Episode 182 – Are You Going To Sell That: Part 1

“Why are you selling? You might be right on the cusp of a really valuable practice.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

I’ve been talking to a lot of dentists in their mid 30s and 40s who are selling their practices. Now it makes sense for people my age to be selling our practices – we are ready for retirement – but it’s concerning to me that we’re seeing this trend of younger dentists selling. I know they are not getting the value their practices merit.

When they talk to me about their reasons for selling, this is what I’m hearing:

• I’m burned out
• I have a physical problem that is keeping me from practicing clinically
• I’m worried about missing out on this opportunity to sell
• I love clinical, but I’m struggling with my business

These reasons are so tragic to me, because the answer to these is “I’m going to sell my practice.” The sad truth is if you’re selling for any of these reasons you are not getting the value out of your practice that you should.

Selling shouldn’t be the answer. All these problems have workable solutions. There are ways to build a profitable business, maximize your practice value, and sell at a time that gives you the financial security you deserve. The problem is, most doctors don’t know they have options.

I want to see every independent dentist successful. I know with the right effort, thought process, and coaching you can increase your value year over year, no matter your circumstances, so you can get the value from your practice that will support your future.

So today I am starting a series on the right time to sell your dental practice by exploring:

• Why you want to sell your practice
• What your options are
• Ideas to increase the value of your business

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:00
Hi, Doctor. Regan Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else? That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years, PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Dr. Bruce Baird 0:47
Most dentists were engineers, you know we’d like everything has to be step by step by step by step and that dentist is does a beautiful job clinically because everything has to be done in a sequence and the problem is, is that about 80% of their patients are really not engineers. Hello, everyone. This is Dr. Bruce B. Baird and you’re listening to the Productive Dentist Podcast in this podcast, I will give you everything that I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry working with 1000s of dentists. I’ll tell you it’s not that my way is the only way, it’s just one that has worked extremely well for me and I’d love to share that with you so you too can enjoy the choices and lifestyle the productivity allows, more time for things you love, increased pay, better team relationships, and lowered stress. Let’s get into it with this week’s episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast and today, um, I’ve been hearing a lot of you know, a lot of things and I’ve talked to you guys about it in the past but you know, are you ready to sell your practice? Is that is that the case? I mean, I see doctors in their 30s mid 30s selling their practice, and I see doctors obviously my age selling their practice but why, why are you wanting to sell the practice? I think that’s something that that you really need to take into account before you to make the sale. Is your practice value where you want it is are you unhappy with dentistry? Is there something about dentistry that’s making you unhappy? And this I’m probably going to do a series on this over the next few podcasts because there are different reasons that that people sell and the first thing that I’m going to going to look at is, you know, what, if you’re unhappy and demonstrate, now that’s a that’s a physical problem, I certainly understand that, you know, you’re you’re going to be ready to sell your practice or or find an opportunity to bring other dentists into your practice, I’ve got a good friend who had a physical problem, and he’s done very well from the business aspect. So if it’s a physical ailment or something going on there, then you should consider the opportunity that you have with your practice of potentially bringing in a couple of associates potential partner along those lines. Now in order to do that, most dentists are going to need help at some point. What, what I like to look at is the thought process of getting your business set up like a real true business and that’s one of the things that Productive Dentist Academy has been doing for 18 years so you know if that’s your, if that’s your rare when we work with several Doc’s who have had some physical ailments that had precluded them from continuing to practice so and then we’ve helped grow their business and and they continue to reap the benefits financially, of having that practice in play. The other option is where a dentist just is unhappy being a dentist, and then I can kind of split that out into two different directions. One is they finally realized when they got out of dental school, that they don’t like doing dentistry. Now there are a lot of dentists out there that just go associate you know. I’ve had multiple associates so I felt like you know, probably just didn’t enjoy the dental part of it didn’t enjoy dentistry. There are other doctors who have come through Productive Dentist Academy who have had, you know, they don’t really like the clinical part, but they love the business part and so they they go off on setting up a practice with other, other dentists where with them, that’s where the small and midsize DSOs come in play where they somebody has two or three practices and that becomes their new mission and, you know, and those are kind of differentiated. I mean, they’re the on the one side, you have the dentist who doesn’t like dentistry the the other that physically can’t do the dentistry and then you have the dentists who really loves dentistry, who really, and is an excellent clinical dentist, but just doesn’t have the business skills or the personal skills to be able to grow that business into what I call a legacy practice. A legacy practice is one like, like I’ve built here in Granbury, Texas, which, you know, everybody in town knows me and everybody in town knows that I’m a dentist and that I’ve had a dental practice and, and that it’s a high-quality dental practice and people you know, people come from all over to come to that practice and for me, as I stepped away from the clinical realm of dentistry, two years ago, the practice has continued to thrive and from a financial standpoint, it’s continued to grow. So that really is something that I’m seeing with dentists that are struggling, they don’t really know what to do and they’re not, you know, they’ve been to kois, they’ve been to spear, they’ve been to panky, they’ve been to, you know, you name it, they’ve been there but, and they have all the clinical skills, I call that, you know, they’re at the dance, but they don’t have anybody to dance with and if I think about that, that, to me is the saddest story, you know, because that’s something that can be fixed so easily and it’s something that I’ve been working with dentists for the last really, almost 30 years, and helping them gain better communication skills. You, many of you have heard me talk about the engineer and the non-engineer and this is a perfect time to insert that into the story because most dentists were engineers, you know, we’d like everything has to be step by step by step by step and that dentist is does a beautiful job clinically, because everything has to be done in a sequence and the problem is, is that about 80% of their patients are really not engineers. They’re just people who, you know, if you, if you give them a reason to like you, and you, you ask the right questions, then that builds that trust in that relationship, where they’ll do the dentistry that you that you recommend, as opposed to not being able to communicate. Now, most dentists if you think about, I’m gonna call it the 80-20 rule. I don’t know if it’s actually that, but let’s just say there’s 20% of your patients are engineers, and you speak engineer, because you’re a dentist, well, you’re going to have about one out of five of your patients who you communicate great with, and you think, “Wow, I love dentistry,” and then you’re gonna have the other 80%, who you go, “Oh my gosh, I don’t feel like,” you know, we keep educating, we keep teaching, we keep giving them all the information that they truly don’t even want. What they really want is to have somebody that they know and like to be their dentist, and they’re gonna trust you to do the right dentistry but we can’t do that, because we’re an engineer. So we have to teach you every step of what we’re doing and explain and that’s when you see that patient glasto, and they don’t even, you know, verbal vomit, whatever you want to call it, we just keep talking. That, to me is the most frustrating. And so, on the one hand, if I could teach an engineer, to be a non-engineer, to ask questions, to find out personal things about a patient, find out you know, where they live, and you know, all the things that I’ve talked about in the past through the Productive Dentist Podcast. If I can do that, then do I really want to sell my practice because what you’re gonna find is if you’re a dentist who’s, who loves dentistry, but is struggling in their business, that’s when you need to find a coach. That’s when you, you, you you know, you can you can solve a lot of your problems by finding the right coach and the right team to coaching because I promise you, you’re right on the cusp of having an absolutely incredible business that you’re absolutely going to love. I noticed is true when I opened up Granberry Dental Center it was the flip flop. It was I tend to be more like a non-engineer when I’m talking to patients but I had a nuclear power plant that was being built here with 16,000 employees and 80% of my patients were engineers and I just wanted to just, you know, I want to pull my hair out, I literally had to learn to speak engineer, in order for me to build a successful business and you know what I’ve read every book, I did everything I could, I had coaches, I had everything and I finally feel like, I know, an engineer needs to have all the information, they need to have a checklist before they can move forward, but what I want you to know is that 80% of your patients really don’t need that and so that’s another area where Productive Dentist Academy really has, when we’ve dedicated 18 years to teach in the non-engineer to speak, the engineer to speak non-engineer. I mean, we really have worked hard at that and today, Productive Dentist Academy has changed our focus a little bit, we’ve always, we’re always going to continue to teach communication skills but what we’re doing now is, and we’ve always taught, let me help you increase your productivity per hour and that’s what many of you have seen us talking about over and over and over again. and we know how to do that and that’s actually that’s fairly easy. Now, we’ve turned our focus into not just increasing your productivity, but increasing the practice value, meaning your EBITA. So, you know, many people, we have doctors coming to us, probably 15 offers a month, come to Productive Dentist Academy, meaning that dentist has gotten an offer from a DSO, or gotten an offer that somebody wants to buy their practice and most of the time a DSO is going to come in and look at all of your information, and we willingly give them everything and we say, “Here’s my tax returns, here’s all of our books, here’s everything,” and they tell you what your EBITA happens, and then they make an offer, we’re gonna give you a 5x multiple of your EBITA, which, that’s great, you know, if the evidence correct and that’s something I’m going to talk about in the next, in the next podcast will be due in part two of this, because you really need to be ready. The other thing is, what age are you? Are you ready to get out of dentistry or you’re selling because it’s retirement time? You’ve done well financially and you want to, you want to reap the benefits of that, right? Are you, are you worried you’re gonna miss out on the on the DSO, you know, Firestorm that’s happening? You’re not going to miss out. So, so are you just tired, and you’re done? Well, I can’t help people who are tired and are done but what I can do is I can help people who are who are looking to maximize the value of their investment that they’ve made. Sometimes that’s 10 years, sometimes that’s 40 years and there’s nothing sadder and we see these cash on a regular basis, but somebody has worked their entire career and they’ve put away very little money and they find out that their practice is worth 400,000 or 500 and that’s not enough to take care of their retirement needs and so they end up working longer, and they work longer, and they just keep adding year after year without really any intention. They just don’t know what to do, you know, they’re thinking, “Well, I really would like to make this, you know, be able to retire,” but that’s why 95% of dentists out there don’t even retire at their pre-retirement income. They, you know, they have trouble living at the same level that they lived at, while they were practicing dentistry and, you know, that’s something that is it’s really tragic. and the other part that’s very sad is it’s easily fixable and when I say easily fixable, you know, nothing, nothing. Nothing happens without effort, okay, but with the right amount of effort with the right thought process, with the right coaching with the right team, you can concentrate on doing your dentistry, and your value is going to continue to increase year over year over a year. So you know, I’m going to the next part of this, I’m going to talk specifically about EBITA and how we grow EBITA and how that works and whether you’re ready to sell or not sell, please reach out to us and we can give you some ideas to increase the value of your business because that ultimately when when the time runs out in your career, and it does run out it just kind of happens quickly. You want to be poised in position to win Benefits maximum value for your business, maximum value for your team members that you’re going to be leaving behind. All of these things are critically important. So, again, thank you guys for voting us the number three podcast out of the 69 Dental podcasts that are out there. Please tell your friends about the Productive Dentist Podcast and I look forward to next time. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe, pass it along to a friend. Give us a like on iTunes and Spotify or drop me an email at podcast at productive dentist comm don’t forget to check out other podcasts from the Productive Dentist Academy of productivedentistpodcast.com Join me again next week for another episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast