As a former healthcare banker that worked specifically with privately owned dental practices, I can honestly say that 85-90% of all the dentists I worked with had no clue how to manage a business or general financing. This is not their fault. They paid good money and lots of it to learn how to be a dentist. It is truly unfortunate that probably, 95% of the dental schools provide no curriculum on owning a practice.
Compound that with high school and under-graduate curriculum that do not provide any insight into personal finances. You have a disaster waiting to happen. It is no wonder that so many of the practices we work with are highly leveraged, choking on high interest rate loans both personally and professionally, have never prepared a budget, have little knowledge of how they are performing against dental benchmarks of high performing practices and are stressed out about their scheduling when they have gaps.
They hire bookkeepers and accountants to handle their books and prepare their taxes. What they don’t do is sit down with them quarterly, semi-annually or even annually to understand what they are looking at and what the numbers mean let alone how to effect their bottom line.
If you see yourself in the above, take action now. Find a CPA that works specifically with dental practices and knows the benchmarks and will talk to you at least annually about what the numbers mean. Find a banker that knows your industry and can analyze your debt, personal and business, to see where you can consolidate, refinance or pay it off sooner while still allowing room to save for retirement or college for your children. If anything gain understanding of general financing for dental practices
Finally, get a free analysis of your practice from AMP to see where you can improve quickly so you can reduce your stress, enjoy your life and build a retirement future that does not rely solely on the sale of your practice.
