The Value of Family and Following Your Dreams with the Late Dr Anoop Maini  

In this very special episode, we talk to one of dentistry’s most inspirational figures.

Recorded shortly before his tragic passing in the summer of 2019, the great Dr Anoop Maini shares his recollections of growing up in London and going on to run three successful practices alongside wife Neera.

Always a family man, Anoop tells how he passed on his legendary work ethic to his children, and talks movingly about the passing of his father. 

In an episode full of Anoop’s trademark wisdom, there’s much more to unpack – including his thoughts on the value of teaching others, and how a clinical error transformed his outlook forever.

Enjoy!

To be successful in anything you’ve got to have someone behind you…you can’t do things on your own. – Anoop Maini

 

About Anoop Maini

Anoop Maini studied at King’s College before opening up his first practice in London. He went on to set up a further three successful dental practices, including Aqua Dental Clinic. 

Anoop served as president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD) as well as the European Society of Aesthetic Orthodontics (ESAO) – an organisation he helped found.

Away from his hands-on dentistry work, he had a passion for teaching and helped thousands of other dentists learn from his vast experience.

In today’s episode:

3:33 – Anoop’s London upbringing

9:22 – Shaped by the past

11:10 – Passing on the work ethic

16:20 – Love what you do

21:30 – A story about gaming

23:45 – On working with his wife

30:50 – A life-changing error

34:48 – Business development 

39:20 – Anoop’s marketing tips for new dentists

45:00 – The two types of dentist

52:48 – Why teaching matters

58:18 – About the passing of his father 

1:03:39 – His father’s legacy

1:06:57 – Life after death

1:09:00 – Legacy

 

Connect with Prav and Payman:

Website

Prav on Instagram

Payman on Instagram

 

 

Transcript

Prav Solanki:
Welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast, and today’s interview is with Anoop Maini who sadly passed away since recording this interview. Just saying these words as I’m sat here recording this intro, I’m still in utter disbelief. You know, sometimes I think he’s still there and he’s still here with us, influencing us all. His loss has left a massive void, not only in the world of dentistry, but for a lot of individuals personally and especially those who he was closest to, like his wife Neera, his daughter Nikita, and his son Rohan. But in his absence, his legacy lives on to continue through all of us. His passion for dentistry, teaching, and if you ever had the opportunity and you were lucky enough to strike up a conversation, you’ll remember those conversations where he just injected tonnes of humour into it, never, ever, ever noticed a day in the decade that I’ve known him where he was stressed or anxious or anything like that, and always took life in his stride, or at least he didn’t show it. He was always so selfless and so giving with his time.

Prav Solanki:
But guys, I’m just struggling to find my words, which is really unusual. Yeah, I think it’s just because I can’t believe that he’s gone. So, I’m just going to let you kick back, listen to the interview and get what you can from it, but there’s some really key messages here. If you’re a business owner, a dentist, and you’re working your socks off, just sit back and appreciate the messages from Anoop, especially those relating to family, how important and precious that time is.

Prav Solanki:
We really all do miss you Anoop. I know you’re up there, I know you’re looking down, and I know you’re smiling, I know you’re laughing, and I know you’re up there looking after everyone. And through us all, I promise you mate, your legacy is going to continue and be much, much stronger than when you were here mate. We’ll make you proud buddy. Listen guys, enjoy the interview.

Anoop Maini:
I just shoot from the hip sometimes.

Payman:
You don’t mean fire people?

Anoop Maini:
Well, not fire people. I can be-

Payman:
Fire ideas.

Anoop Maini:
Fire ideas, positivity, but I could also, if someone did something wrong, I’ll tell them.

Payman:
Who does the firing? Who does the firing in the practice?

Anoop Maini:
My wife.

Payman:
Who does the hiring?

Anoop Maini:
My wife.

Speaker 4:
This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one-on-one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts, Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, I think I’ve known you for over a decade and it’s a pleasure having you here on the podcast. I’m sure you’ve got lots of lessons to reveal to dentists and other people listening to this podcast, so let’s just get started. I’d just like you to take us back to your backstory, where you were born, where you were brought up, what your childhood was like growing up. So yeah, just kick things off Anoop and tell us a little bit about yourself and your upbringing.

Anoop Maini:
I was born in Kenya, Nairobi, where we had four siblings, mom and dad. In 1973 we left Kenya and we came to London. When we came to London we moved to an area called Mill Hill, which is North London, and we were probably the first Asian family actually in that sort of area.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
It was most immigrants sort of settled in sort of like West London, but we actually emigrated in North London.

Payman:
How old were you?

Anoop Maini:
I was three years old.

Payman:
So, you don’t remember?

Anoop Maini:
No, I do remember.

Payman:
You do remember?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, three years old. I remember because I remember going to school. At that time I was fluent in Swahili, I didn’t speak English.

Prav Solanki:
Jambo, Jambo, Habari Ghani.

Anoop Maini:
Jambo bwana. So, in terms of fluency and obviously having to deal with the culture difference, the food differences, et cetera, it was quite a learning curve at that time. Obviously I don’t speak Swahili now. In fact, I think you know more than me at the moment. But in terms of the initial integration, it was a little bit difficult.

Anoop Maini:
In those days, fortunately the area we were in, they were pretty accepting of an Asian family. We were almost like a novelty factor, you know, so it wasn’t that difficult. I didn’t experience a lot of racism, as such, directly. They were pretty nice, English accommodating sort of families. Also, a lot of Jewish immigrants in the area as well.

Prav Solanki:
So, my parents came from East Africa as well, and my dad always tells me stories about coming into this country. He always tells me this story, that the only thing him and his family had were the clothes that they were wearing and three gold bangles. Yeah? Three solid gold bangles. My dad’s brother was wearing those bangles way up his sleeve so nobody could see it. At the airport, he was shaking his hand and the bangles fell off his arm onto the floor and they were confiscated.

Prav Solanki:
So, when they came into this country, they had nothing but the clothes on their back.

Payman:
Where were they from?

Prav Solanki:
Tanzania.

Anoop Maini:
See, my dad, we had to emergency sell our properties, et cetera, the house, so trying to get money out of the country, there was a lot of … You almost had to go through the back road. When you did that, a lot of the administration charges consumed the vast bulk of it, so he didn’t come here with a lot of money, as such. But for my father, he was like the father to his own siblings as well.

Prav Solanki:
Got ya.

Anoop Maini:
Because he lost his father quite young. Most of my uncles went onto university. They became solicitors, they became surveyors, et cetera. They were all pretty educated.

Prav Solanki:
Was your dad the oldest out of them?

Anoop Maini:
Second oldest.

Prav Solanki:
Second oldest, right.

Anoop Maini:
And the first oldest was actually studying in Oxford at the time.

Prav Solanki:
Oh wow.

Anoop Maini:
My father was due to come to London to study law, but my grandfather passed away and no one stepped to the plate, so my father stepped to the plate. So, he took over the running and the education of all the siblings, so the income dropped. He actually used to work too, so he was like the second father for the family.

Anoop Maini:
He looked after brothers and sisters and raised them. They call him papa, they call him dad. He’s been someone who’s always put everyone else before him, and that’s always been his culture. So, even my grandmother who always lived with us, he always looked after her. So, I’ve always been brought up in a very family-orientated closeness.

Prav Solanki:
I think a lot of people listening here, especially if they don’t come from an Asian background like we do, sometimes don’t have an appreciation of what that culture is. And so, living with extended family, being surrounded by uncles, cousins, all within the same house, right? Am I right in saying that?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah. Can you just talk to me about that environment and the pros and cons of it while growing up in that environment?

Anoop Maini:
I’ve got two sisters and one brother, and I remember we all lived in one room. So, we had two double bunks. My sisters are almost eight years older. A joke in my family is that I was a mistake, because-

Prav Solanki:
I can understand that. Kidding.

Anoop Maini:
No, I said, “I’m the loved one. I was planned.” Right? You know, the other ones were mistakes. But anyway, my brothers and my sisters are quite close to each other by like one year apart, and then there’s a four, five year gap between my brother and me.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
But you imagine, we’ve got quite age differential and we stayed in this one room for most of our lives up to about 16 to 17. So, we’re not a family that was very fortunate in any way. You know, my father had pretty down to earth jobs. He was very working class. He worked in a motor company selling parts and things. Then he worked for Sainsbury’s, he worked in the car park.

Anoop Maini:
So, it’s very humble character, but I never actually went without. He provided me with a car. My brother got a car. He put me into private education, although it was with a scholarship, but it wasn’t a full scholarship, it was still 50%. And when you’ve got school fees in those days, which we 14,000 or 12,000, even with a scholarship it’s still a lot of money.

Prav Solanki:
A lot of money.

Payman:
Was that Mill Hill School?

Anoop Maini:
Mill Hill School.

Payman:
Was it?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, yeah. Went to Mill School on a scholarship. So, you know, my father was always. My brother went to a private college. He really just went without. We didn’t have family holidays. Our family holiday may have been Blackpool, but we didn’t travel abroad. I didn’t travel abroad until I actually got married. You know, it was my honeymoon was my first holiday.

Payman:
You know, a lot of people, they look back at that hardship and they say it kind of defined them and gave them what they have today and so on. Do you feel that way?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, because you know, I look at anything in life and I can live with or without money. I don’t worry about taking risks because I’ve spent most of my life without much.

Payman:
So, you know you can always get back-

Anoop Maini:
I can always fall back to-

Payman:
My actual question is, your kids are obviously much more fortunate, in inverted commas, than that.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely.

Payman:
Do you worry sometimes that your kids have never seen hardship, and so they haven’t got that inner strength?

Anoop Maini:
I think that is one of my errors, in a way, because where I experienced the hardship and sacrifice in a few different ways, I didn’t want them to, and I had the means and ability to provide them with a slightly more cushioned environment. I don’t think they’re so streetwise, or they’ve grown up in a very protected environment, so I think they would not have the same type of motivation that I probably had in terms of taking risks or advancement or taking challenges or being entrepreneurial.

Anoop Maini:
I’ll give you a perfect example. My son, the other day, my wife said to my son-

Prav Solanki:
Rohan?

Anoop Maini:
Rohan.

Payman:
And how old is he?

Anoop Maini:
He is now 16, just about to do his GCSEs. My wife said to him last summer, “Right, I’ll tell you what, we’ll pay you £50 a week if you do all the chores of the house. Right? You can buy your games, whatever.”

Anoop Maini:
And he goes, “Why would I do that?” He goes, “I’d just take it out of dad’s wallet.”

Anoop Maini:
So, you know, this is times we’re in, because they’re not in that sort of bit of-

Payman:
Did he not know your wallet had a padlock on it?

Anoop Maini:
But the problem is, he knows the combination.

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, you talked about that being one of your biggest mistakes, right? You said that giving him that, but what could have you done differently? Like if you could turn the clock back now, what would you change?

Anoop Maini:
I would have taught him the value of work, value of money, because I think I would have, from an early age, I would have encouraged them to not just get things for nothing, you know? To try and work towards it, maybe in more like a reward, whereas I was in the habit of constantly just buying stuff for him.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
You know? If I saw something, I just bought it for him.

Prav Solanki:
You wanted the best for your kids, right?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely.

Prav Solanki:
You wanted to give them what you didn’t have.

Anoop Maini:
You love them, you know? You love them and you want them to enjoy life and to have things that you didn’t have. Again, it’s quite interesting because they’re used to travelling in quite a few exotic places, like from a young age to Mauritius to the Far East to South America. If you talk to them about their holidays, it’s all a blur, because they don’t have that sort of value on these holidays.

Anoop Maini:
My son will say to me, “Are we going business class?” And that’s the most important thing to him. You know? So these value issues, which I think they will start to face. My daughter’s now doing dentistry and she’s second year at King’s, and we’ve made the decision now that we have forced her to start taking loans rather than me funding her.

Prav Solanki:
Chopped her arm off basically.

Anoop Maini:
We basically have, because she was spending beyond belief. She was forever calling dad up and saying, “Put another £200. Put another £100.” She was having £12 cocktails up The Shard.

Prav Solanki:
They’re a bit more than 12 quid up there mate.

Anoop Maini:
Well, whatever it was, it was quite big by the end of the week. So, now we’re sort of trying to reeducate her.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
We forced her to get a job over the summer, so she worked as a receptionist in a school. We’re trying to encourage the work ethic for her, and I think that is a mistake from our behalf because I think in dentistry as well, you’ve got to have that slight value for money and the entrepreneur aspect, especially in general practice as well. I think she won’t have the same drive I may have had to try and achieve things, where things may have been more presented to her on a plate.

Payman:
I mean, I hear you and we all understand that story, but you can’t also ignore the fact that she’ll have something that you didn’t have from the privileged upbringing that she’s got too. There is that too, we can’t ignore that. She might think a lot bigger than you, you know? She might open a giant chain of dental practises, whereas you were always one at a time, for instance.

Anoop Maini:
Correct.

Payman:
I don’t know for sure.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. She may surprise us.

Payman:
True.

Anoop Maini:
She may be a totally-

Payman:
Did she say she wanted to be a dentist, or did you guys kind of put that in her head?

Anoop Maini:
You know, I’ll be honest, from a young age I was trying to influence her.

Payman:
She’s going to listen to this, you know that?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I know she is. From a young age I was trying to influence here, and I would have bought her the Play-Doh, the dentist Play-Doh. I bought her a Barbie doll which was a dentist, so I was trying to get this little influence in then.

Anoop Maini:
But actually, most of her while she was growing up, she was saying to me, “I’m never going to be a dentist.” Actually, she’s a terrible dental patient. I remember I tried to treat her, I couldn’t treat her. I passed her onto Neera, my wife, couldn’t treat her; she’s a dentist as well. In fact, we had to refer her to a pedodontist, a specialist pedodontist to treat her. She’s coming from that environment. She’s not naturally tuned into dentistry.

Anoop Maini:
So, as she grew up she just went, “I’m not going to go into dentistry. I don’t like blood, I don’t like that stuff.” She was thinking about studying history, going off to Cambridge or Oxford to study history, and that’s the pathway she was going to go down. And then she just surprised us one day and she came back and she said, “I’m going to do dentistry.”

Anoop Maini:
I think what actually fueled that up is actually I sent her on work experience. I sent her on work experience on several different journeys. One was to a law firm, one was to a financial institute, and I also sent her to a dentist called Koray Feran. So, I will thank him or not thank him, because she went to his clinic and he absolutely wowed her. Absolutely wowed her and totally motivated and inspired her. She came back to me and said, “You know what? Out of everything, I now want to do dentistry.”

Prav Solanki:
Do you think he’s the reason why she’s at dental school today?

Anoop Maini:
I think so, because I think the problem that we have from having a husband and wife team who are dentists is when we come home, we never talk about the positivities of dentistry. We always talk about the problems we have with the clinic, or the profession, or the day-to-day issues we have. So, when we go out for dinner the dentistry topic keeps coming up, so they never get that positivity, as such. Whereas when she went to Koray’s, she actually saw the real dentistry. So, I think that trip to Koray was actually very important.

Payman:
You know, with all respect to your dad, the question of your dad was working in Sainsbury’s and then you became a dentist, a step-up, let’s say, let’s call it that.

Anoop Maini:
Yes.

Payman:
Did you not feel like, “Hey, my daughter should step-up from where I am at,” or is there no step-up?

Anoop Maini:
You know, I’ve always … My son, my son’s not heading towards dentistry at the moment. I think he’s going to end up … He’s not very scientific orientated, he’s probably going down the financial road, so he’ll probably do economics or finance. I’m happy for them to do whatever they’re happy with. I think the worst thing I come across, especially younger dentists, is ones that don’t love their job, or got into the job for the wrong reasons, or maybe financial reasons.

Prav Solanki:
Life’s too short man.

Anoop Maini:
You know, they may have been peer pressured into it, or family pressured into it. If they don’t enjoy this job … Because whatever you do, if you’re good at it, it can be any field, you’ll make money. That’s what my father used to say to me. “You’ll make money. Just get good at it.” It could be in any field. You know? You can’t setup any company. Whichever field your forte is and your passion is, the money will come in some shape or form. You can set up an online business.

Payman:
The problem is, the system here … My kids are in a French school and it’s a totally different system. The system here, you almost have to decide at 16, sometimes even younger than that, of what you’re going to be later on.

Anoop Maini:
That’s very true.

Payman:
And who knows at 16?

Prav Solanki:
It’s tricky, right? So my daughter now is going through that whole choice of choosing options and things like that. She hasn’t got a clue what she wants to do. She knows she loves art, and that’s about it. “Oh right, well I might become an architect because it’s loosely related to art. It’s seen as a professional thing.” But, you know-

Payman:
What is she? 16?

Prav Solanki:
15.

Payman:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
But here’s the thing; at that stage in your life, unless you grow up in the environment what we did where it was almost drilled into you, “Unless you’re a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer or a banker, you’ve failed in life,” right? That was my perception growing up.

Payman:
The thing is, that immigrant, you know what I mean, that first generation thing-

Prav Solanki:
Yeah, it doesn’t exist anymore, right?

Payman:
What I would like to see is in the second generation, the next generation, that they’re talking about, I don’t know, writing a movie, or being something evolved on-

Prav Solanki:
A step-up?

Payman:
Call it a step-up if you like.

Prav Solanki:
Whatever.

Payman:
But an evolution from the doctor, lawyer, engineer thing. By the way, I see it. We all see it. Some young kids now doing interesting things like that, but it’s interesting. It’s an interesting question. My kids are a little bit younger than that, and both me and my wife are dentists, and actually it does make sense for one of them to become a dentist because they will get some advantages from it. But I also worry sometimes that … All three of us here are immigrants … That we don’t evolve the immigrant story out to more interesting things than the obvious.

Anoop Maini:
I know where you’re coming from because what also affected me was I heard a story about a dental student who was, I think, second or third year who committed suicide. Now, when you get to a stage where you’re committing suicide at that young age because you’re doing something you don’t love, that is a problem.

Anoop Maini:
I heard that story quite early on. My son, people may or may not be aware, he loves football. He’s an Arsenal supporter. Very early on he wanted to be a footballer. I took him out for trials, for the Arsenal Academy. He obviously wasn’t good enough to get in, but the thing is, had he been good enough I would have supported him. I would have carried down that road.

Payman:
For something you would have never been able to do.

Anoop Maini:
Never been able to do. I’m quite open on him. He doesn’t want to do dentistry, he said that to me. He’s a different kettle of fish, mentality, to me. He’s very astute, he’s financially astute. He’s a bit entrepreneurial, bit of a wheeler-dealer type mentality, so he’s someone who probably wouldn’t be happy in dentistry in that sort of clinical type environment. He’s a different kettle of fish. He’ll make his way somehow in the world doing something, but as long as he’s happy.

Anoop Maini:
Me and wife are always saying, you know, “How big does your house need to be? Enough to have one bed to sleep in. And how many cars do you need? One car.” You know?”

Anoop Maini:
I see a lot of dentists, even people outside the profession, buying material things, material goods. One thing that you soon get with material goods is instant gratification, but actually, that gratification disappears very quickly. If I bought a Porsche tomorrow or a Tesla, you would get some joy from it initially, but that soon fades. You get bored of it and then you think, “What’s the next thing?”

Anoop Maini:
So, if you’re looking at material goods to fill a hole in your life in terms of providing you with enjoyment, I think you’ve got a big void. I think you have to look at things that also fulfil you in different ways. You can’t just rely on … Money, to me, is not my primary goal in life. You know? The money that comes by doing what we’re doing is important, but I don’t do everything purely for the dollar. I’ve never done things purely for the dollar. I’ve made business decisions which also I could have done better with had I stuck with them, but I moved away because I was happier moving away for my own personal development.

Prav Solanki:
Are you happy to talk about how your son spent his first £10,000?

Anoop Maini:
My son’s first … You mean my £10,000?

Prav Solanki:
Absolutely. Happy to go there?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I’m happy to go there.

Payman:
Know the story already, do you?

Prav Solanki:
Fill us in. Fill us in. It’s a great story. You talk about your son being financially astute and entrepreneurial, and this story’s amazing.

Anoop Maini:
Right, so my son, he’s a bit of a gamer and he likes playing these games.

Prav Solanki:
Computer games, right? Xbox, that sort of stuff.

Anoop Maini:
Computer games, yeah, absolutely. You have to buy these credits and things, and he quite enjoyed doing that. But he used to ask me, “Dad, can you buy me some?”

Anoop Maini:
I said, “No, you can’t. What a waste of money.”

Anoop Maini:
I didn’t do that, so he thought, “I’m going to raise some money.”

Anoop Maini:
So, he decided to open up accounts, multiple accounts, PayPal accounts. So, he accrued about three or four PayPal accounts using some of my information, and in the end, he was buying things through PayPal.

Prav Solanki:
Just before we go there Anoop, opening a PayPal account isn’t easy, right? Because you register and then what it does is it charges your credit card like 3p, and then you need to read the credit card statement and put that transaction into PayPal to prove that you own that credit card before you can start spending money on it.

Anoop Maini:
That’s right, yes.

Prav Solanki:
How did he get around that?

Payman:
He figured it out.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, he figured it out because actually, my password was pretty unanimous across multiples, so he could access virtually anything. So, he got into my bank statements, he got into-

Payman:
So, he spent £10,000 on buying uniforms for fighters?

Anoop Maini:
Credits. Yeah.

Payman:
Ten grand?

Anoop Maini:
So, when I picked it up, I saw my bank statement and I thought, “Crikey,” because it was starting to increase. When it’s a bit under the radar, you sort of miss of it. And this accrued over a few months. By the time I picked it up I rang up PayPal and I said, “Crikey, there’s fraud on my account.” So, there was an investigation, they blocked the account, and then they wheeled it down to my son’s email address.

Payman:
How did you feel at that moment?

Anoop Maini:
Well, he got a bit of a thick ear, but apart from the thick ear I was actually quite impressed by what he did in a way.

Payman:
Were you?

Anoop Maini:
I said, “You’ve just got to rechannel this sort of innovation and the way that you worked around it into other ways.” It was quite interesting when he did that, because I was giving the option of prosecuting my own son, which obviously we didn’t do.

Payman:
Tell me about working with your wife. I’ve worked with my wife before. Did you guys naturally fall into that?

Anoop Maini:
It’s really interesting because actually, in the workplace we don’t actually cross each other very much. It’s a bit like when you have associates, you only sort of slightly cross each other at lunchtime maybe.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, having the wife in the practice, I don’t really see her technically from that perspective, but having someone who’s very similar to yourself, thinking about the business from the same … I find very useful and a lot of support. You know?

Anoop Maini:
I know people go into businesses with other partners, and you know, I’ve seen partnerships break up where sometimes the spouses interfere, et cetera, but actually being in business with your spouse … Because my wife is my best friend, so if you’re in business with your best friend, and that’s going to go live, yeah? I hope she hears that, and I love her.

Prav Solanki:
Anything else? Any other messages to Neera here?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I’ve loved her all my life. She’s been the most important, and I’ve never cheated on her, she’s beautiful.

Anoop Maini:
Right, so anyway, coming back to where we were, so working with my wife has been very useful for me because she understands what I’m doing. I develop myself inside the clinic, I’m technically, currently an associate for her because I sold my clinic a few years back. Even being an associate, technically, for her, I’m allowed to develop my dentistry, I’ve been able to buy technologies. I’m currently quite fascinated by digital dentistry at the moment, so I’ve bought a lot of digital equipment for the clinic. And you know, she’ll be quite understanding about it because she knows what I’m like as a dentist. When I get passionate about something, I immerse myself and I get really into it. That’s obviously a very expensive to do, especially in the digital world, so she’s been very accommodating.

Anoop Maini:
She also understands when I need to, when I’m travelling for courses, when I have to cancel days down in the clinic because I’ve got a business meeting, or I’m lecturing, or whatever. She’s very understanding from that. She understands where I’m going and what drives me, so having her on board has been very useful, because if I was with another employer, they probably wouldn’t understand that.

Prav Solanki:
I have quite a few business relationships with various different people, and those relationships are very different in many different ways. But the one thing that I really understand about being in business with other people is that you have different skill sets that complement each other. So, I know what my strengths are, I know what my partner’s strengths are, and luckily they don’t overlap, which works to our advantage. With you and Neera, how are you different? And where are your, what I would consider to be, zones of genius?

Anoop Maini:
Well I think people who know me sort of find that I’m someone who’s almost a little bit of a perfectionist. I’m a little bit too demanding on people. I’m quite demanding of my staff as well. I’m quite quick to fire. I don’t process a thought.

Prav Solanki:
Shoot from the hip.

Anoop Maini:
I just shoot from the hip sometimes.

Payman:
You don’t mean fire people?

Anoop Maini:
Well, not fire people, I can be-

Payman:
Fire ideas.

Anoop Maini:
Fire ideas, positivity. But I could also, if someone did something wrong, I’ll tell them.

Payman:
Who does the firing? Who does the firing in the practice?

Anoop Maini:
My wife.

Payman:
Who does the hiring?

Anoop Maini:
My wife. It’s quite interesting because this-

Payman:
So, go on, you shoot from the hip, and she considers things?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, she’s much more considerate. So, in the practice her strengths are that she’s far more relaxed, she does all our staff issues, manages the clinics from that perspective. I’m probably more involved with sort of the marketing aspects, the business development, that sort of side because I can make decisions quickly, I have a vision. I focus on the vision. But in terms of dealing with people, she’s far better than I am. We complement each other that way.

Anoop Maini:
So, she’s a great person to have in the practice as a team. The team love her, they support her. She’s great from that way. Whereas I’m someone who sort of rolls in and I expect everything done to perfection. My staff always know I’m like that, and that’s quite a … I’m a difficult person to work around from that perspective, so having my wife in there who steps in between, to make them understand when I get upset when something hasn’t gone right, rather than me shooting from the hip, she intervenes. “What can we do next time to make this go a bit more smoother?”

Anoop Maini:
That’s the sort of personality I am. They call it like D type personality, or A type personality they call it. It’s someone who just comes in and it’s like, “I want X, Y, Z done like yesterday.”

Prav Solanki:
So, is she your calming influence?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
Both in life and business?

Anoop Maini:
She is, but in the home life as well she’s very good with the children. She’s more of a socialite as well, so she’s very good at keeping our network with friends and family, whereas I’m probably so busy and immersed in my own little world, I forget to ring up people, et cetera. She’s quite good for bonding and also, relating to the kids and looking after the kids. She’s been brilliant. She’s a very good communicator In terms of encouragement for my daughter and my son, whereas I’m more directive.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
It’s like, “Son, what are you doing? Why aren’t you doing this?” Whereas she is much more … She spends a bit more time, involves it, and has longer conversations with them .

Prav Solanki:
Coming back to your dentistry, what would you say your biggest, and I mean your biggest, clinical error, mistake, has been in your career so far?

Anoop Maini:
I think when I qualified, quite early on, I did these veneer courses. It was quite a thing at the time, to be a cosmetic dentist you’re doing veneers. So, that was the perception in those days a long time ago.

Anoop Maini:
I did some courses learning how to slap on veneers for patients, smile makeovers, and generally the profession, a bit like you have social media today where people post up cases about the before and afters, how good you are, how brilliant you are, in those days we had the sort of media articles about … People used to post cases about smile makeovers, and success of clinics was about how much sort of advanced cosmetic dentistry you were doing. I engaged, I remember, a business consultant many years ago, and the key was to do elaborate smile makeover dentistry, so there was a lot of this push to do that sort of work.

Anoop Maini:
I remember even … Which I would never do today … I remember generating PowerPoints of patients. It’s like almost selling. You used to take pictures, you need to do imaging, and these patients didn’t actually come in asking for that. We were doing it as a, “Here we are. This is what you are. This is what you could be. These are all your problems. This is the beautiful result that you could get.”

Prav Solanki:
I remember those PowerPoints. They were generated by a specific consulting company.

Anoop Maini:
Correct.

Prav Solanki:
That a lot of people from that generation just adopted. Was that almost like the default treatment for any patient that walked through your door?

Anoop Maini:
It was, because at that time, I thought cosmetic dentistry … It was the persona of being in cosmetic dentistry, it was like an awe. It’s like the successful practises were called spas or they were cosmetic clinics.

Payman:
To be fair, the only options you had for cosmetic dentistry back then were train tracks for three years, or that treatment. I mean, I didn’t a lot of them too. I did a lot of them when I was a dentist. But where was the clinical error?

Anoop Maini:
The clinical error for me was, obviously getting involved in that sort of dentistry, is I didn’t learn the comprehensives of other facets of dentistry which underpin that. So, getting the occlusion right, getting the periodontal aspects right, managing wear, patients with wear issues which cause the demise of their teeth in the first place. Not understanding, just slapping on these porcelain veneers.

Anoop Maini:
I had cases, and there’s one case that rings in my mind. A patient would have spent 14, £15,000 with me, and I watched four, five years later, things smashing up. It’s very embarrassing, it’s very expensive, you have unhappy patients. I remember a negative review from this patient. That was a turning point; realising that the dentistry I was performing wasn’t as long lasting as I thought it was going to be, and understanding that I needed to learn more.

Anoop Maini:
I think a lot of problems that a lot of dentists have currently is they don’t have the longevity of looking at their work. So, once you’ve done a restoration, it might look great for the post-op, but what will that composite look like? What will that veneer look like? What will that crown look like in ten years time? Or that implant.

Payman:
And so how did you handle this patient?

Anoop Maini:
How did I handle that patient at that time? I think that particular patient, in the end, I had to refer for remedial treatment, a more experienced colleague.

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, so we’ve talked about the biggest clinical mistake, and in that particular patient who made a complaint, but that was a clinical mistake that you realised, say, five, ten years after making the mistake, right?

Anoop Maini:
Correct.

Prav Solanki:
Have you ever made a clinical mistake where in the moment you think, “Holy shit, what have I just done?” In your younger years, less experienced years, anything like that ever that sort of brings back memories?

Anoop Maini:
I remember during my VT year when I was doing a root canal and I completely missed the canals.

Payman:
Perforated. I’ve done that.

Anoop Maini:
It completely perforated, absolutely perforated. I remember just finishing off the root canal and I remember looking at it afterwards, it looked like an octopus. You know? And none of that GP was inside the tooth. It was all outside the tooth. And you think, “Oh my God.” So, that was probably when you’ve done something and you just-

Payman:
What did you do?

Anoop Maini:
Well, we had to take the tooth out. The tooth had to be removed. Fortunately, it was in a time where the patient didn’t value that tooth, as such, an exempt patient. So, it didn’t have any long term financial repercussions for me, but today, that would be totally unacceptable.

Prav Solanki:
And just take me back to that very moment that it first happened. What was going through your mind? How did you feel? How did you react?

Anoop Maini:
Well, the first thing is you feel sorry for the patient.

Prav Solanki:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
You are trying your best. It’s not like you intentionally try and do something badly.

Prav Solanki:
Sure.

Anoop Maini:
No one’s trying to do things badly. Mistakes do happen in dentistry. I’ve had things where I’ve put a crown, six months later the crown’s dislodged, or a veneer’s chipped, whatever. Things do happen, but when you’re doing something that has caused irreversible damage to someone and that patient’s come and bestowed their faith in you, trust in you, and then you sort of don’t deliver, I mean, it doesn’t embody what we’ve taught. We went to dentist school because we were there to try and improve health, maintenance and preservation of dental health, and if you’ve created a problem yourself that’s subsequently led to the loss of the tooth, it’s not a great motivational thing for you as a dentist. It doesn’t build your confidence up.

Anoop Maini:
I remember … It probably had an impact, because actually, I haven’t done a root canal for probably about 12 years. I’ve always referred out root canals.

Payman:
And you’re saying it goes back to that moment?

Anoop Maini:
It probably goes back to that moment. It probably wasn’t straight away from that moment.

Payman:
No, I know what you mean. I know what you mean.

Anoop Maini:
But now, I’m not that confident in root canal work, you know?

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
I just think, “This is not my forte.” That probably goes back to that stage.

Payman:
I want to ask a question about, you know, you’ve developed, what, three clinics now?

Anoop Maini:
Yes.

Payman:
And, what, all from scratch?

Anoop Maini:
It’s quite funny, the first clinic I bought. I came out, when I qualified, being a typical Asian I was trying to follow my peers which was, “Let’s own lots of practises.”

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, I remember I did my VT in Luton, and in Luton town which is like 90% exempt NHS dentistry, I didn’t actually enjoy working there at all to be honest because it just wasn’t the style of dentistry I wanted to do. But when I was there, the first thing I was thinking was, “Well, I’m going to become an entrepreneur. I’m going to be an entrepreneur dentist and I don’t really have to work then. I’ll just have a whole chain of practises and then just work like shops and businesses.”

Anoop Maini:
So, I was going to go down that pathway because that’s what my peers were doing. So, I thought, “Okay.” I looked in the back of Frank Taylor’s magazine and there was this practice in Luton town centre. I said, “Right, I know the area, I’ll buy that clinic.” So, we bought the clinic. Little did I know, with my lack of due diligence, it was a POGO clinic. Now, if you remember the old POGO, they were GA clinics-

Payman:
You didn’t even realise that before you bought it?

Anoop Maini:
No, because I didn’t do any due … I was young. I was so young. You know? So, I was so young, inexperienced, didn’t really know. Didn’t have guidance from any-

Payman:
So, four clinics then? Because there was Edgware Road I heard on the podcast.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, no, no, I had one in Luton.

Payman:
And then there was Aqua, and then there’s a new Aqua, so four?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, one called Confident Dental Care which we opened up.

Payman:
So go on, what happened with the Luton one? How quickly did you manage to-

Anoop Maini:
So basically, I got this clinic which was a POGO clinic, and the reason why these POGO clinics were for sale is because POGO, the change in The Poswillo Report, meant you couldn’t do GA-

Payman:
You needed an anaesthetist.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. You couldn’t do it in a general practice environment.

Payman:
Yeah, that’s right.

Anoop Maini:
So, this clinic became worthless. I was wondering why it was cheap. Now I know why it was cheap. So, I bought it. Me and my wife walk in, and we suddenly say, “Everyone wants a GA.” We thought, “Why do they want a GA?” And we didn’t kind of offer anything, we’re just local. Right?

Anoop Maini:
So, we very quickly … We started from the practice, it almost collapsed overnight. We had to very quickly go and learn sedation, intravenous sedation. There was a lovely guy called Michael Woods who sadly passed away. He was in Dunstable and he had a big sort of GA clinic quite close to Dunstable hospital. So, we did mentoring with him, and we did some cases with him, so I started offering IV sedation.

Anoop Maini:
Once we took that clinic, because I didn’t enjoy NHS dentistry, I decided I was going to be a private practice. It was the seventh surgery at that time, seventh surgery NHS clinic.

Payman:
Oh bloody hell.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. But it was all Poswillo. There was no patients left. By the time we finished it was like two or three. But you know, they’re all GA patients and they were mostly referral. So, we decided we were going to open up a private practice. I was living with mom and dad. Overheads weren’t there.

Anoop Maini:
So, we decided we would set up a private practice. We then moved across the road, we set up a new building, I bought … I still own the building today. We set up a clinic called Confident Dental Care. So, it was one of those first practises that got branded. So, Confident Dental Care, everything was branded. That’s the first time I brought in DDPC, Gary Bettis, that was my first project with him.

Payman:
So, wait a minute. You bought the GA clinic and that was a financial failure.

Anoop Maini:
Total failure.

Payman:
Where did you have the money to open the second place? Did your dad let you have it?

Anoop Maini:
No, no, I didn’t have any money from dad.

Payman:
So, what did you do?

Anoop Maini:
In those days, banks were stupid enough to lend to you.

Payman:
So, they saw your first failure, and then paid you for the second?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, because you’re a dentist. In those days, because you’re a dentist they would lend to you. I mean, there were people lending 150%.

Prav Solanki:
It’s true.

Anoop Maini:
So, I just borrowed money again. We didn’t, fortunately, pay too much for The Poswillo Report, that’s why it was cheap. But we just business proposal, and most banks were looking for your business. NatWest, Barclays, et cetera, Lloyds, they were looking for your business, so they would court you almost, buy you lunch, because you’re deemed probably someone who wasn’t going to fail.

Payman:
A good risk. Yeah. Even though you’d just failed.

Anoop Maini:
Even though we’d just failed. So, we set up Confident Dental Care, and actually, we got it up to three surgeries. We got it up to three surgeries, and we sold it as a fully private practice.

Payman:
How many years later was that?

Anoop Maini:
It was about six or seven years?

Payman:
And that was a squat?

Anoop Maini:
That was a virtual squat.

Payman:
So, that’s what I’m quite interested in. You know the idea of, you build it and they will come? Seems like you’ve done that a few times. But in that moment of waiting for people to come, some of the steps, some of the steps or some hacks that you would suggest for people that are going to do this again and again, set up practises from squat and have no patients. What are some of the tricks, some of the things you should look out for, cash flow questions? Give us some insights, because you’ve done this a few times now.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, I’ve done it one, two, three times.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, in terms of my recommendation to people, one is controlling the overhead. Be very careful on overhead control. Control your expenses. Especially you’ve got to make a lot of sacrifices in your own personal life as well, you’ve got to control you own expenses because there’s going to be no income coming through.

Anoop Maini:
What’s very important in any, if you’re starting up from squat, is what is your USP? What is your differentiator compared to your locals? You know? That’s going to be so important in terms of your marketing, because you can’t put blanket marketing out in terms of, “I do X, Y, Z,” because every other practice does X, Y, Z. You need to have A, B, C that no one else has got, and that’s so important.

Anoop Maini:
I think from a very early stage I’ve always done lots and lots of courses. I did a lot of courses, even from an early stage. I think that’s important in building skill level that your local peers can’t deliver. I still get, even-

Payman:
And you were marketing that fact, is that what you’re saying?

Anoop Maini:
We were marketing techniques that they weren’t doing. So, you know, implants, smile makeover type dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, tooth whitening procedures.

Payman:
Back then that wasn’t … And interesting, Confident Dental Care was which year?

Anoop Maini:
That was probably about 2000.

Payman:
So interesting, marketing back then was a totally different thing to marketing today.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. Different. We had a website.

Payman:
Did you?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we had a website. So, we had a website that time. I’m not sure, Prav did that.

Prav Solanki:
We came in shortly after that, but you still had the practice then.

Anoop Maini:
I did, yeah.

Payman:
Go on, some of the hacks. Some of the hacks, some of the marketing hacks. Go on. So, the first one you said was don’t overspend.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
Keep your eye on money.

Anoop Maini:
Keep your eye on the… Now, the keys for me was to have at least one patient a day, because that patient’s journey, because you’ve got all the time to devote on them, just make sure that that patient’s journey is exemplary. Go OTT on it, to the point of … You know, when they come in, the way they’re greeted. Obviously we had tea, coffee, the drinks et cetera, we had the fridge. Find out a little bit about them.

Payman:
I mean, you say obviously but there’s lots of practises today that don’t do tea, coffee and drinks. It seems obvious to you back then.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, it’s important to differentiate.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
The USP is not just your clinic, it’s the differentiator on the clinic. You know, we had a clinic that you walked in. There was no corporate dentistry as such in those days, so having a brand, having a logo-

Payman:
That was a thing in itself.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. Having a clinic that was designed, you know, I had an interior designer come in. No one’s doing interior designing, you would just put Mongolia up. So, we had colour themes in there. We looked different, we stood out. And as someone said to, “Wherever there’s dirt, there’s always money.” So, even though we were in Luton, a lot of people who had money, had cash money. We had a lot of travellers come to see us preparing for their weddings. That was quite a big part of my market. We had a lot of people who used to run the local businesses, or car boot sales. They were coming in asking for certain treatments that they weren’t getting within the NHS services.

Payman:
But were you leafleting, or?

Anoop Maini:
We had the website. We used to leaflet market. We used the Arndale Centre, which is a shopping centre, so we used to distribute leaflets there. We even had a little stand.

Payman:
So, you went and bought a stand in the Arndale Centre?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we had a little stand in there. There weren’t dentists doing this at that time. It just wasn’t being done. So, we got patients coming in. We offered the free consultation.

Payman:
Back then as well?

Anoop Maini:
Back then.

Payman:
And it was fully private from day one?

Anoop Maini:
Fully private.

Payman:
Nice.

Anoop Maini:
Fully private. And things like hygienists. In those days as well, we always saw hygienists as being the rock in the clinic. I measure how successful my clinic is by how busy my hygienists are because they’re the barometer. If you’ve got patients return regularly to see a hygienist, you know you’ve got a healthy clinic, so that’s always a strength. When I see quiet hygienists, I know my business is in trouble. So, that’s why we always had hygienists from day one, because they develop rapport. They develop the maintenance, the loyalty.

Anoop Maini:
The other thing I would recommend is try and develop some sort of practice plan. So, you know, you get patients encouraged to join the clinic under a membership scheme, and it just helps them to maintain their loyalty and make it sort of worthwhile. It’s a benefit for them, it’s cheaper than if they paid outside. But again, it’s just that experience thing.

Payman:
And when it came to selling this clinic then, you’d decided you wanted to sell it? Did someone approach you? Who was it? Who bought it?

Anoop Maini:
We sold it to a colleague of mine, a guy called Hitesh Gohil.

Payman:
I know him.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah? We sold it to Hitesh. He was also at King’s with me qualifying. He was about two years below me. The reason for selling it was actually, at that time, I was starting up Edgware Road because I wanted to head more towards the West End because in terms of my dentistry. So, by opening up Edgware Road, it then became a problem of logistics.

Payman:
Being in two places?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely, because you get two types of dentist basically. You get the entrepreneurial dentist who can own multiple clinics and slightly sort of detached from the clinical environment, more like the business environment. And then you get the dentists who’s vocational, so like the Koray Ferans, shall we say, who dentistry for them is so hands-on and they’re so involved with the business on the clinical level, that they can’t leverage themselves into multiple clinics. I can’t have a clinic run by a … I’ll get too involved in how it’s being treated, the standard of care. So, I can’t run multiple clinics.

Anoop Maini:
We had one in Central London, we had one in Luton, and I always had problems with the associates at the other end, concerns about the clinical output, the patient journey, the receptionists not performing. I have to be too hands-on, that’s my problem. I think I’m too much of a perfectionist.

Payman:
Do they call that perfection paralysis?

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. So, I can’t take a laid back approach, which I know some colleagues do. They just worry, “As long as I get the bottom line, I don’t care what happens.” Whereas, for me, I need to get involved with each step off each business, and I couldn’t leverage that up. I think it’s my personality type. So, for me, it was about the dental practice was the opportunity for me to perform the dentistry I wanted to perform.

Anoop Maini:
So, we opened up at Edgware Road. At that time my daughter was born.

Payman:
Which year was that?

Anoop Maini:
That was 1999.

Payman:
Oh. So, which year was Confident?

Anoop Maini:
Confident, well my daughter was growing up, that was the problem. So, there was the problem with things like childcare, then my second son came in 2003. So, my wife had to pull back from dentistry a little bit to look after the kids, so we couldn’t support the two clinics. I had one clinic, virtually run an associates in Luton, and I just couldn’t manage it.

Payman:
And actually, from a business perspective, you don’t make that much money from an associate-led practice.

Anoop Maini:
You don’t.

Payman:
If you’ve got loads and loads of them, I’m sure it’s great, but from a single one …

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely. And especially when I’m in my practice in Hatch], which again was virtually a squat, is they’ve very time intensive, so you couldn’t share yourself across.

Payman:
Why was it you kept doing squats? Why didn’t you buy existing practises? What was the thinking?

Anoop Maini:
For me, I found whenever I bought any clinic which had a patient base, like the one I bought in Edgware Road where it was actually not a true squat, it had a very small patient base, none of those patients are with me today because they are not the patients that I-

Prav Solanki:
It’s not your philosophy, is it?

Anoop Maini:
They’re not my philosophy. They’re not my sort of patients. They’re not the sort of dentistry I want to do. So, you know, I’ve worked out wherever I’ve been, I’ve developed a whole new patient base. So, rather than then buying something and then trying to convert those people across, I’d rather develop my own patients, my own personality, and my own style of patients. They always say that patients reflect the dentist that they go to.

Payman:
Yeah, that’s true.

Anoop Maini:
So, we’re all very different. So, I couldn’t see buying a clinic from someone else and then have to deal with their methodologies, philosophies and approaches and have to reeducate patients. I might as well just get a squat, and that’s always been my philosophy.

Payman:
But it’s not for everyone.

Anoop Maini:
No.

Payman:
I mean, from the risk perspective and the marketing. These days particularly, right? You’ve got to have your marketing game right on.

Anoop Maini:
Absolutely.

Payman:
So then, okay, tell us the difference between starting and making that first one thrive, compared to the last one. What’s changed in you?

Anoop Maini:
The recent squat I set up, which was Aqua Dental Clinic in Hatch End, which is now five years old, that was probably the easiest because we-

Payman:
Because your life didn’t depend on it.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, my life didn’t depend on it, but number two, it was easier in a way because we were already very experienced. You know? I qualified in 1992, so I’ve got 25 years of experience, 26 years of experience. My wife’s very experienced, so we know how to manage staff, we know how to control businesses, we know about expenses. We know marketing things that have worked for us before. You know, we engaged a marketing company that looks after us. So, we’ve made all the mistakes before so we can have the protocols in place to elevate the clinic quite quickly.

Anoop Maini:
And we had skill sets. We’ve moved into an area where it’s quite … When I was looking at the present site, we were looking at all the other practice’s websites. They’re all out of date. All out of date, very basic. It’s almost the basic standard you require from CQC, rather than having a proper thing. Now we have like infusion sort of type software inside the clinics. So, we have follow-ups, maintenance-

Payman:
Do you run ads as well?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we run ads. We do newspaper adverts, we do a lot of online marketing, a lot of social media marketing. So, we’re very more forwards compared to our local competitors in terms of what we’re doing.

Payman:
Where is it? Hatch End?

Anoop Maini:
Hatch End, absolutely.

Payman:
Where’s that?

Anoop Maini:
Hatch End is North West London, quite close to … Not far from Stanmore.

Payman:
Okay, yeah. Nice area.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, it’s not far from Stanmore. Yeah. It’s a nice area. For me, the reason why I chose this clinic as well is because it’s quite important to pick an area that can support the type of clinic that you want to be in. You know?

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
It was a very middle class area. The average property price is-

Payman:
High.

Anoop Maini:
They start for 800 grand upwards, so they’re about 1.2 million for a house there. So, it’s in the area, it’s a very established area, so it’s a lot families. You’ve got private schools in the area, nice high end restaurants.

Payman:
Do you live there too?

Anoop Maini:
I do. I don’t live very far away, so I’m literally now five minutes away from work, which has been a blessing. But in terms of that environment, the most important thing I would say to someone else in terms of looking for clinics is location, location, location. The clinic that we’ve got at the moment is on a roundabout. It’s a corner property on a roundabout, a three bed semi. Directly opposite is Morrison’s, so everyone who comes out-

Payman:
Sees it.

Anoop Maini:
And we’ve got a massive sign up. We’ve got a huge sign. It’s a disproportionate sign, you know? No one can miss it, and we make sure that sign’s changed every month with a different feature.

Payman:
Really?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, we change it every month because other people get … When you’re in an environment and you keep seeing the same things again and again, you sort of switch off.

Prav Solanki:
Call it banner blindness.

Anoop Maini:
Banner blindness, you stop seeing it. So, by changing it and even changing the colours, people retune to that banner. “What is that?” As they come around this visual roundabout, people see our sign. So, our number one-

Payman:
What are you most happy doing? Are you most happy drilling teeth, talking to patients? Are you most happy working on the business, or are you most happy teaching? Because you do a lot of that too. If you had to give one of those three up, which one would you give up?

Anoop Maini:
Business, if I had to.

Payman:
Really?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
Because it sounds like you’re pretty into the business.

Anoop Maini:
I’m into the business, but I love patients the most.

Payman:
Oh, really?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, my key is, I couldn’t give up the patients, because you said give up something.

Payman:
Yeah, yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, there’s no way I’m going to give up patients and stop clinical practice because I love clinical practice. I love being a dentist, I love working with my hands. I’ve always worked with my hands. From a young age I was always making things out of math sticks, playing with Lego. I just love doing things and being creative, so working with patients is very important for me.

Anoop Maini:
In terms of teaching, I love teaching because one thing I’ve learned about teaching, it really makes me need to learn more.

Payman:
Yeah, it’s the best way to learn.

Anoop Maini:
Because to be ahead of the game, or when you’re teaching and someone asks you questions you can’t answer, you have to go back and learn it and it raises your game. So, I’m a much better person through teaching than I would have been on my own.

Payman:
Tell me, let’s talk about teaching a little bit.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
I obviously work with a lot of teachers. For me, the voice that you have on stage, or whatever, is something that I’ve seen develop in a lot of people. Your value add as a teacher compared to the next, what would you say that is?

Anoop Maini:
Someone’s remarked upon-

Payman:
I mean, you’re very funny I’ve noticed.

Prav Solanki:
Entertainer.

Payman:
Yeah, he’s an entertainer.

Anoop Maini:
Well, actually call me Edutrainer.

Prav Solanki:
Edutrainer?

Anoop Maini:
Edutrainer.

Payman:
Were you a funny kid and all that, that whole thing? You know what I mean?

Anoop Maini:
No, I think I take on a different personality a little bit.

Payman:
On stage?

Anoop Maini:
When I’m on a stage, when I’m in front of people.

Payman:
Do you get nervous?

Anoop Maini:
I do, 100%. I get nervous every single time.

Prav Solanki:
Every time?

Anoop Maini:
Every time.

Payman:
You know, when I speak to speakers, the one thing I do say to them, “The moment you don’t get nervous, that’s weird.” Getting nervous is actually normal. It’s a nerveracking situation.

Anoop Maini:
I just did, probably the largest event I’ve done myself now, which is I spoke for the Dutch Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry.

Payman:
Just recently? I saw that.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. So, that was a three hour continuous lecture, which I’ve never done to a static audience.

Payman:
That’s a long time, yeah.

Anoop Maini:
So, you know, we had two, 250 in the room, and I was following up Eric Van Dooren and people like Pascal Magne had been on this stage, Paolo Canno. That’s the guys I’m following up. Then Annop Maini from Harrow, Hatch End turns up.

Anoop Maini:
So, I was absolutely bricking myself for that one. Absolutely was bricking myself. I remember just literally-

Payman:
Heart racing, sweaty palms?

Anoop Maini:
Heart racing. Almost where you’re almost nauseous, like you’re going to be sick. So, I do get that stage fright, but actually, that’s what drives me. The adrenalin’s up.

Payman:
It’s normal. That’s what I’m saying; it’s normal.

Anoop Maini:
It’s normal. And when I come out, the way I relate to audiences whether it’s one person, or a 100, I try and connect with them. I do sort of tune into the audience a little bit and I can joke with them, but I’m careful how they respond back to my jokes. So, my entertainer bid. I find that people listen better and they understand better or get educated better when you make it a little bit more entertaining, rather than being a very dry production. If you make it a bit more fun, a bit more excitable, and you get the whole audience involved-

Payman:
The thing is, if that’s you, if that is you, I think the authenticity piece is huge, you know? The biggest error would be if that’s not you, thinking, “Hey, people like a funny guy,” and trying to be funny because of that. It obviously is you.

Anoop Maini:
I think I am. I think I get into a lot of trouble half the time because I just come out with stuff which I thought about. I think you have to be.

Anoop Maini:
For me, being on a stage is about, when I talk to people, it’s like how I probably would talk to you and Prav. You know, if we joke, et cetera. Actually, when I’m in front of an audience, I just relax down. I reckon all that adrenalin, all that buzz is gone within the first two minutes and then I settle down.

Payman:
I don’t know about you two, I mean, Prav’s going 0 to 60 in three seconds, he’s becoming an extraordinary speaker. But I don’t know about you two, but one big issue I’ve got about stage, it’s definitely not a natural siltation for me, is I never know how I’m coming across as a speaker. You know? Particularly you realise it when you watch videos of yourself thinking you know how it felt to say what you were saying, and then you’re watching it from the audience’s perspective and-

Prav Solanki:
It’s not what you thought was happening.

Payman:
It’s not necessarily what you thought was happening. I see this with speakers, I see it with Dipesh, I see it with a bunch of speakers, is they don’t necessarily realise whether they did well or not from the stage. I’ve got a big issue when I’m on stage, I almost focus in on the one person who’s not looking engaged, which is probably a big error. Speak to that. Have you ever noticed that? Have you videoed yourself?

Anoop Maini:
I try and avoid watching videos of myself.

Payman:
It’s useful though.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Prav Solanki:
It’s very useful.

Anoop Maini:
Because most people will send me the video if something’s happened, like a good friend called Prav. I think when I’m in that environment, I can listen to the sound in the room. I can listen to if there’s chatter.

Payman:
So, you’re saying you’re pretty good at figuring out whether it’s a good performance or not?

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. You can tell by the silence of the room. You can tell by if people are talking, about the noise level in the room. When you can hear a pin drop, you’ve got people listening.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
And if people, if you’ve said something that’s humorous or whatever, and they’re laughing-

Payman:
That feels good.

Anoop Maini:
And you see the energy coming up in the room. You can feel the energy in the room.

Payman:
Yeah.

Anoop Maini:
I’ll know by the end of a presentation if I’ve done well or not.

Payman:
Really?

Anoop Maini:
I don’t need to look at feedback form. I will know because I can tell by the energy of the room.

Payman:
I can’t. You?

Prav Solanki:
I think I can.

Payman:
Yeah?

Prav Solanki:
I think I can, yeah. You look around, you see a few smiling faces, you see a few people who are not engaged or whatever, but you know when you do something and you’re expecting a certain reaction, I got that reaction. So, yeah, I think I do have a feeling, but to be honest, I don’t think I’ve spoken enough to really know, right?

Prav Solanki:
Anoop, I want to take this conversation somewhere else now if that’s all right with you.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah, that’s fine.

Prav Solanki:
Talk to me about that ring you’ve got on your right hand.

Anoop Maini:
Right, yes.

Prav Solanki:
Where did it come from?

Anoop Maini:
This is my father’s ring.

Prav Solanki:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Anoop Maini:
So, my father passed away in May of this year. He had two rings on his hand, and I’ve got one and my brother’s got one. So, we got it engraved with my dad’s name because I wanted to keep him with me at all times. He was an absolute rock for me throughout my career. You talk about confidence, and to be successful in anything, you’ve got to have someone behind you. I’ve always worked out in business, you need consultants, you have to work with marketing companies. You always need someone. You can’t do things on your own, there’s always support.

Anoop Maini:
Moralistically, my moral compass was my dad. You know, a lot of these bits you say to me, “Why did you open it?”

Anoop Maini:
Dad said, “Just open it. Just do it.” He would say to me, “You open that clinic up. If it goes down the drain, what difference does it make? You’re living with me, you’re upstairs, you get your food, you get your clothes, I put petrol in your car, so what’s your risk?”

Payman:
Was it a sudden illness, or was he ill for … ?

Anoop Maini:
He was ill for about a year. He had Hodgkin’s lymphoma which then became aggressive. He did suffer quite a lot in his last few years. The hardest thing for me was you were talking about training, and in the end, he died from water on the lung, emphysema. I was out in Copenhagen doing a course. On the Friday I was out with the colleagues. It was a two day course, Friday we’d go out for the dinner. And then at 11 O’Clock at night, I then got a text from my wife saying, “Dad’s really unwell.” She said, “I’ll let you know how he is in the morning. I’ll keep you posted.”

Anoop Maini:
So, I was saying, I sent a message and I said, “Can you find out when the next flights are? Et cetera.”

Prav Solanki:
So, you knew it was that serious at that point?

Anoop Maini:
It was very serious at that point. So, all of my family members had congregated and I was in Copenhagen. When I woke up in the morning, I looked at my text and it said, “Dad’s passed away.” This was 7:30 in the morning. I’m going to hit the lecture stage at nine to do a course.

Payman:
Wow.

Anoop Maini:
So, at that moment, I had to make a decision. What do I do? I just thought to myself, “What would dad want me to do? What would dad say to me?” I know what dad said to do … He always said stick by your responsibilities. I couldn’t turn the clock back. So, I delivered the course and got the first flight out back home.

Anoop Maini:
But one thing I really regret was not being there for my dad when he passed away because I know my dad had asked for me. In inverted commas, I was the closest son to him, because I’ve always lived in and around my dad. I lived four or five miles away from my dad. My brother’s moved to South London, my sisters had gone up to Nottingham, et cetera, so I’ve always been in and around dad being the youngest son. So, not being there for the final moment, and I know he was asking for me, is probably the hardest thing.

Anoop Maini:
Like they always say, you never get the opportunity to say, “Dad, I love you and thank you. Actually, more than love you, thank you.” And I never got the opportunity to do that. That was the most painful thing for me. And going through that course in Copenhagen, holding that in and still delivering the course-

Payman:
One of the hardest things you’ve ever done.

Anoop Maini:
It was a very hard thing to do. It was a really hard thing to do. But I had … You had 18, 20 people in a room, paid their monies, you know? I had a responsibility to them.

Prav Solanki:
Most people would have walked away Anoop. I know I would have done. If that happened to me, I’d have gone and I wouldn’t have been in an emotional state to even contemplate that.

Payman:
Well, you don’t really know what you would have done unless that was happening to you, to tell you the truth.

Prav Solanki:
Well, no, but you know if … Yeah.

Payman:
But, I hear you. In the moment, he did it for his dad.

Anoop Maini:
Well, I thought to myself, “What would dad say?”

Prav Solanki:
Dad would want you to do it, yeah.

Anoop Maini:
I would run back, dad would say, “Look, you don’t run away from your responsibilities.” At the end of the day, I had a responsibility to these dentists who have taken time off, paid for this course. How would I benefit them or me by rushing off now? My dad’s gone.

Prav Solanki:
So, what’s your dad’s legacy?

Anoop Maini:
My dad’s legacy is the people he left behind because I think dad still lives in all of us. His legacy is he was someone who embodied, like you said raising people to the next level, he got all of us educated. We’ve all been to university, we’ve all, in inverted commas, been successful. My brother’s an optician, I think he’s got six practises or clinics. We’ve all reached our own level of success, and we owe that all to dad, because dad was the one who always was our driver, he was our business consultant, he was our energy. You know? Like I said, he got me through private school, he put my brother into a private college to get him through to his A-Levels because he missed a grade for him to get into Aston University to do Opthalmics. He missed a grade, he had to repeat a year, so my dad put him into a private college which was quite expensive. It was about £10,000 or whatever.

Anoop Maini:
Dad was a chap who just did it. Somehow he found out a way of doing stuff. I’m sure his credit card bills were huge, but he never … We always used to say this; my dad only had … Sorry, I’m crying. My dad only had two sets of clothes. My dad had two sets of clothes, that’s how much … He always said to me, “Why do I need so many clothes?” We bought him suits and stuff, he never wore it. He only had two sets of clothes that he wore for years, and that’s how he was, because he always didn’t spend on himself. He was always looking after his family. His family to him was everything. Raising us up and taking us to the next level was the most important thing for him.

Anoop Maini:
And he did that also not just for his immediate kids, he did it for his brothers and sisters. He set them all up. He got them all married, he helped with their wedding costs. That guy was working hours.

Prav Solanki:
He was the dad to them, right?

Anoop Maini:
He was dad to them. My dad was working 18 hours a day. So, you know, he was someone who went without. He didn’t have anything. He just didn’t have anything. He had two sets of clothes, I will tell you that now, even now. We bought him suits and stuff and he never wore it. He just said, “It’s not me.”

Payman:
Wow. I’m sure he was very, very proud of you.

Prav Solanki:
And I’m sure he still is. I’m sure he’s looking down, if you believe in that.

Payman:
What do you believe in that sense?

Anoop Maini:
I think he’s with me. I think I am dad, and I think my brothers and sisters, we’re all with us. You know? Parts of it, his personality is embodied with us. My biggest priority at the moment in my life is obviously looking after my mom, because obviously he was a big guidance for my mom as well. My mom’s not tremendously well, so our priority is obviously to make sure my mom’s well looked after. My responsibility to my dad is to make sure she’s fine.

Prav Solanki:
On the … Payman just touched upon it then … You know, we all have different beliefs, life after death, religious, non-religious, whatever. Do you believe he’s somewhere up there, looking down, as a guiding spirit? Is that within your belief system, or is it something else?

Anoop Maini:
Me and religion is a funny little game because I’m quite scientific in my … I’m someone who needs to reason and understand, so religion’s been an unknown. I don’t necessarily … I wouldn’t quite call myself an atheist, but I don’t sort of akin to a particular religion as such. But I believe dad is in my mind. With the spirit, I think he lives with me, having his ring on me. Like you said about his legacy, his legacy for me is to make sure I carry on his virtues into my children.

Payman:
That’s a beautiful thing, but an atheist could believe exactly the same thing.

Anoop Maini:
Yeah.

Payman:
Do you believe in God?

Anoop Maini:
To be honest, I don’t really-

Payman:
Think about it? Do you believe in karma?

Anoop Maini:
I think there is karma. See, the God, I think to myself, “If there was a God, why would there be so much suffering?”

Payman:
I guess he’s not into …

Anoop Maini:
Yeah. Why would there be so much suffering? Why would people starve in the world? Why would a four year old kid who’s done nothing wrong just not have on the food on the plate?

Payman:
I think the official answer to that, well one of them, is that if that kid has done nothing wrong, he will go straight into heaven, but his plight will show you how lucky you are. Something like that.

Prav Solanki:
I don’t know.

Payman:
Do you know?

Prav Solanki:
I don’t know.

Payman:
It depends on what religion we’re talking I guess.

Prav Solanki:
It depends on what your belief system is ultimately, right? That’s what I was interested in. Moving on from there, you spoke about your dad’s legacy. Fast forward, you’ve got your last day on this planet-

Payman:
Your funeral.

Prav Solanki:
Your funeral, right? If there’s one thing the world can basically remember Anoop Maini by, it’s this sentence; Anoop Maini was … Finish that sentence off for me in terms of your legacy. Anoop Maini was …

Payman:
And not what it will be. What you would love it to be.

Anoop Maini:
Anoop Maini was a great father, husband, family man and an inspiration to others.

Payman:
Thanks a lot man. It’s been lovely having you.

Speaker 4:
This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one-on-one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

Prav Solanki:
Hey guys and thank you for listening to today’s episode of the Dental Leaders podcast, a vision that myself and Payman had over two years ago now. If you have got some value out of today, just hit the subscribe button in iTunes or Google Play or whatever you’re listening to. Let us know in your comments what you actually got out of the episode, because we love sitting back and reading those reviews. It really does make our day.

Payman:
It’s a real pleasure to do this. It’s fun to do, but I’m really humbled that you’re actually listening all the way through to the end. Join us again. If you got some value out of it, please share it. Thanks a lot.

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