Full Transcript
Dr James:
Fans of the Dennis who Invest podcast. If you feel like there was one particular episode in the back catalog in the anthology of Dennis who Invest podcast episodes that really, really, really was massively valuable to you, feel free to share that with a fellow dental colleague who’s in a similar position, so their understanding of finance can be elevated and they can hit the next level of financial success in their life. Also, as well as that, if you could take two seconds to rate and review this podcast, it would mean the world.
Dr Simon:
To me, what that would mean is that it drives this podcast further in terms of reach, so that more dentists across the world can be able to benefit from the knowledge contained therein. Welcome, welcome to the Dennis who Invest podcast.
Dr James:
Welcome back everyone to a very, very, very, very special episode of Dennis who Invest today. Every episode is special, but this one particularly so for a few reasons, and the first reason that it’s very special is because this is the premiere inaugural episode of Dennis who Invest official side gigs month, the month where we get every dentist to think about how can they improve and enhance their life by potentially getting a side hustle up and running. Because I have been someone and, like many of the listeners and many of the dentists that I’ve come out, whether I’ve met through the group or those relationships that have come about through creating the group, we there is a sort of undercurrent of dentists that have side hustles and they are such an important thing in this day and age. It did an episode with Giles Gallatti not so long ago and he made a really, really, really good point that you can be the best dentist in the world. You have one spurious complaint, you have one patient who decides they really, really, really want to take you down and they can make your life hell, and the peace of mind that comes along with having something else on the side is absolutely magnificent. That was that really struck a chord with me, and that was even before I had created my side hustle or my, or Dennis who Invest, way back when, before that. But it made me. It took on a whole new dimension of importance to me when I heard Jazz say those words. So that was super, super, super interesting. Hopefully that resonated with a few people today. And I have sat here in front of me, a poster boy. That’s not his words, that’s my words. Okay, a poster boy because he is a very attractive, handsome man. Let’s say that for a start. That’s the first thing, and the second thing is he’s a poster boy for the side hustle world because he is TV’s own as of a few months ago. Simon chart, simon, how are you what?
Speaker 3:
an intro Very, very nice.
Dr James:
Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. So yeah, like I say, simon is a little bit of a poster boy, in my opinion, for the side hustle world. I thought to myself what an amazing way to kick off side gigs months, side hustles, months with a man who’s got a very prominent side hustle that made it onto TV no less dragons then, not so long ago, and that being parlor toothpaste. And the reason I think there’s going to be a wonderful episode is because I want to talk, I want to flesh out what it’s like to meet the dragon Simon, and I’m hoping you can give me some insight on that. That’s going to be super, super, super interesting and also just getting that balance as well, because I feel like balance and time is the thing that holds a lot of people back from pursuing their side hustle. What are your thoughts on that, simon?
Speaker 3:
Well, I think we’re very fortunate as dentists, and especially if you run your own clinic where you are your own boss of your own time, that you can taper down your days as your side hustle increases in significance and activity, and I think that shouldn’t be taken for granted. I have lots of family and friends who are bankers or in property or lawyers, and they can’t just reduce their days as their side hustle increases, so they’re forced into working before work, after work, which I certainly do a lot of as well. But I do think as dentists we’ve got that great opportunity.
Dr James:
One thing we were talking about just before we went on air, simon and I. We were talking about the importance of striking balance as well and ring fencing time for relationships, family etc. Etc. Health, because it’s very. There’s an entrepreneurial streak in a certain sort of maybe a type A personality, individual that compromises on those things, and striking that balance is something that comes through practice. Shall we say, Simon, for anybody out there who’s listening, who doesn’t perhaps know that much about you, would you be able to do a little bit of an intro about yourself, your journey into dentistry, and then we’ll come on to parlor toothpaste, because I’m sure everybody’s very intrigued to learn about how that got up and running and where it’s going as well, because you told me off camera as well that things have well. Things are on an upward tangent now, especially after your Dragon’s Den appearance, so we’re going to delve into that very shortly, but just a little bit about yourself first would be super interesting.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, sure. So I’m a cosmetic and implant dentist. I guess I would describe myself as I run a certain surgery multi disciplinary practice with my wife, megan, which is Roti Lodge dental. I’m the vice president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. I’m very, very passionate about dentistry. I love what I do and I feel very fortunate to be able to do it and, as obviously mentioned, I’m also co founder of parlor toothpaste tabs, which is our eco friendly toothpaste solution. My journey into dentistry I mean, I, I’m a graduate student, so I did a degree before I did dentistry which is quite surprising given that both of my parents are dentists. But I actually didn’t think I wanted to go into dentistry. Ended up doing pharmacology of all things down in Bristol, had a great time, did a lot of partying, but pharmacology and being in a lab definitely wasn’t for me. So anyway, got my two, one that got me into fast track at Kings and, and then the rest is history. Really, I really just became obsessed with dentistry at that point, I think because I was a graduate student and all my mates were working in the city and that sort of thing. I kind of viewed it more as a job than a lot of the undergrads that I was alongside and so again, as we were saying off camera before, very much became a yes man to call on. Every opportunity presented to me went for every award, went for every essay prize, went for every sort of opportunity to differentiate myself and to grow my, my skillset in the craft and very fortunately came across through dental towncom. At that time Facebook dental group didn’t exist. Then this was sort of yeah, what era was this?
Dr James:
Was this circa?
Speaker 3:
2009, 2010?. So I qualified 2012. And so, yeah, fell across dental town that introduced me to cosmetic dentistry. And then fell across Tiff Koreshi, who was on there talking about a lime bleach and bond way before anyone knew about it. Jason Smith’s been on there doing amazing resin work and reached out to them, and Tiff came down and did a lecture and I got involved with the BACD and, as I say, that was sort of where it snowballed from there and I do a lot of lecturing. I lecture on digital dentistry, I lecture on photography. More recently, I lecture on mental health in dentistry, because that’s a really, really important topic to me and one that I think needs a spotlight shining on it on the podium so that it reaches as many people as possible, and people like Invisalign have been really good at supporting me with promoting that topic.
Dr James:
Yeah, that’s a huge thing. Yeah, man, that’s really commendable work.
Speaker 3:
I mean honestly. The reason why I got so into it is anytime I would talk about mental health on my Instagram. The feedback that I would get from people in my DMs was just ridiculous. I would have so many messages and people saying thanks. So much for talking about that. I struggle with anxiety. I’ve talked about that quite a lot on my social media Nothing really severe, but pretty severe at some times personally, but nothing medicated or professionally diagnosed or anything of that sort. But your point about what Jazz said in the previous podcast episode that really hits home to me as well.
Dr James:
Definitely, man doesn’t it.
Speaker 3:
That’s one of the things that I am most fearful of and almost takes all of the fun and joy and positivity that I get from dentistry is the knowledge that I can do everything right, try my absolute best for my patients, which I always endeavour to do, and yet someone, if they don’t like the cut of your jeer, as they say, can completely wreck your career. And I’ve seen it with amazing dentists, who are some of the best dentists in the country, getting GDC cases against them. It’s like, well, I know this guy, I know ethically what he’s about and I know clinically that he’s insane.
Dr James:
He’s definitely not the cowboy that you should be after it’s so on and you know what, sometimes it’s the patience that you really really know that realistically you couldn’t have done any better for that make those flippant, throwaway comments to reception About something that they perceive to be negative or wrong, when really you’ve done everything that you can and you’ve actually done them a Favour. Those are the ones that hurt the most. Luckily, with those ones at least it doesn’t become so spurious in that it’s a potential GDC case and things like that. Touch wood has never happened to me. You know those are few and far between, but yeah, like I said, they hurt the most and yeah, it only it really does only take that that one patient to really decide they don’t like it. And it’s really unfair sometimes because some of the the dentist that I’ve yeah, as you just, as you said just then that have been persecuted, I suppose, because of this unbelievable, unbelievable clinicians. They’re the ones that take on the fans of your work as well and sometimes they leave the door open a little bit more to, particularly when they’re charging what they do. But anyway, probably, probably a podcast for another day, but commendable work on the the mental health front and dentistry and I actually think it’s must be positive that you can talk so candidly about Anxiety and things like that. I think there needs to be more of that, simon. So, yeah, nice one on that buddy.
Speaker 3:
I really like that Cool, so I think it’s just just very briefly on that point. I think it’s important to understand that when you put yourself out there as I have done throughout my whole career Just through the nature of social media, I built quite a large profile very early on in my career. When you put yourself out there like that, you, you become very susceptible to Critique, shall we say, for people within Good choice, within that within the profession, who are more experienced than you are, and I think it’s really important for everyone to be aware of the fact that the the way in which that that we communicate with each other, especially on social media within the profession, needs to be better. Like there needs to be the sort of fighting that you see over treatment plans and stuff is just mental. If we can’t support each other in our endeavors, then how do we expect patients to be able to support us?
Dr James:
Simon, do you know what? I’m listening to you speak and I’m thinking to myself there’s probably another, there’s probably some content for a really good podcast between us at some point on that specific subject. I really do think so, because maybe that’s something that I have not really heard on on a platform before and maybe that’s something worth talking about. Absolutely, man, but yeah, but for yeah. Well, before we get on a tangent too much, as much as I’m enjoying this, it was great to hear about your journey, your journey into dentistry and your journey through dentistry and what you’ve got to so far, and congratulations and all your success. And Just when you thought, you thought to yourself Haven’t I got enough on my plate? Then you thought to yourself Do you know what I need? I need a national toothpaste brand, of course.
Speaker 3:
Was that the?
Dr James:
evolution of the thought process.
Speaker 3:
No, no, no. I mean, I think the problem that I have is that I’m quite a visceral Patina individual and when suddenly gets under my skin, I can’t, I can’t not do it. This happened recently with the podcast that I launched. Once will change. Megan was like sorry, joking, why are you doing more? Like you already got parlor, you’ve already got your the practice BACD, you don’t need any more stuff. Like we’re about to have another kid, and she was like and I was like I know, but I know I can do this and I I can’t not do it. I can’t listen to podcasts every day and not launch one. So it was kind of the same with parlor, in that I Could see the problem in front of me and I Felt that I could resolve it. And if I can see the solution to a problem that I have, I have to do it. And, as I said you off camera before we started. I certainly didn’t expect it to grow to the level that it has done so quickly, but it’s been honestly, one of the most rewarding and enjoyable journeys, also one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Many a tier shed over over things going awry, and I think being a startup founder is is probably one of the hardest things you can do With regards to sort of fighting fires every day, but it is. Yeah, it’s been amazing. It has been really amazing.
Dr James:
Blood, sweat and tears, no doubt. And you know, when you were talking about passion earlier, listening to, who was that listening to? I think it was Gary Vee. The other day he was talking about how passion is a transferable skill. Okay, when you have the passion, that’s the core essence, that’s the flame that burns irresistibly inside you. You can channel that into different things, as many things as you like, and you know You’re always going to be successful because you’ve got the P word, because you’ve got passion. Yeah, parlor, let’s talk about parlor. I know that it’s. You’re gonna have to forgive me if I’m gonna, if I’m about to butcher this description of parlor toothpaste, but what? From what I’m aware it’s? It’s a little bit different from your average toothpaste because it’s not a tube, it’s not, it’s not a pier, it’s not even a paste, is it? It’s a tablet and then you mix it in some water and it’s made from Holistic things. If I got that correct Real quick, guys. I put together a special report for dentists entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes the dentist may come whenever it comes to their finances. Most of the time, dentists are going through these issues and they don’t even necessarily realize that they’re happening Until they have their eyes opened, and that is the purpose of this report. You can go ahead and receive your free report by heading on over to wwwdentistsoninvestcom forward slash podcast report or Alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details these seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them. Really looking forwards to hearing your thoughts Kind of, but not really.
Speaker 3:
I’ll give you the full, the full pitch. I just want to be here, but so it’s. It’s basically toothpaste tablets, so it’s dehydrated toothpaste in a tablet form. So the water toothpaste has made of around 30 to 40 percent water, which already is a bad idea because it means you’re shipping water all over the world, which is not good for you environment. But the main core concept behind the brand is we wanted to use our experience and knowledge as cosmetic dentist. So this is myself, dr Rayner Eskander and dr Adarsh, thank you. But we wanted to come at it from an ethical and sustainable point of view. So billions of toothpaste tubes go into landfill in the ocean each year. Every single toothpaste tube that you use Last for 500 years on the planet. So it’s single use because it’s made of different types of plastic and because everything has to be spotlessly clean before it can be recycled. You can’t recycle 99% of toothpaste tubes. There you go. I didn’t know that. So that means that every tube that anyone’s ever used still exists somewhere on this planet, every single tube that you’ve thrown in the bin Still exists somewhere on the planet. So that is a very important point of view. So that is clearly not a sustainable model to last us forever. We have a finite space of an increasing population. So we went about trying to find a way to resolve that issue in a way that would protect Mainly the ocean. I’m I love the ocean. If I’m in it, if I’m on it, if I’m by it. That’s where I’m happiest. And when I heard that by 2050, there’s going to be more plastic in the ocean than fish, what that really struck me with was well, in 2015, my daughter’s going to be my age, and is she going to be swimming in the Mediterranean just surrounded by rubbish, unable to eat any fish because the ecosystems be completely wrecked? Or actually, can I make my small change and make my small impact within my profession to make a difference there? So, yes, we went about trying to find the best way to resolve it. There are certain companies using recyclable plastic toothpaste tubes. That doesn’t really solve the problem, because all you’re doing that plastic can only be. First, it needs to be cut up, the tip needs to be cut off, needs to be washed out. Only one in five people actually recycle anything out of the bathroom to start with, but then even if it does make its way to the recycling plant and recycling, people won’t realize it’s a recyclable tube, so they’ll just throw it in landfill. And even if it gets past, then it can only be recycled two or three times and then ends up in landfill anyway because it’s not infinitely recyclable. So all you’re doing is delaying the problem for the next generation. It seems like a good idea on paper, but actually practically it doesn’t work. Same thing goes for the aluminium tubes, and they need to be cut, washed out to unlikely that they’ll make it into into recycling, but they are infinitely recyclable, so they’re slightly better. But what we wanted was a closed loop system where actually you had a refillable vessel which meant that there was no waste. So our toothpaste tablets come in glass jars with an aluminium lid. I think I’ve got one here. Give me two sets.
Dr James:
Oh brilliant. Yeah, I’d love to see it.
Speaker 3:
So here this is an empty one, but this is. The jars are original and it comes in one of these boxes. So this is the retail unit. So this is the single month supply, and then we have a subscription as well, which is the main base, and basically the jar comes out. You use your tablets, you pop them in your mouth, chew them for five to ten seconds, bring a wet brush into the mouth and then, when you brush your teeth as normal, the agitation of the crumbled paste turned, the crumbled sort of tablet turns into a paste in the mouth, and that’s where you just crack on as normal. So that’s how it’s used. And then the beauty of it is, every four months because some subscription every four months you’ll refill pack comes out in a compostable plant based bag that comes through the less box. You then simply just refill your jar and that bag can be either thrown in compost bin or even if it’s thrown into the regular bin, it’s just going to compost down into, in essence, nutrients that are going to feed plants. Anyway, it doesn’t cause any damage to anything. So, yeah, that’s the concept, really, and with regards to the ingredient debt something that we were really, really passionate about we have our own sort of bespoke ingredient debt that we’ve been working on and refining for the last couple of years. So the key things in there that dentists will appreciate Number one Obviously it contains fluoride. The large majority of eco green, natural toothpaste don’t contain fluoride, which obviously for us as dentists was unacceptable because we know the impact of fluoride has and we know how we feel when a patient comes in and says I’m using this toothpaste, it’s natural but it doesn’t contain fluoride, and you’re like, oh well, we’re gonna have wall-to-wall cavities here then. So we knew it had to contain fluoride. But things that we’ve chosen to remove any animal cruelty most toothpaste, because they sell in China, had to test their products on animals no animal products. So we kept it vegan, which we know is a growing sector of the population. That falls to me that there needed to be any animal products in toothpaste anyway. And then primarily which is one of the dentists we really appreciate is SLS free. So we’ve all had those patients that come in and say I’ve got a really sore mouth, I can’t have anything spicy, especially if they’ve had chemo or radio or anything of that sort, and the moment you take them off an SLS-based toothpaste they think you’re a miracle worker they can actually have a decent quality of life again. So we removed the SLS for that reason, but also because SLS is made from palm oil, which has a dramatically devastating effect on the rainforest, causes eight to 9% of the deforestation across the world the palm oil industry. So that was the other reason that we removed that. So, yeah, we’ve tried. All those flavorings are natural, like preservative free, no artificial flavoring, anything of that sort. So we tried to keep it as natural and clean and ethical as possible, but whilst also maintaining the efficacy that we require for it to be a proper product that we can support in essence.
Dr James:
You’ve really thought about every single thing, every single ingredient in your toothpaste and how you can make it eco-friendly. Is this chewable toothpaste? Is that even presidented? I’ve never heard of that before.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it existed already. We didn’t invent the toothpaste tablet, but the problem was all the brands that were around. Certainly when we created the product they were all non-dentist-led, eco-focused, I would say, these sort of natural toothpaste which I would never recommend to my patients and Norwood 99% of dentists. So if dent? And I’ve seen this in my own clinic. Funnily enough, a patient came in a couple of months ago, saw one of my associates told him that they were using this new toothpaste tablet called Pupupu, and my associate was like Paula and she was like yeah, yeah, is it any good? Is it okay if I use it? And my associate, harry was like you do realize that the owner of this practice also owns Paula. And she was like are you joking? So the reason why that story really hit home for me is that that’s how the conversation goes. When a patient uses a new toothpaste they want, or any new dental product, they want to know from their dentist or their hygienist that actually what they’re using is gonna be good for their teeth and not gonna lead to them having more dental problems. And if someone had walked into me two years ago and said I’m using the toothpaste tablets, first question I would have asked is does it contain fluoride? And at that time none of them did so we wanted to bring in that dentist-focused efficacy, science-based, evidence-based, whilst at the same time not just using cheap, oftentimes unethical ingredients housed in unsustainable packaging, which is 99% of the market still today. So that’s the driver, and obviously since then we’ve had a lot of copycat brands come through.
Dr James:
Really, you’ve got that level already. Hey, copying is the highest form of flattery, they say. But wow, already you’ve reached that point.
Speaker 3:
Oh, we’ve had that for, yeah, for like a year. To be honest with you, we literally down to using the same wording. We have this we spent a lot of time on the packaging and the marketing and we have this design by Identity to be you and the planet Strap Line and Logo, and I mean it almost replicated identically this, but I mean it is what it is, as you say it’s. We’ll take it with a light-hearted humor and carry on doing what we’re doing, but I mean it’s good to be honest. It’s good to see the sector growing. We think it’s the future of toothpaste. We think that everyone will be using tablets and, funnily enough, most people, even dentists, don’t realize that it hasn’t always been a paste. It used to be a powder before Colgate stuck it in a tube and added water to it and made a gel. Like that, people used to use toothpounder before they used the gel, so it doesn’t need to be in that format for it to be effective. I think is the important thing to understand.
Dr James:
Curious thing that a patient once gave me. It was some dentifice okay Dentifice as in the progenitor of the toothpaste and it was from the 1920s and it was like a bar of soap and you kind of just wet it and you scooped it off.
Dr Simon:
I’ve still got it upstairs Now.
Dr James:
I don’t know if it all maybe over time it’s kind of it’s like a little out of date or stale or something, but it’s got the texture of soap. I’ve never used it so I don’t know. But I’ve kind of got like this little shrine to dentistry in my room. It’s like really nice preps and stuff that I’ve just got in the corner and that’s got pride of placing there. But it was a very curious gift and yeah, that was way back when 1920, I think it’s circa 1920s. I don’t know where it got it from, but it’s like a dentifice and a bar of soap. Simon, you were saying as well that since Dragonsten, or perhaps even prior to Dragonsten, paul has been enjoying some great success, as evidenced by as many copycats. How’s that growing through time? Or where are we at at the minute? How is business? How has progress?
Speaker 3:
Yes, I mean we’ve grown at good rates over the first year and when we filmed Dragonsten that was September last year, so quite a long time ago now and the rate of growth direct to consumer has been wonderful. The rate of growth of dentists buying pilot into their clinics has been great. I guess the big thing from last year was that we got into Boots online which is great.
Dr Simon:
Nice to have that credibility.
Speaker 3:
We were on ITV this morning, so Holly and Phil tried our tablets live on air.
Dr James:
No way were you there.
Speaker 3:
No, it was mid pandemic obviously. So I was in my clinic watching it live and, yeah, it was a surreal experience to see this little star on ITV. And then Phil just popped one in, just chewed it and swallowed it. They were really popular.
Dr James:
You did quite get the point, did he?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, but funnily enough and luckily enough, the Dragon’s Den researcher who eventually reached out to us was watching that this morning episode. So she saw that. And then I was actually doing a virtual concert with a patient in the clinic. This was in sort of August I think, and this email popped up as it does on the Mac, on the side of the screen, saying from Dragon’s Den, and obviously my attention was just immediately drawn to the corner. So I finished the virtual and, yeah, they reached out and said we want you to come on the show. And there was a lot of hoops to jump to get actually onto the show and they literally send you an email at every stage, even right up until like two weeks before the show was going live in April. You may not make it onto the show, you may not make it on TV, so you never know if all the hard work’s going to be for nothing. But yeah, in the end and I’m sure we’ll get onto Dragon’s Den later on but in the end we had a really nice sort of steady growth over the first year and then, once that, since that Dragon’s Den episode has gone live, we did like four months sales in about three days. Like it was literally insane. Like when you have an e-com store, you have a Shopify app on your phone and I was watching the Shopify app as the show went live, as our segment finished, I looked at my phone and we’d done like literally a month’s worth of sales by the time the episode had finished air. By the time our segment had finished, we’d done a month of sales and I literally had to be like is this thing broken? Like, is that the number of viewers Like? And it’s like no, that’s the amount of money that you’ve done, the amount of trade that you’ve just done. So, yeah, that was wild. And since then, we obviously had a huge speak to spike peak and then since then, we’ve just been, we’ve just come to a resting level, like three times higher than we were before the show. So it’s really good. And, yeah, I did announce this on my LinkedIn. It’s not massively well-known, but we’re going to St Spree’s at the end of the year in store, so that’s really exciting as well.
Dr James:
That is really exciting, man. It’s really going places. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Where is dentistry fit in and how long does dentistry? Well, dentistry always have some time ring fenced somewhere in your life.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I struggled, certainly over the last couple of years since Pala launched. Always, to be honest, I’ve always been doing BACD, lecturing, dentistry, trying to balance things out with social life and exercise and doing all the stuff that I love to do. And that’s been even harder with Pala because it’s just been such a aggressive learning curve on just learning everything. Like I’ve never pitched to a retailer before, I’ve never pitched to dragons on live TV before, I’ve never like created packaging and like every element needs to be eco. Every element needs to be at a cost that means that we can make margin. Like ingredients go missing packaging, like cardboard Amazon buys all the cardboard in the country and there’s none left. Like those sort of issues are real issues when you’re trying to run a startup and you’re trying to do your regular life with running a 27 person practice, like doing your dentistry and all the rest of it. So yeah, it’s been tough. In answer to your question around, will dentistry always have a place for me? I struggled to see a time where I wouldn’t be a dentist anymore. I certainly would imagine that as parlor grows, my days in the clinic will probably have to reduce a little bit. So I’m currently working three and a half days in the clinic a week and then all the other time is dedicated to parlor really, and as the business grows I’ll probably have to taper that down, maybe to two or three. But I think the credibility of actually still being a wet finger dentist gives me more sort of I’m at the cold face with the patients talking about the product, talking about the difficulties of oral health and that sort of thing. So I think it puts me in a stronger position to do better in parlor if I do still maintain the dental side of things.
Dr James:
Awesome, awesome. Time management is a massive thing, particularly in the world of being an entrepreneur. Do you have any seminal moments or lessons that you can pass on to anybody out there who’s listening, who is curious to become better at time management, or curious to understand what that day to day routine looks like for someone who is starting a side gig? Because for me, you have to be so regimented and strict with your time and the morning routine for me is so, so important to starting the day off on a right foot, and I know that that’s a common theme amongst people who have their own side hustlers and side businesses. How, what are those? What are your top tips or techniques on that front, simon?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I mean I’m obsessed with optimization of my time to give me maximum output and also probably most importantly, but then the circles back optimizing my health and my physiological state so that I can perform at the maximum level in everything that I’m doing. And I’ve done a lot of research and I’m actually even honing this with a productivity coach at the moment to go even further with it, to try and really maximize my output. But, yeah, I’m obsessed with that. I mean my morning routine. I’ve spoken about this on my podcast and it’s on my social media most days. But the seminal thing for me, the key anchor in every day, every morning, is exercise. Exercise every day, without fail. Do something that makes you sweat is my general rule for life now, and that’s come in in the last. Probably every day has happened probably since the pandemic. I think I used to exercise like three times a week, like going to the gym, like going for a run, like it was sort of a nice to have. But since the pandemic I was like, right, I need this every day and actually the impact that it has on my mental health is insane. It is the most powerful thing that I’ve done and it just means that I genuinely go to bed at night and look forward to my morning routine because I’ll run it through with you, because I think people like to know the nitty-gritty details. I wake up at 4.45 every workday, so I woke up at 4.45 this morning even though I went out for dinner last night and had a few glasses of wine, so I didn’t feel great this morning. But I make sure that I wake up at 4.45 every weekday and then on the weekend I’ll normally wake up at 5.45 and just give myself a little bit of extra breathing room. There. I wake up, I hit my. Actually, when I wake up, I down a liter of water because we’re dehydrated. When we wake up, I then do a gratitude practice, which is just simply saying, as soon as my feet touch the ground, I just in my head say one thing that I’m grateful for, which I think is a really powerful way to.
Dr James:
I love that. Man Never heard that before. I love that.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it sounds a bit hippy, but I find it to be really, really powerful and it just refocuses the mind. Gratitude, accountability and perspective are things that I think are really, really important. So I then hit my emails and do some parlor work for about 45 minutes to just try and clear as much of my to-dos for that day as I can do. I used to do my meditation in the morning. I now tend to do it at lunchtime instead, just because I’m a bit short on time with two kids. And then I go downstairs. I’ve got a peloton, as anyone who follows me on Instagram will know because I post about it every day. That thing is addictive, but peloton is brilliant for just smashing out real high intensity 300, 400 calories, like get your heart rate going. So I work out a mixture of cardio and strength training for about an hour and then that’s my morning routine. Done that, I’m getting dressed, get to the practice for about eight. First patient at 8.15 and off we go, and I think the only other point that I would raise on the routine side of things is getting meditation at another time of the day. Is the other like the thing just below exercise for me, with regards to upside versus cost benefit analysis. I think it’s best if we’re talking about investment, so cost benefit analysis. Meditation is ridiculous. It’s so powerful and it’s based in science as well. There’s so many studies now to show that actually meditation can be is obviously incredibly powerful for mental health, as proven by science. But it’s also incredibly powerful for physical health as well and they’ve shown some really interesting studies around that.
Dr James:
Do you know? I’m listening to you talk and I know we said this earlier, but I honestly think there’s probably another podcast worth of content in there on morning routine, life, work balance, the struggles of an entrepreneur and getting it correct. I do think that that’s a podcast for another day. I really do. That’s tremendous. And yeah, meditation not something that I know particularly about, but for me, getting out of bed and exercising every day, that’s what takes me from one to out of 10 mental capacity in the morning to like 10 out of 10, just instantly, just like that. And it’s those. It’s that 20 minute on the bike that just we talk about cost benefit analysis, just there, that 20 minutes. You get the dividends from that. Throughout the course of the day I’ve noticed Like you spend 20 minutes but you become five times more efficient. I don’t know exactly what the ratio is, but as well, let’s pull things back to something we talked about a minute ago Dragon’s Day. First of all, congratulations. I was being shared before. It was interesting to hear about the process, simon, that they get in touch with you rather than the other way around, so they just it’s not always that way.
Speaker 3:
I mean you can fill in an application form and apply for the show. I think we just got lucky, or?
Dr James:
whatever I see, I see Awesome. Well, that must have been quite a pinch yourself moment when you got that email. Well, as you said before, it must have been a bit of a distraction from your patient one to one. I bet the temptation to click on that email was yeah, pretty cool, pretty high Cool. So they got in touch with you and then presumably there’s some sort of process like where they whittled down the candidates so you fill in a form, is that right?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so there’s a lot of due diligence. They do really go into your accounts and all your paperwork and make sure that you’re a legitimate company in essence, and because we were a start-up, only six months training the trading sorry, we didn’t really have all our ducks in a row with regards to looking for a investment. We weren’t looking for investment at that stage. The opportunity arose and so when they contacted us in August we’d literally been trading for like three, four months, so there weren’t big sales on the books. Thankfully, by September we’d done a fair amount more, but it was still sort of fairly minus that like 45 grand. I think we’ve done trading by that point. So, yeah, you go through due diligence. We had to record a pitch which we didn’t add our practice and we literally I mean video. Normally you would do it in person, but because it was mid pandemic, we had to, like record it on video and, like we must have done it 3,000 times sent it in and yeah, I mean the researcher, thankfully, was really really nice and she was very positive about us getting on the whole way through. So, yeah, we found out we were going on and then Rona and I, because of the pandemic, all three of us couldn’t go on. It had to only be two of us. So we decided that Rona and myself would go on and so we went up to Manchester in September and, yeah, drove up there and they stayed you on a hotel overnight and then you go there to the studios Bernardo studios where Coronation Street’s film. We went there the next day and you basically sit around for, like I think we were waiting for about four hours or so. It was a baking hot day. I mean it was 28 degrees, I think, for what I remember. So we sort of penned up like still very much mid pandemic, so lots of social distancing things put in position. Rona and I had to sit in different green rooms because of the pandemic, so it was a bit intense beforehand. And then, yeah, we got called in and I had chosen to wear this ridiculously thick double breasted suit, which was a big mistake because I literally was sweating so hard under the lamp. But yeah, so a couple of things I think that we’ll find interesting. Firstly, the lift’s not real.
Dr James:
Oh man, I was. You know what I was gonna ask you. I was gonna say, Simon, what was going through your head when you were going up on the lift? The lift’s not even real, it’s all smoke and mirrors. Christ said.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so you walk in and then they shut behind you and then you walk forward. But saying that, the moment when those lift doors opened in front of me and I could see the dragons in front, like I’ll never forget that moment. I personally watched Dragon’s Den literally since I was a kid. I mean my mate, Tom Crawford-Clark, who’s a dentist as well, we were students together in Bristol actually and we lived together and we used to play drinking Dragon’s Den when we were students and we would put bets on the pitch and then if you lost, then you’d have to drink. So yeah, it’s got a rich heritage in my mind, Dragon’s Den and yeah, that moment when it opened up in front of you and it was intense. But yeah, I mean, the key thing to understand about when you’re in there is we were in there for two and a half hours.
Dr James:
Wow, really.
Speaker 3:
All live no cuts, no breaks under the lights, getting grilled for two hours, the two and a half hours. So yeah, it was seriously intense. And you don’t get to see the edit, you don’t get to see what’s going on TV until it goes live to millions of people. I watched it for the first time alongside everyone else on BBC, so it was seriously intense. But I think I mean I was really happy with the way that it came across on TV. There were some interchanges, exchanges with Tucker that he was quite negative throughout and my feeling is he had a bit of a conflict in that he already had a dental company, so he wasn’t particularly keen on us. But we went in there looking for Deborah and Tej and they both gave us offers. So I was thrilled with that outcome. We knew that we were too small to commandeer any massive valuation. But, saying that we’d actually done a lot of prep work, we did some mock interviews with Nick Jenkins, who is he used to be a dragon. He’s the previous. He sold Moon Pigcom for 120 million or something like that and Nick had prepped us and we’d given him the pitch that we gave him the den and he basically said to us guys, the pitch is great, the valuation is bang on. Don’t let them bully you around Like you’ve got a really good product here and it’s a really good business, and so that, I think, gave us a lot of confidence going in there, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to turn down the offer if I hadn’t have had that sort of heart to heart with Nick before going in there. Yes, but yeah, it was pretty wild.
Dr James:
Well, yes, well, actually can I just say I was. I was going to talk about the offer. That was one thing that I wanted to bring up, and what was you’ve touched upon it already, obviously just what was going through your mind when you said no to Deborah. But I just wanted to say one thing before we do that. You were talking about being in that room for two and a half hours. Now, the trouble is when you are a TV content editor and you’ve got two and a half hours. If someone says one silly thing in two and a half hours, on balance that’s not that Okay. But when they edit it, they need like five minutes of footage, so they’re going to pull the silly things out. Okay, Now you guys came across really well and they use this. They. If, if, if you guys would have said something dumb or silly, they would have put that in that that five minute. You know content. Okay, so you actually withstood that for two and a half hours and it just makes me see it from your side a lot more and maybe it just gives me a whole new level of respect for being able to do that. That’s, that’s really impressive, dude, because you’ve obviously withstood that for all that time and didn’t say anything that compromised yourselves, because that would have been in the show, because they love that. That’s what the editors are waiting for, man. That’s what makes TV.
Speaker 3:
So, yeah, I think I think the thing is, as I always say, that, as I always say about public speaking, I can talk to all the cows. Come home about anything that I’m passionate about. It comes down to this passion word again. But the product, like. I’ve lived and breathed this brand for the last at that point, for the previous 18 months, we were doing a year’s worth of development before we actually launched. So I’ve been living it for 18 months. I knew everything about the product. There wasn’t really a question they could ask me that I wouldn’t have been able to answer. Now, the one thing that always lets me down is numbers. I’m not a good numbers guy. That’s Adarsh’s department, and so, because ads wasn’t in there, I had to be the numbers guy and so I had, like, literally wrote learnt those numbers. So, so bad. Because I was not going to be the guy that goes in Dragon’s Den and Peter Jones is like right, tell me what your net profit is for 2023, and not know the answer or try and blag it or be like my turnover is this and my gross profit. So I wasn’t going to be that guy and so I knew the numbers inside. Now, like we built a really clever model. We’ve got a lot of advisors behind the scenes have been really helpful for us, so we’ve built some really intelligent modeling of how our finances would develop over time. And so, yeah, I knew that inside out, but in general, I did say some stupid stuff, like to be honest. There was. We were talking about hydroxyapatite, which is in our new pilot pro tablets and Deborah was asking me about I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I just said some stupid stuff that I didn’t really know how to answer the question, like they’re always going to hit you with a few curveballs because that’s their job number one and number two. As you say, you’ve got two and a half hours, so there’s a lot, a lot that can be thrown out during that time, but thankfully the dragons in general were very positive, and so even Peter Jones, who I thought was going to be really gnarly, was actually very nice. Took, a son of mine, was the only one that was brutal on us and, as I said, I think I know the reason why that was. But I think when you’re passionate enough about a topic, you can answer most questions on it, and I said this to Rona the other day. I’ve done enough live TV now and I left podcast and enough live answering of questions that we went on live TV the other day on the news channel called GB, gb news and I wasn’t nervous at all which, given that you’re going on live TV to answer questions and you don’t know what those questions are, it’s quite intense, but I think you do get past that barrier at some point that actually, look, what are they going to ask me? That I don’t know about this product, like I can answer any questions that you want, down to the ingredient debt. So let’s go.
Dr James:
It’s growth man. It’s growth that’s the life of an entrepreneur as well. It’s continual self growth and doing things that are outside, living so habitually outside your comfort zone that it becomes comfortable.
Speaker 3:
So important and I think as I think it was Tim Ferriss who I heard talk about this but when you’re looking at, when you’re looking at a side hustle or potential side hustle, if you’ve got an idea or someone comes to you with an idea, if you can say to yourself if this fails, I have made great relationships, learned a load of new skills, like had a, had a load of new life experiences, then actually it doesn’t really matter. Like a pile of folds. Tomorrow will I be gutted, absolutely. But how much am I learning from it? Like I’m now a startup entrepreneur. I’m now a startup founder. Like I’ve never done that before. I’ve been on Dragons Den, I’ve been on live TV, I’ve pitched to retailers and got into retailers and learn how to build a product from the ground up and learn about marketing and learn about PR and just so much, so much stuff that I honestly couldn’t agree more that living outside of your comfort zone is the most accelerated way to grow who you are as an individual as a business owner even in dentistry, so I might understand the inner workings of EBITDA. And valuations around my practice now are so much stronger than they’ve ever been before, and that’s as a result of power, so it feeds back into all business really.
Dr James:
I love it. Yeah, the intangibles, the things that you may, the benefits that you don’t even perceive that you’re going to get before you go into it, which are huge benefits in themselves of any venture, I suppose, is another way of phrasing it, and that’s something important that I’ve noticed as well. Simon, this has been an absolutely tremendous episode. Thank you so, so much for sharing your experiences, your journey, everything about Dragon’s Den as well. I just wanted to close by asking one thing when you said no to Debra Meaden, how did you feel straight away? How did you feel afterwards? Were you kicking yourself? What was going through your head? Or was that something that has sat comfortably with you ever since? Did it turn out to be the right decision?
Speaker 3:
So immediately afterwards I was gutted Like I thought we were going to leave with five offers on the table. To be honest with you, that’s good. That’s good. So they came out very, very deflated and they didn’t show much of the post-Den interview that they did. We literally walked out the lift straight in front of the cameras with someone interviewing us, and I’m really glad of that because I think I’m a very You’re hard on your sleeve.
Dr James:
You’re hard on your sleeve.
Speaker 3:
Whatever emotions I’m feeling, it’s very, very obvious to everyone around me, for better or for worse. I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just great. And so I immediately asked afterwards I was gutted, but in asking you a question on how, has it sat with me ever since absolutely no doubt in my mind that we made the right decision? I think, yeah. We’ve had so many investors contact us since then. We’ve been growing rapidly. The main reason I think you want to go in Dragon’s Den is to get into retailers if that’s your direction and to give yourself more press. We’ve done incredibly with press and we’re doing incredibly with retailers, so could they have offered us so much? Absolutely. I mean, Tej makes millions of tablets a year. That would have been incredible for our pipeline and our journey moving forward. But yeah, I don’t regret the decision at all.
Dr James:
Well, that’s the main thing, right.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr James:
Come on, I’m going to give you some credit. It took a bit of cahones to say no there and then.
Speaker 3:
Ronan had me say yes. If you remember the discussion by the walls, she was like, let’s take it, Ronan’s would not give away 30% of our business Like hell no.
Dr James:
Yeah, I have to admit my memory is a little foggy. I have 30% of the business and then, presumably she wanted was it the asking price, or was it less? Or yeah, it was going to be 15% each Tej and Deborah.
Speaker 3:
they went on a joint deal and they wanted 30% of the business in total for 70K. So it just didn’t make sense.
Dr James:
That does seem. I mean, that does seem a lot, particularly for something that’s growing as much as it has, as you were saying.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it’s TV at the end of the day.
Dr James:
Congratulations man, really sincere congratulations, because it sounds like it’s really going places. And you know what, when it’s your baby, when it’s something you’ve created and conceived from nothing and now it’s very successful, that hits different, you know, that’s really special, so you must be really proud.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, no, I’m really proud of where we’ve got to and, as I say, I’m proud of the mission of the brand. Like it is very much a purpose driven brand. People may not believe that and might think that we’re in it for the financial gain, but genuinely, like it’s really nice to know that the more this brand grows, it genuinely will have a massive impact on the whole planet and on all the people that live on it and that’s a really nice feeling to have, that we can actually make a difference with it.
Dr James:
What a lovely way to round up this episode, Simon. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Can I just say that I’ve had a lot of fun hosting this. Hopefully you’ve had a lot of fun appearing as a guest and hopefully everybody who’s listened has had as much fun as we have having this conversation today about Parler and Simon’s recent appearance on Dragonstone. For anybody listening to this podcast who isn’t a member of my Facebook community already Facebook community which goes by the same name of this podcast Dentist who Invest, a community group for Dentist who Enjoy Trading Feel free to hit that up we do podcasts every single week on a different aspect of finance, with a focus on the dental community, Plugging that gap between the knowledge that we should have got at university and what the real world requires. We’re kind of somewhere in between filling in that information and bringing everybody up to speed and how they can better manage their finances. Simon, a little bit about Parler. Is that available to Dentist? Is that something that we can buy and stock in our practices, or how does that work? Or is it just in the shop or online at the moment?
Speaker 3:
No, absolutely. We have wholesale prices for dental practices. You can sell it in your practice. We also now have some little four-tablet compostable samples which you can have to give patients out to try out. We’re also working on creating sort of an ambassador program. We already have an ambassador program to allow you to benefit from your patients subscribing to the products as well. If anyone’s interested, just email hello at parlotoothpaste tabscom. We can give you all the information on that. Hopefully you can help us grow this mission further. I think it’s a nice conversation to have with your patients as well that you’re looking to be more ethical, be more eco within the practice. We all need to work hard within our clinics to reduce our plastic waste. There’s certain things we have no control over, like sterile bagging of things for hygiene reasons, but there are things that we can do to reduce how much single-use plastic we’re using because it doesn’t go away. Once you throw it in the bin. If it was all kept in your clinic, then you would think very differently about it.
Dr James:
Awesome. What a great cause, simon, as I said a minute ago, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I hope you’ve had an absolute blast.
Speaker 3:
It’s been wonderful, mate, wonderful.
Dr James:
Awesome, simon. It’s a genuine pleasure to meet you, my friend. I hope that, yeah, well, it’s been great to have this conversation, very good to meet you face to face. Finally, because we have spoke a few times on Facebook. Thank you so much for giving up your time today on behalf of myself and on behalf of the listeners. We’re going to draw a line under everything now and let you get off and enjoy the rest of your day. It’s been an absolute pleasure, my friend. We shall speak again very, very soon.
Speaker 3:
Thanks for having me.
Dr Simon:
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