#358 Trust Your Gut — Ben Barter

<p>Ben Barter has never drilled a tooth in his life, but he's spent more time in dental events than most dentists. He joins Payman as co-founder of Dental Assembly, the latest venture in a career built entirely on getting corporates and suppliers into the same room, first at Open Rooms, then Dental Forum, and now running his own show.</p><p>In between, there's a properly strange detour: a price comparison app for beauty products, built with zero knowledge of beauty or technology, launched into a global pandemic, and later pitched successfully on Dragons Den. Ben talks candidly about what actually convinces an investor to back two people with no relevant experience, and the gut feeling he ignored right before a bus full of a hundred people failed to turn up in Dubai.</p><p>There's a decent amount of shop talk here too, on why fun is a business strategy rather than an afterthought, and why splitting an event by practice size might be the most underrated idea in dental networking right now.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>In This Episode</strong></p><p>00:00:45 – Introduction</p><p>00:01:00 – Life running dental events</p><p>00:09:45 – Getting into events</p><p>00:12:55 – Lessons from Open Rooms</p><p>00:15:45 – Starting Skin during Covid</p><p>00:21:15 – Going on Dragons Den</p><p>00:26:20 – Raising money for the first time</p><p>00:28:30 – Launching Dental Assembly</p><p>00:33:00 – Structuring the events</p><p>00:37:35 – Why fun matters</p><p>00:48:45 – Touchpoints beyond the event</p><p>00:50:55 – Blackbox thinking</p><p>01:01:45 – Favourite resource and book</p><p>01:04:40 – Fantasy dinner party</p><p>01:08:05 – Growing up and life outside events</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>About Ben Barter</strong></p><p>Ben Barter is co-founder of Dental Assembly, an events business connecting dental groups with suppliers, and previously spent nine years at Open Rooms and Dental Forum. He also co-founded Skin, a price comparison app for beauty products that secured investment on Dragons Den, before returning to dental events full time.</p>