Articles

My practice was a low - level suburban practice, so I didn’t anticipate a lot of interest. However, we had 13 interested parties come through to view the practice within a week or so. The new owners are a lovely couple, a husband and wife who are both dentists. I am still working for them two days a week. They are able to offer a number of things, which I hadn’t been prepared to do. I’m lucky as they have been extremely easy to work with. If I have a problem I can talk to them about it, and they are happy for me to do the two days. I’m very busy on those days – I often think I work harder on those two days than I did before I sold the practice!

There is a famous Aesop’s fable about a race between a tortoise and a hare. The race starts and the hare races ahead and soon leaves the tortoise far behind. Confident of winning, the hare takes a nap towards the end of the race and when he awakens, he finds that he has lost the race.

There is a school of thought that in a price negotiation, the buyer should point out every fault, weaknesses, minor flaw and imperfection of the acquisition and talk down any strengths in order to justify giving the vendor a lower than expected price.

As a dental practice business broker, my job is to represent the vendor’s interests in a business sale and get them the best possible price and terms in a transaction. Knowing this, some buyers feel that it isn’t in their interests to have a broker like me involved in their sale, as my sole function is to act for the other side. What these buyers don’t realise is that by faithfully representing the vendor in a practice sale, I also bring many benefits to the buyer that would not be there if the vendor was acting alone.

Selling really worked out well for me. It has been 11 months since surgery and my hand is almost recovered; it is functional, but it will take a bit longer to return to its normal strength. If I had been practicing dentistry in the way I was before the surgery, I may have caused more damage long term – a chance that I didn’t want to take. For me, it’s not about proving anything to anyone, it’s about making the best choice you have at the time with the info you have and not looking back and having any regrets.

I don’t think it is a secret that the name you give your dental practice business can have a big impact on its fortunes. Marketing experts will tell you that the name a business chooses will affect how memorable it is for current and potential clients, how quickly it will come up in Google searches and how easy it will be for you  to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Most dental practices believe that keeping about a month’s worth of consumables in their cupboards at any one time is just about right. This is generally seen as a safe buffer of stock, where you don’t feel like you are going to run out of anything and you aren’t creating an unnecessary drain on short-term profitability and cash on hand.

If I had any regrets, it would be that I wish I had taken more holidays earlier on. I think I could have, I just didn’t know how to do it at the time. I wouldn’t have sweated the small stuff. One of the things my accountant said resonates with me – “you get to a certain point in life where you have everything except time.” People seem to live life back to front. When you are young, and the kids needed us more we are all probably guilty of working too much. We are trying to make up for that now.

In Greek mythology, the story of Icarus illustrates the folly of aiming too high.

In May 2000, a relatively unknown chef called Anthony Bourdain decided that he was going to change careers and not run kitchens in New York City anymore. As a final goodbye to his previous career, he wrote a book revealing some things that he felt restaurant patrons should know. The book was called “Kitchen Confidential”; it would become a worldwide best seller and launch his second career as a famous food and travel journalist.