Speaker1: On Christmas Eve, we learned that Lewis Mackenzie had been taken from us. We saw it only fit to replay his episode with a foreword from one of his many, many students, Dipesh Parmar. Louis, may your caring. Clever, kind soul. [00:00:30] Rest in peace.

Speaker2: Ladies and gentlemen, friends and listeners. It is with profound sadness that we inform you of the passing of a dear soul, a cherished colleague and a friend who left an indelible mark on the world of dentistry. Lewis Mackenzie, a name that resonates with warmth, creativity and [00:01:00] passion has left us leaving a void that can never be filled. I first met Lewis back in 2009, in my fourth year at university, where the magic of shared dreams and aspirations in aesthetic dentistry unfolded. Little did we know that this encounter would spark a connection that transcended professional boundaries, evolving into a bond forged by a mutual love for dentistry that [00:01:30] defined our lives. I will share my beautiful journey with Louis in further detail for you all to enjoy another time. As we replay this podcast, we invite you to join us in celebrating the life of Lewis McKenzie, a visionary whose spirit will forever linger in the corridors of inspiration. His infectious enthusiasm, innovative spirit, and unwavering dedication to the world of aesthetics have left an enduring legacy that will continue [00:02:00] to shape the landscape he so passionately navigated. Through heartfelt stories, shared memories and the echoes of laughter that defined our moments. Together, we aim to honour Louis in the most genuine way possible. Today we remember not only a brilliant professional, but a kind spirit who touched the lives of everyone fortunate enough to know him. So join us as we embark on this emotional journey celebrating the life and legacy of [00:02:30] Louis Mackenzie. May his memory inspire us to pursue our passions with the same commitment and love that defined his remarkable journey. Love you, Louis. Depeche.

Speaker3: But I must admit, without sounding too pious, I do try and sort of keep true to myself. I only talk about things that I use in practice, and I only [00:03:00] talk about things that I know work. Because if I don’t, if I talk about a product that I haven’t got faith in, and then somebody buys that product, uses that product, and then they don’t get the outcomes with it. Again, nobody’s going to listen to me again. And, you know, I’ve been lucky. You know, I’ve never been good enough to work properly with, uh, with enlightened. But, uh.

Speaker4: This [00:03:30] 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.

Speaker1: It gives me great pleasure to welcome Lewis Mackenzie onto the podcast. Lewis is a long time friend and mentor of mine, educator, a general dentist, [00:04:00] now Head of Head, Dental Officer at Denplan. Clinical lecturer at Birmingham and at King’s and General. Uh general. Good guy on the lecture circuit. Someone who probably is the most entertaining lecturer out there. Every time I’ve seen you lecture Lewis, the crowd’s been in stitches. And in my story, most notably the person who introduced Dipesh Parmar to me. You weren’t quite the person who introduced him, but as soon as I met Dipesh [00:04:30] Palmer, you called me, and, um, we knew each other, I think, from the Manchester MSC where we were supporting that. And, um, you know, Dipesh lectures on our mini smile makeover course. I think, you know, Lewis. Certainly. And I would agree, a once in a generation talent found his start in Birmingham Dental School, where Lewis was putting on hands on days for the students. And, uh, he always mentions you, Lewis, as his [00:05:00] key inspiration. Well, lovely to have you, buddy.

Speaker3: Thank you very much. It’s a very nice, uh, that’s excellent introduction and pretty hard to, uh, pretty hard to live up to, I’m afraid.

Speaker5: Well.

Speaker6: All I can say is we’ve all got a similar haircut, so we’ve got something in common, haven’t we?

Speaker1: Lewis, we’ll get back. We’ll get to the backstory in all of that. Yeah, but just just on that Depeche front. And I was thinking about this. The number of others you must have inspired. I mean, I know a few of them, you know, Millie Morrison, uh, [00:05:30] Liv, um, scorer who you introduced to me. Um, people like, um, a few. I know a few of a few of your graduates. Yeah, but you must be responsible for so much good dentistry coming out there. Do you feel the weight of that when you have a new class? Um.

Speaker3: Not not really. Um, but those those names that those names that you mentioned, um, are sort of extraordinary talents. [00:06:00] I would say, of all the things I’ve done over the years, one sort of, uh, skill that have got is being able to recognise this sort of unique you. I think you said it sort of once in a generation talent. Depeche was definitely the first. And I remember I met him during the final year, uh, in 2009, and I ran a special study module, run it for nine years, and Depeche was the first ever year. And, um. He came on the it came on the course, and [00:06:30] the first exercise I ever got him to do was just some occlusal composites and, um, just to sort of set the set the bar. And when I looked at his composites, I thought. Shit. I’ve got to improve my teaching here. This. This bloke. This bloke is an absolute genius. Um, and and as you say, with Millie and with Liv again, they’ve just got this unique talent, and I’m not sure you can teach it. Um, my, my role really was them. Was just to, you [00:07:00] know, put the materials in their hands and just, uh, just just let them go with it. But, uh, but, yeah, they don’t come along to, to too often. Another one that comes to mind is Richard Lee, uh, who’s just just emigrated to New Zealand, actually. But again, when you when you, when you I think now I’ve done over a thousand hands on courses and so, so you really get you really get a feel for somebody who’s just just way, way out of the ordinary. [00:07:30] But Dipesh was the first for For Definite, and he definitely made me realise I needed to up my game on a teaching point.

Speaker1: And at the time you were, uh, general dentist used to visit the dental school for hands on sexual for. For what was that? Was that what it was?

Speaker3: Uh, yeah, I was a part time lecturer. I started, uh, I’d been in practice for about ten years, and then I’d always had that sort of little itch about doing a bit of teaching. I’d done a couple of courses myself and sort of really enjoyed [00:08:00] them. And yeah, just started doing a Thursday afternoon on clinic, did clinic for many years, probably about 8 or 10 years. But then I found a real passion for phantom head teaching. So I like it because it’s a level level playing field. Everybody’s starting with the same cavity, and you get a really good opportunity to sort of rank the students and identify those who have got weaknesses. And so this special study module that I put on and ran for nine years, Dipesh, as I mentioned, was that was the first year. And um, yeah, [00:08:30] just just really, really enjoyed that sort of aspect of it. But yeah, sort of clinical lecturer is the title. And nowadays I don’t do any, uh, undergrad teaching. It’s just purely post-grad working on the working on the Masters at Birmingham and the Masters and a couple of master’s courses at, uh, at, uh, at King’s. Uh, but I do quite a lot of, um, as you know, hands on courses around the country, uh, all the time.

Speaker6: Anyway, what is it that makes somebody stick out, Louis? Is it is it generally how inquisitive they are? [00:09:00] Is it does it just come down to you, look at the work and think, crap, that looks amazing. How did that happen? What is it that is there a like, if you could bottle that up and put it into a formula, what would it be for these super successful delegates that you’ve had?

Speaker3: I think it’s when they do something that hasn’t been taught. They’ve just got that eye for it, you know? They can just see something, explain something, but then take it to the next level. So one of one of my mentors, Adrian Shorter, we might chat [00:09:30] about him later on. He, uh, he said to me, don’t don’t be upset when your students are better than you are. Take, take, uh, take pleasure and pride in it. The thing is, with people like dips, uh, Millie. Liv. Richard. They were always already better than me before they started, so. But I think it is that just that unique sort of X factor, whatever it is. And if you could bottle it Prav then, then it’d be worth a fortune. But I don’t think you can. I think we can all. I mean, you’ve [00:10:00] only got to look on Instagram and Facebook now to see the, you know, the beautiful, beautiful quality of dentistry that is literally within, within anybody’s grasp. But then you’ll see the others who just take it up to the sort of the next level. I think one of the first contemporary, a couple of contemporaries that I saw of my sort of era were Jason Smithson and Tiff Qureshi, where I just thought, wow, you know, that’s a bit special. And then, I mean, the nice thing about, you know, the people we’ve talked about as well is that they’ve gone on to become really great [00:10:30] teachers as well, because that, for me is an extra skill. You know, there’s plenty of people doing extraordinary dentistry nowadays, which is brilliant, but to be able to communicate that to us mere mortals, I mean, I go to to the enlightened course, I go to Dipesh lectures now, and I’ve got my notebook out because he’s constantly pushing, pushing the boundaries when it comes to teaching and practice, because he’s just got that eye for aesthetics, that eye for colour, uh, which, uh, which which I haven’t got.

Speaker1: It’s interesting [00:11:00] what makes a good dentist and then what makes a good teacher to let’s agree firstly, two different things. You know, there’s, there’s many good dentists who aren’t great teachers. And but I think with I think you gave Dipesh the advice that he shouldn’t go on any composite hands on courses. Um, so that so that all the ideas would be original, you know, his own. He wouldn’t feel like he was taking an idea from someone else or something like that. [00:11:30]

Speaker3: That was that definitely wasn’t me. Sure. That was.

Speaker5: That wasn’t, you know, my my advice is go.

Speaker3: On as many.

Speaker5: Courses.

Speaker3: So yeah, absolutely. There might be.

Speaker5: There might be.

Speaker3: There might be crap courses. Uh, but you will always.

Speaker5: You’ll.

Speaker3: Always pick something up off them. And, and of course he did Chris horse. Course there’s another legend. He did Chris Hughes, uh, year long course. I mean, he was only, in fact, that that was that was actually a really nice sort of bit of feedback that I got [00:12:00] that Chris saw has always had I don’t know what the rules are nowadays, but it used to be you had to be graduated, I think, for at least three years before you could apply to go on Chris’s course. But then he made an exception, unless they’d done the special study module at Birmingham Dental School in their final year. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, so dipesh and, uh, Emily got on their lives, done it as well. And of course, Millie now is one of Chris Christie’s associates, so, uh, he knew what he’s [00:12:30] talking about.

Speaker1: And and the teacher herself. Not in, uh, composite, but more in Invisalign. But but it’s interesting, you know, because we were doing a little series called, um, my mini tip, and we had dentists. I took it for granted. Every dentist has got 1 or 2 tips, you know that. And they probably do. And maybe camera shy at that moment or whatever. But I guess the difference between a teacher and a technician is a teacher has more tips that came from them. [00:13:00] You know, that that things they do slightly differently to the rest of us need teaching.

Speaker3: That’s true. And um, but, um, I think we all fall down the same holes anyway, don’t we? Yeah. As we and that’s how we learn by, uh, by sort of reflecting and I think in the, uh, let me use the, the old days of probably the first of several times this evening, usually it was [00:13:30] sort of ten years or so before you did any sort of postgraduate qualifications. Now, obviously dentists are doing it a lot earlier and, you know, certificates, diplomas, even MSCs, you know, on our MSC course, we’ve had some literally sort of first year, first year graduates. I’m just wonder whether actually doing these courses earlier on, uh, actually reduces the risk of you sort of falling, falling into the regular sort of, uh, pitfalls. Or again, the the old fashioned mantra was you needed to make [00:14:00] a few mistakes and then do the course and then learn basically based on your experience. So I don’t know what it is, but certainly there’s a as you know, there’s a trend for courses a lot earlier nowadays.

Speaker1: Yeah, I think in the US it’s slightly different, you know. When you talk to the academics out there, they haven’t got that mantra of become a generalist first. You know, they some do. By the way. I don’t think it’s a right or wrong. You can’t say one is right and one is wrong. But [00:14:30] but you’re right that the sort of the general thing that people have been saying here is, you know, learn a lot of things first and then go and specialise into one, one area that you like, you know, see what try a lot of things. But I remember when, when I did my elective in the US, that the advice wasn’t that it was it was, you know, as quick as possible try and get into something. And I and I’ve given that advice to a lot of people as well, Louis, you know, because people ask me, hey, what should I do? And my answer is [00:15:00] pick one thing and just run with it. You know, get really, really good at something, you know, um, if you want to if you want to do something, pick, pick one, pick one and go. But you know, you’ve seen so many students come and go. Would you say that specialising these days is a good idea? Or would you say that general practice where you know you’ve thrived Kureishi’s thrived? Crystal was thrived, I guess. Which way, which way would you advise someone to go?

Speaker3: Obviously [00:15:30] down to the individual person. But don’t forget, whatever you choose, you’re going to be doing it for the next 30 to 40 years. So you’ve got to make the right decision. I wouldn’t close, certainly early in your career I wouldn’t close any doors because once it doesn’t take long in dentistry to sort of de-skill, uh, not necessarily de-skill, but lose confidence. And then you’re kind of you’re going down that one little route. And of course, you know, obviously Endo Perio, you can just do that [00:16:00] all day long. But certainly when it comes to sort of aesthetic restorative, is it something that’s going to sustain sustain for for 30 or 40 years? One interesting thing I’ve noticed, talking to a few young dentists and even a few lecturers recently, is is just focusing on front teeth. And which is a bit of a bit of a worrying, worrying, uh, situation when we’ve got, what is it, a year’s missed, uh, missed appointments due to, uh, due [00:16:30] to the pandemic. And obviously 70% of all problems occur on molars, which, uh, they’re not as, uh, they’re not as Instagrammable. But that’s where most of the most of the trouble is. So yeah, it’s a I mean, you must see it a lot on your courses. Um, and of course, it’s lovely dentistry to do, but, uh, is it sort of sustainable for that length of time? Um, I don’t know. Um, certainly just don’t know whether, uh, obviously every restoration is going [00:17:00] to fail. And are these almost sort of, uh, aesthetic cosmetic specialists. Their whole career is going to be about replacement of existing restorations or management of, of, you know, marginal stain and stuff like that. So, uh, it down, down to the individual. But certainly I would say early in your career don’t uh, don’t narrow it down too early, that that would be my advice. Right.

Speaker6: You know what? Um, you what you’ve [00:17:30] just been saying there, Louis. And in terms of how long these restorations, every restorations go into eventually fail, etc., etc., right. There’s there’s two bits of, I guess, information that I’ve received from, from like so Tiff has always pushed the, you know, you don’t really know how good a dentist you are until you’ve seen how long you work lasts. Right. And you’ve got that long terme follow up. And he always talks about his ten, his 15 year, you know, follow ups and he knows how long his dentistry lasts. And funnily enough, I had the opportunity [00:18:00] to interview a guy called Daniel Boozer. I think that’s his name is he’s an implant guy over at the A.D. According to everyone who I spoke to, he’s he’s one of the gods of implant dentistry. Anyway, cut a long story short. When I was interviewing him, I asked him about, you know, what advice he’d give to, you know, new students who were getting into wanting to get into implant dentistry and how would they know how good they are? And he said exactly the same thing as Tiff, that it’s about [00:18:30] this long terme follow up that, you know, he’s got cases. 35 years ago he placed an implant and it’s still stuck there in somebody’s head. And he felt that that was the true measure of somebody who was really good. What do you think are the concerns with all of this? A lot of front teeth, dentistry, composite veneers and things like that. Now, obviously, you know, a lot of the courses are teaching that. And then the longevity of that in terms of, I guess, how long these are going to last, how is [00:19:00] it, um, what’s the easiest way to describe it? Is it a huge problem waiting to unfold and happen when all of these, you know, composite veneers sort of mature in 5 to 6 years time and they need redoing with either more composite or porcelain. And then something you just mentioned, which I hadn’t given any thought to, is that are these dentists de-skilling by just focusing on that?

Speaker3: Really good questions. Just to sort of start at the beginning [00:19:30] of that, um, you made a really good point about the longevity. I’ve, I’ve worked in only one practice, the same practice for 30, 31 years. Wow. So so you know what works? But equally, you know what doesn’t work. Yeah. We’re in the kind of the infancy with composite veneers at the moment. Obviously the materials have come along massively again. Uh, advertising payments wonders here. When I started using enamel, really, that was the first time composite [00:20:00] veneers actually became a thing for me because of the polish and. Composite versus, uh, versus porcelain. You know, we could do a whole whole hour just on that. Composites got its disadvantages with regard to sort of technique sensitivity with regard to, you know, surface lustre. That’s that’s where enamel works, because obviously it’s a micro fill. It keeps it it keeps it shine. But the way that aesthetics restorations usually fail where they’re direct or indirect [00:20:30] is usually marginal stain. They don’t usually they don’t usually drop off certain materials. They will composite materials. They will lose their surface lustre. So it will be interesting to see, exactly as you say, Prav a few years down the line. Payman remember exactly the same thing happened in the 90s with the, uh, with, with porcelain veneers, where that was very much, you know, that was very much the, uh, the thing, uh, the thing to do. All the courses were based, were based around that. And then, you know, if you choose the wrong [00:21:00] patient, if you if you’re not bonding to enamel, uh, again, people, people came unstuck and I think probably moved away from that.

Speaker3: But, um, you know, either restoration, if it’s done well, it is going to last for years. But again, you also make a very good point that doing dentistry for the second time is, is is a challenge because you’ve got to you’ve got to take it off and you know, when you’re cutting, whether it’s ceramic, whether it’s composite. Are you in material? Uh, are you in dentine. Are you in enamel [00:21:30] bonding resin. So, yeah, it’s a real it’s a real challenge. So but I would say just to add to that, the foundation of skill with not necessarily young dentists is some amazing, stunning older dentists as well. With composite, it’s because the foundation of skill I don’t think really we know yet. You know, they might just literally just need repolishing. I know I’ve got I’ve got enamel cases where where the composite veneers still again, as you say in my latest [00:22:00] anterior composite lecture, I’ve got a enamel veneer at at ten years. Tiny bit of marginal stain, still shiny. Absolutely. Never been repolished at all. Uh, so, uh, I think now, because they’ve got the skills, you’ve got the, you know, the bonding techniques, you’ve got the material technology, they’re going to last longer. And of course, as every generation goes, they’re just going to get better and better and better at them. So maybe it will be the the treatment of choice. I know Depeche is sort of now he’s sort [00:22:30] of half and half isn’t he. He loves he loves composite obviously, but I’ve seen him lecturing more and more on ceramics.

Speaker5: Now, do.

Speaker6: You know when you talk about restorations lasting? So the purpose of which let’s say somebody has a composite veneer is less functional and protective and more cosmetic when you refer to them lasting. Do you mean just staying intact or do you mean lasting in a, in a cosmetic way?

Speaker3: Yeah. And they’re not going to fall [00:23:00] off. You know, you might get a little bit of chipping, but of course that’s that’s easy to repair. But yeah, it’s really a patient factor. Is the patient still happy with them. And and I think that I think that’s the main thing. And that would that would probably drive the replacement. Yeah. They’re not they’re not going to drop off if they’re bonded to enamel. I think Trevor Burks uh, he did this massive study, millions of restorations that had been done on the NHS and, and labial only veneers came out tops. They last longer than any other restoration [00:23:30] in dentistry. So they’re not going to fall off if they’re bonded to enamel. That’s the best bond in dentistry. So they’re going to last. But yeah so it’s going to be cosmetic. It’s going to be cosmetic failure before before anything else.

Speaker1: Which which year did you qualify Louis.

Speaker3: Uh 1990 uh graduated with a with a marvellous four for four years and one time course. Payman. Uh, not not this five year.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Speaker1: The good old course. Yeah. And, um, so, so. Okay, I was, I was going [00:24:00] to say you’re not old enough. Right. But but when did like your composite come.

Speaker3: Well, like, Kieran’s been around I think since the, since the, uh, on the first composites that was out. I’m trying to think I’ve actually got a picture of Trevor Burke with with one of the original curing lights. It was probably, I would say probably the 70s. Don’t know for certain.

Speaker1: We had Wilson on the, on the podcast and he was talking about when they were developing it with AISI and it was. Yeah, it was one, [00:24:30] one shade only. That’s right.

Speaker3: Yeah, yeah. So yeah. And then there was occlusion, of course, the first composites, you had to mix yourself and there was no polymerisation shrinkage issues because you had so much air in them that the material just didn’t cause any problems. Uh, but yeah, so, so light curing really sort of, you know, probably sort of 70s, it sort of kicked off.

Speaker5: But you, you know.

Speaker1: People like to say that the current day dentists, I mean, even outside of Covid, that, you know, the newer, [00:25:00] younger generation don’t have the skills that, let’s say, our generation had because they didn’t they don’t drill enough teeth. Do you have another side to that story that says they’re a lot better than us because of whatever other, you know, whatever other thing they do have that we didn’t have, you know, like they get taught patient management or, you know, what are they being taught while we were drilling teeth?

Speaker3: Well, I think it goes further back than that. They’re just really, really clever. I mean, I mean, you know, how many, how [00:25:30] many, right? Yeah. I’m going to know when I, uh, it was, it was a B uh, it was a B and two C’s to get into dentistry in 1986, I smashed that with the two B’s and two C’s. Uh.

Speaker5: Uh, it was, uh.

Speaker3: In those days, you buy three, you get one free with general studies.

Speaker5: So.

Speaker3: So yeah, I mean, they’re super intelligent. You’re absolutely right about the undergraduate experience that, you know, they’re going to do a lot less than they did with [00:26:00] regard to everything, you know, particularly amalgam skills. You know, some dental schools they’ll almost do non um extractions again depending on where uh depending on that though.

Speaker5: Why is that.

Speaker1: Because there aren’t enough patients to have their teeth extracted.

Speaker3: Just I mean we, we work uh Birmingham’s fluoridated. So, uh, even back then, you know, my oral surgery experience was, was very limited. And so, you know, I had to, you know, sort of learn those skills kind of on the job, uh, because, uh, are you are you. [00:26:30]

Speaker1: Birmingham born and bred? Were you born in Birmingham, Staffordshire?

Speaker3: I’ve my my quest through life has taken me about 25 miles. Uh, from, from from Staffordshire. Uh, I went to Birmingham Dental School because it was the only place that gave me an offer. Um, Birmingham at the time.

Speaker5: Why?

Speaker1: Dentistry did.

Speaker3: Oh. Well, uh, now, you have asked a good question now, and I had to actually do some research for this because I always was certain that I was 11. I was 11 when I decided I wanted to be a dentist. [00:27:00] Uh, and I was absolutely certain I could remember where I was sitting in a science class, who I was sitting next to my mate Dean. But my aunty has always, always said, no, you are much younger than that. And so I thought, no, no, she’s making this up. And, uh, but then I went up to see one of my uncles in the Lake District, and I asked him about this, and he’s in his 90s, and he said, no, no, you’re about six. So then I went back to my aunty and said, come on, tell me this story. And she said, do you? Yep. I remember you’re in the car. And I said to you, [00:27:30] uh, what you’re going to be when you’re older, how about being a doctor when you can look up, look after your Aunty Lillian? When, uh, when she’s old? I said, uh, and apparently I said to her, no, I’m not going to be a doctor. I’m going to be a dentist. And I was standing up in the back of a Fiat one, two seven. So, uh, so, uh, no seatbelts in those days, and obviously so I couldn’t have been very tall. So, yeah, I think I was about six, so I decided I wanted to be a dentist. I have absolutely no idea why I never I [00:28:00] never changed my mind. Uh, I remember when I went to careers day and I told the careers adviser that I wanted to be a dentist. And her advice to me was, you don’t want to be a dentist. That’s a terrible job. Then when it came to A-levels in those days, you had to fill in, fill in a different form for a polytechnic.

Speaker5: And.

Speaker3: Yeah, precast precast form. So is Ucas and PCAs. It’s all on one form now and I refuse to fill in the, you know, the, the whatever it [00:28:30] was going to be whether suggesting pharm pharmacy or something like that. Uh, and um so I refused to fill it in. I only wanted to be a dentist, but I don’t know why, and I’m just glad I chose, uh, you know, chose a career that’s worked out for me.

Speaker1: What did your parents do?

Speaker3: Um, my dad, uh, was was a draughtsman, and my mom was, uh, she was, well, her final job, she did lots of sort of secretarial jobs. Her final job, uh, they’re both passed away, unfortunately. Uh, but a final [00:29:00] job was the one she really loved. And she was, uh, she was a medical secretary. That was that was the the last job that she did. But my parents, uh, in fact, I was the first person to go to to uni in my, in my family. Uh, so there was.

Speaker5: So, so is.

Speaker1: There, is there a, you know, like how the that that part of the country was very industrial and, you know, our stories in your, in your family about the Black Country and, you know, everything, everything that goes with that. And did you sort of see that change in the area?

Speaker3: You’re such [00:29:30] a Londoner. You’re such a Londoner. Uh.

Speaker5: It’s abortion and abortion.

Speaker3: Staffordshire’s nowhere stuff. It’s just north of Birmingham, not how is it? So, um.

Speaker5: I was so.

Speaker1: Romantic about this story. Like your granddad worked in the mines, and then you.

Speaker5: Know, my granddad, my granddad.

Speaker3: We all going back now? My. I had a granddad. This is on my dad’s side. And my granddad from the Isle of Skye. No. Isle of Lewis [00:30:00] and my grandma from the Isle of Skye. They both left to find work to go to Glasgow. And then once they’d sort of become a couple, they walked to Liverpool to, uh, to find a job. So my, my grandfather on my dad’s side, who I never met, was an engineer by by training. So that.

Speaker1: Scottish.

Speaker3: Uh. My dad’s. No, my dad was born in. My dad was born in Liverpool. So my my grandparents are Scottish and my on my mom’s side, they’re more sort of Midlands based, [00:30:30] more sort of Brummie Brummies, but writing proper Birmingham.

Speaker1: Yeah. So if you, if you were an Indian, they’d say you’re Scottish because you know, you’re Scottish, you’re a Scottish guy like.

Speaker5: I’ve got, I’ve got Scottish, uh.

Speaker3: I’ve got Scottish ancestors. Uh, so uh, but, and I’ve got loads of Scottish relatives, loads of uh, loads of aunties and uncles and, and cousins.

Speaker5: What were you like.

Speaker1: What were you like as [00:31:00] a dental student? Were you really into it or.

Speaker5: I really was. Yeah.

Speaker3: Yeah, yeah, I really was. Uh, yeah, I kind of liked it straight away. I mean, I must admit it was pretty tough at dental school. We were lucky, actually, that we’d, uh, that had just been a sort of a change in sort of management, if you like. Uh, Birmingham had always been sort of known as kind of the comms school. I think the comms department at one stage had about 30 members of staff. So when I started, we used to hear the sort [00:31:30] of horror stories from the previous, uh, the previous tutors, uh, one that’s always stuck in my mind. And I sometimes remind the students when, when they’re being a little bit, uh, little bit soft, uh, that, uh, one of the tutors apparently used to say to when he was checking a cavity or something like that, he’d stand over the, uh, with the with the patient and the and the student, and he’d say to the patient, he’d look at the look, he’d look at the in the cavity, and he’d say to the student, I wouldn’t trust you to cut [00:32:00] my lawn.

Speaker5: So, uh.

Speaker3: So fortunately we missed, uh, we missed that sort of, uh, era and, uh, but really fantastic young lecturers at that time, uh, Phil Lumley, basically, you know, God of endodontics. Um, Ian Chappell was a junior lecturer, uh, as, uh, as well. And obviously, you know, they were both my bosses, uh, Phil and, um, uh, Phil and Ian, [00:32:30] uh, and, uh, uh, Trevor Burke came to, to Birmingham as well via, uh, via Manchester and Glasgow and he, he Trevor’s been really instrumental in my career and Damian Warmsley was, uh, was head of, uh, sort of head of prosthetics or fixed removable props. And so we, we were really lucky that we had all these young legends basically wanted to do things differently. And so the teaching we have, uh, interestingly, actually, the there [00:33:00] were a significant number of people in my year who have actually gone back into dental education and, uh, my four and a half years, sorry, four years and one terme, uh, were yeah, I must admit, I really enjoyed it. I think I was one of those lucky students who kind of, on the practical aspects, sort of picked it up straight away.

Speaker3: You know, I’m quite a sort of, uh, you know, it’s like playing with Lego, fixing my bike stuff, stuff like that. So, so I was quite lucky that sort of picked it [00:33:30] up straight away. And of course, in those days, as you’ll remember, play, uh, the course was very practical. Um, now, going back to your other point, I think now there’s so much new stuff that you’ve got to learn with regard to, you know, I mean, there were no posterior composites. Molar endo was kind of in its infancy. And so the course now is so packed that, yeah, the students are doing less practical work than they would have before. But with regard to talent and skills, [00:34:00] I would say, you know, the future is most definitely safe. These these young dentists are going to be awesome. And, uh, and they’re going to take dentistry to the next, to the next level, you know, I hope I can hang around for long enough to, uh, to just to see where it goes. Obviously, the digital revolution is finally has finally arrived. So, yeah, I mean, that is really, really exciting stuff.

Speaker5: I feel like.

Speaker1: The the newer ones, they’ve got more EQ than, than we have sort of more [00:34:30] emotional intelligence at the at the same time though, maybe it’s just they admit to it more. They seem to suffer with more sort of mental health crises and issues. So is that your feeling?

Speaker3: Maybe it’s. It’s an excellent point and obviously there’s loads of evidence to back that up. But I just wonder whether, you know, we all always had those issues, but it was just a case of didn’t.

Speaker5: Talk about it.

Speaker3: Get on with it and suffer and suffer in silence. [00:35:00] And you know, that’s the way of the world. You know, maybe it is the fact that they’re, you know, they’re more sort of, you know, more sort of people of the world. They’ve got access to, you know, everything. You know, when it comes to sort of social media, the internet, obviously the internet didn’t exist. So just maybe they’ve just got a, you know, a better sort of perception about, you know, what’s their part in the world. And obviously there can be a little bit emotional at times and sort of [00:35:30] older sort of dentists that takes a little bit of getting used to. But uh, I think they’re probably going to get a much better life work balance than maybe the dentists of yesteryear did when it was very much sort of, you know, five days a week, full days of NHS dentistry and then, you know, look, sometimes look forward to retirement, which is, you know, you’ve got to enjoy the ride. I would always, uh, I would always advise, um, and whatever you’re doing, uh, just [00:36:00] enjoy your dentistry. And if you’re in a, if you’re in a situation where you’re not enjoying it, do something to to change that.

Speaker1: I mean, there’s there’s a lot of people who aren’t enjoying it. Louis.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Speaker3: Absolutely.

Speaker5: And then at the.

Speaker1: Same time, there’s loads of people who adore it and love it and can’t stop talking about it. And, you know. So what do you reckon is the difference? Do you think the difference is staying engaged and trying to improve the whole time? And why is it some [00:36:30] people are in such a bad state about? And I think the GDC, whatever has, has a role to play. But it’s always been like that even before the, you know, dental law partnership came along, there was some dentists who were really into it and then others who hated their lives. What’s the difference between those two characters, do you think?

Speaker5: Well, actually, it is such.

Speaker3: A good question, isn’t it? And if you actually love the physical act of delivering, you know, doing a filling or something like that, if you if you [00:37:00] really, really enjoy that, then nobody can take that away from you. You literally just, you know, that that’s a, you know, that’s a big chunk of your life on earth that you’re actually enjoying. But when you’re working in a situation where maybe, you know, you’d really enjoy that filling, you know, it’s going to take, you know, 45 minutes to do it, but you’re working in a clinical situation where you’ve got 15 minutes to do it. Mhm. Then you’ve immediately got that uh I think the textbooks call it that [00:37:30] moral moral tension haven’t you. Where, where you know, you know what’s best. But you know, you’re working in a system that’s not allowing you to, to do that. And I think that’s probably at the heart of, of mental health issues in dentistry, which, as you say, have been around literally forever. I mean, the good thing is now mental health is most definitely on the agenda in dentistry. You know, you know, the regular reports coming out, looking at the profession, looking at the causes. Remember the BJ [00:38:00] did a did a massive one. Thousands of dentists in 2019 just just before the pandemic. And you know, they listed the top ten stressors in dentistry. And most of them were systematic, uh, problem and regulation was one of them. Um, there was a read, uh, I read a nice article by, uh, Martin Keller. I think it was in the BJ, actually. And he said, nowadays it’s like practising clinical dentistry is like being in a [00:38:30] lift with a wasp.

Speaker5: Um.

Speaker3: And, uh, I think it’s a good analogy. The only way that that analogy falls down is if you’re in a lift, you can get out of the next floor. If you’re, uh, if you’re a dentist, you’re in the lift for 30 to 40 years. So I think there is obviously the dental legal stuff is never is never going to go away. But nowadays that’s that’s a separate self-sustaining industry. But I’ve had I’ve had second year dental students, you know, literally just started [00:39:00] on Phantom head, say to me that they’re worried about graduating because they don’t want to get sued. So, so, so second year. So, so this stuff, uh, this stuff does start. It does start early and, uh, what it can do, uh, but, uh, need to be prepared. That’s the way of the world. It’s not going to go away and just do your best for every patient. As long as that’s as long as that’s the sort of philosophy. And if you are in a situation that’s compromising [00:39:30] your ethics, your standards, then yeah, do something to change it. And I know obviously Prav does loads of work with dentists and with whole teams to create the right environment. In fact, I think I listened in preparation for this. I did some revision. I listened to one of you did an excellent Talking Heads when it was just the two of you, and Prav made the point that he felt that at that time, one of his favourite clients was a bloke who was just unhappy in his job and he just needed [00:40:00] to change. No, change was not an option for this bloke. Um, and obviously he did Prav training, uh, and sounded like it all. It all worked out well for him. Prav. Is that.

Speaker5: Correct? It is.

Speaker6: Louis. But you’ve just got me thinking about another thing, which is, you know, what is the reason some of these guys get, especially what I’m seeing and it’s not, you know, I’m not speaking for all the younger dentists, but I have a lot of younger dentists who come to me and say, I just want to make X per month. That is that [00:40:30] that’s the overriding thing that they come to me for. But, but, but they’ve not been they’ve not done enough dentistry yet, if that makes sense. So when you look at them from a and I’m not the one to judge them clinically, but you know, they’ve, they’ve been out of dental school for 18 months, two years. And their, their prime motivating factor is I want to make X per month. Right. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about dentistry, whether we’re talking about a career in marketing or [00:41:00] whatever it is, I think you need to earn your stripes first and get some experience under your belt before that. Becomes your sort of number one motivator. And I do say to them, look, my first bit of advice is get on these courses right? And these courses happen to be courses that people that I respect, that Payman respects, probably yourself as well. Who is that that you just think that let the, you know, let them get this solid grounded and then the money will come. [00:41:30] And but I do think that if finance is that number one motivating factor from a very young age, I do think a lot of these dentists will start becoming unstuck later on because they silo themselves into, I am just going to be an Invisalign doctor.

Speaker6: I am just going to press the button on this program and get this treatment plan done for me, and I’ll finish it off with a little bit of edge bonding or whatever. Right. But you’ve it’s a bit like becoming a marketeer and running Facebook [00:42:00] ads, but you don’t know the first thing about the problems of the people that they face that you’re marketing to. Right? So so how can you how can you market to somebody who needs a full arch of implants if you don’t know the problems that a loose denture wearer goes through, and that the fact that they can’t eat steak, or the fact that they, they cover their hands, or they’re walking around with a tube of fixodent in their pocket all the time, and so on and so forth. And I feel really strongly about this. And, and I feel as, as [00:42:30] somebody who helps practices grow, there’s a bit of a pressure on sort of, you know, them coming to me and saying, well, I want to make loads more money. And my advice at the moment is we’ll get you stripes first and the money will come.

Speaker5: I couldn’t.

Speaker3: Agree more. I mean, you’re giving absolutely spot on advice and I’d give exactly the same advice. Um, I think in dentistry, if you put finances first, it’s doomed to failure because you’ll always be chasing something over the horizon, which is which never actually [00:43:00] arrives. And you’ve got to obviously be constantly chasing repeat business over and over again. If you’re looking from a financial point of view, from a financial point of view, the best way to achieve that goal is, is family dentistry. And look, you know, I think Tiff talks about this, the lifetime patient. Yeah. Uh, you know, it might sound a little a little bit sort of, uh, old fashioned, but yes. See, the, uh, see the grandparents, the parents and the kids and sometimes even their kids. That’s from a business point of view. [00:43:30] That is the foundation of any successful practice. Also, when finance is at the fore, I’ll be careful how I phrase this. There is a danger that it affects your treatment planning. And and if you’re not looking at the whole patient and the whole patient’s needs and maybe just focusing, maybe just on the anterior teeth, it is that old classic that, you know, if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So [00:44:00] everybody gets the same treatments. They all look pretty much the, the same. And yeah, it’s you get on a okay, it’s not an NHS treadmill but it’s a different treadmill.

Speaker3: And so I think, I think a balance between I think a balance between that where, you know, it’s lovely to do the aesthetic stuff. But of course it is patients demands. Now patients are so well educated that, you know, they know what they they know what they want, and you’ve got to be able to deliver on that [00:44:30] promise. So going back to learning your, uh, getting, getting your stripes, getting, getting your hours in, I think it is like any sort of it’s that 10,000 hours, isn’t it? Of course it is. Whatever. Whatever you’re doing, if you’re going to become an expert in it, you know, 10,000 hours a mastermind or shared an office with, uh, Charles Perrier, he actually worked it out. And he reckoned it was about ten years, ten years of of of sort of, you know, four, four and a half, five days of dentistry. That’s about 10,000 [00:45:00] hours of practical dentistry in that time. You’ve probably you’ve probably made most of your mistakes, not all of them, unfortunately. You’ve learnt what you’re good at. You’ve learnt what you’re not good at. You’ve learnt your patient communication skills. And it’s why in the again, using that old phrase, in the old days it usually was ten years was a kind of a turning point where the where you maybe think, well, I’m going to buy a practice now, or maybe I’m going to go on a, you know, I’m going to learn how to do implants or I’m going to be an endodontist [00:45:30] that sort of ten year apprenticeship, for want of a better word.

Speaker3: Uh, but I think that that has certainly come forwards now. Certainly young dentists seem to be a lot more business minded in a good way. You know, they seem to sort of grasp that it’s not something that’s ever taught at, at dental school, but they certainly do seem to have a grasp of of what they want and the vision that they want. But again, you know, I’ll mention this, uh, possibly when you ask me those questions, which I’ve prepared for at the end, [00:46:00] is from a financial point of view, just just enjoy your dentistry. Just do do what feels right for the patient, what feels right for you. And the money will, will will sort itself out. No, no problem at all. And, you know, use the team as well. You know, use your specialists, use your technicians and just become a whole, you know, little sort of industry. Yeah. Look, for me, looking after looking after families is is the key. And then the aesthetic restorative stuff. That’s [00:46:30] the icing on the cake.

Speaker1: Yeah. Not not to mention Prav. Yeah. The best way of not making that money is to focus on making that money. But I wonder, Prav, if people say that to you because they see a marketing guy before them and they feel like that’s I’m allowed to say this to, to the, to the marketing guy. And so they come across as that guy, you know.

Speaker6: Possibly there’s an element of that. Right. And they probably see that, you know, I’ve worked with a lot of successful dentists who’ve who’ve done [00:47:00] really well, um, both clinically and financially, but a lot of these dentists who have done really well have earned the stripes. Yeah, they’ve got that decade well and truly under their belt. Yeah. You know, and then they’ve done well. However you define doing well financially. Right. We all have different I guess set points. Call it whatever you want. Right. What our definitions of success are. And some of them are, you know, spending more time with your kids or whatever. And some of them are, you know, driving fast cars [00:47:30] and going on luxury holidays, whatever that thing is. But, you know, people do come to me and they associate me with with those individuals who’ve done well, let’s say, for example, and then they come to me and say, hey, well, you’re the. I that drives the patients through the door and then can give me advice on conversion and all the rest of it. It’s a Prav bring me some money. Right. And and for me, whether I’m giving advice to somebody who comes to me for career advice as a, as a, as a young [00:48:00] marketeer or someone or somebody comes to me for career advice as a dentist. Yeah. I say, you’ve got to be able to do the shit that you can say you can do. Then we can market that, because if you end up marketing something that you know you can’t do, you’re only going to end up in trouble. And this comes down to, you know, my involvement with the IAS Academy has taught me a lot about how, I guess, you should operate as a dentist, right? And [00:48:30] case selectivity, knowing your limits, right.

Speaker6: Knowing when to say no, really, really important. Right. And and so marketing can put you in trouble because it can deliver a patient that you have absolutely no chance of being able to treat because you don’t have the skill set of doing it right. But you but you decide, okay, I’ll be Mr. or Mrs. Brave and have a crack at that. So, you know, I’m a I’m [00:49:00] a big believer in making sure that we market appropriately at a skill set and at a level that we can deliver because it’ll be short lived otherwise. And even with my clients, I want to build long terme relationships. I don’t want to I don’t want to put someone in a position where they become unstuck. They’re up in front of the GDC, you know, and there’s I guess there’s a sense I feel like there’s a sense of responsibility on my behalf. It’s not just about an exchange of service for money, but I think [00:49:30] I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I can actually say, look, if that’s what you want to do, there may be another agency out there that could help you do that. But but this is my advice. And I think what weighs on me is having business partners like Tiff Qureshi, who’ve got a very, very high moral, moral, ethical, high ground for me to sort of say, well, okay, well, this is this, this is the route I think you should go down.

Speaker5: Yeah, and.

Speaker3: Tiff’s always had that as a, uh, and just. I [00:50:00] mean, that’s such an excellent point that if you are going down that you’re almost always treating strangers and, you know, and I’m sure obviously you’re a medic by training as well is, you know, never treat a stranger, get to know the patients before before you jump in because you don’t know what they’re like. And and you made a really good point there that really sort of rang a rang a bell with me is asking saying to patients not to treat them. I would say some of the best clinical decisions [00:50:30] you will ever make in your practising career are the patients you choose not to treat. Uh, and you know, you don’t have to be rude, you know, send them down the road. You know, you need a you know, you need a better dentist than me for, uh, for for this and, uh, yeah, certainly. You know, if I think back, those have been some of the best decisions I’ve made. As you get older and more experienced, you see the warning signs, but but obviously you can’t be expected to do that when you’re just starting [00:51:00] out. So. Yeah, just earning your stripes exactly as you said it, doing that apprenticeship for a few years, just getting a feel for the, uh, and then decide what you want to do.

Speaker5: Louis, if.

Speaker6: If that’s the best decision you’ve ever made, what’s the worst decision you’ve ever made in clinical dentistry?

Speaker5: In claim.

Speaker3: In clinical dentistry?

Speaker6: Um, with patients, whatever. You said some of the best decisions you’ve ever made is, is actually having the courage to say no, I guess, um, [00:51:30] what what are the some of the worst decisions?

Speaker1: What’s gone wrong? What’s gone wrong.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Speaker3: Well certainly perhaps question first of all would be those ones I’ve learned from those learning patients where I’ve got into something, whether I don’t know whether it’s whether it’s an endo or an aesthetic case or, or or an extraction, uh, that’s uh, I think are really wish I hadn’t started this, but but then you’re on. Uh, but but then you’re on that, uh, but then, then you’re on that conveyor [00:52:00] belt, uh, to answer Pei’s question, uh, you know, it’s a long list of, uh, nothing, nothing catastrophic. Pei I’m sorry to, uh, I was he frozen? Uh, no. I’m just he’s just really good at, uh, sitting still. Um. Um. Nothing. Nothing catastrophic, but a few a few learning experiences which I think made me a better dentist. I’m more cautious. [00:52:30]

Speaker5: Yeah.

Speaker1: Which one’s what happened?

Speaker5: I knew you were.

Speaker3: Gonna make me be specific.

Speaker5: Because you’re not going to leave.

Speaker1: It like that.

Speaker6: Are far too vague, Louis.

Speaker3: I’ll give you. I’ll give you two. I’ll give you two of of many. Listening to a few of these podcasts previously, I noticed quite a common theme is people’s worst day at work has been sort of Dental legal problems. And and as you [00:53:00] know, sometimes this can be sort of a year of their lives with a, with a, with a cloud over their careers. And for me, I would say it’s probably it was probably the same, but embarrassed to say that mine only lasted for 48 hours. Um, and it was, it was an Indo an Indo case which didn’t work and tried to. It was one of those ones that just on the x ray, it just looked absolutely perfect. And uh, but it didn’t, didn’t settle. So chats with [00:53:30] patients said I’d like to retreat this one. And she said I’d rather just have it out. So we had the discussion and I took it out. And then months down the line, just got a letter. You know, the old clinical negligence letter, taken a taken a tooth out that didn’t need to be extracted. But I was just, you know, whether it was luck or whether it’s judge judgement, uh, did did what you’re supposed to do phoned up the, um with the due. [00:54:00] They were brilliant. Just send us all the, uh, the x rays. Send us, send us the radiographs, and we’ll get back to you. So did that posted them off in those days. And then it was I think it was Rupert Hoppenbrouwers at two days later he phoned me up and he said, uh is that uh, Mr.

Speaker3: McKenzie said, we don’t usually do this, but don’t worry about this. This will go away. He said about 1 in 5050 cases, they get to actually [00:54:30] make that call to say, don’t worry, this will disappear. Don’t give it another minute’s concern. Your notes are fine. You’ve done everything that you should have done. And sure enough, you know I got a letter again, months down the line. We’ve decided not to pursue you on this. Uh, on this, uh, on on this occasion, but there’s no question about it. That’s experienced. The wasp came into the room and the wasp never left. You know, it was. It was. It was in the corner. It never formed a hive or anything [00:55:00] like that. But it did make me, because that surprised me. It really surprised me because I had tried my best. Still, to this day, I’ve absolutely no idea why it failed. I’d actually saved the tooth to try and section it and work out why where, where I’d gone wrong. And then you asked for two. So I suppose I’ll give you another one. Was again, just a mistake. I was I was finishing it, finishing a composite and uh, sort of class five composite denture wearer. And obviously I hadn’t put the burr in [00:55:30] into the handpiece. Uh, Burr fell out of the handpiece. Patient literally swallowed just at the, uh, just at the wrong time. Um, and so, yeah, what can you do? So, um, I again, uh, this had a happy outcome as well.

Speaker3: Um, I, um, uh, said to the patient, we really need I don’t know where that’s gone. Where that’s gone. We really need to have a chest x ray. That was the, uh, that was the, uh, that was the guidance then. So drove him up to [00:56:00] the local local hospital. He had a he had a chest x ray. He’d he had swallowed it. He hadn’t he hadn’t inhaled it. And the weird thing was, uh, that, uh, he was a, he was an elderly patient who’d retired. And based on the experience, he actually became a volunteer in the x ray department, which he did for years and years and years. And I saw him for years afterwards. You know, every time I saw him, I just felt, you know, it felt really, really bad about, uh, uh, [00:56:30] about making that, uh, making that error. But, you know, I certainly certainly learned from it, but, yeah, nothing too catastrophic. And I know, you know, I really feel for some colleagues who have got cases that have been hanging over them for, you know, years in some cases. And I had a very, very short experience of, of what that felt like. And it was, you know, oh, that’s it. My career is over. And it happened to me fairly, fairly early on as well. But, you know, [00:57:00] everything my note making, uh, just hopefully really, really improved by that. So so those are two that spring to mind. I’m sure I’ll think of some more.

Speaker6: When you said there was a happy ending, I thought he was going to say he fished the bear out and brought it back for you. I was just waiting for the I was waiting for the punchline. [00:57:30] Louis.

Speaker5: I don’t know, I mean.

Speaker1: I don’t mean to sound disappointed, Louis, but, um, in a 30 year career, those don’t sound like really hard stories to me.

Speaker5: Yeah, but.

Speaker3: They impacted, uh, they impacted on, uh, they certainly had an impact on me, um, I.

Speaker5: Bet. Well, but.

Speaker1: Have you never had a situation where the patient’s lost trust in you, you know, like that sort of situation, or you took on a case that [00:58:00] that went wrong in the wrong direction for a long period, or, you know, even in my short, I mean, maybe you’re just a much better dentist and communicator than I am. But even my short five years at the at the, uh, at the front, I did have a few couple of cases like that, you know, where, you know, like, cosmetics is awful, right? Patient says it looks great, goes home, comes back, says I don’t like them anymore. You know, you’re in a terrible situation. Just there on a matter of opinion, [00:58:30] you know. Has that never happened?

Speaker5: Well, unfortunately.

Speaker3: Not. Um, with regard.

Speaker5: To, uh, with.

Speaker3: With regard to that because, you know, fortunately, I’ve done the courses, you know, when I started doing aesthetic dentistry, fortunately, I’d done some good courses. And, you know, they the thing that they always bang into you is, is make sure the patient knows what it’s going to look like at the end. So there are no surprises at the end because, I mean, there is nothing. And I say this in lectures all [00:59:00] the time. There is absolutely nothing worse than, I don’t know, sticking some veneers on or something like that. And the patient either immediately or after they’ve seen their family saying, saying I don’t, I don’t like them because what you know, there’s no plan B, is there? You know, okay, you know, if they’re too long you can shorten them. But that that’s all you can do. And then obviously redoing stuff like that is, is, is an absolute, uh, is an absolute nightmare. [00:59:30] You know, doing redoing dentistry that you just did.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Speaker3: For free is, is, is literally, you know, it’s your worst day at work isn’t it. Yeah. So I think it’s I don’t think it is judgement. It is, it is just luck. But I certainly uh and maybe, maybe it was, maybe it was that early on Endo case that really made me choose choose my battles and, and you know, be able to deliver [01:00:00] on on whatever I, on whatever I promised. But I’m sorry to disappoint you. I can’t.

Speaker5: Think of.

Speaker3: Anything, uh, anything cut too catastrophic for you in my professional life.

Speaker1: You mentioned, uh, Louis, the conversation Prav and I had about the NHS and leaving the NHS and what people are saying about that and what worries people have about that. But now, in your role in Denplan, that must be a daily occurrence. I know your role isn’t specifically to talk about [01:00:30] that dentist. I mean, you’re more on the education side and so forth, but you know, what stories do you hear? Or you know, what concerns do people have? And are they the same concerns every time? And then the solutions a similar solution all the time, or is it different in each case? What? Tell me some stories of NHS to private.

Speaker5: It is, it is it is the similar.

Speaker3: It is similar all the time and it’s always and they’ve always been the same stories. I mean I’ve, [01:01:00] I say I’ve done a thousand. So I’ve been teaching for about 20 years. I’ve been doing hands on courses for getting on for 20 years as, as well. So I’ve spoken to thousands, thousands and thousands of dentists. And that’s, you know, you know, me, uh, we’ve been on courses together, you know, and I know you’re as well. You like chatting to, like, chatting to the dentist. You know, they good, good to chat to good company, entertaining people. And so, yeah, I’ve got a whole list. In fact, if I did a webinar, [01:01:30] uh, last week on this exact subject, it is the same things that come up every single time. People who have transitioned from NHS to private all report the same thing. Number one is always time. More time, more time with the patients. More time for your for your for your private life, for your for your life work balance. But it’s it’s never money. Money is always the absolute bottom of the list. It is it is clinical outcomes. It’s job satisfaction. [01:02:00] It’s developing good relationships with your patients. It’s using good materials and equipment.

Speaker3: It’s having the time to go on courses and upskill. It’s working with technicians who share the same philosophy that you do. It’s you know, I’ve spoken to dentists on courses, a hands on courses. And this is, uh, this was not an uncommon occurrence. I do I used to run a series of ten hands on courses on various different restorative subjects, [01:02:30] and it’d be quite a common one when I’d, when we’re just starting to push the envelope with, with big composites and almost without exception, sort of every month somebody, an NHS dentist would come on the course and I’d, you know, and we’d do a, I don’t know, mod B build up on a premolar. Um, and it’d take about an hour or something like that. And a dentist would say, you know, you know, this is all well and good, but I can’t do this on the [01:03:00] NHS. And I used, I used to, uh, quite commonly get into this discussion. And I said, if you don’t mind me asking, how many patients do you see per day? And I would say almost without fail, sort of, you know, definitely a few times a year, the dentist would say eight zero, 80 patients per day.

Speaker1: Oh my goodness.

Speaker5: Wow.

Speaker3: Uh, to which to which I’d say, well, no, no, you can’t, you know, what’s what’s your what’s your appointment time. If you’ve got [01:03:30] to do this, if you’ve got to do this in ten minutes. You might get the first one right, but you’re not going to get the fifth one right. You’re not going to get the 10th one right. And I want I did once see, I didn’t believe it actually, but I actually went to went to the went to the practice I once had uh, knew of a dentist who had a hundred patients booked in every day. I didn’t believe it, but I actually saw the day book. It was a pencil, a pencil day book. And there were there were hundred, um, 100 patients [01:04:00] booked in in that day. Uh, the.

Speaker5: Interesting thing.

Speaker1: Is, uh, if you if you said clean up time between 100 patients is just just be really kind and say 5 minutes to 3 minutes, clean up time, that’s 300 minutes of clean up time. Yeah. Which is five hours of clean up time.

Speaker5: Yeah. It’s it’s not doable.

Speaker3: And and you would occasionally see dentists who would get themselves into, into this sort of. This [01:04:30] treadmill of multiple surgeries, uh, on the, uh, on the go, uh, you know, uh, well, but then, Louis.

Speaker1: What are the barriers? What are the barriers? I mean, why don’t people want to leave? I mean, there’s the obvious financial sort of, you know, with the NHS, the system is that you’re sort of assured a certain income per year. There’s that. And then. And then there’s another one talking to people who are thinking about it, the people who are eminently more qualified than I was when [01:05:00] I decided to leave the NHS, worried about their skill set and worried about whether they can pull it off or not. And I said, you know, it seems to me so obvious, like we’ll just keep it simple. Refer, you know, simple as that.

Speaker3: You’re absolutely right. Confidence is the number one. You know, they don’t feel they don’t feel like a private dentist. To which I always say, what is.

Speaker5: A private dentist.

Speaker3: Exactly? I say, you went to dental school. You weren’t trained to be an NHS dentist. You were. You were trained to be a you [01:05:30] were trained to be a dentist and to do whatever that particular patient needs. And I still to this day do a lot of hands on courses with foundation dentists. And so I really, really notice that they really, really feel going from the, I don’t know, safe environment of, of the dental school seeing, you know, two, maybe four patients a day or something like that, and then working into an environment where obviously, you know, you’ve got to speed up. [01:06:00] But that sort of tension with regards to sort of clinical decision making, they, they, uh, a classic one would be they, they know that a direct composite only is the best treatment for that particular tooth. But working in a system, I don’t know, take the UDA system, for example, where you’d be pushed to do an indirect restoration and that tension, a cobalt chrome denture or something like that. So you know that a cobalt chrome denture [01:06:30] is the best thing for the patient. But when you factor in the lab bill, you would know that, you know, you do too many of those. Your business is your business is going bankrupt. And and where cases in the in the UDA system as well. So I mean the system does need to the system does need to change and it needs to change rapidly. I mean, you know, only in the last couple of weeks we’ve seen the, you know, the in Parliament, Shawn Charlwood talking to the health, uh, health and social care social care select committee, [01:07:00] things have to change. And they have to change. They have to change rapidly.

Speaker1: But, you know, at Denplan, what was the USP of that organisation is is it that they they’re good at helping people go from one to the other? Is it is it that they good at managing the teams because there are there are those concerns aren’t they. You know, what will my team think? What will my patients think? Am I up to it in all of those? Does denplan hold the hand better than the next company? I mean, [01:07:30] there were certainly there were there first, weren’t they?

Speaker3: Yeah. 1986 Denplan was set up. Um, was set up with, with three goals. It was set up by two dentists in the mid 80s. 80s was a was a nightmare time anyway. Record unemployment, record inflation, Falklands war, miners strike. It was it was it was a nightmare time and and it was a nightmare time in in dentistry as well. And so these two dentists came up with this idea for [01:08:00] a basically a new system, a capitation system that was something to do instead of NHS dentistry, which was which was the only game in town. Um, you know, in even in the 90s, I remember at the time somebody said there, there around about 500 private dentists in the UK, uh, now there’s, there’s 26,000. So Denplan was set up with three goals. And those goals have remained the same throughout right up into to, to today. [01:08:30] And they’re just as relevant as they were before. The first thing was professional control, getting control of your own career, which is what we’re talking about. The second was to create an environment outside the NHS where you could do quality dentistry. And the final one, which is even more relevant now, was to align the patient’s wishes with the dentists philosophy, which was prevention, prevention. Patients [01:09:00] don’t want dentistry. And so if if a capitation system works really for me, it’s perfect. It’s the perfect practical situation in clinical dentistry because you’re getting paid to keep people healthy rather than getting paid to find things to do and do things.

Speaker3: And so, you know, having that balance of private fee per item and loads of patients on a plan just gives you that sort of clinical freedom [01:09:30] to, to make the right decisions every time, because they’re your clinical decisions are based on, on what the patient needs. And and obviously I’ve talked to thousands and thousands of denplan dentists, and it’s the reason that we’re really quite evangelical about Denplan. Is it because it was the first and it changed? It changed my professional career because when we went private, we weren’t completely private with Danplan. In those days, you couldn’t you couldn’t have [01:10:00] a children’s only contract. So basically it was it was it was private and and we didn’t retain any NHS within the practice. So in those days it was a leap of faith because there was no blueprint. Big practices hadn’t done this before. But of course now there’s, uh, you know, there’s a there’s a blueprint. And, you know, thousands of dentists have already made, made that move. But so, yeah, if you just do chat to to Denplan dentists and I’ve heard this time and time [01:10:30] again is that it changed. It changed their professional careers. I’ll go even further. It changed their lives. And that is why that we’re so passionate about Denplan.

Speaker1: What is what is your actual role there? I mean, I know you were in charge of the education side for a while, but now now your new role.

Speaker3: Yeah, it’s well, the head dental officer is actually the job that the original head dental officer is Roger Matthews, who was one of my mentors, who was an [01:11:00] absolute legend so far ahead of his time. It’s really as a it really is a multifactorial role, you know, difficult to describe it in, in just a sentence. The education side is still a big part of it. And one of the things that I’ve been really lucky to do is be involved with a big project to create a state of the art online education, to go along with our live courses. Our live courses have been, [01:11:30] you know, incredibly popular for.

Speaker1: Summarise, summarise the size of that that unit. I mean, I remember someone telling me maybe it was you. It was like they do something like 500 days of live courses a year or something.

Speaker5: Yeah, yeah we have.

Speaker3: Yeah, way over 500, is that right? 500 courses per year. I mean from from hands on courses. I mean, Dipesh you kindly helped us out. I think that still remains our biggest ever hands on course. I think we had something like 40 dentists [01:12:00] in the room. You got good value out of Dipesh that day.

Speaker5: Um.

Speaker3: But we do in practice training. That’s super popular. We do all the compliance subjects. We have ski conferences, cycling conferences, hiking conferences. Um, we just actually, we’ve just finished actually, we’ve done our first four national forums. These are our sort of flagship events. And so so far we’re up in Scotland with the Blaine, Cambridge, [01:12:30] Chepstow, and then we’re in Belfast the week before last. And so basically this is a full day study day with a nice meal and a stopover as, as well. And we’ve had Simon Chard lecturing for us on digital, doing a doing an hour and a half session, and he has been absolutely superb. The dental plan audience, because, you know, it’s quite a tough audience. I say it’s, it’s a, you know, for for lecturers, it’s a good rite of passage to, to lecture to them to the dental plan dentists because you, [01:13:00] you know, you’ve got a lot of MSCs in the room, you’ve got a lot of, um, experienced.

Speaker1: Simon’s a talented speaker, talented, very, very talented speaker.

Speaker3: He is very, very polished. Uh, and but it does go beyond way beyond the clinical excellence which he most certainly has. But it’s the whole sort of the, the marketing, the use of social media. It’s the his feedback has been off the scale. It’s been absolutely superb. So so those those. [01:13:30]

Speaker5: Control have.

Speaker1: You got if let’s say you want to come up with a new course in Panama.

Speaker5: Whatever.

Speaker1: Well, like, you know, if you come up with a new idea, who does it? Is it you? Is it are you the last person who has to say yes to things? Or is there this other person who has to like it was the process. What’s the process of if a new idea comes up, how does it work?

Speaker3: It would be really lovely if that was if that.

Speaker5: Was the case. Uh. [01:14:00]

Speaker3: Um, uh, my boss, Catherine Rutland, who’s another, another denplan dentist as as well. So she would be the first person I would, uh, in fact, literally, this actually happened only last week. I’m putting together ideas for the programme for 2023. So I’ve literally sketched out this is for me, this is the ultimate programme of live events and online online training events. And then we literally [01:14:30] just go through the process with regards to funding, budgets, manpower and work outs. Work out what’s, uh, what we’re going to do for the next year. So we try and work kind of a year ahead. We’ve got an events team. The events team are amazing and we do lots of charity events as well, but not sort of CPD involved as well. You know, marathons, high conferences. Our parent company, Simplyhealth sponsored the Great North, uh, sponsored all of the great runs for uh, for a few years. [01:15:00] So, yeah, it’s a sort of because for me, it’s and I’m sure you’ll say exactly the same thing with your courses pay and even with your courses as well. Prav is, for me, some of the best little nuggets of education don’t come when you’re sitting in front of the lecturer. Yeah. They come, they come in the breaks. They come when they’re when you’re when you’re having lunch, when you’re on a ski lift or whatever.

Speaker1: The gin and tonic, man, you know, people underestimate that. It’s [01:15:30] not it’s not the gin and tonic. It’s the different sort of sort of the the barriers of the classroom situation and then the barriers and the real conversations do tend to happen outside of the classroom situation. And for me, you know, the other thing, uh, Luis, uh, the delegates learning from each other.

Speaker5: Totally.

Speaker1: It’s a key point. It’s not just from the teacher, is it? It’s a key point. They’re all going through the same things.

Speaker3: Certainly from a practice management [01:16:00] point of view. And, you know, I was really lucky I got into Denplan quite early. I think it was about 93, although we were mixed for probably 15 years. Yeah, probably about 15 years. It was lucky, I think I went on the first ever Denplan golf conference and, you know, just sat down, you know, my golf never, never been any good. And it never it never it never will be. But I remember sitting down with some of the original Denplan dentists and they were really sort of saying, you know, from a, you know, great tips, you [01:16:30] know, categorise your patients and correctly to begin with, equipment, materials, loads of techniques, loads of courses. Again, you know, I’ll go on one course and, you know, I’ll get a tip to go on a to go on another one. You know, it’s much easier now because obviously they’re all advertised on, on social media, but it was very much a sort of a word of mouth. You know, who are the good speakers? Who are the good mentors? And I was just really, really lucky that in the early, early years of my career, [01:17:00] I just bumped into some just really, really influential people who who transformed my career.

Speaker1: Were you always that funny guy on stage?

Speaker5: Because you.

Speaker1: Are you.

Speaker3: Honestly, this is a fantastic opportunity to go into a Goodfellas moment here and, you know, funny anyhow.

Speaker5: But you call me a funny guy. You’re funny.

Speaker1: You’re [01:17:30] entertaining that entertaining style you’ve got.

Speaker5: I start.

Speaker1: From the first time you lectured, was it like that.

Speaker3: Style over content? I think that is, uh. Um, it is, it is, um. I’ve got a message that I want to get across when I first started lecturing. You know, I watched before I’d started. I’d watch some really good lecturers and and you’d notice the ones who kept people sort of captivated. Trevor would be a really good, uh, [01:18:00] Trevor would be an absolute classic example of that. Because no matter how good you’re how good you, uh, you know, your content is, if people are asleep and I’ve had plenty of people fall asleep in my lectures, they are going to learn nothing. They might, in fact, just digressing from my worst ever. It wasn’t even a heckle in a live lecture. There was, uh, it was, I don’t know, there was an audience of about, I don’t know, about 40 or 40 or something like that. So it was a small it was a small seminar, [01:18:30] and there was a bloke in the front row and, uh, and he came in and he fell asleep almost immediately. And, uh, and so that was a bit I still like introducing myself. I was still I don’t have a long I don’t have a long. I don’t have a long. This is me intro. Uh, but but he fell asleep during that. So then without a word of a lie, I kept going, I kept going, and then he’s. After a while, his phone went off. He [01:19:00] got up. He stood up. The group was in two. It was in two halves. So there was a there was a sort of an alleyway down the middle. He walked up the alleyway. He answered his phone and I don’t know what I don’t know what the conversation. He said, no, I’m in a lecture. No crap. And he walked out and he never came back.

Speaker5: Wow.

Speaker3: So that’s [01:19:30] so that was my worst. Uh, so that was my worst sort of experience. But I think public speaking, I went to I went to a lecture the other day from somebody a similar sort of vein to you, Prav. And it was people’s worst fears. And I think, I think the worst fear this bloke was talking about was I think it was death of a relative, public speaking and then being buried alive. Uh.

Speaker5: Uh, so.

Speaker3: When it, when it comes to public speaking, I don’t, [01:20:00] I don’t, I don’t mind I never, I never have.

Speaker1: Thing is, you pull it off.

Speaker5: You pull it off.

Speaker1: So. Well. Yeah. With with the, with the. I don’t want to call it comedy, but the sort of the humorous side of it. Yeah. Um, and I always think if you’re, if you say something funny, I never, I never try it personally. Because what if, what if no one gets it or no one laughs or. And I find people do laugh in my lectures, but at points where I wasn’t expecting it, it’s so it’s like they’re laughing at me. No, not with me. But but [01:20:30] you pull it off like a master, like a king.

Speaker6: Give us an example, Payman give us an example.

Speaker1: But he just. He can’t help himself from the first moment. Yeah. He’s talking. It’s. He’ll say a self-deprecating joke or something, but the audience will just get behind him straight away, you know? Like. Like what you said. You say, oh, let’s say you can say something about your hair being a bald guy or whatever. Yeah, I’d say it. And the room would be empty. Room would be silent and worried. Yeah, he’ll say it and the room will [01:21:00] be bursting out laughing. Yeah. And it goes on. And it’s not like it’s only a comedy show.

Speaker5: I’m not saying. I’m not saying.

Speaker1: That.

Speaker5: I’m not saying that at all. Not at all. I was just about.

Speaker6: To ask Louis to tell us his favourite joke.

Speaker5: It’s just it’s just it’s just the the content.

Speaker1: The content is, is is punctuated with some entertainment bits here. And, you know, you used to talk about different people, you know, good old Anoop, [01:21:30] bless his soul the way he would do it. I don’t know, Louis just carries it off in a really sort of. For me, effortless is the way I would, I would describe it.

Speaker5: I mean, it’s.

Speaker3: Extremely nice of you to say, and it’s it’s not something. I mean, there’s certainly that edutainment, uh, as my, uh, my, uh, predecessor before Catherine Henry Clover, he was my boss at Denplan. He was the he was the head dental officer. After Roger, he said edutainment, you know, you know, get your get your, [01:22:00] get your, uh, get your content across. But it’s got to be entertaining. Otherwise, you know why? Why is anybody going to, uh, when, when is anybody going to sort of, uh, actually come to your next lecture? But it’s not something that I sort of, sort of script in really. It’s sort of, I don’t know, they sort of, uh, I’m kind of lucky. It’s kind of kind of sort of comes to me. I mean, I went to a school, a pretty rough school in those days. You didn’t have you didn’t have social media, so you had to go to school to be bullied. [01:22:30] So, um, I.

Speaker5: And then it comes.

Speaker3: You you had to be either, you know, really tall, which I wasn’t, or you had to be. You had to be a clown. And so I suppose I learned those skills from school. Uh, my dad was always an entertaining bloke, but perhaps just made me think my my favourite joke. It was, uh, anything that I come out with are [01:23:00] things that that please me are things that I’ve thought of on the spur of the moment. Uh, and, and Dental wise again. Probably to to to boring to relate. But I’ve, I’ve been lucky and I’ve probably because I’m, uh, I don’t mind public speaking. I think I’ve been best man 11 I think it’s 11 times, uh, 10 or 11 times. Um, and for me, my, my best ad lib happened in a best man’s speech. And it was a, it [01:23:30] was quite an awkward environment because the vicar had been drunk during the, during the ceremony. Um, and, you know, it hadn’t gone disastrously wrong. But like everybody, you know, it was it was one of those things. If you put it on telly, you wouldn’t think it was. You wouldn’t think it was believable. So I was just getting nervous because I always do get a little bit nervous before, before, certainly before speaking. And I thought, what am I going to say? I’ve got to kind of refer to it, but how can I refer to it? The vicar wasn’t in the room, but, [01:24:00] uh, fortunately. But, uh, how do I refer to it without sort of embarrassing him and embarrassing everybody else? So I just, I thought how? And so literally just it just came to me. I said, I don’t know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but we’ve had a wonderful wedding today, a fantastic service, and I don’t know about you, but in church today I really felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Speaker5: And and for.

Speaker3: Me, that is just, [01:24:30] uh, I enjoyed the fact that I managed to think of something under those sort of, you know, uh, those circumstances and, uh, and, and pull it off.

Speaker6: I’ll tell you my favourite joke. What do you call a man with no shin?

Speaker3: No, Shin.

Speaker5: No. Shin!

Speaker3: No. No idea.

Speaker6: Tony.

Speaker1: Hi.

Speaker5: Nate. That’s my.

Speaker6: Number one. That’s my [01:25:00] number one dad joke.

Speaker5: Hi.

Speaker1: Oxford educated.

Speaker5: Medic joke.

Speaker3: It’s another one for when you go to footlights on a similar sort.

Speaker5: Of, uh, sort of. Here we go. Uh, yeah.

Speaker3: This one always, always makes. Makes me laugh. Is, uh, mangoes into, uh, fish and chip shop and says, uh, fish and chips twice, please. And the bloke says, uh, sorry, I heard you the first time.

Speaker5: Uh. Uh. [01:25:30]

Speaker1: Lewis, out of your different things you do general or done general practice teaching. Have you done some research as well?

Speaker3: Uh, sort of, uh, uh, ad hoc research. I would, I would call it. Um, I started, I started teaching, uh, at Birmingham Dental School in 2003. And I say so we, you know, we had a fantastic faculty, [01:26:00] but as soon as I went on clinic, I realised that the students were asking me questions. I just didn’t know the answers to, you know, how does you know? How does bonding resin work? You know, how to get different colour composites that, you know, just using those, using those as examples. So I really had to sort of go back to school and, and then I was I was equally lucky. Um, at that time, James Davis approached me and asked me to write, uh, write a paper on [01:26:30] posterior composites. And so I spent three months writing a write in a long draft of, uh, of, of this paper on posterior composites, which was my, um, sermon on posterior composites. This is how you do it. And then a sense the I think I probably had to print it out and and take it to, to Adrian Shorthall, who was the head of head of comms. He’s my sort of main sort of mentor. And I gave it to Trevor as well. And [01:27:00] they were very, very polite with me and said, yeah, come, come back, come. We’ll have a read through this, come back, come back in a week and you know, and we’ll give you some advice.

Speaker3: And, and I went back into to Adrian’s office and he said, yeah, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s fine, but you know, but this is, this is going in a peer reviewed publication. Everything that you’ve written is your opinion and you haven’t backed up any of it [01:27:30] with evidence. So he said, to help you out, I’ve printed you out a few things to read, and I can still see it to this day. There was a stack of papers and abstracts. There were over 100 papers on posterior composites. I mean, Adrian always knew the key references and still does. And so for me, I think basically that was a I don’t know whether they were throwing down the gauntlet. I think most normal people would have walked away and said, [01:28:00] right, I’ll, I’ll give up on my academic career. But I read all the papers. I realised what I’d written was just purely an opinion piece. I rewrote it, it took me three three months to write the first draft, six months to write it properly. And then that was the first paper I ever published. In fact, in preparation for this, I actually looked it up. I’ve, I’ve now I’ve got 30 peer reviewed papers and four textbook chapters.

Speaker5: Wow.

Speaker3: And and [01:28:30] those are all those are all written on subjects, quite selfishly, that interest me. You know, posterior composites, anterior composites, clinical photography, caries bonding, amalgam, indirect restorations. So for me the the learning has been my research my postgraduate education. I’ve got well I say in fact I’ve trip myself up there. I used to have no postgraduate qualifications when I put my pen down, and I made a [01:29:00] promise to myself in finals. When I put my pen down that final exam, I promised myself that I would never do another exam and I haven’t. But, uh, in 2022, a colleague of mine, Steve Bonser, who’s a who’s a GDP brilliant bloke, material scientist, he proposed me and Ian Chappell seconded me for a, for a PhDs from Royal College in, in Glasgow. So so so [01:29:30] I have got uh an honorary one. I’ve got a, yeah. Uh, but by accident, not by exam.

Speaker5: That’s nice.

Speaker3: So, uh, so, yeah, I just didn’t want to do any more exams. Um, what.

Speaker5: About, you know, Louis, your.

Speaker1: Your relationship with, uh, manufacturers is is awesome, too. I mean, you seem to know everyone in that side. You know, the trade side as well. How? [01:30:00] You know, for instance, how do you how do you keep a clear head if J and S Davis are paying you or or sponsoring you to, to write about composites, not to sort of get their one as the main one or, you know, how do you keep a good reputation amongst lots of different manufacturers because you really do have a great reputation out there, and how is it that others sort of sometimes fall over on that front? I mean, what’s what’s there? One called Clear Phil?

Speaker5: Careful.

Speaker3: Yeah. Magic [01:30:30] Clearfield magical aesthetic, which is a.

Speaker5: It’s an interesting thing.

Speaker3: Which is an amazing composite. Um, yeah. It’s I mean, so it’s a really good point, but I must admit, without sounding too pious, I do try and sort of keep true to myself. I only talk about things that I use in practice, and I only talk about things that I know work. Because if I don’t, if I talk about a product that I haven’t got faith in, and then somebody buys that product, product [01:31:00] uses that product, and then they don’t get the outcomes with it. Again, nobody’s going to listen to me again. And you know, I’ve been lucky. You know I’ve never been good enough to work properly with uh, with enlightened.

Speaker5: But, uh.

Speaker1: I think you did lecture at the minimalist event, but I can’t call that work.

Speaker5: Are we talking?

Speaker3: We’re talking paid work.

Speaker5: Did you ever get paid? I’m. I’m still.

Speaker3: I’m still waiting. I’m still paid. [01:31:30]

Speaker1: In gin and tonics.

Speaker5: That certainly did. You certainly did. But but but.

Speaker6: He’s got a believe in it first, right.

Speaker5: Yeah. But I mean.

Speaker3: The, the nice thing is that, you know, the companies that I work with, I’m doing quite a bit with opt ident at the moment. I love most almost all of the opt in products. I’ve done a lot of work work with with Kerr. I was really, really lucky that my my kind of, if you like, sort of lecturing career took off when [01:32:00] sort of bulk fill composites came in. So I did a I’ve done a lot of work with Dentsply Sirona over the years, and if if somebody gives me a product that I don’t like, uh, because I’m lucky that I’m on a number of key opinion leader groups. And so, you know, there’s a group of us do get sent stuff, um, before it goes to market to, to test it out. And I love doing that. And it doesn’t take long, does it, for an experienced dentist to know, is it better than what I’ve got before? Is [01:32:30] it worse or is it the same? And then I’m just I’m just totally I’m just totally honest. I would never, ever say anything bad in public or any anywhere else about about a dental product because as you know, you know, there’s millions gone into the investment and I have pulled out of lectures. It’s I remember when I started lecturing one of my colleagues who’d been doing it for a while, and the lecturer said, I said, how long does it take to write a lecture? Because this is taking me hours and hours.

Speaker3: And he said, basically the industry standard for an hour lecture. [01:33:00] You’re looking at about 50 hours of preparation and and development. And to be honest, I’ve never got it down much below that, that 50, that 50 hours. So I can only ever remember it happening once, where I’ve delivered one lecture once and this was on a product. Uh, that’s I started using and, you know, I was really I’m a real early adopter. I like trying out stuff straight away. But then the patients were coming back and it wasn’t really working out as I hoped. So [01:33:30] I had actually had to sort of hat in hand, go back to the manufacturer and say, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull out of this lecture lecture series because I don’t feel, uh, that, uh, so and again, you know, if you’ve ever seen me do a lecture, I get like way, way, way too excited about dental materials and equipment. I can get excited about matrix bands. Uh, you know, wedges. That’s probably one one [01:34:00] of the worst bonding lessons. Uh, because if I really, really like them, because these these materials are designed to solve problems. Literally the first time I used, uh, enamel was on. Remember the World Aesthetic Congress? Yeah.

Speaker5: Yeah. Um, that’s one of the numbers.

Speaker1: One of the moppers down.

Speaker3: Buddy, buddy buddy and his son. What was his son’s name? Um. Robert.

Speaker5: Robert.

Speaker3: Robert. That’s it. Bob. Mopper. Um, so that that was a real turning point for me. [01:34:30] I can’t remember what year it was, but Buddy Mopper was doing two hours of lectures. Um, and.

Speaker1: Yeah, that was the year we started with Cosmo. Then because we, we brought him over because of that.

Speaker5: Wow. Right.

Speaker1: That would have been 2008. I want to say.

Speaker5: This.

Speaker3: This, this, this, all this, this all fits, uh, fits in nicely then. So. So I don’t know you. Obviously, you were in the room. Um, there were about 8 or 900 dentists in that room. And [01:35:00] Buddy Mop was doing this presentation on composites, anterior composites, posterior composites. And I’ve never seen anybody do it before or since. He had cases up on the screen. And he basically said, what should we do? Do you want to do a posterior? Do you want to do an anterior? And basically his lecture could go off in any direction. Yeah. So now this was in the 90s. So this was in the era where porcelain was king. You couldn’t go on any other courses other than. Porcelain veneer causes. The World Aesthetic Congress [01:35:30] was basically a porcelain veneer course. And so I sat there watching buddy buddy Mopper, and he was showing case after case after case of these amazing composites using using Cosmodome products and, you know, whole tooth build ups, composite veneers, taking crowns off, replacing them with composites. And it was absolutely groundbreaking. But then the thing that got stuck in my head then he said, oh, and here’s [01:36:00] the ten year recall going going back to what you were talking about there. Prav here’s your 15 year recall and thought, wow, this stuff works. But the thing that the thing that really, really, um, stuck in my mind is the lecture was in two parts and there was a break in between. And during the break, everyone went outside and, you know, everyone’s chatting and the you could just hear these people just saying that absolute crap. Worst lecture I’ve ever seen, just, you know, [01:36:30] um, and so when we went back in, there were still hundreds and hundreds of people there, but there were probably about 300 less people. They’d all gone off to a porcelain lecture from somebody else. And one of the first things buddy said when he got back up on the stage was, he said, I won’t try and do his accent. People will say that you can’t do these things with composite. As he said.

Speaker5: Composite.

Speaker3: Composite people will say that you can’t do these things with composite. And [01:37:00] he said they’re right. They can’t. And that, that just literally just stuck in my head that, you know, of course you can do it, but you’ve just got to dedicate yourself to the materials, the bonding, the, you know, the tooth anatomy. And so that that was a real pivotal moment for me because, you know, they were doing stuff like you just, you know, in the States that you just wouldn’t believe, and so much so that basically then I [01:37:30] started using Rhino. I did the hands on course with his, uh, with, uh, Robert, his, uh, Bob, his, his son. And the minute, the minute you sort of polished it, you thought, this is different. This is something that’s better than I’ve ever used before. And so I’ve used enamel on my hands on courses ever since. Um, because, you know, from a polishing point of view, as, you know, as, as dips delegates, it’s one of those things that the, uh, the delegates go away from the course with a nice feeling that they’ve [01:38:00] done something that they.

Speaker5: Yeah, they’ve seen something new.

Speaker3: They never did before, which is, uh, which which is what I tried to do as much as possible.

Speaker5: Crazily.

Speaker1: We’ve been speaking for an hour and 40 minutes now.

Speaker5: Oh, my God, it.

Speaker6: Feels like we haven’t scratched the.

Speaker5: Surface, mate.

Speaker1: We haven’t. Haven’t even said. Who was your first boss. Where did you go from there? Um, we’ve we’ve reached our limit already. Can I have to do a round two?

Speaker5: I’ve got more questions, guys. Gone, gone.

Speaker1: Ask it, ask [01:38:30] it. Well, we got another guy waiting, but there we go. We’ll have to do a part two. We’ll have to do a part two.

Speaker5: Man, there’s a.

Speaker6: Whole bunch about public speaking that I wanted to ask. You were saying you were comfortable, and then you mentioned you get nervous sometimes. And then does that ever go away? And. But there’s so much buzzing around in my head. Right. So we’ll have to come back for round two. But.

Speaker1: Sorry, sorry. Prav I hugged him. Um, so let’s finish. Let’s go with the final questions though. Let’s go with the final. Let’s [01:39:00] start with the fantasy dinner party, one fantasy dinner party, three guests, dead or alive. Who would you pick?

Speaker3: Two. Uh, two alive. Uh, Quentin Tarantino, um, a massive, massive movie fan. Come back. I’ll be happy to talk about movies for for two hours.

Speaker5: Oh, no, I’m not massive movie fan.

Speaker1: Massive, massive Quentin Tarantino fan.

Speaker5: Oh.

Speaker3: Uh, Alex Higgins, the, uh, the ultimate, uh, the ultimate [01:39:30] snooker player who still probably has got one of the best ever sporting quotes in history. And then, uh, the final one, I couldn’t decide either be, uh, Ricky Gervais or Frankie Boyle, uh, because it would be an evening of absolutely zero political correctness, uh, and, uh, talking about films, talking about snooker, talking about the talking about the world, and then a and then a game of snooker and getting drunk. Uh, after after that.

Speaker6: What’s that sporting [01:40:00] quote? Lewis.

Speaker3: But it’s been. I read his autobiography years ago, and this quote has been, um, has been given to lots of other sports people. George Best included. But I think the actual truth is it was Alex Higgins who said it said it the first he was asked in an interview quite late on in his career. You know, he’d made millions, he’d lost millions, and he was he was basically penniless. He was having to be crowdfunded. And he went on an interview, I don’t know, it [01:40:30] might have been Parkinson. Not as good as you two, obviously, but he said in this interview. Over the years. All my millions. You know, when I look back, I spent half my money on booze, drugs and women. The rest are just wasted.

Speaker5: Squandered it. So, yeah, I thought.

Speaker3: It was a great, uh, a great sporting. But. But he was a legend. He was an absolute legend. Yeah.

Speaker5: Yeah. [01:41:00]

Speaker6: And the final question, Lewis. Imagine, um, it was your last day on the planet and you had your loved ones around you. And you had to leave him with three pieces of wisdom. What would they be?

Speaker3: Uh, well, I thought about this in advance as well. Uh, none of them, uh, we’ve talked only about dental and teeth tonight, but you know that that’s only half the equation. You know, we spend a lot of time at work, but it’s all about the rest of [01:41:30] your life. Dentistry gives you the opportunity to have the experiences that you want. So I would say my first advice would be whatever experience it is, whether it is travel, whether it is learning something, whether it’s a new opportunity in business or in practice or in any field of life, don’t wait. Do it. Just get as many experiences as uh as you can and just enjoy, uh, enjoy every day. Uh, the second one is a practical one. This was advice that my dad gave [01:42:00] me. He didn’t actually put a number to it, but he said be, uh, but but I’ll sort of extend on the best bit of advice. Uh, sort of, um, my dad ever gave me, which was be debt free by 40, 100%, debt free by 40, no mortgage, no loans, no car loans. And then I’ll extend that. Live within your means. Uh, you know, I’ve got quite a few friends who’ve got ten watches and, uh, you know, they haven’t even got long arms and.

Speaker5: And, [01:42:30] you know.

Speaker3: Multiple, multiple Ferraris. Uh, so, yeah, just because the minute you mean it coming back exactly to what Prav said at the start, the minute you’re not chasing finances, it’s all gravy. You’re you’re just your job is basically funding. Enjoy your job, but it’s funding the what you do in the rest of your life or the other things you want to do, your family stuff and your relationship stuff. So [01:43:00] yeah, if you can take that financial pressure off as soon as possible, then and obviously in dentistry, it is possible to do that fairly rapidly. And then the final thing would be just just enjoy yourself. You know, I’ve, I’ve got no sort of, um, particular sort of, uh, sort of religious faith. You know, I’m just going to make sure that I enjoy sort of every day, every opportunity, enjoy every day. And if, if you’re not doing something, change direction, that that would be the, uh, that would [01:43:30] be my advice to, you know, I’ve given to my kids, obviously, they’ve just come into that stage where they’ll actually listen to me again. Now, they.

Speaker5: They.

Speaker3: They it wasn’t a protracted period of time when they thought they knew everything already. And and I just didn’t understand. Uh, so, uh, but I think they’ve finally realised now that I probably have got something to, to offer them, but. Yeah. So that would be my advice. Uh, sort of, [01:44:00] uh, experience as much as you can out of life, uh, get rid of the whether it’s debt, whether it’s any other things that are bringing you down and just enjoy every day uh, and, and do, uh, do what you want to do. Whatever whatever is your passion. Whatever drives you do that.

Speaker1: I’ve messaged. I’ve messaged the next, uh, speaker so we can go to your final, final prep, which is good.

Speaker6: The final. Final.

Speaker1: How would you like to be remembered? Oh, of.

Speaker5: Course, [01:44:30] of course.

Speaker6: Louis. Um, if it, uh. Yeah. So how would you like to be remembered if if the following phrase was was said about you? Yeah. Louis was.

Speaker5: Finish the sentence. Here.

Speaker1: Yeah.

Speaker6: How would you how would you spell was.

Speaker5: Would [01:45:00] I? Go on. It’s.

Speaker3: It’s something that’s never really, um, I’ve never really thought about. I’ll have to think about it if you do ever drag me back. But it’s not something that worries me at all. Uh, once I’m gone. Once I’m gone, I’m gone. Uh, I.

Speaker5: Just.

Speaker3: You know, just try and make the most of my my time on earth and, you know, good friends, good family and, you know, working [01:45:30] in an absolutely fantastic profession.

Speaker6: I’ve got one more question for you, Louis. Imagine you had 30 days left. No. Imagine you had a week left. Do whatever the hell you want. You know, you’ve got a week. Um. And you’ve got all your health and no financial constraints. What would you do in that week?

Speaker3: It’s not long enough, I’m afraid. Uh, I mean, it would be something crazy, you know, Keith Moon sort of level, uh.

Speaker1: A [01:46:00] heroic dose.

Speaker5: That’s not long enough. Uh, it’s, uh.

Speaker3: I mean, for me, the, uh, you know, I’m not frightened of. Crikey. This is getting a bit deep. I’m not frightened of, uh, of death at all. But a couple of, I suppose, melodramatic to call them near-death experiences. Uh, but it doesn’t. It’s not something that frightens me at all. It would be. I think it would be what I’d sort of miss out on, um. And seeing the kids grow up. And, [01:46:30] you know, Tarantino said he’s going to direct ten films and he’s on nine at the moment. You know, uh, you know, he’d have to get a I’d probably go. I’d go and visit him and just ask for his screenplay on his, uh, his, uh, currently undirected film. I’d probably give him a few tips, actually, and then I’d be happy to. Happy to pop off. But, uh. Yeah. Not planning on going anywhere, uh, too soon, but. But you never know, do you? I mean, look [01:47:00] at, uh, I mean, I’m 54, you know, a few incidents that have happened recently in the public eye, you know, war. Shane Warne, he was one of my heroes. I’m a massive cricket fan. Uh, this week, Ray Liotta, you know, he’s gonna he’s gonna live forever because of Goodfellas. Uh, back to Goodfellas. But, um, uh, but, yeah, it doesn’t do them any good, does it? Uh, so, uh, so, yeah, just just got to make the most of it. Because you never know when that, uh, when [01:47:30] that number’s coming up.

Speaker1: It’s been a pleasure, buddy. We’ll have to do part two.

Speaker6: 100%, part two.

Speaker1: Yeah, that flew by. I suddenly looked at the time and it was like, wait a minute, we’ve been talking for two hours.

Speaker6: I know, I know, we’ve been talking for a while because my Mrs. has rung me a couple of times telling me my tea’s getting cold.

Speaker1: Thank you so much, buddy.

Speaker4: This is Dental Leaders, [01:48:00] the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Speaker6: 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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