Yesterday I was supposed to do a webinar for Straumann (just to add a bit more to the webinar culture we find ourselves in), but this time it was for budgeting.
Those of you who know me well will probably wonder ‘what the hell is he doing talking about budgeting’ but I’m sharing the experience of a high-level group of people who work within our practice.
Many years ago, when I started working with Chris Barrow I understood that I didn’t understand anything to do with the money in a business and I made it my main mission at that time to achieve two things:
1) To understand exactly what was required for the money in the type of business I want.
2) To have someone beside me who is able to count money in an extraordinary way and understands excel better than almost anyone else.
And so, we set up the financial model for The Campbell Clinic with Charlotte Harrison as our Finance Manager and she still is today.
Way back in another lifetime, on or around the 16th or 17th March we held a ‘War cabinet’ in the new Campbell Academy space, where everyone in the Senior Leadership Team (operations/HR/Finance/Marketing/Communications/Clinical) met together to discuss what was coming next and what we thought was going to happen with the onslaught that was about to be unleashed.
During that time, we invented another new metric (we have invented several metrics for finance in the business of Dentistry that we use to monitor our own business) but this time the metric was absolute fixed costs per month (AFCM).
In the month that has passed since that last face to face ‘War cabinet’ we have had many more and they have been running usually twice a week with the Senior Leadership Team on Zoom, but the absolute fixed costs per month is always front of mind.
The thing about AFCM’s is that it applies personally and applies in business.
It has never ever been so poignant both personally and in a commercial aspect as it is now.
The way you get to AFCM, is by identifying your worst-case scenario and then trying to budget to that.
This applies across both personal and business.
There is no point at the moment in trying to maintain your lifestyle, at least not on paper when you’re planning for the worst to happen.
Once you have put in place a contingency for the worst-case scenario, then you can be positive about anything that’s better than that or be active if you reach that stage.
The webinar yesterday was cancelled because it was put together too quickly and has been rescheduled for the 7th May.
If you’re interested in hearing our story about AFCM’s and how we are trying to budget for a business which relocated to a 7,000 square foot premises on the 10th February only to be closed on the 23rd March, and what we've learnt from this, I’ll be happy to share and hope to see you then.
P.S. for those of you who read the blog on Monday, Louis completed his Everest cycle today in a time of 10 hours and 15 minutes. If you would like to contribute in any way please click here.
Blog Post Number - 2339
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