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It’s hard to believe it was 18 months ago that I sat on the patio of The Riverbank in Nottingham in the sunshine with Gary Marvin (the sales director from Straumann) as he asked me what I was going to do on my proposed sabbatical.

That was a conversation that lead to the foundations and the formation of the Business Course that we finished last Thursday.

As I write this I am utterly exhausted because the final 2 days teaching was such an emotional rollercoaster that it knocked me for 6. 

I convinced myself that 2 days of teaching like this was manageable and I can fit them in, get things done and do other things as well, but in truth I can’t. It’s all hands to the pump and wringing yourself out until nothing is left.

It was a joy though.

The first day of the final module, the six practices presented their strategic plans for the next 3 years, formulated and constructed using the knowledge that they had gained through the previous year of the Business Course. This was indeed a magical session, like watching the beanstalk growing out of the ground. There were discussions and arguments about associate values, operating surgery costs per day, channels of marketing, HR principles, meetings and organizational structures, the NHS contract and private pricing. All they have to do is stick to their recipe and they cannot fail.

The second day though we stretched them to their absolute limits giving them two and a half hours to design a project which ranged from opening a squat dental practice in a specific location to taking on an NHS and private practice. It turns out that 18 months and £36,000 with Chris Barrow set the foundations to be able to write a Business Course and stack it full of people who knew what they were talking about. It allowed the delegates to exit the course with a new enthusiasm for running their dental businesses and the tools to make it successful.

These guys will go from strength to strength, they will now meet each other two or three times a year at each others practices to continue the process of learning and adapting the experiment that is a business, their ‘release to the wild’.

Good luck to all of you guys, it was an absolute pleasure.

Blog post number: 1433