The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (80)

A little help

In the first week of October, we start the first edition of our completely redesigned, revamped and relaunched digital business education course.

I put an acronym in place for everything so that I can shorten everything I can, so this course is called DDEP (Digital Dental Entrepreneurial Program).

The course has been redesigned and rewritten for the ITI (International Team for Implantology), the not-for-profit organisation in which I've been involved for 25 years, and I've been a fellow for more than 15.

The ITI spans the globe in 33 sections in 100 countries. When they recently surveyed their membership, 99% of the members said that business education in dentistry was either important or very important.

The ITI realised they needed business education, so our paths collided.

The newly designed, enhanced and enlarged digital education course runs for four weeks of teaching, with a week of onboarding to begin with and a week of catch-up at the end.

The content is about three times as much as it was before crammed in to give as much value to as many people in as many countries as possible.

The new edition of this course will start with 40 people, and there are a few places left.

Many of the guys who have previously done education courses with the ITI have been invited to test it, so the cohort is very strong and experienced.

The benefit of a strong and experienced cohort in a peer-to-peer learning environment is you get to piggyback off all the knowledge, experience, failures and wins of all the rest of the people on the course.

So, clearly, I'm selling this course, and if you want more details about it, click the link here or just reply to this email, and we'll get in touch.

But that's not really the point of this post (not really, anyway).

The image for this blog is a QR code, and if you scan that QR code, it will take you to a survey or you can click here.

The survey is where I need to help.

It very much looks like we've finally achieved significant traction with business education, and I have Zoom calls coming forward to see whether we will present a five-day business course in another country next year with a view to presenting two 5-day courses in that country, year on year.

And so, this will continue through many countries if we can possibly find a model to scale this.

The most important thing for me is to understand who the course is for, who I seek to serve, and what level it is pitched at.

For many years, I've had this theory that the average dental practice in every country is approximately three treatment rooms and about 15 team members.

I tested this theory out anecdotally in China, and it held water. And I tested it out in South Africa, and it did, too.

But lately, we've decided to test it out in a study that we're carrying out between myself and Kath to get a baseline level on the average practice in each country that we're able to touch.

If you scan the code, there is a questionnaire of approximately seven questions.

I would be most grateful if you would be arsed to click the code and answer the questions.

We already have over 100 respondents in this, and therefore, we have something significant, but we're splitting it into different demographics, countries and areas.

And, over time and everywhere I speak, and everywhere the QR code gets shown, we'll start to build a body of evidence to show that 18 treatment room practices over four floors with 300 staff members are not normal, and we should not aspire to that.

What we should aspire to be is as good as we can in the environment in which we work, which I believe is much smaller than all the glossy magazines and social media would suggest.

Please do me a favour, hit the code, and reply.

I'll keep returning to this over time, every time I speak and sometimes on the blog to ask for your help.

Thanks a lot, and maybe we'll see you in October if we've got any space left.