Many, many years ago, when I was searching around for purpose and meaning for my work. I read Yvon Chouinard's Let My People Surf.
Sharon is the founder of Patagonia, and if you've followed his business journey, his exploits, what he and his wife and his children did with the company, it is an extraordinary story.
One of the things that Yvon did, though, was set up 1% for the planet.
Very early on, he was concerned about the impact of climate change, and he therefore decided to tax his own business at 1% and invest the money into solutions for climate problems. He encouraged countless other companies to do the same and created a movement.
When I read that, it touched my heart, and I realised that that was something that I wanted to do in our business for many, many reasons, but not least the fact that we were unable to treat NHS patients in the model that we had created.
I had cast aside my involvement in the National Health Service and dentistry in about 2015 when my contract was cut in half for my oral surgery. That always left a hole in what I felt healthcare should be, and I realised that we could use our business, at least in a small part in some way, to make things better in different places.
That's when we invented the Social Legacy Project.
It was sold to me as ‘corporate social responsibility’. We're not a corporate, and therefore that title did not apply.
The concept of CSR, but for us, SLP is a whole 360-degree concept.
It's not just raising money for charity and giving it blindly wherever it goes; it's having a strategy towards giving. It's also to do with sustainability projects within the practice and within the work, and also the development of the team and empathy and honesty and care.
If you don't want to work in a place that gives 1% of its turnover (actually taxes itself) for the benefit of others, then go somewhere else.
It's a fundamental part of our values and our vision.
It has developed arms and legs since we started it over 10 years ago, and although I have not kept count of exactly how much we've raised (and I shouldn't), it must now be in the region of something like 750,000 pounds in total.
We always had local charities because we wanted to be part of our local community, but we also always had an international charity because our community is also the world, and so we've worked for a long time with Bridge to Aid on and off, and then locally in our environment, charities that include children's bereavement, homelessness, and domestic violence, and various other causes, including suicide prevention.
We do this as a team, and we share it; it becomes part of team day, and we have updates regularly.
All of the managers in our business are given a charity project to look after with their teams, and it creates gamification and fun and interest in the whole process.
Every 3 years we renegotiate together to see which charities we'll support, and we ask them to pitch and tell us why we should; it's a really clear, easy model to adopt, but I think it's something that everyone else should consider to look at.
As soon as you start to tax yourself at 1%, it effectively becomes part of your budget, but it's absolutely possible for all of us who work in these privileged circumstances in dentistry to give something back to a greater, brighter, bigger future.
It's not just giving to charity; it's whole-team involvement and environment; it's purpose and values and vision, all wrapped up together.