Dentology Podcast with Bilal Ahmed

Transcript – Dentology Podcast with Bilal Ahmed

Episode Release Date – Monday 17 March 2025

Andy & Chris (00:01.482)
7 o’clock Monday morning, it can only mean one thing. It can only mean the old Dentology podcast. It is, it is. We’re back, we’re back. And we’re breaking new ground today, I feel. I think we are. I don’t think we’ve ever had one of these people. No, no, which is intriguing and interesting. I wonder why. Well, we’ve got to nearly a hundred and…

90 episodes and one of these creatures, one of these individuals, one of these people has never come across our thing. it’s a really, really important part of the world of dentistry. is. And before we introduce our guest, actually fundamentally goes back to school, doesn’t it? School. People aren’t taught about money and tax and budgeting and the importance of getting these things right.

can set you up for a much less stressful life. definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely. So without further ado, we should introduce our guest and people may be wondering who we have. Who we’ve It’s quite obvious when we explain who he is. We’ve got Bilal Ahmed joining us and Bilal is the chief accountant at Hill Hill Green Accountancy. And there’s a story behind the name, which I’m looking forward to hearing as well. Welcome Bilal, how are you? Yeah, Flip, an accountant.

Bilal (01:15.086)
Morning Chris, how are you doing?

Andy & Chris (01:17.634)
Very good indeed, very good indeed. No pressure for him really, is it? No, that was quite a build up, it? Yeah, a build up to potentially how crap he could read. I’m joking, Billan, I’m joking. So the good thing is we know that Billan is going to blow our socks off. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, no. Before we get to the numbers and the accountancy and the stuff that people should take really seriously and often neglect, because there’s no doubt there’s a big ostrich syndrome.

Bilal (01:32.866)
No pressure then, no pressure at all.

Andy & Chris (01:46.795)
when it comes to dealing with money stuff. And we’ll dig into that. But before we get to that, unfortunately, you fall into a category which isn’t the most exciting, unfortunately. However, he is quite cool looking account. I will say for those of you who regrettably aren’t seeing him on YouTube, he’s probably one of the coolest looking accountants I’ve seen. And also, if anybody isn’t familiar with Bill Arlong on social media,

Bilal (02:09.07)
I’ll take it that.

Andy & Chris (02:16.894)
give him a follow for sure, because the way you explain things is very grassroots. It’s really easy to understand. You do it in really engaging, interesting, fun way. So that puts you into a very small category because most accountants, the thought of just sliding the knot down on their tie is felt as quite rascal. So what you’re doing is very much out there. before… Do you we’ll get lots of accountant complaints now? Or people saying…

I want to come on your podcast. Yeah, but what’s that thing if you’re not upsetting somebody and then you’re probably not doing it right? It’s kind of one of those. Or maybe what’s going to happen is that people are going to challenge their own accountant. Hey, be more interesting. But also I think when you, so we host a podcast and primarily a podcast is here for entertainment purposes. Yeah. People aren’t going to be listening to this to add a piece to their dissertation. They’re listening for entertainment and information. So we need to find people who, who

kind of tick that box. Because when we started out on this and we said, are we doing and why are we going to do it? We said, we’d like to hear people’s life stories and we’ll get to that with you in a second. We’d like to share business tips. Undoubtedly, they’re going to flow just in a conversation. But we said we wanted it to be fun. We want people to tune in for 45 minutes and go away from it having had a good experience and enjoyable experience. A lot of people listen down there as they’re driving to work. We don’t want them driving themselves off the road. Exactly.

So with you Bilal, can we get back to beginning? Can we go for a trip down memory lane? And can you give us a sense of what childhood was like where you were brought up? You got siblings, know, were you riding around on your bike playing tennis? What did it look like for you? At the same time.

Bilal (03:54.04)
So…

Yeah, probably, yeah. Both my parents are from Pakistan, so they came over here, so my dad came over here when he was four. Mum came over when I married my dad at 18. There’s five of us, so I’ve got five siblings. I’ve got three children. I’ve got five nieces and nephews, who I absolutely adore. But early life for us is that dad owned the butchers, and I grew up in that environment, so I grew up around working, grew up around bill payments, wages, costing. We’ve got competitors to deal with.

from up and the road, we’ve to get deliveries out. The difference between wholesale and retail. So I was immersed in that from a super early age and really had no choice. But it’s probably looking back and thinking, dad did us a credit there because if it wasn’t that, we probably would have ended up in much murkier territories because grew up in small Heath in Birmingham, which is where part of the name comes from. the name Heath Harkens back to where I grew up. So small Heath, Spark Hill, Acrox Green, so impoverished, immigrant areas.

Andy & Chris (04:46.065)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (04:49.898)
about,

Bilal (04:56.398)
of Birmingham where the opportunities are scarce, to say the least. And I don’t have a thick Bromley accent. I think it’ll slip out in parts, but I’m proud of it. So I don’t actively try and hide it, but it slips out every now and then depending on how irate you get me. So school was school. One of the funniest things about school was I was taught the wrong math.

Andy & Chris (05:05.962)
There’s a hint of it there you can tell. There is a hint.

Andy & Chris (05:15.951)
Hahaha!

Bilal (05:26.1)
syllabus for the first year of GCSE. So yeah, so was only until we got three quarters through that year 10 where the teacher they had was teaching us the wrong syllabus so we couldn’t be entered into the higher, so we had to get entered into intermediate math. So the highest grade that could have possibly achieved was a C. There was no other option because they didn’t give us a chance to say, well, could you learn the syllabus? So we went on to college.

Andy & Chris (05:28.678)
Excellent. wow.

Andy & Chris (05:42.185)
on.

Andy & Chris (05:49.896)
At this point, were you seeing that maths-based further education was on the cards for you?

Bilal (05:55.971)
I actually want to do psychology. like people, like relationships, I like understanding things. I was always good at math, but I think you could be a really good mathematician, you could be really good accountant, but if you can’t explain anything you know, then you’re really no good at anything you’re doing. I think that’s where the challenge is. So when we recruit a team of accountants and some of them have awesome skill sets and some of them we really don’t want talking to clients, but they’re really good at what they do. So the psychology thing was a bit that I was actually interested in. So I studied psychology and sociology.

Andy & Chris (06:09.332)
Yeah, so true.

Bilal (06:25.904)
at college. I think had I gone on to further education then would have been on the path to become a clinical psychologist. That’s what I wanted to do. Funny enough, I don’t think I can suffer fools very well. So it’s probably a blessing in disguise. I shouldn’t say suffer fools in that sense, but I don’t think I’ve got that level of patience to help and support. So it’s probably a blessing.

Andy & Chris (06:46.634)
about you.

I think you’re right though, think, regardless of what you do, if you’re able to understand people and read people and communicate in a language that resonates with your audience, you’re halfway there. irrespective of what you The technical bit, kind of most people can learn the technical bit. Well, it’s very hard to learn how to be a good communicator and how to be empathetic and all the things that kind of take you forward. definitely. And I think the way that you present yourself in terms of sharing,

Bilal (07:04.782)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (07:17.452)
content which is quite technical but dumbed down in a way that most people that listen to it go I’ll get that that makes sense is pretty cool so that makes sense that fits with your interest in that area. to communicate that you have.

Bilal (07:29.966)
So.

So I was always really good at the math. I was good at business and I ran a lot of the stuff in the background for my dad when we were doing the stuff at the shop. So making sure invoicing went out in time. Started messing about with things like, so if you get three deliveries of chicken in on let’s say a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Thursday for instance, prices fluctuate depending on wider factors. So if this one came in at this price, this one came at this price, this one came at this price, what are you actually charging out at? So you can do something called Avco. So average pricing is you take the entire price,

at the average, you work at your margin and charge your price. You could do first in, first out. That is, I have to sell the stuff that came in on Monday because by Thursday it’s gonna go off. So I’ll charge my pricing based on first in, first out. Or you can click the other way around and do it last in, first out, that kind of thing. But you wouldn’t really do that with Poshable Items. But you can go to all of this stuff. I did business at A level, so I picked up lot of this when I was doing my A level as well.

Andy & Chris (08:17.374)
Bye.

Andy & Chris (08:24.05)
Right, okay.

Bilal (08:25.934)
So, he’s introducing those sorts of things in a market segment where dad really did everything on instinct. This is what I think is going to happen. This is what I think the pricing should be as opposed to a methodical, this is the budget. This one needs to go out, this will happen. And he did really well from it, but unfortunately…

Andy & Chris (08:38.608)
Mm. Mm.

But isn’t that fascinating in itself that now we’ve got spreadsheets and algorithms and programs to help us, whereas your dad just had this instinct of what the pricing should be and when and where it should be sold. That’s a lot of dentists though, isn’t it? Yeah.

Bilal (08:59.674)
Back of an envelope, back of an envelope. That would go in the file. I’d pick that up and I’d try and work out what he did. So that’s what dad would do with that. he got, no, exactly. And he got quite sick. So dad was super physical. He was his absolute superhero. It’s hard to say that I get emotional. But he broke his back and it turned everything around. Jesus, I didn’t think I’d get emotional doing this.

Andy & Chris (09:05.746)
Yeah. There’s no substitute for experience, is there?

Andy & Chris (09:19.658)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (09:27.102)
Yeah.

Bilal (09:29.784)
But it turned everything around and that led me to a point at college that said I had to make a decision. So my brother was at university and obviously there’s cost associated so you’ve got to support your kids through university and everything like that. So Dad would see how hard things were happening at the time so I had to make a really conscious decision that said…

Andy & Chris (09:40.81)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bilal (09:46.796)
can we as a family afford for me to go to university? And the answer was no. So that didn’t happen. So I started working. So I did a number of different jobs. I started off in finance. I knew I liked numbers. I was good with numbers. Numbers made sense. I liked the logical approach to numbers, which is there’s a definitive answer. You’re given a scenario, you follow a process, and it turns out a number. And that’s what I really like about math. That’s what I like about accounting. And I love all of that bit.

Andy & Chris (09:49.94)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (10:03.443)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (10:09.64)
Yup. Yup. Yup.

Bilal (10:13.774)
bit that I love more is finding out the human element of all of that, but I’ll come onto that in sec. So I did a couple of jobs. I was a mortgage advisor and I think I did like pensions and investments and all that kind. I got qualified at 18 to do all that kind of stuff. Hated every second of it. Hated every second of locking people into mortgages longer than I’d been alive. So I was 18 at the time, putting people into 25, 35, 30 year mortgages. When I was doing it, I think a good rate, the best rate was Halifax at like 4.2%, which is ironic now because things have gone…

Andy & Chris (10:24.39)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (10:42.762)
Yeah

Bilal (10:43.81)
the other way around, but house prices have tripled, so it’s all relative.

Andy & Chris (10:47.242)
Hmm.

Bilal (10:48.59)
hated that, started working in telecoms, I worked in telecoms, it’s all on my LinkedIn, but I was working in telecoms and I was doing B2B business deals. So looking out for a set of accounts for Orange, which is E at the time, looking out for clients in London, and when I joined, I was basically given a base of about, I think it’s about 30 or 40 clients, I can’t remember how many it is at the moment in time, but the base I was told they’re all leaving. They said they’re leaving, just help them transition. So it was a sales role, it was an account management role, so the sales element was,

less pushy, more supportive. So I started just talking to them. You know, what are you upset about? Why are you looking to leave? And the basic premise all came down to the same thing, is we keep getting a different account manager. No one really knows our business, and I feel as though I’m paying too much.

Andy & Chris (11:20.104)
Yup.

Bilal (11:35.118)
I like, well if I could fix those things, would you still leave? No, because it’s a ball ache. I fine. So now I understand that the cost of changing is actually more painful to you than sticking around, but if I can fix these things then we’re all happy, right? Yes. So I just set about doing that. I was working in Birmingham at the time, heading down to London and meeting with these clients and just talking to them. And telecoms is just…

I it’s not big part of their business. And it might seem super important to me at the time, because this is my job, but to them it’s a small part that doesn’t need to have any inconvenience attached to it. So once we bottled all those out, I think I managed to retain about 90 % of them. And then just kept on doing that, kept on that, kept on doing that. And then we were packaging commercial. Now this is all pre-iPhone, so the hot thing at the was BlackBerry.

Andy & Chris (12:06.452)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (12:10.239)
Wow.

Andy & Chris (12:18.25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I remember the Blackberry when they got that email integration that was like, whoa Yeah

Bilal (12:24.718)
It’s game changer. So I’ve got a cool story with that. So what we started doing was commercial deals. So I remember packaging a deal for about a hundred thousand pounds at the time. And I pushed the boundaries of what I could do really in terms of commerciality. And because we had a system that we’d use, if it goes green, you could present it to the client. They’ll sign off and it doesn’t have to go anywhere. It’s already been briefed. This was Amber Red. And I didn’t know why.

Andy & Chris (12:45.299)
Mm-hmm.

Bilal (12:50.542)
So it got sent to commercial finance. Commercial finance then came back and said no. I said, well, why is it a no? And then they started telling me that you wouldn’t understand. I was like, well, I don’t like that as an answer. So you’ve now got to tell me why. So I kept sort of badgering them until they told me. So I was then speaking to the head of commercial finance at Orange Business Services at the time.

Andy & Chris (13:00.006)
Hahaha.

Bilal (13:11.854)
And he was telling me why. So we were talking about length of contracts, expected spend, average spend, what the client historically had spent. This is how we could then make that deal commercial. And I thought, commercially viable. So I well, I now know that answer.

So now I can work to tweak these parameters to make it commercially viable. And I did, I back and did that. Dale got signed off, but then I got to see behind the curtain and I really liked what was behind the curtain. I liked that that side of it. I liked understanding the commerciality. I liked understanding the numbers. So I was speaking to him at the time and said, what do I need to do to be in this position? He said, well, you need to go get an accountant qualification. You to go do these things. need do blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, fine, I’ll go do that. So I’m quite headstrong in that sense in that if there’s a path.

Andy & Chris (13:28.426)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (13:44.115)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (13:51.274)
Were you through this period, were you also supporting the family business because of your dad’s situation?

Bilal (13:57.102)
Business had closed, I was supporting family. early 20s, paying mortgage bills, things like that. So quite a lot of responsibility, but it wasn’t just on mine. So it my brother, was dad still doing what he could, it was me doing what I could. The whole family put it together, so it’s not a woe is me type story. I definitely don’t look back at it and think I was hard done by in any way, shape, or form, because I think that’s where a solid bit of work ethic came from, and understanding the cause of it.

Andy & Chris (14:03.978)
Yeah, yeah, guess there’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.

Andy & Chris (14:12.254)
the whole family pulled together.

Andy & Chris (14:24.458)
But that hard done by thing is weird, isn’t it? Because I think we just live our own lives. We only know what we know. It’s like, well, that’s my upbringing, but I’ve no idea what yours is like. I’ve no idea what yours I’ve just got my own experience and that was just your experience. And that would have informed lots of the traits that you’ve got today and the things that are important to you today as a result of that.

Bilal (14:46.904)
think the biggest thing that it taught me was there’s no safety net. You are the master of your own destiny that says you could sit on your hands and lament and hope for better or you can go out and try and do better. And it’s a compound effect of effort that says if you look at climbing Mount Everest and you think, geez, I’m never gonna get up there, but if you just think, well, what do I need to do to climb Mount Everest? Well, I need to get myself in shape first. Well, so I’ll go do that. I need some climbing gear. So then I need some climbing experience. Well, I’ll go do Ben Nevis, Mount Snowden. I’ll go through three peaks in the

Andy & Chris (14:51.914)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (14:58.202)
Mm. Mm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (15:15.806)
Yeah.

Bilal (15:16.848)
Well, I’ve done them, so I’ll do something else. I want to get halfway up, so I’ll go halfway up first and see how that feels. then I’ll go up there. But if you take everything in small steps, try to break it down into a process, then you’re just looking at the next thing. And they say, well, if I just do that bit, then that bit. But then you’ve got the compound effect of growth then, haven’t you? That says, by at least trying it, you’ve got off the sofa. And if you didn’t climb Everest, you’re still way further along than you would have been.

Andy & Chris (15:34.547)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (15:39.412)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (15:43.825)
yeah.

Bilal (15:44.494)
I think that’s my approach to all of this is, so I was told this is what I need to do to go become an accountant, so that’s what I did. I went and studied privately to go become an accountant, managed to get onto a training contract with Volance4U at the time. Because I had telecoms experience, they were only taken on grads at the time. I wasn’t a grad, but the accounting qualifications is classes post-qual, so it’s equivalent to a master’s level. So they attribute what I had done, the fact that I had done it off my own back.

Andy & Chris (16:06.876)
Okay.

Bilal (16:11.582)
and my telecom experience got into a grad scheme, which was really cool. So I got into a grad scheme at Phones for You, all that phone hand jazz. And then spent all the time in the telecoms bit, so got to see what retail was doing, what impact was happening at site level to them, at central level to site level.

Andy & Chris (16:11.69)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (16:16.935)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (16:29.578)
Mmm.

Bilal (16:31.086)
stores across the country. And again, what makes a commercially viable? What gives us competitive advantage? What can we do better than our competitors can? It’s not just looking at it from a numbers perspective, it’s then looking at the human element behind it, which is, discounting, if phones for you are famous for discounting, you’d walk out with bags and stuff. But if your nearest competitors are the telecoms providers, it’s Fold phone, O2 and Orange.

Andy & Chris (16:46.995)
Yep.

Bilal (16:54.06)
and they can’t offer what you can, why are you throwing out the baby with a bathwater? Why are you giving everything out the door when you don’t have to? So it’s then working out, well, at what point does it become commercially viable? Where’s the tipping point? And then you give people some leeway to play with. So it becomes a cherry on the top, not the reason to do. And that boosts profitability because you’re not just giving it all away. Then spend, so all my technical experience comes from National Express. So large transport company.

Andy & Chris (17:03.88)
Hmm. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (17:09.736)
Yep.

Hmm.

Bilal (17:21.43)
head office was in Birmingham, looked after those team of six of us that looked after global finance. So consolidating 2.2 billion pounds worth of revenue and producing the statutory accounts and then the AGM pack that went out to the shareholders that said, is how we’ve performed. One of the things I was in charge of there…

Andy & Chris (17:33.586)
Yeah. Okay.

Bilal (17:38.958)
was the health and safety metric. So super massive transport company, little yellow American school buses in America, big bus network out in Spain, Morocco, Middle East, trains everywhere. Is you cannot put profit in front of customer safety. So the singular biggest metric was, did we, this is horrible story, did we kill more people this year than we did last year?

Andy & Chris (17:56.148)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (18:04.541)
Wow.

Bilal (18:04.864)
If we have, gets paid a bonus. And I was working on that number. So you can guess how popular I was when I sat outside the board of directors in the CEO’s office with a broken, brutal metric. So we started looking at that number and…

Andy & Chris (18:09.862)
Yeah, that’s a brutal metric, isn’t it? Flip.

Bilal (18:19.022)
talking to my colleagues, talking to the director that I was reporting to, talking to the chief financial controller at National Express at the time, and then we were discussing whether that’s the right metric. It says, might have killed more people. If you put 20 people into a coma or in a vegetative state, why are we discounting that? So the rail uses a different metric. Rail uses an index figure. So if a fatality is one, a major injury is a tenth, a lost time injury is a 200th, and a minor injury is a thousand.

So now you’re looking at things in relative terms. It says you might have killed more people, but you 20 people more into a registered state. That’s two fatalities now. Therefore, you have technically killed more people. So I then had to get about redoing three years worth of index figures over five different countries, three different continents, trying to pull all this information in. And how it used to happen was,

Andy & Chris (18:55.602)
Yo.

Bilal (19:12.79)
I don’t know, Andy, you’d send me your spreadsheet, Chris, you’d send me your spreadsheet, someone else would send me their spreadsheet, but it would all be slightly different. Everyone’s slightly different and then you try to pull it all in. Yeah, so couldn’t build a process around it. the thing that I think my career has got a really strong seam of is process improvement, is looking at process. And if I’ve got to do it again, I’m going to make a process out of this because then I can replicate it. It’s easy to do. So first time it takes me ages, second time it’ll be much quicker.

Andy & Chris (19:19.666)
Yeah, There’s a little column or something.

Andy & Chris (19:37.692)
Yep.

Bilal (19:42.83)
So I approached it as I would a set of numbers that says when Andy sends me his financials, he’s got to put it into his system that then consolidates into my system. There’s a pro forma base of the way Andy does it and therefore the way Chris does it, therefore I have to push a button and I can review. Why are we not doing this? Why are we not just taking the same approach with these sets of numbers? So instead of it being from the health and safety team from each country, it would be through the finance team. So the health and safety team would have to send to the finance team, finance team would then upload it into the system, system would then put it up through and we would pull it all out.

Andy & Chris (19:55.998)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (20:00.479)
Mm.

Bilal (20:13.024)
Everything I’ve always done, because of the size, the company would always be checked and audited. So Deloitte would come in and check all my numbers. So, you know, super confident that the numbers I was putting together were correct. And then by doing all of that, the first number that’s still reported is still that fatalities weighted index. I remember that number got picked up and that process got picked up by the Financial Times at the time, which was quite a compliment.

Andy & Chris (20:18.003)
Yo.

Andy & Chris (20:29.065)
Hmm.

Bilal (20:36.286)
and of 45,000 people that were employed by National Express at the time, 25 people got recognised for an exceptional piece of work. And I was one of them. And so I got invited up to London, I could take a plus one, I took Mum, I said, this is what I do, because I remember when she saw me studying, she’d walk in and the preconception about accounting, because we’ve not talked about tax yet, nothing we’ve talked about has been about tax.

Andy & Chris (20:46.14)
well.

Andy & Chris (21:00.554)
Mm.

Bilal (21:01.326)
Mum thought, you suddenly become an accountant, you do tax, what is this algebra on your board? So I had three massive whiteboards in my room with complex algebraic formula on there that had no fit off by heart. And Mum was like, I don’t understand anything you’re saying, but I’m glad you understand it. So when I the award, I took Mum with me. And it was the first time she’s ever seen a five-star hotel. So we stayed at the Royal Horse Guards in London, which was fantastic. She still talks about the breakfast that she had. And being able to share that with my mum was amazing.

Andy & Chris (21:09.866)
Yeah

Andy & Chris (21:26.836)
Wow. Hmm, lovely.

Bilal (21:30.062)
But doing all of that, I then got sent off to the Middle East to help build bus network out in Bahrain. So you’re looking at an infrastructure now that doesn’t have pre-existing bus network. So you’re building off of scrap. Where do the drivers live? Where are the bus stops? Where are the intermediate stops? Where do we clean the vehicles? Where do the drivers live? Where are we going to bring them all in? If I need 10 trainers to take 400 people over six weeks, well, what effect would 20 trainers on 80 people have over two weeks? So then you’re working out optimum mixes. This is where the algebra comes into it. So now you’re running all this

Andy & Chris (21:55.038)
Hmm

Bilal (22:00.016)
formula on a spreadsheet that says what is my optimum mix between output and cost because there’s always a tipping point that says we could throw loads of money at something and get a massive result really early but if money is your limiting factor then you’ve got to be really careful with that resource. In your entire process what is the scarcity of your resource? Is it time? Is it money? Is it effort? Is it ability? What is it? So you’ve got to identify all of this. This comes back to the psychology things I was talking about earlier that says the numbers bit I’m easy with, the formula is there, the formula is never going to lie to me, the formula is dead straightforward, I know what I’ve got to plug into each part.

Andy & Chris (22:11.818)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (22:17.609)
Mm.

Bilal (22:29.678)
but now we’re dealing with a human element. How do I get what you want out of this? So I got bit by a commercial bug and doing commercial accounting. I thought this is, this is, this this is, this

Andy & Chris (22:32.126)
Mmm. Mmm.

Andy & Chris (22:38.314)
But it’s fascinating because this isn’t obvious accountancy, it? know, going to the Middle East to try and design a bus network. Systems and processes. Systems, processes, transportation, logistics, bit of people. You wouldn’t naturally think that that’s going to involve an accountant who’s going to need to do the analysis. The bit I’m fascinated with is how the heck have you ended up in dentistry?

because this path that you’re going down is taking you through telecoms and transport infrastructures and…

Bilal (23:10.254)
I did five years at logistics as well, so I’ll skip the logistics bit, but I spent five years in logistics and standardization automation across 96 sites, looking at how can replicate processes across 96 sites, ultimately culminating in automation that I created that saved about 1,000 hours of admin time a week.

Andy & Chris (23:18.772)
Yeah.

Bilal (23:27.298)
But that thousand hours was now spent on not you doing what, tell me why. Because that’s the bit I don’t know. I know the what, because I’ve got the numbers for the what. I don’t know the why. Why was Andy’s parcel late? But it’s because the road outside of his house is blocked off, therefore the driver can’t park. Well, now know I need to give him a bit more time. So all that stuff. How did get into Dent Street? Well, if I go right back and have a conversation with my earlier self, what did I want to achieve out of life? I didn’t want to be an employee. I knew I wasn’t cut out for it.

Andy & Chris (23:32.554)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (23:38.996)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (23:44.756)
But yeah.

Bilal (23:56.846)
but I had to bear it and I had a lot to learn. Correct. Correct. And I like being the master of my own destiny. I like to be veering off into other tangents. If I see an opportunity, I want to head towards it. I don’t want to have to go through 18 layers of bureaucracy to work out what I want to do. And I don’t want to give anyone 60 hours a week of my life because I’ve got a family. I want to spend time with my family. Those are the people that deserve my time. Not an office somewhere with dingy lit with 20 watt bulbs.

Andy & Chris (23:58.571)
Was that because of that family history with your dad?

Andy & Chris (24:10.493)
Mm-hmm.

Bilal (24:25.557)
is how do I get into dentistry? So I always knew if you’d asked me what I wanted to do 18 years ago, I’d have said, I want to help 10 people, 10 businesses operate, and I want to charge them 10 grand a year. And I want to make 100 grand, and that to me was the most amount of money that I could ever think of. And that to me was me being the equivalent of a multimillionaire at that time, because 100 grand a year, that’s an insurmountable amount of money that I would never be able to spend. And I just worked towards that goal that said, that’s what I want to do.

So what do I need to Talking about Everest again. Well, I need to become an accountant. I need credibility. I need experience. I need to able to say, what? How did I end up in dentistry? So my wife’s a dentist. And I hate doing her accounts. I refuse to do her accounts. She’s the worst. I think I’m the worst patient she has.

Andy & Chris (25:01.247)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (25:06.89)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Bilal (25:10.126)
And then when I moved up to, so when I joined DPD I moved up to South Manchester and all my friends were in Birmingham and then talking to my wife, wife’s mates were all dentists, their husbands are dentists so first thing I obviously wanted was a kickabout, wanted a game of football. So my wife put me in touch with her mate’s husband, Aisha recommended me to speak to her husband Arfien, got invited to a game, most of them were dentists.

And you just hear the same thing over and over again. There’s, get my numbers dead late. I don’t know what my options are. And I’ve got no one to talk to. I was like, well, that’s not my experience of being an accountant because we do our numbers weekly or monthly. I report to the board and every time I report to the board, I have to tell you your options. Cause if I just said this number is five, well, so what? Is five good? Is five bad? If five is good, so what? If five is bad, so what? It’s the so what element to all of this, which goes back to the psychology side of things that says numbers on their own are irrelevant.

Andy & Chris (25:36.81)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (25:52.498)
Yeah,

Bilal (26:04.558)
when you’ve got to apply context that says, and I’ll give you an example. So we had a client who, she had a phenomenal year, but she’d less than the year before. So the year before she had 330K and this year she earned about 280K. And she went, I’ve had a shit year. I said, well, hold on, you’ve worked less days. So you’ve worked 20 % less, but you’ve not earned, well, she’s worked about 60 % of the time, but you’ve not earned 40 % less.

Andy & Chris (26:27.37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re actually doing better than you were

Bilal (26:29.454)
Comparatively, your time has now been worth more. Yeah. So if you wanted to earn more, you could now build that capacity to your spare days and now your income would be 360k. So hour for hour, you’re actually earning more money. So everything has to be relative.

Andy & Chris (26:39.615)
Mm.

Bilal (26:44.62)
So it then got into dentistry. the social media stuff was stuff that I wanted to start talking to people. I’ve got stuff in my head, I want to get it out. And that was drummed into me to what I did at DPD, which is you’ve got to get to the point quickly. And everyone I was working with, I was partnered with people who didn’t know numbers. So was working with operators, working with logistics people who don’t really care about the number, but they want to know what the number means to them.

Andy & Chris (27:03.518)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (27:11.96)
Yeah.

Bilal (27:14.334)
One of my depots in Warrington was spending, when you talk about pence per parcel, it’s how we measured everything. So if your stop cost is, what does it cost for me to deliver this parcel to Andy and Chris? And they were spending about £2.25 per stop. And everything that I could work out was it shouldn’t cost me any more than £2.14 a stop. Why am I losing 11 pence a stop?

So then I started working things out into sort of creating an optimum mix where how much should I be paying my drivers? Why is this driver on £2.80 a when that rate was set up three years ago and he only doing 60 stops out in the sticks? He’s in the city centre now doing 140 stops at 280. We shouldn’t be paying him that. So instead of working through all that and then managed to get that down, managed to strip out 7p, 7p a stop. And think 7p a stop isn’t a lot of money, but when you extrapolate that over 42,000 parcels a week.

Andy & Chris (27:54.408)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (28:03.644)
I saw a lot of stops.

Bilal (28:05.454)
week to year there’s a lot of stops and then we did the same thing for parcels through the warehouse it says well this shouldn’t be costing me 33 pence a parcel through the warehouse I reckon should be costing about 29 pence this is how I think it should so this is what I’ll sit down Andy Chris this is what I think is happening you tell me why it isn’t and you’ll tell me George’s got a gippy leg he can’t do it over here but these are all these are all excuses is these are all things that you’ve almost gone native you’re too close to the problem see the solution

Andy & Chris (28:32.168)
Yeah, you’re trying to justify.

Bilal (28:35.022)
Correct. So I had a conversation with a shift manager. Shift managers would always clock overtime. And I said, why do you clock overtime? It’s because, we have to manage the system. We then spend three hours at the end of the shift trying to work out where everyone’s going. We’ll have three hours of a shift per day of overtime, then paying across five shift managers. Do you want to go home on time, or do you want the overtime?

I’m not an absolute a-hole. If you’ve built your entire life on this money where you’re expecting this overtime money to be here, I just want value for it. This is if you’re to do the overtime, this bit that you’re spending three hours doing is of no use to me. There’s three hours of your time that I could put over here that is of use to me. So you can still earn your three hours. You’ll still get home at the same time you’re doing. But if you want to get home early, because these guys have started at five in the morning, bear in mind.

Andy & Chris (29:07.05)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (29:17.843)
Hmm.

Bilal (29:18.37)
If you want to get home for have a kip and go to the school run, tell me what’s important to you. Because this is how I then need you to approach it. So it was hearing these sorts of things in dentistry that says, everyone is being offered a tax service that says, don’t speak to me until January. Give me all your invoices and your receipts. I’ll produce a tax number and I’ll send it back to you. What is the point of that? It’s a horrible process. You’re dreading that number all year.

Andy & Chris (29:24.724)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (29:38.846)
Hmm.

Bilal (29:43.468)
You don’t know it’s too late to do anything about it. And now you’re to pay someone an invoice to create you an invoice that you’re to pay HMRC. It’s not, it’s not. So sort of spun out in its head that says, what have I learned? What do I know? What do I like doing? What do I actually want to achieve? So.

Andy & Chris (29:49.45)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (29:55.755)
It’s interesting what you say about that process has informed how you sharpen social media as well in terms of the cut to the crispy bit quite quickly. What’s the hook?

I can say that very strongly in how you communicate because people do want, they want the bit that they can use quickly. think people switch off, don’t they? Especially when it to finance or anything like that, this sort of everyone glazes over at 30 seconds because they don’t really understand it. No, the thing that I find fascinating about that is that dentists are scientists, they’re science based, which is very kind of fact based and evidence based and numbers are based on

facts and evidence. I find it peculiar in some ways that there’s disconnect between kind of human science and the science of numbers, because they really don’t like dealing with numbers. don’t understand numbers. And what you said about tax is absolutely right. I’m sure despite your best endeavors, you will still have clients who are pushing the limit in terms of when their tax return goes in. You’ve probably got some that actually trip over the 31st of January deadline.

But it’s probably back also some of it isn’t the fact because they earn quite a lot of money. It doesn’t really matter to them whether they know about it in June or January because they’ve probably got some cash.

Bilal (31:15.11)
I don’t think we debrief this point to death because I quite honestly say is if I spent a couple of hours with you and walk you through the permutations you could do it yourself.

Andy & Chris (31:20.202)
Hmm.

Bilal (31:26.21)
Those aren’t the clients we take on. Because if you can do it yourself, you’ll do it yourself. And it’s fine. And that’s why I put that content on. Because the goal for the content isn’t to clickbait, isn’t to say, book in with me. You’ll never see that in any of my content. It’s book in with me and I’ll tell you more. It’s I want you to walk away from this 90 second video knowing more than you came into it. That’s my singular objective.

Andy & Chris (31:27.922)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (31:43.208)
Yeah.

Bilal (31:45.646)
But the idea then being is dentists as a community, we’re talking about super intelligent people who have never really, who bulldoze their way through academia. So they’ve worked their ass off to a single goal and they would have smashed their math GCC. They would have had to have. And if they went and did it, if they did any of the sciences at A level, which they would have, there would have been a high degree of math in that as well.

Andy & Chris (31:52.38)
Yep.

Yeah

Andy & Chris (32:06.782)
Yeah, yeah

Bilal (32:10.102)
and at university, but they’ve bulldozed their way through it. But then when you get to an area of math, which is tax, which includes subjectivity…

It’s not, we’re not giving you a set of formula. We’re not giving you a formula. There’s an ephemeral sense of what if, if this, that, the permutations then start coming out of the woodwork, which is, I operate as a limited company? Well, what do you want to do? What do you want to achieve? What do you do the money for? What are you trying to achieve in the short term? How much money do you need? Are you married? Do have kids? What do you want to do? I can’t be asked, just do it for me.

Andy & Chris (32:22.003)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (32:29.129)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (32:38.282)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (32:43.772)
That’s almost a bit like, isn’t it? If you don’t think about it, it won’t happen.

You know, everyone knows that they’ve got to pay tax, if they, it’s almost like if I don’t think about it, it’ll be fine. But also I think there is a, I think there’s a degree of kind of Britishness and it happens in the UK where people tend not to like talking about money matters. It’s a very private situation. You don’t share with other people how much money you’ve got or how much tax you’ve paid or what your accounts look like. And I think that kind of, that cloak of secrecy doesn’t help people understand it because they don’t want to expose

their situation for fear of looking too well off or not well off enough or they’re not managing their finances. Or they go the other way and tell you how brilliantly they’re doing. Yeah. I think it’s great. Yeah, which could be a lie. So I think there is still a stigma around openly talking about money and I think you can do it in a way where you don’t necessarily have to be very specific about your situation but I don’t think we’re there yet. That’s my take on it.

It’s back to that knowing thing, it? If you don’t manage, if you don’t know, how can you manage?

Bilal (33:48.75)
Exactly. So we take that point and imbue that in everything we do. So the point for us is, if I can show you numbers and I’m talking to you, and then I can give you your options. And that’s really the three premises on which we operate is we use a bit of software called Zero or Free Agent, depending on the complexity of your business. There’s tax prediction on there. There’s a running forecast that says, this is what you’re at year to date. Put 30 % of that into your tax account and forget about it. It’s not your money. Ignore it.

Andy & Chris (33:59.477)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (34:15.316)
Yeah, it’s not yours. It’s some… Yeah, gotta pay it.

Bilal (34:18.158)
With our practices, we do a hell of a lot of consultancy. quietly in the background, we don’t really advertise this anywhere, is we do a hell of a lot of consultancy for specific outcomes and projects. So if you’re a dental practice that wants to grow, well, how do we distill your essence into the other side? How have you achieved this? But if you can’t measure it, it can’t be improved. So if we build you a budget or a forecast and then we hold you to that, then there’s accountability to that. But if I can see what’s happening in the business throughout the year, I can give you your options. And I can tell you you’re going to pay

Andy & Chris (34:27.53)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (34:32.975)
Yep.

Andy & Chris (34:46.462)
Mm.

Bilal (34:48.112)
100 grand at the end of the year, but if you put this into your pension, put that into charity and go buy a new machine, you’ll pay 20 grand. But what I can’t do is do that. If you’ve ignored me all year and it’s a month of submission and you want it, but that’s like asking for a filling after the tooth’s been extracted. There’s nothing I can do at this point. And you’d be surprised how many people get irate at that. We have some sophisticated automation in the background that says as soon as the year end hits, bang, bang, bang, we’re on you, we’re on you, we’re on you, we’re on you. Send us information, this is what we need, bang, bang, bang, bang.

Andy & Chris (34:53.854)
Yeah, that’s right.

Andy & Chris (34:57.96)
Yep. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:02.538)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (35:15.284)
Hmm. Hmm.

Bilal (35:17.582)
eight months we won’t hear from you. Then we give you your number and then you’re pissed off at me because I’m like, well, you made it. And you knew you made a hundred grand. Why did you not put anything against for tax? You knew the bill was going to come due. where’s… Yeah.

Andy & Chris (35:19.58)
No, that’s right.

Andy & Chris (35:23.932)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (35:29.597)
Yeah.

It’s not a surprise is it? No.

Bilal (35:35.512)
And where’s the accountability on your side that says, you know, we can lead you to water, but you’ve got to drink it. So we’re getting really good at picking the right clients now. And it wasn’t that way in the start. Whilst we were trying to grow and people slipped through our nets. But that’s the first question. So when we’re assessments, it’s really, we’re looking for red flags is, do you understand how your attitude towards money is? Do you put your money away as you’re earning it?

Are you tomorrow’s money to pay yesterday’s tax? Because that’s a horrible scenario to be in. Is, know, for, again, not being sexist, but if you’re a female dentist, for instance, and you’re in that cycle, and then you get pregnant, and then you’re off for a year, well then you’ve still got a really big tax bill to pay and you’ve not got the right cash flow to pay it. So don’t use your cash flow to pay your taxes. Put your money aside as you’re earning.

Andy & Chris (36:05.17)
Hmm

Andy & Chris (36:16.478)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (36:20.746)
Do you pre-qualify clients who are reasonably financially literate and value proactive planning or do you also take on the basket cases where people are just reactively planning, they don’t really know what they’re doing and they’re struggling or isn’t that your bank?

Bilal (36:40.684)
No, we will do that, but it’s more from an emotive perspective that says, why is that the case? Have you just had really bad advice? Have you had, yeah, we took in a client recently where they horribly mismanaged, just horribly terrible advice, and we’ve just spent years, and we’ve just spent undoing it.

Andy & Chris (36:47.85)
Mm-hmm, no advice.

Bilal (37:02.83)
took on a client who I’m gonna go see in a couple of weeks where her partner did the accounting, the relationship went sour and she wasn’t close enough to her numbers to see what he had done. So we redid the accounts and basically he just jimmied the whole stuff. He did them in such a way that she would be in the worst possible position. But we redid them and from what she thought she was gonna pay 125k on, she paid 60k on.

Andy & Chris (37:23.53)
Nice.

Andy & Chris (37:28.298)
Hmm.

Bilal (37:28.718)
or 60 grand like, but then she hadn’t realised she’d already paid 37 grand towards it on account. it’s the goal for me is, is can I work with this person? What are you trying to achieve? If your singular objective is to pay less tax, then that for me is not who I want to work with. Whether you’re a basket case or switched on, if you’re trying to grow scale, if you’re trying to understand why so you can do the what, where if you can understand the what so you can understand the why, that’s what I want to work with. And we’ll do that on any scale.

Andy & Chris (37:32.938)
Mmm.

Andy & Chris (37:54.411)
But my view, perhaps it’s deluded, is if you’ve got a well-planned, thriving business, you will pay more tax. actually, tax is a success of measurement, or sorry, it’s a measurement of success, because if you’re paying zero tax, taxes are paid off, know, earnings or profit. So…

Bilal (38:13.486)
Correct. If it could be done, I’d be doing it. And if I started showing, I did this in Jan, so someone said, well, I don’t want to pay this. I said, well, I’ve just paid 18 grand in tax. If I could do it, I would have paid nothing. And I’ve got my VAT bill due, I’ve got my corporation tax bill due, I’ll pay about 200 grand across taxes over the next couple of months. And that’s a humble brag because I must be making it to tax The difference is I know what I’ve got to pay, therefore I just put the money aside. Correct.

Andy & Chris (38:26.129)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (38:35.443)
Yes.

Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s that security of knowing what you’re doing.

Bilal (38:41.954)
And that’s the difference is if I can get, so we’ve got our in-house software that sits on top of all the PMSs. whether you use DENTLY, CareStack, SOE, system for that, it really matter who you use. We rip all that data, we run it through ours so we can see what you’re doing. So I can then work out what you’re, as a dental practice, which one of your associates is making you any money.

Andy & Chris (39:03.306)
Hmm.

Bilal (39:03.714)
So if your associate’s not making you money, then why even have them there? If you’re an eight surgery practice and making 9.8 % EBIT, what is the point? Because you’re not super sensitive to why the factor’s changing, interest rates going up for one, know, if it’s COVID-19.

Andy & Chris (39:06.847)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (39:17.118)
Yeah, or someone leaving.

Bilal (39:18.926)
Exactly. So if we can empower you with these decisions that says we build your forecast, I build your budget, if I say the budget says you’re going to make 250 grand and then you’re to pay 50 grand in corporation tax and you might want to take 100 grand out for yourself so you’ll pay 22 grand in income tax, well you know those numbers now. But the bit that I’m actually interested in is if we can get your EBIT up to 20 % from 14 % and now you’re making 250 grand EBIT, well your practice is worth multiplying your EBIT.

and that’s bit that I’m interested in. So now you want to pay more tax because I’ll save at you when you sell the practice because you’ll pay 10 % on the first million and then we’re currently 20 % on the bit over but the capital gains tax rates are changing.

Andy & Chris (39:48.144)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (39:57.929)
Hmm

And from a practice value point of view, you’re right. Yeah. We obviously in another world, you value and sell dental practices. And we say to people, if you could get 10, 20,000 pounds as your bottom line, that could be worth a hundred, 150,000 pounds of value of business. The impact is huge, particularly if you’re going into a process where you might be thinking of selling in the next three to five years. Especially it’s not that complicated to do. And I think that goes back to what you’re saying, isn’t it? Most people don’t quite know.

So therefore they don’t know that sometimes there are some really quick wins. And I think for many then, yeah.

Bilal (40:33.484)
Yes. We’ll identify that. So we’ll strip that out. We’ll find it. But what I won’t do is come in and run your business for you. Massive and disingenuous for me to say you’re doing a root canal too long, for instance. My argument is this, if this is how you want to do a root canal, this is what you’ve got to charge because your overhead per hour is this. You reduce your overhead per hour by cutting out costs or put your prices up or make it more efficient. It’s one of the three. But we can show you exactly what Y-Way I meant.

Andy & Chris (40:40.755)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (40:45.043)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (40:50.708)
Mm. Mm.

Andy & Chris (40:56.074)
Yeah.

It’s a bit like, do remember in the early days, I can’t imagine people still do it, but we used to say, so what have you based your prices on? And they’d been happily slagging off the NHS, and they’d say, I just did double the NHS, and it’s like, but you’re using a bad basis for your calculation. And it was like, well, yeah, we’ve never really worked it out, actually. It’s like, oh, man.

Bilal (41:18.978)
Well, get a lot of, well, practices in the area charge this. But if that practice has got no debt and all the machinery is paid off, they don’t need to make as much as you. Because EBIT’s only part of the story. Because EBIT’s before you capture an interest repayments. Even if you’ve got 20 % EBIT, but 18 % goes out on debt repayments, then you’ve made bugger all. So stop just going out and buying stuff and stop comparing your prices and everyone else. it’s like…

Andy & Chris (41:29.886)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (41:35.838)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (41:40.19)
Yeah

Andy & Chris (41:45.407)
But comparing up comparing yourself against other people when you know, so different about them. love it. Crazy. It’s a, it’s it’s a yeah. yeah. Of course they do. Yeah. Yeah. We’ve, we’ve seen it so many times with people who say, I sold my practice for so-and-so and we know what they sold their practice for. And it wasn’t anywhere near the number that they’ve said it is, but they wanted to show off down the pub. It is bizarre really. You know, we always find it quite entertaining because obviously we see quite a lot of accounts, don’t we? And

Bilal (41:51.49)
People lie.

Andy & Chris (42:14.834)
you see people and you think, okay, you’re telling everyone else how to do it. We can see how actually you’re doing. I think your approach is spot on how you’ve articulated in terms of the support, the breaking it down, using the evidence, but then leaving the power with the client because they can do it or not do it or they can go, okay, I get all that. Yeah, fine. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that, but I’m still quite happy.

Bilal (42:21.358)
So we.

Andy & Chris (42:39.166)
you know, spending extra time or spending more on my materials, but at least they’re doing it consciously. Yeah. From a position of knowledge.

Bilal (42:46.606)
Now we had a not this cycle so client who was always in habit in March going shopping Buying new machinery, buying new equipment, everything, always on finance because he didn’t want to pay tax and I worked out he was going to upgrade one of his machines I’m not going to say what it is because you’ll know what I’m talking about. He wants to upgrade one of his machines and it’s about a 90 grand cost to fork for everything

I said, well, you only currently use your current machine, about 60 % utilization. So your additional 90 grand spend is going to have no return on capital, no return on investment, nothing. And the interest you’re going to pay on that loan is far greater than the tax you’ll pay, but you’ll just spread it over three years. So do you want the cash or do you want 60 % of something or 100 % of nothing? What do you want? I’m going to go, I’ll take 60 % of something. So it’s all relative. But then we take a step further that says,

Andy & Chris (43:28.008)
Yeah.

Bilal (43:39.534)
You told me your goal was to start investing in property, for instance. This does not get you there. This new bit machinery does not get you there. If you can show me how this new machinery allows you to do things quicker, i.e. you place 15 crowns a month, and by you getting an in-house milling machine means you condense your patient’s journey, therefore the patient improves. Well then, this is all a no-brainer. This makes absolute sense, because now we don’t have to pay the lab bills. We can bring it all in-house. We can mill in-house. We can do it all in one fit. We can put our prices up, because the customer journey improves.

Andy & Chris (43:45.406)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (43:58.09)
Mm.

Andy & Chris (44:07.242)
Mm-hmm.

Bilal (44:09.134)
But if you can’t do that, then don’t bother doing it.

Andy & Chris (44:11.05)
Mm-hmm. It’s funny hearing you say about buying new equipment that’s underutilized one of the big things we have is chair occupancy You know when we go into practice we look and we kind of might have a three surgery surgery practice So for us, that’s 18 available surgery days Very rarely are people anything around the 12 to 13 days, but I’m gonna get a full surgery But that’s the thing they’ll they’ll they’ll say I’m thinking I’ve got a room and I’m gonna put in a full surgery and a bit like your argument with the equipment We’re like you’re not

You’re not using the assets you’ve got. So why would you bolt? It would be more valuable. It will be more valuable if you’re producing dentistry, but just having a room with a chair in doesn’t add value to your practice.

Bilal (44:43.064)
Come on.

Bilal (44:53.56)
So the biggest thing that I say to any dentist is, we have loads of conversations around, want to buy a practice. So from associates. If I hear the phrase, I’m doing this because I want clinical freedom again, I promise you gents, I’ll have even less hair than I have now. What I do have left will be completely white, because it’s frustrating.

Andy & Chris (45:07.082)
Is that one of those lines that could provoke the Brummie accent?

Bilal (45:15.944)
God, yes. absolutely. I’ve got no issue with telling clients off. I like to scare people in that scenario that says either you’re scared and excited of the size of the task ahead of you or you’re scared and think this isn’t for me. One of the two outcomes is what I’m usually aiming for. Because if your goal is to get clinical freedom, then you’re never going to get that. As a brand new practice person, no.

Andy & Chris (45:32.874)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (45:38.921)
That’s right.

Bilal (45:43.598)
If your singular obsession isn’t about patient journey, patient experience, and clinical outcomes, then don’t bother doing it. Because unless you can start telling there’s 12,500 dental practitioners in the UK and 55 million people over age of 18 in the UK, so about 5,500 people per dental practice in the UK, go find your 5,500. Because I can assure you, if you start talking to your 5,500, you will make millions from your practice. You will.

But if you’re just going to go in and say, want your clinical freedom and you don’t know how to run a business, then you’ll never fall flat on your ass because it’s almost impossible to go bust as a dentist. Almost impossible. It’s not impossible, but it’s almost impossible to go bust. Correct.

Andy & Chris (46:17.96)
Yep. Yep.

Normally nothing to do with dentistry then.

Bilal (46:26.35)
So with that bit is, well, what are you trying to achieve? And it all really boils down to marketing. It says, what are you trying to achieve? And how do they know you want to do that? So how do your dentists know you offer dentistry this way? Because if the way you want to place an implant takes four hours, but everyone else does it in two and a half, you can’t charge what everyone else does. Because you’ve got an extra 90 minute chair time that you’ve got to nurse, overhead costs, overheads, everything.

Andy & Chris (46:44.072)
Mmm. Mmm.

Hmm.

Bilal (46:52.534)
So you’ve got to charge more money, but you’ve got to be able to confidently convey to your patient why it costs more money. And then you let them make the informed choice. But then your market research might say, one’s prepared to pay for that. You’ve got to reflect inwardly now that says, those 90 minutes that I need to put into my process additional worth? And there’s a constant feedback loop, which we help dentists support.

Andy & Chris (46:58.9)
Yeah, true.

Andy & Chris (47:04.685)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (47:09.63)
Mm.

Mm. Cool. Whilst you’re not a dentist, there is a thread that runs through you and dentists. Many of the dentists we’ve had join us over the years have quite a creative streak. We’ve had artists, musicians, dancers. And back in the day, you were quite into the hip hop freestyle dancing yourself. what I’m doing? Yeah.

Bilal (47:33.324)
I did, I did used to dance, so I hope my mum and dad aren’t listening to this, but I used to go out quite a bit. I didn’t drink, I’m good Muslim boy, we don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t do anything like that, so I had to entertain myself somehow, and realised I couldn’t move my body to a beat, so started doing quite a bit of that, and it got really fun for a really long period of time, it’s still something that might, I’m too old to do it now, but they try and break my…

Andy & Chris (47:47.048)
Yeah.

Bilal (48:00.718)
to try and do it but it was a lot of fun so 39 I think in a

Andy & Chris (48:03.242)
Wow, how old are you? Wow, I’m impressed. That’s good. In my head I’ve just got, ba-ba-boom. What keeps you busy away from work? Dancing.

Bilal (48:14.498)
Yes.

Bilal (48:18.36)
So my entire business is built around my family. It says my singular objective is to be a present father. That says there is no amount of business that I will take on that takes me away from my family. There is, if the demands of my business stop me doing the school run, stop me going to parents’ evenings, stop me doing all these things, then I’ve failed in everything. That says my singular objective as my family is being with friends, is being present. And I think that’s the thing I value more than anything else. So spending time with people I love, people I care about, and…

Andy & Chris (48:23.562)
Cool.

Andy & Chris (48:37.066)
That’s great.

Andy & Chris (48:46.431)
Mm.

Bilal (48:47.758)
The educational side of things is massively important to me as well because the singular theme that runs through the content is, I’m gonna get emotional again, is I want my kids to look at the content that I’ve put out over 20 years and say that’s my dad. Is see that he wasn’t doing stupid TikTok dances. He wasn’t trying to clickbait people into buying things that they shouldn’t have bought, but this was someone who was giving what he knew back to a community that was deserved.

Andy & Chris (49:02.302)
Yeah.

Andy & Chris (49:14.484)
That’s lovely. That’s powerful. We sort of say it for these, don’t we really? Because ultimately, you know, it is on YouTube and you end up with, it’s a legacy, you know, in 30 years time, unless they’ve taken it down. But you will still be there speaking like this. But it’s that thing, it’s a digital footprint. And when we started this, we said it wouldn’t be great to produce a body of work which kind of captured all the core elements that are important for dentists.

Equally from our guests we’ve heard back. They’ve said like it’s a bit like therapy It’s a bit like being on a couch I’ve I’ve talked about things that perhaps I didn’t expect to or it stirred up memories or thoughts about other things and for us That’s amazing. That’s brilliant. The you know, it’s rare We get the chance to kind of talk to you in this way and you get the opportunity to kind of you know chart where you’re at and as Chris says if your kids in 10 20 30 years or your grandkids or whatever go Oh, look, there’s granddad bill. Oh, look, that’s what he was doing. That’s pretty cool

That’s what he looked like. Yeah. That you can kind of chart it, chart it in that way. We’ve got two very special questions for you as well. The first one is you’re a fly on the wall. Where are you and what’s going on?

Bilal (50:24.938)
UN meetings is I want to know why they’ve decided money’s going to here, there, everywhere to bomb countries for whatever political gain. I want to understand what the thought process was for that when there’s people at home in food banks eating out of food banks. Now I know internal, was it, internal vigilance is the price of liberty. I’d like to understand the thought process of the people that make those decisions.

Andy & Chris (50:41.492)
Mm-hmm.

Andy & Chris (50:52.934)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that will be interesting that will be interesting I bet takes a lot of unraveling and I bet there’s lots of subtle agendas that are taking place in those words as well Yeah, and if you could so go

Bilal (50:53.774)
Because it can’t be.

Bilal (51:03.31)
It’s easy to slay the people that make the hard decisions, but could we do it?

Andy & Chris (51:09.97)
Yeah, I think that’s right. That’s right. Yeah, and and they are they are hard decisions and by nature of the the level that they’re being made out They’re not going to be popular in many places. Please everybody No, and if you could meet somebody bill, I’ll who would you like to sit down and have a coffee or a drink with

Bilal (51:28.157)
So I think Mayor Rothschild, think it’s one of the Rothschilds that developed the early banking system. And then he sent, I think it was Mayor, I can’t remember which one it was, but he sent his kids off to go, one in America, one in Canada, one in France, one in England, set the banking system.

Andy & Chris (51:34.621)
Okay.

Bilal (51:45.388)
and I’d love to understand that. Where did that forethought come from? did the idea of forethought, because that controls governments, that controls policy, that controls tax, that controls everything, that imbues everything, is where did that forethought come from? Did he even know it could do that? And get to where it would get to, or what was the reasoning behind it? Were they altruistic, or were they somewhat more sinister?

Andy & Chris (51:49.0)
Hmm

Andy & Chris (51:53.758)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy & Chris (52:00.49)
Hmm.

Andy & Chris (52:04.874)
It’s easy once things are fully developed it’s easiest to sit here and go well yeah that that networks in place we can see that but when it always yeah when it wasn’t there and somebody was a visionary and said I’m gonna do this yeah where did that where did that kind of idea that impetus come from? Bill that’s been wonderful thank you very much indeed that is a we got through a lot in a relatively short period of time but I found the bit the non-dental bit

hugely interesting because actually that gave me really good insight and informed us really well in terms of how you approach dentistry. Yeah. You know, for a kind of a systems of processes we need to understand. It’s almost, it’s quite just mildly therapeutic approach. Yes. Do you know what I mean? It’s sort of that thing and that fits with your, your psychology and the fact of actually it’s about not just the numbers, it’s about getting people to try and understand numbers because they understand numbers, they’re in a better position.

than just freaking out and pretending that nothing’s happening. It was great, thank you. Really good. Luke Arthur, thank you very much indeed. That was great. Cheers, man. Cheers.

Bilal (53:12.686)
Thank you.