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This episode of Why I Become a Doctor is brought to you in partnership with Medical Brief, South Africa's leading daily healthcare news service.

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Stay informed with trusted reporting, expert insights, and analysis that matters to healthcare professionals. Subscribe free at medicalbrief.co.za forward slash subscribe. I read them myself every week diligently, yak. And you should subscribe if you've not. Can you do it right now? Cheers.

unknown 0:27

Dr.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Audiriele Moloy.

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How's it? I'm alright, my brother. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

All right, what's this jazz thing you're doing on Sundays now?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Oh no, that's that's that's the other me. That's that's Udi Riley there.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

That's Udi Riley. I mean, I feel like I'm in the studio with two DJs who are both dentists. What's happening? That's true.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

He he's he's a great guy. He's a great DJ. I I got to share a stage with him.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

At uh SciVision. When was this? Uh sometime last year. Yeah. I was starstruck. I don't know if you know this, but I was really starstruck. How did you know about this guy? Please. You're on the show already. You don't need to stroke anybody's egos. SciVision hits me up. They're like, look, we're inviting you to come and do a TED talk with another dentist, but you're gonna love him because he also plays music. I'm like, what? And they said, no, no, check him out. Yeah, this. And I went in, checked, and I was like, wow. Wait, on his social media? On his socials, and also I think he was doing something with their coffee shop. It's a plot. Play-to-play. Play-to-play. He does something with. So I started seeing that vibe, but also more than that, just his lifestyle. For me, I was more intrigued with his lifestyle, how he strikes that balance, and he made me make my life make sense.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Ah, but you know social media is all fake.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

No, no, not here.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Look, I know Yak from growing up to his uh Yak never struck me as a music person. Yak, you know you were not into music growing up.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

I played the tabla. You know what a tabla is? It's like a percussion into the music. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Like an Indian drum. Yeah, yes, I think. I was into music. Yeah, but I mean not a selector. Like, you know, but he's good at it. He grew into it. He's good at it.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Were you always into music from lighty days? I I was always into music thanks to my family. You know, growing up, uncles, my dad, my brother, we grew up in a music environment and we we grew up listening to all kinds of music. And vinyls was the in thing when I was growing up. That's all I can remember. And I fell in love with it because it's something that you could also touch. And, you know, LP. We used to call them LPs. I started calling them vinyls way later in life. But they were LPs growing up. That's all I knew. They were LPs and we used to play them a lot. Even the small LPs, now I know they're called Seven Inches, but we used to play that as well. So I started really collecting later in life when I could sort of afford them. But most of them are inherited. Some friends who know I collect would invite me and say, hey, come in. I know you're into music, into vinyls. Come, I've got a stash at my house. I'm about to throw it away. And you want to come look at it? And I would go clean them up and, you know, preserve them because the best thing. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Rustinberg, Kabane. It's in the Northwest Province. So we grew up under Buputa Zwana at the time.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Rusty Dusty. They call it Rusty Dusty. Is that a thing? Or is it Rust Dusty? My friend just, or is it just King?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

No, no, it really is Rusty Dusty. That's that's a nickname for it. Did you know this, yeah? Rusty Dusty, that's what it's called. Yeah. So there's a township called Kabane. That's where we grew up. And it was fun growing up. You know what I mean? We we and the life now makes me appreciate so much how we grew up and made me realize that we had everything. We had cultural events all the time. We had events that took care of us as teenagers. We had your Lingau Conservation Club where we would go into the into the wildlife preservation. We had great, I mean, there was a lot of things under Boputa Dzwana that were so advanced at the time. And that made us enjoy living at the time during that. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 4:01

But hold on, so Rastenberg was not in Northwest, it was in Boputawana.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So it was funny where you have the townships are part of the Bupita Dwana, but the towns are sort of like Transvaal.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

But is that the new Botswana now? Bopu Botswana.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

No, Botswana is another country.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Yeah, that's what I'm supposed to find a job. There's the Northwest Province.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

But tell us, please, because I'm also ignorant, eh? So we had the Northwest Province is what was previously Boputazwana. And we had obviously the townships like your Mabatu, Mohase, Kabani, Litawile, all those uh townships and the villages that were under President Mangope at the time. Yeah. So that's how that's where we grew up under that. And I have to be honest, it was the best times. It was the best of times.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

What did kids growing up there do? They play.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Look, we we if you remember, there wasn't any social media and other things back then. So we grew up, for example, I was playing a flute at school.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

A recorder. I was playing that. I was part of the music band at my primary school. And we were so advanced we'd gone uh and and we used to do like your inter-primary. We did that a lot with schools from far, schools from near. Our transport system, the bus system was proper. We took school buses to other schools. It was beautiful. We did music stuff, we did choir stuff, we did so much. I mean, there were so many competitions. Your math competitions, your, you know, all your educational programs, they weren't on point at the time. And we enjoyed that. We had great education, I have to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah, it sounds like you had a lot, like a well-rounded upbringing.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah, we had yeah, we had that. And it we really, it was, it was uh worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah. And dentistry, when did that feature? Would it ever come into your mind?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So dentistry is look, growing up, I my mom, a teacher, my dad was in the taxi business. And uh I think growing up, the one thing I really wanted to become was a doctor. I think more than anything, growing up, it was more of a medical doctor more than a dentist, you know. Until I started visiting dental practices. And growing up in Kabaning, a gold tooth was the in-thing. A gold filling, you know, the gold inlays. So I remember going to a dentist in in my township, and I had my mom's medical aid, you know, she, you know, we had that because she was a teacher, so she had to subsidized from those medical schemes at the time. And I went there wanting to put a gold filling. And the lady dental assistant said to me, Look, your teeth look good. Why do you want to do this? And I told her, look, everybody in my class has, everybody in my school has something that I really want. And she said, No, today the dentist is not there. Come back next time. And then the next appointment I went to, I found a dentist, there, a lady dentist. I'd like to assume she was a low-come because I know the doctor who was there, the dentist who was there was male and he wasn't there. So it was a low-come dentist. And I told her, Look, I'm here to have a gold filling. And politely she said to me, Look, you've got beautiful teeth. Why don't I show you around what I do? Why don't I have your teeth cleaned? Why don't I show you how I work and then maybe you can decide after that? And she took a mirror, showed me my teeth, and I really looked at it and I started, you know, thinking differently. I left there without a gold filling. But I left there so inspired to become a dentist. And I never got to thank that woman because she was a local med that practice. I was really young, and I never got to find out her name or whatever, and never got to find her. But this was one person that when I left, and I can tell you it wasn't the first time I went to the dentist. The previous time I went to the dentist, it was a dentist in town, Renberg, and it was on the first or second floor. And I remember I was so scared. Yeah, I was so scared when I started realizing because so we were queuing at the dentist to get to get in. And when I realized that, look, I'm far off in the queue. I was with my mom. I went to play downstairs. And they could see me obviously from out the window. And I kept wishing that this dentist dies. I swear. I kept wishing that this guy dies before out the window. So that so that they tell me, no, he died. You can't, you know. I swear that's that's really how bad. Yeah. And I then the locum would have come. You know, but that was before I met the locum. So after that, I was called in and obviously did the treatment, and I still remember the taste of local anesthetic then. And I I tell you, that time I didn't want to become a dentist. What was it? What did you have done? At the time, remember I said medicine was the thing that I really wanted. No, I mean the treatment, the dental treatment. Or probably an extraction. Extraction. Yeah, but I'm thinking it was milk teeth because I've got all my teeth. So I'm thinking it was milk teeth then because I was young.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

And first forward, meeting this lady locum. And after meeting this lady locum, everything changed. And I was like, look, from now on, I want to do this profession. I want to become a dentist. It's neat, it's beautiful. Patient care, what she did. And I just looked at the artistry, you know, the signs, the cleanliness of the practice, and how she was explaining everything. And I'm like, look, I could change the remember that me that was so scared of the dentist. I could change that perception, become a dentist, and change the narrative. And I can be honest with you, probably now 20-something years a dentist. And I every day want to change the perception of what people think of dentists. It's mainly because of what that woman did. Do you think she's still alive? I swear she probably is. She was young.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

I was in the world. Have you ever tried reaching out? Look, I I wouldn't, I would start there, but in terms of getting records, it would be difficult. Because back then, let me be honest with you, I was in, so back then we had primary school, middle school, and high school. This was in the township, and that's how the education system was like. So I can be honest with you, I was in the middle school. Middle school was between standard five and standard seven. So I was right then, somewhere in between that. We had primary school, which ended in standard four, which is grade six, right? And then we had standard five, middle school until standard seven, and I was in that era, and that's why I remember. Because I remember some of my friends who had gold teeth then, the friends that I made in that school. And that's why I can, if I look had to look at the timeline, I would look in those years.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Maybe she's watching. Maybe I mean it was in Klabani.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

It was in Klabane. It was at a popular medical center. It's we we grew up there. It's called Pumulo Medical Center, I think. Yeah, it's one of the most popular in the township, one of those medical centers we had in the township, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Yeah, so if you do the forensic math, right, you were in middle school, so another, what, three, four years left for you to finish there, then high school, another five years, so that's like eight years. Oh, yeah. And she would have done CompServe, nine years. So she probably would have been like 10, maximum 15 years older than you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Okay, Dr. So-and-so, if you worked at Comolo Medical Center, how about um in the what is it, 90s? It was in the 90s because how old are you now?

SPEAKER_00 11:37

I'm 40. Goddamn, how old am I?

SPEAKER_03 11:40

40. 44.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

I'm 44. Okay. She would be in her 60s or just entering her 60s.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yeah, if you're watching, please um. Yeah. And I'm also thinking that every time I keep thinking, what if she was probably doing dental therapy then and she decided I'm gonna finish and then go do dentistry, you know?

SPEAKER_02 11:58

That's what I keep thinking about. When you were telling me that story, the pessimist in me was probably thinking, maybe it's the hygienist and she wasn't allowed to do the gold, so she sold you the teenager.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

You understand? Maybe. Because that's all I did. And if I think about it, I didn't have any restorations done at the time.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

And then so the inspiration then that came from that incident, like how how then do you move forward with that?

SPEAKER_00 12:23

So my mom being a teacher, I was in a school where most of the teachers were very familiar with my mom. At the time, my parents just got divorced, so my mom's moved. We moved to, we moved to live in Costello, where my mom was born. So all that my mom's friends who were teachers or colleagues, I don't know what to call them, they were in the school and they could nurture what I wanted to become because we had like subjects called career guidance and things like that. And I started becoming intentional with what I want to become. And it was dentistry. And I really, really wanted to do it. So I started obviously leaning more, and I was told then do your maths. If you do your maths, your science and your biology, you would get into dentistry, you would get into the, you know, Medusa. At the time, Medusa was the only institution I knew, and my family was familiar with. It could have been the distance thing because Rastimek to Harangua is not that far off, and Medusa is there. So it was something that really, really I followed at the time.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

This is the second time I'm hearing that maths is a prerequisite for dentists, it's still that way. Must be.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

I I can tell you, recently I was helping a lot of my friends to get their kids into tertiary level. Most of them knowing me coming from Medusa, coming from a health thing, they would come to me and say, hey, my son or my daughter wants to do either dentistry or medicine or pharmacy or this. So they come to me. And that's how I got to know because beginning of this year, I spent most of my time on calls with my friends that I know, people that I know in tertiary institutions, to help these kids, which brings me to this thing of, I don't know if you guys are aware of it, but these kids now, they don't apply. They want to wing it. It's almost like they're in metric, they don't know where they're gonna go. And so I spent this time doing that. And one of my friends' kids did something called, I think it's called applied maths or something like that. And it's not acceptable in medicine, in medical school. They want full maths or something like that. So, yes, to answer you, maths is still a prerequisite.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

I mean, did you have medics in the family? I mean, I c I just I find it interesting that just this one or two experiences makes you think I want to be a dentist.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

So one of my cousins, one of my cousins was a medical doctor then, and he was specializing at Medusa. And that's how also when you get into an institution and you have somebody from home, he was the only guy. And he was, we knew him in our family as the first doctor of the family. And I didn't go there to become the next doctor in the family. I really wanted it that I started not looking at, you know, sometimes people do things to say, I'm the first black to do this, or I'm the first person to do. I did it for me at the time. And I was so, because I remember financially as well, we were not okay. And not being okay, my mom started worrying that how will we get into medical school? And, you know, phone calls were made, finances were applied for, you know, this and that. At the time, remember my parents were divorced, so there was that, you know, thing of back and forth money, who's gonna pay for this, who's gonna pay for that. So that also made me so intentional. And I was like, look, mom, I'm gonna go no matter what. And on the other hand, I had opportunities to go and do engineering. I had opportunities to go and do mining because Rusty Meg being a mining town, we readily had schools, pamphlets coming into our school saying, look, we're doing an intake of engineering students. If you want to go study engineering, go there. My dad being from, you know, from the Bleskop Texas Association, all the mines around there, he used to send word that, look, my son is doing well at school. What do you think? No, he can come, we'll do engineering. He'll do one of the engineering courses and whatever. But I knew very well that there was an easy way, which is me doing it through all of that, or doing what I really want to do.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

And looking back, I couldn't have done anything else. I I would never have done anything else but dentistry is what I really, really love.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

I mean, if you think about it, dentists are like engineers also, and and artists. And mining. They do a lot of mining also.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

We do, we do. You know, like engineering artists, and you know. Well, you're always a tall kid. Tall. Yeah, like height was tall. I had a few guys who were competing with me. So you should be so ready. But uh yeah, look, it's the height thing was there because we were always classified as the tall guys. And even with sports, I mean, I when I got to Medusa, I started playing basketball at campus because back in Rusty Map, we didn't have that. We had soccer, we had baseball, we had long jump, high jump, but there wasn't really basketball per se. But when I got to campus, I knew I wanted to play basketball, and that's when I went to how did you just know you want to play basketball? Like, I've always enjoyed watching it in my room at Rez. I had, you know, posters of the basketball guys. I loved basketball back then. I was, you know, the Michael Jordan era. The Chicago Bulls. The Chicago Bulls guys, that was us. To funny, I was nicknamed Shaq. And most of my friends to this day still call me Shaq from Shaquille O'Neal, and it's one of the nicknames I got from basketball at medical school. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

And you also hinted, you said you're doing well in school, like academically.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

I would say I was more of a hard worker. You know, it wasn't easy. It it I found, I still found maths and physics very difficult. I enjoyed biology a lot. And high school, I didn't do too well in maths and science. This was physical science. And my teachers really tried. I was a I was a naughty boy in high school. You know, you wanted a gold slit. I wanted a gold slit. I wanted, you know. So high school. Look at me stereotyping. Remember, that's you. Remember middle school. After middle school, I went now to an English medium school. I got the opportunity to go to an English medium school. So then you meet different people, you know. So I went to school in Rusty Make called Xinjaville. Xinaville is mostly an Indian community. Okay. So that's where I went to school, in high school, and it was the best time of my life. You say opportunity, is it is that like going up? It's definitely was. Okay. At the time, it definitely was. Because it's not like now when every child is expected to be in an English medium school every now and then, you know, it's it's a it's it's a it's a whatever thing now. But back then with us, it was a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

If parents could afford such a thing, such school fees, it was great. And we all aspired to be there.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

What was the default then? Uh what what languages did they teach in your earlier schools?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

I was about. So we did everything in Sotswana. We, you know, there was remember Tatswana? So it's Sotswana.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

So we had three languages, English, Africans, and Sotswana. And we had the three subjects, whether you take maths, physics, biology, or geography or history, all of those. Yeah. So we did that.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

And then what was the was that the only qualifying criteria to go to the English school, like finances? Or is there other things restricting?

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Of course there were other things, like, you know, maybe look, I was too young to know, but I think also location played a part. Because after my parents divorced, my mother then bought a house in town in Rustamet North, and we were now closer to the other schools, and it made sense. But at the time, I still got a lot of kids from the township who would have a common transport to go to the to the schools in the in town.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

What were the demographics like? Were there any white kids? I'm assuming the Xinya bills. Zinyaville, mostly Indian, mostly Indian colored and and black. Did you have any white friends or any other people?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

We did. There was quite a few. We did. Okay. Yeah, one or two. One or two.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

So it's not like you were you were growing up in like deep apartheid times and things like that. No.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

As much as it as you would, I I felt it more after my mom bought a house in Rusty McNorth. I felt it more there because there was still the demarcation, there was still that big fence separating the township from the town. But later with the years it moved like a literal fence. Yeah, a literal fence. A literal fence that separated that. There was that time. We grew up in that time of it was more the, how do you say it? The dawn? Is it the dawn? Yeah, the dawn of apartheid? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

And then how was it moving to the Zenyeville school?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

That was for me, I'll be honest with you. Most of my purpose came there because my best friend that I still keep to this day, he's my best friend. We met there. Most of my friends, we met at high school. And it's when I really had to change direction. You know, sometimes you get a point where you have to make it or break it. So growing up, we were very not, we were in fights in school, this and that. And I'm not saying even in Zignyadville, at some point I was suspended from school in my matrickia for fighting. And that was that was really bad. We went the fight. Of course we did. Because we do. So there comes a time in everyone's life where you are extremely naughty. And from there, it's downhill for you if you don't change that. So with me, I had friends who, and I'm not gonna blame my friends. I was also that naughty boy. You know, sometimes when you sit in parents will say, No, it's that one. I was probably that one. Because even my best friend today, there was a time in our life where his parents said to him, No, this one, the teachers told his parents straight that if he hangs out with this one, he's not gonna do well. Because I was that kid. Bad influence. The bad influence kid. So I had to really change and say, whatever it is. That I yearn for in life. Growing up in a township, beautiful clothes, beautiful cars everywhere. If I want that, there's no other way I'll get it if I don't go to school. Because other than that, it's the life of crime. And I was privy to that life of crime because I used I I kept I still keep a lot of diverse friends who are on the other side and the others on the other side. I don't say no, no, no, no, no. I am only on this side. No. But I'll be honest with you, there was that time that I had to really, really say, I must lock it in so that I can make a change in my life. How did you have the maturity to do that? And people ask me that. And to be honest, at that time I was thinking clearly, I was like, look, if I really need to do it, I need to really, really focus. If anything I want in life, my mother made it very clear that, look, I won't give it to you. My dad also made it clear that, look, whatever life you think you want, we won't give it to you. And also, I had this thing in me of, uh-uh, I don't want to go to jail. I see my friends were in jail.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Was it the the epiphany when you got suspended in Matrix?

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Or what when does this happen? You know, this is before. I mean, everything happened before. But being suspended was because of an altercation we had. And what's worse was I was just, I had just become a prefect at school. And I set the wrong, you know, standard of being a prefect, especially after they took you on that whole prefect camp and this and that. And I was very happy, sorry to digress, last year.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Was it two years ago? My school had a 50th anniversary and I was invited to speak. And in what I was saying, I was really trying to inspire those kids to say, look, there was a time in my life where in this school I was not wanted. But I came out and became one of those students that the school becomes proud of. And any event at school, I get invited. Any appearance that I can make at the school is a beautiful thing for the school because they say, look, he's one of us. They take pride in knowing that I'm one of them. But to be honest, it didn't start there. It didn't start that well. We were the bad kids in school initiative.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Isn't it so cool that you get invited to a 50-year anniversary? What's the name of the school?

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Xinhua Second Doctor. Yeah, and I was the main speaker there at when they invited me, and it was life-changing. It was really, I was humbled.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

That's a proud moment.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

To go back and have to tell my story like that, you know? Because to be honest, I never ever imagined that I would be the one having to motivate the kids.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

But Aurelia, what made you naughty? You want to get granular about it? Like if someone's watching this and they're like thinking, I'm no, I'm not naughty, I'm just like playful. Because that's what I usually think about myself, not realizing you're hurting other people. I think you're identifying.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Us growing up, us growing up, man, you know, boys and boys growing up, we just either you were more into girls or you were more into being naughty. And so I was that child who was fine. I was a teacher's boy. My mom was a teacher. So I knew homework had to be done. I knew school had to be done. I had to go to school properly. I couldn't bank school because my mother would be the first to know. But at the same time, I was just naughty. You know, growing up, it's hard to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

I tell you, I mean, the apple fell far from the tree. I'm sure your parents were like very strict. No, they were. Yeah. They were.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

But if I look at it, uh, you know, they were. Maybe you were not naughty. Maybe you just had a higher level of expectation on you because your pair, your mom was a teacher, so you're going to expect it all over.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

And siblings, what about siblings and stuff? They, so I lost my brother about two years ago. My younger brother, I've got my older brother. But my siblings, I was the middle, I'm the middle child. So my older brother, quiet guy. I love him to death. You know, he he's he's one of the most quiet guys, but he does speak his mind. My younger brother was excessively into music, into he had tattoos everywhere. He had, you know, I remember once my mother was shouting at him for having tattoos, and he went and got my mom's name as one of his tattoos, just to say, but mom, you know, you are you are here, you know? So he was the naughty one at school. I mean, he was far worse than me. But uh I would say I was the one who was more focused academically later on in life. Because I started, I mean, it was there. I was doing okay at school. I was passing well, so I was the one who really, really had to push. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

And then, okay, you went to school. Where did you apply? What did you what did you do?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

So apply. Fast forward. There's these engineering guys who really are coming forth. And they're there. Like you get bursaries are there flying at our schools. They're the most accessible. Nothing on medicine. And that's because it's mining, right? It's mining. It's a platinum tower. They recruit kids, they recruit us to become engineers. It was more accessible. But on the medicine side, there's not really anyone who has to fund that, you know? And I had no plan as to, okay, what's gonna happen. And one of my uncles knew a lady at Medusa Admin. So after I get my metric results, I tell my mom, look, I'm not doing this engineering thing. And this is after you do, I can't remember what they call them. I think they're called aptitude tests, where they make you write an entry exam or something like that. We wrote them while in metric. So I bought a taxi to Pretoria to go write it. At the time, no cell phones. This is 96, 96, 97. No cell phones. My older brother is a technical. My mother said to him, Look, we received the letter. This boy needs to write an aptitude test for UCT or vets. I can't remember, for engineering, whether mining or mechanical, I can't remember. The venue is UNISA. My brother's like, No, my flat is just next to Unison and Pretoria. He can come to my flat. And I bought a taxi, no cell phones. They told him, No, he's in the taxi. You'll find him there. He said, Look, I'm attending class, but I'll come out. If he gets off the taxi at the Manhattan Hotel in Bosmont, he must just wait for me there. I can tell you the taxi was fast to Pretoria. Got off the taxi from probably I would say, let's say I got off the taxi at 12 and had to wait for the guy. But I wasn't panicking. It's unlike now. Right now, I had to keep you guys posted and say, hey, I'm on my way. Hey, my live location, this and that. I'm almost there. That's because of Yash and his uh back then. You bought a taxi, you're gonna get off at Manhattan. When I come out of school, I'll find you there. And he did. And I remember sitting at that hotel lobby, you know, sitting, I couldn't be right there. So I had to be a bit far because obviously security will tell you, no, no, kid, we don't want you here. Stop playing here. So I was there and I waited for my brother. I wasn't panicking. I knew he was gonna show up. I must have waited three to four hours until he came out of class, but he showed up. And I was not worried. I can tell you if I have to fetch anyone from anywhere and I'm late five minutes, you get 20 missed calls. You get 30 messages. Hey, where are you? You said you'll be here, this and that. No. Back then it was chilled. So I went and I wrote that. And with written, having written that, I still got hung on this thing. And I remember my best friend, he said to me, Look, I got accepted in Cape Town. His name is Peno. He said, Look, I got accepted in Cape Town. I'm going. I'm like, hey, lucky you, man. Good luck, all the best. I'm gonna still hustle my way to Medusa. There were telegrams. And I remember that December I was in Koster where my mom was born. So I was in Coster. There's a post office there. The lady at Medusa said, Look, guys, send everything through a telegram. I don't know if you guys remember there were telegrams, post office, there was no faxes, things. Probably there were, but I didn't have access to them. So I had access to a telegram. So the lady said, Look, send us a telegram, we'll receive all of those things, the application, the results and everything, and then we'll see what we can do. My mess was not good, my science was not good, biology was good, and I was accepted into a BSC at Medunsa. Look, I was in. The consoling statement this lady said to me was, Look, if you do well enough in your first year, you might get into dentistry. Might. Might get into dentistry. It still applies now. And I see a lot of kids just giving up. And look, I had at that time no funding. There was TEFSA. There was my church, which is Lutheran church. They said, look, if you do well, we will give you something. TEFSA said, if you do well in your first year, we'll do something. I can tell you, my first year, I worked so hard. So first year is a mix of I'm free from home. I've been home all my life. You come into varsity, there's parties, bashes, school trips, you know, Valentine, this and that. Valentine's coming, you know, it's it was beautiful. We were messing around, meeting girls, this and that. And you have to also remember that you still don't have funding. At school back then, they just wanted money for registration. And my parents made a plan for registration money. And that's all I did. And my cousin, one of my cousins who I hold him dear to me, he said, Look, I'll go with you to school. We'll go see what happens. We had that money, we paid it, and the registration money. And we said, Look, let's go try it. Let's go see. I got accepted for BSC. I did so well in my first year. So before, let me get to this. Because I didn't do well in maths and science, even in BSC, they didn't give me full courses. They didn't give me your chemistry 101, your physics 101, your maths 101. No. They gave me the special, which is almost like a half course, a half credit before you can get into the main team. Because they would say, no, he's gonna struggle if you give him chemistry 101. Give him the easier time chemistry and he'll do well. But it carries a half credit. Now the thing was, if he gets three distinctions, he will get into dentistry. I can promise you that yeah, I worked so hard. My life really depended on it. And I did so well. Most of my friends who started BSC with me had to complete their BSC degree and then decide dentistry or decide meths, I mean uh medicine, or they just bought they're going somewhere else. With me, after my first year BSC, I got accepted into dentistry first year with a lot of uh exemptions, of course.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Yeah. So how does that work? Like you do a first-year BSE, you gotta go start dentistry from first year or do you credit?

SPEAKER_00 32:49

So had I done the full courses, I was going to outright go into second-year dentistry. But remember, I did the half courses.

SPEAKER_03 32:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

And it means that I didn't do chemistry 101. I didn't do a lot of other like courses that were there. Because when you start off at medical school, your first year, the courses are all similar between medicine, dentistry, and I think physio and other courses. Even your second year, you still all do the same anatomy, the same physiology. But with the dentistry, we stop at head and neck. I think I don't know what you guys stopped at, but we stopped at head and neck, yeah. So with me, I did first year did well in all those courses. But second year, they said, no, you have to do because you have to do the full courses. And also to avoid just being, you know, loafing around, they had to make me do another computer course in that year. So I had a lot of free time in my first year dentistry, not first year BSC, first year dentistry, and that worked out a lot. Yeah. Were you staying on res? I was staying at res in Harangua. So we had reses, 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 5A. So I stayed at 5A, and all the reses had their own little thing, you know. Personality. Yeah. They had that. So our res was a gens res. It was a gens res. How was Medunsa?

SPEAKER_01 34:06

What is it there?

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Medusa, look, I'll be honest with you, we had the best time. It was Medusa that. It was Medusa. Yeah. So all my life, I went to three different institutions. I went to Medusa, I went to the University of Limpopo, and I went to Cefa Comakhat. But they're all the same campus. They just change names. They just change names. So all my degrees are different. When you come to my practice, I've got uh Udiride qualified BDS at Medusa, did a postgrade at SMU, did this at uh University of Limpopo. People always ask me, so you went to Limpopo and no, no, it was Medusa. It's written the University of Limpopo, Medusa campus. So campus life was fun. I was, we threw parties, we had, look, we had so much going on when it came, when it came to my social life, was never lacking, and my music thing was also, I mean, there we we threw parties, great parties at campus, we did, we organized events at campus. I think more than anything, we had to balance it. And if I knew very well that how much is at stake for me. So I forgot to mention that in that first year BSC, when I moved to dentistry with such great marks, also came the American Dental Association. They gave us scholarships. So there were ladies at Finance Medusa who knew very well how to pick students who did well and say, okay, he did well. He qualifies for this for TEFSA. Okay, TEFSA, you qualify for it because of your socioeconomic status. Now it's called NESFAS. So they would see that, okay, he's raised by a single parent. Uh he won't afford they do what we call a means test. And I had good friends at Varsity who didn't have to fill in that. And they're from good families, but they always accompanied me on that queue. So there's a queue that we, you know, it's almost like a Sasa type queue.

SPEAKER_04 36:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

But my friends would accompany me. They would come sit with me and we would go there on the queue, and I'd tell them, gents, I'm here to apply for this financial assistance, come through with me. And they would. And they would chill with me there, and I love them. Those guys, you know, to this day we remain the closest of friends.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

Just to give you company.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Just to show you that, look, as much as we're from families that are okay, we understand your situation and we'll go with you. And also because I'm a friend, if they they they won't go, if they want to go to some girls that they won't go without me. If they want to go to some party there, they won't go without me. So for them to make sure that we end up going there, let's first get this out the way. So there was TEFSA, there was the American Dental Association, there was the Lutheran Church that also funded me at the time. And I'm forever grateful for all these small financial assistance. And as small as they seem, they went a long way for us. And I see it a lot now with students struggling and with I was there, I know it. And that's why to this day we continue to give back, we continue to give other students an opportunity that we were given and to give them the connections that we were given, the the contacts that we were at the time afforded. We do that because we know where we come from.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

So you felt like you had like some sense of responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

I need to pass, I need to make sure. I need I needed to. Because ADA was not going to, American, they were not gonna give me another scholarship for the next year. And it was huge, it was 10,000 rand. It almost slashes all your fees in half. So it's a yearly thing, it's not the whole thing. If you do, yeah. If you do well, they give it to you and you don't have to work back for it. The only time that I got a bursary where I had to sort of do the time was also a strategic thing where later in my dental years, when I identified what I really like in terms of dentistry, and knowing that when you finish dentistry, you're going to do ComServe in a hospital where they just do extractions. And I learned that in the military, you get to do all other procedures that you do, all the high-end procedures I can do. I love root canal treatment, so I can do it there. And I spoke to a friend of mine, and I said to him, Hey, Moss, you are in the military. How do I get it? He's like, no, if you don't have a bursary, if they didn't find you from the first year, you're doomed. I'm like, but can't I get something? He's like, no, I'll give you forms to apply. He helped me apply. He's he's one of the people that I'm forever grateful for. He gave me forms and said, Look, go apply. And at the time I was left with six months' dentistry. Remember, dentistry was five and a half.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

It wasn't five years. When we qualified back then, it was five and a half years. So the the six months that was remaining, I got funded by the military for that six months. So it meant that I needed to work for the military for that amount of stress. But it was also a strategy for me to get in. So I made sure that I got in. That was the only time that I really got a bursary to sort of work.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

But wait now, wait now. You're talking, like, like it sounds like you had a good time. You're talking about campus life. But what about dental school proper? How is that? Dental school for me. Because people don't know, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Dental school is like you can be have campus life. But dental school is different. It's another life. That's another life on its own. That's like jail term within jail term. That's uh, what do you call this prison?

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Uh Bongwene.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

What's that? Cockstart. It's a cockstart within within Paul's Mo. Or something like that. CMAX. So you have campus? CMAX. And you have, yeah, all of them are CMATs. So you have that. So with Medusa, it also remained. We had, back then we had great lecturers, but dentistry was tough. Everybody knew. As much as gents, you know this. Dentistry is one of the most toughest courses. Because you have to. I got a call. One friend of mine asked me the other day, where did you do your internship? I'm like, no, we don't do internship as dentists. Because in your undergrad, it's tough enough. It's tough enough. It's intentionship. It's internship enough. All you need to do is come self. It was really tough. And with that. No horror stories. No tears. I never cried, man. I never cried. I've always been a guy who would make friends with my teachers, my lecturers, and all of them never cut me some slack in terms of saying, no, this is what will be, you know, scope for exam. None of that. You weren't shy. No, I was never shy. Remember, I was a class leader in many of the and I organized. So at campus, we had, I don't know if you guys had this, where towards your more final years, you start inviting companies to come and bring cars in and they buy you drinks and lunch and this. I was the guy organizing, speaking to car dealerships, speaking to insurance sponsors, your PPS. They would come in, they would liaise through me because I was the student liaison in my classroom. I was that guy.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Speak to them for the show, man. Make a friend.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Of course I would. I mean, with everything I'm doing now, I speak to these people.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

Okay, so okay, you were the class rep. We know the class rep types.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

I wasn't a class rep.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Okay. But I was a class leader.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

That's the difference. A rep is the teacher's pair. I wasn't that guy. Okay. But I was a leader. I was a guy in my class where we could say, hey, we need Dance Bly Sorona would say, we wanna come and take the students on a tour to Dance Bly Sorona. Dance Blaise Sorona would send their rep to come in and have a conversation with me. And I would tell my class, guys, let's plan. What is it that we want when we get there? What drink? I'm taking your drinks orders. What do you want? Okay, how many are we? Are we taking a bus? Are we renting a minibus, taxi, or are we taking the school bus? What do you want? I was then guy.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

What was the intention behind reps coming to get that done? So they start. That's an important thing. Because I can tell you today, my love for root canal treatment was also sort of assisted, or how can I put that? What's the English word to say? Fostered like shit. Yeah, yeah. By those guys. Because one of the guys, Mr. Joseph Shy, to this day, I'm forever grateful for him. He's a dance blighterona. He used to come in and show us how root canals, what products are there for root canals, this and that. I still have that guy's business card that he gave me when I was still studying as a dental student. That guy is a very close friend of mine, a brother, a father, somebody that I appreciate so much. He helped me in a lot when it comes to dentistry. And he inspired me so much. And I hope the company is listening and they know that the impact that this man has done is why the reason why we are all. Mr. Joseph Shy. Joseph Shy.

SPEAKER_01 42:53

But so they they knew the importance of fostering relationships from student days. Yes. That's what they did. And you were the guy that also you were a relationship builder leader. True. True. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

So with him, he would come in and bring in all the products to say, hey, these are composites that we need. They're called whatever names they have, the composites that the company is selling. And they would show us how they work. They would take us to the company. And when you qualify, I mean, that's exactly where you're going to go and order. That's exactly the product that you will want to use. And that's exactly the direction you would take as a practice. To say, in my private practice, this is the direction I want to take. And they they get you there. And that's exactly with him, he won me. I'll be honest with you. And he nurtured, he introduced me to great guys who loved endo. I am where I am today with root canal procedures because of the relationships that he helped me build with other dentists. I was the younger guy, and he introduced me to guys like Dr. Tiu, who's a prostodontist in the military. He introduced Introduced me to the late Wadada, who also loved Endo. He introduced me to guys like your Zoland Demander, the late Zolandimander. Great guys that actually gave me a chance to say, hey, this lady knows Endo. He knows Root Canal. He has an interest in it. And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Okay, fascinating. But was there not fostered in undergrad, like from the university, to see what was the opportunity like?

SPEAKER_00 44:23

So in the university, we have a, you guys know we have a quota system where you need to do, you need to extract a certain number of teeth for you to qualify to pass your fourth year or your fifth year, or to qualify as a dentist. You need to do a certain number of procedures. So with my root canal, because I started loving root canal treatment, I completed my quota early. And my lecturers and supervisors who would see that, no, this boy really loves this thing, would allow me to come and work with them in their consulting rooms within the hospital. So while other students are still pushing for their quota, my quota was done with root canal. And I would get then get the opportunity to say, come and observe when we're busy treating a patient, come and try this, come and try that. That's one of the guys I should tell you guys about this guy, because I picked up the call the other day and I called him. Atien Pito, he's an orthodontist in Cape Town. And I reached out to him, I said, Hey, you are one of the people that inspired me because he was my lecturer then. He made sure that when I was done with the quota, I go in and observe when he does it. And he would also still give me a chance to, you know, like perform it. And that's why to this day I still enjoy that type of you know procedures. Which is endodontics. Endodontics, root canal treatment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

Yeah. Okay. So you mentioned previously, right? There's the industry in university is like the prison within the prison. For me, endodontics is like the prison within the prison of the mouth. Why endodontics? You're already working in such a small environment. Why would you go and choose to work within a small little chamber within that small environment? What attracts you to endodontics?

SPEAKER_00 46:09

So with so many disciplines in dentistry, there was extractions, there was surgery, maxillofacial, there was prostodontis, there was orthodontist with braces, there was pirodontis with uh the millimeters, you know, the gingiva, the gums, this and that. And I wasn't really a fan of maxillofacial. One of my good friends also made me hate ortho, man. You know, this guy is a good friend of mine. He knew it too well. But when somebody knows something too well, sometimes they can end up making you hate it because they're thinking, why are you not good at it? Why don't you do this? So with Otho, we they were very strict. We wore formal every time we knew we had Otho, they made us wear a shirt, a tie, and you know, they had this dentistry thing that we all believe in. The dentist should be neat and, you know, well dressed and this and that. So they made me just don't like that subject that much. But with root canal treatment, I just started knowing how what somebody a few minutes ago walked in with so much pain, wanting to have this tooth extracted. And now, me as a dentist, I'm able to go inside their nerves, remove the pain, remove the inflammation, remove the infection, remove the cause of pain, and still make them enjoy having the tooth in the mouth. Now that comes from where? Remember when I was younger and the extractions and me wanting to push hard and be fascinated with the whole patient care, making sure that I increase people's dental IQ. So with root cana, I used to love that. And one of my first cases was a young boy. I remember this young boy met me at one of the malls in Pictoria. He said, Look, do you remember me? I'm like, this is long after I qualified. I'm like, yeah, you have my very first case of endo when I was in fourth or fifth year. And he had just fell and broke his tooth. Now it's non-vital. It's a dead tooth. Now I must help him do the root canal. After that, build up his tooth with the crown. So I did that for him. Now imagine this boy walking in with such a big swelling on the face, pain. The mom says, No, that tooth has got this big disease. Uh, they call it skaku. That's the term they use, like this moving worm thing inside your tooth that must be removed soon. If it's not removed, it's gonna kill you. Now I come in and I say, hey, I can help you solve this problem. As much as most of my colleagues don't like root canals because they feel, look, it's this tiniest space anyone can work in. It is so meticulous, it is so particular, it is so difficult, it's so intricate, it's got hiding canals. Why would you want to go and serve that when you can just I remember one of our friends, Sandy Lee, he's a prosthetic, great guy. He says to me, he was we were both giving a lecture at I can't remember which conference it was, and he was I was giving a lecture on root canal to dentist, and he was giving a lecture on implants, and he says to me, you know what, go tell them everything about root canals. But once that root canal fails, I'll just come back, extract the truth, and put them an implant. Yeah. You know, I looked at it, and Sunday night, you know, I say, you know, he was really busting my balls. You know, he was really, really on my case. And many of my friends go that route. Many of my colleagues would go that route. But I continue to educate even my colleagues about root canal treatments, and that's why even I met these incredible guys and we formed O'Meri. Mostly, even O'Merie was through Joseph Shy. He connected me with all these guys who were all within reach of me. But he said, Look, Udi, please, you love this thing. There's this guy who loves this thing. There's another guy who you were in the study group with that loves this thing. Why don't you guys form this thing and teach dentists how to do root canals? Because you will change the world so much. You will change the dental community, you will change our communities by helping people, you know, save more teeth and do that.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

Well, I I mean, we take it for granted because we all study dentistry. Yeah. But most people off the street, they don't have access to, you know, dental education. Not at all. The if you have that sort of debilitating pain, the automatic sort of response is, I want those tooth out. No one really knows that much in detail that you can save a tooth by doing root canal. That's true. And I've said it before on a previous show, and I'll say it again because we're talking about uh root canals and endodontics. There's only like two sort of professions or maybe specialities, if you can call it that, that work on cranial nerves and amputate them. One is a neurologist, and then there's a dentist who does root canal. That's so true.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

Think about that's not true. The neurologists work on the cranial nerves. We, as dentists who do root canals, really work inside the nerves. That's that's where we work. It's an amputation. And we bring an amputation. And I've seen how social media, you know, with access to social media, people have got modern approaches to dentistry, to everything. You know, this is a modernized world. Everybody has access to TikTok, to this. So you get patients of ours saying, hey doc, I saw this video about this lady who says root canal is bad or who says this causes cancer. Now, I don't know if you guys have picked it up. You are in private practice, you would know. Patients come in with all these stories that they see on social media and they read on Google, and we must now try and educate them. Look, I never get tired of it. I never do. I continue to educate them to say, hey, what you read there is, you know, that's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 52:13

You know what? It's actually good that they come and they tell you that they've got these preconceptions because uh there'll be some patients that come with everything in their mind, they don't say it to you, they listen to you, and then they don't trust you because they've TikTok they've already seen that they mustn't get a root connect. So it's actually good what you're saying. You know, don't get tired of it. Let them talk to you, tell them what they think. I never shut them down.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Good. When somebody comes, even, you know, with our practice, we've got all sorts, we become present, we try and become present in all sorts of social media spaces. I get all those questions all the time. I get all the questions of, well, can I do this? Will it not kill me? My aunt died of a tooth, this and that. Do you think it'll happen to me? You know, and you have to explain to them about the underlying medical conditions that it can happen. Yeah, somebody can die in a dental consulting room, but not only because of a tooth, but because of underlying medical issues. And they can die even when they get home, God forbid. But it's mainly because of, or they can even complicate, but it's mainly because of an underlying medical issue. It's not a tooth. A tooth won't, you know, do that.

SPEAKER_01 53:16

I mean, root canal treatment is probably one of the most complicated treatments that a dentist can do, right? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 53:22

Huh? No, I don't come. No comments.

SPEAKER_01 53:25

He doesn't like it.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

He, he, I know he's like, Why don't you like it, Jack? I don't know. It's just it's like time-consuming, it's frustrating, you're working in a small environment. And to be honest, um creating false expectations, I think. It's like whitening, like teeth whitening. You don't know what you can't promise the patient the result. And I remember with the first few cases that I had to do in Mauritius as well, you know, you're dealing with a tooth that is already like the nerves already sclerosed. So you're telling this patient, yeah, I'm gonna step in here, I'm gonna save your tooth. Then you start trying, and then you you don't know what's cutting, no pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

I I met a guy on social media, great guy, overseas dentist, who teaches everyone this. And it's something that I've been doing ever since I started private practice. This thing of consent, getting consent from patients, is not only about a patient giving me permission to do a treatment. It's also me as a dentist saying, stop selling us short as dentists. You guys as dentists are doing the worst in terms of managing expectations in a way that you put blame on yourself for complications that can happen because of biology, because of science. And I always, when I sit with a patient down and I do anything, be it a filling, be it an extraction, be it a root canal treatment, be it a crown, patients should always know you are here because you did not look after your tooth. You have a problem that you are not aware of. I'm gonna have to take x-rays to show you that this is the problem. I'm gonna have to do a diagnosis to show you that this is the problem. I'm going to help treat your problem. When I do that, we need to know that the level of success of your treatment is not lying solely on me as a dentist. We have three factors. We have you as a patient factor, we have your tooth factors, we have me as a dentist as well. Your tooth factors, if your tooth is really bad and I put a filling on it, and you get home or you leave my room and it comes out, why do you think I'm the one to blame?

SPEAKER_02 55:31

What if you were the one to blame? What if you I don't know, den isolating properties?

SPEAKER_00 55:36

But teach your patients to know that there's three ways to it. Either the tooth was bad enough, either the immune system is not doing good enough to sort out the problem that they have. Let's say I'll give you a classical example with a filling. Patient comes to you, the tooth was never painful, but you see there's a cavity. You show the patient here's a cavity on the x-ray. You decide I'm going to do a filling. You explain to the patient everything. They need to know that if they leave, they can't say, no, all of a sudden my tooth is painful. It was never painful. Give me back my money or redo it for free. No. My practice doesn't do that. We've got complication management systems in my practice where we teach you that you pay for everything, be it a dry socket, be it you want me to come and do an octrusion adjustment on your tooth. Because when I asked you, please buy down this for me to check your occlusion, when they come back, they're going to pay for it. When I do a root canal treatment, you were referred to me for this procedure. Your dentist couldn't do it, they referred you to me. Or you were in so much pain, I need to take care of it. When we do that, let's remember that your body can decide, no, we're not healing from this. No matter how well Udiriele Dr. Mulway did, he put in his lasers in there, he put in his best chemicals to kill this, he used his best techniques to get in there. Your body just won't allow it. Or you, as a patient, you're gonna bite on something and you're gonna crack your tooth. Now, all of that, every time it happens, the first person that is blamed is you every time. And when they come back, they say, Doctor, that tooth of yours, yeah, that tooth of yours broke. And you come with payment plans for patients. While they're busy paying you, they broke the tooth. They say, okay, but why should I still pay you when my tooth broke now and I had to get it extracted somewhere else? But guess what? Heart surgeons, orthopaedic surgeons, they do a procedure, it doesn't work. They tell you, come back, let's redo it again. You're still going to pay for it again. Or, God forbid you die. You're still going to pay the doctor and the hospital. Your estate will still pay the doctor even if you died from that heart transplant that they were doing, from that heart operation that they were doing, from that anything that they were doing, you will still pay them.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Yeah, man, Odie, I think Yak is just making an excuse here because what he said was it's something that you can't guarantee an outcome of. But what can you guarantee an outcome of in healthcare? In healthcare, I don't know. A guy wants to have your attorney.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

That is when I say I'm going to extract the two, that's what that I'll extract.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

But not even that, Odie. Not even that. You see, so I just feel like it's an excuse Yak is making. It's too difficult. Root canals are difficult. It's not easy, right? And that's that's a big reason why a lot of our colleagues shy away from it. From it, yeah, that's true. It's not because they don't want to sit and look in the mouth, because they're looking in the mouth anyway. And yes, it's time consuming, but it also pays. But everything is time consuming. No first quick to you.

SPEAKER_02 58:35

I mean, yeah. Consulting. No, he's lying.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

First consult. He's lying. First consult. He takes time. Yeah. He takes you to Mauritius. He takes you to uh He told us at the Riyadh Musa episode.

SPEAKER_01 58:47

He told us that there's the one guy, Doc Rat, that he books sets aside 90 minutes just to talk before he does dentistry. Yeah. So don't come with these excuses. Endo is hard. Endo. The question was why do you shy away from endodontics? Like why do you not like it?

SPEAKER_02 59:02

Endodontics is hard. I think dentistry is hard in general. Dentistry is difficult.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

Yeah. I agree. Dentistry is difficult. I really agree. I I I you know take my head off to everybody that's thriving in dentistry, and includes both of you. So thank you. So tell you mentioned Omeri. What's this now? What is it about?

SPEAKER_00 59:23

So Omery is. What does it mean? Okay, Omery means Ulirile, Marcus, Eric, Radzati, and Isaac. So I met these four guys. Some of them I was in school with, Eric, I was in school with, Radzati I was in school with, but we were not really close. Dental school. Yeah, Medusa, but we were not really as close. And then Marcus I knew through a lot of other guys. He was in the UK. When he came back, we met through the senior guys that we used to sit and discuss cases with on the groups. We had study groups and we were doing that. Isaac also in Pumalanga, great guy in Ruth Kanal, and many dentists' dental procedures, very good at them. We call him Professor. So these guys loved and we sat down. Before we did that, Eric came to me and said, Udi, hey, I want to do this thing. Are you in? Eric Matlakal. Yeah, Eric Matlakal. And I'm like, yeah, Eric, you know I'm in. You know I've been doing this through some of the companies. So let's do it. And we put together these guys. We sat down. We said, look, gents, let's form a Mary. Let's create a teaching, like sort of like a CPD thing where we invite dentists on WhatsApp, on email, start webinars, teach dentists. And we did our first meeting. So we would go to dental companies and say, hey, please sponsor us. We want to educate dentists. We've got 20 dentists who are really interested in root canal treatment. This is our program. We want to do it way before we even got CPD accredited. We used to do it just to educate. Later on, we start learning about, you know, how to do CPD accreditation, how to do conferences. And we did our biggest conference, I think, in Bila Bila. We did our first Omeri getaway, did well. We are running on our eighth one. We do them annually. But even during COVID, we would do hybrid ones, and we would continue to invite dentists. We would celebrate our women in August, women's month, and we would invite them to say, hey, come let us celebrate our women dentists. So Omeri basically, we invite dentists, we teach dentists, we share knowledge. We bring, we used to be mostly primarily endo, but now we've expanded to aligners, we've expanded to author, we've expanded to implants, to everything where we invite experts to come in and speak. If I know that Udiri and Love Root Canal, I can't speak on implants, I would invite guys who do implants and say, hey, come and speak. I would invite guys who do ethics so that you can come and teach us the legal implications of the procedures we do, the ethical way of practicing dentistry. And it's all about getting dentists, especially black dentists, to say, hey, there is hope for you out there. You can't lock yourself in at that practice in the township and cut gold slits the whole day. It's gonna be boring for you. You can't sit in the village there and extract patients' teeth all day. There is opportunity. All you need to do is come in, learn, because in the undergrad they don't teach us enough these things. Come in, let us teach you how they are done. Let us help you expand your horizon in dentistry. Let us help you grow your practice by offering patients these procedures, do them well. Don't just because you know, you guys know this. You come across treatments that are really, really botched out there. And it's sad for us to say, okay, we all went to dental school. But here's a case where you look at it and you're like, somebody who did this knew very well that they couldn't do it. Why didn't they stop there and say, hey, I know someone who can do it better than me. Let me refer you to them. And I have to give a shout out to every single dentist that refers, because I'm currently running a referral practice where most of the patients I help are through referrals. And for everyone to say to me, Udi, I want to refer this patient to you. Please help me do one, two, three. Or I want to come in and see how you do it, and they know that they're most welcome at the practice. I'm also involved with the universities. I was involved with SMU, and now I moved to UP. I'm involved with the odontology department. I teach their undergrad students, postgrad students, Endo, I supervise that. So for me, that's what I love doing. Cool. Sharing this knowledge and making sure that everybody gets to do it the best way they can.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:43

Now I've got a very serious question about O'Merie. How did you guys decide that your name goes first?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:51

Was there a meeting about that? Of course there was. Of course they were saying, what do we call this?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:56

Of course there was, because wherever there's a group of men with egos, there's going to be a meeting about a name of a thing, right? But gentlemen, you already know.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:05

I had to. I mean, it could have been Mario. It could have been anything. They put them all on the table. And, you know, knowing me, I was like, gentlemen, come on now. You know this sounds okay. This won't sell. If you don't put my name first, they've got to bring to it. Yeah. Thank you. Of course it does. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

But there was no like calculated way of saying, okay, I'm the chronological most senior or this or that or the other.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

No, there wasn't that. It's all respect. Man, I have to be honest, those guys, you know, they they allow all of us to be our best. So when they see that Udi likes this and that, you know what? Just put him first. They probably said that. They probably said, let's put him first. But it doesn't mean that I'm senior to any of them in anything or in any decision making. And matter of fact, I always tease them and say, hey, when I'm not there, I'd call them the NEC. I'm like, ah, the NEC was discussing this without me. It's fine. You know? So I always tease them. But yeah, And Joseph Shy, what role did he play in this? Was he a connector? Joseph Shy was the glue. And I'm not, I'm I'm gonna give him so much credit because Joseph Shy is the guy who, even after we came up and we met, he started sitting us down and saying, gentlemen, we've got we've got so much timeline, so much memory, so much pictures that we captured in those meetings where we sat down with him. I mean, through Joseph, I got to be a key opinion leader for Dance Bleis Rona. And at the time, I had to, I got to travel Germany and you know do everything under the company in Germany, where I was learning this, I was learning these procedures and things like that. And it was through him that the company really got to know about black dentists. Because remember, Joseph Shy was a rep, and it's typical of companies. The black rap will be positioned in the townships where all the black dentists are, the white rap will go. To town, maybe Water Tloof, Pretoria East, where all the whites are. But now things have changed. You find us in all those spaces. But let's give credit to Joseph. He was there. He was the guy who would drive to any dentist in South Africa and say, Hey, I see where you are. I brought you these samples, try them out. This is where we are. If you need to order anything, order through me. To a point where companies used to now have a problem with guys like that, because every black person would want to order through Joseph. If you go to Milnas, every black person, every black dentist would want to order through the world. I'm glad we got into the subject.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:38

Yeah. Because did you guys at O'Meary also identify that there's a need for this type of training and community in the black in the black dental community? Yes, we did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:50

It's there. We all see it. It's there. Not every single black practice in the township will offer CBCT, will offer implants. When you go there, there's extractions. And I've learned later in life in the dentist, dentistry business, that it is not a socioeconomic thing. People in the township can really afford. So what is it? You just need to get in there and teach them. And that's where we came in. We said, look, don't be going to the village and say, no, my location, location, location, where I am, they all uh on a capitation medical aid. They will only do two or three fillings, and that's it. No. You teach that community that look, so I in in my practice, I've I've got a way that I educate my patients to say, look, before we do anything, yes, I hear you. You are here to remove your tooth, but why were you here in the first place? No, because my tooth is painful. Okay. If it wasn't, would you be here? No, I hate dentists. I wouldn't be here. Okay, let's start off properly here. I want to build a relationship with you as my patient. I want to teach you about dentistry. What am I doing here? I'm increasing dental IQ. Because if I don't tell Yesh about the importance of dentistry, Yesh won't change his toothbrush. He'll still be using the same toothbrush he used last year. Yesh won't take his kids to the dentist unless if they wake him up at night and complain of pain. He won't take his wife to the dentist unless she has a really bad breath and he feels no, that's too much to take. But if I increase your dental IQ as the head of the house, I'm sure your whole family would know about oral hygiene, about dental hygiene, about dental education. And they would bring the child to the to for early orthointervention. They'll bring the mom for preventive dentistry so that she doesn't wake up one day and say, I need a root canal. They will restore that tooth before it needs me. And we had to teach a lot of these guys that look, don't tell me that where you are based, they only do dentures. Patients don't want this. Or patients don't want this. You are wrong. And most of the patients I see now in my practice for years. You see someone, they are barely 20, they've lost most of their teeth. Why did you lose this teeth? No, because my dentist said I should take it out. Where are you from? No, I'm from uh Serutube. Okay. The dentist there didn't say no, I can restore this tooth. He said, Look, it means the the the only treatment for a painful tooth is to take it out. And that's what people know. And that's where we come in as dentists to say, with all the access to social media now, with all the access, people our patients know better. And we love that. But I won't talk much about that because I'm privileged to be in practicing in town. But I'm speaking for dentists who are practicing in the remote areas. Not only limited to townships and villages, there are farms, there are any remote place. To say, look, educate your dent your patients about dental procedures, about dental hygiene, about implants, about root canal treatments, about bleaching, about anything, laser dental treatment, early intervention, preventing preventing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:15

So don't underestimate your patients.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:17

Yes, never. Never think for them. Never say they don't have money. Never say no, they can't afford this.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:21

And the guys that are attending your courses and things like that, mostly black, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

Mostly black dentists who come to our conferences.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

Yeah. I mean, I I've I've mentioned this to Yak in the past, because he's he's part of some, you know, Sada and things. And I when I go to the certain congresses, I say, well, where are all the black dentists? Right?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:39

That's true. I I'm very fortunate enough to enjoy all these organizations. DPA, which is mostly the black dental practitioners association, and Sada, which was when it started off, it was mostly white. I mean, I I don't know about the membership. Now I'm part of Sada, yes, but I don't know the ratio between black and white there. But you can see the demographic, you can see there's still when you go to a Sada conference. Most people who attend a South African Dental Association conference, it's mostly white.

unknown 1:11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:13

White did this. White or India. Yeah, yeah. But now we're moving it. We we're changing it. I speak, I mean, I'm invited every opportunity I get invited. And thank you, Sada and DPA and O'Meri and everyone for continuing to invite me to speak. Not because I'm a I'm a better black or because, but it's mainly because, look, now we're talking the subject of dentistry. I know what I'm doing. I want to share what I know and listen to what the other guys have to give when it comes to that. And it has nothing to do with anything. And let's teach as many as we can to a point where our patients don't get to choose Yak because of his skin color or me because of what, you know, but we get to go because we know these guys are good at what they do.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

And also the other way around, right? You don't underestimate your patient because of where they come from. So economic states. So social media, are you you're getting into it?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:12

Slowly getting into it. I've got a great team. You know, I've got a great team, Rally Digital. I met Tepi, shout out to her. Before Tepi, I was doing most of my social media through Homecoming Events, which is a company that's owned by great friends of mine that, you know, I love them to be. They put me on, they started, you know, saying to me, look, there's the space that we feel you can do so much more into it. Let us show you how it's done, let us teach you how it's done. And once we take you to this level, find somebody who can help you manage your accounts. And, you know, through God's grace, I met Sepi. Sepi reached out to me and we had a meeting and we kicked it off. At the time, I was her first, you know, like in music when you are the when you open a record company and you have the first signed artist. I think I was Sepi's first signed artist, you know, at the time. Is she regretting it? She's forever grateful. You know, I get these warming messages from her. And through that, Seppi started, and I said to Sepi, Sepi, don't you want to do, because I've got a lot of friends in the music industry, I've got a lot of friends in the restaurant business. She said to me, Look, I'm more interested in dentistry. And I said, But there's other health disciplines like medicine. She said, no, this. And I said, but you connery yourself. She said, look, watch. Put me on. And she kept saying to me, put me on. So I I threw, I went with her to DPA. DPA reached out, they saw what she was doing. I threw her name there. She's working with them. She's working with O'Meary. She's working with so many other dentists. She's growing so well, and she's helping me. Does it work? Does it? It helps me. I'm sitting in front of you guys in front of the cameras. It's something that I wouldn't do. I start dancing in front of the cameras. I start shooting content. Yeah. Something that I would I never imagine myself to do. I'll never do any challenge. Those ice bucket challenges.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:09

Not now.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:10

But I can still sit there and be myself and teach people and put a message across if I need to, or educate someone about a certain thing on social media. And I see that I'm becoming present there. And you know, it's it's a wild space because somebody sees me on social media and they saw me the other day dancing at a party or playing my vinyls at another gig. But who is this person? You know, they can be mean on social media. Yes. But you gotta know how to trust me, we know how to do that. Also, you know, you you you've seen it. And that's why with me, I try to keep my family from the spotlight. I try to respect them and keep them so far away from all these things so that you avoid such because even if you do, they still go in. People still find a way to say all these mean things on social media. But for what it's worth, I really enjoy the space of social media. I have nothing against it. It has helped me get to educate so many patients, get to interact with so many patients, get to treat so many patients successfully, get to refer so many patients, and get to be present and be known of what I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:15

And also you won't say it, but get to inspire, you know, young up-and-comers, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:19

Um I saw your Monday motivation video today, and I was like, yeah, man, I think this is boycant.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

I need to check this. No, you know, you mess around. I think I I was I was at the practice yesterday just doing some. So what I do at my practice, and they started complaining that I treat a lot of patients pro bono, or sometimes I just waver their so now Who the finance people? The finance people in the company. You know who they are. Yeah, let's not go there. So they started complaining a lot that look, you're spending most of your time away from the practice. You are at UP. At UP, the money I get there is equivalent to not even one endo patient that I see. It's really nothing. But when I was invited there, they said to me, look, we will never pay you enough, but we need your expertise here. And we hope you make a difference with that. I never looked back. I signed, I signed what I saw and I said, I want to do this, I want to help. Now I'm spending most of my time at the university. I'm spending that little time that I spend in the practice, I get to help, yeah, because he's got a toothache and I feel he's, you know, kind of. So they said to me, look, if you really want to help those people, do it on weekends. So on weekends when I work, it's mostly whatever thing. Yeah, wow. Yeah. Just to help who I can help and to avoid the business people in the practice.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

And all this traveling you guys have been doing now, you guys met up in Korea, I think, recently. What's all that about? Ah, man. For me, what happens in South Korea stays and so on.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:53

No, I'm gonna say it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:54

Yeah, yeah, tell us. So Psy Vision, Peter Dubel and his company. It's his birthday today. Ah, happy birthday to Peter. Oh, man. Great guy. By the time this thing gets released, it's gonna be far away. But yeah, happy birthday. So, Peter, that's how I met him. That they invited me to have a TED talk with him on, you know, the important dentistry, this, that. So we had that. And somehow we all got invited to go to South Korea through PsyVision, Peter's company. I can tell you the best experience of my life, life-changing. You know, he's the great storyteller. I'm not gonna take it away from this guy who knows what to say. He tells the best stories.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:35

The listener, for the listeners, uh, Dr. Molo is pointing at Yak.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:39

Not Yak. Yak tells the best life stories that I could sit any day. I want to invite him to my birthday to tell people about his adventures. He's a big storyteller, yeah. You know, he's great at that. So I every chance I get, I want to be next to him and listen to all of that. So for me, having the opportunity to travel with him, the PsyVision team, and some great dentists that I've met, South African dentists that are doing so well in their practices. We got to travel South Korea. We get to go to a company called Vatec. They do mostly digital uh diagnostic, like your X-rays, your CBCT, proper things that are so advanced is the best thing now that is happening. And I urge every dentist to have to digitalize their practice. Because to us, and not only did we go there to learn about what they do, but I'll be honest with you, I'm more moved about their spirit of Ubuntu.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:42

They are how the South Korean people got from the two poorest country in the world in the 1920s, 1930s.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:55

Somewhere there. And they started picking up from the 50s. And I can tell you, similar to our country, those guys were the poorest. And they went from there to where they are now. We got to see so much. I mean, the Vatec great company, they made sure that And I think shout out to Olivia.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:16

She watches this actually very eating regularly. And uh yeah, we'll expect a sponsorship from them as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:24

You know, they were our hosts. They were our hosts, great hosts. I mean, we I love food, man. So I got to eat anything and everything South Korea. I never missed on any dish that was presented there. But more than that, learning how these companies care about you, about your family, about everything and how their customer care and how their staff retention and how their, like just how their core values of the company, that to me was everything. Besides dentistry, they teach you so much. And there was a point where they also invited us to one of the biggest clinics they had, and we had to share our life stories. And I can tell you, listening to Yek tell his story, listening to everyone talking, that that really moved me. And I've learned so much. I can I can never forget the experience I had in South Korea. And we spent a good amount of days there.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:25

Yeah, you see, I would have expected it to be very clinical and very, you know, but it sounds very people-oriented.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:30

Yeah, very and very cultural. Like we got up every day, we did something that was considered tourist, but then at the same time local as well. Like these guys went to eat uh what? KFC, cake, Korean fried chicken. Korean fried chicken, yeah, yeah. And beer. I had to have a salad. Um, but it was it was really good. But they, you know, talking about the core values of, you know, the the not just the Koreans, but Vartec as a company itself, they've got in their head factory a nursery school for all of the students, all of the employees that work there. They've got an in-house gym. And in the in-house gym, there's an in-house golf simulator. Look, it's a library.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:15

Yeah, and a library. Out of this world, that those people believe in libraries. Even you go into a mall, there was one of the malls that had the biggest library. Look, those people, they take, they don't take for granted their people. I mean, the school the the nursery they had, the teachers, the curriculum they use, that's high-end. That's your top schools in South Africa. That's the type of learning and teaching those kids receive. And there's a school bus that fetches them. There's, you know, everything about well-being, we stop. You know how they do? There's a particular time for a break, there's a particular time for lunch, there's a canteen that you don't bring your lunch to work. So wellness is like it's a big thing. It's a big thing for them. Wellness is a very good thing. The gym, the golf simulator, they've got so much in the, and and it's not only them. I mean, there were companies like your Samsung there. Uh Samsung of Article. How do you say Hyundai again? Hyundai. Because I always pronounced it wrong. And until I saw how big it is there, I used to call it Hyundai, this and that, but there's Hyundai everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:17

But here's the funny thing. Like, if I think South Korea, I'm thinking hardworking, like slave driver types, you know, like you think of that, right? Don't you? Now, my question is why do they take you two fools there? What's the point?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:27

Because we're cool. We DJ. We're the coolest guy. Yeah. Think about it. Think about who you know now that can that plays vinyl music, that collects vinyl.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:35

Yeah. I wanted to mention something about vinyl. Vinyl is like the endodontics of uh of DJ, I have to say. Like you choose the hardest level. Because with vinyl, you've got to carry your vinyls with you. Nothing is digital. Well, I think it guess it can be, but you've also got like such an amazing system. The techniques, uh, the the tent the decks. Wow, that's like a phenomenal system. But yeah, like I mean, I only know one other vinyl DJ who's who I know very well, Abby New Rock. Abby, a good friend of ours, very special. And very special. You've got to carry all this, all of the stuff like with you when you go. So that is like you're cool, not just as a dentist, but as a DJ as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:14

So is that what you're doing on Sundays? You take jazz vinyls and play.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:18

Yeah, so with music, uh, because we play on vinyl, it's it's tricky because you gotta know. Imagine if I'm gonna play with Yek and Yak decides to take 20 records, certain 20 records, and I take them as well. I'm in trouble because I'm gonna play the same thing. I can't switch up. It's not like there's a folder in my USB that I can say, no, no, no, he played this, I'm gonna play that. I intentionally have to pack a bag at home, prepare it, and carry that bag to wherever I'm going to share my music with. And that's why for me it's it's never been about being a DJ. It's about sharing the music that I collect. And I'm not limited to one genre. I play all sorts of genres, great music that I feel I need people to listen to this, and it's great music. Okay. So you have to, and with vinyl, it's 100% analog. You have to physically take that, put it there, cue it, listen to it. There's no press of a button to make it sound cool or to sing it with the other one. You have to do the easy part.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

Standing creative.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:25

I think Yak just goes and plays YouTube music. I'm sure he's got it. But no, no, this guy's yeah. Yeah. And then what else do you do for fun, Audi? Look, what's picking picking your life?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:38

Look, for me, I think one thing you know, I recently lost my dad. So losing both parents, I realized, look, you gotta do something with your life and not be apologetic about it. And losing family members, you know, part of growing up, you lose your brother, your sibling, you lose your mom, you lose your dad, and you're like, damn. I could also go at any time. So make sure you live with no regrets. Family time is important to me. Friends, you know, colleagues, I make sure that I do everything I love doing. I don't compromise. So, dentistry, as much as it's a profession, I really, really love what I do, gents. Before, look, this one I have to be really honest. Before anything, dentistry is what I love. And I I I keep saying this to people that I don't do dentistry because of what I I do what I do because of who I am. I'm not who I am because of what I do. No. I do what I do because of who I am. So the love for music, the love for dentistry, I mean, I've got, I'm also blessed with great friends who support me. If I say to the boys, let's take a trip, if I say to my friends, let's go somewhere and hang out, or let's play music, or let's sit and visit friends, go to church. I do all of that. And I make sure that I intentionally do things that are fulfilling to me. And in the process, they don't cause harm to those that I really love. And for me, that's that's the whole purpose of life, man. And how lucky are you? So you probably never want to take leave and stuff. I and and you know, yesterday I got a somebody asked me, real, real talk. They're like, look, you are tired. You just buried your dad. You're back at work like it never happened. You really need to take time off. But it's not me. I I enjoy being at work, interacting with patients. Most of the patients, I'm blessed to make friends with patients. I'm also blessed to have my friends trust me with everybody they love. So I'm not bored at work. It doesn't stress your dentist. Well, no, it doesn't. I wish it paid me the way it pays many dentists. I'm at a point, and I can tell you, yeah, and yes, from now on, I'm gonna make sure dentists pay me. Because I you said you're gonna charge people for inclusive adjustment. I'm gonna charge for anything and everything. I'm going to make sure that, and not in a bad way, but you know, with with with dentists, we become too modest about it, and we we spend so much time. And let me be honest with you, I remember very well after learning that my dad passed, I couldn't cancel the patients on the day, so I went to work the day and kept it moving on the day. And I didn't tell anyone. I just, you know, and as I'm sitting there, I realize we put so much into our work. And as soon as I'm not available, because one of the patients that I had to call, because I sometimes, you know, when I get in any situation, when I have to come here to do this, I have to sometimes it it carries so much weight if I personally call my patient and say, Hey, you're speaking to Dr. Mulowe. I'm calling you because I would like to reschedule our appointment. They know I've got a great team. They know I've got a full great team at work. But the minute they know that I call them personally, they know it means so much to me. So I would phone and say, hey, look, can I please move your appointment? I just have a family bereavement or I just have a family emergency. And I don't want them to feel pity for me in any way, shape, or form, send me flowers, or no, no, no. I just want them to know that, look, I would have loved to see you, but I can't be here. Can we please move the appointment? And when they say yes, that's when they see that, okay, I'm gonna get my office to call you and they'll arrange that. I still want them to know that my powerful team, my strong team is still there. So I'm not gonna be there. So with that, I want to also say that the minute I can't be there for that patient who's in pain, they're going to find the act. They're gonna leave me, they're gonna change the dentist. God forbid I die, I'm no longer there. They will leave me and go to another dentist. Life goes on. Yeah, patients are very quick to go to the next dentist or the cheaper one without knowing. But I always love it when they come back and explain to me that look, uh, I was there, you gave me this, you gave me this treatment uh estimate. I don't call them quotations, they are treatment estimates. Because they can change. And guys would, and that's exactly what I said earlier, to say some complications, patients need to pay for that. So they they would tell me that I'm back because I went there and it didn't work out very well.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:36

Sorry, I cheated on you.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:38

Yeah, that's that type of thing. And that's when, you know, you you love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:42

No, hold on, Audi. You said something and you you like brushed over it. On the day your dad died, you went to work.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:48

Yes. Even with my mom, even with my brother. It's the most difficult thing. People don't get it. My family doesn't get it. But in all honesty, I'm one person when I and I I think I, as I keep saying this, we all mourn differently, we all grieve differently. When I spend most of my life in my family, I'm the one who's on the health side of things. So when my mom is sick, my brother who waits in the mines will come and say, Hey, your mom is sick. I'm gonna take you to the hospital, but you must make sure that you speak to your doctors, they must know what needs to happen. When, you know, so I was there. I saw what happened. I saw when my brother was sick, I saw when my mom was sick. It wasn't a sudden MVA or something that happened suddenly. It was something that you see and you start preparing for. And even my family, I would go back to them and start preparing them for that. So that helps me deal with it sort of a little bit better, if I can say that. And when these things happen as well, I always say this to people, and people get upset. My brother says to me, No, you are different. All my parents passed away at night. I didn't wake anyone up and say, Hey, wake up, my mom is dead. No, she's not gonna wake up. I went to bed, I slept, and in the morning I started making phone calls. I can't now my mom dies. I remember very well it was just before midnight. Now I must wake everybody up and call them and tell them that what are they gonna do? They're gonna sit there until the sun comes out trying to figure out how sad it is or or what they need to do. So, what I do, even with my own family, I don't tell them. The minute I find out, I say thank you, and I sit down. I'm the one who'd rather have that sleepless night and sit in the morning. Then I say, Okay, who do I tell? If my kids were going to school, I wouldn't tell them. I would wait until they are whatever, and then when they come back, I say, hey, this happened. And I remember with my daughter when my when my dad died, she was so smart. She I didn't tell them. They went to school, and when my driver went to pick them up, they came home. And at night I had a meeting with them. I said, Hey kids, I need to tell you. And my daughter said, I already knew. I'm like, how? She's like, No, I saw in the boot there were scorns. And I knew when there's scorns in the family, this happened. And the one thing that I realized with grief is I'm a flower type guy. I love buying flowers for the practice. I love buying flowers for people that I love, you know. But ever since my mom passed, I can't stand the smell of fresh flowers. And when you grief, people bring you flowers. And when they do, just that smell. There's these particular flowers that I remember. And I don't know where this changed recently, this changed last year, today, because she passed on last year, today, you know. So that's one of those things. And it changed me. I'm like that. I think for others more.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:08

And I'm a realist.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:09

As you're telling me that story, I'm just thinking you're trying to protect others, right? Yeah. Because we all know, you know that when you get a phone call like at three in the morning from some relative, you know it's like somebody died, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:18

To this day, a lot of people are upset with me. Oh, Mary. The guys were upset because we went into a meeting. I couldn't tell them. You guys, I was supposed to do this. You tell us also. You told us. We were supposed to do this the week that my dad passed. And I said, gents, can I please reschedule this? And I didn't tell you why. And only later then I said, the reason why I had to do this was because of that. Because I didn't want a situation where now people come in and say, uh, I mean, imagine the very important meeting I was having with the organization. Just before the meeting, I saw the agenda. I'm like, imagine before this meeting, I announce this problem that I have. It's gonna change the dynamics of this meeting. So I allowed the meeting to go on. Everything went on, we grilled each other, we discussed a lot of important matters. When it was done and it was a vote of thanks prayer, then I said, gents, before we do this, this is what I need to tell you. As much as people are not happy with that, but when they sit down in their spaces, they know it's real. There's a lot of people who are not happy with that, but they know the truth is if I tell you something like this, this whole thing is going to be about me.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:29

Well, I hope one day when it happens to me, I have the presence of mind and to be able to just because you never know how you're going to react until it happens, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:37

Okay, so you mentioned kids. I mean, if they come to you and say they want to do dentistry, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:43

Look, I love dentistry. But it's taking up so much of my time that I realize that, you know, I'm not sure if you you feel it. He doesn't. He I spoke to him now. He's in offices in Pretoria, but he was working from home. He got work done from home. I could never, as a dentist, get work done. I can't do that endo from home. I'm gonna tell my kids, I love dentistry, dentistry is good, it has done what, and I will let them do whatever they want, but I will tell them that look, when your friends are having online meetings, getting work done and working from home or working from a holiday, you can't. That root canal, when I have to do it, only I have to do it. I've got colleagues who will say, hey, you go, I'll stay and look after your patients. They don't show up. I pay locums for nothing. I pay dentists to come and sit at my practice, and when they find out that I'm not there, they say, ah, we're going. Why? Because it's a highly specialized thing that I do, and if I don't do it, nobody does it. I've got the pleasures of working with Dr. A. We are starting to work together now. Jagat Paul, huh? Yeah. Avi, great guy. He himself does not want to do this endos. So he refers them to me. So it means I must do that. You see, so a situation like that, there you won't have much time on yourself. And I'm at a point in my life where I'm also scaling down in terms of saying, don't do so much work, do enough to still enjoy your life. And that's that's important. Because patients will switch, people will switch every day. But what about me? I'm I'm gonna miss on that trip. And my mom used to tell me, you know, I used to, she used to be in hospital admitted, and I would tell her ma, I'm gonna present at Sada Cape Town. They invited me. You're in hospital, should I can't say? No, you go. You go, whatever happens, please go. If something happens to me, you'll you you do what you need to do, come back and let's and continue with what you need to continue with here. And I tell everyone, make sure that you have that time. I don't have to be so filthy rich that I can't even enjoy that, you know. I'm okay with what I'm doing. A little bit money would would go a long way, yes, but I think times.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:21

But you know what? Our kids might never work, eh? And also you've chosen a niche where no other dent most other dentists don't want to do it, firstly. And secondly, uh AI, I don't think AI can take take that job anytime soon.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:35

Yeah?

SPEAKER_00 1:37:35

I'm I'm busy with the topic. I don't want to divulge it too much for for one of the upcoming conferences we're having. But you know, AI is doing, you guys know this, how AI simplifies what we do. Does it always in dentistry? It does. And in the dentist. I hear that AI has very limited applications in dentist. It does. But but they do remember with AI now, and I want to give away too much, but with you capturing a CBCT and you putting down one or two things on the history, it can already come up with, well, you need to be knowledgeable as well to argue it. But AI only works on the information that it has already or that you feed it. It doesn't give you things. It's not like a brain that they are no, no, it doesn't. But it's doing so well for our profession as well. But it can't do your job, it can't actually go there and file. No, it can't do filing, no. Cool. But it can give you a one file that you just go in and out.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:35

Anything else you want to talk about, Oli that we didn't we didn't speak about? I mean, I it was a fascinating combo. We've we've had a long conversation in the past.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:42

I think, I think, Jens, how about we talk about the younger generation of dentists that we have? Please tell us. Um I'm more exposed to them now through social media, through the universities. And I think that in our profession, we need to pay attention to them. And with you guys, I do watch your show, and I feel the more you invite these younger guys just to hear what they have to say, it'll be great, man. Because with everything that we do, like you guys ask me now how I find social media. You don't have to ask a youngster how they find social media. They all have been there. They're born with it, yeah. They all have been there. And it'll be so great for us, because I learned so much from these young dentists, and I sit in their spaces, whether in varsity, whether when we're attending evenings of because if you remember, we used to, in the past, I used to do TV adverts.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:36

And they were paid.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:38

Wait, I don't know about this.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:39

Yeah, yeah. So, so I did, I remember I went to Czech to shoot a Colgate ad. But the Czech Republic? Yeah. What? And they would pay me for it. And they would now decide we want to air this advert in Africa. If they want to air it in Kenya, they will just give you a call and say, hey, we're gonna do it in Kenya next year. We're gonna pay you $200,000 just to play it there. You don't have to go shoot it again. It's there. We're just gonna play it there for the next year. Beautiful. Royalty is that? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:09

But now with social media, our space is taken up by influencers. I had a conversation today with another company that they said to me, Look, we wanna partner with you, but you must get influencers. And I'm thinking, now we're in a space where we must get influencers. We as dentists must turn into influencers. I must dance in front of the camera and explain what a root canal is, and I must be that tooth and say what root canal is, you know, yeah, things like that. Somebody must spray me with this bad odor to say it smells like that inside of you know, things like that. But now, social media and the younger dentists have taken over so much. But also there's a concern of let's say somebody is driving an automatic car, somebody's driving a manual car. Because I remember this family that I give a lot to took me, and I was when I was in Medusa and I needed to make extra cash, I started working in their restaurants as a waiter. And what I loved about working with these guys is at the time, before you start working as a waiter, they teach you how the food is prepared. That way, you know when a customer says to you, I want this chicken schnitzel. You know exactly what it is. You don't just read it off the menu and say, It has this. You know, you've seen. So we would spend time, and shout out to Ari and Chris, who own parrots and food chain and many other restaurants, and their families for doing that because they would say to you, go spend today at the salad station, see how salads are made, go to the pastor station, see how it's done, go to the uh pizza section, go see how it's done. So that when the time comes for you to sell it to a patron, you know exactly what you're selling.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:58

That's smart. I wish that's smart.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:00

With us as dentists as well, we teach our undergrad students that because now they they're so fast forward, they've got all access to money. They buy C B C T. They've got a menu. Yes. They've got C B C T, they just don't know how to use it. They start taking pen X-rays, they don't diagnose them, they miss the diagnosis. So we need to say, guys, come back. Let's let's teach them. And there's so much I learned from these young dentists. But also, I wish most of us give them the opportunity to say, hey, this is how we used to do this, and this is how it can work. Or let me teach you how this is done this way, and you also teach. They would look, we learn a lot from them, but they're fast paced, they work with iPads, they work with, you know, gadgets. And I wish we learned that because for some of us, it's I mean, the fact that you guys asked me if I'm on social media, if I but those guys, they are there effortless.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:59

Can I just tell you, I love the way you frame this whole thing because a lot of like the older generation will say, these youngsters now, they don't know how to do things, they they want to be so advanced, but they don't know basics. The way you framed it is I want to learn from them and they can learn from me and let's get together. True. Right? That's what I need. Okay, for the old ones. But now, wait, wait, wait, we have to go back to this Czech Republic thing. Was it good money? It was at the time. What did you have to do? Brush your teeth on camera, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:26

Like I got to do it with a very famous actor from South Africa. She was also taken. But I don't know if you guys know this, but for real TV ads, you were required to be. If you need to do a TV ad on medicine and dentistry, you can't do it with just an actor. You must do it with an actual dentist. Oh, it was a requirement. That's why, yes. I think it still is, because even when you see all the billboards advertising toothpaste, there has to be an actual dentist there. So why did they take you to the Czech Republic? So we were shooting there. We were if I Google this, will I find like a I'm sure you will. I've got I've still got most of them and I've made good friends. I remember very well before I traveled there. A few of the guys reached out to me and said, Hey, we're from South Africa, but we're based here because of the company. Can you please sneak in some beltong and some that so I had to sneak in beltong, some knickknacks in my bag, so and the guys were happy. I got there, we had the right mangoes and beltong, and they were very happy. So you were on TV? I was on TV for the longest time.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:28

I didn't know that you were.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:29

And these ads, these ads were airing. And I remember this was one of the things that'll make anyone back home very proud. So my moms, my teachers, and everybody that knows me would say, Hey, we saw you on TV. And not acting something that I'm not, acting something that I really am.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:48

Maybe we have seen him. Yeah, that's simple.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:51

Because I remember when I was doing this, I did it with a woman who was acting as my mom. Yeah. And now people started saying, Is that woman really your mom? And my mom was super jealous of it. Every time she would have to tell people, it's my son.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:06

My boy.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:07

Wow. Okay, no, you gotta link us to this and we'll put it in the description to this video or something. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm gonna find those videos. Uh, I'm sure Colgate still has them. And I'm gonna just get them downloaded. They're probably on YouTube somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:21

And we'll try and do what you what you say. We'll try and get more youngsters on. It's I love this feedback you're giving me because a lot of people have told me, a lot of youngsters have told me, please get more old timers on because we want to learn from them. Yeah. So let's just all get together.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:32

So for me, that's what I what Yesh is saying, and what we've been saying is let's all learn from each other. Younger dentists are afraid of older dentists to say, ah, no, I don't want to do this. Uh, I don't want to speak to them. They, you know, and the older dentists are just pushing away the younger one, saying, no, these guys are not learning enough. They don't know much. No, their scope is so simple now. They don't do anything, they don't get trained properly, they don't know anything, this and that. Uh, but I think we have so much to learn from each other in the profession. And I, you know, for me, the more I grow in my practice, I wish I could bring in those guys, and I want to bring in those guys to say, hey, let's learn from you. What is it that you can do? There's a different energy that they would bring in. And I've, you know, I've really enjoyed working with the younger, the students at Tucs at Medusa. At VETS, I would be invited as well to go speak to the final year students, and they still reach out to me and say, hey, dog, when I was final year, you taught me this adverts, you came and gave this lecture. Please help me on this, on this matter. And that's and that's that's so cool. That's something that we can do for the profession.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:48

Good. The future is bright. The future's here and it's bright.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:52

Bright. Yeah. Auri, um, yeah, man, I just want to say thank you for being who you are. We got close on our Korean trip, and you, you know, you're a big inspiration for me with uh with all aspects of your life. The vinyls, the Colgate now that I'm learning about, not the root canal stuff that's still O'Meary for me. Thank you. Um But you know, there's there's one specific incident, something that happened that was a big inspiration for me. We were at the airport when we were about to leave for Korea, and everyone had their families with them, and I didn't. I was all alone, which I'm normally am, I'm a solo traveler. But um it didn't bother me up until you were standing in front of me, and the twins came running up to you, and then you gave them a hug, and it was like a long, continuous hug, and I felt myself like choking up because I felt sad. Oh, I mean, I don't have this. You have such a holistic life that you lead from you know being a good father to your kids and to the missus and to your final DJing and running like O'Mary and being a tooth model. There's you you're an absolute inspiration, and that's something that I want to find myself doing, having you know, kids one day and just being holistic in life in general. So, congratulations for for everything that is to come. And uh yeah, we we look forward to the space collaborating with you as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:22

No, gentlemen, for me, I'm so grateful for this opportunity. And uh, you know, I've tell you this, both of you. I've I don't know if you know this, but I've always wanted to meet him.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:34

With this guy?

SPEAKER_00 1:48:34

Yeah. So the opportunity I had, we were both speaking at Sada, and I was coming up, but I think I was coming up three or four programs later, items on the program. And he was speaking with another guy, I forgot the name. Alistair. Yeah, Alistair. They were speaking so well, and I wanted to jump on stage and just, you know, I was thastruck. So what I did, because I was a speaker and I had the linear, the access of the speaker, I was allowed to be a bit closer. So I literally stood there on the staircase when he was coming off stage, just for me to give him a shout out and tell him what great work he's doing. Because I've I've seen what he does. And, you know, social media helps, the guys who've encountered, you know, him working with him and with you as well, the opportunity that I had being around you. You guys continue to inspire me so much. And I must say you guys are doing great. Thank you, Audi.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:28

And the funny thing is, when you greeted me off stage, I was like, wow, that's so cool that this guy has the time to come and say hi to me. Like I because I've seen you all over the place also. Very cool. No, well, Audi, thank you, and thanks for inspiring Yak to become broody. Ladies, Yak wants children. Uh first we need to find him a woman. So that's important. Do your connecting there. Um Audi, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure and a privilege, man. Thanks so much. I love you.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:53

Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that was a good one. That was good.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:59

I like how it ends well, I think.