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I suspect that this week all of us will take a moment to think back to the stay at home announcement from Boris Johnson on the Monday evening of the 23rd of March 2020 and the way in which we navigated that very first week of lockdown.
Many of you know that I do keep a daily journal and so it was interesting to spend a few minutes reviewing my diary entries for that week, to be reminded of the relative naivety with which we approached the coming storm.
I still wonder why it was that other people, notably professional advisors and suppliers, didn't take to the social media stage straightaway?
On the morning of Monday, the 23rd of March, I connected with Philippa Goodwin and Rachel Barrow via Zoom and we had a conversation about how best we could support our own clients as well as the wider Dental Community.
The first thing we did was to drop our fees by 66% - a gesture to clients who we knew would be under pressure.
The second was, that Monday, we began our lunchtime briefings on Facebook Live and, after a few hasty messages I was able to spend just 30 minutes discussing the events of the day with Simon Thackeray, Alan Suggett and Lee Muta (Simon from the perspective of running his own Dental Practice in Mansfield, Alan and Lee as specialist dental accountants).
We were staggered to find that 900 people joined the broadcast and it just went from there.
The next day I chatted to Sarah Buxton, who answered questions live on furlough - remember furlough!
Wednesday James Hamill about the impact that lockdown was likely to have on the supply chain. His words now seem very prophetic.
Thursday back with Simon Thackeray, who did a great job of sharing with us the confusion created by instructions from the CDO that had thrown mixed practices back in to indecision.
Friday, Mark Topley on team wellbeing whilst staying at home.
And so that first week drew to a close - and the audience numbers just climbed and climbed.
Little did I realise that the next 12 weeks would change my life, and my career.
On an average day we welcomed 3,000 people to the lunchtime briefing - there were two occasions when we hit 10,000 (cue frantic upgrading of our Zoom capacity).
To top that all - we then began The Business Confidence Forum webinars every Thursday evening - a "Blankety Blank" panel of dental KOLs, who started meeting at 19:00, we took a break at 20:00 to hand clap for the NHS on our doorsteps - and then back on to answer questions until 21:00. Audiences of 1,000+ every week.
The Business Confidence Forum carried on for nearly 2 years and is now revived live at the BDIA Showcase each year, with the help of ADAM and the show organisers.
We certainly made friendships and memories during those first weeks of lockdown - can anybody recall Alan Suggett playing his ukelele with a rendition of "The Wuhan Blues"?
Last week I presented a Practice Plan workshop in Stansted and one of the delegates came over to thank me for those lunchtime briefings - I suspect that will still happen for the rest of my career.
Looking back - tough tmes - but we came together as a community and we did weather the storm.
Bear that in mind as we listen to the Spring Budget and navigate the storms ahead.
Maybe one day, one of my grandchildren will ask me "what did you do in Covid Grandpa?"
"Something good" - will be the answer.
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