Everything is a metaphor

I’m sometimes asked “how do you manage to keep the flow of blog posts coming, day after day – especially given your schedule. Where does the inspiration and the content come from?” So here are some top tips: write every day – it becomes an embedded habit and, thus, effortless to begin; ignore quality –
Read More

Hire fresh people

Conversations with prospects and clients, like buses, can sometimes come in threes after a long wait. When that happens, as a consultant, you learn to realise that you are spotting a trend. The conversation that I’m involved in frequently right now starts with: “There aren’t enough hours in the day” “I’m doing 35 hours week
Read More

Gravity

Patients are like spacecraft that you are attempting to manoeuvre into permanent orbit around Planet Practice. Approach too quickly and they will crash and burn. Too slow and they will swing past, simply accelerating towards their next destination. Too many and they will bump into each other, with potentially disastrous results. If you judge it
Read More

Consent and Selfies

Many forward-thinking owners are now asking their marketing team members to actively manage a Facebook Page for the practice, recognising that social media (and, in particular, Mr Zuckerberg’s little experiment) is an integral part of many patients’ life. Facebook is an advertising company, not a social media site, and they are watching very carefully to
Read More

The Global Digital Dental Business

Just when you think about slowing down a bit……. I’m currently discussing business mentoring and/or digital marketing services with prospects and clients in: UK Ireland Holland Greece Romania India Sweden Australia and in the last 12 months have been fascinated by projects in Luxembourg and Turkey. The arrival of the digital dental business (in all
Read More

Signage

Many is the practice visit I make where the signage in the premises is either scruffy, irrelevant or confusing. The pictured sign was spotted at Pret a Manger (yes, my favourites) in Newcastle on Tyne. I took a break from a client conversation, wandered down the corridor and, faced with this signage on the toilet
Read More

Letters from a perfect imperfectionist: Digital

I’m talking about digital. I’m writing this in the middle of the BDA Conference in Manchester – where everyone is talking digital. The exhibitors are showcasing digital or heading that way. Digitise or die! We’ve published Venn diagrams and workflows about digital. Next month at the Clinical Innovations Conference, digital will loom large. We are
Read More

Guest post: Defensive Champions

Every now and then a client is inspired to write a blog post and I’m always delighted to offer any coaching on the writing style and content, as well as offer a platform for the post to be published. So here we welcome a newbie blogger, Ash Quraishi, Principal at Westmount Dental Surgery, Sunderland. There
Read More

The development of the business development process

We have been planning the future of 7connections over the last few weeks (not that we don’t do that every day) – meetings with my business partners and with the team to talk about where we see the business going over the next 10 years. It has been interesting to reflect on the process by
Read More