Dear All,

For Nick & I the build up to Independents Day is one frenetic race against time to ensure everything is in place and as organised as possible. It takes a lot of forward planning and even so not everything goes according to plan on the day. We do try and improve each year!

Interestingly the themes that developed through the day were about forward planning for your business, holding a vision of where you want to get to for ever in your mind and as important as exemplary “customer” service and going that extra mile for every patient.

I said at the beginning of the day that we wanted everyone to leave with 6 good ideas that they could put into practice to build there own business, one gentleman sought me out at the day’s end saying he had not 6 but 23 good ideas, I’m glad we over delivered for him. It’s what we are all about.

Listening to all the speakers talking about how they run their practices and Dennis Reid challenging us to be “best in class” it is easy to start feeling a little outclassed. Sitting at the roundtable discussion at the end, I felt a little intimidated at being matched up to the optical luminaries to each side of me.

And then the penny dropped. Every delegate attended because they wanted to improve their business, become even better at doing what they do best. Not all of us want to be the Allan Sugars of this world but we all want to make a good living and earn the respect of patients and peers alike. Independents Day was all about improving your business performance, your staff performance and, dare I say it, your performance.

So take those good ideas, make a member of your team responsible for putting them in place, set a date for review of the implementation and revisit it regularly to make sure it hasn’t slipped. If you have 23 good ideas I’m really pleased but one word of caution, despite my parody “the road to hell is paved with good ideas not acted upon”, don’t try and put them all into practice at the same time! Better to get a couple of things done properly than dozens done badly.

Anyway my heartfelt thanks for attending please come againin 2010.

Have an ever more prosperous year