<p>This week, Payman sits down with Zain Remy, a Newcastle-based practice owner whose path to dentistry was anything but straightforward. After missing out on dental school the first time round, Zain took the pharmacology route, grafted his way through eight years of study, and eventually qualified from King&#39;s College London in 2016. </p><p>What followed was a decade of pivotal decisions — a golden handshake from a corporate, a restorative diploma that nearly cost him his job, and a mental health crisis serious enough to land him in hospital for two months.</p><p>Rather than shy away from any of it, Zain unpacks each chapter with an honesty that&#39;s genuinely refreshing. By October 2023, he&#39;d bought his own private practice in Newcastle — and the lessons he&#39;s drawn from every stumble along the way are, frankly, worth the listen alone.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In This Episode</strong></p><p>00:00:50 - Introduction</p><p>00:01:35 - Growing up in London</p><p>00:02:00 - Dad the dental technician</p><p>00:04:40 - Dental school reflections</p><p>00:14:45 - The pharmacology detour</p><p>00:20:30 - Heading northeast</p><p>00:22:40 - Foundation year</p><p>00:24:20 - The corporate golden handshake</p><p>00:30:05 - Restorative diploma and CPD</p><p>00:40:05 - Burnout</p><p>00:43:05 - Mental health crisis</p><p>00:50:35 - Recovery and talking therapy</p><p>00:57:25 - Buying the practice</p><p>01:00:30 - Practice ownership: the hard reality</p><p>01:05:10 - The associate–principal relationship</p><p>01:10:25 - Social media as a clinical tool</p><p>01:16:05 - Diary of Dental Practice Owners</p><p>01:20:15 - The awards debate</p><p>01:29:35 - Hiring and firing</p><p>01:33:05 - Blackbox thinking</p><p>01:40:05 - Fantasy dinner party</p><p>01:44:30 - Favourite and least favourite treatments</p><p>01:46:10 - Future vision</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About Zain Remy</strong></p><p>Zain Remy is a dental practice owner based in Newcastle, who qualified from King&#39;s College London in 2016 after first completing a pharmacology degree. Having worked across NHS and mixed practices in the northeast, he acquired his own fully private practice in October 2023. He holds a postgraduate diploma in restorative dentistry and runs the Diary of Dental Practice Owners community on Facebook, offering an unfiltered look at life as an independent practice principal.</p>