Month: December 2022

For the full transcript and video of the Podcast see: https://www.prav.com/podcasts/doug-watt-dentist/

So how about you send it to us? We’ll come to your practice. We’ll do. We’ll do the end in the house. Patient as well. We’ll go anywhere. You send us the X-rays prior, and then we’ll send the patient back to you for the crown. And we’ll pay you a percentage of what we were collecting and, you know, fairly decent fee. And we were doing that. And I remember the first session finished at 1130 at night with the last patient. And then, you know, the the guy always a practice came. He goes, Oh guys, we’ve had a great day. And I said, Yeah, it’s a great day.

So what went wrong? What was wrong? What was wrong with that business?

Well, I’m not that honest. That’s what was wrong with it.

That’s what was wrong with it.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Sandeep Sadhana onto the podcast. Known to me anyway as Sunny. Dr. Sunny To some people. Sunny I met first on Many Smile Makeover, and I even remember that course just because of Sunny. He’s got a way of holding the attention of a room. You know, it’s funny. I sometimes think it might even count against you. How how how much you can do that. You’re so good at holding the attention of a room that sometimes you think, well, this guy’s a performer, and then you’re talking about composites. And Sunny’s got a very interesting course the composites composite, the new matrix, the greater curve matrix, and wondering if sometimes people think, do they take you seriously or not? Because I remember when you started telling me about the course, I think, Oh, Sunny’s that funny guy. He’s that funny guy, you know? And then when when you started talking quite serious, is this for real? So, Sunny, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Hi, Payman. Thanks for having.

Me. It’s a massive pleasure. When was the first time where you thought in your life that I’ve got the gift of the gab? I can I can keep a room, you know, I can keep people completely enthralled in what I’m saying. Because every time I’ve been in a room with you, you’ve been centre of attention The first time when that happened.

And you’re making me think way back now. Right.

But really childish ones.

Ones Well, probably, but ones that stand out to me. I actually. I was a salesman in PC World for a while. Yeah. You know, I was, I was working from quite a young age before uni. Before uni. Yeah. Yeah. I actually got my first my first job was selling double glazing on the phone and I got I got promoted in two weeks to confirm, so. So I thought, yeah, there’s something good. And then yeah, the I just did a succession of jobs. My family are certainly big on, you know, go and work and some money and so yeah the PC world thing, I was a top salesman like two years in a row, just consistently being one of my friends. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I wasn’t really trying to sell or anything. I just like to talk to people. So that one kind of resonated then I think that kind of I think it all comes from I grew up in a shop similar to kind of business. Yes, I grew up in the shop, so I watched my two uncles be very, very social every day, day in and day out from six, 8 to 9:00 every day. And they never got hired. Right. So certainly rubbed off on me.

Where was the shop.

Was in Walthamstow, south east.

London. So you born and bred there?

Yeah, I was actually born in Hackney but grew up in Walthamstow and just always in and around the east London, Essex now.

And so. Okay, so you went out and worked and you know, we don’t realise the value of that. Like the same thing. Talking to the public before you first time talk to the public as dentist, you already had loads and loads of experience of that. Did you work in that shop as well?

Yeah, for sure. I mean that’s a child labour, right? That was.

Normal.

Me, me and all my cousins.

And then when, when was the first time that dentistry came on the scene as a, as a career prospect. How old were you. Do you remember.

I was probably quite young but again it was just a family thing. See, one of my uncles had this in my head, right, because they used to open the shop at 650 and shy at nine. He had the dream for me that I should get a nice 9 to 5.

So.

So that was what they they actually looked up to, right? I’m not sure a lot of people think a 9 to 5 is the jackpot anymore, but they certainly did. And yeah, typical typical Asian family might be be a doctor, be a lawyer, be it this better and then yeah, it just kind of fell into it. It was going to be one of those three things. And I couldn’t see myself through medicine, couldn’t see myself doing in law. So dentistry just became the thing. I landed in my my grades were good, so I applied for it and got in.

And where do you study Queen Mary? But how will you how will you, as a dental student, the class clown? That’s how I imagine you.

I’m not sure I was class clown. I did like a joke. I did like her. I mean, I do enjoy, but I do like I do like having fun. But I actually found I found uni quite tough. I find duty really quite, quite tough. I find it to be a little bit prison esque, you know, like, not especially dental school, you know, first year people are out going out, you know, and we’re doing those course assessments every six weeks. So that was that really hit home that this wasn’t going to be a jolly.

Yeah, Yeah, I know. I know what you mean, man. Because you get to uni thinking you’ve got like some some American college life sort of dream that you’ve seen in the cinema and in dentistry particularly is is quite hardcore course. So did you find that Was it, was it academically you weren’t happy or just taken out of your way like where, where you’d grown up and all of that sort of thing?

I’m not too sure. It was like the people there. There was some cool people if people got on with Ice Bowl or football. So that was, that was, that was fine. Five and I didn’t really mind the people so much. I think it was just that it was pretty, pretty structured. It wasn’t you weren’t that free, you know, It just took up a lot of lot of time. You spend a lot. And so I’m slutty. So I think I just. I think I’m a free bird at heart. Right.

Q Did you live out the whole time or did you live back at home at one point?

Both. I did. I did both.

So what did you the first year you live out?

First year lived that and then. And then I think off the second year. Then I moved back home, which they were both equally as hard, by the way.

Yeah. So don’t you feel like you missed out a bit on the uni experience by doing that?

Well, I reckon actually by the first or second year I was, I think I just made up my mind that I was just going to get through it and do the degree and get the education and that was it. It wasn’t. I was getting my sort of extracurricular stuff fulfilled elsewhere. The things actually stimulated me.

So go on.

Well, I mean, I was an Army reservist, so that really fulfilled me. I really enjoyed that. Always wanted to do it. And then uni was just logical. So I think I was more enthusiastic about that than I was actually the degree itself.

So it’s like, you know, they can’t be that many Indian boys in the Army Reserves.

Or I wrong. Am I wrong about that? There’s not lots. There’s not lots. But interestingly, there’s there’s a regiment G company now, actually it’s got loads of Asians. It’s like East Arnhem, I believe, somewhere around there. One of my family is actually in that regiment now. So yeah, he says there’s loads and apparently it’s the most diverse regiment in the, in the army. But mine was, was, was, was not that mixed but it wasn’t that big of a problem really.

What was the drive like. Why, why the army.

Well again my, my two uncles, they were cadets and they had really fond memories of that. And they were growing up in a difficult time. Right. They were they were in the east end of London, where they were the only two the only two Asian guys, full stop, you know, let alone having turban and beard. And they had really fond memories and said that it was a good experience. By and large, it made them who they were. And then there were other people. My family had done reserves as well. My my stepdad was in the reserves as well. So yeah, I was just kind of influenced by I was always pretty active. I was always pretty physical. And yeah, just it just attracted me. I just like the challenge.

So, you know, you’re one of the more engaged than this I come across. You’ve really engaged with with each part of dentistry. Were you that way throughout, or do you remember a time where you suddenly switched on to wanting to be the best at dentistry itself?

Well, I actually think I just did. My heart wasn’t totally in it during the degree. I just. I just did enough. I just I just wanted to do it right. And I think I was a little bit miserable in uni, actually. I think a lot of people that knew me at uni, you’ll probably say I was pretty miserable and but later on, you know, I did vet, vet was cool. I had a really fantastic trainer and that really rubbed off on me. And he was very giving and sharing and, you know, really proud of the things he used to do for his patients. That really rubbed off on me and I kind of followed suit. But then when I got into mixed practice, you know, the two positions I had after that, like predominantly nurse, I’d left the army at this point, obviously, and I, I’d always been part of a team and I just want to be part of a team. I’m quite a team player and it wasn’t like I was just in my room and everyone else was in their room and maybe I’d have a few hours at lunchtime. It was pretty, pretty boring. So I’d just go for a walk instead. And yeah, I was just lacking. I was just lacking that. Right? And then in 2016, a friend of mine from uni calls me up and says, I’ve started a private practice, I’ve got another chair, it’s a squat, there’s no patients you want to come down. And I just bit his arm off. I did it and then never looked back.

How many years after qualifying was that?

That was about six years.

So then are you saying that up to that point you weren’t really looking at improving? And then from that point on, you really started?

Well, I mean, I like improving in general, right? So at least I’m certainly sort of self-reflective. But at that point it was improving, meant doing more. So then my highest accolade was like, oh, did 8000 UDAS one year like. But as we all know, that’s hardly an accolade, right? But then when I got into that private practice and then there was very few patients, and then I really realised how many of those patients actually wanted to come back and see me and how much my work was actually standing the test of time. Yeah, I probably wasn’t as good as what I thought I was. Right When you’re doing Udas doesn’t make you good. So then that was a rude awakening for me. I just realised why I’m actually really rubbish. So then so it was a little but prior to me wanting to improve, I tried to just skip the whole dentistry thing completely. Right? So actually, comically, you know about this, But I actually tried to become a professional bitcoin trader.

Oh yeah, I do. Go on, tell the story, man.

Well, so, you know, I’m in this practice is private practice. First year is just staggeringly difficult not many patients and my that year the take home was just terrible, worse and way worse than just what I would earn on the NHS. But the year after that 2017, I learned about Bitcoin. I don’t know how I did and I just got curious, got interested in it, started playing around and started putting on trades. Some of them started working out, some of them didn’t, but I was learning in the progress in the process and then I just went really deep into that. Like when I get into something, I really get quite deep into it, right? So I just took a deep dive into it. And 2017, I made like a quarter of a million very quickly and I thought I was a genius. I thought I was ready to walk off or I could do this all day, sit on my computer, just do this, look at charts. I thought I could do it. And then the following year I lost it because I didn’t know I was doing right and. Brutal crash of 2018 happened. And then I realised that actually, you know, maybe I am a dentist after all.

And then I.

And then I just did so much CBD because it just hit me. I thought, you know what? I’ve worked so hard to get to this point. You know, I didn’t really want to disappoint my family in that regard as well. I’m typical Asian females and yeah, I did about, I think 200 hours of CBD in person in 18 months. I just really went really went hard. I feel I’m not just I’m not going to waste this opportunity. Right. Because I didn’t give it a good crack. So that’s when I really got serious about the industry.

It’s what did you, which courses did you do?

I did loads of the jaws. I did all of the Lundbeck courses. I did the Fusion, the rest of the ones I did. Endo I went to Egypt to place implants. I did many small makeup. I do money for science. I did was I’m trying to think what else was popular at the time. I was going to do small fast, but I backed out at the last minute. Yeah, I can’t remember, but I did a bunch of bunch of courses. I did loads.

So what stood out for you apart from ours? Obviously.

Well, all right. What stood.

Out? Yeah.

That’s a good question.

Look, if you if you if a young colleague came up to you and said, look, I want to immerse myself in CPD, what would your advice be?

What first hospital we had. First, we ask them what they good at, what do they think? What are they relatively strong at now? Because I don’t think you need to go and plug holes everywhere. Sometimes you can just double down. Look the things that you’re actually really quite good at.

Yeah.

So that’s probably a good starting point because what I did, I just did loads of CBD. I just went online. What can I book? You know, not not wanting to be a failure, but I’m not sure that’s the smartest way of going about it. You know, I’ve said this before, actually, I think it’s better to have a have a group of friends that you’re close with dentistry people, and you can all collaborate and say, Look, how was that? Cause what do you think? They’re a bit hive mind there. But group group intelligence probably get you get you further than just trying to just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Which is what I was doing.

So you wouldn’t have a device if the guy said, Right, I want to get better. I want to get into private dentistry. What would be your advice.

To do my course first?

Am I? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you what I did. Really? That made me good from being this rubbish. Or I say good, right? Just better than what I was. But what I did. So. So this didn’t really cost anything. I actually had a spreadsheet and I put every single complication I ever had in the spreadsheet, and every quarter I would review it and I’d even categorise them right? Whether it was like a restorative problem was in the problem. Was it a communication problem, Was it a pricing problem? You know, I even included that because actually sometimes we’re weak on the communication front. We think we’re going to say, you know, actually let us says this all the time. He says, you know, you think you’re going to save £500 and then three, 350 comes out your mouth. So that’s happened to me a good few times. So, you know, I had loads of those sort of pricing issues or where I hadn’t been clear with the price and whoever else. And that really made me better because then I realised I didn’t have that many, you know, the bigger problems I had were with crowns not fit in or in those failing or stuff like that or restorative. I wasn’t having loads of loads of problems, so I started to think like perhaps this is, this is a strength of one. And then I suppose that’s when I really said, yeah, many times carbon monoxide, severe bandages do all of those and went, Well, those are the ones I suppose I was more interested in, you know, those are the ones I was taking notes pretty seriously.

And then, you know, you go from being a course delegate to someone who’s got your own course now. And with I mean, I’ve got to hand it to you in the short time that you’ve been doing the drill course, you’ve made quite a lot of waves and you’ve made loads of content as well. I mean, I remember it for myself when I went from someone who used to go to courses, to someone who used to set up courses and organise courses. What surprised you the most about that?

About change in courses. All the.

Change? Yeah, we’re putting on courses. Yeah.

Well, I suppose it’s natural rights only have a little bit of imposter syndrome that now you are going to see these guys and learn from them and now you’re imparting knowledge on other people. Yeah, I don’t really feel that actually, because the for this particular course I think I’m the best man for to do this. I’m the best man to share this information. I’ve been using the system since 2018. The event the brand’s been mentoring me since 2020. I’m not an expert at dentistry, but I’m certainly an expert in this system. I started off using it so pretty, not really don’t really have the imposter syndrome regarding that. But I think sometimes, you know, people will ask, you know, they expect you to have all the answers to everything. Right. I I’ll tell you a really funny story. Actually, I the gentlemen reached out to me pretty well. Well, no then is nothing against me or anything. But he said to me that you didn’t want a lunch and learn with me because he had studied implants, prosperity, all this postgraduate stuff, and I hadn’t. And he thinks that people who are going to teach should have a complete understanding of all of dentistry before they could teach one subjects. And I just felt that that was like a bit of a like a gatekeeper ideology, you know, the gatekeepers to knowledge. I’m not saying I have any secret sauce, so to speak. I just I’m the best man in place to teach this particular program, right, because of my experience. And it’s the only thing I use and I can manage to solve most problems. And I’ve gone from NHS to solely private and now being a private associate to running an in-house referral service while I go to other people’s practices and do referrals in their in their place just for stories. So I’m not I’m not saying I’m the best dentist up far from it, but I can handle most problems now.

So no, but that surprised you, right? That surprised you? The guy didn’t want to be taught by someone who wasn’t. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It totally that surprised me because actually there are problems that I know, you know, we can solve really easily compared to any other method. And in fact, some methods are popular, like sectionals and stuff. There are certain situations. They just don’t work. So you can be in a sticky situation. But that gentleman just doesn’t want to know about it because I wasn’t as qualified as him. So that was. That was quite surprising. You know, I also found surprising. Yeah, I found surprising that dentists can be quite brutal. Then it’s like.

When they’re talking about it.

Actually sometimes just at these luncheon ends and stuff. Obviously not to your face. Everybody’s quite polite to you, but I mean, I’ve had it where some of these luncheon we filmed, you know, like we’ve had we just had a mobile phone filming. And then when I’ve watched them back, you know, like we’re just making content out of it. Whatever else, I can see slips, you know, perhaps I was too informal or something like that. But then I can see in the clip, like the guy cover his face and snigger. Oh, I could see it. You know, if I do a lunch and learn with a practice owner and his associates. And then I’m trying to make it slightly interactive and say, has anyone had this problem that nobody answers? And then I could just see him cover his mouth and snigger. That’s fine. I quite that was quite surprising, right? I thought, man, I’m just trying to share some stuff with you. And so that was a bit surprising, but I’m pretty used to it now. I’ve got quite a thick skin.

Yeah, look, I find I tell you, what I found difficult was I felt like I was quite good with patients. I could I could talk to patients, I could sell to patients quite well. And I felt in my zone when I was talking to patients. But at the beginning, when talking to dentists, you know, there’s an inherent trust in a patient sitting in the chair, dental chair. But with dentists, you know, there’s an inherent distrust. We trained to distrust, aren’t we?

Yeah, well, we’re analytical, right?

Yes. Part of our job, right? It’s part of our job. Right. Where is the evidence? Right. For whatever someone’s saying. And, you know, the sort of, like you say, the brutality of that response that you’re talking about, It’s it’s almost like the difference between b2c and B B2B B, and we’re talking business to business. People sort of feel like they’ve got the right, whereas they might not be like that about their dentist, you know, the guy who’s looking after them.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. You know, else is surprising, you know, when we do the in-person lunch, unless, you know, obviously we take food racks, we take some pizzas and stuff. I think it’s probably about two practices. I remember that actually said, thank you for the food. So I find that surprising.

Some people seem to say thank you for food for me. Maybe, maybe, maybe the piece I bought was terrible for.

The dietary requirements.

Wrong. Yeah. All right, so there’s that. But. But these are. These are luncheon loans, right? So these are. What are you doing? Are you sort of people people are showing an interest and then you’re saying, I’ll turn up at 1:00 and you and bring lunch. What about the courses themselves? Do you find it hard selling tickets to courses?

I don’t find it hard. I mean, at the beginning it was hard because nobody knew I was right. Nobody knew us. So imagine, like you’re your first cohort for a hands on program. Nobody knows what this is. They don’t know. They don’t know who I am. So why the hell should they give me money to show them something? To them, I’m a nobody. So, yeah, yeah, that was kind of tough. But then again, you know, you have the early movers, you have the early adopters or early people. Yeah, you have the early adopters who perhaps a little bit more open minded or they’ve personally seen the stuff I can do or they refer the case to me and see like, Well, how did you do that so easily when I couldn’t do it? And so those early adopters got on board and, and, you know, like I said, that first one was when I knew I was onto something because it was a slam dunk. Like they were all pretty happy. They were all Monday morning putting into use, sending it in the WhatsApp group. You know, it’s pretty unfulfilling to see people come on to something and then leave with skills that they can put into practice straight away. Right. It’s not like some fancy thing that they’re going to have to wait three or four weeks before they’re going to have a case and be able to be able to actually use it. This is bread and butter stuff all the way to to more tricky, tricky things.

So we might as well go through what is it, what is the greater curve matrix? What situations does it really come into its own? What are the downfalls of sectionals and the traditional matrices that this this manages to get over? And then and then I do want to talk about how did you come across it? Yeah. Yeah.

So what a great curve is. It’s been around since 2006. So in America is pretty well established. Obviously, they’re old school companies, so their socials aren’t like massively strong. But at the same time, I’ve learned that just because you’ve got a really good social following, that doesn’t mean your KPIs in the business are in sync with that. Right? Just loads of followers doesn’t mean loads of business. So they’ve got loads of business but not a lot of followers. So I’d rather have that problem then I’d rather have that situation then than the other. But yeah, they’ve been around for a long time. Dr. Brown actually came up with the idea in 96 and then just tinkered around with it for ten years before he was only using it for one situation. Classifiers You just wanted a better way of doing that. And then it evolved into being able to do class two and then class two, three, four, five and eight on it can do it, can do everything right. And he kind of ran like a bit of an impromptu clinical trial, so to speak. So like 96 to 2006, it was just his friends and people he was speaking to online on dental town and they were using it and really liking it and was getting really good feedback.

So it wasn’t just him. And yeah, there was so much demand that 2006, that’s when they became a proper company. So but so like I said, it can handle pretty much any of situation and where it really shines, you know, those really difficult sub jingles like I’ve had that before, where I’ve been super frustrated, I’ve done loads of restorative courses, all revolved, all revolving around sectionals. And then I have this ridiculously deep sub gingival and I just didn’t have a way of dealing with it, you know? And then I’m just hitting and hoping and hoping that it’s isolated and hoping that it’s bonded. And people say. Robert Yeah, of course. Fine, I get that. But the rubber dome can’t isolate a really substitutable right. So it really stands out in those situations. You know I have I’ve got this case, this gentleman comes to see me and he had been told he needed a lower partial clearance. And the dentist said, go and see Sonny. And if he can do something, maybe you can keep it safe. So he comes to see me. And by the time I’d excavated all of caries, obviously warning him that this might may not be possible.

And he had been applying for two implants and a breach for eight and a half. K And then I cleaned up all the caries for my client when I was a lower level for all the way to lower three and the caries was sub Gingival Class five, Class three. You know, he’s just an absolute mess. And, you know, three and a half hours later he had restored teeth and he, you know, happy to pay four in half thousand for that in that time. So it’s not just a way of solving problems. It’s quite a profitable way of treating problems, too. We can quickly place restorations are well bonded and, you know, it’s a bit contentious, but if you use rubber down, great, you’ll enhance your isolation. But if you don’t use rubber down, it also isolates at the matrix level. So we’re using a a 38 micron sheet of stainless steel or brass to hug around the tooth and not let anything in, whereas somebody else might want to use a sheet of rubber. Right. So it’s pretty damn flexible as well for your, your particular perspective I suppose, on how you approach.

Them and what is it? What is it about it that makes it better for such gingivalis? Is it literally the curve of the band that goes down a bit deeper? Is that what it is?

Yeah, well, in a nutshell it’s they’re basically curved bands, right, with this modified top of my retainer. Like that’s its core level. But what makes it super special is like, you don’t even need to use wedges if you don’t want to. Like, you don’t have to force the tip apart. So it’s a restorative framework as well, like it’s techniques that brands sort of refined over this period, right? So it’s almost coming up to four years almost, Right? So in that time, you just got a real solid way of approaching any situation. Right? And whoever you’re doing, all units, single unit quadrant, it doesn’t really matter. Just anything anywhere, you know and it’s a little bit efficient to like if you’ve got like an mod and a bottle, we can do it all in one go, right? Because it’s a curved circumferential, so to speak. And yeah, it’s just really easy to use.

Could you come across it.

Yeah. Well after I was, you know, got tired of crying myself to sleep after losing that money, the money side I had, you know, I reflexively kept going on the computer because that’s what I’ve been used to doing. And then I just started I started doing these courses, as I mentioned, but they were all teaching sectionals and that was fine. But like, I just couldn’t get them to work as well. Like, I didn’t really love them. I just something about them just didn’t resonate with me. I just found it really complicated. I thought there must be a simpler way and even like closing black triangles and stuff and using various strips, I just didn’t find that too simple. I was just like, I’ve got one hand tied up, blah, blah, blah. So I went on Dental town as well and I just came across a curve and there was like so many posts, so many cases then just, just loving it. And I just got my hands on it, started using it. But yeah, I was doing all right. But there were still situations that I didn’t really fully understand how to use it, and they’ve got loads of videos online. But again, sometimes it just wasn’t watching the video and having someone explain it to two different things. So in 2020 I heard Dr. Brown on a podcast and he just really down to earth old boy, probably doesn’t care about impressing people anymore and just openly said, Look, I do most of my sort of dentistry what I’ve done.

And that’s like, nobody says that. And even Howard frown on that show goes, you know, a 30 year old dentist would never say that because even if he did, he would never say it because of obviously the the community view overall. So I was listening to him. He’s just very frank. He just talk about how, you know, sometimes get rubbish contact areas. Such tangibles were difficult. No real predictable way of doing class. Five’s just really went into just everything I was thinking and feeling. So I actually emailed him and just reached out to him and just said, Look awful, well done for saying all that stuff. Super impressed, Love your system that are there. And then he said, Look, let’s do a zoom. So I did a zoom slide show in cases and then he said, Oh, you know what you got to do there is turn the retainer this way and then you’ll get more flair. And that’s what I was. Oh, so I’d write that down. And then every time I’d be doing these Zoom call sharing cases, I’d be writing all these notes, and then I’d have pages and pages of notes about his framework. And yeah, that’s, that’s how I saw the mentorship with him, so to speak, which is still going on, which is cool.

And so did he not have a representative in the UK at the time?

No, they were selling direct. But then obviously selling rights is problematic because there’s you can get import import charges. Obviously, it’s got to come from America and then it’s the last minute. Sometimes they just want to order something today and get it tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, you know, the whole process of becoming their distributor, minimum order quantities. Am I ever going to be able to sell the stuff that I buy That must have all been new to you, right?

Yeah, for sure. 100%. 100%. And, you know, I had had friends who who are involved in distributing products, Dental products into the UK as well. So I, you know, I pick their brains often and then, you know, they were really quite helpful about it and kind of approached that beginning, that beginning sort of stuff, trying to understand it with them. But then it’s a steep learning curve. You’ve got to learn. You’ve got to learn, right? If this is what I want to do, you know, I had faith in the product. I had faith in the system. I had faith in the framework. You know, I said to Dr. Brown on a call last year, at some point I said to him, look, man, you know, we’ve got teachers. I want to teach this. And he said, Yeah, I always teach it. And I was like, Wow. So from that point, I knew, right, this what I’m going to do now, just share this with as many dentists as possible, because there were a lot of people that aren’t doing really well on the restorations and they’re just living with that subpar restorations, but they don’t ask to do it, and sometimes they haven’t got a place that they can go and ask for help because if they go to their principal, say, I can’t do a class five, you know, it’s not very becoming, is it? So yeah, it’s not like and if you go online as well, if you go on these Facebook groups and just present like a really, really fundamental problem, I’m not sure people are that helpful when I use a rubber. Damn it is do that. Do this. You know, there are other people that just want a different way. Like they just want a simple framework that works every time.

Well, I noticed Greater Curve is coming up as the answer to some of these questions these days. And I know how hard it is to even get the name of your product recognised. It takes years sometimes unless you do, you know, there’s there’s different ways of of getting the word out there. I notice you using to sort of getting yourself involved in all the different groups and all of that. But I remember when we started maybe the first seven, eight years, the most common thing I would hear from people is I’ve never heard of you. And it took seven, eight years before someone would say, Oh, yeah, we know. And I remember, you know, we’ve always overspent on marketing, you know, compared to how much we were making. And I remember thinking, you know, there I am a receipt, my whole mortgage, my, my family. But by buying these extra ads and then the Dental magazines, and yet everyone I meet says they’ve never heard of us. And it can be soul destroying. It can be soul destroying. So I think you’ve done quite well. I mean, how many years this has been? Even two years? Yes, one year.

Not me. Not even. Not even a year.

Now you’ve done well. You’ve done well. I mean, maybe I’m paying more attention because you’re my buddy. But in a year, you’ve done well to get it out there and. And people bring it up in comments.

Yeah, Appreciate. I appreciate it. I’d say 40 marks, by the way. So 14 months to be super accurate.

It’s tough. But I mean, look, there’s there’s different ways of marketing, right? You can you can go down this sort of content approach, a kind of you’ve gone that way. You’ve got some some videos and all that you can you can do gimmicks in has been a master of that right You can you know whatever you think about dressing up at a trade show you know he accelerated accelerated how quickly people knew about his product by doing that. And then you can buy ads. You can become become a teacher. But either way, today, there’s so many different things. And you know, what I’ve noticed about your product is the people who use it kind of evangelistic about it. You know, they they’re happy about the fact that they’re using it. And you’re right in that sometimes the sort of sexy side of dentistry is what everyone wants to talk about. And yet the day to day today, a dentist would have done a sub gingival class teeth that would have really gotten in his, you know, on his nerves. Tomorrow, tomorrow there’ll be another one. And the next day there’ll be another three. You know, anything that can make the day today a bit more, a bit more predictable needs to be talked about. Right.

For sure. So I mean when I gave, I gave a talk at the Scottish dental show and it was called How to Reduce Your Blood Pressure. Blood pressure as a profession.

It was, yeah. Yeah.

Because it really does, right. So now like those, you know, you’ve just, you’re able to just put that part, that problem that you’re having, just put it to bed like you’ve just got this predictable way of approaching it. It’s just done. I don’t have to worry about those things. Right. So that’s supremely freeing. It frees up bandwidth to say, I want to spend more time on X or I want to, you know, just I just I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. You know, you can you can you can do anything. You can’t do everything. So you can’t worry about every, every single problem. Right. So try and get as many of those things on automation or systematise as possible. Right. So obviously our business is very small. It’s a start-up, it’s a lean start-up, you know, a small team, lots of automations, lots of systems, lots of processes, lots of things so that I don’t have to think about. And they’re being built every week. So dentistry I think is much the same way, you know, how can I systematise things? How can I make my day to day workflow super predictable? You know, we had we had a delegate on the May one, one of the earlier doctors and he said, Look, I’m challenging you. I don’t think this is going to touch back here and I don’t think this is going to touch Garrison. That’s what he said to me when he walked on. Can you imagine? So no pressure. And then that same delegate, he came back his second time on the course that we’ve just run. And he said to the other delegates while they were talking, he said, Yeah, it’s the only thing I use now, you know, and it’s easy. I love it. And I’m I’m charging 40% more for everything I do because I’m confident enough to do that. I mean, that was powerful stuff. I mean, not really. That’s really quite fulfilling to hear.

For sure. For sure. And then you get the question of where is it going to go from here? What I mean, I know we’re very early days, but have you decided that you’re not going to open a dental practice and you’re going to follow this as you become a more supplier and educator than a dentist? Or have you not made that decision yet?

Not definitely made my mind up already. That’s where it’s going.

Really? Yeah. It’s a bit of a shame, man. Deliver shame. You love teeth, man.

Well, I still practice what I was doing.

Today, but that’s my question. That’s my question. Is the practice side going to go down? You’re going to do less dentistry?

Well, I only do two sessions a week anyway. So.

Two sessions, is it?

Yeah, two sessions a week I do now. And like I said, they have referrals, so they’re always pretty challenging. Pretty interesting, little bit spicy. So yeah, I mean, that’s not going to change. I’m going to continue to do those work and just do this for the rest of the time. I mean, I live and breathe this now.

So the two sessions means basically one day a week.

Yeah, like 4 to 6 hours every time I go, you know, I don’t really do more than nine. I go.

Yeah, So I did that. I did that for a long time. I found it very difficult, though. I found that I didn’t I didn’t get into the rhythm of dentistry. I don’t really care if the nurse did something wrong or if the lupus, the battery of the lupus wasn’t working. You know what I mean? Because it was just one day a week. So I felt like I wasn’t engaged. Now, maybe you all do, because your job is the same as your you know, you need the cases or whatever. It’s for your lectures. But I found it. Not enough. I found two days a week better, three days a week, kind of a bit too much. If you’ve got another project.

I think this is just. This is probably like my sweet spot. You know, I could probably do another session and, you know, not detract from things. But I think, you know, there’s one place, again, they send me referrals, I’ll go there twice a month, you know, and it’s always quite a good day. That’s a full day, but that’s twice a month. So and that’s just my staple stuff. But in terms of like what you said, not getting into the swing of things again, I just got systems around that right? So I’ve got someone that will charge my battery and make sure my like you’re charged and tested and all of that stuff’s pretty on autopilot, which is really nice. And that’s something I’ve had to learn this year a lot because, you know, I’ll just get on with things, you know, whatever needs to get done, I’ll just do it. But I can’t do everything right so I can do anything but not everything. So being able.

To.

Get people on board to help, you know, that’s that’s, that’s something I really picked up this year, you know, and that’s helped a lot.

What do you mean? Employees?

Yeah.

How many people you go?

I was think about this number this morning, right? Because some are like just ad hoc in a sense, you know, So like when we run a course, I’ll have one of my assistants come and he always does it. He he always helps run the course. So he’s one guy in total. I mean, we’ve even got that same Jen I was talking about, the one who’s charging 40% more. You know, he’s helping out on the courses now, what have you for him to become a trainer to because you just got the framework down. So I’d say seven in total.

I remember when we got our first employee, it was a good six months in. And it’s funny man, because some people think of hiring. As a natural move and other people don’t. And I wasn’t I wasn’t that cat. We think I need to hire someone. But then the further you get into it, the more you just understand that that’s the right thing to do. Sure. And then as the numbers increased, the management headaches increased, too, Right? You get you get let’s say you get a team of five. They need their own little boss now. They need their own little leader. And, you know, it’s interesting. It’s interesting that the way the way these things evolve, you must have hit some crises in this period. Tell me about some of those dark times of business.

I certainly will. But just quickly, just on point of what you just said as well, you said about the team stuff. Something I’m a big, big fan of. Right. Is like horizontal structures rather than just traditional hierarchical ones where everyone needs to come and report to you and say, I’m doing this. I’m doing that. Yeah. Now I’m a big fan of getting people who are internally motivated. You know, they see division as as I do. And, you know, they’re all on the same page and I don’t need to nudge them. They’re nudging me, you know, 7:00 in the morning. And I wake up and my phone’s got like six messages. Can you do this? You do this, you do this. And 11:00 at night, it’s the same thing. So, you know, I really try and stick with people who are internally motivated, not just not just skilled. And people have got integrity as well. But yeah, that’s how I’m kind of getting around this stage. But yeah, go on the dark. The dark moments. Yeah, the dark times, Yeah. In this venture or just in general, because I’ve had some other dark times.

This is not the first business. I’m happy to hear both.

Well, you know, this is not my first hand at business, you know? So when I was doing the whole NHS dentistry stuff, like, I was pretty damn depressed, you know, like I was heavily drinking on the weekends, just drowning my sorrows. And that was no way to live, you know, like I dreaded Mondays. I just, you know, still be, you know, still not be feeling great for the weekend and then it’d be a drag and it gets fired and I just want to go out and just became this little party boy and it was very vapid, you know, It’s very, very superficial. That’s pretty dark, actually, because I was like very little meaning to anything I was doing at that point. You know, drinking, driving a flash car made me something special, but definitely didn’t. So that was that was actually a dark, dark time. And then only when I really took a took got serious about my life and I was funny, I really got serious. I was like, No, I’m not going to do this. You know, I’m really going to give life could go start digesting any any. I was just reading loads, listening to loads of podcasts.

I was listening to Macro Voices, which is a podcast about oil and gold. You know, I just like really go deep dive into everything and anything, just trying to develop as a person, you know, realise that maybe some of the problems in my life were not others and maybe they were mine to do with me. And then I tried to, you know, try to apply a practice that fell through because of COVID and thankfully so that I think my heart would have been in it. Try to run a facial aesthetics business for a while and teach in running courses on that. But the model was just completely flawed. So yeah, the courses would be good, but you know, I could get people to do techniques, but the financial model was just rubbish and there was no longevity to it. And just like for like everybody else was running their courses, we were pretty much the same thing by a few differences. So no USP there as well, ran a private referral and those areas that didn’t really work out, the numbers didn’t stack, you know.

Just lots of lots.

Of lot taking, lots of swings, you know. But that’s all quite depressing when things don’t go your way.

Well, yeah, of course. But just tell me about the private referral lender. What, refer to you. Yeah. Yeah.

So I wasn’t bad at it though. I was actually alright and I. And then I got a really good rest though. So it was okay. Yeah. Then. Yeah. So this, this practice in Essex, they would somehow propose this to them saying look you’re sending your referrals out and you’re not getting any remuneration for it so how about you send it to us, we’ll come to your practice, we’ll do, we’ll do the in-house patient as well, We’ll go anywhere. You send us the X prior and then we’ll send the patient back to you for the crown and we’ll pay you a percentage of what we were collecting and, you know, fairly decent fee and we were doing that. And I remember the first session finished at 1130 at night with the last patient. And then, you know, the the guy always a practice came. He goes, Oh guys, we’ve had a great day. And we said, Yeah, it’s a great day.

So what went wrong? What was wrong? What was wrong with that business?

Well, I’m not that honest. That’s what was wrong with it. That’s what was wrong with it. So yeah, that’s what was wrong with it. You know, I was not playing to my strengths. My strengths are anything completely related, you know, presenting treatment plans, presenting large treatment plans. Even if I do these referrals for practice, not only will I treatment plan what I need, but if they need like indirect work or bridges or implants, I’ll treat them, plan that and I’ll give that to the practice too. And patients pretty much take it on board. So certainly articulating my ideas was a strength and certainly doing restorative stuff as my strength and I’m quite creative person, right? So this whole project is quite cool because I get to get to express that creative side a little bit more than I would do as an associate.

But you must come across this problem all the time. Yeah, that a referral to you is something that dentists kind of feel like they can handle themselves. So why would they refer to you? How do you explain it to them?

Well, there’s loads of dentists like that. There’s a practice that refers to me and, you know, the four associates.

They’re.

Three do and one doesn’t, because he just thinks. I can do it once. That’s normal. This part is par for the course. But what they do for me is the things that they can’t do. Right? So not only do I.

Do it like. Like what? They just.

Just like, ridiculously general stuff. Like, typically, like I get a lot of that, you know, amalgam overhangs that have destroyed the other tooth as well or say like a like a tooth and an amalgam and then one of the cusps break off and then the, the amalgam just in and there’s just one more remaining and the patient doesn’t want to do, you know, post or crown and the dentist isn’t confident that is going to work and they’ll send that to me for like a direct composite crown, which is one of the things that we touch on in the course. But we’ve got we’ve got that plan actually, how we do that with no post, no ribbon, just a direct composite call. I actually got the the initial time, the first time I ever saw that was severe. Balaji He was showing that at Lundbeck. Right. And that really just caught something, you know, it just triggered something in my brain that he showed me these big, long recalls of these teeth that have been restored with no post, none of the stuff that we’ve been taught that we need to do, you know, And they were working. And he’s got like 20 year recalls when composite wasn’t even that good, you know.

So it certainly works. But then I just adapted it using great curve and now like a bit of a technique, just using it. And I mean, they work, right, And they work in situations where the alternative is thinking. And I actually advocate you should charge the same as an indirect prime for that because it takes 9 minutes. Meticulous work, you know, it takes a bit it takes time and effort to get nice contact areas and all the rest of it in the mouth. But it’s a viable treatment for a lot of patients and not just because of the price point. I don’t think we should see sometimes if you have a treatment that costs X and then you have a treatment cost, why, You know, we’re humans, we got biases, right? You lean towards one that pays more per hour, right? So I just whatever I do pretty much pays the same power. So I don’t really have that conflict. I just for whatever the treatment is, it would be right for the patient. They can pick it and I still get paid the same. I maintain that rate meticulously.

Okay, So take me through other other. You mentioned the drinking. Yeah. Do you remember a moment thinking this is like getting out of hand?

Yeah, probably quite a few. Probably quite a few. There’s probably quite a few, actually, I reckon. Well, I’ll tell you one that stands out to me straight away and obviously I was not drinking at the time when this happened, but certainly, you know when you’re, when you’re in a, when you’re in a I suppose. Yeah. You in that mindset. I was in that place Right. So at this at it’s mixed practice. You know one of the principles he was he was from the Middle East, he was serious. You know, he was a he was a very, very macho, you know, liked, very hierarchical and all the rest of it. Right. So if he says something, you need to go running type of deal. That was your style. And everybody used to be quite scared. And I remember like joining the practice and people say, oh, no, he’s calling. He’s calling. I said, What you mean he’s calling? Slow down. What’s wrong? No, no, no, no. You just have to go. And then so anyway, long story. Lunchtime. I’m having my I’m eating my food. And then one the nurses comes up and says, Are principals calling you? I said, I’ll just let him know, I’ll finish my food and I’ll come straight down.

And he did not like that. So he comes up the stairs stomping big, big dude, you know, boom, boom, boom. But up the stairs, you, when I tell you, come, you come down all this year and he’s spitting into my food and everything. And I was just just biting my tongue and I just went in the mood for it. And then he just he just kept piping up and saying, You have to call me a little girl. He said, You’re a little girl. And then that’s when I kicked off and I stood up and just, you know, profanities got exchanged, told me to leave. So I did. You know, I’m not going to take that rubbish, but obviously I’m level headed now. I certainly wouldn’t have wouldn’t have swore back at him. I walked out. But at that time, yeah, it was just, you know, you just don’t have the patience. You just I just didn’t have the patience and it’s just was not it was not a smart move. It was not a smart move. But things like that could happen, right? You make just stupid decisions. Well, you think you know, you think Bitcoin is going to save your life.

You know, I’ve been there. I think. Look, I go to quite a lot of mixed practices. Yeah. And I kind of almost see burnout on people’s faces sometimes. Not just dentists, you know, that the whole team. There are some practices where I guess it’s to do with patient numbers. Where it’s properly tiring working in that practice now. It’s such a long time since I’ve been in that situation. I think. I don’t think I’ve ever been in that situation to say the truth, because I did vet and then vet. It’s never the pressure’s never proper. And then after that was in private practice. So I never worked in a place where it was volume and speed. And these days, angry patients to boot know almost, almost. It’s the worst of all worlds. Right? You’ve got, you’ve got the the pay side of it, which is poor, but then you’ve got on the other side the expectation side, which is sometimes just as high as a private patient or even more like, you know, people what they’re entitled to and what a greedy dentist you are. And I see it. I see I see a lot more of just dejected faces in practices. What do you think about this sort of mental health sort of thing? Know now? Now people are talking about it a lot more. Yeah. Do you think these days there’s more stress on a dentist than before or not?

Yeah, I think so. Obviously. So it’s hard, right? It’s not getting any easier. It’s certainly not getting any easier. And what I found terribly stressful was being in a mixed practice and saying, you know, I can do this for you in the NHS and I can do this for you on private like that. There’s just.

Like there’s a.

Massive disconnect. Yeah, that’s just, that’s stressful. And then, you know, if you haven’t got like really strong communicators already and then now they’ll be like, oh, you know, the patient just hounds them. Like, why can’t you do that? And then they just end up doing a composite for free. Udas Or something? No, like I can easily see how all of that just how many, how many fires can they put out, Right? So you’ve got the clinical needs, then you’ve got the sub after lunch that you’re not looking forward to, you know, then you’ve got a private patient booked in for composite bonding. The last time you did it, it was like six weeks ago. If you’re not doing something weekly, how good are you really going to be? Be I mean, I used to struggle with at doing NHS dentistry all the time, and then somebody comes in and they want to do.

The odd private thing here and there.

And I weren’t doing it enough to actually be proficient in it. Right. So that’s pretty damn stressful. Yeah, I think it is. It is a stressful environment and one of the main reasons I kind of left why I just had to be bold, You know, sometimes you have to be bold and do what’s right for you.

And the whole note keeping side. I don’t know if you saw the the was it Grant? I don’t know who it was. Someone posted like, here’s some notes from 15 years ago and here’s the same thing now what he showed the notes 15 years ago. I was like, Yeah, that’s what I write, you know? Yes. Because I haven’t been in the game for such a long time. It’s been like, Oh no, it’s been 11 years or something since I was a dentist. Yeah, but sure. What’s the story? What’s, what’s the, what’s the note taking side in those heavy full on NHS practices. Do people just copy and paste and do their best, Right.

Yeah. I mean it’s a little while ago for me now, Right. But yeah, I certainly just copy and pasted and did the best way. But you know, I didn’t rely on the notes. I never did. I always relied on, you know, at least having some, some little chit chat with the patient prior. Right. Just people people come in there defensive. They don’t like you anyway. You’re going to put needles in their mouth. Who likes that? Doesn’t matter how nice you are. Doesn’t matter how good looking you are. And nothing’s going to really combat that. Right. And especially someone who’s scared about it. But if you can actually listen to them, really listen to their needs. Yeah. And you know, you know, you’ve listened to them, right? There’s a lot of people that don’t listen to, you know, sit down, open your mouth. Like if who wants to do that? Right? So even though it’s NHS and it’s low, low pain, I always took the time to and I still do obviously, but I always sit aside to really try and speak to them about something, find out what they were interested in. Just, just, just be a human man, you know? I know that’s cliche, right? But just be a bit of a human. And I always banked on that, you know, them not wanting to take things further or make complaints. Obviously, it’s not foolproof, you know, but certainly I’m a fan of probabilities. And I just thought my probabilities of having problems were going to be far lower so long as I respected that person, you know, and not make snap judgements. Now, I think that that really robs us of the opportunities where we make snap judgements.

Well, I mean, it’s a good point, right? It’s a good point to to I mean, people stress about the legal side so much, understandably. And it’s a good point to say, look, I’m going to I’m going to have just a good relationship, a better relationship with my patients than most, and rely on that to be the thing that keeps me out of trouble for sure. It’s an interesting way of looking it, right, Because you know who who has got a set of notes which are 100%, you know, and it’s so interesting because I speak to friends who’ve been through some GDC problems and they’ll say, Yeah, I was 100% sure about those sets of notes about that patient. And I think it just took just to make that happen. You’re having to write paragraphs and paragraphs, right? It’s become a difficult world. It’s become a difficult world.

It is indeed, isn’t it? And I think patients, you know, to to to win a patient over now, you know, it takes a lot more to write. So I mean you just see it with the with the Internet, right. You know, look at how people present their their stuff. Now, no longer can you just have a good product or a good offering. It needs to have the bells and whistles and it needs to have a book accord with me. And all this is it’s the world is not slowing down. It’s not slowing down.

Tell me about clinical mistakes.

Clinical mistakes. I’ll tell you about one. This one I remember. Right. So it was a year off the vet. I remember this fondly. This lady was getting married in a few weeks and she hated her front tooth. And she said, Can you do a bridge for me? She’s. She had a mishap, Something like that. Something. I remember doing the bridge, right? I did this bridge for her and she needed an end of. I thought a.

Wedding. Yeah.

But I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done it. But, you know, pulling the heartstrings a little bit and I did it. And I think I did it for 12 years.

So.

So she did that at the end of through the through the crown. I wasn’t very good at end at this point. Anyway, long story. I think it was in 2015, the British snaps, but I wasn’t at this practice anymore and they didn’t really deal with it so well. And I don’t even think I found out about about the situation to kind of like remedy it. And anyway, it went, it went back and forth with her going to practice. It didn’t really go anywhere. And in 2019, I get a letter from a lawyer, you know, saying this this is this is the issue. So that was that was a sour one and one that I only realised a lot later. Right. So not all of our learning is immediate, right? We don’t have this like immediate feedback. Sometimes things are really late, you know, you learn about yourselves yourself as well. Things that you’ve done, you don’t learn about yourself until five years later when you see the repercussions. I mean, that happened to me quite a bit. So that was that was one that stood out. And then funny enough, when I went to the practice to go get my notes right, because I just thought it’s just going to be a headache to send in emails and all the rest of it.

I just went down there. So look, this place has got a problem. Can I have the stuff? And then one of the staff there said to me, Look, this other lady came in this week as well. I think you might want to look at her notes. So I did. And it was just luckily that I did. And she had an endo that had at the end. That was why I did the end. I was okay, but it had an infection. But the patient did want antibiotics. And the other thing is they didn’t want to touch it and all the rest of it. You just so I just got in touch with her and just said to her, Look, whatever you want to do, I’ll pay for it. And so that’s kind of the difference between when you know about a problem, When you don’t know about a problem, at least you can address it, right? And you can stop it from going from going quite far. Right. And I’d happily give a little bit of money back, considering we’re not we’re not poor. It’s not for professional. Mike.

Did you never have like an Oh, shit moment? I have. I had the no shit moment. Sure. We’ve all had them, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I must have. I lose. I should open my spreadsheet and look.

Of course. Yeah. Have you, have you never broken a tube porosity. I have, I have indeed I have indeed. That was a no shit moment for me.

Moment for me as well. That was definitely an ownership and it was an shit moment because it came up with the tooth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then there was, there was tissue hanging off the back and luckily I’d done an oral surgery job, so I kind of thought, Oh, I can stitch this up. But it was far more complicated than I thought it was going to be. And then It’s funny, isn’t it? Then from then on, every, every seven or upright upright seems to be such a such a joy. Yeah. Suddenly you realise it’s that sort of not knowing what you don’t know sort of thing isn’t it.

Exactly. Exactly. And then you get PTSD.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what’s yours. Go on up any, any more anymore. This is my favourite part of the show because you can tell I.

Trying to think. I think.

I think, I.

Think I remember. Oh I remember one. I remember this lady. She was, I was replacing her upper central crown like a hero. You know, only a hero would do that. And she wanted it to look better and all the rest of it. And when I went to cement it, the core broke the cover. So I tried to repair the core and then cement the crown.

On that visit. Yeah. Yeah.

And schoolboy error. Yeah.

I know.

And this patient was watching everything I was doing in the the light, the reflection.

Of the mirror. Oh, yeah.

And when I did it, when I sat her up I said that as I stand she said to me she goes, you haven’t done that properly. I say well she goes, yeah I saw it. Break was like, Oh shit. So that was an absolute moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then she came back with her boyfriend and he started kicking off. Then I had to call the principal and then he said, Look, you know, sometimes these things happen. That’s what we do. But she wanted my blood. She wanted my blood. And you know what the funniest thing was? She let me do it. It’s not like she said, Oh, look, it’s broke. What are you doing? She just let me do it.

I know when you’re a patient, I can understand you. So just. Just watching. So what happened? What happened?

I see you think it didn’t go too far for you? Just refunded refunded treatments. You just wanted the money back and a free night. So that was that. But I’m trying to think, man, I’m trying to think.

End of story. That was the end of story.

I mean, that was in the story.

I’m sorry to sound disappointed you.

Would you want hear the whole legacy, the whole saga? I’m trying to think of one now.

I mean, you know, it’s a case of something people can learn from, really.

Something that people can learn from. Looking like a very poor teacher right now.

Have you lost, lost, lost, lost the confidence of a patient. And I guess that one.

Well, this ain’t our shit moment. But you’re talking about losing confidence. Yeah, I’ll tell you this one. So when I first started private, you know, one of the. You know, at this time, I’m only getting a handful of patients. So I say every one counts. And this guy I came in was Australian and he had a full show, and I still had like, my nice hat on the football jokes and all of that. So he walks in, it takes his jacket off, I see the football shirt and I go, Oh mate, I said, There’s the exit. And I pointed to it and he just looked at me like, What are you saying to me? Who are you? You know, he just looked horrified.

And I was he didn’t understand, but he just.

Thought I was I don’t know what he thought he was. I was just telling him to get out. I just brought him into the surgery and then I told him to get out. You know, it was just a massive miscommunication. But, you know, you just you’re fighting now to save the interaction, the how, the very supplicating money. You know, like, you know, this is what you can do and really trying to pander to this man. And he was not having it had the whole appointment. You know, it wasn’t happy. He complained about it, still wanting my treatment plan, had emails back and forth. But yeah, I really put my foot in my mouth with that one.

And that’s just just talk me through it. You’re an Arsenal fan and he walks in with a Spurs shirt or something. One of those sort of things.

Yeah, one of those, Yeah. So.

Yeah, it was so funny. It was. It was. It was just.

Something and all I thought it was it’s just a little bit of a poor banter, but yeah, just a bit of it. Yeah. This guy did not like banter and all the rest of it, but yeah, I mean, you learn, you learn from those words.

So now the thing is, dude, I said I introduced you by saying you’re a master at holding the attention of people. Yeah. So, you know, obviously most of the time this sort of thing doesn’t happen to you. You’re quite the opposite. You’re building amazing relationships with people. And I’m even thinking back to that day when you popped into our studio shoot, the whole there was 15 of us just surrounding you, listening to your stories, right? So maybe, maybe that’s why you’re having trouble remembering these, because you’re generally quite good at this sort of thing.

Maybe. Maybe, you know, who knows? Did you get talking Bitcoin?

Did you invest after the lockdown that after after COVID, that that little one? Or did you not wear that like given up well?

Well, this is it, right? Ptsd is a very real thing, you know, and I’m sure it applies to loads of things, but you are just kind of traumatised by like, Oh, like what the hell? Right. So imagine I actually I actually puked everything. I sold everything at three K, Right. And for people who don’t know, Bitcoin went to 69 K you know, not too long after that. And I only really switched my bias like after 20 K, But then at that point, you know, a lot of, a lot of the meat of the move that kind of happened right so like from three to to 60 is like 20 X right from from from 20 to 60 to three X. So I mean it shouldn’t be greedy. Three X is still amazing. But yeah, I mean now I just now I just keep it safe. I just automatically buy every month, you know, it’s just like an investment dollar cost average every month. And if prices look really juicy, really good, then, then I’ll just put a whole chunk in. But yeah, I don’t really talk about it too much anymore because I remember when when Bitcoin went to 69 K, it felt really toppy to me.

You know, I’d seen this show a good few times and had little group of my mates and that and, and some of these guys are making really good money in this cycle. Like they made ridiculous money. I said, you know, it just takes them off the table, you know, just lock in some of those gains. Right. And nobody listens to me. And I had a sound thesis. I said, look, it’s tried to break out all time high twice. It’s trying to go up there twice. This is the third time, probabilities wise, it’s very unlikely to fail. The third time I’m going to punt it. I did. It failed. I got out, I sold everything, and then I just watched a shit show after that. So I’m just only slightly blind recently. Really just started really nice getting some nice chunks again. But yeah, we’ll see. I’ll come back on this show in a couple of years if I am not doing dentistry or anything anymore.

I mean, after that FDX debacle, I felt like it was it was all on a discount. And I felt like that was it was it was a good time to buy. So and and yet and yet some people I know gave up the whole idea that crypto was ever going to be a thing after that because it’s FTC’s the second biggest exchange or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but that’s just perception, right?

Yeah.

Perception because they were in it and now they’ve lost X percentage of their equity. But if they weren’t in it and they missed that cycle, now they’d be looking at these prices licking their lips. So it’s just perception, right.

No, but it’s like what I’m saying is they lost confidence in cryptocurrency.

Oh, why, why, why.

After after FDX went down. Now, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that. Yeah, but I know some people who did, you know, and and I guess that’s that’s, that’s the arbitrage, right? So I’m saying that was a good time to buy. Yeah. Yeah. Because there was enough people like that. But it’s a funny one. Yeah. Because you know if in 2000 you said Yeah, the Internet. Yeah. Then you sure that’s a good idea. But if you were invested in some crappy thing that went under in 2002. And Google didn’t even exist at that point. You know, we’re kind of at that point with crypto. It could be that Bitcoin is the Google or or whatever, Etherium or, you know, what’s it going to be, Matic or something? Or it could be it could be that there’s one that we still haven’t heard of. Sure. Or one that’s like. So, you know, a and it’s something that’s so, so, so small right now that we haven’t put enough money in it. It’s a funny thing. Investment. I bet you there’s loads and loads of dentists who’ve lost loads and loads of money on stock markets and cryptos. So I think it kind of relies on that idea of that sort of. Gordon Gekko I can I can do better than the prose here, which, which you can’t.

I’m telling you.

Firsthand, you know.

These guys have been doing it for 24 years professionally, live and breathe it. And then you think you’re going to step in on the on a recreational one and you’re going to do better than those guys, I think. You know, that’s the thing as well, because we’ve got a decent level of education. We think that level of education is transferable. No, it’s very specific. You’ve learned a very, very we’ve learned a very specific trade wire, and it doesn’t transfer that well to many other things. But we I think that’s a bias of sorts. I can’t remember the name, but it’s a bias of sorts where you’ve gotten to a certain level in a pursuit, then we think that we’re at that level for other pursuits as well. But it just certainly isn’t what we.

Think we can get. Which is which is which is actually why we asked you that question at the beginning about the difference between being a dentist and being a dental supplier. Because, you know, if you look at some of the best supply, I don’t know. I’ve always sort of really admired the guys from the guys from Kohl’s. I’ve always really admired those two companies, the people they’ve always hired. There’s loads of others that missing. But, you know, let’s just take those two companies, right? When you look at people who are really good in that business, what they have isn’t necessarily what a great dentist has. It’s a different thing. It’s a different thing. So and, you know, so so that’s what I meant about the. What have you found surprising? Because I clearly remember thinking I could sell because I was selling veneers, veneers to patients, and then later on realising I can’t sell them. I’m not a sales. Sales isn’t my forte. You know, when when we first started talking to dentists about it.

Well, certainly about again, the adoption curve and then you learn a little bit about your market as well, just because you’ve got great products and you can present it and say, look, it’s a really cracking deal. Best Buy, you start it on the market, for example. It doesn’t mean people are going to buy it. So that was a bit surprising because I thought, look, man, I got this great thing, you know, transfer transform me from like zero to, like, mildly better. But like.

Just it.

Transformed me. So you think it can do that for everybody else and you think that it’s just a no brainer, right? But then there was a there was a maturation phase for me becoming all in on this. And there’s a maturation phase for them, too. Like, they’ve seen it like, you know, I’ll give an example. As a guy who came to our first talk, the first talk like the premier, kind of like the story of how I got involved with Growth curve and that whole thing and then that giant for six months, you know, conversations back and forth. But nothing. No, no purchase, no advancement, no like talking about, yeah, let’s do something. And then six months down the line says, Yeah, can you come to my surgery on a book to train my associates? So, like, I’ve understood that, you know, people aren’t on your timeline. They’re on their own, you know? So you can’t, you can’t rush things. You can’t be trying to shove things down their throat. Like people are ready when they’re ready. Right.

Can I have talks about this with patients? He trains practices about the slow, medium and fast lane in the middle lane fastly buyers. And it’s very true. It’s very true. He said something like a third a massive chunk of the of the of the market will take 18 months to decide whether to buy something or not. Something like 30% of the market will be like that. And all of our follow up processes, both in dental practice and I don’t know what your follow up processes are at great curve, right? But at enlighten, you know, the salespeople after they’ve harassed the practice for six weeks or something, they said, Well, this guy’s not interested. Yeah, but, but sometimes it takes 18 months, you know? So it’s a funny thing. Tell me about what you learned from the military.

I learned in the military, I learned that sometimes you’d be part of a team and there would be people in that team you don’t like, but you’ve got to get the job done. And so you find ways to do that. You find ways to do that, not kick up a stink, not kick up a hissy fit. Sometimes it end up in a scrap, but in that kind of environment, that’s alright. But yeah, that was a good thing. You know, just not everyone’s going to agree with you, but people will. People can still follow your orders If you’re respectful and you’ve got a sound thesis, know people can trust your judgement and not have to like you. But yeah, it’s obviously it’s easier if people really like you because then they’re much more likely to kind of go over the hill with you. I learnt I learned a lot about physical challenges. You know, when you’re stressed and you’re, you’re going through a bad patch. Whatnot. You go do something physically demanding, and I’m talking really physically demanding something cold where you can’t think about your worries. Or you can just think about how cold you are and how tired you are and how hungry you are. And how vicious is this wind right now. Now it teaches you a thing or two, right? You know, I don’t think I was the best risk manager, however, you know, because I want to do some parachute jumps with the army.

And that was a bit like everyone was buzzing to do it, all young guys wanting to do it. So I learned that even the most steadfast of people, you know, people who are so like, Oh, I’m going to be a paratrooper. Like, I’ve got friends of mine who really just want to be paratroopers from the beginning, and some want to be Marines and all that. And one of my friends, I’m still really good friends with him now. He’s actually a captain in the parachute regiment now, but he was so steadfast about it. And then we go on this. I do my first jump, and the probabilities will suggest this is supremely unlikely, but my parachute malfunctioned as I jumped out the plane. So it’s basically a ball of washing as I’m falling towards the ground and I’m falling pretty damn fast and I don’t really have that much time to get rid of that one and deploy the second one. Now, this friend of mine who was really steadfast, he was on the ground and he could they obviously knew what was happening, Right. That there had been a malfunction. And then I don’t know. I don’t know if he knew it was me or not. But obviously he knew when I landed. And then that evening we had our next jump plan the next day. He just didn’t want to do it, you know, He just he lost.

He lost his cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was that was really interesting. You know, like, like sometimes, you know what people present and it doesn’t take much sometimes to just derail someone, you know? So and that taught me, you know, if I’m going to do something, I can’t let somebody else’s wobble affect me all my own. You know, if you’ve got like. And anyway, he didn’t. Right. But I remember saying to him, like, look, we’ve got to do this jump now, because if we don’t do it, we’re never going to jump again type of deal. So yeah, we did, it worked out alright. And, but I take that really ironic that same day, the next day where we did a jump, somebody else had a malfunction as well, which is like really improbable. So talk about the heebie jeebies.

With with with the army and stuff like that. You get the sort of from the outside, you look at it like a cliched sort of ideas of, all right, so, you know, they’re they’re the best friends you have or whatever, because you’re going to look after each other. And if it came down to it or I don’t know the transferable skills between leading a battalion of men or leading a company, you know, so. All right. There’s the sort of the sort of from the outside, the obvious stuff here. But what are the nuances? What are the things that I wouldn’t know about that are interesting about being in that group of like in the extremes must bring out things in people. So there’s one that you just mentioned, the this guy losing his cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the extremes. Well well, I mean, I love that stuff too. I, I remember I remember that there was once Army versus Navy Rugby match. Right? And people came to our unit and I just bought these brand spanking new army boots. Right. These lowers the business. The business. And then when I came in, you know, on drill night, my locker had been busted open and so had everybody else’s. And it was this like visiting unit. They came and just ransacked everybody’s stuff. Right. And that was, I suppose, something. You just think that just doesn’t happen. Right? And there’s there’s other worse things that happen that these are soldiers, you know, like, yeah, they’re professional, they’re professional soldiers, but they’re lads at the end of the day and they’re very laddish and like there’s horrendous things that have happened in units, you know. And then there’s, there’s things like, I know if you’ve ever heard of deep cuts, have you had a deep cut? It’s like a, it’s like a place where loads of people have died on training and they don’t think it’s a coincidence. Yeah, they don’t think it’s a coincidence. You know, like there’s lots of and we’ll probably never know. No one’s ever really going to know. Right. So there’s stuff like that that goes on and then there’s things that leak out that, you know, do the rounds on WhatsApp and then everybody does their best to kind of just put it away. And and even they get told if anyone’s caught sending this stuff around, you know, they’ll get punished and all the rest of it. But yeah, I see my fair share, these kind of funny things. I can’t say too much about those things, but yeah, shocking, shocking things, you know, like sneaking girls into the place and much worse, much worse to the human.

The human. And what’s then bullying and much worse.

Yeah. Bullying. Bullying is a thing. Bullying is a thing, but bullying is a thing in lots of places. Bullying sitting in lots of places. But that’s an environment where actually like. You can kind of stand up for yourself a little bit and it’ll probably be respected. You know, you’ll probably be respected. So it’s maybe a test of sort sometimes as well. It’s a different culture.

And were you were you known as the funny guy in in the military as well?

Well, no. I was definitely a joke. So, like, when they when we used to have, like a drumhead service before going and going off on, like an exercise, they’d be like two or 300 people there. And one of the sergeant majors would ask if he wants to tell a joke while we were waiting for the padre or something, you know, and somebody would come up and tell a rubbish joke and somebody else would tell a rubbish joke. And then he’d ask for me by name and say, Where is he? Bring him in. And then I’d step up and make everyone laugh with a good old like I’ve got three really good ones in my head that I just keep right for those really important situations. But they’re not. They’re not fit for air or they’re not fit for podcast, I promise.

Oh, but tell me this. But, you know, when I look back on Enlightened and I think of regrets I’ve had and I don’t I don’t want you to have those same regrets or any regrets. You of course you have regrets, right? Whatever. Whatever you do in life, you know, you can look back and say, I could have done that differently or done that better. But I feel like one sort of regret I had was early on. We didn’t sort of go down that raising money, entrepreneurial sort of angle. And I remember in the first year we turned over like 80 grand or something and the whole year and I think I remember I think I’d made more as a dentist or something. I remember I remember the number being just really bad, really bad. And then maybe in the second year, I don’t know, maybe it was 140 grand. And then in the third year, maybe it was 160. It wasn’t like it wasn’t an upturn up into the right in the way that people talk about businesses now. And we were we had several cash crises and moments that the whole thing might have just gone away.

And, you know, we’d put our houses up for just to get these silly tiny loan from the bank. And then these days, you know, talking to some some young dentist, he started a company and he said, yeah, you know, we just got £1,000,000 for a first round of finance and now we’re looking at a £4 million round to order, you know, series A and all this. And I sort of thought, you know, I think it took us five years before a total of £1,000,000 had come in. Maybe longer than that, you know, cumulatively five years of pain and risk. And this guy on day one had raised £1,000,000. Have you thought about I remember you came on that show where we were looking for for investment. But if you thought about the differences between, you know, the sort of the corner shop way of doing it, which is the way we did it organic. Or, you know, the more entrepreneurial way of doing it, of bringing in partners, bringing in a CEO, a CFO, bringing in investors. Do you think about those two?

Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. Interestingly, you know, I’ve got like a bit of a bit of an angle at the moment that we’re just exploring, which is this bottle that we’re we’re rolling out here, which is people can buy the product directly if they, you know, they can just use the products. We can have like an online offering. So they could do the online course where we go through all the techniques and all the stuff that I’ve learnt and Dr. Brown’s developed and they’ll get the starter kit included in that. So that’s like a really low entry. Then we’ve got the hands on, then we’ve got the in practice. So this kind of framework and I suppose the social data, the WHO resonates with our message most, who do we help most? Who are the people who have benefited the most? And distilling down into all of that kind of stuff allows for us to reproduce this model. You know, we’re scaling it to the point where we’re looking to add trainers very, very quickly. Because just to prove I mean, this one is guys, his name’s Ford. You know, he he came and did the program in May, and he’s just flying, you know, some of his works better than mine, hands down.

Like just beautiful stuff. And so we are exploring how do we how do we not only scale that, but how do we make sure everybody’s got upside and is motivated to do that. But then also look at how we could then move that distribution and education model to other places, you know, so bringing in other people to kind of expand it to other regions as well. So yeah, certainly considering that and in terms of in terms of like having an executive board and all that kind of stuff, right now, it very much is like the Lean Start-Up model, you know, it very much is. Take this as far as it can go right now. And for us, it’s not incremental gains. You know, it is like it was quiet then. It’s less quiet. And then now there’s is somebody reaching out every day, you know, like it’s just building and building on that. So it feels like it’s going at a pace where, yeah, we can still manage it because lots of automations. But yeah, there will be a time where we’re going to have to really structure it.

No, but I mean investment. Yeah. Because once, once you get investment, then you get other people telling you what to do as well. Yeah, but are you going to look for investment or you’re not? Because at least you know, we didn’t. We didn’t. And I regret it. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying to you. It doesn’t. Doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that it’s wrong for you or whatever. Right. We were in two totally different times 20 years ago. You are now and you know. But you know what? I wanna reflect on it. I think. Listen, man, you live in London, right? Just the investment capital of the world. I mean, if I was living in some town outside, wherever, then fine. But I’m living in London. I went to school with a bunch of investment people I know a bunch of investment people who are kids, parents or, you know, investments. A huge thing here. Yeah. Yeah. And yet we didn’t do it. We didn’t. And so, by the way, who knows if we’d done it, they might have shut us down five years ago, ten or 15 years ago or whatever. Yeah, but I don’t know, just a bit of unsolicited sort of advice for me, from me to you isn’t go get investment. But consider, you know, be purposeful about whether you are or you aren’t getting investment because, you know, when this kid this kid told me, look, yeah, we raised £1,000,000 on day one, I literally felt those five, six years of pain and suffering that you’re probably going through right now. On day one. This guy brought in that much money with no business. It was a business plan. Yeah, you know, think about it.

Okay? It’s something. I mean, just a tangible. I mean, I understand your angle totally, but we do have two strategic partners now that are. You know, we’ve had discussions about funding from there. And, you know, because we’ve got a bit of synergy, there’s a lot of overlap between their aims and our aims. And some of the conversations we’ve had recently have been, Oh, look, if this goes to plan, we’ll certainly consider funding you because it will help their business for us to do well. So yeah, not totally averse to the idea, but yeah, of course. Just a step at a time, isn’t it?

True? True. All right. But you will. It’s been a massive pleasure talking to you, man, as usual. And I want to. I want to have you back in a couple of years time and know that you’re, like, way forward. Because considering it’s your first year, you’ve done very, very well with this. And if someone wants to learn more about DRA, where do they go?

Yes, I trade directory sort of. Excellent. You can learn more at w w w dot dre composite dot com and the social media is at the same Instagram composite.

And your thing is Dr. Sunny, right?

Yeah. I mean, who wants to look at me.

Now that you said that. Let me, let me, let me take a picture. We always finish with the same two questions, buddy. Let’s start with my fancy dinner party question Fancy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive, Who’s going to be really?

Just list them. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, tell me. You won One by one.

One by one. Marcus Aurelius.

Oh, yeah. You know, stoic.

Yeah. The Emperor.

Stoic.

Good. Yeah. The last good emperor.

Okay. Why? Yeah.

Just what a life. What a life. One of the most powerful people ever in history and chose to be a man of honour and virtue. You know, very, very, very interesting. I find that very, very interesting. Where many people would just succumb to desire and everything else. He chose not to. Had a hard life.

Don’t. You’re a fan of ancient history.

I’m a fan of history. I’m a fan of history. Yeah, History. History. Say, history doesn’t repeat by often rhymes.

Yeah. So Marcus Aurelius.

Number two would be Thomas Sole. Do you know who that is? Thomas Sole?

No. Who’s that?

He’s an economist slash historian, but just a very, very pragmatic thinker. And his books are the ones that really make me just stop and just realise to myself, Man, I’m not as clear as I thought I was. I don’t even understand this page, you know.

So well with the W.

That’s correct.

So what’s the name of the book?

The one I’m getting stuck on right now is a conflict of visions.

I’m on the Wikipedia right now. Just checking him out. But. But go and say something about him. Say something you learned.

So he’s he’s just very, very interesting guy. Like he’s a Harvard professor, Stanford professor. You know, he just he’s an old boy. I really enjoy the company of old boys because they just don’t need to impress anybody anymore. So they just tell you how it is. And this guy is very factual, but also challenges some of some of some of my own beliefs and I suppose many, many people’s beliefs. Right. But you would just certainly challenge it in a very fact based manner, very evidence based. So, yeah, he’s just he’s a breath of fresh air.

Well.

Finally, I love Satoshi Nakamoto.

The guy who made Bitcoin.

And I get my money back.

Could get more money. So, Toshi, whoever that is, right? Yeah.

Or they could be a they could be multiple.

Good answer, man. I haven’t heard that one. That one before. That was a good answer for obvious reasons. Right. So what about perhaps final questions on your deathbed? You got your nearest and dearest around you. Three pieces of advice. You would leave them.

For a moment. Keep it short and sweet, Right? So I’d say to.

Them, No, no, no, no.

All right. Well, I say to to be patient with with others, but strict on yourself.

Mhm.

I let them know that real education happens. Yeah. Real education happens out of the classroom. And they are solely responsible for their education. They can’t rely on other people to teach them. It’s up to them what they learn and how they learn and what they learn. And then I’d say, make time for your wellbeing or be forced to make time for your illness. As I or my dad for different from an alcohol overdose.

And there is one final question that I asked on the on the latest podcast hasn’t gone out yet, but I kind of interested in what you have to say about it. Who would be your your dream guest for this podcast.

Dentist. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the show is called Dental Leaders.

Dentist. Who’s my dream dentist? Having a show. That’s a good one. That is a very good one.

About your guy. The greater curve guy.

Yeah, well, I was just about to say that it.

Has to be.

Dr. Dennis Brown.

Perfect match.

Yeah.

Any others come to mind And the others come to mind?

Any of that? Well, I’ll tell you who’s an interesting person who I’d love to see on this. Who I know, right? And this gentleman is a lab technician.

Yeah.

And he’s a lab tech. And he used to have a lab in Cornwall, and he had a bit of land as well. Long story. He’s got his own story. I won’t spoil it for you, just in case you do get your money. And then he set up his own practice on that same land, became the owner slash principal as a technician and as some of the most top spec dentists.

Working when Jason Smithson worked there. Yeah.

Martin talking. So he’s he’s a quarterback guy.

The practice is a stunner.

Beautiful. I’ve been there. Oh, yeah. I went to go see him.

How do you know him? You just reached out.

Well, of.

Course.

Simon. Of course. He seemed like a really interesting guy because, yeah, he was kind of challenging the lecture, which was interesting. And then so at lunchtime, I just said to you, Can I sit with you? And he said, Yeah. And then we started chatting, start telling me about it. And then he said, Just come see it. So I did.

It. As beautiful as it looks.

Oh, stunning. Beautiful, Beautiful place. Beautiful, lovely people. Lovely people, Lovely culture. He’s a great guy as well.

Brilliant, buddy. It’s been. It’s been a pleasure. Pleasure’s all mine. I hope to see you soon. Are you exhibiting any of the dental shows?

They will be at the. The media.

What do you do?

Yeah. And we’ve got another one that will be at this this month. But this is not to the public. So I’ll tell you about earlier.

Call me. Call me about the media. The first. The first time you do media, it’s a bit of a massive shock. Why has that happened? Oh, really? Yeah. Call me. We’ll talk about that, buddy.

Oh, lovely. Appreciate that.

I wish someone. I wish someone had done that for me. First PDA I went to.

Oh, really? I appreciate that.

Yeah, Well, thanks so much for doing this, buddy. As always, such a such a pleasure to spend time with you. I’d love to see you soon. In real life, for sure.

We’ll make it happen.

Cool, Betty.

Take care.

Hey.

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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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.

Let’s get let’s get to darker moments.

Now, here we go.

Normally we get to the normally get to them a bit earlier on this podcast, but someone was telling me, I’ve met someone on the weekend that you really enjoy that bit with the darker moments. Yeah. And I kind of do, if I’m being honest, to.

Talk to you. Payman You got really.

Enjoyed for sure. Tell me. I mean, it’s important we talk about them, right? We learn, we learn from them, and we don’t talk about them enough in medicine or dentistry mistakes. Tell me about mistakes you’ve made. It could be an oh, shit moment. It could be a treatment planning mistake. It could be a patient who lost their confidence. And you know that that sort of patient management mistake. Tell me something about mistakes. You must have had your fair share. Doing the kind of work you’re doing.

To be honest, I’ve had that many mistakes during my career. It’s really difficult for me to point out which one would be, you know, the most relevant one at this stage. You know.

Some something people can learn from.

Oh, I’ve got Payman honesty. I have that many and everyone can learn from. And that is the best way of learning, isn’t it? People talk about learning from your mistakes, but actually that’s not the best way. The best way of learning is from learning from other people’s mistakes. I mean, even from maybe six months ago, six months ago. So this is more of a recent mistake. I had a patient travel up quite a long distance from Ipswich, came up with their dentist, the dentist came with their nurse. The patient’s quite medically compromised. They’re on, I think, three different types of chemotherapeutic drugs, so quite hardcore drugs. So we had to liaise with the medics to to time her surgery to make sure she’s off the drugs for a certain period before it gets really bad and then put her back on it. So everything had to be timed really well with sedating her. And she has a very, very atrophic mandible. So like very, very atrophic. So she had seen a number of people who said no to her that they wouldn’t treat her. She had something like six mils in heights of bone, so really quite thin. So that’s thinner than a pencil and about the same amount in width bucko, lingual. So I’m doing the surgery and it’s quite stressful surgery of course, because there’s a high risk of mandible fracture. And this lady is aware of the risks and there’s also risks of bleeding, risk of numbness, because the nerves on the on the bony crest and everything’s going well.

And then I can’t remember what happened. I can’t remember what happened. But as I was placing this implant because it was quite high stress and I wanted to be in and out with this case, I’d put the implants in for implants were going in. You know, this is the last implant. I was getting really happy because I knew she’d have fixed teeth and she’s not had fixed teeth in the past. I think 25 years she’s not had any fixed teeth. She’s not been able to eat any solid food. And I put the implant in the carrier and I go to put the implant into the hole that I’d made. And I had it changed the settings on my motor. So the implant went in at the same speed as I as I was drilling the bone, which is something like 1200. And it’s meant to, it’s meant to go in at 30. So you can understand the difference in ratio. Yeah. And the implant went in. I couldn’t then leave it there because it went in too deep and half of the implant was sticking out under her jaw. So it had gone through the mandible because there was at least six mils in high anyway, and the top of the implant was at the was at the lower border of the mandible.

Goodness. So I and it’s an implant that you can’t reverse out because it’s kind of a press fit. I couldn’t get the carrier on to reverse that out. It’s stuck there. So I’m in this predicament. I can’t leave it there because it’s sticking out of her lower jaw. It’s sticking out of her chin. So I then have to well, I didn’t know what to do. I was I was in a oh shit moment type thing. And I was really quite stressed about it. And I’ve not been that stressed in a hell of a long time. And I do, as you know, I do quite high risk work and I’m here, there and everywhere in in the jaw’s upper and lower. But I was really stressed in that case and I had no choice but to remove bone around this implant, which then meant a high risk of mandible fracture. I had my plating kit there. So just in case, if the mandible fractured, I could plate it together. But that’s not ideal because it’s an atrophic mandible and it’s hard to to plate together if it fractures. So it’s just really, really stressful and all because I did it check the motor settings as I was putting the implant in. It’s just one of those off key moments, you know, that happened and that was only six months ago, you know. But anyway.

When you drilled, drilled around it, you drilled around it and you managed to get some sort of purchase on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, you know, you have to then expose the lower board of the mandible and put an instrument up to try and push it upwards as you’re trying to pull it out at the same time. So it was just, it was just high stress which could have been avoided. And actually, you know, that’s more of a recent thing. There’s been you know, there’s been other, you know, kind of cases where I’ve had significant bleeds. You know, I’ve had some really big bleed. That have happened. You know, that’s been hard to stop because, you know, how do you stop a bleed once it’s happened? You try and litigate it, you try and cauterise it, but it’s spraying out so quickly that it’s hard to like, you know, close it off or cauterise it or whatever. I’ve had some really. I’ve also had some stressful moments in GI during my training where I got really well with one of my trainers. We’ve had some high risk cases coming into into hospital. And again, they’re coming into hospital because they’re high risk cases, but you don’t realise exactly how high risk they are until you’re actually doing it. But yeah, I’ve had, I’ve had all kinds of things happen. Um, but that’s the most.

When something goes wrong like that. A lot of times you rely on your relationship with the patient to get you out of that, to say, you know, put your hands up. Say, Look, something’s gone wrong. I’ve done my best. You haven’t got a relationship. You haven’t got a relationship with these patients. I do pay. How do you.

Manage? I do because I’ve already screened them to make sure that they’re reasonable people and they understand the complexity and nature of the work that we’re doing.

Have they? That they’ve never met you before? You’ve done the work?

No, but it’s really quite interesting, actually. Even today, I’ve had I’ve had a case referred to me where this lady had gone around all the houses. She’s got all these failing implants and she’s high risk of mandible fracture. Again, it’s an Atrophic case. She’s got six implants all done in India. They’ve been there for 15 years, 20 years. They’ve all they’ve lost all the bone around them. And just taking the implants out is high risk. But she’s got to see that many people who have all said no and my name has popped up and then her I think her daughter is a doctor and she’s friends with some implant dentists who have also mentioned my name. So she’s come to to see this mentee of mine, knowing that she’ll see my mentee and knowing that I’ll be the one doing it. So even though I’ve not met her, she she’s aware of who I am because, you know, word kind of gets around because not many people want to do these kind of cases, which are very high risk. So I’ve already built up a relationship, not not a relationship, but there’s.

Already I get it. I get it.

And then when I do meet that patient, you know, I’m I’m a very frank kind of person. I’m very, very frank. I’m sometimes people may think I’m quite brash and abrupt, but with this type of work, I can’t I can’t afford to be cotton wool knowing that the procedure, you know, I have to be quite direct with patients. And I think that comes across as experience and patients appreciate that.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree that you can’t. I think what you meant, you can’t sugarcoat it. Right. It’s, it’s kind of, it’s yeah, it’s like it’s a big surgical procedure, you know, you’re going through that story. Just stress the hell out of me. Yeah.

And you know what, Payman? Because you ask me. Because you asked me to repeat that story like the stress was coming.

Back to me.

Yeah, I did. Yeah. I was like, Jesus Christ, Why did I? You know, because you start thinking because a lot. You have to remember a lot of these patients have nowhere to go because a lot of people don’t want to touch them or treat them. So they’re reaching out to me, knowing that, you know, I’ve said yes to them and there’s a kind of a light at the end of the tunnel. And I, of all people, want the treatment to go as smoothly as possible with no complications at all, you know, So I’m then doing these kind of treatments. And sometimes when these things happen, I think, why the hell am I doing this work for? You know, I could just say no to the patient. They can go away with a denture. It’s not my problem. But I’m legitimately out there, genuinely out there to try and help patients and help solve their problems, which is their quality of life. You know, people forget that we provide implants. Well, especially this level of implants, because, you know, patients have lost their quality of life. They’re not coming to see me because they want nice, gleaming white teeth that Robbie does or Kailash does or, you know, these lovely, you know, the lovely work that these guys do. They’re coming to see me because they can’t eat, they can’t speak, you know, which also means they can’t walk out of their house and go for a swim because their teeth won’t stay in, you know. So they just want quality of life back and a little bit of normality. And it’s disappointing for me when things like that happen.

I was I was listening to Laura Horton. You’re aware of what you must be. She’s like a TCO trainer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On a different on a different podcast, on Sandeep podcast. And, and she was saying, you know, that, that getting through when you train a TKO getting through the idea that you know their teeth but if it’s. Life changing dentistry like the stuff you’re doing, then you’re talking about, like you say, someone being able to eat, someone being able to kiss, to fall in love. You know, these are these are really super important things, right? Yeah. And to get that through to the to the team here that we are, we’re providing that sort of service is not just a filling or a a bleaching or my world. You know, It’s amazing. It’s amazing stuff.

Yeah, that is it. It’s. It’s the whole face. It’s not just their teeth, it’s the whole face. And and to be fair, that’s the reason why I do this work. It’s so rewarding. It’s so fulfilling.

But I might be wrong about this year because we don’t really know each other. We’ve met here for the first time. Yeah, but you don’t strike me as the type of guy who’s up for sitting around in meetings on boards of of stuff. And yet you are treasurer of the HDI. Or am I wrong about that?

You’re right. Yeah, you are right. You really have done your research about my background. But yeah, no, that’s right. I’ve so it’s quite interesting isn’t it, because you mentioned that Amit Patel So I had never met Amit Patel before and we used to clash, not clash but you know, you know, I told you seven, eight years ago I was a little bit more abrupt on social media.

Social media has a way of doing that to people.

Yeah, it does. It does. But to be fair though, payment, I can be quite abrupt in real life as well. I let people know my thoughts and my feelings. I don’t shy away from that. So so. So Amit Patel is also, I think, quite a similar personality sometimes. But and we both started on the ADI together and it’s quite unusual because we were both also, you know, normally you have to get elected onto the ADI, but we were both invited onto the ADI. The Northwest Study Club kind of went downhill a little bit. So, you know, I was asked to come on board with the ADI to try and bring up the membership in the Northwest. And we did really well, actually. And I think my first my first speaker was actually Zaki, and Zaki is now president elect. After I’m.

About to be.

President. Zaki about to be president, yeah. And Zaki literally sold out the tickets and that that first event, we didn’t even have room for standing I think from memory we had just over 90, 90 people turn up and it was just a successful after afterwards I’ve got some really good guys and girls to come in and speak. And then over the years I’ve kind of moved up a little bit in the ADI where I was the the study club director, and then I became Treasurer and I’ve been treasurer now for I think four years I’ve been Treasurer.

So I.

Was a Steve.

Jones, which was a big job at the ADI because I got a lot of money. It’s got, it’s got that reputation as a very rich organisation.

Payman I get the feeling that you’re kind of saying, why are you the Treasurer? You don’t really suit it and you’re.

Probably right, I’ll say.

I’m more of a clinician on. I know you know what, you’re absolutely right. But actually what, what a lot of people don’t know when it comes to the ADI is the ADI and all the members of the board, which include study club directors, includes the presidents, the past president, the president elect, the treasurer, the academic rep. We’re all equal in voice and actually the work we do. Yes, there’s a certain level of, you know, accountancy and treasurer work that I have to do. But actually, you know, we all work together as a team. All the decisions that we make, not everything obviously, but the vast majority of decisions we make are made as a team. It’s a team effort. Even even Amit right now is the President. Yes, he’s the president, but actually he’s the spokesperson. All that is, all the decisions we make are made as a team, as a and we’re making those decisions as a team on behalf of our membership. It’s not me just doing it. It’s not just doing it. It’s not Zaki. Just all of us are working together. It’s not always smooth sailing, of course, because we’re all of certain personalities, you know, and we all will agree on things and we’ll all disagree with things. And that’s the nature of the beast, really, isn’t it? But generally, I think, you know, we’ve done really well when it comes to the ADR. I mean, our last masterclass for AM, it ran I can’t remember the figures, but it was something ridiculous. You know, I think almost doubled to to what we had in the previous masterclass. And I think the HDI has gone from strength to strength. And I think once Zacky takes over from Amit’s presidency, it’s going to just keep going up. You know, I think it’s just going to keep going onwards and upwards, really.

I want to turn up. To one of the events because they look so lavish. They are.

They are lavish. Yeah. It’s great. You know what? Actually pay what you should. It’s not you know, it’s not just for implant dentists. I think it’s for all dentists who want to just, you.

Know, party guys to.

It’s not just for it’s not just for parties. Definitely not for parties. You know, I can I can honestly say hand on my heart the speakers, we get that come to our master classes and conferences. There are some, you know, really shit hot world class speakers that are that are around. You know, I’m really quite proud to to see some of the names that turn up to to the events. And actually that’s not just the international stuff. Even our members forum, you know, the members forum for the Adye where we get our, our members from the UK who want to provide a lecture on a certain topic. Some of the lectures that come about on the members forum are so thought provoking. You know, it’s, it’s so interesting and it’s great watching our kind of local, local people like step on stage and present their work. It’s amazing, you know, it’s but yeah, the parties are pretty good as well and you should come just for the parties as well. It’s pretty cool.

Are you planning I’m getting from this sort of presidential tone that you’re putting out now that are you planning to be a president to yourself as well? Is it like a pathway that the Treasurer then becomes the elect and then becomes is that think?

I think I know it’s not.

Are you presidential? Are you president quality by quality? Is it something you want to be the president?

That’s a that’s a that’s that’s a quite a pertinent question, really. I suppose it’s quite a deep, deep question. And I suppose I’ll be I’ll be quite frank. I think it’s not always the best position. I think sometimes it’s a little bit of a poison chalice being the president. But actually, yes, it’s quite a prominent role. It’s quite a prominent title. And for anyone passionate about implant ology and especially passionate about the Adeyeye, I think that’s always going to be, I suppose, on your horizon a little bit. You know, if I if I didn’t become if I didn’t become president, you know, I’m still quite happy knowing that I’ve made a certain contribution to the organisation, I’ve made a contribution to the work we’ve done as, as part of the ADEYEYE as a group. I’m quite happy for the contribution that I’ve made with the work we’ve done in conjunction with C.G. Dent, which was the old FDP and our collaboration with the one. Nelson Yes, that’s right, Yeah. Yeah. So we teamed up with them for some for some funding. You know, you mentioned mentoring, mentoring. We teamed up with them for the new mentoring guidelines for implant ology. So that’s I think that was their first guidelines that they set as part of the new organisation of stents leaving for VDP in the past. So yeah, I think I think, you know, I’m quite happy with the work that I’ve done so far. I’ll be happier if I can get to continue with the work, I think. But yeah, it’s not a politically worded good enough statement on, on, on. In answer to your question that I.

Know you you, you’ve certainly got the political side down my sleeve. It it’s good to see that. It’s good to see you.

You know it’s funny payment because I actually rang up am it before I came on this podcast and I was like it you’ve done this podcast. I’ve listened to your podcast like did they, did they tell you the questions they’re going to ask you in advance or or did they just, you know, And he’s like, No, no, no, no. Because I obviously, I’ve done podcasts before and I get the questions in advance and I was like, okay, that’s fine. But was there any controversial questions like, Do I need to know anything in advance because I’m rubbish at thinking off the cuff. I’m quite a.

Basic.

Basic minded person. I can’t think of the cuff.

You know what it is? You know what it is. Yet, you know what’s amazing about podcasts is that there’s a massive appetite for real talk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re cutting people off. God, that’s what you do. That’s. People want to see it.

Yeah, but real talk. You know, I had a conversation with Kailash last weekend, two weekends ago at the BCD, and it might have been a conversation that me and Kailash would have had over a beer, and it happened to be recorded, You know, real talk. Not. No, not agenda talk, not preplanned, not, you know, just just comment. And there’s a massive appetite for that. And, you know, the audience who listen to this need to listen to this ahead of. I don’t know. It’s not. It’s not. We’re not even in competition with other Dental stuff. We’re in competition with media, you know, with and, you know, real talk is is where it’s at at the moment. You know, that’s why we try not to give the questions out in advance, because I wouldn’t want it to be real, you know?

You know, I completely get that. And actually, if you really wanted that, then I should have had a couple of pints before this podcast that would have really got me settled off. But then if that had happened, I probably would have got a million phone calls after this podcast saying.

What the fuck have you.

Speak like, you know, because I’ll just say as it is a little bit, um, so it’s a bit of a balance, isn’t it, really? It’s a bit of a balance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re coming to the end of the time. I’m quite interested in what you said about wanting to be a priest. Now, where are you now? With your. I am. I am interested that. Where. Where are you now in your belief system? I mean, as a 18 year old, you were there. Where are you now with that.

Oh, that’s. Yeah. So I suppose, you know, everything changes in life, isn’t it? Outlooks and beliefs and thoughts kind of change in life. So where I am now is a very, very different place from where I was as someone in my late teens and early twenties, you know, late teens. I was actually quite deep, early twenties. I really wasn’t because I was out there just drinking away. You know, most of my time spent at undergraduate university was spent drinking and also organising events to drink in, um, you know, in Liverpool, I think in Liverpool in the early two, thousands had very little hip hop and garage and you know, that type of music. And I’d come from London and I’d come from Cranford, Southall, Hounslow and you know, garage was big back then, so most of my time was organising garage events or hip hop nights and things like that. But now my thoughts into life is very, very different from that. So in terms of religion, I wouldn’t say I’m particularly religious, I would say I’m quite spiritual. If anything, I feel quite sad that people do kind of always want to point out differences between their personal religions as opposed to come together and point out the similarities amongst all the, you know, the world kind of major religions and minor religions, to be honest. So I would say I’m kind of yeah, I’m more spiritual as opposed to religious. You know, you treat people how you want to be treated and you practice your religion in your own personal house and, you know, speak openly about it. I sometimes take offence to people wanting to instil their personal not just religious beliefs but personal beliefs onto me and onto others. But that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? I don’t think I can change that.

So you still believe in God?

Is God the right word? Yeah, I suppose so. If you class God as like a highly I don’t know how many different interpretations of that word God, isn’t it? Um, yes, it’s simple answer. Yes. I still believe in God.

It sounds what you’re saying. I know you said you don’t like the sort of classification of people into different, but you’re sounding more Buddhist than. Then, Christian.

Well, I suppose you could be both, really, isn’t it? There’s nothing to stop you from being Buddhist and Christian. So I’ve got a strong respect for Buddhism and Buddha and his thoughts, and I would actually class myself as a potentially Christian and potentially Buddhist because the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You could say you have to remember Payman. So I grew up in India to a certain level and all my family are in India still now. It’s just my my parents and my brother who’s over here and growing up in India is very different from growing up here in the UK And coming from an Indian household is also very, very different. And I’m not talking about British Indians or British Asians, I’m talking about Indian Indians, and especially in South India, and especially more so in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which is kind of the areas I’m from, where the society is very, very socialist in nature and also in religion. It’s a very, very open and welcoming kind of community. We all have a lot of love for each other. So where we’re from in Kerala, you know, there’s a lot of harmony amongst the, the main religious groups, which are the Christians, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Jains. We all get on really well with each other. We all celebrate each other’s kind of festivals. And, you know, we all, we all literally gel together and, and I think that’s very different from the north because the north of India had a very different history where they had various invasions from different areas of the world. And so it was always constantly in, I suppose, you know, a bit of a battle.

And those kind of wars came about with religious aspects to it as well. So there’s a certain level of, you know, disharmony in the north, and that’s very, very different in the south. You know, actually the south, you have to remember India was made as a country by the British. It was a very different country before. It was essentially princely states. And actually the South, the south have a has a very different culture, a very different history, a very different language and outlook on things to the north. So my upbringing in the south of India kind of moulded me to to who I am now. So my uncle, for example, my mum’s brother is an archbishop in the Orthodox Church and he holds quite a senior position on the World Council of Churches. So he regularly meets the Pope and so on. But his doctoral thesis was on the Bhagavad Gita, which is one of the Hindu holy, holy scripts. And actually if you speak to him again, he’s very, very spiritual and religious. And his outlook on the various religions out there, you know, coming as a scholar is very, very open compared to some of the other kind of, I suppose, priests. And I’m not when I say priest, I don’t mean just Christian priests, but, you know, priests from various religious clerics, from the various different faiths that may have a little bit more of a closed mind when it comes to other religions. So, yeah, my my outlook is very different.

Kerala sounds like a super interesting place. I’ve never been. But, you know, you hear about the female literacy rate a lot. You. Yeah, the food. I’d really love to go a couple of times but Kerala sounds yet different again because the Kerala I’ve spoken to really really point that out to me. Yeah.

Like yeah, it’s not like Goa Payman is.

Nothing like Goa.

Goa is a Goa is like comparing London and like a bar in London. And your local pub is like when you’re comparing Goa and Kerala because Goa, you have to remember it’s just a tourist place. It’s not really India, you know. Of course there’s some actual Indian places around there, but most people go to Goa as a tourist place and it’s nothing like India and Kerala, you know? And if you speak to most Malay allies, we’re quite strong in our opinion of Kerala and how great it is and how we’d all like to go back because it really is that amazing. And it really is honestly, you know, I look back at how lucky we are as a society in Kerala and that’s mainly because we are a little bit more socialist. We’re not hardcore communists, we’re a bit socialist, we are a little bit more harmonious amongst our religions. And people just gel, you know, people get on with each other and it works really well. And it’s not just literacy. We’ve got, you know, comparable figures of quality of life. The West, as well as not just quality of life, but quality of death, which is also quite an important factor. We’ve got similar figures to health care in the West. You know, so there’s a lot of positives when it comes to care. And you know, when you land in Canberra, everything’s flipping green. You know, there’s that much greenery out there and you know, it’s just it’s astounding. And I love visiting that place. You know, it’s it’s an amazing it’s it really is a home from home for me.

I hope I don’t become one of the, you know, one of those silly tourists who comes and ruins it for you because it’s suddenly becoming a more popular place on the on the there’s people going to Kerala a lot these days. Yeah. But it is on my list to tell you it’s on my list to go.

You know, funnily enough, it’s not the tourist from outside of India. It’s the it’s the tourists from within India that are coming to Kerala the most. Yeah, the North Indians and people from elsewhere. You know, when I was growing up, we would never, ever see a Sikh person ever. And if he did see a Sikh person, a sick person from the north, everyone would stop and just stare at them in Kerala. And now, you know, it’s an every when I go back, you know, it’s just a it’s an everyday occurrence. Same with people from Afro-Caribbean or African backgrounds. You know, you wouldn’t often see people from that background. And same with people from a Caucasian background. You wouldn’t see them that often in Kerala and all these different people, If you did see them back in the day, everyone would stop and just look because they’re just never seen someone who was Sikh or see someone who was of a white background or see someone from a black background. You know, it was just a different world. It’s completely different now. Of course, it’s you know, the worlds are oyster really, isn’t it?

It’s on the tourist map now. You know, you just hear of people going to Kerala. It’s it’s a thing I’ve heard several times from different people. It’s anything really when at the end we are. Yeah, yeah, I know. My, my designer, he, he just came back from Kerala, not just a year ago. He came back and loved it, adored it, and he was telling me to go for sure.

You know, my. My heart. My heart does get a little bit sad when when I hear that purely because, you know, people are just. Yeah, exactly. It’s my secret. Anybody know? You know, it’s not that. It’s only because, you know, sometimes tourism is great for the for the state and for the local population. And, you know, it brings up the economy. But but there’s also negatives when it comes to with tourism. And you certainly do see the negatives. So, you know, as I was saying, Kerala was always, you know, culturally such a harmonious place. And now, you know, we’re seeing, you know, the influence from certain Middle Eastern countries with the local Muslims. We’re seeing certain influence from the more hardline Hindus coming in to Kerala, and we’re seeing influences from the Western Christians coming in, the hardcore Western Christians coming in. And that, you know, that doesn’t help necessarily, but you can start.

To see this. These societies are a delicate balance. You can mess that up for sure. There’s no doubt about that. Let’s get to our final questions. With this one. I want to ask a third one.

Oh, really?

Yes. Let’s. Let’s start. Let’s start. Well, let’s start with your with your fancy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive? Yeah. Who would you have?

So I’ve had this question being asked before, and it’s really interesting. Dead or alive, who would I have? And I’ll be honest, if I had if if, if I could have one wish and I would honestly want. And it’s not three people, unfortunately, but I would want a dinner party with my family. That’s what I’d want. So you’re saying.

Your family, your wife and kids?

Wife, Kids, Mum, dad, brother, his kids and wife. But obviously that’s not three people and that’s not the answer you want. So if you’re asking.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you ask me about individual personalities of the world, who would I have? That’s a you know, if you’re asking specifically for that, probably the, the three people I would choose would be Bruce Lee, number one. I think Bruce Lee was an amazing person individual, and he was unfortunately short lived, but he was so ahead of his time as a human, not just in terms of martial arts. I know people know him as a martial artist, but also as a philosopher. He was he’s an amazing philosopher. You know, he was well ahead of his time when it comes to a lot of things, martial arts, philosophy, you know, ways.

Of martial arts yourself.

Yeah, I’ve done a little bit. I’ve done, um, I’ve done quite a bit, actually. Not a little bit. I’ve done quite a bit. So, yeah, Bruce Lee was a big influence on me on that. And, and he moulded my life in a lot of ways. So. Bruce Lee Number one, I’d probably then say because it has to be religion, as I mentioned of, you know, I was into religion, but I’d have to be Jesus number two just to just to know, you know, if if he was legit or not, you know. Yeah. You know, you know what payment. It’s interesting you mentioned Buddha. Did you know that there’s a theory? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve if you know much about the Bible, but, you know, in the Bible, the New Testament, you know, we have stories about Jesus’s birth and then there’s a there’s a massive gap in his timeline where the next kind of stories or recordings of him are when he’s around 33 years of age. So mid thirties, early thirties. So he’s kind of gone from childhood, disappeared and then come back as an adult. And there’s a lot of theory. The theory is he went to Asia during this period and he encountered Buddha and Buddhist teachings and then he came back to the Middle East and started preaching.

And it’s.

Very.

Similar. I have heard that before.

You’ve heard that right?

I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that from Ahmadi Muslims saying that they believe Jesus went to India. And and I know there’s definitely a connection between the two Buddhism and Christianity. I think you know about all these religions generally. Well, not generally, but religions. There’s a lot of sort of borrowing from each other. I don’t mean I don’t mean necessarily I’m not talking. Yeah, but I’m not talking only about, oh, you know, treat others as you would like to be treated like that. Those obvious rules of life that are sort of successful ways of living. But but you know how religions build on top of each other. Yeah. I don’t know that I saw film. Maybe it was rubbish, but it was a film called Zeitgeist.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Yeah, it was talking. Have you seen it? Yeah, it was talking about how Christianity was the last of like 40 other religions that came before it, that started off as stories about the stars and, you know, the three Kings with these three stars that would go over and then the Christ gets comes back from the dead. And, you know, you know, there’s a lot of influences between religions. I do get that.

Well, it’s for those reasons. It’s for those reasons. I’d like to clarify with speaking to Jesus exactly.

Whether he’s legit or not.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And and then the last one, the last one is probably a little bit unusual, but it’s it’s actually a guy called Gamma is a guy called the Great Gamma, or people will know him as the great Gamma. But Gamma but he’s actually a wrestler from well, as I said earlier on, you know, India-Pakistan was only made about from the 1940s, but he was born from the Punjab region, which is, you know, at the time not part of India or Pakistan. I think he he then migrated to Pakistan. I don’t think I know he migrated to Pakistan. So he was a muslim from Hindustan from back in the day before it separated to India and Pakistan. And he was probably considered even now, one of the world’s best wrestlers, well ahead of his time. I think he was born in 1908, sorry, 1870 something, and he died in 1960 something. I think he died when he was 82 or something like that. But again. An amazing martial artist wrestler. You know, he travelled the world, even even from the 19 tens onward to test himself. And that’s what I admire about him. He wasn’t satisfied with testing his own ability in India at the time, which was a massive, massive country. You know, it was Pakistan, Bangladesh and India to what we consider now. But he wanted to travel the world and truly test his ability. And that’s that’s awe inspiring, especially from back then. And he was undefeated for, I think, 50 odd years, you know, going from all different countries, from America to Europe to Asia. You know, just one random guy from a village in India who tested himself out. That was a true test of his ability. So I’d love to meet him.

I really admire looking at pictures of him.

Very. He’s a very impressive guy to.

It’s actually a familiar image. I’ve seen that image before. But it says it says on Wikipedia, Bruce Lee was an avid follower of his.

Yep. Yep. So Bruce Lee copied, not copied. Bruce Lee followed his training regimes because he followed his wrestling training because, again, Bruce Lee learned from the best, briefly learned boxing from Muhammad Ali, you know, wrestling from the Great Gummer and a whole bunch of people. You know, Bruce Lee was really ahead of his time when it came to mixed martial arts. But yeah, Bruce Lee followed great government. But also what people don’t know about the great Gama is he was one of the few, not few there were there were loads, but he was one of those Muslims who also helped hide Hindus and smuggled Hindus back into India during the partition partition. And he saved. Yeah, during the partition. Yeah. So he saved a lot of lives back then. So, you know.

And it’s amazing. Amazing. It’s amazing to think that someone like Bruce Lee was taking influences from a wrestler born in 1870 in India. It’s a beautiful thing. Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing.

Yeah. Amazing story. Great. Gummer. Yeah.

Yeah. So those are my people.

Those are my three guys.

Amazing, amazing, amazing dinner party, those two martial artists and Jesus.

Yeah. A bit of a spectrum from philosophy to martial arts, really, isn’t it? Yeah.

Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right. Let’s, let’s, let’s ask about your perhaps famous deathbed question.

That question. Jesus Christ.

You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your nearest and dearest family, friends, whoever around you who have hopefully they’re all old by then was three pieces of advice you would give to you, to everyone, to to them and to the world.

So the three pieces of advice that I would give, it’s difficult question really, isn’t it? Because there’s loads of things you can give. But I would probably say.

God.

Why is that? Well, actually going back to the great karma where you push yourself and really challenge yourself and do things that you may not always feel comfortable doing, or even actually you may feel fearful in doing, keep pushing. So whether that’s work related or, you know, physical exercise related or even mental health related to keep pushing yourself. So that’s in all aspects of life. You just keep pushing, keep challenging yourself. I wrote.

I did.

A post about that recently. Yeah. Get out of your comfort zone. That’s exactly it. Get out of your comfort zone, because that’s what makes you grow. When you get out of your comfort zone, you grow by getting out of that comfort zone.

So true.

So. So that’s one advice. I wrote a post about that. Not not maybe as specific as about that, but I went to see Black Panther two, Wakanda forever, and the main actor from the Black Panther. He wrote a speech. He made a speech, and he was saying more or less the same thing. You know, don’t take the shortcut in life. Stay pushing yourself. Take the long journey, because it’s about the journey. Of course, the destination is important. You know, what you’re trying to achieve is important, but don’t try and take the shortcut, you know, do things properly, do things that will challenge you because that’s how you grow and that’s how you become better. Getting to the end point is not how you’ve got better. It’s that whole journey, the challenges, the tests. That’s how you get better. So that would be my one. My first advice, I suppose maybe my second piece of advice is maintaining your integrity. So I think when it comes to on your deathbed, people will remember you for your actions, not maybe all your actions, but you know you’ll be remembered for what you’ve done. You know, they’ll remember your name and for your what work you’ve done, whether that’s clinical work within dentistry or whether that’s outside of dentistry. And your integrity will will define what work you do. So and your reputation, of course.

In dentistry integrity is such an interesting thing because, you know, a lot of people, class integrity is what you do when no one else is looking.

And yes.

So in dentistry, no one else is.

Do the right thing.

Most of the time, do the right thing right. You know, it’s very easy to do, not the right thing when no one’s looking. But that’s the difference between integrity and not. So it’s huge for us because no one’s looking most of the time.

Yeah. And you know what? You are right in that payment because I, you know, I do worry sometimes not not just as dentists, but as as as humans, you know, Are we always focussed in doing the right thing? And you’re right. Integrity. That’s such a good way of putting it. It’s what you do when no one’s looking and you’ve got to keep striving for that, keep kind of keep kind of to your to the goodness in your heart. And if you don’t do that, unless you’re really, really evil and there’s something wrong, if you don’t do that, you won’t sleep well. You know, you can’t go to bed. You know, your family will suffer because you won’t be right, because the more wrong things you do that will start to come out in your actions and that will spread to your immediate family, not just other people that aren’t connected to you. So it’s really important that you always stay on the right path and and do the right things in life.

It sounds like you do believe in karma.

Oh, yeah. Massive. Yeah, Yeah, massive, massive believer in that. And that’s whether you call it karma or you reap what you sow or all of that. Yeah, yeah. You do something wrong, you’re gonna, you’re going to get back to that and that again is down to probably because you know, I’m an Indian Christian, so I’ve got my Christian side and I’ve got my Hindu, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and karma is massive when it comes to Buddhist teachings and Hindu teachings, isn’t it. But yeah, do the right thing and you’ll reap the rewards. So that’s probably my my second.

Get out of your comfort zone. Do the right thing. Yeah. What’s the first?

The third thing is probably find your, find what you love, find your passion, whether that’s dentistry or not, you know. You know, you could be a dentist. You may not like it if you don’t like it, find something else to do. Don’t try and persevere in doing something you don’t like doing. You’re not going to you’re not going to get your rewards out of it, and you will only really become good in what you’re doing if you truly enjoy what you’re doing. You know, we spoke as we were speaking and I said, I currently work because I enjoy what I do. I don’t. To be honest, I think you get to a certain age or stage in your career. I think I can say this quite confidently. All of us at this stage in our career, we don’t really need to work. We certainly don’t really need to work the hours that some of us work. We kind of do that maybe because we like the challenge of our work, we enjoy our work, or there could be other reasons, but I know I don’t work for any other reason other than the fact that I enjoy my work. There’s no other reason. And then because I enjoy my work, everything else will will follow. So I will then do my research. I’ll I’ll enjoy going on implant courses and learning about implant ology, and then my patients will benefit because I really love my work. I’ll always try and do the best I can. So it’s then it then has a snowball effect. So whether that’s dentistry or not. My other my last advice would be do what you really, really enjoy doing, Find your passion and and just focus on it and give it your all.

Slice. One. Slice. Find something you love and get good at it, right? I think you’re right. It goes hand in hand. It goes hand in hand anyway. I’m going to ask you one other question. Who would be your sort of dream guest on this show? Who would you like to see?

Oh, wow. Jesus Christ. I need to stop being blasphemous then. Dream guest on this show. Who would I like.

Or dream cast?

Well, anywhere in the world.

On this show. So this show is called Dental Leaders.

Okay, so, Dental. And obviously you have to be alive, so it’s not hypothetical. Dental. Leaders.

Because I have I had I had my I had my dream guest on.

Who was your dream guest and.

Andy DUGUID.

Right. Okay.

I just wanted to I wanted to meet that guy, man.

And why was he your dream guy?

I’ve just been following him for so many years, you know?

But he’s an implant, dude. He’s an implant guy.

Such a. He’s a businessman. All right. So, you know his many things. He’s many things. But it’s such a pioneer in technology. It’s such a pioneer. And at the top of the field for such a long.

Time ahead of the game.

And I’d never. I’d never met him. He was. He was you know, I just watched him from a distance. And he actually when he came when we were actually doing the show face to face before COVID, we would do it in our office. And it was just such for me, it was one of those moments when you meet, you meet your hero.

So I see now that you’ve mentioned it, I can now, yeah, I’ve got a clearer idea. So probably the person that I would. The three people. I’m going to be honest payment and you’re not going to like it because I’m going to say three people. So one of them is Derek Satchell. Have you heard of Derek Satchel?

Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah. So he’s, you know, the man when it comes to Prosit antics at the Eastman. Yeah. And he’s. He’s someone who I had a number of encounters with. You know, I think.

I think you. Of course.

Thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the first time he looked at my preps, he said, Just quit dentistry and become a hygienist like this. He’s a funny guy. Funny guy. And he’s one of those old school kind of, you know, old school teachers that isn’t shy in just cussing you and take you down a few notches and then bring you back up. So, Derek, Satchel number one, and then probably Mike Wise.

Because I’m amazing.

Because again, I’ve.

Never I’ve tried with.

Him. Well, I’ve never met him, but you know, from a distance I know the guy is obviously well ahead and he just inspires a lot, doesn’t he? And then the last person is Callum Johnson. Have you heard of Callum Johnson? Callum Johnson was the dean of Liverpool Dental School and well, he started off, as I think, Deputy Dean or something like that, or head of head of dental school or something like that. And then he became the dean when we were leaving and he played such a massive influence in my life and I’m sure he knows it because I’ve told him that. And then he became Dean and then became, I think, vice chancellor or something like that. So he just went up the ranks. So he’s a consultant in restorative dentistry and he.

Do you know him well?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Him and his wife, Catherine Fox. Lovely people. They don’t actually live that far.

From going to get him. Get him on my show, man. Get him. Get him on my show.

Did you want me to ask him?

Please.

You know, he’s had and I can honestly say this, he’s not just had an influence on my life. You know, he was a dean of Liverpool Dental School for God knows how many years because he was that charismatic. He’s such an affable guy. He’s such a knowledgeable guy. And he’s also straight laced, straight lined when he needs to be as well. He’s someone that I’ve always kind of, you know, looked at from a distance and thought, what a guy. You know, he’s a he’s a real, you know, influential, aspirational type of person to kind of be like. So he’s probably my last person that I would want as a guest on your show. And God knows how many dentists out there and specialists he would have influenced.

Get him, get him for me, man.

Yeah, I’ll I’ll leave my.

Amazing.

I’ll email him. Did did you ask did you ask at Patel did this question who did he say?

No, this is a new this is a new question. You’re the first. I was the new question. I’m going to I’m going to be asking it from now on.

I was going to say I was interested in Patel. Robbie, what did Robbie say? What did Caleb say? I would have been interested in what those guys said.

You’re the first, but that’s good. We’ve done something. We’ve done a first with. With with your podcast, buddy. Thank you so much for for taking the time to do this. I just think it’s hours of your time.

It’s been 2 hours. I can’t believe it’s been 2 hours.

2 hours long form, real conversation, a lot of editing to make it. Yeah. No, no, no. They. Excellent, buddy. I really, really enjoyed that. Thank you so much for doing that.

Cool, man. It’s been really good. Thank you so much. But it’s been an absolute pleasure and honour.

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

Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this 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.

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

And don’t forget our six star rating.

I’ll be honest, sometimes I think people are focussed on the technology and they’re not focussed with the basics. So I see people using guided and digital and you know, they haven’t got their basics of restorative there. They haven’t got their understanding of how to fabricate the bridge on what’s important in the fabrication of the bridge. They haven’t got their basics of surgery and what you’re trying to achieve correctly. So, you know, there’s a lot of people out there who are focussed on digital and guided and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I do feel that the focus so much into that and they’ve kind of missed out on the basic parts of the surgery and restoration.

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.

It’s my great pleasure to welcome Pinata George onto the podcast. George I’m going to call it from now on. He’s one of the handful of implant surgeons who are known for full mouth. Known for this eye. Gomer Work. Terri void work transfer of sinus work so that the very high level restorative implant work is a great pleasure to have you. But I want to get to your backstory first because someone like you, you know, people look at someone like you and I was scrolling through your Instagram today and it’s just like it’s a different world to the dentistry that I know. And you sometimes forget that, you know, that person started out as a dental student just like the rest of us. And, you know, you built into that into that world. But do you remember the first time that you considered dentistry as an option?

Well, actually, it wasn’t. I had actually started off as medicine, and in my first year I swapped to dentistry. My dad say, Yeah, my dad’s a cancer surgeon, a plastic breast surgeon. And he he kind of pushed me towards medicine. So I actually started off doing medicine and then I had a little bit of a moment of truth where, you know, I was kind of doing the degree for my dad’s sake. I actually wanted to be a priest, to be honest. I didn’t I didn’t want a priest or an artist. I didn’t want to do anything. And it was my mom who convinced me. Priest Yeah. Priest Yeah, I was quite I was quite a deep Christian, Orthodox. Christian Yeah, yeah. So I was quite deep in my thoughts as a youngster. Yeah. Yeah. So that kind of went to the side and then started off in medicine. And then I kind of had a moment of truth where we didn’t, me and my, my brother and I didn’t really see much of my dad growing up and he was working long hours. It was quite a hierarchical kind of system that he was in. There was a lot of work for very little reward, So I decided I didn’t really want that lifestyle, especially if I had kids myself. So I kind of moved on to dentistry. It was quite a kind of a similar profession. A lot of reward for the hard work. Yeah, and I started off as a dental student like us all, really.

So did you have to reset even year one?

No, no, no. So I got into a couple of places in medicine. I got into Liverpool in medicine, and I was able to transfer to dentistry without a problem. Back then, the first two or three years were literally exactly the same for medicine and dentistry. We shared a lot of the lectures together and there wasn’t much difference. And there was, I think there was a number of people who swapped over either from dentistry to medicine and vice versa. So it’s quite a fairly.

Was it a difficult decision?

No, no, no, no. And even now, I mean, I was in a party over the weekend. Yeah, even even now I look back thinking what a mistake that would have been if I had done medicine. I mean, I look at my friends and I see the slog that they have to do as medics and the amount of hard work that they have to do. Don’t get me wrong, I think the degree dentistry as a degree is a harder degree than medicine. I’m talking about undergraduate degrees. Yeah, but actually, once you’ve done your undergraduate degree as a dentist, you’re kind of free and open to do what you want, obviously within within limits. But for medics, that’s where their life starts. Once they’re finished, their their undergraduate degree, they are literally starting their medical career at that point. And it’s another, what, eight years minimum or ten years, you know, maybe longer if you’re if you’re Max Fox. And yeah, that’s not what I wanted.

But I can understand now you saying that. But at the time, did you not feel like you were letting your dad down or, you know, this pressure to go into it in the first place. Yeah. And then getting out of it so quickly should not feel like you were. Did you get a backlash from your parents or.

No, No, no, no, no, not at all. I think my dad still regrets I didn’t do medicine. I think he kind of hoped that I’d go into Max FACS, But then I think you get to a certain age. My dad got to that age where he looks back at his career and he thinks in terms of benefits and costs and advantages and disadvantages, what he’s achieved, I mean, he’s achieved he’s achieved a hell of a lot in this career, especially as we were from India. He’s not from India. He came over not knowing the English language. He had to learn the language when he came over to do the what was called the lab exam back then, and then start off as a junior doctor in quite a middle age kind of. Rare for him. He was already middle aged. Sorry, and start from the bottom again and I think he may have some regrets about that. I don’t know. I’ve never really spoken to him about it, but I had no regrets. And I don’t think at this point now, my my father feels that I’ve have made the wrong decision. I think he he knows I made the right decision. So I’m quite happy with that.

Well, you are now now looking now looking at your career, of course. Did you guys come from Goa?

No, we came from Kerala.

Kerala? Oh, nice.

Yeah. Yeah. So I actually came over when I was about, I think maybe about seven or something. Six, seven. And then we stayed here for a few years. I couldn’t obviously I didn’t know English. Yeah. And then we had to go back to India for boarding school. That didn’t work out. And then we came back again and started off in, I think, the final year primary. So yeah, came over.

You moved to London at the time?

No. So when we came over, we first started off in Ireland, then Scotland, then the Northeast, and then travelled around a bit and then we settled in London in Southall.

Life of a doctor’s family, isn’t it, back then.

Exactly.

Lots of moving around. Yeah. So. So you grew up mainly in Southall?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and when we did settle, it was in Southall, which you know, was Little India at the time. It’s kind of still is, but I think a lot of Indians have kind of got out as they’ve achieved a higher wealth status or social status, they’ve kind of and then each successive immigrant populations kind of moves into Southall. I think even when we were there, we had, you know, the Somalians move in, Sudanese move in, and now I think it’s Eastern Europeans who moved in. Yeah, although I’ve not been south for a long time. I’d like to go, but I’ve not been in a long time.

So do you think that the fact that you’ve gone into surgery has something to do with the fact that you left medicine and your dad’s a surgeon?

No, definitely, definitely not. It was just coincidental. So I kind of I was in I was actually into restorative dentistry. So I was working in restorative dentistry. I was teaching restorative dentistry. I did an MSC in restorative dentistry at the Eastman. And then I went back to Liverpool to teach undergraduates and some postgraduate trainees. And then I started off in a general hospital, district hospital, doing restorative dentistry for oncology patients. And I was in this kind of funny scenario where I was doing pre prosthetic surgery for implants, but I was the one in the room doing the surgery and I was showing the restorative consultants the surgery and I was showing the Max FACS can consultants do surgery in the operating room. But then I wasn’t classed as a consultant, which I found quite frustrating. So if I wanted to do something, they would the nurses would then look towards the consultants. So I thought I’d go back and do surgery, oral surgery. So I went off and I went off and did oral surgery and that kind of it kind of grounded my implant work, to be honest, because it implants. Implant ology really is a mixture of restorative dentistry and oral surgery. So I kind of ticked that in my view, I kind of ticked those boxes. So, you know, I’ve done the Amnesty and restorative and did some training restorative. I did a doctorate in oral surgery and did specialist training at all surgery. And I had this like MSC in implants in the middle of it all. So that for me, kind of that was enough for me professionally. I had I had kind of I’m satisfied with that now.

So back back then, those that was kind of the people were going with training because there wasn’t much else. Right? There weren’t these courses like the courses you are now. But what would you tell someone who wants to get into it now? Would you tell them to do the kind of things that you did, or would you tell them to sort of find a mentor or do courses? Weekend courses? Yeah, courses. Which way? Which way would you or would you say both?

You know, I think because I get asked that question like a lot, like maybe every week at least if not. Yeah, if not a couple of times a week, I get asked that same question and it really, it’s really dependent on what you want. So for me, you know, I did a doctorate and training in oral surgery, not just because of the implant ology thing. I had other reasons why I was doing it. I had quite a significant neck injury and because of that neck injury, I was told, you know, I shouldn’t be working to the same levels and rates as I was working before the neck injury. So to take time out and I thought, you know, I could take time out and do a research degree and do some training with it at the same time. But if you want those letters, if you want, you know, letters after your name, if you want formal training, the. You’ve got to go and do formal training. But if you want to be a generalist and you know, I look, I look up to my colleagues who are, you know, really more or less the specialist generalists, and you don’t want to commit to doing three years full time training or, you know, research degree at a doctorate level, then don’t do it.

You don’t need it for, you know, high level implant ology work. You don’t need to do all of that to be able to do advanced and complex procedures. It’s not it’s not required. But if you do want to get trained to that higher level, you do what letters then yeah, of course you’ve got to go off and do the course. You’ve got to go off and do full time training, but it’s certainly not necessary for complex implant ology. There are other ways and actually I’d probably say the same thing for all specialities out there, with the exception of maybe max vacs, you know, even within oral surgery or restorative dentistry or orthodontics or periodontist or ended ontex, you know, to become a specialist. Yes, of course you do a number of years full time and you get some letters. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way of attaining that specialist level kind of work. Yes, you may not be classed as a specialist, but you’ll certainly get training to a specialist level because, yeah, it’s a difficult question.

I think, you know, we put specialists on a pedestal, we put we put letters after your name on a pedestal. But you know as well as I do that not all master’s programs are equally.

Yeah.

And you know, I’ve spoken to people who’ve been on master’s programs in all sorts of different disciplines who said that it was very disappointing the level of education and the level of experience they got out of them. And then I’ve heard the opposite as well. You know, I’ve heard people say that their career would never have been where it’s gotten to without the master’s program. And sometimes, I mean, I was talking to heart him, you know, Heart Graffy the periodontist.

Yeah, I know. How so. Yeah, he’s a lovely guy. Yeah.

And and, you know, he was he was going through what his course is period courses about. And, you know, if someone, someone who’s really on it, let’s say you want to get into perio and let’s say you go on a course like his, I’m sure there are others as well, but you go on a course like his, it’s someone who’s who’s putting down the very most important. I’m sure it’s a similar thing with your implant courses. You’ve got the very most important bits of knowledge and thinking and treatment planning in that course. You might think that in that sort of very practical, more practical orientated course, you could get more out of it than from an average MSC that you go to.

I think I think it’s difficult for me. I did the courses, the MSC and Doctorates, where it did ground me, and I was taught by very good people. And without those people, I wouldn’t be where I am and I’m eternally grateful to those people. But you’re right, there are other courses out there that may not fulfil what you would expect, but it’s not just also down to the teachers of the course, it’s also down to the students as well. There were people on the same course as me and you get what you put in. Absolutely, you really do. So there’s that aspect as well in terms of the courses that had him and, you know, myself and other people put out there, you know, those courses. I mean, I’ll put out there because we feel we’re educating colleagues to certain aspects that maybe we weren’t taught or think certain things aren’t taught in a certain structured way, or you will only get taught it if you’re doing a formal structured course. And that may be may not be what your average colleague wants. You know what? Even with my own courses, my own course, sorry, even my own courses, I wouldn’t say they’re the only course out there.

And I did a social media post about it recently. I don’t feel my course is the only course out there. I think if you’re going to study a subject, you know, whether it’s Periodontist and the Don techs, whether that’s on specialist training or not, you know, it’s a lifelong learning. You know, I’m constantly learning. I know a number of colleagues of mine who are specialists in prose or endo perio. You know, their specialist training was literally their beginning. And after their trainings where they learnt more, they refined their knowledge more. And I don’t think there is any one course out there or one qualification or one specialist training programme out there that will fulfil everything. It really is down to what you put in and going on a number of courses and I think there are some courses that should be avoided. There are definitely some courses that should be avoided. That goes without saying. And funny enough, I put a social media post about that as well recently. And I think I think people thought I had this agenda. With regards to that, I put a post that way.

I read that.

But that’s when you if you’re.

Learning different people.

Yeah, different people from different you know, they’re from different backgrounds, they’re being sponsored by different implant companies to, you know, from the guys that I get sponsored by, I get sponsored by Strawman and, and, and by Horizons. And I think people. People question was there their agenda and there wasn’t you know, people said, well, how can you recommend these? I can’t remember how many people are recommended. How can you recommend these guys and not anybody else out there? And, you know, the question was, don’t you have to go on every single course before you can recommend? And my point was, well, you know, if if you’re going to a restaurant or a hotel, you know, you’re not going to go to every single hotel before you make a recommendation. You make a recommendation because you’ve experienced that particular hotel restaurant, course, you know, whatever it is, because you’ve experienced it. And and those guys that I’ve mentioned, I know their courses, I know the content of their courses, I know their knowledge, I know their background, and I know their ethics, their principles. I know a hell of a lot about them. And, you know, there wasn’t anything else other than that. But I think as a profession, we always like to think there’s there’s another ulterior kind of agenda here or motive here or, you know, I think you can’t go on one course. You have to go on multiple courses. And yes, I may not have named every single course provider out there, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend them. It’s just that I know these guys and these are the guys that I recommend. And it was literally off off my head. There wasn’t anything else. I’m sure there are people that I may have missed out on that list as well, and I hope they don’t take offence to it. It was just I think we get very sensitive these days when it comes to social media. I think that’s the problem. Sometimes I feel like I should just shut up and not speak.

But look, I think.

I kind of like the controversy a.

Little bit. You actually said in the Post, you actually said off the top of my head, you said those those words off the top of my head. Did I? You did.

I can’t even remember.

And and, you know, people get sensitive, don’t they? I mean, I don’t know if the guy said to you, do you have an agenda? Did he have his own course? And he felt his course was better than, you know, these things happen. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t worry too much about about it. But what you said about doing more than one course, it’s so true. Even in in our area with just composite dentistry, I always, you know, routinely tell people to go on to as many course as possible because, you know, we do we do a course. But but that’s one opinion and one way of looking at it, one type of material. So in your world, it would be one type of implant or whatever. Yeah. If you’re going to do something every day like dentists with composite, every single patient every single day, it makes sense to go on 12 courses if you want to really know what’s going on. So I do I do understand what you say. Yeah. I’m interested in what you said before, that the reason for that comment was that you’d come across something bad in. Of course, I don’t want you to tell me which course it was, obviously. But what would you come across?

Oh, to be honest, I mean, like, I can’t. There are so many courses out there that I’ve seen snippets of not the actual course, but the course provider. And I see their cases on social media. And sometimes if I’m in the mood, I’ll question the clinical aspect of it and other times I don’t. In the past, maybe about seven, eight years ago, I used to come in all guns blazing and start critiquing cases online, which you know what? That was just that was not the right thing to do, to be honest. It was just me being very cocky. But these days, you know, there’s so many aspects out there. You know, it’s even today I saw a course provider, someone who teaches for lunch, and he’s put out a case on social media. And you can see the transition line of this flat. So when the patient smiling, I can see where the where the bridge finishes and whether the real gums meet the bridge while the patient is smiling. Not to me. That’s that’s not the best case to highlight. And obviously, you’re really, really going to highlight your best cases on social media unless you’re pointing out the mistakes that you’ve made.

So there’s there’s loads of aspects on full arch and implant ology out there. And, you know, there’s no point me kind of pointing to one course or, you know, what kind of problems I’ve seen. I think the other aspect is a lot of colleagues will attend courses without actually knowing the background of the speaker and their knowledge base. So it then becomes, you know, a kind. Of a watered down course because that person would have learnt from someone. He’s learnt it for a number of years. He’s now teaching on a course. You know how I would question the one not just competency, but I’d question the insight and reflection of that speaker because how many complications has he seen? How does he know what he’s teaching is going to work long term? I think there’s a responsibility from the Speaker, but also from the participant of these courses to kind of research the speaker of their course and how experienced they are. But in what Hayhoe is what it is, I can’t change much about it.

The thing is, you can’t get experience without making mistakes, right? I think it’s one of those things that absolutely. And we all start somewhere, even as teachers, as educators. Yeah, we all start somewhere. So it’s a difficult one. I grant you, in an area like yours, though, I do see why you’d be more concerned about that than in an area like mine, for instance. You know, you’ve got potentially you could have, you know, you could blind someone, could you, with one of those good one of those long implants you stick in the in. Yeah. So all right, let’s, let’s move on. Let’s move on to your actual day to day because you work in lots of different practices. You kind of visit them. Is that right?

Payman, You’ve done your research well, haven’t you? Like like before we came on, you knew where I qualified from and you know a little bit about my background. That’s quite surprising, seeing as we’ve not really crossed paths and you’re not really in a kind of a similar field to me. So But yeah, you’re right. I kind of What’s the, what’s the proper term?

Peripatetic.

Yeah, peripatetic. I’m sure some people just say pathetic, but yeah, peripatetic, which means I tend to travel around. Although in saying that although I travel around, I do own my own practice. Oh, so I have my own practice in North Wales. A lot of people don’t know that. I only work there half a day a week and the only other practice I tend to work regularly every week is dental excellence with Robbie. Robbie, he’s. Yeah, I think you guys know Robbie Hughes.

Yeah, I had Robbie on the show.

Oh, did you? I didn’t realise that. So he, he came before me, got damage.

He was episode number six or something, 16 or so. It’s one of the biggest listened to episodes that we’ve ever done.

Well, to be fair, I can imagine that Robbie is a very charismatic guy. He’s a he’s a he’s a lovely guy and he’s well experienced clinician. And, you know, we went to university together. I think it was a couple of years below me. But so those are the two kind of practices that I kind of regularly attend to every week. And otherwise I’m here. They’re in everywhere. So Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, I kind of travel around, but but my my work is only limited.

But how does it work as far as consultation?

So it’s so it’s interesting. I only work with either what I call what I define. And I know everyone has their own opinion on this. I’m sure this will cause a little bit of controversy, but I will only work with what I would classed as a proper implant ologist. And you can ask me what that means in a sack or a specialist. So either a specialist in prose perio or oral surgery or something. Yeah, some sort of specialist. So I’ll only work with those two types of clinicians or colleagues. So because I’m only working with those two types of colleagues, I’m more than happy for them to do the consultation because they will be more than experienced enough to handle the consultation, liaise with me if there’s any medical issues or or other issues or factors that may complicate the treatment, and then I’ll come and do the surgery with them and then leave.

Okay. But who makes the plan? Both of you or them?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we both make the plan generally. It’s generally me defining that plan because they’re going through a mentoring process. So that mentoring process means that, you know, I’ve got to allow them to, to learn from the plan and for me to point out any mistakes and, and how to rectify those mistakes or give them feedback, and then we’ll come to an agreement of of the plan. And they need to understand why that plan is that way. But yeah, it’s both of us making the plan.

So what you said you sit with CT scans and photos and x rays and and talk about the consultation the guy just did.

So essentially the way it works is even before seeing a CT scan, I want to see the patient’s psych assessment or what we call psych assessment. Which is a kind of a, um, like a, I don’t know how many pages it is, but it’s, it’s a number of questions. It’s a number of questions that the patients would have to go through. And I want to see the results of that before the medical history, before the social history, before the scan, CT scans, photos. I don’t want to waste my time on going through a hell of a lot of information. If I know from the beginning that this patient is, you know, expectations aren’t realistic or, you know, they’ve got some sort of issue with anxiety or something like that. So I want to see that score first before I even consider them as a patient.

So you think that you’ve got this five page thing that can actually give you a map psychologically of whether that were whether or not the patient is suitable?

Yeah.

So what kind of questions does it.

Oh, exactly. You know, it’s it’s they’re quite simple, straightforward questions. So does, um does Slate’s or health kind of questionnaire there there’s the modified dental anxiety score questionnaire which is quite straightforward. There’s a questionnaire from general practice, general medical practice, which is to do with anxieties and stresses and other things like that. And then there’s a dental questionnaire, which I’m more concerned with, which is more to do with expectations. So, for example, do you think implants lasts forever? You know, and you’ll be surprised how many patients think implants lasts forever. Yeah. Or for example, do you think implants are indestructible, You know, and there’ll be patients out there that will think implants are indestructible. And, you know, a lot of these patients will answer yes, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But then it’s highlighted, you know, their level of, I suppose, knowledge of what they think implants do. And then that needs to be clarified. And if they don’t accept the fact that implants on average may last 10 to 15 years or, you know, they certainly don’t always last forever or they’re not indestructible, things will break, you know, things like that if or for example, you know, they’re able to come to appointments, they’re flexible to attend for appointments. You know, if they’re if they’re accepting with all of this stuff, then fine. But if after the questionnaire they’ve ticked, yes, implants last forever, then the colleague or clinician says implants don’t last forever. Are you okay with that? And they say, no, I’m not okay with it. Well, then they’re not suitable.

Fair enough. Yeah, I get it.

You know, or or they’re not accepting of the fact that implants are not indestructible. They can break, they can ship, they can get loose. If they’re accepting of it, then great. If they’re not accepting of it, then they’re not a patient for me.

And what about just the anxious patient? Are you saying that you won’t treat someone who’s anxious about.

It’s not that I won’t treat them so. On the modified dental anxiety score. Sometimes patients, depending on what we’re doing, may actually need a general anaesthetic. They may not be suitable for single drug midazolam or, you know, and I also offer multi drug sedation. And they may not be suitable for multi drug sedation either, in which case they do need general anaesthetic. So then we have access to general anaesthetic, but that is a completely different fee associated if we’re going to do things on the. And it also means if they’re that anxious and they get a complication, you know, are we going to take them back to G? No. So it becomes quite difficult. Recently I had a, I had a young girl referred from a very, very prominent implant dentist, you know, very capable. He he’s very competent in all types of implant ology, very skilled. He referred a young girl to me and as soon as she came in, my colleague who was seeing her for the console because he works in Manchester, gave me some red flags. So I said, okay, that’s fine. Thanks for giving me the heads up. I then did my own consultation with her. This girl’s 18, her mum’s a nurse and her mum wanted to be in a Zoom consultation with me and I said no. So I ended up having a chat with this girl and I asked her would she be okay because of her anxiety that we may end up aborting because I’ve never treated her before. And you know, it was a bit questionable. So that was red flags for me. She wasn’t accepting of the fact that her anxiety may not be suitable for just single drug midazolam. And if she went, you know, a little bit off wire with the single drug midazolam, I’ll I’ll end up having to abort the surgery. I’ve never had to abort. But she needs to know that that’s always a possibility. And that was an accepting for her. So it was as simple as, Nope, I can’t treat you. Unfortunately.

I get it.

So, you know, things come about and it’s not it’s not me trying to be horrible. I’m here to help patients out, but I’m also here to do things properly and safely. And, you know, the more experience you get, you become less forgiving with. Well, you become less flexible, there’s less compromise. You do things by the book and, you know, that’s how you get more success because you’re doing things by the book.

So you’re sitting you’re sitting with the other dentist, the implantable digital specialist. The psych assessments come in positive. Now you’re sharing CT scans, X-rays, examinations, photos. And how how is that process take you? Is it like a quick discussion? Is it an hour? How long does it take to go from you’ve never met this, you’ve never even seen a single thing about this patient to you’ve got a treatment plan that you’re happy to then go in and treat.

So I suppose it depends on the experience level of the.

Depends on the situation, right? Well, actually.

Not always, to be honest. Payman it it really depends on the experience level of the mentee and how where they are at their stage. So I’ve got some mentees who are, you know, they’re good to go. I don’t really need to do much. Even when I come to mentor them, they they are really using me there as sometimes I question why I’m there. I’m literally sitting in the corner, actually, to be honest, Payman for some mentees, I’m not even in the room. I’m in the building. That’s how confident I am with their ability. But they want me in the in the building somewhere, just in case, I think for their own comfort until they build things up to a certain level. And then for other mentees, I am literally holding their hands, not even holding their hands, holding their fingers while they’re doing the work. Now you have to remember it’s very unlikely for that to happen to that level because generally the people that I’m working with already at a certain level of experience, so I’m not having to really handhold, I’m kind of really showing them finer details at that point of, of how I would approach a case. Yeah, but the planning, the planning for all of these guys will take more than 40 minutes, half an hour. They’re all at a certain level and I think that’s the difference with me. So I, I have a mentee requirement and it’s all my mentees, like I said, have to be either a proper implant ologist or a specialist.

Yeah.

So, you know, if they’ve met that kind of level, I’m doing very little schooling. In some ways. There’s already a certain level of understanding.

But it’s still it’s still it’s still making my palms sweaty, though. Yeah. That you’ll come in and do such a massive operation on a patient you’ve never met. And I get it. I get it. You’ve done this for long enough. That you know that the mentees and your process is there to to take care of all the different bits. But do you not worry that sometimes someone’s missed something and you’re you’re going to be the one who pays the price for that?

You know, that’s a really good point. But payment. The other thing is you’re absolutely right. So for me to come in, never having met this patient and do some pretty invasive surgery, what what do you think that tells you about my success rate and complication rate?

Yeah, the process is kind of, well, well trodden. It’s a well, well thought out process. Yeah.

Yeah. So I get very little. I shouldn’t really say this word right now. I get very little complication rates and very little failures. So in so I’ve only had, for example, with psychometrics, I’ve only had one case fail. That’s it. And I do a good number every month. I’m not just doing one, I do a good number every month. And I’ve only had one fail since I’ve been doing psychometrics and that that was the case for maybe four years ago. And that was a very complex case with complex medical history and I would do things very differently. So I’ve learnt from that. But other than that, I’ve had very little complications and I’ve not had a case fail. Very little problems post-op and years later. So as long as things are met and there’s very little flexibility with me, I’ve not really had a problem. The other thing is that I choose my patients very well. So it’s not just a psych assessment. You know, the medical history needs to be a certain level. Their social history needs to be at some level. You know, I don’t treat smokers, for example, which is I know it’s a big thing for people out there, but hey, ho, that’s that’s my kind of requirement. If somebody else wants to treat them, that’s up to them. There’s no certainly no criticism from me.

I think smokers are often the ones who need this treatment, isn’t it?

You know what? You say that if that was true, then I would be treating smokers because I wouldn’t have any work. I think in certain areas colleagues are pushed to treat smokers because otherwise there may not be enough work out there. But certainly the cases that I do, if a patient smokes, they have to quit smoking. They have to choose between their teeth and function and all of that, or the fags one or the two. There’s no compromise with me when it comes to that, because, you know, when you’re doing these kind of complex treatments, you can’t have you can’t afford to have any complications. You know, the complications can be significant. So the patients have to be on board. If they’re not on board, then I don’t treat them. It’s as simple as that. I probably say no to God knows how many patients a year.

But how long, how long before surgery you have? Do they have to give up? Is it a long time or is it not?

Yes. They have to give up a minimum of three months minimum, and they have to permanently give up. It’s not just quit for three months after the surgery, a few months later, and then they can start smoking again. They have to permanently quit now if they lie to me. I can’t do much about that.

What about other other sort of health complications, systemic complications? I don’t know. Is it diabetes? That sort of thing must affect it.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, for diabetics. So so again, it’s not just smoking. There’s diabetics, people with autoimmune diseases, you know, a whole bunch of things. So, you know, patients on anticoagulants or antiplatelets, there’s a there’s a whole bunch of medical problems for all of.

Them, and they.

All have to be stable before I treat them, all of them without fail. So, for example, diabetics, they I have to see their HBA one C score before I’ll treat them. And then that score has to be within a good level, not an okay level. It has to be at a good level. And if it’s not at a good level, I won’t treat them. I need to see evidence that they have a good HBA one C score. And then also I do my own blood payment, so I’ll do a full range of bloods and my blood tests are not like the NHS, GP blood tests, they are full range and I’m talking about everything. So I’m talking about, you know, testosterone, I’m talking about vitamin D, I’m talking about, you know, various different types of hormones. So it’s not just the faeces under liver function, kidney function, it’s not just those standard tests, but it’s literally everything you can test for. So I’ll do my checks if I’m not sure about a patient.

Amazing. But the work itself, but it’s sort of hairy work here for the likes of us. I don’t even like blood, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t even the type of dentist you used to take out. Difficult wisdom teeth or even easy wisdom teeth. You’re looking at the work and you see it. You see the sort of, you do think guided sinus lifts and you’re so nice sometimes you correct me if I’m wrong, you bring an implant through the sinus. Yeah, right.

So you really have done some research on me, haven’t you? Like guided sinus grafts and things like that?

Yeah, it’s mind blowing for someone like me too.

So you know what, though, To be honest, Payman like you say that, But actually, any anything you do for the first time is difficult, you know? And I see, you know, you talk about the stuff you’re involved with, composites. I actually think that’s a harder job than sometimes the stuff I do. You know, I look at the work Robbie does and the guys in the practice, you know, Craig does. So I’m having dental treatment right now by Craig, who also works in in dental excellence. And it’s not just Robbie. I look at the stuff Kailash does because I know Kailash really well and he does things slightly different, but similar level and all these guys doing composites out there and I’m like, I couldn’t cope with that, you know? And because it’s because anything you do for the first time is going to be difficult. And I think that type of work is just as difficult, just as complicated. And often it’s management of the patient, not actually the work. The dentistry is the dentistry. You know, it’s actually managing the patient and their personality and their expectations and their wants and desires and telling them what can be achieved and what can’t be achieved. That’s actually the harder bit. True, The actual surgery itself, you know, I personally don’t think is that difficult, to be honest. And that’s, you know, sinus graft, psychometric steroids for larch, single implants, soft tissue grafting, bone grafting, all of it. You know, if you follow the structure, you follow the plan. It’s actually pretty predictable stuff. So I don’t think the dentistry is hard. I think it’s everything else that that makes it difficult.

So do you visit all these different practices? You must see best practice. And I guess sometimes you see worse practice.

And I don’t Payman I don’t see worse practices because the guys I work with are all really slick guys and their practice.

I get.

It. I really I get it practices. But in the past, yeah.

You learn one thing from Robbie and then you learn a different thing from the next guy. I mean, not everyone’s got Robbie set up, right? And it must, it must be, it must be a real education, getting all these different sort of points of view. But the question of the nurse, do you take your nurse with you.

Yeah. I take I sometimes I do because I get a free ride with my nurse so she’ll drive the car, take me to the practice so I can get to snooze in the car. But these days, no, not really. Because, you know, I’m so busy doing so generally after work, I’ll go out for food somewhere. I love eating. I just. I could eat all day, honestly. Yeah. So I tend to work just so I can eat. So I don’t tend to take my nurse with me. I’ll go out there, do the job, and then go somewhere to eat or meet up with mates afterwards. Dentistry for me right now, payment in my level. At my stage of my career, I kind of do it because I. I really enjoy working here, not enjoy working. I enjoy the work. It’s it’s really enjoyable.

Doesn’t it piss you off having to use different nurses who don’t know the way that you do your stuff?

I love I love the nurses. And you know what? The the work that I do, the nurses love it. They honestly, you know, because most of these nurses are implant nurses.

Uh huh.

But as in, do I get annoyed because they may not know what to do and stuff?

Yeah.

To be honest, no. If anything, I’m happier than nurses are nursing than than the guy or girl that I’m mentoring. Because generally the mentees are crap at nursing. And because they’re not nurses, the nurses are generally on the ball. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever again, I’m not working with junior nurses or trainee nurses. They’re they’re often quite experienced nurses, if not, the most experienced nurse in the team is the implant nurse and they’re generally on the board. Generally, you know, I work with an amazing nurse called Leanne in Dental Excellence, and she was so she was doing full arch implants before me. So I started well, I was doing full arch implants with a guy called Eva Dental. I don’t know if you’ve heard of. I’m sure you would have heard of you very dental. And so this was in 2000, I think it was 2012. So this is ten years ago now. And Leanne was a nurse then as well as I’d been working with Leanne ten years ago. She’s now at Robby’s place and she was trained by Veejay. And if anyone knows Veejay, you know, you’ve got to like the nurses needed to have really thick skin to put up with V.J. So I work with her in dental excellent. My, my own nurses in my practice also, they’re amazing nurses because they’ve got to put up with my nonsense and the nurses in all these other practices elsewhere. If anything, I really feel for them because they’re quite nervous when I come along and I can see the nerves in them and they’re really good nurses, like amazing nurses. So I’m generally really happy with with the nursing support.

So tell me this, but the technology is moving forwards all the time. Yeah. So I imagine what you’re doing today is very different to what someone would have done ten years ago. As far as you know, Digital’s really taken a how do you keep abreast of what’s going on? Best practice. And you know, when you’re that at the tip of the spear, I guess internationally there are people who you look up to or whatever. But how do you how do you or are you constantly improving your own process? And where do you see that line between the sort of the risk of trying something new yourself and the medicolegal nightmare that we’re all in?

Yeah, that’s that’s really interesting that you say that, because sometimes I wonder what I’m doing myself to try and keep keep ahead. And it’s really difficult, isn’t it? Technology is moving, but sometimes I’ll be honest, sometimes I think people are focussed on the technology and they’re not focussed with the basics. So I see people using guided and digital and you know, they haven’t got their basics of restorative there, they haven’t got their understanding of how to fabricate the bridge on what’s important in the fabrication of the bridge. They haven’t got their basics of surgery and what you’re trying to achieve correctly. So, you know, there’s a lot of people out there who are focussed on digital and guided and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I do feel that the focus so much into that and they’ve kind of missed out on the basic parts of the surgery and restoration. But yeah, I mean it’s difficult isn’t it? I mean I was doing guided and digital planning, you know, way back before it became quite popular and I was using cadre in America and their labs and shipping it over after sending them the DICOM and CBC because no one was doing it in the UK at that point. But now you know, everyone’s doing it.

Digital is great, but it’s good. You know, in certain scenarios we know that. We don’t know if it’s 100% in every scenario, and that’s mainly when it comes to full artwork, especially the psychometrics and terror grade stuff where there’s much higher risk. And I also think it’s certainly not there for bone grafting and gum grafting, that’s for sure. Although bone grafting, it’s kind of, you know, getting certain aspects are there’s some certain benefits with digital, with with bone grafting, but with full arch stuff where the risks are a bit higher. You know, I’m still dabbling myself. So the guys in Chrome Chrome guided. We had set off to do our first guided psychometrics, but I suppose that’s a little bit under wraps right now. So I can’t talk too much about that. So it’s still kind of up in the air. But up until at this current point, the likes of Zynga, Matic’s and Terra needs to be honest and try and sign us, to be fair. And I won’t be advocating fully guided. Not as of yet. Not until I’ve tried it out myself and worked it out. And and I don’t think there’s anyone out there who’s done fully guided psychometrics anyway to give an opinion. Navigation is different.

Would you do actually print prints the maxilla?

Yeah. Well.

And then build something around.

Well, you wouldn’t necessarily print the maxilla. You could kind of set the guides according to your scan and DICOM. From what you have, it’s a little bit complicated because it also depends on the, the technique your, your you’re going to use for psychometrics. And, you know, we talk about technology coming in. You know, actually the biggest thing when it comes to full arch and psychometrics and terror guides and trance sinus and all of this kind of stuff is actually the surgical technique has changed vastly over the years. And that’s what’s made the difference. It’s not the the guided stuff or digital stuff. The actual surgery has changed.

In what.

Way? And the risks of surgery has changed. So, for example, just as an example triggered, implants in the past were placed almost to the base of your skull. That’s how long they were. So they would use psychometric implants in the Terra region because there were no Terra guide implants back then. And that’s a very, very high risk kind of procedure. But now thyroid implants, you know, they’re specially designed. We’re aiming for just the terra bone and not the terra gold and spheroid bone. So it’s much safer. Yes, there are still risks, but it’s much safer because we’re not drilling right up to the base of the skull. Psychopathic, same thing. You know, there’s always that risk of hitting the eye that you joked about when we first spoke. But actually, if you follow the technique and you can see exactly where you’re going and you reflected a flap, a nice clean flap, and you can see exactly where you’re drilling into, you’re not going to do that damage. Yes, complications can happen, but you’re not going to do that damage. You know, the implants are much better now, so they’re smaller and narrower, so there’s less drilling. And because there’s less drilling, there’s less surgery times, the less complications. We’re avoiding the sinus now altogether. So we’re not getting problems with sinusitis, restorative. They were really quite palatal and now they’re not palatal. So from a restoration point of view, they’re much better. So there’s a whole heap of changes to the implant itself, the technique itself and things are constantly progressing. I am interested in the guided stuff. It’s not that I’m not interested, I just want to try it out first before I can give an opinion on it.

I noticed you’ve got Ricardo Kern teaching for you or with you, is it? And you know, the whole soft tissue side of it.

Yeah.

Yeah. I didn’t really appreciate how important soft tissue is to implant ology until I’ve spoken to a few implant ologists on this on, on here. And it’s so interesting that you’re I always used to think of it as the implant bone issue is what the implant is is interested in. But the soft tissue is always the most unpredictable part of it, right.

Um. I don’t know, actually. I mean, soft tissue is a big, big issue. Don’t get me wrong. But actually, it’s certainly more predictable than bone grafting. Really soft tissue grafting is a lot more Yeah, it’s a lot more predictable and successful than than bone grafting, that’s for sure. I think it’s just that it’s only in the past few years that implant dentists have really been looking at soft tissue grafting. You know, they’ve done all the other stuff out there. They’ve done the full arch courses that done the bone grafting courses, they’ve done the sinus grafting courses, and they want to see what else there is out there to refine their technique. And soft tissue is exactly that. It’s that little last bit of refining their technique. And, you know, most implant dentists are not used to using micro surgical instruments and six sutures and 700 sutures. You know, that’s a new challenge for them or maybe a new tool for them to do so. There’s a hell of a lot of popularity when it comes to soft tissue. But I think that’s because it’s a progression thing. So, you know, implants, when you start doing implants, you do the single implants, you do, you know, a couple of implants for small span bridge. You then move on to over dentures.

You then move on to full arch bridges, you know, maybe PHP one type bridges, then bigger implants like Zeiger matic, Terra Guedes type stuff. You know, you’re looking at sinus grafts, block grafts and that soft tissue. The soft tissue work is the bit right at the end, you know. So I think and I think that’s really, really come about now, especially because we’ve got the likes of, you know, you mentioned Kern, who’s great at soft tissue. You know, you’ve got Giovanni Kelly, who I’m a big fan of, and also the likes of Amit Patel in the U.K. You know, it was actually Abbott Patel who taught me soft tissue work. So I was taught soft tissue work the old school way, you know, doing free gingival grafts and, you know, VIP grafts and quite, quite old school techniques. But it’s actually Emett Patel who who kind of got me to open my eyes a little bit into the into the, I suppose, newer techniques with the Kelly style, maybe Ricardo Kern style. And those techniques are a hell of a lot more predictable and easier to do once you’ve got your head around it. It’s, you know, it’s really quite doable. So you get some amazing results with those techniques.

We’ve had Patel on, on, on the podcast. Tell me, tell me this, but where’s the follow up as far as I’m not talking about of course you have to follow up these patients. Yeah, but my, my point is this. That long term follow up often shows you the results of your decisions that you made in the surgery or in the planning or whatever. Do you get to see that? Do you get to see patients that you treated years ago?

Yeah.

And you learn a lot from that.

Absolutely. Yeah, massively. I think that that is where you learn and it goes back to, you know, me making that statement about course providers and how long have they been doing it for? Because if you’ve not been doing it for more than five years, how do you know what you’re doing works? How can you be confident to teach someone what you’re doing works? Because in my opinion, you can’t. And until you see long term results of your work and how you you could have improved based on the work that you’ve done in the past, I don’t think you can. So one of the one good things of being of owning my own practices, I’ve had that practice since 2007. I’ve had that practice, so I’ve seen all my work in that practice for the past, what, 15 years now? So I know what works when it comes to bone grafting. You know, I see what works when it comes to soft tissue grafts. I’ve got my long term kind of results when it comes to full arch, when it comes to psychometrics, when it comes to terra guedes, the prosthetic kind of work that over denture work, soft tissue work, I see all of that regularly, you know, and the patients that come in, we even laugh about it. Now. The old school techniques that I used to do here, where I’m using austere tomes and banging instruments into people’s jaws and cutting out people’s mandibles and chins and, you know, and all this other stuff with old school drills as opposed to pesos and, you know, various things that I used to do to do full arch. Things have changed. And, you know, I’m so grateful in owning that practice because that is where I learn a lot of it’s where I’ve learned from my mistakes in being in that same practice for the past 15 years.

Let’s get. Let’s get to darker moments. Oh, here we go. Not only against them a bit earlier on this podcast, but someone was telling me, I’ve met somebody that weekend. He said, You really enjoy that bit with the darker moments. Yeah. And I kind of do if I’m got you.

Have you paid when you got a really dark side?

For sure. For sure. Tell me. I mean, it’s important we talk about them, right? We learn, we learn from them and we don’t talk about them enough in medicine or dentistry mistakes. Tell me about mistakes you’ve made. It could be an oh, shit moment. It could be a treatment planning mistake. It could be a patient who lost their confidence. And you know that that sort of patient management mistake. Tell me something about mistakes. You must have had your fair share doing the kind of work you’re doing.

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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