I’m sitting in the lounge of the Thorpe Park hotel, just outside of Leeds, answering emails at 6.30pm, after a workshop day delivering our second quarter’s presentation to over 100 people.
For some years now, Leeds has been our most heavily attended venue and the atmosphere in the room today was electric.
In some ways, my best part of the day was at 9.30am this morning, when we asked the practice owners to report back on their progress in the last 90 days.
I have to say that my usual diet is one of excuses – reasons why very little has been done.
Not so today.
One after another, my clients told me that they had made significant changes in practice protocols, in marketing systems, in pricing and, perhaps most importantly, in their own attitude and that of their team members.
I have a real intuition that there is “something going on” this year.
Our workshops are well attended, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive and the mood of the room is about the future of private dentistry and the opportunity in the marketplace.
Barbara tells me that our level of enquiries is at its highest for some time.
Paul tells me that he is flying around the country, meeting with potential new clients.
My clients tell me that they have “had enough” of waiting for PCT’s and the “new contract” and are getting on with building a first class private practice.
It is a wave of optimism and I’m excited and enjoying my work.
On a personal note, Ernest Oriente speaks about “genius work”, the work that you do better than anything else you do. I have to say that, although life on the road is always demanding and increasingly tiring (its my age!) – I recognise that “holding a room” may be my genius work.
100 people of varying ages, backgrounds, experience and enthusiasm.
Who ever would have thought that you could put 100 dental team members in a conference room for the day and manage to keep the majority of them engrossed in financial management of a dental practice?
I’m really good at what I do – and I am allowing myself a moment of self-congratulation.