Dentology Podcast with Ahmad Nounu

Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Ahmad Nounu

Episode Release Date – Monday 10th June 2024

Andy & Chris (00:01.569)
I’m very excited about our guest today. It’s another cracker. It is. Another cracker. I think anybody where they kind of stray from the path and do things differently, I think we can always learn so much from those people. Stepping out young, I think is a good start. Exactly. It segues nicely into an introduction. So today we are fortunate we have a guest, a dentist, a principal dentist, and it’s Dr. Ahmad Nunu. And Ahmad is the principal.

of the Black Swan Dental Spa and Bristol Dental Suite down in the South West, and also delivers a service called the Private Dental Mentor, which is the, it’s like the UK private FT scheme. It is, it is, but it’s like the scheme, the FT scheme, but for private dentists. Welcome, Ahmed, how are you doing?

Doctor A (00:49.962)
I’m very well, thank you. How are you guys?

Andy & Chris (00:52.065)
Yeah, we’re very good. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Always enjoyable. Looking forward to this. So don’t disappoint. I always, I always love it when we have a guest who’s kind of in the thick of it. And most people listen to this as a podcast. And if you’re watching it on YouTube, you’d understand this, but Armad literally is in your surgery. We’re talking to you in between patients. And very often people kind of think that people have these days structured there and they set time and size. The reality of, of being an entrepreneur, you squeeze stuff in, don’t you? That’s how it works.

Doctor A (01:22.454)
Absolutely, absolutely. And you’ve got to take it as it comes. It’s been a journey for exactly that reason. There’s ups, there’s downs, and that’s the reality of the situation on the ground.

Andy & Chris (01:32.473)
Yeah, yeah. And also it’s that old adage, if you want something done, ask a busy person, because they’ll find the time to squeeze it in, which is important. There’s a lot that’s gone on in your dental career, but before we get to that, what, as listeners, do we need to know about you from your early years? What was your upbringing? How did things start for you? Dish the dirt on the young cupboard.

Doctor A (01:42.859)
Absolutely.

Doctor A (01:56.618)
So I am a Bristol grad, graduated in Bristol 2008 and I’m from Bristol, South West originally, so I didn’t stray too far away from my roots originally in terms of university, but I had my reasons for wanting to go to Bristol. I really liked the city obviously, slight bias, but also the university really drew me to it as well. So my plan was always to go to Bristol and that was where pretty much my journey began.

Andy & Chris (02:05.766)
Right.

Andy & Chris (02:24.259)
And you chose dentistry over medicine?

Doctor A (02:30.426)
Ironically, yes. So ironically, I did the work experience for both at the time, quite early on. I was always sciencey. I always wanted to go into science and maths, my two favourite subjects. Yeah, it was always going to be a science oriented subject. Maths I couldn’t really see doing much with, if I’m honest, even though it was one of my strongest subjects. And having done the work experience for both, and I say ironically, I opted for dentistry because I thought it would be the easier profession with the better hours. But

Andy & Chris (02:37.933)
Right. I was going to say, did you always want to do that? Instead of like.

Andy & Chris (02:58.919)
Right.

Doctor A (03:00.21)
Life hasn’t quite worked out like that.

Andy & Chris (03:01.661)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Are you now your many years into dentistry on reflection? Do you still think you’ve made the right choice?

Doctor A (03:11.07)
Oh absolutely, the problem with getting into the situation that I am in now is I could never go back to the situation I’m in but at the same time I will moan about it and I will say there are ups and downs but I wouldn’t have it any other way

Andy & Chris (03:23.653)
Ha ha Another any in your family any other medics or dentists or were you saw like the first one you thought? I’ll tell you what I can do something different

Doctor A (03:33.851)
No, actually.

Doctor A (03:37.246)
Yeah, immediate wise, pretty much most of my family are accountants or engineers. So I definitely did not buck the trend and I’ve gone down a very different path to what everybody else did or has done. So yeah, no immediate support on that one.

Andy & Chris (03:43.375)
Right.

Andy & Chris (03:47.761)
Hmm. I bet when the family saw you good at maths, they thought, another one! We’ve got another one coming down the lineage! It wasn’t to be the case.

Doctor A (03:59.895)
Yeah, I was like, no, when I want, I mean, again, interestingly, I’m having the same conversation with my own children as they’re growing as well. I was getting to the stage now where I’m thinking, well, a couple of them are quite good at maths as well. I’m thinking, which way are you going to go?

Andy & Chris (04:10.337)
Yeah, where are you going to turn? So you, it’s always good to have an accountant in the family. Oh, it’s very helpful. So she’s a business owner. Yeah. She’s a business owner. So you lived in and around the Bristol area and you went to Bristol dental school. How was that as an experience? Did you enjoy dental school? If you got the opportunity to do it again, would you, would you, would you change your, your dental experience? Was it a big party town as it is now?

Doctor A (04:16.311)
Hmm

Doctor A (04:32.842)
It’s a different… yeah, it was. But it’s difficult to say, I guess, because I can only speak about my own experience. And everyone else has different… Now that I’ve spoken to so many graduates from different universities, everyone’s got their own stories. I wouldn’t change anything about my university experience. I guess knowing what I know now, I would have realised there were certain… every university has weaknesses, but I would have realised what those weaknesses were and probably concentrated on them a lot earlier on in my career, had I known what I know now.

Andy & Chris (04:36.292)
Hahaha

Andy & Chris (04:40.455)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (04:45.678)
Yeah.

Doctor A (05:01.75)
But going back, I wouldn’t change it. I would still go down the same route and same experience. And it’s given me the experience that I’ve got now and to be able to do the dentistry that I’m doing now, which is not a total surprise. Bristol were very, very strong on orthodontics, even in during the undergrads, which a lot of other universities are not. A lot of other graduates from other universities don’t really experience with doing much ortho, which is not surprising the amount of ortho I’m doing now to a more advanced level than most non-Bristol grads would do.

Andy & Chris (05:17.501)
Right, right. Hmm.

Andy & Chris (05:27.961)
Mm.

Doctor A (05:29.674)
And that’s purely down to the fact that we studied it so much at the beginning, even though I’ve done all the advanced courses and everything else and the extended diplomas, the basics were always there right from the beginning, which has allowed me to have the confidence to be able to do more advanced things.

Andy & Chris (05:32.101)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Andy & Chris (05:38.789)
Hmm. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Yeah. And when you chose, did you choose Bristol for the programme and knowing that it was specifically strong and ortho, or was it because it was in Bristol?

Doctor A (05:52.19)
No, it was just it was down to location but also strength of reputation at the time. It was a strong university, it was a strong course. I mean, you don’t know a lot before you go into uni and start, do you? Let’s be honest. Hindsight, well, I’m sure you do. But 15 years down the line, it’s very easy to sort of look back and go, oh, yeah, no, don’t do this or don’t do that.

Andy & Chris (06:01.377)
No. Ha ha ha. Some of us don’t know a lot now. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha.

Andy & Chris (06:13.133)
Yeah.

Doctor A (06:16.086)
But actually, it’s all down to personal preference. There’s lots of pros and cons to various different things. It’s not even just about the actual course itself. It could be about the location of where you’re living. It could be everything down to your day-to-day, your peers that are in your class, the friends, yeah. The friends you make along the way as well. And all of those things, the lecturers that you have, and some of that will be hits and misses. You can’t control that. It’s just, you make these connections as you go.

Andy & Chris (06:25.508)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (06:29.377)
I say your peer group, I think is really crucial, isn’t it?

Andy & Chris (06:39.642)
Hmm

Doctor A (06:41.842)
And some people will make the most of the situations they’ve got and they will make an incredible career out of it. And others might not grasp the opportunities quite so much until later on.

Andy & Chris (06:51.193)
Yeah, and you um you matured quite quickly after dental school So you graduated in 2008 and then you bought the black swan dental spine 2011 so three years out of dental school. That’s that’s pretty rapid movement by anybody and quite ballsy coming out of Financial crash territory and you think that was yeah back in 2008

Doctor A (07:01.362)
Mm.

Doctor A (07:13.654)
Bawzy or stupid? Yeah. Absolutely. Naivety is the start of most businesses, right?

Andy & Chris (07:16.583)
No, no, let’s go down the route of bulls-ear, naivety. It was great.

Andy & Chris (07:26.811)
Yeah, definitely. And was that a conscious decision? When you graduated, did you kind of graduate and go, right, I’m going to be the guy that owns a practice quickly and I’m going to build businesses and da-da-da-da. Was that kind of in the thought process?

Doctor A (07:37.782)
It wasn’t. It was to a certain extent later down the line. It was in my 10-year plan, but it wasn’t in my three-year plan. So that’s being completely honest. So it kind of happened, it was more opportunistic more than anything else. I was in the right place at the right time, the opportunity came up at that particular point. The practice couldn’t continue the way it was. It had to sell and there was an opportunity for a deal to be done.

Andy & Chris (07:41.657)
Right. That was partying, enjoying yourself.

Doctor A (08:03.586)
Did I have the finances? Did I have the experience? No, absolutely not. But at the same time, the opportunity presented itself in a fairly, probably I would say, uncompetitive or easy-ish town to get involved in and sort of learn and build and sort of apply your trade, improve your clinical skills as well as the business skills without there being a huge amount of competition to sort of really take you.

Andy & Chris (08:19.495)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (08:30.182)
Mm. Yeah.

Doctor A (08:30.39)
take you by the horn. So it was an opportunity that was a good one. And it wasn’t one that you can, you sometimes get these opportunities or crossroads in life. And this is what I’ve learned, I guess, over the last 15 years. And some people will understand the opportunity and the position and they will take it and grasp it, regardless of the fear factor that jumps in. Others may think twice about it and potentially regret it in the future. I think I was of the mindset that I’m not gonna live with any regrets. This is not an opportunity that will come by again, anytime soon.

Andy & Chris (08:58.738)
Mmm.

Doctor A (08:59.81)
and I will regret it. It’s a type practice I want. It’s failing massively. There’s reasons for it. The previous brand owner of the practice had a horse riding accident a year before. He’s not been able to practice for a very long time and the practice was not doing well financially as a result of that. But at the same time, the patient base was certainly there to be improved. The quality of the care was there to be provided and the patients in a nicer way of putting it.

We’re not amazingly demanding. It was quite an easy setting to sort of practice and learn in. So it had a lot of pros to it, but you could see the challenge, and I’m not one to shy away from a challenge.

Andy & Chris (09:30.143)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (09:38.221)
I think there’s in there, in there for me, there’s, there’s people underestimate the power of naivety in that you didn’t necessarily know all that you’re getting into, but you still said yes. I think there’s also a sliding doors moment of you could have said no, and we have no idea what your life would have looked like as a result of saying no. But you also kind of glossed over the fact of where the practice is. So your practice is down in Somerset, which is, is not the hotbed.

Doctor A (09:44.162)
Hmm.

Doctor A (09:52.174)
Mmm.

Doctor A (10:04.014)
That’s right.

Andy & Chris (10:07.049)
of the centre of the UK. And so obviously in another life, we value our dental practice and we know that the values of practices very much are dependent on the massive population. So, large cities, towns, they tend to have larger values. But the opportunities in some of the more rural areas are massive because people tend not to move around so much. There isn’t so much competition. And that’s kind of what you were describing. For you, it gave you a great entry point.

Doctor A (10:07.566)
Hmm.

Doctor A (10:27.586)
Hmm.

Doctor A (10:31.95)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (10:36.093)
to work in an area, a location that wasn’t that competitive. And to learn. Yes.

Doctor A (10:43.918)
Absolutely. I mean the journey has genuinely been a learning experience and it’s been a tough one for two reasons because it’s a clinical experience where you’re sort of learning your trade clinically, but at the same time you’re also learning the entrepreneurial side and the business running skills and the two don’t necessarily go together. It’s very difficult to switch hats, especially at the early days from one to the other. I can manage it a lot better now.

Andy & Chris (10:57.701)
Yeah.

Doctor A (11:09.742)
knowing what I know, you sort of build your own sort of limitations, you build your own sort of targets and timings and everything else a lot better in terms of being able to manage it because you’ve seen it all before to a certain extent. But early on it’s very difficult to understand, you’ve got these patient issues coming in from one side and you’ve got the management staffing and all the financial cash flow and everything else coming from the other side and to try and separate yourself from the two is really hard.

Andy & Chris (11:12.592)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (11:28.322)
Yeah, yeah. What?

Andy & Chris (11:32.265)
Well, if you think that, yeah, if you think you’ve got 100% of, you know, business is 100%, I always think it’s quite amazing that, you know, you spend 90% of it being a dentist. You know, that’s most of your day and then you’ve got to try and cram everything else into a relatively small amount of time, haven’t you, which is stressful time.

Doctor A (11:51.631)
Well, dentistry is a very difficult profession in a sense that it’s one of the only few professions out there where if you’re not physically working in the business, that you’re not affecting the income. Any other type of business you can build, it doesn’t necessarily rely on you in terms of running it or overlooking it, overseeing it. Yes, to a certain extent, of course.

But this is one of the unique professions where your time is what brings you the money of seeing the patients, which means you can’t use that time for anything else while you’re in surgery. So it’s not a scalable model unless, and it was interesting you asked the question about the entrepreneur versus the clinician. It’s a really, really good question. And the longer I go on in the profession, the more I still don’t have the answer to that question.

Andy & Chris (12:15.523)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (12:23.629)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (12:36.237)
Yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard. And you’re right, particularly in the early days of practice ownership, you need to spend time in the surgery producing fees to pay the bank loan, the running costs and producing income for yourself. Yet, the longer you do that, arguably, the more you neglect the business from a growth point of view. But you’ve also committed heavily to your clinical learning, your postgraduate learning. You’ve worked with Chris Orr.

Doctor A (12:47.631)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (13:03.065)
You went to see Frank Spear over in Arizona. You worked with the IAS, Professor Hobson. So you’ve really kind of doubled down on the clinical side. It’s not that you’ve literally just gone into business. Stayed in the same lane, yeah. That additional clinical learning, that I guess came relatively early on in your career, how did that impact you? How’s that kind of changed your ability to influence your practices?

Doctor A (13:27.59)
Okay, so I unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which way you want to look at it, was exposed to dentistry of a very high quality very early on in my FD year. It was actually Neil Gerard at Clifford Dental Studio in Bristol, who initially I was shadowing him a few times. He was someone I really wanted to work with or learn from, admire, etc., the quality of the work that he was producing. And he introduced me to the BACD. So this is six months out of dental

Andy & Chris (13:38.589)
What?

Andy & Chris (13:57.322)
Right. Wow.

Doctor A (13:57.742)
and went to their first seminar and I mean I saw work being produced in front of me that I didn’t even know was physically possible until that point and unfortunately that was the turning point a lot of it really for me because I realized that the quality of the work that I was doing in my eyes was very substandard. Patients might enjoy it, they might benefit from it, but actually it’s not just about functional dentistry, it’s about functional and cosmetic and you’ve got to tie the both together and you can choose to be one of two clinicians. You can choose to be a clinician that does functional dentistry only which is

Andy & Chris (14:14.065)
Hmm.

Doctor A (14:27.118)
And I don’t mean it from a cosmetic point of view. I mean it from single tooth dentistry. You’re doing treatments that are the basic requirements for the patients and you can build a very traditional sort of basis and a reputation in an area very well. The problem is the more you understand and learn in dentistry, the more you realize that actually there’s not a lot we know when we graduate. There’s a lot of holes and gaps in our knowledge and they protect us at uni from it because realistically

Andy & Chris (14:29.009)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (14:53.117)
Mm.

Doctor A (14:54.582)
they’re not going to be able to teach you a lot in the space of five years. You don’t understand full math dentistry, you don’t understand all the other implications. And after a while your direction in dentistry is going to go in one of two ways. Either you’re going to become an absolute course junkie and think, right, I need to grasp all of this and get my head around a lot of these things, understand where my niche is, where do I fit in the dental ladder? And do I build a team around me that can plug all the holes? So we give the patients the best experience possible.

Andy & Chris (14:58.75)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (15:09.022)
Hehehe

Doctor A (15:20.358)
Or do I want to continue to claim ignorance and just carry on in my little niche and just do what I need to do and just ignore the fact that my work might be causing future problems here and there, etc. And I’m not knocking at the dentist because this is really, really tricky. And I’m now realizing as you go through the profession that really if you want to be an incredible, incredible clinician, the journey does take 20 years, 25 years, etc. to actually become the best version of what you can provide having learned from all the right people as well.

Andy & Chris (15:24.059)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (15:43.526)
Mm. Ahem.

Andy & Chris (15:49.092)
Hmm.

Doctor A (15:49.122)
because you see things over time that teach you certain things work, certain things don’t work. And you can’t just go on a course and learn that. You need the time to be able to do that. And one of the best bits of advice I was given was the late, and he fainted mainly, may God rest his soul. He was one of the people I used to hang around with and get some mentorship with. He helped me with the lecturing at the Laser Institute, which I took over from him afterwards.

Andy & Chris (15:54.206)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (15:57.477)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (16:09.82)
Okay, interesting.

Doctor A (16:17.15)
And a lot of other things, when we were in the BACD. And one of the things he said to me is, dentistry is a very unique position where everyone assumes that you’ve just, everyone wants to be an overnight cessation or an overnight success and they forget the 20. He said, it’s taken me 20 years to become an overnight success in dentistry. Nobody looks at the 20 years preceding that and they want to be the overnight success at the age of 25. It’s not the case. The reason you’re an overnight successful, all of a sudden everyone starts to find out about you.

Andy & Chris (16:28.38)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (16:33.759)
Mm-hmm.

No, that’s right.

Doctor A (16:44.406)
It’s because there was 10, 15, 20 years of grafting before that nobody saw.

Andy & Chris (16:47.213)
Yeah. That’s right. And I think you were, you were fortunate, but we all create our own luck by working with Neil Gerald and getting early exposure to the BACD. So when you saw the quality of that work, you can’t unsee it. So you then said, I want some of that. So what do I have to do? So your, your journey of kind of development started perhaps earlier than some others, which means that you got to where you are, are quickly.

We’ve kind of talked a little bit about business and a bit about the clinical work and the studying you’ve done. When we talk to most dentists about CPD, continuing professional development, that tends to mean clinical courses. Do you split your development out in understanding the business side of dentistry and the clinical side? Do you kind of treat your CPD in two categories?

Doctor A (17:37.01)
Yes, to a certain extent. I think all this, it’s all ingrained in together because at the same time as learning the clinical, if you can’t communicate the clinical to the patients, if you can’t communicate to the rest of the team, you can’t get the right team around you, you can’t give the patients the experience you want to give them, then ultimately it doesn’t matter how good a dentist you are, you’re never going to be able to portray that to people anyway. Before and after photos are fantastic, but really ultimately they are there for us to be able to review and reflect on our own work.

Andy & Chris (17:52.251)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (18:04.422)
Hmm.

Doctor A (18:04.478)
Yes, you can use them for social media, marketing and everything else. But if you’re not the most approachable, if your team isn’t the most approachable, if you haven’t got the best customer care service experience, the best set up in terms of the business, being able to deal with complaints and all the other things, it all plays a big role in it. If you can’t deal with complaints when they come in and deal with them in a really good, efficient manner, 99% of those patients could be won over based on how you actually deal with something.

Andy & Chris (18:14.306)
Yeah, so true.

Andy & Chris (18:19.849)
Mm.

Doctor A (18:29.79)
Everyone will make mistakes. Everyone will cause gripes and things. But if you deal with that in an appropriate manner, you can transform those situations to your favor. And all of that plays a role. If you’ve got a messy business that’s not particularly well run, the patients will feel that the staff will feel that you will feel that. But if you’ve got that, if you’ve got your house in order and if you’ve got all of that going on really, really well, it allows you to be able to stabilize, to grow and have have. Ironically, I say this, but have less stress levels.

Andy & Chris (18:32.229)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (18:37.763)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (18:45.358)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (18:56.197)
Yes, and we were informed. Yes, we last met at some dental awards back end of last year We were in our penguin suits and we had a quick chat and you got your phone out and you showed me some pictures of Your practice and it’s absolutely remarkable This is this is primarily a podcast so people kind of kind of can’t see what it is because you describe to people kind of your Philosophy and inspiration and how you went about designing the look of your practice

Doctor A (18:59.541)
Mm.

Doctor A (19:23.158)
Absolutely. So my 10 year plan was always to eventually get Black Swan to look like a practice that is very, very unique for the UK on a national and international level. And COVID set us back slightly, but at the same time, it was a massive sort of push that allowed us to be able to fulfill that dream and that vision. And it gave us an opportunity to be able to expand and move into a much bigger premises than the one we were in, which was very, very close proximity, but also it was a blank canvas. It was an old store.

Andy & Chris (19:39.867)
Mm-hmm.

Doctor A (19:53.154)
co-op, which had closed down many years before and allowed us to basically have a complete blank slate to be able to build the premises that we wanted. The inspiration behind it was I’ve always been quite inspired by things that are outside the dental sector. Things that look too clinical have never appealed to me in any way, shape or form. I find patients and the customer service experience can be delivered to a much, much higher standard if we go away from the clinical setting.

So for me, where are the best experiences I’ve ever had? They’ve all been at very luxurious sort of either spas or hotels where you would go and you would experience a level of customer service that you just wouldn’t experience in most other places. So that was the inspiration. The actual remit that was given to the designers was a Dubai five-star hotel experience. And it’s exactly what they pulled off because that’s exactly how the place looks in every single shape or form. The surgeries look at follow on from that.

Andy & Chris (20:32.859)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (20:39.076)
Right, okay.

Doctor A (20:47.274)
And it’s a very unique look, very spacious, very sizable. And all the little, and every single person who walks through the door, patient, clinician, non-clinician, will say exactly the same things. And that’s the reaction that we wanted. It was the whole, wow, that’s incredible. Like, I can’t believe this is a dental practice.

Andy & Chris (20:56.54)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (21:00.73)
Yeah, yeah

Andy & Chris (21:05.689)
What I find interesting is that the practice was called Black Swan Dental Spa before we took it over, but within business, a black swan is a kind of a theory that exists and effectively a black swan is something that is incredibly rare that happens. It has impact and then retrospectively people could predict that it was gonna happen. And I find it quite ironic that your practice is rare because it’s unusual in how it looks. It sure has an impact with your patients.

Andy & Chris (21:36.305)
predictability of it is there are now a number of practices in the UK that have adopted that sort of spa style look for practice. I find it quite funny. I think virtually every practice that opens now and does to a certain degree has that sort of, there’s a lounge area, there’s a relaxation area, there might be a spa area, there might be a gaming area. It’s this whole sort of, it’s the experience isn’t it, rather than I’m not just going to the dentist. I’m going to the dental experience.

Doctor A (22:04.91)
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. But there’s two factors to this. And I think this is the interesting part. And this is what makes it difficult. So getting the look is obviously very important and the feel and the experience. But at the same time, it’s the delivery of the clinical experience. And actually the second part is the harder part because you can get the look and everything else, but the second part doesn’t come easily. We’ve built a reputation in our area as the main referral practice for everyone to send their patients to. Any complex cases, anything they can’t do.

Andy & Chris (22:18.461)
Hmm, definitely, yeah.

Doctor A (22:33.43)
And that hasn’t happened overnight. That’s taken years and years of grafting to be able to get to that level. And as you mentioned earlier, years and years of education abroad, learning from various different people. I mean, I’ve been to the States probably six or seven times now, and for various different courses and things. In fact, I was in the States earlier on in March this year, just for another, a couple of days course in there. Again, for various different things that was to do with design, small makeovers, et cetera. And it’s just in realizing that actually, there are…

Andy & Chris (22:34.861)
No. Hmm.

Andy & Chris (22:40.711)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (22:56.005)
Mmm.

Doctor A (23:02.538)
To take it to the level of being able to provide what everyone around you cannot is not easy. It’s not easy. That requires ridiculous amounts of dedication, skill, training and financial commitment more than anything else.

Andy & Chris (23:07.258)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (23:11.087)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (23:18.602)
And continual refinement, doesn’t it? And continual refocusing to make sure that the message doesn’t get lost. It’s almost like a mantra. And you’ve invested in digital, hasn’t you, as well? Your practice is a fully digital practice. How’s that impacted your team, the efficiencies you’ve seen from it, what you can achieve in terms of patient outcomes?

Doctor A (23:20.579)
Hmm.

Doctor A (23:30.626)
Mm. It is.

Doctor A (23:40.182)
So that was one of the big turning points for us actually in COVID. Because we were off for a while, it gave us the opportunity to be able to buy some equipment that we needed, but at the same time to actually have the time to sit there and learn how to use it. So by the time we came back from COVID, we had invested quite heavily in the digital sector considerably. We’ve got three scanners in the practice now, all sorts of 3D digital scanners for all sorts of things as well. So we are fully digital. We’ve moved away from paper form completely in every single sense.

Andy & Chris (23:51.537)
Hmm.

Doctor A (24:08.798)
And it’s allowed us to be able to provide a much higher level of care. It’s allowed us to become a lot more predictable. And it’s allowed us to be able to delegate to a certain extent and reorganise and restructure the team so that we can use our time more efficiently. And not the way we’re used to, which is where sort of the dentists are relied on for everything. Whereas actually you can skill up your team to be able to do various different bits and delegate to a certain extent. So the patients get the best experience all around.

Andy & Chris (24:14.044)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (24:37.197)
When you were doing it, did you find that some of your team were reluctant to change maybe the way they used to do things or did they all sort of embrace it as brilliant?

Doctor A (24:49.862)
No, you get, I mean, especially with large teams, you always get the some reluctance here and there. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of things in dentistry that have been done in a particular way for a long time that people get used to it. And they don’t, as we know, with any profession, not just dentistry, change is not always received well. No one likes change. So as a result of that, it can go in one of two ways. You can either support and see how you can transform it and change it, or potentially

Andy & Chris (25:07.845)
No one likes change, yeah.

Doctor A (25:19.218)
eventually fix itself and you’ll end up with the team that actually wants to be there and want to embrace this change. And you’ve just got to be realistic about it. But it’s not a quick one, it doesn’t happen quickly. I mean, the team we’ve got now compared to at both parties, compared to where we were three, four years ago, a much more suitable team for the setting that we’ve got and what we want and the direction that we want to go in. And that’s inevitable.

Andy & Chris (25:23.737)
Yeah, that’s right. People self select. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (25:29.774)
No.

Andy & Chris (25:39.825)
Hmm. Yeah. We’ve talked a lot about the Black Swan dental spa and lockdown and how it gave you the opportunity to move and re-equip and digitise and train your team. But there was something else going on during lockdown as well, wasn’t there? Because you bought another practice. So it’s not like you’ve got enough going on here. You went and bought…

What’s the Bristol Dental Spa? But that was owned by a corporate. You had a few months off, you’re sitting in lockdown. So I’ll tell you what, I’m buying another practice. I made banana bread for three months. I think I just drank rose in my conservatory, I think. So you bought what is now the Bristol Dental Spa from a corporate and it was failing. It was a failing practice. So what you’ve done differently with that practice from what the corporate was doing, because as I understand, that’s still an associate-run practice. You don’t…

clinically operate from that practice. And I’m fast, oh, that’s, ah, so just one day a week. So what is it that’s different? Because quite often people look at corporate dentistry. I hope it’s no longer failing. Yeah. I’m sure it’s not. So it’s like, what I want to talk us through was it was a practice that wasn’t working well. You stepped in during COVID, you never earned that practice. How has it performed me? And what do you see? Because obviously you don’t know what they were doing, but what have you done that’s turned it around?

Doctor A (26:31.68)
I’m in that practice right now, so yes I do, but only one day a week, so yeah.

Doctor A (26:58.666)
Well, actually, I do know what they were doing simply because I was already working there one day a week for about a year and a year and a bit beforehand, which is one of the reasons why they offered it to me. And so I was, it was around the corner from where I lived. And again, because I didn’t have enough to do, I had looked into, I was always curious about the private corporate model because I wanted to know what it was like on the inside. This particular model interested me because it was a branch is only open in Sainsbury’s. And the original owners.

Andy & Chris (27:03.936)
Uh, okay.

Andy & Chris (27:07.766)
Right.

Andy & Chris (27:14.654)
Ha ha

Andy & Chris (27:19.11)
Hmm.

Doctor A (27:27.262)
of the corporate had set up, they were ex-BHS executives or directors from British Home Stores. They came into the dental sector to set up Centre for Dentistry, which I’m sure you know a lot about, Andy, probably more than I do. And they were trying to replicate the model of opening 25 branches all over the country all at the same time to run in an associate-led but ownership manner. The idea was sound.

Andy & Chris (27:33.18)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (27:37.145)
Yes. Yep. Ha ha ha.

Doctor A (27:52.818)
I think there was a lot of merit in potentially the idea, but the realistic or the reality on the ground is it’s very difficult to open up 25 branches all in one go and expect to be able to run them well and efficiently from a head office scenario, even if you’ve got managers, etc, etc. And that’s dentistry is a very personalized profession. And one of the things I realized when I started doing some of their orthodontic treatment, which is the only reason I joined the practice really, was that

Andy & Chris (28:06.233)
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Doctor A (28:19.59)
the patient base was certainly there. They weren’t doing very well in terms of retention. The patients were coming and leaving and none of them were going ahead. But suddenly the moment the patients felt that they had a clinician that was confident and that they could trust, suddenly there were huge amounts of money being paid for all sorts of various different treatments. So that automatically told me that the location of the branch is actually in the right place. It’s a fairly affluent area. The customer base is fairly affluent. Sainsbury’s is not.

Andy & Chris (28:37.034)
Mmm.

Doctor A (28:47.242)
the sort of this is no derogatory terms, but just explaining it, they’re not the little sort of Aldi market, but they’re also not the waitress market, they’re the middle of the range, but higher end middle of the range where the customers are choosing to shop there because they have a bit of disposable income, and they want quality. So that’s the clientele that are walking through the door, they automatically have a footfall of 100 new patients with zero marketing 100 new patients a month automatically walk through the door.

Andy & Chris (28:53.248)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Andy & Chris (29:03.939)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (29:07.645)
Hmm.

Doctor A (29:13.494)
But the retention in there was abysmal. It was about maybe 10 to 20 that would actually return for anything. So the dental experience level of the staff at the time, whether across the board was very, very poor. And it was more trying, it was not trying to run something through a retail model, which just doesn’t work on the, on the ground. It’s the clinicians that drive the dental practice. If the clinicians are not delivering.

Andy & Chris (29:18.65)
Right, yeah.

Doctor A (29:40.266)
the practice will not do well. It doesn’t matter how everything else is being done and how everything’s being tweaked, the competitions you run and all of that. You can pay your support staff amazingly well. But if the dentistry, if the product of a dental practice is dentistry, if the dentistry is not being done, if you’re not delivering the product, then ultimately you’re not going to be able to succeed. And that’s unfortunately where they failed across the board. The quality of the dentists they were bringing were not experienced enough. They were not mentored well enough.

Andy & Chris (29:44.07)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Doctor A (30:09.546)
and they weren’t able to deliver.

Andy & Chris (30:11.461)
Mm-hmm. It sounds very much like it was treated as a business. Do you remember the old boots? Yes. Very similar sort of thing. Wrong people. Yeah. Great idea. Wrong people. Bad execution. And that’s the thing is, if it’s treated like…

Doctor A (30:18.879)
Yeah.

Doctor A (30:26.683)
I actually worked for one of the Boots practice very early on.

Andy & Chris (30:28.925)
Ah, there you go. I think they did. I think they basically thought it was the same sort of thing. They could, you know, it was a bit like, what’s that film? I can’t remember that film. If you build it, they will come. I think they sort of thought, oh, I’ll tell you what, we’ll open a practice. Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner. We’ll shove some dentists in and then it will be great. But not truly understanding, as you quite rightly said, it’s not retail. It’s very, very different and you require a very different set of skills and people to be able to make it work. You explain it really well.

in terms of how you turned it around. But also, we are in an environment where some of the corporates are disposing of practices. So I think people will take a lot from listening to how you really kind of tuned in to what had to change to make that practice successful. Are you still in the same site or have you relocated the practice?

Doctor A (31:16.562)
No, we’re still in the same site. So this was three, four years, every four years in June when, when we, when I took it over. And obviously it’s been a bit of a grower. Since then we’ve now got four dentists in the practice, two hygienists and a much bigger team. We’re working six days a week, two surgeries all flat out. So in terms of, yeah, I mean, in terms of the actual gross income, et cetera, et cetera, we’ve, we’ve multiplied that by five and that’s it’s a time. So

Andy & Chris (31:44.616)
Wow, that’s great.

Doctor A (31:45.986)
But the potential was there. I mean, you could see that all you needed to do was to bring in some good quality, confident dentists, some good quality hygiene. And actually, it doesn’t need to be high-end cosmetic, et cetera, et cetera. Normal general dentistry pays well. It’s a very unprofitable, the whole family traditional values and everything else that come with it, with the right dentist and the right team, it works. It’s a really delivered well. Patients need to see that you care, which is the main difference.

Andy & Chris (31:51.282)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (31:55.841)
Yeah. No, it’s right, yeah. Yeah, come on.

Andy & Chris (32:07.197)
and as you say, delivered well.

Doctor A (32:13.85)
And we’ll come on to that when we talk about PDM in a minute, but it’s the main difference between the NHS and private sector. And at the moment, you’re right, the profession, I believe, is at a massive crossroads. It’s going down a route where the NHS dentistry is just not available and I’m not knocking it in a way, shape or form. The private sector needs NHS. It needs that to be able to cater to those that cannot find dentistry and it ends away. But at the same time, there are lots of people that are now starting to convert and think,

Andy & Chris (32:18.609)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (32:23.761)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (32:29.979)
No, no.

Doctor A (32:42.154)
Well, actually, let me see what’s available on the other side, because I’ve never looked into this before and I’m starting to get problems. And if I’m going to pay money, I want to be, this is what I expect, which is everything that the NHS wasn’t delivering. I want to be seen fairly quickly. I want to get some predictable treatment done. I want things that are being done that I know that work. I want to be able to see the same dentist every time I go in, build that relationship, build that trust, build that value with it.

Andy & Chris (32:45.117)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (32:52.05)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (33:03.909)
Mmm. Yeah.

Doctor A (33:07.722)
And I want a nice team that will actually remember who I am and everything else that comes with that. And yes, obviously it comes at a cost. A lot of people are actually prepared to pay for it if they realize what it really does entail. And the reason I say we’re at a crossroads is because we have an obligation as a profession here. And I’m talking from a private sector side at the moment. If we deliver to the rest of the country what real private dentistry is like, and the first experience they have is a positive one.

Andy & Chris (33:20.235)
Mm.

Doctor A (33:35.498)
What we can do over the next couple of years is entirely transform the UK perception of dentistry. At the moment dentistry is considered an added luxury. You go in if you’ve got pain. A lot of people still don’t look after their teeth whether they’re in the NHS sector or the private sector. But if they start to see the value, suddenly the whole term of the greedy dentist who are charging more, they’ll move away from that to a certain extent because they’ll start thinking, well hang on a minute, my dentist is actually lovely. I would pay them money because…

Andy & Chris (33:56.849)
Hahaha

Doctor A (34:05.206)
They deserve to be paid the fees they’re charging. They’re very good, they’re caring. They look after me very well. They’re very honest. They show me the time. They don’t rush me. And actually, I actually enjoy going. My mouth is the best it’s ever felt. I’ve managed to get things into a really sort of great position, opportunity, and I’m gonna stick with this practice. And that changes so much perception on an individual personal level compared to looking at things on a grand scheme of things. And that’s one of the issues that we as a profession are facing at the moment.

Andy & Chris (34:09.317)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (34:20.068)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (34:29.405)
Mm-hmm.

Doctor A (34:35.262)
And me especially as a private practice owner, because we’ve all seen this, I mean, we can talk figures and numbers across Black Swan and across Bristol, the number of patients that are coming in for private care at the moment is through the roof. I’m hoping most practices are having exactly the same feedback and the same experience. The numbers are absolutely flying through the doors and as principals, there’s a limit to how many we can see. We all had existing books as it was anyway.

Andy & Chris (34:54.694)
Hmm.

Doctor A (34:59.234)
So what do you then do? You either expand your practices or close your books. If you expand your practices, you’re taking on a larger number of new patients, which is great for business if you’ve got the space, but if you’re not providing that level of experience across the board, you are shooting yourself in the foot and all those NHS patients that have come to experience private dentistry will walk away thinking, I don’t know why I even bothered. I’m gonna go back and try and find NHS because the money, it’s not worth it. What they charged me for an exam is exactly the same experience that I used to have on the NHS.

Andy & Chris (34:59.33)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:09.925)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:19.269)
Yeah, no, it’s true.

Andy & Chris (35:25.644)
And also, yeah. And the long term harm of that to dentistry is massive because that takes decades to work away from that. I love what you said about general dentistry pays well.

Doctor A (35:33.46)
Absolutely.

Andy & Chris (35:37.277)
There’s a big shift towards doing particular cosmetic treatments and it has been for probably a year prior to COVID and they blew up through COVID massively, but it’s lovely to hear that general dentistry is good. And it’s also linked to what you’re saying about PDM, sorry, that private dental mentor service because you’re right.

Doctor A (35:51.148)
You

Andy & Chris (35:57.833)
I love the concept of the NHS. I love the fact that the NHS should be available for the most needy in society. But creating an environment where we have more dentists that can perhaps more quickly become confident on the private side, I think will actually in turn free up a lot on the NHS side of things. Can you just explain just what it is? Because it sounds very much like a private education, postgraduate education for young dentists on the private side.

Doctor A (36:19.157)
Absolutely.

Doctor A (36:23.978)
Yeah, so PDM or private dental mentor came about a couple of years ago purely on the basis that I was taking on a new associate. A lot of practice principles were contacting me and saying I’m involved a lot with the young dentist, the chair of the Southwest BTA for various committees, including the young dentist. And I was getting that contact saying, I’m taking on all these associates and they’re just not up to scratch. They haven’t got the confidence experience.

And I ended up doing more work to try and fix the problems and situations. And actually it’s causing my business to detriment. What I don’t have a solution to this. What can we do? And I was hearing this a lot. It wasn’t just isolated from when I was experiencing it for myself. So PDM is basically a company that was formed to help skill up associates quicker than it would normally have taken if they were trying to learn by themselves. And it’s involved in two ways. So the, the start up for PDM is the leveling up for private dental practice two day course.

which is now touring Bristol, Birmingham and London over the next couple of months and will be for the foreseeable future. Where it’s an intense two-day hour where we go through all the aspects. If you’re starting in a private practice or have just started and you as a principal want your associate or you as an associate want to gain all of that valuable experience that you need as a starting point, this is everything including those two days that you will need. Everything from…

more detailed patient examinations, presentations for patients in terms of treatment plans, communication skills that are different from NHS practice, looking at diagnostics and fees, looking at restorability assessments clinically for things that you need to be able to start taking decisions on, pain management and diagnosis, patients are coming to you, they want answers. You can’t be wishy washy anymore, you need to actually be able to give them answers properly for things they’re looking at. So it’s a two day intensive of basically covering all of those aspects.

Andy & Chris (38:01.681)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (38:07.097)
Hmm

Andy & Chris (38:12.131)
Mmm. That sounds like a crash course. Great.

Doctor A (38:14.258)
Literally, literally, and that’s the idea behind it. The idea behind it is that you get all of that experience fairly quickly, and then you’ll be able to implement that pretty much from day one when you start in practice, which will improve the stress levels of every single private practice principle out there significantly, knowing that you already know this information and they don’t have to give it to you the hard way as you make the mistakes. Then, if you want to then increase and actually go up to the next level, you’ve then got the opportunity to upgrade to the year course.

Andy & Chris (38:31.64)
Mmm.

Mm.

Doctor A (38:41.974)
which gives you a much more detailed analysis of all of the relevant courses that I would have done if I would have gone back 10 years knowing what I know now, what courses would I have done to be able to basically do outstanding traditional dentistry to a very, very high level. And this is the way it’s been planned. All those courses actually, we brought the speakers and rather than having to travel to Hungary and America and this or that, we’ve brought them all here. We’re bringing them all here monthly for 12 months. Every month you will have one of those.

Andy & Chris (38:48.314)
Right.

Andy & Chris (38:54.885)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (39:04.417)
Right, yeah.

Doctor A (39:09.946)
whether it’s Laura Horton, Janos Mako from Hungary for the tooth morphology, Kevin de Baer for the composites, all sorts of different things that are being crammed in as the year goes on. And in the right order, photography training, you get your own digital SLR included as part of the course as well, all being crammed in so that by the end of this year, you genuinely have 10 years worth of education that’s been basically handed to you on a platter and given to you in the right manner and you’ve been mentored throughout it so that by the end

Andy & Chris (39:34.62)
Mm.

Doctor A (39:39.274)
you should have all the skills that you need to become a really outstanding private clinician and absolutely fly in private practice because if you haven’t had all of this experience and training, you will be the same as everybody else. If you go to this level and you start doing dentistry to this detailed level, whether it’s the business skills or the clinical skills, you’ll be in that minority 1%. They’re absolutely flying and building a really, really good list, doing good quality work but really good looking quality work as well.

Andy & Chris (39:41.743)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (39:53.881)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (40:00.27)
Mm.

Mm.

Andy & Chris (40:07.98)
Hmm. If you could let us have the link, we’ll drop it into the guest notes so people can click on that and find out a bit more about it.

Doctor A (40:14.314)
Absolutely. Well, it’s yeah, I mean, it’s very easy to find. It’s it’s private dental mental on Instagram It’s literally all one word And if you go in the top link at the link tree will have all of the courses and all the links on there um, i’ll say Any private practice principal any associate who’s just starting or looking to upgrade to private practice go and have a look at these courses they are going to and i’m not just saying this they are going to change your working what life simply because

that everything that you should get at the very start of your career in the private sector to give you the understanding what really is the difference, what are patients really looking for? And I’m delivering a lot of these with Laura Horton Consulting. So they’re coming in from the sort of communication side of it as well. Exceptional communication skills and delivering that patient experience.

Andy & Chris (40:43.506)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (41:03.409)
Brilliant. You said earlier on, we kind of talked about clinical and entrepreneur and kind of is it one or the other? You know, you straddle both camps. If you had to choose one, which would it be? And you have to choose one.

Doctor A (41:21.034)
It’s tricky simply because I enjoy the clinical. If I were to do the clinical without the business side, I would absolutely thrive and I would enjoy it. I love the ability to be able to change patients’ lives. One of my missions 10 years ago was to get to a level where you’re getting all the referral, the tricky cases, the small design cases, and be able to execute them to a really high level and achieve everything and change these patients’ lives. And I’ve achieved that. That’s exactly the type of cases we’re getting through the door on a regular basis, whether it’s alignment cases.

that are also restorative, whether it’s veneer cases, whether it’s complex implant cases, complex formality rebuilds, et cetera. And it’s great being able to deliver those cases and achieve the outcomes. And it’s extremely rewarding. You see these patients’ lives transform in front of your eyes, and it’s not cliched. And there’s no substitute for that. Saying that, can you do that to a high level for a long period of time and run multiple businesses? And in my eyes, I don’t think that’s possible. If I’m completely honest, I think it’s really, really difficult. If you’re doing…

Andy & Chris (41:53.843)
Hmm

Andy & Chris (42:08.05)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (42:18.275)
Hmm.

Doctor A (42:20.214)
trying to get them all to work at the same level across the board without you physically being there as a clinician is very difficult to do. One of the people I saw recently, and I mentioned this story very, very slightly, I was in the States listening to Dr. Apa a couple of months ago. It was the first two days that he’s ever organized. And obviously he’s just opened up his fourth site. It’s purely the Irvineers, but they do nothing else per se. And it’s four sites across the world, Dubai, Miami, Los Angeles, New York.

And his entire month revolves around moving site to site, doing the treatments, and obviously, he has his own team of associates that work there. I, 10 years ago, I would have thought to myself, I’d love to have that lifestyle. That was exactly what I want, that’s exactly what I aim. Now, knowing what I know, I don’t think I could cope with that. And it was just, it was a reality check, really, because I’m looking at it, and, ooh, do you know what? No, I can imagine the stress levels of having to do all of that. I couldn’t cope with that. That’s a step too far for me, but you learn over time what your limitations.

Andy & Chris (43:05.749)
Ha ha

Andy & Chris (43:17.585)
Mind you, he’s only got one more business than you, because you’ve got three businesses with private dental mentor and your two practices. Your two practices are quite close together. But you’ve already got three businesses, but you’ve also got four kids as well. So it’s not like you’re short of stuff to do. So what is it? Is it more kids, more businesses, or are you content with three and four?

Doctor A (43:30.757)
Mm.

Doctor A (43:38.998)
I think I’m happy with three and four. A lot of the time, I find it quite funny, I started introducing myself to most people and saying, oh, so tell me about you, tell me what you do. So, in summary, three businesses, four kids, that’s basically me.

Andy & Chris (43:53.711)
But you do it so well and you’ve got a real passion about you for it. A real enthusiasm, that’s what I get from this, is a real enthusiasm for it. And I sense that was kind of the superpower that also helped you turn around the Bristol Dental Spa as well. I think that your infectious enthusiasm, your energy for what you’re doing.

drags people. What’s that thing irrepressible isn’t it? It’s like, yeah, come on, no, we can do this sort of thing. And if people don’t want that. Taking you down the journey. Yeah, if that doesn’t suit them, then they can be happy somewhere else. They’ll go somewhere else. Yeah, they’ll go somewhere else. They’ll suit someone else. But you do, you have an energy.

Doctor A (44:28.318)
It’s about the love of loving what you do. At the end of the day, if the ultimate goal is to provide great quality dentistry, yes, the finances help, yes, the financials help. Of course they do. But ultimately, if that is your goal, to be able to provide a really good, amazing experience for patients, deliver outstanding oral healthcare, whether it’s traditional or complex, and being able to do that on a consistent basis and to drive that through all of your teams. Ultimately, that’s what it’s all about. And that’s what will make a business successful.

So, and if you don’t have that passion, if you’re prepared to cut corners at various, things will happen that will cause you issues or will make you, will find you out along the way. And so, and that’s ultimately what it comes down to, just the love of doing good quality work and wanting your businesses to provide that level of experience.

Andy & Chris (45:07.941)
Ha ha.

Andy & Chris (45:17.689)
Yeah, yeah, we feel that very strongly from you. We always finish up, Ahmad, with a couple of questions. And your first question is, if you could be a fly on a wall in a situation, where would that be and who’d be there?

Doctor A (45:31.394)
Oh God, I think my situation, my mind would probably be something to do with, I guess it’s the, well I’m going to use something slightly controversial, but the discussion here of when they were deciding to go for the war on Iraq and the Tony Blair straight George Bush conversation, I mean the interest level of what actually did happen in that conversation, were they really telling the truth to each other?

Andy & Chris (45:51.723)
Oh, yeah

Doctor A (45:58.922)
Or was it completely, did they not have all the relevant information? I mean, one of those types of scenarios I think would really interest me because it would open up the fact that what conversations actually took place to make all these important decisions and was it really looked into in as much detail as it could have been. So, I mean, I use that as an example, because it’s the first one that popped into my head, but there’s many, many situations that I in history that have happened and we never find out the conversation. We never will.

Andy & Chris (45:58.971)
Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Andy & Chris (46:15.559)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. No.

Doctor A (46:26.902)
But actually it would have been really, really nice to actually know what was really spoken about.

Andy & Chris (46:30.309)
Well, that kind of came down to three words, wasn’t it? Weapons of mass destruction. Was that a design phrase? Oil. Yes. But, you know, what was it? A bean circle. Yeah, what was it? Yeah, no, that’d be very interesting. But like I say, as an example of that sort of situation. The follow up is if you could meet somebody, you got the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with somebody for an hour. A life or death, as we say to people. Yes. Fact or fiction, in fact, anybody?

Doctor A (46:39.722)
Well, yeah, exactly.

Andy & Chris (46:58.557)
Who would you like to meet if you got the chance?

Doctor A (46:59.978)
I think mine would probably be someone like Martin Luther King. It would have been really interesting to, I mean a lot of obviously public speeches and everything else, but really behind the scenes, what would you, what do you really think and believe? What was your goal? Why would you do, what did you want to achieve? And I guess, well, his life was cut too short, so we’ll never find out. But yeah, it would be him.

Andy & Chris (47:04.381)
Okay, yeah, cool.

Andy & Chris (47:22.649)
And a lasting legacy, isn’t it? I think the thing I find most remarkable about him is that he gazes, is I had a dream speech in August 63 and 250,000 people turned up to listen to him. And this was pre-social media. There was no way of cascading that message out. But word trickled out that this guy was going to say something that was worth listening to. And a quarter of a million people turned up.

Doctor A (47:24.674)
Mmm.

Doctor A (47:38.006)
Hmm. No.

Andy & Chris (47:47.613)
because they didn’t want to miss it. That is power. When you talk about influence today, and influencers, and then you think about something like Martin Luther King and people wanting to be there to listen to what he said. Yeah, a truly remarkable individual. No. No, that’s right.

Doctor A (47:49.154)
Mmm.

Absolutely.

Doctor A (47:59.03)
And it wasn’t easy to attend either, absolutely. And it wasn’t easy. It was, the fact is you had to put effort to get there. Whereas now you click on something and it’s a lot easier. So it’s the fact that some people have traveled for hours and hours, days and days to sort of get there, to be there. And you’re absolutely right. It’s in the grand scheme of things. It’s a big deal.

Andy & Chris (48:08.098)
Yeah, sure.

Andy & Chris (48:13.273)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (48:19.293)
It’s bad enough going to a cup fun with 100,000 people and getting home from that. Imagine quarter million people. Exactly. Threat and that. Ahmad, we’ll let you go. Thank you for your time. We know you have patience today, so we’ll leave you, but thank you. We’ve skittled through a lot. Just wish you ongoing success. I think your energy is great. And see you around. Yeah, brilliant. That’s really good. Your team will love working in your environment because you’ve created something incredibly special.

Doctor A (48:45.154)
Thank you, and thank you both for your time. It’s been a total pleasure.

Andy & Chris (48:48.765)
No, brilliant. Thanks, Arvid. Very cool. Thank you, man. Cheers.

Doctor A (48:50.718)
Likewise.