Category: Podcast

[00:00:00] The key is as well, I think more than anything is just being honest with things. And for us, the main thing that we’ve tried to do more than anything with, with everything that we’ve done with support, with education and and it’s a fine, fine balance, let me tell you, is tried to be tried to be as as as honest and unbiased as you can, which I can say it’s a fine balancing act because we have our own preferences, you know, and you get some things. Sometimes you try things out. Companies will say, Oh, don’t try this out, we’ll give you a discount with this stuff like that. It you know, so you try things out. Sometimes you love it, but then then you question yourself and you’re like, Well, do I love it? Because I was given it and you shouldn’t do. So you try and then be honest and say, well, actually it’s probably not going to make that much difference to you rather than maybe something else or whatever. And we’re not going to go down that road and dig myself into, oh, it’s sort of the manufacturing. But basically it’s a it is a fine balance because like anything, you have your own preferences.

[00:01:08] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry, your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:26] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Adam, multi author of the podcast. Adam is a practice principal from Bury. He’s got a practice called Dentist on the Rock, probably best known for his digital side, He’s a founder member of the EDTA, which stands for International Dental, Digital, Dental.

[00:01:47] Digital.

[00:01:47] That idea just flows off the tongue. And also now a principal, a co-principal in a London practice in the West End that there’s digital trials. Yeah. So I’ve been wanting to get you on this podcast for a long time too. And you said you haven’t listened to an episode before, but this tends to be a kind of life and times type podcast with you. I just want to ask you this question just from the get go. You’ve got this sort of it’s almost an obsession. With digital. And it’s not only it’s not only the fact that it’s digital, but your output is. I’ve seen it once before in my career. I’ve got a guy called Julian Holmes. Do you ever come across him?

[00:02:40] Oh, no, I don’t actually. I don’t know the name.

[00:02:43] He was. He was big in, in, in the sort of ozone dentistry and unfortunately passed away. But yeah, lovely guy, lovely outside the box thinker as well. But he had this similar thing, just massive output. What is it man. That is that. Is that something you’ve always done or is it just like digital? It’s just completely taken you over and Yeah.

[00:03:08] I mean, you know what? Whenever if I’m doing a long introduction, I’m like a couple of day course or whatever, I’ll probably bore them to death with giving them a big long introduction to me that I’ll give you now if you’d like. Yeah, but basically I’ve always been a bit of a geek and when I was a kid I’d be chipping, I should say, about soldering consoles and obviously fixing them and that sort of thing, putting pieces together from 12. So, you know, doing all that sort of thing. I’ve always been a bit of a geek and I know it sounds cliche, but I’ve always found technology easy. So in not just relating to it, just using it, I, I’m good with programming, I’m good with using it. The intuitive side clicks with me, so I’m good with it. And plus as well, when I was a kid, I really wanted to do art, to be honest with you. I wasn’t even going to do dentistry. I wanted to do art, really. And then I was architecture, which kind of I wanted to meld in the technology side of things, but I didn’t have the right combination of things for doing A-level in the right combination to do architecture. So I kind of didn’t plan ahead enough with that. And I wanted to dentistry because my dad so my dad’s a dentist, a completely different type of dentist thought process, everything.

[00:04:27] I’m probably a lot more like a lot of ways. No disrespect to my dad, just, you know, my, my mum’s a French teacher, and so when I went to uni, I went, I went into it just because my dad did well and went in with that and being a, you know, not being able to do all the technology and outside of things, I probably just skated along. I was never a high flyer. I never really pushed myself hard. So have I always just been driven? Probably not, to be honest with you. At school I was pretty naughty. I got in trouble a lot and you know, all of those things I didn’t really weren’t really the type of person I am now in any way, shape or form after uni. You know, the thing that got me going was two things really. I was doing my set and I liked doing some mentoring at uni and helping at uni and things and I went to do my simply not my page, so sorry, the GDF. So a demand material first because I wanted to go and do Vtt. I was working at my dad’s with, with full NHS practice for a long time and so I was going through my JDF and going in with the teaching side and as I was going, you know, picking up little things, doing a little bit of very, very early cad comes messing around on computers and things and getting into looking at digital X-rays.

[00:05:51] My wife, by the way, is a radiographer, so and she went specialised very early with that. So it’s a CT. So for me, being with her or being with her since I was 19, you know, I understand in CT and getting in with the radiography site itself very easily to me again with the technology. And that kind of led into me with my masters and wanted to do implants. And then it clicked. And ever since that with doing my implants, as soon as I heard about guided surgery, I wanted to get in there and I wanted to use that technology. And as soon as that was, that was probably 11 years or so ago. As soon as that was the case, getting in there was strong. There was me messing around with things with a lady from Strathalbyn at the time that was just awesome. And there was Craig Parker that was obviously doing things over on the East Coast and things with with go to surgery there and you know, obviously looking into him because he was a year or two ahead. But you know, in general it was guided surgery that got me into it.

[00:06:59] So I thought, I’ve seen the future.

[00:07:03] Yeah. And I wanted in, you know, and basically I was that was it dildo straight in everything digital and that kind of coincided with me. Wanted to set my own practice up as well so that when I set my own place up, which is a years ago now. So when I was setting that place up I. Wanted to set it up completely digitally and realistically now completely digitally. But that isn’t anywhere near what digital is for me now. But but it was at the time I wanted everything digital and I even put my solar panels on the roof to make it easy. So I was just kind of there at the beginning, really, which was nice. I mean, not as early as some people like Chris, who I work with. Sorry, do. Yeah, he uses serac a bit earlier with Cirque three and stuff, but I kind of went in through a different way with guided surgery than.

[00:07:57] People, normal people. I was going to ask people, Go get into digital from different angles and serac seems to be one of them 100%. And as you said, guided surgery seems to be another one. And then and then some people, they just want a scanner. Right. And I think we should talk about all of these things. I think we should talk about scanning. I think we should talk about printing. We should talk about milling. We should talk about DSD and the like, all of those other what they call the skin and so forth. But let’s get back to your childhood. And you were you were into computers. Did you not consider becoming a computer geek guy?

[00:08:36] Listen, being completely honest, my dad was did well for himself. And we lived in a nice house. And I obviously wanted to do something successful and do well financially. So and I wanted to do something at first where I was passionate about, which was, you know, designing things. And and like I said, one of the one of the things that made me so driven is the fact that I could really put that into practice. Now, what I really enjoyed back then, so the computer side designing things to me, when I’m designing teeth, I’m doing mock ups. A lot of people think I’m mad with doing so much that I do in terms of basically being a dentist and a lab technician. I mean, I’m not officially a technician, but I do everything. I do literally everything. So with everything there, I love it because it’s I’m using the technology, I’m creating things. And I love when I’ve milled out restorations, you know, finishing them. And I genuinely I’ve had I’ve been a very lucky to have got an early enough that I’ve worked with and partnered with and been friends with some very, very gifted people. So technicians wise, dentist wise, and some of which are very close friends, people like Quintus is a is phenomenal at surface texture. So I look up to them a lot. Phil Redington We’ve done loads of them on years. It’s just awesome, awesome guys, very, very clinically talented. So for me to I, I liked doing that sort of thing. And so I always saw those guys as somewhere to strive to head towards trying to be as good as and I don’t think I’m in there yet, but I think I do nicer work now than I did ten years ago. So yeah, everybody’s on a learning curve, right?

[00:10:27] Especially with digital, right? Because it keeps changing so quickly. You know, I was talking to Andrew Dorward and he was talking about the sort of the technology adoption lifecycle. And, you know, he was he was one of the first people, the first person to get a CT scanner. And then and then he’s got a printing company. He’s got this happening. And he was saying he was saying that this this moment when you get all excited about the technology and then you get it and then there’s this chasm of light, you suddenly realise there’s all these other things you haven’t thought of and new problems and issues. And I can say we’ve got a lab now in enlightenment and the number of things that no one tells you about, calibration of printers and different resins and just so many different questions. So you must have come across this so many times.

[00:11:18] I mean, that’s 100% why we, we started doing what I was doing with, you know, again, being lucky to have met people like Chris Quince and Patrick way back when. And you know, back then the support was pretty poor really. And I mean, you know, I was doing all these digital things and I knew what I wanted and I wanted to be able to export textiles, combine them and guide surgery software and what have you, and the rest would be like, Yeah, yeah, you could do that. Yeah, you can do that, but you couldn’t. And because it was a closed system and they would tell you one thing and you’d find it the other, then you have to jump through hoops, convert it. And I was finding all sorts of ways of programme software that weren’t even related to dentistry, trying to, you know, convert things out of Surrey and which was interesting. But things have opened up now and you can do whatever. But you know, these sorts of things were what we’re frustrated is when we first got going, what we said of the day that we made friends with people around the world and what became the idea basically through frustration and again, the same thing. With why we started doing the whole bigger course. The PGA said Diploma and masters and things and why we started providing scanners again. Born through frustration.

[00:12:35] You know, we recommend in different things to to students. And let me be clear, we are for anybody who is under any illusion, you know, it is all about the students for us. We really support them Well, and that’s the key to it all. Support an education. And we you know, we started doing that because we’d recommend, say, one brand to one person, one brand to another person. They’d go and get that from one reseller and have a great time and be great support and then go through someone else and be completely deserted. Or they would they would fail the smallest of things and we would end up picking up the pieces anyway and providing that support. So we thought, well, why are we not doing that part? Why? Why not just provide it directly? And there’s some really good examples of people worldwide who’ve I think hit similar, similar levels of frustration and ended up creating amazing companies. You know, in in America, there’s, you know, almond with Cadbury and, you know, companies like that all across the world, built through, you know, frustration and passion and wanted to help people. And that’s a lovely thing because, you know, that that if you turn a negative into a positive, then that’s always going to Well, I think, you know, you turn to a positive and that’s good for everybody right now.

[00:13:57] How long this idea been going?

[00:13:59] So I met I met Chris and Chris and Patrick for us, and that was 2016. So about six years ago, just maybe before that, I think it was maybe the November before that.

[00:14:13] That shit, the sheer volume of of just stuff coming out of idea. Is that the four of you?

[00:14:21] Yeah, not really. I mean, a lot of people say this and there’s me with Jason. You know, I’m, I’m good with my jazz hands, but no, I mean, the four of us do work on things a lot. I’m obviously not. I’m up to long. I don’t sleep much. I’m always I’m an ideas and those are also.

[00:14:43] Executing executing as well you know ideas one thing yeah I mean the number of course I was just on the website a number of courses diplomas events.

[00:14:51] Yeah we’ve got we’ve got a load of people we work with now across the world with things and you know, that’s why the I came from with, you know we’ve, we’ve again been lucky to make some really good friends and that we’ve developed in Portugal like how some in Italy Fredricka Iceland and Sweden and America South America and stuff and and all of these people do things for us in different ways or speaker and things run courses, you know, conferences. We used to have a chap in Egypt that we did a conference with there, so it built bigger than just the four of us by far. And now we’ve got remote designers of technicians that work either with us or beyond. One guy stayed working with us and moved to Portugal, now goes to swap. Hugo is an awesome, awesome guy. So you know, all, all of these people, it’s been a hell of a journey and yeah long may it continue. Right? Such good.

[00:15:45] And so what is what’s the structure of it? I mean what’s what Let’s start with the business model if you like. Yeah. What’s that? Is it.

[00:15:53] Education? You know what we’ve been through at different phases. We’ve we’ve been through a different phases of just the four of us running smaller courses. We’ve got we’ve built that through partnerships with different universities, with places like Camden, Ulster University and what have you, with different people who do parts of the admin phase, a few names behind the scenes that do secretary work or admin work or what have you. So, you know, there’s, there’s a fair few people you don’t see that obviously we wouldn’t be able to do without them. And you know, realistically they keep the ball moving. Even partners and wives, you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of support with that sort of thing, a lot of forgiveness. You know, we’re here, there and everywhere. So it is what it is really these days. We’ve kind of we tried to get to a phase going back maybe about a year and a half, two years ago, maybe just before COVID, we were trying to step back from the limelight a little bit and bring in elections and stuff like that. The problem with that and the difficulty with that was, was the level of commitment and passion. And the stage wasn’t really ready for that. It was, I think, maybe, maybe in the future. But I mean, for me, as much as you see me, like I say, with a jazz sense, I more and more. Try and manage my time smarter so that I’m not taking too much time away from family and kids. And I see you as a good inspiration to them. I’ll tell you another thing later, which which ties in with this where you say about biggest mistakes with things. The one chap who his words always, always play on my mind.

[00:17:44] He was an awesome guy, always doing things with digital, passed away way too young. So Anoop, that with all the things that he was doing. Yeah, we used to do loads of different things then. Would courses used to teach him MSC with things? And one of the last things that I spoke to him about was the time which we spend away from families and kids. And, and he told me a story about how he was cutting down his time on courses and things because his son glued his laptop together and he he realised that that was it. He needed to sort things out. And I thought, I’ve got to get to grips with this. And this hit home probably a year or so ago with the thing I’ll talk about, but the with I don’t want to get to the point where it’s too late and I’ve got a ten year old and a seven year old and literally I’m away a lot over the next eight months. I think we’re in eight or nine different countries doing different courses with things or meeting people for different things here, there and everywhere. And so from January I minimise my time a little bit with Barry and spend a bit more time focusing in the daytime on things. I don’t know how that’s well is going to work financially, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to manage that well. But, but we’ve got a few of the plans of things that I need to spend a bit of time on. Things I’ve done other things behind the scenes with patents and things like that. So we’ll we’ll see.

[00:19:18] We’ll see. So we had Anoop was the first guest on this podcast shortly before he passed away. Yeah.

[00:19:26] That’s right.

[00:19:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember him telling telling that story. You know, I’m involved in education, right? And anywhere on the level that you are. But I’m away basically every other weekend, basically. But at the same time, I don’t really, really do that much work during the week. I do, of course I work, but I don’t have to work. I have to turn up anywhere. And this thing you’re saying about your kids, obviously the subject comes up a lot on this podcast, right? Yeah. And for me, it’s like if your kids watching you doing the extraordinary things you’re doing. That’s a massive inspiration to your kid.

[00:20:08] Yeah, I hope so.

[00:20:09] Oh, it is. It is, Yeah. And if you if you think back to your dad when he was I don’t know the story, but maybe he was on opening up the practice on a Sunday to help someone with a toothache or something.

[00:20:21] Yeah.

[00:20:22] He could have been beating himself up about that and saying, I’m not spending time with Adam and the family. Yeah, but you learn something by watching him do that. Yeah. And this thing that you’re doing now, this thing, you know, like, maybe if you had watched your dad grind and work as hard as he did for the good life that he had, maybe you wouldn’t be this obsessed guy whose, by the way, it’s not just about what you contribute to your family, right? It’s what you contribute to the to the profession. Yeah. And especially in this area of digital where it’s so difficult for you know, most people aren’t like you. Most people hate change. And most people are very scared of technology. By the way, I’m one of them. When we when we were we were setting up our lab, I was like, do we really have to do the digital? I don’t want to get into it. And and I think you should you should stop, stop punishing yourself on that front because your your kids will see what you achieved and they’ll, they’ll learn the hard work. How important that is, hopefully, for sure. I wouldn’t bother yourself too much about it, but how often are you in?

[00:21:40] Probably more at the minute. So obviously today, tomorrow I’m in Birmingham teaching CMD last Tuesday night to start tonight I was in Madrid with DSD. The weekend before that we just got back. Didn’t have the weekend free. It was a week before we were in. Oh, no. Yes, sorry. The week before the Wednesday night to the Saturday night, I was at the London dance show with the theatre we did there. Then the Sunday to the Wednesday. Before that I was in Palmer because we were education partners for X got insights. So I’ve had probably in the last three weeks, maybe four nights at home. Three nights.

[00:22:34] Wow. Yeah. Okay. That might be a bit too much.

[00:22:39] Yeah. So I vowed now, next year, with all these places, I’m going to try and take my kids to as many of them as possible. So at least if I’m doing things, I can show them the world of it, you know? The problem is in the school, you know, the school. So there’s.

[00:22:53] Also also, you know, it feels like you guys have been around for ages because of just the output. But six years is still very early days.

[00:23:02] Yeah, well, very long time. It’s crazy. Yeah, I think technology changes so fast and. Exactly. I think, again, we’re lucky that we’ve because we got into things pretty early and made friends so many places. It’s actually a really close community, the digital community. So yeah, not just at the bottom because of with, with the groups that we’ve got on Facebook and what’s up and stuff. But the actual the people at the top who do education, you know, across the world, you know, we speak to them a lot and they there’s, there’s so many lovely, lovely guys who like guys and girls. I made that clear The really the shared stories plan things together. But the more importantly, they recommend each other for different things. So because they know somebody who might be good at doing something else in their place. So it’s, you know, there’s been opportunities because of that for sure. But the key is as well, I think more than anything is just being honest with things. And for us, the main thing that we’ve tried to do more than anything with, with everything that we’ve done with support, with education and and it’s a fine, fine balance, let me tell you, is tried to be tried to be as as honest and unbiased as you can, which I can say it’s a fine balancing act because we have our own preferences, you know, and you get sent things. Sometimes you try things out. Companies will say, Oh, don’t try this out, we’ll give you a discount with this stuff like that. It you know, so you try things out. Sometimes you love it, but then then you question yourself and you’re like, Well, do I love it? Because I was given it and you shouldn’t do. So you try and then be honest and say, well, actually it’s, you know, probably not going to make that much difference to you rather than maybe something else or whatever. And we’re not going to go down that road and dig myself into, oh, it’s sort of the manufacturers. But basically it’s a it is a fine balance because like anything, you have your own preferences.

[00:25:03] And are you on the radar of all the manufacturers now? They all try they all bang your door trying to do you know.

[00:25:08] What again, it’s a mix. We’ll have we have so many that we love working with and they are they have some really, really nice people that you work with. And sometimes it surprises you. Sometimes it’s surprising both in terms of some of the big companies that they will, I think, shy away from you a little bit because they’re a bit wary of the fact that you are. So you try and be so unbiased and you working with so many different things that probably where either have seen have you seen some a negative. Right. But on the other side of the coin, sometimes it’s really surprising when you start working with a company that you really like and then they just don’t I don’t know whether they just want to have you on a leash or what, I don’t know. But they they just don’t do that much then. And you’re like, But I really like you. I want to do more with you. And. And he’s not Can you with him really? Well, it’s a it’s a big mixed bag of tricks. I’ll tell you who really surprised me recently. And and listen, I’m going to I’m going to turn Anita into a positive again. Right. So. The line. So I think they get a bit of a bad rep in terms of reputation and people doubting them. On the other role, you know, and because it’s such a big corporate structure.

[00:26:30] So the fact is that this this company is mega megabit megabit, bigger than many of the other companies combined, Right? Yeah. So, you know, you kind of wary of that for yourselves. And then we did this because we work with Exocad. We were doing a smart trade course at the Allied conference, me and Patrick going back four weeks ago. So the weekend before all those weekends I was away again. So we’re in London for that. And you know what? We went out with a couple of the guys who were like the manager of like this sales for America and whatnot from Europe and stuff. And we had a meal with them the night before and and genuinely they were such a nice crew of people. It was rare that I’ve actually dealt with a company that was as nice as them, and I genuinely don’t say this to flirt with them because we none of us have it. Heroes. And I say this in the nicest way, but we don’t I don’t use Invisalign, so I don’t need one. I’ve got every other scanner under the sun. But they are. They were awesome. They were so organised and it was a real pleasure to be at the event with them. So I think it was surprising.

[00:27:45] The mistake we make sometimes is that we could think of a company as a person. Yeah, and I’ve had this experience, I don’t know, with so many different big companies, so I align being one of them, by the way, or Henry Shine or something. Let’s say I talk to Henry Shine 12 years ago about distributing something by Enlightened. And for the sake of the argument, let’s say it didn’t go well. Yeah. Then. Then last year I contact Henry Shine again. The people are completely different people now.

[00:28:20] Yeah, Yeah. You probably had a totally different experience, right?

[00:28:23] Totally different experience here. But you do you do get yourself, you think of the company as a human, as person, and you actually you.

[00:28:32] Put emotion into it.

[00:28:33] Yeah, you put emotion into the company. Whereas in these huge places, often people change a lot with a line. I think the big thing with them is just the rate of growth of that company. It’s growing so quick that it’s difficult to keep up with the growth when you’re growing that quick. It’s a bit like, I don’t know if you deal with Facebook at all for for ads and things. I mean, they’re a nightmare to deal with. They’re not new. Yeah, they’re really difficult to deal with. Anything goes wrong with your Facebook account real time. But then at the same time, it’s such a beast. Yeah, but a lot of times, Yeah, a lot of times you’re talking to robots, right? And people get pissed off about that. But yeah, it’s a funny one, but I notice you’re quite close to it, I guess, right? Because you give away.

[00:29:24] You know what? So we we’ve done a load of things with them. But before that, I mean we, I didn’t really and again, I’m going to, I’m hopefully not going to annoy them now by saying something else and things. So I didn’t really write them. It, it’s kind of as when it was just the 500, it was okay. It wasn’t at the same level as the other scanners that we use in the we at the time. We would just get in a prime scan when they very first came out and that was an awesome scanner. So the prime scan, I mean, I’ve done a study on it, right? So the primes kind of statistically at the time Superior, it was statistically in a in a group in a war zone. So and not actually dissimilar to lab scanners that accurate. It was an awesome, awesome scanner but that was before the release of the 700 and everything since. And again we had a lot of people a lot of people requesting, you know, who do I get it through and what have you. And and at the same sort of frustrations that we’d had before. So we just thought and this was at the start of when we were on this journey to just about to launch Scan Club and, and the whole thing was club was basically we wanted to provide a way to get on board with the, the sell the diploma but not pay thousands upfront because we wanted to make the education accessible. And I mean it’s a good cost.

[00:30:52] There’s a there’s one or two negative Nazis. I want to be polite and say that have been a little bit unprofessional at times. I’m not going to say any more than that, that I’ve said that to YouTube. It is not. It’s not. There are YouTube videos that we put the some of the short tutorials on both the platform and the thing, but they’re not on the course. So the course is it’s a it’s an ethical level seven course. It’s got, you know, lectures which are an hour and a half or whatever, 120 hours. But the the whole of that thing, realistically, there was a demand for it. The people wanted to get involved with it. So with everything and we saw that from the start of COVID. So the start of COVID, we had a massive uptick in people joining that course. And we thought this is the right time for people to start learning how to do things with digital. And so we did a couple of surveys and things. And for members of how what puts you off joining the course you’ve been on some of the smaller courses, what puts you off during the bigger cost and it was the cost. So realistically we thought, well, let’s make it remote, let’s let’s take away the hands on and let’s get it so you can join on at any time, anywhere and made it so that it was on demand. We still do the shorter tutorials that do go on the platform outside of it and on YouTube and stuff like that.

[00:32:09] But that’s cetera. And so the cost was to improve your knowledge and not kind of led into itself with the whole support side of things. And and that led into looking at the different scanners to partner with. And it just ended up where just through chance really, we were introduced to one of their reps who said, well, do you distribute that side of things? So that’s the only one that we actually provide direct. The rest is all through partners. So it’s all just goes through other people. And I think I’m really glad we did simply for the fact that it’s been incredible watching the journey of of of made it last year, especially because the software not particularly the scanners the scanners are good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the software more than anything. And the the evolution of that, I think it’s I think it’s probably made a lot of the other companies nervous because they have to step up the game. And you can see that very clearly with with people like Trish, bring them more apps and things like that. And plus as well, they drop the price a lot. So, you know, it makes it more and more accessible all the time. So do we still recommend other scanners? Of course. You know, it’s not right for everybody. And even though we don’t really have anything to do with a line, you know, we still send a lot of people that way if they’re just Invisalign users, you know.

[00:33:29] Let’s let’s let’s let’s break it up then. Let’s start with scanners. Let’s start with scanners. Let’s let’s start with the beginner person. Yeah, sure. So is knows that it’s probably about time to get into scanning.

[00:33:42] Yeah.

[00:33:43] You must get asked this question every day, right. I do. Right. Where do I start. Where do I start. What question. Which, which scanner do I go for? How much? Where do you where do you start on on. So I guess you’re asking them, right? What kind of dentist are you. What kind of treatments do you do? Right.

[00:33:56] Yeah. Yeah. So about 14 to 16 months. Gone now, maybe less. I. I programmed an algorithm on a website. It’s like a choose your adventure style thing called which colour dot com. So you go on there and you it asks you different questions about your clinic. In fact, it was less than that. Sorry, maybe about ten months ago. And it takes you on a journey of asking you different questions about the size of your clinic, whether you’re a social principal, Do you work in different do you work in different parts of the different clinics? Do you travel? Is your clinic called different floors? You know, all sorts of questions. There’s about 23 different paths that they can take and then finish it off with budget if it wants to limit it a little bit more. So the reason why I did that was to just try and keep as as unbiased as possible with that. And I wrote a white paper at the end that kind of gives you a little bit more info and stuff points in the direction of us, obviously, if you need more information, but it’s generally you can just go on it. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to contact us. You can just go through it and work out what are.

[00:35:08] The results, what are the results of that, what percentage you’re ending up with, what percentage of ending up with?

[00:35:15] Good question. I can look up for you if you’d like.

[00:35:18] Okay, here’s your special, exceptional piece of work. All right. I know it’s a silly question, but. But sort of in a nutshell, Yeah. If I’m doing Invisalign and got.

[00:35:34] Invisalign, you can make more sense to make sense to it, because at the end of the day, it’s your bread and butter. Right?

[00:35:40] But what about the restorative side of it? How is it for crowns, bridges that sort of.

[00:35:45] Do you know what? I think it’s improved a lot. And I think if you if you stepped in because of the Invisalign, but then decided to go down the road to Restorative as well, I don’t think you’d regret it. There’s some excellent legs now with Exocad because obviously align bought Exocad and also we’ve got the issue with they’ve just brought in this new smile architect side to basically have a restorative version of clinic. So to do a smile design that sort of thing and, and that looks pretty good. I’ll have to say look pretty good. So I don’t think you regret it either way. My personal take on the article personally and this is, again, just my personal opinion, no to service to anybody who chooses wisely. I personally find that that’s kind of a bit big. So if you’ve got little hands, you don’t like the way to it, then it might not be fit. And there’s the Trace three is still an excellent, excellent scanner for Senator Invisalign because you can use it for that. There’s only the Itero scanners and Vice Chair three and the Omnicom you can send to send to Invisalign. Realistically, I doubt you picking on the cam. It’s all the technology now and you’d end up going with three. But Trista is still really nice and you can get it in the move units, the wireless units, that sort of thing.

[00:37:09] There’s four or five different ecosystem. So it’s a bit like looking at things like Apple and Samsung in a way, you know, these different ecosystems, you know, everybody everybody’s going to be different in terms of which one they prefer. And you can’t say really one’s better than the other in terms of shape or media and that sort of thing. In terms of that, they all do different things. The metaphor, I’d say, for people who do a lot of implants is a great scanner for that, simply for the fact that there’s so many tools to help out with your with your choice of bringing in the eye scan very much in and, you know, colour, colour filtering all all these very cool little software features that make it easier to scan on a on a full dental case. But then there’s prime scan. Right. And it’s a lot more expensive, no doubt. But if your main thing is is cad cam or you want to get into in-house dentistry as of yet and I think next year is probably going to be an interesting year for this because I think it’s going to be on it. I think three shape are going to be on more familiar. We’re going to be in house. I don’t even know if Millie may be printing who will see but but I think in house is where they all want to get through with CAD cam easy so I think but the minute full stop if you get it started or if you used to it.

[00:38:37] The Sirona system is a beautiful, streamlined system and it’s very hard to beat the easy workflow that is sirona when it comes to simple restorations of just inlays on nice crowns, you know, even veneers doing in-house same day appointments. It’s very hard to beat. And the only way you can get close to that realistically is using a stroke. M.s. Excel on unlocking it in effect with using in lab cam and and then having your choice of scanner exocad whatever type of CAD software and being able to mill the saddle. Then just simply for the fact that the MSI Excel is a workhorse. It is. It’s a two motor machine. It’s not the most accurate. It’s not the most accurate in terms of the Fisher patterns and stuff, but it’s better than it used to be with smaller birds. But it’s just fast. So you can, you can mill a crown or an inlay or whatever on a straw on a nail for under 10 minutes with something like a VHF set fall or anything like that. You’re looking at you’re looking at realistically at least 15 to 20 minutes plus, depending on the size of restoration. And that makes a big difference if you’re trying to do things in-house. So what you see.

[00:39:53] What you see, the tension between doing things in-house or letting the technician take care of. The bit that they don’t want.

[00:40:04] I think, you know what we were talking about time before. I actually think that and this kind of leads into a little bit the DSD thing that we were away with them and the. For me. I’ve always wanted to do my own thing, but I don’t know whether it’s age. I don’t know whether it’s that guilt thing with the weird thing with my kids always telling me about whether I feel like I’m too much time away from them. But time wise, I kind of feel like now I want to not step back from doing it all myself, but just manage some aspects of it a little bit more wisely. And this probably started when I was doing things, going back a few months ago with with a character and a company in America with doing some remote design services. And we were in the middle of a four hour run for DDA lab, and we’ve launched that now. So for that side of things, we’re having an in-house lab tech and we just hired a lady who works in London with us to do that side of things, do in-house. So I’m probably going to let her do things a little bit more. And I think that’s probably the future of where everything’s heading with with dentists and laptops. I think there was a point where laptops were afraid that they were going to get replaced by in-house, But I actually think that it’s the other way around. I think not entirely, but I think that more than likely over time, we’re going to see dentists join in labs, maybe with a chair in a clinic. And I think we’ll see lab tech shown in dentists. And I think that gradually they’ll merge into work and intrinsically in-house in the same team. But obviously the big centres, the big, big production centres and things that where you need the big machines to to produce. But realistically for the small things and even for us in Bury, we’ve got, you know, for all that we do some things in house, there’s some things you can’t do in know dentures and stuff like that.

[00:42:04] But my point is look you do make your own surgical guy, right? He’s pretty surgical, but you could have a lab do that, right? Yeah. So what’s the advantage of doing it yourself?

[00:42:17] It’s got to be preference, control, cost. Being a kid, being a control freak probably more than anything is probably a good thing that a lot of people want. They just want to control the whole system, you know?

[00:42:29] Yeah, but. But I don’t know. I mean, dentists are obsessed with chair time and your chair. I mean, a surgical guy doesn’t take that much time. But. But what I’m saying is, if you ideologically go on this route of chair side. Yeah, you can use a lot of chair time.

[00:42:49] Yeah. It depends what it is and it depends how fast you get. And I’ll tell you where things are changing for me that I’ll probably relate more to people who want to save the chair time. Say for example, the same day smile design that me and will do in house. I’ll only see one patient that day. So that one patient is the only thing that I’m doing for a same day. Smile design where I’ve already done planning sides before. I’ve already consented with things I’ve already done, mock ups and smile, test drives and that sort of thing. So this is just purely the actual manufacturing of veneers. So say a ten unit case of veneers or crowns or whatever it is, then I’ll start with them. And nine I end up finishing all of the preps and stuff by say, 11, 1130 I’ll be doing the scans and design. They’ll take me to, I don’t know, let’s say half 12. So I’ve got four mils in buried so I’ll mirror over the four mils. And why did I buy four mils for simple cases like that where, you know, it’s just pure time buying with buying those mils. So I’ll churn out all ten or 12 restorations in an hour. So those restorations then tear them all out, I’ll glaze them by three half three. They’re all out of the oven. Already have printed a model. Everything’s ready to go check the fit, make sure the margins are all good and fit them same day. So on a big smile design case, that’s as extreme as it gets. Where it’s becoming.

[00:44:20] What would you charge for that shot?

[00:44:22] It depends where I am, to be honest with you. If in London and Barry, the prices are higher than we charge in London. So I think so very it’s gone up this year. So I think we charge 6 to 5 in London. Seven, nine, five. So per, per tooth. Yeah.

[00:44:41] Because that worth. Is that worth it though. Not worth to spend your whole day on that. I guess it is for 10 minutes. 12.

[00:44:50] It’s so bad. That’s not bad.

[00:44:53] No, no, you’re right. You’re right. But my point is, could you have done two of them if you were using a lab like that? Look, of course, there’s patient issues.

[00:45:02] Patients do that. No, I agree. But 100% you could. And that’s why I think the future is. And that’s what makes me think the future is. Is that the reality of having all of these different components time and using that time efficiently is is becoming more and more important, especially as things become more competitive with it. So you you’ll see prices drop or you’ll see more competition and you people look at work at the same things that always happen with competition. So where will that head? I think you’re exactly right. I think you’ll end up with in-house lab technicians that you’ll have maybe two patients in the morning doing the preps with your maybe one or two lab techs will do all of that work in between the middle of the day, and then you’ll set them in the afternoon. So I think that 100% you’re spot on. I think that’s exactly where.

[00:45:53] Okay, let’s let’s move on. Let’s move on to printers and printing. And you guys do a whole course on printing, don’t you?

[00:45:59] We do. It’s our most popular cost. Is it 100%? Is that.

[00:46:05] I suppose it’s the first thing people want to purchase.

[00:46:08] I don’t know what it is. We just fill them up quickly every single time.

[00:46:14] Let’s start from the beginning. Start from the beginning for a beginner. Okay. What are the things that get printed in dental surgeries?

[00:46:21] So. Okay, so there’s a big range of 3D printers you realistically can step in very quickly and cheaply, cheaply and easily. You can pick up a printer that is an excellent printer now for sub £1,000, possibly even for some of the really nice ones now for like £300. So you can pick up £300 for an algo mas pro three, you know, £300 or whatever on Amazon. What is the difference between that and printers which are thousands of pounds, you know, literally ten times the price, no more. There are a few things. So realistically.

[00:47:05] If we get into if we get into that, what are the things that get printed? Well, the things.

[00:47:11] So to the kind of lends itself with the different type of princess. So we we’ve got models, surgical guides, splints like guides. You can improve bleach and trays. You can now actually print the aligners direct. There’s resins which are literally put it out with that. You can print teeth, you can print crowns, inlays on laser permanent resin, temporary resin. This pretty much everything under the sun. I was doing a lecture about that today actually, with with the different resins that crown resins that you’ve got with things like bigger resin and stuff like that, that you can print permanent restorations with their license for use as crowns. So that kind of lends itself in then with deciding how far down the rabbit oh you go and how much you spend. There’s a big.

[00:48:01] And also also you’re going to need a printer, you’re going to need a washer and a curing.

[00:48:07] 100%. And that again, lends itself to what you’re going to do with it, because there’s a big debate. The minute 3D printing dentistry kind of got divorced maybe six months ago and I say that very apt. They there was a big 3D printing group. Some people were on it, some people split apart from it. We tried to keep separate away from it and be in in between in the middle with an open group. And and there’s on one end you’ve got Rick Ferguson advocating the cheapest appliances of know you can use them for everything. Then you’ve got a lot of other people like while there are any over in America who just purely advocate you know deadly validated workflows to for clinically applicable reasons and and you’ve got different people in between. So who’s right? And I think the reality is, for someone looking at it, they want to find who’s right and they want to know what they’re doing. But the both right, really, because you can do anything on any of them. And there are reasons which are validated for different printers, for open printers. It’s if you if you use everything you have to forever for all of those different purposes, you need to know damn sure that what you’re doing and the work we’re using is going to be safe for the patient more than anything. So a clinically validated workflow is one that’s been tested, that is approved, and that is known to be safe by compatibility wise and also for the purposes of which that material. This fall. So whether it be surgical guides, crowns or whatever.

[00:49:50] So can you program the cheap princes to do those things yet? Should you? Well, I guess it depends on the resume and it depends on your purpose. But for me, the cheaper resin, the cheaper princess are there for printing, specifically for models and for some of the resin, very few far between resins that don’t specify a printer as long as you post process properly and as long as you do things according to the instructions of that specific resin. Right. So then you’ve got more expensive printers and they again range from a couple of thousand up to ten plus. And you’ll get different. It’s like scanners, you’ll get different people telling you this is the best one, this is the best one or whatever. So let’s give you a sneak peek. The which kind of thing. You can probably guess what’s coming next. Right. So we’re going to we’re going to we’re going to end up I’m just in the middle of programming, but it’s a lot more complicated than choice, so. Right. Oh, man. Exactly. So. So yeah. So I mean, he was right with that. The there’s different printers, the different people use and different people advocate. And again, it depends on you as a user what you’re going to do. So the form of print is great. And they were one that really broke the market with with cheaper printers. Yeah, cheaper, accessible, validated dental printers. Pretty good. Do plug and play. Yeah. Yeah. They’re not the fastest anymore. A lot of these are the printers are a lot faster and that was what.

[00:51:23] We started with Formlabs. But that was the problem. The speed was the problem.

[00:51:26] Exactly. So these days now accurate to Sprint Sprint. Ray Sega, you know, desktop health, they’re all great printer systems. They all have their own little reasons why you might use one over the other, what reasons they are. The difficulty, the main difficulty you’ve got as a choice as a user now is looking at that system and seeing whether the system’s resins are constrained to that system in terms of their own resins and also external resins. Can you use external resins all? Is the system an open system? In which case is it a validated or validated system? So for all of those different printers, it has to be a personal choice. And based on what you need in your clinic for the purposes to which you want.

[00:52:18] And have you gotten yourself into the whole the different types of printing, or is that one of the other guys?

[00:52:26] Do you want to be my way?

[00:52:27] Sorry, they’re like SLA and DLP and all that.

[00:52:30] Oh, yes. I mean, you know, listen, I’ve got a ridiculous addiction to 3D printers. I’m trying to get I’ve tried touch them like Pokémon, you know, it’s about catching them all. So I’ve got listen, I at the at the probably the midpoint of my journey with with guided surgery I was messing with blue sky bio and, and I had got this back then before the Formlabs printer it was a filament printer that was a cell robot printer. And you could sort of get biocompatible resins that would food safe, nice, but it wasn’t really proper. So then Formlabs came out and things. But before the Formlabs I was teaching smart at the time, so I’ve been doing guidance over a few years and I’d kind of gone into Smart Mechanic, gone back with that now, which is totally different story. But with Swap at the time is great was cloud based with things and I was speaking to Florian a lot. We were doing a lot of courses with him, Florian Schober, who’s head honcho over at AdMob and you know, he’s a I’m going to be rude here. He’s either German or Austrian, but he lives in Basel and he’s got this accent and he’s going to probably listen to this and kill me. But he was like, Why do you want to pretend? No, nobody wants to bring it. And I was like, Well, I do. And I’m sure a lot of other people would rather, you know, and have it done in house and stuff.

[00:54:01] And I’ve got this cheap Chinese transfer just bought and I’ve got some resin for it. Can I get my sales and print it myself? No, you can’t read them. And then that was basically one of the reasons why we ended up doing less with Swap at the time was we wanted to we wanted to get them to do a model like Blue Sky Bio where you could you could have your own exports and we moved on to other systems with things and the whole, the whole printing side of things is evolving from there. And I’ve ended up with form labs with weird Chinese ones, which again, no disservice to anything or anybody from China. My goodness, those those guys, they just evolve fast. They’re just constantly constant. William Bates, an apprentice, so you can have one. And then literally a few months later, it’ll be another one totally different again and evolve it. So all of these different prints, we keep trying and then at the same time going for more expensive ones and the validated workflows about them actually vs about the accurate ones. We’ve we’ve got a D for K from Vision Tech in London, which is now the desktop health brand, you know, all these different principles. I think over time I bought three peak printers that I gamble with to try and print implant frameworks, all sorts of silly printers, which which didn’t work out very well.

[00:55:22] Have you ever printed metals, Titanium.

[00:55:25] So I’m, I have actually. So yeah, one of the things that I’ve been doing my PhD the last seven years, I’ve been trying desperately to get it finished, which the hope. David Wood and the chaps that leads listen to this, because I saw them last December and I would really like to finish my PhD now, but, but that’s a different story and I won’t go on at that one. But yeah, I really need to get it to the external examples. Anyway. So my PhD is on guided surgery and adventurous guided surgery and improving the accuracy of it. So one of the things which are patented, these little things I won’t go into, it’s not ready for market yet, but it will be soon. But that we were for the prototypes I was getting printed with like an online printing service a few years ago, which they printed them on the left printer to to get them. But it’s not, it’s not the same level as as machined metal. It’s just it’s not there yet. It’s not the same resolution. It’s cool. It’s very cool. But but the screw pads weren’t very good. So good for things maybe for, like, I don’t know, chrome frameworks, maybe you could do with it and polish it up after that might be a cool thing and frameworks if you polish it up after.

[00:56:39] But how are the aligners?

[00:56:42] Good question. We’re in the process of trialling those minutes. So with Patrick’s little baby as the deadline deadline is lop side of things.

[00:56:52] So before you go on so so there was the way of printing the models. Yeah. And then pressure forming onto the models the old way. Yeah right. That was, that was one form of making your own aligners. Right. Yeah. But now you’re telling me we can print the aligner itself in a practice, in dental practice? Does it make sense.

[00:57:14] In the future? I make 100% because if you think about it, cost wise and time wise, yeah, someone loses in a Line-Up, you can print a new one in 30 minutes. They can then wash it again. And. And the amount of resin that you would use is a very thin. It would be a mess. Not to say that it was cheap. I think one of the big, big, big, big.

[00:57:36] How worried is the client? How worried are the guys at the line about this? You must have I think.

[00:57:42] They’re already on this, you know, right? I think so. And I’ll tell you why I think so is there’s so much development with the resin that if they’re not, they’d be silly because the resins that that we’re testing, the reason why we’re trialling them is I want before we recommend anything, I want to know that it works well. Right? So you have to think about Aligners in a different way using principle liners, because it’s like any resin is flexible. So a thermal forms aligner, when it’s thermal formed gradually over time, it loses that pressure on the teeth and it distorts. Whereas the things that they put into some of these 3D printed resins like fibres and carbon fibres or whatever it is, I need to look it up. So forgive me for being wrong with that, but they, they introduce the whole concept of four dimensional stability in the in the actual shape of the aligner. So body heat heating it up will return it to its original shape a little bit like the nightie files that we have with Endo so that that metal is supposed to heat it up, supposed to go back to the original shape. So the whole thing with these is going to change the way that we design aligners, the number of aligners and all of that, because potentially you might be able to put more stress on the tooth or rather more of a change in the position because it’s going to put a more gentle pressure over longer, but actually try and return it to that shape that you’ve printed that line of two. So. I think the whole line of workflow is going to change with 3D printing, not just in terms of number of lines, but the actual thinking of the mechanics. So we’ll see. It’s going to be an interesting one with them.

[00:59:36] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[00:59:52] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] The key is as well, I think more than anything is just being honest with things. And for us, the main thing that we’ve tried to do more than anything with, with everything that we’ve done with support, with education and and it’s a fine, fine balance, let me tell you, is tried to be tried to be as as as honest and unbiased as you can, which I can say it’s a fine balancing act because we have our own preferences, you know, and you get some things. Sometimes you try things out. Companies will say, Oh, don’t try this out, we’ll give you a discount with this stuff like that. It you know, so you try things out. Sometimes you love it, but then then you question yourself and you’re like, Well, do I love it? Because I was given it and you shouldn’t do. So you try and then be honest and say, well, actually it’s probably not going to make that much difference to you rather than maybe something else or whatever. And we’re not going to go down that road and dig myself into, oh, it’s sort of the manufacturing. But basically it’s a it is a fine balance because like anything, you have your own preferences.

[00:01:08] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry, your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:26] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Adam, multi author of the podcast. Adam is a practice principal from Bury. He’s got a practice called Dentist on the Rock, probably best known for his digital side, He’s a founder member of the EDTA, which stands for International Dental, Digital, Dental.

[00:01:47] Digital.

[00:01:47] That idea just flows off the tongue. And also now a principal, a co-principal in a London practice in the West End that there’s digital trials. Yeah. So I’ve been wanting to get you on this podcast for a long time too. And you said you haven’t listened to an episode before, but this tends to be a kind of life and times type podcast with you. I just want to ask you this question just from the get go. You’ve got this sort of it’s almost an obsession. With digital. And it’s not only it’s not only the fact that it’s digital, but your output is. I’ve seen it once before in my career. I’ve got a guy called Julian Holmes. Do you ever come across him?

[00:02:40] Oh, no, I don’t actually. I don’t know the name.

[00:02:43] He was. He was big in, in, in the sort of ozone dentistry and unfortunately passed away. But yeah, lovely guy, lovely outside the box thinker as well. But he had this similar thing, just massive output. What is it man. That is that. Is that something you’ve always done or is it just like digital? It’s just completely taken you over and Yeah.

[00:03:08] I mean, you know what? Whenever if I’m doing a long introduction, I’m like a couple of day course or whatever, I’ll probably bore them to death with giving them a big long introduction to me that I’ll give you now if you’d like. Yeah, but basically I’ve always been a bit of a geek and when I was a kid I’d be chipping, I should say, about soldering consoles and obviously fixing them and that sort of thing, putting pieces together from 12. So, you know, doing all that sort of thing. I’ve always been a bit of a geek and I know it sounds cliche, but I’ve always found technology easy. So in not just relating to it, just using it, I, I’m good with programming, I’m good with using it. The intuitive side clicks with me, so I’m good with it. And plus as well, when I was a kid, I really wanted to do art, to be honest with you. I wasn’t even going to do dentistry. I wanted to do art, really. And then I was architecture, which kind of I wanted to meld in the technology side of things, but I didn’t have the right combination of things for doing A-level in the right combination to do architecture. So I kind of didn’t plan ahead enough with that. And I wanted to dentistry because my dad so my dad’s a dentist, a completely different type of dentist thought process, everything.

[00:04:27] I’m probably a lot more like a lot of ways. No disrespect to my dad, just, you know, my, my mum’s a French teacher, and so when I went to uni, I went, I went into it just because my dad did well and went in with that and being a, you know, not being able to do all the technology and outside of things, I probably just skated along. I was never a high flyer. I never really pushed myself hard. So have I always just been driven? Probably not, to be honest with you. At school I was pretty naughty. I got in trouble a lot and you know, all of those things I didn’t really weren’t really the type of person I am now in any way, shape or form after uni. You know, the thing that got me going was two things really. I was doing my set and I liked doing some mentoring at uni and helping at uni and things and I went to do my simply not my page, so sorry, the GDF. So a demand material first because I wanted to go and do Vtt. I was working at my dad’s with, with full NHS practice for a long time and so I was going through my JDF and going in with the teaching side and as I was going, you know, picking up little things, doing a little bit of very, very early cad comes messing around on computers and things and getting into looking at digital X-rays.

[00:05:51] My wife, by the way, is a radiographer, so and she went specialised very early with that. So it’s a CT. So for me, being with her or being with her since I was 19, you know, I understand in CT and getting in with the radiography site itself very easily to me again with the technology. And that kind of led into me with my masters and wanted to do implants. And then it clicked. And ever since that with doing my implants, as soon as I heard about guided surgery, I wanted to get in there and I wanted to use that technology. And as soon as that was, that was probably 11 years or so ago. As soon as that was the case, getting in there was strong. There was me messing around with things with a lady from Strathalbyn at the time that was just awesome. And there was Craig Parker that was obviously doing things over on the East Coast and things with with go to surgery there and you know, obviously looking into him because he was a year or two ahead. But you know, in general it was guided surgery that got me into it.

[00:06:59] So I thought, I’ve seen the future.

[00:07:03] Yeah. And I wanted in, you know, and basically I was that was it dildo straight in everything digital and that kind of coincided with me. Wanted to set my own practice up as well so that when I set my own place up, which is a years ago now. So when I was setting that place up I. Wanted to set it up completely digitally and realistically now completely digitally. But that isn’t anywhere near what digital is for me now. But but it was at the time I wanted everything digital and I even put my solar panels on the roof to make it easy. So I was just kind of there at the beginning, really, which was nice. I mean, not as early as some people like Chris, who I work with. Sorry, do. Yeah, he uses serac a bit earlier with Cirque three and stuff, but I kind of went in through a different way with guided surgery than.

[00:07:57] People, normal people. I was going to ask people, Go get into digital from different angles and serac seems to be one of them 100%. And as you said, guided surgery seems to be another one. And then and then some people, they just want a scanner. Right. And I think we should talk about all of these things. I think we should talk about scanning. I think we should talk about printing. We should talk about milling. We should talk about DSD and the like, all of those other what they call the skin and so forth. But let’s get back to your childhood. And you were you were into computers. Did you not consider becoming a computer geek guy?

[00:08:36] Listen, being completely honest, my dad was did well for himself. And we lived in a nice house. And I obviously wanted to do something successful and do well financially. So and I wanted to do something at first where I was passionate about, which was, you know, designing things. And and like I said, one of the one of the things that made me so driven is the fact that I could really put that into practice. Now, what I really enjoyed back then, so the computer side designing things to me, when I’m designing teeth, I’m doing mock ups. A lot of people think I’m mad with doing so much that I do in terms of basically being a dentist and a lab technician. I mean, I’m not officially a technician, but I do everything. I do literally everything. So with everything there, I love it because it’s I’m using the technology, I’m creating things. And I love when I’ve milled out restorations, you know, finishing them. And I genuinely I’ve had I’ve been a very lucky to have got an early enough that I’ve worked with and partnered with and been friends with some very, very gifted people. So technicians wise, dentist wise, and some of which are very close friends, people like Quintus is a is phenomenal at surface texture. So I look up to them a lot. Phil Redington We’ve done loads of them on years. It’s just awesome, awesome guys, very, very clinically talented. So for me to I, I liked doing that sort of thing. And so I always saw those guys as somewhere to strive to head towards trying to be as good as and I don’t think I’m in there yet, but I think I do nicer work now than I did ten years ago. So yeah, everybody’s on a learning curve, right?

[00:10:27] Especially with digital, right? Because it keeps changing so quickly. You know, I was talking to Andrew Dorward and he was talking about the sort of the technology adoption lifecycle. And, you know, he was he was one of the first people, the first person to get a CT scanner. And then and then he’s got a printing company. He’s got this happening. And he was saying he was saying that this this moment when you get all excited about the technology and then you get it and then there’s this chasm of light, you suddenly realise there’s all these other things you haven’t thought of and new problems and issues. And I can say we’ve got a lab now in enlightenment and the number of things that no one tells you about, calibration of printers and different resins and just so many different questions. So you must have come across this so many times.

[00:11:18] I mean, that’s 100% why we, we started doing what I was doing with, you know, again, being lucky to have met people like Chris Quince and Patrick way back when. And you know, back then the support was pretty poor really. And I mean, you know, I was doing all these digital things and I knew what I wanted and I wanted to be able to export textiles, combine them and guide surgery software and what have you, and the rest would be like, Yeah, yeah, you could do that. Yeah, you can do that, but you couldn’t. And because it was a closed system and they would tell you one thing and you’d find it the other, then you have to jump through hoops, convert it. And I was finding all sorts of ways of programme software that weren’t even related to dentistry, trying to, you know, convert things out of Surrey and which was interesting. But things have opened up now and you can do whatever. But you know, these sorts of things were what we’re frustrated is when we first got going, what we said of the day that we made friends with people around the world and what became the idea basically through frustration and again, the same thing. With why we started doing the whole bigger course. The PGA said Diploma and masters and things and why we started providing scanners again. Born through frustration.

[00:12:35] You know, we recommend in different things to to students. And let me be clear, we are for anybody who is under any illusion, you know, it is all about the students for us. We really support them Well, and that’s the key to it all. Support an education. And we you know, we started doing that because we’d recommend, say, one brand to one person, one brand to another person. They’d go and get that from one reseller and have a great time and be great support and then go through someone else and be completely deserted. Or they would they would fail the smallest of things and we would end up picking up the pieces anyway and providing that support. So we thought, well, why are we not doing that part? Why? Why not just provide it directly? And there’s some really good examples of people worldwide who’ve I think hit similar, similar levels of frustration and ended up creating amazing companies. You know, in in America, there’s, you know, almond with Cadbury and, you know, companies like that all across the world, built through, you know, frustration and passion and wanted to help people. And that’s a lovely thing because, you know, that that if you turn a negative into a positive, then that’s always going to Well, I think, you know, you turn to a positive and that’s good for everybody right now.

[00:13:57] How long this idea been going?

[00:13:59] So I met I met Chris and Chris and Patrick for us, and that was 2016. So about six years ago, just maybe before that, I think it was maybe the November before that.

[00:14:13] That shit, the sheer volume of of just stuff coming out of idea. Is that the four of you?

[00:14:21] Yeah, not really. I mean, a lot of people say this and there’s me with Jason. You know, I’m, I’m good with my jazz hands, but no, I mean, the four of us do work on things a lot. I’m obviously not. I’m up to long. I don’t sleep much. I’m always I’m an ideas and those are also.

[00:14:43] Executing executing as well you know ideas one thing yeah I mean the number of course I was just on the website a number of courses diplomas events.

[00:14:51] Yeah we’ve got we’ve got a load of people we work with now across the world with things and you know, that’s why the I came from with, you know we’ve, we’ve again been lucky to make some really good friends and that we’ve developed in Portugal like how some in Italy Fredricka Iceland and Sweden and America South America and stuff and and all of these people do things for us in different ways or speaker and things run courses, you know, conferences. We used to have a chap in Egypt that we did a conference with there, so it built bigger than just the four of us by far. And now we’ve got remote designers of technicians that work either with us or beyond. One guy stayed working with us and moved to Portugal, now goes to swap. Hugo is an awesome, awesome guy. So you know, all, all of these people, it’s been a hell of a journey and yeah long may it continue. Right? Such good.

[00:15:45] And so what is what’s the structure of it? I mean what’s what Let’s start with the business model if you like. Yeah. What’s that? Is it.

[00:15:53] Education? You know what we’ve been through at different phases. We’ve we’ve been through a different phases of just the four of us running smaller courses. We’ve got we’ve built that through partnerships with different universities, with places like Camden, Ulster University and what have you, with different people who do parts of the admin phase, a few names behind the scenes that do secretary work or admin work or what have you. So, you know, there’s, there’s a fair few people you don’t see that obviously we wouldn’t be able to do without them. And you know, realistically they keep the ball moving. Even partners and wives, you know, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of support with that sort of thing, a lot of forgiveness. You know, we’re here, there and everywhere. So it is what it is really these days. We’ve kind of we tried to get to a phase going back maybe about a year and a half, two years ago, maybe just before COVID, we were trying to step back from the limelight a little bit and bring in elections and stuff like that. The problem with that and the difficulty with that was, was the level of commitment and passion. And the stage wasn’t really ready for that. It was, I think, maybe, maybe in the future. But I mean, for me, as much as you see me, like I say, with a jazz sense, I more and more. Try and manage my time smarter so that I’m not taking too much time away from family and kids. And I see you as a good inspiration to them. I’ll tell you another thing later, which which ties in with this where you say about biggest mistakes with things. The one chap who his words always, always play on my mind.

[00:17:44] He was an awesome guy, always doing things with digital, passed away way too young. So Anoop, that with all the things that he was doing. Yeah, we used to do loads of different things then. Would courses used to teach him MSC with things? And one of the last things that I spoke to him about was the time which we spend away from families and kids. And, and he told me a story about how he was cutting down his time on courses and things because his son glued his laptop together and he he realised that that was it. He needed to sort things out. And I thought, I’ve got to get to grips with this. And this hit home probably a year or so ago with the thing I’ll talk about, but the with I don’t want to get to the point where it’s too late and I’ve got a ten year old and a seven year old and literally I’m away a lot over the next eight months. I think we’re in eight or nine different countries doing different courses with things or meeting people for different things here, there and everywhere. And so from January I minimise my time a little bit with Barry and spend a bit more time focusing in the daytime on things. I don’t know how that’s well is going to work financially, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to manage that well. But, but we’ve got a few of the plans of things that I need to spend a bit of time on. Things I’ve done other things behind the scenes with patents and things like that. So we’ll we’ll see.

[00:19:18] We’ll see. So we had Anoop was the first guest on this podcast shortly before he passed away. Yeah.

[00:19:26] That’s right.

[00:19:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember him telling telling that story. You know, I’m involved in education, right? And anywhere on the level that you are. But I’m away basically every other weekend, basically. But at the same time, I don’t really, really do that much work during the week. I do, of course I work, but I don’t have to work. I have to turn up anywhere. And this thing you’re saying about your kids, obviously the subject comes up a lot on this podcast, right? Yeah. And for me, it’s like if your kids watching you doing the extraordinary things you’re doing. That’s a massive inspiration to your kid.

[00:20:08] Yeah, I hope so.

[00:20:09] Oh, it is. It is, Yeah. And if you if you think back to your dad when he was I don’t know the story, but maybe he was on opening up the practice on a Sunday to help someone with a toothache or something.

[00:20:21] Yeah.

[00:20:22] He could have been beating himself up about that and saying, I’m not spending time with Adam and the family. Yeah, but you learn something by watching him do that. Yeah. And this thing that you’re doing now, this thing, you know, like, maybe if you had watched your dad grind and work as hard as he did for the good life that he had, maybe you wouldn’t be this obsessed guy whose, by the way, it’s not just about what you contribute to your family, right? It’s what you contribute to the to the profession. Yeah. And especially in this area of digital where it’s so difficult for you know, most people aren’t like you. Most people hate change. And most people are very scared of technology. By the way, I’m one of them. When we when we were we were setting up our lab, I was like, do we really have to do the digital? I don’t want to get into it. And and I think you should you should stop, stop punishing yourself on that front because your your kids will see what you achieved and they’ll, they’ll learn the hard work. How important that is, hopefully, for sure. I wouldn’t bother yourself too much about it, but how often are you in?

[00:21:40] Probably more at the minute. So obviously today, tomorrow I’m in Birmingham teaching CMD last Tuesday night to start tonight I was in Madrid with DSD. The weekend before that we just got back. Didn’t have the weekend free. It was a week before we were in. Oh, no. Yes, sorry. The week before the Wednesday night to the Saturday night, I was at the London dance show with the theatre we did there. Then the Sunday to the Wednesday. Before that I was in Palmer because we were education partners for X got insights. So I’ve had probably in the last three weeks, maybe four nights at home. Three nights.

[00:22:34] Wow. Yeah. Okay. That might be a bit too much.

[00:22:39] Yeah. So I vowed now, next year, with all these places, I’m going to try and take my kids to as many of them as possible. So at least if I’m doing things, I can show them the world of it, you know? The problem is in the school, you know, the school. So there’s.

[00:22:53] Also also, you know, it feels like you guys have been around for ages because of just the output. But six years is still very early days.

[00:23:02] Yeah, well, very long time. It’s crazy. Yeah, I think technology changes so fast and. Exactly. I think, again, we’re lucky that we’ve because we got into things pretty early and made friends so many places. It’s actually a really close community, the digital community. So yeah, not just at the bottom because of with, with the groups that we’ve got on Facebook and what’s up and stuff. But the actual the people at the top who do education, you know, across the world, you know, we speak to them a lot and they there’s, there’s so many lovely, lovely guys who like guys and girls. I made that clear The really the shared stories plan things together. But the more importantly, they recommend each other for different things. So because they know somebody who might be good at doing something else in their place. So it’s, you know, there’s been opportunities because of that for sure. But the key is as well, I think more than anything is just being honest with things. And for us, the main thing that we’ve tried to do more than anything with, with everything that we’ve done with support, with education and and it’s a fine, fine balance, let me tell you, is tried to be tried to be as as honest and unbiased as you can, which I can say it’s a fine balancing act because we have our own preferences, you know, and you get sent things. Sometimes you try things out. Companies will say, Oh, don’t try this out, we’ll give you a discount with this stuff like that. It you know, so you try things out. Sometimes you love it, but then then you question yourself and you’re like, Well, do I love it? Because I was given it and you shouldn’t do. So you try and then be honest and say, well, actually it’s, you know, probably not going to make that much difference to you rather than maybe something else or whatever. And we’re not going to go down that road and dig myself into, oh, it’s sort of the manufacturers. But basically it’s a it is a fine balance because like anything, you have your own preferences.

[00:25:03] And are you on the radar of all the manufacturers now? They all try they all bang your door trying to do you know.

[00:25:08] What again, it’s a mix. We’ll have we have so many that we love working with and they are they have some really, really nice people that you work with. And sometimes it surprises you. Sometimes it’s surprising both in terms of some of the big companies that they will, I think, shy away from you a little bit because they’re a bit wary of the fact that you are. So you try and be so unbiased and you working with so many different things that probably where either have seen have you seen some a negative. Right. But on the other side of the coin, sometimes it’s really surprising when you start working with a company that you really like and then they just don’t I don’t know whether they just want to have you on a leash or what, I don’t know. But they they just don’t do that much then. And you’re like, But I really like you. I want to do more with you. And. And he’s not Can you with him really? Well, it’s a it’s a big mixed bag of tricks. I’ll tell you who really surprised me recently. And and listen, I’m going to I’m going to turn Anita into a positive again. Right. So. The line. So I think they get a bit of a bad rep in terms of reputation and people doubting them. On the other role, you know, and because it’s such a big corporate structure.

[00:26:30] So the fact is that this this company is mega megabit megabit, bigger than many of the other companies combined, Right? Yeah. So, you know, you kind of wary of that for yourselves. And then we did this because we work with Exocad. We were doing a smart trade course at the Allied conference, me and Patrick going back four weeks ago. So the weekend before all those weekends I was away again. So we’re in London for that. And you know what? We went out with a couple of the guys who were like the manager of like this sales for America and whatnot from Europe and stuff. And we had a meal with them the night before and and genuinely they were such a nice crew of people. It was rare that I’ve actually dealt with a company that was as nice as them, and I genuinely don’t say this to flirt with them because we none of us have it. Heroes. And I say this in the nicest way, but we don’t I don’t use Invisalign, so I don’t need one. I’ve got every other scanner under the sun. But they are. They were awesome. They were so organised and it was a real pleasure to be at the event with them. So I think it was surprising.

[00:27:45] The mistake we make sometimes is that we could think of a company as a person. Yeah, and I’ve had this experience, I don’t know, with so many different big companies, so I align being one of them, by the way, or Henry Shine or something. Let’s say I talk to Henry Shine 12 years ago about distributing something by Enlightened. And for the sake of the argument, let’s say it didn’t go well. Yeah. Then. Then last year I contact Henry Shine again. The people are completely different people now.

[00:28:20] Yeah, Yeah. You probably had a totally different experience, right?

[00:28:23] Totally different experience here. But you do you do get yourself, you think of the company as a human, as person, and you actually you.

[00:28:32] Put emotion into it.

[00:28:33] Yeah, you put emotion into the company. Whereas in these huge places, often people change a lot with a line. I think the big thing with them is just the rate of growth of that company. It’s growing so quick that it’s difficult to keep up with the growth when you’re growing that quick. It’s a bit like, I don’t know if you deal with Facebook at all for for ads and things. I mean, they’re a nightmare to deal with. They’re not new. Yeah, they’re really difficult to deal with. Anything goes wrong with your Facebook account real time. But then at the same time, it’s such a beast. Yeah, but a lot of times, Yeah, a lot of times you’re talking to robots, right? And people get pissed off about that. But yeah, it’s a funny one, but I notice you’re quite close to it, I guess, right? Because you give away.

[00:29:24] You know what? So we we’ve done a load of things with them. But before that, I mean we, I didn’t really and again, I’m going to, I’m hopefully not going to annoy them now by saying something else and things. So I didn’t really write them. It, it’s kind of as when it was just the 500, it was okay. It wasn’t at the same level as the other scanners that we use in the we at the time. We would just get in a prime scan when they very first came out and that was an awesome scanner. So the prime scan, I mean, I’ve done a study on it, right? So the primes kind of statistically at the time Superior, it was statistically in a in a group in a war zone. So and not actually dissimilar to lab scanners that accurate. It was an awesome, awesome scanner but that was before the release of the 700 and everything since. And again we had a lot of people a lot of people requesting, you know, who do I get it through and what have you. And and at the same sort of frustrations that we’d had before. So we just thought and this was at the start of when we were on this journey to just about to launch Scan Club and, and the whole thing was club was basically we wanted to provide a way to get on board with the, the sell the diploma but not pay thousands upfront because we wanted to make the education accessible. And I mean it’s a good cost.

[00:30:52] There’s a there’s one or two negative Nazis. I want to be polite and say that have been a little bit unprofessional at times. I’m not going to say any more than that, that I’ve said that to YouTube. It is not. It’s not. There are YouTube videos that we put the some of the short tutorials on both the platform and the thing, but they’re not on the course. So the course is it’s a it’s an ethical level seven course. It’s got, you know, lectures which are an hour and a half or whatever, 120 hours. But the the whole of that thing, realistically, there was a demand for it. The people wanted to get involved with it. So with everything and we saw that from the start of COVID. So the start of COVID, we had a massive uptick in people joining that course. And we thought this is the right time for people to start learning how to do things with digital. And so we did a couple of surveys and things. And for members of how what puts you off joining the course you’ve been on some of the smaller courses, what puts you off during the bigger cost and it was the cost. So realistically we thought, well, let’s make it remote, let’s let’s take away the hands on and let’s get it so you can join on at any time, anywhere and made it so that it was on demand. We still do the shorter tutorials that do go on the platform outside of it and on YouTube and stuff like that.

[00:32:09] But that’s cetera. And so the cost was to improve your knowledge and not kind of led into itself with the whole support side of things. And and that led into looking at the different scanners to partner with. And it just ended up where just through chance really, we were introduced to one of their reps who said, well, do you distribute that side of things? So that’s the only one that we actually provide direct. The rest is all through partners. So it’s all just goes through other people. And I think I’m really glad we did simply for the fact that it’s been incredible watching the journey of of of made it last year, especially because the software not particularly the scanners the scanners are good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the software more than anything. And the the evolution of that, I think it’s I think it’s probably made a lot of the other companies nervous because they have to step up the game. And you can see that very clearly with with people like Trish, bring them more apps and things like that. And plus as well, they drop the price a lot. So, you know, it makes it more and more accessible all the time. So do we still recommend other scanners? Of course. You know, it’s not right for everybody. And even though we don’t really have anything to do with a line, you know, we still send a lot of people that way if they’re just Invisalign users, you know.

[00:33:29] Let’s let’s let’s let’s break it up then. Let’s start with scanners. Let’s start with scanners. Let’s let’s start with the beginner person. Yeah, sure. So is knows that it’s probably about time to get into scanning.

[00:33:42] Yeah.

[00:33:43] You must get asked this question every day, right. I do. Right. Where do I start. Where do I start. What question. Which, which scanner do I go for? How much? Where do you where do you start on on. So I guess you’re asking them, right? What kind of dentist are you. What kind of treatments do you do? Right.

[00:33:56] Yeah. Yeah. So about 14 to 16 months. Gone now, maybe less. I. I programmed an algorithm on a website. It’s like a choose your adventure style thing called which colour dot com. So you go on there and you it asks you different questions about your clinic. In fact, it was less than that. Sorry, maybe about ten months ago. And it takes you on a journey of asking you different questions about the size of your clinic, whether you’re a social principal, Do you work in different do you work in different parts of the different clinics? Do you travel? Is your clinic called different floors? You know, all sorts of questions. There’s about 23 different paths that they can take and then finish it off with budget if it wants to limit it a little bit more. So the reason why I did that was to just try and keep as as unbiased as possible with that. And I wrote a white paper at the end that kind of gives you a little bit more info and stuff points in the direction of us, obviously, if you need more information, but it’s generally you can just go on it. It doesn’t cost anything. You don’t have to contact us. You can just go through it and work out what are.

[00:35:08] The results, what are the results of that, what percentage you’re ending up with, what percentage of ending up with?

[00:35:15] Good question. I can look up for you if you’d like.

[00:35:18] Okay, here’s your special, exceptional piece of work. All right. I know it’s a silly question, but. But sort of in a nutshell, Yeah. If I’m doing Invisalign and got.

[00:35:34] Invisalign, you can make more sense to make sense to it, because at the end of the day, it’s your bread and butter. Right?

[00:35:40] But what about the restorative side of it? How is it for crowns, bridges that sort of.

[00:35:45] Do you know what? I think it’s improved a lot. And I think if you if you stepped in because of the Invisalign, but then decided to go down the road to Restorative as well, I don’t think you’d regret it. There’s some excellent legs now with Exocad because obviously align bought Exocad and also we’ve got the issue with they’ve just brought in this new smile architect side to basically have a restorative version of clinic. So to do a smile design that sort of thing and, and that looks pretty good. I’ll have to say look pretty good. So I don’t think you regret it either way. My personal take on the article personally and this is, again, just my personal opinion, no to service to anybody who chooses wisely. I personally find that that’s kind of a bit big. So if you’ve got little hands, you don’t like the way to it, then it might not be fit. And there’s the Trace three is still an excellent, excellent scanner for Senator Invisalign because you can use it for that. There’s only the Itero scanners and Vice Chair three and the Omnicom you can send to send to Invisalign. Realistically, I doubt you picking on the cam. It’s all the technology now and you’d end up going with three. But Trista is still really nice and you can get it in the move units, the wireless units, that sort of thing.

[00:37:09] There’s four or five different ecosystem. So it’s a bit like looking at things like Apple and Samsung in a way, you know, these different ecosystems, you know, everybody everybody’s going to be different in terms of which one they prefer. And you can’t say really one’s better than the other in terms of shape or media and that sort of thing. In terms of that, they all do different things. The metaphor, I’d say, for people who do a lot of implants is a great scanner for that, simply for the fact that there’s so many tools to help out with your with your choice of bringing in the eye scan very much in and, you know, colour, colour filtering all all these very cool little software features that make it easier to scan on a on a full dental case. But then there’s prime scan. Right. And it’s a lot more expensive, no doubt. But if your main thing is is cad cam or you want to get into in-house dentistry as of yet and I think next year is probably going to be an interesting year for this because I think it’s going to be on it. I think three shape are going to be on more familiar. We’re going to be in house. I don’t even know if Millie may be printing who will see but but I think in house is where they all want to get through with CAD cam easy so I think but the minute full stop if you get it started or if you used to it.

[00:38:37] The Sirona system is a beautiful, streamlined system and it’s very hard to beat the easy workflow that is sirona when it comes to simple restorations of just inlays on nice crowns, you know, even veneers doing in-house same day appointments. It’s very hard to beat. And the only way you can get close to that realistically is using a stroke. M.s. Excel on unlocking it in effect with using in lab cam and and then having your choice of scanner exocad whatever type of CAD software and being able to mill the saddle. Then just simply for the fact that the MSI Excel is a workhorse. It is. It’s a two motor machine. It’s not the most accurate. It’s not the most accurate in terms of the Fisher patterns and stuff, but it’s better than it used to be with smaller birds. But it’s just fast. So you can, you can mill a crown or an inlay or whatever on a straw on a nail for under 10 minutes with something like a VHF set fall or anything like that. You’re looking at you’re looking at realistically at least 15 to 20 minutes plus, depending on the size of restoration. And that makes a big difference if you’re trying to do things in-house. So what you see.

[00:39:53] What you see, the tension between doing things in-house or letting the technician take care of. The bit that they don’t want.

[00:40:04] I think, you know what we were talking about time before. I actually think that and this kind of leads into a little bit the DSD thing that we were away with them and the. For me. I’ve always wanted to do my own thing, but I don’t know whether it’s age. I don’t know whether it’s that guilt thing with the weird thing with my kids always telling me about whether I feel like I’m too much time away from them. But time wise, I kind of feel like now I want to not step back from doing it all myself, but just manage some aspects of it a little bit more wisely. And this probably started when I was doing things, going back a few months ago with with a character and a company in America with doing some remote design services. And we were in the middle of a four hour run for DDA lab, and we’ve launched that now. So for that side of things, we’re having an in-house lab tech and we just hired a lady who works in London with us to do that side of things, do in-house. So I’m probably going to let her do things a little bit more. And I think that’s probably the future of where everything’s heading with with dentists and laptops. I think there was a point where laptops were afraid that they were going to get replaced by in-house, But I actually think that it’s the other way around. I think not entirely, but I think that more than likely over time, we’re going to see dentists join in labs, maybe with a chair in a clinic. And I think we’ll see lab tech shown in dentists. And I think that gradually they’ll merge into work and intrinsically in-house in the same team. But obviously the big centres, the big, big production centres and things that where you need the big machines to to produce. But realistically for the small things and even for us in Bury, we’ve got, you know, for all that we do some things in house, there’s some things you can’t do in know dentures and stuff like that.

[00:42:04] But my point is look you do make your own surgical guy, right? He’s pretty surgical, but you could have a lab do that, right? Yeah. So what’s the advantage of doing it yourself?

[00:42:17] It’s got to be preference, control, cost. Being a kid, being a control freak probably more than anything is probably a good thing that a lot of people want. They just want to control the whole system, you know?

[00:42:29] Yeah, but. But I don’t know. I mean, dentists are obsessed with chair time and your chair. I mean, a surgical guy doesn’t take that much time. But. But what I’m saying is, if you ideologically go on this route of chair side. Yeah, you can use a lot of chair time.

[00:42:49] Yeah. It depends what it is and it depends how fast you get. And I’ll tell you where things are changing for me that I’ll probably relate more to people who want to save the chair time. Say for example, the same day smile design that me and will do in house. I’ll only see one patient that day. So that one patient is the only thing that I’m doing for a same day. Smile design where I’ve already done planning sides before. I’ve already consented with things I’ve already done, mock ups and smile, test drives and that sort of thing. So this is just purely the actual manufacturing of veneers. So say a ten unit case of veneers or crowns or whatever it is, then I’ll start with them. And nine I end up finishing all of the preps and stuff by say, 11, 1130 I’ll be doing the scans and design. They’ll take me to, I don’t know, let’s say half 12. So I’ve got four mils in buried so I’ll mirror over the four mils. And why did I buy four mils for simple cases like that where, you know, it’s just pure time buying with buying those mils. So I’ll churn out all ten or 12 restorations in an hour. So those restorations then tear them all out, I’ll glaze them by three half three. They’re all out of the oven. Already have printed a model. Everything’s ready to go check the fit, make sure the margins are all good and fit them same day. So on a big smile design case, that’s as extreme as it gets. Where it’s becoming.

[00:44:20] What would you charge for that shot?

[00:44:22] It depends where I am, to be honest with you. If in London and Barry, the prices are higher than we charge in London. So I think so very it’s gone up this year. So I think we charge 6 to 5 in London. Seven, nine, five. So per, per tooth. Yeah.

[00:44:41] Because that worth. Is that worth it though. Not worth to spend your whole day on that. I guess it is for 10 minutes. 12.

[00:44:50] It’s so bad. That’s not bad.

[00:44:53] No, no, you’re right. You’re right. But my point is, could you have done two of them if you were using a lab like that? Look, of course, there’s patient issues.

[00:45:02] Patients do that. No, I agree. But 100% you could. And that’s why I think the future is. And that’s what makes me think the future is. Is that the reality of having all of these different components time and using that time efficiently is is becoming more and more important, especially as things become more competitive with it. So you you’ll see prices drop or you’ll see more competition and you people look at work at the same things that always happen with competition. So where will that head? I think you’re exactly right. I think you’ll end up with in-house lab technicians that you’ll have maybe two patients in the morning doing the preps with your maybe one or two lab techs will do all of that work in between the middle of the day, and then you’ll set them in the afternoon. So I think that 100% you’re spot on. I think that’s exactly where.

[00:45:53] Okay, let’s let’s move on. Let’s move on to printers and printing. And you guys do a whole course on printing, don’t you?

[00:45:59] We do. It’s our most popular cost. Is it 100%? Is that.

[00:46:05] I suppose it’s the first thing people want to purchase.

[00:46:08] I don’t know what it is. We just fill them up quickly every single time.

[00:46:14] Let’s start from the beginning. Start from the beginning for a beginner. Okay. What are the things that get printed in dental surgeries?

[00:46:21] So. Okay, so there’s a big range of 3D printers you realistically can step in very quickly and cheaply, cheaply and easily. You can pick up a printer that is an excellent printer now for sub £1,000, possibly even for some of the really nice ones now for like £300. So you can pick up £300 for an algo mas pro three, you know, £300 or whatever on Amazon. What is the difference between that and printers which are thousands of pounds, you know, literally ten times the price, no more. There are a few things. So realistically.

[00:47:05] If we get into if we get into that, what are the things that get printed? Well, the things.

[00:47:11] So to the kind of lends itself with the different type of princess. So we we’ve got models, surgical guides, splints like guides. You can improve bleach and trays. You can now actually print the aligners direct. There’s resins which are literally put it out with that. You can print teeth, you can print crowns, inlays on laser permanent resin, temporary resin. This pretty much everything under the sun. I was doing a lecture about that today actually, with with the different resins that crown resins that you’ve got with things like bigger resin and stuff like that, that you can print permanent restorations with their license for use as crowns. So that kind of lends itself in then with deciding how far down the rabbit oh you go and how much you spend. There’s a big.

[00:48:01] And also also you’re going to need a printer, you’re going to need a washer and a curing.

[00:48:07] 100%. And that again, lends itself to what you’re going to do with it, because there’s a big debate. The minute 3D printing dentistry kind of got divorced maybe six months ago and I say that very apt. They there was a big 3D printing group. Some people were on it, some people split apart from it. We tried to keep separate away from it and be in in between in the middle with an open group. And and there’s on one end you’ve got Rick Ferguson advocating the cheapest appliances of know you can use them for everything. Then you’ve got a lot of other people like while there are any over in America who just purely advocate you know deadly validated workflows to for clinically applicable reasons and and you’ve got different people in between. So who’s right? And I think the reality is, for someone looking at it, they want to find who’s right and they want to know what they’re doing. But the both right, really, because you can do anything on any of them. And there are reasons which are validated for different printers, for open printers. It’s if you if you use everything you have to forever for all of those different purposes, you need to know damn sure that what you’re doing and the work we’re using is going to be safe for the patient more than anything. So a clinically validated workflow is one that’s been tested, that is approved, and that is known to be safe by compatibility wise and also for the purposes of which that material. This fall. So whether it be surgical guides, crowns or whatever.

[00:49:50] So can you program the cheap princes to do those things yet? Should you? Well, I guess it depends on the resume and it depends on your purpose. But for me, the cheaper resin, the cheaper princess are there for printing, specifically for models and for some of the resin, very few far between resins that don’t specify a printer as long as you post process properly and as long as you do things according to the instructions of that specific resin. Right. So then you’ve got more expensive printers and they again range from a couple of thousand up to ten plus. And you’ll get different. It’s like scanners, you’ll get different people telling you this is the best one, this is the best one or whatever. So let’s give you a sneak peek. The which kind of thing. You can probably guess what’s coming next. Right. So we’re going to we’re going to we’re going to end up I’m just in the middle of programming, but it’s a lot more complicated than choice, so. Right. Oh, man. Exactly. So. So yeah. So I mean, he was right with that. The there’s different printers, the different people use and different people advocate. And again, it depends on you as a user what you’re going to do. So the form of print is great. And they were one that really broke the market with with cheaper printers. Yeah, cheaper, accessible, validated dental printers. Pretty good. Do plug and play. Yeah. Yeah. They’re not the fastest anymore. A lot of these are the printers are a lot faster and that was what.

[00:51:23] We started with Formlabs. But that was the problem. The speed was the problem.

[00:51:26] Exactly. So these days now accurate to Sprint Sprint. Ray Sega, you know, desktop health, they’re all great printer systems. They all have their own little reasons why you might use one over the other, what reasons they are. The difficulty, the main difficulty you’ve got as a choice as a user now is looking at that system and seeing whether the system’s resins are constrained to that system in terms of their own resins and also external resins. Can you use external resins all? Is the system an open system? In which case is it a validated or validated system? So for all of those different printers, it has to be a personal choice. And based on what you need in your clinic for the purposes to which you want.

[00:52:18] And have you gotten yourself into the whole the different types of printing, or is that one of the other guys?

[00:52:26] Do you want to be my way?

[00:52:27] Sorry, they’re like SLA and DLP and all that.

[00:52:30] Oh, yes. I mean, you know, listen, I’ve got a ridiculous addiction to 3D printers. I’m trying to get I’ve tried touch them like Pokémon, you know, it’s about catching them all. So I’ve got listen, I at the at the probably the midpoint of my journey with with guided surgery I was messing with blue sky bio and, and I had got this back then before the Formlabs printer it was a filament printer that was a cell robot printer. And you could sort of get biocompatible resins that would food safe, nice, but it wasn’t really proper. So then Formlabs came out and things. But before the Formlabs I was teaching smart at the time, so I’ve been doing guidance over a few years and I’d kind of gone into Smart Mechanic, gone back with that now, which is totally different story. But with Swap at the time is great was cloud based with things and I was speaking to Florian a lot. We were doing a lot of courses with him, Florian Schober, who’s head honcho over at AdMob and you know, he’s a I’m going to be rude here. He’s either German or Austrian, but he lives in Basel and he’s got this accent and he’s going to probably listen to this and kill me. But he was like, Why do you want to pretend? No, nobody wants to bring it. And I was like, Well, I do. And I’m sure a lot of other people would rather, you know, and have it done in house and stuff.

[00:54:01] And I’ve got this cheap Chinese transfer just bought and I’ve got some resin for it. Can I get my sales and print it myself? No, you can’t read them. And then that was basically one of the reasons why we ended up doing less with Swap at the time was we wanted to we wanted to get them to do a model like Blue Sky Bio where you could you could have your own exports and we moved on to other systems with things and the whole, the whole printing side of things is evolving from there. And I’ve ended up with form labs with weird Chinese ones, which again, no disservice to anything or anybody from China. My goodness, those those guys, they just evolve fast. They’re just constantly constant. William Bates, an apprentice, so you can have one. And then literally a few months later, it’ll be another one totally different again and evolve it. So all of these different prints, we keep trying and then at the same time going for more expensive ones and the validated workflows about them actually vs about the accurate ones. We’ve we’ve got a D for K from Vision Tech in London, which is now the desktop health brand, you know, all these different principles. I think over time I bought three peak printers that I gamble with to try and print implant frameworks, all sorts of silly printers, which which didn’t work out very well.

[00:55:22] Have you ever printed metals, Titanium.

[00:55:25] So I’m, I have actually. So yeah, one of the things that I’ve been doing my PhD the last seven years, I’ve been trying desperately to get it finished, which the hope. David Wood and the chaps that leads listen to this, because I saw them last December and I would really like to finish my PhD now, but, but that’s a different story and I won’t go on at that one. But yeah, I really need to get it to the external examples. Anyway. So my PhD is on guided surgery and adventurous guided surgery and improving the accuracy of it. So one of the things which are patented, these little things I won’t go into, it’s not ready for market yet, but it will be soon. But that we were for the prototypes I was getting printed with like an online printing service a few years ago, which they printed them on the left printer to to get them. But it’s not, it’s not the same level as as machined metal. It’s just it’s not there yet. It’s not the same resolution. It’s cool. It’s very cool. But but the screw pads weren’t very good. So good for things maybe for, like, I don’t know, chrome frameworks, maybe you could do with it and polish it up after that might be a cool thing and frameworks if you polish it up after.

[00:56:39] But how are the aligners?

[00:56:42] Good question. We’re in the process of trialling those minutes. So with Patrick’s little baby as the deadline deadline is lop side of things.

[00:56:52] So before you go on so so there was the way of printing the models. Yeah. And then pressure forming onto the models the old way. Yeah right. That was, that was one form of making your own aligners. Right. Yeah. But now you’re telling me we can print the aligner itself in a practice, in dental practice? Does it make sense.

[00:57:14] In the future? I make 100% because if you think about it, cost wise and time wise, yeah, someone loses in a Line-Up, you can print a new one in 30 minutes. They can then wash it again. And. And the amount of resin that you would use is a very thin. It would be a mess. Not to say that it was cheap. I think one of the big, big, big, big.

[00:57:36] How worried is the client? How worried are the guys at the line about this? You must have I think.

[00:57:42] They’re already on this, you know, right? I think so. And I’ll tell you why I think so is there’s so much development with the resin that if they’re not, they’d be silly because the resins that that we’re testing, the reason why we’re trialling them is I want before we recommend anything, I want to know that it works well. Right? So you have to think about Aligners in a different way using principle liners, because it’s like any resin is flexible. So a thermal forms aligner, when it’s thermal formed gradually over time, it loses that pressure on the teeth and it distorts. Whereas the things that they put into some of these 3D printed resins like fibres and carbon fibres or whatever it is, I need to look it up. So forgive me for being wrong with that, but they, they introduce the whole concept of four dimensional stability in the in the actual shape of the aligner. So body heat heating it up will return it to its original shape a little bit like the nightie files that we have with Endo so that that metal is supposed to heat it up, supposed to go back to the original shape. So the whole thing with these is going to change the way that we design aligners, the number of aligners and all of that, because potentially you might be able to put more stress on the tooth or rather more of a change in the position because it’s going to put a more gentle pressure over longer, but actually try and return it to that shape that you’ve printed that line of two. So. I think the whole line of workflow is going to change with 3D printing, not just in terms of number of lines, but the actual thinking of the mechanics. So we’ll see. It’s going to be an interesting one with them.

[00:59:36] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[00:59:52] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:05] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi, and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:22] We’ve had some brilliant feedback from the Leading Lady series. This is the third part and some really brilliant nuggets. Highlights of the conversations with some of the top lady dentists in the country sharing their thoughts. Enjoy. Jenny Kirby, what’s your advice for for a woman who wants to get into implant ology? I mean, tell me about it. When you say it’s male dominated. Is it is it that the sort of the back slapping, gung ho not admitting to your failures, male dominated? Is that what you mean by male? I know it’s more men than women, but. But but culturally, what does that mean culturally?

[00:01:04] I think along the lines of what you said, that’s the impression I think a lot of us females get. And I think the bottom line is that there are not many females in it. I think the cost entry points to a high, considering what females tend to have to juggle the family life and the work life balance is much harder to kind of get into that realm of work.

[00:01:26] Yeah, but but if there were loads of women in ontologies out there. Are we saying? What would be different? Would we? Are you really saying people would be discussing their failures more?

[00:01:37] I don’t know. I don’t know. I think it’s a human thing. Discussing one’s shortcomings, failures, issues, insecurities, whatever you want to call it. I think people tend to be quite guarded in whatever capacity. But I think we should change that. Open up.

[00:01:55] I mean, I can imagine the men will say, my implant drill is bigger than yours, sort of, you know. Men have a way of doing it, particularly surgeons. You know, surgeons in general. They’re that way inclined. What would you say to a woman who wants to get into an implant ology now? What should she do?

[00:02:16] I think you should find mentors that you’re very comfortable with, people that are going to kind of build your confidence, empower you, and kind of help you in your journey. I met a woman called Karen McDermott. She’s an unsung hero. She’s retired now. She was one of the first females in England doing dentistry. She’s on a par on good friends with Ashok Sethi and Sharma. So she’s of that generation and she mentored me. And she really the times when I had down days, you know, she’d rock up at the practice and be there just to kind of support me. She was brilliant, you know, And she’s not one that’s kind of in-your-face and showing off and exuberant. She’s just an unsung hero. So I think you need to come across the right kind of people that are going to be supportive of you.

[00:03:06] But okay, listen, I don’t know enough about it to explain it to me. When you say find a mentor, there’s a mentor. Someone who, out of the kindness of their heart, is helping you or is a mentor someone you pay to help you, or it’s going to be both.

[00:03:20] I never found any. I think well, I think there’s people that are generous with their knowledge to varying degrees, and whether it be a phone call or discussion or, you know, watching them. And then there are people you’ve got to pay as well, understandably so, because they’re taking a day out to come and assist you. And you pay fees to varying degrees. And that’s why the entry level costs are quite high to kind of understand the game and the skill. I used a variety of mentors and people early on in my journey because I think as opposed to using the same mentor all the time, you can learn different things, skill set. Everyone does it differently.

[00:04:00] So break it down for me. What do I do? I’m a 29 year old associate. I want to. I want to become an implant ologist. Find someone who’s very experienced and say, Can I watch? And then what? Do a course you do?

[00:04:16] I probably say, don’t do implants. I’d say, Yeah, because I think everyone’s jumped onto the implant bandwagon.

[00:04:25] It’s very everyone’s jumped on to align bleach bond Right. That’s what everyone’s jumped on to implant.

[00:04:31] There’s a greater volume of people that named AbbVie as compared to implants. I think I think this I think is great. I think to software is great. I think should I say, there’s lots of other modalities and I think implants. There’s a lot of people teaching it and they’re making money. It’s a business of teaching dental implants, so it’s in their interest to get more people doing it. But I think the risks are quite high. The learning curve is too steep for an associate. It’s difficult investment and getting your structure and set up with the nurses and the sepsis and everything, there’s a lot to it and a lot of stress. So you have to be passionate, you have to be determined and you have to be carefully considered and sure that that’s something you’re going to do. What I have heard is there’s a lot of people that dabble on training and implant dentistry and haven’t continued it forward. There’s many people who’ve done it, but not taking it any further, which is understandable as well.

[00:05:25] Yeah, well, I definitely wasn’t expecting you to hear you say that. I mean, one minute you’re saying male dominated. I’m saying, Well, woman wants to get involved, ask for your help. And you were saying you would say, don’t do it.

[00:05:38] Oh, sorry. I’m sorry. I thought you said What would you say to anyone wanting to do it? I didn’t realise.

[00:05:43] But it’s an interesting response here. You’re saying really don’t do it unless you’re very, very serious. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what you’re saying.

[00:05:50] I think you have to be. Consider it carefully. Understand? I think a lot of people are misconceived implants to be a big book, big money spinner. Let’s get into it because I’m going to make a ton of money. I think you have to understand that the learning curve is steep and it’s long.

[00:06:07] And now you kind of teach on some of these implant courses to yourself.

[00:06:12] Yeah, Not. Not massively. I think it’s me now where I’m at. Interestingly, in my I’ve done the growth, the learning, the journey, the business, the practice set up, the private practice. Female kids. I feel if if you’ve heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs, I really feel at a point in my life where I think I’ve got enough. I’m really content financially and I want to kind of give back and empower other people in whatever capacity I can. And when I was younger, money was important and it’s a natural tendency to want to show that money off, be it by a flash car, whether it’s because you enjoy driving it or whether you want to show it or designer clothes or whatever it might be adversely for me. Conversely, for me, it’s I’ve gone the opposite. I feel that I don’t really have a desire to kind of exhibit wealth. My needs have become a lot more modest. You know, I’m on a dieting program where I hardly anything now, so I can’t even spend it on fine food. So for me, the driver isn’t money in finances anymore, but more connecting with people, giving back, teaching, empowering, networking. And I really love people. I think I like understanding people and I feel that from a business point of view as well, I create synergistic partnerships, so I connect with people, try and identify their strengths and go into business along those lines. So if I tell you, you know, I’ve had a chicken and chip shop, I’ve had a car wash, a bed and breakfast holiday, less HMO student bills, property development, well, just very things. And it’s diversification. It makes life quite interesting.

[00:08:04] Arianne And Victoria Sampson.

[00:08:06] Because I wanted to do orthodontics, I had to do go through the motions of for the application, which the first part was to do a year of Max Fox, which I did at Northwick Park and the Northwest London hospitals. And that was actually the first time that I really veered off course in terms of my ambitions to be an orthodontist. That was one of the best years of my life. And the stress of it, the terrible hours, the on call, the gore, the emotions of that year of Max Fox. I loved every second of it, every second of it. And I very seriously thought to myself, I think I might not do orthodontics. I think I’ll do Max Fox. Wow. And after that year of Max Fox, I did two months more of Max Fox in Cambridge at Addenbrooke’s. Then I got a Pedes post at the Royal London. And Pedes posts were like, I think they still are. They’re like gold dust. They’re so hard to come by. So as soon as you hear about one, you have to go. So that’s why I left Addenbrooke’s only after two months. Started the post at the Royal London, and I still had Max Box in the back of my head. And so I applied for medicine while I was doing Pedes. And sometimes it takes just writing and sending off your application for you to really realise what it is that you want. And as soon as I put my application for medical school through the post, I was like, Actually, I don’t want to do it, but I needed to go through that motion to know that I’ll never regret the decision of not having tried for Max Box.

[00:09:47] I mean, the fact you enjoyed all the surgery house jobs is amazing to me. And I did an oral surgery house. I hated every second of it. I did not like it. So I guess you were all in that sort of in between. So do you now, do you now think if if life had turned that way, do you regret it to some extent, or are you fully happy that you never went that direction?

[00:10:11] I’m fairly happy. I never went in that direction. I think if I weren’t an orthodontist, but I was still in dentistry, then I would have done Max Box. But I really feel like an orthodontist, so I’m happy with it.

[00:10:25] What about you, Victoria? What was your first move out of dental school? What was the first thing the.

[00:10:31] So I did my bit and in London. So I stuck around and then I wasn’t sure if I wanted to specialise or not. A lot of people told me I should follow my sister’s footsteps and specialise and I was very interested in ended on techs and I just loved a good root canal. So that was actually where I was going to go down. And then when I finished I was finishing up my year and I started to shadow other dentists because I wanted to see what other types of dentistry were like and what I wanted to do. So I was shadowing. I was taking a day off of work to go and shadow other dentists, private NHS specialist, general dentists, everything. And I kept on shadowing them and realised that actually I love general dentistry and I love the fact that you can walk in and you can see anyone and you can be treating a six year old child and then treat an 85 year old for a root canal straight after. And I found it very exciting and just it kept me on my toes and I was meeting all of these amazing people. Like, I mean, obviously Arianne Straub is amazing, but for me I wouldn’t be able to just see a certain age group or do a certain treatment. I like the fact that I can do so many different things. So I decided that I would become a general dentist, but I would kind of explore everything. And I’m one of those people who likes to kind of learn everything and then and then decide what I want to do afterwards. So I was doing a ton of courses and I went into general dentistry. I started working part private half the week and then part NHS. And then about a year ago I made the shift to fully private and now I still do general dentistry, but I have a few things that I kind of don’t want to say specialise in, but things that I focus on and that I really like doing.

[00:12:21] Well, I know you’ve got this real research interest in the oral microbiome, but is that that’s not what you’re referring to, you’re referring to as dentists. What kind of things do you like doing?

[00:12:32] Well, actually, I do do a lot of work on the oral microbiome, but on my patients. So you do? Yeah. So I’ve started to when I was doing my research, I was realising that it’s not necessarily the quantity of plaque that’s the issue in terms of gum disease or decay, but it’s actually the quality and what bacteria you have in your mouth. I’m sure we’ve all had patients who have what seems like a very clean mouth and the patient’s got excellent oral hygiene, but somehow they’ve just got raging gum disease and you kind of blame it on like their immune system. You’re like, Oh yeah, it’s probably, you know, your body’s not reacting very well or something like that. But what I was finding was I was starting to do microbiome tests on these patients and I would just screen their mouths for the top 20 kind of pathogenic bacteria. And I was finding that a lot of these patients would have residual bacteria in their mouths from maybe bad habits ten years ago. And if we were able to modulate that bacteria and basically kick out those bad bacteria with specific antiseptics, antibiotics, like everything. So we do a lot of different things and then monitor them. We can then afterwards re redo the microbiome test and see that we’ve actually kicked out that bacteria. And the patient often actually not often always stabilises and their gum disease leaves and they, you know, it’s amazing. So that’s something that I it’s kind of my niche at the moment.

[00:13:54] Is that is it did it start with your interest in this stuff with Perio?

[00:13:58] Yeah. So what I started with, so Arianne and I rewrote a paper on the link between oral hygiene and COVID 19 severity about like I think a year and a half ago now. And it got me understanding more about the oral microbiome and kind of the invisible inside the mouth. And as you go through dental school, you’re taught a lot about how to treat dental disease, but not necessarily how to diagnose or how to monitor treatments. And so I kind of think of the mouth now and the saliva as the as blood. So you go to your doctor and you get a blood test. Why can’t you go to your dentist and get a saliva test and look at different inflammatory markers and bacteria and enzymes and etc.? And that’s where it all started for me. And I started working with the microbiome company straight after we published that paper and help them basically create a microbiome test, which I now use on my patients.

[00:14:55] Oh, wow. So, so let’s get let’s get into it then. What can we what can you learn from someone’s saliva? I mean, we understand there’s a link between gum disease and heart disease. There’s a link between gum disease and diabetes. Right. But is there more than that? Is there a whole lot of other stuff that outside of the mouth that you can tell by saliva?

[00:15:23] Yeah. So a lot of the kind of systemic like the chronic inflammatory diseases. So rheumatoid arthritis, osteo. Writers, those types of things. We’re seeing amazing results with our patients. So I’ve been working a lot with a couple of functional doctors near my practice and they refer their patients who they’re treating for rheumatoid arthritis. And these patients are, you know, drugged up on steroids. They can hardly walk. The disease can be very debilitating. And often because it’s to do with inflammation, with collagen degradation, which is very similar to gum disease in the mouth. These patients with rheumatoid arthritis often also have gum disease, and it’s not their number one priority, as unfortunately most people, their oral hygiene is not the first thing they think of when they have other ailments. And so these patients were being referred to me and these doctors are just like, Oh, can you just stabilise the gum disease and just make sure everything’s okay? And so we started to do that again, modulating their microbiome, checking their inflammatory markers. And what we were finding was that their rheumatoid arthritis was improving when their gum disease had been settled and there was a direct correlation between the two of them. So there’s a lot more systemic diseases where we can see that there’s a huge connection with the mouth. I mean, Alzheimer’s is the kind of the hottest one at the moment. There is a lot of the gastro kind of diseases, Crohn’s, all sorts of colitis, even deficiencies. So there’s so many. And I think that because of COVID and the fact that people are more understanding of their systemic health and they want to be the best kind of person they can be in as healthy as possible, it’s a great time for dentists to also show patients that there’s a strong connection with oral health.

[00:17:10] Rob Young man, tell me about motherhood. I mean, we discussed it at the beginning, the juggling. I mean, you’re are you still as sort of into teeth as you were before being a mother?

[00:17:24] Yes, surprisingly. But I find it harder to be so because before I had a I would just be like message somebody on Instagram, but like, Oh, hey, Ahmed Tydfil, you do great composites. You teach really well. Can I just come to you? Is like, Yeah, I’m in Pimlico. If I jump on a train one hour, go there, film with him, come back now. It’s like, I want to film with somebody. But I have Alana and my husband needs to go to work. Don’t want to put her nursery, so I can’t really ask to be a day where I can be like, Do you mind taking the day off? Can you watch it? And I can go film like even now today to do podcast review so that she’s not crawling around and screaming and jumping on me. I come to my mum’s house and said, Can you watch her for a bit while I’m on podcast? So it’s it’s a lot harder to work around. It’s not as flexible when you have a baby in terms of my free time is no longer my free time, but in terms of loving dentistry, the two days I go back to work now, I do love it. I actually love it.

[00:18:16] Love it even more, right?

[00:18:17] Because yeah, me time.

[00:18:19] My wife, my wife used say to me time and I can understand it needs time. Someone else. It’s not work.

[00:18:26] Yeah, I know that they say that, right? You’ve got your work life, your family life, and then you’ve got your metre. My me time. Work time is the same because I don’t really have any time. So I get to go to work, talk to my staff, I get to chat to my patients, have a laugh, do some dentistry, and then come home to my baby and just love and miss her even more.

[00:18:44] I mean, a bit of advice, you know, there’s no right or wrong in all of this year. But Nanny. Now, Honestly, honestly, you’re busy. And your mom, I don’t know where she lives and how far away she is and all that. All of that.

[00:18:58] Luckily, not too far, but.

[00:19:00] But, you know, busy people. And you should consider nannies. And we had a nanny. She stayed with us for 12 years now. Okay. It’s not always going to be like that. You might struggle. You can’t trust people. There was a time where every time my kid used to say something amazing, I was like, What? How did you learn that? And then she’d say, Oh, the nanny taught me that. And I would sort of feel like, Wait a minute, this is cool. Know you’re getting something other than flexibility out of out of the out of your nanny.

[00:19:30] My mom is like my current nanny at the moment. So she’s.

[00:19:33] Really.

[00:19:34] She’s the one who teaches a lot of everything.

[00:19:36] I mean, maybe I’m saying both sets of grandparents of my parents and my parents were both abroad, so we had to have someone to help us out or whatever. But it’s a bit like your first employee, you know, you need someone to push you into hiring sometimes, you know? Like that. Enlighten my partner, Sage. Whenever there’s a problem, he’s thinking, Who? Who can we bring in to take care of this problem? And for me, my natural position isn’t normally to think of hiring. You know, I like I say, No, I got it. Are you going to have more?

[00:20:10] I would like to. I would like to, but I kind of want to because I found out when we signed the papers for the practice in April and then we had to close the doors the next day, I was really sick. I thought it was just tired and stressed and I thought, Oh, we close the practice, know I can’t furlough the staff, can’t get a business grant because technically we counted as a new business because we were after March, anybody before March got all the grants. So we didn’t I thought this must be the stress, that this is why I’m feeling sick and tired and didn’t have.

[00:20:35] Enough cash like working capital to cover that all the staff’s wages for three months.

[00:20:40] So luckily, because the money was still coming in.

[00:20:42] Of course. Of course, of course. Cause.

[00:20:44] Cause we were able to not furlough them, but we just told them, Look, stay home. We’re going to pay you. We’re going to fix hours 96. We just paid all the staff. You’re going to get a fixed wage. If you want to come in a couple hours a day, you can do. And we had our receptionist calling all the people over 60 checking that they could get their food and shopping done and stuff like that, you know, And sometimes the nurse would come in and just reorganise the shelves and the cupboards and just a couple of hours just to keep them and they enjoyed it. So all that I would get at the house because they’re trapped at home. So they kind of enjoyed coming to the practice and they were like, Look, there’s no fixed hours, nothing. You’re paid 9 to 6, but if you want to come in, you can. And then we just started redecorating because we were inside the practice. Let’s just paint the surgery, let’s do a few things. So when I was painting, I was like, Oh man, I’m getting old. And then I took a pregnancy test. I was like, Oh, okay. So I got the practice. I got the baby exactly the same time. So yeah, that was a big, big surprise.

[00:21:37] And how about this book now? I mean, it’s not like you weren’t busy enough.

[00:21:41] We started the book before the practice and before, but really? Yeah. So when I started social media, actually about a year after, Nicola had been following me for a while. Doctor Go, I think you said you just interviewed her recently. Yeah. Lovely. And she similar to the media company just message and said, I really like the way you talk on your stories. I like you and you know, you seem young and full of energy. I have a project for you. Come meet me at my practice. And then I told my husband I was like this random lady, random Iranian lady. She looks quite sweet on her stories. She wants to meet me for a project. He’s like, What project? That’s like. She hasn’t said. She uses a secret project. He goes, Why are you going to go meet this random Iranian dentist lady? You don’t know to do a secret project you don’t know about? He looks like she could be weird. I was like, No, I can see her videos. She’s not weird. She’s just. He’s not. Why you? I said, I don’t know. She said she thinks I’m nice. She’s been following me. He’s like, okay. Then I went to her practice in a will. So she has she has two. And I went there and she goes, I want to write a book. And she’s like, people my age, they just they just don’t they’re not interested anymore. They want to retire. They don’t have the zest to this. And she’s like young people. They don’t have the knowledge, but she’s like, You’re in the middle. You seem to have the time, the knowledge, the zest for dentistry. Want to work on this project with me? And I said, Sure.

[00:22:52] I said, If we’re 50, 50 partners, I’ll put in as much energy as you want me to. But I said, I want my money, that I come from this to go to charity because I’ve been looking for a project to do for charity. So do you mind if I do something like that? She’s like, I have no problem. I said, Okay, let’s work on it. So we just started working. She had some ideas already. She’s like, I want it to be like a flow chart book. And I said, Whatever, you know, I’m busy and brown. So we talked like, if I was older than you, you just kind of say, I’ll say, Yeah, whatever you want. Nicola We’ll do it this way. She’s like, Can you come to our practice? Yes, we’ll do it. Yes, boss. Like everything. And so she loved it. This partnership worked. I had so much respect for her because she had so much knowledge and so much time and energy to share with me. And I just had the time at the time to sit there writing up stuff, looking at evidences, looking at papers. And when I started doing the project was quite exciting because I was like, Oh wow, there’s ten different ways you can do this. There’s 20 different ways you can do this, and you know, all the evidence is behind things. And we just started working on the book and yeah, it just went from there and just kind of spiralled and just got bigger. And we started making more chapters and adding more things. And it just. Came this dentistry in a nutshell, an exciting project for the two of them.

[00:23:53] Really is really interesting. So fully for charity, it was just your bit for charity and.

[00:24:02] I think Nicola’s doing a few things. Charity issue she was mentioning. There’s a few things she wants to do. I have a question. I said, Whatever you do with your you’re I always mentioned, I always say my promise 100% go there. But there is a few things she’s doing for charity as well. But I had a few places that I wanted to help. But I want is I don’t know if you know who I am. And he just Wells and Wills. Yeah. So just donated there for a village there, which was quite nice. And there’s a few schools in Pakistan and there’s a homeless shelter here in the UK hand on heart. I like what they do for their charities, so I just kind of wanted to find a way to make a difference because I feel like my time isn’t my time now. So if I call it donate, my time for charity is like a donation of wealth. So something.

[00:24:41] Rabia Why are you that person who wants to do something for charity and what believes in the NHS for what it is? And you know what? Why aren’t you the other type of, you know, like make as much money as I can and.

[00:24:55] Maybe religiously and from things that happened in my life, You know, when I got married to Carlile, two weeks, three weeks after his mum passed away from cancer, she was diagnosed four months before the wedding with melanoma and she passed away two weeks after the wedding. She was in Australia. It was really stressful time and she was flying back and forward and we got married early before the wedding date so I could fly with him, you know, practice my parents in Pakistani. They’re not gonna let you fly with, with my fiance to Australia. You get married in the mosque, go, off you go, and then you fly to Australia. And then we saw her in the hospital and she was like, No, you guys go back for your wedding. I want to see your wedding pictures. I can’t be there at the wedding, but I want my son to have his wedding. So we flew back and then three days flew back into Australia and then she was in palliative care for two weeks and then she passed away. And when my father was putting her stuff away, you know, her PhD is that Look, what do I do with her PhD, what I do with her gold, what I do with jewellery. Look, I walk in closet with all these clothes. What do we do if she’s not taking anything with her? And it’s true, we didn’t.

[00:25:54] We don’t take anything with us, you know, We only thing you really can leave behind is people who might say something nice about you. And I remember the funeral when everybody met me. We didn’t have a reception to laughter, and they were like, Oh, that girl in the black, She must be Khalil’s new wife. That’s that’s her daughter, Louis, Janet’s daughter in law. And I can hear people whispering. Then they’ll come up to me like, Oh, you know, sorry about your mother in law. She was amazing. Everyone had these wonderful things to say about her. She’s so helpful. She helped us with this and she helped me do this. And she was so kind. And it just it was amazing to hear about her because I didn’t know her for very long. And I thought, you know, when I die, what would people say about me? Have I helped anyone? Have I touched anybody in a special way, in A to to make them feel that they would want to come to my funeral and say something. And, you know, so I just felt like maybe I hadn’t made enough of an impact in somebody else’s life other than mine or my families. So I thought, how can I help somebody else? You know, how can I leave something behind?

[00:26:53] Nicola Gaul Tell me about the book Density in a nutshell. How did it come about? And Dr. Rabie, a man who we’re having on this show soon as well, your co co-host, how did you meet her and how did this all happen?

[00:27:06] So it all boils back down to me being a trainer. When I was a trainer, I was every year teaching this. So I’ve been a trainer since 2003. Now, up till now, never had a gap in between, thank God. And hopefully I won’t. I want to carry on being a trainer till I can. So I was teaching everything with tips and every time I went on a course the tips would be adding up and everything I teach them is like a cocktail of everything I’ve learned throughout my career from oral surgery, cosmetic, my M.S., my, my experience in dentistry. So when it got to one of my trainees called Kavita, I said to Kavita, Look, Kavita, this is like going back to 2019. I said, I think it’s better if I write things down and make it into flowcharts. It’s easier to learn. And she goes, Sure, how would you like me to do that? I said, So let’s start with bridge prep. Can you put that into a flowchart and write it down? Like from from the moment that we’ve treatment plans to put into study models, topical ELA, consent forms, you know everything, Let’s do it in a flowchart. She goes, okay, I’ll try. So she did it on word and she showed it to me and I said, Brilliant, Let’s do the next one on Crown.

[00:28:23] Let’s do the next one on, I don’t know, immediate dentine ceiling. So we started doing flowcharts and I got a pool of paperwork together. Then I was looking at it one day I said, Oh my God, I should make it into a logbook. So for my next trainee, it’s easier to teach. So I started putting it into a logbook. And then and then I looked at it. I thought this would make a good book. And then I looked on. I was like, looking and searching like, what else to write. So I said, okay, we’re going to have different chapters, restorative, this, that and the workload was getting too much. I thought, You know what? Let me let me find someone who’s so passionate about dentistry like I am. Then I started thinking of all my trainees. I know everybody was busy and generally busy with Smile Academy. Kavita was helping me anyway with this stuff. The other trainees that were doing, they had implants or so most of my trainees have done a master’s degrees now and they’re very busy in their own practices. So I looked on Instagram, I came across Rabiya, which I was following at the time, and she was like talking all about her cases in surgery, similar to what I was doing. I thought, She’s really a mini me.

[00:29:33] I really like her. So I messaged her on Instagram. I said, Rabiya, I have a small project I’m working on. I really want your help. And she goes, Well, what is it you want me to do? I said, Just come over because I don’t even know what I want you to do. Just come over. So she she said, Where are you guys at Harrow. She goes, Oh, I live in Harrow. I’ll come. So she came to her will. She had a look at this. She goes, Oh my God, yeah, let’s do it. So fun. You know, whatever. I said, I don’t know if it’s going to be a book or what is a project. Let’s just work on it. So we started working on it together and eventually it hit. Eventually she fell pregnant. She was very sick. She couldn’t do any more work. And then she then turned around. She bought a dental practice, then it became COVID and then everything just fell apart. So we wrote some of it, some chapters randomised, we made it into chapters, but it wasn’t nothing major. Then during COVID, we did a bit more together, which we had time, we organised all the chapters and stuff and then it hit Christmas time, Christmas time. By then Pooja, my current trainee, had started to work with me.

[00:30:39] I said to Puja, You’re so good at tech stuff, which I’m so bad at. Can you help me like tie these flowcharts up and put photos for stuff? And it goes, Yeah, of course, tell me what to do. So he started helping me and then by then I had also established the British Iranian Dental Association and I had a committee, one of the people on my committee who was my secretary, the Beatles secretary. His name is Millard Miller, and he is a fifth year dental graduate from Glasgow. You met him in BCD? Yeah. And he’s you did meet him. And he I said to him that, you know, he said, I can help you as well on this. It’s such a good project because I wanted him to proofread it because he’s in dental school and I thought it’s going to help because he’s quite up to date. So I said, Can you help proofreading it? So it started proofreading it and he goes, The doctor goes, There’s lots more we can add to the book. I’m happy to help you. So then I said, Okay, why not? Then again, it hit COVID time with lockdown. And in my family, everyone got COVID last Christmas really badly, especially Mahmood. Poor thing. His oxygen levels dropped to 78. He was awful.

[00:31:50] I mean, we didn’t take him to hospital. I nursed him myself to recovery with oxygen and everything else. And anyway, so we were on Zoom day in, day out, day in, day out, over Christmas, over January. And we metered it up a lot, worked on it. Pujan mILLAR were really, really good at helping me, organising it, giving it a bit more oomph. And Pooja was amazing at finding publishers and editing and publishing the book. And both boys helped me with, with help us with the marketing side and Instagram videos and putting the stuff together and like we had plans of how we’re going to move this forward and eventually release it. So really this book is a product of teamwork, is a product of unity, is a product of trust. It’s not just it was my project for for, I would say six months. I shared it with Rabia. Rabia helped me a lot on it. And then eventually we brought Pujan Mila Din, who actually finished it and helped us finish it and get it to where where it is now. So I would never say it’s just my book. This is our book. It’s a team team effort, and we had a group of specialists who actually peer reviewed it as well and everyone’s been acknowledged. So again, another black book.

[00:33:13] Another black. I love you. Your your stories tend to always go round. You inspired someone to do something. It’s a beautiful thing.

[00:33:21] Yeah, it’s a beautiful dude. Thank you, Payman. Thank you.

[00:33:24] We’re going to end it. We end it in the in the same way every time. And it’s weird because we’ve spoken for over an hour and a half and we still haven’t even talked about your current practice. But you told me everything you needed to tell me that the nurse is looking forward to coming to work, and that’s. That’s the best sign you could ever have.

[00:33:44] Exactly.

[00:33:45] So we’ve got two final questions, perhaps final question and my first or perhaps final question. You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your nearest and dearest all around you. One of three bits of advice, you’d leave them.

[00:34:01] Oh, Prav, what a difficult question. Number one, always have time for people, especially people you care for. Not family first. Family always first, parents first, siblings first, then your nearest and dearest friends. But then sometimes nearest and dearest friends become family, don’t they? Payman? They become like family. So always have time, always have empathy. Try and be. If I was on deathbed with my children, whether I’d say, be organised, be organised, I want to leave that legacy behind because organisation is what helped me, you know, being organised. I have books, I have diaries, I have, you know, if I show you, I have every year I have a book. Yeah. And I write everything in here for my trips. I plan ahead, you know, and I’ve learned this. It’s not I haven’t been born with it. I’ve watched people who do it and it’s helped me. The other thing is always the people who help you. Give them the credit for it. Don’t take the pie and eat it yourself because Payman Langroudi didn’t become Payman Langroudi on his own. Nikola God didn’t become Nikola, Igor on her own. You know, we all have a story. We all have a journey. And when you actually say that, that you appreciate and you give credit to people who help you, you actually get respected more and you get to higher places and you will achieve your dreams. Why? Because people then want to come and help you because they know. Nikola go Payman Langroudi will credit them for their hard work, not going to chew them and throw them away. And I think and I hope that people who have been in my life, they feel that I am like that and I don’t, you know, use them or abuse them and I am giving them credit for the hard work they do for me. And I appreciate it.

[00:36:08] That’s lovely.

[00:36:10] Alexandra Jasinski I mean, I really hope whoever is listening this podcast and dealt with some complaints, I would really like them to send me a message to tell me if they 100% got over it.

[00:36:26] Yeah, I hear you.

[00:36:26] I hear you because I didn’t and I don’t think I will ever do. Listen, I feel like.

[00:36:32] Alex, that’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to say it’s ridiculous because it’s.

[00:36:37] Like.

[00:36:37] It’s all right. It’s still reality. It’s your reality are the other means. The word was wrong. Ridiculous is the wrong way.

[00:36:43] That’s okay.

[00:36:44] But you will get over this. Yeah. I mean, you know, I know people in much worse situations and gotten over it. Yeah. And, you know, I don’t know you. I don’t know exactly whether you you were. But my point is, you know, it’s like, it’s like, I don’t know, like. Like a like a death. Yeah, you’ll never forget it. But in the end, you know, you move on from it. Yes. You know. Well, if, God forbid, someone close to you passes away, I’m not going to say you’re ever going to get over that, because, you know, that’s that’s a that’s a thing that, you know, you’re never going to get over, but you can get back to the person you were. I wouldn’t write yourself off that quickly. You know what I mean? Very young to do that, I think.

[00:37:34] But look at you. You’re very wise, right? I probably you lived like four times more than I lived so far.

[00:37:41] So that was my job to tell you these things then.

[00:37:44] So it’s it’s it’s amazing that you tell me this. And I think you’re absolutely 100% right. But it’s like being scared of heights. You know, you can’t really control it. And, you know, when we will go to, like, my transition and stuff, and when I took some space out of it, I started to miss it. And I understood going back in the clinic.

[00:38:09] To.

[00:38:09] Value it. I’m actually doing a brilliant job. Of course, I’m not, you know, like maybe a good cosmetic surgeon kind of dentist that does impeccable bonding techniques and stuff. But the way I treat a patient is always fair and it’s with gentleness. And I think fair is the most important word here. Yes. And I do what’s right for them. And I understand that. And I feel it every single time I’m in the clinic. But somewhere, you know, deep inside, it’s always that very bad memory. It’s not just what happened, but how long it took to clear out. And it’s a relieving every time you get to go through this process, you understand that it’s an ongoing feeling that you’re experimenting. Basically, you’re you’re feeling basically and maybe it’s something you know, maybe I need to educate myself. I need to do.

[00:39:05] To in this country, we’re going through a nightmare legal situation as dentists. Yeah, in that yeah, more dentists are getting more complaints and being sued by more patients than than in every other country apart from New Zealand. Apparently so. More than America, which is, you know, we were always used to look at American dentists and laugh about how they’re getting sued all the time. But it’s happening more here. And I know this isn’t helping you at all.

[00:39:32] So that’s very encouraging.

[00:39:36] But but the thing is, talking to you, I can see you’re one of those dentists. We need more dentists like you. You know, more people who are doing it for the patient fair. You know, you’re obviously you’re an enthusiastic person. The profession needs more people like you. And it’s a damn shame if people like you who someone who’s gentle and responsive. You know, the problem is someone who’s gentle yourself. I’m not talking about with your hands, but a gentle person gets hurt more by this sort of thing than someone who’s hard and just shrugs it off. But, you know, I know dentists just just to help you out. I know dentists have been sued every year for the last four years. And the more it happens, the less they worry about it. Because they figure out they figure out the system of what is what is a real complaint.

[00:40:23] Brokers.

[00:40:24] And and so forth. And, you know, complaints. They shouldn’t happen. But but you should think of them as part of the job. Now in UK dentistry, it’s easy for me to say I’m not practising anymore.

[00:40:38] And it’s not even fair. Yeah.

[00:40:41] When I was practising, when I was, I stopped practising ten years ago, but when I was practising it, this thing just wasn’t a big issue, you know, It wasn’t as big an issue as it is right now. And I know a lot of the younger dentists are stressing a lot and we’re about to do a whole mental health month and talk to people about I know the number one cause of mental health problems in dentistry is patient complaints. So you should join that that little. We’ll talk.

[00:41:07] About that.

[00:41:07] Absolutely So so okay. So you decided it damaged you you thought irreversibly and and you decided you were going to pull away from dentistry and look at other avenues. Yeah. Tell me about that story. So how did it, you know, the confidence it takes? You know, we’ve only ever done dentistry, right?

[00:41:27] So that’s the hard part of it because I ever I mean, anything I read and anything I learned was for dentistry, for teeth. And I have a very good friend of mine, a very good friend of mine. Her name is Alex and she she always says like, But you have transferable skills, you know, I mean, I hear this so many times, I’m a bit tired of it. And I she has a very good heart and she’s amazing and she’s very, very important to me. But it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t want your dentist. No, she’s not the dentist. She’s. She’s a, she’s, she’s practising. She, she worked for Facebook and now she’s on Amazon. Wow. She’s a very good she’s practising now to be a coach and to help you understand like not a coach, like all the coach, but like a really important one. She, she helps people like high level CEOs and stuff to.

[00:42:30] But do you believe that there aren’t some things about being authentically help you?

[00:42:35] Absolutely they are. But tell me, because I applied to many jobs, especially when COVID hit and stuff. Yeah, who cares about them and who takes two, 3 minutes to understand what my transferable skills are?

[00:42:52] You know, it’s a matter of marketing early. Yes. Yeah. You know, I could put someone in front of you or say stuff like, you know, as a dentist, I’ve had to learn complex things. Being under pressure.

[00:43:03] Enabled.

[00:43:03] Me to make people happy.

[00:43:05] Time management.

[00:43:06] Time. You can, you know, the what you.

[00:43:08] Talk about meant.

[00:43:09] Yeah. Although I can see you being the sort of very in the short time I’ve had with you, I can see you being this very sort of honest to honest person.

[00:43:18] Maybe that’s my problem. Yeah.

[00:43:20] Yeah. And, you know, marketing is about first lying to yourself and then telling other people that lie.

[00:43:30] Like, you mean, like, fake it until you make it kind of thing.

[00:43:34] But lying to yourself, you have to. You have to believe. And in this new thing that you’re saying. And so that takes a degree of confidence. And, you know, I mean, lying is the wrong word for it, but it’s this present presenting it, presenting it to yourself in in, in in a way that makes sense to you. And then you can you can sell it to other people. Yes. But, you know, again, in dental school, we weren’t taught marketing either.

[00:44:00] So go on. Losing art, no business skills, nothing. Just how to.

[00:44:05] Feel. What happened? What happened? Where did the flower thing come from? Had you done anything like that before? Or did you always.

[00:44:10] Want to something? So listen, I didn’t give up on dentistry very easily. I did. Well, first of all, with me, I didn’t give up.

[00:44:17] At all having given up yet.

[00:44:18] But no more than that. So I had another baby. I kept going. So I worked until I was pregnant. I went to work from London to Chichester and my eighth month of pregnancy every day for I love it, you know, I didn’t care. Yes. I didn’t want to leave my patients. I knew it was time for us to come back to London because things weren’t very good with my husband job. And we said, if we need opportunities, you need to be in London. So that was the reason. It was a good choice for us. But that meant for for until I got to my maternity leave, I had to travel. I think it was seven months, four days a week, sometimes five London to Chichester, back and forth. But I loved it. It was home for me, you know, I really like that clinic. The staff was fantastic. The people at the CEO and stuff. Amazing. I liked it. It worked for me. I had some some freedom to learn some stuff, to use some materials. You know, you can’t as an associate, you don’t really have that all the time. So when I moved to London, I said, Give, please give me the opportunity to work in Fulham in the Sainsbury one.

[00:45:26] And they said, Yes, of course, gone. I went not full time because, you know, I learned my lesson. Let’s do it a bit more part time. I had a baby at home as well. So I started with two days. Of course I loved it. I always loved teeth and see patients. And I think talking with them and making them feel a bit better, it’s something that I really, really enjoy. So I started working there and at some point I think maybe they felt they have a little bit of problems with the with the overall organisation and they will have to sell. So they, they wanted to sell the practice to me. You should have. And I was I was ready to buy it. We started the papers, we starting everything, everything, everything. And then the COVID hit and my lawyers, I had a very nice lawyers and financial advisers was telling me, Alex, I do appreciate your enthusiasm to close this deal, but if bigger names in the industry don’t buy that, they don’t buy anything at this moment, I can’t let you buy. It’s just not a good move for you.

[00:46:33] Well, that was bad advice, but.

[00:46:37] I don’t know. You know, listen.

[00:46:40] Because I heard I heard about the prices at some of those Centre for Dentistry went for and they were bargains. Bargains.

[00:46:48] Yes. But there are many things that, you know, they aren’t out there. You can you can you can I can take you in private because I was I was I wasn’t given a bargain deal.

[00:47:06] Hannah Burrow. How do you even set up these meetings? How does that work?

[00:47:10] Luckily, we’ve got really good network through through the incubator that we went through. So they have like created these they’ve made these introductions to begin with. And now you kind of you’ve got that network and you can reach out to those investors. But you also then because we’ve now got other investors that are invested in Heroku, they really are extremely powerful in terms of making more introductions, meeting new investors, and it really is just kind of back to back meetings, talking through your business, talking through answering any questions they have. Quite often it won’t even be that they don’t believe in your business. It might just be that they aren’t the right investor to feel like they’ve got the knowledge to support you. But all the same, you do feel it. I think actually my day would be quite different of my my most difficult day of Heroku and it would come down to team. And when we had an employee who handed in the resignation, which happens, you know, it just wasn’t a good day either. It’s just part of part of the process. But when there’s someone that you really, really respect and they’re not continuing to work with you, even if it’s because they’re going to start their own business or they want to be exposed to a different type of technology or whatever it is, that.

[00:48:23] Sort of thing.

[00:48:24] Exactly like that for me, felt like a huge failure of leadership or communicating vision or being effective at listening to not even sorry, not customer employees. So that was for me a really that was kind of a tough time.

[00:48:43] I definitely agree with that. I remember that day that’s only happened once.

[00:48:48] And it’s not that we’ve only had one one resignation ever. We’ve had more than that. But quite often, you know, they’re coming. But it wasn’t even the first one, actually. It was just a particularly difficult one where we didn’t see it coming. Whereas a lot of our resignations, we’ve known from early doors that they’re considering starting their own business or, you know, it’s been a conversation. And I think it being unawares felt like a huge failure because it’s, you know, that is you should have been able to pick that up sooner.

[00:49:15] What would you say is your biggest weakness? Hannah? To the classic interview question.

[00:49:21] I think my biggest weakness and I’m giving you a really classic answer because I’m going to give a really I think I’m not going to say that because that’s just not true. But I think my biggest weakness is probably also a big strength of mine and is that ability not to not quit, not to give up, because I think sometimes that’s allowed me to have real grit. But I think sometimes I put myself in a situation where it’s not returning what it should anymore. And I haven’t called it because I just didn’t even consider I should quit. That would be a failure.

[00:49:58] Yeah, I’m the same. I’m the same. And you find a lot of times your biggest weakness is your biggest strength.

[00:50:04] Yeah.

[00:50:05] Because I’m giving you example of that moment when you just would not quit.

[00:50:09] I think for me, actually, this is going to sound really like, but like, not a big deal. But I think it was just when I was I was working in a practice on Saturdays as well as doing Kokrokoo and to say it was 9 to 5, as is not the truth. So like doing a very kind of intense job and doing every Saturday and did it for two and a half years. And I think I just got to a point where I actually just wasn’t going out and seeing my friends. I wasn’t going out for dinners because I was just always so, so tired. And I eventually got to a point which was like, Why am I doing this? It just I hadn’t even considered that I shouldn’t be doing that anymore. And even if it was just kind of changing when I was doing it, you know, it’s not even that I’m not doing any clinical work these days, but I think that for me was me just doing the same thing over and over again and not considering that I could I could change it. Martina Hodgson I don’t really believe in mistakes. Not all like grapes. I think everything in life should be a learning experience, but I do wish I’d had the confidence I have now. But when I see all these young dentists out there doing crazy, amazing stuff and achieving all these amazing things, and I think, oh, this, I’d have that confidence 20 years ago, imagine what I could have achieved.

[00:51:29] Yeah, I know what you mean. I interviewed a fourth year dental student for this show and he’d figured some stuff out that I figured out last week, pissed me off a little bit.

[00:51:44] I think that, like these young dentists is so different to how.

[00:51:51] Yeah, but their big stress. Their big stress heads. I was going to go into the empowering women in dentistry. Yeah. How did that come about? Was that was that kind of this thing that you found yourself, you found your confidence then you wanted to share that with other women.

[00:52:08] So what happened was I went into this into Costa Coffee where I live, and there was this. Amazonian glamorous women stood in front of me in the coffee key, and I looked at her and I was like, Oh, it’s Andrea and Andrea Eby. I’d always this top 50 dentistry failure. Like every last 20 years it’s been coming out. I’ve been reading it. And she was always in it. And she was she was quite the trailblazer, you know, in terms of marketing and all this kind of things. And I’d followed her for 20 years, never met her. And so I introduced myself. I said, Oh, hi, I’m Dennis, and we just hit it off and we got chatting and then we met up again and we sort of both female practices owners, of which obviously we are outnumbered by men in terms of practice ownership. It was, it was a real delight to to speak to another female practice owner and we both really enjoying our conversation and the way that we approach running our practices seem to be different from maybe the when the way that men do it. And we felt like there was this big need out there for women to come together in dentistry because we recognise this huge lack of confidence amongst women and this kind of imposter syndrome, this feeling that you’re never you’re not what people think you are and you’re never going to achieve what people think you can and all this.

[00:53:41] And it’s huge. It’s a huge problem that I’ve always suffered from as well, and we just felt like it would be fun. It was like, Yeah, it’s just one of those stupid ideas again. It was like, Oh, wouldn’t it be fun if we just did a conference and got those women together and got some cool female speakers in and just tried to be a bit inspiring to women and tried to help other women the way that we were helping each other and that Andrea was helping me and growing my confidence. And so we did. And so we started doing it and we got this really amazing response and through lockdown and everything, it was really incredible. And so that’s how it came about, really. It was just seeing that kind of opportunity and seeing this thing that was missing.

[00:54:23] Who spoke at the conference.

[00:54:26] What we had. So we had Mind Ninja Lady, we had Morreau, That’s Mark Lawson, We have Sally Gano. She was like our keynote speaker. That was amazing. She took us through that whole mindset of how she won gold at the Olympics at the 100 metre hurdles and that was crazy. Like the way she rehearsed that in her mind thousands of times before she did that run. And she just every set, every step was rehearsed in her mind. And it’s that a whole kind of visualisation and I think successful people do that a lot, this visualisation of, of what it is you want to achieve because you naturally think about your goal all the time. So inevitably it becomes something that’s going to happen. But yeah, we had some amazing speakers. It was a fun day.

[00:55:21] Did you say juggling motherhood and business ownership has been a challenge to you?

[00:55:28] Yeah, it’s a challenge because it’s a psychological challenge to me. I have huge working mother guilt and I have a massively supportive husband without whom I couldn’t do achieve what I have achieved. He’s very flexible in his job and he’s very willing to do a lot of the childcare. But every day I struggle with my guilt of not spending enough time with them or not being present enough. But this comes back to this, and I think I do, by the way, I do think I do spend a lot of time with them, but I’ll never stop feeling guilty. But then that drive side of me knows and my husband knows that if I was to give it all up, which, you know, I want to do every day sometimes, but if I was to give up doing what I’m doing, I would be miserable, depressed, very bored person.

[00:56:31] I was I was reading I was doing some research on you, and I came across some article in dentistry where he said, every Sunday I go to the spa and recharge Sunday evening. And I think it’s such an important thing because too many ladies in particular, I think I’m sure there’s some men like this too, but too many ladies in particular are sort of martyrs to the everything that they do, and that leaves nothing for them. And there is some there are some particularly sort of more, I call it enlightened or forward thinking people who realise that that there’s like if you’re not taken care of, you can’t take care of anyone else. When? How long? How long ago did you do that? You still doing that?

[00:57:18] You still going to do that? Excellent. Let’s go to Sunday night. I took some more dinner. We’ve had a nice weekend, and then I just go off to the spa for 2 hours, and I just sit there and think about stuff. And it’s the only time I get headspace sit and think about. And usually I think about work. My next idea. But yeah, it’s just my headspace, really.

[00:57:40] Katie Blake. You know what I was I was quite impressed with because obviously, you know, I’ve got four kids. I’ve worked with numerous associates, some who have taken longer time out of dentistry. But you were very clear. You was like, okay, so Prav, we’re going to we’re going to tailor the implant campaigns down because I’m going to place my last implant on this day. Then I’m going to have X number of weeks off and then we’ll just take and then I’ll start doing some simple cases and then and then I’ll go straight in.

[00:58:14] Yeah. I mean, what’s stopping you? Save your baby. People having babies for centuries all over the world.

[00:58:21] Do you do you think do you think it’s harder for women to do dentistry?

[00:58:26] I think well, I listen to one of your other podcasts. I’ve forgotten the lady’s name, who was you were just discussing a lot about about women in dentistry. Forgive me for not remembering her name. And I think, you know, like you said, that it’s a great career choice for women. You’ve got that flexibility, you know, to be in and out, alter hours and things like that. I think the only difficulty somehow is when everybody tries to do everything, you know, And of course, I feel the pressure is the same as anyone else, you know, owning your business, having kids, you know, some something’s got to give somewhere. But children are resourceful things, aren’t they? They just get on with it. I think my opinion is that sometimes we’re all a bit too led by children and they just have to get on with it. But, you know, very little. So we’ll see how they turn out.

[00:59:15] Yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting point, isn’t it, to be led by your children or to lead your children in different directions. But there must be a tension, right, between the amount of time you’re spending with them and the amount of time you’re spending at work. And do you feel that you don’t feel that like others do? The guilt and all of that?

[00:59:35] Yeah, I think it is sometimes stressful. I’d say the thing that does often give is having any time for yourself, which I know is is a challenge. You know, there’s obviously been a lot on social media in the news and stuff recently about this kind of burnout stresses mental health and all of this. I think it’s a really interesting point I’m very good at, I personally think, compartmentalising things so I can go home and not think about work for a whole evening, you know, which can be a negative, I guess can be a positive. But it does mean that for me, at least when I’m not at work, I feel I don’t really get too involved. Not lying. I do occasionally wake up early and think about it, but I don’t struggle to get to sleep at night, you know? So whether that’s a good or bad thing, it probably is what allows me to be very busy at work and then go home and be a mother. And there isn’t much crossover between the two. I’ve got a great team at work. Makes a big difference. You know, occasionally I can think of even a couple of weeks ago my husband was away skiing since February. Very important to go skiing even with a newborn baby at home. And I had a late patient and so I sent the treatment coordinator to go and pick up the kids from nursery down the road, and she brought them back to work because I can get there. So I think everything you can’t do it all by yourself, can you? You know, so so having that that support team, whether it’s for childcare, for the house, for the business, it’s, you know, it’s a team effort.

[01:01:03] Okay, Katie, your husband’s your right hand man, not just in life, but in your business as well. Right. So just before we get into that, you mentioned you met at sixth form. Yeah. Ten years later, you got together. Just just how did that just tell us about that, that little joke. I’m just curious.

[01:01:26] Maybe just a slow burner. I think I read a big group of friends, you know, and I think it’s a case of. Right, right. Person, different time, right person, right time. Everybody sometimes as you think. What would life have been like if you’ve recognised age 18 or whatever? We met Robin 14, you know, but actually all your experiences make you the person that you are today. So so we got there in the end, you know, and yeah.

[01:01:54] So did did you have a ten year gap or were you in touch with each other?

[01:01:57] We were in touch, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, we’re still friends. We were the same friends. Yeah. Oh, cool. So. So. So yeah, we’ve we’ve essentially grown up together, but, you know, it means, you know, each other and each other’s families. So bizarrely, my parents didn’t actually realise his first name for about the first. Two years that we were dating because we all call them by a surname, which is Blake. You realise it wasn’t to use it to the relationship because I’ve never heard him call anything else.

[01:02:28] Blake. Blake. So, Katie, how far did you go in all surgery? Did you just do the one little house job, or did you take it further?

[01:02:36] No, just the one house job. Yeah. And then a moment of clarity that although I loved the job, I needed a life. So I actually tapped out of London and went down to Cornwall and did a few locum jobs. Took a bit of time out, you know, having done London and London for seven years, you know, I wanted to go get a bit of bit of headspace, which is a great thing to do, you know, lovely area bit the back and beyond. So I thought I’d come back up for work where I came from then.

[01:03:04] So your oral surgery job didn’t particularly help with being a implant surgeon. You hadn’t had enough experience of cutting people.

[01:03:13] And I think.

[01:03:15] Was it one of those jobs that you did jump in and take wisdom teeth out and all that?

[01:03:20] A bit, yes. I think that the most important thing and why I would still always say to new graduates that doing a job like that is great is after you’ve been the on call person for a trauma centre in London and your first person, nothing faces you, you know. So and I distinctly remember my last day on the job being on call and being called to the neuro ICU and they’d hit something whilst doing a tracheostomy. And I was the person they called to stop to stop the bleeding out of hole in the neck. So having, having had that as your kind of you are the person that they call for those sort of issues, really, you know, teeth are just teeth, which, you know, so I think can put things into perspective a bit. Not saying that it could make people blasé because I think there’s obviously we all know there’s risks of everything, but it certainly makes you think, okay, you know, it’s going to be okay.

[01:04:22] So then you decided you’re not going to go down that path. And then what’s a general practice became a goal.

[01:04:30] Yeah. General practice. I was in a busy NHS practice in Essex called Often Union said Can I have a job? And they said, Yeah, there you go. Which in that is the practice. In retrospect, at the time I thought, wow, I must, you know, they really, you know, really good friends. In retrospect, I think if someone like me called me up now and said, Can I have a job, I would say yes. So I can see see where it’s where they were coming from. So did a bit of that and then went up and did Patel’s employment course at UCL and it carried on from there really, which is a great, a great foundation interest course taught me a lot, exposed me to a lot of interesting lectures and things like that, and was a pretty robust course as I found it robust, just put it that way.

[01:05:24] Take us through the decision making process because the vast majority of men and women, by the way, don’t go to implants. What is it about you that made you want to go that way? Had you decided from the beginning that you would be doing implants? Was there a particular patient, a conversation, someone you spoke to, a mentor? Like? What made you make that call to go on Dev Patel’s course where so many people don’t like me as a dentist? I’d never even considered it for a second.

[01:05:52] Yeah, I think for me it was being in the right place at the right time with the practice principle at the time was quite enthusiastic about implants and supportive of somebody who wanted to do that.

[01:06:05] Was he placing himself being.

[01:06:08] Yes. So you were watching him. Where? Where? Yeah, well, your boss sent messages through. Oh, I’m just about to do this. Do you want to come and watch? And the answer’s always yes. Go and have a look. See what they’re doing. So, you know, not a academic, high flying guy, but just, you know, a decent dentist placing decent implants. You know, that that I think is important. Obviously, that or surgery experience has always been really interesting, which I think actually stems from going out on a few charity projects. I’ve done a few over the years, sort of bridge to aid a few other of the Ugandan projects and Euro Central America, things like that. So the doctors in the surgery had come from a few of those experiences over the years as well. So for me, it seemed like a natural step, you know, how can you make or some kind of surgery sit in with general practice? I think for me that was the obvious way to go. And looking around at courses probably, I think still at that time, definitely, you know, you see others, one of the reputable ones, as far as I was concerned anyway.

[01:07:11] Sandra Garcia Martin Let’s talk about women. Let’s talk about women in dentistry. If you felt it, if you felt outside of the obvious, right. I’m sure you’ve had some patient fall in love with you and say, oh, will you marry me or whatever, outside of that sort of outside of that sort of thing, yeah. Have you felt subtly that it’s more difficult being a woman than a man as a dentist?

[01:07:33] I’ve been asked this several times, and I always say the same thing either I was very like in my own little world. I just don’t think that way. So whenever. But now, looking back, I, you know, situations I’ve gone through, I said, Oh, that was probably because I was a woman. But at the time I never thought about it that way. I never I’ve never seen the limitation. I just again, because of this way, I just went for it. Right? So I remember once I was asked if I had got the job because I had I had had something with the practice owner and I thought, What? And then, you know, and then the next thing that person said, well, you know, as a woman. And I thought, that’s a strange comment’s make. And now looking back, I said, Wow, a lot of people thought that way. But because you’re a woman, clearly you have less power and you’re not as capable as doing as doing things. In Spain, for example, male doctors are more popular than female doctors because it is a very sexist country when it comes to that. So not now. Things have changed, but, you know, the older generation, they’d rather be seen by a man, by a woman. So so I guess, yeah, it’s everywhere. It’s just that I’ve never thought about it that way.

[01:08:53] Rather be seen by an old man in Iran. In Iran, the older your doctor is, the better he is, you know? So like, there are some guys walking around 85 year old doctors, right? People think they’re the best doctors they must be. There’s it’s that that way of thinking. But so you’re saying you’ve never felt the limitation. But looking back on it, there are some comments made or or whatever. But do you see that more as a societal thing or as in dentistry, we have a problem because there is you know, people say the industry, we have a problem with not enough female role models.

[01:09:28] Which might be I think it’s I think probably as a society thing a little bit, not so much in this country that it’s it’s very equal. But definitely when I go to conferences, there are not enough women and I don’t know of it because we’re scared of lecturing or because it’s just don’t call us, you know? But it is true. Like you go to big conferences and it would be one female speaker. And that’s it’s shocking, you know, because I can tell you several now that are amazing and they’re doing fantastic work and, you know, they’re hardly ever invited. So. So yeah, I don’t know what it is. I honestly don’t know what it is. Well, but we make it.

[01:10:05] Does this fewer to pick from.

[01:10:07] This is. But do you think it’s because we’re scared of just putting ourselves out there? Because, for example, for me, it’s been throughout the years that I mean, many times I’ve been asked, why don’t you like Sure, why don’t you do this? I was always like, Oh, I’m not good enough for that. So it was coming from a place of fear.

[01:10:27] By the way, there’s many men also scared of putting themselves out there, too. But but I think you’re right. I think I think there is part of. There are some women who are eminently capable. And, you know, I noticed it. I went to a practice of one of our one of our customers. And in the practice, she was she was very strong. You know, like she said, she was saying exactly what she she she thought I thought, you know, she was she was the boss and she was saying it. And then and then I spoke to her on on the podcast. And I found a much more reserved. Much more reserved. And I wondered whether, number one, is it that it’s a strange situation being on a podcast, Right? Or number two, is there that thing in society or as a as a woman, you feel in society that you can’t be loud and out of what’s the word like? Not out of control, but, you know, like stand out outside your box, you know? But I’ve always noticed you’ve never really had that issue. But I’m I’m interested that you’re saying you do feel that and you haven’t lectured because of it. It’s interesting.

[01:11:33] Yeah. When it comes to lecturing. Yeah. When it comes to work. I’ve never had fear of being a woman at all. But when it comes to being in a public where where people can can judge. Yes. Yes. Not because I’m a woman, but clearly because it’s because it’s me that is scared of doing that, because I always feel like, oh my God, they’re going to say this. They’re going to say that, which is a silly thing because, you know, no one’s perfect in this world.

[01:11:58] So when I think about myself or my wife in a social setting, she’s 100 times more capable than I am. You know, I’m really socially like. Like if we go to a dinner party or something, I’m a little bit awkward. I’m very shy. Very, very, very shy. And she’s not she’s she’s she’s very strong, you know? And what she’ll do is she’ll find the one person in the room who isn’t talking to anyone and go and talk to that person and, you know, be very nice and understand everyone. And but then if you ask her to stand on a stage and talk, you might as well ask her to do something, you know, to her. That’s the most difficult thing in the world. And I wonder if I tell her if that’s a man woman thing or what. You know, by the way, I don’t like standing on stage. I like this format because I don’t have to be seen. You know.

[01:12:51] You can hide.

[01:12:52] I can hide. So tell me this, Sandra, if someone wants to download your course. How does that work? Where do I get. Let’s say I want it. What do I do?

[01:13:02] Go to the head. Yes. Veneer veneer school. That’s where all the modules are. Is there a taster.

[01:13:12] Of it somewhere? Like if you want to taste it before you buy it.

[01:13:15] On my Instagram, which is at Sandra Briggs. Well, there are loads of videos of like little I think there was one today about preparation. So yeah, a lot of a lot of videos where you can see the formats. It’s an interesting format because it’s a bit like a movie, you know? So it’s it’s nice to show it. They did a great job. They really did. And the patient was was amazing because, you know, it’s not easy to be there hours and hours of recording and the mouth open and then the rubber dam. I mean, you know, because we did everything under Rubber Dam as well. And then we did like a bonus of mini rubber dam course with the course. So she was the one that I picked to do everything. So I have a funny thing halfway through the fit isolated every single tooth. And she’s a makeup artist and she says, You know what? I have a client that really needs a makeup. Can I can I go? I said, You must be joking, Right? And this is 9:00 PM on a Sunday and No, but what do you mean you could go? She’s like, Oh, but it’s I can’t say no to the job. So I numbed her, removed everything that you know how much it takes to rub a dam? Everything. She went to Knightsbridge, to the Mandarin Oriental to do her stuff. Then I said, okay, let me order some, some food for for the camera crew and stuff. And she came back and we finished. So it was like, Wow, seriously, after we put there. Yeah.

[01:14:52] I’m going, I’m going to wrap it up soon. Sandra But we always have a dark part of this podcast, and it goes around the question of biggest mistakes.

[01:15:04] In dentistry, the biggest mistakes that I’ve done, like.

[01:15:08] It can be clinical, it can be tactical, it can be management, or ideally something I’m going to give people, something people can learn.

[01:15:15] From. Yes, clinical. Not checking on a full composite case like veneered composite veneers. Not checking what my nurse was given to me. The shade. So I did a bit of mismatch.

[01:15:34] Different colours on different teeth.

[01:15:36] Colours and different teeth.

[01:15:38] That was only realised after he’d finished everything, right?

[01:15:42] Yes. I said, Wait a minute. That was like, Whoa! Once and no, never again.

[01:15:50] What did you do? Repeat the work.

[01:15:53] I couldn’t because it was already so many hours in. So I called. I called the patient to come back.

[01:15:58] And removed it all, removed the bits you had to remove, I guess.

[01:16:01] Because it was it was this bad. It was like B one against a two, you know, a two or three. It was like, really? No, it was.

[01:16:11] Obvious when you told the patient, when you when you told the patient what had happened.

[01:16:17] You know, the patient might not even realise. That’s the funny thing.

[01:16:21] Yeah.

[01:16:22] Probably the following day. But there she was like, Oh, yeah, I can see, I can see. But it was so late as well that she was like, It’s okay. They look beautiful. And I’m like, Yeah, the wrong colour situation when you might not be. Thank God the essentials are the same. Uh huh. Get that wrong. It was lateral, pre molar and then canine premotor as well. Yeah.

[01:16:50] And the patient was understanding.

[01:16:52] Yes. Yes. And I said I didn’t check. I must. We must have grown out of this, and I’m so sorry.

[01:16:59] So the.

[01:17:01] Thing.

[01:17:02] I’m interested, if you’ve got a story where the patient wasn’t understanding, even if the mistake was a smaller mistake, did you have any time like that?

[01:17:09] I’ve had. And now I’ve learned from this. Whenever you do a veneer case, given the expectation that it was, it was always going to be perfect in the fit. Not saying, listen, this can go wrong several times. It’s like a central right. This can go wrong several times. Many times is the most difficult truth of the matter. You have to put it on the really negative side. And if we’re so, so lucky than a second next appointment, everything’s perfect. Then we’ll fit. But it’s unlikely that that happens. That’s my talk now. My talk back then was like, Oh yeah, two weeks of fits and it was sedation case. None of the patient remove everything. Nothing fits it. Nothing fits it. Because when I took the impression silicone impression, the patient opened a little bit and then I, you know, and then I positioned it again. So obviously it wasn’t my fault. They work on a model that had a different like the reference was completely different. Not one that was like that patient. So my patient today, what he was yeah, imagine sedation and the whole trauma of having every single tooth removed, temporary removed and yeah, that was Yeah.

[01:18:25] Was he not understanding why he was sedated. So you couldn’t really argue.

[01:18:29] No. But when he, when he obviously has sedation and he’s like what is this? I had documented everything. What happened. He was like, what connections At the time he was was a CEO of one of these big supermarket chains. He was not having it. So he had very limited time. And so.

[01:18:51] What happened?

[01:18:52] He well, I took everything, all the screams and all the nastiness. And then I said, and we have to we have to redo it. I’m really sorry, but, you know. Did you like the colour?

[01:19:11] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:19:26] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] Probably stay at the wrong job for too long. That’s probably one of.

[00:00:04] Them, but one where you weren’t happy with, you’re.

[00:00:06] Just not happy. Yeah, you just, you know, I think you stay sometimes because of patience as well. You know, you got like and also money as well, isn’t it? So if like, especially after COVID and everything and just think, you know what, not you’re not getting what you need from somewhere that you’ve been promised, get like an interview or wherever. And then when it comes down to it, it’s just like backtracking and you just sort you keep waiting and wait and way in, but then it just doesn’t happen. So it’s sometimes just best to cut your losses sometimes and just know your worth as well.

[00:00:45] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:02] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Sarah Ellison onto the podcast. Sarah I first met Sarah as a therapist, dental therapist who I first met on the Smile Academy course with Gillian Kish, who was doing a whole whole year course with them, I think. And then I met again at the Square Mile famous practice in London when we were doing some, I think, enlightened training and mini spa makeover training. And I was particularly impressed with her work, number one. But her enthusiasm number two and and I think this this show, if we’re calling it dental leaders, needs to include different members of the dental team. So I really wanted to talk to a therapist. And I think we will be talking to others other than dentists going forward. Lovely to have you.

[00:01:50] Sarah Oh, thank you for having me.

[00:01:53] It’s a pleasure. So, Sarah, this show is kind of like a life and times kind of show. But I want to start with the question of therapy first, where we are. What’s the state of play with dental therapy? Because I feel like they’re being much more recognised these days.

[00:02:11] They all are. But I think that they’re not regulars enough, to be honest with you, like we do so much more than what practitioners know. We work for a full scope of practice. I mean, for years I was on the NHS doing band tours and just doing the restorations for the dentists and everything within bands within my scope while they concentrate on more complex stuff. So I think we need to be using or utilise a lot more. But yeah, like you say, we are getting recognised more, but I think there’s still like bigger opportunities out there for us. Definitely.

[00:02:45] I feel like in the future that the practice a lot more practices are going to be relying on therapists both in the health service and privately. Do you get that sense?

[00:02:56] Yeah, I think so as well. I mean there’s like in the new regulations are not regulations, but really saying that we are going to be able to be allowed even working for the NHS, work within our full scope of practice, but as in direct access on the NHS, which we aren’t currently allowed to do. So that’s something to look forward to. But I also think as well it depends on the therapist as well, because if someone’s been out of practice for a while, well they didn’t even get the opportunities to do therapy then it can be a bit daunting as well. And you need to work together as a practice and I like where you are at. And look, it is a team based approach. But yeah, I mean, we give us the opportunity and we’ll, we’ll, we’ll shine.

[00:03:35] Do you mean therapists who haven’t been able to do therapy but doing hygiene for years?

[00:03:40] Yeah, a lot of time. It’s really sad to see actually, because I just feel like it’s a little bit, it’s a bit of a waste because we don’t get the opportunity again because we’re not we haven’t been recognised. But like you say, things are changing for the better.

[00:03:53] But do you see that as some sort of like a situation where the dentist knows you’re allowed to do it but isn’t referring the work to you? Yeah. Or literally doesn’t know you’re allowed to do it. I mean, surely. Oh no.

[00:04:05] I think yeah I think yeah it depends. I just think it. Yeah. I suppose sometimes it’s like especially in private settings as well. Dentists probably don’t want to let go of their work for a for one thing as well financially, which it could be also as well. They’re we’re perfectionists at the end of the day aren’t we. So it’s like we’d be like, Oh, they’re going to do a good enough job as I’m going to do for this patient. But also as well, if a privately patient goes see a dentist and then they’re referred to a therapist, they’d be like, But they kind of feel that we’re under skill, not on under scale, but that we’re not going to provide the quality of a dentist. So sometimes that could be a bit of a barrier as well.

[00:04:46] So they come across that with a patient said something.

[00:04:48] Yeah, yeah. Well, not, not a couple of times for me. I mean six years ago it’d be like, oh, but because I was a dental nurse for years as well and I used to, I actually went back to the same practice and they were like, oh, she used to be on reception. So it was, it was. But what we said, please do my teeth now. So I was like, No, I’ve been to uni, but it was like kind of, you know, that situation. So yeah, good. Dentists obviously are qualified in other other things, but I mean in within our training we actually do more restorations than dentists when they first qualify. So we have like more of a well, more of experience then I kind of feel then going into practice because obviously we exit before and then they go on to do pores and stuff like that. So I had the best training because I went to London and I trained with bedside exactly the same training as BDS until I accede. So that’s another thing that a lot people don’t realise the level of education. So I had the same training as a dentist did up to that point.

[00:05:44] So the London hospital.

[00:05:46] Yeah. Royal. London. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:48] Well Whitechapel.

[00:05:49] Yeah.

[00:05:51] So. So.

[00:05:52] Okay.

[00:05:54] I just remembered. I just remembered when when I went for my interview in White Chapel, and I think I’d been living in London for 20 years at that point. I came out of the station and I saw that market and I was like, What the hell is this?

[00:06:09] That’s the extent now.

[00:06:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I grew to love it because a lot of my friends were studying. I didn’t end up there, but a lot of my friends were studying there, and I actually ended up really loving that area.

[00:06:19] Oh, I love it. I love it. I love for the first time.

[00:06:21] Where did you grow up?

[00:06:23] I grew up in Brixton, in East London, and I was born in.

[00:06:26] So, you know the area you need anywhere.

[00:06:28] And I really want you to go there as well. So it’s like a lot of. Yeah, a lot of love for that place.

[00:06:33] So before we move on to your back story, look, I’m surprised that you’re saying dentists don’t realise the level of training and don’t realise the skills and all that we should just for the sake, sake of the ideal for the, for the, for.

[00:06:47] I’m sorry, this is just my opinion. I’m not saying that everybody’s the same.

[00:06:50] But we should, we should go through it. What’s the scope of practice? What can a therapist do?

[00:06:55] So we can do all black classifications so we don’t just do small fillings or baby teeth. We we can do everything on children, obviously paediatrics, we can do Pottawattamie We can’t do pop it to me. We don’t really do them there anyway. Yeah. Crowns thanks to crowns or with whole technique just popping them on or even a little bit of a prep. We can do composite bonding and composite veneers We can’t do. We can do in direct. Sorry. Direct.

[00:07:22] Not in who do direct.

[00:07:24] Yeah. Direct diagnosis as in direct as in in the mouth. We can’t do lab work.

[00:07:31] Because one, two, three, four and five.

[00:07:33] Yeah, yeah. Everything. We can do everything.

[00:07:35] So not that well. Yeah. No, no, I said let’s for completeness.

[00:07:39] Let’s go through it. Yeah, well obviously I do, I do diet caps as well, so I feel like a little bit closer. I’m not going to start. Yeah. Not going to start doing the partial root canal, but it’s been closed a lot of times in East London, let me tell you that. Yeah. So composite amalgams. Yeah.

[00:07:56] What about things? Like what about things like temporary crowns, that sort of thing?

[00:08:01] We can. Yeah, we can put them on. We can put them on with a temporary cement. Yeah. Only temporary cement that we can’t use. We’re not. That might change, I’m not sure. But I mean we can’t, we can’t cement them as in permanent cement, of course, bond or something. So and obviously someone’s like, well, I won’t touch your implants. I’m not that.

[00:08:20] We make temporary crowns as well.

[00:08:23] Do you know what? I don’t know, but I can’t see why not.

[00:08:26] Because in the US they do. Don’t I know.

[00:08:28] I mean that’s the thing is. Yeah. I mean because we can, it’s like it’s really fine because my, my old boss, I mean he’s retired now. I’ve loved him. Yeah, he’s great man. Doctor Graham Dingle And he used to do sic tech. You ever hear a sic tech where you like? It was like fibres and you used to do like.

[00:08:44] You build composites on the.

[00:08:45] Composite to fab. Yeah. Temporary bridge or something. So we inferior. We could do that. So we’re actually making a tool for our composite as a temporary, but we can’t cement permanent crowns. So. Yeah. So everything. And then the only thing we can’t obviously do root canal, any pros or extraction of adulti we can do perio risk for perio.

[00:09:08] And is there, you know, you know, you get ortho therapists and regular therapists is an ortho therapist course completely separate or is it.

[00:09:15] Something you.

[00:09:16] Decide halfway through?

[00:09:17] No, no no. It’s completely different. So all five therapies at the time this do you know what my knowledge on this is a bit not as good as it was because I’ve been there.

[00:09:29] We had a collision.

[00:09:30] I’m sorry. No. So all five are okay? I’m not that up to date with it at the moment, but I know it was. You could be a dental nurse and you could be Warwick Hospital. I think you said it was a year training, and it was literally. They’re also orthodontic specialists. Will give you a treatment plan, and you would just pop the brackets on and do the wires so you’d know about occlusion and stuff, like going into more depth with that, which we do as therapists, but not as much as what dentists would. So it’s completely different. So that’s all they can do. Unless somebody has become a hygiene therapist like myself. Yeah. And then they’ve gone on to do orthodontic therapy, which quite a few people have, and they just do that.

[00:10:08] Then they can do. Okay, so some people do both.

[00:10:10] Yeah, some people do do both. Yeah. A couple of people that one person I know, Benji Plumb, he, he does both. I think he just does ortho therapy now.

[00:10:18] So And you’re the the course is a three year course, right?

[00:10:22] You said when I was at the London it was two about two and a half years.

[00:10:26] Two and a half.

[00:10:27] I think it’s three years now because it’s a degree now. But mine was a diploma.

[00:10:31] And you, you first learn the hygiene piece and then then do the therapy piece, or is it just not fully integrated?

[00:10:37] So it depends on what hospital you go to, like where you where you train. So my I think the train at the London was amazing the way it was because I think the NHS are going to try and start doing that. There’s a couple of things I think going on behind the background in the background, but what they did at the London We train exactly with the dentist, so we had the same period with them. So I was, we were put into groups with them, so we did it all together. So you do perio and cons or whatever you’re doing in them and you just, yeah, you don’t just do one or the other, but then they’d be like the, the, not the X-Men sorry, Essex University, because I used to be clinical educator for them for five years. They used to, they do the hygiene which is about two years and then you can do add on which is therapy for a year, but that’s in practice in placement. So they get they get the other side of it working in practice straight away because that’s how they learn, which is quite another good way to learn, I suppose, because then you’re getting that because in hospital you’re a little bit unless you’re being a dental nurse, I think, or you’ve been in dentistry before, you kind of get a shock when you come out, isn’t it, because you haven’t got 2 hours for an appointment.

[00:11:36] Yeah. So yeah. So it’s like, you know, there’s, there’s all different ways to do it, I suppose. But I just feel the way I had training was, was amazing because I think there’s talk about if you heard about the advanced dental care programme, but they’re now saying so dentists say that don’t end up. So they get to our stage as a therapist and they don’t end up passing the fourth year. I don’t know. They they qualify still as a hydrophobia because I did know a couple of people that didn’t pass dental school, but they did make it past what we did and it’s a shame that they didn’t end up still getting a qualification. So or you can then add on or go forward because I always wanted to be a dentist, but I didn’t have the grade. So it was like.

[00:12:16] What’s what’s best practice? I mean, to stop that patient saying you were the one on reception. How does the dentist approach it when they’re sending a patient to you? Do they do they tell them, Look, that’s my therapist and she’s better at this than I am or something, But how do they do it?

[00:12:30] Well, a couple of my friends are both. So obviously I say my friends because they are. I’ve been working for years and they actually used to say that I actually was better than the Celine’s. So you just say, go in and I’m doing like an MD a day for like a year or so because I was doing all them for him. So it was like Sarah is actually more worked actually better than mine in that field. And also but then I talk to them and say, Look at exactly the same training and this is my work, but then it’s down for them as well. And also you have to try and figure out from them. And sometimes dentists would then go ahead and see it or just say, Well, it’s really tricky because you want to try and keep everybody happy. And also so you do have to be a little bit of a thick skin, don’t you? I kind of feel like I’m like jazz hands as well, isn’t it? It’s like you could be in a bit of a bad day, but you’re like, Oh, you know, I’m ready to go. We’re on stage. But it’s like, you know, this is what I do that, you know, just like, try and reassure them. But then if they really are adamant that they don’t want to, then the dentist sometimes would end up seeing them. But then there would be another person say, look, I actually one of my other friends I worked with, she was like, I don’t do that anymore. I only do like surgical like the implants. Yeah. And so that’s why Sarah’s here with us. So that’s what it is. And then it was fine and they were happy.

[00:13:36] So what about when it goes really subsub gingival or something? I mean, do you electro surge or.

[00:13:43] No, we can’t do that. So what we do, I would just temporise it is in the back. So yes, yes. Yeah. So you can just send back whatever you know, you don’t you feel like you think is going because there is loads. You do get that as well. You do get, you get all the tricky because.

[00:13:57] You don’t really know where it’s going before you start drilling sometimes too.

[00:14:00] You know. I know. Yeah. I’d love to show you some of the stuff I’ve actually done. I mean, you’ll be like, Wow.

[00:14:05] That was. I was very impressed with your work on the on mini spa makeover. And it’s interesting. Yeah. Because when we get quite a lot of therapists, you know, definitely one sometimes two of the group are therapists and they do the best work. Now, let’s maybe it’s because the kind of therapist who chooses to spend the money on a composite course is the kind of therapist who’s really going for it. I. But often their work is the best. But we always say at the beginning as well say no pressure, but producing really great work.

[00:14:38] I just think is because it’s like it’s kind of like the wood industry. You kind of do a bit. You do everything, don’t you? Like a little you know, I’m talking about kind of not so much where you do you choose or you want to become specialists in something, but it’s like, Wow, I’m talking for myself in some way. But we are really passionate about what we do and we are good at it as well. And it’s like, you can tell and it’s like, you know, it’s we did it because we want you to go further. And a lot of people are being a dental nurse before whereby it’s like they look, they, they just loved it and I would work with them. But you know what? The way I felt was that I want to be in that chair. I want that that’s going to be me one day, you know, I’m going to see how I get air and I do what I did. I actually didn’t want to be a therapist in the beginning. I was like, Why would I do that? I’d be a dentist. But then when I did it, I was like, This is why this is me. I actually am really a a therapist at heart, although I do love hygiene, but I am. That’s what I love to do because it’s like you see the difference, don’t you? Straight away, More or less. Kind of.

[00:15:34] So I guess it’s a brilliant point. Yeah, because you’re right. It’s someone who’s already chosen to push themselves forward from, you know, if you’re if you started as a dental nurse to say, I want to be a hygienist and then say, I want actually know I want to be a therapist. So that’s already someone who’s driven to.

[00:15:51] Get to that point because there’s some people that there is. Obviously people don’t. Let’s not forget we do do things because money does play a part as well. But I think sometimes I always say to people that especially nurses or people that I work with, I mean, it ain’t always nurses that go into dental hygiene. I don’t want people thinking that either, because people can just want to be hygienic. But it’s like I say to them, Look, you know what? If you don’t love this job, you’re not going to last 5 minutes because it’s difficult. Yeah, it’s difficult. Like, you know, musculoskeletal problems, you know, the demand of everything, you know, trying to, you know, you know, yourself. But it’s like when you make that different, you see that person happy. Like, that’s how I get my cup to get food from that, if that makes sense. But sad really to say that. But I love yeah, it’s like I just, I love what I do. And also it’s about education as well. So I grew up like from a really low social class, uneducated family, sorry family, but that’s where I come from. So it’s like we didn’t know about that. I think people lost their teeth when they were like in their fifties anyway. And that’s not even, oh, my mum and dad had dentures. I just thought that’s what happened, you know, I was just, I mean, I was like, what? And it’s about, you know, primary socialisation and where you come from. So when I kind of went where I worked and my boss had pushed me further, I was like, actually, I opened up a whole world of like this education that I wasn’t exposed to when I was younger. So yeah, yeah, no, it was amazing.

[00:17:15] So and, and so we’ve been we’ve been having this series of about women in dentistry and, you know, there’s quite a lot of women, dentists, women, dentists sort of saying, oh, women aren’t given the same sort of, you know, they’re not, they’re not put on stage as much and they don’t lecture as many as many men do, and they’re not at the top of organisations and so forth. And I’ve always thought, you know, if the biggest issue with women in dentistry is is the DSPs and some the way I know that is was you have worked in several practices, but on that hygienist group, I don’t know if you’re on it the Facebook one.

[00:17:55] I’m not on Facebook and.

[00:17:58] There’s a I think it’s the hygiene sand therapist group, but I’m on it. And some of the things that happen to hygienist in dental practice.

[00:18:08] What I’m so glad we’re doing this podcast because I’ve been really lucky where I’ve worked actually, and I’ve worked with people that work as a team and I’ve been kind of included, but there has been a couple of occasions like I’ve temp somewhere ever for a long term temp or, or there’s a job left and you do feel a little bit excluded because sometimes as well and things and it’s not about that, it’s about all working together and I do I maybe I’m going to regret saying this, but I do find that there’s still a lot of hierarchy in dentistry. There is, yeah, massively. And that annoys the hell out of me because I just feel like you should treat everybody the same. Like, you know, I don’t get I leadership and there is a level of boundaries and stuff like that. But that is one thing that really gets my guy out, to be honest with you. Like, I just it yeah, it’s just an example.

[00:18:55] Give me an example. Something you’ve come across.

[00:18:58] So. So be like you be. Let me try and think of it. I don’t know how to put it. I’m just a bit worried about what I’m going to say now.

[00:19:08] Just saying.

[00:19:09] It. Yeah, you just. You just like cause you’re not seen as like, a clinician. You’re not even sometimes. Sometimes there’ll be nurses that won’t even talk to you. But then they’ll be like, I always make an effort because I think, you know, they probably don’t talk to me because I probably have people just not talking to them or you just get excluded or you. It’s quite a lonely job as well, because a lot of the time as well, especially now, which I do think is ridiculous. But dental nurses are not given hygiene. It’s not given a nurse. And it’s like, you know, you’re just you’re just constantly battling for what you what you what you should be what you should be given anyway. Like you’re trying to like. I’ll buy my own equipment, I’ve got my own like EMS and only the hand handy one, but I still got my own stuff because I just think. Joe. What? It’s just constantly battling, trying to find or get what you want. I mean, not everybody’s like that, but then they’ll be like they’ll go see a group of people that will go out to lunch and they won’t invite you and stuff like that. And that’s not doing and not saying good morning to you or just being dismissed. And I’m like, that’s just really rude. Like because I’m telling people I’m really like, Oh, good morning. Like you should read it. But then it depends on people having some people having a bad day. Don’t get me wrong, but I just think like you spend most your life at work, don’t you? And it’s like you shouldn’t be like that. And I just don’t know. There’s that Michelangelo quote, isn’t it? It’s. What is it? It’s like people never forget. Like how how they how you made them feel like that works both in good or bad ways, doesn’t it? You always remember if you’ve been, like, singled out or you know, a bit, you know, just just dismiss.

[00:20:41] Look, I think there’s a couple of things that I think that I totally agree with you. There is no doubt there is a level of hierarchy in dental surgeries, and there’s definitely a level of disrespect that I’ve come across in some practices, certainly not all practices, but in some practices for for, by the way, all the DSPs, but somehow the hygiene. I mean, I haven’t worked in a practice where there was a therapist, but some other hygienist has got this sort of in-between position and.

[00:21:07] Often it’s quite difficult.

[00:21:08] Often works in several practices, so they don’t feel like they’re fully part of any team. At the same time, on this question of the nurse for the hygienist or therapists gonna to have to have a nurse. Right. But, but yeah, but for a hygienist, the nurse question. So I think it makes absolute sense to give a nurse to the hygienist, if only for the fact that then the hygienist has time to sell teeth whitening that she.

[00:21:36] Can do that. We can. We can. I mean.

[00:21:39] I think I think there is a caveat. I think there is a caveat because these days it’s really hard to find staff in all industries. You know, there’s a massive shortage of workers. And I can understand how in a dental practice, if you can’t find enough nurses, the nurse for the hygienist is the first one that falls off. Now you could say, why? Why is that? Why there’s the.

[00:22:01] Hygiene, Because there’s a hierarchy of Yeah, yeah, we go to it always. It’s like.

[00:22:06] But it’s also about the amount of money coming in from each chair and stuff.

[00:22:09] I know you say that though, but then some of the ideas are more than a dentist other day and the dentist has got a nurse to do a check up, but they can’t do a check-up on their own. But yet we’ve got to.

[00:22:19] Like, Oh, I get it, I get it.

[00:22:21] So I always tell it. I’m like an indoor crap. Sometimes if I work it on my own, you know, not flying around the room like a lunatic, I need to be an octopus. And it’s like and, and I’m doing I’m trying to take impressions for whitening, and I got no money for the practice and then rest and airflow and I ain’t got nurse. So anyway, we won’t get into that. No.

[00:22:42] What can we shoot though? I think we should. That’s why you’re wrong, right? That’s why you’re on to go through these subjects.

[00:22:46] Oh, so the GDC, if you look at the actual, the actual guidelines of the GDC, we are supposed to have a nurse. And you said. But the only way I think personally or the staff is at the moment, but it’s down to money. We all know that. Yeah, know.

[00:23:01] Well, my point.

[00:23:03] That people make money. I know.

[00:23:05] My point is my point is the hygienist will make more money if she’s got time because the hygienist is. For example, I’m from the world of whitening, Right? In the world of whitening, the hygienist is definitely the most important person in the practice. And if she’s got time, if the hygiene isn’t having to run around cleaning all the instruments and doing all the work, then she’s got time to talk to the patient and talk. If she talks to every patient about the colour of their teeth, I guarantee you that room is going to make way, way more money than that room without a nurse.

[00:23:38] Yeah, it’s about looking at it another way as well. But it’s just I think again, we just so people just get, you kind of get like, what’s it called. Tunnel vision isn’t it. I like your blinkers on and you get what you used to and it change is difficult and even I don’t really like change, but then you need to look at things logically and be like, it would make sense. You know, it’s you know, it does make sense because I’ve worked in a practice that did that and I only left because my boss told.

[00:24:05] Let’s let’s go back to your history. So you said you grew up in the East End. Yeah, I was. Dental nurse. Your first job?

[00:24:14] Yeah, it was actually. I left school, went straight into it. How old are you, really? I did really bad at school, so I didn’t realise how important education was. I didn’t really understand it. Mom and Dad were like, If you just go and get a job after you leave school, We got 16.

[00:24:26] Yeah. And so you’ve always been in dentistry from from the moment you started in the work space.

[00:24:32] For now, more than half my life I’ve been in dentistry, so I’m, I’m 40 next month or January. So I was like, that’s quite scary actually.

[00:24:40] Feels like 24 years. But what I was going to say, what I was going to say was, you know, that’s a level of experience, isn’t it? Experience around the end. History that, you know, if some some some kid who’s been an associate for three years thinks he’s he he knows more than you. You’ve been 24 years in dental practices. Right. You’ve seen you’ve seen a bunch of people do things right and a bunch of people do things wrong.

[00:25:09] And and they used to come to me, the associate. So especially the vet, says to come and ask me x rays and stuff. And that made me laugh because I was like, What do you think that’s. And I was like, Well, yeah, that’s definitely gone through the enamel and I better go in there like, Yeah, you should. Yeah, it was good, right? Cool. Sarah But it just it’s like, it’s not just that though, but I also don’t know everything. And that’s one thing you need to know as well, because a lot of the newer people that come through, they bring something to us as well. So it’s about you’ve got to always be open to everything, you know.

[00:25:38] How many years were you a nurse before you decided to go and get extra education?

[00:25:43] I was a nurse for 11 years, but then I had to reset on my GCSEs and not to do like equivalent A-levels, which was the access to science. So I had to do that and work like night school.

[00:25:55] And what, to get into therapy.

[00:25:57] Yeah.

[00:25:58] So what was it what was, what was the trigger that made you think, I’m going to go for this?

[00:26:04] Really? Yeah. I used to play the receptionist and no, it wasn’t just this, but this was one of the triggers. I see the receptionist at reception. No offence to anyone listening. I would say no judgement, but as I cannot be on a reception desk in my sixties doing this like I need to, I need to do something for myself. And what happened was actually the first trigger was there was a hygienist I used to work with actually my and my boss used to give him a nurse. It was like best practice guy. But I keep mentioning him because I love him. I still yeah, that was like a dad to me, really like mentor. And it was like this lady I worked with, her name was Jenny and she come from similar background to me and she told me what she had to do to get in. But she went to two guys, I think, and it was only 11 months then. And she had a baby when she was younger. And I never even heard these stories before because I just thought university was people that had money. I didn’t think it wasn’t. No, no. Because you don’t know where you come from.

[00:26:58] Don’t know. Really, really, really naive. But it’s so true. I didn’t I just didn’t know nothing. I thought I knew everything, but I didn’t. And she then I was like, So she had to reset all GCSEs and do it. And I was like, So you did it so I can do it. And she was she encouraged me. And then another person on board, actually she’s one of the tutors at the London and she actually worked in my practice years ago before, before I worked there. Same boss again, encourage her to go further and she had the same similar background yet to reset actually. So I was like, actually. So this is doesn’t matter where you come from, but if you want to do something, you can do it does that right? Let’s do it. And then yeah, that was, that was that’s what it was. And it wasn’t just to do with by when I just, I just love, you know, you see the calculus come off. I’m obsessed with, you know, watching Dr. Pimple Popper. I love that as well as you discussing that. I just I’m just obsessed with that or anything with blood or, you know, I. I miss.

[00:27:53] It. I miss it. I haven’t practised for ten years now. That is one thing I miss. Yeah, I actually watch it. I watch videos on on Instagram.

[00:28:00] With.

[00:28:00] Calculus.

[00:28:02] Yeah, Calculus or like tonsil stones. That’s disgusting.

[00:28:04] But I know exactly what you mean.

[00:28:07] Yeah. So I don’t know what that is. I think.

[00:28:09] I know exactly what you.

[00:28:11] Just tell people. I was like, You know what? I would love to do that. And I was like, because I’m not, as you can told you’ve got ADHD. And I’m like, I could not work in the office because I couldn’t sit still long enough. So I need something that’s occupied me and like to get a hyperfocus on. And that’s why I think I’m so good at what I do.

[00:28:28] So when you got to London Hospital and you were in your first few classes, or I expect there was a level of pride, you felt like, you know, I’m doing something for myself and getting in is really getting in is really hard, Right? Right.

[00:28:41] Yeah, really hard. Guys, I found 3000 applicants for, like ten, 12 places. They’re not. Not 3000.

[00:28:48] To 10.

[00:28:48] 12 places, I think. Yeah, I think that’s what they said. Yeah. So.

[00:28:53] So you must have felt really amazing when they told you you’re in, right?

[00:28:56] Oh, yeah. Awful lot. Won the golden ticket from Childhood Chocolate Factory. Really? Yeah. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, Oh, you’re my dad. Everyone’s. Everyone’s really heard this story and that, you know me anyway. But my. Do you know what a rag’n’bone man is? You ever heard? Yeah, that’s what my dad was. He used to go round. We’ve still got horses actually go round on the horse and cart wringing about old scrap metal where now die. And that’s what my dad was. And my dad, he can’t read and write and he goes, Oh, what a fool, we arrogant rag’n’bone man in history. I can’t believe it. He’s just mad. Everyone. Well, well, up we go. Well done, my lads said. But I’ve been in prison. Drug dealers or, you know, people. These are people that I’ve, I can, I can communicate with like people from all walks of life. Yeah. It works a lot because I’ve. I’ve lived it. Yeah. So yeah, I was. Oh my God. I was so proud. Yeah.

[00:29:50] And how do they take how did you take to the. To the the classes themselves and the education. Let the work because it’s quite a full on course.

[00:29:57] Very creative. I mean you know what I’ve because I did a room audit if anybody’s listened to it at once become a hygiene therapist, I would definitely encourage them to do the oral health education certificate before. That helped me so much, especially about like the psychology behaviour change, you know, is about, you know, that’s what I’ve become an oral health educator. I forgot to mention that so long ago I did one nurse on the easement, which was like over 20 years ago. So.

[00:30:26] So which was which you were you then? Which was your two years that you were. No.

[00:30:31] Oh London. London I am. I got in September 2010 by my graduation in 2013, but is two and about two and a half years. I think.

[00:30:41] So. So the work wasn’t daunting or was it that you were so, so proud of yourself? You put your head down.

[00:30:47] Yeah, but I just loved it. I just loved it. I mean, to be honest with you, like, I’m. I’m dyslexic as well, and I didn’t get picked up to a uni, so it was like, not terrible, but it was like I did take I take a long time to, like, write stuff, you know, it just takes me longer. I say it’s probably because I’m, I probably, it’s probably because I’m so disrupted all the time. So it was like that that Yeah that that part would I’ll struggle with it would be like because I find I would find research boring. I shouldn’t really say this because I do want to go back and study dentistry. So yeah, that would be like, um, research and we like, although I’m interested in it, but putting it to paper and doing literature reviews was like, my worst.

[00:31:24] Nightmare is boring. That is boring. Let’s, you know, let’s call it out. If it can be boring, what you’ll find is most researchers are the only ones interested in the research they’re doing.

[00:31:36] Yeah, but you know what? Those You saying that. You know what I’m going to say, though? But it’s like there’s. Have you ever seen that? I think it’s Einstein quote and it’s like it says I’ll go there’s like these animals lined up It’s a really good like your poster and there’s is animals lined up. There’s a monkey I don’t know, a hippopotamus, a giraffe, I don’t know a fish and a monkey. And then it goes a man standing. It goes, Oh, go and climb that tree. And then the monkey goes and climbs it. But that’s because they’re good at that. And a fish wouldn’t be able to climb in order because the educational system needs to change as well. Now, because we’re all different.

[00:32:12] It’s one size fits all, isn’t it?

[00:32:13] Yeah, that’s the problem.

[00:32:15] Yeah, you’re quite right. I mean people learn in different ways and you know, what I’m saying is you don’t have to feel bad about not liking one piece of it, right? Because you know.

[00:32:26] What I hate is.

[00:32:29] The dental world itself, right? I think the biggest skill is people skills.

[00:32:35] Yeah, I do as well. I completely agree, because you can be a really bad dentist. But like if you’ve got the people skills, people like, you.

[00:32:41] Know I didn’t you’re not really bad dentist. Right. But what, what I’m saying is that the hand and eye skills I’d say a number four or five most important thing I’d say people skills and then, and then you know planning planning and you know that that sort of thing as make making the treatment as of course you need a whole lot of skills to do all of that. But people skills number one, right? Number one, I mean I’m sure there’s many dental technicians who’ve got much better hand and eye skills than most dentists. They can make more beautiful crowns or whatever, but being a dentist or being being being someone’s dental therapist, right. You got to have the people skills to put people at ease. What about first time you give an injection?

[00:33:25] Does it bother me? My mum’s diabetic, so I used to do it all the time.

[00:33:28] Oh, really?

[00:33:29] Yeah. That wasn’t a metal.

[00:33:32] And.

[00:33:32] Anything. We used to feel a bit sick about that. The idea that you should make me feel a bit gagging because it’s so deep at the back. Yeah, that used to just make me feel like, want you to throw up because you just went. It’s going to come out the back of the front, but someone’s mouth from every well that used to just make me want to. Yeah. When I used to watch it as a nurse. But you have to got over it though. Yeah, that was fine. I loved uni, actually. I loved.

[00:33:58] It. Did you? Did you?

[00:33:59] I want you to be there. You know, I want you to be there. And that’s.

[00:34:02] Like. And what was it like? I guess you went from school to work without uni. And uni is a lot of fun, Right?

[00:34:11] Did you.

[00:34:12] Did you enjoy it as well?

[00:34:14] Well, being older was probably the one. Well, actually there was quite a lot of us, I would say oldies, but there was actually I was a dental technician. He was in his thirties and children. It was a guy was a solicitor. I end up changes the industry, so there were quite a few of us, which was great because I was like, You know what, you’ve decided to change and it doesn’t matter how old you are. If it is it and it was like you decide, you know, you shouldn’t let people’s like, I don’t know, like these social I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but you shouldn’t let anything stop you. I don’t think if you want to do something you’ve got you’ve got to do it, then go for it.

[00:34:47] So people’s expectations.

[00:34:50] Have a lot. Yeah. I mean I still. Yeah, I still. Yeah, I still went to the pub and yeah, had a good time, but I didn’t really get involved with like the 21 year olds, you know. Well one thing I knew erm or. Yeah. That would be lovely. People like friends and stuff, they’ll probably say they’re friends, but I mean it’s like a different level. I was like I was, I was probably about 28.

[00:35:10] So.

[00:35:12] I mean yeah I a bit like Yeah. A bit older. The old person in the pub you know when you like you got the youngsters there when you’re a young guy and then you go over to the bar, you’ve got a 30 year old still in the pub and you’re like, you’re sad. I sad.

[00:35:28] I know that feeling only too. But, you know, I’m thinking about it. Yeah. I went to university with I think I’d done a two weeks of work as a, like a shop assistant in Oxford Street. And only because my my parents made me come. Like, they. They forced me to do it. Oh, my good. And and I remember I used to spend more money getting there, getting back. I used to take taxi to work, taxi back.

[00:35:58] And taxi.

[00:36:00] And have a steak for lunch. And I honestly used to spend more money every day than I used to make in that job because I hate I didn’t want I didn’t want to do that job. But my parents realised I was a spoilt brat and they said, You are going to work. But what I’m saying is.

[00:36:15] I’d like that, I like that.

[00:36:17] I got to uni and that was the only bit of real world that I’d seen. Apart from that I was just in school, you know. So. So yeah. And so it’s a different person. You’d been working since you were 16, so you don’t, you done 12 years in the workplace by the time you got to uni.

[00:36:35] Yeah. Yeah. It’s weird, but it’s like a kind of it would have been nice to do, like, the traditional way, the normal way. But then I suppose I wouldn’t have had the experience that I had. I definitely wouldn’t have known as much as I did. I don’t think, to be honest with you, the way I was back then, I don’t think I would have been able to deal with the level of education like the education there as well. Only doing the dental nurse in a recent My Jesus and everything that I had to do to get where I was helped me. I wouldn’t well, I would have done better in school, obviously to get into uni, but I don’t think it would. I don’t think it would have been right. I wouldn’t I don’t think I would have done it. It wouldn’t have been my path.

[00:37:08] So it’s okay. Let’s move on. You qualified and tell me about the first few jobs you did. Did you manage to get therapy jobs or did you end up doing hygiene?

[00:37:19] Yeah, I did. I did. I actually before I told you before I qualified that I had cervical cancer, I didn’t want to talk about that.

[00:37:27] I do want to.

[00:37:27] Talk about cos.

[00:37:31] Go on.

[00:37:31] What, You want to talk? Yeah. So when I was in my I was getting confused with the years now, 2011 November I was diagnosed with 1b1 cervical cancer. So that was like, oh I was, I was thinking I was getting in my way now of qualifying. So when that happened I was, I went, I had to have had the first surgery was unsuccessful, so I had to have what’s called a radical colectomy to try and save my fertility and my lymph node removed. But then I went back to you and you after six weeks and then I qualified.

[00:38:09] Six weeks after the surgery.

[00:38:10] Yeah, well, I made the doctor sign me, signed me off because he said to me, they recommend against it. But I said, I want you to go back. So I needed to pass.

[00:38:19] So take me back. Take me back to see what You had some symptoms of bleeding or whatever it was, right?

[00:38:24] Yeah. No, actually, I didn’t have any symptoms at all. Yeah, I had like a little bit of bleeding, a little bit of discharge and stuff. So by. But mainly. But you didn’t.

[00:38:33] Expect it to be cancer, right? So you went to your GP?

[00:38:35] No, no, not at all. And then they come back with dysplasia like precancerous cells, which I was really surprised about because I always, always really good with my smear test. I went every time they asked me to go and I was so obviously changed really rapidly in a short period of time. Every three sorry, every year, every three or every year, I don’t know, three years. And then it come back. I had the cells and I was like, okay, comb, biopsy, and even still then they said to me, Oh, look, it’s probably not that you’re quite young. It’s really, really rare. So two years before that I was having bleeding and they said they found Apollo, but they didn’t want to remove it and it wasn’t cancer. That’s what they told me. And then carried on, carried on and then had had that come back with a dysplasia. So that’s what I’m saying. I didn’t have no symptoms. And it was like if I would have waited another year, I would have probably won’t be. You know, that’s the scary thing about it. Yeah. Because into the cervix.

[00:39:31] So they said dysplasia and and what at that point did they say you’re going to need you need to need operation straight away.

[00:39:38] No, no, no. So what I did was I had like a colonoscopy done. So take a little bit of the cells away and go inside and cut a bit wide biopsy then. But even then they were saying, don’t worry, because obviously they want to reassure you, but sometimes you shouldn’t say that. You know, you don’t think it is. And then they said, actually it is cancer, but it’s early. We think we can get it from a biopsy. So they normally go in and just like cut part of the cervix away and hopefully they can punch it out. Quite a lot of people have it actually actually have kind of I burn the cells away. Don’t if you heard about the burn in. So it’s actually quite common but no one talks about it standard isn’t it. Anyway, so they said to me when, when I went back it was like, like every time, you know, if you go to hospital and there’s like a nurse with the doctor, you know that they’re saying wrong because I have like the million people with them. Yeah, like, I think it sounds like, you know, You see that? Oh, God, here we go. And then they sat there and sat down and they draw pictures and I was like, Look, your cancer’s here.

[00:40:34] We would normally do best practice would be hysterectomy. But because you’re not at children, there’s a pioneering surgery called a radical colectomy we can opt for and in my family all have it because I was panicking. I’ll just call it all away. But if I if I did that made that decision, I wouldn’t have I would have lost my fertility then. So I wouldn’t. And I haven’t got children now anyway. But I want you to, although, you know, you don’t know if you want kids. It’s like someone says to you, your choice is taken away. That’s a different matter, isn’t it? It would be like that was that was like you want it’s got to be your choice. It really did affect me. And then I went back and then they just they we did the biopsy and I’ve been in remission for ten years, so. Well, good. And I’m actually did this I did an advert for the for one of the charities and that should be out so and actually about promoting cervical smear testing because not enough people go for it and it can be treated if it’s caught early. And also they’ve actually saved my fertility as well.

[00:41:29] How did you feel that when they said cancer? Did you did you think, shit, man, like I’m going to die? Like how how did you feel about it?

[00:41:36] I think you know what? I think I went into shock. I think I went into shock. I don’t think I even dealt I still haven’t really dealt with it. I don’t think. Oh, yeah, I just got on with it. My mum and dad were in tears and I was like, always comfort in their mouths that they can treat you, that it was like I can treat, I can treat it like, let’s just don’t worry until like, you can’t sit in upset until we know like them. Let them do what they’ve got to do. And if that, if they didn’t, if that wasn’t successful, not the biopsy, the other one, the radical, the colectomy, then I would have to have chemo and everything like that. But that was from that person who wrote that. Not a lot of people have had that Finding Surgery is quite rare because you have to be very early stage cancer. It has to be one bay or one, so 11b one’s the final. But if if I went up a stage a tiny bit, one one up, which would have been two, then I would have to have a hysterectomy. And I’ve literally just gone back and my tests come back clear again. So I get checked every year by the London I go there.

[00:42:28] So do you think that was some sort of like coping mechanism or are you are you that person who just gets on with things anyway?

[00:42:36] I do know. I don’t know. But you say that it’s really funny because other things. Normally I have last couple years, I think I have been having a little mini breakdowns because I’ve been like getting really up, especially with my mom just dying and my dad’s been diagnosed with cancer now, so he’s got that one up next month. So it just feels like I must have been a really bad person in my past life because I’m just like, Oh, I feel like the shit cloud on top of me that just won’t go away. I mean, you can’t feel like that because you got to be like in life. But, you know, you’re just, you know, I think was I was in uni. I think I was like, you know what I was thinking to myself? I’m not letting this not stopping me. Like, I was like, I’m going back. Life is like it’s like you’re saying else it’s like putting in my way. So maybe the university forced me to focus on something else because I want you to cool off. Well, I had to stay on a couple of extra months to do a couple of modules, obviously, but I’ll still end up doing graduation with my my year and stuff like that. So but I was like it was early enough, you know, And it was I think, well, probably I’ve lost my lip now, but I mean, at the time they did save my fertility, so. Yeah, but it was a coping mechanism. Yeah. And also as well, I don’t really like attention as well. Like my family was all getting upset and I was just like, I feel like I’ve got to protect everybody else. So I don’t know. I’m kind of like a bit, you know, the person who tries to make everyone happy or laughs. I was like, I can’t let them get upset about it. I’m not stop crying. I’m still we’re on on. So maybe it worked.

[00:44:02] Yeah, but, you know, people bang on about mental health a lot these days, right? And and I don’t be amateur psychologist about it, right. Because I don’t I don’t know the answer to these questions, but. And you do need to worry about if you feel like you haven’t dealt with it. I haven’t processed it properly because these things end up being cumulative, you know, like you’re saying.

[00:44:24] I don’t know because it’s.

[00:44:27] Your.

[00:44:27] Mum go.

[00:44:28] Your mum and dad. Yeah. Once you start coping with those two situations and there’s almost this cumulative thing and suddenly you end up, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but one day you wake up depressed, you don’t know why. Yeah. And it’s, it’s the coping of, of not dealing, not, not processing these things.

[00:44:45] Yeah. No. Yeah. That’s the thing, You have got to process it. But I just feel like I have never had to. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I was doing these courses, but I mean, you’re right. You are right. And I think because I come from a back and not like in my family as well, it’s like everything they didn’t talk about stuff like that as well. And my dad doesn’t even say the word cancer. It won’t say it because he’s family. Come from a time where TB was a bad thing. So someone died of TB because I’m the youngest of four. My dad was the youngest of 11, so it’s like 50 or something. It’s just crazy. There’s like all Victorian time, so it’s like everything’s swept under the carpet, stiff upper lip and all that. But we need to change that, don’t we? So I.

[00:45:25] Think there was, there was some sort of idea that if you talked about it, it was going to happen to you in a strange.

[00:45:29] Way. Oh, well, that’s like, it’s like manifesting, isn’t it?

[00:45:34] Yeah.

[00:45:35] They say there’s been a few things where people that have actually acted in something and then that has happened to them or.

[00:45:41] Yeah, but.

[00:45:44] I don’t know. There’s strange things that happen there.

[00:45:47] So, so, so then you got over this and you did your exams. Was this your finals?

[00:45:53] Yeah.

[00:45:54] Wow. I’m past your finals, right?

[00:45:56] That. Yeah, we’ve married. I say that and I’m like.

[00:46:00] You must. You must be so on top of the world after that.

[00:46:05] Just being that I was, I’ll be shit hot. My. I’m serious. And then you’ve got these people though, and they’ve got a migraine, so you need to sort yourself out. I’ve just gone from, like major cancer surgery to extenuating circumstances. I had a headache last night. No way. And I didn’t put that form in ever. I didn’t put it the extenuating circumstances for me. Neither did.

[00:46:29] You. Did you know? But it’s funny. The agony and ecstasy, isn’t it? The nightmare you’ve been through. And then. Passing your exams after all of that. And it’s almost like we don’t know how happy we can be until very sad in life and life.

[00:46:45] But that’s why I think that’s the way it is, though, and that’s why I’m trying to look at it. Because without the dancing, it wouldn’t be high, as would there. We’ve had the highs. It won’t be the lows. That’s why they raised that, because otherwise it would be black and white, isn’t it? You know, that’s what it’s all about. And that’s trying to learn with that. And I always say. One of my favourite quotes is this too. This too shall pass because it’s like happiness that passes and yeah, like good point, you know, But then sadness will pass as well. But I mean like you say, and you have got you got to be careful of that toxic positivity because I hate that. It’s like, you know, you’ve got this and whatever because sometimes people haven’t got it and like you are allowed to be sad as well, you know. So that’s saying that I’m learning to deal with at the moment. So I’m not trying to be like, you know, I’m not as tough as I make out to be.

[00:47:35] Look, look, I say it comes back to bite you. If you if you if you don’t deal with stuff, you know, that’s that’s what I’ve noticed.

[00:47:41] But 100%, I even say apparently people will hold stuff in for a long time and they’re saying about this stress and causing cancer as well. Stress and a lot of stuff. So, you know, you have got to deal with things.

[00:47:53] So listen, listen, let’s move forward and talk about look, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what is guided by a film therapy.

[00:48:05] How is the EMA? Oh, it’s just a name that they made up, I think, because I don’t I just I like the machine. I think it’s really good. I love the way it works. I don’t I’m not not an ambassador or anything like that, but I mean, they’ve just that’s their name that EMS have come up with. They’ve that’s their slogan I think. So it’s like. So it means they’re just the blast in a way. The biofilm with the airflow. That’s it. So yeah that’s that’s what I.

[00:48:36] The guided piece.

[00:48:38] Your aim and your guide on the turf I suppose. I don’t know That’s what I’m.

[00:48:44] Is it. Is it.

[00:48:45] Oh you disclose it first. Maybe because you know where you go, you disclose it. I don’t know. I love it though, because I’m not going to knock it. I’m just saying. I don’t know. I don’t because I’m not the person to ask. You need to have somebody that actually know details.

[00:48:58] So so I was talking I actually know a bit more about it than than I let on because I was asking someone at the weekend. So but but I thought first time I heard Guided by a film therapy, I thought it was like a new thing where you guide the the plaque in a particular direction using particular I don’t know. I was thinking like, like Gore-Tex or something like some, some sort of, you know, barrier that you put in place. But, but it’s.

[00:49:24] Guided into the depths of how.

[00:49:27] But it’s more, it’s more then I, I spoke to someone at the weekend about it and, and I figured out it’s more like mini smile make over is like an hour word for composite bonding. Yeah.

[00:49:38] So I think it’s marketing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s quite clever. I mean, because it’s like their thing, isn’t it? It’s so people can say, oh.

[00:49:46] It is clever. It is clever. Right. The fact, the fact that it’s even come on my radar. Right. It’s come on my radar somehow. Yeah. So it’s.

[00:49:53] It’s a great machine I’m telling. I mean I’m just this is someone that’s like I’m not biased or anything because, you know, I just that’s why I purchased it myself. Because I really. I really fancy amazing scaler. I mean, I haven’t I haven’t really used the piezo actually, but I mean, yeah, the of the master. And that’s really because it has like it warms the water up as well. A lot of people have problems with light sensitivity. It’s one of the main problem. So it’s really cold. It’s bloody expensive though. That machine, it works out about 13 grand and all the bells and whistles. Yeah. Yeah. With everything about 13,000. Yeah. We’ve like the extra tips and that you need because it also has like the period tip as well, you know, like which you can go down with another company’s brought out like metal ones which probably better but.

[00:50:43] And it’s okay.

[00:50:44] Yeah. Yeah. And okay Yeah. Was one the.

[00:50:48] Oh.

[00:50:50] Yeah.

[00:50:51] So so all right it’s just it’s just a bit of marketing so but then do you do tell patients that I’m doing guided Python therapy.

[00:50:59] Is it just, just an airflow. The thing was it my machine and the practice like I work there there’s have a hygienist there and they don’t use an airflow but I used to just do it on my patients. So because I just because I was working on my aunt, I have a nurse as well.

[00:51:14] To upsell it. Like, do you charge more for airflow?

[00:51:17] You can do it better for my back, to be honest with you, to use that, rather than bending over with the Polish and Polish kind of in my hair, I find that I mean, I know the normal air flows. Years ago, they could be so messy. We’re not looking at snowmen like the patient being pure white or that.

[00:51:34] And I would. The last place I worked, I was sure that the airflow machine was was bringing on staining like it was scratching the teeth. Was it just the way we were using the wrong size parts?

[00:51:46] Yeah, it’s probably the party. And you’re be careful because it can be abrasive. You might have been using no room. I’ll go. What’s it called?

[00:51:53] When you aluminium oxide.

[00:51:55] Yeah. It blow staining. I probably would. Yeah. So it’s really good because that powder as well, like bust powder you can use up Gingival as well. So it’s really fine and you can use it on the tongue as well. Aha.

[00:52:13] Let’s move on. I know we’ve talked about some dark things already.

[00:52:17] Yeah. No, that’s a bit more happier.

[00:52:19] No, no, but I do want to talk about mistakes. Tell me about mistakes you’ve made.

[00:52:23] Probably staying at the wrong job for too long. That’s probably one of them.

[00:52:29] But one where you weren’t happy with you.

[00:52:30] Just wait. You’re not happy? Yeah, you just. You know, I think you stay sometimes because of patience as well. You know, you’ve got like and also money as well, isn’t it? So if like, especially after COVID and everything and just think, you know what, not you’re not getting what you need from somewhere like you’ve been over promised something like an interview or whatever. And then when it comes down to it, it’s just like backtracking and you just like you keep waiting and wait and waiting, but then it just doesn’t happen. So it’s sometimes just best to cut your losses sometimes and just know your worth as well.

[00:53:06] What about clinical mistakes? I know we don’t like to talk about it, sir, but it’s important to know.

[00:53:14] It is important. Yes, it is.

[00:53:21] Was there a medical history that you missed and. Or did you.

[00:53:28] Know.

[00:53:28] Shorty? Shorty. Surely you removed someone’s crown when you were trying to clean or something or went.

[00:53:33] Yeah.

[00:53:33] No, no. When you drilled.

[00:53:35] Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, actually, it was like there was actually a couple. So one one. I didn’t do it, but it was like patient was pregnant. And, you know, normally you don’t. I always says, don’t even think, change your medical history. But she didn’t want to disclose their pregnancy anyway and then also taking an x ray. And then I was like, Is there anything you need to tell me? And then she was like, I’m pregnant. So, so lucky that I asked. And that’s one thing that I find that a lot of we all don’t ask if someone’s pregnant and because some people don’t want to. And what she said was, I said I said, it’s really important that you tell us because the thing is, you know, you’re not supposed to take when you shouldn’t, because I didn’t want to say anything because I’ve just just not recently lost a baby, so I didn’t want to jinx what it was. Yeah, that’s what I mean. So you’ve got to be really careful with that. Make sure you definitely, definitely ask, because it’s so easy for us to get roped up in our own world. Another one physically as well has been when I’ve gone, I y you always go above and beyond and I give too much anyway, I suppose.

[00:54:31] But I can’t help the character. My character, Oh, that’s who I am. And I really do care about people. I mean, that’s why I’ve got like my own patient list and people come to me, you know what I mean? That’s why I, you know, I’ve got my own little my little thing goes. So yeah. Like, well, no, I wouldn’t I’m not, not like social media patients know who I am. And then they tracked me down or fired me from somewhere. And I’ve got like my regulars, like, find out where I’m working and stuff, and they will wait for me to go back. But I’m not actually working at the moment. So but it’s like sometimes it’s like you go above and beyond sometimes and it’s like one time you could be like you you’ve not. You have still given them that time, but you haven’t been like that again the next time. And it’s like if you’ve had a complaint, I’ve never really have complaints, but then it’s like, because I haven’t, I don’t know, done something that I did before or something because, you know, it’s about sometimes, well, just just try and be don’t go. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. No, I know what you mean.

[00:55:29] I know what you mean because I.

[00:55:31] I would top down with top too much sometimes because sometimes in that upset it upsets me when they’re not when, when that happens. Because I like to give my heart and soul to what I do. And then that time I know you’re not happy now and I even run over or I’ve done something that really I should have charge for and I’ve just done it. And you’re expecting it’s like sometimes it’s never enough. So sometimes. But that’s again, about learning your worth as well. But I like I always want to help people out. That’s probably why I never have no money for my my practice for free. But it’s yeah, about knowing when to like stop stop giving too much as well.

[00:56:07] You know, there’s there’s an art there’s an art to that. Right. I used to have a boss. He was maybe he used to charge maybe four or five times the price of everyone else in that town. And yet he would give everyone a 15% discount. And his patients used to love him for it. The 15% like, Well, I sometimes I would see his patients and I’d say, Oh, well, I’ll extend the 15% discount to you as well. And they’d be over the moon about the 15%. But the price he was charging was literally four times what everyone else was charging. And he’d, he’d figure it out. And I really it really made me learn about that, that question of people valuing what you’re doing, whereas you’ve done the opposite, right. You’ve done something for free and haven’t even told the person that you’ve done it for free. You know.

[00:56:56] That’s that’s where I go wrong sometimes, because maybe I just think, yeah, but you need to inform them, like with me, really, I should say to them, I’m doing airflow for you, like, but not everyone would do this for you. And normally they charge people charge so much more. But I just I like using it and it’s what I do for everyone anyway. And it’s bad for my back when I’m practising. But really I need to look at it. You know what I’m thinking. Yeah. So it’s things like that really. But it’s a learning curve, isn’t it? You just need to learn and also as well, like I’ll be a little bit uncomfortable sometimes with the money side of stuff as well, because I come from an NHS background, a lot of it before. So that was like I’ve learnt a lot working in private practice and especially not working in Square. My like the guys I love, they’re, they taught me a lot and had to, you know, well value yourself isn’t it as well because you steal your time like I’ll be, I’ll see somebody and think oh I haven’t done as much as I did on the last person. I want to charge them less. So what is wrong with that? I still my time, isn’t it? You know, I just. I don’t know.

[00:57:56] Yeah, it’s very common. It’s common to to not be comfortable talking about money and all that. It’s a common thing, but it’s a massive error. Yeah. I mean as soon as you start dealing with some lawyers and things you realise, you know, they charge you, they charge you to read a letter, to read a letter, but then now you’re not working because now you’re focusing on products.

[00:58:22] Yes, I am. I am.

[00:58:24] But I’m going to I’m going to. You just say what you want to say about these.

[00:58:30] No, I’m going to go for it. So I’m working on my own dental product at the moment and it’s not launched yet. Planning to launch in the next three months or so. The brand is called Bare as in a bare bare like a raw bear rather than bear skin. I’ll just put that in there. The whole idea about that is like base band medicine, and it’s about back to nature bearings for strength and healing. And also my mum used to call me Baby Bear and I lost this February, so kind of a thing for her as well. But also the products actually going to contain CBD oil. So as for the benefits that it will have, I don’t want to go into too much detail because it’s still in under works at the moment, so I don’t really want to give too much away. Yeah, watch this space. So it’s going to be a bear. It’s called Bear Oral Care and it’s going to contain CBD for like health wellbeing.

[00:59:27] What are the, what are the health benefits of CBD?

[00:59:30] It’s got anti-inflammatory properties. So recently it’s been licensed as a medicine for, I think epilepsy and arthritis, but there’s obviously still a massive grey area in the UK around it. So if you sell CBD, it has to go under normal foods as a real because at the moment I can’t say it’s a medicine because of all the clinical trials and things like that, but I’m going on theory based as it’s the same as if you go and buy CBD oil in a shop, it will say it’s a normal food or supplement. It won’t tell you and say to you, Oh, this is going to make you feel better. It’s going to, but it will contain other ingredients and it’s going to be bigger and eco friendly and it’s made in the UK as well. So that’s what I want to try and bring home, try and cut down the waste and everything. We have got, much as we have in the dental world, but also to consumers as well. So yeah, I’m just.

[01:00:25] And you know how people confuse CBD with THC and you know the.

[01:00:32] Psychoactive.

[01:00:33] Yeah. So, so just, just just outline what is the difference.

[01:00:38] So CBD is actually an extract from hemp cannabis and it can contain THC. That’s the psychoactive ingredient which obviously gets people high. If people.

[01:00:48] See other bit of it, not the bit that.

[01:00:50] Yeah, yeah, it’s not, it’s been extracted from it so but will it. As long as it contains less than 0.2% THC. Yeah. You’re allowed to sell it legally in the UK with licensing and things like that, which is still a bit of a barrier, but I do believe it’s going to become legalised soon anyway, fully with the UK and the US and everything. But no one is quite controversial and people are a little bit weary of it. But the products I’m going for as well, it’s actually to do with because I’m making an oil polymer product as well for dental oil and I’m hoping that we’re not hoping if they vary that CBD oil will actually go into the body systemically like sublingual under the tongue and through the gingival sulcus mucosa because you have the oil pull for 15 to 20 minutes. Yeah. Which has been around for years and years but. No one’s marketed it yet apart from me.

[01:01:48] So, you know, quite a big quite a big step. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, listening to your story, I’m I’m actually very proud of you for wanting to do this. Right.

[01:02:00] Oh.

[01:02:00] Thank you. Because it is a it’s a big thing to do. And it’s it’s thinking outside the box and taking a risk and, you know, all all of those things. But what I would say to you is, you know, take advice from lots of people and make small steps and, you know, figure figure out the social media side.

[01:02:23] Of that side of things. You can probably see my Instagram with about five pictures on there.

[01:02:26] You’ve got to you’ve got to and and and, you know, be careful of being the first.

[01:02:32] Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m worried about.

[01:02:34] We think a lot of times that being the first is is, you know, there’s that classic first mover advantage isn’t it, that people talk about. Yeah.

[01:02:41] But it’s like we say Facebook wasn’t the first was it, you know.

[01:02:45] When business took that first mover advantage. They’re talking about the first winner advantage. Right. Yeah. That said, the first winner in a category like let’s say let’s say in the energy drink category, Red Bull. Yeah. There might have been 12 other products before Red Bull, but Red Bull’s considered the first mover advantage. It’s the first product that made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interestingly, Red was one of my favourite companies in the world, right? Because of just their marketing. So beautiful.

[01:03:15] Yeah. The fly, the wings, isn’t it?

[01:03:16] Everything about their marketing just, I. I’m just totally seduced by that company’s marketing. But then.

[01:03:22] Brilliant.

[01:03:22] But then, now, now recently there’s a drink called Trip that you’ve probably seen.

[01:03:29] Oh that’s got CBD.

[01:03:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a, well there’s, there’s a whole lot of drinks that are CBD drinks that I think they have a name.

[01:03:36] So now actually Oh yeah.

[01:03:38] It’s on fire and it’s what, what’s amazing about they kind of copying Red Bull but it’s like equal and opposite. Right. They’re saying Red Bull gives you healthy.

[01:03:48] Yeah.

[01:03:48] No Red Bull gives you wings. This is kind of like a slow you down drink. You know.

[01:03:52] Like chill out.

[01:03:53] Relax with it. It’s got a name, The category’s got a name. I’m not sure exactly what it’s like a down or it’s not down. It’s like it’s got another name, but it’s the same idea of.

[01:04:01] I know what you mean. Yeah, it’s just a flip side of it.

[01:04:03] Yeah. And also in the small cans, I mean always used to get me about Red Bull was to take on Coca Cola, you know, like back in my day, that was like, it’d be like taking on the US government or something. Yeah. So you take on coke. There you go. They just held up, just held up a Diet Coke. They take on a drink like that with, with the can. That’s one third the size and four.

[01:04:26] Times the price.

[01:04:27] And win and win. They won right. Oh well yeah, they didn’t, they didn’t win against Coca Cola but I’m saying they, they won in the world. Right.

[01:04:34] The market. Yeah. Well the one of leukocyte as well didn’t they. Yeah.

[01:04:37] Yeah. For sure. So you know I wish you a lot of luck with that and it’s an exciting that the agony and ecstasy of of of launching a product would be very similar to the agony and ecstasy of getting into dental school and therapy and, and all this stuff you went through before that. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on. So I’m going to end it with the same two questions we always ask.

[01:05:06] Yeah, go for it.

[01:05:07] Fancy dinner party, three guests, dead or alive? Who would you have?

[01:05:14] This was really difficult, but I’d love at ten. But I’m going to say Elon Musk definitely is that guy. Yeah, I just think it’s quite a bit crazy. Like, he just. He just. He just don’t care. And he uses eccentric and I just think, yeah, just everything about the whole persona, like the guy is just great. I think he’s a fantastic, good sense of humour. Sadhguru Another one. Have you heard of Psych Guru who’s a Yogi?

[01:05:43] Oh, I think I do know that we’ve worked with the beard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:05:48] I know him. I think he’s amazing like this.

[01:05:50] Yeah, he’s.

[01:05:51] Good. He’s making me calm down a bit rather than be like, Oh.

[01:05:56] I get. I get him on Tik tok a lot for some reason.

[01:05:59] Oh, really. Yeah. Yeah, I’m on there. Yeah, we know. And the third one will be it’s gonna be Elvis. Oh, yeah. Elvis Presley. Wow.

[01:06:10] Yeah. What a dinner.

[01:06:11] Party. Yeah. This Apple Music, it was always. It was the first person that did dentistry and Woman in London. And, you know, Lily. Lily. And your name was. And. Yeah, there’s others, but. But. But it would go on forever, won’t it?

[01:06:29] Have you seen. Have you seen the Bob Marley musical?

[01:06:32] No. Oh, my goodness.

[01:06:33] It’s amazing. It’s amazing. I don’t like musicals yet, but that one, my goodness, it was excellent. And it’s not what you’d expect. I mean.

[01:06:41] They still go in probably.

[01:06:43] When I went. It wasn’t that long ago and it was kind of new. Amazing, amazing, amazing thing. The different arrangements on the songs and.

[01:06:51] And just. Yeah, I love him. Yeah.

[01:06:53] Just the, the, the sound of that. Like you feel like it’s a live event, you know, like a live concert. You should definitely go to it. Definitely. Definitely go.

[01:07:01] Music does it, you know, doesn’t it? It’s like you could be singing down and it just, you know, it just does something to you, doesn’t it? Just lift your soul for sure.

[01:07:08] So then our final question. You’re on your deathbed.

[01:07:14] Yes, I’ve been there a couple of times. Yeah.

[01:07:19] After your story, this question’s a bit a bit poignant. On your deathbed, you’ve got your nearest and dearest around you, your family, hopefully your children by then, because of that operation, was so successful. And three pieces of advice you can leave for your family and for the world.

[01:07:41] Don’t ever let anyone intimidate you and have the courage to go. If you think you can do something, just go for it. Like don’t about anything. Stop you like where you come from, you know, just. Just go for it. That would be one one of them questions and about. Yeah. Just. Just know your worth. The other one, would they treat everybody as as you would want to be treated? Because you never know. But you could you could bet on people on the way up and then you don’t know where you’re going to fall. You always need and I’ll just say you should always treat the CEO and a janitor. They say the same, isn’t it? Because, you know, you should be humble. And then the last one would probably be. I always tell people that you love them because you never know when you’re not going to see them again just yet. And I do think love love is a cliche, isn’t it, really? But I think love is all you need, isn’t it? Really? It’s so true. That’s what it’s all about. Love. Love is everything. I think so, yeah. Don’t cry, baby was.

[01:08:47] No. You know what I was thinking? I was thinking of one of my friends is his mom passed away, and he said to me, Call your mom every day. But. But. But he wasn’t saying about because one day she’ll be dead. His his mom was sick, you know, had dementia for a few years before.

[01:09:05] This terrible disease.

[01:09:06] And he was saying, call your mom every day while the lights are still on. Like while while she’s there for you. Let her be.

[01:09:12] Yeah, but I don’t think we do that enough, though. Even with friends, the way you should tell people like and I always say, I always compliment people because everyone’s so quick to be negative. And you should always be like, if you like, don’t tell them. And you know, because like, the world can be quite dark and if you can, against that Michelangelo thing as well, isn’t it? You know, people will never, never forget how you make them feel. So, you know, if you can make someone stay a bit better, then do it, you know?

[01:09:38] That’s definitely, definitely, Yeah. I’ve really, really enjoyed this error.

[01:09:44] Me too. And I hope, though, I hate my voice.

[01:09:49] We all have our voice, so. And I know I’m going to be seeing you hopefully enlightened soon. So I.

[01:09:56] Really.

[01:09:56] Look forward. Look forward to that.

[01:09:58] Thank you so much.

[01:09:59] It’s been a pleasure.

[01:10:01] It’s been great. Thank you.

[01:10:04] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:10:20] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:05] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:22] Welcome to Leading Ladies Part two. Our mini series combining some of the best parts of our conversations with inspirational lady dentists. Enjoy. See you in part three. Number 54. Lauren Sparkle.

[00:00:39] The fact that I do hold several media roles so frantically sort of trying to figure out what to advise members as well. So yeah, I think the first six weeks or so I was averaging about four or 5 hours sleep a night just trying to keep on top of, you know, meetings, constant contact, WhatsApp messages flying around and things.

[00:01:07] And you’ve got you’ve got your practice, you’ve got your kids. How many kids have your three? Three kids? You’ve put your brother and your dad and now you’ve got mental dental and now you’ve got all these BDA roles. Are you the type of person who just like says yes to everything and then works it out later? Or do you love do you love being in the middle of it or. You know what I mean? It’s a lot to do.

[00:01:35] Yeah. I mean, we’ve got confidential as well.

[00:01:39] A confidential thing.

[00:01:43] Yeah. My dad at my wedding, when my dad gave a speech, he called me perpetual motion. And I think that, you know, that probably that probably is right. I’d like to be on the go, and I like to help. So if there’s an opportunity, then I’ll take it, because I think that if we’ve got the option to help, if we’ve got the ability to help people, then we should. So yeah, if there’s if there’s an opportunity to help, then I will.

[00:02:18] Lauren, how would you squeeze it all in? What’s a day or a week in the life of your sort of activities like so with running the practice just one day, rather, you know, and then running all of these organisations and WhatsApp messages and stuff like that. What’s it like for you? Typical day, typical week.

[00:02:38] So I will wake up sort of at half, six, seven and just immediately check my phone. As unhealthy as that is, immediately check my phone, scroll through messages, reply to anything that has come while I’ve been asleep.

[00:02:57] While you’re in bed, you’re in.

[00:03:00] Bed. It’s like when I open, it’s like scrolling through and I’ll replace any immediate messages. Then get up, get kids up, ready for school nursery, sort the dog out, sort of cat. So chicken on the duck. So I’ll get the girls onto the school bus. Sonny comes with me because he goes to nursery just opposite the practice.

[00:03:29] How old are they?

[00:03:30] So Brooke is nine, Grace is six, and Sunny is doing well. And so, yeah, I managed to even be spaced out. My husband was joking a little while ago, was like, Oh, come on, now it’s time for the next one. They will be four more. We’ve done it three. We’re both really tired all the time. He still tries to come into bed with us every night. So. So yeah, he I mean, this is this is the reason I’ve got so much time is because Sunny actually has never slept very well. So I’m usually up so I can I can manage a lot from my phone. So that’s, that’s kind of what happens. So yeah, on a typical day, Non-covid, I’ll go in and see patients and, you know, replace messages, lunchtimes and then usually zip from the practice to get sunny, to get home to sort kids out, that sort of thing. And then, you know, like in between times I’ll be replying to messages, doing emails and that sort of thing. So yeah.

[00:04:36] Is it a mixed mix practice?

[00:04:38] It’s a mixed practice, yeah. So we’re about 80% NHS and that. It’s obviously we’ve been really, really fortunate to get some NHS funding in Wales. We’ve had 80% of our contract value initially. We’ve just recently gone up to 90%. So that is being helpful. But obviously the private side has died off really because the priority is being NHS patients kind of because we’re we’re so restricted about what we can do. We’ve really just tried to focus on getting everybody healthy. And a lot of the a lot of the private stuff I was doing was aesthetic. I got a small amount of patients who I’ve been looking after as well, but we’ve just we just mainly been focusing on keeping everybody healthy through this time.

[00:05:34] How many how many rooms is it? How many dentists is it in the practice?

[00:05:36] We were we were two surgeries. And then this year I was appointed as a trainer, so I just put in a third surgery.

[00:05:47] Goodness, you are busy, aren’t you? So tell us. Tell us about mental dental. How did it come about? First of all, for someone who doesn’t know, what is it?

[00:05:57] So Mental Dental is Facebook forum for UK dentists. We’ve allowed a couple of Irish dentists to join because there wasn’t something similar for Irish dentists and we thought that we would still have some crossover between our problems. But it’s mostly UK dentists, so we have close to 6000 members now and it was started really as a kind of a support group. So I mentioned earlier that my mother was the director of a charity when she was alive. She worked her way up to become the director of that charity, but initially was just a volunteer and she used to help to run support groups for people whose children had speech and language problems. And I remember that the support groups were super useful because it meant that people with the same issues and the same problems and the same fears could come together and share them and give advice and support and just hints and tips, but without judgement, because everyone was going through the same thing. And I just I thought, you know, we’re really, really isolated as dentists. We all say it all the time. We’re really isolated as dentists. It’s slightly better if you work in a practice with more dentists, but not always because you don’t always feel you can talk to your colleagues. Some people, you know are very private and I just thought that a Facebook forum would give that space quite nicely to dentists who are all over the country. I’d seen on some other forums that people were really suffering. Burnout is something that is really prevalent in dentistry. I’ve suffered from it myself. I had a breakdown in 2015 myself and I just didn’t want anyone to have to face that alone anymore. So I just wanted to make a space where we could come together and we could help each other.

[00:08:07] So when when you went through it yourself, did you find there was no one to talk to?

[00:08:11] I didn’t want to talk to anyone. And this was problem is that I had hidden this part of myself for so long that nobody had any idea that I was suffering. No idea till until it all completely fell apart. And it was manifesting even physically, because I spent about two weeks with just I was just shaking and vomiting and could barely move. So it was really, really I had affected me not just mentally, but physically, also.

[00:08:50] A lot on the outside. If I knew you passing by and all the rest of it, I wouldn’t have a clue, right? Yeah, I’d be blind to this, but something was going on inside until you exploded and it all fell apart. Would you mind just sharing what it was and what led to that? If you’re comfortable doing so, obviously, and then perhaps just sharing, not necessarily mentioning names, the typical things that you see in your group that perhaps somebody listening to this and is experiencing similar problems would feel comfortable reaching out and knowing that this helped.

[00:09:28] Okay. Well, for me, I think it was a combination of things. So it’s never just one thing in isolation that causes us these issues.

[00:09:39] Number 67 Shaadi Menu Cherry. The tick tock must take time. I mean, I was. I was. I was going through it last night. What do you do one day?

[00:09:52] Well, I used to do one, two, three, three a day. I think that’s the that they say one, two, three a day. Yeah, but you have to be relevant. You have to be out there. And that’s the thing with social media. I think you have to be consistent. You’re going to have off days, but you have to have content pre-planned. But all of this is pre-planned. So I film and do all of that. So if I have a filming day, then I will film as many videos as I can that day and plan it. But it takes a lot of time, especially if you want to do well. You know, if you just want to create videos for the sake of it, then that’s another thing. But if you actually want to spend time editing them, planning them, filming them, and it does take time.

[00:10:28] How many can you produce on a day? Like a whole day?

[00:10:32] Yeah. So if I have a day where I’m not at the clinic, I’m at home, then yeah, I’ll plan. I would have planned them from before. So whenever I get an idea, I dropped it down and then for that day I know how many filming. So for example, for that video that went viral, I think I created like 25 or something videos in that day. And that just happened to be one of the videos.

[00:10:51] Oh, really?

[00:10:53] Yeah. But you get you get you get good at stuff. And a lot of it isn’t like just me pointing to stuff. It’s reacting to stuff. So thankfully on TikTok, there’s a lot of videos that you can react to and just talk about what’s happening and people seem to like those as well.

[00:11:08] I’m a 72 Elaine Halley.

[00:11:11] We were the first in our area to put an ad in the Yellow Pages that actually, you know, we had a logo which prompt a print or someone came out with our cherries. Cherry Bank, Dental Family Dental Centre. And my start line was caring dentistry with a gentle touch. And we put we I guess we built a story at a time when people were just putting lists and their names and numbers. So we started off with a box and then we moved to a column and then we got bigger and then other practices started to follow suit, so we had to do other things. We also did leaflet. I mean, I went around with leaflets myself and put them through doors. I joined the Chamber of Commerce, I joined the business network. I made myself and as I said, as I explained, I talk and teach now, but I was that doesn’t never came easily to me. So I made myself join business networking groups and, you know, have to stand up and vouch for what I was doing. So I remember people saying, you know, most new businesses fold within the first 12 months, so I’d get to 12 months and write a few, and then it would be. But most businesses fold within the first three years and then most most don’t make it to five years. I can remember each of those milestones thinking, Oh my God, it’s like, when can I feel like I’ve made it? So yeah. Then you learn.

[00:12:39] Your three practices now. Elaine Right.

[00:12:43] And no, not quite. So I did open a second practice in Edinburgh and I have sold the majority stake in that practice to a group of practices in Scotland, the Pain Free Dentistry Group, and I work for them as a clinical director, so helping to mentor the associates. So I still have some ownership of Edinburgh, but I don’t work there anymore. So I had a brief dalliance with corporate, which didn’t go well, which I could have probably a bit like the I need to work for myself. So I realised this isn’t going to work, manage to get myself out of that by, by then selling to a dentist who who understands what it is to be to be a dentist. So I really enjoy balance in my working life. So I work clinically part of the time in my own practice in Perth, which is now back to being just mine, which is brilliant. And then I work Mentoring Associates for a pain free dentistry group, and then I also teach as well. So I love the balance.

[00:13:44] And so you said you’re a bit of a control freak. What are you like as a as a boss? Are you touchy feely, caring, sharing like boss? Were you a bit strict on that?

[00:13:56] You’re probably not the one to ask. I have three team members who’ve worked with me for over 20 years, so.

[00:14:03] That’s a good thing.

[00:14:04] I can’t be that bad. And yeah, I think. I. I don’t know. I don’t know. I try and be kind. I try and respect my colleagues, but I also know how I want things to be. And I think sometimes I have to remember to do the touchy feely stuff, you know? I think most business owners have a kind of mindset of getting the job done and making decisions. And yeah, sometimes you have to remember that people aren’t just they don’t can’t read your mind and they’re not necessarily just going to come with you. You might have to check in with them occasionally. So but my my core team, my team here in Perth, as I say, most of them have been with me for a long time. So they’ve figured out how to manage me. Probably more than you must have.

[00:14:50] You must’ve had some some periods of overwhelm, though, right? Because, I mean, before you had more, more practices, more associates, more staff, you hold back commitment. You’ve got how many kids?

[00:15:02] Three.

[00:15:03] Three kids. There must there must have been moments where. Where it was just like too much. What was your what’s your darkest kind of days in your professional life?

[00:15:15] I’ve had lots of moments where it’s been too much. I mean, I don’t think you get through life without, you know, without ups and downs. I think, you know, I’m very fortunate that I’ve been able to maintain ownership of my first practice. And I think anyone who started to swap practice, not anyone, because some people are very good at starting businesses and selling them and letting them go. But for me, you know, this building, this these people, these patients I’ve been looking after for for 25 years have been my rock throughout some of the other ups and downs of life. Absolutely. I mean, starting Edinburgh was an ambitious move. I try not to have regrets in life, but there were some pretty big moments where I really did regret stretching myself financially and emotionally. And I have massive respect for people that can manage multi site practices. I mean, I struggled with two, so I don’t know how these people do it that have have multiple sites. I realise that that’s not that was possibly an ego driven situation. I’m doing so well in Paris, I can certainly do it somewhere else. I think what they learnt about myself was I’m good at what I do, but growing scaling is not. That’s not what drives me. So yeah, I mean, I have three children. My first pregnancy, I had appendicitis in the middle of that pregnancy and was suddenly off like suddenly off for six weeks with a new practice. No associates. So lots of lots of ups and downs that life throws at you. Yeah, certainly don’t take any of it for granted, that’s for sure.

[00:16:59] I’m a 76 physio. Lakhan Osborne Without question.

[00:17:04] I definitely had a much more feisty. I think you’ve mellowed with age. I definitely had a much more feisty. Well, you put the barrier down. You know, I, I’m a great believer when people talk to me about barriers, I say to them the barriers in reality and the barriers in your head. And I think more barriers are in our head sometimes than in reality. And I am a person that if I want to do something, I’m either going through it, round it or over it, but I’m not going to go under it. And I fall down all the time. I fall down all the time. But the thing is, I am surrounded by a family that love me. Come what may, they are unconditionally at my side. I’m supported in by my friends. You know, I said about Corey, even Asha, you know, I have friends I’ve had for 30 years. And even when I fell down in the sense that, you know, I don’t know whether you will bring this up, so I’ll bring it up. When I got my GDC letter. Right, that was four years of hell. Hell, because you suddenly feel that everything has been swiped from under you and you suddenly start to believe that you’ve done something terrible, you’ve really done, you’ve hurt someone. And it’s appalling. And I remember Corey and Zacky coming to my practice on the day, and they sat down and read the letter and said, Right, what are we going to do? And it was always we. It was always the Three Musketeers, you know, And I and I hugely and I remember Corey saying, if they come for you, they’ll come for me, too. And so I was always really lucky because loyalty to my friends, you know, if any of my friends call me any time of the day or night, I will get in my car or walk there barefoot if I have to, to get to them, because that’s what friendship means to me. And I think that’s why I’ve survived this long.

[00:19:02] Really busy. Tell me about your patient experience, because from what I’m hearing right now, your whole life and everything is about loyalty, love, care and all of that. And so how do you how do you wrap that up in your in your patient experience? It seems to me you’re less of a businesswoman and more of a someone who’s there, as you mentioned, to serve to give that 96 year old the ability to bite into a steak for the first time in 20, 34 years. Talk me through your patient experience. What happens? A walk through the door? Who do I meet? If I pick up the phone? Who do I speak to? What is the experience like in your clinic?

[00:19:41] So usually a lot of my work is referrals, so it’s either referral from in-house patients. I think that’s a big plus for us. And also a lot of my students same work, But although we’re doing that work together a lot of the time or it’s just direct referrals. So for example, I take I have referrals from Uchenna and, and other people in the area that I work with, so they will ring and we will have normally had a letter before, so we’ll be aware. So my front of house will know straightaway that someone’s called and they. They will be welcomed and say, yes, we’ve got the referral. We’re going to send you an email. Would you like to send us back your availability? And we would normally say to them, we’ll call you by the end of today to get this sorted for you. Then they’ll come to me and show me that. And if I don’t know about it already, we’ll try to find the appropriate time. So for example, if the patient is 90, I’m not going to offer them a 9:00 appointment. I’m going to offer them an 11:00 to 2:00 appointment because they’re not going to get out of bed at seven know. So things like that I’m fairly attuned to then, depending on what it is, they will be called by my head nurse who looks after all my patients and she will get to know them.

[00:20:58] She will ask them if there’s anything they’re particularly concerned about. She’ll ask them how they’re getting to us, you know, just in case there’s any delays, all that kind of thing. And then she’ll follow it up by email saying, I’ll call you the day before your appointment. If you have any concerns, please contact me before. So that happens when you walk in. We’re ready. We know you’re coming. So my head nurse will welcome you pre-COVID. We would have known. We will have offered you a cup of coffee. Whatever you want. You will sit down and then they’ll tell me straight away and I will go to. To the waiting room or the waiting area and pick up the patient myself. I’ll then take them through and we sit in like a little coffee, an area and sit down and have a chat. So the first thing I do with my patient in that scenario is to sit down and learn something about them, learn what makes them tick, why they’re there, what their experience has been, what worries them, what makes them happy, what they’re concerned about today.

[00:22:00] Is it that away from the dental chair?

[00:22:01] Yeah. So we have a couple of armchairs, we have a coffee table, that kind of thing. Very simple. They might have a cup of coffee still in their hand. And then we’ll move towards the dental chair and I’ll say to them, You know, this is what I’d like to achieve in the next 45 minutes. We’re going to go through it in this way so they know exactly what’s going to happen before we move to the chair and then we get to the chair. So I will do full exam photographs. I tend to ask them what are the three or four things that they want to achieve? And I write them down in their own words. And I say to them, If you decide that I’m the person who’s going to help you, we’re going to come back and look at this at the end when I fit. So I know whether I did this right.

[00:22:44] Number 83 Sabre Shake.

[00:22:48] I think actually you’ll be surprised that a lot of it is in the is in the now. And I’ve learnt that being in the present is everything because that really shapes what’s going to happen. But I think that a lot of my head is in, in the, in the entrepreneurial growth of where I want to be, but actually from a day to day aspect, I’m not doing that every day. I would like to do more. But I think like we said before, Roo is still in its infancy, you know, and the team need me and I hope they need me more so. But, you know, the fact that, you know, having a short maternity and just getting back on my calls and being there, you know, that value add for me, I feel is definitely needed every day and wanted as well. I do see that that I am part of the brand and that the team need that it’s not just patients are so important and giving the patients that flavour of your brand and your quality is everything. But actually for the team, what they need from the brand is me, really. So I’ve got to do that every day in terms of that, that leadership, I think that’s so important.

[00:23:54] So how often do you have those conversations with them? I mean.

[00:23:57] So at the moment I probably structure runs where we now have we’re doing everything now over zooms as well as meetings, but we will meet with different levels of teams. So I would say managers meetings are weekly. Then you have board meetings with group level teams are kind of monthly, but actually group level members, I’m probably speaking to them three or four times a week. So it’s very informal there. We’re in too many WhatsApp groups and Re dental. We really need to relax with those. But you know, we’re always on, you know, in conversation with them. I think I have a really good relationship with all of them that it’s very informal. It’s like, Saba, we need you for this X, Y, Z, and I’m their number 85. Nina Wadia Yeah, I think it’s a completely different skill and I personally think this should be taught at dental school. I just don’t know why. I mean, I hope it changes in the next few years, but that skill of running a business, understanding figures, understanding revenue, all that kind of stuff is so important. It should be taught to everyone. So yeah, I had to learn it, I think so. Read books again, my mentors, business consultants, we went through all the metrics and all the things you need to know which you aren’t towards dental school and then. You learn as you go along. So you see what works. You see what doesn’t work and you change things. And I think everyone mistakes, but you come across things actually that didn’t really work around. Let me try this. So it’s a skill that you have to learn. I do think what I definitely had to was and I guess some people in built with that sort of business ethos, but I definitely wasn’t. I was very academic, so it was a completely different ballgame. But yeah, it was fun learning about it. And I think then combining both skills worked really well.

[00:25:44] Reno What are the best and worst things about running a business? So sometimes there’s things that you do in your business that you just do because you have to do, but you just don’t enjoy it. And there’s some things that you do in your business where you’re in your zone of genius. And if you were doing that 100% of the time, life would be great.

[00:26:02] Let me start. I guess the best thing about running your own business is literally the fact that you can do every single thing your own way using whatever equipment you want, spending however long you want with whoever you want, because you get to choose who your team are. And that makes all the difference in an environment you want to as well. So especially with the new clinic, it’s really made a difference to how much I always really enjoy everything, but it just magnified how much I enjoy going to work. So I think the best part is, and the thing is also working in a team is really fun. I don’t see my team members as I’m the boss. You’re the all. We all collaborate with each other, so we all bring different strengths and we try and support each other and build each other up. So that’s kind of the best thing about having your own own business. And I guess you’re in control of things. You’re in control of the future of your business and who you bring on to the team and things, treatments you might want to offer. So there’s a lot of you’re in charge, I guess, with all those kind of things. I guess the negatives are you just can’t switch off.

[00:27:01] It’s yeah, you’re you never know. I don’t really call it working for me. Well it’s like play to me. I just I enjoy it anyway. But you don’t switch off from your business. For example, you get an email or something happens and sometimes they’re very minor things, but you have to deal with them because it’s your business. So the way I’ve kind of tackled that before, actually in the first year or so, I got quite I tried to zone out work and play and I try to take I’ve done for the day and then I just get like patient emails or this and that and I get really stressed out. Then I realise quite quickly on if you want to do this, you just have to take a lifestyle approach. So and that’s how I work now. It’s more of a lifestyle. I don’t see it as work and play, it’s just a lifestyle. But that’s the thing. You can’t switch off no matter how much you think you can. You just can’t. If it’s a bad thing, it’s just something you got to be aware of. So I guess that’s that’s the hardest bit for sure.

[00:27:53] And so how, how different is life now? You were talking about studying for your specialism. Wake up at 5 a.m., go to bed at midnight. Does the business of dentistry live with you during those hours as well? The first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is check your phone, see, see, see what you’ve got on or whatever and so on and so forth. How how is it now that you’ve moved from studying to having your own business and the integration of the business into your life?

[00:28:23] Yeah, I think it’s quite different now. I think in terms of hours of the day, I still wake up very early. I still probably wake up at five, 530 every day, wake up. I’m quite religious, so I do some meditation in the morning. I actually don’t check my phone till I start having breakfast because I don’t. Personally, I think your first hour of your day is that’s when you have your best ideas. That’s when you want to be fully focussed. I don’t look at my phone, I don’t look at emails the way I see emails. Emails are just like a to do list, like someone’s telling you what to do. You want to just I personally zone that out for a later time in the day. So yeah, the first I think the hours are the same, but my day is far better balanced. So I have time in the morning where I don’t work and then I walk to work. So I have 20 minutes where I listen to a podcast or listen to some music, depending what mood I’m in and just think about my day ahead. Then I get into work. That’s when I turn of career mode on and then I look at my day. I have to say through the move, obviously I’ve been building the new clinic. It’s been stressful, so my hours have been longer, but on an average day, probably start work at around 830 and finish about six, 630, 7:00 sometimes.

[00:29:34] So it is a long day. But, you know, make sure I have a lunch break. It’s a quite nice paced day. And then when I get home I do try and do non dental stuff, which I think is quite important. Some days I’ll have like podcasts or webinars or things on, but I’m not doing that every single night. And I think on the weekend I definitely try and do some non not switch off but just do some non dental stuff, other things that re-energize me essentially. And also I’m not working, I’m not in the clinic, I don’t do, I don’t see patients every single day. So I’m working three and a half days in clinic and then I have a day of admin, which is quite nice and doing non clinical stuff as well. So I try to balance my week, not just my day as well. And what I’ve now set up is sounds a bit strange, but all my calendar on my iCal, I have a zone, my, my actual calendar, so I have anything that’s work related and read anything which is fun and everything’s fun. But anything that’s non dental, it is having blue and every so I try and make sure I’ve got my balance right, which really helps me actually. So I know if I’m just too much red in the diary and try to book in some more blue. So yeah, that that system seems to work for you now.

[00:30:43] I’m a 91.

[00:30:44] Gina Vega No, I am very happy with the way things are. I have achieved a lot. I have no plans to open another practice. I do still have a little bit of room for growth. Within the practice that I’m going to try to to I’m actually September trying to expand that part of the business. But I, I have always something under my sleeve. You know, I have like a moment on my speakerphone recently. Now I have done a few webinars. I’m going to do another webinar and soon. I’m also at the moment working with as part of the educational committee of the VA. And so for me that that is something that I want to explore a little bit more. So personally, I think the moment I only work three days a week at the Practice, I don’t have any more intentions to work four days at all. The fourth day is in my house doing my clean checks and doing my paperwork, my admin, and actually July is my first month that I’m not working on Fridays. I’m not even answering emails on Fridays anymore. I, I have decided to do that because after the pandemic we were working 12 hour days and it was killing us. So we have changed. And that’s why I think at the moment I want to need to be more of a work life balance. I want to spend a little more time with my family. I want to spend more time in my house because I enjoyed it when we were in the lockdown. So so now for me definitely is growing a few to maximise the space of the practice, but also growing my my name as a speaker, as a committee member, things like that.

[00:32:55] Tell us about the family, Gina.

[00:32:57] Well, I have two children. My husband Mike, as I mentioned before, and the kids are they’re amazing. You know, my son just finished his GCSE in May. I’m very, very proud of him because we tell him that he had to find that he was going to have a summer job and he’s embracing it with both arms. He is doing some gardening 2 to 3 days a week and he is loving it. So he has his first job and he’s yeah, he’s amazing. And my daughter Sophia, she just finished a senior school. Sorry, junior school. She just that was a last year junior school. She had her Leavers party and now she’s going to senior school. I can’t believe how quick time has gone.

[00:33:50] I’ve got 93 Hannah Woolnough.

[00:33:54] So I graduated. So I’d love to say that I’m really, really youthful, but that is probably just some of the boat stops talking. So I graduated in 2006, so it’s 15 years since I graduated and I think I first started going to things like Ldl-c meetings and getting involved with HIV about ten years ago. So and it started off quite gradual just attending the board meeting. But as I say, these things tend to snowball, especially if you live in remote areas where we find it really difficult to recruit somebody to come and do a job at the LDC, no one wants to hold a chequebook. So if you’re willing to get involved in any way, you sort of end up getting sucked into it and just being given more and more responsibility. Because if you’re interested and it is interesting, it’s not that you’re being lumbered with jobs that you don’t want to do. It is interesting stuff. It’s just finding people that have the capacity to deal with that. And I think in our profession there are lots of people who are really, really worn out with everything that they’re doing. And the thought of asking them to go to a meeting at the end of an evening of full clinic day and talk about dentistry even more, that that can be quite an ask number.

[00:35:05] 104 Shazia Ahmed Now one.

[00:35:10] Hands are tied, hands are tied, limited. A limited time, limited.

[00:35:17] Materials.

[00:35:18] Materials, you know, and we’re supposed to produce the best, best outcomes.

[00:35:23] Yeah. So. So. So personally, for you, what made you stick at NHS Dentistry? I mean, did you not think, Hey, I’ll go private?

[00:35:34] For me, I’ve actually worked in high needs areas most of my life.

[00:35:40] And it’s even harder, right?

[00:35:43] Very, very difficult. Yeah, very difficult. And you know, when you’re a woman and you’ve got young children, yeah. Sometimes you have to take on a bad deal just to be there for your kids. Yeah, and I was one of them. I took on the harder jobs just so that I could finish work at 3:00 and pick my kids up myself. And the beauty of that is that you do become a very good dentist. You learn, you learn techniques, you become the best dentist you could be.

[00:36:20] Number 106 Slaney McGraw I guess you’ve been in and out of enough dental practices to see what’s going on, right? But I guess when running a bit different, being an associate, totally different. Being an associate than a principal though.

[00:36:36] Yeah. Yeah. And I think from a setup perspective, I mean, I’m lucky that I have been involved in the opening of a clinic before and from a Sikh perspective and all of that I’ve been involved in in the interviews. And so I’m I know that’s a lot of work, but I’m I’m not otherwise working at the moment.

[00:36:53] So but my my point isn’t that my point is, you know, when you and Kerry working at RU.

[00:36:59] Yeah.

[00:37:00] When you’re not the boss, there’s a different relationship with the staff. And when you are the boss.

[00:37:06] Right.

[00:37:06] Of course. And how that’s going to translate, What kind of boss are you going to be, what kind of post you’re going to be?

[00:37:12] I think there’s a line between being too close friends with your colleagues because then it or sorry, not with your colleagues, with your employees, because it then becomes very, very difficult if somebody is not kind of working at the standard that you’d like them to be. So I want to be very, very fair. I want to get on very well with my employees. But I’m also not going to be going out with them on a Saturday night and partying every week or with anybody else for that matter. And I’ve got two children and I can’t. But if I could, I might.

[00:37:43] Talking of that, we’re coming to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks, aren’t we. For And so I did. I heard that.

[00:37:49] There’s a babysitter in that job. Pardon.

[00:37:52] I was going to say Thursday the 11th. I hope you’ve got your babysitter sorted.

[00:37:56] I know I did actually have to message Susie because I have a babysitter for the Friday of I’m coming to see the money talking on Friday, but I just don’t know if my youngest will be able to stay on her own because she’s not great at feeding from the bottle. So I had a message, Susie, and was like, Can I take her? She was like, I don’t care what anyone else says. I like babies, become friends with the baby, but not on the Thursday night.

[00:38:23] I’m 108. Jasmine, would you tell your kid to become a dentist?

[00:38:28] Oh, that’s a really tricky one because I really want to say yes. I really want to say yes to that question. And I have to be honest, I think I would say no, because I. Chain, I feel like, and I hope it passes. I feel like we’re we’re going through a period in our profession, which in some ways is incredible. I think we’re so privileged to be in a situation where we’ve got great technology. You know, digital dentistry is phenomenal. We’ve got great material sciences, you know, the things we can do artistically, aesthetically, for patients without, you know, very minimally invasively. I you know, I get such a kick out of that side of things. I absolutely love it. So that side of things is amazing. But then you look at the kind of the litigious ness of the population that we’re living in. You look at the lack of support that we get, I believe, from our regulators the way that that all plays out. I just think it’s become quite difficult. And certainly I feel so lucky that I managed to kind of pave the way for myself within dentistry into the types of clinics that I’ve worked at because, you know, I read on these forums that the kind of the situations that a lot of associates working in very busy NHS practices are going through. And I just think that must be so hard. And we we need that to be going on because we need the NHS dental system to be working and we need patients to have access to that care. But working in that way within that system I think is really hard. And if somebody came into the profession now, they’d have to work through that first before they could get to a point where they’re not having to do that anymore. So that’s probably why I would have reservations, I think.

[00:40:12] I don’t know if if you’ve seen that British Dental Action Group.

[00:40:16] Have and it’s it’s a little bit soul destroying. And I read the post and I sense there’s such a kind of there’s a bit of a them on us between associates and principals and. Both sides seem to just so often see the worst in each other. And I’m sure there’s reasons for that. But I find that really sort of disappointing because ideally, if you’re in a situation where you’re either a principal or you’re an associate, it should be based on a place of trust for either your associate or your principal. And I think not being able to have that and feeling like. You’re kind of constantly being screwed over, for want of a better word. It’s just really sad and it’s a horrible kind of environment. It’s a bad energy to be working in, I would say.

[00:41:06] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[00:41:21] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we’ve had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

[00:00:00] The thing about experience is you can’t really buy it. You can’t you can’t accelerate experience. Experience comes from a set of things that essentially go wrong over those years and then you’ve got experience. And so it’s a funny thing because, you know, if these things don’t go wrong, then you’re going to have big problems going forward because you’re not aware of the things that can go wrong. It’s one of those that’s why we call it dental practice, right?

[00:00:31] Practising dentistry, word experience by itself. You just bought yourself right now and I’m thinking about it, the word experience is learning is what you have learned and you have learned from the good, the bad and the ugly mistakes to learn from and not to make them again.

[00:00:53] This is Dental Leaders the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:10] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Farida Dar onto the podcast. Dr. Dhar is a principal implant ologist, now retired, of course, a mother of three dentists, one of which ZAYNAB, who was on this show herself. Episode 14 For any of the listeners who want to listen, and really the reason why we have her on this show is because in that interview with Zainab al-Mukhtar, she constantly referred to her mother as the source of her inspiration and the reason why she does what she does. And then after a few conversations with Zainab, I was telling Zainab about women in dentistry and Middle Eastern women in dentistry and in medicine. She said, Well, you really should talk to my mom. And and, you know, she’s got a great story to tell. So so here we are. We’ve got we’ve got you on the show. Welcome to the show, Doctor. How are you?

[00:02:01] Nice to be here.

[00:02:02] So this is kind of a sort of a life and times type of podcast. But but I want to start with who was your inspiration in the way that you were?

[00:02:11] Zainab’s Right. So completely different to my daughters, who just sort of took it as a as a, as a natural thing to become a dentist because they came to my practice all the time. They saw what I did, they saw how I enjoyed it. And that’s such a bad thing to do for the rest of our lives. For me, I wanted to do medicine and I got a scholarship to go to Romania to do medicine. But I was very troubled with with the ID because I had come to England and see my brother, who was working in Oxford at the John Radcliffe Hospital. And when I saw his type of life and what he was leading, what life he was leading, I thought, I’m not going to have a family life at all with being a doctor because the hours are terrible. The responsibilities are far too high, and I want it to have a life with my children, with my family. When I did have them. So I was very troubled. I enjoyed my course. I had started it, but I was not happy about the outcome when I’m already a doctor of what my life is going to be like. So I went to the Minister of Education and asked them to change it the bedtime time. I didn’t know what to change it to because I didn’t want to do anything else but medicine.

[00:03:39] My brother, when I asked his opinion, he said, Oh, if you could change the pharmacy, that’s quite close to medicine. So I went there and they agreed, which is quite unusual that they agree to change when you’ve already started a year. But when I did start pharmacy, I told to me hated it. I didn’t like anything to do with pharmacy. I didn’t like the chemistry, biochemistry, the botany. It was not just me. It was my interest at all. So I went back and I started thinking, What else should I do? So being quite miserable in our hostel or where I was in our accommodation, there were long corridors with loads and loads and loads of rooms. That’s how it is in university campuses in the Eastern countries. So one day I was sitting in my corridor trying to study, not really wanting to then trust a girl and she I looked at her and I said hi and she said hello. So we sat together and chatted and I asked her what was she doing? And she said she was doing dentistry. I said, Oh, now that wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to change to. So long story short, I went back to the ministry and they said, No way, we can’t keep on changing you from one thing to another.

[00:05:01] So I pleaded with him and he refused. So I went out because winter was snowing beautifully and I did a little prayer just outside the ministry and something inspired me to go back, but not to go to the same person. I went straight to the person above him and I knocked the door and he looked at me. I had a kind face and went inside. Half in English and half in Romanian. By the time I at that time I wasn’t that fluent in Romanian language. I pleaded and I said to him, Look, I’m a I’m a good student. It’s not because I’m not serious, but I would really like to change. And for the last time to to dentistry in Romanian is closed dermatology. Dermatology. So I said, oh, all I can say is that if you get all ten out of ten in your upcoming exams, which is the end of the first year, then come back to me. So I said okay. And I went and studied. I locked myself in the library and got those things and flew back to the universe, to the to the ministry. And she handed him the results. He agreed. And since then I never looked back. I certainly enjoyed my course and my career every day up to when I retired. So how did you end up?

[00:06:26] How did you end up in Romania to study?

[00:06:29] So we at that time I was in my country, which is Yemen. We had just come from Africa because there was a revolution in Tanzania at that time. So my father thought we were not it’s not very safe to remain there. So we went back to our country.

[00:06:48] So you were growing up in Tanzania to start with. You were born in Tanzania and growing up in Tanzania.

[00:06:52] Oh 47 So just before I finished my secondary school, we had to go to Yemen. Aden is a beautiful place at that time, not now anymore. And so I did my last year GCSEs and having got amongst the ten best results in the results list. They offer scholarships to to the top students and the only offered at that time to Eastern European countries. At first they gave me a scholarship to Russia, but I didn’t like the language at all, so I refused. And then I said, Give me anywhere else but not Russia. So I had to wait for another year and worked at that time in a military museum as a guide for foreigners who spoke French and English. I could speak French at the time and then I went to Romania and I loved it. I absolutely loved the country, the people such that my own practices I employed just Romanian girls in my system.

[00:07:57] Which year are we talking? Which year was.

[00:07:59] This? So 1975.

[00:08:02] So, so for for a I mean, in 1975. For a for a lady. To be even looking at dentistry, let alone a middle Eastern lady, to be looking at what was going on. I mean, were there how many brothers and sisters were you was there was there a dentist or a medic in the family? I mean, you said your brother.

[00:08:22] Was a medic. My brother was, yes.

[00:08:24] Were your parents anything to do with medicine?

[00:08:26] No, but my parents promoted education very much. My dad had just passed away before we moved to back to Yemen. So But he he promoted education. All my everybody went to university In my family. We had nine, six girls and three boys, and they all ended up well. My eldest brother, engineers, pilots, surgeon, my brother, the one who was the petroleum engineer, construction engineer. And these are girls, girls in construction and also my sisters. So yeah, I mean there was from in Yemen at that time, there was there was very little taboo about girls study, which is an open country. The Russians had just landed, but not just because of the Russians. Even before girls went to study the university. Later on it became a little bit closed up and became more conservative. But at that time, the English the British had just left like 67 and the Russians came 1970. So the country was still left open. And yeah, I mean, I must say we were just two girls and 21 boys in the group that we went to in that year. But this is not to say that there were not many girls in other years.

[00:09:52] So at this point you said you spoke French. Did you speak English at the time?

[00:09:56] Oh, yes. The medieval construction in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania was was English okay. But French was a second language school. And I had family in Congo. Bujumbura, actually, which is Burundi, was Burundi at the time. And they used to come often to our house every summer. And I loved learning language. So I just learned there, which is very easily.

[00:10:23] And I expect you spoke Arabic at the time.

[00:10:25] Not very well, I’m afraid, unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately it is a really big, unfortunate thing is that there were we learn Swahili, so he knew the local language. My mum and dad tried to teach us Arabic, but just like our children. Now here is such a big struggle to teach them our language, the television, the friends, the school, they just pull their parts and it’s difficult unless you’re really strong. They are very strict with coach. Teach your own language. My girls. All right. They can speak quite well. Arabic, their father insisted.

[00:11:05] What was your what was your feeling about Romania when you got this? I mean, going from East Africa to the Middle East and then to Romania Must’ve been a massive change. Were you scared or were you excited?

[00:11:16] Yes. At age 17, it was scary to cross the seas. I bet to go to a completely new place, not knowing the language, not knowing anyone my age. It’s a time when you really take big risks without thinking too much. But there was an uncle that lived very close to our house in Aden. His wife was Romanian, and so I went to ask her about Romania. She was this very gentle, beautiful lady, and she said, There’s nothing to worry about. It’s a beautiful country with very nice people. And I think that was enough for me to take it, to take with me and and go with confidence. But it says I reached there. It was fine. We were very well looked after.

[00:12:10] So was this the time of Ceausescu?

[00:12:12] Yes.

[00:12:13] Indeed. So communism?

[00:12:15] It was Yes, it was socialist and socialist country. Everything was very restrictive. People couldn’t travel. They were not even allowed easily to talk to foreigners. Yet there were so many foreign students coming to Romania from all over the world because it was very cheap to study in Romania. So people paid and they came. And for me it was a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world for the very first time in my life. So European, South Americans, very few from the east, like very few from China or Russia. But otherwise, yeah, it’s an eye opener I wouldn’t regret. I would have done the same thing if I was living at that time again. But now the world has changed.

[00:13:09] So how were you in dental school? Did you see it as this massive opportunity and just really get down and study or do did you did you have your freedom for the first time from family and you sort of trying to explore the world?

[00:13:21] We were brought up with a huge amount of freedom in Africa. We were not brought up with television. There was a television in the house. We never opened it. It was always outdoors, swimming in the sea, playing out up the trees and down. Africa is Africa. It’s a wild country and you’re never restricted. So I had that. I had that spirit of free living. And in Romania I felt sorry for the Romanian themselves because they didn’t have the freedom that I was used to, you know, go places, do what we wanted. Of course, always with boundaries, because the Arab families had like everywhere in the eastern cultures, they have boundaries. And once we know our boundaries, that’s it. We just do everything we do within the boundaries. But we could travel. We were travelling every long weekend. We were out either in Italy or Bulgaria or Poland. We travelled a lot. It was nice. I enjoyed that very much.

[00:14:26] So you finished the course? Became a dentist?

[00:14:28] Yes.

[00:14:29] And then did you stay there or did you go somewhere else?

[00:14:32] So I went to Vienna, where my sister’s husband was working as a second person in the embassy there of the UAE. And I stayed for three months thinking what to do with my life. I didn’t want to go back to Yemen at that time because that would have been a dead end. I would have just worked at no, not no progress. But then after three months, I one day was tidying up my handbag. These are the little stories that I find interesting to recall. And I found a little card or a business card, something like a personal card that my professor had given me, my oral surgery professor had taken out of his pocket to give it to me after the very last exam that I did at university, my very last final, because all oral exams were never, never written exams in Romania. I didn’t already know about that.

[00:15:30] No, I didn’t know that.

[00:15:31] Yeah. Anyway, after the interview and after the exam, they can ask you anything under the world, under the sun. So he asked me, Well, what do you want to do? And well, I thought the only place I can go is the UK to do further studies. So I said to him, I’d like to do that because my brother is there and I’d like to continue to do postgraduate. So he fished from his pocket, this card almost wrinkled, and he said, Well, if you go to London, contact this friend. He’s a friend and he will he perhaps may help you. And that was Professor McNeill here at UCL. I took that card and I put it in my handbag and after three months I found it and I thought, Why don’t I write to Professor McNeill? Long story short, he responded and said, I’d be very pleased to offer you a. Actually, when I wrote to him, I was asking if I can apply for a job for a post office. He said, We don’t do that just from abroad. You need to compete with other people in this country. You have to have an interview. But what I could do is offer you an unpaid attachment for three months, if you wish. That was just the beginning of my whole career. I came here, was very impressed, and then I applied for a job there, and I got one. After the attachment, but at the same time I applied in Bristol, so I had a choice to either stay in London or go to Bristol. I thought, I’ll go to Bristol because it’s a new place and I wanted to see. And that’s where I went out to Bristol to do it.

[00:17:10] She was this was this late seventies.

[00:17:12] That was early eighties. Early eighties Margaret Thatcher time. Yeah, the course was five years and then I came here in the eighties and so I spent three years in Bristol.

[00:17:27] And did you study more in Bristol?

[00:17:29] I did the statutory exam for people from abroad. At that time you had to do this very difficult exam post a tutor exam, which is equivalent of free time. You could only do two times. You only had two times an opportunity, and if you failed the second time, you would have to leave the country. So I was working at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and Bristol Dental Hospital, doing all my junior jobs, and I passed the exam and then I got a registrar job there as well at the same place. But then I had a knee operation, which was an emergency knee operation, so I had to resign and then I moved to the Midlands, to the Midlands to do my proper registrar job in surgery.

[00:18:17] So all of this was oral surgery?

[00:18:18] Yes, I did nothing but sorcery for a long time before I went into practice.

[00:18:23] So you were doing what the wisdom teeth was? Was it more than that? Was it was it operations, cancer operations and all of that?

[00:18:31] No. Predominantly wisdom teeth. At that time, there were being taken left, right and centre out of the mouth. Not anymore.

[00:18:43] Talk to me. That sort of.

[00:18:44] Thing. Yes, exactly. Which I love doing. I like doing very delicate, tiny things. I like doing that. And then, yeah, the cysts, soft tissue, bones. And then, of course, when you’re doing an oral surgical registrar job, you come across lots of trauma RTA, road traffic accidents, fractures and main infections.

[00:19:09] Did you have did you have by this point, did you have the feeling that you were going to settle down in Britain?

[00:19:14] And at that time, as I was going along, I must say no. What were you thinking to such hot countries in other and meeting countries like Africa? I was not happy with Britain too much at that time because it was always cold.

[00:19:34] Yeah.

[00:19:35] And you’re in the middle of a crowd, which you can feel lonely in certain places in person. Because why isn’t that same?

[00:19:46] There isn’t that same feeling of community for someone who’s come from the from especially from some of the third world countries. You know, I was just in Montenegro last weekend and my car broke and my rental car and literally three people started helping from nowhere. You know, people stop their car. And one guy, he had a he had a little girl in his car and she was just sat on the on the side of the road. And he was he was helping fix my car. And it reminded me of Iran, you know, where there isn’t services, the community come together and help each other out. And that itself has got a certain feeling about it that you miss out in a you know, let’s call it a first world country. You know, where there is, there are services. But then the other thing is people forget early eighties, Britain was just after the winter of discontent. It was quite a bleak place. It wasn’t it wasn’t Britain as we know it today. You know, the whole Thatcher thing hadn’t happened. I mean, the Midlands where we’re in the Midlands where you.

[00:20:48] I worked in Hull. Oh yeah. Early eighties. Hull. I think at that time it must have been the most depressing place in the whole island of the United Kingdom. The only nice thing at that time was my team that I worked with. Yeah, there was super, super friendly and very, very supportive and so kind. I love being with them. My consultant was amazing and after that outside work, there was nothing else you could do except go drive in front of the suspension bridge. If you’ve known if you know it, and just sit there and imagine you’re in San Francisco or something. Yeah.

[00:21:33] So where were you? Where were you thinking of moving to? Because you were you thinking Africa or Middle East or were you thinking yet another place.

[00:21:40] Now not to get to that place? I think by that time I had already started putting my roots in this country because I had just got married before going to college. So.

[00:21:51] So you met you met your husband here?

[00:21:53] Yes, in Bristol.

[00:21:55] Oh, really? Really. And he’s a surgeon.

[00:21:58] And he’s a surgeon now. I still work. So he was working in Scotland, I was in house, were travelling up and down. And then he said, Look, I married you because I wanted a wife, not tomorrow. So you move up here, I can’t move there. So yeah. So I finished my job, or just about maybe two months before finishing my post completely there I handed in my resignation and apology and then we were together all the time following where he went. I could always find jobs. And then that’s when. When I got my three years later, I already had two children. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

[00:22:45] So at this point, had you pulled out of hospital dentistry and now you were doing practice jobs wherever your.

[00:22:50] Husband was working? Yeah, exactly. So when I left my surgery registrar job, the second one, I think I followed him. And wherever he went, I just slotted it into local practices. Luckily, without profession, you can get jobs anywhere up and down the country. Yeah. In practice, this one I started general practice. And believe it or not, when I first went on the list in Scotland, it’s extremely busy. The first day I went to a general practice post, I was presented with a variety of things to do, which I had not done for a long time. I hadn’t touched our city or composite feelings or amalgam feelings for ages. I got worried, so I pulled it. I remember the lady, the assistant, the dental nurse assistant had so much experience as she was beginning to teach me. And the very first day she was handing me the right instruments and I pulled her out. One day I said, Listen, I haven’t done dentistry for a long time. The last I did was when I was a student. Can you remind me to do this and that? What do I do? So kind of very nice. Yeah.

[00:24:10] Which town was this?

[00:24:12] Glasgow. Well, we initially. We went to Greenock and then. And then Glasgow.

[00:24:17] Did you have trouble with the accent?

[00:24:19] Yes. I bet you did. Often. I had to ask her. Excuse me. What did you do for.

[00:24:27] So. So then your. Your husband. Did he eventually settle down somewhere for a number of years? Was that Glasgow or somewhere?

[00:24:34] No, In at that time, doctors used to travel to move about so much every six months in the junior and then every year slightly up the going going up the ladder. It was getting slightly better and better. Well, I did mind. I love travelling and I love new places. So I loved going where he went, Oh, he travelled a lot. And sometimes he would do locums between jobs, between posts. If there is a time lag he would go to locums, Isle of Skye, Shetland, Orkney, all those little remote counties and islands.

[00:25:13] Is he a Yemeni as well?

[00:25:15] No, he’s from Iraq.

[00:25:17] Iraq. Okay.

[00:25:18] Okay.

[00:25:19] Yeah. And what kind of surgeon is he?

[00:25:21] He’s a general surgeon. So he was one of the first people who went into keyhole surgery very early on when it started to get very interested in that. He’s a very good surgeon, I can tell you that.

[00:25:37] Oh, sure.

[00:25:38] Terrible with DIY at home, but very good. He’s been too.

[00:25:44] Busy. Too busy studying, isn’t he, to do any DIY?

[00:25:47] That’s the problem.

[00:25:48] With our colleagues. So. So then when did you end up in London? How did it become London? Because eventually you set up this practice in Harrow.

[00:25:55] So when the 1980s were late 1992, when I had three children at that time he decided to come. He was given a post here in London, and I was reluctant to come to London because of the hustle and bustle. And I was so happy where I was in Scotland. By that time we had our own house in Paisley. So he came and then and then he was offered a longer it was first just a local and then it became a more of a local for more months, then.

[00:26:32] Longer.

[00:26:32] Periods. Yeah, it kept on being extended and I said, Look, it’s not easy now to travel up and down. I’ve got three children. So I moved down here and then we bought our house here. And then about a couple of years later, the fourth kid had arrived Well, and I was offered a job abroad in Oman. So we discussed about it and we thought, let’s just give ourselves another few years of trying something else somewhere else and let’s see how it goes. So I went and I worked in this new private hospital there, the the first private hospital, Muscat, in a month as the head of the oral surgery department. Well, and I introduced implant implants for the first time in the country.

[00:27:26] And had you already been doing implant ology at this point?

[00:27:29] Yes, I had already done here in London. I had done courses and in the practice that I was working in here in Neasden, I started doing a few.

[00:27:40] For an associate.

[00:27:42] Associate.

[00:27:44] So look, this, this juggle doctor of four kids and a husband who’s travelling around. He’s a surgeon who I’m sure you didn’t see very much of. And then being an associate and deciding to learn implants.

[00:27:59] Yes, that’s a lot.

[00:28:01] To do, a lot to take on at the same time.

[00:28:04] What was the.

[00:28:05] Drive? What was did you not consider not working and being a stay at home mum.

[00:28:10] For it was never on the table. So what is it?

[00:28:14] You mean career wise? You would just. You’re ambitious, career wise. What’s what’s the story? I mean, I see that in your daughters.

[00:28:21] Yes, I had my girls by that time. The three older ones were at school when my fourth was born. But I went to do Scientology early on. In that three years that I came to London, I stumbled into this course upon this course in Hardy St, forget his name. Now, he was one of the first people to do proctology in this country. 6 to 1 are the address of the place, 61 Harley Street. That’s where the course was. And from the minute I went to the course, I became so interested in implants. I was talking and eating and thinking implants since then.

[00:29:05] Really? So was it was it because you had this oral surgery experience?

[00:29:10] Exactly.

[00:29:11] It kind of spoke to you more.

[00:29:13] Yes. That allowed me to go back into the bone to raise flaps. The time for ontology. It was raising flaps. Yeah, spending time, drilling bone, etc.. So by the time I went to Oman, I had done a few good cases, so happy about them. And then I thought, Well, let me introduce this procedure in this new private hospital. And we became very busy very quickly and I gained more and more experience while I was there.

[00:29:44] Who is who was the teacher? Was it was it.

[00:29:48] Harris was his name Haris.

[00:29:51] Skidelsky?

[00:29:54] No, no, no. But I know I knew him at that time. Who was?

[00:30:02] Was he an Indian?

[00:30:04] No, he was English. Cool. I’ll try. Try to remember his during the course of it.

[00:30:13] So? So then. Okay. You started putting implants in at in your associate job. And were you were you thinking at that time that you were going to only do implants or you like a normal dentist, your normal NHS or private dentists? What were you doing? What was what was your day to day? How much implants was it and how much?

[00:30:32] Very few. I didn’t do too many at all. Okay, Again, associate. I didn’t do too many.

[00:30:38] So you were just a regular, like a regular NHS dentist at that point?

[00:30:41] Yes, but it was a mixed practice. Yeah. So, but I just grabbed the opportunity of being able to. The principal just allowed me to do anything that came in.

[00:30:55] So then when you move to Oman, when you moved to Oman and it was an it was like more like a hospital job, right?

[00:31:02] Yes, it was a hospital job. It was in a hospital. Private hospital.

[00:31:07] And did your husband move as well, or was he still here?

[00:31:09] Nothing. Not not because he had taken on that long locum here and he was just about to finish what was required for him to enter into the specialist register. So he didn’t come with me, but he said as soon as I get into the specialist register, I’ll apply for a job there. He then got a job there, which is a bit far from where I was in Moscow, which is about 45 minutes away. He wasn’t happy travelling. So he came back and took up a consulting post, permanent one. And so I had to come back reluctantly to England, I guess to say. I came back kicking and screaming, which was all for the good, very good that that could be.

[00:32:01] And I mean to be taking care of four kids and running all surgery department in a new country.

[00:32:09] Just to me. Seems like I had my mom with me and I had a maid, so it was much, much easier than being in London. That’s why I wasn’t happy coming back.

[00:32:24] So then you came back and then was this around the time you set up your own practice or do you know?

[00:32:29] Yeah, that same practice I was an associate with. The chap wanted to sell it. Unfortunately, it had problems and so I bought it and I ran it for 15 years. Oh, wow. And. But after the ten years I was there, I decided I don’t want to do the NHS anymore. I was finding it extremely difficult to cope with doing implants. The demand was going up for implants and NHS and general and private. It was far too much. So I started another practice in Harrow on the hill from scratch. The building was being refurbished, so when I went to see the premises it was like a it was like a construction site. No ceilings, no floors, mud everywhere. Anyway, when I looked at the floor floor plans and the guy had reduced the price of the apartment that I was looking at quite substantially because he had two failures, tried to sell it twice and he was they failed to continue. The two buyers failed to continue with a purchase. So he thought I must reduce the price and sell it quickly. Then I trotted log in and bought it immediately and I waited for the construction to finish. Luckily, I was there when it was finishing and then I asked them to put all the plumbing for the chairs, etc. So I got the premises on in March 2010. Started it with zero patients, but many patients were sort of following me from my other practice, so very quickly became busy. And then by 2018, I thought, okay, that’s it. Final Got to take an exit from dentistry. Now, look, I ran for about nine years.

[00:34:25] And that’s when you sold it to Zainab?

[00:34:27] Yes. And her husband.

[00:34:29] And her husband. Ahmed. Yeah. So, look, you’ve you’ve run a couple of, I guess, successful dental practices while at the same time as running a family. What would you say is the secret to, you know.

[00:34:43] Successful Dental people that if you want to do something very hard, you have to know how to balance your sleep, how to eat well, and how to be very organised, and how to make your life as a routine. So I slept early. As soon as my kids slept, I would not waste time. I would sleep early. Yeah, wake up early, make sure that my house is clean in the morning before I leave, girls go to school. I go to work and I always took one day off in the week. I never worked full time until very late when they were all at school and they were older and they could look after themselves. So I had one day to re charge and go back to my settings and do what I needed to do to look after myself and everything else, to do some more paperwork, etc.. So that helped that I could split the week into two. I never worked on Wednesdays, so Wednesdays was my my day off. So yeah. So the secret is to have very good rest and not to be lazy and to wake up early and eat well. Fair enough.

[00:36:00] But you could say that about any, any life though, right? You could say you could say do that for any sort of good life. But what about a dental practice? I mean, did you have key people? In the place that that we’re running things.

[00:36:15] And yes, so I think that to run any business is to know it very well. Yeah, not to worry about competition ever. If you’re confident, even if you’ve got three dentists around me like I did in my other NHS practice, there are so many practices around me it never bothered me. In fact, I strive to cooperate with these practices and be friendly with them. So competition is not a problem. You should never worry about what you’re going to get. As far as income is concerned. There’s always bad, good, bad and ugly days. Just have to know that there are going to be bad days. And they’re going to be good days. Just keep going. Be focussed on what you do and ensure that you do the best for the patients. Very honestly work with a lot of integrity and a lot of honesty. Be charitable people who ask for discount and now discount and we will be busy and you’ll never fail if you give your sincerity to your work. Take time off travel, go swimming, relax, unwind. Be happy as much as you can. It’s not easy in England, but funnily enough, I used to draw happiness and cheerfulness for my children and travelled a lot with them without their dad because he was always busy. So I used to take them and go places with them and have fun.

[00:37:52] It’s refreshing to hear you talk about it in such sort of simple terms because, you know, like anything, the basics really are important, right? Getting the basics right. And you’ve described a sort of a simple case of look out for your patients and and they’ll look out for you in the end. Right? You didn’t you didn’t say anything about, you know, the things people have to do these days with Instagram and Google and advertising and any of that. You know, you just look after people and and that was it.

[00:38:25] But yeah.

[00:38:27] You know, you.

[00:38:27] Must be in that position yourself.

[00:38:32] Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been a dentist, but I’ve never, never been I’ve never juggled as much as you’ve juggled.

[00:38:39] Yeah. Women always do more than men. Yeah.

[00:38:42] I’m finding that out. Talking to two lady dentists and finding that how hard some people work in their lives. Well, I mean, my wife’s a lady dentist, right? So. So I should. I should be aware of it. But. But. But, you know, it’s an interesting story, right, that you’ve done all of this. I want to find out why is it what is it about you that makes you comfortable with jumping into the unknown? The way that you have. I mean, you’ve done so many things where, you know, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have the balls personally to go and study in another country. Number one, I wouldn’t have the idea of going and setting up a as oral surgery in a in another country with, you know, you seem very comfortable with jumping in. What is it about you?

[00:39:37] I must have inherited that from my dad.

[00:39:39] It Was he like that?

[00:39:41] Yeah, he was very. Literally, there is an Arabic saying that it means just take the step with God behind you and you’ll not fail. So he took that literally. And whatever he did here, he was a business man. It never bothered him to work hard. He would wake up in three at three in the morning. He was a he was a butcher master. So he had lots of butchers around. And he did a packing meat packing business. And that required very early brides choose your cattle to be slaughtered for that day, etc.. And he used to travel far to, to choose the cattle to bring back to town, etc.. Back in Africa, he was always doing hard things, but seemingly easily. And kept my mother on her toes because he was sometimes travelling very late at night with only one driver. And he was very brave, enterprising and always charming. They always laughed and kept us happy, just like I think myself. Now, as I said to you, I think that to be content and happy, however little you have, is very important. Rather than being always stressed and you are a millionaire.

[00:41:03] It’s so true.

[00:41:04] If you are content, that’s it. We’re here to be happy. We’re not here just to earn money and have lots of money in the bank and then have to wonder what to do with all that money and be stressed about it. So I think my dad was that kind of a person and I emulated him and I always think about him, God bless his soul maybe. And also I inherited, I must say, thankfully, his strength as well, and the conviction and his sincerity at work. He always used to say to us, you know, if you want it to be successful, never cheat, give rather than take if you have to. And so what if you lose money? Doesn’t matter if you’re making the other person happy, be charitable to your patients or other needy people, to your children, to your friends.

[00:41:56] It’s it’s it’s a great way of of in the end actually running a business, isn’t it? Because if at the end of the day, what is a business, it’s it’s a set of customers, a set of suppliers and a set of staff, you know, people who work in the business.

[00:42:15] And if you have slightly better I’m sorry, I’m paying you very well. Yeah.

[00:42:20] So what I said was what a business at the end of the day is a set of customers, a set of a set of staff and a set of suppliers. And if you can, if you can keep those three groups happy, you’re going to have a fantastic business. Right. And and it’s you’re right that some people do difficult things and make it look easy.

[00:42:43] Yeah. And yet I think.

[00:42:46] Have you noticed today with the younger generation with let’s say with with Yusra and Zainab and Fatima’s generation, you get a lot of mental health concerns, people worried about their mental health. Is it is it that we’re now talking about it and we weren’t talking about it before? Or is it that you guys were just made of a more resilient. Thing than these guys?

[00:43:13] I don’t know. I think it’s a set of a combination of things that is causing there, there. Sometimes I get surprised at how much influence they have. Not as much. Zaynab But my youngest, she’s very interested in mental health and how to help others. Infectious Saturday, a group called the Dental Bond. Now we use a bond bonding system when we do our right. So she chose that word. It’s a self-help kind of group or group help for people who are undergoing a lot of stress in dentistry. We all went through stresses in dentistry, but it was. It never culminated or we never thought about it, that we are stressed. We never thought that we’re stressed. We just got stressed in different ways. I would say to my husband, Look, I’m really stressed. Let me take the kids to the pool today. Let’s go swimming. And that’s it. That’s it. That was for me. Good. But they this generation, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a competition. Competition defined Instagram and social media that they think that is causing them have stress. Thank God my girls are not really indulging in to stress, but they talk about mental problems more than we did at our downtime.

[00:44:39] Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Definitely. People are talking about it more. But, you know, I’m thinking is is it is it that or is it that they’re you know, they’re not as resilient as your day.

[00:44:54] It could be. As I said, my child, our childhood, especially back in Africa, I’m sure in many other similar countries, we were more outdoors than indoors. And I think that makes a lot of difference. So being outdoors, you get that means of survival or bonus or not between animals in Africa. But we went out were more streetwise. People were not afraid if we went out. Now our kids can go outside for 2 minutes without us having a heart attack. They’re always indoors. We protect them too much. Obviously they’re not going to come out with a lot of strength in a strength like we did in time is not going to get better. I think the world is getting worse in this in this aspect, in this problem because. It’s becoming more and more dangerous out there, More crimes. Is that.

[00:45:49] Is that true? Is is is there more crime now than there was before? Or is it that we know more about it than we knew before?

[00:45:56] Well, I think there is. And I think and I think there is more crime because the world has not become a better place in that time. There’s more poverty even in the West. There’s more. There’s a bigger gap between the rich and the poor. And the poor, of course, will take drugs and then go and commit crimes and robbery and theft. There was I mean, I must say, during our time in Africa, it was also security wise, it wasn’t very secure. We had robberies and we had big dogs like fierce dogs outside our house. In order to ward off the burglars. But nevertheless, it was the type of upbringing was different. And now it’s different now more television and more and more influence to get from the TV as well. So your message to.

[00:46:53] Your daughters have famously done very well on social media.

[00:46:58] You did well. I’m so proud of them. So when you.

[00:47:01] Look at that. Does that? Does that sort of. Would you if you were a dentist now, would you be the Instagram dentist? I mean, it takes a certain it takes a certain type. It takes a certain type to be out there with.

[00:47:18] Yes. I think that like you said, like you pointed out, I was not very fearful of taking steps forward or putting myself out there for different things. I was out when they were young guys to take them to conferences in America and Las Vegas, Chicago, wherever I went. Did you? So that gave them also, I think, the feeling that, oh, if mom can do it, so can we. You know.

[00:47:47] So it’s funny, Doctor, I talk to I talk to dentists now and they say things like, you know, I’m so busy with work that I can’t see to my kids.

[00:47:57] I can’t.

[00:47:58] I can’t give attention to the kids. You know that. They say sometimes they’ll say something like, The kid wants my attention, but I’m busy on the computer or something. And, you know, mother’s saying this. And and often I think, you know, the kid’s learning something. By watching the mother do that in the same way as your kids, you know? You know, why was it ZAYNAB just kept on saying. My mum, my mum, my mum throughout her, you know, she watched. She watched you do what you did.

[00:48:28] And.

[00:48:28] People forget that, you know.

[00:48:30] Yeah. I mean, I used to Zainab when she started school used was at the nursery but she didn’t like her nursery very much. Just yesterday we remembering this. So I used to take her to the surgery that I was working in. I was an associate in Scotland, in Glasgow, Southside of Glasgow. And if he’s listening now, he will he will remember this, the practice, the practice order. And you’re still just sitting there amusing and chatting up the patients in the waiting room is about for such a cute kid and she was so good she would sit there. There was a game she played and when we finished I just took her away. So it was like, you know, she lived my life almost in a minuscule way. She enjoyed it. I enjoyed having her tiring for her, of course, but we had a little room that she progressed. So. Yeah.

[00:49:30] Doctor, what are your top tips? What are your top tips for parenting? Because your daughters are so confident. And as a parent, now that I’m a parent and you think about what can you give to your kids? And confidence is the most important thing. The way I’m looking at it. But without arrogance, you know that there’s almost a thin line between those two positions. And yet your daughters I haven’t met you properly, but I’ve definitely watched quite a lot of her content. And Zainab, I know quite well they’ve got a real confidence about them.

[00:50:07] What’s your what’s your what’s.

[00:50:08] Your tip on parenting for confidence?

[00:50:12] For confidence. I think it’s to highlight their strengths. Positive, rewarding. Encouraging.

[00:50:21] When you say when you say positive, rewarding, what did you literally say? If you get this in your exams, I’ll get you that. Was it like that all right?

[00:50:29] It was not rewarded with material as much as, okay, we go for a trip if you get if you do. Well, I never forced them to sit down and do their homework. For example, I used to supervise their homework, by the way, when they were young. I never worked till five. I would finish school hours, pick them up and come home with them. So it was always with them, dropping them to school and bring them back home. They wouldn’t be at home alone with another person.

[00:50:55] Did you never have like a nanny?

[00:50:57] No.

[00:50:58] Not even in the Middle East?

[00:51:00] Yes, In the Middle East? Yes. When I was there, I had to work very hard as a new hospital. I had to help the building build it up. So I was working very late, but I had my mum and that made them. Everything was done for me there. So it’s a positive, positive reward.

[00:51:18] You said.

[00:51:19] You said not material. So yeah, my girls, I brought them up a little bit like myself. We were never thrown into a heap of toys or it is more like for me and my girls, it is more like, okay, we’ll go here and we’ll go there and we’ll do this. More activities rather than rewarding presents and toys and dolls and feedback that they would get. Toys, mainly educational toys, but not much.

[00:51:50] So did you did you was it was there a point where I guess you got quite successful? Was was there a point where you were not giving them things on purpose so that they would sort of feel the value of.

[00:52:02] Not giving them.

[00:52:03] Not giving them whatever it was, you know, whether it was a holiday business class or, you know what I mean? Did you hold yourself back on purpose for them to get the value of money or the value of life or value of work?

[00:52:18] I would not shower them with whatever they want.

[00:52:20] On purpose.

[00:52:21] Right? Yeah, that was exactly what they needed. But they wouldn’t get more of what they wanted. But they would get I mean, if they asked for this and that they would get it. But it wasn’t like showering it all over them such that they would be so full of what they have and not aspire for both. And I think another thing I learned from my dad is, you know, bringing up children, you should always leave a little something that they should want and work for it before they get. Yeah.

[00:52:55] And what about dentistry? Did you actively encourage them, the three of them. And you’ve got four daughters now. How the how is it the three of them ended up wanting to be dentists?

[00:53:04] Yes. I didn’t actively encourage them. But did they ask me? I would tell them that it’s a very good profession where you enjoy working with your patients. You put music the only, I think, the only profession where you could put music, smile and sing along with your patients while you’re working with them or break into a dance behind while I’m dressing up my dress for doing my implants, for example. So they saw what I was doing and they knew it was a fun. For me, it was fun. It is still fun. If I went back today to do dentistry, I would still have fun. I like working with my hands, doing minuscule things, tiny, delicate things is my passion as I love also painting. So. So it was a way through an enjoyment.

[00:53:59] Okay, let’s. Let’s move on to darker times.

[00:54:03] Yeah.

[00:54:04] On this show. We like to discuss mistakes. I want I want to hear I want to hear both clinical mistakes. And maybe business business mistakes.

[00:54:15] Business was critical. Mistake. I remember the very first time I went into theatre as an officer to remove some teeth from a child. And at that time when I came to this country, the notion of left and right was new to me. So what is right should be left and is right the opposite way. While in in college in Romania, we use international 1 to 3 number and number and the very first child I remove the teeth with the wrong teeth on the opposite side. Wow. First child, four of the four.

[00:55:01] What did you what happened?

[00:55:04] There were deciduous teeth or very little rotten as well. There were caries all over the everywhere, rampant caries. But I didn’t remove the worst of them. I did not so bad. So when I realised actually it wasn’t me who realised first it was the nurse, my assistant U.S. attorneys. And as soon as we finish she came. She was a stern lady and stood all over me. It was over.

[00:55:30] Was general anaesthetic.

[00:55:31] Again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. And she said, Here you are. She gave me that piece of paper that I was supposed to read correctly. And she said, This is what you removed. You should give her modesty. I looked at my speechless, heart pounding a bit and not knowing what to say. And she looked at me. She said, you know, I’m going to have to report this to your consultant. I said, Yes, of course it’s a mistake. And I will not deny that it is a mistake, as we all are. Human beings can make a mistake. And I walked away saying, Yes, we are all human and we can make mistakes. But I was kicking myself and I thought that that was a huge lesson for me to be extra careful ever again. So that was my biggest mistake.

[00:56:22] What came of it? What did you say to the patient? Was it as simple as that?

[00:56:27] I went to the parents. I went to the parents after the patient recovered and the teeth were in the container. And I went straight to the mom. Who didn’t already knew it didn’t look please at all. I do apologise. I made a mistake. I own it up. I’m so sorry. Whatever. Whatever is required of me, I’m going to do it. You know, I didn’t know what was required after that. I had no clue. I was a very junior person. So then my consultant just wrote a letter to them and apologised and offered any help that they required. It died down a natural death, but I never did it again.

[00:57:12] So it never got to legal or anything. I guess back then it wasn’t such a legalistic world.

[00:57:16] It No. Even now, I don’t think such a huge simple human mistake will necessarily lead up to litigation.

[00:57:26] But I’ve done it. I’ve done it too, By the way, I drilled the wrong side. And and you know what it was? The OPG was labelled incorrectly and there was no no fillings in the mouth at all. And I was going to drill lower, left seven and it turned out there was lower. Right. So and the funny thing was I kept saying to the patient, you know, I just, I just can’t find this decay. It’s weird because I can see it on the on the x ray, just not getting to it. You just need to go a bit further. It’s a weird shadow or something. And then drill, drill, drill, drill to it and suddenly think, wait a.

[00:58:05] Minute and.

[00:58:06] Look on the other. The problem was I just met the patient that day and that’s always problematic. And this fear came over her eyes and she she got up and walked out and the boyfriend came in and I told him, look, this is what’s happened. And then and then they did they did see me. I think we ended up paying £3,000 or something, but it’s easily done. And you’re right, you only do that once.

[00:58:32] Yeah. When I was a trainer in my knees in practice, I used my experience because there were new dentists. Yeah, I would tell them this story and that’s why it’s quickly came out. When you ask me this, I repeated a few times. Yeah. And I told them, Look, I did this mistake. I’ve learned from it. I want you to learn from it as well, even though you haven’t done that mistake. So I told them and then one time another typical mistake is I was using those days. We used to use a tool.

[00:59:07] To fill the root canals.

[00:59:09] Yes.

[00:59:10] Yeah. The spiral filler thing.

[00:59:12] Exactly. So we use that nowadays. They are not even introduced to them. But I had them in my practice because I love using them. So I was teaching my all my vet trainings. I was a beauty trainer from 22,003 till 2009. And I was telling them if you wanted a really good canal feeling, you can use this, but be very careful, because when I was a junior dentist myself, I made a mistake and I pushed the pedal fast and this thing went right through into the sinus and broke. And then the patient had to have a sinus lift. Don’t do that if you’re going to use it. And I’m telling you this one time and I’m not going to say it again in front of my staff, use it very slowly.

[01:00:06] So that happened to you.

[01:00:09] So at least they knew what could happen if they were to use it.

[01:00:14] What about what about with implants? Surely with implants, you must have had something where you went, Oh, God.

[01:00:20] You know, with implants. Implants. So well, you plan so well, you take CT scans, you do your measurements, very little room of mistakes. There’s very little room to make a mistake. And I don’t even recall. I’ve done hundreds or thousands. I since 2000 and 2003. I’ve been doing it until the time I retired.

[01:00:43] What about a case of.

[01:00:45] Oh, yes, there was a year where I thought there was enough bone because there was a lot of thickness down and a young lady, a beautiful girl who was missing a little hole close to the nerve, too. So I thought, Oh, there’s enough bone, there’s no need here for me to do a CT scan, the metal frame far towards the thigh. So I knew there was enough space. And a few years down the line of starting implants, I stopped raising flaps. I would just puncture the top part of the government and then drill down through taking care, not only to realise that her bone is so thin, it’s not going to it’s not going to. In the lower region, you can’t expand bone very well because the bone is very thin. It’s thin, that’s it. You can’t really expand it. But in the top where it’s sponges and soft, you can expand the bone using aggravated osteoporosis. So and she’s such a patient person, was the last person I wanted to not do an implant in her because she really needed it. Just halfway down I realised, oh my God, I’m puncturing this bone to the lingual side. Wow. I realised that I’m going to be more appropriate on many levels. I realise it’s going nowhere. So I said to her, Look, it’s. I should have taken a scan. Sorry.

[01:02:14] So was it. There wasn’t enough width of bone. Yeah. Rather than depth. What’s with. So then what you abandoned pulls out and abandoned?

[01:02:25] Yeah. Yeah. I bended it and I just then raised a flap and closed the, the, the gum rather than leaving a hole there and said, I really am sorry. Would you refund all your deposit is not going to be possible unless you have a good augmentation. And augmentations don’t really work very well in this region unless you do a graft from the hip or from the chin. And even then they can all dissolve. So they don’t go through all that. Just do a little a little bridge and you still go to bridge this about ten years ago.

[01:03:00] And then did you end up always taking a CT scan in that area going forward? From then on.

[01:03:07] Increasingly, as years went by long and sometimes something tells you, oh no, it’s it’s okay. It would be alright here if the patient finds it a little bit difficult to go all the way to town to do this. It is cash.

[01:03:24] Sure, sure. What about a situation where it might even have been the patient was, you know, had some, you know, expectations that you couldn’t meet or where a patient lost confidence like a management, a management problem rather than a technical problem. Did you have any of those?

[01:03:43] No, not in the sense of management. But I remember I treated a lady who had a very deep bite class to this to a very difficult situation where she had lost two front teeth, wanted nothing but implants. She had a bridge that she didn’t want to have. Again, it was a bridge. And so I did the implant with the bone was was orienting towards the back. But the team, the rest of the team were tasked to leave to come down with. So if we as a matter of having a very animated Batman, which we had to make it custom made in order to get that angle. After that, we had very good results. The results were unexpectedly good. But there was a little bit of protuberance in the region here of the emergence of the gum, naturally, because of the angle. And thankfully, she had a low smile. So even when she smiled, it was not showing that area. But when.

[01:04:56] You lifted the lid, puppet looked weird.

[01:04:58] And she kept looking through the mirror with the lip up in order. Now, what do you have when you have a bridge? It’s different because they can mask these little defects. So she came back and she said, I want all my money back, which is not as I expected. And in spite of in our consent form, we always included a clause or other sentence saying that the results may not be as you envisaged or as you visualise it, because we cannot really go inside your head to know what you’re visualising it. So they signed this contract. But sometimes, like in that case, she came back and said, No, I’m not happy. I want my money back. And then so I contacted my DPP. I think it was the Medical Protection Society I was with and told them the case and they said, okay, we will advise you to write so-and-so. So let us going forth and back forth. And I said then to the them, I said, Look, it’s not worth my while. She wants the money back. She can have the money back and she can use those implants for the rest of her life. I give her her money back and off she went and off I went. So sometimes this would happen very, very difficult.

[01:06:21] I mean, you know, the the thing is, I was talking to my previous guest about this. You’ve been a dentist for 30, 35 odd years or whatever. And you can say you’re a highly experienced dentist. Right. The thing about experience is you can’t really buy it. You can’t you can’t accelerate experience. Experience comes from a set of things that essentially go wrong over those years and then you’ve got experience. And so it’s a funny thing because, you know, if these things don’t go wrong, then you’re going to have big problems going forward because you’re not aware of the things that can go wrong. It’s one of those that’s why we call it dental practice, right?

[01:07:08] Practising dentistry, word experience by itself. You just worked it up right now and I’m thinking about it. The word experience is learning is what you have learned and you have learned from the good, the bad and the ugly you learn from. And not to make them again. Again, there was another case also way back when I was younger, where I did a set of dentures to some Italian, and he was very particular about his appearance. An older person, full set of pictures, and he went away and came back a year later and said, I don’t like them. A year later. And he said. Refund my money or I’ll take you to court. And I said, a year later, you want to take me to court, take me to court then, because I’ll win this case, because you used it for a year and now you’re coming back and you want your money back. Oh. They started shouting at the practice and I don’t like them. And they keep coming all the more, more and more. As time goes by, they’re coming off more. And I say this because your lost your bone. We removed a few teeth. The becoming lose. There is a solution to that. We can rely on them. No, I don’t want any line. I want my money back. And this was another case that I had to pay back his money and he’s gone. When I tell people this, they said to me, You shouldn’t have given him his money a year on. And I said, Yes, but what is money is going to give me trouble. I’d rather pay no more trouble.

[01:08:49] Of course.

[01:08:50] And just finish with this trouble.

[01:08:52] I think, you know, I totally agree with that with that approach. Right. Because you can think of it as a cost of business. You know, that’s what it costs to be in the job that we’re in, that once in a while you’re going to have to do this. That’s all good. But sometimes people you know, I’ve heard stories where people think the patient is actually on purpose doing something to get something for free. And then once you’ve got that in your head that it’s not just an unhappy patient. It’s a patient trying to, you know, quote unquote, steal from you, then then then you become defensive about it. And it’s funny because in our business, we’ve got a bleaching business and we’ve got this thing, this be one guarantee, the guarantee the result. And one of the biggest issues with my team is to get my team to whether or not they think there’s a problem to believe that the dentist, you know, to say, look, we’re going to believe every dentist, even if one or two aren’t being 100% honest about it, because it’s the other 98% that I’m interested in keeping happy rather than the 2% that might be doing something, you know, And it’s having having the sort of the zoomed out approach to understand that that, you know, even if this Italian guy was was was was doing it cynically, you need to believe.

[01:10:15] For one thing, then I would be very selective, more selective out of it. But yeah, I mean, it’s very fun and it’s a lovely profession and it’s so enjoyable. But I think you also have to be very careful about taking on certain tasks or certain treatments or certain people. You’ve got to know how to select your cases, really.

[01:10:45] I mean, people talk about a sixth sense when it comes to that. They say there’s something about the patient that wasn’t right. Have you put your finger on that?

[01:10:55] I don’t know. I mean, I think that it’s just a pot of luck. You might just be so friendly and so happy with the patient and he can turn around and be quite unpleasant. Yeah.

[01:11:06] Okay. Well, it’s been a real pleasure getting your story and your experience. What are your what are your future plans? I mean, now that you’re retired, how did you find that? Not going to work every day? Did you find it quite difficult or easy?

[01:11:21] Yes, actually, I was building a house back in Oman at that time, so I was super busy in terms of my everyday tasks. But when I finished the house and finished furnishing it and not having a job and not being able to swing my legs in the morning out of bed, having a goal, what to do, I passed through about two weeks of feeling quite low. Two weeks for the first time in my life. Yeah.

[01:11:53] And then you got.

[01:11:54] Over it because I decided to travel. Let’s go, Let’s go. I don’t. I don’t feel good. I must have a change. Well, building a house is very hard anyway. Very stressful. So I needed a break. So we went to Malaysia and we had a very nice time. When I came back, I said to myself, I have to do now seriously take up my real hobby, which I loved all my life but never had the chance to do, which was painting. And I started learning more techniques. I was already quite good at painting, but not technically like very good. So then I started studying and going to classes, studying from YouTube, and I started painting. Very nice work. Yeah. Oh, love got hooked.

[01:12:47] And how was how did it feel losing your practice to your daughter? I mean, I’m sure it felt great, but did you did you find yourself sort of worrying about your practice or which direction they were going to take it in or, you know, Tell me tell me about that. How does it feel leaving this baby that you I mean, the practice you said you set up from scratch, right?

[01:13:07] Yes. Yeah, from school. I guess there was a time when I had to leave my girls, Zainab and Yusra, to work there. Very good.

[01:13:17] I mean, when you actually sold the practice to Zainab.

[01:13:20] Oh, when I saw the.

[01:13:21] How did you feel about it?

[01:13:23] I think I was quite ready and I was so happy that is going to enter into the family there. The family’s hands are very happy because I declared to them, I said, Look, it’s for me now it’s time to sell. Anyone wants to buy here it is up for grabs. So yeah, they were lucky. I think they were very lucky because it’s hard work to bring it up to the standard varieties, which I did.

[01:13:49] So yeah, from nothing, of course.

[01:13:52] But then there’s a lot of modification in the upgrading to their taste, lots of things and they’ve done their own logo and their own branding. It’s quite amazing what they’ve done. Very, very proud of them. Yeah, it was not easy actually. It was easy to give up my initial practice for sure.

[01:14:17] But yeah, you must, you must be proud when you see their work as well. I mean.

[01:14:22] Yeah, they’re quite skilled also. I mean not just in facial aesthetic, they’re very skilled in minimally invasive, but yeah.

[01:14:30] Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[01:14:32] Well of course I think it’s a year year course in composites, so she’s well, well trained. Yeah.

[01:14:43] Yeah. That’s how she came. She came onto our radar that way when one of our page managers, we were looking for dentists who are really good at composites. And that’s. That’s how we found Zainab in the first instance.

[01:14:55] Beautiful. I sometimes have a look and say, Oh, wow, I didn’t know how she did that. But yeah, the other day I looked something they did and I said, Wow, I’d like to come and see how they do. And she said, Oh, mom, let me remind you, you’re retired. Okay.

[01:15:17] So do you think do you think you’ll ever do any dentistry again or not? Is that it? It’s over.

[01:15:23] I must admit. Sometimes I get tempted to reregister. So now she. She’s got her own practice. But it’s. It’s just up to now. It’s just facial aesthetics. Is that in Liverpool? At Liverpool. Yeah. She hasn’t put in dental care yet. She’s just about to do it and I have the urge to go and help her start it all up. But I think she wants to go straight into cosmetic dentistry and things like Invisalign and adult orthodontics and more inquisitive is doing more cosmetic work and everything which which had past that that had passed me and I hadn’t taken initiative to be really good at it. Corporate bonding of the front teeth.

[01:16:15] But you can’t be really good at everything, right? You’ve got it. You’ve got to pick the bit that you’re good at.

[01:16:19] Wow. So I said to her, okay, so if you wanted me to start, you wanted me to reregister for a little while. I would do general dentistry only and perhaps implants, but not bonding and not Invisalign and not the adult said, No, Mum, let me just go straight into that. I don’t want general dentistry. I said, Well you’ll have to because lots of people need dental dentistry, proper dentistry, general public. So she’s still in two minds about that.

[01:16:55] It’s been a real pleasure to have you, Dr. Wonderful. We’re going to we’re going to end it with our usual questions. Let’s start with the fantasy dinner party. You can have three, three guests dead or alive. Who would you have been alive?

[01:17:14] In her life. I think I would invite my parents. Well. Salim and Jamila, my mom and my father and I haste, I hesitate to say, but wouldn’t I just love to have Prophet Muhammad with me at some point, even in an imaginary situation? What an honour it would be to be in his presence. Of course. Hopefully when we meet in heaven. Hopefully in heaven. Yeah.

[01:17:55] Amazing. And the final question. On your deathbed. You got all your loved ones and by now you will have loads of grandchildren as well, all your loved ones around you. One of three pieces of advice, you would leave them and the world.

[01:18:16] Is to remember the good. Forget the bad and keep your bond and friendliness always tight in family. Keep together, forget to box. Who said what? What they said. Why they said These things are not important. Always be good to each other. Be fair and honest. Be helpful to each other. I’m going to have my count in more than three.

[01:18:50] It’s an interesting thing you’re saying there, because the older you get, the more you see family breakdown, brother and sister not talking to each other, you know. You see it a lot. So sometimes I know sometimes in our in our culture, it tends to be a money thing sometimes, isn’t it? That I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe because the laws aren’t as stringent. And then. And then things fall apart. And this thing you’re saying about, look, it doesn’t matter what people said, but stick together. I’ve seen it with friends. Friends, good friends where the two brothers aren’t talking to each other anymore. Where it started out with something as simple as that. You know, this guy wanted that guy to apologise and that guy didn’t apologise. And then now, seven years later, no one’s talking to each other and.

[01:19:40] That’s really.

[01:19:40] Bad. You must have seen it too, right?

[01:19:44] Um, luckily we’re very close, but we siblings, I don’t think my my children have seen how close we are. We really love each other, help each other, visit each other, never take grudges. We never do that. We’re really very close knit family. I think they too always want to be like that, but seen the benefit of that. So I have seen me in other families, definitely. But since I retired, I’ve also gone deep into learning the holy book, the Koran, deeply and repeatedly. I mean, the third, third time now to learn each verse and its meaning and background and the story behind the verses. So and I realise how many times it says in the Koran, one of the big things that God doesn’t like is cutting off family. One of the big things in His eyes is he considers cutting off and not talking to family is one of the bad things. One of the big, big sins. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I know. Hopefully that would never happen within my midst, within my surroundings. And another thing is just to. To ensure that they learn why they’re here in this life. It’s not just about enjoyment. It’s a journey. It’ll end one day. And to learn why you’re here. Learn the only one book that was given to us. We have libraries of books that we have read. But has everybody read one book that we were given to read? That would be my next most important advice.

[01:21:33] Have you talked to her? Have you ever found your faith being sort of questioned, questioned your own faith?

[01:21:40] When I was younger. Yes. I have gone through like everybody else questioning and a lot of questioning. But I think you will find all your answers if you search for them, if you truthfully, if you are sincerely looking for your answers, you’ll find them. It’s not just about hearsay. Asking people or scholars. No, but reading yourself. Look and read and find. And all the answers are there in one single book. Only 606,600 plus. Verses and everything is there. So.

[01:22:18] Wonderful to have you, Dr.. It’s a real honour. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

[01:22:26] My pleasure.

[01:22:27] Best of luck for four for your retirement and and all the paintings and things you’re going to do in the future. I hope you really enjoy all of that. Thank you so much.

[01:22:37] Thank you very much.

[01:22:40] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts. Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:22:56] Thanks for listening, guys.

[01:22:58] If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.

[00:00:00] You know, you’re not good because you’ve got an excellent pair of hands. Of course it helps. Or I think you become experienced or good at avoiding problems by being able to look ahead. So before before you do something. You can see all the things that could go wrong. And therefore, you can you can avoid them. And that’s you learn the hard way.

[00:00:28] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:45] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Farid TB onto the podcast. Farid, an old friend of mine, so he’s probably such an old friend. I can’t even remember the first time I came across you, but you certainly studied at the same time as my brother did, and guys that remember you from then, the kind of dentist that you know around expert at the sort of implant restorative end of things. Dentists send my family members to and have done that several times and failed to come through for them. High ethics, high skills. But on the other hand, not someone who courts attention very much. Principal of the extraordinary 76 highly st multidisciplinary specialist centre in the West End and Boston House Dental Clinic in the city, which I’ve also had the privilege of seeing another beautiful place. Good to have you, Farid.

[00:01:43] Thank you very much for the very kind introduction. I actually remember I don’t remember the first time I met you, but I am very, very fond of your brother. And he was a very good friend of my wife’s and they studied together and he was kind of watching out for her because he was a year or two above her. So, yeah, I’ve got a lovely family and we’re very fond of you guys.

[00:02:10] Excellent. And interestingly, our parents are neighbours now as well. Another have been neighbours for years.

[00:02:17] That’s another connection. They probably see each other more than we see one another.

[00:02:21] Yeah.

[00:02:23] So this this this show kind of is kind of like a life and life and Haim’s kind of show. Yeah, but. But I’m getting sick of starting it always with the same question of where did you grow up and all that? We’ll get to that, by the way. But I want to kind of get to the crux of as and as an expert in that implant restorative. I mean, much of dentistry is in it. Most of dentistry is there. What would you say are the are the key sort of learning goals for someone who wants to get into that field and become an expert in that field? What’s the what’s the roadmap to become that person?

[00:02:59] I can. I can. I’m sure there are many, many ways you can become good at a particular set of skills. For me, it was probably a lot of experience in every other field, apart from the field I ended up going into. So and that was one of the things that my tutors at college recommended I should do. So when I was doing dentistry, they said, Go and do everything, and then you’ll find out what you like and do more of the other stuff that you’re not going to be doing long term, just so that you understand it and you can communicate to people. So to do this backwards. My initial aim was to do maxillofacial surgery. I did dentistry at guys. I had the pleasure of meeting Professor McGurk when I became a house officer there and I was really, really fond of him and he was probably my first mentor. He looked after me and he recommended I came and did maxillofacial surgery at guys and did do the three year short and medical course and do max effects. And I was really keen and sort of raring to go and my wife had other ideas about my future. She said, You’re not going to go and do something and become a consultant in 15 years time. Do something that makes you more available without on calls and that sort of stuff. So I wanted to learn more about all surgery at that point. So I went and did a bunch of house jobs, senior house jobs that were slow coming left, right and centre. And I’d done some work in Ortho at Guy’s as a house job. I’ve done some work in the paediatric dental department, so I sort of did the other bits.

[00:04:41] I never had an interest in Perio, so I never was going to do that. But we’d done enough. You start off as an undergrad with Perrier and it covers quite a lot of your undergrad training. And by sort of elimination, I came to restorative dentistry and we had some talented people like Leslie Howe at guys who were inspiring. And that’s one of the things I recommended to my children, that they put themselves in contact with inspiring people, with people who enjoy life, enjoy what they’re doing, and are good at conveying that to other people. And those people will sort of drag you along no matter what life walk of life you’re in. They will drag you along and inspire you and motivate you to do other things. So those were sort of the early influences, to answer your question, how do you become good at something? You do do a lot of it. You know, I. The simple answer to it. I do martial arts. We have a general rule. Unless you’ve done 1000 repetitions of a technique, you don’t really know it. And once you’ve done a thousand repetitions in the technique, you then start to find out all the things you’re doing wrong. There’s a curve. I don’t remember the name of it. Where? Where? When you start doing something, you think you’re really good quite early on. And then the longer you do it, the more you find out how difficult it is. And by the time you’re an expert, you’ll probably end up at about 75% of where you thought you were ten years prior to.

[00:06:15] So how serious were you about Max? Max, I mean, do you still have a little part of you that says, what if?

[00:06:22] Well, no.

[00:06:22] I’ve built it into my practice. So ever since I started doing dentistry and practice, I’ve incorporated not maxillofacial surgery, but I’ve incorporated all surgery into my day to day. So I do my own. I don’t know whether it’s wisdom, teeth, extractions, episiotomy, sinus lifts, bone grafts, block grafts, whatever it is. I really enjoy doing it, which is sometimes quite difficult to explain to patients because they think you’re weird if you enjoy that aspect of dentistry. But I’ve always enjoyed it. Although my first experience of horror surgery was atrocious and I thought I would never, ever do anything again. I think it was my fourth year and I was supposed to take out an upper six and it was on the oral surgery department of Guys on floor 23. First tooth that was ever taken out and I slipped with the complaints and of this sort of centimetre, centimetre and a half laceration on the palate of my patient and started sweating and didn’t know what to do, called Mr. Shepherd, who just looked at it and said, Well, that’ll help. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t even need a stitch. So that’s the chap at the expert end where he can assess something and just look at it and say, I’ll be okay, don’t worry.

[00:07:40] So out of the different aspects of being the sort of the boss of principle of so many people and so in two different big clinics, you know, you’ve got the clinical side and now you’re telling me, okay, even out of the clinical side, you prefer the surgical. So is that what you’re saying? You really enjoy the surgical side more than the rest?

[00:07:59] I don’t shy away from it. I enjoy it. And I’m primarily a dentist. I enjoy the company of people. Yeah, probably why I became a dentist.

[00:08:10] I was going to be my question. That was give me a question because I get the feeling I’ve never been your patient, but I get the feeling your chair side man is going to be really good. Like, do you have long conversations with your patients and get something out of that? Because that’s certainly the thing I miss the most about being a dentist is those long conversations with with people, you know, rather than the teeth.

[00:08:32] It’s a very significant portion of my clinical time. I’ve never rushed to patient. In fact, I’ve been told off many times by reception or by my nurse or who’ve been sort of coming in and out of the room trying to tell me that you’re running late for your next patient. Can you please get on with it? I want to get home. And I’m sometimes sometimes you can politely suggest that maybe there’s some waiting and maybe you should get on. But a lot of the time people have got significant things to share with you, and it feels inappropriate to interrupt them at an extreme. I had a patient who sadly is not with us anymore, and she was actually very influential in sort of in me setting up this practice at 76 Harbour Street. But she used to book two, two and a half hour appointments and sit down and just talk. And then we would run over by an hour and all I had to do was sit there and nod and listen to her. And when she first started doing this, she didn’t really want the nurse to be present, which was awkward. So I asked her to be sort of in the sterilised area next to my room, which there’s no door there. And then with time she started trusting the nurse also. So the nurse was also present and she was sort of pottering about doing things and she was just talk and she ended up unfortunately dying from a pulmonary embolism, which was just not diagnosed. She she’d had it for three weeks and people thought she had a cough.

[00:10:02] So how was she influential in you making the decision to start 76?

[00:10:07] All right. So I was renting rooms in Wimpole Street, 30, Wimpole Street and Rohan. Roger Rogers, who is still working here with us, is one of our dentists, said, look, we’ve got a case here. We need a dentist to assess her and get a treatment plan together and then can you come over? And at that time I was working in quite a few different practises. I was working in Oxford primarily and in Rickmansworth, and I think I was also working still at Whitecross in. Come out. So anyway, I said, Yeah, I’ll make time. And I went and met this woman and she needed quite a lot of work. It was a big implant case with everything dentistry has to offer. It thrown in root canal treatments, crowns, bridges, implants. And it was a really interesting case. We started going there on Saturdays and doing that on Saturdays, and at some point the person who had set this practice up couldn’t run it. He was from out of town and he thought, I don’t want to mention any names, but he thought he could sort of come into London and see what he described as as high value patients, and it just didn’t happen for him. So I started renting these rooms from him and started seeing patients that were referred in. One of the patients that got referred to me was also seen by Rowan, and she’d had a really, really ugly crown put on a central incisor, which was, I mean, the colour was just so off and this was supposedly done by an Australian expert.

[00:11:40] So I said, yes I can, I can certainly do better than that, can’t make any promises. And that was Bernie, this lady who who ended up bringing not only her extended family. I mean, I see her cousins and nephews and sisters, quite a lot of her family. They are absolutely lovely. Absolutely lovely. But what then happened as fast forward by sort of maybe a couple of years and I found 7600 st I started setting this place up and as an open evening we had a gallery and art gallery with a good friend of mine, Sari Sam’s, who’s an artist. She lives in Germany now, so fair use my rooms as an exhibition hall and put put screws into every wall that I have and hung up her artwork. And people came and I had Bernie as one of our guests when everyone left and we were tidying up, Fahri said, By the way, where do you want these? And I said, What do you mean? Well, your patient bought these for you, so she bought five pieces of art or Fahri for the practice as a sort of housewarming gift. So and sort of it developed from that amazing.

[00:12:57] Amazing story with 76 though. What was strange about it for me or different about it for me was how, you know, like the standard way to open a West End practice is kind of, you know, small and one room at a time. But with 76, it was almost intentionally you were coming in as as a sort of multi disciplinarian, sort of. You even had health and wellbeing from the beginning. Am I right about that?

[00:13:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:13:27] That that I understand the rationale for wanting a centre like that, but quite a big, big chunk to buy it off. And you know, we all know the rents and things that are huge and doing the work and all that. Did you have moments before you opened and thinking, you know, what have I done here? And after you open, you know, how do you manage to fill a place like that? I mean, you know, with difficulty. I know, but but did you not worry about that?

[00:13:54] You know, parents, you know, they say ignorance is bliss.

[00:13:59] I dwell.

[00:14:00] In bliss. I love bliss. I’m a I just didn’t know any better. I this this property was belonged to the father of a friend of Anna’s brother. And I went to see them. I came here and they were smoky. They’re a petrochemical engineering company. Mr. Malik Shut, who’s unfortunately now passed away. He was a petrochemical engineer, MIT grad, really lovely man. So I sat down with them and I said, Look, this is what I’m planning to do. I have no patient base. I’m starting from scratch. I’ve never had my own practice. I’ve got maybe a dozen patients that I know that that will come and see me. But apart from that, we’re starting something from nothing. I really loved the space we’ve got. You’ve seen it. We’ve got big windows and beautiful. Good, good light. And but at the time when I when when I first saw there were there was yellow wallpaper, sort of dirty beige carpets. Everyone in this building smoked.

[00:15:09] And it was it was it was it that you fell in love with the building and you saw the potential from the building perspective and you thought, to hell with it, let’s do this.

[00:15:18] Exactly right. Exactly right.

[00:15:20] Really, it wasn’t like a plan that you were going to open them up.

[00:15:24] I really felt for the building that I was doing.

[00:15:26] The I’m I’m one thing. I’m I’m an optimist by nature. And like I said to you earlier, yes, man, I tend to go along with things quite, quite. Quickly and easily, and I make decisions very easily live to regret some of them. But on the whole, I’m good at making decisions quickly and most of the time it works out. And this was one of those. Would you.

[00:15:51] Say would you say you trust your instincts, like when you meet someone or something, you know, instinctively, whether it’s right or.

[00:15:59] Wrong, I should say yes to that. But as most people, we also get disappointed sometimes, you know.

[00:16:08] Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:09] But on the whole, yes. Let’s go with my God. God.

[00:16:11] Really? Really? Yes. Yeah.

[00:16:14] On paper, my business would have never worked. There was no scenario. I’ve since sort of learnt about business plans and doing things, so how people do things properly and we’ve got a few other things in the pipeline that we’re doing now and trying to plan things out and budget and da da da. But at the time, no, we you know, I took out a mortgage on the house, spent it on this place. We decked it out. I remember my parents coming in and they saw the wood floor going down and said, Hey, this is a bit extravagant. This is going to be a dental practice. Are you sure you want wood floors? And my my rationale was the price difference between having a wood floor and not a wood floor wasn’t actually that big. And yeah, it just looks so much nicer. And I wanted to separate out clinical and non-clinical areas by having demarcations in the floor. So the clinical area will have clinical flooring, but the rest of the place can look like someone’s front room, you know, can, can look comfortable. And I’ve always liked a minimalist look. I don’t like clutter. I don’t like things being on surfaces that annoys my wife to no end. So that was sort of this is my, my, my Zen place to I actually find my, my weekdays more relaxing than my weekends.

[00:17:41] So so okay. You’re saying there was no scenario where it could have worked, but it worked, right. With tenacity, with what would you say? What would you say? Well, whatever it is, you know, whatever you used the.

[00:17:54] Yeah, that’s it.

[00:17:55] All the skill, all the skill. All the skill. Okay, then give me, give me give me some of the some of the sort of inflection points that could have gone wrong. But for whatever reason, it went right.

[00:18:03] I’m a great believer in in luck in being you’re not both know we weren’t born in this country. We’ve just been born to the right parents who’ve done the right things for us in terms of education, immigration, whatever it might be for us to end up in this wonderful country. And then things have worked out. And in terms of dentistry, my first lucky junction was meeting a lady called Alyson Keele, who was my form tutor. So I schooled in Germany. I finished school in Germany. I was there for 11 years. I got my AP tour and then I came here and wanted to do dentistry because in the UK in 1991, it was the first year they had an integrated system where you could start seeing patients from sort of as a as a student year two. Whereas in Germany you studied non-clinical for five years and then in the last year you had to in the sixties you had to provide your own patients, which just didn’t make any sense to me. So this this sounded much, much better. So I came here with a view to doing dentistry. And in order to learn English, I started doing A-levels. And then the colleges that are applied to said, Well, if you’re doing A-levels, we don’t really know how to assess your German RB tour, so we’ll just take A-levels.

[00:19:29] And then I thought, Hang on, I’m just doing this to learn English. I’m not really doing doing it competitively, if you like to get high grades. But that’s that’s how it ended up. And in today’s world, I would have never gotten into dentistry. But coming back to Alison Keele, she was my form tutor and she wrote a lovely letter of recommendation to Peter Longhurst, I think, or actually to to all of the universities, because I got an unconditional offer from King’s a conditional offer from Guy’s Leeds. I went to the interview and they said, You’ve got an unconditional offer from King’s. Why are you here? And I said, Well, I wanted to see your university. And they said, Well, if you’ve got an unconditional offer from King’s, there’s obviously no point in us giving you an offer. And he was really rude about it. And I sort of thought, I don’t know, I could have, could have, could have gone to Leeds anyway. I ended up with guys and it was lovely.

[00:20:24] When was the first time dentistry came on your radar? I mean, why dentistry?

[00:20:27] I was 16, so my initial aim was to do orthopaedic surgery because well before that, that’s after I thought I would do carp and. I sort of I really love carpentry, and I think that’s my retirement plan. At some point I’m going to do more of that carving and that sort of stuff. But I thought, I like human interaction. I like carpentry. Orthopaedic surgery would would be my thing. And then I went to we had a friend who was an orthopaedic surgeon. I went to watch some of his colleagues work. And I thought, there’s no way I would be ever doing that. It just seemed really rough and brutal. And, you know, this is me prior to me having been exposed to any sort of clinical environment. So to go in and watch a surgeon put a wire through someone’s forearm six times before it actually worked, it was horrific. So I thought, no, I’m not doing that. And I want to actually deal with patients who can talk back.

[00:21:29] So but I mean, why the medical field? I mean, do you have medics in your family? Why why medical? Why why didn’t you.

[00:21:35] Become I’m actually the first dentist within my close family.

[00:21:39] So how did it come about? And why didn’t you go into business?

[00:21:42] Like like. Like my father?

[00:21:44] Yeah, why not?

[00:21:46] It never, never sort of tickled my fancy. Not because I was rebellious, because I wanted to do something more manual and not offer space and more to do more interaction with people. So I could have I could have become a sort of salesperson. I could have I could work in a shop easily, I think, or I could have have a restaurant that would have worked.

[00:22:09] But being the.

[00:22:10] Son of Iranian.

[00:22:12] And what and what a restaurant it would have been.

[00:22:17] But no, my.

[00:22:18] Point is that was was there an element of, you know, I’ve got one of my kids saying, I’ll do anything but dentistry now. Yeah. And okay, maybe he’s in a rebellious phase or whatever. But was there an element of watching your dad and something about what your dad did not appealing to?

[00:22:33] You know, I. I loved what my dad did, and I, I would go and help him whenever I could. I loved being in his office. I love being in his company, a company as a next to him, you know, spending time with him. I used to run errands for him all the time and it was a good time. So during the holidays I’d go into the office and I liked what he did and he was obviously he was quite successful, but it wasn’t for me.

[00:23:06] No, no element of wanting to carry on the family business, you know, something that that whole thing.

[00:23:11] No, no, not really. Not really. I like I said, quite early on, I knew I wanted to do dentistry and I knew I wanted to get married quite early on, both around the age of sort of between 16 and 18, my sights were set.

[00:23:24] What was that about? Why did you want to get married, don’t you?

[00:23:26] I wanted to have kids.

[00:23:28] Early on.

[00:23:30] Then.

[00:23:32] Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:23:33] Go on. Tell me, where does that come from?

[00:23:35] I don’t know.

[00:23:36] I got I mean, my my father got married when he was 28, I guess I went to the age gap between myself and.

[00:23:44] My.

[00:23:45] Not to be huge. So I got married when I was 25 and we had money when I was 20, 28 I think.

[00:23:54] And he’s in uni now. Yeah.

[00:23:55] No he’s finished his working.

[00:23:57] It’s.

[00:23:58] My goodness. It’s working.

[00:24:00] My goodness. All right, let’s let’s go back then. So you were brought up mainly in Germany, born in Iran.

[00:24:06] So born in Iran. Moved to Germany when I was 878.

[00:24:11] No. Yeah.

[00:24:13] 1988. So we moved out of Iran three months after the war started.

[00:24:19] What are your memories of that? I mean, I was seven when I moved and I clearly remember Iran. Yeah, very different. It was very different to here. What are your.

[00:24:29] Memories? I’ve been going back fairly regularly until a few years ago, so.

[00:24:34] But what are your memories of the time when we were changing country? Did you did you know you were changing countries? Because we didn’t we were like, oh, we’re just going on holiday, right?

[00:24:43] So the first memory of the war I have was we lived on on the top floor of a three storey building. And I said, Mum, someone’s rolling an oil barrel on the roof. And she said, Don’t be silly, I can hear it too. But that’s not an all that. There are no oil barrels on the roof. So we both went on to the balcony and we had a huge balcony to look up and there was an Iranian jet chasing a MiG over Tehran. And what we thought was the oil barrel was actually machine guns, so we’d never heard it before. So we and it’s not like today where people play cod and all sorts of computer games and they’re very iffy with how things sound. And they can tell the difference between the sound and, I don’t know, a, an AK 47 and something, something different. Whereas in those days it was all new to us.

[00:25:35] So in Beirut, you get very good at. Knowing the difference between a firework and a gun.

[00:25:41] Here on.

[00:25:43] New Year’s Eve. They fire both.

[00:25:46] Of their friends.

[00:25:48] But go on. So then you decided to move?

[00:25:51] Well, I didn’t. As kids, my parents said, okay, we’re going to go on holiday.

[00:25:57] Yeah.

[00:25:58] So that was the plan. We went to Spain and we were going to stay out of the country for a couple of months. The war was going to be over, and then we were going to just go back.

[00:26:08] Yeah, and here we are, 40.

[00:26:12] Well, so when do you remember when you got to. When you got. We went to Spain first. How long were you in Spain before you got to Germany?

[00:26:18] We left Iran on a bus on one of the because they bombed the airport.

[00:26:23] So we left across the border.

[00:26:24] We we drove to Tabriz, where my family are from. So we’re from the north west of Iran. And then one of dad’s family members drove us across. Drove us to Turkey. And then we caught a bus from there to Ankara, then a plane from them to Hamburg, where we had family and then to Mallorca. And Mallorca was lovely. I vividly remember seeing seeing orcas and dolphins for the first time at SeaWorld in Mallorca. So, yeah.

[00:26:58] We hadn’t we in Mallorca.

[00:27:00] I don’t remember. A few weeks.

[00:27:02] A few weeks and then and then Germany.

[00:27:04] Hamburg. Yeah. And then the summer in California where Dad wanted to see if he can start working there, because it was quite apparent that we weren’t going to go back. So we went to camp and then Dad was basically just ferrying us from kindergarten to school to whatever, and he said, I can’t do this. So we moved back to Germany and that’s where we settled.

[00:27:26] So funny. We did the same the same move in to California to see whether we wanted to live there and spend the summer there and decided not to. Often think about what would have happened if we did decide to go to California. So Germany, you know, interesting place. What are your observations about the difference between German and U.K. culture?

[00:27:46] Okay. So I had a really lovely time in Germany and I’ve had very fond times in Hamburg, kind people, Germans on the whole, when you get to know them, there might be quite cold initially, but when you get to know them, they’re incredibly sweet and loyal as friends. And I had some very good friends in Germany growing up and went from sort of a fairly I need to use a Farsi word social guy up until the age of.

[00:28:20] What.

[00:28:20] Would that be, an English pansy?

[00:28:23] I, I don’t know what.

[00:28:26] You can say these days. There are many words you can’t use anymore.

[00:28:28] So.

[00:28:30] You know, whatever, whatever that is in English to sort of once the testosterone kicked in, I started doing martial arts and I started doing a lot of sport. And, you know, I started making friends and it ended up being a lovely, lovely time.

[00:28:48] Hamburg course, a beautiful town.

[00:28:51] It is a lovely place, but I left Hamburg when I was 18, so I saw a lot of London school and I saw some nightclubs there in the latter years, and that was about it for London.

[00:29:07] I work I work with Germans now. I work with Germans now. And for work I find them excellent. I really do. Very straightforward. One lovely thing about working with Germans, whether you’re buying from them or selling to them, price is not part of the conversation and it’s beautiful. When you take price out of the conversation, then you can talk about all the other things. And with most, most times with buying or selling something, price ends up being the only thing people are talking about and everything else goes out of the window and it just comes down to price. And it’s so refreshing in a joke, you know, I think in the same way as you can’t get a discount on a Porsche or whatever. Yeah. And then it works also when people are buying, we’ve got a distributor in Germany who has never, ever mentioned price. It’s just the way, you know, it’s not part of the the conversation. And the other thing is when we have stuff made in Germany, which if you know much about the Dental world, you know, the vast majority of stuff’s made in Germany anyway. Yeah, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. The majority is wrong. But certainly historically that’s that’s why it’s was in Germany and all that. Right. When you buy stuff from from from there, when you when you want to do something new, I don’t know. We wanted to do a desensitise or in a pen or something for the sake of the argument. When they can’t do it, they’ll say, look, we can’t do that, you know, or they’ll be very straightforward about it. Whereas some of our American manufacturers, you know, everything is possible until it’s not not possible. And it’s a refreshing thing for work now as a society to live in. I don’t know. I they’ve never lived there, but.

[00:30:43] They’re exactly the same when you live with a very straightforward, you know, if they don’t like you, they’ll tell you they don’t like you and they’ll stop communicating with you. And when when they become your friend. I mean, we’re generalising now and it’s a very mixed community and it’s becoming more and more mixed. Yeah. Especially in the last probably 30 or 40 years. But I’m I’ve always enjoyed that company and I’ve never experienced any sort of xenophobia or racism from from from Germans while living there. I lived there for 11 years.

[00:31:17] So you call it two guys. What were your first impressions of of dental school? Was it as you expected it to be or were you down about it? Or. Because I wasn’t very happy at all at the beginning. Dental school, did you did you take to it very quickly?

[00:31:32] Yes, it was brilliant. Freshers week was was a blast. I sort of I’d been living on my own in Guildford doing A-levels for for a year prior to that. Can you imagine. I was like between, that’s between the ages of 18 and 19 with all the hormones building up to my eyeballs. So when I when I arrived at guys, it was phenomenal.

[00:31:56] Where were your parents? Still in Germany.

[00:31:58] I was here on my own. Yes, they were in Germany.

[00:32:01] Oh, wow. So did you stay in halls in guys?

[00:32:04] Yes.

[00:32:05] Wolfson House. And remember, we you sort of freshest week. Everyone’s friendly. Everyone wants to be your friend and you sort of you very quickly find your your clique and the group of people you want to hang out with. And you go from there. And I met some lovely people with whom I’m still in touch. 21, 25 years on, 30 years on.

[00:32:30] I So were you as a student as were you studious? Were you near the top of the class or were you passing all your exams first time? Or what were you who were you?

[00:32:38] I don’t think passing your exams first time is makes you studious.

[00:32:43] I actually no, I did. I did. I did. It makes you a failure. I failed.

[00:32:49] Dental, public health and oh.

[00:32:52] My favourite.

[00:32:52] Subject and interesting. I’ll tell you why.

[00:32:55] More at home, you know more at Milan who sadly passed away earlier, earlier this year in May. And I used to play backgammon together. So when we were studying for dental public health, we said, okay, every day we get together, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll study together and then we’ll play some backgammon. What we ended up doing is not studying at all and played, you know, backgammon. You usually play to five. We said, forget that we’re playing 55, 50 classics.

[00:33:28] You think of the way of doing it. Yeah. So, so yes.

[00:33:32] It’s the only, only exam. I’ve failed in my life until very recently. I’ve recently felt something else. I failed a martial arts grading and it was devastating.

[00:33:44] It was because.

[00:33:44] I wasn’t used to it. You know, it’s been I’m 50 now. It has been years since. 20, 24 years, 26 years since I last felt anything.

[00:33:55] So did you. Did you have in your head that you were going to specialise from even pre preclinical days and it was kind of finding what you were going to specialise in. Where did you have that in your head? I’m going to be a specialist.

[00:34:07] You know what? When I said I’m going to specialise, specialise, my my wife said, what? You because I wasn’t particularly studious to answer your earlier question. And, you know, we were having a good time at uni, so I found it really unlikely that I would want to go and commit another four years to to study. But it probably was the best decision I took. You know, I’ve really enjoyed it. And it’s good to have sort of, you know, I am a jack of all trades. I’m not just talking in the dental sense. My some of my friends call me auto balancer, which which is sort of a monkey wrench. Right. It adapts to to most things. And I think I’m quite adaptable and I enjoy many different things. So specialising was good and it sort of gives you I guess it gives you kudos and it gives you recognition for being good at a certain field. But really I enjoy a lot of things within dentistry and there are many other things I avoid. And one of the reasons I set up this practice at 76 is because I wanted to have the people who are good at the things I’m not good at around me. So I can I don’t I’m really lazy. I don’t like writing letters, so I can just hand, hand over my patient to them and say, look, this, this is the problem. Do you mind dealing with it? And that that’s been probably my main motivation for setting up 76 was I wanted to have everything under one roof.

[00:35:45] So we’ll get back to the the the back story again. But let’s go back to 76 then to build up a referral base, enough to feed the number of specialists that you’ve got there. I guess it’s not just referral. I guess you get patients word of mouth from from patients as well. You’ve got you get you’ve got direct patients coming directly to you as well as referrals. Yes. That must be. Yeah. But to build up to to fill that place, it takes a level of I mean I don’t know as a, as a person in my situation, I’m like, I would think marketing is the way that you would fill that place up. And it’s strange because, you know, dentistry wasn’t ever about marketing. It was about it was about reputation, word of mouth. And you’ve done it the old way. You’ve done it the normal way. And it goes to show reputation, word of mouth. This is the way to to to fill these places up. But you still didn’t expand for me on, you know, what were the key things? What were the key moments, the key decisions that that made you succeed in this difficult situation? I mean, how did you pay the bills to start with? I did. You have hairy moments, remortgaged?

[00:36:54] Yeah. Yeah. After a year, I took out some more money on the house, but it was going the right direction, you know, it wasn’t.

[00:37:02] You could tell it that. Yeah.

[00:37:03] After. Yeah, I had grossly underestimated our expenses. Like by probably by a factor of five or something like that.

[00:37:11] You mean the build cost or the day to day expenses.

[00:37:14] Day to day expenses. The build cost was sort of you get quotes and that. Yeah. And I worked with a fantastic team, a Polish outfit. He, he was his name is Andrew Trajkovski. He’d previously studied theology and computer sciences in Poland and was the job market was great in Poland. So he’d come here and set up a construction company and they refitted this place in six weeks. And the reason it had to be six weeks was I had to see my first patient before the third. So I signed my contract on the 22nd of January and my accountant said, You have to be working before the 31st of March to be able to claim your expenses within the first year. So that was the reason we had to be open for the 31st of March. And I remember my first patient walked in, it was a Saturday and I was still sweeping the floor from the dust, from the builders. So when when my patient walked in, I sort of I thought elegantly but very clumsily, move the broom behind me, leant it against the wall behind me and next, next to me. And as I walked towards my patient, the broom hit the floor, made a massive crack. And it was very embarrassing. But to come back to answer your question, the fact is that made this practice successful. I had a very experienced practice manager John Sampson from would go so and again I can give you a long story about how I found Joss, but she was when we started working probably in her early 60.

[00:38:51] And she’d been a dental nurse since she was 16. So she came and she’d always worked in the West End of London, so she’d seen it all. She worked with brilliant dentists and knew her way around. I worked with a brilliant nurse called Barbara Scullion, who’s now moved down to Weymouth. Unfortunately, her and I got on like a house on fire and I came across Barbara in this practice I used to rent out in Wimpole Street, and then I actually stopped working for a while because I was working for a practice and Barbara didn’t have a job and I said, Please don’t go looking for another job. I’ll, I’ll carry on paying you until I find myself a practice because we just got on really well. And she was brilliant at what she did and my patients loved her. And the, the and they, the patients could see that we gelled and we worked well together. And a lot of the time, I mean, people still ask after Barbara and I speak to her every other week, know we’re still very good friends. So those were probably my two key people that helped me set up this practice. The other people that helped set up the practice where they’re specialists. So from word go, we had work Rowan working here with us. We had had mammography. Who did? Perry Over here we had Johnny Johnston started doing paediatrics and we slowly each each of us had had our own referral base.

[00:40:21] We then had the medical side and we used to do head to toe health care, which which is now evolved into something else. The Centre for Health and Human Performance is now mainly about physio and about getting people to perform at their peak. But I’m not involved in that business anymore and we sort of expanded that in 2012 and I stepped back from it for reasons we’ll come to speak about, as you alluded to earlier. But yeah, those were sort of the main, main avenues. We just had a lot of different avenues through which people were coming, coming into 76. And then a phenomenon happened, which I wasn’t expecting. People who came to see me for the last I don’t know, I qualified as a dentist in 97. I set this place up in 2007, so I’d been working all along. I started working in practice in 2008, sorry, in 1998, alongside doing house jobs and as a job. So I was I always had a sort of Saturday job or an evening job to work at Whitecross on Wednesday evenings between six and midnight while I was doing my postgraduate degree. And then when I had my own place, suddenly people recommended our practice to their spouse, to their siblings, to their family, and all of a sudden it started mushrooming. Whereas for all those years I’ve been seeing these people, they wouldn’t be referring anyone else into the practice.

[00:41:48] And I actually I still don’t know why that would happen at that point. But yeah, it was. I think the practice was quite welcoming. Joss was brilliant, Barbara was brilliant. And a real people, people, if that’s the word, the environment was nice. It was all new and plush and white walls and all fairly clinical and clean. And we have big rooms. I mean, for a dental practice, I think we have relatively big rooms and they’re quite inviting. So I think a combination of all of those things and then we put in some gimmicks right from the start. So the kids had in those days it was Netflix, it was a PS3 so they could watch things on the PS3 or play things on the PS3 while they were being seen. And it was nice to have headphones and a remote control in their hand. It took them away from dentistry and that’s sort of always been my aim to do dentistry in the least disruptive and most entertaining way possible. So other other bits around me provide the entertainment, and I mean this in the kindest way. Barbara, my nurse, was entertaining. She was brilliant to talk to people. I couldn’t get any dentistry done because my my patients wanted to talk to Barbara. It just was very welcoming and entertaining and that sort of that was probably the seed to making this practice grow. So again, going back, I think I’ve just been lucky with the people I’ve come across.

[00:43:19] I mean, it’s interesting because you when I ask you what’s the key things and you immediately went to people. You know, only you know, some people wouldn’t do that. You immediately went to people, people, people, people, people. You’re to keep people. And then these specialists and then you summarise it with people again, you know what? What makes you such a people person? I mean, is it just comes to second nature that to do things, you need people because you strike me as a perfectionist and perfectionist tend to have trouble delegating anything. Never had you does that.

[00:43:59] Never done it.

[00:43:59] Perfect in my.

[00:44:00] Life.

[00:44:01] So are you not a perfectionist?

[00:44:04] You you can you can always strive for perfection. But I have not achieved perfection in anything in my life. And I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I don’t think it’s attainable.

[00:44:16] But, you know, things need to be a certain way for you. People need to be treated a certain way and all of that. Do you think do you think you sort of instil call it I mean, in business brand values, would you would you instil that in your people just because of the relationship you have with them? Or did you work work on it?

[00:44:38] No, I think I’ve just come across people who are like minded and those who have been like minded have stayed with us and have either adopted or added their flavour to the practice. And I’ve always wanted this practice to be a kind, caring place first and foremost. I’ve always wanted it to be a fun place for us. For me, I want to work in a place where I look forward to going in every morning. I don’t want to come into work environment where people are stressed or people don’t get on or, you know, I’d rather deal with that situation and end a situation if it’s stressful and we’ve had to do that and make sure everyone else that that’s sort of the machine carries on chugging along happily. And I think again, we’ve been lucky in that my current business manager, Emma Russell, has really contributed to that. Again, she was a young person, she is a young person. She hasn’t hit 30 yet who is a real people person. And she had no experience in dentistry at all. She worked at a vet before we advertised the job. She was a candidate and she had that sort of. Kindness and drive. That made me think, yes, she’ll be able to do this job without any previous dental experience. And within six months she owned it. And now she’s telling the rest of us how how to how to run things.

[00:46:04] Just brilliant.

[00:46:05] How how involved are you on the management side? You kind of leave that up to her and her teams or do you get involved?

[00:46:14] No, I think I do get involved because I’m asked a lot of questions every day, which which makes me think I’m involved. And also, when I’ve got the option of working in a room where the decon area is detached from, and I like being in the room where the deacon area is right next to me because it sort of keeps my finger on the pulse and I can see how things are done and I can. I only need to get up and look around the corner to see how people are, how things are done. So I think I like to be involved. I like to know what’s going on. And you know, I’ve been working with Emma now since 2018, so we’ve got a good understanding of the things I can do by herself and the things that still run past me. And to be honest, she runs more personally than I need her to see. She’s sort of she she she could be a lot more independent and I trust her implicitly.

[00:47:12] What does what does it take to to be a referral practice? You know, I’m sure it’s a struggle.

[00:47:19] To get referrals happy.

[00:47:21] It’s not a struggle. It is really, really enjoyable because, look, we’re here to provide a service where we’re. And it’s really fun. And it’s it’s I was going to say it’s an honour and it is, but it sounds a bit pompous. It’s really nice for people to trust you, to treat that patient, do what you need, and then ask them to go back and see them. And it’s kind of sort of we’re then showing off what we’ve done by sending the patient back and saying, look, this, you referred them in. This is what we’ve done. Here is an x ray of it. Here’s a report. Thank you very much. Would be happy to do it again. And that sort of that’s what’s kept us going. And we don’t have a huge referral base. As you know, I’m I’m a relatively although I’m a people’s person, I’m also a relatively private person when it comes to business. So we don’t splash around a lot. We don’t sort of I don’t think we advertise much. I think we do. Emma started putting things on Instagram that we do, but apart from that, we don’t really have much going on.

[00:48:32] So what’s the reason for that?

[00:48:34] I know it’s a comfort thing. I think I’m just not comfortable doing it. I’ve never been comfortable advertising. We used to advertise in Angels and Urchins for Johnny Johnson. We stopped doing that because we only had limited access to Joanna because she’s the clinical director at Guy’s and sort of her time became more and more limited. So we couldn’t actually put patients in with her. And the number of patients that she’d built up was so big that we really couldn’t take on much more. But now we work with three fantastic paediatric dentists. Sarah Johnson’s here, the other two are one of them’s new, and the other one is on maternity leave at the moment. But, you know, they sort of keep us going.

[00:49:20] Yeah, but what I’m saying is.

[00:49:21] Sorry, there’s babbling.

[00:49:23] No, I get it. No, you get it right. I understand what you’re saying, but what I’m. What I’m asking is to be a practice like yours. You do need to be out there a little bit for people to know you, but you’re not. You know, someone who for someone who’s been a very a risk taker, you’ve done what you’ve done and you turn up to work every day. Enjoy. You know, when I say it’s a struggle, you’re like, no, I enjoy it. Right? So you enjoy the process of of work. You know, it’s important. And yet you shy, shy away from it. Are you simply saying it’s just not you or are you saying what are you saying? Because, you know, you’ve got a hard time in the practice, very high profile periodontist. People know.

[00:50:02] Him well. He’s like, stop.

[00:50:03] Stop working with us. You stopped working with us three years ago, four years ago.

[00:50:08] Because I was like.

[00:50:10] He’s more involved with Pyrex Academy. So we’ve got kids in L.A. working in the kitchen.

[00:50:16] So, you know, it would make sense to be for you to be more sort of out there, more famous, more trying to caught attention. Are you saying it’s kind of I don’t know. It’s just not.

[00:50:27] You know, and the same way we’ve attract the patients we have and the patients that have trusted to come and see us the same way dentists have trusted us and have found us through recommendation. And I always find that’s a much more organic, much better way of starting a relationship and then nurturing that relationship because they’ve heard about you, they know who you look. Holly St We’ve got 500 dentists working here and we’re all busy, we’re all working. So competition doesn’t really come into it and we all have our style of doing things and we’re all different. So my patients or the dentists I work with will know how I operate and they’ll, they’ll recommend people to, to work with to that who appreciate the way we do things. And then there are the mysteries of this world and the Michael Hortons of this world and, you know, who have got their their referral bases were brilliant at what they do. And and it’s it’s good. So I don’t need to sort of advertise because it comes through organically anyway. We’re all busy, we’re all working now.

[00:51:36] But you don’t, you don’t need to water ski, but you still water ski. So what I’m saying is that you’ve got if you’ve got something against it.

[00:51:43] No, I don’t have anything against it.

[00:51:44] It’s just not me. I’ve just just never I don’t think we’ve ever been good at it or looked into getting good at it. And I’ve never looked at growing this practice in any other way than just organically. So it’s the only way this practice has grown is by, by reputation and by recommendation. And I like that. I’m comfortable with that.

[00:52:10] It’s kind of beautiful. It’s kind of beautiful.

[00:52:12] I’ve never I’ve never had ambitions to have have an empire or to to to I’m primarily a dentist. I’m not a businessman. And I’ve never been good at business. And what one thing Joss was really good at was business. And Emma’s really good at that now. So they they do the business side of things. I do mainly my dentistry.

[00:52:37] It’s good. It’s good to hire opposite strength to your own, isn’t it? I mean, that’s that’s a key thing. I’ve got a marketing manager who’s just, like, highly reliable, pushes me all the time because I’m not that cat, you know, that, you know, I need that person to keep on telling me, you know, what time what time will you have that in mind? But having said that, you don’t want to a group you did set up the second practice. How was that? Tell me the process behind that. What happened?

[00:53:06] My very good friend of 20 years plus parricide said, Yeah, I want to start practice in the city. Will you come and do it with me? And I said, Of course I will. That was it.

[00:53:19] Really.

[00:53:20] Feels like that was the process.

[00:53:21] That was it literally. That was the that was the process. He said, you know, I’ll find a place where will you come and run it with me? And I said, Yes, of course it will. Because by that time, yes, by that time, I mean we started that practice in 2014. By that time I’d been working seven years. We had some track record here at 76. It was it was working. It was working space. So and Farid works here with me two days a week. So he has been on the very inside of the workings of my practice. He knows everything. Whatever he couldn’t see, I would tell him. So, you know, he’s a very straight shooter. Lovely, lovely, kind human being. I couldn’t imagine working with a better person.

[00:54:02] So, look, both we know the differences between the practices in terms of just aesthetics and. Well, I do. One is very sort of old style, beautiful. And the other sort of state of the art modern and one’s highly street. The others in the city but. Outside of that, what’s, what’s the same about the practice? Are they both multidisciplinary specialist centres?

[00:54:26] We’ve got people like Robert Crawford working at Boston House, got fired for working there. So we’ve got sort of restorative comfort there. We’ve got Natasha writes in orthodontics at both places, so there isn’t really much of a market for paediatric dentistry in the city. But yeah, we’ve got specialists working at both. We’ve got. But the difference is that in the city we’ve got two general dentists working there as well cost us and. Anyway. We have dentists working there also.

[00:55:05] So did you go for the Invisalign and all of that?

[00:55:09] Natasha does Invisalign. She’s an orthodontist.

[00:55:12] Oh, you’ve got your specialist in. But the generalist, what kind of. What’s the profile? I mean, what are they busy doing.

[00:55:19] Cost us does a lot of general dentistry and a lot of implant work in aesthetic dentistry. He’s a brilliant dentist. He spent half his time at Boston House and the other half here at State DaVinci Dentistry. And he’s he’s a very, very good dentist with very high standards and does beautiful work. He’s half Cypriot, half Russian, treats a lot of Russian patients because he speaks the lingo. And a lot of Russians who come here, especially from embassies and so on, don’t really speak that much English or don’t like to speak English if they can get away with speaking Russian. So that’s the sort of people he treats. Other than that, we started the practice. I think you were there when I was putting up a sign outside, outside the practice and you took a picture of it. So yeah, other than that, it’s sort of a mix of general and specialist dentistry.

[00:56:18] So Farhad, you’re a bit of a daredevil type, but if adrenaline junkie, junkie type, all the all the stuff you did go through it. What do you do?

[00:56:30] Outside of dentistry.

[00:56:31] Yeah, yeah. Water skiing, fly planes. What do you do?

[00:56:36] I don’t fly. Well, my. My neighbour is Harold Pre-school. He’s a.

[00:56:45] Pilot.

[00:56:45] Pilot and he’s taken me up in his chipmunk, which was great fun. And he sort of does roles and loops and that sort of stuff in that plane, which was great fun. So compared to that, I’m definitely no daredevil.

[00:56:58] No, I like I like sports.

[00:57:01] I’m one of those weird people who, you know, you go into the gym and the music starts before a class and the corners of my mouth go up immediately. And I look forward to whatever punishment is coming our way and really enjoy it and laugh all the way through and look forward to sort of getting the best of the instructor by doing it. Extra ten Push-Ups at the end or whatever it is, it’s I think it’s a genetic thing. I don’t think I can take any credit for it. I’m just wired that way, but I enjoy exercise. So yes, I do. I know when. When we’re on holiday, when we’re anywhere near the sea. Everything from kitesurfing, wakeboarding, water skiing, wake surfing. I tried these new flight boards recently. Which. Oh, that’s pretty good fun. They’ve got a hydrofoil underneath them. So as you speed up, the board slowly rises out of the water, and you’re like the Silver Surfer. You were sort of gliding along without touching the water. It’s great fun.

[00:58:11] Amazing. It does look amazing that. Have you done just traditional surfing? Surfing. Wave surfing?

[00:58:18] Yes, I did. I could tell you a story about that. I nearly, nearly got lost in the Caribbean.

[00:58:25] It’s hard. Is there.

[00:58:26] By. Yeah. I haven’t surfed for a really long time. And then I started surfing and I started getting braver and braver and going further and further out. And then the waves picked up and the wind picked up. And I fell and hit my knee on the dagger board and on the dagger board on the board. So I couldn’t stand up anymore. And sort of 15, 20 minutes later, I couldn’t see land. It was quite an interesting experience. And then a boat picked me up and dropped me back off closer to shore, and they’d already scrambled someone to come and look for me.

[00:59:01] Oh, did you? For a minute there, I think. What if. No, you must. You must, boy. You must have. You know, when you could. Could you not swim?

[00:59:08] So sorry.

[00:59:09] Could you swim there for a minute?

[00:59:12] Well, it didn’t didn’t come to that. It was fine.

[00:59:17] Okay. We’re going to move on to the darker part of the show. Let’s talk about errors. Uh huh. I’d like to I’d like to hear about things that you think were maybe clinical errors. And I know you’re not the type to regret anything but things, things that you think were errors as far as the business side, the practice side. What comes to mind when I say that?

[00:59:40] I’ve. So in terms of the business, I’ve I’ve made mistakes in working with people that I shouldn’t have worked with. And they then it gets difficult, it gets, it’s easy and it’s, it’s, it’s a bit like it’s a bit like marriage when, when things are good and you’re first get married and everything’s good and you never think of anything that anything bad could happen and then something bad can happen. And then you sort of don’t see. A certain thing at the same way, and then it becomes difficult to to change or break that relationship. So that’s been difficult.

[01:00:20] But do you think do you think you went. Do you think you sort of went against your instincts and and then live to regret it?

[01:00:28] Absolutely. Absolutely I did. But, you know, you do things when when when you are when you’re starting out in business. There are always people around you who are in a stronger position than you are, because when you were starting off, you feel you’re the new boy or the weaker person, or at least I was. And I did go along with things that I.

[01:00:54] Shouldn’t it?

[01:00:57] You are not going into it any further than that.

[01:00:59] I probably best leave it at that.

[01:01:04] What about what about clinical?

[01:01:06] Clinical. I can. Where do you want to start?

[01:01:11] I’ll start with. Let’s start with a note. Oh, God.

[01:01:14] Moment. Okay. One of.

[01:01:16] The most.

[01:01:17] I mean, this is really skeleton territory. The most scared and embarrassed I’ve been was. I was working at Whitecross in Victoria. That’s 2001. Probably so about 20 years ago. I wasn’t specialist. I’d qualified in 97. So I’ve done some stage jobs and some part time practice jobs, and I was replacing a veneer for a young patient. So I as I’ve been taught, I taught some groups into it. I split it up and then I used a flat plastic to flick off the bits of veneer. And part of the tooth broke off with with the veneer. And I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared, embarrassed and shocked in my clinical practice. That’s certainly a moment that will live with me forever.

[01:02:17] How much of the tooth? How much are we talking?

[01:02:19] Oh, a quarter of it. More than more than needed to.

[01:02:26] Okay.

[01:02:28] Any more come to mind? As an implant guy, you must have had implant moments, right? You must.

[01:02:33] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was placing an implant for a friend of mine. A very good friend of mine. A friend of mine that I’ve known since Germany. We’ve been at school together since we were 14. I was replacing his upper left second molar. And again, this is the same era, 2021, probably amongst the first 1015 implants I’ve placed, and I hadn’t assessed the radiograph properly. It was entirely my fault. So I left a flap, I stopped the osteotomy and there was not enough bone for me to put the length of implant I was planning to put in without putting about a third of it into the sinus. So yeah, that was a shocking moment and I had to explain to him that I won’t be placing an implant for you today, and I’m just going to close this up and let it all heal.

[01:03:28] How far do you go then before you realised that you’d done the prep?

[01:03:31] So I’d left it alone. I’d. Well you find out pretty quickly with the first first twist drill that you put in that it’s going into thin air rather than into bone. So yes, that was a fairly shocking moment. And he he was quite a nervous character anyway. So it’s. Yeah.

[01:03:54] Every day. I feel like I feel like you’re getting some catharsis out of these these these questions. I feel like you’re enjoying them.

[01:04:00] I’m not enjoying them.

[01:04:01] It was a horrendous moment, my life. But I also you know, that it’s I think tell me tell me about tell me.

[01:04:09] About this like this. But of course, as long as you only do them once and you.

[01:04:14] Learn.

[01:04:15] And it makes you a lot more astute and a lot more careful for the rest of your life.

[01:04:21] Listen, tell me tell me this. You’ve been experienced now for 25 years as a dentist that very sort of very top end of it. And the thing about experience is that you can’t buy experience. You can’t accelerate experience. Experience is the thing that takes time. That’s what it is. Yeah. But what would you say? Is it the stuff that goes wrong? I mean, I’m remembering a conversation I had with Andrew Dorward where he said, look, a lot of a lot of dentists, they think that by talking about the stuff that could go wrong, the patient’s going to be put off. Going ahead, whereas the more you talk about the stuff that could go wrong, the more they realise you’ve been around and they trust you more and then they’ll go ahead. Now is that what experience of 25 years at the end of the day? What does that mean? Things have gone wrong over those 25 years have made you this experienced person.

[01:05:17] I mean, when I when I talk to my patients about dental implants, of course, tell them implants. I’ve got a good track record. But the bulk of the conversation is telling them all the things that go wrong with them. So, you know, porcelain chips, off screws, brake implants can break if you become diabetic, if you start taking bisphosphonates, if you start taking other medication, that affects you. I mean, there are so many things that can go wrong. And I give them some statistics about what percentage of implants develop some form of problem.

[01:05:48] Yeah, but but listen, anyone could do that, right? You could just you’re a brand new graduate. Could do that if you’ve given that. But experience is in this situation, you as an experienced practitioner knows that in this particular situation, this particular thing could go wrong. And at the end of the day, what my point is, experience comes from things going wrong. I mean, it’s by its very nature, of course, it comes when things go right.

[01:06:16] Yeah, but you become good. You’re not good because you’ve got an excellent pair of hands. Of course it helps. Or I think you become experienced or good at avoiding problems by being able to look ahead. So before before you do something, you can see all the things that could go wrong and therefore you can you can avoid them. And that’s you learn the hard way.

[01:06:42] Yeah. Yeah. So that’s that’s what I mean. It’s very, it’s a really super like useful thing to talk about, which was we don’t talk about much, do we? It’s just one of those things we don’t I don’t know.

[01:06:54] We don’t know.

[01:06:55] I’m super, super comfortable talking about failures or things of that have gone wrong and my, my, my.

[01:07:03] One more, one more, one more, one more. It doesn’t have to be clinical because whatever you whatever comes to mind, whatever comes to mind.

[01:07:11] I think I’ve learned not to not to be a first adopter with things. So when Sarah came out, this was also in the 2000. I placed a lot of I switched to all ceramic and placed a lot of crowns and I thought, this is brilliant. And all of them failed. All of them cracked. I replaced all of them free of charge, and some of them would crack after two years, some of them after five years. But they would eventually break and they would always break the same way. So just because something’s new and people talk about it and people want to do it is not a good reason for me to jump on it. I only bought a scanner in 2018 because I want to. I didn’t want to be bound to to a single system. And I wanted the thing to be very predictable and sort of powder free and all of that. So we’ve only started using scanners since 2018, which is not that long ago.

[01:08:07] No, I think Basil said a similar thing and it’s look, you guys, you’re highly predictable with impressions. And then to then say, okay, even though you’ve got this highly predictable way of doing it, now, do it this new way. Introduce all these risks that, you know, you’re not you’re not taking those risks with with impressions. And I put that to him and I put it to you as well, that you have to tread an interesting line between doing the tried and tested thing that, you know, works. And you have to try new things as well.

[01:08:43] Because you want you want improve if you don’t try new things.

[01:08:46] Yeah, exactly.

[01:08:47] Exactly. You know, scanners have been around for, what, 25 years and we’ve only now trusted them because also the margin of error that I mean, you know, a lot of people use serac, but serac in the old days was was terrible, you know, the things people made chair site and fitted. You would never accept that from a technician. You would never fit something that hasn’t been stained.

[01:09:14] Polished and.

[01:09:16] Glazed. And yet because the dentists were doing themselves, it was acceptable to them to sort of manufacture this thing to fit it. And the patients don’t know about where rates and what what, what the roughness of the porcelain does to the opposing tooth, etc.. So and also the sort of as what we get, we get obsessed with marginal fit and marginal error and that sort of stuff. And, and that’s only become better than impressions probably in the last five years, five, six years. So I swear by it, I love my scanner. I use it on pretty much every patient now even to have it because I’m also getting older and I remember less so I never needed to look at patient’s notes. I remembered everything about every patient I used to see. That’s not the case anymore, so I need to rely on my notes a lot more now. And it is really helpful to have x rays and a scan of the patient to see, to remind myself what I’m looking at.

[01:10:16] What have you got? Three sheep?

[01:10:17] Yes.

[01:10:19] So take me through. Let’s say a patient comes to you from let’s say it’s not a referral. Let’s say someone’s come, you know, emails your clinic. Yeah. Says I want to be seen about my whatever the way patients will say my missing teeth. Yeah. What happens? What’s. What’s the next thing that happens there? Who gets in touch? Is it. Is that the TKO?

[01:10:41] Yeah, we’ve got a treatment coordinator daughter. She’s she’s lovely. And she is an Eastman trained nurse who decided not to do nursing anymore and decided to do initially reception. And now she’s become a treatment coordinator courses and she’s very personable. So they’ll get an email to fill out some some details about medical history and what the reason is who’s referred them. And they make an appointment and they generally, depending on what they’re coming in for, I mean, they’re been referred to me as either a patient to come and see me for a particular reason, or sometimes people can just to come in for an exam because they haven’t seen a dentist for a long time. And we don’t we don’t turn anyone away.

[01:11:28] So how long is that initial exam that you would give a new patient.

[01:11:32] At one hour? Every every every initial appointment is one hour.

[01:11:36] In the hour. What if what if you notice that, you know, I’m the wrong person to see you? Just you just give that our. What you think if there’s someone else who should. You know, I mean I mean, at the end of the day.

[01:11:48] Your patients kind of come in and I still need to do my full examination.

[01:11:54] And I got your full record.

[01:11:56] And speak to the patient and see what they’re after and what we can do for them. For example, if they’ve got periodontal problems, I then suggest they go and see hitn and what has often happened and I’ve said, Look, I’m really sorry you’ve been booked with the wrong speciality or the wrong dentist here. We’re not going to charge you for this appointment. Please make an appointment with my colleague and they will see to your need.

[01:12:25] Let’s say, let’s say you are right. And now you’ve done the one hour. You’ve given the patient some understanding of what you think, I guess, by this point. And then what do you do? Do you write to the patient with a treatment?

[01:12:38] Every patient, even if they need no treatment, will get a letter. Even if the letter just says you’ve got a clean bill of health, your teeth are good, your gums are good. We’ll see you in six months. Every patient gets a report.

[01:12:51] What is how do you get that? You dictate that. Do you actually write it?

[01:12:54] I write up my notes and Georgia will put put the letter together. I then read, read it, adjusted, add some bits to it, and then Georgia sends it off.

[01:13:04] And so how do you do it that day? Is that is that your process or how soon will I get that letter as the patient?

[01:13:11] It’s rare for a letter to be sent out the same day. It usually takes about a week or so.

[01:13:16] Okay. So I get the letter from you and you say, look, my recommendation is whatever it is. Yeah, three implants down here, two crowns and whatever. What what happens.

[01:13:26] Next?

[01:13:27] I’d be sorry to interrupt you. The I think the important part is to especially in this day and age, with with being aware of litigation, you you have to make sure you give patients options rather than rather than just a plan. So you go through various options. The most likely I mean, I don’t go through 12 different options. Even if 12 different options were available. You sort of establish at the of the examination stage what the patient’s after, what direction there’s there’s no point writing to a patient who wants another complete denture about putting six implants into that drawer. They know that the option exists. You discuss it with them, but you’re very quick and come to the OR they will explain for whatever reason that’s not what they want. And then you can mention it, but talk more about what they’re actually after.

[01:14:23] Yeah. So, so, so you give them two options for the sake of the argument or you give them a stabilisation phase in order, whatever it is. So now patients got this is, is the process that they will make another appointment to go through that with you or or what happens now depends.

[01:14:37] On the complexity of the the treatment plan. So if it’s something simple like a crown or a treatment, then no, I won’t see them again. They’re just looking to have that procedure done. If it’s a formal invitation, I’ll see them several times before we start, before we pick up a drug, because we first that is, depending on what it is, you might make a michigan appearance first, stop them grinding, then you might make a diagnostic workup, then you might build the teeth up in composite, you know. So it depends on what the patient’s coming in for.

[01:15:15] So let’s say it is a big job. It’s something something big like a full mouth rehab. Look, did you see the patient again? Let’s say you sort of figure it out.

[01:15:24] My aim is to show the patient in their mouth what they’re going to end up with before I do anything. So the best way to do that is with a sort of mock up in their mouth of what what things are going to look like. And that’s not always possible. But more often than not, it is possible to do that with a temporary, temporary mock up and we will use pro temp and the diagnostic wax up, make some indices and try it over their teeth or something along those lines.

[01:15:57] Have you ever bothered with the whole DSD workflow or.

[01:16:01] No, I haven’t. I haven’t. And maybe because I’m a dinosaur, maybe because it’s just not I don’t do a lot of I spend more time talking patients out of having cosmetic dentistry have it. I mean, I happily do it as part of a bigger treatment plan. I’ll happily do it for all the patients. I’ve many times refused to put veneers on on sort of 20 something year old. So it’s just not what I do. It’s not what I want to get known for. So that’s not the wrong practice for that. But I don’t I also don’t recommend them to have it done. So I don’t say so. And so we’ll do it for you because I just say this is not a reasonable thing to do. If you have some whitening, does have some bonding, then have some ortho and, you know, keep your teeth.

[01:16:49] Sure, sure. So, so but okay, let’s say the patient comes in again. You explain things. Let’s say the patient then doesn’t contact you again. Is that it? You leave it at that or is there a follow up process that you guys do?

[01:17:01] No, we don’t follow up. We don’t follow up on patients who I mean, we make sure they’ve received the our treatment plan. And as far as aware, I need to check with what the girl signs they do anything else. But as far as I’m aware, we don’t we don’t chase chase them at all.

[01:17:19] And what about the issue of price and costs? Do you get you get patients asking about giving them discounts, anything like that happen ever?

[01:17:28] Yes, I have been asked and I guess I’m fairly dramatic about it. I don’t like talking about money at all. I don’t think we’re an unreasonably priced practice where I think we provide quite good value for money. And I find it almost insulting to sort of. It’s not health care shouldn’t be an area where you want to skimp or save or it’s just not worth it. And also, I don’t believe in discounted products. So if you give a patient a discount or not, the outcome the patient expects will be the same. Right? If you have a crown done, you want it done perfectly and you want it done with the best materials to the best of the person’s ability. And that service has been priced at a certain level. Why would you why would you want to challenge that? Why wouldn’t you just go somewhere else if you didn’t want to have that done? Where where it meets your budget better.

[01:18:30] Is a nice Germanic way of looking. I like that. Yeah. I don’t like talking money either. It’s weird because some people are very confident about it and some people just aren’t. And I don’t know. I don’t know where it comes from. Like I hate sales.

[01:18:47] Let me give you I’ve got a I had a patient who seemed to be talking about my dead patients a lot.

[01:18:54] This chap.

[01:18:55] He was Egyptian and he came in one day and he said, Farid, I want you to replace my two front clowns. I said, Yes, sir. You know, I it was at the end of the day, I could I could work that day. And he wanted it done there. And then I sort of knew the calibre of patient I was talking to. So I said, Forgive me for saying this. I don’t ever do anything without telling my patients what the procedure is, how long it’ll take, what it will cost, etc.. So it may I, may I just impart that information to you? And he said, yes, indulge me. So I told him and he says, Right side, let me tell you something, just to put your mind at ease. I just flew over from Dubai where I spent whatever an obscene amount of money on his hotel room. And basically he said, You’re fine, just do what you need. So I’ve used him as an example. Whenever I feel don’t feel comfortable talking money to a patient. I sort of say, you know, I’ve had this said to me before, forgive me for mentioning this, but I don’t usually do things without telling you what the cost is. And then, you know, because these days it’s really, really rare for you to do anything without writing to the patient first. Anyway, it just doesn’t happen anymore. It used to be more more commonplace.

[01:20:08] So we you know, it’s times flown by. I think we’re an hour and a half in. We, we tend to finish these always with the same two questions. Perhaps not here, but I’ll start with perhaps. Your deathbed. Nearest and dearest around you. What? Three pieces of advice. Would you leave them?

[01:20:37] Oof!

[01:20:43] To have sympathy empathy sorry is is probably important to me to because you never know what’s going on in other people’s lives. So to show some level of understanding, to try and show some level of understanding towards others. To be kind. And the last thing would be, I would say the world and what’s going on around you doesn’t really care about how you feel. So if you want to be successful, I think you have to do what you need to do every day. Despite not feeling great, despite feeling great, despite that doesn’t matter. Your feelings don’t come into your day to day life. You have to have a name and take them off, deal with it.

[01:21:34] So it’s kind of like empathy, kindness. And then the third one, be like a discipline type. Yeah, something like that.

[01:21:42] Yeah, I.

[01:21:44] Yes, I think discipline is very important to me, but also a lot of the time you might, you might get out of bed and you might feel tired, you might feel drained, you might feel like not doing what you need to do. And I think one of one of the things that teaches you about this is having kids actually, because your child still needs feeding. You know, it needs burping, it needs nappy changing, whatever else. So whatever you might be feeling is irrelevant. You have to do it. And I think in life you can treat most things like your baby, like my practice, I treat it like my baby. I look after. It doesn’t matter how I feel about that or how I feel that particular day happens to be that. Most of the time. I feel really good about my practice and I really like being here.

[01:22:34] I love that body. The final, final question. Fantasy dinner party. Three guests. Dead or alive? Two. Would you have.

[01:22:47] My three guests are all that I’d I’d invite Mohammed, Jesus and Moses because I’d really like to know what they’d have to say about religion these days. I’m not particularly religious myself. But I would really love to know how much of what they supposedly preached or told people about is what we know about them today. So those would be my three ideal guests. I mean, I’d love to invite God, but I think he wouldn’t make it.

[01:23:24] What an.

[01:23:25] Interesting list. How interesting. Especially for someone who’s not very religious. I like that very much, but I like that very much. Jesus and Moses. So nice speaking to you. So nice speaking to you, buddy.

[01:23:40] It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

[01:23:44] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:24:00] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we’ve had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

[01:24:15] If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

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[00:00:00] What about the actual the picture or video of the ad? Have you found one? Some things work better than others.

[00:00:07] Yeah. Without giving too many gold nuggets away. What I would say is having a picture of a patient with a treating dentist really helps. Having a picture of the practice and having the picture of the practice with nearby common things. So I don’t know if there’s a really statement shop next door, put that in or saying, Oh, we’re right next to X, Y and Z. So that really helps. That really gets a lot of engagement.

[00:00:34] So you don’t you definitely don’t recommend like a stock photo of something.

[00:00:39] That’s not really definite enough.

[00:00:46] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:04] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Paul Miller onto the podcast. Another dentist from Leeds. Leeds seems to be a bit of a hotbed for amazing new practices lately. Loads and loads open. We’ve had loads of guests on the podcast. We’ve opened Super Dippers in Leeds recently, so we’ll go into the reasons for that. Paul’s kind of become an authority figure in Invisalign open days, another with another hat. He’s a marketing company with his brother, expert media tech. On top of that, Paul works in London at Square Mile with Nick and Sanjay Sethi, great friends of this podcast, Amit Patel, Elaine Mau, all of them. They’ve all been on this podcast. So we’ll get into what that will move was about. And then to add to all of that, I’ve done my research. Paul, the first guest to have been on Britain’s Got Talent on this podcast of a dancer. Actor.

[00:02:02] Yeah.

[00:02:04] We’ll get into that. It’s lovely to have you, buddy. How are you?

[00:02:07] Oh, no, I’m very good, thanks. Thanks for having me today on on a nice bank holidays. Good way to wrap up the weekend. Yeah I have done done quite a bit I’ve had my hands in a few things. But you know, dentistry is where my passion is at the moment for sure.

[00:02:20] So as as a child, I mean, this acting thing is quite different, right? So as a child, did you have that moment of saying, am I going to go all in on showbusiness or am I going to be a dentist? Or was that never a Yeah.

[00:02:33] So do you know what I did? I did ask the question. So when I was about 16, that’s when I first went on Britain’s Got Talent. When I was about 19, I got through all the way to the stage before the semi-final and it’s because I break down. So our body pop with a bit of Punjabi dancing as well. So I was, do you know, for me it was a hobby and it was always going to be a hobby because if you think about dentistry, there’s security, there’s loads of things attached to that. Whereas with body puffing you can’t quite, can’t quite do much with that, to be honest. It’s probably like a one in a one in 10 million kind of make it so. But someone like an agent saw me on Britain’s Got Talent and they needed a body popper for that Disney TV show. So they got me in for an episode and we got on so well in season two. I got drafted in for five out of 12 episodes, so I did that during uni during my third year of uni like summer break.

[00:03:26] So time how did you get into body popping at your age? I mean, that’s more like people my age used to do that.

[00:03:33] Do you know what it was? Yeah, just. Just started doing it. I didn’t have a mentor, I didn’t have anything. I just was just dancing in front of the mirror, almost watching a few videos, just picked it up and just really enjoyed it as a as a side hobby. So, yeah, that’s how it came about. Nothing. Nothing special.

[00:03:51] So, Paul, tell me about what kind of a kid were you?

[00:03:55] So I was I was a bit of a cheeky kid, you know, I was one. I love my video games. I wasn’t the greatest worker in the world, but I loved to play sports as well. So I was I was quite sensible, you know, within my family, you know, we’ve got a lot of dentists, probably half the family dentists. So for me, it was all about that stage of getting into dentistry. So making sure education, you know, your, your hobbies to put on your CV or your personal statement was all on point. But yeah, so and also then obviously the dancing and the acting thing as a side. So I tried to do as much, as much as I could with the opportunities.

[00:04:31] Yeah, but outside of dancing, were you always going to go into dentistry? Women who’s a dentist in your family is that you’re very close family.

[00:04:38] Yeah. So I’ve got I’ve got a cousin who’s a professor of paediatric dentistry, my sister, my sister in law, both dentists. I’ve got about ten, 11 cousins that are all dentists. So the dinner chats are very dental orientated, a bit boring actually sometimes.

[00:04:54] So with you having so many dentists in the family, would you say that’s been a massive and. Advantage to you because, you know, Dipesh Parmar does our composite course and yeah, he’s, you know, I mean, he’s undoubtedly one of the most talented dentists I’ve ever come across. So he’s got he’s got talent. But his older brother, who’s many years older than him, is dentist. And then his next brother, the middle brother, is the technician. And, you know, I can just tell the insight he’s got or had. I knew him very early on, just as in vet. I met him and the insight he had into teeth and dental practices was so much more than I what I had. So would you say that’s given you a massive advantage?

[00:05:41] Yeah, I think I think definitely that’s one of the reasons why my main hub is Leeds, because the majority of my family is from Leeds. So in terms of the connections that you get, the networking and even before I even started dental school, my sister in law had a practice, my sister had a practice related to Prem Semi as well, who’s had X amount of practices. So being able to kind of hear how they’ve done it, what works well for them, as well as big mentors of mine at Jen and Kisch as well, and they help me with that. So I think what family does is it gives you a network of support and mentorship and they can’t really say no to you. It’s quite nice. So you can bug them as much as you as you feel.

[00:06:22] Related to them.

[00:06:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit of a further relation, but yeah.

[00:06:28] One of those everyone’s related to everyone’s story.

[00:06:30] So that’s one of those. Definitely one of those. He helped me out. He helped me out a lot in the early days as well.

[00:06:39] So he’s a giver for sure.

[00:06:43] He’s very much.

[00:06:43] Together. So, okay, where did you study?

[00:06:46] So I studied in Sheffield, so that was started in 2013 and then graduated in 2018. And I actually had two cousins in Sheffield Dental School while I was in dental school.

[00:06:57] What kind of a dental student were you? You were sort of the studious type or the party type.

[00:07:01] So if I’m being honest, probably the party type. For me, I didn’t really I’m going to be honest for me. I didn’t really have a passion or I didn’t really enjoy dentistry up until fifth year where one patient changed my life. So it was just a normal, odd clinic. And before then I didn’t really know what was going on clinics wise. I didn’t. I was always late to clinics trying to get out of seeing patients early. Then this one patient came in. I remember I was trying to go away from the clinic, you know, maybe watch a bit Game of Thrones at home. And she came in to force me to kind of see her. And she goes to me, Paula, I’m not smarter than that yet. And I just you know, I start to question why I didn’t smile. And then she had a lateral incisor. And then in my in my eyes, I thought, well, there’s nothing really I can do about that because we’re in dental school. What is that something that we can do in hospital? And I was lucky, my tutor at the time because, well, there are quite a few options that we can do for this patient, even though it’s not technically for health, but it’ll help her mentally at least. So he said, Let’s do it. That’s true. It is a case, you know, you’ve done your targets.

[00:08:08] So all of a sudden I was doing some research of how I could do. I could kind of restore the smile in a way. And he gave me a lot of information, emailed me things like gold and proportion and how to get the right length to with ratio for this to make it look symmetrical, to do a wax up. And all of a sudden I just gained a huge interest. So I really wanted to pull this off for her because I knew how much it would mean for her. So suddenly I was the first person on clinic I was really enjoying because I was really taking on board what the lecturers were saying. And I did the composite with a wax up, you know, something simple. And I took about one and a half to 2 hours, and when I showed her the mirror, she swore out loud, she screamed and everyone gathered around. She was just so happy. She was crying of happiness. And I just thought, Wow, I did that for this person. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. You know that moment where you go, what you were born to do? That was that moment for me. And it’s from there where I really, really gain the passion. But before that, definitely the party side was was who I was.

[00:09:13] It’s interesting. Yeah. Because, you know, her reaction maybe was the final push to make you realise you can change people’s lives and all of that.

[00:09:24] Yeah, I had no idea that you could do that within dentistry. I had no idea how much power dentistry can have on someone’s life. I mean, you might be the reason why someone has the confidence to go for that job or to meet confidence to talk to that special someone then, you know, and it comes down to what you did. So that was when I thought, I need to go down this path.

[00:09:46] I remember I was pushing myself to go into cosmetic dentistry as quickly as possible, and that doesn’t seem like a big thing to say now, because everyone’s doing it now. But. But back then it was. Very bad. It wasn’t a very common thing at all. But but but the reason I was doing it was because my brother had a genesis imperfecta and he went off to the iceman and he was a child. He was like 11 years old or whatever. And they did a they did a full mouth rehab on him. And this kid went who had no confidence or whatever, came back and smiled. And I remember that magic moment to see Jesus. What they they’ve changed his life completely. I was a nine year old or something, but but it stuck with me. And that’s why I pursued cosmetic industry. But the point I want to make was, yeah, the patient’s reaction. But let’s not forget that tutor. Yeah, that tutor.

[00:10:43] Oh, 100%. I mean, if it wasn’t for that tutor or dismissed.

[00:10:47] The tutor who, who went out of his way here to say, okay, there is something we can do here, who supported that? You could be the guy to do that and to hold your hand through that process, not only change that patient’s life, but then change so many other patients lives because of now the person you’ve become. And it shows the importance of teaching and what a massive thing effect you can have as a good you know, we all remember our best teachers from school and all that, but go, don’t shout him out. Who was it?

[00:11:17] So it was Miss the mother. He was one of those that kind of only came into the hospital once a week. And I think because he worked in general dentistry, he almost because it definitely wasn’t hospital guidelines to do that sort of work within the clinic setting. But I think he appreciated how much this patient needed that after we went through a history of presenting complaints. So yeah, I know I owe a lot to so I really appreciate that.

[00:11:42] So then what happened next? You went to VTI?

[00:11:44] Yeah. So I went, I had the summer and I went to vet just kind of nearby the release date at home. But for me, I spoke to my vet trainers. I said this is the type of dentistry I want to do. But they sensibly told me, Look, well, what you need to do is you need to focus on your bread and butter first. You need to be able to do removal care as well, be able to do a simple filling. Well, then you can think about these things and then we’ll teach you a little bit more about these things. And I really got that because dentistry isn’t just, you know, the majority of dentistry comes down to that bread and butter. If you’ve got good foundations, you can then build on that. I mean, and the only sad thing is today you can look on Instagram and you can go, Oh, all these people are doing amazing things, but you don’t see that graft to get to that level. It takes a lot of years, a lot of courses, a lot of mistakes, and some, especially for me, I grew up like when in dental school with Instagram, social media and dentistry all kind of blowing up and you think you can do that sort of work straight away, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. So I was really lucky that my PhD train has really grounded me in that regard. And then I went to the TUBULES conference in Vito and a competition for that. So I was allowed to go and I drew a lot of that as well. Very good guy. I he introduced me to gin that’s shaped a lot of my career knick that day as well. That obviously gave me the job at Square Mile. So from there they both with small clinical group and Square Mile really kind of mentored me to go forward.

[00:13:15] Yeah, you did luck out there because you know some of them.

[00:13:20] All on the same day.

[00:13:21] Well, you know, that’s the other thing about going to conferences, isn’t it? The soft benefits, the they outweigh the hard benefits. Yeah.

[00:13:30] Yeah. I mean, a lot of what people think about conferences is that you’re going to learn or, you know, you’re going to see that lecture. But a lot of it comes down to networking and sharing experiences and learning from other people’s.

[00:13:41] Experiences because, you know, again, we do our course, right? And we have this dinner during our course and we really try and get and obviously some people have got kids and they can’t come to the dinner and all of this, but really try and get people to come to that because, you know, the structured learning is one thing, but talking to each other, there’s so much more in that. And I’ve had people in that dinner say to me, Oh, I’m looking for a private job and I’ve introduced them to someone. And, you know, it’s important to understand that about about education in our setting in our world, that there’s a lot more to it than what the lecturers put on it. Of course, pay attention to the lecture.

[00:14:21] So that is also important. Yeah, of course. We can’t discuss.

[00:14:26] And then implement. Right. Implement. Tell me this dude, are you naturally sort of the confident kind of guy who you know, you go on a you mentioned Robbie Hughes before you go on an avant garde course. Do you then go and put that into practice straightaway so that you don’t forget and and, you know, what’s the difference? Why do you why are you that cat? And then why are there so many others who go on a course and don’t ever put it into practice?

[00:14:51] I think the most important thing about courses, especially when I first did my first few, I realised that if you don’t have one or two patient. Lined up for that treatment, then you’re going to forget exactly what you were meant to do. And then you don’t eventually you don’t have the confidence to do it and then you don’t do it anymore. So I think the key thing is and Invisalign do this, to be honest, I think this is why a designer being so successful because a line tells you to have three patients. Now, I think it’s five patients ready with a contract and you can’t go ahead with the course unless you’ve got them ready. And I think with me, especially, I did Robby’s six month mentorship course with Millard and that really helped because you get about six courses in one, but you get that mentorship. So I had a WhatsApp group between me, Robby and Millard, and I would send him complicated cases. They told me, Actually, Paul, do you know what? This to me is probably outside of where you’re at right now. You will get there one day, but maybe repair this on someone else. And then just having someone tell you that just makes you think, actually, now I know where my boundaries are. So I think that’s kind of the difference there. It comes down to connecting with the people that are teaching the course.

[00:16:01] Yeah, but still there’s an element of confidence in going ahead and implementing. Would you say you’re a competent person?

[00:16:08] I would say I’m always willing to take a calculated risk is the best way to describe it. So I will do the treatment as long as I know that all the other variables are controlled. Obviously the variable of pulling it off isn’t going to control, but as long as everything else. And what I mean by that is, is the patient’s expectations relatively low because it’s the first time you’re doing it. If their expectations are high and your skill set is quite low at this point, then you’ve got a bad combination there. But if your skill set is maybe medium low to medium, but the patient’s expectations are very low, then it’s okay because you know that they will give you time to learn that skill set through and we’ll be adaptable when things may not go as well as you’d hope. And but they’re not going to kick off if something goes wrong.

[00:16:55] Yeah, that’s a good point. Very good point. So then tell me about what you did next after VTE.

[00:17:02] So about six, I went straight into a part time private job and about five months later, so five months after I got the call from Nic and he offers me the job at square month. So I was very excited. I was definitely not ready if I’m being honest because five months after beat working at Square Marlborough, he said, Look, come down for two days a week, we’re going to mentor you to give you a simple case as best. And I thought, what better way to learn than to learn from them? So I actually left my jobs. But unfortunately, now you’re going to laugh at this. Unfortunately, I left my job in February 2020, and then we all know what happened in March 2020 COVID hit. So unfortunately, I had no job during lockdown because I couldn’t start in London and then anywhere where I tried to find another job or a locum. Nowhere was hiring because there was no point for them to, especially with the 20% contract, etc.. So at that point I thought to myself I had a lot of ideas, I learnt a lot in terms of the way I thought dentistry is going with aligners and orthodontics.

[00:18:08] So I did a lot of training in that regard, so that’s when I decided to buy my own practice. So during the first lockdown I actually went to go view the practice that I ended up buying. And I knew because it was COVID that I’d get a really good price. I got 35% off the asking price, and so I kickstarted that process off. But without having a job, I then was starting to money was coming up and money wasn’t coming in. So I ended up working as a test and trace for about four months am till 8 p.m. just to make sure that, you know, that is a steady stream of income. And then that practice I took over took about 13 months, 14 months to complete because no bank would ever I didn’t really trust someone that was only 6 to 7 months out of PhD with no assets or anything. But I managed to persuade a bank to do it and it was a high deposit, but then took over the practice, called to passion, renamed it to dental and kicked off.

[00:19:07] Where did you get the money from?

[00:19:09] Just the work. So test and trace and that six months of work because the practice is valued quite low so I only needed a relatively low deposit percentage was high, but it’s technically a relatively low deposit to surgery practice. So yeah, I managed to just when I took over I only had £150 left in the bank.

[00:19:29] And did you sort of strategically buy a place that was that you thought had potential and you were going to buy a cheap place that you were going to build? Or was it just the only one you could afford? Why didn’t you wait?

[00:19:43] So yeah, I think you said it right. What I thought was I just need a staple point. So I wanted to change everything within a practice. All I needed was the goodwill. So what I found was a practice that was very rundown. I mean. Now doing film X-rays, etc.? Well, no digital dentistry whatsoever. And but they had a very good work, good will. They had about eight or 9ka month of capitation income. So then plan income coming in. And I thought, well, here’s a practice where you have stable income that can pay the bills and then anything you add on top of that can allow me to grow. And I within a year introduced CBT implants and with all the endo kits have gone into dentist as well, Treo scanner orthodontics, computerised system. Eventually everything changed it all refurbished, it all made it look really modern. And we’ve only just finished the refurbishes.

[00:20:41] To the patients and the staff, not sort of run for the hills when they saw all these changes happening. Like, you know, I mean, traditionally people talk about evolution instead of revolution when you take over a practice. But there are other there are other models. You know, we’ve had Def Patel on here and his model is to smash the place down completely and start all over again. And, you know, he’s kind of a he almost believes in that as a way of a break with the past, did you get pushback from patients and staff when you started changing everything?

[00:21:12] Yeah, great question. So I think with both patients and staff, you have two categories of people. You have those that you know are very set in their ways. And it doesn’t really matter what age they are because some people say, oh, maybe they’ve been there for a lot of years, they’re not willing to adapt, but either you’re willing to adapt or you’re not willing to adapt. And those that were not willing to adapt to a happily let go mutually and because it wasn’t the right place for them anymore, I wasn’t going to let anyone impinge on my vision. I wasn’t going to let anyone hold back on what I thought the future of dentistry would look like. And I’d say the majority of staff said, and only about 2% of patients left, and that’s because they came from different places. I felt like we we offered an experience that was so when you come in, it’s all about the experience for me. So, you know, they’re greeted very nicely. Everything is digitised for them so they can fill in their medical history, etc. They come in as a TV on the ceiling and a lot of the patients, they were excited by this new technology. It was almost like they were waiting for this change to happen and they were also on that journey with me. So yeah, I didn’t get much pushback from that.

[00:22:18] I’m a little bit surprised by it. I mean, it’s I’ve heard I’ve heard stories of people mourning their previous existence, you know, like the staff particularly. I mean, are you good at persuading people? Did you did you sort of sit everyone down and say, this is my vision? And and how did you manage to not come across as sort of some upstart and.

[00:22:38] Yeah.

[00:22:39] You know what I mean? Are you are you naturally good at that?

[00:22:42] No, I, I wouldn’t say I’m not sure. Good at. I sat down and I explained I had to explain that what we did was we incorporated everyone. We said we incorporated everyone’s ideas and created one vision. So it was about making everyone feel valued. So, you know, if my my lead nurse made a suggestion, I suppose, you know what, let’s let’s set it up like this or can we design it like this? I would take that on board. And, you know, half the time I would implement it if I thought it was right. So I think making your staff feel very valued and also with patients, we were constantly asking, you know, what do you think of the changes? You know, well, what do you think of the new Chaz? Are you happy about this? And I think they felt valued as well because a lot of them have been there for over 30 years. So for them being a part of that, basically, including everyone in the process, makes them feel valued, which then allowed us to grow exponentially.

[00:23:36] Did you have what happened to the outgoing principal? Did he stay on a bit or so?

[00:23:41] He stayed on for three months as a transition. That was a bit difficult because we had we were on like we were poles apart at this point. But he was ready to retire 70 years old and he was ready to retire. And and luckily for me, you know, in my eyes, he was a great dentist. Great dentist, and he did really good work. So really, again, I feel really lucky to have taken over from someone like him because it can be it can go the other way. It can be a bit of a disaster class. So I think Fortune just gave me that.

[00:24:12] So what I think I think people underestimate the value of local knowledge. Yeah. You have, you know, you have these sort of stories of. Oh, yeah, I sat down, looked at where there were fewer fewest dentists and most patients or where there was the most need or which high street was best. And I strategically put my practice there and it sort of ignores local knowledge as far as, you know, the nuance in your you’re, you know, Leeds born and bred, right? You’ve been in leads from the year doc and you’ve got all this family all around leads and so forth. The nuance in you being able to take your staff with you and take your patients with you. An outsider might not have been able to carry that off. You know, it’s not as simple as find the right location and go for it, you know?

[00:24:59] I think being Leeds born and bred definitely really helps. I went to school in Leeds and you know, you can relate even even football. Everybody’s big Leeds United fans. So you can you can always find common ground with a lot of the patients know a lot of the patients live nearby me, golf, etc.. So I think having those common things with patients and that happens from local knowledge really, really helps. I think if someone to come in from a different city and go, okay, I’m going to make this work. It could have been a different story.

[00:25:29] So tell me about maybe big mistakes you made along the way.

[00:25:33] I would say I’m probably one of those that I made the most amount of mistakes, but I’ll always learn from them and I reflect on the biggest mistakes. Everyone’s going to make clinical mistakes here and there about how you what you do after that kind of is what counts. And I think my biggest mistake was basically thinking that it was quite easy to take over a practice during COVID and, you know, thinking the time frame of it will happen the way I thought it was going to happen. So when I was trying to take over, the process took so long. It was very mentally challenging, very, very mentally challenging. There were some really bad days in terms of what’s going to happen. Is it going to happen? Is it? There were points where the practice was never going to go through and I think I was quite cocky at the start where I thought, okay, this is easy. You look, you’ve got the deposit, there’s a lot more that goes into it. You know, hiring a dental orientated solicitor is definitely the key. I did not do that. I wish I had done that because that would have made the process a lot quicker, a lot easier for me, and probably would have saved me money in the long run. But I obviously won’t buy this kind of thing. That’s basically why. So I think if you’re going to take over the practice, you definitely need the right team around you to do it and don’t cheap out or don’t get someone that’s maybe less expensive but doesn’t have any dental experience because that’s going to go against you in the long run.

[00:27:01] Yeah, it’s similar to, you know, some people won’t use a broker to sell their practice because of the one or 2% the broker takes.

[00:27:10] Yeah.

[00:27:11] And you think if the broker can’t add one or 2% to the price you’re going to get, I mean, of course he’s going to. So it’s a good point. What about clinically? I mean, even your clinical. I’m not.

[00:27:23] A broker. It’s so important.

[00:27:25] Yeah. I don’t necessarily want you to tell me about. You’re too young to have made that many clinical mistakes. Yeah, but at the same time, your trajectory has been quite steep. So clinically, what were things that you wish you knew earlier or things you wish you hadn’t tried so soon? Or some give me some some, some, some insight clinically into going from zero to Invisalign. What are you, Diamond Apex boy. What, what, what were the what were the highlights?

[00:27:57] Yeah. Do you know what it is again? I think anyone can learn from their mistakes, but a wise person learns from the mistakes of others. So anything that I try, I always have quite a mentor that’s already on that level. So for example, restorative early I had Kish, Nick, and if there was ever a point where I had any doubt about how this case was going to end up, then I would ask them. I’d ask him or go, Look, what can go wrong here? What should I think about? And a lot of the time Nick stopped me from doing cases where he’s gone actually, mate, because Nick’s quite humble. He would go, Actually, I wouldn’t do this myself. I definitely wouldn’t recommend you to do it because of this. This could happen. So even with Invisalign Bhavin Bhatt, Sandeep as well. Kumar They’ve been mentors of mine and you know, Bhavin especially, he taught me what cases can I do, what cases can I not do? And those were I thought, kind of do this. You just mentor me through it. Same with Elaine. She helped me with that as well. So I think clinical mistakes, things could have gone better and I’ll always reflect on that. But having the mentor has really allowed me to negate or lessen them.

[00:29:08] I mean, how do you go about getting so many great mentors?

[00:29:12] Did you most of them happen on that same day in TUBULES conference day.

[00:29:16] What a great day.

[00:29:17] And then we just really connected. What was it? You know what? That’s probably when I look back, that’s probably my highlight day. That’s better than a birthday. So I think just also if they took, for example, Jen and Kash, I remember the first time they ever gave me an opportunity. I said, Look, we’re doing the I think it was a BDA conference and they’re lecturing and they said, Look, Paul, come down, come me to the hotel. We want to talk about something with you. And I just went down I just went down to Birmingham all the way from Leeds. I just chatted with him for half an hour and that was it. But I think when you show a mentor that you’re willing to put in that effort, they will put the effort back into you. So even now, fast forward three years with Jen and Kash. We’re looking to buy a practice together, I hope, with that Dental Academy in Manchester. So we set that up up north where we’re running quite a few courses there for dentists and therapists. I lecture on a few of their courses as well. So if I hadn’t put in that initial effort, even though I had pretty much nothing to gain from it, monetary or anything, then they may not have put as much effort into me.

[00:30:23] Yeah. I mean. But still, there’s a talent in looking for mentors and accepting mentors. It sounds like you’ve got so many there, so many good people that to go to, and I find often this very easy advice to give. It’s like, you know, get yourself a mentor. But, you know, I was I was quite a shy sort of associate type here. I wasn’t the type to go up to someone and say, Hey, you help me with something unless, you know, something happened. So to, you know, it’s not as simple as go get a mentor, is it? You know, it’s it’s a skill in itself.

[00:30:59] Is just good. But you’ve got to also put yourself in that situation. If you don’t go to the course, if you don’t go to the conference or then you’re never going to put yourself in that situation to find a mentor. So I think the key thing there is keep going, keep connecting, and eventually you’ll form a connection with someone where you know, it can it can hopefully turn into that sort of role. Yeah, certainly. And also even on the flip side, you know, I’ve been given a lot. I also try and mentor people that are younger than me as well, you know, through the courses and those are newly graduating because I think whatever you receive, you should give back as well.

[00:31:34] Certainly. Let’s get in on the leads, dude. How come? How come Leeds has got so many new practices opening?

[00:31:41] Which was crazy. It was crazy, but it’s not. Over the last two years there’s been a lot of private squats opening in Leeds and they’re all doing extremely well I think. I think with Leeds there’s been a huge shift, whether it’s local or I don’t know if it’s happening nationwide, but huge shift from NHS to private industry and I don’t know what it is but there’s a lot, it’s quite something in the water.

[00:32:07] Like, yeah, you’re right, private squat, super branded, beautiful places.

[00:32:11] All happening to me. Well, I would say it’s the capital of the north. It’s like London, but without the hassles of London.

[00:32:22] You know what? I’ve spent some time in Leeds and you know, what I like most about it is the people. People are like, straight up on the easy to talk to. But you guys, you guys have a lot of fun. I’ve noticed up there. There’s, it’s, it’s like it’s different to Manchester. It’s got a different kind of vibe to Manchester. But of course you’re biased.

[00:32:43] Yeah, it’s it’s funny, you know, we do the academy in Manchester. I think people people are very, very friendly in Leeds. And there is, it’s like work hard, play a hard mentality. But I also think maybe as opposed to Manchester or maybe because I’m not from Manchester, I don’t know. There’s a really strong Leeds Dental community where a lot of even the most renowned dentists within Leeds will come to the meetings, they’ll lecture. So like I find my team, they all lecture regularly to all the dentists within Leeds is this kind of really big community feel and I think that also contributes towards everything. Whereas I don’t know well being in London, I didn’t really feel that. I’ve not heard of that in Manchester. So I think that could be the difference there.

[00:33:26] Yeah. So, so okay. Let’s talk about the marketing journey because your practice, we were talking off mic, your practice has grown exponentially since you bought it, you know, a year ago. Sounds ridiculous. A year ago. Just, just run, run, run those numbers by buy by the audience quickly.

[00:33:48] Yeah. So I can be open, honest. So I bought it for 175 and now I just got it recently valued for literally just under a million. And that was after a year. And the biggest reason for that was marketing. And that’s why I kind of started my own marketing company with my brother. We both actually got covered at the same time and Christmas and we were just chatting and I just said to because I did loads of insider like alchemy, I did myself, I did everything and I just, I said to my brother, I think I know how to do this now, can you help me do the tech side of things and can you help me manage the ads, etc.? So he did it for me. And then all of a sudden we got a message from a local practice manager who got Paul, who’s doing your opening. And all I said was, my brother goes, Oh, what company is it? And so I said to my brother. Then I said, Well, here’s a great idea. Why don’t if we can do it for me, then why can’t we do it for other people? If we can help them grow, then there’s nothing better than that. So we create expert media tech where we design websites. So the main thing is like open days, which is. Invisalign open days. And in the space of seven months we’ve gone, we’ve got about 20 clients now continuously up and down the country. We do it for the small clinical group as well. They trust us with their marketing and yeah, we’re just flying with it really. But I think the best, the best part about it is when we do it for a squat practice. So we’ve done it for about three squat practices and then them telling us, Paul, we were a bit worried here. We’re not being able to fill our diaries as, as we would have hoped, then being able to run their ads or do their marketing for them and kind of get them to where their expectation was and really seeing them grow as well and becoming stabilised is really satisfying.

[00:35:44] So what I’d really like to do here is to get you seem to have sort of super specialised into this idea of Invisalign Open Day, right? I’d like to break it down to what’s Paul’s sort of cornerstones for a successful Invisalign open day, super successful one. And I probably want to probably you’re better at this than me. But, you know, there’s the let’s face it, there’s all the work you do before the open day. There’s the day itself. And then there is all the work you do afterwards. Right. Let’s break it down like that.

[00:36:21] Let’s break it down. All right, cool. Let’s break it down. Let’s get into story beginning, middle, end. So we’ll start with the beginning. First thing is the practice has to be aware that they have to be all in. If you cut it halfway, you’re not going to see the benefits and you’re only going to see the expensive side. So the key.

[00:36:39] Thing being set wise.

[00:36:40] Why? Because it accumulates. So when if, for example, you only do one open day, then you would not get the result of four open days within a five or six month period. So it’s the fact that you have to trust the process and trust what we’re doing. And kind of what makes us unique is that so many marketing companies or even dental agencies, they outsource it to marketing companies now where we ourselves are the marketing company with a dentist involved. So what we do is we don’t only just do, okay, here’s the ads, here’s the data, here’s the leads, you do it yourself. We do the whole process for you. So we start off with running the ads and we get the right people to help us within the practice. So we need a treatment coordinator, we need a practice manager and we need the treating dentist. What the TKO will do is we’ll provide the leads. Now, whether you have a TKO or not TKO job is to convert and get a deposit from that lead. So let’s say we expect about a 760 to 70% conversion rate. If you don’t have a TKO, you use X TKO and we do it for you, obviously for an increased fee.

[00:37:49] Once we’ve done that and we manage the list, what we do is we make the day special because nowadays Invisalign is almost we call it Invisalign, it’s not even a clear aligner treatment, but patients know it as Invisalign and they’re shopping around, you know, they’re looking at about five or six practices. You’ve got to make yourself special, so you’ve got to wow them on the day. You’ve got to give them the best treatment plan that’s suited to their needs. So you’ve got to really listen to them. And what a lot of mistakes that I believe practices make is that they think the clearer line of treatment is the only treatment that should be given to that patient. That patient will have pre orthodontic restorative treatment, orthodontic orthodontic treatment and post orthodontic restorative treatment. So you’re looking at don’t think of it as only, I don’t know a23k treatment plan and spending increases heavily because a lot of things when that patient comes in they’re looking for the whole works. Once the physio has got everyone in, we send videos beforehand to patients getting them excited for the open day. You know, it’s a celebration when they come in on the day.

[00:38:56] The practice manager with us organised little gifts, decorations, all sorts to kind of make the day special. And then on the day itself, you’ve got a while, you’ve got to give them experience that they’ve never had a dental practice before. So you’ve got to be digitally scanning, you’ve got to talk them through what no one would have mentioned, to talk them through their occlusion as we talked about that pre treatment, that post treatment, tell them why certain options are more suitable to them than other options. Really why them on the day and then what after the day is all about the aftercare as well, because some of them might not necessarily sign up on the day. So you want to be able to do follow up messages from from your team. And then when you get them in, you start it off. Once you’ve done that, that patient base will then refer. So you may need this initial marketing, this adds, but then when they start referring, you may not even need it then, or you may want to do both. And that’s how you grow exponentially, in my opinion, right now, while Invisalign is a gateway to. Treatment.

[00:39:59] So break it down. Break down some numbers for me. You mentioned the 67% conversion. Is that from from lead to appointment someone is going to turn up, is that what you mean?

[00:40:08] Yeah. So I would say leads to appointment. I would say it’s about 60%. Yeah. That’s deposit included. And then from that I would say at least half will convert. So let’s just give you an example. One open day 12 patients, the Invisalign average price is three K, take the label off, let’s say average price is one K, that’s 24 K for one day organised. Now a majority of the time you double or triple that because they’re going to need other things. And then if you, if you can get them on a plan scheme like a Dem plan or a practice plan afterwards and then locked into the practice, that’s also going to boost. So I think from one day you could easily get £50,000 from an open day eventually.

[00:40:53] Yeah. Let’s go into nuances of it. Right. So how important is the offer? Do you talk about the offer from from the ad stage? Is price a key point or do you does it depend on the particular practice? And you sort of have to think about this practice going for quality, that practice going for price or what?

[00:41:13] Yeah, you have to adapt it for every practice. Now the same is pretty much everyone does the same offer. You know, everyone’s I have pre widening pre retainers. What makes you different is kind of researching the local area, what the patients want. And I learned this from my smile’s quicker, better, cheaper. That’s what they want. That’s all the patient wants for Invisalign especially. But if you want to go for kind of quality, then what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to show that quality. So your practice should have a lot of high tech equipment, should be quite luxurious. Then people buy into that. But if your practice maybe doesn’t look like that or doesn’t give that feel and you put your price as high, then it’s going to be very difficult to kind of pull off. So it’s about going with the practice environment and the local environment will set the price.

[00:41:59] What about things like copy? Is that important? Like how are their key sort of statements use? Did you know types that would let me know? What kind of things do you say?

[00:42:10] The words are very important. The words are very important because that’s the first thing they’re going to see. But what all of these are with you, I mean, all the patient wants is that they’re getting a good deal. Everyone loves a good deal, even though technically you are probably because at the end of the day, you’re probably going to give retainers, you’re probably going to give the whitening included in the package. You will probably going to do the scan for free. But if you can show the patients that actually this is what we’re doing, then they’ll also think, Oh, I’m getting a good deal here. So if you package it up, well then patients really appreciate that. If you’re just going, okay, we do Invisalign, then there’s absolutely zero incentive. And you’ve also got to add you’ve got to add a reason why in your ad you have to have a reason why. So we’re celebrating our one year anniversary or we’re celebrating the refurbishment. Then patients can get feel like they’re getting involved within that celebration that are they’re doing it for this reason. It may not happen again.

[00:43:03] Yeah. Okay. What about the actual the the the picture or video of the ad? Have you found one? Some things work better than others.

[00:43:12] Yeah. Without giving too many golden nuggets away, what I would say is having a picture of a patient with a treating dentist really helps. Having a picture of the practice and having the picture of the practice with nearby common things. So I don’t know if there’s a really statement shop next door, put that in or saying, Oh, we’re right next to X, Y and Z, that that really helps. That really gets a lot of engagement.

[00:43:40] So you don’t you definitely don’t recommend like a stock photo of something.

[00:43:45] That’s not really definitely not. Absolutely not. It never works anywhere near as well. I mean, let’s say I don’t know you’re going to go for, I don’t know, some skin treatment. Right. And when you’re looking and you know what treatment you want and you’re looking at these different ads, if you’re looking at a stock photo that gives me nothing now, I don’t know what’s going on here. I don’t I don’t trust this thing. But I’m looking at a patient that’s happy with the treating clinician. I know that I’m going to be in that position. With that treating clinician. It’s not almost bills. That element of rapport and trust before you’ve even started.

[00:44:21] It’s interesting, man, because I don’t know. I haven’t been a dentist now for ten, 12 years or something. Yeah, but I remember back then I definitely wasn’t looking for okay, for want of a better word, bargain hunters, you know.

[00:44:38] So it’s changed. Yeah, well, I didn’t.

[00:44:42] I wasn’t interested in having bargain hunters as my patient. Now, maybe. Maybe I was wrong to do that. Right. But there is I think the space there is space for for, you know, of course, no one wants to feel like they’re being done over. Right. But the space for the creative. Having something other than you’re going to get a great deal. Of course you’re right. Beautiful practices and all of that. But I remember perhaps I did one. It was like it was like it was like cheap invisalign. You were in the wrong place. Was the was in the ad. Yeah. And and that’s that’s what that’s what they were pushing that that particular practice was saying with the most expensive Invisalign in town. Yeah. And, and you know that was their angle. It’s an interesting way that the market’s turning though, and I think recession coming on as well is going to affect all this. Have you thought about this question? Recession?

[00:45:37] Yeah, I. I’ve thought about it a lot. I think there’s been an Invisalign boom ever since COVID. You know, people over Zoom, they’re looking at their teeth. And I believe that Invisalign has gone from a high value treatment or clear aligners going from a high value treatment to a or most people are shopping around for it. So I think five, six years ago it would be quite a high value. You know, only few people would get it within the local community, but now it’s become very mainstream and that’s why the price has come down as well, because, you know, simple economics, even though the demand is high, but a lot of people provide Invisalign now, so there’s a huge supply of it. That’s why I believe the price has come down in terms of what’s going to happen with the recession that’s going to that’s going to have a very soon, I believe that people will still spend money on their teeth. There will be a bit more careful where they go. I think word of mouth is going to be it’s always going to be a big trigger, but ads will work less. But that’s where dentistry will always be needed. So that’s where SEO and other things are going to be really important for practices. You know, they’re going to be Googling with emergencies and we do emergency ads, for example. So it’s about adapting to the way the time is. So if during a recession, for whatever reason, the clear line of treatment just starts to decline, something else will start to come up in its place. Everything before clearing line as it was been, is that it’s clear. Line is something else will come in its place. It’s about jumping on the trend before it becomes a trend.

[00:47:10] Yeah, I think dentistry generally does quite okay during a recession and you know, I’ve been through a few recessions, so I can tell you it’s not the end of the world. It certainly feels like the end of the world for a little bit there. But I think one thing to sort of be wary of and not only for what you’re doing, but there’s going to be a bunch of dentists who, you know, credit is a big part of their sort of, you know, I don’t know. You must have the numbers on this, right? There must be some practices where way more than half their income comes from credit. And if credit dries up, what happens next? And we went through this enlightened for a while when we were having dentists were buying Enlightened on credit. And I remember thinking, what if credit dries up? Well, how is this going to work? And at one point at one point, we actually implemented it ourselves, right? We said, okay, we’re going to have this group of people we’re not going to even offer credit to, and we’re going to have them do a part payment type thing themselves without a third party. And then it happened. It happened credit. We couldn’t get credit to buy it anymore. And thank goodness we’d put that in place, you know, that it was it’s a worry. The market, I think, you know, people talk about, oh, yeah, implants won’t be affected, composite will or it’s impossible to know for sure what’s going to be affected. Yeah, although you’re a bit too young to have lived through the 2008. Well, you know, as being in business during the 2008 recession, it is shocking when it actually happens. Right now we’re in this sort of we’re sort of summer holiday feeling. You know, everyone’s enjoying the last few last few of us. But but when it happens and it’ll be over something totally like they’ll say, oh, yeah, some, some some students in America can’t repay their student loans anymore. And that’s the whole global system collapsed.

[00:49:00] Yes, I can see that happening.

[00:49:02] You know, you wouldn’t be surprised that it doesn’t matter what they tell you. Yeah, they’ll tell you. There’s been a war. The Chinese attacked Taiwan. That’s why the whole global economy, any of these stories will be plausible, right? Because we all know it’s kind of a house of cards anyway. We’re all waiting for it to fall down.

[00:49:19] It’s going to fall. And it’s about kind of maybe putting measures in place to to help that fall not affect you as much. So I think my advice to practices and one thing that we really implemented is if you’re getting patients who are new patients, get them onto a capitation scheme. And that’s what really helped people private practices, especially during the lockdown period within COVID. So get them onto a plan scheme, get them onto a practice plan scheme. I believe that’s going to be the key over the next few months. If you’ve got a good amount of income coming from that, I think you’ll be safe and stable.

[00:49:52] So poor you didn’t really have much NHS experience at all, did you?

[00:49:57] I had about I. I did part time. Nhs and I also look on the NHS. For me, my, my biggest issue was like I was learning from Nic and Sanjay Sethi and you know, take your time with everything, make sure you follow all the steps correctly. There’s absolutely no shortcuts that can be taken from you. The NHS is that you see 30, 40 patients a day and I couldn’t give that time and that quality that I wanted to give to those patients. And that became very frustrating and very dissatisfying to me. So almost not wanting me to I didn’t want to do that type of dentistry. It wasn’t making me happy at all. I felt a bit lost when I was doing that. So for me it was a no brainer to try and do everything I could to make the switch and do the type of dentistry that I know I enjoy. I’d rather see six, seven, ten patients in one day spend a little bit more time with them, get to know them. Because in NHS, I mean it’s a wonderful system, but time is not on your.

[00:50:54] Side, but it’s not a wonderful system. I mean, let’s listen.

[00:50:58] Let’s be very politically correct.

[00:51:00] Let’s not try to sugarcoat. Here is not one. I feel I feel the same as you. Yeah, I felt the same as you. I got out of the NHS as quick as I could. I didn’t want to be an NHS dentist. I didn’t. I didn’t want to be that. I didn’t want that career at all. But but what’s your advice?

[00:51:18] Do you know what the Payman what’s interesting is that I know dentists that are fantastic at doing that, you know, they love seeing, you know, 30 patients a day and they can they can do it very well. And that’s what kind of makes them happy. So I think to any dentists, you just got to ask yourself, how do you like to work? What do you want to gain out of your career? And that will answer which side to go on for you. But I think more and more as time is going on, people are definitely heading towards more private than NHS.

[00:51:47] So what’s your advice? I mean if if I’m on the wrong side of that equation right now, if you’re a young NHS associate and I agree with you and I want to go more private, but I’m not an expert on Invisalign, I’m not an expert on Invisalign open days. It scares me when someone says they want to be. I have heard that someone say to me, Look, when someone says they want to be a private patient, I’m too scared to treat them. What’s your advice? What’s your general advice? Go on. Cause it’s gone. What else?

[00:52:20] Yeah. So the best advice I can give is you just got to take the plunge. That first private patient that you’re scared of will be very scary. I remember my first private patient like it was yesterday. It was a very scary experience. I made a denture for them. It was okay. But, you know, it’s just about you will grow into the role the more you do it. If you don’t take that plunge, then you’ll never be ready for that step. So I know some people that are, for example, 36, 37 and they still say those things where, you know, I don’t think I’m ready yet or, you know, I’m not sure whether I can take that first step. So I don’t think age is of a concern. If you feel like you’ve got a base good clinical knowledge going, that’s what I mean by go on the courses, get a mentor then and you’re afraid to take that step. It just means that sometimes you’re heading in the right direction to just take it and see what happens.

[00:53:13] Yeah. And also bear in mind that you weren’t trained to be an NHS dentist. You were trained to be a dentist. You know, that’s to me, sometimes it makes sense to go back to our training, doesn’t it? I tell you, would train to be a dentist. It happens that you’re working in this system now, and so much of it is about the soft skills in private. Did you.

[00:53:35] Communication?

[00:53:36] Did you actively go out and learn communication or were you always naturally good at it? I suppose it’s an actor type.

[00:53:43] Yeah. So I believe I was good at communication. I probably not in dental terms, so definitely one on courses for that actually latter for one Ali from the small dental academy as well was a big help. And what they make you understand is that, you know, people can be categorised into different personalities into the way the way they think as well and the way they process information is different. So if you can get on their wavelength, then you can almost build better rapport and better trust with that patient and therefore have better communication with them. Because I always say, you know, no one’s ever going to sue someone that they like so you can get the patient on board and comfortable, then you should be okay from there in terms of communication.

[00:54:27] How much does it weigh on you that a patient might sue you? Because I know the younger generation very, very anxious about this these days.

[00:54:38] It’s a great question. I think the fear of that litigation is probably the biggest worry that young or newly graduated even that I think I think overall throughout the profession, actually, it’s probably the biggest fear. Fear of litigation. But the way I think about it is if you have good intentions for that case, that patient, then it doesn’t matter what happens with the outcome. You still had a good intention about it. What I mean by that is let’s say there’s a tooth and, you know, carries very, very close to the nerve. You’ve explained to the patient that it might be a root canal, money taking out. There’s a risk of this. You’ve explained all the risks. And but what I want to do is I want to try and see if I can do this without heading into a root canal. That, to me is a good intention, because if you can do that, then you’re elongating the longevity of that, too. So and if, for example, you do that and three weeks later the patient comes back, severe pain, you know, it’s your fault, then it wouldn’t matter to me what happens from there. So if the patient decides to sue me or whatever, I know I’ve good intention that I was trying to do my best for that patient so I can hold my head up high. That’s the way I think of it, and that’s the way I try to do all my dentistry.

[00:55:51] It’s a really good way of looking at it. But have you ever had a complaint like a legal complaint?

[00:55:57] Touchwood So far I haven’t. But I also think that comes down to if someone’s not happy to deal with it straight away. I think a lot of the reason why people are unhappy is because they’ve not got what they expected to get. So what I would say in that regard is try and set expectations straight away. And worst case scenario, if that’s not the case and they’re still kicking off, they’ll want something. You know, they they want something for what’s happen. Just really understand what they want. If you leave it or you let it fester, or if you go try and go to formal, even then, I think that’s when patients get annoyed and they want to take it further. Don’t anger the patient even more. Just really listen to what they’re saying. Don’t ignore it. Don’t think I did the right thing. You know, I was all like the patients making this up in the head. You know, it might not even be your fault, but just listen to what the patient’s saying and really adhere to that. All patients want to know is that they’ve been listened to and that they’ve got some sort of good outcome from it and touchwood hopefully nothing can escalate from there, but it is. At least you tried your best.

[00:57:05] Yes. Good way of looking at me. What tends to happen is if something does happen, people take it quite personally and and you mustn’t do that that that is the error, taking it personally. And it’s difficult, too, because we’re always, like you said, your intentions are good. You’re trying your best for people. Often the people who do end up causing these problems for you, the ones you tried the hardest for, and weirdly so.

[00:57:30] It does.

[00:57:33] Questioning everything.

[00:57:35] Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:37] Tell me about stuff on this journey where you’re, you know, your staff must be watching you grow this business. Huge. So do you incentivise them today? How do they feel like they’re coming along on that journey with you? Did you manage career progression already in this short time for your staff?

[00:57:57] Yeah. So what we so we basically when I first took over we had a it was the Fiona principal, lead nurse and receptionist. Yeah. Now we have 11 staff members and everyone is on the right seat on the bus if that makes sense. So the bus flows well, drives well because everyone where utilising their major skill sets into that position. So we create a new position such as new patient coordinator, slash receptionist. So what I need for someone for that is someone that’s very good at sales, you know, knows their dental treatment inside and out. And then we have a patient care coordinator who’s very empathetic, you know, willing to offer that sort of 24/7 service. So I think putting people in their best positions allows them to feel a little bit more comfortable and allows them to grow even more. What’s good is I’m always explaining the vision, so we’re taking over a second practice, five surgery, one, which should happen at the end of this year, and we’re getting them involved in that. I’m saying, look, we’ve been through all of this development. What I want you to do, if you can, is let’s train up the next practice. You know, I want you to be involved in that.

[00:59:08] Don’t. What my philosophy was is that we’re always going to grow together and that, you know, it’s a we it’s never a this is me, this is I, it’s we’re all growing together. And I think that’s what’s really helped build this kind of good morale. We don’t have any drama. Well, very little drama. And everyone just gets on well. And also parties. Parties is key. And I said we we hit 55 Google reviews. Let’s celebrate. Let’s go for a dinner. Let’s do Christmas party. If we hit X amount of target, then we will do this. So that also incentivises them. And I also have bonuses for new patient conversion for my NPC, those little things, it depends what kind of drives that certain staff member. So if a staff member is driven by monetary value, then give them a monetary bonus body. But if a staff member is driven by, you know, other things like reaction or they want a tree or they want maybe an extra day off, sometimes I do that. If we’ve done really well, you can have an extra day. And if they appreciate that more than that. So they’ll be giving you work hard, you get the reward.

[01:00:14] All of this seems to come very naturally to you, but. You know, you seem to have a wise head on your young shoulders. Do you have a lot of business in the in the family? You know, you’ve seen examples or what has this happen?

[01:00:29] Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do. There’s a lot a lot of my family, especially my dad, you know, he’s owned a textiles company. So there’s a you know, a lot of my family are kind of within the business sector. So my dad owns a business sister, sister and brother and a lot of cousins, I think as well. In terms of business, I’d say Gin and cash really, really helped me in order to how to grow and what to build as a team. They taught me a lot, especially when it comes to financial accounting, what works, what doesn’t work. So it’s just about not being afraid to ask those people that have done it.

[01:01:03] Turkish helped you with the finance side.

[01:01:06] Yeah, definitely help me with the finance side. Call me up sometimes in the middle of the night, you know, and we’d have a chat about it. And we’re just talk through some practice accounts and watch out for this. You know, this has happened to us before. What’s up with this? It’s invaluable and you gain nothing from that. So he did that because we’re good friends now.

[01:01:25] So yeah, but both those guys are particularly cash. You know, you can if you don’t know them, you can think they are. They’re just like sort of fun party people and like, you know, like going out. But when you meet them, you realise that there’s a lot more to them than that.

[01:01:42] They have a wonderful balance.

[01:01:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s your plan for the group? I mean, for a group is to practice, but. But what would you like? What would be your sort of ideal situation five years time?

[01:01:57] Yeah, for me, I want to be able to be in a position where I think way my group is, it’s a little bit reliant on myself. So I think the veto group will only ever be two or three or three or four practices. What I’m looking for is now like JV as well. So I think joint venture partnerships is going to be the the next stage within that’s already happening actually. You’ve got models like you mentioned before, Deb’s model. So I think the JVP and other models where, you know, it can function by itself without me being there, but it has my stamp on it. I think that’ll allow me to keep the balance right without growing too much with something that’s too reliant on myself.

[01:02:40] Yeah. So, so then of the things that you do, you’re doing a bunch of clinical stuff, you’re doing a bunch of teaching, a bunch of marketing. I don’t know if you’re dancing anymore which, which, which is a bit, that’s really got your passion. Which, which bit really, you know, what really turns you on.

[01:03:01] And that’s what really turns me on. It’s a great question. I think it already does. But what really does is the Academy. So being part of the small dental academy, can you watch these dentists that come in at the start and you watch how they grow? And what’s nice is they will talk about the issues that they’re having and then they realise that actually, you know, you’re not the only person having these issues. Pretty much 90% of the dentists, they’re having some sort of similar issues. So to be able to kind of talk to them and even I learned so much from other dentists just being there as well. So I think that’s what really gets me going and it also allows me to grow a lot. So not only are they growing, but I’m also growing. So I think the clinical side is fantastic and I love seeing patients and I love being able to perform treatments that are life changing. But seeing how a dentist grows is also very, very satisfying.

[01:03:59] Something you said in passing before you said, Yeah, I met Nick Sethi at this conference and then a few months later he called me up and said, Do I want a job? Yeah. What happened in between those two?

[01:04:11] That’s what happened was I wish I was so busy. He was running a course, a composite course, and we hit it off. And I was just telling him, you know, I’m in this struggle when I was in the composite, a sensitivity graduate. Do you know what? Come down on the course and we’ll sort out because you’re an M.D. and, you know, come, come learn. So we did that and I had a great time. I learned so much, an incredible amount. And I said, here’s my number. If you have any cases that you’re not sure about, just WhatsApp me and I’m happy to help you at any point. And so, so I sent him a few cases, obviously a patient permission and it gave me some good advice. And I was also sending him my work where he would then critique it. Sometimes I thought maybe a bit unfair. I think it was very good, constructive criticism. Very, very good, constructive. I allowed me to go, but there came a point where there was a position available and luckily I was the first person that I thought of. And even though it was all the way in London and I work there, so I work in London Thursday and Friday and. In these Monday to Wednesday. I’ve been doing that for about two years now. Go down, up and down. I just thought, you know, taking the phrase, you move for the right job a bit too literally. But it was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse.

[01:05:31] So what’s your arrangements? You stay one night in London.

[01:05:34] So I stay two nights in London Wednesday and Thursday night just at a hotel nearby. And then I come back on the Friday or there’s sometimes something going on on the Friday night, Saturday within in London in terms of the academies, etc.. And I just try and help out as much as I can.

[01:05:50] That’s a busy life, right, with your own practice as well.

[01:05:54] It’s a very busy.

[01:05:55] Busy, busy life going up and down the country every single week. But, you know, you’re right. You’re right. You’re right about the opportunity to work with those guys because, you know, that’s not that’s not something that’s going to come around very often with either of those guys, whether we’re talking gin and cash or with the settees, how do you omit, you know, him from the from the practice?

[01:06:16] I know. I know. I’m a three square man. So he works. He’s he’s one of the owners at Partners of Square Mile as well so as me next and Alain and recently and and then recently joined them and Keith.

[01:06:30] All right, man. Let’s let’s let’s let’s wrap it up. You said you were a listener to the podcast, so you should know these last two questions. I’ll start with mine. Perhaps on holiday, I’ll start with mine. Fancy dinner party. Cool. Three guests. Dead or alive. You going to pick?

[01:06:52] Great question. Well, I’m a big football fan, a big Liverpool fan. So I’ve got to say Steven Gerrard is the first one. Got to say it.

[01:06:59] Not least.

[01:07:00] Second. Now, I’m not at Leeds. I’m a big Liverpool fan. Actually, I should. Sometimes I pretend to be at least fan in clinic, but now in terms of maybe this passed away, Mahatma Gandhi would be very interesting to listen to and his values. A third one, this one I’ve been thinking about a lot. I would say someone that was really, well, highly respected within dentistry and recently passed a new money. I would love to work into it because he definitely created a legacy.

[01:07:33] Yeah, certainly did. Had a lot. Had you never met him?

[01:07:40] I never met him, no. I never had the pleasure. But I heard really, really great things about him.

[01:07:45] So not a good guy. And perhaps final question. It’s a bit weird. Deathbed someone. What are you, 28 on your deathbed. Nearest and dearest. Around you. Three pieces of advice. For them, for the world.

[01:08:08] The first one would be life as a balance. So try to not prioritise even even your career or anything. Just make sure you’re really enjoying each moment. If you try and prioritise a goal in on one thing, you’ll find that you may lack it a lot later. So it always try and find a balance. You know, take that holiday, take those time off work patient. Your patients will still be there, so don’t worry about that. Secondly, I would say is just really cherish those highlight moments that you have, especially within dentistry. You know, capture that reaction or video of where, you know, you change someone’s life or capture those moments that you’re having a highlight within dentistry. And then the final one is, yeah, just work hard, play hard. So again, just don’t forget to, to enjoy a life in the process.

[01:09:04] I feel like that’s only two and a half. I think the.

[01:09:10] Last piece of advice I would give is, okay, I’ve got one. Never do something that you wouldn’t do for yourself. So if you’re looking at other dancers or you if you’re looking at patient care and you think, Oh, okay, I’ve recently gone on a course, let’s do this, let’s do this for this patient. But you don’t feel like you would have that treatment yourself. Then don’t do it because you will always morally, consciously not feel right about it.

[01:09:40] That’s a very good one. That’s a very good one. Brilliant man. Lovely to have had you on. And super impressive. Super impressive. If someone wants to get in touch with you, I guess it’s on the usual channels. Paul Miller and it’s expert media tech if they’re interested in in the marketing.

[01:10:01] Yeah, yeah, definitely. Either they can message Dr. Paul Miller, video group expert, media tech. And I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[01:10:12] Amazing, buddy. Thanks a lot for doing this.

[01:10:14] Pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[01:10:18] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:10:34] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

[01:10:48] If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

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[00:00:00] My opinion is when you get that letter from the GDC, if you want a dentist, you’ll ring a mate. If you want.

[00:00:06] Someone who knows what he’s talking about, though.

[00:00:09] Hopefully. Yeah, but how do you know? A dentist on the other end of the phone knows what they’re talking about. Because let’s be honest, it’s not going to be if you get a dentist at the other end of the phone, that will not be the person that sits with you in the case. The person that sits with you in the GDC case will be a lawyer. So what we prefer as a company, we prefer that very, very experienced and qualified lawyers take that first call because we want these cases addressed very quickly. We want them squashed very quickly if they can be. And the best way to do that is with the most experienced person you can possibly find. Now, if the dentist is speaking to a lawyer and thinks this guy or this girl doesn’t know what I’m talking about, of course they can talk to a dentist. But you know what? In five years it’s never happened. And in all my years with surgeons, it never happened. So I honestly believe that it’s of course, I got asked this last Tuesday how many dentists have on your helpline? And I said, No, they’re all lawyers. They’re all lawyers because that’s what you want. Oh, what if I need a dentist? Or if you need a dentist, you can have a dentist. But they’re not on the helpline. The lawyers are on the helpline because they’re the people that you need for a legal case or a legal a legal query. Now, even if it’s just I’ve got this patient a little bit annoyed, how do I draft a letter? You still need the lawyer to do that. Now, I’m not saying there’s not dentists perfectly capable of doing that. Of course there is. But we honestly believe that a highly experienced lawyer at the very first step is the way to go.

[00:01:36] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:54] It gives me great pleasure to welcome Garry Moynihan onto the podcast. Garry’s an insurance professional, not a dentist, but very involved now with dentistry. He’s founding partner at PDI Professional Dental Indemnity with Neil Bracewell, who is also a friend of the podcast. One of our earliest episodes was with Neil relatively recently in the last five years. Garry’s gotten involved in dentistry, and I’m going to try and unpack, obviously how his story and all of that, but also we want to try and get to the bottom of indemnity regulation litigation, you know, from from the professionals perspective. Where are we at and where are we going? Massive pleasure to have you on the show, Garry.

[00:02:43] Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

[00:02:45] Garry, tell me, how did you get to this position? Which how did you get into indemnity in the first place? Where did you grow up and how did you manage to get into this field?

[00:02:55] I think my my background is is probably easy to explain as a background in plastic surgery. I’ve been involved in plastic surgery for about 23 years now in various incarnations. I worked for a breast implant manufacturer for nine years and it was really that a chance meeting really. While I was working for the breast implant manufacturer that got me into indemnity, we realised through a chance conversation with someone that approached us that there was a gap in the market if you wish for an assured product. Having only had three options with the defence organisations for many, many, many years, so I was sort of enticed away from my position at the at the implant company to set up an indemnity company that was called premium medical protection. Now that was a very, very tough thing to do because I was in a very stable job, but I felt that the opportunity was enormous and I felt that the need was absolutely essential as well. We took counsel from some very, very high ranking plastic surgeons at the time. A lot of the input was given by the then president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, who gave us the data that we needed to go to an insurer. The insurer was happy to underwrite the scheme. It was a Lloyd’s of London insurer, which which gave everyone a lot of confidence in the product and so on.

[00:04:15] And we launched to plastic surgeons. That was very late, 2009. Now, what we couldn’t have foreseen is how that would have grown, because it grew incredibly. It wasn’t just plastic surgeons that were coming to us because they work with orthopaedic surgeons, they work with anaesthetists, and all of a sudden we found that all specialities were coming to us because we were making incredibly big savings and providing a very good service and providing a very good product. So there was clearly some discontent with the the offerings that were available to surgeons. We got a lot of abuse, particularly from one of the defence organisations who basically said this is just like St Paul’s, it will fold, it will never last and so on. Just for reference, it has lasted, PMP still around. It’s still it is the largest provider of insured indemnity to consultants in this country with several thousand consultants on its books. And it’s thriving. So know we were proud of the fact that we broke the mould. Really. We were the first company arguably ever to successfully do Mick’s speciality insured indemnity in the UK. I worked with that company for eight years, I think it was, and then I left. I missed the sort of day to day heart’s heartbeat involvement, if you wish.

[00:05:33] With surgeons, I’m used to working in theatres with surgeons and so on, and I started a consultancy business which still sort of runs in the background behind what I do. That sort of led me to a sort of chance meeting with Neil Neal, Jay Swan, who attended a meeting that I happened to be at. We got talking. Neil said everything that we’d heard seven or eight years ago with the surgeons. We’re frustrated. Our fees are go. We know what we don’t feel. We get what we pay for, we don’t feel we get the right defence and so on. So it was, it was a pathway that I’d already walked down. I decided to almost come back into the market if you wish. This time we’re dentists. Now, Neil was a perfect partner for me because I wouldn’t pretend that my contacts at the time in the dental world were anything like they were in the surgical world. So I needed a partner like Neil, who was very well connected, very well respected and understood the profession intimately. So we formed PD, delighted to say, five years later we’re here, we’re thriving. You know, our numbers are swelling and we’re proud of of being a part of the dramatic changes that everyone has seen in the dental indemnity market now.

[00:06:40] So what was in the medical field? In the surgical field, what was the catalyst that. Made it, you know, market conditions wise that an insurance product was was viable when you came into it, because I remember the Saint Paul. What did they do wrong and what did you do right? And what was what was the situation and how does that reflect in dentistry? I know there’s a lot of questions.

[00:07:04] I know. No, no, it’s fun. I think the Saint Paul, St Paul’s were along the right track. In my mind. They were potentially a little bit too to early in the game because I think where the perfect storm occurred was one of the biggest driving factors. And I hate to say this, but it is a reality. It was price, you know, plastic surgeons were paying 40, 50, £60,000. Now as a percentage of their income after tax, it was a huge amount. So some of them were even giving up private practice because it just wasn’t viable to do it. With the soaring indemnity costs and plastic surgeons were not in the highest risk category in the private sector, there were other specialities that were paying even more than them. So I think it was becoming unviable for many consultants to actually have a private practice. So I think that was one of the driving factors, if not the main one, to be honest, where I think the landscape change was, there was clearly an appetite in the London insurance market to do this and to get into it. But there wasn’t really a knowledge. There wasn’t really knowledge of how to do it and there wasn’t really an avenue to market.

[00:08:05] Insurers don’t go direct to clients. Insurers go through brokers or introducers. Now an insurer can have the desire and the ability to write a product, but if they don’t get clients to their door, it’s like having a wonderful retail outlet that you never open the door of. So I guess what we brought to them was, was, was often used into the market because I was very, very well connected in the surgical arena. So we were bringing them numbers. And with any insurance product, the more numbers you get, the more relaxed the insurer gets, the more it expands, the better the features become. And really that’s what happened. So St Paul’s I think was ahead of its time because there was when St Paul’s went under. My understanding is that there was no other insurers that would pick up all the clients that St Paul’s had. Now, if any insurer went under in the London market, now you’d have a dozen other insurers wanting to pick up the book. And that’s why I think the landscape now is very, very different.

[00:09:01] And what is it about mutuals that makes their business model so much more expensive?

[00:09:07] I think I mean someone from a mutual. May well have a different view on this than than I have but my view is that they’re picking up a lot of history. You know when when you’re with a mutual that the cases that you do with a mutual stay with the mutual forever. So there’s a feature called IBNR which is untrue incurred but not reported, which basically means there’s a whole lot of cases that are coming down the track that no one’s aware of yet, that there could be five, six, seven, eight, nine years in the making because people have, as I’m sure you know, people have a timeframe of three years to report a problem from the date of awareness. And that date of awareness is the absolutely key element to that. You could be blissfully ignorant of a problem for many years. So what we found is when a lot of surgeons started leaving the MDU, the US and the M.P.s, which is the medical arm of dental protection, they were going back to these companies as they were perfectly entitled to, to report cases of patients that they treated when they were with them. Now they were duty bound, these organisations, to pick those cases. So even though they weren’t getting any more revenue from the surgeons, they were still paying out. We also felt that the and this is just purely an opinion, I wouldn’t necessarily have any facts about this, but I know this is a it’s a very commonly shared opinion. We felt that there was a much higher propensity to pay out quickly rather than to fight, because the lawyers know when there is where the hospital is.

[00:10:43] They know that in certain cases it’s just easier and possibly cheaper to pay out and get rid of the case than it is to stand and fight it. Now, that’s fine from a possibly purely financial perspective, but what we found very early on was that one of the things that our clients wanted was defence. They didn’t want the lawyers to roll over because they felt that their their integrity, their professionalism and their abilities were being questioned. And they felt in many cases there was no case to answer. So we were encouraging the lawyers to fight and the lawyers said, look, it will potentially cost more to do so. And what was great was that the insurers stood behind it and said, We know that, but in the long run, we believe that’s the best strategy. Now, what we found, certainly in the group of plastic surgeons, was that the complaint per surgeon from the year one to year five went down by half. Now, we believe that was because we got a reputation for having a very nasty bunch of lawyers behind us, because when lawyers are putting cases as an attack position, they know that certain cases, they haven’t really got much chance of winning. So they hope there is just a simple payout. They win, the client wins. The only losers, I guess, are the insurers. But if you stand and defend those cases, they’re much less likely to pursue them because they know they’ve got less chance of winning. So we encouraged our lawyers to stand and fight, and they did. And we honestly believe that’s what led to a reduction in the number of complaints.

[00:12:15] So the call the attack lawyer, the attack lawyer is aware of who’s defending the particular medic up at that point?

[00:12:27] Exactly right. At a certain point, they will know that. And they will know them.

[00:12:31] They’ll know the reputation.

[00:12:32] Absolutely right.

[00:12:34] How interesting. What about what about the sort of is there a marketing case to be made for? We fight. We don’t settle. Are you finding. I know dentists certainly want that.

[00:12:45] Yeah, I absolutely think there is. I mean, you’ve got to you have to caveat it to some degree, though, because not every dentist wants to fight. Not every dentist is happy when a lawyer says, look, this may well go all the way to court. You may well be standing up in court, being asked a question by a barrister. Some dentists, quite understandably, would run a mile at that thought. So it’s not a case of we want the tail to wag the dog here. We want the dentists and the surgeons to have control to some degree over where the case goes. So if a dentist feels that I’ve done nothing wrong here, I’m happy to stand up in court with you by my side. Mr. Lawyer, I want this to happen. Of course, the lawyers are much more inclined to go down that road on exactly the same set of circumstances. Another dentist might say, I don’t want this hassle, just get rid of it. So the lawyers really need to undo the fall into line to a very large degree with what the dentists want them to do. Of course, if they think the dentist is barking completely up the wrong tree, they’ll advise on that as well, because it may well be that I don’t know that a personality is getting in the way of a clear vision sometimes.

[00:13:54] So we do get the client that because I’ve done nothing wrong, definitely nothing to do with me. The lawyers look at the notes and go. Not your finest hour. So there will always be that element where the lawyers may well lean a little bit heavier on the. Fantastic to just make them see that it’s probably not a case they’re going to win. But the critical thing is that it’s a two way process. It’s not an organisation running off with a case, sorting it in the background and the dentist not having a clue what’s going on. We get so many cases where we get the what’s called a letter of good standard from previous providers, and it’s actually a revelation to the dentist what’s on it. You know, we’ve had many cases where the dentist has gone. I didn’t even know that I’ve been settled. Now, I think that’s appalling. You know, that should never happen. It doesn’t happen because the dentist knows exactly what stage that legal case is at every step of the way, because it’s their right to. It’s their reputation. It’s their insurance record and so on. So, you know, that, I think is quite a significant change from the previous circumstances to where the insured market is now.

[00:15:01] With your experience in medical and in something that’s sort of emotional, emotionally charged as plastic surgery. Yeah. Do you find dental indemnity is easier than that or would you say it’s the same set of issues? No note keeping communication and all of that. Is there a nuance to dental?

[00:15:24] I think what I found, without doubt and I think this is very largely reflected in the number of cases that go to the respective governing body, is that surgeons, rightly or wrongly and frankly my view wrongly, put on a bit of a pedestal, maybe slightly more than your dentist. Now, whether that’s because they see the dentist more regular, whether that’s because clients see it as a less technical profession, I honestly don’t know. But there’s no doubt that that is the case. And I think that is also one of the reasons why dentists are far more likely to be taken to the GDC than a surgeon is to the GMC. It’s completely wrong, in my view, but those are the facts. Now, the number of times we saw a surgeon who had on his record or her record, a case with the GMC was few and far between. We see it all the time with dentists. You know, I know there’s great differences between the GDC and the GMC and the way they’re structured and the way they’re run and everything else. But I also think that there is that propensity of of a of a patient much higher to take a dentist to the GDC for those reasons. Now, dentists won’t want to hear that, but a lot of them will will probably agree with me that their profession is not necessarily seen in the same esteem as the surgical profession for for reasons that societal really nothing else, anything more.

[00:16:45] But then you’ve got the sort of the three variables there. If we’re comparing medical and dental, you’ve got the professional themselves. Yeah, you’ve got the what you just said, the way that the patients perceive that professional and then you’ve got the regulator. Should we go into the other two. What, what, what do you see as the differences between the regulation of GMC and GDC? Is there a lighter touch? Is it more sort of solutions orientated?

[00:17:12] Yeah, the GMC seems to be a much more. How can I put this sort of a rational organisation really? You know, they’re not they’re not looking for a reason to strike the doctor off. They seem to be very, very rarely. And it would have to be an extreme case that they would strike a doctor off. You know, some of the restrictions and the and the cases that we’ve seen from the GDC are completely different to the point where, you know, outside looking in, because often we arrive at these cases after they’ve finished in a way on a person’s record, we’re slightly baffled as to how the situation has developed to the position that it has. Now, I can’t put my finger on why that would be the case. I think it certainly seems to be historic. This doesn’t seem to be a recent thing, but surgeons don’t have favour with the GMC. They don’t want to be in front of it. But I think fundamentally they feel they’re going to get a fair hearing and they feel that it’s a regulatory body that is there for them as well as for the patient. And I just get the feeling that dentists feel that the GDC is a stick to beat them with. Now, I know a lot of insurers have tried to talk to the GDC and certain insurers that we’ve worked with feel that they’re making a bit of progress. But I think that’s a long haul. You know, it’s it’s it’s a tight turn around that will take years, I think, to get it to the same stage as the GMC.

[00:18:32] Yeah. Although I mean, I know since you’ve been involved, the GDC has been in a real state, but it wasn’t always like this. You know, when I qualify 25 years ago, it wasn’t the feeling you had from the GDC. Of course, as you said, you don’t want to be in front of them, but you didn’t get stories of perfectly brilliant clinicians who’d had massive issues because of something someone had found in the notes about something they’d not written or whatever. What about the professional themselves? Are surgeons different to dentists? I bet there’s some egotistical surgeons out there.

[00:19:05] Yeah, there absolutely are. There’s no question about that. And what I found interesting was I did notice quite a difference between certain types of surgery. So your gynaecologist would be a slightly different personality trait to your plastic surgeon, would be a slightly different personality trait to your orthopaedic surgeon. So we did notice distinct differences like that. Surgeons themselves say, well, plastic plastic surgeons, plastic surgeons refers to themselves as the artists and they refer to orthopaedic surgeons as the Carpenters. Now, there’s a bit of ego in that statement alone, really, isn’t there? But I can sort of see where they’re coming from, because the genre that I align most with the majority of dentistry, I think, is the plastic surgeons, simply because it’s a very heavily laden self-pay market. So it’s got it’s got that level of expectation. It’s got the fact that it’s your money that you’re paying. So in private dentistry and plastic surgery, the patient expectation is is unfortunately slightly higher than it will be in other forms of surgery and NHS dentistry. And I honestly believe that leads to more claims as well, because if the expectation is higher, the fact that it’s your money, you are more inclined to be slightly more aggressive when it comes to a complaint and potentially taking a case legally. So we see a lot of similarities and particularly in areas of dentistry like implant dentistry as well. We can see very great similarities between between implant dentistry and plastic surgery.

[00:20:32] And was there an equivalent of dental law partnership in the world? There must be some ambulance chasers in the world of plastic surgery.

[00:20:40] There was a lot. We didn’t have the dental partnership, which is probably a blessing, but there was yeah, there was plenty of lawyers that were just simply out there for for medical cases. I mean, if I was working from home, I’d, I’d have Jeremy Kyle in the background sometimes. And I did a just a little straw poll of one morning and I counted five different adverts for medical and well for medical cases by lawyers in two mornings of one week. And that really sort of brings it home to you that it’s actually very, very easy to get to a lawyer who will encourage you and what you along that pathway to get you to sue a surgeon.

[00:21:22] I mean, we naturally have a sort of a dislike for that kind of lawyer, but I think we’ve got to accept the reality that it’s a massively profitable part of law, hugely to to I’ve heard stories, you know, nine figure sums for selling these companies. Yeah. And and the reality of that is but what annoys me sometimes is Gary, you get you read stories about dental law, partnership, lobbying, government, you know, organising as one company is one law firm, organising in a way that we as a whole profession haven’t managed to do. You see on on our side as far as we’ve got the BTA, do you do you see dentists as a sort of disjointed lot who can’t organise?

[00:22:12] I think interestingly I the similarities, the differences I see with dentists is certainly certainly plastic surgeons. Many, many plastic surgeons work on their own. You know, it’s not been until certainly the last few years that they’ve ever come together and working groups or practices where there is several that do different specialities. So one thing that was refreshing, of course, was the whole dental structure where of course, pretty much all dentists work with colleagues, which is really quite rare. I certainly was quite rare in plastic surgery. So that said, you’ve you’ve also got so many dentists with so many different views, it’s quite difficult to get anything like a consensus. I mean, plastic surgeons in the UK is in the hundreds, you know, dentists in the UK is in the tens of thousands. So that in itself brings massive differences in the opinions. And to be fair, I think the spread of the circumstances in dentistry is much broader than it is in the surgical world as well. You know, and associate dentists, we know obviously dentists income because every single one declares on their applications to us, some of them are earning below average wage right the way through to the very high end dentists that are earning seven figures. So I think the spread of of circumstances in dentistry also means it’s probably much more difficult to corral opinion and corral a consensus of a direction. We find it quite difficult to work with the organisations for that exact reason because you’ve got very large numbers, you’ve sometimes got a difficult consensus to find. We’ve got a couple that we’re very close to getting a scheme together with, but it has been difficult to do that because of the breadth of opinion, which is not a bad thing, but it can be problematic when it comes to getting things done. You know, when we approach customisations, they often. Say, Well, this would take a year or two. We’re like, why, why? Why can’t we get this done?

[00:24:11] I guess also from the perspective of expert witnesses, when you’ve got so many different opinions, yeah, that must be a real complicated I mean, in in plastic surgery, the if if the opinions are fewer. Yeah. It’s just easier to figure out what’s going on.

[00:24:27] Massively, massively, massively. And there are cases in plastic surgery where there are surgeons where you wouldn’t find an expert witness to go against him. Oh, it’s very difficult to. Which makes it so much easier to defend the case if if the expert witness, inverted commas and has done a quarter of the case is that the person who’s been sued has. So. Yeah, it does make it I think slightly easier. Alex It’s a much narrower profession. Everyone knows everybody else in plastic surgery. And of course you’ll always find someone to say to be on the other side of the witness stand. But in dentistry, it’s so much easier to do that.

[00:25:05] Let’s say, okay, let’s, let’s move on. Let’s say I’m with one of the big mutuals and I’ve had enough. Let’s let’s say I haven’t even had a bad experience. I’ve just had enough of paying too much.

[00:25:17] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:19] Now there’s a, there’s a set of insurance based companies out there that I could turn to. What would you say is PDI value add? I mean, obviously, generally in positioning your business, you can’t be everything to everyone. So what’s what’s the kind of dentist you’re looking for, number one? And number two, how easy is the process of moving from one of the mutuals?

[00:25:43] Okay. That that’s a really good question, because if I was in a position where I was with a mutual and let’s face it, then pretty much all dentists start with a mutual and they sort of grow up through their training. And so they’re always coming to from a position of, in some cases, real comfort in a mutual. Now we have cases where we actually discourage dentists from moving because we feel if they don’t understand, one, what they have to what we can provide. We don’t want a dentist to move. We don’t want anyone to move purely because it’s cheaper, because if they don’t understand what they’re getting and they don’t understand the implications, then that’s not a good move. You know, quite frequently we get people coming in two days before their renewal saying, Save me morning, I’ll just up the price I want to move. Now, we’d rather that person moved in a year’s time and was fully, fully clear of what we do. The moved just to save a couple of grand or whatever it might be. So I think the key thing is we have we have a number of products and we fit most, if not all. You know, we have a product for what we call distressed dentists, distressed emotionally and from an insurance perspective as well. These are dentists that have got a record that is not to their liking or potentially not to the liking of the mutuals as well. And quite often they’re just given a letter that says, we’re not going to renew you this year. Thanks very much. We get quite a large number of those because these dentists are basically cast out of the mutuals and don’t know where to go. So we have a product that works for them.

[00:27:12] That’s a higher risk dentist from an insurance perspective.

[00:27:15] It is. And I think where I don’t know what the insurance companies do, but what we do is we we sort of ring fence those dentists because one of the great arguments about mutuality is you’ve got everybody in the one pot. So in other words, if you’ve got 100 and this this is the best example I can possibly give you is from our first 20 applications. When we were back with the surgeons, we had our first 20 applications with some plastic surgeons. That was in the first 18. It was probably about 2025 claims between them, the first 18 and the last two, there were 39 cases between the last two. Now it makes no sense to me to put the last two in the same pot as the first 18, because that completely changes the dynamic of the whole pot. So what we do as insurance companies, I guess, is we go to certain insurers and say, right, we are going to be bringing you risks that are not necessarily the best risks, but we want you to specialise in them. We want you to give them robust defence. We want you to work with them and improve that record because there’s people that are not as not as capable in every profession. But we honestly believe that all dentists reach a certain level of qualification and ability. Some of them just need help, whether it be note taking, whether it be consent, whatever it may be. We don’t feel for a minute that a bad record will always and should remain about director. It can be improved. It may well be that we don’t get it completely clean, but we can certainly improve it. Now, our goal really is any any dentists that come to us and go into the distress scheme. We want them in the main scheme and we want to move them across on the basis that we’ve improved their record to the point where their record is can be compared alongside anybody else. So that’s sort of one way I think, which we.

[00:29:06] When you say you put them in a different pot, we you’re talking purely talking from the cost of insurance perspective. Or do you handle them differently as well?

[00:29:17] I think you know, I think we do handle differently because I think what is really what is really clear is a lot of these dentists don’t really know how they’ve got into that position yet. Of course, they know there’s been claims made against them, but I think they don’t understand that it’s either a higher than average or they don’t understand what they’re doing wrong. Because if you do something wrong in in innocence and you keep doing it, it takes someone to sort of point it out as to where you can improve and what other direction you can take. And it may well be, and it often is that the lawyers will come in and say, look, we’ve seen your consent process. It’s got holes in it. Now, unless you’re told that, you probably don’t know. So you’re always going to get claims on that basis. So the lawyers will work with these dentists. So we tend to find that we spend a lot more time with these dentists because they have got a circumstance and a situation that is directly affecting not just their professional circumstances, but their personal circumstances as well. It’s very stressful to get a letter from a defence organisation saying either you give us 30 grand or we’re going to let you go. You know, either it’s crying down the phone to me that I’ve never met and you can feel the pain at the other end of the phone line. So we do tend to find it. We spend a lot more time with those dentists because they need it. It’s as simple as that. You know, it really is a case of if a dentist comes to us completely clear and understands the process, yeah, we will potentially have a lot less contact with them because they don’t need it. But other dentists that really do need our help and our expertise don’t get it.

[00:30:48] As far as claims. Have you got stats on different types of claims, different types of patients, different types of dentists?

[00:30:56] The lawyers will have we don’t have them off top of our head, but we can we can certainly pull them from the lawyers. Yeah.

[00:31:01] What does one of the one treatment modality must stand out as high risk implants, surely.

[00:31:08] Yeah. Yeah, it is. Anything period is quite high as well.

[00:31:14] Neglected period.

[00:31:15] Yes. Yes. You know, I personally feel I personally feel that the personality of the dentist is one of the most important factors as well and how you actually handle a complaint or a claim because a very, very good dentist who is technically brilliant may not have the personality to have his, his or her integrity and abilities questioned. And if they don’t handle that initial complaint well, it could easily lead to potentially a very, very high claim. We’ve seen it several times in plastics where the patient has just been pushed back, push back, push back till the point where they make a claim and then then the horse has bolted and the damage is done. So I honestly feel that the the the approach to claims is absolutely critical in this whole area. And that’s that’s a big area of education for us as well.

[00:32:07] So I guess that would fall under the umbrella of sort of risk management in dental practice.

[00:32:12] Very much.

[00:32:13] So. Go on outline key points there. Obviously handle complaints empathetically, right.

[00:32:19] Yeah. And pathetically quickly, effectively, consistently. I think they’re the absolutely key areas. Speed is probably as much as good as anything because when a patient makes a complaint at that point in time, that is the most important thing on that patient’s mind, potentially, potentially in their life, if it’s a really serious one. And the speed in which the complaint is at least acknowledged, I think is absolutely critical. I don’t think there’s anything wrong at all in saying, well, looking into your complaint, we’ll get back to you very quickly. You know, and it should be a process, a complaint process under siege, you see, anyway, that that you follow internally as to how a complaint is handled, managed and run. So I think it’s absolutely essential that the response is given to a patient as soon as you possibly can just to acknowledge it. Bit of a holding pattern if you wish. It is the attitude that I think is the defining factor in where these cases go. It really can be what you respond and the manner in which you respond. More importantly, that determines what the next step will be. I think there are some patients that are just hell bent on suing you. They’re almost unavoidable. But you’ve still got to show that you’ve handled that complaint properly because that will heavily weigh in your favour if it does go to a legal case, you know, because even a top lawyers will look at their own clients and sometimes think there’s any favours there and they’re much less likely to recommend that the case is progressed.

[00:33:44] What about NHS versus private patients? Is one more likely to take a claim, take on a claim than the other?

[00:33:53] We have seen some data a few years ago about the about geographical location, which which we found very interesting as well. There are certain areas in the country where there is just simply a higher propensity for a patient to make. And and interestingly it was very, very much NHS patients as well.

[00:34:10] So where’s that.

[00:34:12] North west. Liverpool was very high. Really? Yeah. Liverpool came up very high in that as a mancunian. That’s not an anti Scouse comment because Manchester is very high.

[00:34:22] It was very high as well. Well, the difference between those two towns.

[00:34:28] It’s just an East Lancs road between us and I live right in the middle, so I am on the fence. Yeah. Yeah, it was. There’s a lot of detail in claims data and we are we’ve we’ve had a recent discussion with the lawyers about can we have more data? Because in a way I see I see indemnity very similar to dentistry. It’s very much about prevention rather than cure. Dentists don’t want patients presenting with problems. We don’t want dentists presenting tools with problems because at that point, you know, it’s stressful. The lawyers are involved, it costs money, etc., etc. We would much rather we did get a single call from our clients all year and in the nicest possible way. I mean, inevitably that’s going to happen, but it’s very, very much a situation that we can work on the prevention element rather than just handle the problem well when it pops up.

[00:35:20] So on the dreaded day that a letter comes in from the GDC.

[00:35:25] Yeah.

[00:35:26] Dentist contacts you guys?

[00:35:28] Yep.

[00:35:29] Who do you speak to? I wonder one of your clinical advisor types, right?

[00:35:32] A lawyer. I was a lawyer.

[00:35:34] Not a dentist. Yeah.

[00:35:36] Now, I’ve got this debate many, many times now. This is my opinion. My opinion is when you when you get that letter from the GDC. If you want a dentist, you’ll ring a mate. If you want.

[00:35:49] Someone who knows what he’s talking about, though.

[00:35:51] Hopefully. Yeah, but how do you know? Dentist on the other end of the phone knows what they’re talking about. Because let’s be honest, it’s not going to be if you get a dentist at the other end of the phone, that will not be the person that sits with you in the case. The person that sits with you in the GDC case will be a lawyer. So what we prefer as a company, we prefer that very, very experienced and qualified lawyers take that first call because we want these cases addressed very quickly. We want them squashed very quickly if they can be. And the best way to do that is with the most experienced person you can possibly find. Now, if the dentist is speaking to a lawyer and thinks this guy or this girl doesn’t know what I’m talking about, of course they can talk to a dentist. But you know what? In five years it’s never happened. And in all my years with surgeons, it never happened. So I honestly believe that. Yes, of course. I got asked this last Tuesday how many dentists have on your helpline? And I said, no, they’re all lawyers. They’re all lawyers because that’s what you want. Oh, what if I need a dentist? Or if you need a dentist, you can have a dentist. But they’re not on the helpline. The lawyers are on the helpline because they’re the people that you need for a legal case of a legal a legal query.

[00:36:59] Now, even if it’s just I’ve got this patient a little bit annoyed, how do I draft a letter? You still need the lawyer to do that. Now, I’m not saying there’s not a dentist perfectly capable of doing that. Of course there is. But we honestly believe that a highly experienced lawyer at the very first step is the way to go. One thing I should mention, the choice of lawyers is very, very personal. Neil spent weeks chatting to the lawyers to make sure that he was happy with them, how they did things, what they did. And then by a really happy for us development the law firm to be two law firms I know really well I know Clyde and Co really well they were our lawyers of choice on the surgical scheme. And there’s a company called BLM Law who were our preferred lawyers on the dental scheme. They’ve just merged. So if I was going to pick two law firms to merge, it will be those two. So we’re delighted with that merger because it’s formed. I think I’m right in saying the largest medical and dental malpractice team in the country, and they’re the lawyers behind us. So we’re absolutely made up about that.

[00:37:59] And look, I expect they’re so used to getting that call that this question might seem obvious to you, but to me, it doesn’t seem the answer doesn’t seem that obvious. People call up in all different states, don’t they?

[00:38:12] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:38:13] Yeah. I mean, it’s very, very I’ve heard that the number of times I’ve heard suicidal ideation from dentists going through this process is more than ever I’ve ever heard it from anyone else. Are they trained to handle that side of things? The sort of do they sometimes refer the dentists to a counsellor or.

[00:38:31] Yes, very much they do. They watch. I mean, the welfare of of the dentists is absolutely critical. I mean, yes, of course, the lawyers are they’re lawyers. Lawyers can handle a person who’s distressed. But there is a certain point where it is beyond their trade and it’s beyond what they should be doing, and they absolutely know that. So of course, they would bring in counsellors or the professionals as well if they felt that there was any possibility that there was that was potentially going to be harm to the dentist, whether it be whether it be mental or physical. So, of course, they would they would contact other medical professionals as well or peers. You know, we’ve got people that we can use within the company, Neil being one of them. Neil’s very, very experienced dentist. If people want to chat with Neil purely as as a dental professional, he’s always there for that. And we have other dentists that we can call on for that as well. But yes, the lawyers are there prima facie to to give the legal advice. They’re not counsellors. They do know how to handle and calm people down, because, as you rightly say, well, as I said to you about 10 minutes ago, I have people ringing me in tears. So the lawyers will get that as well, because I’ve never been sued such what I can imagine, it’s horrendous. I can imagine it’s even worse when it’s someone that you know, someone that you’ve treated possibly over many years and someone that is alleging things against you that you might know 100% not to be true. So the mental side of all dental cases really shouldn’t be underestimated.

[00:39:57] And the stakes the stakes are high. That’s the thing, right? Because massively high. Most look, I used to be a dentist and I stopped being a dentist ten, ten years ago, and not because of any sort of legal claim or anything, but because of the the company and work and everything. But I remember even then, even then, stopping practising dentistry seemed like such a massive step because you’re so super specialised so early that you think there’s nothing else you can do. Now, if you’re a proper dentist, that you have a practice, you have kids in school, school fees and the like, the stakes suddenly are I might not be able to pay my.

[00:40:33] Feels right. Absolutely huge.

[00:40:35] On top of all the things that you said about the, you know, the patient knowing that you’ve done the best for the patient and so forth. And, you know, we’re going to we’re going to try and delve more into this on the podcast and try and talk about more cases. Hopefully you can help us with with some of that later on, Gary.

[00:40:52] Yeah, I think so. To jump in, I think one thing that people really do need to hear is that they’re not alone. You know, they’re not it’s not the first time it’s happened. I can pretty much guarantee every single case we ever see has got precedent, circumstances, you know, of the dentist of the case, whatever it may be. So and there are people to help them. You know, it’s called a helpline for a reason, that it’s there to assist you. It’s there to give you the best support that they possibly can or to pass you on to other people if they if if the need arises. But it must be very, very distressing. We know it’s distressing. You know, I wouldn’t mind me saying this. One of the reasons that Neil was so aggrieved with the defence organisation that he left was the one he’s ever had. It stressed him out for two years. It was completely exonerated. Nothing happened. But he felt that the defence he got was well below the standard that you would have expected and it personally affected him for a long time. So we have a very, very real example within our own companies as to how it can affect somebody.

[00:41:55] Gary, in the industry, is it true that you’ve got a record of all the calls the dentist has ever made to indemnity wherever it went?

[00:42:07] Yes. Yeah, yeah. We have to look those. That’s right. Yeah.

[00:42:10] No, but but to previous indemnity companies.

[00:42:13] Oh, yes, that’s correct. So when we ask for what’s called a letter of good standing, that letter of good standing tells us is is all the activity from all the previous providers. Now, sometimes they come with limited information, sometimes they come with quite a lot of information. I think the key thing is that I know dentists feel that that counts against them and we would very much turn that around. If you don’t win your indemnity company when you’re facing a problem, there’s a very real possibility that you’ll handle it wrong. There’s a very real possibility you’ll potentially prejudice the case. But when it does reach the insurer of or the or the indemnity company, it costs them more money because of your innocent but erroneous actions in trying to deal with it. So we would encourage people to pick up the help line because if they don’t, it could actually be much more damaging to them personally to see the costs and certainly that their insurance record. I mean, you know, we expect claims it’s as simple as that. That’s the environment that dentists are operating within in this day and age. So we expect pretty much every dentist will ring that help line at some point. That’s just the law of averages.

[00:43:25] That’s just what happens. So, no, we don’t punish them. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say if you make claim after claim after claim, it won’t affect your premium, because of course it will. Just like driving your car into a wall will affect your premium in car insurance. But equally, the communication is absolutely key. You know, we worry if we don’t get a call from a dentist for, say, five years because no one will tell me that that dentist has never had a patient that has either threatened a complaint or brought a complaint, because I’m afraid that’s just the environment that we’re in. But it’s not used as a stick to beat that with not by yours anyway. I can’t comment for the companies and I know the perception, but it’s not used as a stick to beat, to beat them with. And I think that’s really down to the quality and experience of insurance underwriting that we use because these underwriters know how to interpret these these claims records. They don’t just hold the numbers and say, right, you know, it’s a simple algorithm. Therefore there’s your price. There is an element, a large element of of good feeling and then human experience that goes into underwriting.

[00:44:28] Interesting. So then you’ve someone the previous example like if someone’s leaving a mutual comes to you, you said if they’re high risk or distressed, you put them put them into one pot. How many pots are there? Is it just those two pots or. Yes, depending on my mentorship, the courses I’ve been on. Do you ask those questions as well?

[00:44:47] Yeah, we do. I mean I mean, potentially there’s there’s as many pots as we want in a way, because we’ve got access to the whole London market. So arguably we could go to as many shows as we want. That doesn’t make sense because there are different products. So we tend to use access underwriting that we use to our brokers on Metro because access only pro of access exclusively, it’s a very, very good scheme. We know the team there, we know the team. Ahmed Pro, we’ve chosen to move to our metro in the last six months because of their relationship with access. The more you work with underwriters, the more you get from them what you want. In other words, it may just be a case that you think they just need to take a little bit more of a punt on. You know, you’ve got that rapport with them to do so. So your vanilla dentist, if you want to call it that, which is probably I’d say 85% of the market will come to us. We’ll put them into access underwriting. They’ll give them two options. Claims made, claims occurred. We work with the dentists for them to understand the differences and what’s best for them. And it’s not it’s a million miles and pressure sell and certainly for us insurance it’s a case of it’s educational rather than pressure selling.

[00:45:53] There are other schemes though for the specialists and without mentioning the name of the organisation, we’re working very closely with one of the implant associations because we do feel that there is distinct differences in in what they do and how and how the scheme should work. I mean one of the elements I give you is damage to reputation. You know, implant dentists feel, I think that their reputation is they need to safeguard it maybe more than an associate dentist. What? Because associate dentist, I guess if you want, it’s probably a poor choice of phrase, but it can hide within the practice. An implant dentist can’t. They’re almost like an island that goes from practice to practice. And, you know, the press release falls firmly on them individually. So. So for implant dentists, for example, we may well or we will have very soon a completely separate scheme that fits them and their circumstances particularly well. So I don’t subscribe to this school of thought that basically says, you know, you can all go to one insurer. I really don’t. I never have it. I never will. I’ve worked with too many insurers to know that one size does not fit all. You cannot cram 40,000 dentists into one product. It just doesn’t make sense to me. And I think we are unique in that.

[00:47:08] I think we are unique and that we don’t just try and hurt thousands of dentists in one direction. This is why I mean, you spoke about this many, many times. I don’t think we’ll ever of 20,000 clients. We don’t want 20,000 clients. We want a good number of clients. It gives us clout with the insurers that know us, that know me personally, that know Neil personally, that pick up the phone. It was quite often before they pick up the phone to the lawyer. I think we get more calls directly to me, Neil, than the lawyers do now. We don’t ever try and give legal advice, but we’ll certainly say, don’t worry, we’ll sort it, we’ll get the lawyers to call you and so on. So I think dentists feel with PD, I would argue more than any other organisation that it’s personal. They’re not just a number and they don’t just send us a cheque every year. The cheque got a hold of mine. They don’t just send us a bank transfer every year and that’s that’s their only contact with us. You know, they can contact us any time. Neil prides himself on this. Neil prides himself on the face to face contact that he can get with clients. And when we’re proud of that.

[00:48:07] Yeah, Neil certainly is very good at that. It’s always got a way of breaking down complex things into simple bite size. He’s very.

[00:48:15] Methodical. He does it very methodical.

[00:48:18] Very methodical. I’m going to ask you something a little bit, sort of maybe unfair now, but I wanted to make the case for mutuals.

[00:48:30] Then I think.

[00:48:32] You know, they can’t all be bad.

[00:48:35] You know, I don’t think they are. But, you know, I think they get. There is a lot of scaremongering that goes on with with mutuals. And I don’t subscribe to, you know, this whole. They’re going to go bust and they’re not going to be there to pick up the past. I don’t think they are going to go bust. If someone ask me how they’re going to go bust and it’s a yes or no answer, I would say no they’re not. I know one organisation in particular is peddling that. You’ve got to be with officers when the mutuals go bust, nobody’s going to be there to pick up the pieces. I just can’t see that happening. The government, I just can’t see the government allowing so many medics. I’m not talking dentists with a mutual we’re talking dentists, GP’s surgeons, physios. You know, the MP, for example, look out for 200,000 people on their books in many countries. So it’s been oversimplified, the, the financial structure of the mutuals and yes, of course they’re under pressure. Of course they are, because it stands to reason if more people leave than arrive, prices are going to go up. So at some point, that becomes a critical that does become a critical point where they’re under pressure. And one of them in particular, I think everyone’s seen their public accounts. They’re not in a stronger position as they were ten years ago. That’s quick. That’s quite clearly the case. But I don’t think that dentists and doctors should necessarily run for the hills and think that any of the mutuals is going to go under in the short term.

[00:49:56] I just don’t think that’s going to happen. And the other thing that is pedalled is this it’s almost random whether they protect you on this element of discretion. Now, no one is going to argue successfully. I don’t think that discretion is better than insured certainty, but it is not a lottery. When you pick up the phone to a mutual that they’re going to help, they’re going to assist you. You don’t cross your fingers and go, am I going to be the one that don’t help? That’s just not the case. And again, some of our competitors are putting it across like that. You have no idea whether they’re going to help you. Of course you have an idea they’re going to help you. They will help you on that. There is a reason for them not to know. In my experience, the reasons that they don’t help people is sometimes when there’s a dispute, it may be it may be a premium dispute or a fee dispute. They would they would argue it may well be that they feel that you haven’t acted as you should by reporting it in the right way. And there could be activity, just a Patterson case. The MDU pulled out with that in the middle. But I think to be fair to the MDU, they were probably citing criminal activity there.

[00:51:04] So you know, it’s not as black and white as well. It’s not as great as discretion can be, can be used and you don’t know when it’s going to be used. Yes, they can use it. Yes, they have used it, but I don’t think it’s used anywhere near as much as he’s being portrayed. I still think and the government thinks that there is a much stronger case for a regulated organisations. You know, that was the recommendation that the Government made just before COVID happened that they were much more in favour of a regulated mutual body. Now regulated in this country means it falls under the Financial Conduct Authority. So in other words, it’s in my view, it’s likely at some point that the mutuals will go to an insurance background. Now, that will be interesting because immediately they’ll be they’ll have to levy IPT insurance premium tax. So that’s 12%. They’re going to go on your fee straight away. The other thing is you’ve got to find an insurer to pick it up. So that will be an interesting step if it happens. I believe it will. I think the government will pick it up and run with it again at some point. I think without COVID, it would already be much closer to that position than it than it has been than it is right now. But it will be a very interesting change of events. When that happens.

[00:52:17] Would their cost not go down and become more sort of direct competitors to you?

[00:52:22] I don’t believe they will, no, because I think I think this whole model of putting everyone in the same pot is potentially a problem because. In the pot with dentists. And this this is the. This is this was our age argument when we started premium medical protection. We could choose who we took as clients. We could we could say to someone who had the worst record we’ve ever seen, you just don’t fit our model. Now with a mutual everyone was in there. We have seen some absolutely horrendous insurance records where individuals alone will rack up millions in terms of payments. Now, no one will convince me that those cases do not have a direct impact on the on the fees of other cases, because, of course, they do. And it is it is a fact that a relatively small number of people rack up a very high number of claims. Now, if your model is to put everyone together, you’re naturally going to be under a lot more pressure at the median line than a structure like ours, where we do take cases that are distressed, but we move them separate to the larger body of medical professionals.

[00:53:30] I think it’s a credit to you, buddy, because in in an environment where I mean, it’s a fear based area right now for dentists, you’re choosing not to use fear as your you know, the reason why people come to you. And and it must take discipline to do that because because it’s about fear. And it is.

[00:53:50] It is about fear. Well, thank you. You know, it’s it’s probably I would say our growth has probably not been as as big as one or two other companies because of that.

[00:54:01] Because of it.

[00:54:02] But I don’t care. Neil doesn’t care. You know, we want to do the right thing. We want to do the right thing for for dentists. And we don’t think scaring the pants off them into moving is the right thing. We don’t think moving for price is the right thing. You know, the acid test and we’re under no illusions what we’re doing here. We’re selling the ability to pick up the phone, get help, but help as and when you need it. Nothing else. We’re not selling anything other than that. That’s what that’s what dentists want. Now, we believe that and this is borne out by our numbers. When people move to PD, they don’t move anywhere else. Now, that is the best compliment that we can have. Our retention rate is almost perfect. So people join us as they understand what we do and they don’t leave because we don’t let them down. Now, what we don’t want is people to move on mask as it’s cheap or because they’ve been blind panic and then suddenly realise, oh Christ, this is almost as bad. But the leader in me last week who for obvious reasons will remain nameless, who move to one of our competitors.

[00:55:03] And she rang and said, I’ve been with this other company for two years. They’ve utterly let me down. I didn’t know what I was going to. I was in a panic because I got a problem with a with a mutual and I don’t know what to do now. And we spent absolutely ages going through her case, making sure that she absolutely understood what we were about and what she wanted. And we said to it at one point, we said, look, if we don’t fit what you want, don’t come because we don’t want clients to come and go. We don’t want a revolving door for clients. We want people to come. We do what we say we’re going to do. We support them. Prices will go up to some degree, but they’re never going to go on a curve like that. If we get it right and people are happy, it should be a piece of paper that you’re sticking your jaw. You use it when you need it, you get the defence you want. It keeps you focussed back where you want to be and that’s in your dental practice. That’s how it should be.

[00:55:54] All right then. You’ve been around long enough to see recessions. Does that affect your industry or do you expect more claims during a recession? Yeah.

[00:56:07] Yeah. I mean, people get more. Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. You know, economic factors, they do influence people. You know, they it pains me to say so, but I’ve got a friend who’s pretty much said that exactly to me. You know, he actually said to me the other day, he said, I probably wouldn’t normally be looking at this, but I’m a little bit desperate at the moment, so I’m going to make a claim. And I just shook my shoulder and said, look, you you’ve got a right to make a claim. We would never, ever, ever diminish the right for a patient to make a claim if something’s gone wrong or it was just a bad day, whatever it may be, we would never, ever, ever seek to diminish the right for a patient to seek compensation. We don’t like the use of this process as a means of income. That is what it shouldn’t be, and that’s when it really does come down to the robustness of the legal defence and the balls, if you pardon the expression of the legal defence, to actually stand their ground and push these cases back. So unfortunately, it’s very, very easy to bring a case. Very easy. You make one phone call to a lawyers, they handle it. If you’ve got a sniff of a chance of winning. Sometimes they’ll just take a punt. And there we go again. There’s another legal case that we’re fighting. But I do think that the economic climate makes a direct impact on the number of claims. Yes, I do.

[00:57:27] It’s a shame.

[00:57:29] It is a shame.

[00:57:31] We’ve had it good for a while. Gary, going forward, how do you see the industry developing? So you said about you think the mutuals might get an element of insurance. Within them. What are your plans going forward?

[00:57:46] Well, our plans is in many ways, many of us have the feeling that we’re not going to necessarily worry about what everybody else is doing. We’re worrying about what we do. You know, we’re constantly trying to evolve the product. We’re constantly trying to improve the product. One of the reasons we moved to Metro is we felt that there was a real chance that we could improve the product because of their association with access underwriting. So that’s one of the main reasons for moving there. So we’ve very much focus on ourselves. We like the fact that there’s competition because it pretty much endorses what we do as as insurers. I mean, one of the biggest challenges we faced right at the very start when we formed premium medical protection, was we were the only one. So people were scared to come to us because because this whole pulse thing was being thrown around by the media in particular, and people were scared to move. So there was very much a you move first and I’ll see how it is in a year. So we found that by year three when the fallacy that they won’t last a year was completely obliterated, it went through the roof in year three because people were then looking at the savings that we were making and the defence that we were giving and the support we were giving.

[00:58:56] And they were saying, You know what? Maybe it’s time for other options. So we like the fact that there is a good number of healthy competitors out there in the market. We don’t like the fact that there is a huge amount of it’s lack of education, mis education or or selling. I don’t know which one is it? Maybe a combination of all three, because we see dentists moving for reasons that causes a little bit of concern. That’s how it is. It’s a big market, competitive market. You always get that. But we’ll very much focus on what we’re doing. We’re constantly trying to improve the product. We’re constantly trying to stabilise pricing and keep them as as flat as we possibly can. And we’ll listen to our clients and it’s really listening to our clients that we we constantly harassing the brokers and the insurers to do this, do that, do that, and that’s on the back of the feedback that we get directly from our clients.

[00:59:48] So on that education point, yeah, it’s definitely in your interest to educate your customers, your dentist. Do you have like a formalised way of doing that or is it more to do with case by case?

[01:00:03] It’s not formalised, it probably should be more formalised. And one of the things that we want to do is, is, is, is, is podcast with lawyers is face to face meetings, hallelujah again with the lawyers where sometimes they go through like a mock case. They’re difficult to do because you’ve got to try and get 20 or 30 people in one place, which is never easy. But with the advent of Zoom and and forums like this, it makes it a little bit easier for us to get these sort of things organised. So unfortunately with the big merger that client and BLM were going through, these sort of things got a little bit of a back burner, but they’re right there at the forefront now. So, yes, we very much want to do that. Your second point was on an individual basis, that’s where the real work does happen, to be fair, and that’s where the communication directly between the lawyer and the client and sometimes referrals as well really makes a difference. The reason we get involved is there is this element of, as we touched on before, about, I don’t think I should report it or count against me. You know, this is where the insurers and ourselves with the brokers can step in and say, no, that’s not the case.

[01:01:10] That’s not a question for the lawyers. That’s a question for the insurers. You know, if you don’t report a case, it’s more likely to be prejudicial. And if you do, we’re constantly stressing that. We’re constantly stressing it because there is this fear factor. You know, I saw a claims history not long ago and there was about 12, 12, what we call circumstances on it, spread over about seven years. That was a perfectly, perfectly reasonable and normal claims history. There was two cases, I think, that paid out. One was about 600 in legal fees, was almost certainly just a couple of letters going backwards and forwards and another one that paid out with a couple of grand. That is an absolutely normal, 100% acceptable, unexpected, you know, case history from a dentist. It really is. And the dentist rang me in a bit of a panic that his claims history would count against him. And when I got it, I was like, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. That is fact. It’s probably below the law of averages in terms of the actual activity that we saw that actually led to a complaint, a legal a legal case, rather.

[01:02:15] What percentage of dentists do you refuse to insure?

[01:02:20] Eye. That’s incredibly small. In fact. I can’t actually remember, to be honest. I can’t honestly remember one that we’ve not at least got a prize for now. Obviously, sometimes the price is not what they want.

[01:02:35] What was the highest price you’ve heard? God. God, let God go on me.

[01:02:41] It’s over. Six figures looking for it that way. And I don’t mean £9,624, 84 PPI. I mean over on the ground.

[01:02:54] Well.

[01:02:55] I mean, the surgical in the surgical world, I think the largest one we ever saw and we did place it was about 238 ground 240 ground. It was something.

[01:03:05] Like that for insurance.

[01:03:07] Insurance? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:03:10] What about the largest claim that the payout. The largest payout.

[01:03:14] Of just the dentist. It’s not high. You know, we very, very, very rarely see it go above 100 grand. Very rarely. We’ve had thousands of people apply to us. And I can’t remember going above 200. Hmm. I can’t remember. That’s not to say there aren’t cases out there, because, of course there are. But we haven’t seen them above 200. I can’t remember one being above 200. There’s a lot on ten grand in dentistry. It’s much more frequent than it is sizeable. In the surgical world. It tends to be the other way around. You know, orthopaedics might not get a claim for five, six years and then it’ll be 50,000. So it’s the surgical market is very, very different to them. And the dental market, you tend to not know what’s coming until it hits you. Whereas dentistry, you probably do know what’s coming and it’s a little bit more pain free. Very different dynamics, though.

[01:04:08] Gary. You know, you’ve got we’ve got this I mean, I don’t know if you see it this way, but me and a lot of dentists see this way, that regulation and litigation is out of control and it’s definitely not correct. Yeah. And I know you’re in the industry, so you’re navigating those those seas, right? But if you were the king of the world and you could change one or two things. What would be one or two things you would change to make this whole process, let’s face it, benefit patients as well as dentist. Patients aren’t getting the best right now because we’re all being so hyper defensive.

[01:04:44] No, no, you’re absolutely right. I mean, I think there is no doubt there is a large amount of what we would call defensive dentistry, but in practice, it stifles innovation. It stifles the progression of certain treatments because dentists don’t want to be the one that takes the leap and does something new or slightly outside the boundary, because it may well be that the food on the back of it and they don’t have a leg to stand on. And that’s that’s bad. That’s bad. Nobody wants that to happen. What would I do? I would make it I would give the ability to the lawyers to sue the other side for legal fees, for legal costs. That’s what I’d do, because that would make a lot of lawyers people.

[01:05:23] Wouldn’t that be a worry, though? Wouldn’t that be a worry, though? Because then the patient wouldn’t wouldn’t, you know, a patient who feels like they’ve been wronged?

[01:05:31] It’s not yeah. It’s not the patient. I wouldn’t it wouldn’t be the patient getting getting the getting the getting the cost. It would be the lawyers. Because that would make the lawyers. That would make the lawyers think about taking the case on. In other words, they’ll take well, that’s as I said before, I’m not advocating for a minute that a patient shouldn’t have a right of recourse. Of course they should. But equally, I we are appalled by some of these absolute fishing trips that we see where there is clearly not in there. And the lawyers are just simply trying to build a case to get some money. It’s as simple as that. And there are a number of those, obviously.

[01:06:02] That’s very interesting, isn’t it? Because that should be the counterbalance.

[01:06:06] Exactly. It just needs to sharpen the focus.

[01:06:08] The counterbalance to no win, no fee. If you’re going to involve yourself with no win, no fee lawyering, you should have that risk as well. On top of the notion.

[01:06:20] That there is there’s no risk. There is no risk. You know, what they’ll do is if they see that, if quite often the process is, they’ll they’ll put they’ll put a letter saying, we want to see the notes. The notes come back. It’s very easy to find something in the notes where you can say, oh, that’s not quite right. It’s not quite done. It’s also very easy for a patient to say, I didn’t I didn’t understand. It’s very easy to say that. So the onus is very, very much on the surgical and the medical, dental profession to make sure that the patient fully, fully understand everything. And that’s very difficult sometimes because the patient would just go, oh, I was bamboozled, didn’t get it. So. Lawyers rely heavily on that lawyer. The lawyers. The lawyers. We rely heavily on the fact that, you know, sometimes that no matter how often you’ve had it explained to you, you’ve tick the box and you understand it. You just didn’t. So I think I think that just needs to be just that cap, I guess just to stop this stream of cases that I’ve got no substance whatsoever. I’m not a genius. I’ve got to come up with the idea that will do it. And one day somebody will hopefully. But it can’t keep rising unchecked. I think I think I think I’m right in saying the biggest single cost in the NHS is the legal payouts and again not saying for a minute a lot of justified, maybe a lot of them are, but equally there’s probably a lot of them that aren’t and it just has to be a bit more of a balance. It really does.

[01:07:44] You. Well, it’s been a massive pleasure understanding your health a little bit more. We we tend to finish on the same two questions on this podcast. We didn’t do the whole life story bit, but you can at least end to end it in the way that we normally end it. Go fancy dinner party.

[01:08:06] Okay.

[01:08:08] Three guests, dead or alive. Who do you have?

[01:08:12] I would have that lovely lady who is called, I can’t remember her surname, Sabine, who used to drive vans around the Nürburgring. Top Gear Ace because I think what she achieved in her world. I’ve been to the Nürburgring many times and I’ve been to her restaurant many times, and she’s a legend in those parts, and I never had the pleasure of meeting her. So I would love I’d love to have her at the table in her restaurant. She definitely be one of them.

[01:08:40] She passed away.

[01:08:42] She did? Yeah. I think I think about 12 months ago. And we were in a restaurant this year only only eight weeks ago. And her legend lives on all over the walls. And I did meet her mother, so that’s as close as I got. But yes, she definitely one of them. I’ve got to say, Sir Alex Ferguson, because of what he did over such a long period of time, which the longer we go without success at United, the more we appreciate what he did and on what he sustained and what I do as a third one. Tony Blair. Tony Blair Yeah, I think all my questions will end off at Tony Blair, but I think that would be absolutely fascinating. Can I have a fourth? Of course. Bill Clinton, because I have heard that if you can get a and after dinner speech with Bill Clinton, you absolutely have to move heaven and earth to get there, because apparently as an orator and as a as a raconteur, he’s absolutely unbelievable. So, yes, I think that would be my four.

[01:09:47] And Tony Blair. Tony Blair. I’ve got to you know, at the end of the day, history remembered him about Iraq. But yes, recently when I’ve been listening to him on that Restless Politics podcast, I think you’ve seen that you feel like now nowadays you’ve got such a low standard of politician that Blair seems like a little like intellectual genius.

[01:10:12] Exactly. That’s exactly how I feel about it. It’s like I think somebody said to me about six months before the the perfect storm. Can you imagine it if Boris Johnson and Donald Trump both get in at the same time? Well, don’t need to mention it, do we? But yeah, you look back on Tony Blair now, and maybe he’s maybe his place in history will change as time goes by. And this almost procession of imbeciles keeps coming to us on both sides of the Atlantic.

[01:10:41] And the final question is more of a personal one. You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your nearest and dearest around you. Three pieces of advice for them for the world.

[01:10:58] Don’t think about work 24 hours a day. I used to, and it’s nothing wrong with being passionate about what you do, but it shouldn’t ever consume you. Family life is incredibly important. It goes by unbelievably quickly. I speak as someone that took I think we talked before. My son is now in America at university. We’re missing him like Matt. And you look back on all the years you grew up and it’s like, you know, did we really appreciate those as much as we could? I think we did. But maybe we could have spent even more time as a family together. That’s definitely number one. No matter how bad something seems, things do get better. That’s an old cliche, but it’s absolutely true. You know, I’ve had challenging periods in my life and I remember them very well because there’s not been too many, fortunately. But I honestly feel that I’m much, much, much stronger as a person having come out the other side. When we started PMP, we were lambasted left, right and centre by defence organisations and other people as well. I was really tough. I left a very good solid job to do that. That was really, really a struggle for me and the fact that we came out the other side, the fact that we built something that lists to this day and I’m very, very proud of that. It’s really made me much tougher and an a stronger person.

[01:12:16] But the best company. Were you. Were you in finance?

[01:12:20] No, not at all. My my sort of jump into the finance sector was was really with someone that understood the insurance market. I had no clue. So I was the I was the gateway to the to the surgeons, basically.

[01:12:34] W difficult not being from that industry, right?

[01:12:38] Oh, massively. I had to learn the difference between claims made and claims occurrence. Like to learn all the sort of intricacies of the Financial Conduct Authority. I actually do all the the courses that are mandatory to become part of a regulated insurance company. Actually, to all of them. It was very difficult because I’ve been extremely comfortable in the aesthetics arena for well, by that stage probably 12, 13 years. So it was a gamble. And I think that’s potentially one of the other things that I advise on as well. If you see something and and everything is telling you, you know, if you don’t do that, you will regret it, then do it and it’s better to do it. And it may be not quite work than forever. Think, Oh, I wish I’d done that. You know, leaving that very solid job with an implant company that I really enjoyed was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. But if I hadn’t have done it, I would have regretted it, and I certainly wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. So, yes, it was tough. Yes, it was brave, some people would say, but it was definitely the right thing to do. And every bit of me was telling me to do it and I did. But a lot of people sometimes stay cosy. They stay in their own comfy environment, and sometimes looking outside of that isn’t a bad thing at all. Even if you end up going back, even if you end up, you make the job doesn’t work, go back.

[01:13:57] So that’s the critical that’s the critical point, isn’t it? You can go back if you want to. Yeah. You don’t think that and.

[01:14:05] You don’t know. And I think my fourth bit of advice is never burn a bridge, because I honestly don’t think I’ve ever burnt a bridge in my life. So it’s amazing how often people, circumstances, companies come round again and you see these people storming out of offices, swearing and you know, F-you, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. And before you know it, fate conspires to put you right back in in their sights again. So I’ve never I’ve never been a bridge with anybody. And I don’t intend to either, because life’s too short. And certainly the industry, I mean, it’s very small.

[01:14:39] Amazing. All great advice. Really was. Gary, I hope we get we get to talk to each other again on this subject because actually, we just just sort of introduced it from from the insurance perspective. But we’ve got all the other parts of this, the dentist themselves, the legal perspective, the regulator. There’s so much to unpack there. And I want to I want to really thank you and pay tribute to you for for first of all, doing PMP, a pioneering move like that as a fellow business owner. It’s always so, you know, the fear of going into something new. And, you know, it really is agony. And ecstasy is this ecstasy of getting it right and and the pain of it, but also your move into dentistry and how interesting that’s been.

[01:15:30] And I’ve loved it. I’ve loved it. And I, you know, I dentist have very different decisions as we touched on in a little while ago. But you know, this dentist now, I can count as my friends because they are very, very engaged and very, very professional profession. And I would say, arguably, I enjoy dentistry more than I do the surgical world. And that’s that’s a statement from someone that spent a lot more years in the surgical world. I just think dentists are probably a little bit a little bit more engaged than surgeons. If you wanted a very broad statement.

[01:16:05] Does that does that chair side manner piece, isn’t there? There’s a lot of surgeons who don’t have that bedside manner piece, but dentists have to be able to talk. I think you’re right.

[01:16:14] I think you’re right. And the fact you could do you’ll deal with as many people in in one day as some surgeons do in a couple of weeks. That’s right. So I think that’s a very large element to it as well.

[01:16:24] Massive. Thanks for being on the show, Gary. As I say, it’s lovely to continue. Thank you so.

[01:16:30] Much. Very much. I hope so, too. Thanks a lot.

[01:16:34] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[01:16:50] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it.

[01:17:04] If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

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[00:00:00] I spend a lot of time with my team in the morning, seeing them up, figuring out what needs doing. Executing my delegation strategy. Having my team members delegate to other more junior team members. But every day that happens. And let me tell you, I couldn’t possibly imagine running several businesses without some kind of daily huddle.

[00:00:29] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman, Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:47] Hello and welcome to the Dental latest podcast. Today is another solo episode. This topic of today often leaves practitioners divided in opinion of whether they think the subject matter of what I’m going to share today is the right way to run the business. The wrong way to run your business. An inconvenient way to. But before I talk into that, I think what I’d like you to do is just reflect for a moment and think about growing your business and think about having a team around you to help you grow your business. And that team or those team members can either be given a role and they go off on their own and they fulfil those roles really well in helping you on your growth. Well, they kind of self-manage. They go off in their direction in your business. Gross. Okay. Or the alternative scenario is being surrounded by those team members who you connect with on a daily basis. You share your goals with them on a daily basis. You talk about how perhaps you know the things that went wrong yesterday or the things that could go well today, every single day, and how you can learn from them. Your team members may be connecting with your patients in a way that you maybe don’t connect with your patients, and they could possibly feed back to you and teach you things about your business on a daily basis. And if you haven’t guessed it already, what we’re going to talk about today is the Daily Huddle Scrum, The Daily Stand-Up, the morning meeting.

[00:02:30] Call it whatever you want, but it’s that concept of planning every day. It’s that concept of sharing with your team every day. And it’s a concept of developing your leadership skills as a leader every single day and having a team around you that are driven towards the purpose, the goal, the vision that you’ve set out. In my businesses, at least, the majority of the we have a daily huddle. In the majority of my business is not and not with Democrats yet. I call it we call it scrum. And I guess, you know, that originates, you know, in the soft certainly in the software development world. You know, we’ve we’ve built and designed and created quite a few different bits and pieces of software for the industry, be it the the support platform, the, the is the company used. Mentally. You know, that was an idea that was borne by clinicians who had ideas. And then they came to me and I directed a software development team to create their dream. Write this port, this portal that allows clinicians to give secure. My software development team has built our own CRM system that manages thousands of inquiries on a weekly basis and automates that and helps patients outpatient workups, clinics convert or elevate their conversion rates. Right. All of that stuff started with a line of code.

[00:04:03] It started with an idea for I’m surrounded by a team of software developers that I direct I meet with on a daily basis. I learn about what their goals. And then drives them accordingly. And what’s really interesting is that before I started adopting the Scrum methodology in my business, right, and if you want to learn about the huddle and its foundations and its origins and more about the benefits of it and much more detail, and then I’m going to share with you today. I read a book by a guy called Jeff Silverman, I think is something likes from the arts of doing twice the amount of work in half the time or something like that. And if you just look up Jeff Sutherland, it’s a really cool book. So I saw inspiration from that book when I started utilising. Growth in my business on a daily basis. Right. And it was actually it was my lead developer, James, who pushed me into reading this book. And then I saw it was just one of those moments where you think, why the fuck have I not been doing this since day one? Right. And, and so then I went back to James said, look, this is a great idea. And it’s like been trying to tell you for the ages, but let’s do it. And so the concept was that we had a team of software engineers who went off on their own. We made their own mistakes.

[00:05:32] They came back. This piece of code failed. That doesn’t work. This doesn’t work. And guess what? It was taken as ages to write any code that produced any valuable functional software. And then we brought the team together and all we did is as a team, we decided, what’s our goal for the next two weeks? What do we want to achieve? Right? What is it in this piece of software? So we broke everything down into micro two week tasks or two week chunks of it. We split them up into tasks. And every day we met and we discussed what every team member was working on, which pieces are code they were writing, and what the impact of that would be and whether we’d be, at the end of the day, towards that two week goal and everything that the whole team was doing, the software engineers, they were working. That two week goal. What happened as software development, cadence or speed went through the roof. We started producing software that was working. The team started collaborating more and working together more to solve problems. So instead of taking a day to solve a problem, they were done in an hour. Because, you know, four I’s are better than two and all of that. And the end result was a happier team. But what I noticed as a business owner is it helps me to connect to my team better. It made me a better leader.

[00:06:57] It helped me to identify the little personality clashes in our team, how to deal with them. It also helped me to identify the lazy mode folks in my team who are no longer in my team. Because when you’re talking every day, when you’re meeting every day, and when you are discussing what is ahead of you that day and when you’re discussing what did you achieve yesterday? Did you achieve what you set out to achieve yesterday? There’s no way a bloody high. And so it’s great to get real clarity on who’s doing what. Who’s pulling that way? Who’s contributing to that angle? And who’s in there for just a free ride. So when I used Scrum in software development, it really, really opened up doors for me in terms of my own business growth. Let’s go back to the business of dentistry now. Right. If you’re one of those practice owners who says the huddle will never work for me, there’s not enough time in the day. Staff get in at different times of the day. Our patients are already in at that time. People won’t come early because of childcare, right? Sponsored than one decent excuses you can use, right? There’s some practices that managed to do it and some. Smash yourself. The question, why is that? And by the end of today’s podcast. Let’s make a case that is probably worth giving it a shot, and I’d like to make a case that you will achieve.

[00:08:32] More rapid business growth. A happier time, happier patients. And you’ll be able to spot opportunities faster than you ever after in the past, because you’re meeting with your team every day. You’re discussing opportunities, pitfalls. How you can fix problems and you’re leading that team and connecting better with them every day. So for those of you who have employed the hotel or already in a practice that uses the daily huddle, I think there’s a few key benefits that you’ll know already. Right. I’m going to share it with you. It reduces errors, having a daily huddle and talking about what went wrong yesterday and how we’re going to prevent that from going wrong ever again. And looking at lab work two or three days ahead and looking at problem patients that are coming through the door and looking at nervous patients who are perhaps coming through the door that might need a little bit more attention and looking for opportunities when patients are coming towards the end of treatment or an opportunity where a patient’s walking into a practice for the first time ever, for whatever reason, whatever whatever things you’ve discussed in your huddle. Right. So you’re one thing. It reduces the amount of mistakes you make over. And if you’re in one of those practices that continues to make the same mistake over and over and over again. But you don’t share it with your team. You don’t strategize how you can fix it.

[00:10:12] You don’t delegate or discuss how possibly somebody else would take responsibility or ownership of that problem. And you carry on making those mistakes. The one thing that it really does for me, I mentioned this earlier gives you complete transparency on what your team are doing. An accountability is wonderful for teambuilding, absolutely fantastic for teambuilding and morale booster. It improves efficiency. That goes without saying. It allows you to scale your business a lot quicker and improves customer service. So with all of those benefits, it only makes sense that you at least give it a shot. Like give it some consideration. So what is the huddle? It’s a meeting that happens first thing in the morning, 10 to 15 minutes. It doesn’t need to take that long. But we need all of the team fully engaged. And I say usually start that day with some positivity, some affirmations, your core values, essentially. Why do we exist? Why are we amazing? And what is our purpose? Clinic, then go on to talk about what went wrong yesterday. How does it see how we can fix that in the future? What processes and systems we can put into place to prevent that happening again. And what does today look like? What does amazing look like today? Right. If today was amazing, what would it be? Yeah. Is it getting three Google reviews, having, you know, really happy patients? Is it getting that love working on what was amazing look like today? Okay.

[00:11:55] And what are those steps towards? Happy and amazing day in between? All of that is spotting opportunities, problems and your planning ahead. And every single day that you do a huddle with your team, you are making marginal gains in your. Even if you’re making those tiny 0.1% gains in multiple aspects of your business over time, your business is just going to grow. Okay, so let’s kick off with the first part of the Hodl. What I truly believe that you should be doing is talking about what your core values are, why you exist. And making some positive statements about the. Okay. So, you know, whatever that may be in your practice, right? So here are changing faces. Our ethos is about providing exceptional dentistry, exceptional care, and exceptional customer service. And every single patient that walks into our practice deserves the very, very best that we can do. And every single patient that walks into our practice will walk out of their practice and telephone friends because of the exceptional service that every single one of us deliver. Yeah, we are absolutely amazing in what we do and we should all be really proud of the smiles that we deliver at that point. Possibly share some positive news to what we would do as we just run through one or two Google reviews that were left yesterday, a video testimonial that was handed over yesterday, a Facebook review.

[00:13:43] Oh, Mr. Smith said this. Isn’t that amazing, Joel? Well, good on getting that review and team. Fantastic on delivering that amazing experience in service. Right? Start your huddle off with a bit of positivity, right? Talk about then the good stuff from yesterday. Specifically treatment fun. So reviews that you got, testimonials, referrals from friends and family members, social media mentions, comments, those sort of things. Positive patient experiences. Summarise the good stuff from yesterday, then talk about the bad stuff. Okay. Complaints. Team issues. How we could have prevented that any mistakes we made. Was there any late lap work? How did that happen? Poor planet, patient issues. Emergencies, whatever that was. But just briefly summarise. The bad stuff. Yes. Okay. So the what went wrong? What’s really, really important when you’re discussing this in the hotel is figuring out why that thing went wrong and discussing as a team and making sure as a business leader, you give your team a voice. Okay. Certainly in my businesses, I don’t want to be the guy coming up with all the ideas. I don’t want to be the person who’s put in all the drafting and figuring it out and doing all the direction stuff. Because I’m surrounded by people who are ten times better, a hundred times better than me. But doing what they do. Okay. So for me, it’s more about the home and not the house. So there are some when we talk about the plans to open it up to the team, how could we prevent that from happening yesterday? What could have we done? Could have.

[00:15:42] We called the patient ahead of their appointment and warned them that, you know, we’ve started late today and there’s likely to be a ten minute delay or 15 minute delay, which it’s making its way throughout the day. Yeah, we could have done that. Mrs. Smith It was then at 4:00, you ended up getting seen at 430 was pretty cheesed off. If we’d have called her at lunchtime and said, Look, these things look like they’re running late today and, you know, your appointment may be a few minutes late or maybe a little bit later than normal. How are we going to handle that? Right. It may be that you introduce a policy because of that. They say, you know what, if it’s time they’re more than 50 minutes late, somebody has to walk into reception, apologise to that patient. And give him a gift voucher for Amazon and tell them how much we value their time and we’re really sorry. And this isn’t how we normally operate. Right. Over the Budget Office. Let your team contribute to the great ideas. And you see great ideas come out. Okay. So what went wrong yesterday? But more importantly, what can you do to fix? Then the next thing I like to think about in the huddle, after you’ve done the good, the bad, and then what you know today.

[00:17:01] Right, the follow it. Okay. Are there any call backs in the day ahead? Any patients need following up three patients who came in yesterday and had, you know, infarct surgery? Well, any nervous patients that attended the practice for the first time? Are there any treatment funds that need following or chasing today? Were there any FTAs yesterday that we need to follow up on? And this is really important, and this is where I ask yourself this question Have you ever had a patient? In the morning and then you scrambling around for the lab work. You realise it hasn’t arrived. So what happened in your practice? I know a lot. I know a lot of clinicians would be nodding their head like, okay, but if in that huddle you give one team member the responsibility for looking of lab work two plus days ahead and reporting on lab work two plus days ahead, and if there’s no sign of it and there’s no communication about it, but we get in touch with the lab. We realise very early on that there was no way that lab was going to arrive. By the time Mr. Smith comes in, in 48 hours time, you’d better rearrange Mr. Smith’s appointment, because there’s a downside to doing that. Pissing off Mr. Smith when he turns up having council half a day of work ready to come in for some kind of surgery that was absolutely nervous about only to be told, Oh, I’m sorry.

[00:18:32] He love works. Not here. The hotel prevent a whole bunch of disasters. Right. And you know what? If that does happen and your lab works late and all the rest of it, you sit down with your team in the hotel and you talk about how could have we prevented that? What could have we done? What could have been done to save us the embarrassment? What could have how could the communication be let back into the rough? We know this love always delivers life. Do we need to think about changing lamps? Do we need to think about perhaps booking the appointments a little bit? You know, giving the patient a little bit more time when they come in, whatever that may be. You figure out a process and a strategy that moves forward. You never make that mistake again. You focus on fixing the mistakes and problems. And as a business owner, I mention this all the time to my clients. I’m a problem solver as a business owner and a problem solver, and I solve to fix problems and my team help me solve and fix fix problems. It’s no more complicated than that. And you get really good at solving very, very specific problems. And with the huddle, when you’re talking about problems ahead, you become even better at fixing those so that your business will smooth. So after you’ve been through your follow ups.

[00:19:51] There are opportunities for you to identify. Now, when you run that data hoddle, there’s usually one person who will call him the Scrum Master, and we’re running scrum like who runs that day and we tend to base it off the dailies. Right. Here were the patients coming in today. What are the possible opportunities ahead? So what I would ordinarily do is work my way through that Davis and say, okay, is there any white space in the valley? Today. Is there any white space in the diary ahead tomorrow that we could look at doing some follow ups, callbacks and squeezing some local patients in? Right. So there are any gaps in the day. Are there any opportunities for testimonials? Right. Whatever that is. Is it a video testimonial? Is it a Facebook review? Is it a Google review? Who’s going to ask that patient for a review? Who’s the person who’s got the deepest relationship with that patient? Who’s that patient going to be connecting with? So in the huddle you say, All right, graph. You’re going to ask John for review when he comes in at 2:00 because he’s your mate. When we get to the huddle tomorrow, surely the question is going to be, so did you ask John for the review? What did you do? I left with you. Congratulations. Well done. That comes into the positivity section. No effort to hide that because he’s got to ask John for a review at 2:00.

[00:21:17] Okay. And if it doesn’t, we’re talking about it tomorrow. What went wrong? Are we going to need to follow that review or are we going to need to call that issue? What other opportunities can lie ahead for us, if you will, looking at the day list? Right. Some of us operate that day list and it hits us. As if he is patient by patients that they list as nothing while list of names for ends of hearing into your ecosystem as that time ticks along. Some of us look at that day list and see what we’ve got ahead of us. We look at the little hurdles we need to jump over. We look at the positive opportunities that we’ve got ahead. Right. So what other opportunities are there out there? Social media selfies, Smile reveals content opportunities as well as the reviews everybody talks about as that patient got a birthday coming up. With that patient come back off holiday. Was there, you know, bereavement in your family? Was there anything? Right. Anything. Is there something specific about any of these patients we should be bringing up? Well, Mr. Smith walks in on his birthday when we say, See that patient? Happy birthday, Mr. Smith. Yeah. Welcome to Change of Faces. If you take a moment to go to, actually and while I’m talking about birthdays, if you take a moment to go to the changing faces dentistry Facebook page and.

[00:22:47] Look of one of the recent posters. See that mark north of. And it’s a lady who came in and have full arch implant dentistry. 50th 60th birthday. I can’t remember that. Right. But what did we do that day? We got some balloons with their age on it. We got us some flowers. And the first thing that happened when that patient walked through the door, she got a birthday greeting from all of I would see how were we able to do that? Because we. Two days, three days before, and we’re able to make that patient feel really special. So what are the opportunities in your day list that can help you get more stuff for you reviews, testimonials, selfies, reveals, and all the rest of it. What are the opportunities in your day list where you can possibly elevate your level of customer service? Elevate the experience of patients? Right. Share that with you to think about what the opportunities are. Then we like to talk about special needs. Okay. Is there any nervous patients walking through the door? You know, Mr. Smith, who’s avoided the dentist for the last ten years and absolutely terrified at the thought. Walking through the door. Perhaps we know Mr. Smith’s coming in at 2:00 today, and I’m going to go and open the door for Mr. Smith as he comes in. I’m going to come from behind the reception area. I may even hold his hand and take him to the, you know, the seating area.

[00:24:22] Offer him a drink. Get down to high level. Sit down with him. Tell him everything’s going to be okay. Congratulate him on making the effort of looking up the courage to come and see us today and telling him he’s not alone. And we’ve got hundreds of patients like him. Maybe you’ve got somebody in your team who is super duper. We’ve noticed patients. So we identify them on the list and we say, Sarah, we got one of your specials in today. Make sure you give them the red carpet service. Okay. So those special needs nervous patients. What about referrals from friends and family members or another dentist? Right. That’s another opportunity, but it’s a special need right there. We can just sort. Talk to that patient about that with. About that friend, about what they’ve we’ve done for them. Okay. That’s okay. We’ve all got those patients. Okay. We’ve all got those people in our businesses who are slow. Okay. Those was the moment that opponents over, they die out of that door before going to the reception desk and we get sick and then we chase them. Right. If you know who they are, if you know the usual suspects. Right. You can you can keep your eye on that. If it’s a sizeable deposit, you need to take off the pay of patient at that appointment. You can either all forget about it because no one’s mentioned it.

[00:25:52] It just happens to be in the patient’s thinking. Those or you can bring it up in the hallway and go, Hey, mister, Mr. Woods has got to pay £7,000 to. Our Fish Treatment fund. So can we make sure we pay attention to that and collect that today? So that is another one, which is especially that we like to. And that’s it, really. That is ultimately your daily huddle. Okay. It’s a relatively short podcast, but I think it warranted this conversation because I’m having more and more conversations with business owners who are divided on the benefits of the hotel and just don’t know whether or not they should be doing it right. So I’m just, you know, speaking to the converted, if you already do it. And what we’ll say is whatever excuse you’ve got, you can find a way to implement and execute this. If growing your business is important not to you, change your start time, move all your patients 10 minutes ahead and you think, Crikey, all of that clinical time I’m going to lose, right? Pay your team to participate in the whole. Yeah. But it’s during their time that they’re getting paid for and that you’re not getting paid from clinicians. I know in my team every morning in do I spend a lot of time meeting with my team? I hate meetings for the safety meetings. I spend a lot of time with my team in the more.

[00:27:26] Seeing them all, figuring out what needs to execute in my delegation strategy, having my team members delegate to other more junior team members. So for every day that happens and let me tell you, I couldn’t possibly imagine running several businesses without some kind of daily. And then moving on from there. You know, we have moving on from there. You’ve got to be strategic meetings and things like that. What’s the next two weeks Sprint looks like for this project? And so. And that comes back to the, you know, the pulse of the business rate, the meeting rhythm. So you got your daily means, you got your retraining, you’ve got your monthly meetings, right? You discussing different things at those meetings. But let me tell you, I’m that guy who hates meetings for the sake of meetings if there’s no execution of the. I’m not interested. That’s medium for today, guys. So. Thank you for tuning in. If you’ve got any value out of it and you know, you you’re not a huddle person and I’ve converted you or changed your mind, please leave something in the reviews or in the social media. Post the payments that are going to share or somehow reach out to me and let me know that you’re going to give it a crack, because it means a lot to know that if I’ve shared a piece of content and somebody has gone ahead and implemented it, that’s wicked. That will make my day.

[00:28:56] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman, Langroudi and Prav. Solanki.

[00:29:12] Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don’t forget our six star rating.