The Campbell Academy Blog (16)

A short series on the Business of Dentistry: Part 1 - Introduction

As promised in Sunday's blog about things that were coming up in the next two weeks over the next few days and a couple of weeks, I'll be writing a six-part series on an introduction to the business of dentistry, but as part of that six-part series, I wanted to put together a few words on why I'm putting together a series on the introduction into the business of dentistry.

Back in 2008, I was working as an associate for a husband-and-wife partnership team that owned two practices in the east of Derbyshire and the west of Nottingham.

The practices were predominantly NHS practices in 2008, and the principals had them from the early to mid-1990s. I joined in 1997 as a VT (dental foundation trainee).

I'd been there almost 11 years, having come out of three years of hospital work and a Royal College of Surgeons Fellowship before I got there, and it's true to say that I had absolutely no understanding of how to run anything like a business.

And so, in March of 2008, after one or two personal turmoils that year and 6 to 8 weeks after the birth of Callum, my third child, the husband-and-wife bosses turned up at my house and told me that they'd sold the practice is to Integrated Dental Holdings (now, Mydentist).

I had been very clear about the fact that I never really wanted to work in the corporate environment.

So, in very short order, I left and gave away everything I'd built, including a service with 250 implants per year, about 300 referring dentists and the first ever permanent IMOS contract (Intermediate Minor Oral Surgery) that England had ever given out.

At that stage, I was actually an associate in practice who had his own associates (I know, crazy), and I parked all that and left it understanding and after close consultation and discussion with my wife and soulmate, Alison, that we would be taking a 70% wage cut to stick to our principals.

I found myself going into a small private Periodontal practice in a bungalow not far from my house with Ian Peace, who was at that stage a specialist in Perio, and I worked for a year as 'an associate with a view' as I made it clear to Ian that I'd never wanted somebody to be able to sell a business over the top of my head again.

In 2009, I became a partner in that business and was quickly catapulted into a world I had no understanding of.

I became one of those guys who, by sheer luck, owned a dental practice (or at least part of it) and felt that because I had a dental degree, it gave me some sort of divine right to be able to run a business of any kind.

How wrong was I? How badly could that go?

It was clear from the outset that I had a lot to learn and had to learn really fast.

At the same time, the primary care trust in Derbyshire returned to me and offered me an even larger minor oral surgery contract in the north of the county after IDH had taken my one in the south.

I decided to accept that and set up another practice in the north, an NHS specialist practice.

I was deep in over my head and out of my depth.

Over that period, I initiated the help of Chris Barrow as a business coach and paid Chris a ton of money over 18 months to try and teach me as much as he could as fast as possible so that I could get my feet on the ground.

In these pages of the next series, I want to share what I learned at that stage and how we managed to move things forward.

On the first of April 2008, the practices I went to to run away from IDH were turning over approximately £249,000 a year.

At the end of January 2024, The Campbell Clinic Group will turn over more than £5 million a year, and the overall assets and the value of the practice will be many times that.

There is a story about how to get from there to here, and there is a system and a format.

These few introductory pages might just give you some inspiration for your journey, whatever that might be.

Happy Christmas.