Changing people’s lives by changing people smiles and creating victors from victims.
When I was 19, one Sunday afternoon in September my father drove me to London, to my halls of residence and to the beginning of my life at university. The following Sunday I was viewing his body in the chapel of rest, not knowing anything of his illness in the intervening week. That same day my mother threw me out of the house and told me that I wasn’t welcome any longer. Just before the end of the Christmas term I realised that what my mother had said was not just a reaction to the death of her husband, but she meant that I was never welcome back home. Just before my end of term exams I discovered that I was homeless and had to move out of my halls of residence. I was alone and felt like I had no one to support me. My years at university would probably the worst five years of my life, as I look back at that time I don’t recognise the person I was. I’m not proud of many things I did or the person I became. During college I worked hard and played even harder, and at the end of five years had an astronomical amount of debt.
Within a few years of qualifying I brought my own practice and life became much better. Then I discovered my manager was embezzling very large amounts of money. I discovered my practice was technically insolvent. I had many staff who were dependent on me for their income, and I felt a massive responsibility to them and my patients. I was single with no family to fall back on, the only thing I had to get me through with my resourcefulness. Once again, I was alone, didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who to turn to, and this time I had a mountain of debt.
I realised I knew how to deliver great dentistry and yet I knew nothing about how to run a successful business. There was no reason why I should know how to run a dental practice as a successful business, as there was no heritage of self-employment in my family and dental school does not teach business skills.
This period of my life was one of the longest and darkest times and yet the most rewarding. I was lonely, isolated, ignorant, frustrated, and felt helpless much of the time. My free time was spent in seminars and reading, learning how to run a successful dental practice. I worked with a coach and implemented everything that I could. To this day he tells me that what made me different from other clients was that I took action and I got results. The truth was I didn’t feel I had any other choice; my practice was failing and I had to blindly trust that my coach and other mentors knew what they were doing. There were times, many times, when I doubted myself and was distrustful of those around me. It was bleak.
My ignorance of how to run the business had repercussions in other areas of my life, I was overweight, unfit, drank too much alcohol. I cut myself off from friends and those I did see, got the worst of me.
So why do I now work as a business coach and trainer?
In essence I do what I do so nobody else has to go through the ignorance, pain, frustration, and loneliness that I went through.
Within a relatively short period of time I transformed a failing business into a profitable rewarding practice. The staff felt it was like belonging to the family and the patients loved coming in and kept returning.
I transformed the practice because I learnt how to run it as a business that put its patients at its heart and still attended to the other aspects of business. I can show you how to do it too, without the heartache.
Dental schools still don’t teach business skills and I have yet to find many other business owners who have learnt how to run a business before they go into business themselves. Each day I talk to business owners, dental principals, and team members who tell me they are experiencing some of what I went through no money, lonely, exhausted, disillusioned, frustrated, and depressed. Not to mention being unfit, failed relationships, and unhealthy. I passionately believe that this pain, frustration, and isolation that you and so many business owners experience is entirely preventable. The Institute of Dental Business is here to help you when things are tough and prevent problems in the future.
Throughout my life I often felt the only person I had to rely on was myself. Some of the experiences I went through could have broken me and yet whenever I thought things couldn’t get any worse I realised I had a choice, to give up or to find the strength inside to overcome my circumstances. I believe that, given the right support and encouragement, everyone has the potential to lift themselves out of a poor and unhealthy present to fulfil their unrealised future.
I spent years in therapy that rather improving my experiences made them worse. It was not until I discovered therapeutic coaching was I able to overcome my trauma, put down my emotional baggage, and slay the demons in my mind. I have studied all over the world learning and developing the skills of therapeutic coaching so you too can be free of your demons, traumas, and emotional baggage.
