Dentology Podcast with Aly Tejani

Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Aly Tejani

Episode Release Date – Monday 15 July 2024

Andy & Chris (00:01.378)
So podcast recording 140 something 140 something. Yeah, it’s funny. I was thinking about that when you were just I was thinking I wonder what number this is going to be. Yeah They don’t roll into another but because we enjoy it so much. You’ve never really counted the numbers of what no, that’s true because every time you have an interesting conversation It just stands alone as an interesting conversation and I don’t think we’re chasing a number either. No, no I thought what I find about it interesting is the fact of

There are so many times when I say do you remember we had that person on who told us about so -and -so and it’s like the stories that we learn and our listeners learn I think are fascinating because you wouldn’t know those unless you listened or spoke to the people and had a conversation which leads us nicely onto our guest for today and our guest for today we are very fortunate we have Ali Tajani joining us and Ali is the acquisitions and operations director at AU Dental. Welcome Ali, how are you doing? Yeah, hello.

Aly Tejani (00:57.006)
Good, good, good. Thanks Andy and Chris for having me on. I’ve been excited to come on your show for a while. So glad to take this opportunity and have some fun and laughter today as well.

Andy & Chris (01:09.026)
Wow, honored, someone excited. Yeah, no, and it is. It’s a great opportunity for all of us. One, we can find out more about you. Two, you can tell the world what you’re up to. And quite often we talk about dentistry as being an ecosystem. And it’s really important that everybody in that ecosystem does well. So whether you’re an equipment supplier or a manufacturer or a dental practice group like yourselves or business service providers like us or dentists or therapists or a nurse.

Aly Tejani (01:16.142)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (01:38.402)
Everybody has to do well because any part of that that isn’t doing well, it will fracture that whole ecosystem. So for us, supporting you and everybody else is vital because so much of the world these days hangs around finance and making sure that the whole profession and industry sitting around dentistry stays strong so that it becomes attractive.

to the finance industry and the finance providers is important as well. So yeah, for us, it’s a great thing to do. It’s a great thing to do. So we’ll get onto AU Dental shortly and your family dental business. But before we get to that, can you just tell us about your childhood? About young Ali. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, what was young Ali all about?

Aly Tejani (02:24.526)
Yeah, so it’s probably 29 years worth of stories there. So don’t want to be here for the whole day. But yeah, I was born in Leicester. I was born into a family that fled Uganda in the 1970s. So yeah, correct. My grandfather lost his coffee factory.

Andy & Chris (02:28.994)
Excellent, good, like that, that’s not very good, school is a good stuff.

Andy & Chris (02:41.954)
Okay. Idi I mean, it’s a common story sadly, yeah.

Aly Tejani (02:50.797)
My dad was already in the UK, so they came to the UK with next to none in their pockets. And I think they always had that entrepreneurial spirit from Uganda. And I think this time they had sort of nothing to lose because they were setting up from scratch. So I’ve been born in sort of a business orientated family. And I think most…

Andy & Chris (03:04.322)
Mm, yeah.

Andy & Chris (03:11.074)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (03:15.362)
Hmm.

Aly Tejani (03:18.541)
sort of our conversation around the family, table work around business, I remember. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (03:21.346)
Hmm, but also I do think howdy I wonder whether if you’ve been in a situation where

You’ve built a business you you’ve had a business and then you’ve had it stripped away from you because of kind of your political Reasons and you’ve needed to fled that country. I would have thought your strength and your resolve and also that that In a knowing that i’ve done it before so I can do it again confident Yeah, it really must drive you on and to have had something to have lost it Is is quite often more painful than not having had it in the first place I thought the drive to get back to where they were was enormous. Mm -hmm

Aly Tejani (03:56.972)
Yeah, I think it was that drive that came from my father and my uncles. You have to remember that there were seven in a family, seven boys all banding together trying to, of course, set up a company, which was a paper factory that then spanned across five European countries. So it was a unity. It was that desire to get back to where they were in Uganda.

Andy & Chris (04:00.002)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (04:05.474)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (04:09.57)
Well.

Andy & Chris (04:21.666)
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Aly Tejani (04:23.211)
but also that higher purpose of contributing to society.

Andy & Chris (04:29.41)
So what did you do growing up? I mean, obviously it talks about business, but you were school and sports and stuff like that. What did you do and hang out with?

Aly Tejani (04:36.396)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I went to a love programmer school. I was on the football team. I used to play table tennis for my county. So I was very sporty as a kid, very academic. But also at that age, I was very entrepreneurial. I remember doing a school fate with my cousin where we set the stand called Desi Corner. We were selling

Andy & Chris (04:49.57)
wow.

Andy & Chris (05:05.73)
I will.

Aly Tejani (05:06.156)
I love Indian food and I think that always did well with the teachers. They’re always coming back for more pappadams. You know how it is with the Indian food. So I was always energetic, active. I was in the same year as my cousin as well. So yeah, we really enjoyed school. And yeah, I have 20 first cousins, so that’s a lot.

Andy & Chris (05:08.674)
Brilliant. Desi Kolder.

That’s great though, isn’t it?

Andy & Chris (05:26.274)
Alright.

Safety in numbers, really.

Andy & Chris (05:35.266)
my goodness. Wow. So that was a big party time. Yeah. Are you married? Are you married Ali? No, I’m not saying I bet the family weddings are like bonkers. Yeah. Most of them are probably your family by the sounds of thing. That’s before you even get past the two John is so you’re.

Aly Tejani (05:36.588)
So we all live like a minute. No, not yet, not yet. I’m kidding.

yeah, Indian weddings, you can probably get a thousand plus guests in there. But yeah, all the… Yeah, it’s true, it’s true. But yeah, I think all the aunties, yeah, I think all the aunties, yeah.

Andy & Chris (06:03.874)
Yeah, so your father grew this what became a very significant paper manufacturing business and then he exited that business in 2010 and then sort of turned his attention to dentistry. That’s a real kind of pivot, isn’t it? What was kind of what went on in that time?

Aly Tejani (06:19.019)
Yeah, I think it was, I think it’s about succession planning and the next generation, how are you going to bring them up? And so what vehicles are you going to put them in to sort of grow the family balance sheet, whether that’s financial or the human capital of the family, because there’s different types of capital. Financial is one aspect, but one thing that’s very important to us as a family is human capital and cultural capital. So I think.

Andy & Chris (06:27.362)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (06:36.962)
But…

Yeah, yeah.

Andy & Chris (06:45.57)
Mm.

Aly Tejani (06:48.299)
We had a non -compete clause that expired in three years after we sold that to an Italian company. So my dad re -entered the tissue industry with my older brother and then running parallel to this, my sister is a dentist. So he thought, let’s just, why not pick another recession proof business and try something else. And they’re both very different businesses. One’s very much.

Andy & Chris (07:12.706)
Let’s try something else.

Aly Tejani (07:17.931)
One is very micro, one has higher margins, one has lower margins. It has its nuances but the principles of business and working with people to deliver results is the same across any discipline.

Andy & Chris (07:34.754)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you’re right. I think sometimes we do, we do have a tendency to overcomplicate things and we get very much down in the detail and the weeds and what’s going on. But you’re right. When you kind of step back, the, the, the core principles of business get applied to whichever section. Yeah. News agents, butchers dentistry. Yeah. The same principles do apply and

Did you always have ambition to get into dentistry? Because you studied economics at Warwick. And was a plan for you always to move into the dental business or was that something that – You’re going to do something else. Yeah, you kind of learned about it and it sort of turned your head. It turned your head.

Aly Tejani (08:05.067)
Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah.

Aly Tejani (08:14.987)
I think the nature of the circumstances led to it. I was always going to do something in family business, but my initial plan was to get some experience outside. I was lining up the job with Google after university. My mom unfortunately died of cancer during that year. So we had to battle that. And then at the same time, we had two clinics, one in Wigan, one in Stockport. And my older sister,

Andy & Chris (08:22.85)
Right. Right.

Andy & Chris (08:33.73)
Aly Tejani (08:44.138)
went on to maternity leave. So I was sort of roped into the business. I was going to the practice, doing the basics and understanding the business. And that was sort of an opening and an avenue to the world. Yeah, correct. Correct.

Andy & Chris (08:50.434)
Okay, right, yeah.

Andy & Chris (08:56.354)
That was your introduction to it. Which is, which is, it’s good. That’s a good intro though. Isn’t it really? What was that Blake used to do the game back to the shop floor? What was his name? it’s a John Harvey Jones. Most of our listeners will not have a clue who he is, but anyway, but he used to go back. He used to basically go onto businesses and sort of like go on the shop floor. So as he could then tell the management actually how far they were away from the actual business. I think it’s a great one that you went in and.

Aly Tejani (09:23.465)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I learned that from my father. He was always on the factory floor. He would walk around the factory floor during, you know, after his meetings, he would speak to the people on the production line. I think presence is important, also showing that you’re a leader and you’re on the front line as well with your team.

Andy & Chris (09:24.386)
and rolled your sleeves up really by the sounds of things.

Andy & Chris (09:45.986)
Yeah, definitely. And then you joined the business in 2016, is that right? Yeah, but then it sounds like a significant moment for you was COVID. So whilst you’ve been in the business, perhaps for four years, you seized the opportunity to grow the business when COVID hit. What was your thought process and how did you go about that? How did that kind of manifest itself? You were young, weren’t you, in 2016? I’m just working that backwards because you said you’re 29 now.

Aly Tejani (09:50.921)
That’s correct, yep, 2016.

Aly Tejani (10:12.713)
Yeah, I was probably 21. I was probably 21. Yeah. Yeah. Straight out of uni. I was very, I was very green. So yeah, I think during the pandemic, it was quite a, quite a period with sort of that triple -A scenario. And practices were closed. We had a bit more strategic mindset. We had already grown our three practices. We had bought one practice before the pandemic.

Andy & Chris (10:14.786)
Yeah, flip, yeah. Straight out of uni, straight, yeah. Hello everybody. Yeah, flip.

Aly Tejani (10:41.737)
in January of that year. So we had the senior management team in place and our ambition was already to grow. I think the pandemic just gave us that boost that we’ve got more time. We need to grow really now and we had already grown the business organically. We had done a lot of refurb projects because acquisitions is not the only thing that’s important for us. It’s organic growth.

Andy & Chris (10:50.85)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (10:54.882)
Mm -hmm.

Andy & Chris (11:09.09)
Hmm. Yep.

Aly Tejani (11:10.057)
So we always combined the two and we felt we were reaching that ceiling on the organic growth. We had understood the business quite well. So let’s double the size of the group and get some momentum.

Andy & Chris (11:22.498)
Mm -hmm and and that plan was was built during kovac you saw the opportunity to do that through that window Yeah Hmm but quite but but but quite thinking time I’m gonna say but quite visually as well because lots of people

Aly Tejani (11:29.672)
Yeah, that’s correct. I think there was a lot of time in Covid. I think that was probably…

Andy & Chris (11:40.194)
either kind of just pulled down the shutters or went into panic mode because they didn’t really know. Thought they’d never reopen. Yeah, they didn’t kind of, they couldn’t see what the other side would look like. So at this time you’re a young guy yet to have that vision to say, look, this is our time to push forward. You know, we can actually kind of gain some ground here while everybody else is doing that. I think it’s wonderful.

Aly Tejani (11:45.384)
Yeah, yeah.

Aly Tejani (12:01.032)
I think you got to take the leap that, you know, sometimes you want to see the net, but the net starts to form when we eventually take that leap. And I think that was the time where I thought, you know, let’s go and let’s grow the company. Yeah. And continue the progress.

Andy & Chris (12:05.858)
Hmm.

Yes. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (12:13.762)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And in terms of building that,

We talk to lots of people and there’s lots of people out there who have a few sites and they’re looking to grow. And one of the areas that they tend to suffer with most is systems. And by that what I mean is they don’t always necessarily have the foundations in place to build a group onto. So if you think about a property, if you’ve got foundations for a two or three storey property, that’s it. So if you put on three or four more stores, it’s not got the foundations, it’s gonna come crumbling down. Did you put in place the foundations and the systems?

Aly Tejani (12:46.472)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (12:50.34)
and the processes early on, knowing that you’re going to be building a larger group.

Aly Tejani (12:55.816)
Yeah, I think being a master of scale is very important, especially in dentistry when you’re running multiple sites and you’ve got different practice managers, you really need to get your systems in place. And for me, systems is just an acronym for save the self stress, time, effort and money. So that’s how I view it. And one of our sort of main strategies is people and systems. The reason why we have people and systems is because you need systems. I mean, systems run the business and people run the systems.

Andy & Chris (13:02.69)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (13:12.898)
Yeah, that’s quite clever like that.

Andy & Chris (13:24.322)
Yep.

Aly Tejani (13:25.576)
So we have all our systems in a software called Trainual. You can see when practice managers have completed certain systems that have been released. It notifies when there’s been changes to systems. And yeah, we record a lot of videos. We share our screen. We record even training and coaching sessions where prospective practice managers can watch it. So we’re very much about getting the content.

Andy & Chris (13:55.042)
Mmm.

Aly Tejani (13:55.144)
And it has worked. I mean, we’ve interviewed practice managers, but our system is very slick from sort of interview stage to, you know, second interview to offer letter. We all work through sort of hyperlinks that’s listed in sort of our software. So anyone can do it and that’s how it should be.

Andy & Chris (14:10.114)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (14:15.01)
That’s great to have that hands -on stuff because as you grow it’s really good to have that embedded because otherwise the risk isn’t as you get bigger and that will be your risk is those things get sort of forgotten or Sidelined, you know, you know, we used to work for big organizations. There was lots of things that people should have done First the business got bigger people just didn’t do it. But I think also the benefit is technology I think now you’ve got that real -time reporting. Yeah Yeah

Aly Tejani (14:26.664)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (14:31.656)
Yep.

Yeah.

Aly Tejani (14:41.992)
Yeah, yeah, correct. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (14:45.058)
So you’re now in a position you’ve got seven practices, six in the Northwest and one in Milton Keynes. So this kind of process and automation that you’ve kind of designed, does that enable you to have kind of a dashboard view of your group, which in theory gives you the ability to effectively buy or acquire practices anywhere, or you still kind of focused in particular regions?

Aly Tejani (14:48.52)
That’s correct. Yeah, correct.

Aly Tejani (15:12.2)
I think for us, the dashboard’s mainly for sort of practice performance and driving organic growth. So for us, we have a dashboard that a practice manager has a dashboard, a senior manager has a dashboard, a director has a dashboard. Certain reports are auto -generated and sent to emails of certain stakeholders. So we connect APIs from Google, from LinkedIn, from DENTLY, our practice management software, even feedback forms so we can see.

Andy & Chris (15:30.018)
Mm -hmm.

Aly Tejani (15:40.264)
live feedback from the practices, certain metrics are important to us like income per minute per practitioner, income per minute by treatment, how our private is doing, how our NHS is doing. It’s all coming from multiple data sources and we’ve used a lot of developers to develop this. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (15:58.274)
I can imagine that’s a super sophisticated big data. I mean income per minute man Yeah, what’s it? What’s it? What’s the mix that you’ve got across your group with between NHS and private?

Aly Tejani (16:04.584)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (16:09.544)
Yes, I think we’ve of course grown our private because we’ve added surgeries, we’ve spent money on marketing, we start to really tap into premium time dentistry. So now we’re about 60 % NHS, 40 % private, but we’ve acquired a lot of practices that were 96 % NHS, 4 % private. We’ve increased the surgery occupancy, we’ve offered the implant services, the Invisalign, the composite bonding, which we’ve

Andy & Chris (16:13.73)
Sure. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (16:23.586)
Right.

Andy & Chris (16:29.57)
Speak Shift.

Aly Tejani (16:38.632)
previously wasn’t being offered by the vendor. So we look at practices and we see is there space to add more surgeries here? Is there space to add more services? Because yeah, you can look at the multiples, but one way to sort of increase sort of the value of your business is through building EBITDA and that operational growth, which is very important.

Andy & Chris (16:42.21)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (16:57.386)
Yeah

Andy & Chris (17:03.106)
Yeah.

Absolutely. And one of the things that we often say to our clients in one of our other lives, we value and sell dental practices as you know, and quite often when people buy a practice, we say to them that the market, the value for dental practice is very high. Therefore, if you want to add value to the practice, you probably need to do something different with that practice. The market will not necessarily take it up and up and up. So what you said is absolutely spot on. You can either introduce additional services to use chair occupancy.

Aly Tejani (17:13.096)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (17:33.492)
capacity that you’ve got where surgeries aren’t optimized or you can add in more surgeries if there’s space for that. So that’s where you really have value for that business. If the market moves in your direction then that’s a bonus. I think that just waiting for the market to move in your direction is a risky game because it may not. And I think systems and processes in the future will probably be an important part of value.

Do you know what I mean? I think there’ll be a point where people if you haven’t got this and haven’t got that means we saw to see it there’s I don’t think there’s really many but there was a period of time was there where people didn’t have any computer software, you know, and it was like whoa, I think I think I think weirdly CQC coming into dentistry actually made quite a lot of the the bottom -end practices back up their ideas

because the good practices already had systems and protocols and documents, but some didn’t. And I think CQC coming in did mean that some of those practices had to get a bit better at how they recorded some of that information.

Aly Tejani (18:34.216)
Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think even if you’re not exiting a business, you should always run a business as if you’re going to exit it. So you have your systems, you can hand the keys to the incoming vendor. I mean, we’ve bought so many practices where people flying everywhere, you don’t know where it is, you can’t find it. And you’re thinking, how can?

Andy & Chris (18:42.882)
Yeah, definitely.

Andy & Chris (18:53.182)
Well, it must be good for you as acquisitions that when you go somewhere and you’ve got something that you can actually see what people are doing, it must make you feel confident in buying and also in the value that you offer, mustn’t it?

Aly Tejani (19:09.768)
Yeah, yeah. Of course, we do feel confident whenever we’re going to acquire. But I think you can learn from everyone. I think we’ve been to a lot of acquisition viewings and thought, that’s a great idea. We never thought of that. So I think it’s about sharing knowledge and understanding your limitations as well and being open to knowing that you may have some good ideas, but there’s also other people in the industry that have great ideas too.

Andy & Chris (19:26.21)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Andy & Chris (19:34.218)
Hmm Yeah, sure recycle them I think that’s that I don’t I’m not I’m not too sure there’s ever ever a brand new idea apart from you know people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, but even Elon Musk that was just a reinvention of crappy electric cars

Aly Tejani (19:38.312)
Yeah

Andy & Chris (19:50.306)
Yeah, even even nickname Tesla. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, but it is as you say it so but I think it’s a Foolish person who doesn’t think they can learn from anyone else. No, exactly And also I don’t think we should be shy and sharing our ideas as well because the thing that makes

Aly Tejani (19:53.128)
Hahaha

Andy & Chris (20:07.522)
our business is good isn’t one amazing thing, it’s a hundred small things. So if somebody takes one little thing that you do, okay, there’s gonna be a marginal gain of some sort, but it doesn’t mean they suddenly end up with an amazing business as a result of that.

Aly Tejani (20:10.824)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Aly Tejani (20:17.096)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I was reading a book and it talked about being like a chef. If you think about it, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, they all have their recipe books. You can find them from Amazon. It doesn’t mean you want to be Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver. So I think it’s about being open. And I think we should encourage that more, you know, in dentistry so we can learn best practice from one another. And, you know, I’ve got calls with some.

Andy & Chris (20:29.538)
Yeah.

Nah, that’s true, that’s true, yeah. Not at all.

Aly Tejani (20:45.736)
dental groups on how, you know, they can use sort of CRM systems, APIs, and we’re happy to support things about strategic partnerships rather than hiding information. But it’s a give and take relationship, right? You’ve got to bring something to the table.

Andy & Chris (20:52.098)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (20:57.666)
That’s great. Yeah, that is great. No, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, totally. Has the has the dental profession been as you expected? I was going to ask, has it surprised you? Has it surprised you in any way? Because none of us are clinicians at all. Yeah, we’re on the business side of things. Is it as you thought?

Aly Tejani (21:16.744)
I think there have been some sort of shocks, but I think I, I mean, I was, I mean, my parents wanted to push me into dentistry, but I didn’t want to go into dentistry because I was interested in economics. I was interested in the world of commerce, but I had a deep interest in sort of chemistry, biology, neuroscience. So I came in sort of the industry with an interest in science.

Andy & Chris (21:22.37)
Ha ha ha.

Andy & Chris (21:45.986)
Hmm

Aly Tejani (21:46.696)
But yeah, it’s sort of opened my eyes to a different world. It’s a different sort of industry to manufacturing. How you address your audience is very different. It’s B2C, B2P, which is say business to patient. Manufacturing with B2B, dealing with dentists as well, which are highly academic. And I think there’s a lot, you know,

Andy & Chris (21:55.682)
Mm.

Aly Tejani (22:14.984)
can learn from them, but there’s also a lot we can bring to the industry. And I think one thing that is sort of quite telling is the communication. I think communication with the patient is very important. And I think realizing that there’s this concept called information asymmetry. So dentists have done five years of academia. Patients may not necessarily understand the dental lingo.

So nobody wants to really know what integration is. They want to, you know, a layman term of what that is. And I always believe that, you know, a picture paints a thousand words. So what’s a video? What’s a prop? So I think what we’re trying to do in our sort of group of practices is develop that communication skills, bring in props. Because if you think about it, you go to a car showroom.

Andy & Chris (22:45.986)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Aly Tejani (23:09.)
You can see the cars, you can see how big the boot space is, you can jump in the front seat, put your hands on the wheel, test the digital tech out. So in dentistry, if something’s going into your mouth and sort of lab work, then surely we should be showing that to our patients and helping them understand the treatments so they can make decisions that maximize their patient welfare.

Andy & Chris (23:33.282)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (23:37.25)
It’s fascinating when you think about it you what you what you were saying earlier It just reminded me when so Frank Taylor who’s the guy we bought the business from? 24 years ago one of the things he used to do is he got a set of Basically crowns and bridges made and he used to train his dentist that he did and said you basically need to show people what these things are

Aly Tejani (23:43.58)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (24:04.386)
so is that they could hold them and feel them. He said, and it’s fascinating because you’re saying the same thing, but so many people don’t. It’s a real interesting one, isn’t it? Your relation to the car thing, as you say, you can go and sit in it. You can choose what colour you want. What leather do you want? What colour do you want the inside? here we go. Let’s show it to you. And then someone’s saying you’re going to pay £600 a crown. What is that? That’s a great thing. It’s white. But also I think that…

Aly Tejani (24:08.296)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (24:14.632)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (24:23.4)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Aly Tejani (24:29.288)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (24:32.834)
The point about information asymmetry is spot on. And I think when you’re dealing with people who are highly academic and they’re technicians, they use language, which to them is just so common. It’s not jargon. Yet from a patient point of view, they get lost. And because of deference in many cases, people don’t ask the question.

And that’s where I think kind of TCOs and receptions and people like that can help because they almost become trans, they become translators and they kind of explain to the patient what actually went on in the surgery because the patient doesn’t really want to ask. But if you could get that to actually happen in the first instance with a clinician, that’s a massive win.

Aly Tejani (24:57.825)
Yeah, correct.

Yeah.

Aly Tejani (25:07.873)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, most of communication is nonverbal cues. So these are the things that you need to spark from the waiting room. Is a patient anxious? Are they looking at their watch? Are they tapping their foot? When they come into the surgery, are you going to shake their hand? If a parent’s coming with a kid, if you high five the kid, you’re not just building rapport with that kid, you’re building the rapport with the patient. How far are you from the patient? Are you on arm’s length? Are you standing up?

Andy & Chris (25:15.074)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy & Chris (25:22.306)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (25:31.202)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (25:37.026)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (25:38.818)
you know, tall above a patient, which is intimidating or are you eye level. These are very sort of basic things which aren’t taught in dentistry. And that’s sort of what I’m trying to do with our team is, you know, work with the dentists and understand that communication is important.

Andy & Chris (25:43.394)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (25:50.53)
It’s brilliant. Yeah. And you find resistance sometimes from some of the practices you take over where people say, well, I’ve…

Aly Tejani (25:57.441)
I think.

Aly Tejani (26:02.369)
Naturally, you’ll find resistance, but for me, I think numbers don’t lie. People do. So if you have statistics, you have case studies, and generally when you have an idea, you’re going to go to the most open of your associates, open up your team and sort of get this conversation in the corridors happening that, this has been done with me. This is what’s happened. So it’s a work in progress. You’ve got to win the hearts and minds of people. That doesn’t happen overnight. But if you have…

Andy & Chris (26:17.41)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (26:26.21)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (26:31.138)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (26:32.193)
track record then it becomes a lot easier.

Andy & Chris (26:35.97)
Hmm. Hmm.

I suppose you get an internal ambassador, don’t you? Yes. But what I love is that you were talking about how you enjoy neuroscience, but I also love the fact that you’re taking that and turning it into a practical application for how you’re getting your team to communicate with patients and how to get them on board and how to build rapport and how to do it in different ways. But it’s backed by kind of your interest in science. And that’s kind of smart. It’s, you know, it’s based on evidence and data as opposed to just with

Aly Tejani (27:03.488)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (27:07.268)
think it’s a good idea.

Aly Tejani (27:07.392)
I think one thing that’s sort of lacking in our industry is sort of, I mean, in organizations, there can be addition, you can get more resources, or you can multiply the resources that you already have. And economics and business is about resource allocation. From what I’ve seen in the industry over the last six years is that we’re not using our nurses more, and they should be supporting the dentist, chair side. And you have to align the interests of the dentist and the nurse. And I think,

Andy & Chris (27:30.338)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (27:37.793)
Training the nurses to reach their potential and to support the dentist to a greater level will only lead to a greater experience for the patient.

Andy & Chris (27:45.282)
Mm.

And also fulfilling for the nurse as well. Yeah, definitely. You know, if they’ve got capabilities beyond what’s expected of them at the moment, that’s a very stimulating environment to work in. They’re not just a suction person holder. What’s the most fulfilling part of what you do, Ali? Because obviously you, you know, you find practices, you go through the process of buying practices, you like data, you like processes, you’re obviously interested in how to develop people. If we had to strip away all those things and you were left with one thing, what’s the thing that…

Aly Tejani (27:48.672)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (27:54.016)
Okay.

Yeah.

Andy & Chris (28:16.42)
that really gets you up in the morning.

Aly Tejani (28:18.24)
I think for me, I don’t wake up in the morning thinking I’m managing people. I wake up in the morning thinking I’m managing purpose. For me, after my mom died, we set up her foundation. So our foundation is closely linked to ANU Dental. So the better ANU Dental does, the better we can deliver on sort of helping, sort of support education in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and those countries. So when I go into work, I’m going…

Andy & Chris (28:28.514)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (28:38.978)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (28:45.25)
Brilliant.

Aly Tejani (28:47.487)
course with a purpose to learn from one another, help people achieve their goals and ambitious, deliver a great service to our patients, but also that higher level goal is to do something better than, you know, just run a business.

Andy & Chris (29:03.946)
That’s nice. That’s good. And what I love about that is that that never goes away. That’s something within you. So if in the future you decide to have other businesses that are either within or outside of dentistry, that purpose is something that kind of sticks with you and your family.

Aly Tejani (29:16.351)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (29:21.503)
Yep, yep, I agree.

Andy & Chris (29:21.762)
What’s the guys we spoke to today and about their outreach? Yeah, we spoke to some guys in another episode and they have a group of pediatric practices, but the most fulfilling thing they do is they, as Chris said, they have this outreach program where basically they have this coach, this RV in America that’s kitted out with surgeries and they truck around different schools in Texas. And for them, that’s the thing that is special. That’s special to them. And they said that if they didn’t have

Aly Tejani (29:44.831)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great idea.

Andy & Chris (29:51.716)
the businesses they had, they wouldn’t be able to do this. So similar to you, that was the thing that kind of, they sort of bounced out of bed in the morning for.

Aly Tejani (29:58.751)
I think it motivates you more because when it’s proven scientifically and statistically that when you contribute to society you tend to do better in sort of your businesses and your personal lives because you want to be more successful so you can help more people and more people and have that domino effect.

Andy & Chris (30:09.858)
Mmm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (30:15.97)
Yeah. Yeah.

That’s good. The community thing. You’re still young, Ali. You’ve got decades ahead of you in terms of work. But what would you say, so far, what’s the thing that you’re taking as the biggest learning from your entrepreneurial journey so far?

Aly Tejani (30:25.183)
Yeah. Yeah.

Aly Tejani (30:37.951)
I think one thing is probably patience and having the ability. No, no, no, I think I’ve learned that more from. I think more from sort of the business side. I think I’ve generally been a patient person, but in business, I always want to get things done quickly. But I think a lot of my team say, Ali, you’re rolling too many things out. You need to be a bit more patient.

Andy & Chris (30:42.914)
what you’ve got a lack of it. Yeah. And we don’t mean the ones with tea.

Aly Tejani (31:05.855)
So I think I’ve taken that on board and realized, Rome wasn’t built in a day. So it takes time and just be patient and keep your head down and things will start to move in the right direction.

Andy & Chris (31:09.922)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Andy & Chris (31:17.218)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s hard, isn’t it? But the flip side to that is we used to work with a very wise guy who said to us years ago, if you’re feeling control, you’re not driving fast enough. And it was an analogy from, I think it was the four -wheeler -one driver, Mario Andretti. And that’s what he said. He said, if you’re feeling control, you’re not driving fast enough. And his view was that you should always be pushing boundaries and you should be at the limit. And that’s where you kind of get those gains. But they also have pit stops. Yes. So maybe that’s the way. Every once in a while, we need an

Aly Tejani (31:32.218)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Aly Tejani (31:44.062)
Yeah, yeah.

Aly Tejani (31:48.086)
I agree. I think speed is very important, but when you have a lot of fast moving ideas, you also got to look at your error rate. So you want to balance your speed and your error rate. If your speed is generating a high error rate, you need to reduce your speed so you can minimize the error rate.

Andy & Chris (31:51.076)
emotional pit stop to be able to like chill out a bit. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (32:02.306)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (32:06.338)
yeah. Yeah. there’s a risk you don’t want more pilots in the RAF.

Aly Tejani (32:14.302)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (32:14.306)
You don’t want to be trying hundreds of things all at once because it’s hard to keep track of them. And I think from a team point of view, whilst you may have a very clear idea strategically why these things matter and what they mean when a team are delivering a set of services, it just looks like chaos. And you don’t want that to have an impact on the patient experience. You have to get buying as well, don’t you? Some people say they actually follow you on your journey. Otherwise you do a little bit like an idiot. Yeah.

Aly Tejani (32:31.549)
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Aly Tejani (32:38.877)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is true, that is true.

Andy & Chris (32:43.426)
Yeah, Ali, we always finish up.

Are interviews in the same way we have two questions for you But before we get before we get to that there’s there’s something that that kind of almost is linked to one of our questions so we’ll ask you the question in a minute about If you’ve got the opportunity to meet somebody who would it be but the point before that is you actually met? Muhammad Ali didn’t you and we’ve had people that have said to us before that that would be the person They’d like to meet if they were given the chance. So as somebody who met Muhammad Ali, how did it come about? I was gonna say how did that happen? Yeah?

Aly Tejani (33:15.773)
Yeah, I think I was very young at the time. I was 16 and my dad knew I was a big Muhammad Ali fan. And I think even previously he went to an auction and, you know, a charity auction and we, you know, he brought back home a Muhammad Ali glove. So I always had an interest in Muhammad Ali. And, you know, my family knew that my brother wanted to name me Muhammad Ali, but that was vetoed by my grandparents.

Andy & Chris (33:22.562)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (33:41.19)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Aly Tejani (33:45.852)
So yeah, I was just, I think I was in GCSE at the time, and then my dad was saying, I’ve got one surprise for you. Do you know what it is? And I’m thinking, okay, what is it? And he says, he gave me like three sort of chances to guess. And then my last chance said, is it, have you organized for me to meet Muhammad Ali? And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (34:09.858)
Are you guessed it? it was that important to you that it was in your guesses. Yeah. Wow.

Aly Tejani (34:15.452)
Yeah, so I’m done. Yeah, it was a charity event by his foundation. So my sister and I went to Old Trafford, not Manchester United fan, but if I’m going to see Muhammad Ali, that’s fine. But yeah, it’s worth it. So yeah, we went to his foundation dinner, managed to speak to him. But the thing is, he was already late in his stages of Parkinson’s disease. So for me, for me, it was…

Andy & Chris (34:29.346)
It’s worth it.

Andy & Chris (34:41.858)
So he’s quite unwell, yeah.

Aly Tejani (34:46.013)
It was a difficult experience, right? Because you want to see your hero in the prime and you want to have a lengthy chat with them. So it was, yeah, it was a bit sweet experience. But yeah, I had an opportunity to at least speak to his wife and have a lengthy conversation with her. So that was, yeah, it was a, I mean, yeah, there were a lot of boxes there like Ricky had and the like. So I got to see a few of them. So that was interesting as well.

Andy & Chris (34:49.73)
Yeah, it’s quite bittersweet, yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:02.498)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:09.634)
So you got to see all those guys as well, yeah. You’re a big boxing fan then? As opposed to specifically just Muhammad Ali?

Aly Tejani (35:17.724)
Yeah, yeah, I used to get angry when my dad wouldn’t wake me up for the Mike Tyson fights. And he was like, well, they’re going to be knocked out in 30 seconds. So there’s no point waking you up. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:22.818)
really? Wow.

Well, I thought I’d let you sleep. I’m intrigued. You don’t happen to remember what the first two words were, do you?

Aly Tejani (35:33.148)
I can’t remember, I was so excited that… Yeah, but I can’t remember the first two but I know my brother also, a guest as well, Muhammad Ali.

Andy & Chris (35:34.882)
what are the guesses? Yeah, do you remember that? I can’t imagine that. That’s a pretty cool one at number three, but Dan, you’ve bought me a plane.

Andy & Chris (35:53.634)
They might not have been quite as bonkers though. They might have been that you sort of like, you know, you bought me a new bike. No, maybe not. You’ve bought me a new, you haven’t bought me a new bike. you have bought me a new bike.

Aly Tejani (35:59.26)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (36:04.22)
Yeah, I think he put so much emphasis on it that you knew it was going to be something very unusual. It was, yeah, yeah, so something life changing, right? So yeah.

Andy & Chris (36:08.354)
something big something quite special yeah that’s brilliant brilliant and yeah like you say it is not with Sanian he was kind of an aging aging man and in poor health it’s still remarkable to me a true legend amazing amazing i still remember seeing him you won’t remember parkinson but i remember watching him when he was always interviewed he’s just that he was just such a great

Aly Tejani (36:25.915)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (36:29.755)
Yeah, interview. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (36:35.234)
Rack and Tur wasn’t it? You know and and a brilliant boxer. Yeah, well, really? Yeah, I remember him saying About being the greatest and he said if I was a bin man, I’d have been the best being man in the world I’d have been quicker than everybody else and I’d have straightened the bins up when I was finished and he just had this outlook of like You know, whatever you do just be the best of what you can do. I don’t know Did he I don’t really know much about boxing, but did he sort of boxing style? Transform boxing, you know was was previously

Aly Tejani (36:36.283)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Aly Tejani (36:45.595)
He he he.

Andy & Chris (37:04.77)
Because he was a heavyweight, wasn’t he? Was he a heavyweight? I can’t remember. Before Ali did basically just two big blokes stand in a room and punch nine wattsets out of each other, but Ali sort of introduced it, made it into a craft.

Aly Tejani (37:06.427)
Yeah, yeah, he was heavyweight. So it’s…

Aly Tejani (37:16.955)
Yeah, I think he was very unorthodox in the sense his hands would be down and in a heavyweight boxing match you really want to keep your hands up. He was dancing around the ring and I think he brought that entertainment to boxing. And yeah, he might have sounded arrogant at the time, but deep inside, it was very humble giving human being, which you saw, you know, after his retirement during his career, he gave a lot back to a lot of people.

Andy & Chris (37:28.034)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Andy & Chris (37:36.93)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (37:46.206)
And I think in sport it’s nice to have characters, you know, fairly recently Tyson Fury fought.

Aly Tejani (37:53.339)
He tried to do a bit of a Marmonali on the road so he was…

Andy & Chris (37:55.65)
Usyk yeah, and he was well, I think in the ninth round. I think he was on the ropes I don’t think it was necessarily play acting was it he was getting battered But I think I think having characters is important in business in sport whatever because I think it gets attention I bet you were polo Creed. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Whatever those rocky films. I bet you they based Creed on

Aly Tejani (38:13.499)
And the rocky. Yeah.

Yeah, and that was, I think, yeah.

Andy & Chris (38:19.586)
Ali I bet you they did just thinking I was just thinking about it that he was he was a Transformational character Ali wasn’t I bet you they based Creed on that sort of bouncy?

Aly Tejani (38:26.523)
Yeah, I think that was an Oscar Awards and Sylvester Stallone was handing it out and then Mum and Dad just came behind the stage and said, you stole your storyline from me. So I think there’s some truth to that, Chris.

Andy & Chris (38:36.578)
right, right. Hahaha!

Yeah, yeah, I say when you look at Creed you think that is Ali actually so so so back to our back to our yeah, sorry, we digress Yeah, we did. We did. It was a good. It was a worthwhile. I will come to the person you want to meet in a second But the first question is if you could be a flyer on the wall in a situation Where would you be? Who’d be there?

Aly Tejani (38:49.851)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (39:00.539)
I think, yeah, looking back on that experience meeting Mahmood Ali, it wasn’t probably the most happy moments in the sense you see your hero, you know, suffering. So I would like to sort of go back to when he fought Sonny Liston in sort of 1964, when the odds were against him, Sonny Liston had been knocking people out, the odds were eight to one. I would have been, you know…

Andy & Chris (39:10.082)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (39:20.13)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (39:26.714)
very privileged to be around him during that time, understanding his training camp and how he kept that sort of aura of confidence when deep inside he was scared of this quote unquote ugly bear. But that would be a sort of an amazing experience to see that training camp and see the media. I think about boxing, the fun thing about it is the media attention beforehand and you know.

Andy & Chris (39:31.682)
you

Andy & Chris (39:39.266)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (39:46.658)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (39:51.906)
Yes. Yeah, it really is a frenzy, isn’t it?

Aly Tejani (39:56.122)
Yeah, so I would have liked to be there right in the heat of that moment and then he became heavyweight champion as well.

Andy & Chris (40:00.482)
Brilliant. Yes, yeah, amazing, amazing. And I don’t know if this is gonna be linked to what we’ve been talking about, but if you were given the opportunity to meet somebody, who would you like to meet given the opportunity?

Aly Tejani (40:13.754)
Yeah, so for me, I think I would like to meet Malcolm X. So I think I’ve just finished his autobiography. I know he had sort of close links with Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, the NFL player. But for me, Malcolm X, of course, he was born in a family where his dad was murdered by the KKK. His mother was taken away from him.

Andy & Chris (40:19.65)
wow.

Andy & Chris (40:26.346)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (40:30.882)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (40:43.354)
He wasn’t really fighting for civil rights, he was fighting for human rights. And I think from where he sort of started his sort of human rights movement and where he ended up, I think his views started to change, his views started to mature. And I think he reflected back and, you know, he was first, you know, I believe in separation, not segregation, separation, but I think later on in his life, he acknowledged that was the wrong thing and that…

Andy & Chris (40:48.226)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (41:08.002)
Yeah.

Aly Tejani (41:13.369)
people can be united. And one of my favorite quotes from Malcolm X is, when you replace we with I, sorry, I with we, even illness becomes wellness. So yeah, Malcolm X would be someone down. And his charisma is all.

Andy & Chris (41:15.394)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (41:28.962)
Mmm, nice. cool.

Was he the fist at the Olympics? Was it Malcolm X? He was known for his, I put me arm in the air with the fist. And was that when the black athletes, the American black athletes did it when they were on the podium and it went round the world as like, I don’t know, was that the? Yeah, I think that was, I think that they did the Malcolm X gesture for it. And the world was like.

Aly Tejani (41:55.449)
I don’t know. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (42:02.306)
Whoa, because that must have been about the 70s or something. I think that might have been the early 70s. It’s a very iconic picture. I think what’s really powerful in that is someone that has the self -awareness to reflect on a situation and say, actually, what I thought.

Aly Tejani (42:08.953)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (42:18.306)
wasn’t necessarily right and they’re able to take a different position because particularly in modern day society there’s very few people that tend to do that nowadays. People just get ingrained in their view and that’s it. But to have the platform that he had and then have the confidence really to be able to change his position on something is really powerful.

Aly Tejani (42:25.849)
Yeah, I think.

Aly Tejani (42:37.464)
I think introspection is something that the world needs a lot more of and he had the ability to do that and I admire him for that.

Andy & Chris (42:40.809)
Yes, definitely.

Andy & Chris (42:47.458)
Yeah, yeah. Adi, it’s been wonderful. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I think it’s really interesting. I think the group you’re building is great. I think you have a nice philosophical outlook on life as well. And I think that’s going to serve you and your business as well as you go forward.

Aly Tejani (42:50.456)
Yeah, thank you.

Aly Tejani (42:55.256)
Thank you. Thank you.

Aly Tejani (43:02.2)
Thank you for having me on and Chris and I really enjoy this and hopefully we can have a round two someday. Yeah, alright, thanks.

Andy & Chris (43:04.13)
Nah. Nah.

Absolutely. Brilliant. Thanks very much. Cheers man. Keep well. Cheers.