Category: Podcast

Speaker1: And I’m glad that it’s now probably more accepted to go outside the curriculum and get some learning through mini smile makeover or other means. Because with clinical exposure reducing since I left and since you left, dentists coming out are not as experienced with all the procedures, so they have to do more learning when it comes to private education, shadowing, reading. So if they can do that early whilst they’re in dental school, in this protected environment it’s all the better.

Speaker2: This [00:00:30] 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.

Speaker3: It gives me great pleasure to welcome Sahil Patel onto the podcast. So he a young dentist who’s making lots of waves from where I can see he’s just got accredited at the OECD, which [00:01:00] I saw, which is a massive achievement. Having watched Dipesh Parliament go through that process as a what a massive achievement that is. So congratulations on that. So he’s opened his own practice in the West End, Marylebone Smile Clinic Clinic, Melbourne Smile Clinic recently, where he’s focusing on aesthetic and restorative dentistry. I actually was in the lift at the OECD and a couple of the examiners were asking too, so how was the Hills work? And there was a [00:01:30] knowing nod. And in that lift, knowing little knowing nod saying, you know, it was it was excellent work and we could see your work online. The other thing so he has done a lot of is, you know, just get himself out there and educate the public on, you know, all the different parts of dentistry. But this time, you know, our audience is mainly dentists. So maybe a bit different to the focus you’ve had. Thanks a lot for coming in for this.

Speaker1: Thanks, Payman. Thanks very much for having [00:02:00] me on. And the comment about the lift I haven’t heard about, and I thought it would be a different answer because they gave me a specially a hard time during the viva, and I’ve been telling stories about it since. I enjoyed it a lot. I wish there was a recording of it, because such useful debates and discussions amongst very knowledgeable people asking me questions about cases. I found it helpful and yeah, stressful.

Speaker3: So take us back. [00:02:30] Give me. Give me your backstory. Sahil. As a kid, where did you grow up? When was the first time dentistry came on your radar?

Speaker1: Grew up in north London, and dentistry came up relatively late in the thought cycle or application cycle. When kids go through lower sixth form and are asked, what do you want to do at university? I was encouraged to do medicine. I looked around me. Lots of my friends. My older brother had gone to medical school. Yeah. Me too. And one [00:03:00] thing I asked myself at that immature age was, how do I want to spend my time outside of work and inside work? And I always knew I had interests outside of dentistry. So quite selfishly, at the time, I thought, I’m being told I’m good at biology. I like working with people, but also would like to do things at my own time as well. Dentistry seemed to allow for that, or at least on the face of it. And those were the core reasons why it appealed to me. There was no innate passion for teeth, I don’t think. I don’t think anyone has that.

Speaker3: I [00:03:30] asked this question a lot. Right. And you do get there tends to be three answers to it. One is kind of the one you gave late, being sort of soberly looking at how you want your career to turn out. There is another one which is I had a great experience at the dentist myself, and from then I decided to be a dentist, which is a lovely story, right? Which means people are treating people well. But then sometimes you do get these people who say, I want to be a dentist since I was five years old. It’s rare. I find that.

Speaker1: Hard to hard to relate to because [00:04:00] many people ask me to this day, why would you want to spend your time looking in people’s mouths? You know, on the face of it, it seems like quite a squeamish thing to do. So at a young age, having a passion for it or innate passion for teeth. It’s exceptionally rare for me. That came a lot later. Was there anything.

Speaker3: Else on your radar apart from medicine, dentistry? When were you thinking maybe, I don’t know, engineering or law? Some some other angle in another life?

Speaker1: I would love to have gone into film production. Oh, really? [00:04:30] In another life, I would have loved to have tried to become a professional performer in some way. I did a lot of dance through university and through school. I continued to this day and Hollywood used to be Bollywood house and locking through university and then competing in Latin and ballroom through university. So that’s what I do. More recently, a couple of colleagues I know did go pro and you know, I live vicariously through them. It’s a tough life, but also an amazing and very different life to clinical [00:05:00] dentistry. So those are the two things I would fantasise about.

Speaker3: So performing. So that really puts it into sort of focus that like watching your social media, how comfortable you are. And I remember looking at it when you started really going in all in on it. I remember thinking, these youngsters are just so comfortable in front of a camera, you know, they just find it so easy. But were you lots of plays and school plays and that sort of thing as well as you were growing up?

Speaker1: No, I’ve actually [00:05:30] never been into acting or singing or dancing specifically. Dance. Yeah. Which has an element of acting to it. Yeah, but coming to recording yourself on camera, I didn’t think of it so much as performing and it didn’t. Come naturally to me. Although you said it does.

Speaker3: Seems like it does.

Speaker1: I think having confidence in what I knew and what I was discussing seemed to help, because it didn’t require me to rehearse lines. None of the videos I do.

Speaker3: Was it ad lib?

Speaker1: 95% of it. [00:06:00]

Speaker3: Oh, that’s so interesting. Sam Jethwa said the same thing to me and I couldn’t believe it, man. I was like, Jesus. Even the bigger achievement.

Speaker1: People can see very quickly. When you’ve rehearsed something, you can see through it. People know when it’s not authentically you. It’s true. And I was very aware of that when I did try to write something out that was, let’s say, complicated. You look at, you watch yourself back and you think it doesn’t look genuine and you wouldn’t buy it. And I think when it comes to health care, people are looking for relatability. Very true. They could see if you’re not being [00:06:30] truthful in that moment just through body language. So I was very aware of that. And I think if it doesn’t, usually when if it doesn’t come through in the first or second take, it’s not going to be better than that.

Speaker3: It’s funny because there’s a camera on right now, isn’t there? And somehow I can ignore it because I feel like we are just chatting and then it happens to be recorded. Whereas if I’m standing in front of the phone, it’s not just me. Maybe that’s the way to think of it. And maybe that’ll be the the my answer to my problem. But [00:07:00] I can’t talk to the camera as I hate it. Completely hate it.

Speaker1: I had a little bit of the same issue because you’re looking into a lens which is not looking back at you. Yeah, exactly. But right now I’m looking at you exactly. When you look at a lens, you’re just seeing a very small reflection of yourself, and there’s no one there. And I’ve had to break that down by repetition. And I think that’s probably how most people do. You then become more related to the camera, which is an odd expression, but these days I don’t think of it much.

Speaker3: Well, I can see that you do look comfortable now. [00:07:30] So tell me, you decided to go for dentistry. Was there a thought process of I’m definitely leaving London for university or what? How did you end up in Bristol? Why Bristol?

Speaker1: It was the only university that gave me an offer. Yeah. I desperately wanted to go to King’s College because all my friends were going there. Yeah, it has a good reputation, especially amongst secondary schools. Yeah. I was really upset to go to Bristol. I was torn and I was at the time I was childishly. [00:08:00]

Speaker3: Though now, in retrospect.

Speaker1: Very much so. I think as a teenager growing up in north London, you think you.

Speaker3: Know it all.

Speaker1: And the world revolves around London, outside the M25. Nothing exists. And I was of that mindset and foolishly, it was the best thing I could have done to separate from a circle that I knew very well and find out that actually, outside London, there are all sorts of worlds which are just as good, if not better. And I threw myself into Bristol life, and it took a couple of years to actually [00:08:30] become settled and feel like it was more comfortable there than I was at home. And afterwards I didn’t want to leave, and I was really sad to leave after five years, just as torn to leave and go to a new, new place, which was even remote area. Cool. Yeah.

Speaker3: To get to. I adore Bristol. I love Bristol, it’s one of the towns in the UK that I could live in. Me too. I studied in Cardiff and we used to visit Bristol sometimes for whatever [00:09:00] it was. But I love Bristol so much. I visit Alfonso and the Touraj and Richard Field and it’s a great town and there’s great restaurants, great people, great people. So, okay. How were you as a as a dental student? Were you top of your class or not?

Speaker1: No, I would say I was average right in the middle. As time went on, I became disillusioned with dentistry. In the first three years, I think. I didn’t know if it was something that I enjoyed. [00:09:30] I knew there was an academic component, which you’re trained just to go through the phases of that, and then you start to see patients and you start to realise what the job and the task really entails. And I struggled. I was not particularly good with the practical learning of my hands. I was I was lagging behind and a couple of colleagues who I stay in touch with today, the three of us were comparing notes as to how bad we were because we were just rocking right at the bottom. And [00:10:00] as time went on, I had some influence from a couple of dentists. You may know Nick Claydon, he has a practice in Cardiff. He made an impression on me early on and I was lucky enough to go and visit his practice, and that changed my mindset as to what dentistry could be. It was a stark contrast to how the dental hospital ran things, and something in that gave me a lot of motivation to explore what’s outside of the dental school. And he actually was the first one who pointed me towards the British Academy of [00:10:30] Aesthetic Dentistry, and he just said the name and I didn’t know what it was. And that academy is not particularly well known compared to the BCD, which you mentioned earlier. And then from there I met Richard Field and became a student rep. All of that, and that gave me a lot of motivation to become quite rebellious as a student in the final clinical years. I was trying to break out of it early, I’d say, which is good and bad, but.

Speaker3: So you’re saying that Nick sort of inspired you to go after excellence, whereas the dental school [00:11:00] didn’t?

Speaker1: Nick encouraged a patient journey and he showed me that journey from his practice. What happens when the patient walks through the door, sees him, sees the treatment coordinator, and then leaves with a treatment plan? I’d never seen that in my life. As a student, you’re you’re arranging the appointments. You’re trying just to get them to a point where you can have a treatment plan that you can actually.

Speaker3: The experience side of it kind of seduced you, that you want to create the best experience for the patient.

Speaker1: Yes. And until then, I felt dentistry was [00:11:30] quite barbaric in the, in the methods we’re using. And I felt it’s just quite aggressive and it didn’t seem very pleasant for the patient. And he made it seem so pleasant in his practice, the way he designed it, the workflow. He had a lot of chairside CAD cam never seen that before. When you see that for the first time, I think everyone is very, very impressed. Yeah. You see a cerec machine for the first time, or you see a scanner for the first time and you’re and, you know, you go back to our dental schools and we’re mucking around with silicones and things.

Speaker3: What did [00:12:00] you call it for 2015? And there was no mention of scanning or anything. I suppose scanning wasn’t what it is today. Well, it’s.

Speaker1: Interesting since seeing Nick use Chairside cad cam, I went to go I went to the lab in Bristol and I asked them about this and they said, yeah, we’ve got a machine, but no one uses it apart from our head technician for some some inlays and onlays and he showed me it. It was a red cam from 2002, gathering dust in the corner. And he used it every so often. Not on not [00:12:30] on technician. Technician used it kind of in the lab setting too. Never, never, never scanning a patient. And I did a lot of research at that point. And I got what I would call obsessed by the aim of using this machine on a patient as it was intended. I must have read so much stuff on Cerec, doctors from Scottsdale, all those guys, and I just searched for a case that I could do this on and tried to get competent with something that no one would teach me. So I got models, I prepared models, I did it on a model. [00:13:00] I showed the technician. The technician took me under his wing and actually gave me advice on what to do. I found a case in fourth year and we did it. Three hours start to finish and only from preparation to fit. It caused a lot of upset in the dental school because it had never been done.

Speaker3: You haven’t passed it by anyone?

Speaker1: No. Well, I’d passed it by people, but it just never been done before. And people were just certain people were understandably confused as to why a dental student is calling [00:13:30] the shots. And in hindsight, I can see why I don’t have a license. That being said, I’m being supervised by dentists, so I still I still feel it was okay and clinically it was the right treatment for that. But that was that was a great moment. And then I did it again before graduating. And then unfortunately, I think think didn’t manage to pass on that to anyone else because the barriers are just so high when you’re a dental student. But all of that led to all sorts of different things, such as clinical photography. Richard was guiding me quite a lot at that stage.

Speaker3: So [00:14:00] you were in touch with Richard Field as a student because of the student rep situation? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker1: Richard was just recently having been a student rep and he was recruiting for student reps, I believe, in Cardiff, in Bristol, and I remember at the time you’d have to write a short application. And Richard being the relatively intense guy that he is, I remember having a conversation with him and he mentioned a few things. I just never heard of things like deep margin, elevation and as a fourth [00:14:30] year student at the time, completely alien to me. Then I started reading about them and I realised there’s a whole world of information, techniques, clinical teachers who are far, far beyond the UK and the UK is playing catch up and lagging behind. That was what I felt then. I feel that now.

Speaker3: So and you were accessing these people on social know or did you go on courses abroad or what did you do.

Speaker1: Courses, a lot of reading of literature, a lot of [00:15:00] shadowing of dentists. I found didactic learning was helpful for giving background, but for me, seeing what people do chairside made me confident enough to actually do it. And one thing I noticed was some clinical teachers do slightly different things on a training course, or they teach different things versus chairside. And particularly with composite resin bonding, so many techniques out there, some people actually are more pragmatic with a patient versus in teaching where you’re learning Floss ties, let’s say technical gold standard. Yes. [00:15:30] Then when you have the cold face with a patient, you may do different things.

Speaker3: And so how did you go about asking people if you could shadow them, literally DMing them, or how was it? I mean, because in my day, shadowing people wasn’t really a thing. Whereas I spoke to some dental students and they were saying, yeah, any time I get a minute off, I go and nurse for a senior student or or shadow a lab, go to a lab and just watch a technician building. [00:16:00] Building a. Lab work, which is like it sounds amazing education. But when I was a third year dental student, you wouldn’t have caught me in a lie. The thought didn’t even cross my mind, let alone doing it. So tell me about that. That shadowing process where you pick picking people you really respected a lot, and just directly asking them if you could shadow, was that it? Yes.

Speaker1: The first one was Nick Layden. He gave us a lecture on oral hygiene instruction as think second or third years, and I dropped [00:16:30] him an email to really say thank you for the lecture. And he did talk about his practice during the lecture. And I thought if he was willing to allow me to shadow him, that would be great. I was just intrigued. At that stage, I didn’t realise I would learn so much. And he kindly said yes. And I think from his point of view as a referral clinic, it made sense as well because I have referred patients to to his clinic since then. So I think it was a win win there. When it comes to being post qualified, it’s a little bit more complicated because I think a cold [00:17:00] or a cold email probably will land flat because there’s no particular reason dentists would would allow it, because there are complicating factors and having another clinician in the room, it can it can cause patients to feel as if the dentist is being supervised, depending on the age difference between you two. What I tend tended to do, I think if I had a pre-existing, even a relationship with that dentist, such as if I’d seen them on a course, met them socially, or conference conference. And at Bard when I went, I went to that as [00:17:30] a 50th student, and I met so many dentists who were significantly senior to me, and they all seemed eager to pass on what they’d learned to someone who’s the youngest there by ten years. And I’m thankful for that because many people said yes, the majority said yes. People such as Jason Smith’s and Teju Manku, Mark Hughes, all these people. I learned plenty from Chairside.

Speaker3: Wow.

Speaker1: And my approach. And how long were.

Speaker3: You shadowing each of these guys?

Speaker1: Probably varies from 2 to 10 [00:18:00] days.

Speaker4: Wow.

Speaker1: And, you know, at the upper end of that, if you if you shadow someone for ten clinical days, that’s a lot of clinical dentistry. You’ll see and you’ll see a lot of different approaches and complications. And it’s interesting to see again.

Speaker3: Bloody good point about being as as a dental student getting as much sort of, you know, exposure to conferences, meeting people, going by the way, we do this for many spa makeover. We let students come for free. Okay. [00:18:30] It’s almost for me. It’s almost like a like a laboratory rat situation. I want to know what happens to these people. There’s one in particular. I got him in the first year of dental school. Wanted to know. I wanted to know what would happen. So on the hands on in the first year of dental school and unfortunately, unfortunately, he was holding the composite gun upside down and stuff and you realise, you know how much you actually everyone in the room does know. Whereas usually when you’re teaching you’re thinking, oh, well, [00:19:00] I’ve got to teach all this new stuff to people. But he’s gone on to do, he’s in his fourth year now, so he’s gone on to do a lot.

Speaker1: And as he stuck with the mini saw makeover group.

Speaker3: I’m just trying to expose him to as much stuff as possible just to see what would happen. Yeah, okay. But anyway, the guys have come and watched. They’ve been firstly keen, taking notes, asking questions, meeting people and there’s pleasure in it, man. There’s pleasure in in propelling people forward. You know paying [00:19:30] it back. I mean you must be getting people asking you now right?

Speaker1: I do and how do you handle it? Just like you, I, I like to give it back as well. Yeah. And most cases I say yes and I say most because the only situations which can be problematic is certain personality types who may not wish to have other people in the room, even if they are a dentist. Also, as a young, younger dentist with a young dentist in the room, sometimes that can be a [00:20:00] miscommunication as to who is watching who and who is actually who is mentoring who patients can. Sometimes it can cause a problem for yourself, and I’ve seen that happen for sure. So it’s usually helpful if there’s a big age disparity because there’s no miscommunication. But when it’s quite close it can be problematic.

Speaker3: So yeah, you can have to wait a few years because now now you’re going to get loads of people asking. But it’s it’s important though. It’s important. I don’t know why. In my day just was not a [00:20:30] thing. And it really is the best way to learn.

Speaker1: It’s good to hear that people are doing it. Early years I remember when I was doing it, I was very much the black sheep in the year. I wouldn’t to the point where I wouldn’t tell anyone because I was already being criticised for going outside the curriculum. And for example, I was speaking to Heraeus Kulzer at the time, and they were helpful to lend me some composite to try and use instead of using 0.4, which they still use in Bristol, just to try and improve the quality of outcomes in posteriors. And I was really criticised heavily by clinicians and students. [00:21:00] I’ll just keep it all to myself. And I’m glad that it’s now probably more accepted to go outside the curriculum and get some learning through. Mini smile makeover or other means. Because with clinical exposure reducing since I left and since you left, dentists coming out are not as experienced with all the procedures, so they have to do more learning when it comes to private education, shadowing, reading. So if they can do that early whilst they’re in dental school, in this protected environment, that’s all the better. [00:21:30]

Speaker3: Absolutely. I mean, the early years are so formative. And we were discussing off mic, you know, what advice would we give to people? And you made the very good point that we tend to give the advice that’s based on our own experience. Although, you know, I’m not advising people to go start a teeth whitening company, but you’re right in that, in that we all have our own sort of lens that we put in front of the advice. But you went from university [00:22:00] to, I guess PT in Cornwall.

Speaker1: Yeah. Df1. Yeah.

Speaker3: Df1. That’s right. And and then from there straight to cosmetic private dentistry. So. Right. Yes. Okay. So so so tell me about why Cornwall first of all and how was the experience?

Speaker1: Just like my upper sixth application to dental school had one offer then and the only offer to Cornwall at 50 a dental school. I desperately wanted to stay in [00:22:30] Bristol and I was, I think I cried the day that I found out that not that I was going to Cornwall, but I actually didn’t get a position. I was one of those few who didn’t get a position because you ranked so low in the country. And at the time, if you, you know, I was possessed with dentistry and all these different things, and I was just really sad for a period of time. And then after graduating, after passing finals, I found out it was Cornwall. On one hand, I was sad to be leaving Bristol, but number two, on the flip side, I thought it’s a new place, [00:23:00] why not go head first into it, just like I did at Bristol, maybe there for one year or two years beyond. And then I knew Jason was there as well. So that was one of the first things I had on my on my list was to introduce myself to Jason. Before that, I hadn’t met him. I worked in a practice in Wadebridge and two trainers, both of them were lovely, taught me loads about clinical dentistry, and what’s nice about the sticks is that you often get exposure to a wider group of people because [00:23:30] there are less dentists per area per square mile, and in Cornwall in particular there are, there’s a severe lack of certain specialities. Periodontics, prosthodontics or surgery. So those things we would try and bounce the referrals to, to Exeter or Treliske in Truro and sometimes get bounced back to us saying, sorry, we can’t take this patient on for X, Y and Z. So my trainers and I would say, well, let’s let’s give it a try. And as a result you get [00:24:00] amazing exposure to learning.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: Which I’d heard in big cities you don’t. So for dentistry it was great. And although I was the youngest person I knew in Cornwall, I got some nice exposure to triathlon. Cycling is amazing out there, so there are lots of positives from it, and I threw myself into a lot of courses at the time, and shadowing did a lot of miles that year in the car. And to answer your question, to then apply for positions I. My priority was not so [00:24:30] much to go into cosmetic private practice, but to find a practice that would support the, let’s say, the educational pathway I was on, which was essentially to treatment plan comprehensively. That was sort of where I was at at the time, improve my skill sets. And and in order to do that, I wasn’t focussed on finances, not one bit. I would spend a lot of time and a lot of stuff, and that doesn’t work with a lot of practices because practices are businesses. And at that time I was jaded for that. That was not really on my radar. So I was searching [00:25:00] for practices that would accommodate that, which there aren’t many. So I sent out a lot of a lot of cold applications. I guess I got some very nice responses, actually, because I did put together a portfolio of sorts based on what I’d done and since fifth year to end of Df1. And I did eventually have people respond positively, and I took on, I believe, three positions, one in south London, one in central London and one in Hertfordshire, and split my [00:25:30] time for that for, for those three practices and, and started a very, very steep learning curve.

Speaker3: And when you said portfolio, are we talking Instagram at that point or. No. What, what how what shape did it take this portfolio. Was it when you you’d send an application, would you just send the photos or on hard paper.

Speaker1: Oh paper I hard paper I’d got them printed professionally. Oh and in hindsight I’m not sure if it was a good move. I think it was, because [00:26:00] I remember. Getting some phone calls.

Speaker4: People who stood out.

Speaker1: Who actually thought what I was doing was the right way. And and a couple of people come to mind. Nick gave me a call from Cardiff. Yeah, yeah. He didn’t have any space at the time, but that’s understandable. Kamal Suri gave me a call. I’d never met her before, so. And she invited me over to have a chat to her, which was great. And through BCD it was sent out as well digitally through through. Suzy and I received several calls from them because I [00:26:30] didn’t know a few of them by that point, so I had it printed.

Speaker3: And what were the cases?

Speaker1: The cases were the cigarette case, the one that I worked so hard on and it turned out great. There was a fibre post core and crown, which by fluke was a good shade match. Um, and I think there was a single tooth bonding which I used enamel on, I believe. Oh, nice. Yeah. And I think I may have sent it to you at the time as it.

Speaker4: Just rings a bell. Yeah. [00:27:00]

Speaker1: Years ago, I remember I spoke to you about it. So, so very simple things. Things that turned out well. And at the time I was photographing different stages of things which most people are not taking any photos at all. So I think, you know, even producing one case from a dentist. Now, if I see one case from a dentist, you know, it elevates them so high because I think 80% do not.

Speaker3: It’s interesting man. We can you can track that way of progressing your career right back to being a student rep at BCD because [00:27:30] of the people you were meeting and the lectures you were watching and and so forth. Get yourself a camera, get yourself some loops or whatever it is, and meet all these people to shadow. So the three practices Hertfordshire was with Rahul?

Speaker1: Yes. Perfect. Smile Studios, Hertfordshire. Yeah. So at the time it was girls Sammy, oh Sam Jethwa and I and interestingly, as I entered that practice, I, Rahul was planning the last ever cohort of the course [00:28:00] that he used to run. You may not have you may have heard of the course, but no one else will have because the course has not been running since 2016 and it was an internal only course. So it was just 4 or 5 of us. And I went straight into that, and that was treating a live case for ceramics. So that was a very steep learning curve, but it was amazing.

Speaker3: I used to visit the practice with the enamel for that course. Yeah, a few times. And what were the other two jobs?

Speaker1: Oh, the 210 Dental Clapham and oh [00:28:30] nice, Nick and Martin. I’d credit them with teaching me much of what I know about implants. And yeah, two great practices there and then Harley Street small clinic with Maurice Morris. Johannes Morris. Johannes.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker3: What a group of people you’ve been you’ve been exposed to because and we’ve obviously we’ve had both Nick and Martin from ten Dental and two different angles on Implantology. Right. But then Maurice, Johannes, a lot of people don’t know Maurice, but Maurice was one of the original guys in dentists, [00:29:00] which was one of the.

Speaker4: You say.

Speaker1: Dentists, not dentex.

Speaker3: Dentex was the original cosmetic shop front practice in London. The the first really that did it shop front. I mean, there were definitely cosmetic dentists before that, but in more sort of West one locations. But this shop front and he partnered with a PR person and they gone into the at the time it was you know Vogue and and all of that. They used to get their story. But when I, when I was trying to get enlightened into that [00:29:30] practice because I’d made this ridiculous thing in my head that if I can’t get into that practice, I might as well just give up. Right? And I had they put me in front of Chris Hall, okay, who was the clinical director and had Chris sore asking me, where’s the evidence for this? And it was at the time light activated teeth whitening as well, which okay, doubly difficult. I remember I visited that practice so many times trying to get this product in, but um, but Maurice was one of the original guys there. He was.

Speaker1: Yeah, I think it was [00:30:00] him. Joe Oliver and.

Speaker4: Joe Oliver.

Speaker1: Mervyn Drian. But he may have not been in the same practice.

Speaker3: Anything but.

Speaker4: But Mervyn was, you.

Speaker1: Know, I believe he’s older than. Yeah, he’s older than Maurice. But he was always in Swiss.

Speaker4: Saint John’s Wood, Hampstead. Yeah.

Speaker3: Yeah, yeah. But so Maurice Wood at the time was just doing Paul Simon ears all day.

Speaker1: To this day, to.

Speaker3: This day. And so you were perfect smile cosmetics, Maurice veneers. Were you doing veneers also?

Speaker1: Yes, [00:30:30] I was his support in the sense of people who did not want veneers. So let’s say composite bonding, tooth contouring, gum lifts. I was on that side. But as time went on, I did more and more ceramics cases and as yeah, as a result, I did a mix of cases there and then at ten dental restorative general dentists. So a combination of things that practice is full service. So it’d be working alongside specialist plan sometimes working alongside Martin’s plans which can be quite complex. It’s a very. Edifying [00:31:00] experiences across the three and working alongside people with different approaches and finding which parts you want to take into your clinical practice is what forms you as a clinician. And I think I said it in my post for accreditation, you’re usually the sum total of the people who have exposed you to their workflow. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes we forget who those people are, but they will have had an impact. And you know, I made my list.

Speaker3: It is a long list of people I saw there.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: So when I sat [00:31:30] down and I thought, who has impacted my practice in a significant way, that I remember something that they’ve taught me and I made that list. And, and it’s a very earnest list because there are tangible things they’ve all given me and I do to this day.

Speaker3: And so let’s pick up on I mean, yeah, clinically, all of these guys are different. Let’s pick up one on the other side of it, because you now are a practice owner yourself. What are things you learnt regarding patients, staff on the practice [00:32:00] management from these three different characters through these three different.

Speaker4: Places on the.

Speaker1: Non-clinical side?

Speaker4: Yeah, we’ll get to clinical.

Speaker1: I had a mentor of sorts. My name is Jill and she isn’t a dentist. You could say she’s a practice manager treatment coordinator, but I’d say she’s much more than that. She’s been at London Smile Clinic, I believe dentists before that and Welbeck Clinic after that and then Harley Street Smile after that. She’s had experience across the top cosmetic clinicians across her career, and [00:32:30] she has enough knowledge to be a dentist, pretty much, and to look at things like a dentist would. But from a customer service point of view, she imparted a few things as to how to make how to make a procedure that is expensive, not very comfortable, as easy as possible for someone who is anxious. We don’t get taught that at university. So specifically I learnt how to respond to complaints, which they don’t teach, how to read someone’s personality as to what they’re really upset about. Sometimes [00:33:00] it’s not written down for you to actually unpick. You have to read between the lines, and how you respond will dictate the outcome in many ways, not from a litigation or a regulatory point of view, but from.

Speaker4: Patient management.

Speaker1: Patient management, patient expectation and the goodwill of the practice. And that goes a long way.

Speaker4: So just just to drill.

Speaker3: Into that, it’s kind of that question of why are you trying to fix it now kind of question, isn’t it, where someone might say, well, [00:33:30] I’m going to get married or I’m I’m at a stage in my life where I’m not feeling like so understanding these sort of soft things around.

Speaker4: That’s right.

Speaker1: Yeah. So I think why fix it now is probably an Ashley lattice sort of. Is it probably. Yeah. Something that he would say is, you know, drill down into what is the motivation to do it now. Yeah. And with a complaint letter it’s a similar approach. What are they actually concerned about. It may not be verbalised. And sometimes you have [00:34:00] to bring them in and just have a have a conversation over a cup of coffee and try and understand how to fix things and finding out what the different routes are to to fix things. And with cosmetics, it’s slightly different to health orientated treatments because the complications are more to do with dissatisfaction over aesthetics or a miscommunication of what the intended outcome could be. And this is not this is a very fine margin stuff. This is these are, you know, as well as I do, the types of things we can be asked for would not [00:34:30] be noticeable by the majority of the population, but it’s important for that person. So understanding that person exceptionally well, the outset is important. And I think, you know, I’d credit her and the other two clinics of giving me that kind of rounded approach as to how to take feedback from a patient in a way that can positively be spun into a way to move forward. You can’t always fix it so.

Speaker4: You know when you can’t.

Speaker3: So now you’re a bit more seasoned. Yeah. Are you almost looking for that nugget [00:35:00] to feed back to the patient? Almost like it’s such a long time since I’ve done a dental examination. But but now that you’re saying it this way, I mean, people are kind of pre-qualified. By the time they come to you. They’re already talking about a makeover of sorts, I suppose. Right. So then you’re almost in, in the, in the assessment process, looking for that key that’s going to sort of switch them into fully trusting you. Is that.

Speaker4: Right? Yeah.

Speaker1: I try not to [00:35:30] prejudge anything. I try and keep an open mind. So even though we’ve got data from them sending their first inquiry or referral into the practice, my treatment coordinator may give me some information about what she thinks about the patient. I’ll take that and I’ll park it. We’ll put it into a note. But when the patient comes in, I really just want to give them a clean slate and just let them tell me about themselves. I want to listen. And another thing I learned from Jane Sproson, you know, is first listen. To understand, [00:36:00] then respond. Dentists have a great ability to pre-empt what someone’s going to say to us, because we know if they give us this list of symptoms, it’s irreversible. Pulpitis so we just know what we’re going to say. You need a root canal treatment. Et cetera. Et cetera, et cetera. I try and disengage my brain from that. Just let them tell us where they’re at. It might be simple. It might be complex. And if those nuggets come up at that time. Okay, hold them in your mind and talk to them about that later, or use it to progress the plan.

Speaker3: But, [00:36:30] I mean, I spoke to Basil Mizrahi and he told me, look, the kind of treatments that I end up doing for patients are so involved. They take such a long time, and they cost such a lot of money that it sometimes takes him three assessments before he’ll want to go ahead on that patient. So do you ever do that? Do you ever get them back in again or what’s the what’s the patient journey. [00:37:00] Let’s go into it. What’s as far as the patient’s met you. You’ve had the chat. You’ve had a look.

Speaker1: One thing I’ve missed out is before the patient sees us in person, there may be a video call. Oh, really? Okay. Video call with myself or the treatment coordinator will uncover many of the things there. And when we go into our consultation phase, we’re doing a barrage of data collection, photographs, occlusal analysis. And then if it’s a complex plan, such as the ones you mentioned Basil might be involved with, I [00:37:30] would give them a skeleton framework to work with. One thing I’m hesitant to do is to give them no plan and say, really? Well, we need to get you back to study models and do a wax up, which I know is an approach that some specialists take. And I think in today’s world, people want to be sure that there is a solution here, and I try and give them that. And sometimes it means that I have to give a treatment plan. That is. Yes, it’s an estimate, but I’m held to it and I give it as accurately as I can. I may refine it later with the second visit. So [00:38:00] to answer your question, in a complex plan, I would do the consultation.

Speaker1: In most cases, 90% of cases I will know the broad strokes of the treatment plan. What I might not know is what’s underneath some of these restorations. I might not know if I can identify this implant, if I can uncover and dismantle this implant in. There are several cases that come to mind right now, but that doesn’t stop me. Treatment planning for every eventuality, I can give the patient a couple of options and say we may not need both. It may just need one. We will find out later. And patients [00:38:30] normally understand. And the other one is we don’t have a cbct in front of us. I can’t tell you if you need a bone augmentation, soft tissue augmentation just yet. We may need to ask you to see our surgeon. And it doesn’t stop me giving them a prosthetic plan. There just may be bits added later, and I just try and communicate that clearly and people seem to understand. So the first consultation is top heavy. Give them all the information then and refinements later with Basil’s approach. You mentioned of a three stages. I can’t comment specifically, [00:39:00] but horses for courses?

Speaker4: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker3: So just fill in the patient journey for me a little bit. Typically, what’s the most typical route by which a patient finds you? Word of mouth or social media or.

Speaker4: Google okay Google.

Speaker3: So you’ve got a good Google game to start.

Speaker4: We’ll give it a try. Yeah.

Speaker1: I think the difference with Google people are actively searching for something. So they’re usually quite they’ve done some research [00:39:30] attention. Yeah. They’ve got some Dental intelligence. And when they come in they actually they’re engaged. So that’s the most common.

Speaker3: So okay the email comes in or something.

Speaker1: Email comes in, we ask for a photo normally and maybe a 1 or 2 concerns they might have. And the photos may range from lots of photos to no photos to a video. And based on that, our practice manager who clinically trained and we’ve worked together for many years, she analyses the photo, gives her best guess as to what she thinks. I would [00:40:00] say she may run it past me before she writes a response. She would give some indication to the patient as to what she feels could be an option. And if it’s something not so straightforward, such as something involving tooth replacement or ceramics, she would suggest a video call with myself. We arrange a video call. I try to glean more information from a video, which usually is helpful but limiting, and the next stage is a in-person consultation. So from there, we’ve had three touchpoints of consent, I’d say, [00:40:30] which I think is really important because sometimes the consent forms we give are so verbose and so detailed that no one could absorb that much information. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t read it quite right. So when they come to the clinic in person, they already know a lot of the disadvantages and advantages of, let’s say, implants versus bridges or ceramics versus composites. So when I have that discussion with a photograph and a radiograph in front of us, they can actually engage and understand what I’m telling them. After our data collection, [00:41:00] I would issue a treatment plan based on what they think is good for them. And if they’re not sure, I might issue two two treatment plans if they’re thinking of both.

Speaker3: But when? So how far? When does that appear? When does that land? Is it at the end of that visit? Is it one day later?

Speaker1: Is it on the day?

Speaker4: On the day?

Speaker3: Okay. Perfect. Because you’ve had these touch points. You kind of know which way which direction you’re going.

Speaker1: Yes. And I try and give my advice as well because many, many people will defer to us even though we are. Supposed [00:41:30] to give the options and the patient makes their decision. Yes, they do, but they may ask us for what their advice is, what our advice is, and I.

Speaker3: Yeah, and I think Prav talks about this a lot, and I totally agree with him that in that moment. We should give the answer, we.

Speaker1: Should.

Speaker3: Whereas that’s not specifically taught. I mean, there’s a lot of people who say you give them the three options. It’s their decision, you know, but, you know, with every other supplier I’ve ever had, right? [00:42:00] I’m going to ask that supplier, okay. What would you do in this situation yourself?

Speaker4: It’s so interesting.

Speaker1: Ollie Harmon and I were discussing this at accreditation. Viva. Oh, really? Yeah. Because there was a case which I did, which was very debateable as to which approach to take. And we were having the debate open forum, three examiners and the ten of the accredited members at the back of the room listening in. And we were.

Speaker4: Let’s be nerve wracking.

Speaker1: It was it was when you have that much knowledge in the room to temper my answers very carefully.

Speaker4: Choose your words.

Speaker1: Not as much as I have today. And [00:42:30] we were asking ourselves the question, to what extent do we respect the patient’s autonomy to make a bad decision?

Speaker3: Well, if they have informed consent, right?

Speaker4: Correct.

Speaker1: Informed, informed consent. But there must come a line where we are no longer comfortable to actually do the procedure ourselves. So we have patients. Let me give you an extreme example.

Speaker4: Oh, I get it. I get the.

Speaker1: Extreme. One is a patient comes in and says, I’d like to have all my teeth removed in favour of implants. You could give them informed consent and they [00:43:00] may still continue with that decision. But how many dentists would be comfortable actually physically doing that procedure? Not many. So there comes a line where a dentist would not be willing to cut a tooth back, or to remove a tooth for reasons of elective informed consent.

Speaker3: But but I mean, just in that it’s an extreme example, right? But if you thought you explained to the patient the benefits, the costs and benefits and advantages and many disadvantages of that [00:43:30] route of action, and then they they said, yeah, I hear all that, I understand all that, and I still want to have my teeth taken out. Then you need to refer them to some sort of psychologist to see. Are they, are they actually understanding something like that? It’s madness.

Speaker4: But yes.

Speaker1: But also don’t underestimate people’s ability to make a bad decision and to have a different set of values that we may do as dentists. We’ve been through a very specific training pathway [00:44:00] to understand dental health, medical health. We have that information that patients do not. They also may have different set of values in the sense of I’ve seen people be prepared to take much more physical risk with the aim to get 10% of aesthetic improvement, whereas they may never do.

Speaker4: It came up in.

Speaker3: Dental trauma, didn’t it? We both.

Speaker4: We both. Yeah. You were there.

Speaker3: Both. We both commented on it. Yeah we.

Speaker4: Did. Yeah.

Speaker3: You’re right, you’re right. It’s an interesting it’s an interesting area. Right. And that daughter test that came up. Yeah there’s there’s sort of it’s [00:44:30] the daughter’s choice.

Speaker4: That’s right. It’s not your choice. Well the point.

Speaker1: The one in Dental Rama. I didn’t explain too well. Maybe I can explain it here. Yeah. The daughter test is problematic because the act of the patient being the daughter is not what should guide your decision making. It has to be the patient’s values and circumstances in their personal, professional and social life, not the fact that they are a loved one of yours. Yeah.

Speaker4: Agreed.

Speaker1: So Martin Kelleher had an unfortunate experience of having his career exposed with lots [00:45:00] of ceramics cases that got complicated, and he had to replace all of them. So he published the articles that he that he published and Daughter Test was one of them. And that article is infiltrated all dental schools. And that’s now how we make decisions. But I’m keen to write a response to it, to say that we need to come away from the daughter test in favour of something along the lines of Montgomery’s judgement, which is to take into account the patient’s values in that point in time informed consent, as you said, and [00:45:30] respect their autonomy to make a decision you don’t agree with. Yeah.

Speaker4: Agreed?

Speaker3: Agreed. Like, for instance, if, let’s say the person is a model. And is thinking career wise, this will help my career loads and I accept the health cost for it.

Speaker4: I would be much more that they’ve.

Speaker3: Got agency in that decision.

Speaker4: That’s right.

Speaker1: And your ability to be more aggressive with your treatment plan in the aim of helping the cosmetics should be much broader than someone [00:46:00] who is not in that in that professional work.

Speaker3: That said that said, I think the infiltration of the daughter test into all curriculums probably overall net net, a big positive. It’s a good, good, good thing to keep pointing people to. But you’re right, there’s nuance. There’s nuance especially. You’ve got to understand that in your situation, you’re seeing that the very edge of I mean, I know you understand this, but you’re seeing a very edge of the total. The people who are coming for specifically this sort of treatment. [00:46:30] Talk me through now the rest of your career after that. So you were in these three practices. What was the next career move?

Speaker1: One of the dentists, Harley Street Small Clinic, was departing, and I was asked to do more days there in a hurry. And I had a decision to make whether to say yes and consolidate my time to that one practice, which is what it would take or to decline. And I took the decision to consolidate to one practice at [00:47:00] that point. So that’s what I did. And what.

Speaker3: Was the driver of that decision.

Speaker1: In Hertfordshire in ten Dental? Whilst my exposures to dentistry were excellent and I had a good time, both of those practices, Harley Street Smile was not a general practice. It operates as a little bit like a referral clinic. Patients come to us for their elective treatment and they usually have a GDP they go to afterwards. And I was intrigued by that approach, and I thought it was good in the sense of it allowed us to really become experts [00:47:30] at a very small select group of treatments. So I can tell you what those are. It’s it’s tooth contouring, gum lifts, composite bonding and ceramics implants was my bag. I did a bit of that as well. That was it. It’s a very small group of treatments. And I thought to myself, those are the areas I’m developing most in. I should do more of.

Speaker4: That was all.

Speaker3: Did it? Did it spill over into full mouth rehab, or were you referring those?

Speaker4: It did.

Speaker1: It did a little bit. And depending on different [00:48:00] clinicians risk appetite, people would take it on or not take it on. And that’s where some things would go in Basil’s direction or not. And we had a referral relationship with Basil’s practice at the time. To clarify, it was Maurice Gilmartin and myself, those practices, and Jill’s actually one of the people that pushed me towards accreditation.

Speaker4: Oh, nice. Nice. All right.

Speaker3: So so then at what point did you think I’m going to break out by myself? And did you go all in or did you keep doing a few days circumstances? [00:48:30]

Speaker1: I stayed at Harley Street Smart for five years, so it was quite, quite a big gap between consolidating my time and thinking about starting my own. I think the first inkling of it was when dentex became involved with many of the practices across the country. They struck a deal with Maurice’s practice, and they they took over us. Yeah. And and no particular issues as such. But what did happen was I wondered what happened at the end of that road for dentex. What was the outcome going [00:49:00] to be for the practice? And it was kind of unknown at the time. And I was I was relatively happy. So I was not I was not thinking of starting my own. It wasn’t really on the cards. But I did think to myself, is the long term in anyone’s sort of radar? Dentex. Maurice, what’s what’s their outcome here? I didn’t really know what it was. The thing that tipped it for me was having a regulatory case occur in 2019, and I didn’t know what the outcome of that would be. The two outcomes were I [00:49:30] stay at the current practice or I need to start my own for reasons of being let go of that practice as a result of the case, and I didn’t know what it would be.

Speaker3: So you started mentally thinking, worst case, I’m moving. But you weren’t moving to an associate somewhere. You were going to move and do your own place.

Speaker4: I also considered.

Speaker1: Moving as an associate as well. When the case did break out publicly, I did get a lot of calls of support, and people did actually say to me, if you if you need a position, give me a call. Which is really kind, actually [00:50:00] at time was quite difficult, you know, quite difficult time. Having said that, Harley Street Smart were very supportive. They had no intention of.

Speaker4: Letting you go, letting me.

Speaker1: Go. And I give the clinic and all the team a lot of respect for that, for for going through a very tough time with me. But we didn’t know what the outcome of the case was until 18 months after we knew there was a case. So we just continued as normal until that time. And but in my mind, I thought to myself, well, either I stay at this practice or I become an associate or I start my own. Which [00:50:30] one of those was I didn’t know until I knew how long, how much time was going to be suspended for if I was going to be suspended at all. And what the. Fallout would be with the practices involved, because the complicating factor for a business is if a dentist is not there, they can’t leave the position open. It’s not viable. And I totally understand. So how long can a business leave a space for a dentist financially and still have me come back.

Speaker3: To go into the case? Sure.

Speaker1: Plymouth. [00:51:00] What would you like to know?

Speaker4: Tell us about the case.

Speaker1: In a in a nutshell. The case was me not maintaining a professional boundary with a patient combination of poor judgement on my part and bad luck. I think I’ve learned some hard lessons from it. I’ve learnt a lot about our regulators and how the system works. I’ve taken some positives from it as well. I think if the case hadn’t happened, I think I would be at Harley Street. Smile.

Speaker4: Oh really, I think so.

Speaker1: And I wouldn’t [00:51:30] have taken a six month sabbatical ever. I can’t see why I would, but having taken that six months or been given that six months, it was one of the nicest and most memorable times of my life because I legally wasn’t allowed to give any dental advice either. So I had to actually ignore all my emails.

Speaker4: I mean, I love how you’ve.

Speaker3: Drawn a such a positive out of out of that, but take me through the darkest part of that time. So, I mean, do you understand that people say it’s the most stressful time of their life? Did you feel that [00:52:00] or not? Did you manage it differently?

Speaker1: It came in different ways.

Speaker4: Moments.

Speaker1: Yeah, because a case starts at a point in time and only a handful of people know about it. It’s not so stressful at that point. And then it continues on. You don’t really think about it. You continue practising as normal. And that was one of the most supportive things, is that even when the case broke out publicly patients, it didn’t change a thing in the practice, which was encouraging. The most stressful time was, I think, when the [00:52:30] press picked it up and decided to spin it and spread it everywhere. And this was in November 2020. We’re just coming out of Covid at this point and just starting back up. Things are quite busy in dentistry, and I didn’t expect it to get a.

Speaker3: Stressful period for everyone, wasn’t it? Let alone having this on top?

Speaker1: I think so, and we were not expecting it to go national and viral and international. It was more than what we had expected and as a result, that had to have some very difficult conversations with everyone [00:53:00] from other dentists I knew to family to my commanding officer in the Navy, because I hadn’t told people in the Crimson what what was happening. I in broad strokes I may mention it, but I wouldn’t give the details. And that was the toughest time.

Speaker4: You mentioned the.

Speaker3: Navy. Were you a Navy dentist? Were you that cut?

Speaker1: I’m a general entry. I am not Dental in the Navy. Oh. Non dental.

Speaker3: Oh I see. How interesting. So, [00:53:30] okay. Advice to others who are getting that letter because many, many, many of us are getting this letter now that you’ve been through this awful experience. What are your nuggets that you’d advice that you’d give others who are going to get these letters?

Speaker1: I have had conversations with people who have had these letters and they ask for advice. And each case is very specific. And me, having been through one to do with professional conduct, is [00:54:00] very specific and many cases are clinical performance related, which is an entirely different arm of the GDC, one that I don’t know about to the point of. The panellists are very different as well. So on the clinical performance ones, I’d say my knowledge is as good as yours, but the ones on professional conduct, I always went into my case trying to be open and honest, and to hold my hands up to what I did wrong and to apologise, seeing in the judgement what has been decided [00:54:30] to be a fact and what’s not a fact. Part of my mind thinks is that which was was my approach correct? Because it didn’t pan out in my favour, and I’m not sure what I could have done to make it any better. I’m not sure. I’m not sure I could have. I could have made it worse. And I think probably being candid and honest is probably a good way to go.

Speaker3: Yeah, I can see. Look, just talking to you, I can see you’re choosing every word very carefully. Not just about this. On every subject I see, you know, any, [00:55:00] any point you’re. I can see honesty is a massive thing to you. It seems. It seems obvious. But when I’ve been involved with a legal problem before. Nothing to do with dentistry but a legal problem, which it was dentistry. It wasn’t. It wasn’t GDC. Um, I was shocked at how the system didn’t just bring the truth out. I thought, you know, in my naivety, I thought, look, I’ll just tell my side of the story. The truth will out and [00:55:30] that will be the end of it, and it doesn’t. Whereas my adversary had loads of experience in legal and played that experience really well and didn’t necessarily tell the full truth, and mud stuck. So so, you know, this question of could you have done something differently in that case, I don’t know. I don’t know because I’m not expert. But I was shocked, I don’t know, how did you feel about number one, the legal ramifications, because, you know, before you were ever involved [00:56:00] in anything legal, you just think, well, it’s just it’s just this wonderful place where the truth comes out. But that certainly isn’t the case. It’s a place where the best lawyer is wins, is what I found out, like the one, the most expensive lawyer. But but number one. But then number two.

Speaker4: Most compelling lawyer.

Speaker3: Compelling.

Speaker4: Compelling. Aggressive. Compelling. Yeah.

Speaker1: Verbose.

Speaker3: Yeah. Number two. What about the press? Did that surprise you as well? I mean, what were the what were the the [00:56:30] ingredients of that virality? Was there was there someone in the press that acted outside of what you would have expected or what? Did it just go viral because it did or salaciously what was it, what what are what are your reflections on the law and the press after having been through this?

Speaker1: Interestingly, with the press, I thought if we ever did a PR campaign to get some positive press on myself post the case, would they ever would they ever do this? Because I’m sure, you know, [00:57:00] if you have the, let’s say, the Daily Mail and they have an article about you and you say, okay, let’s do a, let’s do a piece about dental health education. And they may just link related articles about me at the bottom of that, which spins the old negative press at the same time. So my team and I were really worried when we launched the practice as to how can we launch a PR campaign without risking the negative press getting resurged. Encouragingly, we found out that the press are not personal. They [00:57:30] really are not. They are business entities that are looking to.

Speaker3: Driven by their own goals, driven.

Speaker1: By other goals. Bigger than you, bigger than me. They do not particularly care about the case or even about the the truth element you mentioned. So when we decided to do a PR campaign to the positive, The Sun, the Daily Mail didn’t spin anything from the past and as a result I learnt something about it. So that was what I learnt about the press. And when it comes to legal matters, it’s, you know, circling [00:58:00] back to your very first point about your case and you truth not necessarily coming out. I think when it comes to things that don’t have hard evidence, when it’s your word against someone else’s, humans are going to be humans. And I’ve learned that that is the case of panellists as well. It’s not that they’re trying to make it hard for you or have someone else’s side necessarily. They’re going to be guided by human factors, how you come across in cross-examination and in hindsight, I didn’t come across so [00:58:30] well in cross-examination because I was under extreme pressure and extremely stress. So as a result, it became very sort of robotic in my answers, which didn’t come across well.

Speaker4: I mean, you.

Speaker3: Started the clinic, you went for some positive PR when you say you went for PR, did you hire a PR agency? Yeah. And then I mean, look at now I look at your social media, you’ve got many, many thousands of followers and your output is extraordinary. Were you doing [00:59:00] that? From what point was it, was it was it when you opened the clinic that you went ballistic on the social media, or were you already doing a lot? Was it was it kind of a redemption thing where you wanted to just say, hey, I’m, I’m out here and I’m, I don’t I’m not I’m not shy after that that’s happened, you know, how did how did it how did you feel about it? All of.

Speaker4: The above.

Speaker1: I remember speaking to a friend at the time and thinking, I post clinical cases like many dentists do. Yeah. [00:59:30] Before and after. Pretty mundane these days. But not a lot of people go on camera and talk about things. A handful of people do as we know. And I thought, can I add anything? And I kind of really racked my brain. An offer, put some ideas down and started recording some stuff. I just thought, I’ll upload it, see what happens. Then I got some traction on it and then it continued. And that’s really it. Redemption. I don’t think of it like that because I had such a rich time in that six month period. I don’t think of it as like a negative in [01:00:00] my mind. It’s actually a time I really relished and I had such a great time travelling. I know we talked about it when I was away. It’s such a positive in my life now. All the things to do with the case just almost kind of gets, you know, cornered into nothing. And, you know, the time I’ve spoken about it, today is the first time I’ve spoken about it in a long time.

Speaker3: Did you come here today planning to speak about it or did you? When I asked you this morning, did you decide there and then? You’re. You’re cool.

Speaker1: Given the subjects you’ve brought up on [01:00:30] this podcast before, I thought it would be on the cards. I didn’t know if you’d actually do it, though.

Speaker3: It’s incredibly brave. Incredibly brave of you to to be happy to talk about it, because you can understand why someone would want to sweep this under the carpet, but also incredibly helpful to others. And then, from my perspective, incredibly impressive what you’ve done with it. You’ve sort of used it to propel yourself forward in a way, you know, as a as a driver that you’re going to prove us all wrong or [01:01:00] prove whoever was was saying anything about you wrong. Something like that. And what kind of a person are you, dude? Are you are you the kind of person who gets involved in back and go up the the, you know, what do you call it? The committee and.

Speaker4: I do.

Speaker3: That sort of.

Speaker4: Thing.

Speaker1: People usually go committee or accreditation way. I’ve chosen the latter.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: So I think I’ll continue on that. On the education side, I do enjoy passing on what I’ve learnt because so many people, as we talked about, you know, passed on what they, [01:01:30] they, they learnt. And I’m doing a bit more teaching with the, with a little bit more with, with other teaching academies as well. And that kind of blends in quite nicely with the oral health education for the public, which is on social media. So I quite like just getting better information out there, because one of the things I find is misinformation is problematic, and the industry in the UK is lagging behind mainland Europe and the rest of the world in terms of clinical standards, but also knowledge. So I’m [01:02:00] trying to change that for the public and dentists.

Speaker3: I’m going to ask you a really, really unfair question now. Yeah, but I kind of like this idea, right. Of if you had to put it in a nutshell, your clinical not value add, but your clinical aha moment, what would that be? And let me give you an example. When I asked Sam Jethwa this question, he gave a lovely answer. It was about the occlusion being outside in as well as [01:02:30] inside out.

Speaker4: Oh really? That was his when.

Speaker3: When he when that clicked for him, it it made a big difference. And it was funny because at the time I’d never thought about the outside. So I’m sure you had but but I had. Can you think of, like what comes to mind when I say that?

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: Occlusion comes to.

Speaker4: Mind because it’s.

Speaker1: An area which, you know, shrouded in mystery. And Sam and I kind of went through a kind of together. Almost together. Yeah, a journey on that. But we never spoke about it too much because clearly we have different experiences. But a big [01:03:00] thing in my mind and other people’s minds. How can you fit a restoration and know if it’s going to last with confidence? As a dentist, you’re coming out of dental school. How can you know it’s going to last? What are the parameters that we should check aside from? You know, how the teeth come together? That’s just not enough. And I think the aha moment is understanding guidance, pathways, steepness, interferences, how people posture their teeth. If there is interferences, how [01:03:30] that gets deflected to other teeth. It’s a very generalised way of saying why things break down and you look at enough cases and look it in a certain way and you realise why things have worn in a certain way, why that cusp is broken. Once you realise that you can treatment plan so much clearly so.

Speaker3: So again we are talking occlusion.

Speaker1: Talking occlusion. Yeah.

Speaker3: But give me an example. Like it’s often, it’s often the lateral that’s broken okay.

Speaker4: Here’s here’s one. Have you ever.

Speaker1: Seen you have seen those cases where patients got no worn teeth [01:04:00] at all except the lower anteriors. We wonder why. Okay, they’re clearly posturing on those front teeth. Right. What’s what’s up with that? And I found out why. Constricted chewing envelope. Class two, Division two. Retrogradation of the upper central incisors. Creates less space for those lower incisors in function. As a result, you get that shearing effect. You get that incisor buckle where that shiny surface, and you multiply that over 20 years. What do you get? You get localised anterior tooth [01:04:30] wear. These cases are primed for a certain approach to be treated. But that was a clear moment of now I can see all those cases. As soon as you see that you know exactly what’s going on. And before you would think, oh, well, there are attrition. It’s. And it’s not just that.

Speaker4: You doll.

Speaker3: Do you doll as well or not?

Speaker1: I do, and I’m developing or formulating a slightly different approach on doll, which is what I’d call accelerated doll. Typically doll is with the cobalt chrome appliance onto the top teeth. You get the [01:05:00] space built up through that way, and then you restore them indirectly or directly. I think Hemmings then developed that process to have doll direct composite build-ups, which is now the preferred approach instead of the appliance. So I’ve taken that one step further and I take it to ceramics instead of composites. Increase video, and I’d hope to publish it at some point. But if you direct the forces in a certain way, the intrusion and extrusion effects you have will not compromise your aesthetics. [01:05:30] That’s the main concern, and I’ve.

Speaker4: Got pretty good.

Speaker1: Recall. It’s fine.

Speaker3: The other thing Sam said was his sort of value add was, if I remember correctly, the temper ization phase where he thought he had a pretty could give the patient a very accurate representation of what their final result was going to be with his temporaries, even though I think he doesn’t directly not not in that sort of Gallup career way. What would you say? It’s your sort.

Speaker4: Of.

Speaker3: Value [01:06:00] add if I if a patient comes to you specifically for aesthetics, what is it that you do that adds value? You know, it’s an interesting question because in a way I’m asking for, okay, you’re standing on the shoulder of giants. There’s all these people who’ve given you tips. What’s your tip? You know, your tip that you’ve come up with? I know you’ve got many.

Speaker1: My approach to understanding ceramics as they are today, I think I go a little bit [01:06:30] deeper than most would. Ceramics are developing very fast, and one of the things that have eluded most ceramics cases is getting fluorescence on the result. Now, if people are wondering what that means is when light goes through a natural tooth, it internally refracts in the dentine and then emits back out as if it is its own light source, and that gives the appearance of vitality. So what makes something look less flat? Emacs Press has always had a problem with [01:07:00] this because it looks grey at high value, right? And it has quite low fluorescence, but it’s a great material because of biomechanical properties. Feldspathic porcelain is awesome for a fluorescence because it’s got so much natural feldspar in it that that internal refraction can be emulated. But it’s got biomechanical issues, right? Super weak, and you need to cut heavy margins. All this stuff is it doesn’t really fit with minimally invasive dentistry. And you can’t you can’t do it. Accelerated [01:07:30] dull and feldspathic ceramics. I wouldn’t advise it anyway. Ceramics are developing. There are ceramics out there and I would say my tip and my my value add is understanding those ceramics, knowing which combinations work best. I keep a list of my ceramics and I are aware of which combinations will work best for different skin tones, different types of makeup, different lighting and that is what will make a nice looking smile, smile, make over look sort of world class versus, you know, kind of just really good. [01:08:00]

Speaker3: Now I’m really interested in if there was a way of doing an experiment. If I removed your ceramist from you, how long would it take you to get back to where you are now? And vice versa, if we remove you. Yeah. And there’s a ceramist working with another dentist. What would be the situation, how long it would take him to get back to?

Speaker4: I’m glad you.

Speaker1: Asked that, because I can answer your question. I can.

Speaker4: Answer I can answer.

Speaker1: The first one anyway, if I get removed.

Speaker4: I’m not sure. That as well.

Speaker1: The [01:08:30] first one. If the ceramics gets removed, how long does it take to train a new ceramist to the same workflow? Six months.

Speaker4: Six months.

Speaker3: And that’s someone who starts already. Quite good, right?

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: Someone who’s free thinking, creative, good at their hands. Quite a long time.

Speaker3: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure.

Speaker1: And that’s why I would always advise people doing a lot of ceramics cases to have multiple ceramists, because 1st May go on go off sick or something will happen. [01:09:00] And you need, you need several. And usually ceramics are not good at everything. So an occlusion doll case is going to be someone very technically minded, not necessarily creatively minded, versus a single tooth ceramic case. You need to have, you know, a really careful.

Speaker3: Chairman versus an Italian.

Speaker4: That’s right, that’s right.

Speaker1: So German Swiss approach would be very, very. Yeah. And okay, so the typical one a lot of South African ceramics in the UK, they are very good with occlusion and things like that. But [01:09:30] creatively they all have one way of making teeth look and that’s it. And that and one of the Holy Grail in ceramic work is for ceramists, is having creative diversity in how you build teeth. We get taught how to build a tooth and we make it the same way each time. Having variation is one of the hardest things. I’ve only ever seen it a couple of times and if you get it, those people are worth their weight in gold.

Speaker3: Let’s move on to darker days, even darker. I know we’ve [01:10:00] been through some, but we like to on this. On this pod, we’d like to discuss errors so that in medical we we don’t have to share our errors very much, mainly because we’re sort of trying to run away from blame. But it’s based on black box thinking where if there’s a plane crash. The community tries to find out what happened without blame, and then the information goes out to the whole community so [01:10:30] that you don’t have to learn only from your own mistakes. You can learn from other people’s mistakes. With that in mind, and outside of your case, what comes to mind? Clinical error wise.

Speaker1: The one that comes to mind was in my last couple of months as a foundation dentist, I was on a steep learning curve. As we discussed. I was keen to, you know, they say after a course patient who’s most in need of that treatment is on Monday, right? And I was succumbing to that as well. [01:11:00] I thought I’d take on a full mouth rehabilitation case in ceramic, and at the time I was working alongside a ceramist who was very high achieving as well, and was working at a high standard. So the pressure was on, you know, in various various ways. It was prosthodontic. It was it was it was quite complex collusion and my knowledge was definitely lacking. And the issues that came out of the case was that I didn’t know enough about how to take [01:11:30] complicated impression of multiple abutments, to the extent that I could never get a good working model. So as a result, the restorations never fit perfectly. And this is a combination of bridge crown on veneer. So you’re asking the to go into different nooks and crannies and directions. And as soon as you have that you often need to take to use other methods. And I and I couldn’t get my head around it. And I also had a limitation in terms of the standard of materials I was working with. Now they say they don’t, you know, don’t blame your tools. [01:12:00] To an extent you should for sure. And with one of the things that I realised as soon as I went to a practice with something that was a high standard material, wow, my technique or the material seemed to make a big difference. It probably was both.

Speaker3: I mean, listen, imagine if I took away your favourite instrument or your favourite loops or your favourite composite, or you would affect you, it would affect you.

Speaker4: You give me a.

Speaker1: Turbine instead of a speed increasing handpiece, I’ll be there for a [01:12:30] lot longer. And the burr is going to do this. You know, it doesn’t matter how steady your hands are, the burr is doing this.

Speaker3: So go ahead. Go. What happened?

Speaker1: So the case, the case I was up against the clock because I was leaving to go back to London, and I was aware that I wanted to finish the case. It’s not really one you can pass on to someone else. The good thing is about the case is that it was pretty much as a Df1 any private work you do, you are not paid for. So it’s pro bono from my point of view. For me, I just wanted to learn. And, you know, as a result, the patient gets a huge discount [01:13:00] on the treatment. The case was was fitted. The margins were incongruous, not not fitting as well as they needed to be. And I’m thankful to my trainer for taking on the case and redoing it, which is what I believe happened.

Speaker3: So the mistake.

Speaker4: Was a disaster.

Speaker1: There was no disaster that.

Speaker4: You know, what.

Speaker3: Was the mistake? You didn’t know how to take the impression with a special tray or something.

Speaker1: Oh, I had all of that. Yeah.

Speaker4: What was the mistake?

Speaker1: Not understanding the complexity of how to prepare for restorations [01:13:30] of different shapes around the arch. How to transfer the relationship when you’re preparing upper and lower teeth. I was going to learn that about six months from that point, and I wish I knew that before that. So the lesson I took was probably to not jump ahead too fast. It’s hard to know where to where to pitch it, because in many cases, you know, that was smaller than that. You know, they worked worked out really well. How do you know when it’s too much or be beyond your scope? It [01:14:00] clearly was took a lot from it, and I think it was a safe environment to do so because the patient was not, you know, had a significant discount on the treatment. I was working under two trainers who were very experienced, and the only problem was it was just a combination of limited time, limited knowledge.

Speaker4: Perfect storm. Yeah.

Speaker1: Yeah. And if I had more time, I probably would have fixed it. But but I was lacking knowledge for sure. And I was biting off more than I could chew. And as a result, you know, ceramist is frustrated, team are frustrated. [01:14:30] The trainers are frustrated because I’ve then left the practice and you know, it did haunt me a little bit when I was back in London thinking, you know, you’ve left this, you’ve left this case knowingly in a bad state.

Speaker3: And we never know, do we, until we try something for the first time. We never know what the outcome of that is going to be. I remember my first cerec was horrible with all the powder.

Speaker1: Yeah, I use powder.

Speaker4: Yeah, yeah, I remember.

Speaker3: My first Invisalign. I could not believe that they were letting me loose on a patient with a two day course on [01:15:00] how to use the the portal, you know? Yeah. At the time, Invisalign was quite a hard thing to put in place and take out and all that.

Speaker4: So yeah, but I think, like.

Speaker1: You say, the black box thinking approach is lost in health care. Yeah. Why is it lost? I remember writing a reference to Black box thinking in my reflection for the GDC. Don’t know if they they read that part, but.

Speaker4: It’s.

Speaker1: Something that we could take a lot of lessons from that industry, and it would [01:15:30] reduce a lot of the issues people have when they have litigation regulatory cases, by not encouraging them to hide. Many of the typical pieces of advice are came up in Dental AMAs. Don’t change the notes. Don’t try and cover up anything that’s happened. Be be candid. And why is it that people are thinking about covering things up in the first place? You’d think because there’s a there’s a blame culture. There’s the clinician is is liable. [01:16:00] The buck ends with that person. So it creates this culture of people not wanting to own up to mistakes. Which is why I’m glad you asked this question. So what is the mistake? Many people would just never talk about it. You know, how many study clubs have you been to where they talk about failures only? None. None.

Speaker4: You know, I was thinking, Emily.

Speaker1: Rena and I, you know, we run a study club and we’ve talked about it for years doing a study club just on our failures. And we just, you know, we said, oh, no, we’ll do that another time.

Speaker4: Another time.

Speaker3: I’m thinking of doing a conference on failures. Only [01:16:30] failures allowed. Yeah. You call it something fun.

Speaker1: There are two ways that can go, though. Either someone comes up with a real failure, or they come up with a case that actually is awesome. They say, oh no, this is not quite right, and it’s almost like a show off. It’s like a.

Speaker4: Humblebrag.

Speaker1: Exactly. It makes you seem even better because you think failure is this awesome case and it makes everyone feel worse. So you’ve got to put it as a failure. But don’t mean a I mean a failure in the sense of it’s an unfixable or, you know, a failure.

Speaker4: I hear where you’re coming [01:17:00] from here.

Speaker3: I’ve also had another idea, which I think is a wonderful idea, but what do you think of this? I really want to run this by someone. Yeah. You know, you go to a lecture and the rate at which the lecture is being. You’ve been to so many, right? The rate at which the guy is speaking. And my particular bugbear is this four bulleted points. And these reading the four bulleted points out, you know, maybe putting a bit of detail around each one, but I can read them quicker than you can tell me them. Yeah. [01:17:30] So but if everyone in the audience has a button for more than 50%, press the button. The slide just goes forward. It would be nerve wracking as the lecturer would be horrible, but in the audience it’s really good.

Speaker4: It’s really good. It’s good. That is good. You know, there’s a.

Speaker3: Number of times you just think, okay, okay, we got that move on. It’s such.

Speaker4: A good idea because it allows the people.

Speaker1: Receiving the information to receive at their speed.

Speaker4: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker3: And I’ll tell you the other thing.

Speaker4: And it gives feedback.

Speaker1: To the lecturer.

Speaker4: Of, you know, you’re [01:18:00] rambling.

Speaker3: Yeah. And I’m talking to loads of loads of speakers in my time. Right. And I sometimes hear people say, oh, I filled it out with that. And to me I just see red when when I hear that. Right. Because. What are we doing here? Like wasting each other’s time. Going to fill it out with stuff, you know, like, don’t fill it out, make it a shorter conversation if it’s like that. Yeah.

Speaker1: I’m doing a course for the BCD on ceramics courses that don’t exist on ceramics these days, and I’ve got one day to do [01:18:30] as much as I can. Yeah, it’s the complete opposite approach. I was looking at my slides the other day and thinking.

Speaker4: Editing out which which parts can.

Speaker1: I must keep because I need.

Speaker4: I.

Speaker1: Can’t fit everything in. It’s only one day and that’s the problem we should have.

Speaker4: Exactly.

Speaker1: Not having too, you know, too much time.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker3: You know, like traditionally back in my day it would be like, oh, we’re talking about ceramics. Let’s start with the history of ceramics. Yeah, yeah. But by the way, probably, you know, it makes some sense if we’re talking relating the history to the future and so forth, and the trends happen and so [01:19:00] forth. But come on, man, I think.

Speaker1: Chris, Chris finds a good balance in that. He gives you a, you know, a stack of reading material. Very good. Before before you come in. And it’s your choice whether you read it or not. But then he’s going to run with it and talk about everything, you know, assuming you’ve read it. And that’s great because you’ve engaged before coming in. And he doesn’t have to recite to you the history of ceramics. He can.

Speaker3: The thing about Crystal is the presentation is not you know, I’ve seen many more beautiful presentations than his. It’s all about the presentation. It’s not I mean, I [01:19:30] know many more charming, funnier. He’s a funny guy. Yeah, but it’s not about his charm. He somehow manages to for me, he manages to to cover depth and breadth to the right amount. You know, you think it’s either depth or breadth, and sometimes it’s too much depth and not enough breadth and sometimes the other way around. But his his proportion ratio of depth to breadth is perfect.

Speaker4: I think people appreciate his common.

Speaker3: Sense sort of.

Speaker4: Degree [01:20:00] of.

Speaker1: Rationality when it comes to different approaches. You know, you ask him about any, any subject or any teacher and he’ll he’ll give you a very measured response.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: He’s not one to get on a bandwagon or fleetingly move from, you know, from, from one approach to something else. You know, as I was chatting to him the other night about biomimetics and, you know, that’s that’s all the rage right now, he’ll come up with an answer which is, you know, quite sympathetic to everything. And but he’ll he’ll give his opinion.

Speaker4: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker3: But a lot of respect for him. We’re coming to the end of our [01:20:30] time. We tend to end these with the same two questions. The first is a frivolous one fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive. Who would you want to have a chat to?

Speaker1: First one is straightforward Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker4: Arnie. Yeah.

Speaker3: I had him recently on politics. Do you ever listen to. Yes. Yeah. Leaders leading. Leading. Yeah. I never I never used to understand anything about Arnie until Prav [01:21:00] told me. He’s he’s one of his heroes. And I thought, man. And then I really enjoyed listening to him though.

Speaker1: People think of him, you know, he’s misunderstood as being the kind of the movie guy or the weights guy. But behind all of that, he’s someone who’s kind of he’s lived three lifetimes when one person would be happy just with one third of what he’s done. And all of that is testament not to kind of good luck or anything like that. He’s forged it out of nothing.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: So I have a lot of respect for someone like that. And he’s had his fair share of turbulent times [01:21:30] as well. And he’s come out of it and he’s he’s an interesting character for sure.

Speaker3: Didn’t he father a child with his nanny? That’s right.

Speaker4: I think a year.

Speaker1: Or two before he became governor.

Speaker4: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Who else?

Speaker3: Michael Jackson for the dancing.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: And I think creatively, you know, dancing wise, but creatively, you know, think about the best performance in the world right now. He still seems to stand on their shoulders. I know many people. You know, Beyonce is probably one [01:22:00] of the best these days. But you take into account his musicality, his acting ability, his dancing ability. It kind of he did things which very rarely happen, and he developed from his dance style, a whole range of different things in dance kind of developed and it kind of came the roads led from him and.

Speaker4: So, so listen.

Speaker3: I’m no expert in dance, but you are. Yeah. So. Okay. Michael Jackson dance. What about, like, proper professional dancers? That’s all they do. Dancers do they are they [01:22:30] not more impressive than Michael Jackson’s dancing?

Speaker4: No, really.

Speaker3: Because, I mean, his style was his style.

Speaker4: You’re right.

Speaker1: Michael Jackson’s ability in dance was in succession of of professional dancers. And where he where he shines a lot is his ability to develop innovative choreography, which people have not seen before. And he, you know, he developed certain certain dance moves which are very famous now. But branching from that, you had different dance styles. That whole style would come from, from Michael Jackson.

Speaker3: I guess the reason [01:23:00] I’m pushing back is because I was a massive Prince fan and Prince at the time. It was either one or the other.

Speaker4: Yeah, no. Fair enough, fair enough.

Speaker1: When when you had his final concert, a lot of his backing dancers who he chose were some of the best. Dance in the world and remember seeing the interviews of them. Then one of their all of their biggest influences was always him, because maybe because of their age.

Speaker3: But he definitely was special.

Speaker4: They said that. Yeah, an.

Speaker1: Influence on on on dance and also the music that he’s come out with. You think about his like three main albums [01:23:30] musically. Pretty impressive.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker3: But but there was no Billie Jean.

Speaker4: We’ve got to think back to there was no kid.

Speaker3: Yeah, there was no one who ever told him. Beat it. None of this stuff ever happened. Yeah, for me, it was like comic book stuff. Whereas with Prince, yeah, I felt like everything happened to him that he sang about. Yeah, there was an authenticity. But by the way, pop is pop. Pop is not supposed to be about about authentic stuff. So. So [01:24:00] I get.

Speaker4: It. It’s a bit like.

Speaker1: Watching a movie, you know, the movie is fiction doesn’t need to happen to the past.

Speaker4: It’s just, can they.

Speaker1: Transport you somewhere.

Speaker4: Somewhere.

Speaker1: And show you a little glimpse into something and can you believe it? And if you can do that, that’s cool. You know, like thriller and bad to the kind of best music videos probably ever made. Yeah. And you watch them back today and they still stand up. Still good. I mean, from the 80s they stand up. That’s incredible stuff. Stuff from the noughties doesn’t stand out right now.

Speaker4: Right.

Speaker1: And who are we at? We’ve got a third person. Third person. Okay. [01:24:30] Steve Jobs I am not a fan of Apple, but I’m a fan of Steve Jobs.

Speaker3: I’m not a fan of Apple.

Speaker1: Not really.

Speaker4: No. You don’t have an Apple phone.

Speaker1: I used to I gave it up for a OnePlus, Google, OnePlus. It’s one.

Speaker4: Plus.

Speaker1: Yeah.

Speaker4: Chinese thing.

Speaker1: Chinese company. Yeah.

Speaker4: What’s better than Apple?

Speaker1: It’s it’s pretty much an exact copy.

Speaker3: Us is not better than that.

Speaker1: No, it just doesn’t restrict you to all the different things you need to do. You have to. You have to use their charger. You have to use their computer. They’re always it’s kind of a bit de-conflicted. [01:25:00]

Speaker4: Steve. Why?

Speaker3: Steve Jobs I.

Speaker1: Think, was very I was very taken aback by his biography from Walter Isaacson.

Speaker4: I read it, I thought.

Speaker1: His his his approach to. His work, and his life was very against the grain and people. Walter paints a picture of him being someone you like, but it’s something you can really hate as well. And I thought to myself at the end of the book, you know, has he done humanity a good service or not? You know, having alienated all these employees [01:25:30] and from a business point of view, you know, take a few lessons from that into my own business as to how far to push. And where not to. It’s slightly different in health care, but he would find solutions for things by pushing people beyond breaking point. And I think we need people like that. This needs to be everywhere. But we would not have these products if it wasn’t for him saying to his employer, his programmer and his dev make it happen.

Speaker3: I [01:26:00] think Stanley Kubrick, people talk about him pushing actors beyond the pale, you know, like, and, you know, his.

Speaker4: Movies to tears. Yeah, yeah. Real tears. Actual tears. Yeah.

Speaker1: And they would not he would stand back from the actors and he wouldn’t give them too much direct direction. He would do it through one of his assistant directors. So as a result, he was a slightly feared by the crew. And does that give a better performance? Well, maybe you know, who knows.

Speaker3: The results speak for themselves.

Speaker4: Yeah. I mean.

Speaker1: His films are incredible.

Speaker4: That’s the thing.

Speaker3: Lovely, lovely group.

Speaker1: B, funny, [01:26:30] funny. Dinner.

Speaker4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker3: Annie and Michael Jackson. Yeah.

Speaker4: I’m not sure they know.

Speaker1: Or Steve Jobs, maybe I know Steven Schwarzenegger. No. Know each other.

Speaker4: That’s about it.

Speaker3: The final question, then. It’s kind of weird with someone as young as you, but it’s like a deathbed question on your deathbed. All your friends and family and loved ones around you. Three pieces of advice that you’d leave the world with.

Speaker1: My [01:27:00] first one is not short, but can I can I can give it to you. Prioritise being happy and having a lot of fun. We’re in this life for a period of time and things will happen, but our only job really is to be happy and have a lot of fun in my view. So make sure you just prioritise that. Which sounds selfish but actually think it’s important. Number two, I can’t take full credit for, but I think it rings true. Stay [01:27:30] hungry. Which means. Always look to be. To be better or. Look to progress, be it whatever you’re doing. There was a book which analysed the failure of major corporations, and they they found that invariably when the company started to kind of plateau and get comfortable BlackBerry or something, that’s when they get surmounted by another entity which is really pushing themselves and [01:28:00] behaving like they’re very hungry for success or for for whatever it may be. So that would be my second. Did you watch.

Speaker3: The BlackBerry.

Speaker4: Movie? I did, what did you think? Loved it. Yeah, it was good. Really interesting. Charming.

Speaker1: Amazing, amazing film.

Speaker4: The story.

Speaker1: The story as well.

Speaker3: I think in your case though, that stay hungry. I would if I, if someone was asking me about you having now had this conversation, I’d say you’re very curious. Person you know. So stay curious. It’s for you [01:28:30] to have wanted to figure out that cerec machine in dental school. I think a degree of curiosity, you know, for you to start with a blank slate with your patient and just feel what they’re saying. It takes a level of sort of intellectual curiosity that not everyone has or not everyone keeps, you know? So it’s a it’s lovely advice. What’s your third piece?

Speaker4: Third piece.

Speaker3: I think it’s kind of such an interesting question. I was telling Prav, it’s [01:29:00] perhaps a question that some of it could be, you know, I’ve done this, so you do it too. But another way of answering that question is I didn’t do this, but you should. You know, like when you know yourself really well, that’s that’s another way of answering the question. You know, I tell my kid, hey, I didn’t go to the gym, but you do, you know, for the sake of the argument.

Speaker4: It’s interesting you say that because I’ve.

Speaker1: Always tried to live life, to not have those regrets. Yeah, and it’s hard. It’s [01:29:30] easy to say, but hard to.

Speaker4: Act on for sure.

Speaker1: And that’s why I look back to my six months. And I remember thinking to myself, I’ve got I may have one, three, 6 or 12 months off. And I had a plan for each one, like skeleton plan on paper as to what I would do, where I would go. And and it landed on six. And I just followed that plan.

Speaker4: And it was a quick summary.

Speaker3: Of what you did in that.

Speaker4: Six months, quick.

Speaker1: Oh, so I’ve always wanted to get into mountaineering and I did a little bit with the Navy, you know, small [01:30:00] stuff. So I thought, okay, I’ve got six months, let me see what I can do. So I started with Mont Blanc as a training climb, which was super fun to learn about, kind of all the equipment side of things. And then I did a big one for two months in Nepal, Mt. Manaslu, which is, if you’ve seen 14 peaks with Nims Dai, he was with us out there. He’s it’s one of the 14 peaks, basically. And that was incredible. Just such a great experience with the Sherpas. Lovely.

Speaker4: Had you climbed at all before this?

Speaker1: Nothing high, nothing high altitude. So I’d never used kind of supplementary oxygen [01:30:30] or done rotations until that point, which is why the Mont Blanc climb was a training climb, so physically quite demanding. So I had to do a good amount of training before then. I did some scuba diving with a friend in the Maldives afterwards as a bit of a holiday, and then the final trip was Antarctica in December. In January we’re doing some mountaineering out there, pulling sleds along, getting very cold.

Speaker4: Oh my goodness.

Speaker1: Which was which was awesome.

Speaker4: Oh my.

Speaker3: Goodness. Wonderful.

Speaker4: And you couldn’t.

Speaker1: Couldn’t have done and could have gone Antarctica without having done the high altitude stuff in Nepal. [01:31:00] Because you’re not allowed, you’re too dangerous because you need to have experience in cold environments, tent living because Antarctica has no fixed structures at all.

Speaker4: So is your third piece.

Speaker3: Of advice take a six month sabbatical?

Speaker1: Yeah, it’s kind of along those lines is to not live with any fear of losing something because we really have nothing to lose, although it seems like we do. You don’t want to get into a point where you think, oh, well, I should have done that. I should have tried [01:31:30] that.

Speaker4: Yeah. You know.

Speaker3: I’ve found now I’m getting to that age where you start regretting stuff. Yeah. Like, okay. Much as you try not to. Yeah. The not having gone for something regret. Yeah. Tends to come from a position of fear and just decisions. Decisions that come from a position of fear in general are pretty bad decisions.

Speaker4: And it comes from all.

Speaker1: From the simplest decision as asking someone you like out for a drink. Yeah, all the way up to buying a home or [01:32:00] trying to buy a home or starting a business. All these things, and they all come with risk of rejection, failure and financial ruin. All these things that I’ve kind of been through all the three scenarios and you feel better having even even if it doesn’t go your way.

Speaker4: Yeah. Having tried.

Speaker1: Yeah. You feel better if you tried and failed, if you haven’t tried and failed and you go back and think, oh, well, what if it could have worked, then what?

Speaker4: Yeah, very true. I’d say.

Speaker1: I’d say give it a punt. Take a try, take advice. Be careful. [01:32:30] Don’t be, don’t be, don’t be kind of reckless. Yeah, but give it a try.

Speaker3: Very good advice. It’s been lovely. Lovely chatting with you, man.

Speaker4: It’s been great.

Speaker3: I’ve really, really enjoyed that. Time flew by. Thank you so much for doing that, buddy.

Speaker4: Hey, it’s been great being so open.

Speaker3: Wonderful.

Speaker2: This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. [01:33:00] Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Speaker5: Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

Speaker3: 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.

Speaker5: And don’t [01:33:30] forget our six star rating.

British culture is very meme culture. Like, we always like to take the piss. Take the piss. Whereas if you go to America, it’s very opposite, right? It’s like, yo bro, you got this. And I think the problem is both aren’t great because you go to America and you’re told you’re going to be the best at something, and then at 30 years old, you haven’t made it. And it’s like, well, what happened to the American dream, right?

This is mind movers. Moving the conversation forward on mental health and optimisation for dental professionals. Your hosts Rhona Eskander and Payman Langroudi.

Welcome to another episode of Mind Movers. And today we have the incredible Henry Wade. So Henry is a very, very known content creator. I actually met Henry. I didn’t meet him. This is a funny story I became when I first split up with my first boyfriend, I went to fitness first. It was a bit of a rough gym in Clapham, and I used to see Henry and his twin working out there all the time. And interestingly, I looked at you both and I was like, you just had presence. I just felt like you both were going to do really well. I didn’t even know what you had done. And then serendipity has it. We actually ended up meeting later on in life through friends, etcetera. And I was like, you were the one that was working out of Fitness first, and I had seen his content online. Henry’s extremely hard working. He’s become very successful in what he does. And interestingly, he transitioned from having, you know, quite a sort of generic career, I’d say, and, you know, making it online and, you know, really taking a leap of faith against what his family believes. Because I know you come from family in Cambridge and, you know, saying, like, I’m going to make this work and I’m going to make a career out of content creation. And more recently, he has focussed on fitness as well. Fitness has been a massive part of his life, has been doing marathon running, documenting that as well, which we’re going to cover. So welcome Henry.

Thank you very much. That was a very nice intro, so I really appreciate it. I was like smiling. They’re like, oh, I haven’t had this kind of compliment in a long time. So I really appreciate it.

Well, you know, a lot of love for Henry. We’ve known each other for a while now. So, Henry, I want to start from the beginning, as I do with a lot of people. Tell me a little bit about your childhood. I know you grew up in Cambridge, but tell me about, like, where you come, your background a little bit.

Yeah. So for the record, I’m 31 years old now. He keeps saying that.

Like he’s old. I’m like, do you know how old I am? Okay. Go on.

And I’m initially from Cambridge, so I grew up there and I then moved. Well, sorry, I went to Cambridge. Been there since all the way to college, then went to university and then went travelling and then I moved to London. So yeah, I’ve been grew up and grew up in Cambridge with a family of four, and I’m an identical twin, and I’ve got an older brother and an older sister as well. And then there’s me, the youngest one with mum and dad. So yeah.

Amazing. And you worked in nightlife, didn’t you? So after, was it after or during university?

It was actually during. So when I was at uni, that was the first time I separated from my twin brother. I kind of got the chance to build my own identity a bit and went to university, went to Newcastle, had an amazing time. I be honest, I kind of chose university life because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next in my career, so I just chose a standard business and marketing course and I kind of went because of the nightlife. I watched one episode of Geordie Shore and thought, this will be epic, like me and Gaz of Geordie Shore, like going to get on anyway. I started becoming a co-promoter because I thought, you know what? This is a great way to meet people, make friends and I then did quite well, became a junior manager and then because I sold so many tickets, I had so many people on my guest list and then I became a senior manager. So I started essentially running my own nights, and it only took me to like a few years ago to really realise how important that job was for me, because while everyone was getting placement years at university and going to like all these amazing companies, which I didn’t actually get, I tried to, but I couldn’t get them. And I actually realised, like the communication skills I learnt during this job, some of the best I’ve ever done in my entire life. Like I can talk to anybody now and it’s I think that’s a really powerful tool to have, and they’re the kind of skills I probably don’t think I’d have got, or having the confidence to go and speak to anyone is I probably won’t have got those skills. If I’d have gone to like a corporate company and kind of just worked and seen how their business runs.

And do you know, that’s interesting. I’m going to I’m going to interject there because I saw a post. So as you as I told you, like the majority of people that tune in with me in Payman are dentists and a lot of them have been confused because within dentistry there’s loads of courses, right? Because obviously clinical skills is like a big part of our career. So, you know, you learn how to do like crowns and veneers and bonding and Invisalign and all the stuff that you know about. But the one thing that they really lack is that communication skill that you said. And even though we go to university for like five, six years or longer, if you want to specialise, they still feel they can’t communicate with people you know, they still feel they can’t talk to patients. Why do you.

Think? When I was a kid, I used to be so scared to go to the dentist? It’s the very thing, isn’t it? Yeah. The dentist is the scary place to go. Like they’re not the nice people. They put their fingers in your mouth and it’s just like all these tools go in. Whereas I think that’s definitely changing now. I think you’re doing a great job in the industry of doing that. And other dentists as well. I know, and.

Your dentist, Henry didn’t choose me, that’s why.

Yeah, but yeah, a couple of you do great. And I think that’s amazing for the industry to kind of change that thing about it. But yeah, as you were saying, I think those communication skills are really, really important. But do you.

Think the communication skills were because you worked in nightlife, or do you think it was because you went to university? Do you see what I mean?

Think it’s a little bit of both. Like when I went to university. As I said before, it was the first time away from my twin and we were always together. So it was always like, oh, okay, I’ll turn up to the party or I’ll turn up to school with Will. And we always kind of had each other to bounce off of, whereas going to university, I had to really come out of my like, oh shit, I haven’t got a twin with me. Yeah, everyone’s going to know me as just Henry. I’ve kind of got to be this, who am I? Like, so I was like, all right, I’ve got to be the communicating and energetic and outgoing guy I think I am. And I was, and I became confident because I had to grow my own confidence and because I didn’t have will. So I was like turning up to university lectures on my own, making friends with those people and those university lectures, heading on nights out and meeting people on nights out. Actually going to university again is one as well, I think really makes you step out of your shell because you are stepping into an environment where there’s no one else you really know, none of your friends are really there, so you kind of just do it by yourself, and you are thrown into a situation where you have to make friends. And I think for everyone who goes to university, I think there’s so much topics right now and people talking about how you don’t need to go to university and you don’t have to be successful to go to university, but I think there’s so many benefits of still going in personal development and self growth. And I know a lot of people, not just myself, have gone to university and been like.

I’m massively pro it, I think, I think I’d be interested to see what you think. Like obviously for vocational degrees like dentistry, medicine, etcetera. Oh, 100%. You got to go. Yeah, totally. But a lot some people say they think it was a complete waste of time. But I think that the connections that you form and the experiences you had, there’s something in that 100%.

I think for me, I’ll be totally honest. I don’t think I learnt that much about business and marketing, like sitting in a room. I think with business you learn by doing, you generally do like I’ve done that through all my content creation. I’ve learnt by doing and if you don’t do it, you never know. So you’ve got to put yourself through the through the process and learn. And then so which is great. And I think that’s perfect. But um. Oh sorry. Where was I?

Perfect. The business and marketing. Yeah.

That’s right. I didn’t really feel I learnt so much from actually doing business and marketing the actual degree, but like I said, the meeting people, the job I did, that was the stuff I really learnt. And I wouldn’t ever say to anyone, not go to university. But yeah, if you want to go, go. But if you don’t, you don’t have to.

But I think as well, maybe it is a stop gap for people that don’t know what they want to do. Yeah, yeah, maybe it is a stop gap because maybe you need that time to go through like your growing pains or, you know, but also like university can equally it was pretty traumatic for me. Like I think being thrown into an environment like I’d never university for me was like a really weird experience because I’d, I’d grown in a multicultural society in central London in a day school. The halls that I was put in was very much like everyone was like from public school. I was like the only brown person. And I was very much, like, treated like in a certain way, like I had all friends, you know, I had a great social life, but it was a different experience. And there was, there was, there was like a kind of difficulty and like somewhat, but obviously that shaped me as a person as well. So I think, you know, there’s definitely like pros and cons to it. But yeah, what I want to know as well is you’re an identical twin. Yeah. Right. And I don’t know if you know, like as an I’m really interested either one of you about studies because being an identical twin is that difficult. And like in terms of like identity, you remember there was a documentary. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, either one of you where there was triplets. Yeah. That was amazing. I can’t remember.

Three identical strangers. Yeah, I haven’t.

Actually seen it, but I’ve heard it’s amazing.

It’s amazing.

So basically, the therapist keeps telling me to watch it. Yeah.

Yeah.

So so so so it’s really amazing because those three, those those triplets were separated at birth. It has a dark turn in the end because it was a social experiment by someone that kept doing these experiments. And when they got reunited, it was all great. And then there was a huge problem with like identity crisis, etcetera. Do you think that, like biologically there is something about being a twin, a triplet or whatever, you know, and how it affects who you are and who you believe you are? And like whether you have that sense of like being oneself.

Oh, that’s such a good question because no one will ever know unless they’re an identical twin. What it’s physically like to be an identical twin, right? Yeah. And growing up, Will and I always had this thing about us where we weren’t really known as Henry or Will. It was always the way twins. Oh, it’s the two twins. The two twins. And in school, if one of us did something right, or most, most of the time, if one of us did something wrong, then it always threw back on the other person. So if we all got told off in a class that teachers instantly going to categorise him as being naughty and they’re going to think I’m naughty as well, because we come in pairs, right? Yeah. Very normal. We pushed down the pram together. Oh, those two look so sweet. Do you know what I mean? It’s never like oh, one of you or whatever. And then, um, as I said earlier, the only time we really got to find ourselves as our own identity was when we went to university. But the funny thing is, by, yeah, we were building our own, building our own identity and becoming our becoming our self. What was funny was we still did the exact same thing. So he did a business course. We both began our first year working at Nando’s. So? So did he. So did I. And then we left Nando’s both. Club promoters both got promoted to junior manager. And then it was weird because those two companies, we became like top of those companies, both knew each other as well.

So it was like, oh, we tried to become ourselves, but then we kind of have our self identity, but we can’t forge back into it. And then when travelling together, we got home from travelling, went to London. We both had similar kind of jobs to begin with whilst we were becoming creators, and then we realised we’re probably better off together. I think the thing with being a twins is you’re very competitive and growing up like Will and I both wanted to always be the winning one, whether it be grades or 100 metre races or whatever. We did all sports and it would always be like, I want to beat Will, but I want him to come second by like five, just just a bit. But I don’t want him to beat me. And it was every race, every run, every football team. We wanted to get picked first, but over him will be the captain or whatever. But the older we got, we started to really compete and it made us get to who we were. Like we did really well in sports and achievements and academics. We weren’t so bad either. However, we realised instead of like keep battling and competing, collaborating with each other so much more beneficial. And that’s when we started to grow, like our Instagram and TikTok following by actually being together. Because don’t get me wrong, it’s cool being a white male in today’s industry. However, there are so many other tall white males doing what I do in fitness and fashion.

So what can make you really stand out from the crowd? For me, I’m very fortunate to have an identical twin, so and it’s great. And we are best friends. Like you’ve heard. I’ve heard horror stories of twins having like hating each other, whereas Will and I, we get on so, so well. We’ve. Yeah, don’t get me wrong, we bicker like 13 year old boys still, which is very family. But we’re definitely learning learning to navigate that a lot better. And I think that’s so important. I think we always will in our entire lives because, yeah, I never talk to Carmen. How I sometimes talk to Will, and it sometimes takes me to realise, like if he leaves something in the sink, I’ll go will clean it up. Whereas if Carmen did that, my girlfriend, I’d be like, I’ll just grab it and put it in the dishwasher. But because he’s my brother, I feel like I need to tell him. However, I’ve like now started to realise I look at that and go, is this worth picking a fight for? No it’s not. Pick it up, put it in the dishwasher. Like if I wouldn’t talk to him like that, my girlfriend like that, why should I talk to him like that? Just because he’s my brother, I shouldn’t. And. Yeah, so. But it’s it’s a head game because like I said, I’ve known him my entire life. I’ve been in the womb with him. Like we are so close. But can I ask you something?

Do you know if biologically there’s any studies to show, like whether, like, you can ever fully be, like, separate or separated? Like, is there any studies around twins? You might not know this I don’t.

Know, do you know? Well, I thought, you know, all this stuff about gut microbiome. Yeah. And the guy was saying that his his research interest was twins because twins end up getting different diseases. And his question was, why do twins get different diseases if they’re genetically the same? Environmentally very similar. I’ve got something for.

You there, like Will. My family has this, I don’t know.

One second. That was all right. Okay. Go ahead.

My brother has this really bad eye condition called keratoconus, I think. I think that’s right. Maybe I’ve pronounced it wrong. So if anyone on here knows that, please pronounce it correctly.

Keratitis.

Similar, but I’m not sure. But basically it basically means the his eyes, the pupils are shaped, I think like footballs instead of rugby balls or the other way around. I can’t remember which one it is. And the doctor is like the number one surgeon who tests who does his eyes for him, because we had to go privately, and because it was so he got so bad, he had to be jumped into hospital straight away and put under the knife and have it sorted. It got that bad and the doctor was like, we need to get you twin in here ASAP because he’s going to have something and it’s so funny that I don’t have it. And I still now get tested every 18 months and the doctor goes to me. I’m still have no idea why you don’t have it. And they’ve realised it’s in my system, but it hasn’t quite triggered. So Will’s will got it and it triggered, whereas I haven’t had it and it triggered and he’s still so shocked, which is so weird.

So so so this this researcher found the microbiome was very different in twins, so different bacteria. And so he was he was blaming, he was saying, well that’s where he could see that the effect of different bacteria on people. When you look at the effect of different bacteria on twins, because the one thing that’s very different in the measurements between twins is the bacteria that lives in their gut.

Yeah, maybe. I think there’s so many studies now coming up about gut and how it’s one of the main factors. Controlling everything, controlling everything. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s become only in the last real year. So it’ll be interesting to see.

Well, we’ve talked as well. You’ve had a lot of like stuff with your gut. You know, we kind of had that conversation and you know a lot around that with mental health, which I want to go into 100%. But before we actually delve into that. So I just want to know, how did you rise? I know you might think like, I don’t say this, but how did you rise to TikTok and Instagram fame? Oh so and like, how did you make that transition? Because a lot of people want to know that. They want to know how to, like, make a living out of just being a content.

So in America, the number one most wanted job now apparently is like a YouTuber, TikToker, Instagram like an influencer. People want to be kids.

Yeah.

For kids. Your kids too.

Not my kids, but kids in general.

Yeah, your kids are probably all right, I think. I think the thing is, people see this lavish life we all post about, like, you get the free products, you get paid to work with these amazing brands. Your life is sorted, like, almost like you get free dinners and you think it’s all glamorous. And don’t get me wrong, it can be at times, but there is a very stressful side to it that I think a lot of people don’t don’t show. But we’ll go. We’ll move on to that. But the question you initially asked was, how did I rise to stardom, essentially, as you said. So back in, oh, when I was travelling the world, because obviously TikTok came after Instagram. So this is our Instagram story. We were travelling Australia and we and all the world.

And you’re working in nightlife still then? No, no this.

Is we packed our bags came backpackers. And this was when Facebook was big. Instagram was kind of just coming up and it was like Twitter, everyone’s on Twitter promoting the news or whatever. And we basically got to Australia after doing Cambodia, Thailand, all the Southeast Asia countries. And honestly, we were just alcoholics, like all we did was drink booze, get pissed and not really see these countries for what they were. And we got to Australia and Will and I were in such bad physical shape, like we were weighty. And I was like, what the hell? I went for a run and almost puked. And I’ve never been this like this before. I’ve just been drinking for six months. I had one night off in like six months because all I was, all me and my mates were doing was getting pissing in Thailand or whatever. And don’t get me wrong, it was amazing. Still had the best time ever and I’ll never change that experience. But I got to Australia and Will and I, we suddenly went from being in the worst shape ever to being so obsessed with fitness and got into the best shape of our lives. We were so lean, like 4% body fat, like we were walking down the Aussie beach. These fitness trainers have been on the front of mental health for telling us we’re too lean, we need to put on some weight and we’re going, no, not lean enough, not lean enough.

I’m sure we all wanted the six pack of dreams, which you never we thought we didn’t have yet, but we did looking back and we were like, right, let’s start documenting some fitness and doing these, like twin workout things. And we had a page, the Weight Twins. Then we had our own personal Instagram as well, and we then left Australia and we started travelling back. And instead of seeing the world being like alcoholics again, we thought, let’s really like be normal. Like do it well, get up for sunrises, do yoga’s, do runs on the beach or whatever, and see this place with the real beauty it is, and you don’t always have to be pissed essentially on the on the booze. So we picked up a camera in Japan, picked up a little canon in Australia, and we started documenting our journey. Just like selfies, we didn’t have a clue how to use this equipment, and I was YouTubing how to use Lightroom and Photoshop and change colours and stuff, and I was making everything oversaturated, and we started documenting and and doing all these things. And it was, it was quite funny at the time was all our friends were commenting on our photos being like, lol, this is a joke. We started a website as well called the twins.com and where we wanted to write blogs on our travels and everyone was like I was getting emails.

I remember the first ever email I got through it was you’re a joke from a fake account being like, you’re never going to make it. This is the biggest laughing thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ll never. I wish I still had a screenshot of that, but obviously I was so embarrassed at the time. Like I was like, am I doing the wrong thing? And it makes you really question whether you’re doing the right thing. And but luckily I had willed Fall Back On. He was like, when he had a bad day, I was there to pick him up and go, no, don’t worry, just keep going, keep going. When I had a bad day, it was the opposite. He was the one picking me up, which was great. So we started documenting our journey and we got back to London, Cambridge, where we lived, and we had about maybe ten, ten, 11,000 followers by this time. And I remember we were ordering these clothes because we had cool wardrobes at home. We really wanted to get back into our main fashion and we were like taking photos on our back garden. And we were like, what are we doing? This is a waste of time. We need to be in London. And we ended up both moving to London and literally had about £2,000 in my bank. Not much money at all, and Will had probably less because he spent a lot more and we both lived in different areas in the most tiniest bedsits in the world.

I had a single bed and I was living with five other people with one bathroom, and I remember just having to bang on the door, please let me into the bathroom. We used to have to literally run outside, sometimes just to go to the bathroom, because I was so desperate because this, this girl next door would take so long and we were like, right, how can we really continue this Instagram and content creation we’re doing? And but we need to make a living, right? So we had to get a job part time. He worked for an events company, and I worked for a start up company with a drinks company, and we’re both working five days a week. And I was like, right, we still need to create content. So every day we would like essentially go for a meeting. And that meeting would be like, we would go for a meeting with some drinks brand or whatever, and I’ll go for a meeting with like Tesco’s CEO, one of my clients, and I really would just be sneaking my camera out and going to meet Will and shooting around London. And then also we’d do it in the evenings, we’d do it on the weekends all the time. And we were like, right? So we kept shooting content.

And whilst this was happening in the evenings, there was always events on H&M, Topman, All Saints or whatever these events and fashion brands would be. And we were like, right, we want to work with these brands, but how can we get put in the face of them? And we were networking with other creators at this time, finding out how London works and. What their experiences of, or if we wanted to collaborate with them and shoot content with them. And we’ll get sent all these events. But we weren’t invited to them. So we would just be like, should we just turn up and see what happens? Because what’s the worst that’s going to happen to us? We’re just going to get a no, and they’re going to just go, all right, screw it. We’ll go for a drink by ourselves. Whatever. Yeah. So we would turn up to these events and our analogy was who’s going to turn down two well-dressed six foot three lads, and every time nine out of ten will get in even without an invite, because we’ll just show them like the thing and all your name’s not on the list are. We’re so, so, so weird. Like, anyway, what we’ll do when we were in that room would not just go for the booze and go for the free nibbles, which 18 year old Henry would have done.

It was right. Who’s the PR marketing? Who’s the PR manager? Who’s the marketing manager and who’s the head of brand? And I want to meet that person in five minutes. Get their email, have a good chat with them, show them the content I do right there and then, and then schedule a meeting with them. Within two weeks, I’ll have a meeting with that person, whether it be coffee or a lunch, and then within like a week after that, I’ll have free clothes from them, and then after that I’ll put you have a job with them as well. I love that that was for me. Like I think now moving forward, I can put that what I did there into other areas of my life as well, and other businesses I do because it’s the same thing. It’s all like you initially start doing things for free. If you’re a dentist, you may want to do something free for your free for a client. Show them. Show someone what work you can do, how good these teeth are. And then someone sees that and they go, oh, I like that. I’ll then pay for it. It’s the same with any business. It’s the same kind of process. And then our following was going up and up and we started to get more followers. And then we got a few viral videos and then that kind of blew up.

And how did you know back then in Australia where you started filming that that’s what you want to do? I mean, because it wasn’t influencer land, wasn’t exactly what it is now. Yeah. Which year are we talking? Oh.

Wow. This must have been 25. So about seven years ago maybe.

Okay. So there was.

Something it was just started I think. Well, and I would say we’re phase 2 or 3. There was a phase one who were like.

That was that was your stated goal, you to become a big on these platforms?

It wasn’t necessarily a goal. It was more of a we wanted, didn’t want to be pretty boys just prancing our thing around because that’s quite easy to be done. But we wanted to offer value where we could because I think there’s a fine balance of offering value, but also showing off on content creation. And it’s okay to do both because a lot of people want that. Oh, I wish I had that live or oh, I wish I had that kind of moment. But then also if you offer value, it’s like, okay, that was that was a good piece of content. So Will and I were initially started when we’re in Australia was like, right. We saw everyone in the UK posing on the streets of London and show off fashion, and I was just and no one was English, no one had a personality. It was like I just saw all these people who were from Europe doing it in England, and I was like, well, why are they all doing it? There’s no English British lads doing this. Like and I think there was.

Probably a taboo though, because you said even like people were taking the piss out of you like, oh yeah, totally. Your friends.

Always do.

But but that’s the thing. But I think that’s a male thing, right. Because they see they see like that career or doing that stuff online as being very feminine I think. Do you know what I mean? As in like and then.

It’s just that I think it’s also like British culture is very meme culture. Like we always like to take the piss, take the piss. Whereas if you go to America, it’s very opposite, right? It’s like, yo bro, you got this. And I think the problem is both aren’t great because you go to America and you’re told you’re going to be the best at something, and then at 30 years old, you haven’t made it. And it’s like, well, what happened to the American dream? Right? So they need a bit of like downgrading, whereas we need a bit more of that boost because everything’s a meme. You get taken the piss out all the time, but the way Will and I stopped. That was just like we encouraged each other and we’re like, we know what we want. We had our goal, we had our view and we had our vision. And if you’ve got that, I think sometimes when people look at you and laugh, it is one of the best things that can happen to your career. It’s one of the best things that happen because you know you’re on the right path. It’s like that old saying.

In dentistry Rona’s managed it. Yeah, but but I come across hundreds of dentists and I asked him, do you have an Instagram? And they say, no.

Yeah, so do I. I’ve actually got a friend who’s a dentist right now. And I said, why don’t you set up your Instagram friend? Her name’s Hannah. She’s my girlfriend’s, one of my best friend’s girlfriend, best friend. And I’m like, I’m like, it’s like a hairdresser set up an Instagram account for hair.

But then the reason why often there’s a they don’t want to share their work, you know, because everyone’s very critical. The judgement, the judgement. Very true, very true. And and often it’s being uncomfortable in front of camera. So how did you get over these questions or did that not bother you at all? You were like, no.

Before Henry goes on with that, his story reminded me of mine in terms of like people say, how did you get on TV and the easy cop out way? As you know, people say she paid PR. I’m like, hun, I didn’t have PR back then. I went outside ITV studio and I stood outside that studio for about 5 or 6 hours until Zoe Williams came out. The doctor. Yeah, yeah. And she came out.

Telling me that story. I was like.

I had messaged her loads to meet me, and she took a chance and she met me for coffee and I said, I want to do this. And she was like, well, why do you want to do it in the same way that you just asked Henry? Why? Did you want to do the content? For me, it was the bigger vision. And I’m going to be completely honest. I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted to leave a legacy within my field. I didn’t want to be in a life where I was like, I got up, I drilled a few teeth, I did a few small makeovers. Impact. And the fact is, no matter what anyone says, platforms such as social media, TV, radio, etcetera, they give you that platform to reach more people and therefore have a bigger impact. And I’m not talking just about a narcissistic way, but it’s just that value add that you just said to me, it’s giving value to people.

But it’s a particular flavour of impact. So I want to have impact. That’s why I started this company. Yeah, but it’s a particular flavour where you’re you are the product. And that’s what a lot of people suffer with, with you two don’t.

So what you said there about offering value is so difficult in the world I live in, I think because there are times where I’ll create a piece of content and I’ll sit there and I’ll go, I really like it, but where’s the value? There? And I’ll show a friend it or I’ll show you it and they’ll go, but it’s so entertaining. That’s the value. And I’m like, is it, is it like, yeah. And I’m like, is it like, should I not be doing. I go to the gym all the time. Five best ways to grow your chest as a male or something because there’s value there but may not be entertaining, but.

Education, education, entertainment but there’s different.

Value. Well, yeah, there you go. But I sometimes struggle to see that because I’m always I think we’re always critiques of our own work. And what you’re saying there about why not all dentists set up their, their accounts. Because we are the worst critique. Like, you have a spot on your chin. Who sees it? You. Does anyone else see it? No. Because we we worry about so much what other people think about us. And it’s it’s detrimental to our success.

But validation is a form of addiction. Right. And I’m going to go out there because everyone’s like, what’s your addiction, Raina? You don’t drink, you don’t take drugs, you don’t, you know, and I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to say to the world, my addiction is validation. So I do get a dopamine hit when I get approval online on something. You know, if a video does well, I’m like, that’s done. Well, great. I have a great day. Comments. You look good. This is I love this. Your work looks great right? Because that is mine.

I thought you.

Didn’t like it when someone said you looked good because I’m not Trustpilot or something.

Now, I said you don’t need to leave. Oh, here we go, here we go. I said, you don’t need to.

Ever since I heard you say that, I don’t tell you if you look good anymore.

So he basically I said to him, no, I said, when people give you well, this is the thing, right? Because on the one hand, and I’m sure Henry can relate to me right on the one. Like I’m saying, you know, when people give negative views, I’m like, I don’t need your opinion. I’m not. What’s the one for the travel agents, the reviews. You know, I’m talking about travel.

Tripadvisor.

Tripadvisor. I’m not TripAdvisor. I didn’t ask you for a review. Just you. I mean. Yeah, but that would be like, you know, if you get some kind of review, someone would be like, you look much better with brown hair. Like, oh, I don’t like your copper hair. Do you know? I mean, of course it’s an opinion. But then, like, at the same time, if people are like, you look great, it validates the decision I’ve made.

We love that. That’s why. Why do we go out? Why do we get a new haircut? Why do we? Why do we go to do our teeth? Why do we dress up? Well.

I thought you didn’t want it in either direction.

Shower me. Show me the compliments.

Look. Great. What was.

What was interesting? What you said there about validation. You want validation is something that I’ve realised about myself is wanting. Wanting to impress. So when I was a kid growing up, I was. Will and I were always in trouble. We were the naughty kids at school and we always wanted to impress our mom and dad every time something bad happened. So give you an example when I was, and I’ve got these childhood memories in me distilled and it’s probably who I who I’ve why they’ve shaped me, who I am today. Because I remember being told by our like when I was in year two or year three, my teacher head teacher said, you are you don’t know the difference between right and wrong. And she told that to my parents in front of me. And she said, my mum and dad were distraught, not knowing as a kid I didn’t know the difference between right or wrong, whatever came to year six. And the woman told my mum and dad, I’m so sorry about making that comment. Your two boys are the politest I’ve ever met and things like that. And so we changed her perspective. But we always. So we always, always wanted to impress. So growing up, I’ve always wanted to impress. So when I run a marathon, I want to get a good time because I want to impress people watching me.

When the content I create, I want to get loads of likes. I want people to be impressed. So now my growing up, I was wanting to press my mum and dad. I was predicted E’s and F’s in GCSEs. I got a B’s and C’s and that for me was like I told you Mum and Dad. I knew I was going to get those F’s predicted. So there’s my proof. I’ve impressed them by doing that. Got into a great university, impressed them by doing that, got a good degree, impressed them by doing that, got set myself up a business and doing what I do in London, and managed to bring my mum down to do a fragrance profiling with some of the best high end profiles where she gets to pick out a £200 bottle. So I’m going to buy for her. That for me is impressing my family. And so now instead of impressing my family all the time, I feel I need to do it to my followers to impress them with good content. Or. And that’s similar to the validation thing. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just I want to impress how? And I do it for me instead of do it for others. Sometimes it can be okay to do well.

Carrying on from that. Now let’s have let’s be real, right? There’s a dark side to social media, and you have your career right now is very much with your face, your body, you know, at the forefront. Has your mental health taken a turn since you have exposed yourself on social media, or do you ever worry about certain things being online?

I think it’s such a good question because as I said earlier to you guys, people, this is the number one job people want to do in their like now as kids, they look up to social media influencers more than they look up to actors and celebrities they look up to. They look up to influencers because we see so much of their life. But what you don’t see is always the bad parts or the. And a lot of people are doing it better now. A lot more people are showing you the struggles they do have in this industry, because there are so many like I have been, social media doesn’t sleep like sometimes as a dentist or as a corporate person. You can close the laptop at 5:00. That’s it’s another day tomorrow, right? Social media is 24 hours like it does not sleep seven days a week, 365 days a year. And I am trying to put out content. And if I don’t put out for six seven days, I’m forgotten about, like I guaranteed. Like if your favourite influencer deleted their account tomorrow, you may for a second go, oh that sucks, but you’ll find another one within three three days or two minutes. It’s just like, and I hate this. Like Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players in the world. Unfortunately, he died. But there will be other best players in the world. There were basketball still live on. It’s the same as me as my job. It will still live on if I don’t create content.

But I need to keep creating because that’s my job and my work. And if I stop, then I’m not going to be at the money or anything. So it’s like all the all grow my brand and it can keep you up at night. There’s new platforms coming, there’s new kids popping off. Your content you created the other day doesn’t get as many views. The algorithm isn’t working in your favour or something or some something out there isn’t working to your favour. And then you start questioning going am I? Do people not like me? Is my content not good? Is Instagram just hating me or is TikTok hating me? And then you start seeing other people do something and you’re like, oh, maybe I should follow that content. Should I start doing that now? And it’s like, no, stick in your lane. And it’s so hard because you see other people’s success and you want to get a bit of that success. So you may start dabbling into that type of content. But I think it’s really important to stick in your lane and keep authentic. Keep authentic. But oh, can you be authentic on Instagram now because so and these creating platforms because you’re selling yourself to an algorithm. Like sometimes you want to create the content you want to create because because in that moment you’re like I really enjoyed creating that. And that’s authentic. But then when you but then it doesn’t perform well, you go, oh, that must be the algorithm.

I think thinking dentistry there is like that risk of that. Right. And we see it as well. Like there’s a lot of disgruntlement because there’ll be like the dentists that are sort of like a little bit more on the geeky side, the academic side. And they like the content that’s like really like, like the tooth zoomed in like a million and then like, oh, let’s talk about this. And then they hate on the Instagram dentist like me that do better because their content is a little bit more clickbait or it’s just a small makeover. But I understand my audience. I’m not there to impress dentists. I’m there to impress patients. I’m there to get a following of people like they want to engage, because also I’m going to lose a big part of my audience and some patients that come to me, they don’t feel afraid to cry to me in the chair or like, hold my hand or something. And the reason why they don’t feel that is because they see the like type of authenticity that I put out on social media, so they don’t feel embarrassed. Do you know what I mean? But your personality as well?

Totally. So when I see you on Instagram, I don’t just see teeth, I see Rhona’s personality. And that’s when I meet you in person as well. I see that personality because it’s exactly what you are.

I feel like you’re massively needy for for professional validation.

Oh, totally. But I’m not because you.

Don’t want to be known as only Instagram. Good at Instagram.

Just like Henry said. What I resonate was is that like the teacher said, he was going to get E’s and F’s. Dentists thought I didn’t have any clinical skills, so I upped my clinical skills. I made them better. I’m pretty good now. Do you know what I mean? Now you have.

An entire dentistry and have people dentists working for you. That’s how good you are. Yeah, but the thing is.

Is that I still have. But there’s still those other people that are like, I’m looking at like the one fifth of this, like, angulation of the enamel or whatever, but I, I’m, that.

Means nothing to me, by.

The way. You know, like what.

What is that English.

But the point is, I know that my work is good because patients as well can now tell the difference between a good before and after. I don’t think before they really could. But now people are like, I like you because you put translucence in your teeth. They understand things a bit better. Do you see what I mean? And I think that of course, like Payman asked me earlier. Right. Because as you know, I’ve released my own course. Yeah. Interestingly enough, the majority of people that bought the course was on the first day I released it. 95% were young females that had been on the courses of loads of famous dentists. Why did they choose me as an. You’ll know them. I’m not going to say why. I said, well, why did you go? Why do you want to do my course? Because they also feel that there is not a strong female leader within the field, and they feel that I’m more personable when it comes to stuff, because as part of my course, I have like, you can do like one on one and contact me on WhatsApp and send me and they like that. So the interesting thing is with the cohort, because he said to me, are you getting criticism for your course? And I’m like, of course I’m going to get criticism, but I don’t care.

I don’t think you’re doing anything right if you aren’t getting criticism.

Yeah, no, 100%.

You can’t please everyone. Like even content I do like 50% may like it, 50% may not. And that’s okay. Like you can have things you can’t be. You can’t have everyone like everything you do. So I think the great thing.

About content is it finds its own audience in a way. Very true. Yeah. I mean, when you said mental health as you remember, it wasn’t really my subject. He was.

A bit like, why.

It’s not my subject. So I know it was your subject.

Do you suffer from it? Do you ever suffer from anxiety? No, I.

Realise I do now.

He does now he does. Before this I me damaged goods babes on this before.

But then. But then. But then because. Because I had the experience with the previous pod that, you know, we weren’t trying to do anything. We were just having some conversations. And those conversations found audience.

That’s so true.

And this pod will find audience. And then what you do find and people who are not into it will stop following you. Okay, so here’s the thing.

This is the one way I always bring it back to you. Right? And why I think people like us probably will be successful in life is because there is still a cult out there who believes the world is flat. And if they can build a following, even though it’s scientifically proven that the world isn’t flat and they can build a following and a cult around it.

That’s a nice way of saying.

Someone will buy your product or will follow you like it’s so so facts like yeah, so.

But so those because I think like one of the important thing is like you took that leap of faith, Henry. And I think, like even so many young dentists, as he said, are so afraid to start content production. But I always say start with something. Even if you get two likes, don’t worry about it. Just do it. You know what I mean? So what advice would you give for people that want to start a similar journey? Because this could be within any field, right? Because you could be. There are doctors, by the way, Dr. Ali is her name. His name is he’s the one. He’s the one. He’s huge. He gave up medicine and he didn’t.

Yeah. My friend was on his podcast the other day. He said.

Listen, do you know about him?

He’s done great.

So he’s done amazing.

I watched a video on him this morning.

So he has a YouTube academy. He gave up medicine. He did a video. He’s brilliant.

He’s brilliant.

And he did a video on how much he made. Like it was like £50 doing his NHS work and how much he was making on like on, like on that. And I’m not saying not everyone’s money driven. Right. So it shouldn’t be about that. But he had a very transparent video about like this is what I do. This is how much I make. This is why I do it. But for those that want to start that sort of journey and question number one is what would you say is the most important thing to start? How do you start it? Second question is, do you have to have a certain amount of mental resilience to do it?

Okay. Number one, I would definitely say be okay with being shit. And what I mean by that is you have to start off being shit because your first 100 posts will be shit like your first 200 maybe shit and you may got any like get no likes, but you have to be consistent. Like you may not be successful by being consistent, but there is a 100% fact and chance you won’t be successful if you’re not consistent, right? Which is so true. So you may have the risk of not being successful if you if you don’t try it, but you’re never going to know if you aren’t. So you just got to make sure you keep going. And my dad says this saying all the time, and we did it when I had exams. If you throw enough shit at the blanket, eventually some of it’s going to stick and some of it will. So you’ve got to keep going and then you learn from it. Every post you do, every podcast you do, you learn a little bit more about it. And it may take you a thousand podcasts before you suddenly get that curve of success and it goes up. Right. But then if you if you quit it, 999, you’d have never known. And it’s like that hole that, you know, that photo, someone digging for the gold. And then he stops at the very end when he would have been there. So yeah, I think consistency is 100% key. Like be consistency, always be consistent. And what.

About mental resilience do you think you.

Get? I think you definitely need it because you’re going to get no likes at the beginning. You’re going to get no listens on your podcast. You’re going to get no views on your YouTube channel. And then you’re saying to yourself, oh, I’m putting all this work in, I’m doing all these camera angles, I’m doing this and I’m getting nothing back from it. And you have to have that resilience to keep pushing on. It’s in it’s almost self-belief, like if you don’t have that self belief in yourself, then how are you going to push forward and convince the world that they should watch your stuff? And if you have that self belief, then you’ve just got to keep going and going and going. And I think that will that will push you on.

So. So now you’ve got this audience that’s engaged with you. What are the steps to monetising that.

And okay, so there’s a lot of ways you can monetise on social media. And it depends what. Of Omicron. So number one is brand deals. So it’s good to do your. The content you do should align with the brands you want to work with. So for example I’m massive into my health and fitness. I’m never going to go work with McDonald’s because unless they unless they wanted me to promote some sort of healthy, healthy thing, then maybe that’ll be right. However, 90% of the time I’m never.

Salads have more calories than the burgers. Just saying.

There you go. Yeah, maybe they do, but I’m not going to listen. I’m not going to hold a burger and be like the new Quarter Pounder, even if they pay ten grand, because it’s probably not really worth it. Maybe it is to some people, but everyone’s got their price now, so you’ve got to align yourself with those certain brands. I think you can also get paid from, like Rona is doing courses. It’s a great way. And then you can set up other things like plans. You’ve got a website you can set up, fitness brand. If you’re a fitness fitness courses, you’re in fashion. You can set up your own clothing brand. Yeah. These endorsement product endorsement. Yeah. So do you have.

Someone who represents you?

I have a manager. And that manager kind of deals with all my logistics and deals with all the brands I work with, and can also get me brand work as well. And they’ve been great. They’re lovely people and I’ve been with them for 3 or 4 years. And yeah, so me and my twin are the same manager, and then there’s different ways of making money on different platforms like TikTok actually have a marketplace where and a creator thing where if your video blows up, you can get some money. It’s very small, but YouTube’s even better. Youtube has a platform where if you create for that brand that that you can get thousands of pounds if your video goes off because the YouTube algorithm is great, like your videos, can you remake money? So your video, if you make a video five way five, if you go on Veganuary, it’s always big Veganuary right? If you make a video. Five recipes for making Veganuary, which are cheap. Let’s say that that video will be big from January and you made it so 2019. But also if it’s gone well in the algorithm, it will pick back up the next year because people will be researching again. Veganuary recipes oh 2020 2021 so that video could kill it as seven years later. So yeah, so there’s a lot of ways to make to monetise monetise it.

Yeah. I’m going to ask you something. I like to be controversial. Right. Oh here we go. So you were talking about platforms right. And platforms that control the livelihood as you know. Like what’s your view on censorship. Right. Because also you think about a case like with the recent news of like Russell Brand at the moment with what’s going on and the allegations YouTube have pulled him. Right. They’ve actually stopped and YouTube was his biggest source of income. Okay. So he’s now saying because Rumble’s the new platform where they don’t allow any censorship, right? Yeah. Do you believe so? First of all, do you ever get scared? I mean, you’re not obviously. Henry, I know you you know, you’re not a controversial slash immoral person or whatever. Do you do you ever get worried that you’re going to get cancelled online or not? Really. And secondly, do you believe that censorship is a good thing or not.

To censor yourself when you’re talking? Yeah.

Do you feel like, oh, I’m going to actually like I’m not going to.

Say say that.

Say that. Yeah.

Listen, I think the world we’re in now, if you are so straight line and boring, your content isn’t ever going to get, you’ve got to be left or right polarising. You have to be like, look at Piers Morgan, but you’ve got to be very careful about what you say, because if you aren’t educated in that topic enough and you say something which is one thing or the other, then it’s more likely you’re going to get cancelled. Like the reason why James Smith does it so well and Piers Morgan does it so well is because they are so good with words and they’re educated on the topics they talk about, so they’re less likely to get cancelled. Whereas if it was someone like me and let’s take an example, it’s the politics and you vote Labour over conservative or vice versa. And you document, oh, I voted conservative because of this, but do I really know that much about politics? No. But if I made my opinion about it that I’ve voted on conservative, then people are probably going to go, well, you’re right, you’ve clearly uneducated. And that’s the thing I only ever would be talking commenting on or something if I’m well educated on the topic. It’s the same with all the I can’t remember what it was. Now, somewhere in one of these Middle East countries where the woman couldn’t women couldn’t wear their masks.

No, no, no, they couldn’t wear the burqa or something like that.

I remember what it was, but these women couldn’t wear their hair. And people, if I were to make because people were DMing me going, why aren’t you why aren’t you commenting on this? And I’m going, it’s got nothing to do with me because I don’t know this industry. I don’t know it until I’ve done my education on it, and I now know to talk about it, then I’m okay to make a comment, whether it be this or this, but people on their podcasts and I watch it all the time, or on their Instagram stories or whatever, they’ll make a comment about something and I’m like, bro, just don’t even and I stay out of it.

I got trolled about something like this. This is really interesting. So this is the little insight because you were like, what were you getting trolled about? I get asked quite a lot to go on national television to make comments about like the NHS crisis. I worked on the NHS for ten years. Okay, so I did my I paid my dues. Like I said, I worked really hard. I left in 2020 for like health reasons. Up to 2021 I was doing NHS work. Yeah. Now people. So basically there’s like a meme account. On Instagram, which does really well. It’s a Dental medium account run by young boys. Young Dental boys. And basically they said that they were sort of the opposite of what you were saying. They were saying like, are you not like, doesn’t it infuriate you so much that these private dentists that don’t realise the shitstorm of what’s going on are going on TV and commenting on what’s going on, right? I got sent it by a few people because they were like, I think this is targeted at you. And I was like, listen, I don’t care, because at the end of the day, if they want to go out and speak about it, go out. There is freedom of speech. If you want to talk about it on your social media, do. Why do news channels approach me? Because I’m vocal about stuff. Because I’m the one that’s out there saying I left because I was depressed and suicidal working on the NHS and I can. I stood up to Jeremy Kyle, who was basically saying, dentists are greedy and that’s why they leave the NHS. I’m putting myself in that position. How does he know.

He doesn’t work in?

Exactly. But the thing is, is that after that interview he was like, I can see your point now. I found it really weird because I was like, they can say all they want and they control and whatever, but what they were saying is the opposite to you. They were saying, because I’m not in it. Whereas, you know, the people that are saying to you, you can’t win, you know, I mean, because they’re saying, why aren’t you commenting? You know, so.

There’s no the thing is, no matter what you do in this world, there’s going to be controversy. Like this girl the other day actually posted a photo in her lingerie in a public street, street. And it was a I my first initial thoughts were it’s a sick photo. Yeah. Whereas the comments under it were had to unfollow because of this, this, this. And I’m like, what is wrong with the world? Like and my older brother is actually a teacher, and the things he has to now do about child safety and security is so different to what we had in our lives back in school, where the teacher could probably hit us still and it would be okay, but now it’s just it’s all so different and it’s like you do one thing wrong in any industry or make one comment about something and you’re more likely to be cancelled.

I saw I saw a thing. It was it was like a picture of Kate Moss in the 90s with Calvin Klein next to her. They were taking a photo in his hand. Was like on her, on.

Her, on her arse or.

Something just above her arse. Yeah. And the comments that came in, who’s the creepy guy with the octopus hands? Yeah. Octopus. Calvin Klein, a gay guy. Yeah. Number one, Calvin Klein. Yeah, he probably designed that very dress. And his hands have been all over, like, to fix that thing, and and, you know, the the notion that, you know, maybe the person watching it was offended or had had some, maybe something had happened to that person.

Okay, here’s another thing.

Could have happened. Yeah. Someone someone might have put their hand inappropriately on on that person. That doesn’t mean that was going on in that photo. But like.

It’s just that pictures tell a thousand words, right? Everyone’s got their own opinion about it. But. So here’s another one. When I went to Dubai during the pandemic and right now people are watching, going, oh, you went to Dubai during the pandemic. But the facts are I went when it was okay to go, but I started posting photos when I was out there when we went back into lockdown. So I left on like, I don’t know, 23rd or 26th or seventh thing from Cambridge, which essentially was like a tier two level, whatever it was, which was legal for me to fly. And because I booked this months ago, by the way, and it was I made that vocal booked Dubai back in November and I made it on my social media, booked Dubai buzzing to get out there for Christmas New Year. And so it was legal to me. Book. We had no lockdown, we’re all okay. And then Boris suddenly announced bam this day, certain tiers, certain people. Yeah, long time ago. So I went to Dubai, but again, it was fine. I was flying from Cambridge, I was allowed to leave, so on and so on and got to the airport, got to Dubai.

Fine. And then I started posting content. Me on a beach. Nothing like drinking booze, partying, which a lot of the some influencers were. It was just again, clean content, show my outfits, whatever. And I got the biggest backlash on my on my photos being like, how dare you escape the country? All this, all this. And I was like, I, have you been following me for a long time? You’d have seen that on my post. Like I booked this months ago and I left legally like so. I’ve done nothing wrong. Like I wasn’t the one jumping out of my bed and doing it on January 3rd and sneak into Dubai and suddenly appearing on a beach. I booked this months ago, so. And then people were commenting on it and going, oh, you should be ashamed for yourself. You raised all that money to climb Everest. I did a charity challenge and and now you’re and your mum’s going to work. My mum was like, the boys did nothing wrong and my mum was actually in the NHS. I wouldn’t have done that to her. Raised all this money for charity, sent it to the NHS and then buggered off to Dubai just for a holiday.

The thing that you said about the NHS, dentistry and people saying who is this private dentist to talk about? I mean I did, I did one year of NHS dentistry and vet, then went to private, then stopped being a dentist. Now I manufacture teeth whitening products so doesn’t mean.

You can’t ever comment.

Being a dentist. I want to talk about the NHS. Yeah. If I want to talk about the NHS, I’m allowed to comment about the NHS, even though I’m not working in that system. Yeah. And maybe they’re saying why did ITV ask her and not one of us. Well ITV asked her because of everything we just said. Yeah. All the 15 years work.

You’ve put I think, I think like, you know, people don’t realise that the nuances of situation but also like in terms of like so there’s two, there’s two different things. Also I want to cover with the content creation before we move on. There is I’m not going to say her name because she blocked me. Say her name. No no no.

Who’s this? Say her.

Name.

We’ll cut it out. We’ll cut it. I really want to know who’s blocked it out.

We’ll cut it out.

I’ll tell you afterwards. Okay. There was content. You’ll definitely know by a certain female. She’s doing a brilliant job. Just listen. Listen. Just listen. Sorry, sorry. She’s very beautiful. She’s very articulate. And she claims to be a psychologist. Okay. Initially, I was like, fantastic content. You. I love it when I see strong, empowered women doing this. She then got called out. She went on Chris Williamson’s podcast. Ah, okay.

Is it okay? I think I know who it is with Chris Williamson podcast.

And someone called it out because there were certain things she was saying and I was like, she’s not a psychologist. And her response to other people was like, medical professionals don’t respond in this way. You just know, pay. Like, you know, the way that we have to respond to stuff. So I did my own little research, found some TikToks. She’s a psychology teacher now. She has gone on some of the most famous psychology teachers.

A psychologist, no.

But clinical psychologist is what she’s kind of like, portraying herself as.

Doctor.

Like psychiatrist. No, no.

It’s the woman I’m thinking of. I’m sure her. I won’t say her name, but I’m sure her title is doctor.

Yeah, or something like that. Listen, listen, listen. So she’s basically misleading, but it’s incredible because she’s been on Lewis Howell’s podcast. Yeah. I think even Joe Rogan like interviewed her like there’s been loads. And the thing is no one has done their due diligence and there’s only a few people calling her out. I called her out in a really nice way. I dropped her a DM and I was like, hey, love your content. And I was like, but you’re not a psychologist. And I think it could be quite misleading to the public. You know, as you said that she said she blocked me direct. Yeah. She direct.

Messaging.

She blocked me. But the point is, without replying, without replying me saying you’re not a dentist, I’d be like, actually, here I am and this is my credentials. Shivani was obviously like, of course she’s going to block you. Like it’s like saying you’re a fraud, you know what I mean? And I was like, okay, but I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it like that.

How block happy are you? Oh I’m.

Sorry. Block happy now? I blocked so many times.

I don’t block at all. Do you know what I block? I do, you know, I always say I block a lot.

Block, block, block.

My way to deal with things is killing with kindness. And the reason why I do that is because this girl. Yesterday I put on my story. It was hilarious. She actually DM’d my girlfriend because I don’t really tag my girlfriend much and. But I do sometimes just tag her and people can find that by tagging my girlfriend’s private. Anyway, she got a DM saying hey lovely, I don’t you don’t know me, but I follow your boyfriend’s page. And just to let you know, I think you should be concerned that I think he sways both swings both ways as it like gay and yeah, and I put it on my story and she sent it to me. And I could not stop laughing at this because it was hilarious. But she. The thing is, I could have messaged this girl back because I’ve got her Instagram handle now being like, how dare you? Whatever. But something seriously troubled with those people who have to give you hate because they’ve taken the time out of their day. We have 24 hours a day and.

But you could say that about the psychologist. But I wasn’t giving hate. I was more concerned.

No, yours is very different. Your messaging out of. Yeah, a concerning way. This is something way worse. Like someone, someone going out of your way to hate someone is a complete like something’s troubled with that person. 100% truly troubled of that person. 100% truly troubled. So when you always get on TikTok, you’ll see you probably get it as well on your Instagram, it’s it’s fake accounts commenting on your stuff. 1234512 lol. It’s the emails I got from those people when I first started my website going you’re a joke mate. This is the biggest laughing stock. Those people have troubles and there’s one kid from university, his name is Gus and I’m going to say it out right now actively.

Then respond and be kind.

Be yeah, yeah yeah. So this one Kick-Off Gus from University I went to University of. Never spoke to him, but I’d always see him on shake his hand on nights out. He or he was no one at university, but he was just friends with these two guys and these two Joe and this guy Gus. If they listen to this, I hope they do. They will. They always, they always, always, always would comment on me and I would just comment back lol haha. Or hope you’re well mate. Or one of them was. Once I was, I was blessed are your well skinny or something like that and lol this is the biggest joke he. Whatever and I’ll be like, thanks mate. Appreciate your support. Always killing with kindness. And I got it for like two years straight and I haven’t for a while now. But it’s like, you know what? I love that because they’re taking time out of their day to message me out of their precious day. What are they probably doing? Nothing. They’re not trying to achieve any goals. They’re just doing their life and board. So they think they’re better off blasting someone else and hating on someone else. Never hate on someone. Success. And the one thing I would say anyone above you if you’re hating on someone, they’re above you. You never hate on someone below you. There’s no point. You never hate on someone below you. You always hate on. So you always know if you’re being hated. You’re above.

That person. In dentistry, it happens so much and it’s so sad. And I’ve tried so hard. Have you?

Have you never not hated? Hate is a big word. Have you never thought that something someone said needed calling out in dentistry?

As in like the things they say to me or the things they say to me?

They say they’re saying to the public that they’re saying to their audience, you know, we’ve had a few things in dentistry recently, like the the twins. Um, maybe you’re not. You don’t follow them.

Yeah, exactly. See, I stay so far away.

But you know what I mean.

What was the twins tell me.

There are, there are there are things people say that you might think I think that’s wrong or I think that’s, I don’t know, self promoting or. I think that’s totally so. So do you know why has there not been in dentistry a time where.

You wanted listen, listen, listen. And Henry will be the same. Of course you’re going to see people online. I get I mean.

In your industry. Yeah.

But listen.

But nutrition and stuff. But listen.

But the thing is like, okay, for example, the reason why the psychology thing triggered me is because I genuinely believe if you’re going to give medical advice you need, like you said, people should comment things that they’re on an expert. There is nothing wrong with being a psychology teacher. Just say you’re a teacher. Do you see what I mean? But misleading people and people that are going to look up to you. So I do have a problem with people like saying that. However, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I was like like for me, like psychology and psychiatry and psychotherapy is so important. Okay. Well, what about fitness?

Do you have to be a PT to essentially give personal trainer advice? But I know so many people in unreal shape. But the thing.

Is, it’s like but it’s also about transparency. It’s about like, I have a lot of experience. I’m giving you advice based on my experience. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. So I think that like it’s just the, you know, but you’re not going to lie about being a PT no. Do you know what I mean?

I, I actually went and got my license just because I sometimes couldn’t be bothered. Well, sometimes I get people commenting to me being like, you’re not even a PT bro. And then you’re.

Like, actually I am.

Well, actually, now I actually do have the level three qualification and I’m trained to do this if I wanted to. So you know what? I can talk about it even though that course isn’t great. Like it’s like going back to school and learning. You don’t learn much, but it’s just like you got it and it’s a credential. And if you do want to talk about it, you can. And if I want to release my plans, how about.

Same question to you. Have you ever thought someone in your industry needed your hate? Yeah.

But listen, listen a Payman I’m not done with that. I’m not done with that because it was going to lead on. Right. It was going to lead on. You see something you don’t like or someone online, you unfollow and you move on. Yeah, that’s my philosophy. So you don’t like the content. Why should I call out if someone doesn’t like Henry? I don’t like these fashion stuff I don’t like. I don’t like the fact that you’re talking about running and you’re not doing a million marathons. I don’t like the fact that you’re giving this advice and you don’t work completely in fitness. Just unfollow. Henry. Yeah.

Don’t follow me. So true. Why? Why do people want to hate so much? It’s. I just don’t get it. Like. Well.

There are nuances to that as well. Well.

Here’s what I did. And it made me really realise this when I was probably 13. I remember, um, Twitter was huge and X factor was on and I used to go onto my Twitter and I would slate the contestants. I’d be like, you have the world’s worst voice at Frankie Cocozza. And I only realised, but no, listen, this is 13 year old immature ten year old.

Trying to get something.

Yeah, trying to get something back. You never know. But I didn’t realise how badly this can affect people’s mental health until it started happening to me. So. Yeah. So as a kid I was like slating these famous people. If they’d had a rubbish football game, I’d comment, look, you guys have a football match. Everyone swears at the players, right? Because they don’t get it and you’ll see tweets. And if someone’s missed a missed a penalty or whatever in your club’s missed it, you’ll get hate from so many seeing so much hate. So think about how much that impacts that player. Like we all have the same minds and brains and we all are so similar. Really. Like it’s going to affect you like and people are probably told by their managers people stay off social, stay off Twitter. But sometimes you’re just on it and it’s natural that you may read that comment about you or something and you’re like, ah, it’s always the one bad thing, the one bad comment that stays in you as well. It’s not the good ones. Yeah, you could get your amazing tonight, mate. Well done. Or you were great at singing tonight or you played really well, but that one bad one can’t believe you missed that penalty.

You’re dead to our team. It’s going to stay with you for so long and it’s so traumatic. It’s the same in social media as it taught me. Massively. Like, if you’re not going to say something nice, don’t even bother saying it at all. And it’s so simple to say and it’s harder for people to do, especially at young kids. And. Stuff like that. And you do get that hate on TikTok all the time because it’s such a Gen Z platform and you get hate all the time, but you just got to for me, now is like, kill them with kindness and just whatever and whatever. Like they’re not my friends. I’m not worried about them because they’re not my I don’t see them every day. I’m not going to see that person. I’m just worried about who what my friends think of me, what my family think of me. And am I being a good person to my girlfriend or my brother or my mom and dad? That’s what you should really be caring about, not about what user 101 things. Do you know what I mean? Like that’s the least.

What’s your in this journey where you’ve come from? Just making some content and then getting really successful at it and then brand deals and modelling and all that. What was the darkest?

Yeah, I was just about to ask, what was your darkest moment? Yeah.

Oh.

I tell you what I think it’s honestly it’s the the followers. Because I think the the more you get, the more pressure you have to feel like you need to perform to that audience. Like if you looked into a room and you had 100,000 people in one room, you’d be like, Holy shit, I’ve got to talk in front of 100,000 people. Like you wouldn’t be able to do that. It’d be like you’d be nervous, you’d be sweating. So it’s the same as going on your Instagram story and talking on there, but you’re doing it in to an audience of 100,000 people. So I felt when I got over 100 K, I felt almost had pressure on me. And the better I got at doing things like it’s the same as when I run or create content. When I first started, I wasn’t very good, so I had nothing to compare to. I had nothing to lose. But when I start getting good at it, every video I started posting, if it wasn’t as good as the last one, I’d put pressure on myself and go, don’t post it. It’s not good enough, which isn’t the way to do it. And I still do it today. So I’ll then because I’m at the top, I’ve got 178,000 followers or whatever. I’ll compare myself to other people have 170 K, and I’ll look at their content and I’ll be like, God, this is better than mine, or that guy’s better than mine, or he got to 200 K, his is better than mine. And I’ll go because I’ve got to that number, but then I’ve got to I got to remember, well, what was I doing when I had one follower like or two followers, my content look back at my content from ten years ago. So bad. So for me, it’s the pressure from feeling like I need to perform all the time. When you don’t like you don’t. You need to have days off, you need to have time off. And I’m I’m.

At some point on one day. Did that become like overwhelming and yeah.

Do you ever get did you ever get like severe crippling anxiety from social media.

So I yeah I get it all the time. Like I am a really anxious person quite frankly. And I hold it in well and I can’t control it.

You wouldn’t realise.

I think I do a lot. I think I’ve done a lot of things to help me balance it. So I see a therapist once a month. She’s been incredible. Same therapist, only ever. One I’ve seen and I haven’t seen anyone else since. So I see her about once a month. And for people who can’t afford or have the privilege of doing therapy, then I think just a good conversation with a friend is equally as important or can actually help as much. Or starting a new hobby, or taking your mind away from things that aren’t causing you anxiety, and waking up and not touching my mobile phone first thing in the day. Going to sleep one hour before no blue light or no screens again. Doesn’t have your mind wandering with all these thoughts and same when you wake up. You’re not jumping into your emails is another thing that’s really kept me anxiety at bay. And if it does come, just let it be. It’s a bad day, not a bad life. Like there’s going to be some times in life and days and years where you have that day where you can’t get out of anxiety and people go, oh, just breathe, breathe, go meditate. I’m telling you right now, you cannot go meditate. When you’re anxious. You cannot do it. You do the meditate. You do the meditation in the morning or whenever you fancy doing it too. So when you are anxious or in those bad thoughts that you remind yourself when you’re in that state of flow and state of chill and calm, that’s the state you can try and get back into, but you can’t go and just breathe it out because it’s not going to work. And you can you can lose a day and say, oh, you know what? That day, today’s not been good, but that’s okay. Just knowing that it’s okay.

My question for you is, though, you said like all these great coping mechanisms tell us how you ended up on this marathon journey. So first of all, like how many marathons you do, why you decided to do a marathon and how that’s helped your mental health.

So running for me, I actually started it when I got an injured shoulder and I couldn’t lift weights and I this was gyms, a part of my routine. I like training and I just lifted weights and I was in quite good shape, bodybuilder esque, like big, not not stacked, but like big. And excuse me. And I started running because I couldn’t lift weights and I was a bit slow, wasn’t I was always okay at school, but I wasn’t great now. And I started to get okay. So I set myself a challenge of a half marathon and I wanted to do it in sub one hour 30, and I did it in one hour 27 across the line, absolute gassed I was, I see I did it, but then I started right, right. So I did a marathon and I did my first ever marathon with not much training because I got given like a place with a brand very last minute, did it in three hours, 37 and my first ever one was like 302 only two years ago, actually two and a half years ago maybe. And I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to get into this. I trained for this. I could be a okay runner. And I started running. I set myself a target last year about seven, 8 or 12 months, 14, 15 months ago, set myself a target to do a sub three hour marathon. And I this is my first ever trained one. So I did about seven weeks of training to get this sub three and everyone was like, yeah, you’re never going to get a sub three on your first attempt.

I remember telling my mates, If I’m ever going to train properly for a marathon, I want to do it sub three. And I never forget the face they all went, no chance mate. Yeah. And so I put the work in and I got sub three on my first attempt. I did a 2 to 58. And anyway, the reason why I started to run was one because the shoulder. But also this moment of peace. I just have like there’s a lot of run clubs and I think it’s great running with people. But something incredible about running and present, about running by yourself first thing in the morning or after a long day at work where you can’t physically look at your phone or touch it, or compare yourself, or scroll media or whatever. It’s just you, your breath and your feet and the tap, tap, tap, or a bit of music or podcast in your ear or whatever. And I think that is just incredible. And I love it. Whether it’s raining, whether it’s cold outside and the sun’s rising and you see the sunrise or whether it’s a beautiful day, I think there’s just something empowering about it. And there is. Leaving the gym is great. After lifting weights, you feel great, but leaving after a run that runner’s high is the best feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life. They talked about. I think it’s massively made my mental health just feel a bit like, have a stressful day, go for a run, go.

For a run. Yeah, that was so I mentioned to Payman earlier. So did you have you listened to the latest Steven podcast with Dr. Tara Schwartz?

I haven’t yet, no.

It’s amazing, but she talks about the impact of aerobic exercise on the mind. I don’t know if you guys knew that. Not weightlifting. So first of all she talks about different studies. So with weightlifting with people that lift heavy, even if they didn’t lift just thinking about it, they had muscle growth.

Yeah. That’s that’s I’ve heard about that. Yeah. Apparently if you if you picture yourself in the gym and think about yourself lifting weights, they do say you can something like psychological empowering about I think it’s like a placebo though I think she talks.

About the effect of aerobic and actually causing. I think it is neurogenesis. So we were talking about this earlier how like you can get like increased neurones. And with aerobic exercise in particular, you have more of that impact of neurogenesis where you can get like an increase of like your neurones. And then if you go for like have a break from running and then you like run again, like it can do that even more. So there’s a huge benefit. Like people overlook cardio because they’re like, don’t do cardio, don’t do cardio. And I think that’s actually a really because we’re not thinking. We’re not talking about just physique. Why? The most toxic thing that’s happened with exercise is that we’ve completely related it to physical and aesthetic goals, when actually it has huge, because I know people that aren’t in great shape and are amazing at sports.

You know, let’s talk about. So for me, this is when I got into a really unhealthy place of fitness. It was when I got to Australia, as I told you guys earlier, and I got into the best shape of my life, I was like 4% body fat. Me and my brother, we were counting all our calories. We only really lifted weights and that because if you lift weights, it will aesthetically get you into the place you want to be 100% fat like you are growing each specific muscle, lifting each specific muscle to grow to where you want it to. And you will look the best. That’s just fact. But I got so unhealthy with it. It was beyond belief. Like every time I go out for food, I would I would probably eat chicken salad dressing on the side, nothing else because I was worried about the calories and I knew that I was like calories. I would barely drink because I was I was in Australia, I wouldn’t drink, I’d do nothing. I was so boring. All I wanted to do was go to the gym, and the girls upstairs used to come downstairs. This is how bad it got.

The girls upstairs who lived above us would come down. Go. Do you guys want to go out tonight? And me and my brother would go, oh we can’t. We’ve got something on tomorrow. Got to go to work in tomorrow. Unfortunately. When really we had sushi dinner that we wanted to save because it was our calories and it can get so caught up in your mind. It actually makes you have a bit of an eating eating disorder. So for me, it was like every time I had a burger, I’d be thinking about the calories. So I actually completely stopped counting calories. And what I do now, I think, I think it’s not bad to go through it, because once you go through it, you understand what you’ve done, you’ve learnt about it, right? And now, like I’ve got such good balance between running fitness, eating aesthetics, drinking it all, and I think you need to go through the bad times in this journey to learn it, and you won’t learn it by someone telling you on YouTube. You can tell it, but then you’ll be like, I don’t get it until you go through it. And I’ve gone through.

It all now. Level of obsession that you’re discussing, it has its positives, right?

Yeah, totally. In the meantime, in the moment it doesn’t until you can digest it and be like, oh, that’s why I did that or that’s why I’ve done that. Yeah. Looking back, I remember I was honestly trying to get shredded for a holiday to Marbella when I was 21. I’d go on this egg white diet where I just ate egg whites and broccoli 800 calories, diet like because I wanted to have abs. That is so unhealthy. What am I thinking? Yeah, you don’t need that at all.

So as well, do you? Have you ever tried alternative modes of therapy to help your mental health? Like, we’ve had a few people on this podcast talk about like plant medicines and other things like that. Like what’s your view on that?

Yeah. So I actually I’ve dabbled a little bit in psychedelics and now it’s quite a taboo, taboo thing to really talk about or discuss because there’s not been a lot of like science based evidence, especially with mushrooms. More coming out.

Yeah. Psilocybin. They’re going to be using it for depression MDMA.

They are in certain. But it’s it’s how our body reacts to it right. If you drink alcohol for the first time, you don’t know how you’re going to react to it, and 90% of people are probably going to be sick or drink too much, and it’s going to make you have a bad headache. So you you learn from that experience. And it’s the same with psychedelics. You don’t know how your body’s going to cope with it or what your mind is going to do. So you get a bit panicky, maybe until you understand what it does to you. So the first time I went on it, it was in a controlled environment. And I think that’s the best thing to do with any drug or anything you do should be in controlled environment. And that’s why in America now in like Texas or Houston or Austin, it’s like the psychedelic Mecca of the world in and they do it all under control people. So you have like therapists doing it for you. So I was going for a bit of a rough patch of and I was a bit anxious, worried about what’s the next part? I didn’t have a girlfriend at this time.

I was I felt a bit lonely. And in London you can probably know. It can be a very lonely place. And I was like, screw it, I’m going to go on this retreat. My friend Louis, who, you know, who had this podcast, he was like, mate, come. You’ve got nothing to lose. I was like, you’re right, nothing to lose. Turned up. And I went on this amazing retreat in Wales and I knew no one there. Went by myself, told my friends all last minute, I’m actually going on this retreat to do psychedelics and do mushrooms. And they were like, you fucking what? And I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing, but I’m going to do it. I’m all about new experiences, right? And I went on this thing and I sat down. They were like, right, we’re going to do a sharing circle. And as soon as the sharing circle started, I was like, what the fuck have I entered into? This is not me. Like, get me out of here.

Woo woo!

It felt a bit woo woo and it felt a bit, a bit like a bit intimidating, like, why do I need to share my thoughts and feelings? And I did it and I felt really good. And I was like, this is, this is before I’ve done any mushrooms, by the way, or any psychedelics. And I was like, wow, isn’t it great to just let your thoughts off your chest to strangers? Because we’re all doing it and.

We’re all connected.

And we all had similar thoughts. It was like, this girl to the left of me have nothing in common, but the thing she was saying I could completely resonate to, and it was like, isn’t that funny? Like, we all are so connected in this world. And then the next day you go to bed. You don’t. I took off social media. I turned my phone off, left it in the car, didn’t touch it for two days. So the conversations I’m having are so raw, so real and amazing. And because I think for me, for one, I get judged quite a lot because I like to dress well, take care of my skin, and like to do fitness and groom myself. Self-care quite, quite. Probably too extreme. But anyway, I do. And so a lot of the initial judgement is people think I’m arrogant and that’s okay. I don’t mind that. Anyway, I thought it was a really good place for me to actually tell these people who I truly am and the personality, because actually, at the end of the trip, a lot of people were like, damn, man, I judged you as soon as I walked in, like, I thought you were just this good looking guy at this retreat, thinking he’s someone else. And I was like, I’m so sorry about that. And I was like, I was so honest that you’re like that because I think we all do it. Like we judge people walking down the street for having pink hair.

And actually there could be the loveliest person or having something. They’re just going fancy trying something new. Yeah. And anyway, did the psychedelics and during the experience, it’s very like I first I was quite nervous because I’ve never done this, but I just said to my body, in my subconscious, in my mind, surrender, surrender to this and let it be. Whatever happens is lean into it. Because if you step away from it, lean away from it. You’re going to block the drugs out. Because the way I say it is, if if you’re smashed out of your face, right, and you’re boozing with your mates and your mum texted you saying your dad’s in the hospital, get home now you’re going to snap and you’re going to go, I’m not I’m not drunk anymore. I’m sober. I’m alert, I’m focussed. So your mind can take you out of certain situations if you want it to. And it’s the same with the psychedelics. If you want to be taken out of it, you will. But if you surrender to it and just say mushrooms, like whatever you do, do your thing and it will work really well. So the first hour I’m taking it and I’m like, oh, can I go to the toilet? Should I go to the toilet? I’m not a bit sure. And I was like, just Henry, stop and do what you want to do.

And I went to the toilet, came back, went back into this like kind of weird trance. And it takes about a week to really digest what you’ve seen and done and to really put it into work. And the moment, the first time I did it, I’ve done it twice now, and each one I’ve had different experiences, but the first was a very special one because I think the other people around me were really significant. Have, since I’ve done it, have been a real significant part of my life, and they’ve all been friends now and they’re all really interesting people on it. Some were entrepreneurs, some were, I don’t know, some celebrities or whatever, and there were some really cool people there, and I connected really well with these people. And I think for me, it was like that sharing circle the next day after you’ve been on it and everyone again sharing their experiences was just such an amazing, amazing thing to hear. And it was just like such an eye opening experience. And I left and I sat down and I was like, because I didn’t touch my phone this entire week and I was like, wow, the world doesn’t actually go that fast. We just think it does because we’re always scatty we’re on phones, we’re running at 100 miles an hour. But actually, you know what? It’s slow. You can have it. I’ve had about 13 incredible conversations before 1130.

In the morning. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I know what you mean. But we’re so busy doing things.

And was everyone’s experience similar or different after.

Everyone actually had very different experiences? I think. I think, you know.

The thing is with psychedelics, as they have shown, because they’re doing so many studies on it, particularly with psilocybin and mushrooms and stuff like if you have on those levels, because there’s like there’s different levels, right? And there’s a really famous psychologist at Imperial that does studies and there’s like certain doses. So you have a recreational dose. So that’s when you’re like, ha ha, I’m having fun. Yeah. Then the dose that Henry would have taken, which is more like your ego, they call it ego death. So the ego dies, right? So the ego dies.

A heroic dose.

Yeah, exactly. So then you get pushed, you get pushed, you get pushed into the closet, as they said, with your skeletons, and things will come up. Like you might see things that are uncomfortable, your parents or stuff about your relationships.

So that.

Doesn’t happen to.

Everyone, though. Everyone has different appearances, a lot of the time you can go and have intention. My intention may have been I want to find the future wife, what type of girl I should be with that. Maybe everyone, but you don’t choose how the mushrooms.

Control your brain. They’ll take.

You somewhere. They’ll take you somewhere else. It could be completely different. It could be you as a child playing football and how you got tackled by a boy. And that caused your trauma for the rest of your life because you’re now scared to play football? I don’t know, um, pretty bad example of that, but you get my point. Um, for me, the first I’ll take you back to my first experience, because I actually did mushrooms in Thailand, jokingly, recreationally, recreationally. And when I was travelling and again, all I did was get the giggles. It was hilarious. We had the funnest time ever. It was really good fun. Um, but this was very different. Didn’t get any of that hilarious moments for me. It was more deeper, very deep. So things I actually saw, um, was the type of girl I need to go for because I’ve had two relationships, but by this time one of them was really good. But we broke up because I went to university. The other one was a bit toxic, a bit fire on fire, and it was. And at the time I was dating these type of girls and in my vision it was like, you need to go back to someone like your first ever girlfriend, because that’s exactly what you need.

And now so you saw that in your second.

I saw that and know first trip, first trip, and then what else I saw was my dad on his deathbed. And that was horrible because I was crying in the trip and it was like, okay, so again, a week later, what does that I’m writing these down and I read it afterwards and I was like, what does that mean to me? And in that moment that was like, your parents aren’t here for a long time. Maybe go and spend more time with them. Maybe that’ll make you happy. Maybe that seeing your mom and dad more often is going to make your.

Dad was perfectly fine. Fine? He still.

Is fine. He still is. But it’s just like, maybe that is like.

There might be a worry, though. Do you see what I mean?

I haven’t got many. You haven’t got many experiences left with your say. If you see your parents, say if you’ve got parents still and I’m 31, my parents are 67 and 66. Say, if I only see them twice a year and they live till the average age of, say, 75, that’s only 29 more times I’ll see my mom and dad. It’s crazy. Isn’t that scary? And then it’ll be 28, 27. And that’s sad. Exactly. So it was like, I need to make a more conscious effort to go see them all the time. Not all the time, but more of a conscious effort. Pick up the damn phone and call your mum and dad because they want you to call them. Like my mum is always like, oh, you never call me anymore. And I’m like, I know, I.

Know, I put you on that guilt and you feel so bad.

But you should. Do you know what? It’s not hard when you’re walking down the street to pick up your groceries or something to go. You know what? I’ll give my mum and dad a call because they all really appreciate you.

Not call your parents every day all the time.

But you know what my mum’s like? My mum’s like, you never see us, you don’t want to hang out with us. And the thing is, is like my like, I’m so like, death is such a taboo subject, right? As in, like, we don’t talk about, we can always see our parents getting older and it’s a few little struggles. You know, me and my sister are like, dad looks a bit old. Do you know what I mean? He’s looking a bit more frail. He’s forgetting things a bit more, you know.

Yeah, same as what my me and my brothers are doing.

The thing is, it just. It is a really scary thing, but it’s also like a part of life, like we are going to lose our parents. And this is.

One thing I talk about with people of success and doing things as well. It’s like there’s only one inevitable thing that’s going to happen this one, we’re all going to die, right? So go do what the fuck you want to do anyway. Like, why are we stopping ourselves from thoughts of what other people think? Because like, go fucking do it like you want to start that business and all your friends think it’s crazy. Fuck it. If it doesn’t work, you’ve learnt something like go do it. And I’m saying that sometimes for myself because I need.

You to say it to me, Henry.

Yeah, like. And me and Rhona talk outside this podcast and she goes, me babe, sometimes I have imposter syndrome. And I’m like, what? You you’re a successful entrepreneur. You have this amazing parlour business, you have this amazing tooth business. Sorry. Dentistry business. You’ve got a podcast. You, in my eyes, are the most successful person I know. And then she’s like, Henry, I look at you and think, your content is amazing. This is amazing. How do you get imposter syndrome? And I’m like, I think we are the worst own thoughts.

But we also think people are thinking about us, you know.

Are we overexaggerate our own importance? There’s far too much.

There’s an amazing woman I found online. Her name’s Sarah, something, and she’s a woman that is in Dubai, and she talks about how she has dealt with stigmas all her life. She’s a divorced Middle Eastern woman with 27 tattoos that doesn’t cover up. And she was saying that, like people, especially in the Middle East. In culture like where I’m from, have always judged her for things. And then she said that she did like a massive detox because when she lost a lot of people being her authentic self, she lost a lot of people. She goes, but it felt so good because the people that stayed were the people that loved me for who I was authentically. Do you know what I mean? And then she goes on to say that, like, your brain is like tofu. Be careful what you marinate it in, because if you marinate it in shit like toxicity, it absorbs that, you know what I mean? It’s like a sponge, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, you know, that that is the most important thing. But you’re right. We forget that we have one life. And over and over again, people on their deathbed, as you know, they get asked, what do you regret? You know, and the regret is always doing the things that they wanted to do that they didn’t.

Living for other people’s expectations. But, you know, you get you guys are a bit younger. You get to my age and you start to regret the things you didn’t try. Yeah. That definitely what?

Well, I’m already seeing it already in my.

Products or companies or whatever. It was. Many things we haven’t tried.

Yeah, I think it’s so true though, because I always look at it like this and it’s easier to say than it is to do. It’s like money will come and go, like just fucking spend it and give it your best shot on whatever you want, like, because you can go back and make money. That’s the Middle.

East in a way. By the way. My mom’s Lebanese. She spent she’s like, Alex, buy me the Chanel. We might die tomorrow. Which really justifies everything, you know, like everything. Because Lebanese, by the way, they grew up in war, like, their whole life. Like Payman knows it’s the most bougie country in the world. Yeah, a bomb will hit. They’re still clubbing because they’re like, you know, you’re like, Yalla, we might die. You know what you were saying?

There is like buying me that thing anyway. So I think there’s a lot of, again, ways to look at that. Like there’s two ways to look. Oh, the first thought is £1,000. That’s, you know, maybe I shouldn’t do it. But then the other thing is, if I wear that Chanel bag, my confidence is going to go through the roof. So will that confidence make you better at work? Maybe. Will it make you get that boyfriend, your girlfriend you really want? Maybe. Will it make you walk with confidence? Maybe. And I think confidence is so key in anything we do. We talked.

About that. We talked about exercise and confidence because people were saying that. We say, oh, you shouldn’t have aesthetic goals. But then if aesthetic goals make you more confident and the confidence brings you other things in life, is it.

Bad, do things bad. But I do think every everyone who starts in the gym probably has some sort of low level of confidence and the and they’ve got some sort of validation they want to have to have. And I think I do.

Anything at the beginning of anything. It’s very difficult. Yeah.

Maybe. Yeah I think I was like that as well. Probably I was a skinny lad at uni and wanted to get all the girls, so I started lifting weights.

So when you look back on the journey, what, what, what are the high points? What comes to mind when you think of like the moments where you can take real pleasure?

So was it was like when I first started this, I was like, one day I’m going to work with this brand and this brand. And the moment I started working with them, it was like, fair play. I’ve done what I said I was going to do this brand, was it what was All Saints? And quite cool because and Ralph Lauren and I was like, you know what, fair play. Because I’ve always wanted to have the email being like, oh, we invite you to this or you can wear our clothes. And it was like, I remember 18 years old, I bought a All Saints leather jacket, my mum bought me one for my birthday and I was like, mom, there’s a lot of money, £330. And now and I’m not saying this gloating or anything, but it’s like I can contact them and they’ll send me one. And it’s like great feeling. It’s like, you know, I worked for that. And people look at it.

And the thing you work for, that’s the thing, people.

Look at it straight away, go, oh, you got this easy. I’m like, mate, I did it exactly.

When people are like, you should get in the TV gig.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Yeah, it’s it’s the same people, right, who complain. Right. So there’s two types of people. There’s the person who has the wife, who has the two kids and still manages to work out. And there’s the other one who what you were saying, and there’s the other person who comments on everyone’s post, but you don’t have kids and it’s the person. But there’s still, I guarantee there’s someone out there still finding the time to get the work in and do X, Y, and Z, even if they’ve got kids in a job and everything. Exactly. It’s just what you prioritise and what you spend those other little minutes doing that could save you on other certain areas of your, of your, of your life.

So what does the future hold for you?

Yeah.

I think it’s a really good question because for me, the future. I’ve been doing content creation for a while now, and I’m seeing all the changes and things like that, and I almost feel like I want to pass the baton down to the younger generation in content creation. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to do it. I think it’s going to be a part of my brand and what I do to showcase things, but for me, I really want to get my own fashion brand. I’ve got an idea to implement, like running kind of wear in more of a fashion wear fashion aesthetic, not like Nike, like performance clothing, but cool aesthetic in the running kind of space and fitness space, but also fashion space as well for like holiday wear and stuff. So I’m working on some designs right now for my own fashion brand, and I really want that because I think it’s for me, it’s like I love creating content and stuff like that, but I really want to have something which is bigger than my name and grow a brand, and I can impact. Impact? Yeah. Like I can always if I see someone wear my jumper down the. Street or something. And they bought that. I’d be like, fuck yeah. Like, and I get that now. I get people messaging me online and it’s like, that’s.

A dream lots of people have had. Right. So but now that you’ve started that process, what are the things about that that surprised you or you weren’t aware of or I mean, for instance, just for the sake of the argument, you want to make that jacket? Yeah, you got to make that in seven sizes and four colours. Yeah. Suddenly you’re talking 28 SKUs of that jacket.

Totally. Well, so far what I’ve learned is like, start small. Like you can’t expect to have a jumper, a t shirt, a pair of trousers, a pair of shoes off the back of it. Right. You have to start small. And again it’s just consistency like we talked about earlier. It’s starting small and being consistent with it and learning along the way. There’s going to be mistakes. I’m not going to I know for a fact I’m just not going to be all plain sailing because like you said, everyone would have done it. So it’s just and if it doesn’t work, it’s okay.

But in specifically in fashion, what are some things you’re starting to learn?

Okay, so I’ve got a sample made the other day. Samples can come back really shit. And they’re also really expensive to make. You know I think they look really good. So I get this jumper and I’m like, not not what I thought. And that’s £130. And I could have bought a nice jumper for £130, which is. Yeah. So it’s things like that. Um, the, the logo, the, the branding, the, the name having meaning behind the name is really important. Like I could just slap. I don’t know, there must be a reason why you started. What was the reason for you starting in lightning and lightning smile. Is there a reason behind it? Is there a brand behind it?

Yeah, yeah, but but I mean, one thing that’s very interesting. When we try and make something, there’s two ways of going. One is you stick your name on something that exists. Yeah. And the other way is where you make something completely new. And making something completely new costs us maybe five times as much. Totally sticking our name on something. I think with.

Fashion, you don’t actually need to reinvent the wheel all the time, because if you look at fashion, what actually happens is it goes in circles, just it goes in cycles. Right. So certain trends right now will probably go in May, maybe stay like there’s always some things that are going to stay leather jackets, things like that. But there’s certain trends and styles which will go round in cycle. So it’s like understanding what’s big now and then. You never know. It could become big in ten years, but for teeth to making them whiter or something, maybe a complete like you said.

You want to do a t shirt or a shirt, let’s say. Yeah. And you’ve got a specific idea about the way you want the stitching on the on the shirt or something. Unless you unless someone makes that specifically for you. Yeah. You’re not going to get that right. So is that the way it is that that is ready to go. Things that you can stick your name on got you or there’s like, you know, cutting new shapes and is that is that how it works? Well essentially.

Yeah. Like the manufacturer I’m speaking to at the moment. I said to him, listen, I want this, this, this. And he’s like, yeah, we can do that. So there’s just certain certain things people can do. If they can’t do it, then you find someone who can. Yeah, yeah. And it may take a long time to find someone who can. The thing which is really tough with any business, I think, is let’s take content creation for an example. You want to get better at photography, but to learn it. I learnt a lot of mine off YouTube. But what do you type into YouTube if you don’t have a clue about the terminology? Yeah. So there’s things on a camera which is ISO, aperture and things like that. But if you had no idea what aperture was, how could you say, make my photo look cleaner in YouTube? And then you get all these videos. It’s the same as like starting a clothing business. What is the word for this? Like, do you know what you need? Almost a dictionary of your words and everything. But it’s also about dentistry as well.

It’s about starting like Paula was the most like difficult thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. Because also like with dentistry, like I so had like a clear idea. And then I went on courses and then I invested. But like with business, especially a Start-Up like know it’s all it’s it’s all this new terminology and you kind of learn like on the go. And like recently I learnt all this stuff about business, like, you know, like shares, articles of association. Do you know what I mean? I had no flipping clue at that.

Richard Branson started a business and he made it to the top. And he still doesn’t know the.

Difference between Net and.

Gross. So do you know what? If you if you’re here and you make that, you’ll be all right.

Yeah, I think I think one of the big things like that Henry has brought today, like a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of great tips. But you know what you’ve shown a lot of people just start and also have the like, have the vision in mind, because I know that when he was that guy at Fitness First that didn’t have like he wasn’t going to be one of the biggest, like, content creators in the world. He just knew he wanted to do it. So you have to start somewhere.

So as I said earlier, self-belief is so important and we’re always going to feel something every day. We’re going to feel like, oh, we don’t deserve to be here. But if you can control your mind and just stay in that zone, you’ll you’ll get there. And that’s what I got. Mind over feelings tattooed on my under my bicep here first ever one. I love it because I think we feel something all the time. But if you can say to your mind. Your mind. You can do anything.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Henry. It’s honestly amazing.

I really.

Really, really.

Enjoyed that chat.

With you both. And yeah. And, like, probably have to bring you in for like, part two. Let’s do.

It. I’d love that. Thank you very much. Amazing. Thank you.

Lovely to chat to you both.

Thank you.

You look at the energy we generate about 98,500 unique users, of which about 68,000 of them are logged into the site. So we know the details and we can track them. That’s going to become incredibly powerful when cookies are available because you can’t pixel. And obviously what you’ve done where you’re giving the money to Mark Zuckerberg, if you can’t pixel, you know, all of these things that you’re doing, you’re going to need an organisation that has that data, has that infrastructure. And we’ve been doing that for the last 4 or 5 years. And we have a data team that’s just constantly looking at that user journey and harnessing data and. You know. So I think it’s it’s more about how people are preparing for the future. And, you know, I know how hard that journey has been over the last four years and the development and the infrastructure and the team and the investment that’s gone into developing that. You know, I wish anyone luck was going through that now because it’s not easy.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Craig Welling onto the podcast. Craig has really lived the British dream. We talk about the American dream sometimes. Craig’s lived the British dream. He joined FMC who anyone who’s in dentistry will have some contact with as a cold caller, a marketer telemarketer, and I’ve known him since that time when he was just just a young lad. And over the last ten, 15 years, he’s worked his way up that company, culminating in a management buyout of the company where he’s become the boss of the company, along with Tim and Jason, which is amazing. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story, but if you’ve ever picked up a Dental magazine, it’s likely to have been an FMC title. If you’ve ever been to an awards ceremony, it’s likely that that’s an FMC award. The Dentistry Awards Private Dentistry awards. If you’ve ever been to a massive event, you know they’ve got big events in Manchester and London and so forth, along with loads of other activities. And avid listeners will remember on episode 130, we had Ken Finlayson, who’s the F in FMC? No longer is Ken the boss. So lovely to have you Craig.

Thanks, Paddy. What a what a wonderful introduction. I’ve never been introduced like that before so yeah, appreciate the words. Shall I give.

You my intro? Craig?

As long as if you can top that, that’d be lovely.

Not a freaking not a fricking chance, mate. So before we started this, Craig said to me, either in his late teens or early 20s, his recollection of us last meeting was in a curry house in Manchester, and it was and it was a brilliant curry. And we were in the gym and we were just we were just talking about Craig’s journey. And I said, what you joined as a young kid hitting the phones and now you’re the boss of the company. And he goes, yeah, one of three. I mean, that just blows my bloody mind, right? And I’m sure during today we’re going to talk about that journey. What happened. You know, what what have you done specifically to make that happen. You know, what have been what have been the ingredients of that? And was that a goal? Was that a dream? Did it happen? Right place, right time, hard work, probably a combination of all those things, but really, really interested to learn your story, Craig, and hear what it was. And look in you know, dentistry news travels fast, right? So I’d heard about this on the grapevine and I was like, bloody hell, I really want to know what happened and how and why. Right. So yeah really curious. And Craig, we usually we usually start this podcast by asking, you know, where did you grow up, what was your childhood like and all that sort of thing. So so just give us your backstory. Early days of Craig as a as a young lad growing up.

Yeah. No worries. So I mean, I grew up in a in a small town in Hertfordshire called Elstree, Borehamwood come from a really traditional working class family. My dad worked for the Royal Mail as a as a lorry driver and my mum worked for a company called bowerbirds actually, which produces coffee, but two really hard working individuals. And I think for me, you know, I was always about people, you know, at school, I loved the engagement, I loved interacting with people. I found it really hard to focus, if I’m honest, in terms of knuckling down on the educational side. And I’ve battled my way through school, quite honestly. And, you know, the work ethic was always there, but it wasn’t something I particularly enjoyed. So I got got through my GCSE, stayed on A-levels, and I remember I did my A levels and I just thought, you know what this is, this is not for me. I’m not going to go on to be an academic. And I remember I went went back home and I said to my mum, that’s it, I’m out, I’m tapping out. And she, she said, right, jump in the car. And she took me down to next and she bought me a suit and went to the library and made me print out my CV. And she said, you’ve got a week to go and get yourself a job if you’re leaving school. And I’ll never forget that. I think that was quite a pivotal moment in my in my adolescence, really. And, you know, I remember walking into estate agents and different, different organisations as a young guy in a, in a really cheap suit, not I and criticism, but for a job. And I remember I got the phone call actually, and I started at an estate agents the week after which, which was a which was a tough role. But yeah, you know, like I’ve got both my parents still together. I’ve got a sister. We’re really 2.4 children, working class family from a small town. Nothing really exciting, to be honest. It’s just. Just. Yeah.

So your mum, your mum took you to a took you to next. Got you your suit and what job. What, what was that process of. Right. I’m going to start applying for jobs. What was going through your mind? Was it always sales? Was it was that your thing because you were a people person? That’s what, you know. Like back in the day when we were at school, we’d go to like the careers adviser and they’d say, oh yeah, you’re Asian, so you’ve got to be a doctor or an accountant, or do you see what I mean? And are you doing well in your A-levels or whatever? What was going through your mind there in terms of you dropped into the estate agent job? That’s all sales orientated. And then you ended up I think it was.

I remember I had a few of my friends were older and a couple of them were in the sales, and I quite liked that you could make your own destiny, you know, in the sense of if you could see, you know, driving nice cars, wearing a nice watch, nice clothes and, you know, ultimately come from a very similar background to me. And I quite like that, that, you know, they they’d been able to achieve that from, from, I suppose hard work. And it’s something I’ve never really reflected on if I’m honest. Prav it was more I saw an opportunity in that and looked at recruitment agencies, looked at estate agents. But I don’t think I ever thought, oh, it’s a people’s thing. I just kind of saw other people doing it, doing well and thought, I’ll give that a crack that that might work out.

But both of those roles, I’m sure there were others, but recruitment estate agent, you need communication skills, people skills. You need to be able to get on with people. A bit of banter and sales, right? So whether whether that was deliberate or not, there must have been some subconscious there, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, like I think I started with always like that at school that you had your group of friends, you saw each other every day. You’d have a good laugh. And that was really my my purpose to school. It was to connect, have fun. You know, the academic side was never the thing that was driving me. So I suppose, yeah, subconsciously it was to get into a sector that you could communicate with people and, you know, enjoy ultimately. And, and yeah, a state agency was it was tough. I was very it didn’t, didn’t, didn’t quite um, you know, the first couple of years was amazing. I think, you know, you kind of get that stereotypical view of an estate agent. And to be fair, it’s not wrong. You know, they are, as people say, and actually ended up doing quite, quite well with the estate agency. And then the just late 2007, actually, the recession hit. And I remember we went from like four branches and about 70 employees down to a core group of like ten of us. And it got incredibly tough. And, um, I remember sitting there thinking like, I’m earning way less than I was earning. This is not going in the direction that I anticipated. And so I went to a recruitment agency, and I just started starting to apply for a few jobs and then a telemarketing sales role come up for a media company. And I thought, I’ll you that that sounds quite cool. And, you know, fast paced and a movement. And then I found out it was in venture into media. That’s big niche. But anyway, come in and met with Ken and then that was it.

You when you look back. If you could rewind by 20 years, knowing what you know now, would you go on and do a degree and all of that? Has it held you back in any way? What would you tell your children about that?

Yeah, you know, that is something I’ll definitely reflect on and I think. I would definitely have tried much harder at academics. And and I think that that would have put me an even greater step down. And I think education is important. And now I’ve got two young children, you know, that that is a big focus for me. But personally, I don’t think it’s the be all and end all. I think it’s a combination of education, you know, work work ethic and application is, is and also just just common sense. Right. You see a lot of these people that go off to Oxford and Cambridge and they’re super intelligent, but they can’t they can’t sit in a room with them.

Just totally dreamy.

People like Prav, man. People like probably Oxford boy, you snobs can’t no common sense. But listen. Listen what?

What I was about to say, Craig, was this right? You know, I run a business, a few businesses, and I also have a lot of friends. Well, let’s just go to my business, right? More than half the people in my business do not have a degree. But I would say I shit you not some of the smartest human beings I’ve ever met in their craft. Whether it’s software development, whether it’s design, whether it’s user experience, having those people skills. And so even though Craig, you might sit back and reflect and actually one one of my team members who’s been with me the longest, James has always said to me, oh, do you know what? It would have been nice if I, if I had my time to go back and get any way smart enough to go and get his degree and postgraduate degrees and all the rest of it. But let me tell you, it is his experiences and his exposure to having not done that and being exposed to other things in early life that has shaped him to be who he is today and. Your path would have been completely different as well.

If you’d have slapped a degree on the end of your name. You may not be sat where you are today because the estate agent role, the recession, the fact that then you went looking for a recruitment job and then you landed in telesales and the the butterfly effect of the way the stars aligned. Right. Had you where it is. But you know, as a father, we all want I guess we all want better for our kids, don’t we? And perhaps the opportunities that were not afforded to us. And you think, okay, well, let me push education your way. Right. But but it may be that, you know, you have a you have a couple of kids and you think, do you know what one of them’s cut out for the academic route, but the other 1st May not be. And that’s cool, you know, and and that’s my take on it, even though I’ve, I’ve gone deep into education and thrown a ton of time to my education, I don’t necessarily believe that that is what is required for success.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s a really good point. And it’s funny you say that actually, because my daughters are still so young. I’ve got a six year old and a four year old, and I can already see their personalities that the the eldest, you know, she is quite academically driven, really enjoys school is where I see a lot of the a lot of me and the younger one, you know. Much more chatty. And, you know, she she wants to be in the room and be in the thick of it. But but you know, education is second. So it’s. Yeah, it’s a really good point. I think it’s playing to their strengths isn’t it. And I think that that comes into business as well, looking at people’s core strengths and values and making sure you’re equipped in, in the right way to, to fulfil what they can.

Craig, on that first day when you went into FMC, what were your first impressions of the Dental market? I mean, we’ll talk about FMC as well because it’s such a special company. But the Dental market, what were your first impressions of it and how right or wrong were you?

I suppose first is a tough one because, you know, I think. You kind of learning the ropes and you’re understanding what the products are and why we produce the products that we produce. Obviously, I remember making those calls and being hung up on a few times thinking why these people are not very nice and but, you know, you learn the role and you understand that, you know, dentists in particular are incredibly busy people, and they’re only making money when they’re in the chair. So they’re the last thing they really want to do is speak to someone who’s going to sell them a subscription. So but I think as I’ve gone through the profession and, you know, as you introduce Payman and we hold lots of events, we hold lots of awards, and I think the dental community is an incredibly powerful thing. And, you know, amazing people, you know, there’s a lot of collaboration and people are there to help each other. So I’ve come to be incredibly fond of this sector. And yeah, I think it’s full of great people.

What about FMC as a company? I mean, there’s a certain buzz about that company. You’ve got to take your hat off to Ken and Kimberly. I guess the the way that they made that company a meritocracy, I think. Yeah. The fact that you went from the bottom to the top of that company shows that, right? Yeah. But also I feel like, you know, very hard working. This is from the outside, right? You tell me if it’s a very hard working and yet lots of fun at the same time.

Yeah. I think you just absolutely summed it up. I think, you know, Ken’s become an incredibly close friend of mine. And, you know, I’m a close family friend and he knows, you know, my and my family. And, you know, we’re continue to be friends, you know, as we are. But I think the one thing that that Ken and Kimberly instilled was, you know, one is work ethic for sure. You know, and what one thing you can’t say about either of them is, is that they didn’t lead from the front. You know, I think Ken was the guy. And, you know, that that guy’s work rate and effort and being relentless was was something that really rubbed off on me. And but, you know, through my career looking at him, just thinking how was he got the energy, you know, 4 or 5 in the morning in amounts out for a run working on this, doing that. And. And you know, I’m a competitive guy by nature and, you know, incredibly skilled as for him as his business. But he made me want to beat him, you know, in return as a business owner was phenomenal because it and I remember sitting there thinking, I’m going to absolutely smash in this week. I’m going to see more people. I’m going to do this. You know, chances are it didn’t in the early days because he was it was he was on it. But you know, with hard work come a lot of reward and a lot of fun. So, you know, the team culture is, you know, you see everyone at the awards that they will be Uber professional and Uber slick and they all work their socks off. But as soon as the job’s done, we have a good time. And, you know, and I think that’s what it’s all about. You got to do that. And they all get rewarded really well for that.

What do you think it was about? I mean, you jumped around a few jobs before there and then you stuck there. What do you think it was about it that kept you there whereas all the other jobs lost you? Was it the progression?

Yeah. I mean, it’s not something like, you know, like with with progression. It’s not something that’s like unless you’re on like a gradual scheme and everything’s completely mapped out and you’re going to get to this point and then you’re going to go there, you know, thinking in kind of small to medium sized businesses, it doesn’t really operate like that. And I don’t think we really operate like that now. So I don’t think so much it was the progression. I’ve just really enjoyed it, really enjoyed the culture, and I really enjoyed being around Ken and and the team and, you know, the sense of being part of something that was successful and playing a part in that. And I think, you know, big, big learning for me is if you can get everyone on that journey and, and everybody feels like they’re part of that success, that that goes ahead of a long way on top of salary, on top of bonuses, which obviously are important as well. But I think that self esteem and and being part of a success is, is just as important.

You mentioned earlier might have been offline that you had two stints at FMC. You joined in the early days. You went away for a bit. You came back. What happened in between and what pulled you back?

Yeah, it’s actually Prav. It’s quite funny. I remember I come for the interview and, and I actually interviewed for the digital advertising display role and, and then there was also a telesales role. And I really wanted the display role but didn’t quite make it, so actually got rejected for the position. And then I got a phone call to say, actually, you think you’d be suited for that? And I remember I come in on my induction and Payman you probably remember James Howell.

Yeah, yeah. And Beth.

So, so Jane James Howell and Beth. Yeah, he was a sales director at the time. And he turned around and he said, the thing is, Craig, I’m. The people have been FMC for ten years. This is our culture. Nobody lives. And about three weeks into my role, I found out that the business has been sold to Springer and. What was going on here? And and then James left and a couple of people left and I asked him, this is not what I got told. In fairness, you know, the core team was still here. And yeah, we carried on working, but I think I went from education straight into work, and I never really got that time to do anything for myself. So, you know, like people that goes to go on to uni, they get that time and living away from home and, and the rest of it. So I decided that I wanted to take a year out and travel so, so handed by noticing I went went travelling for just over a year and then come back. Same thing as I’ve kind of got got out of system, had a lot of fun memories for life. And then I dropped Ken a line and just said, oh, I’m back, you know, are you doing anything? And then he said, oh, actually, we’ve got this position. And he had a company called Premium Practice Dentistry.

I remember.

Yeah, yeah.

So I went there and I said, yeah, really. You know, we had a good chat and we met over, over a drink in Hartford, and he offered me the role. And about two weeks before I started, he got, I got a phone call from Tim and he said, oh, Ken’s just reacquired FMC. How would you feel about working from Shenley? And at that point you don’t really understand anything and also start. Yeah, that’s closer to home. Perfect. You know that that works really well. And and walked back into the organisation and it was literally like nothing could change. You know, the same faces were there. Ken was back at the helm, Julian English was around and and then. Yeah, come back. So it was, it was a it was a for me. I didn’t really understand the whole nuance of what had happened and the challenge of reacquiring the company and redeveloping the culture. But but yeah. So it was a, it was a the first stint was more of a just kind of getting into a new role from a state agency. And it was really when I come back from travelling and kind of had a thought that, you know, I need to take on my career now in my early 20s and wanted nothing.

So. But how does it feel? I mean, it was from, you know, we’re talking 2008 till now where the landscape in media has changed so massively. And, you know, in many ways there was, you know, I was advertising with FMC from the day we started. Yeah. But in in many ways, some of the dollars that I’ve been was giving to FMC, I’m now giving to Mark Zuckerberg, you know, and such a big change and navigating that change. And, you know, every industry is going through it. But media kind of first in that. Have you’ve watched that happen. Right. You’ve watched the transition from print to digital.

Yeah. And I think that’s a very broad question. But you know, I think it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. Right. That print media isn’t it was I think there’s still a big part of print media that that remained, you know, with the profession and even going out talking to dentists, you know, they could still consume print media. It’s just not what it was. And I think the issue now where you’ve got with, with, with marketeers and, and business owners is everyone’s looking at that final 3% of the funnel. Yeah. Everyone wants to know I put in x pound and I get X pounds back. And there’s only certain types of media that can perform that. Right. And you look at in the funnel marketing and lead generation. And I suppose our job as a, as a, as a media company is really to show facts and educate that you can’t just focus on that final 3%. You know, we can deliver campaigns that will deliver you your ROI. But, you know, I think there was a podcast that Steven Bartlett did when he was saying, you know, people have forgotten about the the 97% at the top of the funnel, you know, and you look at the big brands like Apple, like Coca-Cola, like Google, you know, they’re everywhere and they’re everywhere for a reason because they’re they’re building that brand. So for us, we’ve really had to adapt to make sure that, however, a Dental professional consumes media, we want to make sure that we have a LinkedIn channel and a leading approach. And really our job is to work with companies to to identify what their need is and make sure that we, you know, we put together a solution that will tick all the boxes. We’re not going to just work with a company on a one month campaign to do the final 3% because, you know, the world doesn’t work like that. So I think we’ve had to adapt our products, but we’ve also had to adapt to becoming more of a solution sales organisation rather than just a media sales company, if that makes sense.

So, Craig, back to your back to your story, back to your journey. So from that sales, what how did you evolve? So so I want you to give me a almost like a potted history of sales professional doing well, hitting your targets, getting your bonuses, enjoying your role to now being one of three bosses of the company. Right. What what happened in your evolution as a human being and as a professional? And then how did that even come about? Like like what was the what was the what was the journey? If that’s the question, you can sort of articulate and answer for us.

Yeah. So I think if you, if you, if you spoke to Ken and asked him about me, he would say I was an absolute annoyance for years because I think I got went into the role and to me, sales was always a numbers game. You know, if you if you believe in your product, which I did and you know, we’ve developed and I’m more passionate about our products than we’ve ever been, but if you’ve just got to get through to the people to explain it, and if you can do that, you’re going to do all right. And I remember my first role was selling tickets to the World Aesthetic Congress, which was held at the QE two. And I think we used to charge some £600 a ticket, and it was really looking at those kind of top end high, you know, cosmetic orientated professionals. And we did really well. You know, we see a huge turnout and and you know the brand was really strong. And then we went on to, to sell in subscriptions. And again it started to get a lot of traction. And I think probably my ego got got in front of me from, from a, you know, a young age from seeing success and, and earning quite well and saying to Kenya, I want to do this, I want to head this up, I want to I want to do this. And I suppose, you know, looking back now is is I was in the job for about a year, didn’t have a clue about anything. And it. Credit to Ken. He managed that situation really well and, you know, he’d be really kind, but it’d also be really honest.

So he’d say, you know, it kind of said, you know, things are going really well, but you need to work on this. You need to work on that. And, you know, let’s do this. Let’s put you on that course. You know, he was really instrumental in kind of my development. And then Kimberly was involved in the organisation. And for anyone who met Kimberly will know that she was a very unique character. And, you know, she she’d become a dear friend of mine and was was, was again instrumental in my personal development and my, my growth. And she really, really pushed me. And she, you know, she, she’d set outlandish targets, you know, that you just. And there’s a fine balance, right? I’m sure you guys have it with you with teams and the products that you sell to say, you know, this is what we want to try and generate in terms of new customer acquisitions. And if you go too high, you switch the team off because they go it’s just ridiculous. And then but you don’t want to sell it too low because obviously, you know, you want to deliver what you set out for. And Kimberly used to set outlandish numbers, and I’d go home and I’d be like, she’s mad, absolutely mad. And but then you get to the end of the month and you do hit them. And then there’s the realisation of, you know what? If you put the effort in and you’re home still and you try really hard, it is achievable.

And that was something that really stuck with me. He’s like, you know, you hear people about this blue sky thinking and, you know, shoot for the stars and all of these cliche sayings. But, you know, Kimberly was was, you know, she was someone who did that. And, you know, we weren’t always him, but but it showed that you could. So so that really stuck with me. And I’d always try coming through, whether it be with, you know, tele sales. And then I moved on to head up a magazine called laboratory, which was like our next title. You know, what was about 2000 labs and probably 50 suppliers in the lab? Well, back in 2008 and again, I grew that title and had phenomenal success with it. And, you know, the more people that you get out and see and the more people that you can show your proposition to, and you believe in your product. And then, you know, ultimately the end user believes in the product, you’re going to get results. And we got really good results from that. And then again moved on to another title and then saw a really big opportunity with exhibitions. So, you know, I think conference is a kind of paid for conferences and, you know, moved out by then and you had two big, large national exhibitions. And we we launched like the digital dentistry show. So we went a bit more niche, and then we launched the private dentistry show. And again, that was out seeing companies selling space, but really developing a proposition and going out to market.

And I then got appointed as commercial director. I think that was 2015, 2015, 2016, so really stayed on the events and supporting media and worked really closely with Joe Lovett, who was a great guy, you know, very charismatic, and I’ll learn a lot from Joe as well, just the way that he’s with people. And I think, you know, again, it’s all these cliche sayings, every day’s a school day. But, you know, I think in seeing things with, with, with people and, you know, that that works really well. It’s just adapting it to your own style and thinking, you know, I’ll utilise that and I’ll try that. And that doesn’t quite work. And just being authentic. And so I went on to do that and then. Obviously then the pandemic hit in 2020. And you know, I’m sure everyone’s aware that unfortunately Kim passed away in that period and can add a very, very tough time. So Kim has actually stuck over in in Bali at that point. And it was I mean, one of the most challenging times, one, to deal with losing a really close friend and then trying to support a friend and a colleague who’s going through absolute hell, but then also looking at the business and thinking, you know, fuck, what the hell are we going to do? You know, it was a and I’m sure everyone went through that. And, you know, looking back, you know, taking out all of the terrible things that happened with Kimberley, Covid was actually one of the most enjoyable times at work, I’d say.

And we as a team will sit there and we agree with that because, you know, our backs were against the wall and we just saw the spirit in the team come together and and we innovated and we launched new things. And you know, we got some things wrong, but we we got some things really, really right. And, you know, that really propelled us into this, this new era post Covid. And then following that, Ken returned from Bali and sat down with myself and Jason and just said, you know, I need to be there for my family and I can’t be as involved. And and he appointed us as NDS of the business, you know, and he kind of took a back step. So he wasn’t involved really from 2020 onwards. And again, I think that was quite a steep learning curve from 2020 to 2022 that you just got to work it out and you’ve got to make mistakes and you’ve just got to keep trying and keep pushing and don’t give up. So it’s it feels like therapy. Yeah. You know, like, you know, just explaining it that way. I think it’s been a real roller coaster of a journey because you learn things off so many different people and you adapt it into your own technique and your own way of, you know, your own values and what you believe in and how you position things, you know, coupled with just just taking risks and going for opportunities and just working it out. And ultimately here we are.

And but the thought of private equity backed management buyout, whose idea was that who first came up with that idea. Was that you guys or was that Ken’s idea or.

Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t really an idea. I think obviously, again, going back to what what happened with Ken. And then he had another tragic loss, which his son.

Yeah.

Because as parents, you can’t even imagine and you don’t even want to imagine, you know, but we still had the business to run. And we stood up, Ken, to support. And I think, as you just mentioned, that the media landscape was has changed dramatically over the years. And, you know, we we come out of Covid and much, much stronger business, you know, from from our offering and our multi-channel approach and the results that we were delivering and our transparency of results and looking at the end of the funnel and our social and our content creation and all of these things are either the modern media business should offer. And like anything, we had a big community. You know, we had a big following. And that’s really how we’ve always commercialised. We monetise our community, so we’ve always offered education. And we looked at developing an online platform for education. We felt like, you know, there’s some really good platforms out there, but there was nothing that was really simple and effective for the for the end user. And credit to Tim, you know, he really spearheaded that project along with Lori, who’s our marketing director, and he’s kind of like head of product. And they developed this phenomenal platform, which was like a Netflix interface, e-learning platform. And obviously, we’re really lucky that we’ve got an abundance of content from some of the leading clinicians globally because of the magazines that we publish, and we put that into an online platform and really without much effort and energy, we generated thousands of subscribers. So I remember sitting there and looking at the numbers and thinking, well, we’ve got the vast majority of the advertising market, you know, in the media landscape because of the size of our portfolio and, and our multichannel offering, there isn’t any, you know, and I think everybody there’s space in the market for everyone. So and I think there’s some really strong other publications out there. But in terms of the breadth and the reach. Wasn’t anybody that could really come close to what we had to offer.

So the growth.

Opportunity in media wasn’t really there unless we looked at other verticals, so looked at similar markets like veterinary or optical or. But then there was just this, this, this moment of saying, well, we haven’t really pushed the education side and we’ve generated this, so what could we do if we really went for it? And myself, Tim and Jason and Ken sat down and, you know, it needed a lot of energy, a lot of investment. And I think, you know, we collectively agreed that if we could raise the funds that Ken would be willing to because, you know, he’s he’s he wants to be with his family and he’s gone through that, that time. And so we went through a crazy. A crazy period, and it was really eye opening and fascinating. And I actually listened to your brother’s podcast, Prav, about obviously when he joined the.

Dental.

And he talked about, you know, the, the model of private equity. And I think you hear all these things about private equity. And straightaway everybody gets their back up and they’re like, well, yeah, it’s scary. But you go through the process and it’s fascinating. Absolutely fascinating is the only way that I can describe it. And I actually loved every minute of it. I thought it was phenomenal. So we we went out and we put our proposition to ten different private equity firms. We also looked at other ways of lending. And out of the ten, I think we got eight offers, which was, you know, it was great. It really showed that we had a solid business and a solid growth plan, and they really liked what we were doing, and we gelled really well with two guys, a guy called Abbott and a guy called Alfred, and Alex, the founder and CEO of a company called Coniston Capital. And and they battled management buyout. And then yes, it was the end of August and we’re yeah, we’re right in the thick of it.

But how did you know what to do? Did you have corporate finance?

Yes. We used a company called Castle Finance and Lake Victoria. And so again, if anybody’s looking at going through a process I couldn’t recommend hard enough. She was absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenal. She you know, you go through, you meet with them, you talk about the business, you talk about your growth plans, and you know what you’re looking to achieve and timelines and and then they basically challenge you on so many points and, and really gets you to really understand the business deeply and look at all of the different. Levers that you can pull in the opportunities that there are, and then you pull together an. So an information memorandum, which they then share out to their network of private equity firms. And then they invite you to come in and you basically present a bit like Dragons Den. And then they sit there and they grill you for half an hour in a nice way. They’re there to get a job done as well. Yeah. You know, they’re looking to make investments and then and then, you know, you kind of shortlist it and then you go, you might go for dinner with them. You go and have a beer and you see what they’re like socially and make sure that you kind of values are aligned and you really believe in, in the direction that, that you’re taking a business and that they believe in that and they’re not going to come in and try and change that. And then, yeah, we’ve picked them and so far they’ve been phenomenal that let’s get on with it.

But you said.

They’re majority shareholders right. So they they can do whatever they like. They can they can pull the plug on you or sell you or whatever it is. Right. So if you say to them, this is my growth plan, within x number of years, Y will happen. If you don’t hit that plan, they can literally mess you up, right? Is that correct? Is there someone on your board now from them? How does it work?

No. So yeah. So so it sits on the board. But then we also we have a Non-exec chairman James Tyler was CEO of Dennis Media. So Dennis Media was published a title called The Week. And I think they they exited for 330,000,002 years ago. So you know massive subscription business. It’s got a wealth of experience and knowledge from from media. And, and he sits on, on the board with us as a conduit. I suppose the thing is, Payman is, is like any partnership, right? Is you’ve got a team, you could fire all of your team tomorrow if you wanted to. You went out of business.

Yeah, I know, but then, you know, like, are you having to answer to them now or, you know, people talk about the downside of this sort of thing is that they will interfere with you and so forth.

Yeah.

So they could write is the honest answer if they wanted to. But they’re not they’re not. You know, we’ve got we outline a budget and we outline an approach and we outline an investment. And as long as we stick to that and we don’t, you know, draw £1 million extra investment out to go and, you know, set up a business in UAE without, you know, with you anyway. So, you know, we’re completely aligned on our, on our, on our journey and where we’re going to go. And I suppose, you know, let’s not be foolish that there’s going to be some ups and downs in the next 5 to 10 years, and I’m sure there will be difficult conversations and I’m sure we’ll have difficult conversations with them. But but we’re all aligned to where we want to get to.

And have you suffered with imposter syndrome in the middle of all of this? I would yeah.

It’s a it’s a real interesting one because I had a chat with James last week and and honestly, looking back, I think I’ve suffered with it my whole life. Generally, I think, you know, I’ll sit in meetings with, you know, Harvard grads and people that develop, you know, all of these incredible platforms for dentists. And they’re Uber intelligent and some of the brightest people I’ve ever met. And I’m sat having dinner with them and they’re buying. I always leave there just feeling frustrated, saying, you know, what the hell just happened there? But but yeah. So I think that is in you know, obviously I think that is still something that I’m getting to grips with.

So, Craig, I just want to want to ask a few more questions about the process. I’ve been through that process with a dental practice. Right. And, you know, you have this idea. You go to an advisor, corporate finance, a broker, whatever that is, right? And they put, you know, you produce a pitch document essentially, and then you went to how how many people you said eight people said yes or whatever, we’d like more information or whatever. Yeah.

So we went out to ten. So we met ten. And then I come back to say that they were interested.

So your pitch, your pitch was, hey, we need some dough to buy Ken out. This is how the business is going to grow and provide you, the investor, with a return on investment. Right. Because if that model, if that story wasn’t there, they they ain’t just going to stump up the cash for no reason. Right. Yeah. So, so so you’ve got to prove to them that, hey, whatever you’re putting in here, you’re going to get that back. And so in a period of time, an eight out of ten people said, I think your story is great. Yeah, and we won in. Right. Just talk me through the process. You’ve now got eight on the table. Yeah. Was it a really easy decision like the one that stuck out as, like they’re the clear winner because, you know, we’ve had a pint with all eight of them and these were the coolest guys. Or was it, you know, the questions they asked or the direction in which they wanted to take the company was aligned with yours. What was talk me through that process.

Yeah. So a couple that we met and straightaway you just, you know, like you’ve got interesting territory. These are not people that we can work with. They’re just not, you know, they’re just they didn’t come across as really nice, genuine, authentic people. So they was off. So I think there was three that were left. And, you know, all really nice companies. I think the thing that stood out with Coniston was one they. Like. I suppose the other two felt like it was more lip service, like they you could see it was a solid business with, you know, a market leading brand, really engaged community, you know, and a big potential for, for growth on that, on the on the professional side. And I felt like a lot of it was lip service just to try and get a deal over the line. And then with Coniston and the thing that I really liked about those those guys is they were straight talkers, you know, they challenged, they didn’t just say, yeah, that’s great. What would you do in this scenario? What would you do in that scenario? Have you thought about this? You know they challenged on that media change from social. And obviously, you know we’ve got a business plan for for all of these elements. And ultimately just I think just we just clicked with them. You know, I suppose this when you say you’re going to buy a house, you know, you do get a feeling and an instinct and, you know, you go through the facts and the figures and ultimately they were the guys that one could meet Ten’s demands. Because, you know, this, let’s be real, can add a number that you needed to achieve. And that was a number that they had to be willing to pay, which they weren’t. So that was great. And then they really had to believe in us and that to challenge what we wanted to get to.

So of the three people that you shortlisted, did all three hit the magic number? Yeah. So so it was so, so the number was the number went out of the equation then. And then it was about the right fit.

The right fit. Yeah.

Obviously the number was the first thing that needed to be agreed. Yeah. And then that was agreed. And then and then it was a case of like who can we Gerald? Who do we believe we can work with and obviously gambatte to to payment point of, you know, they can do this and that. We need to make sure that we were comfortable in, you know, picking the right partners and.

So when you pick the partner, is there a whole process of due diligence that they went through? They tore through your finances, the books, the team, the the structure. What was that process like? The thing.

Is, the Craig Cairns sold that company a couple of times before already, so he must have dotted all the i’s and cross all the T’s several times before. Right?

Yeah.

And the thing is, you know, you can’t build a brand like FMC half heartedly, you know, so we have lots of structures and everything was in place. I think you know, me, Tim and Jason will bring quite a different element to the business from very operational. So I think if you ask Jason about how the process went, it’d be very different answer to mine. You know, I thought it went pretty well. They challenged a couple of things like, but Jason’s really the guy that was in the thick of that, pulling all of the packs together, providing information, and did a phenomenal job.

How long was that process, Craig?

This was the just over 11 weeks.

And was was this 11 weeks of day in and day out, constant information requests, providing this, providing that. And during that due diligence process, was there ever any point where you thought, fucking hell, this ain’t going to happen?

Yeah, multiple times. Multiple times. I mean, the challenging thing is I still got the business to run and and you’ve still got the magazines out the door. You still got put the events on. You still got planned for the awards. You know, you still got to keep innovation. You still got to keep the team motivated as well as get through 200 questions a day. And, you know, of course, I think anyone who’s gone through that process who says that it’s just easy and you’ve never questioned yourself, I wouldn’t believe, or I’d want to know what their secret sauce is, because there was multiple times we’d sit there and think, Jesus Christ, is this worth it? This is like, what’s that? What’s this? Why have they raised that? And then you get through it and you realise that, you know, there’s tactics that are involved. But also, you know, anyone who’s dealt with lawyers, buying a practice, selling a practice, you know, they asked questions they’re had to ask and become irrelevant over a period of time. But again, you learn a lot through it. Right? And and you start to understand, you know, I’ve never done an acquisition, I’ve never done a buyout, you know, and we’re going through our first acquisition now, which is incredibly exciting. Which, which, you know, I can’t go on too much into the detail of it because it’s due to complete next week. But, you know, all of these things, you’re then on the other side of becoming a buyer and not a, you know, so it’s. Yeah. Just just a fascinating fun.

And Craig my my sorry my understanding of of from what you’ve told me, the plan that you presented to them was that you’re going to shift to more of an AR model annual recurring revenue model. Is that right?

Yeah. No.

I wouldn’t say a shift because, you know, the heart of what we do is media, right? And we will never lose that. And that is something that we need to maintain and continue to innovate. And, you know, one of the big things that I really liked about this process was understanding your why. Why do we do what we do? And ultimately we do what we do to help businesses grow. You know, from a media perspective, we work with brands to help build their brand, grow recommendations, generate ROI, and and educate the profession on the services that are available. And then we looked at the professional side. And if you look at the the offering in the market, again, there’s great solutions in the market. But what we believe is there isn’t really anything that really empowers that, that that professional development from a practice or an individual side. So it’s how can we create solutions to really help practices and individuals grow. You know, and I think from, from developing that this, this naturally that becomes a subscription led model. So you know, we will never drop and we will never forget about media. That is the heart of what we’re doing. It will always be. But we will have an assumption of professional services where we will really look to help and grow the professional side of the business.

We can’t have someone from FMC on and not talk about things like Dentistry’s top 50. Yeah. And and and other controversial subjects like awards themselves. I mean, there’s a love hate relationship in the profession with both of those two things, right. And I guess I don’t want to be the, you know, the the guy who asks you this unpopular question, but what do you think? I mean, what do you say to the people who say, look, that all of this stuff pitting dentists against each other, implying one dentist is better than another, is sort of fake? It’s not. It’s not real.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like like like we went back to, I suppose, the beginning of the conversation, like self esteem and recognition is a big thing. And I think really people don’t understand why we launched the awards when, when we launched them and what, what what you know, going back to why why is on that. It’s not to put people up against each other. It’s we’re getting to the publishing awards and we have done since, since I’ve been in the business. And you with any awards. Right. They’re self nominated. You have to write about yourself and we enter brand of the year. We enter publishing company of the year. And when you sit there and you write about your business, it really makes you reflect, like going back to what we did with this, you know, talking about corporate finance at the end. And you look at it and you think, actually, you know what? I think we can improve on that. And I think we can we can do this a bit different. And it’s only when you actually take the time to sit there and write down and really reflect on why you think you are the leading business in, you know, the South, or why you think you’re the leading practice in the North or whatever it may be.

And that led us to really up our game on, on, on the brand side of things and look to the bits that we weren’t really happy with and what we like, what we didn’t like. And I’ll tell you that we improved our brand position by about 10% off the back of entering those awards and every year. And that’s really the aim of the awards, right? If we if every dental professional that enters those awards, or any practice that enters those awards can sit down and reflect and actually has an impact of making them try harder, 1 or 2%. That’s a good thing for the profession and a good thing for patients. Okay, whether people think is right or wrong to put people up against each other, it’s a good thing because everybody’s trying harder, everyone’s producing better dentistry. And the only winner in that is the patient.

Yeah. But do you have do you have sympathy for the, you know, for the for the dentist who’s sitting in Yorkshire who hasn’t even entered the awards because that’s not what he does. And you’ve called some his his next door practice. Best practice Yorkshire or something. Do you have empathy for that guy? He’s not into going for awards. He’s into taking care of his patients. Do you have do you have empathy for the position of that guy who thinks, you know, what the hell?

Yeah, absolutely.

But I suppose, you know, we can only judge what’s put in front of us, right? And we’ve got a panel of 20, 25 leading clinicians, you know, chaired by David David Houston. And it’s a vigorous process. You know, they all take the time out and they come to the office and they go through these awards. And. Estate and I cannot tell you like I’m in credit to all of them that take their time out because of the love and passion that they’ve got in sector. And you know they will ultimately choose who they believe is the best that’s in front of them. Yeah. And you can’t pick the guy that didn’t enter. And you know, I suppose you’ve got to feel for these guys that are you know, there’s probably some of the best clinicians out there, right, that aren’t on Instagram, aren’t on Facebook. Yeah. Their clinical skills are way above anybody that’s ever won an award. I can only imagine. And no one really knows who they are. And that’s that’s fine. Right. Because that’s that’s the lane that they’ve, they’ve chosen and that’s what they do. And, and you know, that’s it. There’s nothing else really to say, is there. It’s like we can only judge and follow a process that’s in front of us. And, you know, if he was at the awards on Friday night in Leicester, it was incredible. You know, like looking at people’s reactions when they’re shortlisted and when they win. But like that is one of the best feelings of the job. Like means everything to them.

I mean, one thing’s for sure, you guys have really got that process down to a tee. When you go to one of those award ceremonies, you just feel like there’s a buzz in the air. And particularly that Leicester one, it’s a loads, loads of fun that night. Loads and loads of fun. All the teams are out and so forth. Tell me about the process of actually hosting something like that. I mean, you guys must be very slick in it right now, by now. But you know, there’s massive productions and teams and everyone’s stressed out. Well, tell me the process. How far ahead are you working for the awards?

Yeah, it’s about six months. And again, I cannot take any credit. And to be honest, I don’t really understand.

The love that.

I’m just being honest. Right. I just, you know, we’ve got the production team, you’ve got Leander, who’s our event director, who also hosts the awards. You know, they’re be in the office till like 9:00 at night, like a good month before the awards. So, you know, every day and they’re making sure. And they’re perfectionist and they really care. So in answer to your question, I don’t really understand the whole process of it, but I know that they work incredibly hard to make deliver that as you see it.

And what about the top 50, man? Because I’d say the top 50 is even more controversial sort of thing. I mean, do I need to spell out the charge?

Just what’s your.

Thoughts on top.

50?

I think it probably sells loads of magazines and things. Right. It’s one of those things that everyone’s interested in. So, you know, it’s got attention. It’s definitely, definitely an attention grabber. I’m sure everyone reads it. I’m cool with it, dude. But, but but there’s a lot of people who don’t know what I mean. Well, I can spell out the problem, but the idea, the the idea that it’s voted for or was voted for now, now you guys just just announced it for yourself. And again, it comes back to the same question of really, is number 14 better than number 67.

Yeah. And I think, you know, when it was numbered I don’t think that was right. And I think everyone’s always misunderstood how the top 50 worked and no one’s really ever knew. You know ultimately and I think can explain this when when he was on the pod we’re we’re incredibly well connected. Right. In terms of we know what’s going on in the sector and we know what, you know, people that are having an impact, people that aren’t having an impact. So we utilise our network of our awards judges, our editorial board, and we’re asking people to put forward who they believe had a big impact in the sector. And then ultimately, the content team will sit down and they will go through and they basically shortlist and they will pick 50 people that they believe has had the biggest impact on the sector. And I think if we can’t pick that list, there’s not many people that can. And I suppose we would always challenge anyone that has something to say about it, to say, well, who don’t think it should be on the list. And we’re having that conversation to understand, you know, why they believe they shouldn’t be on the list. And, you know, we always take that that feedback and review. Now, ultimately, every time that’s happened, no one’s been able to answer the question because, you know, I think the 50 that have always been picked have had a big impact on the sector, and they’ve done great things for the profession.

I think part of your problem is the brand dentistry. Yeah, because if we’re talking about dentistry is top 50, there’s all sorts of people who missed out. You know, academics, you know, people in dentistry is such a big subject. Whereas I think maybe, maybe you guys are more sort of general practice oriented. But listen, dude, I’ve got no problem with it myself. I know loads of people do though. Do you get a lot of blowback about it?

Oh, every year. Every year.

And so what are what do people say? What’s the criticism? Is it having them at all or is it who’s on the list?

I think you’ve.

Seen a lot of comments on social around top 50, and.

I’ve sent you quite a lot.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

There’s always going to be people like, I think if you put yourself above the parapet and you’ve got a big social following, whether you know, or you’re a big media company and you do these things, you’re always going to have a big fan base and people that love what you do. But you’re also going to have people that detractors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we’re we’re really comfortable with that because you, you know, you cannot please everyone. And ultimately we are we’re in the market of eyeballs. And when the top 50 is launched, that is the number one most visited day on that website. And I’m pretty sure all of the detractors will jump on that site to see who’s on the list.

Yeah, that’s for sure.

You know, so if it was that big of an issue and, you know. You know, they really care. You know, obviously it means a lot to people. And we’re only ever trying to do good things. We’re never we’re never going out with the attention to say, let’s do this is how many people we can wind up. People think, you know, generally think people sit there and think, oh, they’ve done it again. They’re doing this is controversial. Like everything we do, we’re just there to try and do good for the profession. Whether it’s the award, whether it’s recognising people in the top 50. Whether it’s putting people on a speaking program, I think it’s all there to try and do good for the profession. And ultimately we’re never going to be able to please everyone. But, you know, we keep trying and we work really hard and, you know, we don’t always get it right. Nobody gets it right all the time. But but one thing we won’t do is we won’t stop. And we keep trying really hard. And we make sure that we do the best that we can to keep elevating the dental profession. And I think, you know, if I’m being biased, I think we do a good job of it, and we want to make sure that we keep doing that.

And we definitely do. Before Prav jumps in, tell me, how do you get people to come in and stay till 9 p.m.? I mean, how does that work?

Yeah, not not not once ever till now.

I think it just goes back to culture and and care and, you know, just, just. It sounds corny, but just just the love of what you do. If you really enjoy what you’re doing, you love it. Stay until 9:00 and having a bit of food and a couple of drinks with your peers while you get something together. It’s not. It’s not horrendous, is it? Yeah. You know, we’re going to get a Nando’s in and have a couple of beers while we do this. It’s like it’s fine with people you really enjoy working with. And you know what you’re going to what the output is going to be at the end of it, and what that means to, to us as a company, but what it means to the profession as well. So, you know, I think we’re really lucky in the fact that the people that we’ve got here, as James told me all those years ago, have stuck around and they’ve been here a long time. You know, I think every everybody’s been here ten years plus. And, you know, we’re building a team now. We’ve got a lot of positions open and we’ve got, you know, a new kind of era of FMC starting. And it’s really exciting. You know, not not everybody makes it, if I’m honest. And you can see that straight away. People come in if they don’t fit the culture.

You know, loving this 9:09 p.m. story, because we had one episode where we were talking about Prav recruitment process, and it turned out his number one concern is he doesn’t want people to leave at 530.

Absolute bollocks.

Absolute bollocks.

Honestly.

Listen, I urge everyone to listen to that episode. He was his number one point. Do you know what time saving employees. But go on, Trav, go on. Absolute shit. Payman.

Absolute bullshit. Um.

So, look, my take on this is during recruitment, right? And I think what pays alluding to is, is I don’t want to talk watcher. Right. And so and so there’s, there’s a culture thing that you’re talking about. So are you here because you love what you do or are you here to collect a rate. Yeah. And if you’re here just to do your job and collect a rate, you’ll fucking know it’s 530. In fact, at 525, you’ll hear your bag packing up. And when it hits 529, the fucking door’s gone, right? Yeah. And and I definitely don’t want to hire anyone like that. Right. But I’m a massive believer in in, um.

We mustn’t fetishise it, though. We mustn’t. Let me listen. Let me.

Carry on. Let me carry on.

Let me let me finish.

Just for the sake of the argument. Yeah. An enlightened 530. Everyone gets up and leaves. Yeah. Unless there’s something going on. Like. Like he’s saying, like if there’s a go on. But.

But the point I’m making, I’m a massive believer in switching off from work. Right. And I tell all my team this year, I mean, I’ve got a new guy who’s just joined the team. Ross Yeah, fucking hell. Like this. Geezers on slack at 6 a.m. messaging me. Yeah, 9 p.m. he’ll be messaging and he’ll be working and messaging me. Right.

He’s figured you out.

No, no, no, it’s not that.

It’s not that at all. Yeah, it’s not that at all. But but he tells me he absolutely loves what he does. Yeah. He feels a sense of responsibility for the projects he’s got. There’s no deadlines being given to him. But he does it out of and there’s no requirement there. Right. But I guess for me, you know, I want people to be there because they love what they do. That’s really, really important to me. Right. And you know, in that episode we’ll have mentioned that, you know, whatever it is. Right? But I’m not interested in Clockwatchers. Right. I’m not interested in someone who just wants to come in. Boom, out the door. That is what it is, right? Maybe enlightened. The work is done at 530 or whatever, right? Most of my team. Yeah, finish at 530. Since we’ve gone remote, things have changed, right? Since we’ve gone completely remote, some team members say, hey, I’m doing the school run. I’m not going to be in at this time, but I’ll get my work done right. And you’ll find some of my team are working until 7 or 8 at night. So some of them finish at four. Yeah. On certain days, whatever doesn’t really matter. Yeah, but but I think the important thing is you ask Craig the question, how do you get those people to stay tonight? You don’t have to. Yeah, you don’t have to. You don’t have to get them to do that. It’s because they want to do that because they feel either a sense of responsibility. They love it.

Yeah. Yeah. But you know, guys, the reason I ask the question was if that’s the culture in the company, then you can understand why how a junior will end up. If everyone if all the seniors are staying till nine. A junior will end up staying till nine as well. Yeah. Doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to. Yeah it could, it could be that the culture is pressuring them to.

They’ll go they’ll they’ll get filtered out.

I think the. If you look at the organisation and is now what’s the time now is 518. It’s probably three, 3 or 4 people I guess, right, that are there because there’s certain projects that need delivering or we’ve got the industry awards coming up next Thursday. You know, we do flexi time, we do remote working. We have all of these benefits. What’s the like 60% of the team will leave at 5:00. Right. They’d do a solid day’s work. Phenomenal operators. And you know that’s that’s that’s that’s that’s great. You know they’re so instrumental to the business. And then you’ve got another layer of people like you say Prav that it really brought in to what we do, what our our vision is, where we’re trying to get to. And they’re putting the extra yards to make sure that the projects finessed and, you know, they take the extra time and effort. And if they’re in the office an hour later just to get that extra level of detail and delivery that they do that. And I think it’s, you know, you can’t have everyone in an organisation being a racehorse or being there till 9:00 at night and you know, you need to have a good blend of people that come in and they do a really solid job and they they give good output and they like what they do. It’s a nice environment. And, you know, ultimately they’re it’s a job for them. And I think every organisation will have that. And you have another layer of people that you know that are a little bit more career minded, that want to put in the extra effort and the extra hours. And they care about the journey, they care about the, the, the overall outcome. And obviously, you know, people in those categories are rewarded different, different positions within the organisation.

And also different times, different days. You know, there might be a day that, okay, I’m going to stay behind because I just need to get this shit done. And other days they finish on time. Some days they finish a bit early, some days they need an early day on a Friday. That’s cool. And it’s that give and take, right? That’s what’s important.

Yeah, absolutely. Craig, tell me this.

Sometimes, you know, you’re visiting people or you have been I guess maybe you don’t do that anymore, but you’re visiting people, selling them events, ads and all that. And sometimes you’re talking to, I don’t know, global head of marketing for Invisalign, who’s a $20 billion company. And then another time you’re talking to a lab owner, tiny business, 12 people. Would you say the fundamentals of those two situations are the same? Or have you learned how to handle sort of the giant company? You know, the way the way they move slowly or whatever. Give me some thoughts on the on. It’s such a different types of people, aren’t they.

Yeah, definitely. I think.

You know, overall the fundamentals are the same. Right. Everybody’s got an objective and they’re seeing us because they need help with that objective. And whether that is they need to grow their brand. They need to get, you know, more sales. They need to drive more traffic to the website. They need to help content creation. So, you know, ultimately the fundamentals are the same. I think the language that spoke to, you know, the chief marketing officer at align. You know, to the language of Alabama is that the is not going to be talking about setas and cap and, you know, churn and and the rest of that that that kind of marketing speak. And the CMO alone is so, you know, I think it’s just adapting the language and the output to the end user. But ultimately the fundamentals is exactly the same, right? We’ve got a product that can help them with their objective, and it’s just presented in a way that they understand, okay. If I do that, you know, potentially this is the outcome that I’m going to get. Or if I do this, this is what I’m going to get. Is this exactly the same, whether you’re talking to a lion or you’re talking to Barry’s lab in Scunthorpe.

I guess you’re not playing ping pong with the eyeliner.

No. I want that rebound. I want that. Prav.

He’s lost so much. He’s lost so many ads and exhibition. Now that he owns the company, we can be open about it. Because before we play a game with him. Before we used to play a game of ping pong. He used to lose, lose like an exhibition space to me. And then he go, don’t tell anyone about this Payman.

And really.

He really suckered me in. It’s a yeah, and I don’t really play play that much.

So man.

Play. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely play. Shocking. I think I’ve got this. Go. I’ll give you six points. Head starts with six points. You see. Yeah. Yeah. Those mental.

Listen he tried that. He tried that bullshit with me years ago. Right. But can barely hold the bloody bat in my hand.

Yeah.

He’s got two left two left fingers.

And then and then and then when I’m playing table tennis, I play it as though I’m on a full flipping size tennis court. Yeah.

That’s exactly right.

So absolutely useless, you know. So, um, yeah, I give him about 10s of entertainment and then.

Yeah.

Amazing. Craig, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently in your career?

Oh, said Bill Gregson.

What I’ve done differently, I’d have been I’d have been more patient at the beginning, in the in the early days definitely would have been more patient. And.

You know.

And impatience is a disease of the 20s. It is.

Yeah. I think I think like believing in the process. And I think obviously these are the things that you learn as you go through it. But I think, you know, if you believe in yourself and you work really hard and you get the results, you know, good things are going to happen, right? You’re going to get noticed whether you’re in in writing, whether you’re in FMC, whether you’re in a line, whether you’re in Google, you know, if you if you if you put the right level of application in and you try really hard and you get results in your area, you’re going to get noticed and good things are going to happen. But I wouldn’t rush into things thinking, this needs to happen now. Now, I think it’s good to have a level of urgency, but don’t put too much pressure. I think I put too much pressure on myself in my early days, trying to get to somewhere that didn’t quite mean to get to.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, you’re definitely the market leader in Dental media, but you’re no longer the biggest company in Dental media, from what I can see. I mean, some of these gigantic companies that are now involved with exhibitions and all that. What are your views on the competitive landscape?

Yeah.

I would say we are the largest Dental communications company from a from a media perspective in terms of Dental media. I think the competitive landscape, again, it’s a really interesting one, right? Because I think as you alluded to, we are general high street practice. We’re not that IT media and we do regional shows. And I think if you look through the market since Covid, there’s been a huge transition, right, including exhibitions. And I think you look across the board, not not just in Dental, but in all of these other, other sectors that the big large shows have all taken a massive hit, right, because of this end of funnel 3% ROI. And I remember when, you know, you would go to many early shows and yeah, in life and you must have spent some serious dough with these parties. And I think, you know, when you look at the way that the market is now and everyone’s focussed on that ROI and the funnel is you can’t drop a hundred K investment on a show for two days to speak to 300 people, because you’re not going to get that return. And I think we noticed that quite early on, and hence why we launched our regional model, that we’re not trying to be massive and 10,000 stans and the rest of it, we’re just trying to get people to to affluent and populated areas in the UK that don’t tend to travel. So I’m really excited about the future of the shows. I think they’re gaining really solid traction, and I think our content program for next year is looking incredible, which again now. So I’m really excited about that.

And then I think on the traditional publishing side, I think, you know, there’s some great, great magazines and there’s some great titles out there and they they do a phenomenal job. And I think we do really well with what we do. I genuinely don’t believe there’s anybody that can touch us from a digital perspective from Dental UK, our social reach, you know, our data and our investment in, in in that approach. So, you know, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries and obviously as we move into a cookieless future which which we all know has come in and, you know. If you look at the entry, we generate about 98,500 unique users, of which about 68,000 of them are logged into the site. So we know their details and we can track them. That’s going to become incredibly powerful when cookies are unavailable because you can’t pixel. And obviously what you’ve done, where you’re giving the money to Mark Zuckerberg. If you can’t pixel, you know, all of these things that you’re doing, you’re going to need an organisation that has that data, has that infrastructure, and we’ve been doing that for the last 4 or 5 years. And we have a data team that’s just constantly looking at that user journey and harnessing data and. You know. So I think it’s more about how people are preparing for the future. And, you know, I know how hard that journey has been over the last four years and the development and the infrastructure and the team and the investment that’s gone into developing that. You know, I wish anyone luck who’s going through that now because it’s not easy.

Yeah.

What’s the future of FMC? Craig, you alluded earlier to a situation that obviously you can’t talk too much about, but I’m sure we’ll be announced in the in the near future. You mentioned an upcoming acquisition. So what’s the plan moving forward? Is it is it acquiring complementary businesses to increase your footprint and exposure? Obviously to grow it. Where do you see FMC between now and the next five years? What’s the plan?

So I think, you know, as I said, I think media and now and awards and events and that side of the business is at the heart of what we do. And really diving into the education and and building solutions that allow individuals and practices to to really become better clinicians and, and better practices, whether that’s through education, whether that’s developing systems that can make their life easier through compliance or HR and or asset management, and really trying to build that infrastructure of products that can help practices perform better and taking our hassle. So I think, you know, I think there’s great product out there. I generally do, and I’m not just saying that for lip service, but I think that there’s a there’s definitely an opportunity for a slicker, easier interface and platform with content that can help a lot because I think a lot of the platforms that are out there at the moment and feedback from clinicians is that they’re great. They tick a box, but they’re quite clunky in their hearts and views. And so I think, you know, developing that side of the business and really having it led by dentists for dentists is going to be something that that will ultimately help the profession.

Okay. And so you talk about platform there and obviously having a better platform improving the platform and so on and so forth. But if you could just paint a picture in five years time, what would FMC be doing something fundamentally different through its acquisitions?

Yeah, I think.

It would really it would really break into the professional offering. So at the minute, if you ask people about FMC, they probably know us through the private industry awards, or they might know Dentrix or they know dentistry magazine. Yeah. And I think in five years time we’d be known for that, as well as offering market leading solutions for practices.

So you mean B2B as well as B2C?

Yes. Yeah. Well.

I mean.

As in as in.

As in dentists. Yeah.

As in.

Yeah, but but but so, so so the offering rather than FMC being predominantly a company that allows businesses that want to advertise to dental practices, also directly helping dental practices to improve their businesses as well. Correct. Yeah.

That’s you articulated that much better than I did.

Sometimes I just want to wrap my head around things in a really simple way. So just for my simple mind to understand. Um, so. Yeah, that’s that’s brilliant.

Before we move on to the final questions, before we move on, what would you say is your biggest mistake you’ve made in your working life, Craig?

It’s been a few. It’s definitely been a few things. A couple of.

Ping pong, ping pong games.

They do fun games.

And. Yeah, I think two biggest one one was being too obsessed. I think in two ways is, is is is panned out for me really well. But then it’s a big a big impact. You know, it has an impact on the family. Right. And I think you know we we touched on it just before I lost my brother in law 18 months ago, which is really impacted my, my, my family at home. And I think, you know, you. I would say big mistake is being too obsessed with with the end goal and the mission and not actually taking time back to to probably being a bit selfish. In all honesty, I’d say that’s a big mistake. And then the other one is is is getting going at things too quick. So making rash decisions. And, you know, we made a rash decision with launching the Cardiff Dentistry Show. Absolute shocker.

And.

Craig, have you have ever had the biggest? I always ask so asks this question. Then I try to dig into the detail. Right? So rather than a mistake we made as a collective, a mistake Craig made as an individual, and when you made that mistake, you had an oh shit moment. So like, like almost like you’ve just made a mistake, right? Whether you’ve jumped off a phone with a, with a supplier or a dentist or whatever, and then you think, fuck, I can’t believe I’ve just done that. Yeah. Any of those?

Yeah, yeah, definitely been one of them. Actually, I had a meeting today and I won’t I won’t name any names, but we had a, um, we had a leadership team meeting, um, last week, and we had, you know, the idea was to be really open and honest and understand as a business where, you know, to basically to align everyone to say, this is the journey, this is where, where we’re going and let’s get everything on the table. And a lot of, you know, I’m quite a simple character, and if there’s an issue, I’d like to raise it. And I raised an issue with an individual in a fairly direct way and didn’t really show too much empathy with with the way it was delivered. And I remember leaving the meeting and I knew that it had to be said because it was generally there to help. And I remember I left the meeting and I went back and I spoke to my wife and I said, I think I’ve really messed up there. And, um, so I called this individual on Thursday and in my head, I had this plan that I was going to apologise for the way that I delivered it. They explained why I said it and and in my head I was like, the conversation is going to go like that. It’s all going to go fine, man. It it should. And it went the complete opposite. We ended up having a huge argument, really unprofessional.

And, um, exactly what you said. I got off the phone and I thought, I’ve absolutely messed this up, but I’ve really, really let the team down there because they felt that I’d been untrustworthy and and betrayed them. And it was not my intention. And and I felt awful. Absolutely awful. And then a senior member of the team and I have a really important role. And I had a really important role with the awards on Friday. And then, you know, you know, that feeling when you go home and you just feel sick, you just like, you know, you’ve really messed up. And I felt sick and, and and we had a meeting today and I explained it and, and I tried to articulate it and I apologise and I haven’t and it’s all fine and it’s all settled. But I’d say in, in recent times that’s been the one that’s really, um, you know, as a mistake, I think, not rushing into things and dealing with everybody in the same way. Right. Everyone’s got different emotional levels. And the way that you approach people is, I can talk to someone in one way and be really direct, but in other ways I need to adapt the way I say it and still get the same outcome, but I need to be more sensitive to their situation. And yeah, so hopefully that answers the question.

It does, it does.

It’s lonely at the top, my buddy.

Um.

Let’s move on to the final questions. Prav. Let’s let’s start with mine. Let’s start with mine, because yours is more profound. Yeah? Yeah. Craig. Fantasy dinner party.

Yeah.

Three guests. Dead or alive. Who would you have?

Yet, so I’d have my brother in law out of the way. He’s, um. You know, he was a good way. And he was a fun, fun guy. But in all honesty, I want to understand. But not not to get too deep into it. But, you know, he he suffered with, with depression, which we wasn’t aware of. So I’d like to get into that because I know mental health is obviously a big thing within our profession, but, um, to try and understand what happened there and try and give those answers to my wife and, and then then make my life easier there and then on a more positive, uplifting guess, I’d say. Reed Hastings. So, so CEO, founder of Netflix. I think we spoke a lot about culture today, and obviously they released the book, Netflix culture and, you know, just fascinated in the way that he did. You know, it doesn’t have a number of holidays, doesn’t have a time machine. You know, he lets his team do what they want, when they want. They can take their voting, voting, you know, their holidays whenever they like. Just that mindset of how we develop that. And I think that’d be fascinating. Fascinating. Just really getting into into those details. Um, and then Elon Musk, you know, that that vision of, you know, like your reaction there is, you know, he’s crazy, but the vision that he’s got and how he sees things from such an early point on, before anyone who had thought of that, how does that work? And what is it that he sees and he believes? And is it is it a gut instinct that, you know, I just would love to understand that in more detail.

I like that. Prav Prav wouldn’t have much, much, much sympathy for the pick your own holidays. Prav I’m joking. Just a joke. It’s just a joke, buddy.

Lucky you.

You see, one thing I’ve noticed is your Prav has to be very careful with what he says on this pod. Yeah, because members of his team listen to this pod as they’re editing it and so forth.

But listen, mate.

I’m absolutely cool with it. Yeah.

Absolutely cool.

You’ve changed man.

There you go.

Craig. It’s your imagine. Yeah. So she last day on the planet and you’re surrounded by your loved ones, the kids, and you have to leave them with three pieces of life advice or wisdom? What would they be?

Oh three. So I’d say be authentic. You know, I think we probably all going through life when you’re with groups of people and you’re trying to make it and try and do things and saying things to impress and to to have an impact. But ultimately it’s not you. And and I think these people always get found out. So I always say to them, be authentic, be yourself. No. Trust what you believe in. And and everything will come good. Because, you know, I think people understand when when someone’s being authentic, like you can, you can see the bullshit life and it irritates me. So I think be authentic. I think the other thing is, I’d say cherish the moments. You know, I think we’re all in a world of of, you know, living in the fast pace and a fast pace and looking at the next goal. And where are we going to get to and how are we going to do this? But actually, you know, just just cherish the small things, you know, like having a cup of coffee in the morning with your wife and your kids in the garden, like just, you know, it’s simple, but just just enjoy the moments because you don’t know when they’re when they’re going to end and then you don’t know what’s around the corner. And, you know, we’ve obviously gone through tragic times the last few years with, with you know, Ken’s lost and my brother in law. And I think that really heightened the fact that, you know, just just enjoy the successes and enjoy the small things because, you know, what’s it all about, why you work so hard and you do all these things and but you know what? No one’s going to ever going to remember half of it. But your family will remember the the little holidays, the walks on the beach, the coffees in the morning. And so I’ll definitely need to start doing that more. And then lastly. I’d say.

Just work hard.

And then be consistent. You know, I think there’s there’s too many of this, this next generation coming through that, trying to get these get rich quick schemes. And, you know, they they see the success on social media and they don’t see the, the ten years of growth and just just work hard and be consistent. And I think even when you don’t want to get up and you don’t want to go to work, get up, go to work, try your hardest and then go home. And you do that every day. You’ll be all right. Don’t don’t cut corners. Don’t try and cheat. Just just be consistent and work really hard.

Incredible advice.

Thank you Craig.

And really, really the way you’ve lived your your career there Craig. Right. I’m so, so very proud of the three of you having dealt with you so over the years and and always enjoyed dealing with you. I’m so proud of what you guys have achieved. You know, it’s a wonderful thing and it’s a wonderful thing that you’re carrying on Ken’s sort of work. Really well done man.

Thank you Matt.

I think it’s really inspirational mate. And yeah, I think we need to I think we need to have episode two of that Curry, mate.

Yeah, definitely. We’ll have him.

Back in five years and see if any of the stuff he says comes true or not.

But that’d be gone and I’d enjoy that. But thanks. Thanks so much for having me on. I’ve really enjoyed it. It was, you know, good to actually go back and reflect on the things, because I think without the these platforms and talking about it, you actually forget about, you know, how things be working career. And it’s actually yeah, it’s been really enjoyable.

Amazing man. Thanks so much for doing this, buddy.

Thanks, Craig.

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.

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British culture is very meme culture. Like, we always like to take the piss. Take the piss. Whereas if you go to America, it’s very opposite, right? It’s like, yo bro, you got this. And I think the problem is both aren’t great because you go to America and you’re told you’re going to be the best at something, and then at 30 years old, you haven’t made it. And it’s like, well, what happened to the American dream, right?

This is mind movers. Moving the conversation forward on mental health and optimisation for dental professionals. Your hosts Rhona Eskander and Payman Langroudi.

Welcome to another episode of Mind Movers. And today we have the incredible Henry Wade. So Henry is a very, very known content creator. I actually met Henry. I didn’t meet him. This is a funny story I became when I first split up with my first boyfriend, I went to fitness first. It was a bit of a rough gym in Clapham, and I used to see Henry and his twin working out there all the time. And interestingly, I looked at you both and I was like, you just had presence. I just felt like you both were going to do really well. I didn’t even know what you had done. And then serendipity has it. We actually ended up meeting later on in life through friends, etcetera. And I was like, you were the one that was working out of Fitness first, and I had seen his content online. Henry’s extremely hard working. He’s become very successful in what he does. And interestingly, he transitioned from having, you know, quite a sort of generic career, I’d say, and, you know, making it online and, you know, really taking a leap of faith against what his family believes. Because I know you come from family in Cambridge and, you know, saying, like, I’m going to make this work and I’m going to make a career out of content creation. And more recently, he has focussed on fitness as well. Fitness has been a massive part of his life, has been doing marathon running, documenting that as well, which we’re going to cover. So welcome Henry.

Thank you very much. That was a very nice intro, so I really appreciate it. I was like smiling. They’re like, oh, I haven’t had this kind of compliment in a long time. So I really appreciate it.

Well, you know, a lot of love for Henry. We’ve known each other for a while now. So, Henry, I want to start from the beginning, as I do with a lot of people. Tell me a little bit about your childhood. I know you grew up in Cambridge, but tell me about, like, where you come, your background a little bit.

Yeah. So for the record, I’m 31 years old now. He keeps saying that.

Like he’s old. I’m like, do you know how old I am? Okay. Go on.

And I’m initially from Cambridge, so I grew up there and I then moved. Well, sorry, I went to Cambridge. Been there since all the way to college, then went to university and then went travelling and then I moved to London. So yeah, I’ve been grew up and grew up in Cambridge with a family of four, and I’m an identical twin, and I’ve got an older brother and an older sister as well. And then there’s me, the youngest one with mum and dad. So yeah.

Amazing. And you worked in nightlife, didn’t you? So after, was it after or during university?

It was actually during. So when I was at uni, that was the first time I separated from my twin brother. I kind of got the chance to build my own identity a bit and went to university, went to Newcastle, had an amazing time. I be honest, I kind of chose university life because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next in my career, so I just chose a standard business and marketing course and I kind of went because of the nightlife. I watched one episode of Geordie Shore and thought, this will be epic, like me and Gaz of Geordie Shore, like going to get on anyway. I started becoming a co-promoter because I thought, you know what? This is a great way to meet people, make friends and I then did quite well, became a junior manager and then because I sold so many tickets, I had so many people on my guest list and then I became a senior manager. So I started essentially running my own nights, and it only took me to like a few years ago to really realise how important that job was for me, because while everyone was getting placement years at university and going to like all these amazing companies, which I didn’t actually get, I tried to, but I couldn’t get them. And I actually realised, like the communication skills I learnt during this job, some of the best I’ve ever done in my entire life. Like I can talk to anybody now and it’s I think that’s a really powerful tool to have, and they’re the kind of skills I probably don’t think I’d have got, or having the confidence to go and speak to anyone is I probably won’t have got those skills. If I’d have gone to like a corporate company and kind of just worked and seen how their business runs.

And do you know, that’s interesting. I’m going to I’m going to interject there because I saw a post. So as you as I told you, like the majority of people that tune in with me in Payman are dentists and a lot of them have been confused because within dentistry there’s loads of courses, right? Because obviously clinical skills is like a big part of our career. So, you know, you learn how to do like crowns and veneers and bonding and Invisalign and all the stuff that you know about. But the one thing that they really lack is that communication skill that you said. And even though we go to university for like five, six years or longer, if you want to specialise, they still feel they can’t communicate with people you know, they still feel they can’t talk to patients. Why do you.

Think? When I was a kid, I used to be so scared to go to the dentist? It’s the very thing, isn’t it? Yeah. The dentist is the scary place to go. Like they’re not the nice people. They put their fingers in your mouth and it’s just like all these tools go in. Whereas I think that’s definitely changing now. I think you’re doing a great job in the industry of doing that. And other dentists as well. I know, and.

Your dentist, Henry didn’t choose me, that’s why.

Yeah, but yeah, a couple of you do great. And I think that’s amazing for the industry to kind of change that thing about it. But yeah, as you were saying, I think those communication skills are really, really important. But do you.

Think the communication skills were because you worked in nightlife, or do you think it was because you went to university? Do you see what I mean?

Think it’s a little bit of both. Like when I went to university. As I said before, it was the first time away from my twin and we were always together. So it was always like, oh, okay, I’ll turn up to the party or I’ll turn up to school with Will. And we always kind of had each other to bounce off of, whereas going to university, I had to really come out of my like, oh shit, I haven’t got a twin with me. Yeah, everyone’s going to know me as just Henry. I’ve kind of got to be this, who am I? Like, so I was like, all right, I’ve got to be the communicating and energetic and outgoing guy I think I am. And I was, and I became confident because I had to grow my own confidence and because I didn’t have will. So I was like turning up to university lectures on my own, making friends with those people and those university lectures, heading on nights out and meeting people on nights out. Actually going to university again is one as well, I think really makes you step out of your shell because you are stepping into an environment where there’s no one else you really know, none of your friends are really there, so you kind of just do it by yourself, and you are thrown into a situation where you have to make friends. And I think for everyone who goes to university, I think there’s so much topics right now and people talking about how you don’t need to go to university and you don’t have to be successful to go to university, but I think there’s so many benefits of still going in personal development and self growth. And I know a lot of people, not just myself, have gone to university and been like.

I’m massively pro it, I think, I think I’d be interested to see what you think. Like obviously for vocational degrees like dentistry, medicine, etcetera. Oh, 100%. You got to go. Yeah, totally. But a lot some people say they think it was a complete waste of time. But I think that the connections that you form and the experiences you had, there’s something in that 100%.

I think for me, I’ll be totally honest. I don’t think I learnt that much about business and marketing, like sitting in a room. I think with business you learn by doing, you generally do like I’ve done that through all my content creation. I’ve learnt by doing and if you don’t do it, you never know. So you’ve got to put yourself through the through the process and learn. And then so which is great. And I think that’s perfect. But um. Oh sorry. Where was I?

Perfect. The business and marketing. Yeah.

That’s right. I didn’t really feel I learnt so much from actually doing business and marketing the actual degree, but like I said, the meeting people, the job I did, that was the stuff I really learnt. And I wouldn’t ever say to anyone, not go to university. But yeah, if you want to go, go. But if you don’t, you don’t have to.

But I think as well, maybe it is a stop gap for people that don’t know what they want to do. Yeah, yeah, maybe it is a stop gap because maybe you need that time to go through like your growing pains or, you know, but also like university can equally it was pretty traumatic for me. Like I think being thrown into an environment like I’d never university for me was like a really weird experience because I’d, I’d grown in a multicultural society in central London in a day school. The halls that I was put in was very much like everyone was like from public school. I was like the only brown person. And I was very much, like, treated like in a certain way, like I had all friends, you know, I had a great social life, but it was a different experience. And there was, there was, there was like a kind of difficulty and like somewhat, but obviously that shaped me as a person as well. So I think, you know, there’s definitely like pros and cons to it. But yeah, what I want to know as well is you’re an identical twin. Yeah. Right. And I don’t know if you know, like as an I’m really interested either one of you about studies because being an identical twin is that difficult. And like in terms of like identity, you remember there was a documentary. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, either one of you where there was triplets. Yeah. That was amazing. I can’t remember.

Three identical strangers. Yeah, I haven’t.

Actually seen it, but I’ve heard it’s amazing.

It’s amazing.

So basically, the therapist keeps telling me to watch it. Yeah.

Yeah.

So so so so it’s really amazing because those three, those those triplets were separated at birth. It has a dark turn in the end because it was a social experiment by someone that kept doing these experiments. And when they got reunited, it was all great. And then there was a huge problem with like identity crisis, etcetera. Do you think that, like biologically there is something about being a twin, a triplet or whatever, you know, and how it affects who you are and who you believe you are? And like whether you have that sense of like being oneself.

Oh, that’s such a good question because no one will ever know unless they’re an identical twin. What it’s physically like to be an identical twin, right? Yeah. And growing up, Will and I always had this thing about us where we weren’t really known as Henry or Will. It was always the way twins. Oh, it’s the two twins. The two twins. And in school, if one of us did something right, or most, most of the time, if one of us did something wrong, then it always threw back on the other person. So if we all got told off in a class that teachers instantly going to categorise him as being naughty and they’re going to think I’m naughty as well, because we come in pairs, right? Yeah. Very normal. We pushed down the pram together. Oh, those two look so sweet. Do you know what I mean? It’s never like oh, one of you or whatever. And then, um, as I said earlier, the only time we really got to find ourselves as our own identity was when we went to university. But the funny thing is, by, yeah, we were building our own, building our own identity and becoming our becoming our self. What was funny was we still did the exact same thing. So he did a business course. We both began our first year working at Nando’s. So? So did he. So did I. And then we left Nando’s both. Club promoters both got promoted to junior manager. And then it was weird because those two companies, we became like top of those companies, both knew each other as well.

So it was like, oh, we tried to become ourselves, but then we kind of have our self identity, but we can’t forge back into it. And then when travelling together, we got home from travelling, went to London. We both had similar kind of jobs to begin with whilst we were becoming creators, and then we realised we’re probably better off together. I think the thing with being a twins is you’re very competitive and growing up like Will and I both wanted to always be the winning one, whether it be grades or 100 metre races or whatever. We did all sports and it would always be like, I want to beat Will, but I want him to come second by like five, just just a bit. But I don’t want him to beat me. And it was every race, every run, every football team. We wanted to get picked first, but over him will be the captain or whatever. But the older we got, we started to really compete and it made us get to who we were. Like we did really well in sports and achievements and academics. We weren’t so bad either. However, we realised instead of like keep battling and competing, collaborating with each other so much more beneficial. And that’s when we started to grow, like our Instagram and TikTok following by actually being together. Because don’t get me wrong, it’s cool being a white male in today’s industry. However, there are so many other tall white males doing what I do in fitness and fashion.

So what can make you really stand out from the crowd? For me, I’m very fortunate to have an identical twin, so and it’s great. And we are best friends. Like you’ve heard. I’ve heard horror stories of twins having like hating each other, whereas Will and I, we get on so, so well. We’ve. Yeah, don’t get me wrong, we bicker like 13 year old boys still, which is very family. But we’re definitely learning learning to navigate that a lot better. And I think that’s so important. I think we always will in our entire lives because, yeah, I never talk to Carmen. How I sometimes talk to Will, and it sometimes takes me to realise, like if he leaves something in the sink, I’ll go will clean it up. Whereas if Carmen did that, my girlfriend, I’d be like, I’ll just grab it and put it in the dishwasher. But because he’s my brother, I feel like I need to tell him. However, I’ve like now started to realise I look at that and go, is this worth picking a fight for? No it’s not. Pick it up, put it in the dishwasher. Like if I wouldn’t talk to him like that, my girlfriend like that, why should I talk to him like that? Just because he’s my brother, I shouldn’t. And. Yeah, so. But it’s it’s a head game because like I said, I’ve known him my entire life. I’ve been in the womb with him. Like we are so close. But can I ask you something?

Do you know if biologically there’s any studies to show, like whether, like, you can ever fully be, like, separate or separated? Like, is there any studies around twins? You might not know this I don’t.

Know, do you know? Well, I thought, you know, all this stuff about gut microbiome. Yeah. And the guy was saying that his his research interest was twins because twins end up getting different diseases. And his question was, why do twins get different diseases if they’re genetically the same? Environmentally very similar. I’ve got something for.

You there, like Will. My family has this, I don’t know.

One second. That was all right. Okay. Go ahead.

My brother has this really bad eye condition called keratoconus, I think. I think that’s right. Maybe I’ve pronounced it wrong. So if anyone on here knows that, please pronounce it correctly.

Keratitis.

Similar, but I’m not sure. But basically it basically means the his eyes, the pupils are shaped, I think like footballs instead of rugby balls or the other way around. I can’t remember which one it is. And the doctor is like the number one surgeon who tests who does his eyes for him, because we had to go privately, and because it was so he got so bad, he had to be jumped into hospital straight away and put under the knife and have it sorted. It got that bad and the doctor was like, we need to get you twin in here ASAP because he’s going to have something and it’s so funny that I don’t have it. And I still now get tested every 18 months and the doctor goes to me. I’m still have no idea why you don’t have it. And they’ve realised it’s in my system, but it hasn’t quite triggered. So Will’s will got it and it triggered, whereas I haven’t had it and it triggered and he’s still so shocked, which is so weird.

So so so this this researcher found the microbiome was very different in twins, so different bacteria. And so he was he was blaming, he was saying, well that’s where he could see that the effect of different bacteria on people. When you look at the effect of different bacteria on twins, because the one thing that’s very different in the measurements between twins is the bacteria that lives in their gut.

Yeah, maybe. I think there’s so many studies now coming up about gut and how it’s one of the main factors. Controlling everything, controlling everything. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s become only in the last real year. So it’ll be interesting to see.

Well, we’ve talked as well. You’ve had a lot of like stuff with your gut. You know, we kind of had that conversation and you know a lot around that with mental health, which I want to go into 100%. But before we actually delve into that. So I just want to know, how did you rise? I know you might think like, I don’t say this, but how did you rise to TikTok and Instagram fame? Oh so and like, how did you make that transition? Because a lot of people want to know that. They want to know how to, like, make a living out of just being a content.

So in America, the number one most wanted job now apparently is like a YouTuber, TikToker, Instagram like an influencer. People want to be kids.

Yeah.

For kids. Your kids too.

Not my kids, but kids in general.

Yeah, your kids are probably all right, I think. I think the thing is, people see this lavish life we all post about, like, you get the free products, you get paid to work with these amazing brands. Your life is sorted, like, almost like you get free dinners and you think it’s all glamorous. And don’t get me wrong, it can be at times, but there is a very stressful side to it that I think a lot of people don’t don’t show. But we’ll go. We’ll move on to that. But the question you initially asked was, how did I rise to stardom, essentially, as you said. So back in, oh, when I was travelling the world, because obviously TikTok came after Instagram. So this is our Instagram story. We were travelling Australia and we and all the world.

And you’re working in nightlife still then? No, no this.

Is we packed our bags came backpackers. And this was when Facebook was big. Instagram was kind of just coming up and it was like Twitter, everyone’s on Twitter promoting the news or whatever. And we basically got to Australia after doing Cambodia, Thailand, all the Southeast Asia countries. And honestly, we were just alcoholics, like all we did was drink booze, get pissed and not really see these countries for what they were. And we got to Australia and Will and I were in such bad physical shape, like we were weighty. And I was like, what the hell? I went for a run and almost puked. And I’ve never been this like this before. I’ve just been drinking for six months. I had one night off in like six months because all I was, all me and my mates were doing was getting pissing in Thailand or whatever. And don’t get me wrong, it was amazing. Still had the best time ever and I’ll never change that experience. But I got to Australia and Will and I, we suddenly went from being in the worst shape ever to being so obsessed with fitness and got into the best shape of our lives. We were so lean, like 4% body fat, like we were walking down the Aussie beach. These fitness trainers have been on the front of mental health for telling us we’re too lean, we need to put on some weight and we’re going, no, not lean enough, not lean enough.

I’m sure we all wanted the six pack of dreams, which you never we thought we didn’t have yet, but we did looking back and we were like, right, let’s start documenting some fitness and doing these, like twin workout things. And we had a page, the Weight Twins. Then we had our own personal Instagram as well, and we then left Australia and we started travelling back. And instead of seeing the world being like alcoholics again, we thought, let’s really like be normal. Like do it well, get up for sunrises, do yoga’s, do runs on the beach or whatever, and see this place with the real beauty it is, and you don’t always have to be pissed essentially on the on the booze. So we picked up a camera in Japan, picked up a little canon in Australia, and we started documenting our journey. Just like selfies, we didn’t have a clue how to use this equipment, and I was YouTubing how to use Lightroom and Photoshop and change colours and stuff, and I was making everything oversaturated, and we started documenting and and doing all these things. And it was, it was quite funny at the time was all our friends were commenting on our photos being like, lol, this is a joke. We started a website as well called the twins.com and where we wanted to write blogs on our travels and everyone was like I was getting emails.

I remember the first ever email I got through it was you’re a joke from a fake account being like, you’re never going to make it. This is the biggest laughing thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ll never. I wish I still had a screenshot of that, but obviously I was so embarrassed at the time. Like I was like, am I doing the wrong thing? And it makes you really question whether you’re doing the right thing. And but luckily I had willed Fall Back On. He was like, when he had a bad day, I was there to pick him up and go, no, don’t worry, just keep going, keep going. When I had a bad day, it was the opposite. He was the one picking me up, which was great. So we started documenting our journey and we got back to London, Cambridge, where we lived, and we had about maybe ten, ten, 11,000 followers by this time. And I remember we were ordering these clothes because we had cool wardrobes at home. We really wanted to get back into our main fashion and we were like taking photos on our back garden. And we were like, what are we doing? This is a waste of time. We need to be in London. And we ended up both moving to London and literally had about £2,000 in my bank. Not much money at all, and Will had probably less because he spent a lot more and we both lived in different areas in the most tiniest bedsits in the world.

I had a single bed and I was living with five other people with one bathroom, and I remember just having to bang on the door, please let me into the bathroom. We used to have to literally run outside, sometimes just to go to the bathroom, because I was so desperate because this, this girl next door would take so long and we were like, right, how can we really continue this Instagram and content creation we’re doing? And but we need to make a living, right? So we had to get a job part time. He worked for an events company, and I worked for a start up company with a drinks company, and we’re both working five days a week. And I was like, right, we still need to create content. So every day we would like essentially go for a meeting. And that meeting would be like, we would go for a meeting with some drinks brand or whatever, and I’ll go for a meeting with like Tesco’s CEO, one of my clients, and I really would just be sneaking my camera out and going to meet Will and shooting around London. And then also we’d do it in the evenings, we’d do it on the weekends all the time. And we were like, right? So we kept shooting content.

And whilst this was happening in the evenings, there was always events on H&M, Topman, All Saints or whatever these events and fashion brands would be. And we were like, right, we want to work with these brands, but how can we get put in the face of them? And we were networking with other creators at this time, finding out how London works and. What their experiences of, or if we wanted to collaborate with them and shoot content with them. And we’ll get sent all these events. But we weren’t invited to them. So we would just be like, should we just turn up and see what happens? Because what’s the worst that’s going to happen to us? We’re just going to get a no, and they’re going to just go, all right, screw it. We’ll go for a drink by ourselves. Whatever. Yeah. So we would turn up to these events and our analogy was who’s going to turn down two well-dressed six foot three lads, and every time nine out of ten will get in even without an invite, because we’ll just show them like the thing and all your name’s not on the list are. We’re so, so, so weird. Like, anyway, what we’ll do when we were in that room would not just go for the booze and go for the free nibbles, which 18 year old Henry would have done.

It was right. Who’s the PR marketing? Who’s the PR manager? Who’s the marketing manager and who’s the head of brand? And I want to meet that person in five minutes. Get their email, have a good chat with them, show them the content I do right there and then, and then schedule a meeting with them. Within two weeks, I’ll have a meeting with that person, whether it be coffee or a lunch, and then within like a week after that, I’ll have free clothes from them, and then after that I’ll put you have a job with them as well. I love that that was for me. Like I think now moving forward, I can put that what I did there into other areas of my life as well, and other businesses I do because it’s the same thing. It’s all like you initially start doing things for free. If you’re a dentist, you may want to do something free for your free for a client. Show them. Show someone what work you can do, how good these teeth are. And then someone sees that and they go, oh, I like that. I’ll then pay for it. It’s the same with any business. It’s the same kind of process. And then our following was going up and up and we started to get more followers. And then we got a few viral videos and then that kind of blew up.

And how did you know back then in Australia where you started filming that that’s what you want to do? I mean, because it wasn’t influencer land, wasn’t exactly what it is now. Yeah. Which year are we talking? Oh.

Wow. This must have been 25. So about seven years ago maybe.

Okay. So there was.

Something it was just started I think. Well, and I would say we’re phase 2 or 3. There was a phase one who were like.

That was that was your stated goal, you to become a big on these platforms?

It wasn’t necessarily a goal. It was more of a we wanted, didn’t want to be pretty boys just prancing our thing around because that’s quite easy to be done. But we wanted to offer value where we could because I think there’s a fine balance of offering value, but also showing off on content creation. And it’s okay to do both because a lot of people want that. Oh, I wish I had that live or oh, I wish I had that kind of moment. But then also if you offer value, it’s like, okay, that was that was a good piece of content. So Will and I were initially started when we’re in Australia was like, right. We saw everyone in the UK posing on the streets of London and show off fashion, and I was just and no one was English, no one had a personality. It was like I just saw all these people who were from Europe doing it in England, and I was like, well, why are they all doing it? There’s no English British lads doing this. Like and I think there was.

Probably a taboo though, because you said even like people were taking the piss out of you like, oh yeah, totally. Your friends.

Always do.

But but that’s the thing. But I think that’s a male thing, right. Because they see they see like that career or doing that stuff online as being very feminine I think. Do you know what I mean? As in like and then.

It’s just that I think it’s also like British culture is very meme culture. Like we always like to take the piss, take the piss. Whereas if you go to America, it’s very opposite, right? It’s like, yo bro, you got this. And I think the problem is both aren’t great because you go to America and you’re told you’re going to be the best at something, and then at 30 years old, you haven’t made it. And it’s like, well, what happened to the American dream? Right? So they need a bit of like downgrading, whereas we need a bit more of that boost because everything’s a meme. You get taken the piss out all the time, but the way Will and I stopped. That was just like we encouraged each other and we’re like, we know what we want. We had our goal, we had our view and we had our vision. And if you’ve got that, I think sometimes when people look at you and laugh, it is one of the best things that can happen to your career. It’s one of the best things that happen because you know you’re on the right path. It’s like that old saying.

In dentistry Rona’s managed it. Yeah, but but I come across hundreds of dentists and I asked him, do you have an Instagram? And they say, no.

Yeah, so do I. I’ve actually got a friend who’s a dentist right now. And I said, why don’t you set up your Instagram friend? Her name’s Hannah. She’s my girlfriend’s, one of my best friend’s girlfriend, best friend. And I’m like, I’m like, it’s like a hairdresser set up an Instagram account for hair.

But then the reason why often there’s a they don’t want to share their work, you know, because everyone’s very critical. The judgement, the judgement. Very true, very true. And and often it’s being uncomfortable in front of camera. So how did you get over these questions or did that not bother you at all? You were like, no.

Before Henry goes on with that, his story reminded me of mine in terms of like people say, how did you get on TV and the easy cop out way? As you know, people say she paid PR. I’m like, hun, I didn’t have PR back then. I went outside ITV studio and I stood outside that studio for about 5 or 6 hours until Zoe Williams came out. The doctor. Yeah, yeah. And she came out.

Telling me that story. I was like.

I had messaged her loads to meet me, and she took a chance and she met me for coffee and I said, I want to do this. And she was like, well, why do you want to do it in the same way that you just asked Henry? Why? Did you want to do the content? For me, it was the bigger vision. And I’m going to be completely honest. I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted to leave a legacy within my field. I didn’t want to be in a life where I was like, I got up, I drilled a few teeth, I did a few small makeovers. Impact. And the fact is, no matter what anyone says, platforms such as social media, TV, radio, etcetera, they give you that platform to reach more people and therefore have a bigger impact. And I’m not talking just about a narcissistic way, but it’s just that value add that you just said to me, it’s giving value to people.

But it’s a particular flavour of impact. So I want to have impact. That’s why I started this company. Yeah, but it’s a particular flavour where you’re you are the product. And that’s what a lot of people suffer with, with you two don’t.

So what you said there about offering value is so difficult in the world I live in, I think because there are times where I’ll create a piece of content and I’ll sit there and I’ll go, I really like it, but where’s the value? There? And I’ll show a friend it or I’ll show you it and they’ll go, but it’s so entertaining. That’s the value. And I’m like, is it, is it like, yeah. And I’m like, is it like, should I not be doing. I go to the gym all the time. Five best ways to grow your chest as a male or something because there’s value there but may not be entertaining, but.

Education, education, entertainment but there’s different.

Value. Well, yeah, there you go. But I sometimes struggle to see that because I’m always I think we’re always critiques of our own work. And what you’re saying there about why not all dentists set up their, their accounts. Because we are the worst critique. Like, you have a spot on your chin. Who sees it? You. Does anyone else see it? No. Because we we worry about so much what other people think about us. And it’s it’s detrimental to our success.

But validation is a form of addiction. Right. And I’m going to go out there because everyone’s like, what’s your addiction, Raina? You don’t drink, you don’t take drugs, you don’t, you know, and I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to say to the world, my addiction is validation. So I do get a dopamine hit when I get approval online on something. You know, if a video does well, I’m like, that’s done. Well, great. I have a great day. Comments. You look good. This is I love this. Your work looks great right? Because that is mine.

I thought you.

Didn’t like it when someone said you looked good because I’m not Trustpilot or something.

Now, I said you don’t need to leave. Oh, here we go, here we go. I said, you don’t need to.

Ever since I heard you say that, I don’t tell you if you look good anymore.

So he basically I said to him, no, I said, when people give you well, this is the thing, right? Because on the one hand, and I’m sure Henry can relate to me right on the one. Like I’m saying, you know, when people give negative views, I’m like, I don’t need your opinion. I’m not. What’s the one for the travel agents, the reviews. You know, I’m talking about travel.

Tripadvisor.

Tripadvisor. I’m not TripAdvisor. I didn’t ask you for a review. Just you. I mean. Yeah, but that would be like, you know, if you get some kind of review, someone would be like, you look much better with brown hair. Like, oh, I don’t like your copper hair. Do you know? I mean, of course it’s an opinion. But then, like, at the same time, if people are like, you look great, it validates the decision I’ve made.

We love that. That’s why. Why do we go out? Why do we get a new haircut? Why do we? Why do we go to do our teeth? Why do we dress up? Well.

I thought you didn’t want it in either direction.

Shower me. Show me the compliments.

Look. Great. What was.

What was interesting? What you said there about validation. You want validation is something that I’ve realised about myself is wanting. Wanting to impress. So when I was a kid growing up, I was. Will and I were always in trouble. We were the naughty kids at school and we always wanted to impress our mom and dad every time something bad happened. So give you an example when I was, and I’ve got these childhood memories in me distilled and it’s probably who I who I’ve why they’ve shaped me, who I am today. Because I remember being told by our like when I was in year two or year three, my teacher head teacher said, you are you don’t know the difference between right and wrong. And she told that to my parents in front of me. And she said, my mum and dad were distraught, not knowing as a kid I didn’t know the difference between right or wrong, whatever came to year six. And the woman told my mum and dad, I’m so sorry about making that comment. Your two boys are the politest I’ve ever met and things like that. And so we changed her perspective. But we always. So we always, always wanted to impress. So growing up, I’ve always wanted to impress. So when I run a marathon, I want to get a good time because I want to impress people watching me.

When the content I create, I want to get loads of likes. I want people to be impressed. So now my growing up, I was wanting to press my mum and dad. I was predicted E’s and F’s in GCSEs. I got a B’s and C’s and that for me was like I told you Mum and Dad. I knew I was going to get those F’s predicted. So there’s my proof. I’ve impressed them by doing that. Got into a great university, impressed them by doing that, got a good degree, impressed them by doing that, got set myself up a business and doing what I do in London, and managed to bring my mum down to do a fragrance profiling with some of the best high end profiles where she gets to pick out a £200 bottle. So I’m going to buy for her. That for me is impressing my family. And so now instead of impressing my family all the time, I feel I need to do it to my followers to impress them with good content. Or. And that’s similar to the validation thing. And it’s not a bad thing. It’s just I want to impress how? And I do it for me instead of do it for others. Sometimes it can be okay to do well.

Carrying on from that. Now let’s have let’s be real, right? There’s a dark side to social media, and you have your career right now is very much with your face, your body, you know, at the forefront. Has your mental health taken a turn since you have exposed yourself on social media, or do you ever worry about certain things being online?

I think it’s such a good question because as I said earlier to you guys, people, this is the number one job people want to do in their like now as kids, they look up to social media influencers more than they look up to actors and celebrities they look up to. They look up to influencers because we see so much of their life. But what you don’t see is always the bad parts or the. And a lot of people are doing it better now. A lot more people are showing you the struggles they do have in this industry, because there are so many like I have been, social media doesn’t sleep like sometimes as a dentist or as a corporate person. You can close the laptop at 5:00. That’s it’s another day tomorrow, right? Social media is 24 hours like it does not sleep seven days a week, 365 days a year. And I am trying to put out content. And if I don’t put out for six seven days, I’m forgotten about, like I guaranteed. Like if your favourite influencer deleted their account tomorrow, you may for a second go, oh that sucks, but you’ll find another one within three three days or two minutes. It’s just like, and I hate this. Like Kobe Bryant, one of the best basketball players in the world. Unfortunately, he died. But there will be other best players in the world. There were basketball still live on. It’s the same as me as my job. It will still live on if I don’t create content.

But I need to keep creating because that’s my job and my work. And if I stop, then I’m not going to be at the money or anything. So it’s like all the all grow my brand and it can keep you up at night. There’s new platforms coming, there’s new kids popping off. Your content you created the other day doesn’t get as many views. The algorithm isn’t working in your favour or something or some something out there isn’t working to your favour. And then you start questioning going am I? Do people not like me? Is my content not good? Is Instagram just hating me or is TikTok hating me? And then you start seeing other people do something and you’re like, oh, maybe I should follow that content. Should I start doing that now? And it’s like, no, stick in your lane. And it’s so hard because you see other people’s success and you want to get a bit of that success. So you may start dabbling into that type of content. But I think it’s really important to stick in your lane and keep authentic. Keep authentic. But oh, can you be authentic on Instagram now because so and these creating platforms because you’re selling yourself to an algorithm. Like sometimes you want to create the content you want to create because because in that moment you’re like I really enjoyed creating that. And that’s authentic. But then when you but then it doesn’t perform well, you go, oh, that must be the algorithm.

I think thinking dentistry there is like that risk of that. Right. And we see it as well. Like there’s a lot of disgruntlement because there’ll be like the dentists that are sort of like a little bit more on the geeky side, the academic side. And they like the content that’s like really like, like the tooth zoomed in like a million and then like, oh, let’s talk about this. And then they hate on the Instagram dentist like me that do better because their content is a little bit more clickbait or it’s just a small makeover. But I understand my audience. I’m not there to impress dentists. I’m there to impress patients. I’m there to get a following of people like they want to engage, because also I’m going to lose a big part of my audience and some patients that come to me, they don’t feel afraid to cry to me in the chair or like, hold my hand or something. And the reason why they don’t feel that is because they see the like type of authenticity that I put out on social media, so they don’t feel embarrassed. Do you know what I mean? But your personality as well?

Totally. So when I see you on Instagram, I don’t just see teeth, I see Rhona’s personality. And that’s when I meet you in person as well. I see that personality because it’s exactly what you are.

I feel like you’re massively needy for for professional validation.

Oh, totally. But I’m not because you.

Don’t want to be known as only Instagram. Good at Instagram.

Just like Henry said. What I resonate was is that like the teacher said, he was going to get E’s and F’s. Dentists thought I didn’t have any clinical skills, so I upped my clinical skills. I made them better. I’m pretty good now. Do you know what I mean? Now you have.

An entire dentistry and have people dentists working for you. That’s how good you are. Yeah, but the thing is.

Is that I still have. But there’s still those other people that are like, I’m looking at like the one fifth of this, like, angulation of the enamel or whatever, but I, I’m, that.

Means nothing to me, by.

The way. You know, like what.

What is that English.

But the point is, I know that my work is good because patients as well can now tell the difference between a good before and after. I don’t think before they really could. But now people are like, I like you because you put translucence in your teeth. They understand things a bit better. Do you see what I mean? And I think that of course, like Payman asked me earlier. Right. Because as you know, I’ve released my own course. Yeah. Interestingly enough, the majority of people that bought the course was on the first day I released it. 95% were young females that had been on the courses of loads of famous dentists. Why did they choose me as an. You’ll know them. I’m not going to say why. I said, well, why did you go? Why do you want to do my course? Because they also feel that there is not a strong female leader within the field, and they feel that I’m more personable when it comes to stuff, because as part of my course, I have like, you can do like one on one and contact me on WhatsApp and send me and they like that. So the interesting thing is with the cohort, because he said to me, are you getting criticism for your course? And I’m like, of course I’m going to get criticism, but I don’t care.

I don’t think you’re doing anything right if you aren’t getting criticism.

Yeah, no, 100%.

You can’t please everyone. Like even content I do like 50% may like it, 50% may not. And that’s okay. Like you can have things you can’t be. You can’t have everyone like everything you do. So I think the great thing.

About content is it finds its own audience in a way. Very true. Yeah. I mean, when you said mental health as you remember, it wasn’t really my subject. He was.

A bit like, why.

It’s not my subject. So I know it was your subject.

Do you suffer from it? Do you ever suffer from anxiety? No, I.

Realise I do now.

He does now he does. Before this I me damaged goods babes on this before.

But then. But then. But then because. Because I had the experience with the previous pod that, you know, we weren’t trying to do anything. We were just having some conversations. And those conversations found audience.

That’s so true.

And this pod will find audience. And then what you do find and people who are not into it will stop following you. Okay, so here’s the thing.

This is the one way I always bring it back to you. Right? And why I think people like us probably will be successful in life is because there is still a cult out there who believes the world is flat. And if they can build a following, even though it’s scientifically proven that the world isn’t flat and they can build a following and a cult around it.

That’s a nice way of saying.

Someone will buy your product or will follow you like it’s so so facts like yeah, so.

But so those because I think like one of the important thing is like you took that leap of faith, Henry. And I think, like even so many young dentists, as he said, are so afraid to start content production. But I always say start with something. Even if you get two likes, don’t worry about it. Just do it. You know what I mean? So what advice would you give for people that want to start a similar journey? Because this could be within any field, right? Because you could be. There are doctors, by the way, Dr. Ali is her name. His name is he’s the one. He’s the one. He’s huge. He gave up medicine and he didn’t.

Yeah. My friend was on his podcast the other day. He said.

Listen, do you know about him?

He’s done great.

So he’s done amazing.

I watched a video on him this morning.

So he has a YouTube academy. He gave up medicine. He did a video. He’s brilliant.

He’s brilliant.

And he did a video on how much he made. Like it was like £50 doing his NHS work and how much he was making on like on, like on that. And I’m not saying not everyone’s money driven. Right. So it shouldn’t be about that. But he had a very transparent video about like this is what I do. This is how much I make. This is why I do it. But for those that want to start that sort of journey and question number one is what would you say is the most important thing to start? How do you start it? Second question is, do you have to have a certain amount of mental resilience to do it?

Okay. Number one, I would definitely say be okay with being shit. And what I mean by that is you have to start off being shit because your first 100 posts will be shit like your first 200 maybe shit and you may got any like get no likes, but you have to be consistent. Like you may not be successful by being consistent, but there is a 100% fact and chance you won’t be successful if you’re not consistent, right? Which is so true. So you may have the risk of not being successful if you if you don’t try it, but you’re never going to know if you aren’t. So you just got to make sure you keep going. And my dad says this saying all the time, and we did it when I had exams. If you throw enough shit at the blanket, eventually some of it’s going to stick and some of it will. So you’ve got to keep going and then you learn from it. Every post you do, every podcast you do, you learn a little bit more about it. And it may take you a thousand podcasts before you suddenly get that curve of success and it goes up. Right. But then if you if you quit it, 999, you’d have never known. And it’s like that hole that, you know, that photo, someone digging for the gold. And then he stops at the very end when he would have been there. So yeah, I think consistency is 100% key. Like be consistency, always be consistent. And what.

About mental resilience do you think you.

Get? I think you definitely need it because you’re going to get no likes at the beginning. You’re going to get no listens on your podcast. You’re going to get no views on your YouTube channel. And then you’re saying to yourself, oh, I’m putting all this work in, I’m doing all these camera angles, I’m doing this and I’m getting nothing back from it. And you have to have that resilience to keep pushing on. It’s in it’s almost self-belief, like if you don’t have that self belief in yourself, then how are you going to push forward and convince the world that they should watch your stuff? And if you have that self belief, then you’ve just got to keep going and going and going. And I think that will that will push you on.

So. So now you’ve got this audience that’s engaged with you. What are the steps to monetising that.

And okay, so there’s a lot of ways you can monetise on social media. And it depends what. Of Omicron. So number one is brand deals. So it’s good to do your. The content you do should align with the brands you want to work with. So for example I’m massive into my health and fitness. I’m never going to go work with McDonald’s because unless they unless they wanted me to promote some sort of healthy, healthy thing, then maybe that’ll be right. However, 90% of the time I’m never.

Salads have more calories than the burgers. Just saying.

There you go. Yeah, maybe they do, but I’m not going to listen. I’m not going to hold a burger and be like the new Quarter Pounder, even if they pay ten grand, because it’s probably not really worth it. Maybe it is to some people, but everyone’s got their price now, so you’ve got to align yourself with those certain brands. I think you can also get paid from, like Rona is doing courses. It’s a great way. And then you can set up other things like plans. You’ve got a website you can set up, fitness brand. If you’re a fitness fitness courses, you’re in fashion. You can set up your own clothing brand. Yeah. These endorsement product endorsement. Yeah. So do you have.

Someone who represents you?

I have a manager. And that manager kind of deals with all my logistics and deals with all the brands I work with, and can also get me brand work as well. And they’ve been great. They’re lovely people and I’ve been with them for 3 or 4 years. And yeah, so me and my twin are the same manager, and then there’s different ways of making money on different platforms like TikTok actually have a marketplace where and a creator thing where if your video blows up, you can get some money. It’s very small, but YouTube’s even better. Youtube has a platform where if you create for that brand that that you can get thousands of pounds if your video goes off because the YouTube algorithm is great, like your videos, can you remake money? So your video, if you make a video five way five, if you go on Veganuary, it’s always big Veganuary right? If you make a video. Five recipes for making Veganuary, which are cheap. Let’s say that that video will be big from January and you made it so 2019. But also if it’s gone well in the algorithm, it will pick back up the next year because people will be researching again. Veganuary recipes oh 2020 2021 so that video could kill it as seven years later. So yeah, so there’s a lot of ways to make to monetise monetise it.

Yeah. I’m going to ask you something. I like to be controversial. Right. Oh here we go. So you were talking about platforms right. And platforms that control the livelihood as you know. Like what’s your view on censorship. Right. Because also you think about a case like with the recent news of like Russell Brand at the moment with what’s going on and the allegations YouTube have pulled him. Right. They’ve actually stopped and YouTube was his biggest source of income. Okay. So he’s now saying because Rumble’s the new platform where they don’t allow any censorship, right? Yeah. Do you believe so? First of all, do you ever get scared? I mean, you’re not obviously. Henry, I know you you know, you’re not a controversial slash immoral person or whatever. Do you do you ever get worried that you’re going to get cancelled online or not? Really. And secondly, do you believe that censorship is a good thing or not.

To censor yourself when you’re talking? Yeah.

Do you feel like, oh, I’m going to actually like I’m not going to.

Say say that.

Say that. Yeah.

Listen, I think the world we’re in now, if you are so straight line and boring, your content isn’t ever going to get, you’ve got to be left or right polarising. You have to be like, look at Piers Morgan, but you’ve got to be very careful about what you say, because if you aren’t educated in that topic enough and you say something which is one thing or the other, then it’s more likely you’re going to get cancelled. Like the reason why James Smith does it so well and Piers Morgan does it so well is because they are so good with words and they’re educated on the topics they talk about, so they’re less likely to get cancelled. Whereas if it was someone like me and let’s take an example, it’s the politics and you vote Labour over conservative or vice versa. And you document, oh, I voted conservative because of this, but do I really know that much about politics? No. But if I made my opinion about it that I’ve voted on conservative, then people are probably going to go, well, you’re right, you’ve clearly uneducated. And that’s the thing I only ever would be talking commenting on or something if I’m well educated on the topic. It’s the same with all the I can’t remember what it was. Now, somewhere in one of these Middle East countries where the woman couldn’t women couldn’t wear their masks.

No, no, no, they couldn’t wear the burqa or something like that.

I remember what it was, but these women couldn’t wear their hair. And people, if I were to make because people were DMing me going, why aren’t you why aren’t you commenting on this? And I’m going, it’s got nothing to do with me because I don’t know this industry. I don’t know it until I’ve done my education on it, and I now know to talk about it, then I’m okay to make a comment, whether it be this or this, but people on their podcasts and I watch it all the time, or on their Instagram stories or whatever, they’ll make a comment about something and I’m like, bro, just don’t even and I stay out of it.

I got trolled about something like this. This is really interesting. So this is the little insight because you were like, what were you getting trolled about? I get asked quite a lot to go on national television to make comments about like the NHS crisis. I worked on the NHS for ten years. Okay, so I did my I paid my dues. Like I said, I worked really hard. I left in 2020 for like health reasons. Up to 2021 I was doing NHS work. Yeah. Now people. So basically there’s like a meme account. On Instagram, which does really well. It’s a Dental medium account run by young boys. Young Dental boys. And basically they said that they were sort of the opposite of what you were saying. They were saying like, are you not like, doesn’t it infuriate you so much that these private dentists that don’t realise the shitstorm of what’s going on are going on TV and commenting on what’s going on, right? I got sent it by a few people because they were like, I think this is targeted at you. And I was like, listen, I don’t care, because at the end of the day, if they want to go out and speak about it, go out. There is freedom of speech. If you want to talk about it on your social media, do. Why do news channels approach me? Because I’m vocal about stuff. Because I’m the one that’s out there saying I left because I was depressed and suicidal working on the NHS and I can. I stood up to Jeremy Kyle, who was basically saying, dentists are greedy and that’s why they leave the NHS. I’m putting myself in that position. How does he know.

He doesn’t work in?

Exactly. But the thing is, is that after that interview he was like, I can see your point now. I found it really weird because I was like, they can say all they want and they control and whatever, but what they were saying is the opposite to you. They were saying, because I’m not in it. Whereas, you know, the people that are saying to you, you can’t win, you know, I mean, because they’re saying, why aren’t you commenting? You know, so.

There’s no the thing is, no matter what you do in this world, there’s going to be controversy. Like this girl the other day actually posted a photo in her lingerie in a public street, street. And it was a I my first initial thoughts were it’s a sick photo. Yeah. Whereas the comments under it were had to unfollow because of this, this, this. And I’m like, what is wrong with the world? Like and my older brother is actually a teacher, and the things he has to now do about child safety and security is so different to what we had in our lives back in school, where the teacher could probably hit us still and it would be okay, but now it’s just it’s all so different and it’s like you do one thing wrong in any industry or make one comment about something and you’re more likely to be cancelled.

I saw I saw a thing. It was it was like a picture of Kate Moss in the 90s with Calvin Klein next to her. They were taking a photo in his hand. Was like on her, on.

Her, on her arse or.

Something just above her arse. Yeah. And the comments that came in, who’s the creepy guy with the octopus hands? Yeah. Octopus. Calvin Klein, a gay guy. Yeah. Number one, Calvin Klein. Yeah, he probably designed that very dress. And his hands have been all over, like, to fix that thing, and and, you know, the the notion that, you know, maybe the person watching it was offended or had had some, maybe something had happened to that person.

Okay, here’s another thing.

Could have happened. Yeah. Someone someone might have put their hand inappropriately on on that person. That doesn’t mean that was going on in that photo. But like.

It’s just that pictures tell a thousand words, right? Everyone’s got their own opinion about it. But. So here’s another one. When I went to Dubai during the pandemic and right now people are watching, going, oh, you went to Dubai during the pandemic. But the facts are I went when it was okay to go, but I started posting photos when I was out there when we went back into lockdown. So I left on like, I don’t know, 23rd or 26th or seventh thing from Cambridge, which essentially was like a tier two level, whatever it was, which was legal for me to fly. And because I booked this months ago, by the way, and it was I made that vocal booked Dubai back in November and I made it on my social media, booked Dubai buzzing to get out there for Christmas New Year. And so it was legal to me. Book. We had no lockdown, we’re all okay. And then Boris suddenly announced bam this day, certain tiers, certain people. Yeah, long time ago. So I went to Dubai, but again, it was fine. I was flying from Cambridge, I was allowed to leave, so on and so on and got to the airport, got to Dubai.

Fine. And then I started posting content. Me on a beach. Nothing like drinking booze, partying, which a lot of the some influencers were. It was just again, clean content, show my outfits, whatever. And I got the biggest backlash on my on my photos being like, how dare you escape the country? All this, all this. And I was like, I, have you been following me for a long time? You’d have seen that on my post. Like I booked this months ago and I left legally like so. I’ve done nothing wrong. Like I wasn’t the one jumping out of my bed and doing it on January 3rd and sneak into Dubai and suddenly appearing on a beach. I booked this months ago, so. And then people were commenting on it and going, oh, you should be ashamed for yourself. You raised all that money to climb Everest. I did a charity challenge and and now you’re and your mum’s going to work. My mum was like, the boys did nothing wrong and my mum was actually in the NHS. I wouldn’t have done that to her. Raised all this money for charity, sent it to the NHS and then buggered off to Dubai just for a holiday.

The thing that you said about the NHS, dentistry and people saying who is this private dentist to talk about? I mean I did, I did one year of NHS dentistry and vet, then went to private, then stopped being a dentist. Now I manufacture teeth whitening products so doesn’t mean.

You can’t ever comment.

Being a dentist. I want to talk about the NHS. Yeah. If I want to talk about the NHS, I’m allowed to comment about the NHS, even though I’m not working in that system. Yeah. And maybe they’re saying why did ITV ask her and not one of us. Well ITV asked her because of everything we just said. Yeah. All the 15 years work.

You’ve put I think, I think like, you know, people don’t realise that the nuances of situation but also like in terms of like so there’s two, there’s two different things. Also I want to cover with the content creation before we move on. There is I’m not going to say her name because she blocked me. Say her name. No no no.

Who’s this? Say her.

Name.

We’ll cut it out. We’ll cut it. I really want to know who’s blocked it out.

We’ll cut it out.

I’ll tell you afterwards. Okay. There was content. You’ll definitely know by a certain female. She’s doing a brilliant job. Just listen. Listen. Just listen. Sorry, sorry. She’s very beautiful. She’s very articulate. And she claims to be a psychologist. Okay. Initially, I was like, fantastic content. You. I love it when I see strong, empowered women doing this. She then got called out. She went on Chris Williamson’s podcast. Ah, okay.

Is it okay? I think I know who it is with Chris Williamson podcast.

And someone called it out because there were certain things she was saying and I was like, she’s not a psychologist. And her response to other people was like, medical professionals don’t respond in this way. You just know, pay. Like, you know, the way that we have to respond to stuff. So I did my own little research, found some TikToks. She’s a psychology teacher now. She has gone on some of the most famous psychology teachers.

A psychologist, no.

But clinical psychologist is what she’s kind of like, portraying herself as.

Doctor.

Like psychiatrist. No, no.

It’s the woman I’m thinking of. I’m sure her. I won’t say her name, but I’m sure her title is doctor.

Yeah, or something like that. Listen, listen, listen. So she’s basically misleading, but it’s incredible because she’s been on Lewis Howell’s podcast. Yeah. I think even Joe Rogan like interviewed her like there’s been loads. And the thing is no one has done their due diligence and there’s only a few people calling her out. I called her out in a really nice way. I dropped her a DM and I was like, hey, love your content. And I was like, but you’re not a psychologist. And I think it could be quite misleading to the public. You know, as you said that she said she blocked me direct. Yeah. She direct.

Messaging.

She blocked me. But the point is, without replying, without replying me saying you’re not a dentist, I’d be like, actually, here I am and this is my credentials. Shivani was obviously like, of course she’s going to block you. Like it’s like saying you’re a fraud, you know what I mean? And I was like, okay, but I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it like that.

How block happy are you? Oh I’m.

Sorry. Block happy now? I blocked so many times.

I don’t block at all. Do you know what I block? I do, you know, I always say I block a lot.

Block, block, block.

My way to deal with things is killing with kindness. And the reason why I do that is because this girl. Yesterday I put on my story. It was hilarious. She actually DM’d my girlfriend because I don’t really tag my girlfriend much and. But I do sometimes just tag her and people can find that by tagging my girlfriend’s private. Anyway, she got a DM saying hey lovely, I don’t you don’t know me, but I follow your boyfriend’s page. And just to let you know, I think you should be concerned that I think he sways both swings both ways as it like gay and yeah, and I put it on my story and she sent it to me. And I could not stop laughing at this because it was hilarious. But she. The thing is, I could have messaged this girl back because I’ve got her Instagram handle now being like, how dare you? Whatever. But something seriously troubled with those people who have to give you hate because they’ve taken the time out of their day. We have 24 hours a day and.

But you could say that about the psychologist. But I wasn’t giving hate. I was more concerned.

No, yours is very different. Your messaging out of. Yeah, a concerning way. This is something way worse. Like someone, someone going out of your way to hate someone is a complete like something’s troubled with that person. 100% truly troubled of that person. 100% truly troubled. So when you always get on TikTok, you’ll see you probably get it as well on your Instagram, it’s it’s fake accounts commenting on your stuff. 1234512 lol. It’s the emails I got from those people when I first started my website going you’re a joke mate. This is the biggest laughing stock. Those people have troubles and there’s one kid from university, his name is Gus and I’m going to say it out right now actively.

Then respond and be kind.

Be yeah, yeah yeah. So this one Kick-Off Gus from University I went to University of. Never spoke to him, but I’d always see him on shake his hand on nights out. He or he was no one at university, but he was just friends with these two guys and these two Joe and this guy Gus. If they listen to this, I hope they do. They will. They always, they always, always, always would comment on me and I would just comment back lol haha. Or hope you’re well mate. Or one of them was. Once I was, I was blessed are your well skinny or something like that and lol this is the biggest joke he. Whatever and I’ll be like, thanks mate. Appreciate your support. Always killing with kindness. And I got it for like two years straight and I haven’t for a while now. But it’s like, you know what? I love that because they’re taking time out of their day to message me out of their precious day. What are they probably doing? Nothing. They’re not trying to achieve any goals. They’re just doing their life and board. So they think they’re better off blasting someone else and hating on someone else. Never hate on someone. Success. And the one thing I would say anyone above you if you’re hating on someone, they’re above you. You never hate on someone below you. There’s no point. You never hate on someone below you. You always hate on. So you always know if you’re being hated. You’re above.

That person. In dentistry, it happens so much and it’s so sad. And I’ve tried so hard. Have you?

Have you never not hated? Hate is a big word. Have you never thought that something someone said needed calling out in dentistry?

As in like the things they say to me or the things they say to me?

They say they’re saying to the public that they’re saying to their audience, you know, we’ve had a few things in dentistry recently, like the the twins. Um, maybe you’re not. You don’t follow them.

Yeah, exactly. See, I stay so far away.

But you know what I mean.

What was the twins tell me.

There are, there are there are things people say that you might think I think that’s wrong or I think that’s, I don’t know, self promoting or. I think that’s totally so. So do you know why has there not been in dentistry a time where.

You wanted listen, listen, listen. And Henry will be the same. Of course you’re going to see people online. I get I mean.

In your industry. Yeah.

But listen.

But nutrition and stuff. But listen.

But the thing is like, okay, for example, the reason why the psychology thing triggered me is because I genuinely believe if you’re going to give medical advice you need, like you said, people should comment things that they’re on an expert. There is nothing wrong with being a psychology teacher. Just say you’re a teacher. Do you see what I mean? But misleading people and people that are going to look up to you. So I do have a problem with people like saying that. However, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I was like like for me, like psychology and psychiatry and psychotherapy is so important. Okay. Well, what about fitness?

Do you have to be a PT to essentially give personal trainer advice? But I know so many people in unreal shape. But the thing.

Is, it’s like but it’s also about transparency. It’s about like, I have a lot of experience. I’m giving you advice based on my experience. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. So I think that like it’s just the, you know, but you’re not going to lie about being a PT no. Do you know what I mean?

I, I actually went and got my license just because I sometimes couldn’t be bothered. Well, sometimes I get people commenting to me being like, you’re not even a PT bro. And then you’re.

Like, actually I am.

Well, actually, now I actually do have the level three qualification and I’m trained to do this if I wanted to. So you know what? I can talk about it even though that course isn’t great. Like it’s like going back to school and learning. You don’t learn much, but it’s just like you got it and it’s a credential. And if you do want to talk about it, you can. And if I want to release my plans, how about.

Same question to you. Have you ever thought someone in your industry needed your hate? Yeah.

But listen, listen a Payman I’m not done with that. I’m not done with that because it was going to lead on. Right. It was going to lead on. You see something you don’t like or someone online, you unfollow and you move on. Yeah, that’s my philosophy. So you don’t like the content. Why should I call out if someone doesn’t like Henry? I don’t like these fashion stuff I don’t like. I don’t like the fact that you’re talking about running and you’re not doing a million marathons. I don’t like the fact that you’re giving this advice and you don’t work completely in fitness. Just unfollow. Henry. Yeah.

Don’t follow me. So true. Why? Why do people want to hate so much? It’s. I just don’t get it. Like. Well.

There are nuances to that as well. Well.

Here’s what I did. And it made me really realise this when I was probably 13. I remember, um, Twitter was huge and X factor was on and I used to go onto my Twitter and I would slate the contestants. I’d be like, you have the world’s worst voice at Frankie Cocozza. And I only realised, but no, listen, this is 13 year old immature ten year old.

Trying to get something.

Yeah, trying to get something back. You never know. But I didn’t realise how badly this can affect people’s mental health until it started happening to me. So. Yeah. So as a kid I was like slating these famous people. If they’d had a rubbish football game, I’d comment, look, you guys have a football match. Everyone swears at the players, right? Because they don’t get it and you’ll see tweets. And if someone’s missed a missed a penalty or whatever in your club’s missed it, you’ll get hate from so many seeing so much hate. So think about how much that impacts that player. Like we all have the same minds and brains and we all are so similar. Really. Like it’s going to affect you like and people are probably told by their managers people stay off social, stay off Twitter. But sometimes you’re just on it and it’s natural that you may read that comment about you or something and you’re like, ah, it’s always the one bad thing, the one bad comment that stays in you as well. It’s not the good ones. Yeah, you could get your amazing tonight, mate. Well done. Or you were great at singing tonight or you played really well, but that one bad one can’t believe you missed that penalty.

You’re dead to our team. It’s going to stay with you for so long and it’s so traumatic. It’s the same in social media as it taught me. Massively. Like, if you’re not going to say something nice, don’t even bother saying it at all. And it’s so simple to say and it’s harder for people to do, especially at young kids. And. Stuff like that. And you do get that hate on TikTok all the time because it’s such a Gen Z platform and you get hate all the time, but you just got to for me, now is like, kill them with kindness and just whatever and whatever. Like they’re not my friends. I’m not worried about them because they’re not my I don’t see them every day. I’m not going to see that person. I’m just worried about who what my friends think of me, what my family think of me. And am I being a good person to my girlfriend or my brother or my mom and dad? That’s what you should really be caring about, not about what user 101 things. Do you know what I mean? Like that’s the least.

What’s your in this journey where you’ve come from? Just making some content and then getting really successful at it and then brand deals and modelling and all that. What was the darkest?

Yeah, I was just about to ask, what was your darkest moment? Yeah.

Oh.

I tell you what I think it’s honestly it’s the the followers. Because I think the the more you get, the more pressure you have to feel like you need to perform to that audience. Like if you looked into a room and you had 100,000 people in one room, you’d be like, Holy shit, I’ve got to talk in front of 100,000 people. Like you wouldn’t be able to do that. It’d be like you’d be nervous, you’d be sweating. So it’s the same as going on your Instagram story and talking on there, but you’re doing it in to an audience of 100,000 people. So I felt when I got over 100 K, I felt almost had pressure on me. And the better I got at doing things like it’s the same as when I run or create content. When I first started, I wasn’t very good, so I had nothing to compare to. I had nothing to lose. But when I start getting good at it, every video I started posting, if it wasn’t as good as the last one, I’d put pressure on myself and go, don’t post it. It’s not good enough, which isn’t the way to do it. And I still do it today. So I’ll then because I’m at the top, I’ve got 178,000 followers or whatever. I’ll compare myself to other people have 170 K, and I’ll look at their content and I’ll be like, God, this is better than mine, or that guy’s better than mine, or he got to 200 K, his is better than mine. And I’ll go because I’ve got to that number, but then I’ve got to I got to remember, well, what was I doing when I had one follower like or two followers, my content look back at my content from ten years ago. So bad. So for me, it’s the pressure from feeling like I need to perform all the time. When you don’t like you don’t. You need to have days off, you need to have time off. And I’m I’m.

At some point on one day. Did that become like overwhelming and yeah.

Do you ever get did you ever get like severe crippling anxiety from social media.

So I yeah I get it all the time. Like I am a really anxious person quite frankly. And I hold it in well and I can’t control it.

You wouldn’t realise.

I think I do a lot. I think I’ve done a lot of things to help me balance it. So I see a therapist once a month. She’s been incredible. Same therapist, only ever. One I’ve seen and I haven’t seen anyone else since. So I see her about once a month. And for people who can’t afford or have the privilege of doing therapy, then I think just a good conversation with a friend is equally as important or can actually help as much. Or starting a new hobby, or taking your mind away from things that aren’t causing you anxiety, and waking up and not touching my mobile phone first thing in the day. Going to sleep one hour before no blue light or no screens again. Doesn’t have your mind wandering with all these thoughts and same when you wake up. You’re not jumping into your emails is another thing that’s really kept me anxiety at bay. And if it does come, just let it be. It’s a bad day, not a bad life. Like there’s going to be some times in life and days and years where you have that day where you can’t get out of anxiety and people go, oh, just breathe, breathe, go meditate. I’m telling you right now, you cannot go meditate. When you’re anxious. You cannot do it. You do the meditate. You do the meditation in the morning or whenever you fancy doing it too. So when you are anxious or in those bad thoughts that you remind yourself when you’re in that state of flow and state of chill and calm, that’s the state you can try and get back into, but you can’t go and just breathe it out because it’s not going to work. And you can you can lose a day and say, oh, you know what? That day, today’s not been good, but that’s okay. Just knowing that it’s okay.

My question for you is, though, you said like all these great coping mechanisms tell us how you ended up on this marathon journey. So first of all, like how many marathons you do, why you decided to do a marathon and how that’s helped your mental health.

So running for me, I actually started it when I got an injured shoulder and I couldn’t lift weights and I this was gyms, a part of my routine. I like training and I just lifted weights and I was in quite good shape, bodybuilder esque, like big, not not stacked, but like big. And excuse me. And I started running because I couldn’t lift weights and I was a bit slow, wasn’t I was always okay at school, but I wasn’t great now. And I started to get okay. So I set myself a challenge of a half marathon and I wanted to do it in sub one hour 30, and I did it in one hour 27 across the line, absolute gassed I was, I see I did it, but then I started right, right. So I did a marathon and I did my first ever marathon with not much training because I got given like a place with a brand very last minute, did it in three hours, 37 and my first ever one was like 302 only two years ago, actually two and a half years ago maybe. And I was like, oh my God, I’ve got to get into this. I trained for this. I could be a okay runner. And I started running. I set myself a target last year about seven, 8 or 12 months, 14, 15 months ago, set myself a target to do a sub three hour marathon. And I this is my first ever trained one. So I did about seven weeks of training to get this sub three and everyone was like, yeah, you’re never going to get a sub three on your first attempt.

I remember telling my mates, If I’m ever going to train properly for a marathon, I want to do it sub three. And I never forget the face they all went, no chance mate. Yeah. And so I put the work in and I got sub three on my first attempt. I did a 2 to 58. And anyway, the reason why I started to run was one because the shoulder. But also this moment of peace. I just have like there’s a lot of run clubs and I think it’s great running with people. But something incredible about running and present, about running by yourself first thing in the morning or after a long day at work where you can’t physically look at your phone or touch it, or compare yourself, or scroll media or whatever. It’s just you, your breath and your feet and the tap, tap, tap, or a bit of music or podcast in your ear or whatever. And I think that is just incredible. And I love it. Whether it’s raining, whether it’s cold outside and the sun’s rising and you see the sunrise or whether it’s a beautiful day, I think there’s just something empowering about it. And there is. Leaving the gym is great. After lifting weights, you feel great, but leaving after a run that runner’s high is the best feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life. They talked about. I think it’s massively made my mental health just feel a bit like, have a stressful day, go for a run, go.

For a run. Yeah, that was so I mentioned to Payman earlier. So did you have you listened to the latest Steven podcast with Dr. Tara Schwartz?

I haven’t yet, no.

It’s amazing, but she talks about the impact of aerobic exercise on the mind. I don’t know if you guys knew that. Not weightlifting. So first of all she talks about different studies. So with weightlifting with people that lift heavy, even if they didn’t lift just thinking about it, they had muscle growth.

Yeah. That’s that’s I’ve heard about that. Yeah. Apparently if you if you picture yourself in the gym and think about yourself lifting weights, they do say you can something like psychological empowering about I think it’s like a placebo though I think she talks.

About the effect of aerobic and actually causing. I think it is neurogenesis. So we were talking about this earlier how like you can get like increased neurones. And with aerobic exercise in particular, you have more of that impact of neurogenesis where you can get like an increase of like your neurones. And then if you go for like have a break from running and then you like run again, like it can do that even more. So there’s a huge benefit. Like people overlook cardio because they’re like, don’t do cardio, don’t do cardio. And I think that’s actually a really because we’re not thinking. We’re not talking about just physique. Why? The most toxic thing that’s happened with exercise is that we’ve completely related it to physical and aesthetic goals, when actually it has huge, because I know people that aren’t in great shape and are amazing at sports.

You know, let’s talk about. So for me, this is when I got into a really unhealthy place of fitness. It was when I got to Australia, as I told you guys earlier, and I got into the best shape of my life, I was like 4% body fat. Me and my brother, we were counting all our calories. We only really lifted weights and that because if you lift weights, it will aesthetically get you into the place you want to be 100% fat like you are growing each specific muscle, lifting each specific muscle to grow to where you want it to. And you will look the best. That’s just fact. But I got so unhealthy with it. It was beyond belief. Like every time I go out for food, I would I would probably eat chicken salad dressing on the side, nothing else because I was worried about the calories and I knew that I was like calories. I would barely drink because I was I was in Australia, I wouldn’t drink, I’d do nothing. I was so boring. All I wanted to do was go to the gym, and the girls upstairs used to come downstairs. This is how bad it got.

The girls upstairs who lived above us would come down. Go. Do you guys want to go out tonight? And me and my brother would go, oh we can’t. We’ve got something on tomorrow. Got to go to work in tomorrow. Unfortunately. When really we had sushi dinner that we wanted to save because it was our calories and it can get so caught up in your mind. It actually makes you have a bit of an eating eating disorder. So for me, it was like every time I had a burger, I’d be thinking about the calories. So I actually completely stopped counting calories. And what I do now, I think, I think it’s not bad to go through it, because once you go through it, you understand what you’ve done, you’ve learnt about it, right? And now, like I’ve got such good balance between running fitness, eating aesthetics, drinking it all, and I think you need to go through the bad times in this journey to learn it, and you won’t learn it by someone telling you on YouTube. You can tell it, but then you’ll be like, I don’t get it until you go through it. And I’ve gone through.

It all now. Level of obsession that you’re discussing, it has its positives, right?

Yeah, totally. In the meantime, in the moment it doesn’t until you can digest it and be like, oh, that’s why I did that or that’s why I’ve done that. Yeah. Looking back, I remember I was honestly trying to get shredded for a holiday to Marbella when I was 21. I’d go on this egg white diet where I just ate egg whites and broccoli 800 calories, diet like because I wanted to have abs. That is so unhealthy. What am I thinking? Yeah, you don’t need that at all.

So as well, do you? Have you ever tried alternative modes of therapy to help your mental health? Like, we’ve had a few people on this podcast talk about like plant medicines and other things like that. Like what’s your view on that?

Yeah. So I actually I’ve dabbled a little bit in psychedelics and now it’s quite a taboo, taboo thing to really talk about or discuss because there’s not been a lot of like science based evidence, especially with mushrooms. More coming out.

Yeah. Psilocybin. They’re going to be using it for depression MDMA.

They are in certain. But it’s it’s how our body reacts to it right. If you drink alcohol for the first time, you don’t know how you’re going to react to it, and 90% of people are probably going to be sick or drink too much, and it’s going to make you have a bad headache. So you you learn from that experience. And it’s the same with psychedelics. You don’t know how your body’s going to cope with it or what your mind is going to do. So you get a bit panicky, maybe until you understand what it does to you. So the first time I went on it, it was in a controlled environment. And I think that’s the best thing to do with any drug or anything you do should be in controlled environment. And that’s why in America now in like Texas or Houston or Austin, it’s like the psychedelic Mecca of the world in and they do it all under control people. So you have like therapists doing it for you. So I was going for a bit of a rough patch of and I was a bit anxious, worried about what’s the next part? I didn’t have a girlfriend at this time.

I was I felt a bit lonely. And in London you can probably know. It can be a very lonely place. And I was like, screw it, I’m going to go on this retreat. My friend Louis, who, you know, who had this podcast, he was like, mate, come. You’ve got nothing to lose. I was like, you’re right, nothing to lose. Turned up. And I went on this amazing retreat in Wales and I knew no one there. Went by myself, told my friends all last minute, I’m actually going on this retreat to do psychedelics and do mushrooms. And they were like, you fucking what? And I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing, but I’m going to do it. I’m all about new experiences, right? And I went on this thing and I sat down. They were like, right, we’re going to do a sharing circle. And as soon as the sharing circle started, I was like, what the fuck have I entered into? This is not me. Like, get me out of here.

Woo woo!

It felt a bit woo woo and it felt a bit, a bit like a bit intimidating, like, why do I need to share my thoughts and feelings? And I did it and I felt really good. And I was like, this is, this is before I’ve done any mushrooms, by the way, or any psychedelics. And I was like, wow, isn’t it great to just let your thoughts off your chest to strangers? Because we’re all doing it and.

We’re all connected.

And we all had similar thoughts. It was like, this girl to the left of me have nothing in common, but the thing she was saying I could completely resonate to, and it was like, isn’t that funny? Like, we all are so connected in this world. And then the next day you go to bed. You don’t. I took off social media. I turned my phone off, left it in the car, didn’t touch it for two days. So the conversations I’m having are so raw, so real and amazing. And because I think for me, for one, I get judged quite a lot because I like to dress well, take care of my skin, and like to do fitness and groom myself. Self-care quite, quite. Probably too extreme. But anyway, I do. And so a lot of the initial judgement is people think I’m arrogant and that’s okay. I don’t mind that. Anyway, I thought it was a really good place for me to actually tell these people who I truly am and the personality, because actually, at the end of the trip, a lot of people were like, damn, man, I judged you as soon as I walked in, like, I thought you were just this good looking guy at this retreat, thinking he’s someone else. And I was like, I’m so sorry about that. And I was like, I was so honest that you’re like that because I think we all do it. Like we judge people walking down the street for having pink hair.

And actually there could be the loveliest person or having something. They’re just going fancy trying something new. Yeah. And anyway, did the psychedelics and during the experience, it’s very like I first I was quite nervous because I’ve never done this, but I just said to my body, in my subconscious, in my mind, surrender, surrender to this and let it be. Whatever happens is lean into it. Because if you step away from it, lean away from it. You’re going to block the drugs out. Because the way I say it is, if if you’re smashed out of your face, right, and you’re boozing with your mates and your mum texted you saying your dad’s in the hospital, get home now you’re going to snap and you’re going to go, I’m not I’m not drunk anymore. I’m sober. I’m alert, I’m focussed. So your mind can take you out of certain situations if you want it to. And it’s the same with the psychedelics. If you want to be taken out of it, you will. But if you surrender to it and just say mushrooms, like whatever you do, do your thing and it will work really well. So the first hour I’m taking it and I’m like, oh, can I go to the toilet? Should I go to the toilet? I’m not a bit sure. And I was like, just Henry, stop and do what you want to do.

And I went to the toilet, came back, went back into this like kind of weird trance. And it takes about a week to really digest what you’ve seen and done and to really put it into work. And the moment, the first time I did it, I’ve done it twice now, and each one I’ve had different experiences, but the first was a very special one because I think the other people around me were really significant. Have, since I’ve done it, have been a real significant part of my life, and they’ve all been friends now and they’re all really interesting people on it. Some were entrepreneurs, some were, I don’t know, some celebrities or whatever, and there were some really cool people there, and I connected really well with these people. And I think for me, it was like that sharing circle the next day after you’ve been on it and everyone again sharing their experiences was just such an amazing, amazing thing to hear. And it was just like such an eye opening experience. And I left and I sat down and I was like, because I didn’t touch my phone this entire week and I was like, wow, the world doesn’t actually go that fast. We just think it does because we’re always scatty we’re on phones, we’re running at 100 miles an hour. But actually, you know what? It’s slow. You can have it. I’ve had about 13 incredible conversations before 1130.

In the morning. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I know what you mean. But we’re so busy doing things.

And was everyone’s experience similar or different after.

Everyone actually had very different experiences? I think. I think, you know.

The thing is with psychedelics, as they have shown, because they’re doing so many studies on it, particularly with psilocybin and mushrooms and stuff like if you have on those levels, because there’s like there’s different levels, right? And there’s a really famous psychologist at Imperial that does studies and there’s like certain doses. So you have a recreational dose. So that’s when you’re like, ha ha, I’m having fun. Yeah. Then the dose that Henry would have taken, which is more like your ego, they call it ego death. So the ego dies, right? So the ego dies.

A heroic dose.

Yeah, exactly. So then you get pushed, you get pushed, you get pushed into the closet, as they said, with your skeletons, and things will come up. Like you might see things that are uncomfortable, your parents or stuff about your relationships.

So that.

Doesn’t happen to.

Everyone, though. Everyone has different appearances, a lot of the time you can go and have intention. My intention may have been I want to find the future wife, what type of girl I should be with that. Maybe everyone, but you don’t choose how the mushrooms.

Control your brain. They’ll take.

You somewhere. They’ll take you somewhere else. It could be completely different. It could be you as a child playing football and how you got tackled by a boy. And that caused your trauma for the rest of your life because you’re now scared to play football? I don’t know, um, pretty bad example of that, but you get my point. Um, for me, the first I’ll take you back to my first experience, because I actually did mushrooms in Thailand, jokingly, recreationally, recreationally. And when I was travelling and again, all I did was get the giggles. It was hilarious. We had the funnest time ever. It was really good fun. Um, but this was very different. Didn’t get any of that hilarious moments for me. It was more deeper, very deep. So things I actually saw, um, was the type of girl I need to go for because I’ve had two relationships, but by this time one of them was really good. But we broke up because I went to university. The other one was a bit toxic, a bit fire on fire, and it was. And at the time I was dating these type of girls and in my vision it was like, you need to go back to someone like your first ever girlfriend, because that’s exactly what you need.

And now so you saw that in your second.

I saw that and know first trip, first trip, and then what else I saw was my dad on his deathbed. And that was horrible because I was crying in the trip and it was like, okay, so again, a week later, what does that I’m writing these down and I read it afterwards and I was like, what does that mean to me? And in that moment that was like, your parents aren’t here for a long time. Maybe go and spend more time with them. Maybe that’ll make you happy. Maybe that seeing your mom and dad more often is going to make your.

Dad was perfectly fine. Fine? He still.

Is fine. He still is. But it’s just like, maybe that is like.

There might be a worry, though. Do you see what I mean?

I haven’t got many. You haven’t got many experiences left with your say. If you see your parents, say if you’ve got parents still and I’m 31, my parents are 67 and 66. Say, if I only see them twice a year and they live till the average age of, say, 75, that’s only 29 more times I’ll see my mom and dad. It’s crazy. Isn’t that scary? And then it’ll be 28, 27. And that’s sad. Exactly. So it was like, I need to make a more conscious effort to go see them all the time. Not all the time, but more of a conscious effort. Pick up the damn phone and call your mum and dad because they want you to call them. Like my mum is always like, oh, you never call me anymore. And I’m like, I know, I.

Know, I put you on that guilt and you feel so bad.

But you should. Do you know what? It’s not hard when you’re walking down the street to pick up your groceries or something to go. You know what? I’ll give my mum and dad a call because they all really appreciate you.

Not call your parents every day all the time.

But you know what my mum’s like? My mum’s like, you never see us, you don’t want to hang out with us. And the thing is, is like my like, I’m so like, death is such a taboo subject, right? As in, like, we don’t talk about, we can always see our parents getting older and it’s a few little struggles. You know, me and my sister are like, dad looks a bit old. Do you know what I mean? He’s looking a bit more frail. He’s forgetting things a bit more, you know.

Yeah, same as what my me and my brothers are doing.

The thing is, it just. It is a really scary thing, but it’s also like a part of life, like we are going to lose our parents. And this is.

One thing I talk about with people of success and doing things as well. It’s like there’s only one inevitable thing that’s going to happen this one, we’re all going to die, right? So go do what the fuck you want to do anyway. Like, why are we stopping ourselves from thoughts of what other people think? Because like, go fucking do it like you want to start that business and all your friends think it’s crazy. Fuck it. If it doesn’t work, you’ve learnt something like go do it. And I’m saying that sometimes for myself because I need.

You to say it to me, Henry.

Yeah, like. And me and Rhona talk outside this podcast and she goes, me babe, sometimes I have imposter syndrome. And I’m like, what? You you’re a successful entrepreneur. You have this amazing parlour business, you have this amazing tooth business. Sorry. Dentistry business. You’ve got a podcast. You, in my eyes, are the most successful person I know. And then she’s like, Henry, I look at you and think, your content is amazing. This is amazing. How do you get imposter syndrome? And I’m like, I think we are the worst own thoughts.

But we also think people are thinking about us, you know.

Are we overexaggerate our own importance? There’s far too much.

There’s an amazing woman I found online. Her name’s Sarah, something, and she’s a woman that is in Dubai, and she talks about how she has dealt with stigmas all her life. She’s a divorced Middle Eastern woman with 27 tattoos that doesn’t cover up. And she was saying that, like people, especially in the Middle East. In culture like where I’m from, have always judged her for things. And then she said that she did like a massive detox because when she lost a lot of people being her authentic self, she lost a lot of people. She goes, but it felt so good because the people that stayed were the people that loved me for who I was authentically. Do you know what I mean? And then she goes on to say that, like, your brain is like tofu. Be careful what you marinate it in, because if you marinate it in shit like toxicity, it absorbs that, you know what I mean? It’s like a sponge, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think, like, you know, that that is the most important thing. But you’re right. We forget that we have one life. And over and over again, people on their deathbed, as you know, they get asked, what do you regret? You know, and the regret is always doing the things that they wanted to do that they didn’t.

Living for other people’s expectations. But, you know, you get you guys are a bit younger. You get to my age and you start to regret the things you didn’t try. Yeah. That definitely what?

Well, I’m already seeing it already in my.

Products or companies or whatever. It was. Many things we haven’t tried.

Yeah, I think it’s so true though, because I always look at it like this and it’s easier to say than it is to do. It’s like money will come and go, like just fucking spend it and give it your best shot on whatever you want, like, because you can go back and make money. That’s the Middle.

East in a way. By the way. My mom’s Lebanese. She spent she’s like, Alex, buy me the Chanel. We might die tomorrow. Which really justifies everything, you know, like everything. Because Lebanese, by the way, they grew up in war, like, their whole life. Like Payman knows it’s the most bougie country in the world. Yeah, a bomb will hit. They’re still clubbing because they’re like, you know, you’re like, Yalla, we might die. You know what you were saying?

There is like buying me that thing anyway. So I think there’s a lot of, again, ways to look at that. Like there’s two ways to look. Oh, the first thought is £1,000. That’s, you know, maybe I shouldn’t do it. But then the other thing is, if I wear that Chanel bag, my confidence is going to go through the roof. So will that confidence make you better at work? Maybe. Will it make you get that boyfriend, your girlfriend you really want? Maybe. Will it make you walk with confidence? Maybe. And I think confidence is so key in anything we do. We talked.

About that. We talked about exercise and confidence because people were saying that. We say, oh, you shouldn’t have aesthetic goals. But then if aesthetic goals make you more confident and the confidence brings you other things in life, is it.

Bad, do things bad. But I do think every everyone who starts in the gym probably has some sort of low level of confidence and the and they’ve got some sort of validation they want to have to have. And I think I do.

Anything at the beginning of anything. It’s very difficult. Yeah.

Maybe. Yeah I think I was like that as well. Probably I was a skinny lad at uni and wanted to get all the girls, so I started lifting weights.

So when you look back on the journey, what, what, what are the high points? What comes to mind when you think of like the moments where you can take real pleasure?

So was it was like when I first started this, I was like, one day I’m going to work with this brand and this brand. And the moment I started working with them, it was like, fair play. I’ve done what I said I was going to do this brand, was it what was All Saints? And quite cool because and Ralph Lauren and I was like, you know what, fair play. Because I’ve always wanted to have the email being like, oh, we invite you to this or you can wear our clothes. And it was like, I remember 18 years old, I bought a All Saints leather jacket, my mum bought me one for my birthday and I was like, mom, there’s a lot of money, £330. And now and I’m not saying this gloating or anything, but it’s like I can contact them and they’ll send me one. And it’s like great feeling. It’s like, you know, I worked for that. And people look at it.

And the thing you work for, that’s the thing, people.

Look at it straight away, go, oh, you got this easy. I’m like, mate, I did it exactly.

When people are like, you should get in the TV gig.

If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Yeah, it’s it’s the same people, right, who complain. Right. So there’s two types of people. There’s the person who has the wife, who has the two kids and still manages to work out. And there’s the other one who what you were saying, and there’s the other person who comments on everyone’s post, but you don’t have kids and it’s the person. But there’s still, I guarantee there’s someone out there still finding the time to get the work in and do X, Y, and Z, even if they’ve got kids in a job and everything. Exactly. It’s just what you prioritise and what you spend those other little minutes doing that could save you on other certain areas of your, of your, of your life.

So what does the future hold for you?

Yeah.

I think it’s a really good question because for me, the future. I’ve been doing content creation for a while now, and I’m seeing all the changes and things like that, and I almost feel like I want to pass the baton down to the younger generation in content creation. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to do it. I think it’s going to be a part of my brand and what I do to showcase things, but for me, I really want to get my own fashion brand. I’ve got an idea to implement, like running kind of wear in more of a fashion wear fashion aesthetic, not like Nike, like performance clothing, but cool aesthetic in the running kind of space and fitness space, but also fashion space as well for like holiday wear and stuff. So I’m working on some designs right now for my own fashion brand, and I really want that because I think it’s for me, it’s like I love creating content and stuff like that, but I really want to have something which is bigger than my name and grow a brand, and I can impact. Impact? Yeah. Like I can always if I see someone wear my jumper down the. Street or something. And they bought that. I’d be like, fuck yeah. Like, and I get that now. I get people messaging me online and it’s like, that’s.

A dream lots of people have had. Right. So but now that you’ve started that process, what are the things about that that surprised you or you weren’t aware of or I mean, for instance, just for the sake of the argument, you want to make that jacket? Yeah, you got to make that in seven sizes and four colours. Yeah. Suddenly you’re talking 28 SKUs of that jacket.

Totally. Well, so far what I’ve learned is like, start small. Like you can’t expect to have a jumper, a t shirt, a pair of trousers, a pair of shoes off the back of it. Right. You have to start small. And again it’s just consistency like we talked about earlier. It’s starting small and being consistent with it and learning along the way. There’s going to be mistakes. I’m not going to I know for a fact I’m just not going to be all plain sailing because like you said, everyone would have done it. So it’s just and if it doesn’t work, it’s okay.

But in specifically in fashion, what are some things you’re starting to learn?

Okay, so I’ve got a sample made the other day. Samples can come back really shit. And they’re also really expensive to make. You know I think they look really good. So I get this jumper and I’m like, not not what I thought. And that’s £130. And I could have bought a nice jumper for £130, which is. Yeah. So it’s things like that. Um, the, the logo, the, the branding, the, the name having meaning behind the name is really important. Like I could just slap. I don’t know, there must be a reason why you started. What was the reason for you starting in lightning and lightning smile. Is there a reason behind it? Is there a brand behind it?

Yeah, yeah, but but I mean, one thing that’s very interesting. When we try and make something, there’s two ways of going. One is you stick your name on something that exists. Yeah. And the other way is where you make something completely new. And making something completely new costs us maybe five times as much. Totally sticking our name on something. I think with.

Fashion, you don’t actually need to reinvent the wheel all the time, because if you look at fashion, what actually happens is it goes in circles, just it goes in cycles. Right. So certain trends right now will probably go in May, maybe stay like there’s always some things that are going to stay leather jackets, things like that. But there’s certain trends and styles which will go round in cycle. So it’s like understanding what’s big now and then. You never know. It could become big in ten years, but for teeth to making them whiter or something, maybe a complete like you said.

You want to do a t shirt or a shirt, let’s say. Yeah. And you’ve got a specific idea about the way you want the stitching on the on the shirt or something. Unless you unless someone makes that specifically for you. Yeah. You’re not going to get that right. So is that the way it is that that is ready to go. Things that you can stick your name on got you or there’s like, you know, cutting new shapes and is that is that how it works? Well essentially.

Yeah. Like the manufacturer I’m speaking to at the moment. I said to him, listen, I want this, this, this. And he’s like, yeah, we can do that. So there’s just certain certain things people can do. If they can’t do it, then you find someone who can. Yeah, yeah. And it may take a long time to find someone who can. The thing which is really tough with any business, I think, is let’s take content creation for an example. You want to get better at photography, but to learn it. I learnt a lot of mine off YouTube. But what do you type into YouTube if you don’t have a clue about the terminology? Yeah. So there’s things on a camera which is ISO, aperture and things like that. But if you had no idea what aperture was, how could you say, make my photo look cleaner in YouTube? And then you get all these videos. It’s the same as like starting a clothing business. What is the word for this? Like, do you know what you need? Almost a dictionary of your words and everything. But it’s also about dentistry as well.

It’s about starting like Paula was the most like difficult thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. Because also like with dentistry, like I so had like a clear idea. And then I went on courses and then I invested. But like with business, especially a Start-Up like know it’s all it’s it’s all this new terminology and you kind of learn like on the go. And like recently I learnt all this stuff about business, like, you know, like shares, articles of association. Do you know what I mean? I had no flipping clue at that.

Richard Branson started a business and he made it to the top. And he still doesn’t know the.

Difference between Net and.

Gross. So do you know what? If you if you’re here and you make that, you’ll be all right.

Yeah, I think I think one of the big things like that Henry has brought today, like a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of great tips. But you know what you’ve shown a lot of people just start and also have the like, have the vision in mind, because I know that when he was that guy at Fitness First that didn’t have like he wasn’t going to be one of the biggest, like, content creators in the world. He just knew he wanted to do it. So you have to start somewhere.

So as I said earlier, self-belief is so important and we’re always going to feel something every day. We’re going to feel like, oh, we don’t deserve to be here. But if you can control your mind and just stay in that zone, you’ll you’ll get there. And that’s what I got. Mind over feelings tattooed on my under my bicep here first ever one. I love it because I think we feel something all the time. But if you can say to your mind. Your mind. You can do anything.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Henry. It’s honestly amazing.

I really.

Really, really.

Enjoyed that chat.

With you both. And yeah. And, like, probably have to bring you in for like, part two. Let’s do.

It. I’d love that. Thank you very much. Amazing. Thank you.

Lovely to chat to you both.

Thank you.

There’s always new techniques, there’s always new materials. So the way that I plan a case now is different to how I was kind of planning it two years before. I keep seeing changes in the way I speak to people. I keep changing my my consent forms, and I’ve got this 20 years of experience now that I endorse change. I’m not I’m not scared of change. The only limitation is that being an associate, I don’t have a full freedom to kind of open my wings and do whatever I would like. Because if there’s another five people like me, I cannot just be a like a wild card and do whatever I want. But just look for your mistakes, keep training and those change. That’s my message.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr.. Kostas Karagiannopoulos. Dr.. I know that’s what they call you cause there’s your your students love you. Kostas is a prosthodontist who splits his time between private practice in Chelmsford and Saint Albans, and also a consultant at King’s. He’s also part of the famous wonderful Biotinylation group, which I’ve had a lot of lot to do with at its inception. And he’s one of the guys who, when you talk to his students, everyone just loves this teacher. Someone who’s super passionate about his work. And lately he’s gotten into injection moulding of composite injection moulding for all sorts of different cases, both aesthetic and functional cases. Real pleasure to have you. Costas, how are you?

It’s great to join you guys. Thanks for having me. It’s, uh. We’re going to have a good chat and share some opinions. I had a long, clinical day today, but I’m really happy and excited to to to meet up with both of you. I’ve met you on separate occasions, and now it’s. It’s great to be here tonight.

Welcome, Costas. Think what was quite interesting was how we met, because we were both speaking at the same event, and there was a bunch of names that were on this roster of people I was speaking alongside, and Typekit was one of them, so I clearly knew who he was. Then there was you, and I’d never come across you, Costas. And that doesn’t mean a lot, but but then, obviously, I saw you speak, and I’m no clinician, right. So I’m not a judge of clinical work, but I can I can appreciate beautiful teeth and beautiful photography on slides. And I saw that and a very charismatic teacher and then and then pay as you know, I always go to my clinical guy or my point of reference. And I went to pay and I said, so this, this guy’s stuff, is it good? And payments like good. It’s fucking amazing. Prav this, this is the best shit. Right. And so so then I go to Tiff for, for a second, second opinion. Right. And it’s like, this stuff’s amazing. Like, well, why have I heard about all these other injection moulding guys and never heard of this guy, right. You know, I see that as I know you teach and run your own courses. Costas. And I see this as you know, I see this a lot that people who are either really very, very good at what they do and amazing at what they deliver. Not many people have heard of them. Right. And as a marketeer, I find that really, really interesting, really interesting because it’s it’s very, very easy to market something that’s absolutely amazing and harder to to market stuff that’s less so. Right. I guess before we get into your backstory, every Tom, Dick and Harry is doing injection moulding now, right? What’s what’s the deal with that and what’s your point of difference if you don’t mind me putting you on the spot?

Yeah. Good question. It’s it’s something that I get asked a lot because being a registered prosthodontist, it doesn’t automatically go hand in hand with these technique of fully guided composites or copy paste composites. So, um, it started about six years ago. Um, and I got an interest about this through my teaching position at King’s, where I look after the training specialists, and we were struggling to get a predictable result, and it was kind of down to to Bob the builder techniques. And there’s nothing wrong with freehand. It works. Whereas I wanted all my students to, to to put a lot of planning and engineering and architectural work. So I had to kind of think of there’s got to be a way to, to do similar fully guided stuff in the world of composites, similar to implants and ceramics. And I’ve been experimenting and toying with all sorts of techniques. I’ve made every single mistake that there is to make in this technique. And I’d like to consider myself, let’s say, a pioneer, a leader in this technique in this country, although I kind of do a very good job of keeping it a little bit of a secret about. How well I know this technique. So what kind of also gave me the label of the injection moulding guy? Although I tried to get this label off my of my forehead is some webinars that we did withdrew from dentinal tubules of Covid. And after I did that webinar, I got asked a million questions and I got invites for for this and that. And now I’ve ended up having trained about 6700 dentists in Europe and the UK. It’s a very popular technique. It’s a catchy technique. Call it out of laziness, call it out of predictability and consistency. But it has actually transformed my dentistry and it has changed many people’s dentistry.

Of course, that’s one of the sort of indications and limitations when it comes to, you know, whether you’re going to do it with composite or has a prosthodontist. Obviously, traditionally people do it with indirect. What can you tell us about that? Because, you know, the technique hasn’t been around very long.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And the materials, the, the by its very nature, the materials have to be sort of flowable or, you know, heated up to become flowable or whatever. Flowable what are the indications were the limitations.

But before I answer, I’ll tell you something that a patient told me this morning. Um, he he had some worn down teeth. He was in his 30s, and he, he kind of did some research that, hey, we can use some composite bondings which are like, say, additive and high maintenance, and they’re going to last about five years, or I’m going to take a little bit of a hit financially, and I’m going to take a little bit of a hit biologically by having my teeth shaved down to some extent and go for porcelain veneers. And I was kind of pushing him a little bit towards the former that, hey, listen buddy, you’re very young. I wouldn’t want to have my teeth shaved down. So I was pushing him for the, let’s say, cheaper option and he was telling me, listen, don’t you want to make triple or quadruple the money from me? I said, I would love to, but I’ve got my kind of ethics, and I’d like to recommend what I would do for my brother. So I’m a little bit biased towards this technique. I love ceramics, I do a lot of ceramics, but I want to give them a chance. So to to answer your question, the main kind of three indications is tooth wear, the worn dentition, um, whether that is erosion from acids, whether that’s kind of attrition or a combination.

The second indication is the kind of the makeovers, the people who come and say, hey, I want composite bondings. And I don’t know where these people where 15 years ago, but now they’re just banging on our door asking for composite bondings. And the third indication is actually as transitional to ceramics as long term temporaries. The technique has been around for, let’s say, 20 years. There was a guy in Alabama, there is a guy, he’s still around, Douglas Terry, who came about with this technique. But the recent advances in material technology have made it a little bit different. So the one of the main questions I get asked is like, hey, how dare you go ahead and put this week kind of Mickey Mouse composite on the incisal edges of your patients. So do I have the published evidence to to to answer back? I don’t all I have is my own experience of five years and several lab studies, some of which have done myself. So this kind of weak flowable is not a weak flowable. It’s performs as well as standard composite paste. Hence, I kind of believe in the benefits of having it flowable because it adapts, but there is no solid evidence. Limitations is the classic things that composites have chipping and discolouration. So average longevity that I give to patients is about five years.

Yeah. But but the limitations of the technique as opposed to the limitations of composite. Oh there are things you can’t do. Oh yes.

That’s what you meant. Well, the things that are not kind of best indications for this technique is like black triangles. You never really going to get a good result with. Technique. Diastema closures are probably better off done with curved matrices and anatomical matrices, and also what most GDPs do up and down the country, which is some form of a line bleach and bonds, where you have to add little corners and small edge bondings, if you will. So this technique is not for small additions, is for big comprehensive plans rather than tiny little corners and additions. These are better off than freehand because you said.

The new materials are the new variables are stronger than they used to be, and I guess they’re more highly filled than they used to be. But what makes the thing flowable if it’s more highly filled than a non flowable and stronger than a non flowable, what? How can it be a flowable?

Yeah, it’s I mean traditionally the floorboards, they had very low filler contents, about 40, 50%. The one that I. Where are you now.

With, with your material 70s. Where are you.

What do you mean where am I? Which brand?

The material that you’re using. Well, you’re using the.

Yeah. My preference is, is the material that kind of dominates this injection moulding technique. It’s called genial universal injectable.

It’s what’s the filler filler.

That’s it’s 6,969%. But it’s not only that. It also has a kind of a silent technology where there’s no big particles and small particles. So so it has a very good ability to to have a gloss retention over time. I haven’t really seen any other material other than the, the, the, the enamel micro that can, can maintain a gloss over time. And the Japanese kind of dominate that market because the main materials are coming from Kuraray, Shofu and JC and I mean, I just finished a lab study at the Eastman where we compared a composite paste, probably the most popular composite paste in the country, and we compared flexural strength and wear, and it came significantly lower than that of the of the JCS injectable. So the material science is there. The material science is there. All that’s lacking is the clinical performance study, which I wish I had the time to do, but I’m struggling for time. If anyone wants to help me, I’d be delighted to to run a study with them.

So but what do you tell patients about longevity then? You say five years.

I tell them exactly what I tell everyone that has composite bondings. I mean, patients are not statisticians. Okay? So the minute you tell somebody that, listen, the average longevity is five years, the way they perceive it is how I would perceive it. If I’m buying a fridge from John Lewis that, hey, I’m going to get a free remake up to the very last day of that five year period. So I go to the extra step and I tell them that, listen, things are going to chip and these repairs are payable, but the frequency and the severity of these chippings means that at about 5 to 7 years, we’re going to need to go for a round two. So I’ve got a very long comprehensive consent form, because what the restorative dentist hates to do is free remakes. It’s a it’s an utter failure. So so people need to know what the rainfall. And as my mentor Frank Speer told me that, hey, would you like your cardiologist to hide anything from you? So I let people know that, hey, we’re not going to shave your teeth. We’re just going to add. But this is not for life.

Must. Let’s go through the process because, you know, obviously we looked at this a lot and I’m sure you went through down a lot of rabbit holes and dead ends and you know, any, any, any sort of development processes like that. And when we looked at it, the number one, the issue with the flow tables, but now you’re telling me you’re happy with the strength and where is the sense of the flow? But the problem that we couldn’t really get over was clean up always with injection and compression. Moulding with clean up was always a big issue. And the sort of air infusion. And as you inject air inclusion, not necessarily by, you know, the teacher but the delegate, you know, that you need to be, I don’t know. We found it very difficult not to include air when we were injecting. You must have had an we gave up right at that point. But you must have had several other hassles and things that you’ve worked through. What I’m trying to go with the question is, you know, being at the tip of something where you’re developing stuff, often you’re making sort of your best guess as to what the right thing to do is of making mistakes and so forth. And it’s in a way, it’s your responsibility as someone at your level. It’s your responsibility to to move things forward. But what how much of that do you share with the patient?

It’s I’ll come back to the patient. Yes. The technique has let’s say the frustration of the delegates is, is the, the cleanup as well as bubble formation. So what I’ve done internally. Yeah. If anything you might get a void subsurface, which in my case happens in about 1 in 15 teeth. So I have different ways to minimise it. We have researched and tried extensively different stents and different vents in order to, to, to start injecting and how you’re going to place your tapes and where you’re going to start, where you’re going to complete. So we teach on our courses several ways to minimise the voids, but you cannot eliminate them. So remember one of my profs at at King’s was was kind of telling me that, listen, injection moulding is great when when you come up with with zero flush then come and speak to me. But but then again when, when any piece of plastic is kind of made with injection moulding, there is always flush. And that is then kind of trimmed up. So the benefit that I have over heated composite paste is that my kind of cleanup is going to be much easier compared to heated paste, because the stent is going to be the stent is going to be the boss. So I’m taking, let’s say, a little bit of a hit by using a weaker composite on the name of rigidity and replication. As far as the voids, yeah. 1 in 15 is going to happen. I look for them, I inspect the restoration, I deal with it. I kind of open it up and repair it on the day using certain lights, but it’s a case of minimising it.

Now as far as the patient is concerned, what patients love about this technique is, is the power of the of the mock up, the test drive, the try before you buy. And I was kind of in in Germany last week and I was telling the delegates that the two best things that I’m at both teaching and executing is the mock up process and temporary crowns, two things that have nothing to do with the final treatment outcome of the patient. So when you kind of want to buy something, you like to try it out, okay, it’s not a free test drive. I charge for this mock ups and the the replication of the design is, in my opinion, much better than using heated composite paste. Why? Because composite paste cools down very quickly, very quickly, and distorts the stent. You’re going to have plenty of excess and you need burrs and disks. I never use any burrs in order to clean up my composites. If I pick up a diamond, that’s an utter failure. So the process kind of almost excites the patient because they they get it that, hey, it’s going to be a copy paste. And I’m not I’m not going to deviate from what I showed them. And that avoids misunderstandings. And when I want to do a little Instagram video to show how excited the patient is, it’s all kind of pretence because the patient knows. From two weeks before exactly what they’re going to get. So so I take a little bit of a hit on the, on the, on the strength of the material in order to win on the predictability.

And I guess you’ve played around with lots of different materials for the stent itself.

Absolutely. The current one that makes a.

Big difference, right?

Oh yes. Listen, the the, um, I don’t hide from the fact that my dental technicians, they make me look super cool because I recreate anatomy that I would struggle to, to create myself. And all I have to do is not make a mistake. So the key to this technique is excellent communication with the lab. You need the top, top, top level of designing. As far as the stent itself is concerned, we now call it the cross the work stent because we’ve spent five years of mistakes of how to, to, to to kind of not to make it. And we have kind of cracked the code. And the way we make our silicone stents now is just awesome. What I also did with my partner Zo from Prostate Works recently because because the emphasis and the onus for this technique is on the designing is is we are designing smiles for dentists. So we are providing a CAD service for, from from prosthodontist to, to dentists.

Oh, sorry. Perhaps ready to geek out, man, but I’ve got.

Look, I’ve got a.

Couple of talks.

I’ve got a couple of questions. Right. Which may seem a little bit too simple. Um, but to be honest, maybe they’re not.

I’m not finished.

You’re not finished yet?

Go on, crack on. Crack on me. Go ahead, go ahead.

So, listen, I spend a lot of my time talking to GP’s, right? And when they come to me for marketing advice, I start quizzing them on their post-graduate education and training they’ve got. And because I’ve got a mark on them. Right. So. So I was asking, you know, if a dentist comes to me and says, hey, I need some implants through the door, I’d say, all right, you need some implants. Tell me about your clinical skills. Are you doing ones and twos? Are you doing full arch? Do you do immediate load, do you do sinus lift, blah blah blah blah. On the composite side of things, what do you know what I mean? Like where do you sit. Yeah. And what training have you done? And all of that’s really important to me as a marketer, because then it helps me to articulate or communicate them in the right way. Right? So in the same respect, I’m sat here now thinking. How the hell do I communicate? The difference between cost us five years of mistakes across the extent. Yeah, to another one. And look, wherever you look on Facebook now, somebody has got an injection moulding course here and an injection moulding course there. And someone else is running this, that and the other. Right. And you’re talking about flash and cleanup and blah blah blah and this, that and the other. Right. What’s the difference? What what is the difference? Like like Costas is telling me his technician makes him look amazing because he recreates anatomy in a way that maybe he couldn’t before. Right. And in my mind, from a simple point of view, what you do is you take a piece of plastic, chuck it in the mouth, get a syringe, throw it in, pull it off, and you’ve got teeth. Yeah, yeah. That’s right.

So some of them, some of them look better. Some of them look better. Some of them are easier to clean up. Some of them are harder to clean up. But you know, I mean, Costas, you’ll know. You’ll know better than all of us how many different ways people are doing it. What I what I understand is there’s this sort of the smile fast way, which is the all the teeth, together with a metal separator unit in it. And then there’s Robbie the way he does it, which is the alternate teeth, which is, I guess, your, your technique as well, alternate teeth, but using normal paste. And then there’s your one which is with flowable. But but from my understanding it’s the aesthetics, the way that the flowable and the stent interact means that you can get more detail, secondary anatomy wise, for the sake of the argument with Costas. Is that right or no.

It is right kind of answer, perhaps. Point. Firstly, we had approached the works. We we hit hard on the quality of the designing, in other words, the communication with the dental technician. So one limitation of training for the last couple of years is that we were training clinicians how to implement the technique, but then it was down to these GP’s to find the right support, the right technician who’s going to speak the same language. And that was a bit of a barrier, because if you have average records, you’re going to get an average design, you’re going to get an average mock-up. This technique has zero capability of improving. The best it can do is replicate. So what differentiates us from, let’s say, our competitors is the extent at which we go to of sending very comprehensive prescriptions, a series of photographs and digital kind of superimposing, which is going to be facially driven in order to customise each and every case rather than having signature. Kind of small, though, that looks like a post-work smile, the way ceramics might look like Luke Barnett ceramics or whatever. So it’s down to to to this bespoke extent. Please repeat your point Payman because I forgot it. I just focussed on perhaps.

Prav ask the question and then I said I think it’s to do with, it’s to do with the way that the material and the technique interacts with the with the stent. So the way it looks is one thing. And then the clean up question, which is the big issue with all of injection moulding, seems to be a bit better with you.

Yeah. It is. Um, again, it was about a month ago. I was in Belgium and a couple of the delegates did a couple of injectables on a type of don’t on the plastic model. And the way that the material came out, it required zero polishing. It was super, super shiny. So they asked me, I’ve been doing composites for 20 years and my composites have never been shiny upon setting the light. So I asked them what was it that polished it? And I can tell you it’s not the material, because if you just use it freehand, it looks matte. Okay. So what it is that polish is it? It’s the super glossy silicone stents. And that is a replica of the super glossy wax up. So the shiny righties, we actually put it on a, on a lathe like a denture in order to, to get a model, which is giving your reflection almost so that you need minimal human touch.

And just like, just like a mylar strip, right? When you put a mylar strip on composite, take it off and it’s super polished.

Absolutely similar to the bio clear injection moulding, because it’s going to be that’s going to hardly need any polishing. So these are things that keep evolving. We keep finding out about new like spinoffs and branches as well as. New indications for this technique? Yeah.

Do you prefer wax up wax ups or digital, or have you taken it fully digital.

For five years? My preference was what I call a hybrid technique of having a printed model, basically of a scan, but physical wax on the printed model. So it was combining the best of both worlds in order to get outstanding anatomy, which required a master ceramist, if you will. But in the last six months or so, the advances of digital libraries are such that we can the anatomy and the the morphology that you can get digitally is par with the one that you can get analogue. So all the cases that we now design are on a exocad the dental software. And we’ve gone fully digital indeed.

Oh, really? Excellent. So is it to do with the resolution of the of the sort of print? Is that what.

The. That is a good point. Typically, as all dentists would have seen printed models, they have these annoying lines on them. The printing lines. Um, so it’s not a true representation of somebody’s teeth. So we have a few ways to, to bypass that and get a model which has zero printing lines. It has to do with the resolution. It has to do with a little bit of manual finishing of the model. And as I said, it’s been five years of painful mistakes where now what we do digitally is as good as we would have done it manually in analogue, but it took five years of of painful mistakes.

Prav. Sorry to keep going. I still don’t.

Think my question’s been. I still don’t think my my question’s been answered.

It looks better from the patient perspective. It looks better.

So you guys said you guys said to me this, right? It’s about how it looks. It’s about the cleanup. Yeah. And the technique or whatever. Right. Alternate to this, that and the other. So I want to know in one sentence. Right. If we take cost as injection moulding we take Robby’s and we take smart. Right. So which one looks the best. Which one’s got the least cleanup and what’s the technique or am I asking a controversial question here?

It’s too controversial for cost.

I you you know, you you know, you both you both don’t know me that well, but you you would have guessed by now that I’m not going to give a direct answer because it’s it’s it’s disrespect to colleagues. If I said mine is better, but all we do is we go to extreme lengths to customise that functional result in aesthetic for that specific patient. So we we do not have, let’s say kind of a signature design. One fits all. And I’m not suggesting this is what my competitors do but but it’s what we do a very high level. And patients will appreciate that because they get to see this on the trial appointment on the, on the on the mock up appointment. And they get involved and it’s about making a bespoke result and a customised result.

I think I have the answer to my question, but I’ve got a follow up question, which is this to deliver this superior end result, does it take more time? Because what I hear marketed about injection moulding is it saves time, right. So now what we’ve got is maybe a copy paste model, and then we’ve got a copy paste model with a layer of bespoke ness over the top, where actually you don’t just have a library and say, we choose this, but but us goes to a to another level in terms of design or whatever, right? That’s what I’m understanding. But does that mean it takes a lot longer to implement in the patient’s mouth as a result of that, or is it a similar time frame?

Very good question. And you’re right. Whatever time you save clinically on the day of execution, because if you do a freehand composite makeover for eight teeth, it might take four hours easily. If you do this, let’s say in the injectable technique, you’re not going to save a lot of time. You’re not going to save a lot of time. It still takes me a good three hours. So what I don’t sell to is, is fast results. What I don’t sell to GDP is the ability to do multiple of these cases. My eyes are completely burned out. I only do one case a day maximum and yes to to. Whatever time you save on the execution is actually spent, not chairside, but on the communication with the lab. So it’s done, let’s say in the evening when you’re sending a very comprehensive prescription to your lab technician. If we receive a wax up prescription, say wax up 3 to 3 with nothing else, we just reject it. So so when we were sending it out to our own labs, it’s like an A4 page with multiple pictures. So a lot of time is invested in the planning. Speaking to your architect about how you want your house and you save some time. Chairside. So dentists love saving chairside time, but there’s a bit more admin time, if you will.

I think the other thing, you know, you talked about the indications and we seem to be focusing on the small make-over indication, but what’s particularly interesting to me is the tooth wear indication becomes a bit more about that because I mean, if it’s erosive, is it different if it’s efficient?

Just to add one more point to, to to to perhaps point before I go into the tooth wear. So just to add one more benefit, is that on a Monday morning, if I get to do some freehand composites and I’m not now comparing to to other injectable techniques, I’m comparing it to freehand. If I if I do it freehand, I’m in a good mood. I didn’t argue with my wife. I might smash the result and it’s going to look stunning. But on a Wednesday afternoon I would have got a text from my wife giving me whatever. A list of things to do or something, and I’m a little bit off. So my composite’s on the Wednesday afternoon are going to look wrong. There’s not going to be consistency. So the injection moulding technique eliminates that element of consistency not eliminates eliminates the mistakes and the lack of consistency. Um so you know what you’re going to get.

You’ve said it. You’ve said it in a very elegant way there, Costas. But but really, the point is, someone like you can do it and do it much better than someone who’s not as experienced. Well, listen. Whereas with whereas with, with injection moulding we really do reduce that variability a lot.

Yes. It’s you can still make mistakes, but you know exactly what you’re going to get from from two weeks before. So it’s it’s not quite a slam dunk, but it’s, it’s pretty close to a slam dunk with a little bit of experience and some training. It requires training this technique, you can’t just go ahead and do it on a Monday morning. It gives you consistency from Monday to Friday. Now to go on to the the tooth wear. It’s it’s a disease let’s say which is much more prevalent. We see it more and more in younger people who have, let’s say a healthy diet and more acidic elements in the diet and more reflux and, and even more eating disorders. So what we know from the tooth wear research is being additive and minimalistic, and small biologic costs is always preferred. So injection moulding and the wound dentition, they just kind of met on a on a on a on a on a Friday night in a bar. And they’re kind of inseparable. So so I don’t know what happened later on that evening. But but the main indication for me is indeed the wound dentition, because that’s the referrals that I get from GP’s and blessed them. A young, inexperienced general dentist, when they see somebody with moderate severe where they don’t even open up the discussion. Why? Because they haven’t really got something tangible to offer. So so they either stay quiet and kind of whistle away, or they kind of send the patient to, to, to a specialist. So you got to change the occlusion. Usually you got to be comprehensive. You got to do extensive number of teeth. And that is a conversation which is very comfortable for me. So I see that longevity and performance of injectable composites for tooth wear perform extremely well. I did cases five six years ago, and the patients are massively thanking me for giving them a lifeline and preventing having to cut their teeth for for crowns and veneers.

Would you say that’s only by referral to a specialist? Or would you say GDP can pull it off as well?

Oh no. Absolutely. Listen, the we set up the injection moulding course, which is a one day course to learn the A to Z of injection moulding and all the questions we were getting, all the questions had to do with tooth wear, palatal erosion, incisal kind of grinding. So a year into prosperworks we had to come up with with a tooth wear course, which is a two day prosthodontic course. And what we tell people is that this is something everyone can do. I would love you to all refer to the specialists, but you don’t need to. It’s something very simple. We go through the chronological journey of a patient in that course, and we promote Glps to actually take on more challenging cases. And the ones that have kind of grasped on the idea, it’s kind of life changing for them because they’re super confident about carrying on complex dentistry that otherwise would need an MSC, if you will. So this is not a specialist territory. I’m never going to protect the the specialists for the management of tooth wear, okay. If it’s massively severe and is missing teeth and there’s TMD, then you probably it might be beyond your leak. But the 90% of the tooth wears are kind of localised, moderate and should be done at primary care level 100%.

What about cost wise cost us? What do you charge compared to.

I’m not cheap, man.

Good.

You you remember I was saying earlier that I spend a lot of time on the designing and the the, the. The discussion with the lab. So. So that is reflected on the course. You want me to give you an exact number now for for for per tooth. Exactly.

Ballpark.

Well, I can give you an exact number. It’s it’s fine. It’s £550 per tooth. Which, which is not cheap. Okay, but I raise value in this through the process of a mock up, through detailed discussion of the patient being involved in exactly what thereafter. And on the maintenance aspect that. Listen, after we do this, we’re kind of dentally married and you pay me quite a bit of money. Now, everything for one year is guaranteed. Let’s say any repairs are free of charge, but thereafter you have to have an annual maintenance budget. Ceramics are going to be about three times as much. But then again, I’m a little bit biased. Let’s say being a specialist, I might be charging more than the average GDP, so ceramics are going to be at 1500.

Same price on a Monday or a Wednesday.

Absolutely. The only difference is that if I’m doing if you’re okay, you’re joking. And I’m answering seriously, but, but, but but if I’m doing a single teeth at the front, I’m going to be charging more. But, uh, it’s going to be the same on a Monday and a Wednesday. I just want to be consistent. I’ve kind of streamlined the process, and it’s a three step process for the patients. Records mock up execution.

Contact before. Move on to see Prav just itching to get away from this subject because I promised him this podcast wouldn’t be this this way. Listen.

Listen, listen. I’ve been itching to get the injection moulding label off my forehead. And when we’re not, we’re not doing very well here.

But when said, when I say this podcast, I don’t mean this one. I mean the whole podcast. We were supposed to discuss people’s lives instead of teeth, but because I’m geeking out one last final, final question. Do you ever do a layered approach? Do you do a cut back or something?

Oh, absolutely. We’re planning a hands on course in April. I’m bringing a world class clinician from France. We teach layering, but I’m I’m bringing somebody who’s better than me. He’s a guy from France who looks about 15 years old, and he’s amazing at layering. And Celine Higton, my partner in crime with bad emulation. She’s going to join on the day and do something on Rubber Dam. So on a toothpick course. We teach layering in terms of dentine, internal fingers and adding some effects, and then just injecting the facial enamel so that you don’t need the skills of anatomy. So it’s a hybrid technique of whatever we’ve been doing for the last 30 years with palatal silicone case and adding the dentine, but just the very final layer. Instead of going straight, you take a sneaky left and you inject. So this has a lot of future and I don’t want to present this that hey guys, I want you to hold this skill and forget about going to D.D.S. or to Mini Smile Makeover or whatever in order to get the freehand skills. I want people to learn this, but it’s just an auxiliary supplementary technique.

What about cutback? Do you ever cut back and then put another layer of effects or something.

It’s it’s typically we’re going to do it in such a way that we we measure the layers and we just inject. I tried to lay the cutback some three years ago and it was a hassle. It was messy. Plus it wasn’t consistent between teeth, so I gave up on it.

Point. Good point. Let’s move on. Where were you born, buddy? Where were you born?

I was born in Athens. And when was that? 1977. I’m 46. I left exotic Greece in 95, and I moved to something more exotic in Whitechapel to study dentistry in the East End, and I was just telling my dad the other day that I’ve left Greece for 28 years, so it’s a lifetime. I’m never going to go back. But in the summer, Greece is the only place to be, at least for for European standards, because we’re we’re better than Italy and Spain and and Turkey. So I’m as Greek as it gets. Yeah, fine. Fine. Seems fair enough.

Yeah. So you did your undergrad in London Hospital. So you specifically, why didn’t you study in Greece? What was what was the story there?

The the story was that kind of the Greek system required you to memorise a 500 page book and replicate it? There was no kind of critical thinking of any sort. And my older brother had a bit of a bad experience. So so, I mean, I didn’t have an initiative when I was 15, but my dad said, listen, I have a little bit of a background from the UK, so I prepared for the A-levels in Athens. I sat the the A-level exams on the same day as, as all my kind of British peers and surprisingly, I passed. I turned up for some interviews and I don’t know why I chose the Royal London. It was an experience to to be over there before it was massively invested, so it was a bit of a shithole in the late 90s, the university, the university in Whitechapel, now they’ve kind of spent much more money and specialist training. I did it at King’s and the minute I finished I started teaching, which I did for 15 years, and only last week I quit King’s College London, and that’s me done with teaching in a university.

That was, that was that was a run fast, fast run through of your career.

It was it was a little bit.

But tell me, what were you like, were you always very good a no.

No no no absolutely they, they but back in the third year, I remember my dad received a letter that, hey, your son is expelled from the school because of lack of attendance. So, so, so he as a typical Greek dad, he came over here to take control in his hands. And we made an appeal. And we collected all the evidence that I had of attendance. So they let me repeat the year. But then they really pissed me off. And when I get pissed off, I kind of react. So I finished with kind of distinction in the end, but I was super average on the first three years, super average.

And what was the reason for your lack of attendance? Were you partying too hard or.

Oh yeah, partying non-stop. Really? Well, listen, if you leave your family home from a different country and you go into halls of residence where there’s no mum and dad around and Greek, Greek mums and dads, they they just support you financially. You see, there was no student loan or anything for me. I was kind of privileged, let’s say. So I was just partying for three years until they kicked me out. And then I said, okay, now I’ve got to study.

And was the plan always to be a specialist or did that happen? Sort of. The thoughts happen later. I know in Greece there’s a lot of specialists like, you know, the way people think, my Greek friends, every time there’s anything wrong with them, they don’t go to the doctor, they go find a specialist.

It’s yeah, mean in Greece, there’s lots of students, full stop. They all like to study something until they’re 45 years old. But pros came out of frustration from dental school because back at the London it’s now called Queen Mary’s restorative dentistry was very poorly taught, so we didn’t have any decent teachers. And out of frustration that, hey, I don’t get it, I don’t get it. It’s like, how does this fit and how things work? So I said, I’ve got to do a specialist training to understand the subject. Mind you, when I finished the specialist training at King’s, I realised that I know nothing. So I went to several courses in the States to actually learn the business from Frank Spear and Pascal Magnier and and D’ardeche in Geneva. So they were my mentors.

What’s your advice then? When a young guy comes up to you now and says, hey, I want to get really good at fixing problems. Is your advice to follow the path you followed? Or would you say go straight to the spear thing?

No. I tell them to to invest quite a bit of money on a continuum of education through, let’s say, spear education or equivalence rather than the the official specialist training. I know how this is taught in this country if they do want to become specialists. And I’m sorry this if any of my hundreds old trainees are listening to this, I would suggest to actually do the specialist training in a different country. Geneva, like Switzerland or the US. It’s it’s tied up too much to the NHS and it’s not focusing purely on education. So you don’t get value for money by overseas students. They pay £55,000 a year, bless them. And this is the reason why I quit, because we don’t align anymore and I’m all about education. I want to give, give, give. But the trust has its own agenda. Bless them. And they are focusing on numbers.

Yeah I mean look the NHS has been, you know, in Britain they think of it and have like a love hate relationship with the NHS. Right. Because you think like oh it’s there for if you have an emergency medically. But in dentistry I feel like they’ve finally achieved the goal that, you know, the conspiracy theorists used to think they want us to dump it. You know, that’s kind of the way it feels to me. Yeah.

I mean, what I tell young colleagues is, is collect some money, go to the people that inspire you. I mean, I got inspiration from a lecture from Frank spear, who was talking about failure, and I said, wow, if that guy is talking about failure like this, I want to see him talk about success as well. So I spent some, I don’t know, £25,000 on courses in the US. Um, and that’s what I suggest. People, thankfully in the UK is blessed with a plethora of private Dental education. So so mind you, I did most of mine abroad at source rather than through the British Messenger. Um, so I’m a little bit biased.

So I mean, when you say that though, do you not also end up putting yourself as one of those messengers? Are you a messenger?

No, I was about to say. I was about to say I’m I’m the injectable guy at source, so I’m, uh. I’m, uh, I don’t know, I’ve got so much experience with this technique that that I don’t think anybody in this country, the sphere that I’d like to to say so. Yes, in my modest kind of mood. But, um, I’d agree with that. Yeah. I have been a messenger for my mentors, and the simulation group is basically disciples and messengers of the, of the, of the messages of Pascal, Magna and biomimetic dentistry. And I’m leading that team for the UK. Indeed. So but this injectable technique me and so we are kind of spearheading it in the UK.

To date through the population, groups of people who don’t know about it. Because I was a little bit I was completely seduced by it back in the day. And I went I went to a conference in Berlin that it was it was a big event in Berlin back in the day, whenever that was like ten years ago, 15 years ago. And it was the best presentations I’ve ever seen, one after the other. It was it was a crazy thing. I mean, first of all, the AV was just the most extraordinary AV I’ve ever seen in a Dental setting. And then the presentations that Ed McLaren and Panos Basel’s where does it come to now? I haven’t been following it.

Well, it’s it’s formulation is a group of dentists. Let’s say it’s got about 100 members all connected by the drive to preserve dental tissues and avoid aggressive dentistry. And we share kind of ideas and protocols. My contribution is the is the Mickey Mouse injectable technique. And we just came back from a symposium in Bulgaria. There were 500 people and indeed there was 12 presentations, one better after another. What we’re actually planning for the end of next year, we haven’t announced it yet. And probably when this podcast goes live, it’s not going to be common knowledge. But we are planning a London symposium for end of 24, and we’re bringing the creme de la creme of bisimulation to run an international meeting in a very international town in London. And all I have to do is organise it, and I have no clue how to do that. But it’s going to be about education is not going to be about any other kind of agendas. It’s not an academy, it’s not a profit making kind of organisation. And it’s not even, let’s say, a clique or anything. We’re going to open up a pathway for people to enter by simulation through an educational diploma, an educational program. So we’re planning lots of things for the UK with the rest of the team, which is Govinda birth, Celine Higton Zoagli and Claire O’Connor from Ireland. Nice.

Keep me informed, buddy. That sounds so, so exciting. Seven tell. But you did your training at King’s. You could do any private, any practice. General practice at all in the middle of these things. Did you do the NHS? Did you work in the NHS for any period of time?

I did, I did up to the point where the UDR kicked in and I think it was 2004, which is when I started my specialist training and straight after finishing it, I walked for about 15 years in Richmond in, in, in a very good quality private practice, and I was kind of doing GDP work, although I was kind of a specialist. But then at some point I said, listen, I can’t really hide the fact that I’m a specialist anymore. Prav is going to laugh because I’m a pretty good at hiding things. And I started going for specialist jobs and then the training opportunities came. So I’ve been through the item. I’ve been through the NHS, dentistry in hospital. I’ve been through a good private practice of doing kind of GDP work, but now I’m purely limited to to prosthodontics, which is not better, it’s just limited. And I work in two specialist clinics around London, and I’m planning to to move to, to the west and sometime in the new year. Oh, nice. What’s the extent.

Of your work? Do you do implants as well?

Yeah. I mean if anything the, the, the two things that I regret not doing in the past, one is never opening up a business because I don’t know if I opened up one, I would be in the pub by midday. And the second and the second thing that I regret not doing in the past is any serious surgical training. So I kind of see a drop of blood and I start running so I don’t place any implants. I rely on my surgical team either prosthodontist or Periodontists, and I just do the restorative part. So I’m that’s something that I kind of should have done. And I now keep saying to myself, it’s too late, forget about it. I’m not going to open up a business. I’m not going to start placing implants. I’ll just stay in my little comfort zone. But I do a lot of implant work. I do a lot of ceramic work. Although the majority of the cases that I get referred and they come specifically to me because in one clinic I have five prosthodontics and another one seven. They refer these cases specifically for tooth wear and injection moulding. People think that, hey, this might be a good case for for this technique, so I’ll send it to them so that that keeps me busy.

And so that’s what’s a week in the life of of Costas in and outside of dentistry. Right. So we’ve been talking a lot about dentistry today. What about outside of dentistry?

Well, the other thing that I do a lot before I go outside of dentistry is I do a lot of travelling and I go, I’m a key opinion leader for, for Europe. So I do a lot of travelling and I’m trying to stop this and cut, cut down on this. I’ve got a nine year old son, Alexei, who is kind of put a ban on any international travel, any weekend travel, and my hobby and my extracurricular activities is spending time with him. And okay, we do mess around and we do our sporty stuff. That’s that’s what I do. So hobbies are such for my own, for myself. I’m not really going to say that I’ve got anything kind of left. The kind of phased out over the years of of just being a dad and a bringing some money to the house. So whenever I’m not doing any Dental stuff is just focusing on family, but it’s never enough time. So he keeps moaning.

It’s never enough.

And I want and I want him to keep moaning because he’s doing the right thing. Of course.

He is. Us. Um, what would your if your nine year old could pick the perfect day? What would it entail? With you. Obviously.

Like if. Oh, if he, if he could pick like.

You say, you spend some time, not enough time hanging out with him, right? But if he could pick the perfect day with dad, what what would you be doing?

The ideal day would be one where his mum has booked a four hour haircut. God knows what he does for four hours, but something along these lines and then it’s just the two of us. So we’re going to start the day with a little bit of a PlayStation because he’s, let’s say a Covid baby. So so he had a screen time exposure, bless him. Then we’re going to go and play a bit of tennis in the most weird places, like a car park or something random, just completely makeshift kind of tennis. Then go to the local park and tackle me to death playing football. A bit of cycling, just active stuff, which I can just about manage, which I can just about manage as a 46 year old. But I’m I’m feeling the heat already. So. So you Prav you do a lot of kind of activities and you stay healthy. Well, I don’t try my best. So in a couple in a couple of years I’m going to struggle to play football and tennis and all of that with him. But active stuff. Yeah. Awesome.

Let’s get to the darker part of the show.

Yeah. What is your biggest clinical mistake? And I don’t want you to say something like, hey, I picked the wrong patient, but, but, but something when you were in the mouth and you had one of those oh, shit, what have I just done moments.

Um. The first thing that pops to mind is something that stayed with me. I told you about my outstanding surgical skills, and I was kind of taking out an upper six. And of course, the route broke and I was trying to take out the final part of the route, which which kind of completely disappeared on me. I knew that it had gone into a structure called the sinus, which is an empty airspace, because I was pushing that hard that I pushed it into an area that I shouldn’t have, but I was just kind of whistling away in denial that, okay, I can’t see it anymore. So it must have come out and I didn’t really manage it correctly. The poor guy came a week after with a with a swelling, and his sinuses were all over the shop, and I had to kind of send him to Max Fox to have it managed properly. So I learned that you’re never going to get anywhere by just hiding from the problem and kind of whistling away, thinking that it might disappear. So I did it in my own kind of knowledge. I said that it’s never going to come and kick me back, and since then, I’ve just made the change that I would always tell patients what I would like to know rather than please them. Because the minute you try and please someone, it’s always going to come and hit you back. I’m not saying keep them happy, that’s a different thing, but just telling them what they would like to hear.

Trust us. You know, a lot of times, I think you alluded to this when I saw you lecture as well, was you learn from your own mistakes. With patience. Can you think of times where you’ve learned something from the sort of the not from the procedural perspective, but from the sort of human planning perspective? To the patient after seeing them years later when you’ve done something.

Yeah. This is, um, it’s it’s I’ve got a little bit of a disadvantage nowadays because in a clinic where I was for 15 years, I had the merit that I could see how my own work was, was performing, and and now I moved to, to a couple of specialist practices, and I don’t do check-ups. Okay. I do my treatment. I tell people, off you go. If there’s any problems, you’re gonna come back to me. But I’ve, I’ve lost that ability to, to, to see my own work. So I have that limitation as a specialist. So what I do advise young dentists, the majority are going to be GP’s is to, to find your nest, find your base and stay there. Because that constant idea of just being a little butterfly and flying from one position to the other, which is a very typical UK mentality in finance and advertising and whatever doesn’t really work in dentistry, you need that continuity because you. In 2016, you did the best that you could, with the best knowledge that you had and the best skills. But when it comes over years, then, then you’re kind of changing something. Otherwise you would do exactly what you did in 2016. So I’ve lost that kind of merit. And I just see people when there is a problem and I might get an idea, but GDPs have an advantage over that.

But what was the learning point?

What was the learning point that dentistry evolves, although it’s kind of set in stone, and we’re going to be doing a filling the same way that we did it before. There’s always new techniques, there’s always new materials. So the way that I plan a case now is different to how I was kind of planning it two years before. I keep seeing changes in the way I speak to people. I keep changing my my consent forms. And I’ve got this 20 years of experience now that I endorse change. I’m not I’m not scared of change. The only limitation is that being an associate, I don’t have a full freedom to kind of open my wings and do whatever I would like. Because if there’s another five people like me, I cannot just be a like a wild card and do whatever I want. But just look for your mistakes, keep training and those change. That’s my message.

Yeah, but. Sharon. Mistake.

Share a mistake. Other than that.

I mean, you said. You said. You said. You’re absolutely right. Everything you said is absolutely perfect. I really enjoyed everything you said. I used to do veneers when I was a young dentist. I used to veneers and I did stay one place for four years. For only four. Yeah. And four years later my my veneers in approximately stain was occurring. And so I learned from my own mistake there to number one do less veneers because you thinking I’ve done this wonderful beautiful thing. And number two, if you’re going to do veneers, extend it more and approximately so that you know that that interproximal extension of the prep thing. So I learned that by by saying that. Give me an example clinically that, you know, with your level of work and all that that’s going to be I know it’s going to be nuanced, but this example is something where you saw something. Six years later and you thought, I’ve changed. I know you’re doing that every day, right? Give us an example to teach someone.

It’s it’s it’s going to come back to the injectables because I do a lot of them. I’ve done a few, a few hundred cases and it’s got a kind of A22 sides that I do something on day one. And I kind of I inspect it, I look for problems, I try to repair any proximal issues, any little bubbles. And I was kind of looking at something and I said, that’s going to be fine. But but then that patient would, let’s say, come back to me for something irrelevant. And I would say, how what what I knew back then was a small issue, but I kind of ignored it out of laziness, out of whatever that kind of extrapolated into a bigger problem. So I said it before we dentists, we know at least specialists know how things are going to fail. So so don’t hide from that. On a more technical note, it has to do with, again, as you said, wrapping around the wax up as much to the proximal as Pascal Magna calls it the proximal wings in order to hide the junction between tooth and composites. Otherwise you’re going to get that yellow yellow halo. Um, but but more importantly, to, to inspect things thoroughly and whatever you see and it doesn’t quite click with you fix it on the day rather than ignore it because you know that this is going to become a problem. And the patient might not know anything about it, but I don’t care. It’s like it’s my best way to improve so that I do the next case better.

Yeah. No, no. You’re right. I mean, especially with composite. Composite tends to compound like your small area tends to become a much bigger area six years down the line with composite. But you’re right in that, in that the basics of what most people trip up on. And so taking care of the basics, you know, at every step makes a big, big difference.

It’s yeah, it’s it’s it’s you’re thinking that a little void because it’s on the facial. It’s not going to grow into a bigger problem. Well it probably will. And even if the patient is not bothered it’s going to bother me that, hey, I could have managed this better. So the very technically demanding composites, they’re not easy. These composite veneers. And whoever is good at them, I can tell you spends a lot of time on them. Yeah. Do you advocate bleaching.

Them because those.

Bleaching the teeth prior to composite or bleaching the composite itself.

Bleaching the composite.

No, I’ve never I mean I do give trays and gels to people and protective guards. And I tell them, hey, you’re going to need to top it up on your teeth. I’ve never really looked up on the ability of peroxides to to to work on composites. I don’t even know if it works. Yeah, it does.

Not not not as far as changing the colour of the composite, but as far as preventing that little pit from causing dark brown. You know, void. Like looking, looking, looking. Preventing those, those those staining from coming in the first place.

So it slows it down in a way. Okay. Well more enlightened tubes for more, more, more enlightened orders to make them fine. Well, not 100%.

Sure what it does to the composition.

Well, you know.

One night a month.

You know, listen, I’m going to I’m going to give you a better analogy because many people come and tell me, people who have gastric reflux, okay. And they, they, they, they, they, they take omeprazole or whatever that listen, don’t do composites on them. It’s contraindicated because the acid will destroy the composite. And I feel like kind of slapping these people because come on, what’s the alternative? Let’s let’s leave the teeth to rot. You got to intervene. So. So I don’t care what the acid does to composite. I do actually care what the peroxide does if it slows down the staining process. So I’m going to I’m going to give that a go.

It’s the opposite advice that you normally give right. The normal advice is treat the teeth, don’t treat the restorations. But in this case, because composite is so composite is so unforgiving, right. You need to treat the composite to lightly. Let’s get on to career errors. And you alluded to one a minute ago. You said maybe you should have done more surgical training. But what would you say if you could if you could go back 20 years with full knowledge, career wise, what would you what would you which direction would you go or which things wouldn’t you have done and which things would you have done more of?

The. The one that I regret now is not taking the initiative and having the courage to open up my own business. And you may have heard this on several occasions. I always wanted to rely on just doing very good quality dentistry and not having to worry about teeth after 5:00. Well, sadly, I was surprised that I was thinking about teeth after 5:00. But but but not about whether the practice would burn down or whether the nurse would have an, I don’t know, a sick cat the next day and could not come in. So managing people and rotors and managing a shop is was never really something that I wanted to do. But now I kind of pay the price that I’m all my wings are kind of always a little bit kind of dying down, clipped a little bit from that. So I’m kind of, let’s say reaching my, my peak or on the decline, I don’t know. And I would have liked to have the full clinical freedom that this is where I am, this is what I do, come and find me, rather than an associate here or an associate there. So.

You know, dude, what if what if, what if someone said, like Prav said, listen, I’m I’m feeling good. Cost us. I’m going to put some money behind you and perhaps really good on the whole, you know, recruitment rotor part of the thing. And he said, listen, it’s your dream. You do it. What would you do? Like, you know, you don’t have to worry about those bits of it that you hate, right? Which Prav seems to adore.

Do I?

It’s what would you do? What would you tell us? Your dream like what would be the setup? That was the wings bit that been clipped.

Now I’ll tell you the the wings that I kind of was visioning the 20 years ago would be to have a nice glass facade dental practice on the on the top of a mykonos island cliff, and do a little bit of dentistry and then go to the beach. I’m still working. I’m still. I’m still working on that idea. Um, but yeah, I mean, do you think I want to have three sets of cameras and three sets of equipment and three sets of everything? So I would jump at the opportunity and which I did. Hence, I’m going to make a move into the the West End next year and just have my own base if you will, rather than be all over the shop. Amazing, amazing.

Just just a final question for me is how much of your work is patients coming to you to see you and patients coming to you because they’ve been sent to you by another dentist?

Um, that’s a very good question. So he kind of, um, I had control over that percentage because it was about five years ago that some of my students and my wife, they told me that, listen, you kind of you kind of good at what you do. You should open up some social media channels and promote yourself and blah, blah, blah. So for about 4 or 5 years, I was directing everything towards patients, like simple language, just trying to attract patients into coming and see me. And there was a very healthy influx of inquiries that, hey, I’d like composite bondings and blah, blah, blah. And then I made a kind of a switch that, hey, I’m just going to focus on dentists from now on and not rely on marketing patients directly. So if anything now it’s the referrals from dentists is 90% and 10%, let’s say people off the street contacting directly through my website or through the social media channels. Why? Because I want to have, let’s say, some sort of a filter, that GDP filter that somebody does want to do something about it rather than shopping around. They have the people that were coming through social media channels were just shopping around, or they ended up needing invisaligns. And I’m not the right person for that. So I don’t want to see anyone for a face to face consult that it’s not going to be suitable for me. So my clients, if anything now is.

I guess it makes sense, right? Because they’re all pre-qualified, right? You’re not having to. Essentially, we say in inverted commas, sell to those patients who’ve been sent by a GDP because it’s pre-qualified. Right. Yeah.

That that’s that’s another, let’s say, benefit and advantage that I have that by the time somebody comes to me, they already are hungry for for some treatment, they’re seeking some care and they probably have a budget in their mind. So I don’t have to have the difficult discussion that, oh, I can see a little bit of tooth wear here, or I can see a little bit of crowding. They’ve already been primed. And all I have to do is not make a mistake. So for that reason, let’s say my conversion rates are good. And how does the GDP feel? They’ve got no reason to make my life easier. Or my my my my wallet fatter. They just want to to their patients to be well taken care of. And they know that I will do that. And they don’t want to start a conversation for something that they’re not going to be able to deliver. So I send these patients back rather than poach their patients because I’m not interested in keeping check-ups. So I have zero interest in that. And all I’m looking for is a compliments from that GDP after a year or two. That’s wow. That that work that you did for X, Y and Z or whatever was stunning. And that is the best advert for me. So that I keep referring patients to me.

Because that’s as far as the sort of timing of your life. It seems like you’re mostly in practice, right? And then teaching is a smaller part of it, but if you could have it your way, would you teach more and practice less?

Um. Clinical practice and dealing with patients is stressful. There’s no dentist that that is going to say otherwise. I was in Israel, and I remember one of the profs over there was telling me that, listen, the minute you stop the clinical practice, you’ve got two years of teaching, then you’re dead. And I was like, no, come on, man. It’s it’s it can’t be true. He says, you’re going to be presenting the same cases again and again. You’re just going to be providing microwave foods. So. So don’t disturb that balance too much. So I’m doing more and more teaching through Prosperworks and JC kind of Europe and by emulation in the new year. Um, but I have zero intention of reducing the clinical activity, both because it excites me, both because it feeds new cases and new potential techniques that that I can do. And yeah, if I did stop the clinical work, I would just phase out. I would I don’t know that that guy was probably right. I would just teach for a few more years and then I would get out of date kind of thing.

Also, I think it’s your hobby, dude. You know, and you said you haven’t got a hobby. You got a hobby, your hobbies.

Teeth and photography and photography. Unfortunately. Um, so, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s. Listen, if I get a WhatsApp message about a clinical case, I will always reply. Always. So I do have a big passion for what I do when I teach. I give giving everything I have, which I did at King’s for 15 years. I don’t know how long that drive is going to carry on for, but while it does, I’m just expanding my educational horizons to, to, to to to provide the best I can, which is why I left King’s.

Think, think. Jesse Gulati, a good friend of Prav, said on one of his pods that the you know, the biomimetic guys in dentistry seem to be the happiest ones. And I wouldn’t put you in that in that box because you’re much more than a biomimetic guy. But but they are happy dentists, man. The real the real geeks.

I thought you was about to say you don’t put him in the happy box.

I wouldn’t put him only in that box. He’s a bit more than just a Payman. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I don’t really I don’t really do single tooth dentistry is is the cases that I do and I’m not presenting myself as better or whatever is my, my default. My default is is looking at the global picture is not single tooth dentistry. But I admire these people that spend a lot of time and science and thinking on doing one simple teeth, one simple thing to the highest precision and excellence. And I want, I want people like that around me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, let’s get to the. I’ve got. I do have one other interest though, dude. Yeah, that, you know, the problem solving part of it, the development part of it. Do you trace that back to something in your sort of like, you know, you said, oh, the first three years you were partying in dental school, you weren’t really trying to excel. Then you excelled. Just excelling piece being really good and being at the, you know, at the front edge of something. When did that come from?

That’s a good question. It might actually be instilled in most dentists. Although I have seen some who couldn’t care less. But let’s say the average dentist who goes onto courses and likes what they do is a little bit of a perfectionist. Where did that come from? Um, probably from my A-level years, where I was kind of prepping for A-level chemistry and physics and maths, and it was completely different to what I was doing 9 to 5 in the Greek school. And um, bizarrely enough, I was kind of keen to go back home and open up. I remember the book was called Ramsden’s. It was like A-level chemistry and do exercises and solve the problems. So I was seeing it as a, as a, as a hobby, like, like, I don’t know, just eating peanuts, you know, when you can’t stop. So that that is kind of probably where it started. But then I had a three year sabbatical of partying till five in the morning as a junior uni student, and then I went back into my geekiness and I said, okay, let’s let’s put some effort into this and okay. Then the pros side kind of came and I had the special interest for this. So it probably goes back to the A-level years. Yeah.

Amazing man.

I mean most teenagers would like to, to to to just go and flirt with a lot of girls. I was just doing chemistry kind of equations, but hey ho, um.

I didn’t, I did, I.

Didn’t the parting a little bit late though. In Whitechapel. It’s okay.

It’s fine.

Yeah, it was the same. Was the same but. And Prav Prav it was the Oxford, Oxford medic. There was some of that in years. Oh, Prav.

There was the first year I hung out with the English students and the historians, who had literally no work to do, virtually no lectures, and I was just blind drunk six nights a week, and everyone thought, this kid’s going to fail. Literally. Yeah. But then I think it’s like Costas says, right? When the crunch comes to the crunch, you kind of think, right, I’ve got to pull my socks up now and get my shit together and look for Costas. It took a visit from his dad, right, and whatnot. And for me, that’s it. I had the fear of my dad from Manchester, like, always coursing through my veins. Right. So either way, it was there was still a family influence to pull your socks up and get on with it. But I’ve always been a crammer as well. Right. So last minute you pull all the stops out, right? All or nothing. And onto our onto our final question. Costa. So imagine it’s Costas. It’s your last day on the planet. You’re surrounded by your loved ones, your boy, and you have to leave three parting bits of wisdom. Life advice. Call it what you want. What would they be?

Um.

The first thing is something that comes to mind, and it’s probably something I’m going to poorly translate from Greek, is that it’s best to kind of have a regret about something rather than say to yourself, how would it be if I did that? There’s probably an expression in English that, that that says that, but that bypasses me now. But you know, what I mean is that sense of like, not not having the cojones to do something and always be, oh, I didn’t I never really did that. And how would it feel? It’s, it’s I would just tell my son that, listen.

Go for it.

Go, go with what kind of clicks for you and see where it takes you. Because if it’s I mean, for me, I used to love, I don’t know, music and DJing and I wanted to be the DJ of a ministry of sound. Thankfully, I didn’t pursue that because I would be rubbish at it. Um, but I would just say to him that and it goes into the second point, that whatever makes your heart race, it’s going to become your, your hobby. So so, so, so go with that. And if you’re good at it, that’s let’s say the money will come. Now a typical Indian dad or Greek dad would, would, would never really agree with this that, hey, you got to be an accountant or a doctor. But the third thing is that, I mean, if he’s I hope it doesn’t happen in the next year, because if he’s ten years old, he would really understand that. When you do love someone, love them with a passion and give 100% of what you have because it’s going to be the biggest investment you can possibly do to show your emotions and your love to your other half. So that’s the three things.

Beautiful. Wow.

Nothing.

That question is so interesting because that question could could either be, look, I’ve done this in my life, so I’m telling you, or it could be the exact opposite. It could be that I’ve not done that in my life, but I want you to. Yeah. Of course. It’s such an interesting question. Of course, but mine isn’t as interesting. Fantasy dinner party where you can have three guests ready. Dead or alive. Which three guests would you have? Who do you want to have?

I can easily think of two out of three, and they come from the entertainment industry, and they are people that I never got a chance to see live on stage. One is Freddie Mercury for his magical voice. It was like borderline. I said, oh, early 90s. I was kind of a young teenager. I could have just make it happen, but I was a few years late. The second one would be because I love my kind of house music and dancing would be to, to, to, to to see Michael Jackson perform. And who is the, the godfather of of of of dancing because he was training 6 or 7 hours a day just dancing. I mean, who would possibly do that? The third person I don’t know, I don’t know, um, somebody like Prav who, who, who has the discipline to, to to say to himself or herself that, listen, I’m going to wake up at five, I’m going to suffer in on the name of my kind of physical health and subsequently mental, then go to the gym and, and follow the old ancient Greek kind of saying that healthy mind in a healthy body. And that motivation is something that I’m struggling to find in the UK, where it’s kind of gloomy and miserable and say, like, sod it, I’m just going to have have, have a fry up or something. So it’s not somebody specific, but, but somebody who could.

Who could.

Present a good idea and perhaps a good idea. Don’t get me wrong.

Well, I have this I.

Have this mental image of him like the, the.

The, the, the.

Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson.

And Prav Solanki.

Yeah. See? Robin. Yeah.

No no no.

The interesting interesting. He says that. Right. So about 4:45 this morning. I get into an ice bath that’s two degrees C and I sit in there. Exactly.

All that shit.

I sit in there for four minutes, freezing my stones off and then spend the next 30 minutes shivering. Yeah. Yeah. Contemplating. What the fuck am I doing with myself? Yeah. And convincing myself this is good for me. Yeah. Um. And it’s dark and it’s miserable and it’s horrible. So I get it. And but but do you know what?

When you feel great for three hours. No.

Feel amazing for the rest of the day. But. But the thing is, I’ve been on the complete opposite end of that spectrum, right? You know that more than anyone else. Payman. Right where I’m literally in self-destruct mode, and I’ll wake up in the morning and make myself cheese on toast, you know, or or actually, I had pizza the night before, so I don’t even have to make myself cheese on toast.

You know.

So there you go. That’s probably the worst trio you’ve ever come across in the podcast. Michael, Michael Jackson, Freddy and somebody like Prav. But anyway, there you go.

What about what about if you could sit with a few dentists? Who are you like your dentist you want to sit with?

Which dentists do I want to do? What with?

Sit with.

Oh, um. Hula. Hula. That would be my my, my my three mentors. Um, and unfortunately, the kind of life brought it that they’re all kind of males. And that would be Frank Speer, Pascal Mani and Did.she because I don’t know, they’ve got so much to give. They are the best educators I’ve ever come across, and they can kind of educate in one minute. What it takes me about a fortnight, okay. Over dinner we wouldn’t quite talk procedures and stuff, but these have been the people that inspire me. So I’m kind of always looked outside of the UK. So it’s it’s not quite UK names.

I just saw um, nazzari in BCD water presentation, but I was really impressed with that.

Yeah, well, next year you’re going to be massively disappointed with the BCD Line-Up of Jaz Gulati, K.K. and Mahmud. So. So it’s going to be a bit of a letdown, but hey ho.

How you doing that up, buddy? Lovely. Lovely to have you back. Thank you. Really lovely to have you. Really enjoyed that very much. Thank you so much for sharing so, so openly.

Thanks, Kostas.

I think if we’ve achieved.

Anything otherwise, if.

We’ve achieved anything today cost us is maybe that, um, world’s best kept secret that you are is is probably not so much of a secret anymore when we publish this. Right. And more people find out about you.

Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. It was it was great to chat and it was really a joy indeed. I really mean that.

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.

Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we’ve 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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It’s scary. It’s really scary. From the financial perspective. I think that that was probably the scariest because I was sitting and earning money and then putting it straight into this. And.

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.

Regular listeners to the port will remember episode 113 when we interviewed the Dental sisters, Ariana and Victoria Samson, and the last time I spoke to them, they were both associates working in lots of different practices, and now I’ve come to visit their brand new practice in Mayfair, which is called the Health Society. Something different, and I wanted to catch up, see what the process was. You know how the trials and tribulations of opening a practice in Mayfair are. So I’ve got for now, I’ve got Victoria with me. How are you? Hello.

Hi. I’m good, thank you. Yeah.

It’s a beautiful practice. Thank you. I must have been to a thousand practices. Right. So I’ve seen a lot of different practices, and it’s really different. Colourful. Quite pink.

It’s a little bit. A little bit.

Pink, but a lot of art on the walls. And you can tell that, you know, it’s almost like you guys have been thinking about this for a long time. If you if you think about it, when, when, when did you know you were going to open your own practice from the get go, or when did the idea start?

I think for me, to be completely honest with you, it was quite late on. So my sister and my mom and kind of everyone else I think had this idea, we’re going to open this dental practice and they had all of these ideas, but for me, it was probably only in the last kind of year or two years that I thought, okay, yeah, this is happening. We’re opening our own clinic and it’s now I kind of thought always that I would open it maybe in 5 to 10 years time, to be honest with you, but then with, you know, everyone else wanting to open it and then also all of my patients pushing me kind of just meant that I went with kind of what everyone else said. And I’m I’m glad that we did it. But I think that patients really pushed and they really were like, you’re doing something very unique and special, and it’s a shame that you are not in your own clinic and you don’t have your own clinical freedom to do whatever you like. You should open your own place and just do whatever you like. So, yeah.

And so look, the process, a lot of dentists are going to go through this process of being an associate and moving to becoming a principal. How much of it did you already know and how much of it did you have to go and find out? And what about the the financial side, you know, getting loans and and saving up and all of that sort of thing. So talk me through that part of it. The pre pre starting anything pre even looking for for a site.

I think know as a dental student you’re taught to be a dentist. And the financial side the even opening a clinic the management all of that is not anything that you’re taught at university or even as an associate. So we had a tough time kind of having to learn all of that. And there’s also not like a manual or a person that you can just call up and ask, you know, for example, it’s not like you can just call them up and be like, hey, could you just help me a little bit and tell me, you know, what colour bin I should get? Or, you know, like it’s very difficult. Yeah. We were super lucky that we had a lot of amazing people to support us who are already practice owners. So they kind of would help us in terms of, okay, yeah, you need this water filtration system or, you know, you know, in your decon room you should have x, y, z. And that really helped. So I think having great mentors to support you is key and extremely important from the financial side of things. So originally we were going to get a loan and we were going to kind of do it the I guess traditional way, but it ended up that we were trying to get a loan out at probably the worst time imaginable, with everything to do with the pandemic and Covid and, you know, the housing crisis and then the living costs crisis and all of this, that our interest rate was just ridiculous. It was it was yeah. It wouldn’t have made sense to open a clinic. So we ended up actually just using all our savings up and just really it was completely self paid for. And I think that is a testament to how much we thought, like how much we wanted it and the risk that we put in, because everyone has always said, when you open your own business, you should never use all of your own money. But we were like, look, it’s either that or, you know, a 20% interest rate, which we’re not going to do. So yeah.

But that’s a hard thing to do, right? Because if you’re the kind of person who, you know, works diligently and saves diligently and then and then, you know, that sort of nest, nest egg, it’s kind of like a buffer that for a rainy day, and then you’ve gone and spent the whole lot. On a dental practice. Were you scared?

I think you know what? I wasn’t scared for a really long time. Throughout the whole construction side of things, I was. And I think I was in a bit of fight or flight mode of just, like getting it done. Getting it done. I didn’t care. And then it hit me quite late on like a month or two before we were opening, where I was like, oh my God, like, what if no one comes? Yeah, shit. Like, what happens if, you know, we can’t hire any staff? And what happens if no patient ever wants to come and see us or okay, they come for their first appointment, but they don’t come for their, you know, six month check-up because they didn’t like the service that they received. And that’s where I think I was terrified. But I think that when you have a goal and you know that what you’re doing is special and different and that you’re bringing something new to the market and you really believe in it, then that fear is kind of secondary. Like it’s kind of, okay, fine, you will be scared. I think for me in particular, because I’m quite young, I kind of I see a lot of my friends and I see a lot of other people who are maybe my age and they’re using their money to go on holiday and they are travelling and they’re, you know, buying a car and they’re, you know, and so it was weird for me to put that money away into something more substantial and open a business with it. No regrets, but it was just a bit of a different did you need someone.

To push you over an edge? Did someone have to say, hey, look, go for it.

Yeah. My mom. Yes. And my.

Sister.

And like I said, all my patients, they just kept on saying it and saying it. And that’s also what gave me that safety net of saying, okay, like if we open a clinic, I have at least, you know, 100 patients who are going to follow me. Social media helped as well. And I knew that, okay, our concept is unique.

And, you know, you told me that you don’t you didn’t use the traditional dental fitout. People did that come with its own problems because they didn’t understand, you know, suction and all of that.

Yeah.

So why didn’t you use traditional dental? Because you didn’t want it to look like a traditional dental practice?

Partly, yes. Because also. So when we were we originally did approach lots of traditional dental fitout companies, and the designs that they were creating for us were pretty much, you know, copy and paste of the other 20 clinics that we’d visited. And we wanted something completely unique and different. That was one problem. The second problem was that we found that it was very expensive. And for a completely self-funded project with no investment, we quite honestly didn’t want to spend that much money. And we were there were a lot of times where we still continued with with a company, but it was just getting a bit ridiculous where we felt like we weren’t getting value, value for our money. Every time we would make a change, it would be an extra couple of thousand pounds on our bill, and it got to a point where we were like, we have no freedom.

So we started out with a traditional company and then changed.

And then we changed and we decided, actually, you know what? Let’s get some prices from some just normal construction teams, builders. And it was, you know, a fraction of the price. We had a lot more freedom. I work with a lot of companies like as a, you know, advisor or ambassador or whatever. They were super supportive. And so we ended up just kind of creating our own relationships with companies. We were our own project managers. So we never had.

A were you here every.

Day, every day before work. And I was still working full time. So before work I was here 7 a.m. I would go to work for nine, then I would come during my lunch time, and then I would come after work as well. And we were between the three of us. There was always someone on site, but we were, yeah, we were going crazy like we were working ridiculous hours.

Have you ever project managed any building work of any type? No. House? Nothing?

No no.

No, literally this is the first we’ve.

Ever done. Yeah. So we and we what surprised you the most? Um, it was actually phenomenal to see what’s behind walls. And I was obsessed with plumbing. I thought the plumbing was mind blowing and so interesting. So I got really into that. Um, I think that also just how many different jobs and things need to be done, particularly for dental practice, because the construction team that we chose, they had never plumbed for a dental practice. So we had to, you know, use like we had to kind of help with them and we had to kind of decide on things together. And it worked out. But I mean, it could have gone terribly wrong, probably.

And the logo is everywhere. Yes. And I like that, you know, that’s what that’s the whole point of a logo is that that’s what. But you’ve done a really special thing that I’ve never seen before, where you’ve actually recessed the logo in lighting on the ceiling. Yeah. Whose idea was that?

It was mine, actually. So it was with my. So one of my kind of mentors or the people who helped us with this practice is my boss from one of my other practices. And I went up to him straight up and I said, look, I want to open my own. He was like, yeah, I mean, it’s about time. I thought you were going to open it last year anyway. So he was super supportive and he helped a lot because his was a squat practice and he together we decided that what would be really cool is to have the logo in the ceiling recessed with LED strip lights. And so we actually measured the wattage, the Kelvin, because there’s a specific amount of lighting that a dentist or any, you know. Um.

But my question is, look, it’s a straight line logo. Yeah. So did you get a bunch of straight line LEDs and put them together? Or if it was a round, curvy thing, you would you could have done it too.

No. We got so this is the first time in my life I ever used Pythagoras finally came in, finally came in to use one of my builders. And I were sitting there and I was like a squared plus b squared equals c squared three.

Four, five.

So it’s lots of lots of straight lines that we combine together. And we just cut loads of LED strips up and put them together. So God forbid we ever have to replace those lights. That’s a whole other issue.

And the name the Health Society and now visiting it, I kind of understand it a bit more because there’s a gym area, there’s a sauna, infrared sauna area, but also your work. And we discussed this on the on the previous episode is a lot to do with functional dentistry. The whole body sort of holistically looking at, you know, systemic disease and the effect of that on the mouth and vice versa, which is a really interesting part of it. And you showed me just now a machine that sort of gives you a score of collagen breakdown and that kind of tells you how active is gum disease. Yeah. You think, shouldn’t every single dental practice have that machine? I mean, it really is a really important machine to have, isn’t it? If you can give a score, how accurate is it? You know.

It’s extremely accurate. So yeah. So we have lots of different tests that we do here. So we do one which measures your collagen breakdown to assess your basically gum disease from a bio molecular level. So we know that often gum disease is happening six months before clinical symptoms are appear in the mouth. So this is finding that and being able to flag that patient before they start getting, you know, pocketing and bone loss and being able to say, okay, let’s reverse this before it becomes a problem. And it’s as.

Simple as like a little mouth rinse and spit into the thing and put it in the machine.

So now what’s the name of that machine? So it’s for Ampa is the enzyme and the we just call it the Ampa test. So the enzyme is activated matrix metalloproteinase eight. And it’s the enzyme that is for collagen breakdown. And then we do the bacteria testing. We look at your saliva pH as well.

What does that involve.

Saliva test as well. So it’s a spit test. And then we send it off to the lab. And then we look at all of the bacteria in your saliva and fungi as well. So we can see if you have any candidal infections. And then based on that, usually in combination with the other saliva tests that we do, we create a personalised oral hygiene plan. So it will tell you exactly what mouthwash is good for your microbiome. What toothpaste? Toothbrush. If you have gum disease, what is causing that gum disease? Which bacteria? So then if we need to give you antibiotics which ones. So it’s a lot more specific and personalised for the patient. But also but.

Explain it to me. You get back a list of bacteria names and how much of it there is in the mouth. And so I guess the gram negative ones are the ones causing the problem. So when you say you bespoke the antimicrobial to that, how do you do that? How does that work?

So it depends on not only which bacteria are present, but how you know, the patterns and the amount of bacteria as well as what is visible clinically because everyone’s microbiomes are slightly different. So what might be terrible in my mouth might be really good in your mouth. Oh, really? Yeah. So you really have to pair everything together even. It’s not just, you know, gram negative, gram positive or anaerobic aerobic. There’s a lot more that you can, you know, you can use for those bacteria. So it could be that we use specific sprays. Gels again mouthwashes I love mouthwashes a lot actually for what we really take pride in is we’ve got a fantastic recovery for full mouth disinfection and periodontal patients. So patients who are suffering from really bad perio by having more of a focussed approach and knowing exactly what’s causing their their periodontal disease, then we’re able to actually treat it properly and we’ve had fantastic results using that. And we can measure and monitor that with the collagen breakdown test. So it’s it’s not only solving the problem, but it’s monitoring and maintaining that patient, which is really the core of our practice.

And just give us an idea because this is so new that. People want to know what’s the cost to the patient of each of those? The collagen tests. The the microbiome tests.

So at the moment, we’re actually the hygienist. I’m trying to push the hygienist to do a lot of the testing. And so if it’s about £2,025 for a collagen breakdown test, the oral microbiome test by itself is £250 that we charge. But that doesn’t include the analysis. And then it depends on what treatments are needed. You know, if you need full mouth disinfection, if you need, I don’t know. Whatever it is. I would like to think that I’m trying to find a price point which is affordable to a lot of patients. And yes, you know, I’m not saying it’s cheap, but at the end of the day, the amount of time that I spend on creating those treatment plans, each patient is probably 40 minutes to an hour of additional planning for that person that we do charge for it, because the benefits that we’re seeing are superior.

I’ll tell you the truth, it’s actually cheaper than I thought it would be. Yeah, but I’m interested in this. Have you ever done a microbiome test scan and polish and another microbiome test? Yeah.

So we did so weirdly. So we did a study or a trial with EMS. I partnered with them and we did an oral microbiome test immediately before a hygiene, immediately after a hygiene three months later, immediately before and then immediately after as well. And we used their, their hygiene. So we use guided biofilm therapy. And what we found was that immediately after a hygiene, the oral bacteria was extremely elevated. And that’s because you basically spat it all out into a cup. But interestingly, with the guided biofilm therapy, because it uses it’s got an antibacterial component to it. So it uses erythritol. The erythritol was able to reduce the levels of the bad bacteria in the oral microbiome, not only short term but also long term as well.

So just for someone who doesn’t know what is guided biofilm therapy.

So it is a treatment that a company called EMS from Switzerland have created. It’s their solution for a hygiene treatment. So basically what you do is you use a plaque disclosing tablet, you paint the teeth with it, and that will show all of the areas of biofilm and plaque. And that guides you to removing the biofilm properly because, you know, most of the time we’re not actually removing a lot of the biofilm when we’re doing a hygiene with a normal ultrasonic or with a pzm. So this has like an air flow. So it’s like a proper spray. And that spray has been impregnated with erythritol, which is antibacterial. So that gets rid of all your biofilm, all the bacteria and your staining without damaging the teeth. And then we go over and around the teeth again with the PS on to remove any hard capulus or tartar. And it’s with warm water and it’s got like a no pain technology. So it really is a fantastic solution. It really is, in my opinion, a better alternative to a normal hydrogen treatment.

And so is that GPT is that marketed like that at dentists or do you market that at patients as well?

I think we’re in a bit of a unique situation where a lot of our patients are extremely tuned in, and they come to us knowing that they are going to get that kind of personalised and maybe heightened kind of treatment plan. Yeah. The elevated treatment. Yeah. So we do paint it out to them as saying, okay, this is going to reduce your bacterial load. This is going to be no pain technology. You know they’re very educated patients as you mention it specifically. Yeah. And they specifically come here because of that for EMS with general dentistry, I think their main angle is that it is a lot more comfortable. It’s a lot more effective for the dentist. To the hygienist, it’s much less pressure on their wrists and their hands. So if you’re a hygienist and you’re working, you know, back to back 12 hours a day, you can’t use a poison or an ultrasonic constantly because the vibrations can really hurt you. So the airflow really helps. But yeah, there’s more comfort. Our angle is more maybe science and improving outcomes.

So I know you have to go. You’ve got a patient waiting. But let me just finish off with a couple of other questions. What’s the Mayfair patient like compared to I mean, you’ve worked in Harley Street and and and other places, right? Yeah. What’s what’s this patient like. Are they are they more picky? Are they more, you know, do they miss appointments or do they what are they like. No.

So, you know, the thing is, is although we’re in Mayfair, a lot of our patients travel from all around, actually the world. I had a patient from Chicago last week, another one from Berlin from LA. Like they actually are flying in for treatment. And so it’s difficult to say what the. Mayfair patient is like. But from the few who do share the same postcode as us. Because I do analyse being like, oh, you’re a resident, you’re cool.

We all do. We all like.

How exciting, you’re local. They are actually very. They are on time. They don’t miss their appointments.

Because they’re abroad a.

Lot. They are abroad a lot. That’s one thing, is that a lot of them will mean booking appointments for them is quite complicated. It’s not so easy. And a lot of because they travel and all that, but generally they’re pretty switched on patients. I think the patients we generally are attracting are ones who are into optimising their health. And as a result, sometimes you can get some patients who are quite difficult because they think they know better than you, or they’re a little bit more kind of, you know, take out all my root canal treated tea, take out all of my implants, you know, and you can go down quite a rabbit hole of very kind of aggressive or excessive dentistry. But generally I think we we’re doing a good job in, in kind of attracting the right types of patients that we want.

What do you do in that situation? Just somehow not do it? Yeah.

Yeah. I think that I’m. It’s annoying because I think I’m maybe more holistic or functional than your conventional dentist. You know, I believe that mouth is really connected to the rest of your body and all of that. But, you know, I still do root canals. I still believe in titanium implants. I’m still very much a normal dentist. And so what I really try is to convince those patients and explain to them the research. And I’m very research heavy, so I will explain all of it. And if they still decide, you know, actually I really want all my root canal treated teeth to be taken out. And they’ve had a cbct, for example, and there’s a sign of an infection. Fine. We can take it out if there’s no sign of an infection. And they’re still really, really want to have the teeth taken out, then I tell them to go somewhere else because it’s not worth it’s not worth my stress, really. And, you know, we all have our morals and our beliefs. And I’m not going to, you know, change them because compromise them. No. Yeah.

You’re also a DJ.

Yes.

And you were just telling me how you take control of the music in the whole practice. Yes. Is there going to be an element of a DJ deck and actually literally playing decks? Yes. I can totally see it happening in front.

Of the light.

Yeah, yeah, the pink light.

Yeah, yeah, I want to. I’ve actually had quite an idea I haven’t come I haven’t done much about the idea, but I want to do like a boiler room set in front of the light invite, like, you know, 20 people, not too big. Do like an hour and a half set. Film it. And for all of you who don’t know what a Boiler Room set is, it’s basically like a DJ set. And usually they’re in quite interesting locations. Yeah. And you invite like a very small group of people and they just vibe and they just enjoy themselves. And I thought, you know, I haven’t seen a boiler room set in a dental practice. So it’s on the to do list.

On the list of how do I make it different. So look, how do you see the future? Do you do you see it as some people have this sort of idea of one perfect place and you never get to perfection, so you’re constantly improving, constantly improving. I can tell you, after 23 years in business, we’re constantly having to improve everything. You know, it’s one of those things. Or do you see it as a scalable thing where you can have one of these in each town, or what are you thinking? Or is it too early?

I think I think it’s a bit too early to say. I can tell you from for me personally, and that I think it is relatively scalable. And I think that for the premise of our practice, or from the dental side of things at least, is prevention is key, regular appointments is key, and particularly guided biofilm therapy or hygiene every 3 to 4 months is what I recommend for that. It means that you need patients who are coming in all the time, and for one clinic which has 3 or 4 surgeries, that’s not, you know, and you build enough of a patient base after a year or two, it’s not going to work. So my idea is that we would maybe expand or scale this up so that you can have treatments done elsewhere, and we would still know about it in your like kind of core practice or whatnot. I don’t know, that’s kind of my idea at the moment, but I think that because we’re so hygiene heavy, we either need to have lots of hygiene rooms or we need to expand.

I think in the end, if you’re going to expand, you have to take yourselves out of it somehow. Yeah. And it’s so linked to yourselves right now that it seems ridiculous. It seems such a unbelievable thing. But you’re literally inventing the protocols around oral microbiome. You’re the one that’s sort of the tip of the spear of all of this. And so it’s quite a responsibility as well. But it’s something you need to get done. Right. You need to get you need to say, look, these are the protocols for someone who knows very little about it. Of course you’re going to train people. Yeah. These are the protocols. Yeah.

That’s what I think. For me, it’s not even scaling the clinic. It would be actually creating these protocols, teaching other, spreading the word to use it and for them to do it on their own patients. I think that’s my next step. It’s just that at the moment it’s been a struggle. You know, it’s early days, it’s early days. We’ve just opened and I keep on getting people messaging me, being like, hey, teach me how to do microbiome testing. I’m like, I’d love to, but I’m working, you know, six days, 9 to 7 pretty much every day. And I’m clinically full time and I’m owning a practice right now. So I’m trying to kind of readjust. And I think eventually in the next few months I will have time to do that, but not yet.

Okay. Well, I’m really, really proud of you. I mean, it’s so nice. It’s nice to see you get this far. I remember back thinking back to the early days of. Enlightened how much pain was involved. Maybe. Hopefully you’re not going to go through as much pain as I went through. But, you know, even the simplest thing, I was just looking at the door, just the sign on the door saying private. Yeah, someone’s going to find that sign. Someone’s going to stick that sign up.

It’s funny you say that Marianne got them from America.

Is that right?

She literally. When she went to America, she was there for a wedding. But she shipped the these toilet signs.

To her friend.

In LA, and then she picked them up from there because it was impossible to find the right sign, which was pretty, which wasn’t.

Right.

Which was right, which wasn’t too ugly. Like, you’re right, every single thing that now. And that’s one thing actually, you were saying, what have you learnt from your building kind of experience was now whenever I go anywhere I’m like paying attention to my access panel. Oh, look at that plumbing. Like I’ve become such a weirdo. I become obsessed with all this weird construction stuff and ventilation.

It’s so good to see you succeeding, and it’s nice to see you working with your sister and your mum, so hopefully it continues. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Well, Victoria has gone to see her patient and now I’ve got Arianne with me. Arianne I was I was talking to Victoria about the process of going from associate to principal and, and your situation’s sort of special, right? You’re a specialist orthodontist. You’re now having to take care of referrals to you rather than referrals to another practice where you work at. Yeah. Are you having to work at that or is that just flowing organically?

I feel like it’s a combination of the two. It’s flowing organically and I have a nice referral stream from Victoria and also from our hygienists here, and it’s because we’re we’re focusing on holistic dentistry and preventive dentistry. A lot of our hygienists play a really important role in referral to orthodontics, because it’s part of better dental cleaning to be to have straight teeth in order to get the interdental brushes through and things like that. So I get a lot of organic referrals just in house, even though we’re very new in terms of our external, in terms of external referrals, they’re still coming through. Even though I’m in a new location or offering a new location. And I think that’s just because of location convenience, but also because they trust the treatment that I’m providing. I’ve been taking on their referrals for a few years and producing what I hope are good results, because they keep referring patients back to me. So it’s been it’s been good. I do find it a little bit difficult sometimes to navigate getting referrals from general dentists who maybe feel uncomfortable referring their patients to a specialist orthodontist who is in a general dental clinic for fear of losing the patient to the general dentist there. And I completely understand that. So I am very careful to say to the patient that, listen, you’ve been referred to me for orthodontic treatment and I will provide that orthodontic treatment for you, but you will be referred back to that referring general dentist. So I am very mindful of, of the situation that that patient and that referring dentist is in.

So look, you’re we’re in a practice called the health society. Your is doing all of the microbiome stuff. You’re telling me that there’s a link between health and ortho. Yes. Because it’s easier to brush your teeth or I don’t know, it could be a traumatic bite or something. But mindset wise, as an orthodontist, if you not always thought of it as a cosmetic benefit rather than a health benefit.

Not really. I think a lot of people think orthodontics is just a cosmetic thing, and I think if that were truly the case, we wouldn’t have had it offered on the NHS for so long. It’s still offered on the NHS. I think there are very profound health benefits to orthodontic treatment. So you mentioned the traumatic bite. There’s that and in doing so will prevent where will prevent periodontal disease, will prevent collapse of the facial skeleton because it reduces the vertical dimensions over time. So we prevent all of those things. But I think also in terms of anterior open bites and poor poor lip seal, you have mouth breathers. And with mouth breathing you have snoring. It can put you at increased risk of sleep apnoea. And with Victoria we can see also an imbalanced oral microbiome. And so the orthodontics. Plays a big role in terms of rebalancing the microbiome and therefore improving the general health and wellbeing. So I take that responsibility pretty seriously. And then there are also links with the tongue, the lingual frenum, the swallow pattern, the I don’t.

Want to push back too much, but let’s imagine there were no aesthetic benefits whatsoever.

Yeah.

Would you still risk all the risks that come with orthodontics for the benefits that you’re talking about?

I think so, yeah, yeah, for sure. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought it was purely aesthetic.

No, no. But my question, my question if, let’s say there were no aesthetic benefits, said there was this new treatment that would reduce your microbiome, that would maybe sort out your bite a little bit, but comes with all the risks of orthodontics, which we can list them if we like. Right.

Would I still I still would be a strong supporter of Orthodoxy. So for sure there’s definitely a place and I think I think at the end of the day, we need our teeth and mouths and facial skeleton to.

I remember when I took my 14 year old for ortho, I wasn’t thinking about his oral microbiome.

You were.

But what you.

But what you’ve done is really helped out with.

It. Yeah, yeah. You’re right.

I also think, you know, and I take this really seriously and there’s, there’s weird inconclusive data about it, but they say that if you’ve had orthodontic treatment and your teeth are are straighter and you feel more comfortable with your bite. So, yeah, there’s the cosmetic, but there’s also the comfort. It’ll improve your confidence. And those kids with the improved confidence have better dating partners, have better job prospects and better longevity. And like literally longevity as in living longer. And I don’t mean to blow my own horn too much, but I do feel like I’m playing a part in this 14 year old’s orthodontic treatment. When they’re 34, they might get a slightly better partner because of a better job.

Well, the aesthetic.

Benefits are.

Profound. Yeah.

So the reason maybe I’ve got a bugbear about this is because sometimes dentists have such trouble talking about whitening, right. Because they see it as cosmetic and all that, and then they have no trouble at all talking about ortho, I see, because and in my view, you know, for most I mean, we’re sitting in a health society, but for most dentists, the benefits that they’re providing from ortho is maybe 90% of the benefit. The health benefit is 10%. But the reason why they like to talk about it is because we were taught to talk about it. Yeah. And we weren’t taught to talk about whitening. And by the way, whitening has a bunch of benefits too, right? It has. We just learned microbiome benefits. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s good for the gums and all that. But you know, maybe that’s my bugbear. Maybe maybe that’s where I’m going with that. Tell me about the process of opening a practice. The question I’m really asking though is like, what are the how long ago did you envisage this?

I when I was in dental school, as in studying dentistry, not orthodontics? Yeah, I remember we had to write a career plan. So a five year career plan and a ten year career plan. And I had option A and option B, and I don’t know why I had it this way, but option A was go down the specialist pathway and become a specialist orthodontist and work as an orthodontist. Path B was open your own dental clinic and my timescales were totally warped. I thought that I would be a specialist orthodontist within five years of graduating dental school, which is not possible. And then. Or that I’d have a clinic within within like a couple of years of graduating. I think that seed was planted in my head from our mom. She has such an entrepreneurial spirit, and so I always had it in my head that, okay, from dentistry, I want to be my own boss and this is the path to doing that. So that seed was planted very, very early on. I went down the pathway of specialist orthodontics, and when my sister was a dentist, it kind of made a lot of sense for us to work together. We happened to be working together in a clinic, both as associates, and we were cross referring a lot to each other within that clinic, and we saw that we were working really well together. And also as sisters, we know each other pretty well, and our values and our goals are very much aligned. And so for us, the prospect of working together was a no brainer. We’re in the same industry, so why not open a clinic?

But when I look at this, it’s so interesting because it’s very, very, very on brand compared to your Instagram pages. The art. Yeah. The what’s your page called? Dental Dental sisters and sisters. And it’s weird. Is usually you have a practice and then you have the Instagram page of the practice that’s supposed to reflect it. But your your Instagram page for Dental sister started years ago.

That actually started. We had a totally different name for it and we kept it very anonymous and it was more like fun images to do with dentistry to kind of break down the barrier of how scary dentistry could be. And so that’s how it started. We didn’t even have like our names or our faces to it. Then we announced ourselves as the dental sisters, and it was kind of just a fun thing to be able to, to make dentists seem more accessible and approachable. And I think that was helpful to do it that way around, because people liked us for our personalities as dentists and maybe shared in our humour when we posted like fun things about dentistry or shared in some of the research that we were putting out there also. And so we already had a little bit of that following before we got the clinic. I think when you open an Instagram page for a clinic, it’s tends to be pretty boring and a lot of people don’t really want to be following things like that. So doing it the other way around was helpful. And I think actually, to be honest, because we always intended to open a clinic, we we probably had that.

It was a good move.

Yeah, we probably had that in the back of our minds just to be ready.

So who is the.

Outlier amongst you because or are you all because, you know, there’s you can see there’s, there’s a, there’s an obvious move to for it to be different.

Yeah. I think it’s all three of us in a slightly different way. So I think for Victoria, clinically she’s the outlier because she’s doing a lot of clinical things that are not traditional dentistry. So that’s her for me. I think I have a huge focus on art. I think if I was not in dentistry, I would have been working in art if not being an artist. And so that was a really big focus for me in terms of just the design of the practice and making sure that we have our exhibitions and things like that. And then our mom, who’s involved, she’s the outlier because she’s bringing in that fresh, non Dental perspective on it. And so all three of us are outliers in different ways.

So do you.

Find sometimes your mom, because she’s not of dentistry, she’s not from dentistry. She’s sometimes pointing out something that you two never thought of.

Yeah, absolutely.

Give me some examples of that.

I think in terms of like people management or one of the things is Victoria and I just always call patients patients. It was it’s something that we always do. And to me calling somebody a patient is not implying that they’re sick. But for some people they feel that way. And our mom was like, why would you call them patients? Like if they’re coming in for maintenance, they’re not coming in for the treatment of a problem necessarily, like we should call them something different. And it’s just, you know, putting a new idea in our head. And I know some other people have thought that before within dentistry, but it was definitely food for thought and something that we we took on, which was interesting.

What else?

Um, I think also in terms of the practice design. I’m trying to think no, because in the end, I got my way. She didn’t want mirrors in the.

Dental surgery because.

She was like, oh, one wants to see those. So I was like, no, no, no mirror. So actually she.

Had that wrong.

Yeah, yeah. In the end I got my way with that. But I’m trying to think what else has.

She been approaching.

Businesses.

Outside. Yeah.

So in terms of.

Dentist find.

Really hard.

Yeah. At the end of the day we’re taught to be dentists. We’re not going to be good at everything. We’re not going to be necessarily good at marketing, good at all these things. And it’s the problem with dentists is they have to wear so many hats, and we have to accept that we can’t wear that many hats. So our mom has been really good with marketing. She comes from a marketing background, and so she’s approaching non-traditional audiences to help out business and so like local businesses and working with them. And that’s been really, really fruitful.

So your sister was telling me that rather than going for bank loans, you put everything you had in.

Yeah.

Tell me about like, the fear factor. How much how scared were you when you decided to do that? And how about from day one, you opened the place and there’s no patience, right? For me. I’ve never opened a dental practice, but for me, that would be the sort of the weirdness of, like, where do these patients come from? I mean.

Yeah.

It’s scary. It’s really scary. From the financial perspective. I think that that was probably the scariest, because I was sitting in earning money and then putting it straight into this. And so I think made money and then go to zero, make money in the good of zero. So so that is really scary. But I trusted the combination of the three of us enough to be able to trust the process. And I’ve spoken. I’ve spoken to so many dentists that we know who have done this in the past, and they all went through that fear. They all started from zero patients, and they all said it was going to be a massive challenge. They helped.

So specifically, you sought out dentists who had done squat practices?

Yes. Yeah.

How many did you talk to?

I think I spoke to, I probably spoke to like briefly spoke to like ten. But there were three in particular who I spoke with at length.

Throughout the process.

Yeah, yeah. And then so there was like one standout dentist who really helped us from start to finish.

Shout, shout him out.

Farid Muneeb shout out to Farid wannabe.

He’s also been a guest on this. Yeah.

Who’s help was was unbelievable throughout the process and really reassuring in terms of.

Sometimes.

What you need isn’t it? Yeah, simply that and it’s not.

Just being like, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. It’s like, you know what? This is really hard. This is a massive challenge. And like, you’re you’ll be prepared for it. So I think I really value that. And he had some really good tips and tricks and things like that.

And so what was the biggest mistake you made?

The biggest mistake I made.

What were you yourself you guys?

What would you have done differently?

Actually, one of the things was choosing our building and architectural team. We were told by a lot of people that we should go for a dental architect and a dental building team because they know the ins and outs of dental chairs and plumbing, etcetera, better. And I would agree that they do. And we inquired with a lot of them. And I found in the end we were wasting a lot of time entertaining them. When we eventually went with a non dental architect and non dental builders, we were recommended to use this building team by an art gallery. And so for them it was a big learning curve. They had never done a dental clinic before, they had never installed dental chairs. But it worked out really, really well. And I think again, it brought that freshness.

To this where Farid was involved saying, look, you need plumbing and piping and air. And I mean, did you know anything about this?

No, we learned so much about it. And that’s where. Yeah. So Farid came in and was like, where’s your compressor going to go? Because the building team didn’t know. Yeah. So that was that was really helpful. And. So I don’t regret. I regret wasting time with these Dental companies, to be honest, because I thought that. Um, I don’t know. The experience wasn’t too great with them.

I mean, building.

Like, sets up like that. In fact, it ends up like that every time. No one’s happy with their builders in the end. But you said. You said with the final team, you were quite happy. We were.

Really happy. I was really happy.

To hear that.

Yeah, I would use them again in a heartbeat. And I’d recommend them to anyone.

Yeah, I’ll get their number for good builders like Gold Plus.

Yeah.

So look, I asked your sister this. I’d be interested to see what you say. Look into the future. Where do you see this going? Some people have this idea of one perfect location, and I totally get that right, because perfection is so hard to get to. I mean, you never get to perfection, right? So you constantly improve, constantly improve, constantly improve. Some people say, no, I’m going to scale the idea, and I’m going to have several different locations where I’m not at, and I’m going to train people to work the way that I work. And and some people, they get even one level further and say, I’m just going to train the market. I’m going to become an educator. I mean, you’re definitely doing something new here. You know, the link, the link between author and microbiome in itself. Right? But then the testing, the health part of it, the gym and so forth.

What do you reckon? I think I’m.

In that second camp, so I definitely want expansion. I feel like this would be a sort of flagship site, and then we’d have smaller spoke sites for our patients to, to visit that are closer to their, to them. We have a lot of patients who travel from far to get to us here actually. And yeah, I think it would be great to scale and then expand in that way. That’s that’s what I see in the future.

I mean, it’s.

Very early days to ask this question. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I do get that. So let’s imagine three years time this this model is very room heavy. Right. It’s very hygienist heavy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Three is time. There’s absolutely no capacity left in this building. God willing then are we are you thinking literally replicate this in other locations?

I think I’d replicate the hygiene in other locations. And then this is our Dental flagship.

Oh, yeah.

And the salivary diagnostic flagship.

That’s interesting.

Yeah.

So then you have maintenance everywhere else.

But then. So we’re not saying there’ll be an orthodontist in every site. No.

I already travelled so much as it is, it doesn’t have for you know, I know, I know.

But no, I don’t think there’ll be an orthodontist at every site. The magic of orthodontics is that I only see my patients every couple of months over an extended period of time, but it means that your time commitment is not as much juice.

Dental monitoring.

No, I don’t actually. I know about them.

Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

And I’m looking at from the patient perspective I mean my my daughter’s going through it. Yeah. And she hardly sees her really. You know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. The orthodontics compared to my son who didn’t have dental monitoring, who was going in once a month paying those parking things in Harley Street, totally different amounts of you can see as a, as a guesstimate. I reckon you can see 4 or 5 times the number of patients. Yeah. Because, you know, I’m sure her orthodontist is looking at something like looking at the scans or whatever it is. Yeah, but she’s visiting very little. I’m really surprised at how little she’s visited. Yeah. And, you know, it’s Invisalign and the teeth are kind of getting there.

I think it’s a great idea. I’ve but I’ve noticed with some of my patients they feel the need to come in and see someone.

But I’ve it’s headache though.

You know, once, once a month I want to turn up at the dentist.

Yeah, yeah I agree it’s a lot.

And it’s worked out really because I have patients who see me from from San Diego, from Zurich. Yeah, yeah. And it would make their lives a whole lot easier. My patient in Zurich flies in for his appointment and goes straight back on the plane to.

Zurich once a month.

Yeah, pretty much.

Once every six weeks or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s crazy. It’s crazy.

I mean, I’m honoured.

Did you tell them that there are some good orthodontists?

You did no harm at all.

So, look, you’re doing your clinical bit. Your sister is doing her clinical bit. What are the bits you’re doing around the actual running of the practice? What’s what’s the bit that you’ve grown into?

So I did a lot of the legal stuff. I did a lot of the contract things with our freeholder contracts with the companies that we work with. I did all the stuff, which was a huge, huge learning curve. Yeah, because you can.

To do it. Yeah.

But then I just worried that at the end of the day, we were going to be interviewed in person by the QC inspector. And so I might as well write all the policies myself. And then I can answer the questions better.

Orthodontist OCD sort of thing.

Probably. So.

So I did all this stuff.

But what about.

Now? Now in the running. Are you doing hiring?

Yeah. Hiring? No. Hiring is all three of us. We take, like, equal load with that.

I’m. I don’t know if you fired anyone yet, but it’d be interesting to see who the Fire Robo is going to be. Yeah, I think they will.

Be a well, I don’t want to take that. And then, like, in terms of, like, staff HR because it’s contracts. That’s me. I’m just the contract person. When I was applying to dental school, I was deliberating between dentistry and corporate law. And so I guess it’s fitting I can.

See it as a corporate lawyer, actually.

That’s right.

So I guess it’s fitting that.

I’m doing it’s one of those.

Weird sort of sliding door sort of moments. Right. Imagine you’d gone that route. Yeah. And I know some corporate lawyers are tough life. Yeah, tough, tough life. Not the orthodontist. Life is easy, right? But tough love. And so interesting. Right? Why do you end up. Why does one end up doing the things that they do? Sometimes comes down to something almost insignificant.

Yeah. For me, I couldn’t really think of what to do. My mom organised tons of work experience for me in dentistry and in law, and a bunch of other things, and the dental work experience I did with an orthodontist. So shout out to Siamak Bagheri and and then also with a general dentist. And I just thought it was less boring than law and that was it. It was literally just like, okay, I’ll do dentistry. It was a little bit less boring and that was it.

And but, you know, like in that moment.

If that day someone had come in for the lawyer and talked about something interesting. Yeah. You literally your life might have been completely different to what it is today.

Absolutely.

Interesting thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I know it’s not the same thing, but we were talking about this on holidays, right? Why is it some people want to go to Bali and some people want to go to Australia. Yeah. And when it comes down to it. Right. Yeah. You could have had a friend who’s been or you could have done a bunch of research. A lot of times it’s like, there’s no reason why Bali is this place that I want to see, you know, it’s just a thing in your head.

Yeah.

It means nothing.

Well, that’s what you know.

The. Who’s that magician? Is it David? No. Not David.

Oh, Blaine. Blaine.

No, the other the the ginger guy, what’s his name? And he puts, like, subliminal messages all around.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. To the to the performance. So it’s kind of like that but like the. Yeah. Yeah you’re right, you’re right.

So yeah, maybe the subliminal. Maybe your mom’s been putting orthodontists into your head since I’m.

Six years old.

Yeah. How does it work with me? I’ve tried.

It with my kids.

First. Not yet.

I’ve heard subliminal.

Messages were just to do dentistry. And then when I was a dentist, I was like, I’m going to do ortho. And she was like, what? Why? Dentistry is fine.

No, no, no.

You clearly love it, though.

Oh, I love it.

I really didn’t like general dentistry, if I’m honest. I think if I had remained a general dentist, I probably would have quit by now. Really? I really disliked it. The only thing.

You dislike so much.

I think. To be very honest with you, there were elements of dentistry that I didn’t feel like I was good at, and I’d sit and I’d do a filling or whatever it may have been, or veneers or whatever. The patient would have been fine. But I was looking at it and thinking, if somebody had done this to me, I wouldn’t have been. I wouldn’t want me doing dentistry on myself. And that really upset me. And then I did Max facts.

And I was honest with yourself. Yeah.

And I was doing Max. Max and I was taking teeth out and I was like, I would allow myself to take out my own tooth. So I was like, this is the feeling that I want. I want to be able to trust myself to do it on myself. So after that, I was like, okay, I like oral surgery and orthodontics and that was it. So I would do orthodontics on myself.

And I remember in our last podcast, you were going to actually do medicine and Max, Max and all of that. Yeah, yeah. And at the last minute you just decided, yeah, sanity went over.

I’ll stick stick to the original original plan. Yeah, yeah.

Well, it’s been so amazing to come and see this place.

I’m so glad you’re in the flesh.

And I’m really proud of both of you. You know, even to even just. We were just talking about, you know, the toilet signs, which I hear you got from LA.

Yeah.

So even something as simple as that compared to, like, you know, manifesting this whole place. Yeah.

By the way, how.

Hard was it to find it.

To find the location.

Location?

How long did you look.

Oh, so we we started looking maybe a year before we even found, we found the place not even started building, and it was just kind of on the back burner. I was on all of the websites to get notifications on new properties in the area.

I put websites on it.

Um, oh, there was some. Oh.

Was that shop, shop.

Property or something?

No, some. I remember calling it real LA. And then somebody was like, no, it’s real LA. So so it’s okay.

So you were getting a bunch of emails saying this shop’s come up.

Yeah. And they were.

Just because there was a change in the laws in terms of your.

D1 and all.

That. Exactly. So after that, suddenly everything was, was, could have been available to us. So I was getting all these notifications, I was seeing a lot of the properties and, and I liked Mayfair. I felt like there weren’t enough dentists in Mayfair.

And so then did you think.

I am going to go? I am going to have a practice in Mayfair. Like, were you only looking at Mayfair, or was it that this came up while you were looking in other areas as well?

I was looking like 90% in Mayfair.

Where else were you thinking Harley Street or no.

No, it’s so saturated. I didn’t I didn’t want to do that.

So you wanted a shop frontage sort of situation? Yeah. Retail kind of situation.

Yeah, exactly.

And then I come across this site and the agency that was advertising, it wasn’t answering any calls and wasn’t answering any emails. And I thought it was suspicious. That almost made me more hungry because it was like, normally people want to get rid of their place. And it had remained empty for at least a year. And so I contacted this guy called Guy who, who kind of does deals in, in real estate. And he was like, I’ll find out for you. And he got us a viewing. But it took me a really long time. He got us a viewing. I have no idea why they were so weird about showing this place to us, and we just absolutely fell in love with it.

And it was an art gallery. And you said there were no walls at all.

No walls. It was all totally open plan. They had one room downstairs, which was their staff room, and that was it. And which is perfect because it means we don’t have to knock anything down. All we have to do is erect the walls.

And it’s cool because it’s.

Kind of a blank canvas, isn’t it, that you can.

Exactly.

You can literally make your own mark on.

Yeah, exactly. And they had all of the wall hanging mechanisms for when they were exhibiting for the art. And we have some and use the same ones of course.

And the place is full of art.

Yes, which is a.

Really big focus. So you mentioned that got the toilet signs from LA. Yeah, a lot of the art from LA to carrying in my suitcase.

Amazing. I’ll remember not to return your calls so that you get even more. Yes. To get in touch with me.

Thank you so much. Thank you for.

Giving us the time of your practice. I know you’re so busy, so amazing and good.

Luck with it. Thank you so much.

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.

Thanks for listening guys. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you tune in for future episodes. Hit subscribe in iTunes or Google Play or whatever platform it is. And you know, we really, really appreciate it. If you would give us a.

Six star rating.

Six star rating, that’s what always leave my Uber driver.

Thanks a lot, guys. Bye.

Don’t drive with the brakes on. And what I mean by that is don’t limit yourself with negative thinking or the fear of not knowing what you’re getting into or not. Not believing you can actually deliver on something or achieve something. I think it’s always better to do things and figure it out that way, because you’ll always regret the things that you don’t do as opposed to things that you do do and that go wrong. So I think having an action bias would be the first one.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Tani Kawakami onto the podcast. I was thinking Tani was our youngest guest, but actually episode 1 to 9. You didn’t get that that privilege today? No, no.

This is this is something that bothers me a little bit. Payman. We’ve known each other for a little while, and I remember saying to you in second year, I want to be a podcast. Yes, but second youngest will have to do. Adam.

That’s funny dude. Yeah. Adam Lawton that’s right. When you said it to me in your second year, I remember going back thinking, I can’t believe that guy asked me that question, but then. But then that imprinted it in my head. And then when I saw Adam, I was like, oh, Adam, you become a fourth year dental student. You had backfired. You wanted to be the record holder. But anyway, it’s it’s a massive pleasure to have you. Tani got a really interesting career so far, his very young career, and he’s just qualified dental school. And in his PhD year, he. When I met him at the end of his first year, I think Tani or beginning of second year when he was doing a sales role for Bryant Dental, and he’s been doing that throughout dental school and really a real feature on the on the dental circuit. You know, wherever you go, any conference, Tani is there. And I’ve always been so impressed with your sort of articulate sort of nature. You’re very good talker and and impressed is a funny one, but I’m not sure if I want to use the word impressed, but it’s a different word I want to use. Just like, you know, like in awe of how tactical you are. You’re very tactical person. Very, very, you know, there’s a lot there’s a lot of ambitious people, but ambition plus tactics, plus hard work. So killer combination. So Tani is actually a partner now in Bryant Dental there with Priam and Connor and some others, I guess. Right? Yes. And also now becoming a dentist, an actual dentist. So working in a dental practice for the first time. So it’s a really interesting career. Massive pleasure to have you, Modi. How are you?

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. I mean, Dental Leaders podcast. I’m not sure what I’ve done to warrant a spot here, but, um, I guess you’re running low on guests. They thought you’d scrape the barrel.

I think we both know what you did to get a place. All right, well, I’m quite interested. We we do this thing about childhood and all that, but actually, I just listened to you on a different podcast, and I can’t be bothered to hear that story again. I’m going to I’m going to summarise. I’m going to summarise it as, you know, you are sort of a sportsman in your childhood. Yeah. And you and your brother. Go on, go on, hit me with it. I do like to know how, what produces this kind of guy. But go on, give me the highlights of childhood.

I think you know, from from day one, my brother and I have always been very competitive. He’s two years younger than me, so very close in age, whether that’s academic, sports, everything. It was always, you know, head to head, neck and neck. He was slightly younger, so we always joked that I was the pacemaker and made a little bit easier for him. But that’s my excuse, I guess, for for what he’s done now he’s onto, you know, two very impressive things. But fundamentally, I think, you know, from from a young age, my parents instilled strong values. Dad was a very, very, very hard working. And that essentially became the baseline. That high work rate is is not necessarily something which impresses my parents. That’s just, you know, the average expectation from them. And then from my mother came bigger thinking. She spent a lot of her time as a child growing up in different areas in the world. Her father was a clinician who went from everywhere. His story, in fact, is exceptional. But don’t want to digress too much. But you know, she’s seen a lot of the world from a young age, and because of that, she’s had quite a bit of exposure to to a lot of things and tried to put it in our brains that whatever you want to go out and do is only, you know, a set of steps away. Nothing is out of reach. And at a young age, it’s hard to understand that and hard to really figure out what that really means. But as we’ve progressed through life, that’s served us quite well. That cocktail of, you know, working hard and then also, you know, seeing the bigger picture.

You’re both your parents doctors.

Yeah, both parents are doctors. Last few generations, actually in the family tree. Everyone’s been doctors. So I’m a dentist, I guess I’ve we’ve we’ve gone backwards. But my and my brothers in my brother’s in finance. So we’re the only two to break the mould. Even our cousins laterally are also going into medicine.

Were you thinking of being a doctor?

I was, yes, I was, I was very strongly considering it. Then I saw the lifestyle that my parents were living in the UK as doctors. Lots of long hours, late nights, etcetera, with very little output compared to the input that was being put in. And I thought that’s maybe not necessarily what I want to be doing. Finance was something I was also massively interested in and did some work experience, both hospitals and also in some funds in London, and I realised that dentistry is actually an amalgamation of both. If you decide to go down the business track, you get the clinical satisfaction that you do from providing great work for your patients. But at the same time, right from day one, if you want to day one out of dental school, you can start building your own, your own thing. And that is something which for me was very appealing and I wanted to be able to craft my career from, from day one, as opposed to go and work in a big corporate or spend X number of years working up the ladder in hospital.

So you’ve got your brother and he’s gone into finance, so you can see what would have kind of you’d be different, I guess, but you can see kind of the life he’s, he’s gone into. Is there a side of you that thinks maybe I should have gone that route?

Possibly. Possibly it is. It is something that we that we always think about. Grass is always greener, I guess, but I’m pretty happy with how things have panned out so far. There’s positives and negatives to everything with with dentistry, it’s great because you have flexibility. You can set your own calendar, you can set your own working week, and essentially you can do whatever you want to. Whereas if you’re in a in an institutional setup, then you have seniors to answer to and that’s that. But then I guess, you know, risk reward, pay off, etcetera can be can be different. But again, with dentistry that’s in your hands. And you can, you know, you can create whatever you want to create.

So is he working in a giant organisation?

He’s actually in his final year at LSC, but he’s been recruited by Blackstone, done his internship, etcetera, and been offered a spot there. So he’s he’s doing well. I think he was there was a stat somewhere. They took 164 analysts globally this year from 64,000 applications. So he’s done all right. He’s done all right.

Well well done. So okay. Tell me about when you were going to apply to dentistry. Where did you grow up?

Grew up in Birmingham. Grew up just just outside Birmingham in the in the countryside, a small town called Redditch, if you’ve heard of it.

Yeah. Did you, did you sort of on purpose choose London because of the big city?

Exactly that. I think there was two parts of my decision making process. Number one, Kings has the name, and I did a bit of shadowing in a hospital in India as well when I was building my application. And as soon as you mentioned, you know, I’m applying to Kings, everyone’s jaw dropped and they looked at you a certain way. So that was part of it. And then the second thing was I wanted to be in the big city. I enjoyed my visits to London. I enjoyed the pace of what the life appeared to be like, and I wanted to be in the mix. I think being at dental school in London is great because that’s where everything is happening. I mean, you have speakers from around the world, where do they come to in the UK? They come to London. So all of these extra exposures were on our on our doorstep and it made it very easy, as you mentioned, to come to these conferences and talks and events and lectures, which really broadens your thinking. And I think it’s good to to set that thermostat from from early on in your time at dental school. So it worked out quite nicely.

Were you not interested in that sort of the student life and being in a town where students are dominant?

Um, possibly. But I think London’s student circuit is also quite good. It’s maybe different. It’s not a campus based university, etcetera. But there is there is still a lot to do. I mean, I’d argue it’s really the greatest city in the world, and there’s always things going on. You have, you know, multiple universities within the same city. So you get to meet a lot of people. And I had a lot of fun.

I don’t know, dude. It’s a funny one because, you know, maybe I grew up in London. So so for me, it’d be that going out of London, you grew up somewhere else. So coming into London is is a thing and you’ve got to remember your, your you’ve been working since the first or second year. So your finance situation is not like your normal London Dental student. Sure. You know, and yeah, you’re right, London is the best in the world when you’ve got loads of money, but quite the opposite when you haven’t. But tell me then, were you when you were a kid, did you used to work as well? Did you used to have jobs? No, never.

Never at all. Actually, I never, never worked a job in my life, actually, prior to university. Um, so it was different, but I think I was quite lucky in that I always had a full plate. It was never just one thing going on. There were always lots of plates spinning from quite a young age, whether that was sports societies, etcetera, etcetera, every day of every week was always quite busy. Great for us, not great for our parents. They had to ferry us around all over the place, but it was useful because then you’re used to a certain level of activity all the time, and that filters into your time at university and then the working world, etcetera. Your baseline resilience tolerance is is pretty high, and I think that unlocks a lot.

I mean, your dental school experience, you know, I kind of got, you know, I speak to quite a lot of young dentists, kind of got an idea of it. But my dental school experience, I felt like there was lots and lots of stuff that wasn’t necessary was taught, and loads of stuff that is necessary wasn’t taught. Is that how you characterise it as well or do you not feel?

No, I would agree with that. I think of course the foundations are important, but there was a lot of um, yeah, I think you’re right. There was a lot covered, which didn’t need to be, which isn’t relevant clinically. You know, afterwards once you get into the real world. And there were holes in other areas. But again, I was very, very lucky because of my involvement with Bryant from the end of my first year, early second year, I was a rep on many, many postgraduate courses, etcetera. So I got to sit in the back of the room of all of these postgrad courses, and that was filtering in from, from day one. So I didn’t necessarily feel the holes because I was getting exposure elsewhere, possibly with some of my peers. Maybe that was the case. But, you know, that wasn’t my experience because of the situation. It’s worked out nicely for me.

But what aspects of it like because because I’m a long way away from it, it’s hard for me to pull it out. But you’ve just done it right. What aspects of it would you say you know that those bits were not necessary? It’s quite difficult, isn’t it, because there are people in your year who are going to go on and become, you know, oral medicine consultant? Sure. That that that guy needs some, some basic cellular stuff that they teach in dental school. And there’s another guy who’s going to go on and own 100 practices, and there’s another guy who’s going to go into community and teach. It’s difficult, you know, which bits, which bits do you think you could cut from your course to make way for the bits that they don’t cover, like, I don’t know, do they cover digital? Did you have scanners and things?

Yeah. I think when you put it like that, my answer previously was I think oriented towards what I wanted and what I needed. I agree that that is the dilemma because there are so many different career paths within the profession. It does make it extremely difficult to design a course. If it was an easy solution, every university would be doing it. In my opinion. It’s also difficult at King’s because you have a cohort size of 160, right? So even if you do decide, you know, to to implement whatever it is you want to implement, you have to do that for the whole cohort. And that’s a logistical challenge, I think maybe a bit more depth in, in, in some domains. So for example, occlusion I don’t think was taught very well at university at all. Our, you know, idea of occlusion was basically only for dentures and then for, for restorative work, it was okay. Patient bite down on a piece of articulating paper, remove the high spot. And that’s occlusion sorted. So that was maybe, you know, an area that was lacking. And I think inclusion is probably pretty fundamental to to all dentistry. Right. It’s the baseline which you need to crack for every case. So that would have been great to to sort out at university. But again, at the end of the day, I think universities are gearing you up to become a safe beginner and work on the NHS. Right? So single tooth dentistry really is the focus.

Yeah. Although it’s interesting because, you know, they taught us quite a lot of occlusion in Cardiff because there was a guy who’d written a book on occlusion who was one of the teachers, you know, so it’s weird. You kind of get kind of different. I remember going on and there was loads of people from King’s and from London, and they knew a lot more, for instance, about ortho than I did. Yeah. But I, I knew a lot more about occlusion and for instance, oral med than they did. So it’s interesting. But the thing is, the majority of people who go out into practice are not only going to be looking at fillings and crowns, which is kind of what they teach you fillings, crowns and endos. You know, you’re going to be looking at Invisalign, bleaching implants, scanning. Those things aren’t taught at all, right?

We had, we had a little bit of of work with scanners as, as the, as you progressed. But it wasn’t, you know, the core fundamentals of what we were doing. I think modern dentistry is progressed at a very quick rate, a very alarming rate almost, and it’s difficult to catch to keep up with that when you are in, you know, teaching within an institution where everything has to be approved, things move slowly.

Things move slowly.

Right? A hierarchy, etcetera. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So it’s it’s fine. I mean, most of we’re in a vocation. At the end of the day, a learning starts when we leave university doesn’t necessarily end there. And I think we a lot of, a lot of us have that understanding. And we will spend a lot of time investing in our in our clinical journeys.

It’s important to talk about though, dude. Yeah. Because, you know, if people don’t talk about it then changes won’t come about. And, you know, it just legacy will be the thing. I mean, you know, I bet the amount of time you guys spent on full dentures was way more than the amount of time you’re going to spend with patients on full dentures, and then a whole lot of stuff the other way around. Right. Let’s get on to your first moment where you thought, Bryant Dental, I’m going to get a job. Was it was it I’m going to get a job or was it I’m going to get a job at Bryant Dental because and so did.

In fact, it was nothing to do about getting a job or getting or any kind of remuneration at all. I was in first year getting a little bit bored at university because you weren’t doing much dentistry. It was just biomed in a lecture theatre, etcetera, and I felt the pace was quite slow. I didn’t really feel excited or there was no big goal or ambition at that point in my life. And whenever I, whenever I’m in a situation like that, I feel quite uncomfortable. So I was I ended up looking around quite a bit at some of the trade shows and some of the companies that were out there, and I saw Bryant Dental was a young, up and coming, fast growing company, doing things very differently to what a lot of other companies were doing.

What are you talking about, dude? You were a first year dental student. You had no idea what other companies were doing or what Bryant Dental was doing. Your first year dental student no, I mean.

You get an understanding of you go to a trade show and you see people all, you know, everyone was what were.

You doing at a trade show? First year dental student.

Why not? Why not? I’m in London. It was it came up.

As an advertisement. There weren’t that many, right? There weren’t like many loads of you going to trade shows? No.

I was just curious, to be honest. Payman. I wanted to see what the profession was that I signed up for.

Amazing. Go on, go on, I like that, I like that. So you went to a trade show? Yeah, I went.

To a trade show, saw what was going on and thought, these guys are electric. There’s something different about them. I also then met VP Thomas Powell at a dental talk. He was the president at the time. Again, he was a dental student in a suit standing in front of a crowd of people delivering, you know, an introduction for whoever the speaker was that day, very eloquently. And I thought, this guy has got something different about him. He’s quite different to the normal dental student. So I spoke to him and he said, yeah, I’m involved with this company, Bryant Dental. And then, you know, one and two came together and I thought, excellent for me, essentially what I wanted to do, what I wanted out of that was I wanted to collapse my learning timeline. I thought, if I get involved with this company, I can get access to all of these courses for free as a representative, and I’ll get to meet a lot of clinicians face to face with loop sales, etcetera, etcetera. And that way I’ll be able to, you know, condense the time it takes for me to get from point A to point B. So my initial email to Connor and Brian was, look, I don’t want any form of payment at all. I think you guys are awesome. This is what I can see you guys are doing, and this is what I think I can add. Of course, everything that I could I said I could add, they would already be doing, but they liked the foresight. And, you know, the the opposite of inertia, the ercia, I guess, you know not not to be to be hurt. Guess they quite like that. So they brought me on board. And, you know, for me it all worked out quite nicely. But the goal was never, you know, I’m in London. I need to make money to survive. I had quite a generous student loan. The idea was really just to get as much exposure as I can as quickly as I can.

And Thomas Powell was the president. And then you later on became the president as well?

Yes, sir. Was the president three years after him?

He’s your hero. You’re doing everything he does.

Quite possibly. Hope he’s not listening to this. You’ll never let me never let me live that down.

So. All right. I’m still. I’m still. I still can’t get my head around it. I’m thinking back to my own first year. A whole different species to me. Man number one, the characterising undergrad that, you know, that biochemistry, physiology bit as boring and easy. I didn’t say.

Easy. I didn’t say easy, I said boring.

I didn’t do biology A-level. That made it all very, very, very interesting. But then number two to then go and go work for a company. But guess the Tom Hayes Powell thing was quite kind of serendipity something. All right. So so then you got there what did you do. What was what what happened. What did they I mean, they were they were recruiting students because Connor himself was a student when he set the whole thing up. And I spoke to Connor, I had a conversation with Connor when he was at your stage now in Vught, and I asked him, I advised him to leave dentistry. Yeah, because. Because I asked him a couple of questions about, I don’t know, numbers and number of employees and all that, and I realised this guy would be wasting his time in clinical. You know, he’s got he’s got a bigger fish to fry. And that was my advice leave clinical and I don’t give that advice very often at all. In fact I remember with Tom I didn’t give that advice. I advised against leaving clinical, but Connor had something going on and the two of them. So when you got there, there were already. Was it just you and Tom or was it other students?

Oh no, I was it was just Tom and I actually George. George was a student at Imperial. He was doing, I can’t remember what, his geology or something completely random, but I think Connor and Priam wanted people who were very similar to them in that young, hungry, ambitious, willing to work crazy hours because you’re motivated by things other than money and and lifestyle. Et cetera. You want to be part of building something. And yeah, I guess with youth comes exuberance. A little bit of naivety as well. But that’s can be a superpower and it all kind of fits together nicely at the time.

So then, then give me a sort of a snapshot of what you were getting up to, let’s say, when you got into the rhythm of loop sales, what was how was your time spent between university and seeing dentists, and what were you doing when you’re driving around the country? Is that what you were doing?

I don’t actually have a driving license payment, so I was carrying carrying this case around on trains and buses, a bit like Will Smith from Pursuit of Happiness. But it was. Yeah, it was, it was, it was fun. Essentially. We were all the leads that were coming through. They would be assigned to us from that point onwards. It’s, you know, every customer is our individual responsibility. So right from outreach to setting up the meeting to then exactly, as you mentioned, running around the country visiting probably three, 4 or 5 practices in a day throughout the week and on weekends as well, and then taking care of all the aftercare. So it was, you know, the standard sales role really just in between lectures and around exams etcetera.

Five a day.

Yeah, we try and because you control your own, your own calendar. Right. So if you’re going to Leicester I’d lump all of the Leicester leads together in one day. If you’re going to Birmingham, all of the Birmingham leads together in one day and and carry it out that way.

And how long would each visit be?

Each each loops meetings. About an hour, hour and a half lunch times or end of the day. The main thing was the travelling between them, really, because you’re all over the place. And I was covering London and the Midlands at the time, whilst in second and third year, which was pretty tough. But because we have we had online lectures, you could watch lectures at any point. So in the back of a cab or on a train or in the evenings, you could pop open the laptop and make sure you sit on top of it.

Because of Covid.

Even prior to Covid, it was online, but post Covid exams became online as well. So that helped me quite nicely as well.

But wait a minute. So. So when you say were all other students just sitting at home watching lectures on their computers?

Um, in first year, a lot of people came in, but I’m not sure how much attention or studying was actually being done in these lecture theatres. It was more of a social occasion. But then post-Covid, everyone was obviously at home, and since then I don’t think it’s really picked up. So most people are doing all of their lectures at home in the evenings or in their own time, and there’s maybe only ten, 15, 20 students coming to the lecture theatre, which is probably quite disgruntled for the lecturers themselves. But it is what it is, I guess.

And what what’s been the same lecture is being you can see it live, it’s being streamed.

So that’s how it was in first year. It was streamed and then also recorded. And you can watch it in your own time and post Covid. I believe most of them are being recorded and left that way. So they’re only filmed once and then left up. And obviously as and when they’re revised, that change is also reflected on the on the platform.

So. Okay. So give me a flavour of the week. So you’ve got patients to see at some point. So patients came pretty patients.

Patients came pretty late for us because of Covid naturally. So it was quite it was quite funny. We meant I was meant to be seeing my first patient on a Monday. And then we went into lockdown the Friday just before that. And then it was a year and a half, 18 months until I eventually started, saw that patient. So that was that was quite funny. But for us, I think my year hit the sweet spot because we didn’t miss too much clinical. We got a hands on end of third year and all we missed really was, you know, a bit of scaling in second year. And then for us in fourth and fifth year, they really went heavy on the clinical. So we made up for lost time.

But then did you stop selling loops in fourth and fifth year?

Fourth and fifth year I stopped selling loops and I said to to Priya and Connor, I want to be doing something else. You know, I think I’ve learnt all I can learn selling loops. Now let me take on another challenge. And I started working on the software company.

So let’s stick with loops for a second. Yeah. How would you characterise the whole Bryant experience as opposed to another experience? Because certainly like you said there’s certainly different. Right? The experience is different. I think one side of it is, you know products. Right. But there’s another side of it really is the service side. Well give me, give me put some put some salt and pepper on on my basic understanding of what I mean. I’ve been to the office. It’s lots of fun. Huge party areas. Loads of people working as well. How many employees is it there now?

I believe it’s about 80 now. Close to 80. Yeah. So quite a quite quite a big in the same site.

Some of them remote.

Some are remote, some are in other countries. We’ve got a set up in Australia now as well. And so yeah it’s overall I think headcount is about 80 reasonably reasonably sized. But to get back to your initial question about the salt and pepper things essentially, yeah. Yeah. We’re just trying to delight every customer. That’s really the idea we want to make. Every customer of loops feel like they have a concierge service. So you deal directly with us via WhatsApp. There’s no email channels, anything like there weren’t any email channels initially. As you scale, they need to be introduced, but you have a very 1 to 1 intimate experience with whoever it is that you’re meeting. And because we were such a small company, we are all at the heart of the thing. So you’re not speaking to someone who’s at a distance from what’s going on. We’re all in the thick of things. I think the great thing that that was indifferent about us is that we are all dentists or dentists in training ourselves, so we can understand what it is that you want. We understand what it is that you need and what the problems are that you face. And we’re perfectly positioned to be able to relate to you. And I think people really appreciated that. And there’s a level of playing field essentially, rather than them feeling like they’re being sold to. I think we were great because we could be very authentic, because we all, we all use these products ourselves before anything goes to market. We use it for six months ourselves, test it out, tried it out. So everything that’s coming from from our mouths is authentic. And people I think resonated with that.

But what was the training? I mean, you were a 20 year old kid.

No training really. It was just a case of following Connor around Tom around for a few days when they were meeting customers. And that’s it really product knowledge. You you do that in your own time and the rest of it is just being good with people. And I think at the end of the day, what we wanted at that point in time was I guess they were hiring for personality as opposed to skill set hiring for people with the right motivations, the right approach, and, you know, not just going through the motions or not doing things Transactionally you want to be part of building something and you have to buy in and the rest really can be learnt. If you have the soft skills, the rest of the things can be pieced together over time, and I think that’s the approach they took with me.

I feel like, you know, I did the transition from clinical to, to B2B to, to, you know, talking to dentists. And I found it much harder selling to dentists than to selling to patients. What do you think? You’ve you’ve kind of gone the other way, as you say that I would agree.

It’s I wouldn’t say more difficult. I’d say it’s different. I think with patience there’s a little bit more trust per se, in what it is that you’re saying. Because they see you as a doctor. You’ve trained for X number of years. Okay, you must know what you’re doing. But with dentists it’s different because dentists all understand intimately what it is that they’re, that they actually want from this thing. They have knowledge on it, they’ve done their research, etcetera. What really works well with dentists is being super confident in your product and knowing that the product that you are, you know, putting forward to them is actually best in class. And it’s quite reassuring when you have that behind you. But then secondly, just being completely open and, and, you know, being authentic and giving them the breakdown. They want to be slightly more technical, I think than than. Patience will be. Unless you have an engineer as a patient who’s going to start asking you about shear strength, etcetera. Dentists are slightly more analytical in that respect. So if you know what you’re talking about inside out and you can put across the value quite clearly, then it’s, you know, it’s not a transaction at all. It’s a no brainer. So it works quite well. I think that’s a privilege that we had because we knew the product that we are selling is best in class. And, you know, it works worked very well.

But you know, what I found with dentists is that, you know, there we are where they are. We are trained to be super critical and disbelieving. I mean, that’s that’s part of our training is is big bad companies are going to come along with products and none of them are going to be necessarily proved, and you need to get that out of them and so forth. Yeah. And you know, whichever way, different dentists are very different in the way they translate that into the questions they ask a sales person as well. But I always used to think, you know, having I must have gone to about the same number of practices that you probably went to a few more than me, actually, maybe because I stopped early, but but I went to hundreds of practices or thousands of practices, and I always found most of the interactions when when the guy himself wasn’t stressed were all very nice. Yeah, but I did find some interactions where, you know, the guy was trying to catch me out sort of thing. There’s plenty of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you know, I was it was funny situation because I was a dentist, the owner of the company probably like maybe, you know, earlier on than you. Yeah. The owner of the company. And sometimes I wouldn’t even tell anyone I was a dentist just to see how that would work out. But I was just a surprise me was that dentists wouldn’t use the reps more for information. Yeah. You know, because the reps are the ones who’ve got the information on what the market’s doing, what people, you know, most, most good ideas come from other dentists, but the reps have all of that information. And to see the interaction between a dentist and a rep as an education interaction instead of a sales interaction.

Is difficult that there isn’t it from from the perspective of dentists because they feel like they’re being sold to. And naturally you’ll be sceptical. But I completely agree. I think approach everything with an open mind, and that way you are going to get get more value from it. I think with us, what was quite good is that there was never a hard sell for us. We just essentially wanted to make every interaction as positive as could be with whoever it was and not necessarily enter a, you know, one of these. Enter a practice at lunchtime looking to make a sale. That was never the case. It was always a case of just making the other person feel good, being authentic and doing everything you can to delight them. Over time, that compounds and suddenly, you know, once you’ve done that enough times, they start talking to their peers, etcetera. It’s always going to sound better coming from, you know, recommendations as opposed to from the rep themselves. So once you’ve built up that that compounding effect, the sale was done most of the time before, you’ve already gone into the meeting. So you’re not, you know, actively looking to sell. Then it does become an educational thing that just comes with reputation, I guess.

Yeah, but if you had to put it down in one word, what’s the magic of Brian? What is it?

Going above and beyond for every customer. I know everyone says it, but genuinely that is what it was. Speed of replies.

So that means fixing things when things go wrong.

Is that fixing things when things go wrong? Being proactive. Speed of responses. If someone’s expecting to have something fixed, then fixing it quickly, but then also giving them something extra on top. Just surprising people with with the way that you operate and just being differentiated, I guess, from the way that other companies handle things. And over time that adds up.

Yeah. So then, okay, you decided you had enough of going around selling loops to people and you went more towards the note side. What do you call that product line?

Tap tap.

Notes. Tap notes. Tap. Yes. So just describe to anyone who’s listening what tap notes is and what it’s actually part of a bigger project by Bryant. Right.

Sure, sure. I think how it all it all came about is fundamentally, you know, we’d met a lot of dentists, many thousand at this point, face to face. And us being clinicians ourselves, we can intimately understand the day to day lives of a lot of clinicians. And we realised that just magnification and posture are very, very small problems that clinicians face speaking to them 1 to 1, a number, a number of times we realised that there are much more pressing issues and we want to position ourselves as problem solvers within the profession. And that’s kind of where this whole software project was born. So we were looking at what are the problems that dentists face in clinic. And those are things like litigation. A lot of time spent on admin note taking, etcetera, stock level management within practices, auditing, all of the stuff that’s not fun for anyone, but you have to do it as part of running a dental practice. So we thought, let’s start on the journey of trying trying to, you know, to tackle that head on. So part one of a number of softwares is tap note. And this is what we thought was the most pressing issue, which is dentists spending a lot of time on record keeping on and on notes and then also not being protected from a litigation standpoint.

So they’re spending a lot of time in practice at the end of the day, not getting home on time and then also worrying about and and being stressed about their record keeping, if anything, were to crop up. So we’ve essentially built an AI tool which allows dentists to click buttons, click diagrams. And in fact, because it’s all protocolized, the nurse can click buttons, click diagrams as you’re in the appointment, and by the end of the appointment, the AI will automatically generate tailored notes for that patient, linking symptoms to diagnoses and linking certain medical history factors to prognosis of treatments, etcetera. So it’s super tailored, super refined for that patient. So it’s not a template approach. And then it also generates consent forms and referral letters and gives analytics to practice owners. So they can do auditing in one button as opposed to poor practice manager having to sit there once every quarter and and go through, you know, multiple notes. So we want to eliminate admin with tap note. And then going forwards, it’s essentially us dipping our toes into software.

And off the back of tap will then build out the others. So one of which is stock room which is essentially our solution for stock level management in the practice. So like Amazon Fresh where you can walk in and walk out of the store and it automatically tells you what you’ve taken and bought and charges you just like that. With RFID gateway technology, we want for practices to be able to track automatically all of their inventory. So when a delivery man walks through the front door of your practice on a Monday morning carrying X boxes of composite X boxes of ET Cetera, just by walking through the gateway, it automatically logs it on the software, and it will tell you exactly what you have in each room in the practice, what your usage rates are per associate, per, you know, time period, etcetera, when your expiry dates are and then automatically reorder the correct amount that you need at the best price, because we’ll have network effects and group buys at that point. So that’s kind of what we’re looking to do there. And then the third part will be a integrated practice management software tying all all of the bits together.

So who’s in charge of the software side of the business.

Priyam. Priyam. So the way the company is structured really is you have Connor who does the hardware. So all of the loops, light systems, the materials, heaters, chair etcetera, that’s all Connor’s baby. And then the software side of things is, is Priyam.

So I mean who’s who’s who, who are the techies, who are the engineers. Yeah we’ve got many of them are there. I’ve got a team of developers.

So I think when we were building it all out there was a team of 10 to 15 and now it’s more maintenance and small changes. So that’s that’s much less.

So if I’m understanding correctly, I mean, the difference between tap notes and kiroku that we had, we had Hannah from Kiroku on here. Yeah. Is that from what you just said is that it actually has. Sort of an actual I not it’s not it’s not a database of notes.

That’s the idea.

Is that right?

Yeah, that’s the idea. So we’ve we’ve tackled it essentially we’re trying to save the same problem as Kiroku with with the tap note offering. We want to save clinicians time and also protect them from, from a litigation standpoint, same same use case. But we’ve tackled it in a different way. So we’ve gone back to front. So rather than taking templates and making them into buttons, we’ve built a neural network inputted with all of the latest clinical information and clinical guidelines etcetera, so that when inputs are clicked, it will then everything is linked together. So then symptoms will link to suggested special tests that you should be doing that which will then link to what your diagnoses should be there for your further discussion in treatment plan, etcetera. And with these neural network neural networks, they’re self reinforcing. So over time we’ll be able to accurately predict if a patient comes in with X situation then this, this, this, and this is what is most likely needed to be done and required. And that way we can act as an AI assistant or an AI crutch for clinicians basically.

Yeah, but kind of put some meat on the bones. Give an example of that. Patient comes in with pain. It could be an RCT it needs. It could be like that. Is that what you mean.

Yeah. So patient comes in with certain pain whatever that is. If we go through Socrates dull, achy, throbbing pain. Et cetera. Et cetera. Yeah. And as you go through the record, it then suggests. Okay, because you’ve got symptoms of x, y, z. Therefore, you should be doing all of these special tests on in these locations. And the results of the special tests are x, y, z. And therefore the most likely diagnosis is this and this and this. Because oftentimes I mean, we we often hear the saying that, you know, if you give a certain patient to ten different clinicians, you might get ten different treatment plans, but the diagnoses should all be the same. But unfortunately that isn’t the case. There is a lot of, you know, we’re up against it. We’ve got time pressure. We we might not have a protocol in place. We might not be up to date with the latest guidelines, and therefore we can often misdiagnose and not be as accurate with with what we’re doing as we’d like to be. So this just sets a protocol. So no matter how short your appointment times are, it tells you, okay, you need to follow this step, this step, this step, this step to make sure that all bases are covered. Because the knowledge is there. And we’ve been through dental school. We understand these things, but it’s very easy to forget. And it’s very easy to miss things out when you’re in a high pressure, high paced environment. So we’re essentially trying to tackle that with this tool.

But okay. But what I’m not fully understanding, dude, is is it a time saving tool primarily, or is it literally going to help me with diagnosis? Or is it is is that in the future it’ll be it’ll be a diagnosis that fiend. And right now it’s the time savings to.

This is something that is to be honest, both of these things are value adds of using the software. But it depends from clinician to clinician what the main use case for them is. If it’s a time thing, great, which is probably the slightly more experienced clinicians, because for them, you know, they understand these things. They’ve got experience. They’ve seen it inside out multiple times. But for new graduates like myself or younger dentists who might not be confident in as many domains, for them it’s it’s almost an educational tool or a reinforcement that what they’re doing is correct. Or if it’s not correct, then how to put it right. So therefore they feel more confident in their clinical protocols basically.

So now, now that you’re a PhD, you’re working five days a week or one day a week as the when are you when are you spending time on this? In the evenings and weekends.

Evenings and weekends. That’s right.

So you’re not you’re not involved in the sales part of this or do you make evening appointments with people?

And I do I do a little bit of.

That online appointments.

Yeah online appointments. But we have I’ve got a team now who handle that. Once demand has grown quite a lot. It’s too much for myself and a couple of people to to handle. So I’ve got a small team running the sales operation and then we, we spend a lot of time also talking to customers and discussing feedback with developers to then guide the way that we develop the product, as is the case with all software products, really, if you’re doing it right.

So you do the sprints and. Yeah, exactly. But then let’s say I don’t know what the situation is with Tom. Let’s say he’s he’s not doing dentistry, is he not.

He’s not practising at the moment. No.

Yeah. So, so he’s he’s available five days a week and you’re only available in the evenings. What pressure is there on you to do dentistry or come do more time at I don’t mean pressure by by by Connor and Priam I mean which way are you being pulled?

The reason I did my foundation year really, was because then it buys me a year to not have to to make that decision. I think up until this point in my life, there’s been very little opportunity cost because I’ve been at Dental school. So it’s, you know, it’s simple, just, you know, graduate, get as much knowledge as you can. Off you go. And this is supplementary with that. And we’re now getting to the point by the end of my year where I need to make a decision in which direction I’m going to go. Is that kind of what you’re alluding to with your question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s something I’ve toyed with for quite a while and something that I haven’t necessarily got clarity on just yet. However, I’ve broken down, you know, my blueprint for the next 12 months and what it is that I need to execute on. And my job, really, I don’t want to overthink things is just to execute on these steps in this time period. And at the end of the end of that year, I can make the decision. So I haven’t got a straight answer for you because I don’t want to commit either way just yet. This buys me a year to see number one where how do I develop? What is my skill set turn into? And secondly, what happens with with the company and the trajectory and then also with my clinical career within dentistry, what doors do I unlock and then I can make a decision.

Because when the last time I saw you, we were speaking about America. American exams. And and although, you know, don’t know, you might be the kind of cat who says, I’m going to just do my American bit because just to have that door open to me, but to me, someone who wants to to to pass, you know, to become a dentist in America is someone who’s going to go into clinical dentistry.

Um, yes and no. I think more than, you know, just passing the exams and then going to America to become a clinical dentist. For me, it just unlocks another geography and the opportunities associated with that. Once you’ve got the, you know, the or whatever route your mechanism, you decide to get into the states. Now the whole world is open and you’re not going to be limited. And to be honest, the the opportunity, sorry, the cost of that is pretty low. All it takes is a bit of hard work and a bit of elbow grease over the next couple of months to get that done and over the line. So it doesn’t really cost me anything to to to spend the time to do that.

So you’re actually saying that you’re open to going and becoming eventually a 100% clinical dentist? I just don’t see it, dude.

No, no. 100% clinical. I know for a fact that’s not going to be it. I think the great thing about dentistry is you can have impacts both upstream and downstream. So your downstream impact will come from your clinical work, your surgical work, etcetera. And there’s probably nothing more fulfilling than actually delivering that. But at the same time, you can scale a business, own multiple practices, clinics, etcetera, and have impacted a slightly more upstream and broader. So for me, the idea wouldn’t be to go to America to just become a wet finger clinician. And that’s that’s all I do. It just unlocks the opportunity for me to if I want to build a group of practices, I can now go and do that in the States as well. And I don’t need to make that decision now. It costs me nothing to to just keep that door open.

I mean, the sort of the flexibility you alluded to in dentistry is definitely a you know, it’s definitely true. Yeah. And having, you know, having danced on this particular needle myself, I can let you know that when you’re mixing, you’re going to be mixing it for a while. Surely when you’re mixing it two days clinical and 3 or 4 days non-clinical is a good mix. It’s a good mix. Two days clinical is kind of, you know, you’re doing enough dentistry to be, you know, wet fingered. Three days clinical is just hard work. It’s just you’re more dentist than you are anything else because it’s three days, you know what I mean? It really is that. And one day clinical definitely isn’t enough. In my experience, I did it. I did it for a long time. It was a big error. It’s demotivating in its own self. So, you know, maybe that will be the way that in the early days you’ll be in that sort of phase of mixing clinical with non clinical.

That’s that’s definitely how I envisage it for now the next couple of years, I think early on in your career is probably where you develop the most clinically. You probably learn the most in those few early years and don’t want to sacrifice that time because I actually do enjoy clinical dentistry quite a bit. So I’m trying to front load that as much as possible. And I know it’s, you know, it’s tricky too. I think with, with clinical dentistry you just need experience. At the end of the day, you need to put the reps in. No matter how much you study or learn up front, it’s very difficult to condense that time period in any substantial way and recognise that. So I want to spend time on my clinical dentistry, but then also keep the appetite and develop the skill stack in other domains as well. So then when it is time to go, both options are open and both will complement each other. If I mean at the end of the day, if you want to run a group of clinics, then it can only be a positive thing to be clinically competent or you know, as best as you can be anyway. Yeah.

But so what are you saying? You haven’t decided whether you want to run a group of clinics or whether you want to do the supply side or both, or neither. You don’t know.

I don’t know for sure. I don’t know for sure. If I had complete clarity, it’d be it’d be pretty easy to just point the gun and execute. Up until this point in my life, I’ve always known what it is I’m working towards, and it’s just a case of executing on the steps to get there. This is why right now is a different territory for me, because I’ve never really been in this position where I haven’t exactly figured out what that trajectory or what the right path to take is, but which is, you know, for now, all it takes is hard work to to keep all of those doors open when I get clarity, execute, job done. No doors are closed. Let’s do it.

Yeah. I mean, I don’t know why I’m expecting you to have the answers to this question. These are difficult questions, man. And the reason is you’ve gotten yourself to a position that that gives you these choices when you’re thinking about the future. As far as Bryant, how wed are you to it? I mean, we’ve got we said you’re a partner. And so I guess there are some financial implications to that. But but how ready are you to it? I mean can you, can you envisage yourself doing a different thing altogether? Nothing to do with Bryant or.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the guys are quite, quite open and quite, you know, understanding. They know that at the end of the day, this is their baby and they’ve sacrificed more. And you know, for, for the, for the rest of us, of course, we’ve sacrificed a lot, but nowhere near as much as them. And we need to, you know, at some point do our own thing and build our own company or whatever it is. We have our own journeys. I’ve always been up front with them and said, look, from day one, this for me is an opportunity to learn. It’s a it’s a playground really to to try things out and, and learn a lot of skills with very little downside. And they’ve been quite, quite open and quite facilitating with that. At the end of the day, you know, they know what kind of people we are and they know that we’re not going to be involved with something or tied to one thing for our whole lives, or at least for a very long time. And it’s I mean, that’s that’s that’s the thing with great leadership, isn’t it? You’re not going to restrict people that work with you. You want to facilitate whatever it is that they want to do. And therefore there’s a mutual value add.

For sure, for sure. And. It’s it’s been an impressive journey to. But I want to get to the darker side of this board. I want to talk about errors. And I know it’s a bit bit unfair because clinically you haven’t had much time to make errors. But we I made some errors in dental school. And in the spirit of the pod, let’s discuss errors.

Yeah I think. I’ve. Endodontics has been tricky for me. I’ve. I’ve perforated while at dental school, but that’s to be expected. Is it?

But is it, is it because I perforated in dental school? But does everyone perforate in dental school?

I think not necessarily just perforating, but you are going to make mistakes at some point, right? That’s part and parcel of it. Yeah. I think maybe being a little bit gung ho, trying to do things on my own, which has served me well in some aspects, but some aspects of life. But when it comes to, to clinical practice, of course you need to be a bit more careful. So in fourth year or whatever it was, I should have been stopping at every single stage, etcetera. And these things happen. But you learn the main thing is you learn your lesson and from that point onwards you know, you don’t make the same mistakes.

What about, you know, a loop spaced error? What comes to mind when I say that mistakes you’ve made on the road?

Or I think once I sent a case of loops in an Uber to one of the other reps, and then the Uber driver went went driving around the city. So we had to to chase him and get that back. So that could have been pretty costly. Other than that really, it’s just been technical things. So maybe my first couple of customers, the measurements weren’t correct. And then I go back, be open and honest about it, say, look, you know, I messed this up, this up, this up. Let’s remake it for you. Let’s get this right. Et cetera. Et cetera. So it’s always been slight technical things that, you know, that’s part of learning. I’m quite lucky in that I don’t think I’ve made any huge mistakes in terms of decision making or strategy so far with how I’ve conducted my life, but who knows? Those those are, I guess they’re all those are all coming at some point.

But I’m still not, you know, I’m still not happy.

I don’t know what.

A darkest day, a darkest day you must have had. What’s been the darkest day in the last 24 years? 24. Is it.

23? Oh. Darkest day. I’d say the one that hits best life. The one that. No, no, the one that hit me the hardest. It sounds quite trivial, but in year 11, the first game of the hockey season, not being selected for the first 11, that hit me quite hard because I always thought I was pretty good. But then from, you know, one game later I was back in the squad and that was sorted. But, you know, to be honest, I’m interested.

I’m interested in, you know, you said you and your brother competitive. Yeah. And and the benefits of competitiveness are kind of obvious. But the downside of being very competitive, you know, like what you just said, not being selected for the team destroyed you somewhat. Yeah. So that or or being a bad loser like we all lose in life, don’t we? We all lose somewhere.

Yeah. Well I think losing.

Somewhere with that.

Losing my brother consistently over many, many years is you.

Lose. You know what I mean? The downside of being competitive, what relationships got you.

I’d think relationships, friendships and your personal life can take a toll quite a bit because you’re you’re not always in the room. You’re in the room, but your mind’s not. And you’re living inside your head quite a bit can be quite taxing. My brother and I, maybe when we were growing up throughout school, had an extremely competitive relationship, but not a healthy one. It was not a supportive one. We weren’t, you know, we weren’t growing together. We were always trying to outdo each other. But then once we went to once I went to university, it completely flipped. And now we’re the closest of friends and it’s awesome. I think it’s really, really good. And I’m very, very grateful for that relationship. But I think to answer your question, you know, you probably felt the same thing when you’re getting you’re getting enlightened off the ground. It’s very difficult to not be completely consumed by it and that to take over your life in all areas. And a lot of my close friends, they do sit me down and tell me, look, you’re here, we’re having a conversation, but you’re not here. Snap out of it. Come on. And that’s something I need to work on for sure.

Yeah, that definitely happens to me when during during a phase of innovation. And you guys are constantly innovative innovation. So it’s one of those things it doesn’t I’m sure it’s the same with, you know, people who are doing fantastically well or people not doing fantastically well, or anyone when you’re doing when you’re making something new and you’re bringing something new out, you have to be completely obsessed by it. Yeah. Otherwise you just won’t do the damn thing. It’s so hard that you won’t do it.

Yeah, no, I think I’ve listened to a lot of your pods. And you always talk about, you know, execution is the most important part, right? But the execution is the most difficult part. Anyone can can have an idea. And to get something over the line, you need to be. 100% in until that is delivered on, and 100% of anything means that everything else becomes neglected. And that’s something that you need to come to terms with and agree with, I guess.

And you know, before we were talking about talking to dentists and sales and you were saying, you know, knowing you have the best product, but everyone doesn’t have the best product. You know, there’s some guy selling his product based on, you know. Priceless a or someone else’s based on just just habit. And you know, it’s that thing of having being able to say, I’m selling the best product. It’s a nightmare to deliver that, isn’t it? 100%.

100%. Yeah. But then. But then at the same time, I think if you can very definitively define what your USP is, fine. If quality is the main thing, then yes, you need to have the best product. But then if your main thing is, you know, we can outcompete anyone else on price, great. Or if your main thing is we have a certain feature which to you may supersede everything else in terms of importance, then this is what we have. And I think the main thing is you’re not trying to sell to everyone. The people that recognise what you have is going to suit their needs the best. Then great. You just need to deliver value to the people for whom it’s appreciated. I mean, recently I’ve been reading Blue Ocean Strategy, which is. I’m not sure if you’ve read it, but it’s.

I’ve been reading it recently.

Excellent. Great book, great book.

And it’s lovely.

It’s all about competing on a completely different axis to everyone else and therefore making competition, you know, irrelevant. And I completely agree. I mean, if you’ve got a nice green field opportunity then it sounds it’s great. It’s great. You can just focus on doing what you do best for the people that you’re trying to serve as opposed to, as opposed to outdoing your adversary.

It’s been a massive pleasure, man. It’s been a massive pleasure having you. I’m. It’s funny. It’s funny man. Every time I talk to you, it’s just so easy to talk to you because. Because you’re very, very, very articulate at your young age. Where did you get that, man?

Uh, repetitions. I think I’m speaking to a lot of dentists over two years. Three years or so.

Does it not predate the dentist? I think always I think.

I’ve always been relatively articulate, but probably wasn’t that confident in many social interactions. I was quite an anxious kid always. I was always doing a lot, but I was maybe not as confident in myself as I am now. I guess that’s part of growing up, right? But I think in my school there were a lot of articulate peers, a lot of articulate teachers. We were always presenting, doing, doing things like that. And that builds the baseline competence. And then over time, as you build the confidence and you get the reps in, it’s like anything in life, you do enough of something and you’re in the right in the right areas and you observe it a lot. Then it starts filtering into the way that you operate.

Yeah, I find it strange that you’re saying that now that you weren’t confident because you seem like I suppose not. No one was ever confident from day one. But I think your parents have done a wonderful job, because instilling confidence in your kid without instilling arrogance is a massive, massive achievement. And you really have that. It’s a lovely thing. Let’s get to the final questions, buddy. Which one do you want first? Is an avid listener. Are you looking for the Prav? The Prav, the Prav? But let’s start with the P because it’s less deep. Okay. Fantasy dinner party three guests, dead or alive. Who would you have?

Number one is Roger Federer. I think to compete at a high level and to be at the pinnacle of such a competitive environment for a consistent period of time for so long is is exceptional. And I think you need to be wired a certain way to constantly demand standards of yourself over such a sustained period of time. And I think there’s a lot of lessons to learn from him. How did he keep that fire going? All the time? Because we all get it in sprints, right? We all have motivation at times, and then sometimes we don’t. But to compete at that level, you need to constantly be on and that has to be systemised, I think. Yes, there are characteristics, but he’s definitely done something or his team have done something with him to maintain that. So I think there will be a lot to learn from someone like him. Secondly, isn’t isn’t.

Federer famous for being a boring guy? I might be wrong. I don’t know.

Never met him. Never met him?

No, I’ve got no idea, dude. I’m not. I’m not exactly a sports fan, but something in me. Maybe it’s just. I’ve got some sort of thing about his face. Go ahead, go ahead. Who? Who else?

Um. No, I’d say the second one would be Bill Clinton. I think the thing with the thing with Bill Clinton is that we probably everyone’s heard it, but he has this innate ability to to make everyone that he meets feel like $1 million. And again, that is something which I think is such a superpower. To be able to build people up like that is great. I mean, we hear about this, they call it this reality distortion field and how he makes every person that he meets feel like they are the most important person in the universe at that point in time, and it’d be great to see how he does that. It’ll be awesome.

I read a book. Maybe we probably read the same book, but it was talking about the guy was going around with Clinton on the campaign trail or whatever, and he was saying, literally, the guy who opens the door for him, he makes you feel like $1 million, genuinely.

It’s awesome. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Yeah. See, that’s not a boring guess. Well done.

Gotta have a mix. Maybe he can get something out of Federer. Right.

Yeah. Who’s your third?

Third would be, at the moment someone I’ve been super, super in awe of and impressed with in terms of execution is is Will Ahmed of the CEO of, CEO and founder of Woop. It’s a crowded space, you know, health care and wearable technology. But the way he’s been able to outcompete his his competition in an environment which was so, you know, it was already quite well established with with other companies Garmin. Aura et cetera. He’s done it in such an organic way where he’s really leaned into, you know, community building with users, etcetera, etcetera. And who knows, maybe his tech might be the best. Probably. Probably not. But the the way that he’s been able to create virality, again, learning how he’s done that in a systematic way would be very useful in my opinion.

Yeah, I’ve heard good stories about him as well. Um, young as well? No. Like really young.

Very young. Think he’s 30 something, isn’t he?

Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah.

Let’s get to practice. It’s weird last day on the planet for someone your age, but last day on the planet. Surrounded by your friends and family. Three pieces of advice you would leave for them.

Number one, I’d say don’t drive with the brakes on. And what I mean by that is don’t limit yourself with negative thinking or the fear of not knowing what you’re getting into or not. Not believing you can actually deliver on something or achieve something. I think it’s always better to do things and figure it out that way, because you’ll always regret the things that you don’t do as opposed to things that you do do and that go wrong. So I think having an action bias would be would be the first one.

Um.

Secondly, I would say again, going back to Bill Clinton is build people up around you, take people with you on whatever journey it is that you’re on and try and, you know, play positive sum games where everyone around you wins and you win as well. It’s not at the expense of anyone. So don’t be selfish. Share and make people feel good and add value for them. And then finally I’d say to to try and be present, which is something that I need to figure out myself. So maybe this is me talking to myself. So try and be present and live out. Live outside of your own head. Don’t be, you know, always occupied with the future and have anxiety about what’s going on. And also don’t regret what you have done. Just trust your gut and back your convictions and have faith in the process.

Again. Wise words from a young man. Wise words from it really is bad. You’ve really got an older head on your shoulder. But it’s nice to hear that, man. Action bias build people up. Was the third one. Trust your instincts.

Trust your instincts and be present.

Be present, be present. Yeah. You know, it’s a funny thing here because this this preface question, it’s kind of like some people answer it in a sort of, okay, be kind, because I’ve found being kind is really, really useful thing to be, let’s say. Yeah, but then some people answer it in the way you answered. Your third one is kind of the the thing I wish I had done, which I haven’t done so far, sort of thing. Um, which is, which is interesting. It’s an interesting thing, buddy. Thank you so much for doing this. I think I want to check in with you again, as the guy who suggested you want to be on the pod in your second year of dental school. You deserve a second bite at this. But in in, you know, a couple of years time, I’d be very interested to see where you’re at, buddy. So thanks a lot for taking the time to do this.

Thanks for having me. Much appreciated. Thank you very much.

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.

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My husband understood addiction. He went away and he learnt about it because he knew what he was seeing was not Sheetal, the mum who didn’t care if she was drunk, the mum who didn’t care because I just passed it on to him. He knew that wasn’t me and so he took some. He took the kids and he said, I’m going to my family’s house and you know, you need to think about rehab or that’s it. So he gave me an ultimatum, rehab or nothing, and I was done.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Sheetal Jain onto the podcast. This this podcast is we’re going to call it a Dental Leaders. But it could have been a mind movers because she tells the story is inspiring and painful at the same time. Drug and substance abuse is definitely more prevalent in doctors and dentists. Mental health issues are more prevalent, suicide is more prevalent, and Sheetal’s been through the worst of it and come out the other side. And she reached out to me to tell her story, which I think is incredibly brave and the right thing to do because, you know, substance abuse can be anything alcohol, even the substance that you secrete when you make a bet. Right? It could be a gambling addict. It could be so many different things. Thank you so much for coming in. Actually. Coming all this way. Welcome.

Thank you, thank you. And I just want to say thank you for being open and willing to talk about an area where it’s not really talked about enough, and I don’t know why. It’s kind of looked down upon. I don’t know why people are scared of it, but that’s something I’m willing to explore and for you to open those doors. It says a lot about you and your character and being curious about it.

I think, you know, Sheetal, we all, all of us have someone in a family or friend situation who might have been through this. And I found that separating the sort of the guilt of it, the looking, looking at it as mental health disease rather than this person has chosen to go down this route, seems to be the best way to sort of get over that stigma that you’re talking about. At the same time, coming out of it is a choice. And so the strange thing is, and I want to get into this with you, that, you know, so many people have friends and family in this situation, and none of what you try and help them with actually tends to go in and people talk about this rock bottom that the person has to get to themselves. What was your what was your first experience with misuse of substances?

Um, I firstly, I don’t know anyone of my circle that has come out and said they’ve had a problem with food, gambling, sex and love, drugs, alcohol, workaholic ism. That’s a big one. No one I know before I went into recovery. No one. So I was alone. I didn’t know one addict was let alone know that I was an addict. Well, so this is all new to me. Wow. And so the work that I have done, um, I found out alcohol wasn’t my first substance. That came on really late, actually, but it was louder, and it it was killing me faster. But for me, the substance that led to unhealthy coping mechanisms was eating. Oh yeah. So it was a disordered eating. So being quite fussy. So now we call it orthorexia and and all these words. You know, I’m going back nearly 35 years. I’m 41. And for me those habits were clearly there around the age of 11. And there was a trauma linked to that. I can accept that. But it was food for me. Really? Yeah.

And was it when your father passed away? Yeah.

Yeah. That’s when the substance used to suppress my feelings or help with my feelings started. But again, with work that I’ve done, um, it really came down to a lot deeper than that. And this is what addiction is about. Addiction is not about the substance. It really is about what it is within you. So the substance is just a symptom. So once that’s cleared out your system, hence why they say rehab a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks because it fogs your brain. You then get to the real stuff like the real stuff which you don’t want to go to. And I didn’t want to go to. I was afraid, and I had no choice but to go there and and what I believe. And this is why I want to start the story with everyone, is everyone I know does have children, or are becoming parents, or have nieces and nephews or work within a field. Their children are involved, and it’s those conditioned children’s beliefs that are hardwired in us. That changed things. That put us on a path that can either go up, stable or just down like it did in my story.

But then, you know, I’ve got kids, you’ve got kids. And I’ve noticed with kids, even with the best of intentions, you sometimes, in fact, particularly with the best of intentions, you set up an unintended consequence that comes out of it. I see it with with staff as well, with the team, you know, you think, well, you know, it’s a great idea. Let’s incentivise them on whatever it is. And then you realise, oh God, because I did that. Now there’s a new behaviour going on that’s only focussed on that or whatever. So have you found that there are lessons that you can gain from it as a parent, in terms of the way you can treat your children? Not to set up these issues 1,000%.

And I mean, I went to my third establishment of last year, facility wise, was a place in South Africa called Oasis, and it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I was in Thailand and then my eating disorder got found out and they said, alcohol wasn’t your primary, your food is your primary. So I ended up in Oasis and that was a story.

So like a rehab.

It’s a rehab. Yeah. For all for all types of things. And one type of therapy we did there they do. There is something called schema. And I don’t know why something like schema is not so established in the UK, and hence why my psychiatrist sent me to Oasis in South Africa because for some reason America, South Africa, places like that are so much more advanced in this knowledge. So I did schema and it’s single handedly changed my life and it’s changed everyone’s life that I saw that came in and came out of Oasis. And what schema is it’s everyone’s got a schema. You’ve got a schema, I’ve got a schema. The girl next door has got a schema. And it’s basically a your childhood conditioned belief, the way you’ve been brought up. What what scheme are you under and how are you today with that schema? So if I am now aware of what my schema is, unrelenting standards never being good enough, low self esteem, all those kind of things that’s going to feed off no matter what anyone’s going to give me. And so what we start with is just recognising what are the basic, basic children’s needs that we all, as do I forget in a world that we live in that is so stimulating, you know, lots of gadgets and this and that, lots of distractions.

Yeah. You know parents parenting field is like in, in in consumer markets the biggest one because you feed into it. So what I learnt was autonomy, safety ness, nurturing protection and having a voice is all a child needs or that’s bottom line. So now I’m a completely different mother to how I was before I went into Oasis. And I thank God every day because that place was not only a rehab for addiction, it was a school of life. It was how I want to be as a person, as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, as a daughter. And and what I really was grateful for is this I have this one chance with my children, and anyone that knows me knows that my motherhood is the thing I cherish the most. It’s a gift. So everything I’ve learnt I am channelling not only to myself, to my children. So if I get it wrong. Humility. I have to embrace humility because I know what I’m doing now is I’m doing it. Whatever I’m doing with the right intentions.

With any intention.

With any intention, right intention, and to the best of my ability. Now, if it goes AWOL after that, it just requires sustainability, perseverance, patience. And I’m really seeing that with my children because they act out. That’s what children do.

So give me an example of something that your kid would have done, or something that you would have done before you understood schema and how you’ve changed that since.

Wow, that’s a good question. Um, so all my three children are very different. Yeah. So I’ve had to address that. They all have different needs and different ways of expressing and suppressing, and all I, all I’m doing now is I’m listening to them. I’m being the biggest thing I’m doing. I’m being present. I’m giving present energy. I’m not just sitting there next to them. They’re watching TV and on my phone. I’m giving them my energy, whether it’s sitting in silence, but I’m holding their hand. Whether it is, I put my daughter to sleep now, and both of them and I do affirmations to them, and I say to them, you’re safe, you’re lovable, you’re protected. You are enough. I wake up in the morning and I say the same things again. If they have a problem, I stop what I’m doing. And I give them my focus, and I try and tune out the high sensitive volumes that they have. And it’s hard. I’m not I’m not lying to you, but I take my away from the situation. I take myself physically away and I just recenter myself. And then I go back in and I just say, mummy just shouted then and mummy is sorry. Mummy did something that was not right and it wasn’t your fault. And that is what a child needs to hear. Sometimes it’s not their fault and you hear of things when you’re fighting in a room with your wife. Your children are fast asleep, but they can hear something that is true, because what they’re thinking in that bed tucked up is it’s my fault. It’s my fault. Mummy’s crying. It’s my fault. Mummy’s upset. It’s my fault. I got sent to my room, you know, actually, they got sent to their room because mummy reacted irrationally. Really? Because everything is figureoutable in a sentence to a child, you know? So our actions and our reactions and our impulsivity, I’ve had to really look at and it’s hard.

And I think during a period of substance sort of abuse or substance or dependence, the whole what that is, is that thing is number one. Yeah, I mean, it that’s that’s why we call it that. Right? That thing is number one. Yeah. And so is that part of the reason why you’re now present. Because before you were present with the substance or with the, with the behaviour as well.

I mean, I say to I said to my therapist the other day, I said I’m knackered now, I’m tired. Physically tired, like being a mum is tiring. I’m not working at the moment. Yeah. And I said I don’t know how I did it before. I was always perfect. I looked the part, I said the part. I did all the school runs, I did all the activities, I turned up to events. I worked my ass off and I said, I don’t know how I did that. And she goes, well, you were using. That’s how you got through it. You acted out. You acted out an unhealthy ways to keep yourself going. Yeah. And so that’s how I that’s how I thought it was. I didn’t know any different going back to childhood. I didn’t know these feelings are meant to be felt. I didn’t know struggling was a thing. And it was okay to struggle. I didn’t know not being a certain way was okay. I wasn’t uncomfortable with my own skin. I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t love who I was, and so what did I do? I abandoned myself because it was easier to do that. But to the world, I had it all together. And that’s what alcohol, that’s what food disorders, whatnot can give off that impression that you are okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I’m in survival.

In a way. Being able to change your state at will is a massive advantage. Right. So if that’s what alcohol does for someone or if that’s what a cigarette does for someone or whatever it is. Yeah. Being able to say I can at 1113, I can be calm because I’m doing that thing. So have you got now? I guess you’ve been through the 12 step program. Have you got other ways of sort of getting calming yourself down that before you used to use. Yeah. So what did you meditate with?

I mean my, my drug of choice was wine. Oh really? The wine o’clock. The mummy. Oh red.

Wine.

Both. Yeah. It was both and but it did, it did calm me down. Yeah. It did take the edge off me. And you know, I know all my friends and family that I, that I love still do drink. What, how it was different for me is that it worked until it didn’t work. Yeah. And then the dependence started. And I think that’s just what I want to really get the awareness out is that fine line is very fine. Yeah. And if you’re not assured and you’re not healthy, you’re not having those frank conversations with yourself going, is this taking the edge? Is this appeasing what it needs to appease, or do I need more of it? That’s the slippery slope. And so for me it worked. But then it just went further and further and further because the problems just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

So then the I guess like any other situation, by the time you sometimes realise that’s the situation, sometimes you’re a bit too deep in it. So what are the early warning symptoms? Is it as obvious as when it starts affecting other people in your life? And you know, the kind of what we were saying about being present in the room and.

Yeah. Is that it? I guess for me, unfortunately, I’ve only known the one way, which was I went too far and it was rock bottom. The warning signs were all there, God like, they were all. There and I guess it was denial. So if you can get over the denial. So today if I, if I’m connecting with someone that is going, oh, that sounds a little bit true, it sounds a little bit. And that’s what happened to me. You know, as a dentist, you know, you’re asking someone, what’s your what’s your weekly allowance? And I’m going, oh God, I’ve gone over that this week. It’s only day one. I wasn’t willing to look at myself. I wasn’t willing to go, is this habit of mine which it became a habit or this coping mechanism? Is it healthy or have I got have I got a hold of it? Can I just stop it tomorrow? Can I say.

Am I controlling it or is it controlling me? Absolutely. Yeah.

So you know someone very close to me. I don’t want to mention names because there’s boundaries and whatnot. But he looked at his habits. He was able to look at his habits and go, that’s got a bit unhealthy because it’s every day I’m going to try 3 or 4 days, got down 3 or 4 days, then go. You know what? I’m just going to just not have it because I don’t need it. So he was able to look at himself and he wasn’t frightened because he’s okay. He’s not an addict. Now, if you struggle with looking at yourself, if you struggle with well, I don’t need to prove it to anybody, not even to myself. I don’t need to prove it. That’s a warning sign. And if anyone’s looking or hearing this and being sorry to say judgemental or criticising me, I’ll hand that over because it’s not. This is my story. I’m not criticising.

You for falling into this.

Trap or for saying what you just said. This is what I. This is what I also did when someone I saw on TV, like people do, are talking about it. Well, that happened to you. It’s not going to happen to me. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I can have my glass of wine and I’m okay. I still function, I’m a functioning person. I didn’t say functioning alcoholic. I am functioning. So who are you to say I’m drinking too much? I did it, so I’m able to say that was a warning sign for me. Yeah, and I think it’s a warning sign for a lot of people.

And I guess, you know what you were saying about being a perfectionist, a perfectionist? I don’t think those are the words you use that self image thing. Yeah. And I don’t know whether you set that up in your own head to cope with your dad’s passing. And I don’t know, your brother or your sister might have gone into sport or into whatever it was. It’s it’s that kind of person that doesn’t go and question themselves on this sort of thing. Right. And so, so me and Rhona have been trying to figure out why is it that dentists are so stressed and suicidal is that you must have looked at this in detail, right, with doctors and dentists.

And that’s why I’ve like I said to you before, there’s a belonging I feel in this profession and I’m maybe not doing it clinically. There is a duty of care within my fellows and also the well-being of other people. And it just so happens that all of my circle are kind of medics and dentists and pharmacists and whatnot. So I’ve asked myself that question, and I can only talk for my myself is that it came down to that unrelenting standards. I can be something and I’m going to get it. And this pushes me. My ego gets the better of me and we are capable of doing it. And it’s the same thing. We’re capable of doing it until we are not capable of doing it, you know, and we lose ourselves. I think we lose ourselves, our humility. We are just human beings that are trying to do the best that we can, and we’ve chosen a vocation to do the best by others. It’s hard to do that and remain human, and it’s hard to do that without being criticised. And it’s hard to do that by leaving work at work and home at home.

It’s really hard to get those boundaries. Yeah. And it’s the especially in medicine, the frontliners, you know, they’re at it. The capacity is at it. You know working all these hours. It’s proven you need eight ten hours sleep to function. So how do you function if you’re not getting that sleep you get on a hamster wheel and then it stops and it’s not sustainable. So you’re then looking well, do I just ditch my career and have a lifetime change, or do I change something that can keep me at that pace? And unfortunately, as far as I know, it’s only substances that can keep that momentum going other than a lifestyle change or a well-being change or a mindfulness change. But this is easier. Getting a substance is easier. It’s at your disposable on demand and it’s very, very socially acceptable. Yeah. And that’s another field of alcohol being socially acceptable. It’s in freshers week. It’s in toasting. It’s in it’s 5:00. Let’s you know it’s the way we. Live.

I mean, alcohol and dentistry is gigantic, isn’t it? It’s every single event that you go to and. And what are the numbers? Do you know what are the numbers of. I mean, I guess we’ve got this issue of there must be thousands of dentists who rely on alcohol but don’t consider themselves as reliant on alcohol. But but what are the what are the numbers of people who sort of you would call problematic users of substances amongst the medical and dental field? What percentage are we talking?

So it’s hard and this is what almost the government want. They want numbers. They want quantitative data. And you can’t you know there are numbers out there.

And I’m really surprised you said, you know, no one who’s been I know loads of people.

I don’t know anyone.

Older than you.

No, no. But if you do know people, that’s great, because what that shows is that people are talking and they’re sharing you. There’s one thing recognising a behaviour. So yes, obviously now I’m in recovery. There are a lot of people I can see that have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. That’s not for me to say or do anything about, but I can observe it. And that’s what makes me sad, is that there is so much help out there. There is a committee. I don’t know if you know of it. British Dental Doctors Group, which is BDG, and they are. It’s a whole fellowship of people that are suffering with addiction and they need that safe space. So there is a separate entity aside from Na, AA and all of that sort of stuff for dentists and doctors, which is a first. And it’s very it’s.

Kind of like a 12 step programme tailored to medics.

No, no, it’s not a 12 step programme. It’s a safe space, okay? It’s a safe meetings. Meetings. You talk about work, you talk about your struggles and you feel there’s a connection because of the same job. Yeah, there’s an understanding that maybe others don’t understand. Yeah. So there’s a lot of the same agenda on all these things. It is the momentum. It is the pressure. There are the things, you know, people now willingly just say as though it’s normal defensive dentistry I practice defensive dentistry. What is defensive dentistry? Why why are we okay with going to work under attack? Yeah. Why is that okay? Why is it that we have to go to work and go? We doubt everything we do, and we don’t now take love in what we do. We fear what we do. And that fear, that capacity, that fear holds in us. It sets us back from so many things, for sure. And it’s not a way of living. And fear for me was a big thing that led me down to addiction.

So why is it that we haven’t heard of this organisation? What did you call it?

Mta, BDG I should have bought the QR code today. So anyone that is wanting to scan it have a look. But you can google it b.

G.

B double d d g. So British doctors dentist group.

Why is it that we haven’t heard about it? Is it because there’s a stigma associated to it?

Do you know what. If I could give you an answer for that? That is what I would like to know. And I’m sitting here today raising that awareness, but I didn’t know about it until I was in addiction. And there’s PHP professional health professionals. They are there as a first port of call. If someone is struggling with substance abuse. I know that I went to that establishment because I was afraid of my dental career. So a lot of people go in fear of their registration, not because they want to go. So it’s almost like pushed upon them. And then some of these meetings are kind of pushed onto them to get the tick box and the CPD and whatnot. Oh.

So like if they’re at the GDC because of this, the GDC recommends that they go that direction.

Yeah. So there are facilities and PHP and BDG are amazing. The last thing they want you to do is be jobless or report to the GMC. They do everything within their power to be on your side because it is an illness. It’s not a choice. I didn’t wake up one day and say, hey, I’m going to ditch my kids and my husband, my marriage, my family and everything because I’m an addict. Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s let’s be an addict today. You don’t choose to have this illness, and it’s taken me a long time to really believe it’s an illness. And I don’t know if that is what’s stopping medics, medical professionals, dentists to actually think, oh, I’m ill. Yeah, this is a thing, but it’s not looked nicely on, so maybe I can’t say it is.

Well, I mean, it’s strange because as medics, we should be the ones who understand that more than more than everyone else. But you’re right. The stigma is so huge. And, you know, we discuss it on this podcast all the time about errors, mistakes and how we all hide from mistakes. This sort of image almost, that we think our patients think we have to be perfect. Yeah.

It’s the assumptions.

Yeah, but.

It’s not the assumption. It’s it’s what we put on ourselves. Yeah. It comes right back to the schemas. Yeah. Always goes back to childhood. What we believe is the truth. We are hardwired a certain way to get to a certain point that hard wiring.

Whereas whereas I mean, it’s an interesting question, right. If, if I was having an operation and the surgeon was a functioning heroin addict, and the way that he was functioning was by being an amazing surgeon, but a terrible dad or something. Yeah. My operation is going to be better than if my surgeon had never touched drugs in his life, but wasn’t the best surgeon in the world. Yeah, yeah, but there’s no way in hell that surgeon is going to tell me he’s a heroin addict. Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it?

That’s the.

Illness.

Yeah, that is the illness.

Itself is.

The denial. Yeah. And that admittance of powerlessness. I am powerlessness, I am powerless to alcohol. Done. I’ve had to surrender. And it’s taken me so many years to get to that point. It took me three rehabs, so many rock bottoms, an attempt of my life, well, losing everything that I had. Everything for me to go. Okay, I surrender. This is it. It’s not obvious. It’s hard to accept. And it’s hard to surrender.

Do you want to go into.

Yeah.

The rock bottoms?

Yeah. If you want me to.

We don’t have to.

So there were so many rock bottoms because I kept going.

Uh huh.

I would never admit defeat, but all I knew is I don’t know what is happening to me. It’s not fair. And you go into victim mode. You go into projection. You’re going to blame. This is never good enough. This is never good enough. This is the way I am. But the the substance was now a problem because it was changing who I was. I was Jekyll and Hyde. I did some very shameful stuff when I was drunk, but I wasn’t when I was at that stage, I was drinking just to stay alive. I was, I needed it, and that’s where my most shameful things happened. And that’s how addiction works. It thrives on shame. Right. Let’s just forget about it. The drink will make it better. That will soothe me. So all those bad habits just keep circulating. But the biggest rock bottom, which is where I got to with my family and my husband just said I can’t do any more, was when I got drunk after five days of being sober at home, where we went on holiday and he said, I can’t do this anymore. And you know, I believe in a higher power because he knew what he was seeing was not evil. So I was a lucky one. The mum who didn’t care if she was drunk. The mum who didn’t care because I just passed it on to him. He knew that wasn’t me and so he took some. He took the kids and he said, I’m going to my family’s house and you know, you need to think about rehab or that’s it. So he gave me an ultimatum, rehab or nothing, and I was done.

So you actually needed that?

I needed that, and I took some medicine. I drank a lot, and I was somehow I don’t quite remember the ins and outs. And it’s something that I guess it’s hard for my family to talk about, and I have to respect that boundary. But I was found on the floor unconscious and I was blue lighted to hospital. And I guess they see this every day overdose drinking. That’s a sad thing. It’s so common now, right? And the next thing I know, I’m in the Priory. But I was not ready. I was in denial. I was I was looking around going, I don’t hide vodka under my pillow. I don’t drink that much in the morning. But I did become that after that, because I left, I got chucked out because I smuggled alcohol in, which, by the way, I thought was normal. But that was okay. It’s their problem. They don’t know what they’re talking about. I thought, I genuinely thought that was okay. Big deal. God, I’m not an alcoholic. And then it just spiralled. And then my husband did what he had to do. He put the kids first and he said, I am here with you, for you 1,000%, but you need to get help. And he just for three months, it was awful. Three months of me being separated from the children and I just went, I spiralled, I spiralled, I spiralled and he just kept strong and just said. The psychiatrist says three months rehab. That’s the start, she thought. And after a summer of just going crazy, being at my wits end, all I wanted was him and all my children. That’s all I wanted. But he was asking me to do something I didn’t know how to do. And so I flew to Thailand and that’s the rehab that I chosen three months away. My my son was only six months old. Wow. I played on that. I played on that massively.

What do you mean?

How can someone ask a mother to leave their son? Oh, because who do you think you are? Yeah. Like what? Mother does that? So the guilt played in.

That was your first rehab.

So now Thailand was my second. Priory was my first.

Okay. Yeah.

Got to Thailand.

Is there something around? By going to rehab, it means you’re admitting that you have a problem.

Funny you say that. The famous.

Song.

Yeah. No it doesn’t. Oh, it comes when you’re ready to surrender. But you’re in a place that you can surrender. That’s what rehab is.

Yeah, but the reason you don’t want to go is because you don’t want to. Oh, the reason why.

Of God? Absolutely. Yeah. It’s like, okay, now I have a problem. But even though I went to the Priory and everyone knew, it still wasn’t enough for me, I was in I was in full denial. Denial. You know, I was manipulative, I was coercive, everyone got it wrong but me. Everyone on that table professionally was wrong. Um, and I guess that’s what people that are intellectual, they overintellectualize it, and they find it hard just to breaking it down and go, yeah, call a spade a spade. Um, but it’s when I got to Oasis, I left Thailand because they said your primary was Ed. I heard I’m not an alcoholic. Food is my problem. Ha, ha. Oh, I drank the whole way to South Africa, South Africa, but I was. I was six weeks sober. I did a couple of weeks before and four weeks sober in in Thailand. And Thailand was easy, by the way. It was easy because alcohol it was it was it was okay to give up. Like I knew that wasn’t that was just the substance, right? It was just symptom. So I was like, yeah, I’ll do this work. I’ll do my life story. I’ll do the the steps. No problem.

So quickly explain to someone what is rehab, what happens. You get there and.

You get there. And the first part is detoxing. Yeah. Getting the substance out of your system. So thank the Lord. I never dabbled in drugs, so alcohol was just my thing. So they detox you slowly from the alcohol by monitoring you, they give you like methadone or something of that to kind of, um, appease the alcohol. And so for me it was librium. So for drug addicts it’s methadone. And so they keep it safe. So it’s a clinically safe area. And then you’re, you’re in a safe space where you can. See what you’re doing and going. It’s placed where you should surrender and it’s a place to go to heal. It’s a place to work out what the hell is going on? That is rehab. That’s a good rehab.

That’s what it’s supposed to be.

That’s what it’s supposed to be. Yeah.

And what, as you imagine it.

Meetings, meetings.

Group therapy, group therapy meetings.

One on one.

Do they put you in a group with people like you in terms of like, is it alcohol and is it young people and is it ladies?

And you’re all the same in that room.

So what, you’ve got a 64 year old heroin addict and yeah, yeah.

I had a roommate that was in her 70s.

And it becomes clear that the issue isn’t the actual chemical.

The line is look for the similarities, not the differences. And so the opposite to addiction is connection. And that’s what rehabs try and work on is the connection. You build connections. You then see someone who’s got exactly the same story as you, because you know what the story is not about the drugs or the alcohol or the eating. The story is or the similarities are. Some traumas happen in your life. It’s not the trauma. It’s not the incident.

How you handle it.

It’s what it did to you. Yeah. It’s struggles, it’s egos, its character defects. It’s all the stuff that we have been conditioned to be because we’ve never really looked at how to live healthily, how to deal with stress, how to deal with an early loss, how to deal with never feeling good enough. You know, having that self affirmation for yourself, having loved for yourself. We all have that in common and that’s the bottom line.

You explained it really well because, you know, look for the similarities, not the differences. But I’ve spoken to people who’ve been to rehab and got out of it that, hey, I’m not so bad because they met all these people who whose stories are more crazy than theirs. But the way you explained it kind of makes it. That’s what.

Happened to me in The.

Priory.

So the Priory wasn’t the right place for me? Yeah. An oasis, it was. It was a it was the account of effects. And my biggest rock bottom was I was comatose on the plane. I didn’t even drink that much. But they say when you pick up, you go back to the same amounts, but your body can’t handle it. Altitude, everything. So it’s not. Although I drank bottles and bottles. Yeah, even a few glasses would have got me to that state. And I was held in a holding cell. And not many people know this story. And so I’m just I’m being vulnerable here and being open and honest and. My husband got in contact with Oasis and again, I believe in this higher power connection. I was saved, I was saved from that holding cell if I was in Jo’burg. No, in fact, I was in Cape Town. I had a little bit of a chance. And then before I got onto the flight to Oasis. So in Plett, my husband on the phone and I was I was in paranoia. I was convinced someone had spiked me like that. That denial was still there. I was, I was shaken, I was full.

Of your tolerance had gone right down.

Everything. I woke up from that going, what? Where? I’m what? What is this like? Look at me. And that was the first time when I arrived at the gates at Oasis, I literally, I literally surrendered. I put my hand up and I said, I’m fully exposed. My eating sword is out there, my alcohol is out there. I’ve lost everything. My dignity, my family, money, everything I’ve lost. This is my last chance. So people who gain recovery treatment is different to recovery. People that are on that path of recovery is though people that have surrendered and said, help me now. I’m willing to do what it takes and trust the process. And the lady called Catherine who who owns Oasis, she just held me and she just said, I’ve got you. You’re safe. We’ve got you. Trust us. And for the first time ever, ever, have I given that control to someone else. And I had. I had to hand it over.

I guess she’d seen it before, right? It was. She recognised what it was.

Yeah, it was done. And that’s what is so good. They they know. They know addiction. They live and breathe it. They are top of their game and what they do. And I had the privilege, the gift that my family were able to afford for me to go there. So this is not just a normal thing. I understand that it was a privilege.

I mean, number one, your husband, the way he handled it, could have gone in any so many different directions that that itself is a massive, massive thing. I owe.

Him everything.

Yeah. Number two, having the resource. What does it cost to go to Oasis? What what are we.

Talking ballpark figure? Um, anything between 13 to 20 grand a month.

And how many months?

One month. I was there for about five.

Oh, really?

But again, my husband.

Where were your kids at this point? Your husband’s family were looking after them.

My husband and his family. Yeah.

And then when you came back, how old were your children at that point?

Ayla was about to turn ten, Amalia was about to turn eight, and my son had just turned one.

You know.

The fact that you’re speaking up is so it’s so brilliant, right? Because you’ve recovered or you are in recovery or whatever. Which which are you? People say it. Recovery. You’re in recovery. You’re you could easily not mention this to anyone ever again and limit the damage that’s been done already and just cover it over, you know, and there’s loads of reasons why you might want to do that. Your your kids may listen to this podcast. It’s, you know, it’s taken for me. Likely. Yeah. Because my kids, my my my kids, you know, all it takes is a Google. Yeah, yeah. Why is it that you’ve chosen to come out with it? Is it because you felt so lonely and you don’t want others to feel that way or.

So recovery for me isn’t just abstinence from alcohol or abstinence from my eating disorder. That’s a big part. But it’s not the only thing. Recovery is emotional sobriety. And what I learned in Oasis, you know, once the alcohol and all that. Step one, step two was out the way I admitted I was powerless to this drug. That’s what I mean. The layers were peeled off. And when I say layers, I was down to the core. And I went places that I didn’t think I would ever get to. They went they they went there and and I guess what I learned in Oasis is vulnerability, the power of vulnerability and the power of authenticity. Now, in order for me to.

Be.

Sober, I have to be authentic. This is me. I’m sheethal. I’m an addict. That is me. Today, just for today. I am Sheetal and I’m an addict. And. I am accountable for certain things that I did, but I am now living a life in a fellowship that I am correcting my wrongs. I’m correcting my character defects. I am learning how to be who I want to be. I’ve got core and moral values that were always there. They were always there, not always been this person. Of course, I just didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with some of the stuff that was thrown at me as a child and going forward, because it was just going to multiply these problems. So I’m here today because this is how I’ve got to leave my life. I’ve got to have I have to leave my life with radical honesty, radical acceptance of myself. Be vulnerable when I need to be vulnerable. Feel my feelings. And share. Share the message. Do service. And that’s what makes me wake up in the morning. Go. I’m enough because I’m telling my truth. I’m tired. I’m so tired of hiding. I’m so tired of having this other alter ego. I have a purpose in life now. My main purpose is to be healthy, to be sober, but then also be there for my children. So like you said, of course I’ve thought about it. My children know I went to rehab. They know mommy had a had a problem with wobbly juice. They know. But what they also know is that mommy is calmer now. Mommy’s more fun. Mommy is more present. Mommy is.

There and all.

That. Mommy is just there. Yeah, mommy has capacity to hold them when they are not doing good. I am now capable without reaching for things that alter my mood, my sense of purpose, my actions. I can control that. And so I hope they’re going to be proud of me.

I’m sure they will. Take me back to when? Unfortunately, your father passed away. How did your mom cope? How old were you? How many kids were you?

Um.

There was four of us altogether. And my mum. So she had four children. Um, and it was a sudden heart attack in India. So they both were away and. It’s the hardest thing I think any of us in that family have ever been through. It doesn’t go away. That pain.

How old were you?

I was going to be 11. Um. But you can’t control things. Hey. Yeah. And so what I’ve learned is.

How did your mum cope?

She’s a strong woman. She was broken. Absolutely broken. Which did it for us. She stayed alive for her children and nothing more, nothing less. And that’s the strength in her that I try and pull on every day.

And this sort of perfectionism and what you expected of yourself. And do you do you think it was a direct consequence of of what happened with your dad? Is that was that your coping mechanism that you were going to excel at something, or was your mum pushing you hard on studies or or was that did it predate would that have happened anyway if your dad hadn’t?

What happened? And I’ve got to be careful here because I’ve got to respect each other’s boundaries and privacy. Yeah. And but what I can say is when my father died. And it can be anything, by the way, for anyone else. But it left me with a sense of unsafety ness like I can’t put my finger on even now today. So any time I’m feeling something, I go back to that same day as a little girl where I felt unsafe on shaky ground. And that’s why I say when the basic needs for children safe, protected, nurtures autonomy, being heard and listened to. And I guess you can say some of my child’s basic needs were taken out, out of no control of my mum or my family. They were just taken. And when I tried to alchemise my trauma and I’ve done a bit of eMDR work. Emdr is when they do an instinctive wisdom with the hand to get you back to that traumatic event, so you don’t have the same PTSD reactions. And I remember when doing that, there was a sense of fear and anger and blame and resentment and fear and this loneliness, this real depth of loneliness that no one could understand what I was going through. And as a child, you’re very selfish. It’s just your needs. You don’t think about anyone else’s needs. You think about your needs. And all of a sudden, I have to say that at 11 years old, I was not thinking about my needs. I was thinking about everyone else’s needs. And that is where I I’ve discovered that is where I abandoned myself by not looking at what I sheetal’s needs. Because back then this was not talked about. Mental health was not talked about. You just got on with it like even my friend from high school messaged, did your teachers ever help you? Did we even help? You know, because I didn’t talk about it. The first time I ever really spoke about it was in university. Was at university.

And the the first thing was the eating disorder.

That was my way of controlling. It was my way of controlling these feelings of feeling unsafe, worried anxiety about exams. Where was I going to be in life, who’s going to pay for my everything? And so I had to drive. I had this drive in me to get things done, and without that drive, I wouldn’t be here today. So it in a way it can get you some things, but it can also have a damaging side. So I use that drive. But with that drive I couldn’t cope with those dark days. So I acted out on eating and that gave me that momentarily, that release of anger and fear and. Just the unknown. The things I couldn’t control. Then I went back into the mode of being in control again. And it’s that deep. It’s not about how I looked. It wasn’t about my weight. It wasn’t. It was about control.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, how do I control my feelings? I can’t feel them. I don’t want to do. When I feel my feelings, I go a bit crazy. So let’s just keep it. Let’s just keep that. That tunnel vision.

I mean, I’m.

No expert, but but I mean, they say things like anorexia are all about control, aren’t they? They’re not actually about the way the person looks.

Eating disorders is is a mental illness that is very, very intricate and it’s very prominent. It’s very prevalent, especially eating nowadays. You don’t have to have an eating disorder to have a problem with food. Yeah, it’s it’s a form of acting out. Um, so it’s something that I’m very aware of. And like you said about my children watching this, you know, I’m not in denial that this could happen to my children. It could happen to me. It can happen to anyone. Right? But what keeps me sober, one thing also keeps me sober is if that day ever arose, any challenges of that nature. If I’m sober and only if I’m sober, I will have the tools and the capacity to know what to do in that situation. Otherwise, I’m no use. If I pick up a drink or if I go back to my old ways.

The stigma in I mean, obviously you must have a bunch of family type questions and all that, but I’m interested in dentistry. Did patients ever find out? Did staff find out? Did you worry about that? Did you now come out and tell everyone in dentistry how did it play out.

So this is my first.

Is it big thing.

Yeah. Wow. And I had to think about that. It was a choice I had to make. Is this the platform? That I’m going to choose. But like I said, I’ve made that vow to myself to now live a life of authenticity and humility. And. I was lucky, extremely lucky, that with my practice and my work, that I was already out of that game before the addiction took over because I had my son.

You’d stop practising dentistry.

Already, and I.

Think that that didn’t happen by chance. That was someone looking over me. Like I said, my my high connection saving me from going down that route. But it does happen. And I am fortunate to have say that I have work and my drinking never overlapped. And when the addiction got fully, it was very quick and very succinct and talking about months where it just went from 0 to 100, and those months I was off work. But but yeah.

But every every addict has that situation of almost under the radar. And then I guess you think you’re under the radar, but everyone actually knows. And then where it gets to a point where people find out. And so did you. Was that a it must have been a source of anxiety.

If I’m telling the truth, if I say to people, you know, I’m an addict, I’m in recovery, I’m more shocked about the resistance to talk about it, as opposed to the curiosity to talk about it. And all I can say is the resistance to go, oh, tell me more about that. Is a bit of. If I know too much now, maybe I have to look at myself. And there’s a there’s that line. Do you think.

That’s the reason.

You do your.

Thing? Yeah.

I’m okay. How I.

Am. Yeah.

You know, and I’ve had to accept that. I have to accept that I was willing to look at myself and change myself and do right by wrong, you know, and do the wrong. Sorry. And. So I don’t have the stigma label on my head because I’ve come I’ve done work on that. It’s one of the one things I had to really work on in Oasis is I’m an Asian woman. I’ve got three children, I’m married, I’m in a Punjabi family. Like, what the hell? But this is where I’ve been blessed with people around me that have learned to accept that it is an illness, and she didn’t choose to be like this. There are reasons and red flags that have shown. That’s why I ended up the way I am. And Puneet said something to me the other day. He goes, people are starting to lose respect for you when you are acting out towards the end. And it was like one month of people seeing me in this rage and like saying not very nice things about him. And he goes, that switched as soon as you started, you, you surrendered and you’ve done something about it. Otherwise there’s no substance to you, to your story. If you don’t do as you say, you’re doing. So for me, that appeases that stigma of what other people think about me because. I’m proud of myself. So if people want to judge me, put me in a box. That’s on them. It’s not on me.

You know, as I said in the in the intro, I think you’ve shown a lot of sort of courage to step forward. But now talking to you, it seems like this this is this is you now, this is the new you. It’s feeds you now to talk about it and help others, I guess.

And this is what this is what recovery is about. Like I said, opposite to addiction is connection. And. I daily have to connect with people that understand my struggles. That is my medicine. And if anyone is out there and they resonate even just with one thing I’ve said, you know, being a mom is hard. Doing the right thing always by your children is hard. Being a good wife is hard. Being the best dentist is hard. If anyone can just resonate with anything that I’m saying, just look at it. Be vulnerable about it. Share about it. Talk to someone. Connect with someone and say, hey mom, I’m in a bit of a low day today. I’m feeling this feeling, but I don’t know what it is and I’m acting this way. So where is this all linked? You know? And once you start joining the dots, it’s quite a beautiful thing.

I think as a woman there’s this sort of expectation of perfection from others. And I think particularly from, from the person I sometimes I sit in a cafe and I see a group of women talking to each other, four of them. And it’s like even in that, in that environment, everyone’s super smiling and being super present and being super correct. And, and I often reflect on that and think, you know, why is it and I see it more with women than men in that sense. You know, why? Why is it that we have to put out perfection and what is it costing us to put out perfection? Right.

That’s the thing.

That’s the thing.

That’s the thing.

What is it costing us? And so that’s.

In your case.

It was it was substance abuse, you know. But it could be as bad as that.

It started from that.

What does it cost us like.

But if it’s not substance abuse it’s something else. Right. It’s shame or pain or what are the 100 other things it can be. Yeah. You going forward now? You told me you want to do a some sort of work within dentistry, but you’re not sure exactly what. And you’re looking at different opportunities and so on. But you don’t want to be a dentist anymore, right? I get it. I stopped 14 years ago. Right. Um, if you were the queen of the world, what would be like your dream job now? I mean, how could you? I’d say it would have to be something around increasing connection. Then. She’s a very isolated job. Increasing connection to dentists. You should start a pod. That’s it. You should be. You should have a podcast. But that’s the correct move. Are you.

Hiring me?

You should have your own. We’ll have another.

Like.

What do you think? I mean, I, I, I’ve got a zest for life now that I never had before, and I didn’t know I was living a life of self harm. I mean, I was on a slow suicide and I got to a t junction and I had to choose. Do I just want to do I choose life on life’s terms or do I choose this death? And when I got to that t junction, I’ve done this step work. I’m on this perfection, this idealistic view. Socialness it’s all there. I’m never going to have a big enough voice to stop all of that. And I think it’s just that question to ask. Tell yourself I am enough, dude. Doesn’t matter if I have curly, frizzy hair or if I’ve got straight hair, doesn’t mean I’ve got my nails done or not done. And all those thoughts were coming through my head this morning. Why do they have to rain on me? Why don’t I get my nails done? Like all this stuff? It’s still there, but I can shift it now and go, what? What is the point? I’ve got someone that loves me, I love myself, my children love me. That should be enough. It was never enough before because there was something that was fundamentally missing from me and that was connection.

It was a sense of belonging. It was a sense of authenticity. And day by day I’m finding that. So just for today, I’m okay with my hair being frizzy because I am connecting with you. This is so much more meaningful and value to my life than the way I look, because I’m going to go home and no one cares about what I look like. You know? Only I cared. So I think a lot of it, again, is just asking these questions, you know? And I don’t know if you listen to Gabor, mate, but he did a podcast recently and he was saying that he had this nurse that he knew who looked after the elderly in their care home. And I think 95% or 93%, they they were all high achievers and not one of them said. That the purpose of my life was getting this MD, this PhD, this OB, whatever their value was, the value of their love and the connection they made in their life, and that’s all they wanted at their deathbed. So why are we striving in life to get to the next goalpost when it’s all there, right in front of us? That just needs nurturing. And I genuinely believe that.

You know, a lot of us, you know, go chase after the last, the next car, the next house, the next whatever. And in your rock bottom, all you wanted was to have your kids and your health.

And had it all.

And, you know, that’s all it was all. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you so, so much. I knew we had to do this in person. This wouldn’t have worked in zoom, had to be in person. And I think we should follow up. We should do more and you should do your own pod 100%. I’m sure of it.

I’m sure it out.

I mean, at the moment it’s my priorities are my recovery and my children. And I think I underestimated how much my children need me and how much I need them. They make me grow as much as watching them grow. They teach me something every day. And but yes, my calling is is connection, you.

Know, because it’s so just talk.

You know, it’s it’ll all be okay. It’ll all be.

Okay.

Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. And for being so open as well. Thank you so, so much.

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

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.

Thanks for listening guys. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you tune in for future episodes. Hit subscribe in iTunes or Google Play or whatever platform it is. And you know, we really, really appreciate it. If you would give us a.

Six star rating.

Six star rating, that’s what always leave my Uber driver.

Thanks a lot, guys. Bye.

Hey, can I ask you some questions? Because, you know, I’m. I’m just starting out. I’m young and I don’t know what I’m doing. I really want to do well. I’m like, man, I’m taking you out for lunch. I’ll give you whatever time you need because this is so brave of him to be like, Listen.

I want to do what you’re doing.

I want to be No, I want to. Maybe. But I also I want to listen to people and find out how can I be better, right?

This is Mind Movers. Moving the conversation forward on mental health and optimisation for dental professionals. Your hosts, Rhona Eskander and Payman Langroudi.

Welcome to another episode of Mind Movers. Today we have another one of my friends. I feel like I take over with friends where I’m just very lucky to have surrounded myself with people who have impacted my life in a positive way. We know that the conversations are mainly about mental health, and today I’ve got a really special guest, Arthur Sulkowicz. Did I say it right? Very good. Woohoo! I said it right. So he’s actually a name that’s synonymous with fitness, wellness, high performance coaching in London. Arthur is somebody that really has demonstrated to me the importance of exercise, physical exercise and also mental exercise in a way that he’s harnessed his life to become the person that he is. He’s had a really interesting childhood. He works with some incredible people, has done some amazing business ventures, so really happy and excited to talk to him. Welcome, Arthur. Well, thank you.

For having me.

Great. Amazing. So I’m going to start off, right, because I remember that when we first started talking, we discussed martial arts. Right. So tell us a little bit about your childhood. Where did you grow up? How did martial arts come into your childhood and how did how is it for you today as well?

So I was born in Poland in 1985, so quite a while ago already.

I mean, I’m 1987. Let’s just say that’s not old.

I’m not going to mention.

Um, and I always have been a very active child, so I played a lot of chess because my parents were more into that. They would always push me towards more intellectual pursuits, so it would be more playing chess, reading books, writing. Um, but I was also always very active, so I played a lot of football, a lot of volleyball, so always a lot of activity. And I grew up amongst a lot of boys that would like to get into fights. So and I was never really a fighter. So my parents, I think, decided my dad specifically initially decided to send me to karate classes when I was actually we wanted to when we were when I was six. But back then, because the training was so tough, you couldn’t you had to be eight, so you had to be eight to to to be able to start training. So as soon as I turned almost eight, we cheated a little bit. So when I was still seven, I actually started karate training. And that’s sort of that has set me up for the future in as in it taught me so much, the training, the people, the coaches that I had, the role models that I had there, um, the competitive side of it and you know, the, the discipline, those, those a lot of that.

So, uh, to the point, you know, the first, the first year I didn’t want to go because, you know, you had those one coach, he was a very, he was a very intellectual guy, but also physically very fit, right? So, but he was also very strict. So back then it was just normal. It was 1993, so it was very normal for for a class like this to be very strict. So to give you an example, he would have 120 kids in one in a dojo. That’s what you call it, the place where you train. And it was only him and there was no word spoken. It was silence, right? If you came late to the class, you had to sit down on your knees and just wait for him to allow you in. And before you went in, you’d have to do push ups just to punish you for being late. Now, I’m not saying this is these are the right methods to treat children and, you know, eight year olds. But what it did I’m never late now I I’m I’m always on time. I’m always sort of you know, the discipline of of coming to place on time or being regular with what I do.

And I attribute this exactly to back then because, you know, I taught karate myself. I taught martial arts myself. And it’s very different nowadays. And again, I’m not saying that was the right way, but there is a middle ground between what’s happening now with what was back then, right? And then further down the line, I again, as I said, I would, you know, the first four years, I did not miss a single session. And my mom was very happy because three, four times a week I would be out every evening and out. I mean, by being out. I mean, when I came back home, I was that tired and I would just go to sleep. So she, she had it easy with me. Um, and, you know, so I, I then I competed every other weekend. I would go for karate seminars, workshops, competitions mean a lot of friends. I had my first kiss with a girl. I met the karate in a karate competition. So, you know, it was it was it was a very important part of my life. And up until today, I do a lot of kickboxing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. So I do it frequently, 3 to 5 times a week.

The question is right, discipline. I think that’s the one thing that massively stuck out for me. And I think that you would agree that dentists harness a group of very disciplined individuals. And on the one hand, would you agree? Payman. No, really. But I think discipline, I totally I think discipline. We argue a lot on this, by the way. You’re going to get used to that. I think you have to be disciplined because you have to get the grades that you need to get to get into dental school. When once you’re in dental school, you need to be disciplined to get through your exams, turn up to clinical things. Right? That’s discipline, right? That’s all discipline. You have to also be disciplined, like a lot of red tape is around our career. You have to be disciplined to do your CPD, to do all the like the paperwork around our stuff. I think that requires more discipline than the average person.

Maybe. All right. Yeah.

See one. So I think that that’s a really important thing. Now, I don’t know actually about the younger generation of dentists. Maybe you know better, but I don’t know if that’s sort of that discipline is perhaps less now, you know, because there’s like, I can’t be bothered with this. This is causing me stress. And I think that a lot of times we perceive stress to be a bad thing. But like, as you said, as a child, it’s probably had a positive impact on you. So I don’t think that like putting yourself through situations where you’re expected to turn up and perform as necessarily a bad thing.

Well, I’m interested in what you’re saying, Arthur, that, you know, going on from what Rona is saying, when you say classes today, martial arts classes today don’t have enough discipline, what is it about, you know, how are they how is a class today? Because I recognise the one you’re talking about, the the dojo, the sensei, the respect, the the sort of the the hierarchy. What is it like today in martial arts and, and are you saying the same thing in dentistry. Discipline, Maybe. But go on. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I’ll. Okay. Two things. Two separate things. Number one, the stress, you know, the exposure to stress. There’s an actual term called hormesis. So that’s a dose of stress that’s good for you and that’s going to make you progress. You can overdose. So then stress becomes a bad thing, right? But stress in and of itself, it’s not a bad thing. Right. Because we’re so afraid of it nowadays that we we tend to stress about stress. So as soon as we lose stress, we stress more. And that’s sort of like a like a vicious cycle. To your point, your question again, I’m generalising now, but the the it seems to me that in a lot of them it’s the martial arts classes for children. That’s what I’m referring to. They’re more playful, they’re less, you know, they’re less disciplined. There’s, you know, and there comes a point in every child’s life. And that was back then the same thing, say, 15, 16. When other factors come into play, kids stop doing what they actually what makes them grow. So they go, you know, the gender or the same gender, whatever you’re into, and then alcohol, drugs. So all these things sort of interfere with your progress, whether it’s martial arts or whatever else, right? So your passion when you’re a teenager, I think is so important.

But nowadays it’s just more so. For example, if you give a coming to my classes now, Brazilian jujitsu, you don’t necessarily have to be on time, right? Because there’s always you don’t there’s no punishment. But I still show up on time. And I noticed that with my with my peers at that club that when whoever most of the people that did any type of traditional martial art so were discipline is an actual component that’s being taught they always on time. There are some other people that’s more you know, and it’s also very cultural in a way. So, you know, people treat time more loosely, but I think that component is missing. It’s one kids can do more. You know, they can they they they allow to do more, which is a good thing. But also they’re left to themselves otherwise. Right. So there’s no they just there’s an iPad. There is a phone on the mat. There is. That wasn’t the case. And now, you know, my dream recently in the one I trained in jujitsu, they said, okay, no more phones on the mat for anyone, children, adults. And initially I was, you know, my first reaction. Oh, But then actually, I did a couple of classes. I was like, this is the best thing they could have done.

Because you don’t have you have people interacting with one another, right? So you have people and and you know, we probably will speak about later, but it’s a community of people. Yeah, mostly, mostly men. There are women as well, more and more, which is amazing. But it’s also speaking specifically of men. It’s it’s a safe space where if you speak in the changing room with other with, with our guys, they’re like, this is my meditation. I come here, I don’t see my phone. I can’t think about, you know, whatever spreadsheet or a decision or whatever I have to do. This is where I have to fully focus what I’m doing, because otherwise you’re going to get choked out, right? But you can also you you have that component of aggression which important for men. You can have that component of of camaraderie, friendship, which is also very important. And you have a time away from a screen, the time away from anything else. So that’s so. That’s why I always tell anyone when it comes to children, send your kid to some sort of a martial art class and just research. First. Go and try it out and see if that, you know, because I think that’s the best thing that can happen to your child.

I think I hear as well. I mean, there’s a few key words there. Punishment was one that just came up because you said there’s no sense of consequence. And I think that I mean, I think there’s like good and bad to having consequences and punishment, because I think, again, when I relate it back to dentistry, the fear of getting in trouble, whether it’s with like a governing body or your indemnity or do you know what I mean? That also keeps us accountable to certain actions and decisions, decisions that we make. You’re giving me that look again. You know.

The thing is. The thing is the thing is in dentistry, it’s one of the areas where actually you can you can get away with a hell of a lot. I disagree without anyone finding out the difference between a great dentist and a not so great dentist is what he does when no one’s watching, which is most of the time.

Yeah, but you just made a great point that that’s the difference with anyone who performs in a high level and anyone who sort of is a very average what they do. Right.

But but I.

Think what I’m saying is what my point is. Yeah. That you you could have someone who keeps up with their CPD. Yeah. Who doesn’t get sued because of, you know, he’s good. Good. Charming. Yeah. And yet when he does the work doesn’t doesn’t do it to the highest standard because no one’s paying attention to the work. I mean, in our career, we know this. You. The longer the better job you do, the less money you make. Yeah. Because as you say, this restoration is going to cost you £600. Now, I can spend real, real time, you know, magnification checking everything, or I can not check those things and still get the same £600 and me and you know that that compounds and the thing will fail in five years instead of in 12 years. And the patient will have forgotten all about it. So what I’m saying is one of the aspects of our job of professionalism that you’re alluding to is what you do when no one’s watching.

I hear you. But I think that you’re mistaking that actually for like a sense of consciousness, like on the one hand, with.

Ethics where.

Ethics, right. Because I think in anything that you do like, I think you’re confusing the two because I think, okay, number one, like if you’re a lawyer or you work in finance or you’re in this professional jobs, yes, there is a degree of of us being like, we can’t get in trouble because we will get punished if we do something wrong and get found out, which is what you’re saying, we will get in trouble. So that keeps a lot of people like somewhat in check, right? But also the person that’s like, I want to do this because I’m genuinely, you know, and this is the way I practice dentistry, care about the person in the chair, and I want to make sure that I’m doing my best for them. And that’s the same in kind of anyone that like runs a business. That’s just really ethics to me, you know? But I think that a lot of people now, especially with accountability, because they don’t have anyone to be accountable for apart from themselves sometimes that isn’t a big enough motivator to keep you going, and that’s why people give up much more easily because as you said, as a child growing up, turning up on time because someone will tell you off because you’re not on time. Got you into that habit, you know, and you know, there is that quote that says habit will get you further than than motivation can because that’s the thing. You know the famous book Atomic habits right. I’m sure both of you know it.

I’ve got an important question for you, Arthur based on Rona in dentistry is she’s a very good dentist, very, very, very top dentist. But for me, her her absolute superpower is how she relates to the person. Yeah. Not not the teeth, the person. Yeah. What I’m interested in is when you’re doing personal training and you’re doing personal training for these high, high end, high top level people, what how much of your value add is that mental understanding the person thing? How much of it is technique, nutrition?

I’m going to say and I was going to be controversial, but I think for a personal trainer operating, having clients such as I have, personality is much more important than than your knowledge. And obviously you have to have a note. You have to have the knowledge, right, because you have to bring results, etcetera. But. At the end of the day, people spend. You think about this, right? I have clients who spend five, six hours a week with me and then I see them outside of the hours as well. So they spend a whole lot of time with you. Some of these people don’t like spending time with this much time with even anyone. Anyone. Right. So you have to bring something, something special to the table. I’m not saying I’m special, but value. Value. But also you need to, I think, okay, personality and by personality, personality also mean your level of emotional intelligence. Yeah. And I think I have I have a quite high level of. Yeah, quite high IQ.

And so do you.

Yeah. And that’s why, that’s why I mean to get on so well. Yeah.

But give us an example of that. So you’ve got some guy who’s a CEO of some company. Yeah. And he hasn’t got the motivation to come to the gym or he you double his motivation somehow. I want to interject.

That Arthur actually works with Lulu’s Hertford Street five Hertford Street. Yeah. He’s saying as well. So the type of clients, as you know, there are not necessarily like aesthetically driven just to kind of put in there. So their motivations, which I think is really interesting when we talk about wellness and fitness. So yeah, just for the, you know, for people that don’t know.

Okay, So motivation is, you know, again, it’s more habit than motivation, right? So once people one thing, especially for this type of a client, I would say it’s your meeting. Your meetings are important to you. This is your meeting with yourself. And you don’t even have to say it because, you know, you operate with people who are much smarter than I am. So the level of IQ there is just much higher than mine. Right. But it’s the it’s the ability of of of not taking the cookie cutter approach in which you understand the human being. So to give an example. Right, to understand the and that’s why I’m not that’s what I what I do I call more performance coaching rather than personal training because, you know, you take care of the full body and in that body I see the mind as well, right? So it’s part of your body in the end. I’m not saying I’m a psychologist, I’m doing anything special, but my interest is in more areas rather than just just the aesthetic part of it. Right? Because that’s easy. You can go to a gym in a few places in London. Their sole business model is is to get you fit in three months. If you don’t follow the rules, they fire you. And pretty much I know so many people that went there.

And they relapse.

But there’s no longevity in it. There’s no longevity. There’s no they don’t they they not happy afterwards. Right. And there’s a whole bunch of sort of technicalities we could speak about. But, you know, to me, understanding the person and what they like, what they dislike, and also personal training is a service thing. So your service matters as much as you know it does. People don’t get it. Your your if you work with clients as I, you know the type of clients I work with you general knowledge matters. So you have to read the news, listen to the news. You have to be able to speak about things. Right? So and then you see the there must be some sort of connection to connection. Communication. Right? So there’s not one way to do this. These people don’t like when I tell them what to do. They don’t really like anybody to tell them what to do. Right. And we still have. And but if you make it fun and games, you know, for example, I have a client now, very, very close friend as well, who has become a very close friend. And as I told you before, a business partner, we play chess in between. So in between his rounds, we play chess. And, you know, it’s just something that keeps his mind busy. And, you know, I have someone else who, instead of listening to music, he likes listening to the news or LBC, Right? So it’s it’s.

Such a hater station, by the way, the LBC, you know, just saying. Just saying.

Go on. It’s, you know, but you know, it’s how you keep the person interested. Engaged. Some people hate exercise, though. They hate it actually, but they still do it, which I admire. Right. But so how do you how do you keep people engaged? How do you keep people coming back to you and not anyone else? Right. So it’s it’s building relationships, I think, with the people I have now. I managed you know, I’ve been seeing them for five, six years. So we we and they still getting what they want to get out of it and also keeping it interesting right. So keeping it so that they they don’t get bored because also a lot of playful minds and a lot of people that, you know, have a lot going on in their lives and understanding stress levels as well. So understanding, okay, the accumulation of stress in you, your work, your family, your business, your whatever it might be, and physical exercise and the mental pressure you’re under. Well, you have to understand that level of it as well in order to prescribe the right exercise, Right? So as you can see, exercise is only one thing. It’s not really you know, there’s some of my clients I would do, um, there’s we spoke about it briefly, actually, but there’s, you know, neurogenesis neuroplasticity. You can actually there are ways and. That’s also on me to go to the right place. I go to the US frequently to two conferences just to find out about that stuff also because of the other project.

But I guess also whether he’s having a good day or a bad day. Exactly The same person could be different, different days.

And also you never take things personally. You know, these people and sometimes, you know, initially when you start a nightmare.

In my case, just saying my personal training session. Huh? Are you are you looking at me like I knew that, you know, am I am just because I’m on my phone as well, like checking emails in between. I’m not very present anyway. It’s a tough life. I would.

Probably tell you off for.

This. Yeah, but you’re not.

You’re not her personal coach. No, no, no, no.

I told him to give me a training session. Still waiting for that, but go on, go on.

No, but, you know, I think there is. And that’s why, you know, I’m the person training you perceive is sort of the what’s what’s seen on social media. So solely the physical part of it. Right. So we train, we get ups and that’s it. But think about dentistry. Okay, let’s put let’s let’s take dentistry. What if you were only doing the whatever, you know, so that people look good but the health is not there? Yeah.

Yeah.

There’s a lot of but, but there is a lot of that and interestingly.

That’s what I’m saying. But that’s, that’s what it.

Would be like.

But interestingly, because Payman knows, there was when Facebook was a thing like ten years ago, there was this like fitness dentist, gym group, right? And you’ll be surprised. There are dentists that are really obsessed with the aesthetic aesthetic. And I’m talking about like you’re like, are you on steroids that sort of look like super bulk, super lean and you’re thinking to yourself, and again, it’s quite common. I do think it’s because of the personality types of dentists, the way they put pressure, the perfectionism, etcetera. But like you said, like are you healthy? And I think that that leads me onto my like next question. Like there’s constantly like these fads that you see online and all these things. And I think that the perception that if you’re not ripped, you’re not healthy is really toxic and dangerous because as you said, having a very low body fat percentage for for a woman, for example, is actually really, really bad. Like you’re compromising your fertility, you know, and movement in itself is good for you and you don’t have to be ripped to do that. So how do you like maximise your performance and also help change the narrative that like being this physique is not necessarily the healthiest way to be? And by the way, there’s still a lot of young dentists that aspire to be that kind of like ripped look, which I’m like, No, this is just.

You know, there’s okay, there is this and there is also that other that. If you’re lean, you’re not healthy. So I disagree with both. So if you lean your healthy, that’s one group of people think, oh, you know, it must be super healthy. But if you lean you’re unhealthy. It’s just the other type of narrative you’re seeing now. Right? One thing. Okay, a few things. I’m not even know how many things, but we’ll get there.

We won’t count.

Um, so number one, fitness and health and wellness is a marathon, not a sprint. So you don’t get there in three months, right? So you don’t. You know, people. I get accused sometimes. I’m in a good shape. I got to do some people. Oh, So what are you taking? Like, what’s that? You know, like, are you in testosterone? No, but I have been doing this constantly. Constantly since I started lifting weights when I was 20. I started training when I was seven. Right. So. So it’s the it’s the marathon that you that habits it. Habits. Exactly. And, you know, it’s you just simply cannot get there in three months or a year. Right. You have to and and that’s purely aesthetics. Obviously I got into lifting weights because of aesthetics, because I went to a modelling agency. They were like, you don’t have you know, I was my performance was amazing because I compete in martial arts winning competitions. But I got to the modelling agency, they were like, Oh, you know, you don’t have apps, so we don’t want we don’t want you because for your type you have to. So then I was like, okay, I have to start lifting weights. And that’s what got me into it, right? And I’m not going to. But then once you understand the impact of physical activity on all other areas of your life, right, your confidence levels, your mental health as well, because you can speak to, you know, there’s a a meta review of studies which meaning over 128,000 participants overall.

They they the the the results were that the conclusion was that physical exercise. So I think high intensity to sort of moderate intensity was as effective or more effective than counselling and and medication for anxiety and depression. So if you think about the impact of just physical exercise going to the gym regularly, whatever you do there. Right. And then this impact on your relationships with people, your, your mental health, your relationship with yourself, there’s just such a huge impact. So my point being that once, you know, it’s all good that people want to look good, that there’s nothing wrong about this, Right? That doesn’t mean that they will be healthy. If they get there because Because of the way they get there. Right. But there’s just once you realise how many benefits it has for you and your family, your friends, your the people that you surround yourself with. Then you probably understand the importance of it. Number two is there’s this concept of back casting. The doctor, Peter Attia or Attia, one of the top people in the it’s like.

A longevity.

Person.

Yeah, he’s sort of the most prominent doctor, at least on the social media front on online longevity. He’s, you know, a super smart guy, has a podcast as well. And, you know, anyway, he’s got this concept of back casting. So essentially what he says in terms of your physical health, where do you want to be in the last ten years of your life? Right? So assume you know what 30 something, right? Not disclose here. We’re like 30. Okay. 38 right. I assume I will live, I don’t know, 100 years. That’s punchy being optimistic here. But between 90 and 100, what physical ability do I want to have? Right. So I probably want to be able to get up. I probably want to be able to go to the shop, which probably is not going to happen in six years, but you know, whatever. So I want to be able to the, the, the things that are a daily living activities and you want you don’t want other people to be to have to help you maybe have grandkids and maybe you want to play with them right So in order to achieve that, what do you start what do you have to start putting in place now in order to be there in six years time? And that puts fitness in a much, much different environment and context because then it’s a health context.

It’s not getting ready for my wedding, getting ready for the next Yeah, yeah. Spain trip or whatever. Right. So not, not not many people respond well to it because people don’t want to think about it, right? So it’s sort of like, oh, whatever, we’ll figure it out with some pill is going to come about. But this this is also the way of of putting fitness and performance into a context that’s more important than just the chiselled physique that you’re referring to. And, you know, health to your question. Sorry, I digress. But being in a good shape doesn’t mean you’re healthy. Being in a good shape doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy. It just depends how you got there. And it depends on many other factors, such as, you know, your recovery, your diet, your mental state and etcetera.

So there’s there’s a few well, there’s a few things there because first of all, I think and obviously I’d like to get your view on it, but I think, number one, there’s immense pressure to for people to exercise, especially when they are depressed, because there’s also a group of people and I’m sure we’ve all been there that, you know, you have days where you’re like, I’m actually paralysed with how I feel mentally. The last thing I want to do is pick myself up and go to a gym, often because of habits, even if when I don’t feel like it, I might even go to the gym for like 15 minutes and be like, I’m not feeling it today. But even like the act of going. But I know that I’m in a privileged position because some people are not. And you know, we talk about our bubble, right? The bubble that we live in, because there are some people that have like seven children to feed and like are on benefits and live like a really stressful life, you know, And they’re not like, I’m going to go to the gym because everyone says it’s good for me and they are suffering from all of this sort of awful things that obesity imposes. So I think that there is that challenge and difficulty and it’s all very well saying exercise, don’t take antidepressants. But I think that there’s much bigger mental challenge to even just get up and go to the gym for some people.

Again, just to clarify, I’m not saying, you know, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t, but what I’m saying is that as good or if not as.

Effective.

As effective. Right. So but I understand this. And I you know, I was fortunate enough that my I’ve been doing it for such a long time for myself. I’m speaking subjectively now that, you know, my parents got me to do it and I was an active child and that was my you know, and there’s a difference between siblings. There’s different there differences depending on what they do when they and you know, it is really it That’s why childhood has, you know, in terms of your physicality, it has such a huge impact on who you become later in life. I think totally as a person.

And I think as well, I mean, I don’t know. You’ve got kids, right? Do you know, sometimes think like I need to keep my health in check because I want to be around for them, like the priorities?

Chell Yeah.

Do you see what I mean? And so if you have a bit of a health.

Scare, I’m.

Quite interested in this question though, you know, I know people who, if they don’t do exercise for a couple of days, they become a mess and I can’t complain. It’s a bit like sleep, isn’t it? Like, yeah, if you get eight hours sleep every night, then one hour, one day, one day you get six hours sleep. That day you’re going to feel terrible. Yeah, it’s six hours of sleep every night. It’s this.

Anxiety. It’s. Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s a process, I would say. Yeah, I used to be. Stressy about. Oh, I didn’t work out today. So what’s going to happen now? It’s just I’m about to die and I’m depressed. Obviously I wasn’t, but it’s a process of learning that it’s okay. And it’s also, you know, one bad day is not going to is not a year, it’s not a month, it’s not a week. It’s just one bad day. And it doesn’t have to be a bad day. And sometimes it’s okay to say, listen, I don’t feel like it. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. It’s okay to do. And I think there’s a lot of especially with like tracking devices, for example, that you can track so much stuff, they can always almost get overwhelmed with data. So I have some clients that where the tracking devices, I don’t have them checking the data, I check the data. They don’t see them because I know their personality once they see I used to hate it.

But even like, you know, those machines that like do like the body fat and all that stuff, I used to just have a such big cry because I was like, I’m a failure. This is terrible. I’m technically obese. What am I going to do? Do you know what I mean? And like, I had a a coach that was like obsessed with the tracker and I just found it really mentally like.

But see, that’s why. That’s why you have to that’s why it’s, it’s a personal training should be a highly personalised service in a way that you understand the client and you work with what they like or dislike. Obviously there is always some sort of negotiation room for negotiation where you’re okay. You probably need that, but maybe we do it in a way that you don’t see that we’re doing it. So, you know, the the brain training that I mentioned to you before, I have some people doing it and they don’t they have absolutely zero clue they’re doing it. But because I think they need it because they’re a certain age or whatever, it’s I’m doing it with them so they don’t have to know about this. But it’s the way how you communicate with people. So as a trainer, as a coach, how do you get people to do you think it’s good for them and you program for them, But, you know, they they won’t want to do it. So there is there’s always it’s always all about communication on the standard of the person. Right. And the data, the the or you know, if you don’t go to the gym, you feel you feel guilty or you’re a mess. Two sides of it, though. One is I know that when I exercise or train, you know, I feel much better.

So if I have an issue, you have a problem. I this is my time to switch off. And I obviously, you know, I still need to take care of the right sleep and recovery and other recovery components because that physically it’s not a recovery protocol, but mentally it makes me feel so much better. Whatever. Whatever’s happening in my life is a Break-Up. There’s plenty of jokes, you know? But if there is anything with business, family, health always that, you know, the two hours of physical activity between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. in the evenings, it’s a sacred time. And, you know, for me and I said it, it doesn’t matter how big my business grows, this is going to be my thing. And, you know, I have been very busy with because I’m I’m trying to build stuff. But everyone involved knows that this is something Arthur does every day, right? So it doesn’t have to be, by the way, it doesn’t have to be intense exercise, but some sort of movement movement and some sort of, you know, thing that allows me to process as well. So I have and so many times when it comes to building my Start-Up or working on projects, you know, consulting people and projects, I had my best ideas, training or under the shower. But that’s a different but.

But the, the, you know, the thing you said about some people have six kids and can’t get to the gym or whatever, it’s kind of an easy way out.

Like it’s not an easy way out because we have.

I spent years I spent years, you know, I had a Start-Up as well. I spent years convincing myself I haven’t got time.

To go to the gym. Yeah, but.

This is different. Go on.

Here we are. It turned out to be bullshit excuse. Yeah, Because one day I realised at the time Clinton was the president. Clinton was going, like, running. Running? Yeah. He’s running the whole free world. He’s got time and. Yeah, I’m starting a teeth whitening company and I haven’t got time and you know. You know what I mean?

It’s priorities.

I get it.

It’s just.

I get it. I get.

It. But you’re talking about. You’re talking from a place of privilege. I’m like, the problem that I’m talking.

Clinton No, you isn’t.

Clinton And you. Clinton and you a place of privilege. Because me and Bill, it is.

True. Those my real problem what I’m trying what I’m trying.

To those younger than me is running Canada.

So so the thing is.

Is that he keeps going on about Trudeau by the way. I don’t know what the whole thing is. A Trudeau Basically, the thing that I’m trying to say is, is that we’re talking about a socioeconomic problem is what I’m trying to say. And those people in society, that sector of society that don’t have the privileges. And by the way, I mean.

Basic privilege.

But he’s he’s treating, treating, sorry, helping some of the richest people.

In the world. Totally. Totally.

You’re treating some of the richest people in the world. The Dental pain of a rich person is just as much as a Dental pain of a 100%. But okay, there’s some sort of cumulative effects of not being able to afford and so on. But but you know, there’s my point. I think it’s a universal.

Yeah, I.

Think I think it’s it’s it’s it’s a different problem but it’s, you know, essentially the same problem. It’s a lack of time. Yeah. But also but.

It’s also that mental capacity the.

Educational part of it. Right. Yeah. And also what you’re used to doing, what you’re not used to doing because I would argue for someone who, you know, has got billions in the bank and they are not used to someone’s calling me. They they’re not used to exercising. It’s going to be as difficult to get into the gym or whatever exercise is going to be as that person you’re referring to with six kids. Right. Because on the the brain doesn’t recognise money. It’s like it’s just it’s a lack of time. So I get I get I get your point. But your point is it’s just.

Yeah, go on.

Go on, go on.

I get it now. I’m being told. Go on. No, no, no.

I get. I get where you’re coming from and and I agree with it. Right. Because it’s much harder, much harder for someone who struggles with financial problems and potentially time problems and lots of other problems because they don’t have money to throw money at the problem. Right. So for someone to.

Buy their way out.

Of it, Yeah. So for someone who is, you know, for someone who’s wealthy, they’re like, oh, I’m just going to hire Arthur Fine. You know, totally taken care of. But I agree with you. But I also agree.

With you totally.

Very diplomatic.

And it’s very it’s very it’s very interesting as well, because when we you know, I do a lot of work in the refugee camps. I go every year to Greece to do work with the refugees. This year, I brought one of my best friends, Chrissy Keller, who is a really well known fitness influencer entrepreneur. And because obviously part of it was like we have a skill, like we’re really lucky as medical professionals. We go, we literally treat pain, you know, when we go out there. And that’s amazing. That’s what I love about my job. And so with Chrissy, what she did was, is that we found her like the Women’s Wellness Centre within the refugee camp, and she did a fitness class, you know, and it was so great and we like recorded it and it was so fantastic to see like these women and getting involved and like some of them were like dying at like three squats because they just never done it. But there was a real sense of community and that’s where I’m going on to kind of like the next subject, which I think is really important and something that is really close to my heart. Payman and I have often discussed that the biggest cause of male death under 25 is male suicide. And I think, you know, the problem is growing and growing, and we often talk about the unfairness within society when it comes to women.

And of course, that exists. You know, I’m very much at the forefront of that. But, um, men, boys in particular, you know, you know, you guys saw the shooter, the accident in Croydon, right, with that young boy. Right. And what it screams to me is that young men more and more, do not have role models. They are their support system is going down. They’ve got the likes of Andrew Tate as well, who is the person that they look up to who is spreading toxic masculinity and all that thing. But I want to know your views because one thing that you said was that there was a real sense of community. And I noticed that you were talking about, you know, previously as well when you played sports, like there was male only groups and things like that. And I think, again, that’s another challenging conversation because people are like, why should it only be male and why should it only be female? And everything is the same and we’re all equal and all that kind of thing. But I’d really love to know your views. And as well, when it comes to like male sport, like is it important to have like sexes working together against each other? What kind of community? How could we do better for younger males?

Okay, so broad topic. Um, I actually looked look the numbers up last night and in the UK 150 people a week take their lives, 75% of which are men, which is which actually blew my mind. I was just sitting there like, yes. So and annually I think it’s worldwide. That’s that’s 6000 people a year right. 75% from which are men. And then worldwide, I think it’s around 700,000 people, 700,000 people who decide, I don’t want to live anymore. That’s just you know, it’s actually it’s very scary. Um, when it comes to men, I think what you mentioned earlier, the lack of the right role models or the availability of way too many wrong role models and everyone getting a voice nowadays and everyone, you know, without the, the sense of. Consequence that without a sense of potential punishment, they can voice their opinions, however controversial they are. And then we have people like Andrew Tate spreading, you know, whatever he has been spreading. And it’s funny because he’s getting so much publicity even from us and we dislike him. You know, it’s that’s that’s just the phenomenon on on on the these kind.

Of people on the.

Media nowadays. Right. But and you have a lot of young men and even women I speak with they’re like oh I agree with some of what he says. I’m like, how can you agree with some of what he says? But he also, on the other hand, is just the most sexist and chauvinistic. And, you know, it’s it’s just it blows my mind. Listen.

On that subject, one of my kid’s friends sent me an Andrew Tate thing.

How old is he?

Uh, 18.

That’s and that’s the group.

But it was three hours I listened to in that three hours. He didn’t say anything. Yeah.

Yeah, but you don’t understand. He’s changing the narrative now because his recent accusations. His recent.

It was. It wasn’t. It wasn’t a new thing. But my point is, there’s definitely stuff he says that I wasn’t. I wasn’t massively into it, but. But but I could have been someone else. Could have been. And he didn’t say a single thing in that three hours. That was.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, listen, I don’t listen, we’ve, we’ve.

All listened to the three 32nd things here and, and we all know those are the ones that that trended. And and I’m not saying anything. I mean the name Andrew Tate is now linked to those. Yeah, but there’s plenty of people who’ve listened.

To the long you know one you should we should be taking care of boys. We should be taking care of not only boys, but children in general. Right? So we we should be giving them enough education and understanding of what it is to how, you know. And it’s difficult because the traditional split of roles is no longer does no longer exist, which means that men used to know how to behave. Now we don’t know how to behave anymore because there’s so many suggestions you should be this, You should be that, you should be this, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t. So you sort of feel like, you know, unless you have a strong personality and you you stay strong with your values and aligned with them and you know, then you know who you are. But otherwise, a lot of men, especially young men, I can see that happening. They just don’t know who they should be and they don’t know how they should treat a woman. They don’t know. They have absolutely no idea. You know, they should open the door for her. Should not. Should I? I don’t know. And the.

Rules are changing.

And the rules are changing all the time.

But what do you but what do you think? Like, how can we do better? Like, is it like what kind of role models do they need? And also, I’m going to go, go, go back to the whole community thing that I asked you, you know, and especially when it comes to like male sport and things like that, you know, are those things that help harness. I know that before we’ve had conversations where you were like, jiu jitsu helps me get like in touch with my masculinity, you know, in a different way, you know. You know.

Jujitsu is so martial arts in general. An interesting one because you have you are everyone is tough there. Like you are able to go on the mat and choke all the people. They choke you Obviously it’s not. But it’s a it’s a dangerous sport. But then so that toughness is no longer needed because everyone knows you’re tough. But, you know, it’s a community of people. Maybe, you know, we don’t talk about everything, but you make friends, which then which then makes you talk to them about the topics that maybe you wouldn’t mention with other people. So you have male friends and male friendships are and I’m talking specifically of male, but there are also we also have, you know, we also have ladies only class and then we have mixed classes. It’s a community where where there’s sort of there’s a boundary that’s taken away. So there is no there’s a certain societal limit, I would say that just doesn’t exist there because you sweat together, you fight together, and then you laugh together and you have events together. Right. And that’s one specific community I’m talking about here In my karate days when I was a child, for me, that was everything. You know, I would I would spend weekends with these people. And as I told you, like the first girlfriend I had was from karate. It’s a friendships that stayed for life, friendships that I have up until today. And you know, people that because they were and I’m not saying I’m talking specifically about sport just because that’s my thing but I think there is more there’s more you can do that creates and teaches people how to be how to have certain values, right? And the values are freaking boring. It’s the problem we have nowadays. Everything needs to be exciting, right? It’s the paradox of choice. There’s this really good book called The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz and what he says. The more choice we have, the less happy we are. And that’s true. The more choice.

So true. But this is why we’re all unhappy.

But listen. And then you have these two types of people. I told you about it before, but you have satisfiers, right? So people that make a choice, they’re happy with it. They’re like, Fine, I bought this coffee. Perfect. Then you have people who are maximisers. They’re like, I bought this coffee. You see a coffee shop? That would have been better, right? That’s me. That’s me as well in a lot of. But I think.

Me too. Jesus, We’re all doomed. My.

My theory is. But, you know, if you think of romantic partners nowadays and social media, I mean, we’re opening a whole another Pandora account, but it’s the Pandora box. But, you know, you’re you’re you are always presented with choice. That’s potentially a better choice. Right? So same same with, say, if you relate it to fitness, fitness is boring. You have to do the same thing over and over again, change it up slightly, but you have to be consistent. You have to show up and you have to keep doing this. People don’t want to do it. People don’t want to see it. Right. So and that social media part comes in and like, you know, you have people doing one people bashing all their people for saying stuff. Number one, that’s a trend where you sort of you sort of criticise everyone and everything and they just build that algorithm because of that. I’m not saying that’s a wrong thing, bad thing, do whatever you want, but you know, it creates that sort of where there’s the communication doesn’t, it’s not a conversation, it’s shouting in the and hoping that people listen. And there’s a lot of people listening and self-censorship.

We we talked about this many times, right? Yeah. You’re thinking something. You can’t say it because you’re worried about cancel culture.

We’ve talked you know, we’ve talked about this. But I’ve got a question for both of you. Do you think it is important to for men or young boys to still have a safe space, to have a community which is only men? Do you see what I mean? Because now it’s so frowned upon.

What is frowned.

Upon, I think. Well, I mean, Arthur might agree with me. Maybe it’s because we’re at the forefront of, like, social media. But like anything that doesn’t include women, everything they do, it’s like you’re misogynistic, you’re non-inclusive. This is it. Do you see what I mean? And I see sometimes that stuff going on in dentistry as well. Like I’ve called out, by the way, because there’s been like certain, um, I’ll never forget it. And actually, do you know the story about me? Chris Coachman? Did I ever tell you this story? No. So, Chris Coachman is an amazing dentist within our field, a really good friend of mine, and he was part of this thing, I don’t know, like six years ago called, um, dental stars on Instagram or something. And it was him and like four other men and they were really like promoting it. And I sent the course organiser or whatever like message and I said, This is really great. Topics are really interesting. I’m really sad to see that you don’t have any females on the panel because it was just one of those things. Apparently the message I sent was then screenshot in the group and then just being like ha ha sort of thing.

And Chris Coachman stepped in and he was like, I know Rhona and she has absolutely a point. He was like, Maybe we can consider like a female later on. He was like, No, no, no. You’re going to bring her on right now to the board because we need those female voices. And then I was the only female on there. And I think a lot of people were shocked. But I was like, well, you know, you don’t ask, you don’t get number one. Number two, I thought that that in that instance it was important. But now I think about it as well. And I think about like the way, as I told you, like young men are like, do they not have a safe space to be in? And also, like, what does that look like? Because I think that like, there’s also like toxic masculinity, as you said, like men commit suicide because, you know, they’ve got emotions going on. They feel there’s no way out. But then if you talk about your emotions too much as a man, you’re too soft. So where is it? Do you see what I mean? Where is that sort of like safe space?

First and foremost, you know, good friends. Yeah. And, yeah, good friends. You should have female friends. Male friends. But good friends are so important to men. Yeah, so, so, so important. And whether or not a club has enough women in it, we can talk about. Yeah, there’s been plenty of research that says diversity makes the strongest club, Right? But men. Men like to be around men, just as we would like to be. It’s quite funny, though, you know, Lebanese dinner parties. Yeah. Are very civilised affairs. Men and women come in together and they kind of stay together. Iranian dinner parties immediately at the at the.

At the.

Handing over of your coat, the men go to one side, the women go to the other side. And that’s that’s the way we like it.

Yeah.

You know, it’s certainly men together will have conversations that.

Yeah I think listen I think also it depends what we’re talking about. I think I agree with diversity always, always go first. But I think for men it’s important to have someone as that. It doesn’t have to be a large number, but someone else who can relate to their problems. And obviously, you know, and I don’t I hope that doesn’t sound controversial, you know, but men and women are different. Totally. And we have different we have various views. Right.

So amazing that that’s controversial.

I you know, I don’t like sport, like watching sport very much. Right. Yeah. I’ve been to the odd football game. Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I end up watching the crowd more than the game because the crowd is just so amazing. It’s so.

Interesting to.

See like the human kind of like.

Tribalism.

Of it.

You know, there’s research that actually, um, men who watch football, their testosterone levels.

Yeah. Yeah. If they win, right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, but Jenny because, you know, essentially to for testosterone to be secreted, you need components like aggression and physical activity. So if you think of a martial arts, amazing. That’s just the best thing you can do. Right? But to your point, I think it depends what we’re talking about in terms of friendships. Friend, friend groups agree 100%. It’s important to have friends of both sexes. Um, important to have time with your male friends and male only. And because it’s I think it’s it’s and also it’s important to have different friends right so people that you can talk to about anything, right? And then people who have same passions and same hobbies and same, you know, do the same thing because they, they can connect over something. And this is important. I think the lack of the lack of passion is what what what leads to people having problems because they don’t know how to channel it and whether that’s a good way of coping with it or not. I don’t know. I’m not a mental health specialist, But, you know, for me, for example, I know that as I as I mentioned. Earlier that my way of dealing with whatever is going on here is through movement, right? And also talking to people. I’m very fortunate to have have a very close relationship with my parents, have some very close friends who, you know, I’m not my sister as well. We can talk about anything. So I’m very fortunate in that regard. Right. Maybe also because of my upbringing, maybe because my parents were slightly different, Maybe, you know, I don’t know. But I think coming back to your point earlier, you could ask the same question about, okay, girls only and boys only schools, good or bad, because that’s where it starts.

I went to a girls.

Only.

I went to a boys only, but then I insisted on my kids going to a mixed.

And do you think it’s.

Made a difference?

Yeah I.

Have. I don’t have a problem with it. I think it kept me focussed on like exams and stuff. Also, I think that like this is controversial, but also I think that it was really good because I wanted to as a young girl, you don’t really know what’s going on. And I think especially when you make decisions about like getting physical with guys and stuff, I felt like it kept me on the like, good path, if that makes sense, because there were no temptations and like I developed like a real sense of like, understanding boundaries and things like that. Controversial, I know.

But what about.

Like, sisterhood? Did you get that? Because in boys only schools you get this friend camaraderie thing. Whereas when I look at my daughter, the girls are just so horrible.

They are.

Horrible.

I still get it Horrible. I still.

Get it. But this is the thing. Like.

Was there sisterhood also? Or were you like.

No, no.

No, listen. No, not not at all. I’ve always been in sort of like the IT crowd, like as in like the popular crowd. Surprise, surprise. But I’ve also felt I’ve also felt that within that crowd.

There’s a hierarchy.

Know that I’m also really different, as in like there’s parts of me because I’m a very complex person. You know, despite what people say, um, that there’s parts of me that don’t necessarily like resonate and girls around me since I was at school have always been competitive. There’s always been a fight for boys. But again, this goes back and I think like I see this still all the time in society and I’m really interested now I’m going to digress a little bit on like the Primal Instinct. I was listening to the amazing podcast with Dr. Tara Swart. Did you see it in Steven Bartlett? So she’s a neuroscientist. I think I sent ATA, which I’m going to ask him some stuff and she talks about loads of different elements of society. So as you probably know, women, when they spend a lot of time together, their menstrual cycles sink. And the question was asked, who determines who sinks with who? And it’s actually the one that’s the strongest in the tribe. Now I come into work and I’m like, So am I the strongest?

You know what what device, the strength. Then what’s the.

Difference? It’s I.

Don’t know. I guess it’s like the strongest genes, like this is what she was saying. Does it matter? No, is what she was really saying. But anyways, that’s the thing that determines it. And it’s saying that those kind of like there’s certain elements that sink also back in the day, like primal days as well. Um, men. This is really interesting. The strongest man had to spread the seed so he’d impregnate five women at a time and then he’d have to go out and find food or whatever. And the reason why he’d do five at a time is because there might be a chance only 1 or 2 would survive. Does that make sense? So like, there is this really innate.

Sense of sex at dawn?

No, I’d love to read it. Is it good? Does it cover this stuff?

Yeah, well, it’s sex at the dawn of humanity. So. Yeah. So what did the cavemen do for sex?

I think it’s. I think. Do you know? I think. I think it’s really interesting. I’ll let you know how I go on that. But I think it’s interesting because we’ve moved on from like primal stages right now because as we know, like, we could be attracted to someone on the primal level. Again, studies have shown that, like women from the Primal will go for a man with like a t shaped physique, right? Because it’s that strength of sense and protection. Men on a subconscious level will like women with like a waist hip ratio because it’s like childbearing instincts. They can carry a child. You know, one of my friends dumped a girl because he thought her bones weren’t big enough so she couldn’t carry his children. Did you know that? Like, so anyways, so anyways, I digress again there. But the point is, right. I think that there’s been a confusion.

Not only because of that.

But that was one of the reasons he was like, Oh, apparently her bones were too little. So that was like he just thought she couldn’t carry his children anyway. Whatever.

Did he.

Make it up for.

Himself, huh?

Did he make that up for himself?

I think so. But he’s quite like he’s quite like old school like that. He’s definitely about, like, the DNA sort of vibe.

Okay.

I think. Let’s not.

Discuss it. Let’s not discuss. This is another conversation. Anyway, the point is. The point is when. Now, I think also there’s a challenge with mental health, which I want to come on to with you because we’re not in a primal state anymore like you. Might fancy someone because of the way that they look, as in on those like physiques. If they don’t stimulate you or if they can’t provide for you emotionally, or if there are so many other elements now which contribute to our survival, does that make sense? Which I think maybe you disagree, which I think is also impacting men and women as a whole, right? Because we’re so becoming so much more complex. And do men feel that because there was such an onus on those like primal features that now they’re a bit lost? Do you see what I mean? And then how can exercise support them? Because you said at the beginning, quite rightly, it shouldn’t just be about physique, right? But perhaps that was such a big motivating factor because they knew that’s what attracted women being more muscular and broad. Does that make sense? You know, but we’re saying now it’s actually to kind of like stabilise you, make you feel good, etcetera. But how would you say, you know, to young men like this is why you should be exercising and this is the goals that you should achieve?

Um, good question. I think it’s tricky because if you think about young men, I don’t know what we define here as young men, right? Say 18 to 25 or.

Yeah, I mean, I’d say even younger, maybe like 13 to 25.

Okay.

It’s initially nowadays because of what’s going on, every single boy is going to go into exercise either because they do a sport and they want to perform really well, but there’s going to be some type of a an aesthetic goal that’s there, right? So they will want to have abs, they will want to have that physique because they still they are still hormonally growing. Right. I recently someone sent it to me, I’m 38 and they say, oh, men are mature when they’re 43. I was like, okay, I still have five years. Right?

But really.

That’s so don’t know.

I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s true.

What about.

Women? Those are friends. Um, I don’t know. I don’t know.

I’m still a child.

And I don’t look.

At a nightmare. Go on, go on.

Yeah, but, you know, it’s so you have to take and. And it’s okay because. But you just have to show them the right way to get there and you have to teach again. I think people should be taught consistency. Consistency in any any level of performance, you can be good at it just by doing usually for a long time or just learning how to do it very well. Right. And it’s no different with fitness physique wise now. Right? But also, if you think about the human body, it’s the brain is part of your body, right? So your heart is part of your body. And these are quite vital parts that will keep you alive for a very long time. I’ll keep you attractive to people if we if we refer to that. But also it’s a super important part to get you to, to to get you where you want to be, right. Whether that’s physical or mental level. So it’s it’s hard to speak with people because and you can you can tell, you know, sometimes whenever I see someone new and people ask me and interestingly, actually today I will digress a little bit, but speaking of kickboxing and jujitsu, which I do now, there’s one of the like really young boys, like he’s 18 and he sees that I’m building a business, I’m doing this and that, you know, on social media, he he reached out to me. He was like, Hey, can I ask you some questions? Because, you know, I’m I’m just starting out. I’m young and I don’t know what I’m doing. I really want to do well. I’m like, Man, I’m taking you out for lunch. I’ll give you whatever time you need because this is so brave of him to be like, Listen.

I want to do what you’re doing.

I want to be know. I want to maybe. But I also I want to listen to people and find out how can I be better, right? Whatever, whatever he wants to do. But I’m so up for this because I have been supported by by various people. And I think whatever support you can give, you should be you should be given the support, especially if you think that someone needs that support or they have the potential, you know, whatever that might be. But I think it’s it’s it’s always a very subjective and personalised conversation that should happen because people react differently to they have different motivators, right? So different. So it’s really hard to answer this question actually. So generally speaking.

Yeah, Yeah.

I think what you said is, is interesting because you know, t shaped t shaped body is what you’re saying sort of your program to, to be into.

But primarily.

Apparently. Yeah but but then now now we’re getting confused with other things you’re saying sort of thing.

Well no it’s not that but I think like survival then was completely different to survival now is what I see because as you know, like there are women that are like they value more like security and safety, financial like wallet. Lol. So. So, um.

So yeah, I get it. You know, good business.

Idea. Yeah.

And also like. And also for men. For men, you know, you’ll find plenty of men that don’t necessarily like women that have hips. Do you know what I mean? Or whatever it is. So like there’s a lot of different elements.

I think. You know what.

I think it’s still. That’s the attraction part, the physical attraction part. It’s still going to be quite primal, I think.

But this is the thing, like on according to this podcast, the Primal was very much, as I said, like so women with like small hip waist hip ratio, like, like men are going to be like, Oh, she can carry children. Do you know what I mean? That kind of thing, on that very primal level. But it’s super interesting. But I would argue and say that now it’s changed, right? Because you might find men that like super skinny, straight girls. Do you know what I mean? You know, like he’s like me.

No, but listen, the Iranians.

They love their Eastern Europeans. I think.

I think I think it’s very, very general. It’s a general statement. I think that the the sort of primal instincts will still have an impact as to who we are attracted to. Right. Whether or not you have a type or whatever. And you you probably could go very Freudian here and like discuss a lot.

Mom, Mom will come into it.

And I’m.

Interested. You’ve got you know, you’re clearly mentally quite nuanced, right? You think you’re thinking deeply. You’re you’re when we spoke before we started, you’re definitely an entrepreneur, you know, like, you know, you could call me an entrepreneur, but I don’t think I’m wired that way. But listening to you, your story from Poland to Austria to the businesses you started and the businesses you’re starting now, I feel like you’re you’re definitely an entrepreneur and how these things have now, it’s possible now to be in the fitness space and and someone who’s intelligent. Whereas back in the day.

Yeah, you definitely.

Have a Johnny Bravo effect. Sorry. Like my parents.

My parents were definitely was like a joke. Yeah, it’s a joke.

And there was a scientist.

You have that.

Stereotype, you do have that stereotype. And I think that, like, as I said, it’s really important because people think like you couldn’t be one or another. And I think I think people still have that stereotype. And like if they if they see someone also that’s physically in really good shape, like, well, he has he’s a personal trainer, there’s time to just be in the gym all day.

I play a very I always experiment with it and I enjoy it. Actually, I used to get very insecure about this, right, by the way, because also I moved here like I didn’t I, you know, I, I one, I just, you know, I lived all over the world modelling. I was a journalist for a while and writing. So, you know, I have absolutely no issue talking to people. I can go and talk to anyone. I can travel by myself. I always find new people that I that eventually become friends, right? But what I do now, sometimes, you know, there is a lot more strings to my bow. But what I always people when people ask me what I do, I’m a personal trainer. But the reaction of that person, you kind of can see, okay, we’re not going to get along because they disregard you straight away, especially in certain, you know, certain cultures, cultures.

I have to say, like because my parents are amazing, they would love you and get on with you really well. But obviously there’s like a my mom definitely being Lebanese, you know what I mean? And like even like my dad, when my sister loved art, he was like, to be an artist. For what? You know what I mean? You want to be poor, you know? But I think that’s a cultural thing. They didn’t get it.

They’d want a PhD in it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I get, I get. No, no, no. But I’m probably going to get smashed for this. Right. But I got so much I don’t know people. So, so there’s so many assumptions based upon the way I look. You know, I have been a model and I’m, you know, probably quite a good looking guy judging by made money from it. So, you know, there must be something to it. But the amount of times that people judge me as a as a guy, just based upon my just my looks, same.

With me all.

The time, appearance all the time. And you know, if you think if you think about it like and that makes me understand women a little bit more because that sounds funny, you know, but it’s and I’m probably going to get a lot of hate for this as well but.

Cancelled.

But it’s it’s it’s it sucks it sucks to be based to be to be judged upon based based based upon you look yeah. And because you know you have that and you know this is why I like talking to people and getting to know people better because there’s I believe there’s so much more to me. And and I, you know, I, I, I’m interested in so much stuff and you know, I university degree etcetera, you know, started a second one whatever but that’s just not you don’t you shouldn’t be you shouldn’t have to and that’s never going to be the case. But you shouldn’t have to prove people, oh, I’m not that stupid. Right? So I’m not stupid. I’m not as stupid as I look. I was I.

Was guilty of that. Siloing people into physical and mental. Yeah. And the point you made about the mental being. The physical, you know. Absolutely right.

All the way it to me.

No, all the all.

Did you did you did all the.

Way. No all the all the way until Joe Rogan was the one that made me realise, wow, he’s a super clever guy. That’s super physical guy.

Like, you’re making a great point because this is the role model boys should have. Right in terms of men that they should understand that physicality, you know, and and the mental strength and the intelligence. They don’t they have to go. They should go together, really? Because they it’s there’s no you know, there’s there’s is it I think from I’m going to I’m going to quote now from Conan the Barbarian. I think he says this is a the this is a task for men with skinny arms, for old men with skinny arms. So that’s sort of the separation between I’m so strong, I’m going to kill everyone and, you know, sleep with a woman. But you make the the important decisions. But that’s just not the case. It’s just there is a way of connecting, being in good health, being in a good shape as well, and and and being interested in a lot of. Things that would normally be assigned to someone who’s more intelligent, more smart, more academic and more. But it doesn’t it’s not it’s not mutually exclusive. It can go together. It can go hand in hand.

I think. I think also, like for me, as I said, like we’re failing a whole generation of young men and it’s not being talked about enough because we focus so much on other things and people don’t recognise how how pertinent it is when it comes to like male mental health. But as you said, there is a balance because there are good role models. We’ve spoken about it before. I absolutely love Huberman. Do you listen to Huberman? I absolutely love Lex Friedman. Lex Friedman a little bit is a little bit more of the archetypal like geek in a way, isn’t he? Because he’s like an academic. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. But.

But he’s.

But he’s really sexy. No, no, no, no.

No, no. He’s a black belt. He’s actually a vicious black.

He doesn’t, he.

Doesn’t he doesn’t like the thing for me, as I said, going, I don’t want to give Andrew Tate any more airtime, but he represents the archetypal Johnny Bravo, which I personally don’t find attractive. Do you see what I mean? Whereas, like someone like Lex Friedman, where I’m like, I find it so attractive when someone’s intelligent, like I genuinely do and that’s, and that and that and that for me, that for me as well is really important because for me, I’m like, you’re a great role model. And Huberman, you know where I’m like you guys. But also you can see they they embody the degree of masculinity, but they also respect women. Do you see what I mean? Because you can tell the conversations they have, the conduct. They have the nuanced way of thinking, you know, And I think, you know, there are there are men out there and like you said, Joe Rogan, you know, like he can have very balanced conversations. He can you.

Know, he’s in a very fulfilled relationship, but.

He’s And human and Lex Rubin not. But you know, but, you know, they talk about that. So I think it’s important. And actually, I didn’t tell you about this, but I got trolled. I’ve actually been trolled recently, as you know, I get trolled by some male dentists recently.

What would they say?

It’s really weird, but the way that they’re behaving is that they’re annoyed and angry about my success. And I’ll tell you the context of later. But I don’t get it because I’m like, why? Why am I threatening you? Or why are you trying to compete with me? Or why are you trying to put me down? And the ages, they are about like 22 to 25. And I’m like, I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Like, why the needs to attack me? Do you see what I mean? And again, I’m like, Is it because of the younger generation? Is it because they don’t understand there’s some kind of like undertone of hate or wanting to see me fall?

You’re quite a public person. So it’s it’s you’re you’re out there, you’re not afraid to say things and you’re not afraid to present your work. And you also, you know, you’re prominent, prominent in the in the field that people didn’t think you could be prominent in. So that will always attract because you’re different. That will always attract people who are that’s probably pure envy and they will probably always and men probably. Easy to call.

It envy, though. Yeah, it’s a bit easy to call it envy. I mean, I think Rona, the thing about her is she knows social media better than us.

Yeah.

No, I’m asked is pretty good.

Not as good as better than most. Right? She knows me, so she knows part of social media is trolling. Yeah, but what I’ve noticed with her more recently, before she used to complain about her a lot. Now she wants to understand it.

She’s writing. She wants.

To know. No, she wants to know. She wants to understand it. And I don’t think it any longer comes from the same place of hurt that it used to come from before. Now now you just want. But I.

Understand. But I have.

I have empathy and nuance thinking. Right? Because with the stabbing, it was such a heinous act, right. With the guy like stabbing the 15 year old girl in Croydon. But also my nuance part of the brain is like, what have we done to fail these people? Like, why are people committing these acts? Because again, like another off topic thing, but like when people go to prison, right, people are like they’re criminals. They deserve to die. People become criminals because they’ve had some trauma or something awful happened to them. And unless we address that, people will keep going to prison and then they get released. And by the way, 90% or some crazy statistic end up being going back to prison for the same crime because you don’t get back to the root cause of the problem. Right. So that’s why I said to you, punishment is an interesting one, right? Because there’s on one hand, a little bit of fear keeps you on the straight and narrow and just like, you know, focus on what you’re doing. On the other hand, it can you know, it can just create a sense, you know.

I guess there is there is a correlation between mental health, one to the space to to be able to say stuff without again, without, you know, without being punished for it. Because, you know, I don’t know what these people said to you, but it was probably not very nice. Right. So it’s online bullying essentially. In the US, you have guns, you have them available and you have mental health issues and you have more shootings than ever before. Right? You have more stabbings than ever before here. And so I think. I think there is something happening. I don’t know what it is, you know, not that smart, but there is something happening that we’re not only failing men, we’re failing society as a society In a lot of ways. It’s sad, you know, because there’s just so much more available and so much more. And then there’s.

The there’s the crisis with the number of people being prescribed antidepressants and how that takes empathy out of you. Yeah.

And you know, you have, for example, if you correlate that with obesity numbers the obesity even though. Yeah. The the knowledge about it, you could argue that the available knowledge about health, fitness, wellness so much more than than ever before yet you know for children so many more opportunities you know still even the the underprivileged children they have more opportunities than the underprivileged children back in like, I don’t know how many years ago. Right. So but you still I saw I don’t remember exactly. So I don’t want to misquote but the obesity rates amongst children in the US were absolutely shocking. Same in the UK. So and you know, we have so, so much more, so much more available to us. So much so so many more resources to help these people.

Yeah. But also.

To damage.

But also to.

Damage but also damage them. But you know, it’s easier to the.

Phone itself is a is at the end of the day an addictive mechanism.

100%.

And obesity, a lot of it is to do with addiction.

Yeah. But then obesity has links with depression. That was my point. Right. Course. So you can see there is a correlation between that too. And then it’s it’s it’s just, you know, I don’t know what’s happening, but I think something really has to change on a systemic level for sure.

You know.

You quoted numbers or you said 700,000. Yeah.

A year.

Humans or guys, humans, humans killed themselves. And I always think about this sort of number as like, you know, what’s the number of people who got close to it? Probably a thousand times that, you know?

Yeah, but let me ask you a question. Do you know do you know anyone who got close to it? Sure. Do you know anyone who got close to. Yeah, I do. I know anyone. I ask this question. Everyone knows someone.

I know several who actually did it.

But especially in dentistry.

In dentistry, it’s.

Huge.

It’s the highest suicide rate. So we know. We know Payman. I know people we could name probably like five people that we know killed themselves. Yeah, yeah.

What’s the what’s the actual reason.

We don’t know.

This is the thing. Like, this is why we started this whole podcast. We delved into it with my therapist. I brought her on and you know, as Payman was saying, like you got, you know, like brain surgeons and heart surgeons. And, you know, my dad had traumatic time delivering babies, babies that don’t survive sometimes, you know, like there’s a lot of stress why dentists and, you know, like we try to hone in on it. But obviously some of the reasons are the patient’s awake. So some surgeons, for example, the patient’s on a table, but you’ve got patients giving you feedback, pain, stress, tiny fields to work in. Do you know what I mean? Like there’s all these accumulative effects. And quite interestingly, some dentists I don’t know if you knew this Payman, but I know too they commit suicide in their surgery, which I think is quite must mean something, you know.

Well, there’s access to, you know, things in the surgery that there is. But but I mean, it’s a very isolating job. Yeah. So it’s not like a brain surgeon community. Massive hospital. Right. Whereas dentists work sometimes in one room all day, all day. Um, but it’s not a new thing.

You haven’t ended the family. My uncle is actually was a dentist in a long retired.

It’s been it’s been true for 100 years, which is the crazy thing. Yeah. So. So maybe it’s the mercury.

Well, listen, we could. We’re probably going to have to bring you on for like, episode two. But I want to just ask you as well, um, what would you say to people that are struggling if they could do like three easy things to help them with regards to fitness and mental health kind of takeaway?

I think if they’re struggle, if they struggle mental health first and foremost, seek professional advice, right? So never underestimate someone else who can who’s trained to help you. Yeah, that’s number one. When it comes to other tools such as fitness and health and, you know, just just sign up for something and just commit to it. Yeah. Make a deal with yourself. Whatever motivates you. It’s really always hard to hard to answer a question that’s very general, especially when it comes to that, because I really like the sort of personal approach to, to, you know, to say, a client or um, but if there is, you know, mental health issues or people don’t feel well, it’s probably somewhere where there is a community where you can meet new people or you can meet like minded people. Yeah, probably as well, right? And then if you on a on, you know, on a very basic level, take one step at a time. Don’t try and change everything at the same time because if you do you’ll fail and most people do. So just do one thing, establish a habit and then so step. By step. So really it’s consistency and understanding what the issue is, or at least having having a brief understanding of, hey, this is this is wrong, I have to do something about it. So number one, establish there is an issue. Number two, be consistent in your approach that you do. But then again, we could probably discuss how can I be consistent, etcetera. So I think the professional help is always going to be number one.

I think the other thing was, is that we discussed like an on an ending note is about the importance of like neuroplasticity as well.

What does it mean?

So again, according to this, neuroscientists like our brains are always malleable To change the neuroplasticity is is that we absorb and our minds change according to our environment. The people that were in etcetera. Now it really drastically slows down at think 25. And what happens is, is then it’s almost like play Play-Doh. So before then you can mould it after, then it’s a bit hard and crusty. The Play-Doh you can it’s just a lot harder to deal with. But again.

There is actual I’ll interrupt you here, but go ahead. It’s funny because I in July, I went to Los Angeles for a conference, which is sort of idea world fitness. And, you know, there’s a lot of brilliant minds presenting. And one of the workshops was exactly on that. Yeah. And there’s an actual method of, of training that. Right. So you have to connect a few different things. So you have to give a person a cognitive task. Yeah. And auditory slash verbal cue and then also a physical task and it all has to be performed at the same time.

So can you give an example?

So for example, you have a clock, right as they call in the US the military clock. So 24 and you would say and then you have the quadrant, so you go lunges in different directions. So you tell them the time. So they have to think about the time and they have to step towards the time and say a their favourite colour or whatever. So it’s a few different things that you have to your brain has to multitask essentially at the same time, right? So your body has to do something, your brain has to do something, your voice has to do something. And that is proven to you to generate new brain cells, which is which is so and to establish new connections in your neural neurogenesis.

But then what do you get from that? It’s it’s.

Okay. Number one. Okay. Number one, it’s you take care of your brain health. Right. Which as we as you guys probably know amongst women. So dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, these are the the the I think the largest cause of death in the UK at least if I’m I might be wrong here but I looked at it but essentially taking care of your brain and and and helping the brain to stay stay vital for longer. So if you think about it, you know, you can even reverse or stop dementia or Alzheimer’s disease if you do it correctly and for a long time. Right. And trust me, if you do it for five minutes a day, I did it in that thing. At some point you’re like, whoa, what’s going on? It’s a great tip. It’s it’s actually it’s actually because your brain is takes burns. So much of your energy that after a few minutes you’re like, oh, God, like I’m fried. Right? But you just like when just like when a muscle you adapt, you.

Go muscle memory. Yeah, Yeah.

Now, that’s a great tip.

Are we allowed to.

Ask you how much it costs for you to be the, you know, your private trainer.

Payman wants to do once? You know.

I’m not I’m not taking any more clients at the moment because I’m busy.

Well, how much are your existing clients pay?

Uh, around. Not that much. That’s probably going to give me nothing. No, I don’t want to discuss this here, but. But we can talk about it afterwards. We can talk about it.

Yeah. Perfect.

Thank you so much, Arthur. It’s been amazing. So insightful. Really appreciate you coming.

Yeah, Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for coming. It’s been brilliant.

Thank you so much.

My view on that is it’s very, very fine balance because imposter syndrome can actually hold you back if you’re not kind of progressing. But also you want to do it from a safe viewpoint. Again, give patients the best service. So my kind of simple tips to anyone wanting to start doing more endo is firstly take on referrals from 2 or 3 very close people, close friends or colleagues who you know, you trust. Explain to them exactly what level you’re at. They show you the x rays before you even see the patients. There’s no kind of awkwardness, etcetera, and slowly build your confidence. And if you are, you then do have to push yourself. And that’s where mentors come in. So sharing certain cases with mentors. So I remember when I did my first retreatment in practice and it was on a patient who I’d known as a GDP for 4 or 5 years and we kind of safer space. Safer space. Exactly. So so those are the two, 2 or 3 kind of key things. If anyone’s looking to push more into any special interest or specialism, let’s say in practice.

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.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Assad Rahman onto the podcast. Assad had a meteoric career insomuch as he’s done lots and lots of post-grad. He’s onto his fifth qualification, which is now an MBA dentist with special interest in Endodontics and now a clinical lead at Portman who’ve just merged with Dentex and sort of 400 practices in that little stable as as head of two of those divisions. So lovely to have you, buddy.

Hi, Payman. Hi, everyone. Lovely to be here.

It’s really nice to have you, man. I think I’m going to start with you. Where did you grow up?

So I was born in Doncaster, but my dad was training as an orthopaedic surgeon at the time, so we travelled around, moved around quite a bit and eventually when I was about 5 or 6, settled in Birmingham and that’s where I grew up. And often a lot of people say I don’t have the Birmingham accent until I say Birmingham and then it comes out. So yeah, grew up there and then but I always had this kind of affiliation with Yorkshire and then as soon as I could go to university I ended up in Yorkshire and kind of ended up staying up here.

Do you remember the first time you thought, I’m going to be a dentist?

Yeah, I mean, I was lucky. So I was one of those children. And to this day, I’ve never had any restorative work. I’ve recently just had my Invisalign done, but before that I had no dental treatment. So for me, going to a dentist was, I’d say, you know, a really relaxing experience. So from quite an early age I realised I wanted to do something in science and science background. My dad, my mum, both being doctors, but dentistry kind of dragged me in really from I’d say 13 or 14 when I realised I couldn’t do the long hours that medics do. So dentistry was kind of the the career for me.

What kind of a doctor is your mum?

So Mum was an anaesthetist. She retired when I was born, so my parents had me quite late. I’m the oldest of two. Yeah. Um, my mum was late 30s at the time, so she kind of retired after I was born. My dad obviously carried on working.

And as a surgeon he was he obviously didn’t see much of him as you were growing up, right?

No, very busy. He’d always make time for us on the weekends though. So whenever me and my brother, we play a lot of sports, so we play a lot of sports. And he’d always make time to come and see that. And that was the real kind of bonding we had with him on the weekends when he’d come to see our football matches, cricket matches, rugby. But during the week, yeah, very busy. And that kind of work ethos I suppose, rubbed off on me as I grew older.

What was your parents advice regarding whether to become a doctor or to become a dentist? Were they dead against you becoming a doctor or was it the opposite?

No, my parents obviously instilled certain kind of ethos, so it was hard work and it was education was very important. But I suppose if I’d gone and said, I want to do a degree in maths, let’s say, or finance or whatever, they’d have been happy with that. But like I said.

But specifically medicine, what do they say about medicine? Did they say do it or did they say don’t do it?

Well, my brother’s a doctor. Oh, really? Yeah. So he’s a he’s a doctor. He’s going to orthopaedic surgery now, So he’s becoming a surgeon.

How is your brother?

He’s 30 now, so a couple of years younger than me.

And now when you. When you compare you and your brother career choice wise, what are your reflections?

Well, obviously, I mean, I talk about this a lot when I when I see young dentists and dentistry is is a kind of a strange career in terms of we let’s say we we reach our peak or we can reach our peak very early on in our careers and let’s say we qualify 23 within 7 to 10 years, you can actually reach, especially financially, a position where you’re kind of at your peak earning. And with that brings obviously positives, negatives with other careers, especially medicine. You know, even today, junior doctors are striking. It’s kind of that slow, gradual progression, which in the past was seen as good. But in this kind of current day and age, when people want everything really quickly, I feel sometimes people struggle with with that aspect of things. So yeah, big difference in terms of kind of where I am in my career and where he is, even though he’s doing really well. He ranked number one in surgical training last year and he’s going to do his surgical training. In London, really prestigious post, but it will be still another 8 or 9 years of his training left. So yeah, big difference.

And but lifestyle wise, he’s not seeing much of his nearest and dearest now, is that right?

Definitely, yeah. Very busy. And I suppose that’s where you choose to take your career. You can. Yeah. That’s the kind of flexibility that dentistry gives you. You can choose to take career at your pace if you wanted to.

So where did you study Leeds? You said.

Leeds. Yeah, I did my undergraduate in Leeds. And what kind of.

A dental student were you?

Um, middle of the road, I’d say. I’ve always been in all my education. I’ve been kind of middle of the road and never got close to failing. Never got close to distinction, let’s say. So just a good solid student. And that was that was despite me really trying, revising hard, working hard. But I just I never can end up getting a distinction when it’s an exam or something in front of me.

So then I’m quite interested in this question of, you know, you’re right now obviously to me, when I’m looking at you, you’ve got that look in your eyes, which is like there’s a kind of remember that looking in so many of my my friend’s eyes here, there’s this sort of determination to make a difference in the world, kind of look in your eyes. And at what point did that happen? Have you always been that cat, or was there a moment when you said, God damn it, I’m going to like, do the best I could, be the best I can be, fulfil my potential.

I think. And I speak to a lot of friends about this and that’s where kind of people talk about school education, etcetera. I’ve always wanted to be the best and I’d love to get a distinction in exams etcetera, but I feel that especially GCSE or A-level exams, let’s say again, I didn’t do badly because I ended up in Dental school, but they often are geared towards a certain type of thinking in a funny sort of way. When I’m doing my graduate learning now, I’m a post graduate degrees, especially my MBA. I’m getting my best scores yet and my best marks yet. That determination, I think, comes from seeing my parents, especially my dad, from kind of his upbringing in rural Pakistan, to end up obviously in the UK and then just seeing what we saw of him throughout his career, the ups and downs that all careers have. But the continuous aspect of keeping on going is a big thing for me. Day to day we can all have struggles, but it’s the fact that we continuously must keep going on. So that’s my big ethos, I’d say.

So when when did your dad study medicine in Pakistan or here?

Yes. Yeah. Both My mum and dad studied medicine in Pakistan, then came here to do their postgraduate training with the view to eventually going back, but then kind of the NHS took them on and, and they stayed for the rest of their careers.

What about the question of like race? Did you did you did your dad complain of not getting promotions? Because that was that was I mean, now it seems like a like a crazy thing to say and we’ve come a long way. But back then, remember, that was a complaint massively so.

My dad was actually the first non-European consultant in the UK and that was in 96. So when he came over first to Ireland again, I feel so as you’re saying, we’re very lucky nowadays. Situation is completely different. And personally, for example, I’ve never had any racism either personal or kind of systematic, systematic etcetera. But my dad does mention, obviously he, he, he, he was in a time when the opportunity wasn’t there. There was a simple kind of bar on non European consultants and even sit the exam was a big kind of barrier to to pass. But as you say with time I feel like we’ve done well in the UK to get to a point where now there’s masses of equal opportunity. I was speaking at the International Women’s Day last year and the topic of diversity came up. And now, for example, if we talk about just dentistry, if you’re a prospective student from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background, you’ve got a higher chance of getting into dental school than a white student, for example. So, you know, so.

Some sort of positive discrimination?

No, I don’t there’s not been any study. Again, the percentages are very small difference wise.

But just the fact that it’s on the same graph, it’s quite interesting. Yeah, exactly.

It’s just yeah, it’s I mean, it’s kind of a full circle moment, let’s say.

Yeah, Yeah. So then tell me about your first job.

So I qualified in 2015 and I was very lucky to end up in Coventry. So as my parents from Birmingham, after doing your PhD exam that you do ranked high enough to be end up in Coventry, which is close enough to allow me to be back home, let’s say, and my trainer, their manager who I’m still in touch with.

I know many. Yeah, I know brilliant people. Brilliant people.

Yeah, great, great people still in touch with them to this day. And so Mandy was my trainer. Anoop was obviously in the other dental practice that they own and manage. I thought it was a fantastic trainer because she knew exactly when to let you kind of get on with things because when you’re a. Trainee. You have to have that kind of impetus to learn by yourself, but also do it in a safe manner and manner, as you’re saying. Fantastic experience. Trainers, you know, 15 plus years being trainers. So they knew exactly what kind of level I was at and how to push me. And then I was lucky enough that they offered me to stay on as an associate and then ended up staying with them for about three years. Oh, really? I really enjoyed that. And again, every time I speak to and I was speaking to a lot of you know, we met at the BCD conference a few weeks back and a lot of young students coming up to me and I was saying, try and stay in your practice if you can. If it’s know it’s a good practice, try and stay there. Try and see your mistakes. Try and and build your career in one practice, at least for the first 2 or 3 years before you look to move on.

It’s interesting you say that. Yeah, because remember as a PT, we used to call it I adored my practice that my boss was still one of my best friends, mentor, wonderful person. But I on purpose left that practice because I thought that it’s the opposite, right? I thought I thought I want to see something else. And it’s quite an interesting question. I mean, I think you’re right in so much as now with with the benefit of hindsight, seeing some failures would have been good. Yeah, because I moved to a whole new practice. That said, I did see another way of doing things. So you stayed there for three years. The amazing thing about Anoop and Manny is the life lessons you must have learnt from those guys because just successful humans not, you know, the wonderful relationship, wonderful practices, that’s just the way they think is just amazing. So that’s lovely, man. So then what happened after that? Why did you leave after three years?

So I think I was getting to a point where, as you’re saying.

You won’t see something else.

Yes, essentially. And there was lots of factors to it. One was I’d done a pgcert in sedation by then. I’d just started my restorative master’s at Birmingham, which I ended up doing a pgdip. And at that point I kind of wanted to transition into private dentistry. And the reason for that was I’ve always kind of my values belief system is always, you know, we’re talking earlier about wanting to do the best quality work. So nowadays when I do my clinical days, for example, I’m seeing 3 or 4 endo patients a day. And it’s about the fact that I can really focus on quality, create exceptional experiences for those 3 or 4 patients, and that’s it. So that’s what you have to focus on. And it was really just wanted to progress in my career to to a fully private practice. And I got the opportunity. It was hard to to say goodbye, but like I said, I left on good terms and still in touch with Mani Anoop, and that’s when I ended up with Portman and I joined as an associate five years ago in Malton, and as soon as I joined the practice, everyone kind of looked at me and said, We don’t like doing Endo. And I said, Well, I like doing Endo. I’d had some endo training on my restorative degree, so I started taking kind of internal referrals, doing my own endo, and then decided to formalise my endo training that way.

Oh, how interesting. So and that’s it. The rest is history. You’ve been you’ve been with Portman ever since, right? Yeah. And have you worked in any other practice? Just those two?

Yes. So I do a day of endo in a non Portman practice at the moment as well. So Mondays a do a day of render in a non Portman practice. It’s a practice five minutes away from me in York fantastic practice love the team there. I just go and do my endo and come home But as soon as I join the practice in Malton at Portman, I could just see kind of dentistry where the whole team is kind of geared towards providing the patients a fantastic service and I feel a lot of people, a lot of dentists, you know, going with the mindset where you’re going from Udas to private dentistry and you even initially have the thought. So you know what? If I don’t earn money, what if patients don’t come in, but they do come in and if you give them a good service, they do come in and they do value you. And that’s what kind of led me on to trying to move more non-clinical to try and pass that kind of feeling and knowledge onto others to help them develop and grow their careers.

Well, there’s quite a lot I want to talk about in what you just said there, because, you know, what’s your advice when when a when a young dentist asking about private is your advice to follow your path, which is three years of mixed, get your hands dirty? And then is that your advice or or is your advice different in. Much as it doesn’t have to be like if I’m a young dentist coming and asking you if you just regurgitate what you did and think that’s the best thing to do. Not necessarily true, is it? So. So what’s your reflections? If I say if I if let’s say I was this young gun and I said, listen, I want to go from university, from PhD to a private job or even skip PhD and go straight to a private job. Am I not going to be like in a in a in that frame of mind that that excellence frame of mind quicker by doing that rather than doing any time on the NHS?

So my my personal view and the reason I highlight my personal view is because lots of people nowadays are trying to go. There are certain pathways, let’s say, to private dentistry even before having done PhD. Yeah, but I feel if we’re all honest with ourselves, what do we get in dental school? It’s kind of a basic it’s that driving analogy when you pass your driving, when you do your driving lessons, you’ve had 20 lessons with an instructor. Where are you then safe to go and completely drive? Yes, to a certain level, but you still need, let’s say, a year or two of practice and that’s what the PhD training gives you. It gives you that safe, basic standard, even in terms of if I talk about my personal. How often does your car fail when you’re an FD to All the time. If you’re in private practice, you can’t have your car fail even once. So or you shouldn’t have your fail once. So it’s those kind of basics. The other things, the mentality. Even on the NHS, there’s nothing stopping you from doing a spending an hour and a half doing an endo if you’re an FD, And then as an early associate, let’s say all you’re going to do is make less money and you’re not going to be doing that all the time.

You’re also going to be able to do 12 Udas Very quickly. So it does balance itself out, but you have to kind of sacrifice something somewhere. But my advice, yes, I think staying in mixed practice, but you have to do I always say postgraduate education is the key. And again, with postgraduate education, I say, yes, courses are great, but try and do degrees with degrees. You get the kind of holistic teaching. You can then supplement them with certain courses out there. But if you’ve got, let’s say, a restorative pgdip or master’s, you can then add courses onto that to give you further skills rather than doing lots of different courses. It also ends up being the same amount of money as well. If you think about it, restorative pgdip 19 to 20 £21,000. By the time you’ve done 4 or 5 six different courses in lots of little things ends up being the same. So I’d say build a good foundation for yourself early on.

The thing is though, I mean, I did then went straight to a private job after that. Yeah, I found the private job a lot easier than the job. Yeah. And so when I say easier, you know, fewer patients, right? Fewer patients to deal with. And for me not being able to say, hi, how are you? What do you do was the hard bit. Yeah, because there’s no time to do that in the NHS. And you know, of course I understand your point, Right? Let’s not, let’s not be about I understand what you’re saying about the driving analogy. At the same time, there’s a, there’s a sort of this, this thing we have in dentistry of hey, go practice on the patients, make all your mess ups there and then and then go to private after that. Well, what about those patients, man?

Like I was saying, that’s a that’s a very good point. And what you said and I say this to a lot of people now, you know, so one of the things I’m working on in parliament is helping a few of my practices transition from NHS practices to private practices. So NHS contracts are going back and the kind of 1 to 1 work that we have to do with clinicians and colleagues in practice is to change that mindset. To say it will actually be easier because let’s say somebody who’s coming into a private practice, patients again, not to stereotype, but will be more kind of looking after the dentition, let’s say. Well, so your actual dentistry might be easier itself. But going back to your point when I was saying I mean, like I said, my personal view, but as I also said, times are different nowadays, aren’t they? Because, I mean, I had lots of people coming up to me a couple of weeks ago saying I want to go straight into private practice. And the key there is finding a mentor. Yeah. So I found my mentor early on in the NHS practice so you can find your mentor anywhere. But if you are thinking of whatever you’re thinking of doing in your career, you have to have a mentor, let’s say, who can guide you in your career.

What do you say to someone who says, Look, I want a mentor, but you know, my boss isn’t interested?

Well. Renters don’t have to be within the practice. They can be external. Yeah, they can be external. So it’s often just reaching out to someone you know, or you might see someone at a conference. They can also be I mean, I’ve found a lot of my mentors in the postgraduate education I’ve done, and I call it a likeminded network. So one of the biggest things, let’s say in life people struggle with nowadays is even if you have 1 or 2 negative people in your life, that kind of drains a lot of your energy. And I am very fortunate after doing lots of postgraduate education, having people who are like minded. So two reasons why that’s important. One is they’ll be able to guide you, give you the correct advice, but the days that you’re not feeling your best, you’re not wanting to grow and develop, they’re actually holding you accountable. So those mentors don’t have to be, let’s say, a different age to you or or might be slightly older than you, but even those 1 or 2 years difference in dentistry can mean they have the the opportunity to be a mentor for you.

Yeah, very true, man. I used to play badminton with a super super dentist. Super Pete Strand. For anyone who might know him, he’s a specialist, periodontist, big implant guy, and I used to play badminton with him once a week and we used to just go for a beer and talk about teeth. Right? And I thought I was just talking to a guy about teeth and, you know, I mean, I wasn’t I wasn’t realising how much mentorship I was getting from this guy and, and, and, you know, his principles. And we challenge each other and so forth. And massive Pete’s a massive mentor of mine but didn’t know it at the time. So your point is brilliant. Yeah. That a mentor can be a professor like someone who’s, you know, officially your mentor. Or it could be anyone you’re talking to or a peer, which is which is very interesting because you think a mentor needs to be the senior person. But you know, you sometimes get a group of PhDs living together and one of them’s going to end, though the other one’s good at selling, let’s say, or good with patients. And, you know, you teach each other. So let’s go to Endo. Yeah. How is it that you like Endo? And so many of us don’t? And by the way, when I say us, I did a restorative house job and the my direct boss was an endodontist. And so I got the bug. Yeah, I did. But I did. I had this perforation in my undergrad and it put me off. What what was the moment that you decided like, you know. Endo And how, how did you get into it?

So it’s a very, very early on and so I’m probably not might not be the best person to ask this question to because I was in third year actually of dental school. Yeah. When I when we first started getting introduced to Endodontics and that was it for me, I realised.

It clicked, then.

It clicked then so to the point where I was the first person in my year to get loops as a third year because I just thought I’ve got an endo coming up in the beginning of fourth year and I want to be able to see what I’m doing. And it was just it was that early on, but it as kind of my career started, I still did give myself the opportunity to see if I liked anything else. Yeah, but I just kept coming back to Endo, even to the point where I even did formal training in sedation, restorative. But I just still kept coming back to the endo and that’s why I even applied and got accepted for an indent. And the plan was to go and do a full time.

Specialisation.

Pathway specialisation. And then that was just before Covid and Covid hit and lots of things happened. So I kind of spun around and and went towards doing an MSC in Endo, which has given me so much knowledge, etcetera, along with my restorative degree, to be able to accept internal external referrals for treatments, re treatments. But what.

What Endo training did you do?

So my MSC.

The restorative one.

Know my MSC and an endo.

Okay.

So in my final year now.

Oh I see. I see. I see.

Yeah. So yeah again. So this is why I was saying earlier about degrees rather than courses. So if you look at lots of societies, so the British society, British society, for example, they’ll recommend or they won’t use the word accredit, but they recommend certain degrees in the country to say if you do one of these kind of degrees, you’ll be off a certain standard. And I went and did one of those. So I did the simply Endo one, which is affiliated with the University of Chester up in Liverpool. Great people up there. Mike Horrocks running a great course. And from that I’ve built up quite a big network of kind of fellow dentists who do some fantastic work. And one of my good friends is actually training to be an endodontist in hospital, and we now share cases. For example. And there’s not much difference in our treatments and re treatments. Obviously he can do apicoectomy, etcetera. But my kind of viewpoint was how often does a patient want that in practice? So I’m happy doing my treatments and re treatments and passing on apicoectomy to people like him.

So you feel like in a way, you feel like that is the one difference between you and a specialist is the discectomy.

Again, every field is different. But in endo, yes, I feel it kind of it depends on the kind of teaching and how you then go off. And I mean, another key point is I didn’t just go and do this. My restorative pgdip and my endo and then go and start taking on the most hardest of referrals. Yeah. So there’s, there’s lots of factors that come into that. And one of my friends was actually talking to me the other day and he’s in his first year of Endo training and he’s saying he’s and I was kind of pushing him to start taking on some referrals. And he was saying, Well, he’s feeling some imposter syndrome, let’s say. Yeah. And my view on that is it’s a very, very fine balance because imposter syndrome can actually hold you back if you’re not kind of progressing. But also you want to do it from a safe viewpoint. Again, give patients the best service. So my kind of simple tips to anyone wanting to start doing more endo is firstly take on referrals from 2 or 3 very close people, close friends or colleagues who you know, you trust. Explain to them exactly what level you’re at. They show you the x rays before you even see the patients. There’s no kind of awkwardness, etcetera, and slowly build your confidence. And if you are, you then do have to push yourself. And that’s where mentors come in. So sharing certain cases with mentors. So I remember when I did my first retreatment in practice and it was on a patient who I’d known as a GDP for 4 or 5 years and we kind of safer space. Safer space, Exactly. So those are the 2 or 3 kind of key things. If anyone’s looking to push more into any special interest or specialism, let’s say, in practice.

But sort of don’t talk about endo a bit more. Yeah, insomuch as I mean, this is such an unfair question, man, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Yeah. What would you say is the crux? Like what was the what was the thing that flipped in your head that suddenly made endo seem like something you want to do for the rest of your life? Well, that’s one question. The second question is clinically. Clinically, what is the crux? I mean, I know what an endo is. I know what access and isolation is. I know about Rotary. But what’s the crux of it? What’s the most important thing.

Shall I say, Why I enjoy it. So, yeah, let’s start with that.

Let’s start with that.

I go in, I know I have a day of three maximum for patients because I’m seeing patients for an hour and a half. Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know how to put this, but if I put it in a simplest way, I’m seeing that patient for 90 minutes and then hopefully never again. Now, it’s not to say that I don’t want to continuously see my patients, but and I don’t kind of build a rapport with them in early on in when I’m meeting them, etcetera, or doing consultations, let’s say. But it’s the viewpoint where lots of implant Dental let’s say you have this phrase where you’re married to the patient, or so there’s none of that, let’s say. The other thing is that endo, I feel lots of people worry about the complications, but once you have a certain level of training, those complications.

You know how to handle.

Yes. And also you reduce those complications. So one of my tutors in in Liverpool used to say if somebody has and again, I’m not quoting them or putting this out there, but the common phrase is kind of say if somebody has a high incidence, it’s 100% their fault. And the point is that once you have a certain level of endo training, you know how not to have a hypochlorite incident. And it’s those kind of things where once you take the complications away, the day to day becomes comfortable and then predictable and you’re in control and then enjoyable. Obviously, I think that control aspect lots of dentists want and when you’re a GDP you struggle with because one second you’ll have an oral surgery patient, next second you’ll have an endo and you have to kind of be a master of all. And it’s very difficult to do that.

Not to mention profitable, right?

Yeah. I mean, so that’s the other thing. So no lab bills.

You know, the other thing, dude, forget forget the money itself. The best thing about being an endodontist is you don’t have to sell anything to anyone. Yeah, and selling is tiring, man. Yeah. You know, I remember as a dentist thinking that, like, another day of of getting people to go ahead. Yeah. Whereas in endo that’s not a problem is it?

And again it referrals. Once the patient’s been referred to you, they’re on board. They’ve even had the discussion of how much it’s going to cost.

It’s all being done. Yeah, it’s.

All been done. So. Yeah.

And then what about my second question? The crux of it clinically, like what is it like? I see some endodontists I’m a sad fool. I follow a few Endodontists Right. And and they’re like, they’re doing this super like, minimal access cavities. Is that some sort of macho thing in endo? Like the smaller your access cavity, the better you are.

That’s the latest kind of buzz. But I think in all kind of fields you get things coming up, obviously. So I come at come at anything from a restorative viewpoint. So maintaining as much tooth tissue as possible is important. But the crux and I say this, the kind of this can be actually extrapolated into other fields as well. But the simplest thing is breaking the bigger task into the small. So when I’m doing the LA, that’s all I’m focusing on giving the best LA the most painless LA. And so the patient thinks that’s the best seller they’ve had. Then I’m putting the rubber dam on and then I’m just focusing 100% on the access until I’ve found the canals. I’m not thinking of anything else. And it’s that kind of step by step process, methodical approach, which like I said, you can take into lots of fields, but especially endo feel the more methodical approach you have. Technically all your endos and your approach should be the same for all of them.

That painless injection is such a massive thing. Man. Such a massive thing. What’s your tips for that? Just put the topical and go slow.

So I did. When I did my Pgcert in sedation at Bristol, we had about six months learning about Endo LA Sorry and making it comfortable. Yeah. And lots of little factors but topical. Lots of dentists don’t wait for it to work. So if you’re using lidocaine needs to be 3 or 4 minutes for it to.

Work and use those 3 or 4 minutes to make like talk to the patient, like give that amazing service that we were talking about. Right, exactly.

And there’s lots of there’s a vibration technique, for example, when you’re doing the infiltration and.

Dry the area. Right. Dry the area before putting the topical on there. Like it’s so interesting that you forget that like for ten years of dentistry didn’t do that. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what dude, you one thing I’ve come to realise, okay, I’m going to put myself out there, so I’m an expert at bleaching. Yeah. One thing that I’ve noticed is being an expert really is about getting the basics right. It really is. And it’s not. We put it up as this sort of voodoo thing that so-and-so is a specialist at so-and-so at whatever it is, but actually that guy is just in whatever subject He’s an expert at taking care of the basics. Man in bleaching is take a damn good impression. A simple thing like that.

I can’t stress that enough. And when I did all my postgraduate teaching I’ve done, I thought I’d go back and I’d learn lots of massive differences of what I’d been taught in undergrad. But essentially it’s just reinforcing your undergrad teaching and the the kind of basics that you’ve forgotten because you’re trying to cut corners when you’re in practice and just learning not to cut those corners. And before you know it, you’re a special interest or specialist. Yeah.

So, so now with that in mind, yeah, we can say, look, excellence is a state of mind. Yeah. Not a technique. Not, not. Not a product. Yeah. That said, what’s the latest in Endo? I mean, is there. Is there some wicked arrogant That’s wicked. Is there some rotary thing that that solves a problem like I’ve been out of it for, I don’t know, 12 years. Haven’t seen a patient? Yeah. What’s the latest thing that you’re excited about in Endo?

So, I mean, I wouldn’t even say it’s the latest but active irrigation which is still feel. What does that mean?

Just irrigating.

So active irrigation. So most dentists are doing passive irrigation with the normal syringe. Yeah. So you’re kind of bringing in hypochlorite and then sucking it out with the aspiration. With active irrigation, you’re agitating it in some way so ultrasonic or whatever, ultrasonic. But nowadays you can get something called an endo activator. So it’s sonic activation. It’s the easiest thing in the world to use. Obviously hard to explain on the podcast, but if everyone just google it, you can find it easiest thing in the world to use. Essentially it moves the irrigant around and that improves your success rates. And why I say it’s not even it’s not not a new concept. So one of my essays I did in my endo training was on active irrigation, but it’s still surprising as to how many people don’t use it. And it’s a piece of kit which I feel all GDP should be using in their endo, and it would just improve success rates across the board.

So. Well that’s well, well, well documented. Is it Well, well supported?

Yes. Well evidenced. Documented. Now again, there’s lots of. So the reason why I mention active irrigation with Sonic is because you have to take factors into account like cost. So there’s active irrigation machines in America, for example, which are about 50, $60,000. No one’s going to do that. There’s active irrigation machines which are have a high risk of breaking in the canal. Nobody’s going to use those, but they may, when they work, provide a slightly better result. But when you balance everything out, like I said, this is when I did my literature search on it. The endo activators, the most simplest piece of kit that everyone can be using and improve success rates.

And what about the Irrigant itself? Is that just hypochlorite or is there something hypochlorite? Yeah, there’s nothing else.

No, no, no. No magic. No irrigant.

But you heat the thing or not.

No. So again, there’s lots of studies done and that’s where I mentioned active irrigation. So people have done studies on kind of does heating improve success rates? Not significantly, but active irrigation does. So another common method of doing active irrigation, which lots of people try and do is the GP pumping, but you’re not going to be able to move the arrogant around fast enough in the canal. And that’s where the endo activator comes in.

What about when you’ve got a tooth that’s really broken down and it’s like subjectively broken down? Are you now a ninja, like rescuing, like doing heroic antics?

No. So my viewpoint again, so and if you speak to it.

With implants or.

Yes, exactly. 100%. So I work very closely in both the practices of work clinically with the implant dentists, and often if it’s a consultation, we’ll both be in the room. And again, like I say, my restorative training and why I recommend that to anyone before they go on, even if they want to specialise in anything else, do some restorative training because treatment planning is so key. So with endo, you want to be saving the teeth that realistically can be saved. And with everything else, you know, we’ve got implants nowadays to a certain standard, A big factor which people miss out is age of the patient. So when you’re treatment planning, let’s say if when we mark up the success rates of an endodontic treatment, the younger the patient is, it’s worth taking that risk to prolong that tooth for longer because the implants. Not going to see them out. Yeah. When when a patient gets older, you want to try. And the highest chances are that the end is going to fail. There’s no point taking that chance. So you want to go towards implants. So even a simple factor like that needs to be taken into account. But Hiroden antics, you know, patients are paying you for a service. They as much as they can consent and you say it’s not going to work. Let’s be honest, they want it to work. So you have to be pragmatic and explaining all the options that they have.

And so you actually manage for posterior indos in a day’s work.

Yes. So I do an hour and a half sessions, 15 minutes in between for my nurses to clean up, set up.

Is that beginning to end? You do the whole thing in an hour and a half.

It depends.

So the situation.

Most likely I do single treatment, but for example, if you can’t get the canal dry or if there’s just a huge lesion or there’s a swelling, for example. Now, again, by the time a patient’s been referred to me, the dentist has either accessed or etcetera. So the swelling has come down. But so often I can do things in one session, but if I have to go to a second session, I do. Personally, I don’t charge for the second session. It’s all part of the same price. My viewpoint, obviously you win some, you lose some, etcetera. Yeah, it is what it is. The the treatment needs to be done right and the the best standard.

And what are the numbers? How much do you charge for a molar endo and for a retreatment.

So different in the two practices I work at. So we have set prices in both practices. So beginning from £800 for a molar and then slightly higher in my Portland practice.

And a retreatment.

Retreatment I add on £150 extra for per tooth. So whatever the tooth charge is, plus under 50. But that’s another key factor I always like to point out. And for example, we have this at Portman where we have set prices. And it’s really important that I feel for patient service, patient care and Endo can do this. And no implants, for example, can’t do this, but where you can to try and have set prices because it allows the patients to know where they stand. And you also don’t get kind of patients talking and say, oh, I had this tooth done for this much, this much, this much. So I have set prices wherever work GDP is, know what to say, etcetera, is all very clear.

That’s nice, man. The vast majority of days that you work, you grow 3500 pounds.

Yes, hopefully. I mean, that’s that’s the aim. If you have four, three, four molars and like I said, but then, for example, you have some second stages which no charge. Yes, it works out well.

I think people should think about endo more, man, because honestly, I’ve always thought that because I had a endodontic Endodontist used to work with me who unfortunately Covid took him. But, but yeah, but he was a lovely guy. No, he, he, he, he, he used to be very relaxed day to day. He really was. And I asked him, I mean he was a specialist. I asked him, listen how many times a week do you, do you hit like a situation that you’re not sure what to do? And he’s like, it’s not it’s not even once a week. It’s he said it’s maybe once a month that it gets really like hairy for him, you know, like he doesn’t know what to do. And that’s. That’s lovely. I mean, what a great life to have to sell Anything to anyone. You can do it with your eyes closed. I’m joking. I’m joking. I mean.

That’s where I kind of got to a point with my clinical work where to obviously progress my career or whatever. That’s why I started going into the or started looking for the non clinical work because that’s what kind of and now I knew what it was. Yeah. Nowadays I’m more if if I split my week it’s three days 2 to 3 days non clinical and a couple of days clinical.

But then like the non clinical days have to pay pretty damn well too. If we’re talking money have to pay pretty damn well to make up for you not working right.

Well I mean obviously non clinical when you talk about that there’s lots of different roles. Yeah. Non-clinically But I think with the non clinical roles, they never they never will make up. Yeah. What someone can earn clinically if they’re a special interest or specialist dentist if they’re a GDP for example, it’s comparable. But like I said, they do the non clinical work. It’s something.

For growth.

Yeah. For growth. Yes. And and to be able to help others grow, that’s the main thing for me.

Yeah. That’s so funny. You talk to you talk to dentists, even the ones who want to be specialists, not enough of them want to be endodontist. I find you know, people it’s not the most sexy subject. Enough of us have had a trauma in the background that we’re worried about. And then, you know, it’s the thing that’s covered late in dental school and not very well. You know, what’s what’s dental school going to do for you? Foreigners. It’s a postgrad subject in the end, isn’t it? Let’s face it. Yeah, but but when I talk to young dentists and even the ones who say I want to specialise because, you know, hey, what about Endo? The majority aren’t interested. And it’s a shame because it’s actually a fantastic career. It really is. Oh, definitely. Yeah. All right. Well, let’s move on. Let’s let’s let’s talk about firstly, how did you start going up the sort of ladder of the corporate world and how does the corporate world sort of are you are you built for it? I mean, do you like it?

So, I mean, like I said, I joined as an associate and a few years back, we’re talking.

What, five years ago?

Yeah, five years ago, joined as an associate. How many practices.

Did they have then?

I joined Molten and we’d just been taken over by Portman and I think we were practice number 71. So. Wow. You know, rapid growth recently, especially after a merger with Dentex, we now have 400 practices. So the largest providers of private dentistry in Europe, so massive organisation. But during Covid we acquired some we call it NHS practices practices with NHS contracts of 15,000 or more. And an advertisement was placed on a kind of our internal emails looking for a regional clinical lead for the NHS division and the job description was someone who can support these NHS practices to grow, develop etcetera. And and that’s what I’d kind of done with my career personally. I’d never done that at a practice level, so I applied, went for a couple of interviews. They must have liked me and obviously got the position. And as soon as I got the position I realised, you know, it’s a it’s a very heavily business role. It’s a big role. On leadership now personally, for example, leadership comes naturally to me, but I still have to do a lot of development on that side of things. And that’s why I decided to formalise my business training by doing the MBA. So I applied to Warwick, which was voted the number one business school in Europe last year. So I was lucky to be accepted to that and really enjoying that some six months into the MBA at the moment. But the learning I’ve got from that is directly usable for my clinical lead role really developed me. As a leader and my kind of non business side of things.

But I’m interested in how do you go from being associate to clinical lead and, you know, what were the steps?

So for me, so we have lots of different pathways. So for example, we have practice clinical leads as well. So there’s clinical leads within practice. Now in the near future, the hope is if someone wants to be a regional clinical lead, so we have kind of a ladder. So there’s associate dentists, people working in practices, for example, there’s then practice clinical leads who look after certain practices. There’s regional clinical leads who look after regions where I am, and then there’s director of dentistry and the kind of hope going towards the future as we get more practices is to for people to end up as practice clinical leads, regional clinical leads. I like I said, for example. So yeah, the pathway I for example like I said, saw the regional clinical lead advert and applied to that literally just like that. Yeah. Oh I see. And so again, the reason I applied is because part of the advert really interested me in it was talking about doing something at a practice level that I had done personally. I had gone from being an NHS clinician to working in a private practice and kind of developing practices for the future. But like I said, I mean, I was talking about imposter syndrome earlier. Yeah, when I first got given the position, I did suffer from that slightly and that’s why I decided to do the MBA, because my kind of there’s only in my mind there’s only one way to kind of counter the imposter syndrome. Well, there’s two ways. One is time, but sometimes you’re not afforded time if you’re in a position, and the other is to educate yourself to a point where you have you genuinely have the skills. So the MBA is definitely added that for me.

But what is it added? Give me an example of that.

So an MBA, obviously it’s a business administration degree, so leadership, like I said, for example, I’m a natural leader. But one of the biggest things that when we talk about leadership nowadays is knowing yourself as a leader and how you come across to others and how certain situations require either you to be different or if you naturally can’t be different in that certain situation, delegating a certain task or working with others around you and leadership. In the past, it was seen as a leader at the top of an organisation kind of dictating what others should do. And nowadays it’s more about the journey and bringing people along with you and even that kind of simple learning and that kind of simple mindset. Mindset shift has been massive and I’ve been fortunate to do kind of psychometric analysis through it. So I really you really learn about yourself as a person, and that’s actually something I recommend for anyone to do, even if you’re not looking to work on clinically or clinically learning about yourself. We don’t often think take enough time to learn about ourselves, our own values and how we respond in certain situations before it’s too late. So those kind of things have really developed me as a as a person even, let’s say.

So when you’re working, I mean, how tactical are they as a group? Are you are you are you running someone’s agenda like the clinical leads? The director of Dentistry’s agenda, is it how often do you meet with that guy? How often do you meet with your juniors? How does it work? Like give me give me a feeling of the structure, the org structure.

Well, I’ll talk about my kind of week, let’s say. So. Directors Dentistry. I talked to director dentistry once a week. That’s my kind of 1 to 1 check in with them and I give them. That’s often towards the end of the week where I give them a report for the whole week. I also have to write a written report for my practices and explain exactly what’s happened, certain situations, exactly what kind of decisions have been made, how things have been improved, certain things in a weekly report, and that goes to the Directors of Dentistry and the board.

So how many practices is it?

So I look after the two divisions of about 25 to 30 practices. So you write.

About you write something about each of those 30 practices?

Yeah, it takes a lot, takes a lot of time. So take to write. My weekly report takes me about an hour and a half to two hours because you’re kind of so throughout the week I’m jotting things down to write in my report and obviously discuss with the Director of dentistry. But alongside that regular 1 to 1 time, you can obviously communicate with director of dentistry any time. If there’s a there’s a situation at any point during the day or the week that you need kind of assistance advice on. But my day to roll day to day role and my remit, it’s a really wide ranging role. So it ranges from interviewing clinicians for practices, deciding who we take on to join our practices, to kind of ensuring compliance to working with practice managers. And then the wider aspect is working with the business to help develop those regions. So. The regions I look after. There are certain different criteria we’re trying to work on in those regions. So one region you might be looking to, for example, transition away from a certain type of dentistry, etcetera, or grow and, and those remits and working with the wider business colleagues to help those kind of decisions and be made from a clinical viewpoint. So that’s another thing we’re proud of at Portman, that we have a strong clinical leadership structure. Every decision that’s made is run past a clinician, let’s say. So for us, it really puts us apart at the forefront of dentistry there.

Compared to other corporates.

Compared to the corporates. Yes. So obviously, independent practices you have that kind of figurehead there from a clinical viewpoint. But compared to the corporates, we’ve got very strong clinical leadership structure there at Portman.

Do you mean explain it to me? What happens? What’s what’s the agenda? What happens? How does it work?

Do you mean the agenda for the practices in general?

For example, because we’re talking clinical now, aren’t we? We’re not talking acquisition of or are we? We’re talking clinical.

Yeah, so clinical. So I mean, examples can be day to day. So I’m a point of contact for clinicians for support. So let’s say they want any support from either if it’s directly involved. I’ve just had I’ve just seen this patient. I don’t know what to do. If it’s an endo thing, fantastic. I’ll answer. If it’s restorative thing, fantastic. I’ll answer. If it’s not an endo thing, we’ve got implant clinical leads. We’ve got other clinical leads and other aspects. I pass it over to them and vice versa. Complaints. One of my clinicians gets a complaint. I’m their point of contact. Just too often clinicians can go through personal issues. You know, I’ve been through lots of personal issues in my time as well. I’m their kind of point of contact. I’m available to talk to clinicians, you know, nine, 10:00 at night sometimes speaking to them if they’re having some issues and then from. So that’s kind of direct clinical support, let’s say. Yeah, there’s then the wider point ensuring compliance. So you’ve got audits running throughout the week, throughout the month, ensuring that everything’s running correctly, how we would like NHS standards, etcetera. And then the third kind of aspect is the growth piece. So we want all our practices to be growing, developing, adding in new services and as you know, running independent practices. That’s different and varied for each practice. So just because it’s important practice doesn’t mean there’s a one size fits all approach. And again, that’s what the MBAs brought kind of learning for me. You can’t have kind of a one size fits all approach. It needs to be implemented in different means and different practices.

But mean how much of it is is based on sort of top line, bottom line, you know that and how much of it is based on professional development or.

So I’d say 50/50 really, because so one of the key things we say at Portman is we want our clinicians businesses to grow so that our business grows. So and that is a very key but subtle but key point because clinicians self employed, yeah, they have to see the kind of growth in their own business, in their own development for the business to grow. So any decision I make for a practice to grow, it can’t be. This is for the practice to grow because if it doesn’t help at least one of the clinicians to grow, then the practice isn’t going to grow. You’re only going to grow through one of the clinicians, essentially adding in a new service, working extra hours. I don’t know who would want to do that, but working extra hours or a new clinician coming in, etcetera, etcetera. So it’s those ultimately it boils down to that, isn’t it? It’s working with the clinicians and colleagues on the ground to, to improve, move forward, adding new services develop.

And then how many dentists are we talking about?

So some practices I look after, we’ve got about 3 or 4 clinicians, some practice I look after. I’ve got 15 clinicians in total. So in total I’d say I’m looking after about 200 clinicians to 50 clinicians. So, so.

Any one time you’ve got several of them being sued, you know, loads of complaints. Yeah. So you’re doing all of that in two days. Bloody hell man. You’re working your ass off aren’t you?

So it’s employed for two days. It’s not a two day role a it’s a seven day role. And that the work ethos from earlier. But it was interesting, you know, I was saying earlier, my my dad’s passed away now unfortunately. But even him with his work ethos he when I took on this role two years ago, he used to think it’s it’s a lot of work. And that was coming from his work ethos.

So how are you fitting it in man? You’re doing the and what’s what’s the commitment there.

So every month we have kind of it’s a it’s module after module so there’s 12 modules. So I’ve done six modules so far. I’ve got six modules to go and then an elect a dissertation to do and it’s, it’s six weeks for a module and then a new module starts so there’s no break in between. So my days and weeks are very, very regimented. So I’m a big organiser strategically plan my days from kind of the moment I wake up. So work out early on in the morning. Then if I’m working clinically, I work clinically. When I come home, I’m taking any meetings at lunchtime or after work, phone calls, etcetera. If it’s a non clinical day, then it’s just a full day of 12 to 15 meetings, phone calls and then in the evening I’ve put time aside for kind of my MBA work, but most of my MBA work is done on a Saturday, so I’ll often. Like a big, long six, eight hour block on a Saturday and Sundays and two other days in the week have my son. So kind of saves time there. And then it’s just repeat. So that’s good. Go, go, go for yeah. Week after week.

My goodness That’s that’s made me tired just listening to that, man.

It’s. I find it exciting. Yeah.

I know. Now I’m starting to think maybe that look in your eyes wasn’t wide. Wide maybe that look at your eyes or something other than determination. No, but I’m going to take my hat off to you. That. That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. I mean, don’t burn yourself out. You know that. That’s important, isn’t it? I feel like. I feel like you’re fed by it.

Yes. I mean, so that’s another thing. I was listening to someone online and they were saying so again, knowing yourself is so important. So after I’ve done this psychometric analysis and it’s really strange when you fill out this questionnaire and you have this 30 minute conversation with someone and they come back and they kind of tell you things and you almost think that someone’s been following you for six months. Yeah. So my first line on my analysis said Assad is all work and no play. Yeah. And, and I had I had not even told them about my roles that I do my work but they just managed to pick this up. And I think the point is that I personally don’t see work as work. It’s a career for me. It’s certain things I’m trying to achieve. And but I also know when I’m getting to that point of burning myself out. So I’ve got certain tactics where I’ll go away and take myself away for a couple of days or have the evening and even an evening off, for example, really refreshes me. So go for dinner, go to cinema. And that really refreshes me for the next day. But it’s important to do that before you get to the point of burnout.

Have you got a psychometric test that you like? Is there one that someone could look up?

And I’ve actually done two. So we at Portman, a lot of the employed colleagues, we were fortunate to do the Spotlights one and so the business insights one at Warwick, we did the business insight, the spotlight, sorry, and both similar, slightly different in terms of how they’re the scores are calculated and, and the kind of the results they give you. But both times I did them about 18 months apart and both times my results were almost identical. And the whole point is that psychometric point is that that is who you are. You can only adapt a certain way left or right, but to the core, who you are is is who you were kind of raised to be. Let’s say they.

Are. They test that anyone can go online and take.

Yes, you can do them online. Yeah. So again, as with anything, they vary in terms of price ranges. Often the more you pay, the more accurate they come out, etcetera. But yes, you can look at them online.

We put everyone through something called 16 personalities. It’s it’s a good website. It’s a free easy to go 12 minute thing. And you’re right about people are just amazed at what you can tell them about themselves.

And it’s important for, you know, other colleagues around you to know that what brings the best out in you and what brings the best out in them. So that’s a big thing I focus on. I I’m almost after doing so much of the kind of psychometric analysis myself, I can kind of take within five minutes of talking to someone I know where they’re kind of positioned roughly on this map of psychometric analysis and what will get the best out of them. The first five minutes I’m talking to someone are kind of analysing that and you end up doing it subconsciously. And it’s amazing to do with patience as well, because when you’re kind of giving your taking consent from them, you have to tailor it to what they understand. You know, the GDC says that to us now and how how are you meant to do that? Well, there’s lots of different things you can use to help you with that guy.

Then tell me about me.

So, Well, I met you at the show, didn’t I? So I knew straight away that you’re kind of there’s. I’d say you’re obviously built these businesses up, so you’ve been very successful in your career. But let’s say they’re not from an organisation or kind of an organised or traditional organisational approach. And there’s one thing that you even said you kind of gave it away because I was I was talking to James Martin at the time and I was talking about my dentist who investor anyone doesn’t know. I was talking about my kind of MBA and you were saying to him, You don’t want to do an MBA, you and James Martin. And it’s interesting what you can pick up when you listen to people. But I mean, and that’s that’s not wrong advice because you’ve been successful in your career. He’s done fantastic with his kind of business. But some people need it, others don’t. So yeah, by listening to. People picking up on different things. It’s amazing what you can pick up on.

Yeah, you obviously don’t know James Martin very well.

Yeah, that was the first time I met him. That was the first time I met him.

Shaky. Shaky. So, look, you said you have your son every other weekend, is that right?

No, I’m three, three times a week. So every Sunday. Every Sunday. Mondays and Wednesdays. So obviously Mondays and Wednesdays in school. But having Mondays, evenings, Wednesday evenings and Saturday from 12:00.

So. And how old is he?

He’s coming up to five now. So just starting school. And he won an award last week for being enthusiastic, which he was delighted with. Amazing. And it was funny to see because he’s obviously I’m obviously kind of subconsciously rubbing off on him, let’s say.

Tell me about divorce, because, you know, you’ve got your son these days because you’re you’re divorced. Give me some reflections on on on on your divorce.

So saf and so SAF. My ex’s dentist, she knows I’m coming on the podcast. She listens to your podcast a lot. So I said I’d give her a shout out.

So sorry for asking that question.

So we everyone kind of laughs when I say, but we still work together. When I work my clinical days, we still work together. She’s still my biggest referrer as a friend and, you know, it’s all amicable. Ultimately. I think we met when we were kind of 23, 25, and it was, let’s say we were different people at the time. As time moves on, you grow and develop in different directions. Sometimes lots of kind of life events happened which kind of affected that as well. You know, with my father being ill, a son being born really early into our relationship, for example, and then moving to York where we had no kind of family support. So it does add pressures into into a relationship. But ultimately, we’re still good friends, we’re still amicable. And, you know, we do the best for our son. So that’s the I think that’s the main thing going to the future. You know, I’m I’m I’m still a I always use this analogy of wars and battles. So life, let’s say, or certain aspects in life is are kind of like let’s say it’s overall it’s a war and you’ve got little battles and you can’t let little battles affect your overall war. So when I went through the divorce, lots of people feel can sometimes end up being, you know, angry or upset or kind of against the idea of marriage. But I’m personally not. So I feel like you can’t let little things that happen to you in life affect the overall aim of the goal that you’re trying to achieve.

As you were going through that process of like, you know, finally, I’ve never been divorced. I’ve been married. I’ve been married. Um, the moment when you’re thinking. It’s over, you know, like that moment. It’s interlaced with so many different sort of feelings, especially from an Asian background. Right. I mean, there’s it’s even more complicated, I think. Did you feel sort of the stigma of that or did you not did you get over that wasn’t part of your issue?

Slightly, and I think so For me personally, it was that it was a bit out of the blue, the divorce. But I think the stigma point of view, I feel you can feel that in anything. So yeah, again, surrounding yourselves with the right people that don’t let you feel the stigma or kind of aren’t with that viewpoint. Essentially life’s a game of opinion. So some people will have a stigma about something that’s perfectly normal and other people won’t. So ultimately, our families understood it was two people that gave our all. It didn’t work out. But the best thing is that, you know, our son is doing well and we’re still amicable. So if that’s the outcome from a divorce, let’s say, which is, as you’re describing, a kind of tough moment in someone’s life, then I feel like we’ve not done too badly there.

How is it that you stayed amicable with so many people? Don’t.

Well.

I think actually work at that. Did you like sort of want that to be the outcome?

So a bit of a strange one because, I mean, even through our marriage, let’s say we’re two people who aren’t, let’s say arguers. Yeah, we’ll always kind of communicate in the correct manner. And I think that’s always important to try and communicate in the correct manner, whoever you’re talking to in life. So that helps. And then obviously still working together, there still has to be that colleague relationship. So, you know, it’s a relationship of colleagues now and just how I am with my other colleagues and how she’s with her other colleagues, it’s exactly the same there now.

Because I think, you know, often you see it in divorce rate where especially where there’s kids involved. Where it’s not as friendly as yours. And then people people sort of forget that, you know, like while you’re hurting, that your your ex-partner, you’re also hurting your kid badly. Exactly. And I think we all we all know this instinctively, right? But somehow we think the the acrimony takes over and revenge or something. I mean, like some sort of tit for tat. You know, I’ve got family divorced and they can’t even call each other. It’s only email only, you know. And what can you get over in an email that it’s like it.

Yeah. I mean, lots of people ask me about this and there’s no kind of one set thing that I feel we’ve done. It’s just the feeling was mutual to be amicable. And, you know, it’s good that it’s worked out that way and hopefully continues because like I said, and going back to if I talk about me personally, why I’ve really focussed on being amicable is because it’s not worth winning a battle or let’s say kind of causing a battle when the ultimate aim is for a son to do well. So that has to be the centre point and the focus.

With this in mind, let’s get to the darker part of the thought. What would you think is some of some of your darkest days in, of course, divorce your dad, but where it’s interlaced with dentistry, What comes to mind when I say darkest days?

Well, I mean, so I was about 18 months qualified when I was actually sued. And, you know, that’s probably that kind of time period was one of my darkest days. But so it was one of those patients. And again, you were asking earlier what kind of triggered me to really start developing my career. It was kind of that unfortunate event, let’s say. So as a patient I’d seen for an extraction, long story short, but kind of no complications. Patient was a smoker, got to infectious a dry socket, ended up in hospital and we didn’t hear from them again for, you know, they were meant to come back to have some prosthetic treatment. Didn’t hear from them again. We just thought, you know, they’ve gone somewhere else. I even tried ringing them a couple of days after, you know, to check in on them. I was one of the tips I learned quite early on in my career to ring patients after big treatment to try and see, but they didn’t answer the phone. So I just thought, right, they’ve gone somewhere else. And then it was it was almost a year after that point when I came into work one day and I had this solicitor’s letter on my desk and they were the solicitors were asking for about £80,000 because they had said it was a strategic tooth.

I shouldn’t have extracted it in the first place. I should have. It was a grade two mobile, a compromise tooth. I should have crown lengthened, root treated post and chord crowned it because it was a strategic tooth. And now at the time when you when you were young dentist you don’t and the importance of mentors many years later lots of people and even myself. If someone else was coming to me with this, they would say, Look, ask your indemnity to kind of fight this and and fight your corner here because there’s no issues. The my indemnity and the kind of wisdom settled with the patient. It was a no blame on the dentist. So that got me to sign a piece of paper. A patient signed a piece of paper, patient still got, you know, a handsome payout.

And how much did you get?

£7,000.

And you’ve done nothing wrong. Just dry.

Socket. Yeah. And it’s one of those where obviously in hindsight, you ask your indemnity to fight it for you because you know, it’s the the correct thing to do. Ultimately that kind of those dark days kind of kicked me into action because I kind of started thinking, look, I’ve always loved Endo. And the ultimate aim was to do an indent. I’ve not done any postgraduate training, so let’s try and go and do some postgraduate training. So the first thing I could I was accepted on because when obviously when you apply for postgraduate training in universities, there’s an application process, etcetera. Was this Pgcert at Bristol? And obviously I carried on from there. But the kind of stimulus was from those dark days. And one of the things I always say to younger colleagues now is dark days won’t last. If you’re able to get yourself out of them, you have to try and get yourself out of it by thinking of a course of action to move forwards. And there always is a way in dark times, there is always a way to move forwards.

But, you know, I’ve never been properly sued. I mean, there were some there were some, you know, things that could. Only practice for like 4 or 5 years. But, you know, properly full time. But remember that when a complaint became dark for me was where the patient was kind of implying that I wasn’t paying attention, where I was really going out my way to pay attention for that patient. And that that disconnect makes you question everything about yourself. And so in this situation, did you feel like you’d done anything wrong other than that, you know, the communication piece that you didn’t manage to get through on the phone?

No, I mean, that’s where you when you I describe it as almost all the stages of grief, really, because you go you go you start off with anger, but ultimately disbelief. Disbelief, Yeah. Because it’s like that. It’s got that far, let’s say, for example. Yeah. And then obviously continuous disbelief that people are trying to settle it for you, etcetera. Yeah. And you think maybe this is the system. But again, going back to the point, there’s only yourself that can get you, that can get you out of that. And it’s important that you, you kind of see the tunnel. Now having mentors helps you with that because many years later, when I discussed this with mentors, I mean, early on in my career, I was almost embarrassed to talk about it. Yeah, because you were kind of embarrassed that you’ve been sued. But many years later, when I finally started talking about it, people are like, We would have fought this for you. We would have you know, I’ve had restorative consultants in university saying these are the kind of cases when people reach out to me, I come and defend them in court and and fight for you. So, yeah, try and reach out for support.

So I can imagine being sued 18 months out of university is, you know, a painful dark moment. Right. But what about if I said, what’s your biggest clinical error? What would you say to that from the black box thinking way of looking at life so that we can all learn? You know, in medical we don’t tend to share our errors.

Yeah. I mean I mean clinical. So you mentioned earlier, I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never had a major, major disaster in Endo. And again, which is probably why, you know, I always ended up enjoying it. But one of the things I realised quite early on is that I mean, I almost have two left hands when it comes to doing oral surgery, and part of it is undergraduate teaching. Part of it is just never had the passion for extracting teeth and wanting to save teeth. But this piece kind of goes to, I feel, whereas very what that kind of got me to realise. And so my biggest kind of clinical errors are leaving retained roots, etcetera, that then even with the help of a colleague etcetera, couldn’t be removed and you know, had to consent the patient about the process and you know, there’s a root left, etcetera, etcetera. But from that there’s two kind of things I learned is and I explained this to a lot of people, firstly, if you’re struggling with a certain aspect or you’ve made a certain mistake, you have to really analyse it in depth. So when I would analyse those things, it would come back to being a training deficiency for me. And then the next part is what are you going to do? So don’t just kind of analyse and say, Right, I’ve got a training deficiency, what am I actually going to do? And I’ll explain what I did which is which some people may find funny, but my kind of solution was I put myself in a position where I’m not doing oral surgery anymore.

So that’s one solution. I’m not doing oral surgery, so I’m not going to have disasters in oral surgery. But if somebody said write oral surgery matters to me and I want to make a career, then you have to try and kind of push yourself to go and do that training. And again, the reason I didn’t go and do that training was I chose Endo and I thought, I’m going to make a career there. If I say it as a GDP, I know 100%, I would have had to go and do further training in oral surgery to bring myself up to a certain standard. But then you come back to strengths and passions. My strength and passion was always endodontics and one of the key successes, key ways for success I feel people can utilise is focus on what your strengths are naturally. Really enhance those, get your weaknesses or delegate your weaknesses to somebody else. I refer all your oral surgery out and you won’t be too far wrong in your career.

So your biggest clinical error was you broke a tooth in an extraction and left some roots.

Yeah.

Ever. That’s your biggest clinical error?

Yeah. I mean, I’ve been so let’s say I’ve been fortunate in that. So one of those so I’ve had that, let’s say 2 or 3 times in oral surgery, but even one was too many for me. With my kind of ethos of doing the best. And in my mind, if I can’t do something to a really high standard, I don’t want to do it. And that’s the way I’ve always thought about things personally. Now, it’s not always an option for for people doing general dentistry because we we get patients and we’re kind of forced to do oral surgery. We’re forced to do things that we were not good at. And we can’t always refer patients out because they’re not always willing to pay for a special interest or a specialist dentist. But me personally, I put myself in a position where I wouldn’t have to do oral surgery, where I’m able to refer it to colleagues or work with, for example.

But going give me another clean clear.

So obviously no fractured files, but don’t see those as well.

Let’s talk about fracturing first. Let’s talk about fracturing first. So so first of all, the language is beautiful, right? The file has separated.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s beautiful language.

Well, there’s a funny story about that, because somebody was telling me once that a dentist basically fractured a file. So he sat the patient up and he showed them the file and he said, look, this is titanium.

Yeah.

Titanium. And the patient said, How much do I owe you? So so it’s it’s the way you explain things too often. But.

But when does it happen? When does it happen? Is it out of the control of the endodontist or is it. No.

So it’s essentially there’s two types of fractures. You can either get torsion or rotational. So you’ve either gone around too far around a corner and the file stuck there and it’s still spinning at the top or you’ve got a fracture at the whole shaft. Now, the point is there’s again, going back to the basics, one of the first basics we learned in dentistry is creating a glide path in dental school. And when we get into dental practice, we kind of discard that because it takes time. But that taking of time will save you from fracturing a file. So I’ve fractured a file and remind me.

What that means. Does that mean that your access reflects the curvature of the canal? I’ve forgotten what glide path is.

So there’s. So there’s that as well. You kind of your access, but your glide path is your kind of path in layman’s terms, path from the coronal section to the apical section. And it should be essentially smooth, able to smooth to pass file that requires either hand filing first. Yeah, yeah. Or now you can get kind of rotary glide path files to use. I use hand filing for that. But the key point is that if you following those basics, you spend time creating glide path. Your axis is correct. You shouldn’t be fracturing your file. But going back to the time when I fractured the file, it was on my first ever day in the new job and in the new job where I was just doing endo. So I’d done a PG cert. It was one of my first ever patients. And you can imagine you’re already thinking you’ve already got this kind of feeling in your mind, thinking, Am I at the correct time to be accepting referrals? Am I at the correct time to be starting a brand new job where I’m just doing Endo Yeah, and then you go and fracture your file. And that required a lot of mental resilience to get past that because essentially, again, went home, analysed. What mistake could I do? And that was my first and ever fracture. But again, it’s the analysis that let’s me kind of feel lets me get out of those time. You have to analyse it and it has to be brutally honest. So sometimes we analyse and I could have analysed and said, Oh, it was a brand new machine to me because I’m using a slightly different rotary machine to my the practice. Well, if I’m being honest, that’s not actually the reason I fractured is because I didn’t create a glide path. The machine had nothing to do with it and I’ve gone on to use that machine many times and it’s been fine. So you have to, when you analyse a mistake, you have to be honest with yourself.

And then once the instrument is separated, is there any any justification for leaving it in or do you always take it out?

So should always look to take it out again via referral. Or if you’ve got the you know, is that.

A common referral that you receive?

So I personally don’t do many fractured file removals. So again, this is on my master’s training in Liverpool. I met a dentist, Rob Eades. He lives five ten minutes away from me, works five, ten minutes away from me. And between us we get a lot of the endodontic referrals in York and he’s gone and done a lot of training after his master’s on file removal. And again, you send them to him? Yeah, I send them to him. Or. Well, I advise people to refer to him if there’s a fractured file because he’s fantastic at removing fractured files. And the key point is he’s gone and done so much training in that it’s kind of bread and butter for him. And there’s fractured files now in this day and age with the tools that we have aren’t anything that is, let’s say, a game over because you can either look to bypass the file or remove it with the tools that we have.

And what are the tools, some sort of kit.

So yeah, one of the one of the best tools out there is it’s, it’s kind of a simplest way to describe it. It’s kind of a small loop. It’s almost like a cowboy loop, which you throw around the file. You kind of pull back and it grabs it, grabs it and pulls it out. To do that, obviously have to widen your access. You have to widen the canal. What’s that called is a Yoshi loop. Yoshi. So it’s a Japanese instrument, really fantastic dentist who invented that. He does courses now and again. So he charges almost four figures to just remove a file and he can he can remove his kind of claim to fame as he can remove any file in the world. Wow. With this with this system that he’s developed.

So now now in the position you’re in now, your your advice to colleagues who get sued is, okay, stay calm, number one. Yeah. But you know, you’re thinking as as a as a dentist. Often I get this call sometimes from some of our customers, friends of mine who got sued suddenly. It’s not just you’re not a great dentist, it’s you’re not a great dentist. And you may lose your job and you may not be able to feed your family and you may have to take your kids out of private school. And, you know, the catastrophize is what do you do about it? Because you’re kind of a young guy, man, and it’s you’ve got quite an old head on your shoulders. You do. It’s clear. But how do you calm down that dentist? What do you say?

So again, I’ve had to support a lot of dentists with kind of complaints. And the first thing is this again, with anything like putting in perspective. Yeah. So we’ll often catastrophize and make the situation worse. But once you put things in perspective, you realise it’s it’s not the end of the world because it’s a, it’s either an honest mistake or a mistake that that you’ve attempted to rectify. Often dentists will look to rectify this by referring the patient out doing exactly what’s right. And those things are taken in favour of dentists when complaints are made as well. But my advice is always try and obviously take things as your indemnities advising, but also if you want to reach out and take advice from university professors, often quite helpful or again in Portland, my kind of role, reach out and take advice from me and what to do next. Steps and see if there’s any thing that we can do to support you along with what your indemnity is saying. The complaints are going to happen. A long time ago, somebody said the only sure way of not getting complaints is just not going to work and not practice.

If you’re in work, you’re going to get complaints. And as long as you’re trying to be honest, you’ve done everything right. It’s all documented. You’re not going to lose your house. You’re not going to lose your job. The wider point I see and again, my me being sued really hit me on that. And this is part of the discussion I was having with James Martin is I’ve been a kind of a heavy investor financially in things outside of dentistry for and having kind of a rainy day fund. And I feel the earlier people can do that in their career, it gives them the kind of security. So having kind of either with this non-clinical role, for example, another string to my bow, another way to make a living, other aspects to either your kind of financial output, just kind of money in a savings account. Even again, people in dentistry talk more on this than the detail I want I’m going to go into, but seek those people out and have something in place and then complaints, etcetera, shouldn’t be something that, you know, is a scary thing.

Tell me about the great man at the top of Portman. Sam Waley-cohen. Have you met him?

I met him once briefly. So he’s like, lovely guy. So obviously, the kind of inception story into Portman is, you know, he was from a business background and he really wanted to create and I’ve used this phrase a few times tonight, but create exceptional experiences for patients where we really focus on putting patients at the heart of what we do. And it goes beyond just kind of a phrase, but lots of things that we do in practice is revolve around creating that kind of impression. And it’s the key thing from every colleague or every team member is a valuable part as a valuable part to play. So the patient journey for us starts from the moment the patient rings up to book an appointment or interacts with us online to book an appointment via email, etcetera. That’s where our patient journey starts. And, and from that kind of simple ethos. The other kind of big vision that we have at Portman is to be the best dental group in the world. So one of the phrases we use is ultimately, at some point in the future, when somebody thinks of dentistry, they think of Portman. They kind of the two are synonymous with each other. And and that’s the kind of ethos that we have and the vision that we have to go forwards. And that comes from Sam, from everything that he’s done in his career, even as a sportsman, let’s say, continuously working at it, until he won the Grand National.

And now that you’ve got this Dentex merger. It’s not clear mean from from from my side. From the supplier side. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not really clear. Is it going to be one big Portman model? Is it going to be one big dentex model? Is it going to be a hybrid essentially?

So there’s lots of work going on behind the scenes for that. So if you imagine when two companies merge, yeah, there’s initially, you know, the competition, mergers, acquisitions, the CMA authority who want to to to talk about kind of is this a monopoly, etcetera. So we’ve gone through that process. There’s lots of little processes that you go through before you merge a company. And we’re now finally reaching the point where we’re able to merge kind of essentially all the departments within the business into one kind of unified departments. Of the two marketing departments, for example, are coming together to one, two clinical departments coming together to one. So that’s the process that we’re going through. From your kind of point of view during that time period? Yes, that month or so, things kind of are transition. Yeah. Up in the air. But very soon things will be kind of fully merged and everything will be kind of announced and ready to go for the future.

Yeah, but what’s the answer to that question is, are the 400 practices going to be more like Dentexes or are they going to be more like Portmans, or are they going to leave them as they are? By the way, you should go into it. Go into it. What’s the difference between a Portman practice and a Dentex practice? From what I can see, the Portman practice is fully owned and the Dentex practice is kind of kind of isn’t. It’s almost like the Dentex practice. They’re leaving them to do whatever they want. The Portman practice is a bit more managed. Is that right?

On the surface, yes. Yeah. In answer to your question, which model are we going to go towards that? That is the. That were in figuring out and figuring out now. Yeah. So once that is kind of finally settled and figured out, that will obviously be announced to the industry. Well, firstly to our practices for example, and then to the wider industry. But it’s an exciting time because you mentioned the subtleties in that the dentist’s practices, let’s say, are.

Left to their own.

Devices. Well, let’s say less.

Decision making wise.

Hands on. Yeah. The ultimate ethos of both businesses is exactly the same. So if you and it’s been interesting, I’ve met a lot of colleagues from Dentex now and the things that they’ve been working on completely independently over the past two years have been exactly the same as what we’ve been thinking and we’ve been wanting to work on. So now the two kind of combined departments coming together will be. I say might be biased, but it will be industry leading.

And what was the first time you knew about it? Was it the same time that I knew about it?

So it was announced as clinical leads was announced just a bit before obviously it came out.

So what was the reason for the merger?

As simple as that. It’s there’s two companies here who have exactly the same ethos and what they’re trying to provide. So discussions were had between the execs and the decision was made to obviously look to merge the businesses. And let’s say by a by-product that has brought growth because all of a sudden we’re now almost 400 practices going over 400 practices. So all of a sudden it’s a bigger entity. And having a bigger entity allows us to kind of input our vision to the wider Dental industry a lot quicker of becoming the best Dental kind of group out there.

But, you know, when when, when businesses by each other, you can understand what’s going on there, right? You’re almost you’re accelerating market share or whatever the when businesses merge. Mean you’re in the middle of your but you tell me for me from from my from my amateur perspective it’s a cost saving exercise. You’re trying to sort of get rid of people.

Not necessarily because I mean, a famous merger I always talk about and again, with the NBA, you got you get lots of case studies and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, you’ve had GlaxoSmithKline in the past. So Glaxo and SmithKline merged and that was done for a reason of that both develop the similar type of drug. I can’t remember exactly what drug it was, but it was the case study that we read. It was a similar type of drug. They were both trying to go for the same market and when they broke the drug down, the kind of products and the constituent products of the drug weren’t too dissimilar. So they both said to each other, look, this is going to be our leading drug in the market for each of us independently. Why not merge and just take over the whole market in that kind of field? So there’s lots of different reasons why companies merge. But for us it’s a clear and it’s I think it’s been shown to the industry, it’s a clear growth strategy because it’s we could have continuously run as two independent organisations. I mean, even a simple thing of we as a combined organisation now have a head office kind of head based in London, whereas Portman, we didn’t have much of a head space in headquarters in London for many years. We were always attempting to try and get one, you know, costs in London etcetera hard. We now, after the merger, have one in London and one in Cheltenham. So, so a certain practices. For example, in the past both our mergers and acquisitions team and this is when the exec kind of started realising wait a minute, we’re both going for the same practices and it’s not a coincidence how many times it’s happened. And then it would be a coin toss between the, the vendors. And sometimes they go to Portman, sometimes they go to Dentex. So it was essentially those kind of.

Pushing the price of the practice up as well.

Guess Yeah, if you’ve got two competitors going for it, Yeah, yeah.

And going forward then what’s the plan is are they planning to buy more and more practices? You know.

I’m urging the acquisition department was one of the first that fully merged. So yes, essentially we want to continue to to to grow.

Grow the numbers of practices. Yeah. And so now you you’ve got an insight into I guess the numbers right. When you see how many practices do you say you’re looking after now.

25 to 30. Yeah.

So you’re looking at those 30 practices and you can see the numbers in the 30 practices and you can see the performance of the different clinicians. And obviously in my world, it’s it’s like the number of teeth whitening treatments that they do. Yeah, yeah. And, and it’s massively different even within the same practice you get one dentist does, you know, 20 a month and you get another dentist does one every six months. Yeah. And obviously in my world it’s very simple. It’s all about teeth whitening. Hey, talk about teeth whitening more. You know that. That’s that. But when you look at it, how do you have you have you successfully addressed that when when you see one dentist not performing from that perspective from the production perspective?

So this is where at Portman and part of the reason the clinical lead role came about is we have a big ethos of clinical freedom. So yeah, as long as a dentist is providing the best standard of care, productivity essentially doesn’t come into it because they’re self-employed clinicians, they can choose how long to work, etcetera, what they want to work, where they want to work, as long as they’ve got the best equipment, materials provided to them, they’re able to do the best dentistry. But my kind of answer to your question, there’s lots of different factors why one dentist can be providing 20 and whitening treatments, let’s say another is providing one. And let’s kind of take away the fact that, okay, the person who’s providing one is a special. No. Let’s say GDPs. Yeah. So why is there such a disparity? Well, it can come down to even subtle things. For example, a newer clinician in the practice can be focusing on if they’re early in their time in the practice, they can be having to kind of build a patient base and they’ll trust of new patients. They’re building trust and they’re actually having to do lots of restorative treatment. And again, that’s where a lot of my role comes into it because I kind of add colour to the numbers When I’m talking with operations colleagues, I’m adding colour to the numbers and kind of putting a story behind the fact that it’s not as simple as one clinician is just doing 20. Very good point.

Very good point. Because because in the corporate situation, often the numbers are the only thing that are doing the talking. Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. You know, being able to, as you say, put colour to it. Yeah, it makes a big difference. But go on.

Well I mean I think the other the other factor is it’s going the other way. It could be that let’s say one dentist has just gone and done. I’m just using an example of like an ethical sales course and actually that of course they’ve just gone and done that and the others haven’t. And then I’ll kind of sit down if, if the if after putting the colour to the numbers, it genuinely does show that, you know, one clinician is, is outperforming, outperforming for a genuine reason, then obviously we’ll look at that. But you get that again clinicians and people can are self-motivated and self-motivation. Nothing can beat self-motivation. There’s no amount of external motivation. You can dangle all the carrots in the world in front of someone, but self motivation always outweighs external motivation. So some people will always just sell more of your whitening than others.

Yeah, and I notice Portman did it doing a thing where they’re sort of buying associates. That’s an interesting move. What do you guys call that internally? What’s the name of that buying associate? Sounds strange.

I’m not sure what you’re.

Where they ask an associate, someone who’s an associate to move over to Portman but pay them like a big golden handshake to move.

So we are actually one of the corporates that’s not actually doing kind of golden handshakes. Oh, you know, no. So some of the other corporates do. But I don’t know if you want to. Yeah. Got that wrong. Yeah. Because there’s a big self-employed piece around that. So some of the other corporates might be in a bit of hot water soon around that but you’re not it’s it’s hard to give a self-employed person a golden handshake.

Is that.

Right. Yeah. From HMRC point of view I.

Got that wrong. Maybe I got that wrong. You talked about your your dad and it’s obvious to respect that you’ve got for him and you know, the relationship you had with him. Tell me tell me about, you know, as you’re going through this. Stressful job, let’s face it. When you said your dad got ill, what was the what was the time between finding out that he had a problem and then when he passed away, how long was that?

So we ended up having cancer about two and a half years. And his first cancer went into kind of almost remission. And then he got a secondary cancer. That secondary cancer was in January this year, and that was kind of an aggressive and as soon as that was diagnosed, it was kind of terminal. So he passed away in April, middle of April. And again, that kind of time period was very stressful and obviously very busy because I was working full time. I didn’t miss, you know, I was trying to when you have a responsibility to practices and clinicians, you know, I take that very seriously. On top of that, the kind of final week before he passed away, I had my MBA study week, so I had to be at Warwick for five days. So I was going to go into Warwick, go into hospital, sleeping at the hospital till kind of five, 6 a.m., then going back to Warwick, then hospital. And I think the point is through that you, you often sometimes don’t realise how strong you are or how much resilience you have until you get tested. And I always felt and it’s always come out in my psychometric analysis, let’s say that I have a certain amount of resilience naturally, but that was a time that I could really kind of lean in on that. And in some ways I kept it business as usual as much as possible. But obviously, yes, it was a hard time supporting my family emotionally, etcetera.

You said to me, I don’t know if it was in in the pod or out of the pod, but you said to me that your dad had just retired.

Yeah.

When this happened.

Well, so he hadn’t actually the illness kind of retired him, so he, he was one of those same kind of with the work ethos. He never wanted to retire. And he was only 67. Oh, my goodness. So he he didn’t want to retire. And even till kind of his the last year of his life. And I feel like this is where I get a lot of my kind of natural inclination to help others and not just sit in a room and do endo all day, let’s say. Yeah. So in the last year and a half of his career, he set up a big kind of pathway for foreign doctors to come into the UK, and he set up kind of four training centres in UK hospitals off his back. So just a few weeks back it was the first kind of graduation ceremony of those doctors having done two years in the NHS and my mum and my brother and me were invited as kind of guests of honour to that, which is a big kind of moment for us to see, kind of the hard work and see in front of us all these doctors that had come over.

What a lovely legacy for your dad. Yeah, a lovely thing.

Yeah, He left a big legacy. And I think that’s why, you know, I’m very you know, when I talk about him, it’s there’s obviously the sadness, but also kind of the happiness and the pride because of what he achieved in his career.

That’s beautiful, buddy. I know that we’ve kind of we’ve been talking for two hours, man. Let’s let’s get to the final questions. Yeah. It’s gone. It’s gone. It’s gone so quickly for me. I just looked at the title. Yeah. So let’s start with mine. Let’s start with mine. Fancy dinner party? Yeah. Three guests. Dead or alive? Who do you have or why?

So obviously, what I’ve been saying earlier about my dad and so obviously my first guess would be my dad. And, you know, as I’m saying, he wasn’t just what he achieved in his career, but my dad was one of those people that ended up, no matter how busy he was, he ended up knowing a lot about, let’s say, politics, sports. He wasn’t a big sports fan, but he ended up knowing all the sports news, so to the point where anyone could come up and have a conversation with him. So I feel if he was at the dinner party, no matter who I go on to invite, you know, there’d be good conversation there. My second one, and I think obviously title of the podcast Dental Leaders podcast and obviously in the talking a lot about leadership. My second one would have to be Queen Elizabeth. The second, because of what she achieved as a kind of being thrust upon leadership, being thrust upon her at the age of 25 when she probably thought she had a few more years before she became queen in the aftermath of World War Two, you know, was just last year. Everyone was talking about her achievements and then also kind of staying relevant throughout all these years. So relevance is something that, let’s say celebrities or certainly people in dentistry even clinically, let’s say we struggle with because we’ll we’ll work for five, ten years, we’ll get set in our ways. But here was someone who was able to stay relevant for 60, 70 years.

Yeah, she’s come up once before. Flawless. No. Flawless. Yeah. Incredible. Go ahead.

And the final one? I’m a big football fan, not a fan of Manchester United, so I will kind of add that in. But Sir Alex Ferguson and the thing that fascinates me about him as a leader is often leadership is very easy or I wouldn’t say easy, but it’s easier if things are not going well and a new leader comes into an organisation and says, Look, these are the kind of changes we want to make. People are more receptive to those changes and you often have some success. But what happens after success is either people get complacent or you kind of get to a plateau point. And the thing that fascinates me about him, again, not a Man United fan, but how he was able to continuously renovate kind of teams, reinvigorate players after success and to continuously move the club forwards. So those are my three people that I’d have.

Nice. Who do you support?

I’m a Birmingham City fan, so of course my my sins of living and growing up in Birmingham.

Prav final question, a deathbed one. It’s weird with someone so young on your deathbed. Friends and family around you. Three pieces of advice you’d leave them.

So I say some of these to my son every morning when I’m dropping him off to school. And I thought I’d share some of those because. And on the surface of them, they seem kind of simple ones. But then obviously I’ll go in to explain them a bit more. And the first one is, and we’ve talked earlier about enjoy what you do day to day life can be can, can become mundane. And, you know, I talk about this in my career. One of the key factors I feel like I don’t get to burn out easily because I’m genuinely enjoying what I’m doing. And you see that in a lot of people. If you genuinely enjoy what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like something enjoyable. So if and the counter of that, if you end up at any point in your life doing something that you’re not enjoying, then change it, change that. And I’d say very quickly, because it’s very easy to get set in your ways, either kind of something might be financially right or whatever. Exactly. If you’re not enjoying it, change it quickly. My first big one. Second one touched on this earlier, but surround yourself with the right people. And I said even one negative person in kind of around you can really drain that negative energy from you. So I kind of really focus on having people around me who are really positive. Now, it’s not to say if one of my friends is going through a tough time, they’re gone and I’m there to support them. I was going to.

Say, Have you fired anyone before?

Um.

We’ve a friend. I mean, not. Not. Not an employee.

No. So. No, no, but I think not yet. Yeah, let’s say, um, but I think it shows because if your values are such and if what you genuinely sit down and talk about is a certain kind of thing, then you’re not going to attract people to that friendship group, let’s say, who aren’t along that line. But it’s really important to have the right people around you. And the final one, again, like I said, on the surface of it will seem so simple, but we always forget. And you know, again, touching on my dad, my dad was 67. He had still until his last days, he said he had all these kind of ambitions, things he wanted to achieve. And it’s the final piece of advice. Give it your all. So we all only get one chance at this life. So really, whatever it is, big or small, just give it your all. And you don’t know whether by giving your all in that one small thing, it becomes a big part of your life. But remember that you only get one shot at it.

How do you want to be remembered, sir? Assad was.

Assad was somebody who. Who went out of his way to help people. And I put that in there, went out of his way because it’s what I’ve seen my dad do and it’s what I firmly believe in, even to this day. And I don’t say this lightly, but every single kind of message I get on any kind of LinkedIn or social media, I’ll always respond to whether I feel it’s not relevant to me or not. Even if it’s just to say, Look, it’s not relevant to me. I just feel if someone’s giving me their time, I want to be there to help them in some way. So if I can be remembered as that, that would be it for me.

That’s lovely, Melody. Well, think. Think. You know, your future’s going to be bright, but your future’s going to be bright. So someone so young, What are you, just eight years out of university? Yeah. That’s really nice. Eight years out of university. Um, talking the way you are. It’s nice. You got, as I say, you’ve got an old head on your shoulders, and, you know, I don’t know where it’s going to go for you, man. Whether you’re going to stay in this corporate thing or, you know, as I said to you on that day when we met, people who finish MBAs come out and say, I want to run GlaxoSmithKline now, you know. So let’s see. Let’s see where it goes. But maybe maybe we do a second one five years down the line. And you know what? I was thinking of you. I was thinking of saying, hey, where do you want to be in five years or in two years? And then doing another 1 in 2 years and seeing what happened, you know, something like that. Maybe we’ll include that in the in the in the following ones. Lovely. Lovely to have you, buddy. Thank you so much for doing this. Great. Really, really enjoyed that. Thank you, man.

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.

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