Episode 126 – Requested Replay: Step Away from the Cliff

“When you’re scared or tired, you don’t do things that are in your best interest.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

It’s been 2 years since COVID shut down the dental industry. I was re-listening to this podcast episode I released during that time and was struck by how much things have changed…and not changed…in the dental industry. 

One thing I am still hearing is that so many dentists want out. They’re scared, tired, frustrated, and burned out. They’re done. 

As I encouraged you to do two years ago,  step back from the edge of the cliff, and take a deep breath. Think a little bit. Think about how long you’ve worked to build your practice. Think about the hard work you’ve put into your business. 

Yes. It might be tempting to sell your practice right now but remember, your dental practice is your most valuable asset. You’re not just selling your business, you’re setting up your retirement. Setting up your future. 

I’m committed to helping independent dentists like you reduce stress and build practices that will give you a life you love today while building value for your future. So join me today for this timely reminder of how to:

• Build value in your practice
• Make the right decision, for the right reason, at the right time
• Get the value you deserve when you do decide it’s time to sell

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Bruce Baird
What I want to talk about today is kind of the concept because I’ve been hearing this a lot. So you’re ready to sell your practice. I’ve heard a lot of dentists going I don’t want to deal with this COVID stuff there. A lot of these guys are in mid-career or even in late-career and they’re saying, hey, I want out, you know, and I think that’s a little premature. I think now if they’re in a position where, you know, if you’re in a position where you could sell your practice and do really well and you have another occupation or you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve got other businesses that are creating revenue, then yeah, I can see where you might do that. Let me give you a different way of thinking right now. What if you decided, okay, I want to get out but I don’t want to have a fire sale, because that’s exactly what’s happening right now, with a glut of practices going out of business with a glut of that the valuation of the dental practice is going to drop and it’s going to drop significantly until it shakes out.

Meaning, you know, I know that 1012 15% of practices are going out of business and that’s what I’ve seen across people are, you can buy used equipment, you can buy a lot of things and there are a lot of opportunistic dentists that are going and buying up these practices at fire-sale prices. Don’t, don’t do that. Step back. Take a deep breath and think a little bit you know, think about, think about how long you’ve worked and how hard you’ve worked to build the kind of practice that you built and yes, it can be frustrating. Yes, it can be tough but think about that. Think about that type of practice that you’ve built and then look at you know what I’m what we’re going to be doing with productive dentist Academy is we’re going to be asking questions, when when when you Thinking about selling your practice if you’re within one to three years of selling your practice, you know, we can come in and help your practice during those two to three years and take you from a valuation of five or 600,000, EBITA to a million to 1,000,003 million for you in a very short period of time two to three years, or even less. I mean, we’ve seen practices double in one year but so let’s find ways to maximize your value.

A lot of dentists think what it comes down to is? Well, we have to, we’ve got to have all brand new equipment, we’ve got to have all this, there’s a few pieces of equipment we may recommend for you but you don’t need a whole brand new office, it comes down to revenue, and it comes down to marketing. So one of the things that PDA has done, productive dentist Academy has done so well over the years, is helping dentists market to the type of procedures and the type of dentistry that they want to do. So you know, if you’re one of these dentists who’ve just been kind of on autopilot, and that’s what happens to a lot of dentists, we just get on autopilot, we’re not really growing and that old saying if you’re not growing, you’re dying, but you know, you’re not growing, you’re just at a plateau, and you’re just sitting there rolling along and the value that you have is the value that you’re going to have but we have been able to help practices go from 678 100,000 to 1.6 to 2 million to 2.5. Now in three years, when you say Well guess what, you have just set up

fully funding, you know, in many cases, your retirement for the future. So, I would just be very hesitant not to just get on the sale mode right now, I think now’s the time to buckle down. Yes, things are going to be different and it certainly is different. When you look around, you look around the country and you see, you know, the closing of the practice, you see revenue going to zero during March and April and the fear of the pandemic but that’s kind of like the fear when the market starts going down and you know, the market goes down, like I told you guys I did back in 2008. You know, I sold all my stock and if I would have hung on to it, I would have tripled my revenue in my retirement plan in just seven years.

Instead, I was scared and so when you’re scared, you do things that may not be in your own best interest. So I want you to step away from the ledge, you know, you’re not gonna, you know, it may be it is time for you to sell, maybe it is and you’ve gotten things and you understand business, and you’ve been able to put revenue aside and you have secondary streams of income and if that’s the case, fantastic, you do what you need to do but when I look at 90% of the dentists, dental practices out there, and the dentist is in the 45 to 60 range, and they’re thinking of selling. It’s like, what kind of value could you increase for yourself in just a short period of time, that could make a huge difference and so that those are the things I look at, and we can help increase your productivity per hour, we can help you with your leadership skills and getting your team on board and with you know, team success.

Not only that, we can even help you find the right buyers at the right time and we have a lot of relationships with dentists all over the country that are looking for good practices to purchase. So these are all the kinds of things that in my mind, need to come to the forefront of your thought process. Not let’s sell when everybody else is selling and, you know, I hope that makes sense.

The other thing that, you know, that I’ve looked at and one of the things that productive dentist is has been, you know, really working on for a long time is this, this scheduling and how do I schedule my patients and I’ve talked about scheduling many times on the podcast and but what you need to remember and I’m gonna re reiterate this. You look at the statistics and come November, December, you got to look out that far and see how you are How does your hygiene schedule look then six months after March six months after April, you know, is it full? Is it not full? Because now’s the time to begin filling that schedule because what you’re going to find is yes, we have a lot of practices that have had record months in the last two months, June and July. Certainly, May and June and many are going to have a third record month this month.

The thing to remember is is this gonna continue and the ADA, they’ve come out with a report that says it’s starting to flatten a little bit. So am I worried about that no matter if I’m doing the right thing? Not if I’m not if I am not, if I’m saying the right things to patients not if I’m reaching out and talking to those patients now, if I’m reaching out and talking to these patients now, and getting them on the schedule and getting them on the books, and then when you are scheduling, what you’re scheduling is the higher production procedures, for now, the biggest advantage there with higher production procedures is your production per hour is going to be higher during this timeframe and also the pent up demand that we’ve seen, you know, that pent up demand for dentistry. If so, they’re also marketing. You know, many dentists though, the ones that we work with, they’ve increased their marketing during this post-COVID time, they’ve actually increased their marketing, and they’re seeing an unbelievable advantage, because many dentists are still running scared, and they’re afraid. They’re actually afraid, excuse me, they’re afraid to, you know, to do much, they’re not marketing. They’re, they’re only seeing certain emergency patients, or they’re really not getting back into their full swing. Well,

a lot of these patients are wondering because I hear it now a lot. Are y’all taking new patients? Are you taking new patients? Well, yes, we are. So there are actually patients looking for dentists that are ready to go and looking for dentists, they were following the protocols for PPE and doing all those things. So there’s a unique opportunity now but I don’t want you just to think, oh, things are back and we’d have three record months, I want you to be proactive and look at your schedule.

Look at the hygiene schedule, look at November look at October. Because when you look at those timeframes, if you’re not fully booked, then start working, start working those names that got off the schedule, and we need to say you know, Mary, you know, or hi Janice, we only have two Hi, Janice or three agents, we used to have five, I know we’re gonna get you in and, and find times to put them in the schedule, you may even have to do which I’m not a big fan of, you may even have to do some expanded hygiene. So you can put in more patients per day, for a short period of time. I do not believe in that long-term. I’m a dentist who believes in relationship building, and I don’t really care. I want my hygienist to be able to spend, you know the full amount of time with the patients and build that great relationship. The scary times are when you know, you’re in this accelerated hygiene.

Yeah, you might be making an extra 400 A day or 500 A day but through the relationships that Mahajan is Bill, I may be producing an extra 5000 a day. So you know, you’re stepping, you know, you’re stepping over dollars, pick up pennies, and, and so you just have to be really, really aware of that. So those are some things that kind of come to the excuse me come to my mind, the things that we need to be aware of and the things that we need to look out for. So, you know, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Don’t jump off the cliff and sell your practice, do whatever it takes to survive this period of time. So anyway, thanks for listening and sign up with us on iTunes and tell your friends about it. Thanks so much. Talk to you next week. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Productive Dentists Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe and pass it along to a friend. Give us a like on iTunes and Spotify or drop me an email at podcast@productivedentistcom don’t forget to check out other podcasts from the productive dentist Academy at productivedentist.com/podcasts/ Join me again next week for another episode of the Productive Dentists Podcast