Milad Shadrooh: I wrote out the logo and then I went to my dad. I was like, “Dad, I’m going to do this thing with the music and dentistry and I’ve got this idea, rapping dentists, what’d you think?” And I showed him the logo. Genuinely, he looked at me and went, “Raping dentists, what is this?” I was like, “Dad, it’s rapping!”

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

Payman: So, Milad, great to have you. Thanks for coming.

Milad Shadrooh: Thanks guys. Thanks for having me.

Payman: I know you’re busy as hell right now.

Milad Shadrooh: It’s all good, bruv.

Payman: So the thing that’s been going on with you, we’ll get to how you became the singing dentist. But just give us a quick 30 second sort of summary of where did you grow up? What were you like as a kid? When did you decide to become a dentist?

Milad Shadrooh: Oh wow. Okay. So I was born in Iran, in Tehran, and we did this thing as kids, you put your baby on the floor and put loads of stuff in front of them and then see what the baby plays with. And then the thing the baby plays with the most is what they’re destined to become. And I basically played with a syringe. It didn’t have a needle on it, I just want to highlight that. But yeah, basically I kept blowing the air out the syringe. I thought that was pretty cool. So mom and dad, “Boy, he’s a doctor.” So, they basically inspired me to go into medicine or dentistry or whatever. And then when it was time to make a choice, I did work experience. Didn’t think medicine was for me, so that’s why dentistry happened. But yeah, I was born in Iran. We came to the UK when I was five, 1986, during the war with Iraq. And then yeah, just raised in London.

Payman: Do you remember when you arrived in Britain?

Milad Shadrooh: Bits, I do. Yeah, I do. So my uncle and my aunt were already here. My mom and dad were educated here as well. So a pre-revolution in Iran, it was very common for people to come to the UK, go abroad and be educated. So we had an affinity to the UK already, and my uncle and aunt were already here. So yeah, we came here. I remember it.

Payman: What do you remember the most?

Milad Shadrooh: Initially, not speaking English and finding it hard to communicate. But very quickly, as kids, you pick up the language so quickly, right? And I remember very well, my mom and dad constantly telling me, “Speak English, speak English.” And then when my English became too good, they were like, “Speak Farsi, speak Farsi.” So they didn’t want me to forget the heritage, right? So yeah, it was good, man. I had a great childhood. I’m an only child. So no brothers or sisters.

Payman: Where did you move to when you came here?

Milad Shadrooh: So we first came to the North, so Hendon, which is where my aunt was established. And then from Hendon, we got set up in South Kensington. So the other end of the world. And I went to school in Kensington, Earl’s Court. Went around there, and then my secondary school was in Battersea. So always been South, Southwest, basically. And then for uni, I went to Royal London. So then I moved to East, and that was eyeopening, blimey. Whitechapel was interesting part of town.

Payman: The first day when you see Whitechapel Market. It’s a bit of a surprise, really.

Milad Shadrooh: I mean, I remember going for the interview, or the open day or whatever. And you walk out the station, you’re like, “Blimey. This is where I’ve got to come for the next five years.”

Payman: Prav, do you know?

Prav: No.

Payman: It’s like, I don’t know, the first time you go to Bradford or something. It’s not even that. It’s just a very busy market, selling spices, and-

Milad Shadrooh: Cloth.

Prav: Oh, right, like that, is it?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, literally. Yeah you can get anything pretty much down at Whitechapel.

Payman: You could be anywhere. It’s a funny thing. I had exactly the same experience. Went for my interview, and I thought, “What’s going on here?” But then I used to visit there a lot and it’s actually very cool area.

Milad Shadrooh: I like it, man. And you know what? All of that area’s changed so much. Like the East of London has changed so much. But Whitechapel high street, still the same, bruv. From the minute you go to the high street until you leave, literally the same. The shops either side might have changed, but the market is still the same. It’s still, so it’s nice. It’s kind of retained that thing. So yeah. That’s it.

Payman: How were you in dental school?

Milad Shadrooh: How was I in dental school? I was cool, man. I did my work, did well. I was always busy, active, kind of outside of that. So I was still doing the music stuff, which I guess we’ll talk about. But yeah, I’d be performing, I’d be MCing, I’d be going back to South and doing what I was doing and then coming back to East and yeah, it was good man. Had couple of good friends. I would knuckle down proper when it was time to study. So I would purposefully not shave so that I wouldn’t be tempted to step out. So I’d make myself look hideous. So I wouldn’t … I’d just be like, “Oh, should I go out tonight?” And look myself in the mirror and think, “Nah, bruv. You’re not leaving.”

Prav: And so, were you a clever student. Were you one of these people who were at school, were you super-gifted, super-talented in that sense? Or were you grafter?

Milad Shadrooh: I would say I was intelligent, but I’d have to apply myself as well. But anything I applied myself to I’d smash it. I was probably one of them annoying kids, I think, for other people. Like if any sports, I was good at any sport, not excellent at one, I was just sick at everything. So if it was tennis day-to-day, I’d be sick at tennis. If it was football, I’d be good at football. So, and studying-wise, I was kind of good at sciences, maths. I did all right in English. Like my GCSEs, I pretty much got all A’s and a couple of A stars.

Payman: obsessive personality?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Massively. I’ve realised that now.

Payman: Did you get into things really big?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, yeah. Big time, but then I’ll get into it crazy. I’ll buy everything that I need. I’ll do it full blown and then just kind of stop. And I forget about it for like a year and then go back into it again. I’ve been like that with everything. With martial arts, I’ve been like that. With football, I’ve been like that. With music. Music is the only thing that’s been constant though. It comes in peaks and troughs, but it never goes away.

Payman: So when did you first DJ, was that during school or university or…?

Milad Shadrooh: So, yeah. So the rapping probably started first. I used to basically sing along, right? Rap records would be on and I’d kind of just rap along and learn the words and I was always really good at it. And I remember, so growing up, Michael Jackson was the massive influence, right? Because we’re talking about eighties. So the Bad album was the first album I properly remember listening to learning all the lyrics to. And then Thriller, but Thriller prior to that is what I used to kind of watch and dance through and all the rest of it. So Michael Jackson was a big black influence with the musical aspect of performing and kind of being that superstar kind of icon level. And then rap, I just started listening to randomly and just kind of got into that. And I’d just rap along.

Prav: Gangster Rap or…?

Payman: Eminem?

Milad Shadrooh: No, oh, this was years before Eminem.

Prav: Public Enemy?

Milad Shadrooh: NWA.

Prav: NWA.

Milad Shadrooh: NWA was the first kind of thing. Snoop Dogg Doggystyle was the first album I actually bought with my own money on tape, cassette tape kids.

Payman: What was yours? Mine was Prince 1984, well, Purple Rain.

Prav: I think mine was-

Milad Shadrooh: Purple Rain, great album.

Prav: Ice-T. O.G.

Milad Shadrooh: Okay. Nice.

Prav: That was the first one I bought. Yeah. I remember sticking them in my car and playing them, turning up the bass tube.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, yeah. And we’ve all been there. So yeah. And I’ll just rap along. And actually the first proper performance I did was at a talent show in the first year of secondary school. So we’re talking ’91, I guess. I was 10 and I performed Informer. Do you remember the song?

Payman: Yeah.

Prav: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: Informer , you know say Daddy me Snow me, I go blame A licky boom-boom down. I’d have no idea what I was saying, but I just mimicked the words, right? And I had a friend of mine doing a beatbox, so we were on stage. He was beatboxing and I was doing that and we smashed it and I fought, you know what, and the whole school in front of a whole school. And I was like, this is what I want to do, man. This is awesome.

Payman: Were you the class clown as well.

Milad Shadrooh: Always. Yeah. Always. But, but here’s the thing, teachers used to love me. I was like teacher’s pet/clown. It was great.

Payman: I can see that.

Prav: Taking yourself back to that first performance. Were you nervous? Were you anxious? Were you super-confident, I’m going to go out there and just deliver a hell of a performance?

Milad Shadrooh: Always that. Yeah. Yeah. So my dad’s a musician and I’m so in Iranian music, he’s done a lot of stuff and produce stuff for other people. Then he used to play keyboards basically. So any Iranian concert, did you used to go to Iranian concerts back in the day?

Payman: I have been.

Milad Shadrooh: So like, Hammersmith palais, all them things. And my dad would have been Blinkies with all the biggest stars. So we’ve always had a studio in the house and I used to watch him doing and I’d go and kind of copy and learn how to make music and learn the structure of music and stuff just from my dad. So I’d always be at all the concerts. I’d always be at the cabarets, every dinner party, there’d be music, I’d be playing dombak, which is like Iranian drums or something, or I’d be dancing. And so, being on stage and watching that was always kind of normal. So I wouldn’t get nervous. I get excited to get out there and perform and things. So that’s where it kind of started. And I just carried on doing it. And then at that time, jungle music then started becoming popular, right? And MCing to jungle is incredibly fast, but I could always spit really fast. So I started doing that. And I start doing under-18 club nights, which would like start at 3:00 in the afternoon. I finish at 7:00 PM, in clubs, essentially.

Milad Shadrooh: So I’d be MCing in under-18 raves, and you would have to be sort of under-18 to go. House parties, I’d always be the guy on the mic, spitting bars.

Prav: So when you’re spitting or MCing or whatever that terminology is, are you just making stuff up on the spot or are you prep?

Milad Shadrooh: So two ways. Yeah. So there’s kind of, there’s like different aspects. So there’s the hosting side where all you’re doing is just, “Who’s having a good time, the ladies looking good,” or whatever stuff. So just trying to hype people up and get them ready. And that’s the hosting side doing shout outs and bigging people up. Then there’s like free-styling where you just make stuff up on the spot. And you kind of, you talk about the girl in the red dress or you talk about guys to my side or whatever, right? Then there’s bars, which you’ve written you’ve pre-written.

Prav: Got ya.

Milad Shadrooh: So, you’ve kind of got to be able to do a bit of all three of them to be a really good MC. So, majority of is written though. So, and then you just choose what to do and you got to know the music. So, you know when the beats about to drop, so you come in at the right time, you got to know when the vocals and the music starts, so you stop rapping, because it’s horrible, if you’re spitting over someone else’s rapping already, right? It’s just terrible. So you to have a good understanding of music and the actual songs themselves. So yeah, it was yeah man, I still love doing it. It was something I’ve… I just write lyrics all the time. I’ve still got all my old lyrics books, all of them.

Prav: What’s the first thing that you wrote?

Milad Shadrooh: My first lyric I wrote?

Prav: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: It was probably some really like profane horrible thing that I was listening to Snoop Dogg at a time. And so, it was probably just-

Prav: Rude.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, probably. Probably about girls and something rude, because I would have been about 12, right?

Prav: And all the influence from those lyrics as well, right?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, but I never used to swear. I’ve never been a swearer, because I just felt like it’s good for everyone to be able to appreciate your music and kind of, I just never really swore in any songs really.

Payman: So you get to dental school. You’re this cool rapper MC guy. How did you fit in with the…?

Milad Shadrooh: I feel all right? Because I was a Londoner as well, right? So, going to school in London, there was a lot of people also from London, but also from North and everywhere else, right? So, it was all right, man. I kind of, I still, I didn’t do the halls thing. I think if you come to uni and you go halls, you establish a really close network of friends, right? Because you’re living in the same place. But because I was from London, I didn’t get halls.

Payman: You stayed at home.

Milad Shadrooh: Well, my home was Putney at the time, right? So Putney to Whitechapel is like an hour and a half, two hours. It’s a long one. But had a friend of mine from secondary school, he got into the same uni. So he went to Queen Mary’s, he was doing maths and he was living in Oxford at the time. So he got halls. But the only halls left was like a married couple room.

Payman: With a double bed.

Milad Shadrooh: He was like, “Mil, do you want to come with me?” I was like, “Brother I’m there 100%.” So, it was like a house, right? So we went in the halls, but it was a house, the married couple room upstairs. So me and him had a double bed. So basically, for year one, yeah, in freshers, it was jokes. It was so much fun though, I had that year, it was, we bought decks. So he was a DJ. So we had decks in our room. We used to throw parties in our room all the time. And it was literally on the same road as the nightclub at a uni. So after parties were always happening in our… It was just, it was a great year man.

Payman: Amazing.

Milad Shadrooh: It was good times. Yeah, I got halls that first year and then year two, three, four, I lived in Redbridge, which is kind of on the way to Ilford, like even more Essex. And then I discovered Essex life, because at the time I was MCing, so I’d do clubs in Basildon and Romford than Ilford and Gants Hill and mad places I’d never knew existed.

Prav: How’d you go about getting those gigs? So you said I was MCing here, there and everywhere. Did people pick you up or…?

Milad Shadrooh: So my first ever proper garage MCing, so then garage music came in. That was like, when I kind of re-honed my skill and really became a proper MC. So that was in 1998, December ’98. I had some friends that were just at that time you could literally do club nights, right? It was easy, you’d go to the main club, you’d hire out the club on a night, you’d paid them some money or whatever, and you just booked the DJs. So DJ EZ, he’s probably the best, I think, pound for pound DJ ever, top five world-class he was the guy in garage. But you could book him for like 300 quid for an hour, 400 quid at the time. You’d just call him up and say, “I want to book you, are all right?” So, I’ve MC-ed with the biggest people in garage, because at the time my friends were putting on nights. So the first ever night was a Gass Club, which was very famous, like garage club in Leicester Square, December, 1998. Yeah, that was my first gig.

Payman: So would you run that club night or would you be MC-ing at the…?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, I was booked. Yeah, so it was my friends doing it and I got 100 pounds for an hour, which is awesome, man. I was 18 at the time. I was just 17 actually, just turning 18. So it was awesome. And then from there you just kind of start getting a name for yourself and people hear about you and there were booking agents and stuff. But I got onto radio. So pirate radio was a big thing in the garage scene and there was a massive station in South London called Delight FM. That was the one. Every, so North, South, East, West, they all had their big stations and Delight was the biggest probably in South. So Solid Crew, are you familiar with their work?

Payman: Yeah, yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: So Delight was their station. So it was started by a couple of their members and they all kind of grew out from that. It was done in like Battersea, Clapham, all in kind of estates essentially, and you just creep in there and kind of, because it was illegal, right? Doing pirate radio, so you just kind of creep in and hope though, people don’t come and take your aerial that night and then, yeah, you’d pay your subs, you’d pay five pounds and you’d have a show. So, I had a DJ friend at the time, so we had our own show. And then, because I was on radio a lot, I started to get more bookings and you just get people calling you up, “Oh, I want you for my night.” And all right, 50 pound, 100 pound-

Payman: But you stayed focused, did A-levels.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah man. Yeah, Did A-levels got into dental school obviously and during dental school, but I remember so I’d have a booking to finish at two in the morning, go back home, shower, clean up, have breakfast and go into clinic.

Payman: Love that.

Prav: And you never did, did you ever skip class-

Milad Shadrooh: Never.

Prav: All that sort of stuff.

Milad Shadrooh: Honesty, if you speak to any of my uni friends, I was always there. I’m not saying I didn’t nod off in pharmacology or dental materials.

Payman: I think we all do. We love it.

Milad Shadrooh: But even if you weren’t out, you’ll probably nodded off in those two. But I was always present, always there, always signed in. And in clinics I did all my patients all the time. I didn’t miss out on my numbers. I hit all the targets, we had to hit, exams. But that’s what I’m saying. I would knuckle down. So when it was time for studying, when it was time for whatever, I studied well with people. So I’d have a friend of mine, John, who lives in Malta, he’s Maltese now. So I’d go to his house, we’d literally lock off for like two weeks. I live with him for two weeks, we would study 10 hours a day.

Prav: And you stop the music at that point.

Milad Shadrooh: All of that would stop. Yeah. When it was time to get serious, it would, it would stop, because I knew it’s not easy to get into dental school. Getting into dental school in my opinion starts around 13 years of age, 14 years of age, because you got to smash your GCSEs in order to do the A levels in order to get into dental school. So it starts from then.

Payman: The system here. It always does start earlier then.

Milad Shadrooh: You can’t get D’s and E’s in science at GCSE and then expect to get into dental school, because they won’t let you do maths, physics, chemistry, biology, at A-level, if you’ve got D’s and E’s. So you’ve got to get A’s and B’s in that at GCSE level to then go on to do that at any level. And then you’ve got to get straight A’s nowadays to even be considered.

Payman: It sounds like you handled dental school okay. How about, so when you first became a dentist, what was your first job? Who was your first mentor, your first boss and all that?

Milad Shadrooh: So, the same guy that I’ve been with ever. So my first job is the practise I now own.

Payman: Oh really?

Milad Shadrooh: I’ve worked in one place.

Payman: Really like Tif Qureshi is similar.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. So it’s in Basingstoke.

Payman: And you were VT there? And now you owned them.

Milad Shadrooh: And now I’m there, yeah. So I remember very well, we were on oral surgery clinic and we’re all talking about what we’re doing next, what’s our plans are for our life and all the rest of it. And I was like, “Yeah, my life plan is to move to California.” Because we had loads of family there and friends and stuff. And I always wanted to live in LA. I was like, “Yeah, I want to move out there.” And at the time there was a board exam you could sit to get a conversion. The year I qualified 2004, they got rid of the board exam and it became university. You had to go and join their third years or whatever. It’s like $50,000 a year tuition plus living expense. I was like, “Blimey!” But at the time I didn’t know that. So the whole plan was to do that.

Milad Shadrooh: So we’re in the last year and I had also to chew on it at the time, was like, “Okay, well while you’re studying for your board exams, why don’t you just work as an assistant?” I was like, “What’s an assistant?” He was like, “Well, it’s like a associate, but you work under someone else’s contract, but they just pay you for the work you do.” And I was like, “Okay, that sounds interesting. I might as well while I’m studying.” “Yeah, I’ve got a friend of mine has got clinic in Basingstoke. He used to be a trainer. He can help you do all that stuff, but you can just work there while you’re studying.” I was, “All right. What is this Basingstoke you’re talking of? I know not of this village?”

Milad Shadrooh: He was like, “Yeah, just go meet him.” So I literally went and met him, we got on really, really well. And he literally gave me the job there. We had a meeting in a restaurant for lunch and he gave me the job there and then. He was like, “Look, it’s yours if you want it.”

Payman: So who was that?

Milad Shadrooh: Oscar, his name is, and he was like, “Mate, you can, yeah. Just come and work here when you qualify.” And this was three months before anyone even had to apply for a job, right? So then when we did all the CV writing and pitching for jobs and VT and all that, I was like, “Gassed it bruv.” You lot do that, man. I got a job. So I qualified and literally we qualified in July. I was there in 19th of August. My first day, walked in didn’t know what I was doing. Because Oscar had experienced, he gave me full clinical freedom. He was look, “Take an hour for a checkup. Do whatever you want, you just work at your own pace.” And he paid me as like an assistant, even though I wasn’t generating that kind of money, because he knew then longterm, it would pay off. And within about a year or two, he said, “You know what? One day this business is yours if you want it.” Oh, wow. So I owe him a lot, man. And he still works there now two days a week.

Payman: What’s his surname?

Milad Shadrooh: He’s Irish. So basically it was Joe. So I became kind of an honorary Irishman and he loves golf. Right, Oscar was sick, he played off scratch, when he was 18 and he pays off two and four, he’s really good and I’ve never held a golf club in my life. But like I said, I’m one of those guys, right? Give me a sport and I’ll be decent at it. So I remember him taking me along, he like, “Look, you’re playing, you’re a dentist now, you have to learn how to play golf. This is just something we do.” I was like, “All right, let me learn this sport.” So he took me along and I just picked up a stick and hit it. And it went quite far and straight. But then I had lessons and I started playing golf quite a lot with him. And he was great, man. He literally taught me the ropes. Every Wednesday. We’d have a meeting after work and we’d hang around.

Milad Shadrooh: And he showed me his tips for surgical extractions, how to do endos properly. And you know how to prep things, how to really kind of work within the world of dentistry. Then he started teaching me the business side. After about three or four years, he offered me a partnership. So I bought into the practise as a partner. And then a couple of years after that, he was like, “Look mate, I’m out if you want it, it’s yours.” And that’s when everything was changing, the new contract was in, HTM O1-05 was coming in. He was like, “Look, I just want to turn up in dentistry. I don’t want to worry about his business stuff, but you’re young. You’ve got energy, you’ve got enthusiasm. You understand business, take it.”

Prav: What was the most challenging part of that transition? So often when you, especially in that situation, you’ve, you’ve been working with him. He trusts you, you trust him. And then up comes the conversation of buy my practise, getting valued, agree a price. Was there ever any difficulty at that point?

Milad Shadrooh: Never, but I think that’s a lot down to him being so kind of accepting and cool. And he got a valuation. I got a valuation. They were very similar. I think the issue comes when it’s miles apart and you’re arguing with your former mentor or whatever, they were very similar. And we were both super-fair. So I bought the freehold as well. That was valued, it was what it was. So I bought the freehold for what the value was. The Goodwill was valued. That’s such an arbitrary, weird figure, right? But it was what it was. So we both were happy with the figure. So, I got the funding and I bought it. But what was key for me was for the patients, there was never any kind of, “Oh, this is so different now.” We kept it the same. We did it as a partnership. His name was still on the wall above mine. We didn’t change, because it was his practise for 20 years. So I didn’t suddenly come in and go right now, let’s rub my hands, I’m rebranding, I’m changing this, I’m changing that.

Payman: A common mistake, I see it all the time. Yeah, because it’s exciting to own your own practise. And as all the works, all the paperwork’s going through, you’re getting excited and you have this weird idea of people will realise something’s… And it’s actually a big mistake.

Milad Shadrooh: I agree man.

Payman: Because the patients and the staff want to know that everything’s the same.

Milad Shadrooh: Business as usual.

Payman: And then evolution rather than revolution.

Milad Shadrooh: I love that. Exactly, right. And then slowly that’s what’s happened so slowly. Because we were purely NHS, right? So slowly I brought in the private side of it.

Payman: And it was purely NHS.

Milad Shadrooh: Purely NHS, yeah. So then I converted my list to private after a couple of years. So I bought it. I didn’t go private next day. I still stayed exactly the same, because I didn’t want to rock the boat, man. I’ve taken over, we need to try to change somethings. We need to start establishing certain things.

Payman: What was the thing that you wanted to change definitely? What was he doing wrong in your eyes?

Milad Shadrooh: He wasn’t doing anything wrong at all. What he was doing, which I think everybody was doing was the clinical governance aspect, the compliance on so many things. It wasn’t as strict when he was doing it, yeah? You could have sterilisers in your room. You could have, it was just a different, you didn’t need a million folders with a million policies in it. You just took for granted that you did that. You took it for granted that you didn’t discriminate against a disabled person, right? But you didn’t need a folder telling you that that’s what you do. You just did it. Yeah. So it was all of those things. So, and when he was suddenly faced with the task of having to do all this stuff, he was like, “Dude, I just want to turn up and do my dentistry man.” So I was like, “Well, look, this is, I’m happy to do this.”

Milad Shadrooh: The practise management side of it I enjoyed. So it was having to set these things up and those things happen in the background, and patients again, they don’t see those things. Yeah, so it wasn’t like we need to change all the chairs. Patients don’t care about chairs, right? As long as it’s comfy and they go up and down, they care more about your waiting room. They care more about have you got a TV on the ceiling? They don’t care that you’ve got a 50 grand chair or a five grand chair with reupholstered seats that we don’t care. So we had some Belmont 1980s things, bruv, never broke weighed like five tonnes, but they never broke. There was nothing to go wrong. It just went up and down.

Payman: But then before you became the singing dentist, you were lecturing in clear aligners. So how did you go from doing this NHS cat to being this private cat? Who’s now a teacher in orthodontics? Were you actively trying to get better at ortho?

Milad Shadrooh: Oh. So again, that happened, that happened quite kind of organically and sort of randomly. So at the time when I started going private, I realised that the kind of… Because when I qualified, so veneering was really the big thing, everyone was doing veneers and doing small makeovers with veneers. And this thing came out called Lumineers from [inaudible] dead, thin veneers. And I was, “Oh, this is it.” So, I’ll put booked a weekend off, paid an astronomical amount of money to go on the Lumineers course. And I did it and I was like, “Wow, this, this sounds terrible.” But I don’t know if this is going to work. So tried a case and it was just so fiddly. And so, like there were supposed to be thin and it’s just as thick as anything else. It came out and I was like, “I’m not sure this is really the one for me.”

Milad Shadrooh: And then there was more and more stuff coming out with the heavy preps and people getting in trouble. And I thought, “Oh God, there’s surely a better way of doing this.” And that’s when Tif was really talking about the aligning bleaching bonding, right? That’s what that sounds awesome. So let me kind of look into it. I tried to book an Invisalign course and I couldn’t, because they weren’t doing it in my area or whatever. So Clear Step was a company that was around. Yes. So I thought, “Oh, let me learn about Clear Step.” So they came into my surgery, he did an hour lunch and learn training with me. And off you go.

Payman: Fully fledged orthodontist.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, “Start the ortho my friend.” I was like, “This is sweet.” So start taking impressions sending it in. They send back aligners, you start putting a patient’s mouth doing an IPR, just like winging it.

Payman: One hour man.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah man, mad. So, but then as I was doing the cases, I was like, “Hold on, there’s got to be a better way than this. This can’t be normal.” So I had some orthodontic friends. So I was basically mentored through my kind of orthodontic journey, I suppose, as being formal education, I was just mentored by people, because I learned like that. I learned by watching others and listening to them and absorbing what they’re doing as opposed to sitting there and reading books.

Payman: You can’t get that out of a two day course either, right?

Milad Shadrooh: No, I think you need mentoring me to stuff. You need people to tell you their tips and tricks of what they’ve learned based on their experience.

Milad Shadrooh: … they need people to tell you their tips and tricks of what they’ve learnt based on their experience.

Payman: Then I guess when you get stuck they can help you get unstuck and stuff like that.

Milad Shadrooh: Exactly right. It’s so important. Your mentorship, I think, is the key when you try and learn anything, or having a coach or having someone there, right?

Payman: Mm-hmm.

Milad Shadrooh: So I just started doing cases and learning while I was on the job. Learning, okay, so that kind of movement only works well if you do X, Y and Z. No one told me that, I just kind of learnt it. So I was just doing so many cases of it, and then Clearstep kind of decided to disappear. Didn’t they?

Payman: Mm-hmm. I remember having a conversation with you at the time you’d paid for a bunch of cases and paid the-

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, and they disappeared and I had loads of cases ongoing. I was like, “This is maddening.”

Payman: Ongoing as well.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, I had about eight cases to finish.

Payman: So how did you handle that?

Milad Shadrooh: Thankfully, I got my money back just before they disappeared. So money-wise, I was okay.

Payman: Did you get wind of it, somehow?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Yeah.

Payman: Yeah. Patients?

Milad Shadrooh: The patients that were ongoing, they were like suddenly stuck, need more aligners to finish and no one’s there, but I knew the guys at S4S already because I used to do their snoring devices, Sleepwell. I made quite a few of those. They were kind of telling me, “Look, we might have an aligner thing coming.” I was like, “Okay, what is it?” “Smart Line.” ‘All right, let me come and have a look at it.”

Milad Shadrooh: So one of the patients that was ongoing, I sent them the impressions and they were like, ‘Yeah, we can finish this quite quickly and quite simply.” I was like, “All right, this is awesome.” So they sent me some aligners. I put it in, it was much easier than what Clearstep was doing. I thought, “Okay this is pretty cool.” So I finished all of my cases to my own expense. Obviously, I had to pay for them and I finished them. But then I thought, “Okay, these guys are kind of, it’s more digital,” because Clearstep was literally analogue, right? They’d get models, break the teeth off, move them, recast them.

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: Whereas these guys were doing it digitally. I was like, “This has got to be the way it’s going.” So I kind of spoke with them and I moved all my patients over to that, started doing loads of aligner cases. Then the more I did them, they were like, “Okay.” I worked quite closely with the guys at S4S and learning things, you need to kind of change this, change that. They were tweaking a lot of stuff. They were doing loads of R&D into it.

Milad Shadrooh: Then when they finally felt ready to really push this out there and start running courses on it, they approached me and they’re like, “Look, Mil, you’re quite a confident speaker. You’ve done loads of cases now. I’m sure you’ve learnt a lot. You were mentored well. Do you want to run the courses?” I was like, “Okay, but I’m not like an orthodontist, dude.” He goes, “Yeah, but our target audience, our market is not orthodontists. This is dentists who have an interest in ortho, who if you pick the right cases and do proper diagnostics, you can do this stuff.” I was, “All right.”

Payman: Did you put the curriculum together for that course?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah.

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: With S4S, we sat down. I looked at it purely from a dentist point of view, right.

Payman: Uh-huh.

Milad Shadrooh: Because the majority of the time, I mean, on the courses, we still get orthodontists turning up and I’m looking at them. I like to do an intro at the start, “So what’s your name? What you do and why are you here?”

Payman: Are you still doing those courses?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. We still run them. Yeah. Then I’d get occasionally, “Yeah, I’m a specialist orthodontist. Qualified 10 years ago.” I’m thinking, “What am I going to teach this guy?” But the point is he’s like, “But you know, I’ve never done aligners,” because their work is bracket work. They’re doing proper ones. They’re doing pulling canines out of noses and what have you. But then when it comes to just some simple alignment before an aesthetic case, they don’t want to have to bracket it up for 12 months. They just want to use some aligners and fix it.

Payman: Are you just teaching or are you doing the support side as well?

Milad Shadrooh: I do most of the teaching on the day, but I give everyone my direct contact details and, “Listen to anything you need just holler at me.” Yeah, I don’t mind them. I’m available all the time, but with S4S they’ve got proper orthodontic therapists, not therapists, orthodontic technicians, sorry, there. They plan the cases. They’re doing stuff. So they’re not just a bunch of like kids that have been taught how to use the software. They have technicians there. So there’s not a lot that they don’t know on a support level when it comes to aligners. The key with aligners is there’s three aspects in my opinion, that lead to your success. Number one is correct case selection, right?

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: You’ve got to choose the right cases. That doesn’t mean don’t do complex stuff. Just do it if it’s right for you and you know what you’re doing, but don’t do that as your first crazy case. It’s like that with anything, the minute you learn implants, you suddenly going through All-on-4, you learn how to do a single tooth implant in a nice molar area. So you’ve got your endo where if you suddenly go rotary, don’t just pick like the worst upper molar to do, just do bloody central. So it’s like that with anything, if you’re doing aligners, don’t pick the most complex, horrible case. So first thing is case selection.

Milad Shadrooh: Second thing is patient education and motivation because if your patient’s not on board from day one and they don’t know their responsibilities, you’re screwed. Your whole treatment for nine months a year, whatever, is just going to be fighting against someone who doesn’t want to be on that journey.

Milad Shadrooh: I call orthodontics a trip. You start at one place and you want to finish somewhere else. The method by which you go is up to you. It could be a bus. It could be a train. It could be a motorbike. You’re driving. Your lab is your sat nav, but the patient’s your passenger. If they want to jump off constantly it’s going to be a horrible journey. So you’ve got to educate them. You got to motivate them. You’ve got to keep them in the car with you. Happy that they’re going on this journey. The very end is once you get to the destination, retention is so key with aligner treatments, right?

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: If you don’t have a good retention protocol and you haven’t explained this from day one, you’re going to have a nightmare. They’ll come back constantly, “Oh, this is too smooth.” “This is not as straight.” “What, I’ve got to wear retainers for the rest of my life? You never told me that. What? This wire’s got be stuck on my teeth forever? Are you mad? I can’t floss. I’ll get lettuce getting stuck in there all the time. What’s wrong with you? Take it off.” “No, you got to keep on.” Well, if you don’t explain that day one, you have a horrible time. So those are the three keys. Once you establish that and you’re good at communicating you can do aligner treatments very successfully.

Payman: What’s the biggest nightmare patient you’ve had or the biggest clinical mistake you’ve ever made where you’ve just thought, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’ve just done this”? Then how did you recover from that?

Milad Shadrooh: Probably the biggest mistake was choosing dentistry in 1999 when I should have just stuck with the music, my friend. How did I overcome it? 15 years later, start singing about teeth. That’s it? No, no, I’m joking.

Payman: Pulled the wrong tooth out ever?

Milad Shadrooh: No, touch wood. No, no, no, never done the wrong tooth. You know what? To be fair, I haven’t had any of those like crazy disasters, genuinely. There’s patients that I think because I’ve always been a good communicator, I think if you can communicate well and patients genuinely like you, you avoid so many issues.

Payman: Totally.

Milad Shadrooh: Stuff goes wrong all the time. It’s not necessarily mistakes. It’s things that I felt, “Oh, that’s a shame.” There’s been teeth that I’ve properly thought, “You know what? This is shot. There’s no way I can save this.” But patients are really like, “Doc, is there nothing else you can do? Please do it?. Then you’re endo-ing something that you know you can’t restore very well and you kind of endo. You save it for like one year, two years, three years.

Payman: I think being in the same practise for a long time, Tiff always talks about seeing your own failures.

Milad Shadrooh: Yes.

Payman: So that initial Lumineer’s case, how did that look 10 years or … You know what I mean? That kind of work I mean.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, I know exactly. It’s that? So the Lumineer case was … to be fair, still looked all right, but it just needed maintenance. It needed one replaced here and one became a crown and then it doesn’t look as good as everything else because there’s different porcelain and different times. It just becomes a management thing.

Payman: The point I’m making is a mistake, there’s the mistake that you make and there and then, and terrible sinking feeling and perforated a root canal type mistake. Then there’s the other type of mistake which is a whole treatment modality of something you did to a patient 10 years ago, and 10 years later thinking, “I could have done that better,” you know?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, yeah. Again, because I’ve been at the same practise a long time, I haven’t seen too many of those if I’m totally honest.

Payman: I like that.

Milad Shadrooh: Touch wood, I haven’t seen too many. But again, it’s because I’ve always been really good at knowing my limits. I think that’s another key issue for people, you want to do a lot because the majority of the time you’re driven by your desire to do the best thing for your patient. You really want to do well for your patient. So you take on something that’s a little bit outside of your skillset at that time. Then you’re constantly trying to recover from that initial commitment you’ve made to that treatment plan. I’ve always been quite good at just not doing that. I learnt very early on doing stuff.

Milad Shadrooh: I mean probably the worst stuff is … Oh, actually I remember some. So I remember the first time I gave a patient a facial palsy from an IV block. That was pretty terrifying. Obviously, I went a bit too high and I kind of gave in, and was like, “Yeah, yeah.” I started drilling, they were numb, it was working, and then suddenly one eye stopped blinking. I was kind of looking at him thinking, “This isn’t right.” So they were like, yeah, blinking like that. I thought, “Okay, are you all right there?” Yeah, I’m all right. My eye just feels a bit funny.” I was like, “Wow, that’s a bit of a problem.” But I managed it. You tape their eye shut and explain to them that it’ll wear off. Then I finished the treatment, sat them in the waiting room until it wore off, and they were absolutely fine.

Payman: Communication.

Milad Shadrooh: It was communication. It was terrifying at the time. I was like, “Oh, my God, what have I done?” Then I realised what I’ve done and you fix it. I remember taking out a retained root, upper, and I pushed it into the-

Payman: The sinus.

Milad Shadrooh: … the sinus. Crapped myself. But I was like, “Okay, okay, think, relax.” Touch wood, communication. I’d explained to them, that’s a risk. I told them an OAF may happen. I’m going to do my best to make sure it doesn’t.” But dude, it popped up so quick, I was like, “Oh, my God. Wow.” You crap yourself, obviously, but then you just think, you relax, you take a deep breath and go, “Okay, what do I do? Okay, let’s manage it. Call the hospital, say, ‘Look this is what’s happened. Can you see them now?’ ‘Yes, we can.'” Tell them not to sneeze. Give them a nose inhaler thing and say, “Off you go to the hospital.” They recovered it. Job’s done. So mistakes happen, but it’s how you deal with them.

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: I remember my first file break in an endo. Again, I’d warned the patient this thing can happen and it broke. I was like, “Oh, okay, unfortunately, the separation has occurred. Let’s take an X-ray.” But again, luckily it broke right at the tip of the apex. So you actually have … By this one, I’d done quite a bit of irrigation and I was, “Okay, hopefully, this will be all right.”

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: It’s an expensive root canal filling but hopefully it can work and touch wood, the patient kept the tooth for a foreseeable. So I think it’s minimising risk. Of course, knowing what you’re doing, but communicating. Hiding stuff, as you know, you hear them stories where a file breaking, don’t tell the patient, or you know something, they’re the worst. They’re the worst.

Milad Shadrooh: Look, mistakes happen. You should hold up your hand, say, “Look, unfortunately, this has happened. It’s something that can happen. I explained to you beforehand that there is a risk that is going to happen. Unfortunately, it has. Here’s a statistic in how many cases it does happen. Let’s now fix it.” That’s it.

Payman: Moving forward. When was the point that you realised that you were famous?

Milad Shadrooh: Good question.

Payman: Yeah. Talk us through it step by step, what happened?

Milad Shadrooh: So how this thing happened and I’ll explain that. So basically, obviously I had a music background in rapping and MCing, and freestyle and making lyrics up and all that kind of stuff.

Payman: You do believe you’re famous, right?

Milad Shadrooh: No.

Payman: You don’t?

Milad Shadrooh: No. People say this to me and I get DMs all the time.

Payman: Let’s start with that. How famous are you? If you go to Sainsbury’s do you get noticed?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Yes.

Payman: How many times, like several times?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, several times.

Payman: So can you go anywhere? The cost of that. Tell us about that. I mean, I wouldn’t like that at all.

Milad Shadrooh: I don’t mind it if I’m honest because if you grow up performing, if you grow up being on stage and kind of wanting-

Payman: That’s kind of your dream come true.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, that’s your thing for people to know you, people to recognise you, “Oh, my God. That’s that guy,” and like it. Yeah? If you’re recognised for something that people don’t like, that’s got to be horrible. You know?

Payman: Mm-hmm.

Milad Shadrooh: So people that get a lot of hate and a lot of animosity, that’s got to be not very nice. Touch wood, people genuinely … the people that come up to me anyway like what I do. There might be others that don’t like what I do then they’re not going to come up to me or they say, “Oh, there’s that, whatever.” But people that do come up they’re like, “Oh, mate, we love you. Oh, my kids watch you. You’re so funny. Oh, my kids are brushing because of you. It’s so jokes. We love what you do. You’re so creative. You’re so talented. Mate, those eyebrows.”

Payman: The anonymity is totally gone.

Milad Shadrooh: Gone.

Payman: Right? You can’t go and have a quiet coffee in Starbucks, or can you put it in the background, mate?

Milad Shadrooh: It’s not to that level. I can go and then I might not get noticed at all. But then sometimes I see it. It’s very easy. I see it and people kind of clock and they look away. Then they kind of look at you again. Then I see them turn to whoever they’re with, whisper something, that person immediately looks at you and then tries to style it out like they weren’t looking. Then they get their mobile phone out-

Payman: How do you feel about that?

Milad Shadrooh: … and then they start going through it. Then they’re looking at the phone, looking at me. Then all I do, I kind of look at them. I know this is going on, I look at them and I just raise one eyebrow. “Yeah, it is that guy.” Then they’re like, “Mate, we think you’re wicked. Oh, can we have a selfie?” “Yeah, man, course” Then I raise one eyebrow or raise the other, depending on what side I’m standing and it’s great. It’s great banter. So I really enjoy it. The times I find it difficult is actually at dental places because obviously then at a dental show, I’m going to get recognised the most because that’s the industry. That’s the times-

Payman: Yeah. I mean, walking around with you at one of those dental shows is a nightmare, right? You can’t get from point A to point B.

Milad Shadrooh: No, that becomes debilitating at times. Some people, again, they’re super nice about it. Some people in our industry are proper rude with it and it’s those times that I get a bit annoyed.

Payman: Go on.

Milad Shadrooh: Like I’m having a conversation. It’s quite obvious I’m talking to you, we’re catching up. We’re talking business. They’ll literally come from the side, like grab me, “Mate. Oh, it’s you. Let’s have a photo.” I’m like, “Dude, come on man I’m talking here. All right? But let’s do it anyway because I don’t want to be a dick-

Payman: Asked, yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: … excuse my language, to that one person because then they’ll go off and be like, “Oh, that Singing Dentist is right up himself. He’s such a knob,” but I’m not at all. But honestly, in the whole time, everything’s that changed and the fame thing that I find strange, I’m still genuinely exactly the same. I don’t see any difference in the way I behave.

Payman: Yeah, you haven’t changed at all.

Milad Shadrooh: I haven’t changed at all. So I want to show love and I’d hate for someone to go off and be like, “Oh, what a knob? Oh, that guy,” because I’m not like that at all. It would just be that at that specific time, I’m having a conversation and it’s about business and something. Then you come and grab me up. The people that wait there, I can see them waiting. “I’m like, bruv, give me one sec. Hi, are you guys all right?”

Milad Shadrooh: I’ll always smile. I’ll always engage and I love talking to people and getting that feedback that they like what I do, is awesome. It means a lot to me. So I always have time for the people but it’s the rude ones, man. It’s the ones that grab you up and they’re just abrasive with it, I find that just a bit annoying if I’m honest.

Payman: What about the kids and the family, how do they take it? How do they respond to it? Do they come back from school and say, “Hey, you know my dad’s the coolest”?

Milad Shadrooh: So my daughter’s five. She’ll be six next month. My son’s three, three and a half-

Payman: They’re just that little bit too young.

Milad Shadrooh: … they’re that little bit too young to kind of fully know, but they know that daddy does teeth and they know that daddy’s The Singing Dentist.

Payman: My nine-year-old daughter today when I told her that you were coming in, she had this look of pride on her face that I’ve never seen before.

Milad Shadrooh: Wow, that’s awesome. Yeah, so they know, my daughter, especially. Whenever I do a song, I play it to them because I know if you can keep the attention of like a five and a three-year-old for a minute and a half, you’ve done something well. I’ve seen it. If they kind of watch it for 10 seconds and then swipe or walk off, I’m like, “Maybe I need to rethink this one.” I won’t put it out because I know if it hits that demographic, we’re onto a winner.

Payman: I used to do that. I used to put logos in front of my kids. I agree with that-

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Dude because if you’re honest

Payman: …because there’s a purity.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, they don’t have misconceptions of our preconceived ideas. They’re not corrupted yet by media and the world. They’ll tell you to your face, “Don’t like it.”

Payman: Talk us through that first video as it was trending. Why did you know it was or that it was happening?

Milad Shadrooh: Right. Here we go. So it was, I remember very well, there was Drake, Hotline Bling, was the song at a time? I had an endo booked in funnily enough, and it was like 45 minutes, the appointment, and the patient didn’t show. I was like, “This is annoying now. What can I do? I’ve got nothing.” My nurse was like, “Yeah, just go have a break.” I was kind of sitting there and Hotline Blink came on the radio and I was just doing something else, and I was literally like (singing) I was like, (singing) I was like, “This is quite funny,” (singing) I was like, “This is jokes.” I was just started freestyling and I wrote that whole thing in that five-minute break.

Payman: Awesome.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. I was like, “Oh, this is jokes.” I got my phone out. I brought up the song on YouTube, start playing it through the crappy computer speakers, got my phone, and recorded myself doing this freestyle basically to Hotline Bling.

Payman: What were you going to do with it?

Milad Shadrooh: Nothing. I recorded it. I thought, “This is funny.” I was in like a WhatsApp group with a couple of other dentists and I’ve got another friend of mine, Payman.

Payman: Sobhani.

Milad Shadrooh: Sobhani.

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: So I just sent it to everyone and it went into that WhatsApp group. They were like, “Oh, mate, this is so funny. This is jokes.” Payman was like, “Bro, you should put this online.” I like, “No, man. Forget it.” Because in that one as well, I mentioned the GDC. I kind of mentioned the DDU. Just like say, dentists always getting sued and all this headache for a ban too and all this kind of stuff.

Milad Shadrooh: So he was like, “Mate, you should put it on.” I was like, “No, this is silly, dentists don’t behave like this. We’re not supposed to be like that and dah, dah, dah.” He was like, Mate, I’m going to put it on.” I was like, “Don’t put it on brother, allow it. Don’t do it.” He posted it. I remember I went into the shower. It was like 7:00 PM at night, 7:30. I go into the shower. My phone was on the side. Then my phone just started popping off messages, messages, messages.

Payman: Posted it where, Facebook?

Milad Shadrooh: Dentist for Dentists? The Facebook group, the closed group. It started popping off. I was like, “What the hell is happening?” I’ve got out, it’s like comments, comments? He posted it in the group and people were like, “Oh, my God, this is so funny. This is jokes. Can I share it?” We can’t share it because no one could share because it was a closed group, right?

Payman: Right.

Milad Shadrooh: Then Mukesh, Sonny. He was like, “Mil.” He was in that the WhatsApp group, goes “Mil, I’m going to post this. All right?” He posted it in some like World Dental-

Payman: World Dental Federation.

Milad Shadrooh: … something, yeah, with like 10 million Asian dentists. Most of them like Indian dentists do this. It got to like 250,000 views in like two, three days.

Payman: Whoa, geez.

Milad Shadrooh: I was like, “I can’t believe this. This is going a bit mad here.” I was like, “Oh, my God, people seem to like this.” But the general public started seeing it. They were like, “What’s an endo?” I could see the comments, “What’s an endo? What’s the DDU? Because I used a lot of dental terminology. I thought, “Okay, maybe I should do one just for people. Maybe what can I do about oral hygiene advice? Okay, cool. What’s the biggest song right now in the world? Happy by Pharrell.”

Milad Shadrooh: I was like, “It’s globally everywhere. It’s in Despicable Me.” I was like, All right, perfect demographic. What can I say, “Happy, happier, like gappy? You might end up gapping. If you don’t brush your teeth or if you’d get gum disease. Cool.” (singing) boom. Then I started writing it.

Milad Shadrooh: Next day, went into surgery, recorded it. Then I thought, “Okay, I need to put this somewhere. Where should I put it? YouTube, obviously that’s the platform. I need a name. I need a brand, Rapping Dentist. That’d be awesome, let me call myself Rapping Dentist because I can’t really sing.” So I want it to be like a rap. I was a Rapping Dentist, cool.

Milad Shadrooh: I wrote out the logo and I went to my dad. I was like, “Dad, I’m going to do this thing with the music and dentistry. I’ve got this idea, Rapping Dentist, what do you think?” I showed him the logo, genuinely he looked at it and went, “Raping Dentist, what is this?” I was like, “Dad, he rapping, there’s two Ps in it.” He goes, “No, no, no. It looks bad. It looks like raping.”

Milad Shadrooh: I was like, “Yeah, yeah. Dad, you’re right actually, maybe it does.” What should I call myself?” “You call yourself, Singing Dentist. It’s nice.” I was like … I don’t know why he’s turned Arab, he don’t talk like that at all. And so I called myself The Singing Dentist and I made my own crappy logo. I literally took a picture of my eyebrows like this and kind of did like-

Payman: So on the one that it is? You [inaudible] that, right?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. I did it now into a proper one, but I did it on an app on my phone, like cartoonized it, or whatever you do, right?

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: Then I made a YouTube channel called The Singing Dentist-

Payman: Are you aware there’s another Singing Dentist? Are you aware of this, Milad?

Milad Shadrooh: At that time, yeah. He was like a proper opera guy, he signed a million-pound deal.

Payman: Yeah, poor guy.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah.

Payman: Yeah. I was at some dental event and he broke out into song. He could sing.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, he could actually probably sing, which I would say, like that way you said it, “He could sing,” like I can’t. What’s that about, what you say about it?

Payman: Go on. Go on.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, so I called myself The Singing Dentist and made a YouTube channel. Put it on there and it started to get views, bruv. It started doing well. I was, “Oh, my God. So there’s an appetite for this.” People liked it. People find it funny. So then I waited a couple of months, but I very early realised or very quickly realised, “I can’t just do this every week. This is going to be like divisive so I can’t just keep putting these out.”

Milad Shadrooh: So I waited, waited till summer and then Cheerleader came out, (singing) I was like, “That’s a big record. What can I do? ‘Cheerleader, sweet eater.'” Boom. So I parodied that and put out a song about sweets and not eating too many sugar. That started doing well. I was like, “All right, what else can we do? Teeth whitening.” Something came on the news about teeth whitening. I was like, “All right, what can I do about teeth whitening? You want to do teeth whitening, Michael Jackson.” I said, (singing) I said, (singing) boom. Recorded it. It started doing well.

Payman: But which one really did well, which one?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, No, it was at this stage my nurse was like, “You know what? He’s doing something legit. I’m going to call the local paper.” So she called the local paper, the Basingstoke Gazette and said, “Look, my boss has been doing these online parodies. He’s getting loads of traction and stuff.” The moment for me, let me go back to that. It was March 2016. The first one of them was November, ’15. I got a message on my Facebook page, this thing on this Facebook page.

Milad Shadrooh: “Hi,” it was the evening, “I just wanted to tell you that what you’re doing is amazing. My daughter who’s 11 and disabled has never wanted to brush her teeth or go to the dentist. But having watched your songs and listening to what you’re doing, off her own accord now she said, ‘Mummy, I want to brush my teeth and go to the dentist tomorrow.'”

Payman: Oh, my God.

Milad Shadrooh: And at this time I’d just had my daughter. My daughter was like a year and a half. I was sitting on the couch and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I kind of looked over to my wife and went, “Babe, read this. This is unbelievable. This is affected one family’s life in a really positive way. So maybe I’m onto something here. It’s obviously doing some good for some people.” So that’s why I carried on doing them.

Milad Shadrooh: Then I’d start getting more and more of these messages. It constantly kept kind of affirming the reason why I was doing it was to get dental hygiene advice to people in a fun way and then at least make them think about their teeth to make them think about oral hygiene, or for the kids to not be so scared. So it was because of this, that my nurse then was like, “Look, I’m going to tell the papers.” She didn’t tell me she was going to do it.

Milad Shadrooh: The papers call back and were like, “We want to come and meet this guy today.” So they came in that afternoon. I was, “Oh, wow, this is awesome.” Did a little article. They said, “Yeah, we’re going to pitch this out to a couple of papers as well.” I was, “All right.” I remember it was a Tuesday. Wednesday I had a call from Southampton [Solum 00:47:07], which is basically like a big organisation that does a lot of papers. They said, “Yeah, we’re going to run your story in a couple of papers.” I was like, “All right. Cool. Whatever.” Thursday morning it was in the Metro. Now, the Metro in London is like a free paper that goes like-

Payman: Mental, yeah, yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: … half a million copies or whatever it is, for free. I was in the Metro, “Dentist doing good. Singing about teeth.” I was like, “Oh, wow.” That was Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon, the BBC came to my surgery and I was on BBC news-

Payman: Wow.

Milad Shadrooh: … Thursday afternoon, Friday, I went into London and did the ITV London news as their Feel Good Friday story.

Payman: Whoa.

Milad Shadrooh: That following Thursday, Dr. Hilary and Lorraine, because Dr. Haley was on Lorraine, like every other Thursday doing a health segment, they talked about The Singing Dentist, saying, “And there’s this guy online, he’s going viral and he’s done this stuff and wouldn’t it be great …” They showed a couple of clips and they loved it.

Milad Shadrooh: Dr. Hilary was like, “Oh, yeah, it’s so funny, dah, dah, dah, dah.” I got a phone call from Lorraine people saying, “So Dr. Hilary’s away next week, we’ve had such a good response. Would you like to come in and do a dental special on Lorraine’s health segment?” I was like, “Okay, this is live, right?” They’re like, “Yeah, live.” By this point, the BBC news was pre-record. ITV news was pre-record, but this was live.

Milad Shadrooh: So “Oh, my goodness. Okay, live telly.” Dude, they prepare you not at all. You literally turn up to ITV London Studios. You go in a green room and this person come in, “Hi, I’m your producer today. So this is the segment. This is what we’re going to do. We might have a call-in, some people might ask some questions. So yeah, do you want coffee?” “Okay.”

Milad Shadrooh: So I literally rocked up by myself, no one to … and I just turn up there in my blue tunic I’m like, “Do you want me in my tunic?” “Yeah, put that on. People know you do that.” So I’m wearing a tunic sitting in the green room. “Go on live. Yeah, so you’ll be on in five minutes, yeah.”

Milad Shadrooh: I’m just waiting in the wings and I go on and phone-ins from mums, “Hi, my kids don’t like brushing their teeth. What can I do? I’m like, “Yeah, make it exciting.” I’m just going into normal mode, forgetting there’s cameras there and then it did really well. Afterwards they all came up to me, “Oh, my God. You’re so natural. You’re so good. Is that your first time?” “Yeah.” “Oh, I didn’t even know, blah, blah, blah.”

Milad Shadrooh: Long story short, the following week, Good Morning Britain wanted me on. Then This Morning wanted me on. So I became like that ITV go-to guy whenever there was a story. It’s always reactionary, “Statistics show 40 million spent on children’s dental extractions on the GA. Why is this happening? Well here to discuss it is The Singing Dentist. So first of all, let’s have a look and see why you’re The Singing Dentist,” play a clip on YouTube. “So Dr. Milad, it’s great that you’re getting kids, but why are we actually have this problem?” I’d say the same things and then I’ll go home and do a little funny dance, and that was it. So that’s where it started to bloom. The virality came from LADbible and Unilab, those were big pages at the time, right?

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: They posted, (singing) It got like 15 million views.

Payman: Yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: They posted (singing) it got like 18 million views.

Payman: There was a moment. There was a moment, yeah, because I knew it was for real where someone like my brother, who’s not on Facebook, not on Instagram, he’s on WhatsApp, the thingy, Zuckerberg got him, but someone like my …

Payman: The thingie, Zuckerberg got him. But someone like my brother sent it to me. Of course, I’d seen it many times, but the fact that he sent it to me, and then it came to me from Brazil and from Lebanon.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. That was it.

Payman: Was that the uni lad moment, was that when that happened?

Milad Shadrooh: The one that happened, so brin, brin, going away, going away, going away, Ed Sheeran, Shape Of You. Because he went-

Payman: It’s a great song, isn’t it?

Milad Shadrooh: He went away for a year and he came back with Shape Of You. And it was globally doing bits. And within very early, I heard it once. And I was like, this is a banger. This is going to go off. And I was like, what can I do shape of you, shape of you? All I could think was shave your tooth. And I was like, that’s not very nice message, is it? Like all I want to do is shave your tooth. I was like, that’s not good.

Milad Shadrooh: And then my wife, from the other room, “What about save your tooth?” She don’t sound like that either. But I was like, okay, save your tooth. Yeah. My job is to save your tooth, so brush and floss like you need to do. Oh, boom. I wrote that genuinely in 30 seconds, 40 seconds.

Prav: And all of these parodies that you put together, long time, short time, multiple takes, what’s the process?

Milad Shadrooh: The recording of it is in my surgery, my phone on selfie mode, so I can watch my stupidity.

Prav: Microphone or, no?

Milad Shadrooh: Phone camera. Song playing out of a £2 speaker that I attach to the computer. So I can just about hear it underneath. And then afterwards in the edit, I put the instrumental a bit louder. But I record straight into my phone. Because I want to keep it as low fi as possible. I want it to feel, for the people at home, this is not over produced. It’s not over polished. I’m in the room with this guy. And he’s just busting jokes close up on the face.

Milad Shadrooh: I’ve seen so many other dental parodies. Where people go to town, they do a three minute song. They’ve got production. There’s loads of them. And it’s just not good, man. It’s boring. It doesn’t engage. This is, you literally just see my face as if I’m talking to you now and I’m performing for you live. On a low pro.

Prav: One take, two takes?

Milad Shadrooh: Always one take.

Prav: Always one take.

Milad Shadrooh: There’s never cuts. So if I don’t nail it in one, I start again.

Prav: Got you.

Milad Shadrooh: But I’ll normally get it within the first two, three, four takes. If I’m on my 10th take, I’m like, I need to rethink this because something’s not right. It’s not flowing. But I perform them always one time. The eyebrows do their own thing. I don’t know what happens there. They just come out of nowhere, and start doing their thing. And yeah.

Prav: Do you have someone review them. Who’s your.

Milad Shadrooh: My kids.

Prav: Your kids?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, my kids. I go home. I show them to my wife and my kids. And if they like it, and my kids don’t swipe away from it, I know I’m onto a winner.

Prav: Rock and roll.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. So it was the Ed Sheeran, that’s the one, bruv. When the Ed Sheeran landed, we’re talking, on Lad Bible it did 38 million. On Viral Thread it did 30 million. On Uni Lad, it was just, it got, I think, collectively, I’ve counted, over 150 million views on all platforms. On my own YouTube channel, that’s on about 3.8 million views. The Ed Sheeran.

Payman: Bloody hell.

Prav: What’s the impact of you when something like that happens? Obviously your phone must blow up.

Milad Shadrooh: Yep.

Prav: Do you read all the messages?

Milad Shadrooh: All of them.

Prav: Do you respond to them?

Milad Shadrooh: Pretty much all of them. It’s much harder now. But I take time. I respond to … On Facebook, I don’t like the platform for responding. It’s a difficult thing to navigate. On Insta, it’s much easier. So I reply to pretty much all the DMs. It takes me ages. I’ve got loads built up now because I just haven’t been able to-

Prav: You don’t have somebody managing that for you?

Milad Shadrooh: No, never.

Prav: It’s all done by you.

Milad Shadrooh: I’ve never had anyone to do it, it’s always been me. Because I don’t think it’s authentic if someone else replies as me. But I get asked dental stuff all the time. But then with dental stuff, it’s really difficult. Oh, I just saw my dentist and he told me I need two root canals. What do you think? I’ve got no idea. Here’s an x-ray. Sent me an x-ray. And I’m like, listen, this is not the platform for me to diagnose your disease. If you really are worried about it, just go back and have another conversation with them. But sometimes they’ll be like, oh, I’m in a lot of pain and this and this has happened. I’m like, okay, what, what is it? Oh, it’s coming right at the back. Okay, is it your wisdom tooth? Possibly. Okay, have you got a flap of skin over the top? Yeah. Okay, Google pericoronitis, you’ve probably got that. Oh yeah, that’s exactly what I had.

Payman: What’s it done to your dental practise?

Milad Shadrooh: It’s made me much more kind of busy with a different demographic of people. So as in, from all over. I’ve got patients that travel two and a half hours now just to come for a check up, because they were dental phobic. They see me as an approachable type of person. So they want to come and see me. I’m like, okay, awesome. I will 100% see you. I’m mad busy.

Milad Shadrooh: I do one clinical day a week now because … And this was actually nothing to do with … So, I’ve been one day a week for about two and a half years, three years almost. It was for my kids. So we used to do always a half day on a Friday. I used to work four and a half days a week. Always. That’s what I’ve always done. When I took over the business, I kind of dropped that half day because you need time to manage the place. So I was doing four days a week.

Milad Shadrooh: When my daughter was born, I dropped another day. Because I was like, I want to be around. I need to be around. And I want to enjoy my daughter’s childhood. When my son was born, I dropped another day. So now I’m on to two days a week. And I just thought, when the Singing Dentist started getting busy, I was like, look, I need to dedicate time to other stuff.

Milad Shadrooh: Because I’ve got an amazing opportunity now to do something cool. I never know exactly where we’re going with it, but there’s always a direction. There’s always five things happening at once. And this opportunity will eventually die out. May eventually die out. Who knows. But I don’t want to regret in five years, 10 years and go, you know what, I didn’t give it my all.

Milad Shadrooh: Because dentistry is a career. It’s a lot … As long as I don’t do anything stupid and get struck off, I will be able to go back to dentistry. I own the business. I’m not going to sell my business. So I can go back to five days a week when my kids are older and they don’t like me anymore. And the Singing Dentist, no one wants to hear my songs. I can go back and do teeth five days a week. But right now I want to use this opportunity to really give it a push, put my energy behind it. I’m a super creative guy. I want to put the creative energies into this and see where we can take it.

Prav: Just take us back to … Something that resonated with me there is that you took … you decided to drop a day when your daughter was born, is that right? Just talk us through the … take us back in time. The day she was born. How you felt? Instantly, was it instantly fell in love and-

Milad Shadrooh: Terror.

Prav: Or was it like, oh my God, what-

Milad Shadrooh: Terror.

Prav: Terror.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Because you’re waiting for that day to happen. And the delivery wasn’t particularly awesome. It ended up being like an emergency caesarian and stuff. Relief first, the baby’s here, wife’s good, baby’s good. Then like, oh my goodness, life has changed completely. The selfishness of life goes, that’s the only difference in my opinion. You’re still the same person. You can still have fun. It’s just you can’t be selfish. You can’t just wake up and go, you know what, today I’m just going to do what the hell I want. Because that’s not how it works. You’ve got to factor in what your kids are going to do, what your wife’s going to do. Leaving the house is impossible unless you planned it. And you’ve got everything they need for the day. You packed the two suitcases to leave the house. So, you’ve just got to plan a bit more.

Milad Shadrooh: So life isn’t … It’s different. It’s not bad. It’s not worse. I don’t … It’s better to a certain extent. But it’s different. So it was terror. Because you don’t really know what you’re doing with a child. You just kind of come home … I knew I had time off. So, that was good.

Milad Shadrooh: But then when it was time to go back to work, I was like, I don’t really want to go back to work. I just want to be here every day. I want to experience this every day. So I was like, well, I’m going to reduce a day.

Milad Shadrooh: So I contacted all my patients, because by this point I’m private, and I’ve got a lot of plan patients. We’ve got direct debits. I said, “Look guys, my baby’s just been born. And I really want to be around. So I’m just going to drop a day. The service, you guys will still be exactly same. If you have emergencies on a day I’m not here, I’ve got four other associates in the building that can look after you. And then they’ll get you out of pain. And when I’m back, come and see me. But I’m going to do it.” And no one said, you horrible man, I’m leaving.

Payman: Not many dentists do that though.

Milad Shadrooh: No. But why not?

Payman: Yeah, no, I agree with you.

Milad Shadrooh: Your patients-

Payman: You’re one of the only professions where you can turn it on and off, two days a week, one day a week, three days a week. I mean, I’ve always thought was very good for ladies in that sense, because they can be a mother three days a week and dentist two days a week.

Milad Shadrooh: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, communicating with your patients, ultimately your patients are human. They forget that you’re human as well. And when you remind them, you’ve got the same issues that they have. You’ve got the same kind of stuff going on, and you just want to give some time to your family, they’re AOK with it. They’re like, yeah, man, cool. Actually good on you. Come back when you’re ready. They appreciate that.

Milad Shadrooh: So again, I think it’s easier for me because I’ve been in the place for so long. Dude, it’s so crazy. I’ve been there 15 years now. I’m seeing kids now coming in, they’re 18, 19. And I’m like, I remember when you were three, I did your first ever check up. You’ve only ever had my fingers in your mouth. It’s crazy. And they’re massive now, six foot two. These kids, I don’t know what they’re eating. All this genetically modified food, it’s definitely changing. They’re coming ducking under the door.

Milad Shadrooh: And I’m like, “Blimey, look at you. What you doing now?” “I’m going to uni.” I’m like, “That’s awesome.” No cavities in their mouth. And I think, yeah. That’s an achievement there, bro. We looked after you.

Payman: You’re obviously doing quite a lot of influencer type work now.

Milad Shadrooh: That’s interesting, isn’t it? Yeah.

Payman: Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this last night when you were going to come in, you’re probably the most famous dentist in the world, right?

Milad Shadrooh: Wow. I don’t know.

Prav: Without question, without question.

Milad Shadrooh: Do you reckon?

Payman: Well, who is?

Prav: Name one dentist, Dr. Apa.

Milad Shadrooh: Nah.

Payman: No.

Prav: He just plays around with his ears all day.

Payman: Yeah. Listen, even in LA, yeah, if Dr. Apa, well, he’s from New York. Even in New York, if Dr. Apa was walking down the road, and you’re walking down the road, I think it’s more likely that you’re going to get recognised than him.

Prav: Stopped.

Milad Shadrooh: I guess, I guess. Yeah. In that kind of thing. Yeah. So it’s crazy. I’m definitely top five. I put myself in the top five. I don’t know if I’m number one. But I definitely put myself … I’m happy with top five.

Payman: We’re going to have to get Mike in and ask him. But no, so there is an opportunity. Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about … And I think one thing that’s been really admirable about you is you have taken this fame and used it for good, for oral hygiene, for public education. Not everyone might have even thought of doing that. And doing it as much as you did. Who knows the countless lives that you’ve touched by doing that. That’s a beautiful thing.

Milad Shadrooh: Awesome, thanks.

Payman: But on the other side of it, it takes a lot of time, you’ve lowered your clinical days, monetizing this opportunity? What’s it been like? Are you getting people contacting you all the time saying, will you be the face of-

Milad Shadrooh: Yes.

Payman: I saw you on Colgate India.

Milad Shadrooh: Yes. That was fun. So, here’s the thing. So, with the influencer world now, if you talk about it. For those of you that obviously can’t see this, I just did speech fingers. Influencer. Because I don’t really know kind of what that means. What you’re influencing people to do what? To buy your products.

Payman: To buy, yeah.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. So, it’s a strange concept. But social media is undeniably there. Everyone’s on it. And you’re looking at it. And a lot of companies are looking at that. And they use it as a tool to sell. So, when you have a reach and you’ve got eyeballs watching you. Creating content isn’t free. It takes time and time costs money. It takes skills of people who are behind the camera, behind editing, your sound engineers, you as an artist making the content. So, that money has got to come from somewhere.

Milad Shadrooh: And when you bankroll it yourself, then you have to look at an ROI. Now, are you doing it for fun? Luckily I’m in a position where I don’t have to worry so much about money because we’re successful. I’ve got a practise and it’s doing well. And I’m still working. So I can put some money into stuff myself. Because I enjoy doing it. I don’t have many vices. I don’t drink. I don’t do any kind of drugs. People probably think I do, but I definitely don’t. I’m not really into fast cars. I’m not into kind of doing … I stay healthy. And I like some nice stuff in life. I’ve got a trainer addiction actually. Let me just, I’ve got 45 pairs of trainers and growing. So I do have problems with trainers. And watches. But let’s move on from that. Anyway.

Milad Shadrooh: But yeah, I can bankroll a lot of stuff myself. But then I am away from the clinic. There has to be a flip side from me doing all this amazing content for people, there has to be a way that I can monetize it in order to just keep doing it. Not monetize it so I can buy more crappy staff, no. Monetize it so I can just keep doing it. Because I really enjoy doing it. And I think I’m onto something good here.

Milad Shadrooh: So then you’re looking at brand deals. There’s brand deals, there’s ambassador kind of roles. There’s loads of different things that start coming your way. I’ve had so much stuff, bro, honestly, that I’ve said no to. Because I didn’t agree with it. I didn’t think it was a good brand. I didn’t think it was a good product. All this charcoal powder business. Loads of them. Coconut oil stuff. Loads of them. These mad toothbrushes that brush your top and bottom teeth inside and out in 30 seconds. All of them. They’ve all come to me. And I’ve all been like … It’s just, yeah, I wish you all the best, but it’s not for me.

Milad Shadrooh: Because as a dentist, I can’t back this. Because I lose all integrity. So you’ve got to look at it. It’s the long game for me. I don’t want to take a quick bit of cash to spew out some nonsense about something I don’t like. So the brand deals I have done is always with people that I kind of liked their stuff anyway. So I probably would have posted regardless. Because I quite like it and I enjoy it. So it’s always been organic. It’s been something I think has been useful and beneficial to other people. So I tell them about it.

Milad Shadrooh: The Colgate stuff was funny. I mean, they wanted to do a Bollywood-esque thing. So they flew me out to India. And I did it with some other big Bollywood acts. And that was an experience filming in India. Jesus, that was so much fun. I’ve never seen this many people on set to do a one minute video. There was literally 85 people on set. I had one person whose whole job was to pick up the tube of toothpaste and give it back to me when I dropped it. Genuinely. And one time I picked it up, he got upset. It was like, put it back on the floor and let him pick up, bruv. It was great. It was a great experience.

Milad Shadrooh: I’m working with a mouthwash company now. So I’m doing some stuff with them. Done some content with them and some advert type stuff with them. Boohoo randomly, the clothing guys. Yes. I kind of got invited to a couple of Boohoo parties. And I got to speak to them. And they sponsored a couple of stuff for me. So yeah, it’s-

Payman: And do you get paid based on the number of views on YouTube as well?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, so you can. But I don’t monetize any of the parodies. Because they’re parodies. So original copyright gets all the money. So every time I put a song out, some of them within hours, some of them within days, I get a copyright claim. It’ll come up and say, hi, Sony BMG has made a claim against this record. Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong, but basically they’re going to get all the money. If you disagree, press this appeal button. And I never press it because it’s their track. And I could be entitled to something. So it comes under fair usage law. So that would then be my lawyer speaking to Sony BMG’s lawyer and saying, look, my artist deserves 10%. Bro, I don’t want to pay lawyers to have that conversation for me. It will cost me more than that 10% income. For me, that’s free marketing, I look at it. Because I do those things and people know about me then. And I’m doing the-

Payman: But what are the numbers, I mean, if 50 million people watch a video, how much money could someone make?

Milad Shadrooh: It depends. It’s not per view.

Payman: Oh, is it not?

Milad Shadrooh: It’s depending on how many people watched the advert before those 50 million views.

Payman: Oh, I see.

Milad Shadrooh: Because that’s how you generate the revenue. It’s the adverts. So, if you skip ad the artist doesn’t get paid. Now, there’s some ads, when your video is smashing it, you can’t skip. Those are the people that make the money, bruv. They’re the ones that are earning a living off YouTube. And they’re getting 10 million views a video on ads you can’t skip. And they’re gamers.

Payman: Gamers.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. They’re the 15 year olds that play-

Payman: E-sports.

Milad Shadrooh: Fortnite-

Payman: Yeah, Fortnite.

Milad Shadrooh: And 300 million people watch them playing it. And then they’re driving an R8 that they can’t get insurance for.

Prav: So I’m seeing you pop up all over my feed with CB12, squashing bubbles and diving into the floor.

Milad Shadrooh: Jokes. Yes.

Prav: Really, really creative. Really cool. Talk me through that. So, how you got the deal?

Milad Shadrooh: So, with CB12 it started with them wanting me to just do a talk at the dental conference about CB12. And first of all, they were like, look, what’d you think of it? And I said, “Well, send me some and Let me try it.” Because I’d heard of it. Because in the world of mouth washes, I don’t recommend mouth washes routinely for stuff, because people just use it as a replacement. They just rinse with mouthwash and don’t brush or floss.

Milad Shadrooh: So I like niche mouthwashes. So if a patient’s got gum disease, I recommend something specifically for gum disease. If someone needs more caries prevention, I’ll give them a higher fluoride content something or other. So for breath, I thought, okay, there’s only two games in town. It’s either CB12 or Ultradex. They’re the only two that specifically target it. And I didn’t have much experience with either. But what I knew about CB12 was it was really expensive. And Ultradex is really expensive.

Milad Shadrooh: So I always felt like, look, it’s hard for me to recommend this to an end user. If they have to spend 15 quid on a bottle. Because I just don’t know if anyone would do that. But when I spoke to them, they said, they’re reducing their fee and they’re going to make it more like £5 a bottle. I thought, okay, well that could be a good recommendation if it works. So, I started using it and I thought, oh, this is quite cool. I looked into the science of it. They sent me all their research and all their stuff. And I thought, okay, the materials they’ve got in there actually do neutralise the volatile sulphur compounds. So I thought, all right, this could be cool.

Payman: It is chlorine dioxide?

Milad Shadrooh: No, theirs is-

Payman: Ultradex’s.

Milad Shadrooh: Zinc, yeah, theirs is a zinc based stuff. So, I did the lecture for them. And it went really, really well. They smashed it. They were really happy. So then I said, “Look, if you want to get this out there and you want to increase the over the counter side of your business, you’ve got to do online marketing. Just the way it is.” So we just kind of talked it, hashed out with my management, got involved-

Prav: So, you’ve got someone managing the commercial aspects of your business now?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, I’ve got a manager full stop. Yeah, they manage everything, media, tv.

Payman: Oh, is that how it works? So, let’s say, I don’t know, whatever, Philips, let’s not talk about Philips.

Prav: Sunlighten.

Payman: Oral B. Oral B wants you to be their brand ambassador. What do they do, call your manager, is that how it works?

Milad Shadrooh: The way we kind of have our relationship is, I look at the deal first. Because I want to see if it’s something I want to do. If it’s something that I feel fits with … Because no one knows the brand better than me. I’ve created it. And the brand is me. So I look at the project first. Have a chat with them. See where their spiel is. See what they’re kind of thinking, what they want to do. And then I’ll have a chat with my management and say, look, this is the situation. What do you guys think? For me, I think X, Y, and Z. And they’re like, yeah, okay, cool. What do you want as a fee? And I’m like, well, I don’t know. What do you think? And yeah, we’ll do this. And they go back and they negotiate the deal. They negotiate what’s required of me. How long the term is, blah, blah, blah. They do all the nitty gritty bits.

Milad Shadrooh: And then if it’s a goer, it’s a goer. And then it all depends. So there’s brand ambassador roles, which are much longer term. There’s brand deals, which is a one off. Post this. You have certain things you’ve got to do. It has to go on Instagram for a day. You can’t post something else after, for 24 hours. You’ve got to do two swipe ups, one the following week, blah blah. You have those deliverables. As long as you tick all the boxes, you get paid.

Milad Shadrooh: But an ambassador thing, you work very much with the brand. So with the CB12 thing, I worked very much with them on the creatives, trying to come up with the concepts, what they wanted to do, what I felt would work. So it was a joint effort. And it’s been so much fun to do it. Again, we shot that in India. So again, I flew out to India for three days to do that. So yes, it was really good fun. It was really good fun.

Prav: Is it more lucrative than dentistry? Or has the potential to be?

Milad Shadrooh: Do you know what it is, it’s unstable. So you could get a brand deal and then not get another deal for weeks. So you’ve got to live off that one. So I think it depends. Short game, long game. It’s always the way. Dentistry will always provide you with a living. It’s a hard living. People underestimate how difficult it is, nowadays especially. But you use your skills, you graft and you’ll have a comfortable life. You’ll be able to look after your kids.

Milad Shadrooh: It’s more difficult now than it used to be. I know dentists from 30, 40 years ago, basic routine amalgams and extractions were putting their kids through private school, living in million plus pound houses and driving Porsches. It’s not like that now. Your average associate is not doing that now. No way. So it’s much harder. But it’s still a good life. But you pay your dues to have that life.

Milad Shadrooh: So with influencing, pound for pound, yes. Off one deal you can make what someone makes in a year.

Prav: Roughly?

Milad Shadrooh: Really depends, man. Depends what you’re doing for who. I mean, deals can start from £250 to do a story post, to five grand to do a story post. It’s crazy. Proper influencers, when I say proper influencers, it’s mad, I don’t consider myself one. But you come out of Love Island. You go into Love Island with 10,000 followers. You come out with 1.2 million, 1.5 million followers. You’re suddenly worth a load of money. You’ll get a brand for half a million pounds, for a year, for clothing. And that just means you post once a week. So you do basically 52 posts for half a million pounds. That’s not bad going.

Payman: That’s just Love Island. What about where you’ve done businesses yourself.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. So that’s been the other thing, launching stuff. Using the platform to launch stuff. I’m super excited by that. I love … I am entrepreneurial very much. And that’s one of the things that I think coming away from the dental practise has always been something that’s been inside me to do. Because being in one place nine to five is just not my kind of makeup, man. I like meeting, greeting, networking, thinking, designing, creating, starting something from zero and watching it grow. I love that process. I love it.

Milad Shadrooh: It’s like making music. When you make music, you don’t have a beat. You start with nothing. You start with this empty screen. You add your elements, your kick, your snares, your hats, you build up. And you add your baseline, you add your top end. You add your whatever you’re doing. I like that in business. I like to create something from the start.

Milad Shadrooh: So I thought I’ve got a platform. What can we do? But I’ve always been based on trying to help do certain things. So one of the things we did was Smile Wise. Which started out as, I was getting so many patients just messaging me saying, dude, we want to come and see you. I’m like, all right, perfect, where are you? Down in Manchester. I’m like, bro, I’m like three hours away, four hours away. You’re not going to come here every six months. But I know someone sick in Manchester you should see. Oh who? This guy. He’s just like me. He’s not scary. He’s cool. And does a great job.

Milad Shadrooh: And I was like, why don’t I turn that into a business? But at the same time, there’s probably not enough patients doing that. So we can help market patients. And just link people to good clinicians. So that’s what the thought process of Smile Wise was. And we wanted to do it nationally and get the right people.

Milad Shadrooh: But the trouble with that is, if you don’t get the right people or you generate … it became lead generation. Which is a horrible game. And that was never what I wanted it to be. Because lead generation, once you know what you’re doing is cool. It’s what you do with the leads. And if dentists or their team or their receptionist or their whatever is not equipped and ready. If they’ve had no training to handle leads. The leads turn to nothing.

Payman: This is Prav’s day to day.

Milad Shadrooh: Exactly. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Prav: It’s just follow up.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. The follow up is so key. So then we thought, you know what, we need to teach people this, before we do lead generation. Because there’s no point getting leads if you don’t know what to do with them. So Smile Wise has evolved now into something else, so we’ve taken a step back because we’re developing something pretty big. So it’s coming back. It’s in beta testing now. But that was one thing.

Milad Shadrooh: Toothy Box has been the bane of my existence for so long. I thought of this idea three years ago. Subscription oral care. Now there’s 12 of them in the world flying around. Everyone’s trying to do it. And everyone is … But show me one that’;s battering it in the UK, none. America-

Payman: In America, couple in America doing well.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, but America, dude-

Payman: Big market.

Milad Shadrooh: Colorado is bigger than the whole of the UK. You know what I mean. It’s just a massive market. So it’s cool. Burst and Quip and them lot are going to kill it.

Milad Shadrooh: So the issue I’ve got with Toothy Box is unless I … I want to go big or go home, bro. And unless it becomes the sickest thing ever, I’m worried to launch it without then having the logistics in place to smash it. Products are done. The marketing is all in my head. It needs capital, bro. If you’re going to … Your commodity is £2/£3 thing, unless you’re selling a hundred thousand units a month, there’s no business there.

Payman: Yeah, tell me about it, man.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. So I need to make sure that’s right. But coming with dental products has to happen for me. It’s like Jamie Oliver not coming out with cookery stuff. It makes no sense. So, the Singing Dentist has to have some dental products. But it’s got to be right. They’ve got to be the right products. And it’s got to be a massive business. Otherwise I just don’t want to start it and flop.

Payman: I think the kiddies Sonicare that makes the kids brush through the app.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool.

Payman: You should have an app, or you probably do have an app-

Milad Shadrooh: No, I don’t. I’ve looked at it, but it’s just money. Making apps costs a bomb.

Payman: Yeah. But an app where you make the kids brush his teeth and then products stuck to that. Sounds like fun. But listen, dude, this stuff takes time. This stuff takes time.

Milad Shadrooh: It takes time. It takes time for development.

Payman: Dentists, I’m a dentist, dentists don’t realise. Yeah. Because just because you can buy a dental practise, and six months later you’re in profit. Don’t realise, products and services, they take time. They take time.

Milad Shadrooh: Absolutely. And graft and a negative living for a while. Which if you’re risk averse, that’s scary, man. When you look at how much money you owe. And money ain’t coming in. And you’re a bit like, eh, have I done the right thing.

Payman: And I think some of the Jamie Oliver chef stuff, they’re licencing the name of the talent.

Milad Shadrooh: Exactly.

Payman: So it’s not Jamie, all of his own business.

Milad Shadrooh: No, and even then-

Payman: It’s more an influencer ambassador kind of role.

Milad Shadrooh: Exactly. But even on that level, things go wrong-

Payman: Yeah, of course, of course.

Milad Shadrooh: Jamie’s Kitchen, you know what I mean, whatever. So things, it’s difficult. It’s not easy. It’s not easy.

Payman: No. Nothing’s easy, man.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, exactly. Anything that’s good, you’ve got to work for it, man.

Prav: So, on the outside, I’ve not met you before properly.

Payman: Have you not?

Prav: No, it’s our first time.

Payman: What the hell.

Prav: No. We’ve conversed. But the one thing I see straight away and feel is the energy in the room. And the moment you walk in, he’s like the happiest guy I’ve ever met. Seriously.

Payman: Yeah, yeah, because-

Prav: Bursting with energy, super happy, super …

Prav: Seriously…

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. Yeah, Because-

Prav: Bursting with energy. Super happy. Haven’t met anyone like you before, right?

Milad Shadrooh: Awe, sweet. Thanks, man.

Prav: Just amongst all that, the real you. And this is probably the real you. You’ve got so many things that you’re playing with, advertising, practise, management, patients, DMs-

Milad Shadrooh: Family.

Prav: … deals, family, being a dad, being a husband, A, how do you manage that? And B, what are your low points in this journey, because it can’t all be-

Milad Shadrooh: No, not as rosy as it looks on the outside.

Payman: What are the darkest days? So take us back to some of the dark days.

Milad Shadrooh: I mean, so firstly, how do I manage it? I manage it, because I’ve got good people around me. They’re super important. My wife. I wouldn’t be able to do any of it, if it wasn’t for her, 100%.

Prav: She get involved in all of people?

Milad Shadrooh: She gets involved in none of it-

Payman: Okay.

Milad Shadrooh: … which is why it’s so beautiful. But not because of the way it sounds. She does the stuff that allows me to be off doing the crazy stuff, right? She holds the fort together. If she wasn’t like that, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing. There’s time where I have to be away for three days, four days, she handles stuff, looks after the kids, does the bits in the background, so that I can do what I’m doing. When I need to be creative, and I think, “Babe, can you come and have a look at this? What do you think?” She puts time, and she’ll come and look in all of that. So She’s an artist by career and stuff, so she understands graphics, she understands the visuals very well. So she’ll kind of look at it and go, “Oh” and coming up with ideas. She’s super creative. So she helps me massively, and we’re so polar different in personality.

Payman: which is why it works.

Prav: Where did you meet? How old were you?

Payman: The ying and the yang is beautiful.

Milad Shadrooh: We met… I was 20, she was 19. So she’s been with me before any of this, before I was in first year dental school, and she was doing her art and design degree. Theatre design she did. So yeah.

Prav: good people-

Milad Shadrooh: That’s the first thing, my mom and dad, because I’m an only child, right? So my mom and dad live seven minutes away. They see the kids a lot. But my dad, he’s a serial entrepreneur, businessman, so I always consult with him with any kind of business stuff. My mom’s super creative. So they help me out a lot. My aunt, she’s always been around. My uncle is in America. They’re super around. I’ve got very good friends. Being an only child, you develop brother ship style friends. I’ve got a friend who I’ve known since we were five. Went to same primary school. We’re still friends now. Saw him just Saturday. So he gives me a lot of good sound advice, in dentistry Nilesh Power he’s my best friend. We qualified together, so I’ve known him since we were 18.

Payman: Oh, you’re in the same year?

Milad Shadrooh: Yes, same year. Qualified together. So 20 years now we’ve been friends. Nilesh is one of the most phenomenal people that I know, for what he’s done and what he continues to do. He’s just a sick guy. So when I have some stuff, I sit down and chat to him, because he knows business. He knows what’s what, and I chat to him. So I’ve got good people. I’ve got another couple of friends who, they’re just solid guys, man. They’re good, and I trust them. So if I told them something, I trust them to not be yes-man, and I trust them so [inaudible] that’s a terrible idea, Don’t do it. So having good people around you is key. Next thing, is your gut. Do not underestimate your gut. I know, if someone tells me something, and I get that feeling like “Bro, that ain’t the one,” I won’t do it.

Prav: Have you ever gone against your gut and it’s proved you wrong or anything?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. And that’s why I know I have to trust it. Very earlier on I had a brand deal, and they wanted me to do some off-key stuff, and I was already in. I had no management then. I had nothing. I kind of did it, and it wasn’t even great money. And mate, I had to do some dodgy stuff, not dodgy stuff, but they were just cheesy dudes, man, and they were getting me to do some bits, and I just wasn’t comfortable doing it. I didn’t like doing it.

Payman: It was uncool?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. They wanted me to do some cheesy stuff, and I just felt bad, and the final product that came out, the final finished content, was so terrible. And I was like “Guys, you can’t post this.” And, “Well we’ve done it now. We’ve paid you, so we’re doing what we want.” And it just made me feel horrible. And at the time as we were recording it, my gut was just going all over the place, and it wasn’t because I had spicy food. It was just not happy. So after then I was, “Never again. Never again am I going to allow myself to feel that, ever.” So I haven’t ever since.

Prav: So going back to your darkest moments. Yeah. During all of this And certainly for me, I run around doing a lot of things too, and as much as you, but there are times when I’m away from home two, three days at a time. And I come home third, fourth day and my daughter says, “daddy I want you to stay here, I don’t want you to go anywhere, is it the weekend”? Breaks my heart. Does that resonate with you? Do you get similar conversations with your kids?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, there’d be times where I’m going and my daughters be like “daddy, don’t go”. That makes you feel horrendous immediately. But it’s very transient with kids, right? The minute they start watching TV, they forget it. Okay. So I know I’m around way more than other people are for their kids, but that’s just because of the circumstances. So I know that overall longterm, when my kids look back on their childhood they’ll know daddy was around. I’m around way more than I think is expected. These days of what that kind of do or whatever. So I’m not so worried about that. The dark times come when it’s random stuff for me, as long as there’s something happening, as long as there’s direction, I’m happy. I’m least happy when I’m stood still. I like to unwind. Don’t get me wrong. I can be lazy as hell. I could spend a whole day doing nothing. But I do that happy knowledge that tomorrow I’ve got five things I got to do. And that’s cool.

Prav: How’d you do with the overwhelm? Or do you get it? Do You experience it like that. You’ve got so many things to do?

Milad Shadrooh: I did at one point and I was like, you know what? If I continue with all of this stuff, none of it’s going to be successful. So I had to drop a couple of things and then concentrate more on the other stuff. But having said that I’ve still got like five things happening anywhere at any one time. But I had like eight and I was like, this is probably possible. I’m never going to be able to give a hundred percent to all of them.

Payman: What would be your dream true for the next five years?

Milad Shadrooh: Well, so dream wise, first and foremost, I know this sounds really cheesy and stupid, but staying healthy genuinely because the more I’m getting older, I’m 38, I’ll be 39 next month January and things are starting to hurt for no reason. I got a bed with a new pain. So this is not normal. I’ve always been such an athletic guy and I’ve just been in good. And I’m like, “Right, that don’t feel right” you Sleep fine, and you wake up needing the hospital, right?

Prav: It’s me this morning. I just woke up with a bad neck.

Milad Shadrooh: I mean, so staying healthy because I see for the kids, and I’ll always want to be active. And you know, there’ll be times where you just have a blood test nowadays and I’m just praying about the results and “what if they find something Jesus” but I never used to worry about that kind of stuff. So number one, stay healthy for sure. Eat well, stay healthy. So that’s key, but work-wise, I would love to take this thing in dentist to another level. Cause dude listen, in my genetics media is being out there and I’m comfortable in that zone. I think I do well in that zone and people like it. People enjoy what I do, I’d like to do that more. I’d like to have my own TV show, talking about teeth and having a kid’s TV show on CBeebies, we’ve got where we had a great concept, but they just weren’t accepting any kind of shows at the time. So doing that kind of stuff being-

Payman: So literally the Jamie Oliver?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. A hundred percent, I’ve wanted to work with the government on brush club campaigns, getting toothbrushing into schools as a national legislation thing, but there’s just no money, no appetite, public housing they’ve got their own problems. NHS has got no money at ever, even though they spend money on the problems that I want to spend money on the prevention necessarily. So it’s hard work, man. But those things take time, for the amount that you guys might think I’m famous or whatever, I’m nowhere near famous enough to make noise like that. Even reality TV shows like being in the jungle, I’m a celebrity but I watched it every year for the past seven, eight years. I loved the show. I think it’s an awesome show. I’m not famous enough for it. So that’s what we were told by the management.

Prav: To get into the jungle.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. I would do Strictly in a heartbeat. I’m not famous enough for it. These type of things are like “celebrity come dine with me”. I’d love to do that [inaudible] I’d love to do that but It’s getting those types of positions but having more of that established celebrity positioning, so that I can then make those changes. People don’t want to listen. You know DR Ranch. DR Ranch is Asian doctor. He started with a kid’s TV show, singing songs about kind of gutter problems and you know, whatever. And then he became the “this morning kind of one of the good doctors on this morning”. He ended up being on Strictly. He now has a decent profile where he can actually make some change and do some stuff. So I want to come out of being known as just that social media, funny viral eyebrow guy to being that established, figured I can do stuff, and I try and show people my personality. I think if you hang around me-

Payman: There is a lot more to you than the singing.

Milad Shadrooh: Absolutely.

Payman: Or the parodies even in the end of the entertainment space-

Milad Shadrooh: Absolutely. And I want to show that I want to showcase that. I want people to see what my friends see. I want people to see that when you kick it with me, it’s just, jokes and it’s fun.

Payman: It’s fun all the way.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. And I want people to see that.

Prav: What’s the weirdest DM that you’ve received?

Milad Shadrooh: I mean, I get marriage proposals all the time for a while on Snapchat. You know why people use Snapchat? Because things disappear. So I used to get all sorts of photos on Snapchat, I would always know how it’s going to happen as well. So I’d get a DM “hey, do you have Snapchat”? And then I’ll be like “yeah, let’s Snapchat”. And I’ll immediately go to my wife and I’ll be like “Babe check what’s about to come through”. Because I’m super transparent. when you’re doing this kind of stuff, you cannot be like it’s just, and there’s no reason for me not to be right. I find that hilarious. So I’d literally hold Snapchat, open up and I’m like “baby ready”. Because if you screenshot it they know. So I was just literally about “are you ready? Open” Boom! And it’d be something Interesting.

Milad Shadrooh: Alright. So given that kind of stuff, I get a lot of the kind of serious stuff. The stuff we talked about before, which is nice to get.

Prav: The life changing stuff.

Milad Shadrooh: The life changing stuff that is always amazing and i asked some people, if I can share, I’m going to listen. That’s such an amazing message. “Would you mind if I kind of share that”? And they’re like, “Oh my God, that’d be great”. If you help someone else weekly a hundred percent. yeah. I could look for my DMS now and I’ll be able to show you something it’s crazy. And from all over, Globally in all countries.

Prav: So what’s the legacy you want to leave?

Milad Shadrooh: That’s the thing. So when you say it again, what do you want to do in five years? I Want to do in five years, I want to have left behind a legacy. I want it to be so that in 10 years we look back and think, “Oh yeah that was the singing dentist guy, man. He done well. He smashed it”, and I want my kids to be like “Oh yeah, my dad was the singing dentist”. Oh, what your dad was singing? That’s sick”. I want to have done something so that people know, make a change for sure, help dentistry. There’s so many different aspects on a consumer level, there’s stuff I want to do. I want to really help reduce the problems we have in the UK, but on a dentistry level, dentists are my peers are my colleagues, they’re my friends. There’s so many negative things are happening. There’s so many unhappy people and it just shouldn’t be like that, man. But as dentists, we shouldn’t be in this space.

Prav: Do you get hate from Dentists?

Milad Shadrooh: Never to my face, ever. I wish I did, not because I would confront them with beef.

Prav: you can to deal with it?

Milad Shadrooh: I’d love to see what it is. And then take that on board and see what is it he don’t like, you think I’m bringing a profession into disrepute in which case? Okay. Let’s talk about it, why? What is? Was it the brand new stuff? Was it the fact that I’m giving oral health advice by singing songs? What is it that you don’t like? You just find my face irritating? That’s fine. Everyone’s entitled to have an opinion. Right? Dude. The amount of bad trolling I’ve had from non-dentists, there’s nothing that a dentist could tell me, because I’ve had “Oh, he’s that guy. I want to shoot him in the face”. I mean, anyone else think this is the most annoying person in the world. Let’s find him and kill him. You get that kind of stuff online.

Prav: Which Platform is the worst?

Milad Shadrooh: Every platform. YouTube less. Facebook is the worst I think for that. But yeah, you get that kind of stuff

Payman: On the subject of dental trolling-

Milad Shadrooh: I’ve never had it. I’ve never seen it.

Payman: You mentioned Nilesh. He gets a lot of it?

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah. He gets it.

Payman: But having Nilesh at some point we can ask him, but-

Milad Shadrooh: There is one thing first and foremost, 100%. If you do nothing in life, you keep your head down and you just fly through life. Like a leaf in the wind. You’re not going to get, hey.

Prav: put your head above the parapet.

Milad Shadrooh: Guaranteed. The only time you get hit is when you’re smashing it. Because genuinely people don’t like it or they’re jealous of it or they’re envious of it. Or they think they should have had it. They feel entitled. Like why is he doing that? When I should have been doing that?

Payman: Well, I disagree. I mean you could get hate. Cause you’re an idiot.

Milad Shadrooh: Sure. But why would someone know you’re an idiot if you kept it to yourself?

Payman: I understand this whole jealousy thing. We’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but I think it’s dismissive to say “that’s what it is. It’s just jealousy”

Milad Shadrooh: No, I don’t think it’s just jealousy. But what I’m saying is unless you put your head out there, unless you open, no one would know. So that’s the thing. So the minute you’re smashing it, you’re going to get “haters”. it just exists. It’s just the way it is . But dental ones, I’ve never had any come my way. Look, there’s a couple of people in our industry that I think everybody in the world knows who they’re super negative people, they never like anything and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Milad Shadrooh: I’m sure they’ve said stuff like, and I’m sure behind my back enclosed circles in their little forums, they’ll chat about me or they’ll be negative, but I don’t know who they are. Someone’s never screenshot something and sent it to me and go “look what this bread said about you”. I would love it if they did, because I would meet that guy. I won’t do the internet rubbish. I’d like to meet him and just chat to them. And say ” bro, what is it that I did to upset you so much? And to what level are we going to take that upset?” Because if it’s something we could talk about, cool. If it’s something we can’t and you genuinely don’t like it, then let’s have it out and then we’ll deal with it. The South London way.

Payman: Have you ever had any trolling that’s actually bothered you like it’s been-

Prav: No anxiety or anything?

Milad Shadrooh: No. Never, ever. because again people around me, they keep me grounded enough that stuff like that don’t get to me. I find it fascinating. I kind of read some of it and then I think “Cool”. What happens to you that you feel that this kind of comment is a good thing for you to put out on the world to portray your personality? Some people say some horrible stuff, but not engaged with some of it. I normally ignore all of it. Sometimes for some giggles I’ll come in with like a Saki remark or I’ll come back with something and dude I’ve turned so many of them around like literally there’ll be like “you’re the most annoying person ever. I want to kill you” and then I’ll reply with, “thank you so much for your continued support. My new video will out tonight at 6:00 PM. Don’t forget to tune in” and then they’ll DM me, “mate, fair pay. That was funny” and I’ll be like “Alright bro” and then he goes “nah, I actually think you’re quite good, I just didn’t think you’d reply”. So they just do it to get a reaction.

Milad Shadrooh: They don’t genuinely hate you and want to kill you. They just do it because it’s online trolling. And some people think it’s funny, but I can see how it would definitely affect you. If you put a video out, you get a thousand comments and five bad ones. Fine, if you get a thousand bad comments and five good ones, maybe that’s when you should really rethink your content and think “maybe I should take this on board now”.

Payman: But it’s very natural. You’re a kind of person who doesn’t really care what people think about you.

Milad Shadrooh: But deep down, I do care if I’m honest and if I open up properly, of course everyone cares. Everyone wants to be liked. Everyone wants their work to be appreciated because you put your heart and soul into something. I don’t just do these parodies with zero thought process. A lot of thought goes into it. That is a lot of my personality. What you see as the singing dentist, like you said, a lot of the time, it’s me. I talk about the singing dentist as a third person, but it’s me. I’m jokes anyway. So I might turn it on a bit, but it is still part of me. So if someone really hates it, that is upsetting because you’re like “well, why did they hate that aspect of me?” But let’s talk about it. I don’t let it hurt me.

Milad Shadrooh: I kind of want to be “okay, well what can I do differently?” I like to be the very best person that can be for everybody. So I want to change to make someone else happy. If they think what I’m doing is making them unhappy, but positivity, I try to stay positive regardless. There’s going to be negative times, I once posted a video and it’s done badly and I’m like “what the hell happened there”, and you to kind of want to go a bit into yourself and you think “that was disappointing. I thought I was really good, but no one’s really liked it. And it’s getting some shit comments” that’s a bit of a shame.

Milad Shadrooh: So you get a bit down, that there’d be times where I’ll be stocked for contacting “God. I need to post today. I haven’t posted a couple of days”. Dude, you just feel a bit “Oh my God, this is a bit overwhelming” but then you just slap yourself out of it. I do a superhero pose. I go stand in front of the mirror, look at myself and think “you’re better than this. You can come up with some content”. And I end up filming myself, doing that and people love it. There’s content right there.

Milad Shadrooh: So I just stay positive man, and I really do believe in thinking about the good thing. There’s so much bad stuff and there’s so many people that are in such a worse position than you, when I wake up and I think ” why would I be unhappy?” I’m so blessed in so many ways, you just got to really put that into perspective because life genuinely is so short man, and can change in a heartbeat.

Prav: And on that note, it’s your last day on the planet. What three messages do you want to leave the world with?

Milad Shadrooh: Three messages on my last day, always make time for friends and family, regardless of what else is going on, try and do something that changes someone else’s life so that you will never be forgotten even by one person, and lastly, enjoy everything that you’re doing. Even if it’s something you don’t like to do, find some kind of enjoyment in that. Enjoy not liking it because life really is too short. I don’t know if you guys have got kids, but I’ve got kids. Have you seen Coco? The cartoon Coco?

Payman: Nope.

Prav: No.

Milad Shadrooh: Watch it. The Mexicans have this after life theory thing, right? So when you die, you go to a place. Every year they put the photos out of their loved ones who have passed on and then they get to come back. And as long as the photo is up, your spirit never dies, right?

Milad Shadrooh: Because someone always remembers you and you always have that adoration to come back, but in the spirit world someone dies and they go to spirit world, right? So in the spirit world, you can die in the spirit world and you die in the spirit world, the minute, no one in the real world remembers you, the minute no one puts your photo out. Right? When I was watching that, that really hit home for me. I think that’s just terrifying, to think that if there is an after life, when nobody remembers you you’re gone, forever. I don’t want that to happen. I want to be remembered by someone somewhere.

Payman: What is your Belief system? Is it that-

Prav: is there an afterlife (silence) reincarnation?

Payman: Or is it just coma or is it-

Milad Shadrooh: I genuinely don’t have a belief because I’m not very religious. I don’t follow a religion. I believe in something I pray to God. I ask God for stuff. When I say pray, I don’t pray three times a day, get down and pray or I don’t go to church or I don’t go to any kind of religious places, but I believe there is some

Payman: So she’s an atheist in a bomb shelter.

Milad Shadrooh: Yeah, exactly. I speak to somebody and ask for certain things. I get strength from that whether it’s the universe or whether it’s a spiritual thing. I think I like the spirituality side. I know people say, “I’m not religious I’m just spiritual” but I do believe in some other stuff that we will never comprehend. I like to think that maybe when you pass on, you start to really comprehend these other things. So I think there is another continuation of our existence, but not the way we know it now. I got to go a bit deep in it at the end.

Prav: I think that’s a wrap.

Payman: Yeah. Thank you so much for-

Milad Shadrooh: No, honestly no honestly it was cool. Thanks for inviting me down

Payman: I think the great thing that I got from this, is that you are who you sometimes you see a persona online from the moment you walked into now is you are who you portray. That’s awesome.

Milad Shadrooh: Thanks man.

Prav: That’s what you got to be. Being yourself is very easy.

Payman: Thanks a lot.

Milad Shadrooh: Thanks guys.

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

Prav: Thanks for listening guys. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you tune in for future episodes, hit subscribe in iTunes or Google play or whatever platform it is and we really appreciate it if you would give us a six star rating.

Payman: That’s why I always leave my Uber driver.

Prav: Thanks a lot guys.

Payman: Bye.