Don’t drive with the brakes on. And what I mean by that is don’t limit yourself with negative thinking or the fear of not knowing what you’re getting into or not. Not believing you can actually deliver on something or achieve something. I think it’s always better to do things and figure it out that way, because you’ll always regret the things that you don’t do as opposed to things that you do do and that go wrong. So I think having an action bias would be the first one.

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

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Tani Kawakami onto the podcast. I was thinking Tani was our youngest guest, but actually episode 1 to 9. You didn’t get that that privilege today? No, no.

This is this is something that bothers me a little bit. Payman. We’ve known each other for a little while, and I remember saying to you in second year, I want to be a podcast. Yes, but second youngest will have to do. Adam.

That’s funny dude. Yeah. Adam Lawton that’s right. When you said it to me in your second year, I remember going back thinking, I can’t believe that guy asked me that question, but then. But then that imprinted it in my head. And then when I saw Adam, I was like, oh, Adam, you become a fourth year dental student. You had backfired. You wanted to be the record holder. But anyway, it’s it’s a massive pleasure to have you. Tani got a really interesting career so far, his very young career, and he’s just qualified dental school. And in his PhD year, he. When I met him at the end of his first year, I think Tani or beginning of second year when he was doing a sales role for Bryant Dental, and he’s been doing that throughout dental school and really a real feature on the on the dental circuit. You know, wherever you go, any conference, Tani is there. And I’ve always been so impressed with your sort of articulate sort of nature. You’re very good talker and and impressed is a funny one, but I’m not sure if I want to use the word impressed, but it’s a different word I want to use. Just like, you know, like in awe of how tactical you are. You’re very tactical person. Very, very, you know, there’s a lot there’s a lot of ambitious people, but ambition plus tactics, plus hard work. So killer combination. So Tani is actually a partner now in Bryant Dental there with Priam and Connor and some others, I guess. Right? Yes. And also now becoming a dentist, an actual dentist. So working in a dental practice for the first time. So it’s a really interesting career. Massive pleasure to have you, Modi. How are you?

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. I mean, Dental Leaders podcast. I’m not sure what I’ve done to warrant a spot here, but, um, I guess you’re running low on guests. They thought you’d scrape the barrel.

I think we both know what you did to get a place. All right, well, I’m quite interested. We we do this thing about childhood and all that, but actually, I just listened to you on a different podcast, and I can’t be bothered to hear that story again. I’m going to I’m going to summarise. I’m going to summarise it as, you know, you are sort of a sportsman in your childhood. Yeah. And you and your brother. Go on, go on, hit me with it. I do like to know how, what produces this kind of guy. But go on, give me the highlights of childhood.

I think you know, from from day one, my brother and I have always been very competitive. He’s two years younger than me, so very close in age, whether that’s academic, sports, everything. It was always, you know, head to head, neck and neck. He was slightly younger, so we always joked that I was the pacemaker and made a little bit easier for him. But that’s my excuse, I guess, for for what he’s done now he’s onto, you know, two very impressive things. But fundamentally, I think, you know, from from a young age, my parents instilled strong values. Dad was a very, very, very hard working. And that essentially became the baseline. That high work rate is is not necessarily something which impresses my parents. That’s just, you know, the average expectation from them. And then from my mother came bigger thinking. She spent a lot of her time as a child growing up in different areas in the world. Her father was a clinician who went from everywhere. His story, in fact, is exceptional. But don’t want to digress too much. But you know, she’s seen a lot of the world from a young age, and because of that, she’s had quite a bit of exposure to to a lot of things and tried to put it in our brains that whatever you want to go out and do is only, you know, a set of steps away. Nothing is out of reach. And at a young age, it’s hard to understand that and hard to really figure out what that really means. But as we’ve progressed through life, that’s served us quite well. That cocktail of, you know, working hard and then also, you know, seeing the bigger picture.

You’re both your parents doctors.

Yeah, both parents are doctors. Last few generations, actually in the family tree. Everyone’s been doctors. So I’m a dentist, I guess I’ve we’ve we’ve gone backwards. But my and my brothers in my brother’s in finance. So we’re the only two to break the mould. Even our cousins laterally are also going into medicine.

Were you thinking of being a doctor?

I was, yes, I was, I was very strongly considering it. Then I saw the lifestyle that my parents were living in the UK as doctors. Lots of long hours, late nights, etcetera, with very little output compared to the input that was being put in. And I thought that’s maybe not necessarily what I want to be doing. Finance was something I was also massively interested in and did some work experience, both hospitals and also in some funds in London, and I realised that dentistry is actually an amalgamation of both. If you decide to go down the business track, you get the clinical satisfaction that you do from providing great work for your patients. But at the same time, right from day one, if you want to day one out of dental school, you can start building your own, your own thing. And that is something which for me was very appealing and I wanted to be able to craft my career from, from day one, as opposed to go and work in a big corporate or spend X number of years working up the ladder in hospital.

So you’ve got your brother and he’s gone into finance, so you can see what would have kind of you’d be different, I guess, but you can see kind of the life he’s, he’s gone into. Is there a side of you that thinks maybe I should have gone that route?

Possibly. Possibly it is. It is something that we that we always think about. Grass is always greener, I guess, but I’m pretty happy with how things have panned out so far. There’s positives and negatives to everything with with dentistry, it’s great because you have flexibility. You can set your own calendar, you can set your own working week, and essentially you can do whatever you want to. Whereas if you’re in a in an institutional setup, then you have seniors to answer to and that’s that. But then I guess, you know, risk reward, pay off, etcetera can be can be different. But again, with dentistry that’s in your hands. And you can, you know, you can create whatever you want to create.

So is he working in a giant organisation?

He’s actually in his final year at LSC, but he’s been recruited by Blackstone, done his internship, etcetera, and been offered a spot there. So he’s he’s doing well. I think he was there was a stat somewhere. They took 164 analysts globally this year from 64,000 applications. So he’s done all right. He’s done all right.

Well well done. So okay. Tell me about when you were going to apply to dentistry. Where did you grow up?

Grew up in Birmingham. Grew up just just outside Birmingham in the in the countryside, a small town called Redditch, if you’ve heard of it.

Yeah. Did you, did you sort of on purpose choose London because of the big city?

Exactly that. I think there was two parts of my decision making process. Number one, Kings has the name, and I did a bit of shadowing in a hospital in India as well when I was building my application. And as soon as you mentioned, you know, I’m applying to Kings, everyone’s jaw dropped and they looked at you a certain way. So that was part of it. And then the second thing was I wanted to be in the big city. I enjoyed my visits to London. I enjoyed the pace of what the life appeared to be like, and I wanted to be in the mix. I think being at dental school in London is great because that’s where everything is happening. I mean, you have speakers from around the world, where do they come to in the UK? They come to London. So all of these extra exposures were on our on our doorstep and it made it very easy, as you mentioned, to come to these conferences and talks and events and lectures, which really broadens your thinking. And I think it’s good to to set that thermostat from from early on in your time at dental school. So it worked out quite nicely.

Were you not interested in that sort of the student life and being in a town where students are dominant?

Um, possibly. But I think London’s student circuit is also quite good. It’s maybe different. It’s not a campus based university, etcetera. But there is there is still a lot to do. I mean, I’d argue it’s really the greatest city in the world, and there’s always things going on. You have, you know, multiple universities within the same city. So you get to meet a lot of people. And I had a lot of fun.

I don’t know, dude. It’s a funny one because, you know, maybe I grew up in London. So so for me, it’d be that going out of London, you grew up somewhere else. So coming into London is is a thing and you’ve got to remember your, your you’ve been working since the first or second year. So your finance situation is not like your normal London Dental student. Sure. You know, and yeah, you’re right, London is the best in the world when you’ve got loads of money, but quite the opposite when you haven’t. But tell me then, were you when you were a kid, did you used to work as well? Did you used to have jobs? No, never.

Never at all. Actually, I never, never worked a job in my life, actually, prior to university. Um, so it was different, but I think I was quite lucky in that I always had a full plate. It was never just one thing going on. There were always lots of plates spinning from quite a young age, whether that was sports societies, etcetera, etcetera, every day of every week was always quite busy. Great for us, not great for our parents. They had to ferry us around all over the place, but it was useful because then you’re used to a certain level of activity all the time, and that filters into your time at university and then the working world, etcetera. Your baseline resilience tolerance is is pretty high, and I think that unlocks a lot.

I mean, your dental school experience, you know, I kind of got, you know, I speak to quite a lot of young dentists, kind of got an idea of it. But my dental school experience, I felt like there was lots and lots of stuff that wasn’t necessary was taught, and loads of stuff that is necessary wasn’t taught. Is that how you characterise it as well or do you not feel?

No, I would agree with that. I think of course the foundations are important, but there was a lot of um, yeah, I think you’re right. There was a lot covered, which didn’t need to be, which isn’t relevant clinically. You know, afterwards once you get into the real world. And there were holes in other areas. But again, I was very, very lucky because of my involvement with Bryant from the end of my first year, early second year, I was a rep on many, many postgraduate courses, etcetera. So I got to sit in the back of the room of all of these postgrad courses, and that was filtering in from, from day one. So I didn’t necessarily feel the holes because I was getting exposure elsewhere, possibly with some of my peers. Maybe that was the case. But, you know, that wasn’t my experience because of the situation. It’s worked out nicely for me.

But what aspects of it like because because I’m a long way away from it, it’s hard for me to pull it out. But you’ve just done it right. What aspects of it would you say you know that those bits were not necessary? It’s quite difficult, isn’t it, because there are people in your year who are going to go on and become, you know, oral medicine consultant? Sure. That that that guy needs some, some basic cellular stuff that they teach in dental school. And there’s another guy who’s going to go on and own 100 practices, and there’s another guy who’s going to go into community and teach. It’s difficult, you know, which bits, which bits do you think you could cut from your course to make way for the bits that they don’t cover, like, I don’t know, do they cover digital? Did you have scanners and things?

Yeah. I think when you put it like that, my answer previously was I think oriented towards what I wanted and what I needed. I agree that that is the dilemma because there are so many different career paths within the profession. It does make it extremely difficult to design a course. If it was an easy solution, every university would be doing it. In my opinion. It’s also difficult at King’s because you have a cohort size of 160, right? So even if you do decide, you know, to to implement whatever it is you want to implement, you have to do that for the whole cohort. And that’s a logistical challenge, I think maybe a bit more depth in, in, in some domains. So for example, occlusion I don’t think was taught very well at university at all. Our, you know, idea of occlusion was basically only for dentures and then for, for restorative work, it was okay. Patient bite down on a piece of articulating paper, remove the high spot. And that’s occlusion sorted. So that was maybe, you know, an area that was lacking. And I think inclusion is probably pretty fundamental to to all dentistry. Right. It’s the baseline which you need to crack for every case. So that would have been great to to sort out at university. But again, at the end of the day, I think universities are gearing you up to become a safe beginner and work on the NHS. Right? So single tooth dentistry really is the focus.

Yeah. Although it’s interesting because, you know, they taught us quite a lot of occlusion in Cardiff because there was a guy who’d written a book on occlusion who was one of the teachers, you know, so it’s weird. You kind of get kind of different. I remember going on and there was loads of people from King’s and from London, and they knew a lot more, for instance, about ortho than I did. Yeah. But I, I knew a lot more about occlusion and for instance, oral med than they did. So it’s interesting. But the thing is, the majority of people who go out into practice are not only going to be looking at fillings and crowns, which is kind of what they teach you fillings, crowns and endos. You know, you’re going to be looking at Invisalign, bleaching implants, scanning. Those things aren’t taught at all, right?

We had, we had a little bit of of work with scanners as, as the, as you progressed. But it wasn’t, you know, the core fundamentals of what we were doing. I think modern dentistry is progressed at a very quick rate, a very alarming rate almost, and it’s difficult to catch to keep up with that when you are in, you know, teaching within an institution where everything has to be approved, things move slowly.

Things move slowly.

Right? A hierarchy, etcetera. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it’s it’s fine. I mean, most of we’re in a vocation. At the end of the day, a learning starts when we leave university doesn’t necessarily end there. And I think we a lot of, a lot of us have that understanding. And we will spend a lot of time investing in our in our clinical journeys.

It’s important to talk about though, dude. Yeah. Because, you know, if people don’t talk about it then changes won’t come about. And, you know, it just legacy will be the thing. I mean, you know, I bet the amount of time you guys spent on full dentures was way more than the amount of time you’re going to spend with patients on full dentures, and then a whole lot of stuff the other way around. Right. Let’s get on to your first moment where you thought, Bryant Dental, I’m going to get a job. Was it was it I’m going to get a job or was it I’m going to get a job at Bryant Dental because and so did.

In fact, it was nothing to do about getting a job or getting or any kind of remuneration at all. I was in first year getting a little bit bored at university because you weren’t doing much dentistry. It was just biomed in a lecture theatre, etcetera, and I felt the pace was quite slow. I didn’t really feel excited or there was no big goal or ambition at that point in my life. And whenever I, whenever I’m in a situation like that, I feel quite uncomfortable. So I was I ended up looking around quite a bit at some of the trade shows and some of the companies that were out there, and I saw Bryant Dental was a young, up and coming, fast growing company, doing things very differently to what a lot of other companies were doing.

What are you talking about, dude? You were a first year dental student. You had no idea what other companies were doing or what Bryant Dental was doing. Your first year dental student no, I mean.

You get an understanding of you go to a trade show and you see people all, you know, everyone was what were.

You doing at a trade show? First year dental student.

Why not? Why not? I’m in London. It was it came up.

As an advertisement. There weren’t that many, right? There weren’t like many loads of you going to trade shows? No.

I was just curious, to be honest. Payman. I wanted to see what the profession was that I signed up for.

Amazing. Go on, go on, I like that, I like that. So you went to a trade show? Yeah, I went.

To a trade show, saw what was going on and thought, these guys are electric. There’s something different about them. I also then met VP Thomas Powell at a dental talk. He was the president at the time. Again, he was a dental student in a suit standing in front of a crowd of people delivering, you know, an introduction for whoever the speaker was that day, very eloquently. And I thought, this guy has got something different about him. He’s quite different to the normal dental student. So I spoke to him and he said, yeah, I’m involved with this company, Bryant Dental. And then, you know, one and two came together and I thought, excellent for me, essentially what I wanted to do, what I wanted out of that was I wanted to collapse my learning timeline. I thought, if I get involved with this company, I can get access to all of these courses for free as a representative, and I’ll get to meet a lot of clinicians face to face with loop sales, etcetera, etcetera. And that way I’ll be able to, you know, condense the time it takes for me to get from point A to point B. So my initial email to Connor and Brian was, look, I don’t want any form of payment at all. I think you guys are awesome. This is what I can see you guys are doing, and this is what I think I can add. Of course, everything that I could I said I could add, they would already be doing, but they liked the foresight. And, you know, the the opposite of inertia, the ercia, I guess, you know not not to be to be hurt. Guess they quite like that. So they brought me on board. And, you know, for me it all worked out quite nicely. But the goal was never, you know, I’m in London. I need to make money to survive. I had quite a generous student loan. The idea was really just to get as much exposure as I can as quickly as I can.

And Thomas Powell was the president. And then you later on became the president as well?

Yes, sir. Was the president three years after him?

He’s your hero. You’re doing everything he does.

Quite possibly. Hope he’s not listening to this. You’ll never let me never let me live that down.

So. All right. I’m still. I’m still. I still can’t get my head around it. I’m thinking back to my own first year. A whole different species to me. Man number one, the characterising undergrad that, you know, that biochemistry, physiology bit as boring and easy. I didn’t say.

Easy. I didn’t say easy, I said boring.

I didn’t do biology A-level. That made it all very, very, very interesting. But then number two to then go and go work for a company. But guess the Tom Hayes Powell thing was quite kind of serendipity something. All right. So so then you got there what did you do. What was what what happened. What did they I mean, they were they were recruiting students because Connor himself was a student when he set the whole thing up. And I spoke to Connor, I had a conversation with Connor when he was at your stage now in Vught, and I asked him, I advised him to leave dentistry. Yeah, because. Because I asked him a couple of questions about, I don’t know, numbers and number of employees and all that, and I realised this guy would be wasting his time in clinical. You know, he’s got he’s got a bigger fish to fry. And that was my advice leave clinical and I don’t give that advice very often at all. In fact I remember with Tom I didn’t give that advice. I advised against leaving clinical, but Connor had something going on and the two of them. So when you got there, there were already. Was it just you and Tom or was it other students?

Oh no, I was it was just Tom and I actually George. George was a student at Imperial. He was doing, I can’t remember what, his geology or something completely random, but I think Connor and Priam wanted people who were very similar to them in that young, hungry, ambitious, willing to work crazy hours because you’re motivated by things other than money and and lifestyle. Et cetera. You want to be part of building something. And yeah, I guess with youth comes exuberance. A little bit of naivety as well. But that’s can be a superpower and it all kind of fits together nicely at the time.

So then, then give me a sort of a snapshot of what you were getting up to, let’s say, when you got into the rhythm of loop sales, what was how was your time spent between university and seeing dentists, and what were you doing when you’re driving around the country? Is that what you were doing?

I don’t actually have a driving license payment, so I was carrying carrying this case around on trains and buses, a bit like Will Smith from Pursuit of Happiness. But it was. Yeah, it was, it was, it was fun. Essentially. We were all the leads that were coming through. They would be assigned to us from that point onwards. It’s, you know, every customer is our individual responsibility. So right from outreach to setting up the meeting to then exactly, as you mentioned, running around the country visiting probably three, 4 or 5 practices in a day throughout the week and on weekends as well, and then taking care of all the aftercare. So it was, you know, the standard sales role really just in between lectures and around exams etcetera.

Five a day.

Yeah, we try and because you control your own, your own calendar. Right. So if you’re going to Leicester I’d lump all of the Leicester leads together in one day. If you’re going to Birmingham, all of the Birmingham leads together in one day and and carry it out that way.

And how long would each visit be?

Each each loops meetings. About an hour, hour and a half lunch times or end of the day. The main thing was the travelling between them, really, because you’re all over the place. And I was covering London and the Midlands at the time, whilst in second and third year, which was pretty tough. But because we have we had online lectures, you could watch lectures at any point. So in the back of a cab or on a train or in the evenings, you could pop open the laptop and make sure you sit on top of it.

Because of Covid.

Even prior to Covid, it was online, but post Covid exams became online as well. So that helped me quite nicely as well.

But wait a minute. So. So when you say were all other students just sitting at home watching lectures on their computers?

Um, in first year, a lot of people came in, but I’m not sure how much attention or studying was actually being done in these lecture theatres. It was more of a social occasion. But then post-Covid, everyone was obviously at home, and since then I don’t think it’s really picked up. So most people are doing all of their lectures at home in the evenings or in their own time, and there’s maybe only ten, 15, 20 students coming to the lecture theatre, which is probably quite disgruntled for the lecturers themselves. But it is what it is, I guess.

And what what’s been the same lecture is being you can see it live, it’s being streamed.

So that’s how it was in first year. It was streamed and then also recorded. And you can watch it in your own time and post Covid. I believe most of them are being recorded and left that way. So they’re only filmed once and then left up. And obviously as and when they’re revised, that change is also reflected on the on the platform.

So. Okay. So give me a flavour of the week. So you’ve got patients to see at some point. So patients came pretty patients.

Patients came pretty late for us because of Covid naturally. So it was quite it was quite funny. We meant I was meant to be seeing my first patient on a Monday. And then we went into lockdown the Friday just before that. And then it was a year and a half, 18 months until I eventually started, saw that patient. So that was that was quite funny. But for us, I think my year hit the sweet spot because we didn’t miss too much clinical. We got a hands on end of third year and all we missed really was, you know, a bit of scaling in second year. And then for us in fourth and fifth year, they really went heavy on the clinical. So we made up for lost time.

But then did you stop selling loops in fourth and fifth year?

Fourth and fifth year I stopped selling loops and I said to to Priya and Connor, I want to be doing something else. You know, I think I’ve learnt all I can learn selling loops. Now let me take on another challenge. And I started working on the software company.

So let’s stick with loops for a second. Yeah. How would you characterise the whole Bryant experience as opposed to another experience? Because certainly like you said there’s certainly different. Right? The experience is different. I think one side of it is, you know products. Right. But there’s another side of it really is the service side. Well give me, give me put some put some salt and pepper on on my basic understanding of what I mean. I’ve been to the office. It’s lots of fun. Huge party areas. Loads of people working as well. How many employees is it there now?

I believe it’s about 80 now. Close to 80. Yeah. So quite a quite quite a big in the same site.

Some of them remote.

Some are remote, some are in other countries. We’ve got a set up in Australia now as well. And so yeah it’s overall I think headcount is about 80 reasonably reasonably sized. But to get back to your initial question about the salt and pepper things essentially, yeah. Yeah. We’re just trying to delight every customer. That’s really the idea we want to make. Every customer of loops feel like they have a concierge service. So you deal directly with us via WhatsApp. There’s no email channels, anything like there weren’t any email channels initially. As you scale, they need to be introduced, but you have a very 1 to 1 intimate experience with whoever it is that you’re meeting. And because we were such a small company, we are all at the heart of the thing. So you’re not speaking to someone who’s at a distance from what’s going on. We’re all in the thick of things. I think the great thing that that was indifferent about us is that we are all dentists or dentists in training ourselves, so we can understand what it is that you want. We understand what it is that you need and what the problems are that you face. And we’re perfectly positioned to be able to relate to you. And I think people really appreciated that. And there’s a level of playing field essentially, rather than them feeling like they’re being sold to. I think we were great because we could be very authentic, because we all, we all use these products ourselves before anything goes to market. We use it for six months ourselves, test it out, tried it out. So everything that’s coming from from our mouths is authentic. And people I think resonated with that.

But what was the training? I mean, you were a 20 year old kid.

No training really. It was just a case of following Connor around Tom around for a few days when they were meeting customers. And that’s it really product knowledge. You you do that in your own time and the rest of it is just being good with people. And I think at the end of the day, what we wanted at that point in time was I guess they were hiring for personality as opposed to skill set hiring for people with the right motivations, the right approach, and, you know, not just going through the motions or not doing things Transactionally you want to be part of building something and you have to buy in and the rest really can be learnt. If you have the soft skills, the rest of the things can be pieced together over time, and I think that’s the approach they took with me.

I feel like, you know, I did the transition from clinical to, to B2B to, to, you know, talking to dentists. And I found it much harder selling to dentists than to selling to patients. What do you think? You’ve you’ve kind of gone the other way, as you say that I would agree.

It’s I wouldn’t say more difficult. I’d say it’s different. I think with patience there’s a little bit more trust per se, in what it is that you’re saying. Because they see you as a doctor. You’ve trained for X number of years. Okay, you must know what you’re doing. But with dentists it’s different because dentists all understand intimately what it is that they’re, that they actually want from this thing. They have knowledge on it, they’ve done their research, etcetera. What really works well with dentists is being super confident in your product and knowing that the product that you are, you know, putting forward to them is actually best in class. And it’s quite reassuring when you have that behind you. But then secondly, just being completely open and, and, you know, being authentic and giving them the breakdown. They want to be slightly more technical, I think than than. Patience will be. Unless you have an engineer as a patient who’s going to start asking you about shear strength, etcetera. Dentists are slightly more analytical in that respect. So if you know what you’re talking about inside out and you can put across the value quite clearly, then it’s, you know, it’s not a transaction at all. It’s a no brainer. So it works quite well. I think that’s a privilege that we had because we knew the product that we are selling is best in class. And, you know, it works worked very well.

But you know, what I found with dentists is that, you know, there we are where they are. We are trained to be super critical and disbelieving. I mean, that’s that’s part of our training is is big bad companies are going to come along with products and none of them are going to be necessarily proved, and you need to get that out of them and so forth. Yeah. And you know, whichever way, different dentists are very different in the way they translate that into the questions they ask a sales person as well. But I always used to think, you know, having I must have gone to about the same number of practices that you probably went to a few more than me, actually, maybe because I stopped early, but but I went to hundreds of practices or thousands of practices, and I always found most of the interactions when when the guy himself wasn’t stressed were all very nice. Yeah, but I did find some interactions where, you know, the guy was trying to catch me out sort of thing. There’s plenty of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you know, I was it was funny situation because I was a dentist, the owner of the company probably like maybe, you know, earlier on than you. Yeah. The owner of the company. And sometimes I wouldn’t even tell anyone I was a dentist just to see how that would work out. But I was just a surprise me was that dentists wouldn’t use the reps more for information. Yeah. You know, because the reps are the ones who’ve got the information on what the market’s doing, what people, you know, most, most good ideas come from other dentists, but the reps have all of that information. And to see the interaction between a dentist and a rep as an education interaction instead of a sales interaction.

Is difficult that there isn’t it from from the perspective of dentists because they feel like they’re being sold to. And naturally you’ll be sceptical. But I completely agree. I think approach everything with an open mind, and that way you are going to get get more value from it. I think with us, what was quite good is that there was never a hard sell for us. We just essentially wanted to make every interaction as positive as could be with whoever it was and not necessarily enter a, you know, one of these. Enter a practice at lunchtime looking to make a sale. That was never the case. It was always a case of just making the other person feel good, being authentic and doing everything you can to delight them. Over time, that compounds and suddenly, you know, once you’ve done that enough times, they start talking to their peers, etcetera. It’s always going to sound better coming from, you know, recommendations as opposed to from the rep themselves. So once you’ve built up that that compounding effect, the sale was done most of the time before, you’ve already gone into the meeting. So you’re not, you know, actively looking to sell. Then it does become an educational thing that just comes with reputation, I guess.

Yeah, but if you had to put it down in one word, what’s the magic of Brian? What is it?

Going above and beyond for every customer. I know everyone says it, but genuinely that is what it was. Speed of replies.

So that means fixing things when things go wrong.

Is that fixing things when things go wrong? Being proactive. Speed of responses. If someone’s expecting to have something fixed, then fixing it quickly, but then also giving them something extra on top. Just surprising people with with the way that you operate and just being differentiated, I guess, from the way that other companies handle things. And over time that adds up.

Yeah. So then, okay, you decided you had enough of going around selling loops to people and you went more towards the note side. What do you call that product line?

Tap tap.

Notes. Tap notes. Tap. Yes. So just describe to anyone who’s listening what tap notes is and what it’s actually part of a bigger project by Bryant. Right.

Sure, sure. I think how it all it all came about is fundamentally, you know, we’d met a lot of dentists, many thousand at this point, face to face. And us being clinicians ourselves, we can intimately understand the day to day lives of a lot of clinicians. And we realised that just magnification and posture are very, very small problems that clinicians face speaking to them 1 to 1, a number, a number of times we realised that there are much more pressing issues and we want to position ourselves as problem solvers within the profession. And that’s kind of where this whole software project was born. So we were looking at what are the problems that dentists face in clinic. And those are things like litigation. A lot of time spent on admin note taking, etcetera, stock level management within practices, auditing, all of the stuff that’s not fun for anyone, but you have to do it as part of running a dental practice. So we thought, let’s start on the journey of trying trying to, you know, to tackle that head on. So part one of a number of softwares is tap note. And this is what we thought was the most pressing issue, which is dentists spending a lot of time on record keeping on and on notes and then also not being protected from a litigation standpoint.

So they’re spending a lot of time in practice at the end of the day, not getting home on time and then also worrying about and and being stressed about their record keeping, if anything, were to crop up. So we’ve essentially built an AI tool which allows dentists to click buttons, click diagrams. And in fact, because it’s all protocolized, the nurse can click buttons, click diagrams as you’re in the appointment, and by the end of the appointment, the AI will automatically generate tailored notes for that patient, linking symptoms to diagnoses and linking certain medical history factors to prognosis of treatments, etcetera. So it’s super tailored, super refined for that patient. So it’s not a template approach. And then it also generates consent forms and referral letters and gives analytics to practice owners. So they can do auditing in one button as opposed to poor practice manager having to sit there once every quarter and and go through, you know, multiple notes. So we want to eliminate admin with tap note. And then going forwards, it’s essentially us dipping our toes into software.

And off the back of tap will then build out the others. So one of which is stock room which is essentially our solution for stock level management in the practice. So like Amazon Fresh where you can walk in and walk out of the store and it automatically tells you what you’ve taken and bought and charges you just like that. With RFID gateway technology, we want for practices to be able to track automatically all of their inventory. So when a delivery man walks through the front door of your practice on a Monday morning carrying X boxes of composite X boxes of ET Cetera, just by walking through the gateway, it automatically logs it on the software, and it will tell you exactly what you have in each room in the practice, what your usage rates are per associate, per, you know, time period, etcetera, when your expiry dates are and then automatically reorder the correct amount that you need at the best price, because we’ll have network effects and group buys at that point. So that’s kind of what we’re looking to do there. And then the third part will be a integrated practice management software tying all all of the bits together.

So who’s in charge of the software side of the business.

Priyam. Priyam. So the way the company is structured really is you have Connor who does the hardware. So all of the loops, light systems, the materials, heaters, chair etcetera, that’s all Connor’s baby. And then the software side of things is, is Priyam.

So I mean who’s who’s who, who are the techies, who are the engineers. Yeah we’ve got many of them are there. I’ve got a team of developers.

So I think when we were building it all out there was a team of 10 to 15 and now it’s more maintenance and small changes. So that’s that’s much less.

So if I’m understanding correctly, I mean, the difference between tap notes and kiroku that we had, we had Hannah from Kiroku on here. Yeah. Is that from what you just said is that it actually has. Sort of an actual I not it’s not it’s not a database of notes.

That’s the idea.

Is that right?

Yeah, that’s the idea. So we’ve we’ve tackled it essentially we’re trying to save the same problem as Kiroku with with the tap note offering. We want to save clinicians time and also protect them from, from a litigation standpoint, same same use case. But we’ve tackled it in a different way. So we’ve gone back to front. So rather than taking templates and making them into buttons, we’ve built a neural network inputted with all of the latest clinical information and clinical guidelines etcetera, so that when inputs are clicked, it will then everything is linked together. So then symptoms will link to suggested special tests that you should be doing that which will then link to what your diagnoses should be there for your further discussion in treatment plan, etcetera. And with these neural network neural networks, they’re self reinforcing. So over time we’ll be able to accurately predict if a patient comes in with X situation then this, this, this, and this is what is most likely needed to be done and required. And that way we can act as an AI assistant or an AI crutch for clinicians basically.

Yeah, but kind of put some meat on the bones. Give an example of that. Patient comes in with pain. It could be an RCT it needs. It could be like that. Is that what you mean.

Yeah. So patient comes in with certain pain whatever that is. If we go through Socrates dull, achy, throbbing pain. Et cetera. Et cetera. Yeah. And as you go through the record, it then suggests. Okay, because you’ve got symptoms of x, y, z. Therefore, you should be doing all of these special tests on in these locations. And the results of the special tests are x, y, z. And therefore the most likely diagnosis is this and this and this. Because oftentimes I mean, we we often hear the saying that, you know, if you give a certain patient to ten different clinicians, you might get ten different treatment plans, but the diagnoses should all be the same. But unfortunately that isn’t the case. There is a lot of, you know, we’re up against it. We’ve got time pressure. We we might not have a protocol in place. We might not be up to date with the latest guidelines, and therefore we can often misdiagnose and not be as accurate with with what we’re doing as we’d like to be. So this just sets a protocol. So no matter how short your appointment times are, it tells you, okay, you need to follow this step, this step, this step, this step to make sure that all bases are covered. Because the knowledge is there. And we’ve been through dental school. We understand these things, but it’s very easy to forget. And it’s very easy to miss things out when you’re in a high pressure, high paced environment. So we’re essentially trying to tackle that with this tool.

But okay. But what I’m not fully understanding, dude, is is it a time saving tool primarily, or is it literally going to help me with diagnosis? Or is it is is that in the future it’ll be it’ll be a diagnosis that fiend. And right now it’s the time savings to.

This is something that is to be honest, both of these things are value adds of using the software. But it depends from clinician to clinician what the main use case for them is. If it’s a time thing, great, which is probably the slightly more experienced clinicians, because for them, you know, they understand these things. They’ve got experience. They’ve seen it inside out multiple times. But for new graduates like myself or younger dentists who might not be confident in as many domains, for them it’s it’s almost an educational tool or a reinforcement that what they’re doing is correct. Or if it’s not correct, then how to put it right. So therefore they feel more confident in their clinical protocols basically.

So now, now that you’re a PhD, you’re working five days a week or one day a week as the when are you when are you spending time on this? In the evenings and weekends.

Evenings and weekends. That’s right.

So you’re not you’re not involved in the sales part of this or do you make evening appointments with people?

And I do I do a little bit of.

That online appointments.

Yeah online appointments. But we have I’ve got a team now who handle that. Once demand has grown quite a lot. It’s too much for myself and a couple of people to to handle. So I’ve got a small team running the sales operation and then we, we spend a lot of time also talking to customers and discussing feedback with developers to then guide the way that we develop the product, as is the case with all software products, really, if you’re doing it right.

So you do the sprints and. Yeah, exactly. But then let’s say I don’t know what the situation is with Tom. Let’s say he’s he’s not doing dentistry, is he not.

He’s not practising at the moment. No.

Yeah. So, so he’s he’s available five days a week and you’re only available in the evenings. What pressure is there on you to do dentistry or come do more time at I don’t mean pressure by by by Connor and Priam I mean which way are you being pulled?

The reason I did my foundation year really, was because then it buys me a year to not have to to make that decision. I think up until this point in my life, there’s been very little opportunity cost because I’ve been at Dental school. So it’s, you know, it’s simple, just, you know, graduate, get as much knowledge as you can. Off you go. And this is supplementary with that. And we’re now getting to the point by the end of my year where I need to make a decision in which direction I’m going to go. Is that kind of what you’re alluding to with your question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s something I’ve toyed with for quite a while and something that I haven’t necessarily got clarity on just yet. However, I’ve broken down, you know, my blueprint for the next 12 months and what it is that I need to execute on. And my job, really, I don’t want to overthink things is just to execute on these steps in this time period. And at the end of the end of that year, I can make the decision. So I haven’t got a straight answer for you because I don’t want to commit either way just yet. This buys me a year to see number one where how do I develop? What is my skill set turn into? And secondly, what happens with with the company and the trajectory and then also with my clinical career within dentistry, what doors do I unlock and then I can make a decision.

Because when the last time I saw you, we were speaking about America. American exams. And and although, you know, don’t know, you might be the kind of cat who says, I’m going to just do my American bit because just to have that door open to me, but to me, someone who wants to to to pass, you know, to become a dentist in America is someone who’s going to go into clinical dentistry.

Um, yes and no. I think more than, you know, just passing the exams and then going to America to become a clinical dentist. For me, it just unlocks another geography and the opportunities associated with that. Once you’ve got the, you know, the or whatever route your mechanism, you decide to get into the states. Now the whole world is open and you’re not going to be limited. And to be honest, the the opportunity, sorry, the cost of that is pretty low. All it takes is a bit of hard work and a bit of elbow grease over the next couple of months to get that done and over the line. So it doesn’t really cost me anything to to to spend the time to do that.

So you’re actually saying that you’re open to going and becoming eventually a 100% clinical dentist? I just don’t see it, dude.

No, no. 100% clinical. I know for a fact that’s not going to be it. I think the great thing about dentistry is you can have impacts both upstream and downstream. So your downstream impact will come from your clinical work, your surgical work, etcetera. And there’s probably nothing more fulfilling than actually delivering that. But at the same time, you can scale a business, own multiple practices, clinics, etcetera, and have impacted a slightly more upstream and broader. So for me, the idea wouldn’t be to go to America to just become a wet finger clinician. And that’s that’s all I do. It just unlocks the opportunity for me to if I want to build a group of practices, I can now go and do that in the States as well. And I don’t need to make that decision now. It costs me nothing to to just keep that door open.

I mean, the sort of the flexibility you alluded to in dentistry is definitely a you know, it’s definitely true. Yeah. And having, you know, having danced on this particular needle myself, I can let you know that when you’re mixing, you’re going to be mixing it for a while. Surely when you’re mixing it two days clinical and 3 or 4 days non-clinical is a good mix. It’s a good mix. Two days clinical is kind of, you know, you’re doing enough dentistry to be, you know, wet fingered. Three days clinical is just hard work. It’s just you’re more dentist than you are anything else because it’s three days, you know what I mean? It really is that. And one day clinical definitely isn’t enough. In my experience, I did it. I did it for a long time. It was a big error. It’s demotivating in its own self. So, you know, maybe that will be the way that in the early days you’ll be in that sort of phase of mixing clinical with non clinical.

That’s that’s definitely how I envisage it for now the next couple of years, I think early on in your career is probably where you develop the most clinically. You probably learn the most in those few early years and don’t want to sacrifice that time because I actually do enjoy clinical dentistry quite a bit. So I’m trying to front load that as much as possible. And I know it’s, you know, it’s tricky too. I think with, with clinical dentistry you just need experience. At the end of the day, you need to put the reps in. No matter how much you study or learn up front, it’s very difficult to condense that time period in any substantial way and recognise that. So I want to spend time on my clinical dentistry, but then also keep the appetite and develop the skill stack in other domains as well. So then when it is time to go, both options are open and both will complement each other. If I mean at the end of the day, if you want to run a group of clinics, then it can only be a positive thing to be clinically competent or you know, as best as you can be anyway. Yeah.

But so what are you saying? You haven’t decided whether you want to run a group of clinics or whether you want to do the supply side or both, or neither. You don’t know.

I don’t know for sure. I don’t know for sure. If I had complete clarity, it’d be it’d be pretty easy to just point the gun and execute. Up until this point in my life, I’ve always known what it is I’m working towards, and it’s just a case of executing on the steps to get there. This is why right now is a different territory for me, because I’ve never really been in this position where I haven’t exactly figured out what that trajectory or what the right path to take is, but which is, you know, for now, all it takes is hard work to to keep all of those doors open when I get clarity, execute, job done. No doors are closed. Let’s do it.

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know why I’m expecting you to have the answers to this question. These are difficult questions, man. And the reason is you’ve gotten yourself to a position that that gives you these choices when you’re thinking about the future. As far as Bryant, how wed are you to it? I mean, we’ve got we said you’re a partner. And so I guess there are some financial implications to that. But but how ready are you to it? I mean can you, can you envisage yourself doing a different thing altogether? Nothing to do with Bryant or.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the guys are quite, quite open and quite, you know, understanding. They know that at the end of the day, this is their baby and they’ve sacrificed more. And you know, for, for the, for the rest of us, of course, we’ve sacrificed a lot, but nowhere near as much as them. And we need to, you know, at some point do our own thing and build our own company or whatever it is. We have our own journeys. I’ve always been up front with them and said, look, from day one, this for me is an opportunity to learn. It’s a it’s a playground really to to try things out and, and learn a lot of skills with very little downside. And they’ve been quite, quite open and quite facilitating with that. At the end of the day, you know, they know what kind of people we are and they know that we’re not going to be involved with something or tied to one thing for our whole lives, or at least for a very long time. And it’s I mean, that’s that’s that’s the thing with great leadership, isn’t it? You’re not going to restrict people that work with you. You want to facilitate whatever it is that they want to do. And therefore there’s a mutual value add.

For sure, for sure. And. It’s it’s been an impressive journey to. But I want to get to the darker side of this board. I want to talk about errors. And I know it’s a bit bit unfair because clinically you haven’t had much time to make errors. But we I made some errors in dental school. And in the spirit of the pod, let’s discuss errors.

Yeah I think. I’ve. Endodontics has been tricky for me. I’ve. I’ve perforated while at dental school, but that’s to be expected. Is it?

But is it, is it because I perforated in dental school? But does everyone perforate in dental school?

I think not necessarily just perforating, but you are going to make mistakes at some point, right? That’s part and parcel of it. Yeah. I think maybe being a little bit gung ho, trying to do things on my own, which has served me well in some aspects, but some aspects of life. But when it comes to, to clinical practice, of course you need to be a bit more careful. So in fourth year or whatever it was, I should have been stopping at every single stage, etcetera. And these things happen. But you learn the main thing is you learn your lesson and from that point onwards you know, you don’t make the same mistakes.

What about, you know, a loop spaced error? What comes to mind when I say that mistakes you’ve made on the road?

Or I think once I sent a case of loops in an Uber to one of the other reps, and then the Uber driver went went driving around the city. So we had to to chase him and get that back. So that could have been pretty costly. Other than that really, it’s just been technical things. So maybe my first couple of customers, the measurements weren’t correct. And then I go back, be open and honest about it, say, look, you know, I messed this up, this up, this up. Let’s remake it for you. Let’s get this right. Et cetera. Et cetera. So it’s always been slight technical things that, you know, that’s part of learning. I’m quite lucky in that I don’t think I’ve made any huge mistakes in terms of decision making or strategy so far with how I’ve conducted my life, but who knows? Those those are, I guess they’re all those are all coming at some point.

But I’m still not, you know, I’m still not happy.

I don’t know what.

A darkest day, a darkest day you must have had. What’s been the darkest day in the last 24 years? 24. Is it.

23? Oh. Darkest day. I’d say the one that hits best life. The one that. No, no, the one that hit me the hardest. It sounds quite trivial, but in year 11, the first game of the hockey season, not being selected for the first 11, that hit me quite hard because I always thought I was pretty good. But then from, you know, one game later I was back in the squad and that was sorted. But, you know, to be honest, I’m interested.

I’m interested in, you know, you said you and your brother competitive. Yeah. And and the benefits of competitiveness are kind of obvious. But the downside of being very competitive, you know, like what you just said, not being selected for the team destroyed you somewhat. Yeah. So that or or being a bad loser like we all lose in life, don’t we? We all lose somewhere.

Yeah. Well I think losing.

Somewhere with that.

Losing my brother consistently over many, many years is you.

Lose. You know what I mean? The downside of being competitive, what relationships got you.

I’d think relationships, friendships and your personal life can take a toll quite a bit because you’re you’re not always in the room. You’re in the room, but your mind’s not. And you’re living inside your head quite a bit can be quite taxing. My brother and I, maybe when we were growing up throughout school, had an extremely competitive relationship, but not a healthy one. It was not a supportive one. We weren’t, you know, we weren’t growing together. We were always trying to outdo each other. But then once we went to once I went to university, it completely flipped. And now we’re the closest of friends and it’s awesome. I think it’s really, really good. And I’m very, very grateful for that relationship. But I think to answer your question, you know, you probably felt the same thing when you’re getting you’re getting enlightened off the ground. It’s very difficult to not be completely consumed by it and that to take over your life in all areas. And a lot of my close friends, they do sit me down and tell me, look, you’re here, we’re having a conversation, but you’re not here. Snap out of it. Come on. And that’s something I need to work on for sure.

Yeah, that definitely happens to me when during during a phase of innovation. And you guys are constantly innovative innovation. So it’s one of those things it doesn’t I’m sure it’s the same with, you know, people who are doing fantastically well or people not doing fantastically well, or anyone when you’re doing when you’re making something new and you’re bringing something new out, you have to be completely obsessed by it. Yeah. Otherwise you just won’t do the damn thing. It’s so hard that you won’t do it.

Yeah, no, I think I’ve listened to a lot of your pods. And you always talk about, you know, execution is the most important part, right? But the execution is the most difficult part. Anyone can can have an idea. And to get something over the line, you need to be. 100% in until that is delivered on, and 100% of anything means that everything else becomes neglected. And that’s something that you need to come to terms with and agree with, I guess.

And you know, before we were talking about talking to dentists and sales and you were saying, you know, knowing you have the best product, but everyone doesn’t have the best product. You know, there’s some guy selling his product based on, you know. Priceless a or someone else’s based on just just habit. And you know, it’s that thing of having being able to say, I’m selling the best product. It’s a nightmare to deliver that, isn’t it? 100%.

100%. Yeah. But then. But then at the same time, I think if you can very definitively define what your USP is, fine. If quality is the main thing, then yes, you need to have the best product. But then if your main thing is, you know, we can outcompete anyone else on price, great. Or if your main thing is we have a certain feature which to you may supersede everything else in terms of importance, then this is what we have. And I think the main thing is you’re not trying to sell to everyone. The people that recognise what you have is going to suit their needs the best. Then great. You just need to deliver value to the people for whom it’s appreciated. I mean, recently I’ve been reading Blue Ocean Strategy, which is. I’m not sure if you’ve read it, but it’s.

I’ve been reading it recently.

Excellent. Great book, great book.

And it’s lovely.

It’s all about competing on a completely different axis to everyone else and therefore making competition, you know, irrelevant. And I completely agree. I mean, if you’ve got a nice green field opportunity then it sounds it’s great. It’s great. You can just focus on doing what you do best for the people that you’re trying to serve as opposed to, as opposed to outdoing your adversary.

It’s been a massive pleasure, man. It’s been a massive pleasure having you. I’m. It’s funny. It’s funny man. Every time I talk to you, it’s just so easy to talk to you because. Because you’re very, very, very articulate at your young age. Where did you get that, man?

Uh, repetitions. I think I’m speaking to a lot of dentists over two years. Three years or so.

Does it not predate the dentist? I think always I think.

I’ve always been relatively articulate, but probably wasn’t that confident in many social interactions. I was quite an anxious kid always. I was always doing a lot, but I was maybe not as confident in myself as I am now. I guess that’s part of growing up, right? But I think in my school there were a lot of articulate peers, a lot of articulate teachers. We were always presenting, doing, doing things like that. And that builds the baseline competence. And then over time, as you build the confidence and you get the reps in, it’s like anything in life, you do enough of something and you’re in the right in the right areas and you observe it a lot. Then it starts filtering into the way that you operate.

Yeah, I find it strange that you’re saying that now that you weren’t confident because you seem like I suppose not. No one was ever confident from day one. But I think your parents have done a wonderful job, because instilling confidence in your kid without instilling arrogance is a massive, massive achievement. And you really have that. It’s a lovely thing. Let’s get to the final questions, buddy. Which one do you want first? Is an avid listener. Are you looking for the Prav? The Prav, the Prav? But let’s start with the P because it’s less deep. Okay. Fantasy dinner party three guests, dead or alive. Who would you have?

Number one is Roger Federer. I think to compete at a high level and to be at the pinnacle of such a competitive environment for a consistent period of time for so long is is exceptional. And I think you need to be wired a certain way to constantly demand standards of yourself over such a sustained period of time. And I think there’s a lot of lessons to learn from him. How did he keep that fire going? All the time? Because we all get it in sprints, right? We all have motivation at times, and then sometimes we don’t. But to compete at that level, you need to constantly be on and that has to be systemised, I think. Yes, there are characteristics, but he’s definitely done something or his team have done something with him to maintain that. So I think there will be a lot to learn from someone like him. Secondly, isn’t isn’t.

Federer famous for being a boring guy? I might be wrong. I don’t know.

Never met him. Never met him?

No, I’ve got no idea, dude. I’m not. I’m not exactly a sports fan, but something in me. Maybe it’s just. I’ve got some sort of thing about his face. Go ahead, go ahead. Who? Who else?

Um. No, I’d say the second one would be Bill Clinton. I think the thing with the thing with Bill Clinton is that we probably everyone’s heard it, but he has this innate ability to to make everyone that he meets feel like $1 million. And again, that is something which I think is such a superpower. To be able to build people up like that is great. I mean, we hear about this, they call it this reality distortion field and how he makes every person that he meets feel like they are the most important person in the universe at that point in time, and it’d be great to see how he does that. It’ll be awesome.

I read a book. Maybe we probably read the same book, but it was talking about the guy was going around with Clinton on the campaign trail or whatever, and he was saying, literally, the guy who opens the door for him, he makes you feel like $1 million, genuinely.

It’s awesome. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Yeah. See, that’s not a boring guess. Well done.

Gotta have a mix. Maybe he can get something out of Federer. Right.

Yeah. Who’s your third?

Third would be, at the moment someone I’ve been super, super in awe of and impressed with in terms of execution is is Will Ahmed of the CEO of, CEO and founder of Woop. It’s a crowded space, you know, health care and wearable technology. But the way he’s been able to outcompete his his competition in an environment which was so, you know, it was already quite well established with with other companies Garmin. Aura et cetera. He’s done it in such an organic way where he’s really leaned into, you know, community building with users, etcetera, etcetera. And who knows, maybe his tech might be the best. Probably. Probably not. But the the way that he’s been able to create virality, again, learning how he’s done that in a systematic way would be very useful in my opinion.

Yeah, I’ve heard good stories about him as well. Um, young as well? No. Like really young.

Very young. Think he’s 30 something, isn’t he?

Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah.

Let’s get to practice. It’s weird last day on the planet for someone your age, but last day on the planet. Surrounded by your friends and family. Three pieces of advice you would leave for them.

Number one, I’d say don’t drive with the brakes on. And what I mean by that is don’t limit yourself with negative thinking or the fear of not knowing what you’re getting into or not. Not believing you can actually deliver on something or achieve something. I think it’s always better to do things and figure it out that way, because you’ll always regret the things that you don’t do as opposed to things that you do do and that go wrong. So I think having an action bias would be would be the first one.

Um.

Secondly, I would say again, going back to Bill Clinton is build people up around you, take people with you on whatever journey it is that you’re on and try and, you know, play positive sum games where everyone around you wins and you win as well. It’s not at the expense of anyone. So don’t be selfish. Share and make people feel good and add value for them. And then finally I’d say to to try and be present, which is something that I need to figure out myself. So maybe this is me talking to myself. So try and be present and live out. Live outside of your own head. Don’t be, you know, always occupied with the future and have anxiety about what’s going on. And also don’t regret what you have done. Just trust your gut and back your convictions and have faith in the process.

Again. Wise words from a young man. Wise words from it really is bad. You’ve really got an older head on your shoulder. But it’s nice to hear that, man. Action bias build people up. Was the third one. Trust your instincts.

Trust your instincts and be present.

Be present, be present. Yeah. You know, it’s a funny thing here because this this preface question, it’s kind of like some people answer it in a sort of, okay, be kind, because I’ve found being kind is really, really useful thing to be, let’s say. Yeah, but then some people answer it in the way you answered. Your third one is kind of the the thing I wish I had done, which I haven’t done so far, sort of thing. Um, which is, which is interesting. It’s an interesting thing, buddy. Thank you so much for doing this. I think I want to check in with you again, as the guy who suggested you want to be on the pod in your second year of dental school. You deserve a second bite at this. But in in, you know, a couple of years time, I’d be very interested to see where you’re at, buddy. So thanks a lot for taking the time to do this.

Thanks for having me. Much appreciated. Thank you very 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.

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