Month: March 2023

He said, Do everything that you do. Not with greed, not with ego, not with envy, but with compassion, with humility, with love and devotion. That sentence that I read really resonated with me because it’s so wholesome. And I think if you lead that life that’s both hedonistic and holistic, you know, we all want to have fun. We all want to pursue pleasure. But if you’re able to have that kind of really holistic world around you to create that happiness, not to be on that hedonistic treadmill where you’re constantly after that nice watch and the nice car and then this and that and that, the next high, the next high. Because we know, we know that the reason why it’s called that treadmill is that we know that everybody that that short surge of happiness that you get we know everybody ends up coming back to that same level. And these are all things I think we should teach them in Dental school even. But to be able to really sit and when you talk to someone to lean forward, to show them that you’re engaged, be interested in people. I think just all of those things as a whole, that is the secret to happiness.

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 gives me great pleasure to welcome Lala Sharifian onto the podcast. Lala’s got a pretty interesting niche area interest in dentistry, and she was just telling me he’s the only one she knows who’s a full time dental seditionist who works in primary care. She works in loads and loads of practices. Is one of those names that if you Google her, 40 different practices will come up with her with her name. And you know, it’s either, you know, what is sedation. You’ve got a seriously difficult case I guess is one way or where you’ve got a seriously difficult patient, I guess, and where those two things intersect. Lala, lovely to have you.

I’m hugely humbled. Thank you so much. Yes, it’s a pleasure.

It’s my pleasure. Look, we normally go early life and backstory and all of that, but these days I like to mix it up a little bit. Start with the one question I want the answer to more than any other question. And interestingly, it’s not to do with sedation itself. It’s to do with the fact that you see loads of dentists work. Yes. And you see loads of practices. Work or not work. That’s right. And you see the way they handle their staff and you see the way they handle their patients and you see the way they handle their businesses. Give me give me some insights into the differences you’ve seen and, you know, the good stuff and the bad stuff and and how different is it just from the. Let’s start with patient management. I bet there’s 100 different types of dentists that.

You know what? You’re so absolutely right. That’s what I love about it. And it’s so fascinating because you are a witness. You’re kind of this extra person in the room witnessing everything around you. And but I genuinely have a few spinning plates, right? So I have I have the patient, the patient management, the patient that I need to connect with and manage. I have the dentist because that’s also itself. Yeah, I need to be able to be comfortable with them to know how they work. I’m there to make their life easier. And then we’ve got the staff. I need the connect with the reception with the practice manager before, after the notes. So yeah, there’s a lot of those spinning plates. You’re absolutely right. Yeah, But tell.

Me about the way different dentists handle their patients. I bet you get the type. I bet you get the really, really cool, comfortable, sort of, you know, gentle types. And then I bet you get the real sort of people put themselves on a pedestal or whatever. Do you see you must see different ways of handling patients.

I do. I mean, overall, I actually work with people I really like. So, you know, 99% of my dentists are all kind of quite similar, right? Because you tend to generally people like people, so you tend to work with like minded people. But but yes. And I’m really I love communication and, you know, ultimately the best way to communicate with people is to listen to them. And so you do watch some dentists and you kind of do think, oh, you know, maybe that that’s not that message isn’t going across to the patient. And you feel like, should I butt in? Should I say? But that’s really hard. You know, you kind of and anyone that knows me knows that I’m. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to talk. And so. And a little controlling. But you never.

Do, right? You never butt in do you?

I just know when I should and when I shouldn’t. And I know my dentist very well. I’m friends with my dentists, so I know when I can be of help and I know when to. But also, don’t forget, you know, how they this whole rule of the seven 3855 rule. So sometimes my body language, my nodding me saying, you know nothing but that can give a lot of reassurances when the dentist is talking to the patients. Me just being there, just being an extra person, someone that has connected with the patient before they they. And then when the dentist leaves the room, they ask me those questions, which I think is the great thing about being a dentist and doing sedation is that you’re able to understand, you’re able to give some information without giving too much. It’s a real fine balance.

Yeah, I’m not aware of the. 738. What’s that?

Oh, so, you know, the, the whole 7% of what.

Body language gives.

Actually is the words and 55% is the body language. And Yeah.

What about what? Okay, so that’s patient talking to there. That’s the dentist talking to their patient. What about the way that people handle their nurses? Have you noticed big differences there?

Yes. You you notice when there is a great symbiotic relationship, which there should be. I mean, the nurses are the backbone to everything we do. I personally have connected with the nurses immediately because they’re going to be extremely important for me in the room in many ways from setup to watching the patients to managing the airway, to making sure, you know, they’ve got all their equipment set up. But the relationship between the dentists and the nurses. Yes. So a lot of times surgeons come in and it’s the they’re not often in that practice, so they don’t know anybody either. Oh, God. You know, they they’re kind of all on four type surgeons that turn up and nobody knows anybody really. And so I kind of and I have I kind of I’m the person in that middle that does a bit of showmanship to try to blend it all together. And whenever I go to a practice, the patient thinks I am part of that practice. I want them to think I’m part of that practice as opposed to someone external coming in. So you kind of just, you know, the back try to have this performance so that they’re able to get on with it and you can kind of fill in the space. You know, they have those comedians that come in in between the acts. Yeah, yeah. I feel a bit like a co-pilot.

And what about the businesses? Do you have some some businesses? Very disorganised, last minute. Can you come the day after tomorrow? Some businesses I mean, we deal with I deal with, you know, thousands of dentists and some some of them, some of them, you know, the the nurse is empowered to call up, buy the stuff up, sell, you know, we say, oh, you know, double the purchase and get a discount, whatever it is, you know, empowered to immediately say yes or no to that. When the bill when the bill gets sent out the next day, it gets paid. Interestingly, the same practices are the ones who have those nurses and the bill gets paid. Yeah. And, you know, and the whole gamut and everything and everything in between. You must have seen some brilliant businesses because, you know the kind of businesses that are bringing you in are doing high value treatments and all of that. So they’ve gotten to that point. Yes, but you must have seen some.

Well, the other day I actually turned up to a practice and they said, oh, a patient cancelled. And nobody tell you. And I just driven two hours to get to this practice. So there is that. But I think what I notice is practice principles that are just emotionally intelligent, right? They’re great Leaders So they are the ones that you kind of they inspire their team for the kind of to collaborate for one goal. And so they’re really good at delegating. Their staff have power, like you said, and they have trust and they always, you know, what is it They say that people great Leaders don’t have businesses, they don’t have jobs as such. So if you there is a famous saying like that and also you I notice sometimes some practice principles or Leaders that come in and everyone’s a bit nervous around them. Yeah. And so I always think a great leader again someone that is open to, to disagreement, right? So that if your staff feel comfortable enough to have a different opinion to you, that shows a great leader where you don’t have that kind of presence or a power over your staff. So I think those sort of functional practices are the ones that everybody is great at their job. They employ great people, they surround themselves with great people. And in fact, that leader is maybe, you know, not as as colourful as as maybe in other places. But they, you know, that team is great. And actually, you’re right, I work with mostly those sort of practices.

So go on then. And then finally, as a as like a building geek, what’s the coolest, best looking, whatever funkiest practice you’ve ever been to? Because obviously I’ve been to thousands. So I know I can tell you a good like a list of 2 or 3, actually. I should do a whole podcast on that. Yeah. What about you?

Aesthetics kind of thing? Yeah, well, funnily enough, you know that. You know, it’s interesting because I go to a practice that aesthetically is, you know, it’s not great. In fact, they still have, they still put their x rays in the, you know. Yeah, yeah. Machine and the developer and they’ve still got Chesterfield type sofas and that sort of thing. But actually incredible clinicians, incredible work being done, incredible staff.

So yeah, and by the way, much better that way, right, than the other way. Some beautiful building with terrible dentistry like Exactly. You see in restaurants, don’t you, Where the food doesn’t live up to the decor.

No, but you know what you always do? You judge like a restaurant. By the bathrooms or do you ever you know, do you ever go to people’s homes and then you go to the bathroom when you open the cupboards?

That’s pretty funny. I always I always go to to the toilet where in every house that I’m in, just for that, just for that little bit of nosiness. I know. I know every house I’m going to go in from now people are going to be like, I know, me too.

This is going to. But you know what? I interestingly.

I chose the practices based on the staff bathroom. If there is a massive difference between their staff bathroom and their patient bathroom.

Oh, very interesting point, isn’t it?

You know, that’s an interesting point, huh? Or the staff room is, like, shocking.

And then suddenly the waiting room is amazing. But. But I work out. I work out great. I mean, 38 Devonshire Street. Gaynor is such a leader. It’s just. It’s just one of those emotionally intelligent Leaders. The practice is great. It’s beautiful, but great clinicians. Costus is one of my ultimate dentists. It’s a great, great guy. Wimpole Street 2021. Wimpole Street. Um. Kia. Kia Vandi’s Practice again. A whole bunch of really, really great clinicians. I work out with Mark Corvus in Whitstable. That’s a really purpose built practice. Again, it’s a great dentist. I mean, you know. Yeah, quite a few, but those are the things.

How many active practices, how many practices actively refer to you, or is that the word refer to you bringing in?

Yes. I mean, I did my.

Audit for last year and I had.

About 35 practices. Wow.

But you’re right, because you kind of end up doing, you know, 75% of the work for maybe a handful of practices, 5 or 6 practices. So I yeah, so.

In those space. So there are places you’re going once a week where you do kind of feel more like a team member because you know that staff and all that.

That’s right. And usually with those practices I do lunch and learns and we actually I’m lucky because with any practice that does sedation has to be trained, immediate life supports. And Anish, my husband, is a life support trainer and so we do courses for the practices that I work at. And with that we do CPD. So we go through sedation. I go through kind of some lunch and learns and things like that. So I get to know the practices really, really well. They know my consent process, they know me. So it’s just lovely. You know, you turn up and it’s just nice and I love it. I think like I said to you.

Mastery is is lovely. So you’ve been doing it a long time. I bet at the beginning it didn’t feel so rosy.

Well, it sort of started slowly, right?

Because I did.

I mean, I trained that guys because they were the only dental school that taught sedation to undergrads. So it was something I was already thinking about. And so I’d kind of been sedating my own patients from, you know, 99. Um, but this going into other practices, the peripatetic work started, um, well, actually, you know what I can tell you because I’ve ended up balancing my microphone on my diaries and I have to have a paper diary. And so, and so I kind of pulled my diaries.

And I have five diaries here. So. And the sixth one that’s not so six.

Well, five years ago. Six diaries. Yeah. So initially, of course, you’re a little bit more nervous because you just want to. I just want to do well, I’m one of these people. I just I’m a people pleaser, so I just want to do well. I want everyone to be happy. So, yeah, you’re right. It takes a while.

I see. Yeah, I see how you bought the microphone that I asked you to buy.

Yes, I did. Exactly. You know, I Listen.

So how many years of dentistry did you do before you stopped the teeth? Like before the drilling and only doing this.

So I put my tools down exactly about a year ago.

Oh, really?

So quite new because I did this on the side as lots of maybe dentists do. I did it on the side for quite a while and it was actually COVID because I think during COVID, a lot of people made decisions, a lot of decisions about their careers, you know, that sort of thing. And at that point I realised I really enjoyed it. And but at the same token, I wasn’t being able to give enough to dentistry to my patients. I was working two days a week and I had thousands of patients. I’d been in the same practice for 15 years, so two days wasn’t enough. And then the sedation work, which I was doing the other three days, wasn’t enough, you know. It was saying, so you don’t do Mondays, you know, And so something had to give. And then I made the decision during COVID that I’m going to just give it a go and and quit. And it was difficult. I wrote an email to my patients and yeah, the computers crashed because I got so many replies back. Of course, you know, you lose your dentist you’ve had for 15 years.

So when you were going to take that step, did you feel sort of a bit of a outside of the way the patients were going to take it? Did you feel nervous yourself?

I was excited. I’m excited about the you know, what this will bring. I really felt like I would miss the patients. I mean, I’ve been friends with these people for such a long time. But at the same token, everybody was so supportive. Everyone said, you know, they wish me luck. And, you know, it was that sort of thing. And and I people would email me and say, Would you still be like a little mole dentist? So that when we get our next dentist, could we just sort of send you through X-ray so you could.

Tell us that if everything is okay or are they any good or, you know, you can imagine how many people ask me for recommendations, right? Yeah.

And just tell me this. What? What? When you when you’re turning up somewhere, are you turning up with, you know, a bunch of equipment? Yes. So you have.

To drive the elephant.

Packed a trunk? Yes. So I have a really nice little case and I take everything with me that I would need so the practice doesn’t have to provide anything but pulse.

Pulse oximeter, that sort of thing.

Of course. Yes. I mean, all the those things goes without saying. But yeah, all of the monitoring equipment and have some medical emergency things that I keep, but I also know my practices so I know what stuff they have, where it is who does what because we do the life support training for them.

Oh, of course.

Yeah. So it’s kind of nice.

Because I’m.

Well versed with.

But you’re basically driving a lot, right? Is that is that right?

Yes, I.

Do. So I listen to incredible podcasts, you see.

Like.

Not this one. Yeah.

So now I’m too old to do music so well. So I started to learn Italian.

On a podcast. You kind of end up doing things like this. I take.

The train for London.

Quite a bit. I have an electric car, so I do drive to London as well. But if you.

Take the train, how do you carry all the stuff? Is it possible it’s not?

No, it’s actually I’ve kind of a wheelie. Wheelie? I’m a girl, so I’ve kind of fine tuned this art. So yeah, I have a little.

Case and it’s quite easy. I mean, I’m little anyway myself, so I can’t carry heavy stuff. So it’s wheels, it’s on wheels and it’s lovely. It has everything I need and yeah.

Okay, let’s get.

Let’s get to sedation itself. Do you only do IV or do you do inhalation as well.

I don’t. I only do IV. Yes.

Yeah. So what percentage of your work would you class as It’s a heavy duty operation that’s going to go on. It’s heavy, heavy duty treatment and you’re just going to give some sedation to make it easier for everyone for them compared to super anxious Patient wants sedation over and above where you wouldn’t normally be giving sedation to a regular patient.

So most of my work would probably be shorter treatments, maybe up to two hours and occasionally. So maybe every two weeks or so, every three weeks I would do then a longer case, something like all day or 4 or 5 hours you start at 7:00 and finish at three and that sort of thing. And for those patients, yeah, I mean, I think the problem we have in the UK is that most people think sedation is for nervous patients. But you quite rightly said there’s two types of patients, there is the anxious patients and there’s the non anxious patients and that’s the area I think that we are. I think it’s a really well kept secret sedation is because that’s the area we do need to be able to offer to patients. And in fact, conscious sedation is considered by the Department of Health and the GDC as an integral element. And these are their words, an integral element for the control of pain and anxiety. And the GDC actually says that this is something that is a duty placed on the dentists and a right for a patient. So it is something that’s been supported for us. But it’s not often that you when I do the KPD, it’s not often that dentists kind of even think about offering it and in medicine, yet we offer it all the time. I mean, we don’t even offer it. We say you have to be sedated for this colonoscopy, you know.

I found in the US they’re much more, much more station going on. Right? When when I was there for my elective, they were, they were doing this deep sedation and then for wisdom teeth out at once, you know, that sort of thing.

Yes. Yeah. So it’s a whole different system in the in the US. But it’s I mean, it’s worth mentioning that in the UK we’re a streets ahead of the medics in this field and we’re more highly regulated than any other medical speciality and we’ve got the safest record for sedation. And that is something that we have in the UK, which, you know, I mean, I don’t want to talk about the US, but you know, they do have some cases, but here it’s because we are, you know, we do conscious, we do conscious sedation. And let’s face it, in dentistry we have something amazing called local anaesthetic. You know, no one needs to be that uncomfortable, unconscious or no one. You know, we need to have something that has a massively wide margin of safety. And we have local. And actually, I find also being a dentist that dentists don’t really want their patients to be knock outs and snoring. It’s quite difficult to work or do good dentistry when your patient isn’t really responsive. So that’s I’m really proud of us because we able to do that here. But you’re right, the US generally are. It’s, you know, it’s it’s very normal thing for them.

So so getting back getting back to the the nervous patient, whose job is it to say, you know, have you tried everything else before sedation? Is that you or is that the their dentist?

So dentists, when they discuss a treatment plan and consent, the patient for the treatment, that’s when you would go through the options, right? Yeah. So you should be able to at that point say, you know, for your comfort, we do have some options if you know, or if they’re nervous to say here are the options and dentists should know they should be well versed with all the modalities and from behavioural management. And nowadays we’ve got great in fact, often for kind of patients who are anxious, you know, they’ve actually got that sort of trait kind of anxiety. Some behavioural management is, is great before and so that’s an area that needs to be explored more. And then of course when I do the consultation, I could judge the situation a little bit too, and I’ll usually say, have you, you know, have you had sedation before? Tell me what the back story to this is and that sort of thing.

So, so, so but where I’m going with it, though, is, you know, if you do try behaviour management, then you know, people, if they’ve had a couple of good experiences, they, they, they improve a little bit whereas you reckon with sedation they get that sort of retrograde amnesia or whatever and they forget. So you don’t actually solve the nervousness, you just it’s just because they never, they never remember the experience. So they just still stay nervous.

That’s right. Yeah. So I think probably one of the one of the things about I.V. sedation is that you don’t you know, you don’t remember that you were really good and everything was really easy and that nothing hurt. So you’re absolutely right. But then we’re able to fine tune that. So I think if we’re trying to work for the patient to be able to wean them off it, which is a great idea, then we should involve the psychologists, especially, like.

I said, if it’s.

More trait.

Anxiety.

So it’s within their personality as opposed to a state anxiety, which is how they feel at that moment. So yeah, I think we have to think of it.

As a whole.

Patient. I feel like I feel like modality best practice might be okay for every two sedations you have now should we reassess whether you really sedation is right for you or not? But I can see how that’s not your job, right? Your job is to come in and do the sedation at the same time. I can see how the dentist and the patient kind of the patient, particularly pushed by the patient. The dentist will just say, okay, you want sedation, have sedation. So in a way, it kind of needs to be someone’s role, right, to say, hey, what about not sedation for the for the nervous ones I’m talking about not obviously not difficult.

For example, on Friday, I’m sedating.

A lady that sedated before and she had quite big surgery, sinus implants grafts and that sort of thing and super nervous. And I’m seeing her again. I talk to her. In fact, today she said she’s really excited to see me and we work with this, but this time she’s having a little bit more restorative work. So I said to her, Your sedation will be a little bit different because also people people kind of always think it’s going to be exactly the same and they don’t remember that. They don’t remember that. They don’t.

Remember.

So that’s also another challenge.

I have to.

Deal with. So I kind of said, so at this time, it’s going to be a little bit different because the dentistry is going to be a little bit different. You’re going to be able to, you know, need to turn left and bite together and left and right. So don’t worry, you know, because people worry. They think, I’m awake, I’m awake, I’m awake. And so it’s that kind.

Of.

Education as well, so that they know. And in fact, hopefully she will maybe have a more memory of it. And so, yeah, that way you’re able to fine tune it. But I mean, if someone’s having a horrible procedure, then less is more, right?

So yeah, absolutely. So do you use midazolam all the time or do you use other things? What’s your story with the drugs themselves?

So I use midazolam, single drug, just.

Because it’s just so easy to tighter. It’s safer than, you know, sequential administration of two more drugs, the multi drug. So single drug midazolam is is a simple technique. Multi drug is known as an advanced technique. And the guidelines, the standards tell us that we have to have really good justification in order to be able to use multi drugs. And it has to also it actually specifies that it has to be after having excluded a single drug or having a great justification. And I think that’s really important. And I think maybe a lot of dentists don’t know that they’re responsible for that, even though they are the clinician, they’re actually responsible, after all, for the sedated patients. And interestingly, now the guy the the one standard of care. So it’s the first time it’s ever happened that we have one standard of care, the.

Guidelines, 2015.

And by that I mean that before then, you know, maybe the medics thought they were not bound by dentistry. But with this standard of care, whether you’re a hygienist, you’re a dentist, you’re an anaesthetist, you’re a doctor, everybody has to abide.

By this one.

Standard of care if they are sedating for the purpose of dentistry. So yeah, multi Drug has definitely got a place in sedation. I don’t do it myself, but there is definitely a place for it. But it has to be with justification just because there is a more narrow margin of safety.

So, so just just expand on that question of if something goes wrong. Are you saying the dentist has has more to answer than you do.

And not more.

To answer?

But I think but I think what maybe comes as a surprise is that dentists think just because they have a sedation is coming in.

It’s not their responsibility anymore. You do your job. I do mine. Yeah, that’s right.

And unfortunately, it’s unfortunately it’s not true. And if you are recommending if you’re treating a patient for the purpose of dentistry. As a clinician, you are responsible and there is maybe even a school of thought to say that when you have a sedation is coming in, your practice manager should perhaps you know the first before you choose a sedation is should perhaps ask them to sign something to say that they are going to follow the guidelines so that at least you’ve kind of said, look, that’s what I would like you to do, because, you know, when you’re a dentist, you also don’t want to be staring at somebody to see what they’re taking out, you know, and what the and it’s difficult because a lot of dentists say, well, you know, how do I know? Because I turn around and there’s these colourless liquids, Right. I don’t know what they’re giving. I’m you trust them. And my point is that you just should just be a little bit more aware. Also, age group, I think you need to be a little aware of what age groups can have what drugs. So because we are essentially answerable to the CDC, but maybe the sedation is you may have may not be answerable to the CDC, you see. So that’s.

Where they’re kind of.

Maybe a slight conflict can come in. So overall, my advice would be to just to know some information about.

Sedation and.

Put it involves all really kind of simple, simple things. But before you so that you understand what is what is required and what does the CDC.

Want from you?

And can kids have sedation?

Yes. So under 12 age of puberty, which if you want to call it, have a number under 12, cannot be sedated in primary care. 12 to 16 is considered a young person in sedation and you can sedate in primary care, but with a single drug midazolam only. And that’s quite important. There are exceptions to this. If there is a consultant, a paediatric specialist or consultant anaesthetist, you know, you can mix it up a bit. But for your average kind of dentist, 12 to 16 year olds. So that kind of 14 year old may be having some pre molars taken out. You can sedate but with single drug. And so as a dentist, it’s good for you to know that so that when you are asking your receptionist or your practice manager to, you know, bring a sedation in, you’d say, you know, we have a 14 year old, we’d like somebody that does single drug over 16. Then that’s considered as a, you know, an adult. And whatever is justifiable is possible with. Yeah, absolutely with whoever. So that’s the age group and there’s no kind of upper limit. I sedated somebody that was 92 which is and.

It was like.

Oh but actually you’ve just got to be really cautious and you’ve got to do your routine, normal assessments with, you know, their airways and medical comorbidities escort often is a.

Bit of a problem.

Right? Because, you know, the 92 year old might also have a 95 year old husband in a wheelchair.

So I’ve been caught out a little bit before with escorts because sometimes, you know, you have a child turn up sometimes. I mean, I’m very specific, but I’ve learned this the hard way as well. Well, the other day the other day.

Actually, this lady came just on Friday. This lady came in and and then this what looked to me like a child came in with her.

And kind of had that small, you know, a smile or you.

Talk or your.

Mouth is still like this, you know, thinking.

I don’t know. How do you ask somebody, you an adult, you know?

And then she said and then she said, Oh, this is my husband.

And I was like, Oh, what’s up with that?

But she looked 12. I was like, Oh, you look 12. But then I thought.

I sometimes look a little bit like a 12 year old, so.

You must have to be right up there with your sort of medical histories and complication, drug complications and people with co-morbidities. Do you have is that what the training is when they teach you to do this? Is that where most of it is?

Well, yeah, I get a I get a medical history from the practices. And then I when I phoned the patients, I have two jobs. One is to assess them medically and whether they’re suitable for sedation. And my second, probably more important job is to connect with the patients. So medical wise, though, overall one and two patients are mostly suitable. Actually, a lot of people are suitable. There’s only a few things that are contraindicated. They’re usually things that disturb the brain or the airway. So, you know, COPD, major COPD, sleep apnoea, recreational drugs, that’s usually the bane of my life.

Um.

Wife sort of co-morbidities.

Um, but overall, most, you know, a lot of yeah, a lot of patients are suitable for sedation. Actually. There isn’t massive drug interactions. Oh nice. Normal things. Yeah.

So.

So y y y recreational drugs. What’s, what’s the story with them?

Recreational drugs is the bane of.

My life.

Because. So sedation. Actually, this is. This is one of the one of the things I had to.

Learn the hard way, you know, one of the.

Kind of maybe things that didn’t quite go right. You know, there’s always those.

We’ll get to that part.

Of the show. Yes. Go, go, go.

Sorry, Sorry. Then I’ll tell you then. I’ll tell you about that when we get to that part of the show. And then.

And sorry to interrupt. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Yes.

No, go ahead. Um, yeah. So that so sedation is is is sort of.

Midazolam is meant to be both an anxiolytic and a sedative. And the difference between that is one reduces your anxiety and the other gives you that kind of sort of.

Droopy eye, slow sedative.

Kind of feel. They usually go together, but sometimes they don’t go together. You can get.

Anxiolysis.

Without the sedative sort of effect, but sometimes very, very rarely. Maybe. I think the stats is less than 1%. You get something called a paradoxical effect, which is essentially a big increase in emotional release. You get the patients get excessive movements, especially limb movement, limb movements, and you become really agitated. And essentially you have to peel the patient off the ceiling. And that is it can be idiosyncratic, but there is evidence that it has a link to recreational drug use.

And and.

It has happened to me maybe.

Three times in the.

Past 25 years. 20 years.

Okay. And when it first. Yeah. And when it first happened.

It’s difficult because you think maybe you haven’t sedated them enough, right? So the temptation is to sedate patients more.

And so I ended up so I have had this situation where I kind of sedated the patient a bit more and a bit more and it got worse and they got worse. And I thought, right.

Sumo wrestling was definitely not part of.

This. It’s not going very well. And then I immediately realised and it was a young guy, it was like a 19.

Year old and.

I immediately.

Kind of clocked on and I actually reversed the drug. And then it was much better. And so the dentist was able to finish.

And then at the end he said, Oh, this.

Was great. And I was like, Really?

It might have been.

Great for you. It was not great for me.

And I said to him, What have you been taking?

I asked you, you know, I always ask these questions.

And he and he said, What? And I said, Just tell me. And he went, Well, just cocaine.

And I was like, Why didn’t you tell me this before? And he said, Oh, my dad’s best friend with the dentist. Don’t tell him I don’t want anyone to know. And I was like, Oh, God. So, um, so yeah, that was probably.

One of those events where I had to learn things.

The hard way. It doesn’t always happen, of course, but it can do.

And nowadays everybody is.

On something, especially in London. Everyone’s taking something. I have to.

In fact I’ve got this talk to Frank on minimise on my computer because I’ve got to understand the lingo as well. People tell me.

What they take, you know, suddenly they say, I take Calvin.

Klein and you have to know what that is.

What is that? What is that street name? Yeah. What is it? Which. Which drug is Calvin?

Calvin Klein. It’s sort of cocaine and ketamine.

Cocaine and ketamine.

So Cocaine. Ketamine to get mean and ketamine. It must be.

Exciting.

Exciting. Okay.

And there’s me. Wow. This is.

Enough. I swear. There’s all sorts of things. Yeah. Why can’t people just, you know, have a pornstar martini or something like that? You know, like the rest of us on a Friday night?

Just.

Just as bad, though. Yeah. Tell me this. When. When you’re sedating a patient, what’s the thing that keeps you? Keeps you up? Like, you know, like a nightmare scenario that can happen? Is it like a cardiac, like something unrelated to it, or is it something related to it?

So those sort of things are never events.

So over sedation or respiratory depression, that sort of thing is a never event. And it doesn’t.

Happen.

It hasn’t happened to me. It shouldn’t happen. And these things don’t happen, especially with. As you know, we tighter it slowly so it’s something that doesn’t happen. So I haven’t had any medical situations. And also the beauty of midazolam is we have flumazenil, so we can reverse it very quickly. So medical stuff. No doesn’t happen. You know what? I guess for me, the sort of difficult thing that happens, it might surprise you, but the sedation is only as good as.

The local anaesthetic. Oh, yeah. So the thing that’s kind of can happen is when the patient.

Is in pain.

Actual pain.

Because no amount of sedation.

Gets rid of that.

And then and then it’s kind of interesting because.

Sometimes the dentist looks at you thinking.

Should they be a bit more sedated? And you’re kind of thinking.

Oh, but maybe if they weren’t hurting, we won’t have that problem. You know.

Sometimes pain is good because, you know, you want sometimes, you know, with.

The whole idea canal, you know, sometimes actually have an endodontist that has referred me a couple patients because of a hot pulp. Right. You know, some things are going to hurt. That’s fine. And that’s why we sedate the patient so they don’t have that bad resentment for us. But overall, it’s the challenge of making sure the patient’s not in pain for me, I think. And that’s when working with, you know, great dentists or conscientious dentists works. And that’s pretty much everyone I work with, really. And then you’ve got to trust the drug. The drug does its thing.

And but you sometimes.

Gently say, hey, put in, put some more in.

So so sometimes I kind of I mean, thankfully I’m good friends with my dentist.

So sometimes I say, oh, it might be worth topping that up a wee bit because it’s, you know, it’s been a couple of hours or it might be worth, you know, just just a little nudge in a kind of way that is nice. But yeah, that’s probably. But then most dentists know, you know themselves, so those things are fine. And also another thing, actually, one of the most difficult things to sedate for surprisingly, is a scale and Polish hygienist work kind of or perio work or more hygienist work because with perio work or hygienists doing perio work, often there’s local anaesthetic. But when you don’t have local anaesthetic and you’ve got sensitive teeth and it’s the whole.

Mouth and there’s water everywhere and there isn’t.

You know, that sort of scenario is quite tricky for me. I have to kind of be there and but I tend to connect. I mean, my biggest task for me and I think I love people and I love connecting with people and my biggest task is to connect with patients. And I think once they trust me and they know I’m there for them, then half the battle is done and my job is just much, much easier because I always say that people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And so when you care, you really care. I mean, this is where that whole, you know, humanity, empathy and all these words that we use, this is where it becomes really paramount when you’ve got that connection with the patient. And I try to get it’s hard, you know, doing that over the phone often, but you need to be able to recognise personality types, You need to be able to recognise how to connect. And then when I’m.

There, then.

I once they trust me and they trust the dentist, then the rest actually is really easy. I mean the whole my job, honestly, Payman it’s the easiest job. I absolutely love it. Nothing goes wrong. It’s just such a wonderful thing. It’s a great service. I really recommend for dentists to do it. I have this feather in their cap. It is just especially in modern day dentistry where treatments are getting more intricate, they’re getting treatments are getting longer. Also, patients now want comfort not just in dentistry, but I think people want to be more comfortable whether they’re flying, whether they’re dining. Everyone wants to have a nicer time and an easier time. So there was this whole thing about making dentistry pain free. I think we’ve done that.

You know, we’ve really come a long way.

With our local. I think we need to now really move towards making dentistry comfortable so that we don’t have.

Those results of the Adult Dental Health Survey where.

50% of the UK population said that they had a fear of dentistry and 12% had extreme anxiety. I mean, that’s terrible. And I really hope that with this kind of not just I.V. sedation, but just conscious sedation and all the modalities of it, we can all kind of come together to be able to make dentistry more comfortable for. For everyone.

And for the dentists, too.

Sure seems to me that the bit of the job that you love is that connection with the patient. Yes. Reassuring them and all of that. Because on the surface of it, you know.

First time with the.

Dentist, too.

Yeah, the dentist, too. The first time when I heard there’s a person who’s a dental seditionist, I I’m being totally honest with you, I thought, what a boring job that must be. But it’s not. It’s interesting, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I.

Aside from that, I always really, at the end of the day, like I said, I’m there to.

Make the dentists job easier. I’m there for the patient to have a great experience. In fact, when I phoned the patients, the first thing I say is I introduce myself and I say, You know, my name is Lolly.

And I am.

Going to take care of you alongside Dr. So-and-so and I’m going to make sure that you.

Have a wonderful experience on Friday.

But it’s interesting.

Because my connection with the dentist is also.

Really important to me because what I would like my aim for the end of that appointment is for the patient to be really happy with the dentist, not with me necessarily. I’m a little bit of a catalyst or an adjunct here, but what I want is for the patient to be happy with the dentist and happy about dentistry. I love that to happen. And so when the patients write a review on the practice website about the dentist and the practice, that is my job well done because that’s what I’m there for. I’m there for the dentist. And and in fact, you know, you said.

About.

Some of the things that have gone wrong. A few months ago I was working with a dentist who I love and is somebody I would go to myself like a great, great clinician. And and actually, I was doing some implant and the driver fell down the patient’s mouth. Quite a big implant driver. And then sort of there was like a little bit of a devastation type of movement on the patient. But the patient was sedated, of course, and it went down. We don’t know where it went.

You know, and and.

There was this sort of massive, I guess, bit of panic naturally. Right? So it was really interesting because I was this extra person, a bit like an outsider, but in there. And so I was able to sort of say, right, we can put the patient up, see if they’re going to cough or not. And, you know, what we’re going to do is finish the treatment. There was no distress. The SATs were normal. The patient seemed fine. So it was the end of the treatment as finished, the treatment that’s organised for them to have a chest x ray? I asked, you know, I sent a message through to reception to organise that. I said, Let’s find another implant driver, let’s take it with the patient. I will go with the patient myself, bring the patient back. You know, all of those things that went around. And then the dentist said to me, You know what? I don’t know whether I would have done all of these.

Things if you weren’t.

There just to just to have somebody else that’s maybe not in the middle of it all or maybe.

A bit more calm and able to.

Think.

So sometimes I think it is there. You’re there for.

The dentist, you’re there for.

The patient, you’re there for.

The nurses, for.

Everybody, really. So it is fun. It’s super fun. Not at all.

Boring.

And you seem like such a positive person yet. And I keep driving this thing about what what went wrong. But that story you just told that’s from from your perspective is a success, massive success story. Tell me tell me about something that went wrong.

Well, you know, like I said, in.

Sedation, things that go really wrong are never events.

So.

No, no. But something, something.

Something to do with the patient trusting the dentist, something, you know, something that went wrong. Come on. There must have been, um.

Well, do you know what? It’s difficult. I guess there’s been. There’s been times where.

I’ve lost my.

Trust in the dentist. Um, at all times. The patient is sedated. Right. So the patient is generally kind of happy. And at the end of the treatment, they’re always happy and they think they’ve had a great time.

I mean, that’s the wonderful. So sometimes I say, sometimes I say.

When when I have a.

Periodontist or.

Hygienist working with a really sensitive.

Mouth that maybe is not numbed up. They said, oh, you know.

What are we going to happen? And I said, Well, the patient’s going to have a great time. It’s whether you’re going to have be mentally disturbed by.

The end of it or not. Well, gag reflex, your gag reflex is is always really difficult.

And I’m.

Always enjoying my seat, going, please, please, please, and trying to come up with like, you know, ear.

Lobe pressure points and whatever I can.

Because gag is one of those that’s.

A bit unpredictable.

And it can, you know, it can go really well or.

It doesn’t go well at all.

And I’ll say.

To the patient, I’ll say to the dentist, you know, you can just do it, get the tooth out.

And you may not have a good time, but don’t worry.

The patients are in pain, patients won’t remember it.

They would have a pleasant experience.

And they don’t have resentment of us. That’s the best we can do. But there hasn’t been anything. I mean, these are all these are all things that constitute sort of not a bad day, but a more challenging day. Right. But I don’t.

Know. I think there’s those imperfections is.

What makes us kind of stronger. Right. You know, I think what is it that the.

Japanese concept, something.

Like Kintsugi, where, you know, the golden joinery, have you ever seen.

That in plates where plates that are broken? And I always think, you.

Know, Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks us, breaks everybody, right. The world breaks everybody. And afterwards, some people are stronger in.

All those broken places. So all of those days, I think, are just.

Probably what makes you.

Realise and get that.

Experience. I mean, you know, I’ve got a.

Lot to learn. So yeah.

I mean, the reason why I harp on it is from that book Black Box thinking, I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Yes.

I haven’t seen it, but my nephew is training to be a pilot, so I kind.

Of know a little bit about.

Yeah. So but it.

Actually it actually draws a parallel between pilots and doctors.

And and says, that’s right.

That we never learned in medicine. We don’t learn from each other’s mistakes.

Because we hide it. We hide it.

Exactly.

And that black box is.

Thinking is.

Important for two reasons. That plus.

I always.

Think.

Also with sedation.

Oh, so this is interesting because some dentists sort of think that, okay, so the patient’s not going to remember. So they have this sort of banter that maybe isn’t.

So.

Appropriate really, that. Yes, not a bad I mean, nothing bad or anything like that, but just about, you know.

Last night they were out or, you know, something, you know.

And I’m.

A little bit I’m a bit sort of sterile.

Cockpit.

Kind of situation.

And when I’ve always been like that, even.

As a dentist, I never had personal conversations over the.

Patient’s head and that sort of thing. I like talking in case you don’t notice. But I.

Always I.

Always think when the patient’s there, you know, we have to have a performance. But also these in this day and age, you know, people record things. Yeah. So and I have this sort of personality type that is always really worried about, you know. So eventually they managed to get really nervous about the sedation as well as being nervous.

About, you know, they kind of go, what if, you know, what if you say something and I can’t hear.

You, you know, or.

And then I think a.

Lot of, you know, we have to understand that there might be also a black.

Box. They might put their phone on and record everything that’s happening.

We all have to be really, I think, wary of that. So I you know, I’m pretty good with I don’t like to I always like to keep things nice and light. And, you know, I love people anyway. There’s never any patients that I’d never like. I was always that dentist. They always booked those really awkward patients with because I always think Abraham Lincoln said, I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

And that’s a theory I have.

I always I always.

Like my patients. However, nobody else likes them, but I like I connect with them because there is a reason, right?

Why people are the way they are.

And and I think if you cultivate enough curiosity.

In people and you connect with people, you’ll know why people are the way they are. I love those people. Those are the great challenges.

Yeah. So I gave up clinical dentistry ten, 12 years ago, and the thing I miss the most is those conversations with patients. You know, I’m convinced it’s the best part of the job. Of course, you know, the different dentists, you know, into different bits of the job, but for me that was definitely the best bit. Yeah. Let’s go back.

Into your sort of.

Yeah. Let’s get to your back story. A fellow fellow, Iranian. Were you born here or were you born in Iran or.

So, yes. No, I was born in Iran, in Tehran. And really, I’m kind of a self-confessed bonafide.

Privileged.

Girl, really. I grew up in a great, great family. You know, one of those where your mom and dad actually loved each other.

So that, I think, has been really important. I remember my dad telling us, telling me, don’t.

Forget, your mom is more important than any of you guys. For me, she comes first and then all of you.

And you know what? Father says that to their children. So, yeah, I’m one of three, but I have older, much older sisters, 12 years older.

So it was really lovely because I have older sisters.

But kind of was a bit of an only child as well because my sisters.

Came to the UK to go to boarding school. So I was, um, you know, with my parents. So really great.

So when did you come here? How old were you?

So I came with mom. We moved here in 86, so I was ten.

Quite young because my.

Sisters came over after their studies, but I came a bit earlier. There was a war in 86, 85, so I and it was interesting because I went to school well, I couldn’t do any entrance exams because I couldn’t speak any English. So eventually Dad found a small private school in Wimbledon that would take basically well, I thought would take me. But evidently they just wanted to take his money and I kind of parked myself in in there.

And and.

I remember that first day because we don’t have assembly.

And hymns and things like that. So it was the first time that, you know.

I was.

In a class and then everybody goes to assembly in the morning.

With this hymn book. And I thought, Oh, what’s this?

I just sort of took a little.

Notebook with me. I thought, well, I’m you know, I thought it was a little notebook. I thought, that’s what we’re going to start studying. I mean, we don’t have these things. And then everyone starts singing.

And it was all a bit dramatic.

And I thought, Oh, what’s going on here? You know, it was a really bizarre.

Time, actually. I even went to school at half term because I didn’t know school was closed. They must have told us, but I still went. We don’t have half term in Iran, really. So, you know, and I was wondering what’s happening by about nine, 10:00 when no one had rocked up in the.

Whole school.

Was, you know. Yeah. So that was, uh.

That was interesting.

And that was 86. Yeah.

Well, you were saying your first assembly in hymns and I was recalling my first assembly as well when I came here and hymns. It was a very strict Catholic school, very strict, and half way through the year. It’s during the revolution it was 79. Okay. So I didn’t luckily didn’t get the war issues that you had. But then the headmaster shouting at people and he was yelling, Silence, silence. And I thought silence was a person. And I kept on thinking this silence. Such a naughty kid keeps on getting shouted out.

Yeah.

Exactly. Why?

So you remember it?

Well, obviously, because you were ten years old.

Oh, yeah, I remember it well. And. Oh yeah, I was ten, but actually.

The school had a lot of international students. I mean, I wasn’t the only person in this sort of situation, but actually the sort of Japanese people stuck together. A lot of the Asians stuck together.

And I.

Was the only sort of Iranian. So I did sort of spend a few little break times just in the bathroom.

Just sort of sitting on the floor thinking, Wow, I haven’t got any friends sort of thing. Oh, let’s just see how this goes. But um, but actually being.

Chatty and things, you pick up the language very quickly and it ended up being really well for me because I integrated beautifully. And, and also coming from that.

Kind of background in Iran, you were inherently.

Just.

You know, your science and maths and all those subjects.

You were already hitting the grades anyway. So then that side of it at least was okay. So it all had to struggle with was, you know, history and.

Geography and Latin.

We don’t really, you know, the complicated things that you really need the language.

So thankfully we didn’t do Latin. We got stuck with French, which is good. But we could we got a lot of similar words, so managed that quite nicely.

And did you live around Wimbledon? Did you grow up around there?

Yes. So I lived in Wimbledon pretty much.

A lot of that time. I went to Wimbledon high.

Eventually for my A-levels.

And Wimbledon is one of those places I feel really nostalgic about.

I love it still do I generally have nostalgia about my, you know, my schools, my university, and just I love my surroundings generally. So but it was a.

Yeah, it was a great time.

I even won some form prizes, but we didn’t go to Prizegiving because again, we don’t have this in Iran. So they called my dad and said, Can you pick.

Up some things out here? And my dad.

Came home with these.

Like mats, plates and books.

And form prize and this and that. And he said, I think.

These you did, you won these. And I was.

Like, what are they? We just put them aside. I was like, What is this? And then I went back to school at the New Year and I had different there was a different people in the year and they called my parents and said.

Leila had done so well. We’ve moved her up two years.

Instead of one, which never happened. So now was in a I thought, bloody hell, I have to start again with this. Only just I only just got to know who was in my year and so and that was kind of interesting. I ended up going to Guy’s when I was 17. Wow. So younger than everybody else.

Wow. Yeah. It’s a bit of a child genius. How did you not.

Find did you not find being pushed up a year meant you were the most junior one in the in that new year. And I know I know someone else told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Really? Well, it’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a thing people now.

Talk about.

In terms of do you put your child in a year earlier.

Or do you hold them back a year.

And and that sort of thing.

I mean.

I don’t know. I didn’t know what was going on.

Right. I only realised I was young when I went to Guy’s.

I couldn’t drink. That’s when I realised otherwise.

To you, you know, you just in the wave and you’re going forward and managing everything around you. So I had a lot of support.

From family.

And my sisters. Why?

Dentistry?

Um, dentistry. Surprisingly.

I’d like to have something amazing to tell you.

Payman but actually I.

Don’t because dentistry.

Is been the only job I’ve.

Ever wanted to do.

Well, that is amazing. That’s actually amazing.

That I suppose. Actually, you’re right. It is amazing. I have no idea how it started. And I even have I even have it right now on the desk somewhere here. Um, an essay. So when I came.

To the UK, you know, you write that What what do you want to do when you grow.

Up? Everyone had their, you know, want to.

Be a.

Transponster or whatever, you know, and, and with my very broken English who at the time I thought it was just perfect English. But now reading back, it’s hilarious. I’ve actually written When I Grow Up, I was want to be dentist. Uh huh. And so it’s been something I’ve always only the only job I’ve ever, ever wanted to do. And we actually had a I remember going to the dentist in Iran and I was young.

I must have.

Been maybe.

Seven.

Eight. And I remember kind of, you know, having my hand over the spittoon kind of on my tippy toes, which nothing has changed much. I still probably my height probably hasn’t actually changed too much. But I remember looking over the dentist and I was thinking and I said to him, Can I nurse for you? Can I do anything? And I was literally in his face. I’m sure he absolutely hated me. And then eventually he sort of stopped.

He gave some local anaesthetic on my.

To my sister.

He went.

To the corner of the room and I.

Kid you.

Not. Do you know what he did? Can you guess?

He actually lit a.

Cigarette and started smoking in the room. I mean, it was like a total fag in hand. It wasn’t even like, you know, an elegant, like, you know, in the room. He started to light a cigarette. I mean, to be fair, at least he waited for the locals to work, right? And he’s probably got idle thumbs. So he thought, right, you know, just go and smoke. So he actually lit a cigarette and he turned around to me and.

He said, Lala.

Never, ever think about dentistry. It is the most stressful, awful profession anybody could do. And there’s me and my big excited eyes over the spittoon going, What? Um, so I did have that incident as well. And, um. But did you.

Have any dentists.

In the family?

Nothing.

No. No dentists? No medics.

And my parents were just one of those parents.

Unlike kind of the East that never, ever pushed us to do, you know, anything my dad always said? He said, Ideally, I’d like you to be skilled. Uh, he was. He just wanted us to go to university and be educated for him. You know, education was was wealth.

And so he did not.

Mind at all. And so I.

Just.

Always wanted to do it. And so it was so easy for me.

What do your parents do?

Um, so my mom was a teacher, as are both my sisters.

And my dad. Well, before the revolution, he.

Worked for the Ministry of Information. He dealt with foreign press, mainly with the country and then post-revolution. It was interesting because.

I was born in.

76, so that whole period was a difficult time, of course. So my dad kind of changed roles. And so there was this in-between job situation.

Where my dad.

Was taking care of me.

As I was, you know, a.

Bit of an accident child, let’s face it. And I had a working mom. My mom was at school and so my dad.

Just took care of me. Basically. He was a househusband.

Until everything settled down in the country. And then he worked for an international company which still exists called If They Do Flavours and Fragrances.

And he was a managing.

Director, so a business really. So we travelled a lot and that sort of thing.

So wow, what an interesting career. To this day I’m obsessed about. I’m obsessed about flavours and fragrances. I remember going to his office in Iran and I’m so I’ve always been so curious about everything.

Whether it’s people or things.

And he had these, um.

These, you know, you get like those cheesy wotsit type things and at the bottom of the packet you get the blue powder. So he had, he had, you know, tubes of these in different colours.

I mean now that sort of stuff is carcinogenic, right? It’s that sunset yellow colour they put in. And I remember going into his office and opening everything and putting my hand in all of this. It was like all over my face and smelling all of the perfumes and. And even now I’m.

Still obsessed.

With.

Food and tasting and perfume.

I mean, flavours.

Flavours and fragrance is very interesting because I’m I’m involved in it with, you know, with toothpaste and. Oh, yes. I mean, number one, we’ve got some very expensive toothpaste. Expensive what we think is great value, ten, £10 a tube. Um, but I love it. Have you used it? So.

Yes. Well, I mean, I was one of the one of the first enlightened fans and yes, absolutely love it. And also I’m a bit of a I’m one of these, like, nerdy critiques.

Right? So at first I was like, well, let’s see, you know, like, let’s see what this is. I didn’t have.

The accent, but, you know, kind of wanted to see what it was about. And so and then but first of all, I loved Georgiana.

She works with you.

Did she still work ten years?

She’s so she’s a big connector. Yeah, right. She’s a big connector. Right.

So, yeah.

She has personal, you know, public relations skills. Excellent.

So, um, yeah, so. And then I said, you know, let’s try this. And I realised, you know, what a.

Beautiful, beautiful product it was.

Because.

You know, you literally took out all those, um, all of those.

Things that were.

Unpredictable made this system unpredictable. And you made them predictable. I mean, and that’s genius, right? So I. And the toothpaste and, you know, the the tooth. The the, the tooth. The tooth Sensitiser for two weeks.

Oh, I love it. I loved it.

Yeah.

Tooth serum. That’s right. So tell me about the flavours because lots of patients say about the mints and they don’t like the mint and. Yeah, well.

The thing is, number one, you know, you want your toothpaste to be, you know, nicer tasting than other toothpaste. Right? And it turns out that it’s as much to do with the sort of the. Viscosity, the mouthfeel as it has to do with the flavour. But then flavour and aroma are two different things. And the number of mints that there are is mind boggling. You know. You know this. Yeah. You know this. Yeah.

I do. Because I remember my dad’s office. Spearmint.

Yeah. There’s a whole.

Lot and there’s different manufacturers so your dad’s would be one of them. And then there’s others, right? And then, and then the other thing is, I feel we thought, why mint? You know, why does it have to be mint? Okay, so the freshness thing. Yeah, but why can’t toothpaste be just delicious? Like, you know, like, fantastic. Like, look forward to having it because it’s so tasty kind of thing. And my my business partners never approved me going after that angle. Yeah, but, but a couple of other companies have and I had I had Andrew Dorward on this podcast and they did it. Him and his wife did it brilliantly. Wonderful execution. If you ever tried their lime flavour, they they’ve really done it well as well. Chilli and lime or something. They’ve they’ve, they’ve copied the names of the sorbets sorbets in Marks and Spencer.

Yeah.

It’s like a cocktail. It’s well I mean we could call it, we could call it a mojito.

So someone else has done that.

Someone else has done that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got the mojitos and the gin and tonics. And I thought. I thought I thought the execution on that one wasn’t as good. But it turns out this is the thing that it turns out, whatever flavour you do, there has to be an element of mint in it. For when, when. When you test it out on people. Yes. If there isn’t an element of mint in it, people just really put off. So even if it’s lime, it’s kind of like minty lime. And that brings in in all these new complications. It’s a fascinating field, the whole flavour and fragrance field, the.

Whole.

Yeah, the whole.

Toothpaste.

I was sedated for Simon Chard.

And he’s got the.

He’s got the parlour tablet. So he was like, Lolly, can you taste some of these, take some of these and test them out. And I don’t know whether that’s I.

Didn’t end up putting one in my mouth, but I don’t know whether that’s minty. But that’s a.

Great that’s minty.

Yeah. A great concept isn’t it. So it’s all new, but.

So that’s pretty much what I never had dentists in the family.

So tell me about.

Guys, when you first got to guys when you first got to guys, what was your.

Impression?

I love guys. Love it. I absolutely love.

I really wanted to go to guys Umds It was at the time because it was 94.

United.

Medical and Dental School. I mean.

The United Medical. And, you know, in my head it was the best.

Dental school in.

The world. Of course, you guys people think the guys would tell you that.

Yeah.

What is it? What do they do on day one? Do they on day one, do they announce it? Do they say you are the best, the best, that top gun? Do they do that? And then they just keep on telling you that again and again.

But I think I think I mean, I think when you.

When you first.

In your.

First you know, when you first go to guys.

And and you have.

Harold Ellis, Ian Hutchinson and Lawrence Bannister teaching you anatomy in the Gordon Museum, you immediately know you’re.

In a special place, right? I mean, that’s.

The editor of.

Grey’s Anatomy.

So I.

Just felt very I mean, don’t get me wrong.

Every Dental.

University is.

Amazing.

And I you know, of course, now I. I know.

That.

But you and I really.

Hope that.

Everybody, wherever they go, they feel how special it is. I mean, you know, King’s had. They all do.

But I loved it. And I loved the.

Location because, you know, let’s face it, it’s not Denmark Hill, You know, it’s Tower Bridge. And so, you.

Know, it’s.

A great, great location. And we were all.

Living in Wolfson house and, you know, all medics and dentists.

Together.

Back then, London Bridge was not this cool area that it is now. London. London Bridge was right dodgy back then. I remember. I remember I remember dropping my brother off there. Wolfson House was in a proper dodgy place. Yeah. And compared to compared to where I was living in in Cardiff. In Cardiff? Yeah. It was a ghetto. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The place, the place I was living in Cardiff was.

Was much outside of London.

I’m not talking out of London. Out of London. I mean, you can’t beat that campus. We didn’t even have a campus, really. But in London, because I wanted to stay in London. In London, it definitely beat Whitechapel and Denmark. Hill And.

Yeah, everywhere else. Did you not consider leaving London?

Why didn’t you consider leaving London?

No. Why?

I wanted to go to guys and I wanted to. Well, I wanted to go to guys because I did want. I did.

I wanted to do sedation, and I. They were the only dental school that did teach sedation as undergrads. And I wanted to be a part of that. And I wanted to stay in London because I wanted to stay at home. Um, yeah, I loved.

Being at home.

And, um.

With I just, I loved it. And I wanted to live by being at home.

I mean, you know, I still lived in Wolfson house and lived out, but to go back.

Home and I think at the time I didn’t even.

Really I mean, I applied to go to for Birmingham and Bristol and all those great places, but I wanted to go to guys. That was my first choice.

It’s so funny.

That’s how I ended up there.

I’m having this conversation.

I’m having this conversation with my son right now. He’s doing GCSEs and he’s saying, Yeah, he wanted.

Industry.

No, he doesn’t want to dentistry. Um, but he’s saying he wants to stay in London. Yeah. And, and I’m talking to.

Interesting.

Well every 16 year old who’s just about just figuring out their their lives and girls and and you know, whatever going out and being independent and soon it’ll be driving. These guys aren’t so interested in driving as we were of course at that age you’re going to think, I’ll just stay where I am because I know people. But it’s an error of sorts. I’m not saying everyone you know, obviously it worked out for you, but I would have.

Thought every 16.

Year old would want to get as far away from their parents.

As possible, actually.

Well, not you. Not you.

It means what it means. It means you’re a great.

Parent and you provide a wonderful home.

For free.

So he’s very clever man. Do you want to stay? I mean, I think this is a bit more calculated than we think. Yeah.

I mean, look, I ended up in Cardiff by mistake, not on purpose. I didn’t get in. I wanted to go to London Hospital. I didn’t get in. I failed my grades by one point or whatever it was. And Cardiff said, Fine, yeah, but it was the best thing that ever happened. Yeah, because.

What a great choice. What a great choice.

That whole part of my life, which was a whole different chapters that you and my son will never have. Yeah. If you don’t, if you don’t have another angle to your life.

You’re absolutely right. I mean, I think now.

I mean, if I had to give advice, I would say, you know, just go to.

You know, Glasgow or like just go somewhere like Bristol, Bristol, Cardiff, like all of Bristol. Bristol is one of my favourite cities in this whole country.

I mean, it’s absolutely amazing. So yeah, now I would say that, but and I.

Think at the time campus feel and also all my friends are dentists and doctors, whereas everyone else is normal friends. And you know, so I completely agree with you, but that’s how I felt at the time. But, you know, you’re absolutely right, to be.

Honest. How were you how were you as.

A dental student? Were you like top of your class? Were you struggling at the clinical aspects? Were you party animal or were you president of the Student Society? Who are you? Who were you in university?

I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

And I found it quite easy.

Did you?

So, um.

Yeah, I found the whole thing really easy.

I went to all my lectures.

I got did really well.

In all my exams, and I was, you know.

I was, I mean, you know, I was in that top few, you know, ten people or whatever.

But I really enjoyed it.

And I partied enough, probably not at the time enough. But now, looking back, I should have partied maybe a lot more. But but enough of all.

Of those.

Things. I had a great.

Time and I really.

Got to know my tutors. I still.

You know, I still when I. So in fact, I’m seeing my Cascaria.

Do you know my escudier on on Wednesday.

He taught us and he said, Gosh, I remember you as a student. So, you.

Know, I turned up to.

Everything. I did my quotas. Yeah, all in time or maybe.

A little early, but.

I was there to learn and I found it.

A privilege. I felt privileged to be there. I respected those people that taught us.

And I.

Wanted to.

Learn. And also I have being Iranian, you’re kind of inherently.

Maybe a little competitive, so you always want to do really well. You want to impress and just be do well. And so.

Yeah, which is. Because now when you talk to people or the great great achievers and all the famous dentists, it’s sort of inversely proportional to how well they did at university.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, because really a lot.

With a lot of people, their, their passion for dentistry and their knowledge started after they qualified, which is actually great because that’s when you really learn and when you’re older and wiser, right. To really know what you want.

But I.

Just.

Happened. I think I was one.

Of the very few people that really wanted to be there. Let’s face it, it’s a lot of people were there.

For many.

Other reasons than the fact that they wanted to be a dentist. So, you know.

You.

You know, you sailed through school, got pushed up a class, then you sail through through dental school. You obviously find that sort of study side very simple. And I take it you didn’t you didn’t suffer with the anxieties that some people suffer with when they start with patients. You took that in your stride. Did you not consider like specialising?

Yeah, this is a good question. I didn’t. And also.

At the time, it.

Wasn’t something that lots of people did. I don’t know whether you had that experience. It wasn’t.

Now everyone’s everyone wants to.

Do as little as possible.

You know.

But at the.

Time it wasn’t such a thing. And I. I loved it all so.

Much that I couldn’t think of.

Doing one thing.

But what I did do fairly quickly, well, immediately was.

I did my house jobs.

Purely because.

At the time.

It was only you could only.

Do house jobs at Guy’s if.

You were at Guy’s. And so it was one of those things that if you did well, we had a we had an exam called the Oski, you know, the Husky. And then you were ranked you were ranked on that oski and then your house jobs were ranked on.

What you scored.

In your oski And somehow I came.

First in the.

Year in that oski, which, you know, and my academic academically, I wasn’t the best, you know, I wasn’t first, but somehow I did in that exam, God knows. Fluke. And so it.

Was inevitable that I kind of do those house jobs. And so I did do the Max House job, and I did do my restorative. But what I wanted to do.

Learn a bit more about was radiology. Eric Waite, who is just.

Great, the great incredible.

So I did radiology and.

The great Eric Coates, Indeed. So blessed. And and in fact.

He asked me to do the.

Training in radiology because that had just.

Opened up.

And I thought about it because I loved radio. And in fact.

Even to this day, I take some.

X-rays for my dentists.

So those roots, you know, for AIDS and that sort of thing. And I.

See them struggling and I kind of say, well.

Do you want me to take the X-ray for you? You know, if you want to, I don’t mind doing that. So you don’t have to, you know, take gloves off this, that and the other.

Scrub and all this. So I, I love it. But I said no. And then Jemmy Magnus.

Took that role, took that job.

And I said no because I thought, yeah, he’s great.

Um, and.

And Jackie Brown, right. Jackie Brown Incredible. Because I thought, well, I’ve.

Done dentistry.

You know, I love this, but what am I going to do with that? And so.

I.

Yeah, I didn’t do it. And, um, and then I went and did my vet and, and then went into practice. Yeah.

And did you, did you take to practice Quite easily.

I did my vet and it wasn’t a great practice unfortunately. So it put me off practice and a little bit of dentistry because I ended up with a trainer who was not that great and not a great leader, although.

The practice.

The nurses were amazing and I’m.

Still in touch.

With the same nurses from the year 2000. In fact, I’m in touch with almost all of my nurses.

Over the years.

So it was a good practice but not a great leader. And so I.

Kind of was a bit put off it. So then I ended up going back to guys and just teaching a little bit.

And I those were the days where you got jobs.

You know, like in.

The corridor and you didn’t have to apply for things you remember. So I worked there for a couple of.

Years with the incredible Mark McGurk, who is just.

Sending great waves.

Even now. And yeah, and so I and then it was there that I did my diploma in sedation. So whilst I was.

Teaching a bit and doing a.

Bit of A&E and that sort of thing.

I did my post-grad in sedation, um, at Guy’s, which came in really. Sort of handy there. And that was incredible because I was then.

Taught by David Craig, who is my.

Ultimate.

Sedation.

Hero.

Even the queen thinks so because she gave him.

An MBA and Meg.

Skelly Derek debuts.

And now Carol Boyle, who’s fronting Saad who I’m a faculty member for, and I feel very lucky to be there. So there were all my teachers and that was kind of 2002. And then after that.

I braved it and went back to practice. And then I.

Stayed in the same practice for years and years and years.

Yeah. Did you not.

Consider ever buying a practice?

I did. I bought I bought the practice I was working at.

Of course. It’s your practice, right? Yeah. In Docklands. It was.

Well.

In the Docklands. That’s right, Yeah. In Canary Wharf.

Um, so same practice.

I, I bought the partnership because, you know, I mean, it was a.

Great practice and I had a great partner in Nagpaul who was just so different to me in every sense of the way that it just made so much sense. I did that for.

But, but I.

Sold it fairly quickly, maybe three, four years. And it didn’t, you know.

It wasn’t really my style.

Kind of being a being a worker bee and a queen bee at the.

Same time.

Did you not enjoy being the boss?

Uh, well.

I really enjoyed I really enjoyed.

Being a leader and having all of.

Those. I loved my staff. They loved.

Work.

They we were like a family and I really, really enjoyed all of those leaderships.

But often that doesn’t really match well with the business. So I wasn’t very business.

Savvy, but then my.

Partner.

Kind of was. So I kind of had the shop floor.

And the peep dealt with the people and he dealt with the more of the business side of things, which I was probably shocking at. So I really enjoyed that. But then.

I tend.

To I had that even.

Without being the boss. So, you know.

I don’t I don’t have this power issue, You know, I don’t need to, you know, I was thankfully as a dentist.

You’re always a leader, right? You’re a leader for your staff.

Your leader, for your nurse, for your room, for your patients, for the technician. You know, I didn’t necessarily need to own the practice for that, for me to feel that way. I felt it anyway.

I get that. I get that. Yeah, I get that. I find leadership is a really funny thing because it’s there is a difference between being friends with your staff and being their boss. There is a difference. Yeah, and I’m very bad at that. I’m very, very, very poor.

Me too.

But my partner was My partner is very good at that. He’s very strong on that angle. And he’s just an extraordinary human being. You know, he he manages to keep it professional and tell people off when it’s the right time to tell them off and tell them, you know, give them praise when it’s the right time. And whereas with me, it’s literally like I’m talking to a family member and it’s like anything goes. But the combination is actually very strong. You know, it becomes like a head, heart kind of combination where you’ve got both in the same bad cop.

Good cop.

Type.

Situation.

There’s some there’s some of that. But it’s funny because our staff sometimes think we’re doing it on purpose, but we’re not. I always think like like, you know, something like, I don’t know, should they take between Christmas and New Years off?

Should we should they have to be off? I’ll say yes.

And I’m well, no have to be off. They have to take the holidays. Oh, they.

Have to be off. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I’m like, that’s ridiculous. It’s building in pain and resentment for. For what reason? Yeah. And then. But. But they’ll be the other way around. He’ll be the other way around sometimes. And what I’m saying is, my staff, our staff think that we’re doing it on purpose to mess them up or something, but it’s not actually sometimes the way it ends up. Um. Yeah.

Anyway.

But that’s great, isn’t it?

I mean, I kind of ended up.

Being the same. I ended up just.

Paying everyone.

Everything they.

Wanted and.

You know, like, everything. But. But at the end of the day, we never had one day sick leave from any member of my staff. Everyone kind of bounced into work.

It was one of those cliche cartoon type.

Practices where even the patients were like, Gosh, this is really like a.

Happy, you know, it was like literally Lala from the Teletubbies.

But it seems like.

It seems like something you wouldn’t exit because it seems like it was fun and it was, you know, something. Why did you have why.

Did you exit?

Um, you know what? Truthfully, I lost my dad. Um, and I think it.

Was an interesting time because you start to kind. I think anyone that has a shock, whether it’s losing someone very special to you or anything, accident, health, whatever you do, end up re-evaluating. Right? Everything about your life. And I thought, I don’t know whether this responsibility, which I really took personally, you know, I wanted to be the best person as a dentist. I wanted to be the best person, the best dentist that nurses worked with. I wanted to be the best person. You know, I wanted the soap in the bathroom. And in fact, you know what? Something that’s a bit tragic but also funny. After my dad died, my mom had cancer very quickly after.

And I remember being I remember being at the Royal Marsden whilst she was having.

Her treatment and.

The phone rang and it was the practice and I thought, I better take it. And I put the phone sort of quietly into my ear and it was my nurse saying.

All the soap is.

Finished in the bathroom.

And we were just wanting to know, you know, where do you want us to get this?

And and that moment I thought, right, I’m this is bad, You know, this is bad. Like, if I’m stressed, if I’m that kind of person that has to stress I am was really bad.

At actually delegating. Maybe, you.

Know, that wasn’t a good leader. Right. And and I thought, right. I’m sitting here in the Royal Marsden and someone else is worrying about the soap in the bathroom. And I thought, right, this.

Is not good.

And that’s when I thought, maybe this isn’t.

Really for you.

And in fact, I did this really.

Interesting.

Psychology of happiness type thing online. I don’t know.

Whether from a Yale University, it was quite famous. One of my really good friends, Saravi.

Who’s a dentist and.

Reads a lot.

She recommended it and I did it.

And and it shows you your strengths.

And your what they call.

Lesser strengths, but things you’re probably pretty bad at. And three of.

My lesser.

Strengths was.

Perseverance, teamwork and prudence in terms of discipline. And and I thought, you know, and then at that point, honest, she was just the most incredible.

Man, soul mate, just.

Human in the whole world. My husband said to me, Lolly, I love you so much, but I’m.

Starting to not like you that much sometimes.

You know, because you have to let go of some of these. So when I lost my dad, I thought.

Maybe this isn’t.

Really.

And. And also, in a weird sort of.

Way, I’m I.

It doesn’t.

Motivate.

Me. Dentistry actually really doesn’t make any money unless you’re really a good businessman or you’re really getting in, you know, a few practices and all that. I mean, that’s.

Not my style, so why am I doing that? So and actually, one of our associates.

Really wanted to buy into the practice, so it worked out really well. Nobody came, nobody left.

I stayed on. He you know, nothing.

Changed hands like.

So.

I mean, it sounds.

Sounds like a really difficult time with your with your parents. But outside of that terrible thing, did you feel like this was your first failure or did you not feel like a failure? You felt like empowered, empowered by getting out of it?

I thought.

I was such a success.

Actually, because you managed to get out. It was a huge figured it out.

Well well.

The practice when I was a part of being kind of a leader in it, a principal was incredible. And my staff, I’m still friends with my receptionist who.

Says it was the best time of her.

Life working there.

And people, like I said, people like people. So if for me that is a success, if you’ve made a difference in somebody else’s career, somebody else’s life, somebody else, that is amazing. And I’m mean. It was a great period of my time. I didn’t leave it as such. I continued it. In some ways, not much changed and I still interfered with as much as possible within it.

So, you know, so.

And you were.

Doing you were doing quite a, quite an obscene amount of enlightened. I remember at the time it was a successful practice And you were selling lots of dentistry. Do you remember?

Yes.

I was doing.

An obscene amount of enlightening because I because if I really.

Believe in something, I never sell anything I don’t want to have done myself. But God help you if I really believe in your product because I am there.

You’re an all or nothing kind of person.

I am there. And and actually, the patients absolutely loved it. And so, yes, I had I had my logo on your product.

It was amazing. And and yeah, great service. Great.

Yeah. So I did do a lot of.

What did you would you consider what do you consider your biggest failure?

My biggest failure. Um. I mean, all of those things are my kind of lesser strengths, but, um.

As no, I don’t.

I.

Don’t think I’ve, I don’t consider any of my life as a failure because everything is. You learn from everything. I mean, I know that sounds really cliche, and I wish I could have some more interesting things to say, but I do feel a bit sort of humbled by it all. I’m I don’t think I’ve. Have had anything, um, regret sort of shaped regrets? I mean, I think regret wise, it would have been good to do some dentistry abroad.

To do some.

Postgrad abroad.

I think I would have liked to have done my American exams maybe.

At the time because my one of my sisters is American, lives.

In Florida.

My nephew, one.

Of my nephews is a dentist in in Florida. And I think, wouldn’t it be.

Nice to be able to have had some experience abroad and.

Just generally abroad? And and because I was kind of such a.

Sort of a perfect.

Daughter student and all of those things, I.

Think maybe it.

Would have been lovely to have a year out.

And do something else I’d like to have done.

You know, I like to have worked in a.

Bar or something, you.

Know, like I like to have done something. I’ve never done any other job. And, you know, I talk to people and everyone’s done some sort of paper round or something. I never worked.

Dentistry was my first job.

So and I think, you know, something.

Like working in a restaurant makes or breaks you. I mean, you know, and.

Graham Norton, Right.

Said that it was in.

Fact in the podcast of failures, the it’s a great one. He said everybody should work.

In a restaurant because you have so much power in a weird sort of way to make or break somebody else’s night. You understand how people talk to you. You understand about.

Those.

Personalities. You can really change the night for somebody else, and that power is dangerous. You need to be able to know how to control it.

And so I think, gosh, isn’t that yeah, I would like to have done something else. And now, I mean, I’ve changed my career now.

So, um, in.

A weird sort of.

Way and.

It’s such a niche.

Thing that even the patients say.

How did you, you.

Know, are you a dentist or an anaesthetist?

And, you know, how did.

You get into this? So, you know, I’m doing something different, not quite working in a bar, but still.

Well, we’ve got.

You’ve got your, your other interests, which I found out tonight about, which is your Instagram page. Is it is it only an Instagram page or is it more than that. Um, what’s it called?

Spirits. I mean, it’s like the high spirits. It’s the most remind me the name, It’s the most.

Amateur Instagram page. I’m so bad at tech, but it’s called Spirits Run High, which I think is genius. Right? It’s almost as good as my business name of I.V. sedation. And I did. I’ve always want to say, I always like drinking.

I know I’ve always I’ve always been.

Fascinated by flavours and fragrances and mixology, molecular mixology.

Mixology of putting a few things together and creating something beautiful to the eye, to the taste.

I have this picture in my bar of my dad drinking, you know, holding a glass. And he’s.

Got that face of somebody that has just savoured a taste, you know, that lip and the eyes whilst.

Holding a drink.

Because he always said, you know, taste, taste. If you’re drinking something, taste it. Really taste it, live it.

And now we know, you know, savouring everything, every moment.

Everything is one of the biggest one of the six steps to happiness, really.

And so.

Having that mixology.

And have.

Creating something.

It’s been really.

Interesting to.

Me. And like everyone that has a little side hustle during COVID, I ended up doing a.

Mixology.

Certificate online.

Everyone else was doing Cpds.

And I did a.

Mixology.

Certificate online and.

I then set up this page because some friends wanted to know a few mixes and whatnot and then it just.

Sort of, yeah, grew from there. I mean, it’s literally like nothing. I have like, you know, a hundred followers or something. But, but I love it. And, and actually I am one of those people that comes home punished and I will come home and we would make a cocktail and we would sit.

And talk to each other. And we are blessed with the fact that we don’t have children to worry about. So I really.

Savour those moments.

I savour it for my.

Guests and.

Anish and I do this routinely, you know? So yeah, it’s one of my favourite things to do. Dine and wine.

Nice.

Well that we’re getting to the end of our time. Let’s. Let’s finish it in the usual way. You said you said you listened to this podcast sometimes. So hopefully you’re ready for these questions. Fantasy dinner party.

I never prepare. So three guests. But. But yes.

Yes.

Three guests. Dead or alive, who would you have?

Well, you.

Know, I start every dinner party.

With champagne.

Um, and I kind.

Of expect every dinner party that I attend to start with champagne. So my first guess, who better than the grand dame of. That the condom of champagne, Veuve Clicquot.

Arguably probably the first business.

Woman in the world. I think so. Barbe-nicole. Her surname was Ponsardin. She became a widow at 27 with a young daughter.

And a failing wine business. And at the time.

In.

France, I think.

Many places, the only women that had financial independence.

Were.

Widows.

The word verb meaning widow.

And and so she really gave up all of her independence, her inheritance, and she kept persevering. She learned I mean, this was a failing business. She went back to.

Learn more and more and more. And she was really courageous because in.

This is what I want to know more.

From her.

Because.

The.

Napoleonic.

War.

Was coming to an end and trade was poised to sort of start again. And she actually smuggled 10,000 bottles of her famous 1811 vintage in a ship and parked it in Amsterdam ready for that treaty to be signed. And so the day it was signed, she beat every other.

House.

To infiltrate Russia with champagne.

And truth. Behold, the first glass that Tsar Alexander held and drank.

Was Veuve Clicquot. And he said he won’t drink anything else.

And really, after.

That, many widows in champagne like Louise Pommery, Lily.

Bollinger, Laurent Perrier, more recently, Taittinger are all kind of really from that backbone of Veuve Clicquot. So I think she’d probably.

Be my first guest and I would serve her her a grand vintage.

A grande dame.

Wow.

Did you learn all this on your mixology course?

Do you know what I love? Yeah.

I don’t watch TV, which is very interesting.

So I’m kind of.

Always reading things. Not book, not books.

But on the internet and computers.

And that sort of thing.

But I love stories.

I mean, these are great stories, right? Yeah.

So I savour it and yeah.

So this is. That will be my beautiful.

Yes.

Beautiful. Never had her before. Who’s your second guest? No.

So my second guest would probably be.

So somebody like.

Sigmund Freud and not well.

For two reasons. Firstly, I don’t know much about him. Actually. My sister’s a psychologist, so she sort of fills in the blanks for me. But I have realised that I’m.

Definitely interested in in people’s personalities and their whys and their past.

And how that.

Infiltrates in them.

And so I kind of really like to know a.

Bit more about him. I mean, he was very avant garde.

And so I would like to know it from him. Plus, secretly, I’m hoping.

He’s going to bring Dolly with.

Him so.

I can just invite Dolly, make the.

Whole thing. Yeah, well, I don’t want.

To waste a space. No disrespect to Dolly, because he’s. Because.

But Dolly is one of those people that he’s just such a.

Crazy guy, right? Like, I don’t. Not really sure he’s going to sit down at the dinner table. He’ll probably probably mean upside down like that.

He’ll probably be like that paradoxical.

Guy right on the ceiling have to peel.

Off. And so but but you know, but quite like to have a bit of surrealism.

In this and so and then my my second reason.

For inviting him is that let’s face it, I mean we both deal with the conscious and the subconscious.

And avoiding the unconscious.

Right?

So I think we have a lot in common. So I would.

I’m suddenly I’m suddenly realising why you were top of your class. Fully prepared. Answer man.

I just thought.

I just thought, God, he keeps going on about the conscious and I keep going on about.

The conscious and the subconscious and yeah, probably.

I’d probably serve him. I wouldn’t serve him champagne, I’d probably serve him something a bit more grounded, like.

Something that.

I mean my favourite classic cocktail. Not that you asked, but what would be.

Would be something that something that.

Grounds you, that you kind of there’s some cocktails that you can hold in your.

Hand and.

You’re always going to have great.

Conversation with the person in front of you. And so for him, it’ll it’s going to have to be a Negroni.

No, I think this.

Is this is something where.

You you’re always going to you know, you’re going to have a great conversation. No one drinks a Negroni unless.

They’re prepared to have.

A great conversation. So yeah, that’s, that’s my second guess.

And guess my.

I guess my last guess.

Which which is which. I think every, every person, every.

Person that has lost.

A parent would tell you that they would give absolutely anything, anything to have one more dinner Right. With their parent. So I’m no different.

And so my last guess would be.

Howdy, Sheriff. Yeah.

Um, my dad and he would fit right in because he was a master of, you know, he was a giant amongst.

Men anyway, but he was a master of public relations and just so incredible in a crowd. So the kind of person that, you know, people really listen to. So and.

You know, sometimes you have one of those guests where you ask.

Them to come a little bit earlier. Have you done that in a dinner party where you ask one couple to.

Come half an hour earlier? Yeah. So I would secretly want my dad to come a little bit earlier just so that I can just hug him for half an hour and not let go of him.

So. Oh.

So that’s what I would, um, and probably serve him something like a vodka martini because he was so distilled in every way, you know, that it needs to be.

Like it has such a zest.

For life that it needs to.

Be a vodka more. I mean, he was a bit of a James Bond. Anyway, it needs to be a vodka martini with a nice little lemon twist. Yeah.

So that would be the beautiful dinner party. I mean, I’d love I’d love my you know, I love Anish. You know.

Anish is.

Anish and I are one.

Person. You know, we’re always attached. I’m surprised, you know, if you move the camera a little bit to the left, you probably see him. So, I mean, obviously you want your family, but those are the three kind of, you know.

I’m Iranian now, so now.

There’s going to be like 80 and.

Plus Anish is.

Indian. So if we invite his family, there’ll be about 700 people there.

So amazing, amazing answers, though. Amazing answers, though. I’m struck by how positive you are. Maybe it’s your it’s your delivery. Even when you’re talking about something quite sad, you’re laughing and and smiling. It’s a very unique way of being. It’s very nice.

Um, thank you. I’m very humbled. I think that’s important. And I always used to tell the receptionist, Just smile when you’re on the phone.

Um, because people know, right?

They know how you feel.

I even put on some perfume today for.

You, actually.

Because you know you want to.

Feel good, so.

But thank.

You. Yes.

Let’s get on to two, perhaps. Favourite question. The deathbed. You’ve got your friends, family or your loved ones around you. Three pieces of advice you’d leave for them.

And this is a very.

Good this is a.

Mean it’s a great question because it is it is.

Just giving those.

Advice as a 46 year old, you.

Know, things you wish you knew, right. When you really, for your younger self, think something that I’ve invested in that has been really.

Quite a centrepiece for my happiness. And I think, um, is that I would advise.

You to invest in being time affluent and not. Wealth affluent. And that I think it’s really important. I mean, this is not just me being little Miss Chatterbox. This is very well researched and the actual the happiness of people that value time over money is huge. It’s huge difference. A big difference. So having just having that time to do nothing or to go and see a chum for a boozy lunch or just just have time. So I.

Think investing in.

In having time is my first piece of advice.

Beautiful.

Um, I would say the second thing would be to always raise your words and not your voice. It is just something that respects people when they deserve it the least.

And I think when.

We’re sometimes in that low or in that moment, it is so easy to forget about humanity and people.

But I think the more.

You are able to communicate, you can use the words this is really important so that it’s rain that grows.

Flowers, not thunder. So that would probably be my second.

That’s beautiful advice. I’ve never heard that before.

Respect people when they deserve it the least. It’s a beautiful idea.

And, you know, interestingly enough, when I when we go out with people, I notice how they treat people they don’t need to treat well. So I notice.

How they.

Are treating the waiter or how they are treating, you know, like I always say to my nephew, when you go out on a date.

Watch how that person is treating others.

Because they’re going to treat you well. You’re sitting in front of them about to pay for their bill, you know, But.

What about everyone else? And, you know, this is when the.

Patients notice when you treat your nurse really well.

Yeah. Agreed. And vice versa.

So I these things for me.

Are really.

Important. So. Yeah, that’s where that. Back story of that is really.

Agree with that. I really agree with that what you said about the nurse thing because specifically so so so true. How much your patient’s respect goes up for you when you’re respect for your nurses?

Absolutely.

What there was was there was there three bits of advice? Okay. So my last bit of advice.

I mean, I’m I’m Persian.

So every Persian is going to be talking about poetry and the epic books.

And this is what we’re that’s been woven into every cell of our body. You know that Payman We’re very proud of it.

We’re proud of this 2000 history. But interestingly, my mom and my dad always said to me, the.

Fact that, you know about your own culture is fantastic.

Everyone should know about their own culture. But my dad said, don’t forget.

What’s impressive is.

When you understand and you learn about other people, about other epic books, about other people’s cultures, That’s what’s impressive. Not really reeling off things you know about yourself. That’s your responsibility. You should know. So for for my.

Last piece of advice, I think is what Lord Krishna said in the mahabharat, the great epic.

Book, The.

Longest Love poem or love? Yeah, in the world. We have the Shahnameh and the Indians have the Mahabharat. But I really love this.

He said.

Do everything that you do. Not with.

Greed, not with ego, not with envy.

But with compassion, with humility, with love and.

Devotion. And each of these, each of these words, if you really savour, savour each of these words. So, you know, when I say humility, I don’t mean just be modest. I mean look inwards, you know, look inwards and and and improve and be better and learn from others.

And I think all of those that’s that.

Sentence that I read really resonated with me because it’s.

So.

Wholesome. And I think if you lead that life that’s both hedonistic and.

Holistic, you know, we all want to have.

Fun. We all want to pursue pleasure. But if you’re able to have that kind of really, um, holistic.

World around you to.

Create that happiness, not to be on that hedonistic treadmill where you’re constantly after that nice watch and the nice car and then this and that and.

That, the next high.

The next high.

Because we know, we know that the reason why.

It’s called.

That treadmill is that.

We know that.

Everybody that that that short surge of surge of happiness that you get we know everybody ends up coming back to that same level. I mean, this is what happens with lottery winners.

This is what.

Happens. This is this is not just me going off piece. This is this is a fact. Right. And I.

Think if you’re.

Able to savour if you’re able to follow what what.

Krishna.

Said, if you’re able to savour those moments that drink that moment, to have gratitude, to have gratitude for where you study, to have respect for the people that teach you to want to learn, to cultivate curiosity. And these are all things I think we should teach them in Dental school even. But to be able to really sit and when you talk to someone to lean forward, to show them that you’re engaged, be interested in people. I think just all of those things as a whole, that is the secret to happiness.

So nice, man. I feel like. I feel like you’re one of the most successful humans I’ve come across. I really do. It’s a lovely to hear that. Um, it’s been a massive pleasure having you. And thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you, it’s called IV sedation, but IV spelt different, isn’t it? Iv. Like the plant. I.v. Sedation.

Is that right? That’s right. Yes. Yes.

That’s right. That’s right.

And and the boozy.

The boozy one was what was that called? The boozy Internet site. Oh, God, no.

No, Instagram. You should. You’re not interested in pushing that one to that? No, no, not that one. Push it. Push it.

Through. It’s run high.

It’s run high.

I mean, I don’t know.

How high they run over there, but, you know, they could run a little higher, I think. But that’s.

Okay.

It’s been a progress.

It’s been a massive, massive pleasure. It’s such, such a unique story and such a unique person. Really, really lovely to to connect with you like this.

Thanks, lady.

I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

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

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

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

And don’t forget our six star rating.

And I see a wide range of different types of clinicians who have different philosophies is the one you’re coming from is about actually giving the patient longevity in terms of their dentistry that you’re offering them, right? Something that’s going to last, not something that, okay, I’m going to change your smile in whatever, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever the latest craze is today. And it’ll look great. But but the habits that you’ve developed to get your teeth to where you were when you stepped in my door have not changed. Right. So you’re going to you’re going to continue to grind. You’re going to continue to, you know, bite bottle tops off of bottles and things like that and screw your teeth up and you’ll be back here in in six months sort of thing.

So and if you can identify and make the patient see where it’s going wrong, some people might look at this and go, Oh, financially this patient will end up spending less in the long run. But if you look at it from the point of view, this is more likely to become a patient that will come back every six months so that we can check for mouth cancers so that we can check their general the health of the gum and the bone. What’s going to happen is if we feel looked after, guess what? If our friend down the pub have a problem with it and every most people are scared of going to the dentist. Most people.

Without question.

Yeah. And if we if this patient can go. Do you know what? Trust me, you need to go to whoever. I don’t even have to say. Just go. You’ll see what I mean. Guess what? You’ll be building your practice long term and you’ll create an environment where patients want to be there. Staff clinicians want to be there, and everything moves in the right direction.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast. Today on Dental Leaders we have Liza Benting, who’s been a dentist for over two decades, has been a practice owner and associate in numerous practices and currently is a team member at Pluto Partners, where she leads essentially negotiations for selling dental practices. What a colourful career she’s had, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Lisa, and and just filling in all the bits in in that story of yours. Welcome to the podcast, Lisa.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Lisa, tell me about your backstory. Let’s start right at the beginning where you grew up and your backstory and just your upbringing. Tell me tell me a little bit about that.

I’m originally from sunny Cape Town, South Africa, and the year I qualified was a time when things were changing in South Africa and things were very uncertain in the world of dentistry as far as new rules that were implemented by the government and I qualified in 2000 and in that year about 36. We were 48 at Stellenbosch University and 36 of us decided to come to the UK until such time that they decide what they will do. As far as newly qualified dentists in South Africa is concerned. The plan initially was never to stay. The plan was to go back at some point, but after 2 or 3 years, I had a little girl to Mia, and after 2 or 3 years she settled into the system and schooling. And you look at start looking at things differently. When you start thinking of the family and stability and everything else. And myself and my now ex-husband came over and the plan was always for us to have a family practice together. But with being qualifying in South Africa, we had to do four years within working as assistants. They could call us at the time so that we can apply for a visa number. And in 2006 we applied for visa numbers and set up a family practice together, our own practice. But things didn’t work out. And in 2009 I decided to leave the family practice. And that is actually when, if I can say that my journey within different elements of private and NHS dentistry began. At the time I thought things were falling apart. But actually looking back, I can now see how the dots connect and actually finding myself as an associate versus a principal in different environments. I always used to work full time, but I used to divide my time with three days in one practice, two days in another, and maybe a Saturday.

I’m going to stop you right there. I’m going to take I’m going to take you right back to the time when you thought your whole world was falling apart. Right? So so what were the circumstances that led you to leave the family practice where you said, Right, I’ve had enough. I’ve got my own clinic, I’m my own boss, I’m running this. And doing that is no easy job. Right? So. So you’ve been a practice owner? Yeah. What was it that what were the circumstances around that made you say, Right, this this isn’t for me anymore?

Unfortunately, I found myself in a situation where my marriage broke down. Okay? And with being in that situation, like you’ve mentioned, it’s extremely difficult. But because I don’t think any of us would like a family unit to be broken. But sometimes these difficult decisions, we just know it’s the right decision for everyone. Sure. What was difficult, not only did my personal life, did my personal life feel as if it was falling apart, but my professional life as well, because I was building this, my career and this business and everything else, and stepping away was one of the most difficult things I had to do, both in my personal and professional life. And to a degree it felt like I was starting again. And this is why I would say it felt like everything was falling apart. Having to move from, like you say, being your own boss and then having to work as an associate is quite difficult. And finding a practice where you feel as if you belong, which I think a lot of clinicians can associate with, is quite difficult because there are so many boxes, there are so many variables within dentistry that is very difficult to sometimes get that balance right. You can never tick all your boxes, but I think. We all know we are all different as clinicians, but we all know which boxes we can compromise on and which boxes are non-negotiables. Yeah. And at the time when I say it felt as if was falling apart, I’ve always used to work three days in one, two days in another, maybe even a Saturday emergency clinic and things.

And I used to think after three, four years finding out because it takes a bit of time to settle in a practice, to really know whether it is something where you feel as if you belong. And I found myself certain practices, this one that I stayed for for like 11, 12 years. But some of them after three, four years, I find that it was time to move on. And sometimes that can be seen as somebody that is maybe not never happy, but it could also be somebody that just wouldn’t just settle for something for the sake of settling for it. And when I say looking back, I realise things were actually falling in place. What that gave me is the opportunity over the last. It was 2009. So I would say over the last 13, 14 years, to be able to be exposed to different clinical environments, different dynamics, staff locations, NHS fully, NHS, fully private, mixed everything. And when you are in it, you don’t see the bigger picture. But now, looking back, I’ve accumulated this wealth of experience and knowledge of having an understanding which I feel is actually quite priceless because a lot of times, for all the right reasons, we don’t always find ourselves being able to see the inside of different clinics.

I think that Lisa, I think that’s really interesting. And we’re going to we go into tap into where you are today, right? A little a little bit shorter. But I think your experience brings a lot of a lot of benefits to that role, which you find yourself in at Pluto Partners now sort of advising both, you know, practice owners and potential buyers on, on, on, on, you know, what the future might be or potential exits or a deal that’s ahead of them. And you having been a practice owner, having been through the adversities that you’ve been through. Right. So having been through a divorce, dealing with whatever situations that brings to you mentally and personally and and being at that bottom of that dark hole and bringing yourself back up, having worked in several practices as an associate. But what is it that you wanted? Because every associate is different, right? So what is it that you wanted as an associate that boxes were ticked in, one that weren’t in another? And how was that? How did that align with you as a boss previously when you had associates under you? Right. So I’m really interested to hear that because were you looking for a job where you were looking for Lisa as your boss, or were you looking for a job where you weren’t looking for Lisa as your boss because you’d hate to be your own boss? Right. I’m just curious to explore that part of the conversation and just learn about really what your thought on that. Hope. Hope. My question made sense.

It makes 100% sense and I hope my answer will make sense as well. I think with dentistry, it’s a very unique profession and there’s this balance between the profession and the business. Maybe what I found in certain environments and once again, to no fault, anybody’s fault, it’s just we all have different things that maybe we strive for and wanting to achieve. And sometimes I felt that that balance where the business starts taking over the profession, is such a sense of false economy, because when we invest in our patients and our patients care, what happens is as far as word of mouth and patients feel before they see and when they feel that they’re being looked after, I find that it’s a no brainer. They would they want to come and see you. They’ll tell their family and their friends about that. And sometimes that’s very difficult to try and demonstrate when when you try and get the balance with the business right as well. Because in the short term, it might appear as if it’s just a waste of time. And the more bums on seats we have, the more money we’ll make. But actually what we create is an environment that is potentially unnecessarily stressful in a profession that is already so stressful and demanding with nothing happening. And I think the difficulty as an associate sometimes is everything stops with you. You take 100% responsibility for what you do, yet you have no control over the factors that contribute to what you have, to the environment that you find yourself in in order to deliver. So as far as principal and associate go and the different wearing the different hats, I would say the biggest discrepancy for me was being in a situation where people expected you to deliver a predictable outcome, but giving you conditions that’s impossible to deliver.

Well, give me some examples, Lisa.

So examples of that would be, for instance, time surgery time with patients. Not enough.

Not enough time, not enough.

Time, not enough time. And I totally appreciate that. Time is money. Yeah. Like I say, sometimes it’s a false economy because if you take a shortcut, which you wouldn’t want to do in any case, but if you do because it’s totally out of your control, what happens is you just setting something up for the future where you’ll end up spending more time. Such a lose lose. Lose situation. And as well as putting yourself at risk of litigation. And when it comes to that, you are the only one that will have to stand there and answer and take responsibility for your actions. And another thing would also be staff, the the quality of the staff, the efficiency of the staff. But I appreciate this can also be difficult. And this is where the false economy comes in, because when you stress your staff, no wonder they won’t feel motivated or as clear as in the moment as they should be in order for us to deliver what we have to do. So time staff, sometimes it can even be materials, limited materials and things, because as an associate you don’t have that freedom to get what you would like to use unless you get it yourself. And so this could just be a few things. And then also the staff, the members of the team team is so important because if the team is not performing as a unit, it reflects on everything. And my best way of putting it all together is that as an associate, you can find yourself in the position where if you aren’t there to deliver, nobody else makes sense. The receptionist doesn’t make sense, the nurse can’t do anything. Yet the person that is so important, the clinician, is the one that ends up pulling the short straw at the end of the day. So you have to settle for this or you go, okay, this is how things are. I get it. It’s all fine. This is how we, the principal, maybe would like to run the practice, and that’s absolutely fine. But maybe this is not my environment that I would like to be part of.

Please tell me this. Having said all of that, were you the boss that gave your associates all the time, all the materials they wanted and the conditions that you expect? Was that was that the type of boss that you were?

And yes, I would say and this even stems from this even stems from and I appreciate there’s a balance between the business side of things. But this I feel, even stems from the way that we were brought up. Yeah. If it’s not good enough for you, why is it good enough for someone else? Sure. If it is that you treat people the way that you would like to be treated, then for me that is something that you invest in that will pay dividends moving forward and it has a knock on effect. Your associate feeling valued will make your your associate, your staff feeling valued will make your patients feel as if they are valued and the whole unit just works. But when there’s a weak link, it has a knock on effect for all the wrong reasons and long term you start seeing that it starts to crumble and crumble and it creates an environment sometimes where staff don’t want to be there, they don’t want to be there. Patients don’t want to be there.

Understood. Understood. So, so, so from your point of view and I know you’re sort of saying that time is money and all the rest of it, right? But, you know, you can also waste a lot of very hurried time not delivering optimal treatments to patients, not delivering optimal care. And let’s look at the money side, not delivering the sales that you otherwise would have done had you given those patients more time. Right. And the trust that they have in you will result in let’s not put to put too fine a point on it. You know, larger treatment plans, bigger amounts of money exchanged. Right. And I come across a lot of practice owners, Lisa, that have both sides of that mentality. Some of them who are working on the clock and they’re looking at hourly rates all the time and they’re saying, right, 15 minute appointments for that, 20 minute appointments for this and so on and so forth. So so for you, just just tell me in terms of your appointments with with patients, a typical check-up or a consultation, how much time would you take and what would be your process with that patient in terms of educating them on on maybe what they would need? Just just talk me through that, Lisa.

So if I talk from a from a basic private point of view, I would say I think in general as a new patient, that initial consultation with a patient is so important because this is the point where you start building up your rapport. You get to know your patient a little bit and your patient gets to know you. Sometimes we can even find that. Sometimes the two just don’t go together for whatever reason. And if you can pick that up at that initial consultation, you can save yourself and the patient. A lot of problems moving forward. But that initial consultation is so important. And the thing that I why it’s so important so time wise, I would say new patients, 45 minutes, 45 minutes so that you can gather your information, get to understand your patient, get to understand what they are looking to achieve from their Dental journey, building up a rapport so that when you can actually start helping them or try and explain to them what you can do to help them, that they’ve already built up a little bit of trust and connection with you. In order for you to deliver what you need to deliver to help them. So it works both ways. And sometimes I feel that if that initial connection rapport is not being built, then the patient would end up maybe not feeling comfortable taking on board a treatment plan. And we interpret it as the patient being difficult, as the patient not wanting the treatment. But actually it’s a normal human response to something that if we don’t feel comfortable or we don’t trust, why would we invest in something so first? But I would say is that initial connection is so important for both parties to know whether it’s going to work moving forward, working together.

Also, that initial one is important to understand where is the patient? And the thing I feel passionate about is, is the patient to take responsibility for their Dental health. I did a postgraduate certificate at Eastman and something that stuck with me. One of the lecturers mentioned, he said that we have all these advanced treatments, implants, advanced fillings, materials, crowns, everything. This is brilliant, but if the patient doesn’t maintain it, it’s worth nothing. Yet as far as maintenance goes, I feel that’s an area that is innocently being overlooked because of the lack of time that people have to spend on it. And what he said is he said, if we go ahead and we do all these beautiful, beautiful fillings and crowns and implants and smile makeovers, but the patient doesn’t maintain it. It’s like putting carpets in the house whilst the roof is on fire. What is the point? At some point it’s all going to collapse. But what happens is when we see patients and they keep needing further treatments and or things go wrong ten years down the line, we blame the patient because they didn’t look after it. But did we actually educate them enough to take that responsibility? And when we take the time, we don’t have to do all of it at that initial visit. But when that trust and build up that rapport and just get them to have an understanding, we can build on that moving forward. Because in order for us to help them, they need to come through the door. If they don’t come through the door, you can have the best practice with the best intentions, with the best equipment. If they don’t come through the door, we cannot help them.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And and it’s a slightly different philosophy to what, you know, you get you get some dentists who want to get them in. They want to do the cosmetic dentistry, sell it and away it goes. And I guess from what I’m hearing from you, it’s more about long term care of the patient. Right. And, you know, whether that treatment has to be staged over six, 12, 18, 24 months or whatever that is, you’ll get them there in the end. But that patient has got to commit to looking after what you’re going to put into their mouth, right? Yes. Yes. And so I guess it’s a slightly different philosophy from from a from a clinician’s point of view, as I see. And I see a wide range of different types of clinicians who have different philosophies is the one you’re coming from is about actually giving the patient longevity in terms of their dentistry that you’re offering them, right? Something that’s going to last, not something that, okay, I’m going to change your smile in whatever, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever the latest craze is today. And it’ll look great. But but the habits that you’ve developed to get your teeth to where you were when you stepped in my door have not changed. Right. So you’re going to you’re going to continue to grind. You’re going to continue to, you know, bite bottle tops off of bottles and things like that. And. Screw your teeth up and you’ll be back here in six months sort of thing. So, um.

And if you can identify and make the patient see where it’s going wrong, some people might look at this and go, Oh, financially this patient will end up spending less in the long run. But if you look at it from the point of view, this is more likely to become a patient that will come back every six months so that we can check for both cancers so that we can check their general the health of the gum and the bone. What’s going to happen is if we feel looked after, guess what? If our friend down the pub have a problem with it and every most people are scared of going to the dentist. Most people without.

Question. Yeah.

And if we if this patient can go. Do you know what? Trust me. You need to go to whoever. I don’t even have to say. Just go. You’ll see what I mean. Guess what? You’ll be building your practice long term, and you’ll create an environment where patients want to be there. Staff, clinicians want to be there, and everything moves in the right direction.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Totally agree with you there, Lisa. So sort of moving on with your career. So you’ve how long have you been an associate? Was it when did you leave the practice?

The 2009, 2009?

She had the practice for, what was it, about nine years, is that right?

Three It was because we had to wait to do the number and things only for a short. So it was only three years. Three years.

You built the practice up over three years, left that and then went into your various roles. And, and so fast forward into today. Talk me through what you do now, because I was actually chatting to Max Zucchini or is it zucchini? I think it’s zucchini. Zucchini, Zucchini. It’s definitely zucchini. I used to call him Max Zucchini. And then he then then he reminded me, Prav, if you want to remember my name, just think of a zucchini. Yeah. And just think back on it. So it’s a zucchini. Anyway, so speaking to Max, and he told me that you join Pluto Partners, and, you know, Pluto is a company who helped helped me exit from from my dental practice and many of my clients as well. I’ve got a lot of love and time for Max. But how did that come about? Just just talk to me about that journey. How did you first meet? I’ll tell you about the story of when I met Max. It’s really interesting. Tell me yours.

Honestly, life is amazing. Like I say, we look at it in the in the moment and we don’t realise how it’s actually setting things up to come together further down the line. So I always felt that there was so much more to me than just being a clinician. I always felt that I enjoyed industry. I love helping patients. I don’t have a problem with that, but I always felt there was more, but for different reasons. As far as timing goes, it was just I feel that 22 years full time in dentistry, that is how it had to be. But leading up to that, two years before the pandemic, I thought that maybe the reason I feel there was more to me was to expand my Dental knowledge, like maybe I should specialise in something. But if I’m honest with you, there’s not one thing that jumps out at me. I can’t say, Oh, implants or perio or ortho, nothing. So I decided to do a postgraduate degree at Eastman. That’s where Eastman comes in. And.

And when? When was this? At what point in your career was it just before the pandemic? This was.

Just 2018. Was my first year. 2018, just before just before. And I decided to do a master’s in restorative because of the fact that it was quite wide. It would just enhance your skill as far as restorative dentistry is concerned. So it wasn’t just focusing on one thing. It was for me quite a wide just enhancing skills because I couldn’t pinpoint what in dentistry I wanted to focus on. Then I did the certificate. I then did the first year of the diploma, and then the second year of the diploma was when the when the pandemic hit. And for many people, I think the pandemic was quite an eye opener. And what it taught me or what I took from that is I realised that it wasn’t my skill in dentistry that I was that was the problem. The missing piece, not it wasn’t that what was actually missing for me was the fact that those four walls of the surgery was limiting me, was restricting me, was acting almost like a hindrance. Because even if and I admire the advance that how advanced dentistry is and what clinicians can deliver, but you still end up within those four walls with a patient, with a nurse. And for me, I realised that was actually the problem. It was time for me to get away from those four walls and get out. But where do I go? What do I do? I just knew clinical dentistry full time was not for me anymore and this is where I started looking at where do I go from here? The thing with property and I know dental sales is not property, but the thing with property for me and this was in the pandemic is something that is so different to clinical. And it almost to a degree, it’s like a part of my brain that was not tapped into because of.

But where does property come into the mix right now? Have you have you have you, though, before.

Before the pandemic? If when I started thinking, okay, side hustle, what else do okay. The only thing that I thought of was property and why property I think became attractive is the fact that it’s just so different to dentistry. Totally different. It’s a totally different field. It is just it’s just and it gives you that freedom of anything, any time versus dentistry being restricted. So that at first I was just thinking very wide. So I started reading up a little bit more. I actually signed up to find out more out about deal packaging, things like that. And then when the pandemic hit, it also reminded us that when we don’t go into a surgery as a dentist, then we are stuffed in a way because if we don’t see a patient and if we don’t have a nurse and that physically, clinically that doesn’t happen, then we we’re no different to anybody else out there that’s at home. And obviously unless you have courses and things that you can offer. But as far as the clinical side, unless we’re in the surgery, we can’t deliver. And this is also when I started thinking, oh my goodness, maybe something like property is something that is a little bit less restrictive. You can do it from anywhere in the world. You can in your own time and something you can do parallel whilst you’re still busy doing your dentistry. And it’s in 2021 that I realised that I had to close one door or, or or slightly close one door in order to create space mentally and to create time to start working on what is my next chapter, what is the next door?

Why, why, why at this? What happened at that point? Was that was there a moment where you said, okay, this this has happened now or there must have been. Yeah, like some something that happened or a moment to say, right. In 2021, I have to close the door. What was that? What was that moment?

What happened there is, as you can probably pick up from what I’ve already said, I was I was gravitating towards that decision, but actually didn’t take it because I was still quite comfortable doing, you know, when you’re in a comfort zone, you just end up staying in your comfort zone because it’s. Isn’t it? It’s safe. Yeah. And why would we want to create uncertainty if we’re in a nice little safe place and it’s working? But when I had the first vaccine, the COVID vaccine, I was quite unwell and I it created symptoms like chronic fatigue. And my my brain just was just so slow I could still work as a dentist. I could still perform. But I was very much aware of how the strain it was taking on my brain and the intensity. Whereas before we none the wiser how hard this muscle actually works. And this also made me realise that now is the time for me. Whilst I still have the ability to make a change, I need to make a change because if not even health wise, I’m starting to run out of options if I don’t start putting something in place. Because for dentistry, mentally you have to be in the zone and on top form in order to deliver. And so my turning point was the wake up call, I would have to say, is when my health was affected. And it reminded me of how also how fragile life is. And sometimes we plan on doing things, but we put it off and then things can just change in a blink of an eye. So not only was it the health, health wise being able to think the effects it had on me and how much it took from me to deliver as a clinician, but also the wake up call as in life is precious and it can change so quickly. If you don’t do things, you put it off. But if you don’t do things, you could end up finding yourself in a position where you never actually achieve what you wanted to do.

Okay, so what happened next?

So the next, which was okay, it’s a no brainer. I know exactly which door to open next, but I knew which door to start closing and I need to start taking action. I handed my notice in and actually worked at.

So so let me just. So you handed your notice in before you had any options on the table, Right? It’s not as though you said, hold on a minute. I’ve got this great opportunity here. I’m going to hand my notice it. Now, you actually decided, you know what, I’m going to make some head space. And in order to do that, I’m going to I’m going to take a risk. And that risk is to kiss goodbye to this income and this job and whatever. Yes. And then figure it out because I know I need to do something else, but I don’t know what that is. Right. Exactly. Very brave. Very brave.

And Prav, it was a case of if you look at it on paper, I was in a very safe space being my pandemic and everything, because of course, I had a job at Jacob being the dentist there. Jacob the Digger company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was a very safe, like I said earlier, safe comfort zone, certainty, everything. Yeah. Good work environment as well. But I knew.

Got whatever materials you wanted.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Spend the time with the patients that you wanted. Yeah, Yeah. Beautiful. Couldn’t ask for anything more.

And this one? I still knew it wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

All right.

So by taking that risk, you can see there was it was it took a lot to take that step. But I couldn’t deny the fact that it was still holding me back from what I felt I had to give and what I felt where I could be. And when I say could be, this is not me chasing money because it was just chasing money. Where would I stay in dentistry, isn’t it?

Yeah, of course.

So this is an opportunity and there’s nothing wrong with having a lot of money, but this is an opportunity that if I stepped away from it, I give myself a chance of achieving what I feel I have the potential to achieve. And that being getting out there, being able to make a difference still in dentistry, but from a different angle. And how it came about is I handed my notice in, didn’t know which door to open, but I knew I had to close this one in order to have some hope of some direction as to where to go.

And just just to pick up on what you just said there, you said selling dentistry, but from a different angle. Was that in your head at that moment when you were closing the door? Definitely.

Yeah.

It definitely revolved around sales. Is that is that was that something that was clear in your mind and something that you were passionate about at the time?

I feel what I used to think that sales was very I want to use the word dirty is not the use.

It most people do. Right? It’s a dirty.

Word. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what I’ve learned is that everything is sales. And if we have something that can add value to someone’s life, then we have a duty to, to, to help them. And in order and I don’t necessarily talk monetary, but in order to make that difference, we need people to buy into us. And you know what was very evident Prav and what was very for me was very almost reassuring, is I’ve been doing this for the last 22 years without even realising it, having the ability to help a patient making a difference, whether it’s their oral hygiene, whether it’s a filling, whether it’s an extraction, whether it’s getting rid of infection, whether it’s whatever, in order to help that patient, that patient needs to buy into you. And if they don’t buy into you, that is when the relationship starts going in the wrong direction. But if we don’t go out there and make people aware of what we have that can help them, then we actually not serving them correctly. And this is where the sales side comes in. And it is correct because if I then try and use my experience in clinical dentistry, not the clinical side, but the sales side, where we have something that we can offer to a patient, you will not believe how similar this is with the role that I have right now. There are so many similarities between us seeing a patient as a clinician, gathering information, getting the patient to understand exactly what’s happening, explaining to the patient in a language that they get where we are, where we need to get there, and how we need that patient on board.

Because it’s a team effort. It’s very similar with this type of job. So leaving the clinical side, I knew I wanted to go into making a difference, helping serving, if I could call it that. And that is where the sales side of things came in. So there’s a friend of mine that studied with me in Stellenbosch, Irvin Vanderveldt. He’s a clinician as well, and we have been in contact. And because he is part of a bigger group and more on the business side of dentistry, when I left clinical dentistry, I sent him a message. I said, Eben, do you could you give me some guidance, some advice? I don’t need a job. I just want to if now that you are on the other side, on the business side, as a clinician, what is my what would my options be? And most of the options were from a clinical point of view, which I knew. Nope, not interested. Not interested. Not interested because I was going back into those four walls. And then this was in May and then in July he said that, you know, Lisa, I’m going to put you in touch with Tracy. She’s a from South Africa. She’s a recruitment agent. And maybe you can have a little word with her because she might know a little bit more about these different options that’s available for clinicians out there.

And I contacted Tracy and I explained to her what I where I was and I did a cover letter so she could pick up that I wanted to go into the sales side of things. I spoke to her on the Monday and she had three options that she was thinking of. Bear in mind, I’ve not verbally spoken to her. The one was some like a supervisor know. Another one was maybe helping clinicians. That’s coming from other countries and getting the exact no. And the third one was Dental practice sales negotiator. I didn’t even know that was what the name was. I just knew it was the person buying and selling Dental That’s helping with buyers and sellers. Yeah. And then she said, But I’ve got no roles available that you could step into or that’s available that I can put your CV forward. But I helped the dentist six months ago with recruiting an associate, and I know that he is part of a company. He’s a director in one of a company that deals with this type of thing, buying and selling of dental practices. Let me speak to him. So if he knows of anyone that is looking for somebody like that. And this dentist was actually Peter Classen, who’s from South Africa. Okay. He is a director of Pluto.

Partners Pluto Partners.

So by the time Tracy contacted them, they were actually looking for somebody that has got the experience on the clinical side, because the business side is something that you can learn, like I did the valuation certificate and things, but.

You’re.

Already a business owner, right? You your experience and this is where I think your story is so interesting, Lisa, because you’ve as somebody who I may choose to and I’m sorry for interrupting you there, but we’ll come we’ll come back to it. But as somebody that may choose to sort of represent me, if I was thinking of selling my practice, who better than somebody, first of all, who’s taken all the formal qualifications, understands negotiation, valuation and that but has also been in my shoes, being a practice owner, being an associate understands the business of dentistry. She is a practising dentist. I think it’s really I think it’s a really interesting story. So so whilst you’ve been telling me this story, I’ve known what the end of the story is because, you know, we were introduced as, you know, as you, you know, being a part of the Pluto team. But it’s just interesting piecing that together with that narrative that’s sitting over my head. So you obviously got introduced to Peter. Yeah, you’ve done the qualifications and then carry on, Sorry.

Lisa No.

Problem. And that is how my paths crossed with Max Zucchini. Okay. And the timing, like I say, what they were looking for and what I was looking for just came together at a time when we weren’t even looking for each other. And this is why I say, you look back and you think, Wow, what happened? Times when I thought doors were closing, it was actually opening towards the one where I have to be at this point in time. And you know, what I’m so grateful for is the the is I don’t even know if the word is ethos of Pluto partners and how they go about things because it’s so aligned with what I said to you earlier about taking care of this patient, taking care of this client. And every single patient, every single client is treated as if that is the only client that we have, because that is what. Everybody deserves. Because without the client, we are nothing without the patient. We as clinicians are nothing. And what I feel grateful for is having this understanding that whether a buyer is a new first time buyer or whether a seller is at the end of their dentistry and they’re looking to retire two totally separate ends of the spectrum.

But for both, what a massive step there is. And then we have us in the middle that can be make or break because the clinician that’s retiring has been growing this baby for the last 35, 40, however many years. Yeah. Stress, heart, everything, blood, sweat and tears that’s gone into it. And what you can’t afford for is for it to go wrong when you finally looking to let go of this baby. Yeah. And then you have the ones starting out who’s now going to have the baby for the first time. What happens if you buy into something and it’s not and you take take on increased risk when it goes wrong, it could be the end of you. It’s not just you, your family, your wife, your everything. But then you have us in the middle. That is such a fortunate position that can help to make sure that when we step into this agreement or in this equation, that we can make sure that all parties involved can step away from this, having it have the desired outcome for all the right reasons.

And so tell me about you touched upon the values of Pluto partners being very much aligned with with your own values. And you mentioned it was a bit like having, you know, one customer and that’s your only customer or having that one patient in the room, and that’s the only patient that you’re seeing at that time. And you give them a 100% of the attention. Is there anything else you can tell me about about values and what that what that really means to you and how that reflects in sort of your conversations with potential sort of practice owners who are looking to maybe move on to the next stage of their career.

So as far as the opportunity so if I was to look at try and compare to from a clinician’s point of view, remember earlier I said how important it is for an associate to have the right environment. And this is exactly the same thing working me being at Pluto Partners and having the right environment actually puts me in a much stronger position that when I speak to that clinician, having the understanding of what goes hand in hand with a day of stress and so many factors that we cannot control within dentistry, the last thing you want is that when somebody like a agency comes on board to help you either buy or sell a practice is for them to become an added stress. But in order for me to help the clinician, Pluto Partners is helping me to be in a stronger position to do so. And in doing so, it becomes win, win win. Yeah, but imagine I was in a position where I feel I am not as I don’t feel looked after, I don’t feel I have the right. I’m not aligned with what I’m trying to do. Yeah, no doubt that that will will overflow to when I speak to that clinician. And what then ends up happening is we have a typical lose lose lose situation. So something that could have ended up being beneficial for everyone could end up being something where we’ve wasted the opportunity or because from the from the off, we didn’t have the foundations in place.

Now I’m going to ask you some questions that probably devil’s advocate type questions when it comes to brokerage, right. Which is, you know, I could, if I owned a practice, go directly to the buyer and just strike the deal. Okay. I cut you out. I don’t have to pay you a fee now. Yeah, just just give me your take on that. That why should somebody come to a broker to say, like yourself or anyone else versus just handle the deal by themselves?

If we talk, if we’re talking clinical, it’s almost like cutting the dentist out and going to boots and buying yourself a little temporary kit and fixing your filling yourself. Okay, you filling, you can fix it, but you don’t have a clue what you’re doing and you’ll probably end up causing more problems than actually making it better. Yeah, but why would you have to use an agency is because there are so many different elements to buying and selling a dental practice. I try and use the analogy of an orchestra. There are so many different instruments and it’s very important to make sure that all these different instruments play at the right time, at the right tune, so that when it comes together that it makes the right music. So, for instance, when we look at valuing a practice, we need to gather the right information, because if we don’t gather the right information, then we will not be able to put it together in a certain way in order to get to the right valuation or the EBITDA as we call it, for that practice. Yeah. Now, if you don’t know what to gather, what hope do you have in order to get to the right outcome or if you don’t, if you know what to gather but you don’t know how to put it together, what hope do you have in getting to the right calculation which then affects. Evaluation. And if you don’t know how you got to the evaluation or whether it’s the right valuation or not, how can you even start to negotiate? And this is where you increase your risk. You increase your risk as a seller where you could end up finding yourself in a situation where you don’t get the value for your practice. And as far as a buyer, you will increase your risk as far as buying something that you’ve overpaid for. But it will under-deliver. And this is what we go from. We want our sellers to get the maximum value.

And you want your buyers to get the best deal. Minimum risk.

Exactly. And when you do that. But in order to do that, you need to know. You need to sing off the same hymn sheet. And we are there to orchestrate all of this and put together the hymn sheet.

And so if we look at. Dentistry and we look at selling dental practices. Where’s your Which one do you prefer?

Selling Dental practices? Definitely. Definitely.

Oh, wow. Wow.

However, however, I have found because I have it part time, both of them because I’ve got them part time, I actually enjoy the clinical side More now. More now. Yes. Yes. Definitely. Definitely.

Almost reignited your passion for for dentistry because you’ve got this other role as well, right?

Because it’s not I didn’t feel trapped. And when I said those four walls, I think prior to this, I felt as if it was starting to suffocate me. But because I now have this that I’m doing, it actually has made me look at the clinical side and appreciate it instead of seeing it as a a trauma or a hindrance.

And so moving forward, what what what do you think? Do you think your balance is going to change now or do you think you’ve got the perfect balance in terms of dentistry versus brokerage? Or because you love brokerage more, you want to move more towards that side full time? What’s what’s your heart telling you?

Do you know this is this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. I would love to be able to share what I’ve had, what I’ve experienced, because as clinicians Prav, I think there’s so much expected of us to know from a business point of view. And it’s but yet nobody actually informs us of it or tells us or says some clinicians are more, I believe, naturally gifted to have more of the general knowledge or interest in the business side. And some of us maybe don’t have all of that information. And what it does, it creates this grey area for clinicians where we have all these different hats that we’re supposed to wear, but we don’t actually have clarity on some of them. But everybody else seems to we think everybody else have clarity. So we should be having the clarity. And what I would love to do moving forward is making that grey area less grey when it comes to buying and selling a dental practice. And just like I’ve experienced, it’s not as complicated. Just like a patient might think, Oh, I don’t understand root canals or what’s involved with this or another. If you have the ability to be able to put it across to somebody in a way where they can, in a language that they understand, then it actually makes things so much clearer. And as we do with patients, when patients have the information and they understand the information, they can make informed decisions. And this is what I would love to do as part of my role is as we help people and we deal with buyers and sellers and even the ones who’s not buying and selling, if it is that we can make that grey area less grey, we end up with clinicians or practice owners or potential practice owners. That’s more informed. And when they then make a decision, they instantly reduce their risk, whether it’s buying or selling, because they’ve had the information, they can make an informed decision.

So you think that actually moving forward, business education as a whole is something that dentists need to know a lot more about prior to even considering selling the practice, right?

Yes, prior to even selling.

Because if it is that there are certain things that you can start putting in place or even just start thinking in a certain way, you don’t physically have to do things. You can find yourself that when you are ready, whether it’s buying or selling, you are in a much stronger position versus going into something almost a bit more blindfolded. And when you go into something blindfolded, we could end up yes, we make the decisions ourselves. But those decisions was either made in the heat of the moment or they were made not having the right information.

Got you. Understood? Yeah. Okay. I think, you know, I thought this was going to be a much shorter conversation than it was Lisa, but I think we just both got carried away. I was really interested in learning about your story. Yeah. What I’d actually what I’ve got I’ve got another question before we go on to a few more questions, which is what’s a typical week in the life of Lisa? Like how does that get broken up? Tell me about like what you do day to day. What do you do outside of work? Give me give me a give me a breakdown of what a week of being Lisa venting is all about.

I can tell you it’s very, very busy, but enjoyable. So I would find, especially with this position that I have within Pluto partners, they are different dynamics involved, whether it be meeting practice owners in person and going to view practices. It could also be a case of where I deal with buyers that’s just approaching us from maybe projects that we’ve launched. So there could be lots of telephone calls that could happen. There’s also a lot of administration side, the emails and things going out, because once you’ve contacted somebody, you obviously have to follow it up. So it’s a combination of in-person slash telephone calls, slash admin side of things, and then at the same time touching base with Max because very important, we all have to sing from the same hymn sheet and we all have to know exactly what’s happening where with all the different things that we do. So I would say combination of in-person emails, phone calls, but a lot of it is work from home, which I absolutely love. Absolutely love, absolutely love that flexibility that it gives me to do also work in practice. So on a Saturday I work in practice and I find that when I do that, it is just so enjoyable because of the fact that it’s so totally different and outside work. I maybe I should be going to the gym more often. I put my hands up. I don’t go to it as frequently as I should, but I do enjoy, enjoy just being outdoors, especially now that the weather is getting better and things like that. So, yes, you know, maybe I can do more as far as work life balance is concerned, but when you enjoy your work, it doesn’t feel like work. And maybe people can have different opinions on that. But I thoroughly enjoy the fact that you can connect with somebody and make things a little bit easier and better for them moving forward.

I can definitely look, Lisa, you know, a lot of people will be listening to this, maybe only in the audio format. Some people will see it on the video format, but you’re absolutely beaming and glowing when you talk about Pluto and the opportunity there and your work there. Right. And it’s very clear to me that you’re you’re super passionate about that. Right? And just just because of that, it will it will bring you tons of success, I’m sure, right? I’m absolutely sure. And I’ve got some I’ve got some final questions for you that are totally unrelated to what we’ve been discussing and it’s something that we cover on the Dental Leaders podcast. Okay. So I’ve got I’ve got one set of questions, which is perhaps final questions. And my final question is this, that if it was your last day on the planet, Lisa. And you were surrounded by your loved ones. What pieces of advice would you leave them with?

First thing would be to be true to who you are inside. I feel that with its society, with the way the world goes. How? How difficult is it for people just to accept us for who we are? It’s it’s not asking a lot, is it? It’s something that is so almost frowned upon where if you just true to who you are for yourself. So the first thing would be be true to who you are. Be yourself. Be yourself. And the other thing that I also would say is that. Life was never meant to be easy. Although as human beings, it’s natural for us to want to gravitate towards an easier. But it’s only when you go through the challenges and it takes you to the next, but that you appreciate it for what it is. Because otherwise we’ll just be stuck and we wouldn’t grow. And I know it’s so I would say the next would be that life is not easy, but when it’s easy, we should get concerned because then we should ask ourselves, Is it actually worth it? I would say just be true. Just be true to who you are.

It’s it’s a it’s a really difficult question, Right? Nothing else at all?

Yeah.

The biggest one for me is be true to who you are.

Be true.

To who you are and.

Be.

Yourself. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, if you have if you are content and comfortable with who you are, that is what’s important because I think it’s so easy to strive to get the approval of people and it’s just something that keeps going and going. So to be true to who you are. But it’s difficult. It’s difficult because this world will make us believe the opposite, that we are that we are. Odd one out.

And then payments. Final question, which is imagine fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive, who would they be?

Alive. This could be anyone.

Dead or alive. Anyone. Doesn’t matter.

Anyone in the world?

Definitely. My mom, she’s in South Africa. And so terribly So. She’ll definitely be. She’ll definitely be at the party. Um. Oh, goodness me. It’s a tricky one. Definitely not my ex-husband. That one I know of.

We know who we’re excluding. Excluding?

Yeah. We can go on and on and on. Okay. Um. The tricky one. You had to give me a bit more time to think about this.

Anyone famous? Not famous. Past. Present.

Oh.

I love to. I love it. I wouldn’t be able to I can’t think of anyone else.

Any.

Any anyone who you’ve looked up to who’s inspired you, be it a celebrity or. Anyone you’d love to meet at a dinner party.

The.

Political or not famous or not. Past or present. Mum, we’ve got mum. Two more.

People leaving. I’ve got dream.

Party. Right. Imagine the most amazing party. Right. And you got your mum there. Who else would you. Two more people to make it the most awesome party ever.

Oh, I would love to. Do you know who I’d love to have there? Trevor. Noah.

Trevor Noah.

I love his humour. I love the fact that to me, he’s just that. What you see is what you get through to is and how far he’s come as well. So Trevor Noah And the last one would have to be. My daughter. The reason I say that is because I don’t know where this will go. This will go. But the reason I say that is the last 23 years was a very tough 23 years. And just like I thought I was being there for her, she’s actually the one that kept me going. So for us to have this conversation, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t think we would be having this conversation.

So beautiful.

So lovely. Yeah.

See a daughter, your mom and then Trevor Noah to basically entertain you and make you laugh, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Have some comedy there. Exactly.

Brilliant.

Exactly. Brilliant. Yeah. Happy days.

Well, Lisa, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time.

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

Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we’ve 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.

Motivation is an excuse my language for anyone who doesn’t like swearing, but motivation is completely utter bullshit. It lasts maybe 24 hours, 48 hours a week if you’re.

Lucky, But.

Discipline and routine will always prevail, as you know. I mean, like you said, you’ve come from a competitive environment yourself. I know for a fact when I’m coaching individuals, if you can build a routine which works for you and it might be what works for your self, Prav may not work for me. What works for me may work for some of my my male clients or my female clients. You just need to work at trying to thinking about simple, measurable steps every single day that allows you to take control of your well-being. So it might be okay. Go to the gym twice a week. That’s better than you doing nothing.

Different things for different people, right?

Absolutely.

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.

Rohan, welcome to the latest podcast. It’s great to have you here. And just by way of introduction, Rohan is the online dentists fitness coach. We were just have a little bit of preamble earlier, Rohan and you were saying that obviously you’ve got a career in dentistry, that’s what your career is. But you know both of your colleagues and for yourself, there’s a lot more to life than just teeth, right? And as well as looking after your patients, put your own put your own oxygen mask on first. Right. Exactly. So usually we start with your backstory and where you grew up and parents and all that sort of stuff. We are going to come back to that. But I’m really intrigued how you got into the whole fitness thing and why that’s become a priority for you. And then we’ll talk about talk about why you decided to take it to a level where you’re now coaching and helping dentists to to get more out of their life than just teeth.

Yeah, I mean, that’s a bloody good question. Firstly, thanks for having me on here.

Pleasure. Pleasure.

It’s an interesting story. I mean, I guess everyone likes a good story. That’s the best thing about this podcast. We get to learn about each other and learn from other people’s experiences. My transition from dentistry into fitness or how fitness came a big part of my life. Probably not the most conventional way. For me, it’s it was all about actually when my mental health really took a turn for the worst. It was actually an undergraduate level. I was actually always a very active individual. Like most people when they’re at school, they do something right. They’ll do maybe football, club, hockey, rugby, whatever it may be. And I seem to, you know, school level enjoy myself. I never was very anxious. I was very much one of those guys. If I did well, if I worked hard, I knew I could put my effort in and I’d get the results.

So were you when you say did well, do you mean physically in sports and stuff or just academics?

Academics, just generally in life? It wasn’t one of those things. Interestingly, I always found like if I just put my effort into whatever aspect of life it was, whether it be public speaking, dentistry, fitness, I tended to see, you know, what you put in the work, you get the results. Then what happened was when I went to university, I went to do my my Bede’s in Bristol in 22,008, and it was the first time in my career or let’s just say academic life, what I realised, shit, I’m not the smartest person in the room. And suddenly I realised, okay, I’ve got some perfectionism traits here. I’ve got potentially this need to always succeed and impress myself. My parents and I realised I put a lot of pressure on myself and I realised I’m not. None of this stuff really comes out naturally to me. And I remember that the biggest turn point was I remember my first year anatomy spot exam and I was trying to put pen to paper and no matter how much I studied, shit didn’t click for me and I realised I was starting to become more and more an anxious person. And I realised I start to have almost like an anxiety sort of sort of panic attack sort of situation, kind of cropping up more and more into my, my undergraduate level.

And Rohan, how did that manifest itself? You say anxiety, panic for those, those who don’t. Is it that just awareness of your heartbeat and a feeling feeling upstairs? Is, is it that sort of thing or is it a feeling of like failure? Where where like if we take you back to A-levels, GCSE or whatever it was that you did back then, Right. Yeah, I’m assuming you just smashed all of those and there was, there was none of that going on back there, right?

I mean, it’s interesting. I guess it kind of comes back to a little bit my back story. I was in a really fortunate position. My parents put me through private education. They worked their socks off. They sacrificed a lot financially to put me in a good place. And what my mum always said to me as a kid was lip row. You’ve been given this opportunity, your dad working extremely hard abroad five days a week. You’re not seeing him very much.

Don’t.

Don’t take it for granted. I don’t care what you do. The grades aren’t important, but give it your everything. And fortunately, like GCSEs, A-levels, it worked out well. I got my straight A’s, got my stars and A’s and got into university. It seemed quite routine, but then I was put in a different environment and suddenly I noticed my response to the stress was different. It ended up being, like you said, physically, it would be things like literally in that exam paper, I wanted to put pen to paper, but my hand didn’t move.

Or it.

Would be a case.

Of, I’m.

Not going to lie. I had at one point some eating disorders. I would not eat because I felt so anxious. And by fifth year, like my my back five, I remember I was.

Like.

59, 60 kilos. And for a person who’s like, what, five foot seven, five, four, eight, I was pretty much sick and bone.

I was.

Barely sleeping. I wasn’t looking after myself and I thought this this isn’t me. I mean, I was trying to cast my brain back to the good days and I was thinking I was active. I was confident. I was looking after myself. I was eating just like a normal person. But I felt great within myself. And I realised one of the things I wasn’t doing was taking care of myself. So this is.

Where.

The fitness came back. I was like, What do I know? Or What did I know in those years that I had? I had routine. My mom made a great meal for me, lunch and dinner every day. I would always have hot food on the table and I was active and that was something which was missing. I used to play rugby to a high, high.

Level at school.

But when it came to university, that all or nothing mentality of, you know what, it’s the.

Books.

And it has to be the books.

What I want to just wrap my head around this is this five year period where you went from whatever you were weighing to 60 kilos, not looking after yourself, even though you knew that was important. Intelligent guy. Yeah, but how do you go into that? I guess. I don’t know. You explained to me. Is it a mode of self destruct or is it a mode of. I know, but there are other things that are a priority or is it that the anxiety taken over so much that you weren’t able to look after yourself or the first time on your own right away from home? Exactly.

Because it’s it’s a new experience for anyone going to university. I think you’re figuring out who you are. It’s the first time you’re finding your own opportunity to fend for yourself, make decisions. Simple things like cooking meals, like learning what to prioritise, how to spend your money, how to to. No one tells you at university, do this, you’re not set homework. They just say, look, you’ve got you’ve got semester, here’s your exam to crack on. You can decide to go to your lectures. You can decide to study. It was a case of put it on you. Interesting. I’ve never had a problem with motivation and in fact, I just took it to the extreme where I didn’t have maybe someone to say, Look, rein it in a bit. Calm down. I was just going, You know what? I’ve got this opportunity. Don’t. I don’t want to squander it. And rather than looking at it as, okay, let’s go work tonight then maybe have a couple of beers with your friends and then maybe go to the gym tomorrow. It was like, No, no, I felt guilty when I wasn’t studying. I remember in fifth year it would be, gosh, I was trying to do stupid things like preparing for finals. I remember trying to do like 18, 19 hours days, just thinking the more I did, the better.

Yeah. And who is if we go back to sort of the message from you folks, right? You mentioned your mom and don’t squander that opportunity back at school. You were the smartest kid in the class or one off, right? Yeah. And then you moved to this environment where maybe you’re not the smartest kid in the room. Were you were you striving to be like, is that why you were putting the hours in? Did you so were you one of these kids who sort of said, you know what, I just want to pass? No, I don’t care. I just want to pass on. So you want.

To. Okay, wait, wait, wait. Let’s let’s be I’ll be honest with you.

I did it.

I didn’t know what it was to think like that. Initially, it was I wanted to do well. I wanted to be proud of myself. I wanted to make my parents proud. And it’s strange because not you know, it’s not like I had the crack of the as the Indians call it, the champ or the super coming out saying, I’m going to do a chop with a slipper. By the way, guys.

Your mum’s your mum’s.

Slipper. Come on in the back of your head if you’ve done something wrong. I was never under that pressure. And actually I’m really fortunate. My dad was like, Whoa, I’m proud of you. If you give it your everything and if you do your best. My mum was also the same. I think it was more self inflicted, which is interesting. So yeah, I guess I was a motivated individual, but I just took it a little too far.

So look, I had a very similar experience in that Look, I at school, I was I was the smartest kid at school. I didn’t go to a great school. So it wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t surrounded by talent, shall we say. And then when I went to university, having been to a normal state school, end up at Oxford University, and I am surrounded by kids who’d done more A-levels than me play off and, you know, play the instruments, do this, do that. And I’m like, What am I doing here? Right? I just felt completely lost. But there was one thing I had I knew I had. I knew I had graft in me, right? Yeah. And I knew that academically I could perform. And, and in my mind it’s strange to visualise and go back, but in med school we had this photograph of all the kids, right? All these little, little passport type photographs and everyone gets one spot on their wall. Right. Yeah. And I used to literally I had all my competition on that and said I would beat you and you. And you and you. Yeah, that was me. And, and that was. That was competition for me, right? It was all academic. Yeah. But because I was the smartest kid at school, I wanted to be the smartest kid at university as well. And in the class and all the rest of it. Right. And. And there was definitely a pressure there. Yeah, there was definitely a pressure there. Self self-imposed. But similarly. Right. You know, my dad always used to say that the reason I’m working so hard is so that you don’t have to write the reason I’m doing everything that I do so that you can have a better future.

I think that’s a big agenda in our culture, though. I really do. I mean, talking to a lot of south east Southeast Asians, it’s a case of they’ve come our parents, our grandparents came to this country and in an opportunity where they didn’t have many opportunities, they had to beg, borrow and steal. They had to graft. And I think we’ve now got this environment and it’s almost like a gift on a fucking golden plate. And you’re thinking, Right, what do I do with it? I can I can do something about.

It or.

I can squander it.

Yeah. And it is a pressure. I don’t know whether you felt that pressure whilst you during those five years, but I certainly I certainly did, you know, and part of me wanted to want to impress Dad. Right. I’ll be honest. Yeah. I was always striving to make him proud.

Yeah, I completely relate to that too. So that’s a my wife always turns around to me, says you get that glint in your eye when your dad says, Well done, son. And I’m like, Well, it’s weird. I don’t. I don’t.

He’s never said anything to me, but I just like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah. So that’s, that’s where I guess it kind of where I realised when my balance was off off track and I realised I needed something to kind of pull me and kind of pull me back down to earth. That’s where fitness was my, my, my key.

But what was the moment? What was the pivotal moment? You were, you were down in the dumps. You were, you were feeling anxious. All of this was there like a moment, a sliding doors moment, something that happened that you remember anything? I think, yeah.

I wouldn’t say I can remember at the moment per se, but I remember the feeling. The feeling was when I looked at myself in the mirror, said, I’ve forgotten who you are. And this is what I when I looked in the reflection, it was like, This isn’t me. I saw this guy who was his posture, was shrivelled, struggled over like his shoulders were slumped forward. He looked fresh, he looked frail, he looked small. And it was almost like there was a part of me. I felt like, hold on, I’m not taking care of me. And that actually made me more upset more than anything. And then I’ve actually gone on to have some some mental health support through therapy. And I remember that was one of the big turning points in my therapy, was actually accepting it was okay for me to feel that way. That was a part of my life. And actually, you know what? I’m grateful to God that it happened because it’s allowed me to become the person who I am today. To do what I do would work with clients like myself, like other dentists and doctors who are somehow now struggling with their health and fitness in many ways. But also it gave me an opportunity to perhaps end up here talking to you guys. I met my wife. You know, I’m I’m blessed right now, so I don’t look at it with negativity. I look at it as it was a pivotal point for me to realise, okay, where do we go from here?

Okay, so you crawled out of that hole. You you what? You found Fitness. Just talk me through that.

Well, what I knew as I said, what I knew, which work for me was routine. So I started to build a routine. It was a very arbitrary, very Google it yourself, figure it out. And I’ll be honest with you, it was complete and utter bullshit routine initially, but it worked for me. It was a case of, okay, I’m going to start going to the gym and it really starts to flourish. When I left university, it was a case of I’m going to start eating foods which are nutritious. I started doing all the things which I wouldn’t do today, like no carbs. After six, I started hydrating. Well, go to the gym four or five times a week. I started to just take that time to work on me. And I use that one hour of the day to help. When I felt anxious after my VTI year or a tough day as an associate, it became my output. So I realised, okay, I can channel this energy some way, I can utilise it and put it into something which is productive so I can feel anxious. Okay, cool. How can I use that better for me? How can I spend that energy in a nicer way? All right, cool. And the next thing, how can I build on that? What could I do? I’m not.

I didn’t sleep very well at university. Maybe I’ll try and aim to sleep 7 hours a night. And then from there, it was another thing. It was, okay, I’ll eat some more. More nutritious foods. I’ll drink a bit more water from. And then it was just sort of snowball effect when I realised, Oh, okay, now I feel a little bit more confident. My body started to change. It was then a sort of a natural strange pathway, but a natural pathway. I kind of threw myself into a challenge because I like challenges, clearly. In 2015, I actually threw myself into a bodybuilding competition, just completely unknowing what I was getting myself into. And I said, You know what? I’ve always had goals. I always like to challenge. Let me try something different to dentistry. Keep that going. But let’s just give myself another focus on something to focus on. And I realised how much I loved it. And it’s gone on to now be me helping people with the skills that I’ve had for a decade, helping people take care of their lives, take control of their wellbeing, take control of their mental and their physical health, and it’s a blessing.

So did you step on stage as a bodybuilder?

Yes, I have many times. And I did it. I’m still doing it to this day.

Oh, wow. So talk to me a bit more about that. I’ve competed as well. I don’t look like it now. Back in 2005. Nice. I did the when was Leamington Spa Quality.

Spa UK for qualification.

And then did the British came forth nice and then stopped. All right. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was the discipline, really. Bodybuilding teaches you so much about. About discipline and routine for sure. Whether it’s timing of your meals, whether it’s it’s training, whether it’s know and thinking and figuring all, all of that stuff out. Right. And maybe the thinking back then about nutrition and stuff is very different from what we have now. You mentioned sleep earlier and I think I think sleep. Is coming to the forefront of everyone’s mind now in terms of how important it is. Absolutely. And people like Matt Walker and Andrew Huberman have brought this to brought this to the forefront, to the public, to actually.

So back.

Then, I didn’t know how important sleep was. Right. We’re told it is.

But I mean, I figured out by realising I didn’t sleep, so I was like, okay.

Maybe I should work on it.

But I mean, like from a competitive point of view, don’t get me wrong, guys, if you’re listening in, I mean, yes, I would call myself a bodybuilder, but I’ve actually I wouldn’t say I live like a complete and utter bodybuilder. My my life and the way I help people around me is teaching them how to use things which actually are relatable to day to day. If you if you try to live like a bodybuilder or a dentist, I’m sorry you’re setting yourself up for failure unless you’re a the strict maybe 0.5 to 1% of the people who can do it. I’ve used those skills of learning what I did wrong, what I’ve took from bodybuilding, from fad diets. I’ve spent the last ten years making the mistakes and learning what’s worked for me to help other people around me. But you’re you’re right in saying motivation is an excuse. My language for anyone who doesn’t like swearing, but motivation is completely utter bullshit. It lasts maybe 24 hours, 48 hours a week if you’re lucky. But discipline and routine will always prevail, as you know. I mean, like you said, you’ve come from a competitive environment yourself. I know for a fact when I’m coaching individuals, if you can build a routine which works for you and it might be what works for your self, Prav may not work for me. What works for me, We may work for some of my my male clients or my female clients. You just need to work at trying to thinking about simple, measurable steps every single day that allows you to take control of your well-being. So it might be okay. Go to the gym twice a week. That’s better than you doing nothing. Sure, You know, go to the gym three times a week, four times a week, whatever it may be, it might be. Try to not eat five takeaways a week. Have two.

Yeah, yeah. Different things for different people. Right. And. And absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So, so just sort of moving on from there. You start this fitness journey, you started to feel better yourself mentally, mentally, physically at work. So you left uni, you started this fitness journey. What happened to your career in dentistry?

So when I left university, I did my VTI year in the Buckinghamshire scheme and this is in 2013. So I had the glorious trip to Chicago, which is happening I think happened last weekend. And then after that I joined as an associate in Roderick in Aldershot area, realised I didn’t really enjoy mixed practice so much. I’m going to be honest with you, my sort of mindset and mentality is very.

Much do.

Your very best. And I remember at one point I think I was earning less than my nurse and I was like, okay.

I need to I.

Need to find a better way of honing my skills and making an income. So I actually transitioned into working for the civil service as a civil service dental officer.

Yeah.

Where that’s where I spent my first, I would say my first four or five years, just really honing my craft, really building my, my confidence, building my bread and butter dentistry. And whilst doing that, I did my cert in aesthetics for Restorative from the Eastman. So I use those first few years to kind of I guess it was just whilst I was building my body, I was building my dental.

Skills.

And it was great because when I’d done that PG cert, I built myself a little portfolio. I was like, Cool, okay, I feel confident now.

I look good.

I think I can talk, I can be myself. Once again. I’ve got the I feel like I’ve got the soft and the hard skills which I need to for to, to walk into private practice. And lo and behold I applied for a job I wanted in Cookham, which is an area near Marlow Redding, if you’re familiar with that area. And yeah, I got the job and that’s where it’s brought me today. I’m working as an associate in private practice.

And you’ve been there ever since.

I’ve been there now for four and a half years. So yeah, that takes me to, yeah, the last ten years of practising. So yeah, I’ve been enjoying that. Got a really nice patient list there and it’s great because interestingly the area where I work is the area where pretty much where I grew up in and you’ll see there’s probably a recurring theme, whereas I found I realised my roots was where I felt comfortable. Why not come back to what I know, what feels right and let me help the people who help bring me where I am? You know, why not give back to the people that I’ve I’ve wanted to to support all my life and help me get to the position that I am from a school point of view. I mean, I’m I’m teaching I’m treating the patients of the kids who went to my school, which is crazy. So it’s kind of a nice thing, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And so what is your what is your week split up like now? So you do some dentistry. How does the fitness or coaching career work for you on the on the with your clients and stuff. So just talk me through a typical week for you.

So my typical week looks. Quite varied at the moment. So typically Mondays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday afternoons are dedicated solely to my online fitness coaching. So I have my 1 to 1 check ins with my clients. I have a client base who I spend time every single week making sure we go through any plans for the week, nutrition training wise to make sure that they feel in control of their lives, how they can maintain their sort of their course, and to getting into the best shape that they want to achieve, but also giving them strategies for their day to day activities, whether it’s be a tough week at work, whether it be a wedding coming up with their attending and they’re trying to drop body fat or gain muscle. So that’s what my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays afternoons are looking like. And then Tuesdays, Thursdays or Friday mornings, it’s my dentistry. So I have my nice split between the two.

Really nice balance. We’ll talk less about the dentistry and more about the fitness to freely. I’m more intrigued about that. So a typical client, how do they find you? How do they learn about you? And then what is it that you offer? What’s the what’s the list? We talk about the patient journey in dentistry, Right? What’s your what’s your customer journey as someone who is is looking to improve themselves?

Well, first thing, I mean, in terms of how how my clients find me, it’s interesting. I spent about seven or eight years in the in the fitness industry, not coaching one person because I really wanted to make sure like anything if you’re going to if you’re going to give anyone any tools you need to make sure you know the shit inside out, you need to know that the back of your hand. So I spent those first eight years really making sure I really nailed it. And then I start people start approaching me just before lockdown, just saying, Oh, I want some fitness advice. Can you send me a diet plan, a training program? And I was like.

Well.

None of that bullshit.

Works.

Let me actually genuinely help you. And I thought, Hold on a second, Let why am I doing this if I’ve got the.

Skills.

And the people who are approaching, funnily enough, dentists, why am I not Why am I not working with the people who I understand the most? I mean, if you go, it’s what I find really interesting. I see a lot of dentists go into personal trainers or coaches who have no understanding of their profession. You wouldn’t go to a if you’re trying to learn to ski, you wouldn’t go to a canoe instructor and say, Hey, teach me how to ski, would you? You’d go to the best ski instructor and say, Hey, mate, teach me how to skate. So what? I’ve realised I can work the best with dentists because I get you. I am.

You sure?

So what happens now is they approached me on Instagram. They approached me through word of mouth. They saw my profile, they see what I do with other clients, and it’s just built very organically really now. And and that’s what I like about the business. It’s not me trying to hard sell like, Hey, come work with me, come work with me. It’s a case of if you want to take control of your well-being, I would definitely help you.

So what is the what is the patient journey then? As a as a patient, they come in, they have a consultation, you do an assessment, you write a treatment plan. Talk me through that process.

Very, very similar. So the first thing will be to jump on a call. I’ll listen to the clients what their goals are. I find out what they’re trying to achieve and how and what they’re struggling with. From there, we’d sit down and I explain to them what I do and explain my my practice principles, how I apply my theories and my practices, which I think is quite unique to compare to other coaches, because everyone says the same thing. Oh, here’s a training program, here’s a diet program, but it’s not really that tailored to them. It’s not really that bespoke to them. And I really try to step into the individual shoes. So I spend a whole week with my clients assessing them, literally everything about them from their medical history to what their goals are, to what they like training, how often they like training, what they like eating. And I start building almost this framework and you think of it like a cake. We start with the real basics. Let’s get I’ll get my clients to start eating maybe three meals a day. If they’re not even eating consistently. I get them to start tracking what calories they’re consuming currently and depending on where they’re.

At.

Depending on where that goes, I start telling my advice to them accordingly. So if you’ve got a mum who’s a busy mum returning to practice and she wants to lose her postpartum weight, I create a program which works for her. So it might be a home workout program based off the equipment she has two or three times a week for half an hour, but that would be very different to what Prav what you may approach me and say I want to work out in a gym and I want to get back into a competitive state. Okay, cool. I can do that, but it has to be tailored to you. So that’s the patient journey. It’s assess them. The setting is crucial. And then from there, week by week, I work with them on a 1 to 1 basis so they can they have any any burning questions. They can WhatsApp me through the week, but they get bespoke video feedback every single week with their training and their nutrition and explaining them what went well, what they need to tweak next week, and how we can plan to make sure we set ourselves up for success. And that’s like.

Sort of.

The mentoring process a little bit like if you had if you had a dental plan and a dental treatment plan and you’re trying to plan it with a mentor, you’d sit down with that mentor and break it down to individual steps. Okay, Your sleep was crap last week because you went to bed and you would procrastinate on your phone. So maybe off a switch off time with your phone.

Sure.

These sort of small things and you start breaking it down. It then empowers my client. Because what I’m trying to do different to other coaches is give you the tools to walk away and do the shit on your own nutrition.

I think it’s one of those things like, what’s the right diet, right? So we’ve got vegetarians, we’ve got vegans, we’ve got low carb, we’ve got intermittent fasting, we’ve got carb cycling, we’ve got the carnivore diet. Fasting. Yeah. Fasting. Yeah.

Starving. Starving.

Yeah. I’m sure much more than what. What I’ve just spat out at you now, right. Yeah. What’s the best one?

I mean, you know, that’s equally the idea. There’s no body, right answer to this question. I mean, everyone’s got their own preferences. The most important thing I would say, if anyone’s listening and they’re trying to understand how they can take away what they should do for them is is trial and error experiment, just like with dentistry. And I’m going to be boring for a second and I make it very realistic and tangible when you’re doing back to back fillings and you’re thinking, how do I how do I make this work? How do I make these teeth like these fillings sit perfectly with the right contours. You’ve got a trial and error with your matrix bands. You’re trying to get a good veneer and you don’t like the colour match. You have to try out different colours. Same thing with fitness. Try the paleo diet. Try the intermittent fasting approach. Ultimately they all.

Work.

But what is important is not the quick fix which gets you results. It’s the results that you can stick to, the process you can stick to and enjoy. Because with that, like with anything, if you’re able to do this day in, day out, with enjoyment, with predictability, you’ll get better results and more long term results than any other method. So I spoke to another dentist recently and they were saying to me, I like I love intermittent fasting. It just works for me because I love big portions of food. I love being that guy who just has a huge portion crack on. Then if it works for you, do it. Me myself. I would never do the keto diet because I love carbs.

Okay.

So you know, people will say, Oh, carbs are the devil, this is the devil. I think we’re very much here to victim blame. I think you just need to be a bit open minded and just know so long as you’re being sensible with your calorie intake, so long as you’ve got a fairly varied diet with some good nutrients in there.

That’s.

Okay. Just make sure you can stick to it and you can enjoy it and it’s suiting your goals. If that’s if those are boxes you can tick off, I think you’re on the right track.

So you say give everything a try, right? Whether it’s paleo, keto, whatever. Right. How long should you try it for? How long should you give it before you say, You know what, this isn’t for me. I’m going to move on to the next one.

I mean, to be honest, I would say you would have to give it a reasonable amount of time. I don’t think there’s a perfect amount of time, but for example, I would say maybe 4 to 6 weeks to try something out properly. You can’t you can’t try something for a week and say, screw it. I haven’t seen the changes that I want to. It’s like I have clients approached me and they’re trying to get in shape and they’ve been eating. For example, I’ve got many clients coming to me trying to drop body fat. They’ve been eating a certain way all their life. They’ve put on, let’s say, ten, 20, 30 kilos of unhealthy body mass, and they expect it to drop off after three weeks of dieting or two weeks of dieting. I’m like, Dude, it doesn’t happen like this. The results will come with repetition and patience. So you didn’t put the weight on overnight. You won’t lose the weight overnight. Likewise, with a diet, you won’t figure out whether you like it straight away. You just need to see, okay, what sort of things can I look out for? Do I feel good doing it? Are my energy levels good at work? Do I feel ratty around the house? Do I feel generally happy doing this process? Is it convenient? Because let’s be honest, the people listening to this podcast are dentists and going to necessarily want to be doing things which are time affected because we’re time poor as a profession.

So is it convenient? Is it enjoyable? Does it leave me feeling good? Okay. And then the last one, is it helping me hit my goals? And I think if you’re going to look at all of those points, a couple of them, you’re pretty you’ll feel pretty quickly. But the goal situation, like I said, you’ve got to give it time. You can’t make a rash decision. And I don’t think we should be so quickly to tarnish everyone with the same paint brush. I think we need to just be honest and patient and say, look, there’s different methods out there. What works for one person may not work for the other, but just be patient and try them out.

Yeah.

But I do say tracking calories is one thing everyone should.

Do that should track calories.

Yeah, personally I do, because it’s a simple if. Let me caveat that. If you’re struggling with either weight loss or weight gain, you clearly don’t have a good balance of your energy balance because it’s simple physiology, simple bio physics here at calories in versus calories out. If you’re struggling with weight loss, you’re probably eating too much. And if you’re struggling with weight gain, you’re probably not eating enough. So at least have a pet perspective whilst doing those things. What sort of food quantities and calories you’re consuming? And it’s not because I want people to live by an app. But it’s because I want people to improve their their knowledge of nutrition. Because when you start tracking, it’s not the process of the tracking, it’s the mindfulness that comes with it. Oh shit. That Mars bar is 250 calories. I didn’t realise that. Oh, that cocktail at Las Iguanas was 280 calories. I didn’t realise that when you’ve had five pints on a Friday night and a Domino’s the day after, you’d think, okay, I was really healthy Monday to Friday. But now on Saturday I managed to smash for 4000 calories. Now it makes sense.

Sure, it’s that awareness of what’s going in. Right. And absolutely and I guess the come on.

Mean you asked me a question, why am I here? That’s why I’m here. It’s to raise the awareness that dentists we we need to start taking care of ourselves.

And.

We we can’t pour from an empty cup. You know, we practice every single day to our patients that we need to think about longevity. But we’re working in such a highly tense environment, doing highly precise work, and we’re working long hours, sat in the most ridiculously uncomfortable position, which is terrible for our spines. And we’re expecting that we can do this for ten, 20, 30, 40 years, happy and be healthy. I think we need to think a little bit more long, a little bit more longevity. You start thinking, okay, we treatment plan for longevity with our patients, less treatment plan longevity for ourselves.

So what are the dentists out there listening? Right. We’re well aware time, poor, busy lifestyles, all the rest of it. What were the top? What? Your top five tips.

Stop looking for the quickest solution.

Well, see if you think they’re not even looking right. So. So majority of these dentists then cracking on, right? They’re not looking for a solution, right? Yeah, it’s all good. Well, they to a.

Degree, they are there. For example, when you’ve got a bad back, what do they do? Are banging on. You’re often I’ll go to my chiropractor, he’ll fix me up. But that’s just a patch up knee. That’s just a temporary filling over your problem. Start looking at the underlying issues. What about weight training? What about we’re using a saddle chair? What about wearing some loops is start opening your mind to okay, I need to look at the underlying issues.

Your five top tips. Yeah. Health and wellness. The the somebody a dentist can start implementing and executing tomorrow.

Get your weight per 25 kilos of your body weight is how much water so per per 25 kilos of your body weight should be one litre of water should be drunk. So if you’re a 50 kilo woman, drink two litres of water. So figure out how much water you need to drink and drink that from tomorrow. That’s number one.

Start hydrating.

Start hydrating to try to get ideally 7 hours a night asleep, try to get 7 hours of sleep at night to sleep.

Yeah. Water. Sleep.

Three. Move. If you haven’t moved today. Get up and move. It doesn’t have to be 10,000 steps, which, by the way, is a complete and utter arbitrary number made by some Japanese company who made a step ometer about in the in the sixties. It is a bullshit number. Just move.

Move more. Okay. Four.

Eat some protein. If you’re a vegetarian, you can eat protein. There’s so many sources out there. We’re spoilt in the UK, so eat some protein and look for that in at least two or three of your meals a day.

When you say some protein, what’s what’s the ideal amount. The the there’s.

A lot of, there’s a lot of different theories on this one, but the one which is most favoured for improving muscle tone and for strength is two grams. If you take your keep your weight in kilos and times it by two, that’s the number of grams of protein should be consuming a day. So for a 70 kilo ml 140 grams of protein a day is roughly what you should be aiming for.

Okay. Okay.

And then number five as per the NHS. Lift some weights because it’s going to do a lot more than your body pellet on bikers.

That ship is literally.

If you’re trying to if you’re trying to build a body, which is not even just looking good, but it’s going to last you, you’ve got to have muscle if you want your joints to feel healthy, if you want to have that rigidity and robustness along your your back, your neck, your spine, you’re looking for a long, happy, healthy life. I personally think weight training is the way forward.

So some kind of resistance exercise to.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you don’t have to be lifting like crazy weights. Just look to challenge yourself. If it’s lighter weights, just increase your repetitions over time. You don’t have to be lifting like a bodybuilder. I mean, the ladies think out there, they’re going to get bulky. All of the girls that who work with me end up turning up and getting stronger and looking even more feminine and even more proud of their curves. They don’t look like what they see on these Mrs. Mrs. Olympia pages. That takes like ten years, 12 years, 15 years.

Drugs, drugs and a lot of a lot of.

Growth hormone. Guys, It’s not I mean, I’ve been doing I’ve been I’ve been bodybuilding for the best part of ten years. And if I if I look the way I look today, which is I say pretty good, but without.

Drugs.

Okay, I will be really pissed off if that was simply just lifting weights and I didn’t look like a mr. Olympia. So.

Yeah.

So those are my five top tips.

Okay. And so the future for you and dentistry and the fitness career just just breaking it down to brass tacks. Right. It’s a good question. What does it look like from a financial point of view? Which which one’s more rewarding.

Financially rewarding or just rewarding?

Let’s let’s go for both of them. Let’s start with the numbers. Okay.

Let’s so let let me let me put it into context of where I see myself with dentistry and fitness going. I see myself scaling back dentistry, being honest with you, I think it’s going to become my my side hustle and my bread and butter is going to be my fitness purely from the point of view. I love this. And it.

Is.

You know, when people have a calling, I look at people like George, the dentist, I look at payment, somebody I look at Sam Jauhar, I look at these guys and I think that is their calling. You can just see the passion, the way they do their their anterior restorations. They see their full mouth rehabs. It’s beautiful. It’s it’s their bread and butter. I’ve realised dentistry is something I can do into a really good standard and I do push myself. But my bread and butter is helping individuals who are working in that field get the best out of themselves, make sure they feel healthy, they feel in shape, they feel confident, they feel sexy, they feel like they’re not going to be in a position of ill health compromised situations the next 20 years time. So, yeah, fitness is going to be hopefully the way I go and it’ll be a case of and I think in the next few months, maybe the next six months or so, I’ll be taking on another coach underneath me and scaling my business in that sense.

So are you. Are you at capacity now? Yes. And would your other coach be a dentist?

I’ve got a doctor and a dentist in mind. And it will be one female and one male.

Yeah. So you’re going to stick true to that, that value of will. We know who you are. Right. And so it’s a case of.

Like I said earlier, which would you go to see? Would you go to Andrew McLean, who’s an incredible anterior cosmetic dentist or Kailash, and an incredible veneer and implant dentists and ask him to do, I don’t know, dentures. That’s not his favourite thing. His favourite thing is clearly that you would go to what you go to the individual who knows that profession and is passionate about that profession like the back of his hand. That’s what that’s why I want people to come to see me because I get them. And I feel like when you reach down on something and you know what you’re calling is, it’s almost stupid to try to become the jack of all trades.

You mentioned dentistry by your side also in the future, right? Is that because you enjoy this more or do you believe that the financial rewards from the fitness online fitness culture is going to parallel that of dentistry for you, if not exceed it?

I mean, I’d be lying to say I’m not going to go in this blind and think I’m not going to go in this stupidly. I’ve spent the past ten years of my life upskilling, honing my career. But then I also realised that career has also given me the opportunity to work with the people that I want to work with and also do the things that I’m brilliant at. So it’s I don’t have any regret at all about making that transition. If you do it right, and I’ve got my own mentor in this in this side of the business to help me kind of push me in that right direction. It can definitely be a fruitful career, but you can’t just like with anything, especially when it comes to coaching, it’s not it’s still a volatile situation. You still need to be making sure you push yourself and making sure you’re staying on top of your your your delivery to your your clients. That’s crucial. So we’ll see. We’ll see.

And typically, how many how many clients can you work with at any one time?

It depends on, I would say, on time and quality. So for me, quality can never be something I’ll compromise ever based off my time that I have. Currently. I’m at capacity and that’s just I’m about 40 clients, so they’re all working on and sort of monthly programme memberships side of things. But as I said, I would.

Never.

Take on more than that. I can do so currently I’m enjoying doing two and a half days at dentistry. If as soon as I start to stretch myself, do I know for a fact the quality of my delivery of my my coach is going to be shit. And that’s why I pride myself on getting amazing results and I will never do that. So hence why I’m thinking about taking on another another coach. Now, if I decide to maybe drop more days, then maybe I might take on more. More coaches, more clients. Sorry.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so you wave that magic wand and you cast yourself three years into the future and you look back at us today having this conversation three years ago, what must have happened for you to be personally and professionally happy with your progress.

Personally and professionally happy with my progress? That’s a brilliant question.

I would say about three years from now.

I would say definitely that I’ve had made no regrets in my decision making process. So just I took a big, huge leap of faith starting this process. And I think so long as I just keep on following my heart and just doing whatever I can to make sure it works and giving it my everything, I think I’ll be happy irrespective of the financial thing.

I’m not.

Yes, I would like to be able to earn a good living, but I’m not financially orientated or driven guy and I’m not hitting sitting there waiting for my Bentley to arrive tomorrow, Rolls Royce or Rolls Royce or the likes of or a Rolex or something like that. So long as I can do what I enjoy, so long as I can look back and say, Look, I can put food on the table, I can do what I enjoy and go to bed at night thinking, you know what? I get to go to my job tomorrow. That’s exciting for me. I mean, beforehand I put a lot of pressure on dentistry. I didn’t find that I was enjoying it as much. But now that dentistry is becoming my, let’s just say, less pressurised to earn and I’m enjoying working, I’m enjoying getting going into dentistry a lot more now. I’m enjoying waking up to do my clients and I think I’ve always heard this concept of You should love what you do.

Sure.

And for the last for the last two or three years, because I’m putting myself more and more into.

Coaching.

I’m actually starting to feel that that feeling now. So if I can keep on loving what I’m doing, I’m going to be a happy guy.

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, there’s one question I didn’t ask you about the coaching training, bloodwork. Do you recommend that to your clients? Is that something you talk to them about?

Advisor Depends on the if I don’t work with any assisted athletes and by that guys I mean anyone taking enhancement or professional enhancing. But generally speaking, yeah.

Yeah.

But generally speaking, if there are signs and symptoms to me to say like an individual looks like they’re possibly looking like a bit more fatigued and a bit more lethargic than they normally should do, then I might encourage them to get some blood tests to look for anaemia, etc. But I mean it’s very much case by case dependent. There has been situations where I said there’s something like we might be looking at. I’ve got a couple of clients who’ve approached me because they’re pre-diabetic. So we do keep an eye on their blood glucose levels. And likewise we’ve got some individuals who are type one diabetic. So we do look at these sort of things, but it does vary depending on the client. It wouldn’t be like everyone needs to come to me with blood work and I just look at their panels and look at it like that sense.

Okay, It’s something it’s something I do quarterly and it’s something I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that, you know, you could look like a picture of health and your blood could be like custard. Do you know what I mean? And certainly for me, just monitoring my bloods, whether it’s looking at sort of diabetes markers such as HBA one C and blood glucose levels and things like that, and even your hormone panels and stuff. Right. You know, for me, anyway, it does kind of keep me on track. And I know what I’m looking to achieve in three months time or whatever. Right. I’m just wondering from a from a fitness and wellness point of view, the reason I’m mentioning this is a client got in touch with me just only last week who focuses on that area of wellness. He’s a private GP and he centres all of his care around, around the blood work. So just wanted to know what your take on that is and personally for yourself. Do you do you monitor yours?

I’ve done it only as I said, I’ve done it from the point of view. When I felt myself run down about a year and a half ago when I felt my body just wasn’t quite right. And I did look into it and I ended up finding that I had some vitamin D deficiencies and folic acid deficiency. So I ended up going on to supplementation for that. But generally speaking, it’s not. I’d be lying to say to you that it’s something that I look at routinely and regularly. Sure. I don’t you know, if you if we look at it, if we look at it from the point of view, the more information we have about anybody, the more educated decisions we can make about them. Absolutely. But it’s also one of those things when you have an individual who’s approaching you and like, for example, with my assessment week, you’re taking an individual individual who might be at one point slamming in a couple of beers that weekend, a Domino’s and a kebab. Then you start telling them about doing a blood work. They’re thinking, What the hell am I getting myself into? You got you’re going from extreme from, you know, 100 0 to 100. I think it would be a case of walking, walking the walk first, going into a bit of a canter, then a jog, a then a running pace and say, okay, cool. Now we can fine tune and look at things like that. So if there are concerning features, I would definitely look at them. If there’s something which doesn’t seem quite right in.

Your.

Signs, symptoms, physiology, then again, yeah, we’ll definitely encourage that. But you’ve got to I think you’ve got to be mindful not to jump from extremes, but I think that’s what we do as dentists. We look for very extreme.

Measures, very much so onto supplements. You mentioned supplementation just earlier on. Is there anything do you recommend like multi-vitamin greens and any sort of cocktail of sort of staples like D three, K two or what? What’s your what’s your goal to sort of thing that you’d advise your patient, your patients?

So it would be a combination of some simple, simple stuff. So if you’re not consuming oily fish twice a week and Mega three, six, nine. So I’d say that’s my one staple. If you’re a vegetarian, there are vegan options out there as well and vegetarian options. Then I would say number two would be a multi vitamin A box standard, multi vitamins, perfectly fine vitamin D, k, B, D, three, K two. Yeah, absolutely. Given the fact that we live in a temperate climate, we sit inside all day long, we’re not getting vitamin D, let’s be really, really honest. So vitamin D, I think is really essential. And then if you are training with weights, creating. Those are my four, I would say three essential vitamins, one essential sports supplement. Everything else is a bonus.

Protein powders.

If you want it. I mean, I look at it again. Dentists are time poor and looking for a quick fix. I look it as a huge advantage. It’s tasty. They’re convenient. They’re actually the most cost effective way of getting protein into your system. So I personally do advise them, but it’s not something you need. It’s a it’s a nice half rather than a must have. But yeah, absolutely. They can be so useful. You can make puddings out of them, you can make a shake, you can make smoothies, you can make ice creams, you could do whatever you want. They’re so versatile. And compared to all the crap that we had, you know, the best part of 15 years ago, the start, the stuff which tasted like chalk and like literally mix like clumps to now these amazing flavours and clear isolates and stuff like that. You’re spoilt for choice nowadays.

To be honest, I can’t remember what the brand that I used many, many years ago. But you’re right, it just tasted gritty. Right. And yeah, I.

Remember this one’s called.

Nutrisse Nutrisse for that’s what it, that’s the one I remember. Yeah.

It was so cost effective. But I swear to God my, I remember I’ll tell you a funny anecdote very quickly, because I’m sure you don’t want to hear too much about this, but it was 2013, the year I qualified. I remember I was taking this at the time and I fell asleep in our staff room at lunch. And I remember I woke up and everyone looked at me like the most disgusting look on their face. And they were like, I think someone just died and it just came out of you. And I realised this The protein.

And protein wasn’t good. Yeah, I remember that nutri. It used to come in five kilogram tops. Yeah. And it was cheap as chips. I think it was about 40 quid or something like that. Yes.

Five kilos for 40 quid. There you go. That says everything doesn’t it.

Absolutely. Okay, moving on. We like to ask about sort of what life you got. You’ve got kids or married. Married kids. Okay.

Maybe if I’m blessed in the future.

Okay, so let’s. Let’s take ourselves to the future. Please. And imagine at the end of your long, long life that it’s your last day on the planet of God, okay? And you have to give your closest ones and three pieces of wisdom. What would they be? Geez.

Okay. I would say live with no regret because you have no idea what tomorrow brings. And. Probably from the point of view, having lost a few ones, a few loved ones quite unexpectedly, like in COVID. I would say definitely. You just don’t know, like whether it be arguments, whether it be whether you feel like you could have done a job better, push yourself down, a career that you wanted to try. Like I’m trying with my fitness, like to take that leap, you know, don’t don’t sit on the what if because honestly, it’s it’s frightening. I mean, I just had a WhatsApp just before I spoke to you guys on this podcast, and my mum’s got a colleague of hers who unfortunately her partner passed away very unexpectedly a year.

Ago and she’s.

Herself, the colleague, has just passed away this evening. She just had straightforward cancer. And I’m not trying to say this to, to, to frighten anyone, but it’s the case of you just don’t know. I mean, I had two patients last in the last two weeks have just come to me and they’ve just told me that their wives or partners have just had stage four cancer. And you think, Jesus Christ, that’s six months. Things can just change. So live with no regret would be number one and number two would be, I guess it’s in line with what I do. Don’t be afraid to be selfish and put yourself first because. I realised with myself and I’m when I help try to help other people is that you can’t pour from an empty cup like we said at the beginning. Put the oxygen mask on. All right, Let yourself breathe. Then help the other person. Because it’s it’s so easy to to give, give, give everybody else. Give our patients 100%. But then there’ll be a point where you snap because you can’t keep going the way you’re going. Just take a moment whether it be reading a book. Go for exercise. Go for a walk. Eat Better. Start taking care of you. I think that’s. It’s really why I do what I do. It’s just helping other people just start valuing themselves.

Sure. Three, Probably.

You are a product of your environment. So just choose your environment carefully. That’s that’s. I mean.

I wonder what you mean by that is are the people, is it, is it the place? Everything is.

Everything though. Like if you’re unhappy where you work, change your workplace. If you’re if you’re unhappy with your relationship with your loved one. Talk to them like ultimately we have a choice. I don’t believe in anything happens without our decision making process. I believe I have a choice to be happy. I have a choice to be sad if I’m unhappy with how If I’m unhappy with how this podcast is going, I could tell you like, dude, cancer. This this is this.

Is bullshit, but you.

Have a choice so you can change your environment any which way. If you if you’re in a situation where you feel perhaps, maybe I feel overwhelmed, what can you do in that moment to change the script and change the environment around you? Yeah, that’s what I feel strongly about.

And payments question. Okay. He didn’t party. Okay. Three guests, dead or alive? Who would they be? My. Oc.

Jonny Wilkinson. An amazing rugby player and an idol of.

Mine.

Dynamo. The magician.

Interesting. Yeah. And David Goggins. Yeah.

He’s an absolute legend. And I would say Dynamo, because if you don’t know much about his backstory, you need to read about him. This guy is, like, incredibly inspiring. He was probably the most introverted people I’ve ever come across through reading his autobiography, going watching his shows, watching his TV programs like he’s so unbelievably introverted, but has built this persona and built this confidence. And what I love is how he’s mastered his craft to kind of build himself up. And it’s something how I can relate to. Like he he he used to get bullied a lot as a kid, and then he just did his he did his his magic tricks and learnt from his grandpa. And now look at this guy. He’s just you just look at him. You’re like, in awe, which is absolutely insane.

I didn’t know that. I did not know that. Yeah, man.

Tony Wilkinson For the point of being I mean, everyone looks at him as the most incredible, like number ten we had in the English jersey, but I would say more So again, his autobiography, like, is blown me away. Like, you wouldn’t realise this guy is probably the most anxious person I’ve ever heard of.

Ever.

He was so self deprecating, like he was so hard on himself. But I would love to sit down with him and just kind of have a chat because I think he’s just got an unbelievable mindset to kind of just persevere and have that grit and determination. But also he also knows what it is to battle within himself. And I think it be really good. It’s good to kind of hear his take on that because you could see he’s he’s struggled with it throughout his whole career, right way to the very end, to be honest. But he also just just just blew me away, just how incredibly professional he was. So that was one of the things I liked about him. And then the last one, David Goggins I mean, was there a lot to say? Yeah, was there a lot to say? I’m actually in the middle of his second book right now, and I just every page, I’m enthralled. He is just again, it’s interesting, all those three guys I’ve realised when I was just thinking about it, they all have the same sort of like backstory. They’re all kind of like, I don’t know, the, the, the underdog who just come come their own.

Way.

From the guy who was working as a pest control guy to suddenly then become a Navy SEAL man, to do ultramarathons, to doing like the world’s record for pull ups. The guy is an absolute beast but it’s again, it’s down to mindset. He just shows you how you can tap into your brain. And I believe that’s what we all need to kind of do, is just get get into that brain and just know that we have so much more to give.

I’ve not picked up a second book yet, but I remember listening to the audio of his, so I read the first book. Right. But then when you when you listen to the audio, he adds colour to the book. He talks.

It’s insane. I listen to it as well. It’s insane. It’s insane.

And I just you know what the one thing is, you know, back in the day you’d sit down and watch one of the Rocky movies for a bit of motivation, right? But you listen to Goggins and you listen to his story and all the rest of it. My God, it fires you up.

I’ve not. I’ve not met one person who I’ve not recommended that book who hasn’t come out feeling empowered. And it’s not about fitness. It’s really not about fitness. It’s just the the principle that you can, if you want to. That’s the bit. It’s like when you feel like he describes it. I remember he says, like when you’re when you’re on a.

Run.

And you know, you hit that wall. He’s like, you’re only 44 steps there. You’ve got 60, you’ve got you’ve got another 60 to go. And some of the things he’s.

Done physically.

They make no sense. No, But then the power of the mind, you know, and if anyone believes anything, the power of the mind is unbelievable. I think you can really tap into that and make a whole world of a difference for yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely Brilliant. Well, listen, Roland, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. I really do hope our guests just take some messages away today and implement at least a couple of those five tips. I think if they can go away with if they want to learn about you, where do they go? Yeah.

They to jump on Instagram that DOT to underscore RV fitness and then drop me a follow, if you like, advice, which is bullshit free, realistic and applicable to your everyday life. And it will help you in all aspects, whether it be.

Just.

Taking a moment to not be so hard on yourself. Eat better, sleep better, hydrate better, and actually enjoy it.

Drop me a funny cool. Excellent. Well, thank you for your time and absolute pleasure, buddy Berry.

Thank you so much for having me. I’ve really enjoyed 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.

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.

And I think for me, the biggest thing that recently has happened is I’ve, you know, as I’m quite proud to say, that the business has become successful, but it’s become successful to kind of rein everyone in into that ideology has been really hard. And I’ve not yet found a way to kind of, you know, people talk about culture. It’s how to get that culture to filter through the team, the team that’s been a really hard.

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.

Hey guys. A bit of a different episode today.

When Prav went to the Neo dental conference about a month ago or so, he even managed it as well as doing everything else he was doing at that conference. He even managed to do three episodes of the Dental Leaders podcast. Two of them have been full length and then they’ve come out already. But he did a third one, which is a 20 minute episode, which is brilliant. He covered all the main parts of the podcast in 20 minutes with Manish Bose, who’s a friend of mine who actually was practising in the same practice as him, a very, very talented surgeon. And that podcast, because it’s only 20 minutes, we’re going to put that in this episode. But I’ve put another quick ten minute piece in, which is me talking to the managing director and marketing director of FMC about the North of England dentistry show, which is coming up on Friday the 11th of March in Manchester at the MCC. Enjoy it. It would be great to see loads of you there. It’s always so strange when people come up to me and say, Hey, they listen to the podcast and it’s a funny, funny feeling when people tell me about my life, You know, if you’ve listened to hours and hours of this, you tend to know quite a lot about me. A funny feeling when someone knows you so well and you’re just meeting them. But I do love meeting you guys. So do come to that event and, you know, feel a community building up. So thanks a lot for that. Enjoy the episode.

Thanks. It’s no secret that we’re going to be launching the next version of the Enlightened system in March, and it’s been a long time coming. We’re super excited about it. We’re getting superb results from the testing dentists, and we’ve decided to launch it across several different events starting in March. So it will be at the dentistry show in May in Birmingham. We’ll be at the showcase in London at the end of March, but we’re going to kick it all off at the Fmc’s North of England Dentistry show in Manchester at the convention centre there on March 11th. People are a bit surprised sometimes when I tell them Enlightened’s biggest users are from the north, but they always have been. People in the north aren’t. Aren’t that surprised, But whether it was Caliph Solanki practice in Manchester, Michael Oliver’s amazing place in Sunderland, the North’s always been a hotbed for whitening, and it just seems fitting to start there. Fmc have been such a massive support to the profession. I remember the first thing I did when we started Enlightened was was have a meeting with Ken. And since then, you know, whatever they’ve done, whether it’s education print, whether it’s awards, they’ve always been really, really just supportive, cutting edge, innovative. And this is no different. So it’s my great pleasure to welcome Craig Welling, managing director of FMC. Can’t believe I’m saying that. And Laurie Glover and Laurie Glover, who’s marketing head of marketing, to tell us more about the show. So, guys, lovely to have you on. Thanks so much for having us.

I’m really excited to be here. Yeah, No, great to be on.

Yeah. Let’s let’s start with some headline numbers. How many delegates are you expecting? How many stages is it? How many speakers, that sort of thing. Let’s kick off with that, Laurie. Let’s start with the delegates.

That’s the exciting. What everyone always wants to hear about the most is how many how many dentists are we going to have through the doors? And we’re lining up to be absolutely record breaking. This year, we’re expecting over 1000 dentists through the doors itself come to the show and sign ups are just so far ahead of where we expect them to be. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the demand for these in-person events in the North this year.

Would you put it down to.

Well, I think there’s nothing quite the same as an in-person event. You know, the ability to get there, get hands on with stuff, to see new product launches, to to hear lectures and speakers meet with exhibitors. There’s just no way to replicate that at that kind of scale outside of a Dental event. And we are the largest show in the north. That’s why we we get the numbers we do.

Craig Were you were you not worried, Craig were you not worried that this year was going to be a difficult year to to sell, you know, to to attract people to these sort of things? Yeah.

And I think, you know, there’s always challenges and worries around. You know, whoever’s running in. But, you know, I think our model has always been and obviously a really kind introduction that you did. But, you know, we want to give practical information to to the mass. And, you know, there’s a big gap in the north. The BDA used to run there. And obviously they they then partnered with the dentistry show Got to Birmingham. So there hasn’t been a show consistently in the North for many years and we launched our regional events programme. You know, we’ve got some really good traction and year one last year in the North just took off. You know, we had a great turnout, huge support from the trade and obviously we we put the stake in the ground and you know, we got some great speakers coming along, some, you know, superb support from the industry. And yeah, as Laurie said, you know, we’re ahead of the game and we’re super excited.

Because how many exhibitors are coming?

Oh, I think 136 off the top of my head, isn’t it, Craig? Just over the top of your head.

Geez.

They keep swelling up even now, you know, usually shows people have got it all locked in, but we’re still getting people enquiring and saying, Hey, can we come along? Because they’ve seen, you know, the demand for it and they want to be on board and be part of that.

And what about the stages? What are they called?

So we’ve got a number of different lecture theatres. So we’ve, we’ve um, we’ve got a clinical theatre which is obviously practical clinical advice, which I think you’re speaking at Payman, you know, guiding people on, on their writing journey. Then we’ve got the avant garde theatre. So obviously Robbie and Milad, you know, they’ve got a phenomenal business. And then Jin and Kish at the Smile Academy. They’ve got their own theatre. Paul Tipton’s run in a theatre of restorative. And then we have a core theatre that covers all of the the main topics. We have a facial aesthetics hub, a business hub. So we’re really trying to appeal to to everybody as much as possible and bring some of the biggest names from across the sector.

Yeah. Think you missed a couple there, Craig We’ve obviously got the business hub as well, powered by my dentist, the Nursing and Oral Health Theatre as well, and the Oscar Restorative Theatre as well by by Troika.

And so let’s go through some of the speakers. I’m looking at the list now. So for me the standout ones are Payman. Langroudi Payman For sure, for sure. But Riaz You are brilliant. Joanne They are like a lot unless you’ve got on. What’s he speaking on? Do you know implants or is it business? He’s normally business. He’s a.

Business.

He’s doing on this case. He’s talking about wine replacing, restoring dental implants. It was an implants intro lecture in the implant digital theatre.

And so what’s the overall experience going to be? You turn up, it feels a bit like an exhibition, right? Because that’s it’s that mic which is a big hall and then lectures start and everyone starts going into the lectures. How long is each lecture? Are they different lengths or are they all the same?

Yeah, they aren’t. They are different lengths. And we have, you know, we obviously people are there to enjoy a good day out as well as listen to the speeches that are going on. So they don’t want to be sat down for too long. Payman So the lectures tend to last between 20 to 30 minutes. There are few of the kind of core recommended CPD topics that last a little bit longer up to an hour. But it’s kind of like, you know, we keep it short and sweet because you get a chance to fit more in that way throughout your day.

So guys, when was when was the time where you like how many months ago or is it years ago? Did you start planning this particular event? Like run me through the process.

So I think just I mean, taking it back a couple of steps is yeah, you know, and as I’ve just said to you, we’ve always been about supplying. Practical content that people can absorb and take back to practice. And that’s when we launched the regional event program back in 2020. And then obviously COVID come along. And I think that shattered most event businesses around the world. And so so we really pick things back up in 2021. We had a really successful event in March last year and then we’ve we’ve as soon as that finished, we’re straight back onto the planning for this year. So. You know, 12 months in the pipeline. I think Liana and her team have done a phenomenal job. You know, and I just think we’re trying to be a little bit different. You know, we have things like bubbles and beers. So, you know, early afternoon, the champagne comes out, beers are poured. We try to make it more of a social atmosphere. We don’t want it to be too serious. You know, people want to learn, engage with clients, but also to have fun. It’s not about just, you know, white collar walking around. We want it to be an enjoyable experience.

Yeah. And for the North, we see so many teams come along as well. So it’s not just the dentist. They bring their their team with them and it’s a great chance for a team bonding day out. And I think when you talk about the after party this year, I’m talking about things like no indifferent. We have got the north of England after party happening and Payman I hear someone’s got a VIP area kind of set up for that.

Is that right? Is that right? I didn’t know about that. Um, so the party, what runs straight after the end of the course?

Right straight after the end of the show. So from 4 to 6 afterwards we’ve got one of the gin is DJing from small Canning’s been providing Izzy. Izzy Yeah. Some welcome drinks from team FMC and yeah, you’ve got a little area of ropes outfit for you and the crew.

Yeah. Didn’t want to bring that up, but now that you brought it up. Yeah.

So guys, this regional sort of did you do some research that said, oh, people don’t want to travel down to London or Birmingham and that’s why you’re putting it up there. Is that how it happened?

Yeah. So I think.

If you look at the the latest stats that we run there, was it and don’t quote me on this, I’ll have to get the exact number, but it was around 87% of practices said that they wouldn’t want to travel more than 50 miles. And then we looked at, you know, areas where there was a high concentration of practices and labs where there’s a higher demand. And that’s where we decided to launch the events.

And your business model is free to the dentist, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And so it’s just us paying.

Absolutely. Again. Payman. Yeah. So of course it’s got to be free for dentists. You know, we’ve been down in the draw, brings them along, gives you a great chance to meet, you know, more dentists you can ever hope to do by travelling around.

Think think what Payman missed out there is. He said last show that he made over £1 million.

Did he. Yeah that’s right. That’s right.

Hey that that’s a good one right there. Surely for that. Put my.

Villa bought my villa in in Cornwall.

But yeah. No it’s really great to have you on and we really appreciate your support and, you know, ultimately looking forward to a great event.

Yeah, I’m sure it will be, man. I’m sure it will be. You guys tend to take care of the all the bits around it very well. All the AV and the food and all that tends to be give me some, some, some idea of numbers on your end. How many of your people are going up.

So we got our event team. So obviously Leon has got got her team that’s made up of there’s eight people in events now and then we’ve got our content team, so they’ll be there covering lots of the new product launches and then we can use that content to distribute online through the print media. Obviously, the sales team will be there. I’m sure they’ll be on your stand with a clipboard as as the door opens. So yeah, I mean, it’s a big day for us, you know, obviously it’s our our cup final, as we call it. It’s our it’s the biggest show that we run. And we’re, um. Yeah, yeah, I’m.

It’s been events are cool man. You never get, you never get sick of events I find. Yeah I do. Once a month right. With the mini smile makeover and just round the corner, by the way, at the Edwardian hotel. And you never get sick of it because it’s different people every time and different for me, different things that go wrong every time. I’ll be quite I’ll be quite interested. I’m going to grab both of you halfway through the day and have another chat with you, but I’d be quite interested to see what went wrong this time. Right. Because you can never. It’s like a wedding or something, isn’t it? You can never really predict.

Yeah, there’s always something. But, I mean, what’s so good about our team is that we’re so good now at taking that in our stride and getting a solution in place is, you know, pragmatic but keeps exhibitors happy, attendees happy. And we just make sure we go above and beyond to resolve them as quickly as possible. A bit of whack a mole when they pop up.

Just a funny one. Remember the first year that we run London Pay and I think you was there and there’s a whole issue with like the health and safety offer signing things off and everyone was in a panic and I think the registration was due to open at half eight, got to half eight and we’d still not had sign off from the health and safety officer because an exhibitor had left the box on the floor. But everyone thought that we did it on purpose because there was a huge queue of people outside waiting to get in, which which made for some great content to show how busy the show was. Um, but yeah, hopefully it runs smoothly this time.

I’d love to sit with.

You guys and go through all the things that have gone wrong with all of the events.

It’ll it’ll be a whole.

Education for me because we’ve never I’ve never run a big event like this before. Yeah, guys, I’m really looking forward to it. Are you guys going the night before?

Yes. We’ll be there to sell out the day before. Absolutely. On Thursday. No, Friday. So we’ll be up there Friday, Friday.

Friday. Sorry. Yeah, Friday. Yeah. And where are you staying?

Uh, we’re at, you know, the.

The place. You guys are too high up. You’re too high up to know these little details, aren’t you?

Payman the day before. Okay.

And are you leaving?

Are you leaving on the Saturday night or are you staying till Sunday morning?

I think some of the team are staying over. I’m some of us are head back at my I’ve not seen my kids for about three weeks, so I need to get back.

All right, man. It’ll be. It’ll be. It’ll be good to catch up with you guys, man. I’ll definitely see you hopefully on on the date. And, you know, we’ll have a great time. Thanks. Thanks a lot for doing this.

I really appreciate the invite and coming on and the support and yeah, look forward to seeing you in next Saturday.

See you in Manchester.

Cool, guys, thanks a lot.

So, Manish, just introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about your practice, what you do at your practice, who works there? Right.

So my name is Manish Bose. I’m a specialist periodontist. I own a practice. I’ve owned a practice for ten years this year, actually. So it was a it was an existing dental implant practice. If you know anything about dental implants. There was a guy called Ashok Rosetti and his partner at the time, a guy called Roy Sennett and Roy Sennett was from South Africa. So Roy Sennett owned a practice. The practice I bought and Ashok had a practice at the road. So I bought Roy’s practice. It wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life. Buying business is not my forte. I don’t come from a business background. I bought the practice ten years ago. I can pretty much say it was a yeah, not the greatest experience in my life, but anyway, it is what it is. But I created a referral practice mainly by knocking on people’s doors. He had an implant only practice where he used to get referrals for implants. But I never captured that market because he decided to stay on there. So I established a periodontal referral business, started off doing half a day every two weeks, and I’m now doing four days, five days a week, booked in advance, got another periodontist there. We have a specialist orthodontist, we have a specialist oral surgeon, we have a specialist endodontist and we’re looking to expand.

So if we just take a step back and go back to that journey of when you bought the practice, you’ve had ten years of owning the practice. Now, if you could do that all over again, what would you tell your younger self and what would you change? What would you do differently?

Don’t be naive. Don’t be overly eager. I think I think the Roy saw me coming and I think I was way too eager to do a lot more due diligence. I think this was the days before CTC. So, you know, I if I was to do this all again, I’d be I’d look into the books a lot more. I’d be a bit more kind of business. Like I wasn’t business minded. I just knew that I could do something there. It was more of a gut feeling. I wouldn’t do a gut feeling thing again.

So I’m right in understanding that. You were probably at that time quite excited to become a practice owner. This opportunity came along and you just thought it felt a bit giddy maybe, and just thought, You know what, this is it. I’m going to do this without sort of I guess, you know, you can say you could have been more business minded, but how would have you been more business minded at that time?

Think, think like a lot of specialists. I was running around London and I think I was listening to one of your podcasts recently with Hatem, you know, working 14 different places. I was not too different. I was working about 12 different places, and I knew in Ealing there was an opportunity to be had because there was no one and there was not a standalone referral practice. So yeah, I was quite excited. I thought I knew I actually never wanted to be a business owner. I wanted to be an academic. Another day, another story. But you know, the practice is I live in Ealing. We literally moved into the Ealing and the reason I bought got into got introduced to Royce because I do a lot of Southern implants. So I used to know the guy who used to run Southern and their offices were in that building. So that’s how my introduction got into with, with Roy. Yeah. So I was, I was excited. Yeah, I was definitely buzzing. I thought, well, if I can, if I can concentrate in this one area, it means I’m not running around everywhere. I had really young kids at that time as well, so for me to be in Ealing was quite paramount because my wife works much harder than I do then. And she’s she’s a travel a lot. So for, for us it was a real kind of game changer that I could be located near the kids.

Close to home.

And then so if you look back over the last ten years, what were your darkest days? What would you say the, you know, the most challenging aspects of running and owning a business during that time? Was it really in the early days when you thought, what I’ve just taken on, or have there been moments in owning a business where it’s been so challenging that it’s been utter overwhelm and stress? Yeah, I.

Think I think one of the things and I always say this to younger colleagues who buy a business is when you inherit stuff, it’s one of the biggest bollocks that you can have. I mean, because their loyalties obviously are with the previous owner and that realisation from being an associate where you try to be friendly with the staff members and you’re not really that involved with their day to day things to being their boss, that transition. Is huge for me. Definitely the first year of becoming a boss. Not becoming it’s not it wasn’t very natural, but inheriting people that, you know, the realisation that as a boss you’re quite alone and you’re not really like that much. And you know, you then realise that most of the time they’re being nice to you in front of your face and in a really awkward situation. They’ll be horrible to you in front of your face as well. So that was definitely one aspect of it. And I think for me, the biggest thing that recently happened is I’ve, you know, as I’m quite proud to say, that the business has become successful, but it’s become successful to kind of rein everyone in into that ideology has been really hard. And I’ve not yet found a way to kind of, you know, people talk about culture. It’s how to get that culture to filter through the team. The team that’s been a really hard thing is.

That I was going to ask another question Is that what you meant by ideology? Like having this sort of culture that comes from that’s driven from the top yourself and then and then having the team understand what that culture is and then live and breathe that through to your patients.

Yeah. And I think I think the team so I’ve got my staff who get it because then again I’m quite lucky. I’ve got members of staff who have been with me for years. I’ve got Lady a ten years, eight years, seven years. And they get they’ve seen the business evolve. They see that it’s all about the patient journey. And what I what I what’s the challenge is when I’ve got associates. Some of you are quite young and some who are older and set in their ways, who don’t quite see how things work. And, you know, that’s the thing about people, dentists popping in and out of practices, they don’t have any ownership. And it’s hard. And I get it because I was in that position. I get what they’re. But at the same time, we all have to sing from the same hymn sheet. And for me, trying to establish that as being hard, that’s probably my current problem.

Okay. And if you to look over your career, we speak to a lot of sort of guests when we’re interviewing them and talk about clinical mistakes. I think I think it’s really important the concept of black box thinking where, you know, in the airline industry, everyone’s very open about, well, you have to be open, right? The black box records it. And so anything that happens in the airline industry is shared across industry for flight safety. Right. And that’s why that’s why it’s so safe to fly in medicine and healthcare. We have this habit of covering up our mistakes. And just in the guess, in the interest of transparency, we spoke to a lot of dentists, some who pulled the wrong tooth out or perforated. Have you ever had any moments during your career where you’ve made a clinical mistake that you could share?

I’ve got several. There’s a couple that I won’t talk about, but there’s one in particular that I’m more than happy to because it’s quite funny. Yeah. And the one yeah, this one I’ll talk about. So about 10 or 12 years ago I did an implant sinus graft, did an immediate sinus graft, put the implants in as well at the same time. Sorry, sinus graph with an immediate implant. Let the patient be. The patient came back. Oh, sorry. Got a small detail When I did the sinus graft as a tooth next door, there was a little bit of pus coming out of it from the root tip of the root. And I said, I’ll be fine. Kind of kind of cleaned it antibiotics. But obviously the infection got into the sinus graft and it didn’t work. So the patient comes back in after four months, 4 or 5 months. I went to do a second stage surgery to expose the implant and I put a screwdriver and the implant moved and I said, okay, implant moves not worked, okay. And I said to the patient, Look, hasn’t worked. I need to get you back in and the patient is okay. And I said, I’ll get you back in and next time you come in, I’ll be all prepped. I’ll get a surgical setup and said, I’ll come back in a week. And you know, all it happened was it just moved slightly, nothing else. Okay. Patient comes back after a week. Okay. So, you know, all gowned up. Open it up. There’s no implant. Okay, so there’s me. And he’s like, Yeah, I’ve had this, like, you know, congestion issue, okay? And so I’ve done max backs, okay.

Before I did my training, So okay, let me have a look. So then I decided to pull a flap up. I did a little window and the loops on and started looking. Can’t see a bloody thing, anything. Right. And there was crap coming out. There was past all kinds of shit coming out of there, bias particles. And I’m like, Oh my God. And this guy is not the easiest. This is an up in Highgate loads of old money, you know, I’m start to shit myself a little bit. Okay. So then was me a pair of tweezers looking for this thing? Couldn’t find a freaking thing anyway. Anyway, so at which point the guy could clearly tell that I was very, very nervous. And this was, like I said, ten, 12 years. So about 6 or 7 years into me being a specialist, me doing all these kind of things. And so I rang my old boss up and he, you know, my old boss was a guy called Nasser, who’s, again, another day, another story. But he wasn’t in town. He gave me a telephone number for one of his mates, which was who was a proper old school English maths surgeon and said, What? What old boy? Don’t worry, send him over to me. So I sent the patient across to him and he saved my butt basically on various levels. Okay. So firstly, he was able to locate the implant, which was underneath the orbit. Okay. Wow. It was stuck. Were you fishing.

Around in the wrong place?

I was. I was fishing around, but he’d gone all the way back there. Okay. Because I didn’t, I wasn’t, you know, firstly it was underneath orbit. Secondly, he thankfully booked him into the local private hospital, took the implant out overnight stay. I paid for everything, obviously, and paid for, you know, six, seven grand. Just paid it all to him. Sure. What he then did, which was amazing because I did three implants on this guy. This story goes on for a bit longer, right? Sure. The three implants of this guy, two of them were. One of them didn’t. Okay. And the guy’s obviously like, well, you know, and he’s got he’s gone to the old boy surgeons and you know. Yeah yeah Manish has done this and you know you know I think he’s fucked up basically. And Max my guy was on my side. I said, No, no, no. Let me get you a second opinion. So he got me. He got an a second opinion, one of his buddies. And for the life of me, can’t remember his name, but quite a really well-established western Harley Street boy who did an examination and just said, Look, mate, it’s, you know, shit happens. Two of them worked. One of them didn’t, you know, End of story.

Okay. Anyway, it was great, okay? And I was like, lucky break, you know, And the surgeon only charged me 4 or £500, this thing. And the whole thing is, eight years later, this guy’s in in Devon. And you remember that film? Is it yesterday with the Indian lad who starts singing Beatles songs? Yes. Yeah. Do you remember? Yeah. So a mate of mine who’s another dentist who moves, moves out to Devon. He’s watched the film, right. And he’s gone with some mates of his. Okay. And he’s come out and they’re talking about because I think that that guy had an implant Dental implant. And this guy this the one of the mates who was with said yeah. Had an implant with this guy up in Highgate, yada yada yada. And he’s like, And it was me all these years. He still got he’s got still got a little beef with me. But he’s all right and he’s he’s good. And, you know, as we get to know each other, I’ll tell you the other story, which is even funnier for sure. Maybe off camera. Off camera, off camera. But yeah, that was it was the other one was scary but funny at the end.

It’s nice you had those people to just sort of cover your backside, right. And people to sort of help you out in that in that situation, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You I think I’d like to think there are still people like that out there. But yeah.

Have you ever helped anyone out in that similar maybe not the same situation, but more junior dentists or whatever where they’ve got themselves and landed themselves in a bit of trouble And you’ve been able to.

I think one of the things you probably realise, you know, having been in the industry, it’s not easy to run a or not. It’s not easy to have a referral practice and a lot of that is off the back of helping colleagues in different ways. Whether I take an impression or whether a referring colleague may have done something that has got themselves into a bit of trouble. You know, I will, I will. I have worked out for them in whatever way just to kind of eliminate any possible complications that might occur. But yeah, so am I’m very wary of these things. And because someone’s helped me if I’ve.

Been a recipient.

And yeah.

And also it’s good for business if to be honest because you know, it creates goodwill if anything else, and that’s to have a like a referral practice in zone 2 or 3 in central London. It ain’t easy. So you have to do these things. And I do it. I do it with a kind heart as well because, you know, like I said, I’ve been lucky enough that people helped me out.

Done the same for you on these interviews. We usually usually ask a question. So this is going to be sort of we’ll feature this on Dental Leaders It was your last day on the planet. Yeah. What were the what would be the three pieces of advice that you would leave your loved ones with?

Okay. Uh. Okay. Love life. Always learn. Always, always. I’m a was with someone on Saturday local school ball. And we’ve talked about happiness. And his his concept of happiness was to take his dog out. His 56 likes to take his dog out for a walk. And I was like, okay, fair enough. Simple. Simple. You know? But for me, I’m 50 turn 50 this year. I’m perpetually trying to learn new things. I’m learning how to play the guitar. You know, I’m going to take the boys. I’ve got two boys. I’m going to take them to play golf. So it’s that perpetual love of life.

Just on the guitar bit. Are you a musical guy or is it.

Just so okay, not I wish I was because I have this thing that I always tell people that if I was ever reborn. I’d be reborn as Tito Puente, who was a very famous Colombian Hispanic bongo player. And my connection to all of this is actually quite pertinent because we talk about Manchester. So 91, 94, those years my best buddies were two Cheetham Hill boys, Irfan and Ifti, who were who are two Pakistani lads from Cheetham Hill, which in those days were called the Murder Mile, as you know, and they were into Latin music and. Right. So we used to go out, they were into Latin music and hardcore techno, but they were their musical geniuses. Irfan still plays out in Manchester, so I still see him every now and then. So that’s my musical heritage. I mean, apart from all the stuff my dad used to play as Hindi music or whatever, but that was so. So my musical kind of aspirations are definitely developed from those days.

So we’ve got love, life, learn, always.

Be learning, always.

Be learning love life always be learning. Yeah be be be nice to people. Be kind of respectful. I think that that.

Fantasy dinner, you can invite three people, dead or alive. Who would they be?

Uh.

Well, Tito Puente Hills.

Thought, Yeah, this one gonna play? Yeah.

Who else would I invite? Um. It wouldn’t be anything Dental so disappoint, say, Nelson Mandela. I think I’d love to hear how he spent his time in jail, but. Amor Bose. Do you know he is? Bose sound system. He was an Indian physicist who went to MIT, and I just loved to know his journey from going from India, being an engineer to go to MIT, and how he and I don’t know what his involvement in the whole boat. I mean, he must be part of shareholder or something. Sure. So I’d be intrigued to know his business journey. Yeah, actually, I think being a businessman that has made me interested in business, that’s one thing. So how people create things is quite interesting for me and create businesses because the one thing I realised is it’s not easy. It’s not easy running a business for sure. But one of the things that I and I think I spoke to you about is all on Fort say it’s all well and good having an idea or being good at it, but you need a funnel for those things to come in. Of course it’s how to create those funnels I find quite interesting as well. So Amira Bose would be an example that someone is obviously intelligent, crack the code correct. And you need and that’s that. Yeah. That would be that would be awesome.

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

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

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Thanks.

And don’t forget our six star rating.

It was a video that I saw where a chap he puts ping pong balls into a jar and then he puts gravel around the ping pong balls and he’s asking the students, is the jar full? And they keep saying, Yes it is. And then after the gravel he puts sand in and then he pulls two cans of beer into it goes, is it form? I go yes. And it goes. The ping pong balls represent your personal success. And he goes, you know, he goes, The gravel is stuff like your business, your sand are the bits that don’t matter. Because if you put your gravel or sand in first, you’re not going to have room for your personal matters. And I think one of the students puts his hands up and goes, But sir, what what are the two beers about? And he goes, You should always make time to have a couple of beers with your friends. So I think I think people transition. And I think when I first qualified, it was trying to my version of success was to be financially secure, own a business. You know, as I’ve got older, you know, I don’t think money interests me anymore.

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.

Selling cake gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Saqib Ali onto the podcast. Saqib is the principal of Sherwood Dental in Hall Green in Birmingham. What can only be described as a behemoth of a practice. 11 surgeries, one of the biggest NHS contracts in the area, and massive private element as well. Actually 70% private apex predator Invisalign. Actually, I should use the right word tonight. What is it? Apex. What I give Tony.

It’s an apex Invisalign provider. So that’s the top 1% in Europe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met you Saqib on many small makeover, and we still talk about it in our team. We still talk about that. That MSN when you were there because you just made it so much fun for everyone when you came with your wife, Farrah. And it was it was just a party from beginning to end because you were there. And now that you told me you’ve been on these other courses, I’m going to go ask the others. Was it the same for them as well? It’s a massive pleasure to have you, buddy.

Thank you so much for having me, Payman. It’s a great pleasure to be invited to talk on such an amazing podcast. I feel like a fraud. I think that said to you earlier that some of the guys you interview are heads of industry real leaders. So I feel like a slight fraudster being invited onto your podcast because, you know, it’s just little me in Birmingham doing my own little thing. So but going back to your course, it was one of the best courses that I’ve ever been on. It was so much fun. The social aspect of it was just, you know, out of this world, the people that were on the course, it was such a good vibe. I’ve been on many courses, and I must admit yours just head and shoulders was at the top of my list.

It it was. I think it was you who you who made it fun.

You guys were just amazing. It was just the energy in the room was just phenomenal. The people were just amazing. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

Brilliant. Second man, listen up. We start these things usually with Back Story. Where were you born? Yeah. Why did you become a dentist? What kind of household did you grow up in? That sort of thing?

Well, I’ve got a typical Asian immigrant story. My father was a factory worker. And my mother was a seamstress for co-op, so she used had a small cottage industry where a man would drop off shirts to have collars sewn onto them, and she’d distribute them with the other ladies in the area. And so these collars onto the shirts and my dad would go to Braco, which was a factory, and he’d work sort of almost double shifts just to get some money. And so we all live there are five of us children. I was the youngest, second youngest, and we all lived in a two up to down terraced house. So we were very poor. Growing up. Didn’t have a lot at all. I think as time went on, my father started to have problems with his back. And my mother, who was a very clever woman, she’s the main driving force behind all of my brothers and sisters, attaining educations, quite a high level. So my brothers and sisters, all five of us, either doctors or dentists, and she was a teacher back home in Pakistan. And so she was very driven to educate her children. It was the reserve of the rich in Pakistan and India that only wealthy could afford to educate their children. And so she really pushed to give her credit. She also pushed very hard for my sisters to become educated where most of the men within our community and local vicinity would say, well, no, you don’t send your daughters to university or to go on to higher education. You get them married off fairly young. So she thought, I need to get my husband out of this backbreaking factory work.

And so she saw a shop that was for sale, but it was an off licence. And we’re from a muslim background. But she took the plunge and said, Right, let’s buy this corner shop. We’re going to run this shop that still did some factory work in the background. Still went working at the factory, but didn’t do as many hours as she was doing before. So we moved to an area called Radford. So we lived in Foals, which is a big Asian area in Coventry, and then we moved to this off licence. And that off licence facilitated Mum and Dad paying for us to go on to higher education and studying. And so I had a really happy childhood. You know, we were there up until the age of eight, you know, we’d go out and play on the streets to ten, 11:00 at night. You know, we were running the shop. So, you know, it’s the first time I learnt to work as part of a team, you know, Mum, Dad would come back with a car full of cash and carry stuff and you’d have your brothers and sisters and you’d literally learn to, you know, get the stuff in and you’d have to pull it in the right place ready for it to be put on the shelves. So, you know, at the age of seven or eight, you know, I’d been lifting quite heavy groceries and packages out of the car. So it’s quite at the age of seven or eight was very strong for my age. And in fact, I probably hit puberty at eight. You know, I had a beard and one eyebrow, everything. And part of that was that there was any kind of motivation.

If you weren’t hoping you’d get a slap and it would be, hurry up, you need to pull your weight and get this stuff in. And so, you know, it was a brilliant childhood. I look back and that was the fondest part of my childhood, I would imagine, and we’d go out with play in the streets and, you know, some of the older lads would pair us up and we’d literally do bare knuckle boxing. He’d pair us up the two older kids, Rabbani and Liaquat, and they’d say, Right, you’re fighting him, you’re fighting him. And we’d be fighting each other. And you’d come in and you dare not say anything to your mum and dad because if you said came in crying or upset, you’d get clipped around the ear, you know. But we were tough kids, but we had lots of fun. There was lots of love in our house, even though we didn’t have much. But part of it was also that, you know, Mum and Dad were very strict, very strict. So an example is we were having an extension being done and I jumped off a pile of wood and had a six inch nail go through my foot and there was blood coming out of my foot and I was too scared to tell my mum and dad and I came in and sat down and there’s a pool of blood around my foot. My mother noticed that and instant reaction was clipped me around the ear saying, What have you been doing? And in the end we ended up going to hospital and having a tetanus injection. So. But yeah, very fond memories of my childhood.

Do you feel like you knew you were underprivileged in any way or not? Because as a child you had nothing to compare it with when you’re just there?

No, I think I was oblivious to it. I think I was completely oblivious because we were happy. We didn’t know anything different. So, you know, it was, you know, a warm and loving household. And I think at the age of eight, my mother decided to move us again because a post office and General stores had come for sale. And my mother said, Oh, you know, I really like this. And my father is very risk adverse. You’re saying, No, no, we’re fine with the shop, you know. And mother thought, Well, my children are getting older and we’re Muslim. We shouldn’t really be profiteering from the sale of alcohol. And as the children get older, I don’t want them around alcohol. And so she thought this was a good move. And at the age of eight, we moved to a place called Tall Hill in Coventry. And unfortunately, Tall Hill is a quite socioeconomically deprived area and we moved to this post office in general stores, but we were the first Asian family that had moved to that area and distinctly even to this day. I remember I was eight years old. First night there, all of the shop windows got smashed. There was a group of lads outside the shop shouting because we lived above and behind the shop shouting, Pakis, go home. And my dad had his tyres slashed on his car. So as an eight year old boy, that was very. Traumatic for me because I’d come from, you know, a background where I could go out and play till late at night with my friends.

Everyone knew everyone to know. My mom wouldn’t let us out the house. She can’t go out. And then we were sent also to a Church of England school. So we were the first Asian kids to go to this Church of England school. And on the first day, my brother and I both got suspended because someone had sworn at my brother, made some racial remark and attacked him. And I’d walked into the playground and we were strong lads because we’d been moving, you know, boxes of packs of 20 2kg sugar packs, lifting them. So we were strong and we used to fight a lot when we were younger with the lads. So we were like bare knuckle championship boxers at the age of eight we could handle ourselves, so we sort of battered this kid quite badly. There’s blood everywhere. First day we got suspended, got sent home. And so that was a baptism of fire in that we went from a very stable, loving environment where we felt secure. And then we’d ended up in a school where the children didn’t like us because we were different. We couldn’t go out in the evening, couldn’t play outside the house, and we had this pub opposite the shop, so you’d get drunk people coming into the shop that were very aggressive. And so my childhood stopped at eight, you know, and I look back at it and you are so frightened.

To what tactic? What what tactic did you use?

I think part of it was that, you know, you just internalised that you didn’t want to show weakness. You don’t want to show your sisters that you’re frightened or upset. And as we got older, you know, we started to fit into the community because my father would be in place of issuing gyros to people. So people got snow. My dad people got to know my mum. And part of it, too, I started to work in the shop. I’d be on the till mopping, topping up, going to the cash and carrier before I went to school. And I’d have to put all the groceries out for my mum and dad. People got to know us, so we sort of settled into the community and that sort of aggression and violence settled down. I think, you know, Mum and Dad at that point, my brothers and sisters who were older had all been sent to a very good school in Coventry called Bad Lake. It was a private school. And I remember I didn’t pass the 11 plus. I was the thicker in the family. They were all super bright kids. I think my sister had a scholarship. My other sister had a half scholarship. My brother had got in, passed the 11 plus of flying colours. I think I just failed it or just missed out. And so I was sent to a local comprehensive for about a week. And then my mother said, right.

One evening she goes, You’re coming with me. And I said, Where are we going? She’s going to stop asking questions. You’re coming with me. And she took me to ballet to meet the headmaster there. And this chap called Mr. Barker. Really, really nice guy Wharton, and just said that. Don’t say anything. She sat there and she said to Mr. Barker, she goes, I can’t drop my three kids at your school and him at another school on the other side of the city at the same time. And she goes, Look at him, you know. And she goes, It’s stupid, stupid. Look, I don’t look this, but he’s looking at me. And she goes, I know he didn’t pass the exam, but I brought you a little gift. And would you just please consider whether you can get him in? You know, I don’t mind paying full fees for all the kids. Just please let him in so he can be with his brothers and sisters. And I remember Mr. Barker who took out this bottle of whisky, 20 year old bottle of whisky, and Mr. Barker took the whisky, put it in his top drawer, and said, Mrs. Ali, send him to school on Monday. And that’s how I got into it. So, you know, I hadn’t passed anything. And that’s how I got into bad luck. And again, it may have been a mistake because I was always just bottom of the class.

I couldn’t keep up with these kids. They were really bright. They were very clever. And I remember I felt bad because my dad and mum and dad would work really hard to send us there. And I remember one of the parents evenings, and I think part of it, you know, people meet me and say, I’ve got a great sense of humour and I’m a bit of a comedian. And I think part of that stemmed from fact. I was trying to hide the difficulty I was having academically, so it’d be a bit of a joker, you know, and. I remember one parent’s evening, the teacher, my form tutor, Mr. Long, who just hated my Latin tutor and form tutor. And he didn’t like me because always messing around. Sat me down and he’d invite my mum in and big parents in there about 1520 desks in the hall. All the teachers and the parents were there and they were inviting parents up in pairs to talk to them. Mr. Long sits down with my mum, who’d come in and she goes, Oh, your son is more interested in making people laugh than he is studying. He’s a bit of a joker. At which point my mum glared at me. Just Joker. You’re a joker. And then she stood up, took her slipper off and started to beat me.

And right there in front of the teacher.

Yeah, the whole sign. All parents teacher, turn around going, What the hell is going on? Mr. Long had to physically restrain my mother, pull her off me, and then I ran. The next day I went to school. I was so embarrassed. And Mr. Long after that, he was so nice to me because I think he thought I came from an abused home. And he was saying, Sir, are you okay? Is there anything I can do? And it sort of switched. And at that point I sort of knuckled down a bit and I was just worried my mom would batter me again in front of everyone. So I just knuckled down, studied past my GCSEs. I got okay grades, and then I went on to do my A-levels. But again, I was slightly dyslexic. And the other thing I was very poor compared to the other kids. I remember my dad had a 20 year old Volvo estate with rusty wheel arches roof rack that we’d use for the cash and carry. And also Dad dropped me down the road. Drop me down the road, Don’t drop me outside the school because everyone had really nice cars and know it all stopped me at the door saying, No, sir, you need to be proud of who you are. And yeah, drop us at the door in it. And everyone had very nice suits next. Everyone had next suits. And I remember I had a tuxedo blazer. I couldn’t afford a proper suit, so I used to wear a tuxedo blazer with silk lapels. But the thing is, no one would take the mickey because I play a lot rugby. And I was quite sort of tough, mentally tough. And, you know, my reaction was just to punch people if they took the mickey. I just had a short fuse. And I think partly that was perhaps some of the aggression I’d been exposed to as a younger child moving to where we’d moved to.

I’m interested in a few things in what you’ve said there. Number one, your mum seems like a real entrepreneur, like pure bred entrepreneur type.

Oh sheesh. She would have.

Fully. Do you think you got elders crying? You got that from her as well?

Definitely. Definitely. You know, working, you know, I think for a.

Muslim woman in the seventies or whenever that was here to do the things that you’re saying quite, quite, quite, quite unusual, right. Oh, quite.

Unusual. Phenomenal woman, Phenomenal woman. You know, the stuff that she should should be the mother is only about four foot two and should be wearing a shivakumar who’s driving a Volvo estate that was just packed to the rafters, plus the roof rack full of shop stuff. You’ve been to the cash and carry, you know, and we’d be sat in the back with your face pressed against the back window because the car was full of so much stuff, you know, no seat belts, none of that, you know, And she could barely see over the steering wheel of this car and she’d drive it, you know, to the centre of town. You know, there are lots of flyovers in Coventry and she’d just get it still is a very remarkable shop woman. She’s had a couple of strokes now, but she’s still a sharp still. Now she’ll say to me, Saqib, grow your hands, my mum, but she will grow it on one side. Come over and say, Mum, I’m not going to do that and you need to lose some weight. And you know, you sing, Mum, I’m a married man, I’ve got children, you know, Stop telling me off. In our corner and she’ll spend the first half hour. You never call just telling me off. She still does it now, you know. But even if you don’t, you know.

You know, the sort of the the stick and carrot sort of approach to parenting. And I speak to quite a lot of Asian guys on this show and the people of our generation, mine and yours, it seems like it was all stick and no carrot.

Big stick and a just as well about a slipper. Yeah, but that’s on paper.

That sounds like quite a harsh upbringing, but nonetheless, no one ever thinks back and says I was abused or you know, that’s just not in the vocabulary. Is that not is it is it that there was it came the slipper came with a bunch of love Is that the.

Yeah I think there was some in there somewhere but my brother went to Leicester University, studied medicine, so did my two older sisters and they did a course or a module on physical abuse and signs of physical abuse and harm and this, that and the other. And I remember my brother came home and said to my dad, Dad, I think you used to hit us too much when we were kids. It was abuse. And my dad dad was drinking a cup of tea and he stopped and he looked across and I was sitting there. He says, Son, I wish my dad beat me twice as much as I ever beat you. If I could be a doctor today, you know? And I thought, Go on, Dad. Yeah, as one. You can’t argue with that. So But yeah, I think it was sort of at school. I really struggled academically. I was quite good at rugby, So I remember I got into the school team and then I played for Coventry under 18 and I got sent to Warwick County trials as well. But I remember Mum and Dad never came to watch. Not once did they come to watch me, whereas I, you know, my daughter the other day I booked off the day to good Afternoon to go and watch play netball and she was the reserve, she was standing on the sidelines but I was there every match she has hockey, netball.

I go to it because I know my mum and dad never came and they were busy, they were working, they were paying for those school fees. And so, you know, there’s a debt to them that I cry when I pay my school’s school fees and I’ve only got two kids, you know, And I think, well, they had four kids at that time at a private school, you know, on the salary of a postmaster and a greengrocers shop. So we didn’t have holidays, We didn’t go to the cinema, we didn’t have takeaways. You know, the first time I actually went to a cinema was when I went to university. The first time I ate in a restaurant was when I went to university. And I remember, you know, I was, you know, I’d be the sort of guy that would be going, Can you warm up my gazpacho soup? It’s cold. You know, I’d be the guy that ordered fish in and there was a fish knife, and I didn’t know how to use the fish knife to take the bones out of the fish. It was it was just a very.

Very feel it. Did you then feel it? I mean, let’s let’s go into the the sort of the strengths and weaknesses of of that upbringing, right. Where let’s say you guys didn’t have as much money as your as your peers. Your peers tends to be sort of the thing we measure it on, isn’t it? So there are definite there are definite advantages to that. Yeah. That where you know, I was very aware maybe it’s a cliche you value money more or whatever. Well, you.

Know.

But then, but then, but.

Then is there anything that.

Anything that you sort of left over.

In what sense?

As in as okay, we know like being brought up like that. Yeah. You value you value money, you value the nice things you have in your life and so forth. Yeah, but do you feel like that there was there was also it was a weakness as well. Now, coming from that background, do you wish you’d come from a different background or what aspects of it not advantages. What aspects of it cause a weakness now? Anything.

I think it’s not. A weakness now, I think. It’s a strength because I think you end up being sensible with money so far. My wife came to, came from a very different background, talked to me. She both her parents were teachers. Her mother went to university in this country. And so she grew up in an environment where she had holidays and she could do all of these nice things. And, you know, her parents were very well educated. And so she moved in different circles to what I did. So it’s only when FA and I got married, you know, for example, we went on a honeymoon. I’d never been on a boat until I married four and we went on honeymoon together and she couldn’t catch her breath. And she goes, Have you ever been to the beach before? And I went, Well, no, I haven’t. I’ve never been to the beach and I’ve never been on a boat. And she goes, Well, you might feel a bit sick. And it was great because we got on this boat and went to look at some dolphins, and I was like a kid in a candy store. I’d never done anything like this before. I was chatting to the captain, the passengers. I was trying to touch the dolphins far, far. It was just violently sick for the entire journey. She was pregnant at the time as well, but she was just very, very unwell. Yeah, I think it was ten months into our marriage.

We hadn’t gone anywhere on holiday and she kept saying, Let’s go on honeymoon. You’ve not taken me on honeymoon. And my waste of money could be at work earning. You know, these are things you can do later, you know. And I think Farrugia said to me, If you don’t take me on honeymoon, I’m going to leave you. You’re just going. You have to take me somewhere nice. And and I was scared of flying. I hadn’t been on a plane. I’d been on a plane once prior to that. And I remember she booked a flight to St Lucia. That’s where we went on our honeymoon. And for 9 hours I just clung on to the seat in front of me, you know, just frozen with fear. And I got off the plane and I just remember kissing the ground. I literally knelt down. I couldn’t understand how something so big could go in the air and not crash or, you know, And yeah, so I think it taught me to value the money I earn. And it also taught me to offer value for money to patients I treat. I don’t even if it’s £50 or £100 patient spending with me or 15 or £20,000, I value the £50,050 just as much as the 15 or 20. And the people get the same level of attention, love and care, regardless of what they spend with me. So I think there was a positive that came from that poverty that I experienced.

Yeah, I get that. But what was the negative? So, I mean, my point is far it didn’t have that poverty or your kids don’t have that poverty. Yeah. So what is it that your kids do have that you don’t.

I don’t necessarily think there was a negative aspect because that was life. You know, I can’t change what happened at that time. I can’t change the wealth that we had or what we experienced. But I think it shaped me. I think I always look at things or try to look at things from a positive viewpoint. You know, I don’t think there’s a negative. I think perhaps if there was one negative, you know, I only learnt to relax much later on in life. I’d always work hard, you know, to hard. Yeah. And, but I think that’s a positive to have that grit and determination. I don’t see it as a negative necessarily.

We’re going to move on. We’re going to move on. We’re going to move on to your to your university journey. But before we do that, how did it feel when you saw Rishi Sunak I know he’s not Muslim, but an Asian becoming prime minister. And then you’ve got people like Sadiq Khan, you’ve got people like I know Sajid Javid. You know the difference between that situation and the situation where your dad had his tyres sliced or, you know, windows broken. Did you did you feel it? Did you think, Wow.

I think what was interesting at that time I was chatting to Farah. His brother is a councillor in Leicester. And I remember chatting to him and a few other guys who knows when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were competing for the post of Prime Minister. One of the guys I remember, we were sitting, chatting and he said, They’re not going to hand the chai wallah the keys to ten Downing Street.

Yeah, I didn’t think I would.

Be taken aback by that statement. I thought, okay. And then ultimately Liz Truss came in, even though I think Rishi Sunak was a stronger candidate on paper with his background and the things that he’d done throughout COVID. But Liz Truss spectacularly failed and Rishi Sunak came in. So I think when he did come in, I think the sort of. It was nice to see an Asian chap in charge, but I think ultimately, you know, you had President Obama already had almost beaten to the punch in America. So someone from an ethnic minority running a country is great to see. But I think ultimately, you know, his legacy will be based on what he actually delivers as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Of course, of course that, of course that. But, you know, I think you’ve got to remember America is very different place to the UK. I don’t think the Conservatives would be up to it, to tell you the truth myself. And they didn’t, as you say, they didn’t vote him in. It was kind of a boot. But, you know, I just I’m interested in the idea of someone who watched what happened to your family under those circumstances and then to watch in Asia, you know, did you feel that whether or not you support him or his politics or anything? Did you feel a sort of sentiment of achievement? I felt pride about it.

Well, I must admit I was, you know, pleased that he got in. And it’s nice to see an Asian chap, you know, that at the pinnacle. But even then, it’s a job that nobody wanted. So, so so ultimately, it’s a very strange it’s a very it’s almost a poison chalice. Who would want the job in their right mind in with the current state of the economy and, you know, after what happened with this trust. So ultimately, it’ll be interesting if he stays in power and moving forward. You know, he’s challenged by somebody else later down the road. But we’ll see. We’ll see. But yeah, So.

Tell me about tell me about university. Tell me about your college. You said you went to guys.

Yeah. Yeah. So? So I think when I did my A-levels, I actually failed them. I got I didn’t get the grades, get into dental school, and then I think my career master at the time had said that you won’t make it into dentistry, you’re not bright enough to do it. And I ended up going to retake college in Toll Hill. That was up the road from my mom shop and I did my economics retake at one College Hill College, and then there was Heroine College next door, which was a college for people with disabilities. So they’d run A-level courses alongside. They had one person that had a disability within the class. And so I was doing my A-level retakes and erm the lady in the class that had the disability had polio as a child, she was a mature student and halfway through the course she wanted to give up, she didn’t want to do it anymore. And our tutor Trevor at the time said, look guys, if she leaves the course is going to shut down. So from that day on, like we were there buying her cakes at lunchtime, bringing a cup of tea, Can I carry your bag for you? And she, she, she stayed. Thankfully she stayed and we all passed around. But I went from a very posh private school to this retail college where basically anyone that failed their A-levels or dropped out, they’d get sent to this school. And there are a lot of Asian kids that their parents would drop them off. The girls would come out wearing traditional kameez, they’d go into the toilets, get changed into mini skirts and lippy, and they’d go out to go to the pub opposite, get hammered, come back and they’d be sobering up on the lawn.

And I remember when we did my economics A-level, they were kicking a football off the window constantly, and I remember putting my hand up saying, You need to tell the people marking these papers. This is the environment in which we were taking exam papers because this isn’t fair. They’re smashing a football repeatedly for the best part of half an hour, and they knew we were doing an exam. It was that sort of place. But I just wanted to get out there. I tried to pass my A-levels and so I worked really and I think I got a D in an E in my economics and biology, and then I got straight A’s six months later. So and I am getting my results with my dad and he was really pissed off. I said, Dad, I got two A’s. And he goes, Well, you’ve gone to a college where I’ve not had to pay anything yet. I spent thousands on your education and you came out with a D and a NI. What have you got to be happy about? And I think that’s something that even now I say to my dad, I joke with him now and say, Dad, you never tell me you’re proud of me or you’re happy about what I’ve achieved. And he goes, You’ll get big headed. You don’t need me to tell you that.

But sometimes you do. I’ve seen this pattern. I’ve seen this pattern as well with with the parent will brag about you when you’re not around. But not. Not to your face.

Right? Never. Never. I think to this day, my dad, dad, I think I did an Instagram video with him once saying, Dad, I’ve got one of the biggest practice in Birmingham, and you’ve never told me you’re proud of me. And he didn’t say what that was yet.

So do you now do you overcompensate now with your own kids and tell them you’re proud of them all the time, every day, that sort of thing.

Oh, yeah. My kids will, you know, they’ll get two out of ten on the spelling test, and I’ll go. Well done, son, for trying. That’s awesome. And in my head, I’m thinking I’d get nine out of ten, and it would be, Well, what did so-and-so son get? You know? And why didn’t you get the same, you know, as him? And if you’re thinking you can’t win for love nor money, you know. But I think, you know, I think when I got my grades, I was so happy because my friends a year prior to me had all gone off to university and I felt like I’d been left behind. And so and I thought, great, I get to start my life. And then I was offered a place to do medicine at Leicester and with my brothers and sisters, because the dean knew my brothers and sisters quite well. And he said, Well, we’re offering unconditional place to do medicine. And I turned it down because I’d shadowed the dentist and I shadowed a GP as well. And the dentist, you know, 16, 17 chap Stuart Neville, and he used to stop at my mum’s shop to post letters, which were probably the appointment record card in a bright red Porsche 911. And I loved cars. I used to be sitting there reading car magazines, you know, so even to this day I’m mad about cars.

And, and he came into the shop one day and I was there doing my biology homework and they said, Know what you studying? I said, Biology goes, Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, Oh, I don’t know. And he goes, Well, I go, What do you do? Because you’ve got a really nice car. And you know, I see you every day stopping to post letters because I’m a dentist, because you can work, shadow me and I’m an okay, well, I remember I went to shadow him and this guy, like he looked like Robert Redford. He was tanned, very handsome man. And he was wearing a Rolex. You surrounded by the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. His nurses and, you know, and six year old school kid. That’s very aspirational. And that stuck with me. The GP drove a battered golf. He looked miserable. He’s wearing the tweed jacket. He wasn’t surrounded by beautiful women. He didn’t have a tan. And and I thought, I want to be like this dentist. This guy is, you know, a legend. He looked like Hercules to me. I thought, Wow, you know, I’d love to be so, so, so. So I said, Right, I’m doing dentistry. And my mum cried and cried. In Pakistan, the dentist are the people that fix your shoes at railway stations.

They’re the guys that do your teeth. How am I going to tell my relatives in Pakistan? My son’s a cobbler? I say, Mom, no, it’s a better paid job. No, no, no. I don’t want you going to London. It’s too far. This, that and the other. And so reluctantly, she let me go to London and I got to guys and I was my mum was very strict growing up. I wasn’t allowed to go to parties and, you know, girls weren’t allowed to call the house. You know, she was just very, very controlling, you know, And at university, it’s the same thing. She managed to get my telephone number in the halls of residence, so she’d call me in the evening, 9:00. She called me at 930, 10:00 to check I was in. So and then I’d come back to my room. I could have gone to the toilet. Oh, your mum called. She said you need to call her back straight away. So I’d have to go downstairs to the ground floor. Mum, what’s the matter? Nothing. I’d just like to hear your voice. That’s fine. And you’d call again half an hour later. So even though it was 100 miles away, I was still grounded. I couldn’t get away. And then I remember I moved out and I wouldn’t give her the telephone landline number of place I moved into, so she’d stopped calling me.

But again, it was just her. She had very great difficulty letting go and just trusting me to go off and, you know, and rightfully so. I must admit I went mental when I got to university. I couldn’t handle the freedom. You know, I was out partying. I think I failed my first year, had to do retakes in my first I think second year I do retake exams. So when everyone else went on hold, they state university to redo the exams again. Third and fourth year I think I passed my final exams and then my finals. I actually failed. And again, you know, the guy like now I look at some of the graduates from guys that were in my year. They’re all amazing people. They’ve done so well. Some of them have got clinics, you know, on High Street. Some of them I qualified in 99. So it’s the year of 99 that came out, you know, So some of them, you know, are, you know, perio consultant implant dudes. You know, they’re they’re sort of rock stars in dentistry. So but they were exceptional people. And the thing psychologically show surrounded by I think they did a psychological experiment where they stuck loaded people in a room and they jumbled up some words and the people on the left had very difficult, complex words to try and put back together was the people on the right had much easier words, and then they gave them the same test afterwards, a different test.

But both sides had the same questions, and the first group that had the really complex words did quite badly in the second test. And I think psychologically, when you’re in an environment where you’re not top of the class and you’re at the bottom constantly, it starts to impact on your esteem. You almost don’t try as hard as you can. But I remember when I did my A-level retakes, I was top of the class and I worked even harder to maintain that level of academic success. So I think, you know, the finals were difficult for me and I failed on something really daft. I passed all of my exams except a case presentation. No one’s ever fail the case presentation at Guy’s and my patient. I’ve done some anterior composite work on his teeth and some gum gardening, some period work, and I’ve done a crown forward, and the morning of the exam, his grandson had hit him in the face with the rattle, knocking off my composites, and then he pitched up to the exam. If he hadn’t had turned up, the photos were lovely, I think I would have passed. But when he turned up, you know, they said, Well, these are broken. And then it was oh, it also included no VD.

There was some VD work. I changed the VD and the guy that was our external examiner was a guy called Prof. Wolf. He was an expert on occlusal vertical dimension. And it was confusing in that when, when I go into to clinic, one consultant would say, Well, you need to have a formative approach and then another consultant, you go on a week later and the next consultant will say, Well, no, you need to pop open the bite and allow some over eruption. And so there were sort of conflicting views and I sort of had got quite. Fuse. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, and rightfully so. They failed me. So I had to retake, I think, three of my subjects or something. But then my peers, some of my peers qualified and were the house officers on clinic. So I was having to go to some of my colleagues to get my work signed off. And some of them were, you know, really kind and considerate about it. Like I had a good friend, Bhavesh Patel. He’s still a friend of mine. Now there’s a guy called Steve Elias, and there was a huge call, Mark Phillips, that, you know, I was broken, I failed my finals. All my friends had gone off. They were earning money. I think I’d split up with my girlfriend aswell and, you know, it was like my world had just ended.

Yeah, but ultimately that that sort of stress and pressure that I felt actually made me a stronger person, you know, when I look back at it. Subsequently, when I’ve come across adversity or difficult times, I look back at that time and that time it was the end of my world. I just felt so broken at that time. But I look back at that time now almost as a reference point that it was such a catastrophic event to me that anything now very rarely does anything shake or bother me. And it made me stronger. It made me much stronger. And now I can look back at it and laugh about it. But at the time, I was very, very I was mentally very fragile at that time. But it also put a rocket, you know, up my bum to say, Right, I need to qualify and I need to prove myself. And, you know, it pushed me to go as soon as I qualified, very soon after my foundation. Yes. Six months after I set up my first practice as a squat. And I think I was the first person in my year to set up a practice, even though I’d qualified six months after all of them. So, yeah, it was a difficult time. That was a very difficult time.

How long did it take you or are you still at it? How long did it take you to prove yourself?

I think in all honesty. It was a long time. Long time. Because I think we grow into our skin. You know, I found personally I’ve probably grown into my skin probably in the last five or ten years, so probably since I’ve got married and had a family. I think prior to that I went to a very interesting lecture by Raj Ratan once and a really, really clever guy, and he talked about people that people have academic, financial and personal success or professional success, and there’s a trade off that you can financially be doing very well in your practice, you know, But the trade-off might be you don’t spend time with your family so personally you’re not very successful or you might be devoted to academia, but you’re not going to be financially very well off and personally again, you might fail, you know, and I think part of that plagiarising that slightly, I think if you when you go through life, I think, for example, I see a lot of young dentists and they’re desperate to be financially successful. So they come out the traps and they want to earn money, They want the flash car, they want the nice house, they want, you know, to buy a practice. And then often what happens is if they’re married personally, they start failing. So, you know, lots of guys, there’s some really famous dentists know that I’ve come across and I’ve met they’re not married or they’ve ended up divorced, but they’ve got an amazing practice.

You know, I’ve met guys that, you know, written papers, but they’ve got autism, severe autism. When you put them in front of a patient, they can’t communicate with the patient properly, you know? But often the sort of people that are personally successful, they’re not very often celebrated. You don’t necessarily see a happy family man with his kids. And I think there was a very interesting psychological it was a video that I saw where a chap, he puts ping pong balls into a jar and then he puts gravel around the ping pong balls and he’s asking the students, is the jar full? And they keep saying, Yes it is. And then after the gravel he puts sand in and then he pulls two cans of beer into it goes, Is it me. Yes. And he goes, The ping pong balls represent your personal success. And he goes, you know, he goes, The gravel is stuff like your business, your sand are the bits that don’t matter. If you put your gravel or sand in first, you’re not going to have room for your personal matters. And I think one of the students puts his hands up and goes, But sir, what what are the two beers about? And he goes, You should always make time to have a couple of beers with your friends. So I think I think people transition. And I think when I first qualified, it was trying to my version of success was to be financially secure, own a business.

You know, as I’ve got older, you know, I don’t think money interests me anymore. I’m more interested in personal success that do I get to see my daughter playing netball? Do I get to spend time with my son? You know, do I get to take my wife out to dinner? So. So the money is nice, but it’s secondary. So I think I’ve transitioned more towards personal, you know, And so I think professionally I’m relatively successful. You know, we’ve got a very good clinic, we’ve got some great dentists, some great patients, I’ve got a great team around me and so I can take that off. But I think, you know, I’ve transitioned from being financially successful, professionally successful to financially successful. And now I’m trying to concentrate on my personal success now, which is to look after my own health and maybe start going to the gym, try and stop smoking, you know, and spending more time with my parents who are getting older and my family and cultivating friendships, which is something I didn’t really do, you know, when I was younger, because my mum would be saying, Oh, you don’t need friends, your family or your friends, which I don’t think is true. You need your friends. And I think it’s important you seek to cultivate those relationships early on in life.

I think, you know, the getting to places, getting success, whichever way you define it, does end. Having an element of sacrifice in it. And I think what you’re discussing now is that you sometimes reject your sacrifices or your what you call success. I get that, you know, being that you’re the fourth child, four or five is all right.

I’m the fourth of five children. So after me, my parents had my sister about eight years later. And I think my mother had been told she couldn’t have any more children. And so my little sister, well, she was an accident, basically, which if you like.

The idea she was. But she was. Have you heard the idea? I’ve heard this thing, but like a billionaires or or really like super crazy, successful types of people often are fourth and fifth children. Because what happens is, you know, how we script our kids. So number one comes along and you say, Oh, she clever, clever kid, clever called you label clever on that kid. And then the kid, the positive feedback loop happens, right? So the kid sees, well, that worked more cleverness, read the book, whatever gets the pleasure pleasure of that. Number two comes along and you say, Oh, I don’t know. Sporty kicks a ball. Positive feedback. Number three comes in and say, all right, whatever it is funny. And then it ends up with number four and five. They’ve got to be super innovative to stand out. Because all the other things are taken and because they’ve got to be super innovative to stand out that that that internalises them into them. And then at work and in their careers, they’re super innovative. And, you know, sometimes I see you standing on that sofa with your Instagram doing something totally mad, Man is totally crazy. And I think about how successful that practice is, right? That, you know, some people who had a practice of that size and scale and it would be a very serious tight ship operation. And yet yours looks like a bundle of laughs all the time. Do you feel like you’ve carved you’ve carved you’ve carved a niche, carved your own personal niche? Because, you know, forgive me for saying, but you’re not your average sort of 45 year old Muslim guy, just not.

I think part of it, it goes back to maybe it’s this sort of comedic. Need. I dislike making people laugh and I think it stemmed from being a kid where in order to try and fit in with everyone else, they’d all go out and they were allowed to go out together. It’s just, you know, just a bit crazy and a bit cray cray and but, but, you know, with the practice, one of the things with our team is we have a great laugh at work. We enjoy ourselves and we do do daft and crazy things and we do Instagram videos together where we’re doing daft things, we’re jumping off sofas, we’re skidding across the floor on it, heroes and stuff. And I think part of.

It, the account, the account called what? Designer. Dentist.

Yeah, designer dentist. Design a dentist. So everyone should check that. I think I fell into that purely by accident. It wasn’t really in my wife started doing it with. She was always on her phone in the evening and I’d be sitting there, you know, candlelit dinner dressed as Papa Smurf with a spanking board ready. And she’d be ignored. She’d be on the phone Now, what are you doing? Why are you always on your phone? Oh, Instagram, Instagram. And I was thinking, well, what is this Instagram stuff? You know? And then I start started. She showed me a few things, and then I picked up a few things, but I don’t have a serious account. A lot of these Instagram accounts are very similar. They’ve got sort of photographs and, you know, they’re forced almost awkward testimonials. Yes, I came here because it was lovely, but whereas with us, we’re just a bit more relaxed. It’s sort of, you know, I don’t really care how many followers I have or how many likes I get, and I’ll post something in 5 minutes. I’ll do the work there and there, snap it, you know, we’ll do a video then, then you know, how is your journey gone, this, that and the other and bang, I’ll just post it there and then it takes me about two or 3 minutes to a post. But then I think I went to Shaz Maimane’s Instagram course and I remember sharing, showed him my Instagram account.

He says, Your Instagram account is very genuine. It doesn’t feel contrived or forced. It’s got a natural flow to it. I don’t think it will win any awards. And in a strange way, I don’t need the patients. We’ve got 52,000 patients in our practice. A lot of people come to us through personal recommendation. I don’t need to tout for business, which I’m blessed and I’m not saying that in an arrogant way, so I don’t have to take my Instagram that seriously. And I think it shows if you look at it, you know, some of my friends and colleagues, it was my birthday on Sunday, and I was amazed that, you know, when we talk about personal growth and development, when I married Father, I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t know who to invite to my wedding. And my wife was scratching their heads. How come you got no friends? I said, Well, I’ve just worked all my life, gone to work, and I’ve come home. I’ve never really gone out. I’ve gone out and partied with friends and stuff, but I’ve never cultivated deep, meaningful relationships. And over the last ten years I have done that where, you know, just for Christmas, I went away with seven of my friends and their partners and children. We stayed at a lovely luxury villa in Marrakesh and it was a lovely week together.

And, you know, their bonds and friendships that I have now that ten years ago I didn’t have. And I said to her, she said, Oh, what you want to do for your birthday? And I said, I just want to spend time with the kids and you. That’s all I want. You know, I don’t want to go to a fancy restaurant. I don’t want you to book anything. Let’s just spend time together. I had my parents join me as well, and then I had two or 300 different people messaged me to wish me happy birthday. And I sat there and I thought ten years ago, I don’t think even one person messaged me to say Happy birthday or How are you, my friend? You know, So, so. So that moved me because I thought, well, maybe I feel much more enriched and fulfilled than I did working and earn loads of money. You know, this means more to me than that did. So, you know. But yeah, but I think with the Instagram as well, because Farrah is ten years younger than I am, you know, if it wasn’t for Farrah, I don’t think I would have discovered Instagram. And it brings me much joy, makes me laugh. Some of the stuff that we do, it’s just jokes, you know, And because the whole team is involved. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it’s really good for team morale. So if you’re doing something like like we did a video where we did a video where I walk through a door, some nurses rip my gown off me and I put. Shades on. And then we start playing this rap music. And, you know, I’ve got the girls behind me waving their phones with their lights on. Seriously, if I was a patient, I think I’m not going to this guy. This guy is nuts, you know? But it’s all the girls are involved in that video. They love it because they know no one else has got their got that in their practice. They don’t necessarily have that bond. You know, my team have been with me, most of them, since the initial inception. And they won’t leave because they love it here. And, you know, people talk about, you know, inflation rates. People are talking about 10% increases in wages to beat inflation. You know, I try and look after my team as much as I can. You know, like when COVID hit, for example, you know, I. You know, topped up their wages. We had a meeting, I said, and I’ll be honest, I was frightened. I didn’t know what was going to happen. And I said, Your wages, you’re all going to get paid in full. You know, even with the furlough, I topped up their wages because I said, all this is going to die out.

But off the back of that, I remember sitting with my wife and saying, for a look, we might lose the house because I don’t know how long this is going to go on for. I remember I sold all of my cars. I had a Bentley, I had a mercedes SL 55, I had a Porsche, and I sold them and I bought a ten year old Volvo estate and I smiled. So remember, there’s a ten year old your said 100,000 miles. And I sat there and thought my dad used to drive a 20 year old Volvo estate. And your car doesn’t define who you are. I think a lot of these youngsters go, I need to buy a Porsche. I need to buy a merc or this motion, buy it on finance, or if they’ve got wealthy parents. And that sort of projection of, oh, look, I’m successful, you know, often stems from insecurity. The people that are mentally insecure, a lot of it perhaps is driven by social media where they think, do you know what? I need to show people that I’m a success, even though they finance the car to the hilt, they’re better off buying a two or three grand car that they can afford and concentrating on some of these other things, such as personal success, you know, or academic prowess, you know.

So but you’ve been there yourself. You’ve been there yourself.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know what I mean? In order to get the Bentley and the Porsche and all that, you why, why did you bother with the Bentley and the Porsche and all that, If you hadn’t had an element of that in yourself.

I brought a posh I was too embarrassed to drive. It was too flash. So if you went out to a restaurant, I said, I don’t know where I’m going to park this Porsche. I’ll be worried about it over dinner. So I’ll take one of my other cars that was older and knackered. And so I remembered the Porsche in a whole year. It did 200 miles. It was just a waste of money. It just sat there. To be fair, it went up in value. So rare it went up in value. The Bentley dropped like a lead balloon. And I remember I took it to a wedding. One of our dentists got married and I said to all the grooms, Might you all sit on the back seat on the hood? And we’ll put the bride and groom in the front and set them all down. And then the hood got broken. So when I got home, I couldn’t put the hood back on and it went back into Bentley and they picked the car up and they said, Oh, the hood’s knackered, you need a new hood. It’s 28 grand. And I saw I can’t afford this car. And then the car had depreciated ten grand on top of that in literally six months. And at that point I got the hood fixed by an independent specialist. And then at that point I thought, Oh, and COVID happened. And at that point I just got shot of it. And I said to my wife, No more fancy, if I go to buy a fancy car, just stop me. I’m just not going to do it.

But then after COVID, you had the wonderful COVID bump and we all did the whole the whole profession did very well. But you did particularly well after COVID. First of all, tell me, did you do better than the next man? I mean, did you what did you do that made it so successful? And secondly, I’m interested in did you go and buy another car or what did you then do with the money? Did you did you not.

Buy a car? I did. I did buy another car. I think I bought a g-wagon. And then father nicked it. I drove it for two weeks, then foreign nicked it. And so, yeah. So I think when COVID struck, I was worried. Three months like everyone else was. No one really knew what was going on. And then we were acquiring PPE, you know, paying extortionate rates for PPE. And at that time the government weren’t helping them. So she had to acquire her own PPE.

And so before you go before you go on, before you go on, before you go on the three months off, did you sort of take stock? I mean, outside of the worry for the business, we all had that. But did you take stock and say, well, I don’t have to work my butt off? I mean, I can I can also barbecue. I can also chill, you know, like.

No, I actually instructed my builders to start making out house and they started doing an extension on the practice. In my head, I thought COVID is going to burn out. Yeah, if I want to refurbish and remodel the practice while we’re running at full capacity, I’ll have to shut the practice down to do what I want to do. So I may as well take advantage of it being shut down. The builders can get on with their work. We did some training with our staff that I want stuff that, you know, you read about that you know, you get around to doing, you know, working more efficiently in surgery, this, that and the other. We had a whole load of notes we needed to sort out. I think at some point some of the nurses were repainting some of the surgeries and people wanted to get out, you know, and we were still manning our phones as well to give advice. So we dropped in to more surgeries. We moved our kitchen into our loft and built an academy teaching area. We built two big outhouses, remodel the garden. We had a new driveway put in. We had electric doors put in sliding doors, you know, So we were quite busy. And then when we reopened, I think prior to us reopening, I sold all my cars and then I borrowed half a million quid off the bank against my house because, you know, a friend of mine had gone bust a few years earlier. And I remember he said he said a very interesting thing.

He said to me, he said, oh, a bank are fairweather friends. They will lend you an umbrella when the sun is shining. But at the first sign of a cloud, they’re going to ask for that umbrella back. And this poor guy, he went busted a telecommunications company building phone maps. Basically they they pull the rug from under him. It was at a time where banks would make more money from stripping the assets from a company than actually waiting for you to repay the loan because they’d get their money back, sell the assets, and it was jobs for the boys and this is what happened to him. And so at the time, I had the choice of either borrowing 250 grand or half a million quid. And I thought, if this is going to go sideways, let’s just borrow half a million quid, let’s just go for it. And the thing is, since I’ve had a family, I’ve been quite risk averse. You know, I don’t want to buy the practice, I don’t do this, I don’t want to do that. But at that time. I just thought, you know what? Fuck it. If it’s gonna go, let’s just go big. Let’s go large. And I took the money and sunk it into the business. And then when COVID slowly subsided, the extra surgeries, the things that would implement it to make, you know, the flow of patients through the practice quicker and more efficient. You know, we had new computers, phone systems.

It’s very counter-intuitive move the counterintuitive move because people were scared.

They were scared. But I think at the back of my mind, I was looking at what was going on in China. I was part of a couple of study groups as well. So I think Coach Barrow had a study group going and, you know.

Daily briefings.

Yeah. And then there were I know a lot of dentists know a lot of people within the field. So I was chatting, you know, every day. I was in my office for three or 4 hours and I’d be chatting to people, you know, I’ve got some really good friends in London that have got practices, people in Birmingham, Coventry, you know, So so I was speaking to probably five or six dentists a day, you know, different fields. What are you doing? People that work for corporates, work for Portland Boots, what are they doing? What are they implemented? You know, organising the book. So, you know, so even with the team, we sat down and said, look guys, you know, we’ve got these one hour fallow times, what can we do? And then we’d source these industrial fans that could clear out a room in 15 minutes so that one hour father time was cut right down. So I think the private practices led the way in that when that happened, the private practices and the corporate big corporate side had jumped on it and they’d put protocols into place that had been adopted from America that had come over here that could negate that one hour fallow time. And so we’d set up a clever system where we had, you know, some practices, had four surgeries, then only had two dentists in working in between, one in between two surgeries, which I’d set it up. So we had two dentists working three surgeries. They do an AGP do a non AGP in the empty room. So we had a non a GP room that they’d alternate going in and out of.

So then we extended opening times from we would work from nine in the morning to ten at night. Rotating the staff through. So so that we were pulling 12 hour days in some days. But we had a 30%. We were seeing 30% normally see 200 to 250 patients a day through the clinic, and that was down to about 20 or 30. So it was a scary time. Slowly it came back, but it also helped us to become a lot more efficient. It was a blessing in disguise that we discovered things like Zoom and doing online consultations. And also when we were treating patients, you know, I brought we had 11 itero scanners in the practice. So I think we’re the only practice in the country, perhaps even Europe, to have 11 scanners for every single room has got an itinerary. And so again, we can scan infected to work. That fits immediately fits beautifully, you know, and you’re not waiting for a driver to come pick up impressions and stuff. It’s at the lab while the patient is still in the chair. And when the work comes back two or three days later, it fits straightaway, but also bumped up what the dentists were doing. So because of the exposure to an AGP, instead of just doing a filling and then come back for your crown. And it was all being done in one hit. And then when you look at the efficiency of doing all that in one hit, your underlying fixed costs actually go down, you know, because you’re not having to clean down and get your instruments out again.

Sterilise and change, you know, your scanner tips and this that you’re doing everything in one hit in one go, and then you can close the room down. So yeah, I think our revenues increase pre-COVID to now by 30%, 30 to 40% increase in turnover. But I think what was interesting was that I remember I sat down with my associate, I remember one of my I said, Look, guys, I’m going to have to reduce the percentages you’re on. We can’t pay 50% on private work If I’m a box of glove has gone up from £2 50 to 30 quid, it’s just not financially viable. And I remember my dentist and this is the test of a team that during adversity did they step up and go, Boss will support you and we trust you. And all of my team stepped up. They all said, we trust your boss, you know, and you know what you’re doing. We’ll trust you. And I am one of my said Dr.. If you show. Don’t pay me because I live with my parents. I’ve got some money in the bank. I don’t need any money. And I remember it touched me. I thought, Jesus Christ, this guy. And even to this day, you know, I remember him saying those words to me. But then I had friends that had practices. Some of their associates were saying, Oh, well, no, we’re not we’re not going to accept a low percentage and you need to pay pay me. And and it filled me with sadness that.

It’s like, what do you think? What are some of the difference between what’s the difference between your practice culturally and that other practice culturally? Is it that you respected these people for years before? Listen to.

Them. I think part of it is if you care about the people that you know, like my staff, just a draft example. One of my nurses, she sang, Oh, we were having some new computers. And she goes, Oh, do you mind if I have one of your old computers for my son? And I said, You know, and I said, Well, they’re being sent off to be destroyed in this, that and the other. And and what I did was because we had ordered about 30, 40 computers, I said to the guy, put one more on. And when we had our computers installed, I said, so we’ve got a computer left over and it’s a brand new computer. And I bought it for her son. And I gave it to him. She goes, Well, what do I for? I said, No, you can have it. Take it, you know, use it if it helps your son. You know, I didn’t have a computer and I’m going to university. I was one of the only kids that couldn’t word processor or use computer to, you know, and that felt filled me with joy and happiness to give something. And I didn’t want recognition money for it, but it made me happy in the same way that, you know. If one of my dentists gets into trouble, I’m the clinical lead, and if anything goes sideways, it gets sent to me to sort out.

So a lot of my dentists, over 20 years, they would have had two or three complaints I’ve made go away or I’ve dealt with or, you know, if they’ve needed a crown or sorted out or whatever. You know, I think people sense when you’re fair and honest with them and that they sense when you genuinely care about how they are and how they’re doing. So my staff, you know, the cleaner, the junior nurses, senior receptionists, I always stop and talk to everyone, you know. And I’ll know, for example, when my dad just come out of hospital, you know, following pneumonia and I’ll stop and check with how she died doing. Is he all right? Even if I’ve got patients waiting. How are you getting on? You know? You know, if someone’s had problems and one of my nurses had an issue with a credit card bill, they send you a thing saying, Oh, you need to deduct a source. And I said, What’s going on? She’d split it with a partner and find out she was struggling. And I said, Why don’t you said anything? Because I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to discuss it. So I paid off a credit card bill for her. And it wasn’t a lot, you know. But ultimately, that same nurse now, whenever I work with her, I come into a doctor.

That’s a particular day. Can I get you some biscuits? You know? She. There’s almost a love for them people. This were like family. I genuinely I think my staff, we treat each other like family and with care. And because we have a strong work ethic that’s come, you know, from 20 years ago and 20 years ago, I was much harsher, you know, as a boss that I wasn’t particularly compassionate. If someone was ill because their child was unwell, that bollocking, why weren’t you here? We’re trying to run a business. Whereas now I have my own children. I know what it’s like that you know, or if someone’s unwell, I’ll pay them their wages, you know, because if they’ve got mortgages and bills to pay, you know, if I lose 500 quid, 600 quid, that’s the difference between someone paying their rent. I’m not going to miss 500 quid out my wallet, you know, in a hurry. It’s still money and I do value it, but it has greater value to someone that’s in greater need. So, you know, I’m not like Jesus. I don’t walk on water and stuff like that, you know? And some of my staff will say, I can be a tough taskmaster, but. But there’s love there.

Yes, I was going to say so. I was going to say when, when, when, when push comes to shove. And you have to discipline someone or fire someone. Do you find the transition from that family love thing to the boss and disciplinarian? Quite smooth. You find you find it easy flipping?

Yeah, I think part of it goes back to being very poor, valuing people’s time. You know, people that have worked with me for a long time, I don’t suffer fools gladly. Were there, you know, were there to work and provide a professional, high quality service. And I you know, someone said to me, you offer a champagne service for lemonade money, and that stuck with me. And, you know, you know, if you’re delivering exceptional service, exceptional work. And you’re having fun along the way. I don’t mind that. If you’re messing around and not delivering. I do mind that because that to me is costing us money, you know, and it’s costing us our reputation. So. So I think my team know that I expect them to work when they’re at work. They’re there to, you know, first and foremost, they’re there to work. If friendships and fun develop out of doing that hard work, that’s great, you know, and it’s good. But I think if your team a well guided they’re happier so so people still recognise you know you know on their boss first and foremost and then you know I’m their friend second but I am their friend and one of my nurses, when we refer to move to our kitchens, she goes, Oh, what are you doing with your range cooker? There’s a brand new range cook that we had, and I said, Do you want it? And she goes, Oh yeah, but I don’t know how to get it to the house. I dropped it personally to a house with my builder, put it on my pickup, dropped it around and we fitted it for her. And whenever she says she goes, Ali, we had a lovely roast and thank you for my cook. And the thing is, you don’t do these things that they’re not to me, they’re not big things. It’s just being kind to your fellow man, you know? And that makes me happy. I don’t know why it fills me. It’s like giving to charity. It makes me happy, you know?

It’s not. It’s not. It’s like. It’s like giving a present is more pleasurable than getting a present, isn’t it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it’s. Yeah, it’s on paper.

It shouldn’t be that. It is.

Yeah, I think. Again, talk about people on a life journey as you transition. Money becomes less and less important to a person and your personal and mental well-being becomes more and more important.

I do a thing where I read people’s Google reviews.

And yours. I wrote.

All morning.

I that’s why my mom wrote some of them so stunning.

So the way almost I think of life, I think of different things in terms of sort of frequency and amplitude, you know, the and the frequency and amplitude of these of these comments. It’s just so beautiful, so slow. And then when you look at the key words, the words that people often mentioned the most, there’s, you know, the ones you’d expect, like Invisalign, you know. But family reception is 16 times when you read through them. My goodness me, people are over the moon. It’s not just like a five star they’ve been told to write. Sort of. It’s a genuine, genuine, beautiful things that people have said. What’s the do you train your team on that or is it that you go very high level? We respect people, we love people, we do a great job and then leave it to them? Or do you literally train them?

No, there’s no training at reception Reception. Don’t you know? That’s amazing. Say here we leave this a Google review. What tends to happen is when we treat patients, I often take photographs on my phone and I WhatsApp them to the patient and say, This is your teeth before this is what they look like after. Thank you for choosing us. I hope you’re okay. So I usually touch base with them a day later, you know, and I usually review them a week down the road to see how they’re getting on or if they’ve had bonding. I usually fit a retainer a week later. And at that point, you know, usually we’ll just send them a WhatsApp message. There’s no pressure. I don’t think it’s fair to say to them, Will you leave me a Google review to their face? You know, while you’re holding a drill in your hand, It’s not really fair. You know, it’s very you know, hey, let me help you write it, you know, or here’s an iPad. Leave a review while you’re sitting in front.

But, you know, I have my co hosts, My my co-host has a whole process for getting brilliant Google reviews that he trains the teams on. And it’s a beautiful process. But these don’t look like they’re they’re like that. They just there’s love in these.

Let’s see we’ll send a WhatsApp and it will say something like, you know, I hope you enjoy your smile. If you do get a chance, please leave. A Google review would mean a great deal to me. Regards Allie. So it’s not from the practice, it’s from me. If I’ve treated them and then some people do. I get a lot of people that are trying to join my practice as NHS patients, and we’ve not accepted patients for NHS patients for about seven eight years and then they can’t register and you’ll get to a 4.8 star review and then someone will leave a one star review saying, I can’t register with this practice and they wouldn’t see me unless it was privately. And they’re really greedy. And I think one of my reviews, I responded to him saying, Well, for the £23, you pay me half, it goes to the dentist. Because you wrote always greedy dentists, they wouldn’t see me. I said, half of it goes to the dentist. So that leaves me about £11.50. I’ve got a pay a receptionist nurse Sterilise your instruments pay for my PPE plus treat you so. So I can’t really be accused of being greedy because it probably costs me money to treat you, you know?

What about what about associates? Associates, buddy? What’s your view on you? Obviously, having to attract and retain high quality associates for many years. What’s your view? I mean, let’s start with what do you do if your associates been on them? And he comes back and says, I want to buy this, that and the other, What do you do about that? Do you buy it for him? Do you make it make a case? What happens?

Open ordering policy. If they’re going to generate revenue and it’s relatively sensible, I say order it. I worked in a couple of practices before setting up my squat, so and what motivated me to set up my squad. So six months post 50, I worked in a practice, I did my PhD training in Leamington, went to Erdington and worked for a chat, and then I also worked evening and Saturdays for an emergency clinic and both of these clinics that I worked in, in Erdington and Sally Oak, they were a masterclass in how not to run a practice. You know, the the staff were poorly motivated. The boss would sit there bitching about staff behind their backs. The boss in one wouldn’t order material, so he was ordering the cheapest off. He was just wring every penny out of the practice that he could. And then they sold the practice to a corporate. And I just remember. At this woman, vile woman walking in and she goes, We’ve taken over. These are your new contracts. You need to sign them now. And she threw a contract at me. And I remember it landed on the floor in front of me, and I just stood up and walked out. I thought, you know, and I thought, I’m not working for people like this. I don’t care who they are. And then I think their area manager came to speak to me because I was generating more revenue than the principal and the other associate put together. But I’d worked through my lunch to do Domiciliary and they said, What does it take for you to stay? And I said and I said, If she’s the manager, I don’t want to work for you.

Said, You don’t throw contracts at people. We’re not Dogs were people. And, you know, ultimately, I can’t sign a contract because I’m leaving. I just want to hand in my notice. And at that stage, I sort of look to move away. And I was looking for an associate position, but I couldn’t find anything that I liked. And then I saw a chair for sale in the bdg and I thought, Well, I want to set up a practice at some parts. Go and have a look at this chair. Got there and it was a practice that had shut down. The guy had got struck off. He was an alcoholic. The dentist was the landlord was selling off the equipment from the surgery. And I said, Well, what are you doing with the building? You know? And he goes, Well, we were going to just sell the equipment and convert it back into a shop. And I said, Well, can I can I rent it off you? So. And he goes, Well, yeah. And so the rent was, I think, three grand for the year to rent. And these two second-hand chairs Panix machine set. So that’s six months post me and I set up my own practice and then I spent two years running up this squat, and then I put enough money together to put a deposit on the practice I’ve got now.

But I was self-made. My parents weren’t wealthy, you know. So that was two years of learning how to run a practice. And then and then I had to shut it down because the landlord wouldn’t transfer the lease to any buyer found. So I think, you know, I think going back to your question, that sort of retaining associate, you know, I was I would stay there as an associate if I’d been looked after. And I think what you tend to find is my associates at my practice don’t really leave. One of my associates is leaving now after ten years. He was my PhD, but he’s setting he’s taking over from his wife who’s got a practice and she’s going on maternity, so he’s going over to run the practice there. It’s very rare, my staff, because, for example, I’ll give them their own itinerary, I’ll pay the submissions for them, they can order what they want to. We spend a shed load on marketing, so they’ve got a gluttony of private patients coming into them wanting treatment. We spread the patients evenly. Everyone gets a fair crack of the whip. You know, I’m there to facilitate any complaints or tricky cases they want. So. So I think part of it you often find is if an associate, you sometimes get associates saying, well, are you getting 50% at the practice up the road? But if the principals creaming off all the private patients or they don’t have any private patients coming in or they don’t have an online presence.

Or a.

Good social media, you know, 50% of nothing is nothing. 45% of a lot is a lot. It’s the same thing with UDA values. We were interviewing some associates recently, and increasingly we get associates coming in. They’ve done courses like the mini Small Maker course and, you know, or some of some other course that they’ve done a weekend course. They come in and they come in and maybe they’ve got it right, maybe I’ve got it wrong. They come in saying, We only want to work three days a week. The rest of the time I need for personal development and stuff. And I only want to do private work. And the problem is my practice is a mixed practice. I can’t let a newbie come in. So we’re going to send you all of our private patients or some of them that come in. So you have an entirely private list. When everyone else is doing mixed lists, it’s not fair, you know, and for us to do that, it’s not just, you know, and, you know.

Your practice isn’t isn’t right for that person, though. That’s that’s it.

I think part usually we say to our business model tends to be based on the fact that, you know, you often find part time dentists that are running a clinic or surgery. You’ve got two part timers. They won’t generate as much revenue as a full time dentist. The full time dentist will be used to as nurse, whereas materials are, and they will generate probably on average, 15 to 20% more than if you put two associates in that room because stuff will get moved. The nurses aren’t quite used to working with each other or if dentist A treats a patient and they come back three days later. Dentist BE And most people are ethical, but some dentists will say, well, on the NHS I’m not paid a penny to repair what’s broken to go back to your treating dentist. So I think the quality of care can in some instances diminish as well. So we prefer to take on full time dentists that are there most of the time. So if any of their problems come back and sometimes even with the best one I can pop a filling in and it might come off or a veneer hasn’t stuck down properly and they’re back a couple of days later. But for that continuity of treatment, my preference is to have full time guys with us and full time guys that are willing. Like the ironies in our practice, we have a stable list of niche patients that want to access NHS Check-ups but nine times out of ten they’ll opt for private fillings, be that bleaching, white fillings, private zirconia crowns, etc.

So yes, they might be having a check-up, you know, for for their £22 a day or whatever it is, but they’re having a £700 crown hand in hand with it. So, so that sort of nonsense where people come and say, well I can get £23 a year up the road and you’re thinking, well go on and take it, you’re welcome to. And I think in our practice we’re blessed in that our guys, you know, I’ve got guys that have done postgraduate training implants and far as amazing at Invisalign, I’m lucky enough to have, you know, trained under Dipesh Palmer himself. And so, you know, we’re good at bonding, you know, So we’ve got a massive range of experience. So if anyone joining us like, well, want to learn about endo and how to do not endo to the sound of a normal GP, but an exceptionally well trained endo guide, that all he does is endo you know, all specialises in it. It’s a fantastic learning, you know, learn about. We were PhD trains for about ten, 15 years as well. And so we’re set up, we’re geared up to teach people how to learn stuff. And that’s part of the reason we put an academy in the practice as well, because we wanted to share that knowledge.

So we’ve set up a camera above the chair that fires up to two big screens in the loft, and we can have 15, 20 delegates there, you know, viewing it. So, you know, I think ultimately when associates, retaining associates, anyone that works for us doesn’t want to leave because there’s a great team, there’s good solid management, if something breaks, we’ll fix it. You know, and often in corporate practices, it’s got to go up the chain before anything gets done or. If one of my dentists says, I want to try this, it’s okay, fine. Let’s do it. We’ll support you. You know. But Fara. She’s my wife. But even if she was an associate and she said, Well, I want to try Invisalign, can I have a scanner? And that’s a 50 grand outlay, you know. So. Oh, 45 whatever it was, and it’s fine. Let’s do it. Let’s try some marketing, you know? But then at that point, we rolled scanners out to all the associates. So let’s all use them, because, you know, the work, the fits of work is superb on the restorative. And it’s a fantastic product for Invisalign. You don’t be hanging around. If someone’s interested in Invisalign, it’s worth four grand. You don’t be waiting 20 minutes or half an hour to grab hold of a scanner that’s free.

Okay, let’s move on to darker questions. I’m really interested in times where you think you’ve made mistakes. Things you could have done better, both from a clinical perspective and from a business perspective, because a lot of times we don’t talk about our mistakes in medicine and you know, we don’t get to learn from each other’s mistakes. What comes to mind when I when I say that.

I remember as an f d treating an elderly lady. And I was taking out her upper eight. And I heard a crack carried on taking out this eight. And her mouth filled with blood and was pulse 60. And this poor woman was probably 85 years old. And I remember going next door to my boss, Go, Boss, can you please come and have a look at this? Yes, I’ll be there in a minute. And I kicked him. I said no. Bill, can you please come and have a look at it immediately, please? And he could see the terror in my face because I thought, she’s going to die. And he came in. I remember his. He was a great oral surgeon, great set of hands. His pupils just dilated. And he died. So to all. And then this woman, bless her, came in a week later, and the whole right side of the face was bruised and black. And I was close to tears. And I was saying, I’m so sorry. How are you? She goes, I’m fine, my love. Don’t worry. We’ve all got to learn somehow. And and I remember I went home thinking I shouldn’t be a dentist. And, you know, but I think at that time, early on, you know, your I’ve been in training myself for ten years, and we’ve had about ten pairs of trainees come through the practice.

And, you know, as time went on, you know, I think the support that you had 20 years ago was quite poor. It was just get on with it. I know my boss would say, Right, you’re doing the emergencies on Saturday here, the practice case. And I think another time he phoned me up, say there’s a patient with toothache, 7:00 in the evening, open up the practice, take a tooth out and drop the keys round back around to the house. And I went to his house, dropped the keys off and he handed me a silver tray with drinks on it goes Right. You’re serving drinks. He was having a soiree and you did it. You were BFD, you were the dogsbody in the practice. And I remember serving drinks. Now, if I look at my last PhD, if I said, right, your serving drinks at my practice or go to serving drinks at a soiree I’m holding there, just say piss off, I’m not doing it and I’m reporting you to the deanery advisor. Or if I said go to the practice and treat a patient by yourself.

It was unheard of. It’s unheard of now. But back then it was just I remember I spent one Wednesday afternoon, all the dentists had gone off for games, one had gone to play golf, one had gone to play tennis, and I spent 4 hours trying to take out it was a guy. He was a footballer. I spent 4 hours trying to take out a seven. It kept factoring and I still didn’t get it all out. And after 4 hours my arms were ready to fall off, so I had to call him back and to do it. But you were just left to fend for yourself. So I think clinically. Touch wood. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a complaint or issue. You know, we all have difficulties. Dentures might not go right or a feeling might not be perfect or the odd piece of lab. But. But nothing catastrophic is that I can recall that’s happened. I think I’ve also learned as I’ve got older. Things that can go wrong or have gone wrong are, I think, are based on my own vanity where, you know, a patient has come in, they want something. They’ve just got unrealistic expectations. And, you know, you sort of think, oh, well, I’m.

Captain.

Underpants, I can deliver. Get in the chair, let’s do this. Yeah, but you end up just with me. I have no quibble. Refund if a patient says I’m not happy. Yeah, I won’t just say, hey, I have a partner, I will say, have all of your money back. I’m sorry. I’ve not met your expectations. So at that point, you kill any complaint debt Because as long as they’re in a better position than they were, than when you started, which they generally will be, and you’ve given them full refund, you can just get on with something else and earn your money elsewhere. I think where some dentists might fail, they get so wrapped. Well, you know, it’s almost an admission of guilt. Well, I’ve given them a refund. You know, I’ve been known. I think we had a complaint six months ago with one of our associates. It was over a filling that had been done. There was a slight overhang. The patient sort of had discomfort with it, and the patient’s brother was a dentist and this guy was just going mental that shouldn’t have been left and this, that and the other. And the guy had a mouth full of supervised neglect and then in the end sort of was booked in with me to sort out. And then I said, Look, you might need a root filling with this tooth if I redo the filling, you know, well I’m not paying for the I’m not paying for the crown.

I need on it either. You know, my brother’s a dentist and they said dentist roll over easily and you should do it free of charge. And at that point I said, look, you know, we’re not liable to provide a crown for you and we’re not liable to you. I’m happy to replace the filling, but technically, I have to warn you, you might need a root canal treatment, which you may have needed anyway, because it was a very deep feeling, really unhappy kicking off. And I said, Well, I’ll tell you. What is it you want? He goes, Well, I want my money back. And I said, Well, fine, we’ll refund you. And he goes, Well, I can’t afford to have the treatment because guy I want to do it is more expensive than you are. I said, Well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll give you all of your money back that you spent on your course of treatment with this. So you’ve had some other bits and bobs done. And so we ended up giving him 600 quid back. I think the filling had been charged 180 quid for. He still came back and went after the dentist saying, you know, I want more money, I want compensation, this, that. And it went all the way to the GDC and it got kicked out. But the dentist went through a year of just hell with it. But I think those are an overhang. Sorry.

Over an overhang.

Over and over how it was ridiculous, the fact that it even got to the GDC and wasn’t thrown out but the guy went through. There was a visual change in his demeanour while he was dealing with this complaint and, you know, and it was important to support him and say, Look, you’ve not done anything wrong. It could have happened to any of us. You’ve got to just let it go, get on with, you know. And, you know, if someone ends up having to pay out for it, the insurance will cover it. So you’ve not done anything wrong. You know, so I think a lot of dentists are left. I think I think I listen to a podcast with Neil Palmer and he was saying that, you know, there is a mental price that’s paid by dentists and you’re often on your own when there’s a complaint, and often we’re too ashamed, like you say, to admit that you’ve got something wrong and we’re all human and you’re dealing with biological tissues and you can do 100 fillings the same. Nine. If four might work, ten of them might end up with irreversible politesse and the feeling might not be any different than the other 90. You just don’t know. But I think ultimately most patients are generally quite sensible. But you’ll get the odd, crazy patient that no matter what you do, they’re just not happy. And I think I’ve learnt as a leader, I’ve learnt how to say no. So in terms of and that reduces your risk of a clinical failing because all that ends up happening.

I had another case that we did, we replaced some crowns, I think 4 to 4. We redid them. They were a mess to begin with. She looked lovely when they were done. She went away six months. I came back. I’m not quite happy. My husband doesn’t like them. People stopped me in the street and say to me, What’s happened to your teeth, strangers? And I said, Well, let’s look at the photographs. As soon as the patient says that, you just think you’re lying because they look okay, they look lovely, but okay. I said, Well, these are the photographs of what you look like before you go. Oh, my God, I don’t remember them being that bad. They they were like that. This is what they look like now. So. So what exactly are strangers and your husband saying to you? So I don’t quite understand because I think you look better. No, no, I’m not happy. I want them redone. I want the colour slightly different. I want the shape slightly different. This, that and the other. I want them to look like this. And at that point, she pulls out a picture of Angelina Jolie. This is probably 65 and you’re thinking Right, I can’t make you look like Angelina Jolie. Even with the best will in the world, I might be able to get your teeth close, but I can’t change your face. And at that point, I said, all right, we’ll redo them for you if you’re that unhappy.

We’ll do a new mock-up. We’ll do a stent. We’ll show it all to you again, you know. And then we went and I think I did them again. And she went away. She came back a year later. I’m still not happy. At which point I just gave her a full riff and I said, Have all of your money back. I cannot help you. You know, I can’t improve what I’ve done for you and good luck. Hopefully there’ll be done so that it can meet your expectations. I think two years later, she came back to me again. Please, will Dr. Ali see me? Please. Will you do my teeth for me? I’ve been to two or three other places and no one wants to touch it. They probably looked at it and thought, You’ve got a bit of dysmorphia and there might be a psychological element to her needing treatment. But it’s cases like that now that come in. I think I’m better at picking up at the beginning if I can meet someone’s expectations, you know, and often what you find with, I think the advent of social media now, people’s expectations are actually higher than they used to be. So before you could almost get away with doing something that would just improve the situation. Now it’s got to match, you know, some of these brilliant dentist work that you see on Instagram. It’s got to come close to it. Otherwise you can have an unhappy punter on your hands.

What about what about a business mistake? What comes to mind?

I think. One of the things I regretted the most was when I was married to my second wife. I was offered a practice over in Kenilworth and at that time I negotiated a loan. So everyone was after this private practice.

Second wife are your first wife?

Second wife. So I think my first wife was when I first bought my share. With my first practice? No. I’d set up my spot and I’d got married then. And then literally, we were married for four months. And unfortunately, she. She was very upset and almost suicidal that she didn’t want to get married and father a lot of pressure and to get married. I think we’d met four times before. You know, her parents and my parents decided that we were getting married. And so after four months, unfortunately, we went our separate ways. And I think she was relieved, as was I. And then I think I think my mom caught me probably between girlfriends probably six years later saying, you look, you’re older, you’ve had your fun time to settle down. And then I was introduced to my second wife and again, there wasn’t much of a spark there at all, but our family seemed to get on very well. Being a good sort of Muslim boy, my mom and dad saying, Look, this family’s nice, they’re good for you and you’ll be a good match. And you know, your old days are behind you and married and unfortunately, just very unhappy. We had nothing in common. There was no spark. There was no real love there. And after ten months, she left and then we got divorced. And that was it. That was sort of arranged marriage number two. But at the time when I was married to her, I was offered a practice over in Canada.

Loads. People were after it. It was a freehold practice. I think there were six surgeries. It had a good NHS contract and I just won the dentistry awards Best Dentist in the Midlands. So this was 2008. And you know, I met the guy he saw, he came over to my practice, looked at the awards that we’d won the best team in the Midlands, best practice, I’d won the best young dentist. And he said, I really like your practice. I like what you’re about and your team and I want my practice to go to someone that’s going to look after my patients and you fit the bill. And so even though I wasn’t offering because it turned into a bidding war, people were offering way over the asking price. And I got it for the asking price. I think it was 1.2 mil. I had a loan, which I think 0.75 above base rate, which was what they were prepared to lend to me at the bank were. And the deal was sewn up, ready to sign off. And then my wife at the time said, If you work too hard as it is, if you buy this practice, I’m leaving you. I’m going back to my mum and dad. And at the time my parents were putting pressure on me saying, Look, you need to make your marriage work.

It’s your second marriage and you know you can only one chapatti and one bowl of daal a night. You don’t need any more. Don’t you know? Don’t put your family first, put your personal. And so against my gut instinct, I pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. I said, look to the guy, I’m so sorry. My wife’s not being supportive. And then about three months later, she left anyway. And it took me. These practices come up on the market so rarely. Even now, 20 years later, I’ve never seen another practice that ticked all the boxes, you know? And for about two years, it took me a long, long time to get over it because because the lending rate was so it was like free money. I was being handed a practice that I could add value to very easily because it was, you know, it wasn’t being run particularly well. And when she left and I ended up getting divorced anyway, I just literally I was so upset about it. And, you know, and I think it impacted on me for a long time. But then having said that, I met my wife Sara, that I have two lovely children with now. And, you know, it’s probably the happiest I’ve been in my life, you know, So it happens. It all happens for a reason. So again, that goes back to that personal success. That was.

An element. Was there an element? Was there an element of of I’m not going to listen to my parents anymore at that point?

Yeah, well, after this practice fell through, I wrote a check to my mother and we had a bit of a falling out in that I think there was a wedding we were going to. And she goes, I don’t want you to come because people ask where your wife is and this, that and the other. And you know, and I remember saying someone, Well, tell people your son’s dead then if that’s how you feel, if you can’t support me as your son, tell them. And dead And I walked out the house and then for about two years my mum, I didn’t speak to my mum for about two years. I was so angry and especially with the divorce. And then suddenly you realise that on the one hand you’re you have this pressure put on by Asian parents, that family honour and all of this crap, which frankly I don’t care for, you know. But on the flip side, under British law, if you marry someone, they don’t care if you met someone seven times or six times and you don’t really know them, they’ll go after your assets, they’ll go after your business, your home, your vehicle, your money.

And, you know, ultimately, more often than not at that time, I was doing my second marriage financially, it was very successful, had a big house, had a big practice. You know, I had a nice car. And you’ve married someone that hasn’t contributed to anything at all during your marriage, financially or otherwise, that suddenly they’ve got free rein on potentially taking half of your assets off you. So in that sense, I think, you know, it made me angry that I’d been that stupid to put myself at that sort of risk. And even when I met Father, I said, I don’t want to get married. And she was upset saying, Well, look, we can’t just live together. We have to get married. My dad won’t let me just live with you. We have to get married. And I remember I met her father to explain to her that, Look, I’ve been married before. I don’t want to get married again. I want to just live with your daughter. And he.

Looked at me.

Crazy, man, you know, like he was sort of, you know, a sort of blood vessel on his temple was pulsating like he was going to murder me. And and I said, I just want to spend a year getting to know your daughter. And I remember he looked at me because, look, son, he goes, Marry her. And you can spend your entire life getting to know her. Yes. You’re not just living with her. It’s not going to happen. So and so. So we did get married. And thankfully, you know, she stayed with me. And we’ve got two lovely children. And whenever we fight, she does throw in my face. Or the other two cows left you. I’m going to leave you now, too. So, you know, so she generally wins most arguments with me.

So you never you never know from the outside. Right. But you guys do look very, very, very happy, man. You just like making. Each other, laugh the whole time is a great recipe.

Yeah, I think we have quite we’re lucky in the sense that ten years on, I must admit I’m still not bored nor ashamed. She keeps me on my toes. An example will be I can walk in and go, Oh, can you make a cup of tea and sort of do it yourself in front of the builder? And so you learn. You learn where those sorts of parameters are. And so, you know, and you know, we argue like cat and dog sometimes, but then equally there’s a lot of love there and care there. And sort of ten years down the road, we’ve found a groove where we just rub along, you know. So there’s an Asian saying where you throw two rough rocks into a stream and they rub off each other and they become smooth like pebbles. So we’re slowly becoming pebbles, slowly but surely.

Nice, but perhaps going to do me in for keeps telling me your podcast for too long. One want 50 minutes in I think we need to we need to bring it to close but it’s been lovely talking to you. I’m going to close it with the usual questions that we always ask. Fancy dinner party. Three guests. Dead or alive. Are you going to have?

Well, I think my first guess would be slightly controversial. It’d be Andrew Tate.

I find you like a bit of an educator.

Yeah. I find some of the statements he makes quite controversial. But equally, I think he’s a very interesting person to listen to. I think the second person would be there’s an American lifestyle coach called Tony Robbins. Yeah. And I think he’s listening to some of his seminars. You know, mentally, I think it’s very uplifting listening to him. And he has a very positive mindset in terms of looking after yourself physically and mentally.

Have you been to one of his seminars?

I haven’t. I’ve got his books. He’s done a couple of books recently.

You know, money that won.

It was I forget the title. So I’ve got. I’ve got a terrible habit of buying books and I never get around to reading them. So I’ve got books like sort of Seven Habits, Habits of highly Effective People and, you know, books by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And you have to stop worrying and start living.

So Anthony Robbins, Tony Robbins. Well, years ago, 20 years ago, I wrote Awakened Giant Within an Unlimited Power. Recently, recently, he’s written this one called Money that People Keep banging on About. I haven’t I haven’t read that one, but apparently not read that.

I think the two books that I’ve got on my bookshelf, I forget the names of them, but yeah, Tony Robbins, I think some of his on line stuff, you know, if you look it up, look up some of his online lectures and stuff, that they’re just fascinating. The energy that he comes across with it is just, you know, who’s.

The who’s the third guess because it’s getting quite testosterone. You go on, who’s the third guest? Who’s the third guest? Because we’re getting kind of testosterone so far.

Third guess. I think it would be Jordan Peterson. He’s a Canadian. Jordan Peterson is a Canadian philosopher and professor, isn’t he? And I find him very interesting as well. But, you know, and some of the things they come out with are slightly controversial. But then equally, I just find them fascinating to listen to. Oh, another one would be. There’s a guy called Mitchinson. He’s passed away. He’s an atheist, and he’s do lectures at Oxford University.

Christopher Hitchens. Yeah. Hitchens. Hitchens.

Hitchens. Hitchens. Hitchens Yeah. Hitchens Yeah. Yeah, he. I found some of his lectures were quite interesting as well. So yeah, probably, probably one of these guys.

Interesting list of people, man. Interestingly, see, people I don’t know if you heard Jordan Peterson, he was on Joe Rogan this week. Brilliant. Three hour conversation. He just didn’t stop talking. But it was constantly brilliant.

Now he is something that’s really interesting about, you know, something that Andrew Tate and John Peterson both have in common. Maybe something that’s left over from my divorces is that they look at men’s mental health. And that’s something that perhaps we don’t talk about that, particularly with the MeToo movement. And this that I remember there was their Gillette advert that came out where it was men behaving quite appallingly, and then suddenly that’s not okay. And then suddenly, you know, the world’s all sunshine and roses again. And a lot of people boycotted Gillette products saying, Well, most men don’t behave in that abhorrent manner towards women and sort of tarring everyone with the same brush. And I think the voice of men to an extent, be that with domestic violence against men and in particular mental health. I think that’s something I know. I was very lonely when I got divorced. You know, and particularly within the Asian culture where you felt you couldn’t go to people’s houses and you couldn’t go out and it was something to be ashamed of. But I look back at it and, you know, I look at my ex-wives and think there are no winners there. And I feel sorry that they were pressured into marriages.

I feel sorry for me that I didn’t have a voice to say, Well, no, I don’t want to do this and I’m not doing this. And I think that that whole. Issue about men not talking to one another. I think it’s something that’s so important. So I talked to a lot of my male friends regularly. I make time to chat to them. How are you getting on how you’re doing and or go out, you know, as a bite to eat, You know, just have a one on one chat, you know, And it might be that you might go and say, My wife’s terrible. She did this, that and the other, and you feel better, You mentally feel better. Historically, men don’t really do that. My wife is always checking to a friend and, you know, and I’ve started to do that more. I check to my friends now and say, Oh, you know, how’s your week been? How you been? Or if someone says they’re down, I will make an effort to check in on them. Say, What’s going on? Let’s go out, let’s, you know, go for a blast in a fun car or something, you know, And, you know.

I know also, when you lay over the stresses of dentistry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dentistry has been a stressful job for 100 years. It’s not it’s not just the GDC and the Dental Law Partnership and the NHS. And, you know, dentists have had a high suicide rate in countries where, you know, in the US or in many countries, Right. Yeah. Yeah. Where, where these problems haven’t been there. So the job itself has some sort of inherent stress. Well I guess the stuff Nilesh was talking about, you take on, you take on the patient stress when it goes wrong, it can go very wrong sometimes. Yeah. And then, and then you’ve got the sort of the isolation of being in one room with one nurse. And sometimes, you know, you’ve got a great relationship with your nurse, but I’m sure if you haven’t got a great relationship with your nurse, it’s a total nightmare. Man. Yeah. Like, come to that room and spend a whole day with someone you hate or someone who hates you, you know, or whatever it is. And then you lay over on top of that, this thing you’re saying about men, which is real because men don’t discuss their feelings. And it’s not very it hasn’t been very fashionable for men to be talked about, everyone else to be talked to. So it’s real. It’s real that, you know. Lovely to talk to you, man.

Yeah. Yeah, Likewise. Pam. Thank you so much for having me. You know, it’s been lovely chatting to you and hope I’m not said anything too untoward or offensive to your audience or yourself.

The the you say say your truth. That’s that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? That’s. That’s why this medium is working so well now. Yeah. Because people have had enough of, of inauthentic stuff. And I can’t think of anyone more authentic than you, buddy. So it’s.

Very easy.

Very lovely to have had you. Thank you. And I miss you, buddy. I miss you. You look out for me, man. I miss you. Come and see us again.

Did you.

Working too.

Hard? I must say. I’m going to give you a big cuddle. I won’t.

Working too hard crazily. I even put a Birmingham date in today. I put a Birmingham date in thinking of you and thinking of Depeche as well. Not having to travel, but he likes to travel. But I put a Birmingham date in October or something like that, so come see us.

Definitely, for sure. Lovely to see you, man. Thank you once again. Give my love to everyone. Love you, man. Take care.

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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