Speaker1: The vast majority of practices are speed to stop following up inquiries after 2 to 3 weeks. But we know from the data from our lead flow CRM system where we’ve got, I don’t know, a few hundred thousand data points in there where patients have re-engaged after a year, after two years, after 18 months, right, and have come out of the woodwork because we’ve stayed in touch all this time.

Speaker2: This [00:00:30] 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: Hello. Welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast. This is an end of year reflections, thoughts, where my head is in 2023, [00:01:00] at the end of the year and where it’s going. As I sit here in my office on the 22nd of December at 8 p.m., having just finished my last day of work on 2023, it’s been a bloody long day, but I had a massive to do list. I’ve had my team supporting me all the way to the end. Even a member of my team, Ross, is still working and he’s cancelled his plans [00:01:30] this evening to get the work done. Now, as a boss, I never, ever set expectations for my team. I never asked them to stay behind. I never ask them to go above and beyond. It’s never been a requirement. But yet Ross is still here on his last day. Some people finished half day today and got all their work done beforehand, but Ross has stayed there right till the end, almost like my wingman getting everything done, and I think that [00:02:00] is a reflection of him as a, as a, as a team member. But I can say the same about all of my team. You know, Bob, who we’re going to be recording a podcast with probably in the early New Year, I’m going to going to be talking about copywriting and tone of voice and how important that is in your brand. Messaging has been pulling late nights, getting his stuff done for the end of this year, and it’s been a really, really busy period for [00:02:30] us as an agency.

Speaker1: I think we’ve had more inquiries for new business in November and December than we’ve had all year. And, um, we just have a process that we go through when we speak to clients to see if we’re the right fit, if we can serve them, if they’re right for us, if we’re right for them, and we can really make a difference. But just going off work, you know, what’s what’s going on in my mind right now, what’s going [00:03:00] on end of 2023 and what does 24 look like for Prav? My agency, the fresh, my software development company, Lead Flow CRM system, the education business, the IAS Academy and me, you know where my head is at. So I’ll start with me and where my head is at at the moment is about 90% of my energy is consumed on health [00:03:30] and wellness at the moment. And if I think about why that is, um, it really revolves around age mortality. As we get older, we start realising we haven’t got as much time left, and then people around us who have either dropped dead too early. There’s a few in dentistry that we can name, um, somebody that I was really, really close to. Anoop maini, who some of you probably [00:04:00] have known had the pleasure of meeting and crossed paths with an incredibly humorous, funny, gentle human being who who still till to present day.

Speaker1: I can’t believe he’s not here anymore, because we used to talk a lot about the future and what that meant. And, um, most of our conversations, even though it was a client of mine, didn’t revolve around business, but just talked about the wider purpose of life. And then colleagues like Uchenna, um, [00:04:30] and many others around me have either been diagnosed with metabolic disorder, diabetes. I see them deteriorating and wasting away or gaining weight. And I don’t want to be that guy who, in the last decade of his life, for the last 15 years of his life, is, is is having his life extended by modern medicine. And I want to be super healthy until the day I drop dead. Right. And so a lot of the content. I’m consuming. [00:05:00] A lot of the actions that I’m taking revolve around wellness. Should we say I don’t know. Not necessarily. Think about life extension, but I think more about Healthspan. Right. So what is it that that I’m doing at the moment that, um, and that focuses on that? Well, a it’s the content I’m consuming, the podcasts, the content that I’m listening to. So I’ve subscribed to a guy called Peter Attia’s [00:05:30] content. I listen to Andrew Huberman all the time, Professor Lustig and many others. Some content is free, some content I pay for.

Speaker1: And I really get like getting down in the nitty gritty of the science, the receptors, what’s happening at the molecular level, mitochondrial health and all the rest of it. Just because it interests me as a scientist, right. And helps me to understand what’s going on. And that allows me to act in certain ways. So it’s my birthday on the [00:06:00] 24th of December, and on my birthday I will have fasted for seven days. So I will not have had a single bit of food that’s passed my lips for seven whole days. The only thing I will have consumed between then and seven days before is water, electrolytes, vitamin tablets, black coffee and herbal tea. That is it. I’ve been performing at work absolutely fine. I’ve done [00:06:30] a little bit of resistance training. Um, and every morning, in addition to that, I’ve been getting in an ice bath at 0.2 to 0.5 degrees C for about four minutes every morning, and then spending the next 40 minutes of the day shivering before cracking on with some work in the evening. So that’s cold exposure. At the other end of the day, it’s heat exposure for me, so I jump in a sauna at about somewhere between 100 [00:07:00] to 115 degrees C, and I sweat it out for 20 minutes. The research, the literature all points to these sort of crazy things that I am doing at the moment, revolving around longevity and lifespan and wellness.

Speaker1: And I’ve been incredibly overweight. I’ve had l5-s1 disc tear. Those of you who are closer to me and know me well, know that there’s been numerous periods of my life where I’ve had intense [00:07:30] foot pain because of that disc tear, where it almost feels like I’m walking on broken glass, hobbling along, overweight. You know, I remember probably about a couple of years ago, Tiff hadn’t seen Tiff Qureshi for about, I don’t know, six, eight months. And he was saying to himself, I was actually in good shape at the time when I saw him. And he goes, do you know what Prav? I was wondering to myself, are you going to be hobbling today? Are you going to be able to walk? Okay. And the combination of the habits that I’ve just described [00:08:00] have helped me get out of that sorry state, that daily foot pain, that lugging myself around feeling miserable both mentally, inside and physically on the outside. And I think, you know, sometimes we underestimate the impact of how we feel internally and mentally. For me, I’m an all or nothing kind of guy, and I go through these moments where I’m incredibly [00:08:30] positive, right? And, um, and working on myself, my business, my family, my life and everything. And there are certain moments where if I fall off the wagon, I can only describe the process or the journey that I’m going through at that moment in time, a self-destruct mode.

Speaker1: Um, and a lot of friends and colleagues I’ve spoken to, um, see themselves there a lot as well. And I think a lot of it is down to mindset and [00:09:00] mental. We talk a lot about mental health and and whatnot, and that’s coming to the surface now. And I’m not sat here trying to, you know, hijack a new fashionable word or whatever it is. But, you know, there are times in my life where I do feel down and I do feel, you know, despite what I push out on Instagram and stuff like that. And you see perhaps doing this and that and whatever, um, those are just the highlights, right? Those are just the happy times. And everyone else you see out there [00:09:30] on social media, when you see that, you see the good times, right? But behind that, and I’m pretty confident behind anyone and everyone, every persona that we’ve interviewed on the podcast, they have their highs and lows. Um, and I think it’s important to recognise that. So anyway, that’s, um, that’s where I am. And what’s 2024 going to look like? I think I’m going to focus a lot more on my health, a lot more on physical training, [00:10:00] improving my zone two cardio, my VO2 max. I want to improve my strength, and I’ve got various metrics and measures that I’m going to put in place to be able to test how those different areas of my performance are improving.

Speaker1: And I know for a fact when I’m physically fit, when I’m physically performing, I’m mentally performing. And in business I am flying as well. So that’s first and foremost. And and you know that that will see I’ll see rewards [00:10:30] from that in work, in life and also wife and children and all the rest of it, everything will benefit. So that’s going to be priority number 1 in 2024. Then I’ve been speaking to a lot of practice owners. We’ve been jumping on sort of coaching discovery calls about, well, how do I grow my practice? How do I get more patients through the door, how do I increase treatment? Acceptance. And the answer to me, I see it as very, very [00:11:00] simple. I go through a series of questions with clients in and around. I think the easiest way to I call it the patient journey, but I think we should call it the business journey. Right? And I just quizzed them about different areas of the business. It could be air, it could be marketing related, it could be sales process related. It could be related to the entire patient journey A to Z, and I can. I think it’s very easy for somebody else to pick holes in [00:11:30] your business, just like I’ve got coaches and consultants who tear shreds out of me and my business. It’s very easy from the outside looking in.

Speaker1: But the biggest problem that I see in Dental businesses today, and it’s a common problem, is the sales process is not how it should be. So the short answer is this. Most clients come to me and they say, I want more patients through the door. I want more inquiries. Will you help us [00:12:00] with running some Google Facebook ads, internal marketing campaigns, and putting some strategies in place to grow our practice? And before I say yes to that bit, because that’s the easy part, right? The one thing that I have to and must analyse is the sales process. So when that inquiry comes in, what happens next? If you don’t, if you don’t pick up the phone and speak to that inquiry within 30 minutes, your chances of a first [00:12:30] of all, being able to speak to that patient, let alone book them for a consultation, goes down rapidly. And so often I hear, oh, we’re getting loads of inquiries through, but they never pick up the phone. But put yourself in the shoes of that patient. They’ve probably inquired at 4 or 5 practices. One of them picks up the phone, got them booked in within minutes of them sending the inquiry. Because if I’m sat at my computer now and I send you an inquiry and you pick up the phone within five minutes and call me, the likelihood is, at the time [00:13:00] I sent that inquiry, I was ready to transact.

Speaker1: At the time I sent that inquiry, my mindset was in the business of teeth. And if at the time I send that inquiry, you call me, I’m ready to talk about it. Let an hour pass, let two hours pass, let half a day passed. Maybe something else has taken priority in my life. So then I become a waste of time. Inquiry. I don’t pick up the phone, but I’ve sent you my name, email address and phone number. What [00:13:30] was going through my mind when that happened? And so often the follow up process is broken, right? We don’t call the patients back in time or when we try and call them back, we only call them back once and we don’t text them and we don’t WhatsApp them, and we don’t try calling them from a mobile as well as a landline, because we’ve got different preferences, right? So me Prav I pick up the phone if somebody calls me from an 0161 [00:14:00] landline number because I’m based in Manchester and that’s the local Manchester area code, I’m curious as to who in Manchester is trying to call me, so I’ll pick up an unknown number from an 0161, but I won’t pick up an unknown number from a mobile because I think who on earth is that trying to call me? And how’s that mobile number? Got mad. It’s probably someone trying to sell me accident insurance or something.

Speaker1: Right? So I ignore all mobiles, but not all people are like me. Some people ignore landlines and some people [00:14:30] accept mobiles. And so, depending on which you are, then surely we should be trying to follow up patients equally from landlines and mobiles and testing both. Maybe if you try and call me between the hours of nine and six, you’re never going to get hold of me because I’m mad busy at work. And while you’re at work, you’re trying trying to call me. But what about trying to ring those patients and follow them up outside of business hours? Okay, [00:15:00] maybe most patients can’t pick up the phone during work hours, right? So perhaps trying them during a lunch time, trying them after 6 p.m., 7 to 8 p.m. is a really good time to put patients into your clinic. Saturday mornings are a really good time to book patients into your clinic. In fact, in my clinics we book more patients in on an evening and on a Saturday than we’d do all week. And it kind of makes sense. Patients are free then, right? Then [00:15:30] at what point do you give up following up those patients after you’ve texted them, maybe sent them half a dozen emails over the space of, I don’t know, 6 to 12 weeks? Do you give up on those patients because fresh bloods come in. New inquiries have come through the door.

Speaker1: And that’s what often happens. The vast majority of practices I speak to stop following up inquiries after 2 to 3 weeks. But we know from the data from our lead flow CRM system where we’ve got, I don’t know, [00:16:00] a few hundred thousand data points in there where patients have re-engaged after a year, after two years, after 18 months, right, and have come out of the woodwork because we’ve stayed in touch all this time. In fact, if you’re a clinician listening to this now, you’ve probably had a consultation with a patient a year ago, two years ago. Anyway, they come out of the woodwork two years later or 18 months later. Where the hell did [00:16:30] you just come from? And the reason being is that not everyone who comes into a consultation is ready to buy on that day. Maybe they were just getting information, maybe the situation, financial, physical time, off work, headspace, wherever they are in their in their journey, they’re just not ready to transact then. And so you’re not a priority and you send them a treatment plan and they don’t respond and they ghost you. And then they come [00:17:00] into some money a year later or two years later, or circumstances change, a job role, an event that comes up or something, a wedding, whatever that is. And now they’re ready to rock and roll. But you stopped communicating with them after four weeks. If you stayed in touch with him every 6 to 8 weeks through some kind of CRM or automation, then I guarantee you, I guarantee you that a ton of patients will convert [00:17:30] later on down the line.

Speaker1: In fact, one of the most popular marketing campaigns that we run for clients is a patient reactivation campaign. And we tell our clients to to get the data of all the inquiries that have inquired over the last five years that ghosted you or stopped responding, never converted to a consultation, and just send them one email and one text message. And I guarantee you will reactivate depending [00:18:00] on how much data you’ve got, tens, if not 100 hundred thousand pounds worth of dentistry. And the reason being, circumstances change. And if that email literally just says this Prav are you still interested in dental treatment? Question mark. That is it. And the subject line of the email just says their first name Prav dot dot dot. I call that my famous seven word email and it generates a ton of new business. Why? Because there’s [00:18:30] a bunch of patients that we should have stayed in touch with for two years. So if there’s any piece of advice I can give anyone about growing their business, it’s to have a strategy in place to follow up your inquiries for a minimum of two years. And that would change the game massively in terms of marketing strategy. And then you can look at generating more leads and putting them into that two year pipeline.

Speaker1: And that’s [00:19:00] pretty much the best advice I can give anyone from a marketing strategy point of view, other than the concept of congruency. So when you’re running ad campaigns, whether you’re running Google ad campaigns, Facebook ad campaigns, or whatever they are, make sure that the offer that you’ve got in place, whether it’s 10% off composite bonding or a free consultation or whatever that offer is, the communication is totally congruent throughout. So let’s say you offered [00:19:30] 10%. Let’s just stick with 10% off composite bonding. So your advert says that. So when they click on the advert your landing page says that when someone picks up the phone they say, oh, congratulations, you’ve just managed to secure our 10% off composite bonding offer. And then the next thing that happens is that they come in and you talk to them about it, or the text message you send them mentions the 10% off. That’s why they inquired, mentions the complimentary consultation. [00:20:00] You address that at the consultation. It’s amazing how many Dental practices run special offers and campaigns, and their marketing strategy is not shared with reception or the TCO. It’s a conversation between practice owner and marketing agency. It doesn’t get communicated across. Once again, one of the biggest reasons that that I feel marketing campaigns fail. And then only this week we’re running [00:20:30] an implant campaign for a practice owner at the moment, and we’ve just kicked it off maybe about a week ago.

Speaker1: And he messages me and goes, hey, Prav, we had two patients in today and they thought our dental implants were free and they came in for a consultation. Is there anything in our marketing that says dental implants are free? So I say, no mate, we do mention a free consultation, but answer me this how on earth did that patient [00:21:00] make it through to your practice thinking that dental implants are free, right? That’s the bigger problem because somebody will read the word free on a, on a, on a, um, campaign or something like that and think that, yeah, you know, maybe the dental implants are free. And in fact, you know, we’ve had, you know, we run some ad campaigns where, you know, we’re marketing orthodontics and you say, you know, free whitening with ortho and some of these crackpot [00:21:30] patients inquire and say, well, I don’t want the ortho, but can I get the free whitening patients are funny, funny individuals, right? And you get all sorts when you put some offers out there. You get you get patients in all shapes and sizes and all sorts of problems that they come to you with. So you’ll get that. That’s part and parcel of marketing, right? But back to my original question to this client. How on earth did that patient make it through your filters? And he said, what do you mean? And [00:22:00] I said, well, we spoke about.

Speaker1: If a patient comes in for a free consultation or any consultation, they need to earn the right to attend that free concert. Just because it’s a free consultation, it doesn’t mean any Tom, Dick and Harry can walk through your door. So what do you mean by that? Prav? Well, I’ll tell you what I mean. There isn’t a single patient that should be allowed to walk through your practice door without you understanding and knowing. What [00:22:30] knowledge do they have about the treatment? What’s the price point in their head? Where are they going to get the money from? And what is their readiness and appetite for moving forward with treatment? So we have a clear series of questions that we triage patients with before we even allow them to book a consultation. And I think for me this is the basics. But when I speak to a lot of practice owners and often in [00:23:00] all aspects of business, right, whether we’re looking at balance sheets and KPIs, whether we’re thinking about leadership and managing your team and connecting with them and staying in touch with them and being a good leader, or whether we’re talking about sales conversations is often just the basics that we need to get right in order to see massive growth in our businesses. Right. And a lot of businesses get the basics wrong.

Speaker1: So going back to these questions, what are the questions that we ask in order for a patient [00:23:30] to earn the right for a complimentary consultation? Well, one of the questions we asked is so what do you know about composite bonding? What research have you done and what is it that you think you need? Right. We’ll go through the usual, you know, understand the why now and get an insight into, you know, the pain points that that patients experiencing what they can’t do with their teeth, how it’s impacting their confidence, their life, their job, all of that. We go through all of that. But when we get down [00:24:00] to the nitty gritty, what do you know about composite bonding? What research have you done? Have you had any other consultations? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, where have you had those consultations and why didn’t you proceed with treatment there? What was it that they couldn’t do that you was looking for? Was there a price point? Was it a conversation? Dig into that detail a little bit further. Right. These this these days in the current economy, we’re seeing [00:24:30] instead of patients just booking straight in and going ahead, they’re having 3 or 4 consultations before they make their mind up. Right. And maybe it’s a cost of living thing. Mortgages have gone up, heating’s gone up, so on and so forth. Right. But we’ve seen a lot of that right now.

Speaker1: So what have they or what haven’t they got out of those other consultations? Those clues might be important for us as a clinic. Okay. Do you have any idea how much composite bonding or this treatment costs. Have you [00:25:00] looked into the price of that? What do you understand? By that, let them give you their answer and then furnish them with the right information. I believe you should be giving costs over the phone and not hiding behind your prices. Otherwise, you end up in the situation where patients are walking through the door. They think it’s one price, you’re giving them another price and you’ve got a total mismatch, not doing anyone any favours. So once we get an agreement on the approximate cost of this treatment and we’re on the same [00:25:30] page, I want to find out where they’re getting their money from. So I would ask that patient. So if you were to go ahead with treatment and we were the right practice for you, how would you look at paying for this? Would you be paying out of your own pocket and savings, or would you want to take advantage of our monthly payment finance plans? If they say finance, ask them, do you think you’d be accepted for finance? Do you think you’ve got a good credit score? Okay. And once we’ve got to that point, I want to understand what [00:26:00] that patient’s appetite or readiness is.

Speaker1: So I would ask them if everything checks out and we were in the right ballpark of price, and you felt we were the right practice for you or the right clinician for you to get you the result you wanted. How soon do you want to get started straight away in the next six months, or are you just figuring things out right now? Once I’ve got the answer to all of those questions, I pretty much know what the standard and quality of that [00:26:30] patient is on where we are with them. If I asked all that question, all those questions, there is absolutely no chance that a patient could ever sit in my chair thinking that they could get free dentistry. And those really are the basics of the sales process that we need to think about when trying to convert patients or convert inquiries into solid consultations that end up going ahead, [00:27:00] more than likely going ahead with. Of treatment. In fact, you know, dancing, Ollie and Dash, they do a lot of aligner treatment. And I was speaking to Darcy the other day about the open days that he runs. And they run a really unique process. Right. And look, I learn as much from my clients as they learn from me. And one of the things that that does, does, which I think is pretty cool, all of his open day patients have paid £350 before they turn up, because they’ve actually had a WhatsApp [00:27:30] consultation with Susie.

Speaker1: She takes them through all those questions that I’ve mentioned and some more. And the end result of that consultation is this you’re going to come for our open day and you’re going to you want a line of treatment. I’m going to take £350 off you now for you to get started. And the only reason that you won’t proceed is if we deem you to be clinically unsuitable on the day. So he gets 30 or [00:28:00] 40 patients were ever turning up to his open day ready to rock and roll. And I think that’s a really, really unique approach. But I don’t believe that there are many clinics that can achieve that or execute it, because he’s got some really unique team members. He’s got a unique process that he’s drilled for over a decade. But it’s certainly something that I admire and I look at from from some practices and think, wow, you know, I thought I knew all the, all the ways to do this, but but clearly, you [00:28:30] know, the stuff that I get taught from practice is every day that I then pass on to my clients, right, and share knowledge with people. And then when we look at stuff like implant dentistry, I think that’s where I come into my own. Um, primarily because the clinic that I co-own with my colleagues, we focus primarily on full arch implant dentistry and treating edentulous patients.

Speaker1: And so if I think about that process, [00:29:00] it’s really, really easy for me to sell implant dentistry or my team to sell implant dentistry, because first of all, the impact on the patient’s life is huge. We do at least one full arch a day in clinic, sometimes two. Sometimes it’s a single arch, sometimes it’s a dual arch. And our clinical setup, in terms of the clinical team, the lab we’ve got in house and everything is all geared up to do lots and lots [00:29:30] of full arch implant dentistry. But it’s the patient journey that nails it. Right from Kerry. Speaking to the team on the phone. Sorry, Kerry speaking to the patients on the phone. Emotively with a great degree of emotional intelligence understanding. A lot of these patients have got pain and problems right, and that pain is often denture glue. Embarrassment, the inability to be able to eat the foods they once loved right? Hiding behind [00:30:00] their hands, hiding from photographs, becoming socially recluse and avoiding various social events. Well, she can empathise. Empathise with those patients, right? And then when they come in for the consultation, they meet Mark and meet Suresh. And these guys are both incredibly emotionally intelligent and they’re very good at storytelling. And we’ve recorded some amazing, amazing video stories. I like to call them films [00:30:30] of patients who’ve been through that journey, and then we’ve visited them in their homes, in their social environment and interviewed them in depth about their journey.

Speaker1: And what we do is we take these films and we allow our consultations, our patients in consultations to watch these films, because those patients in those films, what do they do? They deal with all the objections, price objections. They deal with fear around pain, embarrassment, [00:31:00] what the future might look like, the potential investment. And is it worthwhile? What partners think. Husbands and wives we’ve interviewed. Right. And when these patients watch them and we say to the patient, so what did you think about Sean’s story? They’re already sold, right? The hard work is done. And we present three options a dangerous patients. We present three options to them. And often I come across implant surgeons who just sell them the Rolls Royce. Yeah. You want a full [00:31:30] arch of implants? It’s all we offer. It’s all that’s on the menu. And that’s £18,000. And that’s like saying. And you’re going to have to excuse my French here, but that’s like saying to a patient, you’ve come here for some help. And unless you’re prepared to spend £18,000, you can piss right off. But we leave in, we’re leaving stacks of cash on the table. And we were still we’re leaving [00:32:00] that patient without options. So what do we offer edentulous patients or patients? We’re in a bit of a mess. We say to them, we can give you a really nice looking set of dentures that look unbelievably natural.

Speaker1: They handcrafted in house by Mark Northover has been doing this for 30 years and they will fit well and be really comfortable. And they won’t look like dentures. I promise you they’ll look like real teeth now [00:32:30] you cost for that, or your investment in that is going to be £5,000. The next step is we can take those stunning dentures and we can stick some implants in them. And so now what you’ve got is implant supported dentures. And they click in and click out. And you remove them to clean them and take them out at night. Right. And your investment in that is £7,000 for the opposite [00:33:00] and £7,000 for the lower set. And then what we can do is build you a fixed bridge, where we permanently fix those teeth into your upper and lower jaw, and your investment in that is £15,000 for the upper jaw and £15,000 for the lower jaw. And then you just leave the patient to make the decision. We’ve had patients over the years who’ve gone for the denture [00:33:30] option. They’ve then come back and said, can you stick some bolts in? Now these are moving around and I’m fed up of denture glue. Right. And those some of those patients eventually come in and have the fixed arch. But if we’d have said to that patient on day one £16,000 or piss off that have gone somewhere else, right, they’d have gone to a cheaper clinic.

Speaker1: Worse still, they might have gone off to Turkey and had a nightmare. And so providing your patients with options once again, you know, implants. I’m speaking to a lot of clinics at the moment who [00:34:00] are saying, do you know what, I want to grow my implant practice. I want to do loads of full arches. I’ve done 25 full arches this year. Next year I want to do 50. I’ve placed 100 implants. Next year I want to place 200. I kid you not, it is rarely, rarely about your Facebook ad campaigns. It is rarely about your Google ad campaigns. It’s about nailing your patient journey. It’s about nailing your communication on the phone. It’s about [00:34:30] listening to the phone calls between your patients and your front of house team, and refining that. It’s about the interaction between your team. When those patients come in, it’s about refining your consultation process, your treatment plan presentation, your treatment plan, follow up and your follow up communication, and perhaps staying in touch with those patients who you’ve presented with a treatment plan for two plus years. Take a list [00:35:00] of all those patients over the last two years you’ve presented to a treatment plan to and haven’t converted. Just reach out to them all again, through text, through email, through phone call, you’ll convert some again. And that’s where the majority of of growth is in practices.

Speaker1: You know, in my journey this year, I’ve done a lot more public speaking and gained a lot more confidence doing that. And I think that has just come through generally through experience. If I look back at the [00:35:30] first time I did that, I, you know, I’d stand up on a stage and absolutely shit myself and think, Crikey, I’ve got all these people looking at me. What if I get my words muddled up or get it, get it wrong? And that’s progressed through, you know, having the opportunities of being able to speak for people like Straumann, Nobel, Biocare and Carlos, the IAS Academy, running my own business courses. And that’s something I want to and I’m going to do [00:36:00] a lot more of because I find it incredibly fulfilling and I feel like I learn a lot. From my audience and my favourite piece of public speaking or training has to be my one day business mastery course. And on that day, okay, we go through some HR stuff, we go through some financial stuff, we go through the sales process, we run through some marketing things. I, I’ve tried to put a course together [00:36:30] that covers all the business basics of growth. Because I said earlier, most practices get the basics wrong. And you know what the most popular part of that course is, I think. And the most impactful part of that course that delegates have told me is nothing to do with business.

Speaker1: It’s this concept called the Wheel of Life. And what I do during that exercise is I go through a series of questions. [00:37:00] If you know what the wheel of life is, you, you know this is probably not news to you. But I go through a series of questions where I ask the room about various elements of their life, okay? And I ask them to rate those different elements from 1 to 10. And it gets people thinking really hard about the different facets of their life. Because, [00:37:30] look, if you take those facets and the facets I’m talking about, if you think about your life today and you think, where are you financially? Where are your relationships with your top five friends? How is your relationship with those family members that you love the most? What’s romance like? What’s your career like? Health, spirituality, and then fun. And you think about all of those facets and score yourself from 1 to 10. You realise that you’re lacking [00:38:00] in certain areas. So let’s look at finance, right? Where are you in terms of your personal finance now and where do you want to be. And finance could be how much money have you accumulated? What are your savings like? It could be down to. What does your lifestyle look like, and have you adjusted your lifestyle to actually become richer by not needing the fancy shit anymore? Right.

Speaker1: And that’s that’s me. Definitely. My where my head is right [00:38:30] now is is I’ve definitely dematerialised in my life and I feel a lot more comfortable about my personal finances. Right. And then your friends, what are your relationships like with your top three mates? You know, those who’d come running if the drop of a hat and, um, you know, often we can we can go a year or 18 months or six months without even speaking to our best friends and just doing something as simple as maybe you score yourself [00:39:00] a three or a five out of ten or whatever, but you know, you know, you’d want to spend more time with them just picking up the phone to that friend and saying, hey mate, I haven’t spoke to you in a long time. Sending a message, sending a text, meeting up for a coffee, those things that you get too busy for family, right? Take the top 3 to 5 people who mean the world to you in terms of family, and think about if they drop dead tomorrow, what regrets would you have? And it’s often around the time or the lack of time you’ve given them. Take [00:39:30] a moment out of your life to give them more time, right? Romance. Taboo subjects? Yeah. What is that like? And look, romance doesn’t necessarily need to mean, you know, what happens under the sheets, right? But you know, how is your romantic relationship with your other half, your partner? What is could it be better? And then what could you do to improve that? Whether it’s going out for a meal, certain gestures, maybe you’ve got too [00:40:00] used to each other, right? And you’ve stopped making an effort.

Speaker1: But we can all change and career. What can you do to improve that? Is it education? Is it motivation? Is it? Is it finding, you know, a new career or a skill? Health. Could you be training more? Could you be eating better? Are you eating too much processed food? Are you just picking up snacks? Quick fix spirituality. What does that mean to you? Does it have religious or non-religious [00:40:30] connotations? For me, spirituality is just finding time for Prav. You know, I have those moments by myself where I feel spiritually connected. It’s the, you know, Prav wakes up at half four in the morning. The rest of the world, my family’s asleep. I walk downstairs, you know, I might do a little bit of breathwork or meditation. Then I’ll jump in an ice bath for 4 or 5 minutes and it’ll be painful. [00:41:00] But during that pain, it’s really peaceful as well. Right? That’s that’s what spirituality means to me. It means different things to different people. Right. And then fun. I know for a fact when I wasn’t running my businesses, when I was, um, how do I put it? Um, had less responsibilities.

Speaker1: I was a lot more fun. So how can Prav stick the fun back in his life? So when you look at all those facets of those wheels, you can really think [00:41:30] deeply. And then we go through an exercise of thinking of three things that you can execute, maybe in the next 30 days to take your score up a notch. And I find that exercise incredibly powerful, as do the delegates on that course find it really, really powerful, too. And so that’s probably the most enjoyable part of the teaching and the training that I do on behalf of the [00:42:00] IAS Academy. And, you know, we’re developing that business now. I think I think one of the key things that we’re working on at the moment is this clearer line of diploma that Josh Rowley and Prof. Ross Hobson are running, which is, you know, I think part of it’s going to go online next year and I’m going to be heavily involved in recording that, putting it together in a way that our delegates can can articulate it. And also, you know, helping to market that. And [00:42:30] I truly believe I like to get involved with businesses that, um, are offering the best in class in terms of the training, the education and stuff and the way they operate. And I truly do believe that the education that Prof. Hobson and Ross and co providing is, is second to none, because it’s not just focusing on the business of Invisalign or one aligner system or whatever.

Speaker1: It comes down to the, the um, the core principles and stuff. And it’s that science that I [00:43:00] really love. And that’s why when I go back to listening to podcasts and, and understanding, you know, the mechanisms of actions of, you know, different agonists on receptors or where dopamine is acting in the, you know, the nucleus accumbens and the reward. World centre. And that’s why fructose is like crack to us. And that’s why we become addicted to these things. Right. And it’s it’s the science of the education that those guys talk about, which I don’t necessarily understand [00:43:30] because I’m not a clinical dentist, but I believe offers sort of the best in class training for the right people. So, yeah, I think I’ve just, um, I think I’ve just jabbered on for the last 40 minutes. So I’m probably going to end the podcast here. And I think my message is this is probably going to go out in the new year. I’m guessing even though I’m recording it 2023, I’m going to be doing some goal setting between Christmas and the New Year, and I’m going to be setting goals [00:44:00] in those different facets of the wheel of life. Right. Health. And I’m going to document what’s my training program going to be like. Who’s going to be my accountability partner on that? Right. What what habits am I going to do in health.

Speaker1: What am I going to do to get my spirituality score up? How’s Prav going to be more fun and have more fun? What am I going to do in terms of finances? How am I going to connect with my top five friends more this year? Right? What am I [00:44:30] going to do about those family members that I take for granted and neglect? How am I going to improve my romance with my wife? What am I going to do to progress my career? I’m going to do a lot more training, public speaking, and that’s I think that’s where I feel I’m getting a lot of value out of my career and putting a lot back out into the world. I really enjoy that and that’s it, really. I’m going to focus on that and focus on some goals. So look, [00:45:00] if you guys are setting goals, maybe think about the different facets of your life rather than just tunnel vision in down on, I just want to get more patients through the door, or I want to grow my dental practice or want to grow my dental business or whatever. I think if you get everything else in place, I think it’s called getting your ducks in a row or whatever. Your business will fall into place. And on that note, over and out, I hope you have an amazing Christmas and New Year. Whatever it is that you do or [00:45:30] you have done by the time this podcast out.

Speaker2: This is Dental Leaders the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Speaker1: 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 [00:46:00] and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

Speaker3: If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so so, so much for listening. Thanks.

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