Somewhere in my book there’s a line that says you only have to be mediocre to succeed as a practice owner. I wrote it to take the pressure off and help dentists feel a little less stressed.
Dr. Wang read it and got a little competitive, instead.
“I was like, oh, you just have to be mediocre? I can do better than that.”
That’s Dr. Wang in a sentence. 🙂 .
What she wanted
I asked Dr. Wang why she stopped being an associate and she didn’t hesitate with the answer. No one second-guessing her clinical choices.. Her own hours. Her own staff. A management style that created the culture she wanted to be around.
“I would like to have my own office that operates according to my liking.”
She had an end goal before she had a practice to analyze. She didn’t want to be a dentist who buys one office and works in it for the rest of her life. She wanted to be a business owner who happens to be a dentist, and she wanted the first practice to be the launch pad.
The search
She didn’t tour eight practices. She barely toured four. Instead, she sent listings to Tyler and Sapna on the Dental Buyer Advocates team and let them run the preliminary numbers before she spent a Saturday driving to a building she’d have to talk herself out of.
“I didn’t want to go in there without knowing if that practice was really great for me.”
We looked at just the numbers for five practices.. Three or four looked good enough for a visit. Then she walked into the last one: six operatories, a hygienist already in place, a modern build-out, long-term staff, and a seller she hit it off with immediately.
“She’s the coolest seller I’ve ever met.”
No DSO on the other side of the table. Just a retiring dentist who’d built something good and stopped marketing it a few years back.
The fears, named
Here’s what I like about Dr. Wang. She didn’t pretend the fear wasn’t there. She just leaned into the fear and named her questions out loud and got our help.
Could she produce enough? The seller had nearly zero new patients coming in, just recall – is that a deal killer? Would the staff accept her as the new owner? And how to handle a broker pushing meeting the staff to the very last minute before closing, which is not a buyer-friendly way to do things.
With our help, she answered each one. She could do more procedures than the seller. She was willing to work more clinical hours. New patients could be fixed with marketing the seller had simply stopped doing. And the broker part, she handed to Sapna.
“With her help, I feel very comfortable dealing with the broker. She was on point, stayed on top of things, never late on any response.”
That’s most of the job on our side. Reduce the anxiety that comes from being the least experienced person in a negotiation.
The first month
The first two payroll runs surprised her. Not because the staff cost was hidden, but because seeing it on a spreadsheet and watching it leave your bank account are two different experiences. Cash flow was close to even in the first month.
She’d walked in intending to wait at least 30 days before changing the big stuff, which is what we tell every buyer. Then she looked hard at one salaried management role that had made sense when the seller ran two offices and didn’t make sense for one. She talked to an HR contact of ours. She made a hard call to terminate an employee in week four.
“I feel pretty bad about it. But in the end, I have to pivot.”
I was proud of her for making the call on a big change early on. I’d rather a buyer follow the numbers than follow my rule. The rule exists to slow people down, not to stop them from thinking.
My Favorite Part of Dr. Wang’s Story
I asked what she’d say to an associate reading this who doesn’t feel ready.
“There is always fear. There is always doubt. You have to expand yourself and carry that fear moving forward. And then you’re going to fall in love with the person you are becoming.”
She said being an associate is comfortable, and that she has colleagues who never want to own and are great dentists. That’s fine. She just didn’t want to be sixty and thinking she could have done this twenty years earlier.
“If I failed, in the end I won’t have any regrets. That’s my philosophy for life.”
She also said something for the women reading this. She’s almost forty, single, and has had relationships that didn’t work out. Her advice: invest in something tangible. Invest in yourself.
“That’s a great asset. That’s worth it.”
Dr. Wang is stabilizing practice number one right now. Practice number two is already on the whiteboard.
The fear was there throughout the entire process. She took action and bought anyway. She felt better afterwards. That’s usually how it goes.
Dr. Wang worked with Dental Buyer Advocates on her first practice purchase. If you’re an associate who doesn’t feel ready, Season 9 of the Practice Purchased Podcast is about exactly that. Episode 1 is out now. Watch on YouTube: here. Or listen wherever you get podcasts, here.
Want to know where you actually stand? Book a chat with Craig. He’ll give you a straight answer, no pitch: Book a complimentary call, here.
