The first time I ever met Chris Barrow, face-to-face, was around 2010 (more than 15 years ago). We met at the Belfry Hotel in Nottingham near Junction 26 on a pre-arranged, free-of-charge chat about whether it would be worth meeting together.
He was an impressive character then, full of confidence, almost arrogance, he knew that he was the best and the only game in town in terms of Business coaching in dentistry, and he was on the up.
He drove a BMW M3, matching luggage, that type of thing. As soon as I sat down in front of him, he said, I'm walking out of here in 30 minutes to get to the airport, he was limiting his time and being effective and efficient.
It in no way felt rude or devaluing when we first met. I liked it because it meant that we had 30 minutes to talk about what we were going to talk about, and then we could go on to something else.
My conversation then, though, was surprising for Chris because I remember being at that stage as an early client of Chris's, of watching social media and seeing what he said about me after we'd met (very vain!)
I told Chris that my problem was not that I didn't have any opportunity, it was that I had too many opportunities, and what I needed was help in choosing which opportunities to take and which to set aside.
I've had that conversation with various clever people over the years. I now have someone who helps me extensively in my business from outside of the dental practice world, who is very successful, and it stemmed from a similar conversation around about three years ago, when I was offered different jobs with the ITI and the University of Zurich and things like that.
I'm always looking for the opportunity for someone else to look externally at the direction, the path, the future prospects and challenge me to see why you're doing that?
This is the secret of success, I think.
The secret of success is not to take all the opportunities; the secret of success is to take the correct opportunities. The secret of success, in fact, is knowing when to say no.
As I've said time and time again here, ‘vision without action is a daydream, but action without vision- that is a nightmare’.
If the opportunity was there to take all the opportunities for someone all the time, there would only be one business in the world that did everything- you understand that, right?
When you look at the businesses, the organisations, the people you respect, you understand that they picked a path and stuck to it and got better at it, whatever that was.
Tomorrow, the next generation, the next iteration, the next cohort of our one-week dental business boot camp starts. The whole purpose of these five days is to show people what they don't know and to let them write their plan (under guidance and direction) for the next 3 years.
Only 10% of global businesses of any size either have a strategy or stick to their strategy. All you have to do to be in the top 10% is have a strategy and stick to it, then you would be in the category of exceptional business, only because you decided to have a direction.
Leave a comment