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. 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.
Mahmood:
Welcome to the Dennis who Invest podcast.
Dr James:
The following is a Q&A that was recorded on the Dennis who Invest group on Wednesday, the 11th of August. It consists of a Q&A between myself and Mahmood Moji discussing how best we, as dentists, can start our own side gigs. Looking forward to hear everybody’s thoughts and I hope you enjoy the Q&A. Welcome everyone, good evening. I hope everyone has had an absolutely tremendous day. So good to see your faces on this very special, unique webinar tonight, which I have put on as part of side gigs month. What I’m going to do super quick, there is just a few microphones that I’m getting some audio through, so I’m just going to mute those. It won’t be too long. There we go, magic. So thank you so much for joining me this evening. Very, very, very topical, because, of course, we are speaking specifically about dentists who wish to start their own side gig, side hustle, whatever that might look like, and I think it’s very important to mention just at the start that everybody has this connotation that a side hustle or a side gig has to be something that’s a business or financial. It can be anything that improves or enhances your life. It’s not just solely a business thing, and that may be something that went over my head a little bit at the start, or there’s a little bit of a connotation about that. The main purpose is to enhance your life and make you a more well rounded person, and that’s why I get so passionate about it and that’s why I wanted to create create this month about side gigs, so that I could share that message and also share a little bit about my story, my journey, etc. And what made me lead well, what led me to start dentists who invest, and where it all came from. Effectively, because I think it’s an interesting one and I think that, well, hopefully, I hopefully think that it will inspire some people tonight. In fact, I know it will, because there’s a lot of there’s a lot of things that I learned in there, there’s a lot of lessons and they’re definitely worth sharing. Could I, just before we start, get everyone to turn their cameras on, because it would be absolutely tremendous to see everyone’s faces. That would be brilliant. Get those cameras on so I can see everyone who we’ve got tonight. We’ve got Sheila. We’ve got Tony. We’ve got Kerm Welcome, kerm. Hope you had a good time on holiday, gregor. We’ve got Shalin. We’ve got Raheem. We’ve got John Jenna. We’ve got loads of people, so good to see everybody and thank you so much for turning those cameras on. Still waiting for a few. They’ll be with us any second, I’m sure Any second. Another little bit of housekeeping before we begin. Guys, is it okay? If you are viewing Zoom on your desktop computer, you will see in the top right there is a button that says view. If you put that on speaker, then you will be able to see. You will be able to see who is presently speaking rather than see a grade of people, and it just means that it’s a lot more interactive and immersive for yourself. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. It’s so good to see the room filling up and thank you everybody for sharing, for coming along tonight so that we could share our story and participate in this evening. So I thought it would be nice just to kick things off with a little bit about my story, and I’ve shared tidbits of it. I’ve just never really had a platform or a reason to share it in as much detail as I do tonight, because tonight is super relevant, because it was literally my path to beginning dentists who invest. There’s the whole reason I’m sat in this webinar right now, and it was about how I went from someone who never really realized what the importance or significance of having a side hustle was to someone who is a massive proponent of it and wishes to share that message and encourage others to do it, because I know how much it enhanced my life and I just really think that it can help a lot of people, because maybe there’s a lot of people who see the world how I did not, even terribly long ago, about 12 months ago About let’s rewind, let’s go back to before lockdown. Before lockdown, I was a dentist. Well, I still am a dentist, but I worked six days a week. I was a dentist who worked six days a week and all there was, yes, I had my invest and, yes, I had my trade in, but very much. It was just as much money as I could squeeze out of, you know, working as hard as I could to invest, to be able to achieve financial freedom, to be able to remove myself from the treadmill of working. And I had this very binary, blinker approach. I thought the only way to do that was if I just worked as many hours as I could, as a dentist, get to that point where I was free and then, as I say, that would be a major, major, major burden off my mind. So my only real, the only real way that I knew how to do that was to be a dentist. I didn’t really think there was anything else that I could do or any other message that I had worth sharing with the world, apart from to learn more about dentistry, to connect with other people. In that respect, I never really realized the significance of it, and that’s how I went through life. So that was me, that was my life. Six days a week, I worked really hard and then all of a sudden, for a lot of us, coronavirus came like a crash, put us out of a job for a few months, and it gave me time to reflect and see things from another perspective, because I was self flagellating myself so hard with regards to dentistry, I definitely was massively disillusioned with it. I was going through life this, you know not really enjoying it as much as I could. There was no fulfillment there. I was just working as much as I could to be able to get to that point. Dentistry is a hard job. Dentistry is a stressful job, as we all know, and for me definitely. I had the wrong mindset, the wrong perspective. I look back on that now and I think to myself why, how come, if I only knew sort of half the things that I knew now, I definitely wouldn’t have went about things in that fashion. And I would think it’s fair to say that I was stuck in a little bit of a rut, definitely disillusioned with where I was in life, but I thought that that was the only way to get to where I want it to be. Coronavirus, like I said, came like a crash, totally turned my world on its head. Give me a little bit of time to reflect. We couldn’t do dentistry, I couldn’t do anything like that. So I was spending a lot of time in my house, a lot of time not doing dentistry and just reflecting on other things Around. About this time, when I was coming towards the end of the coronavirus, the first lockdown, and we were going back to work, I could feel a little bit of dread kicking in because I thought to myself my life’s been so blissful these last few months. How can I go back to this? Something has to change. I really, really, really don’t want to go back to that. So it was a bit of an interesting one, because I feel like the stars kind of aligned and the universe sort of sent me through me a bone. In effect, I signed up to a webinar from the online platform Dentinal Tubules and there was a chap speaking there who you’re going to all meet in a minute. His name was Mamoud Moji and I had no idea what it was about. Well, I didn’t really have much of an idea, but I knew it was along the lines of mindset and motivation and enhancing one’s mental state so that they could be more productive in real life. So I went along to the webinar. I met this chap called Mamoud. He’s full of energy, full of beans, and he was explaining about how he helps dentists to achieve that higher mental state which allows them to be more fulfilled, just generally in life as well as in dentistry, and achieve and learn and grow more, because that’s the fundamental thing that we all need before we can flourish and achieve any other asset or factor in our life. So I went to that. I met this guy, mamoud. He was full of beans. Like I say, I went to the second webinar and we got to know each other a little better and, as Mamud got to know me, we talked a little bit about what I was into. I was into investing, I was into crypto and I’d never really thought about it before. But Mamud was the person that pointed out to me that really perhaps there’ll be other people who could benefit from this information and it might be an incredible thing to do to start a platform and see how it goes, see how it flourishes, see if there’s any interest, see if we can garner or encourage any other dentists to learn about financial literacy and grow themselves, grow their wealth, grow their happiness. Achieve financial freedom is the ultimate goal. So I went into it and I thought, ok, all right, well, maybe this could work, maybe it won’t, we’ll see what happens. So I made Dentists who Invest. Originally it was planned to be just a small group where people would share information about stock tips, about crypto tips, etc. Etc. But then, as time went on, it got traction and it got more traction and it got more traction and it grew and grew and grew and it became this whole movement for financial literacy. So it became so much more than that and it’s because I sort of was pushed or encouraged to begin to think about this that all these amazing things have flourished from there. And I went into it and I honestly didn’t think it was going to be anything significant in any way. I didn’t think it was going to be anything more than a small group where some dentists would occasionally share their tips or their hot prospects in the crypto or stocks world etc. And it was how that evolved through time and it grew and it became something special that it made me really appreciate that just taking that first leap was the magic, the part, the most important part, because otherwise I never would have had any idea it never. It became so much more than I ever set out to create and it’s the whole reason why I’m posting this webinar right now and really for me, as I’ve went through time of being the dentist, is totally disillusioned with dentistry. I’m not at the point where I’m taking some time out of dentistry. I’m just purely pursuing my investments, purely pursuing dentists who invest growing at given value, because that’s the most important thing. As soon as you have something, the more value you can give, the more you can help people, the more the world reflects that back onto you. And I’m a bit philosophical, as you probably worked out, and this is this is why, yeah, I just got so passionate about side gigs months, I guess and I really wish I could go back and speak to myself and say, james, these are all the things you could be doing If you just take that leap, if you just take that plunge. And my mood was the person who encouraged me to do that, encouraged me to take that leap. And the point, what my mood does is he mentors dentists to grow their business, whether that be within dentistry or whether that outside of dentistry. And the beauty of having someone who is a mentor is they can see up here, they can look down on you, they’ve got like an eagle eye, they’ve got an eagle’s perspective of the overall game or picture, and it was something that really, really, really helped me and it led me to where I am and it, like I said, the whole reason we’re having this webinar right now and also the whole reason that I am where I am with dentistry. I’m taking some time out, I’m hoping to pursue this and the long term goal is that I don’t have to go back if I don’t want to. But we shall see you on that one. But, as I say, that was the reason why I created side gigs months. That was what inspired everything, and we have the chap who is fundamental, intrinsic to that journey. He is on this webinar. I thought it would be really nice if we could get him along and have a Q&A tonight so we can do that, so we can explain more about what he does, why having a side gig is so important and see what he has to say Effectively. Mamoud, how are you?
Mahmood:
Awesome. James, thank you so much for the awesome intro. Thank you very much my pleasure. It’s been amazing, amazing to watch your journey, watch your rise, and so I’m really, really proud and pumped for everything that you’ve achieved. And, yes, thank you for the invite. Absolutely Thank you for the invite. It’s great to have everyone here and if you can’t turn your webcams on, it’d be great to see you out of mind. If you’re eating, drinking, whatever, it doesn’t matter, you can have your webcams on. It’d be really good to see you. It just kind of brings it all alive when you can see everyone. So, yeah, please do turn your webcams on.
Dr James:
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Yes, if we can get those webcams on, it’s brilliant to see everybody’s faces, and also Mamoud, and I wanted to mention just before we begin that Mamoud has a special dentist who invest gift for us all this evening, so it’s worth which Mamoud will be sharing the link for his audiobook. Mamoud will be able to describe it way better than me and that will be happening at the very, very end of Mamoud and I’s speech and just before that Mamoud and I’s conversation, rather, and just before the Q&A. So it’s worth sticking around for that, guys, because that is a freebie. Mamoud, would you like to explain a little bit more on that? You’ll know more about it than me, yeah absolutely.
Mahmood:
I feel really honoured to be here with each and every one of you. I’ve got an audio program which I’ve written. It’s about five hours long and it’s about the five steps to create the kind of life you want. It is. It’s about 50 quid online, so please don’t buy it. Let me give it you as a gift, so I’ll give you a link at the end and you can grab it. Please listen to it and, most importantly, you know, keep in touch after and let me know what changes you’ve made in your life. For me, that’s what it’s about. It’s about the changes you’re going to make. So a lot of the time we listen to things, we don’t do anything about it. I want you to listen and take action. Please do. It’s a book which is taking a long time to record and I’m sure it’ll change a lot of your life. So please do listen and let me know. Let me know.
Dr James:
Real quick, guys. I put together a special report for Dentist entitled the seven costly and potentially disastrous mistakes that dentists make 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 wwwdentistuneinvestcom forward slash podcast report or, alternatively, you can download it using the link in the description. This report details the seven most common issues. However, most importantly, it also shows you how to fix them. Really, looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Awesome, awesome. So what we thought would be nice was to kick off and talk about Mahmood’s journey a little bit, because what you’ll find a key recurring theme amongst dent people who have side gigs is that, almost inextricably from the fact that you have one, is that you’re passionate about it, and that usually comes from some sort of emotional, deep set story or journey or path that they’ve been through. And I feel a bit like that and, mahmood, I know you’re no exception on that one earlier. So I thought that might be a nice way to introduce yourself to everybody tonight and also just to tell us a little bit more about yourself, because Mahmood is also a dentist, of course. But now, well, you still a dentist, but you don’t practice, do you, mahmood?
Mahmood:
No, don’t practice anymore. My last practice in the end of September 2018. So it’s been a few years. So, just kind of out of just so, I know kind of who’s in the crowd. There’s kind of three types of people who you’d be right. You’re either going to be that dentist who is, who doesn’t really like dentistry, and that’s why you’re trying to kind of do something on the side. Or either that type of dentist who you know, who loves what you do, but you also want to just create something on the side. You know some other income. All you is that dentist. You don’t. You’re not interested in the side gig. You just really really want to do well in dentistry. I want to make a lot more money, okay, add a lot more value and do really well in dentistry. Can I just find out who you are? If you’re like, either type yes in the chat box or just kind of raise your hands. If I can see you, can I raise your hands? How many of you is that dentist who’s not really liking what you’re doing? Dentistry wise Anyone out there? Okay, cool, there’s not that many, right? Okay, maybe, maybe right, and some familiar faces here as well. How many of you like? Enjoy what you do, but you really want to get a side, a side gig going as well, right, fantastic, okay, a lot more, a lot more, right. And how many of you like you don’t want the side gig. We just want to do a lot better, a lot better in dentistry, right, make more, do more, give more, some yeses, fantastic, right, okay. So so for me, I yes. So my last practicing day was in September 2018. So just a little bit so you know about why I’m here and what I do. So in 2016, my life changed completely. I was, I was coming outside my practice, I was leaving my practice. So I was a principal of two practices and I got a call from Lucy, who worked at the NHS trust, and she kind of she told me that what had happened is one of the practices that I was kind of caretaker for for the last five years. They actually tended to got taken away from me and I’d put about five years of hard work and effort into that practice and someone else had just beaten me to the practice, but I was about 7% more they got, and so what that meant is, obviously I had to close the practice down, and that year was a year when I was told that I could actually sell that practice, it would be ours, and my share of that practice was half a million pounds, and for me the half a million pounds was going to be, like you know, my retirement. I was thinking about retirement already, right, and it was like that was going to be my retirement and my world kind of got chucked upside down. And you know for how many of you that have one day changed your whole life? And for me, that was that one day. For me, right, that one day changed my whole life. And I went home that day. The kids were young, didn’t know what to do, and I just didn’t know how I was going to make it. What was going to happen is, each and every day went on, things for me like it started getting worse and worse. I wasn’t depressed, I wasn’t okay, I was just kind of in the middle. And whenever things for me got really bad, the one person I would always speak to was my dad. Okay, dad was my rock and I went to speak to my dad, and dad always have the right thing to say the right time always. And so my dad said to me look, when we had three very important things. He said, number one never give up on your goals, Okay. And he said, number two never stop serving people. Right, you’re in a profession where you can serve. Never stop serving people. And he said number three that whatever’s happening to you now, the dots will connect down the line. You’ll understand why this is happening. How many of you just raised your hands or type of yes in the chat box have ever had something really bad happen to you and you thought it was the worst thing ever? But later on you realize that it was your greatest gift, that it was something that you got which really grew you Chauvin’s right, but a lot of us right. And so I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand at that point what my dad meant. So I left, and as I left, my dad gave me a book and he said read this. And the book was called Habits 101. Okay, I went home, I read that book and what that book showed me is there’s that 1% of the 1% of people, the uber successful people, right, and what they have is they have something in common that they have a daily habit. They do every single day. It’s related to the health, and it’s normally very early in the morning. So I looked at myself and I said, look, if it worked for them, then surely something like that could work for me. I haven’t got anything to lose, so let me try it. So, are any of you runners, shove hands, any anyone into running here? Okay, a few of us, right? So I used to run, but I never used to run every day. And I said, from tomorrow morning, I’m going to be up at five, six am and I’m just going to go running before my wife started for the kids, you know, just just going to be out. So I started and guess how it felt? Right, you know, it was horrible. Right, it was horrible on day one. It was wet. It was January 2016. The weather was crap. So I thought, as time goes on, it would get better and better. But it did. It just got worse and worse. Right, but what it allowed me to do is the running kind of gave me some me time. It gave me some time to think and allowed me to kind of think about what’s going on in my life and put everything together. It didn’t fix anything, it didn’t solve my problems. It just gave me some me time, right? How many of you realize the value of having some time to yourself every day in show of hands right or tap yes in the chatbot track. That time is so important. Ok, so over time, what I realized is my happy place was that running in the morning. Even though I didn’t enjoy it, I knew it was good for me and I went out there every morning and I ran and it gave me some me time. It gave me some time to think and at that point I thought, look, I can handle anything. It was like my cloak, my armor, and I thought you know what, throw me. Any problem out there you can give me, I can handle it. Now I found my way to cope, right. And what happens when you put something out there? Right, the world replies. Because how do we grow in life? We go through problems, right, problems are here to grow us and sometimes in our lives we get the same problem over and over again, but the reason is that we haven’t learned the lesson in that problem. But when you want to grow, that’s how the world shapes us. Right. Two problems. So I remember it was made the 10th 2016. It was a Tuesday afternoon and my mom phoned me and my mom normally doesn’t call me because she knows I’m at the clinic. But that day she did. She told me my dad was going to be taken to the hospital. My dad was a speaker, he was a lecturer, but since January he wasn’t able to speak and he had a really bad cough. Consultants told us it’s all going to be OK. So I knew there was going to be OK. So I rushed to the hospital and I saw my dad lying in a hospital bed, right Oxygen mask. But he looked OK. I wasn’t too worried. The evening came and it was just me and my dad in the room and the consultant walked in and he said to me Mamoud, what do you want us to do? And I’m like, what do you mean? And he raised the question Mamoud, what do you want us to do? And his point he said come outside. And we walked outside and I remember this consultant. Clearly the guy looked like he was 194 years old, he looked like Yoda right. And he goes to me Mamoud, I don’t know how to tell you this, but things have changed. He goes, your dad’s taken the turn for the worst. And do you know, there’s those times you need to call your loved ones or near ones or dear ones. It’s that time and I’m like shocked at this point, I don’t know what to do. And have you ever felt whereas you’ve kind of come out of your body and you’re looking at yourself and yeah, and so that’s how I felt. And I got my mom, I got my sister, I got my wife and I explained to them that we could be losing the rock of our life. And I went home that day and all I knew how to cope was through my running. So I got my trainers on and that night I just ran and ran and ran, and every day, what the running allowed me to do allowed me to focus on my father rather than on me. Five days later, on Sunday morning it was the 15th of May 2016, I woke up in the morning and I just knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what it was. Have any of you just show of hands? Have any of you woke up in the morning and just know something’s wrong? We just don’t know what it is. I just have a feeling. Anyone show of hands. Right, fantastic, right. So I didn’t know what was going on. So I went for a run and I went to the hospital and the nurse said to me I’m happy you’ve come in because your dad hasn’t had a good night. And I went to see my dad and dad had a CPAP mask on him, so it blows really fast air on you and my dad couldn’t. He couldn’t speak and he goes to me. My mom would get me a piece of paper and a pen. So I got my dad a piece of paper and a pen I want. My dad wrote on there yeah, changed our lives, my life forever. I wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for that. My dad writes on that piece of paper that my mom would just have my time to go and I’m like no way. I said, dad, there is so much we’ve got to talk about, right, like there is so much. And dad goes no, you know, those things sometimes we put off for tomorrow, for tomorrow, tomorrow, that dream, that person we need to talk to, that conversation, we need to have that difficult conversation, and we always put it off, right, tomorrow, I’ll do it tomorrow, and for me that tomorrow was never gonna come. That was it. And my dad said look, I give it a four o’clock and then I’m out of here. My dad died at six o’clock, two hours after he said he would. And when my dad died, each and every member of my family was holding my dad’s hand while he passed on this one to the next. And as the days went on and I looked on my dad’s life and I saw, you know, there were two very, very, very, very important messages in there, right For me. That number one when my dad died, he died happy For me. I was not happy. I was in this profession. I was in dentistry for 15 years and for the first seven years I loved it. I loved what I did. I was placing implants, I was doing formal math stuff, I was a principal, I was teaching. I loved it. But for the other seven years I flipping hated it. I hated it so much that I used to sit outside to practice the time. I used to cry before I used to go in. This was my own practice and I hated it, but I never had the balls to do something about it. I was just scared. What can I do? I’m just a dentist. I had a stutter. I wasn’t able to speak. Since I was young I was 2016, I had a stutter. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be able to do so much. I wanted to be able to help, inspire, speak, do so much. But I was just a dentist, right? That’s the only skills I had and that held me back so much. And that day, when my dad died, I said I want a day when I can die but I can be happy. And that’s the day when my life changed completely around and my mind went from it grew to a growth mindset, rather than being a fixed mindset. That’s the day that I said I was gonna grow, that I wanted to be able to do more, give more, become more, serve more, build something which I can be flipping, remembered for and not just dying the dental practice which I thought would happen year on year, because that’s how it felt. And that’s the day which changed everything. So for me, that was the first lesson. The second lesson my dad said the dots will connect. My dad was totally right, because if I didn’t lose my business, I would have never found the coping mechanism to deal with my father’s death, and for me those dots connected perfectly. But then, as I look back, I realized the dots connected even more right, that if my dad didn’t die I wouldn’t be on this journey with you here right now. And for me that was everything. And you’ll probably think when we just coming talk to us about side gigs and why telling us about this? And the reason is is that I don’t want you to have any regrets. It took someone so close to me in my life to die before I did what I wanted to do. It took me losing half a million pounds before I started doing what I wanted to do. And my thing is why wait until times are so tough before you do something? Why not do it in a moment of joint inspiration, like you are right now? Don’t wait until that happens. And as you speak to people who are dying and you ask them what is the biggest regret they have, you know type in the chat box, right? What do you think the biggest regret people have in their lives is? What’s the biggest regret? What is it? Is it that I didn’t do the things I wanted to do? Could have earned more? Could have done more? What is it? What’s the biggest regret people have in lives? Working long hours, challenge and cue, inaction, change and cue. Give me some more. Not spending enough time. Love ones, laura, thank you. Giving up what else? What else Not living in the moment? What else? You know the biggest? Some people are family okay, spent a long work, great. The biggest regret in life is I wish I’d led life on my terms, a life true to me, a life not governed by the expectation of others. That is the biggest regret, and each and every one of us on this call right now we are governed by someone’s expectation of us, all of us. Okay, there’s something we’re not doing because there’s someone’s opinion of who we really care about, and that may be our spouse, our parents, our kids, our friends. And I’m gonna tell you, there’s gonna come a time when you won’t care about other people’s opinions, but then it’s gonna be too late. And when you do die, when something happens, then you know the only opinion people have is that why didn’t you do the things that you were meant to do? And for me, that was everything, and there’s no way that I wanted to live that life. You know, there’s a philosopher called Peter Cooley and he gave a great quote. He said I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. He said I am what I think you think I am, and what he meant by that is right. We don’t live life based on what we think about ourselves. We don’t live life based on what others think of us, but we live life based on what we think other people think about us, and everyone’s whose path I’ve come across. The one thing which is holding them back from taking action is the opinion of someone else, and today I wanted to break that right. Each and every one of you are here. You’re here in the evening for a reason. You’ve got a dream, you’ve got a goal, there’s something you wanna hit, and I want you to make sure that you leave this having achieved it right. I went on a massive journey after that, where it started, in the fitness industry, and then, after the fitness industry, see, there was this quote by Gandhi which hit me really hard, and what it was is that you will find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others. Okay, and that quote was like what do I have where I can serve other people so well and from there money will come? Money wasn’t the object, but I knew that if I can build something, if I can serve enough people, then the money will come, and that was the start of my journey. We started in the fitness industry, from the fitness industry, went into the speaking industry and speaking when to coaching, and what I said later is I wanted to build up a coaching firm where I can coach other dentists and no one has to go through what I did, so people can live that life They’ve always wanted to live. Okay, and some of you on this call right now. You know you’re with me, you’re in the process already, as many of you here are with me right now, and you know what it’s done for you and for me. I wanna use this session to be able to answer your questions, to be able to you know, for James to tell you more about his journey and for you to be able to hopefully be inspired and motivated to you know, take that leap to do the thing you’ve always wanted to do, because if not, there’s gonna come a time when you’re gonna regret and look back and go. I wish I had, and that’ll probably be too late. Okay, so everyone’s got a dream. You’ve got a goal, you’ve got something you wanna do, and today I want to make it happen. And you know, in about 15 minutes we’re gonna open the floor for questions, whatever, whatever you have asked, there’s no place which is closed. There’s nothing you can’t ask. I want you to ask right, we’re here to be able to push you here, to be able to coach you here, to be able to give you whatever you want, right. And so that’s what this is about. And you know, over that journey, I met James and what James put together something flipping, phenomenal here, right, and I’m sure that you know, ray James, how many of you have really been touched about what James has done. Show of hands, right, each and every one of you right. And for James it was. You know, when James approached me, I was like Mermude, I’m not enjoying what I’m doing, what do I do? I’m like we’ll find a way and go through the process. And James came to the process and what James realized he had a gift. He had a gift that he loved investing. He said what if I could give that to so many people? What if I could serve so many people beyond me? And you know things will happen. That’s how the group was put together and I’ve been there, from you know, from day one, from day zero, when everything you know, when the first person came on the group, when the 10th person came on the group and the 100th person came on the group. And now we’re where we are right now and for James it’s been a life changing journey and he doesn’t have to be dense to do anymore. If he doesn’t want to and right now he’s taken a few months off he can, he doesn’t need to go back in, and that’s one of the biggest blessings you can have. And there’s no difference between James, between myself and between you. It is what it is and I want you to use this session to be able to go through that. So, james, thank you. I’ll leave it back to you wherever you wanna go with this.
Dr James:
I just wanna say how powerful was that and thank you for that. First of all, that was awesome. Yeah, I’ll just listen to you speak a moment. I mean some of the things that resonated with me. It was there’s definitely been a huge amount of epiphany moments, as this has happened to me. When you shift your mindset to what you can give versus what you can get. That’s when the versus sorry, what you can get to what you can give and how much value that you can give out and give other people. I swear it’s like seeing the world. It’s like going from seeing the world in gray to Technicolor. It’s. That was the biggest epiphany moment, and I realized that the more people that I could help or that anybody could help, the more lives that you can touch, the more that that makes its way back to you. And what an enhancing way to go through life, and that was something that I I believe I learned from you, mamma, so thank you for that. On that one, the mindset thing is absolutely massive as well getting up early in the morning, making sure that you have a great morning routine, exercising every single day things that sound so obvious, I suppose in hindsight. And yeah, just what people have to remember is that I’m still pinching myself as well. You know, this is all new territory for me. The fact that I’ve recently left Dentistry about a month ago to pursue this would have been absolutely impossible to me about 12 months ago. And yeah, like I say, this is part of what Dentistry Invest is about. It’s sharing this knowledge, sharing this information, maybe getting people to see things in a whole new way, giving value, enhancing others’ lives, and that’s why I made it Mahmood. What were some of the greatest journeys that you learned along the way? Thank you for that powerful story once again.
Mahmood:
No, thank you. Some of the greatest lessons I learned along the way is that there’s something inside of all of us which you wanna do but we’re not gonna do. And you know, malcolm X said a great thing and he said you know, what you don’t hate, you will eventually get to like right, or you’ll just tolerate. And a lot of us, where we are right now, some of us don’t like doing what we’re doing, and the reason we don’t like doing what we’re doing isn’t that we don’t like what we’re doing but we don’t have anything else. And so a lot of the people who’ve come to me and they’ve said I’m gonna move down and get out of Dentistry, what they’ve actually found is when they find something that they really wanna do, when they’re passionate about something and they get to enjoy the Dentistry again, okay, and that’s great, because you know we’re not here to put people out of the profession. There are some people who’ve called me and said gentlemen, I need to get out now, I’m gonna do something crazy, I get that. And even those kinds of people, right, they get back into Dentistry when they find that there’s something that they really can do, right, see, because we go into uni and the reason we’ve gone to uni is because we wanna be part of a caring profession, that we wanna treat people the best way we can. We come out and we’re stuck in a room at the size of prison. We’ve got these targets, we’ve got these quotas we have to have and we can’t treat people the way we need to treat them. Okay, and with the rates of litigation everything we have right now, we practice defensive dentistry we can’t do what we really wanna do and that’s horrible for us, because we went into this profession because it’s a caring profession and because we’re caring people, because they’re the kind of people we are. And then you’re putting this whole other cycle and that’s why people begin to hate it so much. My thing is what if? What if? Right? What if you can get to love what you do? What if you could fall in love with dentistry again? What if you could go back to that time where you know why did you go to uni? How was the year three or four, year five? What if we can get you back there? Well, we can, and the way is that let’s find you something that you enjoy so much, whether you monetize it or not. Yeah, the monetization part’s the easy part, it’s not difficult. Everyone thinks that’s the hard part. That’s not the hard part, that can be done. But when you do that you fall back in love with dentistry so much okay. So for me it was that that a lot of people who say they wanna get out, they don’t wanna get out, they’re just bored, they’re just uninspired, and when they can find something to light them up, you know a lot of them wanna go back into dentistry and a lot of the people are actually okay with dentistry. When they find something else they’re fit to wall into dentistry.
Dr James:
That’s an important thing to mention as well. It’s not just let me just pin myself. That’s an important thing to mention as well that, whether it be no matter what you do, whether you’re disillusioned with dentistry or whether you be someone who’s completely enthralled and fatuated with it, and you want to pursue, continue to pursue that having a mindset which allows you to be the best that you can be every single day is just absolutely amazing, and that’s something that I’ve only really began to tap into over these last 12 months. Just a personal journey that I’ve been through and really imagine waking up every day and you just feel like you’ve got 110% energy, you’re full of beans and you can go and smash anything. It’s a level, it’s a tier of existence that any single one of us can reach with the right perspective in life, maybe just seeing things from a new, like, maybe a mentor, or whether that be a mentor or whether that be a personal journey that you go through. It’s something that I’ve tapped into or well, I like to think that I’m tapping into. It’s part of a journey. I wouldn’t say that I’m fully there and I’m a sage just yet, but if I can allow the smokescreen of reality to be removed, to expose that brilliant life that can be is possible for any single one of us. Then I’d like to say that I’ve helped some people and I’ve done my bit, and really it’s just so much of it. This mindset is absolutely incredible and when you have that, when you’re functioning on that level, you can do amazing things. You really really can. It’s just about taking that leap. That’s what SideGigs Month is about. That’s why I wanted to share this message and that’s why I wanted my mood to come on tonight my mood. Is there anything you’d like to add to that as well?
Mahmood:
Yeah, when I was about to take the leap out of dentistry, it’s like I felt like I was standing on this cliff and there’s this parachute on me right and parachutes only open when we jump. They don’t open when we’re standing still. And I’ve got this big battle in my head and I’m thinking that you know what I should be grateful for what I have, because you know what. It’s a prestigious profession to be in and I’m earning well. I’m earning six figures. Yeah, I’m a principal and I’m doing well. I’m working three days a week. But I hated it. And there was that constant battle in my mind that, you know, gratefulness versus contentment, that I wasn’t content at all. But should I be grateful? And a lot of people around me. I’m like I’m just be happy with what you have. Right, you’re flipping, motivating other people to like what they do. Why can’t you just go in and like what you do? And all these things started playing. I’m like maybe I can, and what’s wrong? But I realized that, you know, I just wasn’t growing and for me, one of my biggest value systems is growth and that the practice wasn’t growing. I was bored. I was bored at my brains. I was going in, I was doing the same thing over and over again and for us, a lot of our we driven by growth, so imagine being able to do something on the side which can grow you right. It changes your whole life completely. So when I was making that jump, I had to ask myself some very important questions. And so at this point I was speaking around the world, so I was speaking between here, the US, canada, singapore and Dubai, so they were the main places I was speaking in. I started earning from what I was doing. I was earning as much dentistry and for me it was like I was testing my life. So I was working three days at the clinic and four days leading this other life, and I love the four days so much. I hated these other three days, but it was really tough to take that job and I asked myself a few questions. So whenever you’re trying to go from turning your passion into a profit you know trying to this couple of questions you need to ask yourself the number one am I good at what I do? And my answer was hell. Yeah. I knew I was slipping good at what I did. I knew I was a great speaker. I was great at doing what I did. I was great at mentoring, great at coaching, and so that ticked off number one. Number two is like does the world need more people like me? And I was like, yeah, the world really does need more people like me, right? That’s not arrogance, it’s confidence. There’s a big difference in arrogance and confidence. It’s the intention you have behind it. And for me, I realized, yeah, I am very good at what I do, Okay. And the third one is that can I make money through what I’m doing? I don’t think the third one is very important. The first two are the most important and the third one will come. But I knew I could make money from what I was doing and I took that leap. And when I left the clinic, I had one year’s worth of income to get by one year. And I’ve got three kids. You know my oldest is 18 and 17 year old and 12 year old, right. So you know things were tough. It’s not like there were kids and it was like you know, how are we gonna do this? I had one year to make it or break it, but I knew that if I didn’t do it, I’d always regret I didn’t have anyone like me at that time who’d done it. So I went out alone. I had a mentor or guide who I found, and they helped me through my journey and I’ve never had to look back and I’m hoping that I never need to look back, and so far I don’t think I’ll ever need to look back. And so for me the journey was phenomenal. I mean from a financial point of view, you know, you know I’ve, you know, kind of I’m earning 10 times what I did in dentistry right now, but for me it came from a place of. I found what I loved, I found what I was greater. Right, and each and every one of us need to ask ourselves a question right, are we happy doing what we’re doing? And if you are great, but if you’re not, there’s something else which can be done. Okay, and ask yourself that question of what things are my greater, what things are my good at? And that’s the road you start to go down and that’s the biggest question that you need to ask yourself. You know, what are you good at? That? Each and every one of us, we think you know that what we have is common sense, but it’s not Because you know you’ve been through something which other people would want to learn and other people don’t know that, and it’s how do you now develop that into something tangible, something which you can grow? So for me, there were my lessons as I left and yeah, you know, have a look back.
Dr James:
Mamma, you mentioned the point. One of the greatest barriers I’ve noticed in people who are interested in starting their own side gig is that they often feel like they don’t have enough up here to share with others to make it worthwhile. What would you? You’ve touched upon this just slightly in that last question, but let’s flesh it out a little bit more. What would you say to those people? Because I often find that’s the biggest barrier Well, biggest psychological barrier because quite often there is almost certainly a practical solution every single time and definitely there’s something in everybody’s head that they don’t realize is worth sharing. But having the skill to point that out to people is a massive asset in itself. What would you say to those people, mamma?
Mahmood:
You. There’s a world in which you can’t see and see. There’s three types of knowledge, right? There’s a knowledge you know. There’s a knowledge you know that you don’t know. And then there’s that part which you don’t know, which you don’t know. And when you’re in your own shoes, there’s a lot you don’t know. You can’t see yourself. It’s like it’s easier to solve other people’s problems than your own problems, right? Why is that? Because there’s a part of you which you can’t see. It takes someone else to be able to see that. Like you know, someone can see more in you than you can ever see in yourself, and that’s the part that each and every one of you. I’m 100% sure I can put my house on it right that? I know that there is gold dust inside each and every one of you. The question is how we extract it. We can extract it Like. What is it that you love? Like? Maybe you love baking cakes, maybe you love running, maybe it’s fitness or whatever. Can you build up something from it? Yes, right. Can it monetize easily? Yes, right. Do you want to make it monetized? Always, possibly, not. Some people I’ve worked with they don’t want to monetize a side house or they just want to have it there. Some people want to get it to six or seven figures and we’ll get it there. It’s okay, like everyone has something inside of them and you know it’s like people say well, I don’t know what my passion is, I don’t have a passion. You know, you’re not born with that passion. You’ve got to find it. It’s like walking to a restaurant, right? Imagine walking to a restaurant and there’s 60 things on the menu and you’re like I don’t know what’s good. Yeah, the reason you don’t know what’s good is because you haven’t tasted it. You know order from number one today, five tomorrow, seven the next day, and you’ll find what you like, and life’s like that. You’ve got to try different things, something you like and something you don’t like. And the things you like, you do more of it. As you do more of it, you’ll get a passion for it, and that’s what passion developed. Most people think passion comes early on. It doesn’t. It comes by trying different things. But you can take 10, 15 years and try loads of things. All you can figure out is that you really like and go after that and everyone, everyone has something which they can grow without a doubt. I have no doubt about that at school 100%.
Dr James:
the biggest barrier is that one and the one that I hear most often, and I would 100% agree with Mahmood that for the most part, it’s a massive illusion, mahmood let’s look at you, for example, james, for example.
Mahmood:
Let’s look at you, right. When we met, you were like Mahmood, I’m this usually with dentistry what can I do? You had no idea, but you had, you were. You’ve been investing since you were a kid. You’ve got a phenomenal story behind you and you thought that was normal. You thought everyone knew how to do it. And then you realized, no, how, there’s people out there who I can serve, teaching what I know, giving them value, bringing them into a community where we can grow, and the gift that you want to give to people is to make sure people are financially free and that’s looking phenomenal. But for a long time you’d never seen that right. And then, when you saw that, I was like hold on, this, was there always, right, I was so office, but you never saw it. Then, once you saw, it was how do I develop that into a business, right? How do I grow that? How do I make this sustainable? How do I touch enough people around the world? How do I really create a movement? Right? And that’s where the strategy came in.
Dr James:
It did. Yeah, I mean, it just called me, yeah, called me oblivious, but I just never really saw. If you would have known, honestly, if everyone in this webinar would have known me 12 months ago, I was anti-Facebook, I hadn’t used my Facebook in years and now I, well, I use it every day to interact with people and, yeah, via the group and, yeah, seeing that or having that pointed out to me was a huge learning curve, 100%. And yeah, it’s completely. It’s definitely shifted my mindset on a lot of things. Mahmood, I’m just very conscious that we’re coming up to quarter to nine and we said we would throw the mic out to the floor around about this time, but I know that you wanted to mention a little bit about that e-book, your audiobook sorry, I beg your pardon and the other, the various ways that you work with Dentist and you help them to start their side gigs.
Mahmood:
Yeah, that’s fine. Okay, so on the Q&A, please bring up anything. Right, we’re here, I’m here to be able to serve you, help you. So, whatever questions you have, there’s no door you you’re not allowed to open. Please push on anybody and please ask anything you want. Okay, this is for you. You can come live on. You can type the question in the chat box. A couple of things. In about half an hour I’ll put a link up in the chat box for an audiobook. Just type email address in there and then you’ll get a copy of it. It’s a five hour audio program. It’s my gift to you. Second thing is that you know, had some messages before and James also asked me. You know, how is it that any of you can come on this journey? And for me there’s three stages where, if you want to get, if you want to grow that side gig, for me there’s three very important stages. Number one is a lot of you right now may not be happy with where you are, or you may I can. For some people I’m not confident enough or I’m not happy in the industry and they’re trying to make a decision based on that. For me, step one is always to make you extremely happy with where you are right, because when you imagine life’s 10 levels right, energy level one is here and 10 is here. When you’re a one to and three, the decisions you make are pretty crappy decisions. When you’re living life over here, the decisions you’re making a super powerful decisions and they’re the place where you should be making decisions from. So the first step of the journey is to make sure that you can live life here to give you that confidence, that resilience, that mindset, so you could actually start playing life at this level, because when you’re here, you can see it. When you’re here, it’s your whole different view. And over here, this is where you start making the decisions. You need to. That step one. Step two is, once you’re up here, okay. Then you start getting clarity and then you start knowing what is it that you want to do, where you want to go, you know what side hustle you want to build, right. So step one is change the way you think. Step two is a clarity, okay. And then we know what is it that you want to do. And step three now they’re looking for a pair and we figured out what you’re going to do, just like James. And step three is to actually build that.
Dr James:
And when you were talking about growth, I give in value and help people 100%. It’s just such a fulfilling way to go through life when you have that mindset. The growth is one of the most exciting parts for me. When I felt stagnant in dentistry is because I didn’t feel like I was growing. I was going to that same room every day. Yeah, you have. Yeah, you vary the procedures. Yeah, you push the bowdod a little bit. Yeah, you try something that’s a little bit more. I don’t want to say experimental, but you push yourself to your limits, I suppose. But there’s only so much scope to do that within someone’s mouth. Sat in a room, and the really exhilarating thing for me is I literally I literally don’t know who’s going to reach out to me, who is going to speak to me, what incredibly insane, insane, exciting thing is going to pop up in. Well, just, you know what there’s. I heard a great saying the other day your private messages, your DMs on social media are the real LinkedIn. Okay, and the number of just not opportunities that have come through to me people who are quite well known in the finance, finance world, who want to appear in my podcast it genuinely is exhilarating. The growth is tremendous, and it’s a whole other reason to get out of bed in the morning and a whole other reason to be excited about your life, and I never had that until I went through this process of setting up my side gig. It was something that I just didn’t even fathom, was something that came as a consequence of it and, yeah, the growth thing it just it struck a chord with me as well. I really hope I’ve done a good job of explaining partly why I find it so much fun Awesome. Thank you for that man.
Mahmood:
James, one thing, right, let me just just one thing I didn’t mention this, but now I feel it’s the kind of right time to mention this as well that you know the day when I was testing my life, right, so dentistry and outside of dentistry, and then there was one day which, which is when I made that move, and then what that day was is that I remember that you know my aunt was. She had pancreatic cancer, so she was dying of cancer, so we were in the hospital with her. It was a Tuesday night when the hospital with her, and then you know, pancreatic cancer is picked up late and you know we knew she was going to pass away, but we just didn’t know. When the next morning I was driving to work and my mom phoned me and told me my aunt had passed away, and the first thing which went through my mind it wasn’t about my aunt, but it was that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow because I want the funeral to go to right and for me, I stopped the car and I thought what a, what a, what a shit life. If this is, if this is really the kind of person, things have to change. And that’s the day that I went to my business partner and said I’m out, either you buy me out, I’m selling my share and that’s it, I’m out. And I wasn’t prepared to live that life anymore. And a lot of us sometimes you know we, you know what I said, what Malcolm X said that well, you don’t hate, right, you begin to tolerate. That’s what happens, right, and for some of us, you want to leave, you want to get out and you just don’t hit enough. You’ve got that person in your life. You’re kind of hanging on to don’t hit them enough, right, to let go. There’s always that thing, right, you’ve got to hate something to really want to get out of it. And I hated it. But my thing is that what if you could change it without hating it? Right, and for me that would be a gift, because then you don’t have to go through what I went through and have some crazy stuff in your life to change. You’ve got the opportunity right now, whatever, like just just just listening, just being here, just after this, if you go and take some sort of action, you start doing something to be able to get you close towards your goal. That’s it, yeah, but don’t let this, don’t let this go in vain. Please, right, please, follow on Instagram, whatever. Keep in touch. I would love to keep in touch with you, let me know how your journey goes and, for some of you, if it’s right if you come and join me, if it’s not, that’s fine, right, but just keep in touch and just yeah, we’re here to make a difference.
Dr James:
Guys. Thank you so so much, jenna. You’re most welcome. Thank you for the compliment. Thank you everybody for coming. Like I say, it’s been a lot of fun for everyone involved. More content to come on SideGigs Month as the month goes on. Mahmoud is on the group, if anybody wants to reach out to him at any point, as am I, about anything that was said tonight in any way, shape or fashion, whether it be related to SideGigs or not. We’re both here and feel free to send us a message. We’re always willing to answer and help anybody that would like to know more. We have a from Theon. Thank you, james and Mahmoud Really enjoyed the session. You’re most welcome, theon. You’re most welcome, jenna. Guys, I think we are going to draw a line under that, although I could go on for longer if we wish, unless Mahmoud, you would like to say anything? Just to wrap it up for us all. Feel free to do so.
Mahmood:
Jenna, I think everything. I think everything. I think everything’s been said. Just last thing right, you know we’re here, we’re here for SideGigs Month. Right, there’s like each and every one of us. We’ve gone through some sort of pain in our lives and I really do believe that your greatest pain becomes your greatest gift. For me, my greatest pain was the ability. But when I wasn’t able to speak, my greatest gift was being able to teach people how to be phenomenal speakers. Right, and from there everything went on from there. So look at some of the things which have hit you in your life. You know, for some of you, some people I’m working with at the moment, right, so they’ve been, you know, they’ve had a. You know, maybe it’s abuse, maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that, but they’ve got through it and they found a way to get through it. And now they come back and they’re helping other people get through that as well. So, no matter what you’ve been through maybe it’s a sickness, maybe it’s a fail of relationship, maybe it’s you can do great composites, maybe it’s you can like whatever it may be, right, you have a. I really do feel that when you know something, it’s your duty to go out there and give, to go out there and serve. It’s not for you. Knowledge is in for you. It’s there to give right and that’s where your side gig starts from. It’s not about the money, but it’s about the service Comfort. From that angle and everything changes. So, yeah, that’s it. I’ve. I’ve, nothing more to say. But please do reach out, please do connect, and if there’s anything you need, I’m here for you. Thank you very much.
Dr James:
Thank you so so much, everyone. Powerful stuff and thank you for attending tonight. P has said. Thank you so much, everyone. When is the next side gig webinar? I will. We haven’t finalized the date just yet as the format of that just quite yet, p, but we will be very sure to publicize that clearly on the group. If you’re anonymous, this is coming in saying thank you. You’re most welcome, guys. Guys, we’re going to draw a line under it just there. Thank you so so much for giving up your evening to come. I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, hope that there are some people out there that that resonated with and encourage them to go down the path of starting their own side gig. I know how much it helped me and I know how much I was blinkered in my thinking beforehand. Perhaps you weren’t quite as bad to me, but at least to a certain degree, that must have resonated with some people out there tonight. Guys, thank you so so much for coming. Thank you, mahmood, for co-hosting this with me. I hope you’ve had a good time. It’s been a pleasure to have you.
Mahmood:
Absolutely lovely and thank you everyone for your energy Tremendous. Thank you so much.
Dr James:
You’re most welcome, my friend. Good to see everybody. We will connect very soon once more on the group, I’m sure via some format podcast, webinar or whatever. Thank you so much for coming. We’re going to wrap it up there. I hope everybody has a tremendous evening Watch left of it. See you all very soon. Bye. If you felt like anything that was said in this Q&A resonated with you tonight and you’re interested in starting your own side gig, feel free to reach out to myself or Mahmood Modji via the Dentison Invest group to learn more, or, alternatively, click in the link attached to this video where you’ll be able to book yourself in for a one-on-one conversation with Mahmood to see how he can help you create your own side gig. After all, this is the theme of the month Dentison Invest Side Gig Month. Hope everybody enjoyed the podcast and speak to you all once more very, very soon. Thanks for watching.