Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Paul Ebert
Episode Release Date – Monday 7th October 2024
Andy & Chris (00:01.535)
We have microphones in front of us. have headphones on. It can only mean one thing. We’re doing a sports commentary. we’re going to start singing. It might be Dentology podcast. sorry. Yeah, Dentology. Yeah. Looking forward to this. I am. As always. Always good fun, isn’t it? It’s funny as we were talking just before we started recording about kind of what is it? What does it cover? And I think encompassing the business of dentistry is quite important, isn’t it? Because if you think about the dentist, the dentist holds the handpiece. But how many?
people and businesses and support functions need to exist for the dentist to do their thing. Yeah, it’s a bit like when they cars, isn’t it? You when they say, you know, they’re going to lose 5000 jobs in the cars and it’s like there’s also 40000 other jobs that link to the cars and it’s a little micro culture. think of dentistry, like layers, like ogres. Yes. So today we’re very fortunate.
We have Paul Ebert joining us and Paul is the CEO and founder of tabio the patient finance in patient plan and cards together all on one platform. So I’m looking forward to having a conversation. How you doing Paul? You well? Yeah, it is If you’d just stuck with patient finance, it would have been so much easier, but you had to get greedy didn’t you? You have to do it like five pay car or something
Paul Ebert (01:09.964)
That’s a mouthful. I’m good. I’m good. I’m really happy to be here, guys. Excited about this session.
Paul Ebert (01:23.192)
You know what, it’s actually the opposite. So we would have loved to start with finance, but we realized there’s so many greedy people around us that in order to get the dentist a good prize, we just had to compete.
Andy & Chris (01:32.939)
We will get to financing, we will get to financing. But to start, I think we always take a view that there’s clues from our childhood in terms of the people we’ve become. So can you look back on your childhood and give us a sense of what that looked like? And was there a time and a moment in your childhood that kind of put you on the path to the person that you are today?
Paul Ebert (01:59.566)
So I grew up in Germany. And when I say Germany, it’s probably the middle of the land. And then the closest city would probably be Frankfurt. So that’s probably best known for its airport and its football team Eintracht. But I grew up 50 kilometers outside of that. And not a town, but a village. So think of a village of 200 people, 100 houses surrounded by little like hills and forest and a couple of fields. So that would be…
Andy & Chris (02:09.259)
Okay
Andy & Chris (02:23.89)
wow.
very small. Yeah, flip.
Paul Ebert (02:29.454)
That would be me growing up. what exactly, so I think the first thing that teaches you independence is that by the age of three or four, you just sort of like walk down to the bus stop and you get to the public community transport service and you take your ride to the town where there would be the nursery or then the primary school. And that’s what I did until I was 18. So that didn’t really change.
Andy & Chris (02:33.459)
How far you have to get to school, Paul?
Paul Ebert (02:56.524)
I remember it’s really interesting because I live now in London, so southwest London around the Wandsworth Clapham area. The idea for me to imagine that my daughter at the same age of three would walk down the road and get onto the public bus and drive four or five kilometres like I would is not really on the radar.
Andy & Chris (03:09.343)
Mmm.
Mmm.
I was going say, did you do that on your own? You actually genuinely, it’s not like your mum walked with it. You actually walked down to the bus stop, got on it.
Paul Ebert (03:20.334)
Yeah, no, you walk down and yeah, it was like five, 600 meters. and, it was so safe. mean, like, and, and obviously you would know you would, you would imagine that in winter when it’s sort of like, you know, you would do that at eight. So sometimes it would still be dark. but also I think from age of five or six at the latest, you, that the way it would work. And I think this was for most of my school life. It’s like you come home, you’ve been served food or you cook for yourself then. And at one point, once you’re old enough,
Andy & Chris (03:36.532)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (03:49.538)
but you basically do your homework and you leave. So that was other thing that was really useful. For some reason, my parents managed to those sort of like necessary evils into me of just having to do my homework and after that I was free. And so I would usually do my homework.
Andy & Chris (03:59.263)
Mm.
I suppose the thing is Paul, yeah, but we only know our own environment. I did in London all my life, so it sounds bizarre. But for you, that’s your village, that’s where your parents live, that’s the environment you know. So it’s just normal, isn’t it? Yeah, it sounds extraordinary when you replay that story now, but I guess that was just normal life.
Paul Ebert (04:22.248)
I think so. mean, like there were a bunch of other kids, so wasn’t like I was the only one. I mean, like you would just all meet on the way down to the bus stop. You would basically pick up your friends and then you walk together and then you do the same. So it’s literally, and I happened to be the last house in the village. So that would always be, you know, a thing. But in my street, there were already five, six other kids that I could go down to school with. And my brother would often go with me, so you don’t end up being alone. So I think it helped a lot having an older brother. And so in my childhood,
Andy & Chris (04:27.283)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (04:34.148)
Hmm
Andy & Chris (04:46.356)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (04:51.576)
just don’t think that too much pointed towards what I’m doing now, except maybe the day that I broke my upper front tooth during hockey and the dentist didn’t notice that the root was severed. And so what then happened is that she just put it on and I got an inflammation and then the infection eat through my top jaw. I realized there’s value in having a good dentist. And I ran around
Andy & Chris (04:55.605)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (05:18.534)
Nice.
Paul Ebert (05:22.058)
all my teenage life with this tooth being black or gray. So you can imagine I was supremely popular with the girls because of that sort of like cunning smile. I’d like to think that it was my smile that sort of like made that journey a bit harder on me than it needed to be, but I think it was probably more my character that I’m just quite a provocative guy. So, or maybe it was just the hair. I don’t know, but look, I can tell you it feels good to be a grownup.
Andy & Chris (05:27.967)
Nice.
Andy & Chris (05:40.427)
You tell whatever story you need to pull whatever story works for you Yeah flip so what did you steal after school then in a small village was it so like you do your homework then go I’m playing a field
Paul Ebert (05:56.446)
You’d play football, you’d ride a bike, you’d a dam, sometimes to the disliking of the local farmer, if you were bit overly ambitious, then you would flood their fields. You would build tree houses, I think that would have… If I divided my time between tree house, football and biking, things that you can do locally in the village, that would probably be a quite fair split. And then in winter, you’d go ice skating because the lake would freeze over.
Andy & Chris (06:04.937)
Excellent.
Andy & Chris (06:18.26)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (06:21.887)
Did it sn… it’s gonna ask.
Paul Ebert (06:25.848)
You’d go sledge riding because we’d have eight weeks of snow and ice in winter. That’s no longer the case. But I really loved it. Just being as independent and wild as a child can be. So I really enjoyed it. I liked it.
Andy & Chris (06:32.395)
That’s interesting.
Andy & Chris (06:38.047)
Wow. almost feels, this isn’t meant how it might sound, but you know, like one of those idyllic Disney movies where, know, the kids throwing snowballs and getting in front of the fire, then going ice-skating. It’s interesting because you’re obviously not that old. Well, either that or you look really good. So this wasn’t that many years ago, but this is a bit like an old…
British childhood does that make sense? You know, it sounds kind of not quite a Victorian but it’s yes the year in terms of how Somebody of a similar age in England. Yeah, I sort of think I’m obviously much older than poor but I sort of think to myself Yeah, you know we used to do a homework then go on our bikes and disappear and then
you sort of come back being like a home impedeon or your parents have come and find you. Whereas I think nowadays a lot of kids don’t do that. It’s funny hearing your story Paul you say I don’t think there was much that kind of influence what I do now but I’m hearing massive independence you know massive free thinking having to kind of find your own way. find your own fun and enjoyment. So like I say I think there’s probably quite a lot of the things in there that might not necessarily
You’ve necessarily stood out but lots of people in different environments wouldn’t have got got that sort of exposure So how did you did you find adjusting to city life quite straightforward or was that quite challenging to start with when you were so what was your journey so you left your village in in Germany, where did you then next? you go to uni? I see
Paul Ebert (08:11.438)
Yeah. So that German story would have probably been late 80s, early 90s. then beginning 2000s, he would start to go towards the end of the school. So A-level equivalent was then early 2000s, university from 2004 to 2007. And I just followed my brother. So he was the taller, smarter version of me. And so I just figured, look, what’s good for you can’t be too bad for me. And so I just…
Andy & Chris (08:18.72)
But.
Andy & Chris (08:39.295)
When did you go to university, Paul?
Paul Ebert (08:40.91)
I went to a university, surprisingly not far from home, but that was focused on business, was called European Business School. I think it’s now fallen from fame. Back then it was actually quite useful because we would, at the time when I graduated, we would send more people into investment banking in London, Oxford and Cambridge. So was a really small university with 150 to 200 graduates per year, but 50 of us would start at Goldman to Credit Suisse.
And so it was really funny. So we were the top recruiting school in Europe into investment banking and it was similar to consulting. So it was a small school, really focused on business and heavily leaning on the consulting and investment banking boom. And so my brother got a job in London and then I was still trying to figure out whether I want to graduate from university or enjoy my student life in Buenos Aires because I spent some time abroad there. But then my parents cut the…
Andy & Chris (09:11.381)
Buena.
Andy & Chris (09:19.633)
Mmm. Mmm.
Paul Ebert (09:38.252)
pocket money and then it was going a bit harder in Buenos Aires. So I figured maybe I can have fun in London and have a job. because this was pre-Liemann, know, anyone that wanted a job pretty much could get a job in banking. And so they gave me one and then I followed my brother to London. And I loved London. I loved the big cities like, because you don’t have anything like this in Germany. If you think about Berlin nowadays, yeah, probably. But in the 2000s, really like
Andy & Chris (09:48.594)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (09:52.244)
Mm.
Andy & Chris (10:02.293)
Mmm. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (10:07.16)
Berlin was big then, but it wasn’t as vibrant as London was at the time. London was really the capital of the world in terms of being international and fun.
Andy & Chris (10:14.75)
Yeah. And did you immediately adjust easily to that world? Because it just seems what you described as your childhood, I can see that it might be quite overwhelming coming to a city that has kind of 12 to 15 million people passing through it every day.
Paul Ebert (10:30.958)
think I had a great teacher in literature that made me curious about, it was like, whatever, was 14 to 18, I had the same teacher in literature. And he just made me curious in finding things out. And at the time for me, it just seemed like, these are just people like you and me that just happened to pursue this crazy vision of capitalism to the extreme. And so I thought that part is actually really interesting because when you’re on a trading floor in a London investment bank, you have these guys making crazy amounts of money and behaving like,
Andy & Chris (10:34.283)
Bye.
Andy & Chris (10:47.955)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (11:02.138)
They did, you know, well documented now. And that for a young person was really interesting. seriously, it’s really, you could totally note some of those behaviors, maybe not quite. I think it’s dramatized, I would call it. But that was just fun. So if you were curious mind, this was great. then it was just like you talk to really smart people. So the money attracted a lot of smart people as well.
Andy & Chris (11:05.131)
The wolf of Wall Street.
Andy & Chris (11:16.928)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (11:24.509)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (11:31.424)
And so if you’re a young person and you have the privilege to work with a lot of smart people, that’s great. And they were very demanding and that felt a bit like in sport, you know, you just have to try your best and compete with, with the fellow bench people there. And that was all right. So, so I didn’t feel it too strange and I had my brother, so that was okay.
Andy & Chris (11:31.572)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (11:44.295)
Mmm.
Andy & Chris (11:51.204)
And they played hard, I’d imagine, so that was quite fun, isn’t it, as well?
Paul Ebert (11:55.128)
yes, I would definitely say so. managed to place my bonus on London club scene very quickly before even earning it. And I really enjoyed it. It was great. And I think I once got even confused. I still don’t know how and why, but I came out of a London club and then they ushered me into the back of a limousine and then the driver realized, you’re not Harry. So they just saw like a ginger glow and just thought I was Prince Harry at the time, which clearly, you know.
Andy & Chris (12:05.93)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (12:22.539)
Excellent, excellent.
Paul Ebert (12:24.46)
Yeah, excellent, excellent. so that I think then, once that happened, I was like, okay, I fucking love the city. mean, like, it’s an asset to be a ginger and not a liability. So I’m like, this town is my game, you know, so I think that was really brilliant.
Andy & Chris (12:31.324)
Hahaha
Yeah, yeah.
This town welcomes gingers I mean So you’re squeeze but you say that you’re segue into dentistry We were talking before we started and you you credit Laurel Bowden from 83 north and the London base
Paul Ebert (12:42.51)
Totally. You’re not being ostracized. For someone like me, this was a really nice break.
Andy & Chris (13:05.759)
venture capital firm as kind of pointing you towards dentistry. What was the story behind that?
Paul Ebert (13:05.922)
Yes, that that’s right.
So I left the work or the jobs in investment banking in about 2013. So I hung in there through Lehman crisis and then the Southern Europe debt crisis. That was good. But I realized maybe this is not going to grow anymore. judging where credit switch went 10 years later, I probably had a good foresight on where things might go and whether they had a management problem on really sorting out legacy stuff.
Andy & Chris (13:20.115)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (13:28.789)
Hmm.
Yeah, wise move.
Paul Ebert (13:40.812)
and always wanted to do an MBA. And then I went to a place outside Paris and Singapore at INSEAD. And there I met so many interesting people that were so courageous in what they did that I figured, you know what, maybe I can do something other than corporate. And so I came out of that year deciding that I want to go into something where there’s higher growth or where I might be more in charge. And I joined Rocket Internet.
Andy & Chris (14:07.295)
Yep.
Paul Ebert (14:10.142)
in Berlin for a startup clone of Funding Circle. Really loved working with owner led businesses. Then I went to restructuring and turned out that restructurings are terrible because you’re really unpopular if you’re the guy making people let go. Surprise. And I decided I want to stay in startups. And so when I was thinking maybe I want to be a chief financial officer, chief commercial officer in a startup, it turned out that these guys just wouldn’t give me the job.
Andy & Chris (14:37.245)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (14:39.672)
And then I was talking to the founders and I thought like, you what, you’re actually not much smarter than me. You probably even have less experience than me. And you probably understand financial regulation.
Andy & Chris (14:48.137)
I was going to say my sense is that you are too similar. You would have been a challenge for somebody like that.
Paul Ebert (14:52.79)
Yeah, exactly. And so, okay, if they don’t give me the job that I want, then I figured I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t have children at the time. So I might as well give it a go and try something myself. And so it was just poking around. So my wife bought me Nike running shoes in Brazil that she could spit over installments right there in the card reader. And I was just sort of what interest free on the card reader? Why doesn’t it happen in Europe? And then, and then so then I said like, okay, well,
Andy & Chris (15:17.543)
I will.
Paul Ebert (15:20.814)
50 % of people in South America, Mexico, Israel, they all pay in installments interest free. And so it’s like a dominant payment method. And so I was like, well, why is it?
Andy & Chris (15:30.016)
So when you’re in the store when you’re in the store to buy your trainers you tap your card But that’s only the first payment and then the other payments are scheduled to come out over a period of time
Paul Ebert (15:38.988)
Yeah. And so for me, was mind blowing. And I said, like, how does this work? And then my wife said, well, when MasterCard and VisaCard arrived to Brazil, we already were using forward data checks. So the way of paying in installments was already embedded even before they were credit cards. And I was like, wow. And then she said, then they obviously built a shared network, an IT system, where the card reading machine can talk to the card issuer system as well.
Andy & Chris (15:40.98)
Wow.
Andy & Chris (15:58.003)
Yeah flip.
Andy & Chris (16:01.885)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (16:05.826)
and could figure out, you have available balance and could adjust it. And so I realized in that moment, well, if it’s so easy to get credit and if it’s no cost to pain installments, then no wonder adoption should go up. And then I looked at problems and obstacles why this doesn’t happen in Europe. And at the time there was Hitachi and V12, those were the players. Surebrook was backing some others, but in Europe and it was the UK was…
Andy & Chris (16:06.527)
Wow.
Andy & Chris (16:28.255)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (16:35.406)
the avant-garde of the world. the Americans hadn’t even discovered this idea. So the British already had it because they liked credit cards in continental Europe. wasn’t really their retail finance. then I looked at how the process works and I was like, gosh, this just looks like as if I go to a bank branch and fill out a manual paper form. so for me, it was the idea then, well, maybe I can bring a Zopa-like process.
Andy & Chris (17:01.311)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (17:01.902)
area simple thing to to retail finance and make it easier remove the paper stuff that the practices had to do. And Laurel pointed me towards healthcare. So Laurel from 83 North, I thought I’m going to go into home improvement. And she said, like, look, these people are going to go bust all the time. And when you do retail finance, it’s actually, you won’t have a problem with home improvement with the consumers, because they’re homeowners. So they’re probably as good credit as it gets. But the people that will
Andy & Chris (17:12.682)
Right.
Paul Ebert (17:30.91)
cause trouble are that the tradesmen don’t do the same quality of work that they promised and then you have a consumer that probably wants to not pay and then when you go after the Vendor so so that like the the tradesmen and suddenly the tradesmen isn’t there anymore and so then you make more losses on on the side of the business that’s providing the service or the good then you actually make on the consumer side and so she said in healthcare this shouldn’t be the case and that’s how I then
Andy & Chris (17:46.94)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (17:59.094)
of like being pointed in direction of healthcare and then know dentists were on the high street so you could walk in and that’s how the journey started. was just some so seeing things in Brazil, thinking what people use it in the UK and is there strong competition and the competition was sublime. I I managed to speak to the COOs, so the people running the day-to-day of the business of most of our competitors and they were so blissfully confident that they would share all their problems with me.
So for us, one of the things that we wanted to do, you could just write them down in a case study because they would tell you what are the problems where they think their business could be automated, but they never really were bothered to invest in technology because it was needed. And so I was like, this is really cool because they already tell me what you can automate and where there will be value for the operations to automate it and where the consumer and the practice would find it really attractive.
Andy & Chris (18:33.023)
Wow.
Paul Ebert (18:51.788)
And so all I did was listening to people already in the business and copying what people were doing somewhere else, making it easy and more straightforward, I suppose, in digital.
Andy & Chris (18:52.171)
Mm.
Andy & Chris (19:02.402)
I’m intrigued, Paul, why the payment systems in Brazil
were designed in a way where you can tap and schedule that. And is it the wealth of the population? Is it that they are more accustomed to pay for relatively low value items in that style? I mean, we’ve now got Klarna. I guess you can kind of get credit on Klarna for lots of relatively low value items. But that system of scheduling across a credit card hasn’t hit the UK. Is there a place for it over here or are we just not designed like that?
as a society.
Paul Ebert (19:40.824)
So when you look at Brazil, and that’s probably, there are a couple of other countries out there, but I think Brazil is, in the fintech world, is quite well recognized as an innovation leader. You’ve got Nubank there now. And in Brazil, the population is very keen to adopt things that are innovative, making payments more secure or lower cost, or making things more accessible for them. And that’s because it’s a country that is largely developing country.
and where crime rates are high. So if you told someone it’s better to pay by cards because you don’t get mugged at the street corner as a street vendor, that person will probably adopt a cart. And so that really is a powerful impetus for then banks in that market to invest in technology. Because if technology is better for consumers and makes their system safer, faster, cheaper, then there is a real nice return on investment. If you look at Europe,
We still have bank branches and in Germany, my parents still go and fill out the transfer forms nowadays, whereas here in England, people would use their online banking app. so, this is in disadvantage.
Andy & Chris (20:39.839)
Hmm.
Sure. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (20:49.104)
It’s very interesting, it’s driven by personal safety, isn’t it? That sounds like personal safety is a big part of it,
Paul Ebert (20:53.434)
It was based on benefit, personal benefit. Personal benefit is a key driver. And then you have only four or five banks that had a large enough and under-penetrated market so that they didn’t see so much benefit of buying other banks. So when you look at the UK or even the US or Europe, many banks are groups of different divisions in different countries, banks bought together and kind of tied up.
Andy & Chris (21:08.565)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (21:20.782)
But it doesn’t mean that the IT is tied up. And so if you then try to roll out any IT change over these countries and different divisions, it’s really, really hard. And that is now multiplied because today when you think of the Visa and MasterCard network, God, how many banks do we have in Europe? 5,000 in the US, a couple of thousands as well. So if you want to standardize something as a Visa or MasterCard for a payment network, you need to do all that. And I just always said, look,
Andy & Chris (21:23.423)
Hmm
Andy & Chris (21:30.686)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (21:39.817)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Ebert (21:49.57)
Royal Bank of Scotland sold World Pay. HSBC, I think, got rid of First Starter. And so the major trend in the late 2000s in Europe was to get rid of card acquiring services as a bank. And it was better to be spun off as an independent business. And these are big businesses themselves still, the other acquiring. In Europe, you’d find that most of the big payments providers, and there’s even a category of payments providers, are these old acquiring companies like Ingenio.
Andy & Chris (22:02.603)
Mm.
Yeah
Paul Ebert (22:18.478)
And whatnot and so in Brazil, you don’t have those it’s basically the acquirers are the banks as well as the issuers of the cards And so I think that that part really means I don’t think we’ll have the same environment in Europe or the US for a long time and Klana is kind of one of the first banks built in that ethos in Europe because they’re a bank they issue their cards even if they work with technology providers, but it’s fundamentally their cards and they do the credit so they’re
Andy & Chris (22:22.258)
okay. It’s just the bank, just the banking system, yeah.
Andy & Chris (22:31.477)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (22:47.52)
similar in that direction and in the US, I think the first real innovator and credit card would have been Capital One. So Capital One was the first one in the 90s really shaking it up with better pricing and a different model of doing things. And they were extremely successful in doing that. And then on the back of that, because in the US you had so much competition, Amex, Citi, JP Morgan, Bank of America, all of these big players.
Andy & Chris (22:55.944)
Mm. Mm.
Paul Ebert (23:16.428)
have developed a really good game of credit cards. So in the US, I think one of the challenges for the adoption of retail finance is that credit cards are just so popular. in Europe, they are much less popular or much less being used. mean, the credit lines as credit lines in the UK a little bit, but most people in the UK don’t use credit cards in the way that Americans use credit cards.
Andy & Chris (23:26.601)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (23:39.947)
That’s interesting, isn’t it? I suppose, yeah, you use a credit card, you don’t need it.
For me what’s good to hear is I guess you get caught in your own little local world and when you travel to another country you still adopt your preferred payment system. So you go away you still use your car but you don’t necessarily get caught within that environment as somebody that’s living within their structure which is quite interesting. So it was literally this situation in Buenos Aires that sparked this idea of you could come up
Paul Ebert (24:12.526)
I know Brazil, would have been Brazil in Sao Paulo in 2014. So 2014, 2015.
Andy & Chris (24:13.993)
with, sorry, right. And that was the thing that sparked the idea of I wonder if, and then obviously the connection in pointing you in the direction of dentistry, and that’s what put you on this path to create Tabio.
Paul Ebert (24:29.698)
And then what I loved about dentists is that they’re owner led businesses. it’s, yes, there’s some private equity groups buying it up, but that’s really nice way because you have a way of regulating the market with the GDC as a kind of the first layer, right? Then you need to be qualified as a dentist to be even admitted to the GDC. So there are high barriers of entry. And that means then that the level of professionalism
Andy & Chris (24:34.846)
Mm-hmm.
Andy & Chris (24:53.952)
Mmm. Mmm.
Paul Ebert (24:58.166)
in that community of business owners is more homogenous and tends to be quite high. It doesn’t mean that there could be some, but the standards are quite high. And if you then throw in this thing of private equity consolidators, it also means that if you do things in a certain more standardized way, either technology or process-wise, and you can document it, then you can sell your business. And what this created, I think it’s not to be underestimated, is a really healthy environment.
Andy & Chris (25:00.627)
Hmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (25:17.567)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (25:22.367)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (25:26.978)
where business owners have an exit option. Because many small business owners never have the option to sell their business. But what this did, it really meant that closing your business and shutting it down came at a very high opportunity cost. So if something went wrong, you’re just throwing things away and not fixing the patient. First, clinically, you probably don’t want to do this, but financially, there was also a strong disincentive to doing that. And this is why you probably have a finest dental.
Andy & Chris (25:33.087)
Yeah. That’s right.
Andy & Chris (25:46.144)
Mm.
Andy & Chris (25:52.946)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (25:56.622)
happening as a really rare exception compared to home improvement to illustrate why we started to like dentistry and then dentists relative to let’s say vets or opticians are not as consolidated. So the consolidation in the veterinarian optical market is massively advanced. It’s really huge in optical and hearing aid is like 80%. Top five, top six change.
Andy & Chris (26:17.435)
greater.
Paul Ebert (26:23.534)
In veterinary, you’re probably 50-60 % in the consolidation. And at the time when we launched in dentistry, was like 10-20%. And it was that point that I realized, if we can manage to sell and sign people up for our service, probably not many other startups would go after this niche, because it’s quite hard selling to dentists if you’re a cloner. And as a cloner, you’re probably more interested in signing an agreement with Nike.
Andy & Chris (26:32.0)
Mm.
Andy & Chris (26:44.509)
Hmm
Paul Ebert (26:50.21)
you know, frequent low tickets of a big brand that can go global and you start in the UK, but then you expand to different countries with that same brand. What’s game of going after dentists or primary care more generally or health care services? And so when we realized this, we’re like, OK, so we learn to sell our competitors that are the big innovators are probably not going to go into our sector because they they do think it requires a specialist.
Andy & Chris (26:51.327)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (26:56.981)
Mm. Mm.
Andy & Chris (27:03.733)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (27:18.466)
They also don’t know how to distribute. risk management and distribution was a tricky part for them in dentistry. And then we felt, okay, is this market big enough? And it’s really fascinating when we…
Andy & Chris (27:19.732)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (27:35.034)
When we set out to do finance and dentistry, think the market had an annual volume of 50 or 60 million. And the incumbents thought, this is never going to grow. This is never going to go anywhere. It’s never going to be more than X what runs to dental practices. And fast forward, I’d reckon you have almost 500 million.
Andy & Chris (27:52.969)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (28:01.934)
happening in dentistry nowadays and finance per annum across the different providers. So they were wrong by a factor of eight to 10. And that was really exciting to realize they really didn’t see it. So even our competition that was already there didn’t feel like there was a merit of worrying about tabio because they thought they’re going to default, no one else is going to give them money. But then we were cursed to bootstrap for most part. So we raised a little bit money from angels, but ultimately we bootstrapped.
Andy & Chris (28:03.776)
Wow.
Andy & Chris (28:07.359)
10x yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy & Chris (28:13.68)
Mmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (28:21.717)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (28:31.246)
And that drove efficiency. And then from the first 100 vendors, so the first 100 practices that we acquired in 2018, we got so many referrals because they liked our product. They didn’t see the other practice down the road, like two miles down as a competition because it was a local catchment area and therefore it would be good to just share with them, hey, here’s this new tool, why don’t you use it? And we loved that. think we, for three years, 60, 70 % of our
Andy & Chris (28:34.187)
Mm-hmm.
Andy & Chris (28:41.513)
Hmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (28:52.773)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (28:59.63)
registrations were driven by word of mouth because we had a good service, we had a good product and that made scaling like a growing market share quite, quite effective. And, and funny enough, think one of the big wins for us was to discover in Visa lines, Dr. Finder, because we realized what if you look at dentists who are a bit more innovative and back in 1819, know, the diamond.
Andy & Chris (29:10.676)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (29:19.435)
Bye.
Paul Ebert (29:27.8)
gold or platinum providers of Invisalign were still quite rare. But these unicorns were also interesting because they were quite, they were a strong indicator of probably well-run business that is really keen about growing private and for whom because of the product and the patients that it serves, they probably need finance more than others. And so we started going after those. And that was great. And then they started referring us to their friends in the next town. It was also a top provider.
Andy & Chris (29:28.991)
Yeah, yeah.
Andy & Chris (29:38.507)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (29:41.789)
Yeah, definitely.
Andy & Chris (29:48.01)
Hmm
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (29:55.209)
Mmm. Yeah. Mmm. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (29:57.326)
And in doing so, we just now have grown to, I reckon this year we’ll end up with six and a half thousand dental practices that have signed up. So we keep adding to this. We don’t have my dentist yet. We don’t have Bupa yet. We don’t have Portman. So I hope eventually I’ll win them and then we’ll have 8,000. But I’m forever grateful that this theme of that we’re an innovative brand that does finance refreshingly different and simpler, most importantly.
Andy & Chris (30:06.985)
Wow. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (30:15.967)
Hahaha
Paul Ebert (30:27.631)
sticks and then it keeps giving to us. It keeps us honest as well, but I really like it.
Andy & Chris (30:29.216)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (30:33.381)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. You were saying Paul about you described dentistry, know, it’s regulated, you’ve got a professional body, professional people.
qualified to a higher degree, so they’re intelligent people and nice to work with. And I guess that transcends across all of healthcare, which is your market, not just dentistry. Are there differences in dentistry and how they approach finance into their business compared to some other healthcare providers? Are they quite front foot and advanced compared to others, or are there things that we can learn from other sectors? They’re behind. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (31:10.638)
So when I think of health care, I’d say that our focus is exclusively on primary care. And primary care is GP, pharmacy, dentist, vet, optician, audiologist. And the interesting thing about primary care is that you can just walk in. You don’t need a referral from the GP. I mean, the GP goes without saying, but the dentist serves a local community and you can walk in. And the fascinating part is that dentists, unlike any of their peers,
Andy & Chris (31:17.514)
But.
Andy & Chris (31:34.77)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (31:40.942)
in primary care serve an extremely wide span or range of prices. So you can get your checkup done for 60 to 100 quid, or you can get, you know, implants placed for in the thousands. And as a result, if you combine this with the fact that they serve a local community, they accept a multitude of payment options. But it’s very fortunate that apart from NHS, insurance is almost not present.
Andy & Chris (31:51.871)
Mm-hmm.
Paul Ebert (32:10.83)
So one of the reasons why dentists adopt finance more than vets, because they would be quite similar so far, is that there is no health insurance for teeth, whereas there is health insurance for pets. And so if I was to describe the obstacles that we faced in veterinary, it would be that the number one way to finance or pay for bigger treatments would be pet insurance. And then there’s also the convenient option, sounds horrible.
Andy & Chris (32:11.73)
Mmm, yeah.
Andy & Chris (32:24.426)
your pet.
Paul Ebert (32:41.462)
If someone really can’t afford the pet, then it’s just put asleep. And that costs very little money. In dentistry, the option is to just pull your teeth and it’s done. This having to kill an animal if you can’t treat it because you have to put it out of pain is one of the top burnout reasons in veterinary. And I find it horrible. But ultimately, it’s the pet parent making a decision or owner in this case that it just doesn’t work out for them.
Andy & Chris (32:44.883)
Hmm. Hmm. That’s true.
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (33:00.445)
No.
Andy & Chris (33:07.145)
Yeah,
Paul Ebert (33:11.19)
So then that’s where it ends. in dentistry, because it’s your own teeth, that fruit keeps on giving to you if you’re doing it. so dentists will eventually sell you the implant. If you don’t need it now, maybe five years later, you had a thick of it, and eventually you do it.
Andy & Chris (33:16.644)
Yeah. I’m… Yeah.
Andy & Chris (33:26.429)
It’s coming. It’s coming. I’m interested Paul in what you mentioned pharmacy. What things do people finance in pharmacy? right. There we go. Yeah. Okay.
Paul Ebert (33:35.854)
nothing and that’s exactly why we wouldn’t go there. So we decided not to do GPs because they’re two small tickets. Pharmacy, the fanciest thing you’d find there is whatever an expensive vaccination. Yeah, or something like that. So that’s why, that’s why, and there everyone accepts parts and then they have the NHS processing part. So if you look at pharmacy payments, it’s cards and NHS billing. That’s what it does. And then the GP, it’s, I don’t know, it’s supposed to be 95 % NHS billing.
Andy & Chris (33:42.399)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (33:51.825)
cool. Right, okay.
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (33:59.55)
Right.
Paul Ebert (34:05.112)
but in veterinary and in optical and in dentistry, the self-pay part is really big.
Andy & Chris (34:05.321)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mmm, right. Yeah, the or geology bits quite big as well as I’ve seen. Yeah, Those new hearing aids only because one of my friends has gone and really expensive. They’re not true
Paul Ebert (34:23.096)
So hearing aids could be a big one, but I think the challenge that you have there is also that you want to, if you were to see adoption across hearing aids in a similar scale to dentistry, then you will face the challenge that the majority of shops are now owned by corporates. And so driving change doesn’t necessarily benefit so hard, even in this kind of joint venture models that, you know, the different brands will do.
Andy & Chris (34:46.441)
Mmm.
Andy & Chris (34:50.664)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (34:52.502)
it’s much harder getting people to do things. And because they’ve made a lot of money, then making them suddenly make some more money by introducing a higher cost payment method isn’t so straightforward. Whereas in dentistry, it’s literally the owner deciding I want it. And then the independence dentist will set the benchmark for the groups. And I think the only group of note, or what is the only group, but a big group that has flipped this around over the years since we’ve been running.
Andy & Chris (34:53.991)
Mm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (35:03.016)
Right.
Andy & Chris (35:10.676)
But yeah.
Paul Ebert (35:20.686)
It’s my dentist. So my dentist, I think, is now one of the leaders when it comes to implementing technology and payment methods. And they’re really championing that phenomenally well. This is looking from afar, so we’re not working with them. what we see is we’re like, they’re implementing things in a similar way of how we see successful independent practices implementing things with the challenge that.
Andy & Chris (35:36.543)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (35:41.65)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (35:44.214)
It won’t work in every practice of my dentist, but they’re generally speaking quite successful in that. But independent owners in our mind are the best partners for business and dentistry just because they have the decision power. They have the team and they’d see it through and the whole team has ownership. Often when dentists have built their business, it’s a really cool team, like a football team, you know, that’s been playing together. They might not look like the strongest team on the pitch for numbers, but together they’re like, they really have it.
Andy & Chris (35:46.656)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (35:55.167)
Yeah.
Yes.
Andy & Chris (36:12.154)
It’s powerful. It’s a powerful force. To make good decisions when lending money, you need data.
Paul Ebert (36:13.174)
and it’s really joyful to work with them.
Andy & Chris (36:19.807)
and guess a modern day finance business like yours relies very heavily on the data that’s produced. Is there any opportunity for dental practices to benefit and improve their own performance based on some of the data you’re collecting? Is that something that is purely just beneficial for you as a finance company? Or is there something at some point that could be reversed back into the profession?
Paul Ebert (36:43.544)
So.
Paul Ebert (36:47.094)
If you look at the UK population, and that might be in the US, it’s I think quite similar, and probably Germany, those are the three big markets that come to my mind, you have good credit bureau data. And therefore the credit bureau data will be the dominant factor in making a credit decision. You then have an overlay of certain regulation, for example the FCA insists for now about seven or eight years that affordability is very important and that could mean that you’d
check what someone’s income is, or it could mean that you check what the income is and then calculate whether you think they can afford the monthly payments for the installment plan put forward. So in the US, I don’t think you have that requirement. So you don’t have affordability as you have it in the UK. mean, in Germany, I don’t think you have it either. so as a consequence, you would think that most dental practices
Andy & Chris (37:25.556)
Mm-hmm.
Andy & Chris (37:40.98)
interesting.
Paul Ebert (37:45.75)
just have a mix of demographic and credit scores that depends on where they are based. So, and then you can just look at the distribution of credit scores around the country. So if you think of a dentist offering finance in Blackpool, probably makes a lot of sense because it’s a lower income area. But the problem is that that dentist will probably have a approval rate than the dentists on Harley Street, purely because the Harley Street itself is a bit unique because it gets so much catchment area.
Andy & Chris (37:50.047)
Hmm. Hmm.
Andy & Chris (38:06.997)
Hmm. Yeah. The client basin.
Paul Ebert (38:15.406)
So if I was to say the dentist in Bournemouth, they probably have a higher approval rate than the dental practice in Blackpools. And it’s more a function of where you are and whether it’s an affluent area or not, because all things equal income and higher average age for the treatment will result in a better credit score. And when I look at approval rates, I’d clearly love 100%, right?
So I’d love 100 % approval rate because it would make so much sense to offer something and knowing that the patient is always going to be accepted. This has been, I think, moving a little bit up and down. But right now, probably 70 to 80 % approval rate is where most practices can operate. It’s the same of the wider average across the market. And we think that…
Andy & Chris (39:07.179)
Bye.
Paul Ebert (39:13.582)
There’s a set of practices that are very focused on private and know their customers well. They will even extend credit when the financing partner will decline it. So let’s say you pay one and a half thousand upfront for your visa line and then you pay 500 when you get the aligners, a thousand after three months and another thousand or whatever as and when. so, and sometimes this is even a substitute. So for example, if you think of orthodontists, orthodontists have always just
Andy & Chris (39:24.085)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (39:34.399)
Mmm.
Paul Ebert (39:42.594)
taking installments because you come every four weeks to tighten those wires and brackets. And then it makes perfect sense to be spreading the costs over time because why would you charge someone upfront if you go and see them every four to six weeks? And I think implants and in visa line increased the need for finance in the market because you suddenly didn’t see people as much anymore. And it was a big enough market that everybody wanted to share from. And they realized not everybody can pay. So whether data can really
Andy & Chris (39:43.923)
Mmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (39:54.291)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (40:01.599)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (40:11.938)
help you learn something, my short answer would be no. And you totally have to work with an outside party. Because if you don’t, it’s just a huge effort. mean, for us to integrate with two different data credit bureaus is really simple. But for us to then to also get the money upfront, so that the benefit of good credits data is probably that you if you scale, so if you become big enough, you can get your own funding, and then you have a track record. And so one thing that
Andy & Chris (40:23.125)
Mm.
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (40:31.625)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (40:38.091)
Mm. Mm.
Paul Ebert (40:41.07)
We have certainly done for the trade because we were with the only show in town that has its own funding line of the scale of what we have. And that is de facto an indication that dentistry UK, that’s how far I would scope. Private dentistry UK has now its own access to capital markets by virtue of Tabeo because when we go for refinancing, we’ll get 20 people wanting to.
Andy & Chris (40:49.798)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (40:59.028)
Mm. Mm.
Paul Ebert (41:10.414)
do the funding and you know, maybe five or six people will be joining the queue handing out the term sheet. So similar to, you know, dentists wanting to sell. And that’s because people see, uh-huh, it’s a very granular book, you know, two to 4,000 to 5,000 pound loans. They have relatively short terms. People perform, people behave, people repay. And then you have investors that say, I want a slice of that, you know, whether that is SecureTrust who’s doing this through V12.
Andy & Chris (41:15.741)
Hmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (41:27.723)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (41:30.933)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (41:40.236)
or whether Nobunaga or Fumale Hitachi does that with a little bit, but they all did that as part of a bigger play. Tadmeo is the only one that is exclusively dentist.
Andy & Chris (41:47.451)
That’s a really positive story for dentistry, isn’t it? The fact that, you’re the provider, but the fact that there’s people sitting behind you who see dentistry as being a market, they want to deploy their capital in. Especially after the finest dental disaster. Yes.
Paul Ebert (42:03.138)
But that’s the thing. I think the really important thing is to understand what were the unique factors about finest dental and to understand how can you underwrite a practice. So trying to understand is the owner going to behave in a certain way? How can you avoid concentration risk? in our case, we worked with Smile Direct Club and we worked with them to the last day. And I think it’s…
We saw it coming maybe 15, 18 months before it went bust. So we started having serious conversations with them in December, 2022. So a year before they actually started to shut down the UK operations. so they were our biggest client. And naturally, if someone brings you the biggest risk, you want to be most close to them and understanding how it works. Help that they were a public company.
Andy & Chris (42:55.647)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (42:57.742)
So hence they produce data more frequently. It helped that they had a very cloud-based operations so they could share case level data. And so we’ve now processed 10,000 complaints, but we had a full copy of the CRM data to basically respond. you know, Andy, if you came to us and said, I’m not happy with my line or to inform smile direct club, then we’d be able to look up, right, this is your email. I can see you in the database. I can see you’ve completed your cases 12 months before the default.
Andy & Chris (43:05.044)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (43:26.818)
And then we’d say, sorry, Andy, we can’t give you a refund because you actually completed it or you’re no longer covered by the guarantee. And so I think in that way.
Andy & Chris (43:29.236)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (43:34.954)
And I bet there were a of people trying that night. They thought, well, there might be a way that I could get my money back here. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (43:40.174)
Why wouldn’t you? Because if a lender doesn’t have the data, then the UK regulation begs you to actually take them to the FOSS. And so in my mind, the way I view risk in dentistry, I’d say on average, you will lose probably twice as much on the practice, providing the service going out of business, then you would lose on the consumer piece. And that’s why I think for us, the stability of the market
Andy & Chris (43:48.637)
Mmm
Paul Ebert (44:08.908)
So making dentists more profitable, making them making more revenue per site so they can cover more fixed costs, making them more focused on private so they can attract more dentists. So making them more successful and thriving businesses is one of the best defenses that TABIO can run. And so one of the things that we will do is we will, where we find someone that we think we’re worried, we even, when they come to us, we will even call the current provider and tell them you might want to drop them.
Andy & Chris (44:15.071)
Mm-hmm.
Andy & Chris (44:25.437)
It reduces your risk.
Paul Ebert (44:39.394)
Because we would be worried that this, because if Hitachi or WUNA or SecureTrust suddenly would incur a big loss like Finest Dental again, that feeds back into the market, right? And so…
Andy & Chris (44:52.779)
affects the market doesn’t it? confidence, yeah. That ripple in the pond, those concentric circles go out.
Paul Ebert (44:59.832)
Calling out foul apples is really important. You have to to pick people where you think there’s something off. And therefore it’s really important that also dentists on each other check and they basically say like, hey, what’s going on there? And they remain curious, like how can someone build an exceptionally big business? So you had the TDE, the dental experts. So this was actually the ex finest dental crew. And they set up on Harley Street.
Andy & Chris (45:06.431)
Mm-mm.
Andy & Chris (45:13.126)
Mmm. Mmm.
Andy & Chris (45:21.514)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (45:27.97)
And they had exactly the same spiel, it was phenomenal. And then there’s certain tools of how you can surface that. So my team onboarded it then. Somehow they had managed to kind of optimize the thing, but then even when you’re onboarded, you’re not on the platform. And so our triggers just within two weeks said, have a look at this guy because they’re on track to become a really big dental practice in terms of finance origination. And then we looked at them.
called some of their clients and realized, so this is the ex Finest Dental crew, just with a couple of different names, because we found a practice manager and everything, so we had records for that. We talked to the clients, the clients are waiting to see and having delays and treatment starts, just like Finest Dental, and we’re like, let’s shut them down. And it was really funny because about nine months after we shut them down, we got a call from Stripe, our partner for card payments.
And I said, hey guys, we see that you have the dental experts on your system as vendor, please make sure that you shut them down. And we’re like, yeah, we did that long ago. But it shows you how card providers as well as, and it could be WorldPay, Barclaycard, anyone would have been there. Or other finance providers, they just don’t track closely individual practices. And so we will review on a be-reliable basis, anyone that looks like an outlier. And it can be a single practice.
Andy & Chris (46:34.283)
We beat you to it.
Paul Ebert (46:53.792)
somewhere in, I don’t know, North Scotland or South England. And we’ll pick it up and we’ll try to make sure that this doesn’t become a problem. And you always want to see, there anything systematic about it that you can learn? But flagging this means you basically avoid losses like finest dental. So…
Andy & Chris (46:57.035)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (47:04.713)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (47:09.291)
Hmm.
I love the idea of that because it keeps the profession as an ecosystem in good shape. Because like you say, we know that whenever there’s a problem and whenever a high profile practice struggles or goes bust or potentially is in trouble, it’s obviously devastating for the business owner, but that does ripple out through dentistry. So I love the fact that from a financing point of view, you’re kind of trying to get these people and actually it does protect them and their patients immediately, but it also protects the wider profession as well.
Which is a very smart thing. It also reinforces that actually, especially with the finest dental thing, wasn’t dentistry that caused the problem. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Paul Ebert (47:48.748)
No, no, it was just entirely an individual. And this is what you have to realize when you have owners, we think the best thing you can do is underwriting the owner, not the business, because the business changes over time, a bit like with the market. But what you can figure out is if the owner has a certain way and.
Andy & Chris (48:05.673)
Yeah, I think so. Paul, you’re a smart guy and the way you’ve knitted this business together by looking at other things that are out there is incredibly interesting. What’s the key thing you’ve taken from your entrepreneurial journey? know, from the boy in the village in Germany to running a very FinTech-led business in dentistry. What’s the thing that really stood out for you? Gingers are okay. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (48:23.918)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (48:36.16)
You’ve passed as Prince Harry. That was the overriding thing.
Paul Ebert (48:42.587)
So I think for me it will be my team because we wouldn’t have onboarded six and a half thousand dental practices and process I think will have processed now last month we processed a billion pounds worth of applications since starting right so it’s like you wouldn’t do this if you didn’t have it on the technology side but also you wouldn’t have gotten there if your sales team didn’t acquire people and and so for me it’s
Andy & Chris (49:01.715)
Yep. Mmm. Mmm. Yep.
Paul Ebert (49:09.634)
You’ve got to nail your process on how you sale and know exactly who you want to target as well. Because in dentistry, know, we only have half the market, but I’d argue we wouldn’t be that dominant if we targeted the wrong half, if that makes sense. And we were very clear on what we are, which was a finance company. And the reason why we now would do cards and plans is because we think that that gives us a competitive edge in finance and that we can probably do those type of payment methods.
Andy & Chris (49:12.373)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (49:21.205)
Yep.
Paul Ebert (49:38.518)
in a similar way, much more user friendly than a non dental expert or provider could do. And so the specialization is a really important differentiator, both from a risk management, but also product delivery perspective. So, and if I draw a reference to a dentist, if you’re great in a visa line, you’re probably not going to be great at implants. And so we just say we stay in dentistry, we do payments, and that’s probably what we can do well.
Andy & Chris (49:43.189)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (49:49.632)
Mm.
Andy & Chris (49:52.884)
Hmm
Andy & Chris (50:00.767)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (50:07.438)
And finance was just one thing that was very easy to adopt for practices. And we noticed that. So what would be the trigger that makes someone switch providers? if the way to think about it is finance drives highly profitable private specialist treatments, but it accounts for maybe 1 % of your patient transactions that you do. So switching that out is a really small cock to switch, but it drives a big wheel of profitability for the associate as well as the owner.
Andy & Chris (50:08.233)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (50:14.367)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (50:36.234)
and the health of the overall business. And so figuring that small thing out, I think made all the difference. And we were just, I think the first one to really understand this and then able to implement a process around it. And then we just iterated and iterated. So it wasn’t that we had this one big insight and then could capitalize on it. I think it was the team keep listening and then keeping on it. So I think not, yeah.
Andy & Chris (50:47.391)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (51:01.033)
Yeah, and that’s that sort of that one percent marginal gains is evolution. Keep evolving. Keep looking at those little improvements.
Paul Ebert (51:09.046)
So that was, I think, for me, the key insights. And it did came with a sacrifice that we wouldn’t be the next Clona. But that’s OK. You know, if you as a person don’t need to be the next Clona, I find the idea of being as public as Sebastian really scary because like coming from my background, what would my friends think about me if I go back and they would see me on the news or thinking about how much money I would make? Like, you know, that my worst nightmare is that my friends back home realize
Andy & Chris (51:15.561)
Hmm
Andy & Chris (51:20.053)
Hmm.
Hmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (51:30.953)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (51:36.226)
that I’m building a successful business that might one day, you know, hand me a nice payoff. I don’t know when, but, that I build something big because I don’t want them to think of me differently. When you go and drinking a pub of beer, whether I have money or not, like quite frankly, the opposite is true that they pay ideally that they don’t care about this, but they just, you know, you just have a laugh and you talk about kids or you moan about some football match, but don’t talk about money. It’s something for me that that’s really important in
Andy & Chris (51:57.983)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (52:06.139)
Paradoxically, I work in finance, But personally, for me, it’s something I enjoy.
Andy & Chris (52:08.095)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it helps keep you grounded. I think it helps keep you grounded. And away from work, you like nature documentaries, don’t you? Is that your guilty pleasure? Is that how you relax?
Paul Ebert (52:17.216)
Yes I do, I absolutely love it.
Paul Ebert (52:23.392)
At work now, yes, I will totally watch whatever the resident fox or birds, magpies or whatever is floating around in our small garden. I’ll check that or the squirrels. But I love when, you know, I have the window open and the geese from the local pond fly by or some of the parakeets that we have here in London. That is definitely my go-to place. And I just feel good. And that’s, I guess…
Andy & Chris (52:44.234)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (52:50.346)
Most people, if they were to go to a forest and just stand there, they would get relaxed because it’s good for us. And having grown up in a village, it probably will pretty fold be my, whether that’s a visual stimulation on TV or it’s an audio stimulation from a bird passing. For me, that’s definitely my go-to place that I like best. I just think evolution in animals is so unique because they don’t have as big brains mostly.
Andy & Chris (53:11.445)
Cheek.
Paul Ebert (53:19.482)
And so it’s much harder for them to actually learn. So if they don’t learn, they die. And so I find that quite fascinating, then how certain animal species last so long. So I find that evolutionary part, so the very scientific part about nature so fascinating that there can be so many different versions and different things work differently. That to me for nature is what I love. That it can be super diverse, but there is no, there is not this…
Andy & Chris (53:30.535)
Mmm. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (53:43.093)
Hmm. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (53:47.158)
crazy intellectual superpower that allows one species to suddenly dominate. We’re actually the only ones, the humans are the only species that basically dominates the others. yeah, so I think nature is a beautiful place. I like that.
Andy & Chris (53:49.778)
Mmm.
Andy & Chris (53:53.397)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (54:01.929)
Hmm. Great. Paul, we’ve got to the stage where we need to ask you two questions. The first question we have for you is you’re a fly on the wall. Where would you be and who would be there?
Paul Ebert (54:29.846)
I think because I quite like golf, I’d actually like to be a fly that sits on right now, probably Rory McIlroy’s back or his shoulder shirt and just, you know, realizing what the guy is thinking and how his pulse is going while he’s trying to win another golf tournament. That’s probably what I would like most. So apart from nature, golf is probably my second thing to go to. So if I could be on the as a fly sitting there with the big players, that would probably be
Andy & Chris (54:47.209)
Hmm.
Paul Ebert (54:59.054)
my thing because I wanted to become a golf professional because when I was 18 I was between like do I become a golf professional or do I go and study and so I think that never went.
Andy & Chris (55:02.003)
I will.
Andy & Chris (55:10.196)
You still play from scratch, do you?
On a good day. I need to get Paul roped into the charity golf day next year and I’ll be sending you an email. I think golf on is fascinating games where it looks so easy, yet it’s the consistency is phenomenally hard. then you see people like Roy McIlroy, wasn’t it in the US Open when he missed that puck?
Paul Ebert (55:14.982)
15, 16 out of the 18 holes, yes. And then I play handicap 54 on the three other holes.
Andy & Chris (55:42.431)
That was by his standards. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (55:43.586)
He’s been, he’s been missing a fair view, but for me it’s Tiger Woods that changed the game. So if you think about Tiger Woods, what he would do different and in my local golf club, you know, like there wasn’t a golf pro that would work by this. And so I found myself basically reading this book from Butch Harmon, the coach when, Tiger went big and I would literally go into our rain cover box, which had mirrors all around because we didn’t have cameras back then in the nineties. And I would basically just repeat every step.
Andy & Chris (55:53.45)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (56:02.239)
Mm.
Paul Ebert (56:13.334)
according to the pictures and track myself and just find myself three, four hours in that box, hitting range ball after range ball and obsessing about those small incremental changes. And then even if the ball flies, if it didn’t feel right, just like, you know, the, the, the both pros you’d be upset. And, but it was that I think is, is, is I love that about golf. You play against yourself. So if something goes really wrong, it’s not the weather, it’s not the competition. It’s basically you not getting your nerves together.
Andy & Chris (56:21.336)
Wow Yeah
Andy & Chris (56:27.091)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Andy & Chris (56:35.306)
Yes.
Yeah. You. Yeah.
Paul Ebert (56:41.182)
And you’d been missing that small putt, so that’s the other beauty. You can make great golf shot. If, know, coming back to Rory, if you don’t sink the putt from a meter or two when it matters, you know, see you next week, So I quite liked that about golf, that it really boils down to one or two strokes around the golf course to win a tournament.
Andy & Chris (56:44.331)
Hmm.
Andy & Chris (56:48.433)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything’s
Andy & Chris (57:01.961)
Yeah. Yeah. And our last question for you before we let you go is if you could meet somebody, you can sit down and have a coffee, a glass of wine or beer. Who would you like to meet given the chance?
Andy & Chris (57:18.441)
See, I had in my head I thought he might go for, but maybe not.
Paul Ebert (57:21.198)
Yeah, so I have to say it’s two people I’d probably go for. And it’s for very different reasons. So one would be David Attenborough, just because I’m an absolute fan. No, but I when you said it, Chris, when you said it, I was like, 100 % he’ll get that one. Not because he is, he’s just like exceptional at what he’s gone through. And there’s a really good documentary out there. And he is. And the second one would be Angela Merkel.
Andy & Chris (57:31.592)
That was who I had in my head. I should have written it down. should have written it down
Andy & Chris (57:43.477)
Yes. He’s a national treasure, isn’t he? He is.
Paul Ebert (57:50.222)
because she came from Eastern Germany, you know, and she for me is one of the reasons why I think I’m, you know, to the extent you can be proud being from a particular country, I’m proud because Merkel, it was just such a successful leader. And yes, there’s been some problems, but she’s been phenomenal in, you know, stirring Europe through the Euro crisis setting like the schaffen in August 2015 when we opened the border towards refugees from wherever they came from. And
Andy & Chris (57:50.699)
okay.
Andy & Chris (58:03.401)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (58:09.748)
Mm-hmm.
Andy & Chris (58:15.722)
Yeah.
Paul Ebert (58:18.466)
That for me is just something I’m like, she’s lived through an interesting time, know, coming down off the wall, 90s, 2000s, and then looking ahead, I’d love to meet her one day. think I never will, but I think she’s…
Andy & Chris (58:23.288)
Definitely. Yeah, yeah.
Andy & Chris (58:32.619)
It would interesting to know her take on what’s happening at the moment in Germany, wouldn’t it? Yes.
Paul Ebert (58:38.906)
I think the Russia and Ukraine and general now with AFD, so the right wing party is coming up. But that’s the thing, I think she would probably have perspective as well on where it got wrong. But on a much more fundamental level, if that makes sense. Not so much knowing the things, but having the bigger picture of what’s going on. yeah, but Merkel.
Andy & Chris (58:39.796)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (58:44.125)
Yeah.
Andy & Chris (58:52.174)
Yeah.
Yes.
Andy & Chris (58:59.273)
Yeah, not my new shine more of a helicopter view.
Paul Ebert (59:05.696)
and in Attenborough, that I would be the two people I’d love to meet.
Andy & Chris (59:08.523)
Brilliant. Cheers Paul. I’ve really enjoyed the last time we met I was blown away by the quality of the conversation and you’ve surprised yourself again today. been brilliant. It’s been brilliant. Keep well and hopefully we’ll see you at an event or somewhere on the dental scene sometime soon. Yeah. Cheers Paul. Thank you very much. That was very good. Thanks man. Cheers.
Paul Ebert (59:19.222)
I’m sorry, but I take it.
Paul Ebert (59:27.64)
Thank you for inviting me. Have a great week. Bye bye.
