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

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Mind Movers. And today we have a very special guest, Dr. Tijion Esho, who is a celebrity doctor. You might know him from E4 Body Fixers, which was a television show of how actually met Dr. Esho, which I’ll go into the story of how I’ve met him. But he is also a world renowned cosmetic doctor who has clinics all over the UK and also in Dubai and continues to expand. He is my friend and my mentor as well, and we’ve known each other now for about almost eight, seven, eight years I think. Yeah, definitely. Uh, Dr. Esho is a pioneer in a lot of different things with facial aesthetics, but he’s most famously known for the lips that he does, um, the evolution of my face. And we are really, really thrilled to have him on the show today. Extremely busy man. So welcome. Dr. Esho.

Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming in. I don’t know how to live up to that entrance now. There we go.

I can see you blushing. I’m going to tell the story of how we met because I think it’s quite interesting and I’m going to show it because a lot of people have always asked me how I’ve cultivated my own clinic and how I have created the opportunities that I have. One of the things you don’t even know this Payman actually, Dr. Esho was active on Twitter. He was part of the show Body Fixers on E4. Anna Middleton, my hygienist, she contacted him because he did a post to say that he wanted to get his teeth done and I think he’d been offered an invasive option by another dentist and said that he wanted to chat. So Anna said, You should come and see my homegirl Rhona. I was working in this like dingy clinic in High Street, Kensington, like super, like NHS, like not sort of premium at all. And he said, okay, why not? You know? So he came to see me for an initial consultation and I remember I did the consultation. He goes, I like the fire in your eyes. And because of that I’m going to give you an opportunity. So we decided to do a collaboration and I did his teeth. We filmed the whole process. Instagram was the kind of embryonic stages, so the engagement was unbelievable. And through Dr. Esho, I got a flurry of patients. A lot of people came and we talked about potentially working together. And he basically took a risk, took the leap of faith, believed in me, gave me an opportunity. And he was one of the big reasons why I gained the exposure that I did online.

Well, But I don’t think it was a risk, though. I think you’re being humble in that way, because what I saw was you at a stage that was like me at a point in my career that you were hungry. You were just so wanting to push ahead and break through and what you were doing. I had been there and I was like, Right, let me help you in that opportunity. Because I remember when I was there, I was like looking for someone to be like, Look, help me move to this next stage. It was so frustrating being stuck in that point knowing I could do more. So yeah, no, it was down to you.

Amazing. So let’s start from the very beginning. You told me that you grew up in North London. Yeah, I grew up in North London too, but I think the more posh part.

But anyway, yeah, yeah, we were two different parts of North London. Um, I grew up in Tottenham first initially, which was near the retail park in Tottenham. Hale So anyone knows that area knows it’s not the best. Um, and then my parents moved to Edmonton again, an area near Edmonton Green where there was a lot of crime, there was a lot of drug use, but my parents had come over from Nigeria in their like 20s, so they didn’t have much money. My dad wasn’t a qualified accountant, but when you come across into the UK, the qualifications aren’t recognised. So they both ended up working in a tiling factory really to get us through taking donations from the church. And we lived in council housing all during that time. So I’ve seen everything from that end of the spectrum to where I live now and the two polar opposites. But you know, I’m always grateful for it because I feel like one, it’s grounded me. Two, it’s giving me street smarts, which I think is very, very important in business. But at the same time, I think it’s given me ability to what it’s called code switching, which is I can be in any room and appeal to that particular room so I can be with my boys in North London. It could be in a corner in a chicken shop chilling out and it’d be completely fine. Or I can be in a Langham in London with a board of directors and be able to pitch an idea then. So I think if I didn’t have that exposure, I think I would have been naive to one of each party’s in it.

Do you? What inspired you to be a doctor?

So that wasn’t really a choice. You come.

From a Nigerian family, a Nigerian.

Family. So those four, you know, I think a lot of people sometimes judge it, but I understand it now getting older, I think, when parents come over. To the UK. What they’re looking for is a better opportunity. Opportunity of education to forward the family through. And when that happens, they look at set jobs that are secure. Okay. And when those jobs are secure, you know, you look at things like accountancy, lawyer, dentist, doctor, engineer, these are vocations that they see as, look, these are secure regardless of your race, regardless of where you’re from, regardless of the economic climate. So this is what we want to push you into. So I wasn’t that way at first. I loved sketching and drawing. I still do today. You good.

At it? Yeah. Yeah. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I sketch all the time, even for my little kids now, drawing cartoons and stuff. And that’s all I would love to do. So I wanted to be a graphic designer or artist, you know, that’s what I really wanted to do, you know? What did your dad say when I told my dad that he was like, a what? He said no in my house. And then he told me around and I thought he was joking. And I said to my mom, like, you know, surely I should be able to do what I want. You know? He was like, No, like your dad says, pick doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant or engineer. And I had to pick failure or failure. Yeah, basically, I think I think both.

We can all three relate to that because, you know, being Middle Eastern, I’ll never forget my sister. She was amazing at art as well. And my dad tried to force like, first of all, he made her do work experience. He’s a gynaecologist. And that put her off because she was like, I’m not doing this. And then she was like And then he was like, Go do dentistry. And then she applied to dental school where I was. And then she started showing all these beautiful drawings of like teeth, like art drawings. And they were like, What is this? She didn’t get in. And then she was like, Dad, I really want to do art. And he goes, For what? To go sell paintings in Green Park and Piccadilly, you know, like you’re not going to survive off that. So I think we kind of are given that ultimate.

T.j., your your kids aren’t in the same situation as you were in. So now, are you? I know they’re a bit young. Yeah. You said five. Yeah. Is that the oldest?

So oldest. I’ve got two. One’s going to be five in December, the other seven months. So I’ve got a boy and a girl.

So now going forward you’d imagine right, that the evolution of an immigrant could be the next generation rights, you know, film or something that does something more than the the professional. And when I say more, I don’t mean to say professionalism as at one level, yeah, they could be at a higher level, but.

They’ve got more freedom, more freedom. They’ve got more freedom because in that sense, the struggle isn’t there. And I was speaking because I do a lot of TV work. I’m speaking to a colleague of mine and he was doing documentary on the third generation drop off. Yeah, exactly. Because he was saying we were talking about this. I was saying like, look, you know, I saw my parents struggle and they put on into a position to have this education and do and provide what we’ve got amazingly for our family. Now, by look at now them, my kids and go, well, what’s the reason for them to push on now They’ve got everything. They’re in this big house. They see these cars, they’ve got all this lifestyle. What makes them hungry? You know, when I was there living in North London with my parents, I was looking at all of those things I’ve got now going. I want that one day. I want that one day my dad would be like, You work hard, you can get this, you can do this. But for them, you know where that stimulus becomes. And as you said, they’ve got more flexibility because there’s not an onus on them to do well to take things forward. But then at the same time, also they’ve got the worry that, you know, they’ve got the pressure that they have to live up to a set standard that’s already been in there as well. So I am very strict on them. I think.

It’s values. Yeah, I think I have to say, like values is the one one of the most important things that we need to instil. And you know, my father came as an immigrant to the UK with £20 in his pocket, put himself through medical school by washing dishes at Spaghetti House and worked really hard. And then he left the UK, met my mum, and then when we came back he struggled. Like we didn’t grow up with money because he was actually working on the NHS and basically my mum couldn’t work because her degree wasn’t valid. But seeing that struggle made me realise that you said that I needed to work really hard to get things, but also there was a lot of value instilled because even when we got to a point where we could do nice things, my parents very much were like, Work is needed, hard work is needed for that. So I think it’s I think it’s a fine balance, you know, with your children to make sure that they really understand that they’re in a place of privilege.

It’s definitely values. But then also there’s you know, for me, there’s the way the uncontrollable factors, because no matter what you do in your own house, there are things that are happening outside of it. You know, like when I go to the private nursery he’s at he’s going now into reception. You know, he’s there with princes of different countries and bits. You know, they’re flying in on golf jets. You know that that’s not normal. You know, I remember when I went and I was like, there’s a swimming pool in this school. I was like, what do you mean? Like, we just about had a Bunsen burner. So, you know, him having that now as a reality? No much how in the own household that can sometimes have an influence and what I. Try and do is I do what my parents did, which is try to create his friends that immediately allowed to come over to the house. So that’s what my parents did. So we were in a very dangerous area of North London and they weren’t good people at our school. Some of them were doing really bad things and my parents were very good in the sense that they spotted those kids and they wouldn’t let them over. But the ones that they could see were good and came from good families and parents they let over. So by natural selection, we became closer friends. And to this day, three of us, you’ve met them. Fabian and Roderick, like we’ve known each other for over 30 years. You know, it was because those parents came together and were like, Right, we’ll keep these kids together away from everything else. We’ll let them in the house. We won’t let them, but we’ll let this take them forward. So it is a hard job as a parent because you know that.

The the the thing I mean, I’m thinking of friends of mine where they had way more than any of us have got. Yeah. And still, even within the family, one of the brothers is massively ambitious and and and trying to grow this massive global conglomerate even more. And one of the other ones isn’t like that at all. And so it makes you realise that, you know even and they’re two years apart. So even whatever you do, you know, will have different effects on different kids and kids intrinsically will be different. And the fact that you are hungry for, let’s say, a car when you got your driving license and this guy is hungry for a private jet. Yeah, yeah. It comes down to it doesn’t mean that because you’ve given your kids this comfortable life, they’re not going to be hungry in some ways, as you kind of alluded to, they’re going to have to work even harder to prove themselves because people will be saying, Well, dad, we see this in dentistry. We say Mum and dad, mum and dad’s money did that for you or something.

And there’s I mean there’s a term now, I don’t know, I’m sure you guys have seen it. The Nepo babies, nepotism. What does that mean, Nepotism? So, um, you’re just not in the know, are you? Um, so the nepo baby is basically are the ones that are whenever they’re successful, it’s again saying, well, they’re so privileged that, for example, let’s say Johnny Depp’s daughter, Lily Rose-depp, if she does a film or she does a TV series or becomes a model, they say that like they’re nepo babies because they’ve come from a certain background and family. Their success is attributed to that. It’s exactly. But there are successes attributed to that. And I do think that’s unfair because you can’t control the circumstances. And actually there’s a lot of people that are born into those circumstances that go on to do nothing. Do you see what I mean? So I think that like and I think one thing that I don’t agree with is that people always want to celebrate the person that has nothing and came from nothing. I understand that there is more of a struggle, but I think it’s also unfair because it’s very individual. And like you said, people that come from that certain background come with their own plethora of issues. It’s not just the issues of like, well, they’ve got everything. You know, money comes with problems as well. Do you know what I mean? Like you said, in a massive sense of imposter syndrome, because if your father did something, you’re going to feel a lot of pressure to do something that has meaning.

I think it’s nature versus nurture as well, because even though, as you were saying, I was hungry, I never was that way at the beginning, you know, I was pretty much probably like the other brother you were talking about. Very chill. You know, I wasn’t really bothered. It was my dad that kept pushing me until it became an automatic thing. And actually, when I was quite young, I was almost written off as a naughty kid. You know, in school, I was always the one sitting outside in the chair with the seat outside. I wasn’t allowed in the classroom. You know, my dad’s frustration, my mum’s frustration, they were just all upset. And, you know, I was in this big school system, you know, inner city school. So, you know, you can get lost in that. But there was one teacher and I still try and find her to this day, Miss Eitel. She kind of sat with my parents and she said, Look, I just think your son is bored. I don’t think he’s a naughty kid. I think he’s just bored. And I said, I want to try some things if you let me. My parents were like, Look, cool, you know, let’s see. So they started putting me in kind of after classes after school, and I started to calm down and I was excelling at those. And then she was like, Actually, you know what I want to do? I want to put my year ahead. Let’s see what that does. And I completely calmed down and I started smashing it in school. And for me, that was a change because I could have been written off even no matter how hard my parents were doing, you know, in that whole school system, I could have been just wiped out.

Okay. He’s a naughty kid, written off. That’s it. That would be my pathway. So were you acting? It would have been wasted. Yeah, because I was bored. I was essentially. I didn’t know this as a kid, you know? But what was happening was I was understanding. Everything was said. But I was five steps ahead. You know, I had a photographic memory, so I have a bit of it now. So I was absorbing things very quickly and then make acting up to the rest of the class, you know. And I didn’t know that. But she spotted that, you know, and I was very lucky. So even now in the school, my son is there’s two big private schools in our area, but I pick the smaller one because I was like, you know, to my missus. I said, you know, I. Don’t want him lost in the system. I think at this small age it’s so important. There’s all these influences. We’re talking about our parents, but then in the teachers and the things around it. So I said, if you have them, they’re understanding who he is as a child and working with us, that’s going to be the best thing for them. And that was the best thing for me because like I said, no matter how hard my parents would have tried, I probably would have got written off onto a different path.

Tell us tell us about going through medical school, going through surgical training, and then a moment when you decide you’re going to go for this sort of aesthetics industry. Yeah, and I notice a lot of when I’m reading all of your material, a lot of it says the first black doctor to do that. And and sort of the, the being a man of colour. What was, what’s been your experience?

You know, it’s been a lot of pressure and you know, I sometimes I don’t talk about it as much. I kind of just take it as it is, but, you know, it I felt a weight on me for a long period of time and it gets harder each time as I go forward because when that thing happens and it’s the first, I never actually realised I’m the first. I get told it and I get confused about it, you know? So one of the first things was being the first black doctor on the cover of Times magazine. You know, when the photo people told me that, I was like, Well, no, there’s got to have been other black doctors. There must have been like, no, you know. And I mean, you don’t realise the impact. You’re in your area, you’re kind of in your own microcosm thinking about it. But then my mom’s showing it to people on the street. I’m getting messages from neighbours going, My son’s got this on his wall because he wants to be a doctor like you now because he didn’t think it was possible. But now he’s seen someone like him doing it, so he feels now he can achieve that. So that feels great. But then also there’s a weight because you’re human and you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to fail, you’re going to trip up. And now it’s on this public platform. You know, you don’t get the benefit of doing it in private. So that does help. You know, and when I first went to medical school, I remember at that time I still wasn’t into being there. I wanted to be this graphic designer.

I kind of was appeasing my dad at that point. And I remember when I arrived again, this boy from North London, I was in this place where basically there was doctors, family doctors, you know, kids of doctors, family, generational, everything in there. And I’m just this kid. I didn’t see anyone that looked like me there. So I already felt out of place. You know, then when parents were hugging their kids, the guy and go, my dad was shaking my hand like I was off to war. So, you know, it was one of those things I was already like, Man, I shouldn’t be here. But I found a guy who is still good friends today. I remember we looked across the room and I saw another guy who was another black guy with only two, and I saw him. He saw me and we kind of naturally gravitated towards each other. And we walked across the corridor, which showed all the years of graduation. And like in each year there was like either none or one black person. So we made a joke. That man, that’s why it’s only one of us is going to make it, you know? And we were both Nigerian. We ain’t got no choice. We both got to make through this. But we did. And then when I went forward, I think then the specific then speciality is your parents want you to do when you’re of someone of colour, like particularly with Nigerian parents, I don’t know what it is about OBS and gynae and paediatric paediatrics. They literally want you to be those things. Yeah, like surgeon or.

Surgeon in general.

This is it. So it was like, okay, this way. So for me, surgery was a natural way because I was good with my hands. And then in a way, plastics became the most a feasible thing because it was like, Wow, this is artistic in a way. You know, my canvas is now the face, the body rather than this piece of paper or computer screen, which are sketching on.

But it’s also the most competitive. It’s the most competitive speciality surgery.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the most. Yeah. That and neurosurgery and cardiothoracics, you know, that at the time were the very competitive ones. So what about.

The blowback you get from the profession itself? I mean, do you get doctors saying, Oh, you’re not a proper doctor anymore?

Yeah, no, but tell us first of all, tell us then why the plastic surgery didn’t continue.

Yeah. So I was going through that route and I thought this was, you know, I think there was a show at the time, Nip Tuck, that that was on TV. You know, it was very sexy, like what it looked like at the time. And I thought that’s what the job would be like. And I think a lot of doctors even will tell you when they get into the actual job, sometimes what they think it’s going to be. Isn’t that all we have? Yeah, they have this romantic idea of, you know, you’re going to be sworn in and doing this. I felt like I was an honorary scribe for the like first like things as a senior going into registrar for this is a time I should be doing the big, big bits, you know, now. And because the system is not about you, it’s about the system, right? It’s about the patient, which is the right thing. But you’re trying to also develop yourself and go forward. Now, what happened during that time was my bosses at the time had non surgical clinics, private clinics outside. So I was going to those as well to shadow him and see. And what I found was there was a disproportionate part when I was in hospital, I felt like this understudy described it didn’t really have that much power. Whilst when I was in these clinics, I felt autonomy.

I didn’t have this pressure from beds to be moving patients or doing these decisions, and I was handling my own caseload, making my own decisions, and I felt my own person. And in the biggest point to me was when I was more busier than my own boss in his clinic. At that point, I was like, okay, this is time to make some sense here. And I was in fear. To the turning point was I was in fear too, with a boss. And we were doing a case together. And I said to him, Look, I don’t think I like being in the hospital. I said, I love it in clinic, in the non-surgical clinic with the lasers and everything and gadgets and everything else. And I said. Is it is there a career in that? You know, because remember back then, I’ve been doing it for about ten years. It wasn’t as big as it was now, you know. And my boss said that such a simple thing that kind of made me tilt forward. It was like he said, Well, look, if it fails, you can always come back. And you don’t realise that it’s such a simple thing. You’re thinking life decisions that you make. You have to go down that road and follow that road to your death. But he was like, doesn’t work out.

I had the exact same thing when I left dentistry. Someone somewhere said, You can come back. And it was like such a freeing, freeing thing. But you.

Know what? I think there’s a lot of shame in our industry, in medicine and dentistry with first of all, the perception that you are giving something off, giving something up, and also with hospital culture, like I’ll never forget my father, he worked on the NHS for so many years and in a way he was really, really put down by consultants and the kind of conversations were, if you go private, you’re selfish. If you want to leave the hospital, you’re not doing what you were meant to do. You’re brought into this world to serve, you know? And I think the narrative is extremely toxic and can really affect your mental health. And I remember as well, even in dental school, my tutor said to me, Whatever you do, Rhona, don’t become a general dentist. Like there was such shame in wanting to be a general dentist. And I think, you know, the years that you spend committing yourself to hospital work, it can be soul destroying. I have friends that did it. One of my friends that became an orthodontist, she really struggled with her mental health because she had to do the max FACs training, the bullying that was going on the work as a junior dentist, you know, kind of like sleeping through 2 to 3 hours a night for months on end. The burnout, but also the shame associated with even talking about it. And I think that it’s such an old school way of thinking. And as we know, the junior doctors striking now, you know, we’re living in a generation where people are like, hang on a second, I can’t sacrifice my health and mental health. So I think, you know, these are important conversations. And there is no shame in saying I can’t actually cope with this.

Yeah, completely. You know, when I then made that decision, you know, I was met with that in two separate ways. One for my parents and then one for some colleagues as well. My dad at first was like, Well, what do you mean? Yeah, like, what is Botox? What is Phyllis? First of all, you’ve got a secure job, NHS pension. We’ve been doing this. My dad too. Yeah. He’s like, No, this is not in the plan, you know? So that was difficult. And then I had colleagues exactly as you say that, you know, senior colleagues were like, Oh, you’re after the money. I see. You know, and it is interesting that for some not all in that culture, they feel you have to be self-deprecating, You have to suffer to serve. You don’t have to. So true. You can find a way to serve in your own way and also as well, build the life you want for your family and your friends. You can, you know. But I don’t know why it should be felt. There is this old school mentality sometimes that it has to be exclusive.

I think the NHS thing is, is number one, a lot of NHS work was done on Goodwill. My brother’s an NHS consultant and he was working many, many hours not paid and almost the people in it have now said, We’re not going to do that anymore. Yeah, and it’s like they’ve been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and. And got no thank you. Apart from those claps. Yeah. No, no, no. Thank you. Really, for it. Yeah. And so now you get both the juniors and the seniors saying we’re going to do. Exactly. And my brother says now some of his juniors won’t even turn up for training unless they’re being paid for it. Yeah. Yeah. And he’s saying in his day training was this amazing thing that you would turn up for, for free. Yeah. And the NHS is, is this wonderful thing, but it’s also this terrible thing.

Yeah. I think that’s an open and honest conversation, right? Because that is the reality. I think it does such great work and you know, I’ve had the NHS helped me in so many times my family’s life when my mum was diagnosed with cancer, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, when my son almost died during Covid and was in ICU on a ventilator for ten days, you know, So I’ve been in the NHS on that part. I went back to there during the pandemic as well. But I do think there’s a hierarchy. I don’t think it’s within the people in the NHS itself. It’s in that hierarchical bit that stands on top that is kind of saying, well, no, you must do this because of the love of it. And actually it must be to the disadvantage of yourself. And that’s what’s wrong. And I think that’s what’s breaking down morale, not just from doctors to nurses to even more. And, you know, in my job now, my private practice, you know, during the pandemic, I gave up my practices so people could use those for Covid centres and testing. I went back in and helped during Covid. I have a charity initiative called the Esho Initiative, where we do. Treatment for free, which I get referral from my colleagues in the NHS. So I find ways within what I do to give back, but it’s a different way and that’s where sometimes it’s not as seen. And I think sometimes people want you to shout about it more, but I think if you truly doing it, you’re just going to do it and that’s it.

So I think this is this is actually an interesting conversation for you both. I think, you know, we have all agreed that we’ve been there as training doctors and dentists and, you know, the difficulties in that we know now that we’re really going through a crisis more so in dentistry. So I don’t know if you know this, but you know that dentistry has been in the news more than ever in the last year or so. Things really escalated after the pandemic with the restrictions and people are basically leaving the NHS. I tried to have the conversation with people online or, you know, try to empower the public with what to do, etcetera, you know, through media outlets. But a lot of people are angry and they blame it on greed. They basically say patients, patients, correct. So a lot of people have said and as you probably know, Rishi Sunak came out recently and said that NHS dentists will be forced to work a period on the NHS once they qualify. And obviously the BDA, our British Dental Association, then went out and said you can’t tie people to a sinking ship, which I think is really important to understand. It’s a system that’s flawed. The junior doctors as well, a lot of them are actually even resorting to doing careers online. They want to become medical doctors that talk on YouTube or TikTok because they don’t enjoy being in the hospital environment. Now, my question is, I think we can both agree that our degrees are professions are about giving back and helping people. Right? We are so incredibly lucky to have the skills to heal people, you know, in both of our professions. But what does that look like? As in, you know, aesthetic dentistry is one part of medicine and aesthetic medicine. We both give back. As we’ve discussed, I do my refugee work all the time, etcetera. But how much should we be giving back? And this is an open question how much is expected of us realistically, and how much should we be doing?

I think it’s something within you that you just know when you feel. I think within yourself, you know, if you want to do more, have the capability to do more, you know, And I enjoy it because not just because of giving back, but also sometimes it does find a balance because I agree with some members of the public part of what we do and we know this we’ve got people sometimes that are very superficial, very vain, and maybe not as nice people. And so when you have to deal with that and then you go and I’ve got an acid attack victim and I’ve been working on this, guys, and they’re so happy, you know, you get that balance of, okay, yeah, this is the real part of my work. Yes, this part might factor, but this also gives me balance and I think that will just evolve. I think it never should be what someone else says to you do. I think it’s got to be internal. So, you know, we just recently decided to combine with Operation Smiles. You go back. So from the product line, a pound of every product goes to Operation Smile.

A pound of every lip treatment we do goes to Operation Smile, and we’ll be going out as well and doing corrective work there too. But that’s because we have the capacity to do it. You know, if I didn’t have the capacity to do it, I wouldn’t. So I think and that’s not because someone else is telling me to it. So I think it’s really important that it’s an internal job. And I think this is, again, another topic going on to this kind of external validation. I think that is a poisonous cycle. You know, I think we constantly are looking for an external validation. We were just talking about this before we got on podcast, but does it come from parental bit of this where we’ve been pushed and we’re wanting to get someone to say, Well done, they’re proud of you. We go on this circle of trying to push that through success. You know, we’re pushing forward, trying to get this feeling, but you never get it. I don’t know about you. You know, I have it fleetingly. You know, I remember when you.

Get it in moments of acceleration, in.

Moments of acceleration.

But after that, it becomes normal again, you know, So that’s that’s.

The thing I found. Yeah. I honestly, for me, I’m glad I had those experiences early because I think my life would be so different if I achieved them later in life. I would have been so laser focussed on that, not realising that’s not important. You know, for me at that point it was right. I want to be on the cover of a magazine. And the reason why I wanted to be on that was because I was told I couldn’t by one of our peers. So like, you know, quotes are good, you know, being on a cover that’s too much to ask, you know, things like that, you know, things. So I was so determined at that point. I was so stubborn. I was like, Right, you know what? I’m going to prove you wrong.

Do you think achievements are a bit like possessions? Like, I mean, I think we all know, like, you might aim for that watch. Yeah. And you buy the watch and you feel good for about three minutes. Three minutes. Call it three days. Yeah. Someone somewhere says something about it and. All right, I might give you another bit of dopamine and you quickly realise that watch isn’t making me happy. He goes, Yeah, but then. And yet you’re still going to look at other watches if you’re a watch guy. Yes. Thank God I’m not I’m not a watch guy but I but I know the I know the feeling. Right. Do you think achievements are similar? Yes.

Yeah, 100%.

Yes. So. So. So then. So then, you know, I know we shouldn’t get ourselves into that sort of wormhole of is it a good thing or is it a bad thing because everything is a good thing and a bad thing. Yeah, but what I’m saying is if if you’ve got an a an achievement in your head of clinics all over the world, let’s say on one side, you know, as business people, all of us will say, well done, amazing. But on the other side, that could just be another bit of emptiness that you’re trying to fill 100%. It does. At what point in your in your career now, when you’re thinking about the next thing, obviously we were talking about this lovely place you’ve got in Cobham and you’re travelling the world and all that. At what point is that enough and or is there an element of it actually feeds you to grow this?

Is it. So because of those experiences I’ve had early, it’s made me answer those questions early. I would have I don’t think I would have answered those questions earlier and actually, I was told this by a guy there called Hucun Young. They got famous hairdressers in the north, multi millionaire couple. And I remember when I was doing the aesthetics and I was quite young then just starting out and he said, he said, You’re going to do well. I can see it in your eyes. But he says, I want you to know when enough is enough. And I said, What do you mean? I didn’t understand it then? And he said that, you know, my husband and I, he goes, I thought I was going to be retired in my 50s because now I’m working more than I ever did. My husband, you know, gets anxiety if one of the stores doesn’t do as well because he’s worried we’re going to lose all of this. So they were trapped almost in their own success. And he was telling me, look, remember to know when enough is enough. And I left that conversation thinking, no, no, no, I was fine, fine. But I only came back to that conversation after the experiences. Did the cover, did the clinic in flannels, you know, bought things that I never would have been able to buy. But it was always fleeting, always going. And I realised that the. Point when my dad died. You know, when my dad died of prostate cancer. I watched a man that is my hero. You know, he had sacrificed so much in his life and was always focusing on retirement that that’s when he would rest.

Okay. And he didn’t get to retirement. So I was like, he’s done all this. And I know he wouldn’t regret what he position he’s put me in my sister in, but I know he probably has regrets with the time he did have with my mom and the things they didn’t do together because he always thought he had time. And when I look on that now, I look at the things I’m doing and I go, okay, yes, I can build this new clinic. Yes, I can build this new product, but at what cost? And is it is it is that cost worth it? Is that time away from my kids that I have now and their impact in their life? You know, the time away from my misses, the time away from my friends, those things that fill those holes, you know, that we don’t think you know, we think those things that we’re going to success in the material things are going to do it. Actually, it’s the things that are so close to us that we don’t understand. And we take for granted that if we just take in those moments, we realise that. And that’s why I’m so grateful now, because that’s how I live my life. Slightly different. I enjoy the journey, you know, but I’m very protective over those elements in my life and any discussion or any new thing. I sit down with the missus, I sit down with the kid, I sit down with my family and say, Is this the right thing for us? Not just for me? And we take it from there.

I think I think it’s really important to also be in check of your ego, as in like everybody has an ego. You have an ego, even when it comes to enlighten him and his brand, me and my brand. And I think like what I’ve realised as well, just like listening to you speak, is that it’s so important to keep that in check because now I ask myself, but I get it. And then I get over it. And then what? Do you know what I mean? As in like there is more fulfilling things in life. And I recently read a book. I don’t know if either one of you have read it called The Body Keeps the Score. Have you read it? Amazing. I really recommend it. It’s written by a psychiatrist and it talks about how all of our experiences and everything that we do is, you know, it harnesses physically. So when you have certain things that happen to you. And what I found is, is that my dopamine is from validation. We’ve talked a lot about these these conversations. Like I need the validation to feel like I’m good enough because my deepest insecurity in every element is that I’m not good enough at anything or deserving of anything. So if I don’t get a continuous surge of people telling me I’m good or celebration, and that’s why I’ve actually aimed for certain things. So like you were saying, like front covers TV shows because someone will tell me I’m good enough. But the irony is that actually that faded too, because the more I did it, the more people didn’t care. Do you know what I mean? The first couple of times, like, Amazing. You’re on ITV this morning and then after that, no one cares. Do you know what I mean? And then I was like, Oh, I’m not getting my validation.

You’re not getting the same dopamine effect.

Correct. And then I was like.

Well, now you’ve done all this therapy. Where’s the validation deficit coming from?

My therapist and I are still working on that. And I think that, you know, because every time now I call, we have our calls or, you know, do our sessions. I’m like having a panic attack or a meltdown about whatever situation. She’s always like, it all boils down to you not feeling like you’re good enough because you’re questioning yourself about this situation, You know? And I think I have massive awareness. Have I been able to get over it? No. And, you know, we’ve had these conversations as well where I’ve you know, I’ve called up Dr. Rush and been like, I don’t know what to do this. And I have to go over about 700 times with him for him to tell me that it’s going to be okay. And I have those people in my life. But now I’ve come really kind of head to head with it at this moment in my life, you know, um, you know, mid 30s, like really questioning a lot of things as a female as well, you know, really thinking carefully about my next steps. So I don’t really have the answers. But as you were speaking there, I just, you know, a lot of things resonated, especially when it comes to my father. I’m incredibly close to my father, and I really recognise the importance of, you know, spending time really understanding. But also I recognise as well a lot of what I do is for my dad. So a lot of the things that I wanted to achieve is for my dad on a subconscious level, you know, because I love him and I want the validation from him.

But that’s what I was going to come to and say probably it is from some point in childhood because I look at mine and it’s not that it’s done on purpose. You know, my parents kept me away from a whole load of trouble that I could have got into when I was younger. But I learned validation came from certain level of success, whether that was in achievement or achievements. And then I saw then the response that that had. So for me, that then was in a mentor, Well, this is what you do, you have to achieve, which again is validation and that moves forward when actually there were other things that were subconsciously happening maybe that were the more things you should lean into. And that is why I am now. You know, I lean into the fact that when my son walk through the door, my son runs up to me and he’s like, Dad, you know that for me, no matter how bad or stressful my day is, that can erase everything. You know? So I think success is not bad and it’s going to try and achieve. Success is not bad. But I think looking for it to be the reason that it gives you that validation internally is going to be a vicious cycle because that’s an inside job, whether that’s with therapy, whether that’s with speaking with your friends, that’s an inside job that you have to do.

I think the flip side of it is and you guys probably not old enough to have this question yet, it’s the regret of not living up to your potential risks. Potential, you know, like the I speak to someone, you know, the very, very Robbie who’s massively motivated. Right. He’s in our industry.

Just.

You know. Robbie. Yeah. Oh, excellent. Yeah, massively motor. I’ve never come across someone as motivated as him and. All right, he was. He was brought up as a pro kickboxer or something. And that, you know, puts you in a particular way of doing it. But he talks about potential here, about seeing his potential. And as you get older, you get to this point of looking back and saying, should I have tried that thing? You know, because because.

You know, I feel that.

Now. Right. Regrets because you’re getting older, right? Regrets about the things you should have done and didn’t do. And so then we’ve got this balance between doing the thing like, I could take this gigantic risk right now, right. And then and spend no time with my family. Yeah. And one side of it, we’re talking about this validation question. And then on the other side, we’re talking about this potential question. And it’s a balance, isn’t it? You’re right.

And I think the time I got to answer that question was when my dad died. Because if you don’t have it on ageing yourself, sometimes it takes an external situation to happen for you to reflect on it. Yeah, because when I look at my dad, I know how you say when you get older you become your parents, right? I look at before how I was becoming my dad, right? And my mum would always say, You’re both workaholics, you know. So when he passed and I reflected upon how he passed and what happened, you know, I always the same like him, I was always like, I sacrificed now. You know, I’ll rest later. You know, Sleep. Don’t sleep now. Sleep later. You know, do assuming that this later is given. It’s not So. When that happened with my dad, it was the first time I looked at in the face. You know, I probably, as you said, only with age at time. If I was lucky and blessed to get lucky to do that, would I probably looked back and done that. But with my dad doing it, I could have either taken it two ways. I could have ignored it or faced it, and I’ve been facing that ever since, and that’s made me look and go, okay, what is worth it? You know, what is, you know, as we’re talking about, you know, you can get the bigger car, the bigger house, the bigger watch, all of these things and you can do it. But they’re going to go.

Yeah, none of that matters. Doesn’t matter. It’s the enjoying the process itself and it’s enjoying the journey.

The most important thing where it’s come down and we come.

We come across this a lot, right? Where people sell their business. And we can imagine let’s imagine you do really well for the next five years. And then some LVMH comes in and says it gives you an amount of money that you’d never dreamt of and you have to walk away. A lot of times that person goes into a depression after that happens because now their baby’s gone, their life’s gone. What they used to do is gone. And, you know, enjoying the process is a key, key, key thing. Yeah, It’s one of those things, though. We should go into it, right? You’re running this big business now. How many employees have you got?

25 now. Oh, that’s right. That’s right. Spread. Spread across. Spread across. Spread across. It’s still crazy to me. I still see it as, you know, a niece who she knows, you know, it was myself and niece and Matthew for a long period of time, just three of us. You know, the three amigos. I was cool. We were going through. And now, even when there’s a new member of staff, I’m like, Who’s that? And they’re like, Oh, I.

Feel that way too. I’ve got 25.

Now. Yeah. And you’re like, Oh, okay. And that actually is because I controlled that. Yeah, we could have grown a lot quicker and a lot bigger. But because of the questions that had been asked, because of what we’ve seen, I’ve said, well, no, because if I do that, I’ve got less time with the kids. I’m not going to see them grow up.

Would have been the biggest highs and lows of this business journey.

I would say the biggest low was when I had my first public failure. So I joined the company in 2017 called Abnormal Beauty Company. Deciem biggest, the ordinary, biggest, biggest company is sold to LVMH for.

Yeah, listen to this story.

Got they got, um, sold recently for 2 billion. Yeah. So I got headhunted by Brandon, then the CEO who has passed now. He found me on social media. I was just really starting to get known in aesthetics industry. He contacted me through social media and was like, You’re very interesting guy. Can I come and see you in London? And I thought, What? Like, I thought it was a prank because I was like, How do you even know who I am? You’re this huge company. But it was genuine. They came and they met him and Nicola, who’s the CEO now, and Dion, who’s the head of comms now, and we just chopped it up. And he was the he is still, to this day, the smartest guy I’ve ever met. His brain works at 1,000,000mph genius level. And he was just talking, talking, talking. And we got on like a house on fire. I felt like I haven’t got brother. So it felt like I had this big brother to look up to. And he was just like, Look, I love what you stand for. I want to do a product with you. We’ve not done lip products. You’re the lip doctor. Everywhere I Google lips, I see your name. I think it will bring some authority. Let’s do this. And I didn’t think it was going on. I thought it’s just words, you know? And they went away back to Canada. And before I knew it, his contract was here in front of me. I signed that contract without consulting my dad. And I remember that. And we’ll go back to that because that was a bit of a mistake then. But I was like this little kid in a candy shop like this, Goliath will come. Of course I want to do this. I’m going to have a product line. Almost every doctor or dentist dreams of that. You know, in that way, you know, with one of the biggest beauty brands in the world. So I get flown over. It’s like fairy tale. Was it going to.

Be a doctor brand?

Yeah, yeah. Your name. Your name.

On it.

Oh, amazing. So I get flown to the ordering HQ. It’s all in one building, the factories at the bottom with the distribution. All social media is on the next floor. Then on the higher floor, you’ve got Brandon with the rest of the team. I walk into this room, there’s screens up everywhere. There’s a show on the screens. There’s looks of what this brand is going to look like. Is this in Canada? Yeah, in Canada. And I’m like, Wow, you know, I’m taken back. I meet Prudhvi, who’s the chemist there now. He’s like, you know, this is my ideas. So these actors, what do you ever thought of? It was the most intense 24 hours of my life. And then we leave with this idea of it was going to be Doctor Esho. And I see a lot of people don’t know this. So it was going to be Dr. Esho. My clinic at the time was called Le Beau Ideal, which is your beautiful ideal. And Brandon was like with a name like Esho, why is it not in your own name? And I went, Well, I heard that brands have your name, put your name on it. It’s it’s hard if you want to exit. So he went, No he goes your whole brand should be esho not Dr. Esho esho because everybody’s going to know your doctor. But Esho in itself is strong. So he says clinics are. Your clinic, your products. And literally when I flew back that day, I changed the name of my clinic from La Bayadere to Esho because of him. So I don’t know that. So yeah, we launched it. We went to development of this product and it was like a fairy tale.

Was it similar to the products you have now or different?

Yeah, similar. So the full first lip products, coat, paws, drench and sculpt were designed with them, you know, and then we sat down and then there was a period. Then that’s when Brandon went downhill in his mental health. It was like out of the blue, you know, I remember I was getting erratic messages from him, erratic emails, and it was getting into the press because he was see seeing journalists from around the world, everything. So it became this public fallout of mental health. But what was his issue?

What what kind of stuff?

So, you know, back at the time, he had started to experiment with mushrooms. And he he he was so smart. You know, we see it now. We talk about biohacking and how different chemicals can, you know, activate different parts of the mind. That’s what he was so super interested in. So he wasn’t kind of having the mushrooms to be an addict or anything. He was trying to see what he could delve into, into this genius brain of his, but just went too far, I think. And, you know, we just started having erratic behaviour, would leave fly out to different country, cancel meetings, cancel product lines. And one day I remember being in, I think it was pharmacy in Marylebone, this vegan restaurant. And I was with my friends and I just saw on social media that it said, Sorry, TJ, we have to say goodbye on social. Yeah. And I’m looking at my screen and you know, when you’re looking and you’re disbelieving and go, Oh, no one’s going to be speaking to me on Instagram like that. Like as in just a story post.

It was a post. It was a post. It just said on the Post a picture saying, you know, Goodbye. I’m sorry. And so I start reading it, my heart’s beating and my friends are like, What’s wrong? And I said, I think they’ve just cancelled my line. So I’m calling Nicola, the co CEO then who’s now head CEO. She’s in tears. She was upset. It wasn’t anything she planned. She was trying to apologise and I didn’t know what to do. I’m trying to call him. I can’t get through to him and it just spirals out of control. Brandon starts posting quite thing pictures on social media of your stuff. No, no, no. Him and cancelling other lines and you know it got so much that as the Lord, Lord himself had to step in because they’re like they were already minority investing in DCM so they wanted to protect their investment. So in the end it came into a legal battle where they had to oust Brandon from the brand, you know, so they they ousted him and he committed suicide.

Oh, my goodness.

And yeah, it was, it was so hard because I don’t talk about it much. I only talk about it recently with Nika because there’s going to be a documentary on it. And we did a recent filming for it. And that was very hard for me because, as I said, it was like a big brother to me. And I think on the outside people thought, Oh, well, you should just be angry and hate them. And I didn’t because I was like, This is my brother and he’s not Well, this is not him. He wouldn’t have wanted this.

So did they asked Lord Order thing. Was that the.

Catalyst in terms of them taking up? I don’t know. I don’t think we will ever know, you know. But all I know is that, you know, there was so much that was left unsaid, you know, because he was he messaged me out of the blue and was coming to London and he said, look, I want to come and see you. I want to explain everything. I did this to protect you. And I still to this day, don’t understand what he meant. And, you know, Nick and I talk about it. We were in tears talking about it because it was losing. It wasn’t it wasn’t a break falling apart of a product that I really cared about. I think people may have thought, oh, you know, this brand’s been cancelled. I lost my friend like my brother, you know, and this person who I looked up to and gave me this opportunity, you know. And so when it went apart, Nicola, who was then the CEO, told me, Look, we’ve got a situation, you know, the contract DCM own your trademarks, your name, your formulations, everything you know, which is why I hadn’t listened to my dad at that time. I’d signed blindly. You know, I’d say to kids, you know, read the contracts. It’s so important. But I was very lucky. Nicola was there because she fought for me and said, Look, no, these are yours. Brandon would have wanted this, these are yours. So I kind of had that. And so that’s why you weren’t.

Able to have your.

Line. Yeah. So I went away. I didn’t do anything. I just parked it. I was just so hurt. I was really hurt just about what had happened and having to deal with it so publicly, you know, press were everywhere, asking questions, wanting to bring wanting a quote, wanting everything else. And I just wanted to go into the silence and bury my head, you know, And then it was only until the pandemic happened, which was like, you know, that was 2017, pandemic was years later that I got to stop because I threw myself into my clinic. Work was building the brand, processing the clinics, processing it, trying to block. The out. But just doing that. And when the pandemic hit, I got time to think and I said, what do I do want to do this product line? I’ve got this stuff. And I said to him, missus. And we sat there and she says, Look, if you want to do it, do it. It might be closure for you. If not, leave it alone. You’ve got so much going on. And so I decided to work on it. I reformulated, I took out the bits that I didn’t like because a lot of people didn’t realise when he was going through his mental health thing, they launched the products without telling me. So that’s how so far it was. I remember being in my room in Harley Street and getting tagged into all these people going, I’ve got the Astroscope, I’ve got this. And I said, I have even got it. And I was calling up Brian and going, Where’s where’s my I don’t even know. We got final product, you know. And then he was like, Don’t worry, it’ll be fine, fine. It was in this erratic behaviour part that then I had to order my own product. I had to order of Victoria Health, so I had to order them by my first product before anyone else to actually get it and see what it was like. And you know, it was great in some ways, but the flavour, guava, all these different things I had to agree to. I, you know, were.

There pretty difficult, right? Because your name.

Is on it and your name is.

On it. Yeah, but, but then your level of experience in products is zero, right?

Compared to them. So, you know, any decision and anything that happened at that time, there was just this trust there because I was like, Well, who am I? You know, even when I was questioning compared to them, when I questioned all the flavour or this particular thing, you know, Brandon would have an answer. And I’m like, Well, who am I? I’m, you know, I’m a junior. You’re the DCM. You know, you’re ordinary. So of course, you know even more.

Look, our brand is there, right? It’s called Enlightened. He used it when it’s when your own name is on it, it’s even more important that you’re behind.

I had said it to him, and that’s why I know it was the mental health side, because I remember conversation in the car specifically where we sat down and I said, Look, if we’re going to do a show, this is really important because this is a big name. It’s the family name. My dad has so much pride in.

This African.

Thing. And I said, it has to be right. And at that time when things were well, it was understood. But when that breakdown happened, that went out of the window. And so it was up to me to kind of get that together again. So when in the pandemic it stopped and I was reformulating QVC, who we had launched part of the product range, we’ve came back to me, they said, Look, we heard on the grapevine, this is what you’re doing. We’d love you to launch with us. You know, So I’d reformulated that. All of that tested it was happy, but I was scared. You know, I was actually super scared, of course, because I was like, was the success that the brand had initially because of them or because of me? And I didn’t know the answer to that, honestly. You know, I actually leaned more into the fact that it probably was them because they’re same.

I’ve got a couple of questions for you, and they’re two totally separate things. So, number one, when when someone dies, always everyone blames themselves, everyone around them, whoever’s closest to them blames them. And that’s when someone dies. When someone commits suicide, that becomes comes to the fore, isn’t it? Because you think maybe I should have called him or maybe I could have done something? How did you deal with that natural thing, number one? Number one. And number two is it’s an unrelated question. Was your best day ever the day that it first came out? Yeah, like two weeks before or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um, the dealing with it, I’ve not dealt with it, have you not? No. Um, I think in ways you learn to compartmentalise certain things because so much is going on. I know both Nick and and I, when we delve into it, just break down and that’s me protecting myself. Because even when I’m speaking to you, I can feel it. Um, and there’s certain parts I won’t let my mind go to because I’m like scared to. And, you know, we both questioned because we saw the changes in behaviour, what we could have done, how much we could have done. I think the answer is probably always nothing, but you always feel like you should have. But hindsight is a is a great thing to go back to. But in terms of saying then, you know, one of the greatest time before for having my kids. Yeah, that was my moment. You know when you saw your name on that see it on the product to be on QVC, to see in stores, to see people tweeting and posting with this product. That was a high moment in my life. I think the only comparable moment at that time was the Times magazine cover. Like those were up there, like so mad, isn’t it.

Your highest and lowest moment around the same bit. Same bit.

But then this is what my dad always says is like, you know, for much is given can be taken. And I think that’s where I’m aware of that now. You know, I’m aware of that. No matter how good things are, bad things can come. I think someone said it. A patient said, life is like diarrhoea. It’s the shit just keeps coming. And he was so right because it is, you know, in life when you’re just doing things you. Things will just come out of the blue, but you just kind of roll with the punches and appreciate where you are.

One thing that I said is that we’ve become a society that is obsessed with self soothing and not feeling. And because we want to be on these constant highs, because everything’s at our fingertips, you know, even when I was growing up, I remember it was such a treat to get a takeaway because, you know, not many people did it. You couldn’t get it. And now, like Deliveroo, is just easy. It was such a treat to go to Blockbuster and find a film that you’d been waiting for. Now you can get it on Netflix. You know, like all these things that we used to feel, you know, almost had to be waited for. We now have it. So now the adverse effect is, is that we don’t want to feel the pain, so we just numb it. And then we constantly seek being in a high in a constant state. I think recently one of the things I’ve done, I’ve been going through a lot the last few months and as you know, and I’m actually like, okay, I really need to just cry today and feel a bit sad and feel a bit crap and just realise this too shall pass because this is life and you know, I can’t be on this constant state of like happiness all the time. And I think that’s something that we have to understand and accept. And like you said, you know, we talk a lot. This is a mental health conversation. We talk a lot about removing stigmas. Payman has been incredible because I’d approached a lot of people in the industry. Dentistry has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession, and a lot of people didn’t want to talk about it because there’s so much shame, there’s so much shame around being like, I’m not okay and there’s so much shame around like, Well, if you’re privileged and you have everything, you don’t have any reason to get upset. And I think, you know, recognising that actually having these moments, like you said, with Brandon, who seem to have it all, you know, can happens to everyone.

Yeah. Brandon’s very good friend, almost like a brother to him that we never met. We only met during filming this documentary. Now he was surprised about how I had felt. And it just shows you what you’re talking about. Because he said he just saw me as this celebrity doctor that had all these clinics. But this was just a side thing to me. So he never knew the impact, how much impact that had until he was watching me say it on camera. And he was like, I just had no idea. And it comes down to exactly as you’re saying, when you’re in this realm of people like, Oh, you’ve got this going for you, you’ve got this going for you, they assume you’re one scared to react because you’re almost kind of going, Well, I’m not grateful for the other things. But then at the same time, people don’t appreciate that because, well, you’ve got all these other things, so it probably doesn’t really matter to you when at the end of the day you’re still human and it really can affect you in that way. And that’s what I did. You know, I cried a lot about that personally, you know, and shut down and became even now to this day, I’m very careful about using the word friend and who I associate myself with to protect myself, you know, And it’s always been like that, too. But no, but that’s since, you know, I think it amplified it, you know. You know, I was always a bit that way because I saw sometimes how different circles and different people moved and talked about people when they weren’t there. And I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that energy, so I didn’t want to be that. But when I got that pain and that level, I was like, okay, these people here, I know you and I know what you’re like. In each situation. I can predict that these new people coming, I don’t know that. And so I need to control this. So by controlling it.

You know, it’s the thing about that’s why you’re so close to your childhood friends, because you really know who they are. And my wife has a real problem with me not jumping into the friends of my kids parents as much as I do my own friends. But there is that that protected thing. Whereas when you’ve known someone for 30 years, you just really know who they are. Yeah.

But I’d say with dentistry, like you’re very trusting and you open your arms to a lot of dentists within the profession and I think that, you know, that surprises me that you say that, whereas I think that I’ve in the last couple of years, oh no, even probably in the last year, I finally understand why people say protect your own energy, because I’ve trusted everyone and I’ve assumed that everybody thinks in the way that I do. And they have empathy and loyalty. But I’ve sadly learned the truth that like, there’s not people with the same, you know, values and the same ethics as you. And I’ve been hurt and I’ve been burnt. And I’m like, okay, this is funny. But now I understand why people say like, keep your clothes, your circle closed. Don’t trust everyone you know. Don’t just, you know, wear your heart on your sleeve. And I think that there is something to be said for that. And maybe it is something about also growing old. But I used to be like, oh my gosh, like everyone’s amazing. Everyone has something to give. Everyone’s a good person, you know, They’re probably.

Just like TJ saying, your experiences end up forming you, you know, so. What happened with Brandon here. He’s saying now going forward, that’s even made him slightly more defensive than before. But there is a downside to that is you is the loss of the purity of the person. It is the person you were? Yeah, it.

Is. And it is sad because I do know it’s that difference in me. I think when people are in that circle with me, they’re like, Yeah, people don’t know that side as much because you’re your clothes, because you protect the people around you and you don’t want them to suffer that type of pain. I always say, like, all of us are scarred and you either then become a hero or villain in your own story. You know, you see it in comics, right? The the hero scarred, you know, But he’s like, I’ve been hurt this bad. I don’t want anyone else to feel this, so I’m going to protect you and everyone else. Well, the villains like I’ve been hurt so bad. I want everybody to feel this pain. And, you know, you kind of either go each way, you know, depending on how you deal with that pain, you know? And and for me, it’s been like, right, I’m I want to protect the people around me. I don’t want them to have that pain. But then I’m also going to be be careful of who I bring into that space, which is boundaries, boundaries, you know, which can, for some people that know me, know that, okay, that’s just me. But other people that don’t know you can initially think, oh, well, maybe he’s a bit African, maybe he’s a bit this. But actually it’s not.

It’s just it’s amazing the way, you know, you guys are both huge on social. Yeah. So that has this massive problem side to it. I think both of you must accept that that’s just a necessary evil compared to the up that it gives you. Let’s not go into it yet. The the thing is, I didn’t know you before today. I looked at your social and I, you know, I thought, yeah, this guy is probably very good at what he does. He’s a bit obsessed with his own name. Yeah. Yeah. Like I. I thought of, like, Trump. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. No, no, no.

You’re telling me this branding expert told you to put your name on everything, And before this was one of the world’s top branding, people told you to put your name on everything. You didn’t have your name on everything. And so here I’ve made a judgement, right, that this is a guy who loves his own name. Yeah. And actually that was just advice. That was one of the world’s top branding. People gave him the name. I’ve judged you on it. This is it. It’s an amazing thing, you know? So. So what we get from a profile is just a subjective, subjective.

Thing, subjective.

Of what people take. And I think you’re right. It’s it’s the devil is in the details that you get the benefit of how social media can grow your business. But then there is a downside. And I’ve always said this to like Rona, I’ve gone. If I could have had and have the same level of success I had without anyone knowing me, I would trade it for that tomorrow, of course, because I think No one, when you wish for a level of success, wants the baggage that comes with it. So whether it’s any jealousy or envy or anything, you don’t want any of that to come to.

Expand on it. What are the things that have happened to you on social? The Bad bits?

The worst for me is racism.

Oh really?

You know, I think the problem with social media is too easy to say. Something behind a blank. Yeah. Thing. You know, people say stuff that they wouldn’t say to your own face, you know, behind the keyboard warriors and stuff. You know, the worst I had was when my son was born and I had a message and it was basically saying, Oh, just because he’s half white, he’s still a monkey. Both of you guys need to go back to Africa, you know? And I remember thinking, how could you be so triggered by a picture of this innocent child to have that level of anger, to message me that and send me that, you know, this innocent child? You know, I’ve got to a point where almost which is sad. I accept racism to myself, but I’m like this child who has done nothing in this world, just been born and just been born. And you would have that view. That really cut to me. And I just at that point I was very close to just deleting social media because I just thought, I don’t want this energy in here, you know, from that point and coming back to what you said about Escher. Yeah, again, that was partly protective initially because I was proud of my name, because my dad carries so much pride in the name. It was like the surname means jewels more worth than gold, you know, It was like, you know, someone would say Esho. He would correct them, say, No, it’s Esho. He would have such pride in the name. So I never wanted to put anything because I didn’t know if I could live up to that. You know, it was branding. And when he heard it, he says, No, you need to lean into it. And for me, that’s the reason why it’s on everything. Not for me to kind of go, It’s strong.

It’s strong anyway.

But yeah, but it’s not even that. It’s not even the marketing bit of it. It’s now what it represents, you know? So my dad is not here, so any time that’s on something I feel he touches that now keeps.

Keeps his memory.

Alive, keeps his memory. Also the other thing which I didn’t even know it had an impact. So when I opened the recent clinic in Flannels and it’s got Escher in there, I had a journalist. Come to see me as a black journalist. And she was in tears and but smiling and hugged me. And I was like, Are you okay? And she goes, You don’t know what you’ve done. And I said, What do you mean? And she said, To see the name Esho, she was a Nigerian lady in a prominent store like There in the open, like it’s making it acceptable that it should be there, you know, she says. You don’t see that. She goes, You know, I don’t walk in and see a big African name there, right? Bang in the middle of a luxury. I don’t see those things. And to see that makes anyone else that’s looking to do that go, I can do that. And I didn’t. I never knew that. So then from the day she said that on top of the helping my dad and what he’s given me touched things.

That.

This racism thing though. Yeah. Do you not feel this next generation on it’s completely gone for them like I know.

I know No I.

Think that’s no completely.

It’s a massive word but but but I.

Think they tolerate.

It less.

Listen to this isn’t it. I know people who are racist. Yeah, Iranians. Iranians are racist bunch. We think we’re better than everyone. Anyone darker or lighter than us is wrong. This is correct. Yeah. It’s a normal.

Thing for Persian.

Empire.

It’s a normal thing for Iranians to sit around with saying how brilliant they are. Yeah. And being racist about other people. Then I see the children of the same person who might say that being completely the opposite. And, you know, it makes you realise that, you know, the, well, the flip side of this woke bullshit, you know, the bullshit part, which is what everyone keeps focusing in on, right? The flip side, the right side of that is that we’re seeing a new generation come in who are much more accepting of not only, you know, transsexuals, of every type of diverse situation, you know, now there’s not there’s always going to be a chemical reaction when you see someone who’s different to you in your head, just like an animal sees a different species or different, there’s going to be a chemical reaction. But that generation, they’ve been my children, they’ve been trained to understand that that is wrong. You know, that that’s the highest wrong. And even though I think about today’s society and this whole my pronouns crap, right, I.

Get cancelled for saying that. Be careful.

I know. But that, you know, that’s the whole point of a podcast, right? You can you can say as you, as you see what I’m saying is the flip side of all of that is that we’re getting a society that’s much, much more accepting of all the different people.

I think I agree with you partly on that because I do think part of it comes to exposure. So now, you know, these kids that are born, they’re born like it’s the treatment effect, right? They’re living on social media, living on platforms. They don’t just see the world that you give them in the house. They see what’s happening out more readily available. I remember when I went to medical school, there was an Asian girl and I was the first black person she had seen in real life. In real life, because her village in Wales did not have a single black person. And when she moved, it was the first person like, Now that’s different. That’s very hard for that to happen. But that’s because social media, TV, everything that interactions that drive. So I do think now there is, but I also do think at the same time social media isn’t a true representation of what’s fully going on.

Correct?

Because I think there’s a lot of angry people on social media and angry for the wrong reasons. So, as you know, you talked about you expressed your view, how you felt about pronouns. People aren’t allowed to almost express anything Now if it doesn’t fall into a line of whatever you think you’re cancelled, you know, and actually saying social media has the power to do, that feels crazy to me because it’s giving that too much power than it should have. Actually.

I think it’s inciting hate as well into the minorities. Um, you know, that believe of certain things. Like for example, I do a podcast with Shivani who’s one of my really good friends, and we talked about discussions because I think like on the flip side, sorry, I’m going to be one of those women. But you know, I do think that like, you know, I never realised and I think a lot of people have said to me the difficulties of being a female, especially a female in business, I never really understood. And I was like, That’s not a thing. Like, we don’t have that much like adversity in business. And I think as I’ve grown in the last ten years and created things, I’m like, There’s actually a lot of BS. Like, I couldn’t believe it. Now, part of the generation. So we’ve got the Woke brigade that talk about the fact that like men and women are equal and women this and women that, and me and Shivani had these discussions online. And the thing is, is that you do have like a sect of people that are really angry. And I think that I’m a very fair, balanced person in my conversations. And I’m always like very nuanced in the views that I give. But for example, we were talking about like the expectations of a woman by the time you’re 30.

And if you go into the comments, it had a massive impact on both of our mental health. By the way, there’s men being there, being like. Are you deluded? Of course. Women are on the shelf at 30. Of course, men desire like younger, more fertile women. Of course, women who put their careers at the forefront are going to fail in life. Of course, all these comments and obviously I know that a lot of that is crap because, you know, the reality that I’m living in is I have an amazing supportive partner who is, you know, high value, as they put it. I am coping in my career. Sure, I have the pressures of like, fertility. Et cetera. But I’m very aware of that. Et cetera. But the point is, is that when I see how angry these group of people are about these subjects, I think to myself, you know, yeah, we do have all the woke conversations, but there is still a lot of very angry people. And silencing angry people makes things worse in a way. And then they’re going to find some cult leader or, you know, someone online that basically fuels their hatred.

So it’s a difficult.

Hatred out to be a sort of a you know, there are good and evil thing, but really it’s about winners and losers in society. Yeah. If you’re if you’re losing right now, Yeah. You’ll start to feel hatred. Of course. Yeah. You’re winning. Yeah. So it’s hard to imagine what it feels like to be losing. Yeah, but if you’re losing, you start to find reasons why you’re losing. And one of the reasons why is because you’re doing this, you know, and you put it out has to come out of you somewhere, project you project it onto someone else’s situation.

You know, I.

Really agree with you on that. I think when you look at people that are very angry, it’s because it’s it’s not you. It’s them, It’s them. It’s what’s happening in their lives. It doesn’t make it right that they’re putting it towards you, but it isn’t about you. And that’s how I’ve dealt with it. Sometimes I’ve gone, This isn’t about me. It could be anyone that’s like me in this situation right now. But because how? Wherever what I might be achieving or whatever doing is making them feel in that moment in time. I’m the outlet and it’s in protecting yourself from that part.

But I.

Reckon it’s a nice exercise to find that in yourself.

To.

Anger.

Hatred where.

You’re losing.

Yeah.

I mean, I remind myself every day where I’m.

No, no, but.

But, but no, but how that makes you angry towards something like. I don’t know.

I get it.

I get it. Justin Trudeau is younger than me. Yeah.

Who?

The Prime minister.

Prime minister Canada. Yeah. Yeah.

Younger than me. Yeah. Did my head in for a while, though. Is it running Canada? Yeah. I can’t run this 40 person company.

You know what’s so funny? I’m angry.

But you’re not going to go online and.

Just start trolling him and his.

Family, are you? No.

No, but I might sit with someone. I mean, I actually quite like Trudeau, but I might sit with someone and.

Stop bitching about.

It. Trudeau is a bitch, you know. I don’t like what he said about something. Yeah, I know. He’s a bit.

Worried. You know, my.

Therapist told me also, when you feel really angry, you shouldn’t suppress it because it’s a normal emotion. And what you can do is literally go into your room, put the pillow and start screaming into it, or even things like boxing, boxing, like rich, literally people again, like actually releasing anger is actually a really healthy thing to do. Now, I want to ask you as well, because importantly, we work in an aesthetic industry, mental health with patients. Are you good at spotting it, number one? Number two, do you think that has got worse over the last decade with people’s perception of beauty, the ideologies around what they should look like and the reality of what they can achieve?

Yeah, that’s a good question. So mental health has always been prevalent within aesthetics because I do think by a subsection of people that go into it, it does attract a particular person sometimes. So you have to expect if you look at just a whole population as a whole and then you grab the aesthetic patient group, that type of person is going to be skewed more within this group. So you have to be, as a practitioner aware of that and skilled in the consultation to look at flags, you know, and flags used to be very obvious. You know, someone used to go to many clinics and it was always the clinic’s fault. They never got the right result that they wanted, you know, cancelling consultations, rebooking, you know, all of these little flags wouldn’t look in the mirror. You know, you do the treatment, finish it. No, I don’t want to see the result. Can’t look in the mirror. You know, all these different things with flags that you picked up through time. But I definitely even for the experience I’ve had now, I’ve been doing this about ten years. I’ve not seen them out. I’ve seen since the pandemic itself. I keep saying this to like my team, you know, post pandemic. When we sat down, I said, We really need to scrutinise this more because I said the anxieties now I’m seeing in patients, the body dysmorphia, the changes that I’m seeing have been so heightened that, you know, this is going to become a problem.

You know, and you’ve seen it in the rise in medical negligence cases, claims, different things. What are the stimulus for the reasons? Is it that practitioners are getting worse? Is it that there are worse results or is it the reality that it’s becoming defensive medicine? That people now are not winning, they’re not getting the money they want. They have the pressures and someone becomes an easy target. You know, and I and I do think a lot of practitioners do feel that in that space are scared to have that conversation, you know, But it is there and I see it and I see it happen to our colleagues. I see it happening in my own practice. And it does sometimes when you get a situation like that, sometimes questioning why you want to do it, like it leaves you sitting there because when you are genuinely good at it and you generally have it as a passion, which I hope I do, you pour everything into it every day, you know, part of you is left in it, you know. So when something like that comes back at you and you know, you’ve done everything like it hurts you, it really does. And I think people sometimes, you know, they might like I said, see you on social media, see me on social media, think, well, no, they’ll be fine if that doesn’t. No, it cuts cuts.

Deep and so.

Deep, you know, you carry it with you. And so the answer to it, I think, comes into a couple of things. I think better regulation, particularly in my industry, you know, dentistry is more regulated than aesthetics.

So you guys are under regulated, we’re overregulated.

We’re over say so like, you know, you’re almost imprisoned into what you’re doing where there’s so much open parts. You know, we’ve got things happening everywhere.

If you were king of the world, what regulations would you put in place?

You know what? I look at the Dubai system and think, that is a great system. What is it? So even though I’m registered with the GMC, when I went to Dubai, I had to get a license by the DHA first to say I could practice and do as aesthetics as a doctor. Doctor Not no, no. Yeah. And and I had to have, you know, prove so many things, send all these things, get all these references, all these certificates before I could even touch anything. And the things were severe. The, you know, the punishments were severe. If I got caught and I didn’t have a license and I was practising, now I’m in prison. So you had. Yes. You still have people sometimes skirting that, but nothing like you did.

Had people in Dubai no one can inject who isn’t.

A doctor? No.

You you you wouldn’t be able to if the DHA found out. Dentists. Yeah, dentists now are allowed. So it evolved. So I think what happened is they went very blanket hard. So at first you were a doctor. At the beginning it was plastic surgeon or dermatologist.

Wow, I remember.

This. Then it was plastic surgeon, dermatologist, subsections of doctor. You know, dentists was bad. That’s been recent with the dentists and nurses as well, just evolving parts. But then they only also say certain parts of aesthetics they’re allowed to do. How they come up with that.

Is that what you’d like to happen here? Only only doctors and dentists are allowed to inject?

I think so. You know, I know there’s probably no medical.

Doctors that will.

Get on there. No nurses? No, I definitely think so. When I’m talking about sorry, I should be saying medical practitioners and when I include medical practitioners, I say doctor, dentist, pharmacologists, pharmacology is slightly different and I know there’s going to be pharmacists. I’ve had open conversations with pharmacists where I speak now when we’re talking about injectables, I think there’s a core understanding of anatomy that you need to have that makes you safe. Also a core understanding of conditions that relate to what you’re doing and need to make you safe, right? So when I look at specialities that don’t have those things, I worry because I go, okay, what are you actually going to do when those things go wrong? You’re going to have a call, a doctor. You know, this is an independent private sector, so these people should be able to treat these things independently and responsible, not treat it and then go if it goes wrong. Right. I’ll just go and get someone else and hope that every procedure goes right because it’s not going to happen that way. So that’s where I feel in that the training is different now. I think the biggest problem is that it’s not a subsection on its own. So I think there would be a big solving of the issue if at the point of entry at university and you go there, you can practice to be an aesthetic practitioner on a long term.

Like 50 or whatever.

Like that or thinking that way. That I think would clear all the issue because I think everybody would be happy. One, that person’s had the relevant training for all of those years. Two, there wouldn’t be the whole, well, you’ve trained to be in the NHS, you should be in the NHS. You shouldn’t have gone in there. No, your pathway was always there. So there’s none. Okay. How many years do you have to stay in? How many years do you have to give back before you go? You go, right? This is where I wanted to be and go and do. And I think that a time there was conversations for that to happen where a lot of doctors and people talk together about maybe having that happen. But then the door, you know, the horse bolted from the it was too late. There were so many different people doing it, different specialities, different areas that people were like, Well, how do we close the door now when it’s been opened? How do we close the door? You know, if you look at the government point of view, yeah, you would think, okay, the. Interest in safety, but also the interest of making money. That’s a lot of tax. That’s a lot of income for the country. You know, it’s £1 billion industry. You know, so to cut off and go. Right. A third of those people, you know, can’t do it anymore. The economy is going to go, well, where’s where are we getting that money from? Forget the safety. That’s what they’re going to, you know, whereas as a practitioner, we’re like, well, we want it to be safe. We don’t really care about that side. So that’s where Dubai with their side because they get the extra income from the licensing, they get the extra income from the indemnity you have to get from the DA. So it would be supplemented by that. So each doctor would have to spend on an extra license and extra indemnity, which I think would subsidise.

Now, now that we discussed complications. There’s a couple of things I want to ask you on our on our other podcast, we have the big piece from Black Box Thinking, okay, do you know, do you know? No, no. Black Boxing is a book where he talks about plane crashes. Okay. When a plane crashes, they get all the information out. They don’t blame anyone. They get all the information out and they share the information with all the pilots around the world so that that mistake never happens again. Yeah. And then he moves it, segways it into medical because when a disaster happens in medical, it everyone hides the information because it’s all about whose fault was it? And for that reason, we never learn from each other’s mistakes. Yeah. So I want to ask you a couple of questions. What’s the biggest clinical error that you’ve made? And also what’s the biggest, you know, botched job that you’ve had to fix?

So I would say I would say they were both the same thing. So it was tissue necrosis. So regularly as a practitioner, I’ve had to see cases of tissue necrosis and help in those situations. But in my time as a practitioner over ten years, I’ve had two cases myself, you know, And so the one I remember because one was really at the beginning, but I’ll talk about each the each case was a delayed presentation and I’m my self’s worst critic, so no one can criticise me more than I can criticise myself anyway. And I went over and that patient is still a patient of mine today. So it shows you that in a situation you can continue and do the same and the right correct treatment, that person feels they were treated correct and it go wrong. And that’s what people don’t understand. And I think that’s where the fear, that culture, fear of blaming comes, because you should be open about that. I tell younger I feel like old now because the younger guys go, you’re the OG now. I’m like, I’m not that old, you know, But I try and tell them because they go, Oh, I haven’t had any complications. And I was like, Yeah, well, you will. No, no, no. I said, You will. It’s the numbers.

Game. It’s a numbers.

Game.

It’s a numbers game of dentistry.

So you did some lips.

And a piece, literally a piece of.

Necrosis. Yeah. So I did some lips and injected filler. This is a patient I’ve been seeing for three years. Very trusted. Did the lips the same way I did it. Normally, no signs of distress, everything fine. She went home and I always still as pattern recognition because in my system and again probably be at medical defensive we have it sent out the email about, you know, aftercare. We say it, you know, it gets ticked off by the front desk. You know, they get 24 hour emergency number to call. So it’s all around the clock to make sure it’s fine. And what had happened was that patient basically, because she’s been fine all the time, she dismissed that stuff and it was day two. She started getting pain in the right side of her lip, excruciating pain. But she was like, Oh, don’t bother. Doctor Escher, take some painkillers. Woke up in the night, loads of pain, took some stronger painkillers. This time. Hasn’t contacted her at all yet. Okay. And then it got to day three. She woke up, vesicles started appearing above the lip, and that’s when she contacted. So I get a call and I remember this. I was in Miami, my new Newcastle clinic. This patient comes to see me in London, but lives in Manchester and since been a photo and I’m like, Oh my God. Then I’m like remembering because I’ve seen so many patients. I’m like, I saw you like four days ago, like, what’s been going on? And so I get that history and I’m going, Oh my God, why didn’t you call me from the time when you had the pain? This I didn’t want to bother you.

So she come to.

Newcastle and things like that. So what I had to do was act. I had to act. You know, in that time you’re worrying about how much is already necrosis, saying because we know this, there’s arguments about treating in this space of time. Most of the infarctions happen within the first 24 to 48 hours. So really anything you do may not be that good. But then there’s an evidence now that’s showing if you still continue and flush with hyaluronidase in these situations and treat that, you can recover tissue too, right? So I’m like, right, you’re in Manchester and this is an importance of network. So I call my colleague Tim Pierce, who’s in Manchester, and I call him and bless him because I’m working on a Sunday and I’m still in that mode like my dad is working every day. He’s out with his kids and I’m like, Look, I’m sorry to put this on you, but I’ve got a lady in Manchester and I need her tree Now if she’s going to travel from thing, it’s going to take her hours to get here. I need it.

I want you now. I’m happy to come over and meet you or whatever, but can you get her in a clinic? And he was like no doubt got her into clinic straight away. And so treating her and what happened was he was like, Look, don’t come. We’ll just be on FaceTime, you know, so we can be talking and discussing that. And that’s what we did. It was in and out FaceTime in that period of time. She was reassured because she had two doctors talking about it. There was no blame, there was no nothing. It was just two doctors working together to get it sorted. It was funny because we had different approaches to treating necrosis as well because I was like, I want her to go into a hyperbaric chamber. He was like, he didn’t believe in hyperbaric was enough in that way, but it changed his practice because when we saw her afterwards and the way she healed and she repaired, he started bringing hyperbaric more into what he did. And because of that. But she came out she did well.

She injected the.

The hyaluronic acids. He was doing that on the hour in pulses, pulses, trying to make sure that there was reperfusion to the tissue continuously, You know, and when you do that, it’s an irritant. So it’s painful. There’s a lot of swelling. It’s quite distressing for the patient. The patient has to trust what is happening is going okay, because sometimes in that situation, trust can be lost and.

Then straight into a hyperbaric.

Straight into. So I called. I found there was a place in Manchester for her to go. So the next day she went straight there and she was basically having daily hyperbaric sessions whilst being reviewed by Dr. Tim. And we were seeing the photos together and we were seeing that tissue heals and healed, healed perfectly.

So what would have happened if you hadn’t have done all this? You’d have had to cut the bit out.

It depends how much of the tissue is affected because sometimes when you get necrosis, because there’s so many collaterals and there’s so many other blood vessels, the body does compensate. So you might have this transitional part where you have the appearance of vesicles and everything else looking like the tissue is about to die. But what will happen is that then the collaterals give a collateral blood flow. That blockage is transient and goes and actually they reperfused and they heal. So that’s why you see a lot of cases actually don’t end up going that way. But for some it’s where you’ve got end arteries where there’s no collaterals and then.

You’re really in a situation.

That’s why the nose. Yeah, exactly. Or the eye. So in those areas become. But yeah, no, she was very lucky, you know, she was great. But when I look back at it, there was nothing I could have done differently because when I injected her, I did everything that I would do normally, you know, I felt those lips. I looked at the capillary refill. I saw how she was.

You could. You could have you could have.

Called her the day.

After.

Well, no, You see this? So we have a call where we call patients now on the third day. But we used to try and call everyone on the day after. And actually it became more of a irritant to patients. Patients were like, you know, they felt it almost was like a bit like a hard.

Sell where they had a friend.

That was like, It’s overkill.

They call me. Yeah, they.

Call some patients don’t actually like are we always call like big veneer cases where they’ve been in the chair for like five hours. Yeah. Um.

But with routine cases where what we’ve done is we’ve patterned out everything, you know, So we did in that case, like I said, she had everything of the flags when to contact. You have a mobile number which.

Hadn’t had any, any, any adverse effect before.

Before.

You know, it was in that way, you know, whereas actually an anxious first patient probably would have messaged and went, okay, what’s this? And immediately what would have happened was we would have said, okay, come in, let’s see what’s been seen, assess. But we had that situation and that’s how that happened.

I get it. Yeah, Yeah.

Okay. So we could talk for hours and hours because Dr. Esho and I know that, um, but I just wanted to thank you so much as always. It’s been so amazing and so inspiring. Um, we always try to end with a question before you go.

Okay.

My question.

Is.

What does the ultimate form of happiness look like for you?

Family man like it Honestly, for me being at home with and when I mean family, I don’t just mean family blood, family. I mean like the people around you that matter most, being around those peoples when I’m on my most biggest high and I really try to lean that into that as much as possible because, you know, we’re all going to die. You know, when you go on people’s death beds, you know, when they talk to people at that thing, they always say, I wish I had more time and say, I wish I had more time to make more money or wish I had more time to have more success. They wish they had more time to be with their loved ones, with their family. So that’s what I try and lean into now as much as possible.

Amazing.

Thank you so much. You can find Dr. Esho on all social outlets, Google, Wikipedia, whatever you want to do. We really appreciate you being here.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you, buddy.