For 20 seasons, HGTV has run a show called “Love it or List it”. A designer and a realtor playfully compete with one another, along with homeowner couples as guests, whose lifestyle requires them to either renovate their existing home or move to another. The designer sets into motion a team of contractors that give the homeowners’ existing home a dramatic makeover, while the realtor takes them to listings that he feels will suit their lifestyle requirements and budget.
Practice Advocate consults with a lot of dentists. Over the 8 years we have been a company (6 of those under the name of The Dental Broker Team), we’ve supported hundreds of colleagues with buying, selling, and creating more freedom in the practices they own. The most common call we get from an associate is how to compete in the marketplace while still being able to “make bank” on their acquisition. The most common call we get from a practice owner is how not to be an owner anymore.
Between those two calls is where there exists tremendous opportunity to redefine a career of sustainability. But most dentists hate the idea of change, fear reinventing a process, and are skeptical that the investment of energy in a strategy or process will yield returns.
Most practice owners have created well-paying jobs for themselves, but they don’t run a business – and there’s nothing wrong with that. It is a great career to truly help people and provide jobs to others that contribute to them having a better life.
To run an effective business means you are creating something that contributes to your freedom. Most dentists I speak to feel trapped or tied down by their team and their patients. In order to change that, it means thinking very differently than all of the other dentists who feel the same way.
There are practices out there that might not sell for the number the owner wants it to sell for. There are practices out there that produce an impressive profit that could be realized for years to come like a pension if certain systems and management were put into place. There are practices out there that have leases with demolition clauses, relocation clauses, or other key factors that severely restrict saleability and value.
What I propose is that before you tell yourself what has to happen for your future to give you more freedom than your present, give yourself permission to define what you WANT to happen. For a moment, forget what the brokers are saying. Forget what your friends are doing. Forget what you think you “have to do” and ask yourself “What do I want?”. Then look at what you have. Do you have a business that COULD run without you now? Or do you have a high paying, highly stressful job, where you are the gatekeeper to all productivity?
Businesses that become self managing first get OPTIMIZED. Then they MAINTAIN that optimization. Most dentists I meet are good at those two steps. After optimization and maintenance, a dentist that has freedom from their business has “scaled” by replacing their role as a manager to focus on the parts of dentistry they love. That last step is the least intuitive and requires an owner to do less if they want to achieve more.
If what you want out of your practice is different from what you have, it likely means you’d benefit from looking at your practice through a different lens. The “business lens” is indeed a different pair of glasses than the “job lens”. And it’s not for most dentists. But for those who want their practices to remain under their ownership and function as a pension that provides them freedom instead of divesting, a conversation of strategy that involves scaling over selling might have merit.
