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Guest: Simon Chard
Practice Name: Rothley Lodge Dental Practice
Check out Simon's Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsimonchard/
Other Mentions and Links:
BACD - British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry
AACD - American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry
Interview about appearance on Dragon's Den
The Daily Stoic - Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
How to Invest - David Rubenstein
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Unreasonable Hospitality - Will Guidara
Host: Michael Arias
Website: The Dental Marketer
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Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society
My Key Takeaways:
- It's not about what you want to post on social media, it's about what your viewers want!
- Getting outside your comfort zone is the only way to grow. Keep this in mind when second guessing that next step!
- Success is never earned through constant succeeding, it is always achieved through failure instead. Failure is an important part of the process!
- If you're enjoying the journey along the way, then embrace your hard work and ambition!
- If your only driving factor is financial, the passion will eventually fade. Be sure to work towards your other fulfilling values and goals.
- There is a season of life where saying YES to all opportunities can help you grow your network. Don't forget about the season of saying NO to opportunities to prioritize your values though.
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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)
Michael: simon, how's it going? Very well, mate. Thank you for having me. No, man, thank you for being on. We truly appreciate it. If you don't mind me asking, where are you
Simon: located? I live in Sur, so just south of London in the, in the suburbs.
Michael: Okay. Did
Simon: you grow up there or no? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've grown up in this area, so it's, it's a nice place to live. It's. Countryside, but it's about a half an hour commute into the center of London, so it's a nice mix of the, the, the busyness of the city alongside some nice outdoor lifestyle. Nice.
Michael: If you don't mind me also asking, like you, where you're at right now, is that your home or is that your
Simon: practice?
Yeah, it's my home. It's my my dining.
Michael: Guys, man, he's in a mansion. This is it. This is the west wings of his . This, I'm excited to have you on Simon. If you can tell us a little bit about your background. Tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you
Simon: are today? Yeah, sure. I mean, I'll start at the beginning, I guess.
So I'm, I'm from a, a family dentist, both my parents and dentists. My parents bought their clinic together six months before I was born. That's the same practice that my wife Megan and I bought from them back in 2017. So there's a sort of generational lineage of dentists there. I always joked that there was a, a, a mirror and probe in the cutlery draw when we were growing up.
So it's yeah, sort of in the blood. So that was my path. I actually went and did a different degree before going into dentistry. So I did a, a degree in pharmacology, so in drugs first, and then did my training at Kings College London, in dentist. Basically as soon as I foundry, I found my passion.
I found what I feel like I was meant to do. I never looked back. From that point. I was very lucky at Kings to have a, a variety of fantastic professors who sort of pushed you to compete. Even from an undergraduate sort of student level. And that meant that by the time I qualified as a dentist, I already had a pretty solid cv pretty solid sort of background of awards and prizes and experience, which meant that I could sort of hit the ground running when I qualified,
Michael: man.
And then you already had your own practice and then right now I know you got your hands in a lot of things. . I also follow Kyle. He's been on the podcast before Stanley, right? Talking about Pearl and everything. And so I saw you and I was like, they're out here doing a lot of moves, man. Like, so what do you got going on right now?
Simon: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a busy, busy year. So yeah, obviously I run my own practice. It's a. Seven surgery practice with about 30 staff members now. So that's going very well. That's growing, growing rapidly. Primarily driven just through sort of organic social media and organic word of mouth. Not a lot of paid ads currently.
I'm the president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, so that's the, the biggest academy of dentist in the uk. Similar obviously to the A A C D in the. . So I'm the youngest ever president of that academy. And I also own a uh, a co-owner. Plastic free next generation oral care brand called Parlor which is in all the major supermarkets and, and stores across the uk.
yeah, is doing very well. And we've got our whole, whole team running that alongside it. And then recently, this last month, I won um, I was, yeah, voted. The dentist who's had the most impact in dentistry in the UK in 22 by Dentistry Magazine. So that was quite a nice award to win as well. Yeah.
Michael: How does that work? do you, I guess, like submit or they just like randomly pick, you're just like, oh, I'm it, you just see your face on the thing or? Well,
Simon: it, it, it wasn't even a, it's the first time they've done it. They've based it off the sort of Time Magazine person of the year award. Mm-hmm. , and.
Uh, Because it didn't exist. There was nothing to apply for. They as a, as a committee of sort of industry experts, came together and, and analyzed all of the high profile individuals in the market. And very fortunately, and they're very grateful to say that they, they chose me, which is, yeah, it's nice yeah.
I mean, running all these things, Cool. And it, and oftentimes it is really cool cause you get to win awards like that. And we've had some amazing experiences with with Parlor. Like we were on the dragons Den, which is Shark Tank in the uk. So we were on national TV with that. So it has, its amazing sort of really peaking exciting moments, but it's also, a lot of stress and spinning the plates can sometimes all go a bit crazy, especially as I've got two young kids as well.
Throw that in the mix and it all gets a little bit saucy sometimes. .
Michael: Ah, man. So you got a family too, real quick. Simon, how
Simon: old are you? I'm 36. Okay,
Michael: man. Yeah, you got a lot of, you know what I mean, like everything going on. And we'll dive into that in a little bit uh, later on in the episode. But if we could rewind a little bit, you did a degree in pharmacology.
Why did you go that route?
Simon: Initially. Strangely enough, I think I, I listened to my peers at school and there was this one kid who said, oh, you don't wanna do what your parents did. That you, that's really lame. For some reason, that stuck in my head. So I just always discounted dentistry as something I wanted to do.
And then actually when I got to my first university to study in pharmacology, coincidentally, my, my roommate was training to be a dentist. And I saw the community that he had and the practicality of being able to use your hands alongside, science, which I've, I've always been sort of fairly good at.
I sort of saw in that first term at university that really dentistry is what I should be doing. Thankfully in the UK you can complete your degree and then miss out the first year of dental school. Cause a lot of it's just sort of basic science. . And so basically I did a fast track into dentistry from there, which, which worked out really well.
And, basically I did a lot of my partying in the first degree and then really got my head down and got to work on my dental degree, which for me worked, worked really well.
Michael: Yeah. Okay, nice. So it's interesting you, did your parents by any chance say like, nah, Simon, like, I don't care what your friend said, like, trust me, we, this is a good setup right here or something?
Or, or were they Yeah. Do what you.
Simon: No, they were children. I mean, they, they, they never wanted to push me or my, my siblings into anything we didn't wanna do. So from that point of view um, they, they sort of let me make my own decision. I also think, to be honest, that I, if I had gone against, at that first degree level, my grades probably wouldn't have been good enough.
I didn't, I wasn't parti. ambitious or academically talented at school? Cause I didn't really have any, any focus or any drive. And actually it was, it was when I'd started at dental school, that was the first time that really sort of felt that I found my groove and and I actually started excelling and yeah, won of these awards and came top clinically in the year.
And so, I, I, I'm not a sort of serial, a serially successful. I wasn't at that stage a seriously successful individual. Whereas now, sort of I'm hyper ambitious and, and driven, which is yeah. Very different than I was as a teenager.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I, I feel like that's um, once you found, right, this is what I wanna do, you went all in right.
And became ambitious. So kind of like right. , you're like, I'm, I'm, I'm finding things that I want to do and I'm going all in. Right. And it's, it's making you, what's the downside of that? If, if you can let us know, like, Hey man, it's great to go all in, but then this could happen
Simon: if there is a downside. Yeah, no, there's definitely a downside.
I mean, I, funnily enough, my wife and I were talking about this on the phone as, as I was driving home from work that I just, I, I can't switch off. So there's always The next idea, the next business opportunity the next product that I'm creating with Parler, the next thing I wanna do to grow the practice.
It's a constant state of progression and flux. And, my view on that is as long as you're enjoying the journey, then keep on driving and be as ambitious and shoot for the stars as as big as you wanna go. If you are grinding out and hating the journey, then sometimes enough is enough and you, you.
You need to be grateful whilst being ambitious. And I think it's finding that balance between gratitude and ambition that's quite difficult for, for of type A driven entrepreneurial individuals. But I think for the, for the younger clinicians listening, I have this type, I, I don't think I made this up.
I think I heard it somewhere, but let's just say for this, for this call, I made it up. Was that I said yes to everything in my twentie. And said no to everything in my thirties. And for me, that worked quite well because when I first qualified, I said yes to every opportunity that was presented to me, whether it be a speaking gig, doing lecturing going to an event where I didn't know anyone.
It was really awkward and I really didn't wanna be there because I wasn't a naturally sociable individual at that stage. Whatever it was I just said, yes, yes, yes, yes. And what that meant was I just created this incredible network. I met so many people many of whom became future mentors or future employers because I worked in, in multiple different practices before coming in full-time to my own clinic.
And so by saying yes to everything, I've got this incredibly broad experience. However, if you let that go of forever, then it becomes unmanageable and, and you. Especially when you have kids. So in my thirties, I've now tailored it right in and I'm very, very selective with what I say yes to. But I can only do that because I've got the I've built it from that solid foundation of a network of guys from industry as well as sort of high profile dentists and, and people sort of who were the movers and shakers of, of our industry, I guess.
Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So you mentioned about the journey. , you gotta enjoy the journey. Um, Make sure you, you love it. How do you know Simon, when you're just in a road bump in the journey and you're like, oh my God, this is a headache. I hate this. Or how do you know? It's like, I'm not enjoying it anymore at this point.
Simon: Hmm. That's a difficult question. I mean, I, I, I think you've gotta know why you're doing things and. What your ambition really is. If, if you're just doing it for money, for example, then that will fade and you will, it will, you will lose your passion for it. If, if the only passion there is the financial recommendation, then I think it's very easy to get jaded then to lose, to lose that.
It's a personal thing at the end of the day. I mean, some people love dentistry, some people hate dentistry. Every job has its pros and cons. And I think we're very fortunate to actually do something that is genuinely meaningful for our patients and that we get a lot of satisfaction from.
But clearly it has a lot of a lot of negatives as well, because there's still such. Massive issue with mental health within the profession. So I think it's really important that, that people don't just keep on driving because they think they should love it. Maybe taking some time away. So actually create a bit of open head space and then coming back to it and seeing if you actually want to go back or if you wanna move away from it.
Michael: Hmm. I like that. Creating open that space, right? Like have you had to do that where you're like, oh man, I need to take some time, sit here and really think. , am I gonna drop this or am I gonna keep this?
Simon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously I have, the beauty of dentistry is that you can. Toggle up and toggle down the number of days that you're working quite easily.
So I've done that. Clinically, I only work three days a week clinically. Now, the other two days I'm working on sort of more entrepreneurial endeavors. And so I've found a, a lovely balance. Certainly if I was still working six days a week clinically now, I don't think I would've been enjoying my job half as much as I am doing now.
. And even saying that sometimes it goes too far. I'm, I've got inbound emails coming in all the time, and if I'm in a three hour surgery placing implants, I'll come out and have 30 emails in my inbox. That's quite stressful, . and quite difficult to manage. So, I think it's important to create space the way I manage that.
As I, as I try to travel as much as I can. Do, I try and block out times in my every month where. I'm just gonna be at home. I'm not gonna be doing any social stuff. And I'm just gonna be chilling with my family. And then around every six to eight weeks, I'll make sure that I'm going away somewhere to travel.
Try to do a sort of as much of a digital detox as I can do. I'm obviously fairly active on social media. It's how I've built up a lot of my profile, and that's how I still get a lot of my patience. But social media can be obviously, A dopamine overload and, and very much or consuming if you don't know how to control it.
So switching that off, controlling that so it doesn't control you. I think all those things were super important.
Michael: Hmm. Where was the point in your life where you realized you had to do that? Where you're like, man, this is it. The I need a something, right. Something different.
sometimes it can happen where it. You're, like you said, you're talking with your, your spouse, right? And then the af they're like, man, you're always doing this. You're, you're on social media, you're doing this. And then you realize like, I need that dopamine in the morning. I'm waking up at night.
I'm going to sleep. I need to check it in the restroom. You know, all this stuff. So it's kind of like, when did you realize I'm going down the wrong, wrong path.
Simon: I think, I mean, I, I think I, I dunno if I've really cracked that yet, to be honest. I think I still have that dopamine addiction and I think I just constantly want to be moving forward. And when you have the capability to look at your Shopify account, On your direct to consumer business to see how many sales you've had, look at your emails to see if you've landed that new retailer listing.
Look on your Invisalign like doctor site to plan your cases. Like there's, there's so much now that you can do all the time remotely. I think certainly for the last five years where I've been running the startup, been a, on the board of the b, c, d and running my own practice. . During that whole time, I've really tried to, to control that inbound.
And for example, I've not gone on TikTok intentionally because I just don't want any more, any more things to check and I know, cause I'm, I'm fully, I'm sort of all over the latest things in social media and I can see the monumental power of TikTok. And I'm not saying that other people shouldn't go on it, but I've grown my business on Instagram.
It's been very successful for me. But, I've kind of take, pulled back a bit from where I was in that, like, like five years ago. I been posting every single day grid, post, post, post stories, every, like, just going like really hard on it. Whereas now I think, I feel like I've, I've, I've got to a certain level of achievements so I don't need to continuously prove myself.
And so, I've tried to pull back from it a bit more than I have done previously and really focus on just delivering sort of a few nuggets here and there in essence. Hmm. I like
Michael: that. Where does that come from, where you feel like you need to continuously or what you felt like you've had to prove yourself?
Simon: I don't know, to be honest. I think I've, I think I've been like that since, since dental. . I think uh, I mean I have, like anyone had, a reasonable amount, amount of form in my childhood. My sister had cancer when she was seven, which was a, a major, sort of seminal moment in my childhood. Mm-hmm. , um, and obviously in hers.
Thankfully she survived and, and it's, it's healthy and well and has, has two kids of her own now. But she was in hospital for six months. It was, it was a serious, incident. , for the whole family. And I think for me, age nine at that time, obviously I had in essence lost my parents as they were sort of looking after my sister.
I think that there's probably some, there's probably some, internal sort of desire to be seen if I'm gonna. Heavily myself to the max here. but um, I think the end entrepreneurialism and business is a passion of mine. And so I be as successful as I can do, as I can. And I derive my satisfaction from, from being a man and, and working in our industry.
Really. Yeah,
Michael: man, that's, sorry about your sister man. Like that's really um, light bulb a a light bulb moment. You know what I mean? For, I think myself, for a lot of us, like in essence when the parents' attention goes, you know what I mean? To like a one full kid. I never thought about that Simon until you mentioned it.
Like mm-hmm. You kind of do lose a bit of your, you know what I mean? Like your, the attention you, not a little bit, a lot of, bit of your, the attention from your parents and, and that does stem where you're like, I need to, I need to work harder now for their attention. . And so you feel like that's where it kind of, from that point on and still, and then obviously magnified way more in dental.
Simon: I'm sure, I'm sure it's played a part, but I mean, I think the thing is with success, when you, when you taste a bit of success, you won that success again, right? Mm-hmm. . Um, For example, I won best young dentist in the country in 2015, and that was an amazing award to win. But then I was like, right, that it's like gold medal syndrome, isn't it?
It's just you, you, you get that big peak of dopamine and then you have the reverse crashed the same way, and then you want to go again to get up to that same level. And that's why I say it's so important that you're enjoying the journey, because if you are only striving for that one moment of success, it's so fleeting that actually it's, it's probably not worth it.
Whereas if you're enjoying the journey along the way, as I do with entrepreneurship, I mean building a brand, building a profile, building businesses, that's just play for me. That's fun. And so, I don't look at that as being like, oh God, I've gotta listen to this podcast, or I've gotta come on this podcast with Michael tonight.
It's, I, I, I just look at that as fun because I like to, I like to meet new people. I like to talk about experiences and, and all the the various components that make up running a business in, in 2023. Yeah.
Michael: No, man. Yeah, I appreciate that. When it comes to the moments of success that you were talking, What would you feel so far is not worth it when it comes to striving for, and maybe you see it on social media where people are like, yeah, you gotta do your own startup.
You're gonna love it, and maybe you wanna let them know like, no, not, not everybody's meant for this or not everybody's meant for that kind
Simon: of thing. I mean, I definitely agree that not everyone's meant to be a startup entrepreneur. It's incredibly. , especially building a, I think you call them CPG brands in the us right?
We call 'em Met fm cg, but consumer package goods like Parlor. Mm-hmm. like toothpaste. It's such a competitive market and you're constantly fighting uphill. You're fighting against the biggest brands in the world. You can leave her and part of Pro and Gamble and Colgate. These guys have got some serious money behind them.
And so you constantly feel like you're running up a uphill treadmill. And the girl posts are always changing, especially doing it through a pandemic and, and now going into a recession. So it is, it is a rollercoaster emotion. I think if you don't have a solid support structure around you, then it's not surprising to see so many startup founders have mental health issues.
I couldn't not do it. Like I just have this fire inside me where I, I, I can't not execute on my ideas, and I have a million ideas every single day. And so I had to actually execute on one of them. And I'm really proud with Parla that actually we, we've, we've done it. I mean, we've landed on, we're in over a thousand stores in the uk.
We've got tens of thousands of subscribers online. So even if we fail from now, . I feel like we've achieved what we set out to do. And I've sort of actually made a difference with this idea where, I mean, the reason we created the brand is that 20 billion toothpaste tubes made a single use plastic end up in landfill or the ocean every year.
That every tube of toothpaste you never use still exists somewhere on the planet. That's why we created a brand. So it's a plastic. Solution. And a zero waste solution as well. So I feel like I've made that positive impact as well as creating what is a really cool brand and also disrupting an industry that is in dire need of disruption.
Gotcha. Wow, I
Michael: didn't know that. So Parlo, what, why that name?
Simon: So parlor means Pearl in Swedish. And we felt that the Pearl was the perfect representation of what we were striving to do as a brand. Obviously we're designed by a dentist pearl, white smile and then also the pearl of the ocean.
We created the brand really to protect the ocean from single use plastic. That's my happy place. That's where I derive the most joy is when I'm on the ocean, in the ocean by the ocean. And to see the, the level of devastation of single use. Across the world. I mean, anywhere I travel, I see microplastics all over the beach.
I just don't wanna see that get worse for, for my kids. And so Parla was, was the, my thing that I could do to actually, to actually make a difference in. I mean, it's dentistry small, but toothpaste. Everyone in the world uses toothpaste in these single use plastic tubes. So it is a big way that we can make a difference as dentists.
And so, yeah, hopefully that'll be part of my legacy.
Michael: Yeah, man, that's nice. That's beautiful. And so I kind of wanna rewind a little bit. You talked about your, your practice, right? The, the one you currently have, 30 staff members. Yeah, you have 30 staff , and so there's nine operatories, right? 7, 7, 7. I'm sorry, seven operatories, 30 staff members.
Do you, let me ask you the positions of all them, you don't have to explain all their single positions or anything like that, but how does that look? 30 staff members,
Simon: Structurally? Oh no, you're asking, I mean, I guess we've got about.
10 to 12 clinicians but obviously part-time. And then around four or five hygienists. About five receptionists, again, part-time. Two practice managers and to treatment coordinators. . obviously those figures probably don down up to 30, but you get a rough idea on, on what the split's like.
Michael: Gotcha. And so you solely run it, or you, and, and your wife is like the COO or how,
Simon: how does that look? My wife's a dentist as well, and but yeah, she is, she's best basically the uh, the COO because, obviously with everything else that I'm running , I'm more of the ideas guy where youth more operationally working alongside our practice management team to make sure everything runs, runs smoothly.
Okay,
Michael: that's good. And so you mentioned you grew it, or actually, lemme ask you, how many new patients are you getting a month if you
Simon: Roughly No. Uh, About 50
Michael: 50. Okay. And so organically you grew this through social media, right? They people are finding you through social.
Simon: Yeah, so I mean, it's a nice it's a nice setup in the practice where obviously my parents have been there for 35 years.
They grew it from a one surgery to a five surgery practice, and then we grew it from a five surgery to a seven surgery practice with a an additional scanning room and, and training center as well. And so it has this nice base of a local reputation, uh, with a large patient. . But then on top of that, obviously I've brought in the specialists, the technology, the cerec, the iro the, the focus on cosmetic and implant dentistry.
So, I, I've brought in all these additional additional offerings, which means that we can service all of those existing patients with additional dentistry. But then on top of that, yes, I mean, . I mean, my following on Instagram is nothing, nothing major. It's only about 27,000. But I've been very successful in certain instances with working with influencers with them still paying for treatment but only re receiving a, a discount in exchange for some activity.
And that's led to a lot of organic growth of patient demand. I think also because I was on Instagram, Ly very early on, just because photography's a passion of mine anyway, I sort of leveraged on, on most of the alpha of Instagram, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. , um, before now, em, it's incredibly saturated.
Now. Everyone's doing Invisalign whitening and bonding on Instagram, certainly in the, in the uk. But it still drives patience and, and still I have patients coming from around the UK around the. Flying in to, to have the dentistry because they like, my specific style of dentistry, which I, which I, I was, I was talking about this um, on another podcast recently, I think about the fact that the thing that I love about social media with dentistry is that actually by the style of dentistry that you do, you attract a certain clientele of patience.
So my style is very much A natural aesthetic. So my patients in general want to have a beautiful white smile, but they don't want anyone to know they've had their teeth done. Whereas there's certain areas of the country and certain dentists who, who carry out more sort of flay dentistry where there's less texture and more flat in size ledges and less translucency, and they, those patients almost want everyone to know they've had their teeth done, if that makes sense.
Mm-hmm. as sort of like, A show. And so, I don't really get any of those, that second group of patients, I, I only get the patients and they, they always say to me, I've come and see you because I like, I like the style of dance. You do. I like how natural it looks, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's just a really nice self-selecting vehicle for my patients wear.
They already know me from a personality point of view. They've, they've seen my profile online and they've, they've seen me talking to the camera, et cetera. But then secondly, actually the clinically we're on the same page as well. that point of view, it's worked quite well for me.
Michael: So then what can you give us as far as like, advice when it comes to, Because you've seen that, right?
Where people are like, man, Simon, I'm trying to grow my Instagram page, and I have like 105 and it's just like, you know, other dentists following me, but I want like my community to follow me, you know? New patients to get new patients from it. What do you recommend we do from like, if you can give us instructions to start from this point and continue to try and grow.
Simon: Well, whether or not Instagram or TikTok is the right place to do that, I would probably say TikTok now, given how much more reach you can achieve, after obviously just saying that I'm not on TikTok, so I mean, that's fairly hypocritical, but that is, that is, that is the truth that TikTok is the place that you should be playing in right now.
I think the key thing with social media in general is you need to be not thinking about what you want. You wanna be thinking about what the viewer wants. And so when you are producing content, Think about who you are producing that content for, and then create contact content that's gonna give them value for the things that they want.
So, . Instead of just putting up a before and after, for example, fine put up a before and after, but then add onto that, right? This is how I did this. These are the steps. This is what's involved. Try and give more behind the scenes, more real stuff. Not, not necessarily reals, even though reals is what you should be doing, but mean more real content as in more behind the.
I think the best way to be successful on social media is to be true to who you are as an individual and just be as honest and real as you can be. Because I think people fall into the trap with Instagram density, where they try to just replicate what they've seen has been successful with other individuals, and then all that happens that everyone just starts looking the same and it just gets very, very dull and boring.
I think the more you can be yourself and unique to you and your own values and your own personality, the the more you'll cut. . So I think by following those two things of thinking about what value you're providing to the consumer and to the viewer, and also just being true to who you are as an individual, that's the way that really should be thinking about the content.
And then you just need to be doing it at scale. I think people are too sort of blase with, with how they how they produce their content. When I was doing it properly, I was having someone in every single. For a whole day to generate that content. And it was, it was a serious operation and we were looking at what was working, what trends were working, what, what was successful, and then putting our own spin on it.
And, and as I say, trying to add value to the consumer with with the way we delivered it. And, and that worked very well for me. And I think if you were to implement that on, and I've seen this with lots of young guys in, in the uk, they've done, they've been incredibly successful with. If you can mass produce and batch produce that content, then it can be really efficient and you don't have to think about doing it every single day.
You can, preload your posts using Buffer or later or something like that, and just have them running and then you, you can just sort of set it and forget it. . I say that, but then you really need to be engaging and communicating with your community if you want to grow it. So you, after it's posted, you probably do need to be on there.
Liking, commenting and communicating.
Michael: Gotcha. Do you still do that right now? Do, are you like having somebody once a month come in or No. Gotcha.
Simon: Okay. You right now, I'm, I'm very lazy now. ,
Michael: you ain't like you're doing a lot, man. You know, that's what I'm thinking. Like, I feel like you're doing so much that you can kind of like take pictures, you know what I mean?
And it's just on your
Simon: own. Share it. Yeah. I mean, I think I, like, as I say, I, it's probably not the right way to be because. I think this is like the classic pathway of like Blockbuster and Kodak where they become very successful and then they die because they haven't adapted with the times. I'm certainly doing that at the moment, but I think at the same time, you've gotta just, you've gotta look at the realities of your own life.
And for me at the moment, the most important thing for me is I've got two young kids and I wanna be spending as many hours of the day in the week as I can do with. . And so something has to give and I have to be respectful of my time and, and not push myself because I know, just because I know I can do something doesn't mean that I should do it.
For example, I know that I would smash on TikTok if I really went through it properly and sort of producing content at scale, but I also know that's gonna take me a day, a day, a month, and I literally don't have a day a month. my diary is I have a pa, a personal assistant, and. It's literally blocked out by the minute.
I mean, there's no, there's no room anywhere . And so that doesn't mean that I, I neglect my, my health or my family or anything like that. It just means I've blocked out my gym session every day. I've blocked out a therapy session. I've blocked out meditation. I blocked out family time where I'm not on my phone.
But if I'm gonna add anything else into. Then something has to come out and at the moment there's nothing really need to come out to add that into.
Michael: Yeah, man. Simon, you've, you're very aware, right? Like of your time, you're very aware of like your very specific, why, how did that come to be?
Simon: Well, I think it comes back to learning where to say.
and being, being respectful of your time and actually knowing what your val, what your life values are. I mean, my, as I say, my, my main focus is that my family is everything. I will never get this time back when my kids are, at this age. And once it's gone, it's gone. And I, I've heard so many successful individuals say that their only regret is that they didn't have enough, they didn't spend enough time with their kids when they were.
So that's my main focus with regards to my personal life. With regards to my professional life. I'm very, very clear now on what my values are with regards to that as well, which is that I only want to be doing stuff that I enjoy and that I feel is meaningful and I only wanna do it with people that I love.
And so that's how I make my decisions on. on how I move forward is that I, I, I don't, I have to be very, very careful with what I say yes to. And if it doesn't help me with one of those things, if I'm not doing it with people that I enjoy spending time with, if I don't enjoy it, or if I it's not allowing me to progress with something that's meaningful in my life, then I'll just say no to that opportunity.
So, for example, if a brand that I'm not particularly keen on, gets in touch with me and asks me to do, An Instagram post and they're gonna pay me a thousand pounds, I'm, I'm not gonna do it because it's gonna take time outta my day. I, I don't, it doesn't, it doesn't fulfill my, my ambitions. Do you know what I mean?
Even though it's easy money in, in many ways.
Michael: that's the thing. Do you think this kind of can apply at any stage in our lives or, you know how, like at the beginning you said, when we're grinding and we're, we're, we're trying to say yes to a lot of things. Do you think it can't apply there?
Because if you say no to, you know what I mean? Like what I don't want to do, then you're, you're not growing kind of thing or,
Simon: or what are your thoughts? I think it's gotta be personal to you. I think you've gotta, you've gotta, I think awareness and self objectivity is the really important thing. And you've gotta, you've gotta know what your diary looks like and then tailor your attitudes to, where you're at in your career.
For sure. You wanna push yourself outside of your comfort zone as much as possible. And I still do that now because I know that that's where the growth, that's where the growth area is. I mean, God, I've learned so much in the last four years on, on through running par on the, talking with retailers and margins and marketing and.
To LTV ratio for my performance ads. I mean, there's just, there's so much stuff that I've learned in the last four years that is way outside of my company zone that I've had to just think on my feet. Like pitching to five dragons on, on Livet, on on live recorded TV for two and a half hours. I mean, that's pretty far outside my comfort zone.
I've learned an incredible amount from it, and it's, it's created an incredible opportunity. So I'm definitely not saying that you shouldn't say yes to as much as possible when you're in your early stages, but I think it's just when you have lots of time pressures and lots of opportunities, you have to learn when to start tapering that in because there's only 24 hours in the day and seven days in the week, and so you can only do so much if that makes.
No,
Michael: that makes a ton of sense. Ton of sense. Okay. So one of the last questions I kind of wanted to ask you. One of 'em right, is throughout this time, your wife is a dentist, right? She's also operations, like the whole, she, I mean, she does all right a lot, right? When it comes to running the practice, family, everything.
Yeah. And you, same thing doing a lot. Visionary when it comes to your personal life. I don't know. Do you guys ever agree like, all right, at this time we're not gonna talk about. work-wise, none of that stuff? Or is it more like, yeah, you know what, let's whatever. If it comes up, it comes up. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Or is it like, don't ever stop enough kind of thing with each other?
Simon: You might get a different answer here from me and from Megan, but . No, I think, I think one, well, one time that we're very, very careful with is, is the time just before we go to bed. So we always make sure that we're not like dropping like.
Oh, this, this hygienist just handed in a notice, like just before we go to bed or something. Or like, like not cause sleep is so important to us, to us both. And we try and uh, sort of flow down the brain in that pre in that free bedtime. So I like that that section is, is certainly sort of demarcated as, as not being appropriate for dental chats.
But in general, I think that Megs and I are both very honest, open people, and if we're worrying about something, then we will just talk about it. I mean, I very much wear my hat on my sleeve. if there's something wrong with me, then everyone around me unfortunately will know about it. And if I'm happy about something, everyone will know about it.
And so I think we have a very open and honest relationship where we are. We're comfortable talking about whatever. I don't think either of. Get, it is not being necessary to have that conversation to say, these are the times when we talk about this. These are the times when we don't. Because firstly, that's not the reality of owning a a small business.
Things come up normally when you are on holiday, um, and you have to deal with them sometimes. So that is just the reality of running your own business. That's, that's what you sign up for. But also we enjoy it. And it's, it's, it's part of, it's, it's part of the fabric of our relationship. I mean, it's certainly.
The majority of our relationship, but we've been together now for, for 13, 14 years. And it's, it's always been, obviously we, we grad, we, I met her on the first day of university. We graduated together. Dentistry's always been a part of our relationship, and so, uh, and now businesses as well. And it's just, it's nice to learn new things together and to grow together.
So I think I, we look at it very much as a positive.
Michael: Nice. You met her on the first day of Univers. You're like, this is, you're it. You're the one that, that that's how it went. Pretty much. Yeah. , that's, and she was like, yeah, I guess. Yeah, you too. Yeah. . So that's good, man. That, that makes me happy, Simon. And then last question is, throughout this process, let's talk about from the moment I guess you decided to open, not open this practice, but like take over your parents to like today, right?
What's been some. Your biggest struggles, fails, or
Simon: pitfalls?
I mean, the biggest struggle was the pandemic, to be honest with you. Certainly that day when I had to call my team and tell them all we were posing, I mean, that was a, that was a very emotional day. and, uh, yeah, a lot of tears, a lot of anxiety around, when we were gonna open again, we. Terrible information for Mark governing Embodi, very poorly disseminated.
I mean, we found out, we were going back to work on the BBC with, with everyone else, and they said Dentists will be open, or healthcare providers, we open in a week. We're like, is that us? Are we, are we, are we back in action here? , like we had no, no protocols. Like it was just, it was awful. It was a constant battlefield.
But, I'm a very emotional person, so I, I, I feel that the ups and the downs very viscerally, but I am a huge advocate that the hard times are what you need to go through to get to, to get to successful parts of your life. And . Yeah, I think certainly. I mean, whenever something bad happens in any of our businesses, we're always just like, we're just gonna, we'll put it in the book, we'll put it in the book one day when we write a book of our, of our story.
And so I think that's a good way to look at it, is that nobody who's ever run a business, ever run their own business, has ever succeeded their way to success. They've always failed their way, success. And that is just what happens. You've gotta, you've gotta build that resilience and you've gotta just understand.
Your favorite associate's gonna hand in their notice or that patient who, you've tried your best for is gonna complain and, and sue you or whatever. These things are just the reality of life. Life is not fair. Life is not just, but you have to build that resilience and. I sort of push through.
I, I read a lot of stoic philosophy, so I read I dunno if you're familiar with the Daily Stoic book. um, from Ryan Holiday, but I read that every morning uh, as part of my morning routine, first thing. yeah, I love stoic philosophy for looking, for looking at uh, a lens through which to look at the hard times in life because we're all gonna have them, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's
Michael: true. And you gotta build that. Resilience, like you said, when it comes to reading, I guess, is that the one that you're on right now, like as far as, or is that what you do in the morning for like, and then you read other things?
Simon: Yeah, I mean, I, I, I only read the, the idea with that book is that you just read one quote and you sort of let, let that, sink in and, and process it as opposed to sort of rattling through.
So I've been reading that for I think three years every. So I read one quote every morning. It's literally the first thing I do. And even travel with it. It goes everywhere with me. So yeah, so that, that I wouldn't really class as reading. The book I'm reading right now is called How to Invest by, I think his name's Daniel Rubenstein.
Which yeah, it's quite interesting. I'm quite interested in sort of angel investing and that sort of thing as potentially part of. My ongoing career obviously with my sort of deep understanding of building a startup now and looking for ways to sort of diversify my, my portfolio moving forward.
That's quite a, an interesting area for me. So yeah, that's a book that that I'm reading currently. And then the book that I always recommend to everyone, which I just think is so good is uh, the Almanac of Nav. . It's just an amazing book. It's just such a well-rounded view on life. I think everyone should read it.
It's, it's so powerful.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. You're right. That I just read, finished it. Uh, I wanna say December. Really good book. Yeah. Oh,
Simon: really? Yeah. It's, it's Wick. Good. it's the only book that I, apart from Daily Stewart that I've read more than once. Cause I just wanted to get that knowledge again.
Michael: Yeah. When you reread it, like, for example, the, the Daily s. , do you feel like where was this? I didn't see this last year. Do you feel like that? Yeah.
Simon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you not in concentration mode reading book right out and you'll different. But Steve reminding, like, especially with the daily Stoic, it's so easy to let whatever the current.
Storm is to distract you, but I think it's good to go back to those sort of classic philosophies.
Michael: Yeah, nice man. You need to start a book club and we'll join and, you know, kinda get your suggestions, but Awesome. Simon, I truly appreciate you coming on. If anybody has any questions or concerns or they just wanna reach out to you, how can they
Simon: find you?
Um, So Instagram's probably the best place. My Instagram handles at Dr. Simon Char. And then Yeah, that's probably it. Really just, just send me a D on Instagram and normally on there uh, a little bit too much. Awesome.
Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below, and Simon, thank you for being with us.
It was a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon. Cheers.
