Articles

The stakes are high in practice sale transactions.  Financially, a practice usually sells for amounts in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. There are also important non-financial qualitative aspects of the deal, like transferring staff, patient relationships and a reputation that has been built over decades, and post-sale work commitments for the vendor that can last from 6 months to 5 years. The transaction itself is usually documented with three or four legal contracts (1. a business sale agreement, 2. a premises lease contract or premises sale contract, 3. a work contract for the vendor post sale, and 4. a partnership/associateship agreement if there are equity partners/associates). With all of this at stake, you would think that a buyer or vendor would want to make sure that they get appropriate legal representation, to ensure that they get what has been promised to them and to protect themselves from future risk.

It’s not uncommon for many women to put their own careers on hold while their children are young and their spouses are building their own business/career. This is the story of Laurie Koranski, a dentist’s wife and former practice owner, who got a second chance at a career she is passionate about, when she and her husband sold their busy Jimboomba practice.

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.