It’s almost exactly nine years since I handed in my notice, the day before IDH took over the practices I had worked in as an associate for almost eleven years.
I handed in my notice because I knew what would happen. I had worked as a mentor and advisor to dentists in practices who had been taken over by the corporate and my friends had been involved in takeovers too. I knew what would happen and it did.
I gave up the chance for a big pay cheque to stay on for eighteen months and to allow the corporate to strip and rip anything that I had built for their own means and I left with almost nothing. I gave away an oral surgery contract (one of the first in the UK) and a list of hundreds of referring dentist and walked away from someone who had been a friend and mentor to me for many years who had decided that enough was enough aged 46.
It’s nine years this week and I am 45.
I wondered what would happen when I go to this stage, when I go to the age he was at when he had enough and I wondered whether I would have had enough. Whether I’d be tired and fed up and worn down and cynical. God knows enough had happened in that nine years to make me like that if I chose to accept it – not just the GDC case but circumstances where I’ve had to deal with partnerships that have been less than ideal, I have had to sack members of staff for stealing, I have had heartaches, doubts and health scares and all sorts of things. So it’s interesting to reflect at 45 if i’m ready to stop.
It crosses my mind, not infrequently, that I could go back to the sabbatical way of life – ride my bike exactly how I want, take my kids to school, cook for my family and remove my self from the rat race entirely and all the incumbent pressures and stresses and contra-indications that that life promotes. But the truth is, even if I wanted to I couldn’t.
I wanted to create a business that was like a family where we allowed people in and looked after them as if they were our own. It doesn’t mean be nice to the all the time, it means challenge them when they need challenged and bring the best out of them. Look after them when problems of life get in the way and expect them to look after us, or me, in the same way. To a large degree we did that, to a large degree we have that.
There is still some work to do but we are way along the line of what we set out to do just a few short years ago.
So herein lies the thing – God knows there are times when I get upset with my kids. When they don’t do what they’re supposed to do or worst still, when i’m at a low ebb and get on at them for things that they didn’t actually do and we fall out as a family. That is every family. Even in those times when things are difficult I never think about selling them or getting rid of them or how life would be better if they weren’t there. Were I to manufacture some situation where my children could be taken away it would create me so much more time in my life to do exactly what I wanted for myself and for me, but it’s not about me, it’s about us. And the practice, the business, the organisation, the work family, that’s about us too.
So while I respect anyone’s decision for the path that they choose to take, and this is not a criticism of anyone’s route, for me I couldn’t come in on a Monday and tell them that I’d given them away.
Honestly, I’d rather lock the door and walk away than do that and they would rather I did that too.
Blog Post Number - 1239
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