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Dr James:
What’s up team. Welcome back to the Denyssey Invest podcast Inch-Haston podcast. Today we’ve kind of touched upon this a few times but we’ve never actually did its. You know, give it the credit, its dues, give it the full respect that it’s deserved and had a fully and calm pass and focus dedicated episode on this subject. Today we’re here to talk about starting a squat. I’ve got with me my good friend and expert on the matter, dr Bobby. How are you today? Yeah, i’m great. Thank you, bobby Bandau. How?
Dr Bobby:
are you? What are you up to? Yeah, fantastic. Just finished the day in clinic and finished a little bit early to get off. I have a chat with you.
Dr James:
Lovely stuff, lovely stuff. And then it’s the weekend, of course, so things are getting better and better. Tell me, bobby, for people who are in the audience, for people who are in the audience who have yet to meet you, maybe it might be nice to do a little bit of an intro by yourself.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, yeah, no problem. So I’m a dentist, obviously. I graduated in 2013 from University of Birmingham about 10 years ago now And I was an associate for most of my waking life. But about two years ago I decided to set up my own practice And I set up a squat in Leviton Spa in the Midlands. We opened in December 2022. We’ve been going for just over six months now. Yeah, things are fantastic, been great.
Dr James:
So far, so good. That’s awesome. So many people say starting a squat is one of the toughest things that they’ve ever done. Would you agree with that?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, yeah, hands down is incredibly, incredibly tough, dougie. we’re on. this been really fun. I’ve learned so so much along the journey. But yeah, it was one hell of a ride. There was so many ups and downs, but what you get out of here at the end, no one can give you that feeling. walking into your own practice, it’s built at yourself, created it from scratch and whatever’s in your heart is just insane.
Dr James:
Cool man, cool man. Well, it’s a little piece of you. It’s like a kid. like every business is like a flipping kid. I put a poloid on the group the other day and I said which is harder starting a successful business or having a family? Probably about 80% of people said kids. So I think kids just pips it in terms of effort and probably overwhelming joy and love at the outcome. I guess, but I don’t know, i’ve never been there. But what I will say is starting a business is a hell of a lot of work. So I’m with you on that one. So what inspires you to start a dental practice, bobby? how did that journey begin?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, so I mean with us baseball. For me, what happened was I was in a great practice as an associate. I loved it, but the practice got started to a corporate And unfortunately, there was a lot of changes. Things went downhill pretty rapidly And then at that point came to a bit of a crossroads. You know, i was really fed up. My list was really stable, you know, and just couldn’t really carry on anymore the position I was in. So it was either you know what I’m going to do go get another job in private practice or start setting up. I’d always had something in my head that I wanted my own business. Come from a family you know voice, have businesses, so it’s always been in the back of my mind And then started having a look around, started seeing what practices were like, what they were selling for, started researching squats My old principal had set up a squat And so he was really keen on the idea and he gave me a lot of guidance, pointing me in the right direction And in the end, yeah, i just decided. You know what, let’s just go for it. You took a leap. Yeah, i took a leap of faith. I mean goodwill values around our area. They were just ridiculous. I mean when I was doing the maths I would have spent all my life just paying back my bank loan. You know, before doing anything else, you know when you work out the maths. It just didn’t make sense to me.
Dr James:
So that was the main reason that made you think squat versus purpose in practice.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, for me doing a squat seemed like a lower risk the buying an existing practice. I know people will look at that quite silly. You know they’ll be like well, how can you compare that with? you got cash flow coming in. But when you’re comparing it with the value of practices, you know around where we live to me it was a no brainer. You know. For me, 250 grand All right, fair enough, it’s a lot of money. It’s tough. Worst case scenario I can go to work as a dentist if everything failed and I can make that money back within one to two years. You know, if you think about it logically, most dentists are pretty capable of doing that.
Dr James:
Well, it’s, it’s 100% right, And it’s one of those things that there’s an added incentive incentive if you’re at the very start of your career, given that you’ve got time to recover, right.
Dr Bobby:
So, it’s kind of like this duality.
Dr James:
most people are waiting until they’ve got enough experience in very commons, which I think is actually a little bit of an illusion, because I used to have that mindset where I was like, oh, i need to hit a certain level of competency at my compsits or certain level compsit can see a dish or whatever And actually it does help to have some skill and knowledge of dentistry, given that you don’t want, if you’re a rookie dentist, you don’t want your failures to be an added thing compounding the difficulty of you setting up a business. But at the same time, if you wait too long, then it gets harder and harder. kids come along, family comes along, all of that stuff. So it’s that there’s a sweet spot, isn’t there? There’s a sweet spot. It’s not really one or the other and it looks different for everybody.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, 100%. I mean, if you’re going to be the main dentist working in your squat clinically, you know, ideally you want some level of clinical confidence because you don’t want all your patients having bad treatment and things coming back on you. Yeah, it’s an overranya, But I think anything you come out of three or four years at a university, you’re reasonably confident. You’ve been on enough courses, had a bit of experience. I definitely regret not doing it sooner, though. Oh that’s, you know. I sat on this for probably about five years in the back of my head. That’s five years experience. I could have had five years with a good will. There you go, and what?
Dr James:
age. Are you now, bobby? just for context, i’m 34. 34. Great stuff, okay, cool. So here’s the thing You’ll have lots of knowledge that you almost think is like common sense, because you’ve been through this process. But the people out there who find it extremely valuable, and one of the things that I’ve always liked to know is how did you go about that process of getting the squat up and running? Did you go look at sites? Did you try to obtain finance? Just what order are those things undertaken?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah. So when I first started looking I had absolutely no idea where the hell to start, what the hell to do. I’ve got lots of tips from principals and things like that, but you know we give you guidance but there is no like rule book, there’s no handbook. It is literally just the case of I had to go out and just figure it out and, you know, make a lot of mistakes along the way. But in essence what I did was I took loads of A3 sheets of paper and I stuck them on my wall in my study, right in front of where I’m sat now, and on about seven or eight pieces of massive white paper I write down everything So building, marketing, finance, everything And I just started making massive lists of everything And then I just started building it out from that. So then from that, i started looking at how much money I’ve got, started speaking to brokers, see what I can kind of finance, what kind of money I’ll be able to obtain. Then, on side note from that, i started looking at buildings, locations, you know, based on what finance we could get, you know what can we do. And that’s literally how it went the whole way through just piecing everything together. There’s no order to everything. A lot of things happen simultaneously. You know it’s not like you got to do this bit and then you do this bit. A lot of it’s all being done, you know, at the same time.
Dr James:
Cool. So, in essence, what it sounds like is you started out with the vision as in what that practice would ideally look like, and then you kind of worked back from there. And then, naturally, you’d have to adapt the vision, first, whenever you know, based on what you could, based on what you uncovered through the journey in the process, based on what reality, information, reality was giving you. However, it’s just a point from that to navigate from, isn’t it? And finances like that as well. The very first place you start out is what is your vision? Where are you? And the part in between is how you get there.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, the vision was massively important. I mean, that was the whole page to itself, Exactly what type of practice I wanted it to be, How I wanted it to look. The patient journey you know how the patient goes through that practice, You know what type of patients we want, the avatars for those type of patients, And then, yeah, like you said, we just work our way backwards from there.
Dr James:
OK, cool. And what was? what? was that avatar of a practice? What did that look like for you?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah. So for us, you know our location. We’re in a relatively affluent location. We wanted to make something that looks stunning. You know it doesn’t look like a dental practice. We have no reception in our practice. It’s all done back at house. So you know, patients come to our practice is very, very personalized service. People comment that it’s like coming to visit their family. It’s all meet and greet. We let people in, we introduce ourselves to them, they come into a lounge and they just get to relax. You know they can have a cup of tea or coffee. We’ll go out there and speak to them. You know, have a conversation with them for 10 minutes before we take them into surgery. It’s just very, very different experience to go into your average dental practice. It’s definitely unique.
Dr James:
So that was the vision, so to speak. And do you think everybody who start in a squat should they aim high end? Is that necessary? No, no, no, 100% not.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, every person who’s going to open their squat can have a different strategy. You know I’ve got. I know people who are competing with the NHS. You know different price points, but going on a volume basis, yeah, it depends on so many different things. It’s just what vision you have in your head. You just got to work out can you make money from it? You know, if the answer is yes to both of those, there’s no right or wrong way. You just got to do what suits you. You know this was what suited me. I had a vision. I wanted to be somewhere that looks stunning and I wanted to be able to provide great care for my patients. You know, that service, that journey, that experience was really key to me. That’s what I enjoy, you know I enjoy doing that for my patients, but not everyone will you know.
Dr James:
Good stuff, good stuff, my man, ok, cool. So you had the vision, you had the plan, and then the next stage was to look into finance and look into premises. presumably, yeah yeah, exactly.
Dr Bobby:
So, and how did you?
Dr James:
go about that? How did that occur?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, we started looking at buildings, see what was around, what was suitable. I was actually quite lucky in that sense. So my family owned a building which is quite local to where we live, in a great location. But the building needed a hell of a lot of work doing to it. So it was. It was almost like a blank canvas. So it was great. I took the lease back of the people that were in there and we started playing around with it. But it ended up being a massive property development, not just the practice. So we had land on the back of it, we knocked part of the building down, we built some flats upstairs and then we kept all the downstairs for the dental practice. So, yeah, it was pretty cool. So, yeah, it was pretty, pretty, pretty mad. Really, it wasn’t what I was expecting When we first looked at it. We were just going to use the existing part of the building and have one surgery and a decon room, and it went from that to three, four surgeries, a double story extension and a new flat.
Dr James:
It’s quite the upgrade. How many decided to change?
Dr Bobby:
Well, when we looked at it with the architects it just didn’t make financial sense. It’s like we had all the land and if we got the scope to expand, it just saved us having to do all that building work at a later date. I didn’t want to have a running practice and then be doing loads of building work, so we sucked up the cost at the start, but on the back of it we know the value of the property has gone up And if we get to bulk capacity within five to 10 years we’ll have made more than I’m money back anyway.
Dr James:
Very cool, my man, okay cool. So basically, you had the building, you went to the architect and he said Hey, here is what we have planned. We’ve got the one surgery, the D-con room, and then through that two and four process for the architect. That’s when you thought to yourself, you kind of uncovered this fact that it, financially, it made more sense to go bigger rather than smaller. Right, that’s basically what happened, and I’m guessing that there’s such a thing This is coming from. You know, i have no idea how this process works whatsoever, so I’m guessing that you got architects who are specialized in the dental sector. Is that correct?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah, so we used a great architect. He’s from Glasgow but he was fantastic, so he looked at everything for us. He gave us, you know, five or six different options, you know, for what we could do with the building, with the site, and then we picked what we liked and then we just worked on that and developed it.
Dr James:
Cool, cool. And then the next step was finance, presumably.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, yeah. Next step was finance. Yeah, it’s always a fun bit. So you know that was just. It was actually a really straightforward process, you know, as far as what most people think It was a simple case of. I had a certain amount of cash which I was available, had available to use and went to brokers, so spoke to different brokers. This is what we’ve got. This is what I’m planning on doing. This is how much we’re going to need. I worked out, you know, my own kind of financial forecast beforehand. You know what it’s going to be, what it’s going to cost to do everything, what it’s going to cost to run, and then within a month, we had money in the bank.
Dr James:
Oh yeah, sweet, always a good day. Always a good day Cool.
Dr Bobby:
But we took that alone before all the crisis, so I didn’t fix my rate.
Dr James:
Oh, the mortgage crisis.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So before all the kind of war and everything that happened with interest rates. So this was obviously back last summer And the rates they offered me there was about a 4% difference, I think, at that time between a fixed and a variable rate. So I decided not to fix it. I didn’t foresee, you know, everything that was going to happen, as nobody can. So let’s just say the monthly payments at the moment aren’t pretty.
Dr James:
Gotcha. Okay, unexpected, but nobody can really predict these things. It is what it is. But here’s the thing, you know, on the flip side, right, a lot of people are waiting for the perfect time, right? Because in reality, the perfect time never comes, does it? And these unforeseen things are going to pop up and you just have to make it work, and you almost always do find a way, right?
Dr Bobby:
No, no such thing. You know you can get finance if you speak to brokers out there. No matter what, you can get access to money. You know it’s not an issue. The dental practices generally are stable investments. You know money is out there, whether it’s private investment, whether it’s through banks, whatever it is, you can get finance. You can’t predict anything. Well, you know, on the back of it, if anything, it makes me work harder because I know I’ve got, you know I’ve got more money to pay back, so I’ve got to perform better.
Dr James:
This is it. You just make it happen, don’t you? I’m a big believer in that. I’m a big believer in that. You just fill in the blanks along the way. Yeah, cool, okay. So you’ve got the building, you’ve got the plan, you’ve got the finance. What happens next?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, so then you find builders.
Dr James:
Awesome, awesome. How does one do that?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah. So we went to probably about 10 different builders, you know, within the dental industry, outside of the dental industry. Again, it was a minefield. We had quotes varying by about 250 grand from the top to the bottom, Yeah, which was mental. So we decided to split it up because we had an extension. We decided to use local builders who came through family recommendation to do our extension, put the shell up and then use some dental builders to do all the internal work. It was not a very enjoyable process A lot of mistakes, The builders who were doing the extension. We had to kick them off the site. They were charging us a VAT, They weren’t VAT registered, amongst other things. There’s so many things you don’t know if you’ve never done a building project before, things that you should check. You just do a lot of research into your builders. It’s one of these funny things. It’s hard to believe that can be such a rogue trade when the work that they’re doing is so serious. When you think about dentists, how tightly we’re regulated. These guys are building houses that can fall down and do all sorts of damage. There’s just cowboys left, right, centre, Yeah man.
Dr James:
Yeah, what were the hardest lessons from that period? What were the biggest takeaways?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, number one is always retain money, cash. Do not pay everything up front. If a builder ever asked you, we were fortunate enough We hadn’t paid. We were due payments so we were able to not overspend At the point where we had to kick them off. We went out of loss. Thank God There’s a lot of builders out there that will ask for a lot of payments up front and then that might disappear.
Dr James:
And is that what happened in your case? You had to say no, we’re going to spread it out.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, exactly, we worked out a plan. We said we were going to spread it out, we weren’t going to pay for everything up front. Unfortunately, we managed to save ourselves, and then whatever money we had left them, we were able to use it, obviously finding other builders.
Dr James:
Right, okay, wow, well, i mean lesson learned. I suppose it could have been worse. Yeah, it could have been. Yeah, it could have been. Which is which is there’s? there’s a tiny upside in there somewhere. I knew you have got the outcome, which you’ve got, the beautiful practice. What were the other tough lessons learned around about that time, apart from spreading the payments, because this is real gold for people who are going to build a practice one day.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, i mean spreading payments, i mean other things you know, know about health and safety. You know, health and safety. We actually had a HSC officer turn up at the building site And we had a neighbor who wasn’t very pleasant to us. Thank God she moved out. She was in the process of selling a house but she reported us to HSC because she didn’t like the fact we were doing building work. And we had an officer turn up, you know, at the building and the builders all ran away And I was just stood there, turned around behind me, and all of a sudden everybody’s gone. What’s going on here? Where is everyone? And then this officer was standing there like, yeah, so you know, are you, are you, do you own the building This and that? Who’s the contractor? Who’s the contractors This and that? And he started asking me for certain documents, like you know, spestos, surveys and things like this. You know touch word. I had it all. I researched it all beforehand and I had a lot of that stuff. But you know he could have really got us into some, you know, real trouble, some hefty fines. So you know there’s there’s a lot to the building work. So you got to have, you got to either have complete trust in your contractor, but even that you got to go and find out about yourself. You know there’s other things. You know CDM regulations, you know construction, design, management, you know do a little bit of research into those areas. So you know for yourself. You know kind of pitfalls that can be there.
Dr James:
It’s going to say it’s used the word pitfalls. I was going to say minefield.
Dr Bobby:
It is a minefield. You’ve never done building work before. It is a minefield. Yeah, for us it was a bit more complex because we were doing an extension and, you know, got in the whole building quite a bit. Building, you know, for most squats if they’re just shell fit outs, you know retail units, things like that is generally a lot more straightforward, but we were just complete other end of the spectrum So I had no choice but to learn about everything you know from scratch.
Dr James:
Yeah, man, wow, okay, fair play. Well, you made it, which is the main thing. Okay, cool. So practice building up. tans finance attend. you paid the builders, the buildings looking pretty. presumably there’s some regulatory loopholes that you have to jump through as well.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, so building regs, building control, they’ve got to sign up all of your work. So they come out, they check all your building work process. So they come out and sign everything off, you know, as each stage is done. So you’ve got to instruct them. You can either go to your local council or you can find private companies. Again, that’s another area we had massive issues with, you know, our architects, advisors, who use private company because that we could get the work done quicker. They turned out to be absolutely shite. They shut down our site And we had to go back to our local council who fixed things for us and got the job moving again. But yeah, that’s, that’s key, because it’s a key that what I see is a lot of people that are open squads don’t actually know that you need building control or building regulations, because what a lot of them do is they’ll go to an equipment company and they’ll get some drawings of a dental practice, you know. Or you could have this room, that room, you know, a chair or a deacon here And they think that you can build from those. But you can’t. You can’t. You need certain standards to adhere to and building control have to sign that off. They’ll check things out. You know fire safety, ventilation, but those are key.
Dr James:
Got you and then presumably CQC. They’re a factor in there as well. You have to get them in at some point.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, CQC are actually one of the easiest things, contrary to what people believe. So CQC comes in actually quite later down the line. Cqc they rely on everybody else doing the work for them. So CQC essentially just send you a list of about 50 documents that they want to see, And if you send them all those documents, they’ll want to see you building control certificates so they know your building has been built properly because you’re already signed off along with everything else, And it’s just like a tick box exercise essentially. And then there’s really good compliance companies that will help you out with that when you’re doing your interviews for your register manager. But for me that was probably one of the easiest parts of the whole process.
Dr James:
Oh, good stuff, There we go. Anything else anybody needs to know about who’s they’ve just completed the practice. and then things that they need, that they need in order to open the doors for the first patient.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, so I mean coming on from that, mainly is recruitment. You got to have a team.
Dr James:
And how does that look? because obviously there’s a, there’s a. It’s not like where in most practices you’ve got the team and then someone leaves or whatever. It’s kind of just modular, like you just add them in, whereas for you it’s like you’ve got this start point and you basically just have to get everything running smoothly. Definitely beginning is that. Is that how it looks? is that just that’s just an added hurdle? then there’s just something you have to deal with, is it?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, it’s just something you got to deal with. It takes a bit of time and patience. I mean, for me the key was to start early. So I was quite fortunate I had some of the old nurses that I’ve worked with come in to ask me if they could come and work for me, And I took on one nurse who I worked with years ago and she’s fantastic. She helped me with loads of the compliance and setting up for the practice. And then for me it was really really important to have somebody who’s a real people person. So we wanted someone front of house you can reel the patients in. So we ended up taking somebody from British Airways. Actually she was an air hostess, She wanted to get out, settle down And she was just amazing. You know we’re patients, They just love her. Like her service skills are just incredible, Yeah. So we kind of went outside a dentistry for that.
Dr James:
Right. So to the people listening, we don’t have to necessarily feel bound to hire someone who’s from the dental world. It can be someone outside as well.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, yeah yeah, I mean we interviewed for that role a mixture of nurses and girls from outside a dentistry, and the ones who came from outside a dentistry generally perform better for that role that we wanted, you know, in terms of customer service.
Dr James:
Take from that what you will There we go, interesting stuff. And how does the practice look nowadays, now that the doors are open, because obviously that was all six months ago? How’s the journey been since then? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the journey has been great.
Dr Bobby:
I mean the first, the first few weeks, absolutely shot myself. You know our patients going to come. You know it’s really scary. We were the third squat to open in our area within, you know, a year, year and a half, and the area is quite saturated already. But no, it was just great We had, we did a bit of pre-marketing So we had an open list to start with And then it’s just gone from stem to stem for really month to month. We’re taking something like 40 patients a month on average. That’s good. And how do you get the word out? Yeah, so I mean loads of things. You know we’ve got a whole marketing strategy. Do loads of different things. You know you’ve got Google ads, facebook ads. Integrating with our local community was really good for us. You know, kids, schools we did a lot of visits, things like that, getting to local businesses Yeah, we’ve tried all sorts really And you know we’re still trying to figure out you know exactly what works good in our area. But yeah, it’s interesting just to see where it will go and where the mouth is taken over a lot now.
Dr James:
Got you Okay, cool, and what? what sort of dentistry is that you do at your squat? Is it general dentistry?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah. So I’ll say 90% of what we do is general dentistry. I do implants, some surgical work, but the bread and butter is general dentistry. We do the cosmetic stuff as well. You know composite bonding, things like that But what we’re seeing is just a massive demand for really good quality private general dentistry. You know root canals, crowns, you know just a lot of perio. So I think that’s part of it’s quite profitable.
Dr James:
There you go, good stuff, so you don’t even necessarily have to go down the specialist route. If you just do the straight up stand yourself and you do it well, you’re good. You’re good, which makes sense because most, in most areas, there is a lack of dentists. I feel like someone who starts a business in the dental world. They benefit from these huge tailwinds In that there’s already this massive demand and constricted supply, and surely by the fact that you are a dentist, there’s going to be demand for your skills to a higher degree than what there are potentially in other industries. That’s what I’ve noticed anyway, which is a good thing. Would you say the same, or is that total nonsense?
Dr Bobby:
No, no, no. I agree with that completely. The way we looked at it was we looked at what the other practices were doing in our area. So the other squats that were opening they are marketing really, really heavily on smart makeovers and in Vizalon. For us to compete with that on Google ads and Facebook ad spend, we’re going to have to be spending thousands. Then on top of that you’ve got your lab bills that come with that. So we just went at it from a different angle. We can do all that work, but we went down the route of if you want to come to us, it’s more about the service experience and getting really good quality, just general dentistry. Our ad spend on the back of that is massively lower than what these other guys are having to spend to compete with each other.
Dr James:
I like that a lot. That’s thinking outside the box, and then in six months, 12 months.
Dr Bobby:
you can upsell to them on all of that anyway, Once they’ve won some of your practice.
Dr James:
There we go And tell me this how do the books look at the minute? What’s the? what’s the wait list like? Like, if someone comes to see you on the book and appointment, how long would they typically have to wait in order to get their treatment done, should they need to rebook?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, so at the moment about three weeks Oh wow. Yeah, yeah, we’re running the surgery five days a week, so I’m there four days a week. I have a therapist who’s working one day a week. We always keep same day emergency slots so we can get patients in the same day. You know we like doing that. But yeah, generally for treatment we’re booked up, you know two, three weeks.
Dr James:
I mean that’s amazing, because some people don’t have a list that busy years into running a practice and you’ve managed to acquire that six months in. I mean that’s that’s, that’s a fully functioning, busy dental practice within six months, which is awesome, and you know those surgeries. you said you put four, you put four surgeries in, did you?
Dr Bobby:
We’ve got space for four. We put in one, so we’ve got room for. Yeah, we can put the other ones in. So we’ll hopefully be putting the other one in towards the end of this year And then start looking at expanding the team Gotcha, Okay.
Dr James:
So things are going not just a little well, really really really well. Okay, brilliant stuff, right, And that’s and I’m guessing that’s what the future looks like for Bobby. We’re just going to keep growing the practice. Maybe look at another site at some stage, Who knows?
Dr Bobby:
I’ve got that bar. Yeah, get this one to full capacity. Yeah, we’ll see.
Dr James:
my life takes us to settle on this bad boy. Got you my friend? Okay, cool, well, listen, congrats on all your success. Let’s look back over the whole journey from Bobby. Let me see, like 2020. Whenever this stuff was just on the periphery of your perception and you were just still considering where you were going to go, whether you were going to do it or not, versus the person that you are today, the version of Bobby that there is today. What were the biggest lessons that you learned along the way?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, i couldn’t. I couldn’t do this journey being that same person that I was. You know your personality has to change. You know it’s a completely different game. You know the learning process that you go through that will change you. But you know running a business is a whole nother skill set. You know being a dentist is one thing But running a business managing, you know, a team it’s just completely different. You know everything about you has got to level up. You know you’re thinking what you’re doing day to day. You know you just you can’t be that same person. It just won’t happen. And if you take that through with you, you know you practice won’t be successful.
Dr James:
Would you say that you have to embrace the overwhelm and the fear and all of these emotions? embrace them from the point of view that we have to accept them as part of the journey, because they’re going to be the things that grow us and develop us into that version, the person that we need, that version that you are today, that version of Bobby that you are today, or something similar, given that those are the things that are character building, whereas what most people do is we feel these emotions and we think, oh, life shouldn’t feel like this, and we kind of back off, whereas it’s a very would you agree that it’s a very powerful place to go mentally, to be able to understand that actually that’s how the journey looks. We should lean into those feelings because then we know we’re in the right place and we’re growing.
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, 100%. You know, four or five years ago, you know, i was running away from it. You know it was in my head and I just didn’t, you know, didn’t want to face up to it. Now I’m the complete opposite. I’ve run into it. You know I will find it. I will go, you know, because that’s what makes you better, you know. But live your life scared. You know you’ve got to just do it. You know, take risks. You know it’s not saying you always say, if you don’t take any risks, you’ll just stay where you are. You know you don’t know what’s on the other side. What’s on the other side could be flipping, amazing, you know. Well, it is amazing. You know most of the time. But you’ve got to be willing to go and find out.
Dr James:
I love that. I love that. So that’s maybe more on the mindset side of things, which is awesome and is actually probably more important. I do agree. What about technical stuff? What about mistakes that we’ve made? What about if you could go back to Bobby and say hey, you got to watch out for this. You’re going to waste money on this. Don’t hire these people, hire these people, or something like that. What would those recommendations be? Yeah, i mean money money wise.
Dr Bobby:
Anything with dentistry is a mindful. As soon as you tag the name dentist onto anything, you know, the price goes up by 10fold. Yeah, bro, yeah, whatever it is. I mean, i’ve seen it in the practice, even with tradesmen who are coming in who not from the dental industry but because they know you’re a dentist, they just see like money signs, pound signs, and all of a sudden, you know, quotes start tripling. So you know, the key thing for me was, you know, if you want to try and save money is get as many quotes as possible. You know, don’t rush the process. You know, for me I was just desperate. You know I wanted to get it done, get it done. So I was just like you know, use whoever get it in. They give me a quote, let’s do it. But you know if I could go back? number one get as many quotes for whatever you’re looking for, you know, as possible. take proper advice. You know whether you have to pay for it or not. You know you need the right people around you to give you the proper guidance. You know, if I had a lot of that, you know beforehand, you know I could have saved a hell of a lot of money. And the other thing I would say is definitely go and learn a bit about you know managing a team and people, because that’s just the whole of the skill set in itself Cool man.
Dr James:
Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom today. Some real golden nuggets in there, bobby. If anybody listening wants to find out more about you, where are they best to get in contact?
Dr Bobby:
Yeah, they can find me on Instagram, or you can find me on Facebook, or yeah, anybody can drop me an email. It’s bobby at avenuedentalpracticecouk. Okay, top stuff.
Dr James:
Bobby, thank you so much for your time today. I’m sure we’ll speak again very soon. Much love, Hey Simes.