In the inaugural episode of The BACD Podcast, Dr. Simon Chard, president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD), warmly welcomes Dr. Lincoln Harris, a renowned dentist specializing in a multidisciplinary approach to dentistry and CEO of Ripe Global. Dr. Harris, based near the coast of Queensland, Australia, is set to be a featured speaker at the upcoming New Horizons Conference in November 2023. Dr. Harris will be conducting a hands-on workshop, Advanced Treatment Planning Bootcamp and delivering the keynote lecture, Building Aesthetic Foundations at the conference.
This episode serves as an enlightening primer not just for the conference but also on the evolution and dynamics of modern dentistry. It focuses on the challenges and advantages of operating a multidisciplinary dental practice in a small town, the role of technology like chairside milling in dentistry, and the importance of continual learning through platforms like Ripe Global.
Key Highlights:
Introducing Dr. Lincoln Harris: Known for his multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Harris covers everything from restorative dentistry to soft tissue and implant surgery, as well as orthodontics.
The Importance of Location: Operating in a small village north of Sydney, Australia, Dr. Harris discusses how the lack of specialists in his area has led him to adopt a more rounded approach to dental care.
Ripe Global: Dr. Harris is a co-founder of Ripe Global, the world's leading and fastest-growing cloud-based hands-on training business. He emphasizes how his remote location made him seek online education and subsequently led him to start this educational platform.
The Role of Technology: Dr. Harris candidly discusses his experience with chairside milling technology like CEREC, shedding light on the limitations and advantages it brings to restorative dentistry.
Complexities and Simplicity in Treatment Planning: Dr. Harris shares insights into the simplicity yet not necessarily the easiness of treatment planning when a dentist is skilled in multiple modalities.
Whether you are a dental professional or someone interested in cosmetic dentistry, this episode offers valuable insights and previews the depth of discussions to be expected in future episodes and at the New Horizons Conference.
In the inaugural episode of The BACD Podcast, Dr. Simon Chard, president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD), warmly welcomes Dr. Lincoln Harris, a renowned dentist specializing in a multidisciplinary approach to dentistry and CEO of Ripe Global. Dr. Harris, based near the coast of Queensland, Australia, is set to be a featured speaker at the upcoming New Horizons Conference in November 2023. Dr. Harris will be conducting a hands-on workshop, Advanced Treatment Planning Bootcamp and delivering the keynote lecture, Building Aesthetic Foundations at the conference.
This episode serves as an enlightening primer not just for the conference but also on the evolution and dynamics of modern dentistry. It focuses on the challenges and advantages of operating a multidisciplinary dental practice in a small town, the role of technology like chairside milling in dentistry, and the importance of continual learning through platforms like Ripe Global.
Key Highlights:
Introducing Dr. Lincoln Harris: Known for his multidisciplinary approach, Dr. Harris covers everything from restorative dentistry to soft tissue and implant surgery, as well as orthodontics.
The Importance of Location: Operating in a small village north of Sydney, Australia, Dr. Harris discusses how the lack of specialists in his area has led him to adopt a more rounded approach to dental care.
Ripe Global: Dr. Harris is a co-founder of Ripe Global, the world's leading and fastest-growing cloud-based hands-on training business. He emphasizes how his remote location made him seek online education and subsequently led him to start this educational platform.
The Role of Technology: Dr. Harris candidly discusses his experience with chairside milling technology like CEREC, shedding light on the limitations and advantages it brings to restorative dentistry.
Complexities and Simplicity in Treatment Planning: Dr. Harris shares insights into the simplicity yet not necessarily the easiness of treatment planning when a dentist is skilled in multiple modalities.
Whether you are a dental professional or someone interested in cosmetic dentistry, this episode offers valuable insights and previews the depth of discussions to be expected in future episodes and at the New Horizons Conference.
Hi guys, Dr. Simon Chard here, president of the BACD. Welcome to another episode of our BACD podcast series, where we are gonna be interviewing the speakers from the upcoming New Horizons Conference in November 2023. So we are very grateful today to have Dr. Lincoln Harris with us. Dr. Lincoln is going to be delivering a hands-on workshop on our Thursday, on the 9th of November. And he's also going to be delivering the keynote lecture on the Friday on the 10th of November at the IET in London. So Lincoln, lovely to see you here. Your reputation precedes you. You've got a huge following personally and with your group of Right Global, which has it's been a pleasure to see grow from in the first place. What I saw anyway, a relatively small Facebook group that just just seem to explode and just create such incredible traction with a real focus on quality, practicality and just really getting down to the nuts and bolts of dentistry in a very entertaining way, I always found. So I think that's what I've really enjoyed. But tell us a bit about yourself for those who don't know you. Tell us where you're based. And yeah, a little bit about who you are as a dentist.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Simon, thank you very much for inviting me to speak at the BACD. It's actually a tremendous honour and every time I've come to London, the weather has been absolutely perfect. And so as far as I can tell, London is a sunny city with perfect weather.
[simon]:
right
[Lincoln Harris]:
So I'm hoping you keep that up for me. So look, I'm very excited and. I come from the small village, it's a village, we don't use the word village much in Australia, but it's more or less a village, it's under 4,000 people, it's on the coast of Queensland, it's north of Brisbane, most people don't know where Brisbane is, so it's north of Sydney, so if you drive
[simon]:
Hahaha
[Lincoln Harris]:
1,000 miles north of Sydney, that's where I live on the coast. And This town has actually really driven a huge part of my career. Because I guess one of the things that people know me for is that I'm multidisciplinary. So I am generally a restorative dentist, but I do a tremendous amount of soft tissue and implant surgery as well as orthodontics. And having done all of those procedures combined for since about 2006. it just changes the way that you view treatment plans and the simplicity, simplicity and easiness are not the same thing of course, but the simplicity of treatment planning cases when you constantly use all three modalities, it just becomes more or less effortless, not necessarily effortless to do or to talk to about the patient, but to actually come up with a plan is effortless. And that's driven by the fact that I live in a very small town and I have almost no specialists within three and a half hours of driving. So we have an orthodontist and I, you know, orthodontists, don't take this the wrong way, orthodontists who are listening, but orthodontists are kind of like that, I said to someone a bit like the Chinese restaurants of dentistry because you know, you'll have like some small rural town in the middle of nowhere and it will have an orthodontist and a Chinese restaurant. So the, but no other specialists. So the, we have a visiting maxillofacial surgeon comes once a month. There's no periodontist, no endodontist, no pediatric dentist, no oral pathologist. So to some extent, either I learned to do some of these things or the patients drove three or four hours to have it done. And that has led to building a multidisciplinary practice. So, so and then and then from there, like, well, obviously I have a I'm one of the co-founders of Ripe Global, which is the world's leading and fastest growing cloud-based hands-on training business of almost any sort. And that also is driven by the fact that I have always had to engage the internet to learn because I'm so far, it's like over a day from when I leave home until I arrive in London. So going to a weekend course in London is like 10 days of jet lag when I get home. So that's... to
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
some extent, Tiny Village is the foundation of my career.
[simon]:
I love that and a very beautiful place to live as well from the photos you were sending me the other night from the sunset on the beach. So yeah, I'm very jealous of that viewpoint. Another thing that I think we share in common is, and I think this sort of filters into that point that you just made on being isolated in your location, is the utilisation of chairside milling of SEREK of that. Can you give us a bit of an insight into how you utilize that in your multifaceted approach to sort of general restorative dentistry?
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yeah, so I was a Seric hater for a long time. I was a Seric, I adopted Seric back in like 2005. And then when I started moving into multidisciplinary cases, I didn't really, you know, I tried doing some aesthetic cases back in like 2007 and eight. And it was just so traumatic that
[simon]:
Hahaha
[Lincoln Harris]:
I just kind of, when my loan was paid off, I
[simon]:
Yeah,
[Lincoln Harris]:
just
[simon]:
I
[Lincoln Harris]:
stopped
[simon]:
know how
[Lincoln Harris]:
using
[simon]:
that feels.
[Lincoln Harris]:
it. where you do a single central incisor, you think how hard can it be? And then you find out. So,
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
and of course, like the first anterior seric you should choose should definitely be a dark brown stump. So, you're
[simon]:
That
[Lincoln Harris]:
doing
[simon]:
makes
[Lincoln Harris]:
a
[simon]:
it
[Lincoln Harris]:
single
[simon]:
easier
[Lincoln Harris]:
central
[simon]:
I heard.
[Lincoln Harris]:
on a dark brown stump. It's incredibly difficult, even with the best lab in the world and you're going to do it and you have no ceramic skills. So that was my background. And then I went into just... fully lab work. So my loan for my Ceric got paid off, it slowly turned into a paperweight, and then it went into storage somewhere, and I think it's probably still there. It was a Ceric 3D. And then, I was seeing all these anterior cases, done with Ceric, and, but like the shapes weren't quite right. Like they just, you know, straight out of the software, the software just gives you this kind of slightly fake shape.
[simon]:
bit
[Lincoln Harris]:
and
[simon]:
rounded,
[Lincoln Harris]:
I'd spent
[simon]:
thick
[Lincoln Harris]:
tremendous
[simon]:
incisal edges,
[Lincoln Harris]:
amount of time in the
[simon]:
that
[Lincoln Harris]:
lab.
[simon]:
sort of thing.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yeah, and they're just blobby. Like, I don't know. I only
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
describe them as blobby. So I'd spent five or six years training a technician to give me the sort of aesthetics I wanted. And so that meant sitting in the lab, watching how technicians actually do stuff. And so you would see them press, press ENAX, but then they would pull out all these. burrs and things and they would hand finish it. And the difference between the hand finished thing and the pressed thing was like a completely different tooth. So one day I got the, sorry, I said, come up and just let me try this thing out. We'll see if we can actually do a case. So I got a patient in, it was a trial patient. We had him booked for two days and we milled all the things and then, but then we did what technicians do, which is get a hand wheel out and hand finish the ceramics, like putting all of the shape in, the texture and so on. And after that, like it turned out better than most of the cases I got from technicians. So from there, I went into basically doing all of my own ceramics. It's not really the most efficient thing, but I find it very entertaining trying to duplicate ceramics level quality myself. And for teaching point of view, it's really good because there is nothing that teaches you shape of teeth, like trying to get ceramics to look good. Ceramics are really harsh. Composite resin, if you get it wrong, you can kind of polish it and shape it. But if your ceramic
[simon]:
Hmm.
[Lincoln Harris]:
is off and then you put a glaze on it, it looks really off. So yeah, so most of my rehabs now I do the ceramics myself as well as the surgery and the orthodontics and the soft tissue and
[simon]:
Yep.
[Lincoln Harris]:
not necessarily recommended for a low stress lifestyle, but there you go.
[simon]:
Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I think when I lecture on SEREK, I always say you don't want to be a straight out of the mill dentist. You want to be someone who's delivering bespoke chair-side ceramics. And I think when you do harness that skill set, actually being able to look at things in the mouth, modify with diamonds and wheels and the like, and then also with your staining and glazing and your characterization. think it's a really fantastic way to be able to deliver dentistry. And I think obviously now with the advent of AI coming more and more into these platforms, I think it's going to be an even more exciting time to be able to deliver these things chair side. How about 3D printing? Have you implemented 3D printing into your workflows at all yet?
[Lincoln Harris]:
So we use 3D printing mostly for our full arch implant cases. I don't use it for temporaries because I don't do temporaries, hardly ever. And then when I do temporaries it's for, you know, a set of provisional crowns usually is go to last at least sort of 15 hours overnight until the next day and so I will admit that I don't put a lot of effort into those because it's very hard to get gingivitis around your temporaries in sort of 10 hours. So... But we use 3D printing for our full arch cases with implants. And I am in the process of getting myself ready to buy a full arch mill. What I've learned from doing my own ceramics in smile cases is that patient satisfaction goes through the roof if you don't put them in provisionals. And the reason for that is that when, well there's two reasons. Reason number one is that when you put someone in provisionals they forget how bad their teeth were. And so when you put the final restorations in, and you can do things with provisionals that you can't do with real teeth, like join them all together and make them out of bisacryl. And bisacryl has this marvelous optical property that you cannot match with ceramics. I don't like it. It's kind of opaque, but kind of not. And patients really like bisacryl unless it's A4, but they don't like, like it can be very hard once you've got bisacryl in to match it with your ceramics. And so then, Their satisfaction when they get the final restorations is usually like, oh yeah, it's okay. Whereas if you go straight to final restorations, where it's appropriate, their satisfaction is through the roof because they remember that this morning my teeth looked terrible and now they don't.
[simon]:
Mm.
[Lincoln Harris]:
And on top of that, the mouth is much more harsh than a model. So I've learned that things can easily look terrific in the lab and the moment you even bring them near the patient's mouth, they start looking bad. the mouth is really unforgiving. And so if things look decent in the mouth when you're trying them in, the patient will generally like it. So that whole mindset of how patients react to such a rapid change, where their satisfaction is marvelously higher than it would otherwise be, holds the same for full arch implant cases too. And so I have quite a few friends who either... they print their restorations either same day, or some of them even just mill a zirconia temporary. They go straight to zirconia. And then if it breaks, they have a puck there and they just hit print and do another one. So, and then later on, once things have healed and they're really satisfied, they'll put a metal bar underneath it. And of course the cost of pucks is so minimal compared to a lab fee that... and you have the ability to use AI or outsource design labs all over the place so that you can turn these things around really quickly. So just from a patient, I guess you would call it PROMs, which is patient reported outcome measures. So dentists, we tend to focus on a whole range of things that patients don't care about, but the patient
[simon]:
Mm.
[Lincoln Harris]:
themselves, the things that make them happy are often different to what makes us happy. And so patient reported outcomes are far higher. with rapid turnaround to the final restoration.
[simon]:
super interesting. I really like that. I mean, yeah, obviously, from my point of view, as a Seric user, I've seen that firsthand, but I don't think I've quite defined it in that way. It's really interesting. I guess the only counter argument to that or question that I would have associated with it would be in those bigger full arts cases. Obviously, a lot of the work done in the prototype restorations is to test drive the occlusion. So from a functional point of view,
[Lincoln Harris]:
Ahem.
[simon]:
Obviously building the wax up or the digital wax up or whatever in the lab with a physical or a virtual articulator, we all know that carries with it its own inaccuracies and actually getting it in the mouth with proper function is the truest way to assess how well shaped your restorations are going to be. How do you achieve that without going through that prototyping phase either on teeth or on implants?
[Lincoln Harris]:
I mean, if I'm doing a really complicated rehab, I'm gonna make provisionals because you need them for, like I'm doing a case at the moment, a patient went to, I think the Philippines, she had a full mouth rehab. Two years later, the roots are going underneath her roundhouse bridge. And so I had to remove everything, put her into provisionals, bone graft everything, then place implants and soft tissue graft. And so it's one of those like one year. you know, overhauls.
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
And so for cases like that, obviously you need to do provisionals more often more for the surgical and gingival aspects than for the occlusal aspects. I mean, it's slightly controversial, but I've been doing rehab since 2003 and the longer I do them, the more suspicious I become about most of our occlusal theories. Like there's so many cases that I did when I had absolutely zero idea and when I look back at them, I see the theoretical risk, but I'm not seeing the actual outcome that's attached to that risk. And then I guess lastly, I've learned to accept the fact that actually everything wears out. You know, you can't escape this. So like dentists tend to beat themselves. I mean, obviously if it's wearing out in two years, that's terrible. That's like, that's either a failure of diagnosis or you're very unlucky or you're just a hack. Technical term for sort of. sub-par performance. And, or actually probably more commonly is that you are on the early stage of the Dunning-Kruger curve where you don't actually understand how little you know. And that's a problem that all of us have. And the people who become leaders in the profession often are that type of person because that's what drives them, this self-confidence that they have drives them to advance really quickly, but that is not always a painless process. You know, many of your
[simon]:
Certainly
[Lincoln Harris]:
educators
[simon]:
not.
[Lincoln Harris]:
are Yeah.
[simon]:
You've got to fail your way to success, as they say.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yeah, yeah. And then when we're old and grumpy, we go, Oh, those young kids shouldn't be doing that. They're not experienced. Yeah, so yeah, I've like, I mean, more and more people are going, well, centric relation is just an artificial position that we use for convenience. It has no known association with clinical outcomes. You know, like, if you can show me an outcome-based paper that says that full-mouth rehabs done to some particular centric relation endpoint outperform other types, I'd be very interested to see it. But I suspect that you'll struggle to find an actual outcome-based paper of that type.
[simon]:
Yeah. And I think that's what I like about your style, Lincoln, is that you're not afraid to challenge dogmas. And yeah, we're looking forward to seeing that at the conference. Can you give the listeners any more of an insight into what the general topics are you going to be speaking about in London in November?
[Lincoln Harris]:
So the first thing actually, I think probably the word hands-on's probably not quite right. We'll be doing a treatment planning bootcamp on my first session. And so what is a bootcamp? So often we focus so much on the theory of something and the, you know, the process of how we do something. And we think that allows us to be able to be good at doing it. So it's like saying, you know, I've read a book about flying planes. and I've done a single hands-on on flying a plane, so therefore I'm good to go. And so in dentistry, we accept that approach. That's how we're taught at dental school. Most of us graduate having done a number of crowns that we can count on our hands, which you could argue is a fairly low number. But we have a lot of theoretical training. And obviously that is necessary, and there's a whole bunch of historical reasons why that's the case, which I can go into another time. But... In any other industry of any significance, we know that it takes repetitions for things to become automatic and easy and you can't do things really well until they're almost automatic. And the reason why is because things are stressful. And so when we get stressed, our mental ability drops by up to 85%. So if we can only just treatment plan a person, when we're completely relaxed in a lecture theatre, with no pressure at all, when we get a grumpy patient who's complaining about the money, or they're really anxious and they're crying, our whole treatment planning abilities will just fail, because it's so stressful. So our boot camp is we will go through multiple treatment plans very rapidly and I will put the pressure on. So the pressure will be you'll have a very short amount of time to treat and plan very difficult cases. And the purpose of this is to break the fear that dentists have of making decisions. So when you give a dentist a treatment plan, they will agonize about whether to do root canal therapy or an extraction for often several hours. And it makes no difference because at the end, they'll make a decision that in five years time, they'll look back on and go, I wish I'd done the other thing. So, you know, like there's no rational reason to take so long, but it's our fear and our anxiety of potentially making a wrong decision that slows us down. And. Speed of treatment planning often improves the quality. So often dentists are very, very good at self-sabotaging mentally. So they will come up with a correct treatment plan and then they'll suddenly self-doubt and overthink and sabotage the result and then come up with the wrong treatment plan because of the self-doubt. And so we'll go through many treatment plans very quickly. It's a lot of fun. It's free flowing. We'll tell some jokes as well, but the key purpose is to help people with the ability to make decisions in complex treatment plans.
[simon]:
Yeah, I love that practicality.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Actually, that's the
[simon]:
I
[Lincoln Harris]:
first
[simon]:
mean,
[Lincoln Harris]:
one.
[simon]:
you mentioned
[Lincoln Harris]:
What's the second one? The second one
[simon]:
aesthetic
[Lincoln Harris]:
is
[simon]:
foundations.
[Lincoln Harris]:
the lecture on? Yes.
[simon]:
Build the aesthetic foundations.
[Lincoln Harris]:
So that one is I find a lot of lectures in this topic can be quite narrow focused and they ignore the reality of aesthetic. Aesthetic treatment plans are very, very complex because First of all, you have a patient, and you can't just tell the patient, you should do this, and then that's that. So patients have fears, they have anxieties, and they have budgets, and they have physical limitations and health problems and all of these things. So first of all, you have to be able to deal with the patient, and then you have to have the ability to put together a range of procedures to give an outcome. And so sometimes, sure, it's just a set of veneers, which is, a set of veneers on a person with worn teeth is a very basic treatment plan. It's like... you know, so straightforward. I send them to my associates in my office. But then you have the patients who have recession or they have recession on one side and then they've got, you know, altered passive eruption on the other side and then they're missing teeth and then they've got crowding and then they've got like not so much crowding that you will feel like, and you know, a morally deranged person to prep those teeth and put veneers on. But. not so little that you don't consider. You know, like those edge cases in the middle between severe
[simon]:
Hmm.
[Lincoln Harris]:
and easy are the ones that are very difficult to decide. So we'll be putting all of that together. So, you know, how we do with patient, how we design the cases, and then a whole bunch of techniques for simple cases, but then through to multidisciplinary complex cases. So I think people
[simon]:
Love
[Lincoln Harris]:
enjoy it.
[simon]:
it sounds super interesting. You mentioned a few points there, Lincoln, which gives me insight into the way that you think about the dentist psychology. Has that come largely through your own sort of internal processing of how you've managed situations? Has it come more through the training side of things, or have you got a secret background as a psychoanalyst from a previous life?
[Lincoln Harris]:
I mean, psychology is obviously probably the single most important skill you can have as a dentist because patient anxiety in dentistry is higher than any other field of healthcare that's procedural. How do I know this? Because I've worked with anesthetists and emergency specialists who come and do intravenous sedations for me. And so they obviously treat, you know, emergency specialists, see people who are motor vehicle accidents, you know, domestic violence, gunshot wounds, all sorts of, not that we have a lot of gunshot wounds in this village, but they see all of these things. and they tell me they have never seen the levels of anxiety they have in dental patients. Like it's a whole new
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
thing for them. Like it even throws off the biochemistry they're thinking about because the amount of propofol they're using is just another level. So
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
part of it is that. Part of it is I got my pilot's licence before I was a dentist and in pilot training, I actually spend a tremendous amount of time on what they call human factors, which is how we perform under stress. So anyone can do something when they're relaxed, but as soon as you put stress on them, then their abilities decline sharply. And so that's why they, like pilots, do things like have checklists, but they also have routines that they do things exactly the same. And so that, we use that thinking with our training at RIPE Global because it's incredibly important for dentists. Dentistry is really, really stressful. And so... if you don't train people to the point that they can do stuff automatically, the stress affects them. And then just, you know, as you go through life, I've been to a psychologist, I've had friends go to it. You learn how people react to a whole range of different situations. So, uh, yeah, it's just a combination of all those things.
[simon]:
Love it. I don't suppose you've read Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, have you?
[Lincoln Harris]:
No, I probably should read some self-help books at some point, but I went off them for a while because I realized that the first chapter of a self-help book is to tell you all the things that are wrong with you so that you continue to read the next 11 chapters. So, and so there was a point where I kind of went off them because I didn't need to be given a headache
[simon]:
what was
[Lincoln Harris]:
so
[simon]:
wrong
[Lincoln Harris]:
they could
[simon]:
with you.
[Lincoln Harris]:
sell me the aspirin. So, yeah.
[simon]:
The reason it comes to mind is that he compares the airline industry against the medical industry with regards to iatrogenic issues and
[Lincoln Harris]:
Ahem.
[simon]:
he illustrates very clearly over the last 40 years the dramatic reduction in the number of pilot related incidents. versus the number of iatrogenic medical incidents being still very, very high. And he puts it down to the way that they deal with failure in the airline industry is that the failure is not allocated in general, not allocated to one individual, but it's accepted as a norm and the learnings are disseminated through the whole profession. Whereas in the medical industry, and I sort of filtered this into the dental industry as well. If there's a failure, which as we all know is inevitable in every procedure we carry out, the blame is very firmly allocated onto the practising clinician. And therefore there's a natural force that leads that clinician to try and bury that failure, hide it, certainly don't take responsibility for it. even though we all know that it's a natural inevitability of everything that we do. So it's just a very interesting book, I think, for dentists to read to reframe their relationship with failure. Because as I jokingly said before, you've got to fail your way to success. I do very much believe that to be true because you learn a lot more from the failures than you do from the successes, which is probably why being a seric dentist, you learn so quickly. because there's no technician to blame when your restoration doesn't fit.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yeah, it can be painful. It can be painful. You know, you can also get unlucky with Seric. Like, you know, there's obviously a small number of people who get any type of technology and they just happen to get a lemon and it crashes on a regular basis. And if, you know, if your Seric crashes after you've spent 45 minutes designing six teeth, you can feel quite close to the edge of tears and, or
[simon]:
Ha
[Lincoln Harris]:
taking
[simon]:
ha.
[Lincoln Harris]:
up a substance abuse habit. That was a joke, GDC. Um, so anyway,
[simon]:
We won't
[Lincoln Harris]:
so
[simon]:
be discussing
[Lincoln Harris]:
the.
[simon]:
substance abuse at the conference.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yes, yes, yeah, you'll have to give me a list of allowed and not allowed jokes.
[simon]:
Brilliant. Great, Lincoln.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yeah,
[simon]:
Well,
[Lincoln Harris]:
so...
[simon]:
I think that's probably a good time to wrap it up before we get in too much trouble. But there is a question that we've been asking all of our guests at the end of these podcast series. I might already know yours based on what you've told me already, but if you weren't a dentist, what career do you think you would? I guess what you would now go into would be the most interesting.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Okay, so to answer this question, I need to have a little bit more information. So I'm not a dentist, but do I need money or not?
[simon]:
Yes,
[Lincoln Harris]:
See,
[simon]:
it's still very
[Lincoln Harris]:
because
[simon]:
much a
[Lincoln Harris]:
the
[simon]:
reality.
[Lincoln Harris]:
answer, because if I was financially independent, then I'd probably just tinker away on my farm and set up a, like I have a 17 hectare farm and my... financially independent goal is to have a destination restaurant. That's nationally
[simon]:
Love
[Lincoln Harris]:
known,
[simon]:
it.
[Lincoln Harris]:
has a tremendous cellar with a table for, you know, four down in the cellar, big wood fired, open fire for some of the cooking and on-site accommodation with about a 10 acre organic garden that you drive through on the way to the restaurant. So that's the like money no object alternative career.
[simon]:
Dream. Yeah. Would you be the chef or would you bring someone
[Lincoln Harris]:
No, no,
[simon]:
in?
[Lincoln Harris]:
I'd get someone good. Get someone. You can't be a destination restaurant without a very good chef.
[simon]:
Yeah.
[Lincoln Harris]:
But that one requires to be significantly wealthy. So I just enjoy the dream of that one. It may or may not ever happen. Otherwise it'll just be like if you come and visit, we'll be cooking you roast chicken just in a regular kitchen. So the other one, I did actually have a number of things cross my mind as a child. which are quite diverse. I did obviously have a predilection with flying for quite a long time. This will make you laugh. There was a very small period of time where I thought I'd be a naturopath and be a complete alternative medicine type person.
[simon]:
interesting.
[Lincoln Harris]:
And then there was a period of time where I thought I might go into, you know, corporate life or something. But I kind of moved to dent, I actually went to a dentist just at the end of grade 12 and I found it really interesting to do these Fisher sealants and shining lights in my mouth and making things cure. And I thought, well, that's pretty cool. And so that basically was the start of my dental career. But
[simon]:
You've
[Lincoln Harris]:
if you
[simon]:
got
[Lincoln Harris]:
do
[simon]:
that
[Lincoln Harris]:
a personality
[simon]:
poor
[Lincoln Harris]:
test
[simon]:
dentist
[Lincoln Harris]:
on me,
[simon]:
to blame.
[Lincoln Harris]:
yeah, there's a thing called the Harrison Aptitude Test, nothing to do with me. It's a really, really good psychology test for helping work out what career you might be good at. So I did this with a business development guy one time, and it said that I would be good at a career that revolved around healthcare, education, travel and business. And I said, well, thanks for telling me what I'm actually already doing. So,
[simon]:
Yeah,
[Lincoln Harris]:
you know, I
[simon]:
isn't
[Lincoln Harris]:
like
[simon]:
that
[Lincoln Harris]:
to
[simon]:
funny?
[Lincoln Harris]:
travel, I've got a dental practice, I've got a... co-founder of Right Global, which is, you know, we have shareholders and I have board meetings and actual proper difficult stuff. What difficult compared to dentistry when you've done it for 20 years and you know, you're quite comfortable with it. Dentistry
[simon]:
Yep.
[Lincoln Harris]:
is not easy when you start out. And I get to travel, so I don't know, I love what I'm doing.
[simon]:
Well, I mean, that's a lovely place to end, I think. I've got loads more questions, but especially on the naturopath side of things, but I think we'll leave it there for now
[Lincoln Harris]:
Yeah, okay,
[simon]:
and
[Lincoln Harris]:
no,
[simon]:
we'll
[Lincoln Harris]:
I'm not gonna...
[simon]:
let you tell us more about that.
[Lincoln Harris]:
Well, you can podcast me again if you like, you know, I'm, it's not particularly difficult for me to sit and talk. So, uh, if you want to do another podcast, we can do one there, but I won't go on the path. It was a very short thing. You know, I was young, it was a young stage. Don't judge me. Uh, I can just imagine there's a whole
[simon]:
Alright,
[Lincoln Harris]:
bunch
[simon]:
dude.
[Lincoln Harris]:
of, you know, dentists in the UK currently going, oh, he's a quack and no wonder he doesn't like centric relation.
[simon]:
He hates centric relation, he hates fluoride.
[Lincoln Harris]:
No, no, I don't actually hate centric relation. I just
[simon]:
Yes.
[Lincoln Harris]:
think that it, cases where I've used it and cases where I haven't, don't look any different after 15 years.
[simon]:
Yeah, well, I always I love the phrase, strong opinions loosely held. So I think it's always good to challenge pre existing dogmas. It's the only way that we can progress as a profession is to challenge everything and hopefully continue to gather new information to improve our outcomes. So, yeah, as I say, I'm really, really looking forward to really looking forward to the talk. I've not heard you speak. in person before, so I'm very much looking forward to having you on UK soil. And yeah, we look forward to seeing you in November.
[Lincoln Harris]:
I'm very excited to be coming, so thank you very much for inviting me.