Overcoming Pre-Ownership Jitters – Episode #341

The decisions you make prior to purchasing a practice have long-term implications. That’s why knowing which practice model fits your vision is so crucial. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan talks with Dr. Richard Lowe and dental student Andrew Clingan of Shared Practices about pre-ownership angst in today’s economy and how to speed up the path to owning a practice.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, sponsored by Dentist Advisors, a no-commission fiduciary comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, long time friends, Shared Practices, we have Richard and Andrew, which is kind of a cool two-sided coin here, because we have someone who’s experienced, multi-practice owner, quite a few years under his belt, that, of course, being Richard. And then, basically D4 student who’s heavily involved in Shared Practices. I said student, but Richard says pre-owner, and I like that. That’s just a lot cooler. So Richard and Andrew, today we’re talking about getting into ownership, the pros and cons, how to speed up that path of getting into ownership while still maintaining some balance of getting some experience to know what you wanna do and a lot of other things. Such great tips and wisdom. These guys are really helpful to practices, especially getting started all over the country, so my thanks to them for spending their time. And thanks to all of you for joining us today. You’ve got any questions, go to dentistadvisors.com, and you can book a free consultation on there with one of our very friendly dental specific advisors and ask any questions that you would like to. But thanks for being here and enjoy the show everybody.

Announcer:
Consultant advisor, conduct our own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor.

Ryan Isaac:
Hello, Dentist Money Show listeners and friends. I would like to invite you to join us for something new and exciting. It’s something we’ve never done before, but we’re all very excited about this. On June 22, June 22, we are gonna do an episode of the podcast, the Dentist Money Show, but we’re gonna do it live, which we’ve never done before. And again, that’s June 22nd, 2022, which is a Wednesday, by the way. You will be able to tune into the episode as it happens, as we record in the studio at 5:00 PM mountain time, June 22nd, and we’ll be taking questions on air. You can join the conversation and submit questions live, up vote the questions from others that you’d like to hear answered.

Ryan Isaac:
We will also be announcing the release of a brand new Dentist Money service that we have had in the works for years and have been excited about, and have feedback from many, many listeners and clients and dentists around the country for years about this, and we’ve been waiting for it for a long time. So we’ll have more info about that on our live podcast episode, which again is Wednesday, June 22, 5:00 PM mountain time. And to register for the live show and to get the Zoom login instructions, go to dentistadvisors.com/live. That’s dentistadvisors.com/live. It’s gonna be awesome. We’re super excited. We’d love to see you there. Thanks again for joining us. Enjoy the rest of the show.

[music]

Announcer:
This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m Ryan Isaac, your host, and I’m here with long-time friends of the show, the crew at Shared Practices, part of the crew, two of the crew, Shared Practices. You got Richard and Andrew. What’s happening, guys? Thanks for being here. How you guys doing?

Dr. Richard Low:
Hey, Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Andrew Clingan:
What’s going on?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, we are here together and two of the crew. How big is the crew at Shared Practices these days? When I say two of the crew, two of what? How many?

Dr. Richard Low:
So, we actually just had a company-wide meeting last night, which is an ironic, inaccurate statement, because it’s only half of the company. We did a Shared Practices proper, which is the podcast courses consulting company, and there’s 30 people there in that group. And then there’s the Shared Practices group of practices, the denture and implant offices, and then there’s six of us partners who have merged our existing practices together to get the financing. And we just opened four denture and implant offices in the last month. So last month we opened four at once, which was kind of a very exciting but also a questionable decision to open four offices at once.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, we’ll get into that. I wanna hear about this.

Dr. Richard Low:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, very cool. Congrats on all your success. You guys have grown a lot. And for those of you who might not know who you are, let’s give a quick background, both of you feel free to chime in here. I like our panel discussion style, too. This is really cool, but…

Andrew Clingan:
Yeah, it’s lovely.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Where did things begin for Shared Practices? How was it born?

Dr. Richard Low:
So Shared Practices was born out of angst, practice ownership angst.

[laughter]

Dr. Richard Low:
We are still fueled on that.

Ryan Isaac:
Fueled by angst, yeah good.

Andrew Clingan:
Very much so.

Dr. Richard Low:
We love it. And Andrew is full of it, so he’s on 24/7.

Ryan Isaac:
Yep, we’ll get into that. Yeah, Andrew’s dental school life. So we’ll get into that dental school angst that he’s fueled by. You’re just now in like… Richard, you’re in practice-owner-entrepreneur angst, which also never ends. At least dental school angst ends.

Dr. Richard Low:
Yeah, well, the pre-owner angst… The thing about the pre-owner angst is that it’s all of these potential futures of owning a practice or starting a practice. And I think a lot of it is fueled by the deadloads that people are coming out with the concerns about corporate, all of these things. But the central thesis of Shared Practices started off as a podcast of practice ownership is way more in your reach then you realize, and if you have a path to get there, you can get there sooner, which is probably… If you’re gonna do it, getting there as fast as possible is gonna be the best thing for you financially as soon as you’re clinically ready. So we started a podcast and we went season by season into that journey from should I own a practice, how to buy a practice, how to start a practice, and then on the flip side, how to run it and actually get good at things like case acceptance and marketing and leadership and culture in your office. And along the way, we started coaching pre-owners, owners on their practices on how to buy the right practice, how to grow a practice. And now we have a coaching department with much better coaches than us originally. Originally, we were dentists coaching dentists.

Ryan Isaac:
[laughter] Yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
Which is kind of funny because there’s so much of a dental office that the dentist never actually does, and we have very limited real knowledge of how to run and organize these systems behind the things that really are the cogs and wheels and important parts of the dental office. So now we have former office managers, regional managers, who are our virtual coaches, and we’ve got over 80 owner clients, we help people do the due diligence and buyers representation on finding and buying a practice. And so it’s evolved from this journey of sharing knowledge about how to get to the right practice and now helping people do it all the time. It’s been a lot of fun.

Ryan Isaac:
Man. I like… It is cool to see the evolution of a business when you are in the beginning, I can relate to that with dentist advisors being in the beginning with the big hat reshape and yeah, you see a different perspective growing it along the way, but eventually when you have systems and team and processes, and you’ve nailed those things, you can put smarter people than yourself into those systems and watch them just flourish quickly, a lot faster than we ever did in our own businesses early on and be like, “Oh yeah, they’re just… They’re crushing it”. That’s really… It’s cool to see. So it’s awesome to hear that perspective of coaches now are better than when you guys are coaches in the beginning.

Dr. Richard Low:
Oh, it floors me. We just had an event. We hosted four courses in Scottsdale at our headquarters over the last six months from December through March, this last 20, 21, and then it getting in 2022, and the last course was… All of them are Analytics Based, so we had Analytics Based Practice Management, Analytics Based Pre-ownership, Analytics Based case acceptance and Analytics Based office management, so that’s for office managers and the manager course, we put Susan, our director of coaching and the coaches in charge of that last course. So the other me, George and Alex and some of the other people who had built the other courses, we didn’t touch this course and we were floored ’cause we got to show up and attend the office manager course.

Dr. Richard Low:
And it was better than the courses that we had built in terms of the flow of the pacing, the handouts, the applicability, the content, we had provided all this life-changing content of the other courses and like the Polish and the delivery was even better, and I got to take that course with my office manager side by side, so I was in the audience, she was in the audience, and all the light bulbs turning on in her head from our department having built this, it was a really fun experience to take that with her and have zero to do with the course and how good it was originally, we were just gonna do one this year and we said, “Okay, this was… ” Using when you can do it again, so we’ve got a line up this fall that, we’ll do it all again.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, I have questions for Andrew ’cause I wanna get into this.

Andrew Clingan:
Okay, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I called it dental school, but you call it pre-owner, which I think is way cooler, it connotes a lot more potential and hope for the future. But really fast, I wanted to ask you something. You were just saying, Richard, you specifically said all these courses were… What did you call them? Data-focused, data…

Dr. Richard Low:
Analytic Based.

Andrew Clingan:
Analytics.

Dr. Richard Low:
Okay, it’s better, Analytics Based.

Dr. Richard Low:
And I will say. I actually kinda hate the names, ’cause it’s ABPM Analytics Based Practice Management, Analytics Based Practice pre-honor, ABPO.

Ryan Isaac:
ABTB. Okay.

Dr. Richard Low:
Not very creative naming, and I’m big on finding the right name for things, I was not involved in the naming.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, what’s the… When you say Analytics Based as opposed to what is more common or as opposed to what in the industry, Analytics Based Practice Management as opposed to what practice management?

Dr. Richard Low:
As opposed to taking over…

Andrew Clingan:
Subjective feelings.

Dr. Richard Low:
Practice and doing what they always did or running it by your gut, like, using numbers and data to drive both in a practice in a purposeful way ’cause you know where you’re going.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, you’re talking to a pretty big nerd here, so I really… I did that. That’s how we build our whole business too, is like how do you take an emotion doesn’t get removed from running a business or making investment decisions or financial planning, but how do you move as much of that as possible so that we can just make decisions based on the numbers and the math and then blame the math or things? You know like the news, well, that’s what the numbers are telling you. Sorry. [chuckle] That’s cool.

Dr. Richard Low:
Well, so we rely very heavily on dental Intel right now as far as analytics for the coaching for how we see and evaluate practices, and it’s interesting, I’ve been in a practice ownership seat where I had dental intel, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I had all these metrics and data numbers, and I was like, “Okay, great, I want them to look better”, which is a very different experience than I wanna grow my practice to be able to bring on a second doctor to more hygienists. Here’s the numbers that I care about that are the bottlenecks to take me from here to there, and here’s all the pain points along the way. Now, if you know where you’re going, then the metrics inform your decision-making, and they show you what to focus on, because the other thing is you can improve or tweak so many things in a dental office, and every time you introduce change to your team, it’s a pain point, it’s something you’re gonna have to go back over over and over and over, you’re gonna have to reinforce it, and if you think you can change five things in your office over the course of two months, the team…

Dr. Richard Low:
Three of those five things are gonna drop off by the end of the two months, and one of the five maybe you’ve truly changed in it, so it’s knowing what to focus on and what to ignore is probably one of the hardest parts of practice ownership and without an ability to stand back and maybe get someone else to help you look at things and have a perspective of, “This is where we’re going, this is where we’re at. So we’re gonna focus on these things. That’s what matters”. That’s the hardest thing, ’cause you don’t have… As a clinician, I’m sober as of this moment, I have a very long canal day. My analytics mindset and my ability to think strategically as a full-time clinician is hampered because by the time you’re done seeing a day of patients putting out all the fires dealing with team member concerns. Oh, you know what, I’m gonna pull up dental Intel and ponder deeply for 45 minutes about my practice. It’s just not gonna happen.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, well, you’re touching on something that’s… It’s just the… It’s like the pro and con of the day and age we live in, which is there are so many technologies that have brought us at our fingertips mostly for free in a lot of cases, or extremely cheap softwares, notifications, tracking devices, like all kinds of things that should in theory, give us really good access to improving diet, health, exercise, sleep, drinking water, managing our practices, investing money, saving, getting out of debt, but it still requires a human to interact with that technology on a consistent basis, which is where… It’s like really… It’s easy to get really excited about software and be like, “Oh, here’s some new tech”, and it’s gonna change the world and it’s gonna make us do all these things, but you know, we’re not getting healthier as a country and we’re not saving more money as a country despite the fact that it’s all easier to do than it ever has been, the information is free, there’s free apps to help us stay accountable, but we still have to interact with the software as humans, and that’s where we always fall short is just such a human thing.

Ryan Isaac:
So I like systems and companies that add… They add kind of the human element of accountability to software, that’s the combo that should be, software alone, no, humans alone. No, but that combination like cyborgs basically, humans and machines is what really… That’s what gets things done though, honestly.

Dr. Richard Low:
It’s the cyborgs. I’m glad we’ve landed on cyborgs. Thank you guys.

Andrew Clingan:
It’s where we are now. Nice.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s where we are at. Andrew, speaking of the newer generation of Shared Practice as being better than the old generation, Andrew here, tell us where you at these days, what do you do in these days? How did you join up? And what are you doing for the business right now?

Andrew Clingan:
Yeah, for sure. So I am a third year dental student at UAB in Alabama. About four days away from being a fourth year, so I can see a lot of the…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yes, yes.

Andrew Clingan:
Yes. We got the calendar for, I guess next year, like two or three weeks ago, it had my graduation date on it. So I am counting down the days. But yeah, so Richard talked a lot about pre-owner angst and dental students to start listening to the Shared Practice podcast back in the day, early on. That was me. Dentistry is kind of crazy. The barrier to entry is incredibly high, everyone knows it’s a great profession, but in terms of time and resources, you gotta put in a lot to get there, and during that time, it’s easy to listen to what the 2019 version of Richard Low and George Hariri on the podcast and just be enthralled with what’s going on, and that’s what begins to build that angst, and fortunately for guys like myself and other people, we got to see them kinda grow up on the podcast and learn what it looks like to find a practice and to grow it and all that, and the not so great part for them, but the good part for us was we got to see the mistakes they made in addition to the good things that they did and learn from them, so our whole premise now, we talked about that term pre-owner.

Dr. Richard Low:
I can’t take credit for it. They came up with it, but it’s really just our way of saying, “Hey, dental students, and whether that be young associates or heck, we even have some people in our pre-owner group who’ve been out for quite a while, they just haven’t bought a practice yet, but the whole premise of what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get really clear with these people and go, “Hey, what do you want in? Life what do you want in your career, alright, now let’s find the right practice for that and hopefully… ’cause that’s the craziest thing about buying a dental practice behind like, maybe who you choose to marry, it’s like the biggest decision you’re ever gonna make and so…

Dr. Richard Low:
Buying, or like which surfboards you buy sometimes feels that way.

Andrew Clingan:
Feels that way.

Dr. Richard Low:
Which tacos you get off of a menu, but yeah, marriage and practice ownership…

Andrew Clingan:
Yeah. And going down and getting a million dollar loan.

[laughter]

Andrew Clingan:
So we’re all the time, trying to help people make the right decisions, because these decisions they’re making in this pre-owner phase, if you call it that, they have implications for the next 30-40 years of their life. And so everything Richard was talking about, which is the multifaceted side of being a clinical dentist and a business owner and all that, we’re trying to maybe get ahead of that, but really just prepare people as much as they can, help them learn as much as they can, with this angst that they have before they get into the everyday hustle and bustle of a dental practice.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m curious, Richard, since you’re an old man now here hear the old resident there, and then Andrew, you chime in on this. What has changed in this whole thing of practice ownership and just the whole dynamics of it of you’re either doing startups, or you’re acquiring something, and then you get team and then you gotta… You gotta be a really good clinician with 100 other jobs in the entrepreneurial kind of category. What have you guys seen changed, Richard, since you did it, and now Andrew, you’re about to do it, and you’re coaching people through it, what’s changed? And Richard, by the way, when did you start actually clinically… Oh, when did you actually own a practice for the first time? You probably owned something at age 14 when you were like had a paper route. In general, I didn’t own a dental practice at age 14, but yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
Thing is the podcast started when I still had five years left in the army, and I assumed that I wouldn’t be a practice owner for five more years.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
But somewhere along the line, one thing led to another, and I ended up with some partners buying three practices while I was still in the Army.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, which makes total sense.

Dr. Richard Low:
Not advisable.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
I had it cleared with my commanding officers. I have the signatures and the paper trail, so that when I got investigated by an army attorney down the road, I had all the right documents to prove that I was above board with it.

Ryan Isaac:
Man, that sounds like a whole story in and of itself, but we’ll get there another time, actually.

Dr. Richard Low:
Yeah. So those three practices were bought in 2019 and great people. The practices were amazing. My partners were great. We just had different goals. I really wanted to drive single-site growth of like, “Okay, we’ve got this amazing one-doctor practice, I wanna grow it to a two-doctor practice.” And that journey involves a lot of pain points and a lot of unprofitable or thinner months, where you’re investing in team members. You’ve got these steps of pain points of, “Okay, now we’re bringing on this hygienist, then we gotta fill ’em up. We gotta expand our space. We gotta do all these things.” And we just had different visions of where we wanted to go.

Dr. Richard Low:
And so I ended up splitting on those practices and then I bought Dr. Ryan McCall’s denture practices. There’s McCall’s Denture in Indiana, he used to be real active on Dental Time, he still might be. And he sold me his practices this last March and converted that into denture and implants. So I added implants to those and doing a lot of full arch implant stuff, and that’s the kind of practice that we’re opening new locations of. A really fulfilling practice model, but the thing that you asked is, what has changed? And George and I just did a 500 episode recap, where we hit the 500 mark.

Ryan Isaac:
500?

Dr. Richard Low:
Which is crazy, like 500 hours of audio…

Ryan Isaac:
Geez, man, congratulations. Yeah. That’s such a grind.

Dr. Richard Low:
Thank you. Who listens to that for 500 hours.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, a lot of people for you guys, but that’s a grind, man.

Andrew Clingan:
Can I interrupt you real fast, Richard?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Andrew Clingan:
We have a few people in our group, who that’s been their semester long project, and I’m like, “Guys just stop. It’s great stuff, but you’re never gonna get through it all.” I haven’t listened to every episode, so… Sorry. Continue.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s a 2XB…

Dr. Richard Low:
I love that you’re actively discouraging people from listening to…

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, don’t do that. Just start currently. That’s a lot. That’s a grind. Yeah, okay, so going back, you recapped 500 episodes, 500 hours of talking to people.

Dr. Richard Low:
When we realize, that we got some stuff right and there were some stuff that we missed, and the biggest miss from those early seasons was understanding beforehand, the growth potential of practice ownership and the model that’s right for you, because if you buy or start the wrong sized practice really quickly, the real estate can be a limiter to your potential. And the number of operatories being a huge piece of that, and so if you know that you wanna be a two-doc or three-doc office and you want that runway to grow, and you buy a three-op practice or four-op practice, you have shot yourself in the foot and… Or you do a start-up.

Dr. Richard Low:
You do a fancy start-up with four or five ops and you take out a $500,000 loan to do that start-up. You take 18 months to build it out and get it up and running, and you don’t leave yourself any room for success, ’cause for a start-up, you have to be able to grow, you have to figure out the marketing problem, and on the back end of now we’ve figured it out, we filled out our office, now you have excess demand and an amazing experience and nowhere to put people. So figuring out the practice model, that’s right for you, whether that’s a solo or a super solo office, where it’s the doctor you show. It’s all about you, you’re doing either predictable bread and buttered industry or you’re doing everything under one house, that’s our super solo versus solo. Solo is bread and butter dentistry, one doctor, two hygienists. Super solo is I’m referring much less out, doing a lot of procedures and really cranking as much as I possibly can with one doctor, still two hygienists.

Dr. Richard Low:
Those are two models and two avatars, that we have a ton of data around. We have a ton of coaching around, where if that’s your end point, here’s all the metrics that are gonna drive towards success in that. But if you’re buying a successful solo office and you wanna turn it into a group practice with multiple doctors, there’s a couple of journeys and a couple of options, that you have to get there with different pain points and different metrics that we care about, but knowing ahead of time is the most important thing because so often people buy one practice and then decide after the fact, “Oh crap, I want business problems. I wanna lead, I wanna grow up; or you know what, I don’t like having multiple doctors, I wanna be clinical, have it the smallest team possible, but be profitable and predictable, sustainable. I want that solo office.”

Dr. Richard Low:
And so, knowing that about yourself ahead of time, where do you fall on that, business problems personnel problems versus clinical problems. What gets you going as a dentist? Knowing that spectrum is gonna guide you towards do you need our runway to grow and the drive and the metrics and the ability to turn that into a multi-doc office, or do you just wanna buy that right-sized practice and keep it that size. I think that’s the biggest thing that we missed. Andrew, what would you add to lessons learned or things that we maybe got wrong originally and we’ve learned since then?

Andrew Clingan:
No, you nailed it. And that’s really where you left off, is where we picked up. So kinda like Richard alluded to a lot of the recommendations back in the day, where, “Hey, just buy the cash flow. Find the biggest practice you can and buy it”, which on paper is not necessarily wrong and not necessarily a mistake. And I do kind wanna be clear too, I said I learned from these guys mistakes. In a lot of ways, I feel like guys like myself and girls alike in our mastermind group, get to stand on the shoulders of giants, if you will, from the things these guys have learned, but anyways, we kind of went from this let’s buy the cash flow to now we get really, really particular with what Richard was alluding to and what’s your vision? What do you want to see happen? So really what I sit around doing a lot of times is just talking about my feelings with people and talking about their feelings, and it’s very rah-rah, in a sense.

Andrew Clingan:
And people probably get tired of it, but we really believe in it just because the coolest thing I think about dentistry… And I don’t know, I just always kinda saw this in the field is that you can make it really whatever you want it to be. If you wanna go out and be the single doctor in your office and produce big and low overhead, that’s great.

Andrew Clingan:
If you wanna go open denture implant practices, great. There’s just so much room to do so many different things. And so for that reason, we really do try to spend a lot of time with people going, “Alright. Well, what’s your idea?”, like Richard alluded to, clinical versus entrepreneur, “Where do you fall on the spectrum? What kind of problems do you wanna have in the world? Do you wanna have people problems or you won’t have tooth problems?” All of these sorts of questions and just trying to… And challenging people with that and trying to get really specific. Because then that gives us a lot better clarity to go, “Alright, well… ” And somewhere along that way too, they kinda… Like Richard alluded to, they figured out the growth formula. And so depending on what that vision is, if we find a practice that is at Point A, we’ve learned how to get it to Point B.

Ryan Isaac:
So I like… I put myself in my, I don’t know, 20-something shoes again, maybe 30-year-old shoes again, I’m an old man now, and I just think, how do… How can you know what you even want until you get in there, ’cause your advice is totally spot on? It’s a big mistake, if you buy a four op practice but you wanted a three doctor set up. It’s like, “Oh, that wasn’t right,” but how do you… Okay, so here’s two questions. How often do people even know what they want when they do jump into it from your experience, when they buy something? How often are people actually picking the thing they think they really want? And the second question would be, how can people… What can people do to know what they want later? Is it even possible?

Dr. Richard Low:
I love this…

Andrew Clingan:
So…

Dr. Richard Low:
Oh, sorry, Andrew. I’m gonna steal this. I’m stealing this.

Andrew Clingan:
Okay, go for it, that’s fine.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s equal answering opportunity, but the old guy’s going first.

Andrew Clingan:
Richard’s living proof. He can answer this better than anyone here.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, you’ve done it. Yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
Well, I think the key here is you’re probably gonna get it wrong.

Andrew Clingan:
Okay, yeah, which is what I would say too. In career in general, you’ll probably… You’ll probably get it wrong.

Dr. Richard Low:
You’ll probably get it wrong. You’re gonna think… So here is my D4 version of what I wanted. I hadn’t started the podcast yet, I was working for Howard Fran. I was in our practice management course. And I thought to myself, “You know what? I really like doing some of the specialty work. I’m gonna go do the two-year AEGD in the army. I’m gonna get training in root canals and surgery and be able to do a lot of different things. And I would love to own multiple practices and then kinda do some of the specialty work between them. And also have the ownership aspect.” But I was like, “But that’ll probably be a long-term thing, so I’ll probably end up owning three practices maybe when I’ve got more time with my kids or teenagers or something like that.” So that was my D4 version of this. I didn’t expect to buy those three practices while I was still in the Army.

Dr. Richard Low:
But I did, and I got the chance to be the rotating specialist owner, and I hated it. And I did not like it at all. It is way more challenging to go do a variety of specialty procedures at different offices with a different team every time, all the equipment and the set up either hauled around or having it in each office, but the teams out a very efficient at those procedures. You’re only there a few days a month. And just the challenges of owning multiple practices on top of that, running those through the last… Through COVID and all of that. And I realized, “Maybe I don’t… This vision was not right for me.” And so I walked away from that group and from some amazing practices and some amazing opportunities, ’cause I got it wrong. And I think one of the things we have modeled a lot on the podcast is pivoting of…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

Dr. Richard Low:
“Okay. Here’s what you think your vision is. At least you’ve thought it through and committed to it, rather than just buying a practice, ’cause it looked good on paper.”

Ryan Isaac:
Well, you gotta start somewhere. You’ve gotta like… You gotta put your money where your mouth is, you gotta take a step, whatever cliche you wanna use, and you gotta begin somewhere and yeah, pivoting, I love that word.

Dr. Richard Low:
We do a lot of that. And that’s okay too. And the thing is… The nice part is, if you do these two things, number one, you’re intentionally thinking about where you wanna go, and then you buy right. You either buy or start the right practice and you do it in the right way. You have a very valuable asset and you’ll be able to pivot, you’ll be able to sell it. You’ll be able to maybe replace yourself with someone else. But if you don’t do those two things, you haven’t thought about your vision and you buy wrong, or you start it wrong, now you have a huge liability, you don’t… You’re not cash flowing, you don’t have flexibility to pivot and move off of that, and that’s what we’ve seen happen. And I know someone who started an office here in the area. He did a consultant to help him do the start-up and he hated it. He hated practice ownership. And he realized, “You know what? I don’t like the problems of practice ownership, I just wanna be a clinician.” And I helped him see, I’m like, “You know what? You can sell this.” And he assumed that he was just kinda stuck, he…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. You’re done. Yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
He couldn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t have anywhere to go. And it took a little bit, he’s finally kinda getting to the finish line here shortly, but he was able to get out from under it and now go work somewhere else and make more money. ‘Cause he wasn’t making money as a practice ownership, ’cause he hated it. He hated the ownership aspect. So the answer is, you’re gonna get it wrong, but if you’ve at least been intentional and you’ve done it with buying the right asset or starting the right asset in mind, you’re gonna be able to pivot much easier than the other way around.

Ryan Isaac:
I like… Before Andrew, you jump in there, I just wanna say that as financial advisors, I mean, especially for dentists… A big piece of our advice, it’s really consistent across the board, is always to have high amounts of liquidity, which doesn’t mean checking account balances are outrageous, astronomical, but access to cash and capital. Because if life’s not pivoting, then I don’t know what it is. You can say you think you know which state you wanna live in, which house you’re gonna live in, which school you want your kids to go to, and which jobs you want, and what careers you wanna do, but until you jump into it and experience it, you won’t know if that was right or wrong. And we all change. We’re constantly changing. So I like the concept of pivoting, I like the concept of buying right, and regardless of what your decision is and how you think your outcome is gonna be, to just run it right while you have it, so that you can leave flexibility in your environment, in your life, to pivot. So I love that. Andrew, what would you say about… ‘Cause you’re in that beginning stage where you think you know what you want and you’re gonna go after it and then see how that shakes out, how it feels.

Andrew Clingan:
Definitely. And because of my role in our mastermind groups, like I’m kinda doing this and watching others do it all the time. I guess where I’ve landed, and I think this is good advice, but I like in practice ownership to marriage, earlier in the episode, right? And it’s kind of like, I’m bringing it back to that. How can you ever be 100% sure with anything? Right? And there just comes a point, I feel like, where I’ve told people, “Sit down, do the hard work, the soul searching”, whatever that is, and then once you do that, just for the foreseeable future, work towards that and commit towards it. Because like Richard said, you’re going to get things wrong along the way. Like you said, life is going to change. But a lot of times, and this is my personality, it’s really easy to get the analysis paralysis and I gotta have it perfect before I move, and I just think the… Just getting to work and just doing something, and getting that experience, allows you to make the mistakes along the way, to learn, and to be able to have that life experience. So yeah, that’s typically how I view it, is, “Hey, just figure out what you want now and work towards it, and then be flexible from there”.

Ryan Isaac:
So here’s a question I wanna talk about. You guys advocate a lot, I think, for early ownership. Would that be a fair statement?

Dr. Richard Low:
Yes.

Andrew Clingan:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Getting early? How do you balance that with, say, a new grad trying to go, “Well, I don’t know what city or state I wanna be in, I don’t know what type of practice I want, I need a little bit of associate experience maybe”. What’s the balance there between early ownership and a little bit of early experience?

Dr. Richard Low:
Well, okay, so, Andrew, I’m gonna let you take this first, but I do wanna circle back to something else that Ryan said before we do that, and then I’m gonna pass it over to Andrew.

Andrew Clingan:
Okay, cool.

Dr. Richard Low:
I wanted to go back to the liquidity that you brought up. So, your show, you and Big Hoss’s influence on Shared Practices, that was for me the take-home of the pre-owner, like this phase of like, “Am I ready for practice ownership? Do I know what I’m doing?” Socking away cash instead of paying down student loans, being the best thing you could possibly do leading up to practice ownership. And then once you’re in practice ownership, maintaining that liquidity state, where you can ride out the bumps, you can make the right hires, you can invest in your practice because you have a buffer, has been so huge. And when you guys did your… Was it million episode? Or million-download episode? You guys did something recently, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Yeah, we had me and Matt and Reese and people recorded their… You recorded, you were one of them, recorded some advice, like your million dollar piece of advice for people. Yeah.

Dr. Richard Low:
And that was… Liquidity was the take away from what I learned from you guys and has embedded itself into practice ownership.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s good.

Dr. Richard Low:
So, I wanna hear now… I just wanted to circle back to that, but I wanna hear Andrew on this…

Ryan Isaac:
The balance.

Dr. Richard Low:
How aggressive and how unruly…

Andrew Clingan:
Yeah. You know, this is a conversation that takes place in my household at least twice a month. My wife and I… She’s like, “You know, can’t we just go somewhere and try this for a while and then live here?” And I’m like, “No, that’s not how it works; if I’m gonna find a dental practice, this is the next 30 years of our life”. And she’s like, “Well, that’s stupid”. It’s tough, right? And I guess it really just kinda… And this even kinda goes back to, I think what’s been a little bit more of a focus for us, even in the last few months, is, is practice ownership even right for you? Like if you don’t know what you wanna do or you wanna go live here for a while and try this… “Hey, a lot of dentists are career associates and they live a great life”. So we’re huge advocates for it, of course, and always will be. And I wish I could give you an answer, and say, “Hey, this is the balance”. But, obviously, that’s something I’m working on and walking in and living in every day right now. And so I think, luckily for me, the one cool thing about getting the angst, if you will, early on in dental school, is you have some time to just walk around and dream and not be able to do anything about it.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, that’s a good point.

Andrew Clingan:
[laughter] Which is agonizing, but it also kinda comes to your advantage when you start going to parts of town and you’re seeing commercial real estate pop up that wasn’t there till recently, or whatever you wanna say. It gives you time to really sit and think on things. And so, for me and my wife, we have… You can’t be 100% on anything, but we think we’re like 85% sure where we wanna be for the rest of our lives. And I think that’s enough for me for now. [laughter] And so, that’s kind of what we’re pursuing. And this is for me personally, an exciting time, I guess, in this journey, because the other thing that’s tough about getting the angst early on is, like I said, you can’t do anything about it. No one who owns a practice wants to talk to a D1 about taking over their practice one day. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Andrew Clingan:
People think in really 12 months, 18-month increments. And so for me, heading into my fourth year, I’m gonna take my summer break to go out and try to network with some people, pass out some mailers, that sort of thing, and kinda see if I can get anybody to bite and see where that goes from there.

Ryan Isaac:
Alright, folks, you heard it then. Andrew, this summer, summer of 2022, hot dentist summer, it’s happening. He’s gonna be out there.

Andrew Clingan:
Hot dentist summer. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Rotating. If you wanna meet Andrew, let’s get you guys in touch. Well, that’s good, that’s good perspective. I wanted to throw something on that too, just from looking back in my life, I would say to give yourself some grace during those times when you went after what you thought you wanted forever, and then you get to a point where you’re like, you don’t want it anymore and you want something different. I would just tell my old self, “Hey, don’t stress about changing, don’t worry about that, it’s okay. You’re a human, you’re supposed to keep progressing and changing. And as you have more experience in life and you learn different things, you will change. Your brain, your heart, your mind, whatever will change along the way, and don’t stress about it. You’re supposed to.” So I like the advice. Thanks for… It’s a good perspective.

Andrew Clingan:
I wanna add to that.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, yeah.

Andrew Clingan:
So one of the whole hypothesis of Shared Practices is that the financial upsides of ownership, if ownership is right for you, the potential upside of buying the right practice, growing a practice, being a practice owner of a well-run practice is worth being aggressive on the timeline. But you have to know what you want in terms of clinical dentistry. So I would say the first check mark is, “Do I know the kind of dentistry that I wanna be doing for the rest of my life?” And if you need to do an AEGD or a residency, if you need to go get a bunch of CE or you need to go try a few practice models, the clinical growth of early ownership, it kinda hits a pause when you’re trying to take over as a business owner and you’re just so scared of doing a new procedure on one of your patients who’s gonna write a Yelp review.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, so true.

Andrew Clingan:
You know, go do that as an associate on someone else’s page.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, okay.

Andrew Clingan:
So I think the clinical check-mark of like, “Do I have confidence, that I know the kind of dentistry that I wanna do and that I can do that and handle complications and confidently present that to people” is a huge first check-mark. But the upsides and the delaying of practice ownership, the, “I’m gonna do this in five years, I’m gonna do this in seven years,” pushing that to two years or a year and a half is what we’re trying to do. Is shorten people’s timeline, give them the path, give them the direction so that it’s not this ambitious thing in the future. The unknown of practice ownership is what keeps people away and misinformed financial priorities, AKA, the Dave Ramsey Apostate, of people paying down debt instead of building up liquidity, people afraid to buy a practice. I had to break myself of that. So for a lot of people, that’s not an urgency. But for me, that’s been part of my journey, is being…

Ryan Isaac:
Dave Ramsey Apostate, I like that.

Dr. Richard Low:
Dudes, I grew up drinking the Kool-Aid, yeah. Big time.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I went through the courses. I saw him Live, I did the thing, I cheered live, I left feeling like, “Oh, so excited.”

Andrew Clingan:
It’s still a big thing.

Ryan Isaac:
I am too, for certain circumstance… Okay, but going back. Yeah, that’s really cool. That kind of actually segues into the… Part of the last scene… Well, we could do this forever, but we’ll leave people hanging wanting more for the next time. What have you guys… I know you’ve launched some courses, new stuff recently, what have you guys been up to? What’s new for Shared Practices that people can get involved with? What do you guys have going on?

Dr. Richard Low:
Yeah, so what I was just touching on, the Buyer’s Rep Services, the pre-owner course that we put on. We realized, when we did this last December, of people who come to this course before they bought a dental practice, and they catch the vision of what is possible in practice ownership, they figure out their vision, their whole career has changed from that point on. They can’t unsee the framework, the practice models that we lay out. So having that journey of seeing the vision from the pre-owner course, being able to help people do the due diligence on an acquisition, helping them through that first year of practice ownership, that’s like the journey we’re really, really excited about. And then people who want to grow from a single doctor office to a two or three doctor office, really excited about that. And not saying three offices, we’re saying one large single-site, everything under one roof, office. The potential and the repeatability of our framework and coaching department. Our coaches have had, over the last year, 40% average growth from either solo doctors or multi-doctor offices.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Dr. Richard Low:
And it’s been amazing. One of our coaches shared last night that one of her doctors had a goal to grow by 15% this year by June, so just within six months, and they hit that goal in April. And so, seeing that happen on the coaching side of the house has been very, incredibly fulfilling. We got a headquarters in Scottsdale next to Set Jet, who is the fancy airport people in Scottsdale. Well, it turns out they are awful co-tenants and we had some head butting.

[laughter]

Dr. Richard Low:
And then, we mutually broken up and we’re leaving that space and we have a new headquarter space we’re moving into in the fall. And so we’re gonna have our line-up of pre-ownership, Analytics Based Practice Management and the office manager course this fall, and we’re gonna do some mastermind meet-ups, really excited about that. And then, lastly the…

Ryan Isaac:
I need to come down to Scottsdale, it’s been awhile. I need to come hang out with you guys in Scottsdale.

Dr. Richard Low:
Oh, come hang out. There’s no waves, but…

Ryan Isaac:
That’s alright. There’s good taco’s there. How do people get in touch with the mighty Shared Practices? What’s the best way?

Dr. Richard Low:
Yeah, follow the podcast, download the podcast, go to sharedpractices.com. If you’re interested in any of the things I brought up, the events, the coaching, or even finding out about denture and implant stuff, reach out, there’s some Contact Us and some forms on there. I am wondering, we’ve got a Facebook group as well, Shared Practices. I’m wondering if you would be willing to come back on our show here sometime soon, Andrew and I have a whole bunch of questions about…

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s do it.

Andrew Clingan:
Yes.

Dr. Richard Low:
About investing at these different phases. So it’s like the dental student version, the pre-owner version, the growth phase. So it’s like you’re growing your practice actively versus the steady state and all along the way. So we would love to have you on our show, if you’re down.

Ryan Isaac:
Love it. Any time. Name a time and place, I’m there. If there’s one thing I’ve been able to do my whole life, whether it’s good or not, it’s talk a lot. So…

Dr. Richard Low:
Alright, let’s do it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I’m down.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Well, thanks guys for joining me here today. I really appreciate it. And I’m stoked for all your growth and everything, it’s been fun. We always tell the story, but I still remember so vividly meeting Richard outside the elevator at the headquarters at Howard’s office and Dental Town, and it’s just cool to see where things have come. It’s awesome. So congrats to you guys. It’s really awesome.

Dr. Richard Low:
Thanks for having us on, Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, man, any time.

Andrew Clingan:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for everyone listening and tuning in, and if you have any questions, you can go to dentistsadvisors.com and click the Book Free Consultation link, we’ll have a chat. You guys, thanks. Have a good time and a great week. And everyone else listening, thank you for being here, we’ll catch you next time. Bye-bye.

Early Career, Practice Transitions