Articles

It was great to be interviewed by Dental Head Start about how to find and succeed in your first practice. We spoke about the common pitfalls that buyers and new owners can find themselves in and how to avoid them. 

When a practice owner is looking to sell their practice, they will often put off telling their staff about the sale for as long as possible.  There are many reasons for this. Sometimes (often) they won’t want to tell the staff at all until after a deal has been locked in with a buyer.

"I wanted to structure my business so that I had some free time and could get away. Somehow, I convinced myself that the way to get this free time was to grow the practice, but every time I grew the practice, I had bigger overheads that needed to be covered and the business of dentistry relied on me more than before."

Once a dentist has decided that they want to be their own boss and own a dental practice, the next question that they face is “should I buy an existing practice or set one up from scratch?”

In October 2019, a bottle of The Macallan Fine and Rare whisky sold at auction for $US1.9 million, becoming the most expensive bottle of wine or spirit ever auctioned. This whisky was bottled in 1986, after maturing for six decades in European Oak at Macallan's distillery near the River Spey in Scotland. The cask this bottle was from has produced six record-setting bottles, beginning in 1986 when the first one was sold in New York and won the Guinness World Record at the time for "The World's Most Expensive Spirit".

So, you’ve decided to sell your practice and after years of blood, sweat and tears, doing whatever’s necessary to build it into the success it has become, you want to make sure you get top dollar for it.

As a child, I remember my paediatrician worked till his mid-80s; he had a walking stick, he was half asleep during consultations, no mother wanted to bring her child there. I knew I didn’t want to stay too long like him, but my partner in the practice was 9 years older than me and I always thought I would stay on longer than him. Life had other plans for me though.

While almost all buyers will visit a practice before making an offer, there is very little guidance out there on how best to spend your limited time at a site visit.

We are standing at the frontier of one of the greatest changes in the ability for hygienists and oral health therapists to generate wealth in the history of the profession in Australia - and somehow, very few people are talking about it. In mid-2020 the dental board finally agreed to increase hygienists and OHT scope of practice so that they could practice independently to dentists. This was a huge step towards independence as a profession and recognition of value. Only one administrative impediment remains for independence to be complete. Currently, lobbying is underway to grant hygienists and OHTs the ability to have their own provider number - when this happens, so too should the historical reluctance of banks and financiers to lend to hygienists and OHTs wanting to buy a practice. Practice ownership – once a pipe dream for many - is now finally going to be a very real possibility.

Any business is made up of both tangible assets (those that you can see and touch, like equipment, fit-out and furniture) and intangible assets (like goodwill, brand recognition and intellectual property).