CE Zoom

Category: Practice Growth

  • How Two Women Built an International CE Platform from Nearly Nothing

    How Two Women Built an International CE Platform from Nearly Nothing

    Navigating the difficulties of establishing a women-owned and operated tech startup.

    Building CE Zoom from the ground up, co-founders Sarah Thiel & Katrinna Jackson, faced many mountains to establish themselves and find success.

    Lack of Funding and Investment

    Women-led tech startups are often overlooked for funding and investment opportunities, leading to difficulty in scaling their business.

    While venture capital funding overall has surged in recent years, the numbers haven’t leapt forward for female founders at the same pace. In 2022, companies founded solely by women garnered just 2% of the total capital invested in venture-backed startups in the U.S. 1

    Sarah pitched CE Zoom numerous times in the last 8 years. It takes an incredible amount of time and resources to prepare to meet with investors, only to have deals fall through.

    When you’re focused on finding investors, you’re not focused on the day-to-day of building your business, which could potentially set it back. With no funding and investment but sheer tenacity, CE Zoom was built on a shoestring budget to become an incredible platform.

    Balancing Work and Family Life

    Women in business often face the challenge of balancing their careers and personal lives, especially when they are also mothers. There are eight women who operate CE Zoom, five of whom are mothers. In describing this balancing act, Sarah says, “Having to be ‘on’ all the time, whether I’m in mom mode or CEO mode, is equally challenging and exhausting.”

    Building a strong team provides additional support when one aspect of life requires more attention. Honestly, there is no work/life balance. It’s all juggling.

    The CE Zoom team recognized the difficulty of juggling career and family responsibilities and have accounted for the needed flexibility and help each other keep all the balls in the air.

    Building a Support Network

    A support network can influence every aspect of a startup. Strong team members, people that can make introductions, cheerleaders, and sounding boards are all part of a support network.

    As a small-town girl living in a lonely world, Sarah had to go out and hustle. She went to every possible conference and endlessly networked. She talked to anyone that would listen. During this early phase, Sarah met her fan club – people who support her ideas, give critical feedback, and are loyal mentors.

    Often, Sarah struggled to be taken seriously. As she built her support network, she was able to utilize her connections to gain traction in an industry where she was unknown. Her support network has been pivotal in opening doors for CE Zoom. The hustle continued for years until one day, it seemed like the entire country knew what CE Zoom was.

    By persevering in the face of rejection, building a supportive team, and connecting with a respected support network, CE Zoom turned challenges into opportunities for growth and success. Finally reaching the peak and looking out to enjoy the beautiful view.

    Schedule a call if you’d like to see what we’ve built: [email protected].

    1 PitchBook. (2023. February 1). US VC Female Founders Dashboard. https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/the-vc-female-founders-dashboard

  • How to Offer In-House CE

    How to Offer In-House CE

    Standardize your office processes and knowledge throughout all your practices.

    Educating your staff, especially within DSOs and large group practices, can be more effective than relying on outdated dental association meetings to provide the needed CE and training. Internal training allows you to offer your staff the required education and standardize your office processes and knowledge throughout all your practices.

    If you’ve started the process for offering CE, you probably realized quickly that it takes a lot of work to become an Approved Provider. The process may seem daunting and not worth the effort.

    Why do you pay thousands of dollars for your staff to attend an out-of-town conference? For one, they need the CE for their license renewal. Secondly, you do it because you hope they will return with knowledge and increase the net profit of your office – because we know that education sells.

    If you invest in your staff’s education, they can educate your patients on the correct care and services needed, which in turn increases your practice’s revenue. If your staff doesn’t understand why a service is needed, then they can’t effectively explain it to your patients. This flow of education increases the trust and the relationship between patients and your staff.

    By offering your CE in-house, you can bring speakers and trainers directly to your offices. If you are an expert in your field, you can provide the CE and train your own staff. We can help you become an Approved Provider so you can educate your own staff and offer the required CE your staff needs.

    CE Zoom makes offering CE simple by eliminating the time, effort, and paperwork required. CE Zoom has done the work to become a recognized CE Provider in accordance with AGD-PACE. By working with us as a Joint Program Provider, we walk you through the red tape and help simplify the process to offer your training. We make sure your education follows the AGD-PACE standards and guidelines.

    Additionally, with our state-of-the-art system, we manage the courses, registration, surveys, and other details all the way through the digital CE certificate distribution. With CE Zoom’s state-specific CE Tracker, we make sure the courses your staff is taking will count towards their license renewal. You can also view your staff’s training completion and what courses are still required.

    We take the misery out of the Approved Provider process and allow you to focus on providing courses and training that are aligned with your vision and make your practices more profitable. We do all the heavy lifting so that you don’t have to.

    Don’t worry about how to offer CE, instead let’s decide when. Schedule with CE Zoom to get started.

    For more information, contact [email protected].

  • All Your CE in One Place

    All Your CE in One Place

    Running a successful dental practice is nearly impossible for one person to do alone. Hiring experts in specific areas and setting up processes and systems are crucial to productively run a practice. Once a process is established, opening another office becomes streamlined. Find key players, put systems in place, grow your business, repeat.

    An area often ignored is making sure your key players remain key players by keeping their licenses in good standing. Without a license, they can’t produce. Many companies and offices provide CE or a stipend for their staff to facilitate license compliance. With no system in place, state rules for each professional’s license type could be misunderstood, therefore causing a key player to fail an audit.

    Let’s use payroll as an example. As an employer, you have a responsibility to ensure your staff is paid for their work. You also have to ensure your employee payroll meets all the requirements for proper calculations including accurate deductions, appropriate payment for hours worked and other considerations such as voluntary deductions when applicable. That’s a lot of information to keep track of using a manual payroll process. I don’t know any employer who does this manually. Why waste valuable time when there are multiple systems that can do this for you? Just like the ease of a payroll system, CE Zoom manages CE and license compliance for your entire staff.

    We’ve surveyed thousands of dental professionals and the top 3 concerns we hear are:

    1. Difficulty understanding each state’s licensing requirements
    2. Finding necessary CE courses for license renewal
    3. High cost of CE

    CE Zoom solves all 3 of these concerns in one simple program.

    The CE requirements required for each profession and license vary significantly from state to state. For example, most professionals understand that AGD-PACE and ADA CERP are approved in all 50 states. However, a common misconception is if the CE Provider is approved then the course will count towards CE. This isn’t always the case. Some states don’t allow self-help or business courses or limit the hours that count toward CE. Several states require mandatory courses by state-approved presenters for license renewal. For example, New York requires a state-approved infection control course that can only be given by a state-approved presenter.

    CE Zoom provides all the required CE courses in one location. There is no need to scour websites or travel to conferences looking for the right CE. As for cost, a dental professional can get all CE through CE Zoom’s Your Total Package for a low annual fee.

    Navigating the required continuing education can be complex. CE Zoom is here to simplify it. We’ve done the research, we track licenses with precision, and we provide every course professionals need to renew. One place. One price. No joke.

    For more information, contact [email protected].