He Bought a Practice Before Graduation. I Told Him Not To.
Steve Van De Graaff was a D4 when he asked me for help. Eight years later he sold the practice. Here’s what he’d tell you about feeling ready.
In 2016 a fourth-year dental student at Creighton asked me to help him buy a practice.
I tried to talk him out of it. This was before Dental Buyer Advocates existed, and I remember the conversation clearly. I said something like, “Dude, you’re a D4. You don’t know what you don’t know.” Work a year first. Do a residency. Take the traditional pause.
He said, “I’m doing it. Are you going to help me or not?”
So I helped him.
What he bought
Dr. Van De Graaff did the searching and the negotiating during the second half of his fourth year, while he was still in school. He bought a PPO practice in North Augusta, South Carolina, four or five chairs, bread-and-butter dentistry, and moved his family across the country before everything was lined up.
He didn’t have a job history. He didn’t have a year as an associate. What he had was a weekend of business CE in San Antonio during dental school, where he’d rubbed shoulders with people who owned practices and realized what ownership could look like, and a decision that he’d rather do it now than later.
He practiced there for eight years, hit the financial goals he’d set, sold the practice, and moved back near family. Today he coaches dentists through The Lifestyle Practice and co-hosts the podcast of the same name.
What he’d do differently
I asked him on the podcast whether he wished he’d worked somewhere first. He gave me an honest answer: yes, a little. He’d have come into ownership with his eyes wider open. Specifically, he underestimated how hard it is to practice in a low-fee environment. In dental school you do everything for free, so the practice’s fee schedule looked fine to him. It took a year or two of building the patient base before he could drop the insurance plans that were dragging on him.
Then he said the thing I actually want you to hear. In his years of coaching practice owners, he can’t think of one who told him “I got into this too early and it’s causing me problems.” What he hears, over and over, is “I should have done this five years ago.”
I’ve had the same experience. It’s close to universal.
The thing nobody says out loud
Steve was careful to point out that there was nothing special about him. He didn’t have a business background. He wasn’t unusually gifted at any of it. His view is that dentistry is a straightforward industry, other people have already figured out how to buy and run a practice, and you can follow their cookbook. Get the right information and act on it.
What he did have, and what he now looks for in the dentists he coaches, is a certain posture. He can tell within a few minutes of a conversation whether someone is a problem solver or a problem finder. The ones who are going to own are looking for reasons to do it. The ones who aren’t are explaining why $400,000 in student loans makes it impossible, or how the DSOs have ruined everything.
His first year in the practice, he paid off all of his student loans.
How it turned out
If you’re a D3, a D4, or a resident, and you’ve been telling yourself you’ll think about ownership after you’ve worked for a while, I’m not going to tell you Steve’s path is the right one for you. He’d be the first to say the low-fee lesson was tough. But the belief underneath the waiting, is that there’s a point someday in the future where you’ll feel ready. You’ll wait a long time for that day, because it never comes.
The full conversation, including what Steve says is the hardest part of ownership (it isn’t the clinical work), is on the podcast this week. Listen here.
Want to know where to actually look? I’m giving a free live session tomorrow: How to Find a Dental Practice for Sale.
If you’ve stopped waiting and the next question is where to look, that’s what I’m covering Friday, October 2, at noon Mountain (2 p.m. Eastern): where the unlisted practices are, who hears about them first, and what I’d do this week if I were searching.
Free, live, and everyone who registers gets the recording. Save my seat.
