The Course that Changed Her Career – IC059

Jaz’s Introduction:
What’s the best course you went on? What’s the number one course I should be doing right now in my stage of my career and literally daily basis? And it’s a tough one ’cause I need to do some like discovering about you. I cannot answer what’s the best course for you until I learn more about you. So anyway, back to this episode.

A similar interaction happened between me and our guest Lakshmi. And at that time, some years ago, I recommended that she did the Ripe Global fellowship. And so this episode is all about how it went, was my recommendation. Good. And that recommendation was given to her purely based on some of the things that she requested.

Now I’m gonna tell you now that for every single person, that course would look different based on what’s important to you and what kind of learner you are. Some people absolutely smash through online learning, whereas other people really struggle to get the time and to make online learning a priority.

Some people absolutely hate traveling and therefore the online world is well worth it. And believe it or not, there are some colleagues who don’t really need the hands-on so much ’cause their philosophy is, once I understand what I’m doing, once I know what I’m doing, the one or two times you get to do it on hands-on isn’t gonna make a big difference.

‘Cause really practice makes perfect and it’s important I get stuck in with patients and develop that over the next few years, whereas others absolutely need must have loads of hands on. Otherwise they don’t truly grasp the concept of what they’re learning. So everyone’s different and we’re very fortunate that we’ve never had more courses on the planet than today, honestly.

And that number is probably going up and up and up. There are courses everywhere, which actually makes it a bit of a challenge. It confuses us even more about which one to do. Now, I dunno exactly about those in Australia, USA, India or wherever you are in the world, but in the UK we have some brilliant educators.

Like I never did Aspire by Richard Porter and Raheel. I never did Chris Orr’s Continuum, but these are some huge courses that I always hear great things about. Also, Monica Vasan Continuum. So, so much great choice in the UK. Also, shout out to the ACE Academy in London. Look, the list is endless.

There are some great courses out there, but what I want to think about is to decide what’s the best course for you. Figure out what kind of a learner you are. Speak to as many people as you can who’ve done the course. See if it works out with your family life and your logistics and your geography. Try and find out how many people are at the course and what’s like the ratio between educators and learners.

For me, when it gets to more than 12 learners per educator, on some course I’ve been on, like in hotels where there’s been like, 30, 35 delegates and one educator, I haven’t been the biggest fan of that. I also wanna know what is the educator doing? Like how much do they care about your success?

It’s a difference between you being on a course and every opportunity, the educators like somewhere else. Their minds elsewhere, they’re on their phone versus the educator being in your face and really wanting you to grasp every single concept and what are the values and what’s the person like, what is that educator like?

Are they your cup of tea? Can you relate to them? Do they inspire you? Some of the best courses and where I learned the most is when I actually really admired the person. This person inspired me in their personal life and their philosophy and their values, and I often gain more because of that. So please don’t think that just ’cause we’re talking about the Ripe Global Fellowship, that this may be the right one for you.

I want you to do your own research and find out what kind of learner you are. You should know that I have been an educator in Ripe Global before. I’m a shareholder of Ripe Global and I bloody love Lincoln Harris, Michael Frazis, Michael Melker, all these guys behind Ripe Global. And I think it’s an important duty for me to tell you that before we dive into the episode.

And one last thing, just yesterday, I was at my wife’s graduation, right? She got awarded her masters in pediatric dentistry at the Eastman Dental Institute. Very, very proud of my wife. It was no easy feat. It was very tough, with two kids. She was exclusively breastfeeding my second born during her final year, and she came out with a distinction.

So ever so proud of her. And for her, the MSC was a great choice. She liked having that contact time. She was able to do her like online lessons when there wasn’t any contact time. But was there much hands-on? No, it was a lot of reading and research and that kind of stuff. You have to relook at these programs.

Do you actually get to treat patients or not? So there are really pros and cons, but now some of the opportunities she’s getting available to her because of this master’s is very impressive. It’s very good. So there’s no one course that maybe ticks all the boxes and you have to balance it around, your family, the cost of the program, the geography, and all those things.

And I guess we discuss all these things in today’s episode, but if there’s one thing you take from it, it’s about the mindset, right? The mindset of the person or the dentist who’s hungry to learn. I’ve got to a stage in my career now where I was very hungry, early on, I’m still hungry, but now I’m more about quality.

Of courses rather than quantity of courses. And with me having binged so many courses at the start of my career when I go on courses now, it’s these little tiny micro details that mean so much to me, right? I’m not getting tons of information. I’m picking up these few gems that I can implement straight away and they make the course fee entirely worth it. Anyway, I’ll stop blabbing. Enjoy the podcast. I catch you in the main intro and then again, in the outro.

Teaser:
Managing life as well as being a dentist and still having to be like everything’s absolutely fine and help everybody else when you might be having like multiple things going on. And it’s not like I’ve been a course junkie.

I’ve definitely like cherry picked, like the ones that I definitely wanted to do. But it was really overwhelming on the front of- In terms of choosing the course, it’s been great. A lot of growth, but there’s not much for work life balance. I think it really helped living at home at that point. ‘Cause I didn’t realize, I think if I wasn’t living at home, I don’t think that that option would’ve been there to just drop that much amount of money towards something. But at the same time, when you look at these MSCs and MClinDents and all of these things, it’s quite a lot less. For your growth.

[Jaz]
Over a year ago, a young dentist reached out to me on Instagram and she said to me, Jaz, which course should I do? Now, I get lots of such messages and usually I try and find out what they’re interested in learning and I give them a range of different courses and educators that I respect.

But Lakshmi knew what she wanted. She was looking for something very practical, and she really wanted to learn from the best. And so at the time, I took a risk and I made a recommendation. Now, why is that a risk? It’s risky because even though I’ve recommended some good things to you in the past, like which UV torches to buy to identify your composite or the coffee mug heater, I told you guys about to heat your mirrors, heat your composite.

Thousands of you purchase a Cosori mug from Amazon that even went outta sale several times. But then there was this one time I recommended this caliper. It was a caliper to measure the width of teeth such as urine sizes. And unfortunately, I had some people say, oh, you know what? The calipers, the tips were too fat, Jaz.

The tips were too fat. And I felt bad. I felt sad that I made a recommendation and it wasn’t amazing. And so now the course I was recommending to her was a really sizable investment, but she did listen to me. She booked a call with Ripe Global and she ended up enrolling on their restorative fellowship.

Fast forward a year, and I meet her at the BACD conference, and I finally get to ask her, well, how’s it going? And I’m pleased to say she had some good things to say. She’s very thankful and she’ll share everything about the course and stuff. But beyond the course, it’s not about the Ripe Global course.

Or this course or that course. It’s about the mindset because what I really want you guys to tap into is Lakshmi, a young dentist mindset. I think she’s very mature and I think we can all learn from her, especially if you are in dental school or a new grad, and maybe you are in a tough spot in dentistry. You’re not enjoying what you do because Lakshmi went through that.

She says everything about her journey in this episode. I want you to experience her growth mindset. I also ask her what was going through her mind at the time? Was she considering a Master’s? Why didn’t she do an MSC? Why didn’t she pick any of the other courses? And of course, going deep into what’s good and what’s not so good about the Ripe Global fellowship.

Hello Protruserati. I’m Jazz glarier. Welcome back to your favorite Dental podcast. This episode is with Dr. Lakshmi Ranjan, and I really hope you learn you gain from her journey. This is a non-clinical episode without CPD, but if you want CPD or CE credits, we are a PACE approved provider. There’s hundreds of hours waiting for you on the Protrusive Guidance app.

The website is protrusive.app and you can get CE for the episodes and also my mini short courses and that’s all there as well. As well as the community of the nicest and geekiest dentist in the world. Hope you enjoy it and I’ll catch you in the outro.

Lakshmi Ranjan and welcome to the Protrusive Dental Podcast. Great to have you here. It’s a frosty evening, late night recording. You’ve been telling me how you had like a day off, but it’s never really a day off. It’s been adminy, it’s been video-y, it’s been treatment planning, all that kind of stuff. All the good stuff that we signed up for really. Tell us about your self Lakshmi.

[Lakshmi]
Thank you. Thank you for having me on your wonderful platform. Firstly, it’s a round circle, full circle moment, a bit by myself, then. So born and raised in London, essentially. Went through the normal hurdles, you’ll go through to get into dental school. Bit of a different energy with me ’cause I was also quite an avid dancer. At that critical 17, 18 age, so it was either dental school or backup option was literally be a dancer. Got into dental school. 

[Jaz]
What kind of dance did? We had to talk about it. What kind of dance?

[Lakshmi]
So I did South Indian classical dancing and then was like competing and like went on BBC on dancer and then did some stuff on channel four and I was just really into it. So I definitely knew what it was like to have a discipline and be very rigorous in it to get to a semi-professional level, which on that end, on my parents’ end to be, to let me do a competition like that at the age of 18 when you are doing your A levels to like get into dental school is a very critical decision they took there.

But anyways, it all happened in that year, essentially got into Bristol in the end, weren’t there for five years. I was caught in the COVID trap, so graduated 2020 and we’d literally just done our writtens in January. So we just had the last leg to go. It was literally the vivers and we were out. And then COVID hit May, March, May time, I think. So that got really dragged out. That little last leg that you really wanna just get through dental school with. 

[Jaz]
Everyone says that my year was the year that got affected the most kind of thing, and do you think you were that year or you, do you think the year below you? 

[Lakshmi]
I would say it was the year below. We just made it out. Luckily, I was quite on it with reaching my totals for whatever our totals were for each. Type of procedure. I wasn’t really a last minute.com gal, so I was actually okay. But I think the year below really did, and onwards probably suffered a lot more on the practical side of things.

[Jaz]
I ask all dentists this question by the way who come on all like relatively recent grads. I would love to know like how many root canals did you do? How many crowns do you do, if that’s okay. And just some of the answers we’ve had from American grads that you’d think that if someone’s in US, they’re doing like a million crowns like a day. But they’re really not. And it’s an international problem, not just in the UK. So what were your totals like? 

[Lakshmi]
Mine were actually okay. I think root canals did suffer. I probably did maybe two incisor root canals and I got as far as orifice opening for the molar endos ’cause we had to like do it stage by stage.

So I’d never actually completed a molar endo and there was no kind of going back and being able to do that because COVID had occurred. But obviously we’d had it done on loads like typodont teeth in the labs and I think they were confident enough in me that I’d done. So I think I’d done like a couple premolars and a couple incisors, but that was about it really.

[Jaz]
Crowns? 

[Lakshmi]
Crowns, I can’t actually remember. Probably like four or five. 

[Jaz]
Surgical extractions? 

[Lakshmi]
Surgicals, I honestly, I can’t, I don’t think I’d really done a surgical, no. I hadn’t like actually divided the roots myself and delivered each route. I’d have like a supervisor there who was like telling me what to do, but it’s not like I’d done that as a total, no.

[Jaz]
So that’s fairly typical from what I’m hearing. So it definitely is an international issue. It’s not just here. So, you come out, you qualify. Obviously COVID and stuff happened, but already you were qualifying with less experience so that hunger, that desire to improve yourself is there. What was it like for you when you qualified? 

[Lakshmi]
Rather than hunger and desire as more anxiety, to be honest. I mean, you are kind of struck by COVID. You dunno where you’re gonna be placed and like people are dying left, right, and center. So in terms of where I got placed, luckily I got placed in London so I could come back home.

Thank God. I was like praying like please ensure that I’m near home and it’s not too bad of a commute in. And my trainer was really, really good on the front of being quite hands-on, but I was their first trainee. So they’d never had a trainee there. And you couldn’t go in the room that frequently, so I couldn’t shadow my trainer either.

[Jaz]
Oh, sucks. 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, it was really tough. But luckily I was in a really good scheme. We sort of got like an integrated DCT sort of style training year instead. So they placed us one day in hospital in a restorative department so you could shadow like the restorative dentist or surgery maxfax, depending, because you couldn’t have that many people in your clinic at that time.

So it was okay. But, I think once things started normalizing again, I was in a really high needs clinic as well, so the endos and the extractions were just running on tap and fast, to be honest. So I’d done a few surgicals by that point, and my trainer was really into extractions as well.

That’s something I’ve learned that I’m not really a big fan of. Like I’ve rather do an endo than an extraction, but essentially it was a bit slow running at the beginning and then it started picking up. But I was quite grateful for that because I still don’t understand how people go from like three hours in university for one person.

To then like 15 minutes and 30 people a day. And there’s no, like, you’re not taught the structure of how you should present an examination or how you should do this or that. Like you are on clinic and you have a supervisor coming and checking now and again. But in terms of the basics of being a dentist, there’s no like handbook on it.

[Jaz]
Which is why the year exists. And I think it’s good that in the UK we have that and that most people take, you don’t have to do it, but if you wanna have a performer number be able to work at the interest, then yes, lots of people do it. Most people do it. And I think it’s a nice bridge.

And especially if you have a supportive trainer, it’s good. So it sounds like you got the right type of experiences you did, did eventually hit those high numbers of patients, which, you know what? You kind of have to do your time. You kind of, there’s no shortcut. You have to experience that.

You have to experience the headache that you get at the end of the day. The notes that you have to catch up with. Oh my God, did I just do three extractions, two root canals, and a and a crown prep today kind of thing. Because that’s a quick way to learn. 

[Lakshmi]
Exactly. And I think a quick way to learn is when you are struggling. I think in that year it wasn’t easy. Like I think because I was their first trainee, like they were also understaffed because of COVID. They didn’t have a DSLR camera at the time. I would have a different nurse every single day. I’d be put in a different room every single day, and then you didn’t have certain piece of equipment available, so there was a lot of just working stuff out on the spot because you had no other choice.

And I think, through struggle that you then appreciate the little things of like, I had to manually do all my referral forms and check that they were sent myself and sealed them in an envelope and put them in the thing rather than ensuring that there is a triaging team on reception to do that.

Or like just the really little things. So it was a really like triumphant year of like clinical growth, but it was also an awakening of like appreciating how much teamwork is involved in the job and how multifaceted you need to be in like having five conversations at the same time. At all times of the day.

[Jaz]
Very, very true. I mean, it sounds like most people you got thrown in the deep end, but like you got out of it, you grew and you realize that okay, perhaps the systems that are in place at the practice you’re at when weren’t so efficient. ‘Cause obviously we’re at now, I’m hoping that it’s a bit more digital, it’s a bit more automated, it’s a bit more people do the things so you can focus on the bigger things on the clinical dentistry aspect of it.

Where did it leave you at the end though? What were you craving? Were you looking for an associate position? Were you looking to go back to hospital? Where was your head space at that time? 

[Lakshmi]
So for me personally, I didn’t really wanna go into hospital because again, I think it’s really good with the specialties or exposed to, and are not bashing anybody who’s there. But I felt like the culture in hospital can be quite, you’ve gotta have quite thick skin sometimes. It can be quite harsh and you are thrown into situations sometimes and then you can be told often for no reason when you’ve just turned up in a particular situation. So I felt that it wasn’t really helping me grow as much as I’d like. So I knew I didn’t wanna go into hospital. 

[Jaz]
Did you listen to the episode I did with Ameer Allybocus on trials and tribulations of maxfax? 

[Lakshmi]
I haven’t actually. No. 

[Jaz]
So if anyone’s listening, just what luxury is saying is so true and some great stories, some experiencing death in a  maxfax unit that’s tough. And experiencing that thing where you turn up and you just get a bollock left, right, and center from a consultant. Like all of that is all that good stuff that you can write a book on just that episode I did with  Ameer  to shout out to  Ameer. But you’re right, there are some challenges and a lot of people are grateful for their  maxfax year or their DCT year.

So it’s not to say that just ’cause Lakshmi said this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it kind of thing. But Lakshmi’s got a great point that it might not be for everyone and you are a smart cookie ’cause you realize it wasn’t for you. So what were you thinking to join the rat race and get, go into the associateship?

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, so firstly, I just wanted to leave the practice I was in ’cause I could just see that this wasn’t an area for me to grow. And there was a lot of things I had to do in order to just be at a baseline level associate to get the work done. So my aim was to just be somewhere where things were a bit more organized, just to have a practice manager, someone to just organize stuff and ensure that the team’s running okay.

And I think for me it was practicing what I’d learned. I just didn’t feel confident enough to go into these like, big practices already when I already in the clinical area. I just wanted to be by myself and work things out and have a basic understanding of how the practice should run.

Because I wasn’t really exposed to that. In your training, you’re still doing admissions, you’re reflecting on everything. You’ve still got supervisor to report to. I think that year I just wanted to not sign up to anything, just go free Rodden. Till from the age of like 11 to 23. At that point, you’re just submitting things and doing exams all the time.

So for me, I was like, let’s just have one year of just going with the flow and see how that goes. So yeah, mixed practice was the aim with great good support. Somewhere where a team would be there for you to still get clinical advice on things. Digital scanner, rotary, endo equipment, just the basics.

Like not a major target where the principal’s gonna be pressing on you to do X, Y, Z every month. And thankfully, yeah, they were really supportive on that front and they weren’t pressuring, they were really good with equipment. 

[Jaz]
How did you find this place, Lakshmi? Because a lot of people say, oh, I dunno where to look for to find my place. So was it luck? Was it forced by you? It was make your own luck. Was it destiny? How was it? 

[Lakshmi]
It was a combination. So I don’t really have any family in dentistry or really any friends in dentistry other than people from dental school. So it was really through BDJ jobs, where I was just kind of searching every day of like what jobs would come up.

Asking around, like on my scheme as well, if there are any job opportunities like, we had really good educators on the London schemes. So yeah, I would go and ask them like if there are any openings anywhere and they would suggest you should email these people or send your, CV to them was building a portfolio of work with the camera that the practice eventually got those little things.

And yeah, it was just mainly through BDJ jobs to be honest. I wasn’t too fussed like, like on the location and like cohort patients I was seeing and things like that. I was just focused on clinical dentistry and just ensuring that what I’m providing or the care I can provide is a good enough standard in the first place.

[Jaz]
And did you feel the DF1 year, which had the study days and all those things, did that now prepare you? Or did you feel as though you now need to supplement some courses at this stage?

[Lakshmi]
So at that stage, I didn’t wanna sign up to a course because I was, firstly, you’ve just come out of COVID and we didn’t even get to celebrate final year or go on holiday or like anything to relieve that pressure and stress that you’d built up that entire year.

So for me it was just kind of a release of like finally I can go away like a year and a half later and just go with the flow of life ’cause you’re just on this treadmill the entire time. So, no, I didn’t think, but I definitely knew it was only gonna be one year of trial running this and then see how I feel at the end and what to hop onto and I wasn’t really-

[Jaz]
And what did that year teach you then? 

[Lakshmi]
I think it taught me that like you can de-skill very quickly. I was quite demotivated and you are really run down and exhausted ’cause it’s just like a high turnover of patients every day. 

[Jaz]
And also how about how quickly you can like pick up bad habits?

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, very quickly. ‘Cause again, it’s you by yourself in that room. So luckily I am the type clinician where if I identify that I’m not gonna be very good at doing something for you. Like I’d either stabilize and pass you on or stop at that point and say, look, you might need to consider something else rather than continue with the shortcut idea of doing this filling with an open contact point or something.

Do you know what I mean? So I think I definitely realized by the end that I need to get onto something that covers the bread and butter of dentistry to a high enough like baseline understanding. Does that make sense across all areas? Because I learned from the study days there was like photography was one bit, then you’ve got posterior fillings, and then you’ve got this concept of onlays coming into the equation now when all you’ve been exposed to is crown preps. And then you’ve got smile design and aesthetic work, which was a whole another domain and what I was- 

[Jaz]
Let alone the communication to actually get patients to that point where they’re open to discuss those things with you and to actually communicate fees and sequencing and how that actually works in amongst all these the busy day that you have and then you have that kind of different type of appointment and nothing prepares you for that.

[Lakshmi]
Absolutely not. And you’re not gonna have that understanding in NHS dentistry. Like, it’s just not gonna happen because it’s a completely different line of work. Like it’s still really got its own way of doing dentistry, but you simply just don’t have the time and facilities to advocate to those aesthetic plans.

So I kind of got through that year and then realized all these things and I just was like really demotivated and I wasn’t like enjoying my job as much. Really. I was kind of like going in, seeing how it would be. The other associates were really good doing their own thing, but it’s not like they had that kind of fire for dentistry either.

[Jaz]
Did you feel like, actually, if don’t mind asking, did you feel like you were practicing defensive dentistry? 

[Lakshmi]
It was just a lot of stabilizing really, to be honest. 

[Jaz]
The area stabilizing the basics just to make sure the active disease is gone. Nothing fancy from there. Mostly single tooth dentistry.

[Lakshmi]
Single tooth dentistry, dealing with the problem, referring them to the hygienist for perio most of the time. And then otherwise, yeah, just normal kind of day-to-day dentistry. There really broken tooth at the back. You need a crown. Don’t really do that many crowns anymore, but back then it would be like a zirconia crown or something as the least invasive thing.

So, but I didn’t mind at the time because you’re still kind of getting your clinical skill up, you know? And once I moved practice as well, the rate of endo I was doing really dropped. So I was in two practices. One was very high needs and exempt patients with limited English. So that in itself was just a rollercoaster ride because I was doing a high churn of dentistry, but very exhausted with communicating.

‘Cause I just didn’t really understand what I was trying to say. And then I had another, the other practice was like low to mod in terms of needs. But I was doing a lot more kind of posterior work, composites, crowns, things like that. So I think it was really good for those three years to just really practice all areas of dentistry.

Like one, I was doing loads of extractions at endos at, and the other one I was like doing composites at and realizing that I couldn’t get a contact point and last was dreary. But I was listening to you a lot actually during those years because you’re not really getting any guidance on like what the next step is or where to go and who to turn to when you’re having clinical.

[Jaz]
Uncle Jaz was there for you. 

[Lakshmi]
Uncle Jaz every day. Especially in my foundation year. Yeah, because there wasn’t really a lot of guidance then. 

[Jaz]
So what changed then? 

[Lakshmi]
So essentially got to 2023. I was like, the year’s done. Now I’ve realized, we’re de-skilling. I’m not really enjoying this, where to go. But then when exploring these courses, that’s when I messaged you because I was actually considering the Spear courses or the Dawson ones 

[Jaz]
It’s interesting how you’re considering already like hats off to you ’cause you are already considering going abroad. Whereas most people like, okay, which is the next course I can do that’s within a 20 mile radius of me kind of thing. So what made you think already to the states wide? What did you, here, how did you get this perception that you may need to go away? ‘Cause not many people think that at that stage of their career.

[Lakshmi]
Of course. And I think a lot of it fed into my principles at the time. ‘Cause I was asking them like, what do you do? And they were like, why don’t you learn from the people you taught, the people who are doing the courses in the UK. So, I can’t remember who I learned from, but it was one of the like sphere kind of-

[Jaz]
Spear, Kois, Dawson, Pankey, some of the good folk in the States. 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, one of them. So he was saying, you should go there. But then my thing was, now I’m not really the best traveler and whatever I learn in America, like, how can I apply it in the UK when I’m already struggling to apply in the UK in the first place?

And I just didn’t want to just like focus on one area. And I think the dance background really played into that because when I was training, you didn’t go and see your trainer like every single week. Like I would go to a workshop with the top dancer at that time, they’d teach you whatever the repertoire was.

You’d take away what you needed and go away and apply. And it’s just you practicing in your own time and then just going up the ladder, really. So I already knew, I wanted to go to the best of whatever there is. Sort of baseline bread and butter start to- 

[Jaz]
I love how you applied that from your dance. I love that you took that as a life lesson. That, okay, you need to learn from the best but then you gotta do the reps. There’s no shortcut. You have to get the reps in just like you used to practice. I imagine late into the evening when you’re doing your dance. Sounds like you got quite serious about it, but now you have to recreate that in the dentistry.

And the only way you could do that is practicing on your patients. So I like that you are already thinking about, okay, if I go here, but how can I actually get those reps in once I’m back and apply it? 

[Lakshmi]
Exactly. And I tell everybody this, that having a discipline or like a background hobby or something is really, really important because you offer from a young age already, you’ve already developed those innate skills to identify those things.

Like it’s a problem of being a perfectionist. And then there’s the identifying that, this doesn’t just come overnight. Like it’s repetitions of it and it will modify over time anyways, messaged you being like, I was considering this. What do you think? But generally, I think my main prerequisites were hands-on covering generally most grounds of dentistry to a baseline degree and relatively affordable.

‘Cause I was looking at all these courses and they kind of focus on one area for like an entire year and it’s like 10 K for that entire year, but it’s like a couple days every month that you’re just going in for this weekend and then there’s like kind of not much connection in between.

And then some of them you’ve got to do one course first, and then after you’ve done that, you can then sign on to the next one. So I just felt like everything was in pieces and it’s already busy being a dentist and then having to think, how shall I systematically organize which course to do where, and understanding what type of learner you are.

I knew that I’m not like a, let me read this study and then I’ll be able to do the online prep tomorrow. Like, I just knew I was more of a visual, like looking at someone, do something and then see how they rectified whatever problems they had and then apply. So more of a visual learner.

So it was a combination of understanding all these different aspects and then financially I was like i’m going to invest. I’d already made that decision. ‘Cause I think I do find now when I’m talking to people on considering ripe or whatever course, they’re like, yeah, let me think about it. ‘Cause it’s like just a lot. But I’m like, you need to invest in yourselves though. 

[Jaz]
Did you know that when you qualified that you’d have to spend so much money? Because when I qualified, I remember being like, maybe I was like in fourth or fifth year, I was shadowing who eventually became my principal in a very nice clinic in Richmond.

And I said to Hap like, Hap, any tips you wanna give me? And he gave me some tips like, forget everything they’re teaching at dental school. Like, literally at dental school he tells you forget everything they’re teaching at dental school. And that was a shock to me. And then he was like, be prepared to spend a lot of money.

And even that was like a huge shock to me. He said, spend, you have to, 50 K upwards, he said to me. And I almost fainted. I was like, what? Really? This was all a big surprise to me. Did you have that kind of talk from someone? Did someone anchor that actually you need to spend a lot of money here to be able to break free and acquire the skills to then apply?

Interjection:
Hey guys, it’s Jaz and interfering. At the time when I made the recommendation to Lakshmi, I did so because I genuinely believe in the people behind Ripe Global. Not only am I an educator on the Ripe Global website, Lincoln Harris and Michael Melkers have been huge mentors and friends for me, as well as the inspiration of Michael Frazis, who I got to meet recently in London, and so I know they have some great people on board.

I’ve been following the Ripe Global journey for almost 10 years now. I’m a shareholder and I’m really proud to see what Ripe Global was achieving. I think they truly are democratizing education. You no longer need to fly places to learn because of their innovative methods using the mannequin head and world class educators now, Ripe Global, are doing a promotion at the moment to get you 20% off one of their fellowships.

That’s a big amount, and it’s not up to 20% off. It is a guaranteed 20% off. The way you access that is to book a call to make sure you are the right candidate, to make sure it’s gonna fit in your work-life balance and that your learning style is conducive to it. If you would like to take advantage of that discount, just mention my name and they will apply the 20% for you.

You can book the call at protrusive.co.uk/rgdiscount. protrusive.co.uk/rgdiscount, all one word. I’ll also put in the show notes so you can click through. Now, let’s get back to the main episode and dive deeper into Lakshmi’s experiences. 

[Lakshmi]
No, they didn’t actually, and I didn’t really anticipate dropping. I think it really helped living at home at that point. ‘Cause I didn’t realize, I think if I wasn’t living at home, I don’t think that that option would’ve been there to just drop that much amount of money towards something. But at the same time, when you look at these MSCs and M MClinDents and all of these things, it’s quite a lot less for your growth. 

[Jaz]
Yeah. MSC is like for a year, MSC, it was 18 grand when my wife did it a few years ago. Now it’s gone up to like 26, 28 grand. Like for an MSC, just, I’m talking about British pounds. British pounds obviously, but all over the world. Ripe Global.

We could talk about it ’cause we could talk about how much you paid because it’s on the website and everything when you were considering it. Obviously it’s important to look at the fees, but it’s also important to look at okay, what you’re getting out of it. So we’re gonna talk about what you were expecting and whether it met your expectations, but how much you have to pay and how do you have to pay it because like you said, if you weren’t living at home, then sometimes we have to defer things for the future when you are a bit more financially stable.

For me personally, I was living at home when I first qualified. Therefore, with my first paycheck, I was able to buy a DSLR, body lens, et cetera, flash and crack on with photography. If I wasn’t living at home, that would’ve gone towards rent. So it’s a massive help and very grateful for anyone who’s had that. And that was obviously part of your journey as well, but how much money was it? 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, so comparatively to the other courses, it was actually less per year. So the way it works with them is you can either do it in finance, but it’d be with interest. So you’d be paying a lot more, or you just pay it off in bulk? So if I paid it off in bulk in Australian dollars, at the time I think it was like 20 K. So that in pounds was like 18,800. 

[Jaz]
Is it 20,000 Aussie dollars? I think it’s two to one. So that’s about 10,000 pounds? 

[Lakshmi]
No, no, no. It was definitely like in the 18 sort of range for two years. 18.7 to 18.9, or maybe it was like 23, 24, I can’t really remember. But in pounds it translated to like 18.8 k ish. 

[Jaz]
Okay, so 18,000 pounds. You paid for two years. So it’s about 9,000 pounds a year. Which is okay, fine. Which is pretty competitive- 

[Lakshmi]
More like, yeah, 19,000. So yeah, which is pretty good for two years. It’s like nine and a half K for the amount that you- 

[Jaz]
Depends what you’re getting out of it. And so, which is what you’re gonna go into now basically? 

[Lakshmi]
Exactly. So what I was comparing it to was the equivalent for one year for some of these other restorative courses, which are still really, really good. But you are only going for in, for like two days, like once a month for like a few months for that entire year.

And then that was it really. And I suppose you’d get the study materials per weekend, but between that time there was no like interaction or anything. Whereas here, I think what really stood out to me was that you got four hands ons per module. So that’s like eight. 

[Jaz]
And how many modules are there? 

[Lakshmi]
So there’s four modules. Okay. There’s two per year. You’ve gotta do a pre-theory challenge before the actual hands-on. And each hands-on is like eight hours long. So they go from- 

[Jaz]
And people have no idea about, it’s like when you came to me, you had no idea about Ripe Global. I told you about it and then you were like, oh, what the hell is this kind of thing.

[Lakshmi]
Yes. 

[Jaz]
I knew about it ’cause I was a huge fan of what they were doing, the whole Facebook group initially set up from years ago, obviously a big fan of Lincoln Harris and what he’s taught me. And so I knew that if I was starting my career again, that was a course I would’ve done by the time Ripe Global came out, I had hundreds of courses under my belt already.

But when someone like you, when you came to me and you asked me, and you told me what exactly what you’re looking for, like really practical. And that’s why I said, okay, you know what? 

[Lakshmi]
Bread and butter really exactly. 

[Jaz]
And foundational, and I know how much hands-on they do, which is a big part of the ethos because that’s why I recommend it to you and I’m glad is when I recommend something. I’m taking a risk ’cause people then come, oh yeah, Jaz recommended this and I didn’t like, so I take recommendations very seriously. So it is great to see you on the other side and I wanna just talk more about that because for a lot of people, I wanna prepare them for the challenge, the amount of work it is, it’s not like you sign up to a course and you’re gonna get to a five star buffet and chill and drink the sparkling water, which no one seems to drink, but it’s there.

You can drink it. It is a lot of hard work, which perhaps you need to warn people. I don’t want people to go and say, oh, Jaz, Lakshmi came in the podcast, she said some good things about Ripe Global, and then you end up doing it, but you don’t prepare for amount of work involved. So give us a breakdown of how is structured and then how much commitment is required at each stage. 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah. So once I got off that kind of chat with you. I had a call with them and they kind of talk through how it works and you have to have a DSLR before you start. Now the thing is, when I was starting, I was in the process of moving out.

So like I couldn’t afford to go and buy a DSLR myself at that time ’cause I just paid for this course. And I think I just got a car at that time as well. And I was just about to move out too. So it was all sort of happening at the same time. So I actually borrowed my principal’s 20-year-old DSLR, which he kindly let me borrow for like a few months and then I bought my own like six months later. But you have to have that before you start. ’cause then- 

[Jaz]
I like that. I like that they enforce that because there’s no point in you coming on and then you don’t have the means to communicate the cases and show the photos. So I think it’s a sign of a good course that you need to have this as a barrier to before you come on.

[Lakshmi]
Yeah. And I think what a really beautiful moment was when I messaged you at the time, I felt like another main thing I didn’t mention was the loneliness in the profession. I just felt very anxious, de-skilled, lonely on the front of like, there’s no one who can understand what I’m going through right now.

It’s very defensive in our profession as well. You never like go to a clinician and be like, this went wrong for me. Help. It’s more like, don’t even mention it. But I’m very open book and like, what do I do in this situation? So fast forward. What I loved with the course is that they’ve got mentoring.

They have a lot of checkpoints in checking that you are okay. You are following what the kind of schedule is ’cause it can be really overwhelming. They have different groups for you to message into in their own app for camera problems. If you dunno how to set something up, they will call you and go through that or get one of the educators to go through it with you.

And so it’s not just the clinical. So they talk to you about communication, treatment, planning, how you should even do an examination with all your photographs, the different views and how you should set up your camera. Troubleshooting problems on the actual hands-on, free, hands-on. You’ve got to do all those different views.

So buccal, lingual, palatal, occlusal, pre-op, then post-op and like each of the different stages. 

[Jaz]
So just make that tangible for me so, you pick a patient, like for example, posterior module. You take some photos of a patient and then you submit that and then you do the dentistry. You submit that. Like just make that clear. 

[Lakshmi]
So essentially in terms of the actual course, you have your phantom head, so you’re not doing anything on a patient when it comes submissions for the actual course hands ons. So mine was called Jim, Jim G. 

[Jaz]
Do they name it or do you name it?

[Lakshmi]
They name it, yeah. Jim came with a sunglasses in a briefcase that we’ve had a lovely relationship for the last two years, but essentially, yeah, so you do your hands on, on the phantom head in your own time. So another key thing with Ripe is that you have to have a discussion with your principal. That they are happy for you to use the surgery out of hours. Like on a Saturday. 

[Jaz]
So you’ve gotta have the keys and have that trust and allow you to use the handpieces, use everything. So using the tools in the clinic. How about the nurse or do you have this option? 

[Lakshmi]
You need the nurse. You just need them to say, okay, you could have the compressor on for that many hours and have the key to the, luckily I was actually doing Saturdays at that time, so it was like fine and every other Saturday. So there were some days where it’d be a 12 hour stretch of just clinical dentistry.

But essentially, yeah, you are on a posterior module. The first one was crown preps, though, you do your one crown prep and you send all your views and you are played it onto this PowerPoint with all the different views that you need to put on. They will then give you a video analysis of that. So when it gets your actual hands on, you have an idea of what you need to improve on.

Then that hands on, you’ve gotta do 16 crown preps, over the course of like six hours. So by the like I think the 16th one. Yeah. You’ve just got muscle memory on what you’re doing. But it was really strenuous. Like I couldn’t lift my head up the next day because I was like bent down for that long.

And again, at each stage you’ve got to take a photo and send it to them. So, occlusal reduction, interproximal, buccal, lingual, you’ve got to- 

[Jaz]
Is this like synchronized or like you said you had to do 16 preps, but is there someone like from what I’ve seen from the marketing is like you are there like on a Zoom with them or like a web meeting with them, right?

[Lakshmi]
Yeah. 

[Jaz]
WebEx maybe. And so you’re doing those 16 preps, but then as well as that live interaction and they’ve got a little camera watching your prep, right? But then you’ve gotta submit the photos as well. Is that right? 

[Lakshmi]
So essentially you’ve got your box with the phantom head. You put your laptop on the box and your phantom head is on the chair. So you’re not doing all 16 and one go. You do it like quadrant by quadrant. So essentially the first one is a guided one where they’ll say you need to send us occlusal reduction first and then into proximal and like each step, essentially you’ve gotta send them separately so that they know that you can follow instructions and then you are guided on keeping the preps parallel and how you can do them quickly and efficiently and keep the margins minimal, et cetera.

And then the next one will be timed. So then you get on with it, and then you send them the rough prep and then the polished prep. Then the next ones they just say, just move on and do it in your own time. And then they’ll do one more that is like timed in like five minutes. And it’s really shocking to see where your prep starts and ends in that time.

And I think another thing is because they’ve made you do like, that was a crown prep day, and then it was basically the same thing for class two cavities, but like with different matrix systems. You then had to do that in all four quadrants. So by the time you’ve got to like the end of that module, you’ve rinsed out like everything you could possibly know for posterior teeth in hand with the clinical videos in the library and all of that stuff.

So I think it sounds really strenuous, but genuinely when you are actually doing it with other people and it’s practical, you can also apply it on Monday. So you are automatically kind of engrossed in what you are doing because you’re like, this is gonna help me out anyway. 

[Jaz]
I love most about it so far, Lakshmi, is the fact that implementation and being able to apply it is at a higher level because yes, you’re not just like prepping on a model in your hand. Yes, there’s a mannequin, which is a level up, but that mannequin is laying in the same chair that on Monday, a patient will be sat in. So it is in your own surgery with your own stuff, with your own handpiece. That’s correct. Right? 

[Lakshmi]
Yep. 

[Jaz]
That’s powerful. 

[Lakshmi]
And the other thing is you’re by yourself. So like there were a number of times when the suction like died and it’s just me at like 7:00 PM and I’m like, I don’t know what to do. Because usually I just look at the nurse like, you sort this out. So I literally had to be on all fours, like trying to work out all this vent plugs in. So like you are really kind of- 

[Jaz]
You grow as a- 

[Lakshmi]
Very quickly, and it was really hard, like there were times initially, I’m not gonna lie, where I was like, why am I doing this? ‘Cause I was just feel like I’m still struggling. I am so having to look inward a lot of the time because there isn’t any other clinician there using the DSLR. And it is just me trying to push myself along. And then the pivotal moment for me was actually the fact that I think Dr. Lincoln actually checks in with each delegate like once.

Like that year, ’cause there’s obviously so many of us internationally and he actually came to London for the BACD as a head speaker that year coincidentally. And I’d already done the posterior module by that point and I think we just started the anterior. So I was kind of getting into the flow again, I was invested in the course, but I could be doing more.

‘Cause I was just starting up and so I just dropped him a message saying, oh, I know you’re in town. I just wanted to say thank you to creating such a great platform. Like I feel a lot more motivated and inspired. Just as a general respectful comment. And then essentially had like a one-on-one mentoring meeting with him where I essentially kind of got chiseled into place of like what you need to be doing to see yourself.

I am now essentially like a year on. So he sort of was like a little ignition at the end of that kind of first year of the course to do additional things to grow even quicker because he was asking- 

[Jaz]
What a lovely thing for him to do, to meet up. And I know we had a chat about when we were at the BACD and he told me about how he probed you and you asked, are you doing this? Are you doing that? Are you doing this? Are you there? No, I’m not. And you’re making notes and what a lovely thing for him to do. 

[Lakshmi]
And I was really nervous actually. ‘Cause I was like, this is just so out of the blue. I didn’t really plan this in my week. I usually see you virtually on the screen for like every lecture. And he was like, do you have a vision? Can you envision the practice you wanna be in? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, I’ll eat that. And I was like. No. And then I think he asked me, do you treat what percentage of patients you treat that are exactly like you? Like enlisted all my personality traits.

And I was like, none. And then he was like, would you go to the practices you are at currently have your own teeth treated? And I was like, no, actually, like knowing the type of person I am or I wouldn’t. So he was like really kind of got to you in a particular way for you to be like, actually I need to make a lot of changes for me to reposition myself.

I wasn’t on the Instagram. I didn’t want to be actually, because again, from the dancing and being in the forefront and the spotlight and the kind of backlash you got from the performing arts, I was sort of a bit like, I don’t wanna be in the spotlight again. So then he was like, it’s really critical for your professional growth to have a platform.

So, when you said implement, so essentially the next day I just opened it. Just started and yeah. And then he said, you’ve gotta go to these courses, network, ask them how they got there, do what they’ve asked you to do, and then just keep applying and practicing every single day. And then, yeah, it’s just been a following that protocol ever since. And then we moved on to the veneers module on January. And in hand with Ripe, I was also doing other little courses. So do you know Vish and Aaron? 

[Jaz]
Yes, of course. 

[Lakshmi]
So they were doing an associate course funded by the NHS earlier this year. And it was like five day kind of course with like Elaine Mo, Mo Bogar. So they kind of had one day on like examinations, another whole day on rubber dam, another day on endo, another day on onlays. And I think the fifth day was on class two. So basically everything. 

[Jaz]
At this point, hopefully you felt like this was revision or just seeing how other people do it ’cause you already had now some grounding of how to do on Jim and on your patients. ‘Cause I’m hoping that what you were learning on Jim, you were able to then implement on your patients as well. 

[Lakshmi]
Of course. And I think it was also having the backing of the clinical video library. So again, when I was there, nobody heard of ripe. And they were like, what are you talking about? And how does it work? And things like that. But you can automatically see when even those educators could see that you’ve learned loads of these pearls already, like how have you grasped all this stuff already? But I think there’s an aspect of also taking the time out of hours and sacrificing. A lot of free time towards more of things to do in your profession, like, there was a lot of-

[Jaz]
Well, let’s talk about that. You had the weekends to actually do the out of hours to actually have the lessons and stuff. What other commitments, how much more time did demand of you, ’cause obviously you had some pre-reading to do.

I imagine there’s on demand library or videos, lectures you need to watch, but then what was taxing, what was demanding? Because like, my wife was doing a master’s in peds. And there she was like breastfeeding Sihaan and then studying for this and live webinars and all these papers she had to read. It was tough. How challenging, how draining was the actual amount of content you had to go through within your Ripe Global, is it called a diploma? Or is it a- 

[Lakshmi]
Oh, you don’t actually get, I don’t know, like it’s a fellowship actually. But you don’t get like a diploma or anything. But I think they’re working on getting that once you’ve uploaded all your cases. So I wouldn’t really say it was like mentally draining on the day to day, but you had to sacrifice a lot of Saturdays. On the scheduled hands-on days and then scheduling again another weekday or sometime in your clinical diary to, not in your clinical diary, but again another Saturday or something to come and do the pre-theory challenge for that hands-on. So it wasn’t demanding a lot of time, like you still had your gym time. 

[Jaz]
You need to factor in some gym time to the hands on to get the hands on, to do the submissions for them to quality control how you’re progressing. Now it makes sense. 

[Lakshmi]
Exactly, exactly. Okay. 

[Jaz]
Which kind of people might struggle, basically? Like for example, imagine like some of the people who you’re doing it with. Would you find it more difficult if you’re a practice owner? Would you find it more difficult if you had kids, like some people have kids and they say that, oh yeah, this is challenging because of that. Or various reasons people might say it’s a barrier, but like nothing worth having comes easy.

But what challenges could you expect if you were to do a, a fellowship like this, which is very fascinating remote learning. You don’t have to take flights, you don’t have to go in to anywhere except your practice, which is pretty cool. But you still have to bake that time in. 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah. I would say to be honest, like even if you have a family and kids and things, I think it’s quite easy to schedule it in. It’s only really two Saturdays a month maybe where you’d have to, and it’s in the afternoon. It’s usually like two to eight or two to nine or something where you’d have to schedule that in. And the pre-theory challenge is really up to you. They’re not ever really pressuring on, you have to do it by this date and like, if you have a valid reason, which is why I was touching upon the mental health and having a connecting point with them where they’re like, you’ve gone off radar a bit.

Is everything okay? Like, are you really busy at the moment? Life kicks in. If you want to take a pause, you can and then resubmit another time. So there is a lot of flexibility with it, which I loved as well. I’m quite the type to just get it done rather than drag it out. But you know, there were moments where I went off radar, like this year it’s just been really full on that I couldn’t really be watching that many clinical videos or being as present as I was last year which they do pick up on me.

I think they probably have an activity radar on each delegate. And I got a message and was like, we wanna have a meeting with you just to see how you’re doing and how we can help you. And which is really nice. Like I didn’t really expect that either. So I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly surprising.

No, like I think it’s not like you have to read loads either. It’s a lot of practical stuff and visual things. So you can be cooking and watching like the clinical video or the lecture in the background in preparation for the course. I didn’t feel like I had to read heaps or anything. 

[Jaz]
Fine. That’s good to know about yes, there’s reading, which is important, but nowadays people are seeking practical courses. So tell me, like you were considering at one point some of these courses whereby you go in on a couple of Saturdays a month and then you go back to your practice. But then what you’re describing is you still have to give up a couple of Saturdays. What made you think that you made the right choice, or do you think you made the right choice, but what makes you think you made the right choice compared to some of those other courses? 

[Lakshmi]
I think it was a lot of factors. So firstly, I loved the fact that they went from posterior dentistry right to full mouth rehab and that incremental growth. It wasn’t just being pushed into aesthetic rehabilitation and then we’re suddenly gonna talk about class two cavities and then suddenly gonna talk about class four. It’s like it was very systematic. So by the time I’ve got to the FMR now, like I’ve got a solid understanding of posteriority, anteriority, how you smile design.

They even make you draw the upper three to three manually. So that you actually understand golden proportion. And then the number of times you’ve done composite buildups on anterior teeth to understand. Nines. On Jim. On Jim. On Jim. 

[Jaz]
Must have a great smile now. 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, he’s great. He’s really gone through a lot. He’s really stood by me, actually. 

[Jaz]
More importantly, have you now been able to find your Jim out in the world and to help them with their dental issues and give them good smiles? Do you feel confident to implement what you’re learning on Jim on real patients? 

[Lakshmi]
Absolutely. I think that’s the beauty of it, because you don’t feel as nervous doing it on someone because you’ve done it so many times on the phantom head that your hands sort of got muscle memory and you’re able to identify what to do if it’s not gone particularly correctly at that time.

Because they also instill a lot of use what you’ve got. They give you an equipment list, which you also have to invest in, which is really just some matrix bands here and there and some burs, which you then use for the entirety of the course. So they will give you ways in which you can use different things to achieve different things.

So like, for example, diastema closures, I was only really used to using a TorVM band, you know, and using that repeatedly in different ways to do it. But then, you’ve got talk about the modified mylar pull using the Bioclear matrices. You can use a TorVM bands. It’s not like one technique fits all. It depends on that type.

So that already alleviated a lot of anxiety because you’re like, oh, okay, I can maybe try this way and if that way it doesn’t work, it’s all right, I’ve got this this other way, I’ve got plan A to D available. It’s not just plan A or B because on the hands Sunday you’ve got like 15 other people doing it with you. So you are seeing on the DSLR picture, that’s very zoomed in like the different things that go wrong and everyone’s in the same boat as you. It’s not just you struggling- 

[Jaz]
And you’re learning from the, not mistakes, but learning from some of the practical errors or refinements of other people. Like is, for example, I imagine Lincoln Harris saying, oh, Maria, look at this. What you’ve done here. You’ve created a J margin and are you all watching that kind of feedback live as well? 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah. And you have an annotating thing to like do that. So yeah, you are tested on photography multiple times. You’re then made to do it each clinical thing multiple times. They have checkpoints with you throughout the year so you don’t feel alone as well. And they also implemented a therapist for all of us this year. Just to look through- 

[Jaz]
Like a psychological therapist? 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, psychological therapist with better help. 

[Jaz]
Nice. Oh wow. Okay. I’ve heard a better help seen that, seen some of their ads. That’s really cool. 

[Lakshmi]
Really, really good. Because I think what’s really not spoken about in dentistry is that, you are like managing life as well as being a dentist and still having to be like, everything’s absolutely fine and help everybody else when you might be having like multiple things going on.

[Jaz]
Does everyone have to have a session or just like something you opt into? 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, you have to. They’ve got it as an option. So they’re like, you can use it to help structure your thoughts and see why you’re struggling. 

[Jaz]
Have you used it? 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, I used it earlier in the year because I felt like, especially this year I was trying to find a new job. I was doing the Vish and Aaron course, I was still in the right course and I had like some- 

[Jaz]
You were at BACD then I saw you a few weeks later. The event we did, right. Well, you were everywhere actually. 

[Lakshmi]
Yeah, everywhere this year, honestly, I feel like even this year when I saw some of my course mates, they were like, where have you been? Because you’ve suddenly come onto the scene. But I was just really, and it’s not like I’ve been a course junkie. I’ve definitely like cherry picked, like the ones that I definitely wanted to do, but, it was really overwhelming on the front of in terms of choosing the course, it’s been great, a lot of growth, but there’s not much for work life balance. Because you are basically- 

[Jaz]
But you get that with masters as well. Like there’s a Eastman Conservative Dentistry Masters, which I considered at one point. They call that the divorce course. Right. And if you do the prosthodontist training, you have to do your own lab work. Nothing worth having comes easy like it, it will sabotage your social life for a little while. And I think everyone has, and it’s good when talking about this ’cause people need to go in knowing what to expect with that. 

[Lakshmi]
Of course. So I definitely think it was, yeah, it was very full, very rounded. It’s a lot of, you definitely have to take the stairs. There’s no escalators. But I think what additionally made it difficult for me was that I was doing some other things on top of that because I had in mind having had my mentoring session with Dr. Lincoln like last year in November, that I want to be in private practice and I want to be in a new, in a different clinical environment that is going to allow me to enforce what I’ve invested in this course. ‘Cause currently where I am, I’m not able to enforce it and the types of patients I’m seeing.

So in my head as well, they make you also do like an, what do they call it? It was an ECG plan. So it’s like a extraordinary career growth plan. So you write down the steps that you wanna do for you to get to where you wanna be. So that involved going to these courses, asking the clinicians.

If they know any jobs available or what they would do to get those jobs, go and meet really like-minded clinicians and learn from them, which is essentially what I was doing. Applying, making a spreadsheet a way you’ve applied, and then chasing them up and asking them, did you get it? And developing your portfolio at the same time.

So it was definitely an exponential growth of like just nothing and stagnant from like November to May. And it was really, really tiring and you are really kind of wearing yourself thin because you’re just still on this treadmill and trying at your a hundred percent and you just not seeing- 

[Jaz]
Plus when your few fear Lakshmi, like you, everything’s still new, right? Everything’s still new. You’re constantly doubting your treatment plans, which brings you to a really important question. Like, yes, you’ve done something on Jim, but then now you’ve found someone who you want to apply some anterior resin on, for example, that you’ve learned from your hands-on modules.

But the mentorship aspect, because when you go on courses, where you get stuck is when you actually have the patient, you get stuck because you don’t have anyone to ask. Because the course organizers, it is not like you have easy open, a hundred percent access to them to be able to get that information.

So it’s difficult, which is why I’m setting up this thing called Intaglio. It’s like literally like the Uber for mentorship. Like you find a mentor, you pay them, but then you have that one-to-one zoom thing. So that’s coming soon, but was that already baked in to what you have there? So what mentorship channels are possible when you have that case that you think, Hmm, should I, should I not, who can I check this with?

[Lakshmi]
There’s too, probably too many mentors actually on Ripe, to be honest. First you need to take the pictures. So for any of my cases, I have always kind of asked one of the educators from the hands-on day. So mine was Dr. Natasha actually for my anterior composite bonding case. Yeah, I just took some photos, sent her the kind of pre polish initial appointment pictures and was like, I don’t know, this lateral looks a bit strange, but I dunno why.

And then she was like, drawing where I should modify the line angle a little bit. So there’s quite a lot of mentors. Yeah. As long as you have your photo, you just upload it on the WebEx, there’s a community group and then you’ve got your separate sections for your hands-on groups that you can also just post into. And about and people will probably reply. 

[Jaz]
Amazing. 

[Lakshmi]
And the good thing is international. So like you will get a reply pretty quickly ’cause there’s someone awake somewhere. 

[Jaz]
It’s good you mentioned that because they got different slots that you said two to 9:00 PM but they have like a European cohort and like a American cohort and Australian cohort. So time zones are, are covered which makes sense ’cause then you have so many different mentors as well available to help you at any point. In the interest of time, I’m just gonna just hone in on what’s next for you actually. Like, you are learning so much, you are applying it.

One thing that Lincoln talks about is how when delegates do the Ripe Global fellowship, their income does go up. Do you think, I know it’s a taboo subject, but do you, ’cause that’s not why we do it. We do it to grow as a clinician, but when we grow as a clinician, you know, we put so much into it.

We then also gain the communication skills to be able to take on these cases. And they are challenging. They’re back breaking, but they are high risk, high reward as well. Do you think there’s been a return on investment? 

[Lakshmi]
I think at the moment I’m getting there. I think once I moved into private practice, it was definitely a very big drop in income initially because you’re not seeing that many patients. You’re kind of building your book slowly. You’re now spending an hour for like a consultation, which even still doesn’t feel like that’s enough time for the amount of stuff you need to cover in that time.

So I would say now that I’m in the right place, seeing the right sorts of patients, and now I’m applying exactly what I’ve been taught in action now because I’m presenting it in the way they’ve taught you to, it is definitely building a lot quicker and I’m like seeing a lot less people and earning relatively the same. 

[Jaz]
And I think, you’re only in the middle of it. There’s still some modules to go and you only really are gonna grow when you get to now over the next few years, implement that. But what are great foundation that you’ve gained? What are your aspirations for your career? Do you wanna be a practice owner? Do you want to be a super associate? Do you want to go into implants? Like what’s next on your mind, Lakshmi? 

[Lakshmi]
I think for the moment, I really wanna become really good at restorative and just being able to do what I’ve been taught to a good enough level. I suppose in a five year, 10 year, if I’ve been able to grow this much in like a year, basically I’d hope in five years time I might be doing implants, just to cover the restorative fail of work you can do potentially. I don’t think I’d wanna own a practice alone. I think seeing everything that’s involved there.

That might be a 10 year plan of being a partner somewhere, if that’s where life takes me. But I do enjoy teaching as well, so I’m not particularly sure. I mean, you dunno where family circumstances take you, but I think for now I just wanna be really good at being a restorative dentist and ensuring that I’ve really kind of put to the test of whatever I’ve learned from all these amazing clinicians so far. You know, one step at a time, not over pressuring oneself. 

[Jaz]
As you were talking there, I was checking out your Instagram. I was looking at your cases. Well done. So looking at your reels and looking at your posteriors, this is a sign of someone who’s really enjoying their dentistry. This is a, oh, lovely.

You used the articulating paper. Thank god. Good. Look, you’re doing good work. And oh, some dance stuff as well. Brilliant. I like that you incorporate, I was gonna ask you, are you still making time for the passion of dance? ‘Cause just ’cause you’re not doing professionally or maybe you are not on the side, but you’re still making time for dance, right?

[Lakshmi]
I did a little bit, actually. I was trying other styles ’cause I think you do grow out of these things a little bit. ‘Cause I did really kind of really put to use whatever I learned from that. ‘Cause I was obsessed with it really. So I think now you just can’t physically balance both. But I do go to performances still and it’s really nice to see that you’ve still made a mark in that community for people to still remember you and feel that you touch them with the art that you produced at the time.

And that’s the same implementation I wanna do with dentistry. And just know that you’ve helped people grow or you’ve taught people or just through you enjoying what you do. I noticed even my nurses, when they work with me, they feed off your energy with like, if I can hear the click of that flops at the end of that call too, I’m like, did you hear it?

And they’re automatically smiling and happy at the end of that procedure and they’re looking forward to working with you. So I think essentially, like I still keep the arts there. Like I’m a lot, I still am very active as an individual. Yeah. I’m trying other styles. 

[Jaz]
Cool. 

[Lakshmi]
Away from the classical form, but it’s definitely helped a lot.

[Jaz]
You need to do that for your mental health, physical, all these things. So well done for continuing that. And also what you said there about the whole floss thing, that is truly beautiful because I think the way that we are gonna gain longevity in this long career is falling in love with the small details.

Really enjoying being a little bit of a perfectionist, but not in a toxic way, but really diving deep into, just giving your patient your everything and trying to do 1% incrementally better. Every procedure, every time, and document and share. And the days where I’ve taken more photos or videos, I look back and say, yeah, I really enjoyed today compared to days where you don’t document as much.

So I can definitely see that coming through from the work you’re doing and more power to you. It’s great to touch base with you after that recommendation I gave you for a few years ago now. So I’m glad it’s, it actually was fruitful for you so far, but as obviously only partway through, you’ve still got to go.

So maybe in a few years time, we’ll, we’ll touch base again, but I’m really excited to see your career. You’ve got your head screwed on, right. It was great to see you at the BACD. It was great to see you again a few weeks later at our event. And I think you are a great role model for young dentists, new grads, to be open to consolidating your knowledge that you already gained.

So I like the fact that, okay, you took a break. You realize that, okay, let me just find my feet. I like that it’s very mature. You are already looking abroad, you’re looking beyond what’s out there. You are looking to learn from the best. And I like that. And you are someone who’s very good at implementing.

So congratulations for everything so far. We’re early on in your career, but, I’m rooting for you and if ever you need anything, the Protrusive community are here. Obviously you’ve got great stuff with the Ripe Global crew as well. Thanks so much Lakshmi. Any final reflections or messages for those who have listened and watch about your journey so far?

[Lakshmi]
Well, thank you for having me. I’ll just say that, you can find yourself on Jaz’s podcast two years later. Like little did I have fathom even having this conversation with you now and that things are possible. Like, honestly, like this time last year, I was like aimless in mixed practice churning out UDAs and still doing good work, but I wasn’t happy and very kind of demotivated, and it’s just a complete 180.

A year on and it doesn’t take years, it’s just every day improving yourself with the little wins and ticking those boxes off and going back and reflecting and moving forward and understanding. It’s not like a straight line trajectory, like you’re gonna have a few squiggles here and there, but it will even out at the end.

And yeah, like whatever course you choose to do, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Ripe. Like I did additional courses as well, which all fed into each other and it’s just applying what you’ve learned and making your days happy and enjoying what you do really. And then you’ll just see the results very quickly.

[Jaz]
Brilliant. Lakshmi, thanks so much.

Jaz’s Outro:
Well, there we have it guys, thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. Hope you’re inspired by Lakshmi’s journey, her mindset of growth. You can see how Lakshmi’s very driven and she’s really mature. Like I wish I was as mature of her when I was just four years qualified.

We’re rooting for you, Lakshmi, and do give her a follow on Instagram. I’ll put her Instagram handle in the show notes as well. Many of you’re also probably thinking that this Ripe Global fellowship sounds pretty good. Remember that you can get a guaranteed 20% off by visiting protrusive.co.uk/rgdiscount that way, just like Lakshmi did.

You can book a call to see if you’re a right fit for the course. And yes, as a shareholder and as an affiliate, I have a financial interest here. But as you can see, I only recommend people and organizations and courses that I truly believe in, and I’ve been a huge advocate and supporter of Ripe Global from the very beginning.

They’re good people. They’ll look after you. You heard about the kind of things they do and how considerate they are towards their delegates. Hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into a young dentist mind of decision making when you have a plethora of different fellowships and continuums out there. I’ll catch you same time, same place next week.

Bye for now.