Increasingly, solo dental practice owners have been feeling the emotional, financial and health pressures of running a business with continuously escalating overhead costs, shortage of staff, and increased competition from large dental service organizations with whom they cannot compete in terms of wages, benefits and marketing.  

As I see it, solo dental practice owners have 2 options:

1) continue to struggle, destroy their health and their bodies in the desperate attempt to stay afloat and cover their personal and business expenses 

2) embark on an intentional plan to grow their practice to $6 million in revenue which will concurrently solve multiple challenges.  Let’s explore this option:   

• Become large enough to be to compete in terms of marketing dollars, benefits, and recruitment with the Dental Service Organizations.
• Be able to have increased margin to better weather escalating costs.
• Be able to convert their income from majority active income to majority passive income, thus giving them the flexibility to reduce or even eliminate their clinical hours, reducing the massive pressure and harm to their bodies and their health. Doing so while doubling or tripling their take home income.
• Significantly increase the sale price of their practice thus securing a more financially stable retirement.

Sound too good to be true?  It’s not. I’ve seen this occur countless times with colleagues that I know who have worked with the same management company that I have.  Furthermore, not only did I do this with my first solo practice (on pace to gross over $7 million this year) but have done 2 additional new startups in the last 8 years. One will gross over $4 million this year, the other over $3 million. Both startups will cross the $6 million threshold in the next 3-5 years. 

Am I unique? Are the other dentists that I know who have done this unique? No.  It’s formulaic.  You follow the formula and the processes, and the result comes about.  What does it entail?  I’ve identified 9 Key Elements that create this result:

1. Mindset Shift/Focus on Health

• The foundation/starting point to the transformation is mindset. Embark on a concerted, intentional effort to shift into a growth mindset. Focus on learning/growing and changing your paradigms and beliefs.
• Build habits that focus on your physical, mental, emotional, and cognitive health. Balance is key

2. Goal Setting

• Set Personal and Financial Goals: 10-year, 3-year, 1 year
• Have a clear vision of the life you want to have 10 years from now
• Set quarterly rocks/goals that move you in the direction of your goals.
• Ensure you set goals for every domain of life: physical, emotional, growth, relationships, professional, health, financial, etc.

3. Math

• There are 3-4 formulas that form the basis of your growth and the accomplishment of the goal. That’s it. It’s math.  You figure out the numbers based on the formulas and just make the investments/take action.  That’s it.
• These formulas will guide you towards what investments you need to make in terms of Marketing, Human Capital, Capital Investments and Financing Needs.
• Annual projections are key to keep you moving towards your goals. Make projections based on goals.  Projections are not a one-time deal that your accountant did for you to get your financing at the start.  They must be done annually.

4. New Patients

• New Patients are the lifeblood and the most important metric in achieving growth. Understanding how to acquire them, book them, retain them is foundational.  You cannot grow if you don’t significantly increase your new patients.

5. Average Revenue per Patient

• This metric reflects the effectiveness of your office in case acceptance. Tracking, training and tweaking is key to drive up the revenue per patient you derive.

6. Boosting Team Productivity

• Most dentists grossly underinvest in training team members on boosting productivity. Most offices just invest in CE.  There is often minimal to no correlation between taking dental CE and increased productivity.
• Tracking hourly production, booking rates, and various other metrics and coaching based on these results is key. Whatever you track improves.  Very few dentists actively track different metrics.  They just rely on data from practice management software that is both inadequate and often inaccurate.  Active tracking AND regular review are key.

7. Culture

• You must be actively engaged in improving workplace culture. Productivity and retention are directly correlated to the quality of the culture

8. Recruitment

• To grow, you must have an active, intentional and ongoing recruitment program to ensure you are able to hire quickly and effective candidates for the positions that you will need to grow. Throwing an ad on Indeed every time you need a new hire is not sufficient.

9. Systems and Processes

• Your growth and long-term success will depend on creating effective systems and processes for EVERYTHING. The part most practices miss is the DOCUMENTATION of these processes AND the necessity for ongoing training/reminders/audits of these processes to ensure they are working as they should. 

By working on these 9 key things, you can grow your practice and change your life.