Payman Langroudi: This podcast comes to you from Enlighten Enlightens, an advanced teeth whitening system [00:00:05] that guarantees results on every single patient. We’ve treated hundreds of thousands of patients [00:00:10] now and have a really clear understanding of what it takes to get every patient to that delighted [00:00:15] state that we want to get to. If you want to understand teeth whitening in much further detail, join [00:00:20] us for online training. It only takes an hour completely free. Even if you never use [00:00:25] enlighten as a whitening system, you’ll learn loads and loads about whitening. How to talk about it, [00:00:30] how to involve your teams. Join us. Enlighten online training. Com.

[VOICE]: This [00:00:35] is Dental Leaders. The [00:00:40] podcast where you get to go one on one with [00:00:45] emerging leaders in dentistry. Your [00:00:50] hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Payman Langroudi: It [00:00:55] gives me great pleasure to welcome Grant Goodson onto the podcast. [00:01:00] Grant is actually married to a dentist, not a dentist yourself, [00:01:05] grant.

Grant Goodstein: But keep it far away from the teeth as humanly possible. Don’t want to ruin any smiles. [00:01:10] I leave that to our dentist.

Payman Langroudi: Um, Leo [00:01:15] Melkonian, who actually, your practice that you guys have just bought is [00:01:20] the closest dental practice to my house, and I walk past there multiple [00:01:25] times a day. A perfect smile that you guys are buying and the first perfect smile [00:01:30] that the original. Yeah. The original. And that group’s become one of our loads and loads [00:01:35] of practices. Um, and new to the UK. Two, [00:01:40] three years you’ve been here. Yeah. And new to the profession as well. But your own history [00:01:45] in Twitter and in tech companies. Um, so we’ll get [00:01:50] into it, but massive pleasure to have you actually come all the way here. We could have just done it from home, right?

Grant Goodstein: I know that’s what [00:01:55] I was thinking. Do it from your place, huh?

Payman Langroudi: Where do you.

Grant Goodstein: Live? I live. Leah and I live kind of near the Hammersmith [00:02:00] Bridge, so we walk to work every day. That’s one of our, uh. I can get a little bit more into [00:02:05] the journey of finding a practice and ultimately leading to the practice where Leo was already working. But yeah, we’re in the neighbourhood [00:02:10] too, and that’s part of what makes us so happy to do what we do is we actually treat our neighbours when we go to [00:02:15] Tesco, when we go to. I always joke with Leah, I’m used to going everywhere with Leah and [00:02:20] she’s everyone’s dentist and they love her and her patients are crazy about her. She gets recognised everywhere and people want to [00:02:25] talk to her. But since I started sitting on the desk and owning the practice’s practice, sometimes I have people who [00:02:30] recognise me too, including the ones who aren’t her patients or our other associates patients. So I always [00:02:35] joke with her. Leah. I was out at getting groceries and I had a celeb sighting today. [00:02:40] Someone recognised me. So it’s always it’s always a lot of fun, but.

Payman Langroudi: So I mean, how [00:02:45] did you two meet?

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, so we met. This is, uh, she might be slightly embarrassed with me telling the story, [00:02:50] but that’s never stopped me from doing anything like this before. Uh, she was, uh, [00:02:55] she’s English. She grew up just outside of London in Surrey, and she was [00:03:00] on PhD year. She was working in Essex and she had some, you know, it’s the rare year as a [00:03:05] dentist where he actually have like PTO, like, uh, annual leave, uh, which, [00:03:10] you know, when you’re self-employed associate, you don’t have. And she had a bunch of days she hadn’t taken any holiday yet. This was [00:03:15] just coming out of Covid and she thought, oh, you know what I want? And the reason why is she’s a huge Hannah [00:03:20] Montana fan. That was her favourite show growing up on the Disney Channel. And those who are are [00:03:25] fans, as I’m sure most of your listeners are, know that Hannah Montana, set in Los Angeles in her [00:03:30] house, is a famous house in Malibu. So she was like, I want to live my my Hannah [00:03:35] Montana dream. She’d never been to Los Angeles before. And she said, booking the solo holiday. There are flights for [00:03:40] like £300 per turn, timing it right out of Covid. So she did it and she thought, well, I’m there. Wouldn’t [00:03:45] it be a fun story to tell my friends and family, uh, to go on a date with American guy? So she go to the [00:03:50] dating app. She goes and, uh, we, we mutually swiped on each other [00:03:55] and got to chatting a bit and she told me she her favourite food is sushi so I said, great, we’re going [00:04:00] for sushi when you’re here. And we had a couple of great dates when she was in Los Angeles and. [00:04:05] But obviously it’s not practical, right? Living over 5000 miles away and I was going [00:04:10] midweek up to Las Vegas with some friends. I had a concert that I was [00:04:15] really excited to see Silk Sonic. If you’re familiar with them, Bruno Mars and Anderson.

[BOTH]: Oh, Bruno Mars like.

Grant Goodstein: Great [00:04:20] kind of soul album that they did. And they were doing a residency in Vegas. I had two of my good friends that [00:04:25] I was going with, and on the morning I was supposed to leave, both friends had to cancel last minute [00:04:30] for the trip to Vegas from Los Angeles. One got Covid, the other had a personal emergency come up. And [00:04:35] so all of a sudden I had these tickets to the concert. I just gone on two dates with Leah. I call her out of the blue. I’m [00:04:40] like, I know we don’t know each other that well. Um, but would you want to come to Vegas with me? [00:04:45] And we kind of, once we started spending time together in Vegas, went to the concert, we kind of fell in love and have been [00:04:50] inseparable since we did long distance for a while. And we would try to meet every month or two was [00:04:55] for me at the time I was working remotely in tech, so it was easy ish for me to get away and work [00:05:00] from abroad and do all those kind of things. Um, so we were able to do that until finally [00:05:05] I was able to make it over here on a full time basis.

Payman Langroudi: So was there no question of her moving to you?

[BOTH]: Um. [00:05:10]

Grant Goodstein: It was, but one of the things as a dentist [00:05:15] is the US.

[BOTH]: Doesn’t.

Grant Goodstein: Make it very easy. So she would have to go back to school at a cost of 100,000 [00:05:20] a year for a minimum of three years. So it was firstly, I love London. It’s [00:05:25] uh, will be.

[BOTH]: Had you been before?

Grant Goodstein: I’ve been before once as like a student and, you know, went [00:05:30] to the, to the London Bridge and the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard. All the things [00:05:35] us Americans think you should do when you come to London, which I’d really tell all my friends to skip when they’re here. I’d [00:05:40] had a good time. I remember it was when the pound was a lot stronger compared to the dollar, and I had a two [00:05:45] week trip in Europe to visit some friends who were studying abroad, and I spent my entire budget in my four days in.

[BOTH]: London. [00:05:50]

Grant Goodstein: For the trip. So I drank a lot of cheap beer and Prague after that and mostly survived on [00:05:55] that and water. Um, but yeah, so I’ve been to London once before and then got to know London much [00:06:00] better. While I was dating Leah, I was back and forth quite a bit and, um, really fallen [00:06:05] in love with it. And this is where we’ve obviously been buying and buying a business here. Uh, [00:06:10] we’ve decided to make this our, our permanent home for the next many years.

Payman Langroudi: While we’re on it. [00:06:15] What’s the best and worst things about London compared to someone outside of I miss my [00:06:20] family and friends. I mean, yeah, just as a town.

Grant Goodstein: So for me, what I love again, I grew up in Los Angeles and in [00:06:25] Southern California, which means you’re kind of reliant on a car to go everywhere, right? Like people come to Los Angeles [00:06:30] and they see the beaches right there, but they don’t realise next to the beach is a massive four lane highway [00:06:35] that you have to cross in either direction. It’s just it’s not ideal, but it’s a reality of [00:06:40] a city that was built and kind of built up in the 1950s. This is very reliant on cars. I love [00:06:45] being able to walk and take the tube everywhere I go. I just love the energy that it brings. [00:06:50] I like the idea of like, even in our business, right? Everyone who comes to our practices lives five, [00:06:55] ten minutes away. They live. I’m sure all your neighbours or many of your neighbours come into our practice. [00:07:00] And I love that energy that comes with the idea that you can just pop over to [00:07:05] Tesco and grab the groceries you need for dinner. Doesn’t all involve this effort of getting in the [00:07:10] car.

[BOTH]: It’s only it’s.

Payman Langroudi: Only New York, which is like that.

[BOTH]: Yeah, the East Coast, like [00:07:15] Boston and places like.

Grant Goodstein: That are a little bit more similar, right? I think people came over from England [00:07:20] to the States to start. So the original East Coast cities, Philadelphia, Boston, [00:07:25] New York are a little bit closer to a London field. But on the West Coast, I mean, the population [00:07:30] in California, especially in Southern California in LA, wasn’t any size [00:07:35] until between the 30s and 40s, which kind of came right with the popularisation of [00:07:40] the car. So everything’s built around cars.

[BOTH]: So I.

Payman Langroudi: Found DC the most European. [00:07:45]

[BOTH]: City.

Grant Goodstein: So, um, international and diverse as well. You walk similar to London [00:07:50] and you walk down the street and you could hear five different.

[BOTH]: Languages.

Grant Goodstein: From five different people. I [00:07:55] love DC, I used to be there quite a bit in my previous job.

Payman Langroudi: So good time that Georgetown [00:08:00] bit. Very nice.

Grant Goodstein: That was my dream uni that I didn’t get into.

[BOTH]: Oh really?

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, I fell in love. I went during [00:08:05] high school with my family on a trip to Washington DC and just fell in love with it.

Payman Langroudi: It’s very strong on international [00:08:10] relations, that sort of thing.

Grant Goodstein: Oh yeah, I must be. I originally thought maybe I wanted to study [00:08:15] political science.

[BOTH]: Maybe.

Grant Goodstein: Go do some of that. I didn’t, I wound up studying economics, so something completely [00:08:20] different.

Payman Langroudi: So and then you went from economics into tech.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: Um, so I, my [00:08:25] whole life grew up thinking I wanted to work in sport. I’m obsessed with sport and it’s my passion. I always had [00:08:30] this joke within my family because I was really like, um, as a kid, [00:08:35] every kid wants to grow up being the star of the basketball team. I was okay at sports. I was never, [00:08:40] I was good enough to make the team and a good team, but not certainly enough to be any sort of [00:08:45] star or more than a bench player and in my high school. But what I [00:08:50] was interested in is like the business and the back end of sports. So my dream job [00:08:55] growing up from the time I was like five years old, was to be the general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers. [00:09:00]

[BOTH]: That was my dream.

Grant Goodstein: Basketball was my sport growing up. And you know, all the kids are pretending they’re going to be Kobe Bryant [00:09:05] or Shaquille O’Neal. And I was going to be the guy.

[BOTH]: Making the trades, moving the pieces. [00:09:10] So I was like, yeah, there’s very.

Grant Goodstein: Few Jewish kids with limited jumping abilities playing in.

[BOTH]: The NBA. [00:09:15]

Grant Goodstein: So that was going to be the more likely route for me. And I really pursued that, that [00:09:20] dream through university as well. So I wound up going to the University of Michigan, which outside of having [00:09:25] great university sports, also home to the US’s best Dental school. So maybe that was a little bit [00:09:30] of foreshadowing there as well. But so I went to Michigan and I went the.

[BOTH]: What’s the.

Payman Langroudi: Name of that [00:09:35] town?

Grant Goodstein: Ann Arbour.

[BOTH]: Michigan. Ann Arbour So.

Grant Goodstein: Where there’s major scandal right now going on with our football [00:09:40] coach was just fired in disgrace. So don’t get me started on that American football coach, [00:09:45] I should say. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I showed up on the first day of campus, and I found out where the [00:09:50] basketball team’s offices were, and I knocked on the door and I said, can I work here? I want to be [00:09:55] a part of this. And I said, uh, there’s other people interested, but come back next week and we’re doing interviews [00:10:00] for our student managers and, uh, for those who don’t know, and I’d imagine probably not a lot of Americans [00:10:05] listening to the podcast, but American college sports and our unis are, [00:10:10] are on a scale that’s probably hard for most British people to understand. Uh, football [00:10:15] is the biggest thing. And at Michigan, our football stadium, Michigan Stadium, is [00:10:20] the size of the Wembley Stadium, plus the O2, and that’s sold out [00:10:25] every weekend during football stadium. So 110,000.

Payman Langroudi: Yeah, I noticed, I noticed, I noticed [00:10:30] sometimes the college football stars are bigger than the NFL [00:10:35] ones, like in local towns, right?

Grant Goodstein: It’s it’s absolutely massive. The more than 100% [00:10:40] of the population, like the city’s not even 100,000. We have 115,000 [00:10:45] in the stadium every Saturday for football, so it’s a lot of fun. Our basketball arena, you know, 13,000 [00:10:50] fans screaming, going crazy, jumping up and down the whole game. It’s really a cool experience. [00:10:55] And if you’re a fan of sport, I’d encourage any fan of sport to check out American University Sports. [00:11:00] But anyway, I wound up interviewing, I wound up getting the job, and it was the transformative experience [00:11:05] of my career in university. Um, frankly, I wasn’t an outstanding [00:11:10] student. By the time I didn’t get there. I slept through a lot of classes, but I learned so much and so much that [00:11:15] I take with me today, um, from working for the basketball team. It was, uh, by the time [00:11:20] I was in my third and fourth year, I was working 40, 50, 60, 70 hours a week. So [00:11:25] a lot more time spent. So I was, I started out basically doing all the dirty work that no one wants to do. That’s [00:11:30] player falls on the floor wiping up the sweat. Everything from [00:11:35] setting up the cones for the drills. Basically, our job was to allow it so the players can focus on playing. [00:11:40] Our coaching staff could focus on coaching. We did all the dirty work that helped everyone [00:11:45] focus on their task. As my time evolved, I had a very special [00:11:50] interest in analytics and the numbers around sports, which is especially [00:11:55] at that time in the early part of I started uni. Between 2012 and 2016, [00:12:00] that was growing like crazy. So that was an area of interest for me. And I kind of pitched [00:12:05] an additional role to the staff to be kind of the, the analytics manager for the team as well. So putting [00:12:10] together all sorts of reports, both from games and practices. But again.

Payman Langroudi: Is there a gambling edge to that [00:12:15] as well?

Grant Goodstein: There is. It’s highly illegal for the folks involved in it to be [00:12:20] like. So I was certainly not gambling on. I’m not much of a gambler anyways, but there’s [00:12:25] sports.

Payman Langroudi: Gambling is a gigantic thing.

Grant Goodstein: Gambling is growing like crazy. The UK was well ahead of the US. [00:12:30]

Payman Langroudi: Because it was.

Grant Goodstein: Legal or illegal and now legal, and I think 46 of the 50 states and the [00:12:35] US, California is actually one of the few exceptions that doesn’t allow it on a legal basis, but it’s not hard [00:12:40] to do it if you want to do it on a on a semi-illegal basis. But yeah, there’s a [00:12:45] lot of math and statistics that go into that as well. But yeah, it was a transformative experience. [00:12:50] I worked under kind of a very legendary coach in that world, the same as John Beilein. He’s if, you know, [00:12:55] college basketball, this was one of the all time great worked up from the bottom, self-made [00:13:00] kind of men. And he a lot of the lessons that he brought in the way [00:13:05] that he led the team is stuff that we use every day, actually in our practice now, in the way.

Payman Langroudi: That [00:13:10] we tell me what kind of things.

Grant Goodstein: So something that was very interesting to me and something that was unusual [00:13:15] is I think people operate best when they’re at their most [00:13:20] enthusiastic and their most engaged, but that can be very hard to. Everyone has a bad day. [00:13:25] Everyone is someone sick. Someone just had their grandmother die a few weeks [00:13:30] ago. There’s. Life happens, right? Yeah. Um, so one of the things that [00:13:35] he believed in was creating rituals to build enthusiasm. So the every day would start [00:13:40] with a film session. So they would look at the film from games and practices before they went on to the court to take [00:13:45] to to do the practice or play the game. He would be the last one to enter the room. All [00:13:50] the players would get there at least five minutes early if the film session started at one. You got to be in the room [00:13:55] by 1255 at one on the dot. He comes through the door. [00:14:00] Every player gets up out of their chair and starts clapping and screaming. It’s probably the most American [00:14:05] thing that you’ve ever heard. British people would find this horrifically cringeworthy and embarrassing, [00:14:10] but it created this sense of enthusiasm, even though it was a ritual. And it’s [00:14:15] like, this is what we do. It created a real enthusiastic ritual. So all the dentists and [00:14:20] everyone, last I come in, we don’t do the same thing every morning, but we come in and I say good morning, and [00:14:25] I go into every dentist room, every hygienist room, give them a big good morning, get [00:14:30] them fired up for the day. We’ve got a fully booked diary. Let’s let’s do this. Let’s let’s let’s fix [00:14:35] some teeth. I mean, I just bring that again, very American, probably anti-British [00:14:40] sense of enthusiasm.

Payman Langroudi: You know what? I think the problem with enthusiasm [00:14:45] is that what you’re saying, the cringe worthy part of it is if there’s nothing solid behind [00:14:50] it, yeah.

Grant Goodstein: You got to back it up.

Payman Langroudi: If there’s something solid behind it, well, enthusiasm is the best thing in the world, [00:14:55] isn’t it? You know, like I hear where you’re coming from, like, I’m sure some nurse is like, oh, [00:15:00] here we go again. But but it’s the key point is, is there something to back it up [00:15:05] or not? Yeah. You know, if you’re making these changes and you’re making this place the best practice around and all that, [00:15:10] then hell, let’s be enthusiastic.

Grant Goodstein: And that’s our vision. And I think part of that is do you have [00:15:15] the right team behind you? We’re now a team of 14, including myself, um, combination of [00:15:20] dentists, dental nurses, practice manager, um, hygienists of that 14, [00:15:25] only three, one of which is my wife are holdovers from the practice that we took [00:15:30] over in July.

Payman Langroudi: Okay, okay.

Grant Goodstein: It’s almost a new team and that energy and enthusiasm [00:15:35] and that presence.

Payman Langroudi: It was always there.

Grant Goodstein: It’s like the number one quality that we’re looking for. Like so. [00:15:40]

Payman Langroudi: The.

Grant Goodstein: Process to be critical of anyone in the past as a practice was very successful in [00:15:45] the past and there were great clinicians and staff.

Payman Langroudi: What happened? Did you come in saying, this is my vision [00:15:50] and people weren’t aligned? And yes, you managed managed them out?

Grant Goodstein: Yes. And it wasn’t [00:15:55] all my choice, to be honest people. Um, we had and again, business owners will know this when [00:16:00] there’s change. Not everyone likes the idea of change. That’s true. Even if that change can and will [00:16:05] be and you expect it to be a positive. I had multiple staff members who told me I sat down with [00:16:10] everyone when we let the team know that we’d be buying, and the team was not as familiar with [00:16:15] me, but they were very familiar and loved Leah. And it was a team effort where she leads the clinical side [00:16:20] and I lead the operational side and we made some changes. For example, instead of first patient at nine, first patient’s [00:16:25] at 8 a.m. now, so that’s one change. Not everyone’s enthusiastic, especially people who are commuting [00:16:30] with. And we didn’t do it from day one. We said, we want to give you a three month warning. If this is where we’re headed, We. [00:16:35] The last thing we want to do that wouldn’t be fair, but we gave everyone fair warning. We said, [00:16:40] these are going to be some of the changes. This is how we want to change the atmosphere. This is how we want to change the energy. This is what we’re going to [00:16:45] do. And multiple members of staff basically gave me the middle finger and said, good luck without [00:16:50] me. And we were surprised. We thought, everyone loves Leah because she’s so loved [00:16:55] in that practice. She was a practice as a corporate three surgery practice. There’s no [00:17:00] principal dentist, but she was there four days a week. She had really taken an interest in the practice [00:17:05] and patients loved her. People would come in asking for Leah, which is, I think, not always so [00:17:10] typical in a typical corporate dental practice. So she kind of felt the sense of ownership [00:17:15] already that, of course, when we became the actual owner, she kind of expected that the team would get behind her [00:17:20] and ideas and it ultimately wasn’t the case. So, um, we finding [00:17:25] those right team members became our priority.

Payman Langroudi: I think it’s interesting as I was a dentist [00:17:30] before I stopped years ago, but as a, as an associate, your [00:17:35] relationship with the team is very different to. As the business owner that I am [00:17:40] here. And there’s almost as a as an associate, especially in a [00:17:45] corporate situation here, there’s a bit of an us and them thing going on, especially [00:17:50] because there’s no one you can literally go to who’s got absolute power. People have to keep [00:17:55] putting things up the chain.

Grant Goodstein: I think there’s some people who like that. Actually, one of the reasons they prefer to work at a corporate [00:18:00] is because a corporate environment is generally going to be a bit more hands off, right? There’s not someone.

Payman Langroudi: You can [00:18:05] hide, right?

Grant Goodstein: You do things your own way, like again, whereas if you have the principal and the principal’s [00:18:10] husband who are there from a business and operational side, we do have some things that we have a pretty clear [00:18:15] idea of how we want them to be done, and we hold our team accountable to the way that we want to be done. Again, [00:18:20] ultimately for clinical things. Firstly, that’s the last place where I feel comfortable [00:18:25] or appropriate to butt in because I am not clinical whatsoever. Although Leah jokes that I’m ready for year [00:18:30] two of dental school now, based on what I might have learned.

Payman Langroudi: People talk about classically when [00:18:35] there’s two two trains of thought on this subject of when you buy a practice. Some [00:18:40] people talk about evolution and some people talk about revolution. And the evolution [00:18:45] path is the sort of the lower risk way of doing it right, is that you’re going to [00:18:50] come. You’re not going to rock any boats. You’re going to keep things very much the same so [00:18:55] that the staff don’t get scared off and the patients don’t get scared off. You’re going to [00:19:00] assess it properly, and then you’re going to make small change after small change. Even if [00:19:05] your ultimate goal is something very different to what we are today. The other approach says [00:19:10] there’s memories in this old approach that I almost want to physically [00:19:15] rip out of the wall. Yeah, and the fact that I’m coming and ripping when [00:19:20] the room was oriented this way. Now I’ve taken that wall out and now the room’s oriented that way. The memories [00:19:25] of the previous practice are gone. And now? Now we can start fresh. I guess that was your [00:19:30] approach.

[BOTH]: I think so.

Grant Goodstein: Some of it was by choice, some of it was not. I think one of the things that is the [00:19:35] reality and the environment is, firstly, we’re first time practice owners, we’re young. I [00:19:40] think there’s I’m 31. Leah’s a bit younger than me. There’s not. Firstly, many practice [00:19:45] owners our age, especially first time practice owners, especially not in London. [00:19:50] The reality of the business right now is, firstly, we had [00:19:55] a little bit more knowledge about what was working well and what we wanted to change. I think because she had been working in this [00:20:00] practice as an associate, made that a little bit clearer. The other part is with the way practice [00:20:05] valuations sit right now and the way the model used to work, and it was interesting talking and learning from [00:20:10] Chirag, who’s been an absolute class act, who sold us the practice with under. He [00:20:15] wasn’t thrilled with the idea at first, but he came around to it. We could talk about that.

Payman Langroudi: I liked Chirag.

[BOTH]: When.

Payman Langroudi: He grows [00:20:20] on you, man.

[BOTH]: Yes, he’s a sweet. He’s a sweet guy.

Grant Goodstein: Especially once you get to know him. And he’s been, again, [00:20:25] very generous with his expertise with me. But when he was telling me when he was starting to buy by practices [00:20:30] 20 years ago. With perfect smile. They were trading at about 30% of turnover. So you [00:20:35] were wanted to buy a practice with half £1 million in turnover. You were paying what, [00:20:40] 100 and sorry, 150,000 for that practice now, rather than [00:20:45] a multiple of turnover, which which is a third. They’re trading at about 7 to [00:20:50] 10 times profit. And the profit margin is generally about 20% [00:20:55] for, for a typical practice, rather than trading at, let’s call it one third [00:21:00] of turnover, they’re now trading at one and a half times turnover. So it’s five times [00:21:05] the cost to buy the exact same contract practice as it was 20 [00:21:10] years ago. And the truth is, especially with rising interest rates or I guess they’re not risen compared to where [00:21:15] they were, um, let’s call it a decade ago. Yeah. Um, we couldn’t [00:21:20] afford to keep the practice as it was. And that was part of what our vision was. We bought [00:21:25] the practice knowing that if we didn’t grow, we [00:21:30] weren’t going to be successful in this. So our. And that was one of the reasons why we felt [00:21:35] there was opportunity again. Perfect smile is an incredible business, but it [00:21:40] just is a different reality to have a principal husband, wife, team led business. [00:21:45] There’s a different level of attention to detail and pursuit.

[BOTH]: Of opportunity.

Payman Langroudi: Much more.

Grant Goodstein: Exactly [00:21:50] versus on a corporate model. Again, this is, I want to be clear, no criticism of of them as they [00:21:55] do an incredible job in running their group. But we came into it with a very clear [00:22:00] picture and some underwritten assumptions.

[BOTH]: And some.

Grant Goodstein: Changes.

[BOTH]: That we could.

Payman Langroudi: Just. Okay, just just quickly, [00:22:05] if you will, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re wanting to. Yeah. Give me [00:22:10] a couple of the highlights of what did you already know you could change to [00:22:15] make this place more profitable?

[BOTH]: So I would say.

Grant Goodstein: And I want to focus on my, my [00:22:20] priority was not to make it more profitable first. Not that we didn’t [00:22:25] want it to be more profitable because we certainly do. Our priority first was actually what do patients [00:22:30] want? Ask patients what do they want? And my firm belief in business is if you’re meeting your customers [00:22:35] needs better, your business will be more profitable so long as you look at the financial logic behind [00:22:40] it. You can’t you can’t sell pounds for £0.50 as long as you stay away from doing that. [00:22:45] Um, you have an opportunity to do well. So one of the things that was interesting was every, [00:22:50] uh, patient, if you ask them, what change would you like to see most? Which Lea asked [00:22:55] lots of patients as they said, I want to be able to see the hygienist here. You only have a hygienist in one [00:23:00] day a week. I would like to see it. It was. The hygienist was booked like six months [00:23:05] in advance. So the first change we made from we took over on July 1st. [00:23:10] From July 2nd, we had hygienist four days a week. Now we have the hygienist five days a week [00:23:15] now. Did you find.

Payman Langroudi: The space for that?

Grant Goodstein: That comes back to the equation and the [00:23:20] hour. So we expanded the hours of the practice. We started instituting split shifts. So we have a hygienist [00:23:25] and 8 to 2 some days 9 to 6. Some days we’re starting to add a 230 to [00:23:30] 8 shift. We’re thinking about how we open availability on weekends. And again under [00:23:35] a corporate model, it’s hard to make those changes. And it’s not easy because the manager doesn’t necessarily [00:23:40] feel empowered to say, okay, we need to build out Saturdays because that manager doesn’t [00:23:45] want to work on Saturdays. And that’s what’s ultimately going to drive.

Payman Langroudi: I think the 8 to 8, seven days [00:23:50] a week model might end up being a necessity. Yeah. Um, [00:23:55] especially, you know, what sort of grinds my gears, if you like, is where people, [00:24:00] you know, there’s a vanity metric of having more than one practice. Yeah. You almost feel like [00:24:05] if you can go from 1 to 2, you can go from 1 to 100 almost. Yeah. You want to just be able to replicate. [00:24:10] Yeah. But the, the people who go to number two before sweating number one properly [00:24:15] and you see it a lot. I mean, in your place at the end of the day, it’s a shop front and [00:24:20] you know, okay, maybe you can go down. But you know, sometimes I see it in some, you know, outside [00:24:25] London, massive building and, and space for [00:24:30] development. But they’re talking about moving on to a second practice. They’re not open 8 to 8, [00:24:35] seven days a week.

Grant Goodstein: We’d much rather focus on exactly. Um, how do we offer more [00:24:40] in our current footprint? And I hope and expect that we’ll be in a place to grow that footprint or replicate [00:24:45] that. Our hope would be to find more space in or near the current footprint. [00:24:50] So whether it’s the flat above becomes available or the building next door, that would be something we’d love to do in the future. [00:24:55] But again, if we’re open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday and closing at 430 on Fridays, [00:25:00] like exactly as you said, we should be open Saturdays. We should be open evenings. We should be thinking about all [00:25:05] those things before we say, okay, it’s time to open the next one. So there’s still a lot of work to do. [00:25:10] We’re about five and a half months into this journey, and I think it’s going to my kind of timeline is I think [00:25:15] it’s going to take two years of really focussed effort. We still have an open Saturdays yet. We’re just going to be opening, [00:25:20] uh, evenings in February.

[BOTH]: It’s not easy. It’s not easy.

Payman Langroudi: The 2 to 8 shift [00:25:25] is one that you could. It’s difficult to find people for. Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: Um, one of the things actually that might surprise [00:25:30] you is I, in listening to your podcast and others, people talk about finding clinicians, hiring [00:25:35] dentists, hiring hygienists, being really hard. We have not had that same problem whatsoever. [00:25:40] Dental nurses have been a little bit more challenging to find. Um, but [00:25:45] what I’ve found coming from outside the industry is when you present your practice as [00:25:50] different and you again, not just present it as different, but then show how it’s different. People [00:25:55] will flock to you. There’s a lot of dentists who are really fed up with the traditional corporate model and the [00:26:00] expectations of them, and the rigour that comes with some of the constraints that are put on them. [00:26:05] I think there’s a lot of dentists who are really, really interested.

[BOTH]: Give me your pitch.

Payman Langroudi: Give me your pitch. Do you give to an [00:26:10] associate?

Grant Goodstein: Yeah. So I think, um, firstly the area that we’re in is, [00:26:15] is favourable for an associate. Right. Um we are a, we are a proudly mixed practice. We [00:26:20] have NHS patients and we have.

[BOTH]: Why did you choose.

Payman Langroudi: To do that? Why didn’t you choose to go fully private? [00:26:25]

Grant Goodstein: Um, it’s two reasons. Two reasons I’d say. Um, [00:26:30] one is that I and this isn’t different for me as an American, right? Because I didn’t grow [00:26:35] up with the NHS where I’m from, we pay for all healthcare and medical and dental. [00:26:40] Um, but I quite like the vision and the mission of the NHS. And I wish that there was more access to health [00:26:45] care in my own home country. So one, I really like that we’re able to provide access, [00:26:50] particularly to children and people who don’t have the funds to pay. I think that’s great. The second [00:26:55] thing for us in our area, I mean, we’re very lucky that we live in quite a nice area of London, [00:27:00] and that means that the patients who come into our practice are generally people who do have the means to opt [00:27:05] for some of those private treatments, whether it’s whitening their teeth with enlighten, whether it’s Invisalign [00:27:10] to to fix anything that they’ve been insecure about. When they’re thinking about fillings and crowns, [00:27:15] they want to look for those tooth coloured options. So for us, it’s actually quite a nice balance because [00:27:20] we never have to worry about as an NHS practice, never have to worry about any gaps in the [00:27:25] diaries. And at the same time, a lot of those patients, when you educate them, talk to them about, learn [00:27:30] what their goals are. Take great interest in in what they would like [00:27:35] both for the function and the aesthetics of their smile. What we find is when we properly [00:27:40] educate patients, they’re very interested and prefer to go for a lot of those private treatments. [00:27:45]

Payman Langroudi: So okay, so you know your first reason though, I get it. But you [00:27:50] could, you could, you could do good in any direction, couldn’t you? You could, [00:27:55] I don’t know, feed the hungry in Africa. Just silly example. Silly example. But [00:28:00] you could. Yeah. Yeah. But the second, the commercial side of it. Yeah. And I know lots of practices [00:28:05] do do this. Yeah. And in the right location, which I think [00:28:10] Fulham is the right location for that sort of approach. Just the fact you can get bums on seats then [00:28:15] explain it properly. But, you know, the notion of it’s [00:28:20] difficult to do both well. Yeah. So are we saying that if you [00:28:25] had to pick. Are you giving private treatment to these NHS patients, or are you giving [00:28:30] NHS patient treatment to the private? You know what I mean? Like it’s difficult to do both. Exactly [00:28:35] right.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: I think again, it’s always a balance to strike. Right. And there’s business realities to all of this too. [00:28:40] Yeah. Um, again, we believe in treating everyone equally in terms of [00:28:45] the dignity of the level of care that they deserve, whether they come in as an NHS patient solely for [00:28:50] NHS care, as an exempt patient or otherwise. Our job is to help make sure [00:28:55] that their oral health is well looked after, and we take that very seriously. Are there business realities [00:29:00] of what we can and can’t offer on the NHS based on what the contract is? Absolutely. That’s [00:29:05] true. And I think it’s again, we could get into what I think the future of NHS [00:29:10] dentistry might look like. And I think, uh, does it make sense to offer kind of full fee [00:29:15] paying patients a fixed price for for check-ups in this banded structure, [00:29:20] I’m not sure. I think the NHS money would be more effective and go a longer way if we. If we [00:29:25] kind of focussed on NHS funding for exempt patients, whether those are children or [00:29:30] people who really have a financial need, I frankly think that would probably be a better way to allocate [00:29:35] care to people who need it most, and then allow the free market to dictate for things [00:29:40] like check-ups and hygiene care and fillings. Like if you said, hey, there’s no more NHS care [00:29:45] for, um, folks who are fee paying who don’t have an exemption. What I think [00:29:50] you would see is a much more competitive environment. And some of frankly the [00:29:55] there’s cross-subsidization subsidisation right. No practice can certainly [00:30:00] not in London can afford to be a purely NHS practice. You have to offer private. And the private goes [00:30:05] to help subsidise that NHS care that’s delivered at a loss. But again, it is [00:30:10] a tough balance to strike. One thing that.

[BOTH]: We’re looking at.

Payman Langroudi: I just want to drill a bit deeper into it as a business.

[BOTH]: Go for it. [00:30:15]

Payman Langroudi: Just be a.

[BOTH]: Businessman.

Payman Langroudi: Now. Yeah. You’ve got this number of chairs.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: That [00:30:20] the capacity of those chairs for private dentistry. [00:30:25] You could have said, I’m going to grow the private side.

Grant Goodstein: We’d probably have made more money if we came in in [00:30:30] week one and said, and there are folks who take this model and said, we’re going fully private, either sign [00:30:35] up for practice plan or den plan or something like that.

[BOTH]: Again, it’s.

Grant Goodstein: A little different for [00:30:40] us because we live in this neighbourhood. These are our neighbours. These aren’t.

[BOTH]: Numbers.

Payman Langroudi: The private patients [00:30:45] would have been your neighbours too.

Grant Goodstein: But what I’m telling you is there’s people who’ve been coming to this practice for 20 plus years.

Payman Langroudi: You didn’t [00:30:50] want that bad, will.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, not not only bad Will. We just didn’t feel good about doing that. And we don’t feel [00:30:55] good about doing that again. Um, we can’t treat everyone. That’s a reality. But people are [00:31:00] used to getting care on a certain basis in their in their neighbourhood, and we are their neighbours. It [00:31:05] didn’t feel like the right thing to do. And again, over the long term, we hope to be able to remain committed [00:31:10] to the NHS and we anticipate. But we can’t make promises forever because we don’t know how the contract [00:31:15] and the model will change with the years, but for right now, we don’t feel good about changing [00:31:20] too much, too fast for our community, and we want to be able to again. It’s [00:31:25] different when you’re some some guy sitting in an office and, uh, on, on, uh, [00:31:30] in the city or whatever it might be. We see our patients every day and they’re our community members. [00:31:35]

Payman Langroudi: And we understand, like, I live three minutes from the practice. Yeah. I [00:31:40] want a private orthodontist specialist to treat my child. Have [00:31:45] you got one?

Grant Goodstein: Uh, we don’t have an orthodontic specialist, but.

Payman Langroudi: I want one. Yeah. So [00:31:50] now now I’m having to go find one. Yeah. So you’re not serving me? Yeah. I live [00:31:55] three minutes up the road and you’re not serving me. Yeah, I’m not saying, you know, I’m not saying you have to do one thing or the other. [00:32:00]

[BOTH]: You can’t.

Grant Goodstein: Serve everyone. That’s. That’s the truth. And what we look for in that scenario is who are our great partners? [00:32:05] For example, a couple of the things that you mentioned, we start thinking, what are we not offering here that we can’t offer [00:32:10] here? Two of the things that we again fixed right away. We now have a dentist with a special interest [00:32:15] in implants, and we have an oral surgeon to do that one. Before there was not.

[BOTH]: That.

Grant Goodstein: Before. So those are two new [00:32:20] things. We’ve also significantly expanded our focus on orthodontics through Invisalign. [00:32:25] Leah’s gone from doing about 20 cases a year to closer to 100 cases a.

[BOTH]: Year.

Grant Goodstein: With Invisalign [00:32:30] also. Again, how do we build stronger?

[BOTH]: How did you manage that?

Grant Goodstein: I mean, my wife is just [00:32:35] extraordinarily talented at her job.

[BOTH]: No, no, no.

Payman Langroudi: But how did you manage? She was doing 20. Yeah. And [00:32:40] then how did you find the other 80 patients to, um.

Grant Goodstein: Through effort and through delivering [00:32:45] an amazing experience. And I think we can get more into that is when people like you and you [00:32:50] educate people properly and you get to know them and you ask them questions. She’s the furthest [00:32:55] person in our practice is the furthest practice where you feel sold to, and that’s the last thing that we ever [00:33:00] want. But when a patient comes in, I mean, this is a story that happens on a weekly basis. [00:33:05] Patient comes in. She’s in her late 20s, early 30s Engagement [00:33:10] ring on her finger. Oh my God. Samantha. Congratulations. [00:33:15] I noticed the ring. You’re engaged. So exciting. Yeah, I’m getting [00:33:20] married. We’re going to get married in 2027. It’s really fun. Amazing. [00:33:25] Anything with with your wedding? Have you started planning the wedding yet? We’re going to go get married. Doing a destination [00:33:30] wedding in France. This, that and the other. Amazing. Anything that we can do to help [00:33:35] get you ready for those wedding photos. You know what? I’ve been up. I don’t [00:33:40] really like how my teeth look. They’re a bit yellow. Amazing. Is that something you want to get ready for [00:33:45] your wedding? Let’s talk about enlighten. Like those are the kinds of conversations that we like to have. When [00:33:50] you get to know people and that happens front of house at reception, it happens in surgeries. [00:33:55] When you take genuine interest in people’s lives and build a connection, you will be shocked [00:34:00] what you learn and the more you learn, the better you can serve your patients. [00:34:05]

[BOTH]: So yeah.

Payman Langroudi: I mean, genuine interest in the patient’s life. Really, that is a key, [00:34:10] key thing.

Grant Goodstein: And it can’t be fake. You can’t.

[BOTH]: Coach.

Grant Goodstein: People to be like, oh, Joe, I see in your notes [00:34:15] here, like.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: It has to be genuine. And that’s one of the ways we screen. Again, we brought in a [00:34:20] lovely new practice manager. Again, I was telling you earlier from a previous guest on your practice, Claire Nightingale [00:34:25] talking about specialist orthodontic practices.

[BOTH]: Actually, my London.

Payman Langroudi: My daughter went to Claire [00:34:30] Nightingale.

[BOTH]: And again.

Grant Goodstein: That’s the other thing from us. Our answer to you is always what’s [00:34:35] best for you, not best for us. So we just closed for two weeks for a refurb. A patient [00:34:40] is in pain. They need a tooth extracted. We don’t say, hey, wait for us until we’re back and we’ll do it. We’ll [00:34:45] say, this sounds bad. How about we refer you to our friends at Fulham Road Dental and you get that taken [00:34:50] care of this week. Someone comes in with a pretty complex orthodontic case. It’s not like, let me try [00:34:55] to figure it out. It’s, you know, this is complex. You should really would benefit from a specialist here. Let’s refer [00:35:00] you over to our friend Claire at at Queensgate. Like that is our model when you look after [00:35:05] the patients again, my thing that I talked to every clinician about when I interviewed them is [00:35:10] our ethos is what you recommend for every patient should be the same [00:35:15] advice that you would offer to your parent, your sibling, your child, [00:35:20] your niece or nephew. That’s the standard of care that we expect to deliver. [00:35:25]

Payman Langroudi: So there’s a professor called Martin Kelleher and he talks about it’s called [00:35:30] the daughter test. Is that would you treat this patient the same way as you treat your daughter? It’s like an ethical [00:35:35] test. Yeah.

[BOTH]: No, we.

Grant Goodstein: Believe really firmly. And then we ask our clinicians, [00:35:40] when you sign up here, you use you sign up to take [00:35:45] that question and keep that in your mind with every patient. This is this is not about selling the most [00:35:50] treatment. There’s just out there who describe oh, I’ve just bagged a case. I’ve [00:35:55] heard some things like that. That’s that’s not the way that we look at our business. We look at our business as [00:36:00] delivering exceptional care. And when I say care, that’s not just the care that we apply [00:36:05] to your teeth is the care that we deliver to the individual person.

Payman Langroudi: Can I rewind to when you [00:36:10] were looking to buy? Did you look at other practices?

Grant Goodstein: Oh yeah. We knew that this was [00:36:15] something both of us come from entrepreneurial families. Both of us had fathers that had their own [00:36:20] small businesses. So it’s in some ways probably in our in our blood for both of us. And [00:36:25] we knew if you’re an ambitious person, this was probably going to be the next step. I had kind of grown a little bit [00:36:30] tired of my career in tech, and I had something that Leah and I actually probably from our third or fourth date, we talked [00:36:35] about doing this together at some point. Um, so we wanted to [00:36:40] do it. And the obvious answer was we wanted to buy where Leah was and Fulham [00:36:45] perfect smile, but that was never going to be likely, right? How often do corporate sell an individual [00:36:50] um, practice. So we started looking, we went to on the BDA course how to [00:36:55] buy a practice with both of us. We signed up with Henry Schein, we signed up with Dental elite, we signed up [00:37:00] with, um, Frank Taylor. Frank Taylor we were on all the lists and we start to look [00:37:05] at practices and we started looking. We put in a couple offers. We met some lovely people. [00:37:10] By the way, who are still in touch with the practice owners who were selling their practices.

[BOTH]: Do you feel.

Payman Langroudi: Confident looking at the [00:37:15] books or did she or did you have an outsider?

Grant Goodstein: So I.

[BOTH]: Yes. [00:37:20]

Grant Goodstein: I felt.

[BOTH]: Confident.

Payman Langroudi: It’s a bit complicated, isn’t it? When you don’t know the sector.

Grant Goodstein: I’m a student [00:37:25] of business and I. Something that I like particularly love is business, and I’m someone [00:37:30] who’s read every one of Warren Buffett’s, let’s call it 70 annual shareholder letters to Berkshire [00:37:35] Hathaway shareholders. And I have an economics background. So there.

[BOTH]: Are certainly.

Payman Langroudi: For you. Not too.

[BOTH]: Bad.

Grant Goodstein: There were questions [00:37:40] that I had, and there were things that I had to learn and.

[BOTH]: Learn in the.

Grant Goodstein: Business. And one of the things that you [00:37:45] learn very quickly is the numbers that they give you in all these marketing pamphlets are actually worthless, and [00:37:50] you have to build your own assumptions because everyone’s going to tell you, oh, we spend nothing on this, nothing on this £0 [00:37:55] on marketing, £0 on recruiting, £0 on. And those numbers just aren’t true. So kind [00:38:00] of the formula that I learned to, Hope to understand better is what [00:38:05] is their revenue from the NHS? What is their revenue from private and what is their revenue from hygiene? [00:38:10] Those were the only three numbers that I was interested in. And what is the staff, the employed staff making? [00:38:15] Um, if I had that information, I would do my own math about what the actual profile [00:38:20] of this business was going to be. I again had crazy Google Docs, Excel spreadsheets, [00:38:25] all that kind of stuff. So for me, that was an area where I got very interested and it was [00:38:30] helpful to get all these brochures, run the numbers. I ran the numbers for 25 practices [00:38:35] before we put in our first offer, and probably 50 before we actually, um, [00:38:40] bought the practice. So we were thinking.

[BOTH]: Again, looked.

Payman Langroudi: At 50 different practices.

Grant Goodstein: Oh, we didn’t look at it. We got [00:38:45] the.

[BOTH]: Request.

Grant Goodstein: The brochure for every practice and they give you the turnover for the past three years, [00:38:50] some of those breakdowns. But we actually visited 4 or 5 practices. It wasn’t a huge number. And [00:38:55] we put in an offer on on three of those practices.

Payman Langroudi: And the ones that you looked at, what you [00:39:00] put it off. But you weren’t the best offer someone else.

[BOTH]: Um, a couple of them.

Grant Goodstein: We were the best offer. [00:39:05] And, uh, we ultimately to tell a little bit of a funny story [00:39:10] is when we did go to Chirag, the owner of Perfect Smile, and say, hey, we [00:39:15] don’t really want to buy a practice and we’d love for it to be full of Munster Road. And he [00:39:20] said, no, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t sell them. It’s okay. It’s just we want to be transparent with [00:39:25] you that this is our plan. So okay, come back. Starting to [00:39:30] put in some offers on practices. Nothing’s accepted yet. I just want to check in again. Would you be interested [00:39:35] in selling? And you know, Chirag is a really funny guy. No. Absolutely not. [00:39:40] Call back the next day. Okay. I’ll give you a percentage if you want to [00:39:45] buy it to be my partner in the business said, um, I think [00:39:50] I think that’s not for us. I think we want to be able to really go in and execute our plan. And then we said, okay, we have [00:39:55] we have a number, we have an offer that’s accepted. So, um, Leia had built [00:40:00] to a point where she was representative of the majority of the turnover for the practice, I think he he saw [00:40:05] that, look, I don’t want to start over at Munster Road. And he ultimately said, okay, let’s [00:40:10] let’s do a deal. And he, uh, after a little bit of back and forth. Agreed. And again, he’s been really, [00:40:15] really kind. Even we had our autoclave go down one day and I gave him a call. I said, can we, can we [00:40:20] hop by a new King’s Road and do it? And he’s just been an absolute class act and, and [00:40:25] helping us. And he again, this was his. He describes it as his baby. This was where he started his.

[BOTH]: Business, [00:40:30] his original.

Payman Langroudi: Practice.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: Quite an empire. Yeah. Um, 20, 20 plus years ago. So he’s been, [00:40:35] he says, look, I want you guys to really be successful. And again, it works both ways, right? We [00:40:40] can refer patients back to the perfect smile practices. Almost all of our children get referred [00:40:45] over to their, their orthodontic, uh, practice in Putney. So it’s been, uh, [00:40:50] it was, it was a journey to get there. But we’re just so thrilled because some of these practices would have involved us, [00:40:55] involved us moving, including potentially out of London. And this is really somewhere that we again, we [00:41:00] got to we got to. Keep the relationships that she’s so treasured with her patients that she’d gotten to know over the [00:41:05] last years. And for us, we absolutely love. I mean, you know how great it is to live in West London and live in [00:41:10] in Fulham. So we’re so thrilled to be able to continue to do that.

Payman Langroudi: Okay. So [00:41:15] now going forward.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: What changes are you making as far as patient journey? [00:41:20]

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: So the obvious, the building works and you showed me and it’s beautiful. So [00:41:25] the waiting room is going to be a lot nicer than it was.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: So I think it’s again, [00:41:30] starting with, um, what’s the experience that we want to deliver to patients? Um, a special area [00:41:35] of interest for Leah is treating nervous patients, patients who have dental anxiety. I didn’t [00:41:40] realise this. I am not someone who’s personally anxious about going to the dentist. [00:41:45] Um, I, uh, 50%, a whole 50% of the population is [00:41:50] anxious about going to the dentist. Half. And of that, 10% of the population is [00:41:55] so anxious about going to the dentist that they just flat out don’t go.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, yeah, it’s phobic to where [00:42:00] I will not get anywhere near the deadlines. Dentists always will know, obviously, what I’m talking about. [00:42:05] It’s really about the only profession that is a pro would be considered appropriate to tell that person that you hate [00:42:10] them when you walk into the dentist. Oh, I hate the dentist. Like, no, you would never go into [00:42:15] a bakery and you say, oh my God, I hate the baker. Like it doesn’t happen in any other profession in the world that [00:42:20] I’m aware of. But we know that this is true. And we like to think about why and how can we help. So, [00:42:25] um, firstly being welcomed really warmly when you come in, we greet everyone [00:42:30] by name. We say, hey Payman, how are you doing today? Welcome into pearly whites. Uh, [00:42:35] can I just confirm you’re here for your 3 p.m. appointment with the hygienist? That’s great. [00:42:40] We’ve got some fun music going every day. Again, the little things really set the tone in our opinion. So [00:42:45] we’ve got, you know, the fun playlists, Spotify playlist. If anyone’s looking for it, it’s called classics that everyone [00:42:50] knows. So it’s the kind of patience that kind of get people’s.

[BOTH]: Name of it.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah.

[BOTH]: Classic. It’s not [00:42:55] our.

Grant Goodstein: Individual. It’s a playlist from Spotify classics that everyone knows. Good for [00:43:00] kids, good for older patients. Everyone. And then we think about, okay, what’s what? Don’t what [00:43:05] is it that people don’t like about coming to the dentist? There’s actually one thing about coming into a dental office. I [00:43:10] really historically, like didn’t like I don’t enjoy getting my teeth cleaned. I find it kind [00:43:15] of quite barbaric the traditional way, even if it’s with a hand scaler or an ultrasonic. I [00:43:20] had an injury to my front teeth growing up. So what that means is I have quite a bit of sensitivity. So that [00:43:25] cold water, when that hits my teeth, is like, oh my God, it’s extremely uncomfortable for me. I [00:43:30] hate the scratching. I get some build up around my gum line. It’s just not a nice [00:43:35] experience at all. And I think there has to be a better way. So I go out and start doing my research. Is there [00:43:40] a better way to clean your teeth? It actually turns out, yes, the better way to clean your.

[BOTH]: Teeth.

Grant Goodstein: Has GPT [00:43:45] that’s been invented? Why hasn’t every practice invested in GPT? Because the damn [00:43:50] machine costs £14,000. But we said we are very much in again. This is something that’s [00:43:55] been a big difference for me, learning about life in the UK versus life in the US. Investment [00:44:00] and risk and growth is very much encouraged in the US in a way that I think it’s not [00:44:05] here. I think a lot of practice owners are really, really, really afraid to take that leap [00:44:10] to say, okay, I’m going to spend £14,000. We’ve never offered this before. I have [00:44:15] no idea if anyone’s going to sign up for it. Are we really going to spend £14,000 on a [00:44:20] on a GB t machine from EMS? And by the way, the powder is like £100 for every [00:44:25] bottle that you use. It’s not cheap to offer it to your patients, but my belief is we can offer [00:44:30] it to our patients. We can offer it at a premium. Our standard clean is £89. We charge 129 [00:44:35] for the GB t, so it’s a £40 upgrade. And my belief is patients are going to try [00:44:40] it and they’re going to want to go for it and they’re never going to look back.

Payman Langroudi: So it’s an option.

[BOTH]: Yes.

Grant Goodstein: So that’s what we. Again thinking [00:44:45] about how do we shake things up and not disrupt the status quo too much. We don’t want to tell patients, [00:44:50] hey, you’re cleaning was 89. Now it’s 129 and you have no say in the matter. Those [00:44:55] are the kind of things that we think. Do businesses need some sort of support and goodwill from the community? [00:45:00] And we didn’t want to do that, but we wanted to firstly hire, um, clinicians [00:45:05] that were trained and experienced in it, and secondly, give it as an option to every [00:45:10] patient. We’d educate them, we’d tell them we’ll do a great clean regardless of which option you [00:45:15] choose. But there’s some real advantages to the CBT. So we when we were hiring our hygienists, [00:45:20] we would only consider hygienists that were, uh, Swiss Dental Academy certified. That was a hard requirement [00:45:25] for us. We invested in the machine within a month, we had 75% of our patients [00:45:30] opting for those updated cleans. And again, I mentioned bringing hygiene from one days a week [00:45:35] to three day a week to four days a week. Now five and going towards six. And hygiene has become one [00:45:40] of our top like by by turnover, it accounts for a really large [00:45:45] percentage of our turnover.

Grant Goodstein: And what we found, people come out and I’d say 95% of [00:45:50] people say, oh my God, that’s life changing. I will never go again. And I cannot tell you the amount of [00:45:55] people. We had a lovely patient who came in and he came out and gave us a five star Google review in the next day, his [00:46:00] mother called up on the phone, I’m the one who is answering the phone. He said. Anthony called. [00:46:05] He says, I must come in for your tea hygiene. When you give a great [00:46:10] experience, most people are quite happy to pay if the experience matches [00:46:15] the price. So our our goal is not to be the least expensive option. [00:46:20] Our goal is to be the best option at a fair price so we don’t. We don’t want to rip [00:46:25] people off. We want to make sure there’s always value, but we’re always going to aim to provide the very best experience. [00:46:30] And that’s our philosophy. And again, when we talk about in interviews, our goal is not to be good. Our [00:46:35] goal is not to be exceptional. Our goal is to deliver the best patient experience in the country.

Payman Langroudi: So [00:46:40] it’s interesting because understand the dentists [00:46:45] who don’t buy it insomuch as a normal scalar cost £500 [00:46:50] or something.

Grant Goodstein: Like a.

[BOTH]: Thousand now.

Grant Goodstein: But yeah, it’s certainly not 15.

[BOTH]: And [00:46:55] by the way, each of.

Grant Goodstein: The hand pieces are an additional £800 on top of that. And as I mentioned, you’ve [00:47:00] got this expensive powder, it’s not cheap and you have to charge a premium.

[BOTH]: In order to.

Payman Langroudi: Get the highlights. When [00:47:05] one dentist to another, I’ve asked dentists, you know, so what’s this GPT thing? [00:47:10] And they say, oh, it’s actually just it’s a scalar that’s like warm water. Yeah. And, uh, and you [00:47:15] go, well, what’s, what’s 15 times. Where’s the 15 x in that? Yeah. It doesn’t sound like it [00:47:20] makes sense. Yeah. But number one, they’ve been genius in the marketing. [00:47:25]

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: They’re really.

[BOTH]: Good.

Payman Langroudi: Themselves to the profession. The message that if [00:47:30] if going to have your teeth cleaned is a lot more comfortable, that’s [00:47:35] worth 50 grand.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: I mean, that’s it’s such a big sign of what kind of practice [00:47:40] is it that, you know?

[BOTH]: Yeah. It’s a message you send to everyone. Every single.

Payman Langroudi: Patient goes [00:47:45] through.

[BOTH]: That. And clinicians, clinicians.

Grant Goodstein: Want to work with good equipment. My thought always is we’re not going to overpay [00:47:50] just because. But when we’re in the market for a piece of equipment, I’m going to say if we want to hire [00:47:55] an oral surgeon, the surgical motor that we have for this clinician is part of [00:48:00] the way that we communicate how seriously we take what you do. The same way about we inherited a practice [00:48:05] that was again, neighbourhood spot, been there 20 plus years. It hadn’t had that investment in [00:48:10] love that it needed. So we put a lot of money into making sure does the love [00:48:15] and care that we put into this practice, regardless of how much we put in, doesn’t matter [00:48:20] until the patient knows. So every decision we make has to be communicating [00:48:25] to our patients and to our clinicians and to our staff. We care about you [00:48:30] and we care about delivering you an amazing experience.

Payman Langroudi: Although there’s, you know, much [00:48:35] of good dentistry isn’t noticed by the patient. Yeah. You know, I mean, I guess to [00:48:40] the clinician, that’s where the communication would be.

[BOTH]: That’s why I’m saying.

Grant Goodstein: It’s difficult to show, right? Like taking [00:48:45] some extra steps. I know Leah like tells us again. For my very, uh, limited [00:48:50] Dental knowledge, she uses glumr for her. Uh, filings, which she tells me about [00:48:55] exactly for desensitising how she does that. A patient’s not obviously. Hopefully the result will be better and [00:49:00] they’ll have to come back less. But a patient doesn’t necessarily know about that extra step that we take in our [00:49:05] feelings that other practices don’t. But they do notice when they walk in and there’s new floors [00:49:10] and the bathroom is really well taken care of and all these different things. [00:49:15] So we have to do the little things and the big things, the invisible things, and it’s not one or the [00:49:20] other. It’s all of the above in my view.

Payman Langroudi: Do you find sometimes, you know, the way that [00:49:25] you’re sort of serving the community and there’s almost like a, you [00:49:30] have to be yes to everything kind of feeling.

[BOTH]: Um.

Payman Langroudi: And [00:49:35] yet there are situations where you need to say no.

[BOTH]: Yeah. I think that’s.

Payman Langroudi: Crossed that.

[BOTH]: Already. [00:49:40]

Grant Goodstein: Learning when and how to say no, um, is one of the most valuable things [00:49:45] that you can do and how you can deliver and know with care. And love [00:49:50] is also one of the most important things that we need to learn how to do. And [00:49:55] remembering that when you say no to people in our industry, which is a caring industry, particularly [00:50:00] in a, in a country where people aren’t used to paying for their health care, you [00:50:05] you have to recognise how you’re perceived. You have to recognise how you perceived. Again, one of [00:50:10] the examples that I would give of this is NHS registration, right? So we have [00:50:15] a lot of patients who are, frankly, more than we can really see on an annual basis, many of which who haven’t [00:50:20] been in, in in many years. But what that means is that it’s not easy to get an NHS appointment [00:50:25] in our practice. Even if you’re registered patient, you might wait two months, three months, four months. It’s not [00:50:30] by choice, it’s a reality of the NHS only allocates us a certain number of days, [00:50:35] right? If we. And this has happened in the practice previously, prior to our ownership, there’s been years where [00:50:40] Udas were completed in January, and you spent the last three months of the year not able to offer NHS [00:50:45] care. And we don’t feel like that’s the way we want to go about it. So we have only a certain number. [00:50:50] Certain hours between 10 and 4 in our day is reserved for NHS patients. If you want to come [00:50:55] early or late in the day, you can come on a private basis. But again, we send lots [00:51:00] of reminders to our patients. Some patients find it a little bit irritating, but we send a booking confirmation. [00:51:05] We send another reminder 72 hours in advance of their appointment.

Grant Goodstein: We have a 48 hour cancellation [00:51:10] policy. We ask that if you have to make a change to your cancellation, you let us know. So again, we send [00:51:15] the text message 72 hours before, which gives them a full 24 hours to let us know. Hey, [00:51:20] I realised I can’t come or something’s come up at work or something’s come up with child care. With that said, [00:51:25] when patients don’t show up, which happens from time to time, it does disrupt our ability [00:51:30] to deliver care. And by the way, also we’re in a business. I don’t know if many patients know this. Our [00:51:35] clinicians don’t get paid if people don’t show up. And it’s not a great way to keep clinicians happy. [00:51:40] If we have constant no shows in our diary. So we have to have policies and enforcement mechanisms [00:51:45] in place to make sure that patients aren’t able to abuse the system. Of course, life [00:51:50] happens, and it’s no problem if once every year or two years you’re, [00:51:55] um, you’re not able to make we totally slept through your appointment emergency. All [00:52:00] those things happen and we’re not going to be ridiculous, but we now have some controls in place and a process for [00:52:05] what happens the first time a patient misses an appointment. How do we communicate that to them? [00:52:10] What do we say? What happens the second time? What happens the third time? And there is now a point where patients [00:52:15] will get deregistered and they’ll lose their NHS place. And we give everyone plenty of warning. It’s not happening [00:52:20] on the first time, but being able to communicate with respect and help [00:52:25] patients understand the why not just sorry, we won’t see you anymore. Help [00:52:30] explain to them the reality and also what are the alternative options that are available [00:52:35] to them.

Payman Langroudi: Yeah, there’s nothing more annoying than someone telling you it’s policy. You.

[BOTH]: Yeah, exactly. [00:52:40]

Grant Goodstein: Again, if the answer is sorry, that’s just how it works here.

Payman Langroudi: Yeah. [00:52:45]

Grant Goodstein: People don’t feel listened to.

[BOTH]: And don’t feel.

Grant Goodstein: Heard. But you can explain to them again, if like a constant [00:52:50] thing that’s happening is the decision. A patient has cancelled last minute or has [00:52:55] not showed up to their hygiene appointment. We can’t take a deposit for NHS work, but we can and do for [00:53:00] private work. Every time we have a decision to make, are we going to keep this deposit as the [00:53:05] late cancellation fee per their policy, or does it make sense to waive it? And again, we have a lot of discussions [00:53:10] as a team with our front of house staff of creating clear policy, but also creating exception [00:53:15] and escalation pathways. I want everyone in our team to have a heart [00:53:20] and be understanding, right? Like my answer is always if you’d be if you’re personally embarrassed [00:53:25] to tell this patient that they can’t have their deposit back based on what they told you, the answer should be absolutely, let’s [00:53:30] refund your deposit. The other thing that’s really important to us, and is rare and unique in the UK, [00:53:35] and as part of our USP, is the speed of which we do everything from an admin [00:53:40] perspective. In our practice, patients are shocked that when they say, hey, can’t make it, I have to cancel my appointment, I’m moving [00:53:45] out of the area. Can you refund my deposit? My aim is to have that deposit back in their bank account [00:53:50] within 60 within 100 and 20s. That’s and people are like, oh my God. Like, especially [00:53:55] in this country and especially in an industry like healthcare where people are used to waiting, people [00:54:00] are used to maybe a little bit of a grumpy receptionist not greeting you at the door. Part of the way we, we [00:54:05] set ourselves apart is by acting really fast. I think it shows the sense [00:54:10] of urgency we have in delivering great care. And a task done means we can then move [00:54:15] on to the next task of helping our patients. And that again, is for cases of, of of refund. [00:54:20] I think a great refund experience is one of the few opportunities to that makes patients [00:54:25] say, oh, these people actually do care.

[BOTH]: About doing the right thing. Yeah, you’re right.

Grant Goodstein: I’ll even say, [00:54:30] and I want to give credit to your team. Enlighten is the best in the industry that we’ve worked with in [00:54:35] terms of, of delivering a great experience to us, and that’s why we love.

[BOTH]: Nice [00:54:40] to hear with you guys.

Grant Goodstein: Boren on your team, who I email with all the time, is [00:54:45] like the sweetest, kindest person ever. We had a patient who signed up for enlightened, [00:54:50] paid for it in full, as we do when you sign up. And the next day he called up and [00:54:55] he’s like, I’m so, so sorry. I’m having buyer’s remorse. I don’t think there’s room in the budget for this. And I immediately [00:55:00] I said, let me see what I can do. Let me get right back to you. Reach out to Laura. And she’s like, yep, that’s been cancelled. Fully refunded. Don’t worry. [00:55:05] Voucher vouchers back in your account. Like that’s totally.

[BOTH]: Aligned. That’s how we want [00:55:10] to do things and.

Grant Goodstein: How the enlightened team does things. And again, those are the opportunities. When things [00:55:15] don’t go perfect or.

[BOTH]: Things come.

Grant Goodstein: Up, those are the opportunities to really show you care and that you’re [00:55:20] different.

Payman Langroudi: For sure. So I noticed you’re changing your practice management software.

[BOTH]: Yeah. [00:55:25]

Payman Langroudi: Why? So that you can access from the cloud.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: So we are [00:55:30] going to do things a bit differently than the traditional UK Dental practice. One thing is, again, I [00:55:35] come from the world of tech, and I’ve been a little bit surprised in learning about these practices, how so [00:55:40] many practices are still server based. I think so is still the leading, uh, software [00:55:45] on the market. R4 is what we inherited, um, in our practice, uh, making [00:55:50] sure we had the right tech to do, to operate the way we wanted was really, [00:55:55] really important from day one. And it was an area where I had expertise. So that goes down to every small [00:56:00] detail. So we replaced everything down to the internet connection coming into our practice, replaced it with gigabit [00:56:05] fibre. Uh, we replaced the phone system with the modern VoIP phone system [00:56:10] that could be accessed both in person and remotely, and made it easy for us to return missed calls [00:56:15] and answer voicemails and track. We have AI phone systems now that make it so that we get transcripts, [00:56:20] recording, and feedback on every single call that we take. We created. We don’t get great [00:56:25] cell service for whatever reason in our specific practice. So we put in Wi-Fi that had a guest Wi-Fi [00:56:30] network and works. I literally went sat on the toilet in our loo and made sure that the signal [00:56:35] strength was strong enough in there.

Grant Goodstein: It wasn’t. We added a second point to our mesh network so [00:56:40] that if someone’s on the loo and they want to scroll through Instagram on their phone, they’re able to do that. Like that’s [00:56:45] the level of attention to detail that we’ve paid in the decisions that we’ve made in [00:56:50] delivering a great patient experience. One of the ways we feel that we could deliver an amazing patient [00:56:55] experience is by being able to offer more resources and have more members [00:57:00] of our team than other comparable practices of, of a given size. There’s [00:57:05] some realities, and we may want to get into the realities of operating in the UK today. It’s [00:57:10] really hard to hire quality people in the dental industry at [00:57:15] a fair competitive wage. The business model does not work [00:57:20] that we can have ten folks in our office that are dedicated to helping people. So we’ve made [00:57:25] two decisions. One is we’re going to find the very best people to sit in our offices, and we’re going to pay those [00:57:30] folks a living wage. We are the only NHS dental practice in London that is Living [00:57:35] Wage Foundation accredited. We don’t pay the minimum wage, we don’t pay the national Living wage. We [00:57:40] actually pay the London Living Wage.

[BOTH]: Which is how much.

Grant Goodstein: Rate it’s just went from 13.85 to [00:57:45] £14. 80 is the new wage. So it’s about a good £3 above the minimum wage. And [00:57:50] again that’s our minimum. That’s what we pay. For example, a trainee nurse. We have members of our staff who make [00:57:55] significantly more than that. The other thing is, okay, it’s going to be [00:58:00] really hard to hire folks in the UK in our office. And by the way, we’re in, as you described it, a [00:58:05] neighbourhood storefront. We don’t have a manager’s office or anything like that, a lot of space. So one of the things [00:58:10] that we’re going to do is start hiring remote folks to join our team. So looking internationally as well, we’re [00:58:15] actually in the process right now of hiring someone in South Africa to join our team as a patient services [00:58:20] coordinator. But if you want to have someone that’s going to help us answer the phones, help us respond to patient [00:58:25] emails, help us book and manage appointments, that person cannot do that if they have [00:58:30] server. If you have server based software and a traditional landline, you need to have [00:58:35] VoIP systems and you have to have everything in the cloud as far as your PM’s. So we [00:58:40] were again, I don’t know what policy is for the podcast about talking about specific vendors.

[BOTH]: It’s cool.

Grant Goodstein: To [00:58:45] talk.

[BOTH]: About.

Payman Langroudi: So you went with K stack?

[BOTH]: Yeah, we went.

Grant Goodstein: With Care.

[BOTH]: Stack.

Payman Langroudi: Did you look at Dental as well?

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: I’m going [00:58:50] to be slightly controversial on the podcast and that I really, really, really don’t like Henry Schein personally. [00:58:55] I’ve had a number of experiences in dealing with them and their team that made me feel like they [00:59:00] are not very customer centric, and that they are in the business of extracting maximum profit rather [00:59:05] than, uh, rather than delivering a great experience. Which led me to write straight [00:59:10] into the arms of Care stack. The timing was really great. We particularly enjoyed connecting with Adrian [00:59:15] Dre, who I’m not sure if you’ve had him on the podcast.

[BOTH]: Before.

Grant Goodstein: But a great, great guy and a great character [00:59:20] and we just got the sense that they were one, they were not in the market position that Dental was [00:59:25] or new in the UK, but we had the we had the perception that they cared a lot more [00:59:30] and that they were building a lot faster. When we talked to Dental, we didn’t hear a lot of exciting plans [00:59:35] that they had for the future. Whereas when we talked to care, we got this huge roadmap of [00:59:40] all the innovations they were set to make and improvements that were set to make. And we’re seeing a lot of those come to [00:59:45] come to fruition already that have been really helpful. Yeah. So we have voice tech and care stack.

Payman Langroudi: Explain voice stack [00:59:50] for someone who doesn’t.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah. So voice stack is a VoIP phone system. So that means basically, even though you have a traditional [00:59:55] landline number, it’s actually connected via Ethernet or Wi-Fi through a, through what they call a VoIP [01:00:00] and IP phone. And we’re able to take our calls both from a traditional handset. [01:00:05] But I can also answer calls from a computer. So I’ll give you an example. We did a little refurb [01:00:10] we had to shut for two weeks for the first phase of the refurb of the practice. In November, we went [01:00:15] back to the States to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family. We were able to set a voice message that let all our patients [01:00:20] know, hey, we’re currently closed. Feel free to email us or leave voice messages for emergencies. [01:00:25] And every morning I’m setting my alarm for 6 a.m. in Los Angeles for eight hours, behind waking [01:00:30] up and answering all our voicemails and missed calls for the day, as well as our emails again. Those are the things [01:00:35] that I think folks aren’t probably used to in the UK, that a practice is shut. It’s a weekend. It’s a Sunday [01:00:40] where we’re very much all in on doing everything to go above and beyond for our patients. [01:00:45]

Payman Langroudi: So listen, there are lots of practices that do all of this stuff. Yeah there are. They [01:00:50] tend to be more fully private.

Grant Goodstein: I was going to say I don’t think.

Grant Goodstein: Neighbourhood or like maybe if you’re [01:00:55] if you’re talking about on Harley Street or those.

Payman Langroudi: In every town in every town there are, although they’re [01:01:00] still not the majority by any means. Yeah, maybe, maybe I’m seeing the one the enlightened users enlightened a high end product. [01:01:05]

Grant Goodstein: I think that’s probably the case.

Payman Langroudi: There is that there is that. Yeah. But you don’t see it with with mixed [01:01:10] practices very much. Yeah. So there’s a difference. But my, my feeling is that, [01:01:15] you know, you’re going to be successful enough that you’re going to regret the NHS piece. [01:01:20] And maybe at that point, you’ll have to think about phasing it out because you’re going to just the [01:01:25] the real estate would be better used privately.

Grant Goodstein: It’s possible.

Payman Langroudi: Than NHS. That’s my hunch. [01:01:30] That’s what’s gonna happen in the next five years. Let’s say.

Grant Goodstein: That’s possible.

Payman Langroudi: For you guys. But the the [01:01:35] the enthusiasm you’ve got is exciting. Yeah. You know that that I [01:01:40] hope it keeps on going, man, because, you know, you’re young and it’s it’s when you’re young, it’s [01:01:45] being enthusiastic. It’s a big.

Grant Goodstein: Thing. I think it’s.

Grant Goodstein: Who I am, to be honest. And I think it’s, I think it’s something that [01:01:50] I really value in my amazing wife, Leah as well were the kind of people that we’re both like [01:01:55] very traditional extroverts, and we get our energy from being from around other people. And we both [01:02:00] describe ourselves as question masters. And this is just as in our work life.

Grant Goodstein: Yes, we ask.

Grant Goodstein: A [01:02:05] million.

Grant Goodstein: Questions when.

Grant Goodstein: We’re out to dinner with friends. Like sometimes like we’re like, [01:02:10] oh my God, how was your holiday to Oman? I can’t believe you were there. Those pictures look so great. What’s going on with your family? [01:02:15] How are you? Like, we’re the kind of people who just love to learn about other people and hear what’s going on in their [01:02:20] life. So I think when you have that genuine enthusiasm and curiosity for [01:02:25] day to day life. Not even anything crazy. But just like when patient comes in, it’s not about, [01:02:30] hey, do you have an appointment? Can I get you booked in? It’s like, Happy Christmas. [01:02:35] Where are you going to be for like, it’s having those genuine conversations. And again, [01:02:40] we’re not everyone is wired this way, but Lee and I both love having those conversations with anyone. [01:02:45]

Payman Langroudi: And are you sitting at a desk every day?

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, right now, almost every day. I’d say four and a half [01:02:50] days a week now. When we bought the practice, as I mentioned, there was a lot of turnover in the team. So [01:02:55] the practice actually couldn’t be open without me behind the desk. Um, because no one else [01:03:00] knew how to take the payments, essentially because the entirety of the kind of front [01:03:05] of house team decided that they didn’t want to remain with the practice at the time that we took over. [01:03:10] So, um, yeah, I’m still behind the desk and I think that’s also one of the most underlooked functions, the [01:03:15] front of house function and reception. I cannot tell you the amount of difference in terms of turnover [01:03:20] to the practice and patient experience that having someone who is a conversation starter [01:03:25] rather than a question answerer has. And that’s the number one piece of training that I do [01:03:30] with my. And I’m a very big believer in. In sales, we call them [01:03:35] mocks or role plays, but simulating conversations and practising the conversations that [01:03:40] you’re going to have before you actually have them.

Payman Langroudi: As an example.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah. So if a patient comes in and says, [01:03:45] are you accepting any new NHS patients?

Payman Langroudi: The answer is, [01:03:50] yeah, no, unfortunately we’re not. Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: So um, most people [01:03:55] would say no, sorry. Have a great day. Yeah. The answer for us is um, [01:04:00] hey, by the way, welcome in. What’s your name? What’s the person’s name first before you start the the [01:04:05] the the conversation. Okay. Are you are you new to the area? Most of [01:04:10] the time when people walk into a dental practice for the first time and ask about a new patient, they’re likely have [01:04:15] moved into the area. There could be another answer, but okay. Oh, where’d you move from? Start [01:04:20] a conversation. So as far as taking on new patients, we have a few remaining [01:04:25] spaces for children on the NHS, which we do. Unfortunately, due to capacity reasons, we are [01:04:30] full on the NHS. I’m curious, do you have something in mind? Is like are you wanting to go to the dentist [01:04:35] for a specific reason or are you just just wanting a general check-up? Is there a particular treatment [01:04:40] or pain that you’re having? You know, I want a general dentist, [01:04:45] but I’ve also, I don’t like the colour of my teeth. I don’t like or I have a lot of pain in my back tooth and [01:04:50] my wisdom tooth, I. The last. Dennis said I should really get it extracted. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. [01:04:55] Okay, so okay, tell me, when did you last see a dentist? Okay.

Payman Langroudi: So [01:05:00] a relationship is built already with.

Grant Goodstein: I hear what you’re saying. We don’t have an NHS appointment. [01:05:05] The truth is what you’ll save in being an NHS patient for some private patient. Nhs [01:05:10] Check-up at £27 for a private Check-up £75 here. And we [01:05:15] like the idea of being transparent and having an inclusive pricing model. Lots of practices. You go in to [01:05:20] check ups cheap, but they’re going to add on lots of things. X-rays are included in our prices for our check-ups. We’re not [01:05:25] going to charge you extra for an X-ray. So what you’re actually looking at is an additional 50, let’s [01:05:30] call it £48 twice a year. If cost is the actual absolute most priority. [01:05:35] You might be best going for the NHS, but if you’re looking for a great experience, I know that [01:05:40] we could help you and it’s frankly not going to be. If you’re telling me you’re looking for private treatments that are private and [01:05:45] not available on the NHS. Anyways, frankly, you’re not going to see much of a price difference here, so I’ll leave the decision to [01:05:50] you if you if you’d like us to get you booked in and we can get you started for a whitening consultation [01:05:55] or a consultation with our oral surgeon, I’d be happy to do that. If not, I’d be very [01:06:00] happy to recommend. There’s not any directly in Fulham, but there are some practices throughout West and southwest London [01:06:05] that I’d be happy to let you know are taking on new patients on an NHS basis. So again, [01:06:10] educating, learning, educating and giving a patient a dignified [01:06:15] choice.

Payman Langroudi: This sort of script comes very naturally to you because in the US it’s [01:06:20] so much of that. Yeah. Do you find this resistance like your difficulty in getting that over to [01:06:25] a UK person?

[TRANSITION]: A bit, a bit. It could be a.

Grant Goodstein: Little bit more challenging. I think any time you’re trying to [01:06:30] roll things out it’s always training is the um is the hassle. One thing we screen [01:06:35] for is people who are eager to learn. So we never expect anyone on day one [01:06:40] to be perfect. Um, again, we have a great new practice manager with experience in the industry who we hired [01:06:45] him not because he’s not good at the compliance and organisational things, but we really hired him for his [01:06:50] presence and caring nature more than we did for maybe the typical things that people look at a practice [01:06:55] manager for. We’re also training up on cross training. We want to eventually cross train all of our nurses. [01:07:00] We’re cross training one of our nurses on reception right now, so it’s been fun. We’ve both had chances to work with him on [01:07:05] reception and train him. And one of the things you have to do is you have to invest time and energy in creating the resources, [01:07:10] right? We can’t expect, especially as we think about we want to grow this business and be a bigger business [01:07:15] someday. I can’t do it all, and in our practice manager can’t even do now. We have [01:07:20] multiple page guides that I’ve developed on. Here’s how you. Well, [01:07:25] my best, my best friend in doing this is AI. I would love [01:07:30] if more folks in the Dental industry thought about learning to apply AI. [01:07:35] I am come from the tech world so everyone knows and uses ChatGPT and Gemini [01:07:40] and perplexity.

Grant Goodstein: I’m shocked when I realise in most kind of folks who aren’t in that [01:07:45] industry how new it is to most people. So it’s unbelievable what you can do with [01:07:50] a couple of thought starters and things that you want to do. Ai can deliver this incredible product. It’s not [01:07:55] 100% of the way there, but you can get from 0% to 80% or from that first 2% [01:08:00] to 80% in about five minutes. And then you can spend time refining the [01:08:05] rest. So we have a guide of this is how we triage emergency appointments. This is how we take deposits. [01:08:10] This is how we again, all the common situations that we experience. And again, there’s still much [01:08:15] more to do. Um, we certainly don’t have it all figured out, but we’ve thought about how [01:08:20] do we document and make these processes repeatable and have a little leaflet that can sit in front of our reception [01:08:25] team, especially as they’re getting started and getting trained. And the other thing I’m trying to really get into [01:08:30] our team’s mind is it’s always okay to say, I don’t know the answer. Let me get back to you and [01:08:35] check with someone who knows people. It’s really refreshing to people. Actually, people are afraid like, oh my God, [01:08:40] this person will judge me because I don’t know the answer.

Payman Langroudi: I’d much rather hear. I don’t know than someone making it up.

Grant Goodstein: Exactly. [01:08:45]

Payman Langroudi: And that comes across generally when someone doesn’t really know the answer to that question. [01:08:50] Um, I’m interested in the sports kind of analogy, insomuch as, I [01:08:55] don’t know, we start a company and you try and you try and make it fun and, and then [01:09:00] sort of almost, almost the highest level of sort of, uh, working [01:09:05] out for me was like, oh, we feel like one big family here. And, and, but then [01:09:10] you realise as you go that it’s not really a family. It’s not, you know, like [01:09:15] the very nature of a family is that you can’t expel people from a family.

Grant Goodstein: So are you a [01:09:20] are you a have you. You sound like someone who’s read the Netflix culture deck or the No.

[BOTH]: Rules rules book.

Payman Langroudi: I’ve [01:09:25] actually I’ve actually read a summary of the Netflix.

[BOTH]: Okay.

Payman Langroudi: It didn’t come from there. It didn’t come from [01:09:30] there. I actually, I was talking to, um, from, uh, Pearl, Pearl [01:09:35] AI, you know, the one that.

Grant Goodstein: I’ve heard good things about them.

Payman Langroudi: Yeah. And, and, uh, it’s [01:09:40] a general thing, isn’t it, that to treat your business like a pro sports team, the right [01:09:45] person, the right job and the team being the ultimate thing. And do [01:09:50] you do you have that? Like, I mean, you said this, this coach really inspired you. Yeah. But [01:09:55] sports analogies that do cross over into work.

[BOTH]: Yeah I agree.

Grant Goodstein: We’re [01:10:00] we’re a high performing team. And what that means exactly as you said, you know, say, grandpa, [01:10:05] you’re pissing me off today. So you’re out of the family. I mean, some people might do [01:10:10] that stuff, but I’m not from a family where that happens, but um, yeah, it’s, there’s [01:10:15] standards on our team. And again, it’s not appropriate to go into details, but there have been not, not many, [01:10:20] but there have been folks since our in our journey who have not met those standards and are no longer part [01:10:25] of our team. Um, so we enforce and uphold those standards every day. And there is, [01:10:30] again, we are lucky to have our team, but we are building an environment where people should also, [01:10:35] we believe, feel lucky to be a part of something that’s special. Again, we don’t have a [01:10:40] sense of entitlement around that and it goes through our actions that we do every day. But when you [01:10:45] build something that’s special, it’s a it’s a two way street for sure.

[BOTH]: Yeah. [01:10:50]

Payman Langroudi: For sure. So you’re telling me you have had to fire people already?

[BOTH]: I have.

Payman Langroudi: That’s [01:10:55] tough man. It’s so early on.

Grant Goodstein: Not nice. It’s not nice to do, but it’s a. Again, if you remember, the [01:11:00] ultimate obligation is to.

[BOTH]: The business.

Grant Goodstein: The business, and not only the business to the patients. [01:11:05] If you have people that aren’t putting patients first or aren’t putting, uh, aren’t treating [01:11:10] other members of staff in the right way. That all comes back to creating an environment that’s that’s [01:11:15] not favourable and ideal for a patient.

[BOTH]: So yeah.

Payman Langroudi: We [01:11:20] like to talk about mistakes on this.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: So generally with the dentists it would be a clinical error. [01:11:25]

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: But with you I guess it’s going to be a different type of error. Yeah. What what what comes [01:11:30] to mind. A mistake that other people can learn from.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Grant Goodstein: Um, I think sometimes, especially as a [01:11:35] business owner, you can have moments where you’re a little bit too focussed on the business [01:11:40] and the process and less focussed on the person. Um, it’s been very few [01:11:45] and far between. Thankfully, we’re really lucky that the vast majority of patient feedback has been fabulous, but [01:11:50] we had a patient who, who came in who was not thrilled with the outcome of her appointment. [01:11:55] Not through any malintent or anything that clinically negligent, but she didn’t [01:12:00] get the experience that she deserved, and that was very readily apparent to me. It was a communication [01:12:05] issue more than anything, but the communication wasn’t ideal for this patient [01:12:10] to to give. To make a long story short, it was a patient who was told she needed [01:12:15] to come back for a second appointment with the hygienist, but it wasn’t communicated in the right [01:12:20] way. And when we went to ask her for the deposit for the next appointment, she was quite shocked [01:12:25] and my immediate instinct went to, oh, this is [01:12:30] our policy. We’d like to offer you 50% off for [01:12:35] the next appointment. And ultimately, she felt completely because my instinct wasn’t [01:12:40] to say, you’re right. It was like, well, I’m sorry this happened, but let’s [01:12:45] do this goodwill gesture to reduce the cost of your next appointment by £50. She didn’t [01:12:50] feel heard and she didn’t feel understood. And that was an enormous the patient left really unhappy. [01:12:55]

Grant Goodstein: And I really, really felt bad about it. And I really, really regretted the way that I handled [01:13:00] it. I thought about the process and not about the person. It was a person who’s going through a very difficult pregnancy. [01:13:05] She had shared with me. There was a lot of other factors going on, and I should have just set [01:13:10] money aside and did the right thing, which was offer her in a complimentary [01:13:15] appointment for the day and a complimentary appointment for the next time. So but anyway, what [01:13:20] I did learn was it’s not never too late to make things right. And I thought about it that evening and [01:13:25] Leah and I had a conversation about it, and I sent her a follow up email and gave her a phone call the next [01:13:30] day. And I said, I’ve given more thought to your situation. And we were completely in the wrong with how we handled [01:13:35] this. I want to apologise to you. I understand if you don’t want to come back, but if you do, we’ve [01:13:40] refunded the charge automatically through your card already and we’d like to offer you a complimentary appointment. [01:13:45] And if you don’t mind, we have your address on file. Would it be okay if we sent you flowers to say that [01:13:50] we’re sorry? Um. And she came back. She was back the next week, and. [01:13:55]

[BOTH]: With a big.

Grant Goodstein: Smile.

[BOTH]: On her face.

Grant Goodstein: Now she’s got a child that she’s so excited to bring to [01:14:00] Leah for the child’s first up. So I would [01:14:05] encourage people to remember we’re all humans and [01:14:10] to make sure that you take care of the person first. And you always, always make sure that person feels [01:14:15] understood, because there’s no way that 100, £150 will be [01:14:20] remembered in the grand scheme of our business, but the relationship that could be created or destroyed. [01:14:25]

Payman Langroudi: And, you know, the massive opportunity that every complaint brings. Yeah, it’s [01:14:30] it’s yeah, I guess in a way you were kind of addressing that in the, in the first [01:14:35] instance.

[BOTH]: But it was.

Grant Goodstein: A half measure.

[BOTH]: It was a half measure.

Grant Goodstein: It was not taking it seriously. It’s like, [01:14:40] what’s the minute I thought in my head, what’s the minimum I could do to make this go away? Not how [01:14:45] do I actually make this right? And that was I’m glad I learned the mistake then. This was [01:14:50] early on in the first two months of our our journey, because I now have a very different philosophy [01:14:55] for how we deal with, again, we’ve been lucky enough that we haven’t had any like, like formal or GDC style complaints, [01:15:00] but there have been a couple of patients who have voiced displeasure about something or the [01:15:05] other, about their experience from one patient wasn’t happy that we didn’t have the sign for the bathroom in the clinic, or a [01:15:10] bin as readily available. Like again, some smaller and some that are bigger, like the one.

[BOTH]: That all the [01:15:15] things.

Payman Langroudi: We’ve done differently regarding the purchase, the, the, the makeover.

[BOTH]: Um. [01:15:20]

Payman Langroudi: Because I mean, if you’ve had a good experience with builders, then I really feel like.

[BOTH]: Yeah, [01:15:25] that’s different if I, if I can give a plug, um, UV.

Grant Goodstein: Who owns, uh, DeVoe [01:15:30] Interiors again, someone else you should have on your, on your podcast. Just great stand up guy. [01:15:35] Um, I think one of the things that we have had a little bit of trouble with is we’ve [01:15:40] had let stuff get away from us a bit in assuming that everyone has [01:15:45] all the context when they don’t. Um, we wound up again, we were working with a combination of the Hague [01:15:50] design team and equipment team, who’s amazing, and UV who is doing the actual [01:15:55] building work and executing their vision. And there were a couple examples of things where we got [01:16:00] the quote back and we’re like, what? How is it this much? And it’s like, well, we designed this amazing custom [01:16:05] planter that you wanted. And I’m like, well, not for the planters, not for 10,000. Like it does [01:16:10] look beautiful, but it’s not £10,000 beautiful. And I think one of the lessons we’ve learned there is [01:16:15] it is we have to be incredibly specific in everything [01:16:20] that we do. You have to be really vigilant.

[BOTH]: Particularly when you make a change what.

Grant Goodstein: You want and [01:16:25] what you don’t. And the other thing I learned is no matter how great the people are that you [01:16:30] work with, you as the business owner have to drive. There’s a great tech executive who [01:16:35] I think is really fascinating, a guy named Frank Slootman. He was the CEO of snowflake, which is a $100 [01:16:40] billion tech kind of cloud company. And his thing is the, the, the [01:16:45] CEO or the whoever is running the business, that person’s job is to drive urgency [01:16:50] every day. Because if someone is not there cracking the whip and that doesn’t necessarily [01:16:55] mean in a cruel, cruel way. But if you are not pushing things forward, [01:17:00] nothing happens in your business. That is the death of the speed that can separate a great business [01:17:05] from an average one. So for me, my reminder is don’t be afraid to be annoying. Follow [01:17:10] up with the design team every day. Follow up with the builders every day. If they need to be reminded [01:17:15] 2 or 3 times. I’ve got to do that 2 or 3 times. What’s going on with the sign? Because if [01:17:20] I forget to email the guy to do the shopfront sign, as I did for 3 or 4 weeks, no progress was made [01:17:25] and that was entirely lost. We’re five and a half months in without the sign. Even though I emailed, I got [01:17:30] five quotes. I decided who we went with. I forgot to drive the follow up in the sense of urgency, which [01:17:35] means we’re still five months in.

[BOTH]: Without our new sign.

Payman Langroudi: Particularly with building works, right? And I’m very [01:17:40] guilty of that as well. I kind of want to. I just want it to go away and build itself. Yeah. [01:17:45] But but then do you also take that onto a day to day?

[BOTH]: Oh, it has.

Grant Goodstein: To be everything. It has to be with hiring. [01:17:50] It has to be every single operational change, whether that’s implementing a new practice [01:17:55] management system and phone system. As we had ordering a new and signing a new intranet, [01:18:00] Uh, negotiating. Uh, associate agreements, uh, discussing, [01:18:05] uh, creating again, everything. It’s, it’s been eye opening to be a business owner [01:18:10] for the first time and to think, oh, my God, everything that’s happening around me only happened because [01:18:15] there was some guy or some woman who made it happen.

[BOTH]: You do. [01:18:20] These things do not happen. You seem incredibly.

Payman Langroudi: Seasoned, though, for a first time. It’s interesting.

[BOTH]: No, it just sounds. [01:18:25]

Payman Langroudi: Like it’s in your blood or something. You know, you do seem very seasoned, man. You do seem very seasoned. [01:18:30] Um, considering you’re only. What are you, six months in?

[BOTH]: Five and a half.

Payman Langroudi: Goodness me. [01:18:35] You should have seen me six months. It was all sorts of problems, though. Um, [01:18:40] no, it’s nice to see that. It’s nice to see that. You know, I think you’re going to be very successful. [01:18:45] Um. And you sound like you’re enjoying it and you sound like you’re, [01:18:50] you know, happy.

[BOTH]: I love.

Grant Goodstein: It. I mentioned earlier that I hit a point in my life where, [01:18:55] um, I was not thrilled with my career and I was kind of feeling depressed about [01:19:00] it. Honestly, I felt like rudderless and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And it’s been so refreshing [01:19:05] to start this journey, and I feel like I really have a sense of purpose every day. I think especially [01:19:10] in tech, right? And the world’s heading to a more remote world and this and that. When [01:19:15] you are going in person, to a physical place and delivering care to your [01:19:20] neighbours, I mean, it just what could be more motivating than that, [01:19:25] like, than making your neighbours feel good about themselves, helping [01:19:30] your neighbours feel healthy, having conversation with you, with your team that you really like spending time [01:19:35] with every day. It’s just like I have this new found purpose to my day to day routine that [01:19:40] I think, uh, I mean, I wish I could have done this earlier, but I’m loving it so far. [01:19:45]

Payman Langroudi: So what do you reckon if like a, like a optimistic estimate of when you [01:19:50] think you’re gonna grow?

[BOTH]: I mean, I’d love my vision that I have.

Grant Goodstein: In my head is.

[BOTH]: 20. [01:19:55]

Grant Goodstein: 27 will be a year that we can grow, whether it’s expand the physical footprint in our current neighbourhood [01:20:00] or which is my first. My first preference, there’s some difficulty. And again, I [01:20:05] mentioned investing in growth. Um, when Leah and I purchased the practice, we had £2,000 [01:20:10] left, um, in our bank account and rent was due the next month. So if [01:20:15] we didn’t put a positive balance in the first month, we weren’t able to make rent. So we [01:20:20] were fully tapped out when we did this. So we don’t. Everything that we’ve really invested has been out [01:20:25] of cash flow from the business, and we’ve taken on significant debt not only to buy the business, but to the [01:20:30] building works. All that stuff is largely debt financed. And one of the great things about working in [01:20:35] the dental industry is that they call it what a green light industry, I think, which means banks are [01:20:40] quite happy to.

[BOTH]: Lend.

Grant Goodstein: And at quite affordable rates. So it’s been really nice [01:20:45] because we can now afford to have these, uh, again, it was a calculated bet [01:20:50] and we made some assumptions that worked out really, really well in terms of some of those risks that we were going to take. [01:20:55] For those reasons, it may be difficult without the two years of, uh, of [01:21:00] accounts to get that next loan for, to continue to grow the business. [01:21:05] But I think we’re optimistic that 2027 so we’ll have one more year to really execute [01:21:10] and operate before we start thinking about, um, expansion as a next chapter.

Payman Langroudi: Sounds [01:21:15] amazing man. It’s been a pleasure having you.

[BOTH]: Oh.

Payman Langroudi: I’m going to [01:21:20] end with the usual, um, question.

[BOTH]: Yeah.

Payman Langroudi: Fantasy dinner party. [01:21:25] Actually, before I do that, um, what’s your favourite business book?

Grant Goodstein: Favourite [01:21:30] business book. That’s one that I really love that I mentioned recently that I, that we just, I [01:21:35] mentioned to you in this conversation is no rules rules, which is written by, um, Reed Hastings, [01:21:40] who’s a founder of Netflix. And Aaron Aaron Myers, I think is her name, who’s an amazing [01:21:45] business professor at Insead in Paris, who I actually had a chance to see speak about her previous [01:21:50] book, which is another good one called The Culture Map. Um, when I was working at Twitter, she spoke at one of our conferences [01:21:55] over there. Um, I really, really, really, um, it’s [01:22:00] a very interesting different culture at Netflix that they have. It’s a very performance oriented [01:22:05] culture. It’s not as warm and fuzzy a culture as some of the other tech companies [01:22:10] are known for happening. And they were very intentional about the way that they built their company in a way that’s [01:22:15] very inspiring to me. Um, that’s a really good one. Again, I’m a little bit of a Warren Buffett [01:22:20] file. So the, the intelligent investor, which is the, uh, Benjamin Graham book that [01:22:25] was his professor at Columbia Business School who wrote it. So that’s an old book. Now we’re talking about a book that’s [01:22:30] getting close to 100 years old. That’s a classic if you want to learn more about value investing. [01:22:35]

[BOTH]: Um, those are two.

Payman Langroudi: Is there any performance related, uh, pay [01:22:40] at the practice?

Grant Goodstein: Um, not, I mean, all of our clinicians are on [01:22:45] a.

[BOTH]: Sliding scale.

Grant Goodstein: Or on a, on a split. So they, it’s.

[BOTH]: A.

Payman Langroudi: Fixed one or a sliding.

[BOTH]: One. [01:22:50]

Grant Goodstein: Some are on different.

[BOTH]: Arrangements.

Grant Goodstein: Between the two of those, but everyone is incentivised [01:22:55] based on their production. Who are the clinicians, dentists and.

[BOTH]: Hygienists.

Payman Langroudi: And the. [01:23:00]

[BOTH]: Clinicians?

Grant Goodstein: Right now, we don’t because we’re in a place where we’re still learning what that looks like, but it’s absolutely [01:23:05] part of our vision for 2026 to add some sort of annual incentive. [01:23:10]

[BOTH]: Program for employees.

Payman Langroudi: I keep forgetting.

[BOTH]: How early, but yeah, we’re.

Grant Goodstein: Five months in. And frankly, [01:23:15] cashflow has been a really, really, really big. So again, we, our strong firm believers [01:23:20] in to attract the best people, you have to pay really well. So again, our vision is [01:23:25] to be one of the best paying dental practices in London for dental nurses and for [01:23:30] um, our employed staff. Um, but I had these conversations and [01:23:35] that was one of the points of friction when people came in was that people wanted big raises and I said, [01:23:40] I would love nothing more to give you this raise, but let me walk you through the state of the business today [01:23:45] and what that means. My plan. And I told people I have. I spoke [01:23:50] with three of the members of the team who asked for significant raises. We did give a raise, [01:23:55] but we weren’t prepared to meet their demand from day one. For each of them, I mapped out, this [01:24:00] is how we can get you to the number that you want within six months. I’m not guaranteeing that it will happen, but this is my vision. [01:24:05] We’re going to add more days of hygiene. We’re going to add more specialists. We’re going to do this to to make sure [01:24:10] that the diaries are fully booked on a daily basis. These are all the different things. We’re going to change our pricing structure a bit [01:24:15] here and there. Two of the three told me to go fuck myself and and left one, [01:24:20] our head nurse said, I am all in. We gave him that raise that [01:24:25] he wanted, plus more within 60 days of purchasing the practice because the [01:24:30] what we said, what we believed in, what we said we were going to do actually happened. And it’s been [01:24:35] he’s like, practically again, I know we talked about it team, but Sal, our head nurse, is like a member [01:24:40] of our family at this point. He’s someone who is so invaluable as a leader in our practice. [01:24:45]

Payman Langroudi: Amazing man. Let’s get to the final question. Fantasy dinner party. [01:24:50]

Grant Goodstein: Yeah. Okay. Yes. Three.

Payman Langroudi: Dead or alive?

Grant Goodstein: Okay. Once my wife, Leah. [01:24:55] Um.

Payman Langroudi: She’s not.

Grant Goodstein: Having it. No, she’s. She’s my guest. Really important. Uh, you [01:25:00] don’t have to have it, but I’m telling you. Because I think something that makes it really special for us is.

Payman Langroudi: A fantasy dinner [01:25:05] party. It’s not a dinner party. It’s a fantasy dinner party.

Grant Goodstein: Why would I.

Payman Langroudi: Not? I’m not accepting.

Grant Goodstein: I’m not. Why would I [01:25:10] not want my favourite person in the world at dinner?

Payman Langroudi: I’m okay. Because you have dinner with her every night.

Grant Goodstein: I know, but what if I’m having this [01:25:15] special party? Why would I not want her to be there?

Payman Langroudi: I’m sorry.

Grant Goodstein: Okay. Next person I’m going to give you is. I’m [01:25:20] extremely close with my grandfather. He’s 90 years old. Yeah. Um, he talks about the kind of the [01:25:25] entrepreneurial lineage lineage in my family. He was.

Payman Langroudi: The what.

Grant Goodstein: Did he do first? So he was someone [01:25:30] who grew up in quite a poor family in Los Angeles. Um, he was born in the 1930s, [01:25:35] and his father was kind of like always did odds and ends. He like helped [01:25:40] measure suits and worked in a factory as a machinist, was a very like, hardscrabble [01:25:45] kind of guy who just wanted a better life for his kids, and my grandfather [01:25:50] came up and wasn’t a very serious student, but was a very hard worker. He didn’t never went to university. [01:25:55] He started about 5 or 6 businesses, including a clothing store in Los Angeles. That all [01:26:00] failed. And my grandma always describes the first ten years of their marriage is extremely miserable [01:26:05] because they could barely pay their rent in their house, and they had to go to family [01:26:10] members and say, can you help out with with holiday gifts for the kids this year? And it was a [01:26:15] very difficult existence, but they just never gave up. And my grandfather came to learn in the early [01:26:20] 1970s about, um, he was at the time selling tape, not the most [01:26:25] glamorous business, like duct tape, Sellotape, duct tape, all different kinds of things. [01:26:30] And he was at a company that sold this tape to people who needed it, and [01:26:35] he somehow came to learn that it would be possible to bring in [01:26:40] tape from different parts of the world at a way better [01:26:45] price than he could get it.

Grant Goodstein: So at that time it was happening in Japan. So he found out if [01:26:50] he was selling tape for for $0.25 a roll in the States, he [01:26:55] had to pay $0.15 a roll. And if he imported from Japan, he’d pay $0.03 a roll. So what he could [01:27:00] do is offer it, undercut the price and do more. So he he started buying tape and then [01:27:05] from Japan and just using every penny of his savings to, to order the [01:27:10] order the tape, sell it. And then he could put in a bigger order. Then he could put in a bigger order. And then he started expanding [01:27:15] the business to where he really got to was tools. So he started importing tools and he was travelling [01:27:20] through these years. He was spending about three months, a year away from his family, travelling through Asia, first in [01:27:25] Japan, then into Taiwan. And then later he, he was, uh, Richard Nixon was the first American [01:27:30] president to visit China in 1974, I think within 6 to 18 months, my grandfather was [01:27:35] in China trying to figure out how to work with factories there. So he wound up selling to, you know, famous US [01:27:40] stores like Home Depot and things like that. So he wound up kind of building this, this, this business [01:27:45] from really nothing. So I admire him so much.

Payman Langroudi: Forget China in 74. [01:27:50] Yeah, today’s equivalent of that would be Mars. And people [01:27:55] don’t realise that.

Grant Goodstein: He always describes himself. He says, I was not the smartest person in business. [01:28:00] Um, but what I was is the person willing to to put up with the most maximum [01:28:05] pain and discomfort. This was in the years where when you were travelling through through China, you were [01:28:10] taking a coal driven plane, which he describes it as being almost suffocating the the [01:28:15] fumes from the coal coming out of the train. And people would be cooking on open [01:28:20] fires on the train, like killing a chicken and cooking it. Like he says, it [01:28:25] was like in the hotel, a single person.

Payman Langroudi: Would speak English.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, one star hotel. He had [01:28:30] to hire like a local person to be his kind of chaperone to help him get get around. Who? Someone who was [01:28:35] bilingual. And he said, the death of me is when they start to open a Marriott hotel in [01:28:40] this country, he says. As long. Once it gets easy to do this, All the stores that he sold [01:28:45] to, they just sent someone out there and do it. But for him, he said, I don’t have a long window in this business. [01:28:50] I’m going to have ten, 15, 20 years. And he was going to. What do they say? Make hay where [01:28:55] the.

Payman Langroudi: When the sun shines.

Grant Goodstein: While the sun shines. That’s what he did.

Payman Langroudi: So what a character. Yeah, what a great story. [01:29:00]

Grant Goodstein: I’d say my next one would be, um, I would say Warren [01:29:05] Buffett. That’s someone who, um, again, are starting to centre around old men here in their 90s. [01:29:10] But, um, Warren Buffett is someone that I think looks at business in like such a, one of the [01:29:15] things I love about reading his shareholder letters is he always describes it that he writes [01:29:20] his letters as if they were to his grandmother or to his aunt. He always says [01:29:25] he wants to be able to. An idea isn’t great unless it can be communicated in a way [01:29:30] that anyone could understand. And I’ve learned so much about communication through him and about [01:29:35] not sounding, not trying to sound like the smartest person in the room, but actually have the most [01:29:40] coherent, easy to understand use simple words instead of big words. I really think that [01:29:45] he’s such an incredible business mind.

Payman Langroudi: Are you not going to give me a third?

Grant Goodstein: The last one’s Leah. [01:29:50] I mean, can I use this opportunity to talk about my wife, who is amazing and [01:29:55] something that’s really special about us, and I feel like the luckiest guy is that. Um, not everyone [01:30:00] gets to be married to their best friend. And for me, it is like, that’s why I say, why would you not want to have your favourite [01:30:05] person at the special fantasy dinner party? So we one thing that we love is a little bit corny, [01:30:10] but literally we walk to and from work every morning. It’s a 15 minute walk from our flat to where we work, and we hold hands every [01:30:15] morning on the way to work. So she’s the most special person and I want to recognise, especially because I [01:30:20] think if you look at a lot of the Dental industry, there’s not a lot [01:30:25] of prominent women in dentistry in the UK or worldwide. I mean, we went to Invisalign live [01:30:30] last week, last year, which was a great event. I think they had 1 or 2 women [01:30:35] speaking, one of which I know, Claire, who’s been on your podcast, is very, very involved in women in dentistry [01:30:40] and I have so much respect for her because all that I do, and I think I do a good job as [01:30:45] the MD of the practice and running the operations. But I always need to remind myself [01:30:50] that none of this would be possible without her. She is exceptional at what she does. She has patients [01:30:55] that swear by her and would never even consider going to a different dentist, [01:31:00] and she delivers amazing care again, both to the to the to the mouth and to the human. She’s [01:31:05] just a spectacular person. I’m very, very, very lucky to have her as my wife and my business [01:31:10] partner.

Payman Langroudi: And the thing you said about the treatment of nervous patients. Yeah, it’s [01:31:15] those those dentists get the most loyalty from their patients.

Grant Goodstein: If you take [01:31:20] someone and this is actually another story that I think is interesting to tell on this podcast is my wife Leah. [01:31:25] Funny is for someone who is dating long distance, 5500 miles apart, has quite a fear [01:31:30] of flying. That’s not something that she feels very comfortable with. And she decided she was going to [01:31:35] do something about it. And she booked onto the fearless flyer course with Easyjet, which culminated [01:31:40] in a flight that takes off and lands at Gatwick Airport. Okay, you have this [01:31:45] online learning pilots. Come on, talk about the science, how planes fly, answer common questions [01:31:50] and then kind of the graduation day of the course is you go on this flight that takes off and lands at Gatwick. [01:31:55] You make a circle in the air for 45 minutes and you land. And it was so inspiring. I went on the I didn’t do the [01:32:00] course with her. But you were able to purchase an extra ticket for that kind of graduation flight. And [01:32:05] she learned so many amazing things about how to soothe herself [01:32:10] during this process that she actually realised, oh my God, everything I learned here [01:32:15] can be applied to my patients who are scared of the dentist.

Grant Goodstein: She doesn’t [01:32:20] like when you’re on the plane and there’s that ding for her. She says, oh [01:32:25] my God. That must mean the pilots are communicating to the flight attendants that the plane’s about to go down. This is the end. Like [01:32:30] that’s where her mind goes. And she learned, I bet a patient when they hear the sound of my fast, [01:32:35] fast speed handpiece, They probably think, oh my God, the whole tooth is coming out. It’s [01:32:40] going to start bleeding blood. It’s going to be flying everywhere. So she can explain to the patient before [01:32:45] she ever does any treatment. Here’s the tools that I’m going to use for your appointment today. Here’s this look. We can touch [01:32:50] this one while it’s working. Not dangerous at all. It only works against a tooth. So you’re not going to again, [01:32:55] just the ability to really relate, empathise and understand has been again, as you [01:33:00] said, if a nervous patient finds a dentist that they can trust, it’s massive. They would never, ever, ever think [01:33:05] about.

Payman Langroudi: My wife works down the road from you guys in the Bupa in really?

Grant Goodstein: I didn’t know that. I didn’t [01:33:10] know your wife is a dentist.

Payman Langroudi: Yeah, opposite Chelsea and Westminster.

Grant Goodstein: Okay.

Payman Langroudi: Yeah. And she’s had patients [01:33:15] follow her from practice to practice because of this nervous patient thing. Um, because, [01:33:20] and what you described there and they, they teach it in dental school when you’re treating [01:33:25] kids, but it’s actually kids are very much like nervous patients. And [01:33:30] the whole, the whole thing about kids is don’t get them to become a nervous patient eventually. You [01:33:35] know, that’s a tell show do approach.

Grant Goodstein: We actually something in that spirit again. Yeah. In [01:33:40] the way we want to be a bit different is we got a little. One of these stuffed animals that you could buy online. It’s [01:33:45] a giraffe. We named her Daisy. My grandma is obsessed with giraffes. And her. She calls every giraffe [01:33:50] Daisy. So she was the inspiration for Daisy. The giraffe. And Daisy has this giant [01:33:55] set of gnashers, like, 30 teeth on there. And Leia brings out to every child [01:34:00] as she loves treating children. She brings out the giraffe and she goes to reception and says, this [01:34:05] is Daisy. Daisy and I are going to be looking at your teeth today. And before she starts [01:34:10] with the child, she said, let’s take a look at Daisy’s teeth. Let’s do a check-up for Daisy. [01:34:15] Let’s count her teeth. One, two, three. Then she goes to the child. Okay, now Daisy wants [01:34:20] to count your teeth again. That’s. Obviously you wouldn’t do that to an adult, but [01:34:25] the principle is still the same. The principle is the exact same. You help people understand what’s going on. You introduce [01:34:30] them to the concept. You help them understand not only what we’re doing, but how we’re doing [01:34:35] it and why we’re doing it. And people are going to.

Payman Langroudi: The practice of a scanner before you bought it.

Grant Goodstein: Yeah, it [01:34:40] had a itero scanner, and that’s a big part of that’s actually another thing that’s worth mentioning as [01:34:45] well is the, um, we are very much and I think this is somewhere where I can add a little bit of [01:34:50] value as an outsider of the industry, if a dentist shows me an X-ray, the team always laughs at me. As again, [01:34:55] Leah says, I’m in year two. I was looking, went into the clinician, saw a dentist, had an X-ray. I was like, oh, [01:35:00] that’s great. Implant. And Doctor Rowan, who does our our. She’s like, you got to go back [01:35:05] to your one that’s a root treated tooth. That is not an implant. I just saw a big white line going up the tooth. [01:35:10] I assume that’s an implant. Yeah. Turns out it’s a root canal, but that just shows that the average person has absolutely [01:35:15] no clue what they’re looking at when they look at an X-ray. And I think there are some tools, Pearl Overjet [01:35:20] that are helping. They can do some AI overlay and help educate a patient. But the truth [01:35:25] is, an actual picture of your tooth speaks far more to a patient. [01:35:30] So whether that’s an Itero scan or that we use intra oral. We have an intra oral camera in [01:35:35] every surgery. So instead of telling the patient, showing them the X-ray or just a lot of dentists, I might imagine just [01:35:40] say you need. There’s decay. We need to do a filling. We actually take an intra oral picture. Say, [01:35:45] see this hole in your tooth? You actually need a filling here. Let’s get it built back [01:35:50] up strong. And here are your options for how we can.

Payman Langroudi: When I was a dentist, I was so reliant on the Intraoral [01:35:55] camera. Scanners didn’t used to exist back then, but I was so reliant on the Intraoral camera that when the little light used [01:36:00] to go on it, I would honestly disable disabled for that day. You know, like we’d have [01:36:05] to order it and I’d have to come or whatever it was. Um, I used to use it for every single filling, every [01:36:10] single exam, every single everything.

Grant Goodstein: We had a software issue one day where the Intraoral camera wasn’t [01:36:15] working for one day. We had to as an emergency that we had to fix it. But Leah said she came to me, this one patient, [01:36:20] she said, this patient really needs a filling. But she didn’t believe me because I didn’t have the picture to show her.

Payman Langroudi: Because you get so [01:36:25] used to presenting it that way.

Grant Goodstein: I 100% know if this patient had seen a picture, [01:36:30] they would have said, yeah, oh yeah yeah yeah, let’s let’s do the filling. But the patient’s like. Mhm. It’s not painful. I’m [01:36:35] not sure I need it. When you show the X-ray, they have no clue what we’re looking at. So we’re we’re believers in showing [01:36:40] not telling.

Payman Langroudi: Definitely. Yeah. It’s b a massive pleasure man. Thank you.

Grant Goodstein: Thank you so much for.

Payman Langroudi: Having me so much. Not [01:36:45] least your enthusiasm.

[VOICE]: This is Dental [01:36:50] Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders [01:36:55] in dentistry. Your hosts [01:37:00] Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Prav Solanki: Thanks for listening [01:37:05] guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you [01:37:10] both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our [01:37:15] guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

Payman Langroudi: If you did get some value out of [01:37:20] it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who [01:37:25] you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

Prav Solanki: And don’t forget [01:37:30] our six star rating.