Entrepreneur Chloe Barrett co-founded edtech firm Immersify Education in 2018 to create engaging and effective educational resources for dentistry students.
The Manchester-based scale-up uses AR, animation, expert content, gamification and more to bridge the gap between dentistry’s theoretical and practical elements, and has set its sights on 100,000 users by the end of 2022.
Barrett founded Immersify alongside Maxwell Boardman based on the frustrations she experienced during her own dentistry training, and later while developing a chain of dentistry academies.
We heard about a recent week in Chloe’s life…
Monday
Monday is one of my working from home days. As a business, we’ve decided to take a hybrid approach to work life post-COVID so most, if not all, of the team work from home on a Monday and Friday. This allows the team to have a better work life balance, which I’m a huge advocate for!
My routine doesn’t differ too much from an in-office day, except I have more time to do some exercise. I tend to practice yoga in the morning, walk my dogs at lunchtime, and then try to squeeze in some more exercise in the evening.
In the morning, I make a cup of coffee and then get ready for the day ahead! I’m big on health and nutrition so I make sure I have a pint of water, my vitamins and a mineral shake before getting stuck into work.
To kick start the week, I meet (virtually) with our marketing team to find out what they have planned for the week ahead. It’s actually a really exciting week for the Immersify team as we’re launching a new paid content subscription for dental students, via our popular Immersify Dental platform.
From influencer activity and a social media campaign, to a PR launch, it’s set to be a busy week. After catching up with the marketing team, I meet with some of the development team to make sure we’re ready from a technical point of view for launching tomorrow, and the platform is ready to go live.
The rest of the day is spent catching up on emails and planning my next few days.
Tuesday
Tuesday is launch day – so I am up and out of the house early to travel to the office in Manchester. When I’m going into the office, I make sure my outfit is ready the night before and my lunch is in the fridge already prepared so that my morning is as stress-free as possible.
I also keep my phone on airplane mode throughout the night and I don’t turn it on until I’m ready to leave the house. We work with educational institutions and organisations around the world, meaning I can often receive non-urgent emails and calls throughout the night.
Whenever I drive into the office, I listen to a podcast as they can help spark creative ideas and thought processes. This week, I’m listening to Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO and Jay Shetty’s On Purpose – two of my favourites!
I start the day by catching up with the marketing team to make sure the launch has gone smoothly and ideate activations for over the coming weeks to keep up momentum, before joining some of the departmental meetings which happen every week.
Later in the day, I catch up with our PR agency to find out how the media launch has gone. The full team is in the office today, so we have a lunch celebration.
We have a launch party organised for next week for Immersify Premium – it’s been a labour of love and it has been a long time coming, so we’re celebrating the amazing team who have made this happen! From a doughnut wall to VR games and karaoke, we’re looking forward to a great evening, celebrating some amazing work.
Wednesday
I start the day with an early train down to London. The day has been filled with big client meetings as well as meetings with potential new partners!
After the last two years of being restricted to virtual meetings, it’s so nice to be back out and about meeting people – I find that meetings are much more productive when they’re in person.
Our Immersify Dental platform, which utilises augmented reality, gamification and personalisation to create engaging learning experiences, is already being used by tens of thousands of dentistry students across the UK, US, Australia and India, predominantly via their universities and colleges.
However, we’re looking to grow this number over the coming years so I like to regularly meet with current and potential partners to see how we can help their students make the most of their learning experience.
Thursday
On Thursday I’m back in the office. Having so many meetings on Wednesday meant I was offline for a lot of the day, so I spend a good chunk of my morning catching up on emails before checking in with the team on how the launch of Immersify Premium is being received.
As well as catching up with the team, I have a lot of meetings with global clients, as well as the legal team.
Friday
After my morning yoga, I spend a lot of the morning responding to emails, reviewing documentation, and preparing for the next week ahead.
I’m taking a half-day today as I’m going to the Lakes for a hike over the weekend. I often get asked what I do outside of work to help with my mental wellbeing, and hiking is one of the many things which I feel really helps me reflect on challenges and successes, while helping me to prepare for the future.
