[00:00:00] What tends to confuse people or tend to confuse patients where you end up just listing a whole load of options and hope that they’ve got the knowledge of a BDS, which took us five years, by the way, minimum, so that you’re trying to explain it to them in 15 minutes and then they just get confused. And the typical answer they give is, I’ll have to think about it. Can I let you know? And the moment you hear that you’ve lost that patient, they do not understand what you’ve talked about. So I think I think the biggest take home, I said, is just give them an honest opinion. And obviously the second thing is, which is probably more important, is listening to them, is asking them a question and the art of shutting the hell up and letting them talk. I think it’s it’s a lost art and it’s the easiest thing to do. Be quiet and let them talk and they will tell you what they’re looking for.

[00:00:57] This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry.

[00:01:06] Is a principle at clean dental.

[00:01:09] Your house Payman, Langroudi and Prav Salon Kick.

[00:01:25] Been up giving your opinions on a lot of different forums. Reggie, welcome to the show, Rudy.

[00:01:32] Thank you. I don’t know whether those opinions are welcome or not, but I gather people like what I say sometimes. Sometimes they don’t.

[00:01:44] But if you worked at lots of different practises, or have you been at this one for most of your career?

[00:01:50] Actually, I’ve only ever really worked at two practises where I did my feet training, which was an amazing practise, actually. Still is an amazing practise with an amazing trainer.

[00:02:01] Who is.

[00:02:03] His name is Shani Kalsi. Lancaster House in Croydon and Centre Practise. And he is the most kind, patient, helpful man in dentistry. The loveliest guy you could ever imagine. Great guy. And the practise I work at, which is mine, believe it or not, I actually owned the practise before I did VTE, so I don’t know if you guys knew that. Know how that came about? Long story. Well, I mean, I was at university and I just hated the politics in the hospital. You could even as a student, you could feel it. And I knew I never really wanted to have a hospital job or do anything. And I’ve always wanted to work for myself. And I own the practise with my sister Mika. And I think Amica felt the same way. She’s a couple years older and she had just finished her vet and my father passed away when I was in my second year sorry, first year of university. So luckily we had a bit of inheritance money and when we were in the final year, my sister was in a second year, my mom said, There’s this guy in some random place selling a dental practise. Why don’t you just go and have a look just for experience, to see what this is like. We both turned up. We looked at each other effectively and were like, Well, there’s no way we can make this worse. It was kind of in the right place, the right time sort of situation. It was a really old, shambolic NHS dental practise and we thought, Well, why not? We’ll give it a go.

[00:03:39] Was it in your house where you lived?

[00:03:40] It’s built. Yes. I grew up in Dulwich in south east London. So the practise is in an area called Crayford, which is about half an hour drive. So it was local ish. I mean, that’s a definite commutable and it was in an area where it was improving, gentrifying. The practise, as I said, was tiny. It was an effectively it was a one chair practise open three days a week. And it was very old school, very old school. I mean, you wouldn’t find bite wing holders in there when we first went. So it was it was, you know, we turned up knowing that we can improve this.

[00:04:24] So you knew during your VTE you knew that straight afterwards you were going to go into practise ownership. Yeah. Did that have an element of sort of trepidation to it?

[00:04:33] Well, you say that straight after, but you know what it was? It was quite nice. I said, my my vet trainer was absolutely amazing when I first told him. He was obviously taken aback a bit, but then he helped me so much. He gave me lots of advice, you know, and I think actually I helped him out as well because because I wanted to learn how to do these things. Whilst also the vet, I actually took on a lot of those roles as a vet. So as a vet I was doing stock ordering, I was helping train nurses because I needed to. And sometimes, you know, you jump in the deep end. The learning curve is great, but it’s it’s it’s helpful.

[00:05:16] Would you do it again like that? Or do you think in retrospect, on upon reflection, do you think you would do it the ordinary way, sort of do it, have a team.

[00:05:24] People if somebody asked me if they should do it, I’ll tell them not to do it. I would do it again. Yeah. I mean, it’s but I’m like that. I will quite happily take big risk if I feel that’s the right thing to do, I will do it.

[00:05:43] So a three chair nurse practise with no right wing holders.

[00:05:49] Yeah, well it was actually one chair with three rooms. One of the rooms didn’t have a chair and one of the rooms was completely dead. Like it was prehistoric, I think.

[00:05:58] Take us through take us through the sort of evolution of that and how long it takes and what moves you made and what were the key sort.

[00:06:06] Of.

[00:06:06] Cornerstones of going from that situation to this? I guess it’s quite a high end, fully private, is it?

[00:06:14] Now it’s actually has a little bit of NHS. Oh very, very little. We haven’t changed our contracts since we bought it and only we only had seven and half thousand days to start off with. But now it’s a seven surgery practise running from eight, 730 in the morning to eight at night every week to every day, pretty much seven days a week, not Sunday, but and Saturday we run half a day. But it’s a it’s a pretty big outfit. And then we’ve got another one practise that’s six surgery, doing the same thing in Mitcham and then a new practise, which is also seven surgery. Yeah, a seven surgery squad, which which is a little bit of a gamble for us, but we’ll see how it goes.

[00:07:00] So a lot of it has been sort of building works extensions, that sort of thing, surely, right?

[00:07:06] Well, yeah, we took over in 2008. This would be our fourth. The current project would be our fifth project building project. So it’s either building or extension or. Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve had five building projects effectively. I’ve always had a builder on, on, on the go doing something. Wow. Yeah. It’s been, I think about it. I should probably get myself a builder and hold on to the projects.

[00:07:39] The both courier practises doing 12 hour shifts. Six days. Yes. Yes. Just out of curiosity, how would you make that work in terms of staffing and management and all the rest of it? What’s your organisational structure and team structure across that?

[00:07:58] Yeah, sure. Well, it’s you know, I don’t think anyone can work for 12 hours.

[00:08:02] No, no, no, of course. Yeah.

[00:08:04] So we actually run a purely shift based system. So effectively there’s two shifts. We have a whole new set of staff working in the morning and then completely different set of staff working in the afternoon. So there’s a the staff turn up at seven in the morning and they leave at 130 or 145, 2:00, and then the second set of staff come in at 130 and leave at eight 830. So effectively everyone has a half day every day and they do the staff do a seven hour shift. The dental, the clinical dental is 6 hours. But I find that if you work 6 hours, the efficiency is is far greater than a standard day or even a 12 hour day, which I’ve heard some people do, which is absolutely insane. You know, if I look at myself after about 7 hours, the quality of my work, it doesn’t drop. It just takes a lot longer to get there. Yeah, a hell of a lot longer.

[00:09:03] Out of curiosity, Rajiv, do you have like a huddle or some kind of team meeting?

[00:09:08] I mean, these are always things that we have to work on. Cultures are really difficult. Yeah, we were 9 to 5. It was a lot easier because we’d all have lunch together. Sure. So culture is always. Is always a little harder when you’re running. The bigger, the bigger the operation, the harder the the harder it is. We don’t do anything like a huddle or anything like that. What we’re trying to do is having more of a team meetings and not in the traditional sense. So Fridays we tried to get together and we tried to keep the Friday afternoon shift a bit lighter, and then we try and spend that afternoon doing more administrative, you know, talking to each other tasks. You know, in my head I call it a Friday reset, but the culture is always the most difficult thing. The bigger you get, the harder it is. And that’s just impossible. It’s just a numbers game that.

[00:10:03] And I’m just curious about this because obviously I’ve not run practises like this and don’t know of any that do. So I’m really, really curious in terms of like just the day to day now. Like for example, our PM is our firefighter, right? And she’ll be putting fires out left, right and centre or whatever or dealing with like, you know, whatever, whatever the issues are of the day. Right. So do you have like two shifts to PMS as well or what’s the like the structure of the of that, the higher level management?

[00:10:34] So we have, we don’t actually have a PM. I know that’s crazy, but we don’t we have, we have a team, an administrative team. So what I try to do is I’d rather outsource administrative work to existing members or staff. So, you know, I think one of the crying shames of our profession is that especially in the nursing sector and the reception team is that there’s actually very little progression. Once once you are a nurse, you know, I think I think a lot of nurses get bored after two or three years and there’s very little for them to carry on doing. So I try to give them more things to do. So one of our nurses ended up doing h.r. One of our nurses has ended up becoming a patient coordinator. One of our administrative team now basically does payroll and banking and all the finance teams. So one of our old receptionists and I like to promote that. So I try and give people tasks and then get them to build that into a career and move forward. So we don’t actually have a specific practise manager. And personally, I’ve always found it a bit dangerous to have one practise manager. You know, if, if they leave, all the knowledge goes with them quite, quite honestly, and they may leave for any sort of reason.

[00:12:02] So you sort of say like the so called, you’ve almost like separated out the management tasks into separate chunks and then give that to several different team members to handle. So it’s not there’s not one particular person who’s overall responsible.

[00:12:17] Well, I mean, as we get bigger and bigger and our projections are for the end of next year to be almost on 200 members of staff. Wow. Which is a hell of a lot of people. Wow. You can’t run on on on a simple practise manager system. You have to have an administrative team. Sure. So, I mean, we’ve got in my head, I’ve planned for an HR team, a payroll team, a sick team, a team to just be in charge of learning and teaching and practise progression that way. I’ve I’ve even got a person who’s just purely there to fix things chairs, breakdowns, maintenance, painting, get the door lock fixed or whatever it may be. But when I think as you get bigger, you have to start evolving that part. And I think that’s actually a very interesting business concept in that people don’t realise that you can’t stick to the same system as you get bigger and bigger. It’s something I’ve had to learn very, very quickly.

[00:13:19] And then so Rajeev, what part do you play in that in terms of your day to day? Like as that organisation grows to like 200 members of staff? Like where, where do you sit in that in terms of like your typical day or your typical week, who you’d be interacting with, what you’d be doing?

[00:13:38] It’s interesting because I still love clinical dentistry. The more I do it, I still absolutely love it, but the more I feel that I have to give it up at some point. But I’m holding on. I’m still doing three and one half days a week, so I absolutely love it. I think we’ve already touched upon it. Culture is probably the most important thing when you’re in the position I am, so I jointly run it with my sister and luckily we’re very, very different people. So I tend to hold the more role of forward thinking for planning. So I try and do anything, practise development, deciding where the practise goes in the future. Obviously with her blessing and she helps me with that and we discuss things together, whereas my sister is very much a hands on nitty gritty, she tends to make sure that the administration is done. She’s she’s a bit of more of a taskmaster and she’ll keep an eye on everything effectively. Yeah, it’s, it’s luckily we’re so different that it works that way. So I think as you I think as things progress, you, you end up being the person steering the ship, but you can’t be the person pulling the oars.

[00:14:57] But what happens regarding something like recruitment? Do you yourself get involved at all now?

[00:15:03] I mean, at the level of recruitment we’re doing at the moment, I only do the clinical side.

[00:15:09] Dentists and hygienists.

[00:15:10] Scientists and hygienists, whereas the receptionists and the nursing team is done by one. As I said, one of our existing staff members, in fact, two of them, the two people interview, they both have a veto. If they don’t like someone, then that’s that’s fine. And we actually don’t we don’t look to hire someone. We look to see whether they’ll fit into the team. We’re not really looking for specific qualities, if that makes sense. We make we’re trying to make them fit into a team rather than whether they’re qualified X, Y and Z. They’ve got this skill or that skill. Our thoughts are that we can teach skills. We can’t teach attitude and we can’t teach you can’t teach personality whether they fit in your team. I mean, I’ve seen so many lovely dentists who have got amazingly good skills, but I don’t think they’ll fit in our organisation just because of their personality. And that’s not to mean that they’re a bad personality, it’s just not our fit.

[00:16:09] And so, Rajiv, what is your culture like if you if you had to just sort of whip up in a few sentences or whatever to describe when you become a member of your team, what what is it that they become and what does that mean for me? I was Strohm and asked me to do a piece for them the other day about what their culture is.

[00:16:31] Right.

[00:16:32] And I didn’t know until I’d interviewed all of like a big chunk of their team. And it was very, very clear then that their culture revolved around family values, helping team members outside of work, progressing from within and promoting from within. And so I got a real sense of values, but I only learnt that after interviewing all their team members, right? So how would you describe your culture and your values in your organisation?

[00:17:02] So our culture I would I would say is it has to be quite relaxed, it’s quite natural, it’s quite free flowing. But more importantly than that, the key thing for us is that everyone needs to progress. You can’t stand still, you have to get better and better and improve. And we were having a little chat about this earlier. We were saying that if a staff member joins us, whether they’re a nurse or a trainee nurse, I don’t mind if they leave after a year. I really don’t. As long as they left better than when they joined us and as long as they leave for an opportunity. I actually hate it when people leave and I think they’re taking a step down. I want them to take a step up and I’ll happily do that. I mean, I’ve got two hygienists who were previous nurses for us. One of them is training to become a dentist. So she doesn’t work for us anymore. But she she wants to come back. I’ve had patients who are going on to study the industry and I’d love them to come back and join us at some point. As I said, we want our reception team to progress and do an administrative role or whichever role they’d like to do. But the key thing is they’ve got to leave better than they started. They cannot go back. And actually, I find it really frustrating when people stay still. That’s that’s the biggest bugbear for us.

[00:18:33] How would I demonstrate that I’m that dentist that. Forward thinking that progressive not standing still, is it through a track record of my post-graduate education, what my personal development plan looks like moving forward? What’s the thing that you’d look for me as maybe an associate working for you?

[00:18:52] So education is obviously very important in clinical skills, but I think clinical skills is actually, I hate to say, overvalued. That’s probably the wrong word, but I think more correctly, I think the other part is undervalued. And when I say undervalued and the other part, what I mean is that being able to progress in your own personal life is really important. Being able to progress in terms of being able to communicate with patients, dare I say it, financially progress. I’ve seen so many good dentists, not progress financially, but improve their clinical skills and and get deeply frustrated and not understanding why they’re going on all the best courses yet they don’t end up converting that into a career payment. I’m sure you’ve seen it with many people doing the Mini Smile makeover. Yeah, they come on the course. You see them four years down the line and say, how is that cost for you? And they’ll say, Actually, I’ve never done a case that.

[00:20:00] We’re trying to figure it out and say, why? Why is it one guy ends up being Matty Parsons booked up eight months ahead with composite veneers and then another guy just doesn’t even do one?

[00:20:13] Well, this is the thing I find really frustrating, because if you have a dentist who has got no skill at all, but they’re able to talk to patients and get them to do the work, they’ll very quickly progress. Even if they were born handed, they’ll eventually become a decent dentist and they’ll build a career because they can talk to people, whereas you can have somebody with the skills of mode, Monica and Jason Smithson all combined and multiply by five. But if they can’t speak to anyone and they can’t explain anything to patients, they’ll end up nowhere. And that now I feel it is really upsetting. You know, if someone like that joined our practise. Well, firstly, if they did, I would show them how to do how to do the other thing and actually speak to patients. But because I think that’s really undervalued. Massively undervalued.

[00:21:05] Do you think that’s teachable?

[00:21:07] Oh, yeah, 100% teachable. Well, you know, no one was born with that way. Some people are more naturally gifted, but I would say I’m probably the least likeable person in the world, naturally. And I’ve had to work on getting my patients to understand where I’m coming from. So if if I can do it, I think other people can. And I have to say that, you know, this is I didn’t learn it. I didn’t make up a system. I learnt it from an amazing guy called Asif Syed, who not many people have heard of, or if they have heard of him, they’ve never really met him because he kind of is one of these people who has quite a lot of influence in the dental world but hides in the background. And he taught me, you know, his version of how to talk to patients. And actually I think he’s actually trained over 400 dentists. But as I said, he kind of is a personality that likes to hide in the background, is more of a have you have you guys see non knockers or anyone see narcosis is more like the Kelly cartel. You know, they like to be in the background while working efficiency efficiently.

[00:22:29] Taff was that guy for seven, eight years and then suddenly one day he came out of his shell. What would you say that a couple of takeaways that you’ve learnt from acid.

[00:22:41] In terms of talking to patients, I would say very simply, tell the patient what you think is best and I mean that in a in a very blunt way. I think a lot of dentists get bogged down in options. They don’t like to give an opinion of what they think is right. You know, if a patient tells you, you know, they’re really upset that they’ve broken a tooth and, you know, it’s hurting and they can’t eat on it and they’re getting food stuck and it looks crap. You know, it’s quite easy to say, well, you know, you need root canal and a crown and it would be nice to have a white one because I actually I think it will fit what you want, and that’s the one I’d go for. There are other things we can give you gold crowns, amalgams, etc. but that’s the one I would recommend based on what you told me. And I think if you just say that to patients, most of them, as long as you come across likeable and trustworthy, they’ll say, Actually, yeah, I’ll do that. Hmm. I think what tends to confuse people or tend to confuse patients where you end up just listing a whole load of options and hope that they’ve got the knowledge of a yes, which took us five years, by the way, minimum. So and that you’re trying to explain it to them in 15 minutes and then they just get confused. And the typical answer they give is, I’ll have to think about it. Can I let you know? And the moment you hear that you’ve lost that patient, they do not understand what you’ve talked about. So I think I think the the biggest take home, I said, is just give them an honest opinion. And obviously the second thing is, which is probably more important, is listening to them, is asking them a question and the art of shutting the hell up and letting them talk. I think it’s it’s a lost art and it’s the easiest thing to do. Be quiet and let them talk and they will tell you what they’re looking for. It’s so true.

[00:24:38] So true. Although what do you think is the reason that people don’t naturally do that?

[00:24:47] I mean, I think we’re a product of the system. Partly the system doesn’t help. It really doesn’t. I mean, I think every dentist at some point has gone through an industry, whether it be for 5 minutes or 50 years. And obviously that’s a time pressure where, you know, the NHS doesn’t really value you talking values are you doing or it doesn’t even value you listening even less than you talking, which is which is even worse. So the system doesn’t help. Secondly, I don’t think that there’s enough emphasis on that part of it in university teaching. For the life of me, I have no idea why I spent a year learning histology. Just no idea. I’d rather they spent a year telling to teaching us how how to communicate with patients. It’s just. I don’t know. I think the focus is is very academic and less practical. And I think that’s also down to universities picking on academia as well, rather than being able to pick on soft skills. But I mean, there’s a vast, vast reason. But one thing I have noticed is that coming out of university is the most successful dentists are not the dentists who are very successful at university. They were the people who had to scrap effectively to get through. Those people have done incredibly well, whereas the academics haven’t done badly, but they haven’t excelled.

[00:26:27] You know, I find there’s the odd person who. Who’s good at both things.

[00:26:33] The unicorn. Yeah. Yeah. There are a few unicorns. Yeah, but that’s. You know, there’s always an outlier somewhere. Yeah.

[00:26:44] So what if you said you love clinical? I do. What is it about clinical that you love? Is it that getting to the bottom of what the patient is after and.

[00:26:55] Not finding that I’m quite unlikeable? I don’t actually care that much. I actually like the technical work. I mean, I do love it when you change a patient and you can visibly see them change. I love the technical work. I actually enjoy it. I love the problem solving and you know, I love my patients. I genuinely do. There’s some patients who I’ve had from day one who are NHS, who I treat for free now, you know, on a private basis because I just love them and some of them I’ve seen, I’ve got deeper relationships with them than they have with their own family sometimes. And one of my patients said to me, I see you more as my family than some of my family, especially around the cove. Around Cove, the time when I had some patients who had a only son, she’s by herself is in Australia and I see her twice a year, once, once a year even. But that’s, you know, she hasn’t seen a son for three years and I love seeing those patients. It’s really hard to give up. But I think the further along you go in the journey, I’m going to have to give up at some point. I just don’t know when.

[00:28:18] What about clinically? What kind of work do you like the most?

[00:28:24] I like the variety. I genuinely like the variety. I consider myself a true gdb. I’m quite happy with a hand scaler doing Perrier. Equally, I’d rather do surgical Perrier. I love doing a bit of Indo. I like doing some orthodontics. I like doing some straightening. I like. I love putting implants in. I like, I like doing whitening. I genuinely like it. Or I think I’d get bored doing one thing. I like seeing a patient and being able to deliver everything. Obviously there are some cases where I can’t and I have to refer out, but I would consider myself a true GP in that I genuinely like everything. The only thing I don’t really like to do myself is is paediatric dentistry. It’s just I’ve never liked it. It’s never been my forte. I’ve always felt like I can’t deliver high quality care with children, but that’s just me. But everything else I love doing.

[00:29:21] I’m in the in the practise.

[00:29:23] You’re sort of.

[00:29:25] Clinical lead, is that.

[00:29:27] Right? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, we’ve got some really strong dentists and I mean, some really.

[00:29:34] Strong you have specialists as well.

[00:29:36] We don’t at the moment, but with our new venture, I think we’re going to look that way to.

[00:29:42] 15 chairs that all.

[00:29:43] Generalists. All generalists. Yeah.

[00:29:47] And maybe private.

[00:29:49] Yeah. Well, between the 14 chairs, we’ll have 7000 users. So effectively, we’re all private. Yeah, we’re all generalists. And we. We we have waiting lists that are, you know, an arm, you know, six months down the line at the moment. So it’s a very, very busy place.

[00:30:07] So what’s the secret, bud? What’s the secret? You’ve you’ve grown this thing so quickly. Is it the very basics of treating people well? Word of mouth?

[00:30:16] Yeah.

[00:30:18] Do you have a marketing machine behind it?

[00:30:20] No, I. I don’t understand marketing. It’s. Perhaps you can have to help me at some point. I genuinely don’t understand it. My wife actually, believe it or not, as a degree in marketing, and she she doesn’t.

[00:30:33] Understand it either.

[00:30:36] Dentistry. But she works for a massive company. She works for Diageo, which is huge as a one under a company. But I personally, you know, I’ve I don’t I don’t understand. Definitely not external marketing anyway. I’m quite happy to ask patients to write a Google review and things like that. My sister’s way better than I am. She’s far more personable than I am. But yeah, no, this is it’s always been word of mouth for us. I know it’s still old fashioned, I suppose, but we’ve always managed to, you know, we see one patient, we get two back, and it’s always been that way. I don’t know why I actually.

[00:31:14] In some ways do you system either systemise the wow moments or do you just you’re just nice people.

[00:31:23] I would personally. I’d love to be able to systemise it. I just I don’t know what it is, in all honesty. It would be nice to know, because then I can box it and repeat it. Yeah.

[00:31:34] Do you know what? You’re doing? Something right? Right. You see one patient, you get two back, right? And this takes me back to yesterday evening. I was out for dinner and I spoke to Payman about this great customer service is so frickin rare that when it happens.

[00:31:55] You want tell everyone you.

[00:31:56] Fucking rave about it. Right. So true. So I went out for dinner yesterday to a place I’ve never been before. Right. And. My usual thing is, first of all, I never, ever order anything off the menu. I’m just twisted like that, right? So I always want a bit of extra chilli garlic. The first thing I do want to walk into an Indian restaurant. Do you do masala chai knowing very well it’s not on the frickin menu? Of course they don’t do it right. And the guy goes, We don’t do it. I’m going to ask the chef to put a couple of pots on for you that’ll keep you going. So it’s like, Boom, he’s got me once. Second thing is, I don’t know if you’ve got young kids ready, but when you take them to a restaurant, right, you want to feed them and get them out of the way first so you can enjoy your meal. Right. And for us, when we feed the girls, we get them plain rice and we ask them to put loads of veg in and not too much spice. Right. So that fills them up. But the guy goes to me, Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll throw some egg fried rice together, I’ll put loads of virgin. And we didn’t ask for this because and I’ll bring that first so your girls can get sorted. Yeah, he’s just like, shit. Wow. Then I was like, Can I have my tandoori roti rodley? Just just just thin. Really, really butterly and thin. Yeah, it goes thin and crispy. I’m like, bang on, mate, boom. That’s the next thing that comes a little bit later as he’s bringing the starters out. Bring some extra starters out, right, some alley tricky and some Raj Kutcher. And he goes, Try this, try this. This one’s on me, buddy. This one’s on me. Just try it. I want your feedback on this dish at this point. May I’m getting quite emotional. Right? I’m overwhelmed with the surge.

[00:33:33] Yeah.

[00:33:35] Seriously, seriously, buddy, I’ve got a.

[00:33:37] Tear in my to Buddy.

[00:33:38] Yeah. And then and then, you.

[00:33:41] Know, I always speak to my eldest daughter about what great services. She’s smiling at me, beaming and giving me that look like this guy’s got his shit together. Yeah. And then comes along and goes. Just before you leave. Just before you leave. I’ve got Indian afternoon tea. I’m launching that soon. Yeah. And then says to me I’m right in my mobile number on a card for you. You take that away. Yeah. What the actual fuck. Yeah. Like amazing customer service as I’m walking out. There’s a couple stood there studying the menu here. Bloke says to me, food any good, mate? I said to him, Fucking amazing, mate. And the service even better. Get in there. Yeah. Give him a fist pump, smile it and look at it and he walks in. So word of mouth translated instantly at that point. Then I proceeded to write a Facebook and Instagram post about it. Right. Because that was because I was so blown away. Reggie. You’re probably doing that every day. You don’t fill 14 surgeries by accident, mate.

[00:34:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you say that. I’m not sure I am, but I honestly. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not sure I am. I think I like to use the Tibbs analogy since we’re talking about Indian restaurants. Yeah. You know, Tibbs doesn’t have amazing customer service, though. That’s the thing. But yet on a Friday night, well, pretty much every night they’ve got a queue of, you know, 200 metres down the road.

[00:35:14] Because lamb chops.

[00:35:16] For the lamb chops because that product is just absolutely amazing. So as I said, I don’t really understand marketing, but I understand what a good product is, and I really do. And I think for what we offer, our value of the care for the price and for what we do is that I think is unbelievable. So I think of it more that way. Yes. Obviously, you get amazing customer service on top of that and it accelerates even more. So, you know, as I said, I don’t really understand marketing, but my wife has kind of taught me a few things and she taught me about the the five P’s of of of marketing, of which the most important thing is product. And if you can get your product right, I think that that’s the most important thing. Yeah, customer service makes a massive difference and you’re absolutely right. And it’s definitely something we need to improve on. And I believe that. But I think our strength lies in the fact that we can deliver great industry efficiently, well, in a really beautiful environment, at a cost that I think and this what makes me feel comfortable when I do a crown, I get I deliver that. I look at my patient and I genuinely believe they’ve got a bargain. I genuinely believe they’ve got a bargain. I think, God, I’ve I’ve you’ve got a bargain here. And I think if I can do that and obviously it has to be profitable and it is. Yeah, but if we can do that efficiently and beautifully, then I think that’s for us that’s really important and that’s what our practise is about. We want to give people great dentistry at a bargain and make money at the same time.

[00:37:00] So is that is that the positioning of it? One of the other piece. So are you not the most expensive practise? No.

[00:37:07] Not not by not by a long way. We we’re not we’re not the cheapest. We’re not the most expensive. We’re you know, if we were a supermarket, we’d be we’d probably be somewhere between Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. You know, we’re not like a Whole Foods, we’re not an Iceland. We’re kind of that’s our position and that’s a position we’re very comfortable with.

[00:37:33] And all three clinics of the same positioning. Is that is that.

[00:37:36] Yes. On new clinic, we’re trolley probably. We’re trying to position it slightly higher. But as I said, the way we try to deliver it is we might be priced like a Waitrose. But, you know, we’re we’re we we try and give a product that’s even better.

[00:38:00] Do you know? Do you know that, Rajiv, that value piece that you’re talking about there? Like some people say, hey, you know, what’s the magic formula to sales in dentistry or whatever? Right. I really believe truly it’s about value in what you do, because if you think you’re providing exceptional value, you ain’t got to try to sell because it’s coming from the horror. You’ve the passion that you’re showing now is that it’s a bloody bargain what you’re giving, right?

[00:38:27] I genuinely believe it. I genuinely believe it’s an absolute bargain.

[00:38:31] So you don’t get a struggle.

[00:38:32] But you say you know nothing about marketing. Marketing is is communicating your value.

[00:38:37] Yeah.

[00:38:38] Yeah, that’s it. That is marketing. Communicating your value.

[00:38:42] Yeah you say that, but I’ve never done anything on marketing. I don’t understand.

[00:38:47] I’m doing it right.

[00:38:48] You’re doing it.

[00:38:49] Coming out of your mouth.

[00:38:53] So I might be saying things that I don’t know, but it works. It works for.

[00:38:58] Us. Do not fill 14 chairs by accident.

[00:39:02] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:04] Have you done anything like influencer work? Have you treated a particular patient who went and told 100 other people like nothing? It still seems amazing in that time frame.

[00:39:15] I’ve had patients that I’ve told 100 people, I haven’t paid them for it and I’ve never.

[00:39:19] Been paying for them. But but you know, what I’m saying is inflexion points.

[00:39:23] Yeah. There are a few patients who who who generate more leads than others. To be fair, I found that’s more with businesses. Yeah, there’s a couple of local businesses where I think I treat everyone.

[00:39:36] Because people talk in the business that the talking shop the good news and the bad news, by the way. Yeah, of course. Quickly.

[00:39:42] Yeah, well, our new practise is next to one of these businesses, so as soon as we got the lease, I popped in next door and said, Oh, by the way, we’re opening next door. And that’s actually helped us a lot.

[00:39:54] But have you have you have you gone to other businesses and introduced yourself?

[00:39:58] No, not not, not not.

[00:40:00] Not.

[00:40:01] Consciously. Not consciously. I have spoken to other people and owners, but very, very you know, I’ll see them in the street and I’ll say hello and have a little chat, but I won’t specifically go anywhere to speak to anyone. But yeah, I found it’s happened with businesses. It feels like I’ve treat every teacher in South London at the moment for some reason, which is quite nice. When you’ve got two young children, you get to hear the ins and outs of every school is quite nice. Yeah. So it seems to me, you know, there have been spheres of influences rather than specific individuals.

[00:40:44] What you would you explained to me of of Mike what your plans were for the new place. And as you said it to me, I thought I thought to myself, what a confident guy, man. You know, like it takes a degree of I want you to outline.

[00:41:02] It for delusional.

[00:41:06] I want you to outline it for whoever listens to this so that they can get a feel for what you explain to me. But now that I’ve got the context of of what you did before, it seems to me mean if it really is like this, that, you know, you just this successful thing happened and you don’t know how it happened. You know, it’s it’s it’s an interesting sort of situation. Situation, but I’m feeling like either either like you lucked out big time or you’re just being really humble because, you know, like, go on. Let’s start. Let’s start with what are your plans? What are your plans?

[00:41:44] So, I mean, at the moment we’ve got I’ve already mentioned it seven surgery practise in Crayford Green Dental and we’re opening another squat just down the road and it’s a two or three minute walk down the road. And the idea of that was to effectively double our size. So that’s another seven surgeries. And within that, we’ve I’ve we’ve built the seven surgeries. We’ve built a lecture theatre, we’ve been the dedicated admin area. We’ve got a photography studio built in there that we kind of lucked out because we managed to get a lease during the middle of COVID where everything was nosediving in prices. So we managed to get that ridiculously cheap rate for 20 years. Was it before it was, believe it or not, a hairdresser? I have no idea how a hairdresser occupied a three and a half thousand square foot place, but.

[00:42:40] Three and a half thousand square.

[00:42:41] Feet. Yeah, it’s a pretty big.

[00:42:43] The size of enlightened the three floors of enlightened.

[00:42:46] Yeah, it’s a big place. It’s a big place all on one floor. So when we were looking at it the all on one floor. Yeah. All on one floor or ground floor. Bloody hell. Yeah. The frontage of this place is huge and it’s next to a Nando’s and opposite a pure gyms. That’s right on the high street.

[00:43:07] How far are you with it now?

[00:43:10] We’re probably going to be opening in the next two months. Two and a half months.

[00:43:13] Oh, wow. You you’re in the middle of it. You’re like you’re you’re doing stuff right now. Today, builders.

[00:43:19] I told you, the builders are always on on speed dial. Always on speed dial.

[00:43:26] Do you enjoy project managing. Oh, I love it.

[00:43:29] Property stuff. Yeah. I don’t like I mean, I don’t want to be in the rental game ever. I became an accidental landlord when I got married and I had a flat that and I hate that I hate being an accidental landlords are just I’ve given that to somebody else to manage now but I like it on the business level. I don’t know why I like making I just, you know, the way I see it is I spend 50% of my time at work and 50% of my time at home. So I should feel comfortable in both places. And I see one as the extension of the other, you know, and I would, you know, you invest into a business and you get money back from it. You don’t do that at home, but you do that for comfort. And I feel that they should feel the same. I like to feel comfortable in both.

[00:44:21] Yeah, I agree with that.

[00:44:22] And I want my patients to I don’t know if it’s a very Indian thing where you feel like you welcome someone into your house. I feel the same way at work. I feel like I want to welcome them in freaky.

[00:44:34] Tells us he knows nothing about marketing, right?

[00:44:37] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don’t know. Is that marketing or is that.

[00:44:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:44:45] Yeah, yeah.

[00:44:45] Yeah. I mean, I think I think like Lexus. Lexus tell all their employees that whenever you speak to anyone, imagine they’re in your house for the first time and you treat them like that. So if you’re spreading that message that this is what we are with your team and all that and and, you know, running. How many people are you now? Like 100?

[00:45:07] Yeah. About that.

[00:45:08] You’re running a hundred people.

[00:45:10] On.

[00:45:10] Message and on on culture, having the keeping the culture. It’s not easy, man.

[00:45:16] It’s not. No, it really isn’t. I think that’s the biggest learning curve I’ve had is trying to keep. And we’ve been hiring a lot recently. So trying to hire people and make them understand or get them to understand what we value and what we expect. That is definitely been the hardest part for us.

[00:45:38] So take us take us through the steps on this new one, the squat. Is it also going to be called to green?

[00:45:45] It’s called to green dental as well, but boutique to dental boutique. So it’s it’s just a slightly elevated version.

[00:45:53] Of Giorgio Armani of the Emporio. Armani. No, not.

[00:45:56] The whitening brand.

[00:45:58] No.

[00:45:59] I got a little jitter in.

[00:46:01] Your face then. Yes, definitely not.

[00:46:06] So go on. You now near the end of it? Yeah. Yes. But for someone. For someone who’s never done a squat before, go through it. Go through some of the processes. You know, like I want to really about decision making is a big one, right? To decide to do a squat. It’s a big thing to decide, isn’t it? The risks are high.

[00:46:25] You say the risks are high? I don’t know if they are. I really don’t. I think if people are going to open a squat, now is the time and the place, because the price of buying at the moment is is too high. Yeah, I think that’s I personally I think that’s a higher risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I was talking to a colleague yesterday. I won’t mention who they are, but I think they’ve regretted borrowing the amount that they’ve borrowed because they can’t not make ends meet, but they can’t forge themselves the lifestyle initially just because of what they’ve bought. It’s really it’s really difficult, the pricing. So and I don’t see ours as a risk because of the proximity and the brand that we have. You know, that’s like saying McDonald’s opening a new chain down the road is a risk. It’s not that if you understand the product, you go in, you’re going to buy a Big Mac, you know you’re going to get a Big Mac. I don’t see that as a risk. And I think because we’ve we’re opening a squat within the geographical location or the influence of our existing practise. I don’t see that as a risk. I just think of it as a adding another seven surgeries to the to the existing practise just happens to be a bit further down the road. So I don’t know, I personally, I don’t think.

[00:47:47] You made the decision to go ahead thinking it’s not such a big risk. I like that. Then find the property.

[00:47:53] So we found the property which actually kind of fell in our laps. It was literally the first thing I looked at. As I said, we kind of decided to do this in the middle of the COVID period. There was an abundance of property at that point where lots of businesses had gone under. It was in the right geographical location. The price, the rent for it was very, very low.

[00:48:14] Had we already had the COVID bump in dentistry, like where we’d come back and we were busy as hell that one was. It was at the time.

[00:48:21] No, it’s just it was actually we started looking whilst I was sitting at home doing nothing.

[00:48:26] But when you scared like what if patients weren’t going to come back to practises or or you you were cool with it.

[00:48:31] No, no, I didn’t think that at all.

[00:48:33] You were right. I was wrong. I was thinking no one’s going to come. They’re going to think they’re going to get infected by viruses in the air. If you remember.

[00:48:40] I remember you were shitting yourself, mate.

[00:48:43] I think we both were, to be honest. I don’t know. I just never thought of it that way. You know, even with the house prices, my wife was like, the prices are going to drop. And I said to her, I don’t think they are. I think they’re going to rock it up because people are going to move away from London and go into suburbs. And I think I mean, I was proven right, which was a bit crazy because in the middle of COVID, we sold our house and we’ve just put another one. So we I went against my own advice and bought an A in a when the price of going up but that’s another story. But yeah, I didn’t see it as a risk. So we got the practise. You know, we’ve spent effectively a third of what we would have bought if we had to buy it outright straight away with, with a patient base luckily is that we’ve got the patient base already, so we didn’t have to buy that. So for me this is a no brainer. I think we can we’ve got waiting lists of people who are trying to access treatment. So this for me is an extension. The biggest thing is, is staffing. And in getting more people, getting people to buy into what we’re doing, getting the right people to be able to deliver that sort of work where, you know, we see as good quality, highly valued with patients who already value us and more importantly, that they can progress into something.

[00:50:08] Is it easier to hire when you’re offering shift work like because you probably meet certain people’s, I guess, patterns because obviously there might be somebody who wants to do the schoolrooms in the morning or whatever and they want to stop. Does that make it easier to hire or.

[00:50:26] I’m not sure. I think it’s a bit of both. You know, when we first moved our existing staff to shift system, we were met with some heavy opposition. Now we’ve started most of them. In fact, I think virtually all of them have said, I don’t think I could go back to the other system. I think people value having that extra time every day, whether it be in the morning, whether it be in the afternoon. It doesn’t matter so much whether they’ve had kids or not. I think makes it does it make a difference either? Because what we found is that the ones who do have kids either drop them to school or pick them up rather than both. There’s a there’s a variation. Some people have obviously some preferences. Some people are naturally one, either morning people or night night people. I’m a night person. I think Payman yours are the same. You tend to message each other at two in the morning. Yeah. Whereas I think probably you’re probably just about to get up at two the morning. Yeah.

[00:51:33] So yeah, yeah I’m on the opposite. So I went through a phase of being a night person and me and Payman had a lot of evening calls and then and then Payman started eating this one meal a day. I don’t know if he’s still on it now, whether he’s telling me lies, but he messages me at 11 p.m. at night, which tells me he’s probably eating at that time now. But yeah, I’m definitely morning and trying to be unusually in bed for ten.

[00:52:01] Usually what I get from you like talking to you now, this sort of.

[00:52:06] Calm.

[00:52:08] Person who if I if I didn’t if I didn’t know the story, I’d say, this cat, this cat. He’s just he he doesn’t like things to change very much. But looking at the story like you are continuously pushing.

[00:52:24] Yeah, I’m not changing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:52:28] It’s strange. It’s almost like that sort of.

[00:52:29] Calm top.

[00:52:31] Of the water and. And underneath it, like. Like a swan or something like the bottom, the paddling away. But, you know, the just the fact that you’ve done this thing up to now is super impressive, number one. But but, you know someone who just wants to keep on doing things. Yeah. And now 14 years later, you’re like, oh, well, let’s do a new squat and the double up again. Yeah. Would you have plans to keep going? Like, are you thinking possibly 100 practises? What are you thinking? What’s yours? Are you staying regional or do you think you’ll go national with it or are you thinking about all this?

[00:53:12] I would like to expand. I mean, if if it if it keeps going and we keep being successful, why not? I don’t see why not. I’ve never had plans to be a mini corporate or anything like that. I just like to do what the business wants to do. So if it feels natural to expand and it’s the right time and the right place, we’ll expand. If there’s appetite for it, we’ll expand. We’d like to deliver. If patients keep asking, When can I get in? How can I make this appointment? Are you going to be closer to me? You know, then yeah, we’ll expand and you know, as long as we can keep the quality and the people happy, there’s no there’s no reason why we can’t. It’s never really been about that. It’s never been a significant part of the thinking. Yeah, expansion is important and I do want to expand and you know, but more for as I said, I’d like to do what the business is trying to do. I think a lot of people try and make the business work for them, whereas I like to I like to work for the business. If the business is saying to me that more people want to access this service, then yeah, we’ll expand.

[00:54:22] Yeah. But where I’m going, where I’m going is I mean, we’re going into kind of a different era now. But, you know, just a few months back, right, there was loads of cash available for businesses. And you could have done it like a Series A and say, hey, look, look at my track record. I want to put one of these in every city. Yes, you could you could get together with some sharp talking Eton boy or some lawyer or somebody who put the thing together for you. And it would be a credible story. Yeah, but the headaches would go through the roof, of course. But you seem like you’re kind of up for headaches.

[00:55:07] You know, I think I think I take very calculated risks. I don’t like to take crazy risks, even though they may feel crazy or to the outside like they’re crazy.

[00:55:17] Not just about the risk, the headaches, you know, like that one guy would say, look, if I’ve got seven shares, I’m doing well, I’m going on three holidays.

[00:55:25] I’m good.

[00:55:27] Another guy says, Well, why not make it 14 or 21? Another guy?

[00:55:32] I have an answer that for that. So you say that’s a headache? I would say that is a headache as well. But you can plan for that headache. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can you can line up the paracetamol before it happens. What I would say is that yes, if we’re going to expand, I would like to get the system in place before we expand. And then yeah. Rather than expand and then try and deal with the problems as and when they come. So that’s what I mean by calculated risk. If, if I, if we’re planning to expand, which we will. That’s why I want to build up that the administrative part now with three surgeries effectively most people who run three surgeries do not have they have a PM in each surgery, three people, whereas I want to build it into a 20 person, behemoth, administrative, effectively a business in its own right, and then I’ll use that power to expand. So yeah.

[00:56:34] By the way, let’s not forget 21 chairs, as you know, in its own way, it’s like seven practises or something.

[00:56:40] It is. It is. But you know, there’s a big difference between having seven in one building and to to sell for it actually is a huge difference. It’s a lot easier to control.

[00:56:53] You’re right.

[00:56:54] His seven chairs is 14 chairs, remember.

[00:56:57] Because that’s double shift. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. It’s no bloody joke.

[00:57:07] It’s interesting. And it could be someone else’s faulty.

[00:57:10] Practises.

[00:57:11] If they weren’t fully optimised, you know.

[00:57:14] Yeah.

[00:57:14] So interesting, interesting way of looking at it.

[00:57:17] So that’s, that’s my expansion. That’s, that’s the risk we’re taking. You’re absolutely right. If that’s the way we’ve seen it, if we run a shift system, we can literally double up. Yeah. And which patient doesn’t want to have access between seven in the morning and at night.

[00:57:36] I’ll tell you what’s really interesting, Rajiv, is, you know, we operate our practise like 9 to 5 or whatever. We do the odd one late evening. Right. And, you know, I have my team members who I call lead ninjas. Right. Who deal with our, shall we say, inbound marketing, which which you know nothing about Rajiv, because you’ve just got you’ve just got 28 chairs filled at the moment. Right. So you can’t do anything about marketing. Let’s put that to one side. And we find that the best time to get hold of patients if you want to book appointments. Right. Or get through to them or follow them up. Right. Is after hours or on a Saturday and you’re open all that time, do you find that your reception team are more optimal around that time in terms of success? Have you not analysed that? We’ve not looked at that. I’m just curious about it.

[00:58:26] Analysed it.

[00:58:27] He’s not looked at it, man. He’s just just a winner. Some people are just winners, dude.

[00:58:31] But you’re right. I mean, naturally what you’re saying is absolutely correct. People, we do get more phone calls outside of ours. And at lunchtime, that is definitely a massive benefit. And when I tell people that we’re open from 730 to 8, they’re like, Oh, okay, you know, that that really suits me. And in the area we’re in, we’re actually in quite a big commuter area. A lot of people travel into the city. And I think since going doing these hours, we’ve hoovered up a lot of that clientele. I bet just just because we’re the only practise in the area that that kind of does that.

[00:59:11] But does the name come from Buddy?

[00:59:14] It’s not original. We’re on to Green Walk. But we didn’t like the name because, you know, we try and do things sustainably. We try and do things naturally, and we like the nature representation. If you look at our logo, it’s it’s a bit different. It’s a it’s like it looks like a shell. And that for us represents. You guys know what the Fibonacci sequence is? Yeah. Naturally occurring number. And so we like that. We like the name and we kept it because of the the, you know, we like the we like to blend in with our background. We like we like to be natural. We’re we’re, we’re never going to paint our practise bright orange or do anything crazy like that to stand out. We’re not peacocking. But what we are trying to do is we’re trying to ingrain ourselves with whatever feels right in the right area and do what patients want and do things correctly. Mm hmm.

[01:00:19] What’s your what’s your bugbear with associates?

[01:00:23] With associates?

[01:00:24] What bothers you about an associate?

[01:00:27] I mean, luckily we’ve had pretty good associates. And, you know, what tends to happen if if we get associates that don’t get along? And actually, now I think about it, I think it’s what I came back to earlier is people trying to do the same thing. So associates who.

[01:00:43] The same treatment.

[01:00:45] Yeah, not necessarily the same treatment but.

[01:00:47] Oh is it not progressing.

[01:00:48] Well progressing. You know, it does it really does bother me when I see a dentist who’s stuck. He’s really stuck. More importantly, they’re not willing to try and change that. I don’t mind if they’re stuck, but they’re trying things that that’s quite nice. The ones that are stuck and don’t listen in terms of of improvement, that’s that’s the thing that bothers me. You know, I’ve I’ve asked many dentists, what where do you see yourself in five years time? I’m sure you guys are asked that as well. To many of the people on this podcast, and no one says doing exactly the same thing I’m doing right now. No one says that. Do they know so? So what bothers me is if that’s what you are feeling and that’s the way we want you to go. You’ve got to you’ve got to challenge yourself. And I think the biggest bugbear I have is is dentists who don’t challenge themselves. And as I said, it doesn’t necessarily have to be going on courses. It could be any sort of thing. But I want them to improve.

[01:01:52] The thing is, dentistry don’t challenge themselves. But by the way, I’ve I’ve been through parts of my career, I think from from around 2012 to 2015. I feel like it didn’t go anywhere. It didn’t progress.

[01:02:05] Yeah. But was that was that a period of a consolidation as opposed to progression? Because you still need periods of consolidation.

[01:02:13] I don’t think it was I don’t think it was. I just I just don’t feel like I progressed whatever. I didn’t analyse myself enough to figure out why I didn’t progress. But what I’m saying is a lot of times people who don’t move forward are uncomfortable being uncomfortable. Right. That that and you’re clearly the opposite. You’re you like being outside your comfort zone and learning and you know, the kind of person that led the first three day a week NHS practise must have evolved into a whole different person who was on a four day a week for four surgery, private practise and then a different person now and a different person going forward. Yes. And you know, you’re comfortable being uncomfortable.

[01:03:01] Why? I don’t know. You’re right. I just. I don’t like staying still. I mean, I just feel like. I don’t know, I just. I just feel like I need to do something. I need to. I feel that’s. Maybe that’s what I feel. Success is is growth is the growth is actually the success.

[01:03:26] A lot of like. Another person could be sitting here saying, look, I too, think the success is about that.

[01:03:31] But I’m I’m scared of.

[01:03:33] Trying that thing that’s going to going to going to make you like, I don’t know, taking on some new bit of digital workflow. There’s loads of dentists, you know, really good dentists who haven’t made that leap into digital. But I’m sure you have. Have you?

[01:03:48] Of course.

[01:03:48] Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

[01:03:49] Yeah.

[01:03:51] And you can understand how you’re scared of. What I’m saying is that other person could be sitting here saying, yeah, exactly what you said. You know, progress is like that. And yet being so uncomfortable doing it that they don’t make the jump. But you happily make the jump. Where’s it come from?

[01:04:12] Um.

[01:04:14] It’s useful. It’s useful to, to, to know that, dude. Yeah. Because if people could get over that then and by the way, it sounds like you’ve instilled it in your teams. 100 people are thinking like this. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve got something to do.

[01:04:28] I’ve never even thought about it. I mean, I think I’ve always been like this. I think maybe it’s just my nature, you know? I’ve never been scared of doing things. I’ve always felt, in fact, I always feel like I think differently from everyone else. And in a way I have in my my thoughts. I know I think differently from other people. My thoughts are often like an outsider’s point of view from whenever whenever I talked to anyone, you know, we said at the beginning, you know, I put my opinion on Facebook sometimes.

[01:05:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:05:02] And I find often my opinion is vastly different from anyone else’s. Not to say mine is right. It’s just I sometimes feel my viewpoint is completely different. I’ve got where I was going with this, but I’ve always felt that way. I’ve never really been scared of the unknown because I feel that maybe I am the unknown.

[01:05:25] Maybe what about as a kid or something?

[01:05:29] Perhaps. I mean, sometimes you look back at your life and, you know, you look back and say, I wish that other people had done things. You know, I look at my mum’s career and my mum was a very and is a very successful pharmacist. And she retired a few years ago. And sometimes I feel that she got stuck running one practise and she loved it. Don’t get me wrong, she was very successful at it, but I felt that she didn’t progress because my father was very much different that way. He wanted to do new things. He’d take a little bit of a gamble. And, you know, he passed away when I was about 18. But I still that’s one thing I really remember about him and that he always wanted to do new things. And I remember him always. I actually remember him doing stuff that excited him. And I think I think I’ve taken that mantle off him and that doing something new is exciting. And I look back and I think perhaps everyone else, you know, if if you’re not being challenged, it’s not exciting, you know, for me, it’s just boring, actually.

[01:06:40] You know that Payman mentioned the fact that, you know you’re comfortable being uncomfortable. Are you uncomfortable? Like Payman said, making that jump to digital? Did you think about making the jump to digital and think that that makes me uncomfortable? Or do you just think I need to go digital? Let’s just get the shit and buy it.

[01:06:59] Pretty much. I mean, going digital is like a drop in the ocean for me. That’s not even a thing. You know, when I talk to other people about what I’m doing, even even right now, they’re like your mental. So at the moment, we’re expanding this practise. Yeah. So we renovated the existing degree in dental. We’re buying this new practise. As I said, I sold my home, I bought a new home. I’m renovating that as well. So I’ve got building work going on there. I’ve got a I’ve got a 12 day old son.

[01:07:31] Congratulations, man. Thank you very much.

[01:07:34] Yeah, he’s he’s he’s keeping me awake at night and my wife, but he’s absolutely amazing. Even at 12 days, they have such a personality is amazing. I’ve taken a roll with Smile Faster, which is great teaching, learning. I’m doing a diploma with implants at the moment. I’ve also taken a role with Invisalign speaking for them. So all of that in the one year I think I’ve looked back at this year and I thought actually maybe I’ve taken on a little bit too much, but I’m still happy doing it and I really enjoy it and I don’t like to stay still. I like to do new things. So it’s all been like, what’s life without a bit of risk and a bit of adventure? That’s what I think. You’ve got to make it interesting. You’ve got to make it fun. When we’re not on the on this for too long. You’ve you can’t stay still. You just can’t. Patrick.

[01:08:31] How would you how would you define success? What does it mean to you?

[01:08:36] Success. You know, I feel it’s it’s for me, I would say it’s doing. You know, that’s a really tough question. Success for me is, you know, multifactorial. For me, it’s you know, it is getting up in the morning and wanting to do what you’re going to do that day. For me, that’s what it is. It’s about progressing as a person, whether that’s clinically, whether that’s emotionally, whether that’s, you know, with family life, it’s about helping others along the way. You know, I’m always the other thing I really like is collaboration. You know, if somebody phones me up and ask for help, even if I’ve never met this person before, I will help them. And I like that. I like helping other people. I like I like working with other people. My sister sometimes thinks it’s at my detriment that I give too much time to other people just to help them out without without expecting anything in return. But, you know, I believe that you reap what you sow eventually. But success success is moving forward. That’s what it is. It’s just moving forward. And if you back it up, it doesn’t matter as long you know, you can you can move forward even if you have to take a step back.

[01:10:05] Let’s talk about some of the mess ups along the way.

[01:10:08] The many, many mess ups, yes.

[01:10:10] Take me take me through some of the errors you think you’ve made.

[01:10:15] You know, actually, at the beginning of the practise, I actually didn’t move that that far forward for maybe maybe for four years. And I think a lot of it was was down to us not understanding the business properly. So I think I think the first thing that that helped is actually understanding what the business is trying to do. You know, I talked about trying to make a practise fit, a lifestyle, and I feel that doesn’t work. We tried to do that. So we you know, when you when you buy a practise young, you go, well, if only I make 100,000 a year, and once I’m £100,000 a year, I’ll be happy. And so what ends up you try and make that business fit £100,000 a year goal, even though it’s trying to do something completely different. And what ends up you never achieve that 100,000? You always get 70% of what you’re trying to do. So I think the first thing we actually made a big difference is we understand, we understood that we’re a lot of patients were trying to access care, so we expanded. We understand that a hygienist is invaluable in that they help us deliver the care that we’re trying to deliver. So doing that made a big difference.

[01:11:32] And I talked about Assef before when we’re talking about talking to patients, but he also helped us form a really amazing business plan. And we continue to talk every three months about our business and how it can develop. And he’s really helped me out. And my sister, incredibly, he’s got a real keen understanding of what what’s the next good step, even if we disagree, is a great sounding board. And, you know, everyone needs a mentor, however it is, whether it’s through clinical business, business personal. So that’s made a big difference business wise. You know, we’ve we’ve made errors in God. You know, how we’ve talked to staff before. I’ve, you know, sometimes you get snappy and don’t mean to be like that. And I think every owner has done that. They’ve said something to a member of staff that they deeply regret, and that’s happened to me many times. And sometimes it’s not even what you say, it’s how you say it. Sometimes you try and get a message, of course, quickly, and you send something on WhatsApp and you go, Actually, I should have said that WhatsApp told you in person, you know, the human side of things. There are so many mistakes we had.

[01:12:51] We had Zeba Shaikh from Rue Dental and she was talking about what she learnt from her dad and her uncle. They owned this gigantic business like care home is the biggest care home business in Europe or something. And she was saying about body language. And ever since I had that podcast, I’ve been paying attention to that myself, you know, and, you know, it’s a growing number of of staff, this new people just.

[01:13:23] A.

[01:13:23] Nod and a wave from the boss makes you realise I wasn’t paying attention to this fact until I spoke to Zeba on the podcast. And everyone’s looking at the boss’s every move.

[01:13:37] Yes.

[01:13:37] Yeah, I was just walking in like one or the others, you know, like not not thinking that anyone’s paying attention to me. And ever since she said that.

[01:13:46] The just just a.

[01:13:48] Small body language thing of of of acknowledging people from a distance.

[01:13:53] Yes. Makes a.

[01:13:54] Massive difference. A massive.

[01:13:56] Difference. And it’s definitely something I’m not naturally good at either.

[01:14:00] Me either. I’m shy.

[01:14:01] So, yeah, you know, sometimes I feel like you, you know, you’re part of the team and you just want to act like the rest of the team. But in reality, you can’t be that person. You have to you have to step up. And it is small things. It often is small things. I wouldn’t claim to be the best boss in the world by any stretch of imagination. In fact, sometimes I think I’m an arse.

[01:14:22] What’s your biggest weakness, do you think?

[01:14:25] Oh, God. Many. I think my. My personal weakness is probably people management. Actually, I have to work on that really hard. I have to be very careful what I say, because what what I you know, I think I was born with that. You know what? You think it just comes out your mouth.

[01:14:52] No filter.

[01:14:52] No filter. That’s the one. And and I’ve been told I can be really abrupt sometimes. And I think with time and actually if you if anyone has been looking. What I see on Facebook over ten years, I think I’ve filtered it down to be less and less and less confrontational. Not because I don’t feel the same way, but more, you know, it doesn’t it doesn’t actually help anyone to be confrontational, you know. And what I’ve found is that is less important to be right. Yeah. So sometimes I know I’m right and I can argue a point and actually upset a lot of people knowing I’m right. I think what I’ve worked out is it’s not important to be right. Actually, when you’re running a business, it’s more important to be fair. If you can be seen to be doing the right thing for the right and being fair, I think that’s more important. For example, you know, if a patient doesn’t turn up twice on the NHS, know you have every right to not see them. Whereas if you speak to them and they realise that one of them was a funeral and the second one they, you know, their diabetic mother went into a coma or whatever it is, I don’t know. You know, it would only be fair to give them another chance. So you’d be right in saying, no, you can’t be seen again, but it would be fair to let them back. And I think it’s more important now, more than ever, to be fair than right. And I think that’s one thing that I’ve learnt and I’ve had to work on because my natural instinct is to argue about being right, whereas actually it’s not important anymore. Yeah.

[01:16:35] And what about clinically errors, patient management, things that stick in your mind?

[01:16:42] You know what? Luckily I’ve been quite good. I’ve always been naturally quite gifted with dentistry, you know, I was the person at university that it was quite happily doing molar endo and now as a student and not really having to need any help. Luckily I’ve been quite gifted. I think the errors I’ve made is being overconfident that something would work when it won’t.

[01:17:05] So when someone comes to you and says with the classic one with I don’t know that six sets of dentures and you’re thinking in your head, I can get this right.

[01:17:14] Yeah, yeah, I’ve had one.

[01:17:17] Or two with that sort of thing.

[01:17:20] You know, there’s always a little bit of overconfidence. Sometimes it’s it’s not overconfidence. I just, you know, sometimes you look at something as textbook correct, but somebody doesn’t get along with it and you fail to see the patient side of things. You know, clinically, it might be textbook perfect, but, you know, if you haven’t communicated with the patient, the patient, the patient’s adaptability is something that is untestable. And if it’s you know, it gets harder and harder to do things like that.

[01:17:52] Have you got an example?

[01:17:54] Yeah, 100%. You know, sometimes, you know, let’s use the classic doing a crown and it’s five microns off and you get one patient who’s absolutely an agonising, uncomfortable pain from it, and then you leave someone who’s three millimetres high and they don’t care. I’ve had a patient where I’ve seen a crown put in three millimetres high from another practise. I’m like, you know, you can only bite on this one back tooth. Yeah, I know. But I’m happy with that. They’re comfortable. They adapted to it. And, you know, the more and more I think about it, the more talking to the patient and then getting them on your side is more important than the actual dentistry in itself anyway. And luckily I haven’t actually had that many clinical errors, but some errors I have had of when I’ve slightly overpromised something and haven’t delivered to that exacting standard that I do have. But again, most of the time I can get the patient on my side and apologise and say, Look, yeah, I did that, overstate that. And then, you know, in the interest of fairness and value, I would say, look, I’ll just do it for you for free. Don’t worry about it. Just replace it. Luckily, it’s only been one or two patients here or there with the bits that it’s, you know, clinically I’ve been okay and I’ve been lucky. I think it will come and bite me in the arse one day. That’s probably the day I decide that clinically I actually have to do something else. I’ll probably end up giving it up at that point. But luckily I’ve what I’ve tended to do has worked really nicely.

[01:19:33] Nice to hear all this bloody. And you know I’m in touch with you and oh yeah who works at yours and.

[01:19:40] Phenomenon she is she will become incredibly successful.

[01:19:45] Very strong on the content side if that’s what you’ve read out of it.

[01:19:48] But she she’s really she’s really humble so.

[01:19:54] Your lovely girl.

[01:19:55] Lovely, lovely. She she knows her weaknesses. And you know, one thing I love about Q&A, she thinks she’s annoying me. She messages me almost on a daily basis on every other day. And she says, what about this case? How is this going to work? I don’t know how to do this. Can you come in and help me? And I love doing it. I actually love helping her. She as she keeps thinking she’s annoying me. She thinks she’s a nuisance. But what I love about her is she’s trying new things, she’s progressing. She’s going to go somewhere, whether, as I said, whether as a as an associate with us in the long run, I’d love it to be. I really would. But as long as she comes out of it, the other end better, which I.

[01:20:39] Believe.

[01:20:39] She already is, I’m cool with that. You know, you wonder is one of these people that is destined for great things. In fact, a lot of associates are, whether they do it so publicly as you end, day is very different. But many of them are destined for great, great things.

[01:20:56] What I was going to say was she really values you as the boss. You know, she she she vouches for you as a boss talking to. And that goes a long way, man. When you’ve got that many dentists and stuff to look out for, it goes a long, long way that you’re giving your time like that sometimes.

[01:21:13] As I said, I think she feels she’s pestering me and actually sometimes I feel like I want my associates to pass through room more that way. So I’d love to help them, but I think a lot of people are scared to ask for help.

[01:21:26] But that said dude, I’ve worked in practises where the me and the principal would, even though we work in the same building, wouldn’t say a word to each other for days on end. So the guy was trying to get out of my pulpit the whole time. I wasn’t pestering him at all, but. But he just didn’t want to because he was a hands off guy, you know?

[01:21:48] Yeah, I find that insane. I mean, if if that hands off, how can you explain what we’re trying to do? That’s I suppose that’s why culture comes in. You know, it comes from the top down. It never comes from the bottom up. So you have to get involved. You can’t be a practise owner, not get involved.

[01:22:09] Have you had this situation that I’ve had at some points where it’s grown in terms of numbers of people and then you spot you see something that doesn’t feel like it’s too green.

[01:22:20] Oh, yeah.

[01:22:22] I wanted to go and snuff it out. Or would you do that? Because I find it very upsetting if someone does something that I would consider not an enlightened thing to do. And it happens more as a team grows.

[01:22:34] Of course.

[01:22:35] Yeah. What would you do about it?

[01:22:39] I mean, it depends on what it is. If it needs to be snuffed out there and then it needs to be snuffed out there, and then yeah, sometimes it’s an individual issue. So somebody has done something that is already outside of the existing set culture. Sometimes it’s it’s an inherent problem within, within the organisation itself. So for example, let’s take another bugbear of everyone, which is stock, you know, one day you’ll end up. Getting a patient in the sitting in the chair before you realise you haven’t got the materials to do the work. Now thankfully that doesn’t happen that often. It happens in every practise, sometimes at some point. But then you have to go, Well, that’s not kind of what we’re about. We, we, you know, I ethos is that we have to be prepared before the patient comes in. So before the patient’s in, the dentist and the nurse has to go look at what’s out and make sure that’s correct for that treatment. You know, that doesn’t always happen. And sometimes if there’s a stock issue and it keeps happening over and over again, one thing you need, what we have to do or what we do is we look back at the system and say, where’s the system gone wrong? So sometimes you have to talk to the person. Sometimes you have to look at the system, and more often not. I think as we get bigger and bigger, the systems fail more and more.

[01:23:59] Yeah. You know, before you can rely on a, you know, saying to your nurse, can you just order that for me? I mean, you got 200 people. You can’t have 200 people say to their nurse, Can you just order that for me? It has to be a proper system in place. And I think sometimes actually, if things go wrong, it’s an opportunity to to improve. And this opportunity to find out what is, what is, what is wrong. But sometimes you have to snuff out at source if it is somebody going against the grain at the beginning in the first place. You know, and I said, my my gut instinct is to WhatsApp them. If I’m not there, it’s like, what have you done to shake them by the head? But you have to be able to take a breath, sit back, and actually it’s really important you actually speak to that person in person. It has to be done in the correct way in building culture. It’s not always easy, and I think a lot of people think practise ownership is easy when you haven’t done it, when you when you’ve done it, you know how mad it is. You know, in fact, I’ll tell you what, that’s one of my biggest bugbears of being associates. They don’t know what it’s like on the other side. Yeah.

[01:25:17] Us and them sort of culture. Prav have you seen that? You must have seen that in the number of practises you’ve been in.

[01:25:23] I have. And you know what’s really interesting is something that Cal once said to me, which was when Barbara. Right, who’s my business partner in the dental suite clinics. And one of the things that he said to me was that when he became a practise owner, he went back to his principal and apologised. Because he he realised how much of a pain in the arse he was as an associate only when he became a practise owner and figured it all out.

[01:25:59] It’s that famous thing is, you know, you’ve got to walk a mile in somebody’s shoes before you understand what they’re doing. Yeah, in that way, you’re a mile away and you’ve got their shoes. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, it’s. I think associates don’t realise how difficult it is on the other side. No, it’s a completely different kettle of fish. It’s not a simple case of we’re taking 50% of your money and pocketing it. Usually it’s a lot less than that. In fact, most associates make a loss for the business and a lot of people don’t realise that. When I when I tell people, when I tell the associates, I look, I said when you when they joined us, I said to her, you’re going to make me a loss. I don’t care that you make me a loss, because I’m hoping that we can develop you into something that won’t make loss and you can be an asset for the practise in the future. But at the beginning you’re going to make a loss and a loss for about two years.

[01:27:01] Have you got that number of like what what an associate needs to turn over before they’re making a profit in your place?

[01:27:08] Our practise is about £1,200 gross a day.

[01:27:13] If they gross 1100. You’ve made a loss on that associate.

[01:27:16] Yes. Yes. It’s about 1200 at the moment.

[01:27:22] Jesus, is that Prav? Would you say that that’s standard?

[01:27:27] Is that is that a half day shift or a.

[01:27:30] Seven hour day? An average seven hour day? Yeah.

[01:27:33] Okay. Okay. Okay.

[01:27:34] Not. Not on the not on the whole day. On the on the seven hour day. But there’s even more. All our KPIs are done on seven hour days. Seven hour days? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s high. But as I said.

[01:27:47] Is the team aware of that number? Everyone knows that number.

[01:27:51] I’m not sure they do, actually. I think the dentists are more aware of it than the dentists. Yeah.

[01:27:58] Do you publish your daily or your weekly sales or your monthly or any of that?

[01:28:03] No, no. I mean, we the one thing we definitely do do is we do we have a dentist meeting every like every quarter without fail quarter. Yeah. Every quarter. Every three months. And it’s, but, but when we meet, we, we, we meet for 3 hours.

[01:28:22] It’s not like does that end up being what kind of meeting does that end up being where everyone’s just shouting. Would you go with like an agenda and.

[01:28:29] Oh god, no, no, no, no. It’s not a shouty meeting at all. Look, the part of the culture is I mean, we really believe that the practise can only move forward if everyone’s pulling in the same direction. Yeah. So, so the whole idea of that meeting is we, we ask what’s going on, where the issues are like on individual level. And then the bigger picture, which is, which comes from me and my sister, we have to explain what we’re doing, practise and the bigger picture. Well, actually, we’re trying to move in this direction and the next thing we see, the big thing is to do this. Whether we have to develop the reception team, we have to develop nursing team, whether you have to develop yourselves, whether we need to start focussing on one treatment over the other. That’s, you know, the the key thing is, is that we all agree to pull in that direction. And I say to them, if you don’t agree, you either have to we either do nothing. Which I don’t want because our practises are about progression or you leave. Basically, if you’re never going to agree, then our practise isn’t right for you. You know, I’ve never been in this situation where somebody disagreed to that extent. Thankfully, I think most people understand you have to do something to move forward. So we do dentist meetings regularly and once every three months. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but every 12 weeks. 13 weeks. It comes around quick and I think if you’ve got three months, that’s a good amount of time for us to see whether that what we did last time actually made any difference. You know, it’s really easy to fall off the wagon after three days. But, you know, we want to meet up every three months. You want to see what we did last time actually made a difference. And we want to see what the next thing is to make the next difference. So, you know, it’s all about progress.

[01:30:27] Effortless, man. You make it look effortless. Make it.

[01:30:31] Easy. You know, if you’ve got a good system, it makes it look effortless. The way Liverpool or Man City play football. It looks effortless sometimes, but that’s because they got the system. They work together. They they all know their roles. They’re all pulling in the same direction.

[01:30:47] I’m going to meet Bob. Bob is going to call this episode The Swan, because I just see you as the swan man. Beautiful and calm at the top and working hard underneath.

[01:31:02] Working holidays? Yeah.

[01:31:06] It’s going quick. It’s gone quick, man. We’ve talked for an hour and 40 minutes.

[01:31:11] I can’t believe that.

[01:31:12] Let’s, let’s let’s wrap it up, dude, because I think perhaps.

[01:31:14] Could pass Proust bedtime.

[01:31:18] And eat a man.

[01:31:21] What was the name of that Indian restaurant? We’ll go there. Yeah. What was it, by the way?

[01:31:26] Doom down in Didsbury.

[01:31:28] Okay, it’s. Yeah, the.

[01:31:31] Pictures look nice, too, but the pictures of the food looked nice, too.

[01:31:34] But it was that, you know, the food was great. Yeah, the food was great. Not the best food I’ve ever had. The food was just great. But the service was just.

[01:31:43] Emotional emotion making you emotional?

[01:31:47] It was emotional, man.

[01:31:49] Let’s move on to let’s move on to the final questions, man. It’s been it’s been brilliant, but it’s been a real education to to listen to you talk about this behemoth man.

[01:32:02] Unfortunately, we didn’t really get to delve too much into family life or childhood or anything like that. Right. But, Rajeev, I’m assuming assuming you’ve got all your shit going on at home as well and you know, you, you make time for for that as well. You were talking about 50% of your time at home and at work and stuff. But yeah.

[01:32:26] I do try to stay at home quite a lot. You know, my daughter is absolutely a joy. She’s unbelievable. And obviously my.

[01:32:36] Other kids as.

[01:32:36] Well, not just the two, the 12 day old and my four year old daughter who’s the happiest girl I’ve ever met and just such, such fun. And she constant keeps me laughing. Yeah. You know, it’s amazing to spend some time with that. And I like to dedicate at least one day with her completely when I can. So. Well.

[01:33:02] Sir Rajiv, imagine it’s your it’s your last day on the planet. And, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got your kiddies next to you and you had to pass them three pieces of wisdom. What would they be?

[01:33:17] That’s a good question. Number one is, if you if you think it’s right, do that. Don’t do what other people expect you to do if you feel that’s the way to do it and you feel. That’s right, definitely do that. Don’t care so much what other people think about what you’re doing. And that’s definitely number two. And probably the third thing I think is, as I said, as we talked about it.

[01:33:43] Early progress is get out of your comfort zone.

[01:33:47] Get out your comfort zone, progress your comfort zone. But don’t expect you can do some things perfectly the first time round because you can’t. Progress is more important than perfection. And in fact, like my four year old daughter’s very much like that. She, you know, she tries something once and when she can’t do it perfectly the first time and she throws a strop. And then you have to I have to say that you can’t do it yet. You just got to keep trying to do it. And yet it’s really important for her. And I keep saying it to her, don’t, you can’t do it yet. You’ve got to keep trying. You can’t do it yet. But the progress thing is more important than being perfect. So definitely those three bits of advice just to I think that that makes you that makes me happy. I think that’s what I would say makes other people happy.

[01:34:35] Rajiv, what about legacy? So if you if you were to. Read this on on the equivalent of a tombstone or whatever. Right. Rajiv was. Dot, dot, dot. What would you like that to say?

[01:34:49] Um. Yeah, I would probably say it should it should say Rajiv was somebody who wanted change and instigator change. I think I think in the long run. Nice. You know, I’d like to change the profession at some point, you know, the. The whole thing. I don’t know whether it’ll happen or not. You know, the politics, the GDC, the the way the profession is seen, the you know, I’d love to be able to change all that at some point, but I would say that’s what it should be. I’m the instigator of change.

[01:35:29] It’s interesting, but because, you know, you need an opinion on what’s the best lever you can pull to make that change. You know, for instance, you would classically you’d say, oh, go stand for some media post, but that in your opinion, that might not be the right vertical. It’s an interesting question.

[01:35:48] Even if it is, you know, there are lots of people who are in the BDA who are great. But, you know, the BDA has been around for a long time. And there’s a lot of criticism that the media in that it doesn’t actually make anything different. Yeah, the way I see it is, you know how I talked about lining up the paracetamol before the headache? Yeah. The way I see it is if you’re going to make change, you’re going to need to. You’re going to have to have people behind you. You know, I’ve got 200 staff members in the dental profession behind me already or going to be 200 staff. So that will help instigate change. You know, I don’t they know what I’m about. They can spread the story of what we’re trying to do. So if I do end up the BDA, I don’t think I wanted it tomorrow. I want to do it when I’ve got real influence or, you know, lot of people who know what I’m about and people know what I’m trying to do, whether they’re with us now or not, you know, so there’s 200 maybe current members, but maybe 100 other people that I’ve improved or the organisation has improved going forward. And if they can vouch for me going forward then actually I might be able to make some change. I’ve got it. You’ve got to line it up. You can’t just join the BDA and agreed.

[01:37:02] Agreed. But, but you know, it’s like here we are. I don’t know, a good 6000 people may listen to this episode on today’s figures, but who knows? Maybe. Maybe this this episode is going to be here for for forever.

[01:37:18] Yeah.

[01:37:19] So hit us with with your your key idea on how the profession needs to change.

[01:37:27] Mostly it’s about respect. You know that the GDC need to respect the profession more. The profession needs to respect patients more. The key thing for me is, you know, obviously there’s over litigation and stuff like that, transparency with the NHS.

[01:37:45] So it is.

[01:37:47] Yeah, transparency. You know, the funny thing is the GDC say you’ve got to be upfront and honest with your patients. That’s one of the key things they say. Yet they say, you know, a lot of people have taken that to be you can’t say what you’re trying to tell them. You know, if you want to tell them that they they really should pay this for that sort of crown to get the best value of money, whether it’s on the private NHS, because that’s how you feel. You know, there are rules and regulations sometimes, so you can’t say that. It’s like, hold on a minute, I can’t be on. You’ve got to be honest or not. It’s got to be one or the other. There’s got to be some sort of transparency there. And I think the lack of transparency actually makes such a difference. You know, with all this litigation that’s going on, the work force morale, which is probably at an all time low, might have picked up a little bit after COVID, but there’s some major things going on. So, you know, I think respect and transparency is major for me.

[01:38:48] For sure. But, you know.

[01:38:51] Your final question.

[01:38:52] Final question. Fancy dinner party. Three guests. Dead or alive. Who would you have?

[01:39:03] My dad. Definitely back. I’d love to be able to speak to him again and see what he thinks.

[01:39:08] Would it be proud of you, dude?

[01:39:10] Yeah, I hope so. You know, it’s really strange because, as I said, he passed around when I was 18, and I think I was changing quite a lot. You know, it’s when you become from a dependent to an independent effectively. And he never really saw me as an independent. I’d love to see what he thought of me as an independent adult as opposed to a dependent teenager.

[01:39:35] I don’t know what kind of a guy he was, but, you know, Asian parents famously don’t tell their kids they’re proud of them until until, you know, it’s well, well, years and years later when. And so but Buddy, I’m sure he was proud of you when you were 18, but I’m sure he would have been, well, proud of you now, too.

[01:39:57] So definitely my father. Who else? Dead or alive? You know what? I still say my wife. My wife? Yeah. You know, we have such a great time. You know, she’s. She’s so interesting. We keep each other on our toes and definitely, you know, any dinner parties, she’s got to be there. And I like.

[01:40:26] That. It’s a family affair. So you got to throw in Mahatma Gandhi in there, so.

[01:40:32] Yeah, she would just say. And my.

[01:40:34] Cousin.

[01:40:38] One last person. No, that’s a bit of pressure. You know what? Actually, I call it on a business point of view. Someone who I find really fascinating is is Richard Branson. I probably get him in there because I think he’s quite famous in that. I think he said once about improving his own staff and somebody asked him, well, why? What if they leave after you spent £30,000 training them and go, well, he said, Well, what’s better that we let them rot? I’m paraphrasing massively. Or do I train them and improve them? And that resonated with me. That really does in that. Richard Branson I’d love to pick his brains about many things. So yeah, that would be my, my three.

[01:41:30] You should listen to the episode with Andy much more.

[01:41:34] Okay. Yes.

[01:41:35] She hangs with him all the time.

[01:41:37] Okay.

[01:41:38] He’s like. It’s like episode seven or something. It’s in the single. It’s in less than 20. Only one of the early episodes.

[01:41:47] He’s he’s Richard Branson’s buddy. But he happens to be a practise owner as well. And I remember Andy saying to me, the one piece of advice Richard gave him was that spend the majority of your time recruiting.

[01:42:00] Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that. Recruitment is important. People make a business. Yeah.

[01:42:07] But he’s been an absolute pleasure. Absolute pleasure. And really good luck with the new venture. I’m sure it’s going to be super duper.

[01:42:15] Thanks, Rajeev. No, no problem. It’s been fun. It’s, you know.

[01:42:18] It’s flown by.

[01:42:20] Really? It really has. And I got a good Indian restaurant tip out of it as well. Yeah, but, man, just. Yeah, well, you know what I meant all the time, so. And I’m up there.

[01:42:32] 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.

[01:42:48] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:43:02] 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.

[01:43:12] Thanks. And don’t forget our.

[01:43:14] Six star rating.

[00:00:00] Yeah. I mean, I’d say more competition, but to be honest, I’ve never been worried about competition. I think there’s enough patience for everyone. It’s just what kind of patient you want to treat and also personality wise, who get along with as many patients I wouldn’t get along with. And that’s fine. They don’t see me, but there’s a certain demographic I really get along with and I know what my niche niches. But yes, I would say I would say fair market value around average for the whole country at the highest percentile, let’s call 1800 for a crown.

[00:00:32] 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.

[00:00:49] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Patel onto the podcast opens. Dentists who qualified in the US but grew up in the UK a bit different to what some people want to do than where they qualify in the UK and then want to move over to the US. And actually did his A-levels in the UK and then and then moved and then started his undergrad training in in the US in Europe, in San Francisco.

[00:01:16] That’s correct. A specific San Francisco.

[00:01:19] Yeah. Lovely to have you with.

[00:01:22] Pleasure’s mine.

[00:01:24] So open. You know, the reason I wanted to do this podcast was to get for people kind of a contrast on the American system compared to the UK system. I know you’ve never worked in the UK system, but just, you know, your your answers to questions will enlighten people. But just tell me about the move itself. What what happened that made you move?

[00:01:46] Absolutely. So back in 1997, I just finished my GCSEs and every year my mom’s side of the family live in California. Every year we would go for summer holidays to the US. And, you know, I thought nothing of it. I was just I’m just visiting my cousins and but you know, they were probably always talking about my uncles or my mom. You know, you should move out here and move out here when when you’re ready. And then eventually they got a green card and they decided to wait till I finished. I was secondary school in England, so I finished A-levels. I did the usual stuff, you know, it was a pure maths, mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, all the usual stuff. Back then I didn’t know anything. I was so young. Knowing now the difference between the UK and the US, I had no idea what I wanted to do and when I was 18 I just thought, Oh, I’m supposed to be a doctor or a pharmacist or something. So I just took those subjects and then I applied to pharmacy schools in England at King’s College. Queen Mary Westfield, I think was called in and some random place. I think it was Bristol. I don’t remember anymore. I just knew I wanted to live in London and that was that. And then my mum was like, You know, we’re going to move to America. I’m like, Oh, okay, so how do I do that? Suppose you have to take SATs, you go do these exams. I’m like, I just finished all this stuff. I don’t want to do any more. And then then I basically went through the American application process to become a pharmacist in America. I did all that and I got in.

[00:03:10] From.

[00:03:10] Here. Yeah, yeah. You just it just like UCAS form kind of stuff. But they have America similar things. So I did all that and then to basically I got into the universities in England, but I had to decide. So then basically I went, I came to America and when I, when I landed in America, I thought I was going to be a pharmacist. Day one is different here. You do for you as undergrad, pre pharmacy, pre dental or and then you go to professional school. So that was the best thing that ever happened because when I came here, apart from the cost of education is completely different. And that was a big shock to I did not understand that, which is fine. I mean, there’s a difference in the way things are done in the education system versus us versus England. But yeah, I came to school, I mean college, and they’re like, Yeah, you’re taking chemistry in biology. I’m like, I did all this, but what? What do you mean? So I first two years, I was so easy in college, I had a good time. I literally took A-levels again. And then you take organic chemistry, physiology, all this stuff. So you can take all the prerequisites to to go to pre-med pre pre farm. So what happened was I was taking all these classes. I was like top of the class. It was like everyone was like, Oh, the British student, you know, can you, can you talk like the way you talk and all this kind of stuff, you know? And it was easy to make friends and it was easy. It’s like but it was just I wasn’t used to the culture either. I missed all the sports in England. I missed just the places I used to hang out. And it was a big culture shock coming here because I wasn’t in New York City. I was in a small town in California for the university. So it was very hot too, like 110 degrees and all the time.

[00:04:51] Where did you go? Where did you go for the pre-med bit?

[00:04:54] So I went to Europe, also University Pacific, but they undergrad in Stockton. So it’s it’s inland from San Francisco about 2 hours, like not 120 miles. And so I thought I was going to be in like a New York kind of thing and all that kind of stuff. No, but it was a good thing because I studied I didn’t wasn’t distracted. I made lifelong friends. They still my friends. But what happened was all my friends were present and I was like, wait a minute, I’m getting better grades at the same grades as you guys, you know, nothing against pharmacy. But I just by the time I did some, what they call it, work experience and pharmacy dental stuff, I had time to do it. And also I think I had become a dentist. You know, all my friends are doing it. And plus, the dental school was in San Francisco. It wasn’t in Stockton. So I was like, I want to live in a big city. I want to become a dentist. And that’s how it happened. It was just stumbled upon it because my friends. They are doing it and none of my friends are preform. And I was like, I don’t want to be stuck here and get bored, you know? So that’s how it happened. And then if I stayed in London, I would have probably been a pharmacist, but maybe I would have changed mid-career. I mean, undergrad or university? I don’t know.

[00:05:58] You must have had buddies who did A-levels with you and then went to university here. What’s your impression of the difference between uni here and college there?

[00:06:09] So, you know, I don’t know if you went to a private school in England or public sight. My whole I was always in the private school, you know. So coming here was a big difference to always all boys, you know, in England, here, suddenly I’m in college. Oh, this is great. You know, everyone is like there’s a lot more girls.

[00:06:27] Did you go berserk?

[00:06:28] Well, it was it was fun. You know, I didn’t have to I didn’t have to worry about work so much. I mean I mean, studying so much because I kind of was repetition the first year or two, but then it got hard. But so British, I think three years, right? I think it’s three years and then you’re done and then you pretty much off in the workforce. I found that some of them, they went to Oxford, Cambridge, some of them went to UCL Kings. I found I found that they had a good time but it was over in a flash and of them had a hard time with that adapting straight away and then just being a professional and that’s it. You’re like here. I mean, technically you can be in college like eight years, nine years. And if you really do like undergrad masters, professional, you know, I mean, it’s just the cost of this stuff. You know, I did it a little bit different. You can go as fast as you want. So I finished undergrad in three years, you know, because I had all those UK classes, so I got credit for it and then I finished dental school in three years.

[00:07:20] Normally dental school’s for, but I went to Europe which has there’s no summer vacation. So I just kept going and that gave me an extra year. I did a residency like an advanced education, dental dentistry. So I was done in six years. I was done as a dentist, maybe similar to a UK dentist around 23, 24. So I had had a lot of time to process everything, but I had no guidance. None of my family members are doctors or dentists, so that was the first one. So in hindsight, if I could go back 20 years, it’s so much more I would have paid attention to and done, but I’ve done my own path and I’m happy with it. But I think I think UK again, I don’t know too much about what training is involved and an undergrad in dental school, but I find that we had all multiple choice in all our examinations. Any examination for anything is always multiple choice. I think UK is more essay based. From what I understood from when I was in A-levels, it was handwritten answers and maybe that’s the same way in professional school. I don’t know.

[00:08:19] We had some multiple choice, but the multiple choice was negative marking. Did you have that where if you get it wrong, you get a minus one?

[00:08:27] No, no, it’s just.

[00:08:29] It’s just multiple choice. It was like I’m not sure if they still do it, but there was a question of do I even answer the question? Because if you don’t answer the question, you got zero.

[00:08:38] You kind of guess it.

[00:08:39] If you get it wrong, you get minus one. I’m not sure if they still do that now. I know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So give me an idea of the costs. What are the kind of costs you’re looking at for undergrad and then professional school?

[00:08:52] So this is 20 years ago, so I’ll give you 20 years ago costs and I’ll give you 20, 22 costs because I do know those numbers. Yeah. So if you go and these are no I mean, no, no scholarship, nothing straight like full fee undergrad if you go to somewhere like maybe a state school but like a like a like UCLA or UC, that would be it’s not a private institution. It’s still not cheap, you know, versus a private school. Could be USC, Europe, NYU undergrad for you. I mean, you could be looking at almost 103 and 1000 just undergrad, you know, nowadays.

[00:09:27] Now pre-med bit.

[00:09:28] Yeah, yeah. Nowadays yeah. I mean, back then maybe, I don’t know, 100,000 just for undergrad. I mean, that’s maybe 150, but I’m gonna say 100 and then dental school, medical, dental school is more expensive than medical. More expensive than pharmacy. I think veterinary school is more than dental because I think that’s the only other one that could be similar. But dental school back then was 250,000. Now I know it’s pushing FI 400 to 500 just for dental school. And then if you have residency, some of them, some residencies, you’re paid a stipend, some you’re not. So if you go to Endo, Ortho and or Ortho Perio, some of those could be 250 or so now. So you could be $1,000,000 for 8 to 10 years of school age, $30 million of debt, you know, and oh, man, that’s that’s a it’s a big deal. Then you’re trying to buy a practise for 500,000 or a million with building. I mean, it adds up quick. If you don’t understand finance, I mean, you could easily take 500,000 and invest in a couple of real estate and you don’t have to go to school technically, you know, I mean, it depends. It depends, you know, what location you’re at. So you really have to like this profession in this country if you’re going to spend this kind of money. And most people still don’t know that. That’s what I mean. I’ve noticed some people, they think, oh, it’s easy money, you know, just got a. In a bunch of offices and just get going. And there’s plenty of people that are very good at business. That’s fine. They’re good at that. But you know, I don’t know what it’s like in London if there’s a tuition. I mean, England’s sorry, or Great Britain. If there’s tuition, there is tuition.

[00:10:54] But it’s it’s it’s capped. I think it’s capped at nine, £10,000 a year. Okay. And that’s kind of that’s kind of new. When I went through dental school, it was free and there was even there was even money they used to pay people. If I mean, it was means tested. Yeah, it was. It wasn’t even a loan. It was actually it was it was a grant. It was called. And it was means means tested. So I don’t know. I didn’t get it. I don’t know how much you had to earn to get it, how little you had to learn to get it. But but the government would not only give you pay you your your university, but would also give you money to live as well. And, you know and you know that that that wonderful notion that that where you come from shouldn’t affect your your opportunity for for education. That used to be a thing over here. And I bet you think it still is a thing with the cost compared to yours. Yeah. So what do you do about getting that cash? Did you did your parents pay? Did you get a loan?

[00:11:52] What happened? No, you just get a loan. They have federal grants, private loans. So. And then that includes money for living costs and things of that. But if you live in a city like San Francisco, in New York or L.A., I think your rent is going to be you might and you start going out a lot and stuff like that. You probably gonna go a little over, but you know, it was 100% loan. But if I ran out of money, you know, my parents, it didn’t come from medical or any like professional background. They similar to, I think a lot of my age group in England. They, they grew up in Zambia and Kenya. They moved to London in the seventies and they had a shop, you know, newsagent. So they worked like 24 hours. I mean, sorry, seven days a week, almost like 12, 13, 14 hours a day. I think it’s similar to Proud Dad from what I understand from the Cos. But yeah, so they gave me extra money if I ran out because I needed it for food or just rent but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t like extravagantly spend it. No. Because I know I had to pay it back. So I mean the loan money. So back then though it wasn’t nowadays it’s very bad interest rates for loans. It could be like five, six, seven, 8%. Right back then I think it was like you could get 1 to 3% for a for a government loan and private loans might have been 5 to 6% if you don’t if they don’t cover enough.

[00:13:06] So two questions. Number one, what was your parent’s plan regarding work? Were they planning to open a shop in America as well?

[00:13:16] No, I think when they came here, my uncles, they had some history with some business here and some real estate and hotel or motel. So I think a lot of Indians say either go into that category or the agent versus us versus England. But yeah, they got a motel area. It wasn’t the best location, to be honest. They did their best. They got quite badly hurt in the recession in 28, 2008. But you know, they don’t live an extravagant lifestyle, so they’re fine. I’m around. So if they need anything, I got them. You know, I’m fine as a dentist now. So they came here and they they gave me the opportunity.

[00:13:59] Yeah.

[00:14:00] The opportunity to to do whatever I wanted.

[00:14:03] We were at a conference in San Diego, the OECD, last year.

[00:14:08] Oh, yeah.

[00:14:09] In, in the same conference hall was a it was I think, I can’t remember the exact name but it was like a it was kind of the Asian Hotel Owners Association.

[00:14:18] Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[00:14:20] And there was a bunch of happy guys walking around and we bumped into some of them in a bar afterwards. And one of them was, there was a couple who they were dentists, but they’d bought a bunch of motels as well. And they were telling us about the business model and how there’s a couple of guys who own hundreds of motels and. Oh, yeah, like any other business. Right. There’s no, there’s always a couple of guys.

[00:14:44] Yeah, it’s real estate basically. And they got in early and you know, and they have a big connexion. So my parents, a small time they had one and just to pay the bills and get by and you know, they’re content. But yeah, you can it’s just like opening multiple dental offices and selling it for multiple of them and stuff like that. That’s what it is. Or just hang on to more and more and more. Then a big marriott will come over and take everything from you if you really want to. But this, this is never ending. So why would you sell it? You would just keep growing, you know, and then sell it, maybe a portion of it. If you don’t want to deal with a headache.

[00:15:15] I don’t mean to pry, but just give me this. Like, what was when you qualified? What was your monthly payment for your loans that you had? Like, how did that what kind of amounts are we talking?

[00:15:25] So they’re like 25 year loans. So yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I forget now. I mean, I.

[00:15:32] I’m like $1,000 or was it like 5000?

[00:15:35] There’s a minimum payment. But I didn’t I didn’t want to keep I wanted to get rid of these loans. So I try to pay them off in like. I don’t know, like four or five years, I try to pay them all off. I just work like crazy. Yeah, I was done. I think I was done by, like, 31, 32. I paid it all off, but I didn’t. But there’s a difference, right? So now I look back, I would tell my 24 year old self, just make minimum payment, all that money, buy a bunch of properties. And then all those properties would be millions right now. Right. But I didn’t know because I’m very debt averse because just think on my upbringing. My parents always like don’t take risks. Look, you know, like we did this and we lost this. Like, just be be conservative and this and that. So until like I started like establishing myself, I wouldn’t really I would have given me more stress. So I just knew one thing I can earn. I’ll pay off these debts. At least that’s gone. But what I realise is once the debt’s gone, I felt good for a little bit. And then what’s the next thing you know? So the real thing about money and finance is how to leverage things. And some debts are good debts, some are not good, you know.

[00:16:43] Well, you know, hindsight is 2020, right? I mean, if you if you qualified in 2007 and given yourself that advice, that would have been really bad advice. Right? Right. So there is risk in in everything. You’re right. If your number.

[00:16:56] One thing was 1000 a month, I don’t know, three or four if I was I had to dig in. Right. I mean, otherwise, no, in most payments might be 2500 a month and you’re paying many interest. Here’s the other problem in America. If you make, I think, over 100,000 or whatever or something like that, you can’t write off the interest. You cannot so it’s it’s that’s why right now certain with Biden and what he’s said I think a lot of because of all the political things I think right now people have student loans he’s put a hold on interest payments. So they they’re not paying anything right now. They just it’s good. And he may forgive it. He may forgive some of those debts. But I’m guessing people who make a lot that he’s not going to do that. You know, so it’s all just they move the money around.

[00:17:38] You know, that debate, that debate is going on. Isn’t it about non-professional degrees and whether the amount of money they cost has been worth it to all these people? You know, people have been sold this idea of get an education and then at the end of it, not getting jobs that pay. But I think dentistry where we’re, you know, bit better on that front. So then tell me you qualified. What was the next thing you did?

[00:18:04] So I finished in 2005 and to be honest, I didn’t know what to do. I was like, Oh, I don’t know where I’m supposed to go back. Then I remember I was following Rosenthal like just a little bit on on back then there was no Instagram, no Facebook just started. So I was.

[00:18:21] I was just doing.

[00:18:22] Magazines and stuff. I was I was looking at magazines. I would I would like read about stuff. I would fly out to some small courses, but I was I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. So then I was, you know what? I know how to do some things, but I’m unconsciously incompetent. I was at that level, I didn’t know I was doing things wrong. So then I was like, I need to get to consciously incompetent, then I need to get to consciously competent, and my ultimate level is unconsciously competent. I knew that. So then I was like, Dude, right, I’m going to take a residency, I’m going to do a one year here. We have, we don’t have VTE here. So I learnt about that a little bit because I’m going to actually what happened was I did the one year it was, it’s called Advanced Education, Dental Dentistry. Another programme is called General Practise Residency. They’re very similar, but one is more hospital based. I’m one of the more private practise space, so in that one year I got about five years of private practise experience. I did. I did a lot of fixed price, a lot of removable, a lot of endo implants, just everything I wanted to do as a private doctor, dentist. And so that was great. When I finished that, that’s when I entered the workforce. And then I was like, Oh, okay, let me try to live in LA.

[00:19:29] I want to I want to work on Rodeo Drive. What’s that like? So I drove down. I drove like 600 miles down from Norco. So Cal and the jobs were I mean, I don’t know, they were kind of shit, to be honest, you know, they were like, here’s, here’s a base pay of X amount and you do all this kind of stuff. I can’t even cover rent, let alone my payment for loans, right? So I said, You know what? I don’t think I can do this right now. I think I’m going to have to live in Northern California. The jobs are better, and maybe I’ll just find something more corporate, which I didn’t want to do. But there was a new company back then that initially they were good. So I got a job, I got a job and it gave me a good start and I learnt a lot of things, but then a lot of things changed and it became very production based and and just no time and patience. And I had to do hygiene. I started going down this spiral. I was like, This is not what I want to do. Then my mind started thinking about different things. I was like, Don’t want to go to school, don’t want to go to school, then want to go to a surgery school because a lot of my friends were in residency and from a US was still although I was like, maybe they’re doing something right, I should look into this.

[00:20:31] And then I started thinking, I think I want to come to England to do a residency. So I googled all that stuff. So what’s it like to go to England? You know, because I’ve kind of missed I felt like I missed out on on my time in England at that time. I was like 25, I was 24, was like, what if I did a year or two in England? I know it must be cheaper out there and maybe I can learn something different and come back. So I started researching some programmes and then I got more in-depth emails. It’s not cheap actually, and then I’ll say, Wait, I got payments, I got to do this stuff. And so then I scrapped that idea and I realised you have to have a licence to work there. I can’t just even though I’m a citizen of us and Great Britain, I don’t have a British licence and so I seemed like a bit more complicated, take exams and all this kind of stuff. So no, I just, I just started focussing on SEO side of really taking whatever I could at wherever it was in America and just started building on that.

[00:21:23] To just explain to us as an associate what’s the what’s the sort of standard percentage that associates get paid?

[00:21:32] So it depends where you are. So there’s a there’s a great dentist and you probably heard of him. Howard and I took all his 30 day MBA classes and all this kind of stuff on online. And he was saying, you know, most associates, when they get out, they want to live and practise in New York City, L.A., Chicago, right where there’s so many dentists and the kind of job you’re going to get there, you might get a base pay of me for 5500 back then, maybe like a hygienist kind of pay. And well, the best thing to do is go more in a rural area or maybe a city that’s not so large. You’re going to get more opportunities. You have potential to have unlimited income. You could make base pay, but then a percentage of collection of production, maybe 25 to 30 or 35%. So if you’re a specialist, you could make 40 to 50%. As a general dentist, I would be very happy with 30% adjusted production or 35% collections. At the beginning I was getting around 25 to 30. I was happy with that, you know. I mean, I was more interested in just learning my skills. I, I never really I could have made a lot, a lot more money as an associate, but I didn’t want to put myself in risk situations and then deal with problems when I left the practise, because litigation, I thought litigation was bad in the US, but I found out that UK is.

[00:22:43] Quite.

[00:22:44] Yeah, I did not know that and I started hearing about it and I was like, Oh, that’s not not good. What’s going on over there? So something changed so that.

[00:22:54] Yeah, yeah. Basically we’ve got one law firm who changed the whole picture. They, they basically lobbied government. They buy dental cases, they advertised ambulance chasers. Has the dentist hurt you? And then they they they really push hard. And they literally it’s it’s sad to say, our profession has been I mean, society as a whole has become more litigious here with our profession basically in the UK has been turned over by one law firm which which by the way, a couple of dentists set up, you know, like really qualified dentists and lawyers here. It’s awful. It’s awful that we haven’t managed.

[00:23:38] Yes. Together. Yeah.

[00:23:39] Well, you know, they became dentists first, I guess, and then I then did LLP or something. So but this 25% that you just mentioned for the associates is is that is that around the number you’re paying your associate right now? Is that is that the kind of thing is that normal?

[00:23:55] Yeah, I would say, like I said, I pay based on what they do. So there’s no adjustment unless there was like, you know, maybe the patient paid $100 and there was a 5% discount. So they’re going to get 95 rate of 95. I’m not going to. Yeah, that’s what it just means. But yeah, 30%. That’s very fair. I’m covering all that bill. I’m covering you pay the bill anything you want. Yeah, I’ll take care of everything.

[00:24:20] Okay. So I was a slightly different. The associate shares the lab bill 5050, but then a standard kind of percentage here is 40 or 45% now. But that’s recently changed. I mean, it used to be 50% for years and years and years and the last sort of five years it started moving. And then since COVID, which we should we should talk about COVID. Tell me about COVID. Did they force you to close? How long did you close for?

[00:24:47] In this country. I was closed for three months because I felt it was the right thing to do, but there were offices that were open. They can’t force you to close. There was a guideline and then there were some practises that I know of and dear friends, they were open and obviously nothing happened. But to be honest, personally for me, I bought my first practise in 2014 and it’s a large dental complex, so there’s other practises in it. So slowly over the years I’ve been buying out all the practises in this building and I keep merging them into mind. So then right before COVID, I was talking to one of my mentors in the building and he’s, he’s. To be honest, I feel like he’s his level of education and training is in there time and age. But he was close spirit kind of level. And I don’t know in England who are the guys or women that are that kind of level? To have someone like that help me and train me is priceless. He’s like, You know, I want you to buy my practise. I approached him. I was like, You know, I’ll be interested in buying your practise when you retire. He’s like, You know, I really like that. I really like you. And I’ll be honoured if, if we could merge together. So we started doing that and then COVID happened and I’ll say, Oh, is this going to happen now? You know, and then best thing ever happened. I mean, I don’t like that could happen, but it was a good thing because it gave me three months off to merge my practises with him, to merge all our systems. I’ve never in my career had time to strip the whole practise down, go fully childless, go fully everything I ever wanted. I systemise from from A to Z and it’s increased. Like my happiness here is increased obviously the efficiency and profitability. But main thing is, is that I, I’ve just kind of set it up the way I like it now. And he finally retired a few months ago. And it’s been a very good transition, a very smooth transition.

[00:26:33] So did you not have that oh shit moment where you know you’re not going to get any income?

[00:26:38] Oh, I did not. I did. But then we got in this country, we got what’s called a p p p e loan or something. So the government gave up some money, you know, to all businesses. If without that, I was in trouble. Yeah, I had, I had one day I came to the office and I was like, you know, what the hell am I going to do? You know, because I got payroll, you know, the whole country was like that, though, like all the staff, you know, how are they going to pay their bills? But then the government came up and we got these business loans and they were forgiven. So that was good. So we basically injected cash. Yeah, they injected cash in our practise. They go off they go off your monthly payroll and they’ll times that by X amount and say That’s how much you get. So you have to give all your tax returns, all your pals, all that stuff, and then they gave some grants out. This is all this money they were just pushing out there. You know, we got to pay it back in different ways now, probably very different tax rates and all that kind of stuff, but it helped help stabilise the economy and it was necessary. Without that there’d be a lot of practises.

[00:27:38] Yeah, we had this similar, we had a similar scheme.

[00:27:41] Yeah. But with that.

[00:27:43] Also what they did is they paid 80. Oh. On top. Yeah.

[00:27:48] No. Yeah. Because I bought the practise. I got a loan for that.

[00:27:50] Um, ha ha ha ha. I get it with as they paid 80% of the salaries of all the staff. For that three month period, actually a bit longer than that if you wanted to. But when you brought people back to work, then, then they stopped paying them. But you’re right, there would have been carnage. And you’re right that we will all be paying for it some other way.

[00:28:11] Yeah, I mean, it’s fine without that, even our patients wouldn’t able to come see us say everyone needed it. Right. Because they all have businesses they all employed somewhere. It would just be a complete disaster. I mean, I can’t imagine what would have happened. I mean, there would have been criminal activity, looting. I mean, it was a little bit of that was happening, right? People were just smashing downtowns. And it was there was many, many things that were going out of control. I’ve never seen it as, like, a movie, you know, like, just. There was just so many people were getting really messed up and.

[00:28:42] Tell me this. Yeah, my, my. I’ve come. I’ve been to America a lot because all our suppliers are American. I’ve got family there and so on. My, my feeling about America. And one of the dangers of America is that if you fall, you can you can fall a long way down. You know, the safety net, you know, just from the from the health care perspective, we’ve got the NHS, you know. You know if you, if you get ill you’ll be kind of alright. People can argue about the standard of care in the NHS or how long it takes to get the care. But, but tell me that I mean maybe, maybe, maybe that’s the reason why suddenly violence or criminality and so on. But they were desperate people.

[00:29:23] Yes, I would say that the one the one thing about Great Britain is the access to health care is very important. Yeah. If you if you’re if you don’t have a stable income or just someone to or it depends where you live, too, but that is taken away. You live in paycheque to paycheque, you know, and with health care costs, I mean, you can get treatment done, but that there’s going to be a bill that’s coming and then you’re going to be credit lines gone, this and that. So it’s just a cycle. So in America, there’s no limit to how far you can go if you want to pursue whatever you want to pursue. But if you fall a slip up or you get ill and you don’t have the money to cover your health expenses, you could get in a lot of trouble. I mean, you’ll still be taken care of, but your financial distress is going to be quite severe, you know, but that’s the one thing about Great Britain that I do think is very good and even I don’t know much about dentistry with my own experience was I went a few times as a kid and I absolutely didn’t want to go, but I think I never like going to a dentist as a kid. I didn’t know anything about it. And I remember I had a shop, we had a shop in Wandsworth and Vauxhall area, and the dentist was right next door to the shop and it always smell of mercury. Now I know is mercury or amalgam, but I didn’t understand back then. I just didn’t like going there. But yeah, I think I don’t know much. I feel like if you live in London, it’s not easy either. I mean, it must be very expensive to even afford to live there more than it was before. So I don’t know how people and.

[00:30:51] It’s tough also, you’re right because, you know, we’ve got 40 people work for us and, you know, some of them travel used to anyway. Now, now there’s a lot of working from home going on. Yeah, some of them used to travel an hour and a half to get to the office. And I know in America that’s not a big deal. But here you remember, that is a big deal here. And we all drive here.

[00:31:11] There’s no public.

[00:31:12] Bus. Yeah, yeah. But but as I say, working from home has been a big difference for us in our business. Obviously, our business isn’t a dentistry business. We we supply dentists with stuff. So it’s actually rather than expanding our buildings, we’ve just now got people working from home more and more and more and more, and we’re sharing the same buildings, basically. Tell me this, but when you buy someone else’s practise, are you literally only talking about buying their patients?

[00:31:41] No. There’s two ways to buy a practise.

[00:31:45] In that building. In that building.

[00:31:47] Right, right, right. No. So no. I bought it’s practise. So I bought. Yeah. Because a patients alone, the only reason you would buy a patient base is if that lease is up and the equipment is up for sale and it’s like it’s like a fire sale, like they’re just trying to get rid of charts. This is a practise you’re buying the staff. But in this situation is unique because I own the building. So I if I didn’t own the building, oh no. Then I got a I got to pay. That’s different. Then I would I would probably be like, you know, I don’t need your what I do with the space. I need to do a different deal here where I just want the patient base. But he may not have sold it to me that way. So what I did is I bought the practise. I move all his stuff to my practise because my practise is twice the size, so I have plenty of chairs. And then his suite, I had another guy come in and we have an oral, one of my good friends, he’s an oral surgeon, so we do all implants there, so he pays me rent. So it’s worked out really nice to have a dental building, which is a dental implant centre, restorative centre or whatever, but they’re separate entities and I like it’s worked out nice for me but yes, normally, yes, you’re going to have to negotiate the. Or you have to buy the condo suite if that’s available. But typically, most people, they’re going to set up a four, 5 to 7 year lease with options to renew. And you’re buying the practise and that’s that’s what it is.

[00:33:10] But so for our listeners up and Patel dot com that’s your main place where you work are there are others. Are there other practises that are different websites.

[00:33:19] Yeah, they’re all separate entities. So it’s just yeah, it’s just, it’s just like if you had an office building and there’s six other dentists in that building, we all have our own practises.

[00:33:27] They’re paying you rent, basically.

[00:33:28] Mostly, yeah. I’m the landlord. Yeah, I’m the landlord. But eventually, you know, you never know. Maybe the guy next to me, he’s a periodontist, he’s married. He’s going to retire one of these days, if, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen five, ten years from now, but it’d be great if another guy boys practise or woman and the periodontist is there. But maybe in the future, as many things I want to do if it gets going with all the digital, all on X and all this kind of stuff, maybe I can, I can have a lab, you know, that is in that in my building. Maybe they can pay me rent, but I have it in house lab. That might be cool. Or maybe a paediatric practise because we have a orthodontics in the building also. So there’s many options I think. But it’s always nice to have the cash flow to have option, I guess.

[00:34:12] So tell me this. But as far as the choice between specialising or not, which specialism is the one that is thought of as the most sort of high level or the most prestigious? Is that all surgery in America?

[00:34:28] I would say it depends on the person. So I would say just historically or my office, because you can get a six year programme. We have MD and then there’s four year programmes. Yeah. You’re saying oral surgery for a four year programme is the same exact thing, except you haven’t done those two years of medical school. So it’s nice to have MD because then you can get some hospital privileges and billing codes that help out. So I have a number of friends that are and even from my from me personally, yeah, I always feel like they like the oral surgery, you know, like got to respect a little bit more or whatever it is. It’s just there’s an aura about it. But looking back, to be honest, like.

[00:35:04] Do those guys earn a lot more as well?

[00:35:07] Yes. I mean, if you just took everyone baseline like an average general, dentists, average, endo average, I would say all surgery owns the most. But as you know, exceptional general dentist can earn more than anyone, right? Sure. An exceptional paediatric dentist can earn more than anyone. So I think it’s more about.

[00:35:28] Well, well, not here, not here, not here, not exceptional paediatric dental. Unless you’re talking about ortho. Yeah.

[00:35:34] No, no, just Peter.

[00:35:35] Not. Not, not here. Not here.

[00:35:37] No.

[00:35:38] It’s just I mean, there are there’s the odd, you know, kids only practise. Oh, okay. But they’re not they’re not making loads of money and people expect their kids to be treated for free. And there isn’t the culture of saving money for your kids teeth. I mean, there is the cultural thing.

[00:35:54] Too. You know, I figured a lot of paediatrics would be seen by. Yes, you’re right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:36:00] It’s a different culture, you know, it’s like we’re just getting around to the point of people spending money on their own teeth. You know, that’s a big deal here. Things like cosmetic dentistry have changed that a little bit. So you might have heard we were talking on the podcast, you know, when we talk about, you know, the bartenders having Invisalign. Yeah. And it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t have been the case 20 years ago.

[00:36:21] No, I never saw that when I was there. You’re right. I just even here when I go from England, doesn’t everyone have bad teeth? I’m like, I mean, not really anymore. I think people are really want want my teeth.

[00:36:33] Yeah. Things are changing. Things are changing. So tell me about your team and you know, how many people are you responsible for?

[00:36:42] So I have a seven operator practise. So I have a three dental hygienist. I have two dental registered dental assistants, I have one associate doctor and I have one office manager, one patient coordinator and one benefit coordinator. So three front desk. So it’s nice because ideally as I have my associate pick up more days with me right now she’s part time. So the ultimate I work four days a week and she works. She used to work too, but then she took time off to start a family. So I’m trying to bring her back two days and then by next year I’m hoping to bring a three. And my long term goal is for me to work three days in her to work three or four. I mean, it’d be nicer to have like one more assistant as a floater, but I don’t need it right now and and the way I practise. And if you want, I can go into more detail about the different. It’s like three different American models.

[00:37:36] Yeah. Are you jumping between chairs?

[00:37:38] No. No. So when I first started as an associate, I worked pretty much what most practises are in the US. There’s in every insurance driven. So one method is called an HMO. That’s health management organisation where you’re the practise signs up with basically insurance company and. I send you a capitation check per month? Whether you see the patient or not, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to get checked, but you’re going to get a lot of patients. But they may not show up. They may not listen. That when they show up, a lot of stuff’s covered. It’s free. But when you need to do a crown, you’re going to upgrade them. Maybe instead of a metal crown, you might want to do a zirconia crown. They’re going to pay full price cash for that. So it’s more about numbers with that. And I never liked that and that’s what I had to do when I first started because I needed a job.

[00:38:22] And in hygienists it’s more like our NHS.

[00:38:26] But the thing with these models is if you’re in business, you can own multiple of these practises and have multiple chairs and you can make a lot of money, but that’s not clinical based. The second model is PPO, so preferred provider organisation where you can be in-network. So you sign up with insurance company and they say, okay, your crowns, are you going to cost $600 and your family is going to be X amount of dollars and you’re cleaning $50. But when the patient looks up your name on our website, you’ll be a provider, so they’ll pick you. Now they’re this one. You don’t get a monthly check. But what’s happening is, is that your marketing budget? Maybe it’s ten, 15,000 a month. Just making a big number right here. Instead of paying marketing, you’re getting those patients. Right. But what happens is, is that you still got to see multiple chairs, because how can you spend 2 hours with someone doing, you know, a number 2/2 molar crown and and you’re doing it for like half your fee, right? And then you’ve got to go do a hygiene check, which is half your fee, and then you got to do a cement. So you have to run multiple shows.

[00:39:29] That’s why they’re running multiple chairs.

[00:39:31] Yeah. And then you have a but then also that’s very profitable. If you have assistants that are trained in this our country, you can have them trained to take impression to symptom. Yeah. So that’s the second model. Again, very profitable if you want large scale.

[00:39:47] Is that is that the model that how the foreign runs in his Arizona.

[00:39:51] He may he may be out of network too. I’m not I’m not sure I think that is at his peak it might have been in a network but but and it works just fine. You don’t have to see multiple chairs. But I’m saying you’re going to get a lot of patients and and you can have multiple doctors work for you and it’s great. And the final model is more like what you what you kind of have, which is cash, but you’re out of network. So that’s purely relationship based and it takes a long time for someone to say, I’m going to come see you. Let’s just say I’ll make an example. Let’s say your your filling is $400. If you were in network, the filling would have been $95. That’s all you would have got for the occlusal in on number 30, I can set my fee to whatever I want. So if I say it’s 400, I know the insurance is going to pay 100. The patient owes me 300, so I’m going to use your insurance as a limitation benefit. You get something out of it. It’s like a gift card, maybe 2000 a year you get for that. But you come in to see me because I’m going to spend as much time as I can with you and do the best that I can.

[00:40:46] And you come in and see me because you want to see me, not because I’m on the list. So there’s a lot of practises in this country, especially after COVID, that are going at a network of fee for service. That’s what it’s called. And what that does is it opens up your whole like rest of practise career. You don’t have to kill yourself, break your back, you know, see multiple patients with a I might see and I see one patient at a time. So my typical day is I’ll see two procedures in the morning, two in the afternoon, maybe one or two cements. I’m done. And then I have hygiene checks, but I’m only doing hygiene checks once a year and that’s just an emergency, etc.. So it’s given me a lot more longevity to my career. And you can attract better associates because they where else they’re going to get a job like this. No one’s going to give them a job that it’s almost like they have all the perks of being an owner where they get good income and also getting good quality patients, you know, in terms of they pay the bill on time. Also, they want the best level of care and they’re loyal. So they will hopefully refer other friends and family that are similar in that mindset.

[00:41:46] But but you’ve got inverted com. I’m holding my fingers up marketing costs now right.

[00:41:53] Yeah someone get to that. So right now I mean all my growth since I’ve started my career has always been organic. What does that mean like that? I mean, that means word of mouth. Yeah, word of mouth. And it’s just been internal referral and I’m happy with I can go like that probably the rest of my career. It’s fine, but I have to work, right. I want to now start looking into how can I do some type of digital marketing and maybe some personal marketing I have to do in the community, perhaps outreach somehow so that I can start selecting the cases that I want to do, which is primarily hopefully more orthodontics and implant restorative revision dentistry. And that’s the next level I’m trying to look at, which I haven’t spent any time or money on yet, but that would make sense so that.

[00:42:39] You’ve got an Instagram page and there’s a lot of I mean, there’s hundreds and hundreds of cases on that Instagram.

[00:42:46] I mean, these are 20 years I’ve done 20 years worth of cases. You know, that’s my and then also I bring it that’s my catalogue that I show patients in the office. Right like this I’m gonna do this I don’t use Instagram for. I use it mainly to so I can look up tennis and squash and fun stuff and like restaurants I want to go to. I look at some dentists and I’m like, Yeah, that’s cool. I like that. And I pick and I also learn about people like, Oh, that’s a good course to go to. Or He or she is really cool. Okay, I never thought of that, but I noticed Instagram is good if you already have a very good baseline and good knowledge of what dentistry is and you can pick up some tips and tricks, but if you’re if your training is very novice level, you can get quite overwhelmed and thinking you have to be that straight away. And I can see if I was a dental student at 24, 25 and an Instagram was around, I might have I might have gone nuts, like just thinking, I’ve got to be this like within a few years, like, how can I do this? It takes a long time to become like that. It takes at least ten years to get to an excellent level of dentistry where you you feel like you made enough mistakes and you know how to fix a problem. And it’s great that it’s out there because back then I didn’t have people unless it was local, to see what kind of dentistry they do. I had to fly to a course or something like that, you know?

[00:44:03] Look at it, looking at your work. It’s definitely sort of restorative implant based.

[00:44:07] Yes.

[00:44:08] Where did you get the education? Was it Khoisan Spear? Have you done both of those?

[00:44:13] Yeah. I mean, I think when I finished my first level of training was that one year residency I did. And oh yeah, that was that was all hands on and it was all clinical and it gave me about 4 to 5 year head start. But to be honest, the best thing you can do is document your cases from day one. In this country, I notice in England that you have a lot of different qualifications and I don’t know much about it. It’s something to do with Royal College of Surgeons and MD, JD and all this stuff and stuff is but it sounds cool, but here we have, you know, there’s many organisations, a AICD is a AGD or Academy of General Dentistry, so that organisation does have a very significant pathway for comprehensive training in all 16 levels of disciplines of dentistry. So I first did like a fellowship that was like 5 to 600 hours of C and you know, taking classes and an exam. And then I did a monster ship course that was like four or five years took me. So I did like three, 4000 hours worth of C over like ten years, you know. And so that’s what my DDS says, Magdy F du f ICU or whatever it is. And then, you know, all college of ontologies, they have fellowship programmes.

[00:45:20] So initially I just kept doing all this stuff. I found it just more and more like minded people that I would learn from. But then at some point I was like, You know, I’m just I need like a real course. And the course was that course. Ever since I’ve taken course, it just changed the whole way of practise dentistry. And in my opinion, he’s one of the best educators on the planet, period. And then I also did Spear, I did a lot of spear study club in this country. We have it’s called Spear Study Club where local dentists, we all get together and once a month as a club and we go over cases. But Spears provides the case presentations, things like that. So you have a periodontist, orthodontist or oral surgeon in general. Then as we all get together and just kind of dissect the case and then one of the best courses I took last year and it really was more of a tips and tricks kind of course, strop and drum in. He came out to San Diego, but they have it online now too. I really put a lot of stuff together, but I wouldn’t have understood that course to the full extent if I didn’t take course first.

[00:46:17] So what’s that course called again? Say that course again.

[00:46:20] Strop and drum.

[00:46:22] Strop and drum.

[00:46:23] Yeah, they have an excellent Facebook group. So just add join that Facebook group. Excellent cases in there. And they’re there in Clearwater, Florida.

[00:46:30] I believe. Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:46:35] He is excellent. And his and his new. Yeah, but.

[00:46:39] For someone who’s not fully familiar with voice or spear or voice and spear, I mean, for someone it’s rare to come across people here who go to both of those because it’s you know, it’s such a expensive travel nightmare and all that. And the courses themselves are very expensive. What would you say is the difference between those two schools of thought and, you know, should you do both or should you do one or the other, or should you go right to the top of one or do what are what are your thoughts?

[00:47:07] So there are I’m going to talk about maybe four or five of them. There’s Dawson, Pankey, Spear, Kois and La, and they’re all great. I would say Spear is in I think it’s in Arizona and I don’t think Frank Spear talks personally anymore. I think he’s retired, but and it’s a larger group. It’s an excellent course. I think either one pick one. Personally, I like the personal hands on approach of John Cox, and he’s always up to date with all evidence based scientific data. And the thing about course is you kind of meet people who are only interested in a similar thing that you’re trying to do there, and you learn from them actually, because they’re also starting their journey or they’re they’re interested on us, they’re periodontist, they’re lab technicians. They’re it’s almost like the top 1% of dentists that want to be the best. They go to these courses. So you not only learn from John Kois or Frank Spiro, you know, the Pankey course of Dawson, but you’re learning from your peers and you’re a mentor to people maybe younger than you and then someone older than you. You’re learning. You’re learning from them. And then you make friends. And then when you leave, you keep in contact with people. So it’s more about network. But but the context.

[00:48:17] What does it mean? Yeah. What does it mean to you as a dentist? Are you now looking at full mouth?

[00:48:22] Yes. So before I think the best thing would be like I didn’t know some of the stuff I was missing. Like I didn’t understand why there was tremendous in a case how to how to predict, predictably, why there was constriction in the case, why there’s dysfunction, why there’s attrition, why these things happen in with biology, how to break down a case into gum and bone, how to break down a case and care and caries or biomechanical or functional or aesthetics. You want to break a case down in four parts, but a systemised way and spear does the exact same things to a different verbiage. And once you break down a case like that in your treatment plan, start to finish and how your whole office is aligned. That way, it’s very easy to communicate. For patient, whether it’s in hygiene, whether it’s with associate, whether it’s front office. And also when you refer to specialists, they also appreciate that you’ve taken the time to figure out why we’re doing this. And it just it just makes everything more it’s almost like a manual. It gives you a guidebook to kind of help you dissect something, because the key to any part of dentistry is not how good your hands are. It’s diagnosis. If you’re excellent, if you’re the best diagnostician, that’s when the best, probably the best dentist or doctor, because you can be excellent in radiology.

[00:49:34] But if you don’t know how to like if you don’t understand the dynamics of your CBC or your pano or your or your bite wings or pars, and you’re missing some education level there. You’re going to miss things all the time if you don’t understand how to use the correct burr or the finishing systems or why certain segments are better than others. Not just what some rep tells you. Because what typically happens is that you buy a product, you buy equipment, and the least qualified person, which is the dental rep, is going to train you on it and then you’re training the same stuff through your systems. But if you have someone who has gone through all this data and done the evidence based analysis, you know what you’re going to put in someone’s mouth, I think, and also that there’s studies to show that. So I think it’s for me personally, I’m more technical based. I want to know why I’m doing something and how to do it versus just randomly get into the endpoint. So it’s a good it’s almost like a not a cookbook but a like it’s it’s a manual that you can refer back to.

[00:50:29] And I’m going to have to defend dental reps now because dental reps have a real tough, tough time even getting in front of you. And I get I get your point. I get your I get your point, I get your point, I get your point. I get your point, I get your point. You want to be trained by John Kois, not by, you know, the three MB rep. I get it, I get it. I get that. But but the one thing that dentists should, should pay more attention to is that dental reps have a wealth of knowledge about what’s going on out there.

[00:50:58] Right.

[00:50:58] And you’re right. It’s the wrong place to get your knowledge. Yeah, but you know, what a lot of dentists do is, is train their team to keep reps out completely. And, you know, and it’s an error. It’s an error because you can learn a lot from a rep. I wouldn’t trust the rep on, you know what he’s talking about his own product over another one necessarily. Necessarily. But there’s a lot of great reps out there. Now, let’s talk.

[00:51:23] I agree. I agree with you.

[00:51:24] I know you do. I need you to let’s talk about how far you went in voice and how long it took, how much it cost. What did it return?

[00:51:33] Yeah, let me when did I start? So I think the last couple of years. What I’ve noticed to be all these continuum, they’ve rapidly expanded. A lot of younger professionals are really taking them straight away. And in the old days they wouldn’t. It was a lot of older doctors because it was Instagram. It’s just given in Facebook, especially. Instagram is just throwing the light what’s possible out there. And people are thirsty for this knowledge and and they’re okay take spending their money on dentistry instead of buying a fancy car or going on a holiday because they’re getting the return out of it, too, you know. So I think I forget I took me two years, though, because you can probably do it in one year, but only one person I know has done that. It’s one of my close friends who actually is a mentor that he just went back to back to back to back. And but most of the courses sold out. So you want to book your your courses. I think there’s like seven, eight, 7 to 8 continuous. You’re there for like a week or something like that. Total cost, I think 50,000. That’s just for the course fees. And you can pay for flight time, hotel time and then also that amount of money away from the practise.

[00:52:36] If you’re gone for a week, I mean, let’s just say on the low end, 10 to 20 to 30 to 40000 is gone. Depend on what you do. Right. But that doesn’t matter because when you come back, it’s not like I’m treatment planning for mountain people. It means now I know even if it’s single tooth, I feel very confident in telling the patient why I’m doing something, what’s going to happen, predictability, why it fails, why it doesn’t fail. And also, if I have a full mouth case, I’m more they can see. I’m more confident in explaining why it would help them. So if they have questions, I can answer them very easily now versus before I kind of make up some stuff in my head, which was correct, but I didn’t have like it was just kind of like my experience. But now I know it’s evidence based, it’s in literature and and it’s always evolving. So if I want to access stuff from then I can just log on and see what’s up to date and they have a yearly symposium to. So I’m not just plugging, I’m going to say SPEAR Thank you. Dawson They’re all great. Whatever, whatever system, whatever.

[00:53:31] Programme finished the whole thing.

[00:53:33] Yeah, of course.

[00:53:34] Yeah. Amazing, amazing. And I mean, I guess the reason why younger and younger dentists are going into it and by the way, we run courses over here and younger and younger dentists are going to courses here as well is they’re trying to get out of that HMO, PPO system. And if you want to give someone an associate job and they tell you, I’ll finish Coinbase, you’re more likely to to consider them for your kind of practise, right?

[00:53:58] That’s true. You know, a lot of times associates don’t know. Maybe what the best path is. And it’s nice. I’ve had a lot of mentors and they gave a lot of free advice and if I need anything that always there, I can call them. And, and also I mentored a lot of other people too, but for my own associate to help get started and part of its own initiative too, I paid for some of the initial course costs. Just the first one. Yeah, because I want I don’t want if someone’s going to work for me, it makes sense for me to get them aligned if, if they’re loyal and they’re going to be with me a long time. I don’t want to just throw money and then you’re gone in a month or two, right? So I know that my associate, my team members, unless something drastic happens, they’re going to stay with me. And so I’ll invest in them because these are not liabilities. Any employee, any person in your practise, they’re all assets. They’re not liabilities. So in the old days, I think I’m thinking, oh, what’s your overhead? Well, payroll is 25%. It’s a liability. It’s it’s not I mean, you’ve got to be careful how much you’re paying within reason. But but if you invest in your team, you’re going to get exponential return over all, not just financial, but a good camaraderie. And also patients notice this. They’re like, oh, the same person is here all the time. It must be something good. You guys get, get, get along well. You work well and patients do say that. They’re like, you guys are like seamless. You guys know what you’re thinking each other thinking without even talking, that kind of stuff. It’s nice to hear that, you know?

[00:55:21] Yeah. I mean, you know, to ask your patients to make your ask your staff, your team, to make your patients delighted. Yeah, you’re going to have to delight your staff a little bit. Yeah. You can’t you can’t whip people into delighting people, right? No. Absolutely right. Let’s go through some fees, because it’d be interesting for people over here to, first of all, caveat that with the £1 million it costs to qualify $1.

[00:55:50] Million, that’s an extreme example. If you did if you went full. I mean, I’m I’m going to say nowadays undergrad and dental school, eight years, let’s just call it 300 and to 400,000. That’s to say.

[00:56:01] That’s correct. 400,000. What are you charging what do you what do you charge for a standard, let’s say just crown.

[00:56:09] About 1600, but would build 1800 1800 is a fee and that that that is again you might go to New York and some might charge 3000 or 5000. So so yeah. But I think fair market value where I’m at 1802 thousand makes sense that.

[00:56:29] The positioning of the practise I mean are you positioned at the higher I know you’re at the higher end because you’re not doing those models, those PPO, HMO models. But but when it comes to this sort of non non insured. Yeah.

[00:56:41] Yeah. 99% on. Oh really. Yeah. In this where I practise. Yeah. Now if I was in San Francisco.

[00:56:49] I know. Few competition.

[00:56:50] More. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’d say more competition, but to be honest, I’ve never been worried about competition. I think there’s enough patience for everyone. It’s just it’s kind of patient you want to treat and also, personality wise, who get along with as many patients I wouldn’t get along with. And that’s fine. They don’t see me, but there’s a certain demographic I really get along with and I know what my niche niches. But yes, I would say I would say fair market value around average for the whole country. At the highest percentile. Let’s call 1800 for a crown.

[00:57:19] Yeah. What about like an mod competition?

[00:57:23] Like for 95?

[00:57:24] For 95, that’s higher than we get in general. In general, what about, let’s just say skin polish, cleaning, hygiene.

[00:57:35] Like a trophy? Yeah. 150.

[00:57:40] 150 an examination. Just like a six month examination.

[00:57:45] $75.

[00:57:47] What about implant?

[00:57:50] Start to finish or just the fixture.

[00:57:52] Start to finish.

[00:57:53] 5000. No bone graft though. So it would be like, you know, 2000 for the crown, maybe 2500 for the implant plus some tissue stuff. So 5000.

[00:58:03] Now.

[00:58:03] Yeah, sinus lift. If you hadn’t a sinus to add another 2000. If you add in GBR and Ridge augmentation, add another 1200.

[00:58:11] So how about you know, because you’ve been trained. So I bet you’re doing some big, big cases. What’s what’s been your biggest case?

[00:58:19] I mean, to be honest, I’m very different in terms of. I don’t do a lot of stuff anymore. Like when I first qualified, I did everything I did endo. I did all surgery. I did p do. I did. I never did really a lot. Although, to be honest, I never trained in all of those. But like, I mean, biggest case, I mean, it’s full mouth, full mouth all on X or full mouth crown and bridge like 28 teeth. So you can add that up, you know, 28 tooth times, 1500, whatever that is. But because I needed it, so my kind of practise, the kind of patients that I see, I don’t have full mouth every day. I might I’ll be very happy if I got one once a month. That’d be great. But my favourite case is seven through ten. No occlusion changes seven through ten composite seven through ten veneers seven through ten crown with some cor bleaching. I think you have enlightened, is that correct. Yeah. With the white whitening product. And then I finish a case with a pair of attacked or something like that and just good hygiene protocol.

[00:59:17] What’s Perrier protect.

[00:59:19] It’s, it’s basically a tray that’s kind of like a mouth guard kind of material tray, and it’s scalloped to your gum measurements and you load it with 1.2% peroxide with xylitol and and they wear it for about 10 minutes once a day. I’ve noticed significant decrease in bleeding points and plaque build up plaque build-up is much less so. But yeah.

[00:59:41] I looked at that. I looked at that. But the, the resistance from periodontitis on that product. Yeah, it’s gigantic. I mean, like over here I just, I didn’t have the stomach to, to, to, to argue with Periodontist about it. But, but you’re right. Just just by looking at bleaching patients, you can see their gums getting so much better.

[01:00:00] I mean, you don’t want to like I have a team, right? So I have three or four periodontist that I refer to, three or four ended on as I referred to. I have a network so they know what I like to do. I’m referring patients to them so they don’t want to piss me off. So we have a I’m the lifeline for their practise and then I’m they’re helping me with cases that I can’t do. But in order to answer to your question, I predominantly do revision dentistry. My main patient base is 55 plus. I have no kids in my practise. Maybe I have like a handful, like five or six young professionals a little bit, but my predominant patient base is retirees and 55 plus baby boomers. And I love treating them because the best. Yeah, you know, they want the best work done there. Most dentistry is root decay, zero stoma implant work and they’re not in aesthetics. It’s much easier on them. It’s either I do the whole mouth or I just fix the quadrant of the front tooth and they’re happy. They don’t complain too much. You know, some of the middle high maintenance is true, but they just afraid and things like.

[01:00:56] That in general, they’re respectful as well. Right. They’ve got the old school feeling about the doctor.

[01:01:02] Yeah. And then they stick with you unless they’re going to move, you know. And yeah, I’m happy with that. And they actually happy coming to the dentist because it’s, it’s almost like it’s their routine. They go in the dentist, they go in the grocery store now they’re going to the MD and they’re going and then they love a hygienist because they’ve been seen the hygienist for like last ten, 15, 20 years or whatever it is. So I like that. Then that’s what I’m going to try to market more now, and that’s kind of the cases I’m looking for anyway, where patients want locate a denture or they want a little bit Invisalign. But what I’m hoping is the younger professionals would come and see my associate and then she can focus on Invisalign and some cosmetics and I can.

[01:01:37] I think that that demo you’re going to find on Facebook, right?

[01:01:41] Yeah. So that so my cousin actually works at Facebook in the marketing division. So I’ve been talking about this. I’m like, Hey, I need to get involved with some type of Facebook ads at some point and maybe I should look into how to do that because I haven’t done it before.

[01:01:52] But very different, right? The kind of you know that now we’re talking about a lead, the kind of lead that comes from Facebook ad is very, very different to patient who comes from word of mouth. And to start off with, that’s going to annoy the hell out of you.

[01:02:06] Yeah, yeah. Word of mouth. They don’t. They don’t. They tend to show up. They don’t.

[01:02:09] Like. Well, they show up. They show up. Sold.

[01:02:12] Yeah. They’re like so-and-so referred me, you know, I’m like, oh, great. Say hi to.

[01:02:17] There is such a thing as digital word of mouth that exists, right? And so it’s kind of a hybrid between between normal word of mouth and the digital marketing thing. I forgot to ask you, Invisalign, what do you charge for that?

[01:02:31] Oh, I think full cases like $6,000.

[01:02:35] That’s similar. That’s similar.

[01:02:36] But then I have my okay, so I have friends in Orange County that are fee for service. I mean, I’ll give you a difference in price right now so you can see the difference. His whole office, he’s he’s fully digital. So he has his own lab. He’s got every single implant lab system you can think of. He he hasn’t used a lab in the last ten years. He’s amazing and he’s a voice instructor and those kind of stuff. So his fee for an anterior crown would be 2500, his fee for all in upper and lower. All next, you might be looking at 80,000, right? But he does all the surgery himself. I don’t do any implant surgery anymore. I kind of just focus on restorative. That’s my I like doing that. And I have a surgeon like 20 seconds for me that we get along great together and I supply him with all the patients. But the thing is our case acceptance is exceptional because I say something, it’s a complimentary consult with the surgeon. He doesn’t charge a console or CBT, and then he agrees. And then they come back to me and there’s no pressure to do anything. I’m just here, no agenda, just to advise them on what I see. And they like that they get a second opinion or that we’re in a team together and it’s just no stress and no pressure. That’s how I kind of like to come off. And I’ve noticed, like, they do accept the treatment unless it’s financial or they just have a stigma about, well, my cousin or so-and-so had a bad experience with implants. I’m like, Whenever you’re ready, we’ll wait. We’ll wait for you and you let me know when you want to start and I’ll help you. That’s all you can do.

[01:04:00] It makes a lot of sense to stick to the bit of it that you enjoy and your most predictable on. Yeah, because what you said before about the confidence in your voice. Yeah, just comes through. It just comes through. And then you don’t, you don’t feel like you’re selling anything. You’re just you’re just telling them you’re, you know, what you know in your head. And people are saying, yes, you know, and you forget sometimes the how tiring it is to have to worry about people saying, yes, it’s tiring. And mainly it’s tiring when it’s an area you’re not 100% comfortable in. That is when you’re comfortable when it’s your area, you know. And for you, it’s this this sort of implant restorative mix or you said revision work, then it doesn’t feel like selling, it feels like educating.

[01:04:48] And I mean, it’s not easy. I mean, of course the case is not easy, but I’m not like I don’t act like, hey, you got to start today. When I worked when I worked in these corporate offices, the whole model was get the patients start right now. Otherwise you’re going lose the case. So patients can tell like you’re like hungry, you know, like it’s not right, you know? And I remember I mean, you can ask me later if I had some bad experiences and I’ll go into them and they were all pretty much is associate. But if you don’t have proper roadmap in the case you can get lost real quick, you know, and you can’t fix me can fix it kind of, you know, what you’re doing. But if you don’t like I think people sue you when they don’t like you, they don’t trust you and you feel like they’ll be taking advantage of their your friend or, you know, you’re looking out for the best for them. Even if something goes wrong, they’ll be like, okay, doctor, I come here because I know that you take care of me. You’re going to you’re going to handle it or whatever it is, you know. Yeah, that’s really it.

[01:05:43] So tell me tell me what was let’s, let’s get on to the darker side then what? But let’s start with what was the best move you’ve made professionally. And then and then let’s move on to mistakes, errors. The worst move you.

[01:05:54] Make like my clinical or just dental?

[01:05:58] Anything hit me.

[01:05:58] Just hit me. Okay? It comes to me. So like I said, I’m not graduating in 2005. I thought I wanted to be a Rodeo Drive or New York City dentist because I wanted that London feeling. I used to draw. I used to go to work in a three piece suit like Dolce and Gabbana, all that kind of stuff, right? I thought, This is me because I’m a London boy. You know, I’m from Wimbledon. I’m like, I’m going to I’m going to.

[01:06:18] That was that was going to be your brand.

[01:06:20] Whatever. I’m going to be like that aesthetic, whatever. And I didn’t know the whole world was kind of thinking like that initially anyway. You know, everyone wants to be that kind of thing. And then I realised these patients are not cool. They’re like really demanding. They don’t, they don’t care about who I am and stuff like that and what I can do for them. They just actually not as nice. The nicest patients are the ones that actually aren’t as wealthy and they’re they just have a problem. You’ve got to help them get out of pain, you know. But yeah, basically initially I tried all that and I came back to Sacramento. Sacramento maybe like kind of like maybe it’s a city, it’s a capital of California, but I don’t want to disrespect any London, U.K. cities. But maybe Leicester’s a big city. But it is kind of like that. It’s not.

[01:07:00] Like that. Been there. I’ve been there. Yeah, yeah. It’s nice.

[01:07:03] Yeah. So it’s very hot. But so I did a jobs there and then. Then I try to go to San Francisco in the bay. Same thing. I couldn’t. I couldn’t find anything I liked. It was just underpay. Patient quality was poor. And I was like, you know, I’m in Sacramento. It’s right here in front of me. It’s right here. Let me just start looking for something here. I found something straight away in 2014, I found an old guy. He was an ex lab tech and. And the dentist too, and, you know, Caucasian. Practise in a friendly neighbour. And yeah, I bought his practise and that was the best thing I ever did because it was a gold mine. So much amalgam. No digital X-rays like Handbook of Charts. Nothing. So I could just went in there, took my time. I remodelled the whole place. I made it my own over time. Of course, there’s a lot of turnover with old staff and this and that because they don’t like change, you know? But I had so much experience by then. I was an associate for like eight years by then.

[01:07:58] And to be honest, in retrospect, I wish I had become an owner much sooner. But if I had, I wouldn’t have got this practise. So I bought the first one and then I was still a tenant then. And then I the office next door to me, she would have it. She was having a hard time. She just bought the practise and there was a war between us and at the beginning like one year. And she said, Can you buy my practise? I’m like, I don’t, I can’t buy this. I just started looking back. I should have, but then I bought it later from her. But by that time, most of the patients had gone. But I got some patients, so then I had a bigger space. And then I approached the landlord, who is my friend and mentors like, Hey, whenever you want to retire I’ll, I’ll buy your building. And it came up. So I bought the building and then eventually he’s like, I want to sell you the practise. I bought his practise, so I.

[01:08:41] Used it to get the finance. And when you tell a bank you’re a dentist, does it help a lot?

[01:08:46] Yeah, yes. I don’t know how it is in England, but here you can put a00 down.

[01:08:51] Oh, really?

[01:08:52] Yeah. Zero down. So you can get 100% finance. And it could be a five, ten, 15, 15 year loan. You’re looking at 3 to 4%. And then that includes working capital equipment loan plus the practise. So average practise, let’s say practises is producing 700,000, right? Maybe you’re going to pay 475 for that and maybe 60%, 65%. And maybe you need a working capital of 50,000 equipment loan at 100,000. So now, you know your loan is like five 5600.

[01:09:20] When you say when you say produce, do you mean producers in income or do you mean.

[01:09:24] Oh, no, no, I’m sorry. Just collection. Collection per year. Collection not not vacant. Yeah.

[01:09:30] Oh so that’s, that’s actually quite low that our practises are valued much higher than that.

[01:09:35] So it depends where you are though, right. If you’re like I’m going to, I’m going to say average practise. Like if you’re in like San Francisco, Sacramento, L.A., New York, it really depends what kind of practise you have to. If I saw my practise today, I probably want up to 90 200% of my practise, like what I produce because it’s a big value to what I’m bringing. My the practise is very unique. If you have average PPO in-network practise in an average community, it could be 65 to 70% of collection if it’s doing average.

[01:10:07] Still low, though, still low compared to what’s happened here is the I guess it’s the corporates here. I know you have corporates too, but but the prices have there used to be like this, what you’re explaining. But now it’s like I don’t know eight times take home.

[01:10:23] Oh wow. That’s yeah. I mean that’s that’s if you’re buying I mean I have a number of friends now in our age group now like, you know, in their forties where they’ve, they’ve started like selling all the practises to the, to the corporate rate. And so they’re getting a payout initially maybe 70% payout and then 30% reinvest in with them and then maybe five, six, ten years from now they’ll do it. So they’re going to get a big, big payout. It’s great, but they’re going to have become employee four or five, six years. I don’t know what it is.

[01:10:49] Yeah, we have that too. We have that too. Yeah. So let’s quickly jump into before we go on to your biggest errors, let’s quickly jump into corporates there. Are there corporates in all of these different levels of you said the HMO, the PPO, do you have corporates doing high quality fee per item as well or no.

[01:11:07] I wouldn’t say corporate in fee for service. I would say you got guys like just make an example like you got Appa. You know, he’s got multiple offices around the world. You have many clients. Yeah, they’re not. Not this a brand, right? Yeah. And you got like people are very low key, but they have many, many offices and you don’t even know about them. But they’re all fee for service. I mean, they just don’t hear about it, that’s all. But they just one owner or there’s a bunch of partners, but they haven’t sold out anyone. They may as their final cash out, I don’t know. But in general, no. There’s a lot of people who are non dentists, MBAs or whatever it is and they’ve got together with dentists. And yeah, the new model is to buy a lot of offices and, and just grow them and then sell to venture capital and cash out and people do. That’s fine, you know, that’s a way to retire at 50 or 45 or whatever it is. And it’s excellent. And if you can still keep the quality of dentistry, you just have to find the right model and stuff like that. Yeah.

[01:12:09] Let’s, let’s get to the things. What was your biggest mistake that you’ve made now? Now I do want both business and clinical. Does that make the biggest some some mistakes? I mean.

[01:12:21] It’s not a mistake, obviously. I wish I became an owner sooner. That would have been the best thing I ever did. But there was an opportunity but to do that mistake wise when I was an associate, like I said. Back then they would just say like some treatment coordinator does, they start the case straightaway. So a couple of times this happened and I would get random like message from office manager, especially one case in particular. I did a full upper arch decay everywhere and I finished it. But the patient at the end, there was a lot of recession in the case after a while and so she started seeing it was a Coptic case, I believe back then I was using Coptic.

[01:12:55] And.

[01:12:56] She started seeing this gold and black hue around the gum line or whatever. It wasn’t my fault. Patient didn’t care. Take care of the teeth. But you know, I started getting letter from the board for case review and this and that was like, you know, I need to handle this. I haven’t done anything wrong, but I don’t care about the money, you know, like, let me let me have her sign a non-disclosure or whatever, and just give her back the money, whatever it was. I don’t care. But make sure she signed this paperwork and she did, luckily. And I just refunded everything. And she, you know, she probably did it on purpose. In my case was fine. It wasn’t a big deal, but I didn’t want to deal with that as an associate. What I realised as I work more and more, the patient is unhappy. I can’t make them happy unless it’s something for something psychological. You know, I might have missed it that beginning and sometimes a certain case you shouldn’t take on, even if especially when they say to other dentists through other dentists they can’t help me. And, and those are the cases I’m talking about. And when I was young, oh I can do it, I’ll do it. Yeah. You know, and then and then you’re stuck with them, especially like denture cases or like no one wants to pay the teeth out. And I did it and oh, I’m in so much pain now. I need all these drugs. I’m like, I just took out your teeth and your denture is going to be sore. It looks fine, but now you’re the one that they’re blaming, you know? So I would say mainly I haven’t gotten a lot of trouble, but there are some instances cosmetically as an associate where, yes, it could have it could have become something more like, okay, we want to actually go further by just refunded them, you know.

[01:14:21] Other than this sort of spidey sense that you’re sort of talking about of I guess I guess we call that experience one.

[01:14:26] There’s one thing.

[01:14:27] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:14:28] But I mean, obviously, back as an associate, I had to rely on assistants to do some of the auxiliary work, which nowadays I do everything myself. She took off a temporary on number 31, the second molar, and she tried in the gold crown to take a bite. And I was in the other room. And the next thing I know is there was a crown. I always followed it. I’m like, Oh, okay. The guy said, Yeah, I swallowed it. I’m like, No, man, you have to go to the hospital right now. You know, it’s not it’s not coming out. There’s a possibility it could be stuck somewhere in your lung or whatever it was. So but they didn’t go all the way in. And so I didn’t have to do surgery. But luckily I told office manager, hey, whatever it is, I’ll pay for it. I don’t care. They were kind of blowing it off. I was like, No, they need to go now and I’ll take care of whatever it is. And they were able to get it out without anything invasive, but that could have become something. So what I notice is when you’re an associate, sometimes the manager, the doctor’s not on site, you have to just kind of make the call. But ultimately it’s your licence on the line. End of the day, your assistant, your front office, whatever.

[01:15:31] Nothing’s going to happen to them. You know nothing. You are still the one that’s liable. So you have to make sure that you really. That’s why I don’t see multiple chairs anyway. But I make all my own temporaries. I spend the time and do all this kind of stuff. I want to make sure that patient knows that I they’re paying me for a premium like I’m going to take care of, start to finish everything that you need. And if there’s a mistake, it’s my fault. No one else’s. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, the docs. The darkest day, though, was nothing to do dentistry in terms of clinical. When I was an associate, I used to work six, seven days a week initially to pay off these loans, and I was working in random places. I didn’t want to work, but I had to. And one day I was doing a little hygiene. I woke up and I couldn’t move my neck. I couldn’t move my arm. Oh yeah. I had severe impingement of C five, six or whatever it was. I had brachial plexus pain. I went to neurologist, chiropractor. It was a bad idea. It was a chiropractor and I was out for that year. I was out six, seven months. I really thought I couldn’t work. No. I was like, I’ve got to figure out something.

[01:16:31] I had loans. I just bought a brand new car. Was like the first car I ever bought back in zero eight. And I was like, Crap, what do I do? Do I go to auto school because I don’t know if I can pick up a handpiece? I was literally I couldn’t move anything and I was under a lot of stress back then too from other things. What happened was I took time to take that year off in a way that that year I saved by finishing dental school, one year, early undergrad one year. I kind of lost it there, but it doesn’t matter. And then I found a practise that I liked. It was slow practise, it was a private practise. And that’s where I met my office manager that she works for me now. Eventually, you know, he sold that practise and it gave me time to work in a real practise on my own. I was the only doctor there, so it felt like I owned it, but I was just the associate. But I didn’t make that much money. But I was able to take the class that I wanted and rehabilitate myself. And that was a turning point where I was like, Crap, I could be disabled. Like, what does that feel like? I can’t do anything.

[01:17:27] And, you know, interestingly, often the worst moment in your life actually brings out something, you know, you wouldn’t have met that office manager. There’s many things you might not have done. Yeah, no, no.

[01:17:37] But now, looking back, yeah, it happened the way it happened because that’s what I needed.

[01:17:41] You know? But. But, but I can understand. I mean, I’ve woken up with a bad nick.

[01:17:47] Sometimes it’s bad, but.

[01:17:49] Six months, a year of it.

[01:17:50] I mean, I couldn’t because I try to work and it just bend in my neck. I could I couldn’t see anything.

[01:17:55] How did you fix it? Did you have to have an operation or something?

[01:17:57] No, I went I went to the the I went to all these different doctors and there’s a family friend, neurologist I finally went to. And by that time it was like four or five months I was going to a chiropractor. And there’s different levels of chiropractor. This one was maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was like going to a very bad dentist, like they actually made it worse. And now I don’t go to chiropractors now, but if I really needed to, there’s one person I found is physical therapy, is what is needed in conjunction with a chiropractor and a good one. But just like a bad dentist can perforate a canal, you can not have bandanas. But. But if they’re really doing it all the time, right, like that, they can have certain chiropractors that just doing stuff and collecting money. They’re not really helping you. And I notice I was feeling worse. But anyway, no, I went to everyone and then I just found a good physical therapist. I it’s because of dentistry. I was hunched over a lot, even with loops. I’m very tall. I’m like six two, six three. I was working in clinics that weren’t fit to me. So my office now every single chair and item is built to me like special, like certain chairs that I like, certain ergonomics that I like. And when you work for someone else, you can’t do that. So I was it wasn’t my it’s almost like when you’re a dentist, it’s your operating room, you know, it’s your it’s your canvas. And you should be able to paint and, and work how you see fit. But you really can’t do that unless it’s your own. So that, that realised like I need to get my own thing, you know, this is, this is not good. So.

[01:19:19] So you’ve got, you’ve got. I see behind you the London Underground and the map, and you’ve got the Wimbledon Championships logo and thing. What do you miss about the UK?

[01:19:33] I get that question a lot. I think it’s my childhood, really, because when I when I go, I go back every 4 to 5 years and I notice when I go back now I feel like a tourist, you know? But I just miss I think I miss my memories of growing up. And I think I was mentioning earlier, I just watched Doctor Strange recently the multiverse. And sometimes I think like what if I actually didn’t come to America when I was 18 and I actually went to university in London, what would I become? Would I become a pharmacist or a dentist? And if I did, where would I have lived? I know where I would have been and where I always envisioned I always envisioned myself having a nice house in Wimbledon Village next to the championships, up off the road, you know, having if I had, you know, having friends and family around that area, my friends I grew up with, that’s what I envisioned when I was younger. But, you know, it might still happen in the future if I decide as possible one day.

[01:20:25] But no, but but as a comparison of of life, life there and life here, what is it about here that’s better than there?

[01:20:32] I think socially it’s nicer in England because people aren’t so far away here. I have a lot of friends from undergrad and dental school, no high school friends obviously, because they’re all in England, but people live far away. And when you go to university here, people could be from New York, but they come to new university in LA, people, you know. So I might talk to them on the phone, but like I’m going to New York end of this month for a week. I haven’t seen my old college roommates for about 15 years together as one, so we’re all going to be there for a week, but it doesn’t really happen. You know, everyone’s in their own lives. So I would say socially I miss like just and also the city of London. I love London. I love New York. I’m a city person.

[01:21:09] City guy.

[01:21:10] I am. But you have to make sacrifice career wise. I’m very happy with my career in Sacramento. Like I love my patient base here. I wouldn’t I probably wouldn’t function as well in a in a city practise the way I like to work in the clientele I want to see. But it doesn’t mean I can’t get on a plane and go somewhere, which I used to do that quite a bit. But because of COVID, I can’t stop doing all that. But yeah.

[01:21:33] And and I noticed you said you mentioned squash. Yeah. You played a really high level, right?

[01:21:38] Yeah. So, you know, back when I was younger, I don’t know what it’s what was it like in your cultural, cultural family? But it was always like, come studies come first and all this kind of stuff. And my parents had a shop. They always say, you know, this is just for fun. Like if you don’t study, you’re going to end up in a shop. You don’t want to do that or whatever it is. We’re doing all this work so you can go to the best school and you can become something because we ain’t doing this for nothing, you know? So I felt this pressure. I’m the oldest in the family. I always felt this pressure I’ve got. I’ve got to do something. I mean, obviously, in hindsight, I wish I had opportunity to to at least take a year or two out and try to play on the professional circuit and then go to dental school or university. But that’s not what happened, which is fine. But yeah, I love squash. I played it for Surrey, you know. And then when I came to America, I thought it was done. I didn’t think they had squash shoe in the first in two years, three years. I didn’t play anything because I was in Stockton once I moved to dental school in San Francisco. They actually have a very big squash community in the Bay Area. So I got back involved and yeah, I do play regularly. I actually got injured last year, so I’ve been dealing with that.

[01:22:41] But you talk about sliding doors, right? And if let’s imagine if your parents had moved or got their green card three years earlier and you’d moved when you were 15. Yeah. And you could have maybe got a scholarship into dental school, you know, and actually and actually done squash, you know, like squash to a higher level. I mean, life is so strange like that. It’s all the water. Yeah, we have amazing.

[01:23:08] I mean, it’s fine. You know, I got to play like now as I became a dentist, I got to on my own terms, you know, I played like a little bit satellite professional tournament. So local amateur tournament is fine. It’s just it’s nice when you’re younger to have the energy, right? That’s all, of course.

[01:23:24] How old are you now? 42. 43, 41, 41.

[01:23:26] Sorry. Yeah.

[01:23:31] That was close.

[01:23:32] In my head. And I was, I was like 39 and then suddenly I turned 40. So it’s cool right now. I don’t like the sporty sound, but it’s okay now.

[01:23:41] We’ve come, we’ve come to the end of our time. So I’m going to finish it with our usual questions. Let’s let’s start with the fantasy dinner party.

[01:23:50] Three guests, dead or.

[01:23:52] Alive, who do you have?

[01:23:54] So I’m a I’m a big fan of Roger Federer. I would love to have Roger Federer one on one. I really feel like I get along quite well with him. Dennis Bergkamp I’m a big Arsenal fan, but from the old days, like Bergkamp these both these guys are professional, but also they seem like a lot of fun. And I’m going to I’m going to say Michael Schumacher, but if not him, this is more of a spiritual thing. Now, I’m Hindu, so I would I would like to meet Lord SAMINI and or Lord Krishna in person, but that’s more of a spiritual thing. But yeah, that would be good.

[01:24:27] You can have that dinner party if you want that dinner party ready. Yeah. And what about. Perhaps. Final question. I know he’s not here, but that’s bad. I’m sorry to. To bring you down. Your nearest and dearest around you. Three pieces of advice for them. For the world.

[01:24:47] I say. If you wait until later. You’re going to be waiting forever. Take risks and follow all your dreams, especially when you’re younger. You have so much time to to make mistakes. And also mistakes on mistakes that you learn from those experiences are actually, you know, good, good things within reason. I think happiness comes from what. You do so living and making memories of people that you love leave a legacy based on relationships, not just wealth, and be present. I think especially during COVID, I realise like I can’t see people, this is I mean, all this stuff you can do on your own, there’s nothing you can really do that much you and you need people to, to share things with, you know. And then the main one for me personally, this is more like what I’m really like the power of discipline, work ethic and consistency. I think the ingredients of success and luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That’s why I really like Federer and Bergkamp and Schumacher. I really feel like, you know, they really embody these things. And and that’s why I would say.

[01:25:53] Like there are like all three of those very much alike. All three of those very much. But yeah, to younger colleagues, it’s amazing the number of younger people who listen to this show. I keep getting, getting, getting told. Dental students and other younger colleagues take risks early, for sure. For sure. You know, you’re absolutely right about about that. And the other two things, very, very nice.

[01:26:16] Let me ask you a question. Yeah. If you could go back in time to any period, where would you like to go?

[01:26:22] I got asked this question, like if it’s a fly on the wall story. Yeah, I would. I wouldn’t mind being there when whoever decided to. To assassinate.

[01:26:31] Kennedy. Oh, really?

[01:26:34] But. But. But if it’s not a war, then dinosaur, you know that that moment when. When the dinosaurs became extinct.

[01:26:45] On.

[01:26:45] The earth and and and, you know, you know what? Not all animals became extinct. The dinosaurs did. I’d love to see that moment. What about you?

[01:26:56] I’d like to go to the Egyptian era. I want to know how the pyramids were built, you know.

[01:27:01] Have you seen the pyramids?

[01:27:02] Yes.

[01:27:03] I’m going to sound like a Philistine now, dude. When. When I. When I went to see the pyramids in Cairo. But, like, you know, they’re not that great.

[01:27:10] In all their glory. It seems like it’s just the architectural or even Roman time, one or the other. I just. Gladiator. It’s gladiatorial. Just that. The whole civilisation either or. I just like architecture, you know, and.

[01:27:23] Just.

[01:27:24] The different time periods. I mean, it’s just something where you, you study a lot of it. I mean, especially in England, you know, I had to learn Latin and all that kind of stuff. So I don’t remember any of it anymore, but be nice to actually live it at school. I went to Hampton School in New Hampshire. Hampton Court Palace.

[01:27:40] Oh, nice.

[01:27:41] Took the I took the Southwest train pass Kingston and they took the 111 bus. I mean.

[01:27:49] It’s a massive pleasure to have you, buddy. I really, really enjoyed that. Thank you so much for being so open and giving us an insight into your life over there. And please stay in touch.

[01:27:59] But I will. Thank you.

[01:28:00] Thank you. Amazing.

[01:28:04] 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.

[01:28:19] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:28:34] 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.

[01:28:44] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] My my purpose is to serve people, be able to coach people. But I think my bigger purpose is to sort of show the dental world that coaching has massive benefits. If you get the right coaching and you get the right coach, there’s huge potential for you in terms of growth. And I feel like as a profession, we should really open our eyes to opportunities and possibilities and sort of get away from the doom and gloom. Because I think dentistry is a fantastic career, it’s a fantastic profession and it’s got a limited potential. You can do absolutely anything you want. You’ve got a guaranteed job. There’s probably I don’t think there’s any dentists out there that that would be struggling with a job as long as they’ve got the right kind of paperwork. There’s huge demand from patients for work. I just think that how many jobs can you say that you get all that.

[00:01:03] 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.

[00:01:20] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Odessa Husain, a dentist working out of Oldham. Born and bred Manchester Oldham guy, I guess that’s a Mudassar is an associate who contacted us about a while back during the COVID thing. I was having some questions about How’s the profession going? In the meantime, he’s also become a sort of a business coach or a personal life coach for other dentists, and he’s set up a group on Facebook, a football group, which is I think the regular listeners will know I know nothing about football but football for dentists, which you then changed.

[00:02:02] Melissa Ray Yeah, I wanted it to be more inclusive, so originally it was just for dentists and then I wanted to widen it to increase inclusivity and make it about professionals as well.

[00:02:15] So dentists and professional football for dentists and professional.

[00:02:17] That’s right. I wanted it to be a sort of more intelligent kind of conversations and sort of, I suppose, make it more inspiring and motivating and sort of being able to engage with different kind of people from different lines of sectors.

[00:02:32] Let’s let’s let’s quickly start with that. How many members has that group got?

[00:02:37] Last time I checked, over 700 members.

[00:02:41] Oh, well. And was that completely organic or how did you how did how did.

[00:02:44] You grow that? Yeah, it was completely organic. I’ve kind of myself I’ve actually not been on any social media until about seven or eight months ago, actually, and I decided I wanted to engage with the profession in a way. So I went on social media and this was part of my vision as a coach.

[00:03:03] You know, it’s interesting because you say that did you on purpose avoid social media?

[00:03:08] I think there was a lot of, I suppose, negative connotations to social media, and I still think there is. But I think if it’s used correctly, then it’s a great way to connect with people. So I kind of have now realised the huge benefits of of it as well. But you also have to be mindful of, of it being an addiction. And that’s something I talk about a lot about social media being addictive because we’re constantly on our phones and it’s constantly asking us to use our phone.

[00:03:39] Yeah. What’s your screen time in the moment? Do you know?

[00:03:42] I do have an app to limit that, but I would say that it’s around 3 hours a day.

[00:03:48] You’re good. You’re super good. It’s interesting, though, you know, this question. You’ve got you’ve got kids. You just said you’ve got three kids. And this question of screen time and keeping the kids off the phones and all of that. But, you know, for me, there is an aspect of if they’re not on the screen enough, they’re not going to know what’s going on in the world. Not not not that I’m not saying the phone is going to show them news. I’m saying that, you know, life will be on the phone so much more or what about the time they’re older? It’ll be some sort of, you know, lens in the eye. But you know what I mean? Like, in a way, it’s very popular to say I’m keeping my kids off screens. But I remember that kid when when I was when I was a child, that that kid who was on his computer all the time. And that kid’s probably like a billionaire in Silicon Valley right now. But let’s get let’s get to your story, buddy. Tell me about your childhood. Why did you become a dentist?

[00:04:49] So, yeah, I grew up in Oldham, born and bred. I actually, which is a town just outside Manchester. For those people who listeners who may not be aware, my family obviously settled here. I’ve got a huge family and I’m still based in Oldham and obviously went to uni in Manchester. Oldham is quite an interesting sort of place in a way, because I suppose people may remember there were the Oldham riots and kind of Asian communities living alongside white British communities and things like that. And I think a lot’s changed for the better in terms of integration and things like that. So Oldham sort of really transformed, I would say, as a town.

[00:05:30] Would you say there is still some friction?

[00:05:33] I think there’s always friction in different parts of of every neighbourhood. It depends on where you are or where you live. But one thing I do really love about this country is how tolerant we are of each other and how respectful we are. And we allow each other, for example, to practise our religion. And I think we should be proud of that as a country that, you know, there’s a lot of tolerance, tolerance in this country. And I’m proud to be British.

[00:06:01] You’re right. You’re right. And it’s easy to look at problems, isn’t it? But when I look at cousins and things who live in other countries, particularly European countries, and the US has got all of its own. Sure problems. I’d say we have it pretty good here. As far as, you know, relations between different groups, I’ve been told him it’s quite a kind of a ex mining town. Right. Is that is that the thing?

[00:06:29] Yeah, historically, it used to be also used to be a cotton mill town. And, you know, originally there was a lot of migration from Pakistan. My family came from, I might add, in particular. And he’s one of my actual inspirations because obviously he came and and they used to live in quite squalid kind of conditions and worked very long hours in these factories. And yeah, it’s kind of amazing the journey he’s been on and yeah, I’m very, very inspired by him really.

[00:07:03] Tell me about that. He came when? How old was he when he came?

[00:07:07] He came when he was 13 or 14. And so he was very, very young. But back in them days, it was kind of the done thing to work when you were under age as well kind of thing. So you know that. You know what?

[00:07:19] Yeah. Do you know what year that was?

[00:07:21] I don’t know the exact year, but I would imagine he said it was he was when he was 13, so it must have been around 1964, something like that I would say. But when he first came over, yeah.

[00:07:32] Yeah. Very different place to what it is now.

[00:07:35] Oh yeah. It’s very, very, very different and very, very kind of you know, I look at him and I’m amazed when when you look at the history of coming, you know, with with literally no education and living in those kind of conditions to where he’s moved up the ladder and sort of a bit of an entrepreneur in a way, and kind of really successful. So I look at him in all really and and wish that I could aspire and do the things he has achieved in his life.

[00:08:03] So tell me about your childhood. What kind of a kid were you?

[00:08:06] Yeah, I mean, I come from a very large family. I’m second youngest in my family. Childhood was good. It was it was nice. You know, I think things that life is very different now. But as kids, you could go out and play on the streets and then you’d have to be called, called in and you know, you could play football on the streets. And it was just you did knock on each of those doors and it was a very community kind of spirit and it was a very free kind of spirit which which I enjoy. Whereas I think nowadays we talked at the start of the about the distractions of being on phones and being on, on social media and all these pressures that come. But yeah, childhood was really, really good. I really sort of enjoyed that time and I look back fondly and I think it’s probably one of my best times in my life. I would say that those those times where you were just free and you could just go out and kick a ball and play with random people and play football. And I didn’t say you can all these childhood games and there was no no care of concern of whatever was going on in the world. Whereas now I think we’re bombarded with too much information.

[00:09:09] How old are you? Do do you sound like you were you were growing up in the forties.

[00:09:14] This I’m actually I’m actually 34 but I feel like I’m more connected with the older generation than the younger ones because I my sort of I think Facebook came in my second year of college. So so I I’m not kind of converted to that. I’m one of those that I enjoy the simple things in life.

[00:09:35] Unlike older people, I’m actually in many ways more comfortable with older people than younger people. But but also I’m energised by younger people, too. I think you need a good mix of both. And in your thirties you are not yet at that stage where there’s loads of younger people who want to talk to you. But you’ll see you soon. Soon there’ll be there’ll be lots of those, I suppose. Now in your coaching game, you’ve, you’ve got a lot more of this. Why did you choose dentistry?

[00:10:04] I think at the time I was I was actually only an hour in between dentistry and medicine. And at the time as well, I think now there’s a lot more resources available in terms of do a lot more research into things. But when I chose dentistry, you know, it was it was one of those that I perhaps naively thought that you look at the career pathway of a, for example, a doctor, you do your five years and then you’ve got a lot of training before you actually become what you want to become. Whereas I think the thing that attracted me to dentistry was the fact that after the five years of one and the one year training, you’re kind of at the same level as everyone else. So it is more like it’s not a long training pathway and perhaps I’m not looking back thinking that was quite a naive way of looking at it. But you’re young and you don’t really you don’t really know the world or see the world, and you see the world in a very different way now than you do then.

[00:10:53] Did you? You said you came from a big family. Did anyone else in your family become a dentist or doctor?

[00:10:59] No, no. I do have a doctors, optometrists, pharmacists. But I am the only dentist at the moment in my family. But yeah, I think for me it was more like also making my parents proud. It was something that was really kind of important to me. I wanted to to make sure that they felt because because obviously there’s a lot of, I suppose, time and energy parents put into making sure their children aspire to become successful individuals. And for me, that was also part of my motivation to become a dentist. Yeah.

[00:11:35] Then when you decided to go to university, did you not have that feeling of, Hey, I want to get out of this town and see another town?

[00:11:42] Yeah, I think to some extent it was again, my family who kept me here. My dad kind of said to me, Look, I’ll buy you a car and we’ll we’ll get, you know, you can do what you want and try to stay in a way. And I thought, you know what? That doesn’t sound too bad in a way. And I think, you know, for for everyone university is what you make of it. But I enjoyed my time at uni. I made some really, really good friends. I’m not going to lie. It was stressful, but I think it was stressful for everyone. It was dentistry, but it was yeah. It was a it was a difficult journey to become a dentist, but I’m proud of my achievements.

[00:12:21] So you you’re 34 now. That means you qualified something like ten years ago. 11 years ago. Yeah, that sort of thing. And so in that 11 years, you, you’ve been an associate. Have you not thought about practise ownership in that time?

[00:12:37] I have. And there were several occasions where I came close to buying a practise. On one occasion it was the vendor who bailed out on me on the last minute kind of thing. So there’s been a few times, but I think with me personally getting married and having children or the priorities and responsibilities financially started to take over and the practise became a bit lower on priority. It’s something that I still aspire to become a practise owner. It’s something that I am actively looking to do. But it’s like with anything, when more responsibilities take over, you start having other priorities.

[00:13:15] Yeah. By the way, it’s not. It’s not a competition, right? It’s not. It’s not like getting there before this time or losing this many years or whatever. And, you know, our conversation about associates, which I really want to talk about, because I don’t think it’s it’s it’s have enough of a voice out there. It’s interesting because the way it’s set up right now, particularly in the system, I feel your principal is getting most of the gain and the associates getting less of the gain. And then, of course, these days there’s a shortage of associates and, you know, there’s that whole thing. But then the kind of the unwritten contract, the unwritten deal is eventually one day you’ll become a principal and then you can get there. But it kind of completely ignores the fact that there’s loads of dentists who don’t want to be principals. Never, you know, there’s there’s loads of people who want to be a mother and not not own a practise. There’s loads of people who just don’t want to own a business, you know, and so they’re left as being associates for the whole of their career. And if associates get this lesser deal because the contract is one day you’ll be a principal and they’re never going to be a principal. We’ve got let’s not forget the pickiest part of the profession as far as numbers is associates. Tell me tell me what you think about that.

[00:14:35] Yeah. I mean, I think things have actually changed rapidly, I would say, over the last ten or 15 years in terms of that. I think back in the days there was this system of you become an associate, you worked for so many years and you might be offered a partnership or or kind of, you know, you took over the practise of whoever, whoever owned the practise and things. But I think associates themselves are now upskilling, diversifying, and I think the opportunities are huge. There’s a huge potential in terms of income for associates, depending on what type of dentistry they do. And in terms of I think the opportunities are vast and things have changed rapidly in terms of the range of treatments dentists offer. And we’re kind of as you know, we’re in that Instagram kind of generation where even the younger guys who have come across very, very ambitious, very, very different to how perhaps I was taught at dentist, how I was taught dentistry. And I think I think it’s a great time to actually be a dentist because I think the opportunities are huge.

[00:15:40] Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, we’ve had people on this show, you know, I kind of call them super associates who’ve got their own. It’s not their own actual list of patients, but they could walk into any practise and, you know, they’ll be full, full, completely full because of their own social media or whatever. So that that is true. Tell me tell me about your practise when you first qualified. Where did you first work? Who was your first boss?

[00:16:05] I first actually worked for a small corporate, and it was probably one of my most enjoyable practise that I worked at because there was a good range of dentists with a very, very big surgery. I think it was seven or eight surgery practise and there were sort of four or five NHS dentists. And then upstairs there were private dentists and it kind of it was, it was sort of geared towards being able to transition towards doing private dentistry as well as you could pick and choose. So I really enjoyed that first, my first ever job because it was it was a place where there was some mentoring going on, there was some coaching going on, there was some kind of it was just a nice atmosphere. It’s quite a laid back kind of atmosphere as well. The staff were really friendly and yeah, I would say my first job I really, really enjoyed.

[00:16:59] So is that when you say corporate? Was it one guy owned for practises or was it bigger than that?

[00:17:04] Yeah, I mean, I think they’ve got more that probably got about ten or 12 practises now and they still do exist. But yeah.

[00:17:12] Was that all them as well?

[00:17:14] No, no, that was actually in Blackburn so it was quite.

[00:17:17] Ip quite far.

[00:17:18] Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was actually my first job. But I think distance wise and commute wise and I suppose various other things got in the way and then yeah, obviously I decide to, to, to leave.

[00:17:31] How would you say that?

[00:17:34] My first job actually was only. It was a year. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. That was after. I thought we were talking about the first job after that.

[00:17:42] Yeah, but talk about your boss, because I think it’s quite a yeah, your first boss is actually a massive influence.

[00:17:49] Yeah. Yeah. I mean my first actual position was, was actually in Liverpool, it was in a place called Highton. Liverpool. And it’s kind of probably one of the rougher parts of, of Liverpool. So it was kind of a bit of a shock in a way. And I think yeah, it was, it was okay. I felt I learnt more outside of it than I did actually in VTI. But it also really very much depends on I suppose, your trainer as well as the environment as well as different things. But yeah, it was, it was, it was okay but I felt like I learnt more in that other year afterwards.

[00:18:26] Yeah. So and where are you working now? How long have you been there?

[00:18:31] My current practise have been there just under a year.

[00:18:35] Oh, really? Oh, really? Yeah. So where else have you worked apart from these too?

[00:18:40] So, yeah. I mean, I spent a few years for a company called Rabbit and Ray. They’re quite. I know, I know them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. Okay. I mean, obviously, I think they’re sold now to dental partners who have now also sold on, from what I understand. But what impressed me about Robert and Ray was they did things properly in terms of policies, procedures. They wanted everything to the the gold standard. And yeah, you know, I it’s definitely a company that I think of fondly. And there was a lot of opportunities in terms of support mechanisms in place and they had the clinical director you could get support from if you need any help with patients and things like that. So yeah, I worked for them for three years and then I’ve worked for an independent practise for for for nearly, nearly five years. Just under five years.

[00:19:28] Was rough and Rea Oldham was up the Bolton I went to the.

[00:19:31] Bolton that was in Burnley. Yeah. The Baltimore is their flagship one and that’s where they have like training days and things like that. Yeah, yeah. Really, really nice the way they did that. But yeah, it was again, it was great because you could network with other dentists, you know, there was a lot of support there in terms of, in terms of developing your dentistry, in terms of developing you. And I think they also had some urgent care kind of contracts as well. So you could earn some additional money by by doing that as well.

[00:20:00] All right. You said, you know, a pretty standard sort of situation as far as the work that you’ve done and the jobs you’ve done. So now you’re a coach. So how did this happen? What was what was the transition?

[00:20:14] So my transition into being a coach actually happened in the last 12 to 18 months, really. And, you know, I think the pandemic’s had a lot of impact on a lot of people. It made me really re-evaluate my own life. I also got COVID and, you know, obviously had some after effects of that as well. And there was issues with regards to pay as well during the pandemic at the practise that I was at and like a lot of associates, you know, I, you know, we were left in limbo and there was no clarity or help or support from people with regards to pay. And I was in a situation where I just recently purchased a house. There’s a lot of financial pressure. I had two children at the time as well. So money was was tight and there was a lot of uncertainty as well. So it was quite kind of there was a lot of if you are a spouse of various things going on at the same time and obviously we all suffer from, I suppose, mental health issues. And I myself, you know, I’m I’m open to it admitting that obviously I’ve suffered from anxiety in the past, stress in the past, burnout and, you know, sought help from various different types of people like therapists. I’ve even been to see a hypnotherapist to help me with with things like that. But when I got coaching, it kind of completely transformed my whole life in a way. And my whole way of thinking and coaching for the first time I felt was fixing things, whereas things like therapy and counselling, I feel like they just papered over the cracks and it was one of those that it was like, if you needed help, you know, or you went through a bit of a tough patch, you might reach out for some help. So I’ve always been kind of into being in tune with with my body and my physical health as well as mental health and making sure that, you know, it’s not kind of, you know, affecting my performance.

[00:22:08] So so you’re saying that the coaching was the first thing that helped you, really helped you move the needle as far as stress and anxiety? Is that what you’re saying?

[00:22:19] Yeah, yeah, definitely. It absolutely changed the way I viewed the world. It transformed.

[00:22:26] And so so was that kind of like the mindset change?

[00:22:31] I think coaching is far more complex because I think the thing is a lot of the other types of therapy focus from the past and delving into the past and what a person really wants when they’re in difficulty or struggling is actually wants to move out of that situation or. Pull themselves out of that situation. And I feel like coaching is a very forward thinking kind of process.

[00:22:56] Forward looking.

[00:22:57] Right forward looking, forward thinking. Forward and sort of drive driving, kind of moving you from a particular place where you are mentally. And I think that’s what you really want rather than just just sort of putting it in a box in a way and hoping it will go away because it’s still there in a way. Whereas, whereas coaching completely transformed my relationships, transformed the way I think, transformed me as a person as well as kind of made me become an entrepreneur in a way, and sort of take risks and sort of really sort of, you know, have a view life in a completely different way. And the way, you know, and even the move towards being on social media was something very new to me in a way. It wasn’t something that the old Mudassar would would do in a way. And that’s what I’m saying, that coaching really, really changed the way I perceive things. And I feel like so much more stronger, so much more resilient, so much more positive, so much more kind of energetic. And I think after going on my coaching journey and being coach and then getting a formal qualification in coaching and meeting people outside dentistry, that was really what really sort of completely changed the way I think, because it sort of showed me that the life of a dentist, I feel like it’s very, very sheltered in a way. We go usually to the same place of work, we do the same thing every single day. And for me, there’s not a lot of learning that goes on. You’re kind of just doing your work and you’re probably staying at the same level. And, you know, I felt like when I met people outside dentistry, the way they think, how they want to help people grow and become better and improve, that’s what coaching does. And I think that’s that’s when it opened my eyes and I thought, you know what? It’s a concept that I suppose I didn’t know existed really in dentistry, and it probably isn’t that widely used yet, but it’s something that I feel like would completely change dentistry if it was used correctly.

[00:25:03] Well. Do you remember a moment where something clicked in your mind? Because it’s not. It’s a very short period of time to go through such a massive change. And was it was it was was it gradual or was it something your coach said or was it. What was.

[00:25:20] It? I think I think it was it was just meeting these different personalities. And these were people who owned multiple businesses who were who were millionaires, who were weighing sort of almost close to retirement, but still worried about their legacies, still worried about wanting to give more. And I thought I’ve never even thought about these things as a dentist. And you probably never do. You just spend your life doing what you what everyone expects you to do, continuing your job, trying to earn money, trying to support your family and trying to enjoy your life. You don’t really think about what is your purpose here? What is actually your dream? Who are you? And these are kind of questions that I find myself asking. Like, you know, you really need to understand your own psychology or your own sort of narrative that you’re telling, know the way you’re talking to yourself and and these things completely sort of, you know, I was completely unaware of it. And I think the conversation I had with these kind of people and then being coached as well. You know, and that’s the bit that I love about coaching, being on this coaching journey with people and then sort of coming to the realisation themselves and having that lightbulb moment. I didn’t think that maybe I could do that and then they go on and do that and do whatever they, you know, that came, that came to the head during that coaching session. For me, the fact that they’ll, they’ll remember that for the rest of their life and that’s something that that really sort of drives me, the fact that you can sort of turn on a switch that was probably flicked they turned off by accident or close. It might be that they’ve lost motivation. It may be that life just completely killed any any growth in them. And I think being able to turn on that switch or being able to get them to a place where they never thought is for me the the amazing reward that you get from coaching.

[00:27:11] Sounds great. So tell me then in a, shall we say in a sentence, you know, what is what is your purpose? Is it that is it spreading this good news?

[00:27:22] My my purpose is to serve people, be able to coach people. But I think my bigger purpose is to sort of show the dental world that coaching has massive benefits. If you get the right coaching and you get the right coach, there’s huge potential for you in terms of growth. And I feel like as a profession, we should really open our eyes to opportunities and possibilities and sort of get away from the doom and gloom. Because I think dentistry is a fantastic career, it’s a fantastic profession and it’s got a limited potential. You can do absolutely anything you want. You’ve got a guaranteed job. There’s probably I don’t think there’s any dentists out there that would be struggling with a job as long as they’ve got the right kind of paperwork. There’s huge demand from patients for work. I just think that how many jobs can you say that you get? All that. And most dentists, I would say earn upwards of 50 K at least. You know, I don’t see many, many kind of jobs out there that can guarantee that kind of lifestyle or that kind of income.

[00:28:36] And yet. We’re getting loads of people wanting to leave the profession.

[00:28:42] Yeah. And that’s the question we ourselves have to question. Why? And what is the reason for this? And how can we stop this? And what things can we put in place to to support these people who are in this predicament, who want to leave the profession? And I think we need to start caring for each other. And that’s that’s for me, that’s that’s part of my purpose. I genuinely care for my profession. I genuinely care for my fellow colleagues. I genuinely want the best for them. And that’s where my, my, my drive comes in terms of helping and wanting to serve as many as many people. But there’s still something even my coach said. Why do you always talk about dentistry? Because I think for me, I’ve gone through struggles within dentistry. I’ve gone through painful periods, I’ve gone through suffering, I’ve gone through mistreatment, I’ve gone through, you know, lots of lots of hardships and come out through the other end still with an upbeat, positive attitude and still think that I’m definitely not the only one. And especially coaching different people, even people who are hugely successful, it’s amazing some of the things that they they sort of highlight. Some are some dentists, you know, really high grossing dentists. They’ve been taking antidepressants since they were 18. They’ve never got that problem fixed, even though they might appear to be hugely successful. And that’s the thing that we need to really think about self care, think about caring for each other, think about what steps we can do to support each of the dentistry itself is physically and psychologically has a lot of health implications, and those are things that really need to be managed before it’s too late.

[00:30:36] So look, I’ve never been properly coached. I mean, I’ve spoken to a few coaches in my time. But is it that when you’re talking to people and you say, what’s your purpose? That mainly most people say a similar thing about connexion and impact and all of that, or is it that people say lots of different things?

[00:30:58] I think, you know, as coaches, especially with the way I’ve been trained, there’s various tools that we use to unlock you. So if I said to you, what’s your purpose? You’d probably, like, spend. I’d be, I’m not sure really an Ari for a long time kind of thing. So, so, so. And that’s the thing. How do you unlock what’s inside a person? To me, one of the things that’s very commonly used amongst coaches or one thing that I use is something called The Wheel of Life, and that’s just like looking at every aspect of your life and you basically rating it. I mean, these are things that you can sort of then have conversations about. So whether it might be your career and your rating as a for whether it might be personal or romance, you might be rating as as as something high or low your financial whereas these are these are basic human needs. We all want and have the same you know, everyone’s probably heard of the Maslow’s hierarchy. We all have the same basic human means, even even even though we’re dentists, we’re still humans, we still, you know, still perform the same way. And that’s the thing. That’s the thing we’ve got to sort of so I use tools to unlock and there’s always something in the closet that someone’s kept hidden from someone or kept away. And that’s the thing about coaching. I think it’s important to have that kind of trust is really, really important, having that non-judgmental, kind of confidential relationship with your coaches and for them to understand that you’re there to get them performing at peak level, you just want the best for them. And anyone who’s been coached by me will vouch that I will leave no stone unturned. I will do absolutely everything to make sure that they succeed in life and make sure that I can I can remove that obstacle, remove those fears, and get them sort of lying, really.

[00:32:56] So but in the training, is there something that says, hey, as you’re asking people about their lives and you said, oh, you find these skeletons in people’s cupboards? When I say skeleton, it’s like something that’s blocking them. Something they’re scared of something. Yeah. Is there something that says, hey, did you suddenly uncover something terrible and now it’s out of your remit and they need to go see a counsellor? Or how does it work?

[00:33:19] Yeah, I mean, sometimes it can, can can be like that. If you think there’s something that you think, for example, somebody’s feeling suicidal, for example, that’s something that a coach would struggle to. You may have to signpost to someone else, but it all depends on on how comfortable you feel. I mean, with myself it’s been varying kind of issues. Some vary from grief, from dealing with grief and the loss of a loved one to, you know, and also my client base is quite varied as well. It can be simple things about whether whether somebody should deserve a pay rise or not or whether we should fund, you know, expenses for this for a director or something. And, you know, you think that and then there’s other people on the decision committee who who perhaps oppose it. And, you know, you’re kind of sort of delving on whether it’s the right thing for the business or not and whether this person might leave. So I think I think I find those kind of situations interesting because it sort of taps into your emotional intelligence and sort of you sort of weighing up the pros and cons and doing a full 360 before you’re making decisions. But yeah, my, my client base is quite varied in terms of so it’s not the dentist, I would say it’s 8020 actually. I think dentists themselves are very hesitant about coaching and there is a lot of stigma attached to mental health or or accepting there’s a problem. And I don’t think there’s a lot out there for dentists to reach out and get help.

[00:34:56] We’re doing a mental health kind of month thing and licencing and talking to dentists. There’s a lot more mental health issues out there than I realised. It’s I don’t know, is it, is it that more people are talking about it now? There always was, but people weren’t talking about it or people were turning to drink or drugs or whatever it was, and now people are talking about it or is there more stress now? I can’t believe there’s more stress now than there was, you know, in the sixties or something.

[00:35:28] I think there is I think we’ve all lived in lived through this pandemic. And pandemic itself has caused psychological trauma, whether that’s directly or indirectly listening to the news, listening to the catastrophizing that goes on in the media. I mean, you know, there’s probably nobody who’s who can say, I’ve not been affected by the pandemic. We all have in some way. And I do think that the mental health sort of is probably a bigger problem than the COVID 19 itself. And I think nowadays, yeah, we’re more open about it and we’re more sort of thing. But I think it’s, it’s, there’s just even even the NHS or generally there’s just not enough help out there for people. And, you know, it’s, it’s a lonely place for, especially for dentists.

[00:36:20] Well, I want you to give me an example. The idea of you said you’ve been through a lot in your career. I want you give me an example of what things you went through, how you were taking them before, and how you would have taken them. You know, now with your sort of new tool kit that you seem to have, what are the things you went through that you know, that really hurt?

[00:36:43] I think I think one things that we find difficult, especially, you know, NHS dentists will definitely know about this, but patients are sort of kicking off or demanding things or being confrontational. I generally, you know, I find that kind of behaviour is very difficult to deal with, especially people who are very demanding and say, you know, I know my rights, I deserve that, you know, I should have all that treatment on a band or a band. Three And those kind of situation would kind of stress you out because you’re worried that they might end up be the point in a complaint going to the NHS. And we all know that when, when a complaint arises or anything like that, you know, the mental, even though even though you know you’ve not done anything wrong, it can have massive health implications on your mental health. Just use worrying and stressing about that patient. And I think previously, you know, a lot of the time you’d worry about things that would never happen even you know, it might it might be that, you know, you struggle with an extraction. You end up having to refer and you’re worried about them getting seen. And even though you know that you did everything you could to prevent that from happening, but these these are common sort of situations that can arise.

[00:37:53] But you spend a lot of time. Worrying and stressing. And the thing is, there’s nobody who will understand that because because it’s all in your head and you’re kind of almost building up that tension and that anxiety until it’s over kind of thing. And I’ve changed myself in, I would say, now where? I don’t fear patients anymore. And in fact, because I think, you know, what coaching teaches you is, you know, where there’s difficulty or suffering leading to that because that’s when you grow. If you can deal with a challenging or difficult patient, you can deal with anyone. And for me, I actually now actively want to see those problematic patients that nobody wants to see, because I think that the main problem is, is that it’s communication. And as long as you’re doing the best for that patient and they’re not making outrageous demands, you can quite easily manage that situation. So I’m far more confident in dealing with with those patients, so much so that I want to deal with those patients because I feel like if I can deal with them, I can deal with anyone.

[00:39:01] How interesting. How interesting. It’s funny because I quite like complaints myself when if someone complains about enlighten, it’s by the way, very rare. But when I get when I get a complaint, I quite like dealing with it, not because, oh, I’m the boss and I want them to know I’m the boss, but for that same reason that, you know, I feel like I can fix it. You know, I’m I want to enjoy fixing it. It’s kind of the the way the way I think about it. But there is a big difference between those two situations, isn’t it? The pre coaching you and the post coaching you where the pre coaching you would catastrophize this thing and run it through your head, worry about possible consequences and the post coaching use is looking at solutions and and sort of almost like treating treating it as fun and I find fun is such a great word. You know the way I play that game with my kids when they don’t want to do something and say, well, whatever you do, we’ll do this thing in any way that you think would be fun. And suddenly they come up with all sorts of solutions, then they to yeah. The way to do that thing. I’m your what you call them coaches. Customers? Yeah. Yeah. Coaches. Your coaches that come to you now? Give me some of the standard things that they’re hitting sort of roadblocks that the the you know in dentistry it would be patient complains of pericarditis play pain upper right quadrant or lower left quadrant for pericarditis what where do they how do they present? Is the question I’m asking.

[00:40:42] Again, are we talking dental dental kind of client, some kind of people who are facing complaints or even GDC investigations and need some support with that aspect of of it, because it’s kind of become overwhelming for them. So much suffering from burnout and mental health and anxiety and so from panic attacks. That’s quite a common kind of situation. Some are relying on antidepressants. And I think that the problem in dentistry, I feel, and even myself used to, is fear. And where there’s fear, there’s no growth that happens because you’re scared. You don’t want to touch your. I mean, I’ve heard clients say I want to reduce my clinical duties because there’s less chance of a complaint or there’s a less chance of this. And you’re thinking, really? Is that is that really? I’m not so sure. Is it about volume or or or is it about performance or is it about you know, there’s some people who will see happily see loads of patients every single day and get no complaints. And there’ll be some that see a lot less and work part time and get loads. You know what I mean? Is it really is it really about how much clinical time? But I think more and more I’ve sort of I used to actually back in the days, I suppose what they call it, Boston Ash. So I used to do loads and loads of Udas every single year and it used to be sometimes six days a week and you know, it was kind of you’re young and you just need to keep going kind of thing. And I think as I’ve got older I’ve kind of realised that too much clinical dentistry can be damaging to your health both mentally and psychologically. So I’ve kind of got to a point where I do part time dentistry, whether that’s four days or three days a week, because I think you kind of, you know, you’re definitely sort of from burnout if you were doing five days.

[00:42:37] For sure. I mean, I’m a big fan of four days a week as a general for everybody in dentistry, but three days a week is better and two days a week is very good, very good. Two days a week. It’s interesting. I’ve done it. I did it myself for a long time where you kind of feel like, I think you need another job, you need, you know, you need a side gig then. Alright, so I had Enlightened, you’ve got this coaching thing, but two days a week of dentistry is interesting because you kind of it’s more like a hobby than a job, but you’re still in it, you know you’re still in it. One day a week’s a disaster. I did. I did that for a long time. And it’s not just not enough. The rhythm isn’t there enough for you to care enough to give.

[00:43:21] In two days, just to some extent can can do that as well. Because I think, like you said, with dentistry, it’s it’s it’s like, you know, you’ve got to practise and you’ve got to do it every single day to get better at it. But if you.

[00:43:32] Do this.

[00:43:33] Week to week.

[00:43:34] And two days, you know, maybe it’s different. People do different things. But like what I would say is, you know, six days a week, it’s it’s all well and good if you never want to progress in your career. Because if you work six days a week, like a lot of people do, by the way, you haven’t got time to think outside of that. What you’re doing. Of course, you know, let’s not generalise. There’s some people who do six days a week and they’ll manage everything else as well. But then this stuff that you’re talking about comes up panic attacks, mental health problems. I mean, one thing I’ll tell you for sure, there would be no enlighten if I was working five days a week as a as an associate. It was that four days a week. And then that other day where I had the chance to think, what do I want to do with my life? Ben, tell me this. Your qualifications. What are they? I mean, you said. You said. Let’s start with these coaches have a bad name. And I agree with you. It’s not it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But you get you get this feeling of, you know, is it real, isn’t it? Are people ripping people off? And then and then you’ve got I see people transformations like yours here, where someone’s just found their purpose in life completely. And that’s worth $1,000,000. Right? So give me give me some understanding of the qualifications and your position on, you know, the way coaches are perceived.

[00:45:05] So yeah, the coaching that I’ve done is in executive coaching and it’s really seven accreditation, which is the highest level approved by the International Coaching Federation. I also, by the way, I’ve not mentioned this, I’m also doing a part time in medical law and ethics, and I’m also undergoing some expert witness training with with someone. So that was an area that I kind of found interesting as well and things. So yeah, so the qualification I’ve got is that I’m doing is the alum seven in executive coaching.

[00:45:38] But yeah, expand on it. What is it.

[00:45:41] So, so basically it’s executive coaching, so it’s actually coaching people in senior positions within an organisation because coaching isn’t just I think people see coaching perhaps what life coaches do, people see coaching in a different sort of have their own perceptions of what coaching is, but coaching is actually the most effective leadership style and it’s what top companies use and it’s what corporates use to make decisions. So my coaching qualification is coaching people in at a senior level. So these are board of directors, these are people who are senior managers, these are people who are making important decisions for the company. And coaching is is actually a philosophy. So it’s about empowering people, motivating people, inspiring people. And it’s all about performance and maximising the potential of a person or an organisation. And that can kind of massively impact various things like productivity, like turnover, like revenue. So I think coaching has a huge place and it’s very, very widely used in the business world.

[00:46:58] And so what is the sort of the rhythm? How many times do I get to see you if I if you’re my coach and how how.

[00:47:06] Does it work? I think, yeah. So so the way I generally do is I always have a complimentary call to kind of obviously open up and sort of find out or reach out to the people that want to have a little chat about what they do. But I also think and I think it’s very important to have a sort of what we call a chemistry meeting. It’s very, very common amongst people who do true coaching because there has to be that chemistry between the coach and the coach. And, you know, there’s certain people that might just put you off straight away. And it might be that either you as a coach feel like, you know what, it’s like a private patient coming in to see you. Can, you know, the ones that have over the top expectations, you’re going to be like, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t I don’t think I can help you or I don’t think I can. So I think it’s always important to have that chemistry meeting and see what the expectations of the coach is, as well as your own limitations and see whether actually can you can you help this person or not? And for me, it’s about being being ethical as well. So I don’t try to sell people something that’s a fantasy in a way, you know, telling them, you know what, I’m going to make you a millionaire because because I just don’t think that that especially people, for example, dentists and people, you know, they’re hugely intelligent people then, you know, they know that there’s no quick way to become a millionaire. It takes time and it takes steps to be put in place. But you’ve got to sort of almost open your door, open that door of opportunities and like yourself, yourself, you realise that, yeah, I needed to sacrifice my dentistry to create your business, but you know that in the longer term that’s what you wanted and you made it happen. But in the short term there was probably time you think, Gosh, I’ve given up my dentistry, I’m not really making the money. I thought with this and I’m sure right at the.

[00:48:58] Start, your.

[00:48:58] Entrepreneur journey, it’s a very, very lonely kind of journey. And those those are the kind of people that I like to help with, you know, the ones that are at the start where they start doubting their own decisions, they start doubting what they’re doing, they start kind of and most people then they end up giving up on their sort of and they’re probably very close to succeeding.

[00:49:19] Yeah. Yeah. Because the line between success and failure is very, very, very thin, you know?

[00:49:24] Yeah, yeah. But you have to fail to learn and be successful. And the most successful people, if you look at them, they’ve failed at so many different businesses before they became successful and failure. And that’s the thing about I would like to also add as part of obviously dentist listening is failure is the best thing because that’s when you’re going to learn. That’s when the best thing that happens to you. And that’s why I look back at some of my difficulties that I alluded to. It was the best thing that happened to me because I wouldn’t be here on this podcast talking to you and sort of hopefully influencing dentistry if I didn’t have all the issues that happen to me. And that’s the amazing thing about life that you can, you know, when you go in. Through difficulties. You know, you’re kind of looking for a quick fix solution. You’re trying to get out of that problem. But what you don’t realise is that problem was the best thing that ever happened to you. And you know, sometimes you get put in a situation that you never expected or wanted, but there’s always a reason for that and there’s always a positive kind of outcome to it. And I think that’s the difficulty of changing your mindset towards that growth mindset and thinking even if even if you feel like that at the moment. Think about the bigger picture. Think about the long game.

[00:50:36] Well, that leads us nicely onto my favourite part of this show, the the darker part of this where you tell us your actually let’s start with your your best day as a dentist, your best moment, and then tell me your darkest day, your biggest errors.

[00:50:58] I enjoy dentistry, I think every single day, to be honest with you. I’ve started to appreciate the people around me, appreciate the patients. I’m grateful to be able to serve those patients. And practising gratefulness is something that again is something new that I’ve learnt and it’s absolutely amazing that I feel honoured and grateful that I can help my patients. And, and I love the I would say 99% of them is please and thank you. Thank you for that. And one thing I want all dentists to think about is that the patients you see, you might have a ten or 15 minute window of that of their life. You don’t know where they’ve been before, what’s going on in their personal life. If you can make that patient feel special during those 15 minutes of even a check-up and even you know that that for them is amazing. And they will talk about that to their family, their friends and everyone. And I think just being able to understand and stand in the shoes of the patient and practise empathy is something a skill in itself. Being able to understand that a lot of the patients, even when they show aggression, the aggression is coming from fear, that the aggression is coming from the fact that they’re perhaps scared to see you most of the time.

[00:52:20] And people behave strangely when, when, when. And you might misinterpret that that aggression as something else. And being able to understand their body language and understand where they’re coming from, I think is a skill in itself. But for me, it’s just being able to to be part of that patient’s journey and then leaving with a smile on their face. And, you know, you might not feel like you’ve done anything. But to me, I spend now a lot more time talking to them, making them feel special. And it might just it might just be something simple by asking them how their family is doing, how are they doing, how are they coping? And maybe especially the elderly, it may be the only person they’ve seen for a whole week sometimes. And those conversations are like gold dust for people. So yeah, I kind of enjoy that aspect of, of dentistry.

[00:53:12] It’s funny, when I stopped being a dentist, that was the piece I missed the most by a long, long way. I certainly didn’t miss the injections and drilling and all of that, but I wasn’t the guy who hated that stuff. I was quite into my, you know, at the time, cutting a lot of veneers and all that. But the bit I missed was that interaction and I was I was in private lens, cheap throughout the whole thing. But in private dentistry you got to have those conversations anyway. And so you go into it with, Oh, what? I’m to, I’m going to be a nice guy and I’m going to be. But then within that, you go from a child who’s trying to be a nice guy because he knows he’s heard. That’s what’s the right thing to do to building real relationships with real people, finding out and what you said there about the you know, it’s that famous thing. I get to do this instead of I’ve got to do this kind of way of looking at your life and gratitude. You still haven’t told me. What’s your hardest day, though? What’s your darkest day? Your biggest mistake? It doesn’t have be the worst, although just just give me some give me some of that people can learn from.

[00:54:16] Something happened very early on in my career. I think it was my first obviously job after it was a it was a patient who wanted to look like Cheryl Cole because back then Cheryl Cole was the big thing and wanted veneers. And I was there a young dentist thinking, you know what, I’ll be a hero and I can I can sort this out. And she brought loads of printouts of what Cheryl Cole looked like. And over the.

[00:54:37] Years, was she anything like Cheryl Cole or.

[00:54:39] Not? No, I don’t think so. But I think she’d need a lot more than in years to look like Cheryl Cole. But.

[00:54:46] But, yeah, yeah.

[00:54:50] So, so, so. Anyway, I was trying to be a hero, and it was just before Christmas. And I thought, you know, Well, get in there, I’m going to do this private case. And the problem was that we put the train videos in. And they looked amazing. And to try and cement. The only problem was they were slightly darker than her other teeth that she’d had whitening done on them. And, you know, in my head, I was like, look, we need to send these back because they’re not right. And you know what? These aren’t right. And the patient spent half an hour or whatever loving them and whatever. And for some silly reason, she then decided, Just put them on. I really love them. And I naively decided, okay, fine, you know what? I’ll show you, show. You really want that? And this was like very early on in career, you know, you don’t know. And I ended up cementing them for her. And then obviously over Christmas, the email comes that I don’t like the way my body is look, because they’re not the right colour and blah, blah, blah and stuff. And in the end we had to sort them out in January, but it was one of those that in hindsight I shouldn’t have been railroaded by the patient in terms of doing that. And it was all right and we sorted it out in the end. But I think now I’m far more sort of cautious about people like that who have perhaps unrealistic expectations, as well as sort of as well as being able to say no, because I think that’s a difficult thing to do, especially when especially when patients can sort of convince you otherwise because you think, you know, this is what they want kind of thing.

[00:56:27] But did it go I mean, did it go wrong beyond that? So you said, okay, I’m going to I’m going to change these veneers for you.

[00:56:33] I think for me, it was the fact that the labs were closed. So it was it was first time, obviously, I’d received an email from a patient saying, you know, I’m not happy and you didn’t know where it was going to go. So there was a good two or three weeks.

[00:56:44] You stressed yourself about that.

[00:56:46] In and back and stressed yourself out. And then obviously we sorted it out in January. But there was you know, there was that kind of yeah, yeah. It was that dramatic email. You know, my teeth are horrible for Christmas, blah, blah, blah and stuff like that. So it was kind of stressful for you because you thought it was time off for you, but it was two weeks of stress and worry to get the patient back in and get that get them sort it kind of thing in Indian. But obviously we saw it out, but it was kind of through that. I kind of learnt that, you know, you don’t need to be a hero and you really need to assess every case on its merit kind of thing.

[00:57:20] I mean, cosmetic dentistry has got that aspect in it, doesn’t it, where it’s opinion based? A lot of it. And I used to tell I used to tell patients that you’re going to go off and even though you love them yourself, someone else is not going to love them. I used to warn them about that and it actually helped a lot because, you know, you’ve got you’ve got in the patient’s head sometimes they’ve saved up for a long time to pay for these things and they’ve put a lot of emphasis on what their life’s going to be like later. And then if a loved one says they’re not great, it’s such a terrible situation for the patient because, you know, I’ve saved up for it. I’ve gone to the dentist, I’ve done all this and someone’s telling me they’re not great. It can cause problems for sure and cause problems for sure. What about your best day? When did you feel like, Wow, I love my job every day.

[00:58:13] I would say every day after after I suppose after being coached and having my coaching and I’m enjoying my dentistry now and I’m kind of, I think being that sort of relaxed mindset and being able to sort of, you know, you’ve done it for a while, you’re kind of confident with doing most things. And now I look forward to the day I enjoy going into work. I enjoy seeing staff, enjoy seeing the patients. I suppose you know, the problem that a lot of dentists as well that they make is they focus on the clinical aspect of it all the time. And you’ve got to kind of almost, you know, you’re thinking about the injection and then you’re thinking about what I’m going to do next and what I’m going to do, what shape I’m going to, you know, prep that tooth or whatever. But the patient isn’t really interested in all that. And I think now I’m far more considerate of that and far more kind of. For me, it’s all about the patient experience. It’s all about making the dentistry as enjoyable for them because having relaxed, happy patients makes you happy and relaxed and you can perform at an optimum level that way as well. But yeah, I’m enjoying my dentistry now.

[00:59:25] And but you do you actually have teams in the NHS to, to have those conversations. And you know, because I remember I used to, I used to think to myself I’m going to have a ten minute conversation before any procedure and the ten minute conversation after any procedure I kind of I was pushing it a bit too far, I think it was, but it worked like hell. It really worked in terms of people would refer patients to me all the time about I’ve heard you’re brilliant. But it was, you know, someone walks in and says, I’ve heard your brilliant. Yeah. I mean, you’ve you’re sold that you’ve already sold whatever you’re going to say to them. And I wasn’t the best. I was a young dentist, you know, not not the best dentist in the world at all. But my previous guest, Na Hutchinson, mentioned and we’ve all come across them. Right. The dentist who not the best dentist in the world, but patients think they’re amazing. I might have been I might have been that. And then the opposite. The dentists are just technically amazing, but they don’t have that patient experience side fixed and dentist patients don’t get it. So patients don’t get it. What do you think?

[01:00:37] Yeah, I think, I think we’re all got a blend of both haven’t we, in terms of, you know, some dentists are really, really good clinically. But then like you said and I think there’s there’s nothing I suppose there’s no hard and fast rule. It depends on on yourself, you know what I mean. You know, again, it depends on your personality. Like, again, this is something that obviously coaching as well teaches you that there’s people who are, for example, of dominant personality or dominant characters and we’ve come across them. And if you if you have those kind of people, for example, on reception, for example, and this is what I’m saying about the importance of having the right people in the right places. If you’ve got a dominant character on reception, the person going to say, You know what, we’ve got no appointment, see you later by kind of thing. You don’t want that kind of person on reception. This is why I’m saying that you’ve got to understand that, whereas having somebody like that as a manager completely perhaps changes the dynamics of things. And that’s why I think even even dentistry, we’re all we’ve all these 16 different types of personalities out there, we’re all very, very different in the way we think and the way we analyse things, the way we see things. So our people, people orientated people, so my task orientated people, so there’s different types of people. It depends on what you see as what you enjoy being and what your philosophy of of dentistry. And I don’t think there’s any hard and fast rule about that. I think everyone should do dentistry the way they the way they enjoy it. But obviously, if it’s a the impact of affecting patient care, then that’s when that that’s when I would argue that obviously that should be your core value or that should be the thing that you put at the centre of of importance.

[01:02:15] Definitely, definitely. But by the way, for anyone who hasn’t seen it, there is a website called 16 personalities dot com and it asks very simple questions and then gives this detailed thing about the kind of person you are. And we our whole team went through that process and it’s so amazing how accurate it is by asking you these very simple things. Now, I actually have anyone who’s applying for a job do that first so that I can just figure out who it is I’m in front of what other little hacks are there in this sort of way.

[01:02:50] I mean, these form part of psychometric testing and these are very, very commonly used. And if you look at the top companies in the world, there’s so many different kind of tests and ways your Thomas pay is is another one what is it people may have heard of Thomas pay just like your personality profiling and obviously we have a work. Kind of sort of trait. And we have a mask, work mask and a home kind of mask, and there’s lots of in-depth kind of testing that you can do. And the surprisingly accurate that’s what I find really, really kind of how did they know that and how do you work out that? And people can be very kind of, you know, sort of they don’t mean anything kind of thing. But I think for me, when I when I’ve had mine done and done other people, it’s surprising how accurate they are and how you can almost predict people’s behaviours, how they’re going to think. And and that’s what I sort of find interesting, how we’re all wired up differently and how we, we think differently and, and different people require different skill sets to sort of connect or engage with them. And I think that’s the important thing to be able to understand that we are all wired differently and we all have different personality traits.

[01:04:07] You should make your life’s work. 16 Dentists dot com ask ask 30 questions and say this is the dentist you are.

[01:04:19] Yeah definitely. That’s something to someone.

[01:04:21] Needs to do that I consider.

[01:04:23] Yeah yeah yeah definitely. That’s something to consider.

[01:04:27] We’re coming to the end. But I want you to discuss about the group. I’m not a fan. I’m not a fan. Self-admitted, we were just talking about as far as the most I know about football is Sir Alex Ferguson and Renaldo. So but but I know people I mean, I’ve got a real problem. My best friends from school every time we meet is because there’s a big football game on and I’m like, Why the hell are we meeting if we’re watching the football? But for them, it’s like so important in that in that sort of minute I sort of try and ask some questions and find out. But tell me, what does football mean to you? Who do you support? What does the group mean to you? I mean, running a group is quite difficult. I run a couple of groups. Is it has it gone off by itself now or do you still need to do work on it?

[01:05:18] I think I instilled the the main contributor to the group.

[01:05:22] Which is. Which is correct. That’s the way it should be, dude.

[01:05:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose I’m the leader. I’m the coach and the person who but again, this was part of my coaching journey with my coach because we were trying to unlock what what do you actually love? What do you enjoy, what’s your hobby? And football is one of those things that I have always loved from a very, very young age, playing as well as watching. And Manchester United is, is, is, is my club. And I absolutely love it. And it’s for me, it’s, it gives me that release from everyday life. It gives me that release from, you know, just generally I just love the emotions that that brings you and the excitement and yeah, so, so I wanted to sort of for me it was more a sense of, I’ll be honest, I was a bit of a loner for a long time and I didn’t know many dentists and I didn’t know many people. So I thought myself, How do I talk to people without talking to people? In a way, it’s almost like you’re trying to find a topic that you really enjoy, but you might have something in common. And I think if you randomly message someone, they’re going to be like, Who’s this dude asking me about whatever kind of thing? Yeah. So it was more a sense of like, I want to engage with like minded people who have the same passion or similar passion to me, but I also for me.

[01:06:43] So for me it was a way of engaging with people and engaging with dentists in particular, and sort of being able to, I suppose, build connexions with people. Because when you can relate to people, whether it’s through football or whether it’s some other kind of thing, it’s, it’s, it’s not as as awkward or as kind of thingy. You know, people are happy to talk about football in the group and you might not be talking directly to you. So for me, it was a way to network, a way to engage with dentists and sort of be able to use my passion in a positive way. And, you know, a lot of people comment about my group being inspiring, motivating. I try not to make it like other fan groups where it’s just one fan group calling the other and that the other. And there is some of that that goes on. But I try to show that football can actually unite people, can actually bring people together. You might support a different team, but you’re still humans at the end of the day. And there’s so many football stories that I, I try to share with people just to try and inspire them or motivate them and show that football can be a force of good.

[01:07:50] Yeah. How come you’re not an Oldham fan? Because they weren’t winning when you were when you were a kid.

[01:07:56] Right. In fact, they’re completely out of the league now. Completely rare. Yeah. Yeah. They got completely relegated out of the league this year, but I’ve never really been an older sort of fan or anything. I’ve always I’ve just grown up with Manchester United. I’ve always been a United fan.

[01:08:14] Cause you have. So, listen, what’s your view? It’s interesting what you said about uniting people. Yeah, we’ve got a very divided profession. What’s what’s your view on how we can unite the profession? Because it’s amazing how much we we sort of back bite and and you know you’ve got the different organisations that represent us and even them they’re divided right. You’ve got the media on one side or the back and bap types on the other side. Now this associates kind of British action group thing that’s come along and what would you say? How can we unite? Because I remember as a youngster, I remember just thinking, hey, man, we should all be together. We should all love each other. You know, we’re one profession and all that. But now, now that I’ve been in it a while, it’s just, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s getting anywhere nearer to United.

[01:09:09] Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it’s becoming more and more divided. In fact, one thing again from my coaching experience and I think generally in life and if you look at every aspect of life or even business or anywhere, the person that matters the most are the leaders. They’re the people at the top that are influencing change at the bottom. And I think in times like this, we need to have strong leadership. We need to have strong leaders that represent the profession as a whole. Once you get strong, influential leaders, you then start seeing changes within a profession, within a business organisation, within any setting. And I think that’s where dentistry I feel really falls down on in terms of strong leadership in these challenging times.

[01:10:04] When you say strong, you mean quality.

[01:10:07] Well, what I mean is, I mean, who is dictating what’s happening within the profession? Which organisation can say that? I represent every single dentist that’s out there, which I don’t see any I don’t see any organisation out there that that represents the best interest of every single dentist out there. And that’s where I think we’re lacking because, because there is no organisation like that, there is no unity, there is no leader, because we’ve all created our own little division, our own little organisations who are all have different agendas. Then how do you get unity? Because you’ve all got different agendas and you’re all creating your own little sub communities. And this is why I feel like either certain organisations like the BDA need to reform and look at, you know, look at their performance during the pandemic and look at things that they did and sort of, you know, that’s what good businesses do. That’s what good leaders do. They reflect back and see, well, did we actually make the right decisions? Did we support, for example, private dentistry during the pandemic? Did we support associates during the pandemic? Are we acting in the best interests in terms of the NHS contract? Who are who are we acting in the best interest of our be conflicted in terms of where we’re being funded from? You know, these are important questions and that’s what coaching does is is ask these kind of questions to sort of really bring about change. And I feel well.

[01:11:37] Before.

[01:11:37] Before we.

[01:11:38] Before we got on this answer, some of those questions go on.

[01:11:41] Which question in particular?

[01:11:44] Are the ones you just asked.

[01:11:46] I mean, these are questions that I feel like me, myself, I’m not in that influential position.

[01:11:52] What’s your opinion? What’s your opinion?

[01:11:54] My opinion is that I think there needs to be an organisation.

[01:11:59] I don’t know whether it’s what’s your position on it? Does the BDA represent private dentists or did they represent private dentists in the pandemic?

[01:12:09] I think that the answer is definitely, most definitely not, because the media is very much nature centred. It’s very much practise owner centred. And even the contracts that they draw for associates are very much in favour of practise owners. Now these, these, these are inequalities. Even though you mentioned at the start there’s more associates than there are practise owners. So so so these inequalities kind of then pan out with, with, with the issues that associates then then face. And these these are these are things that.

[01:12:41] We need to. But also, at the same time, let’s give them their dues. What did they do right?

[01:12:48] And again, I feel like obviously they’re an organisation that, you know.

[01:12:54] Specific pandemic wise, but I mean that 80%, I mean they negotiated that didn’t they. And that’s that saved a bunch of associates, skins as well as principal skins. In the end.

[01:13:06] I don’t know about associates, I don’t think that they didn’t go far enough in terms of their guidance. For example, the NHS we recommend and then the associates that were in trouble, a lot of them, they turned away because they wanted more money from them and they turned them away and those are the people that will never join them again because they know that it was during that tough time that they pretty much threw them under the bus and they’ll argue that they didn’t. But at the end of the day, these were shocking stories where people lost their jobs overnight, where people were really, really mistreated. And those are times when you need organisations like the PGA to step up and say, Hold on, mate, we’re not accepting that kind of behaviour, even though you might be a practitioner or you might have a contract. But these these people have families to support. These people have you know, we’ve we’ve guaranteed your contract. And out of that, you need to show goodwill and be able to pay your associates properly.

[01:14:04] But what did you expect those do you expect the BDA to do?

[01:14:08] To to almost. Well, I would say they can’t legally enforce it, unfortunately, but I feel like they’ve still not been vocal enough. And to be honest with you, if I would say I would go as far as if a practise owner has been demonstrated to not follow NHS advice and pay an associate correctly, then they should no longer be allowed to be part of the BDA. Why should they be part of the BDA? Because you’re going against the principles and the guidance of this organisation that are so called there to represent us in negotiating fair deals. And that’s why that’s why I say that, yeah, you can’t do that. But you can either you can single them out and say, by the way, you know, this many practises didn’t do this or and B, you could, you could say, look, you didn’t follow our guidance. You don’t follow our rules. I’m sorry, but we don’t want you part of our organisation and that’s I know that’s more than enough to show that we’re on your side. Yeah. And that’s, that’s what we wanted as a society. We wanted the BDA to say, look, we can’t, we can’t get you your money, we can’t make them do anything. But what we can do is we’re not going to allow them to be part of our part of our organisation because they’ve not followed our guidance or our advice.

[01:15:22] And you’re right, even though even though practically, you know, someone would have just left the BDA and a story for because of that, that would send a signal out, a stronger signal out that, you know, pay your associates. Right.

[01:15:34] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that.

[01:15:36] The vast majority did get paid and I know. I know several. You’re not the first to tell me about people who didn’t get paid, because I know several who didn’t get paid as well. And I know some principals who used actually that excuse of it’s advice. It’s not it’s not law.

[01:15:52] I think they did get paid, but I think there was no consensus in terms of how much they should get paid, what they should get paid and things like that. And there’s a will, there’s a way. And I think some practise on is abused abused the system.

[01:16:07] But again, how do we fix this? Because, you know, there is no overarching organisation. Are you suggesting we make one?

[01:16:14] I’m either suggesting that the that somebody like the BDA reform and act more like the BMA. You know if you look at the way the BMA they support their doctors with the with any issues they face including you know it’s almost so even in cases where they’ve had to go to the GMC and they’ve challenged them about cases for doctors and things like that, I don’t see the BDA helping, you know, people who are under investigations. I don’t see the BDA really reaching out for the vulnerable people in our profession. And the vulnerable people, for me is, you know, includes associates include, you know, include people who who need help.

[01:16:54] Yeah. I think part of the reason for it, though, is that, you know, dentists are fiercely independent, you know, practise owners. They that sort of being a small business owner thing means that you are independent. You can make whatever move you want as opposed to doctors, many of them aligned with massive organisations, hospitals, GP practises and so forth. And what that ends up creating is a situation of lots of independent minded people who aren’t united in the same way as doctors are. By the way, I don’t know if we get really get into it is is the BMA as good as we say or.

[01:17:34] I think a lot of, I don’t know, just very, very, very kind of highly of the BMA and they would say that they yeah they would really but I’m not sure you would say the same about dentists talking about the BDA. If you if you did a survey about how many dentists are actually registered with the BDA compared to as a percentage of the whole country, it’d be interesting to see how many dentists are engaging with the BDA or how many dentists also support the BDA in terms of or feel like they’re an organisation that supports them. It would be interesting to to to find out those kind of figures.

[01:18:08] I think whatever the figure is, it’s a declining figure, that’s for sure. Yeah, but it is a shame. I mean I, I’m, I left the BDA years and years and years after I stopped being a dentist. But when I did leave, it was on purpose. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to pay the subs or something. It was that it was what you said about communication. I just found their communication so, so incorrect. And, you know, when you when you when when you feel like, by the way, I wasn’t even a dentist at the time, but but I can understand why this BPD and things came about because when you feel like the association that’s supposed to be representing you is actually working against you, that’s that’s when you start, that’s when you start creating new organisations, you know, same thing with Chaz’s group, the British Dental Action Group.

[01:19:06] Yeah, yeah.

[01:19:07] It’s interesting, but well we always end it on the same questions. You’re. On your deathbed. Let’s hope you’re very, very old. But at this point, you’ve got your friends and family, your loved ones around you. What are three bits of advice you would leave them?

[01:19:30] Oh, that’s a difficult one. I think, number one, I live your life with no regrets. Make every every moment count and live it as though it’s your last day. And that would be my number one piece of advice. I think the second thing would be to build deep, meaningful relationships, whether that’s with your family, whether that’s with your friends, whether that’s with your colleagues, and build a legacy. You want people to talk about how amazing you are wherever you go. Leave those footprints behind for people to remember you in a in a good way. And I think the third thing would be to serve humanity, something that I feel really, really passionate about. And I think it’s important to always encompass and serve other people, whether that’s through charity work, whether that’s through volunteering, whatever that may be, always encompass that in your life because I feel like there is a sense of the more you help people, the more good it will draw in your life. And I genuinely believe that.

[01:20:38] It’s very achievement. It’s very, very true. How much of your belief system is not dictated by, but informed by your religious side?

[01:20:51] I would describe myself as a somewhat religious. Obviously I’m a muslim and yeah, I would say that I feel like religion itself gives people a moral compass. And all all religions teach people to be good human beings. And that’s why I think religion should play a part in everyone’s life. It doesn’t matter what what religion you you follow, but it teaches you to be a good human being and it teaches you life skills. And those you know, even some of my sort of coaching philosophies and ideas do loosely stem from a religious point of view as well. But I feel that religion has a really, really good purpose because it gives people a purpose for their life, and there is a purpose for why they’re here.

[01:21:45] He’s. And give me. Our final final question. Some fancy dinner party. Three guests. Dead or alive. Who would you want?

[01:22:01] So I think you mentioned two because we discussed two of them anyway, coming from Alex.

[01:22:06] Ferguson.

[01:22:06] Football, sir. Alex Ferguson. Yeah.

[01:22:10] Of course. There’s a manchester United guy. Yeah.

[01:22:13] And as a coach. As a coach as well. Have you read his book?

[01:22:17] Have you read his book?

[01:22:18] Absolutely. Yeah, I’ve read his book. But you also made a documentary on Amazon. That’s really interesting as well about his life, that that is a really good it’s amazing.

[01:22:27] The number of people who mention Alex Ferguson outside of football that, you know, like the business people, people who’ve who’ve made it and got giant organisations and they say, oh Alex Ferguson, it’s made me who, who does not care about football one little bit. I want to read his book and figure out what is it about, is it the way he talks to his team and motivates them and all of that? So give me put it for me in 10 seconds. What is it about him? That’s amazing.

[01:22:54] I think it’s the fact that you could influence some people who basically made Manchester United as a club and being able to influence people who are very average and make them into world class kind of players and just being able to influence and impact a team in the way you did.

[01:23:12] Your second one.

[01:23:13] Ronaldo Yeah, Cristiano Ronaldo. For me, he’s the greatest player ever. But I think for me it’s more his discipline, his desire, his determination to be the best in the world and the sacrifices he makes even now to perform at top level. He’s a he’s a winner. He’s a winner. He’s a determined winner. And he’s somebody who will will absolutely everything into every single game and even is off the pitch kind of habits. And the way he looks after himself, you know, means he can perform even now at the age of 37 is phenomenal player. Definitely. Yeah, you’re kidding. Absolutely. Yeah.

[01:23:57] Wow. Normally they’ve burnt out by 37 on a.

[01:24:01] Exactly. Exactly. But this guy has really looked after himself and doesn’t look out of place at all playing in.

[01:24:07] Is he still does he still top level must be right. Yes or no.

[01:24:11] Please regularly for my money and I it as well.

[01:24:15] So the third guest.

[01:24:18] The third guest maybe somebody had made some people may not have heard of him, but it’s called Abdul Sattar Edhi. He’s a philanthropist who’s passed away actually now, but he created the largest volunteer organisation of ambulances in Pakistan and well in the world, actually. And he’s basically a humanitarian and he basically served the poor and needy and spent his life dedicating himself towards that. And that’s something that I feel really strongly about, people who who sort of do that kind of thing.

[01:24:54] I’ve just I’ve just pulled him up on my other screen. Who found the world’s largest volunteer ambulance network.

[01:25:03] Yeah.

[01:25:03] Yeah. Along with homeless shelters, animal shelters, rehabilitations. And what a great guy. What an interesting guy. I’m going to I’m going to go on a on a Wikipedia. On a Wikipedia on him. You know, I got a Wikipedia sort of mouse hole. Just keep on going. Who was his dad? And that gets me really good. Excellent. But him. Him and Ronaldo and Ferguson and you at a dinner party. It’s going to be a good one. Certainly be interesting with him. He’s got a good beard, but he’s got a good, good. Yeah, well, but it’s been a real pleasure to have you on.

[01:25:40] Yeah. Thank you very much for having me on the show. I think it’s a prestigious thing to actually be on this show. There’s been some there’s been so many great people who’ve been on this show. And for me, I feel really honoured to to be invited on and be able to hopefully change and transform and hopefully have a positive impact. And this may resonate with some people and they may end up thinking, you know what, we do need to change as a profession. We do need things to improve and we do need better leaders who can sort of drive dentistry forward.

[01:26:13] Definitely. But definitely, if someone if someone’s going through a hard time in dentistry and they want to reach out to you, what’s the best way to get to you? Is it on.

[01:26:22] Facebook? Yeah, I’m quite active on Facebook. Obviously, I’ve got a website. It’s very easy to remember. It’s Mudassar Hussain dot com. So my company’s Clarity Coaching International and obviously there’s a form there that they can fill in active on Instagram as well. I’m active on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, if anyone needs any help advice, just want to chat. I’m happy to do that because you know, I’m here to help people and that’s my purpose.

[01:26:51] It’s the one thing that’s come through with with you that I’ve we’ve had a couple of other conversations and and and it’s, you know, people hear coach and they hear, Oh, he’s going to make all my money and all that. And and one thing I’ve noticed with you is you’re a lot less interested in the finance side of dentistry. You’re kind of purpose led is if you were a company, I would say you’re a purpose led company, you know, and purpose led is always the best way. It always is.

[01:27:21] When you enjoy what you do and you love what you do, life becomes easier. And that’s the thing. You’ve got to sort of I think your passion, you know, what you’re passionate about is something that you should really do as well. Follow your passion.

[01:27:32] Absolutely, man. Thank you so much for doing this, buddy.

[01:27:35] Thank you so much for having me on the show.

[01:27:38] 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.

[01:27:54] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:28:09] 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.

[01:28:19] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] The thing is, if you want to enjoy your dentistry, if you want to actually like your job, I think you’ve got to go private. At my opinion, you really got to. Nowadays, I don’t think there’s any choice. The funding is just appalling, and I admire people who try and do it for feeling that they have an ethical obligation to it, feeling that they have a moral and more moral obligation to do it. Yeah, do it for a while. Pay back what you feel is your moral obligation. As I said, I did dentistry for 16 years in the NHS, so I think I more than paid back any sort of moral obligation to society on that. But as fast as you can, I would move on.

[00:00:48] 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.

[00:01:06] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Lyle Hutchinson onto the podcast. Nile is famous or infamous really for his red wine posts that he’s been doing lately practise owner principle and has lately set up a group that’s I think one of the most important groups in dentistry now is called not such a good day at the orifice where where we look at errors and things that didn’t go so well. And my sort of antidote to the Instagram generation where everyone’s patting everyone’s back and everyone’s showing off about the things that did go well. It’s lovely to have you now.

[00:01:42] Hi, Payman. Thanks for inviting me on.

[00:01:44] My pleasure. My pleasure. We thought it would be fun to do a red wine podcast. And I’ve got to admit right now, Nile, that the bottle that I’ve chosen I haven’t got because of my my wife’s Lebanese. And so I had thought I had a bottle of matzah in the back of my cupboard. But obviously, I think that some some somewhere along the line. So I’ve got I’ve got what I call my steak wine. It’s a Bordeaux. It’s a scent Himalayan thing. The main reason I like it is that it’s on Zap, so I can push a button and it arrives within 10 seconds.

[00:02:21] Oh, yeah.

[00:02:23] What have you.

[00:02:24] Got now out in rural Berkshire? We don’t have that, I think. I don’t think we’re ready yet. But I’ve got I’ve got it. I’ve got a Australian Shiraz with me here, you know, which is not bad. Yeah. I must admit I prefer the French red wines, but yeah, the nice shiraz is not bad at all.

[00:02:42] Excellent. My favourite thing about wine is this this sound here.

[00:02:47] Oh, yeah, I know.

[00:02:49] It’s the sound. Fine. I never get quite screwed up so I can say why they broke the lid. Because you don’t get a problem with being caught. But it’s not some kind of the cork satisfying side of the cork coming out. And you just that moment that you think, I’ve just got the wine, it’s fantastic. You know, it is. It is that you know, I think there’s a who as I said, we used to live in France for a year and the French taught me to appreciate a lot more wine. And that made me realise that I actually sort of moved as straight away to Chile and Argentina. I know they do very, very good wines. I sort of have gone back to French wines, but they really certain, you know, that appreciation of the whole thing about wine, not just the drinking, but the opening of the bottle and whatever else, you know.

[00:03:34] So, you know, we’ll get into red wine itself later. But I guess the red wine post is kind of a kind of a get out clause, isn’t it? Now, like, it’s almost like in this era of sort of political correctness, you can say something a little bit more, sort of, I don’t know, the controversial.

[00:03:57] And.

[00:03:58] A little more cheeky. And you can put red wine post on it and then it’s cool. We can we can all discuss it. And I think it’s been an excellent series.

[00:04:08] Yeah, it came eventually it came out of one evening. I can’t remember my first ever post, but it came out one evening. I was genuinely drinking a bottle of red wine and I was sitting there thinking really pissed off about something, you know, it was really irritating me and I thought, Cool. So it’s on ground. Grant Macquarie’s business marketing group. And I saw that I’m going to put this up and just hashtagged it because it was sort of it was an anti Instagram hashtag. It was a hashtag red wine post. You know, I’m not Twitter, Instagram, I’m not anything like that. But I thought it was sort of slightly ironic and I thought, you know what? And it just seemed to catch on. And yeah, it certainly divides opinion. There are a lot of people out there who think I troll with it and I’m just an irritating so-and-so. But the genuine questions, I mean, they don’t always hit the mark the way I want them to. But the genuinely r question, people say, Yo, actually you ask the elephant in the room, you ask the question that a lot of us have been wanting to know the answers to. And it’s interesting the way that I mean, sometimes I have a very definite opinion on what what I think on this thing. But quite often I’ll go, actually, I don’t have a really strong opinion on either side, but it would be just interesting to see what people think. And sometimes people pick up very valid arguments and I go, Actually, that’s a very valid point. I actually never thought of that as the latest one. I think. I don’t know if you saw it at the weekend.

[00:05:39] I did 200 responses.

[00:05:41] Yes, 200 plus responses. Yes. And why do we pay any attention to this red round poster? He’s a tosser or whatever, you know. Instead, he’s.

[00:05:51] Just.

[00:05:52] Basically he spreads hate and division of the profession. And I actually sort of I did post to that.

[00:05:58] I think I. Never thought that myself.

[00:06:01] Well, no. Yeah, but it’s an interesting sort of. I’m actually a great advocate of profession. I’m an older dentist. I’m 57 for any of you listening. And I qualified in 1987 when, like, your composite came in one colour, you know, and it was occlusion by IP. It was, you know, everything was nothing was like your nothing. You know, we, you know, we still did blacks cavities, we did all that sort of stuff. So it was all it was a pipe dream, all that sort of stuff. So I sort of look at it and I look at the profession today and I go, Is it taking a path that I am proud of? Totally proud of? And I would say, yes, I’m yeah, I am so proud of most dentists that are out there. But there are a few angles to where I think, are we really a profession anymore? Are we going down a bit more of a car salesman or whatever, you know.

[00:06:56] Yeah. So that initial post was it. This one is the religion. Will there be a second coming or will it still be funded by five? No, no.

[00:07:06] That wasn’t the original post. Yeah, that was so I wasn’t. Yeah.

[00:07:11] Which, which one was it. Half the.

[00:07:14] Way back. I’ve about 24, 25. It was way back last October I think it was. But yeah.

[00:07:20] Yeah I was in the group so maybe yeah. Maybe that’s what I’m missing. Yeah. What it was. I think we should answer some of these. I think, I think we should talk about some of these red wine posts I think is a good place.

[00:07:31] I mean, it’s a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look them up and we’ll we’ll see what goes on. I mean, okay, back to it. Right. Let’s, let’s go for the two most recent ones. Right, CPD.

[00:07:39] Yeah, go on.

[00:07:40] Right. Do. Why is there a sudden proliferation of CPD? Well, I mean, if you look.

[00:07:50] At it because. What? Go on. Yeah, go on. What do you think?

[00:07:53] Yeah. Since just nine years ago, right. Cpd when you had a few courses, section 63 type courses, you had a few courses here and there. Tipton was a bit of a novelty. Yeah, things like that was all. But no, no. For courses everywhere you look at, you know, everybody’s doing the bloody course. So one thing is, why are there so many courses? Is it the lack of education for undergrads nowadays? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to put that out there because that’s an easily thrown out thing against on the grounds of qualified say, oh, you don’t know as much as we did when we qualified back in the day. I think that’s too easy an accusation to make. Or is it the fact it’s easy money? You know, and I’m not saying it’s easy, easy money because I know there will be people going out there. How dare you say that? The amount of hours of time I put in working on these lectures and I go, I agree with you on that. You know, and it’s very it’s not something I ever want to do is run the course. And I can certainly see that for hours. Know you do put in hours of it, but equally well, it must be something in for it. Is it ego or is it money or what? Or is it the desire to teach? I don’t know. I mean, what’s your opinion on it?

[00:09:06] Yeah. There’s definitely a lot more than there was. One thing I hope you’ll agree with me now. When? When we were coming through. I mean, I’m maybe seven, eight years younger than you when we were coming through. There were no courses. No. I mean, I remember thinking as a as a young associate, I remember thinking, I want to learn something about private dentistry or I want to learn something about cosmetic dentistry. And there was nothing. There was. There was one course, I think. And so a much happier overall with too many courses than too few. Yeah. The reason of why is there so many courses? I think a big part of it is, you know, the younger dentists don’t want to do NHS dentistry.

[00:09:50] Yeah.

[00:09:51] They, they, they’ve got to build their CVS or they think they’ve got to build their CVS. And going on a course has become a CV builder. Yeah. And I think we both know, you know, it’s not it’s not what you do on the course. That’s the key is what you do after the course with that information. Certainly that’s that’s really the key. But as for the question of profitability, you know, I run several courses. I’ve got a I’ve got I’ve got a horse in the race here. One thing I would say about it is it’s it’s high risk. It’s high risk. Running a course and, you know, you can toss up whatever you want to toss up, but the risk factor is important. So we’ve got a composite course, which, by the way, we didn’t just start when it became fashionable. You know, we’ve been doing it for 12 years now. But but we for the first four years of that course, we were making a loss.

[00:10:47] Yes. No.

[00:10:48] With that. So. So. Don’t forget the risk side now. Is there. Is there money in it? There is a little bit. It’s a tiny part of our our bigger business, our bleaching business. But and I don’t teach the course. So so I’ve got to pay a speaker as well. But but stuff costs money that people don’t realise, you know, just shipping all the drills and things to the course just cost £1,000, you know? Yeah. And no one, no one thinks about that. And then we’ve got team and you know, there’s loads of reasons.

[00:11:22] Yeah. The reason it brought it up was two or three people pm me and saying you know, you know it’s fair enough because they’ll come on to the quality of courses as well. And do we need to have independent feedback courses in a minute? But some, a couple of two or three people pm me after that first one which was about quality and said what about the price? Of course because they really have gone up. I mean I remember the day courses used to be 299 quid, 250, 199 quid. There are now a standard 700 plus and certainly some of them are heading up that way. Not if that’s what the cost. That’s what it costs, you know. But I think there’s a little bit of cynicism from some that’s out there, as you probably pointed out, possibly quite wrongly. But and I have no strong opinions on it. I’m quite happy I’ve gone on many courses that I pay the best part of £1,000 for a day, and I’m quite happy to do that provided a good course. You know, I have no issues with that.

[00:12:18] And the other.

[00:12:18] Thing might be as to why there’s so many courses nowadays, and I think it was just poked as well by a couple of people going, oh, you know, going to mention the cost of these courses, you know, so I know what you mean. Multiply everything up and just get, oh, you must be taking this by the Monday in the day. That’s incredible. You know, so why why did you do a course? Why did you what got you into doing courses then?

[00:12:43] Well, we sell composite and the composite that we sell. You’ve got to learn how to use it. It’s a particular way of using it. Okay. But but but, you know, one thing I’ll say is, you know, the this same course, the same lecturer in Chicago is twice the price.

[00:13:04] Yeah.

[00:13:05] As the one we do. So, you know, and, and I’ve been to those courses in Chicago and in all over America and dentists come pay the price of the course and almost the whole room buys the materials. Right. And, you know, they they’re just they’ve got a different outlook. And by the way, they’re not just the very young dentists who turn up to the courses. You get all sorts of dentists turning up to the courses, trying to learn a new skill. Yeah, but, but I think, you know, it’s an important question. Of course, I thought the the troubling word in your post was profiteering.

[00:13:39] Yeah, I know. Do you know what? That was a clumsily used word. I said, to be honest with you, the reason why it was trying to link it in with yeah, I know it was a very tough thing and I think that created a bit too much animosity, to be honest with you. Yeah, I didn’t mean profiteering in that way. What I was trying to equate it with was quite a few people are quite quick to throw accusations at dental companies that this bit of plastic. Right which is a bit of. You are charging me 200 quid for a bit of plastic that if I went into it would cost me a couple of quid if it didn’t have to work for dental use on it. And so I was sort of trying to sort of play with that idea that it’s okay for it. So it’s okay to slag off dental companies for charging what you think is an X amount of money. Are you charging excessive amount of money is what I was trying to get at. I think I was. Yes, I wasn’t meant to be insulting. Mike, this is the thing about the red wine posts there. Never.

[00:14:36] Don’t worry about insulting. Don’t worry about insulting. You know, it’s a concept, right? But I mean, I do see some profiteering around around dentistry. So I’ll tell you where there’s profiteering, right? You can go to the IBS, show the world’s biggest dental show. Yep. And the cologne isn’t equipped to have that many people come descend on it. And the three star hotels suddenly become £500 a night.

[00:15:03] Yeah, and they’re pretty, pretty awful.

[00:15:06] And you’ve got no other choice but to go there and spend that money. And I think with PPE, there was a question of profiteering, you know, with it. But at the same time, you know, it’s you know, obviously I’m in with that side, too, right? I supply dental equipment, dental, dental stuff, and our stuff’s expensive stuff. Our stuff isn’t cheap stuff at all.

[00:15:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:30] But but you know, the comparisons that sometimes people make and dentists make with a piece of plastic, you know, there’s huge regulatory nightmares in in supplying dentists. You know, if, if I want to supply my toothpaste in India, I have to pay a compliance company over £100,000 just to say hello, you know, just to get into that country. Yeah, in in Russia. Well, before when Russia was the thing, you had to pay £1,000 per ingredient per product for regulatory compliance. And then, you know, there’s a competitive thing. And, you know, I don’t know, it’s one of those things that, you know, the market will decide and profiteering sounded like the wrong word for it.

[00:16:16] Yeah. No. And with with with hindsight, I wouldn’t have used that word. And I think that’s what went wrong. I mean, now.

[00:16:23] But let’s get let’s get to this question of, you know, as a dentist, let’s say you’re booked up 11 weeks ahead. Should you put your prices up or not?

[00:16:32] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it was it’s a it’s a hypocritical post. And asmuch as that, you know, your patients would look at me and what I charge and my hourly rate of which I average are about sort of 275 to £300 an hour. I work in rural Oxfordshire and patients would look at me and go, Oh Jesus Christ, you’re ripping us off, you know? And yeah, you do get accusations. I mean, I suppose I’m paying for your holiday and I’ll go, Yes, I actually do say no. Yes, yes. You are just a very, very small amount, you know, and if I know that they’re an electrician, but like if I got you to come on wire or something up in my house, I’d be paying for a very tiny bit of your holiday as well. But, you know, it’s, you know, don’t get so much.

[00:17:17] To recognise that dentists of our era had their thing about, oh, don’t, don’t turn up to work with your nice car.

[00:17:25] Oh, yes, don’t.

[00:17:26] Do the practise up that whole thing. But the younger ones, they’ve gone the other way, you know, they want to turn up in the Ferrari. Yeah. So that the patients think they are successful dentists you know. And that’s the kind of change in society.

[00:17:42] I’m not sure. I’ve got a Tesla and it’s parked outside the practise and they might have come on bloody Tesla going oh nice car. Ooh. And some of them are genuinely interest because it’s a Tesla and some of them are like you can tell it’s just angled. You know, the funniest one I ever had was when they took over this practise. Took this practise was like six years ago. This bloke came in for adjustment and his dentures and they go over visits and she said, Oh, what happens? They all dentists. And I went, Oh, she’s retired. And he went, Oh, I suppose he’s gone to a her holiday home in the Caribbean that she’s bought with my money, that I paid her twice over two separate visits. So I actually looked up on their say what they actually paid and they paid 800 quid over seven years. And I just went, Oh God almighty. But I mean, yes, you’re back to what you were saying. I think dentists and and this is partly why I was sort of bringing it up about the thing. I think dentists are very remiss. I’m actually a great supporter of all the dental companies, and I think they do an absolutely valuable job. You’re a company, everybody else’s company.

[00:18:51] We would not have the progression in dentistry if we did not have the companies investing in all the dental equipment. I mean, I use a company called RPA, Dental, Exxon and so on. Brilliant. Dental company best of every use. Not plugging them, obviously, but they are very, very good and the equipment they’ve supplied has enabled me to do much better dentistry. I mean, Saric, for example, I’m a big Saric fan. Saric is just amazing, you know, and you look at it nowadays, but if originally back in the day Simmons hadn’t taken on then, then I hadn’t taken on and threw a lot of money at it because Saric is quite often, you know, oh god, look at the price of £100,000 for I go, Yeah, but look at the value it brings to your practise at the end of the day. And the same with your enlightened equipment. Look at you have the best whitening stuff on the market, you have the best, you know. So the value is there and I think people do take cheap shots. So yes, it may have been a bit of a cheap shot that back to the CBD. Are you profiteering? You know, but it was meant to. Yeah.

[00:19:57] Anyway, back on debate and it did it stimulated debate. Right. That’s, that’s what.

[00:20:01] It was there it stimulated about. Yeah. I was, I went at one point nearly 200 replies wow I but, but back on and I have no no aversion to anybody charging whatever the market will stand for a dental course. But then back to what the previous week’s post was, what about the quality? I mean, have you have you been on dental courses Payman recently. Have you have. Yeah or.

[00:20:31] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well I stopped practising ten years ago but but I’m at a lot of dental courses. Yeah, I’m at a lot of dance courses. And look, you’re right. Let’s talk about the quality of courses and the question of where is the review site for courses? Because you’re right in that you do tend to get a lot of back, back slapping, back, back that. What did they call that when when people are just only talking about the positives. That does happen and it happens more with some courses than than others. And I’ve always wondered about that. You know, is it is there some some way, as the course provider of making that virality happen, that make people talk about you more and want to be part of it, but you don’t hear the negatives very much. And what would you think the reason for that is? I mean, people don’t want to be seen to be that that guy, I guess. So the anonymization of it.

[00:21:27] Yeah, it’s a bit like the red.

[00:21:28] Wine is a good idea.

[00:21:29] Yeah, it’s a bit like I stick my neck out and people do say to me privately, So why do you bother to stick your neck out? You just get a lot of flack sometimes. Why do you bother? And I said, Well, I’ve got to that age in life where I don’t give a shit anymore. And but I’ve got that age in life where I basically go, You know what? Sometimes I’m not willing to stand up and just sort of listen to all the sort of back slapping and all the same people going, Oh, hey, brilliant course, fantastic or whatever, you know, all sort of. And especially for younger dentists nowadays, I think us older than this have a responsibility to younger dentists to make them realise what the profession is about. And it’s not about Instagram, in my opinion. I know some people will argue differently. It’s not about solely cosmetic online, it’s not about solely Invisalign. You know, it’s a lot more than that. So but. Well, so I do stand up for what you’re saying. So why are people sort of worried about giving negative views? Mainly because of that pack mentality? Some some course. And I’ve had personally experienced this. I have been blocked. All right. By someone who took exception to something I said on the dentistry top 50 for actually for putting the dentistry top 50 thing up. That’s another one to come on to. But I got blocked. And so there are people out there who would block you, who had bully you, who would actually just go out of their way to say, you know, you possibly do nasty things. So ultimately, I think a lot of people are very scared. And also there are a lot of people, again, are scared to say the counter opinion because there are a lot of if a lot of people.

[00:23:05] Oh, it’s a brilliant, brilliant course. Brilliant course. And you’re going actually, I didn’t think it was all that. You know, you’re the one that’s going to stand out, aren’t you? And I know. And the problem is all that feedback forms your hand back in that they at the end of the course it’s all named, it’s all GDC numbered. Yeah. No. Fine. Well who’s who’s written them. Are you going to write. Somebody said I think it was Jaz or Drew and when something went. All right. So a brilliant course, a genuinely really good course gets five stars, a crop course gets four stars. And I do think there it needs I mean, people came on and said, yeah, we’ve tried this before. It hasn’t really worked. Maybe there needs to be a consensus of reason. I’m not I’m not senior enough in the profession or well respected enough in the profession to be able to do this. But maybe, maybe people like through is not so keen on the idea. I know that it doesn’t seem so keen on, but guys like you, Payman or Jazz, I say, is a really decent bloke and you know people who are highly respected. To get together and say, we are going to start this and we are going to start some sort of independent review site for courses. And whether it works, whether it brings benefit, I personally you’re not going to get in theory at the GDC, you should be doing it. But they do everything else but the actual stuff that would be useful.

[00:24:24] Yeah, they.

[00:24:27] Do absolutely everything else. You know, I’m so mad. I mean, I come from the day you do you remember coming from the day when when you could just write exam ESP and that would be enough for your notes.

[00:24:39] Yeah. When I was a dentist, that’s what it was.

[00:24:41] Yeah.

[00:24:42] I remember. I remember, I think I remember.

[00:24:44] I remember showing an associate of mine. My old notes have notes from the I think it was the eighties. And I went and we counted the number of visits the patient had on the, on the old brown record forms, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And there were 24 visits, one side, 24 appointments on one side. And they’re all things like exam, ESP, upper left, six amalgam, no le or something like that. And that would be it, you know, that would be your notes and you’d get away with it, you know, oh go for those days. But yeah it is, it’s a changed field ultimately. But yeah, I do think so. Back to the the peripheral vision of course, is how do people tell what’s the good course, what’s of course now people have said to me or gets around in the grip, fine. Yeah. But only if you know people who have been on the course or, you know, the right people don’t ask or there’s something the other. So, you know, it’s surely it’s time that somebody has an evaluation of an independent. And I think it should be anonymous personally, because I think anything the way it would be done and this is the way I would view it would be done. You would people say, well, you could you could have trolls giving you bad reviews, just competitors giving bad reviews. Just Oh no you’d have to upload it wouldn’t it would be anonymous on the front but at the back end it would you whoever controls it would be saying, right, show me your cpc’s certificate. You’ve been on the course. Who are you? What’s your DTC number? Okay, that’s your opinion. We’ll post that anonymously, but we can verify you have been on that course. Yeah, but whether it takes off or not, who knows? You know, maybe there’s too many dentistry.

[00:26:25] Interesting one.

[00:26:26] Yeah, it’s an interesting one.

[00:26:28] Let’s move on to the next one. Let’s talk about that. What of you? You’re fully private now. The NHS one.

[00:26:37] Yeah, yeah. Is it religion? Is there going to be a second coming. Is that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:44] Probably private. Right.

[00:26:46] I’ve got small NHS children’s contract. Yeah. Which is. Okay. Cheers. My friends in the back side. Then they really is. The only reason we keep it on was whether my last practise, we went fully, fully private in 2006 and we lost loads of children, but we actually lost quite a few families as a result of that, whereas we would have kept them on and we kept the children’s contract, probably we kept the adults on privately. So when I took this practise over, it had a small children’s contract. Initially I thought, Oh, I’ll ditch it. But I thought, No, I don’t want I’ll just keep it. We ended up treating the children for virtually free in the last practise it was in, so I thought it better to get some money than no money. So that’s how we kept on. Yes. So I have a small so it’s not that I’m talking in case people think, oh, god, you know nothing about the health service. I was a health service dentist completely. I know. Or not under the UDA system. But from 1987 through to 2003, I was completely an NHS dentist for 16 years, so I know what it’s like at the sharp end of the NHS and it was bloody awful and it was actually my GP who advised me to go private.

[00:27:55] I went to them and she pushed a box of tissues towards me when I was in my early forties and I burst into tears myself in the consulting room and she went well and GP’s with next door to me where I work and she went now you know the number of my patients and she went, you’ve got three choices. You either have a nervous breakdown, that’s where you’re heading for, you either give up dentistry, but you’re too good to do that or you give up the NHS and ask. Gp’s are jealous of the fact that you guys can give up the NHS. And so that’s what we did. I gave up the NHS for others. Oh my God, that was the most stressful time in my life. But there we are. The abuse I got from patients like that, that was incredible. One guy drove up in his new series of five series BMW to say, you may want to be a millionaire son, but not on my money. I’ll never forget that. He walked in the room. He said, I’m here for a check-up for the habit. And I was just like, Oh, my God, there we go. That was unbelievable. But anyway.

[00:28:51] So there’s lots, there’s lots of people right now considering leaving the NHS.

[00:28:56] Yeah.

[00:28:57] What would be your advice?

[00:28:59] Yeah. To me obviously it’s a different we were sort of I wouldn’t say we were the frontiersmen because the, the true frontiersmen of going private were actually, funnily enough, reading what you call a moral mountain origin. And Stephen nor wasn’t it 1990 them plan where they they were the true frontiersmen. What happened was 1991 they had a fee cut of 7% and a lot of people went private. Then that was truly frontiersman charity. That was really, really unusual back then, though, we were still early on, reasonably early on to do it. All I would say is I think you’ve got a different scenario. I think patients are probably yeah, probably more appreciative of the fact that you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place as a dentist nowadays. You will still get them. Think. Oh yeah. Well yeah it was some plan for your bloody test side or whatever. You know, a certain neighbour was going private. I would not be parked my Ferrari outside the door but I would. I think the thing is if you want to enjoy your dentistry, if you want to actually like your job, I think you’ve got to go private. That’s my opinion. You really got to nowadays. Yeah. I don’t think there’s any choice. The funding is just appalling and I admire people who try and do it for feeling that they have an ethical obligation to it, feeling that they have a moral and more moral obligation to do it.

[00:30:22] Yeah, do it for a while. Pay back what you feel is your moral obligation. As I said, I did dentistry for 16 years in the NHS, so I think I more than paid back any sort of moral obligation to society on that. But as fast as you can, I would move on. But is it the problem with it? It back to the original question. Is it religion? Yes, it is very much in this country. It ended up in the bloody London Olympics opening ceremony. If you remember, they had whirling beds, this, that and the other. And I think I read the times at the time and said what other country in the world would put their health service in the Olympic opening ceremony? None. You know, so it is religious. It is a religion in this country and that’s what we’re fighting against. But NHS, I mean, dentistry has never been entered fully integrated into the NHS almost since 1950. I think it was charged upon start charge upon for treatment in 1950. So yeah, that’s the difficulty. Will it have a second coming. No, simple. They may try, but they just don’t have the money. They don’t have the. They don’t have the. What’s the word I’m looking for? They they don’t have the the the really the government aren’t really that interested.

[00:31:41] It’s all political manoeuvring. And it’s sad, actually, the way I mean, I think if they if I mean, my my personal thing would be if if you had it, we could have an emergency core service that was not tendered. I think tendering needs to stop. Right. Personally, would my opinion tendering needs to stop. I think it’s ridiculous situation. You know, I think then every dentist could offer every dentist may include probably could offer an emergency core service to help people out. That would spread the workload out a bit more evenly across the country. Stop this thing about. We’ve got a short what I love is the headlines. I’ve got a shortage of dentists. No, I couldn’t find a dentist. You couldn’t find an NHS dentist. That’s different. You could have gone privately. Yeah. You know, it’s all these head and it couldn’t find a dentist for three years. Did you try? You know. You know, but. So if the president said got rid of Tendring, we’re going to let everybody do have a core service. And then after that and obviously then you’re going to have to have income support, whatever it’s called, not as universal credit, not sort of area covered and run on those bases. And they’re covered for that. But beyond that, yeah, it’s really got to be a private, private service. But I don’t know. Yeah.

[00:33:01] So look, it’s interesting what you said about the Olympics because I’ve recently been using the NHS for medical services in the family and I definitely don’t want to lose that. No. As, as, as something that by the way even in medical it’s got loads of problems, right.

[00:33:24] Yeah.

[00:33:25] Issues and so on. But, but I definitely wouldn’t want to lose it because I also have been using private medical services a lot. My family has. And that has all of its own issues, a whole lot of its own issues over treatment issues and problems like that. But as far as dentistry, I mean, I did vet and I remember the moment it was was very near the beginning of it. I thought to myself, I’m never going to do NHS dentistry. I was completely pissed off with. I couldn’t believe what the situation was, you know, like what you had to do for what. And, and, you know, I also admire people who make it work. Yeah, I feel I feel like making it work. It’s almost a martyrdom thing where, you know, dentistry is a stressful job and you really need to pay be paid. I don’t know what the number would be. You’ve got to be paid 70, 80 grand to be a dentist because it’s a proper stressful job. Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re if you’re doing it properly on the NHS, you’re not going to make that.

[00:34:33] You know.

[00:34:34] And so, so you’ve got that choice of do you do the best for your patients or do you martyr yourself to the system? And I remember back then as the vet thinking, I will do whatever it takes to go private. And this was a long time ago when it wasn’t so fashionable to do that.

[00:34:53] Yeah.

[00:34:53] I found a guy who’d gone private and you said 91 was early found a guy who’d gone private in 68? Yes.

[00:35:01] Yeah.

[00:35:03] I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and he took me on. And that was it. I’d never, never did an NHS after off the vet again. But now I see, you know, people, good dentists, people going on courses, people with good knowledge, working in the NHS. And I think the biggest problem for me is a lot of the work that NHS dentists do as far as learning is learning how to survive in this system. Rather than, you know, learning how to fix teeth. Yeah. You know, it’s understanding the bureaucracy of it. I mean, it’s such a and the funny thing, when you talk to NHS dentists who want to make the leap, a lot of them are worried that they haven’t got the skills or something. And I think to myself I could never have done NHS. Like you’ve got to be a very, very good dentist to pull that off. Yeah. The short periods of time to get people out and not coming back in with problems, you know. So my advice to anyone who wants to make the leap is make the leap. Make the leap. And and and private dentistry. Now, you’ve been in it for a long time now. I think the soft skills are just as important as the clinical skills.

[00:36:23] Yeah. And then the funding that’s going to come to you, I think if patients don’t judge you. Well the judge in a number of ways, but the probably the number one. Do they like you? You know, there’s I don’t know. There’s a classic story by the medical profession. I remember being quite a few years ago, you may have heard.

[00:36:43] This about who gets sued and who doesn’t.

[00:36:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. And the answer was nobody gets sued because they were all lovely. All right. And the guy wrote and basically went, thank you for all your care and attention. And you looked after me superbly. Well, I realise there were just one of those things that was very behind. And then what they conclude it was people don’t sue people they like. And that’s very true and very, very true in life. And it is the soft skills. I learnt that very quickly on my free for my I was the very first year of at Payman 1983, the very first year it was optional. In my year we didn’t have to do it. All right. Okay. I don’t forget. How many years did you spend at dental school? Were you four or five?

[00:37:26] I was five. I was I was the first five.

[00:37:29] I was for four years at dental school. I was and we were the Queen’s and Belfast was the shortest dental course in the UK by one week. Edinburgh was the second shortest by me and my first boss I went to. He was a superb dentist, but a grumpy so-and-so, absolutely grumpy so-and-so, and his practise was failing. I remember we used to have to pull people out of the sofas because the bottoms had fallen out of them and things like that. And I said to him, Why don’t you buy a chair? Why don’t you buy some new chairs? And he went, Oh, NHS doesn’t bloody pay me to buy waiting room furniture and Jesus sort of thing. When I moved out at the end of 80 and I went to a place and nearby a guy he had, you remember the Siemens em one chair, the really Rolls-Royce Siemens erm one chair. He had that himself and you still get crap equipment with associates but you had Siemens in one but he invested and he could talk the hind leg of a donkey. He really had the Blahnik, he wasn’t that good a dentist, but he had the blarney, as we say in Ireland, he was supremely successful. He had people coming from far and wide flocking to him, all that sort of stuff. I very quickly learnt that actually not not such a personable bloke, failing, really personable bloke, not such a good dentist succeeding immensely. And really that’s when I very quickly learnt the soft skills were vitally, vitally important and it’s still the same today, you know I think patients just go, was he a nice chap? And that’s the more important thing that they will forgive you a lot if you’re nice to them.

[00:39:04] Yeah. Yeah. But it, it, it doesn’t mean be nice and then mess up their teeth. It’s be nice and keep, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Yeah. And anything you can’t do, refer out.

[00:39:16] Yeah, exactly. And this is where I would yeah. This is where I would agree with ADC. If not don’t often. But yes. Speak within your competency. Don’t be afraid to refer. Really. So yeah. Just because you see so-and-so on the Instagram having done this, you won’t see the fact they’ve got nine of them that are a bit crap and they both know that. Yeah. You know, you know it is one of those things, you know.

[00:39:42] But Niall’s the guy, the guy sitting, let’s say, like you, he’s done for 16 years a bit much. Let’s just say he’s done, I don’t know, five years of NHS. Yeah. And now he wants to make the leap and very simple. Be nice, don’t hurt people, you know, painless injections. I would say the most important thing you can do and then as soon keep it simple, if you haven’t got super duper skills, if you’re not a full mouth dentist, don’t, don’t try and be. Yeah. Until you get the skills and then refer out. It’s as simple as that. I mean, any dentist could be a private dentist as long as they follow those rules, right?

[00:40:21] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:22] I don’t need special knowledge.

[00:40:24] Most patients just want straightforward dentistry. They don’t want total rehabs. They don’t want film with implants. I don’t want this. What they want is to have teeth that are functional. Don’t give them much problems. Look. Okay, feel okay. And that’s all they want. And they want a nice person to do it for them. That’s what they want. They want someone they can trust. My big thing would be intraoral cameras. If you’re going private, make sure you have a really decent internal camera. Show everything. It builds trust immensely if you can show them. Particularly if, as I say to my associates, I go take the patients on the story, particularly when you’re doing the treatments. You you say you’ve got consent. You’ve you’ve shown them at the exam and you said, see, this big crack filling here, you know, carries whatever. And they consent. They come by. Show them. Remind them why they’re in today. Then show them when the feeling is removed. Show them what it looks like underneath. They normally look pretty. Yuck. You know, shown when the care is removed, show them the various stages, take them in the story, show them the cracks. Show them that you build so much trust that the next time you say to them, actually, we’re going to crack, they’re there, you know? But ultimately, you’re right. I mean, it isn’t rocket science. But one of the things I would say to young dentists, they do tend to come out and just to be focussed. Some of them is and particularly if you’re working for corporate, I would actually take your time, do things properly, right when you’re starting off in your career.

[00:41:48] Don’t worry about the money. All right. Even if you’re I mean, most people, my son, being an example, has graduated with a master’s and whatever else from Lisa. And he’s on 30, 35 grand a year. 25. Now, a lot of dentists come out and think, oh, I should be heading sort of high. 60, 70, 80 ground. Most graduates don’t earn that at that stage. What I would be saying to you, be happy with your 25 to 30 grand, but build your skills now. Take your time. Use the rubber dom. Learn to do a filling. Learn to do the difficult extraction, etc., etc., etc.. Even if it’s onto the NHS, the corporates can’t complain because you’re doing everything by the book, you know. So you’re doing good dentistry. Just take your time and build those skills particularly well. As you said yourself, even if you haven’t done that, you don’t need a huge amount of skills to go private. It’s just been nice, as you say, being nice to people doing basic good basic dentistry. Yeah. And this is back to where people look at. I mean, I was talking to someone the other day who said, where are the associates, young associates nowadays who want to just do general dentistry. They all seem to want to do bloody bonding and Invisalign and you know, that’s all they seem to want to do nowadays. And I’m going, Yeah, I just find that weird because you know, most I would say 90% of patients, 95% of patients don’t want Invisalign or bonding. Yeah, they really not interest in it. They’re interested in good basic dentistry and plenty of money to maintain that.

[00:43:28] Yeah. As long as you’re charging appropriately. Right. And that’s another problem.

[00:43:32] No, exactly. And I think I think we’ve got to do is we’ve got that. You’ve got to start. You know, we’re worried about what people will think about us when we charge fees and all that sort of stuff. I think that’s, you know, that’s a whole different area of mindset of it. But somebody said to me once you think about Harrods, they don’t aim to sell every whatever designer dress to. They don’t aim to sell a designer dress to everybody who walks into Harrods. They’ll only be a certain amount of people will buy them. And that’s the same with your dentistry then, that you will find your market, you will find your people will. You’re not to be scared of your fees. Yeah, but.

[00:44:13] How often do you put your prices up in your own practise.

[00:44:17] And annual? Late January? We we do it routinely. I mean, if we need a mid-year tweak, we will do mid-year tweak. Patients don’t notice when you put your prices up, but you get the old one who does, right. Okay. You will get the old. I think there was a statistic that came out somewhere from Harvard Business School or somewhere that might be apocryphal, but 14%, you can put your prices up by 14% and no one will actually notice. And funnily enough, we stuck are not quite that high, but we stuck our examination fee and our hygiene fee up by almost 11% this year. Not we had one patient mention it. So yes, the fee increases is only in your head then they.

[00:44:56] Yeah. In fact that boss of mine, the one firm that had gone private in 69 or whatever it was, he had a thing about if the patients aren’t complaining about the prices, they’re not they’re not high enough. And he used to annually put the prices up. And I remember I remember thinking, that’s not a big increase. Why is it even bother? But then when I stayed, I stayed in that practise for four or five years and after four or five years it was a big difference. Yeah, if you get 12 12% a year after four or five years is a significant difference.

[00:45:33] Yeah, absolutely. But you’re right, it’s indirect. If you do them regularly, patients don’t notice. I think sometimes what happens is we had this issue when we first took over the practise, the plan prices hadn’t been updated for years, for years. So we had to bring them all into line with the fee per item. The fee per item. Prices had been put up, but the plan price has never been increased. So we had a real sort of backlash from patients going. What we want to put my plan price up from 12 to 17 quid a month. Yeah, well, you know, you’re on an absolute bargain. There are 12 months, you know, so it is doing it little and often and working your way through that. But certainly, yeah, I think turning the NHS, moving away from the NHS now it’ll be just interesting to see how over the next year or so what happens. I mean because I remember there’s an awful lot of dentists talking. They want to go private at the moment and I would encourage them to. But I remember back in 1991 we went to when there was a 7% fee cut by the NHS back on the old fee per annum service.

[00:46:36] We went a BDA meeting in Surrey where I was working at the time and I had just taken over my practise 25 and it was a dump and I was literally there six months and this fee cut came in. So I knew I couldn’t go private because it was a dump and I was just new to 25, new to the area. And but everybody in the room went and they sort of had to show hands who’s all going to go private and everybody stuck their hands up and barmy and a couple of others. Interestingly, I would say about half of those who stuck their hands up never did. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. There’s a lot of bravado at the front end, but it’ll be interesting to see there will be how many actually do make that move. But it is something I think is much better on the other side. I enjoy my job much more. I am not a stressed yeah, etc. etc..

[00:47:26] Yeah.

[00:47:28] Let’s move on to our corporates. A force for good in dentistry.

[00:47:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s an interesting one. What’s my view on that one? Yes and no. I must admit, when I when I come to sell this practise and I’m 57, so it’ll be a few years yet, possibly. But when I come to sell it, I don’t want to sell it to a corporate.

[00:47:52] Right ideologically.

[00:47:55] Ideologically and ideologically. I don’t want it. I think we need to have independent practises out there. I really do. All right. I think it’s sad that we’re all ending up as corporates. You know, there are good corporate, better corporates, less, by the way, than others. I don’t slag any of them off. I mean, we we are near Portman. And I have to say, I think Portman are run very well. They buy good practises. You know, they choose well, it’s run well then. Tax is an interesting another one that I just happen to notice that Hershey sold at the weekend to then tax you know I think that seems an interesting model I know I don’t you don’t know Jack and Deci and Rowling, do you at all, do you know? Yeah, I do. I do. Well, John’s a good man, was a good mate of mine, and he sold to Dan Tax and he’s recommended me Dan Tax highly, but equally well. I would quite like to keep it the independent sector because I do think it’s important for the you know, just what I mean if you’re a young dentist and you’re coming out today and you had no hope to own your own business, maybe, maybe a different mindset, I think. I mean, why did you do dentistry payment? Why? Why did you do Street?

[00:49:07] I was one of those. Didn’t know what I wanted to do. My parents said, hey, you know your uncle’s dentist, you like your uncle? So it was it was as terrible as that.

[00:49:19] Yeah, well, mine, mine, mine seminary. Terrible. I must admit, mine was a bit like I’m the youngest of five, and my two of my brother is much, much, much older than me. My eldest brother was 70, our doctors, and they both went, Don’t do medicine, it’s shit. And what they meant by that was they are not that time. I happen to have a very fun dentist in Northern Ireland who drove at the old quatre, went away on a skiing holiday once a week and had a 9 to 5 job and owned his own business. And that was what I quite like. They owned his own business and I went, Oh, I’ll be a dentist, you know? And that’s how I ended up doing that. But equally, equally shit reasons, you know, but it’s worked out for the best. And part of the attraction for me was the fact I could be my own boss one day. And I sort of think if it goes all totally corporate, I don’t think it ever will go all totally corporate. But if it did or if there was less opportunity for dentists, yeah, I just think it’s a sad, sad day. And if I look at some of the corporates you talk to, some of the youngsters, young professionals on the course are not youngsters. Young professionals are on the courses I made and they’re going, Oh yeah, I’m having to buy my own composite, I’m having to buy my own whatever, because the corporate will not buy this quality material for me. So I have to supply it all myself. And yeah, just.

[00:50:45] Just to be fair, lots, lots of independent bosses aren’t buying things as well.

[00:50:52] Yeah. So the red line post for another day came and that’s, that’s, that’s on the back burner actually. It keeps coming up and I think I’ll post that on this week, but it hasn’t come up yet. There’s other things that keep popping up. But yeah, that is a red wine post for another day. Yeah, you’re right. It isn’t exclusive to corporates. You’re absolutely right. It isn’t exclusive, of course. But I just think. Yeah, how are they forced for good? They’ve been a force for good somebody put out pointed out and the thing for practise owners Goodwill’s.

[00:51:24] For selling out.

[00:51:26] Yeah well it’s gone through the roof I mean back to what we were saying earlier when I first bought my practise, 1991, they were all sold through box yards in the back of the bdg and Frank Taylor was an auditor. Frank Taylor was actually Frank Taylor. He was an he had a little thing and practises were sold for the average of the previous three years turnover. Right. So the average of that on the third of that somewhere between 25% and 33% of the average of the previous year. Three is turnover. And so I bought my first practise which was turning over about sort of 180 grand for about 60 grand. Yeah, well, I know. Just mad, mad, mad, mad. And you know, it has totally changed. I mean, nowadays, you know, so so they have brought the corporates have certainly from the PRI, but from the associates point of view, I struggle a little bit more to see what they brought.

[00:52:26] Yeah, you’re right. On average, you’d probably rather work for a for a non corporate as an associate. My wife works for a corporate and they’re one of the better ones. They’re one of the better ones. Although when something goes wrong, the chain of command is just extraordinary. That’s one thing. And then another thing, you know, my wife is actually owns a quarter of enlightened. She herself owns a quarter of Enlightened. And you’d imagine the owner of Enlightened. Right. Could could make things happen from a whitening perspective in the practise. Yes. And the red tape they have to go through just to make a leaflet, you know, it has to be in brand with the corporates and so on is amazing as well. And then things like computers break and and don’t get fixed sometimes you know. Yeah. And you think this corporates got so much money why don’t they. Although although having you know, I’m talking to lots of corporates about bringing in light in in as well and it’s not a bed of roses running a corporate at all because it turns out the business model actually isn’t that lovely, other than they will then sell the whole thing off for even more bigger, even a bigger multiple. But but, you know, it turns out running these, you know, 300 practises, whatever they’ve got, it takes a whole team of head office and you know, that team needs paying for. And like anything when you grow it, I mean, you’ve got one practise, you know, but there’s several dentists. You’ve got, you know, way more than that. And they whenever they grow it, they find it very. Haunt keeping the thing as it was right. Keeping the culture as it was and and keeping everything going. And so they end up they end up exerting control with cash, essentially, sort of the easiest way for them to control. The thing is to say this is the maximum budget and you’re right in that dentistry doesn’t work well under those circumstances. No, no, that’s very true. I agree with you on that.

[00:54:30] Yeah, I’ve heard that story. And the reason why I didn’t I mean, I was quite interested in in in in the early days, back in the days of you remember Whitecross in London. What was it was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:54:43] Mendelson.

[00:54:44] Mendelson, yeah.

[00:54:45] Just passed away.

[00:54:45] And I took a strong interest in sort of having a look at the courtroom, but I couldn’t see maybe it was just me how it would work. Because again, what you say that I want to have really good practise of patients treated really well. So my first boss had in Northern Ireland had four practises. He went bankrupt. This was back in the early nineties. He went bankrupt and he said to me and he sort of put me off. Somebody said, never run more than one practise. He said the main practise was doing really, really well. The other three branches, squats, fair enough, as branches grinned as money bankrupted them. And he started again. But what I’m saying is that. So that’s between the two. I just couldn’t see how it worked. But I remember back in the day when I wasn’t idea what was what was the idea to the average day when it was originally called? I can’t remember what was called back in the nineties somewhere else.

[00:55:42] Now it’s called something and now it’s called my dentist.

[00:55:44] My dentist. Yeah. Yeah. No, maybe it was always idea.

[00:55:47] It was like that.

[00:55:48] Yeah. But yeah. No, but I remember Whitecross in London looking at them and London and going, Oh, nice idea.

[00:55:56] Nice, didn’t they? And there was JD Hull, if you remember.

[00:55:58] Yes, I remember JD Hull. I mean, he was he was a character. Wasn’t a he was a character. He was a character.

[00:56:06] He started out in South Wales, I studied in Cardiff so. So I’ve got some of his.

[00:56:11] Yeah, yeah. No stories character. He certainly, certainly remember that. I remember talking to him one time and he wasn’t, he was big into rugby, I’m big into my rugby so we got to talk about that sort of stuff. But he was going to almost take you down into hospitality and all that sort of stuff, you know, never, never, nothing ever happened. But yeah, no, you’re right. I do think that the advantage of independent practise owners is that their flexibility. Yeah, they can respond quickly. They can respond quickly to the market. They can respond quickly to everything goes on. And actually, the advantage is if you have a good principle and you have to have a good principle, I’m not saying I’m one necessarily, but you have to have a good principal who has strong leadership, a strong vision of what they want to do with the practise. They will be very successful. I think, unfortunately, a lot of principals possibly don’t have that sort of leadership skills, but yeah, they are. And therefore maybe a corporate is better for certain people, but not for everybody.

[00:57:15] Yeah, so I don’t think it’s impossible that they could succeed. I mean, in opticians they’ve certainly, you know, taken completely taken over except for the very high end ones, right. Yeah. And I think opticians are different to dentists.

[00:57:30] Yeah, they.

[00:57:30] Are. It’s it’s more a retail model than a service.

[00:57:34] I have to say where I say we were more veterinary like I would argue that. Yeah. And I think veterinary there are 40% or something on it or whatever. I don’t know. Is there 40% of the market. I’m not. Yeah.

[00:57:47] Right.

[00:57:48] Yeah, something like that.

[00:57:50] Let’s go on to let’s go on to your story a bit more now. Why did you move from Northern Ireland? I guess you grew up in Ulster as well, did you?

[00:57:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was born and bred there. I’m born 1965 in a place called Larne, currently Antrim in Northern Ireland, which.

[00:58:06] Is a port. I’ve been to Northern Ireland. Yeah.

[00:58:11] It’s a dump.

[00:58:12] Yeah.

[00:58:13] Yeah. I mean the area. So I went to school there. I, my father, my father was stationmaster. Interestingly, it used to be the largest station in Ireland and then the beach came along and he ended up setting my father. I think it got my wanting to run my own business. My father, he ran his own haulage firm for years and my father left school at 14 back in the day. So I mean, yeah, he would have been he would nowadays he would have gone to university. He was a clever bloke, but now he had six children, five which survived. And there is I grew in Larne, so I ended up going to school there ended up, as I explained to you, already doing dentistry simply through the fact that careers advice was shite back then. I remember going to the careers teacher as it was, who happened to be the maths teacher as well, and when she said, What are you doing? And I went on doing maths. Physics, chemistry and said And what you think in doing for university now? I went, Oh, I’m thinking of doing dentistry. And she went, Yeah. Greg go and look under the yonder in the fine cabinet over there. And that was it.

[00:59:15] Was.

[00:59:16] A little bit from Queens was Cuba. And that was literally my 5 minutes of career advice. And, and my brothers went, I don’t do medicine. So I ended up doing dentistry. And, and back in the day I, you know, you literally just fill in UCAS form. Even the personal step one was a bit like I like playing rugby, you know, sort of style. That was it. He had no interviews. No interviews. I don’t know if you. Did you have an interview.

[00:59:42] We had interviews.

[00:59:44] Yeah. Queens, we didn’t. No interviews. You just literally sent it off and you got whoa. Yeah. Offered you press and that was it. That was and I look at youngsters, young people coming out of school nowadays and what they have to go through to get into dentistry and school. And I remember we spend our first year, year and a half with the Medicks and I remember one anatomy lecture. They came to the front and went, We’ve got a medick who’s interested in transferring to dentistry. Does any dentist, do any dentists want to transfer to medicine? This is about six weeks in. Yeah. And I thought about it for an hour during that anatomy lecture going I went, Nah, can’t be there too much.

[01:00:21] Hassle on.

[01:00:22] The as I get switched to the doctor. So anyway, I ended up at Queen’s and Belfast did for years 1983 to 87, graduated, took the optional vet and then went from there and then basically had feet. And the problem with Northern Ireland, it’s it’s a very, very close community. And, you know, it’s complicated by obviously all the troubles. I mean, I was there at the height of the troubles. You know, I actually was in digs in the final year in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast when the sniper fired at the Army post and top of our tower block, you know, you know, that sort of thing was on, you know, so it literally was a, you know, all outgoing all at the time. So I didn’t particularly want to stay in Northern Ireland. You always get attracted by the bright lights of England. My wife, well, my girlfriend at the time was English and her father was a surgeon in Chesney. I mean, I don’t know if you ever my father in law was a surgeon from India, and he came over in 1957 to do his FRCS and ended up in Northern Ireland basically because he couldn’t get consultant’s post in the north of England, as he says, because he was racially discriminated against, because he was Indian. He wrote to the BMA and went DMC and went, Oh, I’m not going to consultant’s posts here. Do you think it’s because I’ve got a brown face basically? And they went, Yeah, probably. What do you want us to do about it?

[01:01:55] And so I’ll tell you, let me tell you a story. My dad studied in Queens. Yeah, all right. In the fifties. In the fifties, yes. And someone asked him to be president of the Students Association, whatever. Right. Because he was neither neither Catholic nor Protestant.

[01:02:14] Yes, exactly. Well, it was a.

[01:02:20] It was very much like that. You know, I remember going to the Catholic chaplain and say, I’m a Protestant. Technically, I’m atheist nowadays, but I’m a Protestant technically. And I know Niles, a very Irish name and normally used by Catholics. I am frozen technically. And I remember going with friends of mine who were to the Catholic Chaplaincy for lunch, you know, because it was cheap and it was good and they, they wind me up. I said, Oh, you better keep a low profile to realise your problems, you know, that, you know. And I was going really isolating and yeah, yeah, I’ll have you chucked out of here and I’m going, oh Lord. But yeah, it was all that, all that was going on amongst fellow students, more banter. But there was a very serious edge going on outside in the real world and Belfast and the wider shrines of Northern Ireland. So I didn’t want to live there. I didn’t want to bring up children there. I felt that it was a very closed community. My personal opinion, I know plenty of my colleagues who stayed in a very successful and enjoyable life in Northern Ireland. So we moved over to England and literally I find a practise through the back as as a box as the beat and moved over when I was just turned 26 and started my first practise and took over a practise from another Irish woman who is returning to Southern Ireland and that was that. And I grew it from there basically. So eventually we outgrew the building and we knocked it down. We got an architect and we rebuild the building, etcetera, etcetera, and the rest is history. Yeah. Do I regret doing dentistry? No, I actually think it’s a great career. You know.

[01:03:58] You’re clearly completely engaged with with dentistry still. What would you. What would you say is the secret of that? I mean, is it is it the people that you love or is it the meccano aspect of it? Is it the business side?

[01:04:13] Yeah, meccano. I was never good at my count. I said, Yeah, I would like a bit more. But yeah, that’s why I don’t do implants. Why do not you go? Yeah, I’ll fit. I’ll fit on ladies and crimes using. Sorry, that’s more like Lego implants. But seriously, what is it about? It’s the people. It’s the people. It’s the people, you know, and dentists. We’re very lucky inasmuch as that we have that amazing ability to take people from who are in severe, severe pain to out of pain within a few minutes. Yeah. You know, help them or even just on a more mundane level improve their self confidence. Even people come in and it’s nice when people write reviews going, Oh my God, I was actually petrified at the dentist till I found you or I came to your practise or I came to their, you know, and we all in all our various practises have reviews like that. And I just like helping people, you know, then they and I think that’s what keeps me going about it. I don’t like all the things that anybody else doesn’t like. I don’t like the GDC, I don’t like the QC, I don’t like everything like that that’s come with it. And I and I actually don’t like the Instagram stroke, you know, composite bonding stroke, Invisalign. It has its place, but it’s not dentistry for me, you know, it’s an aspect of dentistry, but it’s not all dentistry. So, you know, I think there’s, you know, dentistry is about helping people and helping people is extractions, root canals, fillings, whatever, you know.

[01:05:46] I mean, you should you should know there is quite a lot of very valuable stuff on Instagram as well. Yeah.

[01:05:51] Oh, yeah.

[01:05:51] I know when you say Instagram, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. But but there’s lots of lots of really good education on Instagram too.

[01:06:01] Yeah, yeah, I know there is. And I have to say I have to say I do follow not not an Instagram, but quite a few Facebook pages that I think are vitally useful. Jaz does Nick Gulati is Gujarati page A etc. etc. etc.. Yeah, are very valuable and very useful. Yes. No, there are a lot of good stuff. It’s the stuff that you know what I’m talking about, the sort of the glamour do.

[01:06:27] Yeah, I do. And you know, I’m very involved in that space.

[01:06:33] Yes, I.

[01:06:33] Know you are. You know, I’m very Payman.

[01:06:37] Don’t worry. Don’t worry. They say whatever you like, right? At the end of the day. Know a line? Bleach bond. Right. So we’re big in bleach and we’re making bond, and we’re not big in a line. But I know what you mean. I mean, there’s definitely some overtreatment going on with composite bonding and some low quality treatment going on with composite bonding. And there’s going to be a bunch of failures very soon. I mean, composites are very unforgiving material.

[01:07:03] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:07:05] You know, stains very quickly. And but then on the other hand, I would say that’s the reason for learning it properly. And I don’t even mean come to my course. I mean practise, you know, practise a lot and talk to lots of people and and so forth. But it’s interesting, though, these days you can choose to be whichever type of dentist you want to be in a way, because there’s so much more referral. You know, in our day you were either a general dentist or you were a specialist dentist. And even specialist was a new thing, wasn’t it?

[01:07:35] Yeah, it was more. Or your dentist was more or more what. I qualified the other one at the hospital. Or you are a general practise dentist. Yeah.

[01:07:44] And then I know you quite like you quite like endo, don’t you.

[01:07:49] I do quite a lot of endo. Yeah.

[01:07:51] Yeah. So, so I, I stopped practising ten years ago, but in my last four years of practise, I didn’t do any endo at all. I just I referred all of them. And what I’m saying is you can you can choose to be an Invisalign dentist and be fine with that, or you can choose to be an implant guy. And just just go into that very quickly these days. What do you think about that? Do you think do you think do you do you also sort of mourn the loss of the generalist?

[01:08:22] No. As much as I think do I mourn the loss of the generalist? I don’t think we’ve lost the generalist totally. But there are things like implants. I genuinely do think they should be done by guys who are doing X number of implants a year.

[01:08:37] Lots of them.

[01:08:37] Yeah, yeah, lots of them. I really do think. Do you want to go to a hip a hip surgeon and get do you want to go to a surgeon and get your hip replacement done? But find out actually, he’s an abdominal surgeon. Just does the odd hip replacement once every six months.

[01:08:52] No.

[01:08:52] Well done. You know, and you know, so, you know, why should implants be any different? You know, so the likes of, say, Adam Glass food for want of a name or you know, quite there are loads of people out there. Roberti Yeah, yeah. Rob Morrissey There’s another good one. Yeah. Who I think Dominic Hurley tends to do mostly implants. Stuff like that tends to my name. Yes, I am very much a best for that in terms of, you know, Invisalign and so on. Yeah. Well now don’t get started on Invisalign. I do think once you get away from implants, once you get I do think there is a, there’s certainly a place for specialists, but there’s no reason why a good generalist can’t do 90, 80, 90% over to a standard that is more than acceptable for the JDC. Yeah. So, you know, so yeah, I think you can end up referring most of your business away if you end up referring too much out. But yeah, you know, I certainly I certainly think that and also sort of sometimes patients go, yeah, they don’t like going to another place. I know this is where it’s coming back to that people are bringing specialists in-house, aren’t they? More and more so. And that’s that’s a headache in itself, trying to keep them busy and trying to keep them on something the other. But yeah, if patients don’t like, they’ve come to see you, they’ve come to see your practise, they know where you are, somebody’s described also the patients are a bit like patients are a bit like cats or no. Yeah, that patients but like cats. Yes, that’s right. Rather than dogs. Dogs. Dogs are attached.

[01:10:32] To the building.

[01:10:33] Yes, the cats are attached to the building. Yeah. So on patients are a bit like cats. That’s how good the sale of goodwill works because they go, Oh, I’ll stay to the building. Even though a new owners come in, I’ll stick there because I know the building. Yeah, it’s a weird phenomenon, but that’s the way it works. And I think patients. So I do think there is and will always be a place for the general sense. I think what’s sad is that people sort of see that they should be doing more Invisalign and more bonding and more of this. You know, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but at the expense of doing their general dentistry or they feel like they’re peer pressured into doing it because they’re met down the road, is doing a lot or they’ve seen someone on Instagram.

[01:11:16] I feel like I feel like Invisalign kind of feels like easy money, doesn’t it? That’s the thing.

[01:11:21] Yeah, it’s.

[01:11:22] Something. It’s not easy. Money is very difficult work, but not easy at all. But have you done Invisalign? Now, I noticed on your on your website, you guys do Invisalign.

[01:11:33] Yeah. It says my, my associate does Invisalign. I don’t touch the stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On our website.

[01:11:38] Which is leaning on it, I feel like you’ve got something to say about Invisalign. Go on.

[01:11:42] Well, apart from that, like the dominator. Yeah. Apart from the fact that they absolutely dominate the market. What I find sad about Invisalign is the people that sort of chest, the diamond, the double diamond, the platinum, whatever status you know, that. Oh, don’t do this number. From what I understand, the fees are still incredibly high from Invisalign for their stuff. Even if you get diamond, double diamond or whatever status you’re on. Yeah. And if you talk to sort of certain orthodontists like Ian Hutchinson, for example, yeah, he’ll go Aligners or Aligners and my associates done the in Hutchinson’s course and she would go that well yeah, you can do them with Invisalign and you will get down to site their particular Instagram going, I can do everything on Invisalign, you know that. But there are certain cases on quite a lot of cases that are maybe better off with fixed, but you know, it is what it is.

[01:12:37] But I think that tide is turning though in a way, because I speak to a number of orthodontists who are Invisalign only Invisalign orthodontists, and it can do a lot more than it used to do. I mean, I remember when I trained on Invisalign, they were saying, you know, you can’t rotate teeth, you can’t you can do a lot more than it used to. But but this question of, you know, being aligns sort of ad, you know, like some people say, look, why are you putting Invisalign brand ahead of your own brand? Yes. And you know what? I get it. I do get it. Number one, the discount bit piece is is significant. You know, that that that apex diamond predator, whatever status they get it. I think half the price of of an.

[01:13:26] Absolutely significant chunk of money when you compare it to other.

[01:13:29] Compared to brackets. Compared to brackets. Of course. Yes. Yeah. But the other thing is, you know, align invented aligners. Yeah. They, they didn’t just go stick a name on, they invented it. I mean, okay, totally different management to to it was a totally different person, totally different management to who we’ve got there now. But, but having invented aligners that, that first mover advantage that they had and they’re now bigger than Henry Schein, I think the biggest, the biggest company in dentistry now or they’re definitely up there. I mean it’s basically align Henry Schein and then splice around, you know, there’s three or four investor, you know, the ones who own all those noble bio care and or ASC optic. And so, you know, I’ve spoken to a bunch of dentists about this. I haven’t got a horse in the race. I don’t I don’t mind one way or the other. I certainly know some dentists who’ve left Invisalign and then come back because they were unhappy with the alternatives. And I know others who’ve left and and they’re very happy. Very happy. I know some who print their own aligners, you know, make their own in house. So there seems to be a few ways to skin the cat. But the, the brand is super strong and there’s a lot of very happy people with the brand. I think they could do a lot more on customer service. I mean, yeah, they seem to be very poor on customer service, which is weird. You know, you’d imagine they take care of that.

[01:14:59] Yeah, I think it’s they, they almost are in that position of it and they’re so dominant that they feel they can just treat anybody the way they want. And that’s what the seems to happen. Then the single.

[01:15:11] I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think that’s it. No company thinks that way. I mean, it’s well, maybe, but you don’t become the world’s biggest dental company thinking that. I think it’s probably you.

[01:15:21] Know, there are a bit. But I just think I just.

[01:15:23] Think they’re growing so quickly that they can’t they can’t keep up with the growth themselves.

[01:15:31] So, yeah, it’s.

[01:15:32] The same reason Facebook is such a nightmare to deal with. You know, as an advertiser, it’s an absolute nightmare dealing with that company. But the reason is they’re just growing so quickly.

[01:15:44] Yeah, I.

[01:15:45] Think. I think that’s the reason.

[01:15:46] Yeah.

[01:15:47] Tell me, let’s move on to darker questions. Well, before we do that, before we do that, let’s talk about you’ve run a couple of super successful dental practises, have been around for ages, employing loads of people, treating thousands of patients. What would you say that secrets to success outside of the clinical?

[01:16:10] Well, the sacred success are I personally might. Well, we’ve talked about this already is your personality. You know, you have to be a nice person to deal with.

[01:16:21] It’s certainly outside of patient care. I mean, I’m.

[01:16:24] I’m thinking more staff associates. Yeah. Outside the patient care. What’s important for me having, you know, in terms of what do you mean in terms of equipment and stuff like that or staff associates. Keeping people happy? Yeah. What’s important? I think you’ve got to pay people. Well, certainly nowadays that’s a big thing for staff. You know, that’s one of the big questions is the dental nurse crisis. You know, dental nurses have been absolutely poorly paid for donkey’s years, you know, treated like shit, basically, to be honest with you. You know, my it up. We’ve got nurses retiring. She’s 59 and she’s been a dental nurse since she was 16. And she started off nursing right in four inch stilettos because that was the rule for the practise back then. Four inch white slippers, you know. But, you know, she said we had to have that, you know, that was the rule, you know. And I’m going, oh, my God. Yeah. They’re always been paid a pittance. So it’s treating your staff well. The problem is with it is, you know, with difficulty with staff, your staff are key to the success of the practise. They really are. The front of house is absolutely vital. Yeah. You’re you’re your reception team. Your front of house is absolutely vital. If you do not have people who are reasonably intelligent, reasonably, you know, savvy.

[01:17:59] Resourceful.

[01:18:01] Resourceful, etc., you are screwed it really and you really are screwed. I mean, we have been through in our current practise so many from the past team, mainly because I mean, the thing is, you know, it’s funny enough, it’s what I my favourite programme at the moment is the sewing bee. I don’t know, you watch the great British sewing Payman there you watch the Great Britain now.

[01:18:24] And the great.

[01:18:25] You know, great British sewing bees on Wednesdays on BBC One, whatever it what it is, is basically so or as you come along and make clothes out of material and it’s like great British Bake Off, but for sewing. And as I said to them, it’s all about attention to detail. You know, it’s it’s you look at it and you go, right, okay, you’ve made it, you’ve made a dress. But the hems all wobbly. Why is the hair more wobbly? It doesn’t look quite right or one side’s long and the other it doesn’t quite fit correctly there. This colour thread doesn’t match or whatever, you know. And so all about it, it’s all the little details that go in to make a dress. You may look at it and say, That’s a dress, all right. But then you look at everything that’s gone in to make a lovely, lovely dress, and that’s like a dental practise to me. People sort of say to me, Oh, you know, you’re some we’ve been accused of nit picking, you know, say you’re saying, Oh, you need to be doing it like this and be like I say, no, I call it we have standards basically. And they and everything comes together to form the whole. But if you you know if you cannot and sorry people will Brit me for this but if you cannot write an email back to people and where we are a site of Oxford we get everybody from Oxford, professors of English and to all sorts of places people in fact if you cannot write an email that makes sense in perfect grammatical English, back to patients.

[01:19:51] All right. We’re screwed to start off with, you know, and it’s the detail is the little things like that, making sure you put your apostrophe in the right place, making sure you’ve done this, you’ve done that. But yes, staff are key. Staff are absolutely key. And once you find the staff, pay them well, treat them well, you know, look after them well, make sure that you’re nice to them. But even then, yeah, there’s no guarantee we’ll stay nowadays. Everybody wants to move on eventually. And in terms of the servants, the practise, I just think, you know, people well, I can never understand as you get dentists who will have a lovely house, maybe even a lovely holiday home or a lovely Ferrari or whatever, and then spend a little money on their practise. Yeah. Then they have a lovely practise. Patients appreciate it. They really do notice the difference. And it’s all those subliminal things that go in to make to make it successful personally.

[01:20:47] Yeah. I mean, the other thing is, look, the number of dentists, the number of people you speak to and they say, oh, I really like that so-and-so restaurant because the service is excellent.

[01:20:56] Yeah.

[01:20:57] And you know, in terms of restaurant, you’ve got, you’ve got the food in front of you. So you can, you can judge the food. Whereas in dentistry, our patients mostly can’t judge. What we do at all. Our patients got no clue whatsoever that you’re putting this matrix on and wedging it and not understand. And the example you gave at the beginning about the guy who was the Great Panther wasn’t the best dentist in the world. And so they only have these other clues to go on and obviously the people. But, you know, it’s interesting, I go to a dental practise and with fresh eyes I can see things that people who work there can’t see. It’s a bit of the cobweb in the corner or a bit of something sticking off the ceiling. And these are all clues to the patient. And, you know, interesting thing now, do you do you guys serve coffee in your practise?

[01:21:51] Yes.

[01:21:51] Yeah. So so I’ve worked in practises where the coffee’s been terrible coffee and and was my fault. I was the associate there and I fully understand the reasons why, you know, we’re not a coffee shop where we’re a dentist and all that.

[01:22:07] But.

[01:22:09] When I take my BMW, it’s not a Rolls-Royce, a BMW. I take my BMW for service. The coffee is excellent, and I drive up and the guy, some dude opens the car door and welcomes me by name before I’ve even said anything. But I know how he does it, right? He’s got my number plate. He knows what time I’m coming. It still makes me feel good. It takes me upstairs. Latte or cappuccino? It’s a it’s a car garage. It’s not. It’s not a Starbucks either, right? It’s a car garage. Yeah. And so these and now it’s interesting. I must have been to a thousand practises in my career and even I, who knows the full story exactly, knows what’s going on and, and, and what’s going and what’s happening and whose fault it is and whose fault it is. And even now, when I walk into a practise and they offer me a coffee and I have the coffee and it’s a nice coffee, I start making judgements about this practise about the kind of dentist they are, even me who knows all about it. I know exactly what’s happening, I’m still making those judgements. So imagine our patients, you know, the non-clinical queues that they’re taking.

[01:23:18] Yeah, absolutely. And we will serve bean to cup. We have a bean teacup machine upstairs. Yes, we go to Costco and we buy Lavazza beans but we do bean, we don’t have that was the first thing I got rid of was the instant coffee, you know. I said, I’m going to bean cup machine. I bought it once and some later. We bought it five years ago. It’s still going strong. It’s brilliant. And patients come and go. Lovely coffee. Thank you very much. You know, selection of teeth and, you know, and it’s just not having that level.

[01:23:48] Of attention to detail, as you.

[01:23:50] Said. Exactly. And just having nice cups to serve it in and and the place being clean in the modern. And it’s all under decoration, not being too scuffed. I know you can’t help the odd scuff here and there and all that sort of stuff. I mean, there was I mean, not that I’ve gone to this, but I had in the last practise I remember we had a small tester pots and I used to get the nurse to go round and if there was any scuffs, sometimes I’d do it myself. I’d just paint them every week, just find where the scuffs were, repaint them with the tester so that we got rid of the scuffs straight away. So they didn’t hang around. But it’s things like that. People want to see. They can’t, as you say, can’t judge you and everything and anything else, part of your personality. But they will go often. Yeah. I mean, how many reviews have you seen where they go? Oh, lovely. Clean practise. Very modern, you know. Brilliant. Yeah. How do you know they’re brilliant? How many times have you seen patients where you go, God, they’re singing the praises of the previous dentist. And you go, This dentistry is pretty mediocre. Yeah, but the thing the patients are singing the praises about them. Yeah. And you go well yeah it’s because they’ve got a lot of the other things. Right, you know. But they’re really.

[01:24:59] What about associates and associates? What are your Top Tips? Top Tips? Let’s talk about what you look for when you’re hiring an associate and let’s talk about your bugbears. What’s the thing that pisses you off about associates?

[01:25:13] Yeah. What pisses me off? It was those associates outright who basically seem to think that the boss is ripping them off, that they’re making the absolute bloody fortune out of them. And then they they’re really pissed me off associates.

[01:25:27] Some of them thing was.

[01:25:28] Yeah. That wasn’t them. Who aren’t, who don’t, don’t sort of realise that they’re part of the clinical team, that they’re, that things like I’m trying to think what else. Because for both associates we’ve had associates that were that before I took over the practise had to go and work in as an associate for a brief, very brief period of time. And one of the other associates used to, if there was a gap before the end of the day, so say share the gap. And then the other end of the day, she would just literally walk out and tell the receptionist to cancel that sort of patient know. So would say, I’m not I’m not hanging around for 45 minutes to see Mrs. So-and-so for a check-up counsellor. And I’m going.

[01:26:07] Wow.

[01:26:08] Yeah, yeah. Know that’s extreme. And you don’t get that, but it’s, it’s.

[01:26:14] What are you looking for when you hire them?

[01:26:16] What am I looking for? I’m looking for very much. Can I talk to them? Do I get on with them? Can I talk to them? Because, you know, obviously you want people who are on board with what your way of thinking is. You know, I want to hear a good a good story from them. I want to hear that a certain certainly it will be a lot of I want to hear they can hold their own. They can talk to me. Honestly, I’m not so interested in clinical skills, you know. I know nowadays the thing is a portfolio, isn’t it? That seems to be the big thing. God, that was that. Jesus Christ never even thought about my day but a portfolio. Yeah. I’m not so interested. I can normally think well if you can talk good talk, if you’ve been on a reasonable number of courses, if you’ve done this, if you’ve done that, you know, and you know, you’re normally going to be okay and it’s, it’s yeah. Just saying, can you gel with them at the end. You’ve got to work with them day in, day out and, and that’s basically what I look for. And you know, there’s no I guess.

[01:27:24] If you could gel with them, then it’s likely your patients are going to gel with them.

[01:27:27] Too. Like dentists would attract people, attract people. They like them basically. Then there isn’t that old thing, you know. So at the end of the day, if you’re basically if you’re an irritating, irritable old bastard as a dentist, you know, then you’ll get irritable bastards of patients, you know, then they whereas, you know, you’re fairly relaxed, easygoing, sort of bloke, you’ll lose the ones that are irritable, right. Or the ones that think, oh, he’s a bit flippant. You know, I’m always sort of telling jokes and bad jokes and all that sort of stuff, you know? So lose the ones that think, Oh, he’s not that professional, he’s a bit flippant. I don’t want them particularly. And in that way I want more. So yeah, I want associate. But it is good to have a mix within the practise, different styles, different, you know, so that we, you know, patients always you don’t necessarily want the patient leave the practise, but you might say, well, you can go and see, they might go and see, can I go and see yens for example or whatever, you know. But yeah, the problem is with nowadays. Yeah. Trying to get an associate, that’s the thing. But there we are.

[01:28:29] Yeah. You know, it’s not limited to dentistry, right? There is a global shortage of labour and raw materials. It’s a funny time. I don’t know if you ever remember this in your time, Nigel. I don’t ever remember this sort of weird. It’s not even a recession yet. Is is whenever it is. The shortage of labour and shortage of raw materials.

[01:28:51] Yeah, well, yeah, the raw materials is certainly a big thing. Yeah. I mean, we, I have said to the staff, you know, whereas normally we did it just in time because we got a letter from Henry Schein or my email months ago going We can no longer guarantee next day delivery, you know. So I said, I don’t want to be run down to the last minute. Please give us a months, you know, like whatever. But yeah, no, to be honest, when I first qualified as a dentist and came to England, I could have walked into any area in England and been offered six jobs on the spot. You know.

[01:29:23] There were dentists.

[01:29:24] Yeah, I was a dentist. Yeah. But in terms of going round beyond that with dental nurses and stuff, no, I don’t ever remember such a shortage of dental nurses, such shortage materials, you know, and certainly. But you can see it in the wider economy. We were in Guildford today shopping and some of the staff we had to encounter in some of the quite posher shops, you’d go, Oh my goodness, they really must be struggling. Yeah, because, you know, calibre wasn’t there that had, you know, and whose somebody was saying who lives in London was saying that virtually every restaurant has a sign saying staff on immediate start you know.

[01:30:01] Yeah and I guess pressure on wages as well. Right because staff know that this is the situation.

[01:30:09] The staff staff know the situation, pressure and wages. And again, it’s fine in private practise, you just put your fees up, you know, at the end of the day. But the NHS, I don’t know where they go without, to be honest with you, I really don’t know where they go without.

[01:30:24] Let’s talk about some mistakes. What have been your biggest mistakes? I want to talk both clinically and business wise.

[01:30:33] Yeah, business wise. Clinically. Oh yeah. I’ve had quite a few. Yeah. From the, from the woman that I wanted to do, the woman that I injected bleach into her sinus and doing the nasty and, you know, doing the asked. And as she it’s quite funny, I was about 40 at the time and I was doing the Suede Rubber Diamond. She was quite quiet, everything was going nicely and she was sort of and she suddenly went, Oh, what was that? And I went, I’d just blown the three in one. And I thought, Oh no, it’s just nothing. Just air. And so we’re worked on a minute or two later, a re injected with the hypochlorite and a burning sensation in my eye. And I, I went, shit, I’ve just, just after I’ve done that. All right. So I sat her upright and took the rubber down off. Oh, no. Yeah. Luckily I had the thought, oh, shit, I’ve been injected, so I don’t know why. Just in my head I got let’s get local anaesthetic solution. I just got sinus and then pumped about four cartridges of Satanists through the root canals and just pumped it, pumped unprompted and sat her upright, took the rubber dam off, sat her upright, and as we sat her upright, she Oh my nostrils burning. Oh my God, my nose was burning. And all this clear drip out of her nose. Obviously, the hypochlorite and I can remember at the time exterior going to know this sometimes happens. Yeah, it’s rare occurrence, but it’s fine inwardly I was going I want my mummy, I.

[01:32:09] Really want my God.

[01:32:12] And I could remember thinking and I do need the loo right now, you know. And so definitely bra and trouser moment we ended up taking the two thought because it I just said oh it must be cracked, let’s take the two so send her up to the hospital. And she basically the hospital berates her because apparently she had a sinus thinning operation 20 years previous to that and never told me I said I was at least honest or to say to hell, even if you told me that, I probably wouldn’t have made any difference, you know. But she brought me a box of chocolates and apologised for actually putting me through stress and I thought was quite sweet and surgical emphysema as we discussed this on the on the on that. Not such a good day. There are office we cup the patients. Not everybody has but I think most dentists, if they’re absolutely honest, will have caught the patients. Tongue, cheek, whatever. Yeah, we’ve all had minor things. So things like that. Yes. Have happened. Nothing, nothing, nothing. So irreversible. You know, what.

[01:33:14] About what about where a management or patient management problem, where have the patients lost confidence and you know, or something?

[01:33:23] Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. I’ve only ever been sued and once in my career and that was over a when I left the practise, my last practise to come and start this one. If I’d been there it would have been managed and handled. But yeah, it was just one of those things. I missed the root canal on a lower seven and blah blah blah patient and I end up being sued. Nice DLP letter came through for that, which was lovely, you know. So the yeah. So no in terms of yeah, we all.

[01:33:53] I’m looking for something. I’m looking for something that someone could learn from because you know I it’s a nice story the non the hypochlorite one but not, not much we can learn from that one.

[01:34:05] No, no, no, no. Yeah. So in terms of I think the things you’ve got, you’ve got to look for at the start with patient management is you will get red flags from patients from early on. You know, they will start throwing them up fairly early on if they’re sort of saying, oh, I can’t lie back, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I can’t do the other. I think you’ve got to learn to pull out pretty quickly and say, I need to refer you on someone else. I think this is where your bacterial referral comes in. But yes, we do all get patients where we go that things aren’t going well. Right. And maybe, you know, they haven’t gone as well as you’d hoped, despite warning the patients. And the patients obviously very disappointed in terms of patient management. What I tend to do with them is look, I go look that root canal, all right. It didn’t work out as well as we thought it was going to. Unfortunately, it’s cleared up. It’s only eight months ago. I know a bit of crying on it.

[01:35:00] This, that and the other. Why don’t we get that tooth taken out? Because just keep them giving you problems. And I refund money. That’s what I do. Ultimately, people. People say to me, what? You refund money? And I go, Yeah, there’s no point in arguing. I work on that. I probably refund the practise refunds by. Under the practise turnover every year. Yeah. Now, considering we have a really good turnover in the practise, it’s nothing for a quiet line on. Patients will go fantastic. They stop complaining quite often. You don’t even have to refund the refund. You can just leave it as a credit on the the on the account. And they will either say well I’ll go and see so and so we’ll get the implant, that’ll be a credit towards my implant or that will be a credit towards whatever you need to do in the future. I just think personally, you know, it’s in terms of patient management, I think what you’ve got to make sure that, you know, after the money all the time personally patients will.

[01:36:04] Really I mean, refunds a good, good plan I think especially these days when you’ve got DLP around now. But tell me a story where you refunded money.

[01:36:15] Tell me a story where refund it. Well, yeah, I had one recently where basically again, it was a bit of this guy come in to see me for a second opinion. He was he had been somewhere else and what didn’t want to lose this up or six didn’t have a big feral on it. And I went, Oh yeah, tell you what, I can do that. I’ll refill that. I’ll put a crown on it. Hey. Yeah. Deep on the three times and six months, roots eventually fractured and went shit. So I ended up going, right, here’s your 1200 quid back on the wall where so bloody time, you know. And they I should have, you know, I was looking I think because he was, he had sort of gone I really want to keep this tooth, you know, and even though I had to.

[01:37:07] So on reflection on reflection, do you think you overestimated your own skill?

[01:37:13] You probably. I think one of the things about dentists with a lot of us are want to please people. At the end of the day, you know, we want to try and. Yeah, so you want to be the person who says yes, yeah. Yes, we can. I think that’s a danger we can all fall into sometimes. I mean, here rodents is a very good word. And I do like that phrase and I think we’ve all been guilty of here. I certainly have been guilty of Herod antics and that was a hero don’t situation. But unfortunately, I didn’t have my kryptonite with me and it all went head up. So I mean, even though we had been warned it might not work. What do I do? Do I turn around? I mean, how would you feel? I mean, if someone turned around you and said, I know you warned me it wouldn’t work, there was a chance that might work, blah, blah, blah. And my bond, when you said that, I thought you meant sort of like seven years down the line. Not. Not, yeah. How would you feel? You’d be pissed off, you know. So, I mean, refund the money and just chalk it up to another. Life is full of these learning experiences and unfortunately it takes sometimes more than once to do the same thing. I mean, I don’t know how many times I’ve done my career, probably right. But sometimes I just seem to never learn totally. I always go in, but I think it’s back into the people pleaser, into the trying to say, Yes, I can do this. You know.

[01:38:34] I think in private you’re always trying to say yes to everything because you’re trying to be a service orientated place as well. So you’re so you love saying yes. Yeah. And you’re right, you can get you into trouble. Yeah.

[01:38:47] There are occasions when you can you can certainly go. Absolutely. I don’t this worked out really well and patients really pleased with it. But there are sometimes you do have to know and say this is a bit of hero, don’t mix and I’ve got better of that over the years, but I still get all into the traps every so often. Yeah. And I think that’s partly why we wanted to put that page up about the failures that no matter what age you are, we have failures. We cook up basically, but it’s how you handle it afterwards. It’s apologies. One of the things I had a South African associate years ago who we were in the NHS and we got a complaint letter. Wait, this was about in the nineties and they about her, her, her attitude, she was really, really annoyed. So what happened was I used to say to her, you know, she, I’d say, why don’t you just say you’re sorry to hear that? So a patient come in and say, Gee, the way it would go is the patient would come in and she’d go. They’d go, I’ve got a problem that you’re feeling. Yeah. That you did last week. Yeah. And she’d go wasn’t my fault. Get a feeling the first place and sweets sort of out. And I’d say, look there’s nothing wrong with saying I’m sorry to hear that. And she’d go, I’m not apologising to anybody. And I’d go, You’re saying you’re sorry to hear that? And I think people sometimes get.

[01:40:08] Nervous escalating things.

[01:40:10] Exactly. Sometimes people get mixed up with the fact that, you know, saying sorry doesn’t mean you’re apologising. You know, you’re saying you’re wrong. It’s just say you’re sorry you had a problem, you know? And I think sometimes if you look at what. Say What do people want from the NHS? Sometimes they get complaints. They just want someone to say, I’m sorry that happened to you and this is what we’re going to do about it to make sure it happens again. Here’s your money back in case you know, this is what we and this is what we suggest we do is the next step they want. Quite often what people want from their dentist is just confidence. You know, they don’t want to be left hanging. A lot of dentists get in trouble because what they do is they just almost like things start going wrong. They abandon the patient. And I think that’s the worst thing you can do.

[01:40:55] And what about from a business perspective? I want you to tell me one of the like the best move you ever made and the worst or the worst day you had as as a professional, you know. From a business perspective, what’s the worst day and the best day? Best thing you did.

[01:41:09] Best thing I ever did. And I have to credit my wife for this. To be fair to her, was actually building the building the actually going ahead and taking a huge financial risk and knocking down her old practise building in in Sanderson Berkshire and building building that we’ve got currently because that a it won best practise of the year in 1999 building practise building 99 nine but it has.

[01:41:37] Did you build it from scratch?

[01:41:38] Yes, totally. We got architects.

[01:41:40] In. Oh, amazing.

[01:41:42] We got knocked down. We worked out of port cabins for a year. We decided we did. So then there was a double height, double bolted, all glass word. It was a way at raptures to come on and go, Oh my God, I’ve never seen a place like this before. Absolutely brilliant. And that was fantastic. And in terms of financially, that has worked out very, very well, a huge risk. And I remember at one time crying, crying just had my first child, Rory, who’s now 25, and I remember coming off the phone and the bank going, We can’t lend you any more money. And the Arctic going, We need another 50 grand. And I’m going, Gee, I’m crying, going, Where am I going to get this money from? You know, and I wish that I managed to get it from somewhere. Finished it. Yeah. Wouldn’t look back on that one.

[01:42:33] Is your wife is your wife is your wife more a risk taker than you.

[01:42:37] Would you say? And trust me, not. No, not but she got good judgement. She married me now she got you know she’s got very good judgement.

[01:42:48] So when you think, if you think of an idea oh really. When you think of, when you think of an idea and if she thinks it’s a good idea too, then you sort of go full in on it because you feel like she’s got good judgement.

[01:43:01] Yeah, the worst financial decision you want dentistry or just generally financial decisions you like? Yeah. Well, we see again, I have to say my wife, she warned me there was this sort of investment scheme I was desperate to back in. I had a bit of a low period in my in the mid 2000 so when I was about just turned 40, a mid-life crisis which you could call it, you know, and I’m desperate to get out down the street, desperate to try. And I really had and I somebody come along and said, oh, invest 35 grand into this property scheme. It will be brilliant. You’ll make a fortune. That’s something the other my wife went, don’t like them, don’t like them, don’t like them. And I went, Oh, you’re wrong, they’re fine, they’re fine. You don’t want their space, you know. So then you know. And I went, No, no, no, no. So I basically, against my wife’s judgement, took 35 grand of our money and invested. Yeah, it went tits up. Lost it all. Yeah. Loss of all. Yeah. So you know it’s one of those desperate and this factor when you’re desperate for the money, you make poor decisions, you make.

[01:44:12] Bad decisions.

[01:44:13] You make bad decisions, you know? And I think that’s what young guns don’t be desperate for the money. You know, money will come if you treat people correctly. Money will come and and you do. Yeah. So it’s not but yeah. Yeah, no. My wife, she will say I told you about them. She still brings up from time to time now and I’ll go, that was, that was 15 years ago. Now I play Sarah. I think we’ve gone past that, you know. But yeah, you know what? I still beat myself up about it. I didn’t see that coming, you know, I stupid it was, but yeah, that was the place I was in at the time, you know. So, you know, and probably going back to be an associate for too long. I sold the practise. I sold the practise in 2009 and then stayed in it for a few years. Yeah, I was probably wasn’t the best decision for that actually. But apart from that, yeah, I can’t say I actually have been, let’s say, very lucky with where I’ve ended up in life. I can’t complain.

[01:45:15] Excellent. We’re coming to the end of our time gap. So I’m going to ask you the same questions we ask all our guests at the end. Am to two questions. One is fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive. Who would you.

[01:45:31] Pick? Well, the weird with the first one is a weird one. It would be my wife’s great grandfather I use called Surfside Wazir Hassan. All right. Who was the founder of the All India Muslim League. All right. Okay. My way out. My father was from North India, originally from Lucknow area. I went to medical school and whatnot and was meant to go to Cambridge, but couldn’t go because my father in law was born in 1929. His grandfather was Uttar Pradesh. He was the Lord Chief Justice of Uttar Pradesh. Rajesh sounds fascinating bloke, absolutely fascinating and so much so. When my father in law grew up, he went to medical school, right? With a servant. Right. And I said and then looked on. I went and I said to him, Sir, your life when you grew up was very like Downton Abbey. And he went, he thought, Oh, yes, I suppose it was. He said, we had more staff and I mean, and so he had but his his his his grandfather was a fascinating character and actually has a street named after him in Lucknow. So, you know, he’s fascinating to meet, you know. The second one is my love of rugby, the Brian Driscoll of it’s simple but probably the world’s best centre, arguably. But we met him at London Irish when my son was seven and my son took fright and couldn’t go over and see him and God bless him.

[01:47:10] Brian O’Driscoll noticed that my son Rory was sort of cowering by a tree crying, and he went over and actually tapped him on the shoulder and said, And I just thought, You know what? You’re a decent bloke, actually. You know, you noticed that child was, you know, like that. And, you know, I suppose the last person I sort of I struggled with to think who I would like to have have along. Yeah, I really because there’s nobody I sort of hugely go, Oh God, yeah, it’d be great to have so-and-so along. It would be nice to have, you know, I think everybody would say this, but it’d be nice to have my father back just to see, because I think he was such a businessman. He’d be very proud of what I did. I think it would be nice he died before because I was very much he was 47 when I was born and he died when I was only turning 40 and I hadn’t hit quite the success I have now. And I think it would be nice for him to come along and then he could be very, very proud. You know what you know? So yeah, but yeah. So that would be basically my mix. Yeah.

[01:48:13] Very nice, man. Very nice. Interesting mix of people as well. The final question. It’s a deathbed.

[01:48:23] Question.

[01:48:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that far. Not that far.

[01:48:28] Enough. Sure. You’ve got plenty of time on your deathbed, your nearest and dearest around you. What three pieces of advice would you give them?

[01:48:38] My first one is Don’t be a sheep. All really don’t be a sheep. In other words, do not follow the herd. The flock stand up for your own opinion because ultimately you end up with a very dissatisfied life. If you try and mould yourself, you are your own person and what you what you believe in is right. So definitely don’t be a sheep. The second.

[01:49:06] Voice.

[01:49:07] Yeah, the second one would be I had a couple I was torn up between exercise more, which is important to realise that later on in life. But I see trust that I think that’s what a lot of people would say. Wouldn’t it be trust your trust, just literally listen to your gut. If I’d listened to my gut about that investment I’ve made. Yeah. And the final ones are probably true, but slightly more tongue in cheek is yeah, don’t drink cheap red wine. Make sure you drink less of it, but drink better.

[01:49:45] Yeah.

[01:49:47] I like that. I like that. Well, it’s been it’s been wonderful. It’s been it’s been probably our longest podcast ever because we had to go through the red wine bit. I hope you keep the red wine post going. Yeah. So you don’t get put off by by some of those negative.

[01:50:07] You can do. You can’t do. That’s the problem. Yeah.

[01:50:10] But, but you know, there’s a discipline in doing something and sometimes you feel like you’ve got to do every week. I don’t think you should do it every week. I think you should do it every time you’ve got something where you’ve spoken to someone, you know, that’s that’s the important thing. And you seem to speak to a lot of people. You seem to know a lot of people. So, yeah. So you seem to get a nice different views of of what what is and isn’t controversial. It’s lovely to see those. And I really hope the new group goes very well as well. Not such a good day at the orifice. I think every dentist should be part of that and and encourage everyone.

[01:50:40] To.

[01:50:41] Contribute.

[01:50:42] It’s the posting is important. Yeah. Just to help other people.

[01:50:45] Contribute to that because you know the key point in this podcast is what were your mistakes, what can we learn from them? And you know, we don’t talk about our mistakes enough in this profession. We need to talk about them more. Absolutely. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you so, so much.

[01:51:02] Now yeah, now I know it was a great. Thank you very much. Payman.

[01:51:07] 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.

[01:51:23] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:51:37] 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.

 

[00:00:00] And I always remember this very wealthy woman. And she said to me, Oh, I’ve been told I need a gum graft around this implant the right. And I’m like, Well, yeah, I can do it. But then I wasn’t charging a lot of money and it was going to be £400. Right. And she drives him with this very expensive car outside. And she’s busy saying to me, Oh, that’s too expensive. And I’m looking at it and and I’m not backing down. And she’s saying, Well, I said, I’d rather not do anything. And she says to me, Well, it sounds like you do it for free. And I said, No. And I said, I’m the only one in the West Midlands that can do this, and you don’t want to irritate me any further. And she was well aware of that. Never, I never seen again. But then I turned around and I said, So what’s your son do? And she goes, Oh, he’s a lawyer. I said, Oh, that’s really good. Yeah. And I said, So what would you feel if your son had to reduce his fees? She said, Nothing, you know, and that was it. But I think you have to have that confidence to tell people, fuck off.

[00:00:57] Yeah, no.

[00:01:04] 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.

[00:01:22] It gives me great pleasure to introduce Dr. Ahmed Patel, Specialist Periodontist from Birmingham Practise Owner, Teacher, Current President of the ADC. And if you still don’t know who he is when you see him out on social media, he is definitely wearing the brightest outfits that you can possibly see. I mean, we’re on we’re on a podcast now and he’s wearing a bright turquoise zip up hoodie. Filler. Filler. Got to get the brand in, mate.

[00:01:53] And be honest. Right. Because when I was a kid, you’d see all these kids wearing these filler tops and Sergio to TV. And then, you know, it was like, oh, I’d like one of those. But you know what? Can’t afford it.

[00:02:07] I couldn’t afford it, mate.

[00:02:09] Oh, exactly. So now I’m like, you know, and my mum and dad just to take me down to Wembley Market and you’d be like, I’m still not going to ask for it because it was, you know, obviously it was a it was a dodgy, dodgy one and that’s fine. But it was still expensive. But now it’s like I’ve got a little bit of money. I’m going to invest.

[00:02:23] Treat yourself, but treat yourself. You know, I remember those days growing up, me and we used to go to the markets to get our clothes and all my mates had nycc and we had, we had Nick’s.

[00:02:35] Yeah.

[00:02:36] And I and I see I don’t even know if anyone knows that brand. Right. But that was the alternative, right? And we had that and we got the piss ripped out of us for that. Right. And because we didn’t have much growing up. But, but, you know.

[00:02:50] It was amazing like so like back so because I am 50 this year and you know, my mates, they were from divorced families and stuff and then they’d be going out at the age of 15, 16 and they’d be buying these really expensive T-shirts like C two set and, and, and shoving you on and all this. And it’s like you’re paying 70, 80 quid for a t shirt. And I’m like, Whoa. But then in the late eighties, and there’s like a huge amount of cash, you.

[00:03:19] Know, I don’t even do that now. Not going to do that now. But just going back to that, I mean, I think everyone would recognise you as that guy who even turns up to formal events, right? Wearing your suit and your bright orange dreads, you know, and the long hair, right?

[00:03:34] Yeah. I’m very out of luck. Exactly.

[00:03:37] Now I’m very jealous, mate. I’m very, very jealous. But just tell us about your back story. You know, where you were born, where you grew up, and your upbringing.

[00:03:47] So I was born in the UK and my dad is a civil engineer and he worked in the UK for companies and all that sort of stuff. So and my mum was sort of, I think she used to be a schoolteacher when we were in the past, but then became a housewife type of thing. Sure. And yeah. So we were born in we lived in north west London in Edgware. And actually I’ve got I would say I was very fortunate to be living there because it was really, you know, a nice kind of suburb of of London, really. And we had I had Japanese friends, I had Italian friends. I had friends that were from Ghana and all this sort of stuff. It was really, really good. And yeah, so it was, it was, it was fun, but we were all just went to normal state school and just, you know, and we were latch door kids because my parents both went to work. So we’d had the keys to get into the house and we’d sit at home and you’d watch school. I came home and it is amazing when you think about it, you know, because you had to make your own food and stuff and you just at home watch TV. So yeah, it was and you know, and it was also good because you’d go and hang out with your mates on the streets and stuff and everything and your neighbours knew it was good. Yeah.

[00:05:03] I remember those days, mate, that we would probably less so during the week, but on the weekends me and my brother would just nip out on our skateboards and BMX and then just disappear. Me and our parents wouldn’t know where the heck we were, right? We were just talking about.

[00:05:21] They weren’t fussed.

[00:05:23] But then they didn’t care me and we’d, you know, we’d go and play whatever in some hills, make some dens and go and cause a bit of trouble and then come back in the evening for our tea. Right. And the thing is that there was no issues around security where now, mate, my little six year old. Yeah. If I’m in like some kind of a theme park or summat and I let go of a hand for 10 minutes and I can’t see her. Yeah, I’m having palpitations, mate.

[00:05:49] Yeah, I mean, this is it. It’s things have changed and but you know, I think maybe we live in a society where also other adults don’t want to look like they’re checking up on a child or whatever it is, whereas before it was, you know, there’s a much more community based feeling, wasn’t it? I mean, if you think about it, you know, lockdown, what was amazing about lockdown was, you know, we all started to become much more community based. But that’s. Stopped again, right? Yeah. Yeah. One thing I did, one of the negatives about lockdown was because I have my practise in the city centre and I used to go in and just, just just just do some whatever, just to have some continuity.

[00:06:29] Bit of admin or.

[00:06:31] Something that wasn’t important but just what it. But what was interesting is because there’s loads of apartments where I work my practises and you just it was dead and you saw that these people were not mixing with their neighbours, you know, and that was the opportunity that just sat in their flats and didn’t open the doors. So. So I think, you know, it’s a shame. But, but when you go to other countries abroad, you know, you know, there’s that community still there, isn’t it? Like Italy, Spain, even though they live in apartments and the generation who’ve lived in apartments there is this family, you know.

[00:07:03] Going back and just customer mind back to those days. I don’t know if you experienced this, but you could literally walk straight into your mate’s front door, knocking it slightly open. You go straight in, say hello to the parents, you know, is Johnny coming out to play or whatever? And then off you’d go and you’d be in and out of each other’s houses. Yeah. Locks went on, doors were open. I remember those days. And now we’re so security conscious.

[00:07:27] Yeah, and I think it is. I mean, I was. It was interesting what you just said, right? Because I know we’re both like old farts, but back then, you only had the news on twice, right? Yeah. And it was. And before then there was no breakfast TV. Right? So there was the news at 6:00 and then the news at 9:00 and that was it. Right. So you only had 30 minutes of news, so you weren’t ever terrified of any stupid stuff. So as soon as 24 hour news came along, they had to put something on it. And obviously the Americans have driven this so they would turn around and just there’s a there’s a squirrel that’s escaped and it’s killing all humans, you know, but it had to be some useless news. And this is what’s happened. So people have become fearful of their own shadow.

[00:08:16] And the one thing that we definitely didn’t have back then was social media, right?

[00:08:21] Yeah, I, I am not a fan. I mean, it is really useful. I joined Facebook, maybe, I don’t know, eight years ago or something like that. And it was really for me, I didn’t have a clue what it was about, but obviously I’d heard about it back in 2006 because people were talking about it then. I had no interest then. But when you started finding out dentists using it, right? Okay, I’ll join it and friend and all this stuff because I didn’t really know many people and then it obviously escalated. But one of the good things about for me, for Facebook was that I could learn to with a really good clinicians around the world and in the UK. Right. And then you’d build relationships with them because you can contact them. And that was really good and you’d ask them advice and stuff. The bad things of Facebook is for me, you know, you might want to share your work and suddenly somebody comes out of the woodwork and they, they give it a large and they just want to destroy you and stuff.

[00:09:22] You and tear you a new one for whatever minuscule reason or their own ego.

[00:09:27] Right, exactly. And and it was really interesting because I was thinking, well, hang on, this person is asking for help. But and maybe, you know, they may not be fully aware how good or, you know, average their work is or whatever. But but there is a way of doing it, isn’t it? You know, and I think that and it’s really easy to sort of hit sit behind behind a screen and do this. I mean, now I can see your face and I could you know, I’m not going to say anything bad about you. I mean, we’re friends, but but I could if I didn’t know you, I could rip you apart. But if I’m watching your emotions, then I would change the way I’m seeing that. Does that make sense, mate?

[00:10:06] It make it makes complete sense. And, you know, I speak to a lot of dentists and my own experience of social media. Right, is that there are these people called they’re given the title of keyboard warriors these days. Right. But, you know, that person wouldn’t come to come up to you in a conference and say, by the way, do you know the case you posted the other day? That was dog shit, mate. And I’d do this, that and the other. Right. But they’ll do it on social media, right? And so it allows them to act and behave in a certain way that they wouldn’t do normally. And my take on it is it just pulls you away from real life, right?

[00:10:40] Where you, you know, because we all have we’re all social creatures. So what is it that makes you think that you have a right to do this? Because the reality is you say that to my face, they will be a massive issue. Right. Because I know and both of us who are brought up in a particular way.

[00:10:57] But you sound like someone out of Peaky Blinders now.

[00:11:01] But this is it, isn’t it? Because, you know, you as a dentist, you have to be professional. But actually most of us, we walk up a particular way and there will be our wreak havoc.

[00:11:12] Yeah, we have our instincts in the way we react as human beings. Individually and, you know, that whole social media journey, you know, I went through a period where I was posting every single day, right? Multiple times a day at times. And I’ve just picked that up again. But the one the one what I noticed is I was getting consumed with comments, direct messages. I’ll tell you what it did do. It created a massive uplift in business. And the reason it did that is, you know, there’ll be some people that resonate with my content and some people will say, who the hell does this guy think he is? Right. And I’m cool with either. All right. But you do get emotionally impact with it. And I started to withdraw from real life.

[00:11:53] Yeah.

[00:11:53] So whatever’s going on there that I get distracted in, my daughter walks in and even though she’s in the room, I’m not in the room with her. Right. And that’s sad. And I think COVID took me away from social media, if that makes sense. I got COVID had it pretty bad. Yeah.

[00:12:08] I remember you.

[00:12:09] Saying disappeared body. And it’s it’s a breath of fresh air. And what I’m trying now is to post and not check it. Right. So I’ll put a piece of content out there and just not check in and try my best to not give a you know what? And that’s my that’s my strategy now because real life is far more important, right?

[00:12:30] Lately. Yeah. And and I think and I think what is interesting is, you know, you’re right, because there’s a guy called a shaman and he does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the stuff about Instagram. And it is interesting because he’s saying you don’t have to post every day because it is because you know, you’re having to you’re checking it and you almost have to like keep an eye on it and almost have to grow it. And it’s like, that’s not but but again, I’m too old, so I don’t know if that’s the way to do it because I earn money by physically seeing patients. Right now, I understand social media has changed, especially with Instagram, where you are, you have to work it every day because you want patients to come to you directly. And I’m in a very fortunate position because I’m a specialist. I don’t need patients to come to me. I need dentists to refer to me because and that’s why I have to lecture. And I love it. And I do whatever I have to do to network and build that relationship with dentists. So maybe, maybe Instagram or whatever it is has changed the way you interact with patients. But, you know, like I said, as you maybe post once a week, but then step away from it if you can. And you’re right, you know, that’s the right thing to do. Christmas is probably about Christmas. I just didn’t use my phone for two weeks and it was just so good I didn’t miss it. But what was amazing went back to work and I was straight back on to Facebook and Instagram because I was like, Oh, good, let’s just check. But then I realised I don’t need it, you know.

[00:13:58] It’s like crack. Me Yeah, it’s addictive. And you know, I think for you, you know, if you came to me and said, Look, what should I do with my social media? You’ve just you’ve just told me what you should do already without even knowing it, which is your audience are dentists. Yeah. And they come to you because you’ve got a level of expertise, clinical, academic, you know, whatever it is, knowledge, experience that they don’t have. Right. Whether it’s treatment, planning, identifying stuff, carrying out the surgery, whatever it is, you’ve got that experience and expertise. So if I was in your shoes, if you wanted to grow that side of things, I would be sharing case reviews and tips, hence that sort of thing. And it doesn’t have to be every day. But you know, you are louder than life character because of your bright, you know, attire and all the rest of it. Right. So people know Amit Patel has arrived. Yeah. And so I think you I think you do really well on social, but I guess the key comes down to do you really need it, right.

[00:14:57] Yeah. And actually you’re going back to that, you know. Yes, I do dress a particular way and I probably I do to be, you know, to be what it contrived or whatever it is or I don’t know what the word is. But just to show that, look, you know what?

[00:15:16] I am not a conformist.

[00:15:18] Yeah. There you go. That’s the word. Yeah. So and I do that on purpose because, you know, as a student, I didn’t fit in very well at university. I just did anything else but dentistry. Right? I did have long hair back then. And they’d be saying, if you don’t cut your hair, you will fail finals. So I had to cut the hair and I still fell finals.

[00:15:41] So that’s because you’re Sampson me and all your power was in your hair.

[00:15:45] Yeah, yeah, but. But, yeah. And then now obviously I’m a specialist and it’s like, okay, I could look and dress a particular way, but, you know, I don’t really care. I don’t need to show people this is what I am. And I’ve been to I’ve been, again, very fortunate that I’ve lectured at some of the biggest events in the world. So I’ve lecture Europe area where we have 13, 14,000 people at this event, and I’ve done it three, two times and I’ve been on and I’ve been lecturing next to the people that I want to be like and emulate. You know, I’ve always looked up to and even in that situation, I will address a particular professionally, but then I’m rocking around with a twist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, but people, you know, because they assume that you aren’t someone who’s got a brain or whatever. And then but it’s not an issue. I mean, I’m not I’m not very competitive is the truth. But yeah, sorry. We were digressing about social media, but I think one of the issues it could be based on the web and brought up because I’m not the most confident of people about my abilities because I still feel that I’ve got so much more to learn. But there’s a lot of people and it could be the way they’ve been educated that they are very, very confident and they come out thinking that they are so good.

[00:17:01] But when I qualified as a student, I realised as a dentist I realised that I had so much more to that. Even when I qualified as a specialist, I realised I wasn’t good enough to even call myself a specialist. Right know. I mean, I did four years training at guys at St Thomas’s. I only place 13 implants in four years. That means I ain’t good at anything. Right. And I went out of my way to so to meet the people, the best people in the world. I went to Milan. A good friend of mine is a professor in Perio. Julia Russell really spent a month there learning how to do periodontal regeneration and all this kind of cool stuff. And then I built the network of people that he knew some of the best periodontist in the world. And then I went and watched some amazing implant dentists, you know, many weeks with them. And then there’s some here in the UK that I’ve spent lots of time with and I realised actually there’s so much more I can do and now I can give to my patients. And then I was, I was at hanging out with my mate at Harvard, spending a bit of time there to learn loads of stuff that they were doing. And his name is David Kim. He’s a professor there now. And and all that network has worked really well for me because I still want to learn more.

[00:18:12] I mean, I’m off to Brazil in August to learn from this young soft tissue expert called Ricardo Kearns. And he’s just an amazing individual. And we’ve been friends for about five years. And if I mess up a case and I do mess up tons of cases, right. And if I haven’t got a clue what to do, I call up Asia, man. Yeah. And I call up another mate, Michael David Gonzalez, in Spain. And I got all these other individuals that will say, look, this is the way to fix it and oh, let’s see how it heals. And they’re much they’re really cool individuals. They’re not critical. They tell you the where where it went wrong. So it’s really good. So I’m always learning on a regular basis. So, so that’s been the biggest thing of social media for me because, you know, you meet some of these individuals who you’ve built that relationship and then, yeah, good lifelong relationships and then you go and visit them as friends. And now because of the Adeyeye, the Association of Dental Implants ology, I’ve been very, very fortunate where I can just ring up anybody and they’ll come and do it. I mean, there’s a guy called Thomas Albrechtsen Albrechtsen, and he’s essentially the godfather of implant dentistry and he’s going to be lecturing on the conference next year. Oh, wow, he’s never left the UK.

[00:19:28] We’ll come back to the ADA. I’ve got quite a few questions around that. But going back to your upbringing, you mentioned that, you know, maybe, you know, you don’t have the confidence because because of your upbringing. Right. And I can resonate with that. And I also think about my own kids who were beaming with confidence. Right. Will stand upon a stage in front of 100 kids and belt out, you know, whatever it is they need to and have zero anxiety. Right. I know. You know, I’ve got a couple of lectures coming up every time that happens, right. The butterflies kick in me. Yeah. And I start thinking about all those sort of things. Doesn’t, doesn’t. And we’ve seen the younger generation on social media just have bags of confidence. Right. And I think part of that is to do with our upbringing. But what do you think it is about your upbringing, where you feel that?

[00:20:15] So the thing is, I, you know, when I was shit at something, I was told I was shit at something, right? So that was fine. And it didn’t, it didn’t bother me. So I had to work hard and do better. Right. But it wasn’t like I was told. It was good because you even knew it was rubbish. I mean, you know, it was rubbish, right? So I think that was what was good about it. I think that is real. Been a benefit for me, I’d say. And, and you know, if I pretended to sing my mum and dad was you’re pretty rubbish. And I’m like, fine, that’s the end of it. I’m not going to do it. I mean, maybe that’s not the right thing. And it’s interesting because also when I was at dental school. It’s all changed now. But if you are rubbish at something, they did tell you, right? So that was a good thing. Right. And it just made me want to think, och, I would never get to the point where I said I’m going to prove them wrong because that’s that, isn’t it?

[00:21:17] Not you.

[00:21:19] I had no interest in that, but I wanted to get better than I will do it. So I think that was the reason. And and also there’s this there’s this saying, isn’t it physical imposter syndrome or something like that?

[00:21:31] Do you know what that was screaming out at me? And the reason why is you just said to me, oh, I did this. I did my specialist training. I did this only place, this implant. I’ve gone and see this guy, but I’m still not good enough. Yeah. And to me, it just screams imposter syndrome, because you kind of feel like you’re putting yourself out there, I guess. I don’t know what. What’s your take on that? What’s your take on imposter syndrome?

[00:21:56] I mean, I didn’t realise that’s what it was call what I had. It’s like you said. So you and I both lecturing in this thing at this weekend. Right? And I am anxious about it. Right. And I will be doing it until it’s like an exam. You are poo in your pants until you sit there, write your name on top of the exam paper, and then suddenly everything goes away. Yes. And that’s what will happen. So I am so nervous to the point where I’m doing my presentation just before the before I plug it in. And, you know, it’s the same thing with Europe area, right? So I knew that I was lecturing with a guy called Otto Xur and Gallop Gazelle and a guy called David Herrera all at the same time on the same stage. And and, you know, I knew a year in advance and I was still anxious about it for a whole year until I turned up and did it, did the talk. And I can’t get rid of that. And, and yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know the answer to that. But I mean, it’s like when I go, you know, I love you, brother, don’t you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think he’s he’s just an amazing human being. Right. And, you know, when I stand next to him and he just oozes confidence that every single pore of his body, it is hilarious. And and next thing I know, I’m in awe of this man. Right. And the rest is I’m like six foot and he’s like, two foot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, makes me look like I’m the smallest person in the room because of what he has, you know? And it’s amazing. But he has confidence based on how good he is. Right. And clinical ability and his knowledge and all of this stuff that makes him.

[00:23:41] But the one thing Caleb does is he does speak volumes about you. And he does say to me that, you know, you’ve got that guy who you can call up when shit goes wrong. Yeah, you’re his guy. Oh, really? Yeah. And he says to me, you know, it’s nice to have someone like Hamlet who I can just whizz a photograph across to pick up the phone. And, you know, he just squares me away. He sells me out, right? So even though you’re in the same room and you’re looking up to this, you know, two and a half foot guy or down to him that he does look up to you as well, mate. And, you know, he comes to you for that for that higher level advice. I would say.

[00:24:22] This. So I don’t I don’t know about the confidence thing. I mean, I think I’ll always like it. I mean, again, it comes to also if an individual ask me a question, I know I will know the answers and I will answer in a professional way. But but when someone sort of says to me, Oh, yeah, I think the work is good online, I get really embarrassed and I’m like, Oh, that’s very kind. But actually I think this is not as good or whatever it is, you know what I mean? So I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know how you deal with that because I mean, it’s a really good friend of mine called Nick Fahy and you know him as well.

[00:24:53] I know Nick. Yeah. Good friend of mine, too. Yeah.

[00:24:56] Yeah, he’s exceptional individual. He’s. He’s somebody I’ve known for 12 years now. Right. And he’s amazing. And he’s a specialist in his field and he runs a stunning practise in Pango. And what’s interesting about him is he’s been pushing digital implant dentistry and the whole concept of guided implant dentistry for 12 years and he knows more than most people around the world, and yet he lacks confidence because he feels maybe he’s, you know, he’s not in the right place or whatever it is. But it is fascinating. But I will go and say. Days of them learning from him because he knows everything. And yet we’re in the same position where it’s like, Well, hang on, I’m thinking to myself. He’s a specialist in prosthetics and I’m a specialist in Perio. And what I’m trying to say is that he’s probably thinking, why is this periodontist come to learn from me? And I’d be thinking, why is this dentist is a specialist for me? But it’s like, well, he should already know it, you know what I mean? But it is I don’t know. I don’t know how you get over that. I don’t know. The things are changing.

[00:26:02] Yeah. Look, I’ve had many conversations with Nick and his wife, Sarah, about the whole Nick confidence thing. Right. Because he is bloody amazing at what he does, right? There’s no question about that. He’s. He’s somebody who I’d consider to be quietly confident. Yeah, but you can’t go out there and blow his own horn. It just it just doesn’t have that in him. And I respect.

[00:26:22] That because, I mean, I know we know he’s not British, but I think it is. And the way I was brought up is, you know, you’re British and we do have a stiff upper lip. Yeah, but maybe that’s changed now. Well, you know, the days you meet these British individuals in the past, you watch films, they would never they’d have this air of confidence, but they wouldn’t blow their own trumpet. I mean. Yeah.

[00:26:47] But but then, you know, you grow in going back to you. Growing up as a kid, I don’t tell my kids the shit.

[00:26:53] Yeah.

[00:26:54] And I was told I was shit. I come home. Must test. Yeah. Got 98%. Dad, what up. What happened to the other two. Yeah. What happened to the other two. That’s, that’s what I used to get. Right. So I think there’s probably some truth in that in terms of the way we were brought up and the, you know, the encouragement or their lack of that we had. Right. But it shaped us into who we are today. Yeah, exactly. You know, the way I see or deal with my own imposter syndrome these days is, you know, may I might be delivering a piece of content out there that is the same piece of content that someone else is delivering who is far superior to me in experience, years of knowledge and whatever. Right. But it’s the same content being delivered. But guess what? Some people prefer that content to be delivered by a two and a half bald guy. Yeah. And some people prefer that content to be delivered by the other guy who is the the pioneer of it or whatever. Right.

[00:27:55] And that’s cool and right. It’s just people will engage with you or relate to you in different ways.

[00:28:02] In different ways, mate. So, you know the way I do it and I’m still not over it, right? I get anxious all the time. But I do think that the way I deal with it is saying that, you know what, the way Prav delivers it, nobody else can deliver it like rough. Right. And that’s not arrogance. That’s not arrogance. It’s just Prav does it this way. And somebody else might deliver the same concept in a way better than Prav, right? I’m cool with that, right? And that’s how I try and sort of process it in my own head, mate. But moving on to your upbringing.

[00:28:37] Going back to this confidence thing, so I know I’m not told about imposter syndrome, but essentially so when I was a student, if I if I got a B, I was very content, like, okay, if I go to see I got into trouble because they were saying, that’s really bad.

[00:28:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:28:56] All I wanted was the least amount of replies I wanted just to get out of there and get a beat. So I was and but I teach because I moved to Birmingham and I teach at the university here in chapel. Yes. So that tells you who’s. An exceptional friend, and he’s helped me go into different directions. But essentially when I was teaching the students there, I learnt. That their confidence is amazing. Right. So. So I remember one day and I’d be you know, I always remembered that when I was a student at Liverpool, I didn’t want to be that clinician who showed favouritism to a particular sex or a particular individual, which is always the way back then, right? Yeah. So I remember one one student and I give everybody B’s, you know, because they were average, you know, and they were good enough, you know what I mean? And once you turn up to me and she said, I disagree with your grading, and I was like, Oh, really? You’re only like a third year or fourth year. Where do you get this? Confidence is amazing. And then all these individuals are like they will go and shit.

[00:30:11] They don’t know what it’s going to be like because and I just went so. So do you think your what grade you want? And she went like I’m like, okay. So I said, so does that mean you’re as good as me? And then she backed down very, very quickly because they don’t realise the scale. Yeah. And you know, and, and I thought and then she and obviously she looked like an idiot in front of her mates. Right. Which was, which was really, which wasn’t my plan, but obviously that’s the way it ended up. But, but I was amazed. And then I’ve done all this teaching the trainer stuff. Oh, my God, I do that years ago. And and it’s fascinating when we got in this position where we say to people, so. Where do you think you did well? Where do you think you did bad? I mean, it’s like. What? It’s just. And we’re so much more cautious about not. You know, especially when you’re talking to someone face to face, it’s like, you know, you want them to do better, don’t you? You don’t want them to do that. No.

[00:31:17] But you know what? These days we just got to be careful about the words we use. Right. The certain words I used to use growing up that I couldn’t repeat on this podcast. Right. Because because someone would tear me a new one. Right. And maybe, you know, if we were having a beer or over dinner, I’d come out with that stuff. Right. No problem. So, you know, we are in a more cautious society.

[00:31:39] You say this because I was I was when I was driving back from Newcastle on Friday night at stupid o’clock and I was in bed by 130, but essentially at 9:00 on Radio four, there was something about it’s about the nineties and it’s really, really good because essentially it talks about I can’t remember who there was this film called Trainspotting, and there was a particular Scottish actor in a big Hollywood attached, I remember. So he’s he’s the one talking about it and it talks about. So in the eighties, we’re very much more politically correct, right? Yeah. And and then the nineties became less politically correct. But that also led to some of the issues that we have now in 2020. It really, really interesting. You’ve got to listen to that radio for 9:00. And I think it’s a it’s a bunch of it’s it’s called the nineties or something like that. But and it sort of put into perspective about the Internet coming into into the into the nineties. And this is why we now become much more woke because of what happened back then. Sure. And and that also talks about the Ukraine situation and stuff like that. And coming down to the of the war is very, very good.

[00:32:53] But again, it’s about the reason why I’m talking about that is because it also has given these a lot of people this self-confidence and their ability to just say what they need to say. But it’s also made it very difficult for us to be. Because end of the day, 90% of us will say things and it’s not really to hurt people. But that small 10% is so loud and making it difficult for us to be part of society. I mean, look, I have patients of a certain age, right? And they are blatantly racist. Right. And does it bother me? No, because it doesn’t matter. Right. Because because they’re in their seventies or their eighties, but they don’t, you know, and that is fine. But why am I going to try to change their attitude? Why do I need to do that? Why do I want to you know, they’ve only got a certain number of years and then they’re feeling that they’re not part of society. Does that make sense? And it’s because they’re scared of the wrong things, you know? Do you know what I mean?

[00:33:56] Makes complete sense, mate. You know, at the end of the day, you know, I look at those individuals, the older generation, who are racist. Right. It’s just the way they are. It’s the way they’ve been brought up. It’s the way that it’s what they’ve been exposed to. Right. And what’s this seven year old going to do to you?

[00:34:11] Yeah.

[00:34:12] Yeah. They’ve got their own preconceived ideas. So what? Right. Move on. Get on with your life, you know?

[00:34:19] And what is interesting is that that 70 year old doesn’t even see me. As being of a different colour. Which is hilarious. Okay, but. But everybody’s racist, right? Because it also it came back when it came to Brexit. So I’d be asking my patients of this age because they’re obviously. Doesn’t matter what race they are. Right. You know, they’ve they’ve seen the benefit of the of the EU and before the EU and then they realised this rubbish. So I get Asian patients come in, I’m going which way you’re voting and they say I’m voting Brexit. And I’m like, well why is that. We have too many foreigners in the UK. So this is a foreigner. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You say you have English people saying I’m voting for Brexit for the same reason, and so we’re all racist in our own little ways. It just depends on how you communicate with your circle of friends and who you let in and out. You know what I mean?

[00:35:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s that sliding scale again, right? We’re going to move on from this conversation.

[00:35:19] Before I get to this one. Yeah.

[00:35:21] Oh, we get carried away. But we can we can continue at the dentistry show next week. But you know what? When did you when did you decide dentistry was for you? Was it was it one of these, you know, Asian parents brought up in that environment? Doctor, dentist, lawyer, what was the.

[00:35:41] So I went to not a very good school, so and it is now a very good school, supposedly so. So I was 16 and I wanted to leave school. I wanted to join the army or or become a plumber. I just I hate I hate I didn’t hate academia. I didn’t want to. Yeah, I’m really rubbish at learning and, and they were like, well my mates decided to do the A-levels. So I was like, I wouldn’t did that. So they were doing like graphic design. They wanted to be graphic designers and all that. So my mates were not anyway, none of my mates, the doctors or medicks or whatever. And then I went to do my A-levels and then the teacher sort of said and I was good at woodwork, right?

[00:36:24] So I was good at woodwork, my loved CBT they used to call it.

[00:36:28] But then yeah, yeah, design and technology and I love the lathe and all that sort of stuff. I love that. And this would out of everything okay if I left school at 16, right? Yeah. And then they were like, Well, you seem to be good with your hands. You know what? Maybe you should do dentistry. I’m like, okay, fine. And that was it, really. And but then it was a B and two CS.

[00:36:50] And what was that? Some careers dude said to you, give dentistry a go. They flicked a book open and go, Oh yeah, you’re good with your hands. Give us.

[00:36:58] A shot. And that was it. And I remember it very vividly. I’m like, Okay, I’ll do it. Because my mates had decided that they were going to go and do graphic design or or whatever it was. Yeah, designing graphic design and and I went, okay, fine, I’ll do that. And, and my school again, we had a sixth form in the school and most of us went, we all failed at A-levels, most of us, and the rest that didn’t didn’t fail, you know, they did. All right, A-levels. They still went to a polytechnic because we had polytechnics like that, right?

[00:37:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:33] So yeah, that’s what it was. So I just did it for the sake of it. But then the problem, what happened was I did fail in A-levels and I got what I get, I got a C yeah. And I got an E and I got an RN. An RN is a near miss. I see now. That’s right.

[00:37:49] Do you know what you you should have told that girl when she came to you and said, hey, I’m not happy with my B, I bumped you up from a C, love. Where do you want to go?

[00:37:56] Yeah, that was really smart. Yeah.

[00:38:00] Well, go on. So. So you got you got a near miss. What happened? What happened.

[00:38:04] Next? I was really, really gutted because I thought I was going to get these A-levels and and but I didn’t work for it, you know, and I knew I hadn’t worked for it and it was just stupid really. And then I and then my mum and dad realised, oh hang on, maybe the school isn’t that good. They took us out of the school. I got a little Oh. And they put us in a crummy school. Right. And I had a very good friend, that Japanese friend Yuki and he lives in, lives in Japan now and, and his mum took him out of that school a year before without A-levels because she realised he wasn’t going to do well. So he went to this grammar college and then did very well, then left with a successful career. And so my mum and dad took us to the same college and we understood how to sit an exam and all these things. And my brother, brother got his A-levels, really good A-levels and went on to Aston and then I, I got three B’s and I went on to Liverpool but essentially when I went for my interview. So obviously nowadays there’s no way I’d even get an opportunity to be a dentist or a doctor or whatever, right? Because you have to do really well in your swimming test at the age of eight before you’re even allowed into one of these to do a degree like that. So I was rejected at all of these places because I wasn’t. My interview process is rubbish, you know. It’s not very good and it’s still not very good.

[00:39:25] Did you turn up in a bright turquoise tracksuit at your interview?

[00:39:30] No, I wore my dad’s suit because, you know, it was like I was like where my dad said didn’t fit. I never owned a suit. You know what I mean? It was.

[00:39:40] I remember going shopping at Burton for my first seatmate. Do you remember that store?

[00:39:45] Yeah, I do love it. Actually, go buy the bird. So when I went to Liverpool, we were told we have to buy dinner jackets and stuff because there was going to be loads of balls with it. And I’m like, Oh man, they’re expensive. So we had this place called the it was, it was called cardigans and you’d go into this place in Liverpool and it’s like loads of stores in it and second-hand clothes and you’d go and buy your dinner jacket. So I bought a dinner jacket for 20 quid and in it it was made like 1930 or something and it was written on it. It was really hilarious. Nice. The font was very different. I have a burnt jacket now at last. But. But yeah. When I went to my interview at Liverpool it was shocking interview because I’m not good at it and they just said, So I suppose you’ve been rejected from all the other places? I said, Yes. So would you like an offer here? I said, Yes, please.

[00:40:37] Wow.

[00:40:38] Yeah.

[00:40:38] And it was this directors that directors that.

[00:40:41] Yeah, and this is a long time ago. I remember it very, very vividly. And they said to me, So what, what grade would you like? And I said, Well, I prefer three E’s, please. And they’re like, Well, that ain’t going to happen. And that was it. And then I turned up. It’s funny because, you know, when my mum and dad drove us to university, it was on the same day. So my brother was in north west London up there one and six dropped my brother off at Aston and it was I remember dropping him off and I was thinking I was very anxious for him, you know, and he’s he was only 18 and stuff and, and it was good. My mum was calm and then they dropped me off at Liverpool and I was shitting myself because I’ve never left home. But more than that I want to stay London because my mates are there. There’s nothing exists out of London right now. That’s what I thought. And, and, and I remember, you know, my dad told me my mum cried 200 miles back home because they’d lost their kids. So it wasn’t like it wasn’t life. It wasn’t like, you know, I left a year early and then they had my brother.

[00:41:54] Yeah. How did you not clocked your exams or you would have been all right.

[00:41:58] My fucking fault. And it was. I felt so bad when I heard like shit. Yeah. And it was the funny, right? So essentially my mum would say, you know, it’s cold up north. So I was the only one at university who had an electric blanket.

[00:42:17] Say me. I grew up with those electric blankets. Yes.

[00:42:22] Yeah, I know, but it’s hilarious. And I’m they’re like if I’ve ever invited him in to my room. What is that? It’s my electric chair, you know what I mean? But I remember sitting in my home and he says, Roscoe and Gladstone at Liverpool. I just sat in a room. I did not know how to interact with people, any of that sort of stuff. And I just sat there and I got knock on the door and this big tall guy called Sean Rollins and he’s he’s Welsh and he’s 62 and he was loud Welsh accent and he goes, Hi, hi. My name is Sean Rowlands. I’m doing a veterinary degree. What’s your name? And we just became such good friends. Otherwise I would be still sitting in my room then and can you know. And he he suddenly just that, that, that, that one thing. Yeah. And it was, it was just and then, you know, you’re at Liverpool and you know, we had Brookside back then and you know, you heard the Scouser accent, what the hell is that? And you know, I got in the cab to the union the first, second night or something and this guy had such a strong Scouse accent.

[00:43:27] It was obviously from Everton or exactly or wherever. And I was just thinking to myself, Are you actually asking me for a fight? Because I don’t actually know what you’re saying because it sounds so aggressive, you know? But then it took me it took me three months before I could understand what they would say. Yeah, it was, it was good. And going to Liverpool I think made me a better person because I, I could, you know, became much more individual and I could survive on my own. You know, you had your own money, you never had to ask anybody for whatever. You just had to survive. Yeah. And I look at some of my friends who said in London, they’ve definitely not moved away too far from where they were originally from, which I think, fine, you know the choice. But I think if you were to leave, if you have the opportunity, you should take it and run with it. Really? So it was good.

[00:44:18] Push him as far. Yeah. My daughter’s at Edinburgh now and I was very keen on her not going to Manchester or Liverpool or anywhere nearby. Do you know what I mean? Not because there’s anything wrong with Manchester. Liverpool. It’s just.

[00:44:29] No, no, no, no.

[00:44:30] Too close to home, right? Disappear. Go spread your wings.

[00:44:33] And come home straight away. Ask for trouble, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Of course. I remember and this is interesting because because I back then I had a bank account with Lloyds and I thought, you know, because everybody switching bank accounts, I thought, let me do it because this might be a good thing. And I did. And at that point, I was stuck because I was there was no income, no money and stuff. And at that point, I remember it very vividly. I was shitting myself, right? And it wasn’t like there was loads of money, you know, but but I didn’t ring up my dad or my mum and say, Hey, look, I need a hand. But it just sort of had to deal with it, you know, it was. And all those things I think have allowed me to shape you. Yeah. And adapt to situations and and you know, bad things have happened to me, right? Without a doubt. Right. But it just makes you hopefully stronger, really. And, and if things come and somebody throw shit at you, you can just deal with it, you know?

[00:45:32] So I’m moving on from obviously you got into Liverpool University not with threes but but you know, some, some, some more respectable grades. And then what was just what was your university experience like in general? We did you get your head down at that point? Were you a bit of a party animal? Just talk me through university experience and was there any point during that journey where you thought, I want to be a periodontist?

[00:46:00] I love that we want to be a periodontist. Okay. Right. So so I was very lucky that the halls of residence I was living in was full of art students. Right. So the law or whatever degree there was and it was it was a luck, but also a bad situation as well, because they obviously did not have to be at university five days a week, 9 to 5. They could do what the fuck they wanted, which is amazing. Yeah. So I was distracted quite a lot. So the little Liverpool is such a small city, but the campus is is amazing because you have the art side here as well, the unions here. And on this side there’s the medical school and the dental school. Yeah, science sciences in this direction. But essentially I would leave the dental school and I just stroll over there and I’d hang out with all the students because the reality for me was they were having fun. Right? Of course. And maybe that’s why I didn’t fit in with in my own dental school, because I was less than student orientated, because we just did our own thing and I thought, I know the whole universities here.

[00:47:06] So yeah. So I used to go out every night and and obviously the weekends are a bit more restful of, but it was good. And you think about it actually it’s interesting because if you go and do that now, it’s a nightmare. You can’t I can’t stay out till silly o’clock and then work the next day. But we did it for like five years and it was great. But the negative about living with art students was when it came to sitting exams. They’d finished their exams in May or whenever, and they were having a great time. And you were they’re still working towards the exam so and then I always live with the non dentists, so it was, I’ve always had that sort of relationship but going back to dental school. So within the first three months we did something called up tech where we drill, drill these plastic, drill real teeth. And I realised at the end of that I thought, I can’t do this as a career, you know, because.

[00:48:05] If the first three.

[00:48:06] Months yeah, but I was committed to finish it, I was never going to walk away.

[00:48:11] No.

[00:48:12] Because I was having a good time and I’m a degree’s degree end of the day. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that. And it’s interesting that I bring this point up because I’ve met dental students who are at university now and they are three years into the degree and they have realised they don’t, they don’t like it but, but they don’t want to finish it, they want to do something, they want to, they want to leave and find something else. And I find that very difficult to comprehend because again, I’ve got friends who’ve done medicine, dentistry, and they’ve gone on and done completely different things, you know, and you, you, you’re an example of that and they’ve become very successful. So anyway, did dentistry finished it? And then year and year four, I turned up at a hospital in Woolton, which is really rough area, and we were there for a week and I’m like watching these go into that and watching these blokes. Have you seen them, predator? Yeah. Do you remember the predator? Where the guy gets his. Gets his mask off and the.

[00:49:14] Face comes apart? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:49:17] So there I am. I’m rocking up and I’m going. Patient’s face has been opened up like predator. And I’m going. What the hell? And I’m saying to them, Are you all dentists? And they’re like, Yeah, yeah, we’re dentists. And then they say, I said, But, but you cut this guy’s face open and they’re like, Well, we’ve done medicine as well. We’re surgeons. And we said they were maxillofacial surgeons and the guy’s name was James Brown and he was a consultant. And there was loads of registrars and there was a guy called Simon Rogers. He’s a professor now there. He was an amazing individual who helped me, you know, help me massively and loads of registrars there, John Devine and Dave Jones and all this sort of stuff. But essentially because they liked me and I was just so enthusiastic, they used to always drag me in and do that. Gomez Fratricide. Gomez And and mandibles. They got me to do all this stuff as a senior. And I was thinking, You know what? I like this. I might go and do medicine, right? And so at that point I said, right, get the degree out of the way, go on and do house jobs, max back jobs, and then go and do medicine. So I got my dental degree at last. I failed. Failed finals.

[00:50:29] Failed finals as well as A-levels.

[00:50:31] Yeah. Good Lord. How many times tell you? Yeah, exactly. No one was there to keep an eye on me, but. But essentially, this. These things would never happen. But in year three, there was an orthodontic consultant, and he didn’t like my attitude. And I never he never taught me after that. We never had any ones. And I was quite proud, I should say. I’m quite proud of it. But I was the first one to fail this exam at Liverpool Dental School and it was called Paediatrics and Orthodontic Dentistry. And no one, no one fails ever. I mean, it’s just a mickey Mouse exam. No one will fail that obviously I did and I’ve missed it by 2%. I even had a viva. And then I went and spoke to the paediatric consultant and his name is Mr. Lee was lovely. And he says, I didn’t think to me you did not fail. Right. And then when I saw the orthodontic consultant who runs the department, he just said, and back then we had no recording devices or anything like that. Right. Just so he said to me, he says, he says you fell because of your attitude. And if you don’t change your attitude, I’ll spare you again. And I then became this little meek individual after that. And luckily enough, I passed all the other exams by 60, 65. Right. And but then there was the people in the hospital would have a meeting and they would say, okay, who they should feel should pass, who should fail and stuff. And obviously no one put the hand up that I should pass.

[00:52:01] But one of the consultants was living in in Sheffield or Leeds. Leeds. And he came back and he said to me, he says, if I was there it would have been a different. Different, yeah. Because I wasn’t a rubbish chute. And you know what, I was very, very upset and very angry about the whole situation because I knew I was not the shitty student. I mean, and I will say this now, I don’t really care. You know, there were worse students in our year and I have not heard where they are, but they’re passed, right? Yeah. I was very angry and bitter about it all. But you know, now when I think about it, like everybody should think about stuff, would I be here talking to you? Would I have met your brother? Would I have become a specialist in Perio or whatever it is? Would I have had those opportunities, what I’ve published and everything that I’ve done? No, you know, and it’s so funny because, you know, so then I passed my degree obviously. Yeah. And then came back as a house officer and that consultant got many complaints about from me, about about me actually because I didn’t work. He was always complaining and he was saying, look, we know you have an issue with him, but he’s doing that. I said, does he do I work for him because no, I, I don’t give a shit. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but anyway, so then I, then I did my house job, I did my jobs and I loved it and I got my PhD.

[00:53:27] Yes. And I got into medical school, I got into Leeds, I got into a three year course and during that time I then did vet because I thought, you know what, I need to do vocational training because I’ve got to get that out of my way. Sure. Because I’m still a dentist. Right. It’s not like I didn’t you know, I wasn’t sure what I did not like about dentistry. Right. So I thought, let’s get out of the way. And and in that vet, I met a guy I went we went to see a specialist in in Manchester at a place called. It was called, but it’s called the Malthouse now, but essentially. David Cohen, who’s an orthodontist, was just so enthusiastic he was doing I mean, root canal treatment is mind numbingly boring when I was a student, but this guy made it sound so interesting. So I thought, you know what, maybe this is this is interesting. And then he took me out to dinner and he took me out with a periodontist that work there called Phil Green. And he said to me, you know, if you go with a scalpel, then do perio. I wasn’t looking for in any any other. Korean. But I was listening and keeping my options open and. Okay, I’ll, I’ll maybe I might consider Perrier because I’ll use a scalpel. And at that point, the speciality training pathway was being set up because the specialist had been set up because of the EU regulations. And we’re the only country that went the whole hog, whereas the rest of the European Union didn’t do that.

[00:54:45] So as always, and then I worked at UCL as an WHO and I realised how unhappy all of these registrars and consultants were. They were just so unhappy and I thought, I’ve been lucky to work at all of these amazing places and suddenly I’m exposed to these people who are unhappy. And I thought maybe that could be me because I’d have been a consultant age of 44. Okay? And so I then deferred medicine and got into the period training pathway and an A and again there was a mentor there called Allan City and he then made me realise what you can do. Now you go to his practise in, in Harley Street and he would show me, you know, look, we’re doing all this sort of reconstructing bone, all this sort of stuff. And I thought, okay, this is cool. And then from that point I then actually realised I love dentistry and the reason why I love it is it’s the interaction with the patient. The work is an exceptionally difficult if I’m having a laugh from a patient and just, just chatting away or whatever, it was really good. And I’m so pleased I didn’t go down that path of. Do match facts because the whole political situation within the NHS, I think I would be very, very annoyed and frustrated now. I like this autonomy that Kailash has. You have where we are our own own individuals and we make our own decisions. No one else is telling us.

[00:56:07] Yeah, you’re in control of your own destiny, right? You you make your own look, as they say.

[00:56:14] Exactly.

[00:56:15] So I assume you got you got through your period training and did you pass your exams?

[00:56:20] Yes, I did. Yes. Yes. First time I did. I know is.

[00:56:23] Relatively well done. So moving on from there, you became a fully fledged specialist. And then and then what happens after that? Did you what was your transition from this point to actually becoming a dental practise owner? Right. Because traditionally you’ve worked in hospitals, which is very, very different to where you are now, where you’re building relationships with your patients. Right. Completely like chalk and cheese. So just take us through that. Take us through that journey.

[00:56:52] You’re right. So, you know, the thing is, with working in a hospital, you wear this white coat and patients then think this is the highest opinion you will get and that’s it, and they usually believe you. But then when I started working in practise, it was a very different situation. Yes, yes, you were a specialist, but because you weren’t when that white coat didn’t come across in that same way. And also it was also a lack of confidence on my part, my part, knowing how little I experience I had, you know, and how much more I should I should be able to do so. So it was a very difficult transition. And one of the reasons and one of the things, you know, is I’ve worked in London and I was working in quite a few practises and I used to work in some really amazing practises and it was good and I used to work, to work in Manchester and all this sort of stuff as well with Phil Green. But I think I just got bored with all the commuting and stuff. And then my, my girlfriend who’s an intensive care consultant in Birmingham, and she said to me, Listen, why don’t you move up here in 2008? So I then 2007, 2008. So I did, I had no work because, you know, when you train as a specialist, most of us stay in the southeast where the money is and all the training is there. Whereas I just moved up to Birmingham and here in the city there was only three specialists and one of them was me.

[00:58:07] And it’s a very nice working class city. And again, I was commuting around not as you know, probably further than I would have done in London, but it would take the same length of time because it was just, you know, less traffic and stuff and no tubes. And then I enjoyed that. I built my experience because I work with some really I worked for a guy called Jason Glass and he owned three specialist practises in Shrewsbury, Stafford and in Birmingham and I learnt loads from him and understood about business then as well because he’s a very smart cookie. And I also then when I came to Birmingham, Prof. Chappell, Ian Chappell offered me a job and that was, that was an amazing thing, you know, because, you know, he’s the world’s best scientist in dentistry. Two years ago he was nominated the best scientist award in dentistry. Right. Wow. And anybody I went anywhere in the world, people that I’d read about. As soon as you tell them you worked for Ian Chappell or your you know, him, they suddenly want to they suddenly just talk about how how dynamic he is as an individual and you just realise it. You’re with one of the best people you know, and he’s the one who’s, in my opinion has built, helped me build my reputation because he’ll sort of push my name around and, and I’ve always been grateful for that really. And yeah, proper, proper. I mean what I say I love him. Yeah, I love him. Yeah. Because he’s done lots of.

[00:59:41] You seem to have crossed paths with a lot of sort of very well respected clinicians, scientists, academics. Even when you mentioned fourth year at dental school, you were the kid who got in to watch the Zigomanis and stuff, right? I’m taking it that there wasn’t another six dental students doing that. Right. You managed to to get that. What do you think it is about you that sort of enables you to connect with these individuals? Because right at the beginning we were talking about your lack of confidence. And yet, you know, you get this unique opportunity at fourth year at dental school, you’re Ian Chappell’s pushing your name around. Phil Green is the guy who said pick up the scalpel and, you know, do perio or whatever. And all of these names I have heard of, I don’t know to what extent their gravitas takes. You’ve just educated me on that piece, but what is it about you that that connects you with these individuals? Are you better one on one than you are in groups? What is it that.

[01:00:40] I don’t I don’t know the answer that you’re asking me a question that’s making me very uncomfortable, because I don’t in the sense that I’m not. Not. You know, it’s about talking about myself. And I don’t know. I don’t. One thing that I have been told is I am very irritating and annoying. Right. So. So I will if I want to speak to somebody and just that I’ve read about, I will wait and I will just say, listen, I really enjoyed reading this because I need to tell them that you have. Put something in me that’s made me think, Oh shit, I could do something different, but I want to tell them that. And I think that has maybe potentially helped me. For example, a good friend of mine now, his name’s Pat Allen. He’s one of the almost periodontist in soft tissue, and he’s in his late seventies now. And I met him at Boston at a conference in Boston. And again, there’s loads of other people I can mention that I built relationships from that as well. And, and it was hilarious. So he says to me, because, you know, obviously the Americans struggle, realising that some people might have a good English accent because of this interview.

[01:01:56] Right. He says ask him a question and he says to me, your English is very good. And I and I said to him. That’s because I’m English. And. And he was he was a bit embarrassed by that. So then he answered the question to my friend, who’s who’s from? His name is Haitham Al Rafi, who’s again? Another exceptional periodontist in London, once amazing para courses called Perry Academy, because obviously Pat was embarrassed about what he said to me. He then asked the question to to Hatem. And I’m there going. Well, I’m right here and it was hilarious. But then we became friends from that point, you know what I mean? And and again, he’s coming to lecture at the next year, and and I built a really good relationship with his wife and stuff. So he’s now suddenly know he’s there. And he and he again introduces me to people and he’ll throw my name around. But maybe because I’m a bit annoying and can be frustrating, but persistent.

[01:02:51] Persistent.

[01:02:52] Yeah, but I am persistent. But I’m also a lot of academics don’t find me competitive with them. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yes. I’ve noticed that once some academics are talking to each other and you can see there’s a guard up and I’m going, I’ve spoken to you privately, I’ve spoken to you privately, and you two are not talking the same way you do to me. And it’s hilarious. But yeah, you know, and maybe that is, is why I can have a bigger network of people because I just want to learn I am not competing with them. I don’t know the answer, to be honest.

[01:03:30] Okay. I think I think you’re very humble for somebody who’s in your position. That’s that’s very clear to me, not just in today’s conversation, but the conversations that we’ve had in the past. But moving on from there, when did practise ownership come about? When did you start working in in your own year?

[01:03:48] Ten years ago, I thought, right, well, I need to stop and just stop a squat. So I just found a little one surgery practise in the city centre and it was a dental practise before and it never did well because there was no passing track. So we’re literally in the middle of where there’s nobody walks past. It’s just off the back of the mailbox and I just sat there. So it’s just got one surgery, another room, which was a dental surgery, which I switched over and it became a CT scanning room. And we have a receptionist and a nurse, that’s it. And for months I sat there twiddling my thumb. I would go out to dentists and do lunch and learn and send newsletters out or lecture to them, free, KPD, all this sort of stuff. And I would write articles in the dental magazines and publish peer review journals, all that sort of stuff. But that sort of helped me build a small reputation and and obviously running a practise is something that I never wanted to do ever, because I saw the stress behind it. I thought, I can’t be bothered with this. It’s been it’s been a really good learning exercise for me. I don’t want to take over the world because I only have to stop.

[01:04:57] And what is lovely about it is they’re very protective and they, you know, we are a team together. If I’m doing something wrong, they will tell me off which is which is so much nicer. And so I’ve enjoyed that aspect of it and just having that autonomy and what I’ve learnt now is that I love what I do, and if I could do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I would. But my staff caught me, asked, you know what I mean? But you know, and this is one of the reasons why I contacted you, because I saw your stuff on Facebook and I thought and the best bit was I knew Kailash Solanki, right? Yes. Your name is Solanki. I did not realise the two of you are the same and I’d be contacting you, you know, because of what you were showing on, on Facebook. And I love the stuff you were posting. And I thought, this guy is smart and focussed and has a really great balance in his life. And I thought, you know, I’d like that. And that’s why I contacted you and that’s how we became. But then, then somehow I’ll be talking about your brother and you’re like, Well, actually, he’s my brother. I’m like, Whoa!

[01:06:00] So connected that I remember that moment.

[01:06:03] I know I you don’t look in my mind. You don’t look the same.

[01:06:09] We don’t look like each other. I’ve not got his funky hairdo. We’re like chalk and cheese and very similar in this in the same.

[01:06:15] And that’s what’s nice isn’t it. And I think that’s lovely. Yeah. And that’s why the two of you work so well together. And it’s the same again with you, my brother. You and your brother. Your brother and I, Kailash and I, we are the same. We’re chalk and cheese. And I think that’s why we work so well and we can be good friends. But that’s why I contacted you, because I thought, you know, I’m obviously not doing it right and I know I can still do better. But the problem I have is I am the problem because it’s letting go of that control, you know. And yes, I could expect, you know, and yes, I could get more people. I mean, I have 144 five Google reviews and I would be so upset if someone walked up and ruin that, you know, my insecurity, I’ll be sitting in a corner crying, rocking, like, you know, like, like really in a zoo, you know what I mean?

[01:07:03] Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, you’ve created that whole, that environment around you, right? And you’ve realised that you don’t want the additional stress of multiple associates or all the rest of it and you’re in control of that. Right. And you can go on holiday whenever you want and whatnot. And that’s, and that’s cool. And it’s all about you. And and there’s nothing there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[01:07:29] It’s like you just said. Also say to me, like before lockdown, they said, you spend ten weeks out of the out of the out of the clinic. And I’m like, well, it doesn’t feel like I spend ten weeks the most lecturing board, whatever it is, and the few holidays that might have gone on. And then when obviously when lockdown came along after lockdown, because I’ve not gone anywhere because you realise you’ve turned over this much and I’m like, What? And it’s like, I don’t understand why, because you never, you’re here, you know? And it’s like, Oh yeah.

[01:07:57] And you know, all of that comes down to, well, what you want out of life, right? The balance like, does turning over a significant number mean anything to you? Right. Is it important to you? Does your lifestyle allow you to sustain something that’s a lower level of income than than you could ever possibly spend anyway? And it’s all relative, mate. And, you know, you talked about like growth, right? We were talking about and you said, I know it’s me that’s holding me back. Yeah, we’re all holding ourselves back. Right. You know, I’ve been asked to give a lecture on growth at the dentistry show and the. Oh, my opening line will be the reason why none of you were growing beyond where you want to grow is just look in the mirror. Take a selfie. Right. It’s you. Yeah. We all have our self limiting beliefs or whatever. Right. And that’s what holds us back. But it’s okay.

[01:08:49] Yeah, you’re right. It is okay. And you’ve got it. And if you can accept it, that’s cool, right? But the problem is we all have this fear of missing out. And luckily I of course, I have this now, but it’s always based on something that’s really crappy and not important to my profession. Does that make sense? You know, be like, you know what, I’d love a PlayStation five, but you know, I’m not going to buy one yet. You know, that’s obvious. You know, I’d like some Lego and but I’m not going to buy it because it’s really expensive. But that’s what.

[01:09:18] I’m not going to buy it because someone’s going to send me a gift of Lego anyway, so.

[01:09:23] I can hope I can. But that one thing about Phil Green and David Cohen, because they used to use the guy called Chris Burrow and I don’t know Chris very, very well, but it essentially they used him to sort of develop the business. And and and Phil would take me to like a business lecture at the armoury in in Leeds and was Michael Gerber and he wrote a book called The E-Myth. Right. I remember you. I just mind is like 152 years old or whatever and still got enthusiasm. I don’t know how old is now if you’re still alive, but but essentially he was amazing. And there’s like a lot of people sitting in this room maybe, I don’t know, 800 people and a lot of them are dentists and they all want to get out. Right, or be able to do something different. But like you said, we all want we are our worst enemy. And and he was saying so he rocked up at the at the hotel. And and he was like, well, and he was listening to some of the conversation of some of the people around there that were saying, well, I can’t park my car here. And and then he was saying he thought about it. And then he was at the conference, he said, right. They talked about this park, people starting to park the car there. And he says, well, I could develop a business where I’ve got a little, little bicycle, you know, that folds away, put in to back someone’s back of their car.

[01:10:45] And I can then validate it off someplace else and park it someplace, right, then get back to the hotel so I can do this as a business. And then he was saying, he says, I’ll go to one hotel, say the Hilton is doing it even though they weren’t doing it and getting them all to do do this business. He was just making this business proposition and it was like that made sense. But then when we were talking about dentistry, he was saying, this is what you can do. And he goes and we said, You can’t do that. It just doesn’t work. And we’re the problem because we can’t see. And this is why someone like you comes into into play where you sort of sit from a distance and you go, well, actually, you’re the problem. It can be done. This is the way to do it. But we can’t see that. And I think and sorry, sorry about interrupting, but I think my issue also is that we have these dental business coaches and in my mind, I don’t like dental business coaches because you’re still a dentist, you still have the same attitude, you know what I mean? It needs to be coming from another aspect, whereas completely remote from our business.

[01:11:48] What I’ll say about that is that you know how you’ve got yourself limited in belief, and my clients have their own self-limiting beliefs and I help them through that journey. Right. I have my own self-limiting beliefs as well. Yeah. I’m not this, you know, this this guy who’s got all the answers, right.

[01:12:06] And I look at you, I’ll be able to pick holes in you. Oh.

[01:12:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tear shreds.

[01:12:11] In you. Exactly. Because we it’s a different and different entity isn’t it. But yeah.

[01:12:16] Yeah. When you’re in it it’s hard to see from that, from that bird’s eye view. Right. So I have coaches as well. Right. Because, because I need that right and so on and so forth. But going back to going back to you, so now practise owner and then the other aspect of your of your life is teaching. I one of the, one of the pieces of content that I do see out there a lot is, you know, you’re in Newcastle, you’re in London, you’re in, you know, you’re all over the place speaking, lecturing, teaching and whatnot. How did that first come about?

[01:12:51] Again, it actually tell me how that came about. So there’s a guy called Paul Tipton and everybody knows who I know Paul. So I went for a job interview for him because I was looking for work when I moved to Birmingham and it just so happened that it didn’t work out. But he always thought, okay, now he had my name and then he said, Right, he’s running these an education course and he would love me to lecture on it. So I talked about perio and aesthetic perio and and actually doing like a whole day course that I did have like, I don’t know, ten, maybe, maybe 15 years, actually, a long time. And I would let journeyman yeah, maybe a thousand dentists, right. And I loved it. You know, I really enjoy it and, and I, and I built it from that. And obviously the stuff that Ian Chappell would then get me to do, lecture at the university and then companies that ask me to get involved and all this sort of stuff because. Is why you think becoming a specialist is important really is because that you’re going to do part of the job is that you need to be lecturing and and essentially that’s just because you’re, you’re selling yourself to get referrals, aren’t you?

[01:14:00] Of course.

[01:14:01] So yeah, that, that that’s, that’s where it went from. And I don’t, I don’t do the lecturing capacity anymore because I just, I, I like it. But I was thinking it’s time for a change, you know? And what’s been happening over the some years is that people have been saying you need to run your own courses and I’m just really bit lazy or there’s not all the truth is I’m insecure because I think if I go and post on Facebook or whatever that I’m running a course, please come to my birthday party, all that sort of stuff, and nobody’s going to be coming, do you know what I mean? So that does play my mind massively so. But a good friend of mine here in Birmingham, Birmingham, called Zubair Sakhrani, he’s you know, he’s a he’s a really exceptional individual and just gives me good advice. And he’s said to me, look, let’s just run a course, you know, let me do all the hard work and we can. And I’m like, okay, you know what? Let’s just do this. So the plan is going forwards in the next year. We want to prepare courses for hygienists, therapists as well as dentists, and it’s going to be based very much on a practical way of looking at it.

[01:15:10] And yeah, we can talk about the academic side of stuff, but the way I look at it, whenever I teach any hands on or lecture, I always say, Look, if I can do it, anybody can. That’s all I want. I want I want everybody to know that because you know. You can do it. And I think I hate when you go to a conference or lecture and they set so high and I’m like, well, show me your face know, because I can see through those those those holes, you know. And then it almost makes the point, well, you know what? They’ve achieved this high. I can’t do it. And it makes then it makes clinicians around them thinking, actually, you know, I’m just going to sit in my own room, do nothing. And I don’t think that’s right. You know, yeah, I want the profession to know that they can do better and be better every day and their patients will benefit. That’s the most important thing for me.

[01:16:01] Amit, speaking of failures, what’s your biggest clinical mistake?

[01:16:07] Not getting not knowing the truth. Language of brothers.

[01:16:13] That’s not clinical, mate. Come on. And I’m sure there’s been a few, right? As with anyone with your level of experience. Right. But what’s been the biggest heart sinking moment where you just thought, shit?

[01:16:27] Okay. So there’s a lovely woman called Tracey. Right. And. Actually it will come back to that before that. The one that really bothered me the most and still does is when I was working as a dentist, I had a patient who came along. And back then we didn’t understand about bisphosphonates or bisphosphonates that are a drug that’s used in cancer treatments and also helps with osteoporosis because it reduces the activity of the osteoclasts cells. So then you get less, less bone destruction and you get more bone building because the osteoblasts. But essentially as a result of that, because you’ve got necrotic bits of bone in the within, the within the bone itself, the US can’t actually do it so it can’t eat it away. And then you get osteoblasts plastic cells, building more bone around it and you get this osteoporosis form that goes to science lecture. But you knew that.

[01:17:29] But yeah, I used to do you know what? I used to get confused between osteoblasts and osteoblasts. And my way of remembering it back then was the osteoblasts blast a load of bone out and make more bone, and then the clasps do the other bit. And that was my favourite. So, so when you were saying that it actually brought a smile to my face mate because it brought those, those memories back.

[01:17:56] Yeah. Yeah too and stuff. But yeah but he was, he was, he was, he was having this sort of bisphosphonate treatment because he had some sort of cancer in the past and then he needed these teeth taken out in the lower, lower, lower pre molars, lower left molars. And because of loose I took them out and I and back then none of us knew about it. So I took him out and it never healed. It was always necrotic and I did not know what to do. So I was always drawing the bone away, stitching it up, and it would never heal. And that was one thing. I always felt bad for this man because I just put him through this pain for year after year because of me. That was I always remember that. But one of my clinical and that was a clinical mistake based on lack of knowledge or lack of knowledge of the science in the profession to let us know these are this is a consequence. This is back in 2000. Yeah, this is back in 2000. It was in 2000 actually. Right. He hasn’t won the one of my cases that I’ve completely messed up here and I’ve learnt so much from, it’s a woman called Tracy, so and she’s just very lovely, friendly woman in her fifties and I’ve got beautiful smile and she’s got left one which needed removing and an implant placing. And I just looked at the space. I go, Yeah, I can remove it, but I didn’t. I just forgot to look at other aspects. And because essentially she had short clinical crowns, right? And when you take the tooth out, the body will then resolve back to where the clinical crown should be.

[01:19:30] So suddenly you’ve got a gap which is much higher. And I placed the implant thinking it’d be fine and the tooth was long and she didn’t like that. And then we’re now in a position where I was now going backwards and thinking, Alright, actually we need to crown lengthen all the other teeth when that wasn’t an issue for her. Right. And I was trying to all this sort of fancy reconstruction or soft tissue and it was just getting worse and worse. And then she brought a husband in. And I knew I was in trouble. And he’s and he’s a lovely guy. His name is Dave. And I would say. And all I did was I just said, look, I’m really sorry. It’s not going to plan. Right. And I think as a profession, you know, we’ve got defence unions. When I was when I was younger, they would say, you just don’t apologise because you’re admitting liability. And I think you have to learn to say, look, I’m really sorry. And then the whole situation was calm, you know, and I and I said to I said to Dave and Tracy, look, I’ll do whatever it needs to be done. It needs to be done to get this right. And they were much, much happier about the situation. And I said, you’ve got nothing to worry about costs because that’s not going to be part of the equation ever.

[01:20:36] Right. Because at that point, this patient is yours for life. I’m going to do whatever needs to be done to fix it. And luckily, I then contacted another friend of mine, David Gonzalez, in Spain, and I said, Well, what would you suggest we do here? And then we came up with a solution. And after like about two years of doing lots of other fancy stuff and she’s just over the moon, and she then on the last day of the treatment, she brought me these two lovely ties. You know, she didn’t have to. She completely forgot. Mess it up. Right. And she goes, I’ve really missed. Come in here. And I said, Look, Tracy, you’ll have my mobile number. You can contact me. You can come and see me any time. She’s now my patient for life, right? And when I let you at events, I wear these ties. And if I do talk about failures, these are the ties that woman bought me, you know? So I think I messed up cases, and I don’t ever focus on the cases. I do well and my nurse and my research centre and say, look, you know, do you realise look at what you do? I can’t see that. I only focus on the worst ones where I’m, you know, and they’re the ones that eat at me and they’re the ones I don’t I’ll not sleep through the night because I’m thinking, crap, why did I make that mistake? You know, why should I? Why should I make that mistake? How could I have done it differently?

[01:21:47] And you don’t you dealt with it really well. You know, you took ownership of it. And like you say, you’ve got a friend, stroke, patient for life. Right. And a new tie.

[01:21:57] And it’s and this is something, you know, not all my patients have my number, you know, because I know there are dentists that that will give them the number. And I think that’s a stupid right. I gave my number to patients. When I do a complex case and I say, this number is for you, contact me. There’s a problem. And they will always say, you know, I trust, you know, it’s really kind of give me a number, I will not contact you and they never do, which is amazing. You know, and I think the problem of going back to social media with Instagram, there’s this line that’s now been crossed between what you are as a person and the patient can tap on your door any time and you respond back, whereas a mobile phone, they don’t have the access to it. And I think that line of professionalism is very, very massive and grey and it makes me uncomfortable when patients contact you directly. But can you do this for me? Can you do that? But I can see the benefits if you’re trying to develop patients.

[01:22:54] Double edged sword, isn’t it? It really is. It really is a double edged sword. And you can see the huge benefits of it and also the fact that, you know, someone can DM you on Instagram and say, hey, do you know what I mean? And then and then they expect a response because they see you’ve read it right. And, you know, it connects you openly in that way. I see that and I see a see see the negative side of things.

[01:23:18] And I also think, you know, because obviously the iPhone has made things different. They that’s changing because before you would respond to an email because you would do it at home. Right. And there was no rush. But now because you don’t respond to it straight away, they think you’re being rude. Well, actually, I have a life. I’m doing other stuff. Let me respond back to you in a much better way after I thought about it. But it’s it’s and it’s the same thing with and I do find this restraint because I get a lot of young dentists asking me for advice and and I’m happy to do that. It’s not an issue, but it’s like, well, why don’t you actually contact me and actually call me? But instead they’ll send me a voice message and I have to sit and listen to this conversation. Right. And it’s like, you don’t want to listen to what I have to say, but you’re talking at me, you know, like what? The point where I could just we can have a conversation and just like now we can break it up, break it down, you know, figure out where where they want to go. It is interesting.

[01:24:19] Really interesting.

[01:24:20] I don’t know the answer, but I mean, recently it’s interesting that I spoke to someone and this new generation of young people that are coming out of dental school and they are now starting to follow Instagram dentists based on their clinical work. Okay, now that I was when I heard that, I just thought, that’s what you should be doing. You should be saying, right, this is what I want to emulate myself, not based on trying to look like a Z list celebrity and. From Love Island or whatever, whatever TV show it is, reality TV show where you’re trying to be something to someone so that you can then get patients through the door. Whereas it should be based on, well, this is the outcomes I can do. This is what my patient comes in with and this is what I can do for you. And that’s the way I think is that you’re an advertisement. You’re not trying to. Then the patient is not your friend because you fuck it up. They will sue the shit out of you. Doesn’t matter what fake relationship you have. The relationships I’ve got with my patients is a different situation because I can fix it. And I know enough people that will help me. And I will pay whatever needs to be done. But. There is that that balance. It’s it’s it’s not real friendship.

[01:25:41] Yeah. It’s interesting what you say. And I think, you know, some people might be listening to this thinking you’re an old fuddy duddy.

[01:25:48] I am and I am.

[01:25:50] And, you know, and I understand that part. And I totally resonate with what you’re saying right now. And, you know, when when dentists and dentists are looking at and saying, I want to be a better dentist, I want to be a better clinician. I want to learn how to move my hands in this patient’s mouth to get the best outcome right, whatever the black boxes happens in between. And then there’s others that want to emulate what you mentioned before, because they’re more interested in turning a business, making money, attracting patients. Do they have the clinical skill set to deliver what it is they’re promising? I have no place to comment on that. Yeah, because I’m not I’m not a clinician. And, you know, we can look at this on an individual basis. I’m sure others can comment on that. You know, I’m in no position to comment. But, you know, if you look at long term, you know, where where’s your dentistry go in in 15 years? Where’s your dentist should go in in 20 years time. How long does your dentistry last. Yeah, you know, am I going to do the Treacy on somebody else. Yeah. Because, because I don’t have that knowledge or the bisphosphonates thing. Right. There’s a very strong argument that get that solid grounding underneath you before you start pushing that out. But I see both sides of it.

[01:27:03] I mean, you’re right, I’m an old fart, but I’m also looking at it in a way that there’s a longevity to your career. Right. And I think people are forgetting it because I have a meeting yesterday and. People wanting things now is because of the of iPhones and everything be much more Amazon. This doesn’t happen in dentistry. It just cannot be. And if so, what is it? They say there’s three things in it. You can. Is it cheap? Can I get it done quickly and will it last? Did those three things work together? They don’t, do they? Yeah. Yeah. That’s the direction we’ve gone into haven’t we. Yes. Right. And then when it goes wrong, who they’re blaming. Right. Because we live in a society, especially here in the UK. You know, you and I know patients will buy new iPhones every year. Yeah. Unless they can’t afford it. Or they’ll. They’ll buy a new car every year in finance or they’ll buy a new TV because there’s a new whatever, whatever rubbish it is. Right. But yet when they’ve spent tens of thousand pounds on their veneers or whatever it is, they expect it to last. But it’s because they don’t understand. They don’t value what we do and understand that this is you know, it’s got a longevity. Does that make sense? And it takes time. It’s a skill set. And you’ve got to take your time. It’s like building a house. You can’t build it like tomorrow, you know, and you educate the population. And and that is an issue. But then dentists have gone down that path. Okay, let’s chase the money, which is fine. It’s not an issue. But then realise I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but it’s, it’s, it’s frustrating because the longevity, you’ve got to enjoy the, the job and you will just, you will reap the rewards promise you. And you know, I mean ten years ago I was making £35,000 a year. I’m a specialist, but I didn’t really care because I was loving the job. Now it’s a very different situation because it’s you know.

[01:29:02] What you say about longevity there resonates with what you know, some of the teachings that I’ve sat in on lectures given by TIFF. Qureshi Right. And he he talks about and documents cases that he did 15 years ago, the mistakes he made, how this stuff is lasting. Right. And he speaks to patients about something called the replacement event.

[01:29:23] Okay.

[01:29:24] And so when he places something on a patient’s tooth, he’ll educate them on how long that’s likely to last, when it’s going to need replacing and what the likely cost of that replacement is. And I think a lot of clinicians, from my experience and speaking to them, they they talk about the event as in slap in whatever it is in their mouth. Right. And I mean, that would a bit a bit bit more respect than, say, slapping, right? But but putting a restoration in their mouth or whatever. But they don’t really educate them on what you’re going to have to come back in five years time. And and you’ll need a new bridge or you’ll need a new this. And if you if you grind your teeth, these ain’t going to last for 12 months. You’ve got to wear this splint or whatever. Right. And there’s less of that that goes on. And so what you’ve just said is it really does remind me of.

[01:30:13] The one thing I mean, I see I did not know of Qureshi until Facebook, but I think I might have heard of him. I read his articles in some of the magazines, but I’ve never met him. And and yet I know if I do meet him, I would get on with him because I just think, you know, he’s looking out the patient’s best interests and also learning from his mistakes. And just the work is doing is exceptional. And this is and I’m not belittling what he’s doing, but essentially it’s relatively simple work, you know, but which has massive benefits to the patient, you know, not just with, you know, with the aesthetics, but also with regards to the tooth wear and all that sort of stuff that occurs with it. And and I think this is the stuff that maybe they’re not teaching at university to a certain extent. Maybe it could be as simple as that, you know, I don’t know. But you’re right, this the education part of it is an issue. I mean, we had this meeting again yesterday and we as dentists, struggle to talk about money, maybe less so now, but we still talk about money. And, you know, maybe we should be taught that universe to say, you know what, this is what the things cost on the NHS. These are what the costs would be for the lab. And this you understand about the business aspect because now associates are coming, well, you should pay me this much, but they’re not understanding the repercussions of the principle of they know and I think they should be taught these things and then maybe taught the benefits of private therapy that can be done and what is available in the NHS.

[01:31:48] And I think and then they’re thrown in the big wide world and they’ve got someone like a principal try to teach him that and they can’t always fully grasp it. I mean, going back to your brother Kailash, you know, he’s he’s very, very good at explaining all this stuff to his associates. And he does that. He does his own private scheme. And I thought that was an amazing idea where he’s training up somebody to work in a private setting. And when I heard that, I just thought, why don’t other people do that? It just makes sense, you know, you know, he’s been trained to be an NHS dentist because you get the NHS number, but the NHS is good, but patients want more, you know, but we need to be able to deliver that. But to do it well with the skill set that we have developed for longevity. Then the patients value what you’ve done and they have to understand why it costs them. I mean, you’ve explained that, haven’t you, to me before, where you sort of you how many times did we always apologise, know to a patient, oh, he’s going to cost 600 quid. Is that okay? That’s an apology. You know, this is going to be. No, it’s not okay. That same patient will go from buy £100,000 car. They don’t quibble when they pay them.

[01:33:02] Though. And the car dealer doesn’t turn around and say, is that okay? Or your lady in Sainsbury’s who’s selling you a banana doesn’t say that’s $0.23. Is that.

[01:33:12] Okay? No, but we do all these. And I say this as well. I mean, I’ve heard this. I think I think I’ve heard it from you or from Ashley Latta or whoever. But essentially, you know, you’re going to do a composite filling and it’s 300 quid and then, you know, 20 quid and then you sort of thinking might well, it doesn’t take that long. And it’s going to be and I know the patient has got so much money and I’m going to now charge them on a quid.

[01:33:37] And actually, Ashley talks about that a lot.

[01:33:40] Then you say you found a quid and then the thing is he says, fine, you can say that, right? Do we ever say it’s discounted? But we never say that. But you say, look, you know what? Normally we charge £200, but I’m going to do it for £100. How does that sound? And the way you say it, how does that sound? Because that actually sounds really great, doesn’t it? Yeah, the patient will then know it and you see a same thing. One of the things I struggle here in Birmingham is that it’s obviously very cultural and stuff and I get certain groups of people coming in and they’ll I say it’s going to cost £30,000 for these implants. They come back, say, do for me for ten. Right? So and you know where I’m coming from, right? I love that when they say that. And and I’m going, okay. Now, the thing is, I’ve met many dentists in this city or in the UK that have done it for ten. That patient was the patient’s expectation of the cost really should be 30. Right. So when it goes wrong they will blame you because it should be better just because you’ve got it for ten. Meaning they’ve got a bargain. It’s wrong. So I and I have had to fix so many dentists work, patient, dentist, work for the case that they’ve undercharged. And I’m then charging the patient, the dentist, the real fee.

[01:34:58] And so on. Right.

[01:34:59] Yeah. Well, you know, we all make this mistake, but it’s like, you know, if a patient is arguing with you, I’m not going to they’re going to break you when it goes wrong. And I’ve learnt that and I’m like, I don’t. He said, one woman come and see me and I’ll always remember this very wealthy woman. And she said to me, Oh, I’ve been told I need a gum graft around this implant in the lower right six. And I’m like, well yeah, I can do it. But then I wasn’t charging a lot of money and it was going to be £400. Right. And she drives him with this very expensive car outside. And she’s busy saying to me, Oh, that’s too expensive. And I’m looking at it and and I’m not backing down. And she’s saying, Well, I said, I’d rather not do anything. And she says to me, Well, it sounds like you do it for free. And I said, No. And I said, I’m the only one in the West Midlands that can do this, and you don’t want to irritate me any further. And she was well aware of that. Never. I never seen it. But then I turned around and I said, So what’s your son do? And she goes, Oh, he’s a lawyer. I said, Oh, that’s really good. Yeah. And I said, So what would you feel if your son had to reduce his fees? She said, Nothing, you know, and that was it. But I think you have to have that confidence to tell people, fuck off.

[01:36:12] Yeah, no. Yeah. In a roundabout way.

[01:36:16] Yeah.

[01:36:17] Absolutely. Absolutely. Let’s move on to the Association of Dental Implant ology. Right. Because, you know, we’ve been chatting for about an hour and a half, mate. And if if if we’d just sort of said, right, we’re speaking to we speak we’re speaking to the president of the ADA. Yeah. I don’t think the conversation would have been as candid as it’s been now. And and I think I think, you know, you’re probably different to all the past presidents for sure. Yeah. Tell me about that. How did it come about? How did you become president? Why did you want to become president? And what what does it involve?

[01:36:53] Okay. So I was in Scotland treating a patient for a guy called Atiq Rahman. So he asked me, he said, I’ve got a case and I really would love you to do the gum graft in this patient or whatever it was. It was, you know, went well. And then I got a phone, I got a text message from somebody on the committee and they were saying, Oh, we would love you to be on the committee. And this is about six years ago, I think. And I’m like so I sent a message back saying, Can I just tell you something? I’m not very much liked within the profession. I don’t think they’d want me on the committee because I say what I say, you know, I’m not very political. And they were like, Oh, no, don’t worry about it. They’ve all decided that they would like you on. But I’m like, All right, fine. And I wasn’t even a member of the Adeyeye, right? Because one of the reasons why I wasn’t a member of the Adeyeye is because the way I was trained at guys, which is which is a real pity now when you think about it, because if you weren’t a specialist, then you shouldn’t be placing implants or you shouldn’t be part of the society. The Adeyeye was an organisation that was set up by general dental practitioners who were placing implants so they could then have a network of discussing cases and stuff, which I think is a really good, you know, really good.

[01:38:06] But then they were like, Well, you don’t need to be a member of that. You need to do other stuff. So I would I always just kept my distance because of that little seed being planted in mud. And I used to go to events abroad because it was bigger events anyway. So I then turn up at this committee meeting and I had to become a member because obviously if you’re going to be on the committee, has to be a member. And it was really interesting because there was a group of people that they were enthusiastic and they were doing doing it in most part for the benefit of the profession. Obviously, there are individuals that are on their decline, whatever political or whatever rubbish they think they’re going to get from it. Because in my mind, you know, do you remember who the president was last year or the year before? You won’t remember because the names disappear. Who knows, right? It’s just if you can make a difference in my mind, I think that would be amazing. So. So, yeah. And I was and from that, I mean, I met some really good friends. I mean, there’s a friend of mine called Pinata George and he’s this exceptional implant that does dogmatic implants, and he’s pushing the whole fallout stuff in a completely different way, which is much more predictable.

[01:39:14] And he’s making a big difference. So and then another guy called Paul Champagne and a guy called George Margaritas. All of these individuals I’ve been able to I wouldn’t have met if I wasn’t part of that committee. And obviously, there are people that I’m, you know, and that research and that stuff. So that was good. And then I started to understand the whole politics of it all a little bit. And then it came in that first two years, they sort of said, Alright, we need to vote, we need, we need to have an election to see who’s going to be the next president. So my name got put forward, right? And what was interesting about that was and it was lovely that my name was and I’m like, okay, I’ll be happy to do it because I’ll give it a go. Never done it. Yeah, never been, never been el presidente of anything really. And I do call myself anti because yes I do take it seriously, but I’ve also got to do my own thing of course. And, and essentially when, when I was trying to get votes, I was, I was speaking to some of the people on the committee and they were saying, we don’t want a specialist in Perio to be the president because that is wrong.

[01:40:22] And I was like, I couldn’t understand that because Perio is very important, is very much a period orientated think thing without a doubt. You know, all of the treatments, all of the technologies that are involved in periodontitis is based on implants as well. So it just they they’re so side by side, the brother and sister without any hesitation. So, you know, I had half of the group saying no. I said, okay, no problems, you know. And then when it came to the vote, I was up against someone and I beat him by two votes. But but what was interesting was the email that came because his name in the alphabet was before mine. So I just thought he’d won automatically because I didn’t bother reading the rest of the email. Right? So I’m going to carry on. And then I got this text message for some people in the committee going, Oh, congratulations. I’m like, For what I’ve got, I’m not one because I was guaranteed to lose against this individual who had had been president of other societies and stuff because they felt that, you know, he had more experience and but it was hilarious. I’m like, Oh, then I read the email, oh my God, I did win.

[01:41:29] So it was hilarious. But so that was, that was very pleasant because as an implant society, to have a periodontist, hopefully running it for a couple of years and pushing it in a particular direction will give a different impetus to it. You know, we’re getting more hygienists and therapists who are now like, well, you know what? Maybe they have something that the AGI might have something to give them. Course and and we’re getting more periodontist there are training wanted to join the society which has been really lovely and my aim for that for the society which which isn’t going to happen and it’s because of the pandemic things have slowed things down in a particular way was to make it much more of an international organisation. Normally we get about 800 to 1000 people attend the conference every two years and no other implant societies in Europe will get three and a half 5000 people attending an event called CEPA in Spain 12 years ago. They only had 400 people attend. Now it’s like one of the it’s got four, five, 6000 people attending. So and that’s run every year. So I’m I’m not saying I want to emulate them, but I would love to go in that direction. And it’s a that’s a reorganisation, you know, it’s not implant organisation, but obviously we’re running cyber sites so there’s lots of amazing speakers of that.

[01:42:54] So that’s what I want and, and I really want more young people to be involved. So because it is very much a society full of a certain group of individuals and they’ll be retiring in the next five, ten years. So what will we have as a membership? You know, and right now what I’ve learnt is that when I lecture for some of these implant courses like there’s a, there’s a course called Smile Academy run by Ginn and a guy called Kish. Yeah. You know, you look at them, they’re, they, they, they, they are technically young with the way they look, but they’re not, they’re obviously much more older, but they have a different outlook on stuff. And the people that are on that course, you know, have been attracted to them for one for a reason, whichever reason it is. And maybe societies need to change in that direction to because they all have their WhatsApp groups that they can discuss cases. So they have got their own network. But why are they not wanting to be part of a society to have another network to to do you know what I mean? So I think all societies need to adapt and not be very much an old boys club, you know.

[01:44:01] To attract that younger generation of dentists.

[01:44:05] And and, you know, and some of them, you know, like there’s a guy called Git and he’s Jim’s brother and he’s an exceptional clinician and there’s a guy called Viraj Patel. He’s future is amazing. I mean, I was invited to lecture for Guy like, I don’t know, September, October, October. And essentially it was going to be me. Right. And a mate of mine, Julia Russell. Really, the two of us are going to let you the whole day on soft tissue and implant stuff. But then Guy said to me, would you do you think we should have another person? And I’m like, Do you know what? You should invite Viraj Patel right now. This is an individual that hasn’t had an opportunity to do that sort of thing, but he’s talented now. When I was younger, how many people would have actually put my name forward to lecture on the same stage? They want to be doing it themselves. Does that make sense? And I think those opportunities have to be now given to some of these individuals because my day has come and gone. Do you know what I mean? I’ll be running courses locally here, but these individuals need to need to inspire the new, new generation of implant dentists. And I think this is where the addy should have a role and get them involved.

[01:45:15] I mean, I run I organised a masterclass in March and we only had like 150 people attend. That’s nothing. We had the full best for the most exceptional individuals around the world attend. Right. A guy called Luke Stoller, we had David Gonzalez, we had a professor from Sweden called Christa Darling. We had a mate of mine from Brazil called Paolo Paolo Paolo Mesquita. And he came over and these guys usually lecture to thousands of people. And the reason why I wanted them to lecture, because they were telling the whole story about guided bone regeneration and implants and what could be achieved. And these are individuals that have inspired me to try to want to be better. And I think, you know, and I wanted more young people to attend and we did. And and I wanted them to realise that you can do more and be better and be more like these individuals if you can aim, you know what I mean? So and I think that’s what we have to do as a society. But so the plan now is that I’m going to try to organise. I’ve already contacted the old dental schools. I’m going to be getting representatives from the dental schools to be part of the society, will have two people from each dental school.

[01:46:27] And I’ve got to now communicate with the deans and ask them, could you give them days off next year? Because we have a conference next May that’s going to be in Birmingham and get them to be part of that event. And then on the Saturday we’re going to it’s been a many, many, many years before we’ve we’ve got students event organised. So I’m going to, I’m going to organise a student event on the Saturday so all undergrads will rock up at. This thing. And the plan is I’m going to get a good friend of mine called Anthony Budowsky, who runs an exceptional employment practise and is very smart. Talks about the purple cow and business. Oh, yeah, yeah. He’s a he’s a smart cookie and a good friend of mine. Again, another guy called Bill Schafer, who I skydive with, and he runs another very good practise. But again, both their journeys have been different. I’m going to get a friend of mine called Fiona McKillop and she’s a specialist in parallel, works for Android down on the street and her story’s different. So I don’t want it to be too heavily male orientated. I want to be able to have women there to at least talk about their journey.

[01:47:31] And I’m going to get a couple of young guys, a guy Laffan, and talk about his journey. I’m going to invite and invite Sascha Melman also because he can do Instagram and stuff because they want to. Yeah, but I want to be able to talk about all these different journeys. On how they became implant dentists. Then they can be students can sit there, you know what? I can potentially do this, you know, and then they’ll be able to come to the main event on the Saturday afternoon and hear two of the best speakers and clinicians. Again, Ricardo Kearns, talented, amazing and, and friend of my uncle Ramon Gomez from Portugal. So talented. So they’ll be able to say, look, you see them on Instagram and Facebook, but essentially they’re all well published, but they show beautiful aesthetic work. So I’m really looking forward to that next year. But this, this, this month we have a conference in Manchester which is run it was supposed to be postponed from last year because of the whole pandemic situation. The past president, Emma, obviously hasn’t had the best run of it all because she’s not been able to implement things that she would like to have. So the conference is running this and we’re hoping that it will be a big success.

[01:48:48] And of May, right? Was it 27? 28.

[01:48:51] Yeah. You lecturing there, aren’t you?

[01:48:52] I’m speaking. Yeah, you invited me. So you’ll be the reason why I’ll be experiencing some sort of anxiety.

[01:49:02] Maybe I’ll just come from you. I go that irritating you, you be like, Yes, yeah. Excuse me. But yeah, I think. I don’t know. I think it’s not just the ADA. I think all societies need to learn to change to somehow get these younger people involved. And and I want these representatives of the universities hopefully push the society, and we’ll go and lecture at the events. And we’ve got some people on the committee that be willing to lecture at these universities. I mean, I’d be happy to do it. It’s not an issue to empower and give these students an informed decision, really. I mean, it’s it’s interesting going back to that. I mean, I’ve got I’ve met a couple of newly qualified specialists who contact me again. I’ve only become a periodontist because of you. And I’m like, and the responsibility of that is really annoying, right? But and I’m like, you should have told me, right? Because now, now I feel I own you, and I need you to do well, you know, really. And they sort of said, I heard you lecture and I realise this is and I’m thinking, really, I just talked about gum disease and this and the other, but who knows that they are going to be they are talented already, better than I was at that age. And I love that, you know, and and and I’m happy to say that they are better than I was at that age and they’re going to be even better, you know, which is so cool.

[01:50:29] Amit We’re getting towards the end of the time for this podcast. But, but, but, but I really want to talk about your skydiving mate. So tell me about like I’ve seen crazy videos of you jumping out of planes and you know, you’ve got, you’re showing me your parachute that you assemble, put together, pop this pin in. You were telling me if you you know.

[01:50:55] This and then the whole parachute pops out from there.

[01:50:58] Yeah, yeah. And there’s a tiny bit of string that connects you to the parachute and all the rest of it. I mean.

[01:51:04] I wouldn’t. This tiny bit of string. Yeah. How old you to the parachute? This is if I pull this out. Yeah. And I’ve told this away.

[01:51:15] Yeah.

[01:51:16] You’re dead and it’s gone. Yeah.

[01:51:20] And for those that haven’t got the benefit of seeing this parachute, it’s. It’s a it’s a, you know, it’s a piece of string that can’t be any thicker than a shoelace, that’s for sure. That’s holding you to this parachute. And then you’ve got the responsibility of assembling it after you’ve landed. And I can trust myself to do that. Absolutely no way. How did you how did you get into skydiving and jumping out of planes in the first place and why?

[01:51:46] I remember when I was younger and you just watched these people base jumping and you’d see, you know, obviously there was. What was that? What was that film called? With Keanu Reeves and. Yeah. Break, break, breakpoint or something like that. I can’t remember. Oh, I can’t remember. I dive in and I love to watch James Bond. You know, he’d pull a parachute, and then he would, you know, and he’d jump out of an aeroplane and pull the parachute much further down and base jumping, which is what I really wanted to do. I wanted to jump off buildings, and that’s what I really want to do ultimately. Right. But the problem is, I am scared of heights and I’m scared of heights of maybe about 15 feet, 20 feet. I get very, very unhappy about it. But I thought, you know what? That might help me get over my fear of jumping heights. So after I qualified, after after I found a degree and then went to the US and I learnt how to jump out of aeroplanes and within about two and a half days I was doing it all by myself. I was terrified. I mean, I’m there in the plane you’re holding on the door and there’s a man outside holding onto you and the man inside. And I’m going, No, no, because I didn’t want to jump out. It’s 12 and a half, 13,000 feet, and the guy is looking at the other guy. It goes right, dragging him out. And I’m there going, Oh, my God.

[01:53:06] So you do it, Tandem. Do you do it tandem to stop?

[01:53:08] No, no, you can if you want to. But I did something called accelerated freefall, where you just get thrown out of the plane and there’s two guys holding you, and then you just try to learn to fly, say, I mean, the whole concept of skydiving is if you have a ball. Yeah, always is this way and you turn it this way, you drop it. It’s always going to turn back on. It’s on its belly, isn’t it? Okay. So you’re always trying to fall. Would you belly down? Because then you’re going to have you’re going to fall correctly. But as soon as you start a dodge, yeah, what could potentially happen is you can then flick up back on your back, right. So there’s lots, it’s all clever stuff. So within about two and a half days, I was jumping out of planes by myself, which was shocking. And then and then I was just learning to fly this parachute, right? And then I went a year later, I did another I had 50 jumps by then and I bought parachute. So it was like nowadays they wouldn’t let you buy a parachute because that’s like a lethal weapon. You can kill yourself. Right? And I was just been jumping. I got like I took the 13 year break because it was expensive and I was doing my training and I had money. And so I’ve got maybe 300 jumps. I went away to Russia and I went to Russia for two weeks and I was jumping out of military helicopters. It was the coolest thing, you know, the doors open at the back of the helicopter and you just legging it out. And that was really cool. And I did about I did 86 jumps in ten days. So, you know, I do love it. I know, I know it’s sad. And now I’ve got back into I’m older, I’m a bit more fearful and my landings aren’t very good. So I’m trying to get training on how to land better and I’m getting better at it. But it’s only because I’m scared of heights, because you see, at a certain height, I’m getting scared.

[01:54:55] That you’ve jumped out of a plane 300 times or whatever you’ve just said you can’t be scared of heights anymore.

[01:55:00] Oh, yesterday I was in a practise in Harley Street at this meeting and we were quite high up and I couldn’t stand on the edge. It was so scary. And. And it was like leaning against his banister. I’m like, I just don’t. I didn’t want to be standing there. We came down one flight. I was like, Oh, this is easy. It was really weird.

[01:55:21] That’s bonkers.

[01:55:23] That is bonkers. But this is why I messed up with my landings because at about 20 feet, the parachute was coming at about 30 miles an hour. And it’s like getting this wrong, getting it wrong, but I’m getting a bit better. But I’ve got friends who are world champions and they are flying their parachute in at about 70 miles an hour, 80 miles an hour.

[01:55:42] And.

[01:55:42] Landing it. And it’s it’s amazing. I don’t think I’ll ever be there, but I love it. And now I’m doing a lot of wind tunnel flying. I’m flying in a wind tunnel and trying to learn how to.

[01:55:51] Do little tricks and stuff.

[01:55:54] It is cool. So I go every two Mondays a month. I drive down to Milton Keynes. Yes, 30 minutes in the winter. Wow. And like my mate, Bill Schaffer, he’s he’s a skydiver as well. And the long term plan is to get winged suits and go flying in a wingsuit across whatever we need to do. So before lockdown, they have a wind tunnel in Stockholm, which actually the wind is obviously coming horizontally and you can fly suits and you can do loads. It’s like you’re an aeroplane, you know what I mean? It’s so cool. And when I skydive. Yeah. It’s just so peaceful. You know, my brain, love. I don’t think about teeth. I don’t think about anything. I’m just having it. It’s just relaxing. But people say it’s an adrenaline rush. There isn’t really. Because now for me, it’s just the only time my adrenaline starts pumping is when I’m trying to land, because that’s where I’m scared.

[01:56:51] But once you jump out of this plane and then you’re you’re in the air, right? And then what are you just floating about for a bit? And then you pull the cord or what?

[01:57:01] This is all.

[01:57:02] This is all foreign to me, right? I’ve seen it on the on the movies and stuff. Right. But you literally jump out. Are you just bolting down now at that point.

[01:57:11] About 100. And so in about 120 on average. But I’ve done maybe 180 miles an hour when I’ve gone down with my head down and stuff, because then, you know, you’ve got less surface air and you are plummeting and you lose altitude very quickly and you’ve got these altimeters and you’ve got audible ultimate in your ear that’s telling you 10,000 feet, 9000 feet, and it’s going very quickly and you realise it’s cool. And then you’re also flying with a whole bunch of other people. So you can, you know, you can then come together and you sort of holding hands and all that sort of stuff. It’s pretty cool and you’ve.

[01:57:47] Got time to do all of that at 100 and odd miles an hour.

[01:57:51] Now you got loads that you don’t realise how much time you have. It’s about minute that just shoots past so slowly. You know, I remember one time I was, I was in Russia and I was, I was there’s a way you can you can fly and you can fly like you’re on the surface. You sit flying, right? Yeah. And so cool. And so I was above above the cloud and the sun was setting and above the cloud. The sun was just setting and it was beautiful. It was just stunning. And I always remember it. And then when I when I when I went beyond the cloud, then you saw that it was another different view. And it’s just, it’s it’s so peaceful and relaxing. Yeah. There is no adrenalin rush to me. It’s just like, Oh, this is cool. It’s fun going to go mess around and literally just playing in the air, you know? We’re just playing in the air.

[01:58:40] Yeah. I don’t think I’m scared. I have to do it. I’m scared of roller coasters. Me?

[01:58:45] Me, too. Me, too. Especially at the top. And then the rest of. It’s fun. Yeah. You can that as far as you can.

[01:58:55] Yeah, I’m no I’m no thrill seeker mate. But I know people who’ve sat in your Tesla and you’ve given, you’ve given them a run for their money. So I’ve yet to experience that. But they call you a crazy so-and-so and. But we’re coming to the end of this, this podcast. And, you know, before we started this podcast.

[01:59:16] Why would you want to do a tandem jump?

[01:59:19] No way, mate.

[01:59:21] So I’m going to put your name on the list because I’m going to organise a whole bunch of dentists that wanted to.

[01:59:25] You didn’t hear what I just said them, mate.

[01:59:26] No way. I’m a bit deaf in this. Hang on, let me try this one.

[01:59:30] No fucking way. Me. Not a chance, mate. Anyway.

[01:59:37] I mean, dentists that have said they want to do it.

[01:59:40] Really? Really.

[01:59:41] I’m going to organise it and I will organise it. But if you wanted it, it would be my pleasure. Thank you. I won’t go in it, but I’ve got Red Devils who’ll be happy to do it for you.

[01:59:51] Right. Anyway, moving on from that conversation, we when we started this podcast, I said that, you know, wouldn’t it be really nice if we could just record a conversation of me and you having dinner over a beer or something like that and just and just like and then we could speak more freely. I think we have been able to speak quite freely, actually. And I think, yeah, it’s been, it’s been a really good conversation.

[02:00:17] I’m fine, I’ve enjoyed it and I’ve learnt loads from you, you know.

[02:00:20] And I mean we usually end this podcast with a couple of a couple of questions and one of them is if it was your last day on the planet and you were surrounded by all your loved ones and you had to leave them with three pieces of wisdom, what would they be?

[02:00:40] I think. If you work hard, you will be successful. I think that’s the most important thing. And I think. It’s. I think distraction of stuff that’s not important is where you will you will just. You know, just not do well. Does that make sense? I don’t know. I am going down the social media path and I don’t. Yeah. So. Work hard, be successful. And then I think you have to have a good balance in your life, which I think a lot of us have struggled with.

[02:01:18] We all struggle with it.

[02:01:19] Yes. You know, work hard. Play hard. Yeah. You know, but that balance is really, really important because there’s going to be a point where you’re going to regret the stuff that you not had the opportunity to, you know, to have done because we’re we. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s the only. That’s too, isn’t it.

[02:01:38] Okay. So first piece of advice, put the graft in. Yeah. Put the graft.

[02:01:43] Only works with that doesn’t it. Yeah.

[02:01:45] Yeah. The second piece of advice have some balance in your life.

[02:01:50] Yeah. And it could be you find time just to spend time with your friends and family, you know, how often do we do all that? We try to make the effort, but it doesn’t really happen because they’re the ones that ground you, don’t they? Really?

[02:02:06] 100%. And they’re the ones that matter, right? They’re the ones that are going to turn up if you end up in hospital. They’re the ones who are going to be crying at your funeral. Right. Exactly. Not the 5000 followers you’ve got on Facebook.

[02:02:17] No. Exactly. Exactly. This is it. Yeah. And the third thing. And this is cheesy. Everybody says it. You know, you do the best you can and the next day do better, you know, because that’s the only way, because I think, you know, we’re all very competitive. But the person we’re not we have to compete with is ourselves. And I think, you know, I don’t want to be like Solanki. You know, I don’t want to be like whoever else, you know, because, you know, you know what I mean? But but the thing is, it’s a matter of trying to just do better every day and knowing that you’ve done better the next day. I think that’s I think that that for me is important because otherwise, how would you gauge. Yeah, you know where you are?

[02:03:08] Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s really nice of it. And final question. Fantasy dinner party, three guests, dead or alive, who would they be?

[02:03:22] Good question. Charles Dickens. Mm hmm. Only reason why is that I’m a very I’m not a good reader of books, and I’ve read maybe ten books in my whole life because I’m the reader, because I read each word like this, and it’s a nightmare. So and so during lockdown, I bought I bought audibles. And I’ve been listening to such I want to listen to the classics, you know, and I’ve just started listening to Great Expectations and I think, oh my God, this man is an amazing author, you know? So, yeah. Charles Dickens. Dickens Yeah. I would like to add, like Elon Musk, it’s the truth, because I’d love to. Yeah, I’d love to meet him and just find out what is what is he really all about? You know what I mean? Yeah. And. I’d like Mark Hamill. Luke Skywalker.

[02:04:23] All right. Because you’re a Star Wars fan.

[02:04:26] I’d love to ask him all these questions about Star Wars and stuff. Yeah, I could ask Harrison Ford, but I’d rather not. I’d rather ask him because he is. Yeah. And he chose Elon Musk and Luke Skywalker.

[02:04:42] They’re amazing. I mean, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation and I do feel like we could have expanded on so many more points and taken this conversation for half a day. So yeah, maybe maybe we’ll catch up at the dentistry show at the.

[02:05:00] U.s. on Saturday. I’ll come. I would love to sit there and listen to you. Yeah. Thank you. Amazing speaker.

[02:05:06] Thank you. Thank you very much.

[02:05:10] 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.

[02:05:26] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[02:05:41] Out of it, think about.

[02:05:42] Subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend.

[02:05:46] Who you think might get some value out of it, too.

[02:05:48] Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] The thing is, if you want to enjoy your dentistry, if you want to actually like your job, I think you’ve got to go private. At my opinion, you really got to. Nowadays, I don’t think there’s any choice. The funding is just appalling, and I admire people who try and do it for feeling that they have an ethical obligation to it, feeling that they have a moral and more moral obligation to do it. Yeah, do it for a while. Pay back what you feel is your moral obligation. As I said, I did dentistry for 16 years in the NHS, so I think I more than paid back any sort of moral obligation to society on that. But as fast as you can, I would move on.

[00:00:48] 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.

[00:01:06] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Lyle Hutchinson onto the podcast. Nile is famous or infamous really for his red wine posts that he’s been doing lately practise owner principle and has lately set up a group that’s I think one of the most important groups in dentistry now is called not such a good day at the orifice where where we look at errors and things that didn’t go so well. And my sort of antidote to the Instagram generation where everyone’s patting everyone’s back and everyone’s showing off about the things that did go well. It’s lovely to have you now.

[00:01:42] Hi, Payman. Thanks for inviting me on.

[00:01:44] My pleasure. My pleasure. We thought it would be fun to do a red wine podcast. And I’ve got to admit right now, Nile, that the bottle that I’ve chosen I haven’t got because of my my wife’s Lebanese. And so I had thought I had a bottle of matzah in the back of my cupboard. But obviously, I think that some some somewhere along the line. So I’ve got I’ve got what I call my steak wine. It’s a Bordeaux. It’s a scent Himalayan thing. The main reason I like it is that it’s on Zap, so I can push a button and it arrives within 10 seconds.

[00:02:21] Oh, yeah.

[00:02:23] What have you.

[00:02:24] Got now out in rural Berkshire? We don’t have that, I think. I don’t think we’re ready yet. But I’ve got I’ve got it. I’ve got a Australian Shiraz with me here, you know, which is not bad. Yeah. I must admit I prefer the French red wines, but yeah, the nice shiraz is not bad at all.

[00:02:42] Excellent. My favourite thing about wine is this this sound here.

[00:02:47] Oh, yeah, I know.

[00:02:49] It’s the sound. Fine. I never get quite screwed up so I can say why they broke the lid. Because you don’t get a problem with being caught. But it’s not some kind of the cork satisfying side of the cork coming out. And you just that moment that you think, I’ve just got the wine, it’s fantastic. You know, it is. It is that you know, I think there’s a who as I said, we used to live in France for a year and the French taught me to appreciate a lot more wine. And that made me realise that I actually sort of moved as straight away to Chile and Argentina. I know they do very, very good wines. I sort of have gone back to French wines, but they really certain, you know, that appreciation of the whole thing about wine, not just the drinking, but the opening of the bottle and whatever else, you know.

[00:03:34] So, you know, we’ll get into red wine itself later. But I guess the red wine post is kind of a kind of a get out clause, isn’t it? Now, like, it’s almost like in this era of sort of political correctness, you can say something a little bit more, sort of, I don’t know, the controversial.

[00:03:57] And.

[00:03:58] A little more cheeky. And you can put red wine post on it and then it’s cool. We can we can all discuss it. And I think it’s been an excellent series.

[00:04:08] Yeah, it came eventually it came out of one evening. I can’t remember my first ever post, but it came out one evening. I was genuinely drinking a bottle of red wine and I was sitting there thinking really pissed off about something, you know, it was really irritating me and I thought, Cool. So it’s on ground. Grant Macquarie’s business marketing group. And I saw that I’m going to put this up and just hashtagged it because it was sort of it was an anti Instagram hashtag. It was a hashtag red wine post. You know, I’m not Twitter, Instagram, I’m not anything like that. But I thought it was sort of slightly ironic and I thought, you know what? And it just seemed to catch on. And yeah, it certainly divides opinion. There are a lot of people out there who think I troll with it and I’m just an irritating so-and-so. But the genuine questions, I mean, they don’t always hit the mark the way I want them to. But the genuinely r question, people say, Yo, actually you ask the elephant in the room, you ask the question that a lot of us have been wanting to know the answers to. And it’s interesting the way that I mean, sometimes I have a very definite opinion on what what I think on this thing. But quite often I’ll go, actually, I don’t have a really strong opinion on either side, but it would be just interesting to see what people think. And sometimes people pick up very valid arguments and I go, Actually, that’s a very valid point. I actually never thought of that as the latest one. I think. I don’t know if you saw it at the weekend.

[00:05:39] I did 200 responses.

[00:05:41] Yes, 200 plus responses. Yes. And why do we pay any attention to this red round poster? He’s a tosser or whatever, you know. Instead, he’s.

[00:05:51] Just.

[00:05:52] Basically he spreads hate and division of the profession. And I actually sort of I did post to that.

[00:05:58] I think I. Never thought that myself.

[00:06:01] Well, no. Yeah, but it’s an interesting sort of. I’m actually a great advocate of profession. I’m an older dentist. I’m 57 for any of you listening. And I qualified in 1987 when, like, your composite came in one colour, you know, and it was occlusion by IP. It was, you know, everything was nothing was like your nothing. You know, we, you know, we still did blacks cavities, we did all that sort of stuff. So it was all it was a pipe dream, all that sort of stuff. So I sort of look at it and I look at the profession today and I go, Is it taking a path that I am proud of? Totally proud of? And I would say, yes, I’m yeah, I am so proud of most dentists that are out there. But there are a few angles to where I think, are we really a profession anymore? Are we going down a bit more of a car salesman or whatever, you know.

[00:06:56] Yeah. So that initial post was it. This one is the religion. Will there be a second coming or will it still be funded by five? No, no.

[00:07:06] That wasn’t the original post. Yeah, that was so I wasn’t. Yeah.

[00:07:11] Which, which one was it. Half the.

[00:07:14] Way back. I’ve about 24, 25. It was way back last October I think it was. But yeah.

[00:07:20] Yeah I was in the group so maybe yeah. Maybe that’s what I’m missing. Yeah. What it was. I think we should answer some of these. I think, I think we should talk about some of these red wine posts I think is a good place.

[00:07:31] I mean, it’s a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look them up and we’ll we’ll see what goes on. I mean, okay, back to it. Right. Let’s, let’s go for the two most recent ones. Right, CPD.

[00:07:39] Yeah, go on.

[00:07:40] Right. Do. Why is there a sudden proliferation of CPD? Well, I mean, if you look.

[00:07:50] At it because. What? Go on. Yeah, go on. What do you think?

[00:07:53] Yeah. Since just nine years ago, right. Cpd when you had a few courses, section 63 type courses, you had a few courses here and there. Tipton was a bit of a novelty. Yeah, things like that was all. But no, no. For courses everywhere you look at, you know, everybody’s doing the bloody course. So one thing is, why are there so many courses? Is it the lack of education for undergrads nowadays? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to put that out there because that’s an easily thrown out thing against on the grounds of qualified say, oh, you don’t know as much as we did when we qualified back in the day. I think that’s too easy an accusation to make. Or is it the fact it’s easy money? You know, and I’m not saying it’s easy, easy money because I know there will be people going out there. How dare you say that? The amount of hours of time I put in working on these lectures and I go, I agree with you on that. You know, and it’s very it’s not something I ever want to do is run the course. And I can certainly see that for hours. Know you do put in hours of it, but equally well, it must be something in for it. Is it ego or is it money or what? Or is it the desire to teach? I don’t know. I mean, what’s your opinion on it?

[00:09:06] Yeah. There’s definitely a lot more than there was. One thing I hope you’ll agree with me now. When? When we were coming through. I mean, I’m maybe seven, eight years younger than you when we were coming through. There were no courses. No. I mean, I remember thinking as a as a young associate, I remember thinking, I want to learn something about private dentistry or I want to learn something about cosmetic dentistry. And there was nothing. There was. There was one course, I think. And so a much happier overall with too many courses than too few. Yeah. The reason of why is there so many courses? I think a big part of it is, you know, the younger dentists don’t want to do NHS dentistry.

[00:09:50] Yeah.

[00:09:51] They, they, they’ve got to build their CVS or they think they’ve got to build their CVS. And going on a course has become a CV builder. Yeah. And I think we both know, you know, it’s not it’s not what you do on the course. That’s the key is what you do after the course with that information. Certainly that’s that’s really the key. But as for the question of profitability, you know, I run several courses. I’ve got a I’ve got I’ve got a horse in the race here. One thing I would say about it is it’s it’s high risk. It’s high risk. Running a course and, you know, you can toss up whatever you want to toss up, but the risk factor is important. So we’ve got a composite course, which, by the way, we didn’t just start when it became fashionable. You know, we’ve been doing it for 12 years now. But but we for the first four years of that course, we were making a loss.

[00:10:47] Yes. No.

[00:10:48] With that. So. So. Don’t forget the risk side now. Is there. Is there money in it? There is a little bit. It’s a tiny part of our our bigger business, our bleaching business. But and I don’t teach the course. So so I’ve got to pay a speaker as well. But but stuff costs money that people don’t realise, you know, just shipping all the drills and things to the course just cost £1,000, you know? Yeah. And no one, no one thinks about that. And then we’ve got team and you know, there’s loads of reasons.

[00:11:22] Yeah. The reason it brought it up was two or three people pm me and saying you know, you know it’s fair enough because they’ll come on to the quality of courses as well. And do we need to have independent feedback courses in a minute? But some, a couple of two or three people pm me after that first one which was about quality and said what about the price? Of course because they really have gone up. I mean I remember the day courses used to be 299 quid, 250, 199 quid. There are now a standard 700 plus and certainly some of them are heading up that way. Not if that’s what the cost. That’s what it costs, you know. But I think there’s a little bit of cynicism from some that’s out there, as you probably pointed out, possibly quite wrongly. But and I have no strong opinions on it. I’m quite happy I’ve gone on many courses that I pay the best part of £1,000 for a day, and I’m quite happy to do that provided a good course. You know, I have no issues with that.

[00:12:18] And the other.

[00:12:18] Thing might be as to why there’s so many courses nowadays, and I think it was just poked as well by a couple of people going, oh, you know, going to mention the cost of these courses, you know, so I know what you mean. Multiply everything up and just get, oh, you must be taking this by the Monday in the day. That’s incredible. You know, so why why did you do a course? Why did you what got you into doing courses then?

[00:12:43] Well, we sell composite and the composite that we sell. You’ve got to learn how to use it. It’s a particular way of using it. Okay. But but but, you know, one thing I’ll say is, you know, the this same course, the same lecturer in Chicago is twice the price.

[00:13:04] Yeah.

[00:13:05] As the one we do. So, you know, and, and I’ve been to those courses in Chicago and in all over America and dentists come pay the price of the course and almost the whole room buys the materials. Right. And, you know, they they’re just they’ve got a different outlook. And by the way, they’re not just the very young dentists who turn up to the courses. You get all sorts of dentists turning up to the courses, trying to learn a new skill. Yeah, but, but I think, you know, it’s an important question. Of course, I thought the the troubling word in your post was profiteering.

[00:13:39] Yeah, I know. Do you know what? That was a clumsily used word. I said, to be honest with you, the reason why it was trying to link it in with yeah, I know it was a very tough thing and I think that created a bit too much animosity, to be honest with you. Yeah, I didn’t mean profiteering in that way. What I was trying to equate it with was quite a few people are quite quick to throw accusations at dental companies that this bit of plastic. Right which is a bit of. You are charging me 200 quid for a bit of plastic that if I went into it would cost me a couple of quid if it didn’t have to work for dental use on it. And so I was sort of trying to sort of play with that idea that it’s okay for it. So it’s okay to slag off dental companies for charging what you think is an X amount of money. Are you charging excessive amount of money is what I was trying to get at. I think I was. Yes, I wasn’t meant to be insulting. Mike, this is the thing about the red wine posts there. Never.

[00:14:36] Don’t worry about insulting. Don’t worry about insulting. You know, it’s a concept, right? But I mean, I do see some profiteering around around dentistry. So I’ll tell you where there’s profiteering, right? You can go to the IBS, show the world’s biggest dental show. Yep. And the cologne isn’t equipped to have that many people come descend on it. And the three star hotels suddenly become £500 a night.

[00:15:03] Yeah, and they’re pretty, pretty awful.

[00:15:06] And you’ve got no other choice but to go there and spend that money. And I think with PPE, there was a question of profiteering, you know, with it. But at the same time, you know, it’s you know, obviously I’m in with that side, too, right? I supply dental equipment, dental, dental stuff, and our stuff’s expensive stuff. Our stuff isn’t cheap stuff at all.

[00:15:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:30] But but you know, the comparisons that sometimes people make and dentists make with a piece of plastic, you know, there’s huge regulatory nightmares in in supplying dentists. You know, if, if I want to supply my toothpaste in India, I have to pay a compliance company over £100,000 just to say hello, you know, just to get into that country. Yeah, in in Russia. Well, before when Russia was the thing, you had to pay £1,000 per ingredient per product for regulatory compliance. And then, you know, there’s a competitive thing. And, you know, I don’t know, it’s one of those things that, you know, the market will decide and profiteering sounded like the wrong word for it.

[00:16:16] Yeah. No. And with with with hindsight, I wouldn’t have used that word. And I think that’s what went wrong. I mean, now.

[00:16:23] But let’s get let’s get to this question of, you know, as a dentist, let’s say you’re booked up 11 weeks ahead. Should you put your prices up or not?

[00:16:32] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, it was it’s a it’s a hypocritical post. And asmuch as that, you know, your patients would look at me and what I charge and my hourly rate of which I average are about sort of 275 to £300 an hour. I work in rural Oxfordshire and patients would look at me and go, Oh Jesus Christ, you’re ripping us off, you know? And yeah, you do get accusations. I mean, I suppose I’m paying for your holiday and I’ll go, Yes, I actually do say no. Yes, yes. You are just a very, very small amount, you know, and if I know that they’re an electrician, but like if I got you to come on wire or something up in my house, I’d be paying for a very tiny bit of your holiday as well. But, you know, it’s, you know, don’t get so much.

[00:17:17] To recognise that dentists of our era had their thing about, oh, don’t, don’t turn up to work with your nice car.

[00:17:25] Oh, yes, don’t.

[00:17:26] Do the practise up that whole thing. But the younger ones, they’ve gone the other way, you know, they want to turn up in the Ferrari. Yeah. So that the patients think they are successful dentists you know. And that’s the kind of change in society.

[00:17:42] I’m not sure. I’ve got a Tesla and it’s parked outside the practise and they might have come on bloody Tesla going oh nice car. Ooh. And some of them are genuinely interest because it’s a Tesla and some of them are like you can tell it’s just angled. You know, the funniest one I ever had was when they took over this practise. Took this practise was like six years ago. This bloke came in for adjustment and his dentures and they go over visits and she said, Oh, what happens? They all dentists. And I went, Oh, she’s retired. And he went, Oh, I suppose he’s gone to a her holiday home in the Caribbean that she’s bought with my money, that I paid her twice over two separate visits. So I actually looked up on their say what they actually paid and they paid 800 quid over seven years. And I just went, Oh God almighty. But I mean, yes, you’re back to what you were saying. I think dentists and and this is partly why I was sort of bringing it up about the thing. I think dentists are very remiss. I’m actually a great supporter of all the dental companies, and I think they do an absolutely valuable job. You’re a company, everybody else’s company.

[00:18:51] We would not have the progression in dentistry if we did not have the companies investing in all the dental equipment. I mean, I use a company called RPA, Dental, Exxon and so on. Brilliant. Dental company best of every use. Not plugging them, obviously, but they are very, very good and the equipment they’ve supplied has enabled me to do much better dentistry. I mean, Saric, for example, I’m a big Saric fan. Saric is just amazing, you know, and you look at it nowadays, but if originally back in the day Simmons hadn’t taken on then, then I hadn’t taken on and threw a lot of money at it because Saric is quite often, you know, oh god, look at the price of £100,000 for I go, Yeah, but look at the value it brings to your practise at the end of the day. And the same with your enlightened equipment. Look at you have the best whitening stuff on the market, you have the best, you know. So the value is there and I think people do take cheap shots. So yes, it may have been a bit of a cheap shot that back to the CBD. Are you profiteering? You know, but it was meant to. Yeah.

[00:19:57] Anyway, back on debate and it did it stimulated debate. Right. That’s, that’s what.

[00:20:01] It was there it stimulated about. Yeah. I was, I went at one point nearly 200 replies wow I but, but back on and I have no no aversion to anybody charging whatever the market will stand for a dental course. But then back to what the previous week’s post was, what about the quality? I mean, have you have you been on dental courses Payman recently. Have you have. Yeah or.

[00:20:31] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well I stopped practising ten years ago but but I’m at a lot of dental courses. Yeah, I’m at a lot of dance courses. And look, you’re right. Let’s talk about the quality of courses and the question of where is the review site for courses? Because you’re right in that you do tend to get a lot of back, back slapping, back, back that. What did they call that when when people are just only talking about the positives. That does happen and it happens more with some courses than than others. And I’ve always wondered about that. You know, is it is there some some way, as the course provider of making that virality happen, that make people talk about you more and want to be part of it, but you don’t hear the negatives very much. And what would you think the reason for that is? I mean, people don’t want to be seen to be that that guy, I guess. So the anonymization of it.

[00:21:27] Yeah, it’s a bit like the red.

[00:21:28] Wine is a good idea.

[00:21:29] Yeah, it’s a bit like I stick my neck out and people do say to me privately, So why do you bother to stick your neck out? You just get a lot of flack sometimes. Why do you bother? And I said, Well, I’ve got to that age in life where I don’t give a shit anymore. And but I’ve got that age in life where I basically go, You know what? Sometimes I’m not willing to stand up and just sort of listen to all the sort of back slapping and all the same people going, Oh, hey, brilliant course, fantastic or whatever, you know, all sort of. And especially for younger dentists nowadays, I think us older than this have a responsibility to younger dentists to make them realise what the profession is about. And it’s not about Instagram, in my opinion. I know some people will argue differently. It’s not about solely cosmetic online, it’s not about solely Invisalign. You know, it’s a lot more than that. So but. Well, so I do stand up for what you’re saying. So why are people sort of worried about giving negative views? Mainly because of that pack mentality? Some some course. And I’ve had personally experienced this. I have been blocked. All right. By someone who took exception to something I said on the dentistry top 50 for actually for putting the dentistry top 50 thing up. That’s another one to come on to. But I got blocked. And so there are people out there who would block you, who had bully you, who would actually just go out of their way to say, you know, you possibly do nasty things. So ultimately, I think a lot of people are very scared. And also there are a lot of people, again, are scared to say the counter opinion because there are a lot of if a lot of people.

[00:23:05] Oh, it’s a brilliant, brilliant course. Brilliant course. And you’re going actually, I didn’t think it was all that. You know, you’re the one that’s going to stand out, aren’t you? And I know. And the problem is all that feedback forms your hand back in that they at the end of the course it’s all named, it’s all GDC numbered. Yeah. No. Fine. Well who’s who’s written them. Are you going to write. Somebody said I think it was Jaz or Drew and when something went. All right. So a brilliant course, a genuinely really good course gets five stars, a crop course gets four stars. And I do think there it needs I mean, people came on and said, yeah, we’ve tried this before. It hasn’t really worked. Maybe there needs to be a consensus of reason. I’m not I’m not senior enough in the profession or well respected enough in the profession to be able to do this. But maybe, maybe people like through is not so keen on the idea. I know that it doesn’t seem so keen on, but guys like you, Payman or Jazz, I say, is a really decent bloke and you know people who are highly respected. To get together and say, we are going to start this and we are going to start some sort of independent review site for courses. And whether it works, whether it brings benefit, I personally you’re not going to get in theory at the GDC, you should be doing it. But they do everything else but the actual stuff that would be useful.

[00:24:24] Yeah, they.

[00:24:27] Do absolutely everything else. You know, I’m so mad. I mean, I come from the day you do you remember coming from the day when when you could just write exam ESP and that would be enough for your notes.

[00:24:39] Yeah. When I was a dentist, that’s what it was.

[00:24:41] Yeah.

[00:24:42] I remember. I remember, I think I remember.

[00:24:44] I remember showing an associate of mine. My old notes have notes from the I think it was the eighties. And I went and we counted the number of visits the patient had on the, on the old brown record forms, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And there were 24 visits, one side, 24 appointments on one side. And they’re all things like exam, ESP, upper left, six amalgam, no le or something like that. And that would be it, you know, that would be your notes and you’d get away with it, you know, oh go for those days. But yeah it is, it’s a changed field ultimately. But yeah, I do think so. Back to the the peripheral vision of course, is how do people tell what’s the good course, what’s of course now people have said to me or gets around in the grip, fine. Yeah. But only if you know people who have been on the course or, you know, the right people don’t ask or there’s something the other. So, you know, it’s surely it’s time that somebody has an evaluation of an independent. And I think it should be anonymous personally, because I think anything the way it would be done and this is the way I would view it would be done. You would people say, well, you could you could have trolls giving you bad reviews, just competitors giving bad reviews. Just Oh no you’d have to upload it wouldn’t it would be anonymous on the front but at the back end it would you whoever controls it would be saying, right, show me your cpc’s certificate. You’ve been on the course. Who are you? What’s your DTC number? Okay, that’s your opinion. We’ll post that anonymously, but we can verify you have been on that course. Yeah, but whether it takes off or not, who knows? You know, maybe there’s too many dentistry.

[00:26:25] Interesting one.

[00:26:26] Yeah, it’s an interesting one.

[00:26:28] Let’s move on to the next one. Let’s talk about that. What of you? You’re fully private now. The NHS one.

[00:26:37] Yeah, yeah. Is it religion? Is there going to be a second coming. Is that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:44] Probably private. Right.

[00:26:46] I’ve got small NHS children’s contract. Yeah. Which is. Okay. Cheers. My friends in the back side. Then they really is. The only reason we keep it on was whether my last practise, we went fully, fully private in 2006 and we lost loads of children, but we actually lost quite a few families as a result of that, whereas we would have kept them on and we kept the children’s contract, probably we kept the adults on privately. So when I took this practise over, it had a small children’s contract. Initially I thought, Oh, I’ll ditch it. But I thought, No, I don’t want I’ll just keep it. We ended up treating the children for virtually free in the last practise it was in, so I thought it better to get some money than no money. So that’s how we kept on. Yes. So I have a small so it’s not that I’m talking in case people think, oh, god, you know nothing about the health service. I was a health service dentist completely. I know. Or not under the UDA system. But from 1987 through to 2003, I was completely an NHS dentist for 16 years, so I know what it’s like at the sharp end of the NHS and it was bloody awful and it was actually my GP who advised me to go private.

[00:27:55] I went to them and she pushed a box of tissues towards me when I was in my early forties and I burst into tears myself in the consulting room and she went well and GP’s with next door to me where I work and she went now you know the number of my patients and she went, you’ve got three choices. You either have a nervous breakdown, that’s where you’re heading for, you either give up dentistry, but you’re too good to do that or you give up the NHS and ask. Gp’s are jealous of the fact that you guys can give up the NHS. And so that’s what we did. I gave up the NHS for others. Oh my God, that was the most stressful time in my life. But there we are. The abuse I got from patients like that, that was incredible. One guy drove up in his new series of five series BMW to say, you may want to be a millionaire son, but not on my money. I’ll never forget that. He walked in the room. He said, I’m here for a check-up for the habit. And I was just like, Oh, my God, there we go. That was unbelievable. But anyway.

[00:28:51] So there’s lots, there’s lots of people right now considering leaving the NHS.

[00:28:56] Yeah.

[00:28:57] What would be your advice?

[00:28:59] Yeah. To me obviously it’s a different we were sort of I wouldn’t say we were the frontiersmen because the, the true frontiersmen of going private were actually, funnily enough, reading what you call a moral mountain origin. And Stephen nor wasn’t it 1990 them plan where they they were the true frontiersmen. What happened was 1991 they had a fee cut of 7% and a lot of people went private. Then that was truly frontiersman charity. That was really, really unusual back then, though, we were still early on, reasonably early on to do it. All I would say is I think you’ve got a different scenario. I think patients are probably yeah, probably more appreciative of the fact that you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place as a dentist nowadays. You will still get them. Think. Oh yeah. Well yeah it was some plan for your bloody test side or whatever. You know, a certain neighbour was going private. I would not be parked my Ferrari outside the door but I would. I think the thing is if you want to enjoy your dentistry, if you want to actually like your job, I think you’ve got to go private. That’s my opinion. You really got to nowadays. Yeah. I don’t think there’s any choice. The funding is just appalling and I admire people who try and do it for feeling that they have an ethical obligation to it, feeling that they have a moral and more moral obligation to do it.

[00:30:22] Yeah, do it for a while. Pay back what you feel is your moral obligation. As I said, I did dentistry for 16 years in the NHS, so I think I more than paid back any sort of moral obligation to society on that. But as fast as you can, I would move on. But is it the problem with it? It back to the original question. Is it religion? Yes, it is very much in this country. It ended up in the bloody London Olympics opening ceremony. If you remember, they had whirling beds, this, that and the other. And I think I read the times at the time and said what other country in the world would put their health service in the Olympic opening ceremony? None. You know, so it is religious. It is a religion in this country and that’s what we’re fighting against. But NHS, I mean, dentistry has never been entered fully integrated into the NHS almost since 1950. I think it was charged upon start charge upon for treatment in 1950. So yeah, that’s the difficulty. Will it have a second coming. No, simple. They may try, but they just don’t have the money. They don’t have the. They don’t have the. What’s the word I’m looking for? They they don’t have the the the really the government aren’t really that interested.

[00:31:41] It’s all political manoeuvring. And it’s sad, actually, the way I mean, I think if they if I mean, my my personal thing would be if if you had it, we could have an emergency core service that was not tendered. I think tendering needs to stop. Right. Personally, would my opinion tendering needs to stop. I think it’s ridiculous situation. You know, I think then every dentist could offer every dentist may include probably could offer an emergency core service to help people out. That would spread the workload out a bit more evenly across the country. Stop this thing about. We’ve got a short what I love is the headlines. I’ve got a shortage of dentists. No, I couldn’t find a dentist. You couldn’t find an NHS dentist. That’s different. You could have gone privately. Yeah. You know, it’s all these head and it couldn’t find a dentist for three years. Did you try? You know. You know, but. So if the president said got rid of Tendring, we’re going to let everybody do have a core service. And then after that and obviously then you’re going to have to have income support, whatever it’s called, not as universal credit, not sort of area covered and run on those bases. And they’re covered for that. But beyond that, yeah, it’s really got to be a private, private service. But I don’t know. Yeah.

[00:33:01] So look, it’s interesting what you said about the Olympics because I’ve recently been using the NHS for medical services in the family and I definitely don’t want to lose that. No. As, as, as something that by the way even in medical it’s got loads of problems, right.

[00:33:24] Yeah.

[00:33:25] Issues and so on. But, but I definitely wouldn’t want to lose it because I also have been using private medical services a lot. My family has. And that has all of its own issues, a whole lot of its own issues over treatment issues and problems like that. But as far as dentistry, I mean, I did vet and I remember the moment it was was very near the beginning of it. I thought to myself, I’m never going to do NHS dentistry. I was completely pissed off with. I couldn’t believe what the situation was, you know, like what you had to do for what. And, and, you know, I also admire people who make it work. Yeah, I feel I feel like making it work. It’s almost a martyrdom thing where, you know, dentistry is a stressful job and you really need to pay be paid. I don’t know what the number would be. You’ve got to be paid 70, 80 grand to be a dentist because it’s a proper stressful job. Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re if you’re doing it properly on the NHS, you’re not going to make that.

[00:34:33] You know.

[00:34:34] And so, so you’ve got that choice of do you do the best for your patients or do you martyr yourself to the system? And I remember back then as the vet thinking, I will do whatever it takes to go private. And this was a long time ago when it wasn’t so fashionable to do that.

[00:34:53] Yeah.

[00:34:53] I found a guy who’d gone private and you said 91 was early found a guy who’d gone private in 68? Yes.

[00:35:01] Yeah.

[00:35:03] I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and he took me on. And that was it. I’d never, never did an NHS after off the vet again. But now I see, you know, people, good dentists, people going on courses, people with good knowledge, working in the NHS. And I think the biggest problem for me is a lot of the work that NHS dentists do as far as learning is learning how to survive in this system. Rather than, you know, learning how to fix teeth. Yeah. You know, it’s understanding the bureaucracy of it. I mean, it’s such a and the funny thing, when you talk to NHS dentists who want to make the leap, a lot of them are worried that they haven’t got the skills or something. And I think to myself I could never have done NHS. Like you’ve got to be a very, very good dentist to pull that off. Yeah. The short periods of time to get people out and not coming back in with problems, you know. So my advice to anyone who wants to make the leap is make the leap. Make the leap. And and and private dentistry. Now, you’ve been in it for a long time now. I think the soft skills are just as important as the clinical skills.

[00:36:23] Yeah. And then the funding that’s going to come to you, I think if patients don’t judge you. Well the judge in a number of ways, but the probably the number one. Do they like you? You know, there’s I don’t know. There’s a classic story by the medical profession. I remember being quite a few years ago, you may have heard.

[00:36:43] This about who gets sued and who doesn’t.

[00:36:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s right. And the answer was nobody gets sued because they were all lovely. All right. And the guy wrote and basically went, thank you for all your care and attention. And you looked after me superbly. Well, I realise there were just one of those things that was very behind. And then what they conclude it was people don’t sue people they like. And that’s very true and very, very true in life. And it is the soft skills. I learnt that very quickly on my free for my I was the very first year of at Payman 1983, the very first year it was optional. In my year we didn’t have to do it. All right. Okay. I don’t forget. How many years did you spend at dental school? Were you four or five?

[00:37:26] I was five. I was I was the first five.

[00:37:29] I was for four years at dental school. I was and we were the Queen’s and Belfast was the shortest dental course in the UK by one week. Edinburgh was the second shortest by me and my first boss I went to. He was a superb dentist, but a grumpy so-and-so, absolutely grumpy so-and-so, and his practise was failing. I remember we used to have to pull people out of the sofas because the bottoms had fallen out of them and things like that. And I said to him, Why don’t you buy a chair? Why don’t you buy some new chairs? And he went, Oh, NHS doesn’t bloody pay me to buy waiting room furniture and Jesus sort of thing. When I moved out at the end of 80 and I went to a place and nearby a guy he had, you remember the Siemens em one chair, the really Rolls-Royce Siemens erm one chair. He had that himself and you still get crap equipment with associates but you had Siemens in one but he invested and he could talk the hind leg of a donkey. He really had the Blahnik, he wasn’t that good a dentist, but he had the blarney, as we say in Ireland, he was supremely successful. He had people coming from far and wide flocking to him, all that sort of stuff. I very quickly learnt that actually not not such a personable bloke, failing, really personable bloke, not such a good dentist succeeding immensely. And really that’s when I very quickly learnt the soft skills were vitally, vitally important and it’s still the same today, you know I think patients just go, was he a nice chap? And that’s the more important thing that they will forgive you a lot if you’re nice to them.

[00:39:04] Yeah. Yeah. But it, it, it doesn’t mean be nice and then mess up their teeth. It’s be nice and keep, keep it simple. Keep it simple. Yeah. And anything you can’t do, refer out.

[00:39:16] Yeah, exactly. And this is where I would yeah. This is where I would agree with ADC. If not don’t often. But yes. Speak within your competency. Don’t be afraid to refer. Really. So yeah. Just because you see so-and-so on the Instagram having done this, you won’t see the fact they’ve got nine of them that are a bit crap and they both know that. Yeah. You know, you know it is one of those things, you know.

[00:39:42] But Niall’s the guy, the guy sitting, let’s say, like you, he’s done for 16 years a bit much. Let’s just say he’s done, I don’t know, five years of NHS. Yeah. And now he wants to make the leap and very simple. Be nice, don’t hurt people, you know, painless injections. I would say the most important thing you can do and then as soon keep it simple, if you haven’t got super duper skills, if you’re not a full mouth dentist, don’t, don’t try and be. Yeah. Until you get the skills and then refer out. It’s as simple as that. I mean, any dentist could be a private dentist as long as they follow those rules, right?

[00:40:21] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:22] I don’t need special knowledge.

[00:40:24] Most patients just want straightforward dentistry. They don’t want total rehabs. They don’t want film with implants. I don’t want this. What they want is to have teeth that are functional. Don’t give them much problems. Look. Okay, feel okay. And that’s all they want. And they want a nice person to do it for them. That’s what they want. They want someone they can trust. My big thing would be intraoral cameras. If you’re going private, make sure you have a really decent internal camera. Show everything. It builds trust immensely if you can show them. Particularly if, as I say to my associates, I go take the patients on the story, particularly when you’re doing the treatments. You you say you’ve got consent. You’ve you’ve shown them at the exam and you said, see, this big crack filling here, you know, carries whatever. And they consent. They come by. Show them. Remind them why they’re in today. Then show them when the feeling is removed. Show them what it looks like underneath. They normally look pretty. Yuck. You know, shown when the care is removed, show them the various stages, take them in the story, show them the cracks. Show them that you build so much trust that the next time you say to them, actually, we’re going to crack, they’re there, you know? But ultimately, you’re right. I mean, it isn’t rocket science. But one of the things I would say to young dentists, they do tend to come out and just to be focussed. Some of them is and particularly if you’re working for corporate, I would actually take your time, do things properly, right when you’re starting off in your career.

[00:41:48] Don’t worry about the money. All right. Even if you’re I mean, most people, my son, being an example, has graduated with a master’s and whatever else from Lisa. And he’s on 30, 35 grand a year. 25. Now, a lot of dentists come out and think, oh, I should be heading sort of high. 60, 70, 80 ground. Most graduates don’t earn that at that stage. What I would be saying to you, be happy with your 25 to 30 grand, but build your skills now. Take your time. Use the rubber dom. Learn to do a filling. Learn to do the difficult extraction, etc., etc., etc.. Even if it’s onto the NHS, the corporates can’t complain because you’re doing everything by the book, you know. So you’re doing good dentistry. Just take your time and build those skills particularly well. As you said yourself, even if you haven’t done that, you don’t need a huge amount of skills to go private. It’s just been nice, as you say, being nice to people doing basic good basic dentistry. Yeah. And this is back to where people look at. I mean, I was talking to someone the other day who said, where are the associates, young associates nowadays who want to just do general dentistry. They all seem to want to do bloody bonding and Invisalign and you know, that’s all they seem to want to do nowadays. And I’m going, Yeah, I just find that weird because you know, most I would say 90% of patients, 95% of patients don’t want Invisalign or bonding. Yeah, they really not interest in it. They’re interested in good basic dentistry and plenty of money to maintain that.

[00:43:28] Yeah. As long as you’re charging appropriately. Right. And that’s another problem.

[00:43:32] No, exactly. And I think I think we’ve got to do is we’ve got that. You’ve got to start. You know, we’re worried about what people will think about us when we charge fees and all that sort of stuff. I think that’s, you know, that’s a whole different area of mindset of it. But somebody said to me once you think about Harrods, they don’t aim to sell every whatever designer dress to. They don’t aim to sell a designer dress to everybody who walks into Harrods. They’ll only be a certain amount of people will buy them. And that’s the same with your dentistry then, that you will find your market, you will find your people will. You’re not to be scared of your fees. Yeah, but.

[00:44:13] How often do you put your prices up in your own practise.

[00:44:17] And annual? Late January? We we do it routinely. I mean, if we need a mid-year tweak, we will do mid-year tweak. Patients don’t notice when you put your prices up, but you get the old one who does, right. Okay. You will get the old. I think there was a statistic that came out somewhere from Harvard Business School or somewhere that might be apocryphal, but 14%, you can put your prices up by 14% and no one will actually notice. And funnily enough, we stuck are not quite that high, but we stuck our examination fee and our hygiene fee up by almost 11% this year. Not we had one patient mention it. So yes, the fee increases is only in your head then they.

[00:44:56] Yeah. In fact that boss of mine, the one firm that had gone private in 69 or whatever it was, he had a thing about if the patients aren’t complaining about the prices, they’re not they’re not high enough. And he used to annually put the prices up. And I remember I remember thinking, that’s not a big increase. Why is it even bother? But then when I stayed, I stayed in that practise for four or five years and after four or five years it was a big difference. Yeah, if you get 12 12% a year after four or five years is a significant difference.

[00:45:33] Yeah, absolutely. But you’re right, it’s indirect. If you do them regularly, patients don’t notice. I think sometimes what happens is we had this issue when we first took over the practise, the plan prices hadn’t been updated for years, for years. So we had to bring them all into line with the fee per item. The fee per item. Prices had been put up, but the plan price has never been increased. So we had a real sort of backlash from patients going. What we want to put my plan price up from 12 to 17 quid a month. Yeah, well, you know, you’re on an absolute bargain. There are 12 months, you know, so it is doing it little and often and working your way through that. But certainly, yeah, I think turning the NHS, moving away from the NHS now it’ll be just interesting to see how over the next year or so what happens. I mean because I remember there’s an awful lot of dentists talking. They want to go private at the moment and I would encourage them to. But I remember back in 1991 we went to when there was a 7% fee cut by the NHS back on the old fee per annum service.

[00:46:36] We went a BDA meeting in Surrey where I was working at the time and I had just taken over my practise 25 and it was a dump and I was literally there six months and this fee cut came in. So I knew I couldn’t go private because it was a dump and I was just new to 25, new to the area. And but everybody in the room went and they sort of had to show hands who’s all going to go private and everybody stuck their hands up and barmy and a couple of others. Interestingly, I would say about half of those who stuck their hands up never did. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens. There’s a lot of bravado at the front end, but it’ll be interesting to see there will be how many actually do make that move. But it is something I think is much better on the other side. I enjoy my job much more. I am not a stressed yeah, etc. etc..

[00:47:26] Yeah.

[00:47:28] Let’s move on to our corporates. A force for good in dentistry.

[00:47:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s an interesting one. What’s my view on that one? Yes and no. I must admit, when I when I come to sell this practise and I’m 57, so it’ll be a few years yet, possibly. But when I come to sell it, I don’t want to sell it to a corporate.

[00:47:52] Right ideologically.

[00:47:55] Ideologically and ideologically. I don’t want it. I think we need to have independent practises out there. I really do. All right. I think it’s sad that we’re all ending up as corporates. You know, there are good corporate, better corporates, less, by the way, than others. I don’t slag any of them off. I mean, we we are near Portman. And I have to say, I think Portman are run very well. They buy good practises. You know, they choose well, it’s run well then. Tax is an interesting another one that I just happen to notice that Hershey sold at the weekend to then tax you know I think that seems an interesting model I know I don’t you don’t know Jack and Deci and Rowling, do you at all, do you know? Yeah, I do. I do. Well, John’s a good man, was a good mate of mine, and he sold to Dan Tax and he’s recommended me Dan Tax highly, but equally well. I would quite like to keep it the independent sector because I do think it’s important for the you know, just what I mean if you’re a young dentist and you’re coming out today and you had no hope to own your own business, maybe, maybe a different mindset, I think. I mean, why did you do dentistry payment? Why? Why did you do Street?

[00:49:07] I was one of those. Didn’t know what I wanted to do. My parents said, hey, you know your uncle’s dentist, you like your uncle? So it was it was as terrible as that.

[00:49:19] Yeah, well, mine, mine, mine seminary. Terrible. I must admit, mine was a bit like I’m the youngest of five, and my two of my brother is much, much, much older than me. My eldest brother was 70, our doctors, and they both went, Don’t do medicine, it’s shit. And what they meant by that was they are not that time. I happen to have a very fun dentist in Northern Ireland who drove at the old quatre, went away on a skiing holiday once a week and had a 9 to 5 job and owned his own business. And that was what I quite like. They owned his own business and I went, Oh, I’ll be a dentist, you know? And that’s how I ended up doing that. But equally, equally shit reasons, you know, but it’s worked out for the best. And part of the attraction for me was the fact I could be my own boss one day. And I sort of think if it goes all totally corporate, I don’t think it ever will go all totally corporate. But if it did or if there was less opportunity for dentists, yeah, I just think it’s a sad, sad day. And if I look at some of the corporates you talk to, some of the youngsters, young professionals on the course are not youngsters. Young professionals are on the courses I made and they’re going, Oh yeah, I’m having to buy my own composite, I’m having to buy my own whatever, because the corporate will not buy this quality material for me. So I have to supply it all myself. And yeah, just.

[00:50:45] Just to be fair, lots, lots of independent bosses aren’t buying things as well.

[00:50:52] Yeah. So the red line post for another day came and that’s, that’s, that’s on the back burner actually. It keeps coming up and I think I’ll post that on this week, but it hasn’t come up yet. There’s other things that keep popping up. But yeah, that is a red wine post for another day. Yeah, you’re right. It isn’t exclusive to corporates. You’re absolutely right. It isn’t exclusive, of course. But I just think. Yeah, how are they forced for good? They’ve been a force for good somebody put out pointed out and the thing for practise owners Goodwill’s.

[00:51:24] For selling out.

[00:51:26] Yeah well it’s gone through the roof I mean back to what we were saying earlier when I first bought my practise, 1991, they were all sold through box yards in the back of the bdg and Frank Taylor was an auditor. Frank Taylor was actually Frank Taylor. He was an he had a little thing and practises were sold for the average of the previous three years turnover. Right. So the average of that on the third of that somewhere between 25% and 33% of the average of the previous year. Three is turnover. And so I bought my first practise which was turning over about sort of 180 grand for about 60 grand. Yeah, well, I know. Just mad, mad, mad, mad. And you know, it has totally changed. I mean, nowadays, you know, so so they have brought the corporates have certainly from the PRI, but from the associates point of view, I struggle a little bit more to see what they brought.

[00:52:26] Yeah, you’re right. On average, you’d probably rather work for a for a non corporate as an associate. My wife works for a corporate and they’re one of the better ones. They’re one of the better ones. Although when something goes wrong, the chain of command is just extraordinary. That’s one thing. And then another thing, you know, my wife is actually owns a quarter of enlightened. She herself owns a quarter of Enlightened. And you’d imagine the owner of Enlightened. Right. Could could make things happen from a whitening perspective in the practise. Yes. And the red tape they have to go through just to make a leaflet, you know, it has to be in brand with the corporates and so on is amazing as well. And then things like computers break and and don’t get fixed sometimes you know. Yeah. And you think this corporates got so much money why don’t they. Although although having you know, I’m talking to lots of corporates about bringing in light in in as well and it’s not a bed of roses running a corporate at all because it turns out the business model actually isn’t that lovely, other than they will then sell the whole thing off for even more bigger, even a bigger multiple. But but, you know, it turns out running these, you know, 300 practises, whatever they’ve got, it takes a whole team of head office and you know, that team needs paying for. And like anything when you grow it, I mean, you’ve got one practise, you know, but there’s several dentists. You’ve got, you know, way more than that. And they whenever they grow it, they find it very. Haunt keeping the thing as it was right. Keeping the culture as it was and and keeping everything going. And so they end up they end up exerting control with cash, essentially, sort of the easiest way for them to control. The thing is to say this is the maximum budget and you’re right in that dentistry doesn’t work well under those circumstances. No, no, that’s very true. I agree with you on that.

[00:54:30] Yeah, I’ve heard that story. And the reason why I didn’t I mean, I was quite interested in in in in the early days, back in the days of you remember Whitecross in London. What was it was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:54:43] Mendelson.

[00:54:44] Mendelson, yeah.

[00:54:45] Just passed away.

[00:54:45] And I took a strong interest in sort of having a look at the courtroom, but I couldn’t see maybe it was just me how it would work. Because again, what you say that I want to have really good practise of patients treated really well. So my first boss had in Northern Ireland had four practises. He went bankrupt. This was back in the early nineties. He went bankrupt and he said to me and he sort of put me off. Somebody said, never run more than one practise. He said the main practise was doing really, really well. The other three branches, squats, fair enough, as branches grinned as money bankrupted them. And he started again. But what I’m saying is that. So that’s between the two. I just couldn’t see how it worked. But I remember back in the day when I wasn’t idea what was what was the idea to the average day when it was originally called? I can’t remember what was called back in the nineties somewhere else.

[00:55:42] Now it’s called something and now it’s called my dentist.

[00:55:44] My dentist. Yeah. Yeah. No, maybe it was always idea.

[00:55:47] It was like that.

[00:55:48] Yeah. But yeah. No, but I remember Whitecross in London looking at them and London and going, Oh, nice idea.

[00:55:56] Nice, didn’t they? And there was JD Hull, if you remember.

[00:55:58] Yes, I remember JD Hull. I mean, he was he was a character. Wasn’t a he was a character. He was a character.

[00:56:06] He started out in South Wales, I studied in Cardiff so. So I’ve got some of his.

[00:56:11] Yeah, yeah. No stories character. He certainly, certainly remember that. I remember talking to him one time and he wasn’t, he was big into rugby, I’m big into my rugby so we got to talk about that sort of stuff. But he was going to almost take you down into hospitality and all that sort of stuff, you know, never, never, nothing ever happened. But yeah, no, you’re right. I do think that the advantage of independent practise owners is that their flexibility. Yeah, they can respond quickly. They can respond quickly to the market. They can respond quickly to everything goes on. And actually, the advantage is if you have a good principle and you have to have a good principle, I’m not saying I’m one necessarily, but you have to have a good principal who has strong leadership, a strong vision of what they want to do with the practise. They will be very successful. I think, unfortunately, a lot of principals possibly don’t have that sort of leadership skills, but yeah, they are. And therefore maybe a corporate is better for certain people, but not for everybody.

[00:57:15] Yeah, so I don’t think it’s impossible that they could succeed. I mean, in opticians they’ve certainly, you know, taken completely taken over except for the very high end ones, right. Yeah. And I think opticians are different to dentists.

[00:57:30] Yeah, they.

[00:57:30] Are. It’s it’s more a retail model than a service.

[00:57:34] I have to say where I say we were more veterinary like I would argue that. Yeah. And I think veterinary there are 40% or something on it or whatever. I don’t know. Is there 40% of the market. I’m not. Yeah.

[00:57:47] Right.

[00:57:48] Yeah, something like that.

[00:57:50] Let’s go on to let’s go on to your story a bit more now. Why did you move from Northern Ireland? I guess you grew up in Ulster as well, did you?

[00:57:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was born and bred there. I’m born 1965 in a place called Larne, currently Antrim in Northern Ireland, which.

[00:58:06] Is a port. I’ve been to Northern Ireland. Yeah.

[00:58:11] It’s a dump.

[00:58:12] Yeah.

[00:58:13] Yeah. I mean the area. So I went to school there. I, my father, my father was stationmaster. Interestingly, it used to be the largest station in Ireland and then the beach came along and he ended up setting my father. I think it got my wanting to run my own business. My father, he ran his own haulage firm for years and my father left school at 14 back in the day. So I mean, yeah, he would have been he would nowadays he would have gone to university. He was a clever bloke, but now he had six children, five which survived. And there is I grew in Larne, so I ended up going to school there ended up, as I explained to you, already doing dentistry simply through the fact that careers advice was shite back then. I remember going to the careers teacher as it was, who happened to be the maths teacher as well, and when she said, What are you doing? And I went on doing maths. Physics, chemistry and said And what you think in doing for university now? I went, Oh, I’m thinking of doing dentistry. And she went, Yeah. Greg go and look under the yonder in the fine cabinet over there. And that was it.

[00:59:15] Was.

[00:59:16] A little bit from Queens was Cuba. And that was literally my 5 minutes of career advice. And, and my brothers went, I don’t do medicine. So I ended up doing dentistry. And, and back in the day I, you know, you literally just fill in UCAS form. Even the personal step one was a bit like I like playing rugby, you know, sort of style. That was it. He had no interviews. No interviews. I don’t know if you. Did you have an interview.

[00:59:42] We had interviews.

[00:59:44] Yeah. Queens, we didn’t. No interviews. You just literally sent it off and you got whoa. Yeah. Offered you press and that was it. That was and I look at youngsters, young people coming out of school nowadays and what they have to go through to get into dentistry and school. And I remember we spend our first year, year and a half with the Medicks and I remember one anatomy lecture. They came to the front and went, We’ve got a medick who’s interested in transferring to dentistry. Does any dentist, do any dentists want to transfer to medicine? This is about six weeks in. Yeah. And I thought about it for an hour during that anatomy lecture going I went, Nah, can’t be there too much.

[01:00:21] Hassle on.

[01:00:22] The as I get switched to the doctor. So anyway, I ended up at Queen’s and Belfast did for years 1983 to 87, graduated, took the optional vet and then went from there and then basically had feet. And the problem with Northern Ireland, it’s it’s a very, very close community. And, you know, it’s complicated by obviously all the troubles. I mean, I was there at the height of the troubles. You know, I actually was in digs in the final year in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast when the sniper fired at the Army post and top of our tower block, you know, you know, that sort of thing was on, you know, so it literally was a, you know, all outgoing all at the time. So I didn’t particularly want to stay in Northern Ireland. You always get attracted by the bright lights of England. My wife, well, my girlfriend at the time was English and her father was a surgeon in Chesney. I mean, I don’t know if you ever my father in law was a surgeon from India, and he came over in 1957 to do his FRCS and ended up in Northern Ireland basically because he couldn’t get consultant’s post in the north of England, as he says, because he was racially discriminated against, because he was Indian. He wrote to the BMA and went DMC and went, Oh, I’m not going to consultant’s posts here. Do you think it’s because I’ve got a brown face basically? And they went, Yeah, probably. What do you want us to do about it?

[01:01:55] And so I’ll tell you, let me tell you a story. My dad studied in Queens. Yeah, all right. In the fifties. In the fifties, yes. And someone asked him to be president of the Students Association, whatever. Right. Because he was neither neither Catholic nor Protestant.

[01:02:14] Yes, exactly. Well, it was a.

[01:02:20] It was very much like that. You know, I remember going to the Catholic chaplain and say, I’m a Protestant. Technically, I’m atheist nowadays, but I’m a Protestant technically. And I know Niles, a very Irish name and normally used by Catholics. I am frozen technically. And I remember going with friends of mine who were to the Catholic Chaplaincy for lunch, you know, because it was cheap and it was good and they, they wind me up. I said, Oh, you better keep a low profile to realise your problems, you know, that, you know. And I was going really isolating and yeah, yeah, I’ll have you chucked out of here and I’m going, oh Lord. But yeah, it was all that, all that was going on amongst fellow students, more banter. But there was a very serious edge going on outside in the real world and Belfast and the wider shrines of Northern Ireland. So I didn’t want to live there. I didn’t want to bring up children there. I felt that it was a very closed community. My personal opinion, I know plenty of my colleagues who stayed in a very successful and enjoyable life in Northern Ireland. So we moved over to England and literally I find a practise through the back as as a box as the beat and moved over when I was just turned 26 and started my first practise and took over a practise from another Irish woman who is returning to Southern Ireland and that was that. And I grew it from there basically. So eventually we outgrew the building and we knocked it down. We got an architect and we rebuild the building, etcetera, etcetera, and the rest is history. Yeah. Do I regret doing dentistry? No, I actually think it’s a great career. You know.

[01:03:58] You’re clearly completely engaged with with dentistry still. What would you. What would you say is the secret of that? I mean, is it is it the people that you love or is it the meccano aspect of it? Is it the business side?

[01:04:13] Yeah, meccano. I was never good at my count. I said, Yeah, I would like a bit more. But yeah, that’s why I don’t do implants. Why do not you go? Yeah, I’ll fit. I’ll fit on ladies and crimes using. Sorry, that’s more like Lego implants. But seriously, what is it about? It’s the people. It’s the people. It’s the people, you know, and dentists. We’re very lucky inasmuch as that we have that amazing ability to take people from who are in severe, severe pain to out of pain within a few minutes. Yeah. You know, help them or even just on a more mundane level improve their self confidence. Even people come in and it’s nice when people write reviews going, Oh my God, I was actually petrified at the dentist till I found you or I came to your practise or I came to their, you know, and we all in all our various practises have reviews like that. And I just like helping people, you know, then they and I think that’s what keeps me going about it. I don’t like all the things that anybody else doesn’t like. I don’t like the GDC, I don’t like the QC, I don’t like everything like that that’s come with it. And I and I actually don’t like the Instagram stroke, you know, composite bonding stroke, Invisalign. It has its place, but it’s not dentistry for me, you know, it’s an aspect of dentistry, but it’s not all dentistry. So, you know, I think there’s, you know, dentistry is about helping people and helping people is extractions, root canals, fillings, whatever, you know.

[01:05:46] I mean, you should you should know there is quite a lot of very valuable stuff on Instagram as well. Yeah.

[01:05:51] Oh, yeah.

[01:05:51] I know when you say Instagram, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. But but there’s lots of lots of really good education on Instagram too.

[01:06:01] Yeah, yeah, I know there is. And I have to say I have to say I do follow not not an Instagram, but quite a few Facebook pages that I think are vitally useful. Jaz does Nick Gulati is Gujarati page A etc. etc. etc.. Yeah, are very valuable and very useful. Yes. No, there are a lot of good stuff. It’s the stuff that you know what I’m talking about, the sort of the glamour do.

[01:06:27] Yeah, I do. And you know, I’m very involved in that space.

[01:06:33] Yes, I.

[01:06:33] Know you are. You know, I’m very Payman.

[01:06:37] Don’t worry. Don’t worry. They say whatever you like, right? At the end of the day. Know a line? Bleach bond. Right. So we’re big in bleach and we’re making bond, and we’re not big in a line. But I know what you mean. I mean, there’s definitely some overtreatment going on with composite bonding and some low quality treatment going on with composite bonding. And there’s going to be a bunch of failures very soon. I mean, composites are very unforgiving material.

[01:07:03] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:07:05] You know, stains very quickly. And but then on the other hand, I would say that’s the reason for learning it properly. And I don’t even mean come to my course. I mean practise, you know, practise a lot and talk to lots of people and and so forth. But it’s interesting, though, these days you can choose to be whichever type of dentist you want to be in a way, because there’s so much more referral. You know, in our day you were either a general dentist or you were a specialist dentist. And even specialist was a new thing, wasn’t it?

[01:07:35] Yeah, it was more. Or your dentist was more or more what. I qualified the other one at the hospital. Or you are a general practise dentist. Yeah.

[01:07:44] And then I know you quite like you quite like endo, don’t you.

[01:07:49] I do quite a lot of endo. Yeah.

[01:07:51] Yeah. So, so I, I stopped practising ten years ago, but in my last four years of practise, I didn’t do any endo at all. I just I referred all of them. And what I’m saying is you can you can choose to be an Invisalign dentist and be fine with that, or you can choose to be an implant guy. And just just go into that very quickly these days. What do you think about that? Do you think do you think do you do you also sort of mourn the loss of the generalist?

[01:08:22] No. As much as I think do I mourn the loss of the generalist? I don’t think we’ve lost the generalist totally. But there are things like implants. I genuinely do think they should be done by guys who are doing X number of implants a year.

[01:08:37] Lots of them.

[01:08:37] Yeah, yeah, lots of them. I really do think. Do you want to go to a hip a hip surgeon and get do you want to go to a surgeon and get your hip replacement done? But find out actually, he’s an abdominal surgeon. Just does the odd hip replacement once every six months.

[01:08:52] No.

[01:08:52] Well done. You know, and you know, so, you know, why should implants be any different? You know, so the likes of, say, Adam Glass food for want of a name or you know, quite there are loads of people out there. Roberti Yeah, yeah. Rob Morrissey There’s another good one. Yeah. Who I think Dominic Hurley tends to do mostly implants. Stuff like that tends to my name. Yes, I am very much a best for that in terms of, you know, Invisalign and so on. Yeah. Well now don’t get started on Invisalign. I do think once you get away from implants, once you get I do think there is a, there’s certainly a place for specialists, but there’s no reason why a good generalist can’t do 90, 80, 90% over to a standard that is more than acceptable for the JDC. Yeah. So, you know, so yeah, I think you can end up referring most of your business away if you end up referring too much out. But yeah, you know, I certainly I certainly think that and also sort of sometimes patients go, yeah, they don’t like going to another place. I know this is where it’s coming back to that people are bringing specialists in-house, aren’t they? More and more so. And that’s that’s a headache in itself, trying to keep them busy and trying to keep them on something the other. But yeah, if patients don’t like, they’ve come to see you, they’ve come to see your practise, they know where you are, somebody’s described also the patients are a bit like patients are a bit like cats or no. Yeah, that patients but like cats. Yes, that’s right. Rather than dogs. Dogs. Dogs are attached.

[01:10:32] To the building.

[01:10:33] Yes, the cats are attached to the building. Yeah. So on patients are a bit like cats. That’s how good the sale of goodwill works because they go, Oh, I’ll stay to the building. Even though a new owners come in, I’ll stick there because I know the building. Yeah, it’s a weird phenomenon, but that’s the way it works. And I think patients. So I do think there is and will always be a place for the general sense. I think what’s sad is that people sort of see that they should be doing more Invisalign and more bonding and more of this. You know, there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but at the expense of doing their general dentistry or they feel like they’re peer pressured into doing it because they’re met down the road, is doing a lot or they’ve seen someone on Instagram.

[01:11:16] I feel like I feel like Invisalign kind of feels like easy money, doesn’t it? That’s the thing.

[01:11:21] Yeah, it’s.

[01:11:22] Something. It’s not easy. Money is very difficult work, but not easy at all. But have you done Invisalign? Now, I noticed on your on your website, you guys do Invisalign.

[01:11:33] Yeah. It says my, my associate does Invisalign. I don’t touch the stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On our website.

[01:11:38] Which is leaning on it, I feel like you’ve got something to say about Invisalign. Go on.

[01:11:42] Well, apart from that, like the dominator. Yeah. Apart from the fact that they absolutely dominate the market. What I find sad about Invisalign is the people that sort of chest, the diamond, the double diamond, the platinum, whatever status you know, that. Oh, don’t do this number. From what I understand, the fees are still incredibly high from Invisalign for their stuff. Even if you get diamond, double diamond or whatever status you’re on. Yeah. And if you talk to sort of certain orthodontists like Ian Hutchinson, for example, yeah, he’ll go Aligners or Aligners and my associates done the in Hutchinson’s course and she would go that well yeah, you can do them with Invisalign and you will get down to site their particular Instagram going, I can do everything on Invisalign, you know that. But there are certain cases on quite a lot of cases that are maybe better off with fixed, but you know, it is what it is.

[01:12:37] But I think that tide is turning though in a way, because I speak to a number of orthodontists who are Invisalign only Invisalign orthodontists, and it can do a lot more than it used to do. I mean, I remember when I trained on Invisalign, they were saying, you know, you can’t rotate teeth, you can’t you can do a lot more than it used to. But but this question of, you know, being aligns sort of ad, you know, like some people say, look, why are you putting Invisalign brand ahead of your own brand? Yes. And you know what? I get it. I do get it. Number one, the discount bit piece is is significant. You know, that that that apex diamond predator, whatever status they get it. I think half the price of of an.

[01:13:26] Absolutely significant chunk of money when you compare it to other.

[01:13:29] Compared to brackets. Compared to brackets. Of course. Yes. Yeah. But the other thing is, you know, align invented aligners. Yeah. They, they didn’t just go stick a name on, they invented it. I mean, okay, totally different management to to it was a totally different person, totally different management to who we’ve got there now. But, but having invented aligners that, that first mover advantage that they had and they’re now bigger than Henry Schein, I think the biggest, the biggest company in dentistry now or they’re definitely up there. I mean it’s basically align Henry Schein and then splice around, you know, there’s three or four investor, you know, the ones who own all those noble bio care and or ASC optic. And so, you know, I’ve spoken to a bunch of dentists about this. I haven’t got a horse in the race. I don’t I don’t mind one way or the other. I certainly know some dentists who’ve left Invisalign and then come back because they were unhappy with the alternatives. And I know others who’ve left and and they’re very happy. Very happy. I know some who print their own aligners, you know, make their own in house. So there seems to be a few ways to skin the cat. But the, the brand is super strong and there’s a lot of very happy people with the brand. I think they could do a lot more on customer service. I mean, yeah, they seem to be very poor on customer service, which is weird. You know, you’d imagine they take care of that.

[01:14:59] Yeah, I think it’s they, they almost are in that position of it and they’re so dominant that they feel they can just treat anybody the way they want. And that’s what the seems to happen. Then the single.

[01:15:11] I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think that’s it. No company thinks that way. I mean, it’s well, maybe, but you don’t become the world’s biggest dental company thinking that. I think it’s probably you.

[01:15:21] Know, there are a bit. But I just think I just.

[01:15:23] Think they’re growing so quickly that they can’t they can’t keep up with the growth themselves.

[01:15:31] So, yeah, it’s.

[01:15:32] The same reason Facebook is such a nightmare to deal with. You know, as an advertiser, it’s an absolute nightmare dealing with that company. But the reason is they’re just growing so quickly.

[01:15:44] Yeah, I.

[01:15:45] Think. I think that’s the reason.

[01:15:46] Yeah.

[01:15:47] Tell me, let’s move on to darker questions. Well, before we do that, before we do that, let’s talk about you’ve run a couple of super successful dental practises, have been around for ages, employing loads of people, treating thousands of patients. What would you say that secrets to success outside of the clinical?

[01:16:10] Well, the sacred success are I personally might. Well, we’ve talked about this already is your personality. You know, you have to be a nice person to deal with.

[01:16:21] It’s certainly outside of patient care. I mean, I’m.

[01:16:24] I’m thinking more staff associates. Yeah. Outside the patient care. What’s important for me having, you know, in terms of what do you mean in terms of equipment and stuff like that or staff associates. Keeping people happy? Yeah. What’s important? I think you’ve got to pay people. Well, certainly nowadays that’s a big thing for staff. You know, that’s one of the big questions is the dental nurse crisis. You know, dental nurses have been absolutely poorly paid for donkey’s years, you know, treated like shit, basically, to be honest with you. You know, my it up. We’ve got nurses retiring. She’s 59 and she’s been a dental nurse since she was 16. And she started off nursing right in four inch stilettos because that was the rule for the practise back then. Four inch white slippers, you know. But, you know, she said we had to have that, you know, that was the rule, you know. And I’m going, oh, my God. Yeah. They’re always been paid a pittance. So it’s treating your staff well. The problem is with it is, you know, with difficulty with staff, your staff are key to the success of the practise. They really are. The front of house is absolutely vital. Yeah. You’re you’re your reception team. Your front of house is absolutely vital. If you do not have people who are reasonably intelligent, reasonably, you know, savvy.

[01:17:59] Resourceful.

[01:18:01] Resourceful, etc., you are screwed it really and you really are screwed. I mean, we have been through in our current practise so many from the past team, mainly because I mean, the thing is, you know, it’s funny enough, it’s what I my favourite programme at the moment is the sewing bee. I don’t know, you watch the great British sewing Payman there you watch the Great Britain now.

[01:18:24] And the great.

[01:18:25] You know, great British sewing bees on Wednesdays on BBC One, whatever it what it is, is basically so or as you come along and make clothes out of material and it’s like great British Bake Off, but for sewing. And as I said to them, it’s all about attention to detail. You know, it’s it’s you look at it and you go, right, okay, you’ve made it, you’ve made a dress. But the hems all wobbly. Why is the hair more wobbly? It doesn’t look quite right or one side’s long and the other it doesn’t quite fit correctly there. This colour thread doesn’t match or whatever, you know. And so all about it, it’s all the little details that go in to make a dress. You may look at it and say, That’s a dress, all right. But then you look at everything that’s gone in to make a lovely, lovely dress, and that’s like a dental practise to me. People sort of say to me, Oh, you know, you’re some we’ve been accused of nit picking, you know, say you’re saying, Oh, you need to be doing it like this and be like I say, no, I call it we have standards basically. And they and everything comes together to form the whole. But if you you know if you cannot and sorry people will Brit me for this but if you cannot write an email back to people and where we are a site of Oxford we get everybody from Oxford, professors of English and to all sorts of places people in fact if you cannot write an email that makes sense in perfect grammatical English, back to patients.

[01:19:51] All right. We’re screwed to start off with, you know, and it’s the detail is the little things like that, making sure you put your apostrophe in the right place, making sure you’ve done this, you’ve done that. But yes, staff are key. Staff are absolutely key. And once you find the staff, pay them well, treat them well, you know, look after them well, make sure that you’re nice to them. But even then, yeah, there’s no guarantee we’ll stay nowadays. Everybody wants to move on eventually. And in terms of the servants, the practise, I just think, you know, people well, I can never understand as you get dentists who will have a lovely house, maybe even a lovely holiday home or a lovely Ferrari or whatever, and then spend a little money on their practise. Yeah. Then they have a lovely practise. Patients appreciate it. They really do notice the difference. And it’s all those subliminal things that go in to make to make it successful personally.

[01:20:47] Yeah. I mean, the other thing is, look, the number of dentists, the number of people you speak to and they say, oh, I really like that so-and-so restaurant because the service is excellent.

[01:20:56] Yeah.

[01:20:57] And you know, in terms of restaurant, you’ve got, you’ve got the food in front of you. So you can, you can judge the food. Whereas in dentistry, our patients mostly can’t judge. What we do at all. Our patients got no clue whatsoever that you’re putting this matrix on and wedging it and not understand. And the example you gave at the beginning about the guy who was the Great Panther wasn’t the best dentist in the world. And so they only have these other clues to go on and obviously the people. But, you know, it’s interesting, I go to a dental practise and with fresh eyes I can see things that people who work there can’t see. It’s a bit of the cobweb in the corner or a bit of something sticking off the ceiling. And these are all clues to the patient. And, you know, interesting thing now, do you do you guys serve coffee in your practise?

[01:21:51] Yes.

[01:21:51] Yeah. So so I’ve worked in practises where the coffee’s been terrible coffee and and was my fault. I was the associate there and I fully understand the reasons why, you know, we’re not a coffee shop where we’re a dentist and all that.

[01:22:07] But.

[01:22:09] When I take my BMW, it’s not a Rolls-Royce, a BMW. I take my BMW for service. The coffee is excellent, and I drive up and the guy, some dude opens the car door and welcomes me by name before I’ve even said anything. But I know how he does it, right? He’s got my number plate. He knows what time I’m coming. It still makes me feel good. It takes me upstairs. Latte or cappuccino? It’s a it’s a car garage. It’s not. It’s not a Starbucks either, right? It’s a car garage. Yeah. And so these and now it’s interesting. I must have been to a thousand practises in my career and even I, who knows the full story exactly, knows what’s going on and, and, and what’s going and what’s happening and whose fault it is and whose fault it is. And even now, when I walk into a practise and they offer me a coffee and I have the coffee and it’s a nice coffee, I start making judgements about this practise about the kind of dentist they are, even me who knows all about it. I know exactly what’s happening, I’m still making those judgements. So imagine our patients, you know, the non-clinical queues that they’re taking.

[01:23:18] Yeah, absolutely. And we will serve bean to cup. We have a bean teacup machine upstairs. Yes, we go to Costco and we buy Lavazza beans but we do bean, we don’t have that was the first thing I got rid of was the instant coffee, you know. I said, I’m going to bean cup machine. I bought it once and some later. We bought it five years ago. It’s still going strong. It’s brilliant. And patients come and go. Lovely coffee. Thank you very much. You know, selection of teeth and, you know, and it’s just not having that level.

[01:23:48] Of attention to detail, as you.

[01:23:50] Said. Exactly. And just having nice cups to serve it in and and the place being clean in the modern. And it’s all under decoration, not being too scuffed. I know you can’t help the odd scuff here and there and all that sort of stuff. I mean, there was I mean, not that I’ve gone to this, but I had in the last practise I remember we had a small tester pots and I used to get the nurse to go round and if there was any scuffs, sometimes I’d do it myself. I’d just paint them every week, just find where the scuffs were, repaint them with the tester so that we got rid of the scuffs straight away. So they didn’t hang around. But it’s things like that. People want to see. They can’t, as you say, can’t judge you and everything and anything else, part of your personality. But they will go often. Yeah. I mean, how many reviews have you seen where they go? Oh, lovely. Clean practise. Very modern, you know. Brilliant. Yeah. How do you know they’re brilliant? How many times have you seen patients where you go, God, they’re singing the praises of the previous dentist. And you go, This dentistry is pretty mediocre. Yeah, but the thing the patients are singing the praises about them. Yeah. And you go well yeah it’s because they’ve got a lot of the other things. Right, you know. But they’re really.

[01:24:59] What about associates and associates? What are your Top Tips? Top Tips? Let’s talk about what you look for when you’re hiring an associate and let’s talk about your bugbears. What’s the thing that pisses you off about associates?

[01:25:13] Yeah. What pisses me off? It was those associates outright who basically seem to think that the boss is ripping them off, that they’re making the absolute bloody fortune out of them. And then they they’re really pissed me off associates.

[01:25:27] Some of them thing was.

[01:25:28] Yeah. That wasn’t them. Who aren’t, who don’t, don’t sort of realise that they’re part of the clinical team, that they’re, that things like I’m trying to think what else. Because for both associates we’ve had associates that were that before I took over the practise had to go and work in as an associate for a brief, very brief period of time. And one of the other associates used to, if there was a gap before the end of the day, so say share the gap. And then the other end of the day, she would just literally walk out and tell the receptionist to cancel that sort of patient know. So would say, I’m not I’m not hanging around for 45 minutes to see Mrs. So-and-so for a check-up counsellor. And I’m going.

[01:26:07] Wow.

[01:26:08] Yeah, yeah. Know that’s extreme. And you don’t get that, but it’s, it’s.

[01:26:14] What are you looking for when you hire them?

[01:26:16] What am I looking for? I’m looking for very much. Can I talk to them? Do I get on with them? Can I talk to them? Because, you know, obviously you want people who are on board with what your way of thinking is. You know, I want to hear a good a good story from them. I want to hear that a certain certainly it will be a lot of I want to hear they can hold their own. They can talk to me. Honestly, I’m not so interested in clinical skills, you know. I know nowadays the thing is a portfolio, isn’t it? That seems to be the big thing. God, that was that. Jesus Christ never even thought about my day but a portfolio. Yeah. I’m not so interested. I can normally think well if you can talk good talk, if you’ve been on a reasonable number of courses, if you’ve done this, if you’ve done that, you know, and you know, you’re normally going to be okay and it’s, it’s yeah. Just saying, can you gel with them at the end. You’ve got to work with them day in, day out and, and that’s basically what I look for. And you know, there’s no I guess.

[01:27:24] If you could gel with them, then it’s likely your patients are going to gel with them.

[01:27:27] Too. Like dentists would attract people, attract people. They like them basically. Then there isn’t that old thing, you know. So at the end of the day, if you’re basically if you’re an irritating, irritable old bastard as a dentist, you know, then you’ll get irritable bastards of patients, you know, then they whereas, you know, you’re fairly relaxed, easygoing, sort of bloke, you’ll lose the ones that are irritable, right. Or the ones that think, oh, he’s a bit flippant. You know, I’m always sort of telling jokes and bad jokes and all that sort of stuff, you know? So lose the ones that think, Oh, he’s not that professional, he’s a bit flippant. I don’t want them particularly. And in that way I want more. So yeah, I want associate. But it is good to have a mix within the practise, different styles, different, you know, so that we, you know, patients always you don’t necessarily want the patient leave the practise, but you might say, well, you can go and see, they might go and see, can I go and see yens for example or whatever, you know. But yeah, the problem is with nowadays. Yeah. Trying to get an associate, that’s the thing. But there we are.

[01:28:29] Yeah. You know, it’s not limited to dentistry, right? There is a global shortage of labour and raw materials. It’s a funny time. I don’t know if you ever remember this in your time, Nigel. I don’t ever remember this sort of weird. It’s not even a recession yet. Is is whenever it is. The shortage of labour and shortage of raw materials.

[01:28:51] Yeah, well, yeah, the raw materials is certainly a big thing. Yeah. I mean, we, I have said to the staff, you know, whereas normally we did it just in time because we got a letter from Henry Schein or my email months ago going We can no longer guarantee next day delivery, you know. So I said, I don’t want to be run down to the last minute. Please give us a months, you know, like whatever. But yeah, no, to be honest, when I first qualified as a dentist and came to England, I could have walked into any area in England and been offered six jobs on the spot. You know.

[01:29:23] There were dentists.

[01:29:24] Yeah, I was a dentist. Yeah. But in terms of going round beyond that with dental nurses and stuff, no, I don’t ever remember such a shortage of dental nurses, such shortage materials, you know, and certainly. But you can see it in the wider economy. We were in Guildford today shopping and some of the staff we had to encounter in some of the quite posher shops, you’d go, Oh my goodness, they really must be struggling. Yeah, because, you know, calibre wasn’t there that had, you know, and whose somebody was saying who lives in London was saying that virtually every restaurant has a sign saying staff on immediate start you know.

[01:30:01] Yeah and I guess pressure on wages as well. Right because staff know that this is the situation.

[01:30:09] The staff staff know the situation, pressure and wages. And again, it’s fine in private practise, you just put your fees up, you know, at the end of the day. But the NHS, I don’t know where they go without, to be honest with you, I really don’t know where they go without.

[01:30:24] Let’s talk about some mistakes. What have been your biggest mistakes? I want to talk both clinically and business wise.

[01:30:33] Yeah, business wise. Clinically. Oh yeah. I’ve had quite a few. Yeah. From the, from the woman that I wanted to do, the woman that I injected bleach into her sinus and doing the nasty and, you know, doing the asked. And as she it’s quite funny, I was about 40 at the time and I was doing the Suede Rubber Diamond. She was quite quiet, everything was going nicely and she was sort of and she suddenly went, Oh, what was that? And I went, I’d just blown the three in one. And I thought, Oh no, it’s just nothing. Just air. And so we’re worked on a minute or two later, a re injected with the hypochlorite and a burning sensation in my eye. And I, I went, shit, I’ve just, just after I’ve done that. All right. So I sat her upright and took the rubber down off. Oh, no. Yeah. Luckily I had the thought, oh, shit, I’ve been injected, so I don’t know why. Just in my head I got let’s get local anaesthetic solution. I just got sinus and then pumped about four cartridges of Satanists through the root canals and just pumped it, pumped unprompted and sat her upright, took the rubber dam off, sat her upright, and as we sat her upright, she Oh my nostrils burning. Oh my God, my nose was burning. And all this clear drip out of her nose. Obviously, the hypochlorite and I can remember at the time exterior going to know this sometimes happens. Yeah, it’s rare occurrence, but it’s fine inwardly I was going I want my mummy, I.

[01:32:09] Really want my God.

[01:32:12] And I could remember thinking and I do need the loo right now, you know. And so definitely bra and trouser moment we ended up taking the two thought because it I just said oh it must be cracked, let’s take the two so send her up to the hospital. And she basically the hospital berates her because apparently she had a sinus thinning operation 20 years previous to that and never told me I said I was at least honest or to say to hell, even if you told me that, I probably wouldn’t have made any difference, you know. But she brought me a box of chocolates and apologised for actually putting me through stress and I thought was quite sweet and surgical emphysema as we discussed this on the on the on that. Not such a good day. There are office we cup the patients. Not everybody has but I think most dentists, if they’re absolutely honest, will have caught the patients. Tongue, cheek, whatever. Yeah, we’ve all had minor things. So things like that. Yes. Have happened. Nothing, nothing, nothing. So irreversible. You know, what.

[01:33:14] About what about where a management or patient management problem, where have the patients lost confidence and you know, or something?

[01:33:23] Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. I’ve only ever been sued and once in my career and that was over a when I left the practise, my last practise to come and start this one. If I’d been there it would have been managed and handled. But yeah, it was just one of those things. I missed the root canal on a lower seven and blah blah blah patient and I end up being sued. Nice DLP letter came through for that, which was lovely, you know. So the yeah. So no in terms of yeah, we all.

[01:33:53] I’m looking for something. I’m looking for something that someone could learn from because you know I it’s a nice story the non the hypochlorite one but not, not much we can learn from that one.

[01:34:05] No, no, no, no. Yeah. So in terms of I think the things you’ve got, you’ve got to look for at the start with patient management is you will get red flags from patients from early on. You know, they will start throwing them up fairly early on if they’re sort of saying, oh, I can’t lie back, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I can’t do the other. I think you’ve got to learn to pull out pretty quickly and say, I need to refer you on someone else. I think this is where your bacterial referral comes in. But yes, we do all get patients where we go that things aren’t going well. Right. And maybe, you know, they haven’t gone as well as you’d hoped, despite warning the patients. And the patients obviously very disappointed in terms of patient management. What I tend to do with them is look, I go look that root canal, all right. It didn’t work out as well as we thought it was going to. Unfortunately, it’s cleared up. It’s only eight months ago. I know a bit of crying on it.

[01:35:00] This, that and the other. Why don’t we get that tooth taken out? Because just keep them giving you problems. And I refund money. That’s what I do. Ultimately, people. People say to me, what? You refund money? And I go, Yeah, there’s no point in arguing. I work on that. I probably refund the practise refunds by. Under the practise turnover every year. Yeah. Now, considering we have a really good turnover in the practise, it’s nothing for a quiet line on. Patients will go fantastic. They stop complaining quite often. You don’t even have to refund the refund. You can just leave it as a credit on the the on the account. And they will either say well I’ll go and see so and so we’ll get the implant, that’ll be a credit towards my implant or that will be a credit towards whatever you need to do in the future. I just think personally, you know, it’s in terms of patient management, I think what you’ve got to make sure that, you know, after the money all the time personally patients will.

[01:36:04] Really I mean, refunds a good, good plan I think especially these days when you’ve got DLP around now. But tell me a story where you refunded money.

[01:36:15] Tell me a story where refund it. Well, yeah, I had one recently where basically again, it was a bit of this guy come in to see me for a second opinion. He was he had been somewhere else and what didn’t want to lose this up or six didn’t have a big feral on it. And I went, Oh yeah, tell you what, I can do that. I’ll refill that. I’ll put a crown on it. Hey. Yeah. Deep on the three times and six months, roots eventually fractured and went shit. So I ended up going, right, here’s your 1200 quid back on the wall where so bloody time, you know. And they I should have, you know, I was looking I think because he was, he had sort of gone I really want to keep this tooth, you know, and even though I had to.

[01:37:07] So on reflection on reflection, do you think you overestimated your own skill?

[01:37:13] You probably. I think one of the things about dentists with a lot of us are want to please people. At the end of the day, you know, we want to try and. Yeah, so you want to be the person who says yes, yeah. Yes, we can. I think that’s a danger we can all fall into sometimes. I mean, here rodents is a very good word. And I do like that phrase and I think we’ve all been guilty of here. I certainly have been guilty of Herod antics and that was a hero don’t situation. But unfortunately, I didn’t have my kryptonite with me and it all went head up. So I mean, even though we had been warned it might not work. What do I do? Do I turn around? I mean, how would you feel? I mean, if someone turned around you and said, I know you warned me it wouldn’t work, there was a chance that might work, blah, blah, blah. And my bond, when you said that, I thought you meant sort of like seven years down the line. Not. Not, yeah. How would you feel? You’d be pissed off, you know. So, I mean, refund the money and just chalk it up to another. Life is full of these learning experiences and unfortunately it takes sometimes more than once to do the same thing. I mean, I don’t know how many times I’ve done my career, probably right. But sometimes I just seem to never learn totally. I always go in, but I think it’s back into the people pleaser, into the trying to say, Yes, I can do this. You know.

[01:38:34] I think in private you’re always trying to say yes to everything because you’re trying to be a service orientated place as well. So you’re so you love saying yes. Yeah. And you’re right, you can get you into trouble. Yeah.

[01:38:47] There are occasions when you can you can certainly go. Absolutely. I don’t this worked out really well and patients really pleased with it. But there are sometimes you do have to know and say this is a bit of hero, don’t mix and I’ve got better of that over the years, but I still get all into the traps every so often. Yeah. And I think that’s partly why we wanted to put that page up about the failures that no matter what age you are, we have failures. We cook up basically, but it’s how you handle it afterwards. It’s apologies. One of the things I had a South African associate years ago who we were in the NHS and we got a complaint letter. Wait, this was about in the nineties and they about her, her, her attitude, she was really, really annoyed. So what happened was I used to say to her, you know, she, I’d say, why don’t you just say you’re sorry to hear that? So a patient come in and say, Gee, the way it would go is the patient would come in and she’d go. They’d go, I’ve got a problem that you’re feeling. Yeah. That you did last week. Yeah. And she’d go wasn’t my fault. Get a feeling the first place and sweets sort of out. And I’d say, look there’s nothing wrong with saying I’m sorry to hear that. And she’d go, I’m not apologising to anybody. And I’d go, You’re saying you’re sorry to hear that? And I think people sometimes get.

[01:40:08] Nervous escalating things.

[01:40:10] Exactly. Sometimes people get mixed up with the fact that, you know, saying sorry doesn’t mean you’re apologising. You know, you’re saying you’re wrong. It’s just say you’re sorry you had a problem, you know? And I think sometimes if you look at what. Say What do people want from the NHS? Sometimes they get complaints. They just want someone to say, I’m sorry that happened to you and this is what we’re going to do about it to make sure it happens again. Here’s your money back in case you know, this is what we and this is what we suggest we do is the next step they want. Quite often what people want from their dentist is just confidence. You know, they don’t want to be left hanging. A lot of dentists get in trouble because what they do is they just almost like things start going wrong. They abandon the patient. And I think that’s the worst thing you can do.

[01:40:55] And what about from a business perspective? I want you to tell me one of the like the best move you ever made and the worst or the worst day you had as as a professional, you know. From a business perspective, what’s the worst day and the best day? Best thing you did.

[01:41:09] Best thing I ever did. And I have to credit my wife for this. To be fair to her, was actually building the building the actually going ahead and taking a huge financial risk and knocking down her old practise building in in Sanderson Berkshire and building building that we’ve got currently because that a it won best practise of the year in 1999 building practise building 99 nine but it has.

[01:41:37] Did you build it from scratch?

[01:41:38] Yes, totally. We got architects.

[01:41:40] In. Oh, amazing.

[01:41:42] We got knocked down. We worked out of port cabins for a year. We decided we did. So then there was a double height, double bolted, all glass word. It was a way at raptures to come on and go, Oh my God, I’ve never seen a place like this before. Absolutely brilliant. And that was fantastic. And in terms of financially, that has worked out very, very well, a huge risk. And I remember at one time crying, crying just had my first child, Rory, who’s now 25, and I remember coming off the phone and the bank going, We can’t lend you any more money. And the Arctic going, We need another 50 grand. And I’m going, Gee, I’m crying, going, Where am I going to get this money from? You know, and I wish that I managed to get it from somewhere. Finished it. Yeah. Wouldn’t look back on that one.

[01:42:33] Is your wife is your wife is your wife more a risk taker than you.

[01:42:37] Would you say? And trust me, not. No, not but she got good judgement. She married me now she got you know she’s got very good judgement.

[01:42:48] So when you think, if you think of an idea oh really. When you think of, when you think of an idea and if she thinks it’s a good idea too, then you sort of go full in on it because you feel like she’s got good judgement.

[01:43:01] Yeah, the worst financial decision you want dentistry or just generally financial decisions you like? Yeah. Well, we see again, I have to say my wife, she warned me there was this sort of investment scheme I was desperate to back in. I had a bit of a low period in my in the mid 2000 so when I was about just turned 40, a mid-life crisis which you could call it, you know, and I’m desperate to get out down the street, desperate to try. And I really had and I somebody come along and said, oh, invest 35 grand into this property scheme. It will be brilliant. You’ll make a fortune. That’s something the other my wife went, don’t like them, don’t like them, don’t like them. And I went, Oh, you’re wrong, they’re fine, they’re fine. You don’t want their space, you know. So then you know. And I went, No, no, no, no. So I basically, against my wife’s judgement, took 35 grand of our money and invested. Yeah, it went tits up. Lost it all. Yeah. Loss of all. Yeah. So you know it’s one of those desperate and this factor when you’re desperate for the money, you make poor decisions, you make.

[01:44:12] Bad decisions.

[01:44:13] You make bad decisions, you know? And I think that’s what young guns don’t be desperate for the money. You know, money will come if you treat people correctly. Money will come and and you do. Yeah. So it’s not but yeah. Yeah, no. My wife, she will say I told you about them. She still brings up from time to time now and I’ll go, that was, that was 15 years ago. Now I play Sarah. I think we’ve gone past that, you know. But yeah, you know what? I still beat myself up about it. I didn’t see that coming, you know, I stupid it was, but yeah, that was the place I was in at the time, you know. So, you know, and probably going back to be an associate for too long. I sold the practise. I sold the practise in 2009 and then stayed in it for a few years. Yeah, I was probably wasn’t the best decision for that actually. But apart from that, yeah, I can’t say I actually have been, let’s say, very lucky with where I’ve ended up in life. I can’t complain.

[01:45:15] Excellent. We’re coming to the end of our time gap. So I’m going to ask you the same questions we ask all our guests at the end. Am to two questions. One is fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive. Who would you.

[01:45:31] Pick? Well, the weird with the first one is a weird one. It would be my wife’s great grandfather I use called Surfside Wazir Hassan. All right. Who was the founder of the All India Muslim League. All right. Okay. My way out. My father was from North India, originally from Lucknow area. I went to medical school and whatnot and was meant to go to Cambridge, but couldn’t go because my father in law was born in 1929. His grandfather was Uttar Pradesh. He was the Lord Chief Justice of Uttar Pradesh. Rajesh sounds fascinating bloke, absolutely fascinating and so much so. When my father in law grew up, he went to medical school, right? With a servant. Right. And I said and then looked on. I went and I said to him, Sir, your life when you grew up was very like Downton Abbey. And he went, he thought, Oh, yes, I suppose it was. He said, we had more staff and I mean, and so he had but his his his his grandfather was a fascinating character and actually has a street named after him in Lucknow. So, you know, he’s fascinating to meet, you know. The second one is my love of rugby, the Brian Driscoll of it’s simple but probably the world’s best centre, arguably. But we met him at London Irish when my son was seven and my son took fright and couldn’t go over and see him and God bless him.

[01:47:10] Brian O’Driscoll noticed that my son Rory was sort of cowering by a tree crying, and he went over and actually tapped him on the shoulder and said, And I just thought, You know what? You’re a decent bloke, actually. You know, you noticed that child was, you know, like that. And, you know, I suppose the last person I sort of I struggled with to think who I would like to have have along. Yeah, I really because there’s nobody I sort of hugely go, Oh God, yeah, it’d be great to have so-and-so along. It would be nice to have, you know, I think everybody would say this, but it’d be nice to have my father back just to see, because I think he was such a businessman. He’d be very proud of what I did. I think it would be nice he died before because I was very much he was 47 when I was born and he died when I was only turning 40 and I hadn’t hit quite the success I have now. And I think it would be nice for him to come along and then he could be very, very proud. You know what you know? So yeah, but yeah. So that would be basically my mix. Yeah.

[01:48:13] Very nice, man. Very nice. Interesting mix of people as well. The final question. It’s a deathbed.

[01:48:23] Question.

[01:48:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that far. Not that far.

[01:48:28] Enough. Sure. You’ve got plenty of time on your deathbed, your nearest and dearest around you. What three pieces of advice would you give them?

[01:48:38] My first one is Don’t be a sheep. All really don’t be a sheep. In other words, do not follow the herd. The flock stand up for your own opinion because ultimately you end up with a very dissatisfied life. If you try and mould yourself, you are your own person and what you what you believe in is right. So definitely don’t be a sheep. The second.

[01:49:06] Voice.

[01:49:07] Yeah, the second one would be I had a couple I was torn up between exercise more, which is important to realise that later on in life. But I see trust that I think that’s what a lot of people would say. Wouldn’t it be trust your trust, just literally listen to your gut. If I’d listened to my gut about that investment I’ve made. Yeah. And the final ones are probably true, but slightly more tongue in cheek is yeah, don’t drink cheap red wine. Make sure you drink less of it, but drink better.

[01:49:45] Yeah.

[01:49:47] I like that. I like that. Well, it’s been it’s been wonderful. It’s been it’s been probably our longest podcast ever because we had to go through the red wine bit. I hope you keep the red wine post going. Yeah. So you don’t get put off by by some of those negative.

[01:50:07] You can do. You can’t do. That’s the problem. Yeah.

[01:50:10] But, but you know, there’s a discipline in doing something and sometimes you feel like you’ve got to do every week. I don’t think you should do it every week. I think you should do it every time you’ve got something where you’ve spoken to someone, you know, that’s that’s the important thing. And you seem to speak to a lot of people. You seem to know a lot of people. So, yeah. So you seem to get a nice different views of of what what is and isn’t controversial. It’s lovely to see those. And I really hope the new group goes very well as well. Not such a good day at the orifice. I think every dentist should be part of that and and encourage everyone.

[01:50:40] To.

[01:50:41] Contribute.

[01:50:42] It’s the posting is important. Yeah. Just to help other people.

[01:50:45] Contribute to that because you know the key point in this podcast is what were your mistakes, what can we learn from them? And you know, we don’t talk about our mistakes enough in this profession. We need to talk about them more. Absolutely. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank you so, so much.

[01:51:02] Now yeah, now I know it was a great. Thank you very much. Payman.

[01:51:07] 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.

[01:51:23] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:51:37] 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.

 

[00:00:00] Does it get any easier for you?

[00:00:01] Martina It might sound bit harsh, but yes, it does get easier. And you know why? It’s because I now know you do no one any favours by having people on your team that are disruptive, that do not work hard or lazy. And you soon realised when you get rid of those people swiftly, what a favour you’ve done for your team, because afterwards no one wants to recommend to you that you should fire someone. But when you’ve done it, suddenly all the stories come out, all the reasons why you should fire them, come out and you realise that you’ve actually done your team a massive favour because when you have people like that on your team, it frustrates those really, really good team members and you don’t allow them to do their job properly and you’re hurting your team by allowing that behaviour within your team. So I’m actually really quick to fire now.

[00:00:59] 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.

[00:01:17] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Martina Hodgson onto the podcast. Martina is a multi award winning, multi practise owning now that she’s just opened her her squat very publicly on on Facebook. Having having everyone watch your opening. Martina Inspiring women in dentistry a lecturer really quite an inspirational person. I mean, I met you, Martina, the first time the minimalist conference and I want to think and just watching you over the last four years, how far you’ve come in that period. And I know it’s one of those iceberg kind of things that you’ve been working at it for years and years and years. But it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks. Thanks for doing this.

[00:02:00] Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be on.

[00:02:04] So we normally start with you kind of backstory. Where were you born? What kind of kid were you? Why did you choose dentistry?

[00:02:14] And so I was born in Colchester, in Essex. I’m a six girl and I think as a child I would say I was very I was quite driven as a child. I was very conscientious and I worked incredibly hard at school. I wanted to do really, really well. But I come from a very, very normal background. My, my mum was a housewife and my dad was an engineer for BT his whole life. And so I was the first one in my family to go to university and I decided I wanted to be a dentist. When I was about 13, I had braces and I actually really thought the whole experience was really, really interesting, really loved going to the dentist and decided that I was either going to be a dentist or a violinist because I play the violin. And so I think I got to the point where I was applying to dental school and to university and kind of weighed up the pros and cons of each and decided that dentistry was probably a more sensible career. And that’s the way that I went. So so that’s me in a nutshell, really. It was it was just kind of I’ve always been very independent, wanted to make my own way in life with a little help from other people as possible, which isn’t a very good idea. And, and that was, that was me really so quite focussed from quite early. I knew what I wanted to do and just I suppose that is me really just I get an idea in my head and then just go for it.

[00:03:51] Are you the oldest? I am. Have you? How many siblings we go by?

[00:03:57] Younger brother.

[00:03:58] So this thing about independence and doing your own thing. Where do you see that? When, when? When was the first sign of that? Why? Why are you that, Kat?

[00:04:08] Why? Why am I like that? Yeah, I asked myself this question. I’ve never had therapy.

[00:04:15] To start right here.

[00:04:17] I do know. I just know it’s going to come to me right now. It’s quite nice, actually. I just think it’s in me. I think it was from day one. I’ve always been like that. I just think it’s in me a lot of the time. I wish it wasn’t. It’s got its plus points, but it’s got big negatives as well. Being so driven, it’s I actually think it’s an affliction, to be honest.

[00:04:45] What are the downsides to being so driven?

[00:04:48] Martin I’m so single minded that everything else falls by the wayside, including a family, which sometimes which isn’t good because I. Just a lot. I get so engrossed in what I do and I love doing what I do so much and I want to achieve all these amazing things that like pop in my head because for fun, just because, like, I don’t even know why I do it. I just have this innate drive that is getting worse. And you said over like the last four years, I seem to have kind of really come from nowhere. And I think that when I hit 40, it was a watershed moment for me. I think as a woman, my confidence kind of came into its own, and that’s when I think my true potential started to to flourish.

[00:05:42] Have you got an addictive personality, Martina? Are you one of these people who sort of like all or nothing I’m going tunnel vision into this thing or.

[00:05:51] I wouldn’t say I have an addictive personality. No, I wouldn’t, actually. I’m quite I can do everything in moderation. But I think when it comes to work or achievements, I think it’s almost like I find it fun to come up with these stupid ideas and then follow them through, like opening a squat practise.

[00:06:13] Would you say Martina would say you’re better at the ideas or or the following them through the operation?

[00:06:19] To be honest.

[00:06:20] Because it’s rare to have both, you know.

[00:06:22] I think it is I am an ideas person, but I very much follow through such a thing. Yeah. And I think I start like things like opening a squad. Like the idea came to me and you know, for me while I can tell that story of how it started. But once I start going on something, you get to a point where there’s no backing out as much as you want to. You’re in too deep and you have no choice sometimes, but just to keep going and going for that goal that you have in your head.

[00:06:51] So let’s just let’s fast forward to the squat quickly, because it’s so recent, because it was last week that you opened it. What was the thinking behind a squat when when you, you know, you shown your successful at the other way of doing things. Well I guess you bought the other practise right? You bought part of it and then.

[00:07:13] Yes, yes. What happened with. So I came up to so I studied in Leeds, I qualified in 2001. Yeah. And then I went back down south for four years and I was living in London, working in London and I met my husband who is from Leeds and he, he said to me when we met I would like to go back up and live in Leeds. And I said, well that’s cool, I really like Leeds, I know lots of people up there. I’m up for it. So we got engaged, we moved up to Leeds and I went for this interview for an associate. So I was a young associate, you know, quite newly qualified. And I went to this interview in this village in Wakefield, and it was a couple of terraced houses not together in a working class coal mining village in the Triangle in Yorkshire. And I loved it. It had this lovely vibe about it as a lovely family practise. It was a private practise and I’d never worked in a private practise before. And the next day I had an interview booked at There used to be an optical express, you remember they used to do dentists and it was next to Harvey Nichols in Leeds, which was the only Harvey Nichols outside London at the time. So it was very glamorous and exciting and I had an interview booked there and the guy at the practise in Wakefield who offered me the job, I said, Well, can I let you know tomorrow? Because I’ve got another interview tomorrow and I really wanted this job.

[00:08:40] It’s like 90 grand a year working next to Harvey Nichols. And he said, Why do you want to go and work for another corporate? And I went, I don’t, actually. So I took the job. And then after a couple of years, there was two partners that a man and a woman and he belly ate at me for two years to buy him out. And I had no aspirations ever before this to be part designer. I was quite happy being an associate, but he banged on at me to buy him out, so I bought him out. And when I look back now the of money that I borrowed from the bank, just, you know, at the time it was so much money to me. And now I look back and I was like, I got a bargain there. And then I had so I had a business partner, a woman for about 12, 12 or so years, and then she retired. So I bought her out. So it’s a very organic kind of process into practise ownership and it was a really nice way to practise ownership. And I’ve been there 17 years now and I think it’s in my heart and soul that places that some of the staff are still there that were there at the beginning.

[00:09:46] How many years, how many years have you been the sole owner?

[00:09:49] I think about four or five years now.

[00:09:51] 35 years. Did you make big changes?

[00:09:54] Yeah, massive.

[00:09:55] So. So was that something that you were. You were having some issues, the wrong word, but. You weren’t you weren’t having similar direction of thought with your partner.

[00:10:04] Because she was a completely different generation of dentist. And I had all these ideas, but they were all quashed and I wasn’t allowed to express myself. And I think the first six months of full practise ownership, I, I think I had anxiety, but I didn’t know it because I didn’t know how to be a leader. And it was suddenly the spotlight on me. And I used to get like these palpitations. I remember like, just sat watching TV, and I was like, I’ve never had this before. And it was because of this sudden burden on my shoulders of of being the leader. And I’m the only one responsible for these people and for these patients. And so I had to start to learn what being a leader meant. And so that was an incredible that has been an incredible journey for me. And it’s not anything that you ever stopped trying to learn how to be a leader. But my watershed moment in that I think we’re going off course the topic here. But I think my watershed moment for me as a leader was lockdown, the first lockdown when we got flung into shutting our practises. In fact, I shut my practise a day before we were told to. I made that decision and suddenly I had to start making very hard decisions very quickly for the good of my team and for the good of my patients. And there was a lot of people have very different ideas about what I should be doing. So very prominent dentists, people that I look up to and respect were telling me to sack staff. This was before furlough came out.

[00:11:40] They were saying, you’ve got to you’ve got to get rid of. You’ve got to shed, you’ve got to shed. You’ve got to keep your head above water. You’ll go under. And I suddenly started believing in myself and being true to myself. And I was like, No, I don’t want to do this. And I remember standing in front of them the day I closed the practise and saying, I’m making a promise to them. And I said I would never I’d never heard of it before. And I promised them all their jobs, and I promised I would keep the business going. And I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew that I had to and that I would. And then Rishi came out and announced furlough, and I think I nearly cried that Friday. You will remember all nodding. It was a Friday evening, and I think I burst into tears because it was like, Oh, I’m going to be okay. It’s going to be all right. And I think then I learnt the true meaning of leadership. And to me the true meaning of leadership is being true to yourself and your own values and being authentic. And when you when you understand that and that clicked in my head, like I literally felt the penny drop in my head then. It’s easy after that because you’re just being authentic to yourself. And I have to remind myself time and time again to listen to my own instincts and my own heart on that subject of leadership. But we did go off track there. Sorry.

[00:13:01] No, no, that was.

[00:13:03] My leader. What kind of a boss are you? If your team were to describe you as a boss, what do you think they they’d say about you?

[00:13:12] I think they’d say, I’m infuriating. I think they would say, let’s keep up with I think I’m fair. I think I’m loyal. I think I make decisions for the good of all of the team. And sometimes it can be hard decisions, but then you realise afterwards that you did everybody a favour. I think I’m a very supportive boss. I love to push my team. I love to see them grow. I love to get them on courses. I love to progress them as far as they will let me. I’d say there’s people that want to be like that will really flourish with me.

[00:13:56] But when you said.

[00:13:56] It may sound really annoying as well.

[00:13:58] When you said that being a leader is being true to yourself, that implies a set of sort of. Basic principles that that you run your business by. What would you say those basic principles are? I mean, would you say that they’re different for you than they are for the next day? They should. They should be. But what would you say they are? I mean, if a situation presents itself that hasn’t presented itself before, like like lockdown, often the thing to do is to go back to your basic principles and check against those. What would you say yours are?

[00:14:35] This really is like therapy, because these are the sort of questions which you never even ask yourself. And I think that I would always. First and foremost, my team and my priority. Financial gain has never been. Anything I’m particularly interested in. And I know that sounds strange for a business owner. But the less I worry about the money and more I worry about my team and my patients and providing a good experience for my team and my patients and giving them the best that I can possibly give the more financial gain by REAP as a result. And I see too many practise owners focussing on their profit and their bottom line and not focussing on the really important things that I think are really important, which is looking after your team and looking after your patients.

[00:15:37] So what is the experience of working for Martina? I mean. How does it differ to working at the next place?

[00:15:45] I mean, I don’t know of any maximum practise, like most of my life and. I hope I’m fair and I hope I’m supportive and I maybe I’m not always present because I spread myself too thin.

[00:16:00] Let me give you an example, MARTIN Let me give you an example, because I like to think I’m a real touchy feely boss. Yeah. And generally, whenever someone asks a question, which is outside of the norm, can I take another half a day off because my mom is sick or something? One of these. My my general answer is always yes. Sure. But. Sure. And the experience I want to provide to my team is one of family experience.

[00:16:25] Absolutely.

[00:16:26] But my partner, he’s very clear on this idea of fairness. And he’s very like consumed by fairness. He’s like, well, you told that person they can have half a day off. What if 43 of them, there’s 43 people in there? What if 43 of them ask for half a day off? And he’s very much into policies. You know, what is and what isn’t and the rules and regulations and all of that. And I guess between us we get an answer. But, you know, for me, one of the benefits of a small business, one of the few benefits of a small business is that flexibility of being able to let people, you know, do things slightly, ask a question of the boss, something you couldn’t do at Microsoft. But but where do you sit on that? I mean, because it’s difficult. Someone asks something. Maybe it’s the course they want to go on. Maybe it’s a holiday, maybe whatever it is. And you and you want to give that person the thing. But the implication then becomes favouritism on the staff. With the staff. Did you have to juggle that?

[00:17:25] I think you’re right. And I am probably that person whose instinct would be to go. Yeah, of course. But then there’s people around me in my management team who are on the ground, who are working with the nurses day by day and working with the receptionist, and they will soon bring me back down to. That’s not fair, because if you do that for her, you’ve got to do it for everybody else. And they’re right, actually. And you’re not doing your whole team a favour by, you know, the ones that have got the, you know, the courage to come to you and ask these things. Yeah. You know, some of us might not want to ask you that. And you aren’t doing your team a favour really by working in that style. And I think you do have to. And the bigger your team becomes, the more you have to kind of stick to your rules. And that doesn’t rules are there to be bent and broken like we know that and no one’s going to blame you for extenuating circumstances. But I think in general, you have to try and be fair. I do think that.

[00:18:27] Due to the hiring and firing Martina.

[00:18:32] Sometimes it’s becoming less and less. So I like to I think it’s really nice. You know, as my team grows, as my management team grows, I’m quite happy they know me, they know the kind of people I want on my team. So I’m quite happy for them to hire, unless it’s obviously a really very individual role or quite senior role. I would be happy for them to hire a nurse and they do regularly without me even meeting the nurse. However, when it comes to firing, I don’t think it’s fair to get your team to do that and I always think I should be there. At least I should be there when someone’s fired.

[00:19:15] Does it get any easier for you, Martina?

[00:19:19] It might sound be harsh, but yes, it does get easier. And to know why, it’s because I now know you do no one any favours by having people on your team that are disruptive that, you know, work hard or lazy, that the and you soon realise when you get rid of those people swiftly, what a favour you’ve done for your team. Because afterwards no one wants to recommend to you that you should fire someone, but when you’ve done it, suddenly all the stories come out, all the reasons why you should have them come out, and you realise that you’ve actually done your team a massive favour, because when you have people like that on your team, it frustrates those really, really good team members and you don’t allow them to do their job properly and you’re hurting your team by allowing that behaviour within your team. So I’m actually really quick to fire now.

[00:20:15] If you have you ever hired someone and then maybe like this has happened to me quite a few times, I’ve hired someone in I thought shit like three or four days in. Right. And you think they’re not quite right but I’m still going to give them a chance. Right. And then a little bit later, maybe a week or two later, you realise, right, this person’s got a goal. And then you say to yourself, Well I’ve got give until the end of the month, it’s only fair, give them a month and then it drags on a little bit. Have you ever been in that situation where you’ve had somebody in the business where you think, I’ve got to let them go? But but the nerves and the anxiety of building up to letting them go, how are you going to let go? What conversation are you going to have with? Because I find that’s that for me, it’s been one of the hardest parts of running a business. A finding the right people. But once but then you. Sometimes I find.

[00:21:03] People and they turn up at work. Then the person you interviewed, you’re like, yeah, sorry. The same person. Very. I mean, I had this quite recently. Now I am quite you can tell, you know, at that point, if they’re not going to work hard on week one and try and impress you what they’re going to be doing it in and everyone can see it like everyone will come to you or they won’t necessarily come to me or that comes to my manager. And you know, if all your staff are complaining about a new employee, it’s not going to work. Just get rid, do everyone a favour, let them move on.

[00:21:42] But let’s say it’s not that all your staff are complaining, but sometimes we’ve all got this spidey sense, haven’t we? This, this, this feeling inside us where you got tells you maybe they’re not right. But but everyone’s saying give them a chance. Have you ever been in that situation?

[00:21:58] I think that my team are better than me at knowing whether someone’s right for the practise or not. To be honest, they’ll tell me before I even spell it sometimes.

[00:22:09] So when it comes to hiring, what are you looking for? What? What do I need to be to work for you? Who do I need to be?

[00:22:18] Well, what’s that saying? Hire on. Is it aptitude? Or you can teach anyone with the right attitude and personality. Anything. I would hire an attitude any day over qualifications, you know, skill, you know, their CV. I think if you’ve got the right person with the right attitude, it’s absolutely worth its weight in gold, to be honest. And it’s much it’s very hard to find those people, I have to say.

[00:22:50] And how do you tease that out during an interview process? Attitude Have you got any specific questions or tasks or anything that you.

[00:22:59] I think it’s just so like I say it. I think people can be very different in interviews and I’m seeing a lot of this at the moment that they’re coming across amazing in interviews and they’re answering all the questions correctly and you’re thinking, wow. And then they turn up at work and they’re lazy and you’re like, Where did that person go? So I’m starting to think that we should be definitely doing trial days with people. But yeah, I mean, you’ve got the standard set of interview questions that you can download from anywhere, but at the end of the day, it’s the gut feeling for me and I know, you know, you know, within seconds I think whether you’ve got a winner or not, you’re not always right. I Yeah.

[00:23:49] I’ve been wrong loads of times.

[00:23:53] What’s the structure of the Dental studio? So when you say senior management, what have you, what have you got? The the non-clinical team, who are they?

[00:24:02] Well, because I’ve just opened a second practise, I now have an operations manager, so he works across both sites. So below me it’s the operations manager. And then I’ve just promoted my head nurse at the Wakefield Practise to practise manager. So she’s in training. So my operations manager is going to be working closely with her. And then we have like a management team, so we would have head nurse, your practise manager, you had receptionist and you had TKO. We have a meeting every week. On Monday morning we’ll go to the local coffee shop and we just look at our heads together and they kind of report back and any like feedback and you know, we knock ideas around and problems and that’s really great because as you grow, you need to have those key people in charge of each of their departments. Even if there’s only two receptionists, you need a head, one, I think, who just wants to keep everything ticking over because the more you grow, the more you have to step away and you have to let that control girl go to other people. And if you’ve got people that you really, really trust, which I do, my management team, I really, really trust them that they have the best interests of the practise at heart, then it’s very much easier to step away and let them do the day to day running of that practise. And so that’s that structure is well in place in Wakefield and Leeds. We have a similar structure that we don’t yet have that practise manager in place. But eventually, you know, we have that pathway, that career pathway, but we do have a head nurse, we have the head TKO works across both sites and we have a head receptionist as well.

[00:25:40] What about as a dentist? How do you come across? I mean, I know most of your work is clear, aligner now. Is that right?

[00:25:49] Yeah, but for a very long time I was just a general dentist. I had a demo panellist two years ago. Same panellist for 17 years. So how do I come across to my patients as a dentist?

[00:26:01] Yeah, I think I do. One thing I’ve realised is that many dentists actually have totally different styles, you know. There’s some very relaxed ones and then there’s some very formal ones. What’s what’s your what’s your sort of the USP of of Martino. If I come to you for a for a consult.

[00:26:19] Yeah, well, we have some banter, definitely all about having fun, but being professional at the same time. You might. Those two things aren’t exclusive to me. Yeah. And I try and instil that in all of my team. You know, I want patients to come and have a nice time and be comfortable and relaxed. I’m a quick worker, as most principals are. I work very quickly, but I think you can work very quickly to a high standard and be efficient and be fun and have fun. Make your patients relax because but that comes with years of experience. That becomes knowing your trade so that you’re not even thinking about how you’re doing that treatment plan. You’re just doing it at the same time as listening to a dirty joke or something. You know, I mean, it just it takes a long time, I think, to achieve that where you can get that balance right. But yeah, I think if you came to see me for a consultation, you’d have fun and you’d come away with a great treatment plan and feeling really confident that you were going to get the outcome that you wanted. And that just comes again from 20 years.

[00:27:25] How do you how do you how do you get it across to them that you are, Martina? I mean, at the end of the day, the patient’s a patient and they walk in and they don’t know your level of experience. Do you make that clear?

[00:27:38] I don’t think I need to. I think they can tell from my demeanour.

[00:27:46] Do you know what you’re talking about?

[00:27:47] Confident with the work I’m carrying out and that is just 20 years of experience. I wouldn’t have been that person at 23. Yeah.

[00:27:58] And how does the TKO beat work? I mean, what at what point is the TKO? Does the TKO do the initial consult?

[00:28:07] Yeah. So we our patient journey say for example, with Invisalign, we have a new patient coordinator. So she will be the person that deals with the leads that come in. So we would be running Facebook ads, Google ads, you know, interested people coming from social media. And she will be the person initially to to speak to those patients, to build that initial rapport, to give them those basic facts about Invisalign, and to qualify that patient and start that consent process for that patient. And her role is to book that patient in with the treatment coordinator. So she works very closely with the treatment coordinator. She’ll take a £20 refundable deposit. So that agreement with a TKO and then the TKO will run that consultation with the patient, where she’ll go into more detail about what Invisalign is, how it works. We use a software called Smile Mate, and every patient that’s booked in with a TKO is sent this link. Or it’s actually a whole the whole process is automated now, actually, but they’ll get sent a link where they can upload their photographs onto Imamate and it will use artificial intelligence to generate an oral health report for them, which is fine, that’s great. But more importantly, I review all the photographs that come in and I will then make a note to my TKO and I will tell on the notes. It will. It will tell her, is it a light case? Is it a full case? How long do I expect it to take? Can I see tooth? Where do they get any composite? So if they got missing teeth, have they got baby teeth? Are they suitable for Invisalign and the ones you know, the odd case that looked like they’ve come from a different partner or something.

[00:29:57] I’ll send them to my mate. Up the road is a specialist. She loves mix so. But it’s good because they don’t even have to come in and waste that appointment and waste that time. So we filter out the ones that aren’t suitable, which is very rare. But so by the time that patient comes to that treatment coordinator consultation, they’ve left knowing how long are they suitable, how long is it going to take, how much is it going to cost me and all our USBs as well to go along? So they leave that consultation ready to go. So they the next step would be to book in for the assessment with the dentist. And by the time they’ve looked at that point with the dentist and paid £100 deposit for that, they’re good to go. They’re ready. It’s not a question we can’t even ask in surgery. Do you want to go ahead? It’s more of like decided already. So it’s it’s a process that has taken years, a lot of hard work, a lot of refinement and tweaking. That process never ends. We always trying to perfect our patient journey, and it’s something I’m very, very proud of and it works for us really, really well.

[00:31:03] Martina, do you know the front end of this game? Obviously you’re generating lots of enquiries through your marketing campaigns. What’s the qualification process that happens before they get in with a TKO? Because if we let everyone in with the TKO who enquired Utico would be busy with a lot of tire kickers or kickers as I as I tend to call them. But I call them shit kickers. Yeah. And you know, I guess for me, certainly in my team it’s the lead ninja who’s, who’s definitely the most talented person in the team because they.

[00:31:42] Believe in it for sure. It’s the new patient coordinator. That’s her job. Yeah. And we had a management meeting this morning and our TKO, I think in the last two weeks it converted and it was 18 out of 21 of her consoles.

[00:31:56] Wow.

[00:31:57] Yeah, but that is testimony to our lead ninja and the job that she is doing qualifying those patients because that’s an incredible conversion rate.

[00:32:07] So can you share with us what it is? What are the sort of what you need to do to earn an appointment with your TCL? That’s what I always say, is that for you to step into my practise and have an appointment with a TKO or a dentist, you’ve got to earn it as a patient. Do you have some criteria that they need to meet before they I mean, that 20 quid or 30 quid deposit, whatever it is that that’s incidental, it doesn’t really matter. But what boxes do they have to tick to get through the door?

[00:32:37] Firstly, you’ve got to find out, is it actually Invisalign they want or need because half of them think it’s an implant or a veneer or they’re going to get full set crowns. So they need to understand, is that consent process really starting, isn’t it? It’s understanding what is Invisalign, it’s understanding their kind of key questions that they want answering. Is it her? How long does it take? What does it look like? Can I leave my life normally? And it’s, you know, where do you live? Can you get here? Do you know where we are? How old are you? We don’t treat patients under 18. Have you had braces before? Have you got braces now? You know, it’s all these things. But I find it interesting the way that you put the question across, which was what? How do you earn the right to come and see my Mitsuko? It’s an interesting.

[00:33:26] You didn’t actually say that to you. Who? Me, not you in the practise. Don’t say.

[00:33:32] No. But that’s what that’s what I do as part of our training. So I always say to my team that they need to earn a place in the practise. Right? So we have I have minimum criteria that they need to hit. And Martina, obviously you’ve got all your ups there, but no one should be, like I say, the most expensive part of a patient stepping into your practise is someone walking through the door, not having a clue what they’re there for and not having a Scooby Doo of a price range. Yeah, I don’t believe in this whole. You can sell them the value when they walk through the door. Like if they think they can walk in your practise and get their teeth straightened for 750 quid, you’re wasting their time. You’re wasting your time, you’re wasting everyone’s time. So I just sort of say, in order for somebody to earn a place in my practise, they need to know where the star in price is. And it needs to be realistic. We need a little bit of history behind them, their motivations when they’re looking to get started.

[00:34:35] Is this something they’re just looking into in the future as it’s something they’re motivated to get started with fairly soon? What do they know about the treatment? And then they shouldn’t step into the practise without knowing. You’ve got 20 years experience, you’ve straightened so many sets of teeth, you’ve got a gallery of X, Y and Z. We’ve got over 200 Google reviews with five stars, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So like I say, successful phone call is when all of those have been hit by our lead ninja. And if they still say at that point, I don’t want a book, fantastic, you’ve done a great job because you’ve just pushed someone away, was going to come in and waste our time and then vice versa. So yeah, I kind of like flip it on its head that you may never have thought about it like that, but your process must be pretty slick for your SEO to be converting 18 out of 21 patient. So you’re leading in just definitely doing something right and qualify in the patients that were coming through.

[00:35:33] Definitely. And it’s you know, it’s an educational process for that patient. You know, it’s important. It’s our duty to educate them on price, on time, on what is Invisalign? What does it look like to take it out? You know, that’s her job. They should be coming in with all the basic facts. And why? Why are they picking us? They should know why they’re picking us. And you have your list of USBs, say, like you reeled off, you know, here’s my USP.

[00:36:02] So, Martina, can you see I’ve got a gut here. I’ve got.

[00:36:07] Yeah. I’ve got my glasses on. You need an implant?

[00:36:10] I’m in. No, no, no. Definitely not an implant. But I’m interested in getting my teeth straightened with you. Why should I come to see you?

[00:36:18] No, I. No, no, no, I don’t. Whatever. You want me to tell this to my. Now I’m going to do that.

[00:36:27] You’re going to just sell yourself.

[00:36:29] To selling myself? I don’t mind other people selling me. I’m not selling myself.

[00:36:34] How would you? How would you. How would your team sell you? What would they be? What would they say?

[00:36:40] That’s why you’re going through press practise training programme.

[00:36:47] It’s pretty. It’s pretty neat. I said, I’ve got some receptionists out there.

[00:36:55] And.

[00:36:56] It’s nice. It’s nice when you can start two boxes and it takes a long time to earn all these USBs that you can start telling your patients that we’re a diamond provider and a top provider in Leeds and Invisalign Diploma with Dentistry Top 50, all these, you know, awards, blah, blah, blah. It’s all, you know, it’s all just guessing, isn’t it?

[00:37:22] It’s a lot easier for somebody else to. I was going to say I’m low. You’re very.

[00:37:26] Uncomfortable. This conversation you said at the beginning, is there anything you don’t want to talk about?

[00:37:32] Let’s let let’s move on. Let’s move on.

[00:37:36] Now.

[00:37:37] Martina, there’s been quite a lot of talk about Invisalign as as a as a partner and people saying, you know, we’re working for them and you’re making the brand stronger than your own brand. You must know what I’m talking about. Yeah. Do you how often do you look at alternatives to Invisalign or are you just, like, completely head? I’m not not I’m planning to bring out an alternative, but there are loads of alternatives these days. Yeah. How often do you look at those or have you not? Are you single mindedly behind.

[00:38:11] Because that other people do that? So people that I respect, people that know what they’re doing. If they want to try Karolina Systems, I’ll ask them about how do they get. They will go back to Invisalign though. So to me that says it all. The big, well respected orthodontists, they mainly use Invisalign and there is a reason for that.

[00:38:33] But do you think that reason is the way it works, or do you think the reason is the brand, or what do you think the reason is?

[00:38:39] No, I wouldn’t use Invisalign just for the brand. I don’t think I need to. I don’t think it’s it’s just a name that’s become a household name that people use to refer to clearer lines. They, they’ll, they’ll ring any practise and ask for Invisalign but they don’t really care. I don’t think if they’re getting Invisalign or not as long as what the, what they’re saying is they want clear aligners provided by a professional dentist and.

[00:39:06] You know what I mean, that if you walk into Harvey Nichols and you want to buy a coat, there’ll be a kind goose coat there. And there’s a reason why they’re stocking Canada goose and not the number to whoever the hell that is. You know, there’s people walking in saying, I want to use.

[00:39:21] Yeah, I suppose. I mean, it’s a massive brand name now, but that doesn’t really sway me as the reason to use it. I think there would be loads of other ways you could market clear aligners without having to use the word invisalign and still do really, really well. I use Invisalign because I believe in it as a product. I think it’s predictable. I know how to use the system, I’m comfortable with it and that’s why I use Invisalign, because I know I’m going to get the results. I know the research that they put into it, the continuum of development that’s more important to me than the brand name. Maybe, maybe someone who’s like a young associate that maybe doesn’t have much of a profile, maybe it might be important to someone like that. I don’t know. I don’t know.

[00:40:10] I mean, Prav you work with a bunch of different aligner companies with is, right?

[00:40:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I work with a lot of clients who are top invisalign providers. I work with Claire. Correct. Directly. Sure. Smart, sure. Smiles SPARC who’ve been around been around for a long time. I mean, you know, I’m not the guy to ask, you know, which one’s better than than the other and all the rest of it. Obviously Invisalign, they’ve got more volume behind and more research and much bigger company. Right. And I’m not a clinician, so I can’t really comment on that. But you know, you speak to various people out there, they have their reasons for using, let’s say, Invisalign or not or having an alternative, whether it’s a business reason, whether it’s a clinical reason or whatnot. Some people are looking for, you know, I speak to some practises or a top Invisalign. Eighties, but then look at it from a profitability point of view, say, well, they’ve hit this status and now they’re going to move over to, let’s say, spark or clear. Correct as a share of wallet because they know their lap fee is going to be less with that. And they still believe clinically they can get the same or similar result. Right. So there’s loads of different ways in which people, I guess, mix it up. I don’t think anyone can deny that, you know, a Invisalign is the market leader and the number one brand out there. However, I do feel that Invisalign is becoming commoditized in the industry. You only need to flick your Facebook up, open on your phone, wherever, whichever city you’re working in, and you get bombarded with Invisalign ads. And it’s a combination of roll up fee free consultation, will throw in some retainers, will throw in a bit of free whitening, and we’ll do a bit of free composite edge bonding while we’re at it, all combinations and permutations of that.

[00:42:05] And what I feel is that with that type of marketing, what we’re what we’re seeing is almost like it being commoditised, commoditized, like whether you go to get a tin of Heinz baked beans from Waitrose, Tesco’s or Morrisons, it’s the same tin of Heinz baked beans. And people are not looking at Invisalign, for example, based on the fact that you’ve got 20 years experience, you’ve got awards, you’ve got you’re a diamond, whatever that is, right, is patients are just looking at Invisalign like a product they can buy off the shelf rather than the skill that sits behind it, the treatment planning, the the ability to know what to do when things go wrong, whether it’s refinements, adjustments and all of that sort of thing. And, you know, that’s my problem at the moment with, with the marketing of Invisalign at the moment is everyone’s getting on that bandwagon, everyone’s doing an open day, everyone’s got a Invisalign offer. And whether it’s tooth whitening worth £300 or tooth whitening worth for 50 or retainers worth 300, or whether you’re talking about varied retainers or fixed retainers, blah, blah, blah, it’s a combination of that. And I know recently, Martina, you’ve got a little bit of stick online. I think there was a post that went up and then was deleted because you’re opening Invisalign off, right? So I guess first of all, let me know your thoughts and how you feel about Invisalign as a commodity and then just tell us about your opening offer and the generation of cash flow for your new business. And and just give us a bit more insight into this.

[00:43:42] And I agree with you, so to an extent on it being seen as a commodity. But I think that you underestimate the IQ of some of a lot of our patients. Maybe I particularly attract those with a high IQ, I don’t know. But I do think that people search me now and and I do think a lot of people do their research. And there will always be patients who just want the cheapest treatment, who just don’t really understand what it is and the skill behind it. The same as for composite bonding, it drives me up the wall. The DMS, I get saying, what’s your price for composite bonding? Because I’m shopping around and I’m looking at prices and I’ve still you’ve got a way of like me explaining to them that not all composite bonding is the same. Please tell me without sounding like I’m trying to like push them to sell it because I’m not. But I just want these people to realise that not all composite bonding is the same and they think there is a cohort of patients who think that all dentists have the same level of skill and experience and everything is the same.

[00:44:59] Like we’re robots and it’s not true. And don’t ask me to do a root canal and don’t ask me to do a surgical extraction because it’s not going to happen. It’s going to be a screw up, it’s going to be a massive screw up. And the dentist down the road is much better off doing it than me. Right. But I am better at doing clear aligners. And some will do their research and some will specifically say, I’ve looked on your Instagram, I’ve seen the work that you do, and they will come to you and they will find you. And they’re the best kind of patients, obviously, that we like. But it does frighten me when I see the level of skill of some of the dentists that are providing Invisalign. It frightens me a lot is that they don’t have the support. They are blindly going into some of these treatments and I think it honestly gives me the heebie jeebies and they might be charging more than me, but that’s fine. So that’s how I feel about that.

[00:46:00] Regarding that, do you think this this Invisalign should spend a bit more time and a bit. More skill and effort on treatment planning.

[00:46:09] I think at the end of the day in educating.

[00:46:14] Know well you know that clean check that comes back.

[00:46:16] You see they should be responsible for the treatment. No, not not legally.

[00:46:20] But, you know, nowadays people are saying, well, look, the clean check that comes back from Invisalign, you can pretty much ignore. And you have to do your own do your own treatment plan. And then there’s a bunch of people outsourcing that.

[00:46:31] Yes. Yeah. No, no, I do my own. But I think the clinician should be responsible.

[00:46:40] Because the Clinton is is responsible legally. But my point my point on it is Invisalign is by far the most expensive product. Right. It’s the product that’s been there the longest. It should one of the value ads of Invisalign should be that the treatment plans are done really well. Yeah.

[00:46:56] But it’s that technician who’s producing that clean check going to understand what’s going on with the bio type and gingival recession and bone levels and TMJ function and occlusal trauma and all these things that we take into consideration when we’re planning on our treatment plans, short routes, all these kind of things. They’re not they’re not there to do that, and that is our job.

[00:47:21] But I think these guys who are going off the rails, are you saying some of the bad treatments you’re seeing? I guess they’re guilty of trusting that technician.

[00:47:29] To prove like it’s. There you go click approve. Yeah.

[00:47:35] Just says yes. Let’s let’s talk about let’s talk about that thing. Let’s talk about that offer now.

[00:47:44] So we sidestep that.

[00:47:45] No. So what’s the offer? What was the offer? You might as well for people who don’t know the story, just just tell us go through what was the offer and why did you get. Stick over it.

[00:47:54] And the Alpha. I loved that I got sick over that, by the way. It made me so happy because I thought, I’m doing something right. I’m getting under people’s noses. This is great. The ulcer was ending Invisalign, so we had like four, four, two, four, nine five, including whitening and with errors and a hygiene. And the stick that I got was I wasn’t quite sure what their beef was other than it was like, how are we supposed to compete with this? And da da da. And I thought, well, how you can compete is you can work your absolute arse off for 20 years to get to the position where you are, you know, getting a nice big discount from Invisalign and people want to come and see you and you can still do that and make a really good profit. And by the way, you can spend years refining your patient journey and recruiting the right people, getting your lead ninja, getting your TSO, getting other dentists to come in. Oh, you can by the way, you can spend another few years training all the other dentists that you got to come and work for you to learn how to do Invisalign. And you can do a diploma and you can learn how to teach Invisalign. So when you can do all that, then you’ll be in a position I’m in to be able to offer Invisalign at two, four, nine, five and still make a profit.

[00:49:16] What’s the what was the profit do you mind sharing with us.

[00:49:19] If I break it down? I think it was I think it was it was over 1000 times profit still, I think.

[00:49:25] Oh, really?

[00:49:26] Yeah. This is it, you know. And it comes and sees, right? I’ve got a brand new squat practise and you bums on seats I’ve got mouths to feed and they seem to practise loads and loads.

[00:49:37] Loads of people, loads of people jump to your defence as well. Let’s be fair about it.

[00:49:41] Yeah, it was really nice. I loved that. You know what? That post didn’t upset me at all and I was quite pleased that I was creating a bit of a stir because it made me laugh.

[00:49:50] And and I guess if you do in a fixed price for four light and fold, you’re taken into account. There’s going to be a proportion of light where your margins are going to be higher and they’re going to be a proportion of four way imagine will be slightly less. And it all works out in the mix, right? So if you get more lights through the door, you’ll know more than anyone else what proportion are going to be lights versus full. Right. In terms.

[00:50:13] Of, you know, I have a business model that makes sense as well in terms of the way my set up was with my associates and the way that they get paid for the cases and the support that they have from assistant dentists and the support that we give them in terms of education and study clubs and support with the clean tech planning in house, everything’s in-house. And you know, I’m here as a mentor, as a teacher to these people, but I’m then able to attract those dentists that are willing to work for less of a wage. But in return, they’re getting experience, they’re learning the growing, they’re getting support. So I got myself into that unique position, which.

[00:50:54] Is that £1,000 is then split with your associate.

[00:50:58] No, that’s not my business model. That’s my profit.

[00:51:01] That’s your as the owners profit.

[00:51:03] Yeah. So they, they get paid on a case rate. Yeah. And then I have like we have levels of dentists, so we have like a level one dentist who does the IPR and the attachments. Then you have like a level two dentists who’ll be in charge of the case. They’ll do the, the planning. You know, they are they start the case and finish the case. They’ll do the refinements, all that. But they can refer to the level one, dentists, things like attachments, IPR, simple fillings, and those level one dentists are on a day rate. So the set up of the whole practise allows for me to be profitable from that case.

[00:51:39] And what’s in it for the level one dentist that he’ll eventually become a level two dentist? Is that the idea?

[00:51:44] Just a pathway to growth to learn, to grow, to become a good dentist? And that is the whole ethos behind my new practise. Is that really that whole education pathway that grows pathway for associates to come through and learn to be really, really good dentists with the support that they wouldn’t get anywhere else.

[00:52:06] So let’s let’s talk about the squat, the Dental guy, the architect. The Dental architect. First question why did you decide to change brand? Why didn’t you say another one?

[00:52:17] Yeah, why didn’t I keep my. So the other practise is called the Dental Studio. It’s a completely different beast. And I obviously I did think about keeping the brand and having a sister practise, but it’s just not the same. Like it’s my wait for practise is Heart of Yorkshire, you know, farming community combe, old coal mining community families, very, very long term loyal patients. The dental architects is slap bang in the city centre is compared to Wakefield, which is a couple of terraced houses not together. It’s a beautiful grade two listed building, it’s an old leather warehouse and it’s just, you know, the whole demographic of our patients is different. It is office workers, it is students. It’s a younger kind of generation of patients. So the branding that I have for the dental studio just didn’t fit with what I wanted for here.

[00:53:25] And how long was it from when you said, Right, I’m going to do this to the day that you opened your doors?

[00:53:31] Do you think it was about 18 months, I think.

[00:53:35] And take us through some of the. For someone who’s never done a squat.

[00:53:38] Yeah.

[00:53:39] Take us through that process.

[00:53:42] Well. I mean, how it came about was. My husband is a property investor and I don’t really take much notice of what he does for a living. But one day he invited me to come and look at a new property that boy needs. So I was like dragged along. And I walked in and I wasn’t looking for a second practise, something that had been on the back burner for maybe ten or so years but had kids. I never really made much of it. And I walked into this completely derelict building, which is on a really, really busy street and leads literally a minute’s walk to the train station. And I just it hit me like a ton of bricks that this was going to be this should be a beautiful dental practise. I’d just taken the grout. I was just going to have the ground floor. In the end, I ended up having a ground floor in the first floor. It’s a five story building. And really that was that was it. And I said, I have stupid ideas. And then I get in too deep and it’s too late to turn back. That’s what happened. But it was, I think to me when I reflect on why I did it, why, you know, why did I do it? I asked myself that question a lot. I think a lot of me did it just because I could. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I could do. I had the experience of running a practise. And I knew what I could create and I could see more important than all of that. It was that I saw the opportunity and I took it. And that’s what happened. And at the end of the day, I think this practise because it’s mine from very the roots of it I think it’s been an expression of me actually was I was quite sound quite deep but I think it’s my creative expression of my values, of what I’m about, the aesthetics of it.

[00:55:43] So is this your magnum opus? Like every dentist, every dentist has this dream of like this ideal practise, I think is this is this is this what it was for you?

[00:55:54] Yeah.

[00:55:55] Amazing.

[00:55:56] What did the name come from? Well, you know, when when I when I’m approached by either wannabe practise owners or people who are in that discovery phase, like, you know, there’s there’s every spa, studio, spa, studio, smile, spa, smile, practise, smile, clinic. All the names are gone, right? And so picking the name is you can go and then you go look at domain names and all the rest of it. It all goes through that process.

[00:56:26] You know. Well, picking the name is actually if I was to write a book on how to start a squat, I would say the first thing you need to do is pick a name, because until you pick a name, it holds up everything. You can’t do your branding. You can’t do your interior design until you’ve done your branding. You can’t design your final build until you’ve got your interior design. It’s like until you’ve got that name, nothing else can actually follow. Yeah. So the name is obviously one of the first things that I did. I had this really good branding consultant I work with. She’s called Car Abandon. She deliberately all the people that I’ve worked with throughout this whole project, apart from like very specific dental supplies, mentors that I’ve had have got nothing to do with dentistry. They’ve never done a dental practise before because I didn’t want it to be a cliché name, I didn’t want it to be a cliché brand. I wanted it to be very, very special and unique. And she, she we did have that whole kind of discovery process of a name. And in the end, I did spend a whole afternoon with her on this whole discovery process and the name and everything. But that name had been something that I’d already thought of before that process. And I’m glad, I’m glad I still went through the process with her to know that that was the right name, but it was my favourite name and a lot of people said they didn’t like it, they couldn’t spell it and all of that, and I just stuck with it. And it’s like one of those things where I was like, No, I’m going to go with my gut. I really like it and I’ve had so many compliments ever since on it. And the architect, the name architect kind of comes from the building itself, the beautiful building. But the fact that, you know, we we are the architects of smiles. So it was all kind of stuff really.

[00:58:15] And I think the branding and everything just flows beautifully when when you think of the name, just the logo, everything that you’ve seen in evolution on social media is your brand and your and your. We’ve all shared that. It’s almost like we’ve been on that journey with you, right? Because we’ve seen all the little steps and the little reels and the images and stuff like that, that, that, that whole brand has come to life. Yeah. And you right, you nail that name and everything else has followed after it and the brand is so suited to what you see.

[00:58:51] I always felt, I think before as I was starting the project, I felt like the name was like a bit of a luxury to be worrying about the name. But looking back on it, it was so important to get that name nailed and be comfortable with it. Right at the very beginning, because if you change the name, then your branding changes and then everything else changes.

[00:59:10] And what’s been your lowest moment in this whole journey of launching the Dental architect? You said you. You said you found the building. And then you got into deep and then you thought, Right, I’m in now, so I might as well figure out whether I’m going to sink or swim. Were there any sinking moments during this journey?

[00:59:33] Yeah, there’s multiple sinking moments. That was the build is starting work before I even had the funding. So, you know, I said about, like, holding your nose. Oh, man, I held my nerve. I walked into that building site every day, not knowing how I was going to pay the builders. I was like, I’ll call this mine. So for a long time, I didn’t have the funding. I think my, my, my, my absolute lowest moment was a clash I had with one of my the people that I was that was providing me a service for the bills. And we had a very big clash. And I was literally ranting and raving down the phone to him and bawling my eyes out and crying. And because everything had just got so much and everything was being delayed and it was like day after day after day, a new kick in the teeth. And it really has been an exercise in getting kicked, knocked down and getting up again and just doing the same again. And it takes fucking so I don’t know if I’m allowed to sweat balls and it takes grit and I’m not picking myself off it. I’m just putting it out there so everybody knows.

[01:01:05] What’s in it. Give me a bit more detail. Go on. What happened.

[01:01:08] About this?

[01:01:10] Yeah.

[01:01:11] Confrontation. Yeah, I don’t I don’t want to know because I don’t want to badmouth anybody in the industry.

[01:01:19] Don’t, don’t mention the name.

[01:01:21] Well, it’s like, I think if I tell you what it was about, I might give it away. It’s a company that I worked with, but it was just it was a big clash. And, you know, it was just it was it was about you can get over building problems and problems with the QC and staffing problems and all this kind of stuff. Funding problems. I can’t even think of the millions of things that held me back on a daily basis. But it’s that really it’s the relationships that you have along the way. And when that breaks down, that’s what really kicks you in the gut.

[01:02:00] Yeah. Is it a trust thing, Martin? It was. It was it that there was there was some kind of trust there that was broken or a promise that was made?

[01:02:08] I felt that that. I mean, there’s two sides to this story, but I felt like I’d been let down big style.

[01:02:15] Martin Are you the kind of person who works on a handshake or are you the kind of person who sets out the sort of the milestones of what’s going to happen? So if, for instance, for the sake of the argument, if you’re going to have a website, which would you say right by this date, I want this done by that date, I want that done, or are you more intuitive? And if you trust the person, let them get on with it.

[01:02:38] You have to have a timeline. When you when you’re building a practise, you have to have a timeline. And the timeline becomes I’ll tell you why. The reason I got upset with that person was because I was letting down other people and it was delaying the opening of the practise. And, you know, when you’re hiring associates, they need three months to you know, you need to give them three months notice. So you have to pick a date and you have to go with what you told within a day. You know, and what I got so upset about was, yeah, okay, the employees can’t start yet. That’s fine. I can pay them. I don’t care that I’m losing money and I’m, you know, handing the notes and they’ve left the job so I can pay them. But it’s so since you come on and I was just so gutted that these people had left their jobs and followed my stupid dream and believed in me and trusted me. And I felt like I was letting them down. And that’s why that is why I was so upset at that point, because I knew it was going to delay the opening. And I forgot your question. So so in terms of you have to have these timelines, if you do, you do you have to be quite organised. You have to plan in advance and you have to say, right, my landing page needs to be ready now because I need to start marketing now because my TCO needs to start doing virtual consultations now. So I need this, this, this, this and this in place before my TCO starts doing virtual consultations. And so you do have to.

[01:04:02] Be so how much how much ahead of time? How much ahead of opening were you doing virtual consultations?

[01:04:07] Well, in the end, we did. We were supposed to just do a month that we did six or seven weeks because we opened late, which was no bad thing because it meant we got more patients in the chair when we opened. But yeah, so we started running, so we started doing the consults. Now if I did it again, I probably would say six weeks before opening, and then we started running the ads a month before that. So my lead ninja, my new patient coordinator, was booking in with the CEO for the virtual consults for that month before.

[01:04:39] I mean, how involved do you get in the creative? For instance, they’re putting ads out on social. Yeah I help who comes up comes up with the words. Is that you.

[01:04:49] Yeah, I do. Yeah, I have I definitely have a lot of input.

[01:04:55] But then, you know, the process, how the process is where I mean privacy expert. Right. But the process where they try lots of different words and try lots of different pictures and split test.

[01:05:03] They can do that. I’m not that’s that’s for the professionals to do.

[01:05:07] So you give the basic tone of voice. Yeah.

[01:05:10] Yeah.

[01:05:12] Yeah, I get it.

[01:05:13] I think because I think I’m a little bit I’m okay. Like, if I thought it was a bit crap at it, I wouldn’t do it. But yeah, like you say, I’m not going to be A and B testing the arts. That’s for the professionals to do.

[01:05:24] Yeah. And plus, it’s a reflection of you, right, that’s going out there.

[01:05:27] It’s my voice, isn’t it?

[01:05:30] Yeah, it’s. It’s got to be it’s got to be close. I mean, it’s interesting, because sometimes someone else can do your voice better than you. It’s interesting. Perhaps I’ve got a guy. He’s he’s.

[01:05:41] A podcast. I can’t remember the name of the guy. He’s he does loads of implants and stuff. It’s quite a young guy. And then you were talking about. No, no, it was it that one. No, you it was one of your podcasts about building a website and you have a guy that writes everything for you. Just crap. So it sounds.

[01:06:00] Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:02] Word ninja. I feel like everyone’s a ninja word. Ninja.

[01:06:08] Just that phrase.

[01:06:10] But this guy, Martin, this guy, for instance, when he’s writing, he’s writing copy for the owners website here. You can literally hear his voice onto he wrote it and write it, the particular thing that he’s written. But you can hear Ronan’s voice. It’s like you can hear it in Ronan’s accent and voice. And then when he’s writing copy for Enlighten, it’s not my voice. It’s enlightened voice comes over and it’s the same dude sitting there saying, Yeah, yeah, I guess that is a pro, right?

[01:06:40] It’s you. Sometimes other people can express you better than you can express it.

[01:06:46] Just just like right now. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t sell yourself.

[01:06:50] No.

[01:06:53] Well, let’s stay on the dark side.

[01:06:55] Well.

[01:06:56] What’s been. What’s been your darkest day in dentistry?

[01:07:00] Oh doc dentistry.

[01:07:04] If you want wrap it into your biggest mistake clinically or you’re the patient that that complained the loudest or caused you the most pain or any of those sort of things.

[01:07:13] Yeah. You instantly think of something when you say that. You think of that patient, don’t you? Yeah. I don’t think we did any. It was yeah, there was a really, really horrible patient and she complained about literally all the dentists in the practise. And she made me feel anxious for months. She was a lawyer.

[01:07:34] Oh, God.

[01:07:36] It was horrible, horrible, horrible. I haven’t had many, honestly. Oh, mistakes. A million. Of course. Of course. But you know what’s so important? You know, if you would tell young Dennis, what’s the most important thing you can do in your career? The most important learning point is to build those relationships with your patients, because when you do screw up, they’re a lot more forgiving if you’ve got a relationship with them. And of course, yeah, I made hundreds of mistakes. Yeah, but I haven’t had many dark days and I’m sure I’ve had a wonderful career. I love my career. And have you.

[01:08:12] Never had a member of staff let you down big time steal from you? Something like that?

[01:08:18] Not still, no. I mean, I’ve had just. Incompetent members of staff. And just looking back fondly. So. But no, I’ve never had. Yeah. I’ve been very lucky.

[01:08:37] I’m not buying it.

[01:08:39] Well, the gnomes have stolen from me.

[01:08:41] No, no, no. You’ve never had a dark day.

[01:08:43] I can’t. I would say this.

[01:08:46] How can you go 20 years without a dark day?

[01:08:48] No, not so dark days, I’m sure.

[01:08:50] Come on. What stands out? What stands out as dark days?

[01:08:54] Oh, I don’t know. Patience can be annoying and all that and horrible, but I think for me it’s the relationship with your team and I think that would be the thing that upset me the most is if I upset a team member or hurt a relationship with a team member or broken a relationship or done something wrong like that, that’s more important to me. I think with patients, you can you can get over it a little bit, I think.

[01:09:20] I feel like this dark story you’re not telling us honestly.

[01:09:24] I’ll think of one. Ask you is I’m sure.

[01:09:27] All right. All right. When it comes to you.

[01:09:31] I’m never I don’t want to say that I’ve not ever had been sued or anything because then I’m going to get sued. It’s about the way you do allegations, isn’t it? Yes. In dark days.

[01:09:42] It might not just be a patient thing, right, Martine? It might be something unrelated to patients, but it’s in dentistry, right? But I see dark waves manifesting themselves in two ways. Have you ever seen the movie Falling Down? Michael Douglas.

[01:09:56] Yeah.

[01:09:57] Walks into McDonald’s and it’s 5 minutes past breakfast time in the world. Give him his breakfast. Right. So he pulls out his machine gun, pulls out his machine gun and goes batshit crazy. Right. Because he can’t get breakfast. Right. So that’s one that’s one way of manifesting your dark day. And then the other. The other way I see is just crawling into a corner and crying and thinking, what’s the actual f? Why? Yeah. Can you relate to either of those moments, either a falling down moment or just burying yourself?

[01:10:31] I’m sure there’s many days I wanted to get my gun out and shoot everybody in the process. And all the patients and. So like you said online.

[01:10:51] No, no, no. Okay. Doesn’t matter. Let it. Let it. Let it. Let it marinate.

[01:10:55] Dark days that have been dark moments.

[01:10:57] Let it marinate.

[01:10:57] Let it let me.

[01:10:58] But let it marinate for a while. What’s your biggest weakness?

[01:11:02] You. I do know that I’m very good at making plans and things happening in my head and not telling anyone else about it. So like with my team, I would be, you know, I come up with all these ideas and all I have conversations and I’ll agree something with a team member and then not tell anyone else about it. Because I, you know, I just think that they can read my mind. I’m really moody, but I try work, I try and you know, you put on a show, don’t you? But at home, I’m really moody, very quick tempered.

[01:11:41] Really. I will ask for one, but keep going.

[01:11:44] I know I can keep going. Yeah, I think it’s really annoying to my team sometimes.

[01:11:51] What’s been your biggest mistake?

[01:11:55] In life or in life?

[01:11:57] Both.

[01:12:03] I don’t really believe in mistakes. Or like grapes. I think everything in life should be a learning experience, but I do wish I’d had the confidence I have now. But when I see all these young dentists out there doing crazy, amazing stuff and achieving all these amazing things, and I think, oh, this I’d have that confidence 20 years ago. Imagine what I could have achieved.

[01:12:33] Yeah, I know what you mean. I interviewed a fourth year dental student for this show, and he’d figured some stuff out that I figured out last week pissed me off a little bit.

[01:12:48] I think that, like, these young dentists are so different to how.

[01:12:54] Yeah, but they’re big stress heads. They’re big stress heads. Well, I was going to go on to the empowering women in dentistry. Yeah. How did that come about? Was that was that kind of this thing that you found yourself? You found your confidence, then you wanted to share that with other women.

[01:13:12] So what happened was I went into this into Costa Coffee and Weatherby, where I live, and there was this. Amazonian glamorous women stood in front of me in the coffee cake, and I looked at her. I was like, Oh, it’s Andrea Eby and Andrea Eby. I’d always this top 50 dentistry failure, like every last 20 years it’s been coming out. I’ve been reading it, and she was always in it. And she was she was quite the trailblazer, you know, in terms of marketing and all this kind of thing. And I’d followed her for 20 years, never met her. And so I introduced myself. I said, Oh, hi, I’m a dentist. And we just hit it off and we got chatting and then we met up again and we sort of both female practises, owners of which obviously we are outnumbered by men in terms of practise ownership. It was it was a real delight to to speak to another female practise owner. And we both really enjoying our conversation and the way that we approach running. Our practises seem to be different from maybe the when the way that men do it. And we felt like there was this big need out there for women to come together in dentistry because we recognise this huge lack of confidence amongst women and this kind of imposter syndrome, this feeling that you’re never, you’re not what people think you are and you’re never going to achieve what people think you can and all this.

[01:14:44] And it’s huge. It’s a huge problem that I’ve always suffered from as well. And we just felt like it would be fun. It was like, Yeah, it’s just one of those stupid ideas. Again, it was like, Oh, wouldn’t it be fun if we just did a conference and got loads of women together and got some cool female speakers in and just tried to be a bit inspiring to women and tried to help other women in the way that we were helping each other and that Andrea was helping me and growing my confidence. And so we did. And so we started doing it and we got this really amazing response and through lockdown and everything, it was really incredible. So that’s how it came about, really. It was just seeing that kind of opportunity and seeing this thing that was missing.

[01:15:26] Who spoke at the conference.

[01:15:29] What we had. So we had mind Ninja Lady, we.

[01:15:35] Had Maro.

[01:15:38] Lawson. You have Sally Garneau. She was like our keynote speaker. That was amazing. She took us through that whole mindset of how she won gold at the Olympics, at the 100 metre hurdles. And that was crazy, like the way she rehearsed that in her mind thousands of times before she did that run. And she just every set, every step was rehearsed in her mind. And it’s that a whole kind of visualisation. And I think successful people do that a lot this visualisation of of what it is you want to achieve because you naturally think about your goal all the time. So inevitably it becomes something that’s going to happen. But yeah, we had some amazing speakers. It was a fun day.

[01:16:24] Would you say juggling motherhood and business ownership has been a challenge to you?

[01:16:32] Yeah. It’s a challenge because it’s a psychological challenge to me. I have huge working mother guilt and I have a massively supportive husband without whom I couldn’t do achieve what I have achieved. He’s very flexible in his job and he’s very willing to do a lot of the childcare. But every day I struggle with my guilt of not spending enough time with them or not being present enough. But this comes back to this, and I think I do, by the way, I do think I do spend a lot of time with them, but I’ll never stop feeling guilty. But then that drive side of me knows and my husband knows that if I was to give it all up, which, you know, I want to do every day sometimes, but if I was to give up doing what I’m doing, I would be miserable, depressed, very bored person.

[01:17:34] I was I was reading I was doing some research on you. And I came across some article in dentistry where he said, every Sunday I go to the spa and recharge Sunday evening. And I think it’s such an important thing because too many ladies in particular, I think I’m sure there’s some men like this too, but too many ladies in particular are sort of martyrs to the everything that they do, and that leaves nothing for them. And there is some there are some particularly sort of more, I call it enlightened or forward thinking people who realise that that there’s like if you’re not taken care of, you can’t take care of anyone else. When? How long? How long ago did you do that? He’s still doing that. He’s still going to do that.

[01:18:23] Excellent. Let’s go to something I like. I cook some more dinner. We’ve had a nice weekend, and then I just go off to the spa for 2 hours, and I just sit there and think about stuff, and it’s the only time I get headspace sit and think of. Unusually, I think about work, my next idea. But yeah, it’s just my headspace, really.

[01:18:44] And would you would you would you say more people should do more of that? I certainly think so. I mean, whatever.

[01:18:48] It is that gives you headspace, it might be fishing, it might be running.

[01:18:53] Yeah.

[01:18:53] Whatever it is you need, you need that moment. Like I’m addicted to my phone, mainly because I just sit on there and actually probably don’t think for half an hour. Which is also good for you.

[01:19:08] Definitely. I think we’re coming near the end of our time. I do want to ask you about the future. Have you got plans? Are there going to be many more of these architectures? Are you going to start teaching this process? So. Oh, God, I bet it would work. I mean, if you put on a course on how to do a squat, I’m sure. I’m sure people would want to to check that out. But, you know, putting a course on, it’s hard work, too.

[01:19:35] Yeah. I mean, I’ve never been someone that has long term goals. Actually, I’m an opportunist, I think. And I like to grow organically and go where my whim takes me, whether it’s teaching or speaking or building a practise, whatever it is. I just like to be passionate about what I’m doing and enjoy what I’m doing. And so I don’t make long term plans. And, you know, you never say never right now I’m saying never, never again. I think I mean it, but I’m just going to carry on with that journey and spotting those opportunities and and going where those opportunities take me.

[01:20:24] And you said when when when you had the stick about the offer kind of made you happy. Which is kind of counterintuitive. A lot of people would have said, oh, that was horrible. But but but there’s sort of this mischievous side of you, I guess. Does that come from.

[01:20:44] Because I thought. Well. If people are sitting up and taking notice and getting annoyed by this. It must be because I’m doing something right.

[01:20:57] But why would you say that? I mean, a lot of people would say it must be because you’re doing something wrong.

[01:21:02] I don’t really care what other people think. Like, I just I do my own thing and I never really compete with other practises or, you know, I look at, I still look at what the practises are doing and stuff, but it’s my thing, it’s my practise. I’ve got no interest in competing with anyone else. All I want to do is fill my clinic. So I do really care what other people think about what I do as long as what I’m doing is ethical and I’m not hurting anybody and I’m giving these patients an amazing service, like it’s somebody I tell them, I’m like, This is incredible. You won’t get this anywhere else. I’m not just saying, you know, and you’ll get.

[01:21:43] What I mean. It’s clear that that’s the kind of person you are. But why?

[01:21:47] Gosh. It’s just the depth to me, isn’t it? So I.

[01:21:53] You know, you know this thing about women and confidence. A lot of women would would would be very scared about that that level of attention. I know why I’m saying women, but it’s true, right?

[01:22:06] Yeah.

[01:22:07] And and and yet you you go on and you love it and you come out and say, yeah, I am doing it. And you go and set up the Women in Dentistry Empowerment Group. Why? Why? How did you become this cat? Like I want to do. I want to. I want to teach my daughter.

[01:22:27] You can’t teach. You can’t teach it. I love having the drive that I have. But sometimes I wish you could just take it away. And I could just be. And I could just sit and I could just be. And I could not constantly want more and bigger and better. And I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve had a wonderful childhood. I have wonderful, supportive parents. I’ve never had trauma in my life. I’m was going to say blessed to that word, but I am. And so there’s no kind of there’s no yearning in me for something that I’ve missed out on in life. It’s just a me. There’s no I don’t think there’s a secret to it.

[01:23:11] What about what about an inspiration? Did you have someone?

[01:23:15] Oh, I’m always inspired by people I love seeing. So like, I don’t know, I was seeing I got into Invisalign and then I was seeing like these, these speakers for Invisalign. So one day I was like, I’m to be Invisalign speaker. And that was, you know, in my head I wouldn’t do that. So then you just make it happen. You do what it takes, you take the steps and you make it happen. And I saw what they would do and I was like, What are they doing? How did they get there? I’m going to do that. So. Yeah. I’ve gone off again. I don’t know what we were talking about, but.

[01:23:55] Okay. Well, I still I still think you owe us a traumatic story.

[01:24:01] But I think of it. I miss you.

[01:24:04] Yeah.

[01:24:06] I mean, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to start. Yeah, right. Oh, excellent. All right, here you go. Excellent. So I was born dysplasia. So it’s where your hips deformed and the. My finger was deformed and the peri acetabulum, which is the bone that goes around it. Right. And I didn’t really realise it was problem until I was in my early twenties. I was living in London and I was walking around and my hip kept falling out my hip socket. So I’d be walking along and I’d collapse. And for some reason I just thought, this is normal. Don’t know why. I just got too busy. I was like hanging with stuff, so and it really started to happen. It’s awful in London cause you have to walk everywhere, so it’s crippling. I became really crippled with it and I could hardly walk. So eventually I went to the doctor. They took an X-ray and like, Oh, he’s got hip dysplasia now. Oh, okay. Well, at least it’s a thing that I’ve got. And so I, I had to go through a lot of surgery and it was big, nasty surgery and I had quite a few of them and I had my hip, my femur. They cut it in two and they re angled it and then they stuck a pin in it. And then the first time I remember like three months later, I still couldn’t lift my own leg. And I had this horrendous limp and I remember my best friend coming to visit me. I was like, Look at me walking. I was so I was so pleased with myself. And she was like aghast. Look, she’s like, What’s it to you? Well, I was doing quite well.

[01:25:45] So I got to the doctor and he took the X-ray and the two parts of the femur were completely separate. And I’ve been trying to walk around on these broken legs for three months, so he had to then redo it. And then that really didn’t help my symptoms and I was still quite crippled with it and I couldn’t really walk, I couldn’t do it. And I was in constant, constant pain. And this went on for a couple of years and it really affected my life. And then I had the final surgery, which was the peri acetabulum, so it’s your hip bones. So they took a big chunk out of my hip bone and then re angled that and I was laid off in bed for three months and I was getting married. And I organised my whole wedding from back from my bed and my goal was to walk down the aisle without crutches. That was my goal. So I kind of even hired the band without hearing them. I did everything. The Internet hadn’t been around all that long, but I had a laptop and I did it all. And what was really interesting about that period of time for me was not only firstly finding out who my friends were, the people that were there to support me and my husband who supported me all the way through and my family and going through that crippling period of pain for three or four years, not knowing if I was going to be able to walk at the end of it or if I was going to be in a wheelchair. They were. Yeah. There you go. There’s some dark days for you.

[01:27:18] I forgot about that. That qualifies.

[01:27:22] But I got there and well, that was nearly 20 years ago now. And I can’t run and I can’t walk very far. But I can get on my bike and I can day to day I can get by and I’m not in pain. And every every day I am grateful for the body. I’m in the ability it has to get me from A to B and for me, you know, the opportunity that that gave me to be grateful for for every breath that I take, because we take our bodies for granted until something like that happens. And to go through that when you’re quite young and you’re out clubbing and all this kind of stuff and you can’t do it. It was really hard when you’re 23 now, but I’m forever grateful to that surgeon who who fixed me and it’s still working.

[01:28:17] What an inspirational story, Martina. Just the whole story. Not not this justice, but the whole thing. You seem you seem to carry stuff off with relative ease. And I don’t know, I guess it’s the way you put it over, because nothing, nothing significant is easy. As is never easy.

[01:28:35] Not all.

[01:28:37] Let’s. Let’s end it with the customary final questions.

[01:28:43] Martina. She stay on the planet. You’ve got your kids, your beloved ones around you who’ve been there, supported you, and you’ve got to give them three pieces of wisdom, parting pieces of wisdom for life. What would they be?

[01:29:03] So. The first piece of advice that I would give is. If you want to be successful, if you want to grow and you want to become a better person, I think you have to spend every single day out of your comfort zone. And that is why I do. And, you know, it’s not always a pleasant place to be, but very great fun things can come out of that. My second piece of advice, I think, is something that I we talked about earlier, and it is to be true to yourself and to learn to trust yourself and your own values and your own instincts and learn. And it’s a hard thing to learn, but to learn when to listen to other people and to when to when to listen to yourself. And if something doesn’t feel right and it’s not comfortable to you. Then it’s the right thing is is to do what is comfortable to you and how that you treat other people, the work that you do and and the people that you surround yourself with. And what would be my third piece of advice? I wish I could take this advice myself, but I would. Just to learn to be. Just to be. Sometimes. To sit and look around everything because it’s a wonderful, wonderful world. And I’m incredibly lucky. And sometimes I think I take it all for granted because I’m too busy trying to do more. Just be.

[01:30:54] Lovely. Lovely.

[01:30:56] Especially that last piece.

[01:30:57] That last piece. But and also what you said about comfort zone. It’s quite interesting that being comfortable outside of your comfort zone sort of it’s a cliche, but what you said about interesting things come from it. I think that’s a key point because you’re you’re bloody uncomfortable. Right. So that’s an uncomfortable thing. But then when you when you’re looking forward to the interesting things that are going to come from it, at least you’ve got you’ve got that and then interesting things always do come. I remember when me and I said, let’s do a podcast. It was bloody uncomfortable. But then once you’ve been out of your comfort zone a few times and then you know, some interesting stuff is going to go, you might not know what that stuff is yet, but some good stuff’s going to come from it, and that’s the best way of getting into that position.

[01:31:42] Exciting. Yeah. An exciting place to be and to say yes to things even though you don’t know how you’re going to achieve them or do them.

[01:31:50] Yeah. And they’re stopping and stopping and spending the roads is certainly. Yeah. So my final question. Fantasy dinner party.

[01:31:59] Yes.

[01:32:00] Three guests, dead or alive. Who would you invite?

[01:32:03] Right. My three guests. I would have Professor Brian Cox.

[01:32:12] I like him.

[01:32:13] I love him. I just could listen to him talk about black holes and dark matter. And I have no idea what he’s saying. Yeah, I could just. I could. I understand it at the time, but then if you ask me to repeat what he said, I would have no idea if I could listen to him. I would just love to listen to him talk all night about dark matter.

[01:32:37] Is such a cool dude. Used to be a pop star as well. Yeah.

[01:32:39] He was endearing. Yeah.

[01:32:40] Amazing.

[01:32:42] He’s such a cool dude. I’ve seen him, like, twice live.

[01:32:45] Yeah, I speak to that pretty good.

[01:32:48] And my second guest would be, I think I just Tom Hanks because he’s my favourite actor and I just. I just love everything that he does. And I just think he’d be really, really interesting and I just think he’s got a really lovely way about him. So I’d have Tom Hanks. I don’t think my identify, I guess exciting. Really.

[01:33:12] What’s what’s your favourite Tom Hanks movie?

[01:33:15] I really like. Is it, Captain Ways? One way.

[01:33:23] So the desert islands. He’s on a desert island somewhere.

[01:33:26] Oh, no, not that one. That’s what with the ball, Wilson. What’s it called? That one.

[01:33:33] Castaway.

[01:33:34] Captain Phillips. Captain Phillips. I really like that movie. He lands a plane on the Hudson River, doesn’t he?

[01:33:42] Yes.

[01:33:43] Well, that’s really good.

[01:33:44] Yes. Brilliant. And the third.

[01:33:46] Guest. And then my third guest. It would be Freddie Mercury because. Yeah. You know, you asked me, like, what am I, you know, you didn’t ask me regrets. I think one of my regrets is never having seen Freddie Mercury live. And I really, really wish I’d seen Freddie Mercury sing live. I know you can go see Queen now. It’s not Freddie, is it, to have been at Live Aid? Wouldn’t that have been a thing? I remember watching it at the time.

[01:34:17] Yeah, yeah. Incredible. Once that was.

[01:34:20] Yeah.

[01:34:22] It’s been so nice to have you. And I know how busy you are. And the fact that you found time for us is really, really feels like a privilege. Thank. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[01:34:36] You would help me. Thank you. So I really feel like I’ve had a good therapy session.

[01:34:41] So many lessons in all of your loads to be loads. Thank you so much, Martina. Thanks for doing. Thanks for me.

[01:34:49] 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.

[01:35:05] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:35:20] 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.

[01:35:30] And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] And with their infrastructure, the things that they’ve already got in place, their existing head office and allowing me to create my own head office, my own infrastructure as well. I just felt like, although yes, I’d lost majority share of my business, I gained the ability to grow a much larger business. And I felt I’d rather have a smaller piece of a much bigger pie as such. She’s, I suppose, the old saying but you’ve got to think bigger picture. If you’re going to do that, then kind of say I’ve got three highly profitable clinics, which I had with a very, very good EBITDA, which I had, and I could sell the whole thing. One hit for a big figure, but then where do I go again? And so this, I’m hoping, allows me to partially exit, partially exit again, partially exit again, but in a business that I love in a bill.

[00:00:57] 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.

[00:01:15] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Kaley Solanki back onto the podcast for his second visit. Since the last time we had Kaylee Sean A lot’s happened for for him and you know, we’ll perhaps brother, I think that regular listeners will know that Katie has gone through a process of investment and now looking to grow. How you doing, buddy?

[00:01:39] I’m good, thanks. Hey, how are you?

[00:01:41] I’m good. Good. Good to have you back. So the last time we spoke, I remember there was a lot of tears. Hopefully there’ll be some more tears this time as well. But I remember Prav asking you, so what’s the plans for the future? And you said, look, I want to I want to spread my knowledge. I want to get some more people to do the things that I can I can teach them. And what you’ve done is you’ve sold Dental or sold a percentage of it.

[00:02:14] Yes. So obviously, when you guys had me on the show last time, I mean, it was it was great to be on it. And we were going through a really kind of strong transition of kind of rebranding the clinics I was in, not just probably the maturity of our Academy programme where we were teaching. I think by that point we kind of had four or five vets come through our kind of dental private system. And to be honest, business could have never been better really. You know, the clinics were booming, we were out in chairs and growth was going up, profit was going up. So everything was going in the right direction and kind of where I wanted to be and how we discuss things and the last show and kind of moving forward, we wanted almost like an educational platform and we created KIS courses, which was really well received. And you know, we run I think 12 or 13 courses last year and we had we had full uptake of every single day. It was small groups, but it was really nice. It was great to kind of lecture again and be on that side of the table.

[00:03:29] And so, yeah, it was, it was kind of I felt like everything was going in that, in that direction of how I’d kind of envisaged it going. But you get to a point like in anything where you kind of run out of time, run out of not not energy is thought. It’s just time and it’s just the ability to kind of keep on pushing stuff. And so a decision kind of had to be made on What do I do? Because as we discussed last time, I do a lot of clinical dentistry, I then do the teaching, I’ve got the vets and try to have a bit of private life as well, try to socialise every now and then on the MSN course with you. And you know, there’s all these different little avenues that I do, but at some point you kind of think it’s 11:00 at night and I’m not stopped and I’ve not stopped for months and months and months. And so I kind of really wanted to just evaluate where I wanted to be and where I want it to go.

[00:04:26] So you sell to dental, dental beauty partners or you sell, what, 60% of your business to dental beauty partners?

[00:04:32] Yeah. So kind of what happened was probably pre-COVID before I decided to grow and rebrand and so on and so forth. And there was some offers on the table from, from other corporate groups at that time. I kinda was a little bit down and out about dentistry. I’d been doing it for a long time and I think I’d just worn myself out and for many reasons, some not due to me, others due to decisions that I made. And none of those deals kind of went through. And I think in my heart I just didn’t want to sell the whole business. I just didn’t want to be the guy that sold and then worked out for three or five years. And then for what I do now. And then Dental Beauty came about by a broker called Max from Pluto Partners that basically I was quite tight with. And he kind of came to me, he said, I think we’ve got a good deal on the table here where you can sell it. You know, you’ll have to sell a majority share of your business. So 60%, which is what was on the table. But they want to then look at using you as a vehicle in the northwest and really expanding your brand and pushing dental out and and doing all the things that you kind of want to do, but just, I think don’t have the infrastructure, our energy to do.

[00:05:51] And so, so yeah, it kind of just fitted far better for me because I was at the time 41 I still feel I’ve got a lot to give in a role where I feel a need to be kingpin of the of the of the clinics that I run and. Have a lot of kind of knowledge to give to the younger clinicians, and I didn’t want to lose that at this point. So it was just really important that the deal structure had to be right. Which which men then, you know, dental beauty or a large group now 30 practises, I believe in the South, but mainly mixed practises that their idea is by mix practise and revamp it, let it grow, double the turnover. Bosh You’ve got more profitability and we move on to the next one. And Chris essentially is fully private, no NHS. We are aiming for very high end dentistry. We aim for those patients that are very like discerning patients who really want that, that top end treatment.

[00:06:56] Our model is more squats, our model is more built from from the ground outwards, but using our our heavy branding and marketing to really push those clinics forward. So we weren’t going to step on each of us toes. And I think it was just going to be a very, very good fit. And with their infrastructure, the things that they’ve already got in place, their existing head office and allowing me to create my own head office, my own infrastructure as well. I just felt like, although yes, I’d lost majority share of my business, I gained the ability to grow a much larger business. And I felt I’d rather have a smaller piece of a much bigger pie as such. She’s, I suppose, the old saying, but you’ve got to think bigger picture. If you’re going to do that, then kind of say I’ve got three highly profitable clinics, which I had with a very, very good EBITDA, which I had, and I could sell the whole thing for one hit for a big figure. But then where do I go again? And so this, I’m hoping, allows me to partially exit, partially exit again, partially exit again. But in a business that I love in a bill.

[00:08:10] I think when I was when I was speaking to you about this pro and we were having conversations of what next? You were entertaining conversations from the usual suspects or the different offers on the table. And it was like, okay. Sells. He gets a large sum of money in the bank. But you’ve got you’ve got something that I definitely don’t have at this age right now. You have just got a crazy amount of energy and it almost felt too early for you to do your big exit now because you’ve got so much more to give, so much more ambition to grow. And, you know, I think there’s one thing that Max told me right at the beginning when when we were talking about our exit and it was, you know, the right deal has got to be the right deal for the right person. So the right deal for me was getting out of the game. The right deal for you was, I think, doing what you did, you know, getting some money, getting some cash in through the door so you could sort of, I guess, have a nice cushion beneath you. But then having that vehicle and that infrastructure behind you to just go again and I’ve seen it myself, you know, it’s almost like the drive you had back in 2005, 2006 is back again. That’s what I am saying. I’ve seen that that clash with that drive, that ambition, that that, you know, new start of ambition you had in 2005 and six with a degree of aggression is back.

[00:09:39] Yeah. Can I kind of.

[00:09:41] Kate what do you think they bought. I mean the brand I get that but you write I mean these these these ten, ten clinics you want to open.

[00:09:53] Yeah. I mean.

[00:09:54] What’s going to I mean, have you discussed what’s going to be the different roles and what’s going to happen? What’s Dev and his team going to do and what you’re going to do to spell that out for us?

[00:10:02] Yeah. So I think to answer your first question, you’re right. I think, you know, they as the as the as the dance team told me, like a 16 page dossier about me specifically to Nordic Capital and EDG, who were the fund they’re funded by on the basis that they wanted this deal. But I think essentially when you break it down, they kind of wanted me. So it’s one of those that I kind of think to myself, you know, that’s great. But there’s still that degree of pressure on because, you know, you’re in that situation now where you are now saying, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do the ten clinics and I’m going to, you know, in the next 12 months. And I want them to be profitable, as profitable as my existing businesses are. And that’s what this business plan relies on. So for me, there is some pressure. But then, you know, Devin, the team that’s really helped me. So the helping with finance, the helping with HR, the helping with payroll, the help him with, you know. The ability to just sometimes bounce ideas off people that are in the in a similar situation and kind of get their take on how we can progress and how we can build. And sometimes that little bit of information is pretty invaluable.

[00:11:22] Yeah. What would you say is the difference in the approach of dental beauty to what you would naturally do?

[00:11:31] I think I call both both clinics. Both groups are very aligned to like wanting patient care to be there and which is why they they use the partnership model. I really think the partnership model for kids is going to hopefully work super well. But I think like the difference is I suppose are because there’s so much more ahead in respect to I suppose what they do number of clinics, number of partners, infrastructure, you know, a lot of it is is kind of geared by numbers and by spreadsheets and by, you know, all the kind of business stuff that goes on with all of that. And at the moment, KISS is in the infancy of that. And so aspects of it I love because I can kind of now see kind of what our KPIs are or what they should be and what what our targets are and how are we going to be driven and, and how, how infrastructure in a larger organisation works. And I love that because it gives me a thought to say, well we need one of them or a need and integrations manager and I need an operations manager and I understand the reasons why we need these things now.

[00:12:48] Whereas I would just generally get one of my existing staff and stick them in a different role, and you do it because you trust that person. But maybe that in might not be the right person for the job, but then you don’t want to really bring someone else in. And recently we’ve just brought an M&A manager in for KISS and she used to work for BUPA, but she she’s come as an external. But I believe we need that to grow and to find sites and to find existing practises. And so it’s kind of what I really like is as opposed to differences. The main difference, I suppose, is their business strategy or them strategy and how they grow against the strategy and how this is going to grow. But I think everything else we can really work together to to hopefully produce a really strong secondary group in the north, you know, in my view, is to really combat the Northwest, whether it be Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Yorkshire. Those are the kind of key areas that I want to be in in the next next year to two years. Really.

[00:14:00] So. Okay. Did you go through that traditional thing that entrepreneurs go through when they sell their business? I know you haven’t sold it all and I know you’ve got plans for the future, but that that sort of sense of loss that people talk about.

[00:14:13] Yeah.

[00:14:14] You do know you’ve been you’ve been working at this for 15, 16 years now.

[00:14:18] Yeah. It’s you know, it’s a tough thing because when it’s all yours and you kind of feel like, well, I can do that. I can make that decision because it’s my decision to make. And if it goes well, then amazing. And if it goes really badly, then I’ve only really got myself to blame and kind of moving forward. It is tough that when you sell because you have this relief. I remember when I first set up the very first kiss, I think I had 900 or £800,000 worth of debt tied into that first clinic. And then you get to this point where your debt you’re a debt free business, which we were and we still are. We did big numbers and made very good money yearly. And, you know, life life is good, but, you know, life is good because you look at it at a snapshot in time. And, you know, we go back two years and every clinic in the country was closed. Then it was COVID and life was not good and things still needed pay in and this needed to be done. And, you know, to be brutally honest with you, to have a decent lump sum in the bank so that you don’t then need to stress about things is is a really important aspect of why I considered to pull some cash out and do a partial exit now. But yeah, it is sad because it’s sad you feel like you’ve lost a little part of your baby. But, you know, I kind of was was also excited because of the way it went down. And I think if it didn’t, wasn’t this deal, it wasn’t this structure. I genuinely feel like I probably would have lost my mojo pretty quickly, whereas now I’m probably working harder than I ever. I’ve been because as I’ve said, I’ve got that almost that fight back to to ensure that this next level this next step for Chris Dental is a is a really successful one.

[00:16:18] What have been the challenges to you? But I know we’ve we’ve just brought the concept of grief and loss and that that letting go, you know, you’re a control freak. You like to be in control of things and now you’ve let go. You’re not you no longer in control. I guess you’re in control of certain elements. And so what’s the plan for the next part of your growth in your ambition for what? For what you’ve got the fire for? You know, the two groups are different, the kiss and the dental beauties you’ve identified. But what is the plan now moving forward and what and what timescale do you want to achieve that?

[00:16:54] And I think I suppose like control is, is one of those things that you feel like you’ve got or you don’t have in any business. You know, we laugh and we joke and sometimes look at what’s going on around me. And I’m sure most practise owners can can kind of sympathise with me. But you sometimes go into your practises and you think, who’s made all these decisions because they’re terrible, you know, and things are going on around you and the place is falling apart. And then other times, you know, you kind of things are going amazingly and you’re like, Yeah, of course this is all me. And so I think control is like very, very perceived, perceived by many in very different ways. I never really was that control guy though in KISS majority of his staff, if you spoke to them, said, yeah, you know, they respected me when I made decisions. Those decisions were definitely done. So the hopefully, generally the great good of the business. But I do believe that, you know, because I’m still there, because I’m still CEO or clinical director or whatever you want to call me, I’m still the boss there. And to be honest with you, that day to day running, that decisions that we need to make to make sure the business stays successful kind of Dental be a pretty cool they like.

[00:18:14] K You just do what you need to do and you make sure it carries on doing what it does. But then if we talk about me personally and my ambition and my my drive and what I need to do and actually I need to do less than industry. And that is the long and the short of this whole next chapter of my life. Because as much as I love doing the teeth, I kind of need to drop my clinical time down to probably two days a week, really in the next year. I’ve already dropped down to three as soon as the deal went ahead. And that’s hard because you’re right. I’ve got the biggest thing for me is not business control, by the way, is actually clinical control, wanting to do the big 24 veneer cases or the full mount rehabs or the all the armfuls of dental. That’s what I want to do. I want to control that and I can’t, because if I carry on doing that, I will be working solidly in the business. And as the old saying goes, not on the business.

[00:19:14] And unfortunately, it’s really pinnacle imperative that I now work on the business to to grow it and grow it well, really support my new partners that we’re going to be taking on board. So they grow their businesses as well. And I can’t do that if I’m starting my surgery five days a week. So that’s, I suppose, the biggest loss of control. But then for me, ambition wise, the biggest ambition is to be that next leader, not the leader in clinical dentistry, just the leader in both the clinical side still giving support and ensuring that standards of care and showing that dentistry is done to exacting kind of standards and quality, but also making sure the groups, the teams that we build now are going to be super happy and kisses. The brand stays as that happy, friendly kind of brand that people come and see because they love the staff and they love the environment. And you know, everyone smiles and that kind of thing. And, you know, pay has been to our clinics many a time and he always comments like stuff just lovely me. Then I tried to hire the people I think I can get on with and I don’t want those things to change.

[00:20:29] What are the challenges you face as a different type of business owner? So you’ve gone from this guy who’s like super clinical and it’s almost like you’ve changed as a business owner. You’ve had to adapt and develop new skills, whether it’s interviewing new partners for these next ten clinics or having meetings or having structured, I guess, working on the business more so than you ever have done before. What are the changes and adjustments you’ve had to make and adapt as a business owner?

[00:21:00] I suppose it’s like it’s like anything. When you start going more into business, you’ve got to understand numbers, you’ve got to understand spreadsheets, you’ve got to understand balance sheets, you’ve got to look at projections, business plans. And to be honest with you, when you start looking at these things, I’ll be honest. I just wanted to go back to doing teeth because I’m like, Fuck is all this, you know? And people are like, like sending me like, right. We’ve muddled up this clinic that we’re going to be setting up for our partner in Bolton. And I’m looking at it and I’m thinking, just where’s the bottom line? Where’s the bottom line of this? But really not the be all and end all, because I’m kind of seeing how it needs to be modelled out and I need to then actually sit down with that partner and be able to explain this business plan to them and explain this is how we get to these figures. This is what we’re expecting to spend. These are the reasons we’re expecting. And to spend it. And if you do what you say, telling me you can do and we market as we’re going to market these the numbers on a month on month year on year basis which is why you’re going to get this dividend and it’s why you can earn this money and it’s why you’re going to at some point exit for X.

[00:22:13] And that was the probably the hardest thing for me to comprehend and get my head around and kind of now it’s almost like second nature to me. So when someone sends me, you know, at the times and the financial team had done CBC will send me business plans and and models I’ll I’ll scrutinise them and I’ll say I think we’ve got this bit wrong and I think this is this needs to be increased because I think we need to spend more here or I think, you know, this associate actually who’s going to be a partner can grow better than that. So we need to have this. And so yeah, I suppose understanding that which was a, which is more difficult for me because I’m not geared that way. It’s probably been the hardest kind of change to what I do, you know, talking to partners, talking to dentists. I just genuinely believe that I can do that. I’ve done it all my life. I do genuinely believe I’m passionate about something. People are passionate around me about it and they kind of want to be in with that which is which is great because I genuinely believe bringing partners in and, and the right partners to partner up with our new clinics is not going to be the most difficult thing.

[00:23:22] It’s finding the right ones to ensure that everything is met. Quality, looking after my team, looking after the staff, looking after the patients. That’s the most important thing for me. So those things I think have got that skill set already. But it was more the kind of business side which was which was hard to get my head around initially. I mean, death is like a frickin numbers genius, so you kind of sit and chat with him. He talks so fast, it talks like a million miles an hour about and this manoeuvre and I’m like just going way over me and I’m like, You need to slow down, dude. Just simplify this for me. Tell me what’s going on. But that’s him because he is very much more geared as a businessman, I would say, you know, it’s more natural to him. He can look at numbers and accounts and stuff and he’s like that on it. He’s just quick, but not everyone’s got that skill set. But as long as I learn that and I can understand it and I can compute it in my own time, it allows me to then at least be on the same level as these guys.

[00:24:24] Okay. For this for the partners that you’re you’re going to choose, what would you say is this? Let’s start with the minimum skill set that you think a partner of kis dental would need. And then give us what would be your ideal partner? What how many years out, what doing or what kind of work? What kind of person?

[00:24:47] I kind of want partners who can do an all round level of dentistry. So, you know, and I talk about a lot and I genuinely believe the world is going Invisalign bleaching, bonding, mad, which is fine. I believe it’s a very good treatment modality. I’m super happy to provide it. Obviously our practise is provided in a very high, high amount and with all our clinicians, but that isn’t the 8 to 8 is at a dentistry. And so I want my partners to be able to almost be a leader in themselves. So be the guy that if if someone says I’m who’s a little bit maybe less senior than that person, what you think about this? What would you do? Like let’s talk about treatment plans. Let’s talk about this. You know, sometimes you can’t just throw Invisalign. That’s it. And that is something that I need them to be able to do. I want them to be an all round clinician that can do ceramics, that can do bonding, can do orthodontics with Invisalign fine, even if it’s fixed and fine, you know, but can do also general work and understand the more complex stuff. I’m not asking them to be able to achieve that. We’ll have clinicians at different sites to be able to refer to, to be able to do those things. I don’t want them to be amazing implantable objects or anything like that, but also understand the concepts of implant ology.

[00:26:16] So dentistry, I just want them to be decent. All rounders don’t want it. I don’t really want superstars. I don’t want the guy that grosses 200 grand a month. It’s lovely to have that guy. But all the clinics I’m trying to set up a partnership clinics. And what that genuinely means is that guy who can do that 200 grand a month or 150 grand a month or whatever they grow, which is very big numbers, by the way. That guy can keep on doing that the rest of his life. And his options are. He carries on because why would you buy? How would you build a clinic or buy your own clinic? You’re doing that kind of level with no hassles, no problems. Probably walk around with over half a million quid a year with no stress. So option one is crack on and keep on doing it for the rest of your days. But you are it is labour intensive. And I know that because I’m one of those guys and I’ve been doing it for 16 years and you get knackered. And then your next option is do what I did. And bye bye clinic or set clinics up. Back in 2004 2005, believe me, market was different, marketing was different, and there wasn’t many people doing it and doing it well. So I hit the ground running, really doing that now with a squat and trying to get that level of new patient influx and gain turnover and stuff.

[00:27:49] It’s going to be more difficult. Now, this guy that’s doing 200 K is probably pulling 100 K a month just on overheads. So the only way he now makes is half a million quid a year plus is get more dentists in, build a big machine, have to spend more money on marketing. And it’s almost like this vicious circle. And what does he do then? All. The third option is kind of what I’m offering, which is like, you know what, let me go into a clinic which is already well branded, which has got all the infrastructure, which has got the marketing machine behind it and, you know, not telling anyone things that they don’t know. Kiss brings in 300 ish private patients a month. Now, from my point of view, we all have a level of marketing and that will just increase in the areas we set up. So now you’ve got bums on seats straight away. You can still do your decent numbers, but if you don’t want to go so hard. That business should still accrue some money for you. So, you know, 16 years down the line, you’ve got an asset. You’ve earned good money still. You’re probably still doing your half a million quid a year. You can exit for a decent wage at the end.

[00:29:10] Kate. Kate. The kind of guy who’s who’s grossing 100, 200,000 a month has got many, many options. Yeah, you’re right. He’s he’s doing very, very well already. But I’m more interested in the kind of guy who, by the way, I know in your world, doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’s grossing 40,000 a month. That’s a decent gross. 2000 a day. 20 days. Yeah.

[00:29:36] Yeah.

[00:29:37] Are you interested in talking to that guy or you’re not interested in talking to that guy?

[00:29:40] Yeah. 100% interest in talking to that guy. Would that guy straight away be a partner for us? I think what I’d want to do is bring him on as an associate. To start with, I believe, a guy that’s doing about 40 to 50 a month. Gross I can probably get them up with some education, and that’s not dental education. That’s not me telling them how to drill teeth or whatever. That’s education and understanding how to treatment plan more methodically, how to get better uptake and and just understand what I think cosmetic dentistry sometimes requires. I think at that point then that person will grow to 60, 70 a month easily. And then we sit down and we then say, I think you’re at that point now, I think well rounded. You’re doing good numbers. Let’s consider a clinic for you and bring them then on as a partner for a new clinic. And I think that is kind of that process. But you don’t want the guys, if I’m being honest with you, pay that, do those massive numbers because you’re also asking them to run the clinic. And so they’ve got to cut down their clinical time to be able to really put energy into looking after the staff and looking after the team and understanding again the numbers and making sure targets are met and all those different things that a good partner would do.

[00:31:10] But you’ve got to support them to do that. So the guy that’s doing those super, super big numbers, all they’re thinking about is I want to create this vehicle with kis dental to just be able to do those numbers there. And I’m kind of educating them and saying, listen, dude, like you don’t need to do that all the time. Like it will kill you in the end, like. Gross Like, if you’re doing big numbers. Gross 100 K, do three or four days a week, really concentrate on that business, grow that business with all the guys that you can teach because you have got an exceptional skill set. You’ve got a skill set that patients trust you, you do good treatments and you do good numbers. So now teach the other guys how to do that and and pull back some dividends at the end of every year. And now you don’t have to work at that. And no, Dennis is going to say hand on heart, five, six days a week solid. They love it.

[00:32:03] They’re doing 12 hour days. It’s hard. Graft is it’s labour intensive. And so from my point of view, it is genuinely important to kind of get them out of the mindset. You know, I’ve got I’ve got a really good associate, you know, he’s my cousin Caution. He grosses really big money. And I’ve said to him, I’ve said like coach, like, dude, this is great and you are exceptional at what you do. His work is beautiful, so it’s not like he’s quick, fast and shit. He’s quick, fast and very, very good at what he does. And that’s how we can do the numbers he does. But ultimately, I said to him, Are you still going to be doing this in ten years time because you are breaking your back, doing what you’re doing now, you can’t physically do any more dentistry. So at some point you want something else which is going to give you an out, which allows you to just still love what you do. Because the guys that do that level of dentistry, genuinely, I believe that don’t just do it for the money. The money just comes because they’re great at what they do and they actually love doing the dentistry.

[00:33:07] Yeah, yeah. Kate, I actually want to get to that. Yeah. Because I remember you when you started. Yeah. If we, if we go down the sort of the purpose led part of dental, your purpose back then was to change the face of dentistry, to turn it into something exciting and, you know, fun and all of that. And what I’m getting from you now is your purpose now is to teach other people. Would that be right?

[00:33:37] Yeah, I kind of I say to all my associates and obviously all my sales is super younger than me. And I kind of say, listen, you can guys can do what I did. I did it. I’ve done it for 16, 17 years. And don’t get me wrong, they all know I’ve led a very good life and I’m very thankful for all of that. And I’ve done amazing things and the profession has allowed me to do all of that. I was like, But wouldn’t it be really nice that in five years time, which I’ve never had in five years time, you can earn really good money every year, and then in five years walk out with a couple of million quid in the bank, solid set. And I was like, When are you going to get the opportunity to do that in dentistry? Staying in dentistry and I, I understand there’s, there’s dentists out there that are businessmen and they have all the other things in all the pies and all those different things and make a lot more money from those things than they do in dentistry. But what we got to understand is the majority of dentists, they’re not like that.

[00:34:41] The majority of dentists are dentists. And that’s all they know. That’s all they understand. And it’s the only way they can make money and make a living. And so it’s a matter of for me getting them to understand that yet you can keep slogging your bollocks off and you can keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll earn a good living. But if you get ill, if something happens to your hands, if something happens to your registration, you’re in a bad place. Whereas with this ideal, you know, I’m trying to create something which is going to give you a real nice nest egg at the end of it. It’s going to allow you to carry on doing the dentistry you want to do in an environment that I believe is still all those things I wanted them to be in 2004 2005. Exciting, fun. You know, vibrant and with our new branding and and kind of just re revisiting everything that we do at case I do genuinely believe we still have all those qualities at all our clinics.

[00:35:44] So what does the next ten years look like for you, bro? Is that you? Out, done and dusted.

[00:35:51] No like kisses. Kisses obviously evolved. We started off, as Pei said, as this clinic, which was like, Yeah, I would probably say super fun at the start, you know, completely different to anyone else had done. The marketing was completely different and blew people out of the wall and they didn’t like it really. And now we are aiming to do that on a much larger scale across more areas and more platforms. But my ideal is to just keep growing it. Like, you know, I’ve got probably I’m 42 today, by the way. I’m doing this podcast on my birthday.

[00:36:29] Happy birthday, bro.

[00:36:31] Sorry.

[00:36:32] But it’s kind of one of those things that. Yeah, of course, I just want it to grow now. I want it to be successful, you know? Edg The European Dental Group have, you know, expressed interest in, in the excitement of the model that I’m proposing, but also expressed a little bit concern and worry because it is very bullish. And so we got approved that right now we’ve got to prove that that model works. I believe it can. I believe we can do what what I’m going to set out to do. We complete on our first partnership practise today as well, which has been super I’m super, super happy about. And it’s with a really close friend of mine and Dr. Randy McLean, who is going to be our first clinical director, our first 5% shareholder of our first partnership clinic. So, you know, things are going in the right direction for me and I just really kind of want to now like build on that and grow and grow and grow. And even if like old P firms flip in the next two, three, four years, if I have the ability to stay on and carry on building my business and building my empire, that’s kind of what I’m going to do because I haven’t done this to then exit in a couple of years time and be done.

[00:37:49] Otherwise I might as well have just been done. I could have got a decent pot of cash if I wanted to and sold the whole thing now. But that’s kind of not my my end goal. My end goal isn’t really, really about the money. Believe me, I’ve got everyone has a number and I’ve got a number in my head where I want it to be in five years time. And and if that is good, then, you know, that number is life changing. But ultimately that’s by the by really. Like I’m comfy now. I just kind of want to make sure I can I can grow this baby and I can make sure that I just want it to be about like, obviously I’m probably quite precious about it, but I want it to be everywhere. I want it to be in most cities. I want kids dental to be the known clinic to go to for cosmetic dentistry, and I don’t think that’s unachievable. I genuinely believe we’ve got the strength in the brand and with our branding team, with our marketing team, we’ve got a really strong in-house team now. We’ve got a really strong external team headed up obviously by to help. So there’s a lot I just think, you know, all in all it can be unstoppable really.

[00:39:01] Can you set up you set out what it means for the partner. I’d kind of like to go in a bit more detail about that, though. First, is the 40%, the deal that you’re going to do with everyone, is that is that the way it’s going to be that the partner will have 40%?

[00:39:17] Yeah. So ideally for us, because what we do in the moment is we set up squats, what we what our aim is between myself and Denzil Beauty. We will we will hold 60% of the clinic and the partners would hold 40, I think, kind of giving.

[00:39:34] And so the cost to me through the costs part, so the squat is going to cost X to make to build and all that.

[00:39:43] Yeah, if we just talk basic numbers, let’s just say a squat was going to cost half a million quid to me.

[00:39:49] Yeah.

[00:39:49] Then on the basis of that cost because there is no there is no business there per say, it is all equity that goes in to ensure that that that clinic can be built and so on. On the crude is the terms you probably looking at the partner putting in a couple of hundred thousand myself and then still putting in the 300,000 and we’ve got the money then to kind of get this clinic off the ground. That clinic.

[00:40:19] And then what about the. What about the the the the the working capital?

[00:40:24] Yes, the working capital goes in generally by the by the group. So we would generally levy a little bit of debt for working capital and things like that. And that would come from ADG, like the European Dental Buying Group and Dental Beauty, essentially. And so the working capital would be considered all build costs of furniture costs, all equipment, cost, marketing spend. Everything is considered even down to staffing, recruitment, the full, the full.

[00:40:55] As the partner as the partner I’ve put in my 200 grand. Yep. Is that it or do I have to put in more.

[00:41:01] No, no, no, no. So you’re done. So is the partner you you now your 40% you’re 200,000 you’ve invested in. You get the full kiss dental machine. That’s what you get. So you are now clinical director of that clinic. I tell every partner you are responsible. I am not here to kind of I am there in a way to hold your hand if you need it, hold it. But essentially we will train that partner. We will ensure that they are well versed in in all the basic aspects of running that clinic. It is on them the decisions they make, the staff they hire, the offers they run. The marketing may be internally that they want to do. It’s on them, but we will support them along that way. We will support them with the main external machine, both in respect to integrations, operations, marketing, payroll, everything, HR, the lot. And they don’t pay. They don’t pay anything.

[00:42:02] Let’s say let’s say three years in my circumstances changed and I’ve got to off I’ve got to move, move country and go somewhere else. Now I want to sell I sell my 40% to a new partner. Is that how you envisaged it?

[00:42:17] Generally, the first consideration is no, that’s not how we envisage it. So it’s usually a five year deal. And so the five.

[00:42:26] Years, let’s say so after five years, let’s say after five years, I want out, I sell my 40%, which is now worth a lot more than it was on day one.

[00:42:35] Yeah.

[00:42:35] To a new partner. Is that the way you.

[00:42:37] Yeah. So the way that it works is actually, we would look at buying you out at that point and we would give you a guaranteed seven times multiplier on your on your value share as long as you are what we would classed as a good lever. So you just need to ensure that this clinic isn’t solely which is again going back to why I don’t want the superstars grossing 200 grand them on. I kind of need that partner to to almost have signed out of that clinic. They’re kind of earning the dividends from everyone else working and it is generally associate led and if it’s not associate led at that point, take 12 months, get it, associate led because if you sign out now I got back to you in and what you do and take that out of my calculation and what I’m going to pay you times seven times seven. So ultimately it’s in your best interest to ensure it’s a very associate led very quickly. And if you look at the model in dental beauty, that’s why if you look at the majority of partners with Dental Beauty, they own two or three clinics. And why do they do that? Because they understand that actually I’ll do one day a week. They’re one day week, they’re one day a week. They’re clinically. But then enjoy the time. I want to run these babies to make them super profitable so I actually make my money without doing a great deal for my dividends per year. And when when I do want to exit, I can exit quickly, cleanly and actually to a high, high level of profit.

[00:44:09] All right. Now, let’s take the other scenario where, I don’t know, dentists or my dentist or someone comes along and buys dental beauty partners. And I’m one of the partners. What happens there? I still own my 40%. And this this new buyer owns the other 60%. Is that how it would be?

[00:44:28] Well, kind of when when the actual P firm flip so if you imagine European Dental buying group now decide to decide to sell. We all we all have faces. Yeah. They all we all basically have an initial push. The initial kind of push is is 20%. So everyone at that point has to relinquish 20% of their shares. Yeah. Yeah. And so that’s across the board. That’s myself. That’s all the partners of Dental baby. That’s all the partners of KISS that all of us. And so what we what we left with. But when we do sell that, do that sell. Whatever that EBITDA is, they’re getting seven times guaranteed. If they put in 200 grand and now they’re I don’t know, the day’s worth 200 grand. I’m going to get seven times that minus that 20%. You know, a lot of these a lot of these deal structures, the walking out on the first push with a clean million quid.

[00:45:34] Yeah.

[00:45:35] And then they’ve still got 20% in skin in the game to ensure that they are still running that clinic, pushing that clinic, getting dividends yearly on that clinic. And then it’s their decision at the end that five years to carry on, is it just making good money that they’re one day a week it’s been run by everyone else? Or did it say, actually, I’m now in a position and kind of want to sell out and get get rid of my remaining 20% and they’ve got the option to do that.

[00:46:02] It’s interesting.

[00:46:04] So it’s not a lifelong commitment. Well, it’s it’s a real nice way to from their point of view, to do what they’re doing now, to understand the running of a dental practise, which I think is a growth in itself for a person, and hopefully to accrue a decent level of capital over a short period of time. And if you put in 200,000 in and at the end of it minus your earnings, the business does well. And you and you come out with, let’s say, 2 million quid plus what you’ve earnt, plus your dividends. You’re essentially looking at a ten times multiplier on your money, which over five year period, if I offered you that deal, you take it, take it. You know, and so and that’s the deal. That’s generally or at the moment on the table. And I genuinely believe the numbers I’m talking to you about at this point. That’s those are realistic numbers. They’re not inflated numbers. They’re not picked out of the sky. They’re numbers that we’ve methodically gone through price per patient, new patients coming through the door. So how many are coming through the door per month, on month? How does that increase to get to a turnover, to get to profitability, to get to an EBITDA, to then say we’re going to go for a multiplier of that and that’s how you’re going to get to that ten times or 12 times or seven or eight times your initial investment at the end of that five years.

[00:47:38] And then pro, what about existing practises? So we’ve been speaking about slots and you know, a partner say putting 200 grand in they they become a squat and whatnot. But what about a practise that’s doing okay and not breaking any records? And they say, you know what, I’d like to rebrand 16 or I’d like to become a kiss dental. Is that an option in your mind? If that is an option, what’s the what are you looking for in that practise?

[00:48:08] So firstly you’ve got to look for Expandability. So you look at a clinic, if it’s a two or three surgery clinic, and there’s no ability to expand it. And we look at run rates. So if we look at the run rate of the three chairs that they’ve got and the run rate, the chairs are at 400 grand each a year. You know, the business is doing 1.2 mil. I mean, how much more can I grow that I might able to grow two of the chairs because one of them’s going to be a hygiene chair. I’m going to probably grow two of the chairs to maybe five or 600,000 a year. I might get a super associate and grow one of the chairs to 800 grand a year. But ultimately, I haven’t got the ability to put a fourth or a fifth chair in to get my run rate higher and to get my growth higher. And also a practise like that, I’m buying at a quite a high rate because because dental practise is going for decent money at the moment. So on the basis of that, it’s really difficult to then say I’m going to buy that on the basis on the basis of it’s just mulling over because yeah, I can increase fees, I can introduce treatments, I can get better clinicians in. How much more is that clinic going to grow? Whereas if I then look at a clinic and things like that, but there’s expandability of four or five chairs, then we start to speak, then we start to think, okay, there’s an ability, because even if we stay at £400,000 run rate per chair, but now I’ve got five chairs running at that.

[00:49:44] I’m already winning. And then on top of that, I’m looking at the partner who is the guy that’s going to be running this place is the existing principal running it to the ground. So he can’t be the partner here. Does he want to stay on? If he wants to stay on, is he going to be cool with me bringing someone else in and saying this guy is going to run the show from now on? Or can I maybe speak to that principal and say, if you’ve got the belly to run this in a different way? And so it is more difficult with existing clinics, as everyone knows, you buy existing clinics, you buy existing baggage. And that’s unfortunately the nature of that beast. And I’ve done that myself personally. And sometimes the gold mines, if you can get past that and get through that. But that’s why I find the squat model more attractive. I’m none of my clinics that I’m setting up are going to have any debt. So when we do go to flip, when we do go to sell, the actual level of that business is going to be much stronger. And so I’m not saying no to existing clinics, and I’ll be brutally honest with you, in the last three months, I’ve probably been to look at 15 existing clinics in the north west, and I pretty much turn the majority of them down.

[00:50:58] A lot of them are old houses that have been converted into practises. You know how difficult it is to convert that into something that flows and that works with the how you want to now create a patient journey and a patient flow and and kind of get them to integrate through with a coordinator and with a, with a finance team and all these different things that you want to try and guide them through to ensure that patient feels special. You can’t do that in a tube down. It’s just physically impossible. And so can I. Then look at that site and go, actually, 2 minutes down the road, there’s a beautiful commercial unit which is 3000 square foot guaranteed to put five surgeries in it. And I can produce the most beautiful clinic there. And now I don’t have to buy a clinic for six, £700,000, but I’m still in the same area. The only thing I don’t have is that existing patient base. But if a market well in that area, does it matter? And so for me, that’s the reason the squat model for me works better. I understand why the existing clinic model for the dental beauty team works really well in the South, but I’m not interested in buying mixed clinics. And so for me it’s got to be high and private clinics and the majority. I already run a decent rate anyway.

[00:52:23] Okay. What about the patient offering as. As a patient? Why do I choose kiss dental?

[00:52:30] And I think in the Northwest now, you probably choose kiss dental because it’s it’s known it’s a well known brand. We’ve been treating patients for 17 years. So the majority of people I had three consultations today while I was working actually, and all three came because someone they know has had dentistry, a kiss. And so the growth of that is just exponential. Over the years, it’s just been something that has just increase and increase and increase. And then on top of that, they come to kiss because it’s the visuals. Why did we rebrand? Why did I spend last last year over £1,000,000 rebranding my three clinics? I did that because now when we run our social media campaigns, when we run our videos, our stories, all the different levels of sort of marketing. It’s a beautiful environment to be in. And if it’s a beautiful environment to be and people want to be a part of that and people want to be at the latest launch, they want to be at the best restaurants. They want to be in the nice shops. They want to shopping Louis Vuitton, they want to do all those different things.

[00:53:40] And why? Because it’s attractive. It’s very it’s a very nice thing to be done. And when someone says, where did you get your teeth done? You want to be aligned with that. You want to be the kiss. And so that’s what we’ve aimed to set up. And so the patient offering from our side is the quality of dentistry. We showcase our dentistry on a day to day basis, and the dentists that I hire, the dentists I train, I genuinely believe they produce some beautiful work in the note and some of the most beautiful work in the north west. And I stand up to that. You know, there are clinics in the north west that are, again, really well marketed, but, you know, dentistry wise and not not on par. And so dentistry for sure. But then secondarily, I do generally believe marketing is a big pull and then reputation is the third pole. And I think those are the three things that we are we are wanting to utilise to really push forward in the new areas and I think patient offering is going to be I want to be a part of that.

[00:54:47] You know, marketing has always been a centrepoint for Kiss Dental, whether it’s the brand, your socials, the content creation, the team that you’ve now got internally. But one of the evolutions that I’ve seen or the changes that I’ve seen in KISS is that you’ve gone to this call centre model, right? You’ve taken away the hustle and bustle of the practise away from the practise so that the the patient experience is just that. And the back end or the back office, the, the chasing, the leads, the lead management, the.

[00:55:21] Tko.

[00:55:22] Management, all of that is now in a separate location. Just tell it tell us a little bit more about that process, how you’ve gone about putting it together, the team you’ve put together, and how that’s go with. Because it’s still early days, isn’t it?

[00:55:37] Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, it was something I wanted to do about I would probably say about six or seven years ago. I genuinely believe that the worst thing on a reception is a telephone. I think the second worst thing on a reception is a telephone. And I think the third worst thing is the telephone. It’s a nightmare, isn’t it? Because you want your patients to have a very bespoke experience and they’re waiting because someone else, your receptionist is on a call with someone else. And that call could be talking about all sorts of stuff, inclusive of private stuff, monetary stuff, and you kind of just feel like this is really bad and just I just feel I feel for the patient. And what I wanted to do is create a reception desk actually to just be me angry. I welcome to this demo. Let me take you where you need to be today. Have a seat. Do you want a drink? Give us a bit of time. Then she’s going to see shortly. Job done. And that is essentially what a receptionist should do. And for me, we’ve really invested hard in our reception team and not from the dental sector. We’ve taken it from hospitality and recently we’ve hired managers from like the Ivy and and really good quality hospitality institutions to ensure that the people that are our meet and greet guys and girls are very good. But that’s all they do. You’ve then got the team in there in private zones. Are you receptionists, your CEOs or whatever you want to call them that then will look after that patient from that point and they will take money in a private area. They will talk to them about treatment and they will book appointments.

[00:57:26] And that’s literally all that happens front of house in a dental practise from my point of view, because everyone else passed that. We have set up a head office in in Greater Manchester and in that head office we’ve got a team that just looks after new patient leads. So all calls go to her or to them all Instagram enquiries, all Facebook enquiries, all email enquiries, all internet enquiries, all go to them. They then talk to those patients, discuss treatments, discuss ideas and consultations, and get consultations booked in. We then have patient care managers that once those consultations have been conducted, we track them. We know if they’ve gone ahead and at that point they get introduced to their patient care manager again, who is remote, who has a personal mobile number, a personal email address, and they then look after that patient’s journey from start to finish. And then we’ve got the social media team that at the end of that journey will then talk to them about what they’re would be happy to do in respect to marketing. And the journey is over and they go move on to maintenance. But all of that is done remotely. All of that is away from the clinics and what it does, apart from taking calls, the odd call in the clinic, in the back offices about maybe an ongoing treatment or making some call work. Everything else is done in the head office, which allows us to really take away that that level of hustle and bustle in the clinics, and it allows it to be much more patient focussed. And so that patient offering, again, that payment was discussing, becomes much more personal and much more private.

[00:59:16] Okay. A couple of things.

[00:59:18] Yeah.

[00:59:19] You’re your day to day in managing this group of it’s 13 next year you’re saying and who knows where it might go? It might be 26 and I might be 132. Who knows? Yeah. But your day to day, your day to day is going to be very different from what it is now. You talked about reducing your clinical days and your, you know, your daily activity. Some of it will include. Looking out for these partners and looking out for these clinics and making sure everything’s working. And you do see it sometimes where an amazing I think of it from my own experience is like this amazing cafe in Hampstead. And then they, they branched out and they opened loads and it changed. It wasn’t as good.

[01:00:09] Yeah.

[01:00:11] It’s a real danger. Something you need to really, really consider. And the fact that your life and your skill set are going to have to be tested again. And this whole new discipline, I guess I guess the word is discipline, isn’t it? You’re obviously disciplined at what you do clinically. You’re obviously disciplined in the gym and all that, but it’s a new discipline that you’re going to have to put towards this. And the question the question is when it’s going to happen to your idea that something’s going to happen at a Dental that is going to break your heart, you know, so someone’s going to, I don’t know, not return money to a patient who deserved it or something, something you definitely would have done, you know. Are you are you thinking about that? You prepared for that idea? It’s going to happen. Is that the screw.

[01:01:04] That’s yeah. And I get that. And and that’s that I suppose loss of that degree of control again. And I suppose why it’s so important to me is, is the growth is important. Like obviously I’ve got numbers in my head, I’ve got targets in my head and I’ve got to be that way to ensure this is going to fly like I want it to fly. But then there is the other side of it, as you rightfully said. And for me, it’s going to be so important to to cut down my clinical time. So I’ve got the ability to support on those levels. You know, I’ve said to every partner that comes on board, you know, and my first few partners, fine, I’ve got Andy. As I’ve discussed, he was our first partner, Will and Jade, who are going to be our second partners in our Alderley Edge site. We’ve got Coach, my cousin, who’s me, a third partner in our Liverpool side.

[01:02:01] Of course, moving to Liverpool.

[01:02:03] So he’s not he’s going to stay in Manchester. I think he’s going to carry on working at three sites in Manchester at the moment. He’s going to do some work also in the Liverpool site, but again keeping it relatively associate led. So we’re going to gather all the clinicians in there, the decent clinicians that are going to help to start to really drive that Liverpool clinic. But yeah, he’s going to be the clinical director, the shareholder in that clinic and he’s going to it’s a lovely clinic. It’s, it’s a lovely road, beautiful location. So I’m super excited actually about that clinic. But going back to what you said, the reason I’m telling you that is these initial partners have all done a stint at KISS. Yeah, they kind of understand the ethos and the ethics. I go by how I want the patients to be looked after and how I want the brand to be respected. And genuinely, if I’m being brutally honest with you, pay like I’m going to hope that I can keep doing that with with my new partners coming in. And I’ve kind of said to them, I’ve got a couple more partners that that want to be part of this. And I say to them, Give up where you work. You come full time with me for six months first while your clinic is being built and these clinics are taking 4 to 6 months to be built, because I would need you to understand what I expect of you, and I need you to understand what Chris expects of you. And I think that’s really important. And I still don’t think genuinely it will it will stop what you’re saying. But I hope it will take it much further to a point where they will they will think about the decisions they make. They might even ask me and say, okay, what do you think I should do here? And I’ll always.

[01:03:52] Be. Definitely. It’s definitely doable. It’s definitely doable. You walk into McDonalds in New Zealand and you get the same experience as you walk into McDonald’s in Moscow. Right? Money. More Moscow but somewhere else. Yeah, it’s it’s definitely doable. But, you know, it’s a case of executing on this.

[01:04:11] Above.

[01:04:13] Many other things because like I say, what did he buy? He bought the brand and he bought you and, you know, and valued that huge amount of money. And, you know, he put a lot of emphasis on on getting the brand and getting you. And so it’s something that, you know, my my worry for you is this thing that you said before about you were the kind of guy or you are the kind of guy who makes the decision about a person. And if it’s right, it’s right. And if it’s wrong, it was your decision. And being able to have that freedom to do those things. And I know Dev is a very practical guy. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to leave you alone because, you know, he’s got a lot of pies to other pies to be, you know, taking care of. Yeah, but in this area, yeah, this area of keeping standards going in these multiple sites, the managers will be key. I mean, you’re right about the partners, but the managers will be key to set, you know, like you said, get managers who’ve done a stint at KISS, the main kiss.

[01:05:18] And that’s what we do as well. All the new managers are actually trained up at our core three, and we’ve also got regional operations managers and regional integrations managers, and both of them have worked for us for over ten years. And so for me, they’re going to be first line support for the for the new managers and also first line support for the partners with me. And so as well and I’m not saying we’re going to do everything right and it’s going to be a super learning curve, and I genuinely believe that. And there’ll be some ups and downs, I’m sure, but I think in principle I’ve got my masterplan in my head how I want it to be executed. My team completely understand it. And you know, and with me, they’ve been with me for ten years plus and they want to be with me on this new journey. And I honestly believe we do have the team and infrastructure in the north west to to kind of execute this to a good level to ensure things as a map, standards and map, but more the partners and stuff understand really what what this is about. That’s the most important bit for me.

[01:06:27] I like that. Well, I think we’re coming near to the end of our time. It’s been. It’s been. It’s been less emotional than the last time. Sure.

[01:06:40] No, no, no tears.

[01:06:43] You, buddy, you’ve changed. You’ve become a business like a proper business, dude. You know.

[01:06:48] I don’t think. I think any more about three times.

[01:06:52] Yeah. I did it last time. The count was like 100.

[01:06:58] So, yeah, I know.

[01:06:59] You’ve become a corporate. You’ve become a corporate dude, man.

[01:07:03] Well, I’ve just had media training. Now you say, let’s have media training. I feel like the first time was like David Beckham when he was 17. And now, you know, now he’s like a trained animal when he when he gets in front of a camera, kind of like what I’m like now.

[01:07:21] Did I tell you partying in Manchester without you did feel weird. It did. I mean, you know, I still manage to have a good time, but. But it feels weird, buddy. It felt weird, dude. Not being. No, if I took your job at MSB and I did the lecture. But again, next time you go to.

[01:07:40] I’m still here, brother. I still. I live for those nights. I live for those nights.

[01:07:48] It’s been a pleasure to have you again, but and really good luck with it. And what I hope is we do this one more time in a year’s time, see where we are and the 13 clinics are in place. Yes, the 13 clinics are in place. The partners are in place. And you know what you said about one partner taking on several clinics? Yes, I think that would be the ideal, you know, like maybe five, six partners who’ve got one or two or two or three each, you know, something like that. Close, close knit.

[01:08:17] Yeah. And I think if you educate these guys well and I don’t mean not in a condescending way, I just genuinely believe, like said, dentistry is great and people that do it and do it well, I know love it, but it is hard. It’s hard on the body, it’s hard on the eyes and it’s hard on the brain. And I think if they’ve got an ability to still do what they love, choose the cases and and also have have a business at the end of it, which which will give them a nice a nice earnout. Then you’ve got the best of both worlds in a profession that is still loved by many. And that’s kind of what I want to try and achieve, really.

[01:08:58] Amazing, buddy. Thanks a lot for doing it again, buddy. Cheers, bro.

[01:09:02] All right.

[01:09:03] Guys. Enjoy the rest of your birthday, Arket.

[01:09:05] And our curry time now. Lots free time.

[01:09:09] Hope you have a nice time. All right. Take care.

[01:09:15] 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.

[01:09:31] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:09:45] If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

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[00:00:00] We knew an awful lot.

[00:00:02] We didn’t know much at all when we started, but we we just built something that people wanted and thought we did. It took us a while to get there. And then, as I said, once we got our first customer, it’s like a snowball effect and we didn’t realise just by listening to people and watching the media, we learnt so much. Yeah. So the first two years was pretty slow. I think we had a to attempt as soon as Martin came on board. It was a few weeks, I think to the next customer and then it carried on from there. There’s this big snowball effect from that point and.

[00:00:28] And like I think I’ve said this before, but I just I can’t tell you how much our customers have like made a difference in, like, we try and listen to everything our customers are saying, everything our dentists are saying to us, but they are as much responsible for like the direction that the product has gone in, more so than we are, because it’s their feedback and then being generous with their time to tell us what they need from the product, which is what what has led us to this point. So yeah, it’s been a process.

[00:01:02] 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.

[00:01:20] Gives me great pleasure to welcome Hannah Burrow and Jay Shah onto the podcast. Hannah and Jay are co-founders of Karaoke, a platform, a platform that aims to save dentists time by kind of writing their notes for them as it listens to what they say. Sounds crazy and impossible. But I first met Hannah something like three years ago when she was pretty much starting this business. I guess you were one year in, and when she said it to me the first time, I thought, this can’t can’t be real. And now it’s a fully fledged business. So lovely to have you both.

[00:01:58] Lovely to be here. And I’ve got one slight, slight a caveat there, which is we no longer actually focus on the voice technology. We do actually automate record keeping. Everything else was was right. But we do it through kind of different technology these days. So one, one, one change over the years.

[00:02:19] To what you do now.

[00:02:21] So now Kyriacou learns from how you’re entering your notes, what you’re doing over and over again. And then it makes suggested changes to your to your crew who workflows based on that. So it is learning to the individual over time and it allows the dentist into the notes in a really easy kind of clickable way. But it’s also doing all of that learning in the background.

[00:02:44] So what happened with voice? Was it too complicated?

[00:02:47] So it was actually kind of a variety of different reasons. I think the thing that I was always kind of awestruck by was the quality of the technology that Jay built. And I say Jay because I had nothing to do with it early doors. But I think the thing that we actually found really challenging was in a loud clinical environment like dentistry, where you’ve got the chair and aspiration and everything going on. It was so, so difficult to get good quality audio through and therefore actually any, any cool technology you built was was reliant on that. And then that was kind of one area of challenge and then another area was each dentist, even if we’re kind of following a similar flow, still has a unique way of doing things. Might use certain acronyms and a certain structure, so it needed to be a little bit customised to the individual. And so we created the platform that allowed that. And as soon as we did that, our dentist just found that with this kind of really clickable, easy to use workflow, they actually didn’t need the voice anymore. So it became something that our user users led us away from.

[00:03:51] Voice Yeah, we realised there’s a huge element to, I guess control of your notes where with the voice system you didn’t have full control because it was almost like magic in the background. And there’s a huge trust element that if your notes aren’t perfect 100% of the time, then you start to take away the trust and they start reviewing their notes. And that takes even more time than writing them from beginning. And with this new way, it’s completely their input and what they want to have.

[00:04:17] To walk me through it. I’m going to do a Crown Prep. What happens next? I’m going to write my notes at the end. Right. You go. Yeah.

[00:04:25] Well, because everything is kind of clickable and you’ve already got this structure for your note entry. You all actually your nurse can just go through and knows what needs to be filled in. So one or either of you will just go through and click the relevant things. And the example might be, okay, so you’re doing a Crown Prep on an Upper Six, let’s say. So automatically you could make an assumption that you’re going to use a certain type of LA, you’re not going to be doing an ID block, you’re going to be doing an infiltration. So it’s able to then populate that information for you. So rather than you having to type all of this information, make these decisions, it’s just guiding you through that.

[00:05:05] So go on, though, literally. Walk me through it.

[00:05:08] Okay, fine. So you’ve got okay, you’ve got a clickable option for a patient has got no complaints medical history you select no change tooth that we’re treating today X risks that we’ve been through and you can click through as many as irrelevant.

[00:05:23] They’re already there.

[00:05:24] Already that exactly so you don’t have to think because everything is there for you. And then let’s say that you are routinely using a certain material, using a certain lab. It will learn that for you. So we’re doing a restoration on a posterior tooth. You only use Emacs, so then it’s going to input that in for you when you’re doing an immaculate only using X lab. Okay, it’s input that for you. So you’re not having to go through and think all of these things that yes, are very repetitive but still take your brainpower. And so this is just so easy. You click through and notice it would take minutes. Take seconds with Heroku.

[00:05:59] Yeah. And everything’s customisable. So if a dentist prefers one way and another dentist prefers another, they can customise their templates and the system will learn over time to make it more and more personal to them.

[00:06:10] And then how do I input that into my software programme?

[00:06:13] You don’t need to. So we’ve kept it as simple as possible so it runs in Google Chrome. This doesn’t need to be a practise wide decision. You just open Google Chrome, you go to the website and you’re able to do your full notes on Google, and then you’re able to just export it into the text box of whatever Dental software you’re using.

[00:06:30] We’ve got a button on one platform. You click that button and it’ll copy it to your clipboard.

[00:06:35] And you see like a copy and paste.

[00:06:37] Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:37] Exactly.

[00:06:38] Perfect. Actually, quite sort of the simplest thing.

[00:06:41] Yeah, exactly. We’ve kept it simple because funnily enough, it’s just not something that actually causes our dentist’s much of an issue. So we’ve kept things as simple as possible so that the dentists, the autonomy of whether they want to use a new software, whereas if we create creating integrations and things like that, it has to be a practise wide decision and that can be limiting to me.

[00:07:02] Back to what were you doing, Jay, before you met Hannah or where did you guys meet in the first instance?

[00:07:07] So yeah, we met about five years ago now. I was at university, in fact, so I studied computer science. I was here in London and then I went to study Natural Language Processing, which is an arm of artificial intelligence, where they focus on language and how machines understand language. And then after I graduated, I was trying to figure out what to do in my life. I had a few options for carrying on for a PhD or to had a few offers at banks and like bigger firms. And then this programme came along called Entrepreneur First. That’s where I met Hannah actually.

[00:07:38] And yeah, so an accelerated programme just for context is a programme that you can go through where they provide you with individuals who’ve exited large companies before, basically people who’ve done it before, and they can provide mentorship to starting a business, particularly sort of tech technology businesses. And if they believe in you as you go through this programme, they’ll provide investment for you as well. But the most important thing is they actually find 80 other individuals who want to start a company and have got these very interesting backgrounds. So you actually have the opportunity to meet people who you might start a business with. And so yeah, that’s where, that’s where we met. Yeah.

[00:08:18] So I guess I got quite lucky there because I met in the first few weeks, I knew nothing about the industry at that point and Hannah provided me kind of all the realms of dentistry. And how about how dentists hate taking notes? And I think that’s a huge part of it. As a patient, you don’t really see you don’t see all the background work, all the screen facing stuff when you are a patient, but also what happens at lunch time and off the work. And then I was quite lucky that I focussed on a similar problem at university and yeah, we put the two together and we started working.

[00:08:48] So that’s like they call it an incubator. Is that what that is?

[00:08:52] Yes, exactly.

[00:08:54] So then they give you funding as well as know how.

[00:08:57] Yes, exactly. Is that what happened? They don’t. Yes, that is what happened. So they don’t kind of promise to fund everyone. But if they if they believe. Yes, exactly. Then then then they will fund it.

[00:09:10] And so, you know, you went into that with the idea.

[00:09:14] Yes. Actually, no, because I went in with just a knowledge of certain areas of inefficiency within dentistry. And honestly, the thing that I was focussing on when I first applied for the programme was actually quite different. It was a way how could you provide consistent preventative advice to patients when we’re not actually kind of incentivised financially as dentists to do that? That’s what I was thinking about is kind of the area of inefficiency. And actually then I went through the process and I realised two things. Number one, that isn’t that meaty a problem to solve. And then the other thing was actually that wasn’t the biggest problem. And I went and interviewed so many dentists and what, you know, what is the biggest problem? And, and I was so biased to the answer as well because they were saying, oh, it’s note taking. I spend so much of my time doing no taking. I hate it. And I was like, Are you sure it’s not giving positive advice? And they were like, No, no, it’s definitely no, it’s not like, okay. And it took interviewing so many different dentists for it to finally drill into my numb skull. And that is kind of the the as we came to the problem and also by that point as well and you knew Jay’s area of research and so I knew that there was actually a solution to it. So it very much was born out of the kind of environment that I discovered that in as well. And meeting Jay.

[00:10:36] To be honest, even when he told me about the problem, I still didn’t believe it. And we did a survey, I think, to about 200 dentists to ask how much of their time did they actually spend taking. They came up with much higher than I expected, 20% of the day.

[00:10:49] 25%.

[00:10:50] 25% of the day.

[00:10:51] When you were adding it up from there, I.

[00:10:52] Couldn’t believe it. I can believe 25%.

[00:10:55] Yeah. So it was significant.

[00:10:58] The thing is, around the time you guys started, when was that 2018 or something?

[00:11:02] 2017, actually. End of 2017? Yes.

[00:11:05] 20 around that time was when when it became that you had to write essays for your notes.

[00:11:10] Exactly.

[00:11:11] And when I was a dentist, it was literally, you know, two lines and that was that. Yeah, actually, I bet abroad it’s like that too. Which limit the size of your market a little bit.

[00:11:22] Surprised actually it’s it’s.

[00:11:25] Actually in some country more.

[00:11:27] Widespread of an issue and increased like all countries seem to be going in that direction as well that it’s getting increasingly litigious and they have to write more and more detail within their loans.

[00:11:38] Yeah, I get it. So, so then so have you done other languages or is that not yet?

[00:11:43] So actually we’ve had our dentist translate it into different languages themselves. So we’ve got German dentists. We’ve got Danish dentists on the platform, but they’ve actually just gone through the Heroku workflows and they’ve translated it for themselves, which is pretty cool.

[00:11:56] Oh, nice. And so when was it from the moment you two met to the moment you got your first customer? How many how long did that take?

[00:12:05] So. I like customers. My first customer here so we.

[00:12:08] Don’t pay some painful price.

[00:12:10] Yeah. So I guess our first non-paying customers in a couple of weeks and that was for that initial voice product. And then I’d say our first actual customer that was paying us.

[00:12:19] Actually the first I don’t think I should say the name because I don’t know if I’m allowed to, but it’s someone who’s been on this, on this podcast, who was our first paying customer and who was loyally supported us from the get go.

[00:12:31] I think.

[00:12:31] That’s the name.

[00:12:33] I do know. I don’t know if they would be annoyed.

[00:12:35] Go. Can’t say the name and then we’ll edit it out.

[00:12:37] If it’s fine. It’s Martin one day.

[00:12:39] Oh, really? Yeah.

[00:12:41] I’m next, in fact, as well.

[00:12:42] Actually, I’m not completely, completely. Both of them. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.

[00:12:47] Actually, they did.

[00:12:49] That in 1980.

[00:12:52] Yeah. So because we were spending all that time focussing on voice and because it was so difficult to get that product to a point where people could actually use it effectively. Really? We didn’t start any proper commercialisation until we had the product as it is now. So that was more like 2019. 2020.

[00:13:09] Yeah.

[00:13:10] So so in that period where you have no customers and you’ve got I guess a team of developers, right? It’s not just you is it. I mean it must be low.

[00:13:20] Gravity versus not. Yeah.

[00:13:22] Yeah. Then, you know, did you get the points where you were running out of money and runway and all of that or I mean, is that your side hammer raising money?

[00:13:32] Yes, I suppose it’s both of ours. But yeah, I think we’ve we’ve been through a we’ve raised money a couple of times and actually, no, we’ve never been like dangerously close to running out. We’ve been extremely lucky in that we’ve got people who believe in us as people. And I think that’s ultimately what it comes down to, because when you’re that early in a business, they’re not investing in metrics or anything like that. They just do. These people seem like people who are actually going to do what they say they will. And so the thing that was most challenging, I would say, in that time was without any feedback from customers, you’ve got no you’ve got no understanding of whether you’re spending your time on the right thing. And I think motivating yourself when you’re getting no positive or even negative feedback, that that was the most difficult and challenging time of growth for me when we were putting effort into something and not understanding it was just like shooting in the dark.

[00:14:24] Yeah, I’ve been there. I know how that feels. And you know, there’s things like what they call it, they call it product market fit, right? Where you’ve got this brilliant product and the market just doesn’t want it or the price is wrong or or whatever it is. Did you know from the beginning that it was going to be like the SAS model?

[00:14:46] I wouldn’t say we knew. We knew an awful lot.

[00:14:50] We didn’t know much at all when we started, but we we just felt something that people wanted and thought we did. It took us a while to get there. And then, as I said, once we got our first customer, it’s like a snowball effect and we didn’t realise like just by listening to people and watching the media product, we learn so much. Yeah. So the first two years is pretty slow. I think we had attempt to attempt as soon as Martin came on board. It was a few weeks I think to the next customer and then it carried on from there was this big snowball effect from that point.

[00:15:16] And, and like I think I’ve said this before, but I just, I can’t tell you how much our customers have like made a difference in, like we try and listen to everything our customers are saying, everything our dentists are saying to us, but they are as much responsible for like the direction that the product has gone in, more so than we are, because it’s their feedback and then being generous with their time to tell us what they need from the product, which is what what has led us to this point. So yeah, it’s been a process.

[00:15:45] But they haven’t randomly been contacting you, have they? I mean, it’s part of your process to contact them and get the feedback right?

[00:15:52] Absolutely. I mean.

[00:15:53] I think it’s a bit of both really. So for example, last week we’re at the Media Showcase and so many of our customers just came up to us and some of them were asking us if we can log into their account. So they want to show us specific parts that they they’ve built on our platform. Some just want to give us see about there and then. So yeah, it is a bit of both. Yeah. I think the part that we can control is how we take that feedback and what we do with it.

[00:16:16] And I think also trying to I mean, I always try if I’m speaking to a dentist who you need to scroll you to make it absolutely clear that we want this feedback so that they know that it’s well received if they’re giving it. And I hope that helps.

[00:16:31] You do fine once you only find customers that once you act on their feedback, they’re willing to give more. Because I think they know changes. Change will happen. Yeah.

[00:16:39] Yeah. Very true, man. Very true. I remember once early on, Enlightened, someone said something about our leaflet. I think it was.

[00:16:47] Yeah.

[00:16:47] And I changed it and he came back to me and said, you know, anyone who’s ever listened to my feedback. And he became one of the key guys, actually, Julian Holmes, who unfortunately passed away. One of the key guys who used to give me advice in the. It’s early days. Tell me, Hannah. You know, you could have just been a dentist. Yeah, like, you know, wet fingered dentist. What made you go on this particular tangent so early in your career?

[00:17:20] It’s such a good question, and one I don’t have a very neat answer to because I’m as surprised as anyone that I’m not a full time dentist. I did dental school. I did my love dentistry. Like, no part of me is not doing dentistry because I don’t enjoy it. But I think.

[00:17:39] When you study.

[00:17:40] At.

[00:17:41] Bristol, Bristol.

[00:17:42] Bristol Dental School and then did my feet in central London and did my teeth at Barts. So I’ve been in London for a while now. I think there was a couple of things where I could just see that things were being done in a really inefficient way. And I think, again, to go back to your point of that was the time when the notes became kind of essays. I think I was graduating in a time when that was happening, and we were constantly being given lectures from indemnity companies or from our from our university, saying that basically the message was no amount of detail you’re going to include is enough. You’re going to get sued. So just buckle up and write down.

[00:18:21] It didn’t happen. All of that.

[00:18:23] Yeah, exactly. All of that. And I think that just that just like put me into a work environment that was always more stressful because it just felt like either you were prioritising patient care or you were prioritising looking after yourself from a legal perspective. And I think that kind of frustration or resistance is what led me to think surely there’s a better way of doing certain things.

[00:18:50] And then here but Hannah, I mean, every single dentist is frustrated with some aspect of that. You know, I don’t need to tell you. Oh, wow. Bloody Matrix Band is ridiculous, isn’t it? So ridiculous, right? The fact that that hasn’t been I mean mean we all get frustrated every day. I get frustrated with almost every day. I’m frustrated with this microphone right now. But it takes the type of person to, you know, get up and do something about that. I mean, what was it in your sort of outlook on life that said, I’m I’m going to change the world? You know.

[00:19:28] I definitely I couldn’t possibly say that. I was like, I’m going to go out and change the world. I think what I did think was this feels like there’s something that could be exciting here and something that is going to I’m going to expand myself as a human, even if in six months I’m going back to dentistry. And I also thought and honestly, this is my entire journey with career. I’ve always been like, you know what? I’ll do this for three months. And then when I fail that, I go back to dentistry and it’s all good. And that’s genuinely and then, you know, when I actually met Jane, we had a company, I was like, okay, cool, we’re going to do it for another six months and then we’ll see what happens. And it’s just extended because I genuinely felt if I don’t do something different now, I’m never going to do it because then I’ve got a dental salary and it’s a double edged sword because it’s so well paid. So it’s addictive. Exactly. And if I don’t do this, I’m going to get a mortgage and then I can never make this decision to do it. So I was like, I’m going to do it now. I’m going to see. And I think the thing that actually drove me to do it and this can make me sound quite selfish, was not I’m going to change the world. It was I want to I want to widen my own skills. I want to learn more about myself. And so that was kind of a thing that pushed me towards.

[00:20:42] You had an influence, though. I mean, you must have had an influence on you, whether it was a friend or family or, I don’t know, some famous businessman. You must have been influenced by.

[00:20:52] Something, I think. I don’t come from a family of doctors or dentists. I come from a family of technologists. So my parents are retired programmers. My brother works at Google. My other brother’s an actuary. So I think I was I was like, okay, there’s different things out there. And and I also got all the reasons coming out now, but I also did a year of public health. My role had a mix of public health. And I think that just gave me a view of, okay, this changes that you can make that actually affect hundreds of people rather than an individual, like doing an individual feeling for an individual person. And I think that was also something that was slightly addictive that I was like, Okay, yeah, exactly. What can I do that causes a bigger impact? Perhaps that was an element of it as well.

[00:21:38] Jay, what about you? You could have gone and worked in Google or whatever with your skills. What made you go down the entrepreneurial sort of Start-Up route?

[00:21:46] Yeah, kind of similar to how to be honest. It’s poor people selfish to improve my skills, I would say I always go back and get a job and that was something that entrepreneur first convinced me on. They said, If you really want job, go in six months and get one. You might as well try this out. And I think I’ve always been interested in the entrepreneur part. So I started a few. I was in very small business as well as at university, at school, and then I thought, This is great, this is fine. And I think I would particularly like a project like Out of Hand. I think when I started it was, you know, Yeah, we’re just having fun, let’s see how it goes. And then as we started it, we’re like, okay, this is a bigger and bigger problem than we thought initially. And the skills I was learning, what I was learning was unbelievable rate. And I still am. You know, the day never looks the same for us. Right. And I think as you get comfortable in what you’re doing, something changes and you learn something new. And I think that’s kept me going over the last five years. Like, I feel quite lucky in the fact that I’ve got the job that I’ve always wanted and that sense.

[00:22:42] So I get the basic picture. J You were Chief Technology Officer and you’re CEO. I guess Hannah is right. So, so day to day, what does that mean? Does that mean that you’re taking care of all the IT brains and hands, taking care of the commercials?

[00:22:58] I’d say on paper, probably, but in real life, I think we’re both just founders at the moment.

[00:23:02] Yeah, I’d say it’s like they are kind of titles, but ultimately we’re both just doing you’re doing.

[00:23:08] Everything we’re.

[00:23:09] Doing. That’s exactly it. And we’re doing we’ve kind of managed to find a balance of certain things. It’s like one of our strengths and certain things that might be another. But really we both have a hand in a lot of it right now. I think as we grow as a team, that might change and probably something for us to be aware of. But right now it’s kind of all hands on deck.

[00:23:29] So how many people are you?

[00:23:31] So we’re our full time team is seven. So we’re not we’re not massive. We’re a small team, but we hope to be growing over the next three months.

[00:23:40] Yeah.

[00:23:40] Did you have an outsource team as well?

[00:23:43] No. So all of our developers and everyone’s in-house. What we do have, though, is it kind of part time Dental team. So a lot of in fact, a lot of them are early customers, Heroku, and they just reached out saying they want to be involved. And we’ve got kind of a way of bringing them in where it’s flexible so their full time jobs is being a dentist. But a couple of hours a week they help us in what we’re doing, give us input, feedback and help with some of the customer support and new features that we’re building. We’ve got about, say, about 7 to 10. Yeah.

[00:24:14] And so do you run that sort of classical sort of iterative process of, you know, sprints and all of that?

[00:24:20] Yeah, yeah, we do. So I think one of the things that we’re quite proud of is a lot of the software in dentistry I found is very old school. Yeah, we can do this. We can move fast, like faster. And most of the companies are already out. And the way we do that is we’re a small team. We can talk to each other, we can do like the first 50 customers. I would probably speak to them personally and so would Hannah. And now we try to talk to as many as we can, and we can feed that directly to our team and get something out within weeks.

[00:24:48] And I know this kind of thing is never really finished because you you have to keep on improving it. But how long will it be before you sort of I’m sitting back as the complete wrong word for it, but where you’ve got a version of it that you don’t doesn’t need more and more developing for a while until the metaverse comes along or something.

[00:25:11] Then I think again, it’s just kind of how long is a piece of string because parts of it we’re now not embarrassed of, but most of it we still are. And and so I think it really is it’s just like pushing it’s pushing a rock up a hill, basically. I don’t think I don’t think it’s going to we get to a point where we’re like, it’s ready. But yeah, there’s the core product I think we’re not cringing at anymore.

[00:25:44] And you know, in that in that sort of period where, you know, you said that sort of frustrating period where you’re not. You can assure if you’re asking the right questions and you’re working your butt off and you’re not making money, you’re spending money. What is it that keeps you going? I mean, do you have that sort of mission focussed? I want to make the world a better place now. I mean, you both look like you’re enjoying it. You’ve got kind of smiles on your face. When I was when I was at your place, I was hating my life because I was expecting something different to what I got. I mean, maybe in that entrepreneur’s first thing, they train you to understand what the process is. But I don’t have any of that right. I was just like working my butt off and losing money, and I hated it. We never raised any money. Of course, it’s a bit different. What keeps you going? Do you have that sort of purpose led sort of idea?

[00:26:40] I think for me it’s kind of two things. There’s the big mission of what we’re trying to do as a company and yeah, leader from the beginning. And that’s to obviously I’m not a dentist, but I am a patient and I’ve seen the impact that our system has on patients. And, you know, I’m quite proud of this year is that we’ve been seen by a million patients. So a million appointments have been done through. And I think that’s for me, that’s great because I’ve obviously received the care from a dentist or a doctor and you can tell the difference when somebody is giving you attention and focussing on you, your of, you know, what’s actually wrong with you compared to somebody who’s on the screen. That’s the second part. It’s much more than just a team I’m around because they definitely had a the rest of the team is is fantastic. I’m surrounded by people that inspire me every day. So it keeps you going quite easily.

[00:27:26] Conan I would say kind of like very similar, I think. I believed in what we were trying to do because I could feel myself that it was a problem that needed to be solved and also team and being around people that you like to work with. I think also for me and to my detriment as a person, sometimes I actually don’t know when to quit and sometimes I will do things when it’s actually too much pressure on me. But I just I don’t see quitting as an option. And I think that really sustained because I do genuinely think during that time when you’re not getting that feedback and you are kind of spending money and the the way that that felt to me as an individual then was not frustration, it was actually just self doubt. And it was it was I’m not good enough for this and I’m not spending my time on the right things and I’m being too lazy or whatever it was. And so they were the voices that I was finding quite difficult to, to contend with during that time. And then I think as soon as you then get that feedback awake, someone’s actually appreciating what you’re doing. That is the thing that kind of passed me through that.

[00:28:36] It’s very true because, you know, I bet they talked about this in the incubator because in the end, you know, you can bring in an expert. You can you can change as the early founder, you really can pivot. Right? I mean, pivot is a big thing. I guess you guys did pivot right from the voice to the voice. And I find sometimes what you said before about, you know, your preconceptions of what things should be like compared to what they’re actually like. And being stuck to those preconceptions can cause a lot of delay. A lot of delay. At the same time, what do you think about that sort of Steve Jobs idea of you can’t ask people what they want?

[00:29:19] I think only Steve Jobs can do that. To be honest. I thought about asking people what they want you to build. It’s asking what the problems are. Yeah. And then need the solutions to get to you. Yeah, I think it’s a thing of constantly testing your solutions as well. I think it’s a book that we try to live by which is this sort of yeah, it’s an idea is obviously iterative development. Don’t build something that takes you months and release it. Yeah. In stages where you validate validate what you’re doing the quickest way possible.

[00:29:53] I also have another book recommendation actually, which every dentist who’s ever kind of reached out to me, I think I’ve sent it to every single one of them, but it’s called the the mom test. And it’s kind of in complete agreement with that, that Steve Jobs quote, which is if you ask people if they like your business idea, they’re inherently nice and they’re going to say, yes, that’s a great idea. You should definitely pick you should definitely build a tinder for dogs or whatever it is. And instead what you should say is, okay, does your dog have an issue meeting other dogs? You don’t even say that. You really need to just go super broad and say, okay, what are your dog’s main issues in life? And you just go very, very broad and allow them to lead you to the problem. And again, like and yeah, I highly recommend that if there’s anyone who listens, who wants to explore a business idea.

[00:30:42] What was it called?

[00:30:43] It’s called the mom test.

[00:30:45] The mom.

[00:30:46] Of my.

[00:30:46] Mom. Which is why I said just. Yeah.

[00:30:50] Yeah. I mean, I think I listened to someone who was it? Some, some venture capitalist on some podcast. I was saying. He was saying, yeah, if you ask people about your idea and everyone sees it and everyone gets it, then it’s a really bad idea because there’ll be loads of competitors. Yeah. And if it’s such an obvious problem, there will be loads of competitors. He was saying if you ask people and no one gets it, that’s also a bad idea. Yeah, that’s going to be very difficult to convince that you were and he was saying this is in between where some intelligent guy might get it or some some thinking out of the box person might get it. But he was saying as a general, when everyone thinks it’s a good idea, it’s just too much competition. Yeah, if you had any competition.

[00:31:40] So yeah, we actually have. So more recently we’ve got other companies that are trying to do kind of similar stuff to what we’re doing. And yeah, I suppose it’s just something that we just need to keep our head down and we need to keep listening to our customers and make sure we’re building something for them that is actually genuinely solving their problem. Because that’s the thing that is going to best protect us from any competition.

[00:32:03] Is that IP in this environment or is that.

[00:32:07] Ip is actually quite a difficult one because I think a lot of a lot of people will quite often say, you know, do you have a pattern and things like that? But actually patent on software is very difficult to enforce.

[00:32:20] Building something is very flexible in the way you can do it.

[00:32:23] Yeah.

[00:32:23] And there’s a million different ways you can code something and do something.

[00:32:26] Exactly, because if you’re applying for a patent, you have to say, this is what we’re doing. And then as soon as you’ve made that process public. You know, just a different way to skin a cat. Someone else can just do things in a slightly different way. So I think the thing that can best protect us is actually just having a product that is genuinely solving our customer’s problems and always striving to do better. As I said, I think that’s like the best equivalent of a patent we’ll ever have.

[00:32:49] Yeah, I agree. I agree. It’s strange with competitors, though, because, you know, sometimes there’s a there’s a place that a part of the market that you’re calling your own and a competitor will jump into that. And then then it’s like your communication strategy has to change. Also, you know, tell me this. How many users do we have now?

[00:33:12] So we’re in the thousands now.

[00:33:14] Oh, wow. Really? Wow. That’s quick. So. So how did you manage to sort of distribute it? I mean, what’s the mechanism?

[00:33:24] So I think over I think we really took off over the lockdown period. So we we set up the first commercial kind of launch was, I think October ish. But we were really slow at the beginning. And then in March, we just started to release kind of a payment model. And then about two weeks later, the pandemic hit. And we were just like, well, it’s unfair. Nobody, nobody’s working, so they shouldn’t pay. So we just made it free for everybody during the pandemic time. And I think.

[00:33:49] That’s a great move.

[00:33:51] Well, it was like we genuinely didn’t do it as a move. We genuinely did it because it’s what felt right. Yeah. And I think actually probably we only did it a week or two earlier than other companies, but the response from our customers was so positive that they felt really moved that we had kind of proactively made that decision. And I think that really bought a lot of goodwill with our customers.

[00:34:14] What was interesting, we thought, great, the pandemic’s hit. We’re going to be out of business, like just can’t use our products. We’re not going to get any customers, we’re not going to get the traction we need. And weirdly, it was the exact opposite where our product needed a bit of time investing. So like we tell anybody when they sign up, you need to spend about half an hour and you can do this at home, just learning the system, making it perfect for the way you do this, and suddenly you don’t have a lot of time on their hands. They were at home, they weren’t doing much. And so so we had a huge uptick in sign ups over that period where people were really trying out. I think it was around June, right. When people start to get back into work. Yeah. And our numbers just shot up reading thousands of women’s every day after that.

[00:34:52] Yeah, but how were you. I’ve seen you’ve done some paid ads on social. It was that the main way.

[00:34:59] So, so that is a channel we use but I think our strongest channel is actually just word of mouth, our dentist talking to their friends and colleagues about how they find it. And really that is that is the strongest thing that we have in our favour. And I mean, we’re already as I said, you know, other people have translated translated it into their own languages. We’re not just in the UK as well. And again, that’s happened purely through word of mouth of dentist telling each other and it kind of spreading internationally in a small way still. But but from that point, yeah.

[00:35:32] Hmm. That’s lovely, man. That’s that’s quick growth. That’s quite good, considering you said the final sort of your first customer came about two years ago.

[00:35:42] Yeah.

[00:35:43] Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:44] That’s quick growth, man. Let’s go a long way. Continue. How do you charge for it? So how much is it?

[00:35:50] So it’s for basic, which is the kind of product that we’ve talked about. It’s $24.95 per dentist per month. We charge per individual clinician and then we also have a pro tier. And largely, I suppose the most notable thing within that is the ability to automate your follow up letters. So particularly for our specialists who do lots of referral letters back to referring clinicians and to the patient that is entirely automated from their career notes as well. So that product is 69, 95 per clinician per month.

[00:36:26] Well, that’s a big job.

[00:36:28] It’s a big job, but it’s a lot more work that has to go in from our team. And it’s also an order of magnitude more time that we’re saving those users.

[00:36:37] Although, I mean, obviously you’ve done your research or you’ve got your your position on this, but for me, the £25 products too cheap.

[00:36:45] In terms of the amount of time we’re saving them. And what that equates to is I think I think I’ve worked out quite recently and it’s 100 X return on investment for our customers. So you could argue that in terms of the value that they’re getting and what they can do with that time, it is.

[00:37:02] But is there something in SAS that says that’s the magic number?

[00:37:06] No, not at all. And actually, I wish that there was something magical, in fact, that told you that. But it’s absolutely just figuring it out on the go. And us, we shouldn’t ever see pricing as something that is fixed. We should see that as something that we’re testing out and changing as well.

[00:37:20] But for me, if I was forward thinking enough, if I was a dentist, number one, if I was forward thinking enough to be the dentist who was going to try something like this in order to save me time, and then it’s saving me loads of time. I just think I should charge more. Let’s just say so.

[00:37:40] Dentists about half an hour per day. And so you can work out what that equates to. It’s a significant amount. If they wanted to fill that time with more patients, it’s extremely significant financially.

[00:37:54] It’s very impressive. So so to 70, the bigger what would you call that product to the pro? It follows up on referral letters.

[00:38:06] So if a specialist is filling in, let’s say a correctly workflow is about them doing a period console, let’s say.

[00:38:18] They’ve seen a patient, they want to go back to the referring.

[00:38:21] Exactly. They filled in their set of notes. And then actually what what these dentist are having to do is then spend 15 to 40 minutes after the appointment writing up the letter specific to that patient with karaoke. That is a click of a button. So they’ve done their notes. All of the relevant information is populated. Populated.

[00:38:41] This was, I guess, a by-product of of main product. So we what we actually do is we structure notes. So that really hasn’t been done before. So we structure the way somebody should write notes. We know what sections they’re in and how, how somebody writes it time and time again. And what that’s allowed us to do is a one click translation into a letter, and that’s really translated into humanised English that can be sent to the patient or to the referring dentist.

[00:39:05] And again, you might not want the language that’s in your medical record to be what goes out to the patient, you might say Upright six, but that doesn’t mean anything to a patient. So the thing that you want to go at in your letter is the upper right first molar tooth, and that’s fine because you can do that translation because it has that intelligence built in.

[00:39:22] Is it is it limited to notes and medicolegal or is there some sort of marketing application?

[00:39:30] I mean, right now, in terms of our areas of focus, probably for for the near term, we really are focussing on the no element and the and the actions that we can take based on that. So if you are sending follow up material consent information to patients and things like that, how can you very, very simply export that? So you’re not wasting your time on that. So we’re focussing on what actions can be taken from the conversation you’re having with your patient.

[00:39:57] So I guess the whole business is around taking away those repeated things that you do every single day. So your brain is focussed on that 10% of the day where you actually spend it on a unique case or, you know, a unique part of your notes even. Yeah.

[00:40:12] It’s what you see occurring.

[00:40:14] I mean, number one, I clearly don’t like to look too far ahead, just like to to keep doing what we’re doing. I think we’re increasingly believing and getting more and more belief that this is a business that can grow. And we want to provide it to as many dentists as we possibly can, both in the UK, but also internationally. And I think also an element that really excites us is eventually the technology that we’ve built doesn’t have to be limited to dentistry, it can be applied to other areas of healthcare, it can be applied to other professions where they might waste their time writing notes as well. So that’s how long term we see this business developing.

[00:40:58] Is that your pitch at the next funding round?

[00:41:03] Did if it sound like it turned into a robot to this.

[00:41:07] That.

[00:41:11] My eyes glazed over.

[00:41:14] Yeah. That’s quite early on that I seen as like it’s for me, the whole dental work is very new. But since we started releasing as dentists, we have a lot of GP’s coming up to us. Yeah. Yeah. We spent even longer than dentists writing notes. Why aren’t you building this for us? And the process is one step at a time.

[00:41:30] It’s one step at a time. And it’s making sure we don’t try and do too many things too soon and not actually focus on our customers. But yeah, long term that’s that’s what we see.

[00:41:40] I mean, yeah, if you could, if you could solve the GP thing, but I don’t know your experience with GP, but when I’ve been to the GP they’re not even looking at you at all.

[00:41:51] Exactly.

[00:41:52] They sort of kind of quick glance up. Quick question. And then and it’s mad because because you think like is he originally listening to the he’s you know, because we kind of know something about it, right? He’s kind of busy covering himself.

[00:42:14] So true. And I think something that genuinely, like moves me emotionally is with the thing of being a dentist or a doctor. If you could actually just focus on the the fantastic, the empathetic part of that conversation, actually providing care, actually listening to your patients and allow the repetitive things to be done by computers, then that is that for me is a human’s time when well spent, whereas us doing repetitive things, doing it over and over again, that is actually where a computer is so much better than us. So why not delegate that away?

[00:42:50] Yeah, I think what we found from correct a lot of customer sources that the end of the day they just had a bit more energy. I think the more we look into that is because of decision fatigue. They’re tired of making that same decision every single time and it does take that away from you.

[00:43:07] Yeah. With those sort of things you don’t, you don’t realise how stressed you are about them until they are taken away sometimes. Yeah. You know that. That’s very true. Let’s, let’s move on to the darker sort of side of all this we’ve got. I don’t know, if you listen to this podcast, we tend to move to the dark side around 40 minutes. What’s been your worst day at karaoke, each of you?

[00:43:33] What a good question.

[00:43:34] Then I think one day comes to mind. This was like two years ago or something where? We were fundraising. So like I said at the time, we would get for money, but we were excited by the idea of what we could be doing next and I think we had about three. So with fundraising, this is the first time we were raising money. You expect 90% rejections, so and all for different reasons. But we didn’t know that at the time. Right. So we were crashing. So I hadn’t I had about, I think three emails in a row on a monday morning and it just like, yeah, we’re not investing, we’re not investing, we’re not investing. And in that moment where we looked at each other and I think we wanted to kind of shelter the team from that side of things. So that was that’s the one that comes to mind straight away. We were just like, Let’s go for a walk and stretch ourselves up.

[00:44:22] Let’s go for a walk and have a cry.

[00:44:24] How many how many meetings did you go to? How many how many pitches did you do?

[00:44:28] Oh, God, I couldn’t count. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was like 100 like.

[00:44:33] 190 said no.

[00:44:35] Genuinely, that is. That is that’s what you need to expect. But it doesn’t. You gradually get thicker and thicker skin like the longer you’ve done this. But it really is like for me, I’ve always found fundraising difficult on an emotional level because I find it quite wearing.

[00:44:50] And it’s tough. Like you’re, you’re getting rejection off and it’s for completely different reasons. Some, you know, some just might not believe in your vision or some might not believe in you or your team or and I guess another thing is back to what I said, I’m getting feedback. It’s really hard to get true feedback and that’s the most part, the hardest reason you don’t really know what the reason of the rejection is.

[00:45:10] How do you even set up these meetings? How does that.

[00:45:13] Work? Luckily, we’ve got really good network through through the incubator that we went through. So they have like created these they’ve made these introductions to begin with. And now you kind of you’ve got that network and you can reach out to those investors. But you also then because we’ve now got other investors that are invested in Kroger, they really are extremely powerful in terms of making more introductions, meeting new investors, and it really is just kind of back to back meetings, talking through your business, talking through, answering any questions they have. Quite often it won’t even be that they don’t believe in your business. It might just be that they aren’t the right investor to feel like they’ve got the knowledge to support you. But all the same, you do feel it. I think actually my day would be quite different of my my most difficult day of Kroger and it would come down to team. And when we had an employee who handed in their resignation, which happens, you know.

[00:46:09] It just wasn’t a good day.

[00:46:10] Though. It’s just part of part of the process. But when there’s someone that you really, really respect and they’re not continuing to work with you, even if it’s because they’re going to start their own business or they want to be exposed to a different type of technology or whatever it is, that.

[00:46:26] Sort of thing.

[00:46:27] Exactly like that for me felt like a huge failure of leadership or communicating vision or being effective at listening to not even sorry, not customer employees. So that was for me a really that was kind of a tough time.

[00:46:46] I definitely agree with that. I remember that day.

[00:46:49] That’s only happened once.

[00:46:51] So it’s not that we’ve only had one one resignation ever. We’ve had more than that. But quite often, you know, they’re coming. But it wasn’t even the first one, actually, it was just a particularly difficult one where we didn’t see it coming, whereas a lot of our resignations, we’ve known from early doors that they’re considering starting their own business or, you know, it’s been a conversation and I think it being unawares felt like a huge failure because it’s, you know, that is you should have been able to pick that up sooner.

[00:47:18] What would you say is your biggest weakness, Hannah? To the classic interview question.

[00:47:24] I think my biggest weakness and I’m giving you a really classic answer because I’m going to give a really I think I’m not going to say that because that’s just not true. But I think my biggest weakness is probably also a big strength of mine and is that ability not to not quit, not to give up, because I think sometimes that’s allowed me to have real grit. But I think sometimes I have put myself in situations where it’s not returning what it should anymore. And I haven’t called it because I just didn’t even consider I should quit. That would be a failure.

[00:48:00] Yeah, I’m the same. I’m the same. And you find a lot of times your biggest weakness is your biggest strength. Yeah, but I’ll give you example of that moment when you just would not quit.

[00:48:12] I think for me, actually, this is going to sound really like but like not a big deal. But I think it was just when I was I was working in a practise on Saturdays as well as doing Kokrokoo and to say it was 9 to 5 as is not the truth. So like doing a very kind of intense job and doing every Saturday and did it for two and a half years. And I think I just got to a point where I actually just wasn’t going out and seeing my friends. I wasn’t going out for dinners because I was just always so, so tired. And I eventually got to a point which was like, Why am I doing this? It just I hadn’t even considered that I shouldn’t be doing that anymore. And even if it was just kind of changing when I was doing it, you know, it’s not even that I’m not doing any clinical work these days, but I think that for me was me just doing the same thing over and over again and not considering that I could I could change it.

[00:49:00] What about you, J.

[00:49:02] You know what? As you ask that question, I thought I’ve asked this so many times to people. I never thought to ask myself.

[00:49:09] What your answer.

[00:49:10] Is. I’d say maybe sometimes paying too much attention to detail rather than just stepping back and. I think that’s know, I’d want to if I see a process, I want to know every single thing about it. I want to know how it works, what’s going on. But I don’t have time to do everything. And as much as I’d love to try and figure out every line of code and everything within view. I think part of it is actually just stepping back and realising that other people can do a great job better than me at that and letting go of certain things.

[00:49:40] Yeah. And you know, that sort of perfection paralysis thing and delegation paralysis will slow you down. Big time. Big time.

[00:49:49] Exactly. And I’ve learnt that a lot I think recently where there are times where I’ve done the opposite, where I’ve actually just left something and I’m like, Wait, no, we can run. Like it’s actually running a lot better than what I would have done. Yes, it’s kind of just.

[00:50:04] What I found. What I found is at the beginning, you’re doing everything. And then what happens is as you start to delegate it, someone does one little thing not quite as well as you would have done that thing. And that makes you go berserk and you forget the fact that they’re doing all of this other stuff. I tell you, though, it’s funny, because if it comes down to trust in a way, doesn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. And there’s no way you’ll grow if you don’t trust, right? There’s no way at all.

[00:50:34] Exactly. I think I’ve learnt that where we the biggest thing we can do is have the right people. I think the biggest impact we can have on Heroku and what we do is just hire the right people. I think we’ve made really good decisions at the moment with our team.

[00:50:46] I think we have and I think there is more that we can do there because I think quite often I allow myself to be overly busy when actually if the thing I’m doing is making myself more scalable, making myself slightly redundant, that’s actually a good thing for the business. But quite often it leaves you feeling slightly redundant. And I think a lesson that I could develop and I think I would be in a better place if I learnt this quicker, is actually I’m okay not to be really busy all the time. I just need to find the right people who can do this better than we can.

[00:51:17] Yeah, you know, you should take. I’ve learnt something recently and you know, don’t, don’t let it take 20 years for you to learn this. This message is that in a way if, if you’re doing anything, then you’re doing something wrong. In a way I’m not saying don’t do anything, but if you have to do any little thing, then why? Why is it that you’re doing that thing? Why isn’t someone else doing that thing? You know, and it’s an interesting idea because it sounds ridiculous, but but when you actually examine examine it, you know that you want they want to sell this thing, right? Yeah. And and you really want nothing to do with the day to day of it at all. At all. You just want to be leading the sort of the zoomed out plan. And the zoomed out plan means not doing anything at all. Yeah. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m doing I’m doing things. Don’t, don’t get me wrong. But the thought process, it’s quite empowering.

[00:52:20] If we if we aim for that, if we aim for doing nothing, that’s probably doing nothing but not being required for like decisions. I think that’s probably the right thing to aim for.

[00:52:32] And I think it’s really timely advice, to be honest, because now our team is growing and we’re at the stage now where we do have to take a little step back and bring in other people that can actually do this day to day things.

[00:52:42] But there is one big problem with it in that, you know, it sounds all well and good. Hire a guy to do that job, but that guy needs managing and then whoever’s managing, that guy needs managing. And in the end, that comes back to you again. And it’s sort of the difference between finding outsource people and having people in-house. Yeah, because there’s there’s benefits to both. But one of the biggest benefits of outsource people is that you don’t have to hire and fire in the usual way. Yeah, it’s a difficult one. What would you say should be been your biggest mistakes?

[00:53:18] Wolf. So many to pick from.

[00:53:25] To think of this one.

[00:53:30] It’s a bit early because you haven’t had time for, you know, to reflect, really.

[00:53:35] I mean, I try I try and reflect frequently, actually. Clearly, I’m not doing it well enough.

[00:53:41] What comes to mind, actually, is I think almost every company hears this at some point, which is start charging earlier, because I think the moment it came hand to hand, when we had our first customer feedback and charging, people automatically assume you give value to what you’re doing. And if someone’s for free, they’re not valuing it right. They’re not running it, but they’re starting to get feedback. And I think as soon as we started charging for our product, we got feedback instantly and then it kind of spun off from there. So that’s one that comes to mind right now. Whether you call that mistake or not, I don’t know, because I think it worked out.

[00:54:18] I mean, the voice thing was a mistake.

[00:54:20] Again, I find it hard to call it a mistake because I don’t think we would be here if it wasn’t for the voice. We stumbled upon the new product because as a consequence of the voice, it sells other ways to get here. Yeah, definitely.

[00:54:31] I think, again, it’s not like one clear mistake. I wish we’d got to that conclusion quicker because I think we would be know 6 to 12 months ahead of where we are now if we if learn those lessons sooner. But equally. You know, with first time founders, we didn’t. We’re learning this as we go. And I don’t really know what we could have done to have done that much faster. But but to me, if there’s one thing I wish we’d been able to do, it was drive for customer feedback far earlier however that was and realise that that was the problem.

[00:55:06] Without, you know, antagonising investors. What kind of role do they play as far as the day to day? Do they take a position on the board and advise and interfere?

[00:55:19] And I actually we have we are so lucky with our investors and actually genuinely, I would never use the word interfere. I would only use the word support. Yes, they might have a board seat or a board observer. See. So we will have quarterly meetings with them where we present what we’ve been up to. But largely they are there when we need when we need them and they in different ways. We’ve kind of got two main investors in different ways. They get very, very different types of information and support and feedback. And I couldn’t be happier. The people that we have as partners to build Heroku, they they are both supportive and wise and holistic in their in their advice.

[00:56:08] Well that’s that’s nice to hear because you do hear some horror stories.

[00:56:11] Yeah, you do. I think I think that because of the horror stories we were so careful in, I guess who we picked. Quite lucky, to be honest, in a way as well.

[00:56:18] I think luck.

[00:56:20] Is a huge amount of luck.

[00:56:22] But then every time, every time you raise more, you’re going to have a new person to deal with. Is that how it works?

[00:56:27] Exactly. And the unfortunate thing is, again, it’s like suppose it’s like hiring someone. You don’t really know what it’s going to be like. Work alongside them until you’re actually doing it. Except with an employee, if it’s not right, you can kind of do something about it. With an investor.

[00:56:41] You can’t really.

[00:56:41] There’s nothing you can do about it. So you have to pick right and try and try and maintain a kind of filter from your side. Even if you do, you do want the investment you need to make sure they’re the right investor.

[00:56:55] Tell me a couple of stories that your customers have told you. About using. You know, something something that’s changed the way they work.

[00:57:07] I think that it’s like one of the things that is just repeatedly said is like, I’m home. Like this is completely changed. I used to have keys for the practise and be the last person.

[00:57:20] Oh, just writing up all the crap.

[00:57:22] Exactly. And now I am the last person to enter in the morning. I’m the first person to leave in the evening. And I’m able to actually have dinner with my family and I’m able to pay attention when patients are talking to me. So it’s again, it’s so varied because different people use that time different ways. A lot of people actually just want to get home on time. A lot of people wanting more patients. A lot of people want to actually just pay attention to their patient.

[00:57:48] But I think for me, the idea of an idea of somebody getting home has been mentioned time and time again that before they would you know, I spoke to a dentist, in fact, last week that I built a little four day work every day at five in the morning to write letters, but with curfew. Well, now they get to sleep. So it was interesting, home and time, but nice stories were good to hear.

[00:58:14] Generally, we asked this question at the beginning of the podcast, but with you guys it just felt like the wrong time. Tell me about where you grew up, what kind of kid you were.

[00:58:25] I grew up in the countryside outside of Manchester. As you can tell from my accent.

[00:58:33] And the south or the north.

[00:58:36] South Manchester kind of peak district, the area so very, very kind of rural. But I went to school in central Manchester. And what type of child does I am the youngest of three siblings. I have two older brothers. And so I very much embodied the little sister character. I don’t know what else to say. Really gone. Very lucky. Lucky with my parents and lucky with the support I’ve always had from my parents.

[00:59:03] And your parents were it people you said?

[00:59:06] I think people. Yeah, both. Both programmers.

[00:59:10] But were they entrepreneurs as well?

[00:59:12] And no, they both work worked within kind of bigger corporations. My mum gave up working when she had us and so I know that she always missed her work because she was doing so well and I think it just came at a time when she was having kids. So I know that for her she’s kind of always instilled in me that find something that you love doing and don’t stop doing it because you have to have family or don’t do it unless you want to. I think she wanted to give up work.

[00:59:42] That’s fine. You hurried. Get this thing sold, kid. Where did you grow up?

[00:59:56] So mine. I was. I’ve been born and growing up in London. Yeah. For example, the accent kind of is very standard today. There’s not a huge amount. It like great parents. I was. I was in a state school. So, you know, for a variety of people, we had three, 350 people in our year. And there’s a variety of people from people that became athletes to entrepreneurs to a bunch of other stuff.

[01:00:23] Where did you study, Jay?

[01:00:25] So I was at University College London for my undergrad, and then I went to University of Cambridge for my first read.

[01:00:31] The what the I stuff.

[01:00:33] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:34] What was it like being in Cambridge with those brains?

[01:00:37] To find out. Just, I guess going from a state school. I thought I never wanted to go to Cambridge because I thought I just wouldn’t fit in. So I thought I’d literally go have no friends. Everybody would be very posh and I wouldn’t be able to click with anybody. And it was exact opposite. It was just a group of really smart people that love what they do. And I think as you get to post-grad you realise that a lot of people have chosen to do something in underground. Often you do find a lot of people that are in the, you know, studying for the sake of study, studying for the sake of somebody told them to. And it’s a good way to do things. I think when you go to post-grad, people will love what they do. And I find that really fascinating.

[01:01:12] Because you’re 18, aren’t you, when you go to university, I mean, it’s a child. What made you decide to be a dentist when with all these technologists around you?

[01:01:23] I liked sciences. I thought I wanted to be a doctor, probably because I’d grown up watching Scrubs. I did my work experience in a hospital and realised, Wait, this isn’t like Scrubs. And actually being on a geriatric ward is really, really sad. And so my school organised work experience in a dental practise and I remember my mum being like, I don’t know why you’re doing that, you’re not going to enjoy that. And I loved it. I mean, I was in work experience with the dad of someone who I went to school with and he was just a really, really nice, relaxed guy. And I think I just kind of liked his attitude and I just really liked that. It was like craft on a tiny, tiny scale. And there’s, yeah, there’s so much pride to be taken in doing that well. And I think I just thought that would be a good fit. Yeah. And like I said, I never regretted studying dentistry. I really, really enjoyed it. Just sad not to be doing construction on a tiny scale more these days.

[01:02:22] And Bristol, such a fun, fun city to be studying and it’s such a fantastic city. I was in Cardiff, but I love Bristol. I really.

[01:02:32] I.

[01:02:32] Love I.

[01:02:33] Love Bristol as well. I’m just waiting for the day where I can move back to Bristol.

[01:02:37] Really.

[01:02:39] It was honestly, it’s just it was so fun. It was really a good mixture of like good music. Yeah.

[01:02:47] Just great art scene.

[01:02:50] Exactly. There’s just a really nice mixture of culture and and it being a beautiful city in its own right.

[01:02:56] Absolutely.

[01:02:58] Yeah. I really, really enjoyed Bristol.

[01:03:00] Is your office London based now?

[01:03:02] Yes, we’re based in Moorgate.

[01:03:05] Oh, really? In that little hub of technology.

[01:03:09] Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[01:03:10] Well, they call it silicon something.

[01:03:12] Yes, Silicon Roundabout people roundabouts.

[01:03:16] It is kind of spread out now, isn’t it?

[01:03:21] In Cambridge, they call it silicon fen that bit. One last question before our final questions, which are always the same on this podcast, if this imagine, I don’t know, some company Microsoft came along and give you a billion. To walk away. Yeah. What would you do next? It’s hard. It’s hard question to answer.

[01:03:47] Is this what what would you do when they offered you or what.

[01:03:49] Would you do once they sold it? You walked away. You walked away. We can deal with yourself and and you listen. Everyone says the same thing to this. Yeah. They say charity holiday. Yeah. So outside of charity and holiday day to day.

[01:04:06] I think because I don’t think I would do charity, I don’t think I’d do like loads of holiday. I think the thing that excites me and I think maybe because I went from doing clinical dentistry to doing quite a different career, the thing that would excite me is like, What’s next? I’m only going to live once. Why not jump back several careers into one lifetime? And like, what else could I learn and start from scratch again? I genuinely think I’d kind of want to.

[01:04:30] I’ll just I’ll probably start your business and whatever I say, I would drag her into as well.

[01:04:35] So yeah, I don’t know. It’s so exciting that like you could, you could do a whole different thing. I definitely wouldn’t just.

[01:04:44] Take your money behind you so you can kind of do what you want with it as.

[01:04:47] Well. You wouldn’t take holiday. I like that. I like that very much. Let’s just end it with the same question. We always end up with the same question. It is it’s difficult with people as young as you too, but you’re on your deathbed. Yeah. You’ve got your friends and family around you. Three pieces of advice you’d leave for them.

[01:05:12] I’ll let you go first.

[01:05:14] Those are the ones. The ones that I thought of is this one. I really do try to live by it, which is just enjoy the journey. I think you never know what’s going to happen, especially both in business and in life, really. Just enjoy every day and what you’re doing and find a way to make yourself happy with it. Second one is follow your instincts and trust your gut. I think whenever I’ve done that, it’s always worked out somehow. So keep doing that. And then the last one is just live life to its fullest. Try and avoid being lazy and just realise like, you know, again, life’s short. Try and make the most of it.

[01:05:45] Lovely, lovely bits of advice on your death.

[01:05:48] What about you?

[01:05:50] I would say one is very important to me, as is stay silly like I do. I don’t want to grow old. My my grandmother. You actually like in the last couple of years passed away was like the most mischievous soul I know. And she was 80. She was 92, and she was just so silly. And so I would always remain silly and laugh at ridiculous things. That would be one. The other one would be, again, this is so like so generic that it’s almost pointless would be just be kind because you have to leave the world in a better state than you arrived in. And for me, that’s just how you treat the people around you. And if you just strive to constantly be kind in every interaction you have, if feel like you’re doing, you’re doing the right thing, you’re moving in the right direction. And the final one, I’m not sure. I think you’re going to have to think this one on the spot. I think this is this is rather than yeah, I suppose it is advice, but this is more just kind of me saying something that I’ve taken huge value from, which is immerse yourself in other people’s stories. And by that I mean I personally am an avid reader of novels, and the reason I do that is because I love getting perspective on other people’s lives and situations. I wouldn’t I haven’t been through myself. And so whether you choose to do that in the form of reading or watching films or listening to stuff, I think constantly prioritising, getting other people’s perspectives will widen your world and widen your your reaction to things as well, how you perceive the world.

[01:07:34] And of that walk in other people’s shoes, sort of.

[01:07:37] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, probably. That will help you with the kindness one as well.

[01:07:43] But I like that. The fact you know, this question, it’s not my question, perhaps question. It tends to give many of the same answers. But those three or kindness comes up a lot but Cillian shoes that they’re good ones they my final question is it’s to do with a fancy dinner party. Yeah three guests that are.

[01:08:07] Like I’m going to hand it over to you first.

[01:08:09] This is a question I always ask and always avoid giving my answer.

[01:08:14] I think. When do you ask this question?

[01:08:17] I think when things get a bit silent, the three to I said one is Sundar Pichai, who’s the CEO of Google. I think his story is just amazing that he grew up from nothing and now.

[01:08:31] He’s the current CEO, isn’t it?

[01:08:33] Yeah. Yeah. And the next one just has to be Steve Jobs. Yeah, I just I’m obsessed with Steve Jobs a bit too much. But, yeah, I had to pick up on this. And the last. I’m a massive Arsenal football fan, so it has to be Thierry Henry. I’m yet to meet him. It’s a one day.

[01:08:54] It’s an interesting dinner party going on.

[01:08:58] And I’ve actually only got two answers to this. I did actually try and wrack my brain, but two, two came to mind very easily. So I’ll actually just answer answer those. The first one is my grandma from my dad’s side, because I was so young when she passed away that I actually never got to interact with her. My dad speaks so highly of her. I think that would be so lovely to actually understand more about her life and therefore probably understand more about my dad and therefore probably understand more about myself. So that would be one. And the other one that instantly came to my mind is Anne Boleyn. I don’t know why I love the Tudors, but also I’d want to. Anne Boleyn for me, as someone who’s the way that she is told in history, is with a very, very sexist perspective and angle. So I would love to meet.

[01:09:49] The first wife.

[01:09:50] Second wife. She beheaded, beheaded yet, but clearly caused massive change to to England and history. But I feel like I’d want to understand what she was like as a person because she sounds like she might have been quite a powerful, impressive person.

[01:10:10] Yeah, I think I’ve had one of the answers was Henry the eighth, so you might as well invite Henry the eighth, all your other grandma. That would be the third guest.

[01:10:20] I mean, I’d love to.

[01:10:22] You can come. You can come back. Grandma did.

[01:10:27] Well, it’s been a pleasure. And I know I only met you for that 10 seconds in dental showcase, but. But. But, Hannah, you know, I really understand why investors, customers, employees are inspired by you. Just you give off this energy of sort of enjoying everything you do and really listening. I really do. I really do.

[01:10:49] That means a great a great, great deal, especially from you. Yeah.

[01:10:53] There’d be sitting but it’s just, you know, I know again, we’ve met each other twice. Twice, but both times. Both times are very, very, very impressed with you. So I’m sure your work is going to go from strength to strength.

[01:11:05] And thank you so much for having us.

[01:11:09] Yeah, thanks very much.

[01:11:10] It’s been a long time coming.

[01:11:13] 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.

[01:11:29] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

[01:11:44] 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.

[01:11:54] And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] I think the essence of the business is its culture and therefore the people coming in need to mould to that culture rather than the other way around. And that sort of drives itself and it moulds and develops people because in order to fit in at FMC, you’ll have to try hard. You’ll have to be fairly accommodating of your of your peers and contemporaries, and therefore they become FMC people. I’d say that’s why the momentum continues to be good, because the ones that don’t fit you probably never got to know payment because it just didn’t work. The ones that do fit stay long term and add to the culture and develop the business that way.

[00:00:45] 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.

[00:01:03] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Ken Finlayson onto the podcast. Ken is probably one of the most influential people in dentistry. The man who came up with the list of the top 50 influential dentists. But maybe actually I think I think you used to feature on that list yourself sometimes, Ken. But the last five or ten years, I haven’t seen you there. Media mogul, maybe the biggest publisher in dentistry with 40 titles. How many titles, Ken?

[00:01:34] There’s a few. There’s a few. Not as many as they used to be. But yeah.

[00:01:39] Notably dentistry magazine, private dentistry magazine, clinical dentistry, Irish dentists, loads of education awards events since since I started Enlightened may be the most influential person in my early career for sure. Was Ken and you started this company when Ken was it 25 years ago?

[00:02:04] Started the company in 1994. And it’s a little bit depressing, frankly, to say that I used to be I used to be an influence to you and no longer. But yeah, it was a while back, in fairness, and there’s been a number of things happen since then. But yeah, it was a long time ago. Kicking off with the magazine called Dentistry in the days before the Internet, in the days before digital media. And it was pretty popular.

[00:02:32] It really was, I think, when we started in light in 2001. But I was a dentist since 95 and even then, so between 95 and 2001, at that time, we forget we forget how how much things have changed. I remember the independent was it called independent dentistry at the time? Not not private dentistry, the magazine?

[00:02:57] That’s correct. Yeah. It was in those days, private dentistry was a dirty word. It was something that people were afraid of financially. And there was a sort of class resonance to the title Private Dentistry. Yeah. So we coined the phrase in a general sense, independent dentistry, which reflected the fact that it wasn’t solely based on NHS practise and it gave people, it gave people the options to, to think about with regard to non NHS treatment.

[00:03:29] I remember reading independent dentistry as a young dentist and just thinking, God, this there is a world out there outside of this sort of situation that I’m in at the moment and you know, being inspired by the quality of the quality of the print, the quality of the editorial, the the stories that were in that magazine. This podcast normally starts, Ken, with sort of childhood. Where did you grow up? What kind of a kid were you?

[00:04:00] What does it normally start that way? But not this time.

[00:04:03] Not this time. This story started with this is how we started with independence.

[00:04:08] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just very briefly, Scottish. I’m Scottish. I moved to South Africa aged 14 years old. And that’s quite a tough move because if anybody knows South Africans and we all know many of them, they typically big people. So coming from Scotland to South Africa at that age was quite a challenge. But they’re so entrepreneurial and so go getting by nature. The South Africans, it was it was very significant in my life ultimately coming back to UK and getting into the publishing world. And I was looking for an opportunity. And I was lucky enough to bump into a legend called Les Paul, who was the grandfather of private industry in the UK. And I had a title called Dentistry Magazine, which was doing well. But in speaking to Ellis, there was an opportunity to create something more oriented towards the options in dentistry away from the NHS. And he was the forerunner of that whole movement and a phenomenal person that inspired me and many, many people. Yeah, for a quarter of a century thereafter, just through the work that he and I did, and he’d had a huge career before that. So he certainly is the guy that deserves most credit for the whole of the private dentistry work that we did, and I’d like to think helped a lot of people along the way. But he was the guy that really inspired the whole thing and deserves the credit for that.

[00:05:52] But how did you get into dental in the first place can.

[00:05:56] Dentistry? Well, I ended up working for a medical media business. So medical media comprises magazines and events typically around hospital medicine, general practise medicine. And that was the essence of the business that I was involved in. We did look at the dentistry area as well, albeit it was the small relation in the business and I was learning the ropes. I always wanted to be my own boss and felt that it was more of an opportunity to if I was going to do my own thing in the dental space because it was less sophisticated in media sense than medicine and there were less players operating in it. And quite frankly, payment, it was less expensive to get involved in the dentistry. So I decided to develop an idea in dentistry. I went to the US and investigated what the media was doing in the US. At that time. Everybody viewed American dentistry as ahead of what we were doing. The American smile was quite well known even back then, and their thoughts on cosmetic dentistry, on the brighter, whiter smile, on what they could do for people outside of just helping them get through pain, was was a big difference to what we were doing in the UK at that point and the media reflected that as well. So I then essentially took the ideas that I saw in the US, package them together in a more British style and launched Dentistry magazine in 1995. And at that point of time, amazingly, I was probably more amazed than anybody else, but we actually launched with huge success. I expected a very slow start, but in fact it did seem that there was an appetite for a less academic take on dentistry going forward, and a more accessible media, which threw up business ideas, looked a lot at the product opportunities that there were and different types of treatment.

[00:08:11] So before you hadn’t worked in any other dental before you started your own dental magazine?

[00:08:18] Well, I was with a medical media business that did have oh that didn’t work in dentistry. Yeah. Albeit was quite small. So that’s where I really got my experience and I could see that there was an opportunity there that was less intricate and less expensive to get involved in than the dentistry area.

[00:08:36] So, so dentistry magazine in a way, if you had to sort of position it as in the, in the normal sort of newspapers and magazines sort of way, it was, it was kind of it would be where would it be? It would be like sort of the on the sort of the I don’t know, it’s the wrong word because tabloids got such such such bad connotations these days. But on the more on the tabloid end, because up to that point, there was you know, there was there was journals, there was BTJ And I guess the probe existed.

[00:09:06] It Yeah, I mean, the the analogy doesn’t really ring true, as you say, with tabloids. Yeah. However, even in 1994, tabloids were very evident and not particularly well thought of, albeit there were very, very popular. The Sun newspaper in the UK was the most popular newspaper in Europe and a very powerful reader base. It had two. So what we launched was not down-market, but it was accessible and populist, and that’s something that I really wanted to do so that if you were practising in a high street or in Scunthorpe or anywhere for that matter, you could dip into the title and get things out of it that that you could implement into your practise. And that was really what we were trying to do. Whereas titles like the BBG, phenomenal, globally renowned media that it still is to this day and was then it was a little esoteric, article wise, and many of the articles wouldn’t be that valid to the average practitioner at any one time. And so we wanted to be more populist, more accessible, easy to access. And the reaction we got from day one was quite phenomenal actually, that it did seem to resonate and people were reading it in their thousands and we had huge responses. There were used to be back in those days, a card system that you put into the title. So for example, if people wanted more information about.

[00:10:49] Such and such an ad or whatever, yeah, I remember.

[00:10:51] Yes. A product or a product news story. Then we would get. Thousands of these every week sent back to us. And it was a very good feeling and very nice.

[00:11:02] What were you thinking regarding sort of business plan wise? I mean, did you have already lots of contacts, as you know, in the in the industry for advertising?

[00:11:14] Well, the plan was that it’s a fairly straightforward approach insofar as we we knew who the Dental companies were. And we had a list of I say we, me and one other person that was the organisation and I was doing that side of it was really I had a list is there was a list of the companies and you call them up and suggest that we have a large audience and if they want to promote their product through, through that, they could. So it’s, it’s quite unsophisticated insofar as getting to the customer base. You didn’t really need to have a lot of contact as such. You just needed to know who the companies were. And of course it’s quite evident by going to a practise, you can see the products that are being used and there are other magazines around that you could also look at to gather who was promoting through through those media. And we basically just contacted them all. The claims of fame we had at that time is when we launched in 1995. It launched as the biggest launch that there’d ever been of a Dental title, and that was because the industry really liked the idea. And even though we didn’t have an audience, insofar as nobody had actually seen the title until we launched it, the industry was very much behind it from day one.

[00:12:39] And the plan always from day one was you were going to send this out for free?

[00:12:43] Yes. So that was the model at that time payment in media for getting dentistry for a second meet. It was a very popular notion in the British media world that you create a good product, i.e. title for the set to your targeting. Give the group that media free of charge so that they read it and enjoy it. And then there’s an audience to market to.

[00:13:12] And did you have massive start up costs? I mean, in the end, you have to publish. You have to you have to print thousands of of these papers. Did you did you have a backing to start with or did you not know you’d lose money to start with or will you know immediately?

[00:13:29] Well, the title launched extremely well. The great thing about media back in those days and still the same, I suppose, with the digital media, but you don’t incur any costs of any significance until such time as the printer starts printing the title, then ultimately have to pay for the paper, the postage, the printing costs themselves. But by that time we already had the advertisers in there. So as soon as it produced it was profitable from day one. And it was it’s a scary place to be because day two we didn’t have another title. So we have to reproduce the magazine again for February and then for March and so on. So it was it was very, very uplifting and a great time in my life. But there was a great fear, as anybody who runs a business has, about how are we going to manage tomorrow? Will the customer base leave us? Will it be well received? Everybody has these experiences and I was no different. But from day one we were. I remember having the champagne when we got the first edition in the door and it was a celebration because we knew that it was a profitable business from from the outset.

[00:14:44] When I think back to my start and I think we lost money for four years at the beginning and the pain that we went through in that in that four year period just to get to profitability and to hats off to you must have ruffled a few feathers as well, though.

[00:15:05] Yeah. I mean, one of the issues that irritated my competitors and not naming them because it irritates me further. But the one of the things that was galling was the fact that we did get such a fast start. And even in media it typically takes quite a while to build enough traction that the industry will support you. So we did seem to to be of our time and that really, really rankled with the existing media who would be quite disdainful. I mean, I’m a very old man now payment is you know that that cared.

[00:15:45] How old were you when you saw started?

[00:15:46] I was 28.

[00:15:48] I was 28. Amazing.

[00:15:50] But the I was viewed as a very young man at the time against my peer group. And they really didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all.

[00:16:00] But, you know, that mantra is, is it was it Gandhi said, you know, first they ignore you, then what is it? Then they eventually and then you in what? First they ignore you, then they attack you or whatever it is.

[00:16:13] Yeah.

[00:16:14] You know, you know what I’m talking about, right?

[00:16:16] Yes, I do. Yeah.

[00:16:17] Yeah. I find it interesting because in that in that early phase, when people ignore you is actually a time to grow and, you know, to, to, to make moves that when they finally notice when compared to finding notices you, it’s then too late for them to do anything. Whereas you must have had people actually acting against you straight away because you made such a disruptive move. Did you was there any of that? Oh, no.

[00:16:44] Well, there was there was just a level of nastiness in a I’m sure I sound naive saying it, but that’s how I felt. People were just nasty about it. But the in the bubble payment, as you will recognise from your own business development, you’re just running as fast as you can. There’s a modicum of celebration and that’s momentary. It’s really a question of we need to keep running fast, trying hard, and don’t take anything for granted, which was the way that it worked. And I didn’t really pay too much attention to to the establishment’s views, albeit I knew we weren’t that popular.

[00:17:38] How long did it take before it moved on from one publication? One one title? When did you get your second title? How many years?

[00:17:47] Well, through that first year, I met Alice Paul, who I mentioned earlier. Yeah, I mean, we had a great start payment, so there was sufficient profitability to consider options and we staffed up immediately as well. And then Alice was just this inspiring character from Manchester who was running the show in what was called independent dentistry back then. And I approached him in a car park and just outside Manchester and stalked him and said, would he possibly be consider being editor of a new title I had an idea for and he’s such a great guy. He jumped at the notion. He ended up moving down to London because I couldn’t believe, because he was so established, so famous, you know, he would have been top of the top 50 back in the day, although it didn’t exist. But and just such an enthusiast for calibre things and leading people and thinking more deeply about subjects and teaching that, you know, he he made that a phenomenal success. Also payment. He was a guardian and a custodian of the title. So he really cared deeply and was very, very focussed on the level of calibre and the breadth of articles and such things. So the independent dentistry, which was our second title, had a different cachet to the populist dentistry magazine. And in fact we asked the audience to pay for it, which they.

[00:19:28] Did.

[00:19:29] In their thousands as well, which was another great success for us back in the day. And as I said earlier, the Alice was without a shadow of a doubt. The man who made that title and inspired you and many, many other people, it’s it’s amazing, actually, how often people come up to me and say, Oh, you were so instrumental in my early years of private industry and so on. And I think to myself and I didn’t actually do anything and Alex did the lot and really has had an impact in that upper half of the age group, I would say in UK dentistry today. He was, he was very, very pivotal.

[00:20:08] Can you say that you’ve operated this, this organisation. I remember even in the early days, I mean I think we’d got this bank loan, I think we borrowed £80,000, something like that. And there was a dental showcase coming up and I knew nothing about anything, right? So I thought, Alright, I’m going to buy some ads before this event. And I just went everywhere and bought ads everywhere I could find, just didn’t think was understanding what I was doing at all. Just put ads everywhere I could find. But all of those advertisers, your organisation was the only one where a human being then turned up. At my office it was an office. It was my flat where we were, where we were running it. It was actually Kimberly. Yeah, your late wife. But you’ve always had that, that and even as the years went on, that human touch of a relationship with the person that the other magazines didn’t have. And were.

[00:21:12] You.

[00:21:12] Because you were part of the industry before and you knew something about it, was that a conscious move that you were going to sort of that whole people buy from people thing? Because it must.

[00:21:22] I don’t think it was spamming. I don’t I don’t think it was a conscious decision. It is just my belief. People by people, as you say, and we will lie, Avis, try harder to make sure we make our points to to the potential advertiser or company that we link with and make sure we just do the best job we can. And I do feel and in any walk of business that our success was heavily linked to the fact that we give it our best shot. And it’s quite satisfying in any business, again, to look at competition and think, well, I know they don’t really give it their best shot and therefore that’s an advantage that we can bring to bear, given that they’re there pacing it a little bit and we’re going to give it our best shot.

[00:22:14] And then the next thing you guys did, I don’t know if it’s the next thing you did, but the next thing you did that really sort of resonated with me. That affected me was education. And I think back to those early days of independent seminars where you guys would bring a speaker from the US who not even I’m not even talking about the big names, but, but the big names as well. And on occasion there’d be a 600 people at this event that the guy was just talking. There was no, there was no hands on, but the guy was just talking. And more than that, I mean, I remember some of them were gigantic events. How did you first get into education? Was that were you looking at is that is that a standard playbook for a publisher? Is that what is that? Is that what happened? Did someone tell you, look, we haven’t got enough education because we certainly didn’t?

[00:23:09] Yeah. I mean, the the education went the same way that the original title did in that I went to the US and I followed the lead insofar as what were they doing that was working well? And I suppose the thing that typifies my approach to things is I appreciate, I don’t know best, so I’ll try and learn from the best guy I can and typically in the sector. Uk Dental Communications it’s not one of my rivals. So we’d go to the US and we’d go through every speaker we could find, go to the big conventions and watch who’s really pulling an audience. Where are the audience really engaging? Where do the the approval ratings look the highest? And we would bring those people back to the UK and many of them had never been seen in the UK before. A few of the pioneering early adopting type dentists would go to the US for postgraduate education. But Payman they were there wasn’t there weren’t many of them, and certainly not guys in the younger half of their career. And so we would bring these speakers across. They were honoured to be brought to the UK. They were very expensive but they, they pulled in a big audience and we were viewed to be innovative and, and connecting the audience with, with progressive thinking and different clinical techniques than were present at the time.

[00:24:44] So again, I think in the communications world it was a pretty typical playbook. But the way we did it, it was more my tried and tested approach. Go to the biggest market we can find and see what they are doing. And yeah, that’s there was a procession of global speakers actually that we brought to the UK in a time where the NHS dominated, where major league speakers weren’t really coming to the UK. So we became well known for that attitude and the stakes were quite high. Payman So if we could get 600 people in the room all paying, we could afford it. But if we didn’t, obviously it was a typical business risk that that would end up hurting. So again, and it’s really something that played out many times over the years, us against our rivals. Our rivals just wouldn’t do it. It was too much of a risk where I would do it every day of the week if I could. And, you know, I’m a risk taker and want to push to the boundaries and it went really well.

[00:25:55] So when you look back to those events, the couple that spring to mind that I was at was there was a Larry one. Rosenthal one that was packed. It was completely packed. It was I’d never seen an event that big in the industry before. And then I remember one of those world aesthetic Congresses that just I can’t I don’t know how many people there were, but it was it was a two or three days or something, wasn’t it whack? Was it two days or three days?

[00:26:24] Two days, two days?

[00:26:26] And it was it was an expensive ticket. I remember thinking that’s like that’s a new price for a ticket at the time. And there was hands on. There was there was five rooms of hands. So on it was like it was something bigger than a standard kind of BCD conference that you might go to today. It was it was a big, big, big event with excellent, you know, a V, your staff uniform, did a good food little drink at the end. And, you know, there was a moment there where I remember thinking, you know, we’d started doing a few events here and there, and I was running around sweating. And I remember looking at you and you were just totally calm and cool during these events.

[00:27:10] Yeah.

[00:27:11] Thinking back to those days, what are some of the highlights in your head? I mean, those in my head.

[00:27:15] But I think we share those moments. So they were great times and my philosophy in people is invest in people, support your people and let them let them do their thing. So in those moments they ran the show and I was just there enjoying it. So that was terrific feeling mean. It was a great feeling to feel that we were leading the line in terms of original speakers and a little bit of sex appeal was a bit of showbiz was coming into the sector. That just wasn’t evident before. People were also obviously getting a buzz out of it, the delegates that is, and didn’t begrudge spending the money which was. Expensive for a day, but it was really a lovely yeah, it’s a great period of time and certainly in my development it was it was great to see the team that I’d put together, use their individual skills to make these things really special. And I think the more I got involved, the worse it would have become. So I just stood back and enjoyed it. Yeah, and that’s really how it works.

[00:28:21] Ken, would you say you said you’re a risk taker. But where do you think that comes from?

[00:28:28] I think in Scotland it’s quite a conservative country by nature. So those of us who who are a little bit more in are not many of us as a percentage. But if you if you want to really sort of self-selecting, if you want to move on or try something different, you have to just take risks. The markets are too small in most sectors in Scotland to get anywhere. And therefore I just think I just have a competitive appetite to push myself. And leaving home, leaving. I live in South Africa when I first came to Britain on my own. I’d just like to try really hard and it just becomes part of the territory. I don’t want to have a conservative easy life. I just don’t. I want to do the best I can do so. But why? Just think it’s an instinct. Payman.

[00:29:21] You know, I mean, was your dad in business or something?

[00:29:24] My dad is in business. Yeah, he he was in corporate life. He’s a director of a large international company. And then he founded our family business, which is still going to this day.

[00:29:37] What was that?

[00:29:38] It’s a hospitality, training and restaurant business based in Australia. So he is an entrepreneur, very corporate to start with, and then entrepreneur then it’s just something that we like having a go at things and just I think very competitive by nature, just an instinct. I mean, I still play sport to this day and sometimes I ask myself, why do I do it? And it’s not for the love of the sport. It’s just I just like the challenge and winning, if possible. Frequently, not frequently. Not winning, but I’ll always have a crack at it, and I always believe I will win even when I don’t. But it’s quite a shock to me when I trudge off a loser having thought I win to the very last minute. But yeah, I think it’s instinctive. I do.

[00:30:27] How important do you think that is? I mean, it’s weird because you can’t it hasn’t got weight. You can’t hold it. It’s not it’s not a it’s not a it’s not a tangible asset. Confidence is kind of what you’re saying, right? That sort of. But at the same time, it’s so super important when when you when you’re doing something, the idea that that sort of optimism is one way of putting it, but it’s more than that. It’s confidence that you’re going you’re going to win it. This thing. How important do you think that is to have that attitude before you start a thing, a venture of any sort? I mean, when when you guys said you’re going to do education, I can imagine you saying, okay, we’re going to win it this year. How important is that moment, that that moment when you think that.

[00:31:10] Well, I guess it’s pretty damn significant. You don’t think it, though? I mean, you just I mean, my mantra internally would be, we will approach this and we will give it our very, very best effort. And the belief is it will work. You know, that’s really how it goes. I suppose the Avis we try harder notion pretty much sticks with everything we do. You know, we try harder, but we like to think the idea was strong to start with. So if you marry a good idea with a lot of effort, it should work out well. And I’d go into pretty much everything thinking that.

[00:31:46] Yeah, but, but you know, the kind of person who has a good idea isn’t necessarily the kind of person who organises for, you know, massive effort and efforts. A funny word, but you know what I mean. The ops guy isn’t usually the same person as the ideas guy. So which one of you are you both? Were you the ideas guy?

[00:32:06] I’d say. I’m not very creative in my ideas are always pretty basic and likely to work and I take them from from the experts so I suppose I’ll put it into practise. You know, you mould it to the sector, but the idea is pretty damn obvious to start with. And I suppose I’m a practical thinker, not an original or creative thinking. So it didn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with the idea, but in order to make it work, you had to really graft. Yeah.

[00:32:39] Even even in the when I, when I pay attention to the way you guys operate in terms of the copy, when, when I say copy, I don’t mean the editorial copy. I mean, I don’t know. You’re trying to sell me something. Yeah, that that that never works. We’ll talk about that later. But but the copy, the follow up process, process wise, yeah. I’ve noticed over the years the people might have changed. There’s some now there’s some young kid doing something. Yeah, but the process is actually the same process as you are following before. It’s a tried and tested process. So you, the guy who sort of was the architect of that process and do you get involved in the very words themselves or or as they’re someone else? How how did it all come about this this this thing?

[00:33:35] Well, there’s about 40 of us in the business right now. And, no, I don’t get involved in the processes at all. And I don’t even understand them. I don’t really understand them, frankly. And I don’t, you know, a bit like you saw me at the conferences. I don’t really understand exactly what’s going on. Yeah. I mean, I really believe in people and try my best to support them and make sure that they can be the best of themselves. So if they’ve got the role of producing things, then they’ll make that process for themselves and and hopefully excel at it. I would say there is a fairly significant evolution there. I don’t quite know what it is, but it’s certainly more more digital and tech oriented than it used to be. A lot of it’s automated, whereas it never was before. But it’s really again, that that’s one of the reasons I think why we’ve managed to hang on in there as long as we have, is that the people really drive it through their own areas, not it’s not me and I just want to make sure that I keep them as upbeat as possible and support them as best I can so that they want to do that. And then it’s their effort and initiative rather than mine.

[00:34:50] Well, you’ve always attracted good people and kept good people, and I guess, you know, developed good people. What’s what’s what’s your view on recruitment and how do you pick these people? Where do you find them and what are you looking for when you’re hiring?

[00:35:04] Well, I think I mean, we’ve made many mistakes, too, but hopefully, on balance, the recruitment process works. But with your business payment to all businesses that survive, I think the essence of the business is its culture. And therefore the people coming in need to mould to that culture rather than the other way around. And, you know, that sort of drives itself and it moulds and develops people because they in order to fit in at FMC, you’ll have to try hard. You’ll have to be fairly accommodating of your of your peers and contemporaries, and therefore they become FMC people. I’d say that’s why the momentum continues to be good, because the ones that don’t fit you probably never got to know payment because it just didn’t work. The ones that do fit stay long term and and add to the culture and develop the business that way.

[00:36:03] But how much do you get involved in in I mean, at what level is Ken going to you’re going to meet Ken in an interview process.

[00:36:12] No. The answer to that? No, no, not.

[00:36:16] Even if you’re buying that, you’re getting yourself ahead of sales or something or you internally promote those guys.

[00:36:21] That guy’s been there for years. Yeah, but the. No, I mean, again, I mean, that’s really, I’m sure in practises across the country, certainly the ones I’ve met and what I do in my business too is it’s I just really back to people to make the decisions. So it’s no need for me to be there or to, to get involved in that and it doesn’t work very well in it. I’d be too strung out and meddling with people. People that in that work with me will will make their own decisions and hopefully get it right.

[00:36:59] Well, I mean, it’s interesting that, you know, you say culture. I find culture as a thing that just happens in a way. It’s like it’s such a buzz word, isn’t it? That’s sort of for me, though. The culture ends up being what it is. It’s I don’t go and sit there and say, Oh, I the culture here will be X and then make that happen. You know what I mean? I feel like it. It’s a reflection of who you are in a way.

[00:37:30] I think there’s a lot to be said for that, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I’m from I can still remember there’s early days of me sketching out how the company would look. And I am quite a planner in that sense and work ethic, you know, compatibility with one another, you know, going the extra mile, you know, trying to innovate on an ongoing and constant basis. They would be hallmarks from day one, I would say. And they still are, hopefully. And the people that fit the business will will work with those principles too.

[00:38:05] So I visited an office before your current office. The house.

[00:38:12] Yeah.

[00:38:13] Was that your first ever office or was there one before that as well?

[00:38:16] No, that was the first ever office. It was it was next to the funeral parlour, just across from Mill Hill. Broadway. Mill Hill. And. Yeah. And you know, you remember those first.

[00:38:29] You were bursting point when I first got there, so maybe that would have been.

[00:38:34] 2003 or something. We would have been happy to leave. I think 2000 won.

[00:38:42] You left in 2001?

[00:38:44] I believe so, yeah. I mean, the I had a picture in my mind’s eye of a basic rundown dilapidated office in the London postcode area. And that’s exactly what I got and that’s exactly what I wanted. And it really served us well. And I passed that office all the time. I have huge affection for it. The windows didn’t actually open at all and it was cheap and it served us really well. So yeah, that was lovely times there and it was a great triumph to leave though. And we bought our own offices in next to the Arsenal training ground in Hertfordshire and felt like we’d come of age, came in and we’re still there.

[00:39:28] And Ken, along the way you’ve sold this company and bought it back a couple of times.

[00:39:33] Yeah. I have. Well, as anybody who who set a business up knows, it’s a daunting process and you’re always in fear of it going pear shaped for whatever reason. And I’m no different to that. So basically we had a lot of success one day. I had four children at the time. I’ve still got four children, actually, but they were all under five and it’s very expensive and exhausting and all the things you get. And somebody offered me a significant amount of money out of the blue for what they thought was a burgeoning organisation. And in the moment I initially said we weren’t for sale as I read in the book, that’s what you’re supposed to say. And shortly afterwards I capitulated. But but it was really through fear, frankly. You don’t know what the future’s going to hold in store. And and I regretted that. Thankfully, I managed to stay in the company as an employee and did a management buyout the year later, which was an interesting exercise. And then I developed the business further. And a few years later, tragically, my dad died in Australia. As you know, running a business takes a lot of your time up and here we are 8:30 on a monday night and I felt very guilty that I let my dad down and that I hadn’t been there enough for him, even though he got on extremely well.

[00:41:02] And I thought to myself, I don’t need to put this level of effort in anymore. So I decided to sell the company again through an emotional connexion. And it was very, very sought after by the major media businesses in Britain at that time, and I didn’t think I’d ever come back payment. And then a few months after that I’d gotten over my dad’s passing and realised how much I regretted selling the company and was lucky enough to be able to repurchase it, which is where I am now. And that’s probably those two are regrets I have in business. You know, there’s no need to do that. You need to take a deep breath. You need to maybe go away for a bit. And which is what I did in my last tragedy, which, you know, you need to take a bit of time out that you don’t need to panic with the business. And I certainly learnt some lessons over the years this time.

[00:41:55] That was the time you sold to Springer Group, right?

[00:41:58] That’s correct, yes.

[00:42:00] So the process of selling to a giant organisation like that, though, I mean, that’s that’s a proper you must have gotten corporate finance people. I mean, they don’t buy companies quickly, do they. They kind of do do all their due diligence. And all that was it was it was a purposeful process. It wasn’t like someone just made you an offer you decided to sell.

[00:42:20] Yeah, it was a calculated process on my part.

[00:42:24] But I don’t think it was. Once you’d sold it, you felt like you made an error.

[00:42:28] Well, as I do in most things, it was a process, so I thought about it. Enlisted corporate finance. As you say, we did a beauty parade. It was all it was all planned and organised. And I’m delighted to say that nearly every major media business was interested in us at that point. And we finally sold to Springer, which is a multi-billion dollar organisation based in Berlin as a headquarters, but they’re all over the world. But the. Yeah, and quite frankly, I mean it was a, it was a seamless exercise. It just just went exactly like we’d hoped and planned. And it was a smooth process, actually. It’s only afterwards when you realise you’ve got nothing to do and no real purpose that you realise maybe that was a little premature and I’m much happier now.

[00:43:22] I fully understand the derisking thing that you’re talking about because a lot of times the business you’re teetering on the edge of becoming a multi-millionaire or becoming bankrupt at the same time is kind of a weird, weird feeling in business that you have because like you say, you take another risk even even even when things go very, very well, you can ruin it all with a very, very big risk. That was miscalculated. Right. So I do get that that sort of idea of sort of de-risk take some money off the table. But but I’ve never sold the company, so I don’t know how it feels. So is it that cliche thing that people talk about? Is that what it was that you felt empty and all that? And if it was, why didn’t you do something else? Like, why didn’t you open a restaurant or something? I know you’re not a restaurant guy, but you know. You know what I mean? Why? Why the same business again? Because you loved it so much.

[00:44:14] Well, the interesting thing there is I actually started multiple businesses after leaving.

[00:44:20] Oh, you did? Yeah. Go on.

[00:44:22] I realised how incapable I was at that over the course of some years. So you go back to what you’re good at? Yes. I’d had a lot of success and I enjoyed it a lot. I really do enjoy what I do. I mean, I have a lot of social time within the industry. You know, the great awards nights are great fun and and I missed all of that and I always had fairly good earnings as well. Over the years the company’s been been well positioned and profitable for a quarter of a century. But but I didn’t need much of anything and my life was just a lot more dull. So I started up by businesses. You know, some of them are still going, but.

[00:45:08] What would you call them? What did you do?

[00:45:11] Well, I started a. If you’ve ever.

[00:45:15] Heard of me.

[00:45:16] Pimlico Plumbers.

[00:45:19] Yeah.

[00:45:20] I didn’t start that. But I looked at the model really carefully and I decided to start a company called the London Tree Company.

[00:45:28] A tree surgery, I remember.

[00:45:29] Which is it was branded tree surgery for the the London brand, whereas much like Pimlico Plumbers did that for Up-Market London, that’s really where we’re going. We had contracts with Wembley Stadium and other aristocrats in the area, so but I realised how dangerous it was. The idea actually did work very well but it was a hell of a danger. So I decided to get out of that and on it goes. There’s a number of different things. I did an advertising agency, a PR company, some other things, and they were unfulfilling for me. I think for the people I was working with, it worked quite well and I’m very happy to that. But for me it wasn’t, quite frankly, I wasn’t a significant in what I was doing as the experiences that I’d enjoyed within the dentistry world. And and I really yearned for that without even realising it.

[00:46:25] Over the years, Ken Phelps’s had some stick over awards. Sometimes, I don’t know. You’re probably not part of the Facebook groups that I’m reading where these things come up, but I’m sure someone’s pointed it out to you where people worry about what’s it? What is it? They were, they weren’t. They worry about who says this practise is the most innovative practise or that that whole thing that people worry about with awards.

[00:46:53] Yeah, well, there’s a lot of Chinese whispers and talking in the corridors about it, and I understand that they really understand it just out of interest. The idea came from the media industry where FMC has been a regulator as well. We’ve entered the awards. We believe in the notion of being judged by our peers and and it’s a great feeling and uplifting for an enthusiastic business to get that accolade. And so we believe in the notion of it. So I introduce it to the industry because of that. And I knew the impact it could have on someone with, with, with a mentality to, to want to be appreciated, if you like, and to learn. And I realised also when we entered the Media Industry Awards that when you have to look at the entry forms and actually put down what you have actually achieved and what your standards are, then it does. Sometimes it’s quite an illustrative experience experiment where you think.

[00:48:03] Holds a mirror up to you, doesn’t.

[00:48:04] He? Yeah, that’s a great way of saying it. Payman You think we’re not as good in that as I thought we were? We need to try a bit harder to. I believe the process is one that benefits whoever does it, and I don’t care how good people are. If you really are looking holding the mirror up to your face and really examining the creases and cracks in your face, you might take some more action and maybe stay out of the sun a little bit more. But the you know, you learn from from the experience then then I mean, as you say, I hardly do any social media, I’m glad to say. But the I do hear time to time and people are entitled to their opinions. It’s absolutely fine. I go to these occasions, not always, but usually I go to the awards nights, the ecstasy on people’s faces and the practise enjoyment that they get. It’s just lovely to be part of and people enjoying their work and they’re their colleagues and enjoying the success that they feel they’re getting is lovely to be part of. And I feel quite. Listening for them, then I know the process as well. It’s where the zealots for making sure the process is above board. Several times. I mean, many, many times, to be honest. I’ve heard people saying if you don’t buy a table, you don’t win, and all that sort of stuff.

[00:49:32] And where does that come from? Well, I mean.

[00:49:34] But I think it’s just a misunderstanding. I mean, people just guessing that’s the case. And maybe a few people quite enjoy putting us down and stuck sticking that into the mix. And I’ve certainly seen that on LinkedIn and other things where people, some of whom have got a significant amount of influence, will see those sorts of things to try and do us down or get some sort of competitive advantage. They think it’s a shame though, because we don’t do that. And if anybody, for example, was to turn up to the private industry awards judging day, when something like 38 different luminaries from the sector are there poring through for hours on end the different submissions they’ve received, and if there’s any conflict of interest, they have to eliminate themselves and so on and so forth. It’s a it’s a tough process to do these things. And at the end of the day, Payman, you know, does the practise is it definitely the most innovative practise in Britain? Probably not. However, it will have tried hard and it will have innovated and it will have have progressed itself. And therefore, if they’re getting a positive reaction for that, I think is a great thing. There’s really no no harm done by it. And.

[00:50:55] Well well, I think we do need to in order to understand this. Yeah, we do need to separate the sort of the ridiculousness from the what could possibly a reasonable person be worried about this? Yeah. So the ridiculousness. I totally agree with you. I mean, the notion that you would try and fix this event from a from a business perspective is a complete, ridiculous idea. Why would you bother with that? It makes total sense for you, for the organisation organising the event to have nothing to do with picking the winner. Just it just does that, that separation just makes much more sense financially for a business. If profit is your only motive even. Yeah, but I guess what people are saying is something around patients. You know, patients are being misled by practises claiming they’re the best, whatever, be best young dentist, London or whatever. What do you say to that? I mean, I don’t even want you to refute it. I want I want you to understand it.

[00:51:56] Yeah. And I think if professionals are intent and hell bent on exaggerating their skill set to people and making a deal of it, they’ll do it. And the Instagram’s awash with such things and self-appointed experts or whatever that type of immoral approach happens, whether we do anything about it or not. If the guys win it through us or girls win it through us, well, at least they’ve gone through a rigorous judging process. And in the case of young dentists, there’ll be it’s probably the most popular area there is to enter. So in order to win in that area, you have to work very, very hard at your submission, if nothing else, and fooled a lot of people who are experienced and focussed on making the right decisions. So yeah, I mean we, we can’t go in everything and ensure that, that it’s, it’s the best it can possibly be. We do our, our utmost to, to judge it appropriately and zealously. And anybody that knows David Houston, for example, is a hell of a guy that cares the private industry awards. Nothing gets through that net unless it’s complied with every single thing that we can put their way. And as I say, if people want to be unscrupulous about anything and lie and cheat, they can.

[00:53:25] And they’re probably wrong for lying and cheating. I mean, they on their website say winner of London’s best young dentist, that’s not lying or cheating.

[00:53:34] That’s no. Well, if they’re one, then they’ve got through a rigorous process payment. And one suspects that in order to fool that many people, if that’s what they’ve done in other ways, either they are a very good dentist and they did win it and therefore they deserve that accolade because they did or they’ve duped a whole lot of people to get the accolade in the first place, if you see what I mean. I mean.

[00:53:55] I agree with you. Look in so much as far as the harm this might be doing. Yeah. When, when I walk past a curry house in, in Manchester and it says winner of the Curry of the year, whatever. I don’t think to myself this is the best. In the world. Yeah. Don’t I think. Well, this must be kind of a good curry because he’s won something. Yeah. Yeah, I think what the, the sort of the criticism that people level is that patients are in a, in a in a situation where, you know, they it’s a more important decision than than my curry. And they’re in a situation where they haven’t got any information at all or enough information because it’s a scientific subject and it’s a different lingo and all of that. And so patients come to rely on this instead of relying on other variables. But the thing is, you know, what other variables? What else is there a sensible person, if they’re going to find a new dentist, will talk to a friend who’s been they get a recommendation, right? That’s the right thing to do.

[00:55:00] Well, I say I mean they go through a rigorous process to Yeah.

[00:55:05] To withdraw the award in the first.

[00:55:06] Place and one surmises that the people that really aren’t up to it wouldn’t enter in the first place. It is a little self-selecting. That’s how it works in media as well. We don’t bother putting some of our things into the publishing wards. We know it’s not going to win, it’s not good enough. But some things we do think are good and we’ll self-select the best elements we have and sometimes we don’t enter, you know? So I feel that goes on to the other side of it is, is, yeah, you know, people will go on a myriad of different routes to make the decisions trustpilot and all sorts of other things. I don’t even know what they do, but you know, it’s a free country.

[00:55:46] I think it’s interesting as someone who who who would want to put themselves up for an award, it’s there’s a lot of downside here because unless you win. You didn’t win. So know you have to have respect for let’s say ten people put themselves up for best practise north or whatever it is, whichever the category is. Nine of those people are not going to win that and they’re going to go through the process and not win. And so the winner does deserve something, you know, some accolade there in beating those nine. But but for me, taking the risk in the first instance to even go into that thing, knowing that the chances are you’re not going to win it, you know, that that’s that’s the important thing. Let’s go on to the other controversial thing, which I think was your idea, right? The top 50. Was that your idea? Ken’s own idea. It was a bit controversial, too. Yeah. Do you understand the reasons for that?

[00:56:47] Yeah, I understand the reasons for it, and I also understand the level of misunderstanding that it throws up every year. And people believe they understand the process and they don’t. And somebody’s grandmother sister told them, this is what happens. And, you know, it’s not that at all. And then and then obviously, you guys on social media, you know, love throwing, you know, ridiculous notions out there about it. You know, some some people do. Anyway, the the reality of the history of that just, you know, was the Sunday Times. Yeah. The most popular edition of the Sunday Times annually is The Rich List. So I was inspired by that. I saw I was fascinated by it. And, and, and then I thought, well, how could we do that within our sector? You know, and I thought through a few areas and then I came up with a brainwave. I say that slightly sarcastically, the naive notion that we would just ask the dental world to vote for who they figure was having the best or most significant impact. And we could create a list through that. And I naively believe that to be an irrefutable way forward after two or three years. And I would always meet the person who came out top and it was it started off a few hundred people. It ended up being thousands and thousands of votes. It became probably the most popular thing in the dental media all year with that list. Love it or loathe it.

[00:58:22] Anyway, everyone’s going to read the list, aren’t they? Every that day your website gets the most hits or whatever they do. You mention also.

[00:58:31] Payman. You know, to a certain extent our job is to create audience and to create, you know, traction with people. You know, people can take from it what they will. But we need to build as big an audience as we can, and we want to do it appropriately. But if some people don’t like it, it’s not not a disaster for us, frankly, anyway, the I must say the funny side of it. So I would take the winner of the list to lunch every year. I mean, they probably didn’t even want to do it with me, but they usually go along with it anyway. So I remember meeting one of the winners in the early years, and I believe in this list 100% at that point in time. And then over lunch, the person who obviously shall remain nameless said to me, Yeah, I worked really hard to get that. I said, You worked hard. How did you do that? I said, Well, I spoke to as many people and wrote to as many people as I could to generate the the and I had no idea that this was going on. And it became evident to me that it was corruptible. And frankly, that wasn’t used to me at that point. I thought before that it was just an innocent sort of reaction from people. So we’ve been evolving it ever since and trying to to cut out the sort of people using, you know, IP addresses from abroad and all sorts of stuff that goes on and lobbying and all sorts of stuff. And at least as it stands today, payment, I believe it’s out very shortly. We actually.

[01:00:02] Am I on it but.

[01:00:03] You you you might be. I’ve not been to the office for many months. For all I know you are on it. I might as well.

[01:00:12] We should do though. You should. You should, you should. You should make your own note. Did you used to do this? That was it. Like there was the top 50 and then these were the next 50 GS to do that?

[01:00:23] Yeah, I think we did do that.

[01:00:25] We expanded out, make 50 more people happy as well, you.

[01:00:28] Know what I mean? Well, we meant well, but now, now just for the record payment and I’m quite happy to say this to the however many hundred people listen to it, but the the the one coming out shortly is, is really it’s our view as dentistry where where we spend our lives listening, watching, seeing who’s creating an impact, seeing who’s coming through. We mean well. And there is no ranking in the list anymore. It’s 50 people who we feel have made a big impact, some mostly for good reasons, some through infamy. But but the idea of the list now is, oh, is it changed?

[01:01:09] It’s not a it’s not a voted thing.

[01:01:11] Well, people can vote, which gives us some currency to look at. But the editorial board and the office, I mean, I’m not part of it, but the office themselves sit down and think about whether payment Langroudi should be on that list or not. And I don’t know Payman I actually have no idea. As usual in my life, I don’t know what who’s on the list, but I know, I know the positioning of it is, is, is around some fireworks going on is is who’s made an impact. And it’s 50 people who we believe deserve to be recognised for having that impact. And if anyone’s going to criticise it, they can say it directly to us because we’ve picked it. We’ve been helped by people out there in the UK saying We think this person, we think that person and they voted. But but we’re making it clear that it’s it’s not just the list. It’s not just about it.

[01:02:06] I mean, can any time you do anything significant, there’s going to be some sort of unintended consequence of that. It’s just you just take that for granted once you get.

[01:02:15] Your head above the parapet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:02:18] Even even a simple, I don’t know, a simple performance related pay scheme that I put in for my sales people in. In the end, that itself produces some unintended consequence. Sure. And then you try and address that and then it produces a new identity because like anything you do does have an unintended consequence sometimes in media. I guess one of the things is that you’ve got you’ve got a lot of people who feel like they can attack it. You know, that’s I guess.

[01:02:49] Exactly. And I suppose if you’re trying really hard, you’ll have a few more people having a puppet you than than if you didn’t. I mean, there are media out there that I never hear people complaining about anything they do, and I don’t seek it. But if people are making a deal, if the industry 50 list is not necessarily a bad thing payment and I know our heart is in the right place, we’re trying to help and I think generally speaking it does have a positive impact and that’s as good as we can do, but we can’t always get it 100% right. But we’ll try our best, but also to innovate. You know, the old thing about let’s do some market research, let’s ask people what they want. They don’t know what they want. We have to take a gamble and and.

[01:03:35] I’d say that was a very successful gamble. Is it can.

[01:03:38] Yeah.

[01:03:39] Mostly, yeah. Tell me about mistakes you’ve made and things you would have done differently. You undersold it twice.

[01:03:48] Yeah, they’re the biggest mistakes. I thought about that over the last night when I was considering this podcast. I didn’t need to do that. I lost a few years of my life in the wilderness as a consequence and actually Payman in a candid note, when I wasn’t in the sector doing, you know, I worked pretty hard and I don’t go to the office anymore, but I’m still working all the time. It is I wasn’t as purposeful in life in general and the consuming world that I live in with this small organisation that I’ve developed, it takes a lot of concentration and is a good thing for me as a human being. I think so. I do. It’s the biggest mistake I made. I don’t regret it, but it was a mistake for sure. No need for that.

[01:04:36] What would you say? What would you say is your biggest weakness as an operator?

[01:04:41] I’d say. It helped me hugely through my career, but I’m a hell of a tolerant guy.

[01:04:50] I’m the weakness.

[01:04:51] Yeah. I’m the most tolerant guy I know. Now, you imagine being in the same job for 78 years or something like that. Payman If you’re if you’re a very, very tolerant person, as I would say I am, then that that can that can cause trouble. It typically works, but it’s it’s you know, it can’t be construed as a weakness.

[01:05:14] No, you’re right. I mean, a lot of times your biggest strength is your biggest weakness as well. Yeah. You know, you could say, hey, I’m a kind guy, but then two kind in work doesn’t work either, does it? Yeah, that’s the thing.

[01:05:26] So I’d say that. Yeah.

[01:05:28] I want to talk about what you think is going to be the future of dentistry and the sort of the short to medium term. You’ve got a unique sort of position if you’ve watched it, do what it’s done in the last 25 years.

[01:05:43] I’m really excited. Payment for the sector. I’m really excited. I think if you look at the per capita spend on dentistry in UK compared to Germany, compared to Spain, compared to Italy, compared to France, we are way down. I know that the NHS has played a significant role in that, but I believe that the population is prepared to invest more heavily in dentistry and that throws up huge opportunities for for dentists and dental professionals. And training is going to play a huge part in that. Skill development is going to play a huge part in that learning and listening to the innovations. But, you know, it’s just it’s a really exciting place to be. When I look at my children, all of whom are in their twenties, they all have dental work in progress. They’re all their peer group. Their friendship group has. And I think me at that age and my friendship group, we weren’t doing anything in that area. And it’s and they love it and they’re enjoying these developments. And I think there’s so much to be excited about in terms of of private and cosmetically oriented dentistry. There’s a huge demand I know the Conservatives are in in terms of type of person. I don’t particularly like that notion, but I think consumer demand is massive for that and appropriately done and ethically done. You know, dentists can help even more people be more happy and more confident in life than ever. And there’s good revenue to be had there too, if done really well.

[01:07:24] See, can I get where you’re coming from? Regarding, I don’t know. A waitress in a bar was, was, was offering me a drink and she was wearing Invisalign. Yeah. And, and that’s a £4,000 treatment or whatever it is. And you’re right, 25 years ago, no waitress was spending £4,000 on her teeth. No way at all. But you grew up a bit in South Africa and you recognise what I’m saying about in some countries because there hasn’t been an NHS or for whatever reason it’s clear people save up for their teeth or they buy insurance for their teeth or you know, that people think I’m going to have to spend money on braces for my child. It’s in the culture, it’s there. Whereas here that you feel like, you know, it translates the fact that that waitress is buying the cosmetic thing. Do you feel like now we’re at a sort of inflexion point where more of the population will will actually think that I’m going to save up for my teeth? Absolutely. You know, we’re not there in health care and I actually don’t want it to get there in health care necessarily. But in dental, you think there is that inflexion can happen?

[01:08:39] That is my take on it and the research that we do amongst the profession to ascertain what are the trends, what are you being asked to do more of, what are people coming in and asking for all points towards that as well? There’s going to be geographic differences and variances for sure. But I was in Edinburgh yesterday, my daughter’s at Edinburgh University and you know, the brighter, whiter Smile was very much in evidence there. And I went to school in Edinburgh too for a bit and it wasn’t, it wasn’t evident then, but the I can assure you, and I feel that there’s a lot of doom and gloom in the world, in Britain and everywhere about, you know, after the pandemic. And it’s going to be terrible and things are going to go back. And I don’t see it. I just think that I’m very excited about what’s going to happen in UK dentistry over the next few years and see me through my career. I believe that it’s going to be higher up the priority list in the population and you know, there’s great opportunities for dental professionals and media for that matter in that development and I can’t see any other options. I can’t see going the other way.

[01:09:46] I mean, one thing we can be clear on overall. Covid was very good for the professional. It’s a weird thing to say, but it’s true. And so you’ve been through how many recessions now? 2001, 2008? There was one before that, wasn’t there? You’ve been through you’ve watched the profession go through three recessions, at least. And if there is one around the corner, what’s your view? What’s your what’s your advice to young? I mean, there’s going to be some dentists who’ve never seen recession, right?

[01:10:20] Yeah.

[01:10:21] Well, as a profession, we seem to fare okay in a recession. Do you agree?

[01:10:26] I’ve not seen the same major problems in dentistry the whole time I’ve been in the sector. Yeah, frankly, I mean, we hear in the national media, but dentistry has never been particularly hard hit. It’s as far as I’m aware. And my thinking in terms of young dentistry going forward is the diversification of offering. So segment the local community into different types and target those different groups rather than specialising in one element is to offer, you know, the older people such as myself our type of care, the younger 20 something group, a different type of care and so on and so forth. So by segmenting the options, I’m just convinced that there’s a fantastic ethical and business model for young dentistry better than there ever was. And more satisfying to the amount of dentists that’s spoken to me is that, you know, I still much prefer the way it is now because I can implement skill set skill levels that when I just used to do NHS dentistry I just couldn’t do and it’s much more fulfilling, is nice to hear. So I think it’s a blend of that, but I think it’s, it’s very good times ahead.

[01:11:40] When at the end of our time can. I do want to talk about Kimberly, your co-founder, your wife in many ways the heart and soul of FMC, who was taken by COVID, one of the first UK citizens to be taken by COVID before the first lockdown.

[01:12:00] Yeah.

[01:12:03] Was losing her meant to the to the company and then with the family, the kids and all that.

[01:12:10] Yeah. I mean, losing Kimberly was an absolute. In a disaster for us in every element of her life, business, personally, the children and so on. Her memory lives on, though. You know, we talked about culture earlier in our Kimberleys. Culture runs right through the middle of that business to this day. It’s a very generous, very creative individual. And, you know, we still are inspired by that on an ongoing basis, you know, and I think that like it would with me, I think payment, you know, if I was to to pass away tomorrow, I think the business would be fine for the fullness of time. But the the it’s hard the children very, very hard. She’s terribly missed. And the there’s not much more you can say but in the business and what we do there, I think her effect will be there for the long term. One of the things I’m very proud of, though, you were a great support of this payment. Many, many people were. Is that in communities memory, we managed to raise a significant amount of money and her memory has has has meant that we’ve been able to purchase a significant bus for Dent Aid, which will have Kimberly’s name on the front of it and will help homeless people, people that need dental treatment across the country for many, many years to come as well. And that’s very comforting for me and the children, the people at FMC as well, that that.

[01:13:51] Kimberly’s.

[01:13:52] In essence of her, we’ll be driving around the country helping people as she did when she was alive.

[01:14:02] I’m sure she’ll be missed. I’m sure she’ll be missed. She really was a life force. Was. That, as I say, the first person I met at FMC. Yeah. And, you know, I hope your kids are managing. We end it with the same questions every time can. You open your mind to some fancy dinner party? Three guests. Dead or alive?

[01:14:33] Dead or alive? Well, you mentioned him earlier. A huge power in the world. Spiritual force. Gandhi. I think spending time with someone like that would be amazing and inspiring and. That’s that’s something I also really enjoy and enjoyed. I don’t know if he’s if he’s on as much as he used to be. There’s a rabbi called Jonathan Sacks, who and.

[01:15:01] Another rabbi, Radio four.

[01:15:04] And again, I just love the thinking. I love the the way the way he sees things. And any time with wise people of that nature, it’s just. Inspiring. And the third one would be I’ll just take Kimberly back for that moment. And she’s such a humorous, wise, fun, energetic, lovely person to be around. I think we’d have it nailed with those three.

[01:15:38] Perhaps. Final question. On your deathbed. Three pieces of advice for your loved ones.

[01:15:47] Well, I felt like I’ve been there, but I managed to get away with it. But I’m still I’m still here. So. So the mantras that I try to preach to my kids are you. Be you. Just be yourself, but be the best of yourself. So make sure you just leave your imprint. A favourite one for me. Payman. Which again obviously I do talk to my kids all the time and as a single parent is really key at this time to do that. But the I don’t like the notion of worry at all either. Don’t worry about anything. Take action where the problems are. And lastly and obviously I’ve had the pain, as we all have in life, losing people and so on, and just love the people around you and love the day you’re in because you never know what’s going to happen. So make sure you show them and enjoy them. And even in yourself, make sure that day is a winner and you take a lot from it because we all take things for granted and there’s no such thing as perpetuity. So we need to make it make it work.

[01:17:06] Well, that’s lovely, man. Ken, thank you so, so much for doing this. You one of the biggest inspirations in my career. You continue to be as well. I really, really enjoyed that conversation very much. And thank you. Thank you for being so open about everything.

[01:17:24] It’s a pleasure payment and about that art deal that we’re talking about.

[01:17:28] Yeah, yeah. Find me on that. Yeah.

[01:17:34] Make sure that I got you say yes. You said a clear yes there.

[01:17:40] Yeah.

[01:17:41] Well, thanks for having me on payment. It’s been great. And you know, I’ve got everything to thank the dental world for and I have a great life and lots of, you know, I enjoy myself as much as I can. And in my work time and my evenings with with the with the profession and is everything to me. So it’s great to be featured.

[01:18:02] Absolutely, man. Real inspiration. But thank you. Thank you so much for doing this.

[01:18:08] 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.

[01:18:24] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, 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.

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