Chris Barrow’s Blog

In about 4 hours I’ll be leaving for a 2-week vacation and the laptop will be staying in the UK.

Reflecting on the last 5 days of business activity it has been a time of deep thinking personally and careful listening to what Team CB and others have told me about their perceptions around my business.

I have a clear vision of where I want The Dental Business School to be in January 2008 and the beginnings of a plan of action and set of goals to get us there.

There was a moment of overwhelm yesterday, when I thought about the “to do” list that we all have from September onwards – but that is a healthy and exciting version of overwhelm and I can live with it.

Overall, I feel as if I am making a transition from coach to entrepreneur, from practice to business. From “one-man band” to leader. It is feeling like the biggest shift I have made in my thinking in the last 15 years – and that is simultaneously exhilarating and daunting.

Looking forward, I’m hoping that this blog will become not just a knowledge bank of tips for dentists and other coaches but also an account of my journey towards leadership. If the legacy of that is to inspire others to make the same journey, then I will have fulfilled an important part of my professional mission statement.

For now – it’s laptop away and the careful choice of a few non-business books to read (see right and below).
I’ll probably return with a few customer service tales to tell – I cannot help myself.

My conversations with Simon Hocken continued yesterday and there was a particular focus on the way in which I organise my time.

Ever since I discovered Dan Sullivan’s “Entreprenuerial Time System”, I have planned my year’s a year in advance, taking time every August to create a wall-planner, a spreadsheet and then an Outlook calendar that allocated the “Free, Focus and Buffer Days” that Sullivan advocates.

That has given me 12-weeks vacation every year since 1997 and the ability to leverage my one-man coaching practice to over $1m of annual sales.

But there is a problem – and the problem is that my sales and my business have stayed the same for 4 years now – I have reached my own ceiling of complexity and I haven’t been able to break through.

I’m 53 years old next month and I’m beginning to question my ability to continue performing at current levels. I’d also like to be financially independent when I’m 60 – and although I operate a fabulous income-generator, I’m not creating any business capital – if I get hit by a truck, the insurance payout would be good but the business would have no value.

I’m keen that my biggest pay-day isn’t my funeral.

So I’m doing some very deep thinking about what has to happen – big changes in the pipeline that I will share with you here and in the ezine.

Yesterday, I chatted to Simon about my 2007 calendar – and there was a significant paradigm shift.

To start thinking in terms of Free Weeks, Focus Weeks and Buffer Weeks (a la Sullivan but weeks rather than days – I’m finding that I need to focus on either work, rest or play for a week at a time – a day is too short).

The other shift was to innovate some new weeks into my calendar, taking me beyond the Sullivan philosophy.

So I have created a new type of week in my life – and I’m going to call it a “Studio Week” – why?

Because I want to have blocks of time where I can focus on multi-media content development – books, e-books, audio, video, workshops, intensives, retreats, special events.

Time to think and create in an environment (yet to be identified) that will nourish me.

So the 2007 breakdown is looking like this:

• 8 weeks vacation
• 6 studio weeks
• 9 buffer weeks
• 29 focus weeks = 116 Focus Days

So I am dropping my vacation quota from 12 to 8 weeks – because I have realised that a week of content creation will be as refreshing and stimulating as a holiday for me.

I am taking complete weeks to work “on” my business rather than “in” my business – leading Team CB forward.

And I have 116 days to generate the revenues – and a target of £1m in sales for the year – a 66% increase in sales!

How on earth will I achieve a 66% increase in sales? Watch this space.

An interesting post in his own blog by my client and friend Simon Reilly over in Vancouver about the benefits of our coaching call on Tuesday.

Which is ironic because yesterday I asked my good friend Simon Hocken to coach me on my business planning for the next 12 months.

There is a danger that this is sounding like some sort of paper-chain of coaches coaching coaches – and I know that a lot of cash changes hands in the global coaching community this way, with the cynics suggesting that coaches are coaching coaches because they can’t find any other clients! I suspect like all good cynical assumptions, there is an element of truth.

Well I have plenty of clients thank you – and I happen to know that both Simons do as well.

But what I needed was an informed and objective view of my professional evolution and I knew I would get that from Simon Hocken because:

1. He has known me for 8 years;
2. He never accepts my b/s;
3. He ran 2 succesful dental practices for 20 years and knows the business of dentistry and what dentists want;
4. He is a trained, qualified and experienced coach.

Pretty good credentials – and the proof of that pudding was an excellent conversation, masterfully directed.

As the clock struck 5.00pm, over 7 hours of conversation suddenly came into focus and a mental log-jam that has plagued me since March this year was swept away.

Today I am going to continue that conversation, moving from strategy to tactics.

I could not do this without a coach in attendance.

Call-in day on Tuesday and I decided to keep a log of the questions my clients were asking me. Here they are:

1. How much do I invest in marketing – 5%/10%?
2. Can you recommend a great dental web site to look at – www.bowlanedental.com
3. I’m making progress in creating a franchise prototype – how do I make it work?
4. Just back from holiday – trying to get myself back in the groove – any tips?
5. I’m working with my graphic designers on the look and feel of my web site – what do you think about emailed business cards within a corporate client?
6. I suspect my associate is cooking the books financially – what should I do?
7. In the middle of a private conversion – initial take-up has flattened off – when should we write a second time to our patients?
8. Practice uniforms. One of my associates responded to the introduction of staff uniforms by saying “I don’t want to get involved with this corporate sh!t” at a staff meeting – how should I respond?
9. Reviewing a conversion letter for a practice who are going private in September
10. Organised a conference call for September to role play answers to FAQ’s from patients
11. Recruitment – how important are dress, style of speech and overall demeanour? Why not hold an audition?
12. Can I pick your brains? One of the hygienists is “squeezing” the appointment times – normally 40 minutes but appointments keepfinishing early – how best should I discuss this with her?
13. 3 care nurses – 1 part-timer back from maternity leave and has personal issues that are making her behaviour unattractive – demands for more money. She is missing team meetings and training because of child-care issues. How best should I approach this problem with her?
14. Patients are travelling long distances to see us – and arrive late! What should our protocol be?
15. The Smile Check – can I have some examples please?
16. Local advertorial – focus on the people in your practice and not the clever dentistry. The shortest route to the money is tooth whitening.
17. Can you help me in focusing on a niche market for my services?
18. Help me to increase my sales!
19. Can you describe the protocols for dealing with dentists and patients who run late.
20. Can you describe for me the process that you use on your annual retreat.

I mentioned last week that our cash flows were heading in the wrong direction.

At Monday’s management meeting Bonnie presented me with an up to date “mother of all spreadsheets” (MOAS – that’s what we call it), showing a £50,000 deficit in cash flow before 31st December 2006.

Given that one of my principle goals for 2006 is to finish the year business debt-free, this is not good news.

How has it happened?

Simple enough:

1. Sales Year To Date (YTD) are lower than expected (January to April – New Dental Contract Angst, April to June – New Dental Contract panic, June to August – sod it – the sun’s out, let’s have a BBQ);
2. Expenses YTD to higher than expected – largely because I have invested in Team CB and in systems.

As I keep saying – a 14-year old could run the cash flows – it’s not rocket science.

So my weekend was overshadowed by a small dose of Fantasy Expressed As Reality (FEAR) – imagining that the company would go broke and I’d be busking through the winter months outside a local cinema with a banjo and a dog with three legs. Actually, I could borrow my mother’s cat – it has three legs and is called “tripod” – that would get the sympathy vote.

Monday arrives and I default into my crisis management mode:

1. Identify the problem – we are short of cash;
2. Quantify the problem – we are short of £50,000 on these planning assumptions;
3. Identify the solution – increase prices? No. Increase sales? Yes. Reduce expenses? Yes. Increase services? Yes.
4. Quantify the solution – yesterday we spent the morning looking at cost cutting and deferring non-essential expenditure – that saved me £20,000 in about 2 hours. Some tough decisions but necessary. In the afternoon we worked through our prospective new client (PNC) list and identified the best use of Paul’s time in the next 6 weeks. I have a call-in day today but during the rest of this week I will be discussing with Team CB the provision of additional events, products and services to increase our sales by £30,000 before the year end.

By the end of the meeting the FEAR had been eliminated and we are busy focusing on a PLAN of action to rectify the situation – before it becomes a problem.

I wish more of my clients were so diligent in their financial management.

Maybe I am so diligent because I went bust in 1993 and vowed it would never happen again.

I also know it’s not just me – a client of mine went off on holiday last weekend after reporting profits of £19,000 in July, against a target of £50,000. The reason? Sales were down. No doubt he will be sat on a beach right now, planning his return – that’s what we entreprenuers do you know.
Anyone who owns a small business knows that it’s a roller coaster ride and, in the words of one of my first sales managers, Barry Woolley:

You will spend 10% of your time elated, 10% of your time suicidal and the other 80% either too busy or too tired to know how you feel. When you are elated, celebrate, when you are suicidal, make sure you have an inner-circle of team members and advisors who can guide you through.”

Activity is the key – take action – now!

I love my MOAS, I love my Team and I love my circle of advisors – without them I would spend my whole life in FEAR.