Note From Judith | What’s Important?

Ha, ha! Ha, ha!  Ha, ha!   I have total egomaniacal (cue mad laughter) and editorial control this week – and possibly even next – as Nicola packs and prepares for her holiday away.

She’s going for one week to her beloved Stoupa with sister Sarah and I have given her homework: to see if it really is somewhere she could make a life.   Watch her Twitters…assuming she can get a signal.

Does the broadband work well enough?   Is the travel to and from efficient enough?   Is there a community in which she could make friends and play a  role, not to mention poker?

No doubt she will report back in her next Note from Nicola, meanwhile this is a Note from Judith.   Hooray!

So, let me see, what does she tell you?   All about her week.   Well, happily, a lot of our week this week has been in tandem since we spent Monday working together at quite a nice country house hotel near Leatherhead which shall remain nameless.   A very chatty girl in a dark suit and high heels (we in our pink entrepreneur’s flip flops) spent an hour showing us over the old bit and the two new bits and we were nearly taken with it, apart from the dreadful food at lunchtime which depressed us both.   We also couldn’t agree about the conference room itself.

But the killer question came when we returned to our little room we had booked for the day and did some projections about holding our 2010 Wealth Conference at this venue.   Nicola’s body visibly deflated as she contemplated spending two days in that room as compared to say the beautiful state-of-the art auditorium at the Cavendish Conference Centre in central London, where we have run a couple of large events recently, which perks her up no end.   So I am holding the Cavendish for the weekend of 19th and 20th June 2010 for now.   We love working there as they are very Can Do.   We still have some way to go to get all the details right but we learn every time we hold an event there.

The Wealth Conference will include a slap-up party on the Saturday night and so it falls to me (natch!) to organise that in a nearby restaurant – more venue recces upcoming this week for moi.

We talked a lot on Monday about our coaches, Margaret, Marion, Philly and Annie, who we are inviting to take a more central role in the Money Gym in 2010 and beyond, especially at Silver and Gold level and with our Let’s Talk Money events.   The Money Gym is growing up as a business.   I have just completed our 4th set of accounts since I joined Nicola and Steve in partnership.   Our learning is slow because so much of our energies go into helping, coaching, supporting clients and it can be a trap this, for a coach.  You can get stuck in facilitating great things in others at your own expense.   Because of the nature of our business, wealth creation, its vital we lead by example too wherever possible.

Trying to achieve both our own goals and those of our clients at the same time has been complex, rewarding and slow, but I really feel we are getting there now and we have a vision for the business which inspires us both.   I can’t tell you about new projects on the way although I know Nicola has already let slip to one or two of her mentoring clients, but I should be able to tell you soon enough, after all the holidays are over.   For now they remain a work in progress; we love to work on new stuff and bring you new stuff too.

The rest of my Money Gym week has been about Money Gym accounts and VAT, Rent2Own mentoring calls on Friday with Peter Stanley who is now regularly doing two deals a week.   I am also working on my own first deal which is fun.   We are in week 11 of our Silver Elite pilot and I have done at least one of my mentoring calls which are included in the programme and I know Margaret has done one too this week.   Wednesday is Webinar day with one at 10 for Silver Elite and one at 11 for Gold clients, both of which went well this week although Nicola forgot to press Record (easily done) for the first one which is an awful shame since it was about Stocks & Shares and turned out to be really interesting.   I often listen to our calls back as I learn so much more when I am listening as opposed to talking. I know, tragic.   Listening to yourself!   Good grief.   Sometimes I even find myself really, really interesting.   Sad.

Yesterday I helped out a really nice bird who had been to one of our Let’s Talk Money days a while back and was on the horns of a dilemma.  Really enjoyed that one and I am also really enjoying working with Mrs Lucky Winner who won a year’s property mentoring with me at the Property Extravaganza.   The rest of the week has been taken up with shepherding our first 30 clients through their RED investment, all but one or two are using their pensions to do it with and creating a SIPP.   This morning I had a conference call with Darren, Red’s SIPP guy, and now we have a working spreadsheet between the two of us where we are tracking everyone along the road to Pension Nirvana on only 10 years.  So its never too late to start your pension now, I am even working with a lady who is a very youthful 60 years old.

And finally there’s the minutiae, the detail of running a business, emails, queries, letters, follow-ups, liaison between the three of us at Head Office (often at cross-purposes and I use the word cross advisedly!) – could you just look this up, could you just help this person, what do you think about this opportunity, shall we diversify our focus, shall we bring forward a project or delay it?   In the end we decided that our watchword for the week would be “What’s Important?”   You often have to take up that stance before a holiday. And, come to think of it, it isn’t a bad one to run your week – or your business – by, is it?

Personally, there were more huge advances in my garden.   My Twitter followers have been baying for photos of my meadow, my tree seat, my acid bed, my climbing roses, my new shrubs, my lavender and my olive tree, but they are just going to have to wait, Twitpic being a bridge too far for me.   I mean, I’m in SOLE CHARGE here, I’ve got a business to run!   All I can say as a sun worshipper who loves the sun and as a gardener, who loves to look out of the window at Nick’s handiwork but not much else. is “bring on more of that Big Rain!” It means I am on light duties with the hose.

Until next time…

A Real Live Business to Love

On Saturday*, at lunchtime at the Let’s Talk Money day,  trainer Dom asked Nicola and me if we had The Happiness Centred Business by Paddi Lund.   Sure have, it was recommended by dentists’ coach, Chris Barrow, so we ticked that off our reading lists a few years back.  Well today, I have been to the dentist (in Brussels) and been privileged to see one of these at first hand.   If you are interested in creating a business of your own to love, pin your ears back, and be warned this is rather a long story.

My current dentist is a Belgian who practises at the Hale Clinic in London where I am now six months into some very specialist and expensive treatment to save my teeth from gum disease.   He and his wife come over from Belgium once a month to sort out the gum disease of Londoners who choose afford their radical unique one-hit treatment pioneered by – er, well, a pioneer called Dr Hoisington if you are interested.   Today, my dentist revealed that he paid said pioneer to come from the States for a couple of days a month for 18 months to show him how to do it on 50 patients before he felt able to go it alone on folks like me.

At the Hale, I lay on a water bed for hours on end in December and 26 injections later, it was all sorted.   One initial consultation, one 5-hour treatment, two free follow-ups, thousands of pounds, but teeth to keep for the rest of my life.   The UK equivalent is four very painful separate visits and by the time you come back to the second one you have already re-infected yourself from the gum disease left in the other three quarters of your mouth.   The air-perio treatment was indeed successful and gum disease is at bay.   My UK dentist said it couldn’t be done.

However, on a subsequent visit, the Belgian dentist decided that my bite was so abysmal that it was compromising his work as I rely on one or two teeth only to chew and they were making a slower recovery than the rest of my mouth.   My teeth don’t meet anywhere for chewing and he wondered how on earth I had managed to eat anything, ever.   As I said to Janet Swift yesterday, “where there’s a will there’s a way!”   Anyway, gum disease resolution at the Hale doesn’t require the more heavy-duty dental kit, for serious dental work he wanted me to get on the Eurostar and go to his office over there and this was scheduled for today.   They told me to get the 08.30 train, get a taxi to their office, get euros to pay taxi, bring passport, which train to get back etc. oh and by the way could they have some more thousands of pounds.

Dear Reader, I’m a dental phobic and my gums are only in this mess because of decades of appalling UK dentistry on the good old NHS and financial stress, a major contributory factor (scientifically true).   This man I like and trust enough to spend 5 hours in his chair in December and another 6 today.   I would travel further than Brussels to work with him.   I have even laughed with him (not today, mind) and how often can you say you’ve laughed in the dentist’s chair if not on gas?

Anyway, on Sunday night I received an email saying forget the taxi, their son Benjamin will collect me from the station, which he did in trainers and cut-offs (31 degrees today in La Belgique).   He’s 22 and driving a Beamer (assume his Dad’s, its not) and I ask if he is on holiday, thinking he must be a student.   He said no, he works for his parents – computers etc., everything but going inside peoples’ mouths.   We converse in his excellent English about our two shared loves – computers and fast cars, and the journey whizzes by – about 30-45 mins. When he drops me at the surgery, everyone and I mean everyone is at lunch, the place is deserted but blissfully the dentist Dad is sitting in the window of the restaurant next door (he has a life too). He comes immediately to attend to my needs, putting on the restful music to soothe me from the journey and prepare me for my ordeal in the chair and chatting to me about other “natural” medical cures he’s researching.   He’s very interested in health beyond just dentistry.

Turns out he’s 58 and I never noticed this at the Hale, but he’s tall, blue-eyed and silver haired – my very favourite sort of bloke – and very, very clever, better still.   His wife is there, so don’t get any ideas and she’s called something delicious like Marie-Christine and she runs the business and is very artistic and stylish.   The salon is delightfully done up with a lot of low key and tasteful new age touches, candles, flowers, decor and some very nice art which I notice is signed with his surname.   I ask if he paints and he says no, both his parents are painters.   I ask what they think about having a dentist for a son and he replies that they have three sons, two are dentists and one is a doctor!   Their parents’ art is peppered throughout the surgery to good effect.

The surgery is THE most beautiful thing I have ever seen – I have already described the ambiance, music and decor and attention to customer care.   But get this – he has read my websites!   He knows I’m interested in Woo Woo, wants to copy LunchWithJudith and prints me off an article from his computer he thinks I will be interested in, about a cure for cancer, which I read on the train on the way home.   I am totally in his thrall by this point.

The surgery is not done up like ours with tiny tight white boxes each with a solo dentist and patient in – it is one enormous room filled with state of the art equipment, beautiful wooden floors and luxury reclining chairs and healthy green plants and four dentists (all women in comfy but smart and practical stripey topped, elegant uniforms which they wear with pride) all practice in the same room which overlooks the gardens – they all bustle back from lunch on the dot of two, he has his wife, son, and at least two more assistants working to help him run the surgery and it runs like a well-oiled machine with everyone smiley, lovely, kind and helpful.   They speak four languages – English, German, Belgian and French and apparently an average of three clients, like me, come from London per month on the Eurostar.   And the music is switched from new age plinky plonky to something more rockin’ the lady dentists like – and all afternoon songs rotate through all those languages again.

I am given every consideration during my six hours in the chair – water, kindness, more painless injections if I as much as flinch, talked through everything, touched really comfortingly but respectfully – my treatment is co-ordinated in time for the return train and Benjamin again delivers me at high speed in his Beamer, since we are running a tad late.   I don’t talk much this time – mouth swollen from the afternoon’s surgery and injections, feeling a tad sorry for myself and scanning my 100+ emails on phone.

Could 6 hours in the dentist’s chair and another enormous cheque be nicer?

I am delighted with my new gnashers – I have a Hollywood-ish smile, I could bite and chew my Eurostar dinner on the way home, he lasered off a polyp I had in my cheek which I am still queuing for over a year in this country to see the man up the local oral health clinic whatever the hell that is, he drilled out all my amalgam fillings and replaced them with white ones AND he gave me a bite.   I mean, this man is nothing short of a dental hero!   I am in love with my Belgian dentist as you can clearly tell, but more importantly I am in love with his business.   Happy patients, men, women and children, skipped in and out all afternoon and ask they passed my chair on their way out (no waiting visible), they all smiled (!) and said goodbye in various languages to my dentist, the boss, who knew all of their names.   I inspected my mouth full of his handiwork in the loo at St Pancras and am thrilled.

At 58, he is SO not bored with his business and still learning new things.   The man is exemplary.

It was his idea to call Teresa Hale and ask if he could bring his radical new perio treatment to the UK and his son told me he loves it here because it’s Teresa’s business and he doesn’t have to worry about anything except his patients so although he made it look easy, there are stresses and strains to managing staff, profits etc. as ever.

I learned so much today about how to run a good business, give great customer service etc. and still love your business after growing it for decades; always learn new stuff, always cherish your clients.

Off to clean my toofypegs and protect my investment.   Night night – its been a long, brave and fascinating day.   Hope there’s been something useful in here for you and your business.

J

*Wanna know the best bit about this entire story?   I was introduced to this man by Bianca who on Saturday said her strength was connecting people.   She’s so right – and guess what, we were on the way back from a Rent2Own lunch meeting at the time when I was off to the dentist to get the UK recommended painful, also pretty expensive and crappy version of the gum disease solution so she was just the right woman in the nick of time with the right referral.   Go B!