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Once upon a time, buying a dental practice was a rite of passage that almost all dentist graduates went through after a few short years in the workforce. In more recent years however, statistics have shown that being an employee/contractor/non-owner dentist for life is a growing choice for dental graduates. There are many reasons that people give for this trend, including:

In 2014 I became ill, a situation that I had not previously had to contend with. Whilst in hospital, I had time to reflect on 34 years of practice ownership, and the realisation that the effects of getting older could consequently find me more likely to find myself unable to work. It made me consider the possibility of at least easing back and enjoying a little more of life, before I reached the point of no longer enjoying my work.

There comes a time for most successful practice owners when they get to a level of comfort with their first practice, and start to contemplate starting or buying a second practice.

"One of the main mistakes I see practice owners make is that they let a career worth of fatigue come into the practice a year or two before they sell. So, even though their practice has been a fantastic business, none of that history matters."

Speaking from experience, I personally think it is 100% better owning a practice in a regional town than buying a practice in Sydney. And it is cheaper! I love my practice and living here. I tell my patients- and everyone I can - that I am living the dream!

Retirement is often thought of as an event, a date on the calendar, a threshold that you cross one day into a new phase of life. Making a person’s profession or retirement an “all in or all out” proposition like this makes it a big deal. It means that people looking at retirement need to:

I had been planning my retirement for a long time. There were lots of things going on in my life and I thought early retirement might be an option. I went to see my accountant one day, when I was around 55, and he said, “OK, I guess you want to retire”. There was enough in there for me to retire at that stage, so I thought – ah, I guess so, I’ll start looking.

“Acting like an ostrich with its head in the sand” has become a well-known metaphor for human avoidance behaviour. It is used describe a person who intentionally ignores facts, hoping that simply denying the existence of a problem will make it go away.

For many contracted dentists, their planned path to ownership involves the buy-in or buy-out of the practice they are already working in. It should be the ideal buy-in scenario… They have effectively taken the practice for the equivalent of a test drive and know it inside-out, so the purchase involves far less risk than buying any other practice. They already know, hopefully get on with, and are accepted by patients and staff; they know the quality of the equipment, and there is a mutual respect with the vendor.

There comes a time in every successful dental practice owner’s career when they consider opening another branch, or buying another practice. This juncture represents a possible turning point in their personal fortune. It introduces an opportunity to grow their wealth by expanding the scale and scope of their business interests and, at the same time, it also introduces new complexities and risks into their life, which have the potential to bring down what they have built thus far.