Mike Gray's path to dentistry was anything but straightforward — and that's precisely what makes this conversation so compelling.
A former semi-professional mountain biker who raced the World Series across three disciplines, a musician who once had the head of Universal Publishing sitting in his living room in rural Wales, and a dentist who spent years doing everything he could to avoid dentistry, Mike has lived several lives before arriving at the one he clearly loves.
Payman and Mike cover the full sweep — grief, therapy, surgical war stories, and an obsessive, self-taught approach to digital restorative dentistry that culminates in his POISE Protocol: a no-prep veneer workflow that he believes makes truly minimally invasive ceramics available to the vast majority of patients, not just a lucky five per cent.
In This Episode
00:00:55 – Introductions and first impressions
00:01:20 – Mountain biking career
00:09:15 – A friend's suicide, guilt and stepping back from maxfax
00:12:15 – Therapy
00:14:10 – Life on the World Series circuit
00:19:25 – From maxfax to music
00:28:10 – Blackbox thinking
00:33:45 – Music career — Alabama Three, Peppa Pig and Covid
00:49:25 – NHS dentistry debate
00:51:50 – Falling in love with dentistry
00:54:40 – Self-taught restorative and the digital workflow
01:00:25 – Ditching the articulator
01:01:20 – Prototypes, not temporaries
01:05:10 – Into implants
01:11:00 – Compassion fatigue
01:13:40 – POISE protocol and no-prep ceramics
01:25:10 – The Lodge and the course
01:29:05 – Resilience and failure
01:34:20 – Practice ownership
01:41:10 – Instagram
01:49:20 – Fantasy dinner party
About Mike Gray
Mike Gray is a dentist based in Wales, working at Parkway Clinic in Swansea and The Lodge — a referral and education centre where he hosts his sold-out POISE Protocol course on minimally invasive ceramic veneers. His background spans maxillofacial surgery, semi-professional mountain biking at World Series level, and a music career that attracted interest from Universal Publishing and, improbably, Peppa Pig. He teaches himself CAD, machines his own surgical instruments, and has spent five years developing a digital workflow for no-prep ceramic restorations that he believes renders feldspathic and heavy preparation largely redundant.
