Over almost two years of podcasting and almost a hundred conversations with industry luminaries have made one fact clear: Minimally-invasive dentistry is here to stay.

In this week’s episode, we look back at highlights from some of our favourite conversations with proponents of the philosophy including Tif Qureshi, Robbie Hughes, Kunal Patel and many more.

Enjoy! 

In This Episode

00:59 Tif Qureshi
06:28 Nik Sethi
08:38 Payman Sobhani
14:00 Richard Field
20:31 Robbie Hughes
25:26 Simon Chard
30:00 Zainab Al Mukhtar
32:08 Andrew Wallace
39:35 Benji Dhillon
43:25 Daz Singh
49:26 Elaine Mo
53:55 Gina Vega
01:00:45 Jason Smithson
01:04:14 Kunal Patel
01:08:36 Linda Greenwall

 

[00:00:04] 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.

[00:00:22] We’re really lucky in the UK to have some of Leaders of

[00:00:26] The invasive industry coming from here and

[00:00:30] Increasingly on the sort of the global lecture circuit. Minimally invasive dentistry seems to be something that’s really resonated with the UK dental profession. So we thought we’d put together some of our favourite bits from some of the interviews that we’ve done over the past couple of years on minimally invasive Leaders.

[00:00:49] Let’s start with

[00:00:51] None other than Tife Kareshi, maybe one of the most influential people in the field. The father of Aibi Kareshi enjoy.

[00:00:59] But what I started to do is develop a kind of protocol of space evaluation and, you know, space planning. And where I was doing the IPO and I kind of explained to him, this is what I do now. He’s a technician. So he kind of listened to me. And I also kind of created this sort of attachment sequence protocol as well.

[00:01:17] You’re talking to some orthodontists. No, not

[00:01:19] Really. I have to say, not that point. A little bit later. I did.

[00:01:23] And that’s probably the biggest advantage was that you weren’t talking. Well, I mean, I

[00:01:27] Wanted to I did want to early on and I did. And actually, you know, funny enough, one of the first people I consulted with this was was actually chatty, passive aggressive. You know, the great thing about passive was he looked at what I was doing, totally unlike maybe some others at the time. I’m totally open minded to it and saying, look, I can see what you’re doing, it just in the front teeth. And if if those patients have come to see me already and have refused, and this is surely got to be the best thing to do. So he you know, he was really quite instrumental in at least at least making me feel like, OK, this is the right thing to do if we do it correctly. Another person, you know, a year or two later, who I started to sort of bounce back some ideas from as well. And I was very lucky. And this is an amazing person to have. Mentoring me briefly was someone called Bjorn Sacristan, who’s, you know, one of the greatest orthodontists ever to have lived. Still, I was still around today. And I’ve come across him. You know, again, this is thankfully through the BBC day. And that’s what that’s one of the big things about Bastida. You get to meet people like that. And he and he and spoke spoke many years ago. And then I stayed in touch with them after. And I sort of they came on the stage, spoke, and then afterwards I sort of talk to him about what I was doing. And again, he said, you know, it makes perfect sense. And I was trying to learn a bit more about IPR and limitations. And he’d obviously ready we have

[00:02:43] Confidence for to go to the world world’s top orthodontist as a GDP and say, I’m doing this. What do you think? I mean.

[00:02:50] Well, that’s again, that’s where you got to thank people. Do you get the opportunity to and that’s you know, that’s what I’ll always be grateful for that in reality. But but the fact is, I was thinking that way. And and I always think in that way, in an environment when where others words. And so I got I was lucky. To be fair, I’m not saying that it would have been exactly the same, but I was heading that way anyway. So what I’ve spoken to one person or another, I just wanted to validate it and make sure that this was something that was.

[00:03:19] Have you thought, well, maybe I’ve even heard you’ve written. Right, or read about you saying this, that today it would be impossible because you’d be so scared of the legal ramifications of being the only one doing something.

[00:03:32] And I think I said I think you’re totally right that. And I think that’s actually quite a sad statement. Really, I think we were kind of we’ve all been lucky. To a certain degree for the time we lived in. But nowadays, yeah, you probably would fear it. However, I’m getting to the point where I’m just turning the argument around where you used to. I used to hear I still hear people say if a general dentist does, although it’s dangerous. Well, actually, I think the argument around now and say that a general dentist who doesn’t do all those dangerous. Okay, and I can justify that based on the fact that a lot of dentists don’t understand the concept of constricting envelopes and why envelopes constrict because teeth move. And how do you fix it? Not not restorative it. Yeah, you can do some restorative, but you need also and there probably I’d estimate millions of patients around the world who have repeatedly chipping front tooth. Keep it. If it keeps shipping, the dentist solution is another composite, another composite or splen. And a lot of those patients end up with crowns. And actually, the dentist understood that they needed a little bit of ortho to get the right over the right over by a bit of bonding to improve the overbuy. You’d probably find that actually a lot less people would have a.. Veneers or crowns. I’ve seen that. It’s absolutely clear. And I think it’s something it’s a real it’s a really strong part of the message now. So I think general dentists, you know, I’ve got to. Here’s a here’s something I would say controversial. If you were a general dentist and you were my general dentist and you couldn’t do any ortho, I wouldn’t even sit in your chair, not suggest what I would say, but wouldn’t even sit in your chair. You know, if you needed to do my endo, I’ll be right with that. But if there was something anterior in your solution for my front tooth, the chipping was a crown. No way am I sit in your chair, you know. So it’s quite a and it’s a powerful thing.

[00:05:08] Is seeing it now with your record, then you can say what you know, you can basically say what you like and everyone pay attention back then. Back then saying stuff. Like that as a as a GDP from Kent. Well, I find it super interesting.

[00:05:21] I was I was to stop and actually, you know, we stuck my neck out and we were showing what we were doing. And and I’d say there were, you know, you stick your head up and again, people initiate them. And I got a couple of invites to places where, you know, I was terrified and, you know, audience for the orthodontists and all sorts of stuff. But the reality was when they when they when they sat and watched what we were doing, many of them have come up to me after and said they said, well, actually, you know, you’re doing just the front teeth. You’re looking at what’s actually going on. So the key part here, and this is where people are, Ross Hobson, have actually made a huge difference, is actually to to validate the fact that what we’re trying to do is make sure the patients understand the difference between comprehensive treatment versus the compromise. That’s the key. As long as you can diagnose the case completely, you’ve got to diagnose it, not somebody else. This is really important that you can explain to the patient why doing just the front teeth is okay versus perhaps the patient may really need just having the full maths done. It shouldn’t really be a problem at all. And what if you brought that message in? I think it’s it’s made it clear that, you know, there’s nothing wrong with doing this and that actually you’ve got to start thinking about doing it if you’re not doing it already.

[00:06:29] Nick Saidy, brother of Sanjay Sethi, the minimally invasive brother in who’s in the square mile Dental practise. What do you think it comes from? I mean, both of you’ve got this sort of excellence idea, like

[00:06:42] You want to be the best. And you know what? I’ve even spoken to you on this course of yours that you guys will get to it. But this aesthetic thing. And I was saying, well, you know, how you making the numbers work and all this and you were getting the numbers. Not really what we’re interested in,

[00:06:58] Interested in the learning for ourselves, you know. What do you think that comes from? Is that like

[00:07:04] I don’t know. Is it your dad? Is it where does it come from? Why did you want to be the best? Not the Jarno, the biggest, the richest or whatever it is, whether the quality thing come from. I think if you have it not well, we’ve got amazing family of people around us. But I think that actually comes a lot from Sanj. I’m certainly down naturally. I have I’ve got a good brain. I’m quite academic. I love reading. But Sanjay’s passion to just be the best he can be, and not just for the sake of being mad to deliver the best for his patients. And he’s one of these people that he may not and he won’t mind me saying this. He may not get something as quick as maybe I do academically, but no one will work harder than him to them. Practise, practise, practise, practise. There’s no secret whenever people say, oh, how do you do this? How do you get your constant looking like that Alja? As you know, Payman, there’s no secret. You’ve got to follow protocols meticulously. You’ve got to time things. You know, if you’re told to do something for a certain number of seconds, get a timer and time it. And this is what Sanjay did. He took every little part of the protocol and just practised it religiously again and again and again. And he was breathing down my neck when I first tried to, you know, and every day I’d have to show him before and after he’d have his nurse, I’d have my nurse spying on me to tell him where I was going wrong. And that’s honestly the kick up the butt. I needed that. It’s how he lives literally every single day, just learning, practise, practise, practise, practise.

[00:08:39] Payman Sobhani, who I really enjoyed talking to you, just a great guy to have on the show.

[00:08:46] He’s built a

[00:08:47] Whole practise based on memory based, and she’s got a beautiful concept

[00:08:50] Work that he does. If you ask me what I’m supposed to be learning in the role that I’m in as a clinical director as opposed to Dental, I mean, I’m more of a management position of managing the clinical aspects of that business, but also I’ve got to be there for the staff. And you know, that that aspect, I think, is probably what I’ve gotten the most about what I’ve done. And, you know, this actually came from is how much I suppose I’ve listened to this podcast. A good sign. I think it was Mark Hughes. He said, I’m quoting this podcast. Dental Leaders. Covid hearing previous

[00:09:28] Episodes keep coming

[00:09:29] Up. You like to use back in November 2010. We should create a

[00:09:37] Citations list at the end of every

[00:09:39] Podcast. He said he said that he wished he did an MBA. Right. So I was like, oh, that’s interesting. I’ve always thought about doing an MBA. I mean, I’ve just put a practise. And, you know, he said that that would have sped things up for him so much. So it’s like, OK, so first thing I did, I bought the personal movie, a book that I could tell you, a very good book, recommend, highly personal and B, I can’t revetted Cognise Presynaptic. It’s really good. But then I also start searching Ambus and I not the LSC, do a short course 10 week MBA essentials. And I’m seven weeks into that now. And I’ve just signed on to that six and seven weeks of it. And a week soon is it’s intense because this is

[00:10:24] As it help with the Dental practise.

[00:10:26] So again, first week was the whole leadership management influencing all of that sort of stuff. Then it’s going to go and then he goes on to, you know, reading, finance, reading, accountancy, all of these sort of things that are the essential things that you need to know. I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know. Maybe some people will say you need an MBA is Dental practise. I think probably that you don’t. But I think it was good to do that and to be in the process of it, because I’m I’m just relating everything back to the practise and being, you know, at the beginning, where I’m just kind of looking at it like, OK, so this means this, this means this. I can relate this to this. I can go in and start doing this and try this out as made an impact. I think I think that it made me more confident. I think I felt like a bit of an imposter.

[00:11:10] The thing is the thing is, did we as dentists, we think we need to do a course for everything?

[00:11:14] Yeah, I mean, some of the to

[00:11:17] Some of the top business people in the country of corner shop owners. Yeah. Yeah. Then in the

[00:11:22] Course. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:25] Listen, man, I’m no expert, but business is looking after your customers, looking after your people, looking after your suppliers. That that that is the. That’s it. Absolutely. Do do an MBA. Sure. Do an MBA. Yeah, but but, you know, it’s not going to be the answer. They’re the answer you’re looking for as dentists. We just think we have to keep doing courses like if you want to do bone grafting to go do a bone grafting course. You know, when you look look on the High Street, man, there’s a restaurant. That guy didn’t go on an MBA to run.

[00:12:02] His restaurant is all right. So whatever whatever you’re learning, you have to apply it almost immediately.

[00:12:10] But it seems like it’s a massive change for you to go from being an associate at your brother’s place, a tiny place like that, to basically the principal at this huge place.

[00:12:22] Yeah, I mean, we need to pay for staff. Yeah.

[00:12:25] What about the practise manager? Is the practise manager an incumbent or is that someone Dental beauty of imposed?

[00:12:31] Yes. And she she came she joined with us, basically say, yes, she is. She we added her. But I have kind of to I guess I have I have an existing practise manager that was there before. And so all the staff

[00:12:44] Issues she deals with, as I write

[00:12:47] This, I mean, don’t go through hard times at times. Come through through. I think we do it all together. You know, I think it’s um I kind of had a meeting with everyone today even just to say that I want everything to be done together. This is not just me telling you guys how my vision is for this practise. You’ve been here for this long. You’ve been here for a long time. Me and Sophie, who’s the practise manager, have have just come in here. I want suggestions from you. I don’t just want problems. I want solutions to those problems. Are you going to give me a if you have a problem with something, I would like to know what your opinion is, how to sort it out. And I’ll give you my opinion on how to sort it out. And then we’ll get to some sort of middle ground that we both understand and then we can move forward from it. I think that’s how I’m trying to deal with it. And that’s how any staff issues or anything at the moment. I want to try and deal with as we as we go ahead. And these are things, you know, I’m learning these things that I’ve picked up that it doesn’t work for me just to tell you this is how it’s going to be done, because that’s not going to make you committed to making anything changes, is going to make you complain. It’s going to make you say, OK, but, you know, and then go away and then actually make a change, you know, and do things for the practise, for that for the benefit of the practise field.

[00:14:02] Old friend of mine known him since two years before he qualified than straight real expert, but particularly in in this area. So tell me this. But I mean, it’s got a lot of like I’ve I’ve only worked in my whole career and

[00:14:18] Not you know, I gave up dentistry, but but I worked only in three practises and each one taught me

[00:14:25] A bunch of stuff. And by the way, some some

[00:14:28] Stuff, you know, things not to do. But but if you had to

[00:14:32] Distil, you know, you’ve worked at these places where they’re like right at the top of the field, if you had to distil some nuggets

[00:14:41] On

[00:14:42] How to run a practise, I know you’ve always been on the associate side in these places,

[00:14:47] But what are what are the key things you’ve learnt about practise management, patient management, team management

[00:14:54] Products, whatever, whatever it is.

[00:14:57] I think well, if you take Andy for for an example, I was there, I think I was there two thousand and twelve. Two thousand and fifteen. And if you look at who is still working there in terms of staff, is everyone bar people who’ve retired? So I think the first thing is keep your staff happy. Because you screwed without them, really treat your stuff well and keep them happy. And I know I’ve I’ve there’s probably people listening to this and work with me thinking, what’s he talking about? I know I can be quite difficult. I know I’m difficult to work with. But I think in the last few years for sure, it sort of hammered home that definitely keep keep yourself happy

[00:15:52] While you difficult to work with. But what you have very high standards and someone does something wrong.

[00:15:57] I have very high standards for myself and very high standards, I suppose, for the people around me. But I think the big thing is I get very tunnel vision when I’m working. Nothing else. Nothing else exists. Just the just the teeth. And I think if you don’t know me, I can potentially think I’m just you might come across as quite I could come across you come across as quite stern or I get very focussed and I go very quiet. And a lot of our appointments are two, maybe three or four or five hours long. It’s like I supposed to be quiet, sort of intimidating sitting next to someone who doesn’t really speak for for that much time.

[00:16:40] How did you stop that spilling over into the patient

[00:16:43] Pool to me? I mean,

[00:16:45] You’ve got these high standards of bedside manners. Definitely part of that is that for sure.

[00:16:50] I mean, a lot of the time before these big, long appointments, I’ve spent a lot of time with these people, with these patients building up trust, building up sort of conversation by the nurses that I work with are very good. And they’ll they will. Talk to the Payman, obviously, I’m not going to be silent for that long, but there’ll be portions of time where I’m just sort of looking and I’ll put my hand out for something and. Most time,

[00:17:16] If that thing doesn’t doesn’t fall into your hands now, you’re really pissed off.

[00:17:20] I never I never I mean, on some of these gross things around. I’m not someone who shouts. I’m not. So does any of that. I just think it’s because I am silent that it comes across as quite like I’m angry. I’m never I don’t get angry with any surgery. I don’t get. I know a lot. I don’t know a lot. I know of dentistry through things are that’s not what they one that’s not me. I’m just I’m just quite a focussed person. And if you if it’s new to working with me, I suppose that can come across as either rude or indifferent, maybe. But certainly there’s no intention behind if I ever work with someone new, I always say to them when I work, I can get quite tunnel vision. Nothing’s ever personal. I get quite quiet. But it’s it’s it’s just the way I work.

[00:18:13] Tell me other stuff you’ve learnt from these prices.

[00:18:16] Okay, so treat your staff well restaff. Well, I don’t know if it’s what I’ve learnt from these products is something that I’ve often talked about from with newer qualified dentists is don’t make the patients problem your problem. And I think I think it takes a good few years to. Acknowledge that because you haven’t given the patient to say you have an. You have been sort of given them, Perio, you didn’t do the last bad Crohn, don’t internalise your patient’s problems, you’re there to help them. Don’t get stressed about January. I think it takes three or four years to get around that way of thinking. And that’s something that I think is very important in terms of from these practises, is it’s because it’s a difficult one to answer, because I don’t really. I don’t really know any different,

[00:19:17] But how about the differences between them, I mean, to some of them have morning Huddle’s and some of them don’t.

[00:19:22] Yeah, I’ve only worked in one practise. Is that a morning or two? And actually, that was that was very good. That was fifty two the morning Hodor. It was what we said yesterday. How did it get sorted? Hoover got in today. Do we have any VIPs? Do they need to do any special things? Have we got Lopper going out? Who’s dealing with the Laborde? Who’s going to the post office? That was very useful. And I know that taking 50 minutes out of the morning of your day with getting all of your staff together can be quite challenging. I was 52, I think the day the first patient was a half nine in the morning huddle. I think it was a nine until nine 15. So everyone was in even the dentist’s half an hour earlier. And it was that’s a weird way of as a self as a self-employed dentist having to be in half an hour before your work. It is a different way of thinking. But actually, so many problems were avoided from that morning. Hudl ice is worth its weight in gold, for sure.

[00:20:32] Hughes Houston powerhouse. Rob is from Liverpool. You see, since the interview with him, he’s promised into so many different areas with his avant garde stuff, the medy form stuff. One of my favourite interviews actually really worth listen to the whole thing. What gave you the foresight to, you know, go to dentistry? I mean, a lot of a lot of young kids would be good at sport and have that foresight to take care of what happens after. Yeah, the sport finishes. I mean, you know, getting footballers doing it well, dentist

[00:21:06] Dentistry for me was always a career kick. Boxing was never career a horrible

[00:21:10] Because it didn’t pay that.

[00:21:11] It didn’t you like like like I said earlier, I had had I’ve always had a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset and found ways to make money in income through kickboxing and through teaching seminars and making a nine volume DVD set that I sold relatively well. But it was never going to be a career for me. And what attracted me about dentistry was, you know, I was always good at sciences, at school biology, at the general interest in the medical fields. But dentistry, for me, again, it allowed me to to have a mindset and a vision that I knew that as soon as I qualified and knew the type of dentist I wanted to be and I wanted to get quickly into my own business with my own stamp on things as quickly as I possibly could.

[00:21:52] But just take me back to the first time you thought dentistry. Why dentistry? Was that someone, a dentist?

[00:21:58] It all started with school, like careers, conventions, as the. Do you go to these topics? We advise you to go for these. You go for a week’s sort of training on the chose a local dentist. The good relationship with my dentist, because he used to make me go shields for me sports. Oh, yeah. So I had a good relationship with him. It was it was it was a guy called Dr. Khan in in Liverpool. Oh, yeah. But at the time, he was he was the cosmetic dancers. The celebrity

[00:22:24] Celebrity guy. Right? Celebrity Dental. Yeah.

[00:22:27] So he was quite influential to me as a 15 year old boy.

[00:22:30] And he liked his Mercedes or whatever, of course. Is that what it was? Yeah. You know,

[00:22:36] I’ll never remember. I’ll never rimma. I’ll never forget. He said to me, what college I want to drive, Rob. And at the time, I think BMW was released the next five, and that was like the car for me. So I’d love to drive and next five. And he said to me, you want to be a cosmetic dentist, that you only said aim higher. You can have a Ferrari if you want for that. That’s never really been my my drive. And listen it listening to people in business and I have got a massive interest in business, how businesses grow and evolve. And I believe that if you provide the right level of service or nowadays experience, I think is the buzz word. That’s the big with what people want find value in in a brand. It’s about the experience. Then the pennings will come your way. If you focus on the money, then you focus in the wrong place and you’re going to start upsetting people along the way. That’s that’s the way the way I think.

[00:23:27] Just tell me, sir, how you first got into business. You mentioned earlier you were selling DVD courses and stuff like that. So naturally, you know, being an entrepreneur is in your blood or part a part of your DNA of who you are. Just talk us through your very first business idea and what your vision was and what you drive was behind the.

[00:23:48] Yeah, we’ve Dental Street. You know,

[00:23:50] Before the general the first of my first foray into business was cleaning my dad’s taxi and then his taxes and finding money under the max in the car and, you know, ripping the CS up and all the rest of it. And I can just almost relate to you. When you said when you were younger, you just started doing seminars and stuff. You know, our typical kickboxer would do.

[00:24:08] Is it I wouldn’t say it was typical, but there was. But there was a market for it. So, again, quite cleverly, just using a business mind like I know we used to travel a lot to compete. And when you compete, there’s thousands of people in that area for that tournament, usually on a Sunday. So I used to Soyland sort of let people know that I’ll be there on a Saturday, go daily and will teach us and we’ll teach a seminar. So the numbers weren’t difficult to find people going there anyway. And and then obviously you have a centralised place with these people from all over the country coming to one place. I was a relatively big name in the sports at the time. You know, you could get 100 hundred people in the room. Twenty five pound the pop of his walked away with two and a half grand and 14 years old. So it was it was it was it was just that was probably the first sort of business idea. And this was before the Internet was was big. You know, I remember advertising on MySpace for this. So that’s how long ago it was. And then on the back end of the the DVD series come to mind. So we’ve recorded for like four days flat out, and we call it nine volumes, which is basically that was basically the whole syllabus of techniques that we teach are my dojo and tips and tricks from, you know, for competition and all and Buffalo as well. So then we used to sort of like set up like a little mini stall at the tournament’s and sell the DVDs, some sunshine.

[00:25:27] Great friend again known him since before he qualified. We make your name in digital industry and particularly minimally invasive cosmetic dentistry. It just seems for Simon, whatever he puts his mind to him, he does it 110 percent. Let’s talk about that. I mean, the criticism, I guess, is that Instagram is promoting a kind of dentistry that’s perhaps a patient. And a lot of these youngsters, in inverted commas, are, you know, upstarts and. Yeah, and I don’t agree with it. I think that, you know, every situation has good and bad in it. Yeah. But what’s your what’s your what’s your feeling on it? Because, you know, I’m not out there. I’m not posting everyday. I’m not building a personal brand. So a lot of times when people are talking about these things, you might think they’re talking about me.

[00:26:15] Yeah, well, that’s always what I think. And any time I see insta dentist or anyone slating dentists who pose cases on Instagram, on on on Facebook, I assume they’re talking about me. And actually, when they tend to follow, I’ve had we’ve had some incidences in the past of people writing lists, Ashleigh, of dentists who should follow to, in essence, troll, I think. Wow. And I was one of the people that was followed by that specific account. But anyway, I think my my feeling on it is that, as you say, like with anything, there’s always practitioners who are going to be doing things correctly and doing things incorrectly. There’s obviously cowboys in every profession. I don’t think there’s any more cowboys on Instagram than there are on Facebook or on in just the general public. But for me, Instagram is just a way that I communicate with my generation. It’s as simple as that, that everyone who is 20 to 40 is on Instagram, whether they be a dentist or a patient. And so that’s where I hang out. And that’s for me, has been incredibly instrumental in me building my business, in finding patients who are also the sort of work that I provide, which is minimally invasive aesthetic dentistry. Normally things like AB as as Tife told me when I was an undergrad and I’m Beachum Bond, many small makeovers stuff. And that’s just it just is what it is. I think the reason why some people have an issue with it is that there are certain individuals who are doing the same treatment on every patient or that’s what they’re posting. They may not be, but that’s how it comes across. And anyone who’s doing the same treatment on everyone must therefore be incorrectly prescribing that treatment. If they were doing what everyone, which they probably aren’t as it is the cases that they’re posting. But if they were then not was not, then she’s not one size fits all. You can’t do the same treatment on everyone.

[00:28:06] Well, or there were specialists. I don’t mean the actual meaning of the words, but yeah, that’s that’s the kind of work they do.

[00:28:12] Yeah, exactly. But if that was to be the case, then they would they would have to they would they could only do that procedure on cases that were suitable. And I think that’s the concern from some people. I don’t know. It’s a weird environment. I think the most important thing for me is that the profession just needs to sort itself out with regard to the negativity, because you can’t judge someone on a case they put up as to that’s what they do for everything or that’s who they are as a person. You don’t know the ins and outs of the situation. And I think everyone is just so keen to slate each other. And that’s why we’re so weak as a body against things like NHS dentistry and that sort of thing, which has the potential to be such a positive for the general public, and that we’ve allowed the government to just cut, cut, cut the the budget to do that. And now it’s in such a state of disrepair that it’s very difficult to work in.

[00:29:07] So what we need to be more united.

[00:29:10] Absolutely. But there’s so much negativity. I mean, it’s horrible the way in which individuals Dental specifically I see speak to each other on the main Dental forums on Facebook. It’s just horrible. I mean, I’ve just stopped watching them altogether because it’s just atrocious the way that people treat each other. I don’t I don’t it’s so funny. I mean, we have a WhatsApp group with some some of my dentist mates. And you can actually see when when the trolls have broken up for Christmas, because you could do all those forums where they would just slating other dentists, Instagram, Dental, his young dentists, whatever. Whoever you take your fancy Snapchat dentists, I don’t know who the next one is going to be, but it was as soon as they broke up for Christmas. They obviously don’t have anything else to do it. And they just started just keyboard warriors going ahead and pulling that negativity out on social media. So I don’t see what point is, to be honest.

[00:30:00] Seinabo Mukataa, one of our earlier guests, beautiful comments at work. We talk about the devoted herself to be becoming patient centric within minimally invasive dentistry. What about talking about your composite work? Because in the end, just right now, you are here because of the fact that you’ve come up on our on our radar on the many small Makov radar of really beautiful composite bow. Thank you. It really is. Do you feel like that can be taught? Do you feel like there’s a there’s a. Talent there?

[00:30:32] Yeah, I’m sure

[00:30:33] We can grapple with this a lot. You know, we teach 30 dentists a month on this subject. And some people are scared that I don’t have the talent. And we’re always saying if you follow the simple steps, you can get there. But what was your journey from the composite perspective?

[00:30:49] I’ve always had a background where my mom draws paintings and she’s encourage us. And, you know, and art was always something we just found really fascinating. And we’d love drawing. And we were quite particular

[00:30:59] About some of your first Instagram posts. Yeah.

[00:31:02] Yeah, I saw that. So we I’m quite particular about how things are done in my hands. You know, they need to be a certain way. So, you know, when it came to composite, I think that it was literally just practise, practise, practise. And then I’d look at pictures, look at what’s this beautiful smile, what’s desirable. I look to eye shadow the dentist in Beverly Hills, Dorfmann, Dr. Dorfman. And, you know, he had photo, he had wall pictures like you’ve got smiles here. He had lots of these. And I look and just really absorb what was a beautiful smile and then just try and recreate it. And I had a slightly, you could say, OCD approach towards a composite. So if I was doing it, too, I wouldn’t let the patient leave until I was really happy with this that set them up. Have a look. Check with the lobes. Check with everything. Sorry. Can I just sit you back down? Can I just push that bit? And and that was kind of how I was doing. And then and then rewarding feeling of their reaction. And it’s addictive when patients are that happy, you know, about something.

[00:32:08] Andrew Wallace, one of the teachers from the IRS Academy, talking about his practise in Northern Ireland and teaching

[00:32:17] Evolved the practise of 16 years or you worked there for a bit?

[00:32:20] No, I bought it, I think, and I bought it all moved on scene, so I didn’t really know what I was buying. How does that happen? It was kind of there was no real due diligence done then in terms of buying a practise. You got to see the books. You put call in once or twice to meet the staff and a couple of patients. And then you go, you know, there wasn’t a great deal of choice, private practise. And then more than a dozen these were kind of few and far between. Most practises were NHS. You know, they’ve been talking about changing the NHS system in Northern Ireland for like 20 years. And I saw, you know, six years ago that, you know, I don’t want somebody else having such control over what I do. Yeah. You know, I don’t want to be in a system where the NHS can decide to change what they want to do and not be locked in, because I’ve spent a fortune on an NHS practise.

[00:33:08] What was the one thing about practise ownership that you were totally unprepared for? It sounds like you just thought, you know what? Sounds like a good idea. I want to do this. Open-ended still just by a practise. But those books look good, but they get stuck in.

[00:33:20] That was that was pretty much the thought process. What was definitely managing people. Yeah, that’s the hardest thing. Managing staff, trying to see things from their point of view can be challenging. We’ve we’ve had some brilliant members of staff in the past. We have a great team right now. We’ve been through some challenges with the team in the past, like every team does. Sure. But is there still the other partner in place as well? So he retired 10 years ago. So it’s just you and Fiona now. So I’ve thought since had another partner. Oh, a different guy. He he he did an amazing thing last year. He emigrated to Australia. Oh, so you very Celler, you talk about big changes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he did after Vht. He worked in Australia for a year with his wife. And they’ve been out there on holidays many times and they decide they want to give it a try. So the way the visa thing works in Australia, if he hadn’t done it last year, wasn’t going to happen. So this practise, Salz, Heiss Afterwork Associates and an Australia team, another chaperone. So they’ve been a bit of a transition in the last six months for killing. Seems to be coming on Covid.

[00:34:29] And was that like a due diligence process, did you that this guy before he bought in or.

[00:34:33] Actually, yeah. Craig, my partner, just went to Australia. He was very, very open about the whole thing. And yeah, well, essentially him and I sat down. He didn’t advertise the practise. He spoke to his accountant. And we are pleased with the same outcome. And he said, well, I know this chap seems like a nice guy wants about practise. I happened to mention to another young dentist, good message me about sort of what sort of private practises were were looking for associates that at that stage between us, we kind of decided who would have been the best fit for the practise, I think. So he was obviously brilliant with the whole thing.

[00:35:08] And what were you given first refusal to do across your mind? Yeah, I think

[00:35:11] Fusel, but I quite I, I must have met Craig that a lot of the running of the practise. Ok, particularly with me travelling a lot. And I work in a referral practise one day a week as well. So my focus isn’t always on 100 percent on the practise. So you need some. I do. I do. Somebody somebody there was a vested interest wants to see the what is your role in the practise that you have other ideas, guy or something, or the other day, or you do the hiring and firing or what do you do? I try and just do the straight people make me do other things. Yeah. Essentially, I don’t particularly enjoy the I definitely do enjoy hiring and firing and certainly the firing. Thankfully, I haven’t got to do very much of that. The running of the practise I find challenging because I really enjoy them straight down the barrel of the the tactical challenge of it. I don’t really enjoy running a business doing the books. I’m the same

[00:36:15] And so firin talk me through

[00:36:18] Is not even about how to do it. Now we have to do is just the once etwas. I’m well, I’m not going to say a lot about it, but it was a very, very challenging time for the entire team. Ultimately, it had to be done and the team came out of it much better as a result. But it was a very, very challenging time.

[00:36:39] I find it the hardest thing to do is the hardest part of my job is firing some modelling.

[00:36:44] We had that notion, you know, I really believe in this. Now, if you’re going to fire someone and give them four months pay. Yeah. Because if you know, to make to to sweeten the pill. Yeah. But the reason is because if you don’t, what you do is performance you. They should have been fired four months ago. But you stretch it out, you know what I mean? You going to Payman performance anyway? Oh, no, no. One of the Dental gurus calls that a well poisoner. Oh, is that right? If you have them there, you’re better off just to just get them out, get them out. But what I’m saying is just to make it easier for yourself, give them a load of hay, because I’ve been through this situation where we haven’t fired that person. Right. And just stretched it out, stretched, you know, how long would this prolonging the pain with this particular person? How long extra was she there that she should have been out, you know? So there was there was a degree of challenge and difficulty going on with this particular person. But there was one particular incident which brought everything to a head. And we had to involve a huge consultant. And, you know, the first decision that they made was, OK, she can’t be in the premises. So I had to, you know, walk in and say, OK, you’re leaving now. And I went through the whole dismissal process and impartial.

[00:38:00] So you had to deliver the news, right? Yeah. When did you find out that you were going to deliver the news from all the time delay between you saying, I’ve got to do this job and doing the job?

[00:38:12] It was within 24 hours. Ok, did

[00:38:14] You have the conversation a few times with yourself in your head?

[00:38:17] It was a fairly abrupt conversation, was it? And kind of had to be because of because of the

[00:38:22] Because of the situation. Yeah.

[00:38:23] And this was one of the times when I couldn’t lean Craig because he was actually off in Australia on holiday. So it was one of the few times that was kind of left flank, sort of. Well, you know, there was a lot of matches and emails and phone calls and things, but was done to me to deliver the bad news. And it’s definitely not a thing I’d like to repeat. But, you know, sometimes that’s life to somebody that’s not

[00:38:49] Payman performance pay for anyone you’re going to fire. They’re not going to lie. And they listen to this podcast.

[00:38:56] I’ve never done it. But what I’m saying, the idea I’ve certainly had people stick around for four months longer than they should because we didn’t get round because making excuses, la la la la, la, la. You know, we’ve we’ve had some great team members and we found some not so great team members. I’ve never been one to try and change somebody’s mind if they decide they’re going to leave some of the best. Yeah, well, not hope to do well. And oftentimes, if somebody is not flourishing in your business, it often takes a change of situation for them and they they’ll flourish somewhere else. So it’s I try not to I will try and convince somebody to stay if they’ve made up their mind to go, I suppose. And you did an interesting one medical doctor, the one he focussed in on, you know, facial aesthetics, young guy who’s already gone a long way in that in that field, going for the dentist as well, to open a practise either as a boy or something. You’ve never been a boss. I guess you’ve had people about

[00:39:58] To manage people. Yeah, but never been a true

[00:40:00] About what kind of boss do you think you’re going to be? I do.

[00:40:03] No, I’m actually really looking forward to that. I think I’ll be fair. I want to be fair. I want to be inspiring. And I want people I want to help people achieve their goals in work and outside of work. You know, one of the nicest things I’ve heard within my industry is a clinic owner. Whoever comes in for whoever she takes on, one of the first things she asks is what is you would like to achieve outside of work? Came in and said, you know, I want to buy my own. She goes, okay, we’re going to work towards that, you know, get help. And she did she helped to achieve a dream by helping us structure things financially. That’s the kind of direction I want to go in

[00:40:39] Fernholz

[00:40:40] When it’s needed. Yeah, I think come back to that patient experience if there’s any compromise on the quality of delivery of anything to the clinic. I think that’s what would be fun.

[00:40:51] About this being Prav, we talked about the differences between the way he runs his people and the way I run my people. Sure. And, you know, I think actually when I really come down to it, I’m probably better employee than I am as a boss. I agree as as an employee

[00:41:07] Stepping into a community

[00:41:08] To say I simply know it’s just kind of having someone to report to. Yeah. By the way, I love being, you know, my own boss, but not having someone to report to the external, you know, someone checking up on me is actually good for me. Yeah. And I’m very close with my team. But at the same time, when you’re very close with the team is hard to tell them off. Yeah, of course. And we were talking about hiring and firing. Very difficult thing. But it’s interesting because it’s very different working with people when you’re all working for someone else. Yeah. And you think you’re great. You know, even though it might be your nurse or your at the same time, you’re not the boss. Yeah. And actually being their boss.

[00:41:49] Yeah, I can totally see that. No, it’s stepping into new water for me. I’m fully aware how I like to think about it in my head is, you know, I do want to be a bit like, you know, friendly, you know, uninspiring form, you know, my employees. I think the one thing the one thing

[00:42:11] I want to be is

[00:42:14] Like I just have to laugh, though, when you said this is so inspiring.

[00:42:20] I came here from Manchester this morning. I was at Payman office before he was. He lives three minutes away.

[00:42:26] Yeah, but I went to bed before you woke up. I just woke

[00:42:31] Vinicio the tennis table. That’s great stuff that the employees. Right. But yeah, I guess, you know, like you both got your own business. I think I see this fledgling business is like another child. I think when anyone messes with that, I think that. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Bug hell out of me and I’ll protect that little child as much as I can.

[00:42:50] But you know how sometimes your kid does something silly and you and you start making excuses for your kid?

[00:42:55] Well, see, I don’t do that well.

[00:42:57] Oh, it’s a friend or, you know, some some. You end up making excuses for your business as well. Yeah, it’s true. I catch myself doing it all the time. Yeah. Well, if you got a longer term plan than this one clinic, you’re thinking lots of them might. Yeah, well, you know.

[00:43:11] No, no. That’s the ambition. I’d love to. Yeah, I’d love to. You know, if the brand works, if the patient journey works, yeah. I’d love to take this to other sites 100 percent. That would be the dream. But I want to make first one work.

[00:43:25] That thing from all these barsh. Good friend of mine for years and years. Real trail blazer when they open that practise, funny, brandied loads of Invisalign, you know, I still think they did huge line open days. Yeah. So what was the first thing you did marketing wise to get some first few patients to do so? I think we did. We were looking at I think we looked at radio ads as a great way to look at trying to bring people in at the at the get go. Yeah. From the get go. So, yeah, it was a mentor. I mean, you have interest. We had interesting conversation with various different people. And actually. No, sorry, let me liar. I did we didn’t do radio at the beginning. We did that a little bit later. And what we did do is we just did some simple stuff, which was just basic, a little bit of brand awareness around where we were. Do we just had a few posters lined up. We decided to do some stuff with the train stations and things like that around it as well. And that’s. Yeah, flipflops. Yeah. If you apers we did a little bit of newspapers, not as much as we hoped we would, but then I think when we did our first Invisalign open day back in January 2009, that’s what we use when we use railyards for the first time. And that was that was what really kicked us off after that. We’d opened in November 2008 and we had a. It’s been a bit of a soft opening for two or three months leading up to that. But then after that January, it’s just kind of been we just went pretty much for.

[00:44:43] On which station was it? Station called Radio City. The one with the tower. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what was it? It was it was it just like as you would expect anything was. No, it was just when we when we did it, it was like a very specific advert for Invisalign Open Day that we were going to do business in a certain price and it was going to be on this day at this time, they wanted to come in and they had to sort of they had to call up and make an appointment to come and see us on that day. But you still do radio advertising went on sporadically, sporadically. I think that, you know, there’s better ways to look at trying to spend that kind of. How does it cost to advertise on the radio in Liverpool? To be honest. And cost as much or as little as you want. All right. It’s like if you had a budget for five in a month, you can get out of for five in Panama. You want to spend a million Kutiman. They they give you this as well to that as well. So, you know, it comes down to sort of it comes it just comes down to sort of how much you really want to look at trying to spend. It’s great for creating awareness. You know, we because we’ve been doing it for so long, you know, people do kind of recognise us on the radio. We have got a jingle. Yes. Don’t sing it. No, no. I’m on Invalidly. Happening, what’s your tagline, what’s your tagline? One smile at a time where individual smiles must deliver.

[00:45:58] So we just rewind a little bit. The name Ollie and Dash. I only she found out about this, but 10 years later, where it

[00:46:04] Came off the minimalist humanity.

[00:46:06] Yeah, I think it was then. So I’m sure a lot of our listeners are in the same position as me. Would you just like to enlighten us? Yeah. Straighteners? Yeah.

[00:46:15] Is there a tag line to follow? No. No. Okay. Well, Nowata. So the name only Joshua. Does that come about? So my real name is Harambee. Very few people can really say properly first time around and it’s easy to get this question. Sorry. Say that again. So what happened was, is that when I first when I was first born, my sister can say my full name properly. And I stood by my sisters to this day for this. But so she read of a choice at the time, and she started calling me all of them. So for my entire family, all I heard him call me Ollie. And it’s just it’s just that’s the name, that state. When I went to the school in Saudi, my name was Oliver saying it was just basically that’s what it is, is like my yearbooks all have all of us together, but it’s quite something. But then when I when we moved when we moved back to England, I was like, you know, all of this thing does have a reinterred. Yeah, you’d be surprised. Right. But, you know, it’s when we moved back to when we moved back from Seattle and moved into you moved back to Yorkshire, you know, it was made aware to us, as I maybe should start using a real name now and then. So I use my real name. And then that eventually just got shortened down year after year, down to like three letters does.

[00:47:15] So I went through sort of school and uni be known as dyes, and that was fine. I had no problems with that. But we we’re coming up with names at the clinic, Sudar. She’s my business partner. Naturally, her nickname is Dosch and Incense. Yeah. So that made sense. How did you meet us? Again, we used to work in the same clinic together. She was OK. Yeah, she was she was working in another clinic at the time, and it just came to a head where we just felt that we just need to do our own thing. And it just you know, we we have a great business relationship and it works really, really well. We’re business partners first and then a friend seconds, which I think works quite well for both of us, to be honest. You must be nice before she does exist, right? Yeah, she does. She’s there on our website. Sorry. The size of those. Yeah. No, it’s it’s quite it is quite interesting. I get called Ohly and there’s some sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing that I have seen. You’re the Colonel Sanders of the brand somehow. And listen, I’m the sons of Enlightened. I’m astonished does more than I do in light of the Prav Prav world will attest to that.

[00:48:14] You say more table tennis. Yeah.

[00:48:16] Somehow I didn’t do it on purpose. No. Did you say? No, it’s definitely it’s definitely you know, it’s you know, we both have different lives. You know, it’s she’s she’s got a lovely husband. She’s got two at the time. When we first opened up, she had two really young boys. Karen, her youngest had I think was probably less than a year old, I think, when we opened up. So her time I mean, her time, she wanted to maximise between a family and the clinic. So she had no time for any other opportunities are all in. Dyche may have looked to try and afford. And so basically, I was just you know, it was just me. I didn’t I don’t have any sort of dependents. I don’t have any family. And it was just basically, you know, whenever one of these things kind of came about, when an opportunity came about, I’m like, yes, I’ll just say yes. And we’ll work out how to do it later, which is kind of when it’s happening. And the mother of the Susie Susie takes care of the staff. Yeah. Issues. She takes care of a lot of the patient contacts as well. Are you involved with the staff matters that she was literally handle that? You know, one of the things that one of the challenges that we’ve had as a business, as we’ve grown, is that we’ve grown from an idea into an actual business. And, you know, the process of being a business business is that you need to be able to look at delegating things in and amongst yourselves. And Elaine Meaux, I really enjoyed this conversation in in talking about Haitian’s experience and what she learnt from the restaurant business,

[00:49:36] What you think and working in the restaurant taught you about dentistry and working with patients. While the parallels there in terms of when you were 14, you were there? I was brought up in a typical cornershop environment. I was serving customers from the age of 10 and 12. I was telling people they were too young to buy cigarettes and alcohol. Yet despite being 11 years old myself, and that taught me a lot about communicating with people of different backgrounds, ages and everything and to become a good communicator. Can you draw some parallels from what you learnt growing up in the restaurant business industry, family business, and how that’s helped you to become a bad thing

[00:50:16] Is definitely mould that it’s not particular as a dentist, but as a person in general. It’s all about service at the restaurant is the same as a patient journey. And at the end of the day, you want are making customers feel special just as you make your patients feel special. I mean, for me, if I go into a restaurant, they can have the most amazing food, like just like a dentist can have the do the most amazing feeling. But at the end of day, it’s a feeling the food’s food. And actually what MOZA is the experience itself. If you’ve had a bad experience coming in, people and your waitress isn’t addressing you. And not not there to serve you, then automatically you’re a negative, and it doesn’t matter how good the food is that you serve. Always the customer service ranking. And you know what? The other day for my patients is we there are a lot of dentists out there who we even though we’re at the same level, we can provide the same filling. But what makes it different is asking the patient how they are their family, making them feel at home and actually being a being a person rather than your dentist and being someone that you can

[00:51:20] Actually if you want one big differences within a restaurant. You can see the food, taste the food. Often the patient has no idea what’s going on in their own mouth. So the communication service side of it is even more important than it is, because, you know, my personal bugbear is when you go to a restaurant, beautiful décor, excellent service, average food, that really, really pisses me off. I draw that was good food and terrible service, to tell you the truth, if I had to choose between those two. But in dentistry, the people who got no idea whatsoever what’s going to be really going on in them, they

[00:51:50] Really don’t know. And I think this is why photography and people say, oh, take photos for, you know, protect yourself against them if you can’t see them. But actually know the most important thing is for me is patient education and seeing, because for me, it’s kind of if you take different pictures of difference that show them exactly what you’re doing. Actually, even if you’re not, it’s not the proudest thing you’ve done. You’re willing to show the patient which to them means. Oh, wow. She must be. If she’s taking pictures, then it must be going to show people. Yeah. Which means that it must be at a certain level. Yeah. And there’s nothing to hide. And patients just I mean, they don’t know what they’re looking at, but they pretend they do. When you show them, what’s the point?

[00:52:30] So what’s your philosophy like? If I was to come for a consultation with you? I think I’ve sat in probably a hundred plus consultations with dentists, just observing, advising and all the rest of it. Everyone’s different. So if I was to come in and have a consultation with you, what would that experience be? If you can talk me through just from start to get a

[00:52:49] Whole half day lecture on this if you want.

[00:52:52] Yeah.

[00:52:53] So and while I worked on patient experience quite a bit, and I developed a protocol over kind of twenty four months of trying to kind of work what works in my hands and being systematic and doing the same thing over four different patients that time with them and went in my latest practise. One of my principal sat me down and was like, do you want to do it, Half-Day and my course? Because actually we can teach the clinical side, but we need people to actually take up that treatment. So what I think nowadays people are is the communication and the soft skill side, because we can do courses on every single clinical part. But what’s the point if you can’t get that procedure in your chair? And so for me, my focus is not on actually educating the patient so that they understand what we are looking for. I can tell you, you need a feeling. I can tell you you need a client, but why is it important to you? And I think it’s important for the patient to realise why we’re doing it rather than what they need to be done.

[00:53:55] Gina Baker, one of one of my favourite people, Invisalign Diamond, Super, plus whatever they call that. And it’s just a really good approach to to managing patient experience through that sort of Abebe approach

[00:54:11] To take Geneina, take me through your Invisalign process. I know for lots of dentists I speak to, they do it in so many different ways from, you know, that patient having a video consultation, seeing a treatment coordinator, having a scan, then seeing the dentist, and then things like dental monitoring, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the in thing at the moment is, you know, how many Invisalign cases do you do a year and trying to trying to match that up. Right. You see that all over social when everyone has their own sort of approach to it. What’s the typical patient journey for you if a if a patient wants Invisalign?

[00:54:48] How do you find the patient in the first place, you know, to start with that?

[00:54:52] Well, we are very fortunate that we have a very good reputation in the area. So there is a lot of what a mouth. So they can referred by friends or family or I do pay for the Google advertising. And the moment we just about to launch a Facebook campaign as well. Well, yes, I Google a lot of the patients find us through Google. And then what happened? The option to have a video consultation or they have the option to go Face-To-Face. At the moment, we are seeing the video consultations numbers go down with more people that have been to going for a Face-To-Face consultation or something. That is very, very interesting because our website is very clear on how much money we charge. What is expertise might. The cases I have flown, the majority of the patients I’ve come to most is because they are going to be paying the deposit on that appointment when they come for the consultation. So what we normally do, they I have a special day that is only for consultations. No other treatment can be booked in that in that same day.

[00:56:16] And basically, I welcome the patient. I like to be present. I am a very selfish person. And I like patients to know, to get to know me and to me to get to know them. So I will say hello. Explain the procedure. And then I leave the room on my feet and coordinate Savi’s mind that she will then get on to take photos, take a scan, and then answer any questions of the patient has. Then I come in and basically close the deal. And then after that, my if they don’t approve of that ahead with a treatment. They basically go through a mindfreak lymphoid. And she will do follow ups and emails and calls, you know, the normal thing. Well, one thing that is really, really good is that actually my is uncoordinated. So she she takes pride on her numbers, you know, and every month she goes, Jeena, we have done that. So these numbers or that numbers. So she’s also a very enthusiastic part of the process. So so that that helps quite a lot.

[00:57:24] Generally, we do ask very, very similar, actually. We have these what are almost called like pilot, co-pilot consultations, easiest way or post consultation consultations will be done since the nurse handover to nurse nurse takes over. So every nurse is like a mini teco, right. Rather than there being just a specific teco. So each nurse has the ability to be able to graduate. Like you said before, they’re not just doing the suction. Right. They’re involved in the whole process in terms of that process. So when you leave the room and it’s just the nurse and the patient, what are you doing at that point? Are you seeing another patient with another nurse or

[00:58:04] Are you guys considering this? No, I don’t really have the availability to do that because we’re fully involved. No, I get on and do my notes or work on my eggs. Oh, yes, definitely. I utilise that time to get on with things.

[00:58:24] Yeah. So, Gina, when you say close the deal. I, I know what you mean by that, but but how do you differentiate yourself from the next Invisalign user?

[00:58:35] Because for me, the

[00:58:37] Stronger the brand is, the harder it is for the dentists to differentiate themselves. And you said you’ve got a great reputation. I know just by being in that building with you guys once, once someone’s been in there and all that, they get that magic. I get that. But what do you say to your patients about the difference between, you know, having Invisalign at your practise or having it somewhere else? I mean, for instance, what’s the deal in the first place? Is it a budget? That thing? Is that the quality? Like how do you think of it?

[00:59:08] For us, it’s like quality. You know, I have patients call me and say, or are you going to keep me whitening with it? And I said, no, I give you a discount. Why do we give them 20 percent discount on whitening? And I said, what? We don’t need to give you any extra because we know the quality of service. We will provide you funny. As simple as that.

[00:59:31] People thinking Invisalign is Invisalign. It doesn’t matter that we know me and you

[00:59:35] Know, right? Yes. I mean, you know,

[00:59:38] The dentist makes a massive difference, right? The plan makes a difference. Everything makes sense. But you must get patients coming in and saying, well, it’s Invisalign. You know, it’s like,

[00:59:48] Oh, yes, of course. They come and said, oh, well, you only have to press that button and send it to. And I know right now it’s an hour and a half months, and I Prav Payman. I think I’m very fortunate. I count my blessings because when people come to see us, they know who we are. They have already Google those. They have already seen our reviews. They have read. We don’t need to sell them anything at that point. That’s why I feel so fortunate that we have done all this job work beforehand. You know, that is I’ve been I’m going to be there. We love doing this alone, probably since 2000, the four of six years. Well, we’re very fortunate in that like that.

[01:00:45] Jason Smith and I had the privilege of knowing Jason since its very early days in teaching and such a pleasure to see him popping up all over the world on the latest lecture circuits, just this. So one of the loveliest things about my book is seeing people grow. And Jason particularly is granted one of the most famous names in the industry.

[01:01:09] I tell you what, I did this and I always say this to people I meant to. I’ve come to the conclusion right there for somebody in dentistry, and this is only for dentistry. This is probably one of my most profound thoughts. And if you want to be successful in dentistry, you have two main things, and that’s your self, your own mental and spiritual and health, well-being and your own interests and hobbies, which is on equal par with that of your family. Staying married, which is important. One of the most important things. And and giving your kids a significant part of your life and good mentorship, bringing up your kids properly as it used to be called. All right. So those two main things and then you have the little add ons, which may be a lecture career in dentistry, may maybe a practise. Right, but not both, but not both. You can’t shoot well. You can choose. There are four. You can have three.

[01:02:18] Right.

[01:02:19] So choose three out of a four. Now, I’m not saying which is right. Which is wrong is not for me to decide. Some people have chosen then to have a really strong practise, a really, really strong electoral career. And unfortunately, they for me, with my life view, they’re either no longer married to their wives or they haven’t spent a lot of time on themsel, you know, and they’re ill or they can only go out for dinner with American Idol. But industry, in a way, is sad as well to me, but it doesn’t make it wrong. I chose to have a lecture career and spent time with my kids and family and to spend a little bit on myself, because I do have my own hobbies and not have a practise. So that’s basically the highest honour. But I think people who try to do all four might be disappointed because I’ve never yet met one person who has had or for truthfully they might tell you they’ve had or for an on the lecture circuit on the stage, you might see a big even a video or or a big present. Patient about that person having all four, but it’s not true, it’s not authentic. I’ve never met anybody who’s had all four. It certainly isn’t me. If I’m very honest, I probably only have two. And I do neglect myself a bit. I spend a lot of time of my family, a lot of time of my career. And in a way, I neglected myself. You were Prav, probably a little bit inspirational with your weight loss and fitness thing recently. And actually, I well, I’ve been following that. And actually, that’s kind of inspired me a little bit. And I think. You know what? Well, yeah, I think you know what? I’m getting to nearly 50 now. I maybe should think about doing some pull ups because I don’t think I could do one. But yeah, so maybe I only got two out of four Crawfordville.

[01:04:15] Good friend of mine, Lisy, a big proponent of what he calls the ABC concept Love Teeth. I think that’s going to be many more of those. So go ahead with that. Thinking that you were thinking about buying a practise, what were you?

[01:04:30] Yeah. So I want this topic close because I’m always been a family guy. I’ve been away for so long. I just wanted to be at home. I wanted to be back home. So I didn’t want a clinic far away. I looked for a clinic close by, but something that can grow in and being a local boy in the area. I for four years, I knew what people were wanting, but being an associate, I couldn’t change my principal in such a way. I changed him in many ways. And, you know, we still are very good friends. But I couldn’t because he was the content. It was content with what he had. It was happy and, you know, have a great family, a nice home. He was happy, go lucky, whereas I was I’ve always been a bit more of an ambitious guy. And so a clinic came up for sale close by, and it was on the same road as his clinic where I was an associate. So I had that difficult conversation. When I spoke, John said, look, there’s a clinic that’s come available. I managed to find my cousin off from buying it and they did not buy it. True. Yeah. Hundred percent. I went for the viewing and as I was leaving. Now, as me and my mum arrived, my cousin was leaving that viewing of the. And so he was nice enough to let me have the clinic and yes. So long on her because there’s just look is down the road.

[01:05:58] I would love love to buy it. Can I? How do you feel if you said, no, I wasn’t going to buy it. And he goes, me love canal. If you don’t buy, someone else will. So if this is what you want, go for it, because I would love if it wasn’t you, that boy, because I know your vision. I know what you’re capable of, because I was his biggest growth and I was working part time. My not not saying once my cousin did find out, I was making a lot of money for doing that. He did offer me a job and I did take it. So I was working part time at one of his clinics at the same time. And then what do you say you learnt from your cousin? Yeah. So the clinic I was working out for him. I was more or less running for him because, you know, have many clinics that manages I let business alone in. I used to run a clinic which was a mine, right? Yeah. Yeah. I saw the difficulties of management staffing. You know, I was there and because I had invested because it was my cousin’s clinic, if something went wrong, I was treated like my own right. Yeah. You know, it was the best experience I could receive. So I had one guy who was like a mentor to me, taught me everything that I didn’t get from university. And, you know, how NHS worked.

[01:07:17] It was he had no idea. But what was different for me is what I found as I go when I got to know more dentists in the UK is that is UK had more of a fear of dentistry, which was drilled into them possibly from university. I didn’t know. We went talk there. So we when people say to me now, you know, how are you doing root canals in a week? You know, my first year I did X number of crown prince. I just didn’t have any fear in me at the time. Maybe I was, you know, so stupid of me or whatever about that word. Nothing came of it. And one of the teachings I do and I have young dentists and other colleagues come to speak to me, speak to you to speak to your old self. Yeah. You know, I say, look, guys, just have confidence. Don’t be worried. So much know is one is the worst thing I’m seeing in dentistry is the confidence, isn’t there? And that’s what I’m really feel is if all the questions I get from dentists. They’re second guessing themselves, and my hunch is, yes, that’s right, what you’re thinking is right, go ahead of you go. And he said, because I feel as if we could have achieved so much in UK is that as Dental America, you know, we say is five years ahead. But I think our confidence has held us back here

[01:08:36] In the greenwall in that we literally wrote the book on teeth whitening that she doesn’t need any any present day for me. Linda really has been on the most influential people in our industry and still there, you know, for the 20 years that I’ve been in this industry. Linda still right at the top of that industry until you say two dentists who say, you know, whitening isn’t rocket science and it’s not a subject that anyone should, you know, choose to focus on because it’s not real dentistry. I mean, I know what my response is to this with what’s what’s yours?

[01:09:11] So the first thing that the biggest issue I have when I teach dentists is they’ve never bothered to learn about the science of they never bothered to learn about the science of widening the evidence of research or whatever. They do not know whitening. They make it up as they go along. They make random facts and new associate will join the practise. The principal hasn’t learnt whitening. They give them fake news. They say, well, this is what’s done and nobody’s the wiser. And then whitening programmes are not successful because they’re just making it up with random nonsense. But there is a lot of as we know, there’s scientific evidence and there’s certain protocols that need to be followed. So if the dentists take the time to learn it properly themselves, they can be a better teachers for their associates. And the hygiene isn’t everything else. And the biggest problem is that just making it up as they go along.

[01:10:04] So it’s more than just taken an impression and whacking some gel in there and telling the patient to go home, because I speak to a lot of dentists about different whitening products, just mainly from a marketing perspective. Right. And it’s the same attitude that Payman has just said there is that they don’t differentiate between products apart from price. And they say, oh, well, this does the same as that, just the same is that all you’re doing is sticking bleach in there, selling them home, and it’ll do the job. And their results tend to be variables to get some cases that were really well. Some cases my personal experience from whitening, using Payman stuff. And it’s a good free because it’s free. Yeah. Yeah, there is there is that. But only need to wear my tray for a couple of nights and they glow. Yeah. And that’s as far as I need to go, even though the instructions say, you know, 40 nights or whatever.

[01:10:57] The funny thing with in our industry, the weird thing about it is everything’s nailed by percentage. Yeah. And a lot of people like to think they know what’s going on. And so they think, well, sixteen’s that’s like Nurofen. Two hundred milligrams, the same as ibuprofen 200. But you know, the whitening situation is so flexible because you’ve got a physical situation with a tray and then you’ve got a chemical situation with the chemical

[01:11:20] And you had a patient with anatomy and

[01:11:21] You’ve got a patient with a battery teeth or trauma and bruxism. And, you know, the difference in the physical things are going to happen there. And and a volatile liquid. The whole point about it is it breaks down. And so it’s very, very different to, you know, even a composite restoration is much more understandable than lightning. But for me, when someone says it’s not rocket science and all of that stuff, generally that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But but secondly, we know humans know not just us. Humans know the colour of teeth is the number one concern of our patients. Absolutely. By far, it’s way bigger than orthodontics care is buried. That’s what they care about the most. Absolutely. And often you see, you know, these full examinations that the practises, you know, the salad market or our examinations an hour and a half, two pages on the Internet about what’s covered or we look at the TMJ lymph nodes or manifestation. All of this is good stuff. And yet Shade’s not mentioned in any of them. So the primary concern of our patients isn’t culturally in our examination, and it needs to be. And so lightnings be talked about more, not less. Obviously, I have a got a horse in the game. Right. You know, I’m biased. But this idea that it’s not real dentistry. Well, you’re not treating real patients. If you if you think it’s real dentistry, it’s good

[01:12:46] To listen to all the objectors and the objections, because from hearing all that stuff, you can have a strategy to change to to move forward. So here’s the thing we say. Number one, make it take a shit on every single patient. It’s a science, actually. And that’s part of your exam. That’s the first thing. Why do you do that? And we teach the dentist to just start with basic sheild, which is called A3, just have loads and loads of A3 shades and measure every single patient. Patient wants to know, is that a good thing or a bad thing to start the opening discussion some day and to say, oh, I’m not really I’m not good at selling, so I can’t sell wine. This is not a sales thing. This is a scientific measure. It’s a service, but it’s a scientific measure of measure the A3 or their light or darker than AIDS. You recorded the patient goes, can I see the shade guide? What’s lighter than A3? So my teeth are a three. And the dentist goes, well, 90 percent of patients may have that shade and they go, what’s lighter? And they go, aione. Well, that’s quite a nice shade. Can I have that? Would that be appropriate for me? This is Dental Leaders, the podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry.

[01:14:03] Your host, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys.

[01:14:10] 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

[01:14:23] 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.

[01:14:34] And don’t forget the six star rating.

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