In this episode, we welcome insight from Darren Cannell and Andy Stafford into building successful practices and turning old friends into business partners. Darren and Andy discuss their successes in dentistry, including running practices and giving patients quality treatments.
Darren and Andy also tell us about their journey from university to set up their own business in a Grade 2 listed building in Newcastle.
Enjoy!
“We wanted to deliver a level of dentistry that we thought wasn’t available in the region at a time when there were big practices in Liverpool and Manchester and London. We looked and thought there isn’t a landmark practice in Newcastle that was offering this really, really high-level service. So from the start, our vision was, let’s just do unbelievable dentistry, let’s have a surrounding that that looked like Harley Street.” – Andy Stafford
In This Episode
01.51 – Meeting one another
08:07 – Uni life and study
08.49 – Going into business with freinds
09.59 – Finding direction
13:06 – Heading to the North East
14:44 – Buying a Grade 2 listed building
22:04 – Mentors
26:16 – Hiring right
29:15 – Approaching problems together
34:35 – Splitting responsibility
37:38 – Invisalign
39:28 – Expanding
41:42 – Opportunities in a pandemic
45:17 – Work-life balance
46:44 – A day in the life
51:52 – Outside dentistry
57:53 – Dental trends
59:20 – Legacy & last days on Earth
About Darren Cannell and Andy Stafford
Andy Stafford
After graduating from Newcastle University in 2001, Andy pursued a career in private restorative/cosmetic dentistry. He has managed a chain of successful teeth whitening clinics across the North of England.
He has used virtually all teeth whitening systems on the market today and has a portfolio of over 500 completed whitening procedures to date. He co-founded both The Cosmetic Dental Clinics in Durham and the heart of Newcastle with Darren Cannell.
Darren Cannell
Darren Cannell also graduated from Newcastle University Dental School in 2001. After graduating, he was awarded the prestigious James Coltman Award, an individual honour awarded for overall skill in Operative Dentistry.
He became an established restorative/cosmetic dentist, working out of two very successful practices across the North West. He co-founded both The Cosmetic Dental Clinics in Durham and in the heart of Newcastle with Andy Stafford.
[00:00:00] Dentistry that I just didn’t really know existed, and we were working hard at this really nice practise in Lancashire. We thought, what, we can do this for ourselves. We don’t we don’t need to do this for someone else. It wasn’t a massive desire for us to have our own practise. It just seemed at that point that was the natural thing to do. And a lot of that was based on the fact that we wanted this around and we wanted we wanted to deliver this level of dentistry that we thought wasn’t available in the region at a time when there was big practises in Liverpool and Manchester and London for us. We looked and thought there isn’t really a landmark practise in Newcastle that was offering this really, really high level service. So from the start, our vision was, let’s just do unbelievable dentistry, let’s do dentistry, let’s have a surrounding that that looked like Harley Street.
[00:00:59] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders Dental dentistry. Your heist’s Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.
[00:01:16] I t gives me great pleasure today to welcome Andy Darrow to the Dental Leaders podcast to Dental to the clinical directors of the Cosmati Dental Clinic, an exclusive group of practises in Newcastle and Durham. I met you guys probably 15 years ago, and I think we both, all three of us started our journey together in business at that time. I remember driving to it must have been Liverpool. Yeah. Meeting you guys in one of your apartments and you telling me about your love, the idea of this amazing new cosmetic clinic that you wanted to launch in central Newcastle, you about superexcited. And the journey all started there, really. And I think from memory, you probably met me through my brother who you met on the Paul Tipton course, if that’s right. That’s right. They all started there. But if we take a few steps back, obviously, you guys as best friends back then, how did you how did you guys meet and get into the industry together? We were at university together and then decided to practise together. Just tell us the story of how you guys came together and then culminated in this launch of this practise. Yeah, so first of all, guys, thanks for having us on the podcast today, we’ve been listening to your podcast for the past few months. It’s been exceptional. And we do feel as though when Larry Rosen tells Hotseat today. So thanks for thanks for joining to join in today. So, yes, so is Nighty Night six Newcastle Dental School. First day I remember sort of going into where everyone signs on and looking around and sort of the case and everyone’s seen what everyone was like. And I remember seeing this lad with like a long blonde Bob with with a with a Scouse accent. And and yeah, that was the first time I met Darren.
[00:03:23] And I wish I still have that long blonde. But to be honest,
[00:03:28] He moved from Liverpool.
[00:03:30] No, no, I’m the Scouser family since, as Andy just said, thanks again, guys, for inviting us on very much. Appreciate this. But it was my apartment back in the Albert Dock of Liverpool where I first met us. But yeah, Andy and I first met Newcastle Dental School. And you know what it’s like on that first day. You look around for people like you think you’ve got similarities to people are going to have similar interests to you other than what your main reason of being there is. And I think we did very early doors.
[00:04:01] What was your first outlook when you set eyes on them on Monday? Was it was it love at first sight? Was there anything like the equivalent of the long blonde bulb that attracted you to him?
[00:04:10] I thought that there’s a lot that would look a lot better if he had the long blonde.
[00:04:15] But I also remember Darren had the eye wall one thing, but that was that was a vast array of YSL shirts in every single colour, which in nineteen ninety six, if you might remember, what were the things to have in literally every colour under the sun. And I was just, just a normal, hardworking northern lights. So, you know, I was just there to get my head down and do the study.
[00:04:44] Fashion was the thing in Liverpool still is very much a thing in Liverpool, obviously just hadn’t hit the the sunny sides of Sunderland just
[00:04:51] To know she was upset and threatened with Newcastle at the time. And so just moving on from there, did you guys become so obsessed, maybe start hanging out together from that first day? Yeah, I mean, I think Darren is both experienced of university was the same in that I think we were Newcastle University undergraduates rather than Dental school undergraduates. We spent a lot of time in the Dental school, but also the Dental school doing other stuff. I think we mixed with people from Northumbria Uni. A lot of my friends were in sports teams, rugby team, golf team, that sort of stuff. And there was a lot of people that were just completely focussed on going into the and doing dentistry where I think we were a bit more focussed on on having having an experience the university as well and exploring other avenues. And I think that’s where we became good friends, was that we actually like to do a lot of stuff that wasn’t related. And the further we went through university, we both realised that the clinical side of it was where we excelled and the clinical side of it was where we actually got the enjoyment out of it in the pharmacology books was something we all had to do. But it was when we got to the clinical Hands-On side that we both got found that that was where we got the most enjoyment and where our skill sets were as well. Did you use to talk to each other about setting up a practise together while you were students?
[00:06:19] I don’t think at that point we didn’t think it was more about enjoying life or getting through Dental school. I think there was there was that side of it that we concentrated on. I think as the years passed and we done more and more clinical work, I think we both were from a very similar mindset. Long term, I don’t think either of us ever wanted to be just driller’s and philes. You know, there was a certain type of country that we wanted to go into which our eyes were open to more and more, probably more postgrad times. But I think we just shared so many similar interests, whether it be sports, whether it be girls of Newcastle, whatever it may be, it was that side of things that probably made us connect initially.
[00:07:03] And so just give us a give us a summary of what your life at university was like in terms of we we have kids that would from last minute four exams just scrape through. And you were passing through. How was the balance? Payman? He’s got a question. He’s got his hands up. I saying, yeah, that was me.
[00:07:23] Well, I think it’s fair to say, well, I can certainly say for myself, I don’t think I’m one of life’s most academics, but what I am is somebody who’s willing to put a shift in. I’m a grafter. And so it didn’t necessarily come naturally to to me once I got to to university levels. I didn’t really struggle much through taxes and A-levels. But at university, I think trying to find that balance between uni life and study was was a challenge. And I think we certainly partied hard when we were able to party hard, but we were also the ones that would be first and at the library to get our heads down and and get through the undergrads, you know, study like we needed to.
[00:08:07] So, you know, people people say don’t go into business with friends and family. And I did. I went to business with the guys. I live with the university for five years. Yeah. I find actually you end up knowing each other really, really well. And there’s a level of trust that you have when you’ve known when you’ve grown up with someone because it doesn’t have a trust that you have. What’s your position on it? I mean, did you worry about the
[00:08:33] The bottom line is, I think what we’ve been asked that question so many times over the years, some people have said, you know, how have you managed to maintain friendships and business relationships for 15 years plus? And I think, as you say, it stems back from the start. Our relationship started out as a friendship and it’s still, to this day, very much a friendship first and business partner second. And Andy and I were still very different characters. You know, when as we grow and as we mature and life takes you in different ways from a family perspective, you’re inevitably going to change by way of character. I’m one of these people. I’m probably the stress head of the two of us. I’m the one that wants everything done to a certain standard yesterday, whereas the as has got a skill set where you can be much more laid back, you can turn things on and off as and when he wants to, which is, I must say, a skill that I’m envious of. But I think together we complement each other. And I think trust is is a massive thing for us. You know, we trust each other implicitly. People have always said with a fiver for that sort of people. But the nice thing about us is, is that we’re in a situation where when there’s decisions to be made, you know, we’re there to listen to each other with to talk to each other. And usually in a short space of time, we can come to a resolution and a solution to move things forward. And 15 years later, I wouldn’t say we’ve done too much of that
[00:09:59] In 15 years. Have you ever had any massive disagreements, post ups, sort of difference of opinion on how you should do things? And then if so, how did you come to sort of resolve? Yeah, no, we haven’t really we’ve done extremely well. I mean, when you think about it, that’s a lot of years to not have a big argument from the start. We really try to set things up to be more of an experience place. I know. I know. Now, that’s that’s a very popular thing to do to set up a dentist practise to be experienced. But that was really what what we try to do from the start. And we wanted to set it up to be somewhere that we lot we wanted to work. And we actually got enjoyment out of the day to day going in the building, using the equipment, using the technology. And we’ve been very aligned on that from the start. Our direction has always been to try and build and move things forward or to not not to do that too quickly, to take it at our own pace, to be maybe a little bit more cautious than other people have. And I know we’ve had chats in the past Prav way. You’ve said you can do this, you can do that, can do that, and we’ve done OK.
[00:11:07] But we’ll just take it at our pace. And we’ve always been quite aligned on that. It hasn’t been one of us. Let’s go and open five practises tomorrow. It’s always been let’s let’s just take a little step. Let’s be sustainable. And as well, I think going back from the university days, we have a friendship that is not Dental, first of all. So, I mean, a lot of the time we spent together at university was not sitting and studying. It was going to watch the match, are going to be a sports day or something like that. And I think having that background still is still relevant, that if we just talked about teeth all of the time, we’d probably have a lot of arguments it and being able to just sort of at least say, OK, do you want to watch the Liverpool match this week? I’m just not worth watching. So so we tend to watch Liverpool. That’s that’s. I’ve been a big thing. Indulge me, tell me about that first day you met Prav. How did you come across? Because I think we met I met Prav similar time to when you guys met him.
[00:12:15] Well well, I can take you back to it because it feels like yesterday, to be fair, despite having all of you years ago with obviously Andy and I had this idea. We knew what we wanted to do. We knew what we we felt. We knew what we needed to do to achieve it. But one big thing we found is that look at all of the practises that we’re in and around the Northeast, because at this point, we’ve decided the Northeast was where we wanted to go. So we tried to do our research and see what was out there. And there seems to be quite a lack of websites. So we basically needed someone on board who could enlighten us as to what we needed to do. So Andy was doing the Tipton course over the Caliche at the time. So Andy Cohen said to me, well, if I’ve heard from Kay that this is somebody that we can work with at that point, we knew it was Kay’s brother. And then before us, we arranged a meeting at my house. It was my first home in the Albert Dock in Liverpool. And Prav turned up in a Ford car, I think is his car choices somewhat changed in recent times. And yeah, I was proud of her. And we we all sat down together and and worked out what we needed to do.
[00:13:28] So it was it was at that point we’re talking 15 years ago, it was like to have a website. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was really quite strange how it all came about, as David was saying that I was speaking to coalition with and I think he would just sell Chris Dental at this point. And I was saying we’ve got these big ideas of this big fancy practise in Newcastle, but we need to be digital. We need to we need to get something on the on the way. And I said, well, I’ve been using a really good guy is he’s really experienced, knows what he’s talking about. He says, no, maybe you should hit him up. And the funny thing was that when we opened our practise, first of all, we did well. When we when we launched the business, we had a website that provided a great deal of design and we had a wreck of a building in Newcastle that you couldn’t even walk in because the rain came all through all five stories of the building. And we literally did interviews for members of staff in the Malmaison Hotel in the Cup and the key side of Newcastle. So actually, the first thing we actually had was was this website from Prav. And that was going to generate as thousands of patients and get the business kick started, including the one you’re in now.
[00:14:44] It’s the same building. Yeah, this building came up at this point. We made our decision, not Newcastle was the place to be for us. And we searched and searched around the area and then stumbled across this building, an old Heldon square, which we fell in love with immediately. It was at the time it was on the buildings at risk, rich buildings at risk register. So we were hoping that there might be some sort of grants available for this grade to list listed building that might help these two young whippersnappers to, you know, to develop a practise within it. Funnily enough, the minute we paid the deposit for the building, it disappears off the building, got rich register. And so it was almost to to pull it round. And to be fair, there was times during that first 12, 18 months where we were worried that we’d pay off more than we could chew. There was five stories of this building that was in quite a poor state of repair. And the other interesting story was that on the morning that we just paid the deposit for the building, that was the first time we met English Heritage. It was to have a meeting on site. And the first thing the guy said to us was, do not buy this building to this day, which we never really knew why they were advising us against this. But they say in life that you need a little bit of luck to go along with hard work. And two or three days after this meeting, we opened up the centre pages of the the local rag, the Newcastle Chronicle, and there was a plan set out to redevelop Old, Old and Square. So that reinstated for us that it was the right place to be. And it’s a beautiful old Georgian terrace, as I say, five stories tall. And it was a labour of love, you know, to get this building restored back to its former glory. And now is a place where we really do enjoy going to work on a daily basis and
[00:16:42] Just take us through the process of having that lofty vision at this superduper practise. And obviously mindful that you didn’t rent this building, you actually went all in and bought it. Right. It’s great to list the five story buildings, your first wall and you’ve bought. Ebola free hold, right, just take us through the whole process of what it was like having the idea. All the way to probably one of the most successful cosmetic properties in the Northeast. So the idea at the start was, first of all, we’re both working in Lancashire to really good practise down there, which was Mike Booth’s practise and Phil Broughton with that, two amazing clinicians. We’d seen a lot of unbelievable work. It was very technology driven. It was driven at this time. We just got into the ICD as well. And I think I got back from my first conference in Vancouver and was literally just blown away by what is possible in dentistry. I saw dentistry there that I just didn’t really know existed. And we were working hard at this really nice practise in Lancashire. And we thought, what, we can do this for ourselves. We don’t we don’t need to do this for someone else. It wasn’t a massive desire for us to have our own practise. It just seemed at that point that was the natural thing to do.
[00:18:05] And a lot of that was based on the fact that we wanted this around and we wanted we wanted to deliver this level of dentistry that was that we thought wasn’t available in the region at a time. There was big practises in Liverpool and Manchester and London for us. We looked and thought there isn’t there isn’t really a landmark practise in Newcastle that was offering this really, really high level service. So from the start, our vision was, let’s just do unbelievable dentistry, let’s do dentistry, let’s have a surrounding that that looked like Harley Street. And I think that was that was when we fell in love with the practise, was that the building itself looks like a Harley Street practise the floor to ceiling windows, the 18 30s architecture. It looks like Harley Street. And that was our vision from the start. And we just couldn’t say no to this building. It was too much for us. We couldn’t run and we had to buy it. And we just looked at it and thought, well, what’s the worst thing that could happen if we lose our deposits and we go and get a job somewhere else? And our mind set for the first three or four years was what’s the worst thing that could happen? So we were young, we didn’t have dependents.
[00:19:21] And we thought, well, if we’re not going to do it now, when we’re going to do it, we might as well go all in at this time. Just focus on the dream, focus on our how we want it to be focussed on the street. And I think our mindset was if if we do the dentistry that we want to do, people will come and people will see it will we knew quite a lot of people in Newcastle already, so we knew we could lean on a few people and just say, OK, let’s get you in, let’s wait in your teeth and go and tell everyone about it. And it was very much word of mouth at that time, and that’s how it snowballed. And we went from to start off with I worked two days a week. There were two days a week. We had one receptionist and one nurse to remove the full time. We got a couple of more members of staff. We then did another floor of the building. We got some more dentists in and we just build a bit by bit. And now we’ve got nine surgeries over the two sites. We’ve got, what, eight clinicians is it now?
[00:20:23] We’ve got six associates, three therapists and hygienists now.
[00:20:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see the difference there that Darren was just like we’ve got six associates, three therapists, blah, blah, blah. And you were talking earlier about how one of you is just so laid back and the other one is just the detail. And you just saw that this is
[00:20:50] What you know. Within that, though, Prav is why this is work for us over the years. Absolutely. We are very different characters from very different backgrounds, but we both bring something to the table. And I think, as I say, the nice thing is, is that we complement each other to push things forward. And I think that the bottom line is, I’m sure this times throughout this journey where I have drove on the absolutely mat and similarly and vice versa, it’s coming the other way. But the beauty is that together, irrespective of where we’ve come from, we both seem to have the same business and Dental goals we’re aligned with.
[00:21:26] Top of that, I think, as well, was we knew that each other had clinical skills, that we weren’t going to be let down by the other member of the team. So through Dental school, we knew that our work was at the top end of our group. And when we got into private practise, we knew that we could deliver really good quality dentistry. And I think being able to to trust the the person’s clinical ability has always been good. I mean, even as the practises grow, the type and the quality of dentistry that we’ve been able to do is is always been comparable. And it wasn’t that I could do something and Darren couldn’t or vice versa. We’ve always been able to to rely on each other’s dentistry, which has been a massive help.
[00:22:06] Absolutely. And people very. To talk about and I’ve listened to it on the podcast where people talk about mentors and as daft as it might sound, I feel, yes, we’ve both done so much postgrad work. We’ve gone on different courses. We’ve gone all around the world doing research. But we’ve probably mentor each other because we’ve done it together from from the get go. We’ve always turn to each other to share knowledge and make each other a better clinician.
[00:22:34] Just go back to Mike Booth. I remember hearing stories about Mike back in the day that as a clinician, he was absolutely phenomenal at speaking to patients and just had this natural ability to be able to, we say in the most ethical sense, cell treatment of cells, big cases. So Broughton’s always had a great reputation as well. What did you learn from those guys back in the days when you were at the clinic in Lancashire? I mean, it was it was a fantastic opportunity to go work at that practise. At the time, I was working at an oasis practise up in the north east and a position came available at that practise. And I had no desire to go and live in Lancashire. And I went to work at that place 100 percent for the dentists who were there and for the technology they had. And I took over a lot of Mike’s list. So I was able to see all of his work, sewage treatment plants and really picked up so much knowledge on the way from that. I mean, he did a lot of really big, complex cases, did a lot of big bridgework, lot of big small crown veny work.
[00:23:38] And and the standard was really, really high. And it was probably the first time that I realised how much sort of volume was possible in dentistry as well, because he he worked at a very quick pace and he got work done. If someone needed a full mouth rehab, you could turn it round in and next to no time and sang with fellows. Well, while some of the some of the composite work that Phil used to do was amazing and I was blown away, I’ve never seen that sort of quality of composite work before. And just actually being able to recall these patients and see it first hand was was like the best quality mentorship that anyone could possibly have at that time. Because, you know, when I’ve come to your practise, one thing that I’ve noticed is that the team seem really happy. Is that process of managing a team and and creating culture in the practise, you find that easy or is that something you’re constantly having to work at?
[00:24:39] I think well, when we first started out, it was funnily enough, we bumped into a guy who was in our year group is named Paul Thapar, and he owns a number of practises at quite a young age up in the Northeast. And we bumped into him in a car garage of all places, and we realised we were coming to the northeast and he said to us there. And then the biggest problem you will have during your career is practise practitioners is stuff. And we were sitting there at this point feeling really quite chill with ourselves because it was just me and the nurses and the receptionists and life was going just fine, OK, but we knew that as we needed to scale up, we had to build a reactor. We had to build that ethos to the people that were coming to join us. And I think early on we Andy and I did everything ourselves from the business management side of things, the recruitment side of things, the business management side of things, as well as being the dentists. And it was all baby. And we didn’t want to really hand over and delegate to others in case they weren’t taking things in the same direction as what we were.
[00:25:47] But once we got to a certain size, we realised that it really just wasn’t possible. And so we really did invest a lot of time and effort in finding the right people to then bring things forward with us. And I think the key to that in more recent times has been finding the right practise manager. And we have a practise manager, Lisa, who works with us now, who we, again, trust implicitly with our baby. And she helps now with recruitment side of things, business management, side of things, while we can focus on dentistry and grow in the brand. But I think, yeah, you’re right, it’s it’s not something that comes naturally to you. Nobody teaches you this Dental school. And it’s something I think, between the pair of us learns along the way. And yes, there’s been mistakes along the way in terms of recruitment. But I think that’s the only way you can very often learn. But the team that we have there now from clinicians all the way through to admin teams, you know, is a team that we’re extremely proud of and we’re keen to push forward with.
[00:26:47] Just talking about mistakes along the way, either hiring the wrong person or maybe getting rid of the wrong person or for the wrong reasons. Can you just enlighten us to a couple of experiences along the way, maybe having to get rid of someone who did the firing, was it or was earning? And where we did we did have a big sort of blip a few years ago that we more recently, our practise fund manager is just absolutely amazing. Dental, Prav. That’s really what we managed before the manager, before it turned out that she’d been up in the hands in the till a little bit. And when it came to light, it was quite a few quit and it got very serious very quickly. And that was our biggest mistake on the way. And looking back, it was horrendous and it really escalated and it turned out to be something that went a long way. But as an experience for us, we learnt so much about what we should do and what we need to keep our eyes on and and and things that can happen. We’ve always been so trusting. We trust everyone. And I think that was a big turning point where where we realised that, yes, we can trust people. And yes, we should always give people the benefit of the doubt, but not to not to to a point where we’ve taken our eye off the ball a little bit.
[00:28:14] So, I mean, that was probably the biggest bump in the road that we’ve had over the over the fifteen years. And I still look at that and think there was there was a lot of positive that came from that. It didn’t obviously turn out well for her. And, you know, we didn’t do so well financially that year. But I think that has actually pushed us on to the next level and we wouldn’t be where we are today if we hadn’t actually had that experience. So what was the process of obviously discovering? Not the initial shock of it all. And then I’m assuming you guys chat it through with each other. How are you going to approach her? Who was going to have the conversation with what you were going to say? Maybe repeat the conversation in your own head a hundred times, and then what would you talk about the hiring and firing process? It’s always one that induces quite a bit of anxiety, and especially with something like this where, you know, it’s been motivated by by by theft, I guess. How did you just approach that problem?
[00:29:15] I think we approach that one like we approach most things. We did it together. And it was one of these where we’ve, you know, with the type of people that like to face things from the on. And so it was one of these ones being brought to our attention, really, as to what might be happening. It was just straight into our office, sat down across the table from her and tried to establish what on earth was going on. And, you know, the. Particular person was very much in denial. But the facts were there, you know, this was this was taken on by by the police in the end. And this patient’s story, this person got a custodial sentence as a result of all of this. But, yeah, like everything else, we take these things head on together and we work our way through these things, thankfully, hired and fired as a as a general rule within the practise that the firing squad has been very limited. We’ve got a lot of team members that have been with us there for a very long time. So that side of things is not something that we’ve had to do on a on a routine basis. The hiring side of things is, again, something that we very much get involved with, particularly nowadays. It’s probably more for the clinician side of things. And we have Lisa and the management teams underneath her that do the rest of the staff. But we’re very much heavily involved in choosing the right dentists and therapists and hygienists to come and join us, because, again, in protection of our baby, we want to be involved at that point to ensure that the people will bring an end to upset the apple cart that we’ve worked so hard to achieve and to make sure that they’re going to follow the same ethos that we want our practises to work.
[00:30:51] What qualities does a clinician need to earn a place at your clinic? I mean, it’s evolved quite a bit over the over the past few years. At the start, when we were at capacity, we were looking and thinking, how are we going to get someone else in? What level do they need to be on? Do they need to be the finished article to the need to be just full of passion, to the need to be full of energy. And we have a really, really good senior associate that works with us, who’s been with us for quite a few years now called Neil Hare. And and he came in and done some private dentistry award stuff. He came in with a big portfolio of work, which back then people just didn’t have. And we always just looked for passion and a bit of a work ethos. I think that was that there were the two main things that we’ve always tried to look look for. And from that, that’s probably the last time we’ve advertised for a job. But the practise since then, we got a lot of CVS and I think we’ve been extremely lucky to actually being able to attract a lot of the Dental talent of the north east. We’ve got some amazing guys there at the minute, as you know, and is very much a team effort. And every single clinician has been picked on. Yes. That can do a great clinical job or to have the right work ethic. Are they brought in with our cosmetic Dental clinic ethos of of quality precision care? I mean, those are the three core values that we’ve had from the start, and that’s really how it’s evolved over the years.
[00:32:25] Our last few associates have literally just budgeters for so long with CVS and cases of the case of isn’t the case. Obviously now it gets a bit more digital and it’s a bit more getting tagged in Instagram posts and things like that. But I mean, that that just shows to us how passionate these people are. And that’s that’s what we that’s what we really have tried to grow in the practise. We’ve always preferred to bring on younger dentists that just have that fire in them rather than someone that’s been doing it for years and years and years. And they just look at it picking up the paycheque. And yeah, I can churn out so many whatevers and I can earn some money. We’ve we’ve always wanted it to be a career progression from people. Let’s start we’ve done a couple of mentorship staff contracts with dentists as well, where we’ve had them under our wing for a year and we’ve talked them through Invisalign and could ontology and some of our practises, Thorstein, and now they’re just flying at practise. And it’s been such a great part of the process to be able to see these guys grow from where they started coming to as an age for twenty or thirty two to to actually where they are now. These were the nicest things about a business is seeing people grow, isn’t it? There’s so many other problems and issues with that.
[00:33:45] That one thing for me is one, the nicest thing about owning because you’ve been a long term and you can see long term, what happens is how do you divide the work between you? I mean, who takes care of one? Because one of you will naturally go one way and one with another who handles Prav, for instance? That’s always a three summate. Who handles Prav? Yeah, work is definitely a double double heads when we’re dealing with there’s too many ideas for minutes. We have to write it all down. What not naturally the clinical work divides itself. OK, solved and the flow of patients into practise naturally gets divided up. And we’ve always, as we’ve gone along, as the jobs come in, we might have ten jobs on the table. We’ll just say that’s five for you, that’s five for me. And Robyn is trying to use. All of our energy to the both of us have to do these 10 jobs, we’ve always just tried to split it. So I trust you to get those jobs done. I’ll do those jobs and then we’ll just report back. So I think actually having the partnership along the way has really been able to help us to grow and to get to be to be a lot more productive. And we try not to cross over too much and allow the other person to get that job done so that we can do something else a bit more productive with our time as well.
[00:35:06] And I think it’s fair to say when we are splitting up these jobs and we are delegating to one another, that’s something that you learn through time. You learn who’s better at what role, you know. And so I think it sort of happens quite quickly, quite naturally, when the jobs but will always still turn to each other ultimately for the final decisions, because this has been a joint effort from the start and it will continue to be.
[00:35:30] Just just in terms of making sort of big decisions, like, for example, you recently opened the Invisalign Centre within your practise, so, for example, buy in the new clinic in Durham. It was not like an idea that came together. Or did one of you have the idea each other? How did these conversations come about?
[00:35:52] Well, the Invisalign Centre one or Invisalign, so to correctly phrase, this was brought about, quite interestingly, really going back many years ago. And then I had an idea for the third floor of the cosmetic Dental clinic. And at that point we were I’m going back to probably two thousand eight, two thousand nine. And we invited one of the top guys, the head guys from Invisalign up for a meal. And we said to him, look, you’ve got a number of practises offering this service. You’ve got your people on the ground who were going out to visit these practises, but they’re only delivering a few numbers of cases. Why don’t you allow us to be a regional centre of excellence, in essence for Invisalign and allow us to be the Invisalign centre again, despite our wining and dining? It was a no no, but we tried. And then rather ironically, some years later, Andy and I had been recruited by Dan Splicer Sorona to teach dentistry over and across the GCC or from there were from Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, how to use Sirico Software. And while we were out in Dubai, we found and trust to come across a site which was in essence an Invisalign centre.
[00:37:07] So we were like, surely this can still be done all these years later. So that was something that I think we always felt we wanted to try and implement into our clinics. And then by weird twist of fate, it wasn’t long later that I approached by an Invisalign representative, coincidentally from Dubai, who pitched this idea about an Invisalign dedicated area within the practise and by which stage we’ve been delivering Invisalign for 15 years, plus something that we had a big passion for. And so we said, if anybody is going to do this, we want to be the first to do it. And so that decision come very easily to us and everything just sort of aligned to make sure that that sort of happened and it was the right thing for us to do. And I think the room was very it was no different to that. We’ve always just had these ideas together, which we we bounce off each other when we’re in nonclinical times, and then we’ll usually run things by the likes of yourself. Prav you think it’s a good idea?
[00:38:05] I remember that you said, will you come down to the practise? We’ve got someone to tell you. I was like, what is this? And you just told me you’ve got this new clinic in Durham and there’s a massive opportunity there, blah, blah, blah. And it was a bit like, you wait, you watch Prav got to say, what, what, what are we going to do about it? And it seemed like the natural progression for you guys to just sort of get practise number two. But I would like to know, because I’ve had this conversation with numerous people who’ve got multiple practises, what additional challenges of is to present compared to what you were expecting. So a lot of people think, oh, well, practise one is doing well, I’ll just buy practise to multiply it by two and it cannot be all right. How did you deal with that whole process of first of all, if you divide the time, one of you being in Durham all the time, one of you being in Newcastle, getting the new team up to scratch, et cetera, et cetera, how did you handle that transition from one to two? What obstacles came in the way? Well, I think it was probably quite different how other people approach it, because I think other people would would have gone and bought an existing practise with existing patients and they would have just either decided to rebrand or not rebrand and just really take over with all of its issues and with all of its positives where we just looked at it as winding the clock back to what we did in Newcastle.
[00:39:28] Rather than doing that, we were just going to find some space and we were going to just start from scratch again. And we were at full capacity at Newcastle, but we had quite a lot of patients that would come up from the Durham area. And again, going back to twenty six. When we looked at Newcastle, we looked around the city and we felt as though there wasn’t much, there wasn’t many practises that were trying to deliver really high quality cosmetic Invisalign implant dentistry down there so we could have opened up next door to the Newcastle practise. But we thought maybe it’s time to branch out. But we approached it very much that. Right. We’re going to this is going to be a squat again. We’re going to do the same process. We’re going to learn from the process that happened over five or six years in Newcastle. And we just try to accelerate that. And with your help, that’s sort of what we did. We obviously knew that a lot of our our reputation was there already and a lot of our traffic came through.
[00:40:27] The fantastic website that you put together for. Over the years, and we were fairly confident we were going to get people through the door because we could push people around, so initially we did it in a very same way as Newcastle, that I went down a couple a day and a half a week down, went down a day and a half a week. We then built I hope we got some extra associate days in the book down there. And gradually we’ve sort of crept back from it a little bit. But I’m still down there. One full clinical data we can dance down there, one full clinical day a week. And we’ve got two soon to be three associates down there the rest of the week with therapists cover as well. So we really use the resources we already had and we just stretched out a little bit. And that that worked so much better than buying another practise for as I think and I think it just fit in our model better to do it that way rather than to look at trying to change someone else’s practise. And we were in control of all the variables by doing it that way. So moving on from there, guys, what’s the plan? Practise three, four, five. Be happy and safe. What’s the what’s the big goal?
[00:41:38] This is a question that the accountants keep asking us. You know, thankfully, things are all moving in the right direction. Even despite the year that we’ve all had. We used covid could have been such a dark and bad time as as it was for so many and is for so many. But on reflection, if every cloud has a silver lining, covid was an opportunity for us to take a step back from the usual day to day. And we use that opportunity to look in at the business from the outside and realised where we could make changes to move things further forward. So we’ve come back from the Kova Times and yes, OK, we’re still working on all of these restrictions. But, you know, the team is on board. We’re pushing on we’re moving things in the right direction. Financially, things are bouncing back. And so it comes to saying to us, right, guys, when’s the next one open and where are you going to go next? Well, we’re realising now that, you know, down this line, we’re not getting any younger. There’s now dependence that we have to think about this. There’s more of a necessity to try and strike a work life balance, which certainly from my own perspective, I’ll say I’ve failed miserably for all of these years.
[00:42:50] But now with young ones in tow, it’s something I’m certainly conscious of that we need to we need to improve upon because we’re not going to get these years back with the little ones. So the thought of opening of a practise on paper looks like the right thing to do. What have we got? The energy at this time to do is have we got the time to do it at this point in time? Probably not at this point, but that’s not to say that can’t happen again in the future. But at this point, as Andy alluded to earlier, we’ve always done things incrementally, slowly but surely, because we’ve literally we’ve got ourselves to fall back on, too. So we didn’t want to go making any too big leaps of faith. And I think we’re comfortable where we’re at at the moment. Nine surgeries across two sites keeps us busy enough. And I think for the time being, that’s where it’s going to be asked. But who knows? What’s this
[00:43:42] Space? We’ve definitely got some more projects to this. And I think in our project is to is to just push through on that little bit further. And we’ve always looked at it from the very start of what’s the worst thing that can happen if you’re hoping something for all of a sudden that that dynamic looks a little bit more scary, there will be more that will do that might be practise three. It might be practise five, it might be practise ten. It might be something different, but it’s not on the horizon at the minute. We’ve always wanted just to have the growth first before we we sort of overexpose ourselves and we’ve never wanted to try and stretch ourselves to the limit that we lose focus on the day quality dentistry that we do. And I suppose one of our our major issues over the past few years is just we love to actually be in surgery. And it would be a lot easier for us if one of us said, look, I’m not going to do anything anymore. I’m just going to do business development. I’m just going to do staff training. But we both actually really like that part of the job. And we’ve got a real kick out of that side of the job. And that’s probably been at the detriment of of how many practises we’ve we’ve got. If we didn’t love it so much, we probably have ten practises by now. How do you guys cope with the work life balance? So as you start it off, as young single men who launched this practise and I guess puts everything into it, looks flat and says you could work eight hour days if you wanted and nothing mattered, and then family and kids came alone. How did that how did that change things?
[00:45:17] Well, I think there was one big advantage of of growing a team and growing trust within a team is that you can then ultimately start to delegate things off. We’re not these type of principles where we demand that we see all of the new patients coming through the doors, as Andy said earlier, which we distribute those out, but we are in a situation now where we know we need to generate time and we’re surrounded by very capable pair of hands as of hands that we can delegate certain elements of the work to. So that is something that we’re definitely working on. And I think, you know, trying to free up time to ensure that the businesses continue to move forward while still maintaining the same standards of dentistry whilst then balancing a home life is something that is going to need constant work. But again, I think we’re getting better and better. That is times going on and it’s something that we’ll continue to work with.
[00:46:17] Just talk us through both of you. How does that play out in your own personal lives? So it’s different than the typical week. What sort of hours you work and where most of the time you get for the family, what time you get into bed for you in the morning and on your way to work? How does that come out for a busy couple of practises like yourselves with the workload split between you? So I we both work three and a half days. Wednesdays are our days for admin and we’ve got a little bit of flexibility in the week to to pull in big cases if we want. I’ve got an eight and a 10 year old and I try and do four or five trouble can pick up pick ups a week. I’ve tried to be present and that’s that’s the hardest bit. You speak to anyone that’s got a business and a family, that’s the hardest part, trying to schedule it. And then the week also over the last few years, it’s been trying to pencil some time into exercise and looking after ourselves as well. And we’re not getting any younger. We need to look after the engine. There’s no point flogging ourselves to to death and not having any health left at the end of it. And it’s definitely something that we’ve tried to work on weekends is watching my son play football, picking up the golf sticks, some golf balls, just trying to relax, trying to keep it simple. My favourite part of the week is still coming back on a Friday, Friday afternoon, switching off, seeing what the kids have been up to and just relaxing for the weekend. It evolved so much over the last 15 years and it’s still going to be something we need to work on trying to get that balance.
[00:48:01] And I think it’s fair to say that’s something you’re much better off than I am. You know, I yeah, I’m a I’m a workaholic. And I think it stems back from the work ethic that certainly my father instilled into me. I feel that and I’m guilty of feeling guilty if I’m not sitting at a laptop when I’m nonclinical on, this is going to be to my detriment. So let’s make changes to this. I certainly don’t make enough time for exercise in these sorts of things. The things that I know I’ve got to push forward on. I feel as well with some of the changes that we introduced as a result of covid. There’s so many more things now which are cloud based that we do. On your advice, Prav, we changed our in-house software systems. So now I feel that, yes, I might be reduced to my clinical hours, but there’s not that many more things I can do working on and in the business from home, which you can get sucked into so easily. And I feel particularly at this time, because there’s not a lot that we can do outside of work because of the current restrictions that the world is under. I’m finding myself opening up that laptop far too much on Saturdays and Sundays when really I should be spending that time with family. And I’m hoping as the the world is unlocked with all of the with Boris’s plans, I’m hoping that will instigate further change for me to try and separate work and home life for some time conscious. I’ve certainly got to work on it to punish yourself then. I mean,
[00:49:31] If that’s your natural position, if you if you thrive in that situation, then you should lean into that. I think it’s like it’s like me trying to get myself a diary and organise my week, find me the most expensive diary in the world. I still not going to use it. And your kids, from what you’re saying about spending time with your kids, when your kid sees that you’re working hard and you’re obsessed by your work, that will be a lesson you learnt, just like you learn from your dad is.
[00:50:03] No, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that’s the most valuable lesson I have ever learnt from my parents, is that hard work and determination is what is what gets you where you need to be. And I’m very grateful for that lesson was taught to me and I’m, you know, hell bent on ensuring that my daughter picks up on those traits as well. But at the same time, I’ve also got to realise that I’ve got a wife who also. Works extremely hard, and I’ve certainly got to keep her sweet because she’s a divorce lawyer, so I’ve yeah, I’ve got to realise that it’s not just about me. And I feel as a business owner, as a dentist, you can become quite a selfish individual in an effort to strive and achieve as much as you possibly can. You know, I know you’ve asked people in the past about dark days in business. And my wife would definitely say that her darkest days of being with me was when I took on a Masters because I would literally not long been engaged. And then there was a wedding and a house move to organise while I was taking myself off to the office. Every given opportunity. And I do have to consider these people. And, you know, we do have to realise that there’s more important things necessarily than than teeth and businesses. While you’re right, you do have something inbuilt within you. You do have to embrace that. You do have to consider those around you to expand.
[00:51:29] Well, if you weren’t a dentist.
[00:51:32] What would we be if we weren’t dentists?
[00:51:35] I would I would I would have loved to be in sport, and so my grown up, I would have loved to be a pro golfer wasn’t good enough, but it was always it was always hands on things for me. I would make cupboard’s I would be enjoying the outdoors. I would be a carpenter. I would always be making something with my hands. I would absolutely hate to sit in an office 9:00 to 5:00. It would drive me absolutely crazy. And we’re getting quite a lot of work and a house in a minute. I’m quite happy gardening for a full week and I’m quite happy. Make something, make a flower beds. I don’t know that that’s the sort of thing that I would as long as it’s outside active and making something, I’d be happy.
[00:52:18] And I think that’s probably why we both excelled really at the more the Dental surgery sides rather than the academia side of it. When we were at Dental school and people very often asked me that question of why, why did you become a dentist? Because again, I just growing up wanted to be my dad and my dad is a car mechanic and all. I wanted to be with him and I’d done everything in my power to boogum and pester him going into his garage, passing them the tools. And he was hell bent on me not becoming a car mechanic. He always said to me, Son, I appreciate you want to work with your hands, but you’ve got a better head on your shoulders than I have. Can you please fix something else? And it was as simple as this. He took me to a Dental appointments. Mr. Philippos was the dentist and in Krosby in Liverpool. And I was sitting there whilst my sister was getting her examination and he said to me, come on. So what is it that you’re going to do? I’m not allowing you to get underneath cars like I have. It’s far too hard to trace. Can you not fix something else? And at that point, he said, can you not fix teeth? And no word of a lie, I’ve never changed my mind since I thought that was something that I could go about doing. I did a picture of Mr. Philippos on his mantelpiece in his surgery of him and his family on a boat. And my dad tried to convince me that that was his boat. To this day, I do not know whether that was his boat or not, but I figured I could fix something and that would enable me to make money to do things in life that we might not have been able to do earlier on.
[00:53:56] We ask a question about clinical errors so that we can all learn from them from that sort of black box thinking in. What would you some of what some of your clinical errors made over the years and what can we all learn from the. I honestly don’t feel as though I’ve made any massive clangers, thankfully. I know some people talk about the wrong tooth and that sort of that sort of thing, although I Dental possible as an undergraduate, I did try and take a take. I think it was a long way out and I managed to bring out the adult tooth underneath it, which are probably straight back and quite quickly. But yeah, I don’t I don’t think clinically because we’ve always tried to work within our limits and I think I get a bit frustrated nowadays when I see dentistry and not work within the limits and try and do stuff that they shouldn’t be doing. And they’ve seen it once on YouTube and try and try and give it a crack and would never try and do that. We’ve always tried to get the knowledge, take little steps, work within ourselves and always be cautious. And that’s something that we really try and get over to our younger associates that we need to work within our limits and we shouldn’t be doing stuff that that is outside of our box and outside of our comfort zone. And I think that takes you a long way. I can’t really think we’ve always had cases that don’t quite go to plan and bridges that the porcelain chips, but nothing that’s really disastrous and nothing that we didn’t plan for failure before the start. I can’t remember any big climb.
[00:55:35] Yeah, I’d say likewise from my side of things. But there are two cases which I do often reflect back on. And not long after a qualified I was lucky enough to go and work in a VTE position in a in a lovely Big Ten Sadri practise in southpaws and my VTE training, which was great to me. And he really let me just get stuck in and I feel a lot of the new graduates these days probably don’t have that level of autonomy to be able to make those mistakes early on and learn from them. But I always remember, you know, fresh out with the books and the textbooks. So it’s, you know, studied about the Dahl effect. And I remember this guy comes in to see me quite an advanced work case. And I thought to myself, right, I’m getting stuck in on this one. The VTE trainer allowed me to go gung ho and I took the decision to have fabricated a Kobol Chrom Dalle appliance, which I like bonded to the ills of the upper arch with Pineview. Now, thankfully,
[00:56:39] This job,
[00:56:40] It served its purpose, but that was two hours of my life that I will never get back drilling a Cobalt Grumdahl appliance off the rails. So that was a that was an eye opener to be very early on. I think the second one that always jumps to mind is I there was a very elegant lady come into this surgery and Southport and she needed a bridge remove. And now, thankfully, this bridge was lower right quadrant. And I was introduced to the first time to a crown and bridge remover. So I took to this bridge with it and unfortunately managed to decolonise one of those lower abutments. And in the 20 years since, I have never gone near a crown and bridge removed.
[00:57:25] Is it one of those spring-Loaded ones or was it one of those wait wait things?
[00:57:30] It was the weight is the weight, and it still sends shivers through my spine. Now that I would like to try to remove a bridge with one of those. So everything’s been sectioned since I was a less well earlier.
[00:57:41] You guys have been in that practise for fifteen years. You must have seen some of your work that you’re not one hundred percent sure that you would repeat that work. Now, you know, things have moved on,
[00:57:53] That sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, certainly, yes. The year we know that Dental trends have changed, you know, early on there was probably a lot more ceramic work done. There was probably a lot more longer span bridges done with more training that’s been done. We’ve probably look at things in a different light. There’d be a lot more implants placed into those scenarios. Now, we might use adult orthodontics much more so now than what we would have done back in two thousand, seven, two thousand and eight. But one thing that is nice to see, though, as you look back at old ceramic cases and when they’ve been done properly, they do well and they tend to give you a lot less headaches than a chip and composite can might do these days. You know, but, you know, was it the right thing to do then? Is it the right thing to do now? Well, opinions will differ, OK, but I think we’ve always wanted to learn. We’ve always wanted to move forward with the trends and with the Times, but also tried to make sure that what we were doing is clinically the right thing to do for that patient.
[00:58:59] So I know you listen to this podcast. So the final questions. And I’ll start with you. But it’s your last day on the planet. You’ve got two kids with you and you need to leave them with three pieces of advice. Will they be? First of all, I think I think honesty is is something that has always been really important to me, and it’s one thing that frustrates me when I don’t see honesty. I think if you try to never tell a lie, you never have to try and explain yourself, because you never have to try and remember the truths and the lies that you’ve told. I think you should always be honest with people. Sometimes you have to hold your hand up and say, I got it wrong. But it was coming from a place of honesty and it was it came from the right place. I would always want my kids to be, to be honest. The second thing would be hard work. And, you know, this is a phrase that hard work pays off and you can outwork most people. Some people are always going to be cleverer than you. But you can can you can you outwork this person in a lot of the challenges in life is just how many hours are you willing to do? How many can you repeat the same thing? Ten thousand times to say if you if you repeat something ten thousand times, you become a master of it.
[01:00:29] That’s a bit of a philosophy with dentistry. But that’s that can be transferred over to kick in free kicks or a driver or whatever you want to be. So the second one would be would be definitely be hard work. And I suppose the last one would be the ethos that we’ve talked about a bit today is is what’s the worst thing that can happen? Go for it if you think, well, the worst thing that can happen is that I can go back to what I was doing before. Well, that’s not a bad place. I’d like to think I was going to have my kids back. So if they tried a big elaborate scheme and it fell flat on the on the face, I’m always gonna have a spare room for them. So don’t be frightened to fail. Give it a crack going back to two thousand and six. That was our philosophy of if this bomb’s within a month, we’ll just go back and get a job somewhere. So those are probably the three things I would say.
[01:01:24] And I think it’s fair to say again, my sentiments would mirror exactly this. But what I want to pass on to my family and young ones, you know, and I think the only things I would probably say in addition to that is yet we know sheer hard work and determination is something that will get you everywhere, you know, and always just do your best on that front. And I would definitely want my kids as well to do what I’ve done, surround themselves by like minded people, surround yourself by people like you can learn from. And that will only help you grow as an individual and push things forward. But I think the other thing I would desperately want to pass on to my little girl is I’m guilty of one thing. And my mom told me this since day one, and it comes definitely from my father, is that I’m guilty of not being able to see the wood for the trees. And that’s what she’s told me for a long, long time. And I think I’m always one of these people who strive in for the next thing and wanting something to be bigger and better than what it was. Whereas I think you really do need to be able to step back and enjoy the here and now. And that’s something I definitely want my daughter to be competitive. I wanted to have drive, but I also wanted to enjoy every step of the journey and appreciate what she’s achieved along the way. And I think that’s something I would I would definitely like to change in her from what I have learnt locally.
[01:02:46] And that even if it was your last day on the planet and you passed and then somebody spoke about you, what would you want your legacy to be? Darren was complete the sentence.
[01:03:00] I would say as a dentist, I want Darren to be regarded as the clinician who doing everything he possibly could for every patient and not just to deliver the best possible experience and the best possible treatments. As a friend, I would like to be regarded as the person who my friends could turn to. And as a father and a husband, I would like to be the person that they needed the most and done what he could when he could to provide and deliver and to be the lovely.
[01:03:34] And what about you? And they how would you like to be remembered? I think first and foremost, as a someone that wasn’t too serious or could get it done, that was relaxed or can lose it ends, you know, someone to try to enjoy that the time on the way as well, someone that didn’t get too caught up with the little nitty gritty and just try to take a bit of a bit of a step back. But someone that you can always rely on, I suppose someone that if it was ever needed, I would step up, I would do what’s required. I wouldn’t be frightened to get stuck in and go that extra mile if it was really needed. And let’s say tomorrow, somebody said to Andy, you’ve got three days left. And you had your health and everything in place. What would you do for those 30 days? I would I would get on a plane if we could. I’ve always loved to travel. I’m fascinated by seeing different places. I’m someone who just likes to walk around and see different stuff. I get bored sitting down on a beach and my wife just loves to go and sit in the sunshine and chill. And I’m pasternack. Come and go and do this. And I go and see that. I love to see different cities and places to go to South America, um, probably Australia. I took about four months out after I worked for about a year and a half and three friends went and travelled all the way up the East Coast, went down to Melbourne. Just just there was no tomorrows. And for that one time in your life, having no tomorrows was something small. No idea. Don’t let tomorrow get in the way of today. Let’s just absolutely kill it today. Do whatever we want whenever we feel like it’s just such such an amazing mindset to not have to worry about tomorrow. And, you know, my four months in Australia was definitely not tomorrow’s, and yet we didn’t leave much in the tank of that four months of work.
[01:05:46] What about yourself? We are in 30 days left on the planet. Full health. I think I would do my damnedest to get to fill a plane with all of my nearest and dearest, and I would be jetting off to the sunshine and I would be doing everything in my powers to have the best possible signoff. I’d want it to be just one hell of a party and then being able to relax, chill again. I think the whole idea of tomorrow not being of concern would be an absolute ideal. But to be surrounded by your nearest and dearest and a sunset setting. Yeah, that would be where I would want to be. I’d probably throw in some sort of fast cars into that as well with me being a little bit of a petrol head and still have a car mechanic. I’d want that to play a part in that too. But a family would definitely be at the forefront of that.
[01:06:37] And friends for guys, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been great.
[01:06:45] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders history. Your house, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.
[01:07:01] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it if you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.