#325 Clinical Psychology — Richard Porter

This podcast comes to you from Enlighten. Enlighten's an advanced teeth whitening system that guarantees results on every single patient. We've treated hundreds of thousands of patients now and have a really clear understanding of what it takes to get every patient to that delighted state that we want to get to. If you want to understand teeth whitening in much further detail, join us for online training only takes an hour, completely free. Even if you never use their lighteners, it's a whitening system you learn loads and loads about whitening, how to talk about it, how to involve your teams, join us at enlightenonlinetraining.com. This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you get to go one-on-one with emerging leaders in Dentist Street. Your hosts, Payman Langroudi and Prav Salan King. Feelings are the currency of human existence and so when somebody comes into a learning environment or patient turns up to it or I come to your podcast, I have feelings and if you can understand how those feelings are and you can empathise with that person, you can create the most optimal outcome for them and so I'm very into the soft skills side of things. I do think you need to be able to do dentistry. I don't know about you, what your experience with that. Can I ask you a question before we even get really into it? Yeah, yeah. Rate your dental school experience out of ten. With you bear in mind all of your amazing knowledge, skills, experience, incredible set up. I'd like to separate that into the educational side of it because I had the best five years of my life. A lot of people had fun and a lot of people don't. I've noticed that I have thought everyone had that but a lot of people find that some of the hardest times of their life. I didn't realise that. But from the educational perspective, one benefit I had was I did VT in Kent and all the VT groups were made up of everyone from the three London schools back then. And you could see from the different subjects that were coming up the things that we were taught better than them and then quite a few things that they were taught better than we were in Cardiff. I guess the question is when someone spat out of dental school, are they have we treated them fairly? Are they competent to not quite stand alone but very nearly stand alone and face all the trials and tribulations of being in GDP? I'm not convinced. No, of course not. I'm not convinced. So I'm not sure. It's a very minimum, right? Yeah. I was one of those who I didn't like dental school in year one at all. And I was in London and I just everyone was just so rude. Guys. Guys, back in, yeah, old school guys. I don't know what I'm doing with my hand there but something like that. Wolfson House. You know that. Floor 14. Yeah. My brother's done travel. My brother's done do the guy. Yeah. Oh, did he? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I was at guys. Yeah. And I thought when I went there, everyone seemed more confident. Everyone seemed so sure of themselves. Everyone seemed so certain about the purpose direction, what the right social behavior was. And I just found not the students so much but like London's this busy, cold, is a million people in London but it's easy to go lonely in London. Where had you grown up? In rural Kent, in a village in Kent. Very simple place. Which one was it? So that if you've heard, if you've heard of the village, I'm going to buy your horse. It's a village called Hunton. The nearest town is made stone. And you know, I went through a very simple education system. Nothing posh, nothing fancy. And I loved school and I loved being around people who said, please, and thank you. Is that important? It felt important. And you come to London and it was, I guess it's just the big bad city. And maybe it just toughened me up a little bit. But year one, I found it very. And then year two, three, four, five, did you enjoy it much more? Do you know, I don't know about you paying me, you know, what's important to you with your education. I found it, I found it difficult to, I don't know if we talk about personality psychology today, but I studied personality psychology a lot. And if you were to, I can show you my scores. And one of my scores relates to who I like in terms of authority. And I'm very, very selective over who will have authority over me. I'm very cheesy and I'm very judgmental on that. I can't, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just, and I found it difficult to be inspired. And then I remember sitting there thinking, I'm here to a dental school and someone saying, this is Freeman of Arley. And this is Krebs cycle. And I remember thinking, I'm I in the wrong room. You know, fatty acid synthesis. How many times have you used it in your career? No, no, no, no, I'm on a zero. That's what I know. It's important. I know it's really important. So if you were the king of dentistry and you could change the course, because the course doesn't change, this is one thing, I mean, I know it's changed, but it's just in our little world of bleaching. Yeah, it was illegal. So that was the reason they weren't teaching it. But it's been legal, fully legal now for 13 years. Yeah. And this not not teaching it. Is that right? Yeah, they're teaching internal whitening. That's still on the course is half an hour something on internal whitening. But bleaching, which is, you know, fully legal and the thing that everyone wants the most in practice isn't taught in dental. And how does it make you feel as someone who's right in the middle of it? Well, it's ridiculous. It makes me realize that things don't change. Things don't change much in dentistry. So if you could change the, what would you change? I mean, what would we take out? Because once you take out that crep cycle bit, some guy who later on goes on to become a max, facts doesn't know that and doesn't become a noromedicine guy or true. But you could, there's lots of things we don't teach. So what would you, do you know, I mean, what a question. I, I think I look at, first of all, I think you have to, the outcome has to be, the outcome for me has to be patients get better care. Yeah. So if we do root cause analysis from that, if you're going to get a patient getting better care, you can't say I'm going to capture 100% but most of them. So if we're going to do that, then you need good dentists. So the question then is what makes a good dentist? And to make a good dentist, I would really break that into six big areas. And we've got to give them the knowledge and clinical skill set that's most applicable to them. And that would definitely include bleaching. I definitely include bleaching. And if we say, I mean, you could almost do a like for like, you could say, if you need the knowledge and clinical skill set, do you need to spend age is learning crep cycle or how to give an ID block as painlessly and as comfortably as something like that can be. I would compare those two and say, if it's one or the other, it's a very easy choice. Because I have delegates who come into our courses and we talked and I, you know, if there's a group of 20, I'll say that one of you in this room is nervous about every single ID block and you're running at 50% success in failure. I know you are because I was one of them in VT. I was nervous every time I had to give an ID block the night before. And if that's you, come and talk to me. And we will sort that out. Let's take that little anxiety away. So, so I would be very selective on knowledge and clinical skill set. They, I think they, I think the second thing you need is time. And I would say to them, this, this means you're going to need to allocate this much time to do your job this well. And people say, really, what, so one of the great people I had, I admired who was a colleague of mine at St George's, his Henry Marsh, one of the world's most famous neurosurgeons. And he wrote a couple of incredible books. I wish I bought you one. And imagine Henry is going to cut a tumor out of your brain. And he says, it'll take me eight hours, payment. And you go, no, no, no, no, mate. You got three and a half. You, you, you know, and as a patient, you would find that abhorrent. It's just no way it's going to happen. So you need knowledge and clinical skill set. You need time. You need the right equipment and materials. You know, and I've seen, I worked in a practice where the light cure was like a little blue candle out of all of a twist. It didn't do anything. And you need tactical emotion and intelligence, which I'm very big on. And that's a source of skill thing you and I are talking about. You need to understand that feelings are the currency of human existence and the currency of dental experience. And you really need to build that up. You need systems and delivery. You need to build a good team around it. So you need those six things. And if you can do that, so I would build a curriculum around those and anything that didn't fit in back to curriculum or light crepes that I would keep talking about crepes cycle, but I would add that as a bolt on. If you chose to diverge your career towards max facts or something with them, I'm more medical slump. That's what I would do. So look, do you, do you recognize what I'm saying when I say that sometimes the knowledge itself isn't enough in so much as I know if I wanted to look like you big arms, I needed to go to gym every day and not eat crap, but I'm not doing that. So the mindset to change that change behavior change, it should be behavior change should be like for hygienists should be like a third of their course, right? Because I'm going to say more. Yeah, you might if we dwell on that example. So I'm supposedly a pariah specialist as well, but I work with a hygienist who's very good at getting people to behave change their behavior. And I would make the case that if someone has perio, the main thing is to remove the bacterial insult. Yeah, you can change the host response and you can modulate their immune system and things like that, but it's to remove the plaque insult to their body, how often does that need to be done every day? So you're talking specifically about behavior change. So I think perio is primarily treated with psychology. I don't think it's treated with modify with midflip. and deprivements. I think it is, if you can take someone and say, right, motivate. So you and I talk about motivation there. And dental schools have motivation. But the motivation might be to sit still and do nothing. It might be protective over a sense of ego or tradition or conformity or rules and regulations from an external source. I don't know. But they are certainly motivated. You and I are motivated right now to sit down. If someone sits at home and watches TV and eats cookies, they are motivated. If you go to the gym, you're motivated. It's stimulus and response. Everything is stimulus and response. So with that in mind, do you, I mean, I watched a piece that you did that you were walking in the countryside talking about this. Yeah, motivations of big subject. And I found it very excellent. I've had a brilliant thanks because I really did think there was motivated people in one side of the room and then unmotivated people and another side of the room. And it made a very nice thing that we're all motivated, but we're motivated in different directions. We are. It's useful. It's useful. And some motivations come with social reward and academic reward and financial reward and other ones come with other rewards. And yeah, I mean, to break that down, we, I would think of motivation as a mixture of internal and external. External is really, you know, fame, accolades, status, applause. The more you go, kind of. Yeah, yeah. And acquisition of trinkets, you know, push watches and lurking bags. I've found out or a thing. And if you, if you, if you're motivated externally, then the external world has control over the volume on your motivation center and it's and you're going to be in a reactive state. And then internal motivation, which is beautiful motivation is based around curiosity, purpose and passion. And that is your self reinforcing rocket fuel to become whatever you want to be, but it starts with curiosity. And everyone needs a bit of that like we're doing your podcast now and I'm not, I try and be very internally motivated, but people's opinions of me matter to me what you think of me matters to me and what your audience will think is is important to me. So no one's immune to it. No, completely. Only psychopaths genuinely are entirely internally motivated. Other people's opinions of them are irrelevant. I'm interested. So I'm definitely one of them. So in the sort of self development realm. Yeah. Were you someone who wasn't so motivated in that sense, but now are like, where did that journey start for you? You know, I'm not trying to be forced to be modest. It's just luck payment. It's who you meet. And if you meet people, I mean, I'm lucky to be here, but if you meet people who inspire you and teach you and you can connect with them. I think you get ideas and and I've been incredibly lucky to meet people on the way who I found inspiring. And I'm always shocked if you ask someone for help who's in a position above you. Yeah. How willing people are to help you. It just it's just incredible. That's why I love humans. I think we're awesome. And and people will help. And so I was always motivated, not always for the best things in life. None of us are perfect. I've got as many floors as anyone. And I have plenty of dental school. And I've got enough points on my license now to prove. But I I started studying psychology. The reason I started studying how people think and feel was I recognize that every single patient, even at dental school, like we were sitting on the pros floor and someone would come in and no matter what you did, they wouldn't be happy with their denture. And that can't be that it's just not technically made well. It has to be something internal. And I'll tell you another brief story. I was walking through one of the pieces of architecture is in the cloister's at Gloucester Cathedral, where they film quite a lot of the Harry Potter scenes. And there's a time of day you can go there and a time of year when the sunlight is literally golden and the stained glass windows come through this light. And no matter who you are, you walk through there and you go, this is just there's a there's a feeling. And it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up and you say you can feel it. And that is light and stone. It is light and stone because it's glass and I had this thought, I just think like so you'll see it a million times on Instagram. The first thing you give a patient is a mirror. Once you've done their rehab, I see people doing this all the time. Light comes from the ceiling, comes from the windows, it hits the stone, hits the mirror, just photons of light. It goes through that little hole in their eyes, their pupils. And what does it turn into? Feelings and emotions. So light and stone equals emotions. And I just got captivated by this idea. And that's beautiful man. Well, I've been in the receiving end of you put it up and you're thinking, "Oh, I'm not sure that light and stone is going to create my feelings." And the patient goes, "Is this a joke?" You know, and you couldn't even notice, it's just a try-in. But it's that. And again, it proves the point. Feelings are the currency of our existence. And what you want on Instagram is that moment where everyone claps and it's like, "Oh my god, I'm crying." So light is emotion. And I got interested in that. So I started studying that with fever, fever and energy. And that led me to meet loads of other inspiring psychologists. So people who understand human motivation and understand concepts like future self-orientation, rather than being in a reactive state. Which, I can rant all day. How I want to be when I'm 70. Do you know what's about that? That's a big stretch. If you think about, first of all, let me make the case that your brain doesn't care that you're happy, it cares that you're alive. It's predisposed to make you worried and miserable for a number of reasons. Because if you and I are walking through the woods a thousand years ago, and I'm happy, go lucky, and the rustling side is probably nothing, and you go rich, I think it's danger, you leg it and I don't, I get eaten. And so all that genetic code saying don't worry about it is dead. It's all inside animals. Whereas yours is alive. So now we have this group of people on earth got humans and we're predisposed to worrying anxiety and negative emotions. And it's not about a thing, it keeps us safe. So we have that. We then have the concepts of good emotions, happiness, joy, fulfillment, but they will have to be earned and you really do have to earn them apart from pleasure, which is, you know, we will reach for our phones far too much. So we've got positive negative emotion. And if you have a terrible life to date, like imagine you were unloved as a child, perhaps, and you grew up in poverty and you're worried about food and you're worried about X, Y and Z, but from this moment on, you are now feeling connected, loved, opulent, full of hope, opportunities and freedom for the rest of your life. Right now in the moment, how do you feel? I bet you feel quite good. So people don't, they think they're past to find them. It's not your past. It's actually your future because your brain isn't a happiness machine. It's a prediction machine. And it is making predictions for the very near the mid and the long term future. And the more good predictions it can make, the better you feel in the moment. If I switch that around, let's say you had a wonderful childhood, loving family, incredible educational opportunities, abundant food, travel opportunities, all of that. Now it stops. Now you're living in a skip, eating out of secondhand crisp packets, you're alone, cold, worried, how'd you feel in the moment. Don't tell me your past defines you because it doesn't issue future. So conceptually, what I encourage dentists to do, people to do anyone to do is to say there's two things we really, really need. We need clarity on our future. Like and that clarity on our future, I would call your identity. It's who payments are going to become, it's who rich is going to become. And then we need crystal clarity on it and then emotional attachment to it. So if you can create a future, I know we're on camera here, but if you imagine there's a compass here, 360 degrees, and I can move in that direction, one particular direction, but I'm not emotionally attached to it and it's not clear. I'm just a leaf blowing in the wind and we'll be reactive. You know, and I'll get an invite to this and then a nasty patient and then something happens and then my staff leave me and you know, X, Y and Z, you're entirely reactive. If I then focus that down on I think that's my future. That over there, oh my god, I love that. Every little step feels amazing. You don't even need to reach it. So what we need is a future we love. They would crystal clear of out and to take steps towards it. And that's how we get to feel good in the moment. And to answer your earlier question, whether times of my life I wasn't as motivated, I didn't have a clear future. And it's a blessing to be able to do that because and you can measure the personality characteristics that enable us to do this, but being able to think and lay out a future you love for a given time period, you talk about 70, but let's say six months or let's say next week or let's say two years and you can lay out a future so it might be spending more time your parents. It might be, you know, we did this someone recently and they just said like I said, would you want your average Tuesday to be like, just tell me. I think you've wished you were she answers and I said, would tell me about your parents who were my moms alone. And I said, well, how come do you see your mom once every month? Would you like to do that more often? Yeah, yeah, I would. I said, would tell me a dream. It's like, well, I want to have lunch with my mom every Tuesday from 11 till 12 three and I said, okay, how do you feel when you think about that? And they're like, I like that a lot. Like this smile. I like it a lot. Well, let's help you build a life. Well, that's real. Let's just create it. And that positive motion comes your way. So I, I'm very into creating sense of identity. We start with personality on that personality science. People can understand who they are and how they interact with the world, but becoming future-intated is one of the biggest gifts you can give someone. Yeah, I like that. I like that. It's fun. Did you know with all the delegates? Anyone who wants to. I think like positive psychology or any form of psychology, you're a bit like a vampire. You've got to be invited in. I don't think you can foist yourself onto people. And so I will often try and extol the virtues of tactical emotion intelligence and say that you could be incredibly technically great, like the world's best-ended artists. But if your nurse doesn't like your receptionist doesn't like you and patients don't like you, you're going to be a very lonely poor expert. If you are likable and there's a skill to that and amicable and you get on well with your team and they advocate for you and your patients like you, you're better off being a good competent dentist than an absolute expert than that. So we offer that and we offer certainly training in that across the board because it's just an essential. If people want to go further, then if they engage then for sure. And there must be a patient version of that too, right? When you're presenting a treatment planner that that's the future and attaching a patient's emotions to that future. Yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, from a whole point of view, I've heard some of your previous work. So I know I think you're pretty expert at this. You ask your questions, but I think you're expert at this from the subject as well. I will often say to a patient, the reason I'm asking you these questions is what's important to use is what's important to me. So is there anything particularly important to you, not just in the procedure, but when it's finished, I'm trying to work out how you want to feel. So it's nearly November. If you've got any big events between now and Christmas or if you've got a Christmas party, how do you want to feel when you smile at that event? Talk to me about it. Who's going to be the, what's important? Got a wedding coming up. You know, what's important to use? What's important to me? And build that in. And once, I mean, it's that classic Maya Angelou quote, isn't it? Is people don't remember what you say or do? They remember how you made them feel or words of that effect. And it's that. And if you can show people that that to me, payment is, is a crucible in it's where two people meet. So you and I haven't met before, but we're meeting today. And that crucible is where your mind and my mind that live in our brains that are full of emotions, which we can't really control much. And they've become thoughts and feelings. And your thoughts and feelings are your behaviors and we call that personality. This is the meeting point of that whole process all the way down. It's all the way down. And you have this meeting point of personalities. This is why understanding behavioral science and personality is key. And I think it's personally super key for dentists. Because if you're a librarian, you know, you don't, but you and I for a living work like inside someone's head. Yeah. It's crazy. So you have this meeting of personalities. And if that's where you meet, understanding that crucible, that interaction is fundamental to you having any form of success, whatever success may look like to you. So yeah, I try and show that. I we do run specific courses on. Listen, the one thing I've learned by stopping being an dentist is that the people side of it is even more important than I realized it was when I was an dentist. How so? Because it's definitely the thing I missed the most. Okay. From being an dentist, right? And yeah, I know that maybe that's why I have a pod now or whatever to make up for. Yeah. But as a dentist, you don't realize the privilege situation you're in that you're sitting talking to people in society at all different levels and at a moment when they're at their most vulnerable. And that vulnerable side of it, you know, I used to have a boss who's just saying, you young guys, none of you know what it's like to be a patient anymore. And how right I had an inlay fit three days ago. How right this guy was, yeah, because how much we like to say how pleasant today's an dental surgery and all the bits and the it's horrible. It is. It's horrible. I was my wife was fitting it. I was negotiating with it not to numb me up for the fit. I love it. Yeah, because I didn't want to be numb for four hours. I love it. And you forget, you know, like imagine as a dentist, you the number of times you numb someone up thinking nothing of it at all. Yeah. It's four hours of bullshit. Yeah, it is. I was pulling my own. It starts out. And just why the hell by still numb. Yeah. Is it going to stay forever? Such a simple thing. Yeah. Such a simple. Did you check your occlusion as well? Are you giving a lot of that? A mature patient. But what I'm saying is it's a horrible experience. And so what you said about painless injection, something like a hundred percent agree with you on that. Do you know, I think I think I should I should not contradict myself, but is it possible to give a painless injection nearly? But what's important is you showing the intent to do it painlessly because you don't have to do dentistry with complete comfort. It's not like having a foot rub. You know, you can't, you never got that out of the out of the out of the in the open. But it's you can show the intent to do it with kindness. You can show that you have the intent to be compassionate. And God forbid, you know, I'm sure you've taken out teeth where you've given them a cauldron full of local anaesthetic. And at the moment of delivery, they still win because they've got this horrible infection there or something. And but it's the intent to get that over and done with and say, I'm so sorry, that last bit was uncomfortable. That's what matters. That's the key to it. I shouldn't, Joe, I think one of the the caveats here is, and I expect a lot of your listeners, they will have probably met a difficult patient. And I think I can leave scars and wounds in people that can take away that compassion. And so I'd encourage anyone listening to this to, I tell every group I ever treat, it's a room full of strangers. And I say, look, you've known me 10 minutes. If I go like this and I grab my heart and I collapse on the floor unconscious, I bet you're all going to rush over. And a bit of you and I go for a walk out the street here and we both collapse on the floor. Strangers will rush over human solidarity is the norm. Humans being compassionate and kind and helping each other is the norm. You are going to meet outliers and let's train you to detect them because they're actually easy to detect once you know how. But the norm is that nearly everyone you meet is a is a kind, reasonable, compassionate person. And you just need to connect with them. And once you connect it with them, like they've got friends and they've got family who connect with them, you just become the professional person. And as you say, it's a privilege to slot into that person's life. And it's sad, kind of what you're alluding to, it's sad when my brother went for an examination. He's had a full mouth rehab because he had a million nurses in perfect. And I said, hey, well, how was it? What happened? And he said it was more like being a lawyer than at the dentist. And it's sad, you know, that's how the guy came across. Yeah. Because he's being so defensive with his, whatever it was. Because the best out that you can have is that guy going back to work your brother. Going back to his job or going wherever and say, well, I need some dentistry. And him saying, I've sold, I know exactly who you need to see. Not only is this person precise and they give me exact what I want, the way they delivered it, it was just so kind, so compassionate. You know, I really felt involved in the process and like I was in control of the decisions and you know, really, and you know, all the research shows anyway that people don't sue people they like. So yeah, yeah, being like to so much more important than having the right signatures. And the right replaces 100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. People, people complain and sue through an emotional response to how they feel. More than anything else. It's not your high-end lay. You can't see your wife. You know, this question of, you know, the people stuck to the teeth. Yeah, it's a big issue with an enlightened area. I'm always constantly dealing with my team on this subject. Okay. Look how lucky are we that our product is on something that's stuck to humans' teeth, right? It's stuck to humans. That means we can tell all sorts of human stories around our product. And it's not like we're selling microphones stand. Yeah. Anyway, by the way, they're to do with humans too. But you know, human stories are what we should be focusing on. And then we make another advert with a toothpaste spinning around them. I'm glad I know. I'm going berserk, say, well, why is their picture of two storytelling is key to it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then from a patient perspective, they're going to tell you their stories. One thing that with you, I'm really interested to know is, at what point did you decide, what could it be the best? Well, that's a deep, I don't think I have made that decision and I don't think I'm the best. I'm trying to be the best. I'm trying to, so that comes down to motivation. And you can look at motivation internal and external, but you could also a classifier as approachable. avoid. And I think I'm more avoiding not being the worst. A failure than having a determination to be the best. I actually mean that I do think that I think a lot of those things come from people's childhood from how you got validation from your parents from how you would call yourself competitive. Yes. Yes, I am. Yeah, I am a competitive. But I don't let anyone see me coming. You're way see a. So for instance, are you the type of person who said listen, you definitely can't do this. Do you want to reverse psychology? You don't, you'll do whatever it takes to do you know of me wrong. I tell a couple of stories. So I was, I was competitive. I went to a boy school, a state school, but it was a boy school and it was a sports and sports punch up. Plenty of those. And you know, it was very sporty. And I loved competitive sport. And I'm always, you know, that I love seeing human excellence. And I guess I do like to be part of that. So a sane bolt, Leonardo da Vinci, Florence Nightingale, anyone who's just excellent. Pick a world class pianist and just take a moment to look at this person and take all the inspiration you need from it. Moats are like, when did he start composing symphonies? When he's younger than my kids, you know, failures. So from that point of view, I do love excellence. And I love the awe inspiring nature of what humans can achieve. And it's just, you just live in a world of wonder. So that fascinates me. And if you can create something that contributes to that, then I definitely like that. I find that inspiring. Equally, I remember being a vocational trainee and thinking to myself, I don't feel necessarily ready to do this. People call that imposter syndrome. And this is, so this is going back away, Paymon. And this is the very early days of the UFC. And I had, I wasn't in the UFC, but I had a patient who was a British contender in the early days of the UFC, the ultimate fighting competition. And that's where, and there were no weight classes back then. And he needed an endo. And it was my first endo in a VT. And I said to the nurse, could I have a rubber dam? And I got this blank look. And they said, we did, I don't know what that is. And I said, well, what can we have the endo, don't take equipment? It should, oh, you mean one of those little files? Yeah, I'll get one out of the autoclave because they weren't single use. And I said, how do I stop this going down the patient's throat? And how do we use bleach and things like that? And it had a ring that you put on your finger and it had a little chain that would clip on the end. And it was rusted. So it was covered in rust. And I was trying to do endo on this guy as best I could in the situation with good intentions, you know, forgive me. And he ended up with a big swollen face and he couldn't compete. And I just remember thinking, ah, what the hell, you know, if there's 40,000 dead to similar country, I'm ranked 39,998. I reckon I'm better than two. I'm not, I'm not having a career of doing this. And so pretty early on. And again, I've met some people who inspired me. I thought, well, the only way I knew to get good back then was to go back into hospital. So I actually took I applied for a job at the Royal London Hospital and I made sure I got it as best I could. And I stayed in hospital. So then for the next 25 years. Well, so that was the catalyst. It was, it was fear of failure. I think it's true for a lot of people, you know, it's, it's fear of not being enough. And generally, I see, if you pick the average undergraduate now, they've gone through school and they've never failed at anything. They probably get A's in everything. If A's even a thing now, it's nine's. And then they go to dental school and they get through dental school as well. And then they qualify. And you remember that moment, you qualify suddenly you're in practice. And suddenly someone like you and me who's not a dentist comes in and goes, I bet it'll work. You did. It's not good enough. You know, it might be your first ever failure as a dentist. And it might be the first person who hasn't told you your great have a pass. But says, I'm not too happy about that. And you know, and it's, I think it's brutal. It is. It is brutal. And so we try, I try and guide people through that and understand it and get them a beat on mental resilience. And then who they want to become and tie that in with their identity, make them future orientated, help people to find what version of success is to them. So you went off and did all the specialist training. I did post specialist training. I guess what does it take to become a consultant? You have to write papers and raise money and all that sort of thing. I think the goal post change. I'm very frank with you. I hope no one's watching us get me into trouble. So you have to have done a certain amount of training beforehand. So a few hospital jobs. And I think there was still quite a lot of phone calls behind hidden doors back then. And I worked hard. I'd be honest. I did work hard. And I was pretty good at just getting in. And I look at consultants. If you're my consultant, I could say, right, how do I make this guy happy? You know, where is stresses or is stresses on the ward round? This isn't done. This isn't done. This isn't done. You watch what happens tomorrow. So tomorrow morning, I'd say the Chess Physios booked. This is done. He's admitted overnight. I think you need an ultrasound for you make a decision. That's happening in 20 minutes. I'll bring it to you desk later on and they're like, okay. So I was quite good at things like that. And yes. And then I will answer your question. And then I applied to do specialist registrar training and restorative. And I'd visited the units beforehand and met the consultants. And I was very lucky. I do believe I'm not being humble. I believe there's a lot of luck involved in that. And I was appointed. And I worked very hard at that. I was a registrar. And back then you could sit a multidisciplinary exam, which is days of vivas, where I'd sit in a room like you with three or four other consultants. And they cross exam in your cases and statistics and literature. And you would pass or fail. And theoretically, you got, you know, a few chances to pass. And if you didn't, the last five, six years would have been a waste. I was lucky to get through all of that. And then you get appointed as a consultant. And you would, if you'd passed the right bits, you would go on a few specialist lists. And so I managed to do that. I was very lucky. I was, I, again, I keep saying I'm not being humble or falsely humble. I was and I loved being a consultant. I really did. I loved to be a loved helping people. There is an element of status to it. You get the right color scrubs. Yeah. But someone will come in with terribly warm teeth, hit by a car, a tumour. And you'd be part of a team with incredible people who would sit down and would plan out to put this person back together and give them as much quality of life as we could. And that's, that's, that's a great, great privilege. I loved every second of that. I miss that. Now I'm not a consultant anymore. I do. I miss it a lot. I get to see some of my consultant colleagues, a facial aesthetics event in a few weeks time, actually. And I can't wait to see them just to reconnect with them. So, okay. So, became a consultant. Yeah, came a consultant. And within to private practice. So, yeah, I was a consultant. I started as a full-time consultant and I just do one or two private patients in the evening. And I would do that in either on a Saturday or at my friends practice, or I would see one or two, like on a Monday or a Tuesday, and just one patient for a couple of things. And then I, I reduced my timetable as time went on and I did a little more private practice. I think it's important to do both. I think it's important for senior NHS staff to do both. Yeah. So, you know what it's like to say, if I do my job well enough, you pay me this. And if I don't, you don't, you know, that get off the salary assurance train. Yeah. And really understand what it's like to do, do something that comes at a potential risk of knocking, pay for it if you don't do it well enough. And I did that for a lot of years. Yeah, I did. And was there a particular area that you were particularly expert at? Okay, that's a bold question for me to answer. I'm good at ENDO. I'm good at pros. I'm good at talking to people. Periode, Bores, that'll like me in terms of a, it doesn't, and there's some great period on to surround there. But Periode for me was about behavioral change. Yeah. It wasn't about Periode. And restorative kind of encompasses it all. So, if you're on those four specialist lists, I'd be honest, I love, you know, I'm like so many people. I love doing implants. It's just great. What do you love about doing implants? I love the fact that it's quite serious. It is serious. I don't even have these moments to tell me this. Say yes, whatever the answer is. Just to make me feel good. Yeah. Is I sometimes look at being a sort of fully fresh professional. And I think, oh my god, you're an actual adult. You look at your children and you think, oh my goodness, you know, and they call you dad. I'm like, oh my god. Yeah. I'm one of those people. And an implants have that. So they're very serious. You know, you have to cut someone open. Yeah. You've got to put this bit of metal in their skull. Screw it in. So, for instance, you know, the serious thing is happening tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. or 8 30, whatever. Yeah. For instance, the night before you'll, they get a good night's sleep. within reason because this is what I'm saying. that, you know, how the many implants you've put in. - Yeah, yeah. - It's so serious that your countless guy who opens to King of Screw and his jaw, that, you know, at the moment you become not sure what you're about to, you're making a big error, right? - Oh, you know, put beautifully. I think you answer that better than I ever could. The, I think you should always be slightly nervous. - Yeah. - I think you should always be slightly anxious about I'm afraid every day at work. The day you think, don't worry about it, this will be easy, is the day something's going to come. - It's a feature of a professional, you know, like even a lawyer. - Yeah, anxiety, the same. - Yeah, I agree. - Even though, you know, what do you say, even a professional? - Yeah, a professional. - Yeah. - And the image comes to your head of what that is. - Yeah. - It's really worried, look, on that guy's face. - Yeah, yeah, it is. - It's not a big, but for big fats, you must have noticed my friend on the ear. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And sleep is a relative, isn't it? But yeah, I will think about the case, no doubt at all. And I think about how you can assure that person's wellbeing as much as you can. That's why I like transparent operating. You know, so like if I was going to put an implant in and you said, "Rich, we're bringing the podcast team down, "I'm going to watch and film you." That to me, I like, because that means, okay, a game on. Just get your a game on. And this is gonna, you know, it's like a layer of quality assurance. - Yeah. - Rich, what do you think is, it's like a real rich? What do you think is the hallmark of an expert? Because I've just tried to distill it down myself, right? Of all the experts I've come across. And it's a funny thing, I'm now coming down to doesn't take shortcuts. - Yeah, I think it's true. - Like basics, the basics are exactly correct. I think a lot of it is different. - Yeah, it's different. - It's a very good question. I mean, first of all, everything is comparative. So if you're an expert, it's compared to who. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I can run, but the same bowl as an expert runner compared to me. It always is just faster, but it's all comparative. I think an expert, if you're gonna use that word expert in your identity, it has to be the standards below which you refuse to fall. And that's the same thing as you just said. It's what are the standards below which you can't operate. And like, no rubber dam for that end over the rusty key, Jay. - Yeah. - I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. That wouldn't be for me. And an expert is someone who is not willing to do that and is then, socratically, the eternal student. 'Cause being an expert has to, I think you have to say, yeah, but I could be better. And I think that's that sense of dissatisfaction. You should always have. Because if you've got that sense of dissatisfaction, when you're being honest, like if anyone's ever says to me, I did the perfect dental case. Mm, I did it perfectly. I know I'm talking to a psychopath or a liar. - Yeah. - Because you've never done it perfect. There's always something. However trivial or small it might be. So we can always learn. And that's staying humble, staying curious. So I think part being an expert is you still think, yeah, but I'll be better. You think in a 200 years, you're gonna make how they're gonna say, right, to do an implant, you get this steel spike and you load it up with cocaine. And you shove it in their face. And they get, you know, there'll be a way of ennecetizing patients then, which will be a button you press on your phone or something. And they're gonna, so, so, you've got to be humble as well. - So on that subject of, you know, you're forced to be at the tip of the spear in so many different areas and so much as, when a delegate asks you a question, by the way, there's some of the people I respect the most, say I don't know more than you think they would. - Yeah. But you're gonna have to stay on top of what's going on and what's the latest thing. - Yeah. - I think there's attention. If you are the tip of the spear in anything, and you know, I'm sure there's some research somewhere, right, the tip of the spear on one specific subject, you have to try stuff out. - You do. - And then trying stuff out, the very nature of that, the definition of that is sometimes that thing's gonna fail. - Yeah. - And it's incumbent on you as an expert to try stuff out, rather than someone who's not an expert to try stuff out. - Yeah. - Yeah. - But it's attention. It's attention. And I see attention also. I really like your answer to this one, because I'm struggling with this one myself. I hope I can help. - You know, around those words that you said, the difference in contentment and progress on a string, why those two things on a string, when we go understand the reasons why they are, right? But is it possible to live being content and continuing to progress at the same time, because they seem in opposition with each other? - Yeah, I think, you know, I mean, that's a beautiful philosophical question. You know, the Buddha said life is dissatisfaction or life is discomfort. The word is actually duke. And it actually means the sense of tension. The as soon as you've achieved something and you think, well, I've done that job really, really well. And I do have a sense of fulfillment. It's now what next? Do you build a light and smile on a podcast, you know? Now what? You know, because what this is it forever. And there's always this sense of, I can do more and I can become more. And so I think what you're talking about there really is, is people, you know, let's take a dentist, he says, I want to be successful. And I think there's two layers to this. The first thing is, it's not about being successful 'cause that's your destination. And people, I think level one say, it's the journey. I don't think it is the journey either. I don't think it is the journey. I think it's who you become to keep going on that journey. And the sense of growth inside your mind as you progress along your journey. That's why you and I move the goalposts. 'Cause here's our destination and we want to move towards it and we love moving towards it. But as soon as we get there, we're gonna have that intense dissatisfaction. You know, I came across a concrete and then Alexander cried 'cause there's no world's left to conquer. So as we get close, you move the goalposts. So you and I can keep becoming. And that comes down to feelings because you become someone new as payment becomes more. And his social skills become more and you become more of a wonderful parent, interviewer, whatever you do. That sense of becoming is what makes life feel completely fulfilling. I think if you sit back and say, right, I'm content, that to me is, I'll just Huckley's Brave New World. It's like hiding from that progress or the fear of failure overwhelming use. You become apathetic. You know, there are philosophers talking about. - Do you think contentment shouldn't be the goal? - I think, no, I think contentment, I think is gonna be part of your life. But don't expect to be content forever. When you know, what are you gonna do? Sit on a sofa and watch the rest of your life. - It's also transient, like pleasure is the thing. - Yeah, yeah, I mean, pleasure is. - It's supposed to be 12 minutes in a corner, isn't it? You know, whereas misery, you can be happy. Like I'm enjoying your conversation. And when we leave here, I'll have a sense of satisfaction. By the time I get home and after traveling on the tube, it'll start to wane. If you're a patient complaining at me, I can worry about that for weeks. And that's that negative emotion thing. So I think you should be content. I want people to be content. Marted Celagomans work on this is incredible. Martin? - Martin Celagomans. - So he's the Godfather of positive psychology. And he would talk about positive psychology, really in three areas, which is pleasure, joy and satisfaction or fulfillment, which probably leads to that. - I've gotta read this. - Yeah, I mean, he's written, his latest book is fabulous. I think it's just called The Good Life and that might be his original. But so pleasure is used to be the hardest to achieve because you really had to earn things to bring you pleasure. Like even a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, pleasure was incredibly rare. Did you have a warm shower this morning? - I bet it felt good. - Did you have a moment where you thought, oh, wow, this is so nice. And we should be grateful for that, but we take it for granted. And I wanted to connect with you. So I just send you a text. And then I wonder what you're doing. And you get pleasure is now abundant. The other forms of joy. So connecting with someone else, connecting with your patients, connecting with your family, creating value in their lives through your behavior to your patients, your family, your friends. That's joy, that's human to human. And that's the big one we really should concentrate on. And then fulfillment and satisfaction is looking back and thinking, do you know what? I finished my career as a consultant or whatever. I gave it the best I possibly could. I really helped thousands of people. I didn't save everyone, but I saved a lot of lives. I rehabbed a lot of people. I think I did my job pretty well. That sense of fulfillment. So he would break it down into those three. And joy and fulfillment are what make us have high self esteem, ourself concept grows. And we get that sense of, the value of my life is not determined by what I think it is. It's how much I contribute to other people. That's all it is. And we get swamped by the pleasure. The pleasure dome that's everywhere around us now. You know, abundant calories. Like if I want some pleasure on the tube, I can go and buy a pack of hobnubs. And even all the, and every one single one is just impossibly delicious. It's a food like you could have dreamt of two or two years ago. And it's just a 50p pack of hobnubs. So I'm not saying deny self pleasure, but revel in the joy and fulfillment. Do be content. and then accept that part of human nature is, depending on your disposition, what next? What next? What can I do next? Where's my next contribution? I think it's that. And I think that's what makes it toast. It's well put. That's well put. Thanks. Yeah. And my other question, regarding new things that come out digital, new materials, new techniques, I mean, you can't be the first to jump on something like that, I guess, in your position, but you certainly can't be the last. You've got to be pretty an early adopter. You have got to be an early adopter and you do have to sit on the cutting edge. So materials and equipment, you know, I have good relationships with a lot of good companies, and they will often bring my attention, which I'm very, very grateful for. So in our new centre, we have a 7 meter by 3 meter screen, and it's a really high density LED screen. And I'll be doing live prep through that. So there's nowhere to hide. And so we're speaking with Canon at the moment. And there's a new camera, for example, on your subject that isn't even released in Europe yet called the C50. And that records in true 7k, so it can come on the screen. And they let me know that exists. So I affiliate with a lot of companies and people I really, really trust. On techniques, I'd be honest, I think you have to, as part of life is to satisfaction. You have to accept everything you're doing is going to become obsolete. And the good news is social media. People come up with a good technique. I remember when Mylar Paul, you know the Mylar Paul, when the Mylar Paul first came out. And I'd never seen Mylar Paul before. I think I was a red, especially as trainee. And looking at that and thinking, that's amazing. And I take it to other people and say, let when people are doing this into proximal technique, and there'd be two responses. Someone saying it's rubbish. Not interested. And other people who are the eternal students saying, they're on to something. There's something on that. So I think social media helps with dissemination of new techniques. And you just have to have a thick enough, or malleable enough ego to say, everything I know and I'm good at will be super seated by someone probably younger and smarter than me in due course. Yeah, we just do the best you can. One of the one of the nicest things about being a teacher is sometimes that person is one of your students, you know, who, who, who, who, who's now coming back and teaching you something. It's a wonderful thing. Lewis McKenzie used to tell me that that was the thing that made him the happiest, you know, as a teacher. I'm going to do more philosophy on your payment. You mind? Sure. So imagine you're here. Yeah. Well, imagine I'm here and I'm the teacher. And this is my student below you. Yeah, they're below me. Yeah. And they come up here. If my goal is to lock them there and then they have the same goal, then the same goal, five generations as a species we've gone backwards. Yeah. My goal is here and my, this is my level and my goal is to get you here. And then your goal is to say, this is how we learn as a species. So the goal of any teacher has to be that the students outgrow them. And I could show you what's that message is now of tens and tens and tens of our students or on, on our app, who will come up and say, look, I've tried this thing, even if it's something small, like if you look at the number one complaint dental technicians have about crown props, it's under preparation on the clinical surface. So how do we eliminate that? Right. And we'll put that out there to alert people, you know, we've got to turn half thousand alumni. How do you ensure you don't do this? We taught you techniques. Then you've got other ideas and they're like, yeah, I do it like this is in this, you think that's brilliant. That's brilliant. And that collective learning experience, you have to be humble enough to say, someone is going to do it better than me. There will be a new burr, a new technique, a new system, a new augmented, digital feeling, some overlay that shows when you've done it perfectly. It's going to happen. You've got to enjoy it. Enjoy the fact that things are changing. Yeah. And people can teach you. And you've got a responsibility, but you've got to enjoy the fact that if you've got 200 students every year, some of them are going to say, I think I can do it better than you. I think I can do mine if I show you. You've got to say, if you can, you're going to get nothing but gratitude of me. Nothing but gratitude. One of one of the aspire philosophies is it's much better that we have questions we can't answer than answers you can't question. So you can question anything. And if you think it's not clear, the burden of understandings on on me is on us. But equally, if you have it better technique, you're going to get nothing but gratitude. 100%. Show us what you've got. It'll be awesome. Tell me about the evolution of how you met Raheel and whose idea was it to do and send like a training course or whatever now? How did it start and where are you? Yeah. I will. I'll give you the brief version. Sure, Raheel will see this. The, hell of me. We first met when I was giving a talk at a VT event and they used to go to Centre Parks a lot. And I was there. I have to give them one of those. Yeah. And it was, you know, they had, they had a lot of sort of socializing going on. Yeah. And there was an I was doing day two. So there was a lot of hangover from the socializing. And Raheel was very lucid. You know, wondering how cold. And I gave a talk on some of the things you and I talked about earlier on this morning. I was like, does anyone know how to really take an out-of-the-pat pressure? Well, like a really good high list. Let's do it something very, very simple. And I said, so I'm going to give you a 10 minute talk on how to take a really good out-of-the-pat pressure. And he woke a couple of people up and said, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's making it crystal clear. So I then, I'd become quite frustrated with ineffective education at that stage. And I'd seen, I'd been at talks, which I'm sure you have, and you just said, thinking, my God, I'm just learning nothing. This is just either an advert or just ineffective learning. So I ran a, I hired Lundek, the London Deadly Education Centre, and around a three-day Crown of Bridge course. And Raheel had a big steel and borrow money, literally, not steel, but to come on the course. And he came on the course and he was the most determined delegate on the course. And he and I got on very well. I have two sisters. He's the brother I never had. And we got on very, very well. And he was, there's one thing that I admire in someone, it's docket determination. And he has docket determination. And he said, look, you, you, you, you're good at teaching, you're good at this. I think we need to formalize this. And he just presented ideas. And he was relentless in his pursuit of it. And I became ever more full of admiration for his drive, his clarity, how much structure he brings. So I'm inherently quite a disorganized person. And he is incredibly well-organized. And we met and we said, well, let's see if we can make this work. We had a lot of blowback. I had loads of people saying postgraduate education doesn't work. And these are people who tried it and hadn't gone well, protecting their own psychological outcomes. And we thought we'd give it a go. And so we launched our first course and we had one group. Was it a year course from the get-go? Yeah, it was. It was a 12-day course. And we hired hotel rooms and we hired Lundek. We managed to make that work with a small group. The first sort of cohort. First cohort, year one. Yeah, that's 15 years ago. And it's just word of mouth group from there. And so we, we were always fairly good at saying, what can we do better? And we ask for honest feedback. And if someone writes feedback and they're being honest with you as a compliment, even if they're criticising you, criticism from someone who cares about you as a compliment. And we would act on that. And then we would have our philosophy that if we give a presentation and there are questions, we haven't given the presentation well enough. We should always be self-critical and try and say if there are questions which people can ask questions still midnight with us if they want. But that means we haven't landed the important message well enough. So we try to evolve the course and improve the course every time. But it went, I mean, from that first cohort, did you then the second year have two groups? We did. Yeah, we had two groups. And then we had people complaining saying I tried to get into the groups and I didn't. And so we said, well, shall let's go to three. And we did a couple of years with three groups. And then at that stage it meant I had to change my consultant contract because I didn't have time. And so I said, we can go to group four. So it gets around that point and you probably thought, we've really got something here. Like, you know, you're changing your career. But you've got to have the self-doubt as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you asked earlier on about confidence confidence is a combination of two things. It's calmness and expectation of a positive outcome. So how the calmness, but I always wanted them to be sure of the positive outcome. And you never really are. And you know, there's a million courses out there now. So it's a fierce environment. But yes, I started to think this is we're gaining traction here. We're getting more support from big companies. People are starting to resonate with us. And our delegates are starting to say, when's your next course? Are you going to do something with Ended Analytics? Are you going to do something on communication? And it was them lobbying us that let us build the various other facets outside just the first course with just the aesthetic restorative course. And then we during that course, for example, we had delegates who say, like, I've had a complaint. We'd have a Q&A session at the end of the day and it's this and we would give a response and they would start recording my responses and writing it down. We said, "Do you want more on communication?" And they said, "Yes." We started building those courses and it just evolved from there. And what are the headlines now? How many people do you train a year? So we have how many courses are there and all of that? We have our aesthetic restorative course, we have an endodontic course, we have a removable pros course which forehand teaches. We have. An omit. I'll get his jangua. And it's a very much nicer person than me. He's a wonderful human being. And he. You teach the other bits, the endo. I teach endo and aesthetic restorative. We have a spa conversation which is pure communication for dentists. Oh really? We have an implant course. We teach a lot of implants and we have an occlusion course. I'm trying to make sure I don't miss anything. But each of these are multi-day. Well, occlusion is two days. Inplants? Communication is two days. That's 20 days. Over two years. 20 days. Over two years. Yeah. Yeah. Inplants, you know, it's different teacher on implants just because of resettance. I'm a different teacher on implants because the delegates on that, when they go out, their risk of litigation isn't higher but the values involved in implant based litigation, the numbers in the cases are higher. And I need to make sure these people are safe and happy. So, but yeah, those are our courses. We run non-dentic courses because I study personality psychology now because we run a lot of personal development. So, for us on the implant one, are you then their mentor going forward? Yes. We have a faculty team. So, I'm involved in that. But for hands involved in that, we have other teachers and our faculty team mentor them on site. We have a lot of ongoing support. And the way we structure it is they get so much clinical hands on with us that the mentoring is kind of with them. It is very individual because what I don't want is someone who lives in a remote part of the country who hasn't got a mentor to think, well, I can't do that unless I let relocate my family. Other people, so I can think of someone off the top of my head who is working in a big implant practice with experienced mentors left, right and center. And so their educational delivery is slightly different. That's why I've never thought one size fits all. It doesn't. You've got to tailor the course slightly to people's individual needs. And we've got people in there who have placed 100 implants signed up for an implant course. And you've got other people who say, I haven't taken a tooth out in six years. You know, so they need very different things. So look, as you said, the sort of market for education is gigantic now. I mean, we have real problems with staff like many events going on at the same time. We can't go to everything at the same time. There's so much going on. Yeah. All the time in different places. Yeah. Do you get that annoying call that I get sometimes where the guy kiss sell it to me. I'm considering you and Chris or Monique Vassel and elevate, sell me on you. Yeah, just to get that. Yeah. I mean, we don't. I, I, we get a lot. We get a lot of people saying, I'm not sure what to do next. Yeah. And my response always be, well, listen, I can tell you what we can, what we can offer. Yeah. But I want you to make the right choice for you. And now for the names you've mentioned there, you know, we respect all these other people. So I will never badmouth another course. I'll never speak ill of another course. And I think a lot of those delegates need to find what fits with their best. I'll be honest, payment, once you speak to someone, I think they judge you on how connect to they are with you as a teacher. Yeah. So if you can give them that and they can connect with you, if somebody rings up and says, I'm interested and they're sent a brochure, you know, if, if people can't judge on feelings, they'll judge on price and convenience. Whereas if you can create feelings in people and they connect with you and they feel that connection, then I think they make decisions on that. But yeah, there are a lot of courses out there, but it's good, you know, competition drives innovation. Yeah, and also a lot better than back in the day. I remember graduating in 96 and looking for a cosmetic course. Yeah. And basically there was one. There was one. There was one. There was a guy who used to sort of test that for adapt to remember. I remember Larry Rosentoll used to come to UK a lot. Yeah, yeah. So I went on Larry's school. Did you? But there was one guy. There was one UK based guy who did a course. It was called a Stenic Dentistry and Professional Test Day. Okay. And he used to have a course. That was it. That was a choice. Yeah. Yeah. So it was nice that there's a lot of choice. At the same time, you think that a lot of times people are having to do these courses to just get their own CVs going so that they can move to private as quickly as possible. You know, there's a sort of strange feeling from younger than just none of them want to do NHS anymore, right? I think that's true. I do increasingly so. I mean, I hope it doesn't die entirely, but I think that's probably true. It's maybe one of the main drivers, isn't it? It is. It's doing so much education now. And you know, if I came here with 10 CVs, I could open up my laptop now and show them all to you. There's a uniformity to it. You know, I did an audit on bite wings and I'm a kind, compassionate, driven dentist who likes patient care. The forefront. You know, how do you stand out? And so I think some form of post-grad sign-off has become a standard almost for the type of practice that you and I might want to use to work in if we were young associates looking for it. Yeah. I think that's probably true. I think it is. I think it's good that this choice, I think, you know, it does drive innovation. It drives, it gives people the options for what's most convenient for them where they get the best connection. And I think you're right that I don't know. I mean, the NHS has a place, but it's just become such a difficult employer. Yeah. And it's so anonymous. Whereas at least if you come and work in my private practice, I'm accountable to you on some level. Like if you're my. It's just a rich. Luckily, I can say things like this because I haven't got anything to worry about in this respect, right? Lucky you. But yeah, not everyone can say what I'm about to say. Overall, the NHS in medicine, I think, is a blessing. It's a blessing that anyone could get ill and end up being taken care of. Some of the best medicine in the world, I agree. As you said, a lot of good will involved in that. But overall, the net, I would say it's a massive, positive thing about Britain. It was correct that it was during the Olympics, they put some beds around the same thing. NHS, it was correct. Yeah. In density, I don't think it's the same. I do not think it's the same thing. It's fundamentally different things. And politicians get away with conflating dentistry in NHS. So you don't pay when you go to your GP. If you say I've got a chest infection, could I see my GP in the C.U. You go to A&E, they don't say you've got to pay. Even on an NHS contract at the dentist, unless you're exempt, you're paying. There's fundamentally a difference. But if your grandmother, God forbid, gets cancer, you know the NHS will look after her. The equivalent of that in dentistry should be, if your grandmother, God forbid, gets massive toothache, the NHS will look after her. I agree. That should be the equivalence. Yes, it should. Yeah, the minimum standard should be around emergency. So you mean emergency and so forth. Because as much as it does some good in the other area, I think it does such as much harm as well. You know, in restorative dentistry, if the dentist hasn't got time to do the job right, we know even quite meticulous dentistry fails. So I think you're touching on a number of really interesting subjects there. I really do, there's this perception of longevity. So if you have a knee replacement and you go running marathons, you know, your knees going to fail after two or three years, you have a crown and you're parapunctional. Yeah. And if it was off, there's grounds, you know, it's how dentistry has perceived from the top down on the bottom up by the public, by the profession and by politicians as a political tool. That's all it is. Yeah. I think the NHS is primarily a political tool. I agree with you entirely though. I think the NHS, if I step outside of your office today and break a leg, I think it's a good thing. I don't need to give a credit card for the ambulance. And an orthopedic surgeon will fix my leg and God bless that person and nurses will look after me and, you know, be kind to you and it is a blessing I agree with. Imagine the number of people in the US or whatever who aren't going to see their doctor about a particular niggle because just to say hello to a doctor is so expensive and they don't have insurance. You know, I think it's 65 million Americans don't have insurance. And some guy's got through take that might be some cancer. Coswaller. But isn't going to see anyone because he thinks hopefully it'll get better by itself, you know, yeah, my insurance is up. So we don't have that problem in here. No. But in dentistry, if, you know, my grandmother had to think in America, I think I'd be happier for her than if she has to think here. Yeah. So I see a difference. So the service provision of it. Yeah. I agree with that. I think you're right. I think it's a very insightful way of looking at it. And so do you think that means the public then perceive they need to go more privately like they just… Yeah, there's that change. It's very good for private dentistry. And that's, that's right. But then I, so I don't believe that happens by chance. I, I think that is conspiracy theorist. I am a total conspiracy theorist. Listen, the NHS, I believe the primary function of the NHS to UMEs healthcare. But let me make my case. If, if the primary function of the NHS NHS is healthcare, if you look at the number one reason children are admitted to hospital is through an entirely preventable disease. So that's full minute failure. At least about around 50% of people. So, so the number one killer of people in the world, the four big killers in the world, there's a number one viral is cardiovascular disease, then dementia cancer and metabolic syndrome. And for men, particularly cardiovascular disease, it's probably what will hasten our demise. 50% of people presenting a first sign or symptom of cardiovascular disease is death. That's their preventive presenting symptom. Don't tell me you're into preventative medicine. If you allow 50% of the biggest killer to be that. So, why, so if the NHS is into preventative medicine, then that none of that is happening. Look at the children with decay, look at that. And I can pick a million other diseases from that point of view. Then you look at the cost of the NHS, which is over £360 million a day to fund. Now that may be money well spent, but a lot is wasted. So this, sort of utopian idea of how it should be for medicine, how it should be for dentistry is muddied by the point I'm trying to make, which is I believe for you and me as patients and consumers and providers, the NHS is a healthcare service. I think for politicians, on both sides of the house, or however many sides of the house are, it's a political tool. I have seen 24 hours to save the NHS through every political party since I was a child. Yeah, but you could be, but both things could be true at the same time, though, you know, like, oh, yeah, absolutely. It's such an emotive subject in the UK that it ends up being a political subject. Yeah. And, you know, you've got the right way, who will constantly be blamed for trying to turn it private. Yeah. Left way, waste of which, the reality, though, is financially, we're spending more on it than ever before. Oh, yeah. As even as a proportion of, I mean, it's more, it's a bigger dollar number and a bigger proportion number than we've ever spent before and yet it's on its knees. Yeah. The answer, you know, I think there's a lot of conversations in politics now around what you're saying, that actually changing to true, a true preventative model using AI and data to, you know, that's the sort of the headline, right? I'm very into preventative health. We, I try and bring a lot of that to people's lives. And the psychology part of it is the emotional aspect of that, you know, and people be familiar with the work light outlived by Peter and T. And, you know, there's lots of great authors out there, great functional, integrative preventative medicine experts. And you can look at all of that. So we, I look at it from the point of view, that you four big killers, but then you have your six angels of, of life, which is, you know, your big ones are sleep, nutrition, exercise. And if we're ever trying to outside of dentistry, but with our delegates or anyone involved with our faculty to try and help them in hearts of health, is those three big, which sleep, exercise, nutrition, just the energy balance, but then building on to that, this circadian biology, I'm a big believer in light, your light environment really makes a difference. Your emotional wellbeing and the medications and supplementation. And, I mean, we run, I run, I run lecture courses on this and I, I, I think, are you a longevity expert? I'm not an expert at anything, but I am a longevity, and passionate acolyte. I'll give you an example. Yeah. So, and it's a cliched example, but the three big deficiencies we have as a population in the UK with racial disparity, vitamin D, magnesium, and omega three. And a lot of your listeners will be very familiar with that. So there is no sunlight containing UVB in the UK right now until like late March, and it stopped a couple of weeks ago. So your vitamin D deficient, unless you manage that or live a lifestyle according to that. Now, people who have vitamin D deficient, you know, we send delegates for blood testing to be honest, if they really get into this and we'll look at them and I was writing to a guy, he's one of our deluxe yesterday and I said to him, "What do I have to say?" Because he sent me his vitamin D and he says, "Wow, I'm so severely deficient. Is this accounting for my symptoms?" And I said, "How many times have I told you he's a friend, you know, so I can speak to him like that?" And I'm very into people living an optimized life. So I guess you supplement with the vitamin D. So there is nuance to it. Yes. And if you're going to supplement, the point I'm trying to make is if you've got darker skin, you're far more at risk of vitamin D deficient. Yeah, far far more. But what I was going to want, you know, my kids go to French school. Okay, the French take two vitamin tablets a year. Okay. And it's a super whole year. Yeah, all year, every year. So it's a super high dose of vitamin D. Yeah. It's delicious actually. Yeah, it's so easy to do. So I said a lot easier, right? I do supplement vitamin D yet. But if you're going to supplement vitamin D, if we're giving you, it has to be with K2. And it can't be activated. If you take it orally, it's not through your skin, unless you've got adequate magnesium and most people are deficient of magnesium as well. And then to absorb that, you need some fat in you. So how do you take it? How do you want magnesium as well? Anything except oxide, but magnesium by glycinate, magnesium citrate, any of those things will work for a bit more. From, yeah. So I'm very into this side of it. And the only way to three? Is there a nuance there? There's new ones in that most omega-3 supplements, you really need omega-3. So if you're deficient in omega-3, in terms of all cause mortality, it's comparable with smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes a day. Yeah. If you look at the frambling and heart study, then it compares these deficiencies in all cause mortality. Most supplements have rancid oil. It won't make you ill, but it's not effective. So the fish oil. And is rancid. Do you really need this believer or not payment? There is an international fish oil standards group, iFOS.org, in a rank for you. So if you're really artificial, as you can look at a global ranking, and you obviously want high potency low rancidity. And then you can take a very effective omega-3. I would have bought you some if I'd know. I don't know where you live now. My friend Dan Murray, he's got a company called Heights. And he's very much into it. Apparently very good for your brain, in terms of. Very good for brain health. But you know, he was the type of fish oil for key points. Yeah, I don't know if you talk about that. I have a very particular brand, I'm very into. Which I would you. So the best brand i've come across is Nordic Naturals. They do a halal version for people who want that as well. And it's. But Nordic Naturals is just a really, really high quality omega-3 brand. They're very good. And they do kiddie's versions as well. I look that up. Yeah, yeah. I would have brought you some. I'll find it. Let's get onto darker part. Okay. I'm ready. It's around mistakes. Okay. Clinical errors. Done that. What comes to mind? What if I say what have been some of your biggest clinical errors? Biggest clinical error I've made is taking on patients who are as impossible to please. And if you speak to. I will talk about actual clinical errors. First of all, I think it's inevitable. I think if you put in a million implants or you do 20,000 endos, you're going to have a clinical error. You're going to have an adverse outcome. And I have had adverse outcomes. But if I look at anyone who's in a regretful situation, a delegate and associate whomever, I would say to them, did you know this patient was troubled before you took them on and this CDS I did? So patient selection, and I'm going to qualify that with patient rejection, not enforcing your boundaries, I think is one of the most underrated and important skills we can teach any dentist. In 1978, there's a paper by a guy called Groves in the New England Journal of Medicine, and he wrote, "How to understand and deal with hateful patients?" And he didn't have any psychological classifications. He didn't know the personality characteristics, to look for how to detect them. He didn't know them, but he came up with a subject, and there have been medical publications on that subject. Many, many every year since 1978, there's none in dentistry, almost none. Whereas patient personality is the biggest determinant in outcome in challenging cases. So the biggest mistake I've ever made is having. It's not a mistake to have compassion, but if you've got high-ish compassion and you want to help people, difficult people can sneak through the net. So if you ask a group of people what percentage of the British population are psychopathic, diagnosed, they don't know. But it's like one in 50 people. It's one in 50 to one in 100. If you look at surgeons, it goes up to about 8%. In prison, it's 20% to one in five. You know, these are big numbers. And there's narcissism and macchi-evalonism and part of what we call the dark triad of personalities. From a clinical point of view, I have gone, done everything from. So I have seen wrong-site surgery. I'm going to touch word if you don't mind. I've never done wrong-site surgery, which is for dentists taking out the wrong tooth. But I have seen the wrong ovary removed, and I have seen the wrong kidney operated on and things like that. And the fourth leading cause of death in the world is medical error. So these things happen. I've seen prescription errors. I've seen someone prescribe 30 grams of parasitum oil. for post-op pain and had to go to that patient's house, not me to stop that happening. The worst clinical thing I've ever done, I think it ranges everything from putting in implanted and thinking it's perfect and looking at it and they're all parallel and then this one's got a one connet and you think, "How? How? How did I do that?" From looking at your post-op radiograph on an endo, I mean, these aren't common things and I can remember them. So, yeah, I think you're beat yourself up forever. Thinking of this endo is absolutely gonna be brilliant and there's a huge hook and I've been instrumenting around this apex getting around here and you look at it and your observations like, "Oh, mm-hmm." And you think, "How? What would I do differently?" Do you know that I will tell you the worst one? Not many people know this pain and you've got secret agent skills. I was a max-fx-s-h-o and a guy who'd come in who'd been glassed and it was probably two in the morning, there's my excuse. And I spent all the time getting this glass out of his lip and I took, you take a soft tissue x-ray and his lip was like full thickness and I got all the glass out and it's taking me hours and hours and hours and I checked it and I closed it back up and it's fine. And he came in about a week later to the max-fx unit and he was like, "I can feel the sharp thing in here and I'd sewed a bit of glass inside his lips so we had to open him back up and things like that." And I remember thinking, "If you go back and do that again, would I do it any differently?" I don't know if I would. I'm not trying to, I've done that job and it's terrible. It's horrible because in Cardiff you could imagine and rugby games, the England Wales, don't be games. There was a lot of that going on. Not the Wales Scotland match that. No, the England Wales hostility to England for that to Cardiff is very real. Yeah. And 3am, you're not in your normal environment, you're a dentist at the end of the day and you just become a dentist. Yeah. As well. And you've got to get a bed manager and you've got to take high V's and you're like, "I've never done that in my life." Bloody well makes a man if you're doing that job, right? If it's what doesn't kill you, you might make you stronger. So I made mistakes. I'm not a good one. I'm tired, pain, and either. Past day to clock at night. I'm basically useless the every time. What about a dental one? Did you do a. I'm even looking for one occasion. Is there a treatment modality that you were very keen on and then over the years realised that was incorrect? It's happening all the time. You're tweaking all the time, right? But does something come to mind when I say that? I mean, in my world, I classically, 10 veneers, Rosenthal, Styl, you know, even in my short career, I saw some ugly staining, you know, that I thought the most I should have done that. I did that wrong. I think that's a tight line to walk between. You know, it's a very good point and it might sound a bit of a bland answer. But he won't mind me mentioning it, but Martin Keller was one of my consultants and he was like, if you pick up a drill, you know, you should do everything adhesively. Don't drill the teeth. And you do get influence down that way and I was certainly influenced that way. And then you start doing pros where you've got to go indirect. You can't do it all with composite. You're going indirect and you're being so minimal. And I now teach people, if you're going to prep a tooth, don't prep it minimally, prep it properly. And that might mean one and a half miles off the occlusal surface. So prep one and a half miles and people do, you know, so I have changed in that regard in that I was extremely minimal. And if someone said you need 1.5, I'd see to the technician, can you get away with like 0.9? And they're like, well, really not. And so you give them, you know, 0.91. Not that you can prep that accurately, but you know what I mean? It's too minimal. And actually I believed that prepping a tooth, let me give you this analogy I use, prepping a tooth would kill it. Like if you prep a tooth, it's going to kill it. So what's a speck pulp potomy? A speck pulp potomy is where there's carries in a tooth that's got an incomplete root. And what you do is you drill away the carries and then you drill, payment, the pulp. And the intention of drilling the pulp is to preserve the health of the pulp. So don't tell me the act of prepping a tooth is going to defyterize the tooth. You can defyterize the tooth with excess heat and bacterial leakage. It's those two things. So actually I'm very hot. So I have gone around in a circle on that and contradicted myself. I was very minimalist. Now if you're going to prep a tooth and the technician says I need 1.2, you're going to get 1.2. I use a burlust, 1.2, where I'm most wide. We'll measure it with whatever technique. We'll be sure we get you the enough space to put your ceramic in enough thickness to do the job it's designed to do. I will do my job properly. I'll keep it cool. And I won't let it get buggy and dirty and leaky. But that is the key. So I thickness of material direct or indirect. Yeah, it's a material that's so important. Minimum thickness for a long lasting restoration. It's so key. And interestingly, I had this only two, three days ago. To easily have been a composite. Yeah. But I've got off-composite. We've got a full-on composite hands on course. Yeah, very good one. Yeah, but I personally have gone off it. In so much as it's so technique sensitive. And even in the best hands, how long is it going to last as long as my. I agree. waslant on my thing that I just put up. I agree. There's no way. There's no way at all. No, a good bit of E-Max price. Don't really. Well, it's just. Yeah, I agree. I think it's a better product. And I think that's very, very true. And yeah, it's interesting. Your question's really stimulating, actually. Because I've probably gone a bit more towards indirect at the anterior as well. You know, I've done a million cases with composite build-ups, dial, concept, etc. But I tend to. You know, if you really get to know the patient, and I said like, "These two approaches, what's important to use, what's important to me?" Like, "I need its look amazing." And really, for. I don't want to come back for 10 years. Can I get away with this from 10 years? And you do it in Porsland, you know, E-Max or whatever, some form of ceramic. And they're happy for a very, very long time. I agree with you. I mean, listen, I don't know how much exposure you've had to American dentistry. But my feeling on it is that they're more drill happy than we are in Europe, call it. And I agree with that. And TIFFS, you know, that Align Bleach Bond was an absolutely important thing. An important thing, you know, compared to what was the going on before. Yeah. There's no doubt about that. But now I see a lot of Align Bleach veneer cases. And you know, I used to think that's incorrect. Like, why would you do that? I wouldn't need to. But now I kind of get it. I do get why. What do you think the shift is? Do you think that's. Well, it's composite. And it's failing. It's failing. It's failing. It's failing. It's failing. It's failing. I mean, composite fails aesthetically, not only, you know, chips, right? It stains and. It's never fully cured. Yeah. Like, you take composite and you cure it as much as you possibly possibly can. And you're still 20% of that is un-cured. Yeah. And that's a liquid, which will be displaced by the liquid. Yeah, I agree. And we do teach over-curing and curing again in only, you know, two minutes per tooth. But you're right. Right. And the reason we do that is because of what you said. Yeah. Polish is a lot better too, when you do that. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. Always teaching me. I love that. That's very good. I want to get from you. Since you said "MDo" is your favourite subject. Is it.? No. It's like a lazy way. It's like a clean, what's your favourite subject? What do you like doing? I. It's implants and pros. Uh-huh. Yeah, implants and pros. What is it about them? Like, you said. Right. You're. You're serious. Is it the sort of the. Patient side, the macano side? Yeah, I love that. I. You know, I mean, you mentioned materials. I love the fact that these things have been engineered so incredibly well. So if you look at a really good implant brand, it's been engineered and the precision is so, so good, you know. I'm at an implant HQ tomorrow morning. And I love their innovations. I love the fact that that's quite competitive, so they're always trying to stay ahead. And then you. You put this thing into someone's skull. You do. You drill a hole in their skull and you get that roughly in the right place if you can. And then you have these attachments go on it. And then you start taking scans and impressions of it and a jaw registration of it. And. And to us, you and I really. I love the paradox that you and I are excited by that. And it's like, we've done this. The patient doesn't care. They don't care. And then they say, "Give me a mirror and give me a carrot." Yeah. And I love that. The ultimate asset test of all the things that are important to us are actually not necessarily what's important to them. That I just find part of the beautiful part of what we do. And we get to enjoy our precision. It's so precise. Do you know what I mean? Let's talk about another mistake. I've taken hundreds of impressions of crowds of bridges. This is a good one actually. And the lab sends me a photo of my model and says, "Is this the impression you took? You're looking at it go, 'Oh my God, I need to redo my impression.' And I've learned that the hard way. With implants, you don't have that nearly as much because the precision is built into the system in terms of an internal locking mechanism inside your implant. So you still have to take a good impression, but it's a different level of precision, different parameters you're looking for. So I love that. I love the fact that we get to do this and you can give someone a whole small back. Change their lives, right? Change how they feel about themselves and then change how they present themselves to the world. And when you do that, you change the health. So there's a recent study actually, which came out in March 25 and it measured saliva recorders all. So cortisol is your stress hormone and when your hyperthalamic protrusion, adrenal axis is firing up great unless it's firing up too much all the time and you're producing too much cortisol and cortisol. Ages you and flames you. It stops you. you know, you stop your immune system from functioning where it's just a whole multitude of things. And this measured saliva recorders all in patients pre and post dental rehab for anterior teeth. And not surprising, you give people the front teeth back in a way they look good and function well. And this systemic cortisol drops to a level back where you're back in that state of peace, you're parasympathetically activated. So your sleep improves, your joy improves. So things we talked about earlier in your interactions. And with all of that, your health improves. You're probably gonna make that patient live longer and live better until they do eventually get too sick to survive. So that to me is, I think it's some of you-- - Inspirationalism. - Well, you can be proud of that. You can really hang your hat on that and say, like people say, how many times do you make a patient say, I know it's vain, but I'd like this. And I say, it's not vain. It's not vain. It's absolutely part of human nature to love beauty. May I ask you a question? - Well, it's vanity seen as a sin in all the British people, the culture, culturally. - I do think that labeling as a sin. - Yeah. - But if you look at a morning sunrise, do you find it beautiful? - Sure. - So does eight billion other people. Do you think that's by chance? - No. - It can't be. So things that we find beautiful like that are just incredibly good for us. Like seeing the morning wave like change. In the sky is very good for setting your internal clock for every hormone that these things that we find beautiful. You look at a rose and it's beautiful. You look at a smile and it's beautiful. And the more surrounded by beauty you are, the better your physiology. And if you're part of that beauty, 'cause you love your smile and you get confidence from it, those joyful emotions that hormonal, new transmitter, expression in your body is just, you know, we're part of that as dentists. - You know what I've noticed? We don't have a deep whitening. We're constantly saying, ask everyone. - Yeah, I love your message on that. - But then some people, I could do this practice, there's many excuses for why not. And one of them is my patients are older, yeah. And you know, we developed the first version of this in folks that, you know, I know. - Who's like from Kent, I know for sure. - Everyone was over 70 and they wanted white teeth more than everyone else. - Yeah. - So then it's an interesting thing. I've realized that when a patient says, I'm too old for that. The response you might think might be to tell them something around the ages, just a number and all that. But it's not the best response to that, is to throw in a health benefit of teeth whitening. And it's funny because the health benefits of teeth whitening, we never really discussed those, right? They're good for the gums and, you know, plaque adhesion and I think, - You need to feel clean when I use a light. - You put light in your teeth, but-- - You know me, man, he would say something about root carries. - Yeah, absolutely. - But the interesting thing is, throw that out to an older patient and you say, by the way, it's really good for you. And they'll say, oh, if it's good for me, then we should go ahead. Now they're not even saying that, that, what they're saying is vanity. I don't want to admit to wanting a white smile. - So it's culturally at my age, one mustn't. You know, maybe it was the war or whatever, whatever it was. (laughs) - Vanity's a new disease in the UK, you know what I mean? - So do you think they, when they say, I'm too old, they don't mean it. - Not quite, yeah. - So, one of the analogies we use, I'm seeing if this resonates with you. We talk about life is unfair and if you're going to have a kid, would you want them to be clever or stupid? Everyone's this clever. Would you want them to be good looking or I want them to be good looking? And we call this the green button. So if I gave a room full of delegates the option, you press the green button. I don't care how old you are, but ratio are gender you are, any of those things at all. And when you wake up in the morning, you are noticeably, demonstrably better looking. However that looks for you, younger, whatever, you know. Would you press the green button? And normally three calls to the room go, yeah, I would, I'll be honest. And the people you're saying, you say, I'm too old. Say no, I wouldn't do it. You know, you're being callous and shallow. I said, okay, well, you can press the red button. If it looks as if you're so indifferent, and when you wake up in the morning, you are noticeably, demonstrably, uglier, older, less attractive. You could just press it. No one would press the red button. And I think green button dentistry is a universal. I think everybody let you can't buy skin yellowing toothpaste. You can't go to self-reduce, or Harrison said, you have any skin cream that will make me wrinkly and old. Because no one wants it. So I think you're right, the market is always there, but you're having to cloak it in a health benefit. Is that true? Yeah, I listen, when it came, the idea of saying that came to me was I was just sat in on someone selling in Vizelion to a patient based on its health benefits. And I thought, wait a minute, my daughter's just been through two years of ortho. No way when I've put her through two years of ortho for the health benefits of straight-to-tie. That got you can brush better was what the dentist was selling to the patient. But then I thought, wait a minute. If you're saying that, why shouldn't we throw the health benefits of whitening in, but I notice all the patients are the ones it resonates with. Okay, so let me ask you this. Do you think those patients then go and look in the mirror in the morning at their bright white teeth and go, I'm so glad I've got these health benefits? Or do you think they said they're going, I love my way teeth. Every time you've made an adventure for an older patient, they're picking the white as teeth. Absolutely. Yeah, so you absolutely know that. So it's that it's stated preferences and real preferences isn't it? It's the difference between those two, yeah, perception of it. Well, we're going next. I mean, you've achieved a lot. I guess you've just done the new center. So does that increase your number of people you can handle for you? It's, I mean, the center's not finished. We're in the last few weeks. Right in the process. Yeah, and it's been an incredible journey. Do you know the one thing I'd say about having the center or building it is working with other people, not within our beautiful profession. But I'm not advocating for the GDC or saying they're good, bad, whatever. I tell you, we need them because having a regulator, the behavior of professions outside medicine don't street is extraordinary. It's extraordinary. We have a difficulty with the builders. There's something we've had. We've had plenty of difficulties with people along the way. And your real history is Instagram stories where it talks about it. And just, you know, in terms of people not reaching a standard, the stack, we can be proud as dentists that we have that standard. So once this place is up and running, yes, it's the world of opportunities there to be honest, because we've got our own training center. It's got a six-serjury, dental practice and facial aesthetics practice. And we have a wellness along Jeviti Spa built on it as well. So we've got thermal medicine, cryo chambers, IV, trips. We've got an infrared sauna, hyperbaric oxygen, treatment room. So it's a beautiful, obviously, on the radio. Just off-registered. Wow. So about three minutes from Oxford Circus. I'm coming to the opening of that. Please do. Come to the pre-opening. I would argue. I mean, a lot of people are home you say this. But if you've ever had a proper infrared sauna, you'll leave thinking, I haven't felt this good in years. Really? It's so strange. I'm a nice bath addict. Yeah, I like those both. Do you? Yeah, mate. We'll have to-- let's get you on camera. We'll do the ice baths. Yeah, I start to think. And then go from there, straight into an infrared sauna. You just literally sit at home thinking, "I just feel strangely good." And when your body feels good, your mind feels good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything's linked like that. So yeah, that's the big project. And we're very lucky to have a number of plans for different forms of education once we're there. The AV infrastructure is really something we're proud of. And we affiliate with some other people who want to run their educational opportunities there as well. And I'm doing a big project on dementia prevention. I'm involved in the psychology and dementia prevention on a global level. The psychology you live? Yes. So if you look at dementia risk, like twice as many women have dementia as men. And if you can stop dementia in women, you're pretty much by default stop in a men's or everyone benefit. And we are looking at all the risk factors for dementia, which are partially genetic, and epigenetic. A lot of them are lifestyle. And many of them are also also personality and emotion related. So chronic stress, chronic inflammation, things like that. So I'm very involved in that. And that's my going to be my life's mission. I believe dementia is not entirely, but almost entirely, preventable. Wow. Yeah. So I'm going to die on that hill. I might die alone. But I will die on the hill of thinking I will go down fighting dementia. I think-- What's your family situation? Do you have kids? Yeah, I've got two sons. How old are they? 14 and 16. So GCSE is this year? For my oldest, short, yeah. They are my reason. They are-- I would-- Would you like them to be dentists? Do you know that is the question, mate? The answer to the question is, when they're a little bit older, I know the decisions are coming sooner. Sooner than I'd like. Genuinely, if they've got the emotional intelligence, the answer is yes. If they haven't, the answer's no. I believe that is-- How interesting. I think that is an almost dichotomous choice that if you can-- and maybe they can learn it. But I think if you can deal with people, I don't think there are many jobs where dealing with people is more important skill to have than tactical emotional intelligence. I guess I just want them to be happy. And my great friend, Matt Clover, who's an incredible father, said to me, "You'll only ever be as happy as your least happy child." And so, whatever they want to do, and I'll be honest, I'm not trying to sound, but I would be miserable for the rest of my life, it means my kids are happy. Oh, nice, man. I mean, it's a funny thing, because it's easy to say you want to, what the kids do, whatever he wants to do, but often they don't know what they want to do. Of course you don't. I mean, especially young boys, I mean, just idiots. Just play rugby and throw fruit at each other's heads. And what about you, your kids' dentist? My son kind of did want to know, he's just gone to university for the first time, he's doing aerospace engineering. Yeah, that sounds cool. Sounds cool, but it's a lot of it's defense, unfortunately. I didn't even realise that when he saw it, I thought he was like, "Former one cars and helicopters." Of course. But it's like, "Aeronautical defense mechanism." Defense is the 90% of it, you know? The funding is, anyway, as you'd expect. You know, he went on like a work experience and it was all like a helmet for this bomber. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible, it's incredible. Did he love engineering? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he expressed his interests and I thought, "Well, I said that to say to him, I said to every boy likes rockets and planes." So he's sure. It's very difficult to get in and do, and he's like, "No, no, no, he did it. No, he's in baths." Yeah, my daughter, we kind of try to push her into the industry. Not push, not push, not push. But she's like, easily, she's saying she doesn't know, right? So, bath of least resistance kind of. We're trying to make the bath. It's a massive commitment if you don't know. Yeah. But did you always want to do it? No. But I really think it suits a girl very well, like in terms of flexibility, right? You know, you can stop, start one day, five days. God forbid, she gets divorced and needs to feed her kids, she can. Or, let's say she marries your musk and needs to buy handbags that she can. Yeah. The industry, I think in that sense, is very good. You know, particularly errors within the industry, I think, you know, subsections within the industry do give you that flexibility to move in and out. Yeah, I agree with you. I think our profession gets a bad rap. Yeah. I do. And I think it's a good profession. I think it's good. Yeah, I think from within. Yeah. And, you know, some of it's completely justified. But I think we can be more proud of what we do. Yeah. And I think we can have a more positive spin on it. I think we're a little isolated. I think Densers are a little bit alone. Why do you think Densers killed themselves? I know, if I've got it. So, men and women kill themselves for slightly different reasons. But for men, it's particularly like it's much higher in men. And so I'm not excluding women from the answer. But if you look at your negative emotion lists, when your brain predicts there is nothing of valuing you to anyone else or any future experience that makes it worthwhile, we call that emotion hopelessness. So people kill themselves because they feel completely hopeless. Now, to give someone hope, it has to be hope for something that is valuable to them. So what's valuable to you might be different to what's valuable to your wife. For you, it's going to be a sense of purpose. I'm not saying a sense of purpose isn't important to your wife. But for you, that might be prime, that you are of value to the people who love you and need you. I just said, I'll be miserable for my kids if it meant they were happy. That sense of being needed is absolutely key. Dentistry strongly predisposes people to burnout. And burnout and its simplest definition is being asked to give from an account of which is already empty. You're asked to give something you don't have anymore and it manifests as your lack of enthusiasm, exhaustion, depersonalization to patients become a risk rather than a human. And what you and I have been talking about all this time and then a decrease in your ability to do your job. So you get rubbish at your job. You get really unfriendly around patients and you're just exhausted all the time. And I was actually invited to give a talk about that at the British Society of Prosadontics recently. I was wanted to go there because it's a rural institute and it's where Newton spoke and stuff, not that I'm comparing myself to him, but it was nice to be in the same halls. And so then you can look at the risk factors for it and a lot of the internal and external risk factors for burnout and that sense of hopelessness. And the external ones are very prevalent in dentistry which is a demanding workload, social and sort of professional isolation that you sit in a room. You don't get to move around much. You're often working without much natural light, the ability to move your body, produce my kind, some of your muscles, a sense of apathy and no hope for the future. You're not going to develop anymore. You're on this routine. The risk of patients complaints, they loom over us a lot, regulatory over regulation. So the external risk factors are huge. The big one that people don't talk about is emotional. We call it emotional instability, which in personality psychology has the term neuroticism. We call it an end score. So you have an end score out of 100 and so do I. And so does everyone else you meet and the higher your end score, the more internally predisposed to burnout and sensations of negativity and indeed God forbid hopelessness, everyone is. I'm very passionate about saying to someone, the templeer, Delphi, you know, a polished temple was know thyself. Understand what you're like. Understand if you do feel stressed and you bring it into your body and you ruminate and help predispose anxiety and depression and sadness and negative emotional. It is different for everyone, literally on a range from 0 to 100. And if you're very high, you need to be aware of that. You're doing, it doesn't make you a bad person to make sure you're incredibly good at detecting tigers in the forest, which I ignored. And so I'm dead. So your threat sense is really good, but if it's too good and you're predicting misery and you have a bad thing because you will have bad things in dentistry, you will have bad days and it destroys you know yourself and you've got two options. One, change your end score. You can definitely do that. So if somebody's really heavily predisposed and they've got very high end score, very high neuroticism like 96, 97, you can bring that down. There's evidence-based things, if things you can do to bring it down, it doesn't change you. Just enhances your experience of life. Or you need to build a life where you're less exposed to it. And that might be niching. So that might be you do. You do a lot of light, a line bleach and bond and that's you're not trying to do end o and pros and peri or in everything. You just say, I'm just, or I'm just going to set up a whitening practice. I'm going to do whitening and bonding or I'm just going to do end, you know, you either structurally external world or all to your internal world. And I'm very, and that's why if someone kills themselves because of their profession, it angers me. I don't like that at all. I don't think that shouldn't happen. You know, we treating life patients who are scared as well. My cousin's an ophthalmic surgeon. He says his G A days are relaxed. His L A days are much, much more stressful. They're having stich needles and people. So emotional mirroring is really. Yeah, you know, there's a very tense person. You're there all day looking after this very tense person. Yeah. It brings on a lot of stress to you. And we work inside one of their orifices. I'm not being crude, but you've got a few orifices on your body. But there's only one that's involved in eating, speech and gets decorated every day. You know, put lipstick on. It's like, I'll, maybe you put earrings on. Let's just decorate this orific. You know, that's it. And it's an orific, you know, it's so important. And that emotional mirroring is brutal. I'd be honest, you know, if you give an example of that payment, you're. You've got a really calm manner about you. So you and I haven't met today before today. But you have helped me here just because you're relaxed and chill and kind and, you know, emotional mirroring is absolutely real. And you would have known if I turned up here and, you know, it was absolutely terrifying. You would have turned it on even more and you would have given me more emotional support. But how much would that cost you? And if you do that 20 times in a row, you feel this is podcast going anyway. Did you have delegates who are paralyzed by fear of litigation? Yes. It's a much more common thing these days, right? Yes, it is. And what do you do for them? Do you sort of. Is it like, is it the same as being phobic of spiders or something? So, I mean, so if somebody's definitely got a real. The only thing about a spider in the UK isn't really going to hurt you. So a phobia is when it's probably not justified. I think you should be aware of litigation. No, but paralyzed by it, you know. I'm not trying anything new. But every day because I'm worried, every day is just a happy, absolute time. Yeah, that happens. Not all the time, but at least once a year. It's kind of common, isn't it? I'll have five or six people like that. Really, really? And I think you can go down the rational route. But then I would ask that. So you can. That's cognitive behaviour therapy. And then partial exposure to risk at the titrated dosage that's right for them. But if you've got two people who are both really bright, they're both dentists. And they've got the same level of risk, but one is paralyzing, one isn't. Then the difference isn't the external world as the internal. Yeah. So it comes back to their end school. And I would say to that person. Let's talk about ice baths. Do I. They're with me for a second. Yeah. One of them. When you're talking about the mind, I. You have to say it with humility. Because it's infinite. 729 trillion synapses. So all we can do with the mind is use models. And if I'm going to use a model for the mind in this situation, I'm. I would say you've got a coach voice in your head and a critic voice. And the critic voice is your paralyzing voice. It's the one, don't start a whitening company. Don't do this, don't go into aeronautics, don't do this, don't put your ideas forward, don't invite the stranger into your podcast, you might be drunk or whatever. You know, don't take chances. It's the same voice that says don't get in a nice bath. It's the same voice. And so if I have a nice bath, it's extremely cold, the weather's turning now. And there's not one side look at it and go, oh, get me in there. Every single time I look at it and I think, oh, this is going to be horrible. I've turned into my music, I've got some Viking chant going on. And I think, right, what kind of person Richard are you? You're going to become a wizard, I'm going to see, get me ice bar shut up and get on with it. But I still hear the critic voice. So what I would do for those people is say, externally, what can we control? What can we mitigate? What are the systems? What are the level of the assurances? And what's actually rational? And then internally, let's have a look at how you look at life. Because the same voice that says, I'm paralyzed, stay safe, don't go into work. It's the same one who says don't have the ice bar. So it's a small trivial example, but we try and change that threat sense or that amygdala response to perceived or even real threats. And I think the harshness is to pay, is that there are real threats. Yeah, of course. There are difficult patients and there are problems and there are procedures can go awry, but most of them won't. And it's you being resilient enough by changing what internal architecture. So you become the sort of person who can say, listen, I'm never going to silence my critic voice. I'm never going to silence it because we can measure this over time, measure it and square over time. But I can at least dampen it down so I can have the life that I want. That I love. How long have people become? I can ask you some quick fire questions. Oh, this is scary, but. What comes to mind if I say, what's the best lecture you've ever been to? Best lecture I've ever been to, dental, non-dental, I would say the best lecture I've ever seen was TJ Power, who is a neuroscientist. He's got a book I'll call DOS, I don't recommend everyone to live. And I've seen him online, give a lecture. He gave a live lecture, I couldn't attend just recently, a big health event. TJ Power. I know ridiculous name. And you think you're going to see some David Goggins like one of them. And you'll see this small, do you think you're two? No, do you looking really lovely, super smart. And if he watches this, hi, TJ, neuroscientist. He wrote a book called DOS, which is called DOS, which is DOS and serotonin endorphins. Oh, if you have heard him, I'm going to come back with all these books. I've heard him on a podcast. Yeah, brilliant. Excellent, excellent. Yeah. And dental, dental, I'm going to, you know, I've, in terms of content, I've heard Daniel Edelhoff when he was first talking about E-Max. I've heard the electrized most blown away with was Marcus Herzler. And Marcus Herzler was showing how to do the tunnel technique when it was first pioneered with a connective tissue graph from the palette, not raising a flat, but undermining everything, plumbing it in, using composite to close your contacts and suturing this position. And I remember, I was at the British Site of Restort of Dentury sitting next to Shana, my consultal colleague just thinking, blown my mind. Vinini, the first time I ever saw him years ago showing lots of late and thinking, my composites are A3. And yours are like nine shades of composite there, thinking that's absolutely brilliant. I'm going to put a shout out for Martin Keller, because Martin is afraid to stick his head above the parapet and say, this is what I think is right. You can agree a disagreeer. I'm just here to talk to you about it. This is what I think is the right thing to do by your fellow human being. - Do you mean the door to test and all of that? - Yeah, I do. I do. I think, by the way, one of the most important sort of things that he did manage to get that into the narrative, just to make it, and to get you from the door. - Yeah, with a conversation, you've got to, yeah, yeah. And it's brave. - Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, we should be able to agree and disagree with each other in dentistry without it becoming toxic. Although it does often become toxic. And I always think about that, you know, what is that? And what do you think it is? - Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is you get a bunch of egos because, you know, if they've done something in a certain way, they've been successful. It's quite easy to be successful as a dentist compared to as a marketer. So the guy's been successful. He's done something in a certain way. Now someone's saying, that was the wrong thing to do. It almost gets at your identity, you know? But then you can hide behind the patient. And then you can do those awful things to each other under cover of patient care, you know, is my concern. - Yeah, you can. - It gives you license to say, "Hey, you know, as long as there's a patient we're talking about." - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - The benevolence of healthcare. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, I'm, that's, we call that moral spiraling. You know, I'm sitting, I'm ever higher in my moral and once you're morally superior to everyone, you can cast a special role wherever you want. - Inspirally. - Inspiraling, yeah. You just sit on your moral spiral. And if, I think if you, you know, you can gossip about another dentist. And I do, I think you're right, Peyton. I think it does happen to dentistry more. You get to feel morally superior without doing anything. - Yeah. - You know, without doing anything moral. - We could all do with a bit of moral superiority. Do you think he, do you think there is more envy in dentistry than in other professions? - No. - That would, I doubt it. Although I've spoken to people, you know, people who come from banking into dentistry and you know, they own corporates or whatever. - Yeah. - But they're actually saying that people in dentistry are much more horrible to each other than really. - Bankers should try to build us. - Yeah. (laughing) - I was surprised, I was surprised when he said that. The guy, Kunal from tooth club, he's clubbing. - I think he is. - 15 practices or something like that. - I think, I think he's right. - Yeah, yeah, he must be. I mean, he's seen both sides. I just thought bankers were like, real, you know, to each other's head, to each other in no morals and all that. - Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, they're in it for one reason and that's to make money. - Although, although I noticed my buddies who are in corporates, you know, banks and things. - Yeah. - They're so politically sort of aware, you know, of what they can and can't say and do and do. - Okay. - You know, that corporate speak and-- - Yeah, for sure. - It's part of working a bit company, whereas the dentist, many of us are mavericks, you know, like we haven't worked anywhere other than our own place. (laughing) - It's true. - It's true, but there is, and you know, the dentist, we don't get trained in that. - We don't get trained to talk like that. - You get trained to be a dentist. - Exactly. - But not to run a business. - But even, you know, I personally am terrible at meetings, but in a meeting, there's a certain way of carrying yourself. - Yeah. - And you're not good at it. - It's a thing to people with other love. I hate meetings, I just don't like meetings. - So do I. - Is it performative? - I know, but I know how little I like it, when it's in my own company, on my own subject, with my own people, and half an hour in, I'm getting crazy. (laughing) - It couldn't be more about me than that. - Yeah, okay, okay. So where should this comfort come from, what do you think? - I don't know, I don't like it. ADHD, whatever, I don't know. - Something like that. - Yeah, yeah, I love it though. (laughing) - You're seeing from Himshi, I wanna listen to, so you're very, very much. Yeah, I, and Juno, the reason I hate meetings, is 'cause they take too bloody long. - Yeah. - And if you schedule, let's say you and I had to talk about a particular subject, and we schedule an hour for it, it'll take an hour. If we schedule, it's called pizzas. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - If we're so serious, we've got 10 minutes, we've got to bang us out, we'll take 10 minutes. - So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, - I don't keep them very short. - Yeah, when I go to a meeting, I say, "Alright, this is the agenda, if you waffle, I'm gonna silence you, you know, I will, yeah, it's somehow, I'm gonna move on, no waffling, point one, let's do it." - A well-run meeting, yeah. - What's your favorite dental book? - I see, I, you know, I've got an easy answer for that. - An easy answer, I like that. - My advice. - No, it's not, I want to say this slowly. - Go. - I want to say it slowly, because this book, to me, and again, goodness me, I wish I bought you one. The author is a man called Farhad Naini, and Farhad Naini is an author-don'tist I was blessed to work with. I think he's the most published, scientifically published dentist in the UK. - Well. - Probably Europe. - Well. - I swear to you this man is a genius, and he wrote a book on aesthetics and author-don'tics, facial aesthetics and author-don'tics, and you can read this book like a novel. He is an exquisite genius. He is one of the kindest, most eloquent, brilliant people who could ever work with. I am bar-scarce, I've worked with him, and he's helped me so many times. - Do you have the name of the book? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I let me get the word for work. Do you want to if I look at a whole of our forms? - Let me get it absolutely 100%. And. - But his name is Farhad Naini? - Yeah, Farhad Naini. - Naini. - Farhad Naini. And he, I remember, he's a very, very interesting guy in that he. He's like a fourth-dan black belt of luck. - Of course he's a black belt. You think you're talking to the most gentle, kind person you could ever meet in your entire life. And. But he's obviously a very, very, very impressive guy. He's talking at an event I'm going to soon. And so there's a guy called Daniel Hammermesh, who wrote a book called Beauty Pays, and he talks to us about the Halo effect and how Bond looks like Bond looks, and Danny DeVito is never going to be Batman. And you know, I'm afraid. the stuff you and I were talking about, aesthetics matter. And he lectures often with him. - Oh good. - You know, if I had lectures on like a level that is just sort of stratospheric to you. - Oh cool. - A lot of people, he's so humble, you won't know him. Let me get it absolutely correct here. And obviously I'm searching him up and it's buried, buried, buried, buried, ortho book. Maybe we get a screenshot and I'll put it up. Facial aesthetics and concepts by clinical diagnosis by far had naeini. - Nice. - Yes. - Facial aesthetics, concepts and clinical diagnosis. But you know, when you read that book, I'm sorry I'm staring at it because it's so beautiful. When you read that book, it goes into the history and all the symbolic history and concepts of beauty. - Oh nice. - And I just remember thinking, wow, blessed to be close to your mind. Have I sold it enough? - You have. - Yeah. - What's a course you do desperate to go on? Like if there were no time constraints, no money constraints, no constraints and you could click your finger and get yourself through a course or a program or whatever. What would you do? - Dental, do you know, you always has a sense of inadequacy and you know, I'm reasonably well known for doing implants and things like that. But working in max facts, if there's anything zygomatic or further back in the terrogoid, that would always fall to our max facts consultants. So if somebody could say, right, Richard, I'd give you these skills. It would be deep, surgical skills where you could do that, I section yourself, I think from a clinical point of view. From a non-dental point of view, I do study like behavioral cognition and psychology now but I would do that forever. And if I could avoid-- - The fascinated of that. - If I could do it, yeah, if I could avoid sleeping to not waste time with sleep, I would study it forever. Like understanding, for me, sorry, I know you don't quit if I have questions, but you invite me, it's your mistake. - Yeah, I think the internal motivation remembers that's curiosity. Two universes we can be endlessly curious about the cosmos, nature, fluorophore, the incredible natural world. There's always something to study and the internal. There's two infinite universes, external internal and I will study the internal university of human psychology forever. - Love that. - Thanks. - Love that. - Final questions. - I will be quick, I promise. - No, no, you don't need to be great. Fantasy dinner party. - Ooh, three years, then or alive. - I've got to have Frederick Nietzsche. - Okay. - I have. Apparently he was miserable and sad all the time, but I think he was the brightest man who ever lived. Probably, scholarly handsome for all his reasons. (laughing) - Still human. (laughing) Who else? - You know, another living, Navarrava can, I think is. - Navar. - Navar. - Yeah, yeah. - I just think he's, you know, he's wicked. - He's wicked. - Yeah, he is absolutely wicked. There's essential reading and, you know, when Breath of the Comes Air, I don't know if you read it. - No, it's just an incredible book. And the guy that wrote it, died, and it's the story of his death actually. I would love to meet him. - Uh-huh. - I forget his name so much, but when Breath of the Comes Air, if anyone wants a book recommendation, just, - You can have for it. - This is for it. - This is for it. (laughing) - And when I die, that's it. - And it's the moment. - He's a cardiologist, genius cardiologist. - Oh, it's just. - Yeah, incredible. - Absolutely incredible. - The final final question is a deathbed question. - Okay. Actually, I'll see you one more. Three pieces of advice for your deathbed. For your loved ones. - Without doubt, number one, and I'd make it two and three if you'd allow me, is no myself. Self-awareness and understanding. - Why? - Do you think self-awareness though, is something you can train? - Yes. I didn't used to, but I do. - Really? - I do. I think you can create metacognition in people. I think you can say to them, I, being trivial. I use the example of, so this Monday night, Tuesday, next week, you're gonna dream. Your brain is extremely active at night, massively. You're gonna have emotions in your dream, events are gonna happen in your dream. You have no control of what's gonna happen. So don't tell me you're in charge of your own mind. All you get to do is observe it. Your conscious mind can observe your unconscious mind. So all we do with metacognition is to say, let's have a look at your unconscious mind. Let's see why you think, why do I like payment? Like, don't just say I like him. That's pretend world. Why? What are the reasons? You know, I'm going to, it's because he makes you feel this and he was this way and just understand the reason. And as soon as you do that, you realize that that crucible we talked about, you know, your mind, your soul, whatever it is, you live in your brain, gives you emotion thoughts, feelings, your personality. You need to understand that this personality contends with all the seven billion other personalities and how you behave towards them, how you behave, understanding how you behave determines how they react. Now, how they react is your entire life. From the minute you're four years old and you become self-aware up until your last breath. If you know that how the world presents itself to you is determined by how you behave, so I think as soon as you can get that click and people's head, they go, "Wow, it's difficult to sell because it means accountability and responsibility." And you know, you've got to be humble about it. But if you can make people self-aware, I think it's the biggest asset you can ever give them. It's just a harsh lesson. Beautiful. Two would be stay curious and appreciate beauty and awe and seek it and all things. And with that, I'm sneaking in 2.5 because it gives you gratitude. You should be grateful. Like if I say to you now, we're in a room without natural light, if I say to you, "Pay, it's a beautiful day outside." I'm using that, you know exactly what day I'm talking about. You know it. So appreciate it. Feel the kiss of the scan on your skin and think about how that feels when it's May and that first spring day, just cherish those awe-filled moments because they will end. It will come to an end. And I guess my third piece would be, just don't quit. Just don't ever quit. Don't give up. Find your future self, find that orientation and just even small steps to all of it feel amazing. No matter what situation you're in, even if you're close to hopelessness, I'd actually say, if anyone watched it and they're close, give you a call, give me a call. Let me go out for dinner. - I'm sure. - Whatever happens, you are a value, every human has a value, every single one. And you will have duties that I need you for. So don't quit. And wherever you are in life now, you can go again and you can build from whatever position you're in. And the next day can be better than yesterday, no matter where you are. So don't quit. And then when you get to a position and you think, okay, I'm in a stronger position now to help other people watch the joy that follows him from that, it's just unbelievable. - The way you answered those three, we're very much along the lines of, I'm trying to be like this myself, so you should too. So what about the opposite? Like if the thing was, I wish I had been more. What would more of a risk takeer, more of a. - I think I think I'm so hard. I think it's such a hard question to answer because I certainly don't wanna come across, I'm saying people would be like me, I wouldn't do that. But I would say that. - You know what I mean? I might give that piece of advice though. I might say go to the gym. - Yeah. - So from that thinking of it that way, what do you wish you were more like that you're not? - I'll tell you something very, I wish I was better at finding peace in my own mind. I wish I was better at that. And I'm not very good at that. And you know, I'm not comparing myself to Elon Musk but Elon Musk said many people think they want to be me, but they wouldn't. - I said, my mind is a storm. You don't understand. And so I think it's that. So I guess what advice would I give more? I mean, I should have been more compassionate to people in the past. I think if you're very able to create positive emotions with tactical intelligence, you can be hurtful or regret hurting people. I've wasted time. I stopped drinking years ago. Most of my regrets and stupid things I've done, nothing terrible but was being drunk. I wish I'd never, I wish I'd never been drunk in my life. I do. Yeah. And I guess, you know, a lot of this is what we'd say to your kids to not go wrong. - Yeah, yeah. - And I, I, um, yeah, just understand that every choice and action and behavior you present to the world will have a reaction. - It's a very massive pleasure, man. It's been a matter of, I've kept you here longer than you probably wanted. - I have no idea. - It's like, I feel like I can't let this opportunity to do it. - I feel awful, because you're very good at asking questions. And I feel uncomfortable being this, that I wanted to, you know, I, I was walking in here and I was thinking, I want to find out about you. I want it to be like a conversation. - I mean, you have a podcast studio in the building, you know. - We do. You've got a studio. - Yeah. - You know, what will happen with that? I mean, I want to do a lot of psychology work in there. - Yeah, yeah. - Because if you can teach people, we call it the algorithm of life. And if you can teach that in personality science around it, so that's very good from that point of view. Yeah, we do have a podcast, you know all about me. - But it's a brilliant, I don't know, with you, man. It's like, you know, the, the, the wonder of a child with a get squeezed out of us, the older we get. you seem to have that in abundance. And yet, obviously, children don't talk about interesting subjects. That subjects is interesting as yours. So the combination is brilliant. Or you're very kind, mate. You're too kind. I've been curious. Let me ask you a question. Do you enjoy podcasting? Do you enjoy it? Definitely. Yeah. I'm going to ask you more questions briefly. Yeah. In doing someone as a skill, and I was with a guy called Addy Gelpin recently, who's been, he did six episodes on Huberman there. I'll drop a name for you. And so he's an incredible neuroscientist, unbelievable. And I was asking him about being interviewed, because he's done so many podcasts. And I said, it's a real skill, isn't it? And he said, yeah, he said, it's an absolute skill to be sitting where you are and do it really, really well. And I said, have you had good and bad? And he said, yeah, I've had some terrible interviews. And and other ones that have gone really, really well. I'm not trying to blow sunshine up your ass. You're you're amazingly good at it. Thank you. You're incredible. Did you practice? Well, it's been, you know, 320. I was looking through the last 350 on my way. 320. You know, what's he going to ask about it? Yeah, I was looking through. Do you think you're better than you were then? Do you mind me asking? Bit. Not a lot, not a lot. You know, I listened to episode three yesterday. And I like that. It was harder back then because of two hosts. Yes, with prof. That's it. Whenever he feels like it. Okay. But one one one's very easier. Yeah, it's different. It's not. I find it just messy. We always get it talking. I don't know. You're too modest. But I don't know. People tell me they like listening. And that's just amazing thing. I didn't even build this empire without being good at it. I think it's, you know, it so much comes down to connection. It really does. I think you're good at it. I think it's a nice thing to say, so man. So, so, so, it's really good to me. Yeah. I've really enjoyed our time. The podcast where you get to go one-on-one with emerging leaders in Dental Street. Your hosts, Payman Langrudy and prof. Salankay. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this via, you must have listened to the whole thing. And just a huge thank you both from me and Pay. They're actually sticking through and listening to what we've had to say and what our guests have had to say because I'm assuming you got some value out of it. If you did get some value out of it, think about subscribing. And if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks. And don't forget our six star rating.