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With errors and clinical mistakes. I always want to reframe it and say, you know, a failure is just is not a success yet. It’s a success in pending because actually, how much more do we learn when we make a mistake? Yeah. Then when everything goes smoothly because we look back and I, you know, I reflect a lot of my cases and sometimes I see something in the photos and I’m like, Oh my God, I didn’t even realise that happened. And then it’s only when you look at the photos and, you know, typical one for ortho is you lose anchorage and you get a little bit of medial tipping of the 60s and you’re like, Damn it.

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 gives me great pleasure to welcome Millie Morrison onto the podcast. Millie is a dentist I’ve known since just after she qualified. Actually, I think one of the crop of super talented dentists that came out of Birmingham University under the stewardship of Lewis Mackenzie and Lewis contacted me after he’d introduced me. Well, after we talked about Depeche, I’d met Depeche sort of separately, and then he contacted me and said, There’s another. There is another who’s who’s very talented at composite. And we met and really hit it off straight away. And Millie’s been helping us with Mini Smile Makeover. We’ve been to the US several times together at Aacd. And latterly Millie’s really gone into Ortho and Invisalign in a massive way and much to mine and Lewis Mackenzie. I wouldn’t call it disgust, but. But it’s a shame. It’s a shame you’re no longer interested in resins. Millie is now really focusing fully on Invisalign treatment and teaching. Thanks so much for for coming on the podcast. Mills How are you?

Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah, I’m really good, Thank you. Um, sorry that I’ve disappointed you.

To get that far. So really, this, this, this part, right? We used to want to sort of start from the beginning and end at the end. Where were you born and how do you want to be remembered? But then what I’ve noticed is, as I as I do them, sometimes the key question I want to ask someone doesn’t find its way into the conversation. And so now I’ve kind of gone this other way of asking that question early. And it’s a little bit unfair because, you know, we’re not in the rhythm of it yet and so forth, but it goes around sort of success for me when I think about you, you seem like such a like a contradiction in terms in terms of your success is as a human being. You know, I spoke to people in your year. They said you were top of your class. And yet when I met you, you were a proper party animal. One of those rare individuals, those rare individuals who who who manages to carry it all off at the same time. I mean, you’re amazing with patience and at the same time amazing at the work itself. You look stuff up and all of that. And you find with with most dentists, you know, skewed in one direction or another. But you seem to be very good at a lot of things. Have you always been like that or do you remember as a child or something deciding to be that person or what led to this?

Oh, gosh, that is a what a question to start with. Um, so yeah, I suppose I have always done it all and, and even when I was at school, I was very academic. I did a lot of extracurricular activities and I started working really young. I guess the main thing for me is I’m quite stubborn, so if I really want to do something, I’ll get it done and I’ll find a way. Um, and yeah, so yeah, I have really always done it all. My dad used to tell me that I was burning the candle at both ends and they were, they, as parents do, always concerned that I was taking on too much and too much and too much. And at times it has been too much and I’ve had to slow down a little bit. So, for instance, now I have less of my party animal ways for sure, more like ten. But then, you know, the other side of it is working in bars and I’ve worked in bars from a very, very early age. Um, working in bars really gave me a different window into communication and, you know, communication skills because, you know, I dealt with very lovely patient, lovely customers and dealt with, you know, more difficult customers who had maybe taken that one too many drinks, etcetera, etcetera. So you really get this range. And actually, I remember one of my very first jobs was working in a bar in a restaurant in my village, and it must have been maybe my first or second shift and I was probably 16 at this point, so I wasn’t allowed to work behind the bar.

But this young guy who was well known, I grew up in a village, so everyone knows everyone. It’s a well known guy walked in and asked to look at the dessert menu and I was a bit flustered and I was like, Oh, yeah, let me get get it. So I gave it to him. He was like, Oh, I don’t. And then he said something along the lines of, Oh, I don’t see you on it. And I just remember going. Right read because I was like, Oh my God, what do you say? I was 16 and I just remember going bright red and sort of running in the other direction out the back. But now, you know, instead of, you know, quitting the job and not wanting to work in that environment, I really pushed forward. And now if someone came up to me and said that, I would react completely differently. So I think it was quite helpful for me to be in those sorts of environments and pushing myself in different directions because it definitely gives you this, I suppose, elasticity in dealing with different types of people.

Yeah. So Prav puts a lot of his success down to working in the corner shop as well. And he says a similar thing about different types of people. And you know, he’s got the gift of the gab, if you like, as well. But why were you working in bars? Because your dad was in that business.

No, no, no. So I am. I mean, me and my sister started working really early, so my first job actually was training dogs. And then I moved into working in, in a in the local restaurant. I don’t really know why I was working there, probably for some extra pocket money, pocket money. And so I could go out and do what I wanted to do because again, quite strong willed. If I wanted to go buy something, I probably did want to go and buy it and I’d find a way to go and do it. Um, and then to be honest with you, I really, really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the, the busyness of it. And I remember be running around and there would be this great team, this great work ethic. And at the end of the night, you know, we’d all have a drink together, obviously when I was over 18 and, and, and we’d, um, you know, I just really enjoyed that sort of family feel, but that really hard work. And then I carried that on after school. So when I was after school, I really instantly decided I was going to take a year out. I actually had my place at Birmingham and realised I’m just not ready to go.

So decided to take a year out, had no money saved. Then I went and took on four jobs and I was really working from 6 a.m. till 11 p.m. most days within these four jobs to save up to go away. Then I went away. And really that’s the only time in my life I haven’t worked was when I was was travelling. And then I came back and I worked in bars the whole way through university as well to again fund the lifestyle I wanted to have whilst I was at university. And it was really that, you know, obviously we had that family with the dentists, but I really loved having family outside of dentistry, and the girls that I worked with in the bars at Birmingham were still very, very good friends with Now, like they they were a really important part of my life. And, you know, we had I remember, gosh, at university I’d go out drinking till 4:00 in the morning and then literally drag myself, dragged myself to university to sit in lectures all day and then in some ways miserable.

Be top of your class as well with it. I mean, what’s the secret to that? Do you really, really listen the first time? Is that what it is?

I was really disciplined. I came home after every lecture and I wrote up my notes. Like every lecture, every day I would come up and you should. I’ve still got them, actually. I’ve got everything in word documents from those lectures. So I learned by doing. But I also learned by writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. So, you know, those lectures in the good old days when they used to print out handouts, I’m not sure if they’d do that anymore, but you sit there furiously scribbling your notes as the lecturer was teaching. And, you know, it doesn’t it’s not that easy to read. So I’d go home and I would write those up into legible notes in word documents that when it came to revision, everything was neatly organised. I knew exactly where everything was, and my brain works that if I’ve written it out in different colours, I will I will remember roughly well, not roughly. I remember exactly on the page in what colour though that bit of information was. So I still remember A-level when I used to do, I used to do it by hand for A-levels in the exercise books. I can still tell you where you know photosynthesis is and my biology and what colour it is and all those colour codes. It’s just how my brain works and keeps those synapses, you know, going together.

Okay, so I’m interested in two things. What did, what did your parents do to make you that person? Number one and number two, number two. What did your parents do to make you the person that you always going out getting a job? I mean, I didn’t have a job. How come you did?

So.

One might. So my parents were both very, very successful. My mum worked in HR and was very high up in BP. Very, very high up. Very, very senior, very well respected. And she really was very focussed on women in industries being successful and how, you know, women can be successful. And she was a really you know, she really is an inspirational person. Um, and you know, seeing her, I suppose, fight those battles and win those battles and really overcome them, it’s something that was very special growing up. And also, you know, my mum used to tell me when she was younger, when I was younger, that she in the village where I grew up, all the mums and that’s a generalisation, but a lot of the mums didn’t work and she would have more in common with the men than she did with the women. And she found and you know, the women in the village didn’t necessarily like that. And I always thought that was really sad and that my mum had these dreams. My mum was very inspirational and people would judge her for that. And I would most people would say I look quite like my mum and I’m almost a carbon copy of my mum in terms of personality. We’re quite driven and we quite want what we want and we’re probably, you know, more Type A entrepreneur too. Yes, and my dad is an entrepreneur and he’s less he’s in some ways quite opposite to my mum.

But, you know, he has the same work ethic. You work hard. He he always taught me never chase money. He was like, Chase what you want to do, chase what you love, because the money will always come. And also there’s more important things in life than money. And he is he again, he would he was very successful in what he did. He does branding and marketing. And he went from Heinz to Mars, very high up in Mars, and then all of a sudden decided to open his own branding company called Elephants Can’t Jump. I mean, I think that name just really tells you everything you need to know about my dad. And then, you know, 12 years after that, he was getting, you know, getting a bit bored and he decided to open up a brewery with with my uncle. And again, it’s been very successful. And he just you know, I watched my dad to this day and we talk about beer labels and and, you know, the designs. My dad’s eyes just light up when he talks about them. And my dad’s close to retirement. And I said to him, I said, Dad, I just don’t think you should give that part of it up because you come alive when you talk about it like he really does. Exactly. So, you know, I feel like he always gave that that level of passion to to me and my sister as well.

And so somehow, somehow, they kept it real. I mean, I’m presuming, you know, you’ve got two successful parents in the industry. You didn’t have to work, but somehow they kept it real for you and sort of, you know, the environment was that you and your sister used to work all the time.

Yeah, I think well, they definitely well, they definitely encourage us to work. And you know my mum in typical my mum fashion, she, she when we were doing a, an allowance, she, we had to make a spreadsheet of everything we’d spend, we thought we would spend in a year in categories. So clothing, CDs because they were CDs in back in the back then um shoes, stationery for school, you know, if we’d spend any money on Apple Music, you know, iPods were just coming out. But all these things we had to categorise put into a spreadsheet. And she would then say, right. She would tell us if she thought we were being ridiculous. So we’re like, you know, say if we put £100 for clothes for the year, she would like, No, I think you probably spend more like 50. And then she would total that up and she would divide that by 12. And that would be our allowance for for the for the month. And, you know, that really taught us budgeting. So if we wanted to do anything, make anything else or buy anything else, we had to go out and work for it. And I think that was a really nice way of doing it because, you know, we weren’t told, no, you can’t have an allowance. But if that’s that’s all you’re going to have from us, you can’t come and ask us for more. And if you want more, then you’re going to need to fund that that lifestyle because this is what we think is fair. So it worked very well and I’m really, really grateful that they made us that they made us do that or didn’t make us do that. They gave us the that environment where we made that decision ourselves. Yeah.

And tell me about your year off. So once you’ve done the work, where did you go? What was the vacation like?

Oh, gosh, it was. It was fantastic. So we. Well, I went to l.a. I did. It was a very typical UK backpacker backpacker trek. Did you get one of those round the world tickets? Yeah. Yes. By travel, I think it was like really difficult. Really? On the beaten track. Nothing. Nothing crazy. Which probably my parents were quite happy about given that I had. I literally I decided that I wasn’t going. I actually went on a girls holiday to Kavos in Greece, and I had such a good time that I decided I really not ready to go back to uni. I want to go back there and work. So I landed, went on a family holiday and told my parents. Then I was like, I’m going to defer my place. And just so you know, I’m going to go back to Greece next week when we land and I’m going to go work out there for a few months. So that’s what I did. And then I came back from Kavos in October, and then I picked up back up my job, my various jobs. I was childminding. I was working in two, two, two bars in the village and a deli. And then in January, I think I left and then I did Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and then Southeast Asia. Which was amazing. Wow. Wow.

So I never knew all that about you. I never knew you did all those jobs. But it makes a lot of sense now. Yeah, because when me and you used to sit around at 2 a.m. in Toronto talking about how dentistry should be, and you’d say you’d say things way beyond your years about patience and patient care and people. And now, now that you put it in that context, it all makes a lot more sense, you know? All right. So why dentistry? I mean, I’m imagining you were academic enough to do whatever the hell you wanted.

So funny enough, I actually decided I wanted to be a dentist when I was four because I liked how fluoride tasted the fluoride. Yeah. What a terrible, terrible reason to be a dentist. And I remember. So, you know, when it came to writing your personal statements for university. Yeah, I wanted to put that on my personal statement. And my mom was like, No. I was like, But that’s the truth. And she was like, No, like, you can’t say that people will think you’re stupid. And I was like, Oh, but actually, yeah. So I decided I did want it was because of the fluoride varnish. That is what I wanted, you know, from a very young age, like really stuck with me that I wanted to be a dentist. And then, you know, as my personality, I guess developed and, you know, I was doing well at school, it became clear that actually a job in health care would become would probably be suit me the best. And I was deciding between medicine and dentistry. And ultimately I and this might sound a bit crass, but I didn’t want to see sick people every day. I wanted to have some really happy experiences with my patients and I wanted to really be able to see people more than once every five years when they’re unwell. This was, you know, from a 17 year old, 16, 17 year old’s perspective where I was thinking like, I don’t like hospitals and anything else.

You know, they’re not happy, happy feeling places for me. I get it.

Well, exactly. And I just in the end, dentistry felt like a really good fit. It had that flexibility. Um, I have to say, I didn’t really appreciate that there were all these different aspects of dentistry that you could go into. I mean, I knew about them, but I hadn’t really.

Did you shadow a dentist? Did you did your parents not did your parents not sort of say, hey, why don’t you go and spend a week in Shell or, you know, Mars or industry? It was industry. Never an option. Were you never thinking of that?

No, no, no. My I think my parents knew very you know, when I said I want to be a dentist or a doctor, they were like, okay, well, off you go, then. Sounds good to me. Headstrong And I actually went and did work experience with my dentist in the village. Along from where? From the village I grew up in. And I remember I used to get the bus and I used to go every Monday morning because I had that as a free period from school. So I’d go every Monday morning and then I’d get the bus back up to school because that was in another village. So I was there for a long time and it was when the rules were slightly, slightly more relaxed. So I was allowed to hold the suction. And, you know, I was there as like a clean nurse. And it was all very exciting. And actually he was a fantastic dentist. And you don’t really realise it when you’re just watching someone because you’re quite young, young, I think did that from when I was 15 to when I was 18. So I did it for about three years. And then it was only when I went to university and you know, they talk to you about what makes a good dentist or a better dentist or a great dentist. And he did a lot of the things, you know, in terms of the communication, the type of treatments he was doing. So I think I was quite lucky that I had that opportunity. And he was literally, you know, a tiny little village and you wouldn’t really know that he would be so good until you really know how good he was, if that makes sense.

So then in your time in Birmingham, were you what stands out as the best and worst of that period? Because I remember going into clinical like the bit with the phantom heads at the beginning. I was just I just hated it so much. You know? I hated it. I did not like it. Then when I got it, I got it. It was. It was the slow learner. Slow learner. What stands out for you as far as what you loved and what you didn’t love?

God, do you know what I really. I really. I loved. I really loved learning. I really, really loved pushing myself. And I guess I’m quite detail oriented and that and luckily I ended up at Birmingham because Birmingham was quite academic, you know, Dental University. So they quite liked the detail as well. I really loved the the Phantom Heads. I loved the phantom heads. I would have spent hours in the phantom heads. I loved being on clinic. I suppose the things that used to irritate me the most is how long I’d have to wait for feedback from tutors. You know, you’ve got to line up and I’m such an impatient person. I was like, Come on, come on. And. And I loved that. I mean, I loved the support. I remember my first tooth I ever took out was a low right to and my patient was diabetic and was on blood thinners. And I really like quite a lot of bonus, really easy extraction. But this guy would not stop bleeding. So my tutor was like, Well, look, you’re going to have to put Stitch in. I mean, this is my first extraction I’ve ever done, and now I’m having to put a stitch in my hands. You should have seen me. I was shaking so badly. And then we did it. We went fine. And I came out and I just burst into tears because of the like, nothing had gone wrong. In fact, it had gone really right.

But I was so like, there was so much adrenaline going through my system. Like I was shaking and I cried and bless him, he just came over and gave me a massive cuddle and he was like, It’s absolutely fine. So we really had that lovely support from from the tutors. And, you know, Lewis Mackenzie has been instrumental in my, in my confidence, in my abilities and in my career because he introduced me to you. He introduced me to ads who I still work with. And he’s been he’s been fantastic. And I was so lucky that I had him for my second year all the way up to my fifth year. I suppose the things I didn’t like is I actually found working in a hospital quite challenging for like a few different reasons, but I did find it quite challenging, like the actual hospital setting. And when I came out of university I was applying to go to the Army because I thought that if this was what dentistry was like in a hospital, it’s just not going to be for me. So I was applying to go to the Army and then when I got to vet and worked in a practice, then I really loved working in a practice and withdrew my application. But I found the hospital setting quite challenging and I think it was to do with sort of the it was quite slow paced, but also the different areas were quite cliquey.

So you had, you know, it was they didn’t really gel together. Everyone was very separated. And I don’t know if that’s the case now, obviously, but it felt quite cliquey and I didn’t really appreciate that. So I was going to go off and go to the Army again. My parents weren’t greatly happy about it, but they did say, You know, if this is something you feel you have to do or if you go, we want you. You know, in the end, I enjoyed practice. And the other thing is, is that I saw I think it was my medical exam. It was one of one of one of the hurdles you have to go through. And I was sat at the back of the hallway and I was watching the back of the hall, sorry. And at the front there are all these kids, 16, 17 year olds being told that they’d been accepted. And they were so happy, like, they like jumped up and they were like, Yeah, I remember looking at them and like, God, I really, really don’t feel like that. Like, I really don’t feel like that. And I was like, I’m doing this for the wrong reasons. I’m doing this to escape something rather than because I really want to do it. And so, you know, that really compounded and the fact that I was now enjoying dentistry and practice to withdraw the to withdraw the application.

And the city of Birmingham itself. Were you were you like aware of it? Of course you were aware of it. But had you been there a lot? Did you know it? Were you aware of it? So did you know it?

Did it shock you particularly well? Um. Well, do you know what I’ve always found really strange is that people were like. Birmingham is the second biggest city in in the country, but it doesn’t feel that big. I feel like a lot of that is to do with the suburbs around it. Um, but I wasn’t that aware of it. My mum went to Birmingham actually, and my granny was a nurse in Birmingham Hospital and she lived in Droitwich, which I believe is just around the corner. My geography is terrible by the way, so even though I have lived, I grew up just outside London. I’ve lived in London for many years. I still struggle with where things are.

Because you’re not, um.

It’s. It’s my. It’s my weakest, weakest point. Like sense of direction, geography. Terrible. So my mum lives in the States. She lives in Florida. And I remember we were around the dinner table and I had somehow got Florida confused with, you know, that little, um, I think it’s like a the outfit of LA or California. And I honestly, I was so confused as to where we were. And I’ve just got my mum. Oh, I know what you’re talking about.

You’re talking about my.

Sister.

Baja, Mexico or something. That peninsula that sticks out the other side. Yeah.

Yeah. I just got it confused in my mind. Like, it was like my sister’s really intelligent. My mum’s really intelligent. Bill, my mum’s husband is really intelligent. They were looking at me like, You’re an idiot. I was like, I’m so sorry.

So what was your.

I was just sort of aware of Birmingham.

Where was your where was your job?

South west London in Enfield. It’s a really, really good shooters. So I was lucky. I had two. One was a prosthodontist, one was an oral surgeon. Very different personalities, one, you know, quite energetic, quite loud, like me, quite extroverted, and the other was quite introverted. And it was a nice mix because, you know, I got to see different points of view and different techniques and different ideas on the treatment planning side of things. And I mean, we had so much fun, like our lectures on a Friday and the, the group of people that we had just gelled really, really well. And I’m still very good friends with a lot of them. And um, we would finish lectures or that the lectures for the day and we would go to the same bar every week. I’ve probably spent all of my wages that year. My annual income at this particular particular pub, the castle in Tooting. Um, and we just had an absolute, a fantastic time. So, you know, we were having a great time in practice because of the support. And I was, you know, it was a really, really nice practice. And then we were just having great fun at the weekend, creating all these new friendships, lifelong friendships. So I was very, very lucky. I was very, very lucky to be end up where I was.

I think. I think, you know what? It’s a brilliant year. If you’ve got a good practice and it can be the opposite if you haven’t. But, you know, when I when I’m talking to young dentists now, I always worry or I always warn them about the year after vet because the year after vet is very sort of isolating you suddenly a normal person, Aren’t you going to work every day in that one room with your nurse? Whereas just it just seems like an extension of union and weird way, like a fun little way. Like you say, you’re meeting new people, you’re learning things all the time. But I think that initial launch pad, I was very, very lucky with my I mean, I put my boss, I put that down to like almost everything I’ve done with Enlighten down to him because he was just one of these guys who wanted to to find out more about stuff. But it sounds like you had a similar thing. They had like a like a good launch pad. Do you remember others who didn’t? Because I do. You know, my partner had a terrible first job. Terrible because I hated dentistry after that. It’s difficult, isn’t it? Some people have. I think that first year is so important that it can, like, make or break the direction of flow, you know?

It’s yeah, it’s definitely really important. And, you know, we were quite we I don’t know how I don’t know if it’s still the same but we, we got ranked and then we went and we, we interviewed so each tutor would have like 15 minutes with each prospective student of, of the, of that region. So it was quite nice because then you ranked them on who you liked the best and who you got on with. So I think that was quite important because it wasn’t just done on your grades, it was done by a personality match as well. And I don’t think that’s the same now. I think it’s now really just on your ranking, isn’t it? I think they might have changed it.

Yeah, I think it is. I think you’re right. Yeah.

But that that getting on personality is really important. I mean, I speak to a lot of young dentists and there’s a massive mix bag, and I genuinely believe that all the tutors want to be able to pass on their knowledge, otherwise they wouldn’t be a tutor. And I believe or would hope that the students want to you know, they’re just newly qualified dentists would want to, you know, get as much information out. But there has, you know, different people work well with different people. So I do believe that like that personality point where you get to meet them first was a crucial part to why we you know, I had such a great year.

Let’s talk about Emily. Do you get do you get contacted by a lot of young dentists asking for advice?

So, yeah. So I speak to a lot of young dentists, I think naturally, because I’ve been, you know, sort of teaching Invisalign go for the last sort of five years. I speak, you know, I see a lot of dentists see me. Yeah. And I, you know, I always say like, please reach out. I’m always happy to help. And they do, which is fantastic about range of things. Sometimes it’s about Invisalign, sometimes it’s about, you know, career progression or, um, what courses they should be looking at. Or they might have had a difficult situation with the boss or they’re trying, you know, they want to leave and they’re looking for the next step. Um, not, not necessarily just young dentists, some older dentists as well, mainly younger dentists. Um, which is nice.

I love helping. I’m going, Yeah, yeah. Where I’m going with it, though, is I get contacted by a bunch of people. I get contacted by a bunch of people who think I’m like super successful at business and so I can help them be, you know, I’m not. And they’re you know what what, what, what the funny thing is, this is this is my question, right? It’s a massive responsibility to answer those questions. And both of us, I think, are kind of people pleasers. Yeah. Like I want to please whoever, whoever it is, it could be a first. It could be a fourth year dental student or it could be, you know, I’ve had a guy contact me about he’s got an invention and he wants to put it to market. It’s a massive responsibility to give an answer. I think the important part of giving that answer is to sort of. In a gift of sort of health warning with it that, you know, this is just like my opinion is, you know, it’s difficult because because, you know, you know, the guy was asking me about patents. You know, I don’t really believe in patents personally, but that might be completely the wrong advice for him. Or I’m telling young dentists not to do not to do a bit of everything and then decide, you know, I’m telling them, pick something early, very early and run with it. And I have I find myself now thinking, well, you know, this is just my my particular slant. And same question to you might give a completely different answer. And it’s important someone gets, you know, understands that just because you’re you or I’m me, we haven’t got the answers to all the questions. Yeah.

That’s true. And, you know, our own experiences will greatly warp our view of the world. You know, there’s always that great saying, you ask ten dentists for a treatment plan, you get 15 treatment plans. And it’s not just the treatment planning side of it, the clinical side of it, it’s the non clinical side of it as well. Like what’s important, how you should, you know, in inverted commas, sell or communicate with patients. Like everyone has their own tips and tricks, but really. The important bit is that, you know, yes, they’re asking maybe your advice, but maybe not only your advice and also having a little bit of common sense. Sometimes people have advised me to do something. In my mind, I’m like, Mm, I don’t want to do that. So no, and I’ll go do something else and it’s not. But actually having that different opinion doesn’t mean that you don’t do it. It just means it’s a difference of opinion and it might make you feel stronger about what you want to do or it might change your mind. You know, just because you’ve had a certain opinion doesn’t mean that that’s what you’re necessarily going to go and go. And do you know, for instance, you know, if you think about me in composites like Lewis Mackenzie was like, oh, you’re going to be fantastic at composite. And and you know, let’s not lie. It’s really nice to be told you’re good at something. It gives you a lot of confidence and you want to go and do it. Do you know what my first report card from Ortho was at university? Disinterested. Do you know why? I was just interested? Because it was 9 a.m. on a Thursday and Wednesday nights were meet you. So I was always tired and I was disinterested in the subject and it wasn’t really taught. So I.

Found undergrad. Also teaching was very poor anyway, in Cardiff, I don’t know about in Birmingham, but it just wasn’t they, they, they didn’t really explain anything to us man did they. How was it in Birmingham. Did they. Was it a good, good grounding.

Well I wouldn’t want to say anything too negative, but I found watching teeth move around, wax in hot water, really quite soul destroying. So and you know, it wasn’t as hands on or there wasn’t as many opportunities, you know, as it were in other disciplines. But, you know, I was always told you’d be very good at composite. You love composites. And I really could have run with that. But, you know, the more I did them and the more I tried to do, you know, did all the layering and this I did enjoy it, but I wasn’t I wasn’t really passionate about it. I didn’t go home and read about it. And I remember speaking to Dipesh and he was like, Yeah, I lie in bed looking at teeth. I was like, really? Like God was like, I couldn’t think of anything bloody worse. When I’m in bed. I wanted to be like, you know, cuddling the dogs or watching Netflix. And so and then and honestly, then I started doing ortho and I found this, like, massive passion. And I was like, I love it. Like, I really love it. And not only do I like it, but I want to be the best I can possibly be at this. And, you know, now I go home and I read books and I read journals and I read papers and I, you know, spent masses on postgraduate education because I want to know as much as I can. So, you know, when I was asking advice from from people what, you know, for instance, Lewis Mackenzie or you probably said, you know, do compost because you’re good at it, but actually that in some ways made my mind even stronger that just because I was good at it doesn’t mean that I want to do it. And actually, I want to go do something that I really love and I want to learn about and I want to become really good at it.

So I was listening to the your podcast with Qadhi, and you said, I can’t remember exactly, but you said like it was it was a very short amount of time before between your first Invisalign case and your first course that you taught on Invisalign like a year or something like this. Yeah. So, so, so you must immediately realised I love this. And then did you go off and start like researching like hell to, I mean how did you become a teacher of it within a year of doing your first case?

So was it a year? Actually, I was. I was actually I was not I was not a quick starter, and I’ll tell you why. So I like to understand things. I really like to understand things. I really want to understand something. You know, to go to the wide, the wide, the wide, the wide, the wide, to feel like I understand the very first why. And oh my gosh, revising was a nightmare because it would take me so long to get through a topic because I’d be like googling and searching for the last wide find. Yeah, just to understand the first concept. And but when I first started doing Invisalign, I was actually one of the first cohorts through Invisalign, you know, Invisalign go actually. And I went, I was working in a practice and all the treatment planning was done off site. And I mean, I think that’s a great service service, but for me. I for me, for my personality didn’t work, like it really didn’t work because I didn’t understand what was happening. And ultimately I was doing PR and putting attachments and I had no really true understanding of what was happening within the plastic or within the tooth. Aligners And I actually left that practice because I moved house and, um, and it was just, you know, it was just a nice. Was that a.

Practice?

Yeah. Yeah, it was fantastic practice. Practice, like really, you know, advanced in terms of this level of care and everything, but Dental Dental in the end, Yeah. And I really, really love working there with Avi and the team, but it was two hours of practice, three different buses. Yeah. Really gorgeous practice. Yeah. And I did try, but two hours on three different buses and nearly killed me. And in the end I went and, and moved to the other practice. I was working at part time, full time, but I had no understanding of the system. So I stopped doing Invisalign and I started doing fixed because I understood, fixed. You know, I could really understand the biomechanics. Um, and I could see it, I suppose it was, it was, I felt like I could feel it with my hands. And I’m quite, you know, touchy feely. I could feel it with my hands instead of it being on a screen. And I was doing loads of fixed and then all of a sudden, um, you know, my Invisalign, Invisalign territory manager popped up who got really, really well with and she was like, Why are you doing so much fixed and you’re not doing Invisalign? And I was like, Well, I feel like I can understand it and I’ve got more control. And she said, okay, I understand that, but let’s take it back. Let’s, let’s do some like do some really simple cases. Here’s the help, here’s the support and, and see how you like it. And then honestly, all the issues I had with fixing because, you know, fixed I do fixed for me when you put the wire on, sometimes you feel like you’re firefighting because you put the wire in and then you see them four, six weeks later, you’re like, Are the teeth exactly where I wanted them to be? Or am I going to have to now tweak this and tweak that, etcetera, etcetera.

Um, whereas, you know, when you’re, you’re planning things digitally, actually you’ve got lots of control, not just over where the teeth finish, but how the teeth get there. So like round tripping thin biotype things like this. Um, and I just started building up really slowly with really simple cases. Um, and it was massively successful and I really, really loved it. And I was asking for help and I was asking for support, um, and getting some really fantastic results. And I was always sharing that with my team. She was, you know, when we got on really well, we’d go out for dinner and drinks and she would come to the practice and she actually started bringing round these random people from Invisalign who just happened to be with her for the day. And they’d come in my lunch hour. And let’s be honest, I was working the NHS at this point. I had my hair in like the messiest bun on top of my head. My makeup had probably sweated off by that point. I looked a bit bedraggled and I’m not like the neatest person ever anyway. And um, in terms of looks.

This is Kentish Town, right?

Yeah. Um, and most of the time, because I was balancing the NHS and really driving through with this author, I was working early, I was working through lunch and I was working late to try and balance it all, hitting targets.

You were working hard. I remember when I came to see you. Even even when I came to see you, I remember you running around, jumping between patients and opgs and whatever it was.

Oh, of course. Yeah. I worked. Really. I was working really, really hard, actually. Anyway, she was bringing all these people and they weren’t random people. They. They end up end up being like head of marketing for a mere for Invisalign and all the, you know, all these big shots of aligning technology and they liked the cases. She was like, oh, show them some of your outcomes. Show them what you’re thinking is show them this. And you know, in my way, chit chat, chat away, not really thinking anything of it. I honestly thought that some of them were TMS in training, and these are people who are like the driving force of Invisalign through EMEA.

And.

Oh, so naive. Um, and anyway, they were interviewing me, but she hadn’t told me because she didn’t want me to be, you know, overwhelmed I guess would be. Yeah. So then they liked my personality. And, you know, let’s be honest, I was a young female dentist who who was being, you know, having lots of success with the Invisalign product and getting good results, you know, not just going doolally with it, but taking my time in terms of, you know, planning and everything. And so yeah, so they onboarded me really quickly and gosh, I always say that Invisalign changed my life. And always sounds such a corny line. I do know that, but it did because I made that conscious decision to do more Invisalign. I remember, you know, when you do the enlightened training and you said Whitening Wednesdays. So I talk about you and Whitening Wednesdays when I’m when I’m talking to my sort of delegates. Because if you talk, you know, you said if you talk about whitening to everybody, you will do more whitening. I remember I got to talk to everybody about Invisalign and I will do more Invisalign. And that’s what happened. And it really changed my life because not only did I move out of the practice, you know, the practice into into private practice, but I also got this opportunity to speak and to educate. And I found my second passion through that. And bearing in mind that when I went to the social sector in Birmingham University, when I had I remember it so clearly Payman it was awful. You had to give a speech and I was shaking. I was bright red and I barely made it back to my seat because my legs were shaking. I can’t imagine. So to go.

From.

Oh, was I was so nervous. But to go from that to to, you know, going all over the world like it’s been such, such an amazing journey.

Yeah, Yeah. So. So listen, a lot of that kind of stuff is to do with getting out of your comfort zone, isn’t it? You know, and, and growth growth comes from getting out of your comfort zone. And yet in the moment, in the moment that you do something that’s out of your comfort zone, especially someone like you, who likes to be in control, must be really difficult for you. Like, you know, like you were saying, when that when you had to put that suture into that tooth. Yeah. That first time where you’re not in control of what’s happening. And by its very nature, the first time you gave a lecture, the first time you did Invisalign, the first time or the many times that you do things slightly differently, they must all cause you like massive internal anxiety because you’re the kind of person who, like you said, wants the full detail on everything, wants to know exactly how things are going to turn out, How do you square that circle?

So that’s actually it’s really interesting. I suppose I’m slightly addicted to the like to the high of learning something new. Like I really I love it. Like that’s it’s quite an addictive thing to be, to learn and then to learn something else. And you know, when you reflect on the case, you’re like, Oh gosh, like, I didn’t do that and I should have done that. And now I know I need to do that. And you get better and better and better, and I find that quite addictive. And also one of the things I’ve learnt and I’ve been taught by my own sort of mentors is that when you feel uncomfortable, when you feel that fear, instead of trying to lean away from it, which is our natural reaction, is to lean into it. Yeah. And really lean into it. And it’s tough because you’re naturally wanting to run the other way, but you’ve got to lean into it, lean into those difficult, difficult scenarios, the things that you find most challenging, and then you grow. And sometimes I have like these butterflies in my stomach. I’m shaking. I feel so nervous and like the other week I did a TED Talk where a TED type talk and, you know, normally when I lecture, I have my screen, my presentation, I’ve got my slides and I’ve got my clicker in my hand, and that’s comfort. And this TED talk talk was 20 minutes. No, no slides, no clicker to a room of dentists who had done the diploma in clear aligner therapy. So, you know, the challenge there was to also find something to make them think and to, you know, to not just, you know, something different and slightly different point to point in the view. And oh, my gosh, even though I will go up on stage in front of hundreds of dentists in different countries and talk with my slides and my clicker, that was not that was the barrier. I was really, really nervous and I was shaking. And before I was stood there at the back of the auditorium doing my power poses from Amy Cuddy.

Like literally just to make yourself feel better. Oh, gosh, yeah. I was there. My hands in the air, my hands on the hip. I was deep breathing and I was doing these items.

I was like, I am confident. I am capable.

I am going to nail this. I was like, I had.

This mantra going through my in my head because it was so out of my comfort zone. And and the whole time my legs were shaking. At one point I was like, I can’t feel my face. Like my face had gone numb.

Everyone enjoyed the talk. Like, you know, I got great feedback from it.

So it came across well. But internally, you know, just because someone.

Looks like everything’s.

Fine and smooth.

Doesn’t necessarily.

Mean everything.

Is like we’re, you know, we’re.

All growing. And Ramon, who asked me to do that, he said, I’ve asked you to do it because I know it’s going to be difficult for you, but I want you to grow.

I mean, I’ve obviously done a bunch of events with a bunch of speakers, and what I always tell them is if you’re not nervous, something’s wrong. You know, before a big you know, if you’re stepping out on stage, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve done it at that moment, you you know, it’s just I mean, we all know that the Simon Sinek thing about nervous and excited being the same chemical translated in different ways, and I understand all of that. But being a bit nervous before a talk is sort of normal. You know, there’s a, there’s, there’s nothing to be worried about there. I’m quite interested in. You work at Chris Hall’s practice to be asked by Chris or to apply for a job. Is that how it worked? Did he. Did he. Did he did he ask you? Yeah. Given to be given that job when there’s hundreds of dentists going through, you know, that course. So did he tell you what did he see in you that made him sort of ask you and the handful of others who’ve worked at that practice?

He said he does say he knows I did the reading every week because he’s a stickler.

He’s a stickler for that.

And, you know, actually, funny enough.

You’re the one that told me to go for the course because if you remember back then, they wanted two years experience out of out of dental school and I only had one. And you were like, you need to do it. And I was like, Really? But and, you know, rule following me, I was like, The rules say that I shouldn’t. And I emailed Zenith and I was like, Is it.

Is it okay if I apply? And she and she was like, Yes, we do want we do like to, but if you want to apply, then you think.

You can do the work then? Absolutely. Because it’s not necessarily the two years experience. But I think they really want to make sure is that you have the ability to put into practice what they’re teaching you straight away. And, you know, sometimes your first year out of dental school, that’s like, that’s just not going to happen. But it was I mean, it was a great opportunity. And I remember I was so honoured.

Yeah. I mean, look, it’s an extraordinary course, which is why I advise you to go on it. But how soon was it straight after the course that they said, Hey, come work?

No, no. It was a couple of years later. So I did the course. I did the course 2016, 2017, and then I joined the team in March 2018, I believe. Or maybe maybe it was March 2018 or March 2019. I think it was 2018, but don’t hold me to that. But he he was Chris. He Chris was coming to do a talk at one at the end of the Invisalign days and I was co-presenting as sort of a lead in to the into teaching. So actually it must have been March 19th and he sat at the back and we were looking at a case together because I just asked him if he wouldn’t mind having a look at a case. And then he did his thing and we were walking out together and he was like, you know, do you do you have 1 or 2 days you can give me? And I was like, Yeah, Again, I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m so nervous. But okay. Yes.

And then eventually I had a.

Presentation together with my cases and sit there with him and going through on this massive screen. Um.

But what an honour, What an honour.

Did you, did you feel, did you feel the way you would expect someone to feel in that moment when Crystal says, Come work at my practice?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the first thing I did is I came like ran home and called everyone called. I called everyone. I was like, Oh my God.

You’ll never actually actually know. Do you know what? I’ve just realised what happened. So I we actually went to the theatre that night round the.

Corner and.

I remember.

I can’t remember what we saw, but I remember meeting my family and everyone there and us getting, you know, the little bottles of prosecco.

You can get. I’ve got one of those each. And we did a cheers and.

And no one, none of my family, no one knew who.

I was like Chris Chris always just asked me to go to like go for an interview and go for a job. And they’re like, He was Chris Oh. And I was trying to explain. I don’t get it. They had no idea. But anyway, they still got like, we still got a little thing of bubbles.

You know, for what it’s worth, for what it’s worth, I’ve been proud of you many times in your career, but when I heard that, I don’t know why, I. I was very, very. I was probably more proud of you that day than than any other day, because I’ve known Chris and Zayn for a long time and they’ve got very high standard. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the difference between working I mean, adarsh mega entrepreneur, maybe the least sort of emotional person I’ve come across when it comes to, you know, I’m sure he just wants you to make people happy, end of story. Do whatever you like, make people happy. Um. Chris or, you know, I’m sure his practice is full of systems and processes and everything has to be exactly done his way. And then, and then the family business, which was, you know, gentle Dental with so many different branches and so many different people inputting, you must have learned something different from each of these, right?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely very different places.

So it’s such a pleasure.

To work in different in different practices under different bosses who have different approaches to things. And it you, I mean, you just get introduced to different ways of working. So you know, yeah, ads is like super, super laid back. And when I went to Chris, you know, it was a bit more of a shock because they, they wanted to like check, check the letters and, you know, look at, look at our treatment plans and a lot more detail. And at first I was a bit I was a bit like, oh, so you don’t trust us?

But actually how stupid was I to think that?

And also kind of egotistical isn’t the right word, but, you know, that sort of thing. Like how I mean, the reason they wanted to look at the treatment plan isn’t so that they were checking up on us, but it was to give us this opportunity where they would look at our plan and say, Yeah, okay, well, this is a really good idea, but have you thought about it this way and have you thought about it that way? And what about if you did this and did this and did this and again, they just instead of you following the same protocol for every patient, they would bring in different you know, Chris and Dana saying it’s less clinical. But, you know, they’re both pull in different ways of looking at the case ten times better. And, you know, you just learn so much that way. So yeah, systems and those processes in place, but it’s still both approaches are there to support and to guide you and to and to make you better. And it’s just different ways. But then I remember doing my first full mouth rehabs adds his practice and him helping me, talking me through, going through everything. So, you know, again, I’ve been very lucky in terms of in terms of my principles, in terms of my therefore mentors and the different approaches, because it’s given me the opportunity in the space to try different things and to really work out what I like to do and how I like to do things.

Yeah, to have to have someone like Chris or on hand to ask questions must be a massive learning thing. I mean, to have your cases all sequentially going through him, you must you must learn so much from that dictionary encyclopaedia. I should say.

Honestly, his mind works in a completely different way. I mean, to anybody else’s I’ve met and the way he puts things together and you know, sometimes I feel really, really, really stupid because I ask him the same question about five times. But, you know, he’s really patient. He’ll explain it and he’ll explain it and he’ll explain it and he’ll sit down. And I remember, you know, I had someone come in and they’d had direct to consumer aligners and their occlusion was a mess. And so we were setting it up the articulators and we were, you know, looking at whether we were going to add take away or realign. And he sat with me doing sort of looking at where the contact was. We’d set it up and looking where the contact was taking that away. Then what happened to the occlusion? Then what happened? And then what happened? It was hours that he gave me sitting there doing that. And when I wanted to understand more about Bimanual manipulation, he sat with me and, you know, he did it to me. And then I did it to him. And then we did it on my nurse. And, you know, he’s very he’s so willing to share his his knowledge and his time. It’s just fantastic.

But tell me this, you know, with with the work that you’ve done with Invisalign, have you have you done anything else with other Aligners or have you only exclusively worked with Invisalign?

Because there’s so many right at the beginning.

I know. I know. So right at the beginning I did try a few different aligner systems and I found I personally found the Invisalign system the most reliable in my hands and the easiest to understand from the interface. So I always say to my patients, you know, you’ve got the option of having clear aligners The brand I use is Invisalign. At the moment it’s the market leader because of X, Y and Z. But there are some new aligner systems coming on to the scene which are exciting, you know, and there’s a massive sort of upturn of people doing their own aligners because once you understand the biomechanics, you know, you can manipulate the different systems. I like, you know, when you when you’ve used one system for so long, it’s difficult to move because you know the system, you trust the system. And I guess, you know, the cases I’m doing now are the cases where they’ve been rejected to have aligners, you know, they’re being told, no, you can’t have aligners you have to have fixed. And then they land at my doorstep going, please, I really don’t want to have fixed appliances. Can you do this with Aligners? Because I’m doing those more complex cases. I really want to use a system that I know like the back of my hand. So it’s almost like a catch 22. But yeah, I did use other systems in the past for a couple of cases and I just found that with Invisalign I got what I needed and what I wanted.

Well, look, I understand why Invisalign invested in you early and they’re the market leading. They’re the biggest Dental company. Not not the biggest clear aligner company. They’re the biggest Dental company. And so it makes sense, right? And at the same time, though, you know, Dipesh, for instance, he teaches for for us with enamel, but he insists on on staying on top of every other material that’s that’s out there. He’s doing work with doing cases with all the other materials at the same time to make sure that his teaching is, is, is correct teaching. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not saying I’m not saying, you know, you’re doing something right or wrong, but there’s so many new ones coming out that it’s important for your for your students, for you to be able to answer the question. Right. Because you’re now a teacher of it. You know, what is it? What are the advantages of Suresmile over Invisalign? I’ve got no idea, by the way. Yeah, but but there may be 1 or 2, right? I mean, you’d be crazy. And I know it’s a strange thing because each one of those, you know, dense ply, if they can get 1/20 of the valuation of Invisalign with suresmile, that would be well worth it. That would be a $2 billion company or something. Or Spark or Philips are bringing one out candid or there’s 100, isn’t there? Or making them yourself like you said.

Well there’s there’s angel coming from there’s Angel coming over as well which is going to be quite interesting. I mean, absolutely. I think I think for me, if I can, it’s all about case selection, right? I need to I need to be able to to to do that with the right patient, with the right aligner or the aligner system. So and there are dentists that I mentor and might help who who use slightly different systems and we can, you know, talk about it and manipulate it and get it to where where we want it to be using the principle of biomechanical principles. So I guess vicariously, yeah, I’m using some of the other systems, but it’s that case selection and I guess, you know, when you and I was approached to use some different systems and etcetera, but it’s about choosing the exact right case where I think it’s going to be possible. And because of the type of cases I do, I need the route talk or I need the, you know, the intrusiveness I need I need to know that I can get those more difficult movements and I know I can get them with Invisalign. So it’s waiting for those maybe slightly easier cases to come through the door, which I really wish would come through the door more often.

Because I spend less time planning them. But then I can.

See and then I can experiment with the with, with the other systems, because also I’ve got a responsibility to my patients that if we’re going, you know, I don’t want to have to abandon treatment. Exactly. So it’s a and you’re right. That’s that’s something I need to I need to work on.

It’s How about, you know the difference between you who’s doing advanced cases and an orthodontist? What is the difference?

Uh, I mean, there’s a lot there. I think it’s different.

To have a general practitioner, um, to do orthodontic treatment than an ortho. Obviously they’ve got the extra training, they’ve got sort of that understanding of growth potential. So I really treat adult patients. I’m treating my first child patient at the moment, which is my it’s actually my cousin.

Again, I know.

It’s always nerve wracking. But again, I haven’t done it by myself. I’m I’m I’m working with a specialist orthodontist who does a lot, who spends all his time doing clear aligners for children. And we’re going through the case together step by step, looking at it. So, you know, I like I’ll do things that are slightly more challenging as long as I’ve got the right people around me to understand and to one, explain everything and to look at things because you can read a textbook, but when you put it in practice, it’s very different. And also, if I hit a hit an issue or hit a problem, I can go and ask them. So it’s twofold. Ortho and general dentists will always look at things slightly differently, but I honestly think that it’s we’ve got a wonderful opportunity where actually we can work more closely together for the overall benefit of the profession and and of the patients, because, you know, general dentistry maybe shouldn’t be doing, you know, really, really crazy stuff all the time. But then also some of the authors are more trained in fixed appliances. So perhaps there’s something they can learn from a general practitioner who’s doing more complex stuff in terms of biomechanics and clear aligners. So I think there can be that bidirectional relationship rather than us, you know, knocking heads and going against each other.

That could answer a difficult question.

It’s a difficult question.

Do you come across the 32 CO?

Yes, I have, actually.

And I am I think I’m 329th in the list to be to be contacted.

So. Right. Yeah.

I’m waiting I’m waiting patiently.

For for people. I’m going to have Sonya on the podcast soon. But the idea is that they firstly mentor with orthodontists. They’ve got a bunch of free education and then orthodontists plan the case. But then there’s the really funky piece, which is once the case is planned, then they put it onto a marketplace of all the different aligner labs around the world that make aligners. And then those labs bid for the case. And I guess, you know, some of them are in China and some of them are in Europe and some are quicker and some or whatever. But it’s an interesting idea. And, you know, she’s she’s trying to disrupt Invisalign. Everyone’s trying to disrupt the line. Are they because of the value of that of that product? And let’s get on to darker days.

Yeah. So no, I’m waiting. I’m waiting for my callback.

So I can trial it.

I’ll put you in touch. She’s. She’s very busy.

I actually met her at the bar. She’s.

She’s a friend of a friend. But I didn’t take her. Didn’t take her contact details. And also, I don’t want to be pushy, so I’m just patiently waiting, you know?

I’m sure. I’m sure she’ll be in touch. Let’s let’s talk about darker days. This kind of my favourite part of the podcast. It’s weird why I enjoy this bit the most errors. Let’s talk about errors in general. I really want to talk about clinical errors because of that whole black box thinking and learning from each other’s mistakes. What comes to mind when I say clinical error?

Gosh. Um.

Well.

I think, well, gosh, with errors and clinical and, you know, mistakes, I always want to reframe it and say, you know, it’s a failure is just it’s not a success yet.

It’s a success in pending because actually, how much more do we learn when we make a mistake? Yeah. Then when.

Everything goes smoothly because we look back and I, you know, I reflect a lot of my cases and sometimes I see something in the photos and I’m like, Oh my God, I didn’t even realise that.

Happened. And then it’s only when you look at.

The photos and, you know, typical one for ortho is you lose Anchorage and you get a little bit of medial tipping of the 60s and you’re like, Damn.

It. Like you’ve checked the.

Occlusion and I go around the shim stock. I’ve got, you know, the occlusal grind on the itero and da da da da da. But that little means little tip that she didn’t see until you reflect back on the on the photos. And then, you know, you need to get better. I mean, my gosh, I’ve had cases where I have done way too much buccal movement, buckle proclamation recession. That’s never fun, especially because it doesn’t always look as that bad when you finish the case. But when you review it a year later, you’re like, Oh my God. And then you got to get, you know, refer to the periodontist, you know, mistakes. A lot of my mistakes have to be honest with you, are poor communication. So I know you said earlier that I’m a good I get on well with patients and it’s true. I get on well with patients, but I really don’t like difficult conversations. And I, I used to really, really struggle with it. And I would feel bad for having to tell patients they were going to lose a.

Tooth or they had to or they had periodontal disease. So I’d really try and not tell them. And honestly, I’d always try.

And sugarcoat it or make it seem in the best possible way I.

Could.

And that led to more problems than anything. Because ultimately, whilst I thought I was being nice to the patient, actually I wasn’t. I was I thought I was being nice, but I wasn’t because I should have just been much more upfront and direct. But let’s get specific.

Let’s get specific about a real, real painful episode in your past. Oh.

One really painful episode. Really, really painful episode. I had a patient who. Had and this is this is my most painful episode ever. He had a upper left, too, with a big crown on it. A little bit of spacing in the upper arch, a little bit of crowding in the lower arch, really simple alignment. And then we’re going to change the crown or the veneers three quarter crown on the upper left to anyway. He we changed the crown. We went through, we did the Invisalign was fine. Did did all the ortho came to the crown. Honestly he didn’t want to whiten.

It.

Because he didn’t want to maintain the whitening. And even though he went through that, he didn’t want to whiten and he had quite quite discoloured teeth with lots of character in even though he’s quite a young guy. And we went through one crown which she didn’t like the colour of and I agreed. We went through another one. He didn’t like the colour as I agreed. And then the third one he was happy with, we cemented it, but when he walked outside he wasn’t happy with it. So now all my patients, when we’re doing a single tooth, they go outside.

The light is too light, right? Yeah.

The light was different, so he didn’t like it. So anyway, we cemented it and I say, Right, fine, that’s okay. But I have to say the previous prep was, was quite heavy and I was talking to him. I was like, I’m really nervous about, you know, not nervous, but I really want to avoid taking this on, off, on, off, on, off again. So let’s try and get as close as we possibly can without removing the veneer. So even though it’s slightly grey and he was like, Yeah, no, I agree, but I think I gave him a slight complex because then we were going through different, different veneers with the lab and the lab was sending two three back sometimes because we just couldn’t get it right. And unfortunately, halfway through, not only did we have this difficulty getting the shade, but he started he got this pain.

And we looked needed.

Vitality testing. It’s coming back fine. There was no apical area. Everything looked normal. And then the pain went away. And then he came back a little bit later and later and he was like, Oh, it’s back. And I looked at the back of the tooth and the tooth was pink. So he had internal internal resorption. And I was like, No, Oh, I’m the worst. You know, the thing is, is like I had a really good from the start of treatment and the alignment had taken two months. It really hadn’t been long and I hadn’t taken a PR because I had a good quality view of the tooth on the OPG. But that was a mistake. I should have taken another PR, even though when I took the PR, when he first got pain, there was no changes. But from a medical legal point of view, I should have taken another PR, So then I sent him off to my endodontist who I use, and he had a CT scan. He was like, Yeah, it’s internal resorption. I think I can fix it, so I’m going to go in and fix it. So he went in and and repaired it. Obviously there’s a risk that it’s not going to work. And of course it didn’t work and it continued, but it continued silently. So there was nothing, you know, nothing going on outside. And we just managed to fit a veneer that.

Was finally the right colour after it had this root canal treatment. And then he comes back a.

Week later and he goes, I’ve got some pus. And I was like, No. And then honestly, I took another PR and this point was swimming, swimming in in space.

And I was like, Oh.

I’m going to cry. I was like, I’m literally I’m going to cry in this moment. So he sent him back to the endodontist. He had another CT scan. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s much larger now at the same time. Okay. This this patient was really lovely, quite demanding in terms of his his aesthetics in the aesthetics that he wants, which is fine. What I deal with that a lot, but he was becoming progressively, progressively more and more anxious, which I completely, completely understand. And like, let’s not lie. My anxiety levels are rising by this point. And, you know, every time I saw him in the diary, I was like, Oh God, I just want to go home.

My anxiety is rising.

Listening to the story. Come on, come on, come on.

Honestly, it was so bad.

Anyway in the end. And but the problem is, is because his anxiety was, was was increasing and we had this like, opportunity that we thought we could repair the tooth again and get on control of it. And you know, I don’t I’m. Anyway, he was so anxious that he didn’t want to go ahead and he was umming and ahhing, umming and umming and ahhing umming and ahhing. And then when he decided he did want to go ahead, it was too late. So then now we’re talking about extraction and implant. So what should have been a really simple case and you know, it was one of those, one of those things and I reflect on it loads and gosh, I had so many sleepless nights. It was awful. Um, and in the end.

What was the.

What was the feeling was, was the feeling that he was blaming you or was he blaming himself or. But you know, the feeling between us, the confidence slipping in the relationship.

The the confidence the relationship was was definitely slipping, of course. And he kept saying he was in contact with my daily he was in contact with me weekly via WhatsApp. All my patients have my WhatsApp number. It’s a business WhatsApp number so I can put an out of office on.

Yeah, but it.

Was slipping. And he kept saying, you know, I don’t I don’t blame you, but this isn’t what I thought would happen with treatment. And I was like such a low risk. Like, I literally, like I got, you know, and you get to a point, you’re like, I have nothing else I can say. And I spoke to different people and funnily enough, they were like, right, refund him for the veneer, but don’t refund him for the Invisalign. This isn’t your fault. But I actually I refunded him everything so he could go and, and you know, they were saying if you do the implant here then it’s going to, you know, we’ll obviously do it for free and then you’re only going to pay the cost. But he had lost confidence. He had lost confidence at that point. And he had found something he was really confident in. And this was the cost of the implant and that’s where he wanted to go. And in the end, I was like, Yeah, fine, you like, I’ll I’ll give you that refund. And I know there are going to be people who disagree with that approach and that’s completely fine. But that’s what I felt was the best thing to do in the moment. And I’d do the same. You know, everything has gone half everything’s gone well afterwards. So it was who paid, Who.

Paid, paid.

For all the Endodontics Was that himself or did you refund that as well.

He, he paid. He paid. He paid for the endodontics.

That’s okay.

You paid for the endodontics.

So now. So now reflecting. Reflecting outside of outside of that that you think you could have taken if you were being a proper defensive dentist. Anything else that you think you could have done better?

I feel that we could have.

Taken the first initial episode of Pain a little bit more seriously, but because it went away and there was really nothing to see. And I remember and and honestly, something niggled me. And it did niggle me and I know it niggled me. And, you know, sometimes you have a gut feeling about things and I really wish I’d followed my gut more and sent him to the endodontist earlier because even though I couldn’t see it, you know, this is what I think is amazing about dentistry is we’ve got so many people who specialise or have special interest in different things. You don’t have to rely on your own judgement. You can you can send people. And if I’d sent him, then when I was having that gut feeling that could possibly could have been avoided, possibly could have been saved. That’s not for sure.

Was it a while ago? Was it recently also?

Were you younger?

Less experienced Few a few years ago. A few years.

Ago. But not, you know, crazy long ago. Not right at the beginning of my career. Probably about midway.

As far as I’m concerned. You’re still at the beginning of your career. You know, I mean it. I mean it. I mean it. Yeah. Because. Because these. These spidey sense things. Yeah. Having, having the, the, the sort of the conviction of your feeling and, and when, when something feels wrong not doing it. But you don’t know why something just feels wrong. Yeah. That, that takes years and years and years to develop and you know even with your accelerated rate of, you know, getting, getting on with all of this, if it was two, three years ago, that was really at the beginning of your career. You know, it takes time for that spidey sense. It’s not the Spidey sense itself. It’s acting on the spidey sense. That’s the point. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, it’s yeah, it’s it was. You can’t really blame yourself for that one though.

Well, I don’t know.

The other thing that I really wish I had done is I wish I had taken a photo of when I had sectioned the old veneer off the old three quarter crown off and I didn’t have that photo. And so I wasn’t sure if I had gone more subgingival and nicked the cementum somewhere. Like I. I couldn’t say for certain. I didn’t think I did because generally I really hate taking off ceramics. It takes me ages because.

I’m like, Oh, have I gone too far? Oh, have I gone too far?

But so I don’t think I did. But you know, and I quite like answers. And so there were, you know, I should have taken should have taken photos or more photos. But then again, I only know I now want to take that photo because I went through that experience. But if I hadn’t gone through that experience, I probably still wouldn’t be taking those photos today. True. True. Yeah, it was terrible. Honestly, I.

Felt so sick. I felt I felt the pain there a little bit.

Yeah.

And and, you know, even the financial implication of handling handling that back because you’ve already paid for it, right? You paid 50% of the lab bill.

With.

The principal, and now you’re handing 100% back all the honestly pay the hours and hours I spent in clinic. So, you know, it hit hard from from multiple different angles. Have you ever.

Had have you had a situation where a patient comes in and it looks like a tough case or they seem like they’re a tough patient? And then there’s one side of you is sort of the ego side of you saying, I can do this. And there’s the spidey sense side of you saying avoid. And you know.

Yeah.

So we used to. We used to, we used to, we used to trying to make our patients happy. Are we in any way that we can? And then you’re good at what you do, right? So there’s always the, you know, niggling sense sense that whoever tried it last time didn’t know what I know. And, you know, there’s that that piece. And often that’s the case, right? I mean, that’s often the case. Have you have you ever had that situation bite you?

Oh, my gosh.

So there’s always you know, you.

Really have to step back from your ego. Like I want to do like, I want the challenge and I want unless, you know, if there’s something really challenging, then I go and speak to mentors all the time. I have lots of different mentors in different walks of dentistry that I have no qualms about going to ask and going to ask for help or going to ask for guidance. And, you know, I actually really like it because we get to geek out a little bit, but oh gosh, like so many times you look at something, you’re like, that’s a really terrible margin. Why have they done that?

I can do that better.

You do? And you’re like, Ah, this is why it’s a terrible model.

Yeah, you’re there and you’re.

Like, Patient can’t open their mouth.

I know. And you look at it and you’re like, Why did I do it? And you just you’re there, you’re slightly sweating. Your nurse is like, Oh my God, now we’re going to run late.

And just you’re like, Why? Why, why, why? But, you know.

Yeah.

Does a case come to mind that that happened?

No, not one in particular, to be honest with you.

It’s not one that went wrong badly. No, I mean, to be.

Honest with you, I’ve been quite, quite fortunate that I’ve hit bumps. But most of the bumps, apart from that one big case I just told you about. Most of the bumps have been really easy to fix. Like, you know, created an anterior open bite because I forgot to cover the apex and I put a liners in. So the apex over erupted. That was shocking when that walked in the door.

I can tell you, God. But then. Oh, gosh, yes, honestly. And but in what timeframe.

Did that happen?

Oh, my gosh. Payman. I had just been asked to be a.

Speaker for a line and my first text.

The next.

Week to Ramon, who is.

He’s the founder of a line of consulting who does all the training, who was actually going to start working with. That was my first message. After he.

Had just hired me.

I was like.

I’m really sorry to be asking you this.

But bless him, he was really lovely. He was like, No, you’ve really owned up to what you did.

You know what you’ve done wrong. This is how we’re going to fix it. And he walked me through it and really see my blood pressure then came down because I had a plan and it was fine. But.

You know.

Teaching and teaching as well. The situation comes up where someone asks a question and if you don’t know the answer to that question, I don’t know is the best answer. And yet we find that. But but we find that, you know, as the teacher, you know, you’re there to answer those questions. So there’s again, one part of you saying, you know, thinking, I don’t know the answer to this question. And there’s another part of you saying, well, let me just say something to to make this right. And it’s I think it’s a massive responsibility, not only in teaching in all the people I deal with, the ones who say, I don’t know, I end up respecting the most, you know, suppliers, lawyers, whoever the hell it is. You ask them a question, they say, I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s so difficult as the teacher. It’s difficult to admit to that, you know. But I think it’s.

A great response. The only answer they give I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

All day.

I don’t know. Sorry. I think so. Normally, if I don’t know something, I’ll say I don’t know. But also I’ll be like, but if I’m going to really apply some logic to it, this is what I think. But I can go.

And I can go and find out.

And normally you’re in the right.

Rooms and I do sort of have this like what I’m doing now, this like snake back and forth, which I do when I’m tend to be tend to be thinking and thinking around, you know, what’s what’s the logical explanation or where would the logic be taking as I’m thinking of an answer, because sometimes, you know, you do get a question you’ve never had before, and maybe it’s just a different way of thinking about something, you know? But then if you don’t know, I’m always like, Oh, I’ll go and find out and I’ll and I’ll email you or I’ll text you. I like to WhatsApp. I really I’m not a big fan of emails. I’d much prefer to WhatsApp people than anything else.

Me too.

So now, now you’ve got this mentoring and online course that you’ve started and remind me if I’m about this. I said to you, Are you going to open a practice? And you said, Absolutely not. This is what I’m doing. Is that right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. No, I have no interest in owning a practice.

Though, right? I wouldn’t write it off right now because I think you’d be an amazing you know, you’d have an amazing practice. But. But, but I get it. I get it. You know, in the same way as Jaz Gulati said, he definitely doesn’t want to practice because he’s gone into, you know, protrusive and all the things that he does. Yeah, but but go through. What is it? What is it? Is there, is there an element because I saw you actually visited a dentist a couple of days ago in Devon or whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah. So, so there’s an element of face to face and there’s an element of online. Is that right?

Yeah. So I guess one of the.

Things I found incredibly valuable throughout my whole career is having mentors and having someone that can go and ask and go and talk to so and so I developed this program and it combines 1 to 1. And mentorship. So for treatment, planning for general questions with me, but also my treatment coordinator for the team because it’s not just the dentist. If you only focus on the dentist, then, um, then you know, I feel like you miss a massive part. Like the team is so important. So we’ll do, you know, Zoom calls and chat to the team as well. And my, my treatment coordinator is fantastic. And she comes on and, you know, she chats. She chats the team and we we help them, you know, look at their patient journey and really go through that. And then as well as all the clinical treatment planning. And then we have sort of a lecture element to it. So we have that level of knowledge. Um, and it sounds like it’s going to sound like a massive commitment, but then there’s group mentoring. So you’re part of this safe community where you know everyone and it really is a community, so it won’t be for everyone.

But that’s okay because we, we want we want people who have that like mindedness and want everyone else to do well and want to grow. And we celebrate our wins. We we we look at our hurdles and we dissect them as a group because you, you know, as you said, dentistry can be really isolating. And this is a way to get out of the four white walls. And then there’s the live, you know, going to practice. They come to my not my practice, but ace in Wimpole Street and with ads and they’ll come there. I go to go to their practice and then we have a we you know, we’ve organised a couple of dinners. We’ve got a live day at the end with live patients. So it’s trying to create a blended learning environment that’s not just a one day course where you may or may not put it into practice afterwards, but where you have that mentorship sort of six months and you know, I can help you. And our our aim is to get you getting you to do many more cases.

But in a safe.

And predictable way. So you.

Are.

You’re you’re really serving your patients in the best way. And also that growth, because I find so many people want to do clear aligners, but perhaps they’ve never spoken to patients about that value of treatment or, you know, they they don’t feel confident in planning with the software or, you know, whatever the barrier is. But actually having someone to hold your hand and say, it’s okay, let’s go forward together makes then changes. And, you know, even just having the confidence of, you know, to say yes to patients because you know that I’ll be there behind you or over your shoulder helping you get get to the right result is great. And it’s different from a treatment planning service because whilst I’m helping them treatment plan, I’m not just saying we’re going to do X, Y, Z. I’m saying we’re going to do X, Y, z because of A, B, C, So it’s that next level. So, you know, they they can go and they can. Everything I tell them they can and give them they can ten x it, you know they can grow and grow and grow.

Let me ask you a couple of unfair questions. Oh, good. Look, I’m looking for an aha moment. Yeah. Yeah. Around Invisalign. So, look, of course, it’s a massive question. We could. We could talk about it for four hours longer. Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure your course is a few more hours than that. But. But, but, but the bigger heart in your, in your mind that clicked. Something that clicked. I asked Sam Jethwa this about veneers and and he said to me really interesting about the occlusion, not just being inside out, but being outside in. And, and yeah, it was a Southerner half for me because I hadn’t never thought of outside in. Yeah, I’d always thought of it inside. Inside out. Yeah. Around Invisalign. Let’s start with I’m not looking for a sales one. I’m looking for a clinical one. Treatment. Planning one. What, What comes to mind when I say that?

Gosh. Um.

It’s unfair. So in.

Terms of.

A.

No, it’s not unfair. So actually, it’s it’s.

So I guess for me, what I.

Really used to think is I used to think that it was a displacement system. So where you’re just moving the crown from place to place and when you realise actually that’s not true, it’s a force.

Driven, it’s.

A force driven system. So now when I’m treatment planning, I plan where I want the teeth to finish and then I plan how I want the teeth, like the teeth. I’m looking at how the teeth are going to get there and like I’m looking at the forces that are going to be needed and I will overcome. I mean, honestly, I have one clincheck for the patient and I have one clincheck for me.

And clincheck for me is, you know, the teeth don’t look like they, like.

They’re in a straight line, in a straight position because I’ve over treated in some areas, not all areas, but it depends on the predictability of the movement, the correct movements appearing with it. Yeah. So, you know, most of my everything looks slightly torqued the wrong way because I know the line is going to struggle doing maybe doing, you know, expansion with proclamation. The two moves don’t work. So that staging and that that looking at it not just as a clincheck but that force like dissecting the forces behind it that has like changed complete approach and now I’m getting much much better results much more quickly and the patients are so much happier. I mean and a lot of my patients on five day changes and we’re finishing in one set of aligners, which is awesome. Like it’s awesome, but it’s because, you know, and I was blaming the patient, I was blaming the system and actually it was all my fault.

Because I wasn’t looking at the forces behind the system.

Properly. I mean, the biggest variable is that the plan, isn’t it? That is the biggest variable. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, but you can.

Plan and plan and plan. But if the patient doesn’t have them in the mouth, it’s not going to work. True.

True.

So yeah, so it’s like it’s half done, half of one, six, a dozen or the other. I think that’s the saying.

Yeah.

But you know, but that.

That’s that’s interesting. So the forces, you know, you’re saying to start with the end in mind and the particular forces on the particular teeth and the full understanding of that and the overcorrection piece where you’re asking it to do something, you know, rotation or extrusion or whatever it is, that’s difficult to overcorrect on the clincheck so that it manages to get aim for the stars. And yeah, so that yeah, that’s interesting. And what about on the, the selling side? Because I know when you’re super confident about something, it’s much easier to sell it because you’re just super confident about it. But, but how do you teach your, you know, your students. Do you ask them to go after the health benefits of straight teeth or do you assess the patient based on what you think is important to that patient and then hit them with those benefits, or how do you do it?

So there are two things I think are really crucial. One is to listen to the patient and actually listen to the patient and find out their why and chase that why a little bit. So why is this important and why and why and why? And I think it’s more important to find out the why than to chase the. Yes, I know. You know, I don’t I don’t like chasing lots of yeses. I like chasing the why. And then the other thing that ruins it is if you don’t look confident. So my biggest piece of advice.

Is for for.

Dentists is to take the photos, take the scan. If you’ve got one, put the photos on the screen and talk your talk to your patient through it and say, look, I’m seeing this. Are you seeing that? And think about it as a whole. And but but give yourself the space. Most of my patients don’t get a treatment plan when they’re in the chair. I say, look, I’m going to go away and think about everything we’ve said and I’m going to I’m going to come up with the ideal treatment plan for you. And then we have a zoom call a week or two weeks later, depending on how many other disciplines I’ve got to get a hold of and get an answer from. And when I come back to present the plan, I know exactly what I’m saying. I’ve thought it through. If I’ve needed to speak to mentors, I’ve spoken to mentors. So then when I’m talking to the patient about it, I’m not only in my super confident, but I’m super excited because I can already envision what’s going to happen at the end and the patient then picks up on that and they’re like, Yes, okay, Right. No, this is going to be good. And because I know their why, I’m tailoring the why into that treatment plan and only then am I bringing in my why. So your why is that? You want a nice smile for your wedding. That’s great. My why is, you know, your teeth are falling to pieces because your class to div two and you’ve got a restricted envelope of function. So you know you bring you then you focus on their why and then bring in your why. So you’re coming at it from both angles, but you separate it from that initial conversation later on. And I tell my patients when they come through the door that I might not be able to give them the answers that they want today, because if it’s complex, I want to go away and think about it so I can come up with the absolute best plan for them.

I bet you get massive word of mouth from your patients though, because they can feel that you care. You know, that’s much better than spending money on marketing, right?

Yeah. We have a lot of friends, family.

Mothers and daughters are.

Another one. Like, you know what I love? I love it when you’re.

Treating like husband and wife or, you know, any partners because and actually brothers and sisters as well. I have to say, siblings are another great one to treat at the same time because there’s this like level of competition between them. Yeah, Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And they’re like, I want to finish first. I want the best result. I want this, I want that. And you can really leverage it, Um.

Because, you.

Know, then they’re like, they’re so driven and each one is like keeping on top of the other one. It’s great. Like I’ve, it’s like a little bit bad playing.

One off the other, but it does work really, really well. I’ve been there.

I’ve been there with the same thing. Our times come nearly to an end. Um, we’re going to finish off with our usual questions that we ask all the guests. So. My one first fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive.

You know, this has actually been playing on my mind like the last three weeks because I hate this question. I was like, oh, it’s such a good question.

Matty did not want this answer to this question. He wouldn’t answer it.

I really feel him. I really, really feel that.

So did come up with an answer for you.

So the first person who I.

Would want is is J.D. Gleason or Jackie Gleason, who’s not not the actor, but he actually was.

The first guy.

In Australia to breed an Australian kelpie. And anyone who knows me knows I’ve got two dogs, Luna and Frank, who are Australian kelpies, and they are my absolute world.

But my God, are they challenging dogs?

They’re like border collies, but they’re sassy with it.

So I just think, you know.

Like going back to their roots and really understanding where they came from and what the thinking was about it and like how that then breeding went on would be one. It’s just so awesome to know and two would really just help me do better for the dogs because knowing, you know, just the, you know, the inside out and I’m really obsessed with my dogs, like really obsessed with him. At the weekend, we went to see some friends and they’re like.

Are you.

Dog owners? Are you dog parents? I was like.

Obviously we’re dog parents. They are my children.

So you got two of them? Two of the same breed?

Yeah. So they’re. Yeah, they’re two.

We’ve had Luna since she was a baby. And then we adopted Frank literally a year ago, a year and a month ago. And they are. They are a handful. A lovable handful.

But they’re very, very funny. Dog. Luna is like the sassiest.

Of just Googling it while you’re talking. Is it chocolate brown? The ones I’m looking at.

Yeah.

So Luna’s chocolate brown.

And then Frank is black.

And tan. So Luna is, like, really sassy. She’s really judgemental. So we were hiking at the weekend in Devon, and there’s a there’s a steep, really steep and the switchbacks and Luna would run up, run down, run up and then wait for you at the corner. And you knew she was like, Come on. I was like, I am walking as fast as I can.

I cannot walk any faster up this hill. Stop judging me. And then Frank’s just a complete goofball, like, complete goofball. He’s the funniest. Like, he’s just such a funny dog.

But anyway, so that’s why I’d want Jack.

Gleeson, because he is the person.

Who first decided.

To breed.

Kelpies and the second person is actually a mentor of mine who I speak to all the time. So Romano Clarke, He just because like, as I said, I love to geek out and him like when we’re together, we just really, really geek out. And I find it so fun just to really, really geek out on the biomechanics and the materials, everything. And it’s this really nice relationship we’ve got where we really bounce off each other. So I just and I really enjoy that. And then the third person would be my grandma who passed away when we were really young. But I have such wonderful memories of her. Me and my sister skipping down.

To the.

Newsagents in the village because she’d buy us a £0.10 packet of penny. The penny sweets. Do you remember those?

Is that your mum’s mum?

My dad’s mum.

And she, you know.

She had this really interesting history where she was born in Angola, grew up in Egypt, met my grandpa who was Scottish originally from Malta, however, and then moved to England. And, you know, I don’t she died when I was young and I don’t I never really got to talk to her about it or appreciate our heritage. And, you know, it’s something that’s sort of been lost within the family. So and and I just she was such a wonderful person. And I remember her being a wonderful person. But I don’t I feel now I could appreciate her being a wonderful person so much more because I’m older and I can remember and I can ask other questions I really want to ask.

It sounds like you’ve got like feelings but not details. And that’s what you want to get from her.

Yes, yes.

Yes, exactly. I need the detail.

That’s lovely. Yeah, you too. All right, let’s move let’s move on to Prav deathbed question. On your deathbed, got your friends and family around you.

Is this is this.

Three pieces of advice? Again.

This is the other one I’ve been really worried about.

The perfectionist is coming out now. Finally, one hour 44 into the podcast.

If you want to make Milly not sleep for a week, ask ask questions like these. Don’t tell my patients. So so one So.

I really, really suffered from imposter syndrome. So, you know, I was very I was really young when I started like educating. I was, you know, especially.

With you guys.

On Mini Smile Makeover. I was really young and, you know.

It was quite.

Daunting. But like you helping out the students and and you were a baby used one year out of university, but you’re still good at it. You were still good at it back then. You’ve got a real, real talent for teaching. I got to. I got to save that money. You really do.

But go on. Thank you. Thank you.

But gosh, But you know that imposter syndrome.

Makes you feel like the smallest.

Smallest person and you feel like a fraud and you feel like you’re lying to everyone. And actually you’re not lying to everyone. It’s just that you know how mentors can see something in you that perhaps you can’t see in yourself or a coach can see something in you that you can’t see in yourself. You know, trust other people when they say you’re good and that you can do it and you are meant to be here. So, you know, that would be my first piece of advice. The second piece of advice would be to take, to lead in and take on the challenges. So don’t be comfortable. And obviously you can have a comfort, a comfort Saturday every now and then.

But most of the time you want to be.

Uncomfortable, you want to be challenged. And you you know. So last year I actually reached out to a new coach because I wanted to to leave dentistry because I didn’t know why I wanted to leave dentistry.

But I was so fed up of going.

In to the practice. And I honestly thought that that that was my career in dentistry over. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to start. It’s going to sound so silly.

I wanted to start a pub, but instead of the.

Owners bringing the dogs, the dogs.

Brought the owners and so.

All the dogs would be off lead. They’d all be having fun and playing together. And, you know, the owners.

Is just sort of there.

But you can go interact with other dogs like that. I was so close to leaving and, you know, my dad owns a brewery, so I was like, Excellent, it’s going to work so well. Anyway, going through that coaching, what I realised is that I was really like bored. I had stopped pushing myself. Yeah, I was doing some more complex cases here and there, but and I was actually the funny thing is I was doing my masters at the time. I’m still doing my master’s, but I really, really felt I had stopped growing. And one of the one of the areas I’d stopped pushing myself in is that that education and mentoring other dentists. So now that’s why this year I’m really pushing, pushing that because I really lights my fire. I love it. It’s like the most rewarding thing, you know, ever. Um, apart from when Frank learned to sit for the first time, that was pretty.

Rewarding as well.

No, you know what I mean.

But so.

You know, and. And one of the things my coach told me was to push and lean into the things you find difficult because then you’re going to grow. And it was having the confidence to step out and do something by myself instead of, you know, always hiding behind, you know, a company. So that was what I found really difficult. And now that’s what I’m doing and I’m having a blast. I love it. Like I come, I work most nights and I come off and I’m like beaming. And so, you know, lean into the things that you find difficult. And then my third piece of advice is to have fun whilst doing it.

Because you can work and work and work and work. And if you’re not, you.

Know, we’re only here once. Like, I really don’t believe there’s something coming after. And that’s just my that’s my personal belief. But if we’re, you know, we’re only here once and you have to have fun. And so, you know, like with the burning the candle at both ends, like I wanted to study, but I wanted to party. So I’m going to do both. And, you know, I want to work, but I also want to go to Devon. So we’re going we’re going to drive late at night. We’re going to get there at like midnight and we’re going to do both.

Um, you know.

All these.

All these things that you that we.

Have to balance. And it’s hard. And I think the other thing is, is that it’s not always, you know, 5050 in relationships or fun and, and, and work etcetera, etcetera. Some weeks it’s going to be 1090, other weeks it’s going to be 6040, other weeks it’s going to be 7030. But on balance, you’re going to find that balance. And you know, I now go, well, I always quite a happy person, but I do feel like a lot of the time I’m almost like playing and just chatting.

And having fun.

So it doesn’t always feel like work. And sometimes it does, of course. Um, but, but, you know, I’m genuinely happy doing what I do and I’m genuinely happy with the balance I have. So that’s so, so important.

I love that. I love that. For someone who doesn’t like these questions, you had some pretty good answers there.

Honestly, that’s the 3 a.m.. 3 a.m. thinking. I’m joking.

Really? When did you qualify? 2015. 16?

Something like that. 2015?

Yeah. So I’ve been watching you since then, and it’s been a pleasure to watch. And and you’re right that that thing you said about when when someone can see something in you that you can’t see in yourself, I come across that problem sometimes, you know, talk, talk to someone and say something. And they don’t they haven’t got the confidence to to acknowledge it to themselves that they might be the right person for something. But I really look forward to seeing, you know, where where all of this takes you. And, you know, I know you’re going to cover for me at many Smile maker, but I can’t I can’t think of any one better to do that. You know, anyone would trust more to do that And and you know, considering that but really considering you’re only qualified. I know you feel like you’ve been bit you’re only qualified since then. It’s a massive achievement. So maybe one day you will get that doggy pub thing going as well. Why not? Well, we’ll see. It’s been a massive pleasure. It’s been a massive, massive pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this. It’s been a long time coming as well. We were thinking of doing this for a while, but it’s been a long time coming and best of luck with the the author thing. If someone wants to check it out, what’s the website called?

So a line of confidence.co.uk or pop me a message on Instagram and we can set up a call because you know, we want to make sure I want to make sure it’s right for you as well and make sure that I can I can help and I can serve you and you know, and we can work well together. So having that having that call is sort of it’s sort of really, really nice because we get to introduce each other and really important. But yeah, through, through Instagram. What is your Instagram?

Morrison or Dr. Miller? Dr. Millie Morrison.

Yeah. I came.

Across a couple of a.

Couple of people on the team.

A couple of people on Mini Smile Makeover who’d signed up for, for your thing. And yeah, it was, it was cool. It was cool. Cool to hear what they had to say about it. Really, really proud of you, sweetheart. Well done.

Thank you.

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

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

If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

And don’t forget our six star rating.

We thought, well, what if it’s the back of. It’s the back that always moves, isn’t it? When you put a bleaching, when you put any appliance in the mouth, the front is very stable because the teeth are quite long. But it’s the back where you know, where you’ve sometimes got the teeth that are leaning in or you’ve got the short clinical crowns. That’s where and the back moving just lets saliva in. So thought. All right, well, what about an attachment to stop the back from moving? It was simple as that. Like no, no, no, no. Nothing deeper than that.

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

He is co owner of one of the biggest whitening systems on the market. He is the course coordinator of Mini Smiles with Dipesh Palmer and he is a fellow podcaster being the co-host of the wonderful Dental Leaders podcast. Yes, listeners, it’s Payman. Langroudi. Payman.

Well, it’s an absolute honour to have you guys.

To be here, man.

I call you The Godfather, the Godfather of Whitening and of podcasts. Oh really? I hate the word legend, but you are a legend. Truly a legend. Uh, probably some of my viewers are too young, You know, being a Parkinson who used to hockey. Yeah, literally. You are. I think the Parkinson just smooth elegance in how you do things. And it’s interesting.

You say that because I always think Stewart is the most verbose guys I’ve ever come across. Man, when I listen to. I’m a fan of your podcast, by the way, dude.

Payman You are a gentleman and a scholar. You are the listener, then? Payman I’m the one.

I’m the one from London.

But all this time I thought it was Hatton that was downloading the London.

He’s not in London anymore. That’s the problem. Yeah.

I’m always double clicking. Clicking everything. But no, it’s the absolute, absolute gentleman. You are. And I’m really, really grateful because I know you’re busy, busy, busy, busy man.

But podcasting, I mean, we’re always looking for tips, as you can probably imagine. Having listened to our podcast, you probably you can probably think of a few tips you could give us. But how did you how did you get into it? And and what tips would you have for budding Dental podcasters out there?

So yeah, we got, you know, Prav and I were both talking about starting a podcast together, like we’re separately. So he was going to do one for his for himself and I was going to do one. I was just a big fan of podcasts myself. And then because Prav does some marketing for for us, you know, we talk a lot. He’s one of my best friends anyway. I’ve known him for since 15 years. And we said, Oh, maybe we do one together. And, you know, for me, I’m, I’m quite good with some things, but I’m really bad with other things. So I am quite good with, with, with creative stuff. I’m quite good with, you know, vision and all that, but I’m not really good at like execution and Prav. He’s the opposite. He’s really super, super good at getting things done. And obviously because he’s got a marketing background and understood the basics of you’ve got the product itself, which is the podcast, and then you’ve got the distribution of the product. And I knew he would be really good at that. I knew any time we didn’t have a guest, the two of us could just talk and we went for it. And you know, he’s one of those guys. If he wants to do something, he finds the best person in the world to ask about how to do that thing. And he he he said, look, I’m going to find the world’s best podcast coach. I said, is there such a thing? And he found a guy. We paid him $1,000 for a phone call. It was like a it was a half an hour phone call where he basically said, Look, just do one. That’s all He said, honestly, That’s all he said. He said, listen, go away.

Record One voice could give. I give. Yeah, basically just do one Stuart’s eyes.

But hang on. He’s a medic. And you’re a dentist.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that’s correct. Because he’s a medic, isn’t he?

He did. He qualified as a doctor. He never really worked as a doctor, but, yeah, so we found this guy and the guy said, Look, do one and then come back and we’ll have another phone call, another $1,000, and I’ll tell you what to do after that. And then so we did one, and then we went back and then he said, look, this is the way to launch it. This is the way to these are the people you need. And, you know, again, neither of us wanted to spend too much time on it. And we said, look, we want to just do the podcast and let other people handle other bits. And so, you know, there’s an editor, there’s a guy who uploads it onto libsyn for the all the platforms. I personally handle the social media because I wanted to I wanted to try that so that I could then boss around my other social media managers for enlightened and Mini Smile Makeover. Um, but you know, we have conversations. The biggest tip I’d give, dude, is consistency. Consistency in all of content. Yeah. You know whether whether you do it once a week, once a fortnight, whether you post once a day or six times a day, they say on, on you know tick. Talk or whatever. Consistency is the key. The audience likes the rhythm. And then once you could do consistency, then you find, you know, your audience finds you.

If you can, you be consistently inconsistent. Payman Is that an approach that you could take? Yeah.

That’s an approach that won’t work very well.

If it works very well. But it’s certainly an approach we’ve employed. But whether it’s worked well or not, I think the listening figures of you are a testament to that. So Payman mean, we would love to indulge ourselves in a meandering chat through Dental podcasting for the rest of the evening, but I suppose we should ask you a little bit about your career in dentistry. Can I ask you a little bit about your, your journey in dentistry, really how your career started and briefly up until where you are now and you’ve now become essentially the major tooth whitening provider and also a major dental podcaster. So how did you go from, you know, to to that?

So I qualified from Cardiff with three well, two other guys and my wife who The Who later became my wife. Um, I live. I lived with those other two guys for five years in university and they became my partners in Enlightened. Um, but we, we were dentists, right? So we did. We made sure we did in the same town back then you could, um, and then we were associates. And then I was involved. My, my boss was a guy called Nick Mahindra. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across him. He, he certainly had. He had this thing where he would, he would jack open people’s bites like by a lot edentulous patients. Back then it was, it was thought of as very dangerous to open the bite by more than, you know, two millimetres. But he was like he was just totally opening them up, you know, he was he was getting these amazing results, like facial results. These people were completely constricted, you know, completely collapsed. And he’d be opening them up and then you’d wait another sort of two weeks, and suddenly their faces would relax. And he called this thing the Dental facelift. And so I was his vet when he was going through this process, and he had the insight to hire a PR company. Um, and they got this story into the Daily Mail of this woman who’d been to him and the before and after. It was just a really profound before and after, like really weird totally changed her face. And it this one article in the Daily Mail completely changed the guy’s life like the phone didn’t stop ringing for six months continuously just you put it down and it would ring again, put it down, it would ring again.

And he ended up selling that practice and going to Harley Street and then only doing that treatment and then doing it on Dental patients and all of this. But it had a real effect on me. And he was he was a really good guy. He sort of involved me in every part of his business, you know, wherever I wanted to go, he would let me go into the numbers, everything. And I just noticed, man, you know, the press, you know, like it’s a it’s a massive thing. And so when it came to starting our own business, you know, we’d been associates. We were associates, all of us were associates. And we were skiing somewhere. And we said, Hey, why don’t we do like a practice that only does teeth whitening and, you know, it’s a teeth whitening centre, you know, that was the idea. And I thought maybe these city guys would, would, would come and have their teeth flossed by a hygienist and scale and polish and, and bleaching only that, nothing else. Those are the only treatments we were going to offer. And we said we were on this chairlift in Canada and that’s where we said, Well, should we call it or we call it enlighten, you know, enlighten me or whatever, all these sort of ideas. So then we got back and there was four of us. So these two guys who used to live with and my wife who was, you know, going to become my wife soon, and we said, Look, we’re four dentists.

Let’s open four practices all with the same brand. And back then it was quite, you know, even then branding wasn’t a thing, especially branded dental practices wasn’t a thing at all. Um, and we said, All right, we’ll open 1 in 1 in the middle, one in the West end, one in West London, one in North London, whatever. And we’ll call all of them enlightened. And the thing that the sort of the thought in my head was, what is the story? Because I remember being in on those PR meetings with those PR people and they kept on saying, all right, so Nick, what’s the story? What are we what’s going to be the headline of the story? And I kept on thinking, you know, what’s the story? What’s the story? And and so I decided, look, the story has to be some amazing new technology comes from the US for the first time to the UK in these and it’s in London and there it is. You know, it’s enlightened practices that do it. So we thought, all right, well, let’s go and find the best teeth whitening product in the world and see, you know, where is it and find it. The Internet just about started, so we Googled it. I don’t think we Googled it. I think we Yahoo! Did it. And this company came up called Bright Smile. Yes. Do you remember them? Yeah, with.

White.

With white. It was a beautiful light. It was. It was it was about five years before Zoom existed and they were making all sorts of claims. And it was funny because it turned out they they owned a duty free shops all over the world. They were the world’s biggest owner of duty free shops. And the guy had decided he was going to go into teeth whitening now and they’d raised like £25 million or something. And so anyway, we went we went over and said, Yeah, we want to buy four of your machines for four of our centres, you know, for practices. And the guy, you know, he was one of those proper American businessmen. You know, I remember being very uncomfortable in the meeting, 27 year old kid, and the guy said, look, you know, your your timing is excellent because, you know, you’re really early on this, but in a way, you’re way too early because we haven’t even got an office in New York yet, let alone an office in Europe anywhere, let alone an office in London. And he actually said he his parting shots were, you know, you guys, you’re great. You’re dentists, which is great. But we don’t need dentists. Right now. Right now we need distributors. And I don’t know what the hell he meant. I don’t know what that meant at all. So I went back to my wife’s brother, who was one of these McKinsey Hotshots, and I and I said to him, he said this thing about distributor. And he went, he went, Look, you know, in the end it’s just a different business plan. He’d written the original business plan. Anyway, he went, Yeah, listen, go back with this one, which is like, you want to be their distributor, right? So we went back and said, Yeah, yeah, guess what? We’ve changed our plan.

Now we want to sell the machine. We want to sell it all over the UK. And anyway, we’d never got that deal. Someone else got the deal, but we were so invested in it psychologically that we went and found the competitor of theirs, which was this ugly looking. It looked like a vacuum cleaner with a tube coming out of it with a crappy lights on it. Like, you know, the bright smile light was this amazing thing. They’d gone to idea. Do you know about idea that like these product design like the best product design house in the world you go there and you say look hard time. I bet you’ve had an idea for this, like interdental brush that comes in from every angle. Like if you ever want to get that product out there, go to idea. Yeah, give them like 250 grand and say, look, draw some pretty pictures. And they’d gone to idea and made the bright smile light. I don’t know Stuart if you’ve come across it, but it was like this robot thing that the head kind of came out and it was blue light. And then they had all this research that said, Yeah, the light makes a big difference. And then they opened on day one. They opened like 11 huge teeth whitening centres all over America, like in the major cities. And so anyway, we didn’t get the deal. Someone else got the deal. Um, this guy called Malcolm and he started on day one with like London cabs or with small signs on them. And we were like this other player, man, you know, this number two. And it was, it was interesting, man, because if you remember, teeth whitening was completely illegal at that point. Yeah, it must have.

Been so many people that told you it could never work.

Yeah, my parents, my parents were the main nightmare because my dad’s an accountant. Right? Very risk averse. And he read the business plan. He got to the page and said legality. And he said, I think that you’ve made a mistake on the business plan. It says your product is illegal. I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happens to be. And he said, You’re going to give up dentistry to do something illegal. I said, Yeah, man. He was like, I can’t support this. He was he was really against it. He was properly and my mum, the fact she’d like struggled to get me into dental school, the fact that I was going to stop doing dentistry and, you know, to do this was was a big deal too. But anyway, what we had to do was we had to find carrier gel that didn’t have peroxide in it and then get the dentist to call up the local chemist and get peroxide, you know, chemical, mix it in with the carrier gel you could buy. Dental was allowed to buy peroxide chemical for whatever he wanted. Mix it up with this carrier gel, put it on the tooth, and then we were directly copying bright smiles model. The model was a Xerox model where they give you the machine for free and then charge you to turn it on. But we didn’t have the technology to do that, so I had to find someone to stick these card readers into the machines. And we were giving the machine for free and selling these cards for £190. And interestingly, the price of Enlightened has never changed since that date, always been that price has never gone up in the last 22 years.

The dentist would have to go to the pharmacy and have the gel made up some kind of almost like, well.

Like the peroxide liquid peroxide liquid. We’d send them this powdery stuff that was like a carrier and they’d mix the peroxide liquid with the powder and put it on the teeth and, you know, gingival protection. Lots of burns everywhere. That’s exactly.

As topical. Topical is exactly the same. But I remember a bright smile. There was a lot of relapse. It was fantastic packaging. It was the machine was great. I do remember a lot of relapse when it first came out.

It was just dehydration.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Fantastic. Packaging goes a long way, you know.

Just I know that packaging.

Right? And you can.

Put my glasses back on it. But so it was actually so it was in Dental Dental school days where you actually the passion was, you know, ignited then, would you say?

Or we used to joke about it in dental school that we were going to go into business together and we’re going to have a brilliant business and all that and.

We still together, obviously you and your wife, all four of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you share the workload or who’s. No. Can I ask who, who does what? Or is there a silent partner or. Yeah.

My my wife and indie are silent partners now. And myself and Sanjay. So.

So what was the ultimate what was the goal? The goal was, was to give up dentistry and do this full time. And I know obviously that’s the outcome now, but are you working at the same time? No, no.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The goal wasn’t to give up dentistry. I mean, I was I was very happy being a dentist. I used to enjoy being a dentist a lot, but the workload took over. It became very clear that I had to give up dentistry. That was the problem. And, you know, one of us had to it ended up being me. And then, you know, I talked to these start ups now and they’re talking about know on day one they raised £3 million. I mean, it.

Took the first few years were the toughest years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first few years were terrible, man. Really terrible. We had, you know, constant cash crises, constantly having to go to my parents and beg for, you know, I need £3,000 by tomorrow. So it was a really tough time. And look, these machines that we were putting out at the time, I think we were they were retailing for 6500 pounds, but we were getting them for 4500 because we were buying so many of them. And I remember when we got to 60, 70 machines and I remember looking at the how much we owed and the amount we owed to these machines was way more than the value of my flat at the time. And and the mortgage for the machines at the time was like it was like £17,000 a month. We were spending on on the machines on their own. And one day, Sanjay, my partner, Sanjay, he’s he’s the sort of real driver of the the business. He turned around to me and said, look, you know, he’s a Patel, Right. Good with numbers. He said, look, the more machines we’re putting out, the more trouble we’re getting in. Right. And up to that point, I was like, all we need is like another 50 machines and everything’s going to be all right. And he said that we’re just getting deeper and deeper into into crisis. Every time you put a machine out, it’s costing us. It’s not making us money because we weren’t contracting the dentist to any number of treatments. It was just like, take this machine, do what you can with it. And so, you know.

How close were you to that? We’re going to give up. How close were you?

Oh, no. Many times we were we were on the brink. I mean, once the bank we missed the bank payment and the bank sent in these turnaround accountant types who you were paying, who were charging you like another ten grand for these guys, you’re like, You’ll pay us later. Um, and I remember them telling us, Look, if something big doesn’t happen in the next month, we’re going to shut you down, The bank’s going to shut you down. And I remember that was the day before Dental showcase. And we, you know, Dental showcase. It’s funny thing. Now you go to one of these shows, you look around and many. Any of the companies at Dental Showcase are staking a huge amount on that show because, you know, like this, it’s coming up in two weeks time. Yeah. Okay, now. Now we can afford it a little bit, right? We’re spending about 60, £70,000, six figures.

Some of them six figures.

Oh, yeah, some of them, Yeah. I’m going to Cologne on on Wednesday. The stands in Cologne. I’ve spoken to the people from Nobel Biocare and from the the German companies go really huge in Cologne. The the classics. They’ve spent €1 million sometimes on a on a four day show. You know, it’s a double double floored and all of that. But they’ve got money. Some of them have got money. We didn’t have money, right? So we were staking everything on this show. And I remember I remember fighting for our lives at the show. Like if people didn’t buy these, we were at this point we were selling machines or these other they were like sort of like cure machines that doubled up as teeth whitening with these little sort of stupid microphone stand thing. It was. I remember Sanj telling me he said, Dude, if we don’t sell like 12 machines at this show, that’s the end. We’re finished. Okay? And then we had an amazing we had like a, like a record breaking show. We sold like 35 machines at that show. And, you know, like the Agony and Ecstasy was just it was massive. The what it taught me was the line between success and failure is very, very, very thin. You know, that.

Was a turning point. That was after that you were saying, I presume?

No, it only started turning around when we did the evolution system, which is the one we just launched the fourth version of it. And that was really because we were in light activated, right? And we were in light activated for years before Zoom existed. And then what happened was that bright smile company went bust. Zoom basically bought all of their assets and all of their patents and everything. And then Zoom came from nowhere, like as a as the big thing. And the marketing strength of discus Dental at the time was amazing. They’d already had $200 million of sales in the US before they even landed in the UK. And so we had by that point a few customers. But then Zoom came along and we realised, look, the light does nothing. At that point we realised the light does nothing. For the first three four years we were convinced the light was the key, but someone convinced me to put, you know, a bit of cover half the light over with some aluminium foil and I realised oh shit, the light does nothing. And, and so then when we came to.

Like cannabis growing guess, Yeah.

I mean the number of times in period you’ve had something like that right. Yeah. So it came to, it came to pivoting right out of the light and Sanj was my partner. He’s one of these guys. He just wants everything to be perfect, you know, He doesn’t care how much it costs or what we have to go through. It’s got to be perfect. And he turned around to me and said, Look, dude, I didn’t enjoy being number two at all this time. It doesn’t matter whether we make money or not, whether we go bust or not, let’s be the best home whitening system around. And, you know, tray whitening. We hadn’t done tray whitening at that point, so we’re now going to do tray whitening. And so we looked at it for about a year and we said, Look, what is tray whitening? It’s. It’s the tray, right? It’s the gel. It’s the impression. And it’s desensitises. At the end of the day, those are the those are the four areas that you have to really look at.

Why? Why your trays so good? Every talks about your trays. He even did a few before. You know, moving away from John. Why? Is it because you do everything in house or you.

Do everything in house?

Yeah, but is that the secret?

That’s not the reason. No, no. What happened was we. We met a guy called Guy Rod Kirthi in the US who said, look, I’ve got this new tray that that that really is a better tray that you can do tetracycline cases with. Up to that point, you can do tetracycline. And all he was doing is he was increasing the pressure on vacuum formers by covering over the holes. And we said, look that’s that’s not sustainable. He was he was selling a book on how to do this. That was his interest selling that book. And we told him, look, the thing that’s going to work well is if we can just make these trays for dentists rather than teaching them how to make the trade themselves. And so we we. It was the first time, really, that a bleaching product was sold with the tray as well as part of it. And the results were just sort of were mind blowing to us at the time. It was just like it was just the first time you could see really white teeth, although sensitivity was also through the roof. I mean, we used to have to give patients painkillers throughout treatment, you know, from sometimes one week before treatment and one week after treatment and throughout the whole treatment because the sensitivity was so, so, so high. You know, back then, we really didn’t understand bleaching gels at all.

Everyone talks about digital flow and all this. You basically mastered the flow of whitening, haven’t you? Now, you know, would you say or know in terms of I’ve seen the Evo four, is it called Evo four? Yeah. And you’ve seen to that that pathway both for you, for the clinician and for the patient seems to be really quite perfect or. No.

Perfect is a big word.

We’re easy. Simple. That’s what everybody wants.

Yeah. Although, although our focus is the patient, not not the dentist, you know, the dentists complain to us all the time about the bits of the treatment. Our focus is the patient. You know, what we realised is realise is a big word as well, because I don’t think it’s necessarily true for everyone. When you look at Prem Boutique, he managed to go on price against the big guys and win. Yeah. Um, whereas we what we thought was there’s no way we can take on the big guys on price. So the only thing we can do is go on quality. And so we just obsessively trying to make each bit better all the time, every time we do a new evolution. So this is either towards the fourth evolution. It’s when we make a big break from what we’ve done before. So we were constantly changing all the time. Everything. I mean, my my partner, Sanjay, is just he’s just that he’s wired that way, constantly trying to improve everything.

Um, but basically you just get people, you know, to try it out, give us the answer. How do you do that? How do you go do.

A lot of split arch testing? So one thing on the left, one thing on the right, sometimes you can’t do that because either you haven’t got the patience or, you know, you just can’t. I mean, we now we’ve got attachments in the trays and you can’t you can’t split arch test attachments on the tray. It just doesn’t doesn’t work. But yeah, we’ve got we’ve got 6 or 7 sort of very close dentists who help us and show us sequential photos. And then every time a new gel comes, I mean, we get contacted a lot by every single manufacturer and try my gel. Every time a new gel comes along, we try it. And to be very frank with you guys, you know, I try it myself one night and I’d say 80% of them I reject after that first night because either it hurt too much. The teeth didn’t change colour at all or white spots came up. And I know with enlightened gel, none of those three things happen, you know, regularly. So if it happens on the first night with the first gel, that gel just gets thrown out. So then so then the other 20% that passed that test, then we try it with patients. We try it left and right with our existing gels.

Let me just come back to that every second. So that’s quite a big advantage in the gel that you’re you’re you supply. What do you think it is about those other gels that caused those issues you described?

So one big thing with peroxide gel is that it’s volatile. Yeah. So it’s the reason why it makes teeth white is because it’s constantly breaking down. It turns out the secret is to have a gel that’s very stable before it comes out of the syringe, a very stable in the syringe and then very unstable when it comes out of the syringe. And that’s quite a tightrope. Um, and then, you know, you know, when you’ve got no control over how long ago the gel was made, what, what, what sort of conditions it were stored in. As, as the gel breaks down, it becomes acidic and acidic. Gels. They end up causing all the complications of teeth whitening. So. So sensitivity, white spots, chalkiness, opacities. All of that stuff comes from acidic gel. So, you know, we’ve all come across that situation, right? You put the the, you give the patient the gel, they come back massive sensitivity, no whitening. And that’s because I mean, yeah, they could be predisposed because of their bruxism or whatever but generally it’s because that gel severely broken down, it’s become very acidic, the concentration has gone right down, but also the PH has gone right down. So some gels break down in the syringe very quickly, others don’t. And so we’re after the ones that don’t break down the syringe. And then you’ve got the viscosity solubility kind of equation. So you want it to be viscous enough so that when saliva gets in, it doesn’t, you know, immediately denature it. But also you want it to be not viscous enough, sort of watery enough that oxygen can get out of it and the radicals can get out of it and it can penetrate, you know, get. Into the nooks and crannies, if you like, of the two. So those are two variables. And then you’ve got the desensitises. We try and put the minimum amount of desensitises into our jails and have external desensitises.

What would you recommend? What’s your go to external desensitiser?

We have one which is a HEMA based Desensitises HEMA fluoride and benzalkonium chloride as the main desensitiser we use. And then we have a hydroxyapatite toothpaste that we use two weeks before bleaching. So from impression day, the patient brushes with that toothpaste. It’s a fluoride fluoride hydroxy apatite and potassium nitrate to.

Dumb it down for anatomy. What’s the name of the product? Those were some big chemicals you mentioned there. What’s the name of the product? Is it a what’s it called? The HEMA based Desensitiser you recommend?

We call it Enlightened Seal.

Enlightened seal. That’s that trips off the tongue better than It’s quite nice. Yeah.

And the hydroxy appetite toothpaste, we call it enlightened serum.

Enlightened serum.

And how long is that? This two week program before you start whitening. When did that start? Is that is that recent or is that always been the case? I out of touch her?

Yeah, that started in 2009. Wow. Yeah. So so the evolution system we started in 2006. Yeah. Evolution two was 2009. Evolution three was 2012. And now this is Evo four, which is, Wow, it’s been 11 years since we changed it properly. Changed it. And what the big change that’s happened in that time is digital and it’s a nightmare right now. Now our lab is in house and it’s difficult because you can see digital, the wave of digital coming through like it was. It was about a third of our impressions were scans, and now it’s become half of our hands, half scans, half impressions. And that means you need to separate, you know, entities in your lab to handle the physical and digital. And the digital ones are a lot easier to handle because you don’t have to pull them up and all that. But we make tighter fitting bleaching trays on stone models and we do on printed models. And the reason is the stone models gas permeable. So, you know, we’re dealing with gas, we’re dealing with pressure and suction. And when the model itself is gas permeable, that helps a lot to get the the blank to really adapt properly to it. So with the digital, we’re trying everything. We’ve tried to print holes into the models. We’ve tried maybe 25 different resins, we’ve had three different types of printers in the lab. We’ve certainly improved it a lot. We’re doing manipulations on the on the the, you know, the scans themselves make it 5% smaller, 5% bigger. We’re doing something with the bell effect. Do you know what I mean by that? No. See, you got your tooth, and then you’ve got your. The gums and the alveoli. Right. And what tends to happen is as as the blank comes onto the tooth and then you’ve got the gums, it pulls it away from the gingival margin as the more pressure you put pulls it away. So we’ve been trying to sort of undercut under the teeth so that it pulls it towards the gingival margin.

It’s amazing. I mean, you have a phenomenal product and the amazing thing, you’re constantly, constantly developing and and it’s good for us to know because, you know, it’s it’s the ignorance that we all have as dentists is like, oh, this is just a product. Nobody knows the amount of hard work, dedication, innovation that you. You know, it’s it’s it’s same thing as a dental practice. You know, why am I paying all this money? Because, you know, we’re providing all this service products, and sometimes you just need somebody to say, hang on, this is like the eureka moment for saying, hang on, there’s more to this than just a box.

Yeah. And especially outside of a, you know, breakthrough. Yeah. There’s been no breakthrough in teeth whitening since its inception, right? Since since it started. No real breakthrough. I mean, okay, we got to the point of being able to guarantee results in 2006 that that was that was a massive breakthrough that you could you could say we could say that if your patients don’t get to be one or whiter, we’ll give you a free kit. You know, that was that was amazing. But the technology itself, there’s been no change at all, real change. Um, our understanding of the technology has got more but no quantum leap, you know, And in a way that’s what keeps me up at night, right?

Because that’s what we do every morning. Yeah.

No, but keeps me up at night like it’s some, there’s some genius sitting in in Korea right now. Yeah. Working on some sort of nanotechnology thing. Yeah. That looking at a way of doing it, that that could be, you know, twice as fast. Half the price, you know, half the sensitivity. It hasn’t happened yet, but it could happen while it hasn’t happened. We’re working on marginal gains on the current technology and the current technology is gels, trays, desensitises impressions. You know, um, it’d be amazed that the standard of the impressions that come in that we get a lot of amazing ones and then we get some really bad ones too. Yeah.

Did you do that? What’d you do?

Welcome to retake. We also I mean, right now the lab is, is is asking 5% of all the impressions to retake. That’s not bad. But it’s a nightmare for everyone. It’s pain for you guys.

But 5%.

Yeah, but it’s a nightmare for everyone right now. The dentist gets very annoyed. Yeah, yeah, we’ve done that. And then he has to call up his patient and say, come back for another impression. Makes him look bad. I think it’s got something to do with alginate, dude. You know, because. Because we recommend alginate. We supply the alginate. It’s a very stable alginate. It’s a five day stable alginate. Yeah, but because it’s alginate, people get their head into alginate mode where they’re not really worried about it so much. Maybe it’s that obviously people are running late. There’s all sorts of reasons why, right?

You Stuart, this is Stuart’s speciality first day.

When did Prosthodontic training? Um, that’s what we spent. We spent the first two days learning how to take a proper alginate. And you, like you say, it’s kind of we were talking about, you know, does it matter? It’s an algebra. I remember the consultant saying to me, the punches you miss are the ones that wear you out. And he was kind of saying that these little simple things that you think you’ve got, right, you don’t. That’s the stone in your shoe that will ultimately wear you down. So get it right. Learn how to get it right. Nothing is frustrating, as you know, being asked to get the patient back, as you say, for another impression. And one of the good tips for a lower offer you get the air blows in the lower is to get a big wedge of it on a little, take a dollop of alginate on your gloved finger, hold the lower lip back and rub it into the gum before you see the tray, the gum around, the lower incisors and the alginate binds to the alginate, doesn’t it? And that gives you a nice little labial sulcus rather than the big classic air blow you get around. The lower lip is often a site for that and obviously rubbing it into the fissures as well. It’s quite handy.

With with either for we’ve shortened the tray so the tray no longer goes to the sevens, it stops at the sixes. And the reason was we were getting so many drags in, the sixes in the sevens, sorry, both in impressions and in scans. The sevens obviously difficult to get to. And and also, you know, the back of the tray, you know, the longer it is, the more likely it is to move. So we’ve the tray just to avoid that, you know, because like 10%. Yeah.

What do you think of these, um, thermoplastic trays? Payman Are you a fan of those, the ones that you kind of, you warm, you dunk them a bit hot water and you kind of mould them to the, the shape of the mouth? Is that something you recommend or do you prefer a bit of space around your, your alginate to capture. A bit of land space around the teeth, more like the thumb.

I think the thermoplastic states have have trays, have a place, but not in dental practices over, over over the counter applications of that. And we’re certainly looking at that because, you know, outside of Europe, it’s legal to go with, you know, up to 6% hydrogen peroxide. I mean, as it turned out, thermoplastic trays themselves, the ones you heat up, boil and bite didn’t turn out to be the best ones that we found. We found we found ones that you don’t have to boil that form a lot better. They’re just sort of a rubbery material that you really can put into the teeth. And I know right now, because of Brexit, Procter and Gamble are doing kind of a push to make it legal in the UK to sell 6% over the counter. Um, I guess it’s a way of getting into Europe with the crest strips and all of that. So we’re certainly, we’re working very hard on, on, on finding an over-the-counter system that makes teeth very white or as white as possible in case that happens in Europe. But also for us to be able to sell in the US and abroad.

Can pick you up on two things. Payman Just two things I just wanted to ask you about there. And first thing is we’ll come back to crest strips because I have a number of patients that go out to the States and they come back with crest strips and say what great results they get with these and they’re only $40 or something and you can’t get them in the UK. But they’re, you know, patients are finding ways to get them sent across. But when we come back to that but what what was interesting what you were saying is you would you guarantee the results and now what is your protocol, your whitening protocol that you recommend to dentists to use to get the guaranteed results that you describe?

So it’s about the the impression, the trade, the gel and the desensitises. We optimise all of those. And right now with the zero four, it’s a it’s a three week at home treatment. So we do we supply the impression material, we ask for that impression or the scan we make the tray while the patient waits for the tray. They use the hydroxy appetite that the enlightened serum to desensitise. And that also reduces things like white spots as well, because it’s a hydroxy appetite toothpaste. And then the new protocol is the first week, night time at the lower concentration, which is the 10%, the second week, night time at the higher concentration. So we call the first week condition, the second week whiten, and then the third week day time, one hour a day. And we call that blast. That’s the hydrogen peroxide. And we’ve been really careful this time to make it more patient friendly so that you don’t have to bother with the concentrations with the patient. You know, they’re labelled the biggest thing on the on the syringe is one, two and three, you know, week one, week to week three. And for some reason, I don’t know, it’s probably a historical thing. Most other systems that one syringe lasts like three days for some reason.

Whereas we’ve always from the beginning we said, look, one syringe, one week, it’s sort of obvious, right? So, so once it’s three, three weeks, three syringes and they’re called week one, week to week three. And the only thing the patient has to remember is week one and two is night time. Week three is one hour a day. And then we have attachments on the trays. So on the sixes we build in attachments, the little composite attachments, just like Invisalign and and the dentist makes, you know, puts Flowable composite into there. And then when the patient uses, it clicks into place. It’s like bond composite, just like you would with Invisalign. The tray clicks into place. And what we find is when the attachments are used, you get you get much more predictable whitening at the GINGIVAL margin. And also the patients and I’ve treated them myself, the patients who started out without attachments and then it didn’t work out very well. Then we stuck the attachments on and we talked to those patients. The patients say they’re much more comfortable with the attachments because, you know, the biggest thing with whitening, the biggest problem with whitening is para function and bruxism. Definitely the biggest issue by a long, long shot. So, you know, I’ve looked at 3000 failures and I’d say three quarters of those were due to parafunctional bruxism.

And the, you know, the patient grinds their teeth, saliva gets in gel escapes, they tend to have more sensitivity than everyone else. They tend to have thinner enamel as well. And so, you know, one, one realisation I’ve come to you guys, you guys probably understood this instinctively, right? It’s not that the patient is a bruxism or isn’t like in a binary way. You know, we all, we all at times grind our teeth within a night’s sleep. We grind our teeth. And so the other thing is, you know, how can you tell if the patient is a cyst or not? For me, looking at the teeth is kind of a bit historical. Yeah, like if it’s some 26 year old who just had a kid and now she’s bruxing, the teeth will still look amazing. They. Teeth don’t look worn yet. So I’d say a muscle examination and a tongue examination is the best sort of indication of current bruxism. And so bruxism are the big problem with bruxism. We sort of try and train from the beginning, notice the patients of bruxism and tell them, look, it might take a bit longer, we do a bit more daytime whitening with the bruxism rather than Night-Time.

The idea is. And whose idea was that? You know, the composite. Whose idea?

It was mine. It was mine. But. But, you know, they’re not. All the good ideas are mine. That one happened to be mine.

And literally, based on trying our guess.

As you said, it was, where it started was the scans. We couldn’t make the trays as tight on the printed models. And we said, What’s the way of doing it? We’ve tried so many things. We’ve tried manipulating the model, scoring the models, changing everything, changing up our pressure formers, increasing the pressure in the pressure formers, printing holes into the models, trying everything to make the printed model as good as the stone. And then we thought, Well, what if it’s the back of it’s the back that always moves, doesn’t it? When you put a bleaching, when you put any appliance in the mouth, the front is very stable because the teeth are quite long. But it’s the back where you know, where you’ve sometimes got the teeth that are leaning in or you’ve got the short clinical crowns. That’s where and the back moving just let saliva in. So we thought, All right, well, what about an attachment to stop the back from moving? It was simple as that. Like, no, no, no, no. Nothing deeper than that. That’s a good.

Idea. I’ve previously used situations where you’ve got very discoloured teeth in certain spots. Say, for example, there’s a little, you know, brown spot or something like that. Maybe Icon has diminished the need for this, but I would tend to take bond on a little bit of composite to the brown spot, then take my impression so that the the reservoir would be a bit deeper in that area with a view to some gel sitting on there a bit longer. That’s interesting my my theory but it seemed to seem to work I think in a sample size of about six. But yeah, it seemed to work. But it sounds a bit like, you know, it sounds like you’ve taken that idea to to a degree. And and you know what.

I find interesting, Stuart, is that that every dentist has a couple of hacks, right? Yeah. And then you’ve got some dentists who’ve got loads of hacks and they become teachers like, you know, like Artem, you know, or Depeche, you know. You know, if you ask Depeche, he’s got like 30, 40, super duper original hacks. Yeah, but every dentist has a couple of hacks. And, and it’s interesting when asked the younger ones and obviously they haven’t been around long enough to develop hacks, they almost find it like a dangerous question to ask. You know, like. Like, you know, no, you know, don’t do anything outside of the the the the research what’s available out there. But we all have something don’t we. We all have a way of doing it.

Well, you’re right. There was a a textbook that was produced as a German guy and I’ve forgotten his name, which is and I’ve just remembered it. Listeners, it’s Dr. Wolfram bucking rhymes with a. Plucking. So, yeah, he has written a textbook called the Dental Treasure Chest. Tips and Tricks. Tips and Tricks for Daily Practice. And yeah, it was written about in the 90 seconds, but loads of good tips still relevant from everything from the way you sit. How to make your posture better to easy removal of crowns and troubleshooting with implants, patio, etcetera. Great book, well worth a look.

I think there would be no enlighten but.

That’s that’s that’s the worry because everyone’s worried that worried about you know procedure being sued or whatever the case may be and innovation is you know, it’s being stifled because of that. Absolutely. No doubt about that. You know, certain people, you know, including ourselves, really will say, well, do I want to do this procedure on this person? Well, you know, is it worth it? You know, do I want to challenge certain people? And even people we teach to say, look, please challenge what I tell you, Try different things. Oh, we don’t want to try anything because the implications are a bit worrying. But it’s amazing because the innovation that you’ve done, has that been because you’ve been away from dentistry or because you’ve been a dentist? You know what is mean.

We just tried everything to do it. It was a matter of survival to start with. You know, we had to try and make it better and then and then you end up becoming that person. Then you, you know, you end up being good at 1 or 2 things. You know, I was talking to a guy who was saying that he was working in Henry Schein when they were buying companies and he was saying, Yeah, they’d buy companies. And then and then they’d realise this entrepreneur was good at 1 or 2 things they shouldn’t try and mess him about and make him do other things well, they just let him carry on doing the 1 or 2 things that he knows how to do and and work out. Don’t bother him on those 1 or 2. Um, and I feel like that as well. You know, we got addicted to improvement because we had to to start with and then we realised oh well that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re good at and I’m really bad at making things cheaply, you know, like I just can’t do it.

So I think whatever you do, you can’t sit still. But in saying that if we, if we, you know, I don’t know why I got this right or wrong and I’m a bit scary if, if it’s true. Um, you know, the biggest problem being a, you know, a boss, an employer is obviously employing people. It was. I’m saying that you employ 100 people. What did you say that.

No, no, no. About 44 we have now. Okay.

44. And is that the hardest challenge or no? Do you find that easy? Do you do you to pass it off to somebody else?

It’s it can be. It can be when when there’s a disagreement and when the team gets bigger, you end up having problems you never thought you would have, you know, cultural issues. There was some bullying going on. We had no idea about it until, you know, 6 or 8 of them came to us and said, look, this person is doing this. We had no idea. And because we grew quite quickly, we thought everything was fine. And, you know, it’s difficult keeping the culture going with so many people. Um, it’s difficult taking the risk of hiring loads of people as well because, you know, your wage bill goes through the roof and you know, the business becomes a very serious thing. You know, you’ve got to make loads of money just to break even. Um, and you know, the, you know, the latest thing is the sort of Elon Musk thing about, you know, what he did at Twitter, which is he said, all right, who here is essential.

And who.

He is and who here is exceptional? And then he fired everyone else and he ended up firing 70% of the workforce. Um, and that’s become a thing now. That’s become a trend and we’re certainly looking at the business in that sense as well. And in the good, good days you hire, you know, just like we at one point we had an in-house videographer, in-house, uh, copywriter. We do, we already have two in-house social media, you know, full time social media people, a marketing manager, um, her assistant, you know, just just in marketing, just in that one area of marketing, there’s like six people. Um, you know, it’s a, it’s a big commitment. Yeah. Which, which you can always outsource as well. Yeah. Um, but what I’ve found is that, you know, let’s talk about marketing, right? You, you’ve got to make things right. Right? You got to. It’s difficult to make things right. Just a simple photograph, like a photograph of a smiling woman. Yeah. Is really difficult to make that right because it’s cheesy and it’s shit, you know, like, so. And to make that better. Yeah, you’ve got to take that photo now.

Okay, Now we’ve got to take the photo. So who’s it going to be? Is it going to be a white woman? A black woman? You know, is it going to be a man? As well. Yeah. And you know, the creative comes out and says, Yeah, no, we need a white woman, a black woman and a man, right? That’s three models. Now we need, um, in London. Yeah. All the models are Eastern European and all the Eastern Europeans have terrible teeth. Yeah. Um, they haven’t, they haven’t been to the orthodontist or anything, so we had to look outside of London. After a long search in London, we found similar problems in lots of European cities, but not not for instance, in Amsterdam. So we went to the Amsterdam modelling agencies. In the end, our our hero model is a girl from Dallas. Yeah. Which we had to fly over for the shoot. And then to use her pictures, we can only use them for two years. Yeah, we spent a huge amount. The photographer is one of the world’s top fashion photographers. Um, the music we composed.

I’m panicking with this. Yeah.

And. And so, look, we get you get to this point of all we’re talking about is a picture of a model or a video of a model turning around and smiling. Yeah. And I’ve involved one of the world’s top fashion photographers. A huge search around the world for a beautiful girl who’s got a nice smile that, believe me, was a nightmare. Yeah. Because we couldn’t Photoshop, you know that you couldn’t Photoshop pictures. But dentists will see through that. So. So. So you can Photoshop for the public, but not for dentists. Um, just that. Just getting that picture. Yeah. Nightmare. Now, you can go and buy that picture tomorrow. You guys could go in one hour and buy a picture. Yeah, but they’re all a bit cheesy. A bit crap, you know.

Yeah, but do you think Payman Dental school really did not equip us for high glamour fashion shoots with texts and models? Did it just. There wasn’t enough teaching on that subject?

That was. The funny thing is that it taught you a lot about looking down the microscope and stuff.

Being, you know, being really sort of perfectionist. Want this repeating or is it your partner or is a combination of like, if we do things properly, we’re going to go to the extreme and make it right.

You know, dude, what happens is that there’s the time that that takes and the cost you the time is the time, right? But the cost it tends for me, this is the way I think about it, is the cost of design tends towards zero the longer that product is out. So if we did the exact same thing with Evo three and Evo three was in the market for 11 years, we treated a quarter of a million patients with it. And you know the you know how much I spent on the photoshoot back in 2011. Um, I spent a lot by 2011 standards. Yeah. But it per kit it tends to zero is my point. Yeah. Um, now that’s not for everyone, you know, It’s a big risk. Yeah. Doing that. It’s a big risk. We’ve got the paper that we’ve got the products made of. We’ve, we’ve put the data recorders, you know, you can get these things that that record temperature every ten minutes over a period of a week. And we put the data recorders inside the package to see how temperature stable the package is. And you should see the detail that the packaging specialist, I mean, he’s like almost like a physicist like detail he goes to to get the two sides of the package to come together. Exactly right. So that there’s no air exchange there. And then we’ve got a bubble envelope that’s plastic. And we have to you know, we don’t want to put plastic into the environment. So we’re paying another company to take out twice as much plastic as we put in and all of that.

Now, all of this, you know, I don’t talk about it in the marketing because it’s difficult to talk about this stuff. Right. But the reason for it is if you could see what I saw or what I see that when when a shipment comes in from the factory, the first few treatments are magical, like magical, magical. The teeth go super white, zero sensitivity. Then the following month they’re good, but not quite as good in the final month. And this was back in the day, you know, ten years ago when we used to keep the gel just we used to make big orders to get the biggest discount and keep the gel for six months. Sometimes the final few would get complaints, complaints coming in. So then we realised that you shouldn’t keep gel any period of time at all, keep gel for the minimum amount of time, and then convincing our partners, our our manufacturing partners to make it in small amounts because they don’t want to do that, right? They want to make it in big amounts. It makes it easier for them to make it in small amounts and ship it to us cold every month during the pandemic. You know, it was tough, but but if you saw the results that I saw from those first and we’re not quite there, we’re at the point of going from factory to patient in two months Right now, I’d like to get that down to one month because I saw the results.

I’ve seen the results. Um, the big issue with it is either you end up with, um, you know, supply issues because you haven’t got enough or you end up with wastage issues. And by the way, I’m not worried about throwing gels in the bin. Oh, shit, That’s. That’s my red wine. I’m not worried about throwing gels in the bin from the cost perspective as long as I can get a really good result. But you know, from the plastic, we’re now measuring every bit of plastic that we throw away and every bit of plastic we put into the environment from the plastic perspective obviously doesn’t work. So that’s kind of a balancing act. Interestingly, to reduce the plastic in our kits, we end up doubling our carbon footprint. So so now we have to work work out a way of reducing our carbon footprint at the same time. And, you know, I didn’t use to take this stuff seriously before until, you know, we’re now a little bit partnered with Pala, with Simon and Rona and Adarsh with their with their toothpaste apps. And I’m talking to them. I realised that these guys aren’t doing it for some sort of marketing thing. You know, they, they literally give a damn so much about the plastic and the environment and looking into it realised, oh god, yeah, all of us have to completely take care of this, you know, Dental practices included, you know, chucking away.

Still goes on. Yeah, yeah. It’s scary what goes into especially this, all this, you know, HDMI or what do you have to do? Oh, that’s. Yeah.

Right.

It’s just crazy. Absolutely. What goes, what goes into clinical waste.

It’s it’s mad.

And then and then you find out that the local councils won’t, won’t recycle. They don’t know about Scotland Stuart but you know the local councils won’t recycle because this is a business. But if it was, if it was a residential like in Kent, you know, when is it residential road? You can’t recycle because you’re a business. But the next door neighbours who are residential, they can recycle. It just doesn’t make any sense. But anyway, we. We digress. Sorry.

Sorry. Had to recycling. No, sorry. I was just distracted there by Payman spilling his large goblet of red wine. And I’m just so impressed that a man with such a snazzy smile is an avid red wine drinker that says a lot about the quality of enlightened tooth whitening products. They must be the business. I digress. I better get back on to asking some questions. Do you miss clinical dentistry? I told you miss the day to day. Do you miss doing other things like operative dentistry?

I don’t know about operative dentistry. I miss people, human beings, not dentists. I know a lot of dentists, but. But I don’t know many regular people and I miss them. You know that when you see a patient every six months you have that chat. And and I used to have some very interesting patients, You know, I was working in the city at one point, and then I was working in Hampstead after that. And really interesting conversations I used to have. And you see the kids grow up and all of that. Um, they particularly miss the teeth, although once in a while I go to a lecture at Depeche was like that for me. Jason Smithson was the same. Ended up working with him. Um, Gallup Grill was the same. Um, uh, some, some of the, obviously the guys from USC at McLaren. Um, just, there’s a few people that you see the lecture and you think, God, I want to try that. Um, and when, whenever I get that feeling, I realise, oh, that’s a brilliant lecturer, you know, whereas the actual meccano bit sticking things together and I definitely didn’t like surge surgery, so, you know, what does I take my hat off?

You’re very sociable.

It’s obvious you do podcasts. I think when you do the courses, I don’t know whether you like, you know, just move into that because you miss the social aspect. I mean. Yeah, definitely. This is another rumour I’ve heard. I heard that if there’s a squat opening your first at the front door. Yeah. Is that true? I’ve heard Payman there before. Before patients there literally just says you’re so sociable, You like. You know.

I like people. For sure. Like people for sure. And you know that that translates to, obviously, our team. Yeah. Although our team, my two teams, I’m in charge of two teams Enlightened and both of them are remote now. So they come in one day a week. So I go in that one day a week or for me it ends up being sometimes two days a week because they go on, on different, different, different days. But the social aspect of work was a big thing for me. I used to enjoy that. Um, and you’re right. Many Smile Makeover. As much as I enjoy watching the dentist, um, you know, that light bulb moment, which is, which is important and enjoyable, the meeting of the people, the conversations for me are even more important. And so your question, Stuart I definitely miss people. Um, I did up a flat, um, when I was a dentist and my patient supplied everything, you know, the kitchen, the floor, the plumber, the electrician. There were all my patients. Then I did that. This, this, this house. I’m sitting. I’m not sitting in the Seychelles like it looks like in the background. This house I’m sitting in, I did this up just pre-COVID, and I knew no one. I had no contacts apart from dentists. I knew a lot of dentists. Yes. So I called up dentists. I said, Hey, the only one who could do a house.

Can you bring some cement? Yeah, yeah, the cement is there. But, you know, dentists complain of stress. You know, we all do. It can be stressful. There’s no doubt. Clinical dentistry is stress. It’s rewarding, but stressful. Do you? You obviously have your own day to day stress. If you were to compare, you know, how you know your day to day work comparison to dentistry.

Yeah. No. Day to day. I’d say it’s less stressful than dentistry day to day. And I remember there were periods where I was doing dentistry two days a week and I was doing Enlightened the other five days a week. Um, and, you know, dentistry, the problem with dentistry is, number one, you got to turn up. That hate.

That helps.

That helps.

It’s horrible that you have to turn up. Yeah, you take it for granted when you’re like you have to turn up, right?

There’s that same ethos applied to your courses.

But the courses course courses are kind of fun. It’s like a holiday for me. It’s a bit of a holiday, especially when we do it outside London. In Manchester we go get the best hotel. We go the party and the best rooftop and meeting people. Depeche is a great teacher. I get the best projector, the best everything. You know, to try and make it just fun for us as well. Yeah, but dentistry, it’s relentless in that you have to keep turning up. And I’ve found that hard, man. Honestly, honestly. And one of the best things about not being a dentist is that if you want to not turn up, you can not turn up. Now, I’ve got a meeting with the head of operations, the operation director of one of the massive, you know, corporates with 400 practices. Yeah. I got turned up to them. I do have to turn up to that meeting. Yeah, I’ve got to go to some dentist. We do a thing called Regional Centre of Excellence where it’s our big partner in each area and I’ve said I want to be the one who turns up to those meetings. So I do have to do sometimes that guy’s in Aberdeen, right? So I have to get on a plane and go to Aberdeen to see that guy. Yeah.

How many centres do you have?

200 of those. I’ve been to every single one. Yeah. Um, now the thing is, so I’m busy and I’m turning up and I have to turn up to Cologne next week and I have to turn up to showcase. But it’s that daily, day in and day out having to be there for your patients that don’t have. That’s my best thing about not doing dentistry. And the worst thing is you don’t meet people and dentistry, even though it’s high stress, it is high stress. Yeah, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s you’re going to find it’s easy money. Yeah, but there’s some the trust the patient by sitting in your chair they’re implicitly saying I trust you. Whereas you know something to dentists is a whole different matter. You know, as dentists, we’re trained to be distrusting. Yeah. And the next time, let’s say Enlightened comes up to you and says, I’ve found this breakthrough Perio product. Yeah, yeah. No premier product. There’s a premier product that’s based on a bleaching trays that. Yeah, yeah, they do, They do, they do pocket charting and then they extend the tray up into the pocket, Right? And they use peroxide. Yeah. I could, I could, I could go and get that and make that and do that and even improve on it. Right now let’s say I come to you and say, Hey, I’ve got this new period product. It’s a breakthrough. Implicit norm. You’ve seen so much crap come in front of you before making these promises that your first thing is going to be, Well, here’s another bullshit, right? Another another marketing angle.

I’m hoping you’d turn up first.

And so it’s the same with all dentists. Yeah. They’re trained to be trained to be distrusting. It’s correct. You want your dentist to be distrusting of these dodgy companies. Coming up with all these new ideas. It’s difficult. Makes it difficult in.

This course thing because, you know, I love social media and I see. I see your courses. Depression. It’s like, wow, this is A it’s entertaining. B, it has that. Wow. You know, isn’t that like that? But you see the wow factor and it’s like, you know, I presume based on, you know, you’re so passionate about things, you go all out.

Dude. The thing is the thing is he’s, he is exceptional. He really is exceptional As a teacher. As a clinician. I mean. Yes, yes, definitely. I met him when he was one year out of dental school, and even then he was exceptional. Lewis Mackenzie contacted me, who was his big his his mentor, and he said, Oh, you met Depeche? I was like, Yeah. He said, Oh, he’s the best student I’ve had in the last 20 years. And and all he is exceptional at the teeth, he really is. And then we’ve been distributing Renamo for 12 years now, 40 and it’s an exceptional composite. It really is the best composite. Yes, it’s expensive as well, but it’s the best composite. So. So you’ve got these two things, the best teacher and the best composite. And I thought, look, it’s a case of sort of if I don’t do my bit, my bit would be, you know, put on the best hotel, the best food, the best entertainment, the best projector. And, you know, I went to this show at the weekend, the north of England one, and I grabbed the guys from FMC and said, look, we have 30 delegates and we have a screen six times the size of the one that you’ve produced for 1000 delegates. Yeah. You know, we really take it seriously. We spend £3,000 per event on AV, just on AV. Um, with the hotel, we constantly upgrade. We’re constantly telling them, how can you make the food better, the coffee better, you know, everything better. And like hotels, they find that a difficult question. Like better coffee. You know, the coffee’s crap. Can you organise better coffee? And they’re like, no, they can’t.

Honestly changed since COVID, things have changed a lot. But that’s a different story.

But that you know, you know how everything’s a bit rubbish, isn’t it? You go to a hotel, everything’s a bit rubbish isn’t it? Everything’s a bit rubbish, man. Everything’s a bit rubbish. We found one hotel in Manchester where the people are just extraordinary. The Edwardian, the Manchester, the staff, they just. They.

That’s a good hotel, but a great hotel. That is a good one.

The Ave is of a standard that we don’t have to bring external Ave in, which is amazing for a hotel. It’s like, you know, it’s brand new and the food’s good. Yeah. So in Manchester, we good in London? Haven’t found a hotel. That’s. That’s of that standard. Yeah. And you know, we’ve been trying, we’ve been, we’ve been switching hotels every single mini smile makeover to try and find one that’s at the right standard and there isn’t we have to bring in separately. Sometimes we have to bring food in separately. Bring it from. Really?

Oh wow. That’s that’s a the food.

So rubbish in this chicken and beige. Right.

The food is. Yeah it is what it used to be but that’s a side thing.

So and actually doing these courses, how often are you doing these courses. Every three months.

Four months? No, once a month. Once a month.

Wow. And that rotates from city to city. Or you?

Well, we used to. I used to I used to want to see other cities. Right. So we used to do London, Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol, Cardiff. We never came to Scotland. We tried once and then the pandemic got in our way. By the way, dude, is it true in Scotland your your GDC or something pays for your courses, is that right?

Nhs Yes. If you apply to be a, you got to have a is that right? Cpd And then the dentist can apply to get the cost of the course back based on their level of commitment. So it’ll be capped. It might be say £400 a day and if you do 50% NHS you’ll get £200 back. And if you do 75%, £300 back, that type of thing.

That’s amazing, man.

I suppose. Is that not a thing in England? You don’t get that at all.

Payman I’d encourage you, it’s different. The education in Scotland is different. I mean, we do when we do the course, I’m there in two weeks. I can tell you it’s a different Everybody arrives on time. Unbelievably polite. That doesn’t apply to you when you turn up on time. Polite. Courteous. A feedback is always exceptional, but it’s a different market.

We did a lot in Belfast and noticed a totally different outlook from the Belfast dentist and.

No.

Scottish person. The Dental will say, Can I leave early? You know, it’s, you know, down south it’s like, but I’d recommend it go in Scotland is where.

Do you go? Glasgow, Edinburgh, Glasgow. It’s, that’s where the population is, right. Glasgow. Yeah.

Yeah. She was, she was based in Edinburgh.

I love Edinburgh man.

Well, you could go to Glasgow if you wish, but. Oh, I’ll just stop myself there. And what I was going to say is everybody knows that Glasgow and Edinburgh are centres of both culture and hospitality renowned throughout the world. So either city would be a superb choice for a visit or to put on a Dental course we should bring you up and do a course on Edinburgh. I think that would for sure, for sure.

If Edinburgh is where we plan to do it. And then pandemic stopped us.

Edinburgh Castle. You know, I think you’d fit in well there.

We were in Edinburgh for the BCD and we had a big party there. Oh, the museum? Yes. Well, BCD had their part, the museum. But we went to a place on George Street. It was like a nightclub thing.

Some good venues.

You know what I’ve found about Edinburgh? There’s lots of cities with one little tiny pretty bit. But Edinburgh is like the whole town. The whole city is beautiful. It’s like it’s unprecedented. I love Glasgow people too. I love Glasgow. People are.

Unbelievably.

Friendly. I mean. Yeah.

Are you finding are you finding in Edinburgh you’ve got now more of the sort of the cosmetically orientated patient as well.

It’s a really good question. Edinburgh is a I would say that it’s quite traditional. So people will invest in education. There’s a high number of private schools here, but based on the size of the population buying that, you know, people tend to drive nice cars here and people tend to go on lots of holidays. When it comes to aesthetic dentistry, implants are big business, but we don’t tend to see the kind of Instagram style practices here as much as you would. Let’s say if I go down to Manchester, I’ll see quite a few of those and I’ll go to Birmingham. Go to London. Certainly you’ll become conscious of choosing Glasgow. Yes, you’re right, it is in Glasgow.

It’s amazing how different those two cities are with one hour between them, right?

40 miles.

Payman 40. It’s mad. Like totally different accent. Totally different people. Totally different people. Totally different. Yeah.

In Glaswegian, I think.

Yeah. You have. Do you have trouble with the accent?

Hutton Wow. Yes. The we.

Have a few.

Uh.

Northern Ireland and, um, and a few Glaswegians. We have to, I have to really concentrate and you ask them to.

Repeat, right?

There’s one chap who who we’ve been mentoring for a few years. I won’t mention his name. He’s a lovely, lovely guy. And, um, he recommended a colleague of his Northern Ireland colleague. And I find it difficult to understand him. And he was telling me my children can’t understand my Glaswegian body. And I thought, God, how does that work? But unbelievably friendly. It just takes over everything. Polite. Nice. But yeah, there’s a I love.

That, though. I love that. That there are accents that, you know, we find difficult because in our part of the world that’s massive. Right. In Iran and where, you know Yemen and all that, you know literally two, two two villages next to each other, two different accents. Right. Um, and I love that that’s true here as well. You know, that’s but yeah, I find Dipesh he’s, he’s in Belfast a lot of times he’s like, come again? And you can’t ask that more than once, right? You can’t say come again again because.

They speak.

Really, really fast. The Northern Ireland and also some of these gloves you’re okay case you you speak very slowly. I think it’s probably because the.

Edinburgh Edinburgh is different.

Hello Dundee. Actually, boys, what do they call you in Glasgow? Hatem do not call you Haytham.

We hate him.

Hate him.

So aggressive on there. But Payman Let me ask you two quick questions. Two quick fire questions, and I’m going to ask you what your best day in dentistry was and your worst day in dentistry was. So let’s start with the best day.

I mean, it’s a little bit shallow. It was it was the model day. The model Day. Evo three. Model day. When we first time when we when we really like I called up my buddy he’s he’s in fashion and all that, I said, listen, what do I do? I need to I need to find some models. He said, just call up. He said, you know the names, the big names, the storm and all of these you just call them up, say you just want to find the model and don’t worry, everything else will be all right. And he was absolutely right. I called I called up the biggest names I could think of. And one day, maybe, I don’t know, 100, like super beautiful girls came one after the other to be to to be interviewed by me. I really enjoyed I enjoyed that day very, very much. No.

No comment. I’m not going to comment on that.

I’m joking. I’m joking. No, the best day, enlightened was the day that we sort of, you know, when when, when when patients when when dentists tell us. Yeah. That we made a massive change in the same way as when you treat a patient. Yeah. That. Thank you. Right. That you get from a patient who’s truly, truly thankful makes your day. And it doesn’t make any sense on paper. That one thank you. Makes your day. But you know, it happens sometimes, you know, when when we bring in a new process or we bring in a new product, often we get lots of people saying, Oh, I’m not happy about changes. And then we get a bunch of other people telling us how brilliant it was or, you know, the same thing. You must see this all the time, right? You do a course and the the delegate starts producing amazing work.

But it’s interesting because you I think you just nailed it. Exactly. You target patients and we know this. Patients are happy. They go back to their dentist and say, and you do the reverse bit, don’t you? You target the patient because you know the patient’s happy. You produce the product. You get the result that passes on to the dentist, passes it back on to you. Yeah.

What comes to mind, though? We did a we did a conference called the Minimalist Conference in 2017, the conference for Minimally invasive Dentistry and just, just really enjoyed that one. It was like 200 people turned up and big speakers and everything really enjoyed that one. The worst day. I mean, we’ve seen so many bad days.

I’m going to say this podcast, isn’t it?

No, no, no, no. Just in those early days, you know, those early days, the cash crises and those. Oh, I know, I know. I know. We had a product called Smile X. It was. It was. It was a it was a it was a direct application thing. And I honestly thought this was the product. It was going to make me rich. Right. Because it was it was a breakthrough. You you applied it on the teeth and your teeth after two applications a day would just go super beautifully. Lovely white. And it was because we were able to keep the in this, in this, in this um, it was like a glass container with a plastic around the glass and you squeeze the thing and break the glass and then the peroxide would come out onto this applicator and you’d apply it onto the the teeth. And we spent a whole year trying to find the right supplier, the right gel, everything right to try and make this thing work. And it was working. It was like making teeth white because we’re trying to be able to keep it fully stable in that glass container. But then we sold some, we sold some in the market. But then the supplier, the the factory in New Orleans called up and the guy said, we got a problem. And they were exploding. They were exploding by themselves. And glass was coming out of them. And and we put these in the market. We’d sold a number. And, you know, you’re thinking some patients are going to push this and it’s going to explode because they’re exploding on the shelf. You know, they were just pushing.

Um oh, spooky.

We managed to get them back. We did a recall. We managed to get them back. The ones that we could. I don’t know. There was no terrible stories. Yeah, but I was thinking, Oh, someone’s going to blind themselves with this glass that’s going to smash up. But the pain of two years, like I think it was two years of work really, Um, and thinking you’re on the edge of a breakthrough and then you’re on the edge of a disaster. Um, it was hard, man. It was hard at the time. I think we’d invested every penny we had into the project.

And what about you Got two young children. Would you encourage, discourage them dentistry or just say whatever you want to do? What would you do with the kids?

You know what? I want them to want to be dentists. Yeah, not necessarily to become dentists, but want them to want to be. It is a neither of them shown much interest. In fact, they’re saying, I don’t know what I want to do, but I know I don’t want to be a dentist.

Your wife’s a.

Practising.

She’s a real dentist. She does. She does. One day a week. A real dentist. She. She does one day a week of dentistry, sometimes two days a week. But yeah, it’s. I feel like a bit of a failure. Both of us are dentists and our kids could could get massive advantage from going into dentistry. And yet neither of them are really that interested. Both of them say they want to run Enlighten.

Well, there you go. That’s that’s the.

That’s their path. They think it’s a failure. I just think that, you know, if my kids want to come, you know, I’d say, you know, if you wanted to, but I wouldn’t encourage them. But, you know, No, you should. You got to get your two girls.

Um, interestingly, I kind of my, my, my philosophy for a couple of years was what you’re thinking. Payman thought it’s almost the advantage is that you could provide them knowing the inside track, knowing the hacks, as you say. Yeah. Would would be a huge advantage but don’t know there’s it’s, it’s a stressful job isn’t it. And you just don’t know. Um, I think the best answer I had was was last episode we recorded with Grant Macari. He said, Yeah, I wouldn’t encourage it, but I wouldn’t discourage it. Yeah, that’s listen to that as well.

Good episode, that one.

I think that’s probably my feeling. That’s where I probably sit at as well. I know a number of friends and colleagues, incidentally, said they would never encourage their kids to do it, but I don’t know, you know, Do you.

Guys know about Revere?

Which is that it’s.

The the fund that Mark Zuckerberg’s dad has opened up. Mark Zuckerberg’s dad is a dentist. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

This is recent. This came out recently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he’s he’s done obviously, very well. Yeah. He sold.

His dad. Must be gutted. He didn’t follow in his footsteps.

Well so, so, so he, he sold his Facebook shares and has a lot of money because of it. The dad I’m talking about. And now he’s investing in Dental Start-ups. And some of the ideas, I think they’re investing in one a week right now, but some of the ideas are super duper man. And like, you know, what’s going to be the future of dentistry. It’s it’s so like interesting. They were talking about nanorobots, you know that go into the periodontal pockets with the with the hygienist sitting with the virtual reality glasses driving the thing in there talking about we talked about we we talked about the link with dementia and he’s on this whole mission to get rid of that bacterial what’s it called.

Oh that would be a.

It’s lovely to see that thing. Yeah, right. You and you know, we were talking about this before, about being at the edge of a breakthrough and whether or not you can you can do it when you haven’t got the evidence. Every single move forward in dentistry or medicine has happened because someone said hey, what if I try this? You know, we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without those those moves.

All on for Champ. What was his name now? What’s his name?

Marleau.

Yeah. You know, he was in deep trouble, you know, they went to strike. Strike. You know, there’s a lot of issues there. And look at look at that. Now there’s people just, you know, have innovations. And they just said we said earlier, it’s it’s it’s something like we should be encouraging, not stifling. It’s a, you.

Know, the guy who invented Invisalign was a banker and he he he had his retainers and he’d forget to put them in and then he’d put them in and he’d, he’d say once he’d put them in for a few days the teeth would go back to where they were before. And then it was easy to put them in. It was to start with, it was hard to put them in, and then it became easy to put them in and he realised retainers can move teeth because he was a banker. He went and raised $1 billion and they were doing it all by hand. You know, they’re cutting the teeth and moving it by one step and suction, you know, vacuum forming onto the that they were the first Invisalign cases. But, you know, the fact that a banker had to do it, you know, some sometimes a Nick Mahindra used to talk about this all the time. Yeah. That you know, you’re lost in your in your knowledge. Yes. You know people talk about, you know, the curiosity of a child or an outsider looking at something. Can come out with something, a breakthrough that the people who are in it can’t. And if you’ve ever driven a Tesla, you know, you know that guy, he’s the fastest car like by far the best, you know, thing screen thing you know interface. He’s got the best stereo in it you know like, you know, the cars have been all these companies all these years and this dude comes along and just reimagines the whole thing drives itself, you know.

It has the.

President I’ve got one. So it has its pros and cons, let’s put it that way.

Ugly.

It’s ugly.

Okay. Lawsuit, lawsuit.

But, you know, it’s right now we I’m hoping we have a lot of young listeners. Um, and you’re and you’re obviously very influential, you know, when it comes to your podcast because a lot of people listen to it. Um, you know, you mentioned their reluctance to, to sort of have a bigger challenge. You know, a lot of the youngsters have bigger challenges. They’re sort of a bit too scared, a bit too worried. They overanalyze things. Exactly what you just said. Now, you know, as dentists, we critical overanalyze things. Probably risk averse. Yeah. Risk averse. Uh, what advice would you give, uh, you know, young dentists, both in terms of being entrepreneur and also a course provider and also obviously a dentist.

I mean, number one, by the way, I’m in touch with a lot of younger dentists. Yeah. I don’t know. Somehow it gives me energy to to help younger dentists. And I know I can help. You know, it’s an interesting time. Like if a dentist is, I don’t know, one to 1 to 5 years out of dental school, I can help massively propel their careers in that time. But I’m a bit you know, for me, it bothers me sometimes when they say they want to be teachers straight away, like everyone wants to be a teacher. You know, in a way, it’s like in our day, not everyone wanted to be a teacher, right? In a way, it gets to me like, why? Why do you want to be a teacher? You know, what’s the reason? And the thing with these youngsters I found is they’re so good at timing, you know, they’re so good at making you think like the way they answer questions, the way they. They’ve got all the words right already, you know? And so, you know, whatever you challenge them with, they end up giving you this answer that you could sort of think, Oh, God, right. Guess he’s thought about that even if he hasn’t.

If you think about it.

All clinicians want to be liked. And we’re not in a profession where we’re liked, so we all like to be liked. Let’s be honest. You want to satisfy whether it’s a course patient or whatever. So I just think the youngsters probably just want to be, you know, liked, admired. I presume that’s the case where that’s the issue.

I find a.

Disproportionate number of them saying they want to teach, which is fine. Okay, fine. Okay. Maybe they do. Maybe that’s the way it is. But my my advice my advice is opposite to what most people say. Most people say, oh, get out there, do a bit of everything. And then after that, decide if you want to go into one thing or. My advice is figure out the one thing very quickly. Almost pick it out of a hat. Yeah. It doesn’t matter what the one thing is. It could be perio, endo. It could be bleaching, minimally invasive. You could be whatever you want it to be. You say, I want to be a restorative guy. I want to be an orthodontist. Whichever way you want to go, you want to open 100 practices, whichever way you want to go. I’d say the earlier the better. So I’m fully, fully happy for someone to go straight into endo without doing any general practice at all. I’m fully happy for someone to to start in dental school, getting their head into endo and going on endo courses and Dental Dental School and coming out of the other end of that being way ahead. Um, it’s opposite to what most people say. Most people say, oh, you know, go spend a bit of time on the NHS and treat a bunch of general patients, see what you like, what you don’t like, and then decide, Um, I just think pick something and run.

Yeah, but.

Controversial.

Yeah.

We spent five years in dental school. And by the time you come out of it and I see this. The young graduates are desperate to learn, and they’re doing so many courses because they didn’t learn any of these things.

In dental school. Yeah.

What does that tell you? They didn’t learn the occlusion. They didn’t learn the Perrier, they didn’t learn the alignment. They didn’t learn the endo. And that is scary. That’s what scares me. Maybe. Maybe you’re right. And so so maybe we should encourage them to sort of say, Right, you can’t be good at everything. Just go for one particular thing because it’s going to be impossible for you to be good.

Dental school is flawed. What do you think? I think Dental school’s flawed in the same way as school. School is flawed. You know, the stuff that making my kids do every day is not going to help them in their life very much.

No, I think you’re right. I think there’s there’s obviously it probably comes down to, in some ways box ticking, isn’t it? You’ve got to you’ve got to cover a certain number of things. Tick that to say that, you know, to to satisfy the requirements that it’s been covered. But you know, it’s interesting what you say about, you know, should should students be encouraged to go on postgraduate courses as undergraduates to develop an interest. And and I’ve actually come I’ve encountered somebody who did that who whose father was a dentist. We talk about hacks. And she was on a course and was in fourth year at the time. I couldn’t believe this. What you do in this course, you know, my dad’s paid for it because I’m interested in this and he thinks it’s a good thing to do and I’m going to go work for him. And he he wants this service in his practice. But wow, that’s that’s ahead of the curve. And it’s like you’re saying, what an advantage this had over over somebody who who perhaps wasn’t pushed in that way. Um, but yeah, I think most students that you talk to, I did training for a while.

I As the trainer.

As the trainer, yeah, yeah. Before I went back to, to do specialist training. And you know, you come across dentists and the, the feedback you get from dentists is you we didn’t cover this or we didn’t cover that. And as Hattam says, it’s, you know but just chatting today about running a course on Crown and bridgework and it’s it’s going to be for 22 dentists signed up to it they’re all within the first five years of qualification and it’s been um it’s linked in with a corporate body. It’s their dentists and they were saying on when I was chatting to them that they’ve looked at the numbers of this cohort and they said that, you know, very low percentages of them doing any, any invasive treatment, you know, with things like crowns and onlays and endos even and extractions, things like that, they’re really hesitant to do them. So really, it’s the comfort zone, isn’t there? They’re just not comfortable doing these things. So there clearly must be a disconnect if if the graduates are not comfortable doing some of these treatments.

I mean, just just in my little world of, you know, bleaching. And I know it’s not the big priority, right? But they still don’t teach bleaching at all in Dental school. No, they do not teach bleaching. You know, your patients more interested in the colour of their teeth than all this other stuff we talk about. It’s completely safe. It’s complete now. It’s it’s been legal for 11 years now. Like fully legal for 11 years. But no dental school teaches bleaching. They have one little chat about internal, um, you know, and that’s just bleaching, which is like on the edge. I mean, but you know, there’s so many things they don’t teach and it would be, it would be good to know, like, you know, they don’t, they don’t. When I talk to people who’ve been out like two, three years, there was no discussion of digital at all. Yeah. Um, and yet, you know, we used to sit there. I don’t know about you guys, but when I qualified, we to sit there and make dentures ourselves, right? Yeah.

Think about the. You know, you’re right. I mean, you think about the kind of the pillars of of practice today, the kind of modern, modern practice, the things that prop it up and keep it going. You’ve got digital, you’ve got alignment, you know, orthodontic alignment, dental implants and aesthetic dentistry. Yeah, those are the four things, aren’t they, really? And as you say, you’re not really taught any of them, any of them into practice. Patients are probably expecting some of those services to be discussed at the very least. And you must be you must feel quite ill equipped if those things are. It’s different for us. Three, because I think, you know, implants were emerging when I qualified. They were there, but it wasn’t it wasn’t everywhere and alignment wasn’t a thing. And aesthetics were basically veneers and whitening was coming in a little bit. Um, but you know, um, and digital wasn’t a thing. So, you know, our training was pretty close to what you would get when you walked out to practice. But now, if they’re not covering those things that you could find yourself in a practice where you really you have to train all over again, you’re on the job.

And then we’ve got the disconnect between the NHS. No one wants to work in the NHS anymore, the young ones, and and I fully agree with them. Yeah, I fully agree with them. Yeah. It would be good if if the NHS was was was somewhere where you could provide good treatment and, you know, solve problems, then fine. But when you can’t, I fully agree with them not to want to work in the NHS. If you think.

They’re spending all this.

Money on these courses and rightly so, and they want to apply that and they can’t in the NHS.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

They have no choice but to say, well, I need to apply it. So where do I what do I do? I have to. I have to go down the private avenue.

It’s in Scotland is is different. It’s still fee per item.

Yeah, it’s still fee per item.

So do people consider the NHS as a viable place to work? Young dentists.

Probably the ones I speak to would I would say no. I think you’re quite right. It’s it’s it’s getting the nobody wants to work in NHS dentistry any young dentists you know you just either they’re looking for an avenue out of it or they’re looking actually not to see general patients. I was chatting to a younger associate recently, a guy who do a bit mentoring with and a really talented guy, and I was saying to him, he was saying he’s just giving up his practice job. Nice private practice. He works in as an associate. Big list of private patients. I kind of said to him, You landed on your feet there only a few years out. He’s like, Yeah, I’ve given it up. So why is that? So I don’t want to see general patients. I just want to come in and do the stuff I like to do and go again. And he’s carved this niche for himself where he goes around 4 or 5 practices. He does a day in each one, and he’s doing just the type of work he likes to do. And he’s he said, What type of work is it? Composite build-ups, crown bridgework, veneers. And he said, That’s it. So I want to do. And if that’s, you know, I’m not not seeing patients for check-ups or broken fillings, that kind of stuff. And you think your.

Principal, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I get a lot of principals complaining to me of, oh, these young dentists, they, they come in and they say, I just want to do three days a week and I want private. Yeah, yeah. And you know, they haven’t put in their time and all that and I think, you know, that’s a good thing man. It’s a good thing that people know what they want. They want to work, you know, the work life balance and and they want to do the kind of dentistry they want to do. It’s actually a good thing. And, you know, we don’t all have to go like, you know, hard time. You did some hospital jobs, right? I did. You know, oral surgery where you got decimated by that system. Right. And and it was almost like this sort of the abused becomes the abuser kind of thing. Yeah. With your. It was, wasn’t it like, like the the consultant would make me wake up at 3 a.m. to go and push that flap to make sure it’s still, you know, perfused or whatever. And it was the system. It’s like boarding school or something, you know, Why does it have to be like that? Why can’t a dentist say, I want to do three days a week?

I think. Right.

I think it’s really assertive to say, this is what I want to do, this is what I’m going to have. I’m going to do it. And they do it. You know, it’s and yeah.

And going back to that, you know, telling my kids, you know, I really want it more for my daughter than my son because I just think it’s such an amazing career for a woman, you know, because you can you can dictate the number of days you want to do. Which job can you do that man? Which job is there that you can earn really well and dictate? I want to do work one day a week, two days a week, three days a week. You can say however many number of days a week you want and change those as you go. So as kids come along and and all of that very, very few jobs that you can do that unless you work for yourself. Right.

The flexibility of.

Dentistry is amazing.

It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

I’ll go in this field going going to research, teaching innovation like.

I went from five days a week, four days a week, three days a week, two days a week. And I did one day a week for years before I had a bad day and said, forget that. But but what I’m saying is it served me perfectly as enlightened, you know, took over it served me to, you know, pay for my life and whatever, while Enlightened wasn’t making money. And then to do less and less and less. And you can basically you can you can do exactly what you want in dentistry, which is beautiful. I love that about it.

We had discussion.

Previously, Now you’ve got dentists writing books, manufacturing thing, making things, designing things. Yeah, that was unheard of ten years ago, you know, now. Yeah.

I’m going to just rewind you a bit there, guys. Payman What I’d like to ask you Payman is we just touched on the NHS there, but we were asking this question last week that as you all know, as a regular, as the regular listener to this podcast, the other regular listener is Rishi. Rishi Sunak Yeah. And Rishi Sunak, if he comes on the phone tonight and says, Listen, I like the sound of that guy Payman I want him to fix NHS dentistry. Do you think it can be fixed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. How would you fix it?

Look, let me let me tell you what you annoy me the most was that there was a third party involved in in clinical decision making. Yeah. Me, the patient and then third parties. And you can and can’t do this. What I would say for the NHS is it’s a fun it should be a fund of money that people who are means tested have access to. Yeah. And it could be, you know, if you earn below x, you could have this much a year towards paying a dentist from the government full stop. No, what you can spend you can spend it on bleaching implants, scaling polishes or not spend it at all. Yeah, it’s up to you. You can go to any dentist and use these credits and it’s and that that to me would be the only way that would work. And it should be means tested. It should be for the poor people who can’t afford it. Everyone else, I think, should start to get into that mode of saving up for your teeth like they do in most countries, Right?

Or insurance based.

Yeah. Same thing. Right? Same, same, same story.

Who’s inspired you the most in dentistry?

Let’s let’s before we go on to that question, let’s just explain to Payman. This is the drum roll, the dry ice and, you know, the pizzazz associated with this question. Hatem, that this is the this is the Richard Thiel Prize in dentistry. You’re Richard Kiel Prize. And you know who Richard Kiel is. Don’t you Payman know.

Who’s Richard.

Kiel? Richard Kiel is the actor who portrayed Jaws in James Bond. So he had the oh, yeah, the best set of teeth in the movie and television history. And we’re going to ask you to give the Richard Kiel Prize to the person in dentistry that inspired you the most and why.

It was Nick Nick Mahendra, my first boss. He had this he used to say, he always used to say, Why not? Whatever, whatever the question was, his answer was why not? And I just seeing this one guy in a little practice in Ashford Kent come up with this new way of doing something and then put it into the newspaper and it’s life changing because of it. And actually, like chasing that little dream of of making a difference from one little dental practice. It really changed what I thought was possible. And that, you know, that idea, they say like make a dent in the world. And I think your first boss is a massive influence anyway. Right. Which which way you end up going, your first boss really sets that agenda. And I couldn’t have hoped for a better first boss. I mean, he was just brilliant, man. He really I still see him all the time. Just a brilliant mind. Brilliant mind.

Retired. Retired.

Not quite. Not quite. But he’s. He’s. He’s getting there. He’s getting there. Um, a brilliant mind, man. It just, you know, and up to that point, I was like, well, research is done in laboratories by massive corporations and scientists. And, and this guy was just in his practice in lunchtime trying things out. It was it really inspired me to try and do stuff myself.

That’s great. Nick Mahendra The Richard Kiel Prize is on its way to you. And finally, we will finish the podcast with the question we ask all guests Payman. And that is what is your favourite movie and favourite album and why?

So my favourite album is a Prince album. I was a massive Prince fan, brilliant back in the day. Um, and I just can’t get away from him and um, I don’t know, one of one of the Prince albums. I loved them all, but Sign of the Times or something. Great. Um.

Did you see Prince live?

I did, yeah.

Several. Yeah. I went to the O2 to see him. Yeah, we do.

Dodgy sound, wasn’t it? I don’t know where I was standing. It was, like, amazing. It was good Live, though.

Unbelievable. Just. I didn’t quite appreciate that he played all the instruments, wrote all the music performed. You think this guy is a musical genius, isn’t he? Yeah. Tremendous. And the artist as a guitarist, you underrated. I mean, amazing guitarist. And at the.

Time, do you remember at the time it was Michael Jackson or Prince sort of thing. And and I was I used to, you know, Michael Jackson at the time. You could even then it was like a cartoon character, right? So like, you just knew there was no Billie Jean. There was no kid. There was no person. He said, beat it to. Like none of that existed. He was like a comic book. But whereas with Prince, Right, all the songs, you just felt like he’d he’d actually been in those situations. He felt so much more authentic to me. So I liked it movie wise. I’m not a big movie guy now, but, um, I love Darren Aronofsky. Do you know him? The director? Yeah, The Wrestler movie. The Wrestler. Yeah. Not his best, but. But. But yeah, he did. He did one called Pi. Did one called Requiem for a Dream.

I’ve seen pie. Yeah. Pie is a crazy man. That’s a niche film.

Yeah. I liked it, though. I liked it. The obsession. Part of it. I liked a lot. Yeah. Um, he did one recently called Mother, which was like, a about the earth. Crazy thing. He did Black Swan. So I, like. I like all of his films and I like Kubrick a lot as well. I like I like all of all of Stanley Kubrick’s films. Kubrick.

Yeah, like Kubrick, because every film is slightly different. Different? Yeah. Yeah. Um. Favourite Kubrick.

Oh, man, that’s so difficult. That’s so hard. I mean, I think Clockwork Orange in the end, I think in the end, I was thinking of making my stand at Dental showcase that, you know, the milk bar.

The molecule. They call it Molecule. Yeah.

Molecule milk. Do you. Do you do it? These these cats, they go. They have, they drink this milk, which is like, I don’t know, you never he never tells you what’s in the milk. Right. But they drink this milk, then they go berserk. It’s drugs. They go berserk and they stop committing crimes. But I don’t know when it came out because I must have watched it years later. But it probably came out in 68 or 60 something. And this molecule milk bar. Yeah. Like if you if you see an image of what it is, it’s just all white and the tables are made of like parts of humans like women or whatever. And these guys are sitting there looking just like, like crazy psychopaths, right? Drinking their milk. I was going to do that. I was I was thinking of doing that at Dental showcase, making the molecule milk bar and and just just just having people come in and have a good time.

You could do a follow up where you make the maze at the end of The Shining as well, with the Jack Nicholson full on rage Eyes. Um, what’s your favourite.

Film, dude?

Wow, that’s a good question. What is my favourite film? It kind of changes. Do you like it? Changes it. For a long time, it was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Oh, great, too.

You can’t. You’re just brilliant, isn’t it? And yeah, in. I went through a phase of really liking documentary films, so. Yeah, me too. When we were Kings. Muhammad Ali one. Great. Yeah. Watch that every day. Just so good. Have you seen.

The one where it’s about the South African Sugar Man searching for Sugar Man?

Searching for sugar man. Yeah.

Yeah. So love that.

What a great story that is, isn’t it?

Have you seen that hotel?

No, I haven’t seen it.

Check it out. Searching for Sugar Man.

Will never happen again. That. That particular chain of events.

Not anymore.

Amazing. We’ll tell listeners the premise. If we’re known for one thing on this podcast, it is meandering and lengthy, self-indulgent chats. So let’s let’s do that. So Searching for Sugar Man was about an American blues musician, bluesy kind of rock and roll musician in the late 60 seconds. Him and he released two albums and they didn’t really make an impact in America at all. You know, a little Ripple, but nothing. And he was working in construction, so he essentially was was working in construction. Then he kind of was unemployed and he was living really a you know, he was, you know, in Skid Row, basically. Meanwhile, in South Africa, he was an absolute megastar. His because of apartheid in South Africa, there was an embargo on trade from the United States. So music that got in there and pre-apartheid became very popular because they couldn’t.

Scrape music as well. Really brilliant music.

You listen to it. Why is this? Why did he not make an impact in the States? But yeah, but because the apartheid restricted what they could import and what they were given access to this this stuff had gotten just before and it became very popular. It was on radio stations and he was a superstar in South Africa, but he did not know this. He was living in a kind of Skid Row lifestyle. And when apartheid ended, essentially, you know, people were he was still popular. But this guy then made it his kind of wonder what ever happened to him. He must be a big star in America. I’m going to go and find him. And he was astonished to find this guy basically living almost like a homeless existence.

There was some legend about he’d killed himself on stage, wasn’t it? They weren’t sure about it. So he goes and looks for him and finds him. He finds.

Him. And then he brings him to South Africa. When he puts he puts on a concert.

Huge concert.

100,000 stadium like Wembley Stadium, packed. And they said at the start, Elvis Presley and Rodriguez is I don’t know who’s bigger in South Africa. It’s between the two of them. You know, the guy himself did not know any of this, you know, because of no social media, no Internet. You know, this news didn’t travel over there. And it’s such a great story. Such a great story. But as you say, Payman great music as well. Brilliant music.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me and my kids love that music now. Brilliant. How about you? What’s your favourite.

Song You guys are? Leon.

Oh, on. Ready? That’s good.

That’s good.

That’s a bizarrely though, Leon table. When we’re off air, it’s just.

You aren’t from.

London. You’re from Cardiff, weren’t you?

Cardiff City. Yeah.

So I’ll tell you the story about that another time.

But you know, we’re going onto two hours now. This has been amazing. Two hours past my bedtime now.

But sometimes these things feed you, man. They wake you up.

It’s been a quick one by our standards.

We wanted you on board. Honestly, it’s been a phenomenal, honestly eye opener. And it’s covered just about everything in terms of your journey.

Enjoyed it, man.

How passionate you are. You know, the love for dentures that you have, the youngsters you’re hopefully mentoring and also, you know, the perfection that you always want to strive for. You really are honestly, as they say, a legend. Thank you so much. Stuart.

Yeah. Payman Yeah. Absolute pleasure to chat to you and you can tell you’re just all upright elegance. Isn’t he just kind of easy to talk to? But as you said, the Parkinson of dentistry, I think you’re absolutely right with that assessment and brilliant.

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

Thanks for listening, guys. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure you tune in for future episodes. Hit subscribe in iTunes or Google Play or whatever platform it is. And you know, we really, really appreciate it. If you would give us a six star rating. Six star rating.

That’s what always.

Leave my Uber.

Driver.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Bye.

I know why I did mini smile because I knew that my composite bonding wasn’t at the level it could be from what I was seeing out in social media and stuff.

But the fact that you’re even looking and you’re paying attention and you’re trying to improve at this point in your career where you just told me you’re looking at winding down. Yeah, but you know what I mean, that that curiosity to continuously improve. I mean, to go to Pankey, to learn ortho, to the level that you’ve learned it. Where does it come from?

I just love making a difference to the patients. See, I’ve always mixed with people at quite a good level, like Bard. And, you know, I’m blessed at having colleagues and friends who are some of the best dentists in the country. You know, I’m really, really lucky. Always look at anything I’m doing that. Could that go on a screen? Could you show that at Bard? You know, could I show a colleague that and be proud of it? You know, And no, I saw that composites had gone to another level. I wasn’t doing these beautiful, layered composites with all the halo. And I needed to learn that if you could do that, then why wasn’t I doing that?

No, But why?

Because you want to give the patient the best.

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

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Yasmin George onto the podcast. Yasmin is a dentist of over 30 years experience who I still see on the lecture circuit. It’s a great thing that there are people you qualify with that you never, ever see on the lecture circuit. And then there are people like Yasmin, who I’ve been seeing for the last 20 years on different events. Dentists with an interest in orthodontics has been a principal, has been a teacher. The Pankey Institute. It’s a massive pleasure to have you, Yasmin.

Thank you. This is an honour to be to be here.

So, Yasmin, we tend to start with sort of where did you grow up? Why did you become a dentist? When did you first have dentistry on your radar?

So I was born in Kent, in Chatham, in the Medway towns, which isn’t a terribly exciting place. And still isn’t. I went to the local grammar school. Girls, girls, grammar school. And okay, we’re going back to, you know, born in 1965. So there weren’t many brown people in Kent then, and there certainly weren’t any Indian restaurants. And we were the only me and my sister were the only brown kids in school. So it was all rather interesting. But mean, you just accepted this, this was life and you got on with it. And my father was a chartered civil engineer and he worked abroad in the 70 seconds because there was, you know, economically Britain wasn’t investing in the same way that, say, the Middle East was. And there was very interesting, exciting work abroad. And he took an overseas contract or he took a number of them. Actually, he was in Iran and then he was in Saudi Arabia. And my sister and I went to boarding school. So I was in the girls grammar school, got my what were O-levels in those days? And I got my eye on the King’s School, Canterbury, because I was really into music. I was obsessed with music. I was going to be a professional musician. I played the flute, the piano, the piccolo. I was also singing. But in the girls grammar school I felt a bit limited and I couldn’t wait to get to another school. My sister also went to boarding school. She went to Benenden School and she went a bit earlier than I did and parents lived abroad.

And as I say, we we boarded and I went to King’s Canterbury in those days, didn’t have girls until 1982, which was the year I went there. And they took 24 girls in the sixth form. Competitive entry, 300 girls applied. And it was very interesting. They certainly weren’t coming from the local Kent Grammar School sort of thing. There were girls there. We all had a stunning set of O-levels. We all had 910 A’s type thing. And the boys that we were mixing with certainly didn’t have those grades. So that was very interesting. And the girls came from Cheltenham Ladies College, they came from James Lane’s in Dulwich. And you know, I mean. Top schools, but places I’d never heard of, you know. And I was from a state school and there were a few other girls from state schools as well. But, you know, there’s 500 and something boys and 24 girls in the school. I mean, now it’s co-ed and now it runs very, very differently. But some of the experiences we had. Oh, they they’re just off the scale in terms of political incorrectness or, um, I mean, the things that happen would make your hair stand on end now. And I look back on it, especially in this world that we’re now in, where, you know, you can’t say anything to anybody. Yeah. So, yeah, very interesting experience, quite bruising at times, but quite a sheltered, sheltered home Indian background. You know, two sisters. You know, I hadn’t been exposed to some of what I did get exposed to.

So I went to a boarding. I went to a school that had boarding. I didn’t I didn’t I wasn’t a boarder. But that experience that you had in boarding school and I know it’s very different now, did that affect whether you were going to send your own kids to a school like that?

Yeah, it absolutely did. And both my boys have been to the most fantastic boarding school from the age of 13. Um.

So you wanted that for them even though you’d been through this?

Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s really interesting. I mean, it wasn’t great to be a girl at this boys school. Yeah. You know what I mean? But it showed me that private education was better than state in my mind. There was no doubt the teaching was of much better quality, all of that side of things. So the academic side. Yeah, the music, the drama. I mean, I was in productions, I was in choirs, orchestras. I was busy, busy, busy doing all the things I wanted to do. Yeah. So it opened my eyes that there was a difference between state and private, which some people would dispute. But my lived experience was that I don’t think I’d have got two guys to read dentistry unless I’d been at King’s. If I’d been at my grammar school with the fairly mediocre science teaching. You know, I got good grades at A-level, but I don’t think I would have done an A-level.

Yeah, but specifically with regards to boarding, I mean, you could have put them in a private day school. Was it? Was it were there loads of benefits to being a boarder that you now you wanted for your kids?

If you’re doing sport music, drama, if you’re busy, busy, busy, yeah, the schools run a certain way. So some run on a boarding school timetable where they do all the sport in the afternoon and they do all, you know. So then other schools run on on a day by day thing. And then I, I marry a man who who went to private school from the age of seven and boarded from the age of seven. Now, that isn’t something I would recommend. And and I think he wouldn’t recommend it either. But in the 1950s, 60 seconds, when he was going to school, that is what you did. Yeah. So, you know, it’s times have changed. But he was fairly adamant that that with the incomes that we both had as two professional people, we needed, we both wanted our children to have the best. So it’s then a question of what do you think is the best? And he was adamant that he wanted his children to go to the type of school he’d been to in terms of facilities and teaching and at prep school level. That’s what we looked for locally. And the best school, in our opinion at the time was ten miles away. Well, our friends in the village weren’t sending their children ten miles away, but we decided to and we had a full time nanny and she drove 40 miles a day, you know, taking them to and from school and picking them up. And then from there, we then went round a lot of boarding schools, all the top schools, Winchester, Tunbridge, Seven Oaks, Charterhouse, you name it, all the ones around here. And we were looking particularly for weekly boarding where they come home at the weekends or you’ve got the flexibility to do that. And Tunbridge ticked the box for us and.

Is it co-ed or is it.

Boys only? No, it’s all boys. And again, we debated this long and hard and I read up a lot about, you know, what’s the best for boys, what’s the best for girls and all the rest of it. And and they obviously we only have two boys. They don’t have any sisters, but the school does a lot with all the local schools in terms of drama and, you know, productions. And suffice to say, my son had a steady girlfriend by the age of 15, so I really don’t think it mattered.

Well done. Well done. You know, because because I went to I went.

To a boys.

About it. I went to a boys school. And it’s made me adamant for my kids not to go to a single sex school. But then but then I didn’t have that level of success that your son seems to have.

Well, we you know, no, we honestly we debated it long and hard. And I cross-examined.

The headmaster at Tunbridge.

Who isn’t there.

Anymore. But he was a lovely, lovely man. And I said, Well, I said, you know, what about girls? I mean, it’s not very progressive, these in this day and age. And he gave me some sort of answer. Now we looked at this school when our son was two years old, so we didn’t even know what sort of child we’d got. But in those days, you needed to put their names down. You know, things have changed a lot, but 26 years ago, you needed to get names down at schools. So that’s what we did. And I can I can remember, you know, in 2002 going round Tunbridge, but we, we looked at lots of schools and, you know, yeah, we looked at schools that took girls in the sixth form, the same sort of, you know, model that I’d been to. But in the final analysis, we eventually let Harry choose when he was, because obviously we went back to the school when he was a bit older and stuff like that and let him look round the schools and we got it down to two. And then we said, Which one would you prefer? And he chose Tunbridge.

Fair enough.

And it was fantastic choice. Fantastic decision.

And your husband, what does he do?

He was an investment banker.

He is a chartered accountant by training. But when I met him in 1987, he’d come out of a sort of he’d left accountancy, as it were, and he’d worked for Coopers and Lybrand, and then he worked for Nabisco, and he’d moved into investment banking with a French bank, Banque Paribas, and he was an investment analyst. And when I met him in 1987, he’d been in London six months.

As in where was he before that?

Well, he was based in Birmingham and and just around the world, really. He’s literally travelled the world before. He met me on audit in all sorts of places that Coopers sent him to.

So I’m interested, you know, we’re having these conversations about sort of private school boarding school and dentists do well, don’t they? And I guess they can most dentists can can afford to send their kids to to schools that are paying schools, although the cost is the cost is so high that it’s eyewatering. Yeah. Yeah, but I’ve got, I’ve got a friend who, you know, he’s, he’s got perfectly good means, financial means and, and he, he doesn’t believe in, in paying. He says it’s more to do with the kid than the school. I kind of disagree. I disagree with it. But what I’m interested in it in is, you know how much in Britain your your social standing is very dependent on the school you went to. More dependent on the school you went to than the university or. Everything else.

Somehow I think that is the case with some schools.

It’s surprising somehow.

Well, yeah, I mean, it is quite a sort of controversial subject. It’s always great fun at a dinner party when this comes up because.

You know, like you say, there are people.

That can well afford private education, but they don’t agree with it. And I sort of respect that, but I respect it.

I don’t agree with it myself.

But, you know, at the end of the day, I don’t know.

It’s all about what you think is the best. Everybody wants the best for their children. But we don’t all agree on what the best is. And there are schools, I think, that are more sort of famous, if you like, or whatever. But you see Tunbridge 26 years ago, Tunbridge wasn’t one of those schools. It was flying under the radar a little bit. It was getting really good results. I mean excellent Oxford and Cambridge entry, if that’s what you were after and all of this type of thing. But we didn’t we didn’t choose it for connections or name. We you see, I was very worried about letting someone else look after my children. You know, these are my children. And what if, you know, you were you were you were going to work, somebody was going to be in loco parentis. The housemaster was going to be an absolute key figure. Absolutely. And what happened was I, I met the housemaster that was going to be my son’s housemaster. But of course, stupid me didn’t realise. Time goes by, they get promoted and somebody else is going to be there by the time your son gets there.

So, so, so my son.

Wins all these scholarships to go there as well because, you know, he was he did quite well to get in. But all of that. But two years before he’s going there, we get told that the housemaster that I had chosen in inverted commas, isn’t going to be there anymore. He’s now deputy head, but there’s this other nice person coming in and would you like to come to a drinks party and meet him? I was beside myself.

I was like, Oh my God, what am I going to do?

And my husband was much more sort of sanguine about it. And I met this lovely man called Andy Whittle, who was a blue. He’d read maths at Cambridge. He was a Cambridge blue in cricket and he had played for the, I think the Zimbabwean cricket team. I’m going to get this wrong. But it was like he’s really famous in cricket and of course I hate cricket. So like that didn’t mean anything to me.

And I remember.

Meeting him and I’ve just sort of said to him, I didn’t choose you, you know, how dare you sort of thing. And we laugh about it because he turned out to be the most fantastic housemaster. He’s a lovely, lovely man. And for us, we shared the same values. And if you share the values with somebody, whether it’s your partner or your, you know, who you work with. But this was a man who was had day to day care of my son, sort of Sunday night to Saturday lunchtime, you know.

Very important job.

Yeah. And he was he was fantastic.

So let’s finish. Let’s finish the story. What did your sons end up doing?

Oh, so Harry.

Went well, He went to Tonbridge. He then went to Oxford, read history. Wow.

And then. Yeah.

And then. Oh, he was a choral scholar at Oxford as well. Sang in the Merton Choir for three years, which was incredible experience. Then he got a place at UI to train as a chartered accountant, and he’s a qualified chartered accountant.

Followed his dad’s footsteps.

And he’s still with the same girlfriend.

That he met when he was 15.

You’re kidding. How cute.

And they’ve just bought a house. Well.

So. And did you not want any of your kids to be dentists?

And I got told by my kids fairly early.

On, Forget that, Mum. We don’t like sciences.

They’ve got they’ve.

Got A’s at everything they could have done either. Yeah. Neither of them had any. And they just said mum going to tell you now. Not going to do anything like what you do.

Yeah. So both of mine are telling me that but both of them like science. I was, I was talking to Jack Basra. I don’t know if you’ve come across him, but. Yes, yes. His wife was telling me both their kids are in dental school. One just qualified and one’s in dental school. His wife was telling me, the secret is for you not to be the one to recommend it. The other other people need to do that.

So I don’t know. I think it’s I think.

It’s an Indian Asian thing.

I think we pressurise I mean, I.

Don’t particularly want them to be dentists, but I want them to want to be dentists.

Well, mine I think from what mine.

Have seen about.

How hard you have to work.

They think I think they think that they can earn their money easier, although I don’t think they are because my son is working very, very. Heart. And my my baby son has just started. Teach first. And he’s teaching in a school in South London, and he’s just finished his first term and he’s worked incredibly hard.

So I bet he has.

So when did you think of dentistry? Why dentistry? What age?

And so I liked sciences.

Okay. Asian upbringing. You’ve got to factor that in in the sense that it’s not really on your radar not to be professional. Yeah, it’s the professions, isn’t it? Doctor. Dentist. Lawyer. Accountant. Mum and dad were immigrants into the UK in the 1950s. What the culture is and it still is. And I told my kids, doctor, dentist, lawyer or accountant, sort of half joking, but not half joking, you know, but not, but half joking, you know.

So that was that. So, you know, I was, I was looking.

At those four things. I didn’t really wasn’t that interested in medicine. I was a bit scared about medicine. I thought it was too broad. And how would I. I could I couldn’t be a doctor, I decided. But I did have we had some close family friends who was a dentist, and I got on really well with him. Now I just got on with him as a personality, so I wasn’t that interested in the actual technical side of dentistry. But because I liked him, I sort of thought, you know, maybe dentistry might be good. And I liked the idea of being self-employed. I was mindful that I wanted to work. I was I was quite career minded. So I wanted something that would be flexible with motherhood if that was what I wanted to do. But I wasn’t really bothered about having a family mean. I didn’t really want children at the time. When we did have children, it was my husband was keener than I was, so it wasn’t really that. But I just my dad always said to me, If you can work for yourself, it’s better than working for somebody. So there was. There was that. There was. I like the idea of being self-employed, and I like the idea that dentistry was quite focussed and targeted. You were just going to learn about one bit of the body. Yeah. And yeah, so I think and then just, you know, compared it with different things.

And when you got, when you got to guys, when you got to guys, what was your initial reaction? Because if I’ve done my calculations right, 83, 84 around that time I was there.

84. 88.

84. Yeah. So 84 guys was a, I guess quite a lot like your school, like a rugby dominated.

A little bit. 20% Asian. Yeah, 20% Indian. Asian, which shocked me. Yeah. Yeah. Was it the first time.

You were meeting lots of Asians? Yeah.

All of a sudden I said, Mummy, there’s so many Indian people here. My mum’s like, Really, darling, you know? But that hadn’t been my experience of life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was fascinated by all of that, but I didn’t.

Really hang out with that.

Crowd.

Were you a rugby girl?

No, definitely not.

No, definitely.

Not. No. I was up for the all the socialising, dancing. Drinking. London Bridge.

London Bridge at that point was wasn’t what it is today. London bridge right now is this amazing area, right? It was a dump. It was it was proper dangerous wasn’t it. It was like a dodgy it was dangerous.

And also I got.

I went from glasses to contact lenses.

When I became a dental student. That changed my life.

Uh huh. As in. As in you reinvented yourself?

Mhm. Definitely.

Boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.

So whoever said that, that was my experience. So that was quite interesting.

Um, sadly, I dropped all the music. Sadly, I think I found the whole experience of being doing dentistry actually quite overwhelming.

And it is. And yeah, I mean I.

Found the first year okay, because that was fairly academic and it was a move on from A-levels and won a prize and, you know, all that stuff. But when we got into the practical side of things, I, I didn’t enjoy it. I found that really hard.

Yeah, me too.

You know, And other people.

Did you stay.

At Wolfson house? Sorry. Wolfson House.

Did you stay? I remember it well. Yeah.

We we’ve stayed in Saint George’s.

So I was they.

Had they put 20 of us in a medical school like housing accommodation place at George’s. So we used to commute in from Tooting.

So.

We had a little sort of sub community there for the first year. And then after that you were on your own.

And were your parents still abroad when you went? Yeah. So, you know, I guess I guess you were already quite an independent person because boarding school does that to people. It makes you makes you quite self-reliant and all that.

Yeah. You learn to be. Yeah. Cried a lot. Cried a lot. Listen to a lot of.

Slush.

Tapes they were called in those days. You know, every sad.

Heartbreak song that you could.

And I fell in love.

In.

At King’s.

With someone I shouldn’t have fallen in love with. And.

You know, that ended badly.

But, you know, you’ve got to have your heart broken. So I did have my heart broken.

Did all of that.

Yeah. Well, haven’t we all? And then. And then. And then at what point did you or did you have any idea during Dental school of the kind of dentist you wanted to be? Or was that you were just just having a great time and learning? And, you know, some people have got like very early on ambitions about what they want to do. Maybe it’s more these days.

Back then I just wanted to qualify.

Yeah, All I cared about was getting qualified. Yeah, I was. I was so I was a real girly swot. I always worried that I hadn’t done enough work parenting to boys. And I’ve tried to parent them really differently and let and, and going back to the boarding school, one of the reasons I sent my boys to boarding school is I did not want to micromanage them on a day by day basis. Yeah. And I am that sort of person. I would be freaking out about whether they’ve done their homework. I’d be worrying about this, worrying about that. And so I just decided that it would be better if they were managed by somebody with a different style. And that’s worked well. This this blended approach to bringing up your children for me has worked really well. And my boys, they don’t overwork, they don’t swot, they do what they need to do. But and they get where they need to get, but they don’t make heavy weather of it. I made heavy weather of the whole thing.

Yeah I think I think this Gen Y, Gen Z, they’re just much more rounded anyway. You know, they seem to just understand the love of living more than, let’s say, our generation. That’s, that’s my feeling from them, you know, seeing them, they then we.

Were, we were brought up in a more.

Insecure environment, weren’t we?

True. You see.

We’ve given these kids unbelievable security. They’ve never worried. I mean. I mean, my parents, they. They. They struggled to give us what they gave us.

No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t say that for me. I wouldn’t say that for me. Quite the opposite. So sometimes sometimes I wonder, you know, I’m not giving my kids as much as my parents gave me. Right. No.

I. I mean, I can remember when.

I wanted to play the flute. It it it wasn’t easy for my parents to afford a flute so that I could go and have lessons. And. And yet when my son decided he wanted to play the trumpet, I went out and bought him a £2,000 instrument immediately. Yeah. But I said to him, You better now. Make some progress. But. But he did. But you know, we’ve been way more comfortable in being able to facilitate things.

I’m not sure, but I’m not sure that’s the reason. I mean, I think even even even poor Gen Z’s today, people who didn’t have much, they’re just more rounded, you know, I guess people you know, there’s an evolution just in the same way as you’re more rounded than your mother. You know, it’s one of those things as as sort of information goes out, people, people, people understand more about. And it’s just my it’s just my sense of the youngsters these days. It just seem to have a lot of different strings to their bow. And this thing, what you said, what resonated was what you said. You know, they do they do what they do to get to where they want to get to. You know, there’s a balance about them, even even some of this politically correct stuff that one side of me just wants to just, you know, hate it on the other, on the other end of that, there’s a kindness to them that that wasn’t, you know, the kind of things that happened to you at boarding school and the things that were said. And just you’re just in this this current generation. You just can’t imagine some of those things. Now, you know, there’s the two sides to it, isn’t there? There’s the apparently these days you’re not allowed to ask people where they’re from, which is just just it’s making my life a hell because it’s it’s the first thing I ask everyone, every single person I meet. Yeah, but but but it but you know, some my kids, 13 year old cousin was telling me it’s very rude to say that. And I was I was saying, you know, come on, don’t be silly. And then she explained it to me. And once she explained it to me, the way that she explained to me was, you know, her her best friend’s mom’s black, and she went to a dinner party and it was the only question anyone asked her. And they asked her 30 times that night and no one asked her any other question. And, you know, the 13 year old was explaining something to me that.

I’ve been asked that so many.

Times. Where are you really from? They want to know why you’re brown and you were born in Chatham, in Kent.

That’s what they’re asking you.

If I ask you where are you from? And you say East Africa. Yeah, then then we can discuss East Africa. And that’s interesting. Yeah. For me, but, but the point, the point the 13 year old made me understand was that you asked that question based on the way the person looked. And if they were a white person, you might not have asked that, Although I do, I ask Polish people and Lithuanians, they’re white people. But but I get it. I do get it. And what I mean is this generation, they seem to have that side really clear in their head more. They seem they seem to be more rounded. It’s the best way I can put it. Okay. What was your first job?

Uh, the house jobs at guys to house jobs.

Oh, really? Which ones? Medicine and oral.

Surgery.

Professor Challacombe Scully. Professor Challacombe. But all was Crispian Scully.

Was he there?

Uh, no. No, I can’t remember.

But he came to Guy’s later.

No. So did all surgery. Dan, Mr. Haskell and I did oral medicine Professor Challacombe, and then I went out into general practice.

Did you enjoy the house job? Did you enjoy on calls and all of that?

Um, oral.

Medicine. There wasn’t any on call. Um, oral surgery. Yeah, that was entertaining. It was very good experience. Yeah. Very, very good experience. I’ll never forget the day I somehow messed up taking blood on this oral med patient, and I had a bright yellow skirt on. And before I know what’s happened, we’ve got half a pint of blood all over my yellow skirt, and I just don’t know what to do with myself. You know, I haven’t come to work with two skirts and.

And I remember going on the back stairs at Guy’s. You couldn’t go in the lift looking like that, right? And I’m on the back stairs and I run into Professor Challacombe and I just want to die.

And I think he just said nothing. He just raised his eyebrows and walked past me.

You know, I just felt like that big.

So then you went to practice. How was practice for you?

The first in an NHS practice in Sussex in Horsham. Lovely, lovely market town. And the owner.

He owned he owned.

Nursing homes and dental practices and he did practice, but he was in a he had two practices in the same town opposite each other, you know, literally 500 yards apart. And I was in one and he was in the other. So I didn’t really see much of him. But in my building there was a senior associate called Tony Lawley, and he was really my my mentor. You know, he I turn up on the first day and don’t really know what to do. And he taught me how to work in the NHS and, you know, the forms and all. What you had to do in, in 1990, 89, 90, you know, when I started and I learnt a lot from him and he was very ethical, very proper, lovely, lovely man. And he then became a trainer so didn’t exist, then came in afterwards and we became a practice and he was the trainer and then and then associates came in under me, if you like, but he gave me a experience, if you like.

And so how many years of that practice did you do or not? That practice, but NHS practice in general.

Yeah.

Was there. That was the only NHS practice I worked in and I was there until 93. And I was working five and a half days a week. We then got the sort of pay cuts which basically, you know, you know, they had that contract where we all did too much treatment and they had to claw it all back. So the following year they gave you an 8% pay cut. And I was like, What? I was scandalised by the idea that I would work harder. I was getting better as a dentist and I was going to earn less or I was going to have to do 8% more hours or whatever. And I used to be quite tired after five and a half days a week. So I used to go, go get into bed on a Saturday afternoon in order to recover from working Saturday morning, especially if we were going out Saturday evening.

And it’s a lot. It’s a lot of five and a half days. It’s too much. Five and a half days. Oh.

Absolutely. I’ve never, never done it since. But I did then. I didn’t I didn’t know any different. Yeah. And we were young and we’d got 99% mortgage on the house.

And, you know, you know, interest rates were 15%, you know.

And also that day I’d heard the receptionist be quite rude to a patient.

I, I thought, I really don’t like.

This way that we have to treat people or whatever. I was quite upset by it and I started looking through the job pages in the bdj because that’s what you used to do.

Yeah.

Sitting in bed with my because I was a girly swot and, you know, God knows why I’d be reading that on a Saturday afternoon. And anyway, I looked through the jobs and I saw this job in Reigate and I couldn’t work out what which practice it was. And I thought I knew quite a few of the practices, but I obviously didn’t. So I went for an interview at Ringley Park and they were looking for an associate. They only had two days a week work. It was an all private practice which was quite revolutionary in 93 and long and the short got the job was an associate there and then became a partner.

What’s your advice to, you know, there’s a lot of young dentists now who just don’t want to do NHS and it’s a different NHS now to the one that you grew up in. I speak to people and it’s actually surprises me that people think that, you know, they can’t pull off a private job. Sometimes they, they, you know, they haven’t got the confidence to do a private job. What’s what’s your advice to a young associate now who is thinking, I don’t want to be an NHS, I want to get into private dentistry? What moves should they make? What should they be? What should their mindset be?

Mm Okay. So there’s, there’s two angles, isn’t there. You look at it from the dentist angle and you look at it from the, the, the principle, you know, employing. Yeah. So I would have said ten years ago I’d have said you should start in the NHS. It’s a good like training ground, you get experience, you get to work out what you don’t want to do, but it’s a good way to start. I don’t think I would say that now. And part of my reason for saying that is when I teach at Pankey, we have got very, very young dentists now coming on the entry level course, and I teach the entry level. So the institute is is a series of four levels, E one to E four, and there’s 200, 250 faculty. And we’re all divided up into teaching which of those levels we feel most comfortable in. And I teach in E one and we always used to have people coming to E one with like five years experience, six years experience, three years, ten years, 15 years. But more recently we have people coming with 18 months experience, 12 months, you know, or, you know, fresh out of dental school now what they’re saying there is I want to I don’t want to learn the wrong way. I want to start off the right way. And because that’s what we teach is how to do a complete exam, how to take good records, how to talk to the patient about comprehensive care and implement the good stuff you’ve learnt in dental school. And and obviously you don’t learn everything. But but so many people throw away a lot of the principles of treatment, planning and all of these types of things when they get into a busy practice because they sort of feel that they can’t they can’t work that way. And guess what we teach at Pankey is that you can there is a way there’s also a in America, there’s a bigger network of Pankey practices looking for these young dentists that want to work that way.

Oh, wow. In that. Right.

Yeah. And that is fantastic. And that’s what I’ve seen over the 30. Well, how long have I been associated with Pankey coming up? 30 years. Because I went there as a student, but as a dentist. But, you know.

Speak a bit more to Pankey because, you know, out of those I guess correct me if I’m wrong, but if we’re talking sort of Spear Khoy, Dawson Pankey, those are sort of the four comparable sort of angles there was that Las Vegas, but that became Speer, didn’t it? So the question of Pankey is different to those, right? Is it a non for profit, not for profit. Is that right?

Yeah, it is. It is. Having said that, you.

Know, all of the.

People you’ve.

Mentioned, they’ve all taught at Pankey or been students at Pankey at some point, have they? So it’s an incredibly kind of like an overlapping sort of world. But yes, Pankey is the only not for profit out of all of them. And all of us visiting faculty teach for free. We even pay our own airfares to to get there. The students, what the students pay runs the facility, which is a state of the art teaching facility. And obviously there’s core staff that are there. But the the visiting faculty, there’ll be 3 or 4 and every course there will be anything between 15 and 24 students being taught. So it’s a very high ratio of faculty to student and it’s an all encompassing experience because it covers every aspect related to dentistry and even your personal life. It’s not just teaching you to how to do a full mouth rehab or how to prep veneers or, you know, it’s not just technical, it’s it’s personal development. It’s development of your team, it’s practice finances. It’s it’s planning your, your pension and your, you know, right at the beginning in E-1 when we’ve got 23, 25 year olds there, we talk to them about their pension planning and how are you going to save for your retirement, How are you going to structure it? And we show them all these graphs that show how much more money you would have if you start saving before you’re 30 and all those types of things which all young professionals should know about, not just dentists, but made sure my son knows all that stuff because. But, but we talk about communication. That’s my thing. I do the communication styles lecture on the on the first or second night where, you know, we talk about personality and styles and how people come across or how to communicate effectively within your team, but also with your patients. So yeah, I mean, going to Pankey has changed my life, changed my life personally, professionally, and I’m very, very grateful, very lucky.

And if you wanted to go to that, I mean, how long does it take? How many different classes you said ABCD.

Well, well this.

The the core program is is for courses that are about five days each. And they it’s it’s it’s they take you through a progression of of how to do big cases and and all the other stuffs built in. But Pankey run loads of courses to do with occlusion sleep apnoea you know anterior aesthetics you know there’s there’s a number but I would probably say to someone coming to it fresh, if you go in at E one, you know, we’re catering for people that have no.

Clue what they’re coming into.

You know, But if you know a bit about it already or you’ve been on 1 or 2 courses and.

Something else takes your fancy, the quality.

Is is excellent. But I don’t touch on those satellite courses.

Who are some of you know, guys who’ve been I know Mark Hughes has done a lot there that you were talking about before.

Yes. Um, Hap Gill. Andy Toye There’s quite a few open.

Vilani More recently, there’s another.

Um.

There’s, there’s, there’s so few youngsters that have been through like more recently and they’ve done like 1 or 2 levels. And then there’s like us older ones who’ve done done the whole sort of program.

So you’re teaching you said is on communication. Okay. Yeah. Communication with your, with your patients. Let’s start there. Give me, give me, give me your, your nuggets regarding that. Are we talking about different treatment plans recommending different treatment plans, the pros and the cons putting people at ease.

It’s it’s communication.

Style.

Social styles is.

What is what I sort of hang it around and there’s a couple of books written on it and it’s it’s really like perceiving or working out how your patient is going to receive the information the best. Are they an analytical type? They may well be engineers or that type of or those type of jobs, but they want a lot of data. An information. And until they’ve got data and information, they aren’t making any decisions. So give them all the data, all the information in whichever way you feel is appropriate. But probably, you know, I always do a if I’m doing a big treatment plan for a patient, I’ll always sit them down with all the records and the computer. It’s a no fee visit. It’s 30 minutes and we go through everything together and then they take everything in writing home. And again, this is something I learned at Pankey back in the 90 seconds, and it stood me in very good stead to give them a bespoke document, not something out of so that I’ve spent quite a lot of time on. But I have no bad debts and I have no misunderstandings with treatment because it’s all laid out and all my treatment planning is there and you just put it in a version, you must put it in a version that they can understand. But so that’s your analyticals They want that your your driver type personalities. They’ve, they’ve probably already decided when they came to the consult that they’re doing the treatment anyway because they wouldn’t waste their time coming to see you unless they weren’t already fairly confident that they have confidence in you and they want. So they’re going to say, okay, that looks fine. Boop, boop, boop. Yeah. Okay. When can we start? So you need to have next step ready. Yep. Yes, we’ve got some appointments next week or next month or you know, and they’re going to ask you maybe, how do you want this paid? And that’s your driver.

And they’ve got to be somewhere else quite soon. So don’t run late.

You know, then you’ve got an expressive and I’m an I’m an expressive and I flex into being a driver at work, but I’m a natural expressive. I want to talk about the outcome and, oh, see somebody else’s pictures.

And oh, I want that. And you know, and more of a.

Chatty sort of.

Thing.

So that’s an expressive. Now, if I get together with an expressive, I’m probably going to run late if I like them.

Because we just get talking.

And then you’re amiable. All your amiable is wanting to want sometimes wanting to please other people, but not always themselves. And your amiable may often have a significant person that they want to be involved in the decision. So they might want to bring somebody with them. They may or may not like want to, you know, take the information away with them. I mean, everybody gets the same documentation regardless, but it’s just how you handle the different.

They want to corroborate that with someone else, with a with another.

They might do, but they also might flex more because it’s a grid. They might flex.

More onto the analytical.

Side as.

Well that that they they, they might not want to give you their their decision straight away. They want to go away and think about it. And so if you know what you’re dealing with, you can kind of then not be too concerned. If you don’t get any commitment.

How long will it take you to work out which which one of those for your patient is? Can you tell after the initial exam?

Um, well, by the time I’m.

Presenting something comprehensive, I will have met with them 2 or 3 times because they’ll have had their initial exam. I then will have maybe got them back for more comprehensive records, models, photographs, maybe we’ve got a wax up. We’ll have had some sort of dialogue, but I also spend a bit of time in the first appointment, not actually talking about I don’t put them in the chair and start looking at them. I have what’s called a pre clinical conversation, and I always used to like to do that in another room, go and meet them in another room and then take them into the clinical environment. Haven’t been able to do that more recently.

Space Yes, and but.

Now all the patients that come to me come to me on referral and pretty much I also do a lot of ortho, So that’s kind of changed the slant a bit as well. I would say my practice is 60 to 65% ortho, and so then I will always have an initial consult with the patient. And if it’s a teenager or a child, then with the parent. And then I’m really looking at do I get on with the parent? Because it’s very difficult if you don’t get on with the parent treating the child. So I sort of interview them both really. Um, so I don’t hang everything on this social style thing. I just.

Use it as what you.

Teach.

But that, yeah, that’s what I teach and you can use it in the team as well. How to get the best out of your team and how to, you know, understand your team better.

It’s a fun session.

I bet. And is it the same for is it the same classification for your team members?

Yeah. Yeah. So we when.

We do it as a as a staff training sort of thing, there’s a questionnaire you fill out, first of all. So the questionnaire is a social style questionnaire. It’s something like 40 questions or whatever, and then depending. On the answers that that you give. You get a score and then from your score you work out where you are on the grid.

So did you go to Pankey saying, I’ve got this content that I want to teach, or is this kind of their their content that you’re delivering? No, no, no.

No, not at all. I went there in.

The 90 seconds as a student.

No, no, no.

But when it came to teaching.

Oh, no.

They invited me to join the faculty.

Yeah, and.

But specifically the content. Is this your own?

No, no, no. Then.

So basically, you.

Then they. They.

I basically tried.

Out teaching.

In different eyes, as it were. So in different levels. And then.

I, I, I found that.

I was most comfortable in e one, probably partly due to the other people I was teaching with. And there were some phenomenal, phenomenal people I’ve had the privilege of, of being on their teaching team, as it were. And then.

I used to watch this.

Presentation being done by other people. And then it sort of came up that I would quite like to have a go at it and in fact, it used to be done by the CEO, Ricky Braswell. She left a few years back and so she always did it.

And I.

Used to sort of do it.

With her.

And then when she moved on to pastures new and whatever, I kind of then sort of put my hand up and said, Oh, you know, if there’s a chance of me doing this, but you have a lead faculty on every course and the lead faculty person decides who gets to teach what. So we liaise a few months prior to a course and we all talk about who’d like to teach which bit. And if I put my hand up for that bit because I quite like that bit.

But it’s very interesting that they convince people to take time off from their own practice. Fly over on your own, back on your own.

They don’t convince you when they when they when they ask you to teach. It’s it’s an honour. The biggest honour was. I couldn’t believe it. I was like me. Yeah.

But. But what I mean is that the atmosphere, the culture of the place, I’d like to kind of get, get to know it a bit better. Where is it? In Miami.

South of.

Miami. Key Biscayne.

Oh, that’s a fun place to go.

Oh, it’s.

Lovely. Yeah.

Go in the winter. Go this time of year. It’s good. Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah. No, it’s.

It’s an incredible sort of place with incredible people who, you know, when we’re there as faculty, it’s all about the students. It’s all about we work unbelievably hard to try and ensure they get what they came for. They get what they came for and more sort of thing. And someone did that for me nearly 30 years ago and supported me. I mean, I, I did the courses between 93 and 2006. So I was very slow progressing through the courses and there were 6 or 7 at that point because the curriculum has changed and whatever. So but every time I went, I came back feeling happier, more confident, a better dentist, a better wife.

Really? Yeah. Oh, loads of I mean, you really you.

Do some personal development there as well, which is not always it’s sometimes that’s a bit painful too, but yeah.

So if you were to sort of you understand what I mean when I don’t know if I’m saying it in the right way, but the straw man panky as in as in make the case against panky. What would that be?

What do you mean, make the case again?

So I don’t know enough about it. So. But if I were to make the case against it, I would say that by by British standards, there’d be an element of overtreatment. Is that.

All?

Oh, is that true or not?

Oh, no, it’s not like that at all.

No, but if you had to make a case against it, what would be the the thing you would say? Mhm.

I mean, what’s bad about it is what you’re asking me.

Yeah.

What’s bad about it?

I like that long silence.

Oh, really?

Because I know people think it’s all full.

Mouth rehab.

Sort of thing. Yeah, but.

It absolutely isn’t, you see. So people do go there to learn more complex dentistry and.

As well.

Teach that. But we teach diagnosis. So you could get a patient that just needs a splint and a bite adjustment, a minor equilibration.

I mean, there’s some UK dentists who would say that about the whole of US dentistry, right?

Oh no, they’re so mistaken.

They are more interventionalists than we are. But, you know, in a way, I guess, you know, it’s the right thing to do sometimes, right? Well, I.

Don’t. I don’t know. Yes, I suppose. Okay.

So certainly one thing that I came back with right from the beginning is what is the best for the patient in the longer term? Yeah, right. And I’ve always said this to my patients, but I’ve always had it in my head when I’m treatment planning. And I think. Some of my training here. Fear of telling the patient they needed to spend some money. Yeah. Fear of of telling an adult they need ortho before they need restorative. Now, I know we’re doing it a lot, a lot more now, but.

25.

Years ago, we weren’t right. So I think we went for a short or medium term solution. It was more palatable to the patient at Pankey. They don’t do that. Comprehensive implemented a lot of that 25 years ago. Bit by bit, those patients are still with me. Those patients have still got those crowns that I did 20, 25 years ago. So that investment they made has made their dentistry the most cost effective and best value for money ever. And they’ve had very little intervention because the work was done well and it was done properly at the right time.

Yeah.

So when we say at the right time, is there an element of treat that tooth early before it breaks?

There is an element of that.

If you’ve got a rare case, but you’ve see where is a really big issue and occlusal disease or.

Where is.

What I learnt about there. We didn’t really learn that in the UK at that time, but then those cases are unbelievably challenging to treat because they do look like they might end up as 20 crowns type thing. But of course nowadays things have changed and some of my heavily restored, heavily, heavily restored patients did end up with, you know, a lot of crowns. But like I say, 20 years later, they’re sitting pretty and I’m not you know, I’m getting very few problems, very few patients needing endo, all of this type of thing. But nowadays, with the way composites have come on and the you got Francesca Velluti and that whole philosophy of sort of composite work and it’s still full mouth dentistry, but it’s with different materials. So I’m terribly excited that you, you merge this diagnosis and this full mouth planning, working from wax ups and, you know, designing everything like that. But then you’re using materials like composites. You literally are just bonding to the teeth. And the teeth with their wear are just underneath. And I’m doing more and more work like that.

So have you.

Done some of Francesca’s.

Style of stuff? Yeah, and I love the way she explains it.

She talks about.

You know, this is like putting new.

Tires on your car, and depending how you drive, you will wear these tires down at a varying rate. And the patient has to understand this idea that we do dentistry that has to last forever. People go out and buy 40, 50, £60,000.

Cars.

The whole time and they buy another one five, ten years later.

Even £10,000 car, 15,000 car. But the idea that you might have some dentistry done and then it might have to be done.

Again 20 years later, patients go.

Get all upset. I just don’t get that.

Have you followed up? I mean, you’ve worked in so many different places over a career of 30 years. The patients that you treated 20 years ago, are they still did they follow you around?

They followed me. I’ve only been in four practices in 30 years.

So they followed you? Yeah. Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah. I haven’t got.

Anybody from the practice in Horsham. Yeah, I’ve got loads from Reigate. Loads and loads from Chertsey Courtyard and then am.

Where I am now. I haven’t, I’ve and.

I’ve stayed in Surrey. If you want to come and find me.

You can find me. You know, I haven’t run away anywhere. Now I’ve been in the same place.

I noticed you also. It’s quite, quite good with nervous patients. And it’s kind of a thing, a bugbear of mine that I want to get it more out there that, you know, be gentle, be gentle, give painless injections. It’s such a massive practice builder. The reason why people follow you again, it’s these days it’s quite common to understand all this. But it seems that you understood this a long time ago.

I’m a nervous patient myself. I had terrible treatment as a child. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

My parents didn’t know that the dentist was rubbish, and he didn’t give preventive advice either. So we used to go to Kenya because my grandparents were in Kenya and that’s where my mum and dad were born. And the water wasn’t safe to drink out there. So when we went out there for six weeks in the summer holidays, we lived on fizzy pop with sugar in it. There were no diet drinks. We’d come back to England and I would cop a load of fillings and the dentist didn’t use local.

It was.

Awful.

It was awful. So I have.

Horrific memories of this practice in Gillingham that we went to, and I think that is a lot of where I want to help these other people. I also have had the been fortunate enough to work with the most fantastic sedation team and sedation Solutions, and I met Joe Omar back in the late 90s. I think it must have been. And he came to work with us with with his team so we could treat really, really nervous people with IV sedation and do comprehensive work. But it’s that initial consult when you meet them, they’re really nervous. They cry, they feel you’re judging them. You. That’s where the real I think the you’ve got to be patient and you’ve got to kind of like try and get over to them that you’re not judging them. You’re here to help them.

And oh, we together.

As a team. And I say, you know, we’ve got tender loving care, which is, you know, the wand and just taking your time and not rushing and and all of that. And then we move up into, you know, IV sedation and we talk about what’s going to be appropriate. But but yeah, I mean, I’m I am I’m very proud of some of the cases that we’ve we’ve been able to sort of help. And and yeah, those patients follow you. They follow you.

I think, you know what it is that we’re taught about the breadth of the problem. So in dental school, they talk about 50% of the population or whatever it is, a large percentage of the population is anxious about dentistry that we’re taught. We tend to forget it quite quickly. But what we’re not particularly taught is the depth of the problem, that if you can if you can solve anxiety for an anxious patient, it’s such a massive thing for them that they will literally stick to you for the next 30 years until everyone they know to come and see you. And that’s the competitive sort of advantage piece of it. You know that. Yeah. Okay. Be human, be kind, be do do the right thing. But it’s so huge as far as just just that a word of mouth thing. If you’re known as the gentle dentist or someone who’s aware of these things and the number of times, you know, Prav, she records phone calls and things, the number of times it’s missed by reception, You know, a patient might say, Oh, I want to have some implants or whatever, and then throw in, I’m terrified. And the receptionist just misses that completely and goes straight to the cost of implants or whatever it is. It’s such a big thing.

Understanding how people make decisions and the emotional side of things is really, really. And I think maybe women have a little bit of an advantage there, maybe for sure. I certainly seem to see that around me. And I don’t know, I’ve never really been that bothered about production, so I’m not bothered about being the fastest dentist. So I’m willing to give people time. I think I want to be given time as a patient and I always think that if you treat people how you’d like to be treated, that’s always been my motto, right? And again, like the the other thing was, was what’s best in the long term. So those two sort of things I think have been my guiding lights, if you like, for for how I decided I was going to work. And then I.

The.

Money just came.

The money. Yeah. It tends to work out.

I mean, you.

Do have to structure your fees properly and you.

Can’t.

You know, treat people for hours and hours and not charge them an appropriate fee. But but that isn’t the most important thing. That’s not what gives me It’s.

Not the focus.

Yeah, that’s not what gives me a buzz.

Tell me about your ortho journey. When did that start? And you know, you’ve gone to all different aspects of it. You’re doing lingual, you’re doing Damon, You’re doing Invisalign.

Yeah. Um.

When did it start?

So it, it started when I joined Ringley Park. And the one of the, the partners who was a real visionary and in fact had been part of the team that built that lovely practice because it was purpose built just a few years before Tom Heesom, who unfortunately passed away a good many years ago, probably about 15 years ago now, it must be. He introduced me to what we called orthopaedic orthodontics, and this was the ability to widen the dental arch and reduce the number of adult teeth extracted. Now, before that, obviously I’d worked in practice and I’d been sent letters from the local orthodontist asking me to take teeth out for some of my patients. And as you know, a newly qualified dentist I respected what was told to do sort of thing. But I do remember a couple of mums sitting there watching their children have these pre-molars pulled out asking me if there were any other options. And I said No, you know, because that was where my knowledge went. We’d had no inkling from the training as an undergraduate that there were other ways of doing things. Yeah. And so, so that, so then I go to this practice and I see this other type of work being done by a non-specialist. He was a general dentist.

And I was fascinated by it.

And because he was there in the practice doing it, that was a fantastic sort of place for me to sort of dip my toe in. And I started doing all the skip through IT courses. And he at the time was teaching a lot in the UK and the courses were criticised, you know. Oh it’s a. And course in a hotel. But but the people who criticised it never went on one of the courses and the amount of information and content that you got in three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

It was.

Unbelievable. It was exhausting. It was you had to repeat the course at least twice to get everything because there was just so much information there. It was unreal. So that’s where I started. But that then led me into training with with with other people. And but you couldn’t get a lot of that training in the UK back in the in the 90 seconds, there weren’t people willing to teach general dentists. It was difficult to get any training. So I went abroad, you know, if.

I heard of a good speaker.

Like, say, Dr. Derek Mahoney, he was lecturing in America. I went to one of his courses and there I am in this room with 98 American general dentists all learning this fantastic also. And he was going out there fairly regularly and he was their their teacher, as it were. I was blown away, you know.

Wow. And then you go to a Damon conference and you’ve got.

A thousand.

Dentists there, and some are specialists and some are not. And you all have a way.

Of looking at a case.

You know, there’s a.

Philosophy that.

Goes with it.

And it was yeah, it was incredible.

I’ve been I’ve been very, very lucky.

So, I mean, for people who don’t know, what’s the difference between orthopaedic orthodontics and sort of the traditional I mean, things have changed again. Now, now, now, now you do you do get more, more dentists that way inclined. But but what would you say is the key difference? Is it the facial orientation?

I think well, we.

Look at the face, look at the teeth. It’s our diagnosis. We take, you know, a care for a full records and then it’s it’s you do a space analysis.

And.

My understanding and I’ve I’ve, I’ve trained at master’s level so I have I have looked at looked at all of this. And my understanding is that traditionally a lot of the planning is around the lower incisors. And there are certain sort of criteria that you stick to that you believe you can’t.

Change.

Like the crowding in the lower arch or something like that. I’m not 100% sure because I’ve never done a case this way. But this is my understanding was we look at things differently. We look at the upper Arch, we do a space analysis, a Schwartz courthouse, measurements to do with the size of the teeth and the width of the arch. And you can have situations where the teeth are really, really big and you’re going to have to extract. You can also have a situation where the teeth are really far forward and the patient can’t get their lips together. And in those cases you need to extract and pull things back. But those are different racial groups and you don’t tend to see so much of that in the UK. You know, your typical Caucasian European facial structure and everything is that that they might have very tight musculature and they might have crowding, but you can widen the arch and that’s that is the basis of where we start. And then what you find is when you start widening the upper arch, the lower arch, the crowding resolves because.

The lower crowded because it was trapped so free it and then.

And similarly, class twos become class ones because the lower jaw can come forward and you have natural growth at puberty where the lower the mandible comes forward anyway. So you quite often don’t need to treat a class two because it’s going to sort itself out if you expand the upper arch impacted canines. Similarly, you.

Know, I’m passionate about.

The fact that you that we should be taking appgs around the ages of eight, nine, ten, assessing the position of the adult canines. And if we’ve got them overlapping the incisors, you need to expand. You need to, you know.

Stop.

Canines getting impacted.

So so yeah, I mean, I’m I’m, I’m really passionate about this. Probably, you know, more than I should be. But we can.

Make such a difference to young kids, you know, Such a difference.

Yes. But, you know, I’ve met you a long time ago in Courtyard Clinic, I remember. And in courses before then. But then I met you recently on Mini Smile Makeover. And, you know, you and I were the oldest people in the room. You know, we were. We were.

We were. You’re right. I hadn’t thought about it. But you are right. Yes.

The the you know, there’s a reason why there’s there’s associate young associates come to Mini Suamico. But, you know, it helps them get jobs or whatever. And then, of course, you get principles, but it’s more young people. And yet. Ever find you again on a composite bonding course. You seem to have, like, an insatiable curiosity for dentistry. What is it? Is it. Is it? Do you love it? Or are you just that sort of super perfectionist who wants to always improve in your life?

No, I don’t think I’m super perfectionist. No.

You come across as a perfectionist. You do?

Do I really? Oh, gosh. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe am with my work.

Maybe I’m with my work. I’m not with my Christmas preparations.

All the state of my study. You should see it. You think it’s, like, tidy? From what you can see, it’s horrendous down here. Um, I know why I did mini smile.

Because I knew that my composite bonding wasn’t at the level it could be from what I was seeing out in social media and stuff.

But the fact that you’re even looking and you’re paying attention and you’re trying to improve at this point in your career where you just told me you’re looking at winding down.

Yeah, but that’s now.

And Mini Smile Maker was a.

Few years ago wasn’t.

It? It was.

It was. It was pre-COVID. It was pre-COVID. Yeah. But you know what I mean. That question, that curiosity to continuously improve. I mean, to go to bank, to learn ortho to the level that you’ve learnt it. Where does it come from?

I just love making a difference to the patients. I just. I just. And I do. I want, I.

Want.

I see. I’ve always mixed.

With people at quite a.

Good level like.

Bard and you know, I’m blessed at.

Having colleagues and friends who are some of the best dentists in the country. You know, I’m really, really lucky. So I suppose I like. I’ll always look at anything I’m doing that. Could that go on a screen? Could you show that at Bard?

You know, could you.

Could I show a colleague that and be proud of.

It? You know.

And no, I saw that composites had gone to another level.

I wasn’t doing these beautiful.

Layered composites with all the halo.

And I needed to learn that if you could do that, then why wasn’t I doing that?

No, but why? Why?

Because you want to give the patient the best.

Yeah, but.

Lots of dentists want to give the patient the best. Yeah, but to keep that level of learning and curiosity going for as long as you have. You know, look, I know a lot of dentists, don’t I? I know a lot of dentists. Yeah.

You know what? It’s.

It’s. I don’t know, really. I mean, I know what you’re saying, because people say to me, Yasmin, you’re never going to quit. We can’t imagine you not being a dentist.

But I do want to quit. I really, really do.

But, but but you know what I mean.

There’s not many over 50 in many small makeover. Why? Why haven’t all the other. They all care about their patients, too, don’t they? But why aren’t they coming?

Do they say they do? No, they do. They do.

Come on. They do. You know they care about their patients. But, you know, people kind of wind down. They know what they know and they they kind of. But that’s not you. You seem to keep building on it.

Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I mean, I’m incredibly.

I’m overawed by Depeche as well. Okay, so I did choose it because of him.

He is great.

He is absolutely fantastic. And he does not have an ego. He’s not up himself. He doesn’t make you feel small, you know?

I mean, there.

Were so many factors that made me choose him as opposed to many, many other excellent composite courses that are available. And I’m really glad I made that decision. And I’ve sent loads of colleagues to him. You as a result, which you know, which you know about. And but I say it as it is, you know what I mean? And I think shortly after I did the course as.

Well, I.

Reached out to him with a question or a query or something. And, you know, he was really, really nice in how.

He dealt with that.

And not everyone is like that when you’ve attended one of their courses.

Yeah, you know, um, yeah, no, I just. I don’t know. I mean, it’s my since.

Covid, there’s been a dramatic change since COVID and the level of I was doing, I have not returned to that.

At all. Go on.

Tell me about that. Did COVID sort of was it like a wake up call about, hey, live your life a bit more rather than being a worker bee? And did you have the three months off like some of us did?

Some absolute agony the whole time.

Agony? How?

Well, I couldn’t look after my patients.

Yeah, but didn’t.

You barbecue and chill?

And I think I stressed too much.

Yeah, well, none of us knew what was going to happen next, did we?

I hated that.

That was a big worry. You know, I’ve talked to lots of people who say that it changed their outlook a little bit.

Yeah, it did a bit.

Because I got to exercise every day. I got to look after myself. I got to sleep a lot more. And it did show me that actually I quite liked all of that.

Yeah.

So when I went back, I went back three days a week. I think I was already three days. I used to do Saturdays. Saturdays went out the window. I used to do one Saturday morning in for that went for me. That was a big thing. I went to three days, but my husband’s been wanting me to retire for a long time. He’s been retired five years.

But he also knows.

That you can’t force retirement on people no matter who they are. But certainly not your wife, because you’re not going to have a very happy.

Life otherwise, are you?

And it’s taken me.

Covid was part of.

It in that I haven’t gone back to the same level of See, I don’t go on many courses and conferences like I used to. I used to travel the world the whole time.

I’m not going to complete my master’s.

Which was a big decision, but I’ve just decided it’s not a priority for me anymore. So I did most of my masters, but I won’t get my won’t get it because I didn’t finish my dissertation and I’m not going to finish it now because I’ve decided that I just don’t want to spend the free time that I’ve got doing that.

So was it.

Author?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Because it affects nobody. I mean, there’s one part of me that says, Hey, it’s just a dissertation, do it. But there’s a, there’s a definite other part of me that says, Hey, do what makes you happy, right?

If I tell my husband that I’m going to spend the weekend six hours at the weekend working on my dissertation, he’ll say what?

You know, you’ve got all these.

Commitments with your patients, your treatment plans, your you’re.

This, you’re that. I mean, I do so much for.

My patients anyway. And he gets that.

He gets.

That. That’s that’s my job, you know. But he says you don’t need the masters even paid for it. Paid for the whole thing.

But so look the question of, you know, we haven’t it’s quite late in the day to get to my darker part of the podcast, which which I so enjoy, but I want to sort of wrap it into the fact that you’ve been an associate, you’ve been a principal. Those journeys come with all sorts of, you know, in a 30 year career you would have had massive highs and massive lows. Tell me. Tell me about some of the darkest days that you’ve had in dentistry. And.

I think probably.

My worst.

Time. Well, it would probably be both would be at the transition of when you move from one practice to another. You know, why? Why did I stop being an owner? In 2005, I stopped being an owner because I was part of a partnership. We were six. We were six individuals running a ten surgery practice with 27 staff, big overheads. I’ve got younger children. I’ve got a husband whose career is is off the scale, so he’s out the door at 530 every morning. He’s back home around 730. Well, the body comes home, but the the man doesn’t really come home. You know, it. He’s he’s busy. He’s busy and he’s he’s doing very well. So. So he isn’t interested in, you know, what’s going on with me, but not in a disrespectful way.

But there’s only a certain amount. You’ve only got brain power so much.

And I’ve got five partners who I’m really not getting on with all of them that well. And dentistry is changing. We’ve got whitening coming, we’ve got cosmetic dentistry coming. And I’m seeing all this and I’m wanting to drive forward in this to the point that I develop my own brand. So I am part of Wrigley Park dental practice. I am a partner. I am a, you know, a full owner, whatever. I’ve got two kids and I decide.

To start confidence, Miles.

With one of the other partners.

Well, looking back on it, I’m like, You did what?

So internally.

Within within that.

Practice, we go.

Off on a photo shoot, we develop a brand. So of course it was the nail in the coffin, wasn’t it? And of course, with two different personalities and I’m the one with the big mouth. I’m the big gob that can’t can’t has to think.

Out loud instead of thinking and then opening your mouth.

And I learnt this about myself at panky. I, i, i, I speak think if you like you.

Process by talking. Yeah.

Not a good thing to do, especially with some of those individuals.

So. So go on the darkness. What was the.

Darkness. What happened.

So we fell out. We fell out to the point where.

Partners meetings became screaming.

Matches.

The practice manager started playing the politics. It got really difficult and I decided to sell. It was sell the practice or lose my marriage. I was that stressed so.

I probably could move.

The market was really good. I sold above the asking price. I thought everything was great and I took a year off. Then I joined a courtyard and I was clinical director and I thought this was great. No financial investment at all. I would be paid as an associate and but I was in control. I was clinical director.

And, and this is described what.

That practice was because I came there and it was maybe the most state of the art practice I’d been to at the time, because your partner was someone who was supplying Sirona stuff, is that.

Right? Yeah.

So?

So the so he wasn’t really my partner. But, but, but, but.

Basically, yeah.

There were two individuals that owned the business that supplied all the well owned a business that supplied sirona equipment. So they had this grade two listed building kitted out in three surgeries with all state of the art sirona everything. And it was used as a showroom. And then behind that building they had the company that supplied CEREC and all the equipment and the engineers and everything, and then they decided that they would make the dental practice into a going concern rather than have it as a showroom, make it into a dental practice. Yeah. So there were no patients at all. And it’s 2007 and we’ve got a recession coming. But we didn’t know. And I went out to lunch. I was introduced by George MANOLESCU, who was.

I know George. Yeah, yeah.

So I’d known George a long, long time. Good friend, lovely man.

You know, lovely guy. I think the world of him.

He introduced me and we all had lunch together and they said to me, you know, what do you think? And I went, okay. Shook hands and went to work. And building a practice from scratch is unbelievably difficult and it takes a lot of hard work. But after two, three years, you know, we were really doing quite well. And we got associates in and and I was clinical director and I did all my dentistry as well. And I was paid an associate and everything was great and I’d been promised a third of the goodwill and the plan was. They’ve got a plan to sell the practice. They were similar age to my husband and they’d got a similar sort of plan sort of thing, and everything was done on trust. I didn’t have a contract. I didn’t have any paperwork. I had nothing. And looking back, I think there was probably a plan.

All the way along.

Never to consolidate things in writing. I employed somebody to negotiate for me to to get everything in writing and get a contract because I couldn’t do it. It was too personal. So I employed somebody to do that. They failed. It didn’t work. Long and short of it is after eight years. I was driven out of the practice. I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I weighed seven and a half stone. I had all these patients to care for people in treatment who’d paid in advance. I was terrified of what the GDC would or wouldn’t do because the GDC are only interested in patient care. They’re not interested in the business side of things. Yeah, got support from MPs. I had to employ lawyers. I was on holiday and they wrote to all my patients and said that I was leaving the practice and I wouldn’t be working anymore. Now I was leaving the practice. I had handed my notice in and given six months notice. But I was going to be working.

But that’s the sort of thing.

They turned all the staff against me.

It was.

It was the worst time of my life.

Do you think being a woman made that more likely? More possible?

Yes.

And I handled it like a.

Woman instead of.

Handling it like a man.

That’s a funny thing to say. Go on, tell me. Tell me. Tell me what you mean. Why? Why? Why? Why?

Women? I mean, I would.

Write emails to them, like trying to sort things out, you.

Know, it wouldn’t take you.

Seriously.

Oh. And then my husband would.

Say, the email is too long. Then, you know, you’ve got to be much more, you know, to the point and much more matter of fact and in my opinion, much more male.

And and I think my.

Husband’s right, but that’s not my style.

And I, you know, I trusted them.

I gave them eight and a half years.

Between 40 and 58.5 years, best years of my life. I should have built my own practice.

Yeah.

I mean, I would have the most fabulous practice now. Yeah. But, you know.

Thing, you know, things happen.

But it was very.

Hard.

Very you’re learning point from that is that next time if something like that came up you what you would do differently is you would have contracts signed watertight or you wouldn’t trust people as much as did it. Has that affected how much you trust people?

Well, I will only work as an associate now.

No, but in general. In general, have you become a less trusting person because you feel like these people took advantage of you that way?

Now. I don’t think I’ve.

Become less trusting.

I think that’s nice.

Now I think. I think what I’ve done is, is look at all the good stuff in my life and whilst that.

That was awful and horrible.

All my patients followed me. They all left that practice. Not all, but, you know, really loads and loads and loads. So that was a bit sort of satisfying in a way. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But my boys are fine. My husband is fine.

You know, those.

Are the important things. And I’m still a dentist. And I.

You know, I still.

Enjoy my patients enormously. And we can all look back and say, oh, I should have done this. I should have done that. You know, I look back at why I left Wrigley Park and if I’d handled those personalities better and those interactions better, maybe.

I would still be there. But then how would I have.

Felt during COVID with those massive overheads and not knowing what the future held?

Yeah, we’ll never know what the other side of the decision is, do we?

Yeah.

So, you know, when you when you think back, we do a thing on this show about blackbox, thinking about errors in clinical errors. Do you know about blackbox thinking is every plane’s got a black box. So when the plane crashes, they share with the whole industry the mistake that was made so that that mistake isn’t made again, for, you know, for flight safety and all that. But in in medicine, dentistry, we we tend to hide our mistakes a little bit because what tends to happen is rather than all of us learning from everyone’s mistake, it ends up pinning down on one clinician and that person takes the rap for it somehow. The culturally, that’s the way it is. So we tend not to talk about our mistakes enough. So if you had to talk about clinically an error that someone could learn from so that they don’t have to make that mistake that you made, what comes to mind?

Oh, gosh.

I think there is something. And that is a case where I had done 6 or 8 veneers. I had. I’m at the fit appointment. I’m taking off the temporaries.

And.

This has actually happened to me twice in 30 years, but the first time it wasn’t a disaster. But the second time it was in that these old these are older patients. I do veneers on older patients.

And I think.

You have to be really careful about how brittle the actual tooth structure is. And our temporary materials are getting stronger and stronger. And I damaged an incisor. I find this really hard to actually admit.

This is going out on a broadcast.

There’s nothing wrong with. There’s nothing wrong. We’ve all done things right. There’s nothing wrong with. Especially when you’ve done things like something like that. Are you saying you took the temporary off in a bit of the tooth?

I took the temporary off and I perhaps. Well, I wasn’t careful enough as I took it off the incisor tooth underneath that only had a veneer prep split or cracked. Yeah. You know, and basically we ended up the patient ended up not immediately, but ended up losing the tooth and needing an implant. And it was a really nervous patient. I’d got his trust, I’d got his partner’s trust. This was this was a really, really big thing. And I thought I’d sorted the problem. He needed to have a veneer, an implant. I thought everything was all right. But then he sued me.

So did you. When you say you sorted the problem, did you? What? Pay for the implant?

Um, I don’t.

You referred it.

You referred him for an implant?

Yes.

Yes.

In fact, No, What happened was. So he. I referred him for an implant and he didn’t want to see my colleague, so, you know, And then we could have worked something out.

Yeah, I just.

He. He just cut off all.

Contact, went.

To a third party.

And then sued.

You went somewhere.

Else and then. Then eventually heard about it. Now, he then didn’t ask me to pay for the implant, which I would have probably been happy to do. He decided to go to lawyers, so it then went to.

And. And they they dealt with it.

Oh, so was it quite quick? I said you didn’t have problems with it.

No. No, because nothing like that.

No, no.

He said, Do everything that you do. Not with greed, not with ego, not with envy, but with compassion, with humility, with love and devotion. That sentence that I read really resonated with me because it’s so wholesome. And I think if you lead that life that’s both hedonistic and holistic, you know, we all want to have fun. We all want to pursue pleasure. But if you’re able to have that kind of really holistic world around you to create that happiness, not to be on that hedonistic treadmill where you’re constantly after that nice watch and the nice car and then this and that and that, the next high, the next high. Because we know, we know that the reason why it’s called that treadmill is that we know that everybody that that short surge of happiness that you get we know everybody ends up coming back to that same level. And these are all things I think we should teach them in Dental school even. But to be able to really sit and when you talk to someone to lean forward, to show them that you’re engaged, be interested in people. I think just all of those things as a whole, that is the secret to happiness.

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 gives me great pleasure to welcome Lala Sharifian onto the podcast. Lala’s got a pretty interesting niche area interest in dentistry, and she was just telling me he’s the only one she knows who’s a full time dental seditionist who works in primary care. She works in loads and loads of practices. Is one of those names that if you Google her, 40 different practices will come up with her with her name. And you know, it’s either, you know, what is sedation. You’ve got a seriously difficult case I guess is one way or where you’ve got a seriously difficult patient, I guess, and where those two things intersect. Lala, lovely to have you.

I’m hugely humbled. Thank you so much. Yes, it’s a pleasure.

It’s my pleasure. Look, we normally go early life and backstory and all of that, but these days I like to mix it up a little bit. Start with the one question I want the answer to more than any other question. And interestingly, it’s not to do with sedation itself. It’s to do with the fact that you see loads of dentists work. Yes. And you see loads of practices. Work or not work. That’s right. And you see the way they handle their staff and you see the way they handle their patients and you see the way they handle their businesses. Give me give me some insights into the differences you’ve seen and, you know, the good stuff and the bad stuff and and how different is it just from the. Let’s start with patient management. I bet there’s 100 different types of dentists that.

You know what? You’re so absolutely right. That’s what I love about it. And it’s so fascinating because you are a witness. You’re kind of this extra person in the room witnessing everything around you. And but I genuinely have a few spinning plates, right? So I have I have the patient, the patient management, the patient that I need to connect with and manage. I have the dentist because that’s also itself. Yeah, I need to be able to be comfortable with them to know how they work. I’m there to make their life easier. And then we’ve got the staff. I need the connect with the reception with the practice manager before, after the notes. So yeah, there’s a lot of those spinning plates. You’re absolutely right. Yeah, But tell.

Me about the way different dentists handle their patients. I bet you get the type. I bet you get the really, really cool, comfortable, sort of, you know, gentle types. And then I bet you get the real sort of people put themselves on a pedestal or whatever. Do you see you must see different ways of handling patients.

I do. I mean, overall, I actually work with people I really like. So, you know, 99% of my dentists are all kind of quite similar, right? Because you tend to generally people like people, so you tend to work with like minded people. But but yes. And I’m really I love communication and, you know, ultimately the best way to communicate with people is to listen to them. And so you do watch some dentists and you kind of do think, oh, you know, maybe that that’s not that message isn’t going across to the patient. And you feel like, should I butt in? Should I say? But that’s really hard. You know, you kind of and anyone that knows me knows that I’m. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to talk. And so. And a little controlling. But you never.

Do, right? You never butt in do you?

I just know when I should and when I shouldn’t. And I know my dentist very well. I’m friends with my dentists, so I know when I can be of help and I know when to. But also, don’t forget, you know, how they this whole rule of the seven 3855 rule. So sometimes my body language, my nodding me saying, you know nothing but that can give a lot of reassurances when the dentist is talking to the patients. Me just being there, just being an extra person, someone that has connected with the patient before they they. And then when the dentist leaves the room, they ask me those questions, which I think is the great thing about being a dentist and doing sedation is that you’re able to understand, you’re able to give some information without giving too much. It’s a real fine balance.

Yeah, I’m not aware of the. 738. What’s that?

Oh, so, you know, the, the whole 7% of what.

Body language gives.

Actually is the words and 55% is the body language. And Yeah.

What about what? Okay, so that’s patient talking to there. That’s the dentist talking to their patient. What about the way that people handle their nurses? Have you noticed big differences there?

Yes. You you notice when there is a great symbiotic relationship, which there should be. I mean, the nurses are the backbone to everything we do. I personally have connected with the nurses immediately because they’re going to be extremely important for me in the room in many ways from setup to watching the patients to managing the airway, to making sure, you know, they’ve got all their equipment set up. But the relationship between the dentists and the nurses. Yes. So a lot of times surgeons come in and it’s the they’re not often in that practice, so they don’t know anybody either. Oh, God. You know, they they’re kind of all on four type surgeons that turn up and nobody knows anybody really. And so I kind of and I have I kind of I’m the person in that middle that does a bit of showmanship to try to blend it all together. And whenever I go to a practice, the patient thinks I am part of that practice. I want them to think I’m part of that practice as opposed to someone external coming in. So you kind of just, you know, the back try to have this performance so that they’re able to get on with it and you can kind of fill in the space. You know, they have those comedians that come in in between the acts. Yeah, yeah. I feel a bit like a co-pilot.

And what about the businesses? Do you have some some businesses? Very disorganised, last minute. Can you come the day after tomorrow? Some businesses I mean, we deal with I deal with, you know, thousands of dentists and some some of them, some of them, you know, the the nurse is empowered to call up, buy the stuff up, sell, you know, we say, oh, you know, double the purchase and get a discount, whatever it is, you know, empowered to immediately say yes or no to that. When the bill when the bill gets sent out the next day, it gets paid. Interestingly, the same practices are the ones who have those nurses and the bill gets paid. Yeah. And, you know, and the whole gamut and everything and everything in between. You must have seen some brilliant businesses because, you know the kind of businesses that are bringing you in are doing high value treatments and all of that. So they’ve gotten to that point. Yes, but you must have seen some.

Well, the other day I actually turned up to a practice and they said, oh, a patient cancelled. And nobody tell you. And I just driven two hours to get to this practice. So there is that. But I think what I notice is practice principles that are just emotionally intelligent, right? They’re great Leaders So they are the ones that you kind of they inspire their team for the kind of to collaborate for one goal. And so they’re really good at delegating. Their staff have power, like you said, and they have trust and they always, you know, what is it They say that people great Leaders don’t have businesses, they don’t have jobs as such. So if you there is a famous saying like that and also you I notice sometimes some practice principles or Leaders that come in and everyone’s a bit nervous around them. Yeah. And so I always think a great leader again someone that is open to, to disagreement, right? So that if your staff feel comfortable enough to have a different opinion to you, that shows a great leader where you don’t have that kind of presence or a power over your staff. So I think those sort of functional practices are the ones that everybody is great at their job. They employ great people, they surround themselves with great people. And in fact, that leader is maybe, you know, not as as colourful as as maybe in other places. But they, you know, that team is great. And actually, you’re right, I work with mostly those sort of practices.

So go on then. And then finally, as a as like a building geek, what’s the coolest, best looking, whatever funkiest practice you’ve ever been to? Because obviously I’ve been to thousands. So I know I can tell you a good like a list of 2 or 3, actually. I should do a whole podcast on that. Yeah. What about you?

Aesthetics kind of thing? Yeah, well, funnily enough, you know that. You know, it’s interesting because I go to a practice that aesthetically is, you know, it’s not great. In fact, they still have, they still put their x rays in the, you know. Yeah, yeah. Machine and the developer and they’ve still got Chesterfield type sofas and that sort of thing. But actually incredible clinicians, incredible work being done, incredible staff.

So yeah, and by the way, much better that way, right, than the other way. Some beautiful building with terrible dentistry like Exactly. You see in restaurants, don’t you, Where the food doesn’t live up to the decor.

No, but you know what you always do? You judge like a restaurant. By the bathrooms or do you ever you know, do you ever go to people’s homes and then you go to the bathroom when you open the cupboards?

That’s pretty funny. I always I always go to to the toilet where in every house that I’m in, just for that, just for that little bit of nosiness. I know. I know every house I’m going to go in from now people are going to be like, I know, me too.

This is going to. But you know what? I interestingly.

I chose the practices based on the staff bathroom. If there is a massive difference between their staff bathroom and their patient bathroom.

Oh, very interesting point, isn’t it?

You know, that’s an interesting point, huh? Or the staff room is, like, shocking.

And then suddenly the waiting room is amazing. But. But I work out. I work out great. I mean, 38 Devonshire Street. Gaynor is such a leader. It’s just. It’s just one of those emotionally intelligent Leaders. The practice is great. It’s beautiful, but great clinicians. Costus is one of my ultimate dentists. It’s a great, great guy. Wimpole Street 2021. Wimpole Street. Um. Kia. Kia Vandi’s Practice again. A whole bunch of really, really great clinicians. I work out with Mark Corvus in Whitstable. That’s a really purpose built practice. Again, it’s a great dentist. I mean, you know. Yeah, quite a few, but those are the things.

How many active practices, how many practices actively refer to you, or is that the word refer to you bringing in?

Yes. I mean, I did my.

Audit for last year and I had.

About 35 practices. Wow.

But you’re right, because you kind of end up doing, you know, 75% of the work for maybe a handful of practices, 5 or 6 practices. So I yeah, so.

In those space. So there are places you’re going once a week where you do kind of feel more like a team member because you know that staff and all that.

That’s right. And usually with those practices I do lunch and learns and we actually I’m lucky because with any practice that does sedation has to be trained, immediate life supports. And Anish, my husband, is a life support trainer and so we do courses for the practices that I work at. And with that we do CPD. So we go through sedation. I go through kind of some lunch and learns and things like that. So I get to know the practices really, really well. They know my consent process, they know me. So it’s just lovely. You know, you turn up and it’s just nice and I love it. I think like I said to you.

Mastery is is lovely. So you’ve been doing it a long time. I bet at the beginning it didn’t feel so rosy.

Well, it sort of started slowly, right?

Because I did.

I mean, I trained that guys because they were the only dental school that taught sedation to undergrads. So it was something I was already thinking about. And so I’d kind of been sedating my own patients from, you know, 99. Um, but this going into other practices, the peripatetic work started, um, well, actually, you know what I can tell you because I’ve ended up balancing my microphone on my diaries and I have to have a paper diary. And so, and so I kind of pulled my diaries.

And I have five diaries here. So. And the sixth one that’s not so six.

Well, five years ago. Six diaries. Yeah. So initially, of course, you’re a little bit more nervous because you just want to. I just want to do well, I’m one of these people. I just I’m a people pleaser, so I just want to do well. I want everyone to be happy. So, yeah, you’re right. It takes a while.

I see. Yeah, I see how you bought the microphone that I asked you to buy.

Yes, I did. Exactly. You know, I Listen.

So how many years of dentistry did you do before you stopped the teeth? Like before the drilling and only doing this.

So I put my tools down exactly about a year ago.

Oh, really?

So quite new because I did this on the side as lots of maybe dentists do. I did it on the side for quite a while and it was actually COVID because I think during COVID, a lot of people made decisions, a lot of decisions about their careers, you know, that sort of thing. And at that point I realised I really enjoyed it. And but at the same token, I wasn’t being able to give enough to dentistry to my patients. I was working two days a week and I had thousands of patients. I’d been in the same practice for 15 years, so two days wasn’t enough. And then the sedation work, which I was doing the other three days, wasn’t enough, you know. It was saying, so you don’t do Mondays, you know, And so something had to give. And then I made the decision during COVID that I’m going to just give it a go and and quit. And it was difficult. I wrote an email to my patients and yeah, the computers crashed because I got so many replies back. Of course, you know, you lose your dentist you’ve had for 15 years.

So when you were going to take that step, did you feel sort of a bit of a outside of the way the patients were going to take it? Did you feel nervous yourself?

I was excited. I’m excited about the you know, what this will bring. I really felt like I would miss the patients. I mean, I’ve been friends with these people for such a long time. But at the same token, everybody was so supportive. Everyone said, you know, they wish me luck. And, you know, it was that sort of thing. And and I people would email me and say, Would you still be like a little mole dentist? So that when we get our next dentist, could we just sort of send you through X-ray so you could.

Tell us that if everything is okay or are they any good or, you know, you can imagine how many people ask me for recommendations, right? Yeah.

And just tell me this. What? What? When you when you’re turning up somewhere, are you turning up with, you know, a bunch of equipment? Yes. So you have.

To drive the elephant.

Packed a trunk? Yes. So I have a really nice little case and I take everything with me that I would need so the practice doesn’t have to provide anything but pulse.

Pulse oximeter, that sort of thing.

Of course. Yes. I mean, all the those things goes without saying. But yeah, all of the monitoring equipment and have some medical emergency things that I keep, but I also know my practices so I know what stuff they have, where it is who does what because we do the life support training for them.

Oh, of course.

Yeah. So it’s kind of nice.

Because I’m.

Well versed with.

But you’re basically driving a lot, right? Is that is that right?

Yes, I.

Do. So I listen to incredible podcasts, you see.

Like.

Not this one. Yeah.

So now I’m too old to do music so well. So I started to learn Italian.

On a podcast. You kind of end up doing things like this. I take.

The train for London.

Quite a bit. I have an electric car, so I do drive to London as well. But if you.

Take the train, how do you carry all the stuff? Is it possible it’s not?

No, it’s actually I’ve kind of a wheelie. Wheelie? I’m a girl, so I’ve kind of fine tuned this art. So yeah, I have a little.

Case and it’s quite easy. I mean, I’m little anyway myself, so I can’t carry heavy stuff. So it’s wheels, it’s on wheels and it’s lovely. It has everything I need and yeah.

Okay, let’s get.

Let’s get to sedation itself. Do you only do IV or do you do inhalation as well.

I don’t. I only do IV. Yes.

Yeah. So what percentage of your work would you class as It’s a heavy duty operation that’s going to go on. It’s heavy, heavy duty treatment and you’re just going to give some sedation to make it easier for everyone for them compared to super anxious Patient wants sedation over and above where you wouldn’t normally be giving sedation to a regular patient.

So most of my work would probably be shorter treatments, maybe up to two hours and occasionally. So maybe every two weeks or so, every three weeks I would do then a longer case, something like all day or 4 or 5 hours you start at 7:00 and finish at three and that sort of thing. And for those patients, yeah, I mean, I think the problem we have in the UK is that most people think sedation is for nervous patients. But you quite rightly said there’s two types of patients, there is the anxious patients and there’s the non anxious patients and that’s the area I think that we are. I think it’s a really well kept secret sedation is because that’s the area we do need to be able to offer to patients. And in fact, conscious sedation is considered by the Department of Health and the GDC as an integral element. And these are their words, an integral element for the control of pain and anxiety. And the GDC actually says that this is something that is a duty placed on the dentists and a right for a patient. So it is something that’s been supported for us. But it’s not often that you when I do the KPD, it’s not often that dentists kind of even think about offering it and in medicine, yet we offer it all the time. I mean, we don’t even offer it. We say you have to be sedated for this colonoscopy, you know.

I found in the US they’re much more, much more station going on. Right? When when I was there for my elective, they were, they were doing this deep sedation and then for wisdom teeth out at once, you know, that sort of thing.

Yes. Yeah. So it’s a whole different system in the in the US. But it’s I mean, it’s worth mentioning that in the UK we’re a streets ahead of the medics in this field and we’re more highly regulated than any other medical speciality and we’ve got the safest record for sedation. And that is something that we have in the UK, which, you know, I mean, I don’t want to talk about the US, but you know, they do have some cases, but here it’s because we are, you know, we do conscious, we do conscious sedation. And let’s face it, in dentistry we have something amazing called local anaesthetic. You know, no one needs to be that uncomfortable, unconscious or no one. You know, we need to have something that has a massively wide margin of safety. And we have local. And actually, I find also being a dentist that dentists don’t really want their patients to be knock outs and snoring. It’s quite difficult to work or do good dentistry when your patient isn’t really responsive. So that’s I’m really proud of us because we able to do that here. But you’re right, the US generally are. It’s, you know, it’s it’s very normal thing for them.

So so getting back getting back to the the nervous patient, whose job is it to say, you know, have you tried everything else before sedation? Is that you or is that the their dentist?

So dentists, when they discuss a treatment plan and consent, the patient for the treatment, that’s when you would go through the options, right? Yeah. So you should be able to at that point say, you know, for your comfort, we do have some options if you know, or if they’re nervous to say here are the options and dentists should know they should be well versed with all the modalities and from behavioural management. And nowadays we’ve got great in fact, often for kind of patients who are anxious, you know, they’ve actually got that sort of trait kind of anxiety. Some behavioural management is, is great before and so that’s an area that needs to be explored more. And then of course when I do the consultation, I could judge the situation a little bit too, and I’ll usually say, have you, you know, have you had sedation before? Tell me what the back story to this is and that sort of thing.

So, so, so but where I’m going with it, though, is, you know, if you do try behaviour management, then you know, people, if they’ve had a couple of good experiences, they, they, they improve a little bit whereas you reckon with sedation they get that sort of retrograde amnesia or whatever and they forget. So you don’t actually solve the nervousness, you just it’s just because they never, they never remember the experience. So they just still stay nervous.

That’s right. Yeah. So I think probably one of the one of the things about I.V. sedation is that you don’t you know, you don’t remember that you were really good and everything was really easy and that nothing hurt. So you’re absolutely right. But then we’re able to fine tune that. So I think if we’re trying to work for the patient to be able to wean them off it, which is a great idea, then we should involve the psychologists, especially, like.

I said, if it’s.

More trait.

Anxiety.

So it’s within their personality as opposed to a state anxiety, which is how they feel at that moment. So yeah, I think we have to think of it.

As a whole.

Patient. I feel like I feel like modality best practice might be okay for every two sedations you have now should we reassess whether you really sedation is right for you or not? But I can see how that’s not your job, right? Your job is to come in and do the sedation at the same time. I can see how the dentist and the patient kind of the patient, particularly pushed by the patient. The dentist will just say, okay, you want sedation, have sedation. So in a way, it kind of needs to be someone’s role, right, to say, hey, what about not sedation for the for the nervous ones I’m talking about not obviously not difficult.

For example, on Friday, I’m sedating.

A lady that sedated before and she had quite big surgery, sinus implants grafts and that sort of thing and super nervous. And I’m seeing her again. I talk to her. In fact, today she said she’s really excited to see me and we work with this, but this time she’s having a little bit more restorative work. So I said to her, Your sedation will be a little bit different because also people people kind of always think it’s going to be exactly the same and they don’t remember that. They don’t remember that. They don’t.

Remember.

So that’s also another challenge.

I have to.

Deal with. So I kind of said, so at this time, it’s going to be a little bit different because the dentistry is going to be a little bit different. You’re going to be able to, you know, need to turn left and bite together and left and right. So don’t worry, you know, because people worry. They think, I’m awake, I’m awake, I’m awake. And so it’s that kind.

Of.

Education as well, so that they know. And in fact, hopefully she will maybe have a more memory of it. And so, yeah, that way you’re able to fine tune it. But I mean, if someone’s having a horrible procedure, then less is more, right?

So yeah, absolutely. So do you use midazolam all the time or do you use other things? What’s your story with the drugs themselves?

So I use midazolam, single drug, just.

Because it’s just so easy to tighter. It’s safer than, you know, sequential administration of two more drugs, the multi drug. So single drug midazolam is is a simple technique. Multi drug is known as an advanced technique. And the guidelines, the standards tell us that we have to have really good justification in order to be able to use multi drugs. And it has to also it actually specifies that it has to be after having excluded a single drug or having a great justification. And I think that’s really important. And I think maybe a lot of dentists don’t know that they’re responsible for that, even though they are the clinician, they’re actually responsible, after all, for the sedated patients. And interestingly, now the guy the the one standard of care. So it’s the first time it’s ever happened that we have one standard of care, the.

Guidelines, 2015.

And by that I mean that before then, you know, maybe the medics thought they were not bound by dentistry. But with this standard of care, whether you’re a hygienist, you’re a dentist, you’re an anaesthetist, you’re a doctor, everybody has to abide.

By this one.

Standard of care if they are sedating for the purpose of dentistry. So yeah, multi Drug has definitely got a place in sedation. I don’t do it myself, but there is definitely a place for it. But it has to be with justification just because there is a more narrow margin of safety.

So, so just just expand on that question of if something goes wrong. Are you saying the dentist has has more to answer than you do.

And not more.

To answer?

But I think but I think what maybe comes as a surprise is that dentists think just because they have a sedation is coming in.

It’s not their responsibility anymore. You do your job. I do mine. Yeah, that’s right.

And unfortunately, it’s unfortunately it’s not true. And if you are recommending if you’re treating a patient for the purpose of dentistry. As a clinician, you are responsible and there is maybe even a school of thought to say that when you have a sedation is coming in, your practice manager should perhaps you know the first before you choose a sedation is should perhaps ask them to sign something to say that they are going to follow the guidelines so that at least you’ve kind of said, look, that’s what I would like you to do, because, you know, when you’re a dentist, you also don’t want to be staring at somebody to see what they’re taking out, you know, and what the and it’s difficult because a lot of dentists say, well, you know, how do I know? Because I turn around and there’s these colourless liquids, Right. I don’t know what they’re giving. I’m you trust them. And my point is that you just should just be a little bit more aware. Also, age group, I think you need to be a little aware of what age groups can have what drugs. So because we are essentially answerable to the CDC, but maybe the sedation is you may have may not be answerable to the CDC, you see. So that’s.

Where they’re kind of.

Maybe a slight conflict can come in. So overall, my advice would be to just to know some information about.

Sedation and.

Put it involves all really kind of simple, simple things. But before you so that you understand what is what is required and what does the CDC.

Want from you?

And can kids have sedation?

Yes. So under 12 age of puberty, which if you want to call it, have a number under 12, cannot be sedated in primary care. 12 to 16 is considered a young person in sedation and you can sedate in primary care, but with a single drug midazolam only. And that’s quite important. There are exceptions to this. If there is a consultant, a paediatric specialist or consultant anaesthetist, you know, you can mix it up a bit. But for your average kind of dentist, 12 to 16 year olds. So that kind of 14 year old may be having some pre molars taken out. You can sedate but with single drug. And so as a dentist, it’s good for you to know that so that when you are asking your receptionist or your practice manager to, you know, bring a sedation in, you’d say, you know, we have a 14 year old, we’d like somebody that does single drug over 16. Then that’s considered as a, you know, an adult. And whatever is justifiable is possible with. Yeah, absolutely with whoever. So that’s the age group and there’s no kind of upper limit. I sedated somebody that was 92 which is and.

It was like.

Oh but actually you’ve just got to be really cautious and you’ve got to do your routine, normal assessments with, you know, their airways and medical comorbidities escort often is a.

Bit of a problem.

Right? Because, you know, the 92 year old might also have a 95 year old husband in a wheelchair.

So I’ve been caught out a little bit before with escorts because sometimes, you know, you have a child turn up sometimes. I mean, I’m very specific, but I’ve learned this the hard way as well. Well, the other day the other day.

Actually, this lady came just on Friday. This lady came in and and then this what looked to me like a child came in with her.

And kind of had that small, you know, a smile or you.

Talk or your.

Mouth is still like this, you know, thinking.

I don’t know. How do you ask somebody, you an adult, you know?

And then she said and then she said, Oh, this is my husband.

And I was like, Oh, what’s up with that?

But she looked 12. I was like, Oh, you look 12. But then I thought.

I sometimes look a little bit like a 12 year old, so.

You must have to be right up there with your sort of medical histories and complication, drug complications and people with co-morbidities. Do you have is that what the training is when they teach you to do this? Is that where most of it is?

Well, yeah, I get a I get a medical history from the practices. And then I when I phoned the patients, I have two jobs. One is to assess them medically and whether they’re suitable for sedation. And my second, probably more important job is to connect with the patients. So medical wise, though, overall one and two patients are mostly suitable. Actually, a lot of people are suitable. There’s only a few things that are contraindicated. They’re usually things that disturb the brain or the airway. So, you know, COPD, major COPD, sleep apnoea, recreational drugs, that’s usually the bane of my life.

Um.

Wife sort of co-morbidities.

Um, but overall, most, you know, a lot of yeah, a lot of patients are suitable for sedation. Actually. There isn’t massive drug interactions. Oh nice. Normal things. Yeah.

So.

So y y y recreational drugs. What’s, what’s the story with them?

Recreational drugs is the bane of.

My life.

Because. So sedation. Actually, this is. This is one of the one of the things I had to.

Learn the hard way, you know, one of the.

Kind of maybe things that didn’t quite go right. You know, there’s always those.

We’ll get to that part.

Of the show. Yes. Go, go, go.

Sorry, Sorry. Then I’ll tell you then. I’ll tell you about that when we get to that part of the show. And then.

And sorry to interrupt. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Yes.

No, go ahead. Um, yeah. So that so sedation is is is sort of.

Midazolam is meant to be both an anxiolytic and a sedative. And the difference between that is one reduces your anxiety and the other gives you that kind of sort of.

Droopy eye, slow sedative.

Kind of feel. They usually go together, but sometimes they don’t go together. You can get.

Anxiolysis.

Without the sedative sort of effect, but sometimes very, very rarely. Maybe. I think the stats is less than 1%. You get something called a paradoxical effect, which is essentially a big increase in emotional release. You get the patients get excessive movements, especially limb movement, limb movements, and you become really agitated. And essentially you have to peel the patient off the ceiling. And that is it can be idiosyncratic, but there is evidence that it has a link to recreational drug use.

And and.

It has happened to me maybe.

Three times in the.

Past 25 years. 20 years.

Okay. And when it first. Yeah. And when it first happened.

It’s difficult because you think maybe you haven’t sedated them enough, right? So the temptation is to sedate patients more.

And so I ended up so I have had this situation where I kind of sedated the patient a bit more and a bit more and it got worse and they got worse. And I thought, right.

Sumo wrestling was definitely not part of.

This. It’s not going very well. And then I immediately realised and it was a young guy, it was like a 19.

Year old and.

I immediately.

Kind of clocked on and I actually reversed the drug. And then it was much better. And so the dentist was able to finish.

And then at the end he said, Oh, this.

Was great. And I was like, Really?

It might have been.

Great for you. It was not great for me.

And I said to him, What have you been taking?

I asked you, you know, I always ask these questions.

And he and he said, What? And I said, Just tell me. And he went, Well, just cocaine.

And I was like, Why didn’t you tell me this before? And he said, Oh, my dad’s best friend with the dentist. Don’t tell him I don’t want anyone to know. And I was like, Oh, God. So, um, so yeah, that was probably.

One of those events where I had to learn things.

The hard way. It doesn’t always happen, of course, but it can do.

And nowadays everybody is.

On something, especially in London. Everyone’s taking something. I have to.

In fact I’ve got this talk to Frank on minimise on my computer because I’ve got to understand the lingo as well. People tell me.

What they take, you know, suddenly they say, I take Calvin.

Klein and you have to know what that is.

What is that? What is that street name? Yeah. What is it? Which. Which drug is Calvin?

Calvin Klein. It’s sort of cocaine and ketamine.

Cocaine and ketamine.

So Cocaine. Ketamine to get mean and ketamine. It must be.

Exciting.

Exciting. Okay.

And there’s me. Wow. This is.

Enough. I swear. There’s all sorts of things. Yeah. Why can’t people just, you know, have a pornstar martini or something like that? You know, like the rest of us on a Friday night?

Just.

Just as bad, though. Yeah. Tell me this. When. When you’re sedating a patient, what’s the thing that keeps you? Keeps you up? Like, you know, like a nightmare scenario that can happen? Is it like a cardiac, like something unrelated to it, or is it something related to it?

So those sort of things are never events.

So over sedation or respiratory depression, that sort of thing is a never event. And it doesn’t.

Happen.

It hasn’t happened to me. It shouldn’t happen. And these things don’t happen, especially with. As you know, we tighter it slowly so it’s something that doesn’t happen. So I haven’t had any medical situations. And also the beauty of midazolam is we have flumazenil, so we can reverse it very quickly. So medical stuff. No doesn’t happen. You know what? I guess for me, the sort of difficult thing that happens, it might surprise you, but the sedation is only as good as.

The local anaesthetic. Oh, yeah. So the thing that’s kind of can happen is when the patient.

Is in pain.

Actual pain.

Because no amount of sedation.

Gets rid of that.

And then and then it’s kind of interesting because.

Sometimes the dentist looks at you thinking.

Should they be a bit more sedated? And you’re kind of thinking.

Oh, but maybe if they weren’t hurting, we won’t have that problem. You know.

Sometimes pain is good because, you know, you want sometimes, you know, with.

The whole idea canal, you know, sometimes actually have an endodontist that has referred me a couple patients because of a hot pulp. Right. You know, some things are going to hurt. That’s fine. And that’s why we sedate the patient so they don’t have that bad resentment for us. But overall, it’s the challenge of making sure the patient’s not in pain for me, I think. And that’s when working with, you know, great dentists or conscientious dentists works. And that’s pretty much everyone I work with, really. And then you’ve got to trust the drug. The drug does its thing.

And but you sometimes.

Gently say, hey, put in, put some more in.

So so sometimes I kind of I mean, thankfully I’m good friends with my dentist.

So sometimes I say, oh, it might be worth topping that up a wee bit because it’s, you know, it’s been a couple of hours or it might be worth, you know, just just a little nudge in a kind of way that is nice. But yeah, that’s probably. But then most dentists know, you know themselves, so those things are fine. And also another thing, actually, one of the most difficult things to sedate for surprisingly, is a scale and Polish hygienist work kind of or perio work or more hygienist work because with perio work or hygienists doing perio work, often there’s local anaesthetic. But when you don’t have local anaesthetic and you’ve got sensitive teeth and it’s the whole.

Mouth and there’s water everywhere and there isn’t.

You know, that sort of scenario is quite tricky for me. I have to kind of be there and but I tend to connect. I mean, my biggest task for me and I think I love people and I love connecting with people and my biggest task is to connect with patients. And I think once they trust me and they know I’m there for them, then half the battle is done and my job is just much, much easier because I always say that people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And so when you care, you really care. I mean, this is where that whole, you know, humanity, empathy and all these words that we use, this is where it becomes really paramount when you’ve got that connection with the patient. And I try to get it’s hard, you know, doing that over the phone often, but you need to be able to recognise personality types, You need to be able to recognise how to connect. And then when I’m.

There, then.

I once they trust me and they trust the dentist, then the rest actually is really easy. I mean the whole my job, honestly, Payman it’s the easiest job. I absolutely love it. Nothing goes wrong. It’s just such a wonderful thing. It’s a great service. I really recommend for dentists to do it. I have this feather in their cap. It is just especially in modern day dentistry where treatments are getting more intricate, they’re getting treatments are getting longer. Also, patients now want comfort not just in dentistry, but I think people want to be more comfortable whether they’re flying, whether they’re dining. Everyone wants to have a nicer time and an easier time. So there was this whole thing about making dentistry pain free. I think we’ve done that.

You know, we’ve really come a long way.

With our local. I think we need to now really move towards making dentistry comfortable so that we don’t have.

Those results of the Adult Dental Health Survey where.

50% of the UK population said that they had a fear of dentistry and 12% had extreme anxiety. I mean, that’s terrible. And I really hope that with this kind of not just I.V. sedation, but just conscious sedation and all the modalities of it, we can all kind of come together to be able to make dentistry more comfortable for. For everyone.

And for the dentists, too.

Sure seems to me that the bit of the job that you love is that connection with the patient. Yes. Reassuring them and all of that. Because on the surface of it, you know.

First time with the.

Dentist, too.

Yeah, the dentist, too. The first time when I heard there’s a person who’s a dental seditionist, I I’m being totally honest with you, I thought, what a boring job that must be. But it’s not. It’s interesting, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I.

Aside from that, I always really, at the end of the day, like I said, I’m there to.

Make the dentists job easier. I’m there for the patient to have a great experience. In fact, when I phoned the patients, the first thing I say is I introduce myself and I say, You know, my name is Lolly.

And I am.

Going to take care of you alongside Dr. So-and-so and I’m going to make sure that you.

Have a wonderful experience on Friday.

But it’s interesting.

Because my connection with the dentist is also.

Really important to me because what I would like my aim for the end of that appointment is for the patient to be really happy with the dentist, not with me necessarily. I’m a little bit of a catalyst or an adjunct here, but what I want is for the patient to be happy with the dentist and happy about dentistry. I love that to happen. And so when the patients write a review on the practice website about the dentist and the practice, that is my job well done because that’s what I’m there for. I’m there for the dentist. And and in fact, you know, you said.

About.

Some of the things that have gone wrong. A few months ago I was working with a dentist who I love and is somebody I would go to myself like a great, great clinician. And and actually, I was doing some implant and the driver fell down the patient’s mouth. Quite a big implant driver. And then sort of there was like a little bit of a devastation type of movement on the patient. But the patient was sedated, of course, and it went down. We don’t know where it went.

You know, and and.

There was this sort of massive, I guess, bit of panic naturally. Right? So it was really interesting because I was this extra person, a bit like an outsider, but in there. And so I was able to sort of say, right, we can put the patient up, see if they’re going to cough or not. And, you know, what we’re going to do is finish the treatment. There was no distress. The SATs were normal. The patient seemed fine. So it was the end of the treatment as finished, the treatment that’s organised for them to have a chest x ray? I asked, you know, I sent a message through to reception to organise that. I said, Let’s find another implant driver, let’s take it with the patient. I will go with the patient myself, bring the patient back. You know, all of those things that went around. And then the dentist said to me, You know what? I don’t know whether I would have done all of these.

Things if you weren’t.

There just to just to have somebody else that’s maybe not in the middle of it all or maybe.

A bit more calm and able to.

Think.

So sometimes I think it is there. You’re there for.

The dentist, you’re there for.

The patient, you’re there for.

The nurses, for.

Everybody, really. So it is fun. It’s super fun. Not at all.

Boring.

And you seem like such a positive person yet. And I keep driving this thing about what what went wrong. But that story you just told that’s from from your perspective is a success, massive success story. Tell me tell me about something that went wrong.

Well, you know, like I said, in.

Sedation, things that go really wrong are never events.

So.

No, no. But something, something.

Something to do with the patient trusting the dentist, something, you know, something that went wrong. Come on. There must have been, um.

Well, do you know what? It’s difficult. I guess there’s been. There’s been times where.

I’ve lost my.

Trust in the dentist. Um, at all times. The patient is sedated. Right. So the patient is generally kind of happy. And at the end of the treatment, they’re always happy and they think they’ve had a great time.

I mean, that’s the wonderful. So sometimes I say, sometimes I say.

When when I have a.

Periodontist or.

Hygienist working with a really sensitive.

Mouth that maybe is not numbed up. They said, oh, you know.

What are we going to happen? And I said, Well, the patient’s going to have a great time. It’s whether you’re going to have be mentally disturbed by.

The end of it or not. Well, gag reflex, your gag reflex is is always really difficult.

And I’m.

Always enjoying my seat, going, please, please, please, and trying to come up with like, you know, ear.

Lobe pressure points and whatever I can.

Because gag is one of those that’s.

A bit unpredictable.

And it can, you know, it can go really well or.

It doesn’t go well at all.

And I’ll say.

To the patient, I’ll say to the dentist, you know, you can just do it, get the tooth out.

And you may not have a good time, but don’t worry.

The patients are in pain, patients won’t remember it.

They would have a pleasant experience.

And they don’t have resentment of us. That’s the best we can do. But there hasn’t been anything. I mean, these are all these are all things that constitute sort of not a bad day, but a more challenging day. Right. But I don’t.

Know. I think there’s those imperfections is.

What makes us kind of stronger. Right. You know, I think what is it that the.

Japanese concept, something.

Like Kintsugi, where, you know, the golden joinery, have you ever seen.

That in plates where plates that are broken? And I always think, you.

Know, Ernest Hemingway said that the world breaks us, breaks everybody, right. The world breaks everybody. And afterwards, some people are stronger in.

All those broken places. So all of those days, I think, are just.

Probably what makes you.

Realise and get that.

Experience. I mean, you know, I’ve got a.

Lot to learn. So yeah.

I mean, the reason why I harp on it is from that book Black Box thinking, I don’t know if you’ve seen it. Yes.

I haven’t seen it, but my nephew is training to be a pilot, so I kind.

Of know a little bit about.

Yeah. So but it.

Actually it actually draws a parallel between pilots and doctors.

And and says, that’s right.

That we never learned in medicine. We don’t learn from each other’s mistakes.

Because we hide it. We hide it.

Exactly.

And that black box is.

Thinking is.

Important for two reasons. That plus.

I always.

Think.

Also with sedation.

Oh, so this is interesting because some dentists sort of think that, okay, so the patient’s not going to remember. So they have this sort of banter that maybe isn’t.

So.

Appropriate really, that. Yes, not a bad I mean, nothing bad or anything like that, but just about, you know.

Last night they were out or, you know, something, you know.

And I’m.

A little bit I’m a bit sort of sterile.

Cockpit.

Kind of situation.

And when I’ve always been like that, even.

As a dentist, I never had personal conversations over the.

Patient’s head and that sort of thing. I like talking in case you don’t notice. But I.

Always I.

Always think when the patient’s there, you know, we have to have a performance. But also these in this day and age, you know, people record things. Yeah. So and I have this sort of personality type that is always really worried about, you know. So eventually they managed to get really nervous about the sedation as well as being nervous.

About, you know, they kind of go, what if, you know, what if you say something and I can’t hear.

You, you know, or.

And then I think a.

Lot of, you know, we have to understand that there might be also a black.

Box. They might put their phone on and record everything that’s happening.

We all have to be really, I think, wary of that. So I you know, I’m pretty good with I don’t like to I always like to keep things nice and light. And, you know, I love people anyway. There’s never any patients that I’d never like. I was always that dentist. They always booked those really awkward patients with because I always think Abraham Lincoln said, I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

And that’s a theory I have.

I always I always.

Like my patients. However, nobody else likes them, but I like I connect with them because there is a reason, right?

Why people are the way they are.

And and I think if you cultivate enough curiosity.

In people and you connect with people, you’ll know why people are the way they are. I love those people. Those are the great challenges.

Yeah. So I gave up clinical dentistry ten, 12 years ago, and the thing I miss the most is those conversations with patients. You know, I’m convinced it’s the best part of the job. Of course, you know, the different dentists, you know, into different bits of the job, but for me that was definitely the best bit. Yeah. Let’s go back.

Into your sort of.

Yeah. Let’s get to your back story. A fellow fellow, Iranian. Were you born here or were you born in Iran or.

So, yes. No, I was born in Iran, in Tehran. And really, I’m kind of a self-confessed bonafide.

Privileged.

Girl, really. I grew up in a great, great family. You know, one of those where your mom and dad actually loved each other.

So that, I think, has been really important. I remember my dad telling us, telling me, don’t.

Forget, your mom is more important than any of you guys. For me, she comes first and then all of you.

And you know what? Father says that to their children. So, yeah, I’m one of three, but I have older, much older sisters, 12 years older.

So it was really lovely because I have older sisters.

But kind of was a bit of an only child as well because my sisters.

Came to the UK to go to boarding school. So I was, um, you know, with my parents. So really great.

So when did you come here? How old were you?

So I came with mom. We moved here in 86, so I was ten.

Quite young because my.

Sisters came over after their studies, but I came a bit earlier. There was a war in 86, 85, so I and it was interesting because I went to school well, I couldn’t do any entrance exams because I couldn’t speak any English. So eventually Dad found a small private school in Wimbledon that would take basically well, I thought would take me. But evidently they just wanted to take his money and I kind of parked myself in in there.

And and.

I remember that first day because we don’t have assembly.

And hymns and things like that. So it was the first time that, you know.

I was.

In a class and then everybody goes to assembly in the morning.

With this hymn book. And I thought, Oh, what’s this?

I just sort of took a little.

Notebook with me. I thought, well, I’m you know, I thought it was a little notebook. I thought, that’s what we’re going to start studying. I mean, we don’t have these things. And then everyone starts singing.

And it was all a bit dramatic.

And I thought, Oh, what’s going on here? You know, it was a really bizarre.

Time, actually. I even went to school at half term because I didn’t know school was closed. They must have told us, but I still went. We don’t have half term in Iran, really. So, you know, and I was wondering what’s happening by about nine, 10:00 when no one had rocked up in the.

Whole school.

Was, you know. Yeah. So that was, uh.

That was interesting.

And that was 86. Yeah.

Well, you were saying your first assembly in hymns and I was recalling my first assembly as well when I came here and hymns. It was a very strict Catholic school, very strict, and half way through the year. It’s during the revolution it was 79. Okay. So I didn’t luckily didn’t get the war issues that you had. But then the headmaster shouting at people and he was yelling, Silence, silence. And I thought silence was a person. And I kept on thinking this silence. Such a naughty kid keeps on getting shouted out.

Yeah.

Exactly. Why?

So you remember it?

Well, obviously, because you were ten years old.

Oh, yeah, I remember it well. And. Oh yeah, I was ten, but actually.

The school had a lot of international students. I mean, I wasn’t the only person in this sort of situation, but actually the sort of Japanese people stuck together. A lot of the Asians stuck together.

And I.

Was the only sort of Iranian. So I did sort of spend a few little break times just in the bathroom.

Just sort of sitting on the floor thinking, Wow, I haven’t got any friends sort of thing. Oh, let’s just see how this goes. But um, but actually being.

Chatty and things, you pick up the language very quickly and it ended up being really well for me because I integrated beautifully. And, and also coming from that.

Kind of background in Iran, you were inherently.

Just.

You know, your science and maths and all those subjects.

You were already hitting the grades anyway. So then that side of it at least was okay. So it all had to struggle with was, you know, history and.

Geography and Latin.

We don’t really, you know, the complicated things that you really need the language.

So thankfully we didn’t do Latin. We got stuck with French, which is good. But we could we got a lot of similar words, so managed that quite nicely.

And did you live around Wimbledon? Did you grow up around there?

Yes. So I lived in Wimbledon pretty much.

A lot of that time. I went to Wimbledon high.

Eventually for my A-levels.

And Wimbledon is one of those places I feel really nostalgic about.

I love it still do I generally have nostalgia about my, you know, my schools, my university, and just I love my surroundings generally. So but it was a.

Yeah, it was a great time.

I even won some form prizes, but we didn’t go to Prizegiving because again, we don’t have this in Iran. So they called my dad and said, Can you pick.

Up some things out here? And my dad.

Came home with these.

Like mats, plates and books.

And form prize and this and that. And he said, I think.

These you did, you won these. And I was.

Like, what are they? We just put them aside. I was like, What is this? And then I went back to school at the New Year and I had different there was a different people in the year and they called my parents and said.

Leila had done so well. We’ve moved her up two years.

Instead of one, which never happened. So now was in a I thought, bloody hell, I have to start again with this. Only just I only just got to know who was in my year and so and that was kind of interesting. I ended up going to Guy’s when I was 17. Wow. So younger than everybody else.

Wow. Yeah. It’s a bit of a child genius. How did you not.

Find did you not find being pushed up a year meant you were the most junior one in the in that new year. And I know I know someone else told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Really? Well, it’s a bit of a it’s a bit of a thing people now.

Talk about.

In terms of do you put your child in a year earlier.

Or do you hold them back a year.

And and that sort of thing.

I mean.

I don’t know. I didn’t know what was going on.

Right. I only realised I was young when I went to Guy’s.

I couldn’t drink. That’s when I realised otherwise.

To you, you know, you just in the wave and you’re going forward and managing everything around you. So I had a lot of support.

From family.

And my sisters. Why?

Dentistry?

Um, dentistry. Surprisingly.

I’d like to have something amazing to tell you.

Payman but actually I.

Don’t because dentistry.

Is been the only job I’ve.

Ever wanted to do.

Well, that is amazing. That’s actually amazing.

That I suppose. Actually, you’re right. It is amazing. I have no idea how it started. And I even have I even have it right now on the desk somewhere here. Um, an essay. So when I came.

To the UK, you know, you write that What what do you want to do when you grow.

Up? Everyone had their, you know, want to.

Be a.

Transponster or whatever, you know, and, and with my very broken English who at the time I thought it was just perfect English. But now reading back, it’s hilarious. I’ve actually written When I Grow Up, I was want to be dentist. Uh huh. And so it’s been something I’ve always only the only job I’ve ever, ever wanted to do. And we actually had a I remember going to the dentist in Iran and I was young.

I must have.

Been maybe.

Seven.

Eight. And I remember kind of, you know, having my hand over the spittoon kind of on my tippy toes, which nothing has changed much. I still probably my height probably hasn’t actually changed too much. But I remember looking over the dentist and I was thinking and I said to him, Can I nurse for you? Can I do anything? And I was literally in his face. I’m sure he absolutely hated me. And then eventually he sort of stopped.

He gave some local anaesthetic on my.

To my sister.

He went.

To the corner of the room and I.

Kid you.

Not. Do you know what he did? Can you guess?

He actually lit a.

Cigarette and started smoking in the room. I mean, it was like a total fag in hand. It wasn’t even like, you know, an elegant, like, you know, in the room. He started to light a cigarette. I mean, to be fair, at least he waited for the locals to work, right? And he’s probably got idle thumbs. So he thought, right, you know, just go and smoke. So he actually lit a cigarette and he turned around to me and.

He said, Lala.

Never, ever think about dentistry. It is the most stressful, awful profession anybody could do. And there’s me and my big excited eyes over the spittoon going, What? Um, so I did have that incident as well. And, um. But did you.

Have any dentists.

In the family?

Nothing.

No. No dentists? No medics.

And my parents were just one of those parents.

Unlike kind of the East that never, ever pushed us to do, you know, anything my dad always said? He said, Ideally, I’d like you to be skilled. Uh, he was. He just wanted us to go to university and be educated for him. You know, education was was wealth.

And so he did not.

Mind at all. And so I.

Just.

Always wanted to do it. And so it was so easy for me.

What do your parents do?

Um, so my mom was a teacher, as are both my sisters.

And my dad. Well, before the revolution, he.

Worked for the Ministry of Information. He dealt with foreign press, mainly with the country and then post-revolution. It was interesting because.

I was born in.

76, so that whole period was a difficult time, of course. So my dad kind of changed roles. And so there was this in-between job situation.

Where my dad.

Was taking care of me.

As I was, you know, a.

Bit of an accident child, let’s face it. And I had a working mom. My mom was at school and so my dad.

Just took care of me. Basically. He was a househusband.

Until everything settled down in the country. And then he worked for an international company which still exists called If They Do Flavours and Fragrances.

And he was a managing.

Director, so a business really. So we travelled a lot and that sort of thing.

So wow, what an interesting career. To this day I’m obsessed about. I’m obsessed about flavours and fragrances. I remember going to his office in Iran and I’m so I’ve always been so curious about everything.

Whether it’s people or things.

And he had these, um.

These, you know, you get like those cheesy wotsit type things and at the bottom of the packet you get the blue powder. So he had, he had, you know, tubes of these in different colours.

I mean now that sort of stuff is carcinogenic, right? It’s that sunset yellow colour they put in. And I remember going into his office and opening everything and putting my hand in all of this. It was like all over my face and smelling all of the perfumes and. And even now I’m.

Still obsessed.

With.

Food and tasting and perfume.

I mean, flavours.

Flavours and fragrance is very interesting because I’m I’m involved in it with, you know, with toothpaste and. Oh, yes. I mean, number one, we’ve got some very expensive toothpaste. Expensive what we think is great value, ten, £10 a tube. Um, but I love it. Have you used it? So.

Yes. Well, I mean, I was one of the one of the first enlightened fans and yes, absolutely love it. And also I’m a bit of a I’m one of these, like, nerdy critiques.

Right? So at first I was like, well, let’s see, you know, like, let’s see what this is. I didn’t have.

The accent, but, you know, kind of wanted to see what it was about. And so and then but first of all, I loved Georgiana.

She works with you.

Did she still work ten years?

She’s so she’s a big connector. Yeah, right. She’s a big connector. Right.

So, yeah.

She has personal, you know, public relations skills. Excellent.

So, um, yeah, so. And then I said, you know, let’s try this. And I realised, you know, what a.

Beautiful, beautiful product it was.

Because.

You know, you literally took out all those, um, all of those.

Things that were.

Unpredictable made this system unpredictable. And you made them predictable. I mean, and that’s genius, right? So I. And the toothpaste and, you know, the the tooth. The the, the tooth. The tooth Sensitiser for two weeks.

Oh, I love it. I loved it.

Yeah.

Tooth serum. That’s right. So tell me about the flavours because lots of patients say about the mints and they don’t like the mint and. Yeah, well.

The thing is, number one, you know, you want your toothpaste to be, you know, nicer tasting than other toothpaste. Right? And it turns out that it’s as much to do with the sort of the. Viscosity, the mouthfeel as it has to do with the flavour. But then flavour and aroma are two different things. And the number of mints that there are is mind boggling. You know. You know this. Yeah. You know this. Yeah.

I do. Because I remember my dad’s office. Spearmint.

Yeah. There’s a whole.

Lot and there’s different manufacturers so your dad’s would be one of them. And then there’s others, right? And then, and then the other thing is, I feel we thought, why mint? You know, why does it have to be mint? Okay, so the freshness thing. Yeah, but why can’t toothpaste be just delicious? Like, you know, like, fantastic. Like, look forward to having it because it’s so tasty kind of thing. And my my business partners never approved me going after that angle. Yeah, but, but a couple of other companies have and I had I had Andrew Dorward on this podcast and they did it. Him and his wife did it brilliantly. Wonderful execution. If you ever tried their lime flavour, they they’ve really done it well as well. Chilli and lime or something. They’ve they’ve, they’ve copied the names of the sorbets sorbets in Marks and Spencer.

Yeah.

It’s like a cocktail. It’s well I mean we could call it, we could call it a mojito.

So someone else has done that.

Someone else has done that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got the mojitos and the gin and tonics. And I thought. I thought I thought the execution on that one wasn’t as good. But it turns out this is the thing that it turns out, whatever flavour you do, there has to be an element of mint in it. For when, when. When you test it out on people. Yes. If there isn’t an element of mint in it, people just really put off. So even if it’s lime, it’s kind of like minty lime. And that brings in in all these new complications. It’s a fascinating field, the whole flavour and fragrance field, the.

Whole.

Yeah, the whole.

Toothpaste.

I was sedated for Simon Chard.

And he’s got the.

He’s got the parlour tablet. So he was like, Lolly, can you taste some of these, take some of these and test them out. And I don’t know whether that’s I.

Didn’t end up putting one in my mouth, but I don’t know whether that’s minty. But that’s a.

Great that’s minty.

Yeah. A great concept isn’t it. So it’s all new, but.

So that’s pretty much what I never had dentists in the family.

So tell me about.

Guys, when you first got to guys when you first got to guys, what was your.

Impression?

I love guys. Love it. I absolutely love.

I really wanted to go to guys Umds It was at the time because it was 94.

United.

Medical and Dental School. I mean.

The United Medical. And, you know, in my head it was the best.

Dental school in.

The world. Of course, you guys people think the guys would tell you that.

Yeah.

What is it? What do they do on day one? Do they on day one, do they announce it? Do they say you are the best, the best, that top gun? Do they do that? And then they just keep on telling you that again and again.

But I think I think I mean, I think when you.

When you first.

In your.

First you know, when you first go to guys.

And and you have.

Harold Ellis, Ian Hutchinson and Lawrence Bannister teaching you anatomy in the Gordon Museum, you immediately know you’re.

In a special place, right? I mean, that’s.

The editor of.

Grey’s Anatomy.

So I.

Just felt very I mean, don’t get me wrong.

Every Dental.

University is.

Amazing.

And I you know, of course, now I. I know.

That.

But you and I really.

Hope that.

Everybody, wherever they go, they feel how special it is. I mean, you know, King’s had. They all do.

But I loved it. And I loved the.

Location because, you know, let’s face it, it’s not Denmark Hill, You know, it’s Tower Bridge. And so, you.

Know, it’s.

A great, great location. And we were all.

Living in Wolfson house and, you know, all medics and dentists.

Together.

Back then, London Bridge was not this cool area that it is now. London. London Bridge was right dodgy back then. I remember. I remember I remember dropping my brother off there. Wolfson House was in a proper dodgy place. Yeah. And compared to compared to where I was living in in Cardiff. In Cardiff? Yeah. It was a ghetto. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The place, the place I was living in Cardiff was.

Was much outside of London.

I’m not talking out of London. Out of London. I mean, you can’t beat that campus. We didn’t even have a campus, really. But in London, because I wanted to stay in London. In London, it definitely beat Whitechapel and Denmark. Hill And.

Yeah, everywhere else. Did you not consider leaving London?

Why didn’t you consider leaving London?

No. Why?

I wanted to go to guys and I wanted to. Well, I wanted to go to guys because I did want. I did.

I wanted to do sedation, and I. They were the only dental school that did teach sedation as undergrads. And I wanted to be a part of that. And I wanted to stay in London because I wanted to stay at home. Um, yeah, I loved.

Being at home.

And, um.

With I just, I loved it. And I wanted to live by being at home.

I mean, you know, I still lived in Wolfson house and lived out, but to go back.

Home and I think at the time I didn’t even.

Really I mean, I applied to go to for Birmingham and Bristol and all those great places, but I wanted to go to guys. That was my first choice.

It’s so funny.

That’s how I ended up there.

I’m having this conversation.

I’m having this conversation with my son right now. He’s doing GCSEs and he’s saying, Yeah, he wanted.

Industry.

No, he doesn’t want to dentistry. Um, but he’s saying he wants to stay in London. Yeah. And, and I’m talking to.

Interesting.

Well every 16 year old who’s just about just figuring out their their lives and girls and and you know, whatever going out and being independent and soon it’ll be driving. These guys aren’t so interested in driving as we were of course at that age you’re going to think, I’ll just stay where I am because I know people. But it’s an error of sorts. I’m not saying everyone you know, obviously it worked out for you, but I would have.

Thought every 16.

Year old would want to get as far away from their parents.

As possible, actually.

Well, not you. Not you.

It means what it means. It means you’re a great.

Parent and you provide a wonderful home.

For free.

So he’s very clever man. Do you want to stay? I mean, I think this is a bit more calculated than we think. Yeah.

I mean, look, I ended up in Cardiff by mistake, not on purpose. I didn’t get in. I wanted to go to London Hospital. I didn’t get in. I failed my grades by one point or whatever it was. And Cardiff said, Fine, yeah, but it was the best thing that ever happened. Yeah, because.

What a great choice. What a great choice.

That whole part of my life, which was a whole different chapters that you and my son will never have. Yeah. If you don’t, if you don’t have another angle to your life.

You’re absolutely right. I mean, I think now.

I mean, if I had to give advice, I would say, you know, just go to.

You know, Glasgow or like just go somewhere like Bristol, Bristol, Cardiff, like all of Bristol. Bristol is one of my favourite cities in this whole country.

I mean, it’s absolutely amazing. So yeah, now I would say that, but and I.

Think at the time campus feel and also all my friends are dentists and doctors, whereas everyone else is normal friends. And you know, so I completely agree with you, but that’s how I felt at the time. But, you know, you’re absolutely right, to be.

Honest. How were you how were you as.

A dental student? Were you like top of your class? Were you struggling at the clinical aspects? Were you party animal or were you president of the Student Society? Who are you? Who were you in university?

I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

And I found it quite easy.

Did you?

So, um.

Yeah, I found the whole thing really easy.

I went to all my lectures.

I got did really well.

In all my exams, and I was, you know.

I was, I mean, you know, I was in that top few, you know, ten people or whatever.

But I really enjoyed it.

And I partied enough, probably not at the time enough. But now, looking back, I should have partied maybe a lot more. But but enough of all.

Of those.

Things. I had a great.

Time and I really.

Got to know my tutors. I still.

You know, I still when I. So in fact, I’m seeing my Cascaria.

Do you know my escudier on on Wednesday.

He taught us and he said, Gosh, I remember you as a student. So, you.

Know, I turned up to.

Everything. I did my quotas. Yeah, all in time or maybe.

A little early, but.

I was there to learn and I found it.

A privilege. I felt privileged to be there. I respected those people that taught us.

And I.

Wanted to.

Learn. And also I have being Iranian, you’re kind of inherently.

Maybe a little competitive, so you always want to do really well. You want to impress and just be do well. And so.

Yeah, which is. Because now when you talk to people or the great great achievers and all the famous dentists, it’s sort of inversely proportional to how well they did at university.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, because really a lot.

With a lot of people, their, their passion for dentistry and their knowledge started after they qualified, which is actually great because that’s when you really learn and when you’re older and wiser, right. To really know what you want.

But I.

Just.

Happened. I think I was one.

Of the very few people that really wanted to be there. Let’s face it, it’s a lot of people were there.

For many.

Other reasons than the fact that they wanted to be a dentist. So, you know.

You.

You know, you sailed through school, got pushed up a class, then you sail through through dental school. You obviously find that sort of study side very simple. And I take it you didn’t you didn’t suffer with the anxieties that some people suffer with when they start with patients. You took that in your stride. Did you not consider like specialising?

Yeah, this is a good question. I didn’t. And also.

At the time, it.

Wasn’t something that lots of people did. I don’t know whether you had that experience. It wasn’t.

Now everyone’s everyone wants to.

Do as little as possible.

You know.

But at the.

Time it wasn’t such a thing. And I. I loved it all so.

Much that I couldn’t think of.

Doing one thing.

But what I did do fairly quickly, well, immediately was.

I did my house jobs.

Purely because.

At the time.

It was only you could only.

Do house jobs at Guy’s if.

You were at Guy’s. And so it was one of those things that if you did well, we had a we had an exam called the Oski, you know, the Husky. And then you were ranked you were ranked on that oski and then your house jobs were ranked on.

What you scored.

In your oski And somehow I came.

First in the.

Year in that oski, which, you know, and my academic academically, I wasn’t the best, you know, I wasn’t first, but somehow I did in that exam, God knows. Fluke. And so it.

Was inevitable that I kind of do those house jobs. And so I did do the Max House job, and I did do my restorative. But what I wanted to do.

Learn a bit more about was radiology. Eric Waite, who is just.

Great, the great incredible.

So I did radiology and.

The great Eric Coates, Indeed. So blessed. And and in fact.

He asked me to do the.

Training in radiology because that had just.

Opened up.

And I thought about it because I loved radio. And in fact.

Even to this day, I take some.

X-rays for my dentists.

So those roots, you know, for AIDS and that sort of thing. And I.

See them struggling and I kind of say, well.

Do you want me to take the X-ray for you? You know, if you want to, I don’t mind doing that. So you don’t have to, you know, take gloves off this, that and the other.

Scrub and all this. So I, I love it. But I said no. And then Jemmy Magnus.

Took that role, took that job.

And I said no because I thought, yeah, he’s great.

Um, and.

And Jackie Brown, right. Jackie Brown Incredible. Because I thought, well, I’ve.

Done dentistry.

You know, I love this, but what am I going to do with that? And so.

I.

Yeah, I didn’t do it. And, um, and then I went and did my vet and, and then went into practice. Yeah.

And did you, did you take to practice Quite easily.

I did my vet and it wasn’t a great practice unfortunately. So it put me off practice and a little bit of dentistry because I ended up with a trainer who was not that great and not a great leader, although.

The practice.

The nurses were amazing and I’m.

Still in touch.

With the same nurses from the year 2000. In fact, I’m in touch with almost all of my nurses.

Over the years.

So it was a good practice but not a great leader. And so I.

Kind of was a bit put off it. So then I ended up going back to guys and just teaching a little bit.

And I those were the days where you got jobs.

You know, like in.

The corridor and you didn’t have to apply for things you remember. So I worked there for a couple of.

Years with the incredible Mark McGurk, who is just.

Sending great waves.

Even now. And yeah, and so I and then it was there that I did my diploma in sedation. So whilst I was.

Teaching a bit and doing a.

Bit of A&E and that sort of thing.

I did my post-grad in sedation, um, at Guy’s, which came in really. Sort of handy there. And that was incredible because I was then.

Taught by David Craig, who is my.

Ultimate.

Sedation.

Hero.

Even the queen thinks so because she gave him.

An MBA and Meg.

Skelly Derek debuts.

And now Carol Boyle, who’s fronting Saad who I’m a faculty member for, and I feel very lucky to be there. So there were all my teachers and that was kind of 2002. And then after that.

I braved it and went back to practice. And then I.

Stayed in the same practice for years and years and years.

Yeah. Did you not.

Consider ever buying a practice?

I did. I bought I bought the practice I was working at.

Of course. It’s your practice, right? Yeah. In Docklands. It was.

Well.

In the Docklands. That’s right, Yeah. In Canary Wharf.

Um, so same practice.

I, I bought the partnership because, you know, I mean, it was a.

Great practice and I had a great partner in Nagpaul who was just so different to me in every sense of the way that it just made so much sense. I did that for.

But, but I.

Sold it fairly quickly, maybe three, four years. And it didn’t, you know.

It wasn’t really my style.

Kind of being a being a worker bee and a queen bee at the.

Same time.

Did you not enjoy being the boss?

Uh, well.

I really enjoyed I really enjoyed.

Being a leader and having all of.

Those. I loved my staff. They loved.

Work.

They we were like a family and I really, really enjoyed all of those leaderships.

But often that doesn’t really match well with the business. So I wasn’t very business.

Savvy, but then my.

Partner.

Kind of was. So I kind of had the shop floor.

And the peep dealt with the people and he dealt with the more of the business side of things, which I was probably shocking at. So I really enjoyed that. But then.

I tend.

To I had that even.

Without being the boss. So, you know.

I don’t I don’t have this power issue, You know, I don’t need to, you know, I was thankfully as a dentist.

You’re always a leader, right? You’re a leader for your staff.

Your leader, for your nurse, for your room, for your patients, for the technician. You know, I didn’t necessarily need to own the practice for that, for me to feel that way. I felt it anyway.

I get that. I get that. Yeah, I get that. I find leadership is a really funny thing because it’s there is a difference between being friends with your staff and being their boss. There is a difference. Yeah, and I’m very bad at that. I’m very, very, very poor.

Me too.

But my partner was My partner is very good at that. He’s very strong on that angle. And he’s just an extraordinary human being. You know, he he manages to keep it professional and tell people off when it’s the right time to tell them off and tell them, you know, give them praise when it’s the right time. And whereas with me, it’s literally like I’m talking to a family member and it’s like anything goes. But the combination is actually very strong. You know, it becomes like a head, heart kind of combination where you’ve got both in the same bad cop.

Good cop.

Type.

Situation.

There’s some there’s some of that. But it’s funny because our staff sometimes think we’re doing it on purpose, but we’re not. I always think like like, you know, something like, I don’t know, should they take between Christmas and New Years off?

Should we should they have to be off? I’ll say yes.

And I’m well, no have to be off. They have to take the holidays. Oh, they.

Have to be off. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I’m like, that’s ridiculous. It’s building in pain and resentment for. For what reason? Yeah. And then. But. But they’ll be the other way around. He’ll be the other way around sometimes. And what I’m saying is, my staff, our staff think that we’re doing it on purpose to mess them up or something, but it’s not actually sometimes the way it ends up. Um. Yeah.

Anyway.

But that’s great, isn’t it?

I mean, I kind of ended up.

Being the same. I ended up just.

Paying everyone.

Everything they.

Wanted and.

You know, like, everything. But. But at the end of the day, we never had one day sick leave from any member of my staff. Everyone kind of bounced into work.

It was one of those cliche cartoon type.

Practices where even the patients were like, Gosh, this is really like a.

Happy, you know, it was like literally Lala from the Teletubbies.

But it seems like.

It seems like something you wouldn’t exit because it seems like it was fun and it was, you know, something. Why did you have why.

Did you exit?

Um, you know what? Truthfully, I lost my dad. Um, and I think it.

Was an interesting time because you start to kind. I think anyone that has a shock, whether it’s losing someone very special to you or anything, accident, health, whatever you do, end up re-evaluating. Right? Everything about your life. And I thought, I don’t know whether this responsibility, which I really took personally, you know, I wanted to be the best person as a dentist. I wanted to be the best person, the best dentist that nurses worked with. I wanted to be the best person. You know, I wanted the soap in the bathroom. And in fact, you know what? Something that’s a bit tragic but also funny. After my dad died, my mom had cancer very quickly after.

And I remember being I remember being at the Royal Marsden whilst she was having.

Her treatment and.

The phone rang and it was the practice and I thought, I better take it. And I put the phone sort of quietly into my ear and it was my nurse saying.

All the soap is.

Finished in the bathroom.

And we were just wanting to know, you know, where do you want us to get this?

And and that moment I thought, right, I’m this is bad, You know, this is bad. Like, if I’m stressed, if I’m that kind of person that has to stress I am was really bad.

At actually delegating. Maybe, you.

Know, that wasn’t a good leader. Right. And and I thought, right. I’m sitting here in the Royal Marsden and someone else is worrying about the soap in the bathroom. And I thought, right, this.

Is not good.

And that’s when I thought, maybe this isn’t.

Really for you.

And in fact, I did this really.

Interesting.

Psychology of happiness type thing online. I don’t know.

Whether from a Yale University, it was quite famous. One of my really good friends, Saravi.

Who’s a dentist and.

Reads a lot.

She recommended it and I did it.

And and it shows you your strengths.

And your what they call.

Lesser strengths, but things you’re probably pretty bad at. And three of.

My lesser.

Strengths was.

Perseverance, teamwork and prudence in terms of discipline. And and I thought, you know, and then at that point, honest, she was just the most incredible.

Man, soul mate, just.

Human in the whole world. My husband said to me, Lolly, I love you so much, but I’m.

Starting to not like you that much sometimes.

You know, because you have to let go of some of these. So when I lost my dad, I thought.

Maybe this isn’t.

Really.

And. And also, in a weird sort of.

Way, I’m I.

It doesn’t.

Motivate.

Me. Dentistry actually really doesn’t make any money unless you’re really a good businessman or you’re really getting in, you know, a few practices and all that. I mean, that’s.

Not my style, so why am I doing that? So and actually, one of our associates.

Really wanted to buy into the practice, so it worked out really well. Nobody came, nobody left.

I stayed on. He you know, nothing.

Changed hands like.

So.

I mean, it sounds.

Sounds like a really difficult time with your with your parents. But outside of that terrible thing, did you feel like this was your first failure or did you not feel like a failure? You felt like empowered, empowered by getting out of it?

I thought.

I was such a success.

Actually, because you managed to get out. It was a huge figured it out.

Well well.

The practice when I was a part of being kind of a leader in it, a principal was incredible. And my staff, I’m still friends with my receptionist who.

Says it was the best time of her.

Life working there.

And people, like I said, people like people. So if for me that is a success, if you’ve made a difference in somebody else’s career, somebody else’s life, somebody else, that is amazing. And I’m mean. It was a great period of my time. I didn’t leave it as such. I continued it. In some ways, not much changed and I still interfered with as much as possible within it.

So, you know, so.

And you were.

Doing you were doing quite a, quite an obscene amount of enlightened. I remember at the time it was a successful practice And you were selling lots of dentistry. Do you remember?

Yes.

I was doing.

An obscene amount of enlightening because I because if I really.

Believe in something, I never sell anything I don’t want to have done myself. But God help you if I really believe in your product because I am there.

You’re an all or nothing kind of person.

I am there. And and actually, the patients absolutely loved it. And so, yes, I had I had my logo on your product.

It was amazing. And and yeah, great service. Great.

Yeah. So I did do a lot of.

What did you would you consider what do you consider your biggest failure?

My biggest failure. Um. I mean, all of those things are my kind of lesser strengths, but, um.

As no, I don’t.

I.

Don’t think I’ve, I don’t consider any of my life as a failure because everything is. You learn from everything. I mean, I know that sounds really cliche, and I wish I could have some more interesting things to say, but I do feel a bit sort of humbled by it all. I’m I don’t think I’ve. Have had anything, um, regret sort of shaped regrets? I mean, I think regret wise, it would have been good to do some dentistry abroad.

To do some.

Postgrad abroad.

I think I would have liked to have done my American exams maybe.

At the time because my one of my sisters is American, lives.

In Florida.

My nephew, one.

Of my nephews is a dentist in in Florida. And I think, wouldn’t it be.

Nice to be able to have had some experience abroad and.

Just generally abroad? And and because I was kind of such a.

Sort of a perfect.

Daughter student and all of those things, I.

Think maybe it.

Would have been lovely to have a year out.

And do something else I’d like to have done.

You know, I like to have worked in a.

Bar or something, you.

Know, like I like to have done something. I’ve never done any other job. And, you know, I talk to people and everyone’s done some sort of paper round or something. I never worked.

Dentistry was my first job.

So and I think, you know, something.

Like working in a restaurant makes or breaks you. I mean, you know, and.

Graham Norton, Right.

Said that it was in.

Fact in the podcast of failures, the it’s a great one. He said everybody should work.

In a restaurant because you have so much power in a weird sort of way to make or break somebody else’s night. You understand how people talk to you. You understand about.

Those.

Personalities. You can really change the night for somebody else, and that power is dangerous. You need to be able to know how to control it.

And so I think, gosh, isn’t that yeah, I would like to have done something else. And now, I mean, I’ve changed my career now.

So, um, in.

A weird sort of.

Way and.

It’s such a niche.

Thing that even the patients say.

How did you, you.

Know, are you a dentist or an anaesthetist?

And, you know, how did.

You get into this? So, you know, I’m doing something different, not quite working in a bar, but still.

Well, we’ve got.

You’ve got your, your other interests, which I found out tonight about, which is your Instagram page. Is it is it only an Instagram page or is it more than that. Um, what’s it called?

Spirits. I mean, it’s like the high spirits. It’s the most remind me the name, It’s the most.

Amateur Instagram page. I’m so bad at tech, but it’s called Spirits Run High, which I think is genius. Right? It’s almost as good as my business name of I.V. sedation. And I did. I’ve always want to say, I always like drinking.

I know I’ve always I’ve always been.

Fascinated by flavours and fragrances and mixology, molecular mixology.

Mixology of putting a few things together and creating something beautiful to the eye, to the taste.

I have this picture in my bar of my dad drinking, you know, holding a glass. And he’s.

Got that face of somebody that has just savoured a taste, you know, that lip and the eyes whilst.

Holding a drink.

Because he always said, you know, taste, taste. If you’re drinking something, taste it. Really taste it, live it.

And now we know, you know, savouring everything, every moment.

Everything is one of the biggest one of the six steps to happiness, really.

And so.

Having that mixology.

And have.

Creating something.

It’s been really.

Interesting to.

Me. And like everyone that has a little side hustle during COVID, I ended up doing a.

Mixology.

Certificate online.

Everyone else was doing Cpds.

And I did a.

Mixology.

Certificate online and.

I then set up this page because some friends wanted to know a few mixes and whatnot and then it just.

Sort of, yeah, grew from there. I mean, it’s literally like nothing. I have like, you know, a hundred followers or something. But, but I love it. And, and actually I am one of those people that comes home punished and I will come home and we would make a cocktail and we would sit.

And talk to each other. And we are blessed with the fact that we don’t have children to worry about. So I really.

Savour those moments.

I savour it for my.

Guests and.

Anish and I do this routinely, you know? So yeah, it’s one of my favourite things to do. Dine and wine.

Nice.

Well that we’re getting to the end of our time. Let’s. Let’s finish it in the usual way. You said you said you listened to this podcast sometimes. So hopefully you’re ready for these questions. Fantasy dinner party.

I never prepare. So three guests. But. But yes.

Yes.

Three guests. Dead or alive, who would you have?

Well, you.

Know, I start every dinner party.

With champagne.

Um, and I kind.

Of expect every dinner party that I attend to start with champagne. So my first guess, who better than the grand dame of. That the condom of champagne, Veuve Clicquot.

Arguably probably the first business.

Woman in the world. I think so. Barbe-nicole. Her surname was Ponsardin. She became a widow at 27 with a young daughter.

And a failing wine business. And at the time.

In.

France, I think.

Many places, the only women that had financial independence.

Were.

Widows.

The word verb meaning widow.

And and so she really gave up all of her independence, her inheritance, and she kept persevering. She learned I mean, this was a failing business. She went back to.

Learn more and more and more. And she was really courageous because in.

This is what I want to know more.

From her.

Because.

The.

Napoleonic.

War.

Was coming to an end and trade was poised to sort of start again. And she actually smuggled 10,000 bottles of her famous 1811 vintage in a ship and parked it in Amsterdam ready for that treaty to be signed. And so the day it was signed, she beat every other.

House.

To infiltrate Russia with champagne.

And truth. Behold, the first glass that Tsar Alexander held and drank.

Was Veuve Clicquot. And he said he won’t drink anything else.

And really, after.

That, many widows in champagne like Louise Pommery, Lily.

Bollinger, Laurent Perrier, more recently, Taittinger are all kind of really from that backbone of Veuve Clicquot. So I think she’d probably.

Be my first guest and I would serve her her a grand vintage.

A grande dame.

Wow.

Did you learn all this on your mixology course?

Do you know what I love? Yeah.

I don’t watch TV, which is very interesting.

So I’m kind of.

Always reading things. Not book, not books.

But on the internet and computers.

And that sort of thing.

But I love stories.

I mean, these are great stories, right? Yeah.

So I savour it and yeah.

So this is. That will be my beautiful.

Yes.

Beautiful. Never had her before. Who’s your second guest? No.

So my second guest would probably be.

So somebody like.

Sigmund Freud and not well.

For two reasons. Firstly, I don’t know much about him. Actually. My sister’s a psychologist, so she sort of fills in the blanks for me. But I have realised that I’m.

Definitely interested in in people’s personalities and their whys and their past.

And how that.

Infiltrates in them.

And so I kind of really like to know a.

Bit more about him. I mean, he was very avant garde.

And so I would like to know it from him. Plus, secretly, I’m hoping.

He’s going to bring Dolly with.

Him so.

I can just invite Dolly, make the.

Whole thing. Yeah, well, I don’t want.

To waste a space. No disrespect to Dolly, because he’s. Because.

But Dolly is one of those people that he’s just such a.

Crazy guy, right? Like, I don’t. Not really sure he’s going to sit down at the dinner table. He’ll probably probably mean upside down like that.

He’ll probably be like that paradoxical.

Guy right on the ceiling have to peel.

Off. And so but but you know, but quite like to have a bit of surrealism.

In this and so and then my my second reason.

For inviting him is that let’s face it, I mean we both deal with the conscious and the subconscious.

And avoiding the unconscious.

Right?

So I think we have a lot in common. So I would.

I’m suddenly I’m suddenly realising why you were top of your class. Fully prepared. Answer man.

I just thought.

I just thought, God, he keeps going on about the conscious and I keep going on about.

The conscious and the subconscious and yeah, probably.

I’d probably serve him. I wouldn’t serve him champagne, I’d probably serve him something a bit more grounded, like.

Something that.

I mean my favourite classic cocktail. Not that you asked, but what would be.

Would be something that something that.

Grounds you, that you kind of there’s some cocktails that you can hold in your.

Hand and.

You’re always going to have great.

Conversation with the person in front of you. And so for him, it’ll it’s going to have to be a Negroni.

No, I think this.

Is this is something where.

You you’re always going to you know, you’re going to have a great conversation. No one drinks a Negroni unless.

They’re prepared to have.

A great conversation. So yeah, that’s, that’s my second guess.

And guess my.

I guess my last guess.

Which which is which. I think every, every person, every.

Person that has lost.

A parent would tell you that they would give absolutely anything, anything to have one more dinner Right. With their parent. So I’m no different.

And so my last guess would be.

Howdy, Sheriff. Yeah.

Um, my dad and he would fit right in because he was a master of, you know, he was a giant amongst.

Men anyway, but he was a master of public relations and just so incredible in a crowd. So the kind of person that, you know, people really listen to. So and.

You know, sometimes you have one of those guests where you ask.

Them to come a little bit earlier. Have you done that in a dinner party where you ask one couple to.

Come half an hour earlier? Yeah. So I would secretly want my dad to come a little bit earlier just so that I can just hug him for half an hour and not let go of him.

So. Oh.

So that’s what I would, um, and probably serve him something like a vodka martini because he was so distilled in every way, you know, that it needs to be.

Like it has such a zest.

For life that it needs to.

Be a vodka more. I mean, he was a bit of a James Bond. Anyway, it needs to be a vodka martini with a nice little lemon twist. Yeah.

So that would be the beautiful dinner party. I mean, I’d love I’d love my you know, I love Anish. You know.

Anish is.

Anish and I are one.

Person. You know, we’re always attached. I’m surprised, you know, if you move the camera a little bit to the left, you probably see him. So, I mean, obviously you want your family, but those are the three kind of, you know.

I’m Iranian now, so now.

There’s going to be like 80 and.

Plus Anish is.

Indian. So if we invite his family, there’ll be about 700 people there.

So amazing, amazing answers, though. Amazing answers, though. I’m struck by how positive you are. Maybe it’s your it’s your delivery. Even when you’re talking about something quite sad, you’re laughing and and smiling. It’s a very unique way of being. It’s very nice.

Um, thank you. I’m very humbled. I think that’s important. And I always used to tell the receptionist, Just smile when you’re on the phone.

Um, because people know, right?

They know how you feel.

I even put on some perfume today for.

You, actually.

Because you know you want to.

Feel good, so.

But thank.

You. Yes.

Let’s get on to two, perhaps. Favourite question. The deathbed. You’ve got your friends, family or your loved ones around you. Three pieces of advice you’d leave for them.

And this is a very.

Good this is a.

Mean it’s a great question because it is it is.

Just giving those.

Advice as a 46 year old, you.

Know, things you wish you knew, right. When you really, for your younger self, think something that I’ve invested in that has been really.

Quite a centrepiece for my happiness. And I think, um, is that I would advise.

You to invest in being time affluent and not. Wealth affluent. And that I think it’s really important. I mean, this is not just me being little Miss Chatterbox. This is very well researched and the actual the happiness of people that value time over money is huge. It’s huge difference. A big difference. So having just having that time to do nothing or to go and see a chum for a boozy lunch or just just have time. So I.

Think investing in.

In having time is my first piece of advice.

Beautiful.

Um, I would say the second thing would be to always raise your words and not your voice. It is just something that respects people when they deserve it the least.

And I think when.

We’re sometimes in that low or in that moment, it is so easy to forget about humanity and people.

But I think the more.

You are able to communicate, you can use the words this is really important so that it’s rain that grows.

Flowers, not thunder. So that would probably be my second.

That’s beautiful advice. I’ve never heard that before.

Respect people when they deserve it the least. It’s a beautiful idea.

And, you know, interestingly enough, when I when we go out with people, I notice how they treat people they don’t need to treat well. So I notice.

How they.

Are treating the waiter or how they are treating, you know, like I always say to my nephew, when you go out on a date.

Watch how that person is treating others.

Because they’re going to treat you well. You’re sitting in front of them about to pay for their bill, you know, But.

What about everyone else? And, you know, this is when the.

Patients notice when you treat your nurse really well.

Yeah. Agreed. And vice versa.

So I these things for me.

Are really.

Important. So. Yeah, that’s where that. Back story of that is really.

Agree with that. I really agree with that what you said about the nurse thing because specifically so so so true. How much your patient’s respect goes up for you when you’re respect for your nurses?

Absolutely.

What there was was there was there three bits of advice? Okay. So my last bit of advice.

I mean, I’m I’m Persian.

So every Persian is going to be talking about poetry and the epic books.

And this is what we’re that’s been woven into every cell of our body. You know that Payman We’re very proud of it.

We’re proud of this 2000 history. But interestingly, my mom and my dad always said to me, the.

Fact that, you know about your own culture is fantastic.

Everyone should know about their own culture. But my dad said, don’t forget.

What’s impressive is.

When you understand and you learn about other people, about other epic books, about other people’s cultures, That’s what’s impressive. Not really reeling off things you know about yourself. That’s your responsibility. You should know. So for for my.

Last piece of advice, I think is what Lord Krishna said in the mahabharat, the great epic.

Book, The.

Longest Love poem or love? Yeah, in the world. We have the Shahnameh and the Indians have the Mahabharat. But I really love this.

He said.

Do everything that you do. Not with.

Greed, not with ego, not with envy.

But with compassion, with humility, with love and.

Devotion. And each of these, each of these words, if you really savour, savour each of these words. So, you know, when I say humility, I don’t mean just be modest. I mean look inwards, you know, look inwards and and and improve and be better and learn from others.

And I think all of those that’s that.

Sentence that I read really resonated with me because it’s.

So.

Wholesome. And I think if you lead that life that’s both hedonistic and.

Holistic, you know, we all want to have.

Fun. We all want to pursue pleasure. But if you’re able to have that kind of really, um, holistic.

World around you to.

Create that happiness, not to be on that hedonistic treadmill where you’re constantly after that nice watch and the nice car and then this and that and.

That, the next high.

The next high.

Because we know, we know that the reason why.

It’s called.

That treadmill is that.

We know that.

Everybody that that that short surge of surge of happiness that you get we know everybody ends up coming back to that same level. I mean, this is what happens with lottery winners.

This is what.

Happens. This is this is not just me going off piece. This is this is a fact. Right. And I.

Think if you’re.

Able to savour if you’re able to follow what what.

Krishna.

Said, if you’re able to savour those moments that drink that moment, to have gratitude, to have gratitude for where you study, to have respect for the people that teach you to want to learn, to cultivate curiosity. And these are all things I think we should teach them in Dental school even. But to be able to really sit and when you talk to someone to lean forward, to show them that you’re engaged, be interested in people. I think just all of those things as a whole, that is the secret to happiness.

So nice, man. I feel like. I feel like you’re one of the most successful humans I’ve come across. I really do. It’s a lovely to hear that. Um, it’s been a massive pleasure having you. And thank you so much. If people want to get in touch with you, it’s called IV sedation, but IV spelt different, isn’t it? Iv. Like the plant. I.v. Sedation.

Is that right? That’s right. Yes. Yes.

That’s right. That’s right.

And and the boozy.

The boozy one was what was that called? The boozy Internet site. Oh, God, no.

No, Instagram. You should. You’re not interested in pushing that one to that? No, no, not that one. Push it. Push it.

Through. It’s run high.

It’s run high.

I mean, I don’t know.

How high they run over there, but, you know, they could run a little higher, I think. But that’s.

Okay.

It’s been a progress.

It’s been a massive, massive pleasure. It’s such, such a unique story and such a unique person. Really, really lovely to to connect with you like this.

Thanks, lady.

I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

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

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

If you did get some value out of it, Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

And don’t forget our six star rating.

And I see a wide range of different types of clinicians who have different philosophies is the one you’re coming from is about actually giving the patient longevity in terms of their dentistry that you’re offering them, right? Something that’s going to last, not something that, okay, I’m going to change your smile in whatever, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever the latest craze is today. And it’ll look great. But but the habits that you’ve developed to get your teeth to where you were when you stepped in my door have not changed. Right. So you’re going to you’re going to continue to grind. You’re going to continue to, you know, bite bottle tops off of bottles and things like that and screw your teeth up and you’ll be back here in in six months sort of thing.

So and if you can identify and make the patient see where it’s going wrong, some people might look at this and go, Oh, financially this patient will end up spending less in the long run. But if you look at it from the point of view, this is more likely to become a patient that will come back every six months so that we can check for mouth cancers so that we can check their general the health of the gum and the bone. What’s going to happen is if we feel looked after, guess what? If our friend down the pub have a problem with it and every most people are scared of going to the dentist. Most people.

Without question.

Yeah. And if we if this patient can go. Do you know what? Trust me, you need to go to whoever. I don’t even have to say. Just go. You’ll see what I mean. Guess what? You’ll be building your practice long term and you’ll create an environment where patients want to be there. Staff clinicians want to be there, and everything moves in the right direction.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Dental Leaders podcast. Today on Dental Leaders we have Liza Benting, who’s been a dentist for over two decades, has been a practice owner and associate in numerous practices and currently is a team member at Pluto Partners, where she leads essentially negotiations for selling dental practices. What a colourful career she’s had, and I’m looking forward to hearing from you, Lisa, and and just filling in all the bits in in that story of yours. Welcome to the podcast, Lisa.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Lisa, tell me about your backstory. Let’s start right at the beginning where you grew up and your backstory and just your upbringing. Tell me tell me a little bit about that.

I’m originally from sunny Cape Town, South Africa, and the year I qualified was a time when things were changing in South Africa and things were very uncertain in the world of dentistry as far as new rules that were implemented by the government and I qualified in 2000 and in that year about 36. We were 48 at Stellenbosch University and 36 of us decided to come to the UK until such time that they decide what they will do. As far as newly qualified dentists in South Africa is concerned. The plan initially was never to stay. The plan was to go back at some point, but after 2 or 3 years, I had a little girl to Mia, and after 2 or 3 years she settled into the system and schooling. And you look at start looking at things differently. When you start thinking of the family and stability and everything else. And myself and my now ex-husband came over and the plan was always for us to have a family practice together. But with being qualifying in South Africa, we had to do four years within working as assistants. They could call us at the time so that we can apply for a visa number. And in 2006 we applied for visa numbers and set up a family practice together, our own practice. But things didn’t work out. And in 2009 I decided to leave the family practice. And that is actually when, if I can say that my journey within different elements of private and NHS dentistry began. At the time I thought things were falling apart. But actually looking back, I can now see how the dots connect and actually finding myself as an associate versus a principal in different environments. I always used to work full time, but I used to divide my time with three days in one practice, two days in another, and maybe a Saturday.

I’m going to stop you right there. I’m going to take I’m going to take you right back to the time when you thought your whole world was falling apart. Right? So so what were the circumstances that led you to leave the family practice where you said, Right, I’ve had enough. I’ve got my own clinic, I’m my own boss, I’m running this. And doing that is no easy job. Right? So. So you’ve been a practice owner? Yeah. What was it that what were the circumstances around that made you say, Right, this this isn’t for me anymore?

Unfortunately, I found myself in a situation where my marriage broke down. Okay? And with being in that situation, like you’ve mentioned, it’s extremely difficult. But because I don’t think any of us would like a family unit to be broken. But sometimes these difficult decisions, we just know it’s the right decision for everyone. Sure. What was difficult, not only did my personal life, did my personal life feel as if it was falling apart, but my professional life as well, because I was building this, my career and this business and everything else, and stepping away was one of the most difficult things I had to do, both in my personal and professional life. And to a degree it felt like I was starting again. And this is why I would say it felt like everything was falling apart. Having to move from, like you say, being your own boss and then having to work as an associate is quite difficult. And finding a practice where you feel as if you belong, which I think a lot of clinicians can associate with, is quite difficult because there are so many boxes, there are so many variables within dentistry that is very difficult to sometimes get that balance right. You can never tick all your boxes, but I think. We all know we are all different as clinicians, but we all know which boxes we can compromise on and which boxes are non-negotiables. Yeah. And at the time when I say it felt as if was falling apart, I’ve always used to work three days in one, two days in another, maybe even a Saturday emergency clinic and things.

And I used to think after three, four years finding out because it takes a bit of time to settle in a practice, to really know whether it is something where you feel as if you belong. And I found myself certain practices, this one that I stayed for for like 11, 12 years. But some of them after three, four years, I find that it was time to move on. And sometimes that can be seen as somebody that is maybe not never happy, but it could also be somebody that just wouldn’t just settle for something for the sake of settling for it. And when I say looking back, I realise things were actually falling in place. What that gave me is the opportunity over the last. It was 2009. So I would say over the last 13, 14 years, to be able to be exposed to different clinical environments, different dynamics, staff locations, NHS fully, NHS, fully private, mixed everything. And when you are in it, you don’t see the bigger picture. But now, looking back, I’ve accumulated this wealth of experience and knowledge of having an understanding which I feel is actually quite priceless because a lot of times, for all the right reasons, we don’t always find ourselves being able to see the inside of different clinics.

I think that Lisa, I think that’s really interesting. And we’re going to we go into tap into where you are today, right? A little a little bit shorter. But I think your experience brings a lot of a lot of benefits to that role, which you find yourself in at Pluto Partners now sort of advising both, you know, practice owners and potential buyers on, on, on, on, you know, what the future might be or potential exits or a deal that’s ahead of them. And you having been a practice owner, having been through the adversities that you’ve been through. Right. So having been through a divorce, dealing with whatever situations that brings to you mentally and personally and and being at that bottom of that dark hole and bringing yourself back up, having worked in several practices as an associate. But what is it that you wanted? Because every associate is different, right? So what is it that you wanted as an associate that boxes were ticked in, one that weren’t in another? And how was that? How did that align with you as a boss previously when you had associates under you? Right. So I’m really interested to hear that because were you looking for a job where you were looking for Lisa as your boss, or were you looking for a job where you weren’t looking for Lisa as your boss because you’d hate to be your own boss? Right. I’m just curious to explore that part of the conversation and just learn about really what your thought on that. Hope. Hope. My question made sense.

It makes 100% sense and I hope my answer will make sense as well. I think with dentistry, it’s a very unique profession and there’s this balance between the profession and the business. Maybe what I found in certain environments and once again, to no fault, anybody’s fault, it’s just we all have different things that maybe we strive for and wanting to achieve. And sometimes I felt that that balance where the business starts taking over the profession, is such a sense of false economy, because when we invest in our patients and our patients care, what happens is as far as word of mouth and patients feel before they see and when they feel that they’re being looked after, I find that it’s a no brainer. They would they want to come and see you. They’ll tell their family and their friends about that. And sometimes that’s very difficult to try and demonstrate when when you try and get the balance with the business right as well. Because in the short term, it might appear as if it’s just a waste of time. And the more bums on seats we have, the more money we’ll make. But actually what we create is an environment that is potentially unnecessarily stressful in a profession that is already so stressful and demanding with nothing happening. And I think the difficulty as an associate sometimes is everything stops with you. You take 100% responsibility for what you do, yet you have no control over the factors that contribute to what you have, to the environment that you find yourself in in order to deliver. So as far as principal and associate go and the different wearing the different hats, I would say the biggest discrepancy for me was being in a situation where people expected you to deliver a predictable outcome, but giving you conditions that’s impossible to deliver.

Well, give me some examples, Lisa.

So examples of that would be, for instance, time surgery time with patients. Not enough.

Not enough time, not enough.

Time, not enough time. And I totally appreciate that. Time is money. Yeah. Like I say, sometimes it’s a false economy because if you take a shortcut, which you wouldn’t want to do in any case, but if you do because it’s totally out of your control, what happens is you just setting something up for the future where you’ll end up spending more time. Such a lose lose. Lose situation. And as well as putting yourself at risk of litigation. And when it comes to that, you are the only one that will have to stand there and answer and take responsibility for your actions. And another thing would also be staff, the the quality of the staff, the efficiency of the staff. But I appreciate this can also be difficult. And this is where the false economy comes in, because when you stress your staff, no wonder they won’t feel motivated or as clear as in the moment as they should be in order for us to deliver what we have to do. So time staff, sometimes it can even be materials, limited materials and things, because as an associate you don’t have that freedom to get what you would like to use unless you get it yourself. And so this could just be a few things. And then also the staff, the members of the team team is so important because if the team is not performing as a unit, it reflects on everything. And my best way of putting it all together is that as an associate, you can find yourself in the position where if you aren’t there to deliver, nobody else makes sense. The receptionist doesn’t make sense, the nurse can’t do anything. Yet the person that is so important, the clinician, is the one that ends up pulling the short straw at the end of the day. So you have to settle for this or you go, okay, this is how things are. I get it. It’s all fine. This is how we, the principal, maybe would like to run the practice, and that’s absolutely fine. But maybe this is not my environment that I would like to be part of.

Please tell me this. Having said all of that, were you the boss that gave your associates all the time, all the materials they wanted and the conditions that you expect? Was that was that the type of boss that you were?

And yes, I would say and this even stems from this even stems from and I appreciate there’s a balance between the business side of things. But this I feel, even stems from the way that we were brought up. Yeah. If it’s not good enough for you, why is it good enough for someone else? Sure. If it is that you treat people the way that you would like to be treated, then for me that is something that you invest in that will pay dividends moving forward and it has a knock on effect. Your associate feeling valued will make your your associate, your staff feeling valued will make your patients feel as if they are valued and the whole unit just works. But when there’s a weak link, it has a knock on effect for all the wrong reasons and long term you start seeing that it starts to crumble and crumble and it creates an environment sometimes where staff don’t want to be there, they don’t want to be there. Patients don’t want to be there.

Understood. Understood. So, so, so from your point of view and I know you’re sort of saying that time is money and all the rest of it, right? But, you know, you can also waste a lot of very hurried time not delivering optimal treatments to patients, not delivering optimal care. And let’s look at the money side, not delivering the sales that you otherwise would have done had you given those patients more time. Right. And the trust that they have in you will result in let’s not put to put too fine a point on it. You know, larger treatment plans, bigger amounts of money exchanged. Right. And I come across a lot of practice owners, Lisa, that have both sides of that mentality. Some of them who are working on the clock and they’re looking at hourly rates all the time and they’re saying, right, 15 minute appointments for that, 20 minute appointments for this and so on and so forth. So so for you, just just tell me in terms of your appointments with with patients, a typical check-up or a consultation, how much time would you take and what would be your process with that patient in terms of educating them on on maybe what they would need? Just just talk me through that, Lisa.

So if I talk from a from a basic private point of view, I would say I think in general as a new patient, that initial consultation with a patient is so important because this is the point where you start building up your rapport. You get to know your patient a little bit and your patient gets to know you. Sometimes we can even find that. Sometimes the two just don’t go together for whatever reason. And if you can pick that up at that initial consultation, you can save yourself and the patient. A lot of problems moving forward. But that initial consultation is so important. And the thing that I why it’s so important so time wise, I would say new patients, 45 minutes, 45 minutes so that you can gather your information, get to understand your patient, get to understand what they are looking to achieve from their Dental journey, building up a rapport so that when you can actually start helping them or try and explain to them what you can do to help them, that they’ve already built up a little bit of trust and connection with you. In order for you to deliver what you need to deliver to help them. So it works both ways. And sometimes I feel that if that initial connection rapport is not being built, then the patient would end up maybe not feeling comfortable taking on board a treatment plan. And we interpret it as the patient being difficult, as the patient not wanting the treatment. But actually it’s a normal human response to something that if we don’t feel comfortable or we don’t trust, why would we invest in something so first? But I would say is that initial connection is so important for both parties to know whether it’s going to work moving forward, working together.

Also, that initial one is important to understand where is the patient? And the thing I feel passionate about is, is the patient to take responsibility for their Dental health. I did a postgraduate certificate at Eastman and something that stuck with me. One of the lecturers mentioned, he said that we have all these advanced treatments, implants, advanced fillings, materials, crowns, everything. This is brilliant, but if the patient doesn’t maintain it, it’s worth nothing. Yet as far as maintenance goes, I feel that’s an area that is innocently being overlooked because of the lack of time that people have to spend on it. And what he said is he said, if we go ahead and we do all these beautiful, beautiful fillings and crowns and implants and smile makeovers, but the patient doesn’t maintain it. It’s like putting carpets in the house whilst the roof is on fire. What is the point? At some point it’s all going to collapse. But what happens is when we see patients and they keep needing further treatments and or things go wrong ten years down the line, we blame the patient because they didn’t look after it. But did we actually educate them enough to take that responsibility? And when we take the time, we don’t have to do all of it at that initial visit. But when that trust and build up that rapport and just get them to have an understanding, we can build on that moving forward. Because in order for us to help them, they need to come through the door. If they don’t come through the door, you can have the best practice with the best intentions, with the best equipment. If they don’t come through the door, we cannot help them.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And and it’s a slightly different philosophy to what, you know, you get you get some dentists who want to get them in. They want to do the cosmetic dentistry, sell it and away it goes. And I guess from what I’m hearing from you, it’s more about long term care of the patient. Right. And, you know, whether that treatment has to be staged over six, 12, 18, 24 months or whatever that is, you’ll get them there in the end. But that patient has got to commit to looking after what you’re going to put into their mouth, right? Yes. Yes. And so I guess it’s a slightly different philosophy from from a from a clinician’s point of view, as I see. And I see a wide range of different types of clinicians who have different philosophies is the one you’re coming from is about actually giving the patient longevity in terms of their dentistry that you’re offering them, right? Something that’s going to last, not something that, okay, I’m going to change your smile in whatever, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever the latest craze is today. And it’ll look great. But but the habits that you’ve developed to get your teeth to where you were when you stepped in my door have not changed. Right. So you’re going to you’re going to continue to grind. You’re going to continue to, you know, bite bottle tops off of bottles and things like that. And. Screw your teeth up and you’ll be back here in six months sort of thing. So, um.

And if you can identify and make the patient see where it’s going wrong, some people might look at this and go, Oh, financially this patient will end up spending less in the long run. But if you look at it from the point of view, this is more likely to become a patient that will come back every six months so that we can check for both cancers so that we can check their general the health of the gum and the bone. What’s going to happen is if we feel looked after, guess what? If our friend down the pub have a problem with it and every most people are scared of going to the dentist. Most people without.

Question. Yeah.

And if we if this patient can go. Do you know what? Trust me. You need to go to whoever. I don’t even have to say. Just go. You’ll see what I mean. Guess what? You’ll be building your practice long term, and you’ll create an environment where patients want to be there. Staff, clinicians want to be there, and everything moves in the right direction.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Totally agree with you there, Lisa. So sort of moving on with your career. So you’ve how long have you been an associate? Was it when did you leave the practice?

The 2009, 2009?

She had the practice for, what was it, about nine years, is that right?

Three It was because we had to wait to do the number and things only for a short. So it was only three years. Three years.

You built the practice up over three years, left that and then went into your various roles. And, and so fast forward into today. Talk me through what you do now, because I was actually chatting to Max Zucchini or is it zucchini? I think it’s zucchini. Zucchini, Zucchini. It’s definitely zucchini. I used to call him Max Zucchini. And then he then then he reminded me, Prav, if you want to remember my name, just think of a zucchini. Yeah. And just think back on it. So it’s a zucchini. Anyway, so speaking to Max, and he told me that you join Pluto Partners, and, you know, Pluto is a company who helped helped me exit from from my dental practice and many of my clients as well. I’ve got a lot of love and time for Max. But how did that come about? Just just talk to me about that journey. How did you first meet? I’ll tell you about the story of when I met Max. It’s really interesting. Tell me yours.

Honestly, life is amazing. Like I say, we look at it in the in the moment and we don’t realise how it’s actually setting things up to come together further down the line. So I always felt that there was so much more to me than just being a clinician. I always felt that I enjoyed industry. I love helping patients. I don’t have a problem with that, but I always felt there was more, but for different reasons. As far as timing goes, it was just I feel that 22 years full time in dentistry, that is how it had to be. But leading up to that, two years before the pandemic, I thought that maybe the reason I feel there was more to me was to expand my Dental knowledge, like maybe I should specialise in something. But if I’m honest with you, there’s not one thing that jumps out at me. I can’t say, Oh, implants or perio or ortho, nothing. So I decided to do a postgraduate degree at Eastman. That’s where Eastman comes in. And.

And when? When was this? At what point in your career was it just before the pandemic? This was.

Just 2018. Was my first year. 2018, just before just before. And I decided to do a master’s in restorative because of the fact that it was quite wide. It would just enhance your skill as far as restorative dentistry is concerned. So it wasn’t just focusing on one thing. It was for me quite a wide just enhancing skills because I couldn’t pinpoint what in dentistry I wanted to focus on. Then I did the certificate. I then did the first year of the diploma, and then the second year of the diploma was when the when the pandemic hit. And for many people, I think the pandemic was quite an eye opener. And what it taught me or what I took from that is I realised that it wasn’t my skill in dentistry that I was that was the problem. The missing piece, not it wasn’t that what was actually missing for me was the fact that those four walls of the surgery was limiting me, was restricting me, was acting almost like a hindrance. Because even if and I admire the advance that how advanced dentistry is and what clinicians can deliver, but you still end up within those four walls with a patient, with a nurse. And for me, I realised that was actually the problem. It was time for me to get away from those four walls and get out. But where do I go? What do I do? I just knew clinical dentistry full time was not for me anymore and this is where I started looking at where do I go from here? The thing with property and I know dental sales is not property, but the thing with property for me and this was in the pandemic is something that is so different to clinical. And it almost to a degree, it’s like a part of my brain that was not tapped into because of.

But where does property come into the mix right now? Have you have you have you, though, before.

Before the pandemic? If when I started thinking, okay, side hustle, what else do okay. The only thing that I thought of was property and why property I think became attractive is the fact that it’s just so different to dentistry. Totally different. It’s a totally different field. It is just it’s just and it gives you that freedom of anything, any time versus dentistry being restricted. So that at first I was just thinking very wide. So I started reading up a little bit more. I actually signed up to find out more out about deal packaging, things like that. And then when the pandemic hit, it also reminded us that when we don’t go into a surgery as a dentist, then we are stuffed in a way because if we don’t see a patient and if we don’t have a nurse and that physically, clinically that doesn’t happen, then we we’re no different to anybody else out there that’s at home. And obviously unless you have courses and things that you can offer. But as far as the clinical side, unless we’re in the surgery, we can’t deliver. And this is also when I started thinking, oh my goodness, maybe something like property is something that is a little bit less restrictive. You can do it from anywhere in the world. You can in your own time and something you can do parallel whilst you’re still busy doing your dentistry. And it’s in 2021 that I realised that I had to close one door or, or or slightly close one door in order to create space mentally and to create time to start working on what is my next chapter, what is the next door?

Why, why, why at this? What happened at that point? Was that was there a moment where you said, okay, this this has happened now or there must have been. Yeah, like some something that happened or a moment to say, right. In 2021, I have to close the door. What was that? What was that moment?

What happened there is, as you can probably pick up from what I’ve already said, I was I was gravitating towards that decision, but actually didn’t take it because I was still quite comfortable doing, you know, when you’re in a comfort zone, you just end up staying in your comfort zone because it’s. Isn’t it? It’s safe. Yeah. And why would we want to create uncertainty if we’re in a nice little safe place and it’s working? But when I had the first vaccine, the COVID vaccine, I was quite unwell and I it created symptoms like chronic fatigue. And my my brain just was just so slow I could still work as a dentist. I could still perform. But I was very much aware of how the strain it was taking on my brain and the intensity. Whereas before we none the wiser how hard this muscle actually works. And this also made me realise that now is the time for me. Whilst I still have the ability to make a change, I need to make a change because if not even health wise, I’m starting to run out of options if I don’t start putting something in place. Because for dentistry, mentally you have to be in the zone and on top form in order to deliver. And so my turning point was the wake up call, I would have to say, is when my health was affected. And it reminded me of how also how fragile life is. And sometimes we plan on doing things, but we put it off and then things can just change in a blink of an eye. So not only was it the health, health wise being able to think the effects it had on me and how much it took from me to deliver as a clinician, but also the wake up call as in life is precious and it can change so quickly. If you don’t do things, you put it off. But if you don’t do things, you could end up finding yourself in a position where you never actually achieve what you wanted to do.

Okay, so what happened next?

So the next, which was okay, it’s a no brainer. I know exactly which door to open next, but I knew which door to start closing and I need to start taking action. I handed my notice in and actually worked at.

So so let me just. So you handed your notice in before you had any options on the table, Right? It’s not as though you said, hold on a minute. I’ve got this great opportunity here. I’m going to hand my notice it. Now, you actually decided, you know what, I’m going to make some head space. And in order to do that, I’m going to I’m going to take a risk. And that risk is to kiss goodbye to this income and this job and whatever. Yes. And then figure it out because I know I need to do something else, but I don’t know what that is. Right. Exactly. Very brave. Very brave.

And Prav, it was a case of if you look at it on paper, I was in a very safe space being my pandemic and everything, because of course, I had a job at Jacob being the dentist there. Jacob the Digger company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was a very safe, like I said earlier, safe comfort zone, certainty, everything. Yeah. Good work environment as well. But I knew.

Got whatever materials you wanted.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Spend the time with the patients that you wanted. Yeah, Yeah. Beautiful. Couldn’t ask for anything more.

And this one? I still knew it wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

All right.

So by taking that risk, you can see there was it was it took a lot to take that step. But I couldn’t deny the fact that it was still holding me back from what I felt I had to give and what I felt where I could be. And when I say could be, this is not me chasing money because it was just chasing money. Where would I stay in dentistry, isn’t it?

Yeah, of course.

So this is an opportunity and there’s nothing wrong with having a lot of money, but this is an opportunity that if I stepped away from it, I give myself a chance of achieving what I feel I have the potential to achieve. And that being getting out there, being able to make a difference still in dentistry, but from a different angle. And how it came about is I handed my notice in, didn’t know which door to open, but I knew I had to close this one in order to have some hope of some direction as to where to go.

And just just to pick up on what you just said there, you said selling dentistry, but from a different angle. Was that in your head at that moment when you were closing the door? Definitely.

Yeah.

It definitely revolved around sales. Is that is that was that something that was clear in your mind and something that you were passionate about at the time?

I feel what I used to think that sales was very I want to use the word dirty is not the use.

It most people do. Right? It’s a dirty.

Word. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what I’ve learned is that everything is sales. And if we have something that can add value to someone’s life, then we have a duty to, to, to help them. And in order and I don’t necessarily talk monetary, but in order to make that difference, we need people to buy into us. And you know what was very evident Prav and what was very for me was very almost reassuring, is I’ve been doing this for the last 22 years without even realising it, having the ability to help a patient making a difference, whether it’s their oral hygiene, whether it’s a filling, whether it’s an extraction, whether it’s getting rid of infection, whether it’s whatever, in order to help that patient, that patient needs to buy into you. And if they don’t buy into you, that is when the relationship starts going in the wrong direction. But if we don’t go out there and make people aware of what we have that can help them, then we actually not serving them correctly. And this is where the sales side comes in. And it is correct because if I then try and use my experience in clinical dentistry, not the clinical side, but the sales side, where we have something that we can offer to a patient, you will not believe how similar this is with the role that I have right now. There are so many similarities between us seeing a patient as a clinician, gathering information, getting the patient to understand exactly what’s happening, explaining to the patient in a language that they get where we are, where we need to get there, and how we need that patient on board.

Because it’s a team effort. It’s very similar with this type of job. So leaving the clinical side, I knew I wanted to go into making a difference, helping serving, if I could call it that. And that is where the sales side of things came in. So there’s a friend of mine that studied with me in Stellenbosch, Irvin Vanderveldt. He’s a clinician as well, and we have been in contact. And because he is part of a bigger group and more on the business side of dentistry, when I left clinical dentistry, I sent him a message. I said, Eben, do you could you give me some guidance, some advice? I don’t need a job. I just want to if now that you are on the other side, on the business side, as a clinician, what is my what would my options be? And most of the options were from a clinical point of view, which I knew. Nope, not interested. Not interested. Not interested because I was going back into those four walls. And then this was in May and then in July he said that, you know, Lisa, I’m going to put you in touch with Tracy. She’s a from South Africa. She’s a recruitment agent. And maybe you can have a little word with her because she might know a little bit more about these different options that’s available for clinicians out there.

And I contacted Tracy and I explained to her what I where I was and I did a cover letter so she could pick up that I wanted to go into the sales side of things. I spoke to her on the Monday and she had three options that she was thinking of. Bear in mind, I’ve not verbally spoken to her. The one was some like a supervisor know. Another one was maybe helping clinicians. That’s coming from other countries and getting the exact no. And the third one was Dental practice sales negotiator. I didn’t even know that was what the name was. I just knew it was the person buying and selling Dental That’s helping with buyers and sellers. Yeah. And then she said, But I’ve got no roles available that you could step into or that’s available that I can put your CV forward. But I helped the dentist six months ago with recruiting an associate, and I know that he is part of a company. He’s a director in one of a company that deals with this type of thing, buying and selling of dental practices. Let me speak to him. So if he knows of anyone that is looking for somebody like that. And this dentist was actually Peter Classen, who’s from South Africa. Okay. He is a director of Pluto.

Partners Pluto Partners.

So by the time Tracy contacted them, they were actually looking for somebody that has got the experience on the clinical side, because the business side is something that you can learn, like I did the valuation certificate and things, but.

You’re.

Already a business owner, right? You your experience and this is where I think your story is so interesting, Lisa, because you’ve as somebody who I may choose to and I’m sorry for interrupting you there, but we’ll come we’ll come back to it. But as somebody that may choose to sort of represent me, if I was thinking of selling my practice, who better than somebody, first of all, who’s taken all the formal qualifications, understands negotiation, valuation and that but has also been in my shoes, being a practice owner, being an associate understands the business of dentistry. She is a practising dentist. I think it’s really I think it’s a really interesting story. So so whilst you’ve been telling me this story, I’ve known what the end of the story is because, you know, we were introduced as, you know, as you, you know, being a part of the Pluto team. But it’s just interesting piecing that together with that narrative that’s sitting over my head. So you obviously got introduced to Peter. Yeah, you’ve done the qualifications and then carry on, Sorry.

Lisa No.

Problem. And that is how my paths crossed with Max Zucchini. Okay. And the timing, like I say, what they were looking for and what I was looking for just came together at a time when we weren’t even looking for each other. And this is why I say, you look back and you think, Wow, what happened? Times when I thought doors were closing, it was actually opening towards the one where I have to be at this point in time. And you know, what I’m so grateful for is the the is I don’t even know if the word is ethos of Pluto partners and how they go about things because it’s so aligned with what I said to you earlier about taking care of this patient, taking care of this client. And every single patient, every single client is treated as if that is the only client that we have, because that is what. Everybody deserves. Because without the client, we are nothing without the patient. We as clinicians are nothing. And what I feel grateful for is having this understanding that whether a buyer is a new first time buyer or whether a seller is at the end of their dentistry and they’re looking to retire two totally separate ends of the spectrum.

But for both, what a massive step there is. And then we have us in the middle that can be make or break because the clinician that’s retiring has been growing this baby for the last 35, 40, however many years. Yeah. Stress, heart, everything, blood, sweat and tears that’s gone into it. And what you can’t afford for is for it to go wrong when you finally looking to let go of this baby. Yeah. And then you have the ones starting out who’s now going to have the baby for the first time. What happens if you buy into something and it’s not and you take take on increased risk when it goes wrong, it could be the end of you. It’s not just you, your family, your wife, your everything. But then you have us in the middle. That is such a fortunate position that can help to make sure that when we step into this agreement or in this equation, that we can make sure that all parties involved can step away from this, having it have the desired outcome for all the right reasons.

And so tell me about you touched upon the values of Pluto partners being very much aligned with with your own values. And you mentioned it was a bit like having, you know, one customer and that’s your only customer or having that one patient in the room, and that’s the only patient that you’re seeing at that time. And you give them a 100% of the attention. Is there anything else you can tell me about about values and what that what that really means to you and how that reflects in sort of your conversations with potential sort of practice owners who are looking to maybe move on to the next stage of their career.

So as far as the opportunity so if I was to look at try and compare to from a clinician’s point of view, remember earlier I said how important it is for an associate to have the right environment. And this is exactly the same thing working me being at Pluto Partners and having the right environment actually puts me in a much stronger position that when I speak to that clinician, having the understanding of what goes hand in hand with a day of stress and so many factors that we cannot control within dentistry, the last thing you want is that when somebody like a agency comes on board to help you either buy or sell a practice is for them to become an added stress. But in order for me to help the clinician, Pluto Partners is helping me to be in a stronger position to do so. And in doing so, it becomes win, win win. Yeah, but imagine I was in a position where I feel I am not as I don’t feel looked after, I don’t feel I have the right. I’m not aligned with what I’m trying to do. Yeah, no doubt that that will will overflow to when I speak to that clinician. And what then ends up happening is we have a typical lose lose lose situation. So something that could have ended up being beneficial for everyone could end up being something where we’ve wasted the opportunity or because from the from the off, we didn’t have the foundations in place.

Now I’m going to ask you some questions that probably devil’s advocate type questions when it comes to brokerage, right. Which is, you know, I could, if I owned a practice, go directly to the buyer and just strike the deal. Okay. I cut you out. I don’t have to pay you a fee now. Yeah, just just give me your take on that. That why should somebody come to a broker to say, like yourself or anyone else versus just handle the deal by themselves?

If we talk, if we’re talking clinical, it’s almost like cutting the dentist out and going to boots and buying yourself a little temporary kit and fixing your filling yourself. Okay, you filling, you can fix it, but you don’t have a clue what you’re doing and you’ll probably end up causing more problems than actually making it better. Yeah, but why would you have to use an agency is because there are so many different elements to buying and selling a dental practice. I try and use the analogy of an orchestra. There are so many different instruments and it’s very important to make sure that all these different instruments play at the right time, at the right tune, so that when it comes together that it makes the right music. So, for instance, when we look at valuing a practice, we need to gather the right information, because if we don’t gather the right information, then we will not be able to put it together in a certain way in order to get to the right valuation or the EBITDA as we call it, for that practice. Yeah. Now, if you don’t know what to gather, what hope do you have in order to get to the right outcome or if you don’t, if you know what to gather but you don’t know how to put it together, what hope do you have in getting to the right calculation which then affects. Evaluation. And if you don’t know how you got to the evaluation or whether it’s the right valuation or not, how can you even start to negotiate? And this is where you increase your risk. You increase your risk as a seller where you could end up finding yourself in a situation where you don’t get the value for your practice. And as far as a buyer, you will increase your risk as far as buying something that you’ve overpaid for. But it will under-deliver. And this is what we go from. We want our sellers to get the maximum value.

And you want your buyers to get the best deal. Minimum risk.

Exactly. And when you do that. But in order to do that, you need to know. You need to sing off the same hymn sheet. And we are there to orchestrate all of this and put together the hymn sheet.

And so if we look at. Dentistry and we look at selling dental practices. Where’s your Which one do you prefer?

Selling Dental practices? Definitely. Definitely.

Oh, wow. Wow.

However, however, I have found because I have it part time, both of them because I’ve got them part time, I actually enjoy the clinical side More now. More now. Yes. Yes. Definitely. Definitely.

Almost reignited your passion for for dentistry because you’ve got this other role as well, right?

Because it’s not I didn’t feel trapped. And when I said those four walls, I think prior to this, I felt as if it was starting to suffocate me. But because I now have this that I’m doing, it actually has made me look at the clinical side and appreciate it instead of seeing it as a a trauma or a hindrance.

And so moving forward, what what what do you think? Do you think your balance is going to change now or do you think you’ve got the perfect balance in terms of dentistry versus brokerage? Or because you love brokerage more, you want to move more towards that side full time? What’s what’s your heart telling you?

Do you know this is this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. I would love to be able to share what I’ve had, what I’ve experienced, because as clinicians Prav, I think there’s so much expected of us to know from a business point of view. And it’s but yet nobody actually informs us of it or tells us or says some clinicians are more, I believe, naturally gifted to have more of the general knowledge or interest in the business side. And some of us maybe don’t have all of that information. And what it does, it creates this grey area for clinicians where we have all these different hats that we’re supposed to wear, but we don’t actually have clarity on some of them. But everybody else seems to we think everybody else have clarity. So we should be having the clarity. And what I would love to do moving forward is making that grey area less grey when it comes to buying and selling a dental practice. And just like I’ve experienced, it’s not as complicated. Just like a patient might think, Oh, I don’t understand root canals or what’s involved with this or another. If you have the ability to be able to put it across to somebody in a way where they can, in a language that they understand, then it actually makes things so much clearer. And as we do with patients, when patients have the information and they understand the information, they can make informed decisions. And this is what I would love to do as part of my role is as we help people and we deal with buyers and sellers and even the ones who’s not buying and selling, if it is that we can make that grey area less grey, we end up with clinicians or practice owners or potential practice owners. That’s more informed. And when they then make a decision, they instantly reduce their risk, whether it’s buying or selling, because they’ve had the information, they can make an informed decision.

So you think that actually moving forward, business education as a whole is something that dentists need to know a lot more about prior to even considering selling the practice, right?

Yes, prior to even selling.

Because if it is that there are certain things that you can start putting in place or even just start thinking in a certain way, you don’t physically have to do things. You can find yourself that when you are ready, whether it’s buying or selling, you are in a much stronger position versus going into something almost a bit more blindfolded. And when you go into something blindfolded, we could end up yes, we make the decisions ourselves. But those decisions was either made in the heat of the moment or they were made not having the right information.

Got you. Understood? Yeah. Okay. I think, you know, I thought this was going to be a much shorter conversation than it was Lisa, but I think we just both got carried away. I was really interested in learning about your story. Yeah. What I’d actually what I’ve got I’ve got another question before we go on to a few more questions, which is what’s a typical week in the life of Lisa? Like how does that get broken up? Tell me about like what you do day to day. What do you do outside of work? Give me give me a give me a breakdown of what a week of being Lisa venting is all about.

I can tell you it’s very, very busy, but enjoyable. So I would find, especially with this position that I have within Pluto partners, they are different dynamics involved, whether it be meeting practice owners in person and going to view practices. It could also be a case of where I deal with buyers that’s just approaching us from maybe projects that we’ve launched. So there could be lots of telephone calls that could happen. There’s also a lot of administration side, the emails and things going out, because once you’ve contacted somebody, you obviously have to follow it up. So it’s a combination of in-person slash telephone calls, slash admin side of things, and then at the same time touching base with Max because very important, we all have to sing from the same hymn sheet and we all have to know exactly what’s happening where with all the different things that we do. So I would say combination of in-person emails, phone calls, but a lot of it is work from home, which I absolutely love. Absolutely love, absolutely love that flexibility that it gives me to do also work in practice. So on a Saturday I work in practice and I find that when I do that, it is just so enjoyable because of the fact that it’s so totally different and outside work. I maybe I should be going to the gym more often. I put my hands up. I don’t go to it as frequently as I should, but I do enjoy, enjoy just being outdoors, especially now that the weather is getting better and things like that. So, yes, you know, maybe I can do more as far as work life balance is concerned, but when you enjoy your work, it doesn’t feel like work. And maybe people can have different opinions on that. But I thoroughly enjoy the fact that you can connect with somebody and make things a little bit easier and better for them moving forward.

I can definitely look, Lisa, you know, a lot of people will be listening to this, maybe only in the audio format. Some people will see it on the video format, but you’re absolutely beaming and glowing when you talk about Pluto and the opportunity there and your work there. Right. And it’s very clear to me that you’re you’re super passionate about that. Right? And just just because of that, it will it will bring you tons of success, I’m sure, right? I’m absolutely sure. And I’ve got some I’ve got some final questions for you that are totally unrelated to what we’ve been discussing and it’s something that we cover on the Dental Leaders podcast. Okay. So I’ve got I’ve got one set of questions, which is perhaps final questions. And my final question is this, that if it was your last day on the planet, Lisa. And you were surrounded by your loved ones. What pieces of advice would you leave them with?

First thing would be to be true to who you are inside. I feel that with its society, with the way the world goes. How? How difficult is it for people just to accept us for who we are? It’s it’s not asking a lot, is it? It’s something that is so almost frowned upon where if you just true to who you are for yourself. So the first thing would be be true to who you are. Be yourself. Be yourself. And the other thing that I also would say is that. Life was never meant to be easy. Although as human beings, it’s natural for us to want to gravitate towards an easier. But it’s only when you go through the challenges and it takes you to the next, but that you appreciate it for what it is. Because otherwise we’ll just be stuck and we wouldn’t grow. And I know it’s so I would say the next would be that life is not easy, but when it’s easy, we should get concerned because then we should ask ourselves, Is it actually worth it? I would say just be true. Just be true to who you are.

It’s it’s a it’s a really difficult question, Right? Nothing else at all?

Yeah.

The biggest one for me is be true to who you are.

Be true.

To who you are and.

Be.

Yourself. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, if you have if you are content and comfortable with who you are, that is what’s important because I think it’s so easy to strive to get the approval of people and it’s just something that keeps going and going. So to be true to who you are. But it’s difficult. It’s difficult because this world will make us believe the opposite, that we are that we are. Odd one out.

And then payments. Final question, which is imagine fantasy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive, who would they be?

Alive. This could be anyone.

Dead or alive. Anyone. Doesn’t matter.

Anyone in the world?

Definitely. My mom, she’s in South Africa. And so terribly So. She’ll definitely be. She’ll definitely be at the party. Um. Oh, goodness me. It’s a tricky one. Definitely not my ex-husband. That one I know of.

We know who we’re excluding. Excluding?

Yeah. We can go on and on and on. Okay. Um. The tricky one. You had to give me a bit more time to think about this.

Anyone famous? Not famous. Past. Present.

Oh.

I love to. I love it. I wouldn’t be able to I can’t think of anyone else.

Any.

Any anyone who you’ve looked up to who’s inspired you, be it a celebrity or. Anyone you’d love to meet at a dinner party.

The.

Political or not famous or not. Past or present. Mum, we’ve got mum. Two more.

People leaving. I’ve got dream.

Party. Right. Imagine the most amazing party. Right. And you got your mum there. Who else would you. Two more people to make it the most awesome party ever.

Oh, I would love to. Do you know who I’d love to have there? Trevor. Noah.

Trevor Noah.

I love his humour. I love the fact that to me, he’s just that. What you see is what you get through to is and how far he’s come as well. So Trevor Noah And the last one would have to be. My daughter. The reason I say that is because I don’t know where this will go. This will go. But the reason I say that is the last 23 years was a very tough 23 years. And just like I thought I was being there for her, she’s actually the one that kept me going. So for us to have this conversation, if it wasn’t for her, I don’t think we would be having this conversation.

So beautiful.

So lovely. Yeah.

See a daughter, your mom and then Trevor Noah to basically entertain you and make you laugh, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Have some comedy there. Exactly.

Brilliant.

Exactly. Brilliant. Yeah. Happy days.

Well, Lisa, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time.

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

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

If you did get some value out of it, Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

And don’t forget our six star rating.

Motivation is an excuse my language for anyone who doesn’t like swearing, but motivation is completely utter bullshit. It lasts maybe 24 hours, 48 hours a week if you’re.

Lucky, But.

Discipline and routine will always prevail, as you know. I mean, like you said, you’ve come from a competitive environment yourself. I know for a fact when I’m coaching individuals, if you can build a routine which works for you and it might be what works for your self, Prav may not work for me. What works for me may work for some of my my male clients or my female clients. You just need to work at trying to thinking about simple, measurable steps every single day that allows you to take control of your well-being. So it might be okay. Go to the gym twice a week. That’s better than you doing nothing.

Different things for different people, right?

Absolutely.

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.

Rohan, welcome to the latest podcast. It’s great to have you here. And just by way of introduction, Rohan is the online dentists fitness coach. We were just have a little bit of preamble earlier, Rohan and you were saying that obviously you’ve got a career in dentistry, that’s what your career is. But you know both of your colleagues and for yourself, there’s a lot more to life than just teeth, right? And as well as looking after your patients, put your own put your own oxygen mask on first. Right. Exactly. So usually we start with your backstory and where you grew up and parents and all that sort of stuff. We are going to come back to that. But I’m really intrigued how you got into the whole fitness thing and why that’s become a priority for you. And then we’ll talk about talk about why you decided to take it to a level where you’re now coaching and helping dentists to to get more out of their life than just teeth.

Yeah, I mean, that’s a bloody good question. Firstly, thanks for having me on here.

Pleasure. Pleasure.

It’s an interesting story. I mean, I guess everyone likes a good story. That’s the best thing about this podcast. We get to learn about each other and learn from other people’s experiences. My transition from dentistry into fitness or how fitness came a big part of my life. Probably not the most conventional way. For me, it’s it was all about actually when my mental health really took a turn for the worst. It was actually an undergraduate level. I was actually always a very active individual. Like most people when they’re at school, they do something right. They’ll do maybe football, club, hockey, rugby, whatever it may be. And I seem to, you know, school level enjoy myself. I never was very anxious. I was very much one of those guys. If I did well, if I worked hard, I knew I could put my effort in and I’d get the results.

So were you when you say did well, do you mean physically in sports and stuff or just academics?

Academics, just generally in life? It wasn’t one of those things. Interestingly, I always found like if I just put my effort into whatever aspect of life it was, whether it be public speaking, dentistry, fitness, I tended to see, you know, what you put in the work, you get the results. Then what happened was when I went to university, I went to do my my Bede’s in Bristol in 22,008, and it was the first time in my career or let’s just say academic life, what I realised, shit, I’m not the smartest person in the room. And suddenly I realised, okay, I’ve got some perfectionism traits here. I’ve got potentially this need to always succeed and impress myself. My parents and I realised I put a lot of pressure on myself and I realised I’m not. None of this stuff really comes out naturally to me. And I remember that the biggest turn point was I remember my first year anatomy spot exam and I was trying to put pen to paper and no matter how much I studied, shit didn’t click for me and I realised I was starting to become more and more an anxious person. And I realised I start to have almost like an anxiety sort of sort of panic attack sort of situation, kind of cropping up more and more into my, my undergraduate level.

And Rohan, how did that manifest itself? You say anxiety, panic for those, those who don’t. Is it that just awareness of your heartbeat and a feeling feeling upstairs? Is, is it that sort of thing or is it a feeling of like failure? Where where like if we take you back to A-levels, GCSE or whatever it was that you did back then, Right. Yeah, I’m assuming you just smashed all of those and there was, there was none of that going on back there, right?

I mean, it’s interesting. I guess it kind of comes back to a little bit my back story. I was in a really fortunate position. My parents put me through private education. They worked their socks off. They sacrificed a lot financially to put me in a good place. And what my mum always said to me as a kid was lip row. You’ve been given this opportunity, your dad working extremely hard abroad five days a week. You’re not seeing him very much.

Don’t.

Don’t take it for granted. I don’t care what you do. The grades aren’t important, but give it your everything. And fortunately, like GCSEs, A-levels, it worked out well. I got my straight A’s, got my stars and A’s and got into university. It seemed quite routine, but then I was put in a different environment and suddenly I noticed my response to the stress was different. It ended up being, like you said, physically, it would be things like literally in that exam paper, I wanted to put pen to paper, but my hand didn’t move.

Or it.

Would be a case.

Of, I’m.

Not going to lie. I had at one point some eating disorders. I would not eat because I felt so anxious. And by fifth year, like my my back five, I remember I was.

Like.

59, 60 kilos. And for a person who’s like, what, five foot seven, five, four, eight, I was pretty much sick and bone.

I was.

Barely sleeping. I wasn’t looking after myself and I thought this this isn’t me. I mean, I was trying to cast my brain back to the good days and I was thinking I was active. I was confident. I was looking after myself. I was eating just like a normal person. But I felt great within myself. And I realised one of the things I wasn’t doing was taking care of myself. So this is.

Where.

The fitness came back. I was like, What do I know? Or What did I know in those years that I had? I had routine. My mom made a great meal for me, lunch and dinner every day. I would always have hot food on the table and I was active and that was something which was missing. I used to play rugby to a high, high.

Level at school.

But when it came to university, that all or nothing mentality of, you know what, it’s the.

Books.

And it has to be the books.

What I want to just wrap my head around this is this five year period where you went from whatever you were weighing to 60 kilos, not looking after yourself, even though you knew that was important. Intelligent guy. Yeah, but how do you go into that? I guess. I don’t know. You explained to me. Is it a mode of self destruct or is it a mode of. I know, but there are other things that are a priority or is it that the anxiety taken over so much that you weren’t able to look after yourself or the first time on your own right away from home? Exactly.

Because it’s it’s a new experience for anyone going to university. I think you’re figuring out who you are. It’s the first time you’re finding your own opportunity to fend for yourself, make decisions. Simple things like cooking meals, like learning what to prioritise, how to spend your money, how to to. No one tells you at university, do this, you’re not set homework. They just say, look, you’ve got you’ve got semester, here’s your exam to crack on. You can decide to go to your lectures. You can decide to study. It was a case of put it on you. Interesting. I’ve never had a problem with motivation and in fact, I just took it to the extreme where I didn’t have maybe someone to say, Look, rein it in a bit. Calm down. I was just going, You know what? I’ve got this opportunity. Don’t. I don’t want to squander it. And rather than looking at it as, okay, let’s go work tonight then maybe have a couple of beers with your friends and then maybe go to the gym tomorrow. It was like, No, no, I felt guilty when I wasn’t studying. I remember in fifth year it would be, gosh, I was trying to do stupid things like preparing for finals. I remember trying to do like 18, 19 hours days, just thinking the more I did, the better.

Yeah. And who is if we go back to sort of the message from you folks, right? You mentioned your mom and don’t squander that opportunity back at school. You were the smartest kid in the class or one off, right? Yeah. And then you moved to this environment where maybe you’re not the smartest kid in the room. Were you were you striving to be like, is that why you were putting the hours in? Did you so were you one of these kids who sort of said, you know what, I just want to pass? No, I don’t care. I just want to pass on. So you want.

To. Okay, wait, wait, wait. Let’s let’s be I’ll be honest with you.

I did it.

I didn’t know what it was to think like that. Initially, it was I wanted to do well. I wanted to be proud of myself. I wanted to make my parents proud. And it’s strange because not you know, it’s not like I had the crack of the as the Indians call it, the champ or the super coming out saying, I’m going to do a chop with a slipper. By the way, guys.

Your mum’s your mum’s.

Slipper. Come on in the back of your head if you’ve done something wrong. I was never under that pressure. And actually I’m really fortunate. My dad was like, Whoa, I’m proud of you. If you give it your everything and if you do your best. My mum was also the same. I think it was more self inflicted, which is interesting. So yeah, I guess I was a motivated individual, but I just took it a little too far.

So look, I had a very similar experience in that Look, I at school, I was I was the smartest kid at school. I didn’t go to a great school. So it wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t surrounded by talent, shall we say. And then when I went to university, having been to a normal state school, end up at Oxford University, and I am surrounded by kids who’d done more A-levels than me play off and, you know, play the instruments, do this, do that. And I’m like, What am I doing here? Right? I just felt completely lost. But there was one thing I had I knew I had. I knew I had graft in me, right? Yeah. And I knew that academically I could perform. And, and in my mind it’s strange to visualise and go back, but in med school we had this photograph of all the kids, right? All these little, little passport type photographs and everyone gets one spot on their wall. Right. Yeah. And I used to literally I had all my competition on that and said I would beat you and you. And you and you. Yeah, that was me. And, and that was. That was competition for me, right? It was all academic. Yeah. But because I was the smartest kid at school, I wanted to be the smartest kid at university as well. And in the class and all the rest of it. Right. And. And there was definitely a pressure there. Yeah, there was definitely a pressure there. Self self-imposed. But similarly. Right. You know, my dad always used to say that the reason I’m working so hard is so that you don’t have to write the reason I’m doing everything that I do so that you can have a better future.

I think that’s a big agenda in our culture, though. I really do. I mean, talking to a lot of south east Southeast Asians, it’s a case of they’ve come our parents, our grandparents came to this country and in an opportunity where they didn’t have many opportunities, they had to beg, borrow and steal. They had to graft. And I think we’ve now got this environment and it’s almost like a gift on a fucking golden plate. And you’re thinking, Right, what do I do with it? I can I can do something about.

It or.

I can squander it.

Yeah. And it is a pressure. I don’t know whether you felt that pressure whilst you during those five years, but I certainly I certainly did, you know, and part of me wanted to want to impress Dad. Right. I’ll be honest. Yeah. I was always striving to make him proud.

Yeah, I completely relate to that too. So that’s a my wife always turns around to me, says you get that glint in your eye when your dad says, Well done, son. And I’m like, Well, it’s weird. I don’t. I don’t.

He’s never said anything to me, but I just like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah. So that’s, that’s where I guess it kind of where I realised when my balance was off off track and I realised I needed something to kind of pull me and kind of pull me back down to earth. That’s where fitness was my, my, my key.

But what was the moment? What was the pivotal moment? You were, you were down in the dumps. You were, you were feeling anxious. All of this was there like a moment, a sliding doors moment, something that happened that you remember anything? I think, yeah.

I wouldn’t say I can remember at the moment per se, but I remember the feeling. The feeling was when I looked at myself in the mirror, said, I’ve forgotten who you are. And this is what I when I looked in the reflection, it was like, This isn’t me. I saw this guy who was his posture, was shrivelled, struggled over like his shoulders were slumped forward. He looked fresh, he looked frail, he looked small. And it was almost like there was a part of me. I felt like, hold on, I’m not taking care of me. And that actually made me more upset more than anything. And then I’ve actually gone on to have some some mental health support through therapy. And I remember that was one of the big turning points in my therapy, was actually accepting it was okay for me to feel that way. That was a part of my life. And actually, you know what? I’m grateful to God that it happened because it’s allowed me to become the person who I am today. To do what I do would work with clients like myself, like other dentists and doctors who are somehow now struggling with their health and fitness in many ways. But also it gave me an opportunity to perhaps end up here talking to you guys. I met my wife. You know, I’m I’m blessed right now, so I don’t look at it with negativity. I look at it as it was a pivotal point for me to realise, okay, where do we go from here?

Okay, so you crawled out of that hole. You you what? You found Fitness. Just talk me through that.

Well, what I knew as I said, what I knew, which work for me was routine. So I started to build a routine. It was a very arbitrary, very Google it yourself, figure it out. And I’ll be honest with you, it was complete and utter bullshit routine initially, but it worked for me. It was a case of, okay, I’m going to start going to the gym and it really starts to flourish. When I left university, it was a case of I’m going to start eating foods which are nutritious. I started doing all the things which I wouldn’t do today, like no carbs. After six, I started hydrating. Well, go to the gym four or five times a week. I started to just take that time to work on me. And I use that one hour of the day to help. When I felt anxious after my VTI year or a tough day as an associate, it became my output. So I realised, okay, I can channel this energy some way, I can utilise it and put it into something which is productive so I can feel anxious. Okay, cool. How can I use that better for me? How can I spend that energy in a nicer way? All right, cool. And the next thing, how can I build on that? What could I do? I’m not.

I didn’t sleep very well at university. Maybe I’ll try and aim to sleep 7 hours a night. And then from there, it was another thing. It was, okay, I’ll eat some more. More nutritious foods. I’ll drink a bit more water from. And then it was just sort of snowball effect when I realised, Oh, okay, now I feel a little bit more confident. My body started to change. It was then a sort of a natural strange pathway, but a natural pathway. I kind of threw myself into a challenge because I like challenges, clearly. In 2015, I actually threw myself into a bodybuilding competition, just completely unknowing what I was getting myself into. And I said, You know what? I’ve always had goals. I always like to challenge. Let me try something different to dentistry. Keep that going. But let’s just give myself another focus on something to focus on. And I realised how much I loved it. And it’s gone on to now be me helping people with the skills that I’ve had for a decade, helping people take care of their lives, take control of their wellbeing, take control of their mental and their physical health, and it’s a blessing.

So did you step on stage as a bodybuilder?

Yes, I have many times. And I did it. I’m still doing it to this day.

Oh, wow. So talk to me a bit more about that. I’ve competed as well. I don’t look like it now. Back in 2005. Nice. I did the when was Leamington Spa Quality.

Spa UK for qualification.

And then did the British came forth nice and then stopped. All right. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was the discipline, really. Bodybuilding teaches you so much about. About discipline and routine for sure. Whether it’s timing of your meals, whether it’s it’s training, whether it’s know and thinking and figuring all, all of that stuff out. Right. And maybe the thinking back then about nutrition and stuff is very different from what we have now. You mentioned sleep earlier and I think I think sleep. Is coming to the forefront of everyone’s mind now in terms of how important it is. Absolutely. And people like Matt Walker and Andrew Huberman have brought this to brought this to the forefront, to the public, to actually.

So back.

Then, I didn’t know how important sleep was. Right. We’re told it is.

But I mean, I figured out by realising I didn’t sleep, so I was like, okay.

Maybe I should work on it.

But I mean, like from a competitive point of view, don’t get me wrong, guys, if you’re listening in, I mean, yes, I would call myself a bodybuilder, but I’ve actually I wouldn’t say I live like a complete and utter bodybuilder. My my life and the way I help people around me is teaching them how to use things which actually are relatable to day to day. If you if you try to live like a bodybuilder or a dentist, I’m sorry you’re setting yourself up for failure unless you’re a the strict maybe 0.5 to 1% of the people who can do it. I’ve used those skills of learning what I did wrong, what I’ve took from bodybuilding, from fad diets. I’ve spent the last ten years making the mistakes and learning what’s worked for me to help other people around me. But you’re you’re right in saying motivation is an excuse. My language for anyone who doesn’t like swearing, but motivation is completely utter bullshit. It lasts maybe 24 hours, 48 hours a week if you’re lucky. But discipline and routine will always prevail, as you know. I mean, like you said, you’ve come from a competitive environment yourself. I know for a fact when I’m coaching individuals, if you can build a routine which works for you and it might be what works for your self, Prav may not work for me. What works for me, We may work for some of my my male clients or my female clients. You just need to work at trying to thinking about simple, measurable steps every single day that allows you to take control of your well-being. So it might be okay. Go to the gym twice a week. That’s better than you doing nothing. Sure, You know, go to the gym three times a week, four times a week, whatever it may be, it might be. Try to not eat five takeaways a week. Have two.

Yeah, yeah. Different things for different people. Right. And. And absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. So, so just sort of moving on from there. You start this fitness journey, you started to feel better yourself mentally, mentally, physically at work. So you left uni, you started this fitness journey. What happened to your career in dentistry?

So when I left university, I did my VTI year in the Buckinghamshire scheme and this is in 2013. So I had the glorious trip to Chicago, which is happening I think happened last weekend. And then after that I joined as an associate in Roderick in Aldershot area, realised I didn’t really enjoy mixed practice so much. I’m going to be honest with you, my sort of mindset and mentality is very.

Much do.

Your very best. And I remember at one point I think I was earning less than my nurse and I was like, okay.

I need to I.

Need to find a better way of honing my skills and making an income. So I actually transitioned into working for the civil service as a civil service dental officer.

Yeah.

Where that’s where I spent my first, I would say my first four or five years, just really honing my craft, really building my, my confidence, building my bread and butter dentistry. And whilst doing that, I did my cert in aesthetics for Restorative from the Eastman. So I use those first few years to kind of I guess it was just whilst I was building my body, I was building my dental.

Skills.

And it was great because when I’d done that PG cert, I built myself a little portfolio. I was like, Cool, okay, I feel confident now.

I look good.

I think I can talk, I can be myself. Once again. I’ve got the I feel like I’ve got the soft and the hard skills which I need to for to, to walk into private practice. And lo and behold I applied for a job I wanted in Cookham, which is an area near Marlow Redding, if you’re familiar with that area. And yeah, I got the job and that’s where it’s brought me today. I’m working as an associate in private practice.

And you’ve been there ever since.

I’ve been there now for four and a half years. So yeah, that takes me to, yeah, the last ten years of practising. So yeah, I’ve been enjoying that. Got a really nice patient list there and it’s great because interestingly the area where I work is the area where pretty much where I grew up in and you’ll see there’s probably a recurring theme, whereas I found I realised my roots was where I felt comfortable. Why not come back to what I know, what feels right and let me help the people who help bring me where I am? You know, why not give back to the people that I’ve I’ve wanted to to support all my life and help me get to the position that I am from a school point of view. I mean, I’m I’m teaching I’m treating the patients of the kids who went to my school, which is crazy. So it’s kind of a nice thing, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And so what is your what is your week split up like now? So you do some dentistry. How does the fitness or coaching career work for you on the on the with your clients and stuff. So just talk me through a typical week for you.

So my typical week looks. Quite varied at the moment. So typically Mondays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday afternoons are dedicated solely to my online fitness coaching. So I have my 1 to 1 check ins with my clients. I have a client base who I spend time every single week making sure we go through any plans for the week, nutrition training wise to make sure that they feel in control of their lives, how they can maintain their sort of their course, and to getting into the best shape that they want to achieve, but also giving them strategies for their day to day activities, whether it’s be a tough week at work, whether it be a wedding coming up with their attending and they’re trying to drop body fat or gain muscle. So that’s what my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays afternoons are looking like. And then Tuesdays, Thursdays or Friday mornings, it’s my dentistry. So I have my nice split between the two.

Really nice balance. We’ll talk less about the dentistry and more about the fitness to freely. I’m more intrigued about that. So a typical client, how do they find you? How do they learn about you? And then what is it that you offer? What’s the what’s the list? We talk about the patient journey in dentistry, Right? What’s your what’s your customer journey as someone who is is looking to improve themselves?

Well, first thing, I mean, in terms of how how my clients find me, it’s interesting. I spent about seven or eight years in the in the fitness industry, not coaching one person because I really wanted to make sure like anything if you’re going to if you’re going to give anyone any tools you need to make sure you know the shit inside out, you need to know that the back of your hand. So I spent those first eight years really making sure I really nailed it. And then I start people start approaching me just before lockdown, just saying, Oh, I want some fitness advice. Can you send me a diet plan, a training program? And I was like.

Well.

None of that bullshit.

Works.

Let me actually genuinely help you. And I thought, Hold on a second, Let why am I doing this if I’ve got the.

Skills.

And the people who are approaching, funnily enough, dentists, why am I not Why am I not working with the people who I understand the most? I mean, if you go, it’s what I find really interesting. I see a lot of dentists go into personal trainers or coaches who have no understanding of their profession. You wouldn’t go to a if you’re trying to learn to ski, you wouldn’t go to a canoe instructor and say, Hey, teach me how to ski, would you? You’d go to the best ski instructor and say, Hey, mate, teach me how to skate. So what? I’ve realised I can work the best with dentists because I get you. I am.

You sure?

So what happens now is they approached me on Instagram. They approached me through word of mouth. They saw my profile, they see what I do with other clients, and it’s just built very organically really now. And and that’s what I like about the business. It’s not me trying to hard sell like, Hey, come work with me, come work with me. It’s a case of if you want to take control of your well-being, I would definitely help you.

So what is the what is the patient journey then? As a as a patient, they come in, they have a consultation, you do an assessment, you write a treatment plan. Talk me through that process.

Very, very similar. So the first thing will be to jump on a call. I’ll listen to the clients what their goals are. I find out what they’re trying to achieve and how and what they’re struggling with. From there, we’d sit down and I explain to them what I do and explain my my practice principles, how I apply my theories and my practices, which I think is quite unique to compare to other coaches, because everyone says the same thing. Oh, here’s a training program, here’s a diet program, but it’s not really that tailored to them. It’s not really that bespoke to them. And I really try to step into the individual shoes. So I spend a whole week with my clients assessing them, literally everything about them from their medical history to what their goals are, to what they like training, how often they like training, what they like eating. And I start building almost this framework and you think of it like a cake. We start with the real basics. Let’s get I’ll get my clients to start eating maybe three meals a day. If they’re not even eating consistently. I get them to start tracking what calories they’re consuming currently and depending on where they’re.

At.

Depending on where that goes, I start telling my advice to them accordingly. So if you’ve got a mum who’s a busy mum returning to practice and she wants to lose her postpartum weight, I create a program which works for her. So it might be a home workout program based off the equipment she has two or three times a week for half an hour, but that would be very different to what Prav what you may approach me and say I want to work out in a gym and I want to get back into a competitive state. Okay, cool. I can do that, but it has to be tailored to you. So that’s the patient journey. It’s assess them. The setting is crucial. And then from there, week by week, I work with them on a 1 to 1 basis so they can they have any any burning questions. They can WhatsApp me through the week, but they get bespoke video feedback every single week with their training and their nutrition and explaining them what went well, what they need to tweak next week, and how we can plan to make sure we set ourselves up for success. And that’s like.

Sort of.

The mentoring process a little bit like if you had if you had a dental plan and a dental treatment plan and you’re trying to plan it with a mentor, you’d sit down with that mentor and break it down to individual steps. Okay, Your sleep was crap last week because you went to bed and you would procrastinate on your phone. So maybe off a switch off time with your phone.

Sure.

These sort of small things and you start breaking it down. It then empowers my client. Because what I’m trying to do different to other coaches is give you the tools to walk away and do the shit on your own nutrition.

I think it’s one of those things like, what’s the right diet, right? So we’ve got vegetarians, we’ve got vegans, we’ve got low carb, we’ve got intermittent fasting, we’ve got carb cycling, we’ve got the carnivore diet. Fasting. Yeah. Fasting. Yeah.

Starving. Starving.

Yeah. I’m sure much more than what. What I’ve just spat out at you now, right. Yeah. What’s the best one?

I mean, you know, that’s equally the idea. There’s no body, right answer to this question. I mean, everyone’s got their own preferences. The most important thing I would say, if anyone’s listening and they’re trying to understand how they can take away what they should do for them is is trial and error experiment, just like with dentistry. And I’m going to be boring for a second and I make it very realistic and tangible when you’re doing back to back fillings and you’re thinking, how do I how do I make this work? How do I make these teeth like these fillings sit perfectly with the right contours. You’ve got a trial and error with your matrix bands. You’re trying to get a good veneer and you don’t like the colour match. You have to try out different colours. Same thing with fitness. Try the paleo diet. Try the intermittent fasting approach. Ultimately they all.

Work.

But what is important is not the quick fix which gets you results. It’s the results that you can stick to, the process you can stick to and enjoy. Because with that, like with anything, if you’re able to do this day in, day out, with enjoyment, with predictability, you’ll get better results and more long term results than any other method. So I spoke to another dentist recently and they were saying to me, I like I love intermittent fasting. It just works for me because I love big portions of food. I love being that guy who just has a huge portion crack on. Then if it works for you, do it. Me myself. I would never do the keto diet because I love carbs.

Okay.

So you know, people will say, Oh, carbs are the devil, this is the devil. I think we’re very much here to victim blame. I think you just need to be a bit open minded and just know so long as you’re being sensible with your calorie intake, so long as you’ve got a fairly varied diet with some good nutrients in there.

That’s.

Okay. Just make sure you can stick to it and you can enjoy it and it’s suiting your goals. If that’s if those are boxes you can tick off, I think you’re on the right track.

So you say give everything a try, right? Whether it’s paleo, keto, whatever. Right. How long should you try it for? How long should you give it before you say, You know what, this isn’t for me. I’m going to move on to the next one.

I mean, to be honest, I would say you would have to give it a reasonable amount of time. I don’t think there’s a perfect amount of time, but for example, I would say maybe 4 to 6 weeks to try something out properly. You can’t you can’t try something for a week and say, screw it. I haven’t seen the changes that I want to. It’s like I have clients approached me and they’re trying to get in shape and they’ve been eating. For example, I’ve got many clients coming to me trying to drop body fat. They’ve been eating a certain way all their life. They’ve put on, let’s say, ten, 20, 30 kilos of unhealthy body mass, and they expect it to drop off after three weeks of dieting or two weeks of dieting. I’m like, Dude, it doesn’t happen like this. The results will come with repetition and patience. So you didn’t put the weight on overnight. You won’t lose the weight overnight. Likewise, with a diet, you won’t figure out whether you like it straight away. You just need to see, okay, what sort of things can I look out for? Do I feel good doing it? Are my energy levels good at work? Do I feel ratty around the house? Do I feel generally happy doing this process? Is it convenient? Because let’s be honest, the people listening to this podcast are dentists and going to necessarily want to be doing things which are time affected because we’re time poor as a profession.

So is it convenient? Is it enjoyable? Does it leave me feeling good? Okay. And then the last one, is it helping me hit my goals? And I think if you’re going to look at all of those points, a couple of them, you’re pretty you’ll feel pretty quickly. But the goal situation, like I said, you’ve got to give it time. You can’t make a rash decision. And I don’t think we should be so quickly to tarnish everyone with the same paint brush. I think we need to just be honest and patient and say, look, there’s different methods out there. What works for one person may not work for the other, but just be patient and try them out.

Yeah.

But I do say tracking calories is one thing everyone should.

Do that should track calories.

Yeah, personally I do, because it’s a simple if. Let me caveat that. If you’re struggling with either weight loss or weight gain, you clearly don’t have a good balance of your energy balance because it’s simple physiology, simple bio physics here at calories in versus calories out. If you’re struggling with weight loss, you’re probably eating too much. And if you’re struggling with weight gain, you’re probably not eating enough. So at least have a pet perspective whilst doing those things. What sort of food quantities and calories you’re consuming? And it’s not because I want people to live by an app. But it’s because I want people to improve their their knowledge of nutrition. Because when you start tracking, it’s not the process of the tracking, it’s the mindfulness that comes with it. Oh shit. That Mars bar is 250 calories. I didn’t realise that. Oh, that cocktail at Las Iguanas was 280 calories. I didn’t realise that when you’ve had five pints on a Friday night and a Domino’s the day after, you’d think, okay, I was really healthy Monday to Friday. But now on Saturday I managed to smash for 4000 calories. Now it makes sense.

Sure, it’s that awareness of what’s going in. Right. And absolutely and I guess the come on.

Mean you asked me a question, why am I here? That’s why I’m here. It’s to raise the awareness that dentists we we need to start taking care of ourselves.

And.

We we can’t pour from an empty cup. You know, we practice every single day to our patients that we need to think about longevity. But we’re working in such a highly tense environment, doing highly precise work, and we’re working long hours, sat in the most ridiculously uncomfortable position, which is terrible for our spines. And we’re expecting that we can do this for ten, 20, 30, 40 years, happy and be healthy. I think we need to think a little bit more long, a little bit more longevity. You start thinking, okay, we treatment plan for longevity with our patients, less treatment plan longevity for ourselves.

So what are the dentists out there listening? Right. We’re well aware time, poor, busy lifestyles, all the rest of it. What were the top? What? Your top five tips.

Stop looking for the quickest solution.

Well, see if you think they’re not even looking right. So. So majority of these dentists then cracking on, right? They’re not looking for a solution, right? Yeah, it’s all good. Well, they to a.

Degree, they are there. For example, when you’ve got a bad back, what do they do? Are banging on. You’re often I’ll go to my chiropractor, he’ll fix me up. But that’s just a patch up knee. That’s just a temporary filling over your problem. Start looking at the underlying issues. What about weight training? What about we’re using a saddle chair? What about wearing some loops is start opening your mind to okay, I need to look at the underlying issues.

Your five top tips. Yeah. Health and wellness. The the somebody a dentist can start implementing and executing tomorrow.

Get your weight per 25 kilos of your body weight is how much water so per per 25 kilos of your body weight should be one litre of water should be drunk. So if you’re a 50 kilo woman, drink two litres of water. So figure out how much water you need to drink and drink that from tomorrow. That’s number one.

Start hydrating.

Start hydrating to try to get ideally 7 hours a night asleep, try to get 7 hours of sleep at night to sleep.

Yeah. Water. Sleep.

Three. Move. If you haven’t moved today. Get up and move. It doesn’t have to be 10,000 steps, which, by the way, is a complete and utter arbitrary number made by some Japanese company who made a step ometer about in the in the sixties. It is a bullshit number. Just move.

Move more. Okay. Four.

Eat some protein. If you’re a vegetarian, you can eat protein. There’s so many sources out there. We’re spoilt in the UK, so eat some protein and look for that in at least two or three of your meals a day.

When you say some protein, what’s what’s the ideal amount. The the there’s.

A lot of, there’s a lot of different theories on this one, but the one which is most favoured for improving muscle tone and for strength is two grams. If you take your keep your weight in kilos and times it by two, that’s the number of grams of protein should be consuming a day. So for a 70 kilo ml 140 grams of protein a day is roughly what you should be aiming for.

Okay. Okay.

And then number five as per the NHS. Lift some weights because it’s going to do a lot more than your body pellet on bikers.

That ship is literally.

If you’re trying to if you’re trying to build a body, which is not even just looking good, but it’s going to last you, you’ve got to have muscle if you want your joints to feel healthy, if you want to have that rigidity and robustness along your your back, your neck, your spine, you’re looking for a long, happy, healthy life. I personally think weight training is the way forward.

So some kind of resistance exercise to.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you don’t have to be lifting like crazy weights. Just look to challenge yourself. If it’s lighter weights, just increase your repetitions over time. You don’t have to be lifting like a bodybuilder. I mean, the ladies think out there, they’re going to get bulky. All of the girls that who work with me end up turning up and getting stronger and looking even more feminine and even more proud of their curves. They don’t look like what they see on these Mrs. Mrs. Olympia pages. That takes like ten years, 12 years, 15 years.

Drugs, drugs and a lot of a lot of.

Growth hormone. Guys, It’s not I mean, I’ve been doing I’ve been I’ve been bodybuilding for the best part of ten years. And if I if I look the way I look today, which is I say pretty good, but without.

Drugs.

Okay, I will be really pissed off if that was simply just lifting weights and I didn’t look like a mr. Olympia. So.

Yeah.

So those are my five top tips.

Okay. And so the future for you and dentistry and the fitness career just just breaking it down to brass tacks. Right. It’s a good question. What does it look like from a financial point of view? Which which one’s more rewarding.

Financially rewarding or just rewarding?

Let’s let’s go for both of them. Let’s start with the numbers. Okay.

Let’s so let let me let me put it into context of where I see myself with dentistry and fitness going. I see myself scaling back dentistry, being honest with you, I think it’s going to become my my side hustle and my bread and butter is going to be my fitness purely from the point of view. I love this. And it.

Is.

You know, when people have a calling, I look at people like George, the dentist, I look at payment, somebody I look at Sam Jauhar, I look at these guys and I think that is their calling. You can just see the passion, the way they do their their anterior restorations. They see their full mouth rehabs. It’s beautiful. It’s it’s their bread and butter. I’ve realised dentistry is something I can do into a really good standard and I do push myself. But my bread and butter is helping individuals who are working in that field get the best out of themselves, make sure they feel healthy, they feel in shape, they feel confident, they feel sexy, they feel like they’re not going to be in a position of ill health compromised situations the next 20 years time. So, yeah, fitness is going to be hopefully the way I go and it’ll be a case of and I think in the next few months, maybe the next six months or so, I’ll be taking on another coach underneath me and scaling my business in that sense.

So are you. Are you at capacity now? Yes. And would your other coach be a dentist?

I’ve got a doctor and a dentist in mind. And it will be one female and one male.

Yeah. So you’re going to stick true to that, that value of will. We know who you are. Right. And so it’s a case of.

Like I said earlier, which would you go to see? Would you go to Andrew McLean, who’s an incredible anterior cosmetic dentist or Kailash, and an incredible veneer and implant dentists and ask him to do, I don’t know, dentures. That’s not his favourite thing. His favourite thing is clearly that you would go to what you go to the individual who knows that profession and is passionate about that profession like the back of his hand. That’s what that’s why I want people to come to see me because I get them. And I feel like when you reach down on something and you know what you’re calling is, it’s almost stupid to try to become the jack of all trades.

You mentioned dentistry by your side also in the future, right? Is that because you enjoy this more or do you believe that the financial rewards from the fitness online fitness culture is going to parallel that of dentistry for you, if not exceed it?

I mean, I’d be lying to say I’m not going to go in this blind and think I’m not going to go in this stupidly. I’ve spent the past ten years of my life upskilling, honing my career. But then I also realised that career has also given me the opportunity to work with the people that I want to work with and also do the things that I’m brilliant at. So it’s I don’t have any regret at all about making that transition. If you do it right, and I’ve got my own mentor in this in this side of the business to help me kind of push me in that right direction. It can definitely be a fruitful career, but you can’t just like with anything, especially when it comes to coaching, it’s not it’s still a volatile situation. You still need to be making sure you push yourself and making sure you’re staying on top of your your your delivery to your your clients. That’s crucial. So we’ll see. We’ll see.

And typically, how many how many clients can you work with at any one time?

It depends on, I would say, on time and quality. So for me, quality can never be something I’ll compromise ever based off my time that I have. Currently. I’m at capacity and that’s just I’m about 40 clients, so they’re all working on and sort of monthly programme memberships side of things. But as I said, I would.

Never.

Take on more than that. I can do so currently I’m enjoying doing two and a half days at dentistry. If as soon as I start to stretch myself, do I know for a fact the quality of my delivery of my my coach is going to be shit. And that’s why I pride myself on getting amazing results and I will never do that. So hence why I’m thinking about taking on another another coach. Now, if I decide to maybe drop more days, then maybe I might take on more. More coaches, more clients. Sorry.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so you wave that magic wand and you cast yourself three years into the future and you look back at us today having this conversation three years ago, what must have happened for you to be personally and professionally happy with your progress.

Personally and professionally happy with my progress? That’s a brilliant question.

I would say about three years from now.

I would say definitely that I’ve had made no regrets in my decision making process. So just I took a big, huge leap of faith starting this process. And I think so long as I just keep on following my heart and just doing whatever I can to make sure it works and giving it my everything, I think I’ll be happy irrespective of the financial thing.

I’m not.

Yes, I would like to be able to earn a good living, but I’m not financially orientated or driven guy and I’m not hitting sitting there waiting for my Bentley to arrive tomorrow, Rolls Royce or Rolls Royce or the likes of or a Rolex or something like that. So long as I can do what I enjoy, so long as I can look back and say, Look, I can put food on the table, I can do what I enjoy and go to bed at night thinking, you know what? I get to go to my job tomorrow. That’s exciting for me. I mean, beforehand I put a lot of pressure on dentistry. I didn’t find that I was enjoying it as much. But now that dentistry is becoming my, let’s just say, less pressurised to earn and I’m enjoying working, I’m enjoying getting going into dentistry a lot more now. I’m enjoying waking up to do my clients and I think I’ve always heard this concept of You should love what you do.

Sure.

And for the last for the last two or three years, because I’m putting myself more and more into.

Coaching.

I’m actually starting to feel that that feeling now. So if I can keep on loving what I’m doing, I’m going to be a happy guy.

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, there’s one question I didn’t ask you about the coaching training, bloodwork. Do you recommend that to your clients? Is that something you talk to them about?

Advisor Depends on the if I don’t work with any assisted athletes and by that guys I mean anyone taking enhancement or professional enhancing. But generally speaking, yeah.

Yeah.

But generally speaking, if there are signs and symptoms to me to say like an individual looks like they’re possibly looking like a bit more fatigued and a bit more lethargic than they normally should do, then I might encourage them to get some blood tests to look for anaemia, etc. But I mean it’s very much case by case dependent. There has been situations where I said there’s something like we might be looking at. I’ve got a couple of clients who’ve approached me because they’re pre-diabetic. So we do keep an eye on their blood glucose levels. And likewise we’ve got some individuals who are type one diabetic. So we do look at these sort of things, but it does vary depending on the client. It wouldn’t be like everyone needs to come to me with blood work and I just look at their panels and look at it like that sense.

Okay, It’s something it’s something I do quarterly and it’s something I’ve heard a lot of people talk about that, you know, you could look like a picture of health and your blood could be like custard. Do you know what I mean? And certainly for me, just monitoring my bloods, whether it’s looking at sort of diabetes markers such as HBA one C and blood glucose levels and things like that, and even your hormone panels and stuff. Right. You know, for me, anyway, it does kind of keep me on track. And I know what I’m looking to achieve in three months time or whatever. Right. I’m just wondering from a from a fitness and wellness point of view, the reason I’m mentioning this is a client got in touch with me just only last week who focuses on that area of wellness. He’s a private GP and he centres all of his care around, around the blood work. So just wanted to know what your take on that is and personally for yourself. Do you do you monitor yours?

I’ve done it only as I said, I’ve done it from the point of view. When I felt myself run down about a year and a half ago when I felt my body just wasn’t quite right. And I did look into it and I ended up finding that I had some vitamin D deficiencies and folic acid deficiency. So I ended up going on to supplementation for that. But generally speaking, it’s not. I’d be lying to say to you that it’s something that I look at routinely and regularly. Sure. I don’t you know, if you if we look at it, if we look at it from the point of view, the more information we have about anybody, the more educated decisions we can make about them. Absolutely. But it’s also one of those things when you have an individual who’s approaching you and like, for example, with my assessment week, you’re taking an individual individual who might be at one point slamming in a couple of beers that weekend, a Domino’s and a kebab. Then you start telling them about doing a blood work. They’re thinking, What the hell am I getting myself into? You got you’re going from extreme from, you know, 100 0 to 100. I think it would be a case of walking, walking the walk first, going into a bit of a canter, then a jog, a then a running pace and say, okay, cool. Now we can fine tune and look at things like that. So if there are concerning features, I would definitely look at them. If there’s something which doesn’t seem quite right in.

Your.

Signs, symptoms, physiology, then again, yeah, we’ll definitely encourage that. But you’ve got to I think you’ve got to be mindful not to jump from extremes, but I think that’s what we do as dentists. We look for very extreme.

Measures, very much so onto supplements. You mentioned supplementation just earlier on. Is there anything do you recommend like multi-vitamin greens and any sort of cocktail of sort of staples like D three, K two or what? What’s your what’s your goal to sort of thing that you’d advise your patient, your patients?

So it would be a combination of some simple, simple stuff. So if you’re not consuming oily fish twice a week and Mega three, six, nine. So I’d say that’s my one staple. If you’re a vegetarian, there are vegan options out there as well and vegetarian options. Then I would say number two would be a multi vitamin A box standard, multi vitamins, perfectly fine vitamin D, k, B, D, three, K two. Yeah, absolutely. Given the fact that we live in a temperate climate, we sit inside all day long, we’re not getting vitamin D, let’s be really, really honest. So vitamin D, I think is really essential. And then if you are training with weights, creating. Those are my four, I would say three essential vitamins, one essential sports supplement. Everything else is a bonus.

Protein powders.

If you want it. I mean, I look at it again. Dentists are time poor and looking for a quick fix. I look it as a huge advantage. It’s tasty. They’re convenient. They’re actually the most cost effective way of getting protein into your system. So I personally do advise them, but it’s not something you need. It’s a it’s a nice half rather than a must have. But yeah, absolutely. They can be so useful. You can make puddings out of them, you can make a shake, you can make smoothies, you can make ice creams, you could do whatever you want. They’re so versatile. And compared to all the crap that we had, you know, the best part of 15 years ago, the start, the stuff which tasted like chalk and like literally mix like clumps to now these amazing flavours and clear isolates and stuff like that. You’re spoilt for choice nowadays.

To be honest, I can’t remember what the brand that I used many, many years ago. But you’re right, it just tasted gritty. Right. And yeah, I.

Remember this one’s called.

Nutrisse Nutrisse for that’s what it, that’s the one I remember. Yeah.

It was so cost effective. But I swear to God my, I remember I’ll tell you a funny anecdote very quickly, because I’m sure you don’t want to hear too much about this, but it was 2013, the year I qualified. I remember I was taking this at the time and I fell asleep in our staff room at lunch. And I remember I woke up and everyone looked at me like the most disgusting look on their face. And they were like, I think someone just died and it just came out of you. And I realised this The protein.

And protein wasn’t good. Yeah, I remember that nutri. It used to come in five kilogram tops. Yeah. And it was cheap as chips. I think it was about 40 quid or something like that. Yes.

Five kilos for 40 quid. There you go. That says everything doesn’t it.

Absolutely. Okay, moving on. We like to ask about sort of what life you got. You’ve got kids or married. Married kids. Okay.

Maybe if I’m blessed in the future.

Okay, so let’s. Let’s take ourselves to the future. Please. And imagine at the end of your long, long life that it’s your last day on the planet of God, okay? And you have to give your closest ones and three pieces of wisdom. What would they be? Geez.

Okay. I would say live with no regret because you have no idea what tomorrow brings. And. Probably from the point of view, having lost a few ones, a few loved ones quite unexpectedly, like in COVID. I would say definitely. You just don’t know, like whether it be arguments, whether it be whether you feel like you could have done a job better, push yourself down, a career that you wanted to try. Like I’m trying with my fitness, like to take that leap, you know, don’t don’t sit on the what if because honestly, it’s it’s frightening. I mean, I just had a WhatsApp just before I spoke to you guys on this podcast, and my mum’s got a colleague of hers who unfortunately her partner passed away very unexpectedly a year.

Ago and she’s.

Herself, the colleague, has just passed away this evening. She just had straightforward cancer. And I’m not trying to say this to, to, to frighten anyone, but it’s the case of you just don’t know. I mean, I had two patients last in the last two weeks have just come to me and they’ve just told me that their wives or partners have just had stage four cancer. And you think, Jesus Christ, that’s six months. Things can just change. So live with no regret would be number one and number two would be, I guess it’s in line with what I do. Don’t be afraid to be selfish and put yourself first because. I realised with myself and I’m when I help try to help other people is that you can’t pour from an empty cup like we said at the beginning. Put the oxygen mask on. All right, Let yourself breathe. Then help the other person. Because it’s it’s so easy to to give, give, give everybody else. Give our patients 100%. But then there’ll be a point where you snap because you can’t keep going the way you’re going. Just take a moment whether it be reading a book. Go for exercise. Go for a walk. Eat Better. Start taking care of you. I think that’s. It’s really why I do what I do. It’s just helping other people just start valuing themselves.

Sure. Three, Probably.

You are a product of your environment. So just choose your environment carefully. That’s that’s. I mean.

I wonder what you mean by that is are the people, is it, is it the place? Everything is.

Everything though. Like if you’re unhappy where you work, change your workplace. If you’re if you’re unhappy with your relationship with your loved one. Talk to them like ultimately we have a choice. I don’t believe in anything happens without our decision making process. I believe I have a choice to be happy. I have a choice to be sad if I’m unhappy with how If I’m unhappy with how this podcast is going, I could tell you like, dude, cancer. This this is this.

Is bullshit, but you.

Have a choice so you can change your environment any which way. If you if you’re in a situation where you feel perhaps, maybe I feel overwhelmed, what can you do in that moment to change the script and change the environment around you? Yeah, that’s what I feel strongly about.

And payments question. Okay. He didn’t party. Okay. Three guests, dead or alive? Who would they be? My. Oc.

Jonny Wilkinson. An amazing rugby player and an idol of.

Mine.

Dynamo. The magician.

Interesting. Yeah. And David Goggins. Yeah.

He’s an absolute legend. And I would say Dynamo, because if you don’t know much about his backstory, you need to read about him. This guy is, like, incredibly inspiring. He was probably the most introverted people I’ve ever come across through reading his autobiography, going watching his shows, watching his TV programs like he’s so unbelievably introverted, but has built this persona and built this confidence. And what I love is how he’s mastered his craft to kind of build himself up. And it’s something how I can relate to. Like he he he used to get bullied a lot as a kid, and then he just did his he did his his magic tricks and learnt from his grandpa. And now look at this guy. He’s just you just look at him. You’re like, in awe, which is absolutely insane.

I didn’t know that. I did not know that. Yeah, man.

Tony Wilkinson For the point of being I mean, everyone looks at him as the most incredible, like number ten we had in the English jersey, but I would say more So again, his autobiography, like, is blown me away. Like, you wouldn’t realise this guy is probably the most anxious person I’ve ever heard of.

Ever.

He was so self deprecating, like he was so hard on himself. But I would love to sit down with him and just kind of have a chat because I think he’s just got an unbelievable mindset to kind of just persevere and have that grit and determination. But also he also knows what it is to battle within himself. And I think it be really good. It’s good to kind of hear his take on that because you could see he’s he’s struggled with it throughout his whole career, right way to the very end, to be honest. But he also just just just blew me away, just how incredibly professional he was. So that was one of the things I liked about him. And then the last one, David Goggins I mean, was there a lot to say? Yeah, was there a lot to say? I’m actually in the middle of his second book right now, and I just every page, I’m enthralled. He is just again, it’s interesting, all those three guys I’ve realised when I was just thinking about it, they all have the same sort of like backstory. They’re all kind of like, I don’t know, the, the, the underdog who just come come their own.

Way.

From the guy who was working as a pest control guy to suddenly then become a Navy SEAL man, to do ultramarathons, to doing like the world’s record for pull ups. The guy is an absolute beast but it’s again, it’s down to mindset. He just shows you how you can tap into your brain. And I believe that’s what we all need to kind of do, is just get get into that brain and just know that we have so much more to give.

I’ve not picked up a second book yet, but I remember listening to the audio of his, so I read the first book. Right. But then when you when you listen to the audio, he adds colour to the book. He talks.

It’s insane. I listen to it as well. It’s insane. It’s insane.

And I just you know what the one thing is, you know, back in the day you’d sit down and watch one of the Rocky movies for a bit of motivation, right? But you listen to Goggins and you listen to his story and all the rest of it. My God, it fires you up.

I’ve not. I’ve not met one person who I’ve not recommended that book who hasn’t come out feeling empowered. And it’s not about fitness. It’s really not about fitness. It’s just the the principle that you can, if you want to. That’s the bit. It’s like when you feel like he describes it. I remember he says, like when you’re when you’re on a.

Run.

And you know, you hit that wall. He’s like, you’re only 44 steps there. You’ve got 60, you’ve got you’ve got another 60 to go. And some of the things he’s.

Done physically.

They make no sense. No, But then the power of the mind, you know, and if anyone believes anything, the power of the mind is unbelievable. I think you can really tap into that and make a whole world of a difference for yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely Brilliant. Well, listen, Roland, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. I really do hope our guests just take some messages away today and implement at least a couple of those five tips. I think if they can go away with if they want to learn about you, where do they go? Yeah.

They to jump on Instagram that DOT to underscore RV fitness and then drop me a follow, if you like, advice, which is bullshit free, realistic and applicable to your everyday life. And it will help you in all aspects, whether it be.

Just.

Taking a moment to not be so hard on yourself. Eat better, sleep better, hydrate better, and actually enjoy it.

Drop me a funny cool. Excellent. Well, thank you for your time and absolute pleasure, buddy Berry.

Thank you so much for having me. I’ve really enjoyed it.

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

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

And I think for me, the biggest thing that recently has happened is I’ve, you know, as I’m quite proud to say, that the business has become successful, but it’s become successful to kind of rein everyone in into that ideology has been really hard. And I’ve not yet found a way to kind of, you know, people talk about culture. It’s how to get that culture to filter through the team, the team that’s been a really hard.

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.

Hey guys. A bit of a different episode today.

When Prav went to the Neo dental conference about a month ago or so, he even managed it as well as doing everything else he was doing at that conference. He even managed to do three episodes of the Dental Leaders podcast. Two of them have been full length and then they’ve come out already. But he did a third one, which is a 20 minute episode, which is brilliant. He covered all the main parts of the podcast in 20 minutes with Manish Bose, who’s a friend of mine who actually was practising in the same practice as him, a very, very talented surgeon. And that podcast, because it’s only 20 minutes, we’re going to put that in this episode. But I’ve put another quick ten minute piece in, which is me talking to the managing director and marketing director of FMC about the North of England dentistry show, which is coming up on Friday the 11th of March in Manchester at the MCC. Enjoy it. It would be great to see loads of you there. It’s always so strange when people come up to me and say, Hey, they listen to the podcast and it’s a funny, funny feeling when people tell me about my life, You know, if you’ve listened to hours and hours of this, you tend to know quite a lot about me. A funny feeling when someone knows you so well and you’re just meeting them. But I do love meeting you guys. So do come to that event and, you know, feel a community building up. So thanks a lot for that. Enjoy the episode.

Thanks. It’s no secret that we’re going to be launching the next version of the Enlightened system in March, and it’s been a long time coming. We’re super excited about it. We’re getting superb results from the testing dentists, and we’ve decided to launch it across several different events starting in March. So it will be at the dentistry show in May in Birmingham. We’ll be at the showcase in London at the end of March, but we’re going to kick it all off at the Fmc’s North of England Dentistry show in Manchester at the convention centre there on March 11th. People are a bit surprised sometimes when I tell them Enlightened’s biggest users are from the north, but they always have been. People in the north aren’t. Aren’t that surprised, But whether it was Caliph Solanki practice in Manchester, Michael Oliver’s amazing place in Sunderland, the North’s always been a hotbed for whitening, and it just seems fitting to start there. Fmc have been such a massive support to the profession. I remember the first thing I did when we started Enlightened was was have a meeting with Ken. And since then, you know, whatever they’ve done, whether it’s education print, whether it’s awards, they’ve always been really, really just supportive, cutting edge, innovative. And this is no different. So it’s my great pleasure to welcome Craig Welling, managing director of FMC. Can’t believe I’m saying that. And Laurie Glover and Laurie Glover, who’s marketing head of marketing, to tell us more about the show. So, guys, lovely to have you on. Thanks so much for having us.

I’m really excited to be here. Yeah, No, great to be on.

Yeah. Let’s let’s start with some headline numbers. How many delegates are you expecting? How many stages is it? How many speakers, that sort of thing. Let’s kick off with that, Laurie. Let’s start with the delegates.

That’s the exciting. What everyone always wants to hear about the most is how many how many dentists are we going to have through the doors? And we’re lining up to be absolutely record breaking. This year, we’re expecting over 1000 dentists through the doors itself come to the show and sign ups are just so far ahead of where we expect them to be. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the demand for these in-person events in the North this year.

Would you put it down to.

Well, I think there’s nothing quite the same as an in-person event. You know, the ability to get there, get hands on with stuff, to see new product launches, to to hear lectures and speakers meet with exhibitors. There’s just no way to replicate that at that kind of scale outside of a Dental event. And we are the largest show in the north. That’s why we we get the numbers we do.

Craig Were you were you not worried, Craig were you not worried that this year was going to be a difficult year to to sell, you know, to to attract people to these sort of things? Yeah.

And I think, you know, there’s always challenges and worries around. You know, whoever’s running in. But, you know, I think our model has always been and obviously a really kind introduction that you did. But, you know, we want to give practical information to to the mass. And, you know, there’s a big gap in the north. The BDA used to run there. And obviously they they then partnered with the dentistry show Got to Birmingham. So there hasn’t been a show consistently in the North for many years and we launched our regional events programme. You know, we’ve got some really good traction and year one last year in the North just took off. You know, we had a great turnout, huge support from the trade and obviously we we put the stake in the ground and you know, we got some great speakers coming along, some, you know, superb support from the industry. And yeah, as Laurie said, you know, we’re ahead of the game and we’re super excited.

Because how many exhibitors are coming?

Oh, I think 136 off the top of my head, isn’t it, Craig? Just over the top of your head.

Geez.

They keep swelling up even now, you know, usually shows people have got it all locked in, but we’re still getting people enquiring and saying, Hey, can we come along? Because they’ve seen, you know, the demand for it and they want to be on board and be part of that.

And what about the stages? What are they called?

So we’ve got a number of different lecture theatres. So we’ve, we’ve um, we’ve got a clinical theatre which is obviously practical clinical advice, which I think you’re speaking at Payman, you know, guiding people on, on their writing journey. Then we’ve got the avant garde theatre. So obviously Robbie and Milad, you know, they’ve got a phenomenal business. And then Jin and Kish at the Smile Academy. They’ve got their own theatre. Paul Tipton’s run in a theatre of restorative. And then we have a core theatre that covers all of the the main topics. We have a facial aesthetics hub, a business hub. So we’re really trying to appeal to to everybody as much as possible and bring some of the biggest names from across the sector.

Yeah. Think you missed a couple there, Craig We’ve obviously got the business hub as well, powered by my dentist, the Nursing and Oral Health Theatre as well, and the Oscar Restorative Theatre as well by by Troika.

And so let’s go through some of the speakers. I’m looking at the list now. So for me the standout ones are Payman. Langroudi Payman For sure, for sure. But Riaz You are brilliant. Joanne They are like a lot unless you’ve got on. What’s he speaking on? Do you know implants or is it business? He’s normally business. He’s a.

Business.

He’s doing on this case. He’s talking about wine replacing, restoring dental implants. It was an implants intro lecture in the implant digital theatre.

And so what’s the overall experience going to be? You turn up, it feels a bit like an exhibition, right? Because that’s it’s that mic which is a big hall and then lectures start and everyone starts going into the lectures. How long is each lecture? Are they different lengths or are they all the same?

Yeah, they aren’t. They are different lengths. And we have, you know, we obviously people are there to enjoy a good day out as well as listen to the speeches that are going on. So they don’t want to be sat down for too long. Payman So the lectures tend to last between 20 to 30 minutes. There are few of the kind of core recommended CPD topics that last a little bit longer up to an hour. But it’s kind of like, you know, we keep it short and sweet because you get a chance to fit more in that way throughout your day.

So guys, when was when was the time where you like how many months ago or is it years ago? Did you start planning this particular event? Like run me through the process.

So I think just I mean, taking it back a couple of steps is yeah, you know, and as I’ve just said to you, we’ve always been about supplying. Practical content that people can absorb and take back to practice. And that’s when we launched the regional event program back in 2020. And then obviously COVID come along. And I think that shattered most event businesses around the world. And so so we really pick things back up in 2021. We had a really successful event in March last year and then we’ve we’ve as soon as that finished, we’re straight back onto the planning for this year. So. You know, 12 months in the pipeline. I think Liana and her team have done a phenomenal job. You know, and I just think we’re trying to be a little bit different. You know, we have things like bubbles and beers. So, you know, early afternoon, the champagne comes out, beers are poured. We try to make it more of a social atmosphere. We don’t want it to be too serious. You know, people want to learn, engage with clients, but also to have fun. It’s not about just, you know, white collar walking around. We want it to be an enjoyable experience.

Yeah. And for the North, we see so many teams come along as well. So it’s not just the dentist. They bring their their team with them and it’s a great chance for a team bonding day out. And I think when you talk about the after party this year, I’m talking about things like no indifferent. We have got the north of England after party happening and Payman I hear someone’s got a VIP area kind of set up for that.

Is that right? Is that right? I didn’t know about that. Um, so the party, what runs straight after the end of the course?

Right straight after the end of the show. So from 4 to 6 afterwards we’ve got one of the gin is DJing from small Canning’s been providing Izzy. Izzy Yeah. Some welcome drinks from team FMC and yeah, you’ve got a little area of ropes outfit for you and the crew.

Yeah. Didn’t want to bring that up, but now that you brought it up. Yeah.

So guys, this regional sort of did you do some research that said, oh, people don’t want to travel down to London or Birmingham and that’s why you’re putting it up there. Is that how it happened?

Yeah. So I think.

If you look at the the latest stats that we run there, was it and don’t quote me on this, I’ll have to get the exact number, but it was around 87% of practices said that they wouldn’t want to travel more than 50 miles. And then we looked at, you know, areas where there was a high concentration of practices and labs where there’s a higher demand. And that’s where we decided to launch the events.

And your business model is free to the dentist, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And so it’s just us paying.

Absolutely. Again. Payman. Yeah. So of course it’s got to be free for dentists. You know, we’ve been down in the draw, brings them along, gives you a great chance to meet, you know, more dentists you can ever hope to do by travelling around.

Think think what Payman missed out there is. He said last show that he made over £1 million.

Did he. Yeah that’s right. That’s right.

Hey that that’s a good one right there. Surely for that. Put my.

Villa bought my villa in in Cornwall.

But yeah. No it’s really great to have you on and we really appreciate your support and, you know, ultimately looking forward to a great event.

Yeah, I’m sure it will be, man. I’m sure it will be. You guys tend to take care of the all the bits around it very well. All the AV and the food and all that tends to be give me some, some, some idea of numbers on your end. How many of your people are going up.

So we got our event team. So obviously Leon has got got her team that’s made up of there’s eight people in events now and then we’ve got our content team, so they’ll be there covering lots of the new product launches and then we can use that content to distribute online through the print media. Obviously, the sales team will be there. I’m sure they’ll be on your stand with a clipboard as as the door opens. So yeah, I mean, it’s a big day for us, you know, obviously it’s our our cup final, as we call it. It’s our it’s the biggest show that we run. And we’re, um. Yeah, yeah, I’m.

It’s been events are cool man. You never get, you never get sick of events I find. Yeah I do. Once a month right. With the mini smile makeover and just round the corner, by the way, at the Edwardian hotel. And you never get sick of it because it’s different people every time and different for me, different things that go wrong every time. I’ll be quite I’ll be quite interested. I’m going to grab both of you halfway through the day and have another chat with you, but I’d be quite interested to see what went wrong this time. Right. Because you can never. It’s like a wedding or something, isn’t it? You can never really predict.

Yeah, there’s always something. But, I mean, what’s so good about our team is that we’re so good now at taking that in our stride and getting a solution in place is, you know, pragmatic but keeps exhibitors happy, attendees happy. And we just make sure we go above and beyond to resolve them as quickly as possible. A bit of whack a mole when they pop up.

Just a funny one. Remember the first year that we run London Pay and I think you was there and there’s a whole issue with like the health and safety offer signing things off and everyone was in a panic and I think the registration was due to open at half eight, got to half eight and we’d still not had sign off from the health and safety officer because an exhibitor had left the box on the floor. But everyone thought that we did it on purpose because there was a huge queue of people outside waiting to get in, which which made for some great content to show how busy the show was. Um, but yeah, hopefully it runs smoothly this time.

I’d love to sit with.

You guys and go through all the things that have gone wrong with all of the events.

It’ll it’ll be a whole.

Education for me because we’ve never I’ve never run a big event like this before. Yeah, guys, I’m really looking forward to it. Are you guys going the night before?

Yes. We’ll be there to sell out the day before. Absolutely. On Thursday. No, Friday. So we’ll be up there Friday, Friday.

Friday. Sorry. Yeah, Friday. Yeah. And where are you staying?

Uh, we’re at, you know, the.

The place. You guys are too high up. You’re too high up to know these little details, aren’t you?

Payman the day before. Okay.

And are you leaving?

Are you leaving on the Saturday night or are you staying till Sunday morning?

I think some of the team are staying over. I’m some of us are head back at my I’ve not seen my kids for about three weeks, so I need to get back.

All right, man. It’ll be. It’ll be. It’ll be good to catch up with you guys, man. I’ll definitely see you hopefully on on the date. And, you know, we’ll have a great time. Thanks. Thanks a lot for doing this.

I really appreciate the invite and coming on and the support and yeah, look forward to seeing you in next Saturday.

See you in Manchester.

Cool, guys, thanks a lot.

So, Manish, just introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about your practice, what you do at your practice, who works there? Right.

So my name is Manish Bose. I’m a specialist periodontist. I own a practice. I’ve owned a practice for ten years this year, actually. So it was a it was an existing dental implant practice. If you know anything about dental implants. There was a guy called Ashok Rosetti and his partner at the time, a guy called Roy Sennett and Roy Sennett was from South Africa. So Roy Sennett owned a practice. The practice I bought and Ashok had a practice at the road. So I bought Roy’s practice. It wasn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life. Buying business is not my forte. I don’t come from a business background. I bought the practice ten years ago. I can pretty much say it was a yeah, not the greatest experience in my life, but anyway, it is what it is. But I created a referral practice mainly by knocking on people’s doors. He had an implant only practice where he used to get referrals for implants. But I never captured that market because he decided to stay on there. So I established a periodontal referral business, started off doing half a day every two weeks, and I’m now doing four days, five days a week, booked in advance, got another periodontist there. We have a specialist orthodontist, we have a specialist oral surgeon, we have a specialist endodontist and we’re looking to expand.

So if we just take a step back and go back to that journey of when you bought the practice, you’ve had ten years of owning the practice. Now, if you could do that all over again, what would you tell your younger self and what would you change? What would you do differently?

Don’t be naive. Don’t be overly eager. I think I think the Roy saw me coming and I think I was way too eager to do a lot more due diligence. I think this was the days before CTC. So, you know, I if I was to do this all again, I’d be I’d look into the books a lot more. I’d be a bit more kind of business. Like I wasn’t business minded. I just knew that I could do something there. It was more of a gut feeling. I wouldn’t do a gut feeling thing again.

So I’m right in understanding that. You were probably at that time quite excited to become a practice owner. This opportunity came along and you just thought it felt a bit giddy maybe, and just thought, You know what, this is it. I’m going to do this without sort of I guess, you know, you can say you could have been more business minded, but how would have you been more business minded at that time?

Think, think like a lot of specialists. I was running around London and I think I was listening to one of your podcasts recently with Hatem, you know, working 14 different places. I was not too different. I was working about 12 different places, and I knew in Ealing there was an opportunity to be had because there was no one and there was not a standalone referral practice. So yeah, I was quite excited. I thought I knew I actually never wanted to be a business owner. I wanted to be an academic. Another day, another story. But you know, the practice is I live in Ealing. We literally moved into the Ealing and the reason I bought got into got introduced to Royce because I do a lot of Southern implants. So I used to know the guy who used to run Southern and their offices were in that building. So that’s how my introduction got into with, with Roy. Yeah. So I was, I was excited. Yeah, I was definitely buzzing. I thought, well, if I can, if I can concentrate in this one area, it means I’m not running around everywhere. I had really young kids at that time as well, so for me to be in Ealing was quite paramount because my wife works much harder than I do then. And she’s she’s a travel a lot. So for, for us it was a real kind of game changer that I could be located near the kids.

Close to home.

And then so if you look back over the last ten years, what were your darkest days? What would you say the, you know, the most challenging aspects of running and owning a business during that time? Was it really in the early days when you thought, what I’ve just taken on, or have there been moments in owning a business where it’s been so challenging that it’s been utter overwhelm and stress? Yeah, I.

Think I think one of the things and I always say this to younger colleagues who buy a business is when you inherit stuff, it’s one of the biggest bollocks that you can have. I mean, because their loyalties obviously are with the previous owner and that realisation from being an associate where you try to be friendly with the staff members and you’re not really that involved with their day to day things to being their boss, that transition. Is huge for me. Definitely the first year of becoming a boss. Not becoming it’s not it wasn’t very natural, but inheriting people that, you know, the realisation that as a boss you’re quite alone and you’re not really like that much. And you know, you then realise that most of the time they’re being nice to you in front of your face and in a really awkward situation. They’ll be horrible to you in front of your face as well. So that was definitely one aspect of it. And I think for me, the biggest thing that recently happened is I’ve, you know, as I’m quite proud to say, that the business has become successful, but it’s become successful to kind of rein everyone in into that ideology has been really hard. And I’ve not yet found a way to kind of, you know, people talk about culture. It’s how to get that culture to filter through the team. The team that’s been a really hard thing is.

That I was going to ask another question Is that what you meant by ideology? Like having this sort of culture that comes from that’s driven from the top yourself and then and then having the team understand what that culture is and then live and breathe that through to your patients.

Yeah. And I think I think the team so I’ve got my staff who get it because then again I’m quite lucky. I’ve got members of staff who have been with me for years. I’ve got Lady a ten years, eight years, seven years. And they get they’ve seen the business evolve. They see that it’s all about the patient journey. And what I what I what’s the challenge is when I’ve got associates. Some of you are quite young and some who are older and set in their ways, who don’t quite see how things work. And, you know, that’s the thing about people, dentists popping in and out of practices, they don’t have any ownership. And it’s hard. And I get it because I was in that position. I get what they’re. But at the same time, we all have to sing from the same hymn sheet. And for me, trying to establish that as being hard, that’s probably my current problem.

Okay. And if you to look over your career, we speak to a lot of sort of guests when we’re interviewing them and talk about clinical mistakes. I think I think it’s really important the concept of black box thinking where, you know, in the airline industry, everyone’s very open about, well, you have to be open, right? The black box records it. And so anything that happens in the airline industry is shared across industry for flight safety. Right. And that’s why that’s why it’s so safe to fly in medicine and healthcare. We have this habit of covering up our mistakes. And just in the guess, in the interest of transparency, we spoke to a lot of dentists, some who pulled the wrong tooth out or perforated. Have you ever had any moments during your career where you’ve made a clinical mistake that you could share?

I’ve got several. There’s a couple that I won’t talk about, but there’s one in particular that I’m more than happy to because it’s quite funny. Yeah. And the one yeah, this one I’ll talk about. So about 10 or 12 years ago I did an implant sinus graft, did an immediate sinus graft, put the implants in as well at the same time. Sorry, sinus graph with an immediate implant. Let the patient be. The patient came back. Oh, sorry. Got a small detail When I did the sinus graft as a tooth next door, there was a little bit of pus coming out of it from the root tip of the root. And I said, I’ll be fine. Kind of kind of cleaned it antibiotics. But obviously the infection got into the sinus graft and it didn’t work. So the patient comes back in after four months, 4 or 5 months. I went to do a second stage surgery to expose the implant and I put a screwdriver and the implant moved and I said, okay, implant moves not worked, okay. And I said to the patient, Look, hasn’t worked. I need to get you back in and the patient is okay. And I said, I’ll get you back in and next time you come in, I’ll be all prepped. I’ll get a surgical setup and said, I’ll come back in a week. And you know, all it happened was it just moved slightly, nothing else. Okay. Patient comes back after a week. Okay. So, you know, all gowned up. Open it up. There’s no implant. Okay, so there’s me. And he’s like, Yeah, I’ve had this, like, you know, congestion issue, okay? And so I’ve done max backs, okay.

Before I did my training, So okay, let me have a look. So then I decided to pull a flap up. I did a little window and the loops on and started looking. Can’t see a bloody thing, anything. Right. And there was crap coming out. There was past all kinds of shit coming out of there, bias particles. And I’m like, Oh my God. And this guy is not the easiest. This is an up in Highgate loads of old money, you know, I’m start to shit myself a little bit. Okay. So then was me a pair of tweezers looking for this thing? Couldn’t find a freaking thing anyway. Anyway, so at which point the guy could clearly tell that I was very, very nervous. And this was, like I said, ten, 12 years. So about 6 or 7 years into me being a specialist, me doing all these kind of things. And so I rang my old boss up and he, you know, my old boss was a guy called Nasser, who’s, again, another day, another story. But he wasn’t in town. He gave me a telephone number for one of his mates, which was who was a proper old school English maths surgeon and said, What? What old boy? Don’t worry, send him over to me. So I sent the patient across to him and he saved my butt basically on various levels. Okay. So firstly, he was able to locate the implant, which was underneath the orbit. Okay. Wow. It was stuck. Were you fishing.

Around in the wrong place?

I was. I was fishing around, but he’d gone all the way back there. Okay. Because I didn’t, I wasn’t, you know, firstly it was underneath orbit. Secondly, he thankfully booked him into the local private hospital, took the implant out overnight stay. I paid for everything, obviously, and paid for, you know, six, seven grand. Just paid it all to him. Sure. What he then did, which was amazing because I did three implants on this guy. This story goes on for a bit longer, right? Sure. The three implants of this guy, two of them were. One of them didn’t. Okay. And the guy’s obviously like, well, you know, and he’s got he’s gone to the old boy surgeons and you know. Yeah yeah Manish has done this and you know you know I think he’s fucked up basically. And Max my guy was on my side. I said, No, no, no. Let me get you a second opinion. So he got me. He got an a second opinion, one of his buddies. And for the life of me, can’t remember his name, but quite a really well-established western Harley Street boy who did an examination and just said, Look, mate, it’s, you know, shit happens. Two of them worked. One of them didn’t, you know, End of story.

Okay. Anyway, it was great, okay? And I was like, lucky break, you know, And the surgeon only charged me 4 or £500, this thing. And the whole thing is, eight years later, this guy’s in in Devon. And you remember that film? Is it yesterday with the Indian lad who starts singing Beatles songs? Yes. Yeah. Do you remember? Yeah. So a mate of mine who’s another dentist who moves, moves out to Devon. He’s watched the film, right. And he’s gone with some mates of his. Okay. And he’s come out and they’re talking about because I think that that guy had an implant Dental implant. And this guy this the one of the mates who was with said yeah. Had an implant with this guy up in Highgate, yada yada yada. And he’s like, And it was me all these years. He still got he’s got still got a little beef with me. But he’s all right and he’s he’s good. And, you know, as we get to know each other, I’ll tell you the other story, which is even funnier for sure. Maybe off camera. Off camera, off camera. But yeah, that was it was the other one was scary but funny at the end.

It’s nice you had those people to just sort of cover your backside, right. And people to sort of help you out in that in that situation, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You I think I’d like to think there are still people like that out there. But yeah.

Have you ever helped anyone out in that similar maybe not the same situation, but more junior dentists or whatever where they’ve got themselves and landed themselves in a bit of trouble And you’ve been able to.

I think one of the things you probably realise, you know, having been in the industry, it’s not easy to run a or not. It’s not easy to have a referral practice and a lot of that is off the back of helping colleagues in different ways. Whether I take an impression or whether a referring colleague may have done something that has got themselves into a bit of trouble. You know, I will, I will. I have worked out for them in whatever way just to kind of eliminate any possible complications that might occur. But yeah, so am I’m very wary of these things. And because someone’s helped me if I’ve.

Been a recipient.

And yeah.

And also it’s good for business if to be honest because you know, it creates goodwill if anything else, and that’s to have a like a referral practice in zone 2 or 3 in central London. It ain’t easy. So you have to do these things. And I do it. I do it with a kind heart as well because, you know, like I said, I’ve been lucky enough that people helped me out.

Done the same for you on these interviews. We usually usually ask a question. So this is going to be sort of we’ll feature this on Dental Leaders It was your last day on the planet. Yeah. What were the what would be the three pieces of advice that you would leave your loved ones with?

Okay. Uh. Okay. Love life. Always learn. Always, always. I’m a was with someone on Saturday local school ball. And we’ve talked about happiness. And his his concept of happiness was to take his dog out. His 56 likes to take his dog out for a walk. And I was like, okay, fair enough. Simple. Simple. You know? But for me, I’m 50 turn 50 this year. I’m perpetually trying to learn new things. I’m learning how to play the guitar. You know, I’m going to take the boys. I’ve got two boys. I’m going to take them to play golf. So it’s that perpetual love of life.

Just on the guitar bit. Are you a musical guy or is it.

Just so okay, not I wish I was because I have this thing that I always tell people that if I was ever reborn. I’d be reborn as Tito Puente, who was a very famous Colombian Hispanic bongo player. And my connection to all of this is actually quite pertinent because we talk about Manchester. So 91, 94, those years my best buddies were two Cheetham Hill boys, Irfan and Ifti, who were who are two Pakistani lads from Cheetham Hill, which in those days were called the Murder Mile, as you know, and they were into Latin music and. Right. So we used to go out, they were into Latin music and hardcore techno, but they were their musical geniuses. Irfan still plays out in Manchester, so I still see him every now and then. So that’s my musical heritage. I mean, apart from all the stuff my dad used to play as Hindi music or whatever, but that was so. So my musical kind of aspirations are definitely developed from those days.

So we’ve got love, life, learn, always.

Be learning, always.

Be learning love life always be learning. Yeah be be be nice to people. Be kind of respectful. I think that that.

Fantasy dinner, you can invite three people, dead or alive. Who would they be?

Uh.

Well, Tito Puente Hills.

Thought, Yeah, this one gonna play? Yeah.

Who else would I invite? Um. It wouldn’t be anything Dental so disappoint, say, Nelson Mandela. I think I’d love to hear how he spent his time in jail, but. Amor Bose. Do you know he is? Bose sound system. He was an Indian physicist who went to MIT, and I just loved to know his journey from going from India, being an engineer to go to MIT, and how he and I don’t know what his involvement in the whole boat. I mean, he must be part of shareholder or something. Sure. So I’d be intrigued to know his business journey. Yeah, actually, I think being a businessman that has made me interested in business, that’s one thing. So how people create things is quite interesting for me and create businesses because the one thing I realised is it’s not easy. It’s not easy running a business for sure. But one of the things that I and I think I spoke to you about is all on Fort say it’s all well and good having an idea or being good at it, but you need a funnel for those things to come in. Of course it’s how to create those funnels I find quite interesting as well. So Amira Bose would be an example that someone is obviously intelligent, crack the code correct. And you need and that’s that. Yeah. That would be that would be awesome.

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

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

If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening.

Thanks.

And don’t forget our six star rating.

It was a video that I saw where a chap he puts ping pong balls into a jar and then he puts gravel around the ping pong balls and he’s asking the students, is the jar full? And they keep saying, Yes it is. And then after the gravel he puts sand in and then he pulls two cans of beer into it goes, is it form? I go yes. And it goes. The ping pong balls represent your personal success. And he goes, you know, he goes, The gravel is stuff like your business, your sand are the bits that don’t matter. Because if you put your gravel or sand in first, you’re not going to have room for your personal matters. And I think one of the students puts his hands up and goes, But sir, what what are the two beers about? And he goes, You should always make time to have a couple of beers with your friends. So I think I think people transition. And I think when I first qualified, it was trying to my version of success was to be financially secure, own a business. You know, as I’ve got older, you know, I don’t think money interests me anymore.

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.

Selling cake gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. Saqib Ali onto the podcast. Saqib is the principal of Sherwood Dental in Hall Green in Birmingham. What can only be described as a behemoth of a practice. 11 surgeries, one of the biggest NHS contracts in the area, and massive private element as well. Actually 70% private apex predator Invisalign. Actually, I should use the right word tonight. What is it? Apex. What I give Tony.

It’s an apex Invisalign provider. So that’s the top 1% in Europe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met you Saqib on many small makeover, and we still talk about it in our team. We still talk about that. That MSN when you were there because you just made it so much fun for everyone when you came with your wife, Farrah. And it was it was just a party from beginning to end because you were there. And now that you told me you’ve been on these other courses, I’m going to go ask the others. Was it the same for them as well? It’s a massive pleasure to have you, buddy.

Thank you so much for having me, Payman. It’s a great pleasure to be invited to talk on such an amazing podcast. I feel like a fraud. I think that said to you earlier that some of the guys you interview are heads of industry real leaders. So I feel like a slight fraudster being invited onto your podcast because, you know, it’s just little me in Birmingham doing my own little thing. So but going back to your course, it was one of the best courses that I’ve ever been on. It was so much fun. The social aspect of it was just, you know, out of this world, the people that were on the course, it was such a good vibe. I’ve been on many courses, and I must admit yours just head and shoulders was at the top of my list.

It it was. I think it was you who you who made it fun.

You guys were just amazing. It was just the energy in the room was just phenomenal. The people were just amazing. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

Brilliant. Second man, listen up. We start these things usually with Back Story. Where were you born? Yeah. Why did you become a dentist? What kind of household did you grow up in? That sort of thing?

Well, I’ve got a typical Asian immigrant story. My father was a factory worker. And my mother was a seamstress for co-op, so she used had a small cottage industry where a man would drop off shirts to have collars sewn onto them, and she’d distribute them with the other ladies in the area. And so these collars onto the shirts and my dad would go to Braco, which was a factory, and he’d work sort of almost double shifts just to get some money. And so we all live there are five of us children. I was the youngest, second youngest, and we all lived in a two up to down terraced house. So we were very poor. Growing up. Didn’t have a lot at all. I think as time went on, my father started to have problems with his back. And my mother, who was a very clever woman, she’s the main driving force behind all of my brothers and sisters, attaining educations, quite a high level. So my brothers and sisters, all five of us, either doctors or dentists, and she was a teacher back home in Pakistan. And so she was very driven to educate her children. It was the reserve of the rich in Pakistan and India that only wealthy could afford to educate their children. And so she really pushed to give her credit. She also pushed very hard for my sisters to become educated where most of the men within our community and local vicinity would say, well, no, you don’t send your daughters to university or to go on to higher education. You get them married off fairly young. So she thought, I need to get my husband out of this backbreaking factory work.

And so she saw a shop that was for sale, but it was an off licence. And we’re from a muslim background. But she took the plunge and said, Right, let’s buy this corner shop. We’re going to run this shop that still did some factory work in the background. Still went working at the factory, but didn’t do as many hours as she was doing before. So we moved to an area called Radford. So we lived in Foals, which is a big Asian area in Coventry, and then we moved to this off licence. And that off licence facilitated Mum and Dad paying for us to go on to higher education and studying. And so I had a really happy childhood. You know, we were there up until the age of eight, you know, we’d go out and play on the streets to ten, 11:00 at night. You know, we were running the shop. So, you know, it’s the first time I learnt to work as part of a team, you know, Mum, Dad would come back with a car full of cash and carry stuff and you’d have your brothers and sisters and you’d literally learn to, you know, get the stuff in and you’d have to pull it in the right place ready for it to be put on the shelves. So, you know, at the age of seven or eight, you know, I’d been lifting quite heavy groceries and packages out of the car. So it’s quite at the age of seven or eight was very strong for my age. And in fact, I probably hit puberty at eight. You know, I had a beard and one eyebrow, everything. And part of that was that there was any kind of motivation.

If you weren’t hoping you’d get a slap and it would be, hurry up, you need to pull your weight and get this stuff in. And so, you know, it was a brilliant childhood. I look back and that was the fondest part of my childhood, I would imagine, and we’d go out with play in the streets and, you know, some of the older lads would pair us up and we’d literally do bare knuckle boxing. He’d pair us up the two older kids, Rabbani and Liaquat, and they’d say, Right, you’re fighting him, you’re fighting him. And we’d be fighting each other. And you’d come in and you dare not say anything to your mum and dad because if you said came in crying or upset, you’d get clipped around the ear, you know. But we were tough kids, but we had lots of fun. There was lots of love in our house, even though we didn’t have much. But part of it was also that, you know, Mum and Dad were very strict, very strict. So an example is we were having an extension being done and I jumped off a pile of wood and had a six inch nail go through my foot and there was blood coming out of my foot and I was too scared to tell my mum and dad and I came in and sat down and there’s a pool of blood around my foot. My mother noticed that and instant reaction was clipped me around the ear saying, What have you been doing? And in the end we ended up going to hospital and having a tetanus injection. So. But yeah, very fond memories of my childhood.

Do you feel like you knew you were underprivileged in any way or not? Because as a child you had nothing to compare it with when you’re just there?

No, I think I was oblivious to it. I think I was completely oblivious because we were happy. We didn’t know anything different. So, you know, it was, you know, a warm and loving household. And I think at the age of eight, my mother decided to move us again because a post office and General stores had come for sale. And my mother said, Oh, you know, I really like this. And my father is very risk adverse. You’re saying, No, no, we’re fine with the shop, you know. And mother thought, Well, my children are getting older and we’re Muslim. We shouldn’t really be profiteering from the sale of alcohol. And as the children get older, I don’t want them around alcohol. And so she thought this was a good move. And at the age of eight, we moved to a place called Tall Hill in Coventry. And unfortunately, Tall Hill is a quite socioeconomically deprived area and we moved to this post office in general stores, but we were the first Asian family that had moved to that area and distinctly even to this day. I remember I was eight years old. First night there, all of the shop windows got smashed. There was a group of lads outside the shop shouting because we lived above and behind the shop shouting, Pakis, go home. And my dad had his tyres slashed on his car. So as an eight year old boy, that was very. Traumatic for me because I’d come from, you know, a background where I could go out and play till late at night with my friends.

Everyone knew everyone to know. My mom wouldn’t let us out the house. She can’t go out. And then we were sent also to a Church of England school. So we were the first Asian kids to go to this Church of England school. And on the first day, my brother and I both got suspended because someone had sworn at my brother, made some racial remark and attacked him. And I’d walked into the playground and we were strong lads because we’d been moving, you know, boxes of packs of 20 2kg sugar packs, lifting them. So we were strong and we used to fight a lot when we were younger with the lads. So we were like bare knuckle championship boxers at the age of eight we could handle ourselves, so we sort of battered this kid quite badly. There’s blood everywhere. First day we got suspended, got sent home. And so that was a baptism of fire in that we went from a very stable, loving environment where we felt secure. And then we’d ended up in a school where the children didn’t like us because we were different. We couldn’t go out in the evening, couldn’t play outside the house, and we had this pub opposite the shop, so you’d get drunk people coming into the shop that were very aggressive. And so my childhood stopped at eight, you know, and I look back at it and you are so frightened.

To what tactic? What what tactic did you use?

I think part of it was that, you know, you just internalised that you didn’t want to show weakness. You don’t want to show your sisters that you’re frightened or upset. And as we got older, you know, we started to fit into the community because my father would be in place of issuing gyros to people. So people got snow. My dad people got to know my mum. And part of it, too, I started to work in the shop. I’d be on the till mopping, topping up, going to the cash and carrier before I went to school. And I’d have to put all the groceries out for my mum and dad. People got to know us, so we sort of settled into the community and that sort of aggression and violence settled down. I think, you know, Mum and Dad at that point, my brothers and sisters who were older had all been sent to a very good school in Coventry called Bad Lake. It was a private school. And I remember I didn’t pass the 11 plus. I was the thicker in the family. They were all super bright kids. I think my sister had a scholarship. My other sister had a half scholarship. My brother had got in, passed the 11 plus of flying colours. I think I just failed it or just missed out. And so I was sent to a local comprehensive for about a week. And then my mother said, right.

One evening she goes, You’re coming with me. And I said, Where are we going? She’s going to stop asking questions. You’re coming with me. And she took me to ballet to meet the headmaster there. And this chap called Mr. Barker. Really, really nice guy Wharton, and just said that. Don’t say anything. She sat there and she said to Mr. Barker, she goes, I can’t drop my three kids at your school and him at another school on the other side of the city at the same time. And she goes, Look at him, you know. And she goes, It’s stupid, stupid. Look, I don’t look this, but he’s looking at me. And she goes, I know he didn’t pass the exam, but I brought you a little gift. And would you just please consider whether you can get him in? You know, I don’t mind paying full fees for all the kids. Just please let him in so he can be with his brothers and sisters. And I remember Mr. Barker who took out this bottle of whisky, 20 year old bottle of whisky, and Mr. Barker took the whisky, put it in his top drawer, and said, Mrs. Ali, send him to school on Monday. And that’s how I got into it. So, you know, I hadn’t passed anything. And that’s how I got into bad luck. And again, it may have been a mistake because I was always just bottom of the class.

I couldn’t keep up with these kids. They were really bright. They were very clever. And I remember I felt bad because my dad and mum and dad would work really hard to send us there. And I remember one of the parents evenings, and I think part of it, you know, people meet me and say, I’ve got a great sense of humour and I’m a bit of a comedian. And I think part of that stemmed from fact. I was trying to hide the difficulty I was having academically, so it’d be a bit of a joker, you know, and. I remember one parent’s evening, the teacher, my form tutor, Mr. Long, who just hated my Latin tutor and form tutor. And he didn’t like me because always messing around. Sat me down and he’d invite my mum in and big parents in there about 1520 desks in the hall. All the teachers and the parents were there and they were inviting parents up in pairs to talk to them. Mr. Long sits down with my mum, who’d come in and she goes, Oh, your son is more interested in making people laugh than he is studying. He’s a bit of a joker. At which point my mum glared at me. Just Joker. You’re a joker. And then she stood up, took her slipper off and started to beat me.

And right there in front of the teacher.

Yeah, the whole sign. All parents teacher, turn around going, What the hell is going on? Mr. Long had to physically restrain my mother, pull her off me, and then I ran. The next day I went to school. I was so embarrassed. And Mr. Long after that, he was so nice to me because I think he thought I came from an abused home. And he was saying, Sir, are you okay? Is there anything I can do? And it sort of switched. And at that point I sort of knuckled down a bit and I was just worried my mom would batter me again in front of everyone. So I just knuckled down, studied past my GCSEs. I got okay grades, and then I went on to do my A-levels. But again, I was slightly dyslexic. And the other thing I was very poor compared to the other kids. I remember my dad had a 20 year old Volvo estate with rusty wheel arches roof rack that we’d use for the cash and carry. And also Dad dropped me down the road. Drop me down the road, Don’t drop me outside the school because everyone had really nice cars and know it all stopped me at the door saying, No, sir, you need to be proud of who you are. And yeah, drop us at the door in it. And everyone had very nice suits next. Everyone had next suits. And I remember I had a tuxedo blazer. I couldn’t afford a proper suit, so I used to wear a tuxedo blazer with silk lapels. But the thing is, no one would take the mickey because I play a lot rugby. And I was quite sort of tough, mentally tough. And, you know, my reaction was just to punch people if they took the mickey. I just had a short fuse. And I think partly that was perhaps some of the aggression I’d been exposed to as a younger child moving to where we’d moved to.

I’m interested in a few things in what you’ve said there. Number one, your mum seems like a real entrepreneur, like pure bred entrepreneur type.

Oh sheesh. She would have.

Fully. Do you think you got elders crying? You got that from her as well?

Definitely. Definitely. You know, working, you know, I think for a.

Muslim woman in the seventies or whenever that was here to do the things that you’re saying quite, quite, quite, quite unusual, right. Oh, quite.

Unusual. Phenomenal woman, Phenomenal woman. You know, the stuff that she should should be the mother is only about four foot two and should be wearing a shivakumar who’s driving a Volvo estate that was just packed to the rafters, plus the roof rack full of shop stuff. You’ve been to the cash and carry, you know, and we’d be sat in the back with your face pressed against the back window because the car was full of so much stuff, you know, no seat belts, none of that, you know, And she could barely see over the steering wheel of this car and she’d drive it, you know, to the centre of town. You know, there are lots of flyovers in Coventry and she’d just get it still is a very remarkable shop woman. She’s had a couple of strokes now, but she’s still a sharp still. Now she’ll say to me, Saqib, grow your hands, my mum, but she will grow it on one side. Come over and say, Mum, I’m not going to do that and you need to lose some weight. And you know, you sing, Mum, I’m a married man, I’ve got children, you know, Stop telling me off. In our corner and she’ll spend the first half hour. You never call just telling me off. She still does it now, you know. But even if you don’t, you know.

You know, the sort of the the stick and carrot sort of approach to parenting. And I speak to quite a lot of Asian guys on this show and the people of our generation, mine and yours, it seems like it was all stick and no carrot.

Big stick and a just as well about a slipper. Yeah, but that’s on paper.

That sounds like quite a harsh upbringing, but nonetheless, no one ever thinks back and says I was abused or you know, that’s just not in the vocabulary. Is that not is it is it that there was it came the slipper came with a bunch of love Is that the.

Yeah I think there was some in there somewhere but my brother went to Leicester University, studied medicine, so did my two older sisters and they did a course or a module on physical abuse and signs of physical abuse and harm and this, that and the other. And I remember my brother came home and said to my dad, Dad, I think you used to hit us too much when we were kids. It was abuse. And my dad dad was drinking a cup of tea and he stopped and he looked across and I was sitting there. He says, Son, I wish my dad beat me twice as much as I ever beat you. If I could be a doctor today, you know? And I thought, Go on, Dad. Yeah, as one. You can’t argue with that. So But yeah, I think it was sort of at school. I really struggled academically. I was quite good at rugby, So I remember I got into the school team and then I played for Coventry under 18 and I got sent to Warwick County trials as well. But I remember Mum and Dad never came to watch. Not once did they come to watch me, whereas I, you know, my daughter the other day I booked off the day to good Afternoon to go and watch play netball and she was the reserve, she was standing on the sidelines but I was there every match she has hockey, netball.

I go to it because I know my mum and dad never came and they were busy, they were working, they were paying for those school fees. And so, you know, there’s a debt to them that I cry when I pay my school’s school fees and I’ve only got two kids, you know, And I think, well, they had four kids at that time at a private school, you know, on the salary of a postmaster and a greengrocers shop. So we didn’t have holidays, We didn’t go to the cinema, we didn’t have takeaways. You know, the first time I actually went to a cinema was when I went to university. The first time I ate in a restaurant was when I went to university. And I remember, you know, I was, you know, I’d be the sort of guy that would be going, Can you warm up my gazpacho soup? It’s cold. You know, I’d be the guy that ordered fish in and there was a fish knife, and I didn’t know how to use the fish knife to take the bones out of the fish. It was it was just a very.

Very feel it. Did you then feel it? I mean, let’s let’s go into the the sort of the strengths and weaknesses of of that upbringing, right. Where let’s say you guys didn’t have as much money as your as your peers. Your peers tends to be sort of the thing we measure it on, isn’t it? So there are definite there are definite advantages to that. Yeah. That where you know, I was very aware maybe it’s a cliche you value money more or whatever. Well, you.

Know.

But then, but then, but.

Then is there anything that.

Anything that you sort of left over.

In what sense?

As in as okay, we know like being brought up like that. Yeah. You value you value money, you value the nice things you have in your life and so forth. Yeah, but do you feel like that there was there was also it was a weakness as well. Now, coming from that background, do you wish you’d come from a different background or what aspects of it not advantages. What aspects of it cause a weakness now? Anything.

I think it’s not. A weakness now, I think. It’s a strength because I think you end up being sensible with money so far. My wife came to, came from a very different background, talked to me. She both her parents were teachers. Her mother went to university in this country. And so she grew up in an environment where she had holidays and she could do all of these nice things. And, you know, her parents were very well educated. And so she moved in different circles to what I did. So it’s only when FA and I got married, you know, for example, we went on a honeymoon. I’d never been on a boat until I married four and we went on honeymoon together and she couldn’t catch her breath. And she goes, Have you ever been to the beach before? And I went, Well, no, I haven’t. I’ve never been to the beach and I’ve never been on a boat. And she goes, Well, you might feel a bit sick. And it was great because we got on this boat and went to look at some dolphins, and I was like a kid in a candy store. I’d never done anything like this before. I was chatting to the captain, the passengers. I was trying to touch the dolphins far, far. It was just violently sick for the entire journey. She was pregnant at the time as well, but she was just very, very unwell. Yeah, I think it was ten months into our marriage.

We hadn’t gone anywhere on holiday and she kept saying, Let’s go on honeymoon. You’ve not taken me on honeymoon. And my waste of money could be at work earning. You know, these are things you can do later, you know. And I think Farrugia said to me, If you don’t take me on honeymoon, I’m going to leave you. You’re just going. You have to take me somewhere nice. And and I was scared of flying. I hadn’t been on a plane. I’d been on a plane once prior to that. And I remember she booked a flight to St Lucia. That’s where we went on our honeymoon. And for 9 hours I just clung on to the seat in front of me, you know, just frozen with fear. And I got off the plane and I just remember kissing the ground. I literally knelt down. I couldn’t understand how something so big could go in the air and not crash or, you know, And yeah, so I think it taught me to value the money I earn. And it also taught me to offer value for money to patients I treat. I don’t even if it’s £50 or £100 patient spending with me or 15 or £20,000, I value the £50,050 just as much as the 15 or 20. And the people get the same level of attention, love and care, regardless of what they spend with me. So I think there was a positive that came from that poverty that I experienced.

Yeah, I get that. But what was the negative? So, I mean, my point is far it didn’t have that poverty or your kids don’t have that poverty. Yeah. So what is it that your kids do have that you don’t.

I don’t necessarily think there was a negative aspect because that was life. You know, I can’t change what happened at that time. I can’t change the wealth that we had or what we experienced. But I think it shaped me. I think I always look at things or try to look at things from a positive viewpoint. You know, I don’t think there’s a negative. I think perhaps if there was one negative, you know, I only learnt to relax much later on in life. I’d always work hard, you know, to hard. Yeah. And, but I think that’s a positive to have that grit and determination. I don’t see it as a negative necessarily.

We’re going to move on. We’re going to move on. We’re going to move on to your to your university journey. But before we do that, how did it feel when you saw Rishi Sunak I know he’s not Muslim, but an Asian becoming prime minister. And then you’ve got people like Sadiq Khan, you’ve got people like I know Sajid Javid. You know the difference between that situation and the situation where your dad had his tyres sliced or, you know, windows broken. Did you did you feel it? Did you think, Wow.

I think what was interesting at that time I was chatting to Farah. His brother is a councillor in Leicester. And I remember chatting to him and a few other guys who knows when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were competing for the post of Prime Minister. One of the guys I remember, we were sitting, chatting and he said, They’re not going to hand the chai wallah the keys to ten Downing Street.

Yeah, I didn’t think I would.

Be taken aback by that statement. I thought, okay. And then ultimately Liz Truss came in, even though I think Rishi Sunak was a stronger candidate on paper with his background and the things that he’d done throughout COVID. But Liz Truss spectacularly failed and Rishi Sunak came in. So I think when he did come in, I think the sort of. It was nice to see an Asian chap in charge, but I think ultimately, you know, you had President Obama already had almost beaten to the punch in America. So someone from an ethnic minority running a country is great to see. But I think ultimately, you know, his legacy will be based on what he actually delivers as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Of course, of course that, of course that. But, you know, I think you’ve got to remember America is very different place to the UK. I don’t think the Conservatives would be up to it, to tell you the truth myself. And they didn’t, as you say, they didn’t vote him in. It was kind of a boot. But, you know, I just I’m interested in the idea of someone who watched what happened to your family under those circumstances and then to watch in Asia, you know, did you feel that whether or not you support him or his politics or anything? Did you feel a sort of sentiment of achievement? I felt pride about it.

Well, I must admit I was, you know, pleased that he got in. And it’s nice to see an Asian chap, you know, that at the pinnacle. But even then, it’s a job that nobody wanted. So, so so ultimately, it’s a very strange it’s a very it’s almost a poison chalice. Who would want the job in their right mind in with the current state of the economy and, you know, after what happened with this trust. So ultimately, it’ll be interesting if he stays in power and moving forward. You know, he’s challenged by somebody else later down the road. But we’ll see. We’ll see. But yeah, So.

Tell me about tell me about university. Tell me about your college. You said you went to guys.

Yeah. Yeah. So? So I think when I did my A-levels, I actually failed them. I got I didn’t get the grades, get into dental school, and then I think my career master at the time had said that you won’t make it into dentistry, you’re not bright enough to do it. And I ended up going to retake college in Toll Hill. That was up the road from my mom shop and I did my economics retake at one College Hill College, and then there was Heroine College next door, which was a college for people with disabilities. So they’d run A-level courses alongside. They had one person that had a disability within the class. And so I was doing my A-level retakes and erm the lady in the class that had the disability had polio as a child, she was a mature student and halfway through the course she wanted to give up, she didn’t want to do it anymore. And our tutor Trevor at the time said, look guys, if she leaves the course is going to shut down. So from that day on, like we were there buying her cakes at lunchtime, bringing a cup of tea, Can I carry your bag for you? And she, she, she stayed. Thankfully she stayed and we all passed around. But I went from a very posh private school to this retail college where basically anyone that failed their A-levels or dropped out, they’d get sent to this school. And there are a lot of Asian kids that their parents would drop them off. The girls would come out wearing traditional kameez, they’d go into the toilets, get changed into mini skirts and lippy, and they’d go out to go to the pub opposite, get hammered, come back and they’d be sobering up on the lawn.

And I remember when we did my economics A-level, they were kicking a football off the window constantly, and I remember putting my hand up saying, You need to tell the people marking these papers. This is the environment in which we were taking exam papers because this isn’t fair. They’re smashing a football repeatedly for the best part of half an hour, and they knew we were doing an exam. It was that sort of place. But I just wanted to get out there. I tried to pass my A-levels and so I worked really and I think I got a D in an E in my economics and biology, and then I got straight A’s six months later. So and I am getting my results with my dad and he was really pissed off. I said, Dad, I got two A’s. And he goes, Well, you’ve gone to a college where I’ve not had to pay anything yet. I spent thousands on your education and you came out with a D and a NI. What have you got to be happy about? And I think that’s something that even now I say to my dad, I joke with him now and say, Dad, you never tell me you’re proud of me or you’re happy about what I’ve achieved. And he goes, You’ll get big headed. You don’t need me to tell you that.

But sometimes you do. I’ve seen this pattern. I’ve seen this pattern as well with with the parent will brag about you when you’re not around. But not. Not to your face.

Right? Never. Never. I think to this day, my dad, dad, I think I did an Instagram video with him once saying, Dad, I’ve got one of the biggest practice in Birmingham, and you’ve never told me you’re proud of me. And he didn’t say what that was yet.

So do you now do you overcompensate now with your own kids and tell them you’re proud of them all the time, every day, that sort of thing.

Oh, yeah. My kids will, you know, they’ll get two out of ten on the spelling test, and I’ll go. Well done, son, for trying. That’s awesome. And in my head, I’m thinking I’d get nine out of ten, and it would be, Well, what did so-and-so son get? You know? And why didn’t you get the same, you know, as him? And if you’re thinking you can’t win for love nor money, you know. But I think, you know, I think when I got my grades, I was so happy because my friends a year prior to me had all gone off to university and I felt like I’d been left behind. And so and I thought, great, I get to start my life. And then I was offered a place to do medicine at Leicester and with my brothers and sisters, because the dean knew my brothers and sisters quite well. And he said, Well, we’re offering unconditional place to do medicine. And I turned it down because I’d shadowed the dentist and I shadowed a GP as well. And the dentist, you know, 16, 17 chap Stuart Neville, and he used to stop at my mum’s shop to post letters, which were probably the appointment record card in a bright red Porsche 911. And I loved cars. I used to be sitting there reading car magazines, you know, so even to this day I’m mad about cars.

And, and he came into the shop one day and I was there doing my biology homework and they said, Know what you studying? I said, Biology goes, Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, Oh, I don’t know. And he goes, Well, I go, What do you do? Because you’ve got a really nice car. And you know, I see you every day stopping to post letters because I’m a dentist, because you can work, shadow me and I’m an okay, well, I remember I went to shadow him and this guy, like he looked like Robert Redford. He was tanned, very handsome man. And he was wearing a Rolex. You surrounded by the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. His nurses and, you know, and six year old school kid. That’s very aspirational. And that stuck with me. The GP drove a battered golf. He looked miserable. He’s wearing the tweed jacket. He wasn’t surrounded by beautiful women. He didn’t have a tan. And and I thought, I want to be like this dentist. This guy is, you know, a legend. He looked like Hercules to me. I thought, Wow, you know, I’d love to be so, so, so. So I said, Right, I’m doing dentistry. And my mum cried and cried. In Pakistan, the dentist are the people that fix your shoes at railway stations.

They’re the guys that do your teeth. How am I going to tell my relatives in Pakistan? My son’s a cobbler? I say, Mom, no, it’s a better paid job. No, no, no. I don’t want you going to London. It’s too far. This, that and the other. And so reluctantly, she let me go to London and I got to guys and I was my mum was very strict growing up. I wasn’t allowed to go to parties and, you know, girls weren’t allowed to call the house. You know, she was just very, very controlling, you know, And at university, it’s the same thing. She managed to get my telephone number in the halls of residence, so she’d call me in the evening, 9:00. She called me at 930, 10:00 to check I was in. So and then I’d come back to my room. I could have gone to the toilet. Oh, your mum called. She said you need to call her back straight away. So I’d have to go downstairs to the ground floor. Mum, what’s the matter? Nothing. I’d just like to hear your voice. That’s fine. And you’d call again half an hour later. So even though it was 100 miles away, I was still grounded. I couldn’t get away. And then I remember I moved out and I wouldn’t give her the telephone landline number of place I moved into, so she’d stopped calling me.

But again, it was just her. She had very great difficulty letting go and just trusting me to go off and, you know, and rightfully so. I must admit I went mental when I got to university. I couldn’t handle the freedom. You know, I was out partying. I think I failed my first year, had to do retakes in my first I think second year I do retake exams. So when everyone else went on hold, they state university to redo the exams again. Third and fourth year I think I passed my final exams and then my finals. I actually failed. And again, you know, the guy like now I look at some of the graduates from guys that were in my year. They’re all amazing people. They’ve done so well. Some of them have got clinics, you know, on High Street. Some of them I qualified in 99. So it’s the year of 99 that came out, you know, So some of them, you know, are, you know, perio consultant implant dudes. You know, they’re they’re sort of rock stars in dentistry. So but they were exceptional people. And the thing psychologically show surrounded by I think they did a psychological experiment where they stuck loaded people in a room and they jumbled up some words and the people on the left had very difficult, complex words to try and put back together was the people on the right had much easier words, and then they gave them the same test afterwards, a different test.

But both sides had the same questions, and the first group that had the really complex words did quite badly in the second test. And I think psychologically, when you’re in an environment where you’re not top of the class and you’re at the bottom constantly, it starts to impact on your esteem. You almost don’t try as hard as you can. But I remember when I did my A-level retakes, I was top of the class and I worked even harder to maintain that level of academic success. So I think, you know, the finals were difficult for me and I failed on something really daft. I passed all of my exams except a case presentation. No one’s ever fail the case presentation at Guy’s and my patient. I’ve done some anterior composite work on his teeth and some gum gardening, some period work, and I’ve done a crown forward, and the morning of the exam, his grandson had hit him in the face with the rattle, knocking off my composites, and then he pitched up to the exam. If he hadn’t had turned up, the photos were lovely, I think I would have passed. But when he turned up, you know, they said, Well, these are broken. And then it was oh, it also included no VD.

There was some VD work. I changed the VD and the guy that was our external examiner was a guy called Prof. Wolf. He was an expert on occlusal vertical dimension. And it was confusing in that when, when I go into to clinic, one consultant would say, Well, you need to have a formative approach and then another consultant, you go on a week later and the next consultant will say, Well, no, you need to pop open the bite and allow some over eruption. And so there were sort of conflicting views and I sort of had got quite. Fuse. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, and rightfully so. They failed me. So I had to retake, I think, three of my subjects or something. But then my peers, some of my peers qualified and were the house officers on clinic. So I was having to go to some of my colleagues to get my work signed off. And some of them were, you know, really kind and considerate about it. Like I had a good friend, Bhavesh Patel. He’s still a friend of mine. Now there’s a guy called Steve Elias, and there was a huge call, Mark Phillips, that, you know, I was broken, I failed my finals. All my friends had gone off. They were earning money. I think I’d split up with my girlfriend aswell and, you know, it was like my world had just ended.

Yeah, but ultimately that that sort of stress and pressure that I felt actually made me a stronger person, you know, when I look back at it. Subsequently, when I’ve come across adversity or difficult times, I look back at that time and that time it was the end of my world. I just felt so broken at that time. But I look back at that time now almost as a reference point that it was such a catastrophic event to me that anything now very rarely does anything shake or bother me. And it made me stronger. It made me much stronger. And now I can look back at it and laugh about it. But at the time, I was very, very I was mentally very fragile at that time. But it also put a rocket, you know, up my bum to say, Right, I need to qualify and I need to prove myself. And, you know, it pushed me to go as soon as I qualified, very soon after my foundation. Yes. Six months after I set up my first practice as a squat. And I think I was the first person in my year to set up a practice, even though I’d qualified six months after all of them. So, yeah, it was a difficult time. That was a very difficult time.

How long did it take you or are you still at it? How long did it take you to prove yourself?

I think in all honesty. It was a long time. Long time. Because I think we grow into our skin. You know, I found personally I’ve probably grown into my skin probably in the last five or ten years, so probably since I’ve got married and had a family. I think prior to that I went to a very interesting lecture by Raj Ratan once and a really, really clever guy, and he talked about people that people have academic, financial and personal success or professional success, and there’s a trade off that you can financially be doing very well in your practice, you know, But the trade-off might be you don’t spend time with your family so personally you’re not very successful or you might be devoted to academia, but you’re not going to be financially very well off and personally again, you might fail, you know, and I think part of that plagiarising that slightly, I think if you when you go through life, I think, for example, I see a lot of young dentists and they’re desperate to be financially successful. So they come out the traps and they want to earn money, They want the flash car, they want the nice house, they want, you know, to buy a practice. And then often what happens is if they’re married personally, they start failing. So, you know, lots of guys, there’s some really famous dentists know that I’ve come across and I’ve met they’re not married or they’ve ended up divorced, but they’ve got an amazing practice.

You know, I’ve met guys that, you know, written papers, but they’ve got autism, severe autism. When you put them in front of a patient, they can’t communicate with the patient properly, you know? But often the sort of people that are personally successful, they’re not very often celebrated. You don’t necessarily see a happy family man with his kids. And I think there was a very interesting psychological it was a video that I saw where a chap, he puts ping pong balls into a jar and then he puts gravel around the ping pong balls and he’s asking the students, is the jar full? And they keep saying, Yes it is. And then after the gravel he puts sand in and then he pulls two cans of beer into it goes, Is it me. Yes. And he goes, The ping pong balls represent your personal success. And he goes, you know, he goes, The gravel is stuff like your business, your sand are the bits that don’t matter. If you put your gravel or sand in first, you’re not going to have room for your personal matters. And I think one of the students puts his hands up and goes, But sir, what what are the two beers about? And he goes, You should always make time to have a couple of beers with your friends. So I think I think people transition. And I think when I first qualified, it was trying to my version of success was to be financially secure, own a business.

You know, as I’ve got older, you know, I don’t think money interests me anymore. I’m more interested in personal success that do I get to see my daughter playing netball? Do I get to spend time with my son? You know, do I get to take my wife out to dinner? So. So the money is nice, but it’s secondary. So I think I’ve transitioned more towards personal, you know, And so I think professionally I’m relatively successful. You know, we’ve got a very good clinic, we’ve got some great dentists, some great patients, I’ve got a great team around me and so I can take that off. But I think, you know, I’ve transitioned from being financially successful, professionally successful to financially successful. And now I’m trying to concentrate on my personal success now, which is to look after my own health and maybe start going to the gym, try and stop smoking, you know, and spending more time with my parents who are getting older and my family and cultivating friendships, which is something I didn’t really do, you know, when I was younger, because my mum would be saying, Oh, you don’t need friends, your family or your friends, which I don’t think is true. You need your friends. And I think it’s important you seek to cultivate those relationships early on in life.

I think, you know, the getting to places, getting success, whichever way you define it, does end. Having an element of sacrifice in it. And I think what you’re discussing now is that you sometimes reject your sacrifices or your what you call success. I get that, you know, being that you’re the fourth child, four or five is all right.

I’m the fourth of five children. So after me, my parents had my sister about eight years later. And I think my mother had been told she couldn’t have any more children. And so my little sister, well, she was an accident, basically, which if you like.

The idea she was. But she was. Have you heard the idea? I’ve heard this thing, but like a billionaires or or really like super crazy, successful types of people often are fourth and fifth children. Because what happens is, you know, how we script our kids. So number one comes along and you say, Oh, she clever, clever kid, clever called you label clever on that kid. And then the kid, the positive feedback loop happens, right? So the kid sees, well, that worked more cleverness, read the book, whatever gets the pleasure pleasure of that. Number two comes along and you say, Oh, I don’t know. Sporty kicks a ball. Positive feedback. Number three comes in and say, all right, whatever it is funny. And then it ends up with number four and five. They’ve got to be super innovative to stand out. Because all the other things are taken and because they’ve got to be super innovative to stand out that that that internalises them into them. And then at work and in their careers, they’re super innovative. And, you know, sometimes I see you standing on that sofa with your Instagram doing something totally mad, Man is totally crazy. And I think about how successful that practice is, right? That, you know, some people who had a practice of that size and scale and it would be a very serious tight ship operation. And yet yours looks like a bundle of laughs all the time. Do you feel like you’ve carved you’ve carved you’ve carved a niche, carved your own personal niche? Because, you know, forgive me for saying, but you’re not your average sort of 45 year old Muslim guy, just not.

I think part of it, it goes back to maybe it’s this sort of comedic. Need. I dislike making people laugh and I think it stemmed from being a kid where in order to try and fit in with everyone else, they’d all go out and they were allowed to go out together. It’s just, you know, just a bit crazy and a bit cray cray and but, but, you know, with the practice, one of the things with our team is we have a great laugh at work. We enjoy ourselves and we do do daft and crazy things and we do Instagram videos together where we’re doing daft things, we’re jumping off sofas, we’re skidding across the floor on it, heroes and stuff. And I think part of.

It, the account, the account called what? Designer. Dentist.

Yeah, designer dentist. Design a dentist. So everyone should check that. I think I fell into that purely by accident. It wasn’t really in my wife started doing it with. She was always on her phone in the evening and I’d be sitting there, you know, candlelit dinner dressed as Papa Smurf with a spanking board ready. And she’d be ignored. She’d be on the phone Now, what are you doing? Why are you always on your phone? Oh, Instagram, Instagram. And I was thinking, well, what is this Instagram stuff? You know? And then I start started. She showed me a few things, and then I picked up a few things, but I don’t have a serious account. A lot of these Instagram accounts are very similar. They’ve got sort of photographs and, you know, they’re forced almost awkward testimonials. Yes, I came here because it was lovely, but whereas with us, we’re just a bit more relaxed. It’s sort of, you know, I don’t really care how many followers I have or how many likes I get, and I’ll post something in 5 minutes. I’ll do the work there and there, snap it, you know, we’ll do a video then, then you know, how is your journey gone, this, that and the other and bang, I’ll just post it there and then it takes me about two or 3 minutes to a post. But then I think I went to Shaz Maimane’s Instagram course and I remember sharing, showed him my Instagram account.

He says, Your Instagram account is very genuine. It doesn’t feel contrived or forced. It’s got a natural flow to it. I don’t think it will win any awards. And in a strange way, I don’t need the patients. We’ve got 52,000 patients in our practice. A lot of people come to us through personal recommendation. I don’t need to tout for business, which I’m blessed and I’m not saying that in an arrogant way, so I don’t have to take my Instagram that seriously. And I think it shows if you look at it, you know, some of my friends and colleagues, it was my birthday on Sunday, and I was amazed that, you know, when we talk about personal growth and development, when I married Father, I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t know who to invite to my wedding. And my wife was scratching their heads. How come you got no friends? I said, Well, I’ve just worked all my life, gone to work, and I’ve come home. I’ve never really gone out. I’ve gone out and partied with friends and stuff, but I’ve never cultivated deep, meaningful relationships. And over the last ten years I have done that where, you know, just for Christmas, I went away with seven of my friends and their partners and children. We stayed at a lovely luxury villa in Marrakesh and it was a lovely week together.

And, you know, their bonds and friendships that I have now that ten years ago I didn’t have. And I said to her, she said, Oh, what you want to do for your birthday? And I said, I just want to spend time with the kids and you. That’s all I want. You know, I don’t want to go to a fancy restaurant. I don’t want you to book anything. Let’s just spend time together. I had my parents join me as well, and then I had two or 300 different people messaged me to wish me happy birthday. And I sat there and I thought ten years ago, I don’t think even one person messaged me to say Happy birthday or How are you, my friend? You know, So, so. So that moved me because I thought, well, maybe I feel much more enriched and fulfilled than I did working and earn loads of money. You know, this means more to me than that did. So, you know. But yeah, but I think with the Instagram as well, because Farrah is ten years younger than I am, you know, if it wasn’t for Farrah, I don’t think I would have discovered Instagram. And it brings me much joy, makes me laugh. Some of the stuff that we do, it’s just jokes, you know, And because the whole team is involved. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it’s really good for team morale. So if you’re doing something like like we did a video where we did a video where I walk through a door, some nurses rip my gown off me and I put. Shades on. And then we start playing this rap music. And, you know, I’ve got the girls behind me waving their phones with their lights on. Seriously, if I was a patient, I think I’m not going to this guy. This guy is nuts, you know? But it’s all the girls are involved in that video. They love it because they know no one else has got their got that in their practice. They don’t necessarily have that bond. You know, my team have been with me, most of them, since the initial inception. And they won’t leave because they love it here. And, you know, people talk about, you know, inflation rates. People are talking about 10% increases in wages to beat inflation. You know, I try and look after my team as much as I can. You know, like when COVID hit, for example, you know, I. You know, topped up their wages. We had a meeting, I said, and I’ll be honest, I was frightened. I didn’t know what was going to happen. And I said, Your wages, you’re all going to get paid in full. You know, even with the furlough, I topped up their wages because I said, all this is going to die out.

But off the back of that, I remember sitting with my wife and saying, for a look, we might lose the house because I don’t know how long this is going to go on for. I remember I sold all of my cars. I had a Bentley, I had a mercedes SL 55, I had a Porsche, and I sold them and I bought a ten year old Volvo estate and I smiled. So remember, there’s a ten year old your said 100,000 miles. And I sat there and thought my dad used to drive a 20 year old Volvo estate. And your car doesn’t define who you are. I think a lot of these youngsters go, I need to buy a Porsche. I need to buy a merc or this motion, buy it on finance, or if they’ve got wealthy parents. And that sort of projection of, oh, look, I’m successful, you know, often stems from insecurity. The people that are mentally insecure, a lot of it perhaps is driven by social media where they think, do you know what? I need to show people that I’m a success, even though they finance the car to the hilt, they’re better off buying a two or three grand car that they can afford and concentrating on some of these other things, such as personal success, you know, or academic prowess, you know.

So but you’ve been there yourself. You’ve been there yourself.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know what I mean? In order to get the Bentley and the Porsche and all that, you why, why did you bother with the Bentley and the Porsche and all that, If you hadn’t had an element of that in yourself.

I brought a posh I was too embarrassed to drive. It was too flash. So if you went out to a restaurant, I said, I don’t know where I’m going to park this Porsche. I’ll be worried about it over dinner. So I’ll take one of my other cars that was older and knackered. And so I remembered the Porsche in a whole year. It did 200 miles. It was just a waste of money. It just sat there. To be fair, it went up in value. So rare it went up in value. The Bentley dropped like a lead balloon. And I remember I took it to a wedding. One of our dentists got married and I said to all the grooms, Might you all sit on the back seat on the hood? And we’ll put the bride and groom in the front and set them all down. And then the hood got broken. So when I got home, I couldn’t put the hood back on and it went back into Bentley and they picked the car up and they said, Oh, the hood’s knackered, you need a new hood. It’s 28 grand. And I saw I can’t afford this car. And then the car had depreciated ten grand on top of that in literally six months. And at that point I got the hood fixed by an independent specialist. And then at that point I thought, Oh, and COVID happened. And at that point I just got shot of it. And I said to my wife, No more fancy, if I go to buy a fancy car, just stop me. I’m just not going to do it.

But then after COVID, you had the wonderful COVID bump and we all did the whole the whole profession did very well. But you did particularly well after COVID. First of all, tell me, did you do better than the next man? I mean, did you what did you do that made it so successful? And secondly, I’m interested in did you go and buy another car or what did you then do with the money? Did you did you not.

Buy a car? I did. I did buy another car. I think I bought a g-wagon. And then father nicked it. I drove it for two weeks, then foreign nicked it. And so, yeah. So I think when COVID struck, I was worried. Three months like everyone else was. No one really knew what was going on. And then we were acquiring PPE, you know, paying extortionate rates for PPE. And at that time the government weren’t helping them. So she had to acquire her own PPE.

And so before you go before you go on, before you go on, before you go on the three months off, did you sort of take stock? I mean, outside of the worry for the business, we all had that. But did you take stock and say, well, I don’t have to work my butt off? I mean, I can I can also barbecue. I can also chill, you know, like.

No, I actually instructed my builders to start making out house and they started doing an extension on the practice. In my head, I thought COVID is going to burn out. Yeah, if I want to refurbish and remodel the practice while we’re running at full capacity, I’ll have to shut the practice down to do what I want to do. So I may as well take advantage of it being shut down. The builders can get on with their work. We did some training with our staff that I want stuff that, you know, you read about that you know, you get around to doing, you know, working more efficiently in surgery, this, that and the other. We had a whole load of notes we needed to sort out. I think at some point some of the nurses were repainting some of the surgeries and people wanted to get out, you know, and we were still manning our phones as well to give advice. So we dropped in to more surgeries. We moved our kitchen into our loft and built an academy teaching area. We built two big outhouses, remodel the garden. We had a new driveway put in. We had electric doors put in sliding doors, you know, So we were quite busy. And then when we reopened, I think prior to us reopening, I sold all my cars and then I borrowed half a million quid off the bank against my house because, you know, a friend of mine had gone bust a few years earlier. And I remember he said he said a very interesting thing.

He said to me, he said, oh, a bank are fairweather friends. They will lend you an umbrella when the sun is shining. But at the first sign of a cloud, they’re going to ask for that umbrella back. And this poor guy, he went busted a telecommunications company building phone maps. Basically they they pull the rug from under him. It was at a time where banks would make more money from stripping the assets from a company than actually waiting for you to repay the loan because they’d get their money back, sell the assets, and it was jobs for the boys and this is what happened to him. And so at the time, I had the choice of either borrowing 250 grand or half a million quid. And I thought, if this is going to go sideways, let’s just borrow half a million quid, let’s just go for it. And the thing is, since I’ve had a family, I’ve been quite risk averse. You know, I don’t want to buy the practice, I don’t do this, I don’t want to do that. But at that time. I just thought, you know what? Fuck it. If it’s gonna go, let’s just go big. Let’s go large. And I took the money and sunk it into the business. And then when COVID slowly subsided, the extra surgeries, the things that would implement it to make, you know, the flow of patients through the practice quicker and more efficient. You know, we had new computers, phone systems.

It’s very counter-intuitive move the counterintuitive move because people were scared.

They were scared. But I think at the back of my mind, I was looking at what was going on in China. I was part of a couple of study groups as well. So I think Coach Barrow had a study group going and, you know.

Daily briefings.

Yeah. And then there were I know a lot of dentists know a lot of people within the field. So I was chatting, you know, every day. I was in my office for three or 4 hours and I’d be chatting to people, you know, I’ve got some really good friends in London that have got practices, people in Birmingham, Coventry, you know, So so I was speaking to probably five or six dentists a day, you know, different fields. What are you doing? People that work for corporates, work for Portland Boots, what are they doing? What are they implemented? You know, organising the book. So, you know, so even with the team, we sat down and said, look guys, you know, we’ve got these one hour fallow times, what can we do? And then we’d source these industrial fans that could clear out a room in 15 minutes so that one hour father time was cut right down. So I think the private practices led the way in that when that happened, the private practices and the corporate big corporate side had jumped on it and they’d put protocols into place that had been adopted from America that had come over here that could negate that one hour fallow time. And so we’d set up a clever system where we had, you know, some practices, had four surgeries, then only had two dentists in working in between, one in between two surgeries, which I’d set it up. So we had two dentists working three surgeries. They do an AGP do a non AGP in the empty room. So we had a non a GP room that they’d alternate going in and out of.

So then we extended opening times from we would work from nine in the morning to ten at night. Rotating the staff through. So so that we were pulling 12 hour days in some days. But we had a 30%. We were seeing 30% normally see 200 to 250 patients a day through the clinic, and that was down to about 20 or 30. So it was a scary time. Slowly it came back, but it also helped us to become a lot more efficient. It was a blessing in disguise that we discovered things like Zoom and doing online consultations. And also when we were treating patients, you know, I brought we had 11 itero scanners in the practice. So I think we’re the only practice in the country, perhaps even Europe, to have 11 scanners for every single room has got an itinerary. And so again, we can scan infected to work. That fits immediately fits beautifully, you know, and you’re not waiting for a driver to come pick up impressions and stuff. It’s at the lab while the patient is still in the chair. And when the work comes back two or three days later, it fits straightaway, but also bumped up what the dentists were doing. So because of the exposure to an AGP, instead of just doing a filling and then come back for your crown. And it was all being done in one hit. And then when you look at the efficiency of doing all that in one hit, your underlying fixed costs actually go down, you know, because you’re not having to clean down and get your instruments out again.

Sterilise and change, you know, your scanner tips and this that you’re doing everything in one hit in one go, and then you can close the room down. So yeah, I think our revenues increase pre-COVID to now by 30%, 30 to 40% increase in turnover. But I think what was interesting was that I remember I sat down with my associate, I remember one of my I said, Look, guys, I’m going to have to reduce the percentages you’re on. We can’t pay 50% on private work If I’m a box of glove has gone up from £2 50 to 30 quid, it’s just not financially viable. And I remember my dentist and this is the test of a team that during adversity did they step up and go, Boss will support you and we trust you. And all of my team stepped up. They all said, we trust your boss, you know, and you know what you’re doing. We’ll trust you. And I am one of my said Dr.. If you show. Don’t pay me because I live with my parents. I’ve got some money in the bank. I don’t need any money. And I remember it touched me. I thought, Jesus Christ, this guy. And even to this day, you know, I remember him saying those words to me. But then I had friends that had practices. Some of their associates were saying, Oh, well, no, we’re not we’re not going to accept a low percentage and you need to pay pay me. And and it filled me with sadness that.

It’s like, what do you think? What are some of the difference between what’s the difference between your practice culturally and that other practice culturally? Is it that you respected these people for years before? Listen to.

Them. I think part of it is if you care about the people that you know, like my staff, just a draft example. One of my nurses, she sang, Oh, we were having some new computers. And she goes, Oh, do you mind if I have one of your old computers for my son? And I said, You know, and I said, Well, they’re being sent off to be destroyed in this, that and the other. And and what I did was because we had ordered about 30, 40 computers, I said to the guy, put one more on. And when we had our computers installed, I said, so we’ve got a computer left over and it’s a brand new computer. And I bought it for her son. And I gave it to him. She goes, Well, what do I for? I said, No, you can have it. Take it, you know, use it if it helps your son. You know, I didn’t have a computer and I’m going to university. I was one of the only kids that couldn’t word processor or use computer to, you know, and that felt filled me with joy and happiness to give something. And I didn’t want recognition money for it, but it made me happy in the same way that, you know. If one of my dentists gets into trouble, I’m the clinical lead, and if anything goes sideways, it gets sent to me to sort out.

So a lot of my dentists, over 20 years, they would have had two or three complaints I’ve made go away or I’ve dealt with or, you know, if they’ve needed a crown or sorted out or whatever. You know, I think people sense when you’re fair and honest with them and that they sense when you genuinely care about how they are and how they’re doing. So my staff, you know, the cleaner, the junior nurses, senior receptionists, I always stop and talk to everyone, you know. And I’ll know, for example, when my dad just come out of hospital, you know, following pneumonia and I’ll stop and check with how she died doing. Is he all right? Even if I’ve got patients waiting. How are you getting on? You know? You know, if someone’s had problems and one of my nurses had an issue with a credit card bill, they send you a thing saying, Oh, you need to deduct a source. And I said, What’s going on? She’d split it with a partner and find out she was struggling. And I said, Why don’t you said anything? Because I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to discuss it. So I paid off a credit card bill for her. And it wasn’t a lot, you know. But ultimately, that same nurse now, whenever I work with her, I come into a doctor.

That’s a particular day. Can I get you some biscuits? You know? She. There’s almost a love for them people. This were like family. I genuinely I think my staff, we treat each other like family and with care. And because we have a strong work ethic that’s come, you know, from 20 years ago and 20 years ago, I was much harsher, you know, as a boss that I wasn’t particularly compassionate. If someone was ill because their child was unwell, that bollocking, why weren’t you here? We’re trying to run a business. Whereas now I have my own children. I know what it’s like that you know, or if someone’s unwell, I’ll pay them their wages, you know, because if they’ve got mortgages and bills to pay, you know, if I lose 500 quid, 600 quid, that’s the difference between someone paying their rent. I’m not going to miss 500 quid out my wallet, you know, in a hurry. It’s still money and I do value it, but it has greater value to someone that’s in greater need. So, you know, I’m not like Jesus. I don’t walk on water and stuff like that, you know? And some of my staff will say, I can be a tough taskmaster, but. But there’s love there.

Yes, I was going to say so. I was going to say when, when, when, when push comes to shove. And you have to discipline someone or fire someone. Do you find the transition from that family love thing to the boss and disciplinarian? Quite smooth. You find you find it easy flipping?

Yeah, I think part of it goes back to being very poor, valuing people’s time. You know, people that have worked with me for a long time, I don’t suffer fools gladly. Were there, you know, were there to work and provide a professional, high quality service. And I you know, someone said to me, you offer a champagne service for lemonade money, and that stuck with me. And, you know, you know, if you’re delivering exceptional service, exceptional work. And you’re having fun along the way. I don’t mind that. If you’re messing around and not delivering. I do mind that because that to me is costing us money, you know, and it’s costing us our reputation. So. So I think my team know that I expect them to work when they’re at work. They’re there to, you know, first and foremost, they’re there to work. If friendships and fun develop out of doing that hard work, that’s great, you know, and it’s good. But I think if your team a well guided they’re happier so so people still recognise you know you know on their boss first and foremost and then you know I’m their friend second but I am their friend and one of my nurses, when we refer to move to our kitchens, she goes, Oh, what are you doing with your range cooker? There’s a brand new range cook that we had, and I said, Do you want it? And she goes, Oh yeah, but I don’t know how to get it to the house. I dropped it personally to a house with my builder, put it on my pickup, dropped it around and we fitted it for her. And whenever she says she goes, Ali, we had a lovely roast and thank you for my cook. And the thing is, you don’t do these things that they’re not to me, they’re not big things. It’s just being kind to your fellow man, you know? And that makes me happy. I don’t know why it fills me. It’s like giving to charity. It makes me happy, you know?

It’s not. It’s not. It’s like. It’s like giving a present is more pleasurable than getting a present, isn’t it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it’s. Yeah, it’s on paper.

It shouldn’t be that. It is.

Yeah, I think. Again, talk about people on a life journey as you transition. Money becomes less and less important to a person and your personal and mental well-being becomes more and more important.

I do a thing where I read people’s Google reviews.

And yours. I wrote.

All morning.

I that’s why my mom wrote some of them so stunning.

So the way almost I think of life, I think of different things in terms of sort of frequency and amplitude, you know, the and the frequency and amplitude of these of these comments. It’s just so beautiful, so slow. And then when you look at the key words, the words that people often mentioned the most, there’s, you know, the ones you’d expect, like Invisalign, you know. But family reception is 16 times when you read through them. My goodness me, people are over the moon. It’s not just like a five star they’ve been told to write. Sort of. It’s a genuine, genuine, beautiful things that people have said. What’s the do you train your team on that or is it that you go very high level? We respect people, we love people, we do a great job and then leave it to them? Or do you literally train them?

No, there’s no training at reception Reception. Don’t you know? That’s amazing. Say here we leave this a Google review. What tends to happen is when we treat patients, I often take photographs on my phone and I WhatsApp them to the patient and say, This is your teeth before this is what they look like after. Thank you for choosing us. I hope you’re okay. So I usually touch base with them a day later, you know, and I usually review them a week down the road to see how they’re getting on or if they’ve had bonding. I usually fit a retainer a week later. And at that point, you know, usually we’ll just send them a WhatsApp message. There’s no pressure. I don’t think it’s fair to say to them, Will you leave me a Google review to their face? You know, while you’re holding a drill in your hand, It’s not really fair. You know, it’s very you know, hey, let me help you write it, you know, or here’s an iPad. Leave a review while you’re sitting in front.

But, you know, I have my co hosts, My my co-host has a whole process for getting brilliant Google reviews that he trains the teams on. And it’s a beautiful process. But these don’t look like they’re they’re like that. They just there’s love in these.

Let’s see we’ll send a WhatsApp and it will say something like, you know, I hope you enjoy your smile. If you do get a chance, please leave. A Google review would mean a great deal to me. Regards Allie. So it’s not from the practice, it’s from me. If I’ve treated them and then some people do. I get a lot of people that are trying to join my practice as NHS patients, and we’ve not accepted patients for NHS patients for about seven eight years and then they can’t register and you’ll get to a 4.8 star review and then someone will leave a one star review saying, I can’t register with this practice and they wouldn’t see me unless it was privately. And they’re really greedy. And I think one of my reviews, I responded to him saying, Well, for the £23, you pay me half, it goes to the dentist. Because you wrote always greedy dentists, they wouldn’t see me. I said, half of it goes to the dentist. So that leaves me about £11.50. I’ve got a pay a receptionist nurse Sterilise your instruments pay for my PPE plus treat you so. So I can’t really be accused of being greedy because it probably costs me money to treat you, you know?

What about what about associates? Associates, buddy? What’s your view on you? Obviously, having to attract and retain high quality associates for many years. What’s your view? I mean, let’s start with what do you do if your associates been on them? And he comes back and says, I want to buy this, that and the other, What do you do about that? Do you buy it for him? Do you make it make a case? What happens?

Open ordering policy. If they’re going to generate revenue and it’s relatively sensible, I say order it. I worked in a couple of practices before setting up my squat, so and what motivated me to set up my squad. So six months post 50, I worked in a practice, I did my PhD training in Leamington, went to Erdington and worked for a chat, and then I also worked evening and Saturdays for an emergency clinic and both of these clinics that I worked in, in Erdington and Sally Oak, they were a masterclass in how not to run a practice. You know, the the staff were poorly motivated. The boss would sit there bitching about staff behind their backs. The boss in one wouldn’t order material, so he was ordering the cheapest off. He was just wring every penny out of the practice that he could. And then they sold the practice to a corporate. And I just remember. At this woman, vile woman walking in and she goes, We’ve taken over. These are your new contracts. You need to sign them now. And she threw a contract at me. And I remember it landed on the floor in front of me, and I just stood up and walked out. I thought, you know, and I thought, I’m not working for people like this. I don’t care who they are. And then I think their area manager came to speak to me because I was generating more revenue than the principal and the other associate put together. But I’d worked through my lunch to do Domiciliary and they said, What does it take for you to stay? And I said and I said, If she’s the manager, I don’t want to work for you.

Said, You don’t throw contracts at people. We’re not Dogs were people. And, you know, ultimately, I can’t sign a contract because I’m leaving. I just want to hand in my notice. And at that stage, I sort of look to move away. And I was looking for an associate position, but I couldn’t find anything that I liked. And then I saw a chair for sale in the bdg and I thought, Well, I want to set up a practice at some parts. Go and have a look at this chair. Got there and it was a practice that had shut down. The guy had got struck off. He was an alcoholic. The dentist was the landlord was selling off the equipment from the surgery. And I said, Well, what are you doing with the building? You know? And he goes, Well, we were going to just sell the equipment and convert it back into a shop. And I said, Well, can I can I rent it off you? So. And he goes, Well, yeah. And so the rent was, I think, three grand for the year to rent. And these two second-hand chairs Panix machine set. So that’s six months post me and I set up my own practice and then I spent two years running up this squat, and then I put enough money together to put a deposit on the practice I’ve got now.

But I was self-made. My parents weren’t wealthy, you know. So that was two years of learning how to run a practice. And then and then I had to shut it down because the landlord wouldn’t transfer the lease to any buyer found. So I think, you know, I think going back to your question, that sort of retaining associate, you know, I was I would stay there as an associate if I’d been looked after. And I think what you tend to find is my associates at my practice don’t really leave. One of my associates is leaving now after ten years. He was my PhD, but he’s setting he’s taking over from his wife who’s got a practice and she’s going on maternity, so he’s going over to run the practice there. It’s very rare, my staff, because, for example, I’ll give them their own itinerary, I’ll pay the submissions for them, they can order what they want to. We spend a shed load on marketing, so they’ve got a gluttony of private patients coming into them wanting treatment. We spread the patients evenly. Everyone gets a fair crack of the whip. You know, I’m there to facilitate any complaints or tricky cases they want. So. So I think part of it you often find is if an associate, you sometimes get associates saying, well, are you getting 50% at the practice up the road? But if the principals creaming off all the private patients or they don’t have any private patients coming in or they don’t have an online presence.

Or a.

Good social media, you know, 50% of nothing is nothing. 45% of a lot is a lot. It’s the same thing with UDA values. We were interviewing some associates recently, and increasingly we get associates coming in. They’ve done courses like the mini Small Maker course and, you know, or some of some other course that they’ve done a weekend course. They come in and they come in and maybe they’ve got it right, maybe I’ve got it wrong. They come in saying, We only want to work three days a week. The rest of the time I need for personal development and stuff. And I only want to do private work. And the problem is my practice is a mixed practice. I can’t let a newbie come in. So we’re going to send you all of our private patients or some of them that come in. So you have an entirely private list. When everyone else is doing mixed lists, it’s not fair, you know, and for us to do that, it’s not just, you know, and, you know.

Your practice isn’t isn’t right for that person, though. That’s that’s it.

I think part usually we say to our business model tends to be based on the fact that, you know, you often find part time dentists that are running a clinic or surgery. You’ve got two part timers. They won’t generate as much revenue as a full time dentist. The full time dentist will be used to as nurse, whereas materials are, and they will generate probably on average, 15 to 20% more than if you put two associates in that room because stuff will get moved. The nurses aren’t quite used to working with each other or if dentist A treats a patient and they come back three days later. Dentist BE And most people are ethical, but some dentists will say, well, on the NHS I’m not paid a penny to repair what’s broken to go back to your treating dentist. So I think the quality of care can in some instances diminish as well. So we prefer to take on full time dentists that are there most of the time. So if any of their problems come back and sometimes even with the best one I can pop a filling in and it might come off or a veneer hasn’t stuck down properly and they’re back a couple of days later. But for that continuity of treatment, my preference is to have full time guys with us and full time guys that are willing. Like the ironies in our practice, we have a stable list of niche patients that want to access NHS Check-ups but nine times out of ten they’ll opt for private fillings, be that bleaching, white fillings, private zirconia crowns, etc.

So yes, they might be having a check-up, you know, for for their £22 a day or whatever it is, but they’re having a £700 crown hand in hand with it. So, so that sort of nonsense where people come and say, well I can get £23 a year up the road and you’re thinking, well go on and take it, you’re welcome to. And I think in our practice we’re blessed in that our guys, you know, I’ve got guys that have done postgraduate training implants and far as amazing at Invisalign, I’m lucky enough to have, you know, trained under Dipesh Palmer himself. And so, you know, we’re good at bonding, you know, So we’ve got a massive range of experience. So if anyone joining us like, well, want to learn about endo and how to do not endo to the sound of a normal GP, but an exceptionally well trained endo guide, that all he does is endo you know, all specialises in it. It’s a fantastic learning, you know, learn about. We were PhD trains for about ten, 15 years as well. And so we’re set up, we’re geared up to teach people how to learn stuff. And that’s part of the reason we put an academy in the practice as well, because we wanted to share that knowledge.

So we’ve set up a camera above the chair that fires up to two big screens in the loft, and we can have 15, 20 delegates there, you know, viewing it. So, you know, I think ultimately when associates, retaining associates, anyone that works for us doesn’t want to leave because there’s a great team, there’s good solid management, if something breaks, we’ll fix it. You know, and often in corporate practices, it’s got to go up the chain before anything gets done or. If one of my dentists says, I want to try this, it’s okay, fine. Let’s do it. We’ll support you. You know. But Fara. She’s my wife. But even if she was an associate and she said, Well, I want to try Invisalign, can I have a scanner? And that’s a 50 grand outlay, you know. So. Oh, 45 whatever it was, and it’s fine. Let’s do it. Let’s try some marketing, you know? But then at that point, we rolled scanners out to all the associates. So let’s all use them, because, you know, the work, the fits of work is superb on the restorative. And it’s a fantastic product for Invisalign. You don’t be hanging around. If someone’s interested in Invisalign, it’s worth four grand. You don’t be waiting 20 minutes or half an hour to grab hold of a scanner that’s free.

Okay, let’s move on to darker questions. I’m really interested in times where you think you’ve made mistakes. Things you could have done better, both from a clinical perspective and from a business perspective, because a lot of times we don’t talk about our mistakes in medicine and you know, we don’t get to learn from each other’s mistakes. What comes to mind when I when I say that.

I remember as an f d treating an elderly lady. And I was taking out her upper eight. And I heard a crack carried on taking out this eight. And her mouth filled with blood and was pulse 60. And this poor woman was probably 85 years old. And I remember going next door to my boss, Go, Boss, can you please come and have a look at this? Yes, I’ll be there in a minute. And I kicked him. I said no. Bill, can you please come and have a look at it immediately, please? And he could see the terror in my face because I thought, she’s going to die. And he came in. I remember his. He was a great oral surgeon, great set of hands. His pupils just dilated. And he died. So to all. And then this woman, bless her, came in a week later, and the whole right side of the face was bruised and black. And I was close to tears. And I was saying, I’m so sorry. How are you? She goes, I’m fine, my love. Don’t worry. We’ve all got to learn somehow. And and I remember I went home thinking I shouldn’t be a dentist. And, you know, but I think at that time, early on, you know, your I’ve been in training myself for ten years, and we’ve had about ten pairs of trainees come through the practice.

And, you know, as time went on, you know, I think the support that you had 20 years ago was quite poor. It was just get on with it. I know my boss would say, Right, you’re doing the emergencies on Saturday here, the practice case. And I think another time he phoned me up, say there’s a patient with toothache, 7:00 in the evening, open up the practice, take a tooth out and drop the keys round back around to the house. And I went to his house, dropped the keys off and he handed me a silver tray with drinks on it goes Right. You’re serving drinks. He was having a soiree and you did it. You were BFD, you were the dogsbody in the practice. And I remember serving drinks. Now, if I look at my last PhD, if I said, right, your serving drinks at my practice or go to serving drinks at a soiree I’m holding there, just say piss off, I’m not doing it and I’m reporting you to the deanery advisor. Or if I said go to the practice and treat a patient by yourself.

It was unheard of. It’s unheard of now. But back then it was just I remember I spent one Wednesday afternoon, all the dentists had gone off for games, one had gone to play golf, one had gone to play tennis, and I spent 4 hours trying to take out it was a guy. He was a footballer. I spent 4 hours trying to take out a seven. It kept factoring and I still didn’t get it all out. And after 4 hours my arms were ready to fall off, so I had to call him back and to do it. But you were just left to fend for yourself. So I think clinically. Touch wood. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a complaint or issue. You know, we all have difficulties. Dentures might not go right or a feeling might not be perfect or the odd piece of lab. But. But nothing catastrophic is that I can recall that’s happened. I think I’ve also learned as I’ve got older. Things that can go wrong or have gone wrong are, I think, are based on my own vanity where, you know, a patient has come in, they want something. They’ve just got unrealistic expectations. And, you know, you sort of think, oh, well, I’m.

Captain.

Underpants, I can deliver. Get in the chair, let’s do this. Yeah, but you end up just with me. I have no quibble. Refund if a patient says I’m not happy. Yeah, I won’t just say, hey, I have a partner, I will say, have all of your money back. I’m sorry. I’ve not met your expectations. So at that point, you kill any complaint debt Because as long as they’re in a better position than they were, than when you started, which they generally will be, and you’ve given them full refund, you can just get on with something else and earn your money elsewhere. I think where some dentists might fail, they get so wrapped. Well, you know, it’s almost an admission of guilt. Well, I’ve given them a refund. You know, I’ve been known. I think we had a complaint six months ago with one of our associates. It was over a filling that had been done. There was a slight overhang. The patient sort of had discomfort with it, and the patient’s brother was a dentist and this guy was just going mental that shouldn’t have been left and this, that and the other. And the guy had a mouth full of supervised neglect and then in the end sort of was booked in with me to sort out. And then I said, Look, you might need a root filling with this tooth if I redo the filling, you know, well I’m not paying for the I’m not paying for the crown.

I need on it either. You know, my brother’s a dentist and they said dentist roll over easily and you should do it free of charge. And at that point I said, look, you know, we’re not liable to provide a crown for you and we’re not liable to you. I’m happy to replace the filling, but technically, I have to warn you, you might need a root canal treatment, which you may have needed anyway, because it was a very deep feeling, really unhappy kicking off. And I said, Well, I’ll tell you. What is it you want? He goes, Well, I want my money back. And I said, Well, fine, we’ll refund you. And he goes, Well, I can’t afford to have the treatment because guy I want to do it is more expensive than you are. I said, Well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll give you all of your money back that you spent on your course of treatment with this. So you’ve had some other bits and bobs done. And so we ended up giving him 600 quid back. I think the filling had been charged 180 quid for. He still came back and went after the dentist saying, you know, I want more money, I want compensation, this, that. And it went all the way to the GDC and it got kicked out. But the dentist went through a year of just hell with it. But I think those are an overhang. Sorry.

Over an overhang.

Over and over how it was ridiculous, the fact that it even got to the GDC and wasn’t thrown out but the guy went through. There was a visual change in his demeanour while he was dealing with this complaint and, you know, and it was important to support him and say, Look, you’ve not done anything wrong. It could have happened to any of us. You’ve got to just let it go, get on with, you know. And, you know, if someone ends up having to pay out for it, the insurance will cover it. So you’ve not done anything wrong. You know, so I think a lot of dentists are left. I think I think I listen to a podcast with Neil Palmer and he was saying that, you know, there is a mental price that’s paid by dentists and you’re often on your own when there’s a complaint, and often we’re too ashamed, like you say, to admit that you’ve got something wrong and we’re all human and you’re dealing with biological tissues and you can do 100 fillings the same. Nine. If four might work, ten of them might end up with irreversible politesse and the feeling might not be any different than the other 90. You just don’t know. But I think ultimately most patients are generally quite sensible. But you’ll get the odd, crazy patient that no matter what you do, they’re just not happy. And I think I’ve learnt as a leader, I’ve learnt how to say no. So in terms of and that reduces your risk of a clinical failing because all that ends up happening.

I had another case that we did, we replaced some crowns, I think 4 to 4. We redid them. They were a mess to begin with. She looked lovely when they were done. She went away six months. I came back. I’m not quite happy. My husband doesn’t like them. People stopped me in the street and say to me, What’s happened to your teeth, strangers? And I said, Well, let’s look at the photographs. As soon as the patient says that, you just think you’re lying because they look okay, they look lovely, but okay. I said, Well, these are the photographs of what you look like before you go. Oh, my God, I don’t remember them being that bad. They they were like that. This is what they look like now. So. So what exactly are strangers and your husband saying to you? So I don’t quite understand because I think you look better. No, no, I’m not happy. I want them redone. I want the colour slightly different. I want the shape slightly different. This, that and the other. I want them to look like this. And at that point, she pulls out a picture of Angelina Jolie. This is probably 65 and you’re thinking Right, I can’t make you look like Angelina Jolie. Even with the best will in the world, I might be able to get your teeth close, but I can’t change your face. And at that point, I said, all right, we’ll redo them for you if you’re that unhappy.

We’ll do a new mock-up. We’ll do a stent. We’ll show it all to you again, you know. And then we went and I think I did them again. And she went away. She came back a year later. I’m still not happy. At which point I just gave her a full riff and I said, Have all of your money back. I cannot help you. You know, I can’t improve what I’ve done for you and good luck. Hopefully there’ll be done so that it can meet your expectations. I think two years later, she came back to me again. Please, will Dr. Ali see me? Please. Will you do my teeth for me? I’ve been to two or three other places and no one wants to touch it. They probably looked at it and thought, You’ve got a bit of dysmorphia and there might be a psychological element to her needing treatment. But it’s cases like that now that come in. I think I’m better at picking up at the beginning if I can meet someone’s expectations, you know, and often what you find with, I think the advent of social media now, people’s expectations are actually higher than they used to be. So before you could almost get away with doing something that would just improve the situation. Now it’s got to match, you know, some of these brilliant dentist work that you see on Instagram. It’s got to come close to it. Otherwise you can have an unhappy punter on your hands.

What about what about a business mistake? What comes to mind?

I think. One of the things I regretted the most was when I was married to my second wife. I was offered a practice over in Kenilworth and at that time I negotiated a loan. So everyone was after this private practice.

Second wife are your first wife?

Second wife. So I think my first wife was when I first bought my share. With my first practice? No. I’d set up my spot and I’d got married then. And then literally, we were married for four months. And unfortunately, she. She was very upset and almost suicidal that she didn’t want to get married and father a lot of pressure and to get married. I think we’d met four times before. You know, her parents and my parents decided that we were getting married. And so after four months, unfortunately, we went our separate ways. And I think she was relieved, as was I. And then I think I think my mom caught me probably between girlfriends probably six years later saying, you look, you’re older, you’ve had your fun time to settle down. And then I was introduced to my second wife and again, there wasn’t much of a spark there at all, but our family seemed to get on very well. Being a good sort of Muslim boy, my mom and dad saying, Look, this family’s nice, they’re good for you and you’ll be a good match. And you know, your old days are behind you and married and unfortunately, just very unhappy. We had nothing in common. There was no spark. There was no real love there. And after ten months, she left and then we got divorced. And that was it. That was sort of arranged marriage number two. But at the time when I was married to her, I was offered a practice over in Canada.

Loads. People were after it. It was a freehold practice. I think there were six surgeries. It had a good NHS contract and I just won the dentistry awards Best Dentist in the Midlands. So this was 2008. And you know, I met the guy he saw, he came over to my practice, looked at the awards that we’d won the best team in the Midlands, best practice, I’d won the best young dentist. And he said, I really like your practice. I like what you’re about and your team and I want my practice to go to someone that’s going to look after my patients and you fit the bill. And so even though I wasn’t offering because it turned into a bidding war, people were offering way over the asking price. And I got it for the asking price. I think it was 1.2 mil. I had a loan, which I think 0.75 above base rate, which was what they were prepared to lend to me at the bank were. And the deal was sewn up, ready to sign off. And then my wife at the time said, If you work too hard as it is, if you buy this practice, I’m leaving you. I’m going back to my mum and dad. And at the time my parents were putting pressure on me saying, Look, you need to make your marriage work.

It’s your second marriage and you know you can only one chapatti and one bowl of daal a night. You don’t need any more. Don’t you know? Don’t put your family first, put your personal. And so against my gut instinct, I pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. I said, look to the guy, I’m so sorry. My wife’s not being supportive. And then about three months later, she left anyway. And it took me. These practices come up on the market so rarely. Even now, 20 years later, I’ve never seen another practice that ticked all the boxes, you know? And for about two years, it took me a long, long time to get over it because because the lending rate was so it was like free money. I was being handed a practice that I could add value to very easily because it was, you know, it wasn’t being run particularly well. And when she left and I ended up getting divorced anyway, I just literally I was so upset about it. And, you know, and I think it impacted on me for a long time. But then having said that, I met my wife Sara, that I have two lovely children with now. And, you know, it’s probably the happiest I’ve been in my life, you know, So it happens. It all happens for a reason. So again, that goes back to that personal success. That was.

An element. Was there an element? Was there an element of of I’m not going to listen to my parents anymore at that point?

Yeah, well, after this practice fell through, I wrote a check to my mother and we had a bit of a falling out in that I think there was a wedding we were going to. And she goes, I don’t want you to come because people ask where your wife is and this, that and the other. And you know, and I remember saying someone, Well, tell people your son’s dead then if that’s how you feel, if you can’t support me as your son, tell them. And dead And I walked out the house and then for about two years my mum, I didn’t speak to my mum for about two years. I was so angry and especially with the divorce. And then suddenly you realise that on the one hand you’re you have this pressure put on by Asian parents, that family honour and all of this crap, which frankly I don’t care for, you know. But on the flip side, under British law, if you marry someone, they don’t care if you met someone seven times or six times and you don’t really know them, they’ll go after your assets, they’ll go after your business, your home, your vehicle, your money.

And, you know, ultimately, more often than not at that time, I was doing my second marriage financially, it was very successful, had a big house, had a big practice. You know, I had a nice car. And you’ve married someone that hasn’t contributed to anything at all during your marriage, financially or otherwise, that suddenly they’ve got free rein on potentially taking half of your assets off you. So in that sense, I think, you know, it made me angry that I’d been that stupid to put myself at that sort of risk. And even when I met Father, I said, I don’t want to get married. And she was upset saying, Well, look, we can’t just live together. We have to get married. My dad won’t let me just live with you. We have to get married. And I remember I met her father to explain to her that, Look, I’ve been married before. I don’t want to get married again. I want to just live with your daughter. And he.

Looked at me.

Crazy, man, you know, like he was sort of, you know, a sort of blood vessel on his temple was pulsating like he was going to murder me. And and I said, I just want to spend a year getting to know your daughter. And I remember he looked at me because, look, son, he goes, Marry her. And you can spend your entire life getting to know her. Yes. You’re not just living with her. It’s not going to happen. So and so. So we did get married. And thankfully, you know, she stayed with me. And we’ve got two lovely children. And whenever we fight, she does throw in my face. Or the other two cows left you. I’m going to leave you now, too. So, you know, so she generally wins most arguments with me.

So you never you never know from the outside. Right. But you guys do look very, very, very happy, man. You just like making. Each other, laugh the whole time is a great recipe.

Yeah, I think we have quite we’re lucky in the sense that ten years on, I must admit I’m still not bored nor ashamed. She keeps me on my toes. An example will be I can walk in and go, Oh, can you make a cup of tea and sort of do it yourself in front of the builder? And so you learn. You learn where those sorts of parameters are. And so, you know, and you know, we argue like cat and dog sometimes, but then equally there’s a lot of love there and care there. And sort of ten years down the road, we’ve found a groove where we just rub along, you know. So there’s an Asian saying where you throw two rough rocks into a stream and they rub off each other and they become smooth like pebbles. So we’re slowly becoming pebbles, slowly but surely.

Nice, but perhaps going to do me in for keeps telling me your podcast for too long. One want 50 minutes in I think we need to we need to bring it to close but it’s been lovely talking to you. I’m going to close it with the usual questions that we always ask. Fancy dinner party. Three guests. Dead or alive. Are you going to have?

Well, I think my first guess would be slightly controversial. It’d be Andrew Tate.

I find you like a bit of an educator.

Yeah. I find some of the statements he makes quite controversial. But equally, I think he’s a very interesting person to listen to. I think the second person would be there’s an American lifestyle coach called Tony Robbins. Yeah. And I think he’s listening to some of his seminars. You know, mentally, I think it’s very uplifting listening to him. And he has a very positive mindset in terms of looking after yourself physically and mentally.

Have you been to one of his seminars?

I haven’t. I’ve got his books. He’s done a couple of books recently.

You know, money that won.

It was I forget the title. So I’ve got. I’ve got a terrible habit of buying books and I never get around to reading them. So I’ve got books like sort of Seven Habits, Habits of highly Effective People and, you know, books by Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And you have to stop worrying and start living.

So Anthony Robbins, Tony Robbins. Well, years ago, 20 years ago, I wrote Awakened Giant Within an Unlimited Power. Recently, recently, he’s written this one called Money that People Keep banging on About. I haven’t I haven’t read that one, but apparently not read that.

I think the two books that I’ve got on my bookshelf, I forget the names of them, but yeah, Tony Robbins, I think some of his on line stuff, you know, if you look it up, look up some of his online lectures and stuff, that they’re just fascinating. The energy that he comes across with it is just, you know, who’s.

The who’s the third guess because it’s getting quite testosterone. You go on, who’s the third guest? Who’s the third guest? Because we’re getting kind of testosterone so far.

Third guess. I think it would be Jordan Peterson. He’s a Canadian. Jordan Peterson is a Canadian philosopher and professor, isn’t he? And I find him very interesting as well. But, you know, and some of the things they come out with are slightly controversial. But then equally, I just find them fascinating to listen to. Oh, another one would be. There’s a guy called Mitchinson. He’s passed away. He’s an atheist, and he’s do lectures at Oxford University.

Christopher Hitchens. Yeah. Hitchens. Hitchens.

Hitchens. Hitchens. Hitchens Yeah. Hitchens Yeah. Yeah, he. I found some of his lectures were quite interesting as well. So yeah, probably, probably one of these guys.

Interesting list of people, man. Interestingly, see, people I don’t know if you heard Jordan Peterson, he was on Joe Rogan this week. Brilliant. Three hour conversation. He just didn’t stop talking. But it was constantly brilliant.

Now he is something that’s really interesting about, you know, something that Andrew Tate and John Peterson both have in common. Maybe something that’s left over from my divorces is that they look at men’s mental health. And that’s something that perhaps we don’t talk about that, particularly with the MeToo movement. And this that I remember there was their Gillette advert that came out where it was men behaving quite appallingly, and then suddenly that’s not okay. And then suddenly, you know, the world’s all sunshine and roses again. And a lot of people boycotted Gillette products saying, Well, most men don’t behave in that abhorrent manner towards women and sort of tarring everyone with the same brush. And I think the voice of men to an extent, be that with domestic violence against men and in particular mental health. I think that’s something I know. I was very lonely when I got divorced. You know, and particularly within the Asian culture where you felt you couldn’t go to people’s houses and you couldn’t go out and it was something to be ashamed of. But I look back at it and, you know, I look at my ex-wives and think there are no winners there. And I feel sorry that they were pressured into marriages.

I feel sorry for me that I didn’t have a voice to say, Well, no, I don’t want to do this and I’m not doing this. And I think that that whole. Issue about men not talking to one another. I think it’s something that’s so important. So I talked to a lot of my male friends regularly. I make time to chat to them. How are you getting on how you’re doing and or go out, you know, as a bite to eat, You know, just have a one on one chat, you know, And it might be that you might go and say, My wife’s terrible. She did this, that and the other, and you feel better, You mentally feel better. Historically, men don’t really do that. My wife is always checking to a friend and, you know, and I’ve started to do that more. I check to my friends now and say, Oh, you know, how’s your week been? How you been? Or if someone says they’re down, I will make an effort to check in on them. Say, What’s going on? Let’s go out, let’s, you know, go for a blast in a fun car or something, you know, And, you know.

I know also, when you lay over the stresses of dentistry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dentistry has been a stressful job for 100 years. It’s not it’s not just the GDC and the Dental Law Partnership and the NHS. And, you know, dentists have had a high suicide rate in countries where, you know, in the US or in many countries, Right. Yeah. Yeah. Where, where these problems haven’t been there. So the job itself has some sort of inherent stress. Well I guess the stuff Nilesh was talking about, you take on, you take on the patient stress when it goes wrong, it can go very wrong sometimes. Yeah. And then, and then you’ve got the sort of the isolation of being in one room with one nurse. And sometimes, you know, you’ve got a great relationship with your nurse, but I’m sure if you haven’t got a great relationship with your nurse, it’s a total nightmare. Man. Yeah. Like, come to that room and spend a whole day with someone you hate or someone who hates you, you know, or whatever it is. And then you lay over on top of that, this thing you’re saying about men, which is real because men don’t discuss their feelings. And it’s not very it hasn’t been very fashionable for men to be talked about, everyone else to be talked to. So it’s real. It’s real that, you know. Lovely to talk to you, man.

Yeah. Yeah, Likewise. Pam. Thank you so much for having me. You know, it’s been lovely chatting to you and hope I’m not said anything too untoward or offensive to your audience or yourself.

The the you say say your truth. That’s that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? That’s. That’s why this medium is working so well now. Yeah. Because people have had enough of, of inauthentic stuff. And I can’t think of anyone more authentic than you, buddy. So it’s.

Very easy.

Very lovely to have had you. Thank you. And I miss you, buddy. I miss you. You look out for me, man. I miss you. Come and see us again.

Did you.

Working too.

Hard? I must say. I’m going to give you a big cuddle. I won’t.

Working too hard crazily. I even put a Birmingham date in today. I put a Birmingham date in thinking of you and thinking of Depeche as well. Not having to travel, but he likes to travel. But I put a Birmingham date in October or something like that, so come see us.

Definitely, for sure. Lovely to see you, man. Thank you once again. Give my love to everyone. Love you, man. Take care.

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

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

 

I would argue quite strongly that what we’re teaching at the minute and implant dentistry, we’re teaching the surgical principles, which is lifting flaps and managing soft tissue, all really good, important fundamental things. But the bit we’re missing is to make sure that we put it in the right place. If we put it in the right place, we will reduce our surgical complications and we will reduce our risk of complications. That’s the position, and that’s where guided surgery fits.

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.

Selling cake gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr. James Hamill onto the podcast. James is a long time implant leader, is the way I would describe it. First came on my radar with blue Apple Dental. But things have moved on a lot for James. He’s a bit of a serial entrepreneur, teaches mentors, distributes near dental implants in Ireland, CEO, of course dental and recently doing a roadshow around the UK with his chrome product which is really taken off which is the implant digital workflow, which James you’re looking at now going across Europe. With pleasure to have you, buddy.

Welcome. Yeah, Yeah. Thank you. Yep.

So, James, do you grew up in Northern Ireland?

Yep. Correct. Yeah. Currently, Fermanagh, a little sleepy town called Enniskillen, which is over on the west side of Northern Ireland. So we’re, we’re, we’re known as border people. So we grew up on the border.

So Enniskillen to me, only the troubles. I remember Enniskillen coming up in the Troubles. Do you have memories of the Troubles being a feature of your childhood, or were you past that point when you were?

Very much so. Now you’ve brought that up. That makes me feel quite sad actually. But that that’s what you remember Enniskillen for? Yeah. Yeah. So Enniskillen was unfortunately made famous because of the Enniskillen bomb which happened which happened at the Cenotaph when when there was a group families, husbands and wives and kids there for the Remembrance Day period that took place there every year. And yeah, it was a very tragic time for me. Now that you’ve said that the memories actually of that flood back. Yeah. So we grew up in The Troubles. I suppose my generation was generation where we couldn’t we were restricted in where we could go. We went to Belfast. Everything was about. Was there going to be able was there going to be one of these calls that came in that you had to evacuate certain areas? But that’s what we lived with. So I suppose it was nothing unusual. It’s probably more unusual not to have it. And I’ve got two children, 18 and 16, and that’s amazing that they haven’t had to grow up in that environment. And thank God they haven’t had to grow up with that environment, you know, at. You know, I remember I stole so many stories, but I remember sitting in class and one of my very good friends being removed from the class to find out that his dad had been blown. Blown up. Right. But they are very close to the village that I lived in. And that still is a haunting memory of him walking out the door.

The normalisation of it, isn’t it? Because you could even say we grew up with it or I grew up with it because I lived across the road from Regent’s Park and there was the Regent’s Park Bomb, and I don’t remember thinking about this problem very much. So that’s all normalisation. I go to Lebanon a lot and it’s just been war and war and war. And it’s funny because you don’t think about it all day, but then sometimes there’s a big bang and suddenly everyone’s on edge. And it turns out it was some some opening of some garden somewhere that were firing, firing some sort of artillery thing to celebrate. But that sort of PTSD of of it.

You know, goes back suddenly. It does come back and. We live in a beautiful part of the world. Like Fermanagh is essentially the Lake District of Ireland and it is stunningly beautiful and that has just been emptied over the years. But Northern Ireland’s moved on. If we go more positive, you know, you know, it’s moved on massively and hopefully we continue to do that. There’s still the odd dinosaur in there who wants to keep harking back to the past, but we got to move forward and the scars have got to heal. And as a community, we’ve got to let things go, unfortunately. Or if we you know, otherwise we’re just polluting our kids and their kids. So I think it’s important that we got to keep, no matter how painful it is, we got to keep moving forward. And I understand that’s hugely difficult for for many, many families in Northern Ireland. But I also think we all are our next generation and the opportunity not to have that baggage.

James I spend quite a lot of time in Belfast in the last couple of years because we keep coming over for that many small make over course of us. And the the temperament of the Northern Irish seems to be sort of very self deprecating. Not not someone, not people who sort of shout out their their their sort of what’s great about them, sort of the opposite of kind of where I’m at right now, £1,000 down south. But in that environment, you’re a serial entrepreneur who entrepreneurs by their nature have to shout about what they’re doing. Are you an outlier compared to your peers in that sense?

Not Northern Ireland is full of people like me. And it is because you have to be you know, we don’t have chimney pots, you know, we don’t have masses of amount of population. And therefore there is innovative people and a not of businesses all over Northern Ireland. You know, if you look at Ireland as a whole, it’s the it’s the European leading medical device market, as I’m sure you’ll be aware of payment in your business. You know, and the side of Ireland, the innovation is incredible and that has been driven by governmental policies, but also because of the people that exist here generally, a very highly trained population, very good schools, like really good schools. So the education is is superb. And really what we have suffered from for many years is the dirty in a way the that is stopping and a lot of that’s been driven by cost of going to university in the UK versus staying in Ireland. And so I think we’re starting to see more people staying in house. An outlier amongst my friends, you know, a lot of people that I went to school with, lots of them are self-made business people. Lots of them have owned their own businesses at the time. Some have failed, some have been very successful. So no, I don’t think I’m an outlier in regards to that. Now.

Do you remember the first time you thought I was going to be a dentist?

Yeah, I do, actually. I was always going to be a vet, and I had absolutely no interest in the industry until I mess things up. So I at school loved biology, love geography, hated chemistry, and spent most of my time in chemistry. See, I never could hit the guy at the far side of the class with the what? I used to put the orange tube of the Bunsen burner onto the top and it made a very effective water pistol and it was amazingly accurate. And so I just masked in chemistry because I just couldn’t get on the subject. So unfortunately, I decided that I spent summers with vets. Very weird thing and rural part of Vermont. I suppose its normal enough and I always wanted to be a vet. So I guess the story as I got a D in chemistry the first time, so no veterinary school was going to accept me, although I would argue very strongly that it would make a good vet, but that wasn’t going to happen. So what what happened at that point was I remember sitting down panicking and I was going through clearing what can I get with two ears and the D what can I get with two ears and two.

A’s and what a combination.

Yeah, I know my dad. I was nearly signing up for marine biology. Like what? Where that came from? I have no idea. But remember my dad coming in and saying. Les, just hold on a second. You know, let’s not do anything Rush here. Typical of my dad. And he said, Why don’t you think about repeating your chemistry? So that’s what I did. I went to Belfast and my friends were going there from school to university, and I moved in with a few of them in the bottom of the Lisburn Road and unfortunately at that stage wasn’t mature enough to realise I had one year to sort myself out. So for the first six months I basically drank smokes, which is a wonderful drink from Northern Ireland. It’s a beer. We made Christmas trees out of the cans and I got another. Rd Okay, so at that point, at that point my mother and father extracted me from that and God bless them, they continued to pay their rent and move me in with my cousin Rodney, who had just started his accountancy career. So he was on down the road in Belfast. And, you know, I look back at Rodney still may account and a very dear friend, and he moved out of his bedroom, moved into a box room where the bed wasn’t long enough to cope with them. So he used to sleep with his feet up, you know, up against like this. And I got his bedroom and he said to me, If you don’t get a fucking falconer, he says, I’m brilliant. So I saw just the brilliant switched for me and I did every paper that ever existed in A-level chemistry.

And I got an A and came very close to the top band in Northern Ireland. So I switched it round and it was during that period that my mum suggested I think about dentistry. So I went and did some work experience with a dentist in Belfast. And the thing that struck me about that was the relationships between the patients and the dentist and that sort of thought, you know what, that appeals. I then went to see an orthodontist and then I gave the name of Henry Cassidy. You know, this is quite a while ago. No, but he ran a private orthodontic business. Beautiful. Ms. was so far ahead of its time. So he had four chairs, very American style. And then he had a consulting room. He was into bicycles. I liked bicycles. And I still remember the key moment for me was when he sat and he said, turn around to his nurse, and he said, 19. And I was wondering, what is he talking about? 19 And the nurse got up and plugged in 19 degrees into the air conditioning. And I just thought, Oh, that’s so cool, so cool. And then all the kids were set and playing with boys as he went round. So he just got up, put his gloves on, the gloves were setting, did his work, stood up, took his gloves off, went to the next chair and just went round the circle all day. And I thought, Oh, this is smart stuff. So at that stage I wanted to become an orthodontist and then grew to hate orthodontics. But that’s a good other story. So that’s when I realised I wanted to do dentistry at that point.

Either your parents involved in medical at all.

No, no. My mom is She taught special needs all her life. And my dad. My dad did lots of different things. So he he started in the military, much to his parents discussed. He left and then he went, became a sales person for oil. So he sold oil, distributed oil distribution. But that’s his whole that whole side. His father had an oil distribution business. He went and worked his and then his brother, he’s ten years older than Dad, took that business over, pretty much like going into too much detail. And Dad then ran the Enniskillen office. So he did that for many years and then he started his own oil distribution business. That didn’t go very well, but during that he bought a newsagents and we ran the newsagents as a family, all four of us. So he double jabbed, my mum, double jabbed, we went to school, worked on the shop, learnt how to chat to people, stocked the shelves, all that crack. And that was such a good thing for us, you know, when we look back and that the fun we had with that shop was absolutely brilliant. So we ran out and up, put us basically got us started in university and because my, my, my two sisters and me were all at one time, so I’m one of three, I’m in the middle. And yeah, so we all did that. And then he sold the shop. He then became a driving instructor and then he repaired dental offices. So you try and put that together. Make any sense?

The the entrepreneurial side of you are can he’s come from him.

Yeah it.

Has, it has to. Yeah. But me and Prav talk about shop. I mean you might have heard it before but but but I honestly I put the success of both Prav and his brother down to the relationships in that show. Yeah. Does that resonate with you?

Yeah, absolutely. And then we worked in a local hotel, and again, myself and my two sisters worked behind the bar. Pollen paint, half on the crack. And, you know, myself and my two sisters, there’s nobody that you could put us in a room to room with that we wouldn’t be prepared to have a conversation with. And I think, you know, part of my parents genius, if they had it, was that they in all the quiet confidence in us and that has worked out has been great for us as kids and adults moving forward from that, that that’s what they give us more than anything else. Like we were not a wealthy family by any means. I think we had two holidays and our time as one to France and one to Portugal. But we learned an ethic of work, I can tell you that. And we learned an ethic of how to deal with people and be fair with people. And I think I think that’s been good. Did you did you stick long shifts in James in the shop with with her late nights, with her weekends, cash and carry trips, that sort of thing. Weekends, you know, the newspapers. My dad got up every morning and done the newspaper to turn some days you were in before you went to school for an hour just to help out. You were in after school. You maybe come home from rugby training and you get off the bus at half sick. You did an hour on the shop and then you went home and then Dad would maybe come back up to lock up. And then the weekends, usually Sunday was your busy day with the newspapers. I knew to in to set it all up prior to people coming to church and chapel and then, you know, you in on a Saturday she’d go play rugby and then come back from rugby going into a couple of hours. So we just all mucked in really I suppose was the way it left the penny choos.

You’ve done a lot of work with Chris Barrow. You’ve done a lot of work with Chris Barrow, and I’ve heard him say, and he’s absolutely right, that sometimes when you’re hiring, if the person you’re hiring has got a history of family business, that’s a great thing because they understand the sacrifice that it takes to run a business.

I Yeah. You know, the guy that run anyway. Yeah, the guy that runs Quintus. There’s a guy called Ian and he’s an old school friend of mine. And Ian comes from family business, from rest, the restaurant trade. And, you know, these people can turn their hands down, I think, given their time, because it’s inbuilt that drive is just set within stone. And that’s not something that you can train somebody with. You know, we’ve all been there, we’ve all hired a few lemons along the way. But you know, those people that have got that core fight, you know, they’re worth their weight, these people.

So you then studied in Dundee?

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Explain to someone like me the nuances, the differences between Dundee people and Enniskillen people?

Not much, because half Enniskillen was there already.

For once, my generalisation would have been right.

Yes. Okay. Half of Northern Ireland was in Dundee when I was there. So that was a real big attraction. And I’ll tell you a really cracking story. So I was sitting in the restaurant and Dundee on my first night there with my dad not knowing anybody and who walks in through the door. But the guy that I had studied my repeat chemistry A-level with and Dundee Agave remarks live and he bloody walked in and I didn’t know that he was going to Dundee and the two of us lived together for five years. We bought a flat there. We sold the flat and you know, just such a small world. Dundee was a brilliant student city. It’s got a really good campus. It’s real good fun. There’s a really good social life to it. It’s very medical engineering related. They’ve got great facilities. So for me it was like a home from home payment. And on my floor there was 11 or 12 of a seven of us were from Northern Ireland.

Wow.

And so honestly, I was like driving up the road to Belfast in many ways. So yeah, and the Scots are great. I love the Scots, you know, the old Celtic natures. And so there so it was really I had a really good time in Dundee. Really good time. Yeah. Great fun. Just about got past it but yeah that’s, yeah. It was a good place to be.

Yeah. What we like. As a student, Dental student. What were you like?

Oh, and my my mission was just to pass. Okay. We didn’t want to exhale because exhaling usually took away from the party. So we just wanted to pass. And really, all I wanted to do was finish the five years and get out. I’m not overly academic. You give me something practical to do and show me how to do a practical. That’s the way my body and my brain works. But academia lies. Not really. I did well in orthodontics for me, actually, but then grew to detest. But yeah, I was an okay student. I would have been, you know, if there was a party. I was at the party and, you know, yeah, I left, but I left the good student life. Yeah, I used to drive the night bus because I was good fun. So I used to drive the main bus for the last two years and basically drove around with vomit flying up and down the back of the bus.

Not during the driving Payman.

So I was very well crash, that one was. The buggers were sitting in the back of the bus and there were, I was, there were reverse of me out on the course. I trusted them to reverse me out and I drove straight into a car and so that didn’t go down very well and various investigations have to be followed. But yeah, I drove the bus for two for two years and it was great fun, but that was just to make money, That was just to pay for the car that I’d just bought myself. And that didn’t pass the smell test and I had to sell. But was business always in the blood? Was it was going to happen as a dental student? Did you go into dentistry thinking, knowing.

Feeling.

That. Yeah.

This was.

About business. Always. There was no way I was going to work for anybody. I am totally I am a nightmare. And there’s no way it was ever going to happen, really. But I to give you an example. To give you an example. All right. End on DH. As you come to the end of your your fifth year and you’re getting ready for your vet places, it’s a bit like a bunfight around Scott and Dundee. Everybody’s going for the same practices. So I took a view. Let that classic who move my cheese our book, I took it. Where else can I look here? So I found what’s called the GPT scheme and Bristol. I think it was the first year that ever run and I got in my £250 junior to five with the back wheels up like this. And I drove to Bristol. It was a total death-trap, but I drove to Bristol with two other guys from my class who had identified the same loophole and we went down and we had jobs organised for two years, hospital and practice before any before the jobs were released in Dundee. So basically what happened? All the jobs, or at least everybody went mad, but we had our jobs sorted out and the GPT scheme and Bristol and that gives you an idea maybe how the brain works sometimes. And then I went because I didn’t want to stay there. I wanted to see what there’s more to life than Dundee.

So I then went to Bristol and I had I was really lucky, you know, you meet lucky people or you’re lucky and people that you meet at different times in your life, aren’t you? And I had a first year in vet with a wonderful young dentist called Jordan House, who I owe so much to in Rural Croft and the Practice in Stroud. And this practice, this was 2001. He had a Sarich machine. They did implants. You know, he was a young principal with an old partner. I was sitting at. I was sitting at patients, seeing him place implants, restoring implants all in that first year, doing some private work. In that first year, I had a really experienced nurse. It was brilliant. I had a really good launch pad, whereas a lot of my, my, my compatriots and when they went out, they did not get that launch pad. And then second year in the hospital, baptism of fire, you know, Max, fire department people phoning you up and you’re not having a clue what you’re doing, but you just have to get on with it. And, you know, I just I suppose I just did that. I just got on with and I learnt on the job, you know, the very first clinic I had in hospital, just to think that this actually happened. Sister Jones was her name, a real buxom sister, classic sister with her blue dress on, used to run around like this and go come up.

And you know, I looked about for, you know, I don’t look much older now, but then I looked and so she brought me in and me white coat and she said, This is your first clinic. And it was a sedation clinic. And I goes, But I have never done a van flown on anybody before. I’ve treated somebody who’s sedated, but I’ve never done. She goes, Well, you’ve got five, six patients. It was and it was to take out wisdom. And I said, I don’t have a clue what to do. So she said, That’s okay. We’ll just get you through it. And I remember her standing over me in my hand, the goodness, you know, putting in the first floor. But by God, I learnt, you know, you talk about a learning curve on that job and I loved that job and the consultants were fantastic. I was hungry to learn, I suppose, and I had a bit of chat, which always got me through the difficult situations. And after that I went I had a decision to make which was go home. My wife was also my she wasn’t a wife at that point, but so I knew who I married to. She was with me in England. She was got a job. She was a teacher at that stage. And I had a decision to make, which was, do I come back home? I don’t have a job or do I stay? And really, I was going to have to commit five years back, probably in June and practice.

And we just decided we were going to come home to Fermanagh. And I remember meeting Steve Booth. Steve Booth often tells the story of Steve Booth from Australia and head honcho on stream. And I met him in a pub and I told him what I was going to go back to Ireland. I wanted to use him and implants and that I was going to own the largest implant practice in Ireland. And he still goes, What the hell are you talking about? Bollocks. You know, he obviously doesn’t know what implant from one end to the other. But you know what? I went back to Ireland and we weren’t too far away from that after a couple of years. But, you know, that was the drive. That was what we wanted to do. I went back, worked in a practice, didn’t have a job when I went back. Sonia’s dad, who sold furniture, was down delivering furniture and a dentist house, said a son in law was coming back. He’s a dentist, No job. I should come on shore, Send them down to me. I’ll give them a job. Like no interview, none of that. And I just started the start of putting implants in that practice, redesigned all their brochures and logos, tried to bring them up to the, you know, the 20th century. And after 15 months, lay off and start a album. That was what happened.

James. Seems to me there’s a couple of parallels here between your your chemistry days and at one point you decide you’re going to go for it and then you’re 100% in and dental school. You’re saying you weren’t the type of student who was really interested. And yet two years after dental school, you’re placing implants or whatever, that that’s the kind of person you are that when you decide you’re going to do it, then you finally go and do it, right? Yeah, because when I think back to my own time in dental school, I was like, you didn’t didn’t, didn’t really participate properly. I was just trying to get through. And yet. You know, I didn’t want to do implants like that would be the last person who wanted to cut. What was it? When do you remember a time when you realised I want to be surgeon? Yeah, it’s a big step.

Yeah. That was Paul Stone, actually in university. And Paul Stone, very well known implant dentist, came and we had one lecture and implant dentistry and university. And I remember him coming in and lecture and I can, I could bring you to the spot that he stood in and talking about implants and I remember going, oh that’s, that’s really cool. Imagine just sticking these things and they actually stick the bone like, Holy moly, this is cool. And I do remember at that point, God, if I get out of this place, there’s a future in that thing there that he’s talking about. You know, that’s where the future is. You know, this thing about do and fell into that sounds much more interesting. And so that for me was the first penny that dropped. And then Payman coming out and seeing it done and practice and implants being integrated into normal dentistry, should we say that was a big thing as well. And then the third thing then was building the surgical skills and in the house job, you know, getting that confidence, you know, the confidence, you know, at the time I did that, you’re in theatre, you know, you were working in one half. The growth in the Senior Edge was working on the other half. And, you know, you were just getting exposed to things that you just wouldn’t get exposed to nowadays.

So, you know, my, my learning curve in surgery was really sharp and rapid, but it was done with consultant beside me. And, you know, I’m eternally grateful for that. And I think they seen in me somebody who really wanted to have a goal and wasn’t scared to have a go and wasn’t intimidated by the situation. And I think I took advantage of that because they were quite happy to let me have a go with things I probably I should never have touched. So that really settled for me the surgical side of things. And literally as soon as I landed back in Ireland, I always wanted to place implants, the very first implant I placed. Steve Booth was stand beside me. You know, that was as much of the mentoring that you got. And no, there was no mentoring, you know, it was just do your day, let’s just get on with this. So, so you know, could you get people will do it. No, but it’s so much more restrictive now in terms of how you get started. So, you know, the first thousand implants I placed, I was out knowing, you know, I was just having a go, really.

And James, in terms of in terms of the number of people who could put implants in compared to the number of patients who were up for implant treatment, were you much more in demand back then as a as an implant surgeon or because the market grows, doesn’t it, In both. Both markets grow.

Yeah. You have to remember where I live. So, you know, I live in the west of Ireland, probably the worst dental health anywhere in the UK and in fact could challenge probably most places in Europe. So we have a massive dental caries problem, tooth loss problem. There’s no shortage of work where I live. You know, when we open blew up or, you know, we were doing 300 to 450 implants a year in the back of new. You know, nobody everybody thought Jim Hummel had lost his marbles. What does he do? You know.

You’re right. It wasn’t Manchester or London or whatever.

What we did have been opportunistic. We had cross-border trade. So so we were based right on the border and Northern Ireland. There was a town called Black Lion across the street. So basically I could take a stone and just throw up and I would be in Republic of Ireland. So we had two currencies and we had a trend of people travelling from the south of Ireland to the north of Ireland to get their dentistry. So when we set ourselves up, we took advantage of that. That was a total and utter business decision. And then 2008 hit and the business fell off a cliff because the Celtic Tiger was shot dead. And our job in that time was then to reorganise and remodel the business for the Northern Trade, but also to make the people from the South realise that no, you weren’t coming for value or coming for experience and knowledge and expertise. And, and so we had to pivot and change our message very, very quickly around that 2008 period. And that actually taught us quite a lot of lessons over that stage because a lot of other practices suffered heavily and because the cross border trade dried up.

When you say your message, were you actively marketing back then as well?

I was on the radio. I was doing radio shows. You know, one of it we, Johnny, when he falls and smashes from tooth, you know, what do we do with that? And we were very specific about what we did. You know, Payman Blue Apple. We started out 2005, 2006. And that practice, I look back at that. I was really quite unique at that point. There was very few branded dental practices around. You know, we had a clear idea of what we were doing in terms of what we wanted to deliver, which was a customer service orientated business, not a clinical orientated business, but customer service. And we were six months, six months booked in advance, within a few months of opening the door, you know, it was just mental, mental, and, you know, we weren’t the cheapest. We never set out to be the cheapest we charge what we felt was a reasonable price would be provided, a brilliant service. And that was and that was led by saw my wife. You know, we had we were totally party London, party, London to the hilt, you know, clean toilets, all of those things.

And we just created a really good experience. And we I think at that point where we ahead of the game, I think we probably were. But, you know, the downside of that business then was that it then became something that started Eat US, you know, and we had a great ten years, you know, we absolutely loved our song was raised underneath the reception desk, really, But we had a wonderful time and we met some amazing people. And, you know, those patients come and see me and the clinic and. No, but I sort of distract from your question. The demand is still there because they’re just not that many people to place implants in the west of Ireland. And the numbers are going up all the time. So in terms of the patients who have got a demand for it, and that coupled with the fact that there’s very poor oral health and therefore a lot of adventurous patients, it’s it’s a sort of a it’s a honeypot really to a point. And so.

Within a couple of years, you.

Left that job and then you went to open your the Blue Apple practice and fully box within a short space of time. What were some of the struggles that you had? In Ronin managing. Oh, and in that business, what were the.

What would you consider the low.

Points to be during that journey? Did you hit rock bottom at any point? Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yeah. So we had a real blast. And then two years after we had just won an award, how do you remember? What’s an award that we got? And it was that item from Chris Barrow. And I said, Listen, Chris, we have started this. Our timing has been really good. We’ve done some basics, but we have absolutely no Scooby in terms of how to run dental practice. We didn’t know what accounts were. It was all up, the laughed where we make the money, where we not making money, what are we going to do? And that’s what we started working with Chris. And then he used to come and spend a night in our house every quarter. Listen to us, argue in the morning time and then try and get ourselves back on track. And he was great. I think where the challenge was Prav was that clinical dentistry at that level as challenging, trying to provide that level of service all the time is challenging. And we ran out of steam, but we didn’t. We ran out of steam. Ten years down the line. So I remember the the lowest point. The lowest point was when I went up to Sonya’s office. I sat on the floor and I burst into tears and I said, Fuck where we have to get out of this business.

This is killing us. This is killing us. You know, we the kids, we had two kids. We had the business just eat us alive and try and maintain it at that level. And for me and Sonia and I think less than that level is not acceptable. So, you know, it started to eat us from the inside. And it was at that point I used to go in and, you know, I used to get start to get cross with patients, but not with the patient. That was me. Cross with staff. Why are we getting cross from my staff? My staff are lovely. What am I doing here? And, you know, when you look back on that time, you go the warning signs were there. And at that stage when I went into that chair and I looked and I worked in a beautiful surgery that I had designed myself, you know, most people would go, What are you talking about, James? You’ve got this lovely look. And I go, and I go, If I have to sit in this chair one more fucking day, I’m going to go and see them looking out the same window, looking at the same computer. And that was when I decided to sell it.

It was blown out. James Right.

Yeah. Total burnout. Total burnout, Yeah. When?

When you said it was killing you.

Are you talking.

Work.

Family, that work life balance, that dynamic coming home, being pissed off, not being the James or the husband, that you should be the father that you should be? Or was it just all centred at work? Well, try and just just sort of illustrate that to me in terms of what was going on at the time. Yeah. So you were being a rubbish husband, you are giving time to your kids and I was in the middle of doing triathlons and Ironman, you know, cycling from North, the most northerly point in Ireland, the most southerly point cycle. And John O’Groats to Land’s End, you know, you name it, I was stuck in the middle of it. And, you know, all of those things combined just left us in a situation where it’s just not a manageable proposition and we. We at that point, I suppose we even were thinking about expanding the practice. We bought the building next door. You know, it was a nice, profitable business, but it just got to the point where the upside of it didn’t outweigh the downside of it. And that for me was was the point where I said, this business will be sold. Now, Sonia, at that stage wasn’t there in her head. She just wasn’t at that point. But I had been, I suppose, building to that for probably 12 months because I could I stopped enjoying what I was doing. And, you know, that’s not a good place to be when you’re a dentist. And at that point, I could have walked away from clinical dentistry. No bother at all. No bother. And so the process of selling it.

James, did you did you sell it with the ability to walk away or tie in or what was the what was the whole narrative behind that? Because to me, it seems like you want to at this stage hand the keys over, walk away. I’m done. Yeah. So. Yeah. So I was in Dubai and actually Khan O’Brien, who, you know, works with me and introduced me to chop from Oasis, often named Julian. And Julian was looking to purchase a private implant practice and had heard about us. So he said, I’m going to buy your practice. And I said, No, you’re not. He goes, I am. He says, Right, as long as the money’s right, let’s get the deal done. And he came and seen me not long after I was in Dubai. And it took us a year to do the deal. It was a three year earnout. And what’s really you know, they I probably couldn’t have walked away from it. I didn’t want to, I suppose maybe at that stage, because Sonia still wanted to be there for a period of time. I felt bad with staff and all of those things, she said. Less than a three year earnout. And I remember Chris Biro telling me, and probably one of the most accurate things I’ve ever been told. He said, GM is your three year earnout is going to be like you’re running a triathlon. He said the first year is going to be like the swim. You’ll finish, you’ll get out of the water and you’ll go, Oh, that was actually quite nice.

I quite enjoyed that and I am looking forward to getting on to the bike. Second year is like the bike. By the end of the bike you’re ready to get off it and your goal and holy shit, and I have to do the run. And really the third year was horrific, absolutely horrific. I hated every minute of it, but I’m a stubborn bugger and I wasn’t going to stop. And I grew the business. We actually grew the business over those three years despite lots of increased interference. Because basically what I said to them, Prav was you said, I’ll sell you the business, but leave me alone for three years and you’ll get your money and I’ll get my money. But don’t interfere because I know this business and I know how it works. I know how we can continue to generate the high new patient numbers, high value of treatment. We had very high conversion levels, and I know I can do that. And basically I just switched my emails off after about six months and ignored everything that ever came in from them. I didn’t interact with them. I just got on with the job, which was let’s get the patients and less treat them, less, maintain the level of customer service and just keep going that way. And Sonya left after 18 months. She couldn’t stick it anymore. And I always joke with her that she abandoned me in the hour of need. But yeah, so I was left there and we seen it out. And after that it was six months off to recover.

Let’s talk about the highs of that business, too, because sometimes, you know, you talk about burnout, but burnout happens after the sort of the the thing the thing that’s amazing becomes normal. But the acceleration, when you go from opening a practice, not knowing exactly for sure whether it’s going to work or not, and then it works and you’re making loads of money. And give me give me give me some of the best times when what comes to mind when I say the best times of that, that period.

Probably the best times were the relationship with patients. You know, that was old was the thing that gave me the buzz. You know, people talk about, oh, the big reveal. That wasn’t what it was about for me. It was genuinely a patient coming in within 30 minutes. I would have them interviewed to death. They would know everything about them, their families, what their kids did, where they hung out, you know, all of that stuff. And for me it was that relationship building that I really, really enjoyed. And when you’re in a good mindset and a good mainframe, then that’s really easy thing to do. And therefore, I don’t think we ever sold a treatment. It was just listening to the patient and probably one of the pivotal things and it was Larry Brown who we named our centre after Larry Dental technician, probably one of life’s kindest, most generous souls ever. And we still miss him every day. He used to come to my practice and pretty much on a monthly basis, and we used to treat patients together. And that was always the highlight, was when Larry came into the practice and working together with him for the benefit of the patients. It was just such a total pleasure. And we did that for years. Larry used to come to our house. He basically helped us raise our kids. And, you know, he taught me so much about people and life and just being good and getting emotional. No talk of it. But, you know, he was a he was an amazing guy. And when he stopped coming, he just EJ, I think I probably lost a lot of them. Jewel there. Mm hmm.

You know, it’s funny. Those relationships at work sometimes. I mean, that’s a very personal relationship, right? Yeah. So someone. Someone that you were actually next to. But now you’ve been running these distribution businesses, and you’ll find sometimes it’s years and years of relationship with someone from some some supplier. And then this supplier will leave that company, and then you’ll still be in touch with that person and, you know, different person will come along. It’s a beautiful thing. But yeah, obviously this is a bit deeper. You named your practice after him. Wonderful one.

Yeah. Yeah. Larry was a it was a he was a very special man. And actually, it’s, you know, the I think the thing that he taught me more than anything was was the power of empathy. And he used to say one of his great lines was James. When a patient comes in and sits in your chair, they will tell you everything that you need to know. They will tell you their problems, but they will also tell you how to put it right. Now, James, you just need to shut the fuck up and listen. And that’s what he used to say to me. And, you know, just that lesson. He saw he was so right. You know, we as dentists want to get them in the chair and tell them everything that’s wrong with them without listening or not. Very good listeners. And I think you taught the lesson. And just that humility of that type of character was was a very special relationship. So I think, you know, as a high anytime Larry was in the building, it was a hey, the awards, it was a high. So we were we were in for awards at the very start of the awards before the coup. And that was a high hiring. We had a brilliant staff who just loved Blue Apple and everything about it. That was a hey and then treating patients and seeing their families coming in. And a lot of what we did was personal recommendation. It’s the best market I’ve had. Marketing expert as yourself. But for us, that was the best marketing that we did. Without question, price marketing we treated. And I think what we ended up doing was treating patients that we liked and we got the patients that ultimately I hope that we deserved that came into the practice because of the type of experience that we offered. So listen, Payman, don’t get me wrong. No, there were way more highs in that business than there were lows.

Yeah, which is why I ask the question. I don’t want it to sound like it was just not business.

Know, Demonstrate has been very good to us and our business was just 95% of the time. A pleasure to run. It was hard work. It was graft. It was a big risk at the time. I still remember buying the building. I was in the toilet in a restaurant. And so and you had given me a £90,000 limit on the building and it had gone beyond 90. And we were over in England and I was up in the toilet and the estate agent was phoning me and he was saying this 92 and I got, I got 93. And then he came back. And before I goes, I remember looking out the window and seeing Sonja Dean and where she was in a beer garden at the bottom. And I goes back and go for 95 and we got it. And then I have to go down and tell. So I knew we’d got it, but we got it for 95. So yeah, yeah, there’s lots of stories about that business. But yeah, that was good. That was good.

Then he took six months. What did you do?

And. A lot of it was spent on the lake in a boat. Probably drinking too much beer and just spent time. The. De-stressing with the kids, and it was actually a lovely time. My wife at that point, Sonia, hadn’t worked in the business. And then she continued not to work in the business for another three or four years after that. And life was really good, but I got bored and we couldn’t test Dental was still progressing and still going forward. It had moved from that point from being a handpiece repair business, which I told you my dad had decided to do, and a stroke of madness. And we had at that point went on to we were distributing the event and at that stage and just starting and I had just employed Ian and that business was going on. So it was an interest for me. But the brain was working and I was going, What’s this 3D printing thing? All, all of it. And I was quite intrigued by it. But what I couldn’t find in Europe or anywhere at all, for that matter, close by, was somewhere that I could go and find out about 3D printing. So I ended up going to the States to a course run by Auguste Oliveira, and I’m sure you’ve heard of, and that was a printing party.

It was called, I remember. But the reason I went was because all the printing companies were there. And so I wanted in my head I was going printing, distribution, printing, manufacturing. Where could we fit in here? Obviously, understanding that guided surgery, all of those things in my head. So when I went there, it happened to be in Rodanthe Laboratory, which is where crew is manufactured. And after the first day I discovered a table down at the back of the of the lecture room with these metal gate surgical guides. And there was a bit intrigued by the second day I started to become more interested in the guards than it was in the actual printing lectures. And on the day three I got a private tour because I just had the man gaze tortured in the back. So I’ve got a bit of a private tour around the lab. And I remember I still remember the feeling of walking into this lab, you know, almost 200 odd technicians at that point, purpose built building, just mind boggling, mind boggling. And Alan, it was a family run business by the Kawasaki family. And there was a chap called Alan Banks, and Alan showed me around. And I said, Alan, listen, you know, I’m having issues with full artwork that I’ve done.

I can see there’s something in this, what you’re doing, Can I do a kiss? And he said, No. And I said, Why not? And he said, Because we don’t do it out of the USA. I says, Well, that’s stupid. Let let me do a kiss. And he said, No, I don’t think I can. And I said, Well, we need to speak to somebody to try and make this happen. And so the next day was the last day of the course. I went back in and I said, Doll. And again, I hunted them down and I said, Alan, listen, I’ve been really thinking about this. I need to do a case of this. So he says, the only person will make that decision is BJ, who’s the owner of the business. So I then went and got introduced to BJ Koskie, and between him and Alan, they decided that they would let me do a kiss. So at that stage it hadn’t been the people done in Canada and the States that maybe done about 8000 arches. So it was reasonably well dialled in at that point. And I came back and at that stage I set up a peripatetic implant business.

So I went around, set up about eight or nine practices it practising, it was around Ireland where I went and did peripatetic implants because that’s what I thought I was going to do for the foreseeable future. And then one of those practices is in Enniskillen. We did the first groom case outside of the US A. And I did it with my mobile phone beside me and Allen on the mobile phone telling me what to do. So probably not the most scientific way to do this, to do the first kiss, but it was done in two and one half hours. And I thought, you know, there’s some there’s really something in this. So I did a few more cases and kept in contact with the guys in the States. And this was 2018. And then a few more cases got a little bit slicker at it, started to see some of the challenges that it had. And it only at that point, then maybe it was 2019, then it became started to become a commercial conversation. So at that stage we got distribution for a printer called Invasion Tech, which started, of course, three. And in my head it was going to be a digital based business selling Android scanners and printers and all of that.

And had you invested lots of cash at this point? Most of no. Now, how are you getting these these distributions where you like having to buy minimum order quantities and distribute some of that?

It’s called chat.

Shopkeeper Talk.

Shopkeeper Talk.

Nice.

Just don’t just don’t come see your office. But I promise you.

Tell me this before you go on. Before. Before the story goes on. Explain the difference. What was the difference between this chrome technique and guided surgery?

So what I was doing, which is what most most people do when they unfurl artwork, is that they either don’t plan it, which is what I was pretty much doing, or be the planet analogue. They made it a CT scan, but then they have analogue models. They maybe make an analogue. I’m going to say guide, but there are certain parameters that we initially that we should stick to and we’re doing this type of work. And so the problems that I was seeing were what are called transmission line problems where we have manage the smile zone correctly, breakages of the provisional and the final bridges, because we hadn’t given enough restorative of space and implant positioning, not being very good. So when we combined all of that, plus the fact the difficulty of getting the technician to come to where I was to do the technical work and the length of time. So it was basically a whole day on a practice to do a kiss. So it wasn’t very economical. It was bloody stressful. And we were starting to have problems three or four years down the line. And so it was that that was then putting me off doing any more full arch, immediate work. There was not an issue of the implant sticking to the bone. It wasn’t an issue in terms of demand in the market, but I could see that there was problems there. And so what the system does is basically systemise the record, right from the rector, taking the patient, coming in through the door, right the way to your very final restoration.

Every stage, a system that has a unique system, there is no other system just like it, to basically create this pathway to take you all the way through to the end. And the whole idea is to improve accuracy of implants, to reduce risks, to reduce problems, and to give you increased predictability. That’s pretty much what Chrome does. And that’s then what I started to see from a clinical perspective. So I went back to the States and I said, I want distribution for this. Can I get distribution? No way. Who are you to do distribution for this? And I said, Well, this is my plan. I have a plan mapped out in my head. It’s going to be based around education. We’re going to train people on their teams how to use this product. And I thought, right, I need to get mixes up. So I started getting more and more cases on them about start to get friends to do some cases. So it wasn’t really a commercial entity at that stage. And then in 2000, DA 2020, as we entered into COVID, I had, I suppose, that opportunity to have a conversation with Ken O’Brien, who I knew was leaving as MD of Bayer. And I thought, okay, Mab can be in Northern Ireland. He’s a commercial experience that I don’t have. And a chat again persuaded them to come on board to a business that didn’t really exist.

And so off we went and we he was there for two months. And then COVID hit me up the shop for 12 months. So I still blame him for COVID. So we did that. We had to shut the business and then we started again in 2021. During COVID, we bought the centre because at that point I was you talked about all in earlier on and actually he hit the nail on the head. For me it was all we were doing this or we weren’t doing this. And I decided, in fact, you know, I have a pension, a pension pot there. I reinvested in this building, bought the building, renovated it, and had a vision in my head that this was going to be a digital teaching centre, which is what it is, and that we would close all the businesses and get a lab to manufacture the product. So I suppose I jumped ahead a little bit, but I could see where it was going to go and understanding what was happening in the States where I have very good relationships now. And so we have now done 450 arches in the UK over the last couple of years, and we dominate that gate fully, fully gated market. And we have trained just shy of 150 dentists in our centre on that technique. We have had we’ve just had one of the big UK corporates in our building for a private course.

The fact that we can offer customisation to these big groups is a major push for us this year and because of somebody doing a full arch in Aberdeen and somebody is doing one in London, the process is the same because it’s totally systemised and I know that we can. The bet that we’re good at is the education. I think we’re good at the education. We know how to train people. To give you an example, one of our customers did 52 arches last year, and when he starts racking that into his EBITDA, that’s basically out of £4 million with the value to his practice. So if you do so. So this is a very powerful tool you can on an average and I’m not talking about the clinics, you do a lot of this type of work that’s a slightly different market. But I’m talking to people who do one or two arches a month. You know, we can reduce their chair site time by 66% in terms of the entire process. So I was approached by a practice in London who wants to increase from 12 arches to 52 arches in the year. That’s 40 arches doing a conveyance D that’s 90 chair side is that they have to find 90 chairs. I guess that’s not happening in the busy practice unless you put in more chairs and then you have to find more dentists. But with Chrome you can do it on 30 it. There’s.

So why is it so much quicker, though? Because you don’t have to worry about it. Systemised.

Start-up stage is probably the biggest. So surgical it keeps you on the tracks and surgery on it helps you. I can do most of the cases in about 2 hours from from local anaesthetic to the patient walking out with a provision of bridge. No need for a technician. So the conversion is about ten. That’s what it takes to do the conversion. But the big saving is when you come to do the final bridge, you can do that on two appointments. So you don’t need to go through the four or five steps that most people go through in their final bridge. So you save a lot of time in that final restoration. So for four practices doing this type of work, there is significant savings to be made. So on average, out about £1,000 tier net, I already have come down cruel move or conventional, even though the chrome increases the creases your your front costs a little bit, but not a huge amount.

James I work with quite a.

Few implant surgeons and still yet despite this conversation.

We’ve had. I really want to distil.

Exactly why it is who.

We all work.

For and.

The service and the benefits, because the.

Product and the name is popping up everywhere. Whether you go to a trade show, whether you speak to an implant then is to just started using it and it’s blowing his mind or whatever. I guess a lot of these a lot a lot of these dentists who do fall out to implant dentistry, you have to excuse me. I’m not I’m not a dentist and I’m not and I never took an implant in anyone’s head. But the general process that I understand it from from from my perspective is that a patient comes in, they have the consultation, you do the plan. Some people use different implant systems. Some people have like different guided surgery systems. Some people have like a stent made that goes over the over the gums, like drill holes, basically, you know, paint by numbers kind of job, you know, where to sit the drill and it’s going to be safe and the angle and the depth and all of that. And then come to the day you’ve got an on site or a technician on site who’s converting a denture that takes a long time adjustments to that. And then finally they cobble it all together. And after quite a lot of adjusting, they get they fit. The provisional.

Patient goes comes back six.

Months later, three months later or whatever it is. And then then, then they fit the final bridge. What want to wrap my head around is what is your is is it a lab service? Is it a stent? Is it both? Do you produce the provisional and the and the guided thing is talk me through that, knowing what I’ve just said and excuse.

Me if I’ve got any of that detail.

Wrong, but I just want to compare that to to what it is that Chrome does. Yeah. So? So first of all, it’s guided, fully guided search. It’s an open system. It can be used with any implant system that has a gate kit. So that’s the first thing. There’s no limitation in terms of the implant that you use. The very first part of the system is data collection. So we need three elements of data and we call it the tripod of data. These are photographs, CBC, TV impressions, or iOS. So once that so we ask each different type of case, we ask for very slightly different records, but they follow that pattern of that tripod. We then take that information and we do what we call a preliminary evaluation of it. And the reason we do that is because it has to be about the quality of the information going into the system. So if it’s not good, seven out of ten cases stop at that point because the CBC is incorrect. There’s movement in it. There’s bits of a cut-off. The impressions are shit. The iOS is rubbish, the photographs are rubbish. There’s something wrong with the data. So we stop it at that point. And until the data is correct, the case cannot go forward. And that is a learning curve in itself because dentists don’t really like being told that the information that they’ve sent in isn’t good enough.

And that’s just one thing that we have to be open and honest with them about, because what we put in is what we’re going to get out. Guided surgery is computer generated. Although a human is doing it, it still has to be very accurate at the start. So that’s the first step. So we’re systematising the record, taking the second. But then what happens is then it is then goes through internal planning process on planning software and the dentist is called to a planning meeting. And in that planning meeting they sit with the planner and these are dentists, CTS, technicians. Some of them are digital planners. These guys are planning maybe 50 or 60 arches a week. They know their onions. They really understand what’s going on. And what they do is they go totally from their start-ups They say, okay, this is our point. This is where we want our teeth to be. This is our bait. This is our smile. This is transition. This is how much space we need for the type of bridge you’re going to make. And then they work back and place all the implants digitally. And you start as a dentist and you see all of this happening in front of you and you input. Because ultimately, as the dentist, you are having the final say on what happens, but the planner will guide you. So it’s.

Over like a zoom call.

Or. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it takes about 40 minutes for your first couple of cases per hour. Once you’re up and running, take time because the planner gets to know what you want. And then from that, then the case comes back to us and an STL files. We then manufacture that in-house. And what we’re manufacturing is a series of stacked surgical gates. So the guy that invented crew owns the patent for stacked and sequential pinned games. So there are two slate, different slate nuances in terms of types of guide, but basically strowman’s mail in the box. He owns the patent that they use. So this guy is a very clever guy. J Watson All right. And basically they’re going to start suing everybody who’s trying to copy them and everybody has to end up in. Now, that’s just the way is. And so what happens then is that the guys are physically we print and manufacture everything in house. We assembly it on or assemble it on models, and then we ship that out. And then that box, you’ve got your provisional bridge, you’ve got all your surgical gates, you’ve got what’s called a surge map, which is a summary of your plan that you stick up on the wall that you can follow. You’ve got maps to organise, your implants, your components, your temporary cylinders. We email the implant company. They know what implants you need to order. They send it out in a box. So basically we’re trying to systemise the planning and the organisation prior to surgery and then you go to surgery and then you follow the process.

Now you get clinical teaching from me. I go to the first case clinically pretty much have been to them all and early in the UK, so that’s a lot of you turn up at the practice. I go to the practice because I want people to have a good experience. What I don’t want people to do is go, Oh, it’s a load of rubbish. It doesn’t work. I know it works because I’ve done nearly 100 cases. All right, I know it works, but you got to follow the system. And if you then follow the system surgically. So what we’re doing is we’re systematising every step of your surgery. And at the end of surgery, you pick up the pre med provisional bridge. Your nurse converts in about 10 minutes. No technician required. You screw it into the marathon and you also. Do what’s called take a copy of that call the rapid appliance, that rapid appliance, and becomes your conversion for your final bridge three months later, which is just two points. So we’re estimating the surgery, we’re estimating your provisional stage, and we’re also estimating your final restoration. That’s what makes it unique. There’s no other system like it. And so what we can do is we can reduce all of your appointments down to about five. From start to finish.

And just a couple of quick questions on that piece.

So the bridge that you produce, does the dentist have choice of material? Aesthetics, fully print. Yet printed printed on on our printers in high speed and invasion tech. I use a print material called Flex era and America. They use car but use a product called Lucid. These products are very similar, but it’s a printed bridge. The final bridge that they get is full arch. Yeah, we do all that for a fixed price of 4995. And that covers everything right through to your final bridge, no matter if you’re placing three implants or seven.

£4,995.

Yeah. Including your final bridge.

So that you on. On, on your end. On your end. How many people did you say you have?

So. Oh. Working. So we have a team across in chorus. We have a team of nine.

That includes the planners.

Most of the planners are still in the States.

Oh, I see.

So we have technicians, we have technicians and admin and this and that for 995. Just just to put.

That into perspective, James.

What would they practice expect to pay? A lab or a lab technician service for that piece? If we’re going to compare apples with apples, which was important. Yeah. Your final bridge. Your final zirconia bridge. Most labs are going to charge you anything between two and a half thousand and £4,000 for a full arch average, possibly plus components. That’s the first part. The second. But to get a technician to see you, you’re probably going to be charged a thousand quid. Yeah, it’s going to be maybe 1200, depending on the job, plus the temporary bridge that they bring with them, which is usually just a denture. So maybe 300 quid plus initial bit of planning in the lab. So the way it works out is that doing a conventionally when you add it all up and go to the final bridge with an average price of about £3,000 for a final bridge is not awfully far away from the crown price. No prices, maybe a bit more. But then if you build in your Ayers chair site, time saving. So an average we’re saving 66.8, then that’s where you start to see your savings. Plus, I’m going to say it, you get your implants in the right place, you’re going to have an easier restoration period. You know, I’ve had technicians in our course. They’re pulling their hair out. These guys are pulling their hair out, solving dental problems. But you’ll get me go and I get a surgery.

But they’re solving dentist problems all the time because most implants that are placed in the UK aren’t in the right place. They’re certainly not in the ideal place. Yeah. Yeah. So as a profession, as a profession, we don’t plan our cases particularly well. And so let’s take Chrome aside for a second and let’s just look at normal gated surgery. Gated surgery has two main advantages. One is that it forces you to plan. That’s a good thing because you have to plan your cases. And secondly, it helps you put the implant in the best possible position for what you’re going to put on at the end. So it forces you to plan with the and and say, you know what, the fine restoration in the mind. And well, if we look if you speak to a lot of technicians, this is a stat that Larry gave me about 15 years ago, 70% of the implants came across his desk and his lab were in the wrong or less than ideal place. Now, I’ve spoken to quite a lot of technicians and they say that that number is not changing as the number of implants are going up. We got to ask ourselves a question as a profession, what are we training? How are we training dentists to put implants? And if that number is not going down. Okay on the way that you get that number two number, Don’t you force people to plan and you force them to use a guard because at least they’re going to be on the play Plain Park.

I remember Larry telling me when I started in 2000 and 3004 with him, GM’s I’m not restoring any of your implants unless you use a surgical gate. Last he told me back then, because he says, I’m not I’m not picking up your shit. Because that’s what technicians do and technicians are to plate. Larry was a great voice for technicians. You know what technicians? Typically what happens is that they’ll get working and they’ll phone the dentist and they’ll say, Well, what do you expect me to do with this? And the dentist will tell them, Do your best. And that’s got to be one of the common phrases between a dentist and a dental technician is do your best. Do your best that are out there managing the complications that exist from poor implant placement. So we’ve got to be realistic as a profession. I would argue quite strongly that what we’re teaching at the minute and implant dentistry, we’re teaching the surgical principles which is lifting flaps and managing soft tissue, all really good, important fundamental things. But the bit we’re missing is to make sure that we put it in the right place. If we put it in the right place, we will reduce our surgical complications and we will reduce our risk of complications. That’s the position. And that’s where guided surgery fits.

Not to mention not to mention that when you know it’s going to go in the right place, you can hand on heart, sell it. You know, you can you can sell it at a higher price. You can when you’re doing this kind of work where it’s full arch, it’s a complicated work. And if if there’s something that’s better that makes it more predictable health or an extra £1,000 or whatever it is, you would 100% do it. Because what I’m interested in is, does this go wrong, too?

I think it’s a really good question. Payment is like anything, you know, does, does and like know guided surgery. The first question I would ask is, does no one guided surgical? I can tell you just told you 70% of them. All right. So, you know, we have there’s this thing. All right? You have to do a guided. A term I really detest. I actually think that’s the illusory truth. Truth? The fact, you know, we say this thing you have to do a brain guided before you do it. Guided. And it’s just become a mantra in dentistry. It’s a load of tosh. All right. People aren’t really thinking when they say that. And I know that that’s a controversial statement, but I really do care because the challenge that I have there is that. Just because you use a gauge, you don’t turn your brain off. That’s a misnomer. That’s number one. Number two, you still have to have the same surgical skills when you use a guide as you do without a guide. It’s still the same fundamentals of surgery. So I’m not advocating flawless guided surgery. That’s a myth. Get it out of your head. All right. I still teach you left to flap. You still see what you’re doing? I’m using this guide to do is put you on the playing field. All right. That’s it. We’re not promising any more. We’re not promising any less. All right.

It’s not a it’s not a magic tool. It’s not a magic tool to avoid the basic surgical skills that you require. But what I see is what happens if something goes wrong during normal non guided surgery. What do you have to do? You have to problem solve. All right. What happens if something goes wrong during a guided surgery protocol? What do you do? You have to problem solve. It’s no different. So one shouldn’t exist in isolation of the other. They actually should both be coming together because there’s massive advantages to both to work together. So we got to stop thinking about these two camps where somebody goes, I’m only doing BrainGate or I’m only doing that, and never the twain should meet. That’s a major mistake in the profession, I think, going forward, because look at the numbers. All right. The numbers tell us that we’re not doing it particularly well. Okay, We’re not getting this right for a large proportion of our patients. And I had a technician on our roadshow who just is a he’s just like, you know, he’s really about to pull his hair out with a stuff because he feels that he can’t say it to the dentist because he doesn’t want to lose a customer. And all the companies are manufacturing weird and wonderful things to try to overcome. Poor implant position. Guys, let’s just put it in the right place to start.

Yeah. What’s the total?

That’s my message.

What’s the total Like that Tam? Total addressable market. How many, how many full arch cases are happening and what percentage of that do you want to get? I mean.

I don’t answer that question as I actually do know Payman. That’s a very hard figure to out because, you know, you can try and pull it out of some of the implant companies, but it’s a challenge. I honestly don’t know what the figure is. So we deal with between 50, probably 50 live cases in our lab every every month. So it’s live at the moment in the States that are probably with between 305 hundred every month. So you have to maybe look at the UK market versus the size of the US market and try and figure out what what the middle ground there is. But I think probably in the UK we could easily double that market without any great stretch. But a could well be bigger than that. I find it a very difficult thing to pinpoint, but one thing we would say is that the large market is growing. You know, again, you only have to look at what the company is concentrating on and also the fact that they’re also concentrated guided surgery. The companies understand this. They’re not so.

And is this not linked at all to stress and near-death? Separate.

Chrome is Chrome. As an individual product, we will use with any implant system that has a gated kit. And to be fair, to be fair to you. Australian and New Zealand actually there really started to click in that. That’s a very powerful product and it’s it’s a product that helps their customers and reduces problems. And they also understand that we that we educate on, I think well, so they are starting to know companies are just implant companies are just some of them are a bit worried about the fact that that I say on the other hand on the other side but I can say on the unit in the UK, you know, Chrome for me is always going to be a bigger market than our market by a long, long way. So our job is not to be a threat to anybody. And I know that Chrome helps sell implants, so implant companies really should see it as a bonus. And you know, the other thing is that the experience here so there’s nearly 18,000 cases done, though, at a mammoth amount of experience that these guys have that sit behind us. And we’re very lucky I call them. It’s like having a back office team. You know, these guys are unbelievable at what they do and there’s new stuff coming out payment all the time. They are a company that are very open to improvements. They’re they’re an open door policy pretty much. You can go and see them and speak to them and that’s something they like and it’s a family run business.

All right. Let’s talk about on this show. We’d like to talk about errors. Clinical errors. What comes to mind when I say clinical errors.

Yeah. So one of the scariest ones that has happened to me was I was doing an implant lower left six on a very nice gentleman from Galway direction was and I dropped the screwdriver and the screwdriver disappeared. And. He started coughing after he had swallowed, I presume did swallow that, I suppose, at that stage. But obviously the fear is that it goes into the right problem because his daughter was a solicitor and as all this happens. So I remember having to set them up, abort the surgery, stitch him up from the hospital and said, listen, you know, this is what’s happened for me locally. And thinking to myself at dinner stomach, you know, this in the stomach, it’s no big problem. And driving them into A&E myself and having a chest X-ray and then a consultant who I knew wagged me over with a big smile on his face, telling me it was on the right bronchus. And here we had a strowman screwdriver. Sharp thing that’s not small lodged in this gentleman’s right bronchus. So he then had to be transferred to Belfast City Hospital in an ambulance, which is about an hour and a half and 45 minutes from here. To get it removed. And I it was a margin and a big scar on his chest getting him to get it out. And I still remember the journey that the next morning driving up to go and see him and see his family, which I’d obviously kept in contact with that evening, thankfully, finding out that he had been able to get it removed and orally. And they’ve been able to fish it out. So that probably for me was one of the scariest things that have happened from a clinical perspective.

What happened, anything after that? Any recourse for no patient?

I’m going to go back to rapport and relationship building. You know, the situation. We handled it as well as we possibly could handle it. We did everything we needed to do. We kept everybody informed. We had a conversation with his family. We explained exactly what was happening.

Things changed. When I say when I say error, I feel like there was no errors in that.

Do you not? Well, I think there was an error because it didn’t have flow. Stayed right in the blood.

Oh, there you go. Good, good, good, good.

You know, and even to this day, sometimes just don’t forget to do it. But yeah, so that. That for me, that was me. I mean, there you have those consequences where somebody have to go to bloody hospital to have a job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But error, error errors and when you reflect you think I would have done that differently man. Out the screwdriver. Floss for the scooter. Yeah. Give me one more, man. Cue. One more.

Man. Let me see. Yeah. So another big one was we went through a period of using and the early days of zirconia. So this was actually a really stressful period for myself and Larry. Larry had been involved in some of the early work with streaming under. And so we were doing loads of it and hammered did absolutely loads of it. We were doing large restorations in it and it was all not monolithic at that stage. It was a base with veneered ceramic over the top. And almost every one of them fractured.

And how long after you shooting them?

Probably about 2 to 2 and a half years, even earlier in a lot of instances. So we had and I mean, we had hundreds of these.

Oh, so you suddenly you’re thinking they’re all going to come back.

I’m they they bloody well nearly did. So the hours that I spent cutting zirconia off. And Larry, God bless them, replaced every single one of them. And I don’t think he was ever funded by a Stroman. But we remitted every single case at our expense. I give the clinical time. He gave the technical time. And I remember that period being horrendously stressful. You were waiting for the phone call every day to say, GM’s better. Two beautiful cranes from me and know the fractured. And we were just like, Oh, not another one. And yeah, so I was actually a really horrible.

That’s a biggie.

It was a big that cost a lot of money.

Also, Prav, you have no idea you’re drilling Serco Serco now. Yes. It’s like it just doesn’t. It’s so hard. It’s impossible to get the damn thing off. Yeah.

Yeah. So that when I look back, I tell that story to a lot of people.

That’s one of the worst I’ve heard.

Yeah, that was a really horrible, horrible period. Thanks for that actually pay. Thanks for. You know, I appreciate.

It. We should we should give a medal. A medal, shouldn’t we?

Do I win that award then?

Yeah. You’re definitely in the running for that one, man. What a nightmare. Patient of the patient. And did any of those go? Did anyone like a patient get pissed off or. No, Your rapport. So good. Oh, good, good. Tell us that story.

Good people. Common people. Come on and tell me. You told me this was the best thing since sliced bread. What? Why the hell is it broken? You know, I’m no back. Especially when you had patients that maybe had breakages at different times. So, you know, they had one repair that redid the crown and then you had another one maybe in a few months time, and they started to get annoyed. So.

So did you level with the patients and tell them, look, this is a problem we’re having?

What else did? Of course.

She did. No, it’s a problem we’re having across lots of nations.

It’s a problem. You’re not the only one that’s come in the door with this.

Oh, really?

Our. Our. What we are doing as a team is we’re putting them right because we feel there’s an inherent problem with the material. Although we’re handling the material at our site and in the way that we’re told to. We’re still having a fundamental problem. So obviously, it’s like a recall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just have to be.

That’s a goodie, James. That’s a goodie. Yeah. I don’t know why I’m taking pleasure from it somehow. It’s another bad story. So you are? My pleasure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we’re getting to the point where we come to the final questions, guys, But I’ve.

Got one thing that’s that I’ve been thinking a question I’ve been thinking about asking from right at the beginning. James. We were talking about the art of craft that you’re that your father instilled in you. Perhaps what my father instilled in me. And then and then we go on to this situation where we have our own kids and we want to instil the art of craft in them, but we don’t own corner shops anymore, and there’s no newspaper rounds to dish out. But you still want your kids to grow up grounded and understand, depreciate, however you want to put that the value of money or hard work or whatever that that is. Does that ever come up for you?

Look. Look how hard he’s working, dude. I mean, your kid’s going to get it. No, but you as well. You know, I get that. But James worked in the.

Shop, right? That’s where you picked up your. Your personal craft, right? Yeah. Obviously leading by example. Do you ever sit.

Down and have to.

Have those conversations on that piece? What’s your take? Because, you know, both myself and Sonya. And I think that we have we’ve got we have worked fucking hard for. Yeah, we really have. And what’s put a huge amount of pressure on our own personal lives as well as everything else. But, you know, I think that my both myself and Sonya would look back on that and not regret any of it. And when the most of it, I think. But as for I look at Oliver. So Oliver decided that just last week he started his own car, Violet in business, and I caught him outside with a couple of pallets and a screwdriver, making himself a freedom that he can hang all his violet and stuff up on. He created his own Facebook page, and, you know, he he has had a couple of jobs, but they haven’t worked out for him because Oliver is like his father. He’s almost unemployable. And so he has his own cross to bear.

How old is he?

18. Doing a. So. But I look at Oliver. Go on. He went and got himself a job in the local last over the winter time. He went. Then he got his own interview. He did all of that off his own. But now he’s starting this little business cleaning people’s cars. And, you know, so they have always been told, you know, this is what we expect. You know, we work hard. None of this is going to come easy and it shouldn’t come easy to you. Madeline at 16 just isn’t at that stage yet. She just wants to land self over the dog. But she told me she was going to marry a rich man, so maybe that’s her way out of it. I don’t know. But we’ll see.

What Oliver’s.

Drive.

James So, you know, clearly he’s.

He’s been brought up in an environment in a home where he could be given and have everything he wants. Right? Do you. Do you hold things back? What have you done to instil in him? Go get a job in Asda if you want X, Y and Z or. And I guess the entrepreneurial spirit in him have said, right, I’m going to do my own car cleaning business because that’s a challenge and just talk me. Talk me through that. You know, I look at the kids and they’re so bloody lucky. You know, nice holidays, you know, But. But I think some of it’s a guilt thing for maybe myself and Sonya, because, you know, we probably have sacrificed time with them in the years gone past. And at the minute, things are just so incredibly hectic, you know, in terms of work life balance that is just not right. And we would be the first to admit that. But the kids are not given everything that they want. They have to understand the value of of what they have. And I suppose it’s just a. A persistent reminder of luck to them that things will come easy. But they’re good kids. Lesson, you know, proud of the really, really good kids and they don’t really give us too much trouble. So they’re not being troublesome, really. And they’re pretty good. Also not stood outside the off licence drinking side. That may happen the odd time. Yes. We have had the odd hiccup lesson that the 18 year old boy who plays rugby and has got that sort of circle of friends, you’re going to have the World Cup, of course, but that’s part of it. And I move different teams.

Let’s get let’s get to the final questions. Yeah, I think I think I think you’re going to be we can’t no, no one could listen to your story and not call you a serial entrepreneur. And you’re you know, I read this definition of serial entrepreneur. It’s something like highly optimistic and high pain threshold.

Yeah, we just whitewashed Haven. Yeah.

Just let’s get to the fancy dinner party. Three guests. Dead or alive. Who would you have?

Yeah. So first of all, without a shadow of a doubt as Mr. Larry Brown, Larry would have to be there to have one orderly, one more evening with Larry drinking too much wine, talking rubbish, putting the world to rights would be very special. So I think Larry would have to be there. He’s taught me more than I think anybody else has in my lifetime, bar my own parents. And we have a thing in our businesses where we refer back to Larry on a constant basis. And what would Larry do? You know what how would Larry cope with the situation? And so what they’d do, Larry Brown would be the first person at the table. Second one. This could be an interesting one for some people would have to be Queen Elizabeth. If this is a fantasy table. So our queen, the queen that has just passed away, I would absolutely. I think she was a wonderful woman. And let’s talk about work, work ethic and. Service and all these people go, Oh, well, it was easier. Bloody was not easy. You know, she, she put in some shift and she did it with such dignity. And I know that her and Larry would probably kill one another, which would be even better for them. But yeah, so just being able to have a conversation with her I think would be utterly fascinating. So she would be number two.

That’s a good thing. I’m surprised she hasn’t come up before, you know, That’s a goody.

Yeah. Number three. So I am named after my grandfather. So my dad’s dad and he died. Never met him. He died in his early fifties. As far as I’m aware. And. I’m told that I’m quite like him. I’m told that there’s a sharing of some qualities there. And I think ultimately the entrepreneurial side comes from him. And I would be really interested to know it’s actually a conversation I’ve probably not had with my dad too much. And we have discussed it at times, but not in any great detail. And that’s actually something I need to do, would be to find out a little bit more about what made him tick. I think I’d be quite interested in that and just be in meeting the person you’re named after. I remember I used to do carpet bowls. You guys probably have no idea of Calvados worthy. And it was a big thing. And I was given bowls with Jeff. And there were my granddad bowls when I was about 14. I used to play carpools and. Yeah, So I would like to meet him. So that would be the three. Raising. James, it’s your last day on the planet. You’re surrounded by your kids, the loved ones. And you’ve got to leave them with three pieces of wisdom. Life advice. Call it what you want. What would you say to them? So.

Number one. Something my mother told me when I was about. I reckon I was about 18 or 19. There was an incident that happened amongst my friendship group at the time, and I remember telling me, James, you get shot with the crew as your flavour. And. I’ll never forget her saying that at the time. And really what I’ve taken from that over the years, because I do think about it, is to surround yourself with good people and people that and these people can come and go at different times of your life. You might meet somebody for a short period of time that’s going to have an influence. But surround yourself with people who help you when you need help. Surround yourself with people who are good to you. Surround yourself with people who don’t say yes to you all the time, who can challenge you and help make you a better person. And surround yourself with people better than you. And I think if you do that, I think that that pulls you on as a person and that you learn more and that you’re more reflective and that you’re challenged. And I think that’s important. And the last bit of that one would be don’t suffer fools if there’s somebody in your life that’s taking more from the cup than putting in. Just get rid of them. Just stop.

You know, so I think surround yourself with good people. And I’ve tried to do that. So I think that’s number one. Number two, A is probably the only thing I ever learned in the history class. So there was a phrase or a little poem or whatever put on the wall. I keep on a serving man. They taught me all I knew. Their names are walked by. And when, how and where and who. And I use that all the time. And I think the core of that is to be curious. I want my kids to be curious. I want my staff to be curious. I want them to ask. I want them to challenge. I want them to explore. I do want them to accept the status quo. I want them to be interested in finding things out. That’s always been the way for me. When I put my mind to something, I’ve been curious to find out more. And actually that was also a big part of Larry Brown. And so I think being curious is really, really important and not just to accept things as they are. So that little poem sometimes when I’m presenting something or I’ve got an issue in the business that I want to solve, I’ll go through that. Like, I’ll ask the what, why, where and how you are and who to try to figure it out.

So I think being curious is a really good thing to be. And the third one is definitely have no regrets because I see people living with regret all the time. I see it in my own family at times. And regret just becomes a weight on your shoulders that drags you down. And, you know, we’re here for a relatively short period of time. I don’t want my kids to grow up with any regrets. You know, we have a go. We’ve all got skeletons in the closet. We’ve all had things that don’t work out. But you got to just keep going forward and keep trying. Learn from your mistakes. But you want to be able to look at yourself at the end of the day in the mirror and say, You know what? I give that absolutely my best shot. I can’t ask anything more for myself or for those around me. And you know what? That’s a pretty good place to be. So I do think, you know, let’s get rid of the regret. It’s too harsh. It’s too big a baggage to carry. And there’s no there’s no need for it at all. The people that love you are not sure that you surround yourself with. They don’t want you to live with regret. They just want you to get on with things. So that would be my third.

So beautifully articulated, James. Lovely man. You know, dude, sometimes these you know, we’re 10:00 on a on a monday night. Sometimes you get drained by by these conversations because it’s tiring, Right? But sometimes it’s the opposite. They feed you, wake you up. This one. This one really did that for me. Thank you so much, buddy. Thank you so much. Thanks, JD. In talking to you, we really enjoyed.

That. Thank you both, both of you. I’ve been a fan of the podcast for a while and I love the conversations, but you’ve got to get more people in Ireland onto them. Come on, get the Irish contingent. Tell us, tell us.

Tell us who to have. But you happily send us. Send them over, James.

Send them over. Absolutely. Listen, keep up the good work and thank you very much.

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

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

 

An associate was asking me, me How many practices do you think are actually good practices where you’ve got a supportive environment as an associate to minority?

I would say.

I kind of I couldn’t really pick out a figure that, you know, just somebody was explaining to me about some difficult scenarios when they’ve moved from practice to practice to practice. And I would hope, I suppose the people that we speak to, we hope that, you know, most people are supportive and good principles and try and look after people as much as possible. But invariably there’s always going to be good and bad in any profession.

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 selling cake.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Imran Nazir onto the podcast. Amy is a dentist, cosmetic and implant dentist who has recently started a practice in Cheltenham with lots of specialists at Cheltenham and Cotswold Dental. He’s also turned his hand to teaching with his brilliant aesthetic prosthetic courses that he does with Manish Patel and recently launched a new implant course, a rich preservation course called 15. See? Brilliant to have you, buddy. Thanks for joining us. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. It’s great to actually finally come on the the podcast after listening to you guys every morning at 5 a.m. most mornings at 5 a.m..

It’s nice to have someone on the show who actually listens. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That’s when I do my commute. So it’s the best time to listen to all of this.

Here’s a test. What’s your favourite episode of me? Yeah. Nice. Oh.

Favourite episode. That is a test, isn’t it? Can I scroll to? Can I come back to you on that one?

Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell you what my favourite episode is. Vishal. Vishal Shah. Yeah. Have you heard that one?

When was that one?

Ages ago. Yeah. This was the whistle blower. Hygienist Wasn’t. Wasn’t. Wasn’t disinfecting the instruments.

Oh, maybe. Maybe I did miss that one.

That’s the best. It’s the best. I’m going to have him back on as well, because he’s. He’s done really well since then. Class action lawsuit. All his patients. He was on the news in in China. What’s your favourite episode? That’s a good test. I think it’s still going to be a new right? Yeah, I think. I think it does, because. You know, I was very fond of the guy and and even listening back to that and I haven’t for a while. So many lessons, so many life lessons in them and whatnot. And such an inspirational guy, amazing teacher and a guy that touched many, many, many hearts and people’s education over the years. So, yeah, it’s still still stands strong as my favourite and then possibly my brothers, just because of the amount of swearing we had to come out of it, crying and crying.

If if you know the one the one actually more recently that I quite resonated with that I was telling the delegates on the weekend about was actually George is one a couple of weeks ago and you know the message I was telling delegates on the weekend was, you know, even someone as skilled as him with so much experience where he shared that story about putting the implant through the mandible without checking his implant motor and, you know, his background from his father medicine and now what he’s doing. I just found it a fascinating story, just a fascinating backstory. And he’s obviously, you know, he’s he’s done so well for himself now. And, you know, so many people look up to him in the implant world.

I mean, you know, how we normally start this podcast, but I’m not going to normally start it the way that we know I want. You know, I was looking at you today and I was looking at your you’ve done basically the sort of the funnel of a dentist. You qualify associate M.C. Squat practice specialist practice and now teacher. I want you to give me for each of those roles. One thing that surprised you. One thing you wish you knew before you did that.

For each of those roles.

Yeah. So before you became a dentist? Yeah.

Before I came. A dentist?

Yeah. What do you wish someone had told you before you became a dentist?

I suppose. I wish that before I became a dentist, someone told me that, you know, at the very outset of your career, try and make sure that a really good balance between your family, your friends and your dentistry. And I think now I’ve become much, much better at sort of being more conscious of my time and juggling all sorts of activities. But I think in the infancy of my career when I was an associate, certainly I would say that I was working so many hours in surgery and I probably missed out on things with my children that I absolutely regret. Whereas whereas now, when I yes, I’m busy in the week, but the weekends are solely, solely dedicated to being by the sports pitch, running my children around. And I wish I’d have known that a little bit earlier.

On that point, you were getting your 10,000, 10000 hours in, right? That made you that made you who you are clinically today. That puts you in a position to be able to teach and guide others and to be able to launch the clinic that you wanted to launch and deliver the patient journey that you wanted to do. And had you not done that and you were at the side of the pitch more or doing more, more family stuff, and I don’t think you’d be where you are today. And I think a lot of us go through that period. I definitely went through that when I was doing my 17, 18 hour days and wife and kids just got sidelined. Right? They were they were a secondary thought. And there are moments when I beat myself up about it. Right. But also I know very, very clearly I wouldn’t be the Prav I am today had I not been through that struggle. So knowing that, would you change anything if you went back?

You know, I don’t think I’m lucky. I have the most incredibly supportive wife who is a dentist as well. And you know, I wouldn’t change anything about my journey at all. I feel very privileged and fortunate to where I am now. And, you know, it’s been it’s been a passion of love, really. And I think even to this day, whether it’s writing new courses, whether it’s writing material for the practice, I love every single minute of it. So I don’t resent anything that I’ve done in the past at all.

I mean, what about before you started to practice? What do you wish you knew?

I started the practice in well, I think we completed on the first of 2nd of January 2020. I wish on the 2nd of January 2020, I knew that COVID was coming. That would have been brilliant. So second, 2nd of January 2020, we completed we started building work immediately. And I think I got into my surgery on the 1st of March. So I think we had 21 days before we shut down.

Wow.

Wow. I think I was in a practice for quite a few years, a private practice in Gloucestershire, and I think sort of through that period, it was a really, really good practice. And I think I learnt over that period the things that worked with management of the team and things that perhaps didn’t work. So, you know, for me actually when I look back on that period with COVID, it gave me a real good chance to sort of galvanise my team around me and to look after them as best as possible. So when I reflect on it, actually I think it was a blessing in disguise because now they are just so loyal and they’re such a good bunch that, that actually I think it worked in my favour.

But did you not have cash crisis?

Oh, there was definitely a cash crisis. I mean, we had we didn’t have everybody we couldn’t put on furlough because people weren’t on payroll in time. Yeah. And cash flow is definitely an issue. And if I look back to it, I think when Boris’s announcement suddenly came that we could reopen, I think that we probably had I probably think we had about three more, about three more weeks in us to keep things going well. We went to the banks, we went to the banks and I asked for a holiday on the repayments. And the first thing that they said was, What was my pandemic plan? And I told them I didn’t have one. And the second thing was that they said the money was tied into the market, so we’d have to pay break fees. But the break fees were in the were in the numbers of tens and tens of thousands. So that wasn’t an option. So in the end, actually, without taking out any more finance or anything like that, we managed to make it work.

I guess you weren’t you weren’t even eligible for the coronavirus business interruption.

We weren’t didn’t have any accounts. We didn’t have any accounts or.

Even a bounce back. No, none of it.

Nothing. We could we didn’t have anything available to us. So so I was basically sat in my garden office from about 6 a.m. till about 10:00 at night, head in hands, trying to work out how we do this. And on top of that, I was trying to work out what we needed when we were allowed to open. And you know, you can probably remember at the time that there was about there was a limit to how much PPE we could buy number one per week. And number two, it was sky high in price. So all I was doing every week I was ordering what I thought we were going to need so that at least I had some stuff. And then as soon as we were allowed to open up, we did training with the staff for about three days, four days, and then we just got going. But I had the PPE, luckily.

Was it from the beginning a specialist practice? Was that the idea from from the get go or did it become.

Yeah, I mean, that was always the vision of it. So the background to the practice was that it was an NHS orthodontic practice and quite a well established one in Cheltenham. So beautiful building lots of space and they lost their contract three years ago. So essentially it was coming onto the market and one of my, you know, my business partner at the Practice, we were best friends at university and she was actually a locum orthodontist at the practice. So she ended up ringing me and said, Look, Amy, this is becoming available. What do you think? There was four partners who own the building and the business and I just thought, wonderful location, Cheltenham’s affluent area. My referral base was in the in the region. I thought it was just too good an opportunity to pass. So, you know, we immediately made the move and with a vision of turning it into a fully specialist practice.

Nice. So in terms of you said your referral base was there, so were you confident that you’d have enough patients to be sort of treating and seeing at the practice so that I guess marketing or new patient acquisition, those sort of things were less.

Of a problem? Well, obviously, you know, there was obviously an element of risk, no doubt. Yeah, but a lot of the practices that were referring to the practice in Gloucestershire that was previously at they were referring directly to me as opposed to the practice. So, you know, it felt I felt that it was a risk worth taking and it was the right step for me at the time. And from a marketing point of view, my vision with that was that there was still some NHS orthodontic treatment that was being finished at the practice and actually in the lead up I came out of the practice in Gloucestershire about six months prior to concentrate on this, this set up and you know, the previous owners were great. So in reception we were leaving out flyers, we were leaving our information, we were emailing to say about the change of the practice. So I knew that patients like the practice and parents were bringing their kids in for NHS. Also, that we were going to pick up enough enquiries to get us off the floor. So that’s basically where it started from. And even to this day we don’t, you know, we don’t do external marketing. Yes, we have a website, but every I would say on average we get about 100 new patient referrals a month into our specialists and then enquiries a beyond that. So I track it regularly. So and that started pretty immediately and that just continues to grow.

Just, just on a point of curiosity, you know, when, when a referral comes into the practice and I think one of the things when, when I speak to whether it’s a specialist referral practice or a practice that relies heavily on referrals because they’ve got a team of skilled clinicians, is this element of dropping the ball with referrals that have come in and you see a sliding scale of this, all different elements of it and part of it could be a referral comes in, but it came in via WhatsApp, but a referral came in and it came scribbled on a back of a lab note or whatever. A referral came in by email, but it got it went into junk and then let’s say it was the super smooth process and the referral comes in digitally. What’s your I’m going to call it the patient journey, right? But your patient is the dentist and the patient, right? And so what does your journey look like when when when a dentist sends a referral in? What’s your communication like with that? And if you experienced any of those issues that I’ve just outlined.

Yeah. I mean, when you’ve got a high volume of referrals coming in, it is so easy for one to go astray. Especially when you’ve got a big team and you know how, say, for example, my treatment coordinators would handle matters compared to, say, how one of our front of house staff would handle things may be slightly different. So, you know, the standard we have two treatment coordinators and the standard thing I’ve asked them to do, which they do, is as soon as we receive a referral, we will the treatment coordinator will pick up the phone and ring the referring practice and say that we we received it, thank them for sending the referral and then of course, communicate with the patient and go through everything for the appointment, what to expect, what the fees will be, send them a map, etc. etc.. Throughout the process, I mean, one thing I’m massively keen on is I track everything within the practice. So I’m a spreadsheet man. I like to know that everything is logged. I like to know how long it takes for the patient to be seen and actually what the outcome is. So I view that every month and keep an eye that everything’s been been sort of handled. And I think more often than not with my team, I don’t think many slip the net, but we’re human and mistakes can happen. Because like any referral practice, as I say in our in our monthly huddles, a referral practice is all about relations with our referrals, dentists, dentists. You know, it’s just absolutely key. Yes, we have to look after the patients, but we have to look after the dentists as much as possible.

When the dentist sends a referral to is that patient as good as sold? So they’ve got a clear idea of what your fee structure is and all the rest of it. Or do you start chasing that patient in the sense that your dentist is recommended you come in for an assessment for oral surgery or whatever. And our assessment fee is 250 quid we’d like to book you. And with doctors, such and such. Is that a given that they’re going to book in because they’ve been referred, or is it that the dentist has said, hey, this patient might need this, I’m send him across and then your TSOs are doing exactly the same as what you would be doing if that patient came in on a self referral where they’d have to follow them up, remind them, text them email and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I think I think for those that refer to us that they historically referred to us, I think that, you know, I would say 100% at a time, they will come in for the consultation. Usually, you know, 100% of the time they will already regularly communicate with the practices about like even at the end of the year, what our fees have changed to so that it’s accurate for their patient. So only, you know, in January I was sending those messages out to say, look, our consultation costs have gone up, our CBC costs some more are also fees and now this and that way it’s patients aren’t shocked when they turn up to see us. So I think from that point of view, we do we do relatively well. We have two incredible treatment coordinators. One lady who had knowledge base is superb and and actually she has like, you know, Prav, you know, people skills are everything in that position, right? And the patients just love her. Just absolutely love her. She will know about every pet their family member has and she just gets them on the right level and looks after them. And she will try and work out a plan with the clinician. If somebody can’t afford something, she will work out a payment plan for them. She will do whatever she has to to make sure that the patient gets the right treatment. However long the term is.

So in a normal practice where patients are self referring in, CO may see the patient for a consultation and then book the patient in with the the dentist. Right. Or the treating dentist or whatever. What role does the CO have in a specialist practice like yours? Is it similar. Do they meet with the patient before or are they having that rapport building conversation with the patient where they’re essentially selling them the assessment or the US piece of you or one of your colleagues to get them in and then help them along their journey?

Yes. So they will of course, they will initially build up the relationship on the phone. Yeah. And but when they come for their first new patient appointment, they will meet the CO and they will then go through be led through to the surgery by the TSO. And following the appointment they will go and sit in a room and just chat about things and ask questions that maybe they will find less comfortable asking us about.

Sure.

So that’s usually the journey. And then the TSO will follow them up. They’ll get the letter at the end of the day and the TSO will then followed them up probably about a week later to see if there’s any questions that they want answered.

You usually get a letter out within the day or just.

So all the other clinicians usually will get also will go out within the day. My aim is always to make sure my letters are out within the week. If it’s a straightforward letter, not a nine page summary, if it’s a straightforward letter, they can get it within a couple of days. If it’s if it’s a vast treatment plan or I need to look at the CT scans, it might take a little bit longer.

I mean, you seem to me I mean, we don’t know each other that well, but you seem to me like you found your ikigai. You know about that Japanese thing, right? Do you know about it?

No, I don’t.

It’s like. It’s like the concentric circles. You know, that which you are good at? Yes, That which the world needs. That. That which you will get paid for. Basically something that combines your passion, your your, your mission and everything in the middle ikigai. You seem to me like, like one of those cats who’s got that all fixed. And it’s interesting in dentistry, right, because that which the world needs and that which the world will pay for is already ingrained in dentistry. And then it comes down to, you know, what you enjoy doing and what are you good at doing? So with your practice, which bits of it do you hate and hate to hate of anyway? Which, which bits of it is it that you don’t feel in flow when you’re dealing with and which bits of it you really feel like you’re really in flow you really love doing.

So if I could. So what do I love doing? I love driving the team forward and inspiring the other team members to take ownership. You know, we are so, so lucky that we have I mean, the team is now 30 and I can hand on heart, say within every member of that team, there is no one that I would never there is no one that I wouldn’t employ again. Well, and genuinely, you know, they they feel like, you know, we call ourselves a family and, you know, one of my one of my actual greatest worries, which sounds strange, is that I worry that in the future when we do sell, you know, I worry about who’s going to look after these guys. And, you know, so I kind of I love working with the team. I love inspiring them. Hopefully, I know that I push them hopefully in the right way. And I love that. You know, some of my favourite moments is that when we go and socialise together, you know, the most recent two we did, we had a, we had an evening playing darts and food and drinks and that was good. And then we went to, we went to an Indian afternoon tea session and gin tasting and you know, when you can mix the pleasure, you know, genuinely everybody just gets on right here. So that is probably the massive perk of running this practice. Of course.

You haven’t had to fire anyone yet.

I know I haven’t actually, which is which is great. I mean, along the way, there’s probably been people that perhaps I inherited from the previous practice that I realised we’re going to be an obstacle for my vision. But you know, luckily within a few months they realised that things may not work out how they wanted them to work out. And they, you know, they looked elsewhere and that was perfect. That was ideal. So, you know, I would say that we don’t have any bad eggs and there is only, you know, positive energy. That’s one thing I struggle to cope with, that if somebody is continually negative.

True.

That is that is because that just brings you only need one negative person within the team to bring everybody down. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I wouldn’t say we’ve got any of those at the moment, which is great.

So which aspects of it don’t you like?

You know, it’s very easy for me to say that there is nothing within the practice I don’t like. I mean, I think I think we have we have two managers. We have two managers, which now over the last three years have come to grips with how we like to run things. So I would say at the infancy of the practice, too much was coming to us, to Sam and I. But as time is gone, you know, the managers take a lot of load off us. And for me that’s great because I get to get on with my clinical stuff. You know, we do we do a weekly meeting, a weekly managers meeting where for 2 hours we’ll go through all the issues. Anything may have come up and we we manage it immediately and give an answer. And that’s a really good way. So that way the rest of the week, it’s not eating into my mindset or I can get on with the things that I need to do.

And how many days are you clinical?

So at the moment I’m three and a half.

Well, that’s good.

So I’m three and a half and you know, give it probably a year. I’ll probably be down to I’m looking to get to three. So I do.

That’s good.

So three is three is about the optimum for me, the way that I operate. So I think that’s probably the perfect mix to have a date. I do a days admin from home, which is practice related or treatment planning, and then of course a day may be spent teaching and then weekends is about being a taxi for the children.

So. So I’m going to ask same question before you embarked on your teaching. What do you wish you knew or what surprised you about teaching?

And teaching was? A Yeah, teaching was quite a jump because, you know, even on the even on the weekend, just gone when we launched 15, see you kind of there are times where you still feel, you know, it’s that whole inferiority complex and you think, should I be stood here in front of these people? And there are times when I’m lecturing, when I think I’m talking about something so basic that I’m probably not giving value to the delegates. But I was amazed the first time that I taught that actually you can’t take anything for granted and you know, you need to the most keeping things simple is actually the best way to educate others and not to go to Complex. And I learnt that the first time very, very quickly.

What was the first time? Can you cast your mind back to the first time you got up in front of a bunch of people and said, Right, I’m going to teach these dudes some some stuff just how you felt, the whole impostor syndrome complex and nerves maybe. I don’t mean mean. Payman just spoke about this incredible length. We actually went through the journey together. But take us through your journey. I mean, what was that like the first time you stepped into or started thinking about teaching?

Well, I think I mean, it was just the most incredible buzz because during COVID we did I did a few webinars, and the webinars were fun. But, you know, interacting live with a with a group was just was just such an experience. And even even on Friday, you know, it’s a long day. You’re on your feet the whole day. You’re helping everyone. Everyone wants a piece of you. Lots of questions. And the day after you are so, so drained. But it’s just the most rewarding thing when you can see 22 people produced the level of surgery on a pig’s head that you would be proud of and you think, Do you know what? I’ve actually made a huge difference here to 22 people, and that that is just a feeling that you can’t really replicate. You know, we go we after the course we go for, usually I’m there showing clinical paces till we’re thrown out. And on them literally on Friday they were like, You’ve gone past your contracted time. We have you have to go. And I was still up there showing clinical cases. People wanted more. They want to see some soft tissue grafting. So I just started showing a bit of that and we go to the bar afterwards. I ordered the pizzas in and you’re just chatting. You’re just chatting about life, people’s practices, and you just don’t want that moment to end, you know, the course. Or we were just sat there till about 3 a.m. and, you know, and in the end you had to, you had to go to bed. And actually I was so gutted that we had to go to sleep.

Is there a one day course?

It was a one day course, yeah. You know, the second night you would just finished.

So how do you market the courses in me?

So we do it solely on, solely on our Instagram accounts. So, you know, with messages following and the followers that I have, we’ve just slowly, slowly drip fed it onto there. And we’ve been fortunate enough that it’s sort of attraction and people have been really interested in them.

I mean, it’s nice for you, I guess Menashe is a real. Of courses, right. So he could sort of tell you what to expect. And, you know, I remember when we first started doing courses, it was it was a nightmare. The first few times I found it so hard with hands on making sure every little thing was there. Just just just little operational issues like that. Do you not find those hard?

Yeah. So, I mean, his experience from running Focus is has been has been so helpful. And, you know, even when I put some slides together, just his gist his Yeah. Experience from that background has helped us helped us know and I think I think the jump for him has been going from doing photography to something that is different. Say for example, doing live hands on with pigs heads is is a completely different, completely different area. But no doubt from a from a website design, you know like our websites manage puts together from our marketing branding for our book that we put together for the boxes, the packaging, we already has the contact. So it’s made things so much easier. So with AP took us with aesthetic prosthetic, probably put us 12 months, took us 12 months to put it together with 15 C You know, we have the blueprint how we want to do things, we have the venue. And I think within four months we put it together.

What does it stand for?

15 C So 15 C is based on my favourite surgical blade.

So.

So that’s, that’s kind of where we say the logo is, got the blade underneath it.

Okay, that’s funny. What I was trying to think to myself. 15. Yeah, I was saying the mix man because I thought was something dental that you guys probably know about.

So because you haven’t, I mean you haven’t picked up a surgical blade in many years, right?

No, 12 years.

Yeah, 12.

Years. And even then, I didn’t used to like blood at all. I mean, as soon as it was anything to do with blood, I would refer it even a not so difficult wisdom tooth. I just refer it. I just refer.

And that’s fine, isn’t it? Because if that’s if that’s not what, you know, your niche then it’s not your niche.

Yeah. I think what it was, I took a break from dentistry for five years, then I went back. When I went back, I was just like, This isn’t my main career anymore. I’m only going to do the bits I’m either really good at or really like. And that just left bleaching and bonding really was I was referring everything else, completely referring everything else out. And it’s a funny thing. Yeah. But knowing what you’re good at and what you should keep doing because if you ask the question I was asking myself this, it was a bit of a silly question really. Is there anyone who can do it better than me? And if you asked that question, you literally left with nothing because there’s always someone, right? You can do it better than you.

But the but the beating but the bleaching and bonding has taken you down this road, which is, you know.

Was already down the street when, when, when I was saying that. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let’s, let’s, let’s get back to your back story, buddy. When was the first time that you had. I’m going to study dentistry in your head. Like, when did that first coming to endure radar, Do you remember?

So that was literally only the day before I handed in my A-level choices. There was there was. There was. I knew that science was always my strongpoint, Always, always. And so I knew that I wanted to do chemistry, biology, physics for my A-levels. But I think it must have been around that time. And when we were handing in the applications for university that I was marrying up medicine, optometry or dentistry, and I came to the conclusion that medicine wasn’t for me and I thought I would give dentistry a go with no reason. There was no family members that were dentists. And I always actually think back to that day and think how lucky I was that I actually chose something that I fell in love with. Yeah, it could have gone so wrong. It could have gone so wrong. So there was no reason why I chose dentistry, hadn’t really done me work experience in it. And I just got lucky.

And you were living in London? Yeah.

Yeah, I was. So family homes in sort of Purley I was at school in Dulwich and.

The school itself.

That one little college. Yeah. And that business was in Balam. So Dad used to drop me on the way to school and then head up the South Circular to Balam.

What does your dad do?

So he retired now. He would call himself a businessman. He is a man with fingers in many pies, but his main business. His main business. He had a Mott mott station in car garage. So, so, so sort of that that moved over to England when he was 16 and started doing engineering and an apprenticeship. And then he was working I think he was working in a petrol station, but at Night-Time he started a business. Mobile repairs through the night and then managed to save enough money to then set up his own garage. And, you know, we’re very it’s served me and my sister well and just, you know, he worked incredibly, incredibly hard to give us what we have today.

So reflecting on that Prav thing that he was saying about, you know, you not seeing your kids when you were putting in those hours. You didn’t see your dad very much, right?

I literally I did not see Dad at all.

Yeah.

The only mom used to do all of the stuff with us. Really? And Dad was. Dad was so busy with the business and working every hour possible that that. Yeah, we didn’t spend much time together, but, you know, through no fault of his own, I mean, everything that he earns or everything that he worked for was solely for us. I mean, I think back to a story that my mom sort of sums up what my dad is like, and my mom is the eldest of six siblings, and I remember he met my mom. They must have been about 16 and he wanted to take my mom out. And my mom was like, well, you’re going you’re going to have to go and ask Nana about it. As in my granddad. So, Dad.

Is this back in Uganda?

This was back in in England. And this is when they met in England. And about this was probably about six months after they came over from Uganda. And he went to ask my granddad whether he can take my mom to the cinema. My granddad said, Yeah, that’s fine, but you do realise to take her out on a date, you’re going to have to marry her first.

So.

You know, so they got married and incredibly, you know, they’re in love, They’re still together. They make a great pair. But before he could take her to the cinema, he. They got married and Dad would work all week for enough money to go to the cinema. But he felt bad that all of Mom’s younger siblings couldn’t go, so he would save all of his money to take all six of them to the cinema together. So his first date with Mom was with five other younger siblings.

Oh, wow.

And even to this, to this day, he spends, you know, he really looks after my mom’s side of the family. His side of the family are in like Canada, America. And he has very few family in the UK that’s originally from Tanzania. So from Tanzania, they they went, they went America Canada way. But Mum’s family from Uganda being born there from Uganda, they all came here pretty much.

Say my dad was from Tanzania as well.

Oh. Whereabouts?

To borrow.

Right. So so we have similar heritages. We look the same background.

Colour, the same hairstyle.

I know, I know.

So listen to me. It sounds to me like you learned from your dad the sort of discipline, working hard, doing things for your kids, that sort of stuff. And I reflect on what I’ve said and, you know, the osmosis of that came through to you. Whether or not he spent the hours at the side of the football pitch or whatever. What did you learn from your mom? What kind of person was she?

So mom is a really unique, selfless person. I think one of the things I learnt from Mum is that well, I sort of learnt it in a in a roundabout way is that most of her life. She never used to say no to anyone about anything. And I’d say in the last couple of years she’s learnt the art of saying no. If it goes, you know, if it’s to a complete detriment herself. So Mum’s always been a giver. She’s been a feeder. You know, my sister lives around the corner from her in London, and I bet you every time my sister steps out the door, there will be fruit bowls and parcels for all of her children where Mum, Mum can’t go to the shops without buying groceries for her sisters, for her mum, for my sister. Recently we wanted to change mum’s car and she’s got a mercedes saloon and mum’s rationality that she couldn’t possibly change the car. Was that her Mercedes with the saloon? She could fit multiple boxes into the back of it, that she could deliver food parcels to the rest of the community. So, you know Mum. Mum has been. Mum has been the sounding board the whole way through. You know, I still ring mum and dad every day as much as I possibly can, you know, for, for advice or just to listen to things and just get their opinion of things. But you know, they’ve been, they’ve been a great support. Always. Always.

So did you not feel like coming back to London after you studied in Bristol, Right. Yeah. You’ve pretty much stayed on that side of the country.

Yeah, I think I think I’m quite I wouldn’t say say I’m the black sheep of the family, but we have we have so much family in London that actually I find it so claustrophobic that when I’m back, it’s like, you must go and see this and you must go and see this person. If you don’t go here, this person is going to get offended. And I just I just literally there’s too much going on in life that I can’t cope with that.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think for me, moving out of London was was great for me. It just allowed me to grow up. And Bristol is a phenomenal place and we’re lucky. My wife’s my wife’s family’s in Bristol, so we have that support nearby. And, you know, it’s only, as I say to mum and dad, it’s only 2 hours to London. And now that they’re now that Dad’s retired, they can, they can come up at their leisure. But again, you know, from Mum’s point of view he has so many people that she must look after in London. So it’s difficult for them to free up their time as well.

So you still live in Bristol?

So I still live in Bristol. So the children are at school in Bristol. We’re happy and settled there. They’re settled in school, so I don’t see myself moving towards Cheltenham.

So I have like a city.

Yeah. I mean, Bristol is just we have so many friends that have stayed on from uni, so, you know, I can’t see anything changing for the in the near future.

My, my, one of my favourite restaurants in the country is in Bristol. Which was it. Pacos.

Yeah. Pacos is good. You must have gone with Alfonso. He must have taken you.

No, Richard took me. Richard Field. Richard.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But what a restaurant, man. What a great, great restaurant. And perhaps the best thing on the menu. The best thing on the menu. Go on. Brendan Olive oil. Yeah, but you wouldn’t believe it. It’s like a michelin star place or something. Yeah, and bread and olive oil. It’s like they barbecue the bread and then they’ve got some amazing oil they put on my water. I just. I just started watching something on Netflix where the I can’t remember what it is. And the guy walks around with a bottle of olive oil that his mum’s pressed and he just walks around eating this bread and olive oil and they pass it around and apparently it’s the best thing ever. So yeah, I’ll have to, I’ll have to get Alfonso to take me there the next time I’m in Bristol. He just.

I mean, the restaurants, we’ve got some I mean, there’s Michelin starred restaurants. There are Michelin starred restaurants that are so reasonably priced in Bristol as well. We’re actually the bill comes. And you think they’ve miscalculated? Actually, you know, I think the last time I went to one actually said to them, I said, you’re actually under charging here. I feel uncomfortable paying this bill. And it was like it was a it was and the service was just so good and it was like a nine course tasting menu. And it’s in cotton. I forget the name of it, and it’s not flashy at all. It’s got wooden chairs that you think that you just see in a cafe. But just the food was just incredible.

What will you like as a dental student? I mean.

I think I was a party animal. Yes, I was. I was diligent. What I needed to do my work. I did my work. I did well. I did well at dental school, but I was massively involved as well in the sports scene. So I played I played hockey at university, I played cricket at university. So with that came a lot of socialising, a lot of nights out. So I would say probably, you know, there would be events probably for four out of five nights in the week.

Nice. Did you meet your wife at dental school?

No. So we didn’t. So we met at. We met in VTE in Bristol. So she graduated from Cardiff.

All right.

And then we were on the Bristol scheme together.

Nice. Yes. So she’s a better dentist than you, then?

She is definitely the better dentist than me. He’s definitely the better dentist in me.

Because you work in the practice also.

No, she doesn’t. So I’m very what’s really important to me is that my. It sounds strange, but I don’t want my family life and my work life mixing together. So, you know, Kristina works a couple of days a week. She she unfortunately got meningitis ten years ago. So she’s been she’s suffered a lot of health issues. So she stopped working for about 9 to 10 years. So she she only went back probably about school probably about six months ago. And she does a couple of days a week at the at the practice where she did her vet. So a lovely practice down in Cheddar North Somerset. And she’s happy. She works in general practice and she’s a really, really good solid dentist, really solid dentist. So. So yeah, so but no, there’s no aspirations to work together. I mean, recently I asked her if we could go on a course together and she was looking at some courses, but she refuses to go on any courses with me because she said she finds that it would be too much pressure if I was looking at her work.

So, Amy, when you look at this business of yours now. And I mean to you. It must feel like it’s you’ve gone through so many different stages already. But to me, you know, when Prav, I’m sure from the outside you’re just at the very, very beginning of it. I mean, it’s very, very early days. What’s your aspiration? Do you feel like you’re going to repeat this model? Do you want this perfect one site where you’re just going to keep on perfecting it and keep on perfecting that one site? Are you thinking anything about the future, long term future? Do you want to sell it and do another one like you said, sell?

Yeah. You know, there are times where I. I think I think this one would stay as a hub for sure. And, you know, this is the baby. This is this is where it sort of started from. And, you know, Sam and I are so Sam and I Sam, being the business partner and one of my best friends from university. You know this. We will always keep going. I think my one worry is that if there was any expansion, I think that, you know, there’s an element where you have to start letting go of certain things a lot more. And I think either you can I think it’s very difficult to be a teacher, clinician style individual and to have multiple practices potentially. And I feel that for me, I think that I would struggle to cope with multiple practices. I think there is that whole thing where, you know, only about three or four months ago I said to Dad, I said, You know what, I would love to potentially start a school in Bristol and go again. That doesn’t mean getting rid of getting rid of this one. That just means trying to learn something else. And, you know, one dad’s advice always to me is that, you know, slow and steady, you don’t have to do everything at 200 miles an hour.

But I think that’s where dad, in my opinion, slightly deferred, because I’m always thinking I’m always thinking about exit and trying to, you know, not exit, always thinking that I don’t want to be working, you know, at this level of dentistry. I don’t think I can be doing it at the age of 60. So I kind of need to have a strategy in place for the age of 50, you know, something, something along those lines. And then there’s this burning desire of what a challenge of what a new practice would bring. But I think there’s nothing on the horizon. I think I’m fully, fully content. I am fully content with this one. There is room for expansion. There is room for further growth. You know, we’re just starting a sedation service. We’re starting inhalation sedation. There’s a few other angles that we’re working on as well. So I think really that this is this is just what we’re going to focus on for now. On the other side of it, you know, with 15 C, there are lots of exciting ideas that we have coming with that that we’re already working on other projects around the 15 C sort of brand and between the practice and that, I think that’s enough for me to chew on at the moment.

Go on, Amy. Tell us what you mean by that.

Well, I think, you know, I think when I think back to my MSC training and implant ology and what I think to the questions I often get asked, I think within implant dentistry varies. That could be an improvement to the training programs that have been there in the past. So, you know, with this within this umbrella, you know, we’ve been working on. Yes, we’ve brought rich preservation to it. But, you know, I firmly believe that it would be nice to have one day courses for each discipline within implant dentistry where, you know, with a hands on element. And that way people can pick and choose what part they want to dip in or dip out at, you know, and that might be rich preservation, that might be soft tissue grafting, that might be hard tissue grafting, that might be immediate, that might be sinus lifting. You know, So all these things are going on behind the scenes to hopefully put together a program that if people want to do the whole program, that’s great. If people want to do one bit, then that’s also fine. But it’s taking time to develop it because I want to we want to make sure that it’s absolutely perfect before before it comes out.

I wouldn’t wait till anything is absolutely perfect, though, you know, because you’ll never get it. It’s one of those things it can get better on the job. Yeah. But I think, I don’t know, with implant training, there seems to be quite a lot of implant training around, lots of different sort of people teaching. But I still think it’s underserved. You know, one, one thing you don’t realise when you’re in it is that the whole market is growing. You know, when when we started bleaching, there was literally two of us right at the beginning, and then it became three of us. And then now there might be, I don’t know. 23 bleaching systems on the market. It doesn’t mean that now we’ve got 1/23 of that market. The whole market grows at the same time. And when I’m calling, I’m not calling it a market. I don’t mean market as in business opportunity market, but dentists, we need to get trained on implants. Now, talking to others, it seems to me and by the way, we have this problem in composite two people who come on the course and don’t implement. Have you got any sort of ideas on that? You know, there’s I mean, of course some people come on the course realise it’s not right for them. Others will come on the course. Think I’ll just restore implants? I won’t place them. But around that issue of implementation, can you think, you know, why were you the kind of cat who learnt it when on the MSC comes out, treats loads of patients now wants to teach it and then they other people who sit through long courses and not implement? And why are you doing anything about that?

Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. There is with implants. There is definitely you see a lot of that. You see people that have done the MSC and they have not placed an implant in like five years. And I find it really hard to understand why people don’t just get going with it. I think nowadays there is good access to mentors, and I think that’s crucial. Finding a good mentor that can assist you, that you can take patients to them and under supervision, you know, you can build some confidence. But I think really, I think if an individual is that way inclined, I think you need your own individual get though, to to push yourself to take that leap of faith. I think whether people are scared about litigation may be a part of it. Or also I think sometimes people are so people are caught in a rat race where somebody within an NHS practice may have gone and done an implant course and their diary is just so, so full of check ups and things like that that they can’t work out. How do I make time in my diary to just do implant work? And sometimes it takes a leap of faith or vision to think, Do you know what? Even if for the first month there is, I’m empty in that implant clinic on Friday morning that I’m going to go, It’s okay because eventually I’ll fill it and allocate.

The space anyway.

Just allocate the space to it. So I think, number one, that’s the barrier. And I think number two, I think it’s start up cost potentially to people. So if they’re an associate and they’re worried about the equipment that they have to buy. So I think I think within that remit, whether actually implant companies could help to get people going and to give them some implants or I don’t know how they would recoup it in time. But I think if you could take the the barrier away of having to buy everything initially, then people will just get going with it. And in the end, for those companies, if the if the clinician is using their implants, they’re going to do well out of it anyway.

It’s a very good point. I mean, there’s loads more barriers in implants than in other sorts of practice because like you say, you’ve got it’s one of those disciplines. You’ve got to kind of go all in on, isn’t it. You do, you can’t dabble.

You can’t dabble. And you know, you also have to be careful because you can’t do you can’t take on procedures unless you know how to deal with the complications. So, you know, and how many implant sites do you deal with where everything is pristine with lots of bone? I mean, it’s just not the case because you’re dealing with failed teeth. So, you know, I think if you’ve got a supportive principal that can that can help you, that obviously makes a huge difference. But not everybody has that. I mean, what would you say, pay in private? I mean, within the I was having this discussion on on Friday. And, you know, as a percentage in the UK, an associate was asking me in me how many how many practices do you think are actually good practices where you’ve got a supportive environment as an associate.

The minority?

I kind of I couldn’t really pick out a figure that, you know, just somebody was explaining to me about some difficult scenarios when they moved from practice to practice to practice. And I would hope, I suppose the people that we speak to, we hope that, you know, most people are supportive and good principles and try and look after people as much as possible. But invariably there’s always going to be good, bad in any profession.

You know, although when I say minority, I don’t mean I don’t mean that most people are bad. I mean most people are too busy just in the rat race of of running the business. You know, you seem to have this sort of very calm situation where you love your staff, you love your job, you’re running a very successful business from the get go. And I guess you had 16 years of training before you set up your practice, right? You didn’t jump into it on day two. So so but I think most most practices when when Prav visits them, I visit them. And you’re right, these are self-selecting group of like enlightened user is going to be a different type of dentist or the type of practice that’s that’s employing Prav is going to be a higher end kind of practice. And yet we see. I see. I don’t know about you. Tell us now. I see quite a lot of dentists and practice owners who are just running, running and not stopping. I mean, this idea of he’s working in me, he’s working three and one half. At the beginning. It’s rare to see. Yeah. Look, I see a whole mix. Those who want pay. Same, right? The guys who are. Who are just head down in the sand, just getting on with. Just trying to keep their head above the water, shall we say. Then you’ve got those who want to take all the juicy stuff for themselves, right. And so they don’t give the associates the support or the cases or whatever. I’ll take all the juicy implants. I’ll give you the more troublesome cases or whatever. Right. There’s that piece. And this is the whole thing.

The question that you asked earlier in me, which is when we get back to implementation, what do we need to do? You need volume, right? You need to get you need to get your miles in. And if I go on an implant course and the opportunity for me to place an implant is a month apart each time, I’m not going to have the muscle memory, the time, the the repetition and getting those reps in to be able to get better at placing implants. Right. Same with when we’re teaching the orthodontic courses, right? The first thing we say is before you come on the course, have three patients lined up. You know, your mom, your sister, your best friend who’s got crooked tooth nurse, whatever, right? So you’ve got your cases lined up and then start identifying those patients straight away. Make sure you’re in a supportive environment. So it’s really hard to answer that question. What percentage is supportive? I mean, we’re seeing in the high end practices we deal with combination of what case saying. But what I’m saying is that the greedy principle, right? Not necessarily the greedy principle. The principle is thinking, look, I’ve got to get the money in for the business rather than for the associate so we can pay the bills. Yeah. And Amy, what I’m seeing with you is definitely not the mindset of somebody who’s been running a business for three years. Yet, to me, if we were to summarise the conversation we’ve had at the moment, you just floating through life. Yeah. And I mean that with the greatest respect. I’m not saying it’s been handed to you, you just floating through life, right? Like you’ve put, you’ve put the miles in but weekend with your kids.

Right. Three and one half days clinical doing a bit of teaching. Yeah. If you came to me for advice and said practice number two, I’d be like, life’s beautiful right now. Yeah, life is beautiful right now. Scale what you’ve got right now. Yeah. In that location where you can be more regularly. Yeah. Grow the teaching side of things and put an exit strategy together. What does that look like? Forget about volume of practices. What’s the magic number? Yeah, what’s the magic number? That you need to walk away from it all and say, You know what? I’m done, guys. I’m out of bag of material, right? And figure out what that is and then just work backwards from there and you’ll have your answer right as to do. I do practice number two, practice number three. Or maybe you’ve got those ambitions right. But it seems like you’ve got your shit together. Make it really, really does. And I really admire that for somebody who’s three years into business such a short period of time, very calm in terms of not have to fire anyone. Everything. All those members of staff, you’d hire them. Again, there’s not many practice principals that can say that, I promise you, because it’s a daily conversation. How are we going to get such and such out of the business? We’re dragging them along. We’re doing this, we’re doing that. There’s problems and stuff. The systems, processes that you’ve put together, the follow up that you’ve got for your inquiries, just the way you’re talking about that is super, super mature. And it’s that’s your next course, mate.

Well, you know what I think of when I think of that sort of the team and what what makes them so good. I mean, even my interview process, most of my practice, the so recently when we’re been looking for another front of house stuff or the front of our staff said that they were just too busy dealing with all the inquiries and they didn’t have enough time. So I said, okay, so what’s the solution? And they said that they wanted another team member to help in the afternoon with answering the telephone and dealing with the Invisalign lab work, etc. So I said, okay, fine. So we advertised for another position and part of the interview process, yes, the managers will look at the applications. I, Sam, and I won’t get too involved at that stage, but actually we then bring in we might shortlist to six or seven applicants and they will come in and spend time with reception with the other team members and then the other team members will give us feedback and decide who moves through to the next stage. And then of course at the end of the line they will meet Sam and I and we will do the final interviews. But by then, you know, the staff have kind of already made their decision and, you know, and if there was a disagreement, we would have to decide whether we want to go a different way or if we’re going to follow the staff. But actually, more often than not, we all come to the same conclusion. And I think. I think I think that’s the main thing with bringing people in. I’ve just been very conscious that I think anybody is you can teach people some skills, but actually personality, you can’t change somebody so you know more. All I want is a good person in the practice. The rest I’m not so worried about because we can work on it.

That’s lovely. Really, it is. And and you know that the the first time you see that that person, once the staff have whittled it down to two or three.

Yeah. I don’t see them until, until the very end.

And who looks at the CVS in that is you is that still.

The business manager will look at that and that’s Sam. So Sam and I cover different parts of the practice of Sam will usually have been looking at the CVS when they come in on indeed or what have you. And then between her and the business manager, they’ll whittle it down to six or seven guys. And then. And then. Yeah, I’ll come in. I’ll come in on the final three.

I mean, you’ve listened to this podcast before. We like to dwell on errors. Tell me about clinical errors you’ve made that someone else can learn from.

And. I once did a. An extract. This was an ortho extraction. And there was absolutely no issue whatsoever. Tooth came out straightforwardly. It was the right tooth as well. And I went to just irrigate the socket slightly. And as I irrigated, the face completely blew up.

Well.

So my finger must have just touched the air at the same time as touching the irrigation. So, you know, immediately we had an emphysema. And. You know, reflecting back on that.

Did you know what it was when it happened? You understood?

Yeah, I understood what happened. You know, I immediately sort of I immediately pressed on the patient’s cheek, expressed as much air as I possibly could. And I’d done my couple of years of Max. Max right back after beat. So I expressed the air, obviously explained to the patient what happened and talk through the management process, ran the hospital, discussed it with them, discuss whether they wanted to see the patient or not, and and just so innocuous is so innocuous, an intact extraction socket. There should have been no chance of the surgical emphysema there because I hadn’t even separated the gingiva from the bone. So my take home message for everybody is be aware of those scenarios. All I can think was possibly happening was that at the apex of the tooth, it must have just been communicating outside the buccal plate. And then just that tiny bit of air must have gone up through the tissue plane and just blown the face up.

A pre molar. Did that.

It was a pre molar.

Wow.

Yes. So innocuous.

Wow.

And you know, I remember looking at my nurse’s face and obviously, if you’ve never seen that for the first time, it is so worrying. The patient’s eyes closed. The patient thinks they’re going to die tomorrow.

I’ve never seen it. What does it look like? Like a swelling.

Yeah, it’s literally like it’s literally out here within within seconds. It’s just blowing off, you know? And the risk the risk with something like that is that there’s an infected process that goes to the brain. So you expel the air as much as you can, but you won’t get rid of all of it. And then you’ve got to put the patient on prophylactic antibiotics with close monitoring and review that they don’t get any sort of pyrexia systemic issues that you could then be worried that it’s going north.

So this was an adult, not a child, right?

This was on a this was on a probably 29 year old that was happening. Simple extractions for ortho.

And so was the patient.

Calm the patient. I think the patient was calm because because.

I was calm.

I knew I knew what was going on. Right. And actually, I thrive on things like that because I love when something happens like that. It’s just another experience or something to document, something to share with somebody. So I don’t really I just look at it as an opportunity, really.

I think I think when you’ve done max facts, it’s hard to get fazed by that sort of thing. But tell me about one time you did get fazed. You know, it doesn’t have to be that sort of thing. It could be a patient who lost confidence, whatever, like something something that really affected you.

And I would say, oh, I reckon about two years post qualifying, I was doing a root canal and quite a difficult, difficult patient who I would say definitely litigious in nature. And I think there had been a history of stuff in the past and everything was fine. The rubber dam was on and I decided to I was irrigating the tooth and of course she started getting burning sensation in her cheek. Commonly hypochlorite. Hypochlorite had gone straight through the apex.

I realised.

Yeah, I did realise that the mistake was that my my gauge of my needle was way too close to the orifice of the opening of the canal. And yeah, I must have just been irrigating to vigorously and it just went straight through.

Through the situation. Really.

Pardon. Yes. And actually I’d say in clinical dentistry that is the only time I’ve been worried.

Why? Because your relationship with the patient wasn’t great.

Well we had a good relationship. We had a good relationship. But she is just unpleasant in nature. And probably now I would handle her differently. I suppose with experience and knowledge and controlled confidence, you talk to patients in a completely different way. But at that stage, you know, I was really worried afterwards because obviously I knew what happened. I didn’t know what was going to happen was the tissues gone and the crows on top of it. Fortunately, everything healed absolutely fine. There was no ramifications. I saw her every couple of days to check it. I did everything that I should have done, but God, I shat myself at the time.

So when you say litigious, you thought she would be the type?

Yeah.

So what you mean?

Yeah, absolutely. You know the mess.

With your mind, can it?

Yeah. The sort of lady she had, I think she’d had. She was just. She’d had two divorces. She’d had two divorces to two very, very wealthy men. And there was a lot of resentment to life in general because I think the things were she was finding things tough financially. And, you know, of course, in the back of my head, I was thinking, well, actually there’s probably there could be a claim here.

Yeah. Then hopefully.

Hopefully she’s not listening to this and and acclaim doesn’t come through my letterbox tomorrow.

It’s funny, isn’t it? As a as a professional, you’re always looking behind your shoulder.

Is there a time frame where they can’t come up, come after you? Or is it just indefinite?

No. There is a time frame after the time that they know there’s a problem, that they find something like that. But this is two years after you qualified. It’s been a while.

This is years after I qualified. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s hard talking. 12 years ago, though, probably I’d have had me.

I literally had so much hair I used to use. I used to use hair straighteners. I that much hair, really. I used to have some hair straighteners to do my.

Mohawk when I was when I was at uni. The barber said to me because my hair was so thick. Used to use these scissors to thin it out, to control it a bit more. Right. And he said to me, One problem you’re never going to have. You’re never going to go bald. Hmm. Yeah.

Famous, famous last word.

Famous last words. Yeah. Yeah. You did the messy. Now, if someone wanted to get into implant ology, would you recommend they do a sort of a course like that, an MSC type course, or would you say to do more like your kind of course or both?

What would you say? I think you need to do both. I think what you learn scientifically from you get you get pretty much no, I would say no clinical experience with them. What you do get is a really good foundation of knowledge and the ability to critique papers. And that even to this day when I’m looking at studies and papers, is a skill that I still have. But I think you can’t expect to come out of doing a four year MSC and think you’re the finished article because it’s just the beginning. And then you need to supplement it by clinical experience and then fine tuning on the right courses.

So where did you do your MSC?

I did it in Bristol as well. So it was back. I did it in 2010 to 2014. So it was four years, four years back then.

And how many how many implants did you place? Very few.

In the MSC. I place.

To.

Two two cases. Yes. So the first year was just one case, simple case. The second year you had to do a complex case, which was a block graft, and that was it. And then two years of dissertation.

And what was your research area?

So my research area was all for.

Oh, well, what about?

So I did I read all 970 papers back then on all on four. And you know, it was, it was, it was topical at the time. So I thought, you know what? I want to find out more about this. And it wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. So it was it was a really valuable review that I put together.

Do you do that kind of work a lot?

So I don’t do I don’t do all on four. I think there’s plenty of guys out there that do it all day, every day that are better served doing it. And you know, most of my referral work is I get referred high aesthetic cases mainly. So I just focus on what I do and let the all four guys do the oral four stuff, you know, because these guys, when things go wrong, they’ve got options to sort it out. They can put Zigomanis in, they can put Terry Goines in, you know, and that’s what I advise my patients when people come asking me to do an all on four, I say, Look, there are clinics that just do this. Just go to one of them, you’re going to get looked after and they’ll know exactly what they’re doing.

When you say high aesthetic case from an implant guy does that, we’re talking soft tissue.

Yeah, it’s a mixture. So it might be you know, my common referral is for a single central incisor. So and so most of my every implant case that I do, I would say 95% of my cases get a soft tissue graft.

Oh, really? Wow.

So, so every pretty much any anterior case gets the soft tissue graft. If I do any bone grafting, it gets a soft tissue graft at the same time. So, you know, I firmly believe that when we get volume loss around a ridge, 60% of that is actually bone and 40% of that is soft tissue. So I build the bone bit, I build the soft tissue bit, and my implant goes in.

Well. That’s not normal, is it?

I think it is different.

Yes, different to the to the sort of normal orthodox normal mantra.

Yeah. So I think it is quite different because in my eyes, I want I want at least in height of nice tissue, I’m looking for about five millimetres. So if we think if I’m thinking technical terms for the dentist that are listening, if the biologic width is three millimetres, I want a good good trans mucosal seal there. But then also I want that characterised tissue on the first two millimetres of bone so that we don’t start getting bone loss. So for me that five millimetres is key and there’s not many cases where you have five millimetres there. Hence why I tend to augment at the same time.

What does it mean though? Like surgically a soft tissue graft, right? What does that mean?

So soft tissue graft y. So technically there’s lots of different ways of doing it. If I’m doing it simultaneously with implant placement, it will be harvesting a free gingival graft from the palate and then the epithelial using that outside the mouth and then transferring the connective tissue site to the area. And I’d say predominantly, I use a connective tissue graft. I am doing more and more work with substitute materials. And that’s that’s probably more so from a teaching perspective. So I can give delegate a really good sort of description of how I find things working in my hands, all the various different materials. So if I think I’ve got a banker case, I will I will use a substitute material if I don’t need to harvest from the palate, if I’m really pushing the boundaries, I will always harvest from the palate and use the patient’s own tissue.

So you your personal clinical work, is it all implant based or do you do that?

I still do. I still have a handful of general patients and my standard make up for my day. I do my surgery in the morning and in the afternoon I do my consults a little bit restorative. I might do like my last patient just now, I just did a Crown Prep, so there were some patients that followed me from my previous practice. So those guys I feel that have been so loyal to me, they’re the ones that I keep. And, you know, there’s not hundreds and hundreds of them, but I like to look after those. And actually for me that makes a great mix from the surgery that I’m doing. So the case I’m doing tomorrow morning will be, I think I’m taking out single Central. I’ll be placing the implant bone graft, soft tissue graft, custom provisional, and that will take me most of the morning. But then in the afternoon, I don’t want to do another surgery. So I will just do I will do a composite, I will do this. I will do that just so I can slow down a little bit. So it’s the stage.

That you said you listen to this podcast at 5 a.m.. So is that what’s your day like? I mean, what time are you waking up and what’s your morning routine and all the.

So my morning routine. So I’m up at five. The bags are already packed downstairs. I jump in the car and work on the podcast. And if you guys haven’t released another one, then it’s usually the high Performance podcast with Jake Humphrey or Diary of a CEO. So I rotate between the three of you. And then and then I’ll get to I’ll get up to the gym and Cheltenham about at six. So I will train till seven every day, every day, every weekday. So I train till from 6 to 7 and shower out the gym by 730 into the practice. Four eight first patient, then I’ll chat to everyone 15, 20 minutes, have a little huddle with my nurse for the day and then 830 get going and then usually last patient finishes at five and then usually I’ll hang around for probably hour, hour and a half doing odd jobs, doing a few things. And I’ll usually set off from the practice about 630 and get home at 730.

Long day.

And then then usually usually then 730, there’ll always be there’ll be stuff to catch up with emails. So every day I’ll go through all the emails then so that I’m up to date ready for the next day. So usually I probably switch off about nine 930 as Cristina puts on Love Island and, and then up to bed for about 1030.

And the kids it’s that 730 to 830 piece right.

Payton says. The kids, The kids, the kids in the week, I do not see really a part. Yeah. So they’ve gone to I’ve left before they wake up and I’m back after they’ve gone to bed the only day that I’m there for them. So in the weekdays Thursday is my admin day. So I go to the I go and do my blaze gym class at 6 a.m. I rush back home and it’s my day where I drop them to school and I pick them up and then I do my meetings in between. So Thursdays are a dedicated day to drop off and pick off, which I absolutely love.

Let’s, let’s imagine, let’s let’s dream a little bit. Let’s imagine you’ve got a weekend to yourself. Wife and kids have gone somewhere and it’s just you weekend by yourself. What would you do?

I probably write more coarse material. Probably. I guess I probably do a mixture.

I think this guy’s got yeah.

I would probably do a few practice things. I would definitely write more coarse material.

Yeah, I did that yourself, man.

I know a little bit of that. And then I would message the boys and and make sure that we go out for drinks and a catch up that evening, lads.

The lads.

The lads.

Yeah.

And I’d definitely message the lads there would be a gym session in there somewhere. There would definitely be a gin and tonic in there somewhere. And I’m just, you know, genuinely speaking, just really simple stuff. You know, I’m not.

Just tell me that. Might you go to bed a bit later than ten? Come on. I probably.

I, I probably would. I’d probably be watching some sport or something.

Do you like watching sport?

Yeah, like I am sport mad. So, you know, whether it be whether it be Formula One, whether it be rugby, hockey, cricket, everything, you name it. You know, I am the one, the one thing we commit to every year is that we go to Silverstone to watch the F1 and we take my dad and my middle son who’s Formula One crazy as well. And we get great seats right by pole position. And but this year we’ve held off until we know whether the Mercedes is quick enough to compete because if Max is going to run away with it, we’re not going to go this year.

Like I said, maybe and perhaps they know what you’re talking about. But but, but I went but I did. I went to Silverstone last year, actually. It was raining like hell. And I was like, I was telling my son, who loves it. I was telling him, Come on, man, let’s just get out of here before the crowds. And he was like, Are you crazy? Yeah, our time’s coming out. Coming to an end. Time’s coming to an end. It’s gone quickly, man. Let’s. Let’s. Let’s finish with the usual questions. Let’s start with mine. Fancy dinner party. Three guests, dead or alive? Who would you have?

So. Of course. Of course. Guys, I knew you were going to ask this, so I’ve sort of been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it for the last hour before we came on. And the first one that I want to invite to this dinner party is one of my biggest, biggest regrets. And that biggest regret was, well, the person I want to invite first is my maternal grandfather, because he passed away when I was just in my first year at uni. And of course, he set up his whole life in Uganda and he was doing so, so well and he sacrificed everything. He had a lot of siblings, he had lots of children. And, you know, he was going through he kind of went into hiding for six months because the soldiers were trying to get him and kill him and he managed to get the family out of the country. And he eventually got out to Switzerland. And, you know, when we were actually at my nan’s house, as I was growing up, I was never old enough to know about or understand it properly when I was ten, 11. And I never, ever had the discussion with him about it. But the whole story, how he got away, what was going on, what was going on with his neighbours, how we managed to start with nothing and basically now have a generation where all my cousins have really a jobs started from him and I never had the conversation. So I would just I would love to spend the evening knowing more about it because even when I ask my mom, mom doesn’t know it in the detail that he knows it. So he would be number one.

Beautiful.

My second guest is going to be from my childhood. This is a strange one, and I don’t know if anyone’s ever invited this person to the dinner party is that I was a huge WWF fan and I believed for many years that it was real. So I really want to be the rock Dwayne Johnson, because I think he would be phenomenal at a dinner party. And, you know, he’s obviously gone on to do so well and have many different careers. So he’s number two for me.

Nice.

The third one, who is now unfortunately passed away, is someone that I’ve always been inspired by. And being a keen cricketer myself, I thought no one better to invite than Shane Warne, who I think I think he was the one guy that had such a influence on the game of cricket. Length in bowling, the character that he was, he was always in the media. He was probably had the greatest cricket mind, but he was never Australian captain because he was he was a complex character or he wasn’t conforming to the norm. But I just think that he would be he would be great on a night out. So he’s going to be my third guest. Nice.

That’s a nice combination you’re going to have. You’re going to have to explain to the WWF guy what cricket is.

He might have the other two in a headlock.

So how.

About.

That? Well, while you and your grandpa put the curry on.

I know he’ll be he was a chain smoker, so he’ll literally just be smoking. Shane Warne will be smoking and the Rock will be doing press ups in the corner.

Probably the shade won’t smoke. Is that what happened to. Is that did he die of that.

Yeah, I think I think he’s been I think there’s definitely sort of been some incidences of being caught smoking and smoking other things and, and various substances.

So, Amy, it’s your last day on the planet. And you’re surrounded by your loved ones, the kids. And you’ve got to leave them with three pieces of life advice, wisdom. Call it whatever you want. What would they be?

So I think I think my first one to all three of them would be that there is no substitute for hard work. Do not expect anything to come easy. Do not expect anything to fall into your lap. You have to go and grab the opportunities. That would be the first one. The second one would be to be. To be kind to everybody. To treat people how you want to be treated. Because I’m a strong believer in karma. And I think good things happen to good people. So I want them to continue to be good people always. And the third thing I would say to them is to try and sort of give them the confidence to say that it’s okay to make mistakes, but never, ever live with regrets. And that those would probably be some of my final words to them.

Very nice. Nice. I’ve got a question around number one, which is no substitute for hard work. It’s not handed to you on a plate. And, you know, coming from a generation now, who’s sort of, shall we say, we’ve you’ve upgraded your life from the melt station, Right. So so be that, be that. Whatever. Right. So your dad gave you everything he could give you within his means. And now you’re giving your children everything that you can give them within their means. But but there’s a certain amount of graft and hard work and, shall we say, struggle that you’ve fought through to get to where you are. Right? Because I don’t know whether whether you went without or you had less or whatever, but I’m assuming you can give your children more from, let’s say let’s say from a financial point of view than than let’s say your father could give you. Certainly that’s that’s my that’s definitely my situation. And the thing that I battle with quite a lot is how do you strike that balance of holding back and not giving them everything so they can learn the value of things? And with the thing that you always want the best for your children, you want to give them everything right. Do you ever have that conversation with yourself?

Yeah, I think, you know, luckily, Christina and I sing off the same hymn sheet. And, you know, we firmly believe that as the children are growing up and even when they’re at school, that they will go and do paper rounds and they will do jobs. And, you know, they they very, very carefully at birthdays, they have been collecting money that family members would give them. Sometimes when we’re out shopping or something like that, if they want something, I will say to them, that is absolutely fine and you can pay for it from your piggy bank, you know, on certain instances. And I think that’s our that’s our way of making sure that they understand the value of money and they realise that actually, yes, you don’t want to drum it into them, but how lucky they are at the school that they go to the fact that they get beautiful dinners, the fact that they have every sport possible under the sun given to them at school, you know, and that they’re they’re fortunate in that way. And I would hope that they’re really well grounded children because, say, for example, Christina, she was never afforded the luxuries as a child that I was afforded. So we had quite different lifestyles back then. So Christina wasn’t having many holidays with her family. And we were having holidays just just small things like that. So I think that you’re right, it’s always the forefront of our minds that we want to give them everything. But absolutely, they need to know that that. That there is that money doesn’t come easy and that they have to work hard for it.

Nice. Yeah. So. So is is always an interesting topic of conversation at home for us. My two younger girls get pocket money now. Your four year old? Yes, 70 a week. So we’ve created this. We’ve got this little sheet that goes through doing their homework, playing their instruments, blah, blah, blah. The seven things in the week. Right? And they get $0.10 for each thing.

Okay, that’s good. That’s a good way.

And every Sunday, they’re so excited. We sit there and sit around the dinner table and go, Right, we’re going to do pocket money down. And then if they I mean, if the little one goes batshit crazy at any point during the week, like she loses one of the ten B’s. Right. So we sit down around the table and both of them are really excited because we talk through the week and we say, how many that time you smacked your sister. That wasn’t cool, was it? So on and so forth. And she sits down, maybe she’ll apologise, reflect or whatever. Right. But we, the four of us, sit around the table and we have that conversation with the girls. And you know, my, my youngest is one of them is like, take your plate, pick your plate and put it in the sink after dinner. Now, my youngest is so good at that. She’ll grab hers, she’ll grab mine, she’ll grab her sisters. Right. And it’s so cute to see see this. Right. But, you know, sometimes we sit there and think, are we doing the right thing here? You know what I mean? Because there’s often that thing that, you know, should you have to should anyway. It’s always a conversation that, you know, whichever way you look at it and whatever you do and however you mix it up, you can always see two sides to the story, Right? But the motive is we just want to do our best for them to be grounded and learn about the value.

Absolutely. I mean, we’ve done those charts for exactly the same thing. And at the end of the week, it’s on the inside of the larder cupboard. And, you know, when we started off, their behaviour is so, so good, so, so good. But then as things get busy and things waver, you know, and then, and then they start getting to the age of ten and 11 and they start getting very smart with their answers and you know, their answers are correct. Yeah. Yeah. And the arguments become a little bit challenging to work around.

Sure.

But but you’re right. That’s all we want. That’s all we want for them to grow up, to be good people, to have the value, money. And that question that you asked before about, you know, an exit strategy or or a point where I want to stop, a lot of that revolves around me continually thinking about multiples of three in the sense that if I have to do this for one of them, I have to do this for the other two of them. And, you know, you just always want none of your children to feel that you love that one more and you love this one less. You just want absolute equality the whole time.

Because you think like Prav like you’re so different to Kailash when it comes to money. Yeah, I’m. I’m totally opposite to my brother when it comes to money. We were brought up the same way. Same parents, same same reward system. And I feel like I’ve got the opposite problem to what you’re saying. I feel like my dad gave me more than I’m giving my kids, and that’s a real head fuck. Do you feel like a failure and this sort of thing, But this question of value, of money and so forth, if it was that easy to to fix that, surely you and Kailash would have the same outlook. Yeah. Look me in my head. Look, I don’t even know if I’m approaching it the right way or. Or the right or I’ve got the right answers. Right. What I’m doing is going to end up with my children being totally grounded or not. It’s important to think about you, right? Go ahead. Me. But me and my wife have this conversation a lot of the time, right? You know, even when we’re away on holiday. Right. And you just you know, I think back to when I was a kid, right? We used to go to a place called Pizza Land twice a year. Twice a year. Yeah. And those are the only times we went out for meals. Yeah. Now we meet the wife and the kids, like, a couple of times a week, we’ll go out for dinner or whatever, and. And that’s just for shits and giggles. It’s not a birthday. It’s nothing. It’s. And I’m sure a lot of people do, right? And sometimes you sit back and reflect and think, Do you know what we’re really looking for? For the following reasons, Right? You know what? When we when we go round the supermarket, we never look at the price of anything we put in the trolley.

In fact, now we don’t even go around the bloody supermarket because a van turns up and delivers it through the kitchen window. Yeah. And, and you know what? Last week I spent, I spent a few days in hospital. Right. And I was on a ward surrounded by people. And there’s one guy across the way from me, and he said to the nurse, Can you ring my wife? Because I don’t have enough credit on my phone. Hmm. And you know, those those little moments, right, where you just think, fucking hell, you know what? Sometimes you’ve just got? It’s the little things that you take for granted. You’ve got a bloody pinch yourself, right? And whether it’s through your hard work or it’s been given to you, gifted to you, whatever. Right. It’s just sit back and reflect and appreciate the fact that you know what? I can stick some jammy dodgers in the basket and not look at the price. I can. I can say to my daughter, let’s just go. Let me you let’s just go out for a meal. Nando’s, whatever. Super nice restaurant, whatever. The thought or the cost aspect of it doesn’t even enter into the thought process. Right. And, you know, it was that guy who was in the bed across the way from me in hospital credit. I don’t have enough credit to ring my wife and I’m ill in hospital. That just blew my mind. So I think it’s important to sit back and reflect and appreciate what we’ve all got. Amy, It’s been so lovely to me. If you’ve got if you’ve got something to say on that. Go ahead and say it.

You’re absolutely right. I mean, I’m speechless that something that we are so we are so lucky and. You know, you’re absolutely right. Not genuinely really having to look at. What is the price of food that you’re having or however many starters you want or the main course? And yeah, it’s a very fortunate position to be in. You know, hard work or not, there is a fortune element to it.

Yeah, there is. But that practice of, of, of gratitude that you’re doing there, you’re definitely one of the, one of the cornerstones of happiness, right? Sure. For sure.

How do you do it? Do you do any journaling, Prav?

I do. So I’ve got a it’s called the five minute Journal, right. Say that, too.

So, yeah, I do that, too. It’s on my bedside.

So my young my my six year old also has a kids journal and gratitude journal, and it’s written in a different language. But she’ll sit there and she’ll write in it every single night after she’s done a reading before she goes to bed. And about a week ago, she got a piece of paper and she cut out loads of love hearts from the piece of paper. And she got a flask in all these hot thermos type flasks, right? And she got a piece of paper and she stuck on that piece. You stuck the piece of paper on with Sellotape and on that thing she wrote Gratitude Jar. Write down one thing that you’re grateful for and put it in the jar. And she put all the love hearts on the windowsill around it. So what she asks us to do is write something that we’re grateful for on the love part. Put your name on the back and pop it in the jar just once a day. She wants the whole family to do it. Her own bloody idea. She’s 50 years in front of me, man. Yeah. Her own bloody idea. I was blown away because my wife said, Look at what my hand is doing. Right? And I’m like, What the.

Can I suggest one thing? I think. I think she deserves more than $0.70 a week. Especially especially with current inflation levels. I mean, that.

That is at least 85. I’ll give a $0.10 bonus this week.

That is just that is like ultimate proud dad moment.

Right. Do you know what? I just I couldn’t believe that she came up with the concept herself. So I sat there, quizzed my wife, said, Have you told her about this? How does she even know about gratitude? Yeah, etc.. Except blew my mind. Thank you so, so, so much, Jimi. Thank you. Really, really enjoyed that, buddy. Really enjoyed that. Please stay in touch as well. But it’s so nice to see someone so at peace. Successful, you know, ikigai. I’m going to call this one or your your your copywriter is going to call this one ikigai guy. Thank you so much, man.

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

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