[00:45:54] Know, we’ve all worked in practices where that’s been the situation, right? I mean, you’ve never worked in a dental practice, but you’ve owned a few and intense practice. Sometimes you get this massive split where you’ve got two powerful women on either side of this split, and I’ve noticed it only worked in four practices, but like three of them, there was a situation going on. You’re absolutely right about that. Yeah. So you still you still no bitchiness from the outset?

[00:46:24] Well, I said to them, you know, and if there’s a problem, just call them in and get it over with.

[00:46:30] I’m not letting it fester.

[00:46:32] You know. So I know that.

[00:46:34] Style of leadership.

[00:46:36] If you can call it that, isn’t going to be for everyone. But I think hopefully it works. What can I say? We’re only a few years in. I’ll let you know in a decade how it’s gone.

[00:46:47] Who’s the good cop and who’s the bad cop?

[00:46:51] I’m the good.

[00:46:51] Cop until someone pushes me too far.

[00:46:53] And then maybe about once every six months, I get crossed.

[00:46:58] Did you have a word with Alex?

[00:47:00] Yeah, probably.

[00:47:02] Send in Special.

[00:47:03] Ops. Yeah, I mean, we’ve.

[00:47:08] Got a great team here, so hopefully that will continue to expand as we as we expand the practice.

[00:47:16] So we’ll talk about expansion plans and the future in a bit. But now I want to move on to the dark. Aside. Tell me about errors. Decision mistakes. Things you should have done. You didn’t do things you should’ve done sooner. Things you know, clinical mistakes as well. I’d love to hear about clinical errors. Someone who said at the end of the day, the trajectory of your your career has been quite, quite a steep trajectory. You know, you’re young. You must have made some mistakes along the way.

[00:47:48] Yeah. I mean, I think mistakes with patients.

[00:47:53] Happen.

[00:47:53] They happen to everyone is how they’re handled. I wouldn’t ever try and cover over a mistake. I think honesty goes a long way with patients and if things do go wrong, you.

[00:48:04] Know.

[00:48:05] Fess up to it and try your best to put it right. If you can’t put it right, then send them to someone who can. You know, I don’t see that things can be swept under the carpet, you know, and.

[00:48:15] It sort of.

[00:48:16] Alludes to what we just saying about staff management. You know, the style of my dentistry communication with patients may not be for everyone. Bizarrely, although I don’t think I’m a very empathetic person, I seem to have a lot of anxious patients because I say, Oh, you better get in the chair, you know, which.

[00:48:30] Somehow people seem to like when they’re nervous.

[00:48:33] That’s why. So I think for me, it’s, it’s you try your best to, to not have errors. If errors do happen, then then you’re upfront about them. I think with the business.

[00:48:46] I do, you know, why do you not want to discuss the actual errors?

[00:48:50] I think a few, I guess ones I can think of a kind of more the prostate context side of safer large cases. It’s marring that expectation with the patient. You know, they come in and their mouth looks a mess. You get something that you might think looks great in there, you know, a full arch rehabilitation, you know, all on for this case as a case, I’m currently on a full upper ceramic remake from scratch because she’s not happy with it, you know.

[00:49:18] So even though you are. Yeah.

[00:49:20] Well, she she was on the train, but she’s changed her mind now. So, you know, it’s it’s frustrating. Yes. Do you want to put it right? Yes. Does that mean that there’s no money in the case? Yes. But equally, I think it’s got to be it’s got to be right. You know, so and maybe that’s a communication thing, you know, that I’m happy that we will get there with that patient where we want to go. And probably by the end of it, she will be one of our biggest fans, you know, and probably will send us more patients after, you know, so it’ll all come back round keeping positive.

[00:49:54] I’m so interested in why. Why is it that you can stay so positive about that? And then you hear other people completely crippled by by complaint. What’s the difference?

[00:50:06] Yeah, I mean. I guess it’s taking a learning point from it isn’t it.

[00:50:11] That. Yeah.

[00:50:13] I think his one take.

[00:50:15] That did your best and you did your best.

[00:50:17] It’s really important isn’t it. You did your best, you know, whatever, whatever. Whether it was a communication breakdown or something else, you did your very best. You didn’t, you didn’t go out to make an error. Right. But some people some people are so crippled by it, crippled by being sued and being, you know, what’s your sort of vaccination to that problem?

[00:50:40] Yeah, isn’t it?

[00:50:42] I’ve always had my family look on the bright side. You know, I think flipping that from this patient has sent me a 20 page email with 15 photographs attached screenshots of the teeth from different angles that she doesn’t quite like the shape of that one canine tip. And now I’m going to have to spend 4 hours fixing it and another massive lab bill. It’s frustrating, you know, but the positive for me and I always look at a positive in a situation is that at least she’s telling me about it so I can at least resolve it. We’ve got communication lines.

[00:51:17] Open.

[00:51:18] And it’s a learning. It’s a learning for me. Off the back of that, we’ve then had a think at the practice. Okay, do we need to show patients more examples of final prosthesis? Prosthesis? Do we need to make sure that they’ve got that understanding? You know, a full arch on implants is not the same as teeth. You know, it’s the best that we can currently get to replace them. But it is not your own teeth. So this is leading to us rethinking our treatment coordinator at work to rethinking some of our consent process, you know, all of these factors. So for me, although there is negatives from a case like that, what can you take that’s positive? And let’s focus on that so that same thing doesn’t happen all over again, or at least you see them coming.

[00:52:05] Funny you should savour. You know, we do a lot, a lot of flashes in our clinic. So we do probably on a bad week. We’ll do four. On a good week we’ll do six. And I’ve been in on conversations with patients that that my business partners have been on. We’ve had a patient come in. Initially happy in the chair with his bridge and send it to a really good lab. Ashley Burns lab and patient comes back and goes, Do you know what? I’ve got all these, like, little shapes and characterisations and it goes it goes a little bit more lighter towards the end of my teeth. Right. So Mack sat there explaining to this patient that these look like real teeth. And what we’ve done is we’ve tried to replicate nature. The chap turns around and says, I want my temperature. Same shade from top to the bottom.

[00:53:05] Near the one completely clear.

[00:53:07] Right. That is what I want. And you know what? Give Ashley credit. Where where is due? We picked up the phone, spoke to Ashley and said, look, this isn’t our fault, but this is a concern that the patients expressed to us. He was happy on the day he’s come back and Ashley said to us, Mack, the use of premium lab and use a premium lab for a reason. We’re going to do this. We’re going to sort this out, and it’s not going to cost you anything and we’ll put it right. And then that gave us the confidence because we said to the patient we were going to put it right anyway, but we thought it’s going to cost us a few grand, right? The great thing was we had the back from the lab and we do a lot of these and it happens from time to time. And going back to, is there anything that you could have done differently?

[00:53:55] Well, funny you talk about that patient almost spot on with this one. It’s the same thing, right? My social media girl has a video of the patient crying with happiness when she first saw her bridge. Three months later, she’s back wanting a remake. So I don’t know what.

[00:54:12] You can do.

[00:54:13] No, I think you just you just got to take a view on it. And my lab techs remaking it with us for free as well.

[00:54:19] So.

[00:54:20] Yeah, so it happens. You know, it happens. And you sit back and you could kick yourself and like you said, maybe we should have shown them more pictures and this, that and the other. I think the outcome would have been the same. You can never predict that. Right. But we have because we’ve got such an extensive portfolio, we show them pictures on pictures, on pictures, on videos and pictures of previous patients. He will have been through exactly the same process. But you know what? Sometimes it’s their friends will say something, their relatives will say something to the then they’ll make a mental note of it. And then they’ll come back and they’ll explain there that even though they were happy. Yes. Sam down the road said, What’s going on with your teeth? I thought you’ve had them done. Maybe they don’t even look like you’ve had them done.

[00:55:09] We said, change. Change your friends, is what I said to someone.

[00:55:12] But apparently that wasn’t funny.

[00:55:15] It’s a feature of cosmetic dentistry that at the end of the day, it’s based on an issue of taste, you know, does the tooth hurt or not? That’s sort of a yes or a no sort of answer sort of thing. Right. Whereas, you know, it’s I think it’s like it’s sort of like cost of business and cosmetics in cosmetic dentistry that you’re going to have the odd patient like that. But I think, as Katie says, the way you handle that super important. But but I’m interested in the way you handle it internally yourself, your own head, where the next person might have thought, I’m not going to do any more of those. Whereas you look like the third person said, well, that happens. Let’s, let’s, let’s do it again. Let’s, let’s, let’s make it better. Let’s keep on going. And you just, you’ve got that practical, pragmatic way of looking at life. Katie It’s very interesting.

[00:55:59] And I don’t know where that comes.

[00:55:59] From.

[00:56:03] Did you say you would grow up on a farm?

[00:56:06] Yeah. We still live on a.

[00:56:07] Farm, so.

[00:56:09] I can see cows out of my bedroom.

[00:56:11] Window every morning. Yeah.

[00:56:14] That has something to do with it. You know, it keeps things real.

[00:56:17] Yeah. You’re not selling eggs anymore, though.

[00:56:20] Not selling eggs? No.

[00:56:21] We just have to raise my mom to get her.

[00:56:23] Out the hatch in the morning if you want eggs for breakfast. But, I mean.

[00:56:29] Like I said to my patients, implants is.

[00:56:31] Just.

[00:56:32] Just. Just like a bit of DIY is just a bit smaller, a bit cleaner and a bit more expensive. So.

[00:56:38] Can you tell me I met some of your associates. Tell me what you look for in an associate. And how. How can you tell if you’re getting that from an associate in the interview process and coming to work for you? And what’s it like working for you rather than working for someone else? Because I imagine, you know, like you were saying, to be surrounded by to have a boss who’s doing implants, that’s a massive advantage for someone who wants to get into implants. Right. So if an associate wants to eventually look at implants, maybe have that option open, it’d be amazing to work at your place right where someone’s doing loads of implants. Well, tell me about the associate story. How do you attract them? How do you keep them? How do you you know, what pisses you off about them, that sort of thing.

[00:57:21] I think I think the short.

[00:57:22] Answer is we’re still learning.

[00:57:24] Like I’ve alluded to in a lot of this. You know, I.

[00:57:26] Don’t pretend to know it all by any stretch. I’d say I’d say what I hope to deliver is a friendly, nurturing environment, enthusiasm and some experience, a willingness to share like people share with us in terms of getting people in and keeping people. I think recruitment is challenging. It’s something I hear from from everyone we speak to. You know, everyone’s really struggling with it. You know, the further you get out of London in the main city centres, I think the harder it gets as well. We are commutable just I’d say that that has been it.

[00:58:04] Wasn’t such a big train journey.

[00:58:05] Yeah. I guess, I guess that the thing for me is it’s, it’s that day in, day out and it’s building the long term, the long term associates into the practice. So recruitment is a challenge. And as to what you can tell if an interview I don’t know, we’ve had some luck. We’ve had we’ve had some some failures with associates even to date. So I think when we’ve got people we’ve been running a private VC equivalent for the last year is we’re aiming for people who are open to learning. You know, I don’t mind if people don’t know it yet. You only know what you don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. So I think I think for me, it’s having associates who are open to learning, open to sharing and and enthusiasm. I think the attitude has to be right for any associate. And I would base any interview or any associate more on that willingness to learn or willingness to want to learn from each other, from courses, to expand the attitude.

[00:59:04] Rather than the clinical.

[00:59:07] You know, you pay for them to go on courses sometimes, right.

[00:59:10] Yeah. That’s on our year programme. Yeah. Well I think it’s that thing.

[00:59:15] Of.

[00:59:16] Ideally want people who are going to be part of the practice long term so any courses that they go on will benefit the practice. I think you have to take a view on these things and hope that you build people up, you help them become the dentist that they want to be, and that enthusiasm, that love of dentistry will feed back into the practice and therefore grow the business. So so that’s that’s my aim with it, as I say, whether it will work also in a decade.

[00:59:42] But, you know, we talk to associates all the time, the love.

[00:59:44] And the passion.

[00:59:46] We get. We get associates on many Smile Makeover who are 100% sure that the principal is not going to buy the composite, 100% sure about it. And you think, well, you know, make a case or whatever, and then you get other associates coming and it’s almost like they’ve got carte blanche to buy whatever they want. And then I guess you’ve got your your, your, your higher level one. You actually paid for the courses. It’s rare. It’s rare.

[01:00:11] It’s not I mean, I wouldn’t say we go we go wild. I mean, ask my husband about the budget and he’ll tell me. But I think as long as people can justify.

[01:00:21] As long as people.

[01:00:21] Can justify what they need, why they want it, like you said, make a case for it then. Then we’ll we’ll do it, you know, because like I said, what’s what’s good for the associate, they’ve got a good attitude at work that will shine through. Nobody wants to see a grumpy dentist, nurse and receptionist, do they? I mean, so it’s getting that enthusiasm, enthusiasm, get that flowing through the practice and we hope off the back of that. Yeah.

[01:00:48] We’ll be good.

[01:00:49] Katie, you know, I think people underestimate being a local and what that means, you know, because if I was I think you yourself don’t realise that the way that you talk to your patients is such a natural way of talking to your patients because you know that community inside out, you know the type of people inside out. So, for instance, if I was you and I was hiring someone, then being a local would be for me the biggest the number one most important thing, because you can gauge the patients, you can understand the subtle cues when you’ve grown up in that in that community, whereas some hot shot from London comes there, doesn’t even get when the guy says, Oh, I work on such and such street or farm or whatever, has no idea what that means. Or I went to so-and-so school, has no idea what that means. And the subtle, the subtle, the subtle, the subtleties in communication are very, very local, you know, and we’ve come across this before where people say, Oh, I’ve filled up seven chairs for six weeks ahead and I just don’t know how I did it, you know? And they really don’t know how they did it. But, you know, they’ve taken care of people, but they’ve understood people and they’ve been understood by their patients. What do you think?

[01:02:09] Yeah, I completely agree. And I think that also ties into looking at location of of associates and thinking who is going to commit long term, you know, somebody who’s.

[01:02:20] From our perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:02:23] You know, they may sick. Yes. But my ideal associate is somebody who is, like you said, embedded in the local, not the local local, but the wider community who is settled perhaps once the long term commitment, once those long term connections with patients to build a decent career.

[01:02:44] Do you have a chat with your associates about how much they cost and how much they need to make? Yes.

[01:02:51] Yes.

[01:02:52] Do they understand the numbers?

[01:02:55] Yes. And and that, interestingly, is something that I think isn’t taught at an undergraduate level and should be perhaps. I think dentists come out as self employed associates and have no idea about how to actually work work a business, because essentially they’re a small business within a business. So yes, we try and build a lot of that in we do targets. We do their weekly numbers in terms of NHS private looking at their costs, how do they compare with industry standards and make all of that information freely available to the to the individual so that they have an idea? Because when they’re earning, we’re earning. When they’re happy, we’re happy.

[01:03:36] And then we deal with your implant work when something’s gone wrong. Have you always bounced back from that or did you ever have a moment where you thought I shouldn’t? I’m not going to bother with this anymore because I think that’s how I would react. Know if I’m sure it doesn’t go the way I’m saying, because, you know, you build up you build up the complexity of the case. But it tends to be generally when things go wrong, they go badly wrong. And then I’m sure when you’re starting to put screws in bones, things go wrong more right. I mean, how do you how do you stay strong in that situation and not think, you know, I’ll just I’ll just keep it simpler rather than make it more complicated the way you have?

[01:04:19] Well, I think I aim to work within my expertise. I think you’re talking to Andy Moore on the podcast. He said the same thing. You know, I don’t dislike gayness. I think I’ve seen some. But you’ve got to be doing a decent number of cases in order to keep clinically competent within any part of dentistry. So so the bottom line for me is making sure that you you are happy with what you’re doing, you’re confident with what you’re doing, and sometimes putting your hands up and saying, listen, I can’t meet your expectations. You know, I can think of a case literally. She was ready. She was ready to commit. I thought I could get another surgeon in to help me do this. I go. And after a few consultations over the phone, I just thought, Do you know what? I can’t meet your expectations. You know, it’s not about money. It’s it’s about stress. And I refer to someone else in the end, which I rarely do.

[01:05:15] So what does the future hold for the practice or practices? Okay.

[01:05:21] We had.

[01:05:21] It depends if you’re.

[01:05:22] Asking me or my husband. Hey, I mean.

[01:05:27] I like to have a challenge every year or a figure every year. So. So so far I think we’ve gone sort of, you know, build a house, get married, buy a practice, have a baby covered, have another baby for surgery. Extension is the plan for end of this year. So next year, who knows? I’m building the looking to educational type thing we’ve got our first course loosely scheduled for is scheduled for September with Nova Bike running an in-house course, which would be the first one where we’re aiming to do based on GDP’s restorative dentistry stuff going how they can restore potentially implants stuff. We’re currently doing the rebrand of the practice, the new website and trying to launch maybe a some level of local referral stuff. A second site would be great. I’m keen to go now. I think my husband is the one in the background saying Hold up, let’s get this sorted first.

[01:06:27] So the little voice of reason on my shoulder. So I think this let’s give that give.

[01:06:34] That another year and then and then we’ll do it anyway and he’ll pick up the pieces.

[01:06:41] Katie was saying that she’s up for building something from scratch. Sounds amazing. It’s the right time for it. Katie, I think you should.

[01:06:50] Wow.

[01:06:53] I think you should. Oh, we would imagine. Have you ever been there? It’s a very quaint little place. I was. I was telling her you had put a Robbie Hughes here somewhere. You know, one of those wicked, massive warehouse conversion jobs. And it’s funny because we think Essex, us people don’t know the area very well. You think Essex where it’s all TOWIE and all that, but there’s this big bits of Essex that aren’t like that at all. Yeah. And much more quaint and sort of home counties than Witham is one of those. But I think it must be sort of spreading the TOWIE effect.

[01:07:31] Well, you know, you’re the.

[01:07:33] Whitening guy. So you tell us.

[01:07:35] What area of the UK does the most white teen? Liverpool.

[01:07:38] Liverpool and Manchester.

[01:07:40] Liverpool. All day long.

[01:07:43] Once in a while. The other side, Newcastle and Sunderland. Those areas, those areas that people want white teeth before they want a coat.

[01:07:50] You know. Yeah.

[01:07:56] We saw a lot.

[01:07:56] Of white to that, to Essex. Yeah.

[01:07:59] We see that bright shivering teeth mate.

[01:08:02] You know, the, the toilet toilet seat, white composite. We sell a lot of that up north and almost nothing down south. It’s been a real pleasure to have you.

[01:08:12] The corner of Essex.

[01:08:14] Yeah. You know, your social was quite nice as well, I think. What’s, what’s the page called? It’s not called Blakes yet because of your rebrand. Or is.

[01:08:25] It? It’s not so we’re not yet. Give us about three more weeks. So we’re in Canberra, which nobody can say or spell. But Katy, dentist is my Instagram, so.

[01:08:34] Katie’s just fun to connect through.

[01:08:36] That’s the best way to connect you dentist. Let’s get to the final questions. Let’s start with mine, because yours is more profound. Fancy dinner party, three guests. Dead or alive. Who do you have?

[01:08:53] Well, I’ve been toying with this question for the last week since you asked me, and one was a straight up easy answer, which was Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mean, what an inspirational.

[01:09:07] Guy. Hey.

[01:09:08] He’s come up before. He’s come up.

[01:09:10] Before. I know.

[01:09:13] He was one of mine.

[01:09:14] Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:16] I mean.

[01:09:17] I think, you know. Yeah. Just. I mean.

[01:09:21] What can you say about him?

[01:09:22] I mean, I think just keep.

[01:09:23] Reinventing yourself with a new, amazing commitment to hard work and vision.

[01:09:27] You know, I think that’s that is easily the guy who you could pick.

[01:09:31] His brains apart. The other one, I’m slightly more random thought I actually had was Beatrix Potter. So the Peter Rabbit author just for her kind of passion and I guess playing a little bit on the kind of.

[01:09:46] Just.

[01:09:46] Because you’re female. She was in a different time. Yes. Are there still constraints to it nowadays? Yes. So I.

[01:09:53] Think.

[01:09:53] Again, it’s drawing on that passion, that ambition that not accepting what the norms of whatever time you’re in, hold you back, do what you want to do.

[01:10:04] She’s a small person, baby.

[01:10:06] David Attenborough.

[01:10:08] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s come up before, so.

[01:10:11] He’s come up before. I just think the danger is that Arnie’s going to eat Beatrix Potter.

[01:10:18] Yeah, I have considered that.

[01:10:22] I imagine she’s a small person. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, but interesting choice.

[01:10:26] I mean.

[01:10:26] I’m not going with maybe I could have three different dinner parties, you know, because I’m not sure that that would be necessarily the most cohesive group.

[01:10:32] Set I have to know.

[01:10:36] Let’s finish with perhaps.

[01:10:38] Yeah, a bit of fun.

[01:10:41] Katie, it’s your it’s your last day on the planet. You’re surrounded by your loved ones, and you need to leave them with three pieces of life advice, stroke, wisdom. What would they.

[01:10:56] Be? Well, I think a.

[01:10:58] Few you’ve already got the vibe of from talking. You know, positivity goes a long way, I think. Be positive, you know.

[01:11:06] Smile, laugh.

[01:11:07] It will get you a long way. Maybe not laughing at people, but, you know, positivity, really?

[01:11:13] Yeah.

[01:11:14] Positivity, I think really does breed positivity. So in any element of life, dentistry, I think keep that going and you can go a long way. And I think taking opportunities, you know, I.

[01:11:26] Think.

[01:11:27] You only regret the things you don’t do. You know, I very much say I’ll be fine and it drives everyone around me up the wall because I’ll just do stuff and then figure it out afterwards. So I think jump in, take the opportunity, seize the day, give it a go. And I guess the last.

[01:11:42] One.

[01:11:44] Maybe just be polite.

[01:11:45] You know.

[01:11:46] Dentistry, I think is a is a small world at the end of it, even outside of dentistry, everybody knows everyone. You know, somehow or another, you know, you don’t get anywhere. But by being.

[01:11:56] Rude, I think I think.

[01:11:59] Be polite, be nice and and the world is nice.

[01:12:01] Back to you on the whole.

[01:12:02] I love that. I love that. Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure. I feel like there’s a there’s a there’s a whole story of Katie Blake that’s going to play out now going forward because you’re so early in your in your you are you’re so early in your career and, you know, you just started. You just started. And so far, so good is all I can say to you. Because, you know, just like.

[01:12:27] I said, thank you.

[01:12:29] We’re going to come back and do this in a decade, as she keeps saying, ask me in a.

[01:12:33] Decade, after two decades, I’ll tell you. So I’ll come back in ten years.

[01:12:37] We’ll come back in ten years and finish the story off.

[01:12:39] Matt.

[01:12:42] It’s been a real pleasure. Katie, thank you so much for doing this.

[01:12:45] Thanks, guys.

[01:12:45] Thank you.

[01:12:46] Katie 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.

[01:13:04] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say. Because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

[01:13:19] 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.

[01:13:29] And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] Impacts obviously important to you.

[00:00:03] If I can take impact and dive deep into that word. For me, it’s contribution to society or contribution to a community or contribution or play my role. Play my role in this world. Really? And what have I contributed to? If you know, at the end of the day, like, what were you part of? Everybody needs someone to stack the shelves as you need for society to run. Unless a computer or a machine is going to do it. Someone needs to do it. Someone needs to. You will always need nurses. You’ll always need people to contribute their role in society, and you can find passion and purpose in any of those roles.

[00:00:43] 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.

[00:01:01] It’s my great pleasure to welcome the love of Janice Warren onto the podcast website onto the podcast. Love is a partner at Sunninghill Dental. I’ve known him for a while since he started his enlightened journey years ago, but also one of the founders of Cheer Side, which is a cheer side sort of tool to explain different treatment options to patients. And he’s going through the whole founder experience at a tech company now. Let me have you, buddy. How are you doing?

[00:01:32] Oh, I’m really well. Thanks, Payman. Thanks, Prav. It’s actually super exciting. I’ve never been invited to a podcast before, so I’ve been super pumped to do this and really grateful for the opportunity.

[00:01:42] Well, you know, you said you listen to this podcast, and so we usually we start with childhood and all that, but I want to kind of take it in a different direction this time, if that’s okay with you or I want to start with the latest thing you’re doing with chair side and.

[00:01:57] Okay, cool. Yeah.

[00:01:59] Let’s start with when did that come into your head as a direction you might be going into and why? Why?

[00:02:07] That’s a really interesting, really good question. Why? Okay. I was four years into my into clinical dentistry post-grad and I found I was also an PhD trainer at the time and I found that I was having these consistent problems that were coming through that I was experiencing. There were shared experiences with, with, with the PhDs. And it stems it all stemmed down to communication. It really all just stem down to communication. It was like a lot of the the PhDs were like kind of kind of afraid of this litigious space that was emerging. And there was a lot of fear being placed, you know, upon graduation or, you know, you need to do things a certain way. And I find that the main focus at that point is also on clinical dentistry, and communication sometimes takes a bit of a backseat. So for me, I’m a visual learner. I always have been. I’ve been, you know, when I was even at uni or even it’s actually a levels of drawing mind maps my whole, whole life. And I learned things visually. So I spent so many hours, so many hours with patients, one after the other, just drawing out teeth. And I’m a terrible artist at the same time, so I’m drawing our teeth, highlighting what an abscess is that it did it. It did it. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

[00:03:23] So there has to be a better way of doing this. And, you know, I thought there has to be more of a systemic way I can explain every single thing that I want to in dentistry, condition wise, pathologically or what not visually, and also showed them their treatment options and also show patients the risks in a standardised, transparent way where people can understand and really looking deeper into it, we found out that 65% of patients are visual learners, right? And so you had 100% of our consultations available. So that kind of really hit, hit home. But it was at that point that I was, I was just I think that was almost the beginning of a feeling that I want to do something visually, that that can explain conditions. But then I spoke to my best mate, who’s also the co-founder of Chair Side Kiri, and circling back, we decided to do a trip to Sri Lanka where we contacted a ton of dental companies and ask for filling materials, sterilisation packs. I would probably say instruments as well to some degree because we borrowed some from the practice and then we, we put it all in suitcase, put it in a backpack, and we went up to the northern northeast of Sri Lanka where we went to some orphanages. And in those orphanages, you know, care. And I thought, let’s do a bit of dental treatment.

[00:04:38] Let’s go and go and go and see these kids and see if we can help them. And there’s about 120 kids in this fast orphanage that we went to, and I sat with them and carried one of the most humble individuals I’ve had the pleasure to be surrounded by. You know, he was he’s not a dentist. He’s in tech. But he he was he was the guy who was holding the light from a torch through a torch while while we were treating these these kids. We were doing check-ups on these kids. And I thought, you know, the feeling that I got from that that we got from that was incredible. We had kids who were subject to war to tsunami, queuing up to have dental treatment in this little dental practice that we almost borrowed for for a day, once we’d done the triaging in the orphanages to go and actually do the treatment in the clinic. And we and then when when the community found out about it, they’d queue up round the corner and there was these kids and one of them came on a bike and his mate was riding the bike and he was on the back of the bike and he didn’t have one arm and one leg and he had on the other side he had one arm and one leg because apparently when when one of the bombs dropped, he didn’t quite make it into the bunker.

[00:05:45] Half his body was left out, half his body was in. And he came in with these I mean, it was crazy. And so this gave me this incredible perspective on. My fortunate position in life and largely because I was born in Sri Lanka and my parents were subject to a lot of what was going on at the time. And if it wasn’t for the fact that my father was offered to do a PhD in Scotland in a university in Stirling, I wouldn’t have moved to England, Scotland at the time anyway at the age of sort of eight months. And it was that split second decision that could have actually my life could have ended up being one of those kids that we’re treating in this orphanage. Right. Who knows? So I’m in this position now where I’m trying to do dental treatment, and I think I’m coming back thinking, yeah, I’ve done some charity work. Awesome. I feel great. But actually I didn’t it didn’t feel like that was that I did anything sustainable there. You know, I went in, I thought, you know, this is not something I can go into and do every six months. But it was one of the best feelings I got. Now, one thing that came as a by-product of what we did on that trip, and we did go again and again.

[00:06:48] But on that trip was we taught these kids off the cuff. It was a five minute thing which we wrote. We taught these kids a song, and we used visuals on how they how to brush their teeth. So it’s like in the Tamil language, it’s like, go to the left, go to the right, up, down, up, down. And these are kids who didn’t have toothbrushes. There’s like the most northern east village in Sri Lanka. They were using all the sort of anything they could get hold of. Really. These are kids who didn’t actually know the techniques of oral hygiene or the importance of the fact that you should do it twice a day. So we taught them the song and then we left and came back three years later. Actually, two years later, actually, we came back and it was incredible. The entire everybody who was there could sing the song in an assembly off by heart. And not only that, but the new kids that were coming through could also sing this song. And it almost became like a nursery rhyme about how to brush their teeth and if something as simple as that. And I was like, wow, no, hang on a second. This is impact like the dental treatment I did two years ago. That’s fleeting to some degree, right? But this is genuine impact.

[00:07:53] And at that moment, something hit me which is like, wow, this feeling is incredible. And then to know that then a year later, Kyrie went back, same sort of thing. That song is going, that song is that’s something that’s going to pass down. So then I came back to the UK and at that point this was now sort of like the year before we started share side. I looked at the UK and I found one was like 180 kids having their teeth removed under general anaesthetic in this country every day. And why? Fundamentally, it’s because of a lack of knowledge on the parents part and there’s obviously various other socioeconomic issues around that, but it is something that can be largely preventable. Caries is a preventable disease, right. Looking deeper into it, 94% of this population suffer from some form of the spectrum of gum disease, the spectrum, and then like 45% from chronic gum disease, which is, again, a preventable disease. But more importantly, I mean, if you look at the systemic impacts of gum disease or what we can find from gum disease on the rest of the body, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, I’m sure a periodontist would be much better at explaining this than then. I but, you know, we know the we know the systemic impacts, but these are all preventable conditions. So why why are we in a system where prevention is still not quite making it work in day to day practice? And I kept that kept lingering in my mind, going a few steps further.

[00:09:17] You know, Raj, I think Raj Rajaratnam had released an article and this it may have been before that it was it was a point where 90% of dentists were afraid of being sued. And these PhDs that were coming through sort of in the latter latter parts of of of my PhD training, you know, that fear was very much a real thing. And and I personally and all my colleagues, the associates were all feeling that. So why are we feeling that? And again, the running theme throughout patient health and throughout dentists satisfaction and happiness in the workplace all came down to poor communication or great communication. That was just the communication was a fundamental thing. Right? And then something just the penny just dropped for me at that point where it was like, I really am struggling with this whole explaining things and I find that patients eyes light up when I do it visually through drawing. It’s not a scalable solution for me on a daily basis to keep drawing pictures, right? At the same time, communication is not clear, but patients are appreciating, appreciating the visuals. How can we fix that and keep dentists safe at the same time? And that’s when the vision for our side kind of developed.

[00:10:24] And it developed through the core concept of we want to make it easier and safer for dentists to communicate effectively so patients can make better decisions about their health. And that is the fundamental drive for and culture and chess that is built on that as a foundation. Our values are aligned fully on that team. Everyone’s built with the view that we want to make it easier and safer for dentists to communicate effectively so patients can make better decisions about their health. So we’re fully empathetic on why is it that communication is such a problem in communicating better health to patients from the dentist part and being a practitioner, I feel like I have this inside experience on a daily basis as to the time constraints, the pressures, the stresses, the decisions and numerous decisions we have to make, the decision fatigue that we have as we go patients in the morning. You know, you probably, probably have a different view when you’re treating patients in the evening and late, late at night. It’s like we’re human beings at the end of the day and then adding extra elements to the workflow. I mean, how can we be compassionate about that to some degree when dentists already have so much going on? So all of these problems lingering, like, how can we build a great team to solve this? And so first and foremost, it was Cory and I with a PowerPoint presentation going around the houses, really trying to trying to get some kind of buy in from to build a prototype, really.

[00:11:49] And I remember we did a presentation with our accountants, sort of friends and family sort of network. There was about 20 of them in the room. And we did this sort of PowerPoint presentation of what we how we felt we could impact patient communication for the better. And, you know, we got zero sort of zero kind of movement on that. But what we did get was a lot of if you can build something and show us what it could look like, we’ll consider it. So Kyrie and I, we put sort of we were working at the time and I’m I was I was sort of four and a half clinical days at that time. Remember, we went five, we went to four and a half. I found around four and a half to be a nice spot for me when I was fully focussed on clinical and I use that time, that money, that income to facilitate on a monthly basis the ability and any savings to build prototypes and really understand what it is, the content, the animations, everything for gum disease for a fair few conditions and what that journey looks like. So we could explain that to investors.

[00:12:52] But more importantly, we then changed our stance a bit because we thought we don’t really want to explain this to investors. And that was something that was really powerful for me because that moment it became, we want to make this we want to explain this to patients and dentists. We want patients and dentists to love this. How can we build a prototype that the patients and dentists could love because everything else comes as a result of that, right? How can we impact patients? How can make life easier for dentists? So we continued on that journey. We built a user experience and and things were progressing on a on a side. I going to call it a side hustle called our side hustle, but on evenings and weekends and and really intense at that point. Then once we built our first prototype, we put it in. Chess originally was a screen in the dental chair, on the dental chair that patients could just watch and dentists could actually use use the tools. It was almost like a little, little proof of concept. At that point, we took the proof of concept back to the lead to the to the lead investor. And he was the first person to invest. And it wasn’t a huge amount, but he invested. He was very generous. He was very trusting. And we owe him a lot to this day. And at that point.

[00:14:07] He was he was he was he friend and family?

[00:14:09] Yeah. Well, he interestingly enough, he came on the the off the trip to Sri Lanka to three years before I was the one who helped coordinate the trip. And he experienced the journey that we experienced on those trips. So when we came back, we went to him and said, Hey, look, we’ve got this, we’ve got this idea. We think we can transform patient communication. We want to make an impact. We think this can impact if we think this can change the way dentists and patients interact. And it was at that point that we we secured that investment. And then things went from strength to strength at that point, because we were allowed to then turn that prototype, that proof of concept into a real tangible prototype that could be used by a fair few dentists. Right. And yeah, so so that’s how it kind of started. And it just went on from there. And we were able then to get two or three dentists on board to use the platform, bearing in mind we were very hardware based at the time because we had this tablet screen on the dental chair playing and dental animations that dentists could touch interactively. And the UI was horrible, the experience was terrible, but it did serve the purpose.

[00:15:14] It was almost like it played animations, but the biggest impact was patience. And I still remember one of the first few patients that that came across. It was this autistic child that I had really struggled to to get to sit in the chair. But the minute I put him in this chair and I had these visuals, he almost got drawn to them. And he sat back and I and I was and I was able to actually do a physical check-up on him. And the mom actually wrote me one of the most loveliest testimonials. She said to me, You know, this child has struggled to come and sit in a chair. He had really severe autism. So to actually concentrate allow you to to to carry out what you want to carry out. However, the minute you were able to switch on these visuals and show this patient exactly what you’re doing, but more importantly, engage with him and give him something to look at, he was a lot more cooperative, let alone the positive impact that the visual could have on his understanding of what we were trying to do. And it was at that point I thought, we’re definitely on to something here. Like the hassles, you know, you.

[00:16:19] I love the way you sort of extrapolate stuff from, you know, your experiences, you know, because it’s beautiful. It kind of gives meaning to your work, meaning to everything that you do because, you know, the next guy could have said, you know, I wanted to start a company and wanted something to help dentists make more money. And there it is, you know. But you started off with the orphanage and the the story has a lot more meaning to you than just doing a business. Is that because you’re a charming storyteller, or is that is that does your brain work in that in that way, that what you do has to have meaning? And, you know, like, I feel for it. It’s almost it’s almost like, I don’t know, talk to Simon about Parlour and he’s there’s there’s like a mission focus the mission to save the planet. That’s why he’s he’s got that thing. And I find difficulty. If you talk to me about my toothpaste, I’ll say I’ll tell you it’s the best toothpaste in the world. Right. I try you know, it’s the best. I haven’t got some stories to tell you about that or or, you know, how the best toothpaste in the world might change the world or and I guess we’re all wired differently. But but this. What about you? I mean, what is it? Is it is it that you’ve got this sort of mission that you want to get through?

[00:17:40] I think I mean, one of my core values personally is that I want to live my life with purpose and passion, and I want to only do things that I’m passionate about fundamentally because, you know, I want to wake up every morning and just really get excited about what I’m doing and the ability to create, the ability to impact people’s health and be in health care. And it might sound fleeting. I’m not sure it might sound something we might take for granted, but we’re actually involved in impacting people’s health, which I think is like firsthand incredible. But then to to be able to create and build something with people using ideas that we all have, using our brains, problem solving, thinking from using different methods of thinking, using different mental models. You know, it’s it’s also learning something new, like, you know, like building a business and all of that. It leads. It is almost like one of those challenges that you just fall in love with. And for me, I, you know, I’m very, very passionate about impacting if it can really impact people. And in in my case, people’s health, you know, that would have been a purpose worth or an a mission worth worth pursuing through my life. Right. So I find that incredibly rewarding. I mean, that gives me job satisfaction. I’ve always felt actually with my patients, if I’d be fair to you. I don’t like the word play, but the term here is play the long game and maybe not the word game either, but the two fundamental ways they play the long game and play the long game, in a way I think was Raji told me that Saroj Rajaratnam said he was an incredible comment because what it means, what he said is, look after your patience over the long term and expect nothing.

[00:19:31] Do the best by them over a period of time and expect nothing. And the value comes with time. And I’ve been in the same practice my whole life. I was in Fiji then I stayed there and became a partner there and I’ve seen that journey with patience and to be in a position where actually patients come back. Now that I’m only there two days a week, it’s like, oh, like, you know, it’s probably more stressful trying to squeeze everyone in, to be honest with you. But that’s what happens when you’re in a practice for a period of time, especially given the current climate where it’s hard to get into dentists. And I think that I’ve been rewarded with that feeling largely because I like to feel like I’ve always put patient’s best interests first, not expected anything as a transactional relationship at any point, but if they found value in what I did, they’d be interested in what else I could do for them as well over time. And yeah, that all stems kind of from from just being I guess, I guess just just being passionate about what you and having a purpose, having a real sense of mission. It makes you honestly feel. I honestly feel like I can’t wake up in the morning and be excited about something if I don’t have that. And I’ve been in jobs during my childhood, like during my my teens, where I’ve felt like I can’t do this, I can’t do this for the rest of my life. Like and so maybe that’s also.

[00:20:50] Just just going back to the piece where you developed a piece of software. You weren’t looking for money because you’ve got this purpose and you believe in this in this project, and you’re going to impact all these patients through education and helping them understand it and then become more compliant, shall we say. And just I think you referred to the whole game. Game, you don’t like the word game, but but the.

[00:21:14] Whole you know.

[00:21:15] Of educate. And I think communication is the key word that I think is the key to success of any practice, whether we’re talking about business, whether we’re talking about having patients happy dentists or happy team members, communication is key. But how do you go from that piece of saying, right, we’ve got this idea that I want to communicate and I’m going to produce this thing, this piece of software on a tablet. Yeah, that’s engineering. It’s software development is writing code and then the whole money raising piece. And then just take me back to when you go to someone and say, give us some money for this project. Surely there’s a whole conversation that happens about equity or how you get your money back and all the rest of it. And would you like to give us some insight into that?

[00:22:01] Absolutely. So when Chair said when we talk about the hardware, the software, I think one of the biggest things we did, you know, you make decisions and with a view of what this vision could be and you pivot so much as you learn from the feedback. And when it was a hardware based solution, you know, we actually had a manufacturing line in China and we had to and we’ve got a pattern for it in the UK as well, for this piece of hardware that sits on a dental chair, you know, where you can always Netflix and fill to some degree, you know, but you can also learn a lot about what you want to what you want, want to understand. And I think we’ve learned some lessons through that journey and also through the software development journey, because what we’ve actually done is I’ve been very privileged to be able to have to connect with people who are experts in their field in that space. And that for me was the secret. It was to find the best minds who have either done it or who are doing it. And in dentistry, the only thing I can compare it to is having mentors and and really tapping into that and seeing if you can learn from their experiences and if they’re happy to share those with you. There’s you know, you can really you can do anything you want if you’ve got advisors in the necessary space. So let me put it this way. In the software side, one of my cousins and again, I feel life is really interesting because things just align.

[00:23:25] But my cousin who who came to this came here when he’s 24 from Sri Lanka, lived with us for five years. He’s older than me, but he owns a software house. Well, that he built himself then. It was my grandma’s funeral, sadly. And I met and we we got the flight down to Sri Lanka and he was I was talking to about what we’re doing share side. La la la la la la. And he’s like, let me build you a team, a tech team. And the more I got into it, he’s like, I would love to be part of this. Like, this sounds like something worth pursuing and to the point where he sort of separated himself from his his software house. And he then came in, came on board as what we call the CTO and really built an in-house tech team from the ground up, all the processes, all the things that need to be done, the systems. I’m very much we’re all very much orientated on people’s systems and processes. So really getting all of that right aligned with the vision. And if we can, if you can hire talented people and you understand for me understanding a clear vision and a clear sense of purpose and having a strong set of values. I have a 65 page blueprint about chess that I wrote just, just on our culture, which for me was important for me because it allows us to to employ, to recruit way.

[00:24:48] But you can’t we can’t we can’t continue we can’t go forward without discussing that again. Go on. 65 pages.

[00:24:57] 65 pages. A lot of it’s probably waffle, to be honest.

[00:24:59] No, no.

[00:25:00] But it’s it’s almost like a journal of thoughts of of everything from vision, from our vision, from our mission, from this thing called the hedgehog concept, which I find really fascinating, which is what you’re passionate about, what your world class are and what your and what your economic engine is. And it’s a Venn diagram and where you sit in that as a business. And for me, it was like what we’re passionate about, we’re passionate about helping dentists and impacting patient health for the better patient understanding because we’re trying to get specific as possible. And then what are we while class that we’re going to be. Well, class building innovation that can transform patient communication for dentists. And what’s the economic engine? Well, we have to build a business model around that, sort of like it’s a SAS product at the minute, but there are other various elements that come into that. So that’s one big major part of like that. There’s a huge element as well of leadership, what leadership looks like, what level five leadership looks like, what it is to act with humility but also professional will, you know, but also inspire and empower as we grow. So there’s sort of a chart on that. And then and then as you go past level five leadership, there’s a partner and like who we hire and what that looks like and what the values of the company are.

[00:26:22] To who is that and who is that.

[00:26:25] Like? So fundamentally, people who are highly disciplined and highly passionate about the purpose, heart, strong work ethic. And integrity. These are some core things that are non-negotiable when it comes to our side. I’m a true believer in consistency and discipline over time.

[00:26:47] How many people have you got now?

[00:26:49] We’ve got a team of developers, animators and a business team, so we’ve got three elements of cheer side. We just recruited a new someone in marketing, which is like, I’m just trying to count. So we’ve got six, six, seven, eight, about 15, six, six, 15 to 15 and we’re still recruiting two more. So. I’m about 17 now. But we’ve we’ve got a long way to go. It’s just. I mean, it’s just a beginning. But, I mean, we’ve also learned our lesson. So we’ve got to know who we want to hire, how we want to hire, and what those those people look like because they all have a stake and they will have skin in the game. And skin in the game is a really important thing, a concept to me, because everyone has to have if the chessboard has to be their company, it has to be their company. They’ve got to feel it, believe it. So they have equity. They will have shares, all options. When you do that, you have a long term relationship. And when you when you have long term, when you make long term decisions with long term people, you end up making really good. You have to make sure those people are the right people right. And you never get it. I mean, it’s hard to get it spot on every time, but one way of filtering it is not based on just talent. It’s also based on personality. It’s also based on those values that we uphold. And the extension of of who we are is the leadership team. But also, when I talk about the leadership team, as soon as having a democratic way of way of working, there’s so many different cultures out there like freedom and responsibility and all of this. Right? But I found that I would love to have a team that’s freedom and responsibility, but it’s so hard. It’s so hard. And so it doesn’t come without its challenges.

[00:28:28] I’ve got a few questions that stem from all of that, what you’ve just said. And I’m just I’m just going to be sort of sort of, first of all, drill down into I’ve recruited hundreds of people over the year, and I feel like I’ve got the process nailed down. And when I finally do think I’ve got the process nailed out, I hire someone in a serial right point. In case that happened to be a senior senior web developer that I ended up hiring, technically, even my current senior developer will tell me like gifted beyond gifted, right? These guys, this guy was right in ERP systems for banks and stuff. Amazing. Passed all of our tests came aboard long story short fired him. He’s not he’s not been with us long. Payman knows when I hired him didn’t last very long. And it was a values based thing. Right. You talked about you like to hire people of integrity, values, this, that and the other. How on earth do you test for them? Because until this is in my in my limited experience. But until they’re in your business, until they’re communicating with your team, until they’re attending discussions where perhaps they disagree with team members or disagree with you as a leader. Right. And that’s and that’s all. Okay. Is how they respond. You can’t test any of that. Right. So a lot of the time I get it right. There are times even now after being in business for 16 years, I can’t do it all up. So how do you test for integrity and how do you test the things like values and all of that? And then I’ve got a second question after that, which stems down to slicing up your equity and all that razzmatazz, because I’m curious about that more than anything else. But let’s let’s just stick to recruitment for now. How do you test.

[00:30:20] For okay, so deep seated values are something that you learn over time. And I don’t think it’s something you can test in in a in an interview. I don’t think it’s something that is fair to test in an interview almost and based. It’s almost like judging a book by its cover. But there are definitely questions you can ask based on experiences of how people have performed.

[00:30:43] Go and do. Tell me, tell me. Have you hired some good people?

[00:30:46] One example actually that worked really well for us is we have a policy that we actually when we do one interview, then we all go out for lunch on a separate interview and a second interview where it’s a lot more formal and you learn a lot from that relaxed environment. In fact, there was one guy that we thought was incredible and he was on paper and he interviewed really well. Actually, interestingly, when it came to the conversations over lunch, it was almost like, I hate to say it, but it was almost like the examples he gave from his experiences with his last company. Like everyone else was really bad at what they did and he was a maverick at what he did. And it almost you started to realise that actually, you know, these, it’s these little things. And I think I think I’m very again fortunate to have co-founders who are quite good at also reading people and also good at recruiting alongside. I mean I personally have as part of the dental practice, obviously recruited nurses and and dentist and whatnot in the past. But then, Sanjay, he’s been recruiting developers for four years. Kyrie, he’s been in in recruitment in the the banking and tech space as well with experience. And also we have an advisor for recruitment. So with all of that in place and with our core fundamental things that we look for, we’re fortunate to have sort of four I would say I’m not going to say four, eight years and eight eyes from four people that can all input into what what they’re noticing from, from the behaviours and the conversations that these, that these potential employees have that fit in line with the culture of chair side. And it’s probably sense and I think it might sound soft, but I think it’s more of a feeling and based on how and what and how and what people act in, how they act in certain circumstances and when posed with certain questions and more than what what actually how they actually respond.

[00:32:40] I think that’s a very good point, man. I think that’s a very good point to have to have some relaxed time with the potential candidate. That’s a buddy. Excellent idea.

[00:32:50] Excellent. I mean, how high is low? Five, how fast if hopefully you don’t have to fire fast. Right. But hiring slow is part of that process. And in fairness, we came across that accidentally because I think when we with one of the candidates, we actually, you know, just coincidentally ended up going for lunch early doors. And then we learned a lot from that lunch.

[00:33:11] We learned from that.

[00:33:11] And we learned so much also afterwards because because it was a case of like, oh, we went, you know, went to went to the bar to play pool afterwards, all of that. And then when the guards down, you get to understand if they’re the right cultural fit and especially with some of the, the experience based questions that come. And I think, I think over time you try and build a kind of understanding, but we’re still learning. I’m always learning. I’m not the best at that at all. You just have to try and minimise the mistakes and reduce the number of mistakes you make.

[00:33:41] It’s an amazing stuff, buddy. It’s amazing stuff. Tell us. Tell us. Let’s go back. Let’s go back. Childhood before and why people go, hey.

[00:33:49] Before we do that, let’s finish off the question about the equity. The staff get in, check all that because I’m really, really curious. So we started off we started off the conversation about like you go in for to raise money. And, you know, it’s interesting how different businesses approach this. And I always find it really interesting that, you know, you’ve got this business and on day one, you’ve got a tablet and you’ve got some animations, and then you show someone a prototype and you say, give us some money. And in exchange for that, there’s going to be some kind of exchange. Usually it’s equity talk to. I don’t know how comfortable you feel sharing the numbers, but just talk to me, if not just about the thought process of you’ve got a company that’s not generating any revenue right now. It’s an idea. It’s something you’re passionate about, and you’ve got a prototype and you go to an investor, be it a friend, family member, or someone you went on a trip with and say, Give us some dough and we’ll give you this in exchange. Talk me through that. Did you did you do it like a valuation in your head or a future valuation? Just take me to those conversations, mate.

[00:35:02] So, so, absolutely. So just as a guiding principle, you need if your business there’s two types of businesses in my mind, there’s a cashflow, a solid cash flow business. You could call it bricks and mortar to some degree. Nowadays, it doesn’t even have to be bricks and mortar, but it is fundamentally a a revenue based business. And then there’s another business where you can add value through scale. Right. And that value doesn’t necessarily mean commercial value from sales. It could come in various, various means. But you’re building the value of the business because of the number of people you are impacting per se. Right. So when you exit business, I guess my understanding is that you can exit a business based on a multiple of EBITDA of a of a cash flow because you’re selling the future cash flow or you’re fundamentally selling the values that generated the uses or not. When I say uses, you’re selling the fact that, you know, you’ve got a concept that people love and they’re willing to pay for or someone’s willing to pay for somehow. Right. And interestingly, I have actually coming back to just on that exit point share side is actually like we’re building a business for life. Like it’s not actually something that we’re looking for like a, you know, most start-ups are going to have an immediate five year runway with an exit or whatnot. We don’t actually have that. We want to build a business that will last. And through that journey, what happens? What happens? Well, you know, something happens along that journey. Great. But so going back to that with knowing the end in having the end in mind and knowing how we want what our North Star is and knowing that we want to build a business that will last, we know that having people on the journey, this isn’t going to be something that is going to be a quick overnight thing.

[00:36:43] So we have to build. We have to have significant investment. It’s not something that we can to achieve to realise the vision of impacting patients around the world through visual communication. That’s not something we can do, you know, door to door sales. Right. And hope for every transactional cost. Also, one critical part here is that we’re Chesnut is a product that’s not replacing an existing product in a workflow, if that makes sense. We’re not the new. So that replaces the current SUV. That’s not what we are. We are an additional option in a in a climate where patients demand to know or wish to know more and dentists are at the risk of litigation. So we’ve come to a point where we’ve created a solution to help mitigate risk but also empower patient understanding. Therefore, that solution is a culture change, and that culture change comes with its own challenges. I can’t promote chair side or the team can’t promote chair side as Oh, we’re the new so common users, we’re PMS. We have to almost explain what it is we’re trying to do. We are we are a patient community onwards for so long we’ll are we a patient communication platform? Are we a patient education platform? What sounds what sounds sexy? What doesn’t like what is our reality? And so actually getting the words because we are not replacing an existing software or an existing part of that journey, you could argue we’re replacing flip charts, you know, where you had those pictures of teeth.

[00:38:10] So all of that requires investment. So to get that investment, you need to somehow a firm, in my opinion, really have a purpose that is worth pursuing, that is has a tangible business model around it and has a tangible market that is willing to be impacted by it. So when you raise money and you value your business, there’s this thing called the total addressable market. Where how big is this market? Look, you can’t raise, you know, £1,000,000 if you can’t value a company £1,000,000 if your market there’s only sort of ten people willing to spend £100 in that market. Right. It’s just not going to happen. But if you’ve got a market like dentistry where there’s one point you know, 1.2 million odd dentists around the world, this is call it 42,000 dentists in the UK. You know, maybe there’s an opportunity where you can build a product to target a specific niche within that domain and therefore you can then in in my understanding, you have a fair assessment of how many people you think you can impact over what time early doors investors get a more favourable share and you value the company according to your total addressable market, according to your potential economic model and the various impact in revenue streams you can generate from that, right.

[00:39:27] Yeah, but what did you tell, what did you tell the investor that came down to in pounds and pence and percentages.

[00:39:33] Pounds and pence. I would I think.

[00:39:36] If you honestly don’t want to talk about that’s.

[00:39:39] No we can I think at the beginning it’s fair to say there is also this incentive called this by the way. Yeah. Where you know early doors investors get.

[00:39:52] What’s a.

[00:39:53] It’s it’s seed investment entrepreneur seed investment entrepreneur scheme. I can’t remember what it’s called, I think. I can’t remember what the the. So the idea is it’s.

[00:40:07] An investment enterprise scheme, but the same sort of seed. So it’s a it’s a it’s a good tax break for anyone who is wanting to invest. So there’s there’s a tax benefit from that. And it allows you to go out to mass market and I guess give a percentage of your company.

[00:40:25] Up.

[00:40:25] To a pool of investors who you choose to invest. You invest in your company under that enterprise scheme, if I understand that correctly.

[00:40:34] Correct. I mean, I guess what it is, is, you know, high risk individuals are able to invest in businesses that are non bricks and mortar, that are not, for example, property and stuff like that, and put money in and have a potential tax relief on that investment. Right.

[00:40:53] Quick question on that. So did you set up an SES as an investment platform for chair sites or was that correct? Was that your original strategy before you approached your number one investor or did that person bypass that and get into the equity early doors?

[00:41:11] That investor was already savvy on that. And it was it was it was our accountant’s advice. And by counting, our accountant was the first investor here. So his advice, well, it’s the other way round. He’s the first investor and then became our accountant. Right. So he was like, look, we can raise this off ses the da da da da da. In fact, you know, here we go. Here’s some, here’s some funding. Let me go with it. Let’s go with it. And we were like, okay, really, it’s a case of how much equity would you like to have in exchange for the amount that you’re putting in? And we believe that this is how much we feel we can let go of to make it interesting for you, but also scalable for us as we go through this journey. Because, you know, you can’t give away 50% of the company on day one for a very small investment that if you’re raising big money later on, you know, you could get diluted quite heavily. Right.

[00:42:05] So and then and then go on going forward, when you get like a rock star, sort of you go higher that you want to hire. What ends up being the the ownership part, the do you are you following the usual thing that tech companies do with share options and all that for people?

[00:42:23] Absolutely. Like every every every we we mean the ethos that aside is that everyone’s part of the journey and wherever we go, however we get there, when we get there, we will get there. Everybody wins. That’s the idea. And if you’re a rock star, you win to just as much as if you’re not a rock star and you just contributed in a different way in your own. And that’s why hiring is really important for us. But then they’re all part of an option pool that is safeguarded that they can access as part of the agreement within chance.

[00:42:52] So back back to that original piece where what percentage did you hive up and say, we’re going to give that to SAS and as owners we’re going to hold onto the rest. Where where was that comfort point for you?

[00:43:06] I think a good question for me. I think early days, we wouldn’t want to give away any more at that point then I don’t think anyone would would want to give more than I think incubators generally give away about 7%.

[00:43:20] Okay.

[00:43:22] So the market there is a market average kind of thing, but each industry is also different, right? Like if you’re going to build, if you if you’re going to if you’re going to need to start off, if you need seed investment of like 10 million because you’re building like something that can enter your brain and you need R&D like research grants to be able to actually embed a chip in your brain. The R&D itself will cost about five mil. Right? And you can’t then go to go to an investor and raise, you know, what, 20 to 25 grand as your first investor and give him 50% of the company. That’s not going to happen. So there is every industry is different, but I would say 7% is typically what most incubators offer, as I think they might give you six figures for that.

[00:44:09] So did you give any did you give up 7%?

[00:44:13] It’s not like we didn’t do that. We didn’t actually do that. And we didn’t raise we didn’t raise that at that point. He was a much smaller investor and is a much different equity stake. But just to give you an idea.

[00:44:25] Do you know what I’m not I’m not being I’m not.

[00:44:29] Nosy, Mr..

[00:44:30] Newson. I’m not buying this book. I’m not I’m not being Mr. Nosey and I’m actually being Mr. Inquisitive and I’ll explain why. And I’m just about to jump into a partnership with a couple of people.

[00:44:43] And.

[00:44:44] And there’s, there’s a, there’s a business idea stroke model that I think is fairly powerful. And the people involved a the right people in that business.

[00:44:55] Should we get it out of him?

[00:44:58] That was proven right. Obviously. Love it.

[00:45:00] Love and let’s get this.

[00:45:01] Out of, you know, love it, love it, not make anything.

[00:45:06] Host, guest host. This week is loving and just.

[00:45:09] Yes.

[00:45:10] It is. Prav, take.

[00:45:11] A.

[00:45:12] Lovely thanks again. Thanks for joining.

[00:45:15] Me. So I’m just going to tell you that I was born and raised in Manchester and my dad drove a taxi and owned a corner shop. I had a tough childhood and I was bagging spuds in the corner shop for a living.

[00:45:28] All right. What was it? What was it? What was it? It was the basic area without giving it all the way. So you might as you can’t say what you said and then not say the next thing gone.

[00:45:36] I’m going to tell you why I’m acquisitive and I’m not being a nosy, you know, what is the there is this business idea, right? That revolves around three individuals who’ve got this idea to take it to market. And there is an opportunity for us to go and raise some money to kick start this project. Now, the reason why I’m curious is that the idea is great. The concept’s great. We there’s a mission that we believe in and we’re all pretty positive about it anyway. So but the business has got no value, right? Because there’s a product, there’s an idea, it’s potentially a service behind it, but it is cash flow zero. So we can go out to either individuals that we know we’re going to put our own hands in our own pockets to kick start the business as well. But if we want a massive cash injection. We’re asking ourselves this question at the moment. What percentage do we let go of before we go hunt it? Right.

[00:46:37] Really good.

[00:46:37] Question. And that’s really good. That’s why I’m asking that is why I’m asking you this question right now, because I am curious. I don’t actually care about the numbers, the percentage like you talked about, 7%. And then you said, oh, well, this investor got a different deal in this, that and the other just broadly speaking. And it’s not a tech it’s not a tech product, by the way. But broadly speaking, like how do you even have that conversation with investors with yourselves? Right. Because you could just pick a number out of the air. Right. We’ve all watched Dragon’s Den. Right. They make an absolute fool of themselves in value in the companies for like 10 million quid and they’ve not even got a product or whatever. Right. And embarrassing themselves. That’s what I wanted to learn from you May is just just get some insight because you’ve done it. You’ve been there and done that, right? We haven’t.

[00:47:30] Now, of course, I mean, I think I think there’s three parts to any I believe, anyway, from my learning. Sure. One part is understanding product market fit. The next part, I’m just going to lay this out as to how I how I see this. Right. So you’ve got product market fit. You need to achieve product market fit. There’s a huge investment element there with high risk that’s super early stage, that’s you’ve got this idea, but you haven’t actually proven the concept, you haven’t proven usage, you haven’t proven that people are willing to purchase it or not purchase it, and that is probably the highest risk. So there’s a risk to reward ratio based on that phase. So if you’re coming in at that phase early doors, you’re more likely to get to take a bit more equity. But you also have to be understanding of founder motivation. Right. If the founding team don’t have enough skin in the game where it’s worth their sweat equity, and that’s fundamentally what you’re valuing your sweat equity. Right? And then we bootstrapped for years. For years, like I can say, we didn’t we didn’t raise we raised hardly anything for about four years and then had then we were revenue generating and then we were going, you know, sort of like that that raised that funding round. That’s more significant. But what it did was it proved the concept at each phase and you raise enough that you need to to create a runway that takes you to the next phase. So the way I would see it is your concept or the who you wish to back. What is their runway for, what they wish to achieve, and what could the valuation potentially be at that stage? So I’ll give here’s an argument. They say you’re going to you’re in lemonade. You’re selling lemonade. Right. And you think you’ve got this mission, you’ve got this.

[00:49:19] But you’re selling patient education software to pitch to us. Yeah.

[00:49:24] Thank you. Yeah.

[00:49:28] You can give us a glass of lemonade while we listen to you. Me?

[00:49:32] Imagine. Imagine it’s us going and then going.

[00:49:34] Yeah, we’re the lemonade and you’re in. You’re saying no. Hopefully at that early stage, you’re saying, right. I think we could if we get this product right, I think we can make vegan lemonade. Vegan lemonade, we reckon can scale. There’s a vegan market of X, Y, Z. And in the first year, we need to we need food. In the first six months. The first year, dude, we need.

[00:50:09] Is there any eggs, meat and dairy in lemonade?

[00:50:13] I don’t know. Water, lemon, whatever. It’s the process. It’s the process. I’m not sure. Okay. Yeah, let’s let’s call it let’s let’s call it the way the bottle was made. Maybe in the content, but anyway, very bad.

[00:50:31] Whatever the process is.

[00:50:32] Whatever the process. Yeah. So just an argument just it’s just an argument. I use the word vegan because there’s a niche market, you know, it’s targeted, you know, lemonade already exists. Fine. You’re saying we’re going to target this market at this time, this many people, we think we can hit this many people. But first, we need to build to make the best vegan lemonade. To make lemonade we need we need one. We need 150 grand. Right? Most incubators give you 150 grand for seven, 7%. And you say we think that that over six months to 12 to over 12 months, that that 150 grand, you know, that will pay basic wages. We never took salary, but some people may want to take salary that will allow us to, you know, source the product, you know, build the IP, whatever, whatever, whatever, get the actual ingredients right, get the flavours right. And we know that maybe five out of ten people at that stage will want to buy this. Buy this sometimes at seed stage 150 is not enough because you haven’t quite solved it. You might then go to the next level of seed and you might say, I want to raise some more. And I think the trade off is how much if this did go in and if your vision was 100,000 a week that you’re selling, you’re selling this 100,000 a week. And eventually, you know, I don’t know, Procter and Gamble might buy it off you. I’m not sure you will then say to the investor, hey, I think that at this stage in the next 12 months, we can raise more money at this point because we would have hit these targets, hit these milestones. And therefore, this is. Sure, sure, sure, sure. If it’s. But let’s say.

[00:52:11] For this business. I want a million quid. They want. It’s that out there. For sentences. I mean, like you’ve been through all. I’ve never. I’ve never raised.

[00:52:25] Money. Why not? Why not? Why not?

[00:52:27] Is that. No, no. But off the back of a. An idea, right? In your experience, the edge?

[00:52:35] Yeah, 100%. It’s out there. The market’s a bit funky for the next three months. Three years. The projections. I was reading this thing from Sequoia Capital, this really great projection where this thing where there’s like. The next three years is probably going to be quite challenging raising money. But the money is out there and I would probably say scaleable money as opposed to like scalable investments as opposed to cash flow rich investments where more favourable in the past two years for sure, three years, I’m not sure about the next three years. People are looking for more secure cash flow rich investment options. But having said that, the money is out there. You can raise you can raise a million. You can raise 2 million. You can raise 5 million. There are enough, especially in London, there is enough investment to go. It comes down to whether they believe in the purpose. They believe they’re passionate about it, and they believe there’s an economic engine that is tangible and that actually, honestly, I think it comes down to the team. I think it’s if they actually believe in the team because the vision, the product changes, the idea changes what the idea might be at seed stage once you’ve tested it in the market could be completely different when it’s actually the thing that people are using. But if you’ve got the right team that can navigate through that, the challenges and the pivot, I think that’s what people invest in largely. Yeah, yeah.

[00:53:55] Love that, man.

[00:53:56] I think I think I’ve only come to learn that over time. It seems so much, you know, things in hindsight seem so much more obvious.

[00:54:03] So tell us, tell us. Tell us then. More about dentist. What made you want to become a dentist and what made you want to stop being a dentist?

[00:54:12] I originally wanted to do I originally wanted to be a rapper that was actually rap.

[00:54:19] So did Proud really know?

[00:54:21] I grew up listening to NWA and Ice-T back in the day and.

[00:54:27] Oh, amazing.

[00:54:28] How we realised I didn’t have the voice or the.

[00:54:31] Lyrics.

[00:54:33] But I’d study anatomy and biochemistry instead. Payman is winding you up.

[00:54:40] The Fair.

[00:54:41] Enough. So what you wanted to be.

[00:54:43] I thought you actually. I was actually quite excited. I thought.

[00:54:45] You did. No, no, no. I’m just a good storyteller, mate, and. But come on, tell us, rapper, who was your inspiration? Inspirations. Why?

[00:54:55] I come from a point where I think I think I was around at that particular at a particular age, I would probably say 14, 15, where the UK grime scene was in its infancy and it was transitioning from garage, transitioning from garage to, to, to sort of this like more emcees, none of these tracks and having these these lyrics. And I also I think at that point was really was listening to a lot of West Coast hip hop. I think I think in that phase, Tupac and all of them guys were like really making commercial movements and Jay-Z was becoming a thing. And I think I just had this really this I was super passionate about songwriting. And if I would actually go to the crux of it, I think at school it was the thing that I was good at, if that makes sense. Like when I say good at very subjective, but like it was the thing that I felt like.

[00:55:45] I felt like you were in flow.

[00:55:47] I felt like was my thing, right? Yeah. And we do battle raps with other schools and I would be challenging and you know, I wasn’t I probably I wasn’t the captain of the football team nor was I probably the the, the, the coolest kid in on the block at the time. But I was passionate about songwriting. I loved it, I loved it. I did it in my sleep. I did it with my free time. And I felt like I was I felt like I had my identity and that identity like and I still am attached to it because it was such a big part of my identity, but it allowed me to express myself. It was a great platform for expression, but also it allowed me to be myself. And that was something that I carried through. And I’ve been very fortunate to meet friends in the industry who are now full time musicians as well doing their thing and watch them grow and succeed. And, and I was really lovely. But there was there was a point for me where I’m not saying that I ditched it, but I had to make some decisions whether I wanted to follow something I was really passionate about, really passionate about, which is a music thing that was like, I mean, absolute no cash flow like zero negative.

[00:56:58] Like you can’t raise you can’t raise money for that or anything. You just got to graft it. And in hindsight, I learned something about myself. Through that journey is like, what if I actually I didn’t pursue I pursued, I graduated as a dentist and I went three days a week dentist when I graduate because I want to do two days of music. I said when I start earning some money on music videos, I do this on a really pursue my passion. And I ended up becoming a dentist for days and ended up becoming a dentist five days. And because at that point it became like, I don’t know if I had the graft at the time because dentistry was becoming a thing where I was really starting to enjoy the clinical practice and then life kicks in and it’s like, Oh, you know what? I need to, I want to I want to do this course and that course and do this and do that. And then that kind of starts taking over and the whole music thing as well. I felt very like, I think it’s a personal thing at the time, but my mindset at the time was I’d make a song right and I’d go to one extra and BBC one extra would say, Go to the Asian network, and I go to the Asian network and they’d say, Go to BBC one extra.

[00:58:12] And it was like, Oh, and I played my stuff on this Radio one show, which was lovely, but it was also especially a show with Asia. So I was like making, I was like having these Asian beats, but I was also like, I’m saying completely Western. I can’t even speak Tamil or English. I’m not I’m not part of the Punjabi crew. So I didn’t really have the Bhangra thing. But I love lots of Punjabi mates and I loved that music. So we’re a very weird niche of like, wow, you know? And I kept being ping pong and I was like, I can’t build a sustainable crib. But actually in the world now, if I have the courage and I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think I had the courage at the time to actually take the plunge and pursue something I was super passionate about and see where it led. And I learned a lesson from that. And now that. Gratitude. Sorry.

[00:59:01] Regrets?

[00:59:03] Yeah. Well, regretted the timing. Yeah. You regretted the fact that I accepted it as it was and thought.

[00:59:10] You know what didn’t fit right?

[00:59:12] Yeah. Like, I mean, my niche was so small I was making, but I could have. I could. You know what I know now you can build a following of a small niche and then expand, right? And like, I was also super insecure about releasing stuff I just wasn’t 100% happy with. So I’m a bit of a I was a bit of a procrastinator in my own because when you make music, you are the brand, you are the product, you are the solution.

[00:59:39] You at the end of it, isn’t it?

[00:59:40] Yeah. So I was so paralysed by that and I was like, Oh no, you know, it doesn’t really sound too great. And I don’t really have an understanding of market and all of that. And I was just making music and. With what I know now. Like, if I just stuck at it. Like, I think. I think sometimes there’s something. Yeah.

[00:59:58] Sorry, love and sorry. Sorry to interrupt, but tell me this this then moving into the communication side is is kind of that story started with the wrapping. You know, you have the music.

[01:00:11] The music.

[01:00:11] And I actually actually did.

[01:00:14] Yeah. Yeah. That’s kind of kind of where it stems from. You actually connected the dots there? Payman. Yeah, true thing. Yeah. I mean, I learned that and I thought, I’m not playing at this time. I’m just going to really, really blitz it. And if there’s something you’re passionate about, have the courage to really go for it. Take some risks, try it. Obviously educated risks to some degree, but that was a real life lesson. And I still I still write today and I have this hope that like not this hope, but I’m putting it into practice where still recording stuff and just, just putting it out. I think I come to realise as well with that music thing is like that’s everlasting, that’s evergreen, that’s forever that, that is me as a person. I’ll continue to write and do it for myself and to do it for anyone who’s willing to listen to me. And so that’s kind of I’ve kind of made peace with that.

[01:01:07] But that’s how I feel about this podcast. That’s how I feel about this podcast. Really, really. I just feel that, you know, it’s for whoever wants to listen to it and for me.

[01:01:17] But for me, why is that not the best way it takes out so much of the nonsense in your head when you want to do something just for you and for people who want to be part of that. Interestingly, I think it was my younger brother who taught me that he’s five years younger than me, but it was the career he chose. He didn’t choose anything. He didn’t pursue sort of the financial returns of a particular career. He went into like a start up world in like the basics of of VR in a time where, you know, VR was not really a thing. And and I was like, Wow, man, you really inspired me. Like, you just done something you’re just super passionate about zero kid. You really love that kind of stuff and turned him back. Looking back on it, I’m like, you know, that’s that’s kind of kind of important. Just pursue what you’re passionate about, take some risks, have the courage, do it for yourself. And same thing with chess. I’d look if we can impact one patient and we can help one one dentist and it adds significant value. Surely there’s other dentists and patients that will want it right and we just have to try and find them.

[01:02:16] What’s the business model worth? How do people pay for it?

[01:02:20] It’s a subscription product, so it’s a SaaS product at the moment where, yeah, you can you can pay monthly or you can pay for an annual license, which is a bit cheaper. And we’ve tried to keep it, keep the costs as low as possible with the view that it’s an early product. You know, people need to experience it to keep the barrier to entry low at this point and the free.

[01:02:40] Trial or something.

[01:02:41] Yeah, there’s a, there’s a month free trial and hopefully the early. The early users reap the benefits from the from the early incentives.

[01:02:52] To talk us through what happens. Patient comes in needs, needs. Something can explain it to him. Hit the screen.

[01:03:01] Don Yeah. So what.

[01:03:03] Happens is your video comes.

[01:03:04] Out okay. So like really evolving care side now is a cloud based platform. There’s no screen. Yeah, we have that screen as a premium. It is a cloud based platform. Yeah. You sign up within. I would probably say once you’ve filled out your name and a few details, you get access straightaway. You’re in the chat, you’ve got all your conditions. It’s a Netflix style approach. So you’ve got Imagine Netflix, but imagine you’ve got conditions, treatment options, risks, and then you start condition and you can take your patients through that visual journey showing them their condition, their treatment options and their risks. The entire conversation is then timestamped, tracked and stored in your notes to say This was set at this time. This was played for this. This percentage of this video was played. And you can annotate, you can draw, you can do anything you want in an interactive fashion. You can then jump on a video, call with your patient, and again, share all of that content on a video call. Say you’ve had a situation where the patient’s been around. You know, you’ve got large treatment plan and you want to discuss, jump on that and have that conversation to a video call.

[01:04:04] And so you’ve covered what must have been a big time for an accelerated because of the video call. Right.

[01:04:09] That I mean, that’s when it spiralled, to be fair. That’s when it spiralled. A few things came off that we had like within three months we had like 400 practices sign up and then that was on a practice model. Now not the dentist model, but the X number of dentists.

[01:04:25] And then how did that feel? That was to felt like amazing and scary at the same time.

[01:04:31] Do you know what? It’s incredible. But it was five years to get to that point. Right. And like it was just timing. Like the product was in the right place, the market had an immediate need and then it was through that that the visuals became the thing that people loved. Like, okay, a cool video calling, but actually I can share visuals. How can I use these visuals in the chair? Oh, by the way, this is the original product which is chair side, which is like a SAS based cloud based product. Go into Google app com, log in and show your patients anything you want to do on your phone. Do it and your wherever you want and if you want to jump on a video call so that spiralled it and that sold, I think that created awareness for us. That’s what it did. And since then, you know, we’ve been able to go to sort of improve the content while we’re increasing scale. But more importantly, what we’re focusing on user experience, we’re focusing on on having the best content that will that the dentist want to help articulate their messages, whatever that message might be to the patient, whether it’s it’s your perio, whether it’s implants, whether it’s ortho, what the risks are.

[01:05:35] We’ve got animations on like IPR, you know, really explaining, you know, resorption, all these things that, you know, you might not articulate in a conversation or patients might not grasp. You can actually visually explain it within 8 seconds using chair side. And that’s the beauty of it. It’s actually faster and it’s a lot more thorough. And then everything is tracked and stored in your notes. So, you know, there’s proof in five years time, if anyone comes up to you and says, Hey, you never told me that I had gum disease. Well, actually, I did. I even showed you how to use a tepee. And that’s know that was the next one and I showed you this and so on. It’s all timestamped at 9:00 on a monday, 4th of July, whatever the date is. Yeah. So the idea here is in the most automated fashion to help communicate easily, effectively, transparently, using a very straightforward journey that is absolutely customisable whilst having being protected at the same time. And then all of that can be emailed to the patient automatically. So based on what you clicked or those, all that content gets shared to the patient and they can consent to that there and then.

[01:06:41] Does. It connects with the practice software.

[01:06:45] We have we are going through that process right now. The video calling does at this minute, it’s integrated. And it’s a very good question because it’s the question we get all the time. And, you know, what I love about dentistry is like generally from the dentists, through the groups, through to the software houses. Is there is this collaborative like feel? I really feel like people are open to collaborating now. Sometimes there are barriers to collaboration, like technical issues and stuff, but generally everybody is willing to support and help each other. I think that’s a that’s like there’s an abundance mindset as opposed to a scarcity mindset in dentistry. I feel from my experience that’s a really positive thing in our community.

[01:07:26] So for so for example, the you’ve got a video calling platform which I’m assuming has got booking and you can like set appointments or availability or whatever.

[01:07:38] On the video calling side.

[01:07:39] Yeah, yeah, like calendar or something like that or some kind of your version of that. Can that interlink with the dental diary? So the double bookings are not made because we found we’ve built a few bits and pieces of software and the one thing that we found is getting knocking on the door of SWE and trying to get them to open up their API. Yeah, it’s like Rocky not to mate.

[01:08:06] I would probably say the hardest part. I mean, integrating bookings is near enough. It’s a huge challenge. It’s a huge challenge. We don’t have that because we can’t actually get that to happen at this point. And so that actually makes it very challenging. And I don’t think it’s the fault of any of the software houses. I just think it’s the way things are built that are feasible. It’s actually quite difficult as we move, as everybody moves to a more cloud based solution like, you know, you’ve got dental and you got everyone’s moving to sort of more cloud based. That becomes a lot more, I would probably say, achievable.

[01:08:46] Fine. And then you can push your patient data into, let’s say, dental, really, because that’s got an API that allows you to push and pull and whatnot. That’s obviously so I guess it depends on the practice software in terms of what you can and can’t do.

[01:09:01] Yeah.

[01:09:02] But I have a question for you, Prav, when you say to get so to open their API. Yeah. Isn’t that just the revenue share that would determine whether they would or they would agree.

[01:09:14] So there’s technical constraints, point number one.

[01:09:18] Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:19] And then point number two, I don’t know whether it’s or you guys are too small to talk to. We’re not opening an API or they actually don’t have an API. And for those who are listening that don’t understand what an API is, it is just a language that allows you to connect my software to your software where I can push data into it and I can pull data out of it in both directions. And sometimes you have a one way API that just pushes data out and you can just pull it. Or sometimes you have a two way where you can throw data back in and ideally to connect with a third party software platform, you need some kind of two way API where you can throw data in and you can query it and pull it back out. It’s the easiest way to describe it. And with certainly with software of excellence, that’s that’s not been possible. However, speaking of Dental, their engineers will get on the phone with you and have a chat with you and be very collaborative in terms of if you want to build a tool for their platform and they’ll give you all the documentation code as well. Yeah. Really. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that love of what you’re saying, they’re very collaborative.

[01:10:26] Yeah, very cool. I mean on that note I actually as I said, we are really have a really great mindset. Like they are really open to collaborating, they really want to improve the dentist experience. It’s important to them. I actually think that that because as a we own density now I know.

[01:10:48] Yeah.

[01:10:48] So I think the focus is more on the growth of it’s much easier. I think it’s just easier as we have so much on their plate, they’ve got all these nice things that they have to program and the changes every time they have to program. Yeah, I can imagine even just trying to like work with the tech team on chair side and that’s like like a 20th of maybe, maybe even less like of what so is, is a beast in terms of, in terms of the things that need to be programmed. I can understand why actually getting onto the roadmap is a bit of a challenge, but there is definitely I think there’s definitely a push for everyone, you know, naturally moving, cloud based. I think that might be the future is the integrations and the cloud based platforms.

[01:11:27] Yeah. So just out of curiosity, what integrations like let’s say you’ve got the the best Dental platform that you have. Let’s say somebody comes to you and goes, look, I’m all of. Chair side sunshine right chair side is the is is the censor point of my communication. Which dental practice software should I.

[01:11:50] Get.

[01:11:51] That has the best connection with chair side? And could you describe what that journey would be? Would you be pushing and pulling data out? Could you fire patient data over into the practice software, into that patient’s record? And then curiously, how do you identify James Smith in and James Smith in chair side as being the same human beings when this 25 James Smith’s in the system.

[01:12:21] Very good point. I think the best way for genocide is three levels of integration. The first integration is that when you when you start an animation, it works within the platform itself. So we’re not like you’re eliminating that need to go onto the Chrome based platform. I think that that is that’s a natural, like easy, better user experience. Then the next part is having the name. And so like when you, when you go through an animation sequence on Shoreside, what we call flows, when you go through a flow like a period flow, you’re actually everything that’s being recorded is being recorded under that patient that’s been opened on. So. Right, so you’re not entering. So like honestly, I’m opening up James Smith, I’m looking at the previous notes and I’m looking at his x rays and then I’m opening up the chair side under James Smith because James Smith is already open. I’m using chart side to to explain the visual chair.

[01:13:20] Side is already connected to s away and I can open up chair Smith Chair Smith James Smith Chair So I can open up chair side under that patient’s. Nelson It will fire that patient chair side records open who’s already in sway. So those that’s connected already, right? Is that what you’re saying?

[01:13:45] No, that’s what we’re working on right now.

[01:13:48] Oh, okay. Okay. But if you want to take the best.

[01:13:52] I’m just telling you that. I’m telling you the dream tree with this.

[01:13:55] But but but if you were to take the best integration that you’ve got with a cloud based platform, I’m assuming dental is probably the strongest connection you’ve got. Or maybe there’s another one. What are the possibilities as it stands right now.

[01:14:09] And endless possibilities with with platforms like that because. It’s almost like I’m just plugging in different elements.

[01:14:15] Yeah, but I’m talking about in its current incarnation now I buy chair side and I buy generally. What can I do today.

[01:14:24] You can open up chair side on like today. Yeah. We don’t really you can’t do anything right now because it’s not life, it’s not acting.

[01:14:31] Okay.

[01:14:32] The API is the APIs are being both APIs are being developed, they’re being plugged. So I wouldn’t want to tell you what we can what it will become. But if your answer is today, there is no no deep integration.

[01:14:48] Well the possibilities are endless.

[01:14:51] Huge. Yeah, yeah. But, but.

[01:14:56] But I guess and when we’ve developed pieces of software to integrate.

[01:15:02] It just, just links. Those have two things don’t have to stitch I’ll let the guys I have from Kuroki they’re, they’re not even trying to be within each bits of the software.

[01:15:11] Yeah. They don’t have to be. Yeah.

[01:15:14] That’s the whole Andre Allo. That is the Holy Grail.

[01:15:17] I mean it’s a question they ask the most because I mean probably same with everything, but just like could like and as I mentioned like that they’ve done such a great job. I would probably say trying not to rely on anyone is the best thing. Like if you can be stand alone experience but on awesome. But then the next layer is cool. If you can’t integrate, it makes everyone’s lives easier in terms of the experience. But we set out to build this as a standalone product with no expectation of any integrations because we can’t worry about what we can’t control too much. Yeah. So therefore, if it’s not, if it’s not on the table, we can’t, we can’t expect that to be the be all and end all of, of the success of share side or the failure of chatter. But is the success of chat side fundamentally? And if we if we rely on other people, it could actually lead to the failure of a business. So it’s not it’s not the right thing to do in my eyes. Yeah.

[01:16:13] Yeah. Just a bonus if it happens.

[01:16:17] To the British people change a lot of things in terms of experience. You know, it’s already restricted. We’re all restricted on time, just generally what we do. But in the clinic, more so. Right.

[01:16:31] So what’s your what’s your week? Is it how many days are you doing clinical. None. Or, you know.

[01:16:36] I still do. On on it feels like a day, but it’s actually two like officially. But I take so many like odd clinics here and there, like dental shows, all of that kind of stuff. But yeah, a day to two days a week that’s transitioning down now. And that’s, it’s, it’s more so because of the responsibilities I have to the practice. And yeah, but on a personal level it’s also because I get to use this thing and it’s new innovation on in the trenches every day. Like every day I’m in clinic with every patient and really understand and understand how we’re adding value that that for me is really important because I get to see every incremental change, every animation, how it plays out with my patients on a weekly basis. And I can feed back immediately. I can see the flaws, I can see, Oh, hang on a second. There’s no chance I’m going to do this. I don’t have enough time. How do we make it better? How do we make it quicker? So that for me in the trenches is, is an opportunity as well as upholding some of that to.

[01:17:34] Yeah. I mean, the question is, do you do you plan to stop completely or do you not plan to stop completely? We haven’t decided yet because I know if you’ve heard Prav was the one who pushed me. I was on one day a week and Proust pushed me and said, Look, either you’re pregnant or you’re not, or some other phrase you missed was.

[01:17:55] I’ve got a way. I’ve got a way with choice, way with words.

[01:17:59] It just depends who on a canoe and one foot on the shore or something like.

[01:18:03] That in a canoe on the shore, mate. More likely to be the pregnant bit or something. A bit more crass than that.

[01:18:09] But he pushed me because it’s really hard to stop it. It doesn’t feel right to stop with patience either.

[01:18:14] I think that’s probably the hard part for me. It is. It is hard. I’ve you know, I’ve more so more so because I, I like being wet fingered in dentistry. Like I like that feeling of when I speak to my colleagues, I speak to my colleagues as peers. And I don’t want to you know, I enjoy that still. I enjoy saying, hey, I used this or I did this with this patient and this happened and this result and it’s it’s I’m a dentist, you know, I actually really love clinical dentistry. I really, really enjoy it. It’s the opportunity to impact people firsthand there and then is huge. And I’ve had conversations with friends outside of health and there’s like, how do you feel like I mean, you just impact people straight away like there and then in a 20 minute appointment, 50 minute one half an hour appointment, hour long appointment on the day. And I think that feeling is is quite addictive as well, you know, when you have those relationships with patients. But I also am appreciative of the fact that, you know, it’s it is wise to go all in and it is coming to that point. For me, I think the hardest decision, one of the hardest decisions is actually letting go of it because of the love of it. But I hope I hope to still do some clinical here and there and not completely discard. I’ve had some great mentors, advise me accordingly. And like people like Raj Rattan, who’s the dental director, who then to protection going on about what an incredible individual human being but that’s that’s another story it’s just as as a human being a philosopher thinker and also as someone who knows and has seen everything in dentistry, you know, when he became the director, he still does some clinical work on on the side today. So there’s an argument for both just to not skill as well. But I think that’s a hard thing as a dentist. It’s like any skill, right, as well. And you have that attachment. So I don’t know. I’m I always.

[01:20:09] Think I always used to think, though lots of mothers stop for five years and then start again.

[01:20:14] Hmm.

[01:20:15] I wish that was five years is to be my number. You know, you can stop for five years. Loads of women do that or that. Or do they. Maybe, maybe I just made that up.

[01:20:27] I mean loads.

[01:20:29] Must do that.

[01:20:30] Right? I know at least half people take sabbaticals, right? Yeah. You can always go back on courses and learn how to redo certain things. If you’ve been five years out. There’s no excuse. I have no excuse. I’m just pondering. I just need to.

[01:20:46] Know, too. It’s actually difficult to find. I mean, the first thing you said is I want to talk to my peers as peers, which, by the way, that won’t really stop. Yeah. You know, I haven’t practised at all for ten years now. I still talk to my peers. Like peers kind of thing.

[01:21:01] Yeah, kind of thing. No, don’t worry about that. Yeah, I think, I think, I think there’s a point of diminishing returns where you have to take the plunge and just go all in on what you believe in and what you’re passionate about.

[01:21:14] And I think what Prav said to me, something like.

[01:21:17] I have a timeline for that and that should come to fruition.

[01:21:22] But did you know along the way you’ve spoken about or you’ve said the word impact a lot?

[01:21:29] I didn’t realise. But it’s great.

[01:21:32] You have. You have. I used to think about impact a lot too, but. And you’ve said it in so many different ways. You’ve said that you said impact on one human impact on the world impact. You’ve said a few different impacts, obviously important to you.

[01:21:47] If I can take impact and dive deep into that word for me, it’s contribution to society or contribution to a community or contribution or play my role. Play my role in this world, really? And what have I contributed to? If you know, at the end of the day, like, what were you part of? Everybody needs someone to stack the shelves as you need for society to run. Unless a computer or machine is going to do it. Someone needs to do it. Someone needs to. You will always need nurses. You’ll always need people to contribute their role in society. And you can find passion and purpose in any of those roles, some harder than not. But I believe you can, depending on what your personality type is like, you know, maybe certain certain roles allow for you to enjoy experiences because, you know, there’s some jobs out there that are less stress but allow you to earn a certain income and allows you to have experiences. But there’s. But then in your job or outside in your experiences, you may wish to pursue some impact, whether whatever that is or some contribution. For me, I want to hopefully contribute through my work as well as in whatever it is that I do to society. I think that for me gives me fulfilment and if on that journey I can, I can earn a living. Happy, happy days.

[01:23:03] Did you used to see the rat as that? Or was it just fun?

[01:23:08] Impact impact. The rap was I’m kind of like I’m that.

[01:23:13] That was fun for you. Like what was it?

[01:23:16] Was it fun?

[01:23:17] Was it like that? What’s your which one was it? Know when you said on impact the.

[01:23:20] Impact it was.

[01:23:21] For society. Do my bit on society. For society.

[01:23:24] Honestly speaking. Honestly speaking. The bits that I wrote this track called Teardrops, which is about the conflict, which is about orphans in Sri Lanka who had gone through the tsunami and whatnot. And like I remember performing that once and when I had like people messaged me saying they actually it brought tears to their eyes during that summer. Something with impact that was like resonated for me.

[01:23:47] Is it somewhere online if someone wants to listen to that?

[01:23:50] Teardrops? Yeah. I mean, YouTube took it down because I actually used at the time, like when I made it, I actually used some UNICEF images accidentally, which I didn’t realise, but UNICEF images and then there was like this copyright thing and they pulled it. But I mean, I’ve got stuff now that like I could like it’s, it’s, I’m actually going to be putting some stuff out just for myself really, but until my, my Instagram in the next couple of weeks. But again, it’s cathartic. It’s like therapy almost. I wrote this track, How are you? Which is how hard a friend, a very close friend of mine who’s unfortunately at a very young age, his wife passed away at the age of 37 in in quite very difficult circumstances. And I realised that after that my relationships with people changed a lot because I was actually asking people how they were, but actually asking you how are you like on a deeper level, how are you not just, Hey man, how are you? And it’s bad me on to write something that I was really quite passionate about in them. It’s that kind of thing. It’s almost like journaling is like therapy or therapy.

[01:24:54] You should do a podcast, man.

[01:24:58] What? You should. You should. Shall I rap to you guys? Please.

[01:25:03] Please. Please. No. Sure. Go.

[01:25:06] Would you let me do this? How are you thing? Right. Do it. Okay. All right. How are you? No, really, how are you? The question is kind of simple, but the answer is really true. There’s something deep inside that you might want to say. And I don’t mean. Yeah, cool. I’m cool. Yeah, I’m okay. In true friendship, we’re meant to circumvent the niceness, and they say talk is cheap, but to me it’s priceless. Forming connections comes from communication. But when was the last time I called to discuss my trepidations? So many around me with Hunchback. But this ain’t Paris. Heavy weights on the shoulders. Too hard to manage. I go in line. Everyone’s fine. Ain’t nothing savage. So maybe it’s just me on this journey with the excess baggage. Look. What if it’s okay to not be okay? What if it’s cool to not be cool? Society’s provided us with the stigma seen to be strong. But by burying my feelings, I feel I no longer belong. Centuries have passed shaped our perceptions. But who are they to define? What is perfection? Vulnerable was dishonourable. The emotional was weak. How much longer can we accept this for? Three emotions. How I speak. We still connect every minute just to hot spots, not humans blog our everyday lives. Like on a show like Truman. If ego is the enemy, testosterone keeps testing us, let alone progesterone imposter syndrome, preventing us from being ourselves. Share the weight of our feelings. How we use them deserves a greater meaning. The power of three words can go a long way, when answered honestly changed the course of our day. So next time we meet, maybe I’ll find the courage just to say thank you for asking. Yeah, I’m not. Okay. Jesus. Bloody hell. Wow. Wow.

[01:26:52] Bloody hell, man. Thank you so much, buddy. Thank you so much. Oh, definitely this podcast to a place that had never been before.

[01:27:00] I thought, you’re going to carry on wrapping them up.

[01:27:06] But I think we go back to back.

[01:27:08] But if you give if you give 10% of that song to Prav, I’ll stick it on the back. Let’s do this, buddy. Buddy, that was so good. That was so, so good.

[01:27:18] It was beautiful.

[01:27:19] It was beautiful. That means a lot to me. That really does mean a lot to me.

[01:27:24] It just. Just just the meaning that hung on every single word there. And funnily enough, do you know what I was speaking to? I was speaking to Bob earlier today, because we’re having this conversation about this business course that I’m doing later on this month. And we came we were having the conversation and we were talking about how were you? And we had the conversation this morning and it was like. It’s a question that you don’t expect an answer to. That was the conversation that we had this morning, and it really made me think about the fact that actually, when we asked that question, how are you? We don’t. Majority of the time, we’re not looking for an answer. Right. It’s just a you’re okay, you’re all right. And you’ve just.

[01:28:17] Lost the communication tool at that point. But then, you know, he said that to me and said that to me and I go, Oh.

[01:28:23] Yeah, you know, I mean, actually, this is what we’re so used to. And understandably, we’re so used to just saying how coincidental. In my conversation today, by the way, that’s.

[01:28:36] Really like.

[01:28:39] It’s.

[01:28:39] Literally why I was just I was sat there and if anyone was watching the video, I was I was struck. Do you know what I mean? Just just deeply struck while I was listening to it, because I’d had that conversation earlier, I was reflecting on that conversation that I’ve had with Bob, literally about that this morning. And Bob’s the guy who’s going to write the show notes. So he’s going to listen to this and he’s going to chuckle to himself because he knows the conversation that we had this morning. So it’s so surreal. But the depth of every single word that hung on what you said was was beautiful because there’s no other way that was defining.

[01:29:14] That was I was like.

[01:29:17] Oh, so I could do that and start up and be a dentist.

[01:29:20] Man Yeah.

[01:29:22] Look going on that you put some content up, but he put some content out like that because that was really strong. That was really strongly.

[01:29:31] For my birthday. I actually said to myself, I want to do this. And I got I got I got the video guy who shot something for our side. Lovely guy, Lucas. He’s coming round on Saturday, this Saturday to film about just me in the camera, black and white, just me dropping about five of these different ones that I’ve written. Six, six of them. See how it goes? I just put them out and. But it’s not like I can’t believe. Like I dropped the first one here.

[01:29:58] Buddy, buddy, you don’t even need this. This guy to come around with his camera, pull your frickin phone out because he’s. I’m being serious, right? I’m being serious. Me? Because what you actually just dropped there was I think will impact so many people. Right. Because at any one time when someone’s listening to that, I can assure you there’s a lot of people who are not all right.

[01:30:24] And.

[01:30:24] They want to be questioned deeper. Well, right by the right people. Yeah. And for you to do that as a production in black and white, nicely added, nicely polished, rather than just get your phone out and just do it here and now and whack it on Instagram or Facebook. As a marketer, I can tell you now the second version less polished you raw will have far more impact me promise you.

[01:30:55] Fat.

[01:30:56] Do you know what I don’t let not take Don’t let that camera guy hold you.

[01:31:00] Back You know what happened? You know what happened there. You went for perfection. Paralysis? Yeah. Because you were worried about doing it just like when you were a kid, when you were going to do the rapping. And and then he snuffed it out. He snuffed it out like. Like like a Gary Vee kind of guy. Now you got to do it, dude.

[01:31:17] He’s right. He’s right. And if that’s something that that I try and think deeper into why what things program program means or us to to behave in certain ways. Right. And, and I think I must come from a I want to do it. But now, you know, I just I’m not in the camera. No, not right now. You know, I’m going to have dinner. Yeah. And I will get it done properly. We get we’ve got proper video guide to come and do it. But, but actually sometimes the best things are just done impromptu just like that. And just click send and post it and see where it goes. You don’t need to have a marketing plan behind it. Sometimes you don’t need to have a strategy behind it. You just do it.

[01:31:55] The strongest content that you will produce will be stuff like this. What you’ve just done now, right, that isn’t planned, isn’t pre-production. You’re not fumbling your words or you just go with the flow, right? And whatever happens happens. You pull your camera out, you record something, you share it out there on social and just let the world unfold. Mate, whoever whoever resonates with that resonates with that. Right. And we know the feeds are all made for these devices, right? We’re watching them on these devices. We film on on these devices and the algorithm drives it. You produce a flippin picture, perfect, polished production. I’m confident that you’ll have more impact if you just pull your phone out in about 25 minutes.

[01:32:37] I think you’re giving me this this you’re giving me a bit too much credit for this this this production here, by the way, were made with a camera. But you are right. It’s still a level ahead of a raw, raw footage on your phone, which I think you know. In hindsight, actually. Spot on. Yeah.

[01:32:56] But Doo did do start writing again for sure, right.

[01:33:00] I’m I have recently I don’t know why it is I have recently like. Just being honest with myself and stuff about myself, really. Which is quite nice actually. You know, even younger is like, you’re rapping about other stuff. I mean, Teardrops was a really passionate one for me because it was about the history of my culture, I suppose, and the things that that people where I’m from in Sri Lanka also went through. But but you know what it is, guys? It’s like this really weird thing. Like, now is so good. It’s like it’s ever since I definitely social media has helped with that but to just be genuine and just do what comes to mind and put yourself out there and do it is way better than before when actually you had to go through the barriers to get played and what you got. What got played was what people wanted to hear. Stuff like this would never have got played back then and kind of thing, but I feel now is a much better time for it. But as far as process, as.

[01:33:54] Prav says, it also means much more competition. But but you know what you just did? There was bloody good dude.

[01:34:00] The best part of the podcast mate. Yes, right.

[01:34:03] Yeah. Bloody good.

[01:34:04] Being serious.

[01:34:05] That was promised to that rap expert. I know I’m not, but perhaps the rap expert. Well, but he was excellent. All joking aside, it was all excellent.

[01:34:14] Was it just you didn’t rap, mate? You told the story. Yeah, and that. And that’s what you did.

[01:34:22] I was so glad we started at the end. This time I’m so happy about it. Like, I might never have got to that rap man.

[01:34:28] Sure. Payman Payman payment or credit to you, buddy?

[01:34:31] Yeah. Yeah, it was the onion. Right down to the core of it. That’s where that’s anyone who knows. Like, I mean, I was I was at uni obviously with a lot of dental students. So there’s a lot of the like gen cache, those guys who all were like whereas similar time Sanjeev Sanchar together then Dosanjh was emceeing with me at one point from together, you know. Oh really. Yeah. Yeah, he was in. I’m going to call him out on it. His name was.

[01:35:00] Let me see what. Emcee Ray Radia.

[01:35:04] Radar. Yeah. Crazy. He was easy. He was like, We lived in horse together. He’s like, he’s such.

[01:35:12] A great kid. And Kisch as well, were they? Were they?

[01:35:15] Jen was deejaying. He was doing the whole deejaying thing. And they still doing.

[01:35:18] Where? Where was this?

[01:35:19] That was a kings. Oh, yeah. So that was that was a good time. It’s a good time.

[01:35:28] Amazing, man. We’re one hour, 40 minutes in. Amazingly.

[01:35:34] Wow.

[01:35:36] Let’s get your. We might as well get a final question, Steve. And, you know, just I just like I said to the character, guys, I want to I want to see you in the next round, you know, like in the next finance round to say, hey, man, where we where we at now? You know.

[01:35:52] Like.

[01:35:55] Amazing. So amazing having you on my body.

[01:35:58] You guys have been such, so easy to speak to. I’ve really enjoyed it. I, I haven’t even. I didn’t even realise what the time is right now, but I’m like, oh man, it’s such honestly, such a pleasure and I’m so, so, so, so grateful to come on and be able to even be able to rap. Like, I never thought I’d do that here, but yeah, great.

[01:36:20] Like, it definitely was the best bet.

[01:36:22] But without.

[01:36:24] Question. Without question. Even imagine it was the last day on your planet and cheer side has already impacted millions of dentists and and and become this forever company that you’re never going to sell. And it leaves that legacy. What would be the three pieces of wisdom that you would leave for your loved ones?

[01:36:47] Really? Okay, really interesting. I would I think these these three bits are important to me that I would like to to share. I think the first thing is be curious, just be curious and explore your curiosity and learn to be student. Be student and learn through experiences, learn through reading, learn through understanding people and interactions and expand your curiosity. I think that has led me to to really because through that curiosity you find out almost what you’re passionate about. So the second one for me is discover what you’re passionate about and be passionate and then pursue that passion and have a purpose. Align with your passion because when you have passion, you can wake up every day and really enjoy what you do. But also you can be passionate about simple things. You can be passionate about like birds, passionate about things that we don’t take for, we take for granted. But when you when you live with that passion, everything has a meaning and a story behind it and depth to it. Even the words, how are you? You know, like you can unravel so much out of it. But if if you don’t, if you’re not curious and you’re not passionate, sometimes, you know, we get on with our daily treadmill of life and you miss sometimes I found that I miss the beauty of things when I’m not in that space. So yeah, the, the first thing is definitely be curious and be alert, always be student learn. The second thing is find things that you’re passionate about and pursue them and live with purpose and find purpose around them.

[01:38:21] And then the third thing for me would be courage. Have the courage to take risks. If I didn’t have the courage to take risks, maybe I wouldn’t have explored the music thing at that point. And maybe if I had a bit more courage, I would have actually pursued it. If I didn’t have the courage right now, I wouldn’t maybe be doing shoreside or something that I’m I love because I do my best mate, do it some of the great, the best people I know, some of the best minds I know, and my cousin as well as involved. And I’ve met so many people like yourselves through that journey. And that was all at a time where, you know, the risks I took were, you know, cut. My job was lose, lose, lose, lose, whatever came of that stability, security, all of that. And and just generally, even on a day to day basis, you have the courage to take risks that you’re passionate. But I think it all intertwines to each other to be curious about life and explore and continue to continue to learn. And then once you while you’re learning that, be passionate about when you find the things you’re passionate about, you know, explore that and find purpose and then have the courage to take risks. And then I think for me, that’s helped me a lot. And if I knew that a young, younger age, I may have done, you know, explored a lot more as well.

[01:39:35] So it’s beautiful, man. It’s amazing advice, isn’t it? Amazing advice.

[01:39:43] Thank you. France is a dinner party.

[01:39:46] It just doesn’t seem as important now, doesn’t it? Fancy, fancy, fancy dinner party. Ballet.

[01:39:52] Fancy dinner party.

[01:39:54] I think it’s dead or alive.

[01:39:56] Okay, cool. For me. I found. I find Leonardo da Vinci incredibly interesting. Like he’s someone who is, like a thinker. Like a painter. Like an engineer. Like, you know, he was everything. He did everything. And he was actually really, apparently, according to history, really great many things. And I just don’t understand in a world where now we focus in on one thing and be really great, that one thing. How someone back then had the ability to to master so many concepts. And just as individual. I just love to. To understand his mind. So I think Leonardo da Vinci, for me would be someone who has always stood out as a quite remarkable person in history. If what they say about history.

[01:40:40] It’s a good one.

[01:40:40] I know you’ve had this already on the podcast a few times, but just because of the place that I’m in in my life right now, I think Elon Musk would be super interesting for me, this whole journey that he goes on. Mine’s on a much smaller scale, but nonetheless some transferrable ideas there thoughts, problems, concepts, processes, systems, all sorts but ideas. So I think that’s really, really cool. And the final one for me is a personal one because I’m a Bitcoin fan, like kainos been my guy. So like I’ve never had a chance to really have a chat with him. So I’d love to have Kaino come down. He’s a he’s an MC, he’s a rapper in a UK based guy. He, he, he, I think was someone who was ahead of his time, was ahead of his time. If he did something now, he’d be huge. But he he was at a time when the scene there’s a time and a place for everything. And one thing that whole grime UK garage movement taught me was 20 years ago was the birth of a culture. 20 years later, those who loved it, I mean years ago are now buying the CDs that can allow it to be a sustainable sound. Or you can actually have people like Stormzy and them come through and make a living of it. But it’s these guys just like NWA back in the day or even the precursors of them Run-D.M.C. really built. Hip hop is a similar thing, and I was one of those guys who built the crime scene, which the UK music scene. So for me understand like having him there would, would be super cool for me. That’s a personal one.

[01:42:07] Amazing body, really.

[01:42:09] Amazing.

[01:42:11] Woman. Thank you.

[01:42:12] So lovely to have you, buddy.

[01:42:13] Thank you so much.

[01:42:14] Thank you, guys. Really, really been a pleasure.

[01:42:19] 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.

[01:42:34] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

[01:42:49] 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.

[01:42:59] Thanks.

[01:43:00] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] But I must admit, without sounding too pious, I do try and sort of keep true to myself. I only talk about things that I use in practice, and I only talk about things that I know work. Because if I don’t, if I talk about a product that I haven’t got faith in and then somebody buys that product, uses that product, and then they don’t get the outcomes with it. Again, nobody’s going to listen to me again. And, you know, I’ve been lucky. You know, I’ve never been good enough to work properly with with Enlightened.

[00:00:34] But this is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:59] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Lewis Mackenzie onto the podcast. Louis is a long time friend and mentor of mine, educator, general dentist, now ahead of head dental officer Dan Plant, Clinical Lecturer at Birmingham and at King’s and General General good guy on the lecture circuit, someone who probably is the most entertaining lecturer out there. Every time I’ve seen you lecture Louis, the crowd’s been in stitches. And in my story, most notably, the person who introduced Palmer to me. You didn’t. You weren’t quite the person who introduced the poem. But as soon as I met the Palmer, you called me and we knew each other, I think from the Manchester MSC, we were supporting that and you know, the best lectures on our many smile maker, of course, I think, you know, Lewis certainly. And I would agree, a once in a generation talent found his start in Birmingham Dental School, where Lewis was putting on hands on days for the students. And he always mentions you, Lewis, as his key inspiration. Well, lovely to have you, buddy.

[00:02:13] Well, thank you very much. It’s a very nice sir. That’s an excellent introduction. And pretty hard to.

[00:02:17] Pretty hard to live up to. All right. Well.

[00:02:20] All I can say is we’ve all got a similar haircut. So we’ve got something in common, haven’t we?

[00:02:29] Lewis, we’ll get back. We’ll get to the back story in all of that. Yeah, but just just on that Depeche front and I was thinking about this, the number of others you must have inspired. I mean, I know a few of them. You know, Millie Morrison, live scorer who introduced to me people like a few I know a few of a few of your graduates, but you must be responsible for so much good dentistry coming out there. Do you feel the weight of that when you have a new class?

[00:03:01] Not not really. But those are those names that those names that you mentioned are sort of extraordinary talents. I would say of all the things I’ve done over the years, one sort of skill that have got is being able to recognise this sort of unique you I think you said it sort of once in a generation talent. Depeche was definitely the first. And I remember I met him during the final year in 2009, and I run a special study module, run it for nine years. And Depeche was the first ever year and. He came on the he came on the course, and the first exercise I ever got him to do was just some occlusal composites and just to sort of set the set the bar. And when I looked at these composites, I thought. Shit. I’ve got to improve my teaching here. This. This bloke. This bloke is an absolute genius. And. And as you say, Millie. And we’d live again. They’ve just got this unique talent, and I’m not sure you can teach it. My. My role really was them was just to put the materials in their hands and just just just let them go with it. But but, yeah, they don’t come along to too often. Another one that comes to mind is Richard Lee. He just just emigrated to New Zealand, actually. But again, when you when you when you’ve I think now I’ve done over 1000 hands on courses. And so so you really get you really get a feel for somebody who’s just just way, way out of the ordinary. But Depeche was the first for definite and he definitely made me realise I need to up my game on a teaching point.

[00:04:49] And at the time you were a general dentist, you used to visit the dental school for hands on sexual for what was that was what it was.

[00:04:58] Yeah. I was a part time lecturer. I started, I’d been in practice for about ten years and then I’d always had that sort of little itch about doing a bit of teaching. I’ve done a couple of courses myself and sort of really enjoyed them. And yeah, just started doing a Thursday afternoon on clinic, did clinic for many years, probably about eight or ten years. But then I found a real passion for Phantom Head teaching. So I like it because it’s a level, level playing field, everybody starting with the same cavity and you get a really good opportunity to sort of rank the students and identify those who have got weaknesses. And so this special study module that I put on and ran for nine years, Depeche, as I mentioned, was that was the first year. And yeah, just, just really, really enjoyed that sort of aspect of it. But yeah, sort of clinical lecture is the title nowadays. I don’t do any undergrad teaching. It’s just purely postgrad working on the working on the master’s at Birmingham and the Maths and a couple of master’s courses at King’s. But I do quite a lot of, as you know, hands on courses around the country all the time. Anyway.

[00:06:04] What is it that makes somebody stick out, Lewis? Is it is it generally how inquisitive they are? Is it does it just come down to you, look at the work and think, crap, that looks amazing. How did that happen? What is it that is there a like if you could bottle that up and put it into a formula, what would it be for these super successful delegate guts that you’ve had?

[00:06:27] I think it’s when they do something that hasn’t been taught, they’ve just got that eye for it. They can just see something, explain something, but then take it to the next level. So one, one of my mentors, Adrian Shorter, we might chat about him later on. He, he said to me, don’t, don’t be upset when your students are better than you are. Take, take, take pleasure and pride in it. The thing is, with people like Depp’s Millie, Liv, Richard, they were always already better than me before they started. So. But I think it is that just that unique sort of X factor, whatever it is. And if you could bottle it then, then it’d be worth a fortune. But I don’t think you can. I think we can all. I mean, you’ve only got to look on Instagram and Facebook now to see the you know, the beautiful, beautiful quality of dentistry that is literally within anybody’s grasp. But then you’ll see the others who just take it up to the sort of the next level. I think one of the first contemporary couple of contemporaries that I saw of my sort of era were Jason Smythson and Tiff Qureshi, where I just thought, Wow, that’s a bit special. And then I mean, the nice thing about the people we’ve talked about as well is that they’ve gone on to become really great teachers as well, because that for me is an extra skill. You know, there’s plenty of people doing extraordinary dentistry nowadays, which is brilliant, but to be able to communicate that to us mere mortals, I mean, I go to to the enlightened course. I go to Dipesh lectures now and I’ve got my notebook out because he’s constantly pushing, pushing the boundaries when it comes to teaching and practice, because he’s just got that eye for aesthetics, that eye for colour, which, which, which I haven’t got.

[00:08:10] It’s interesting what makes a good dentist and then what makes a good teacher? Let’s agree firstly, two different things. You know, there’s many good dentists who aren’t great teachers and but I think with I think you gave Dipesh the advice that he shouldn’t go on any composite hands on courses so so that all the ideas would be original his own. He wouldn’t feel like he was taking an idea from someone else or something like that.

[00:08:41] That definitely wasn’t.

[00:08:41] Me. Sure that you don’t like my advice is going as many course.

[00:08:49] So yeah. Absolutely. There might be. There might be. There might be crap courses, but.

[00:08:55] You will always.

[00:08:56] You’ll always pick something up off them. And and of course he did. Chris Of course, there’s another legend. He did. Chris all year long course. I mean, he was only in fact, that was that was actually a really nice sort of bit of feedback that I got that Christopher has always had. I don’t know what the rules are nowadays, but it used to be you had to be graduated, I think, for at least three years before you could apply to go on Chris’s course. But then he made an exception unless they’d done the special study module at Birmingham Dental School in their final year. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So Dipesh and Emily got on their lips, done it as well. And of course, Millie now is one of Chris Christopher’s associates. So he knew what he’s talking about.

[00:09:41] And the teacher herself, not in composite, but more Invisalign. But but it’s interesting, you know, because we were doing a little series called My Mini Tip and we had dentists and I took it for granted. Every dentist has got one or two tips and they probably do and maybe camera shy at that moment or whatever. But I guess the difference between a teacher and a technician is a teacher has more tips that came from them. You know, that that things they do slightly differently to the rest of us need teaching.

[00:10:16] Doesn’t that’s true and but I think we all fall down the same holes anyway, don’t we?

[00:10:23] Yeah, that’s true.

[00:10:25] And that’s how we learn by by sort of reflecting. And I think in the let me use the term old days, we’ve probably the first of several times this evening, usually it was sort of ten years or so before you did any sort of postgraduate qualifications. Now, obviously, dentists are doing it a lot earlier and, you know, certificates, diplomas, even mscs on our MSC course, we’ve had some literally sort of first year, first year graduates. I just wonder whether actually doing these courses earlier on actually reduces the risk of you sort of falling falling into the regular sort of pitfalls. Or again, the old fashioned mantra is you need to make a few mistakes and then do the course and then learn basically based on your experience. So I don’t know what it is, but certainly there’s as you know, there’s a trend for courses a lot earlier nowadays.

[00:11:23] Yeah, I think in the US it’s slightly different, you know. When you talk to the academics out there, they haven’t got that mantra of become a generalist first. You know, they. Well, some do. By the way, I don’t think it’s the right or wrong. You can’t say one is right and one is wrong. But but you’re right that the sort of the general thing that people have been saying here is you learn a lot of things first and then go and specialise into one one area that you like to see, try a lot of things. But I remember when when I did my elective in the US, the advice wasn’t that it was, it was, you know, as quick as possible, try and get into something. And and I’ve given that advice to a lot of people as well. Louis, you know, because people asked me, Hey, what should I do? My answer is, pick one thing and just run with it. You know, get really, really good at something. You know, if you want to if you want to do something, pick pick one, pick one and go. But, you know, you’ve seen so many students come and go. Would you say that specialising these days is a good idea? Or would you say that general practice where you’ve thrived if creches thrived, crystals or ideas? Which way? Which way would you advise someone to go?

[00:12:41] Often down to the individual person. But don’t forget, whatever you choose, you’re going to be doing it for the next 30 to 40 years. So you’ve got to make the right decision. I wouldn’t close certainly early in your career. I wouldn’t close any doors because once it doesn’t take long in dentistry to sort of do skill, not necessarily skill, but lose confidence. And then you’re kind of you’re going down that one little route. And of course, obviously no perio. You can just do that all day long. But certainly when it comes to sort of aesthetic restorative, is it something that’s going to sustain a sustain for for 30 or 40 years? One interesting thing I’ve noticed, talking to a few young dentists and even a few lecturers recently is is just focusing on front teeth. And which is a bit of a worrying, worrying situation when we’ve got, what is it, a year’s missed missed appointments due.

[00:13:38] To.

[00:13:41] Due to the pandemic. And obviously 70% of all problems occur on molars, which they’re not as they’re not as instagrammable. But that’s where most of the most of the trouble is. So yeah, it’s I mean, you must see it a lot on your courses and of course it’s lovely dentistry to do, but is it sort of sustainable for that length of time? I don’t know. Certainly just don’t know whether obviously every restoration is going to fail and are these almost sort of aesthetic cosmetic specialists. Their whole career is going to be about replacement of existing restorations or management of of marginal stain and stuff like that. So it’s down to the individual. But certainly I would say early in your career, don’t, don’t narrow it down too early. That that would be my advice.

[00:14:36] Not.

[00:14:37] You know what? What you’ve just been saying there, Lewis, in terms of how long these restorations, every restorations go into eventually fail, etc., etc.. Right. There’s two bits of, I guess, information I’ve received from from. So TIFF has always pushed the you know, you don’t really know how good a dentist you are until you’ve seen how long you work lasts and you’ve got that long term follow up. And he always talks about his ten, his 15 year follow ups and he knows how long he’s dentistry lasts. And funnily enough, I had the opportunity to interview a guy called Daniel Boozer. I think his name is he’s an implant guy over at the ADA. According to everyone who I spoke to, he’s he’s one of the gods of implant dentistry. Anyway, cut a long story short, when I was interviewing him, I asked him about what advice he’d give to new students who are getting into wanting to get into implant dentistry and how would they know how good they are? And he said exactly the same thing as TIFF, that it’s about this long term follow up that he’s got cases. 35 years ago we placed an implant and they’re still stuck there in somebody’s head. And he felt that that was the true measure of somebody who was really good. What do you think are the concerns with all of this? A lot of front teeth, dentistry, composite veneers and things like that. Now, obviously, a lot of the courses are teaching that. And then the longevity of that in terms of, I guess how long these are going to last. How is it? We’ll see. Easiest way to describe it. Is it a huge problem waiting to unfold and happen when all of these, you know, composite veneers sort of mature in 5 to 6 years time and they need redoing with either more composite or porcelain. And then something you just mentioned, which I hadn’t given any thought to, is that are these dentists reskilling by just focusing on that?

[00:16:37] Really good questions just to sort of start at the beginning of that. You made a really good point about the longevity. I’ve worked in only one practice, the same practice for 30, 31 years. Wow. So so you know what works, but equally, you know what doesn’t work.

[00:16:54] Yeah.

[00:16:55] We’re in the kind of the infancy with composite veneers at the moment. Obviously, the materials have come along massively. Again, advertising payments wonders there. When I started using enamel, really, that was the first time composite veneers actually became a thing for me because of the Polish and. Composite versus versus porcelain. We could do a whole whole hour just on that. Composites got its disadvantages with regard to sort of technique, sensitivity with regard to surface lustre. That’s that’s where enamel works because obviously it’s a microfilm that keeps it keeps it shine. But the way that aesthetic restorations usually fail, where they’re direct or indirect is usually marginal stain. They don’t usually they don’t usually drop off certain materials. They will composite materials. They will lose their surface lustre. So it will be interesting to see exactly, say Prav a few years down the line. Payman to remember exactly the same thing happened in the nineties with the with with porcelain veneers. Well, that was very much that was very much the the thing the thing to do. All the courses were based were based around that. And then if you choose the wrong patient, if, if you’re not bonding to enamel and people, people came unstuck and I think probably moved away from that. But you know, either restoration, if it’s done well, it is going to last for years. But again, you also make a very good point that doing dentistry for the second time is is is a challenge because you’ve got to you’ve got to take it off.

[00:18:32] And, you know, when you’re cutting, whether it’s ceramic, whether it’s composite, are you in material? Are you in dentine? Are you in enamel bonding resin? So yeah, it’s a real it’s a real challenge. So but I would say just to add to that, the foundation of skill with not necessarily young dentists is some amazing, stunning older dentists as well with composite is because the foundation of skill I don’t think really we know yet they might just literally just need polishing. I know I’ve got I’ve got re enamel cases where where the composite veneers still again as you say in my latest anterior composite lecture, I’ve got a re enamel veneer at ten years. Tiny bit of marginal stain, still shiny, absolutely never been republished at all. So I think now because they’ve got the skills, you’ve got the the bonding techniques, you’ve got the material technology, they’re going to last longer. And of course, as every generation goes, they’re just going to get better and better and better at them. So maybe it will be the treatment of choice. I know Dipesh is sort of now he’s sort of half and half isn’t. He loves he loves composite, obviously, but I’ve seen him lecturing more and more on ceramics.

[00:19:49] Now.

[00:19:50] Do you know when you talk about restorations lasting? So the purpose of which let’s say somebody has a composite veneer is less functional and protective and more cosmetic when you refer to them lasting. Do you mean just staying in touch or do you mean lasting in a in a cosmetic way?

[00:20:09] Yeah. I mean, they’re not going to fall off. You know, you might get a little bit of chipping, but of course, that’s that’s easy to repair. But yeah, it’s really a patient factor. Is the patient you’re happy with them? And and I think that I think that’s the main thing and that would that would probably drive the replacement. Yeah. They’re not, they’re not going to drop off if they’re bonded to enamel I think Trevor Burks who did this massive study millions of restorations that have been done on the NCE and and labial only veneers came out tops. They last longer than at any other restoration in dentistry, so they’re not going to fall off if they’re bonded to enamel. That’s the best bond in dentistry. So they’re going to last. But yeah, so it’s going to be cosmetic. It’s going to be cosmetic failure before before anything else.

[00:20:53] Which which year did you qualify this?

[00:20:56] 1990 graduated with a with a marvellous four four, four years in one term.

[00:21:01] Course Payman not not missed five years.

[00:21:05] Yeah. The good old course. And so I was, I was going to say you’re not old enough. Right. But when did like your composite come.

[00:21:15] Well like your has been around it thinks is the since they on the first composite that was out. I’m trying to think I’ve actually got a picture of Trevor Burt with with one of the original curing lights. It was probably I would say probably the seventies don’t know for certain.

[00:21:33] We have Wilson on the on the podcast and he was talking about when they were developing it with Eisai and it was.

[00:21:39] Yeah.

[00:21:40] It was one one shade only. Right.

[00:21:43] Yeah.

[00:21:43] Yeah. So yeah. And then there was a clues in of course the first composites you have to mix yourself and there was no polymerisation shrinkage issues because you had so much air in them that the material just didn’t cause any problems. But yes, so light curing really sort of probably sort of seventies, it sort of kicked off.

[00:22:03] But you know, people like to say that the current day dentist, I mean, even outside of COVID, that, you know, the newer, younger generation don’t have the skills that that let’s say our generation had because they didn’t they don’t drill enough teeth. Do you have another side to that story that says they’re they’re a lot better than us because of whatever other you know, whatever other thing they do have that we didn’t have. You know, they get taught patient management or, you know, what are they being taught while we were drilling teeth?

[00:22:33] Well, I think it goes further back than that. They’re just really, really clever.

[00:22:39] You know, I thought, yeah, I.

[00:22:42] Want to know when I it was a B, it was a B and to CS to get into dentistry in 1986, I smashed that with the two B’s and two.

[00:22:53] Sees. It was.

[00:22:56] In those days you buy three, you get one free with.

[00:22:59] General study.

[00:23:02] So yeah, I mean they’re superintelligent. You’re absolutely right about the undergraduate experience. You know, they’re going to do a lot less than they did with regard to everything, you know, particularly amalgam skills, you know, some dental schools, they’ll almost do non extractions again depending on where depending.

[00:23:20] On the why is that because enough patients to have their teeth extracted.

[00:23:25] Just I mean we work Birmingham’s fluoridated so even back then my oral surgery experience was was very limited and so I had to sort of learn those skills kind of on the job.

[00:23:39] So are you are you Birmingham born and bred? Were you born in Birmingham?

[00:23:43] Staffordshire. I’ve my my quest through life has taken me about 25 miles.

[00:23:48] From.

[00:23:50] From from Staffordshire. I went to Birmingham Dental School because it was the only place that gave me an offer.

[00:23:57] Birmingham at the time my dentistry did.

[00:24:00] Oh, well, now you have asked a good question, and I had to actually do some research for this because I always was certain that I was 11. I was 11 when I decided I wanted to be a dentist. And I was absolutely certain I could remember where I sit in, in a science class who was sitting next to my mike Dean. But my auntie has always, always said, No, you are much younger than that. And so I thought, No, no, she’s making this up. And but then I went up to see one of my uncles in the Lake district and I asked him about this and he’s in his nineties and he said, No, no, you’re about six. So then I went back to my auntie and said, Come on, tell me this story. Then she said, Do you remember you’re in the car? And I said to you, What are you going to be when you’re older? How about being a doctor when you can look up, look after your Auntie Lillian when when she’s old? I said, and apparently I said to her, Now I’m not going to be a doctor.

[00:24:51] I’m going to be a dentist. And I was standing up in the back of a Fiat 127. So so no seatbelts in those days. And obviously so I couldn’t have been very tall. So I think I was about six. So I decided I wanted to be a dentist. I have absolutely no idea why. I never, never changed my mind. I remember when I went to Careers Day and I told the careers advisor that I wanted to be a dentist and her advice to me was, You don’t want to be a dentist. That’s a terrible job. Then when it came to A-levels in those days, you had to fill in, fill in a different form for a polytechnic. Picasso’s Picasso art form. So as you. Cassin Picasso, it’s all on one form now. And I refused to fill in the the whatever it was going to be, whether suggesting pharmacy, pharmacy or something like that. And so I refused to fill it in. I only wanted to be a dentist, but I don’t know why. And I’m just glad that chose chose a career that’s worked out for me.

[00:25:55] What did your parents do?

[00:25:58] My dad was was a draughtsman and my mom was she was well, her final job, she did lots of sort of secretarial jobs. Her final job there both passed away, unfortunately. But a final job was once she really loved and she was she was a medical secretary. That was that was the last job that she did. But my parents, if I was the first person to go to to uni in my family. So there was.

[00:26:25] Is there a, you know, like the how the that that part of the country was very industrial and you know, our stories in your in your family about the black country and everything everything that goes with that. And did you sort of see that change in the area?

[00:26:39] You’re such a Londoner, you’re such a London.

[00:26:45] Gossip bullshit.

[00:26:46] Stuff, which is no way stuff is just north of Birmingham.

[00:26:50] Oh, is it?

[00:26:51] So I was so romantic about this story. Like your granddad works in the mines and then, you.

[00:27:00] Know, my grandma.

[00:27:01] My granddad, we are going back now. I had a granddad, this is on my dad’s side and my granddad from the Isle of Skye, Isle of Lewis and my grandma from the Isle of Skye. They both left to find work to go to Glasgow. And then once they’d sort of become a couple they walked to Liverpool too to find a job. So my, my grandfather on my dad’s side, who I never met was an engineer by training.

[00:27:29] So Dad’s Scottish.

[00:27:31] My dad’s. My dad was born in. My dad was born in Liverpool. So but my grandparents are Scottish and my on my mom’s side they’re more sort of midlands based, more sort of Brummie Brummies but. Right. Proper Birmingham.

[00:27:45] Yeah. So if you, if you were an Indian they’d say you’re Scottish because you know you’re Scottish, you’re a Scottish guy.

[00:27:52] Like I was Scottish.

[00:27:59] I’ve got Scottish ancestors, so but I’ve got loads of Scottish relatives, loads of loads of aunties and uncles and cousins.

[00:28:09] What would you like? What would you like as a dental student? Were you really into it or.

[00:28:13] Oh, really?

[00:28:14] Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:15] Yeah. I really was. Yeah, I kind of liked it away. I mean, I must admit, it was pretty tough at dental school. We were lucky, actually, that we’d just been sort of a change in sort of management, if you like. Birmingham had always been sort of known as kind of the cotton school. I think the Cons department at one stage had about 30 members of staff. So when I started, we used to hear the sort of horror stories from the previous, the previous tutors, one that’s always stuck in my mind. And I sometimes remind the students when, when they’re being a little bit, a little bit soft, that one of the tutors apparently used to say to when he was checking a cavity or something like that, he’d stand over the with the with the patient and the student and he’d say to the patient, he’d look at the look in look at the in the cavity. And he’d say to the student, I wouldn’t trust you to cut my lawn.

[00:29:14] So.

[00:29:15] So fortunately, we missed we missed that sort of era. And we had really fantastic young lecturers at that time, Phil Lumley, basically God have ended antics. And Ian Chappell was a junior lecturer as as well. And obviously they were both my bosses, Phil and Phil and Ian and Trevor Burke came to to Birmingham as well via, via Manchester and Glasgow and he Trevor’s been really instrumental in my career and Damian Walmsley was, was head of sort of head of prosthetics or fixed removable prods. And so we were really lucky that we had all these young legends basically want to do things differently. And so the teaching we have interesting actually the there are a significant number of people in my year who have actually gone back into dental education and my four and a half years sorry, four years and one term were yeah, I must admit I really enjoyed it. I think I was one of those lucky students who kind of on the practical aspects, sort of picked it up straight away. You know, I’m quite a sort of, you know, used to like playing with Lego, fixing my bike stuff, stuff like that. So, so it’s quite lucky I sort of picked it up straightaway. And of course in those days is you’ll remember the course was very practical. And now going back to your other point, I think now there’s so much new stuff that you’ve got to learn with regard to, you know, I mean, there were no posterior composites. Molar endo was kind of in its infancy. And so the course now is so packed that the students are doing less practical work than they would have before. But with regard to talent and skills, I would say, you know, the future is most definitely so. These these young dentists are going to be awesome and and they’re going to take dentistry to the next to the next level. You know, I hope I can hang around for long enough to to just to see where it goes. Obviously, the digital revolution is finally has finally arrived. So yeah, I mean, that is really, really exciting stuff.

[00:31:33] I feel like the, the newer ones, they’ve got more AQ than, than we have sort of more emotional intelligence. At the same time though, maybe it’s just they admit to it more, they seem to suffer with more sort of mental health crises and issues. Is that your feeling?

[00:31:55] It. Maybe it’s it’s an excellent point. And obviously there’s loads of evidence to back that up. But I just wonder whether we all always had those issues. But it was just a case of.

[00:32:06] Talk about it.

[00:32:07] Get on with it, and suffer and suffer in silence. And that’s the way of the world. Maybe it is the fact that they’re they’re more sort of more sort of people of the world. They’ve got access to everything when it comes to sort of social media. The Internet, obviously, the Internet didn’t exist. So just maybe they’ve just got a better sort of perception about what their part in the world. And obviously they can be a little bit emotional at times and sort of older sort of dentists. That takes a little bit of getting used to, but I think they’re probably going to get a much better life work balance than maybe the dentists of yesteryear did when it was very much sort of, you know, five days a week, full days of NHS dentistry and then look sometimes look forward to retirement, which is, you know, you’ve got to enjoy the ride. I would always say, I would always advise and whatever you doing just enjoy your dentistry. And if you’re in a if you’re in a situation where you’re not enjoying it, do something to to change that.

[00:33:18] I mean, there’s a lot of people who aren’t enjoying it. There is.

[00:33:23] Yeah.

[00:33:24] Absolutely.

[00:33:24] And I mean, at the same time, there’s loads of people who adore it and love it and can’t stop talking about it. And, you know. So what do you reckon is the difference? Do you think the difference is staying engaged and trying to improve the whole time? And why is it some people are in such a bad state about and I think the GDC whatever has has a role to play but it’s always been like that. Even before the Dental Law Partnership came along, there were some dentists were really into it and others who hated their lives. What’s the difference in those two characters, do you think?

[00:34:01] Well, it is such a good question. And if you actually love the physical act of delivering. Doing a filling or something like that, if you if you really, really enjoy that, then nobody can take that away from you. You literally just you know, that’s a that’s a big chunk of your life on Earth that you’re actually enjoying. But when you’re working in a situation where maybe you’d really enjoy that feeling, you know, it’s going to take you a 45 minutes to do it. But you’re working in a clinical situation where you’ve got 15 minutes to do it, then you’ve immediately got that. I think the textbooks call it that moral, moral tension, haven’t you, where you know you know what’s best, but you know, you’re working in a system that’s not allowing you to to do that. And I think that’s probably at the heart of of mental health issues in dentistry, which, as you say, have been around literally forever. I mean, the good thing is now mental health is most definitely on the agenda in dentistry. You know, the regular report coming out, looking at the profession, looking at the causes. Remember the BDA did did a massive one, thousands of dentists in 2019, just just before the pandemic. And, you know, they listed the top ten stressors in dentistry, and most of them were systematic problems and regulation was one of them. There was I read I read a nice article by Martin Keller, I think it was in the BDA, actually. And he said, nowadays it’s like practising clinical dentistry is like being in a lift with a wasp. And I think it’s a good analogy. The only way that that analogy falls down is if you’re in a lift, you can get out of the next floor.

[00:35:52] If you’re if you’re a dentist, you’re in the lift for 30 to 40 years. So I think there is obviously the dental legal stuff is never is never going to go away. But nowadays that’s that’s a separate self sustaining industry. But I’ve had I’ve had second year dental students literally just started on Phantom Head say to me that they’re worried about graduating because they don’t want to get sued. So, so, so second year, Joe so this stuff, this stuff does starts does start early and it can do but need to be prepared. That’s the way of the world. It’s not going to go away and just do your best for every patient as long as as long as that’s the sort of philosophy. And if you are in a situation that’s compromising your ethics, your standards, then do something to change it. And I know obviously Prav does loads of work with dentists and with whole teams to create the right environment. In fact, I think I listen in preparation for this. I did some revision, I listened to one of you, did an excellent talking heads when it was just the two of you. And Prav made the point that he felt that at that time one of his favourite clients was a bloke who was just unhappy in his job and he just needed to change. No, change was not an option for this bloke and obviously he did perhaps training and sounded like it all. It all worked out well for him. Prav is that correct?

[00:37:21] It’s Lewis. But you’ve just got me thinking about another thing, which is, you know, what is the reason some of these guys, especially what I’m seeing and it’s not you know, I’m not speaking for all the younger dentists, but I have a lot of younger dentists who come to me and say, I just want to make X per month. That is that’s the overriding thing that they come to me for. But they’ve not been they’ve not done enough dentistry, if that makes sense. So when you look at them from an I’m not the one to judge them clinically, but you know, they’ve been out of dental school for 18 months, two years and they’re both their prime motivating factor is I want to make X per month. Right. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about dentistry, whether we’re talking about a career in marketing or whatever it is, I think you need to earn your stripes first and get some experience under your belt before that. Becomes your sort of number one motivator. And I do say to them, look, my first bit of advice is get on these courses, right? And these courses happen to be courses that people that I respect that pay more respect probably yourself as well. Or is that that you just think that let let them get this solid, grounded, and then the money will come.

[00:38:41] But I do think that if finances that number one motivating factor from a very young age, I do think a lot of these dentists will start becoming unstuck later on because they siloed themselves into I am just going to be an Invisalign doctor. I am just going to press the button on this program and get this treatment plan done for me and I’ll finish it off with a little bit of edge bonding or whatever. Right. But it’s a bit like becoming a marketeer and running Facebook ads. But you don’t know the first thing about the problems of the people that they face that you’re marketing to. Right. So so how can you how can you market to somebody who needs a full arch of implants if you don’t know the problems that a loose denture wearer goes through and the fact that they can’t eat steak or the fact that they they cover their hands or they walking around with a tube of fixed it in their pocket all the time and so on and so forth. And I feel really strongly about this and I feel as somebody who helps practices grow, there’s a bit of a pressure on sort of them coming to me and saying, Well, I want to make loads more money. And my advice at the moment is get strikes first and the money will come.

[00:39:54] I couldn’t agree more. I mean, you’re giving absolutely spot on advice and I’d give exactly the same advice. I think in dentistry, if you put finances first, it’s doomed to failure because you’ll always be chasing something over the horizon, which is which never actually arrives. And you’ve got to obviously be constantly chasing repeat business over and over again. If you’re looking from a financial point of view, from a financial point of view, the best way to achieve that goal is is family dentistry. And look, I think TIFF talks about this, the lifetime patient. It might sound a little bit sort of old fashioned, but yes, the see the grandparents, the parents and the kids and sometimes even their kids. That’s from a business point of view that is the foundation of any successful practice. Also, when finance is at the fore, I’ll be careful. Our phrase this there is a danger that it affects your treatment, planning and and if you’re not looking at the whole patient and the whole patient’s needs and maybe just focusing maybe just on the anterior teeth, it is that old classic that if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So everybody gets the same treatments. They all look pretty much the the same. And yeah, you get on a OCH, it’s not an NHS treadmill, but it’s a different treadmill. And so I think I think a balance between I think a balance between that where it’s lovely to do the aesthetic stuff, but of course it.

[00:41:30] Is.

[00:41:31] Patients demands. Now patients are so well educated that, you know, they know what, they know what they want and you’ve got to be able to deliver on that promise. So going back to learning your getting getting your stripes, getting your hours in, I think it is like any sort of it’s that 10000 hours, isn’t it? What if whatever whatever you do and if you’re going to become an expert in it, 10000 hours a mate of mine or shared an office with Charles Perry, he actually worked it out and he reckoned it was about ten years, ten years of of of sort of four, four and a half, five days of dentistry. That’s about 10000 hours of practical dentistry. In that time, you’ve probably you’re probably made most of your mistakes, not all of them. Unfortunately, you’ve learnt what you’re good at, you learnt what you’re not good at, you’ve learnt your patient communication skills. And it’s why in the again using that old phrase in the old days it usually was ten years was kind of a turning point where the where you maybe think, right, I’m going to buy a practice now or maybe I’m going to go on a, you know, I’m going to learn how to do implants.

[00:42:39] I’m going to be an end to dentist, that sort of ten year apprenticeship, for want of a better word. But I think that’s certainly come forwards now. Certainly young dentists seem to be a lot more business minded in a good way. You know, they seem to sort of grasp that it’s not something that’s ever taught at a dental school, but they certainly do seem to have a grasp of of what they want and the vision that they want. But again, I’ll mention this possibly when you ask me those questions, which I’ve prepared for at the end, is from a financial point of view, just just enjoy your dentistry. Just do do what feels right for the patient, what feels right for you. And the money will will will sort itself out. No, no problem at all. And use the team as well. You know, use your specialists, use your technicians and just become a whole little sort of industry. Yeah. Look, for me, looking after looking after families is the key and then the aesthetic restorative stuff. That’s, that’s the icing on the cake.

[00:43:42] Yeah. Not, not to mention Prav. Yeah. The best way of not making that money is to focus on making that money. But I wonder if people say that to you because they see a marketing guy before them and they feel like that’s I’m allowed to say this to, to, to the marketing guy. And so they come across as that guy, you know.

[00:44:03] Possibly there’s an element of that, right. And they probably see that I’ve worked with a lot of successful dentists who’ve who’ve done really well, both clinically and financially, but a lot of these dentists who have done really well as a stripes. Yeah, they’ve got the decade well and truly under their belt. Yeah. You know, and then they’ve done well however you define doing well financially right. We all have different I guess set points, call it whatever you want. Right. Well our definitions of success are and some of them are spending more time with your kids or whatever, and some of them are driving fast cars and going on luxury holidays, whatever that thing is. But, you know, people do come to me and they associate me with with those individuals who’ve done well, let’s say, for example. And then they come to me and say, hey, well, you’re the. That drives the patients through the door and then can give me advice on conversion and all the rest of it. So Prav bring me some money, right? And, and for me, whether I’m giving advice to somebody who comes to me for career advice as a as a, as a young marketeer or someone or somebody comes to me for career advice as a dentist. Yet I say, you’ve got to be able to do the shit that you can say you can do. Then we can market that, because if you end up marketing something that you know you can’t do, you’re only going to end up in trouble. And this comes down to my involvement with the IAS Academy has taught me a lot about how I guess you should operate as a dentist.

[00:45:39] Right. And case selectivity. Knowing your limits. Right. Knowing when to say no. Really, really important. Right. And so marketing can put you in trouble because it can deliver a patient that you have absolutely no chance of being able to treat because you don’t have the skill set of doing it right. But you decide, okay, I’ll be Mr. or Mrs. Brave and have a crack at that. So, you know, I’m a I’m a big believer in making sure that we market appropriately at a skill set and at a level that we can deliver because it will be short lived otherwise. And even with my clients, I want to build long term relationships. I don’t want to I don’t want to put someone in a position where they become unstuck. They’re up in front of the GDC, you know, and there’s I guess there’s a sense I feel like there’s a sense of responsibility on my behalf. It’s not just about an exchange of service for money, but I think I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I can actually say, Look, if that’s what you want to do, there may be another agency out there that could help you do that. But this is my advice, and I think what weighs on me is having business partners like Tiff Qureshi, who’ve got a very, very high moral, moral, ethical, high ground for me to sort of say, well, okay, well, this is this is the route I think you should go down.

[00:47:05] Yeah. And Tiff’s always had that as me and just I mean, that’s such an excellent point that if you are going down that you’re almost always treating strangers. And I’m sure obviously you’re a medic by training as well. Never treat a stranger. Get to know the patients before before you jump in because you don’t know what they’re like. And and you made a really good point there that really sort of rang a bell rang a bell with me is asking saying to patients not to treat them. I would say some of the best clinical decisions you will ever make in your practising career are the patients you choose not to treat. And you know, you don’t have to be rude. You know, send them on the road. You need a you need a better dentist than me for for for this. And certainly if I think back, those had been some of the best decisions I’ve made. As you get older and more experienced, you see the warning signs, but obviously you can’t be expected to do that when you’re just starting out. So yeah, just earning your stripes exactly as you said it, doing that apprenticeship for a few years, just getting a feel for the and then decide what you want to do.

[00:48:21] Louis If that’s the best decision you’ve ever made, what’s the worst decision you’ve ever made in a clinical dentistry class?

[00:48:31] In clinical dentistry.

[00:48:33] With patients, whatever you said, some of the best decisions you’ve ever made is is actually having the courage to say no. I guess what what are some of the worst?

[00:48:43] What’s gone wrong? What’s gone wrong?

[00:48:45] Yeah.

[00:48:46] Well, perhaps question first of all would be those ones I’ve learnt from those learning patients where I’ve got into something, whether I don’t know whether it’s an endo or an aesthetic case or what or an extraction that I think I really wish I hadn’t started this. But but then you’re on, but then you’re on that, then you’re on that conveyor belt. To answer page question, you know, it’s a long list of nothing, nothing catastrophic pain. I’m sorry to see frozen.

[00:49:24] Or I’m just.

[00:49:25] Is just really good at sitting still. Nothing, nothing catastrophic, but a few a few learning experiences, which I think made me a better dentist. I’m more cautious.

[00:49:41] Yes. Which ones will happen?

[00:49:45] I knew you were going to make me be specific.

[00:49:48] Because.

[00:49:49] You’re not going to leave it like that.

[00:49:53] Far too vague.

[00:49:55] I’ll give you I’ll give you two. I’ll give you two of of many. Listening to a few of these podcasts previously I noticed quite a common theme is people’s worst day at work has been sort of Dental legal problems. And and as you know, sometimes this can be sort of a year of their lives with with a with a cloud over their careers. And for me, I would say it was probably it was probably the same. But I’m embarrassed to say that mine only lasted for 48 hours. And it was it was an end and end case which didn’t work and tried to it was one of those ones. It just on the x ray, it just looked absolutely perfect and it didn’t didn’t settle. So chats with patients said, I’d like to retreat this one. And she said, I’d rather just have it out. So we had the discussion and I took it out and then months down the line just got a letter, the clinical negligence letter, taken a taken a tooth out that didn’t need to be extracted. But I was just, you know, whether it’s luck or whether it’s judge judgement, did what you’re supposed to do, phoned up the one with the d-do they were brilliant. Just send us all the the x rays, send us, send us the radiographs and we’ll get back to you. So did that posted them off in those days and then it was I think it was Rupert Hoppen and Brewers at two days later he phoned me up.

[00:51:28] He said, is that Mr. Mackenzie said, We don’t usually do this but don’t worry about this, this will go away. He said about one in 5050 cases they get to actually make that call to say, don’t worry, this will disappear. Don’t give it another minute’s concern. Your notes are fine. You’ve done everything that you should have done. And sure enough, I got a letter again months down the line. We’ve decided not to pursue you on this, on this, on this occasion, but there’s no question about it. That experience. The wasp came into the room and the wasp never left. You know, it was. It was. It was in the corner. It never formed a hive or anything like that. But it did make me because that surprised me. It really surprised me because I had tried my best. Still, to this day, I’ve absolutely no idea why it failed. I’d actually saved the tooth to try and section it and work out why, where, where I’d gone wrong. And then you asked for two. So I suppose I’ll give you another one. Was again, just a mistake. I was I was finishing finishing a composite and sort of Class five composite adventurer and they hadn’t put the burr in into the handpiece. Burr fell out. The handpiece patient literally swallowed just at the, just at the wrong time and so yeah what can you do.

[00:52:51] So I again, this had a happy outcome as well. I said to the patient, we really need I don’t know where that’s got, where that’s gone. We really need to have a chest x ray. That was the was the that was the guidance. And so drove him up to the local, local hospital. He had a chest x ray. He had swallowed it. He hadn’t he hadn’t inhaled it. And the weird thing was that it was he was an elderly patient who’d retired. And based on that experience, he actually became a volunteer in the X-ray department, which he did for years and years and years. And I saw him for years afterwards. You know, every time I saw him, I just felt, you know, felt really, really bad about about making that making that error. But I certainly certainly learnt from it, but nothing too catastrophic. And I know I really feel for some colleagues who have got cases that have been hanging over them for years in some cases, and I had a very, very short experience of what that felt like. And it was, Oh, that’s great, my career is over. And it happened to me fairly, fairly early on as well. But everything, my note making just hopefully really, really improved by that. So so those are two that spring to mind. I’m sure I’ll think of some more.

[00:54:21] When you said there was a happy ending, I thought he was going to say fish the bear out and brought it back for you.

[00:54:38] I was just waiting for.

[00:54:39] I was waiting for the punch line.

[00:54:40] Louis I don’t know. I mean, I don’t mean to sound disappointed, Louis, but in a 30 year career, those don’t sound like really hard stories to me.

[00:54:52] Yeah, but they impacted. They impacted on that. They certainly had an impact on me.

[00:55:01] But have you never had a situation where the patient’s lost trust in you, you know, like that sort of situation or you took on a case that that went wrong in the wrong direction for a long period or even in my short. I mean, maybe you’re just a much better dentist to communicate to that. Yeah, but even my short five years at the the BR front, I did have a few couple of cases like that where, you know, like cosmetics is awful, right? Patients says it looks great, goes home, comes back because I don’t like them anymore. You know, you’re in a terrible situation just there on a matter of opinion, you know, does that never happen?

[00:55:44] Were fortunately not with regard with regard to that, because forcing I’ve done the course is when I started doing aesthetic dentistry. Fortunately, I’ve done some good courses and they the thing that I always bang into is, is make sure the patient knows what it’s going to look like at the end. So there are no surprises at the end because, I mean, there is nothing and I say this in lectures all the time, there is absolutely nothing worse than, I don’t know, some veneers on or something like that. And the patient, either immediately or after they’ve seen their family saying, saying, I don’t I don’t like them because there’s no plum. These are, you know, okay, if they’re too long, you can shorten them. But that’s all you can do. And then obviously redoing stuff like that is, is, is an absolute it’s an absolute nightmare doing redoing dentistry that you just did.

[00:56:44] Yeah.

[00:56:45] Really is is, is literally is your worst day at work isn’t it.

[00:56:50] Yeah.

[00:56:50] So I think it pay, I don’t think it is judgement. It is, it is just luck but I certainly and maybe, maybe it was, maybe it was that early on end of case that really made me choose, choose my battles and be able to deliver on, on whatever I, on whatever I promised. But I’m sorry to disappoint you.

[00:57:15] I can’t think of.

[00:57:17] Anything anything cut to catastrophic for you in my professional life.

[00:57:23] You mentioned Lewis. The conversation I had about the NHS and leaving the NHS and what people are saying about that and what worries people have about that. But now in your role in dental plan, that must be a daily occurrence. I know your role isn’t specifically to talk about that dentist. I mean, you’re more on the education side and so forth, but what stories do you hear or what concerns do people have and are they the same concerns every time? And then the solution’s a similar solution all the time, or is it different in each case? Tell me some stories of NHS to private.

[00:58:01] It is it is it.

[00:58:03] Is the similar it is similar all the time and it’s always and they’ve always been the same stories. I mean I’ve I say I’ve done a 1000, so I’ve been teaching for about 20 years. I’ve been doing hands on courses for getting on for 20 years as, as well. So I’ve spoken to thousands, thousands and thousands of dentists and that’s, you know, me, we’ve been on courses together, you know, and I know you’re as well. You like chatting to chatting to the dentist, you know, good. Good to chat to, good company, entertaining people. And so, yeah, I’ve got a whole list. In fact, I did a webinar last week on this exact subject. It is the same things that come up every single time people have transitioned from NHS to private all report. Same thing. Number one is always time, more time, more time with the patients, more time for your for your for your private life, for your for your life work balance. But it’s it’s never money. Money is always the absolute bottom of the list is it is clinical outcomes, it’s job satisfaction. It’s developing good relationships with your patients. It’s using good materials and equipment.

[00:59:17] It’s having the time to go on courses and upskill. It’s working with technicians who share the same philosophy that you do. It’s you know, I’ve spoken to dentists on courses, a hands on courses. And this is this was not an uncommon occurrence. I do I used to run a series of ten hands on courses on various different restorative subjects and be quite a common one. When I was just started to push the envelope with, with big composites and almost without exception sort of every month somebody, an NHS dentist, would come on the course and I’d, you know, and we’d do a, I don’t know, mode b build up on a pre molar, take about an hour or something like that. And a dentist would say, you know, you know, this is all well and good, but I can’t do this on the NHS and I used to quite commonly get into this discussion and I said If you don’t mind me asking, how many patients do you see per day? And I would say almost without fail, sort of definitely a few times a year the dentist would say eight zero 80 patients per day.

[01:00:32] Oh, my goodness.

[01:00:33] Wow. To which to which I’d say, well, no, no, you can’t. You know, what’s what’s your what’s your appointment time if you’ve got to do this if you’ve got to do this in 10 minutes. You might get the first one right, but you’re not going to get the fifth one right. You’re not going to get the 10th one right. And what I did want to see, I didn’t believe it, actually, but I actually went to went to the went to the practice. I once knew of a dentist who had 100 patients booked in every day. I didn’t believe it, but I actually saw the daybook. It was a pencil, a pencil day book. And there were there were 100, 100 patients booked in in that day.

[01:01:13] The interesting thing is, if you if you said clean up time between 100 patients.

[01:01:18] Is.

[01:01:19] Just just be really kind of say 5 minutes to 3 minutes clean up. That’s 300 minutes of clean up time, which is 5 hours of clean up time.

[01:01:33] It’s not terrible.

[01:01:34] And you would occasionally see dentists who would get themselves into this sort of. This treadmill of multiple surgeries.

[01:01:45] On the.

[01:01:47] On the go. Well, but then.

[01:01:49] What are the barriers? What are the barriers? I mean, why don’t people want to leave? I mean, there’s the obvious financial sort of, you know, with the the system is that you’re sort of assured a certain income per year. There’s that. And then and then there’s another one talking to people who are thinking about it, the people who are eminently more qualified than I was when I decided to leave the NHS, worried about their skill set and worried about whether they can pull it off or not. And I say, you know, it seems to me so obvious. I will just keep it simple. Refer. Simple as that.

[01:02:24] You’re absolutely right. Confidence is the number one. You know, they don’t feel they don’t feel like a private dentist. To which I always say.

[01:02:31] What is that private?

[01:02:32] Exactly.

[01:02:34] I’d say, went to dental school. You weren’t trying to be an NHS dentist. You were. You were trained to be you. You were trying to be a dentist and to do whatever that particular patient needs are still to this day, do a lot of hands on courses with foundation dentists. And so I really, really notice that they really, really feel going from the, I don’t know, safe environment of, of the dental school scene to maybe four patients a day or something like that. And then working to an environment where obviously you’ve got to speed up. But that sort of tension with regard to sort of clinical decision making they they a classic one would be they they know that a direct composite online is the best treatment for that particular tooth. But working in a system, I don’t know. Take the UDA system, for example, where you’d be pushed to do an indirect restoration and that tension, a chrome denture or something like that. So you know that a cobalt chrome denture is the best thing for the patient. But when you factor in the lab bill, you would know that you do too many of those. Your business is your business is going bankrupt and and where cases in the in the UK system as well. So I mean the system does need to the system does need to change and it needs to change rapidly. I mean only in the last couple of weeks we’ve seen the, the Parliament Sean Smallwood talking to the health, health and Social, Social Care Select Committee. Things have to change and they have to change. They have to change rapidly.

[01:04:15] But you know at then plan what was the USP of that organisation is is it that they, they’re good at helping people go from one to the other. Is it, is it that they good at managing the teams because there are there are those concerns aren’t they. You know, what will my team think? What will my patients think? Am I up to it in all of this? Does Denton hold the hand better than the next company? I mean, they were certainly one. They were the first, weren’t they?

[01:04:43] Yeah, 1986 den plan was set up was set up with with three goals. It was set up by two dentists in the mid eighties. Eighties was a was a nightmare time anyway record unemployment record inflation. Falklands War miner strike it was it was it was a nightmare time and it was a nightmare time in in dentistry as well. And so these two two dentists came up with this idea for a basically a new system, a capitation system that was something to do instead of NHS dentistry, which was, which was the only game in town, you know, in, even in the nineties. I remember at the time somebody said there there are around about 500 private dentists in the UK. Now there’s 26,000. So plan was set up with three goals and those goals have remained the same throughout right up until today and they’re just as relevant as they were before. The first thing was professional control, getting control of your own career, which is what we’re talking about. The second was to create an environment outside the NHS where you could do quality dentistry. And the final one, which is even more relevant now, was to align the patient’s wishes with the dentists philosophy, which is prevention. Prevention patients don’t want dentistry. And so if if a capitation system works really for me, it’s perfect. It’s the perfect practical situation in clinical dentistry because you’re getting paid to keep people healthy rather than getting paid to find things to do and do things.

[01:06:32] And so having that balance of private fee per item and loads of patients on a plan just gives you that sort of clinical freedom to to make the right decisions every time, because your clinical decisions are based on, on what the patient needs. And obviously, I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of dentists and it’s the reason that we’re really quite evangelical about them plan is it because it was the first and it. It changed my professional career because when we went private, we weren’t completely private with them. In those days, you couldn’t you couldn’t have a children’s only contract. So basically it was, it was, it was private and and we didn’t retain any NHS within the practice. So in those days it was a leap of faith because there was no blueprint, big practices hadn’t done this before. But of course now there’s, you know, there’s a, there’s a blueprint. And, you know, thousands of dentists have already made they made that move. But so if you do chat to them plan dentists and I’ve heard this time and time again is that it changed it changed their professional careers even further. It changed their lives. And that is why that we’re so passionate about them.

[01:07:53] What is what is your actual role there? I mean, I know you were in charge of the education side for a while, but now now your new role.

[01:08:01] Yeah, well, the head dental officer, it’s actually the job that the original head dental officer is Roger MATTHEWS, who was one of my mentors, who is an absolute legend so far of ahead of his time. It’s really is a it really is a multi factorial role. Difficult to describe it in in just a sentence. The education side is still a big part of it. And one of the things that I’ve been really lucky to do is be involved with a big project to create our state of the art online education, to go along with our life courses. Our live courses have been incredibly popular for.

[01:08:42] Just summarise summarise the size of that that unit. I mean, I remember someone telling me, well, maybe it was you. It was like they do something like 500 days of live courses a year or something.

[01:08:53] Yeah. Yeah, we have way over 500 or 500 courses. I mean from, from hands on courses. I mean dipesh you, you kindly helped us out. I think that still remains our biggest ever hands on course. I think we had something like 40 dentists in the room, but you got good value out of Depeche that day. But we do in practice training that’s super popular. We do all the compliance subjects. We have ski conferences, cycling conferences, hiking conferences, and we just actually we’ve just finished actually, we’ve done our first four national forums. These are our sort of flagship events. And so so far we’re up in Scotland, in Blaine, Cambridge, Chepstow, and then we’re in Belfast the week before last. And so basically this is a full day study day with a nice meal and a stopover as, as well. And we’ve had Simon Chard lecturing for us on digital, doing a doing an hour and a half session. And he has been absolutely superb the den plan audience because you know is quite a tough audience. I say it’s it’s you know for for lecturers it’s a good rite of passage to to lecture to them to the dental plan dentist because, you know, you’ve got a lot of mscs in the room. You’ve got a lot of experience.

[01:10:14] Simon is a talented speaker, talented, very, very talented speaker.

[01:10:18] He is very, very polished. And but it does go beyond way beyond the clinical excellence, which he most certainly has. But it’s the whole sort of the the marketing, the use of social media. It’s his feedback has been off the scale. It’s been absolutely superb. So so those those are flood control.

[01:10:41] Have you got if let’s say you want to come up with a new course in Panama. Whatever.

[01:10:51] Well, like.

[01:10:52] You know, if you come up with a new idea, who does it? Is it you? Is it. Are you the last person who has to say yes to things? Or is there this other person who has to.

[01:11:02] Through.

[01:11:02] The process? What’s the process of if a new idea comes up, how does it work?

[01:11:06] It would be really lovely if that was if that was the case. My boss, Catherine Rutland, who’s another? Another and dentist as as well. So she would be the first person I would. In fact, literally, this actually happens only last week. I’m putting together ideas for the programme for 2023. So I’ve literally sketched out this is for me, this is the ultimate programme of live events and online online training events. And then we literally just go through the process with regards to funding budgets, manpower and workouts, work out what what we’re going to do for the next year. So we try and work kind of a year ahead. We’ve got an events team. The events team are amazing and we do lots of charity events as well, but not sort of CPD involved as well. You know, marathons, conferences. Our parent company, Simply Health Sponsored, The Great North is sponsored all of the great runs for a few years. So yeah, it’s just sort of because for me and I’m sure you’ll say exactly the same thing with your courses pay and even with your courses as well. Prav is for me some of the best little nuggets of education don’t come when you’re sitting in front of the lecturer. They come, they come in the breaks they come when when you when you’re having lunch, when you’re on a ski lift or.

[01:12:35] Wherever, the gin and tonic, man, you know, people underestimate that. It’s not it’s not the gin and tonic. It’s the different sort of sort of the barriers of the classroom situation. And then the barriers and the real conversations do tend to happen outside of the classroom situation. And for me, you know, the other thing is the delegates learning from each other totally. It’s a key point. It’s not just from the teacher, it’s a key point. They’re all going through the same things.

[01:13:09] Certainly from a practice management point of view, and I was really lucky I got into them quite early. I think it was about 93, although we were mixed for probably 15 years. Yeah, probably about 15 years. I was lucky, I think. I went on the first ever Dem planned golf conference and just sat down. My golf’s never never been any good and it it never it never will be. But I remember sitting down with some of the original Bampton dentists and they were really sort of saying, you know, from a great tips, you know, categorise your patients and correctly to begin with, equipment, materials, loads of techniques, loads of courses. Again, you know, I’ll go on one course, I’ll get a tip to go on to go on another one. It’s much easier now because obviously they’re all advertised on on social media, but it was very much a sort of a word of mouth who are the good speakers, who are the good mentors? And I was just really, really lucky that in the early, early years of my career, I just bumped into some just really, really influential people who transformed my career.

[01:14:18] Were you always that funny guy on stage? Because you are.

[01:14:27] Obviously, this is a fantastic opportunity to go into a Goodfellas moment here and, you know.

[01:14:34] When you have. But you could be a funny guy.

[01:14:41] Entertaining that entertaining style you’ve got. I was not from the first time you lectured. Was it like that.

[01:14:49] Style over content. I think that is.

[01:14:53] It is.

[01:14:53] It is. I’ve got a message that I want to get across. When I first started lecturing, I watched it before it started. I’d watch some really good lecturers and and you’d notice the ones who kept people sort of captivated. Trevor would be a really good. Trevor would be an absolute classic example of that because no matter how good your how good your, your content is, if people are asleep. And I’ve had plenty of people fall asleep in my lectures, they are going to learn nothing. They, in fact, just digressing from my worst ever. It wasn’t even a heckle in a live lecture. There was it was I don’t know. There was an audience of about I don’t know, about 40 or 40 or something like that. So it was a small it was a small seminar and there was a bloke in the front row and and he came in and he fell asleep almost immediately.

[01:15:49] And.

[01:15:50] And so that was a bit I was still introducing myself. I was still.

[01:15:54] I don’t have a long I don’t have a long I don’t have a.

[01:15:58] Long this is me intro but but he fell asleep during that. So then without a word of a lie, I kept going. I kept going. And then after a while his phone went off. It got off, it stood up. The group was in two, it was in two halves. So there was there was a sort of an alleyway down the middle. He walked up the alleyway, he answered his phone. And I.

[01:16:22] Don’t know what.

[01:16:23] I don’t know what the conversation. Nobody said, no, I’m in a lecture.

[01:16:27] No crap. And he walked.

[01:16:33] Out and he never came back.

[01:16:36] Wow.

[01:16:39] So that’s so that was my worst. So that was my worst sort of experience. But I think public speaking, I went to I went to a lecture the other day from somebody, a similar sort of vein to Prav. And it was people’s worst fears. And I think I think the worst fear this bloke was talking about was I think it was death of a relative public speaking and then being buried alive. So so when it comes to public speaking, I don’t I don’t I don’t mind. I never I never have.

[01:17:14] I think if you pull it off, you put it off so well with with the with the I don’t want to call it comedy, but the sort of the humorous side of it. And I always think if you if you say something funny, I never I never try it by person, because what if what if no one gets it or no one laughs? So and I find people do laugh in my lectures, but at points where I wasn’t expecting it. So it’s like they’re laughing at.

[01:17:38] Me so.

[01:17:39] Wisely. But but you put it off like a master, like a king.

[01:17:43] Give us an example, Payman. Give us an example.

[01:17:46] But he just. He can’t help himself from the first moment. Yeah, he’s talking it’s he’ll say a self-deprecating joke or something, but the audience will just get behind him straight away, you know, like, like what you said. You say, let’s say you can say something about your hair being a bald guy or whatever I’d say. And the room would be a room would be silent and worried. Yeah, he’ll say, and the room will be bursting out laughing. Yeah. And it goes on and it’s not like it’s only a comedy show.

[01:18:18] I’m not.

[01:18:18] Saying that.

[01:18:19] I’m going to say that at all. No, not at all.

[01:18:22] I was just about to ask Louis to tell us his favourite joke.

[01:18:26] It’s just. It’s just. It’s just.

[01:18:28] The content. The content is, is, is punctuated with some entertainment bits here and used to talk about different people, you know, good old and new places. So the way he would do it, I don’t know, Louis just carries it off in a really sort of for me, effortless is the way I would. I would describe it.

[01:18:50] That’s extremely nice of you to say. And it’s it’s not something I mean there’s certainly that. Edutainment as my my predecessor before Catherine Henry Clover he was my boss at Dental and he was the he was the head dental officer after Roger he said edutainment you know, you get you get you get your get your content across but it’s got to be entertaining. Otherwise, why why is anybody going to when when is anybody going to sort of actually come to your next lecture? But it’s not something that I sort of sort of script in really sort of I don’t know, they sort of I’m kind of lucky. It kind of sort of comes to me. I mean, I went to a school, a pretty rough school in those days. You didn’t have you didn’t have social media, so you had to go to school to be bullied.

[01:19:40] So I think.

[01:19:48] You have to be either really tall, which I wasn’t, or you have to be you had to be a clown. And so I suppose I learnt those skills from school. I remember my dad was always an entertaining bloke, but perhaps just made me think my my favourite joke. It was anything that I come out with a things that that please me are things that are thought of on the spur of the moment and and dental wise again probably 2 to 2 boring too late but I’ve been lucky enough probably because I’m I don’t mind public speaking I think I’ve been best man 11 I think it’s 11 times.

[01:20:31] Ten or 11.

[01:20:32] Times. And for me, my, my best adlib happened in a best man speech. And it was it was quite an awkward environment because the vicar had been drunk during the during the ceremony and it hadn’t gone disastrously wrong. But everybody, you know, it was it was one of those things, if you put it on telly, you wouldn’t think it was you wouldn’t think it was believable. So I was just getting nervous because I always do get a little bit nervous before certainly before speaking. And I thought, what am I going to say? I’ve got to kind of refer to it, but how can I refer to it? The vicar wasn’t in the room, but fortunately, but how do I refer to it without sort of embarrassing him and embarrassing everybody else? So I just I thought.

[01:21:19] Had.

[01:21:20] And so literally just it just came to me. I said, I don’t know about you, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had a wonderful wedding today, a fantastic service. And I don’t know about you, but in church today, I really felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.

[01:21:36] And and for me, that is just.

[01:21:41] I enjoyed the fact that I managed to think of something under those sort of those circumstances and, and, and pull it off.

[01:21:51] I’ll tell you my favourite joke. What did you call a man with no shin?

[01:21:56] No shin.

[01:21:57] Notion.

[01:21:59] No idea.

[01:22:00] Tony.

[01:22:07] Wow. That’s my number.

[01:22:09] One. That’s my number one.

[01:22:11] Dad joke.

[01:22:13] Highbrow Oxford.

[01:22:15] Educated medic.

[01:22:20] Another one. When you go to Footlights on.

[01:22:22] A similar sort of play, we go. Yeah.

[01:22:27] This one always, always makes me laugh. Is mango’s into a fish and chip shop and says Fish and chips twice, please. And the bloke says, So I heard you the first time.

[01:22:45] Louis. Out of your different things you do general or done general practise teaching. Have you done some research as well?

[01:22:54] A sort of ad hoc research, I would call it. I started I started teaching a Birmingham dental school in 2003. And so we had a fantastic faculty. But as soon as I went on clinic, I realised that the students were asking me questions. I just didn’t know the answers to, you know, how does how does bonding resume work? You know, and you get different colour composites just using those, using those as examples. So I really had to sort of go back to school and and then I was I was equally lucky. At that time, Janus Davis approached me and asked me to write write a paper on post era composites. And so I spent three months right in a write in a long draft of, of, of this paper on Post Composites, which is my sermon on Post Composites. This is how you do it. And then a sense the I think probably had to print it out and and take it to. To Adrian Shortall, who is the head of head of comms. He’s my sort of main sort of mentor. And I gave it to Trevor as well. And they were very, very polite with me and said, Yeah, come. Come back, we’ll have a read through this. Come back. Come back in a week. And and we’ll give you some advice. And and I went back into to Adrian’s office and he said, yeah, you know, it’s it’s it’s fine, but but this is this is going in a peer reviewed publication. Everything that you’ve written is your opinion, and you haven’t backed up any of it with evidence. So he said, to help you out, I’ve printed you out a few things to read and I can still see it to this day.

[01:24:48] There was a stack of papers and abstracts. There were over 100 papers on post. I mean, Adrian always knew the key references and still does. And so for me, I think basically that was I don’t know whether they were throwing down the gauntlet. I think most normal people would have walked away and said, Right, I’ll, I’ll give up on my academic career. But I read all the papers. I realised what I’d written was just purely an opinion piece. I rewrote it. It took me three, three months to write the first draft, six months to write it properly, and then that was the first paper I ever published. In fact, in preparation for this, I actually looked it up of of now I’ve got 30 peer reviewed papers and four textbook chapters and those are all those are all written on subjects. Quite selfishly, that interests me. You know, posterior composites, anterior composites, clinical photography caries, bonding amalgam, indirect restorations. So for me, the learning has been my research, my postgraduate education. I’ve got well, I say, in fact, I’ve tripped myself up there. I used to have no postgraduate qualifications when I put my pen down and I made a promise to myself in finals. When I put my pen down and that final exam, I promised myself that I would never do another exam, and I haven’t. But in 2022, a colleague of mine, Steve Bonzo, who’s a who’s a brilliant bloke, material scientist, he proposed me and Ian Chappell seconded me for a, for a PhD from Royal College in, in Glasgow. So, so, so I have got.

[01:26:42] An honorary one.

[01:26:44] I’ve got. Yeah. But by accident not by exam. That’s why so, so yeah. I just didn’t want to do any more exams. What about.

[01:26:58] Lewis? Your relationship with manufacturers is is awesome too. I mean, you seem to know everyone in that side, you know, the trade side as well. You know, for instance, how do you how do you keep a clear head if unless Davis are paying you or or sponsoring you to to write about composites, not to sort of get their one as the main one or, you know, how do you keep a good reputation amongst lots of different manufacturers? Because you really do have a great reputation out there. And how is it that others sort of sometimes fall over on that front? I mean, what’s what’s there one called clear fill?

[01:27:39] Phil Yeah, clear from my aesthetic, which is.

[01:27:43] It’s an interesting.

[01:27:44] Which is an amazing comedy. It’s, I mean, so it’s a really good point. But I must admit, without sounding too pious, I do try and sort of keep true to myself. I only talk about things that are used in practice, and I only talk about things that I know work because if I don’t, if I talk about a product that I haven’t got faith in and then somebody buys that project, product, uses that product, and then they don’t get the outcomes with it. Again, nobody’s going to listen to me again. And, you know, I’ve been lucky. I’ve never been good enough to work properly with with Enlightened.

[01:28:24] But I think you did lecture at the minimalist event. But I can’t call that work.

[01:28:34] Talking paid work. Did you get paid? I’m still.

[01:28:39] Waiting. I played.

[01:28:40] A gin and tonics that.

[01:28:42] I needed. He certainly did.

[01:28:44] But he’s got to believe in it first, right?

[01:28:52] I mean, the nice thing is that the companies that I work with, I’m doing quite a bit with opted in at the moment. I love most almost all of the opted products, but in a lot of work with with Coeur. I was really, really lucky that my my kind of if you like sort of lecturing career took off when sort of bulk composites came in. So I did. I’ve done a lot of work with Dentsply Sirona over the years. And if if somebody gives me a product that I don’t like because I’m lucky that I’m on a number of key opinion leader groups. And so there’s a group of us do get sent off before it goes to market to test it out. And I love doing that. And it doesn’t take long, does it, for an experienced dentist to know, is it better than what I’ve got before? Is it worse or is it insane? And then I’m just I’m just totally I’m just totally honest. I would never, ever say anything bad in public or any anywhere else about about a dental product. Because, as you know, there’s millions gone in to the investment.

[01:29:54] And I have pulled out of lectures. It’s I remember when I started lecturing one of my colleagues who’d been doing it for a while, and our lecturer said, I said, How long does it take to write a lecture? Because this is taking me hours and hours. And he said basically the industry standard for an hour lecture, you’re looking at about 50 hours of preparation and and development. And to be honest, I’ve never got it down much below that that 50 that 50 hours. So I can only ever remember happening once where I’ve delivered one lecture once. And this was on a product that I started using. And really I’m a real early adopter. I like trying out stuff straight away. But then the patients were coming back and it wasn’t really working out as I hoped. So I actually had to sort of hat in hand, go back to the manufacturer and say, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull out of this lecture lecture series because I don’t feel that so. And again, if you’ve ever seen me do a lecture, I get like way, way, way too excited about dental materials.

[01:31:02] And I quit and.

[01:31:03] I can get excited about matrix bands wedges. That’s probably one of the worst bonding lessons because if I really, really like them, because these these materials are designed to solve problems. Literally, the first time I used enamel was on. I remember the world of aesthetic Congress.

[01:31:26] Yeah, yeah.

[01:31:29] That’s what I was one of the mob down.

[01:31:32] Buddy, buddy, buddy, Andy. Son. What was his son’s name?

[01:31:35] Robert. Robert.

[01:31:36] Robert. That’s it, Bob. So that was a real turning point for me. I can’t remember what year it was, but Buddy Moffatt was doing 2 hours of lectures and.

[01:31:48] Yeah, that was the year we started with Cosmo then because we, we brought him over because of that now. Right. That would have been the 2008 I want to say.

[01:31:58] This, this, this all this all fits fits in nicely then. So so I don’t know you obviously you were in the room. There were about eight or 900 dentists in that room. And Buddy Mock was doing this presentation on composites, anterior composites, posterior composites. And I’ve never seen anybody do it before or since he had cases up on the screen and he basically said, What should we do? Do you want to do a posterior? Do you want to do an anterior? And basically his lecture could go off in any direction.

[01:32:30] Yeah.

[01:32:31] So now this was in the nineties, so this was in the era where porcelain was king. You couldn’t go on any other courses. Porcelain furniture causes the world aesthetic. Congress was basically a porcelain veneer course. And so I sat there watching Buddy Buddy Mapper, and it was showing case after case after case of these amazing composites used in using cosmetic products and how to build up composite veneers, taking crowns off, replacing them with composites. And it was absolutely groundbreaking. But then the thing that got stuck in my head, then he said, Oh, and here’s the ten year record. Going back to what you were talking about, there is your 15 year recall and thought, Wow, this stuff works. But the thing that the thing that really, really stuck in my mind is the lecture was in two parts and there was a break in between. And during the break, everyone went outside and everyone’s chatted. And the you could just hear these people just say, absolute crap. Worst lecture I’ve ever seen. Just, you know. And so when we went back in, there was still hundreds and hundreds of people there, but there were probably about 300 less people. They’d all gone off to a porcelain lecture from somebody else. And one of the first things Buddy said when he got back up on the stage wheel, he said, I won’t try and do his accent. People will say that you can’t do these things with composite as he does it.

[01:34:04] Combined composite.

[01:34:07] People will say that you can’t do these things with composite. And he said They’re right, they can’t. That just literally just stuck in my head that, you know, of course you can do it, but you’ve just got to dedicate yourself to the materials, the bonding, the know, the tooth anatomy. And so that was a real pivotal moment for me because they were doing stuff like you just, you know, in the States that you just wouldn’t believe and so much so that basically then I started using re now I did the hands on course with these with Robert is Bob is his son and the minute the minute you should have polished it. I thought, this is different. This is something that’s better than I’ve ever used before. And so I’ve used enamel on my hands on courses ever since. Because from a polishing point of view, as you know, and as dips, delegates, it’s one of those things that the delegates go away from the course with a nice feeling that they’ve done something that they.

[01:35:11] Yeah, they’ve seen something new.

[01:35:13] They never did before. Which is, which is what I tried to do as much as possible.

[01:35:18] Crazily, we’ve been speaking for an hour and 40 minutes now.

[01:35:21] Oh, my God. It feels like we haven’t scratched the surface.

[01:35:24] Maybe we have. Haven’t even said, who is your first boss? Where did you go from there? So we’ve. We’ve reached our limit already. Can I have to do it?

[01:35:32] Round two? I’ve got more questions, guys. We follow slogans.

[01:35:39] Don’t ask it, ask. Well, we caught another guy waiting, but there we go. We’ll have to do part two.

[01:35:46] We’ll have to do part two, man. There’s a whole bunch about public speaking that I wanted to ask you were saying you were comfortable and then you mentioned you get nervous sometimes. And then does that ever go away? And there’s so much buzzing around in my head. Right. So we’ll have to come back for round two.

[01:36:03] But sorry. So I hugged him. So let’s finish. Let’s go with the final questions, too. Let’s go with the phone. Let’s start with the fancy dinner party. One fancy dinner party, three guests, dead or alive. Who would you pick true to?

[01:36:19] Alive. Quentin Tarantino. Massive, massive movie fan. Come back. I’d be happy to talk about movies for for 2 hours.

[01:36:29] I’m not a massive fan. Massive, massive. Quentin Tarantino fan.

[01:36:36] Alex Higgins, the the ultimate the ultimate snooker player who still probably has got one of the best ever sporting quotes in history. And then the final one, I couldn’t decide either be Ricky Gervais or Frankie Boyle, because it would be an evening of absolutely zero political correctness.

[01:36:58] And.

[01:37:00] Talking about films, talking about snooker, talking about the, talking about the world. And then and then a game of snooker and getting drunk.

[01:37:07] After that.

[01:37:09] Whilst that sporting quote Lewis.

[01:37:12] Well, it’s been I read his autobiography years ago, and this quote has been has been given to lots of other sports people. George Best included. But I think the actual truth is it was Alex Higgins who said it the first he was asked in an interview quite late on in his career, you know, it made millions. He’d lost millions. And he was he was basically penniless. He was having to be crowdfunded. And he went on an interview. I don’t know. It might have been Parkinson not as good as U2, obviously, but he said in this interview. Over the years. All my millions. When I look back, I spent half my money on booze, drugs and women. The rest are just wasted.

[01:37:59] Squandered it.

[01:38:03] So I thought it’s a great a great sport. But he was a legend. He was an absolute legend.

[01:38:09] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:38:11] And the final question, Lewis, imagine it was your last day on the planet and you had your loved ones around you. And you had to leave them with three pieces of wisdom. What would they be?

[01:38:26] Well, I thought about this in advance as well. None of them. We’ve talked only about dental and teeth tonight. But, you know, that’s only half the equation. You know, we spend a lot of time at work, but it’s all about the rest of your life. Dentistry gives you the opportunity to have the experiences that you want. So I would say my first advice would be whatever experience is, whether it is travel, whether it is learning something, whether it’s a new opportunity in business or in practice or in any field of life. Don’t wait, do it. Just get as many experiences as as you can and just enjoy, enjoy every day. The second one is a practical one. This was advice that my dad gave me. He didn’t actually put a number to it, but he said, But, but I’ll sort of extend them the best bit of advice my dad ever gave me, which was be debt free by 4000 percent. Debt free by 40. No mortgage, no loans, no car loans. And then I’ll extend that live within your means. You know, I’ve got quite a few friends who’ve got ten watches and, you know, they haven’t even got long arms and, you know, multiple, multiple Ferraris. So, yeah, just because the minute you mean coming back exactly to what I’ve said at the start, the minute you’re not chasing finances, it’s all gravy. You you just your job is basically funding.

[01:40:01] Enjoy your job. But it’s funding the what you do in the rest of your life. All the other things you want to do, your family stuff and your relationship stuff. So if you can take that financial pressure off as soon as possible then and obviously in dentistry it is possible to do that fairly rapidly. And then the final thing would be just just enjoy yourself. I’ve got no sort of particular sort of sort of religious faith. You know, I’m just going to make sure that I enjoy sort of every day, every opportunity, enjoy every day. And if if you’re not doing something to change direction, that that would be the that would be my advice to, you know, I’ve given to my kids. Obviously, they’re just coming to that stage where they’ll actually listen to me again. Now, though, there was a protracted period of time when they fought and they knew everything already. And and I just didn’t understand. But I think they finally realised now that I probably have got something to, to offer them. But yeah. So that would be my advice sort of experience as much as you can out of life, get rid of the, whether it’s debt, whether it’s any other things that are bringing you down and just enjoy every day and, and do do what you want to do. Whatever, whatever is your passion, whatever drives you do that.

[01:41:28] I’ve messaged, I’ve messaged the next speaker so we can go to your final, final prayer, which is.

[01:41:35] Good.

[01:41:37] The final, final.

[01:41:38] How would you like to be remembered?

[01:41:40] Oh, of course.

[01:41:41] Of course. Louis If so.

[01:41:49] How would you like to be remembered if. If the following phrase was. Was said about you? Yeah. Lewis was. Finish the sentence. How would you. How would you spell loss?

[01:42:13] I. Go on.

[01:42:15] It’s it’s something that’s never really I’ve never really thought about. I’ll have to think about it if you do ever drag me back. But it’s not something that worries me at all. When I’m gone. Once I’m gone, I’m gone. I just, you know, just try and make the most of.

[01:42:33] Of my.

[01:42:35] My time on earth and good friends, good family and working in an absolutely fantastic profession.

[01:42:44] I’ve got one more question for you, Louis. Imagine you had 30 days left. No. Imagine you had a week left. Do whatever the hell you want. You know you’ve got a week and you’ve got all your health and no financial constraints. What would you do in that week?

[01:43:00] It’s not long enough, I’m afraid. I mean, it would be something crazy, you know? Keith Moon Sort of level heroic dose.

[01:43:15] That’s not long enough.

[01:43:18] I mean, for me, the I’m not frightened of Crikey, this is getting a bit deep. I’m not frightened of of death at all. But a couple of, I suppose, melodramatic to call them near-death experiences. But it doesn’t it’s not something that frightens me at all. It would be I think it would be what I sort of miss out on and seeing the kids grow up. And, you know, Tarantino said he’s going to direct ten films and he’s on nine at the moment. You know, you know, he’d have to get a I’d probably go I’d go and visit him and just ask for a screenplay on his. He’s currently undirected film. I’d probably give him a few tips, actually, and then I’d be happy to happy to pop off. But yeah, not planning on going anywhere too soon, but you never know. I mean, look at I mean, I’m 54 a few incidents that have happened recently in the public eye. You know more Shane Warne, he was one of my heroes. I’m a massive cricket fan this week. Ray Liotta, you know, he’s going to he’s going to live forever because the Goodfellas back to Goodfellas pie. But but yeah it doesn’t do them any good does it. So, so yeah. Just, just got to make the most of it because you never know when that, when that number is coming up.

[01:44:43] It’s been a pleasure, buddy. We’ll have to see.

[01:44:46] 100%. Part two.

[01:44:47] Yeah, that flew by.

[01:44:49] I certainly looked at the time. It was like, wait a minute. We’ve been talking for 2 hours.

[01:44:56] I know. I know. We’ve been talking for a while because my message is probably a couple of times it’s getting cold.

[01:45:05] Thank you so much, buddy.

[01:45:08] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

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