It was early on a Friday morning, and I was sitting at my kitchen table doing something I tell everyone never to do. A few days earlier, a Utah news station had run a story about independent dentists competing against corporate ownership, and I was featured in it. The piece was getting real traction, so […]
It was 4:00 PM on a Thursday. Dr. Zachary was chairside with a patient in his Poulsbo, Washington practice, about thirty minutes away from wrapping up the final appointment of the day and heading home to his wife and two young kids. Then, he heard a voice echo from the front office. “I quit. I’m […]
Craig had a dentist on the phone a few months ago who was convinced the practice he was looking at was going to fall apart the moment the selling doctor walked out the door. The staff had been there forever. The patients loved the guy. Who was going to stay for someone new? The dentist […]
Craig was on a call with a dentist who had found a practice. The numbers looked solid. The location was right. Everything on paper pointed toward yes. Craig asked him the question he asks everyone at that stage. “Assuming the finances check out — what’s your excitement level about this practice, on a scale of […]
Six weeks after having her daughter, a dentist in Los Angeles got a phone call from the owner of the practice where she’d been working for two years. He wanted to know when she was planning to come back. She told him what she’d already told him: once her OB cleared her at eight weeks […]
Brian recently sat down with Steve Van De Graaff on The Lifestyle Practice Podcast to talk about one of the most consequential — and most misunderstood — financial decisions a dentist will make in their career. The episode is called “Waiting to Buy a Dental Practice Is Costing You $1.14 Million.” The title is not […]
Six months into ownership, Colten Butler’s wife looked at him and said: “This has not been worth it.” She wasn’t wrong. Not yet. The insurance companies were still sending payments to the old DSO. His office manager was spending hours on the phone fighting for money that had already been earned. The nest egg he […]
For years, Dr. Jacquelyn Akmakjian worked as an associate — and like many dentists thinking about buying a dental practice, she kept waiting for the right moment. She moved from practice to practice. The clinical work was fine and the patients were fine, but the environments never quite fit. The culture, the way staff talked […]
How Alina True stopped waiting for permission and built something that was finally hers. For years, Alina True figured she’d be an associate forever. That wasn’t a fear. It was just her plan. She was good at her job, she liked the work, and ownership felt like someone else’s ambition. She wasn’t the type to […]
We hear it all the time from dentists sitting on the fence: “I’m just waiting for the right time.” They’re waiting for the kids to be a little older, for the market to stabilize, or for a magical sign from the universe that they are finally “ready” to take the leap into ownership. But if […]
