Your Value May Be Less Than You Think: Dev Patel On Salaried Dentistry.

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We're going to go from having this same model for the last 50 years of dentists being self-employed and to going more towards a standardised approach like veterinary, where you're salaried, and actually your value is a lot less than what you think it is.
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Well, I've got five robots and five surgeries.
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They work 20.7.
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There's no holidays.
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At the time, I had like £8.5 million of debt on my name, personally.
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If this doesn't open up again in June, like, you're literally going to be like bankrupt.
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The way I look at risk is, if you lose everything, what's the worst that can happen?
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I go back to the clinical.
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Right, Dev, lovely to have you on the pod.
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Thank you for making your way over.
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Thanks for having me, man.
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How are you?
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Yeah, all good.
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All good.
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Just looking forward to the summertime.
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Yourself?
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Yeah, me too.
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Me too, yeah.
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Been busy, but looking forward to it.
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I mean, we've known each other now pretty much since the start of our careers, really.
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And it's been wonderful to see your...
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entrepreneurial journey.
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Obviously, I've known you since the Dental Circle days, since the Brush Link days, and obviously for the most recent time with your role at Dental Beauty Partners.
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So it's always lovely to sit down with a kindred entrepreneurial spirit.
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And obviously what you guys have been doing at Dental Beauty is, I think, really, really interesting.
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obviously made a big big dent in the corporate landscape really sort of out of nowhere compared to a lot of the incumbents that were there already and obviously you guys are up to near on 60 practices now are you yeah have you always been entrepreneur what's your what's your view on entrepreneurship is it a learned skill for you or something that were you there with the lemonade stand outside your parents house back in the day
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Yeah, it's a good question actually.
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And I was just saying this last week because
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I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably have it within their DNA from childhood.
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I don't think people will just be taught to be an entrepreneur.
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I think you have to have some sort of environmental exposure to someone with a close proximity, normally anyway, or some sort of mentor or someone near you who's worked hard in some part of the life or been an entrepreneur.
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Because...
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a lot of, I think I'm not exaggerating, but a lot of our partners and people I know in the UK, even yourself, if you look at hard work ethic, that's kind of the fundamental part of being an entrepreneur.
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And then I think all the other things around it, you can be a really smart entrepreneur, you can be just hardworking, but that's kind of the fundamentals.
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So for me personally, my parents, like most Asian parents, came over from East Africa back in the day when they were kicked out from Kenya.
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I had nothing when I came here and you know, had to work three jobs while at university to do pharmacy.
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And yeah, my dad was like, you know, very, very kind of into family working within the business from a young age.
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So maybe it was child labor, but age of six onwards I was doing 12 hour shifts for pretty much the whole year.
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And like, you know, after school weekends, you know, summer holidays, which is 12 hour shifts every single day, seven days a week, that's what we did.
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Christmas day, seven days, you know, that's what we had basically worked in the shop.
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And I think working in the shop is actually probably the best way of learning business, generally, because you learn every aspect of a business.
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So you get to do customer service because you're having to talk to patients, even if you're not at the first.
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I was only six.
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I couldn't go behind the till straight away, but eventually I did.
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But even if you're watching people talk to patients coming in, different personality types coming in, how to manage complaints, patients who are just rude, all that kind of stuff.
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Then you also get to deal with like buying and selling stock, even though it's small amounts, but if we're just buying some, I don't know, some LEMSips for buying the counter, how much you're paying for it?
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What's the sale price afterwards?
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What's the margin?
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It's basic stuff there, but actually that's the same thing as what we do on a much bigger scale now, right?
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You also get to do, you know, the hours in terms of actually working that many hours for the first time and some of them will never work that many hours until after they graduate almost, you know, so it's quite an early kind of curve there.
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Community and purpose, like, you know, we go after the pharmacy because I spent like five hours driving around the community to get home, stop off medicines, I think it paid for it, but it's a way you build business up for two referrals in the area.
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So these are all the little small things you get to learn, even HR issues with a small team.
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Culture, how do you build a team up to train them up as well afterwards.
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One of the really important factual things that I personally learned was about being really accurate with...
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what you do and taking pride in it because, you know, obviously it was a found business.
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So we haven't got a choice there, but if you put the wrong medicine in the wrong bag, someone could die.
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Right.
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And I learned a very young, like age of seven onwards, it was like, you know, you're helping the pharmacy, but don't mess around.
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It's not, it's not a joke.
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Like this is a profession.
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You've got to make sure you do it properly and have that little detail and being kind of like,
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drilled into my head from a young age was quite good because um i think a lot of people in the industry and just generally in business generally can be good at talking and not actually actually and executing very well um just because you can get away with it right uh but this was a an mba age of seven i guess from as a kid you know in terms of learning like you can't mess around if you've got your own business and this is your like literally what pays for the bills for putting food on the table right
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yeah um so yeah i kind of i think that's where it started from and i was the kid who sold capri suns for extortion prices at age of seven years old making margins and got detention for it as well which i still think is illegal but i don't know why i did it for for entrepreneurism but yeah 12 pack for 50 20 quid
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Don't worry, I saw the yacht of the owner of Capri Sun down in Saint-Tropez recently.
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I think he did all right, even with you cutting into his margins.
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It was actually Costco.
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I bought from Costco, so it's always a third party.
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There you go.
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I think you can definitely see signs from a young age, generally, of people who want to do better in life.
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And then I think there's a fine line between being an entrepreneur and maybe...
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going to the wrong direction, you know, in terms of being a hustler or some other problem, you know, that you can get in terms of that mindset.
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But I think anyone educated who works hard and has got a bit of entrepreneurship can do pretty well in any industry.
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Absolutely.
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And so obviously, how long has it been now since you worked clinically?
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Oh, 10 years till the end of this year.
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2017 was my last two-fire case.
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So yeah, on my uncle.
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On your uncle, right.
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But it's still good.
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Yeah, still there.
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Dardom and everything, it was all good.
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Do you miss it at all?
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Yeah, no, I do.
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All I like, actually, I did my wife's bonding again last year, just like a touch up after 10 years.
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But yeah, no, I miss it.
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I think it's a shame because, you know, I would love to still do like one or two days clinical, but I'll just kind of set out the game now that probably...
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Wouldn't it be safe to do it again?
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Yeah.
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But yeah, I think it's, I mean, you know, we're both doing a lot of BAC stuff back in the day, weren't we?
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We could Chris Orkals, C1 and C2, and all the BACC kind of accreditation stuff I was trying to get into back then.
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But I think, yeah, it taught me what I needed to know.
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I actually saw Chris for the first time in like 10 years at the Minimist Conference last weekend, the weekend before, and I was like, you know, what he taught us was like the fundamentals of our whole group ethos, taking the photographs, patient journey,
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you know, the materials, the kind of workflows that we use, the technology.
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It's all literally still based on what we taught us like, you know, 12 years ago, whatever it was.
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So it's quite fundamental that impact is made in terms of, you know, our whole group ethos.
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But I miss it, obviously.
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And you can only, my main thing was I can only ever help.
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500 people a year, 1,000 patients a year, right?
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If I did two hands myself.
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But now we're helping over, you know, almost a million people a year, right?
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So it's quite a big impact versus what we can do on your own is two hands.
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And I think I found that my place is probably better spent trying to do what I do now versus doing clinical dentistry and helping X many people a year, right?
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Yeah, makes sense.
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And so...
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Tell us a bit about how you moved into Dental Beauty Partners.
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It'll be interesting, I think, for people to understand your journey into that role.
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Yeah, so I bought my first clinic in 2015, probably the same time as I think you took over your parents, wasn't it, roughly?
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A little before, yeah.
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Just before, yeah.
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2015, bought it.
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And then, yeah, we obviously took it from two to five, six surgeries, kind of figured the blueprint out.
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And then at the same time,
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was over in the us in 2017 2018 for the brush link stuff and i think at that point um dental cycle was still kind of growing at the time and we we ended up having a lot of partners who are now partners now but dentist in our age group kind of approached me saying look i won by my first clinic how'd you do it um obviously won everyone a few awards and stuff and and kind of proven that you can grow a business from two to six surgeries quite quickly and
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And then it was like a bit of a penny moment because I was like, okay, well, you want to, you know, these are people who already worked in my first clinic as well.
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So it was like, I have to lose these great dentists who are associates and they buy their own clinic and I can help them and I will help them anyway.
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Just out of my goodwill.
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Or we do it together as a partnership.
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And then I was like, okay, well, let's just do it as a partnership.
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Because I think one of the things I learned in my first practice I've worked as an associate was how do you keep talent?
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like motivated, right?
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Like after you get to a certain point, you train them up, they get really good clinically, then they go spread their wings, which is great, but then you're kind of like, oh, I just wasted three years of my life training someone up to become my best dentist and then just left and done their own thing afterwards.
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So this was kind of a step towards that.
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And at the same time, because the first one was already pretty much self-sufficient after two or three years, the systems were working.
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And then I went to the US, obviously the BrushLink staff, and I realized that every group in the US had to have a dentist with equity because it was like part of state law.
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I was wondering why no one did it in the UK.
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And then another thing was that Dentex as well, obviously, was roughly the same kind of time, 2017, 2018, maybe 2016, they kind of launched.
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They approached me about trying to bring partners on board.
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So Barry at the time, who's now left, but...
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He approached me to get partners on board in 2016, 17, maybe, from Dental Circle to join Dentex.
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So with Rahul, Osh and everyone else.
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And I realized that was a great concept.
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It was like, you know, get partners on board.
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Their model was actually the same as our model.
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It was 51-49 initially.
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And then they pivoted afterwards because they couldn't, you know, get enough partners on board.
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So between all those different kind of things, I was like, okay, well they're doing it, or starting to do the UK with Dentex.
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There was a thing in the US showing me that it's definitely a big model.
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That's the only thing that works over a period of time.
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I had partners already knocking my door saying they want to join us from dental circle and from our current practice.
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I thought, let's just give it a go.
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And I sold 40% of my first clinic to one of our associates in 2017.
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So that was kind of the first step towards a partnership.
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And then that worked really well.
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It wasn't in the UK.
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It was still growing by 20% a year, and I wasn't clinically in the UK or doing anything.
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So, yeah, it made sense to reinvest that capital into doing a partnership rather than just, you know...
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doing one clinic or do one clinic and putting all your eggs in one basket with you know a startup or or whatever else i was doing at the time so and so just so people understand why why is that model of 51 49 so different to the way that it was being done by
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the big corporates before you?
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So all the corporates up until now, and even to be fair now, have pretty much the same model where there's one major ownership by one entity.
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So if you look at pretty much all the big groups, they're all owned by a single entity.
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If you look at a clinical level equity partnership, there are two groups out there that I know of.
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There's obviously many, many, many groups, but the two kind of PE back groups.
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One was Dentex, which has now been privately owned and obviously Portman bought them.
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And I think most of the partners have got their money out or their shares kind of like very small equity left.
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And then you've got DeNovo Partners, which is a new kind of partnership model coming in the market.
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But once again, they're doing a very similar model to Dentex, which is an older dentist rolls over 20, 30 percent equity into the top company.
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Yeah.
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It's not a local leadership, local equity model, which is...
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a very different partnership because it's only like part of a group which is a part of a partnership but you're not actually part of a local partnership which is
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debatable in terms of how you classify that as a true partnership but and so i guess and the concern with having shares in the main topco is obviously normally you've got non-preferent my understanding i might be wrong here but i would assume non-preferential shares i a share class that's not as good as the people that were in there first whether whether or not they'll be able to when things are sold will they actually still be getting what they've been told they're going to get these are all conversations i've heard yeah maybe a bit of a concern
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So there's a big group called Kureos, which was the kind of case study for not student model in Europe.
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And basically they were the same model, 20, 30% equity was rolled over into top company.
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So if you sold your practice to me, you would have 70% of the money upfront.
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Another 30% goes up into a top company, which you're all part of the same top company.
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the class C shares, which basically means that you don't have any voting rights or dividends.
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You don't really have any power.
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It's just, yeah, you're on the ride and you know what happens, happens to the group.
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Now that was bought by EQT, which is a big P in Europe.
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And it went from a, which by the way, the numbers potentially weren't accurate, but whatever.
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You know, PWC got the suit in for it, but it went 50 million EBITDA to 25 million EBITDA after the exit.
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And all those partners with the 30% equity got most of the money out at like 17 times multiple.
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It was a great happy days for those guys and it worked really well.
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It was during the peak years in 2019 when everyone was doing really well.
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But the logical fact was that everyone got the money out at high multiple in one go at one event.
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Yeah.
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Which basically meant, oh, you're 60 years old, you've got your money out now, why are you going to keep pushing harder, right?
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Yeah.
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And they all just completely crashed into half, which is a big problem if you're paying 17 times.
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Yeah.
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It's like 35 times.
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So EQT got screwed on the deal, basically.
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And then they started to call a seam in the end for like pretty much nothing.
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But the point is, is that that's kind of why you don't, that's why you shouldn't really do it in top company.
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And a lot of the US ones have all kind of learned that and done it separately.
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So now they do do it in top company, they have vintages.
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So they have like a five year vintage where you'd have equity in top company, but that vintage would eventually get money out at a different point in time.
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So never at one point in time, everyone had money in the top company or most of them do it in just local.
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So like that clinic on itself,
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is local you have equity in that clinic you've got control over it you work at that clinic you can control whether it does badly or good because you you are the partner in the clinic yeah that's the best model because that way you have to worry about top company like who's running it does it what do you do well or not there's the five partners down the road do badly and therefore my equity is worth nothing afterwards you master of your own destiny exactly do we get the 15 000 multiple that everyone's promised
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You know, it's just all this stuff which is not really, and that could take 10 years to get them out, depending on whenever the group exits.
191
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So that's why it's better to have it local.
192
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And it's also more feasible because if you do have a model like that, you basically want to have a model where a partner can sell in and all one buys in at a similar price and market.
193
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If you have it at 15, who's gonna buy that?
194
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Cause they can't afford it, right?
195
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So it becomes very difficult to transfer that equity over and become a proper partnership, which means that for long-term you also have a partner there with equity in the business.
196
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um it becomes you roll it all up in topco and they sell and then someone still deal with 100 ownership afterwards which is the same problem you have after 10 5 5 years or whatever so i think our one's a true partnership from that point of view that's why it's different um and also it gives that dentist autonomy of actually that is their clinic they can put their stamp of culture in the you know on that clinic they can get their own returns based on their own performance um you know there's a whole host of benefits for there but yeah we're the first ones to relaunch that in the uk on scale um
197
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and still are probably the only one out there to do that.
198
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But it's not easy because you have to, A, have less equity, so you have less skin in the game, so less of the pie.
199
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That makes sense from a private equity point of view or from an ownership point of view from the top down.
200
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So that's why people don't do it normally because it's basically greedy.
201
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Most private equity guys want to have the whole pie.
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They don't want to give anything away.
203
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Although that's been proven many times now in the vet industry and opt-on
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where if you do have a partnership model, you get much better returns, better life-for-life growth, better EBITDA margins, everything.
205
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So it's proven, I think a lot of people are now trying to adopt it in the UK.
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I think Portman have put it in recently and a few other groups.
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But the most important part of the industry is session planning.
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Because it's really hard to have, I mean, it's common sense.
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Like if you sold a clinic and you were doing 20% of revenue and you're a big generator for referrals, if you left, there's going to be a big hit to the practice.
210
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And how do you session plan that?
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And if you pay a lot of money for it, like eight times multiple, and you just get all the money up front all over the next two or three years, after you earn out and you leave...
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You can set up your practice up down the road or, you know, you just basically have to somehow session plan that person.
213
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And in dentistry, a lot of it's linked to dentists, goodwill, expertise, operational excellence, all that kind of stuff.
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So it's quite hard to make it work if you don't have some sort of way of going, all right, well, I've got some equity.
215
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The business is going to be there for long term.
216
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at a wide age point too, not talking about 65 in the retirement end, talking about like, you know, on the younger end.
217
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Yeah, because most of your partners are quite a lot younger than the sort of average.
218
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Average is 34 years old, yeah.
219
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So they're kind of 10 years in clinical, but we're looking to buy their first practice.
220
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So that's kind of our general kind of age profile.
221
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But yeah, so you kind of need to make sure that you've got a good mixture of the right mindset, who wants to be there for long term, who's got the right incentives to keep growing and wants to grow.
222
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And it's coming in at a point where they can make some equity value increase, not just buying it at the point when it's fully maxed out.
223
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Yeah.
224
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But the good thing about most practices in the UK, especially in London anyway, if you've got a mixed practice, is that it's unlimited demand for patients.
225
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Always a space so you could keep moving it from 4 to 8 to 8 to 16 until you kind of have a hospital basically at the end of it Right, so you can't really ever run out of demand and growth every you can get double-digit growth Which means that it's better than put the money stock market or anything else And what I've learned from the US DSO is as long as you can give your partners and your dentists more than somewhere else No, you know from a service point of view marketing patients quality of life and the problem would save you longer and
226
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even if they make good money right you can make a million two million here and there but it's not gonna be the time money anyway even the age of 34 so um a lot of them just i think generally quite happy with what their model is and how it works and you know even if they don't you know after five years want to leave eventually you can always bring someone else in who wants that model as well
227
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Yeah.
228
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Because there's still growth potential, which is the key thing.
229
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But it's a very strong acquisition mindset of buying stuff with growth potential, not just buying stuff at the top end that's fully maxed out because then you can't, no one wins, right?
230
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We can't make money, neither can a partner.
231
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And then as a result of that, you kind of think, okay, this is probably not a good investment for him or for her, right?
232
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As a partner.
233
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Yeah.
234
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And so you just going from obviously taking this one practice, you built it up from two to six very quickly.
235
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You had a load of good dentists that actually were looking to grow into their own locations.
236
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You thought, right, let's take that.
237
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We'll go on a journey together.
238
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I'll take the fact that you're a brilliant dentist.
239
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Actually, we get on well.
240
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Let's go into business in another location.
241
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Let's do the same, the same, the same.
242
00:19:19.612 --> 00:19:21.453
So at what point did you?
243
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that turn into dental beauty partners?
244
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At what point did that, or was it called that already?
245
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I can't remember.
246
00:19:27.595 --> 00:19:30.456
Yeah, no, it was called Dental Beauty Group actually for the first year.
247
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It was what, sorry?
248
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Dental Beauty Group for the first year.
249
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To be completely honest, the partnership model and the plan completely changed from 2019 to 2021.
250
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Our original plan was just to go, all right, well, we know the market's pretty hot for groups right now.
251
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There's a lot of investment opportunity from private equity, et cetera.
252
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we know how to grow a practice from, you know, two to five chairs or, you know, so buy under plumbing practices around them, 25 belt, and then get to 10 sites.
253
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And that was the plan that eventually was going to sell.
254
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That was the original plan to be perfectly honest.
255
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It was never going to be as big as it got to now.
256
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But I think after a year and a half of doing that, and seeing the demand of how many practices there are in the market around London, in our profile, how many partners wanted to do it.
257
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And the fact that debt wasn't that hard to come around.
258
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We grew from,
259
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So we put the plan together in 2018 summertime, like that's kind of when we started to kind of work back from an exit plan of getting to 10 and what we need to do to kind of build up the group to that level.
260
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The partners were all bought into the fact that we were going to sell and get out after five years or however long the plan was.
261
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um then in 2019 we bought eight so it was like one a month for the first eight months of the year then towards end of it all self-funded this stage all self-funded yeah and then we literally went to one hardship bank at a time so this is quite interesting story because when you have a partnership model the banks have a complete heart attack like they're just like what partnership equity i don't understand like hardship banks don't get it at all um so rather than having to explain this to banks and like try to literally have
262
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25 meetings with them we just went to one bank at a time and eventually ran out of banks because there's only eight banks in high street in the uk right so after we got to eight of them they're like okay we've run out of the banks now and they only want to do one practice with one partner because there was a separate covenants for every single practice individually so it's almost like having eight individual practices not under a group structure right um just because of the covenants for each one was separate so you kind of the ring fence each one so the ebid after that one paid the debt for that one and that was just one bank that was like you know one at a time
263
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And then got to the end of the year, and we finally got to the point where we found one bank, which was Clydesdale.
264
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It's a gentleman called Pat Brenner.
265
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You may have not heard of him before, but he does kind of like group level or kind of debt for mini groups, like a facility.
266
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And we agreed a 10 million pound facility with him after two months negotiation up until the end of February 2020.
267
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And then COVID hit.
268
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So he goes, yeah, it's 10 million, all sorted out, all signed off, done.
269
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So we bought another, we had three more practices in the pipeline on top of the eight that we're gonna complete within three or four months, within the beginning of summer time 2020, and then COVID hit, and then obviously shut down, like everyone had a bit of a freak out.
270
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And then COVID opened up again July-ish time.
271
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And then he said, oh yeah, I've been moved on now.
272
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I'm not along with the head of the debt for dental or whatever, or healthcare.
273
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and the debts all gone as well.
274
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So like, okay, great.
275
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So I've got these three practices are completing.
276
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Obviously during the whole COVID, we were like telling the owners of these practices, like actually owned it and selling to us.
277
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It's all good.
278
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All debts lined up.
279
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Don't worry.
280
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As soon as you open up, we can complete the deals.
281
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The partners all lined up for it.
282
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All great.
283
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And then I was like, bank, you're gonna find like 7 million of debt out of nowhere.
284
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yeah um all the banks were just like busy doing c bills because they were just like if we can do c bills which is a kind of covid interruption loans which is government-backed guaranteed five percent you know for them they're like we're not doing any dental deals right now so just you know good luck on your own kind of thing yeah um then we start looking at bridge loans and like you know start looking at some dodgy people to find money farm it was getting a bit uh a bit sketchy towards end of the year in 2020 but um at that time like beginning of
285
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September started looking like we we'd start looking for other options here so it's about to start to speak speak to a few peas that were already that we knew already um and then EDG who actually are our partners now came along in probably October time um they're looking for a platform in the UK they're actually looking to buy my dentist at the same time uh which was obviously much bigger than us we had like eight practices and they had like 580.
286
00:23:35.585 --> 00:23:48.858
And the guy actually, you know, he's still there with me now, the head of BD was like, you know, it's probably better we buy something that's got a good blueprint that can grow and actually build equity value rather than buying a big, at the time it was a bit of a mess on my dentist at the time.
287
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They had literally like zero equity value
288
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700 million of debt with no kind of growth potential and just a lot of historic stuff to deal with yeah and the bundle was expiring for their debt at the end of that year as well so it was a kind of a bit of distress at the time so um yeah they kind of decided to go with us instead which was a the first time they've ever done a deal with less than like 10 million EBITDA for like any platform around europe so it was a big pump for them worked out well for them in the end but um yeah so that's kind of how we got to where we got to in the end and uh it was um it
289
00:24:20.261 --> 00:24:26.710
let's just take a pause there in terms of like the chronology of the journey because i think there's loads in there like yeah
290
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Let's just go back to that whole 2020 debacle.
291
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Because obviously you look back on it now and you can laugh about it.
292
00:24:33.700 --> 00:24:39.862
But I imagine at the time, like you were shitting yourself, right?
293
00:24:40.042 --> 00:24:42.623
Well, actually, when COVID hit, I was shitting myself.
294
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Because, you know, when you buy these practices, people don't realize it.
295
00:24:45.804 --> 00:24:47.084
But you put a PG down, right?
296
00:24:47.764 --> 00:24:52.586
So you essentially say, like, I'm basically personally guaranteeing the debt in this business.
297
00:24:53.406 --> 00:25:08.112
And when they said you're closed and we only had 20% revenue coming from NHS, which was just about keeping the lights on the rent, you know, you're literally saying, well, at the time I had like eight and a half million pound of debt on my name personally, including that was without the partners that debt on their name.
298
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And I'm a kind of partners within the business.
299
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So it was like, you know, I had no money.
300
00:25:13.635 --> 00:25:13.835
I like,
301
00:25:14.934 --> 00:25:29.355
himself made so like it was like you got a minute and if this doesn't open up again in june like you're literally going to be like bankrupt so it wasn't it wasn't like a funny time yeah and we're working really hard to kind of make sure that all the dentists were happy and you know they get paid their bit and we got you know energy coming in and
302
00:25:29.876 --> 00:25:55.613
just to kind of pay the loans off and luckily the loans were delayed but even if you delaying the loans doesn't mean that money's gonna come back in it's not gonna be free money afterwards right yeah now luckily touch wood you know government opened up again and things were flying off that from in terms of dentistry in the uk i'm sure everyone was in the same boat you know who was at the time because you had money from the nhs coming in which is great for kind of keeping the bills paid you had you know people going crazy over bonding and whitening and invisalign stuff like that which is great
303
00:25:56.414 --> 00:26:00.840
So yeah, all worked out well in the end, but it was a stressful few months for sure.
304
00:26:01.281 --> 00:26:04.545
I don't think I was ever in a point where I was like, this is a disaster since then we're going to shit.
305
00:26:04.585 --> 00:26:10.915
But what I did decide at that time, because we had a lot of time at home with the family and stuff and going for walks all the time,
306
00:26:11.475 --> 00:26:15.900
was rather than having three different hats, which was dental circle, brush link and this, I just had to choose one of them.
307
00:26:16.621 --> 00:26:23.448
And obviously at the time we were doing like a series A with brush link and I was like, do I want to go there full time in America and move there fully with the family?
308
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What do they do with practices?
309
00:26:25.730 --> 00:26:28.292
How are we going to keep dental circle going and stuff like that?
310
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And it just worked out that
311
00:26:30.905 --> 00:26:53.813
the price thing got sold that year and then 2020 and same time kind of focused on the group and kept growing that one had a decision with a you know with this kind of a liquidity event of some sort with the five equity in the end of that year or beginning of 2021 so um it all worked out well in the end but i think it was a good time to reflect um on you know the risk because if that wasn't there that whole covid situation i think we kept going going going and
312
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It wouldn't have been a bad thing.
313
00:26:55.634 --> 00:27:03.218
We were doing well in terms of numbers, but it was getting to the point where you actually think, oh shit, you know, got 8 million pound of debt here in my name, and this could all go to zero.
314
00:27:03.738 --> 00:27:05.740
And if you grow fast, that's when it becomes riskier.
315
00:27:05.940 --> 00:27:06.980
If you do it slowly, it's fine.
316
00:27:07.000 --> 00:27:08.601
You can do one or two a year every year for 10 years.
317
00:27:08.621 --> 00:27:09.602
It's not a problem, easy.
318
00:27:10.102 --> 00:27:36.939
where you're trying to buy 12 in one year and you know if one doesn't doesn't integrate well or they don't perform well or you have a high you know we didn't buy any high-risk practices but so the contract was delivered for a reason it could have been a you know it could have been a bit sticky situation yeah um so yeah luckily it worked out well but um there are definitely some stressful times in that 2020 year which a lot of people don't see right they just see all the fun stuff yeah yeah of course are you are you quite comfortable with risk do you think would you say you're a bit of a risk taker or
319
00:27:37.239 --> 00:27:41.142
Yeah, look, I mean, the way that I look at it is going back to my parents again, right?
320
00:27:41.262 --> 00:27:48.686
They came over here with nothing and they built up, you know, X amount to put us through private school and, you know, have a home in the UK from zero.
321
00:27:49.367 --> 00:27:55.191
So I look at it like the basics are if they did that from zero to X amount, I need to do 10 times more than that.
322
00:27:55.231 --> 00:28:01.355
Otherwise, I've kind of failed because otherwise, literally, like they've done that and had three jobs with zero support and like...
323
00:28:01.995 --> 00:28:23.813
racism all that stuff back in the day right and had three jobs and we were basically lazy that's basically what it comes down to um so yeah i've on that basis what i mean what i mean by that is that a you've got to work hard but also if you work hard the risks you take are not that risky because you would always basically push yourself to make it work if that makes sense as long as you're buying like a solid contract that's going to deliver right you're not buying
324
00:28:24.473 --> 00:28:40.795
a startup with like no profit and high revenue right which is these are kind of like cashier in businesses um that generally can make money so as long as not operationally being lazy you can deliver that then it's fine um but the way i look at risk is um if you
325
00:28:42.590 --> 00:28:44.512
If you lose everything, what's the worst that can happen?
326
00:28:44.852 --> 00:28:46.334
I go back to doing clinical, right?
327
00:28:46.354 --> 00:28:47.515
I do what I was doing 10 years ago.
328
00:28:47.535 --> 00:28:48.916
So you're never gonna be broke.
329
00:28:49.396 --> 00:28:52.559
You've got a degree in dentistry in the UK and as long as you're half teeth, you'll make some good money.
330
00:28:53.100 --> 00:28:55.482
So there's not that much risk from that point of view.
331
00:28:55.802 --> 00:28:56.703
Like what's the worst that happens?
332
00:28:56.723 --> 00:28:57.504
You go back to your clinical again.
333
00:28:57.844 --> 00:29:00.907
That's always in the back of my mind or any point in time, even now, right?
334
00:29:00.927 --> 00:29:03.209
Like could lose it all tomorrow and just go back to clinical again.
335
00:29:04.032 --> 00:29:05.352
But you haven't lost anything really.
336
00:29:06.253 --> 00:29:06.913
Like, what have you lost?
337
00:29:06.933 --> 00:29:07.973
You're not going to lose your house.
338
00:29:07.993 --> 00:29:10.174
You're not going to lose... Well, now anyway, because there's no PJs anymore.
339
00:29:10.194 --> 00:29:11.214
But you're not going to lose your house.
340
00:29:11.234 --> 00:29:12.394
You're not going to lose your family.
341
00:29:12.414 --> 00:29:13.074
You'll still be alive.
342
00:29:13.094 --> 00:29:13.455
Yeah.
343
00:29:13.475 --> 00:29:14.595
You'll still be healthy, generally.
344
00:29:14.615 --> 00:29:15.675
And you'll just do what you're doing.
345
00:29:15.695 --> 00:29:18.796
And because you're young, it's not like you're losing everything when they're at school.
346
00:29:18.816 --> 00:29:21.077
Like, you know, and they're in the middle of the GCSEs or anything.
347
00:29:21.097 --> 00:29:23.017
These are, you know, what's going to happen?
348
00:29:23.277 --> 00:29:24.958
I'm sure it's the same probably the way you think, right?
349
00:29:24.978 --> 00:29:27.598
Like, it's not like you're going to be on the street, like, broke, right?
350
00:29:27.779 --> 00:29:28.179
Yeah, exactly.
351
00:29:28.199 --> 00:29:29.019
Whereas if you're...
352
00:29:29.879 --> 00:29:56.952
buying 20 pubs and they all went down you could be bankrupt you could be like well i mean i've got a lot of obviously being that i live a split life part of the dental profession and part in the startup world yeah i obviously have a lot of uh i have a lot of friends and and colleagues in the startup world founders yeah who own very successful startup brands but there's obviously some that you see that that fold yeah especially in sort of food and drink and stuff where trends can change can
353
00:29:59.253 --> 00:30:03.537
the whole vegan space was so big a few years ago and now everyone's moving away from it.
354
00:30:05.598 --> 00:30:12.703
And a lot of these guys and girls have put their PG on their house and bet the house on the deal.
355
00:30:12.763 --> 00:30:16.766
And it's... Obviously, I've invested a huge amount of money into Parlour.
356
00:30:16.846 --> 00:30:17.066
Yeah.
357
00:30:17.406 --> 00:30:17.667
But...
358
00:30:18.307 --> 00:30:23.111
I know that I've also got my practice and my clinical capabilities as a backstop.
359
00:30:23.131 --> 00:30:30.979
So it does give you a bit more certainty, a bit more of a defense, I guess, against the worst case scenario.
360
00:30:31.079 --> 00:30:34.482
Running a healthcare business like a dental practice is not simple.
361
00:30:34.622 --> 00:30:43.630
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362
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363
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365
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366
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367
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368
00:31:16.150 --> 00:31:17.112
Now back to the show.
369
00:31:17.653 --> 00:31:21.658
Yeah, that's why I always think that we are very fortunate, almost like kind of.
370
00:31:22.519 --> 00:31:47.824
not fully fully entrepreneurs that made sense because i think full entrepreneurs risk everything like literally to the point where they can go bankrupt whereas we we both know that like worst comes to worst you still make a hundred a few hundred a year from just doing clinical right like it's not the end of the world like what's the worst case you'll still be probably still top one percent of earners in the uk on our age group so you know we're not that kind of like you know i feel a lot more respectful of some of those kind of startup founders like the same kind of situation i had friends that you know who did that as well
371
00:31:48.404 --> 00:31:55.052
who literally go from like a normal, you know, nine to five job earning 30,000 a year or whatever to putting everything they've got into this.
372
00:31:55.112 --> 00:31:56.534
And it's literally like their whole life.
373
00:31:56.574 --> 00:31:57.015
Life or death.
374
00:31:57.295 --> 00:31:57.555
Yeah.
375
00:31:57.595 --> 00:32:04.324
And it's and that's kind of, you know, really kind of goes a long way in terms of the mindset of going like this is literally going to mean like I don't have to eat food otherwise.
376
00:32:04.464 --> 00:32:05.345
And then I kind of have to.
377
00:32:05.946 --> 00:32:10.191
I know some guys who actually have one meal a day because they can't afford to have two, three meals a day because they want to put the money into the company, right?
378
00:32:10.251 --> 00:32:13.515
So that's proper, like, you know, hardcore hustling.
379
00:32:13.535 --> 00:32:17.360
Whereas we just go, I'm still at Nobu, even though I'm still, like, I'm a founder.
380
00:32:18.301 --> 00:32:19.582
It's not the end of the world kind of thing.
381
00:32:19.602 --> 00:32:20.944
So, you know, you'll be okay.
382
00:32:21.084 --> 00:32:24.526
And I think that's where like, we are very fortunate having that degree.
383
00:32:24.707 --> 00:32:29.730
You know, when we graduated, I knew straight away that that degree would be for life, like my backstop if anything ever happened, you know?
384
00:32:29.870 --> 00:32:30.251
So yeah.
385
00:32:30.291 --> 00:32:34.534
Yeah, well for many reasons, it's more so why dentists should take a bit more risks.
386
00:32:34.574 --> 00:32:34.874
Yeah, 100%.
387
00:32:34.934 --> 00:32:41.599
And actually, it's certainly for me, in terms of everything I've learned through the journey of Parlour,
388
00:32:43.359 --> 00:33:01.928
has obviously been very fruitful and beneficial for Parlour as a business itself, but it's also doubled back into my dental business and given me a very much broader scope and understanding of what's going on out there in the ecosystem around team, around marketing, around actually understanding your finances in a much deeper fashion.
389
00:33:02.048 --> 00:33:02.548
Yeah, yeah.
390
00:33:02.748 --> 00:33:18.608
I mean, I think it's a great kind of like mini MBA for doing a side hustle of some business as a dentist, because you get to understand proper business, like as you know, on a standalone basis, not just having this guaranteed patient footfall coming in with no patients, you know, to worry about ever having, you know, profitability issues.
391
00:33:18.648 --> 00:33:20.430
You start from scratch with zero profit.
392
00:33:20.450 --> 00:33:21.672
You're like, well, I've got to make this grow.
393
00:33:22.172 --> 00:33:23.333
And then also did that for me, right?
394
00:33:23.353 --> 00:33:33.479
Like I kind of, you know, with Amit, we both kind of set something from scratch and it was all about like looking at like how much money you're going to make, how much profit you're going to make based on the P&Ls, how you're going to, you know, do marketing activities, all these kind of things.
395
00:33:33.499 --> 00:33:37.561
It was a much smaller business on scale, but it taught you the basics of a startup.
396
00:33:37.941 --> 00:33:38.182
And yeah,
397
00:33:39.082 --> 00:33:48.928
I think that helped a lot when it came to getting my ideas behind a group structure and what you need to grow a group and what brand and all some of the things that are quite important.
398
00:33:49.388 --> 00:33:55.952
Because I think a lot of dentists take dentistry clinical and they didn't go, I'm going to buy two practices and three practices and never did anything else outside of that.
399
00:33:56.412 --> 00:34:00.455
As a result of that, they haven't learned some of the things that you actually found that you should really know about.
400
00:34:01.095 --> 00:34:02.516
And that's why I don't do as well.
401
00:34:03.137 --> 00:34:05.879
Then maybe someone coming in who's not dentist, trying to do a group, right?
402
00:34:06.459 --> 00:34:07.960
Because they haven't got a different perspective.
403
00:34:07.980 --> 00:34:13.925
They just think of it as clinical times by five, six to seven surgeries or two practices or three practices.
404
00:34:14.565 --> 00:34:20.310
And they always end up becoming very micromanaging because of the fact that as a dentist, you are a micromanager, right?
405
00:34:20.370 --> 00:34:21.230
You've got a nurse there.
406
00:34:21.471 --> 00:34:23.112
You've got overall control of your hands and your teeth.
407
00:34:23.152 --> 00:34:23.512
That's it.
408
00:34:24.693 --> 00:34:29.657
And a lot of them end up taking that same mindset to four, five, six, 10 practices, even though they've got a mini group.
409
00:34:30.377 --> 00:34:37.404
And I really learned that to take a step back and not working in the business every day is probably better, which obviously you have to do as a startup eventually if you're.
410
00:34:38.442 --> 00:34:40.083
at a certain size, you know, or whatever.
411
00:34:40.903 --> 00:34:48.446
So what, what, what do you think are like the main things that, that sort of dentist is, is not doing in there, in those new practices?
412
00:34:48.466 --> 00:34:50.106
Like they're standard things that you see.
413
00:34:50.126 --> 00:34:54.848
I'm sure you look at loads of, loads of practices for sale, loads of P and L's and everything.
414
00:34:54.888 --> 00:35:07.072
And is there certain things that you see, oh, this is the classic, this is the classic micromanager dentist who sort of bought a few extra practices, but actually hasn't spent the time to educate themselves around the business side of things.
415
00:35:07.380 --> 00:35:16.427
Yeah, look, I think a good example of that is you have one practice who does really well and operates so slick on every single area of the business, right?
416
00:35:16.787 --> 00:35:18.668
And it's just the one man person doing that.
417
00:35:18.688 --> 00:35:25.993
Like, there could be the owner of the practice, become the manager of the practice at the same time as the marketing guy, same time as the HR, same as everything, right?
418
00:35:26.013 --> 00:35:29.476
So one man, you know, very, very, or woman, very kind of expert running the practice.
419
00:35:29.996 --> 00:35:30.757
And the margins are good.
420
00:35:30.997 --> 00:35:33.619
So you look at margins, kind of how you can look at performance, right?
421
00:35:34.099 --> 00:35:38.503
Now, if you've got a UA contract, then obviously you've got a high margin because it's a specialist contract.
422
00:35:38.523 --> 00:35:42.946
But generally, if you look at a general practice, high margins normally mean running quite well, generally.
423
00:35:43.146 --> 00:35:45.348
Maybe you look low cost, or you've got high revenue or whatever it may be.
424
00:35:45.908 --> 00:35:52.610
If you look at a group, then you have, say, you've got four practices, and that same four practices have got the same EBITDA as one practice, you know, they're not running very well, right?
425
00:35:52.630 --> 00:35:58.251
Because you look at the margin, you think, all right, why are you only at 18% margin on four practices and your EBITDA is only like 500k?
426
00:35:58.891 --> 00:36:03.253
Because you haven't looked at all the different areas of those KPIs very well on a mini-group basis.
427
00:36:04.813 --> 00:36:10.038
And that's what happens normally because you can't physically be there all the time clinically in all four practices.
428
00:36:10.138 --> 00:36:12.960
You can do maybe one day each, but you can't do five days a week.
429
00:36:13.441 --> 00:36:20.847
And then all those efficiencies for the one practice that were doing really well when you were like a 30% margin has now been spread over four and actually just got more practice.
430
00:36:20.867 --> 00:36:23.390
I don't know if it does, say, kind of flat or...
431
00:36:23.810 --> 00:36:24.270
a bit higher.
432
00:36:24.290 --> 00:36:39.676
I actually talked about this at the Tenter Forum a few weeks ago, but a lot of many groups, if you ask them why you buy more practice for right now, because they're kind of youngish still, they're like 35 to 50 years old, they've got equity value for the first two or three sites, they'll buy more.
433
00:36:40.836 --> 00:36:50.342
you actually look at it and you say, you're buying it eight or nine times or even some of them, you know, 10 times with CapEx and you grind them by 20% so you're back to eight again, but your group's only worth eight.
434
00:36:50.822 --> 00:36:54.544
So you've actually made no equity value over the last five years of that practice.
435
00:36:55.204 --> 00:36:56.145
And you ask them, why are you doing it for?
436
00:36:56.165 --> 00:37:00.007
And they go, because I'm bored and I've got equity values to use up to buy more practices.
437
00:37:00.027 --> 00:37:01.028
I've got debt from the banks.
438
00:37:01.708 --> 00:37:02.329
And it's just because of ego.
439
00:37:02.349 --> 00:37:02.829
That's all it is.
440
00:37:03.049 --> 00:37:03.950
It's just pure ego.
441
00:37:04.010 --> 00:37:04.911
How many practices have you got?
442
00:37:04.971 --> 00:37:05.592
That's the flex.
443
00:37:05.692 --> 00:37:08.074
And it's just like, okay, I don't really care how many practices you've got.
444
00:37:08.094 --> 00:37:16.202
Like, you can look at the biggest groups in the country and they've got, EBITDA is tiny now because they've got loads of practices but they've got no profit because they can't make any money because they've just got a lot of, you know, layers of people.
445
00:37:16.803 --> 00:37:20.487
And actually, it's way more important to look at EBITDA in terms of your...
446
00:37:20.967 --> 00:37:23.889
performance, so we only have 60 sites.
447
00:37:24.409 --> 00:37:33.934
And I say, look, I might rather have 60 sites that are performing really well, with much higher revenue per practice and a much higher EBITDA as a group, than have 200 sites with the same EBITDA.
448
00:37:34.074 --> 00:37:36.496
So our EBITDA now is probably the fifth in the country
449
00:37:37.196 --> 00:37:40.558
out of all the groups in terms of size, which- What, total?
450
00:37:40.858 --> 00:37:42.119
Total, yeah.
451
00:37:42.379 --> 00:37:47.541
Half the head office costs, which is, you know, we're probably like the 10th size, you know, out of all the groups.
452
00:37:47.601 --> 00:37:49.522
So- In terms of number of practices.
453
00:37:49.542 --> 00:37:50.763
Number of practices, yeah.
454
00:37:50.783 --> 00:37:52.244
So 60 sites with 145 million revenue,
455
00:37:52.724 --> 00:38:17.473
and EBITDA is like just you know over 28 now so it's much better to have a smaller group with much better quality than having loads of practices to manage and loads of different layers of people to manage as well and more headache and I think that's something that a lot of people don't ever talk about it's about revenue and number of sites as a top line but there's a saying about you know revenue and profit being sanity or whatever it is you know so I think it's um next time someone tells me how many practices they've got I'm just gonna straight up say what's your EBITDA yeah yeah yeah
456
00:38:18.113 --> 00:38:44.014
i don't care because i think you know it's like you can buy loads of practice i can buy more way more practice i wanted to but if there's no point buying practices if you're not going to make a good amount of and it's all about equity value as well right like you can buy loads of practices and have a high ebitda like you know there were some good some groups that sold in the last 10 years had great ebitda but then at the same time the equity value they got because they're buying it at 10 and they sold for 11 or 12 meant they didn't make much money in terms of equity for the founders or for the shareholders right
457
00:38:45.194 --> 00:39:12.067
so it's also about net debt and a lot of people don't get to that balance sheet level of looking at like oh I can see this big group has got loads of practices and loads of revenue but actually the debt is so high that they've made no money so they exited 50 million and they had debt of 49 million so great they made 1 million happy days after 10 years of working so like a lot of them are really just into like just kind of like a top number and I think it's a PE kind of mindset right it's like just buy buy buy and it will just sell for the biggest multiple and that all that was fine but to be fair that was actually fine because you get away with it before 2022 mm-hmm
458
00:39:13.969 --> 00:39:30.779
So prior to 2022 you could buy any practice you want to for like eight, nine times multiple and sell the group for 15 times and that was like normal for like a 10 year period because debt was like pretty much zero and it was easy to kind of you know just keep funding it from debt but now the multiples have come down to like you know it might have been sold for eight times recently
459
00:39:31.199 --> 00:39:55.040
that was last year um what's all my dentist which is the biggest group in the uk so they sold about bridge point bridge point bought that for like eight and a half times um so that's now set the president of like all right well as a big group you might get 10 if lucky you know for most groups unless you're doing some exceptional stuff but putting it 10 maybe 11 if you're lucky so dante another big group in spain sold 100 million for like 10 times uh last year just after my dentist
460
00:39:55.640 --> 00:40:15.293
that's kind of now set the precedent from like the 15 to 10 that's a big difference right so if you bought those factors back in the day at 10 you lost those those dentists to uh the partners or the the lead dentists they will finish earnouts now yeah so actually it's gone backwards to maybe 12 you're in yourself at 10 you basically made no money because you wiped out a lot of equity value and globally that's been a big problem so there's about the
461
00:40:15.393 --> 00:40:19.415
14 platforms in the US that can't sell right now with over 100 million bidar.
462
00:40:19.715 --> 00:40:24.858
Yeah, I saw some crazy, but was it like Aspen or Heartland or someone like that that was like in trouble with debt?
463
00:40:24.938 --> 00:40:26.359
They were all in trouble with debt to one's view.
464
00:40:27.599 --> 00:40:32.422
Most of them, I mean, there's about four or five big ones in the US that have wiped out the equity value.
465
00:40:32.502 --> 00:40:33.963
So what it means is that they've,
466
00:40:34.643 --> 00:40:42.047
So affordable dental care, for example, saw for 17 times back in 2021, one of the biggest multiples in the US.
467
00:40:42.608 --> 00:40:48.231
They got bought by Modabla, which is a suburb of fund from the UAE.
468
00:40:48.691 --> 00:40:49.912
They've now wiped out the equity values.
469
00:40:49.972 --> 00:40:53.954
Basically the bank owns it, and there's no equity value left, and they've just given basically back to the key.
470
00:40:54.054 --> 00:40:56.256
It's kind of like an intermediation, pretty much.
471
00:40:56.616 --> 00:40:59.638
And that's a relatively large group of 100 million plus EBITDA.
472
00:41:00.298 --> 00:41:05.283
So it's very common now that almost all the big groups have got structural debt issues.
473
00:41:05.684 --> 00:41:06.164
You don't see it.
474
00:41:06.184 --> 00:41:07.565
You can just look at balance sheets properly.
475
00:41:07.585 --> 00:41:12.730
But if you look at their debt and they read the DA and you go, you're 100 million in the DA, but your debt's at like 900 million.
476
00:41:13.291 --> 00:41:15.433
That's too high of a multiple to have with leverage.
477
00:41:15.453 --> 00:41:17.055
You can only have five times normally to be
478
00:41:17.775 --> 00:41:33.068
okay in our industry um and that's where it's a bit worrying because those ones are now just finally kind of getting to the end of their kind of terms for refinancing and the refinance the bank goes i'm not gonna give you money back unless we kind of take equity out off you guys everyone and then everyone gets wiped out
479
00:41:34.272 --> 00:41:36.733
And there's a few groups in the UK that's happening the same thing as well right now.
480
00:41:36.773 --> 00:41:44.555
So it's a combination of buying really high prices from the beginning, which is the piece, no one else's.
481
00:41:45.375 --> 00:41:46.996
Well, that was the market at the time.
482
00:41:47.056 --> 00:41:47.596
It wasn't, right?
483
00:41:47.616 --> 00:41:48.416
Yeah, it was, yeah.
484
00:41:48.837 --> 00:41:49.417
Everyone was doing it.
485
00:41:49.477 --> 00:41:50.677
It was, but then, you know what?
486
00:41:50.717 --> 00:41:53.858
I look at it and even then I was just like, this is completely bonkers.
487
00:41:54.398 --> 00:41:59.620
Like, how can you buy practices off really good dentists operating really well at eight, nine times?
488
00:42:00.740 --> 00:42:04.502
and then expect them not to leave after their own out's finished or retire.
489
00:42:05.523 --> 00:42:11.746
Somehow session plan them to do a million in a chair or whatever they were doing before in the UK, and then expect to get multiple arbitrage afterwards.
490
00:42:11.766 --> 00:42:18.330
Because if you lost that dentist who left, and then he, say it's doing 500k per hour, the guy was doing a million in a chair on four chairs, he's now left.
491
00:42:18.751 --> 00:42:22.213
You know, people like Irish can't do a million, most of them, because they want to work two days a week.
492
00:42:22.673 --> 00:42:29.577
So when they go in there, you have to now hire two more nurses to do three chairs rather than one chair, and you can't get more conversions.
493
00:42:30.257 --> 00:42:33.979
and you basically bought it for nine and you've added another two or three times because the loss of the guy leaving.
494
00:42:33.999 --> 00:42:34.699
So you're now at 12.
495
00:42:35.599 --> 00:42:36.800
It was never worth more than 12 anyway.
496
00:42:37.460 --> 00:42:41.281
Just got crazy where COVID came in and everyone was just- It was very short sighted, wasn't it?
497
00:42:41.301 --> 00:42:41.841
Very short sighted.
498
00:42:41.901 --> 00:42:42.882
And there was no integration.
499
00:42:42.902 --> 00:42:45.243
There's no kind of systems and processes put in place in these practices.
500
00:42:45.683 --> 00:42:47.243
There was no thought about how you're gonna grow it.
501
00:42:47.384 --> 00:42:49.584
There was literally just like, I'm buying it, I'm not gonna change nothing.
502
00:42:49.644 --> 00:42:50.885
I'm just gonna buy it and just flip it.
503
00:42:51.625 --> 00:42:56.887
And we've always been on the, because of our model, we've always been the mindset of, if I'm buying something, I wanna grow it.
504
00:42:56.907 --> 00:42:58.688
So I can bring my model down from eight to four.
505
00:42:59.508 --> 00:43:02.090
And I think that's just a disciplined way of investing anything, you know.
506
00:43:02.550 --> 00:43:11.516
So are you of the mindset then that you should always be buying a reasonably small location with space to grow so that you can control the growth in essence?
507
00:43:11.577 --> 00:43:12.837
Yeah, it can be a big practice.
508
00:43:12.857 --> 00:43:13.478
It can be anything.
509
00:43:13.498 --> 00:43:14.418
It can even be a kiss then tour.
510
00:43:14.439 --> 00:43:15.619
It can be anything you want to.
511
00:43:15.639 --> 00:43:23.185
The key thing is that you need to be able to show some sort of growth, both for yourself in terms of equity value, because if I'm buying a business at eight,
512
00:43:23.785 --> 00:43:25.386
I want to make sure I can double it so I can get to four.
513
00:43:25.967 --> 00:43:27.307
And there has to be a plan behind that.
514
00:43:27.608 --> 00:43:28.528
And you're going to execute the plan.
515
00:43:28.548 --> 00:43:29.329
All right.
516
00:43:29.609 --> 00:43:30.730
But I mean, you'd be surprised.
517
00:43:30.890 --> 00:43:32.391
Most of these groups had zero planning.
518
00:43:32.571 --> 00:43:33.552
It was just like, I'm going to buy it.
519
00:43:33.572 --> 00:43:35.493
I'm going to leave the EBITDA as it is for five years.
520
00:43:35.513 --> 00:43:35.994
Just roll it up.
521
00:43:36.014 --> 00:43:37.334
Just roll it over and it'll be fine.
522
00:43:37.455 --> 00:43:39.136
I'll just sell the whole thing off in three or four years.
523
00:43:39.156 --> 00:43:40.016
So that's all they did.
524
00:43:40.457 --> 00:43:43.639
That's why I bought 50, 100 a year, you know, in the good days.
525
00:43:44.219 --> 00:43:48.302
But it was very, very blind in terms of like, actually like common sense, really.
526
00:43:48.342 --> 00:43:50.383
Like if you're going to buy a business now, you're not just going to buy it and not do
527
00:43:52.797 --> 00:43:54.318
mini groups are all doing the same thing that we're doing.
528
00:43:54.338 --> 00:44:01.984
They're buying practice, they're adding value, they're doing systems, process changes, so they can actually make some money out of it, not just leave it as it is.
529
00:44:02.665 --> 00:44:09.711
But then it was easy to go, all right, let's buy the top 100 practices in the country, they're all doing really well with a high ECBDR, put it together and flip it and see what happens.
530
00:44:09.731 --> 00:44:11.412
But if you don't flip it, you get burned, right?
531
00:44:11.432 --> 00:44:14.094
Because eventually someone will get burned at the end of that line.
532
00:44:14.374 --> 00:44:16.416
Yeah, that debt needs to get paid eventually.
533
00:44:16.856 --> 00:44:21.160
So what does that mean then for the sort of average practice owner now in terms of,
534
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:38.803
forward-looking market, obviously I'm not gonna expect you to get your crystal ball out here, but how would you position yourself, if you were me right now, let's be selfish here, as a single site location that's growing nicely?
535
00:44:41.644 --> 00:44:51.846
Is it, should we be concerned that obviously all these, when these big corporates do blow, if the debt does all fall into administration, is that gonna have a knock on impact on the rest of the industry?
536
00:44:52.737 --> 00:44:53.678
Yes and no.
537
00:44:53.698 --> 00:45:04.649
So since 2022, the majority of the acquisitions that are happening, apart from ourselves, haven't been from the big groups because they've all stopped buying because they've got no facility now to buy stuff.
538
00:45:04.789 --> 00:45:08.312
It's basically been from the mini groups and that's still a big portion.
539
00:45:08.332 --> 00:45:12.657
So if you look at the UK market, 40% is owned, just under 40% is owned by kind of groups.
540
00:45:13.698 --> 00:45:15.559
Half of that is mini groups, half is big groups.
541
00:45:16.039 --> 00:45:20.742
So 20 plus sites are big groups and 20% of it's owned by mini groups.
542
00:45:21.363 --> 00:45:28.508
And they're all young, you know, entrepreneurial, 30 to 50 years old dentist who want to keep buying more practice because of ego.
543
00:45:29.208 --> 00:45:35.773
So it's still a big market for people to buy your practice, for example, because they actually are happy to buy it and they can see value in it and they can do whatever they want to it.
544
00:45:37.214 --> 00:45:39.375
So that's keeping the market multiples quite strong still.
545
00:45:39.736 --> 00:45:43.739
Actually, it's been very competitive in the last few months because of the interest contract changes.
546
00:45:43.939 --> 00:46:00.852
So with unscheduled care being put in recently, dentists who are buying now are saying, mini groups mainly are saying, well, take a punt on this because with that change, I'll do my contract a month or two months earlier because I've now getting more, you know, revenue from NHS for the same 1.2, you know, the year before.
547
00:46:01.532 --> 00:46:08.941
And therefore I'm kind of getting two months of free revenue from private because I finished a product earlier and therefore I've got revenue from private which has not been taken to numbers yet.
548
00:46:09.462 --> 00:46:14.848
So I've taken a bit of paying a bit more for it because of the fact that you can get this extra two months revenue in terms of the calculation.
549
00:46:15.629 --> 00:46:17.631
So I think it's fine.
550
00:46:17.671 --> 00:46:20.655
There's always the good thing is we're not at a point where we're saturated yet.
551
00:46:20.895 --> 00:46:23.236
So we're only 40% owned by groups of some sort.
552
00:46:23.856 --> 00:46:28.037
When it hits 70%, that's when it starts becoming a bit more fluffy and you think, okay, there's not many buyers out there.
553
00:46:28.057 --> 00:46:30.978
It's two or three big players like pharmacy did or Tom or veterinary.
554
00:46:31.339 --> 00:46:34.400
And that's when you're a bit worried about who can buy me and there's demand out there.
555
00:46:34.800 --> 00:46:38.021
If you've got hundreds of mini groups out there, you've got options, right?
556
00:46:38.501 --> 00:46:41.282
So I wouldn't worry too much about, you know, the big group failing.
557
00:46:41.362 --> 00:46:44.003
That would just basically mean that there's less chance of
558
00:46:44.803 --> 00:46:48.649
or less positive sentiment from the big P's coming in to invest in the UK.
559
00:46:49.230 --> 00:46:50.112
Which has already happened already.
560
00:46:50.172 --> 00:46:54.679
I mean, there wasn't like a huge demand from my dentist or a lot of the big groups that are on the market.
561
00:46:54.699 --> 00:46:56.882
Like no one can sell right now if they wanted to sell.
562
00:46:57.243 --> 00:46:59.607
If they're not performing well, obviously.
563
00:47:00.227 --> 00:47:11.492
So I think the only problem with the big ones failing is it means that new entrants into the PE world will say, Alright, do I want to get in the market when everyone's pretty much not done very well from a PE point of view?
564
00:47:12.492 --> 00:47:15.294
In terms of them putting money in and come back out again with a return, right?
565
00:47:15.794 --> 00:47:19.996
So they get burned, but you know, PE's are quite lucky because they have 10 investments in one fund.
566
00:47:20.596 --> 00:47:21.916
One does badly, the other nine does well.
567
00:47:22.217 --> 00:47:25.378
Net net they get 2x return on their happy white investors and LPs don't care.
568
00:47:26.659 --> 00:47:34.625
So it's not disastrous, don't get me wrong, but it does put a huge red flag for any new peas coming in, which is more a problem for mini groups than sell.
569
00:47:35.085 --> 00:47:38.748
Because when they get to 10, 20 sites, who can they sell to, right?
570
00:47:38.768 --> 00:47:45.453
The big groups don't want to buy them because they know they can't operate on 20 sites and run it really well because it's been run super efficiently by one founder.
571
00:47:45.473 --> 00:47:50.497
Or they haven't got equity to buy it in the first place because they've got no money to M&A facility.
572
00:47:51.097 --> 00:47:51.758
then who do you sell to?
573
00:47:51.778 --> 00:47:53.099
And I think that's the bigger problem.
574
00:47:53.339 --> 00:47:58.302
Those mini groups are now trying to work out when they do wanna come to a time and age, I can't sell because I know what to sell to.
575
00:47:58.922 --> 00:48:01.244
But then it's like, well, actually I've milked it for 20 years.
576
00:48:01.424 --> 00:48:02.885
I've got good, you know, they're privately owned.
577
00:48:02.925 --> 00:48:05.987
They've paid the debt off now because they're kind of generating cash every year.
578
00:48:06.687 --> 00:48:10.810
So do I need to sell for a huge value or not and to pass to my kids or something like that afterwards, right?
579
00:48:10.850 --> 00:48:16.454
So we're not there yet with the mini-groups having problems yet, but we are starting to see some smaller groups trying to come to market and not sell.
580
00:48:17.035 --> 00:48:21.378
So being a three or four, then we've like eight, half, eight, ten million that haven't sold in the last few years.
581
00:48:21.418 --> 00:48:24.100
And that's kind of, you know, in my world, what happens.
582
00:48:24.120 --> 00:48:25.941
So you've got to keep an eye on that one.
583
00:48:26.141 --> 00:48:27.923
Is that because they're asking for the multiples that are...
584
00:48:28.523 --> 00:48:29.043
Yeah, no.
585
00:48:29.244 --> 00:48:32.226
I mean, one of them couldn't sell for eight times even last year, you know.
586
00:48:32.386 --> 00:48:34.207
Eight times on an eight to ten million new car.
587
00:48:34.247 --> 00:48:36.289
And that was eight million new business, so it wasn't small.
588
00:48:36.489 --> 00:48:37.249
Yeah, so it's...
589
00:48:37.529 --> 00:48:44.674
But once again, if these anxious groups like My Dentist and all the big ones can't sell for more than eight or nine, why are they going to pay eight times for another group, right?
590
00:48:44.714 --> 00:48:46.235
They've got to come a little bit lower.
591
00:48:46.255 --> 00:48:53.641
So the issue I'm going to try and point out here is that if you're a mini group and you're buying patches for eight, nine times, I'm just going to double that and get to four.
592
00:48:54.121 --> 00:48:55.422
you're not making any money from that practice.
593
00:48:55.582 --> 00:48:57.443
You're just adding it into a group to make it look good.
594
00:48:57.783 --> 00:49:02.866
But when you come to sell and someone says, I'm going to give you eight for the whole thing, you haven't built it up, you haven't grown it, then you haven't made no money from it.
595
00:49:03.206 --> 00:49:05.207
The debt's the same amount of what you, you know, net for net.
596
00:49:05.227 --> 00:49:12.231
So it's a bit worrying, but like, you know, there's enough of the groups out there that are pretty smart and they kind of do grow practice quite a lot.
597
00:49:12.391 --> 00:49:16.693
So they can get 23% growth in a lease by just doing some of their systems.
598
00:49:17.553 --> 00:49:20.815
And typically they are buying pretty poorly run practices.
599
00:49:20.835 --> 00:49:21.896
So unless you're like...
600
00:49:22.436 --> 00:49:31.192
not that smart like you can easily turn it into the practice that's not doing very well into 30% growth so you went from eight down to six you're not doing too badly right um
601
00:49:32.426 --> 00:49:33.687
So, yeah, I think that's fine.
602
00:49:34.547 --> 00:49:38.810
But as an individual practice, I would definitely say, you know, wait for the right time.
603
00:49:39.111 --> 00:49:40.491
Don't rush into it unless you have to sell.
604
00:49:40.952 --> 00:49:46.936
Because, you know, there's not like there's a huge market right now for buying really one-on-one practices.
605
00:49:47.436 --> 00:49:48.417
That's the one.
606
00:49:48.577 --> 00:49:51.559
The big, well-won individual sites are better for the big groups to buy it.
607
00:49:52.099 --> 00:49:53.100
And the big group's not buying right now.
608
00:49:53.120 --> 00:49:54.361
This competition's not there, really.
609
00:49:54.401 --> 00:49:57.623
So you don't want to get as much value as you would do in maybe a few years' time when the rates come down a bit more.
610
00:49:58.764 --> 00:50:12.437
and hopefully some of the groups have kind of figured out what they're doing I mean once again if they go back to the bank another group will buy it or someone else will buy it and then they'll have to turn it around and grow again so you saw my dentist for example went from that zero equity value back in 2020 then they turned it around kind of
611
00:50:14.098 --> 00:50:38.898
some good management stuff more just kind of consolidating sites into bigger ones um doing some light flight growth getting rid of some head office costs and now they're doing well again so now they're looking to buy which points back in there and the buying practice every year now so you know there's that kind of uh cycle basically when the cycle is all right for which groups so you kind of want to wait for your cycle in terms of the bid there being three or four options out there to get competition in the market before you want to sell if there's a big site like like your one for example right so
612
00:50:39.598 --> 00:50:42.760
It's like anything in life, you don't want to sell when there's only one person to buy.
613
00:50:42.780 --> 00:50:43.100
No.
614
00:50:43.120 --> 00:50:44.481
You want to have a bit of competition.
615
00:50:44.501 --> 00:50:45.281
Never gonna get the best price.
616
00:50:45.301 --> 00:50:45.942
Yeah, exactly.
617
00:50:46.702 --> 00:50:47.242
Timing's key.
618
00:50:47.442 --> 00:50:55.807
A lot of the guys who sold to, you know, in 21, 22, just before the 22 kind of crash and the rates did really well.
619
00:50:56.007 --> 00:50:56.507
They did really well.
620
00:50:56.747 --> 00:51:01.330
And their practice was never worth 9, 10 times ever in a 30-point practice, but they got out that time.
621
00:51:01.770 --> 00:51:04.311
I'm sure you know a lot of BSD guys got out that time and were laughing.
622
00:51:05.532 --> 00:51:10.619
I went double the value in four years, didn't do anything different, and now I've just got to go out and I've got tens of value for me about doing anything different.
623
00:51:10.639 --> 00:51:12.322
So, carry days for those guys, right?
624
00:51:12.502 --> 00:51:12.882
Yeah, absolutely.
625
00:51:12.902 --> 00:51:13.263
Timing is key.
626
00:51:14.004 --> 00:51:14.405
That's it.
627
00:51:14.705 --> 00:51:16.608
But you can't tie the market, as Warren Buffett says, right?
628
00:51:16.628 --> 00:51:19.331
It's never tried to tie the market, just do it at the right time.
629
00:51:19.432 --> 00:51:19.792
No, I know.
630
00:51:19.812 --> 00:51:21.254
Well, I think the key message really is,
631
00:51:21.995 --> 00:51:26.920
I love the book, Build to Sell from David something or other.
632
00:51:28.841 --> 00:51:40.432
And it's about building the systems internally so that actually when the market timing is right, you could sell, but you don't have to sell because actually you're making good cash for out of the business anyway.
633
00:51:40.672 --> 00:51:41.353
Yeah.
634
00:51:41.933 --> 00:51:46.678
And then actually in many occasions, you don't want to sell because you've actually got a good asset that's,
635
00:51:47.098 --> 00:52:12.472
that's producing cash for you so i think it's um it's a win-win if you focus on that yeah the moment you get into the situation where you're trying to sell it because you're like in as my business coach calls it complete red space you uh you you can't see the wood for the trees you're making bad decisions just like all right get me out of him he's gonna sell it yeah well surprise surprise no one wants that asset yeah because they could they can see as soon as they look at the fingers they can see it yeah they can smell blood and they give you low price as well
636
00:52:13.333 --> 00:52:21.479
I mean, I think that's what I think is the biggest concern to me, though, where these many groups are leveraging themselves up to eyeballs because of the fact that the banks...
637
00:52:21.940 --> 00:52:22.901
So all the banks now...
638
00:52:22.941 --> 00:52:30.507
So if I rewind back to 2019 instead of before 2020, there's only one or two banks, Santander and Clydesdale, that were doing group kind of lending.
639
00:52:30.607 --> 00:52:34.190
So they'll say, you've got four practices, your EBITDA is 1 million, 2 million.
640
00:52:34.530 --> 00:52:36.092
I'll give you a facility to go buy practices.
641
00:52:36.372 --> 00:52:39.695
There's only one or two options back then, and there's obviously one after COVID, Santander.
642
00:52:40.355 --> 00:52:44.436
Now they're all doing it because all the high-street banks, HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, all said, oh, this is a great market.
643
00:52:44.516 --> 00:52:45.597
It's very resilient.
644
00:52:45.857 --> 00:52:46.897
They're never going to bank up.
645
00:52:46.917 --> 00:52:48.698
They've got four practices that I would do really well.
646
00:52:48.778 --> 00:52:49.398
AI resilient as well.
647
00:52:49.538 --> 00:52:51.759
Yeah, they've got four practices for like 20, 10 years.
648
00:52:51.899 --> 00:52:52.639
Equity value is great.
649
00:52:52.719 --> 00:52:53.139
No debt.
650
00:52:53.159 --> 00:52:54.760
I should give them unlimited funding.
651
00:52:55.200 --> 00:52:57.761
So I get literally 100% LTVs now to buy new sites.
652
00:52:57.981 --> 00:52:58.921
They're buying, buying, buying.
653
00:52:59.001 --> 00:53:01.002
But if you get too crazy and you buy too many quickly...
654
00:53:01.622 --> 00:53:07.005
and you haven't got the cash to pay back that debt, it can get quite bad quite quickly.
655
00:53:07.385 --> 00:53:15.429
So I'm a bit worried because there are some groups that are trying to buy too many too quickly without kind of any proper plan or like idea what they're doing.
656
00:53:16.150 --> 00:53:19.512
And that could eventually blow up in kind of the mini group space in the next few years as well.
657
00:53:20.252 --> 00:53:21.033
Yeah, I think it'd be fine.
658
00:53:21.073 --> 00:53:23.616
Look, in the day, once again, dentists can make money clinically, right?
659
00:53:23.696 --> 00:53:29.061
So if you start getting to the point where your group can't pay the debt, you go back clinical again, you start using your money to pay back.
660
00:53:29.101 --> 00:53:32.225
It's not good for anyone, but it's a way to keep it afloat.
661
00:53:32.645 --> 00:53:33.186
Yeah, indeed.
662
00:53:33.666 --> 00:53:33.907
So, yeah.
663
00:53:34.047 --> 00:53:39.392
I mean, obviously, you've used a lot of terms in the conversation there from...
664
00:53:40.113 --> 00:53:46.035
even from PE, many people may sort of not really know what that means.
665
00:53:47.615 --> 00:53:50.296
You've got all these private equities behind the scenes.
666
00:53:50.756 --> 00:53:52.196
They're doing all these roll-ups.
667
00:53:52.216 --> 00:53:53.057
You've got the banks.
668
00:53:53.097 --> 00:53:54.317
You've got facilities.
669
00:53:54.377 --> 00:53:59.978
There's so much that you've, I think, used language very casually now because obviously it's your ecosystem.
670
00:54:00.519 --> 00:54:05.660
Is that something that you've just built up over your experience of your businesses over the last 10 years or...?
671
00:54:06.425 --> 00:54:28.082
yeah i mean i think um obviously we're not taught any stuff at university right like zero so uh i think there's a couple a couple of things um first of all i always try to learn from who's doing well in the market and spend time with them so spend a lot of time with the us tso's even some of the ones in the uk and just kind of understand how they structure their groups what works well what
672
00:54:29.383 --> 00:54:35.748
like what is the person who's going to eventually buy us a private equity or an IPO look like and how does that work in terms of the real world?
673
00:54:35.788 --> 00:54:36.889
What's the steps involved there?
674
00:54:37.369 --> 00:54:41.572
A lot of bankers, you know, from big banks kind of stand, like, you know, how do you structure a deal?
675
00:54:41.592 --> 00:54:43.253
How do you structure an exit?
676
00:54:43.273 --> 00:54:44.254
How do you structure an IPO?
677
00:54:44.274 --> 00:54:44.955
All these kind of things.
678
00:54:44.975 --> 00:54:46.436
So you've got to learn from people out there.
679
00:54:46.996 --> 00:54:53.800
So you've practically gone and just said, can I have a chat?
680
00:54:53.840 --> 00:54:54.841
Can we go out for dinner?
681
00:54:55.041 --> 00:55:04.226
Yeah, I mean, the good thing is that to learn all these things about what are the key... Work back from exit, basically, right?
682
00:55:04.346 --> 00:55:07.848
So who's going to be your advisor or sell your group in the future?
683
00:55:08.449 --> 00:55:11.711
That's going to be one of the... You know, a few years ago, it was the smaller banks.
684
00:55:12.351 --> 00:55:13.612
It could have been Christie's.
685
00:55:13.632 --> 00:55:14.753
It could have been like, you know...
686
00:55:15.633 --> 00:55:21.058
a Lincoln or international or kind of a smaller kind of M&A advisor.
687
00:55:21.378 --> 00:55:27.784
And then now it's like Rothschild, JP Morgan, you know, kind of those kind of banks in terms of size, you know, of the deals that they do.
688
00:55:28.304 --> 00:55:40.015
And you speak to them, you know, I catch them probably once a quarter just to see what's in the market, you know, who's out there buying, who's selling, what's been because you also learn from the buyers of who they sell to.
689
00:55:40.035 --> 00:55:41.796
So if, for example, last year,
690
00:55:42.977 --> 00:56:07.713
um so bridge like meeting some bridge point so bridge point for example went through this the process right but we spoke to all the the peas who looked at my dentist and some of them actually would you know i was advising some of them and they were saying you know this is what we're looking for this is what we risked what what risk we put in the model for five years is what cash flow we think we're going to get what multiple we're putting in in terms of our exit in five years time what our thoughts on ipo in terms of risk are not happening and that's a really good way of learning because you're basically in the mind of the buyer
691
00:56:08.473 --> 00:56:29.072
If you get in the mind of the buyer and you get to that point and think, oh, that's what they want, that's what they think is a risk, and you can put it in your business and make sure that doesn't become a risk for you, you're basically creating a business that is always exit proof, that comes to it when you go, well, I've got tick, I've got no issues with recruitment, I've got no problems with like-for-like growth, I've got X, Y, and Z, and you go, all right, this is a perfect platform for someone to buy.
692
00:56:29.173 --> 00:56:33.417
So I've always done that, even from when we first set up in 2018, before I set the group up in the beginning,
693
00:56:33.977 --> 00:56:38.619
I actually spoke to 10 different advisors in the city and said, like, how would you structure this from a debt point of view?
694
00:56:39.059 --> 00:56:41.280
How would you structure the joint venture model in terms of the shares?
695
00:56:41.340 --> 00:56:44.001
And what kind of, you know, because there's loads of ways of doing things.
696
00:56:44.021 --> 00:56:44.941
There's not one way of right.
697
00:56:45.621 --> 00:56:48.622
And these guys have all done it before 20, 30 years experience.
698
00:56:48.662 --> 00:56:51.323
And it's kind of great to learn from those people rather than trying to figure it out yourself.
699
00:56:51.683 --> 00:56:52.844
So again, just cold outreach.
700
00:56:53.044 --> 00:56:53.624
Just cold outreach.
701
00:56:53.644 --> 00:56:54.204
What, LinkedIn?
702
00:56:54.724 --> 00:56:56.245
LinkedIn, because once again...
703
00:56:57.145 --> 00:57:01.811
A good thing about that back then in 2018, 2019 is everyone wants to get dental, right?
704
00:57:01.891 --> 00:57:05.676
So if you're a dentist with a platform or looking to do a platform, they're like, oh, great.
705
00:57:05.736 --> 00:57:06.718
They're salivating.
706
00:57:06.738 --> 00:57:08.700
We can sell your group in the future and we can make some more, you know.
707
00:57:08.720 --> 00:57:10.903
So everyone wants to work with us in our industry.
708
00:57:10.963 --> 00:57:11.644
It's not like it's a...
709
00:57:12.425 --> 00:57:15.450
selling vegan hamburgers and no one's not, you know, no one's touched towards us anymore.
710
00:57:15.470 --> 00:57:20.457
Like we were in a very hot market at that point, not as much anymore, but now we're at a certain size.
711
00:57:20.477 --> 00:57:23.341
People obviously, you know, still want to, you know, because their fees are so big, right?
712
00:57:23.642 --> 00:57:27.047
They'll put time and talk to you because they go, well, when we come to sell you- That's their funnel.
713
00:57:27.467 --> 00:57:29.147
We'll make 20 million for like a six week deal.
714
00:57:29.167 --> 00:57:30.288
We're like, happy days for you guys.
715
00:57:31.228 --> 00:57:33.428
That's why, that's actually where they put all the legwork in.
716
00:57:33.468 --> 00:57:40.110
So, you know, at a certain point, you know, you've got to use your contacts or LinkedIn kind of, just to kind of outreach them, trying to just talk.
717
00:57:40.490 --> 00:57:44.390
That's how I do most, you know, anything I've learned over the last, even the dental circle back in the day, right?
718
00:57:44.410 --> 00:57:52.632
It wasn't like, with revenue coming from day one, I'd go speak to every single kind of industry, supplier out there to get them to speak to the right marketing team, or the right MD to go, how are you going to sponsor us?
719
00:57:52.652 --> 00:57:53.492
How are you going to work for us?
720
00:57:53.512 --> 00:57:53.732
Right?
721
00:57:53.772 --> 00:57:55.213
So it's always been outreach
722
00:57:57.913 --> 00:58:10.120
miss out on that I mean LinkedIn's incredible like you think about it I don't know how I live without LinkedIn like I actually joke I joke about this but I've done all of my recruits senior recruits from LinkedIn free of charge zero agency costs
723
00:58:12.160 --> 00:58:15.301
Marketing, obviously, in terms of what we do as a group and how we grow and stuff, that's been great.
724
00:58:15.321 --> 00:58:23.365
It's great for brand recognition, but learning from people and finding out who has sold, who hasn't sold in terms of health care services right now.
725
00:58:23.505 --> 00:58:28.127
Speaking to brokers and finding out who's the kind of key people in different brokerages, it's great.
726
00:58:28.567 --> 00:58:29.248
And it's all free of charge.
727
00:58:29.888 --> 00:58:31.889
I imagine this 20 years ago, I don't know how people did it.
728
00:58:31.929 --> 00:58:32.610
It was like word of mouth.
729
00:58:32.670 --> 00:58:34.872
And you might meet someone luckily in the conference.
730
00:58:34.912 --> 00:58:37.674
But that's why I can do everything from a computer now because I don't have to go anywhere.
731
00:58:37.694 --> 00:58:38.834
I just go, oh, great.
732
00:58:38.854 --> 00:58:39.755
This person's on that business.
733
00:58:39.815 --> 00:58:42.077
Let's have a chat with them and see what they went through.
734
00:58:42.137 --> 00:58:43.638
And everyone's pretty friendly on that as well.
735
00:58:44.038 --> 00:58:49.042
Well, especially with AI now, you can, I think, probably find out very, very quickly who's involved with every deal.
736
00:58:49.062 --> 00:58:49.562
Yeah, yeah.
737
00:58:49.602 --> 00:58:51.543
And then just jump on LinkedIn and just hit them up.
738
00:58:51.583 --> 00:58:52.264
Incredible, yeah.
739
00:58:52.564 --> 00:58:56.267
And I think from, you know, for being in an industry where I'd learned it from scratch,
740
00:58:56.907 --> 00:59:00.150
I mean, that's been one of my biggest assets in the world, like that LinkedIn platform.
741
00:59:00.270 --> 00:59:08.356
Even with trying to find dentists, recruitment, specialists, even looking to by practice, everything's on there somehow.
742
00:59:08.557 --> 00:59:13.441
And you can just, if you use it correctly and you've got a different profile and someone speak to you, you can do quite a lot on it.
743
00:59:14.213 --> 00:59:16.295
I mean, LinkedIn's been huge for me with Parler.
744
00:59:17.477 --> 00:59:21.922
I will oftentimes go into a retailer meeting and they were like, how's it going?
745
00:59:21.942 --> 00:59:22.963
How's it going?
746
00:59:23.383 --> 00:59:25.746
And they were like, oh, I've been seeing what you've been doing on LinkedIn.
747
00:59:25.766 --> 00:59:26.787
You guys have been killing it.
748
00:59:26.827 --> 00:59:27.628
You're everywhere.
749
00:59:27.648 --> 00:59:30.631
And it's like, wow, I didn't realize that I was sort of sitting by LinkedIn.
750
00:59:30.651 --> 00:59:30.791
Yeah.
751
00:59:31.472 --> 00:59:33.473
And same with investors, like the same thing.
752
00:59:33.493 --> 00:59:34.794
And it's like, it's fascinating.
753
00:59:34.814 --> 00:59:41.398
But that's why I say like, if you've got a business, whether it be parlor or dentistry or anything, add everybody in that industry on your LinkedIn.
754
00:59:41.578 --> 00:59:43.159
Because the most likely to say yes to it, number one.
755
00:59:43.639 --> 00:59:46.120
And then if you do post something on there, they will see it.
756
00:59:46.360 --> 00:59:47.681
Like it'll come up on their feed.
757
00:59:47.801 --> 00:59:49.122
And that is free marketing.
758
00:59:50.263 --> 00:59:53.288
And even recruitment for like, you know, talent, it's just, it's amazing.
759
00:59:53.909 --> 00:59:54.430
It's so good.
760
00:59:54.731 --> 00:59:55.512
And it's free of charge.
761
00:59:55.552 --> 01:00:01.361
I mean, like, you know, I don't know, I said once again, I don't know how people did it 20 years ago, like you must have spent a fortune in marketing just to get your name out there.
762
01:00:01.382 --> 01:00:02.824
And now it's just like, just so easy.
763
01:00:02.844 --> 01:00:03.425
Just a message.
764
01:00:04.318 --> 01:00:07.039
this will probably go out not for a couple of weeks, I can say this.
765
01:00:07.059 --> 01:00:17.701
So we're launching into Holland and Barrett, um, end of the month, um, uh, nationally, uh, on the ground in bricks and mortar and then online as well.
766
01:00:18.301 --> 01:00:20.661
And that, that whole deal came through LinkedIn.
767
01:00:20.781 --> 01:00:21.041
Great.
768
01:00:21.481 --> 01:00:26.022
Like the buyer reached out to me on LinkedIn and that's how we landed that listing.
769
01:00:26.502 --> 01:00:29.203
And it's like, geez, it's like, that's mental.
770
01:00:29.423 --> 01:00:29.863
Yeah.
771
01:00:30.363 --> 01:00:31.744
just from a few LinkedIn posts.
772
01:00:31.784 --> 01:00:32.845
You know what I mean?
773
01:00:33.005 --> 01:00:34.045
I think you've got to be out there.
774
01:00:34.145 --> 01:00:40.529
And I think the key, the key message of all this is that if you don't get yourself out there, have a profile, because a lot of people on Instagram, in our industry anyway, I'm not on Instagram.
775
01:00:40.569 --> 01:00:42.891
I'm not anything apart from LinkedIn.
776
01:00:43.271 --> 01:00:44.572
And the reason why is because
777
01:00:45.512 --> 01:00:47.133
In my world now, I have zero.
778
01:00:47.193 --> 01:00:48.934
No one I want to speak to is on Instagram.
779
01:00:49.374 --> 01:00:51.915
Like they're for patients and for dentists, clinicals.
780
01:00:51.955 --> 01:00:53.756
There's not none of the P guys on there.
781
01:00:53.776 --> 01:00:56.517
Well, they probably are on a personal, but not on a company basis.
782
01:00:56.557 --> 01:00:56.718
Yeah.
783
01:00:56.898 --> 01:01:00.820
None of the people I want to recruit or kind of, you know, work in our head office.
784
01:01:00.840 --> 01:01:01.460
That is on there.
785
01:01:02.040 --> 01:01:05.562
None of the buyers who might want to buy us, invest us in the future can be on there.
786
01:01:06.162 --> 01:01:33.849
and the brokers who work in the industry and they're so like it's actually like for me personally it's pointless yeah but if you are on instagram great get yourself out there because you can get more followers and they could potentially be your patients for doing bonding or whatever right or in whatever industry you're in so i think you've got to get out there you've got to be active because that's just free of charge number one but if you can do that and you do it well and you can build a good brand just as you've shown before right like how amazing is that like you've just got one of the biggest you know probably the
787
01:01:34.349 --> 01:01:35.769
I guess one of your probably most famous...
788
01:01:35.889 --> 01:01:38.490
I've been after them for five years.
789
01:01:38.570 --> 01:01:42.551
Yeah, it's like your number one kind of goat that you'd want to get to in terms of a brand, right?
790
01:01:42.571 --> 01:01:44.131
To be associated with in the UK.
791
01:01:44.151 --> 01:01:45.331
You've got it from LinkedIn free of charge.
792
01:01:45.351 --> 01:01:47.052
I mean, like, happy days, right?
793
01:01:47.132 --> 01:01:47.952
Yeah, exactly.
794
01:01:48.712 --> 01:01:51.693
Yeah, I mean, obviously you've got to be doing all the standard stuff well as well.
795
01:01:51.773 --> 01:01:52.293
Yeah, of course.
796
01:01:52.313 --> 01:01:55.453
But sometimes you have to create your own serendipity in life, right?
797
01:01:55.473 --> 01:01:55.994
Yeah, 100%.
798
01:01:56.114 --> 01:02:02.675
And I think that your tools there in terms of outreach is absolute gold dust for anyone that actually...
799
01:02:04.026 --> 01:02:06.067
I think people just think these things happen, right?
800
01:02:06.147 --> 01:02:07.107
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
801
01:02:07.487 --> 01:02:07.987
Definitely not.
802
01:02:08.127 --> 01:02:20.831
And actually there's so much going on behind the scenes in the DMs, like the cold outreach makes such a difference, especially when you manage it with, I think, class and authenticity and humility and you approach it from a place of respect.
803
01:02:21.471 --> 01:02:25.194
I get loads of messages, like, which is just not respectful at all.
804
01:02:25.475 --> 01:02:27.256
And you just immediately, like, go away.
805
01:02:27.336 --> 01:02:28.737
Like, I'm not even going to reply to that.
806
01:02:28.797 --> 01:02:36.243
But I think if you come at it from a position of learning and, like, as I say, in a respectful manner, then it's easy to do.
807
01:02:36.403 --> 01:02:37.664
Yeah, I'm sure you get the same thing.
808
01:02:37.684 --> 01:02:41.688
You get tons of these kind of AI-generated LinkedIn, like, just scam or spam.
809
01:02:41.748 --> 01:02:43.809
And actually, that's annoying for me because that's the one thing I...
810
01:02:44.950 --> 01:03:11.338
uh i would probably somehow wonder how to get with that because then i actually missed out on pop messages that actually do matter because it's like it's still in between like it's like 55 terrible like you know ai messages and then one of them is actually good and i missed that one because i didn't actually read all the messages because it's just too much pain to watch every day yeah so yeah and that's that's that's uh it's a that's the one bad thing about linkedin i don't think you can do that same thing on instagram can you can you dm like with ai and stuff now or
811
01:03:12.559 --> 01:03:34.857
i i imagine so oh you can okay i don't i don't know i don't know how but yeah it's certainly on i mean even in the comments on linkedin oh okay now all ai slop isn't i don't have seen that it's like it's just too i can see that you have an oral care brand and well done for what you've done it's the person from thailand with like zero experience dentistry like how do you live my business even like thank you for that yeah exactly um it's really interesting that you're not on
812
01:03:36.618 --> 01:04:01.936
like for our generation like millennials are so instagram heavy um is that like a is it a intentional execution or yeah you know what i was on um i was on facebook at university and i kind of got off it straight pretty much after i graduated well i was on there just for about a year or two for dental circle and i got out pretty much in 2014 i think it's three things right one is time and effort um
813
01:04:02.897 --> 01:04:07.543
I think you could, I mean, I don't know if you ever checked how many hours spent on Instagram, but it's a lot of hours in life.
814
01:04:08.184 --> 01:04:14.532
I think my wife, no, don't tell her this far, she might do like nine hours a week minimum.
815
01:04:14.552 --> 01:04:17.415
Sorry, a few hours a day, which is probably going to be like, you know, 25 hours a week, right?
816
01:04:17.876 --> 01:04:18.917
That's like a day a week.
817
01:04:19.498 --> 01:04:20.098
for 10 years.
818
01:04:20.938 --> 01:04:24.239
Like imagine what you can do if you took that day a week and do something else at that time.
819
01:04:25.060 --> 01:04:28.841
And like extrapolate that business or for hobbies or kids or anything, right?
820
01:04:29.421 --> 01:04:30.221
It's just a waste of time.
821
01:04:30.381 --> 01:04:32.342
And all you're doing basically just like, and it's addictive.
822
01:04:32.742 --> 01:04:34.483
I thought it was on it, I'll be addicted to it as well.
823
01:04:35.223 --> 01:04:38.324
So it's kind of like saying, all right, well, I know it's addictive.
824
01:04:38.424 --> 01:04:39.264
I know it's time waste.
825
01:04:39.364 --> 01:04:41.305
I don't get any benefit out of it any way possible.
826
01:04:42.265 --> 01:04:44.609
Like, what actually do you get out of it on Instagram?
827
01:04:44.689 --> 01:04:46.692
Like, there's nothing actually you can get out of it, right?
828
01:04:46.932 --> 01:04:48.554
Maybe fashion trends, if you're looking to fashion.
829
01:04:48.935 --> 01:04:51.599
Or, like, patients for, like, you know, if you're doing dentistry clinically.
830
01:04:51.759 --> 01:04:56.466
Yeah, I mean, for me, obviously, it's been instrumental to the success of my...
831
01:04:57.127 --> 01:04:58.928
practice and personal brand.
832
01:05:00.109 --> 01:05:02.990
But if you're not utilizing it for that way, then I fully agree.
833
01:05:03.010 --> 01:05:03.770
Yeah, exactly right.
834
01:05:03.790 --> 01:05:22.020
So for me personally, sorry to be clear, for me personally, I get zero benefit out of using that platform and therefore is it worth me spending time on that or is it better for me just to be not on it completely at all and stick to LinkedIn, which is what I actually need to make sure I can keep doing the brand stuff I need to for the group or for networking or recruitment, etc.
835
01:05:22.700 --> 01:05:27.623
So I think it comes down to what you need it for and do you actually need it or just because you just want to use it for time wasting.
836
01:05:28.163 --> 01:05:31.205
And then that time cumulative is a massive amount of time.
837
01:05:31.345 --> 01:05:31.545
Right.
838
01:05:31.645 --> 01:05:34.286
And if you're not addicted to something like I try not to watch too much TV.
839
01:05:34.646 --> 01:05:37.388
I try to avoid doing anything that's addictive, like playing games on that.
840
01:05:37.468 --> 01:05:41.650
I don't play games anyway, but if I play games, you know, Xbox or something like that, people do that, which is crazy, right?
841
01:05:41.930 --> 01:06:02.635
yeah um you just think all these things that are just a indoors on a screen which is not great for your mental health and just image in life generally anyway b i'm taking time away from people or things i could be doing my life actually more beneficial like the kids or the family or just working that's a bit more productive um or health stuff so there's a lot of things that i think people would
842
01:06:03.295 --> 01:06:06.637
should take into account that if I don't need Instagram, don't be on it.
843
01:06:07.398 --> 01:06:10.259
And I know a lot of people who are on it for no reason.
844
01:06:10.520 --> 01:06:11.240
Like there's no benefit.
845
01:06:11.260 --> 01:06:13.421
They're not even on Dentist team, they're just doing it because they're just on there.
846
01:06:13.441 --> 01:06:15.503
Just like basically, I mean- Killed time.
847
01:06:15.903 --> 01:06:17.524
It's killed time, but it's also living for other people.
848
01:06:17.604 --> 01:06:18.805
That's what they're doing.
849
01:06:18.825 --> 01:06:21.086
Okay, oh, this celebrity did this thing, or this person I know did that thing.
850
01:06:21.106 --> 01:06:22.107
I'm like, leave your life.
851
01:06:22.127 --> 01:06:22.907
Don't worry about what they're doing.
852
01:06:22.927 --> 01:06:23.508
Just live your own life.
853
01:06:24.048 --> 01:06:29.414
I think it comes down to because I don't give a shit about what anyone thinks about me or I just don't care about anything in life generally about, you know, I do what I do and do it.
854
01:06:29.494 --> 01:06:30.154
It's the way it is.
855
01:06:30.635 --> 01:06:38.263
But a lot of people would think about other people too much or trying to like want to be like a person or want to be like that celebrity or whatever it may be.
856
01:06:38.323 --> 01:06:40.025
And I think it's living through other people too much.
857
01:06:40.045 --> 01:06:42.567
Yeah, which is a bad way of living life anyway, generally depends on you.
858
01:06:43.188 --> 01:07:07.687
absolutely and plus you're only seeing the highlight reel of everyone else so you think that actually your life should be more like that when actually nobody's life is yeah yeah exactly that's it so what do you spend your weeks doing then what's your sort of weekly structure look like nowadays i don't really know what you do do you know what i mean in terms of like it's i'm sure you could like imagine what i do in terms of a structure but yeah like
859
01:07:08.728 --> 01:07:31.500
you say you're on the is are you mainly on the computer you're mainly remote you've obviously got offices and stuff but i mean um i think it's changed a lot in the last five years right it was founder on my own kind of running around doing lots of things like you know because you're growing a business going to practices go yeah go buy the practice myself because you've got to think about the team around you and i always say
860
01:07:32.687 --> 01:07:35.167
It's really hard when you have one or two or three or four patches, right?
861
01:07:35.187 --> 01:07:42.689
Because the caliber people around you helping you might be an patch manager, might be a head nurse, but you haven't got a head office team number one, right?
862
01:07:43.149 --> 01:07:48.330
Even the first 20 sites we had, we had a very small head office team and they weren't great caliber because we couldn't afford it, right?
863
01:07:48.350 --> 01:07:54.171
We couldn't go hiring CFOs and COOs for like, you know, a couple of hundred grand, right?
864
01:07:54.331 --> 01:07:59.152
So you're like, okay, I've got to basically work with an ops director or an ops manager who's...
865
01:07:59.912 --> 01:08:22.717
just about what gccs and like they understand dentistry but they don't understand commercials that well and that's smart so it's hard because you have to always check that they're doing and do it and be with them i'm sure the same part of like you never can't go afford like you know really expensive cfos right now like expensive we're very lucky we have an amazing md i'm sure you have a great team but no obviously like yeah i mean though i can't can't yeah go and buy like l'oreal cfo or something yeah yeah
866
01:08:23.017 --> 01:08:25.761
So like, you know, at different stages of the journey, you can afford kind of better roles.
867
01:08:25.861 --> 01:08:32.469
But the first two or three years, A, we didn't have a very kind of a massive budget until after the P deal.
868
01:08:32.669 --> 01:08:35.052
Then they said, look, go higher and kind of get your team you need.
869
01:08:35.372 --> 01:08:41.019
But even then it was kind of like, keep it lean enough that you need for 20 sites, not go buy like, you know, five million pound head off the cost straight away.
870
01:08:41.820 --> 01:08:46.663
And it's a really hard balance there because you want quality, you want the best people in the industry.
871
01:08:47.403 --> 01:08:54.766
But if you overspend on your head office costs, that's from a group point of view, you go from, say you had formerly EBITDA, right?
872
01:08:54.947 --> 01:08:56.807
In one year and your cost is 2 million.
873
01:08:57.048 --> 01:08:58.428
You've just wiped out 2 million now, right?
874
01:08:58.448 --> 01:09:01.430
So now it's 2 million, but debt's still there and payments are still there, right?
875
01:09:01.450 --> 01:09:02.410
So now you're in negative cashflow.
876
01:09:02.950 --> 01:09:05.051
So it's quite a tough one to do in terms of timing of that.
877
01:09:05.091 --> 01:09:05.912
And that's really hard.
878
01:09:05.932 --> 01:09:09.994
I've spoken to loads of people from big massive companies, small ones, and that growth,
879
01:09:10.514 --> 01:09:14.236
of the high growth companies, it's so hard to get that timing right of when do you hire the right people at what point.
880
01:09:14.336 --> 01:09:19.859
Because everyone says hire ahead of when you need it, hire the best person first, it's all about the people.
881
01:09:19.939 --> 01:09:21.179
You do that and then you get wiped out.
882
01:09:21.479 --> 01:09:23.500
My head count is like killing me here.
883
01:09:24.461 --> 01:09:26.542
Yeah, there's a really fine balance there, right?
884
01:09:26.582 --> 01:09:30.144
I would always say like, I would be on, just literally on the curve rather than above the curve,
885
01:09:31.024 --> 01:09:33.408
Especially with interest rates that went up in 2022, right?
886
01:09:33.628 --> 01:09:36.933
Like, so we went from 2021, bought 40 practices in two years.
887
01:09:36.953 --> 01:09:37.674
All right.
888
01:09:37.694 --> 01:09:38.335
So it was really quick.
889
01:09:38.475 --> 01:09:40.798
So we bought 30 practices in two years, really quick growth.
890
01:09:41.299 --> 01:09:46.406
Then COVID, so the 2022 rates went up and we went from like having to pay 7% interest to 10% interest.
891
01:09:46.426 --> 01:09:47.368
And I was like, whoa.
892
01:09:47.688 --> 01:09:48.749
I've got loads of payments now.
893
01:09:49.189 --> 01:09:52.892
I've got head office costs at like 5% or 8% of our revenue, which is crazy high.
894
01:09:53.333 --> 01:10:01.600
I've got to keep buying to outgo that and grow to out kind of, if you've got like a, say you've got EBITDA of 10 million, head office is 4 million, then you've got 6 million left.
895
01:10:01.620 --> 01:10:02.921
You know, it's quite a big hit.
896
01:10:02.941 --> 01:10:04.622
There's almost half EBITDA gone to head office, right?
897
01:10:05.042 --> 01:10:06.444
So you've got to grow fast enough.
898
01:10:06.464 --> 01:10:10.607
And you view that sticky point in the middle where a lot of mini groups are like between 20 to 40 sites.
899
01:10:11.828 --> 01:10:18.332
You can never outgrow that because you need to have like 80 perhaps as minimum or 80 revenue to kind of make that head up its cost.
900
01:10:18.352 --> 01:10:19.273
Because it's a fixed cost, right?
901
01:10:19.653 --> 01:10:20.894
You can't have a CFO for half the price.
902
01:10:21.254 --> 01:10:24.156
You can get into in ones and fraction ones, but it's quite hard right in our industry.
903
01:10:24.176 --> 01:10:27.698
So you have to have a CFO, a COO, head of ops, all these different roles.
904
01:10:27.718 --> 01:10:28.679
You can't really get like half it.
905
01:10:28.699 --> 01:10:29.880
You have to go for all of it or nothing.
906
01:10:30.320 --> 01:10:37.545
That's a fixed cost after a certain point because it doesn't have to go, you know, at a small people that are quite cheap at the bottom, but not having to have a huge cost every time you add 10 more sites.
907
01:10:38.085 --> 01:11:00.302
so you've got this fixed office cost and then you have to outgrow that to make sure that blends down from eight percent to four percent of revenue quite quickly um so it puts a lot of pressure on you and i think that was the reason why i was running around because i knew the pressure was there because at that point it was like do or die right like you either go you buy my practices and you kind of run around go get the sites that you need to buy and you've got to grow the sites you bought and deliver on those plans or you literally just get bankrupt
908
01:11:00.822 --> 01:11:06.985
It's quite a harsh thing when you're growing a group because you hit a certain point at 20 sites where you've got a really small team you can manage it, it's fine.
909
01:11:07.185 --> 01:11:13.928
If you want to go more than that, you've got to hire a big head of this team and then you've got to outgrow it from like 20 to 50 minimum before you can even make it work.
910
01:11:14.628 --> 01:11:23.092
So if you go buy 30 sites in like two years quickly, otherwise you just get burnt out from the kind of wipeout in terms of your interest costs versus your EBITDA you've got left to pay the repayments.
911
01:11:23.712 --> 01:11:26.413
So it's almost like 0 to 20, you should be buying slowly.
912
01:11:27.114 --> 01:11:31.456
20 to 50, you have to buy quick because you've front-loaded the headcount.
913
01:11:31.976 --> 01:11:32.976
Well, you have to buy...
914
01:11:33.717 --> 01:11:35.738
Normally at 20, you do a PED, right?
915
01:11:36.118 --> 01:11:36.458
Right.
916
01:11:36.578 --> 01:11:38.079
And then they go, oh, I'll give you a high multiple.
917
01:11:38.119 --> 01:11:40.300
Great, you've got more debt now because you've put a high multiple in there, right?
918
01:11:40.320 --> 01:11:41.500
So you've got rolled over now.
919
01:11:41.520 --> 01:11:43.802
You've got from 50% equity to 50% equity.
920
01:11:44.242 --> 01:11:45.422
So you roll over with them, great.
921
01:11:45.542 --> 01:11:49.144
You've got this unlimited blank check to go buy more practice, which is all good.
922
01:11:49.644 --> 01:11:52.966
But they go, we have to, from a governance point of view, have all these different roles in there.
923
01:11:53.186 --> 01:11:53.827
like from day one.
924
01:11:54.627 --> 01:11:55.188
So go, okay.
925
01:11:55.368 --> 01:11:56.449
So say you're at 20 sites.
926
01:11:56.469 --> 01:11:57.269
Yeah, give you an example.
927
01:11:57.289 --> 01:11:59.391
20 sites, 20 million revenue, 4 million EBITDA, right?
928
01:11:59.551 --> 01:11:59.951
You sell.
929
01:12:00.472 --> 01:12:08.097
You get a great multiple and now you've got to, I don't know, say you've got to 4 more sites in the pipeline, 24 sites.
930
01:12:08.578 --> 01:12:11.120
But appear you go, all right, well, we want to put in 4 million of costs now.
931
01:12:11.440 --> 01:12:14.162
So you've gone 4 million EBITDA to zero because you put 4 million of costs in there.
932
01:12:14.282 --> 01:12:14.462
Yeah.
933
01:12:14.502 --> 01:12:15.003
Happy days.
934
01:12:15.063 --> 01:12:16.604
I've now made no money from this whole 24 sites.
935
01:12:16.624 --> 01:12:16.724
Yeah.
936
01:12:16.744 --> 01:12:16.844
Yeah.
937
01:12:17.965 --> 01:12:23.093
Then you gotta go, I've gotta buy another 10 million or 5 million dollar just to even get back to profitability where I was before.
938
01:12:23.774 --> 01:12:29.482
And 5 million dollar is probably gonna be, in our world, like 25 million revenue, which is another- 25 practices.
939
01:12:29.502 --> 01:12:31.024
25 practices, right?
940
01:12:31.285 --> 01:12:32.887
Just even get to the point of going back to where
941
01:12:32.887 --> 01:12:53.441
you were before it's like what went from four to zero to five and i'm like i'm one million more but i'm a straight up more sites and a lot more work it's really really kind of like cut front between 20 to 50 like you're going to be kind of thick skin and get through that to make and also in our world now because we're not in the day like a lot of groups back in the day got these practices for very much free of charge right like if you were there 20 years ago go to richmond you know uh
942
01:12:54.802 --> 01:13:00.065
LAT or the ICBs, whatever, NHS, and they go, here, have a contract, a million pound in Richmond or in Putney.
943
01:13:00.565 --> 01:13:02.446
No cost, zero debt, nothing, just have it.
944
01:13:02.986 --> 01:13:04.507
Go open a practice up and grow.
945
01:13:05.007 --> 01:13:05.448
Easy, right?
946
01:13:05.928 --> 01:13:14.612
Now we're buying practices eight, nine times, the debt's there, it's not gonna go anywhere, and the rates are high, so you're kind of like, you're running a really, really tight cashflow basis.
947
01:13:15.093 --> 01:13:19.035
And we're very fortunate being part of a big group, because our debt's part of a big group, not just under the UK.
948
01:13:19.315 --> 01:13:23.517
So we can kind of push things around, depending on who's doing well in the group and who's got bigger part of the group or not.
949
01:13:24.017 --> 01:13:24.598
So we're okay.
950
01:13:24.618 --> 01:13:31.463
But if you're on your own and you're a PE-backed platform on your own in the UK with dental practices with 20, 30 sites, really tough.
951
01:13:31.943 --> 01:13:36.246
All the guys I know who had 20, 30 sites who sold in 2017 to now pretty much all got wiped out.
952
01:13:36.807 --> 01:13:38.468
You know, the PE guys, the founders.
953
01:13:38.969 --> 01:13:41.030
So it's a hard thing to make work.
954
01:13:41.230 --> 01:13:43.112
And I'm not saying that, you know, we did really well.
955
01:13:43.152 --> 01:13:46.454
I think we just delivered on our plans, which is important if you are going to sell to PE.
956
01:13:46.474 --> 01:13:47.715
Make sure you live on what you tell them to do.
957
01:13:47.935 --> 01:13:49.917
Don't just make up the numbers and say, it's going to be great.
958
01:13:50.518 --> 01:13:53.145
because they will burn you afterwards otherwise.
959
01:13:53.806 --> 01:13:55.892
And I think the other thing to really note is that
960
01:13:56.984 --> 01:14:00.007
If you do hire the head office, make sure you try your best.
961
01:14:00.047 --> 01:14:03.130
And I went through a lot of different versions of this.
962
01:14:03.710 --> 01:14:07.053
Try to get your best to keep the culture of what you had for the first 20 sites the same.
963
01:14:07.734 --> 01:14:14.320
So you use that culture, you start hiring people who do 30% efficiency versus your 100% efficiency, and your costs go up for literally minimal work.
964
01:14:14.820 --> 01:14:18.123
And they'd be lazy and they don't talk to the practice well or do their plans.
965
01:14:18.163 --> 01:14:20.726
And you basically pay a lot of money if you're still working as hard as you were before.
966
01:14:22.487 --> 01:14:47.435
fast forward now to five years uh we've got great you know uh we call it shared service center head office team um it's a good size now where it's less than four percent of revenue four and up of their revenue so you know it's a good kind of like percentage of what you want it to be um a team do most of the work day today now and i'm just doing more strategic stuff um new business lines or acquisitions um budgets you know kind of more the board level kind of roles now which means
967
01:14:48.215 --> 01:15:10.839
have to go run around and practice every someday and to be fair like you know when you've been to practices after you bought them or if you know the practice the way everyone's in uk if you're buying a practice for the contracts and location going there's almost impossible because it's almost irrelevant because i'm going to basically wipe everything out rebuild it anyway and put a new partner in a new team in anyway so it's um it's not as important to be going around running anymore um and things are so like
968
01:15:11.159 --> 01:15:15.380
Everything's online, or our KPIs, our dashboards, all the data I need is all there, the fingertips now.
969
01:15:15.440 --> 01:15:17.561
So yeah, it kind of makes it a lot more easier.
970
01:15:17.581 --> 01:15:20.661
And the way I look at it is that if you've hired a big team, let them do their work.
971
01:15:21.001 --> 01:15:26.583
It's not for me running around doing it all myself, and it's not good for anyone to be honest with you, because I'll just start micromanaging and it's the back of the day, right?
972
01:15:26.623 --> 01:15:28.383
So it's actually better to let them get on with it.
973
01:15:28.483 --> 01:15:30.204
And you know, as long as you're looking at the high level,
974
01:15:31.624 --> 01:15:38.673
You're kind of steering the ship into the right direction basically every year and you're looking at new technologies and what projects put time and focus on.
975
01:15:39.053 --> 01:15:43.679
That's kind of what I do day to day now, which is not that many kind of days out of the house.
976
01:15:43.699 --> 01:15:45.701
It's more kind of online and on Teams really.
977
01:15:47.283 --> 01:15:49.406
So what I've taken from what you just said is...
978
01:15:52.187 --> 01:15:54.229
It's very hard to get from one to five.
979
01:15:54.990 --> 01:16:00.195
Everyone always talks about that first starting point where obviously you're working with your old team.
980
01:16:00.816 --> 01:16:04.880
Oftentimes you've taken your EBITDA, you're doing one, and you've actually spread it over four.
981
01:16:04.920 --> 01:16:08.984
So you're not even making any more money, but you're doing probably four times the work.
982
01:16:09.545 --> 01:16:10.245
On your own still.
983
01:16:10.486 --> 01:16:11.587
On your own, yeah.
984
01:16:11.647 --> 01:16:13.869
You've then said when you get to 20...
985
01:16:15.069 --> 01:16:21.194
and you then sell to PE, and then you try and grow from there, that a lot of those guys have been wiped out.
986
01:16:21.234 --> 01:16:22.635
And that's actually really, really hard.
987
01:16:22.655 --> 01:16:29.922
And obviously you've managed to sort of reach escape velocity and penetrate through the atmosphere and you're out on the other side.
988
01:16:29.942 --> 01:16:32.203
It's like Matrix, you know, Matrix, when you go to the sky, the blue sky.
989
01:16:32.364 --> 01:16:33.585
It's the same as that, honestly.
990
01:16:33.905 --> 01:16:36.167
So you've managed to get out the other side there, but...
991
01:16:37.209 --> 01:16:42.993
from the sounds of what you're saying, obviously many, many don't, when they get to that 20 point.
992
01:16:43.093 --> 01:16:47.336
So is there a sweet spot between five and 20?
993
01:16:47.476 --> 01:16:49.398
Yeah.
994
01:16:49.598 --> 01:16:54.881
What should people be, obviously you've got a lot more experience of this than most, and I think the most valuable
995
01:16:56.523 --> 01:17:08.155
The most value we can give to people listening is to give them obviously everyone will be different everyone has their own ideas their own ambitions but in your experience from people that you've seen that could be modeled.
996
01:17:09.052 --> 01:17:10.113
Where is the sweet spot?
997
01:17:10.153 --> 01:17:16.776
If you are that entrepreneurially minded dentist and you do want to own multiples, is there a point where you should just say, that's enough?
998
01:17:17.197 --> 01:17:17.657
Yeah, yeah.
999
01:17:17.677 --> 01:17:18.277
And I'm done now.
1000
01:17:18.337 --> 01:17:19.338
Less than 20, basically.
1001
01:17:19.638 --> 01:17:26.322
So 5 to 20 is kind of the sweet spot because up to 20, the reason why 20 is kind of the number, by the way, is you're...
1002
01:17:27.330 --> 01:17:30.273
not too big for a group to buy you still.
1003
01:17:30.853 --> 01:17:31.053
Right.
1004
01:17:31.153 --> 01:17:31.354
Right.
1005
01:17:31.394 --> 01:17:34.536
So another group can go, I can buy this, go in 20 practices, which is great.
1006
01:17:35.177 --> 01:17:37.599
Um, and you're also big enough for P to buy you.
1007
01:17:37.879 --> 01:17:41.082
So you have loads of options when it comes to selling more competition, more competition, right.
1008
01:17:41.762 --> 01:17:41.922
Um, um,
1009
01:17:42.643 --> 01:17:50.389
The key thing is, and I really want to emphasize this, is between the five, even up to one to five, have a plan of doubling or growing the practice.
1010
01:17:50.849 --> 01:17:52.190
Don't just buy it for the sake of buying it.
1011
01:17:52.310 --> 01:17:53.571
Have more like, right?
1012
01:17:53.731 --> 01:17:54.672
There's so many founders out there.
1013
01:17:54.692 --> 01:17:59.516
They've got loads of revenue and loads of practices, as you said before, the name on paper looks great.
1014
01:18:00.156 --> 01:18:02.397
but equity value is not done anything because they're not growing it.
1015
01:18:02.437 --> 01:18:08.201
And if you're lucky, you bought it four or three times back in the day, and you've now got to eight, nine times and no debt, then happy days.
1016
01:18:08.321 --> 01:18:09.562
But we're not in that generation.
1017
01:18:09.662 --> 01:18:14.165
When I graduated, when you graduated, you know, in 2012, whatever it was, it was always eight times.
1018
01:18:14.425 --> 01:18:18.067
It was another time of you going and buy-backs at four times and like getting a free contract, free of charge, right?
1019
01:18:18.087 --> 01:18:19.468
It's always been tough times since the beginning.
1020
01:18:20.228 --> 01:18:24.432
I spent 18 viewings to fill my first practice over a two year or one and a half year period.
1021
01:18:24.452 --> 01:18:25.893
It wasn't like a board straight away, right?
1022
01:18:25.953 --> 01:18:30.397
So, you know, you can start from the bottom of these kind of like on the M&A chain, you get up eventually to the top.
1023
01:18:30.437 --> 01:18:33.920
But it was a hard graph to get that level.
1024
01:18:34.261 --> 01:18:35.141
And I think
1025
01:18:36.282 --> 01:18:39.004
The main point I'm trying to get at is don't just buy for the sake of it.
1026
01:18:39.084 --> 01:18:41.746
Buy because you're actually going to grow something and there's a reason for doing it.
1027
01:18:42.527 --> 01:18:43.908
Because people want to make money, it's fine.
1028
01:18:43.988 --> 01:18:45.049
But make sure you actually are making money.
1029
01:18:45.089 --> 01:18:47.931
Are you actually growing that business and growing it consistently every time you do it?
1030
01:18:48.532 --> 01:18:53.275
And it's very, very rare, but I've seen anyone in the UK do it over 20 sites.
1031
01:18:53.635 --> 01:18:57.238
As in buying a practice and growing it consistently every time.
1032
01:18:58.199 --> 01:19:00.240
They get to like 10 and 15, they can grow them.
1033
01:19:01.041 --> 01:19:02.781
if they're doing really well and kind of good operators.
1034
01:19:03.162 --> 01:19:09.463
But over 20, there's very few that have actually gone, I've bought 20 or more and have that track record of doubling and practice or growing it consistently.
1035
01:19:10.443 --> 01:19:16.085
And that's where our partner model works because their partners are doing it locally and they've got kind of individual sites rather than one big group.
1036
01:19:16.645 --> 01:19:23.847
Imagine if you try to run 20 sites yourself, like how are you going to grow all of them and have that impact of like the culture, the leadership, the KPIs, what things to focus on every single week.
1037
01:19:24.027 --> 01:19:25.127
It's impossible for one person.
1038
01:19:25.847 --> 01:19:28.508
So that's kind of, I think, what I was going to say.
1039
01:19:28.528 --> 01:19:28.648
Yeah.
1040
01:19:29.448 --> 01:19:34.753
So 20 is the perfect number, is it, in terms of competitive tension?
1041
01:19:35.134 --> 01:19:35.274
Yeah.
1042
01:19:35.334 --> 01:19:36.615
That's where the sweet spot is.
1043
01:19:37.276 --> 01:19:38.156
Yeah, maybe 15.
1044
01:19:38.297 --> 01:19:42.921
I mean, that 20 was good because you get the mid-sized PEs who are like this loads.
1045
01:19:42.941 --> 01:19:44.402
Obviously depends on the size of the practices.
1046
01:19:44.442 --> 01:19:45.543
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1047
01:19:45.563 --> 01:19:49.467
So like the 4 million, 5 million, up to maybe 6 is kind of a good number to go for.
1048
01:19:49.647 --> 01:19:50.268
Right.
1049
01:19:50.708 --> 01:19:53.992
Another reason for that as well is because you can actually operate 20 sites with a really lean team.
1050
01:19:54.552 --> 01:19:56.874
You can have probably four people running it and that's still okay.
1051
01:19:57.514 --> 01:20:05.441
Any more than 20, I'm just saying 20 is a rough number, gets to the point where you start having a bit more resource and expensive hires and some of the big guns coming in.
1052
01:20:05.681 --> 01:20:10.525
So if you've got, because obviously we do a trade sale to a group and you've got four people working in your head office.
1053
01:20:10.705 --> 01:20:15.869
So that group I mentioned last year, I was in the market, had eight million EBITDA, had a team of six people running it.
1054
01:20:16.610 --> 01:20:40.990
all nhs sites across the uk um and obviously they couldn't sell in the end but if they did sell the trades buy would say okay i can just wipe the four people out and run it myself and i'll take that cost as ad back you know off of it um p would say okay we'll give you a high multiple but we can add in some of the cost of head office and it's only like one or two hires extra um so it's a nice spot where you don't have a huge head office team but when you have 20 plus three you have a big head office team that's when it wipes like you've done they kind of have to
1055
01:20:41.770 --> 01:20:57.255
get through that kind of like you know gray skies in the matrix and get past it to the blue skies which is the tough bit interesting and i mean you've how much have you enjoyed the journey i've loved it to ones of you um there's been a few times where
1056
01:20:58.727 --> 01:21:05.630
It's been a bit disheartening just because like, you know, it's like giving a kid some candy and saying, this is yours and then take it away.
1057
01:21:06.010 --> 01:21:06.951
Right.
1058
01:21:07.351 --> 01:21:12.033
There was a, we had some great offers in 2022 before the crash happened for the group.
1059
01:21:12.073 --> 01:21:13.854
And it was like, you can make this much money.
1060
01:21:13.914 --> 01:21:15.615
It's like, you know, you're made for life kind of thing.
1061
01:21:15.635 --> 01:21:20.497
And then it was like, all right, now it's worth half because the mop was all come down because that, that markets all crashed.
1062
01:21:20.537 --> 01:21:20.737
Right.
1063
01:21:21.458 --> 01:21:28.261
And then we had the, like, you know, Trump thing last year with like, basically our whole kind of, uh,
1064
01:21:29.628 --> 01:21:32.569
multiple in terms of what we get is based off the markets, right?
1065
01:21:32.669 --> 01:21:41.312
So our stock market is doing well, what interest rates are, how's politics looking in terms of sentiment, which is kind of high level stuff, but that's completely out of my control.
1066
01:21:41.332 --> 01:21:41.552
Right.
1067
01:21:41.892 --> 01:21:47.534
So as I said before, all I can do is build a good business and then hope that whenever the time is right, it will, you know, have a good value to it.
1068
01:21:47.554 --> 01:21:47.734
Right.
1069
01:21:48.314 --> 01:21:51.896
But yeah, I would say, look, that's been kind of a bit annoying.
1070
01:21:51.976 --> 01:21:58.238
And then I would say, you know, having to deal with people and trusting someone to run this department and being, you know,
1071
01:21:58.838 --> 01:22:24.055
lied to or failed on in terms of like you know the performance is you know is what it is but i think generally i would say like 95 of it i've enjoyed a lot along the way and i actually think it's better now that we didn't get an amazing exit in 2022 january because if we did we'll learn anything right and i i said to my wife like look even if we do you know if we go to this next level it's going to be a good five years minimum maybe 10 years of you know of at least going to
1072
01:22:27.022 --> 01:22:29.867
there's going to be a lot of work involved, but I'll learn a lot along that journey.
1073
01:22:30.327 --> 01:22:39.502
And I think, I don't think anyone in our age group, you know, has been through, ups and downs I've been through, like, you know, the last five, six years, doing these kind of deals.
1074
01:22:39.522 --> 01:22:40.764
And I think it's,
1075
01:22:41.746 --> 01:22:42.766
It's been like an MBA in the job.
1076
01:22:43.207 --> 01:22:51.029
And that in itself is worth all the pain and blood and what if you want to call it over the last five years, because that'll be there for the rest of my life.
1077
01:22:51.049 --> 01:22:53.750
Like I've now been through enough shit that I could know.
1078
01:22:54.251 --> 01:22:58.992
If enough, if enough, if another COVID hits or another run, what hits or this hits again, I'm just like, all right, it is what it is.
1079
01:22:59.452 --> 01:23:03.414
I think a lot of investors who've done very well, you know, a lot older than me, who's in the sixties have gone through,
1080
01:23:03.754 --> 01:23:21.756
you know, the crash of the Black Monday, whatever it was back in the 70s, 80s or whatever it was, and they saw like the bubble was in 2000, and they've been through those bubbles and those kind of disasters in the markets, and they are actually able to go, well, I've been through it, I don't get scared now, and actually I'm gonna invest in those times at the bottom of the bubble, rather than last year, I started going,
1081
01:23:22.297 --> 01:23:24.258
COVID, oh my God, I'm going to die, like kind of thing, right?
1082
01:23:24.318 --> 01:23:27.180
And actually, yeah, it's actually the best time to buy with those kind of things.
1083
01:23:27.200 --> 01:23:29.522
And I think that's really been a good lesson for me to learn.
1084
01:23:29.542 --> 01:23:33.805
And also how to scale from X to X and like, you know, what systems do you need in place?
1085
01:23:33.845 --> 01:23:34.705
What teams do you need in place?
1086
01:23:34.725 --> 01:23:35.666
And what part of the journey?
1087
01:23:36.026 --> 01:23:37.227
What do all charts look like?
1088
01:23:37.307 --> 01:23:38.448
You know, what does operations look like?
1089
01:23:38.528 --> 01:23:39.208
Is good and bad?
1090
01:23:39.628 --> 01:23:41.129
I've learned a lot along that five-year journey.
1091
01:23:41.189 --> 01:23:43.651
So I don't regret anything, to be honest with you.
1092
01:23:44.392 --> 01:23:50.696
And we're just very fortunate that things have turned out in terms of our numbers and our planning again, rather than being one of the ones who got cut from the founders' way.
1093
01:23:51.392 --> 01:23:52.973
Yeah, that's it.
1094
01:23:52.993 --> 01:23:55.014
But I mean, I feel exactly the same way about Parlour.
1095
01:23:56.135 --> 01:24:01.318
And as I always say, it's the period of challenge that you can look back on with the greatest pride.
1096
01:24:01.558 --> 01:24:06.641
And actually, if and when you do eventually get to a position where you...
1097
01:24:08.085 --> 01:24:18.996
metaphorically sail off into the sunset or physically sail off into the sunset, it will be so much sweeter with the knowledge that actually you battled through and you got the job done.
1098
01:24:19.036 --> 01:24:23.761
If it was very easy all the way through, then you wouldn't, I don't think, have the satisfaction.
1099
01:24:24.194 --> 01:24:29.038
Yeah, no, I think you, you know, once again, it goes back to your kind of character, right?
1100
01:24:29.058 --> 01:24:35.662
Like if you're got grit and hard work and discipline, like, you know, we do quite a lot of, you know, endurance sports, right?
1101
01:24:35.682 --> 01:24:38.745
So for that, I think that's all part of our kind of character, right?
1102
01:24:38.765 --> 01:24:39.866
Like we want to have that challenge.
1103
01:24:39.886 --> 01:24:40.426
Do hard things.
1104
01:24:40.506 --> 01:24:47.334
If it was easy to go do an Ironman tomorrow, wouldn't it be kind of like worth the kind of the last five minutes of the race thing, oh, I'll finish this now.
1105
01:24:47.354 --> 01:24:48.616
I've done something, I've accomplished something, right?
1106
01:24:49.117 --> 01:24:53.041
So I think doing something difficult and push yourself out of the boundaries, what an entrepreneur is about.
1107
01:24:53.081 --> 01:24:54.984
It's literally like the essence of why you're an entrepreneur.
1108
01:24:55.404 --> 01:24:57.086
It was easy, then you'd be like, oh, okay, I've done it now.
1109
01:24:57.106 --> 01:24:58.368
And actually we'll be a bit bored, wouldn't we?
1110
01:24:59.529 --> 01:25:03.351
So maybe we just like love having the pain of doing these things, right?
1111
01:25:03.391 --> 01:25:11.134
But I actually think it's a good thing because if it was that easy and you don't learn anything, you wouldn't feel the accomplishment of doing something at the end of it.
1112
01:25:11.534 --> 01:25:15.716
And every year, you know, we look back at how the performance of the year and the group, and I'm just like, you know, this is amazing.
1113
01:25:15.756 --> 01:25:17.617
Like, you know, especially our retreats we have when we go...
1114
01:25:18.097 --> 01:25:36.052
a board and we all just kind of two days together with all our partners and they tell them the stories about how they've done this differently and they took that advice or they did this project or they've done this growth and the money's changed their life now to pay their parents house i've always found stuff that's like really what for me it's about now because um for the last few years now it's not been about the money it's been like you know okay you're
1115
01:25:36.952 --> 01:25:38.113
how much money you live on life kind of thing.
1116
01:25:38.133 --> 01:25:51.097
It's more just about like, how do I give back to those partners who've kind of invested in us or want to join us now and how I have to help them change their life and go from A to B or hit their accomplishments now and clinically or we've been a practice owner or whatever it may be.
1117
01:25:51.117 --> 01:25:55.139
But that to me is more fun because it's a good thing most of them are friends of mine.
1118
01:25:55.279 --> 01:25:58.220
So it's actually great to see them doing really well and having kids now and their family.
1119
01:25:58.840 --> 01:26:00.961
You know, you can see a dentist who's in our age group.
1120
01:26:00.981 --> 01:26:03.362
We've got a friend group now, like five people from university.
1121
01:26:03.902 --> 01:26:05.363
Three of them are partners, two of them not partners.
1122
01:26:05.383 --> 01:26:07.064
And the three of them are partners now, we're millionaires, great.
1123
01:26:07.084 --> 01:26:08.144
The other two are still associates.
1124
01:26:08.164 --> 01:26:10.845
You think those three guys have got their life sorted out for their kids, right?
1125
01:26:10.865 --> 01:26:12.946
Like they kind of made at least, you know, decent.
1126
01:26:13.146 --> 01:26:14.547
Well, partly because of the framework that you've had.
1127
01:26:14.587 --> 01:26:16.748
Yeah, and that's just to me like beautiful, you know.
1128
01:26:16.868 --> 01:26:17.669
I'm not just that.
1129
01:26:17.689 --> 01:26:20.991
Generally, it's really nice because, you know, the best thing is when it goes to their weddings, right?
1130
01:26:21.011 --> 01:26:32.277
It goes to their weddings and their dads or their parents go, oh, because of the model now, the kids have sorted out and like the grandkids have sorted out and it's all because of the model we've made and that really kind of touched me kind of in terms of like what our purpose is now and what we do, what we do.
1131
01:26:32.697 --> 01:26:33.357
No, it's amazing, mate.
1132
01:26:33.377 --> 01:26:34.058
You should be really proud.
1133
01:26:34.398 --> 01:26:35.619
Yeah.
1134
01:26:36.499 --> 01:26:40.001
You and Prav have got a new little venture on the go.
1135
01:26:40.261 --> 01:26:40.762
Yes.
1136
01:26:41.102 --> 01:26:42.382
Start, scale, exit.
1137
01:26:42.563 --> 01:26:43.043
Yeah, yeah.
1138
01:26:43.919 --> 01:26:53.871
Tell us a bit about that and maybe give us a bit of the inside scoop into the learnings that people can have in terms of growing their own locations.
1139
01:26:53.891 --> 01:26:58.317
Because, I mean, obviously we've talked a lot already about, I guess, sort of more...
1140
01:26:59.798 --> 01:27:11.043
top of the market, biggest part of the market in terms of like big groups and even mini groups, but the large majority of listeners and people that own practices will own one location, or even they're looking to get their first one.
1141
01:27:11.063 --> 01:27:14.645
So what have you seen that needed help in that space?
1142
01:27:15.084 --> 01:27:32.455
Yeah, so, I mean, a few years ago, me and Prev were sitting there thinking, you know, there are so many people out there that approach him or me, you know, directly saying, we want help because we were running our first practice, we said we're squat, we want to go from one to two or three or four, whatever it may be.
1143
01:27:33.096 --> 01:27:34.637
And we give them advice, right?
1144
01:27:34.657 --> 01:27:38.459
And it's always like a 20-minute phone call, free of charge, whatever, we'll give them advice and tell them what we can do.
1145
01:27:38.519 --> 01:27:39.660
But actually...
1146
01:27:40.280 --> 01:27:42.741
you think about a person, you look at them and think, you need a bit more than that.
1147
01:27:42.921 --> 01:27:45.662
You need probably a good six, 12 months of proper coaching.
1148
01:27:46.303 --> 01:27:52.185
And there are coaches out there exist, that are good coaches in the UK, but none of them do it for groups, like mini groups.
1149
01:27:52.325 --> 01:28:01.549
They will do it for like individual site that can go from one, from like, you know, half the revenue, double the revenue over, I don't know, kind of, you know, that kind of Chris Barrow style coaching, right?
1150
01:28:02.069 --> 01:28:02.590
But actually,
1151
01:28:03.350 --> 01:28:05.511
There are very few that should done it themselves and actually been there.
1152
01:28:05.671 --> 01:28:12.174
And obviously I've done it perhaps on it, you know, with three sites and we've all, you know, he's sold his two companies now over the last couple of years.
1153
01:28:12.234 --> 01:28:16.556
And I think, you know, we've we want to share our experience because once again, like we've got time on our hands now.
1154
01:28:16.596 --> 01:28:17.456
So let's kind of share that.
1155
01:28:18.217 --> 01:28:22.598
And it also came from the fact that we realized our partners didn't have a structured induction.
1156
01:28:22.619 --> 01:28:25.720
It was like the first 10 parts for me personally, one to one for two years.
1157
01:28:25.760 --> 01:28:25.940
Right.
1158
01:28:26.340 --> 01:28:29.222
But let's take a step back and then let the operations team kind of help them.
1159
01:28:29.282 --> 01:28:32.284
And it's like, actually, we should have a structured pathway for partners.
1160
01:28:32.304 --> 01:28:35.426
So it's like, you join us, you do this one year course first.
1161
01:28:36.126 --> 01:28:43.470
And that course is going to teach you everything from HR, recruitment, marketing, conversions, you know, finance, P&Ls, balance sheets, everything.
1162
01:28:44.051 --> 01:28:48.273
And at the end of that, you should feel confident that you can go into practice ownership and be like, I kind of know what I'm doing now.
1163
01:28:48.633 --> 01:28:52.436
Like, rather than just kind of having to come me up every five minutes and say like, oh, I'm not sure what this situation, that situation.
1164
01:28:53.156 --> 01:29:04.960
And it's from a vast majority of different leaderships, not just from me, it's from like, you know, HR expert, we've got Nigel Rizner on there, we've got Prav, Payman does some clinical workflow stuff, Kunal Patel does some stuff about leadership in terms of integrations.
1165
01:29:05.280 --> 01:29:08.721
So we've got kind of a nice different panel there, different leaderships.
1166
01:29:09.461 --> 01:29:14.363
And we feel that was really needed in the market because it's not really a course that exists for that.
1167
01:29:14.963 --> 01:29:19.104
And it wasn't the fluffy one of like, oh, what's your North Star?
1168
01:29:19.125 --> 01:29:20.505
How are you gonna grow your business?
1169
01:29:20.685 --> 01:29:22.206
like what do you want out of life?
1170
01:29:22.226 --> 01:29:23.086
What's your purpose, right?
1171
01:29:23.106 --> 01:29:25.147
This is like literally how to run a practice.
1172
01:29:25.647 --> 01:29:26.847
And in that course- The playbook.
1173
01:29:26.867 --> 01:29:44.534
You have everything you need to be an expert operationally of how to run a practice really well and maximize either your current practice before you sell it or buy your first practice or grow into a group and understand the multiples of groups, how it works, what's the benefit, all the stuff about the, you know, who's gonna buy you afterwards, how you can structure it, how do you become non-clinical and let it kind of run itself.
1174
01:29:45.194 --> 01:29:47.735
And that can be one, two, three, 10 sites, whatever you want.
1175
01:29:48.235 --> 01:29:50.676
So that's what we did it for and it's going really well so far.
1176
01:29:50.696 --> 01:29:51.716
We're in our third cohort now.
1177
01:29:52.076 --> 01:29:56.357
And yeah, we had our first cohort just finished last week, actually.
1178
01:29:57.138 --> 01:29:59.178
And the feedback we got from that was great.
1179
01:29:59.198 --> 01:30:05.360
You know, we've had some partners who've said, the people in the course have said like, you know, half them are from DB, half them are not from DB as well, right?
1180
01:30:05.380 --> 01:30:05.940
So you've got kind of,
1181
01:30:06.540 --> 01:30:08.842
a different kind of a mix of the group there.
1182
01:30:09.282 --> 01:30:12.064
And the ones from outside of the group were like, this is the best course I've ever been on.
1183
01:30:12.124 --> 01:30:17.888
Like, you know, I've now changed revenues and systems and I've increased by 30% that one year alone and, you know, stuff like that, which is great.
1184
01:30:17.928 --> 01:30:21.211
And people are looking to sell now and they've got stuff in place for that as well.
1185
01:30:21.251 --> 01:30:22.452
So yeah, it's been good.
1186
01:30:22.592 --> 01:30:24.373
I think hopefully adding value.
1187
01:30:24.393 --> 01:30:32.539
We just want to keep doing that because it's, once again, giving back, right, in a way that's actually useful for someone to, you know, put tangible impacts to them in their practice.
1188
01:30:32.659 --> 01:30:35.001
Well, I think there's so much variability in...
1189
01:30:36.220 --> 01:30:41.221
how practices are run and therefore the profit to be crass, the profitability of them.
1190
01:30:42.422 --> 01:30:46.163
Like you see such a variation and it's like, we're all doing the same thing.
1191
01:30:46.983 --> 01:30:49.304
How could it possibly, everyone does the same thing.
1192
01:30:49.444 --> 01:30:50.604
Everyone has the same problems.
1193
01:30:51.104 --> 01:30:59.587
Yes, you might have Mandy on your front desk and you've got Rebecca on your front desk and you've got John in that surgery and you've got Jane in that surgery.
1194
01:30:59.627 --> 01:31:03.528
But the reality is every single dental practice owner has the same problems.
1195
01:31:04.649 --> 01:31:07.411
And it's like, there is a system here that clearly works.
1196
01:31:07.752 --> 01:31:08.172
Definitely.
1197
01:31:08.372 --> 01:31:12.777
And obviously you've seen enough practices to know what that looks like.
1198
01:31:12.997 --> 01:31:15.740
Yeah, I mean, a good example is working smart and working hard.
1199
01:31:15.760 --> 01:31:17.282
So one of our modules is about this, right?
1200
01:31:17.302 --> 01:31:20.905
It's like two practices, case one, practice revenue is 1 million revenue.
1201
01:31:21.987 --> 01:31:23.068
It's got 100k UBDA, 10% margin.
1202
01:31:24.389 --> 01:31:27.251
Practice 2 has got a million revenue, but it's got 250k EBITDA.
1203
01:31:28.032 --> 01:31:37.899
And to be honest with you, what brokers do normally, like the FTAs and the World Dental Leaks, they go to practice two years beforehand, tell them how to improve the margin, how to grow it, and then they get the best value out of it afterwards.
1204
01:31:37.919 --> 01:31:45.445
But rather than waiting until they were 65 to sell, do it now, because every year you could be doing 150k extra revenue EBITDA a year for the next 20 years.
1205
01:31:46.045 --> 01:31:48.087
And actually you might be like, I don't want to sell this now because it runs itself.
1206
01:31:48.807 --> 01:31:58.396
And the biggest thing we want to really get across in this course is how do you step back from clinically working every day and having to run it by yourself to actually letting it run by itself, by the team systems in place.
1207
01:31:59.016 --> 01:32:08.905
I think everyone's dream in life as dentists is like, how do I go to America or like, you know, sail in the sunset after working clinically and it runs by itself as an asset for me rather than having to work clinically all the time and be there.
1208
01:32:09.445 --> 01:32:11.106
just to do their day-to-day micromanaging.
1209
01:32:11.686 --> 01:32:19.068
And we want people to understand systems and posts that we did that worked and actually can be scalable from one to more sites and not have to work clinically all the time.
1210
01:32:19.669 --> 01:32:25.691
And I think that's kind of what we really want to get across really, because I think you are right, it's crazy how much parents we see in the market when we buy practice.
1211
01:32:26.231 --> 01:32:29.112
But normally they've done really well before they sell because the focus of the time is how to do it, right?
1212
01:32:29.152 --> 01:32:35.794
So, like, pay costs here, put your staff costs down, you know, get work every day from last year, just kind of get numbers up and then sell it.
1213
01:32:36.374 --> 01:32:58.281
um but we normally see through that quite quickly so we can can smell the bullshit basically yeah so go on then give us a little teaser in terms of what's something what's one thing that you see uh that one million practiced with a hundred thousand versus the one million with 250 000 what what's like one little nugget where people often like make a mistake that actually has a huge impact on that
1214
01:32:58.541 --> 01:33:05.146
So normally it's just to do the P&L and the KPIs, but because no one's tracking them, they have no idea, right?
1215
01:33:05.266 --> 01:33:11.611
So a lot of practices, and I'm sure you know friends of yours that have a practice, they don't do anything in terms of looking at P&Ls.
1216
01:33:11.651 --> 01:33:17.355
They look at their management accounts, nothing for KPIs for the whole year, apart from UA targets and maybe private.
1217
01:33:17.975 --> 01:33:19.957
And they wait till the end of the year and they go, these are my numbers, right?
1218
01:33:19.977 --> 01:33:20.117
Right.
1219
01:33:20.657 --> 01:33:23.338
So it's like going to gym for a whole year and not knowing anything about how your performance is.
1220
01:33:23.998 --> 01:33:25.178
Like, how does that make any sense?
1221
01:33:25.678 --> 01:33:30.900
So actually just looking at P&L, I can look within five seconds telling you how to make your business more profitable very quickly.
1222
01:33:31.380 --> 01:33:32.680
But then doing it is not a question.
1223
01:33:33.100 --> 01:33:37.001
So like, I can tell your margin in terms of your staff costs versus your revenue.
1224
01:33:37.061 --> 01:33:39.242
Is that benchmark or is it too high or too low?
1225
01:33:40.302 --> 01:33:42.623
Or your material costs or your lab bills or...
1226
01:33:43.943 --> 01:33:48.287
are you getting rebates and rent for practicing a contract for NHS?
1227
01:33:48.708 --> 01:33:54.794
So lots of tricks you can do to actually just some, I would say normalization and benchmarking.
1228
01:33:55.374 --> 01:33:58.457
But because you don't know what benchmarks are, you don't know what's right and what's wrong.
1229
01:33:58.877 --> 01:34:01.460
So like one guy on the course had, I think 25% staff costs.
1230
01:34:02.901 --> 01:34:04.421
And he was like, yeah, they're all really busy.
1231
01:34:04.481 --> 01:34:06.662
I'm like, you've got nine nurses for four surgeries, man.
1232
01:34:06.802 --> 01:34:07.782
Like, you're definitely not that busy.
1233
01:34:08.022 --> 01:34:08.743
Like, what are they doing?
1234
01:34:08.763 --> 01:34:11.323
He goes, oh, but she does decon and she does stock ordering.
1235
01:34:11.343 --> 01:34:12.244
I'm like, it's not a full time job.
1236
01:34:12.384 --> 01:34:13.844
Like, you got to stop making some time.
1237
01:34:14.264 --> 01:34:16.245
We really collect some costs.
1238
01:34:16.805 --> 01:34:19.426
Either you grow more or you work out with stuff costs.
1239
01:34:19.446 --> 01:34:20.826
So just looking at that.
1240
01:34:20.926 --> 01:34:28.448
And when you do that every single day, like I can tell if I'm right away what to do, but unfortunately a lot of dentists don't know what's right and what's wrong.
1241
01:34:28.888 --> 01:34:31.649
And then a KPIs and their surgery revenue per hour or
1242
01:34:32.029 --> 01:34:36.632
how they're looking at like, you know, their FTA rates or conversions for prior patients coming from marketing.
1243
01:34:36.932 --> 01:34:38.393
These are really basic things that people don't do.
1244
01:34:38.954 --> 01:34:43.617
And you're like, you're spending four grand a month a month of marketing, two grand's on my agency costs.
1245
01:34:44.157 --> 01:34:46.859
And you're saying you're doing real well because you're getting new patients coming in and you're converting.
1246
01:34:47.059 --> 01:34:47.960
But how much is that converting?
1247
01:34:48.100 --> 01:34:48.980
What's your ROI on that?
1248
01:34:49.080 --> 01:34:49.561
Is that profitable?
1249
01:34:49.581 --> 01:34:50.121
Is that profitable?
1250
01:34:50.801 --> 01:34:53.663
And they just get completely caught up because they're not even looking at the right numbers.
1251
01:34:54.184 --> 01:34:57.906
And actually a guy in a course was going, yeah, we're doing real well, we're growing and I'm doing this much.
1252
01:34:57.986 --> 01:35:00.248
Actually realized it's completely loss making for his marketing efforts.
1253
01:35:00.908 --> 01:35:02.650
So he stopped it and he started changing the way he does it.
1254
01:35:02.670 --> 01:35:03.711
And now it's way better.
1255
01:35:04.212 --> 01:35:08.597
But it's unfortunately what you haven't been, what you don't know, you don't know, right?
1256
01:35:08.717 --> 01:35:11.540
So you kind of just assume that, oh, I spend money in marketing, I get leads and it's fine.
1257
01:35:11.961 --> 01:35:12.762
Everyone else is doing it.
1258
01:35:12.902 --> 01:35:13.543
Everyone else is doing it.
1259
01:35:13.563 --> 01:35:14.363
So I've got to do it as well.
1260
01:35:14.383 --> 01:35:15.485
What's your view on marketing?
1261
01:35:15.525 --> 01:35:17.227
I think paid ads is like,
1262
01:35:18.616 --> 01:35:47.169
such a misnomer in dental practices like yeah people think oh it makes so much sense i'll pay a couple hundred quid for a lead and i'll get like loads of seven grand in visline cases and it's like i hear so many people moaning about the fact that their paid ads aren't working and it's just yeah i think this is the really important point so when we spoke to this guy actually spending like you know i think seven grand a month marketing for two chairs right he was doing quite like 10 ever he was like yeah i'm busy i'm getting literally patients right but i had no idea what the cost of booking was cost per lead all the conversion rates were for any of these bookings right
1263
01:35:48.349 --> 01:36:01.375
And it was like, after he did the analysis on all of it, he realized actually that he was loss making because the amount of spending on every single patient coming to the front door, with the cost he's paying for associates, the materials and labs, that EBITDA for that patient was basically negative.
1264
01:36:02.135 --> 01:36:06.257
So it was like, okay, I should stop this now because actually it looks really good in the top line, but the bottom line is not growing.
1265
01:36:06.277 --> 01:36:07.398
So it's not that great actually.
1266
01:36:08.518 --> 01:36:12.180
And look, if you've got mixed practice like we have and like yourself, it's fine.
1267
01:36:12.280 --> 01:36:13.020
You don't need any marketing
1268
01:36:13.160 --> 01:36:23.126
because you've got people in the front door coming in and you can have a good conversation with them, go through what they clinically need, take some photographs and voila, they can potentially go for some other treatments that you might not know before.
1269
01:36:23.606 --> 01:36:24.447
But it's education, right?
1270
01:36:25.127 --> 01:36:30.910
And we generally avoid having a fully private practice because of that issue.
1271
01:36:31.370 --> 01:36:36.393
Having a fully private business means that you have to always worry about marketing and leads coming in and constantly checking the numbers on that.
1272
01:36:38.375 --> 01:36:45.000
It's a very competitive game when you're in London as well, when everyone's competing for the same Invisalign patients or the same bonding patients or the same veneer patients.
1273
01:36:45.080 --> 01:36:50.405
And it just gets higher and higher the cost of booking because you're all competing for the same patient base and the same advertising platform.
1274
01:36:51.045 --> 01:36:54.989
Ten years ago, no one was on Facebook ads and no one was doing Instagram ads and stuff like that.
1275
01:36:55.009 --> 01:36:56.810
So you were kind of like one of many hundred.
1276
01:36:57.251 --> 01:36:57.971
Now everyone's doing it.
1277
01:36:58.031 --> 01:36:58.692
You're just one of one.
1278
01:36:58.992 --> 01:37:01.474
It's just commoditization, isn't it?
1279
01:37:01.614 --> 01:37:03.876
It's a race to the bottom, it seems, in terms of...
1280
01:37:04.757 --> 01:37:10.622
Like, we're primarily private as a practice, and so we're in that realm.
1281
01:37:10.642 --> 01:37:12.884
But I just, I think it's...
1282
01:37:14.383 --> 01:37:16.325
I think it depends on what sort of practice you are, right?
1283
01:37:16.365 --> 01:37:22.432
Like if you're going to go out for the cheapest Invis line on the market, be my guest, it's going to work beautifully for you.
1284
01:37:22.612 --> 01:37:22.833
Yeah.
1285
01:37:22.953 --> 01:37:33.905
But like, especially with a lot of the competitor brands out there now, Smile White and all these other sort of lower cost aligner brands that are out there that are paying a huge amount on paid ads.
1286
01:37:34.946 --> 01:37:37.468
I think you're going to struggle if you're trying to sell a premium product.
1287
01:37:37.488 --> 01:37:45.216
Well, it comes down to like, if you're general practice and your core life is being a general dentist, then do that.
1288
01:37:45.616 --> 01:37:46.317
Do what you're good at.
1289
01:37:46.877 --> 01:37:53.563
Because if you start trying to compete in that, you know, low cost Invisalign or low cost implants or facial aesthetics, you're not going to win.
1290
01:37:53.583 --> 01:37:55.045
You're going to burn in cash and not be good at it.
1291
01:37:55.085 --> 01:37:58.127
Because I think a lot of practices, which is quite crazy.
1292
01:37:58.928 --> 01:37:59.568
try to do everything.
1293
01:38:00.569 --> 01:38:03.930
And yes, you've got to practice and yes, you license to do it because you can do it clinically, you're allowed to do it.
1294
01:38:04.531 --> 01:38:09.953
But should I really be focusing on all these different specialties when actually my core base is trying to do good dentistry really well for Solitive?
1295
01:38:10.714 --> 01:38:16.617
And I think, you know, when you try to dabble into these areas, you might do four cases and resign a month, but it's not really going to change the game, isn't it?
1296
01:38:16.637 --> 01:38:16.817
Right?
1297
01:38:16.977 --> 01:38:18.437
You might do a few implants here a month.
1298
01:38:18.457 --> 01:38:19.198
That's what most practices do.
1299
01:38:19.518 --> 01:38:22.679
But dabble in it and they don't really get good at it because they've never done it properly and focus on it.
1300
01:38:23.200 --> 01:38:24.120
And even we struggle with that.
1301
01:38:24.160 --> 01:38:25.461
Like our practices right now, if I went to
1302
01:38:28.102 --> 01:38:33.087
even if they had the best ends in the world, they couldn't figure out the workflow, the, you know, the equipment you need, the nursing, the stuff.
1303
01:38:33.107 --> 01:38:34.048
The nurses wouldn't know what they're doing.
1304
01:38:34.088 --> 01:38:34.708
No idea, right?
1305
01:38:34.748 --> 01:38:38.913
And it's like, you don't go to hospital and go to a heart surgeon to start doing liver surgery, right?
1306
01:38:39.433 --> 01:38:41.215
You do a specialist for a special reason.
1307
01:38:41.715 --> 01:38:46.440
And there's a triage for that service in the first place from the GP first, and you go to other places afterwards.
1308
01:38:46.500 --> 01:38:46.660
And,
1309
01:38:47.040 --> 01:39:11.615
in different building and i think that's where we probably have got a bit too excited and trying to compete on the fancy stuff that's that's nice to do and easy like fun to do because of instagram but actually it's not what our core thing is if you're mixed practice just do mixed ancestry right that's enough for the rest of your life do it well do it well provide a good good customer service for your patients patients come back in again word of mouth will keep you going yeah patients are anxious will keep coming in you're fine and that's enough don't do more than that
1310
01:39:12.075 --> 01:39:15.656
I think that's where people go wrong and actually they focus so much on paid ads and all this.
1311
01:39:15.936 --> 01:39:17.117
Let's just spend more on ads.
1312
01:39:17.137 --> 01:39:19.337
Let's film more video content.
1313
01:39:19.357 --> 01:39:25.099
And actually the patient arrives and they get a terrible customer service and not a good experience.
1314
01:39:25.199 --> 01:39:27.100
And nobody's happy.
1315
01:39:27.260 --> 01:39:32.382
Yeah, it's hard to give them that five-star experience or like a Harley Street practice where you've got two TCOs for one patient.
1316
01:39:32.963 --> 01:39:44.908
When you're mixed practice, try and do high volume dentistry in a, you know- Yeah, but I don't think it need, it doesn't need to be the five, the- No, I'm saying if you're doing Instagram and you're trying to film it being like a summer, cause like all the videos you see on Instagram are like amazing, like, you know, oh, it looks perfect.
1317
01:39:45.208 --> 01:40:14.767
you go in there as a spa you get a drink and you go in there you can see sally on the desk going i'm busy right now i've got a patient like it's just the way the world is because you're mixed you're mixed practicing high volume dentistry right so i mean that's what i've always said to our partners like we are not the harley street we are not going for like you know the harriads of dentistry here we are mns we're we're on high streets everywhere around the uk we want a good quality but scalable business that is high service high quality service good dentistry but we're not going for like marble floors and having you know the next you know luma ton like you know branded like wallpaper like that's
1318
01:40:14.787 --> 01:40:39.995
not what we do yeah right and that's not what we should be spending our time and effort on it should be on doing good quality care on high streets to help patients on the nhs have a much better service than when they're getting down the road which is well it's needed isn't it yeah it's hugely needed just had um had eddie crouch on before you oh yeah and um we were talking about the challenges around the nhs it's actually quite refreshing to hear you talking positively about it in terms of keeping it going within your structure
1319
01:40:40.315 --> 01:40:47.818
Yeah, I mean, I agree with what the etiquette says, and don't get it wrong, I think there are problems structurally across the UK with NHS system.
1320
01:40:48.558 --> 01:40:56.921
But at the same time, a lot of practices are moaning on the fact that they've got, I don't know, lower pay cuts, this and that and that.
1321
01:40:56.961 --> 01:41:01.502
But once again, it's about finding solutions to problems, not just saying the same thing over and over.
1322
01:41:01.922 --> 01:41:02.843
Government's not giving money.
1323
01:41:03.163 --> 01:41:03.803
They're broke as it is.
1324
01:41:04.183 --> 01:41:05.864
Let's not sugarcoat it.
1325
01:41:05.884 --> 01:41:06.764
They are broke.
1326
01:41:06.784 --> 01:41:08.825
They've got too much debt in the country as it is.
1327
01:41:09.525 --> 01:41:24.032
I mean, I had a meeting with Jeremy Hunt in 2019 for FreshLink, and he pretty much said, you know, indirectly that, like, whether you like it or not, you need to understand it's 4% or 3% of our whole budget for healthcare is essentially 3%.
1328
01:41:25.402 --> 01:41:27.204
No one really cares, like in a nice way.
1329
01:41:27.645 --> 01:41:31.971
And it is a fact, like, you know, we all love our dentistry, we all love our profession, and we wanna keep chatting about it.
1330
01:41:31.991 --> 01:41:35.235
And I think Eddie's doing a great job with the BDA and they keep pushing it, which is great for politics.
1331
01:41:35.816 --> 01:41:38.659
But don't wait, like same as me with the Trump and the whole world markets.
1332
01:41:38.980 --> 01:41:40.021
Don't wait for the world to change.
1333
01:41:40.041 --> 01:41:41.303
Like fix what problem you've got there.
1334
01:41:41.743 --> 01:41:56.236
So if I've got practice and I've got four chairs, I've got lots of UDAs to deliver per chair and I'm getting less and less revenue because of my price increases, less inflation when the NHS contracts, fine, add more chairs, build some more, put investment in the practice, start doing more fiver, happy days, you can make your business work.
1335
01:41:56.696 --> 01:41:59.178
Don't keep complaining about it over and over and like kind of getting bogged down, right?
1336
01:41:59.698 --> 01:42:02.100
And if we can do it for practice, I'm sure everyone else can do it.
1337
01:42:02.121 --> 01:42:03.742
It's just a case of actually putting the time and effort and doing it.
1338
01:42:04.382 --> 01:42:07.425
But when they say, oh, I've got to build two more surgeries, it's a lot of work and effort, isn't it?
1339
01:42:07.525 --> 01:42:08.106
I might just sell it.
1340
01:42:08.146 --> 01:42:09.227
I'm like, it's because you're being lazy.
1341
01:42:09.907 --> 01:42:14.991
Like the times have changed from 30 years ago where you could have a contract just milking it every year not to worry about anything.
1342
01:42:15.071 --> 01:42:16.232
Like times have changed.
1343
01:42:16.372 --> 01:42:18.333
You've got to make it work and do different things.
1344
01:42:18.693 --> 01:42:21.616
And I think that's the difference between people who do well in practice and the ones who don't do well.
1345
01:42:21.636 --> 01:42:24.798
And that's why I see positivity versus some people who don't see positivity in the energy market.
1346
01:42:25.720 --> 01:42:27.041
Well, you've got to be willing to adapt, haven't you?
1347
01:42:27.061 --> 01:42:29.922
I think adaptability is such an important characteristic.
1348
01:42:29.942 --> 01:42:30.963
It's how you live in jungle.
1349
01:42:31.643 --> 01:42:32.364
Yeah, exactly.
1350
01:42:32.384 --> 01:42:47.273
I mean, talking about adaptability, obviously technology, AI, huge amount of change that's come and is going to be coming like a tidal wave into our industry over the next couple of years.
1351
01:42:47.293 --> 01:42:48.073
Yeah.
1352
01:42:48.513 --> 01:43:00.200
How are you guys looking at that in terms of, in terms of firstly implementation into your group, because obviously you need to stay ahead like all of us in terms of the market, and CapEx on some of these things can be quite significant.
1353
01:43:00.740 --> 01:43:04.242
And then secondly, what's your view on how it's going to impact EBITDA multiples?
1354
01:43:04.282 --> 01:43:06.904
Because I think it's going to be quite interesting.
1355
01:43:07.184 --> 01:43:11.226
I'm very, very bullish, like very bullish on the next five years.
1356
01:43:11.526 --> 01:43:16.149
It's probably because I'm an entrepreneur, but I'm very bullish because I think, and this is going to be quite...
1357
01:43:17.149 --> 01:43:43.878
maybe not not gonna say it's on the podcast but i think we're gonna go from having this same model for last 50 years of dentists being self-employed and basically demanding how they can work and not work in the practice to going more towards a standardized approach like veterinary where you're salaried and actually your your value is a lot less than what you think it is um reason being is i see four things number one and what we're doing right now with our practices we're putting in
1358
01:43:44.638 --> 01:43:47.901
voice agents like Linda AI, I know you've had them recently on your podcast.
1359
01:43:48.661 --> 01:43:53.045
We're putting in voice stack for missed calls to make sure we can track all those kind of missed opportunities at the beginning.
1360
01:43:53.505 --> 01:43:58.949
Putting in a CRM for every single clinic, not just before we have Salesforce, but now we're putting in Boxly.
1361
01:43:59.089 --> 01:44:09.898
So we're linking it all together, that patient journey is all monitored and we can track every single kind of point of that journey through data and like actual AI can look at it and saying, Sally's doing a bad job on the phone, she's literally telling everyone to go away.
1362
01:44:10.298 --> 01:44:12.700
And there's opportunities that have been missed all the time and et cetera, et cetera.
1363
01:44:12.800 --> 01:44:17.564
So you've got data now that can be easily spread back in two minutes to give you actions of what to do.
1364
01:44:17.584 --> 01:44:18.285
Reviewed remotely.
1365
01:44:18.305 --> 01:44:20.567
You can feel like you're in the clinic without being there.
1366
01:44:20.607 --> 01:44:21.127
Exactly.
1367
01:44:21.147 --> 01:44:22.148
Which has never happened before.
1368
01:44:22.208 --> 01:44:23.749
I can't sit here looking at everyone's phone call.
1369
01:44:23.769 --> 01:44:26.591
Even though we do that with our ops teams, they do phone calls, mystery phone calls.
1370
01:44:26.611 --> 01:44:27.872
They're practices only once or twice a week.
1371
01:44:27.892 --> 01:44:28.473
Very manual.
1372
01:44:28.733 --> 01:44:31.294
Yeah, once or twice a month, not like every single day now, like consistently.
1373
01:44:32.395 --> 01:44:37.757
And you can get this data now saying, I'm so busy in the reception desk, but you've missed like half your calls and you've not returned them as well.
1374
01:44:37.777 --> 01:44:40.238
So what you've been doing, I can see in the camera as well, you're not even working, like what you're doing.
1375
01:44:40.638 --> 01:44:41.699
So that happens a lot, yeah.
1376
01:44:41.739 --> 01:44:46.221
Like you'd be surprised, especially in groups, they just talk about what they're doing all the time and they're not actually doing anything productive.
1377
01:44:47.482 --> 01:44:51.066
Then you've got the self check-ins now and you've got payments that can be done as well by kiosks.
1378
01:44:51.086 --> 01:44:54.369
So this is all kind of like coming in very soon, which is happening in every industry, right?
1379
01:44:54.389 --> 01:44:58.974
You go to M&S now, it's not like you go to the on, there's still one or two left, but most of them are just kiosks, right?
1380
01:44:58.994 --> 01:44:59.935
You check in, check out.
1381
01:45:00.375 --> 01:45:02.077
That's happening as well, which is really interesting.
1382
01:45:02.097 --> 01:45:03.258
What do you, I've not heard about that.
1383
01:45:03.319 --> 01:45:03.679
Conveen.
1384
01:45:04.199 --> 01:45:05.821
It's a- Conveen.
1385
01:45:05.841 --> 01:45:08.444
Yeah, it's kind of a screen that you,
1386
01:45:08.897 --> 01:45:12.261
same as Matt Donald's, like, or, like, you know, M&S, you kind of go in there, check in, check out yourself.
1387
01:45:12.842 --> 01:45:13.682
And it's linked to dentally as well.
1388
01:45:13.702 --> 01:45:14.624
It's integrated properly.
1389
01:45:14.664 --> 01:45:15.885
So that kind of helps there.
1390
01:45:16.446 --> 01:45:23.213
A lot of the systems that we are implementing are already integrated into dentally or have to have integration of some sort there, which makes it a lot easier because otherwise...
1391
01:45:24.054 --> 01:45:44.156
you put software in it's separate which just makes it really hard to make it work what you want to do is have your central PMS being your heart of your whole business and everything else plugs into it and those different um ad hoc areas around that just feed into different areas that are not in density right now and probably will never be in density but they're kind of helping the whole patient journey of the end to end now rather than having just a PMS only
1392
01:45:45.777 --> 01:46:01.427
and then I see Lupin which is a robotic company coming in a few months I've got Gallup coming on the pod yeah cool great I'm sure I'll tell you all about it but yeah him and Stefan have obviously created an amazing robot that I think is going to come in our group in the next few months now which is great in the UK you're going to have it in the next few months that's the plan yeah hopefully
1393
01:46:02.167 --> 01:46:02.627
Seriously?
1394
01:46:02.667 --> 01:46:04.088
Yeah, it's got UK approval now.
1395
01:46:04.468 --> 01:46:05.048
Has it really?
1396
01:46:05.068 --> 01:46:05.888
Yeah, yeah, last month.
1397
01:46:05.928 --> 01:46:09.249
So, I mean, I didn't realise it was that far along.
1398
01:46:09.369 --> 01:46:12.190
Yeah, no, they were doing human trials about a year and a half ago now.
1399
01:46:12.470 --> 01:46:16.552
I've seen the minimally invasive veneer preps, which is quite remarkable.
1400
01:46:16.592 --> 01:46:19.093
Yes, that was in India almost two years ago now.
1401
01:46:19.253 --> 01:46:24.875
And they've actually done all the trials, got the approvals now, and they've already improved in a few parts of Europe.
1402
01:46:24.895 --> 01:46:27.135
But they got UK approval like a month ago.
1403
01:46:27.636 --> 01:46:31.777
So, sorry, you're bringing in a Lupin robot into Dental Beauty in the next few months.
1404
01:46:32.017 --> 01:46:35.080
That's the plan, yeah, for the first one anyway.
1405
01:46:35.261 --> 01:46:36.342
And to do what?
1406
01:46:36.782 --> 01:46:49.456
So, I mean, look, if you just take a step back, right, and this is going to be quite contentious, so if it's right along, there's nothing more of a story, but our biggest problem as a group or as a practice owner, right, is talent.
1407
01:46:50.297 --> 01:46:55.338
Like, how do I get another Simon Chard or the next Gallup Grill, you know, do my veneer peps for me consistently?
1408
01:46:55.758 --> 01:47:02.380
I'm not taking half the year off because they make so much money all the time or bigger diva because they want to have two nurses for them and et cetera, et cetera.
1409
01:47:02.500 --> 01:47:10.422
Or trying to, you know, the whole process to work around that one person and then always worrying about them leaving because it's high risk.
1410
01:47:11.542 --> 01:47:14.283
In the end of the day, dentistry, from the...
1411
01:47:14.603 --> 01:47:17.703
So if you look up, we've got Pearl in all our clinics, second opinion.
1412
01:47:18.283 --> 01:47:30.106
That, along with dentistry, is bringing out auto-charting, auto-coding soon, which means that your notes, obviously done by the voice, and then I can pick up the notes, can take the notes from that and make your treatment codes for you.
1413
01:47:30.126 --> 01:47:33.246
So it's all done pretty much automatically now, right?
1414
01:47:33.706 --> 01:47:36.967
And eventually, I'm not saying it's far without, but there's a company that's going to come soon that will then do...
1415
01:47:37.807 --> 01:48:03.976
um second opinion treatment planning for you as well so i would say based off the notes based on the x-phrase based off what you said in the examination with patient once and the intraoral scanner and the intraoral scanner these are the options that you should do for treatment planning right yeah option one few companies option one is a full mouth this is the kind of state stabilization this is like just emergency right and i'll give you that so there's no thinking involved now right so we're now going from having dentists having the skill sets to just going approving and that's it all right not saying that's a good thing about this that's the way it's going right which to be fair
1416
01:48:04.356 --> 01:48:33.234
is actually not a bad thing because scalability for me so i want everyone to have the right treatment plan i want everyone to give them the right options it's better for patient care yeah i mean treatment plan variability is huge for individual and it's not because diagnosis as well yeah diagnosis is wrong which is i mean like you know what pals like you see 10 of an x-rays and tell them all different like you know reports afterwards about what they saw um secondly you've got the issue of um the dentist having self confidence issues and therefore not trip planning because the fact that they're scared of what the treatment should be in the first place
1417
01:48:33.654 --> 01:48:35.715
Or they don't know how to do a certain procedure.
1418
01:48:35.755 --> 01:48:38.697
And so they decide not to recommend it because they actually don't know how to do it.
1419
01:48:38.717 --> 01:48:39.717
And they've got no one to refer to.
1420
01:48:39.797 --> 01:48:40.177
Exactly.
1421
01:48:40.197 --> 01:48:42.499
Or they don't have a vision of the whole mouth because they're looking at one tooth only.
1422
01:48:42.519 --> 01:48:42.719
Right.
1423
01:48:42.739 --> 01:48:45.860
So all those problems that you get just because of dentistry has not been taught very well at university.
1424
01:48:45.900 --> 01:48:52.844
So all that will, in the next year, I reckon, be active in terms of that system being alive for us to have...
1425
01:48:53.384 --> 01:49:09.962
within the group then you've got the point alright so now it's being diagnosed by AI it's not actually giving you the options from AI it's not even selling it because it's giving you you know the chair side going through the options of like before and after of what the crown prep does and stuff like that and it can make a customized video for the patient about you know what does that treatment plan look like in terms of real life
1426
01:49:10.662 --> 01:49:16.544
You've got obviously a small architect of Visalign showing you before and afters of bonding and all these things are coming now for visualization.
1427
01:49:17.024 --> 01:49:27.467
So now it goes from having to before take your focus of SLR, put in a big screen, use your brain and your 10 years of experience to treat and plan properly, make a treatment plan for a patient, put in the right code.
1428
01:49:27.487 --> 01:49:29.807
Put it in the keynote, present it to the patient.
1429
01:49:29.827 --> 01:49:30.507
Yeah, and do that.
1430
01:49:30.547 --> 01:49:36.149
So now it's being done in five minutes by a much better AI generated software than us.
1431
01:49:36.629 --> 01:49:38.530
And you can see ChatGPT and how good they are, right?
1432
01:49:38.550 --> 01:49:39.890
Like that's just coming to the industry very quickly.
1433
01:49:40.410 --> 01:49:48.051
So you got that and then you go, all right, so that's the beginning bit done by not having to have someone special, just dentists can approve it or not approve it.
1434
01:49:48.711 --> 01:49:50.012
Then it's the treatment, right?
1435
01:49:50.172 --> 01:49:58.013
And actually we look at treatments from fillings, you know, perio, whitening, some of the basic stuff can done by therapists.
1436
01:49:58.353 --> 01:50:00.513
So that model's great, proven out, be really easy.
1437
01:50:00.553 --> 01:50:02.534
As long as you've got a good therapist doing that bit, that's the easy bit.
1438
01:50:02.554 --> 01:50:04.534
And that's probably not gonna be done by robot anytime soon.
1439
01:50:05.654 --> 01:50:09.075
But then you've got only extraction of root canals and these are done by specialists.
1440
01:50:10.032 --> 01:50:16.454
Otherwise, almost everything else, crown preps, veneer preps, onlay preps, implants, could all be done by robot.
1441
01:50:17.054 --> 01:50:21.496
And there's robots that already exist in the US that do onlay crown preps already, that do implants placed already.
1442
01:50:21.736 --> 01:50:26.137
I knew about Yomi for the implant placements, and they've done like hundreds of thousands already.
1443
01:50:26.317 --> 01:50:26.477
Yeah.
1444
01:50:26.917 --> 01:50:28.298
I didn't know about the onlay preps.
1445
01:50:28.338 --> 01:50:29.298
Yeah, yeah.
1446
01:50:29.358 --> 01:50:30.599
That exists for the last five years as well.
1447
01:50:30.619 --> 01:50:33.120
It's been well-invested as well by DIA.
1448
01:50:33.340 --> 01:50:34.140
And then obviously...
1449
01:50:34.740 --> 01:50:35.720
Lupin will do that same thing too.
1450
01:50:35.760 --> 01:50:40.001
It's just like the next phase is after veneer preps is going to be, because it's the same procedure, just back in the mouth now, right?
1451
01:50:40.041 --> 01:50:41.742
So it's the next phase for them to do that as well.
1452
01:50:41.822 --> 01:50:47.303
So I think we're probably a few years away from having robots that can do pretty much all the software industry for you.
1453
01:50:47.543 --> 01:50:48.843
I didn't realize it was that soon.
1454
01:50:48.903 --> 01:50:49.483
I know, right?
1455
01:50:49.663 --> 01:50:52.284
And then you think, all right, well, I've got five robots and five surgeries.
1456
01:50:52.724 --> 01:50:53.464
They work 20 or 7.
1457
01:50:53.724 --> 01:50:55.265
There's no holidays, right?
1458
01:50:55.485 --> 01:50:58.225
There's no, I'm not going to work because I'm going to get paid.
1459
01:50:58.265 --> 01:50:59.666
Joe's laughing in the background.
1460
01:50:59.686 --> 01:51:00.386
He's like, what the?
1461
01:51:03.038 --> 01:51:04.219
You've blown his mind.
1462
01:51:04.599 --> 01:51:08.943
He's like, I'm going to be filming robots talking to the camera.
1463
01:51:09.043 --> 01:51:11.085
Just get terminated, man.
1464
01:51:11.145 --> 01:51:12.346
It was great.
1465
01:51:13.166 --> 01:51:16.889
But you're going to get a scenario where, like, Da Vinci, for example, with knee surgery, right?
1466
01:51:17.030 --> 01:51:17.230
Yeah.
1467
01:51:17.270 --> 01:51:20.933
You can actually be in Australia and doing a knee surgery in England from online.
1468
01:51:21.593 --> 01:51:23.395
I'm not saying it's going to happen, but, like, you have to...
1469
01:51:23.615 --> 01:51:25.997
I still think you have to have dentists in the clinic on the ground.
1470
01:51:26.357 --> 01:51:35.261
Yeah, but I can I can easily see where you have free surgery for treatments free robots running at the same parallel and just booked in for crown preps, you know, veneer preps and blah blah.
1471
01:51:35.661 --> 01:51:44.585
And it's just on the day printed out fit sprintway, whatever may be for your on nasal crowns and then veneers done by, you know, same day fit because looping if anyone knows what looping is, it's.
1472
01:51:45.125 --> 01:51:54.134
you scan the patient in, you get the STL file from Lupin, and the next appointment in after that, after they've approved it digitally from the smile design, is a fit appointment.
1473
01:51:54.274 --> 01:51:56.256
So you literally prep and fit the same day.
1474
01:51:56.276 --> 01:52:02.923
It's kind of similar to the... Because obviously the algorithm of the robot is prepping exactly as per the design of the veneers.
1475
01:52:02.943 --> 01:52:03.763
So unlike...
1476
01:52:04.504 --> 01:52:31.776
a first fit or something like that now where you have a guide and it's roughly the same yeah this is literally 0.5 microns it's super accurate 0.5 microns that's mental so is that is that the primary uh utilization case for looping currently um that's it's a test yeah i think it i think it's for veneers first test it out and obviously if you can bring down the dentist's cost which is obviously the biggest cost generally and you put in a salary instead you can bring that across to
1477
01:52:34.417 --> 01:52:37.379
Yeah, so it's basically a bit like a CEREC in your mouth, if you can imagine that.
1478
01:52:37.579 --> 01:52:41.701
The actual drill goes on each tooth, right?
1479
01:52:41.741 --> 01:52:43.122
And your head's kind of like fixed there.
1480
01:52:43.622 --> 01:52:45.703
But it's always back, I think.
1481
01:52:46.503 --> 01:52:56.508
But I think the beauty of this is that you don't need to worry about dentist prep being great or not great.
1482
01:52:56.529 --> 01:52:57.069
Will it fit?
1483
01:52:57.149 --> 01:52:57.609
Remakes?
1484
01:52:57.709 --> 01:53:00.871
That kind of stuff is like you literally fit it on the same day as the day you prep.
1485
01:53:01.351 --> 01:53:03.973
because you've already got them given to you from day one, and you just finished straight away.
1486
01:53:04.593 --> 01:53:09.776
And I can't see it being far from where Spookway finally figured out strong material for veneers as well.
1487
01:53:09.796 --> 01:53:10.797
They can print on the same day as well.
1488
01:53:11.217 --> 01:53:11.698
Yeah, yeah.
1489
01:53:11.718 --> 01:53:13.039
Which would be even, we're not a million miles away.
1490
01:53:13.059 --> 01:53:15.140
Doing a beta test on the new material soon.
1491
01:53:15.180 --> 01:53:15.540
Exactly.
1492
01:53:15.560 --> 01:53:17.321
It's like 70% filled or something like that.
1493
01:53:17.361 --> 01:53:17.541
Yeah.
1494
01:53:17.662 --> 01:53:24.406
So I think, you know, we obviously are big CEREC fans, both of us, but that was, you know, that's still an option as well if you wanted to do that as well in-house.
1495
01:53:24.426 --> 01:53:27.428
So I can see, like, you know, from a margin point of view,
1496
01:53:29.625 --> 01:53:32.127
You've got a much more efficient reception desk now.
1497
01:53:32.747 --> 01:53:35.769
So potentially not to have as many receptionists, potentially for bigger clinics.
1498
01:53:36.569 --> 01:53:38.910
So that's, you know, some benefits there.
1499
01:53:39.150 --> 01:53:45.093
You've got better conversion rates, which means, you know, just generally kind of like high revenue and potentially lower cost marketing, et cetera.
1500
01:53:45.333 --> 01:53:50.176
You're going to get dentists on salaries operating these robots rather than on percentages because...
1501
01:53:50.896 --> 01:53:56.479
You don't need to pay a percentage of someone who's pressing an on-off button, right, or operating three surgeries at the same time, you know.
1502
01:53:57.719 --> 01:54:06.963
And then you've got the lab bills coming down because of the in-house 3D printed models or veneers or restorations that you can do in-house, right, that are going to be stronger and better in the future very soon.
1503
01:54:07.804 --> 01:54:09.785
That's going to be potentially a 10-15% increase in margins.
1504
01:54:11.825 --> 01:54:27.973
we could be looking at early 30s 40 margins businesses right which is crazy it's like doubling our ebidava doing extra work so it's very exciting and that's not even like 10 years away it's like the next few years that's what you can see in front of you right now that's like not even what we can't even imagine yet which is what's coming next yeah
1505
01:54:28.613 --> 01:54:30.615
So it's, I mean, to me, very exciting.
1506
01:54:30.936 --> 01:54:32.397
It should be very exciting for everyone, to the point of view.
1507
01:54:32.417 --> 01:54:34.620
But obviously, we've been to all these companies for years now.
1508
01:54:34.680 --> 01:54:38.124
So I've been seeing it kind of in the background being Bill, and I'm sure you've been to some companies too about this.
1509
01:54:38.164 --> 01:54:43.229
And it's just the speed of their growing and the development they're making is like six monthly rather than years.
1510
01:54:43.850 --> 01:54:45.632
I mean, just even our PMS dentistry, right?
1511
01:54:45.652 --> 01:54:47.854
Like it's made so much progress in the last three or four years.
1512
01:54:47.874 --> 01:54:48.155
Mm-hmm.
1513
01:54:48.595 --> 01:54:51.239
because Kezak's in the market too and Kezak's pushing it, which is great.
1514
01:54:51.259 --> 01:54:52.761
But it's been hugely improved.
1515
01:54:52.781 --> 01:54:54.323
He's been so good improvements.
1516
01:54:54.383 --> 01:54:55.384
I'm like, this is great.
1517
01:54:55.965 --> 01:54:59.670
I've now got second opinion on my surgeries for my second opinion for my x-rays.
1518
01:55:00.171 --> 01:55:02.013
Signs get auto-charting for notes now.
1519
01:55:02.274 --> 01:55:03.135
It's all very exciting stuff.
1520
01:55:03.255 --> 01:55:04.657
It finally seems to be happening, right?
1521
01:55:05.398 --> 01:55:10.243
What we've been looking at for ages, wouldn't it be great if that did talk to that and that talked to that?
1522
01:55:10.663 --> 01:55:12.565
It's actually happened, I think, a lot quicker.
1523
01:55:13.406 --> 01:55:16.028
As you can see by the fact that, obviously, I've been aware of Lupin for a long time.
1524
01:55:16.048 --> 01:55:20.392
I've got Gallup coming on the pod, but I was not expecting you to say you've got one on the way.
1525
01:55:20.493 --> 01:55:20.993
Yeah, yeah.
1526
01:55:21.353 --> 01:55:25.858
I mean, feel free to say, but what's the ballpark figure for what these things cost?
1527
01:55:25.878 --> 01:55:26.879
Is it public knowledge or...
1528
01:55:27.159 --> 01:55:28.000
No, the model is different.
1529
01:55:28.020 --> 01:55:29.001
They don't charge you for the machine.
1530
01:55:29.021 --> 01:55:30.022
They charge you a subscription model.
1531
01:55:30.062 --> 01:55:33.385
So for every single case that you do, they charge you a fee.
1532
01:55:33.405 --> 01:55:35.808
It's a bit like a lab bill, if that makes sense.
1533
01:55:36.048 --> 01:55:36.268
Right.
1534
01:55:36.288 --> 01:55:39.091
It's for the STL file, but it's like a software fee.
1535
01:55:39.311 --> 01:55:40.733
But they give you the robot?
1536
01:55:41.213 --> 01:55:41.433
Yeah.
1537
01:55:41.854 --> 01:55:42.975
But then you commit to doing...
1538
01:55:43.055 --> 01:55:44.496
It's the same as when you're at Resiline back in the day.
1539
01:55:44.516 --> 01:55:47.199
Do you remember you had to say, I got ITRO, but you got to do X-MOM cases?
1540
01:55:47.399 --> 01:55:47.760
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1541
01:55:47.880 --> 01:55:49.161
Same kind of model as that, pretty much.
1542
01:55:49.301 --> 01:55:49.782
Fascinating.
1543
01:55:49.882 --> 01:55:50.422
Yeah, so...
1544
01:55:51.443 --> 01:55:57.468
I mean, we haven't got the exact location yet, but we're going to work out which one I'm going to do soon, in the next few weeks, and hopefully I can... You've got to let me know when it's in there.
1545
01:55:57.488 --> 01:55:58.049
I need to go see it.
1546
01:55:58.149 --> 01:55:59.390
Yeah, no, it's exciting times.
1547
01:55:59.730 --> 01:56:07.097
I think the other good thing as well is that it's... We're so early in that that we can help them kind of, you know, tweak it to what we think would work in the UK with patients and that.
1548
01:56:07.237 --> 01:56:10.199
You know, if it works well, it could be a game changer because...
1549
01:56:11.040 --> 01:56:15.203
Once again, if you've got a talent issue or recruitment issue in the UK, people want to work more hours or more days.
1550
01:56:15.243 --> 01:56:18.304
As we're seeing dentists now, the young people at the university, they want to work two hours a week.
1551
01:56:18.504 --> 01:56:19.405
It's a full-time job, right?
1552
01:56:19.745 --> 01:56:24.748
Like that whole thing becomes irrelevant now because you're going, well, rather than working full-time, I just get these robots to do most of the cleaners work.
1553
01:56:24.788 --> 01:56:27.870
And you're just like therapists who do this in the beginning bit, AI as well.
1554
01:56:27.970 --> 01:56:37.055
And that can probably, you know, have to reduce the issues you have to do with retention, recruitment, training, which are the biggest kind of problems in the industry, right, generally.
1555
01:56:37.335 --> 01:56:37.435
Yeah.
1556
01:56:37.475 --> 01:56:39.397
Do you think patients are ready for robots?
1557
01:56:39.417 --> 01:56:39.577
Yeah.
1558
01:56:40.617 --> 01:56:44.381
I think they are because once again, it goes back to like Medtronic, right?
1559
01:56:44.401 --> 01:56:46.904
Like you look at a lot of the- Back to what, sorry?
1560
01:56:47.104 --> 01:56:52.250
Like Medtronic's a big company that does healthcare robots, you know, for many, many procedures.
1561
01:56:52.631 --> 01:56:54.813
So in hospitals, they're everywhere.
1562
01:56:55.954 --> 01:57:00.479
And when we're doing these studies about robot, there's so many robots out there in different parts of
1563
01:57:01.460 --> 01:57:02.822
in different procedures within hospitals now.
1564
01:57:03.522 --> 01:57:04.883
Patients have done it for the last 10 years.
1565
01:57:04.903 --> 01:57:05.824
It's not like it's a new thing.
1566
01:57:05.864 --> 01:57:09.267
Like they've been out for ages, like literally probably 10 years now, I think.
1567
01:57:09.327 --> 01:57:12.930
So if you think about that, patients have been doing it in hospitals, and why wouldn't it work in us?
1568
01:57:12.990 --> 01:57:14.532
And we're always a decade behind, aren't we?
1569
01:57:14.552 --> 01:57:17.915
We're a decade behind because no one puts the investment in dentistry before hospitals, right?
1570
01:57:17.935 --> 01:57:20.677
Because it's a bigger market to go for in terms of billions more than what we do.
1571
01:57:21.197 --> 01:57:24.300
So yes, I think definitely people will be used to it, will be ready for it.
1572
01:57:24.320 --> 01:57:26.142
And also it's not that bad.
1573
01:57:26.182 --> 01:57:28.584
Like if I'm sitting there, so the way it works is your head's like,
1574
01:57:29.024 --> 01:57:55.720
like kind of in a bit of a kind of a brace thing and your mouth's open with like a same thing we do objure on that right yeah what's interesting that and dentists doing the drilling right it's just a robot's hand rather than your hand so as long as dentists are there watching it and can stop it at any point and it's quite slow and it's not kind of like fast movements it's way more efficient right like imagine how long it takes us to do a prep right you've got to put attempts in you've got to prep through it do your apr technique it takes ages this is doing it in 40 minutes 10 preps
1575
01:57:56.639 --> 01:58:22.085
right and it's way more accurate than what we can do right so it's a no-brainer for a patient if I was told be told rather than two hours for a guy doing for the first time doing his preps or a robot doing it 40 minutes more accurately what would you choose and the price point would be lower because I'm not paying so much money anymore so that's gonna be quite that's what I've always said I mean I've always said at the end of the day when when we can say it's cheaper safer more predictable then people will get over the fact that it's a robot doing it not a human yeah exactly
1576
01:58:26.886 --> 01:58:51.662
that's what's blown my mind um but i mean we all know it's it's the way that the future's going right so yeah you may as well be the early adopter i mean i'm i'm just jealous i haven't got my order in already i'm gonna have to yeah i mean i think have a chat with megan yeah the other thing is going to be um you know teeth being regrown as well right there's been lots of studies now that working in mainly in asia but lots of studies now showing that you can regrow teeth from scratch you know and i think
1577
01:58:52.583 --> 01:58:54.786
then you think, okay, well, who cares about dentistry more, right?
1578
01:58:54.846 --> 01:58:58.790
Like, you just be cosmetic only, because if we lose a tooth, no one cares, you just regrow it again, right?
1579
01:58:58.910 --> 01:59:00.912
Or implants have gone completely, dentists have gone completely.
1580
01:59:01.293 --> 01:59:04.176
So what's the treatment flow for a regrowth of a tooth then?
1581
01:59:04.196 --> 01:59:05.617
We've lost one.
1582
01:59:06.138 --> 01:59:08.721
We spend now some bloods or something, I take it.
1583
01:59:08.881 --> 01:59:10.462
Yeah, I don't actually know where they get it from.
1584
01:59:10.502 --> 01:59:13.303
I think it must be some sort of blood or some of that.
1585
01:59:13.323 --> 01:59:19.866
Yeah, and then I think you can basically create the lattice of it outside the mouth or maybe in the mouth.
1586
01:59:19.906 --> 01:59:21.586
And then it just kind of regrows around the lattice.
1587
01:59:22.047 --> 01:59:23.547
And it just creates a whole tooth from scratch.
1588
01:59:25.276 --> 01:59:47.478
imagine if you can regrow two for it i'm not saying this gonna happen anytime in our next five years maybe the next 10 years probably but they're doing it already in labs it's working so it's not far from humans you know and i think they've done it with i think like animals now that it's actually working within animals it's not far from humans yeah so i think that will be very interesting because then that will change the whole game completely again from doing restorative work and fixing teeth to actually just
1589
01:59:48.190 --> 01:59:49.191
you know, growing them again, right?
1590
01:59:49.751 --> 01:59:54.274
So then it'd be all cosmetic only because you want to make them look nice, but actually teeth would be regrowing.
1591
01:59:54.294 --> 01:59:55.194
So you don't want to lose them anymore.
1592
01:59:57.436 --> 01:59:57.656
Yeah.
1593
01:59:58.036 --> 01:59:58.376
It's crazy.
1594
01:59:58.396 --> 01:59:59.457
It's like how much is going to change?
1595
01:59:59.477 --> 02:00:08.222
Like we're going from preventative dentistry, like, you know, when we graduated to now having robots doing it and having regrowing teeth for the next, it's like our life's going to just see a huge different shift within every 10 years.
1596
02:00:08.662 --> 02:00:08.882
Yeah.
1597
02:00:09.083 --> 02:00:11.184
Well, this is why I was, I was saying to, um,
1598
02:00:12.797 --> 02:00:14.058
We had Samir Patel on earlier.
1599
02:00:14.098 --> 02:00:18.221
I was talking to him about parenthood and what skills you need to be teaching your kids.
1600
02:00:19.202 --> 02:00:32.352
And I just think they have to be... You almost need to put them into an environment where everything changes 24-7 to get them used to this ability to adapt to new environments and new...
1601
02:00:33.333 --> 02:00:58.137
like how people in our industry can still be dogmatic about anything yeah with the speed of change that's happening right now it's like you're just going to get left behind like you have to every new thing that comes in you need to be seeing it analyzing it like seeing proof of concepts and then looking to implement it as soon as safely possible yeah um because otherwise it's literally it's going to be old news before you're ready for it
1602
02:00:58.477 --> 02:01:05.242
I think that's one of our super strengths as a group because we've got all our partners that are young, hungry, enthusiastic and really clinically driven.
1603
02:01:05.763 --> 02:01:07.224
They all just take on this technology like tomorrow.
1604
02:01:07.604 --> 02:01:11.847
So when we mentioned about Linda AI or VoiceDak, it's like 24 hours, everyone goes, yeah, I want to do it.
1605
02:01:11.907 --> 02:01:16.791
Like, it's not like, you know, potentially a big group with dentistry and the retirement end of the career going like...
1606
02:01:17.451 --> 02:01:19.793
oh, I don't trust that, I don't want to touch that, and I don't want to do anything.
1607
02:01:19.833 --> 02:01:22.756
It's like a five-year implementation process, right, where we can move super quickly.
1608
02:01:23.376 --> 02:01:27.720
And I think that puts us in a really good stead with the technology coming out, because A, the suppliers know that.
1609
02:01:28.120 --> 02:01:29.201
Yes, they might talk to us.
1610
02:01:29.241 --> 02:01:36.467
We're not the biggest group in the country, but we'll roll it out within a six-month period fully and use it, versus a big group that might take five years to implement, right?
1611
02:01:36.507 --> 02:01:38.569
So you're a great proof of concept for them.
1612
02:01:38.589 --> 02:01:38.869
Yeah, yeah.
1613
02:01:38.889 --> 02:01:41.892
Because you can be like a testing bed for new innovation, in essence.
1614
02:01:42.072 --> 02:01:48.893
Yeah, and also they know that we get stuff done because our model allows it in terms of we don't have to...
1615
02:01:48.933 --> 02:01:49.694
Governance from top down.
1616
02:01:49.894 --> 02:02:00.796
Yeah, it's like a top down, four different layers of... Like if you went to one of the biggest groups in the country and you tried doing it, it would take them so long just to do a basic trial, let alone figure out what's next and how to roll it out afterwards and get everyone on board of it.
1617
02:02:01.136 --> 02:02:03.076
And if no one always uses it, then there's no point investing in it, right?
1618
02:02:03.156 --> 02:02:03.877
From a group point of view.
1619
02:02:03.937 --> 02:02:05.637
So... Have you got Linda set up?
1620
02:02:06.437 --> 02:02:10.138
It's literally in five sites next week and then there'll be all the other sites in the next few months, yeah.
1621
02:02:10.838 --> 02:02:34.018
you've done the trial already yeah yeah and what well proven out yeah yeah it's good um we were pleasantly surprised with patient feedback because one of our big things was like patient's gonna hate this i'm talking to like a robot how are you using it just for out of hours currently out of hours and overflow um but we'll be doing with appointment reminders um reactivation reactivations about some of the more mundane tasks first and then eventually you know if it
1622
02:02:36.040 --> 02:02:57.316
putting it as part of the first point of call if after three rings human can't pick it up go straight to them afterwards so yeah we're looking at lots of different options there but um even with like new campaigns get new patients go straight to linda i books indirectly rather than having to go through like you know you know send the lead over to a crm wait for something afterwards yeah it's immediate um i think the
1623
02:02:58.137 --> 02:03:00.200
Like we as a group miss thepes in my calls, right?
1624
02:03:00.240 --> 02:03:01.822
It's like a known factor.
1625
02:03:01.842 --> 02:03:03.124
Most groups miss thepes in their calls.
1626
02:03:03.144 --> 02:03:04.145
I think probably practices do as well.
1627
02:03:04.165 --> 02:03:05.808
Of course, that makes you aware of that very quickly.
1628
02:03:05.828 --> 02:03:07.850
We see that and we're like, okay, great.
1629
02:03:07.950 --> 02:03:13.037
I've got that many missed calls, but I don't want to hire two more FTEs, receptors in that practice because it doesn't make it more efficient.
1630
02:03:13.598 --> 02:03:14.640
So actually having that...
1631
02:03:15.000 --> 02:03:31.375
kind of without having to have a central call centre obviously having that local reception team that's doing really well and talking to patients doing what they do best which is kind of building a relationship with patients having a face-to-face time with them listening to them and stuff like that they can do that and the missed calls go to the Linda AI then it's a win-win and the missed calls then can be picked up by Linda AI rather than having to wait to
1632
02:03:32.016 --> 02:03:53.943
get a two-hour callback afterwards right so we want to include patient service customer service as well as keeping that local feel still and i think that's a good kind of compromise there which is working nicely i think that's that's the key balance right it's the it's the high human touch and the high technological adoption and the combination of those two together yeah is where you've got the real sweet spot yeah so that's my big focus at the moment
1633
02:03:54.223 --> 02:03:55.664
Yeah, really excited about that.
1634
02:03:55.904 --> 02:04:05.529
But I said before, because of that, and plus the convening check-ins, like we just want to, because if you look at a receptionist's job, probably over half of it is to take your phone calls.
1635
02:04:05.990 --> 02:04:10.112
20% of his admin, it's just kind of be done, could be done anywhere really, like, you know, cashing up on other stuff.
1636
02:04:10.532 --> 02:04:14.134
And then 20% of the patients, we can move it 20% to 100% of the patients.
1637
02:04:14.455 --> 02:04:16.576
You're like, wow, you've actually got a much better service now.
1638
02:04:16.596 --> 02:04:23.019
And you're not, you're like trying to train them over and over saying, why don't stand up and give them a big smile and greet them nicely because they're busy, right?
1639
02:04:23.179 --> 02:04:24.080
Now they go, well, all I do
1640
02:04:24.080 --> 02:04:39.977
is talk to patients that's literally your job that's all you do now ask them about the whole thing yeah that's all you do and actually that in itself will have better patient retention better customer service like all the things that you want them to be doing will be done really well and the stuff that shouldn't be done by them it could be done by some you know AI or another software which is great
1641
02:04:40.262 --> 02:04:40.642
Absolutely.
1642
02:04:40.662 --> 02:04:45.985
And I think that's, I mean, again, I think me and you are probably very similar in our optimism towards the development of technology.
1643
02:04:46.045 --> 02:04:52.728
But I do really hope, obviously, many people that work in our industry may hear what you've just said and be really worried about it.
1644
02:04:52.748 --> 02:04:54.169
They get fired tomorrow.
1645
02:04:54.209 --> 02:04:54.849
Yeah, yeah.
1646
02:04:55.449 --> 02:04:56.490
Your dentist especially.
1647
02:04:57.210 --> 02:04:58.231
But I think actually...
1648
02:04:59.411 --> 02:05:03.473
I really do hope that technology gives us the opportunity to actually live more human lives.
1649
02:05:04.154 --> 02:05:11.477
And like no one takes great joy in sitting on a computer, like managing, moving appointments around and that sort of thing.
1650
02:05:11.517 --> 02:05:17.800
Like the real joy of being a human is interpersonal connection and like building relationships with people.
1651
02:05:17.840 --> 02:05:20.322
I think AI is never going to replace that part.
1652
02:05:20.462 --> 02:05:22.643
And especially in our profession where we're very...
1653
02:05:23.303 --> 02:05:27.969
We're in a very personal space with our patients.
1654
02:05:28.990 --> 02:05:30.392
They're oftentimes very anxious.
1655
02:05:31.333 --> 02:05:34.797
It's such an important place to have a close interpersonal relationship.
1656
02:05:34.837 --> 02:05:37.941
And so I think we should be excited about it.
1657
02:05:38.322 --> 02:05:52.446
Yeah, I would say that, maybe retracting a bit about the dentist being salaried, is that the most important, I think, area that will still be probably the biggest differentiator between practice A and B now will be your brand and marketing and patient journey.
1658
02:05:52.466 --> 02:05:55.487
Those are the three things that you can ever replace with AI or with anything.
1659
02:05:56.067 --> 02:06:03.129
So what I mean by that is dentists going through the treatment plan of the patient, explaining to them what the benefits are, giving them comfort, anxiety, and then going through what their options are.
1660
02:06:03.550 --> 02:06:05.890
That will still be done by a human, by a dentist.
1661
02:06:05.930 --> 02:06:06.811
That's what they need to be done.
1662
02:06:06.831 --> 02:06:07.851
That's what they should be focusing on.
1663
02:06:08.491 --> 02:06:25.205
So I think if I was dentist now and I'm graduating, I'll be looking at how do I build a brand if I'm doing it on my own as an associate, like same as what you did, you know, on your Instagram account many years ago, how do I really master ethical communication and that patient journey, that kind of, you know, empathy.
1664
02:06:26.006 --> 02:06:34.453
And thirdly, how do I master knowing about the format of dentistry treatment planning side of things so I can actually add some value to,
1665
02:06:35.137 --> 02:06:38.618
to those AI general management plans and say, that's actually not what I would do, so what I would do differently, right?
1666
02:06:39.119 --> 02:06:46.682
So it's not doing as much, it's more thinking, using your brain and your profession as a dentist to be that person, because I compare it to consultants, right?
1667
02:06:46.722 --> 02:06:54.985
You go get your knee surgery or hip surgery, and there's difference between consultants who are great, you could just communicate so well, you feel at ease, and you're like, yeah, he's got the guy to go to.
1668
02:06:55.005 --> 02:07:00.487
A lot of the ones you just rush it and go, oh yeah, just, you know, we'll do it next week, it's gonna be two hour procedure, kind of sign a piece of paper.
1669
02:07:01.007 --> 02:07:19.322
right luckily it's all nhs or it's private and you're not paying for out pocket because there's another insurance for nhs right but in our in our industry you have to pay out pocket for it that's the biggest benefit of a dentist so if you can get your marketing you know for the practice or the dentist really good and you can actually work out what is those conversions how am i performing well because the one thing that ai can't do is get bums on seats
1670
02:07:19.822 --> 02:07:26.986
For now, I haven't seen anything that goes, oh, I'm gonna go out there, get you some new patients, convert them really well and bring them in the chair perfectly, right?
1671
02:07:27.166 --> 02:07:38.513
That'll probably come in a few years time, but for now, that's still like a really good aspect of that treatment coordinator or the person at the desk doing those new patient calls and converting them well in terms of tracking the data from the dentists.
1672
02:07:38.653 --> 02:07:45.577
And actually that comes down to communication, which I think is the one thing that patients want, they'll be reassured and talk to a human dentist first, then the treatment with a robot afterwards.
1673
02:07:46.017 --> 02:07:46.918
So it's a combination of both.
1674
02:07:47.158 --> 02:07:49.840
It's storytelling and communication from start to finish.
1675
02:07:49.880 --> 02:07:55.785
Basically, it's how well can you communicate online to get to let someone know about the services that you provide.
1676
02:07:56.325 --> 02:08:02.210
And it's then how well can you storytell and communicate in terms of the treatment plan for the patient.
1677
02:08:02.590 --> 02:08:05.853
And then how can you make them feel comfortable all the way through the remaining part of the treatment?
1678
02:08:06.033 --> 02:08:06.213
Yeah.
1679
02:08:06.573 --> 02:08:13.395
I'm saying if you've got a robot there and you don't give me the information about that robot that it's like safer, faster, cheaper.
1680
02:08:13.415 --> 02:08:15.436
Yeah, I'm going to be like, what the hell are you talking about?
1681
02:08:15.456 --> 02:08:16.597
You're not bringing that thing in my mouth.
1682
02:08:16.857 --> 02:08:17.717
100 percent.
1683
02:08:17.997 --> 02:08:20.098
So those skills will be ever been.
1684
02:08:20.118 --> 02:08:23.839
Do you remember when we first started back in the day, right?
1685
02:08:24.319 --> 02:08:25.780
It was like, oh, you can make the crown here and there.
1686
02:08:25.800 --> 02:08:25.960
What?
1687
02:08:26.060 --> 02:08:26.700
I've never heard that before.
1688
02:08:26.860 --> 02:08:27.861
It's a whole new thing, right?
1689
02:08:27.881 --> 02:08:28.642
It's a mindset shift.
1690
02:08:28.662 --> 02:08:34.488
When you explain to them that, I can do it the same day for you and it's going to take me 20 minutes to do it or whatever it may be in terms of making it and fitting it.
1691
02:08:34.708 --> 02:08:35.569
There's two appointments.
1692
02:08:35.629 --> 02:08:36.330
They go, oh, it's great.
1693
02:08:36.370 --> 02:08:37.371
Yeah, right?
1694
02:08:37.391 --> 02:08:38.031
So it's like that.
1695
02:08:38.071 --> 02:08:41.795
It's like that kind of, this is the new generation of that now, obviously robots, but it's coming.
1696
02:08:41.955 --> 02:08:44.518
And it's, I think, communication and explaining it is completely right.
1697
02:08:44.538 --> 02:08:45.559
It's the most important part of it.
1698
02:08:45.945 --> 02:08:46.865
Yeah, absolutely.
1699
02:08:47.726 --> 02:08:47.886
Right.
1700
02:08:47.906 --> 02:08:52.727
Well, we've been going for a good couple of hours now, so I think we probably need to wrap it up soon.
1701
02:08:53.567 --> 02:08:58.428
I'd like to finish with your definition of success.
1702
02:08:59.349 --> 02:09:03.890
What do you view to be how you define success?
1703
02:09:06.313 --> 02:09:07.414
I think it's different for everyone.
1704
02:09:07.874 --> 02:09:08.275
For you.
1705
02:09:08.515 --> 02:09:15.760
For me personally, for now, at this moment in time, I think SES would be building a company that lasts.
1706
02:09:16.300 --> 02:09:17.781
So like forever.
1707
02:09:18.022 --> 02:09:21.424
Like, you know, my children will grow up and say, oh, Denner Beauty Partners are still around.
1708
02:09:21.444 --> 02:09:22.005
It's still growing.
1709
02:09:22.025 --> 02:09:23.766
It's still doing really well.
1710
02:09:24.226 --> 02:09:27.008
And secondly to that, it's like a legacy, I guess.
1711
02:09:27.048 --> 02:09:29.790
And the second thing is, you know, seeing our partners do well.
1712
02:09:29.950 --> 02:09:31.812
Whether it be clinically, whether it be, you know,
1713
02:09:32.532 --> 02:09:44.625
making money from their own outs or from the model or just having the purpose of having their own practice and being their owner and you know having that autonomy that they wanted when they first run us in the first place um so that's kind of yeah i think what i'd say that's what it looked like for me
1714
02:09:45.875 --> 02:09:49.057
And then the follow-up question is, what would you do if you did sell?
1715
02:09:50.718 --> 02:09:51.538
Do you be bored?
1716
02:09:51.938 --> 02:09:53.219
Yeah, no, I mean, I wouldn't.
1717
02:09:53.359 --> 02:09:58.221
So in our model, especially with PE world, you don't just leave for yourself.
1718
02:09:58.301 --> 02:09:59.882
Like you get rolled over for another five years again.
1719
02:10:01.063 --> 02:10:02.604
So there isn't any...
1720
02:10:03.504 --> 02:10:23.446
near plans of of leaving fully that makes sense so an exit in our in our world is you sell half fits another pe then you go all over half it again and then you kind of go for another five years again because they're investing in the team and and me you know in terms of growing the business again so unless we sell to a group which is very unlikely because of our size now you know it's going to be another pe and you can
1721
02:10:24.445 --> 02:10:27.486
they're literally investing in you to go for another five more years after that or however long.
1722
02:10:27.526 --> 02:10:29.167
So yeah, I'm not going to leave fully.
1723
02:10:29.387 --> 02:10:31.408
And to be honest, as you said before, I enjoy it now.
1724
02:10:31.468 --> 02:10:34.869
It's not like it was six years ago when I was running around.
1725
02:10:35.369 --> 02:10:37.570
I do everything myself and it's a lot better now.
1726
02:10:37.630 --> 02:10:39.971
And we've got a great team and great partners.
1727
02:10:40.291 --> 02:10:45.353
The good thing about our model is that each partner can do one practice, can do two or three or four practices.
1728
02:10:45.973 --> 02:11:02.570
and if you've got 45 partners now if you've all got one each or two each maximum you get to 200 practices easily without doing anything different like we've got the same all of our friends are there and they're all good guys who want to keep growing and they can see the benefits of it so as long as that keeps going to at least 200 practices I don't think we're going to go anywhere anytime soon so yeah
1729
02:11:03.111 --> 02:11:06.499
I was, I'll be a bit bored of wise to sit around and do nothing at home, Mike, because the kids are at school now.
1730
02:11:06.519 --> 02:11:07.301
I feel like you might be, yeah.
1731
02:11:07.321 --> 02:11:07.843
Yeah, for sure.
1732
02:11:08.264 --> 02:11:08.584
Good man.
1733
02:11:08.604 --> 02:11:09.186
Well, thanks for that.
1734
02:11:09.206 --> 02:11:10.509
It was a really interesting conversation.
1735
02:11:10.650 --> 02:11:13.577
And yeah, I look forward to seeing the growth over the next couple of years.
1736
02:11:13.918 --> 02:11:14.279
Thanks, man.
1737
02:11:14.379 --> 02:11:15.121
And the robot army.
1738
02:11:15.462 --> 02:11:16.725
Yeah, yeah.
1739
02:11:16.765 --> 02:11:16.966
Cheers.