Everyone Else Is Taken - NAIL-IT with Payman Langroudi

I'm Renna Ralfaleky. I'm Bumfseh. And welcome to the Nailit Podcast. This is your place to lead better, live fully and laugh more. It's your blueprint to optimal performance. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Nailit Podcast, your place too. Live fully, live better, laugh more. You've got it in the wrong order, but I'll forgive you. I'll forgive you. I said I was going to get a tattoo, don't I? No, I think we don't record this practically every week. I mean, seriously, it should be your tattoo, actually, yes. It's my mantra. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they're going to put on your gravestone, isn't it? Yeah. Always, always remember you. And we have an amazing guest, Bev. We do. We do. I've been looking forward to it. It's me, to Payman. He's a busy man. We managed to nail him down. Come on to the podcast. So to introduce you to Payman Langroudi, some of you may already know, because you've heard him, it might be this incredible host to the Dental Leaders podcast. And of course, he is the clinical director in Lighten as well. So we are truly honored, and he's a little bit nervous to actually be on the receiving end of a podcast. Yeah. It's much harder on this. Thanks for having me. Hey, Payman, hey, Payman, did I? Well, I've heard your voice and heard you talking to people asking them the questions. We're honored to have the opportunity to now put you on the other side and ask you the questions. Thanks for having me, guys. No worries. Brilliant. So I'm really curious, because I've had a lot of colleagues and friends who have been on your podcast. And I've always been, you know, I'm always curious about when people start a podcast and then particularly when it's about Dental Leaders. And I think you really, you were quite innovative in this before, because it's only in more recent years. We're really starting to hear about the need for leadership in Dentistry. So I'm curious what prompted you to start that podcast in the first place? Listen, I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a marketing thing to start with. We decided to go down a content-based approach to marketing when social really exploded. Really based on the fact that I felt like we didn't pay attention to the Google ad words and all of that. When that came along, we didn't go all in on it. So when social came along, we said we're going to go all in on it. And the idea with it was to have a content approach and not only talk about teeth whitening, not only talk about teeth, talk about people, stuck to the teeth. And it's difficult as well because the team wants to sell product. So I often get the question, "Where's EROI on this podcast?" And it started out like that with my good friend Prave Sulanki. Then, after a while, today it feels more like a hobby than anything else. I mean, of course there are benefits to having a podcast that loads of dentists listen to. From the business perspective, I don't look at it from the business perspective anymore. I look at it as important conversations. And we've done a 320 episodes or something. And three of our guests are now passed away. And to have those conversations on record for their families. And we're all going to pass away one day. And I find even though it's probably the thing that brings back the least for me in terms of ROI, it's the thing that I'm most proud of than I do. Because in its real stories, it's not boxes of teeth based all the way. That is awesome. I mean, it's probably the biggest podcast in UK dentistry, I'd say. I think Jazz Goodlarty's. Do you know what? I've not listened. That's a protrusive one, right? Yeah, great. I've heard of that. Great. I've never listened to it. But how many years have you been doing it? Since before COVID, so maybe six years. Something like that. Nice. Do you know what? Rena, we forgot. We didn't ask him the first question we were supposed to ask him. You see, you threw me off track. And then we just went everywhere. Oh, but can we come back to it? Because I was like, I was about to ask you a question. I don't want to use your flow payment. And it's like, when you talk about how this, it doesn't really necessarily get ROI. And yet, it is something that for you, you're the most proud of. What comes to mind, I mean, of course, it's the dental leaders podcast, right? And of course, you're on the nail it podcast, which is nail it leadership. And for me, that's the pinnacle of leadership. That that that peak of the triangle, which is true transcendence. And when everything goes beyond yourself, you're not just doing it for yourself and you're doing it for others and you're doing it for other people to grow as well and bring others with you, lift other people up with you, which for me, I truly see that as when you've really made it as a leader, you know, that's what you're ultimately aiming for. And to me, from what you said, that's what it sounds like. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't know that, you know, we're having a conversation, right? So whenever conversation you have to sort of put into words what's going through your head, but what's going through your head off of their feelings. And for me, I've got maybe a bit of, I don't know, ADHD, whatever you want to call it, I don't know, you call it. These days, everyone's got something, right? But if it's something I really like, I'll stay up all night on it. But if it's something I don't really like, I will procrastinate like hell and be the laziest person in the world on it. And so, you know, it's lucky that, you know, when you own a company, you can, you can call the shots, right? You can say, I want to, my first meeting is at 10 o'clock. So like nine o'clock or eight o'clock meetings. I have meetings right now, eight at night, no problem, but eight in the morning. I don't know, just as one example. And so I've got an excellent set of partners who understand me and let me, let me just do the things that I'm really good at and the things I really like doing. Because, you know, I'm that kind of cat anyway. I end up, you know, I'm a bit disorganised. You can buy me a hundred diaries. I'll still be disorganised. You know, and leaning into your strengths rather than your weaknesses. For me, it's been a massive revelation because there's loads. I'm really bad at that. But there's obviously things you're really good at. I mean, obviously we can come on to enlighten as well. But again, I wasn't going to say this now, but you, when you first started enlighten, you did that. I'm guessing it was at your 20s. Yeah, 28. 28 years ago. So, 28 years old, about 25 years ago. You probably don't remember this, but you apparently turned up at my father-in-law's dental practice. And he still remembers you to this day. So apparently you'd cold-called in Nottingham when you were first launching in Lighten. And he fondly remembers you. And he actually still says, he came to my practice and you stuck in his mind. So you left him really good example of my father. What's his name? What's his name? His name is Deroon. Deroon Patel. - It's a Toza. - It's a Toza, for a Toza, is in 96 sense, but one of our earliest users, - It just goes to show that, you obviously, there was something that you wanted to get out of there, and you put in the work that 28 years ago, and at that time, you know, cosmetic potentially, you were sort of taking off in the UK, I guess. What made you start that? Why did you want to leave dentistry and start a company? - You know how these things work out, Paf? It wasn't a decision to leave dentistry, that wasn't what we wanted to do. We started out, we were 28 years old. We were, I started the company with the guys I used to live with at university, and my wife, my now wife, you know, my then girlfriend, so the four of us, the two guys I used to live with and my wife, and we just wanted to do something a bit different, and you know, when you get to that point of, you're going to start a practice, we were going to start practices, we were going to do four practices, because it's four of us, and they were going to be teeth whitening centers. They basically, the idea was, you know, these city boys would come in, have their teeth white and have a clean, have their teeth flost, and that's all we do. We don't do anything else. You know, like superstars, I don't know, do you know the place on the stake place? There's only one thing on the menu, right, a stake. - Right. The only choice you've got is, you know, medium or rare or well done, you can't even say medium rare. And that's the only choice you've got, they do it very well. They've got their special sauce, whatever. And that was that idea of do one thing very well. - Right. - And, you know, you go around so many places and so much stuff is rubbish, you know, and it needs to be improved. And you think, you know, people, if they focused in on just the one thing, if you have the best pizza in Norwich, the best cheese and tomato pizza in Norwich, you'd have a great business. (laughing) Or then you spread it out, you know, you say, I wanna be the best dentist in this practice. I wanna be the best dentist in this town. I mean, the best dentist in the country. And then, you know, I've got the best farmer who I work with on the composite course, once in a generation talent. - Yeah. - I do come across them, but once in a generation, literally like that. And sometimes the guy gets depressed. when some kid in Brazil does something better than him because he wants to be the best in the world. And each of these comes with sacrifice. It all sounds great. But it comes with massive sacrifice. Now with Enlightenment, we want to be the best teeth whitening system in the world. And it comes with massive sacrifice, all sorts of sacrifices that you have to make to do that. What sacrifices? Because again, this is another leadership issue, as we always say, you know, ultimately there are sacrifices so that you can pursue something else. So what sacrifices? Well, from the Enlightenment perspective, like, you know, there's just product market fit kind of sacrifices, right? You want to be the best in the world. You can't be the cheapest in the world. You know, so then, you know, you can't be both of those things. And then you get people who worry about, you know, price, for instance, just as a basic example. But, you know, you have to, you have to obsess over details to make things correct. And, you know, that takes extra people and it costs more. And, you know, we take, we take the gel from the factory all the way to the patient in a maximum of six weeks, a maximum. So, you know, it's all flown over and refrigerated planes, refrigerated trucks. It only sits in the patient dentist practice for one night. Because we know that they, you know, we're going to give the dentist a date that is going to arrive at their practice and they put the patient in after that. So it hasn't broken down. It hasn't come acidic. Now, all of that takes a lot of work and a lot of hassle and a lot of sacrifice. We throw away notes of gel because it gets passed or we've decided not to keep it more than one month at absolute maximum. You know, the alternative is that we get results that aren't as good, you know. And then sometimes these goals tend to go over each other. So we said, oh, we want to be more green. So we reduce the plastic in the kit by 80%. But then that increased our carbon footprint, doubled our carbon footprint just by doing that. You know, you're in a throw away gel. That's not very green thing to do. So, you know, these goals, different goals that you have get in each other's way. But at the end of the day, I mean, supply, the supply business is difficult. It's not easy at all. March harder than being a dentist. March harder. Your patients trust you intrinsically, you know, just by sitting in your chair. They trust you. Whereas us as dentists, we've been trained not to trust. You know, that's our whole training is. Where's the evidence? And it's quite right, isn't it? You're not going to believe everything. You're in Perio, runner. You're not going to the number of things you've seen come and go that promised, you know, they'd be earth. And in the end, Perio seems to be about the same thing it was 25 years ago, would I qualify? Well, you know, I pushed the boundaries, right? I was that person who wanted to be the best and I became that and became a global pioneer for the use of lasers in Perio. And I had to I had to stand in front of British Society of Perio, American Academy of Perio, European Federation of Perio talking about lasers when everybody's sitting there saying, oh, there's no evidence, there's no evidence, there's no evidence. And there I am doing research and publishing papers and showing but I'm showing you bone regeneration. I'm showing you better patient centered outcomes. I'm showing you flat plus surgery. So sometimes it comes from needing to push the boundaries and truly have a deep, deep belief in what it is you want, what it is you stand for and what it is you can care, you can provide, which by the sounds of it was an underlight is definitely an underlying aspect within light and as well because you have to you have to have that deeper purpose to keep going, to keep going in your profession. I'd be going for nearly 30 years and yet I still love doing what I do. And so there is a reason for that and it is because I get to be the best I can possibly feel. I mean, the other thing is you know, it's a decision that you make and we were number two in terms of product for the first five, six years and it was terrible, horrible being number two. The other the competitor had a better product, better looking product, more expensive product, everything about it was better. I don't know if you remember there was a product we started out with light activated warning, there was a product called Brightsmile and this was all sort of four, five years before the zoom light came along and Brightsmile was you know, it was properly funded, they'd raised like a hundred million dollars, they'd gone and had one of these like design firms make a beautiful row-bottied thing and at the time we had this sort of vacuum clean vacuum thing, cheap copy. And then when it turned out that we found out lights do nothing, at the time we thought they did, right? The Brightsmile had the publications of 30 publications or what the light was okay. Then when we came to Switch and we had to Switch Zoom had come along by that time and we decided to go into tray whitening and I sat down with my partner, San, she's one of these guys, it's just like he's a perfectionist. Like he doesn't mind if something goes wrong but he never wants it to happen again and he'll literally change everything based on one incident and he said look I don't get how much it costs and get what it takes, we have to have the best tray system. So we worked on that for about two years and you know broke it down into you know what is it, what is straight whitening? At the end of the day it's the gel or the tray, the impression, desensitises of those four things and you know incrementally improving each of those parts and you know those incremental improvements in the end get you better results. We're getting a real insight into your personality and how you obsess over these things and it's amazing you've got that's what drives you. Well why don't we go back to your favourite quote then maybe that gives a little bit more insight into what you're about payment. I mean I really like your ska wild gooks and you know I brought them up and it's amazing the number of them they're actually in their vernacular now just like it's part of the language and you know I was looking through quotes and the Oscar Wilde ones, almost the whole page was delicious but out of the ones I've got to narrow it down to the best one, fam. I think that you know from my childhood be yourself everyone else has already taken. Yeah yeah because you do spend a lot of your early years trying to emulate other people until you find yourself I guess some people find themselves quite early. But when you realise that you know being yourself is the key. Yeah it really does it's really empowering but you know knows the price of everything the value of nothing that's one of his but we're all in the gutter some of us are looking at the stars. Yeah so many beautiful things. Yeah and man who's the woman's first love, the woman likes who the man's last romance, actually part of the part of the vernacular though. The first one you said was be yourself everyone else is taken right? Yeah yeah but as you quite rightly say it takes quite a few number of years you know it's one of those things is in your teens you want to fit in you want to be like everybody else in your 20s you want to impress everyone else and be you know be the person that everyone like looks to. It's usually most people don't do that till quite late on and then it's like you know as you get oldies realise actually you know you don't nothing really matters as much as you think it does you go around running your head and there was a saying things I whole blooms book about you are not as important as you think you are to other people you know people don't think about you as much as you think about yourself until you realise that it takes a lot it takes you know it takes you to get quite old to actually understand that. Yeah so the empowering to isn't it that you don't have to try any at the same time I do I still think you're always trying to be someone else isn't it because I don't know one might get completely drunk or something and another person comes out. There are inhibitory mechanisms that play the whole time right. I think we're going to take him out for a drink but I'm not. Always up for that game anyway. I don't know but I don't know about you guys I bet ran it was just swat yeah but I wasn't right and a dental school. Can you tell us all the books look at all that but yeah I can tell us all the backgrounds. It's a good good swap man but in dental school I was the grammar guy and and we found this stuff that was for you know bodybuilders it was like some sort of protein pound but it had something in it that kept you awake all night. So we stayed awake 48 hours went through two exams and then I wrote I wasn't this all surgery exam and it was like something what's the differential diagnosis of the swelling on the palate or something and I was writing garbage actual garbage but I couldn't stop myself yeah and I really realized that in the emergency mechanism thing but you know there's all sorts of thoughts sometimes you drive you a car you think I'll just drive over the cliff but then something stops you something stops you from doing that you know there's an arbitrary mechanisms kick in and you know in our podcast I do one with Rona on mental health and we asked this question of you know why is it that then to take their own lives and in that moment yeah something inhibitry doesn't kick in I guess yeah we'll talk about why later but in the moment of doing it something doesn't kick in and a lot of people who had depressed or haven't had any sleep. And having had no sleep for 48 hours, those two days, I realized I was writing like, "Sure crap." I was saying, "Yeah, you could bite into a peach, and it could burn your. " And like not even using medical terms. I knew it was incorrect, but it couldn't stop. - Well, who is the real you? - And who is? - So some of this goes into kind of self-destruct. And I mean, you, Bob and, Bob and came back and said, "Actually, it takes quite a long time, and you seem to think it didn't, but it does." It takes a lot of maturity and a lot of growth and a lot of self-awareness to really not just believe, but resonate with that, be yourself, because everybody else is taken. There's a big thing, and when I do a lot of work with people in their 40s and their 50s, we realize that so much of it is actually about identity, because you've spent so long with the label, the label of identities, a business owner, a mother, a father, a parent, a daughter, a son, a niece, and nephew. And actually, who are you really at your core? And for me, that's what nail it encompasses, because you have to go back to being your true self. You have to be prepared to shed all of the layers of everything that you've accumulated. And that's the only way you actually set yourself free. So it's not, and we do see, like, when some people get a lot older, right? They don't tend to care what other people think, and they voice things a little bit more. But I think particularly in a profession and in dentistry and this idea of needing to behave a certain way, it really does create incredible limits. It creates anxiety. It creates depression. It removes you from being truly authentic. And from actually, it puts a cap on your success, however you want to define success. Yeah. Although, on the other hand, dentistry does sort of lend itself to sort of being the king of your own kingdom, as well. Yeah. You know, the dental practice is, I would define it as a very large small business. You know, it's a small business. And you can totally call the shots in that small business. And in a way, it can be an expression of yourself. And I do see it. I go into thousands of practice. I've must have been thousands of practices. And sometimes you're in some little town. And you've got this super happy guy who loves coming to work, loves his team, loves his patients. And it's basically finding it, you know, at the end of the day, you know, keep your patients happy, keep your staff happy. It's basically all of dentistry, right? You know, we're seeing you do the teeth. Yeah. We're seeing you do the teeth well. But keep those two constituents happy. And you see people pulling it off and being the kings of their little kingdom and actually being themselves. And it's so interesting, you know, from the outside, you might imagine dentists and dental practices are all the same. But boy, are they not? I mean, totally different, totally different things I see in practices. And yet we have massive burnout rates. We have a huge, huge rates of burnout, depression, suicide. You touched on mental health issues. So there are a lot of people out there who are really. Have you thought about this one? And I looked into it about why dentists take their own lives. Because, you know, me and my own interviewed loads of people, red alert of staff, turns out dentists have been taking their own lives for a hundred years. It's not the GDC, you know? Yeah. One thing I thought about is, I've got a cousin, he's an eye surgeon. And he was telling me, if he has a day of operations, LA, or a day of GA, the LA days are twice as stressful. Because you've got a patient there, right? And sticking an injection in his eye, in essence, to house situation, nervous life, patient, all day, every day is a level of stress, or an amount your bucket is going to get filled. And then layer on that, let's say your relationship with your nurses, as good as it could be. Now you've got someone in the room with you all day, and now that's extra stress in the bucket. Layer on that, much of our work fails. You know, people come back with, you know? So your self-worth goes down a little bit. But, you know, we don't have the answer. We don't have the actual answer. We didn't have it. Did you guys have a look at that or think about that? Well, I know like my own experience of contemplating it, but the inhibitory bit definitely did. But there have been moments, because it's almost-- That's the dark days. Dark days. There are days when I feel like I don't even want to be on this earth. It suddenly feels too painful. And there have been times, if you know, complete decision for tea, where you just shut down. And you're right, it's not just the GDC, but it's just, it's suddenly an inability to just cope and these thoughts that it wouldn't just be easier to just not be here. The inhibition for me was like, yeah, okay, hang on, runner, you've got kids, don't be so stupid. And then you kick back in again. And there has to be a way. But there are some people who don't have that level of resilience. And usually, they do. For the first thing they do is once they make a plan, you usually see there are much karma. And you've got to watch out for your friends if they've been really depressed. Because the minute they seem to perk up, that's actually the danger point. Because usually at that point, they've made a plan. And once they've made a plan, they feel better. And then they execute the plan. We've gone down a path. Yeah, it's, and it's tough, you know, I sure we've all lost people through, you know, in the profession. And it's very, it's incredibly sad. And it's not the dentistry. Like you say, it's not, it's not our care for our patients, but it becomes a massive accumulation. And that's where payment, I think, we do get back to labels, you know, because we get back to the huge burden and responsibility of owning a practice, needing to make the numbers stack up. Having piles and piles and piles of more responsibility laid on your beard through regulation or taxation, remuneration, and all these things where every time you feel like you're taking two steps forward, one step forward and two steps back. And I know so many practice owners who feel that. And they love the dentistry. They just feel out of control. Yeah, you know, dentistry business is, I mean, the word easy is sort of misleading, but it's an easier business to thrive in than pizza shop. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but the pizza shop guys got taxation, he's got remuneration, he's got all the issues that the dentist has got. And yet the pizza shop guy isn't killing himself and the dentist is. And then you go the other way and say, oh, it's really intricate, high stress work. The brain surgeon isn't taking his life as much as the dentist is. But the brain surgeon isn't running the business. The brain surgeon is getting with brain surgery. The problem is the dentist is every single business. It's like the pizza guy is making a pizza or employing the stock. The accountant is running the business, the lawyer's running the business. These guys aren't taking their own lives as much as dentists. I think you're something to do with the energy as well, though, right? Because you take on so much of an emotional drain when patients come into stepping into your room. Yeah, sometimes you're not being you, right? You're an actor or an actress, right? And you have got to put on this happy face, even though inside you may not be happy. Absolutely. And that's that. That has got to take its toll day after day, patient after patient. So that's that thing you're talking about of sort of being on stage if you like. And you know what, in my life, I've done things like be a dental rep. Yeah, when we started the company, we didn't have anyone that the internet didn't really exist. Yeah, so someone would call up from wherever. Yeah, I'd have to get in my car, work out if there was no Google. Like you said, yeah, you turned up with my father in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah. I'd have to get up and get in my car and go there and believe you, me, that's a much harder life than being a dentist, being a dental rep. But on this question of how long you'll show, you'll show for about an hour or two today. This is it. If you know, if I guess maybe I wasn't a very good dental rep, you're some of them, maybe like three hours a day, at the very most. Now it's bloody hard. I could have waited about 5 a.m. drive, find your way there, sell to the guy, come back, all those things, but you're not on show all that time. Being on show does take it out of you no doubt. But also you're inflicting pain on people. That's true. They're anxious. They're not them. And there's no nicer of doing what we do sometimes. But I try to make it into as humorous as I can be. And try to make it a nice, pleasant experience for my patients. But at the end of the day, we're working in a very sensitive area. And we're putting them in very vulnerable positions. And by the way, loads of dentists love it. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love the profession. And that's one of the reasons why we're doing this. It's like we do love the profession. And we want it to be great again. And we want people to find the joy in what they do. Make dentistry great again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, get the hat. We've already got the hat sorted. I'm going to be around now. Well, make it greater. I mean, I went into dentistry with this idea. I wanted to be a dentist who people weren't scared of. That was kind of my challenge at the time when I went into dentistry. We had literally 39 of us at the London in our year group. it was a great day. tiny and only six of us had actually chosen to do dentistry first and foremost. The rest were still in the days of failed medics. They all changed their minds after medsurge and doing more drowns. They were like, "Actually, I'm really glad we're doing dentistry." You've both got hits on you. Yes. Would you tell your kids to become dentists? I would. My wife would in, I would. Is she a dentist too? She is, she is. Yeah. My ex and my ex husband is a dentist but we would not and neither of us would be particularly keen on that. I definitely would. I think it's a great profession. After everything it's given you around, I've been a world leader, written books or whatever. You still wouldn't give that opportunity to your kids. It's not about giving the opportunity. They also see how hard you talked about sacrifices, right? You talked about sacrifices and it's not, it's not a job that, it's not, no job is necessarily easy but it's not one of those jobs that, it takes really hard work to get the rewards that you truly want. And so I have made a stop. I don't know, let's just throw a number out. Let's say in your specialist practice you were putting out £300,000 a year for the sake of the argument. In any job earning you £300,000 a year, the destroyer. If you were a lawyer, if you were a banker, if you were, by the way, if you said I want to do in another field marketing or something, you'd have to be head of marketing at Procter and Gamble or something, not some dentist in Brighton. So you know what I mean? What you're saying there, the return for the work that worked the amount in. No, so I'm not just talking about the money. I'm just saying the life, the life that you want, you have to work really hard and for me I've made a huge amount of sacrifice. And you know, I sacrificed myself to the point where I became chronically ill. So that was my, for me, that was my turnaround. That was my, my inspiration for then developing nail art to be able to optimize your energy so that you can really thrive with what you want to do. But my kids have seen that. They've witnessed that and they're going to put labels on that of, you know, they've seen me just setting off around the world and not necessarily being around for them when they were younger because I was invited here. They're everywhere to just speak and they want me around. So I think they've just, they've, they're inspired by a very hard working mother, but at the same time, I just think they feel they want an easier life. Yeah. And I, I, I recognised that early on. So I sold my practice three, four years ago. So I had a practice in Winpall Street. Well, eight years, seven, eight years. Yeah. So that three years ago, surely because my children are six and eight and I want to be present. I want to drop them to school and to pick them up. I don't want to be stressing about the practice on weekends. So I made that choice. And exactly the same payment, dentures given me that opportunity to be able to make that choice. Right. There's not many job jobs that you could say, "Do you know what? I don't want to work on Mondays. I don't want to work on Fridays. You know, I want to work." As you quite rightly say, I don't, I'm not a morning person. I'd love to start 10, you know, but we can do that. That's the beauty of our job and our profession. And that's the reason why I'd always sort of stick up for it and go, "You know what? It's a great profession to be in, but it's finding that work life harmony." I know, I mean, I've been speaking about this quite a lot. It's just finding that. I don't want to say the word balance, but you know what I mean, it's the, it's the finding that sweet spot, let's say. I mean, my, my son just started aerospace engineering his first year and we found out it's all defense. Like my, maybe 5% of it is, you know, Formula One class and think 95% of it is defense missiles, landing systems, you know, like planes, like helmets, the shoot things. And okay, all, all, well, and good, you need aerospace engineers in the world. And then we looked at the salaries, you know, the starting salaries and how quickly does it go up? And it basically doesn't. It's awful. Like it takes 10 years to get to, I don't know, 60 grand salary or something. So he said, "Oh, I'm obviously not going to do that." So now he's saying, "Oh, may I make a start-up? I might go into finance." You know, and it's all a bit in the air. My daughter, she's a bit easier to manipulate. And so she's more like a path of least resistance. And you know, her mum's, my wife's a dentist, works one and a half days a week. And she's now said, "You're maybe on a be a dentist." And you know, I'm happy for her, especially as a girl, especially as a girl who can stop start due two days, two, two, five days. I mean, Rana, do you think that question of wanting it all was the problem? You know, you're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to be the perfect wife mother in this lecture." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the bit you touched on of perfectionism, which actually is very high rates of that industry, right? I had to be the best. I couldn't be mediocre. Good enough was not good enough. Everything had to be, like as good as it could possibly be. So I had to be the best practitioner, the best friend, the best mother, the best lecturer, the best researcher. And eventually, you know, you have to, something used to give, right? So absolutely, it's partly a personality thing. That's one of the things that we obviously sort of teach and sort of do the assessments on is you've got to discover yourself and know what your drivers are before you can help other people, right? So you've got to know yourself and it goes back to your quote, it's gone full circle, is that, you know, to understand yourself, it takes time. And, you know, like I say, everyone else is taken. So look, I'm quite mindful of the time. So shall we move on to your favourite pillar then of the nailing system payment? Because I'm sure Arren has already got you tagged as well. Yeah, better right. You know, hold on. Yeah. Yeah, I like them. I like them. The one I like the most is intuition. And not because I've caught this feeling. Did you write that? Did you write that? Did you write that? Did you write that? Did you write it down? Integrity. Yeah, but well, no, no, I looked at integrity first. Yeah, because I like integrity. And I let your definition of integrity quite well. But in the end, I picked intuition because and not because I've got a brilliant instinct actually quite the opposite. In so much as I spent the first half of my life almost ignoring my intuition thinking, oh no, that's all, you know, bollocks. That's a real out of the switch. That's that's all, you know, not scientific. And I almost used to go against my intuition just to prove to myself that I'm like this logical scientist. And then the second half I suddenly realised that all these successful people saying things like, oh, it just felt wrong. And I could feel it in my tummy, in my stomach. You know, and I say, oh my goodness, you know, I've been making this mistake all these years. And now I do trust my instincts a lot more. And the other thing is I'm really like sort of look up to people who trust their instincts because, you know, because they add it all along. And, you know, my business partner's funny, you know, you'll make a decision. Can't tell you why. He doesn't like that person or that idea. But he's so sure about it. And it used to drive me crazy, but now I've kind of changed. And because, you know, it's again, like a bit like that, be yourself thing. Once you learn something and then change direction as an adult, it really does feel really good. You know, so yeah, that's the one I like the most. I love that. So that's the North Star Navigator. So, it's four components. So one is about silence because we really do need to quieter ourselves enough. So no distractions that we get exposed to hundreds of millions of bits of information per second. So you really do need to silence it. That's why actually people's intuition generally does tap in the most when they're in the shower or when they're driving. And there's scientific factor that they've done studies around that to show that if you're mildly distracted with an activity, but silenced, then that's when your intuition comes in. And the other bit is what you touched on, which is really about trust, really needing to trust that this is truly an intuition. And trust yourself. We're back, as Babin said, to being able to be yourself. So trust what's right for you. The A from the star stands for attachment. So you need to have that connection. So you need to have that connection to yourself to believe in yourself. And then of course recognition. Recognizing very much if it's a fear, if it's a logical belief overriding it and you're when the procrastination bits are just sometimes you get in your head or if it truly is an intuition. So we usually encourage like if you were starting out on intuition, just start off with a little intuition journal and just start off sort of taking the actions about things you think are intuitions are right down for yourself to reflect what's working and what isn't until you then learn to recognise that's like a little tip. But yeah, I love intuition. And it's such a powerful, powerful element of leadership that's being recognised more and more nowadays. And you can train it. Don't just have to be female to have good intuition. I like that that you can train it. It feels like that. Very much so. Bayman, we have loved having you on. Definitely, yeah, there's no whole part with you. That's for sure. It was a bit of a roller coaster, wasn't it? Good. Yeah. So it's lovely. Lovely to see you on the other side. So you know, how was it for you? It was okay once I got going. You're all right once you got going. Oh thank you. catastrophize things. Exactly. Exactly. you've got to get rid of those limiting beliefs. - And he's still part two, Paymon. We're still part two, mate. - Yeah, anytime you like him. - Absolutely. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure to have you. - Lovely to meet you, guys. - Thank you, Paymon. - Thanks. - So, Bav. - Yeah. - Well, you're welcome. - Paymon, do you know what? He's such a true born leader and he's, you can tell he's a perfectionist. And that's why in light enough, done so well, I think, and his podcast has done so well. I don't know if you realized halfway through, you do realize he's such a good podcaster that he actually turned into a podcaster and he was interviewing us. You do realize that for half of that. - He did. - I think that was his defense was attack. So, he just naturally went back to his podcasting mode. Which is great. We don't mind. We'll be on the other side. - And we love the talk. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know what, I think he's a sort of person you can talk to about how it's going in. - Absolutely, absolutely. So thank you, thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of The Nail It Podcast. Bye bye for now. - Thanks for listening guys. See you later. - Thanks for listening to The Nail It Podcast. 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