Acquiring a dental practice can happen in a variety of ways. Many recent grads take the path of intrapreneurship; instead of taking on the beast of practice ownership alone, they work alongside other dentists as business partners. Then there’s the young, ambitious entrepreneurial type—like the young Glenn—who focuses on starting a dental practice right after graduating. Last but not least, some dentists are later in their careers but have decided they want to own a business.
No matter how you come to owning a dental practice, you must remember some essential dental practice management tips to keep things running smoothly. Dental school only taught us the tip of the iceberg when it comes to running a business, and it’s better to avoid learning things the hard way. That’s why, for this week’s article, I want to give you four pieces of new dental practice owner advice during your first-year dental practice ownership journey.
1. Your awesome ideas might get shut down by your (more seasoned) business partners.
Young entrepreneurs starting a dental practice always come up with great new ideas. Whether we’ve picked something up from a CE course, listened to a podcast, or read a dental practice startup guide, making changes to our businesses is one of the most exciting things we can do.
However, it’s not easy when you’re not calling all the shots. In other words, you may fall into the trap of others circumventing your authority. This is especially true when you’re the new guy, coming into an established practice bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with plenty of new things to say. Working with associate dentists means many varying opinions are involved in most decisions.
Enrolling those seasoned folks around you into trying your new ideas when they already have something working for them takes effort. It takes convincing to persuade them to change lanes or adjust their habits, tactics, etc. Even if you’ve owned a practice in the past and you’re not brand-new out of dental school, you’re still the new guy.
The best way to get your ideas heard—a crucial piece of new dental practice owner advice—is to first look for pain points of your colleagues. Perhaps you see that one of the doctors has a pile of AR collections, and money is constantly overdue. With their AR out of whack, it’s hard for them to pay expenses for overhead, staff, etc. Without collecting money, they can’t dish it out. When they’re desperate to fix their problem, they’re more likely to listen to potential solutions.
However, instead of becoming the sole solution person, start a discussion. Address that problem with the team and see if they can develop a plan. Anything they suggest themselves will mean they inherently have much more buy-in to take on the problem you’ve brought up. They’ve now involved themselves in the issue you’ve presented.
2. You must focus on assembling a team and finding systems that work with them before you make leaps.
When we enter a new practice, it’s easy to get eager to start making changes and aim for immediate results. But as any dental practice startup guide will tell you, you need to buckle down and set yourself up for long-term growth. It will be your people and your systems that will keep your business sustainable.
There’s so much pressure in performing during your first-year dental practice ownership, but it’s essential to strengthen your foundation before you start making significant strides on other fronts. In other words, you need to steady your feet before making steps.
This means more than hiring the right team members. It means building relationships with those team members—one of the most valuable dental practice management tips you’ll receive. Half the battle of managing a dental staff is the personal component. You can be great with numbers or even pay them twice as much as the practice down the street, but—if they feel like a number and aren’t happy—they may not stick around or do their best work. Take time to chit-chat with them, get to know them, and get to know what makes them tick. That’s how you unlock a high-performing staff.
While we’re on that note, remember to build relationships with your patients. It might be hard for them to exchange idle chit-chat with your fingers in their mouths, but you can still take action to make them feel cared about. After all, your relationship with them is what’ll keep them around. They don’t know the difference between the dentistry you offer and the dentistry offered by another practice—except for the prices. They’re much more likely to stick around if they feel fond of you.
3. Expect expenses.
Making investments during first-year dental practice ownership is like buying a new car. You’re investing a lot of capital into getting this car, but you expect that car to last less than twenty years. You may not even expect it to last ten years. But you’re comfortable forking over $70,000 for that vehicle all while knowing you will be doing that same thing less than ten years from now.
With dentistry, we often put so much pressure on ourselves to make something last a lifetime—whether it’s a marketing campaign, a piece of equipment, or a patient’s loyalty—especially when we’re spending lots of money for it. But, the truth is, we’re going to make a lot of investments for things that will be temporary. This is particularly true when starting a dental practice from scratch.
Patients will come and go, especially when you do higher-end procedures that take significant investments—whether it be implants, dentures, cosmetics, etc. There will be many investments that won’t be investments for something long-term. But expenses in dentistry often aren’t stocks you hold onto, sitting and holding, watching them compound like a snowball. The sooner you understand that, the better.
4. Use morning huddles to your advantage.
One of the most crucial dental practice management tips involves your morning huddles. Pick the KPIs that will drive your practice—hygiene appointments, case acceptance rates, and the other must-dos that drive your practice—and focus on those during your morning huddles. Lockdown on what you offer: sealants, straightforward implants, Invisalign, etc., and treat those metrics like they’re the lowest-hanging fruit.
Get your team into a habit of tackling them consistently, and they’ll get baked into your day-to-day strategies until you’re always on track toward your objectives. At the end of each week (or during each quarterly meeting), discuss how many Invisalign appointments were made, how many implants you did, how many 5-star Google reviews you got, and so on. From there, the flywheel will keep spinning.
But for those first few spins of the flywheel, you must put your energy into the right place—whether your focus is personnel-driven, metrics-driven, and so on. You need to build a foundation to keep building off of—metrics can be the gifts that keep giving. This advice for new dental practice owners can make or break your success.
I wish I had known these four dental practice management tips during my first year of practice ownership.
Learning the ins and outs of starting a dental practice is challenging. But, when it comes to owning a dental practice, we need to be able to remember more than the clinical stuff. Take it from me, as a seasoned pro, that remembering these four essential pieces of new dental practice owner advice will keep you in a better spot than where I was during my first-year dental practice ownership journey.
I run a community of dental professionals who can give you wisdom about running a dental practice. So, join the Nifty Thrifty Dentists Facebook group and reach out! People from all across the globe will be happy to let you in on their two cents.