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Dentists, Puns, and Money is a podcast focused on two things: The financial topics relevant to dentists leaving clinical practice and the stories and lessons of dentists who have already done so.
1. The stories of dentists who have transitioned from full-time clinical dentistry.
2. The financial topics that are relevant for dentists making that transition.
If you’re a dentist thinking about your exit from clinical, and you’d like to learn from the experiences of other dentists who have made that transition, be sure to subscribe to your favorite podcast app.
Host Shawn Terrell also dives deep into the many financial components of exiting dentistry, including tax reduction strategies and how to live off your assets.
And, we try to keep it light by mixing in a bad joke… or two.
Please note: Dentists, Puns, and Money was previously known as The Practice Growth Podcast until March 2022.
Welcome to Dentists, Puns, and Money. I'm your host Shawn Terrell. My guest in this episode is Dr. Tom Reed. Dr. Tom is the owner dentist at City Center Dental Group in the Denver area and he's been a private practice dentist owner since the year 2000. In our conversation, Dr. Tom and I discuss mentorship within the dental profession specifically how private practice owners can think about mentoring their younger associate dentists we discussed with Dr. Tom has learned by mentoring nine associates in his career and how he's built the system in his practice to make sure the expectations of the relationship are being met for both the mentee and the mentor. A quick reminder our company dentist Exit Planning helps dentists leading clinical with the personal financial planning piece of that transition specifically, how to reduce that massive lifetime tax bill and how to optimize living off of your assets. If you're interested in guidance on your taxes and your income as you transition out of clinical to schedule an initial consultation with us our website, which is dentist exit.com Again that website and just exit and with that introduction, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Tom Reed. All right Dr. Tom Reed Welcome to dentists puns and money. I am excited to hear more about your story and share your story with the audience. Thank you for joining us. Oh you're quite welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to spend a little bit of time this great afternoon to go over all things dental and have a good time in the process. I'm looking forward to a lively discussion. We've talked a little bit offline and we've had no shortage of things to bounce back and forth to each other but maybe just for the audience who's meeting for the first time. Could you share a little bit about yourself and your background and kind of your journey in dentistry up until this point? Yeah, sure. Well, I graduated from Miami University of Ohio back in 1991 and picked up a degree in economics there and somehow managed to get excited about taking on the challenge of going through dental school, and so ended up in Chicago and finished up at Northwestern University, sadly, no longer exists. But as my alumni and I'm very proud of that opportunity that immediately turned into a general practice residency back in Ohio at Ohio State University where my wife was actually from because we're contemplating making that our home and we kind of missed the city. So we moved back to Chicago when I was finished and I began my private practice journey, which was multiple associates trips there. We got set up with the city ended up back in Denver, Colorado where my family is from where I'm still at to this day, and have been in private practice for ever since I really started the ownership track in 2000. Going into a group practice and subsequently buying out all of my business partners with an effective effect retiring them from practice. So that was like folding in for practices. And then acquired two additional books of business and one close by that I called it in the charts on a chart acquisition and then more recently bought a secondary location on the other side of town that I manage with my current business partner gone through a lot of associate ships of our own here, which isn't told I think it's about nine I counted them correctly. Three of those folks are still with me to this day, who are thriving associates and like I've mentioned earlier one is is my business partner, and I'm pretty grateful for the opportunity. So you're in the Denver, Colorado area now and you have a practice that originated from how many practices we're doing that is now folded into your one practice. That flagship location was a cluster of about five small sized practices you know, in today's market, you know they might be in a half million to three quarter million dollar annualized revenue operations that they ran solo but they were all under one roof. I bought one of them initially, one of those folks retired out and then the remaining four I gradually bought out their books of business and sort of folded that into one that's like a five in one shop where we're at still today with our main location. And then the second location is a separate physical facility. About 25 miles across town where we have a associate doctor and completely different team meeting that operation for us up there. And then we also acquired a book of business on the outside of a local practice was building up and so we acquired their charts and folded that into the flagship, and that was probably six, seven years ago. We did that. Okay, so yeah, there's a lot of inflection points in there. I guess if you had to characterize or some kind of your journey in dentistry thus far thus far in the last 2025 years, I guess, what are some of your big takeaways and things that you've learned through all those transitions and holdings and other analogies? Yeah, you know, time is a huge factor. Unfortunately, a couple of those retiring Doc's just weren't able to come to grips with it wasn't the time to let it go and actually just hang it up. So I carried them on out of the goodness of graciousness of my benevolence. And we kind of walked out there, and they're welcome, so to speak after a while, and what that made it difficult for was the actual transition and getting those patients either accustomed to myself and other Doc's in the practice or having the bandwidth to bring other younger doctors into its workers, too many that would end up with too many mouths to feed with fewer patients to do that. So that was a challenge. You know, that original group was a very clinical oriented practice. I mean, we're talking absolute basic bread and butter care, and we've evolved into a super generalist operation today with every facet of the industry being offered to under one roof here with all general dentists, like licensed and qualified and trained the preventive services. So that was a big evolution. The other big one has been the move away from insurance dependency, as well as took quite a bit of effort, which is a whole nother rabbit hole for sure.
Gotcha. So that's probably another podcast for another day is the fee for service model in the transition for how to get there, but it's definitely a trend within dentistry right now. So I mentioned earlier that we talked offline and we're kind of spitballing what would be a good topic for the podcast? And the thing that really intrigued me about your story thus far is that for all the practices that you've been involved with that you mentioned, you've really had a good opportunity to be a mentor to several dentists throughout your career and mentioned that that had been a meaningful aspect of your dental career. And so I'd like to dive into this idea of mentorship because I'm curious what a good mentor mentee relationship works, what looks like and then how that can be really beneficial in the transition process is an older dentist, so to speak, start to think about who they want to take over their private practice someday, and how they want to think about bringing on another doctor to do that and what a good scenario would look like. So that's really all over the place. But where I'm trying to get is anything about mentorship, maybe we'll just start there. Absolutely. You know, all of my experience helped me foster my own program, really working hard on mentoring younger practice owners at this point in time, so a different avatar than we're looking toward helping reaching out to you today. But I think it's relevant all the way through. I think there's so much symbiosis that should take place between a mentor and a mentee or a senior doctor and some younger folks coming through. It's like an apprenticeship in so many levels and just can't be any assumptions or really any stereotypes thrown on the fire, because that'll just ruin the experience out of the gate. I think someone put it in the great one time that knowledge plus experiences wisdom, and there's no shortage of wisdom in our in our elders, in our senior doctors in particular in this profession. And there's so much value that has been created and they've worked so hard to build what we call a legacy and I don't think there's a more valuable asset to be transitioned to the younger crowd than that legacy. And so I think mentoring those folks and getting them prepared to handle that handoff effectively is really what it's about. So everybody learns from those experiences, including the mentor and if a mentor isn't equally on their learning frontier with the mentee, then probably not a great relationship. My opinion because I think at the end of the day, if the business is being transitioned, there's an intrinsic and extrinsic value to what we know. It's often argued at the bargaining table over which one gets more credit, right. And so I do believe that we can always go find new equipment and a new place to put a roof over the head of that practice, but you can't really change the Goodwill or the blue sky of the organization. And that's the real meat and potatoes of the mentorship right there. And without that really effective younger doctor taking the reins, I don't know if the handoff is gonna go quite smoothly. And I worry about Dr. X who's retired or looking to retire and it's cut back and ends up crossing paths with one of their longtime patients at the grocery store. read them the riot act right there at the checkout that's consistent How come you have to tie and dry this way with with so and so and they're just not you and they're not taking care of shop the way you did and so on and so forth. And I only say that because I've heard it before and I've never witnessed it firsthand, even though I've gone through a lot of transitions myself inside my own organization, but I fear for that and it could ultimately hurt and depending on how the financial structure was set up for the the actual remuneration of that business. It could hurt that to potentially.
So it's easy for me to sit here and see what the benefits would be for younger dentists to be mentored by someone that's been doing it for 20 or 30 years. What are the potential benefits of an older dentist that doesn't necessarily need to mentor younger dentists? What are the benefits to them other than maybe including their legacy and legacy of the practice that they built? Great question and you know, I guess I don't quite have the experience of being post ownership are in that retirement mode yet, but you know, 53 years of age, it's definitely crossing my mind on countless occasions. I'm also thinking about well, if I want to get top dollar for my entity, and of course we're all being tempted these days by all kinds of infusion of hot money into the dental space, you know, DSOs and private equity and multiples of EBITA instead of percentage of collection discussions and a lot of jargon getting kicked around could be confusing to some It also could leave maybe some retiring Doc's a little unprepared for what might be coming through the door who could be a qualified candidate to be able to take over the reins of their practice and pay them the value that they've what they've created. And so I think you know, a lot of these younger Doc's are starving for mentorship and when they witnessed that and worked with them firsthand. And folks I've interviewed and now folks that I'm coaching personally, and that's one of the big things they're looking for and to be a part of something bigger than themselves and hopefully maybe get a seat at the table and have some some equity to speak up for it as well. And you know, the other thing too is they're coming into this equation with an unbelievable amount of debt service already on the books before they even hit the ground. running as a practice practitioner, much different than my time. We don't have graduated and certainly probably some of our retiring ducks today, given the age of retirement. So I think having the ability to coach someone younger, you know, it doesn't feel good moment. I'm not gonna lie, just partly mostly that it's that legacy piece, and it's departing from the profession and leaving it in a better state than when you arrived. You know, I think that's, I don't know, I feel like that's sort of an unwritten code in our trade as well. You know, basically, I think it comes back to the real value at the end of the day. And also, here's the last one, I think, you know, it's not just you the practice owner, but it's also your team that has helped you run the organization for all these years or decades. And whom are you leading them in the hands of at the end of the day, you have that hanging over your head? Should that transition not be very effective or be abrupt whether or not it's smoother to the most qualified individual. So it occurred to me that I maybe should have qualified the idea of mentorship a little bit better. So that ended a couple of layers you can talk about with mentorship. You can mentor younger dentists sort of in a coaching program or an unofficial way but you can also mentor people who are working with you as associates underneath you, potentially to move on to whatever's next in their career, whether that's potential ownership and your practice or going on somewhere else. I know you said you've had nine associate dentists that have worked underneath you so to speak in some capacity in your career, what have been the good and the bad lessons that you've learned throughout those different experiences as much as you can share understand confidentiality to be some of the yes or no, I mean, we won't mention names because that's obviously not relevant, but I think you know, having the right frame of mind from the get go and realizing that there's that symbiotic piece you know, the mentor is gotta be dialed in to optimizing their ability to lead you know, listening skills and accountability, being truly available at all times and always trying to challenge those mentees out on their own frontier. I think when I first started into no longer being an associate myself, but actually hiring associates, we did it for all the wrong reasons. At first it was just to leverage those individuals to make more money for the business. And at the end of the day, I don't think that was a very good mindset and it created no meaning or relationship between us in the in the associates and they want the standard timeframe, to most recounts is about 18 months for an associate ship before it really starts to wheels can fall off and things get so crazy and want to go through the long end or the mentor has owner dockets perhaps. And they're parts of torpedo relationship. So we skipped we got smart because that revolving door of doctors is not a healthy place to be in the relationship business. And your patient base is ultimately who has all the voting rights, I think in the organization and they'll tell you right firsthand, like Where's Dr. so and so or how come I keep seeing the new person every single time I come in here. I've been through that experience as well. So over time, those battle scars started to make me personally realized that we've got to build a relationship with this doctor or doctors and really start to get to work on them. And because we did that and made intentional moves in that direction, we built a system in our organization that enables almost a plug and play type of format where it's associated x as the point where they're a maybe moving or decided to start their own practice. Yes, it's frustrating and you get upset, and you're sad and all as a practice owner, but realize that they've left behind a great basis or platform upon which to find the next qualified individual who I'd like to say passes the cultural test first and you can get them on boarded into the organization and hit the ground. Running. So I think it's important for building that runway for the future of the business. I've never experienced that directly. My take away on a lot of this is that well, just in general, I believe that in life most disagreements are about poorly communicated expectations or intentions. And I can see how in the situation that would happen a lot. You could have a younger dentists that is coming in that doesn't really want to tip their hand and they only want to be there 18 months but they do need some experience before they go start their own practice. And at the end of the spectrum, you have an older dentist that as you said earlier in your career was maybe thinking about associates yet or having associates not with the right mindset so and maybe to be fair to all parties, like people's intentions and circumstances can change to like someone that's just coming out of school might think they want to leave but then decides they don't want or vice versa. And you know, like an owner dentist could say well I want to be done clinically in three years, well, maybe life changes, and it's that runway ends up getting extended. So I think open communication is probably a big part of that. And maybe here's another one lined up to a long winded question. How have you thought about some of that, that I just mentioned? Oh, it's critical. I mean, I think communications platforms in all relationships in all facets of our life, and I know it gets overused a ton, but it's so true. And it's so funny, obviously coming back to it over and over and over again is that that is the basis like you said of all misunderstanding and I think for the most part there are errors of omission or left out information. I don't think anybody ever really intends in their own mind to commit those moves. Right. So I think it just ends up being Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that kind of scenario as opposed to you know, sabotage or tension never experienced that ever. And I think sometimes that's the fear in us is that the practice, we're going to get sabotaged. I'm afraid to invest so much time, effort and money into these folks only have them turn around and leave.
And I don't think that could be further from the truth or the fairness to the situation. It said earlier, you can do it right and you're effective and you're committed to it. And the mentors or mentees, excuse me are also equally committed to the time they send the communications and what their needs and wants are. It works really well and then you have an open, transparent basis of relationship. And if that person does need to leave, or let's just say maybe something happens in the owner dock. It's like, Man, I just can't do this anymore. They're ready to step up their departure. They've got a good, good working relationship with those individuals. I think those transitions can be pretty smooth and pretty profitable for both parties involved. And so that would be kind of my take on that question. Yes, no, and maybe what I think would be helpful next would be a few practical examples of what that looks like. You mentioned you created a system that's more plug and play, and does that include like check ins every month does that include like reviewing clinical cases? Does that include, you know, evolving life goals, like my wife got a job here? So maybe me staying here becoming an associate for years, like we talked about a year ago isn't in the long term future anymore, I guess, without getting into all the weeds of what the system is? Could you just hit on a few the characteristics of what you have created that you think is a much better system than what you started with? Absolutely. Well, first, I had no written systems whatsoever back in the day, everything was kind of upstairs in the head and that large database and it gets lost very quickly in mind. I don't know about everyone else, but that's just kind of latest for me. We started writing things down and really building a system. So you know, started with time journaling and figuring out like, what is one going to do throughout the course of a day in a week. And then you start next with checklists and figuring out like what are places to ideally highpoints to check and then turn into an onboarding protocol list that you've built and some accomplishments of timelines, you know, time harnesses I think, are so important. So like in 60 days, we hope to be here, 90 days here, and so on and so forth. And then the check ins are almost in real time because I'm on the Florida our flagship practice three and a half to four days a week, not always clinical, but certainly readily available. I have an associate doc here that we check in regularly within a month that our other lecture practice with that associate doc several days a week are really like I like to tell these guys, I'm virtually your 2am friends. So if you have something that's really that urgent, you can always pick up the phone and call. Let's try not to use that. But let's realize that that's always in your back pocket. It's almost like a parenting role in so many ways. You know, having been a proud parent of three almost grown kids at this point. You learn a lot through that. And it's I think there's so many carryovers from parenting and raising kids and getting through the teenage years and college years and so forth is there is to helping these young dogs see a better path for themselves forward without really getting in their way at the same time. So hands on in real time. That would be another one of the last thing you need is for an associate dog to do to meetings like I happen to them quite a few years ago, which they come walking up the hallway and they tell you they're bored. Okay, that wasn't a good day. didn't make me feel very proud of what I had created here for the opportunity for them. And stuff made me wonder what is their aspirational position as well so it ended our relationship better sorely and it shouldn't have so I think that should never happen because that was lack of communication. And anytime that happens, I generally look to myself first because the leader is like what did I do to mess that up? So we have a checklist. Now we have an onboarding program, we have our timelines that we'd like to hit goals and we have an ongoing sort of organic and ever growing reading list of things that we recommend books and so forth at all and under below like we've heavily encouraged reinvestment in themselves through continuing education. So we only provide an allowance for our associate Doc's on an annualized year to go and earn some continuing education and invest in themselves and we help match that investment with them all the leadership training and I think every every person needs their own version of coaching as well. And so I have my own personal coaches and all of the learning that I do on that frontier is brought right back to my associates in real time for them to see and benefit from. I mentioned earlier, I have my own private coaching program where I have my own clients that are paying me for my time, but my associates have the best seat in the house because they get all of that at no additional cost to them other than their willingness to sit and listen to me or digest content that I give them. So that is why if you keep going, but that's kind of it, build a really good practical example of how you go about it. I think it's very helpful for people listening, it occurs to me that you can get to the larger discussion about private versus corporate dentistry and where that's trending, but it occurs to me that if private dentistry is going to keep some level of foothold in some piece of the pie that they're gonna have to do a good job of solving this problem. How to transition private practices to new private owners and mentorship of associates that are brought on is probably going to remain a big piece of that puzzle. Oh, absolutely. We don't benefit from the economies of scale that these large organizations do in the in the backing, you know that they have both in like I said, financials as well as person power. They have whole teams dedicated to continuing education, potentially, depending on the size of the organization, and certainly dedicated support crew to help foster that. I mean, dentists oftentimes can just be dentists in those arenas, and that works well for many people. But I think for the true entrepreneur in the bunch, and like we said at the outset, I don't think there's a more entrepreneurial and he was in the pre call more entrepreneurial elements of healthcare than dentistry, and that's what I love the most about it is it's your own frontier, you can hang a shingle or you can go acquire a book of business, you can fold in under one or you can go acquire 10 on your own and, you know, there's so many ways to go about it just depends on how it fits you. But at the end of the day, you need qualified licensed dentists to be able to do the dentistry so that you can run it run a business, you know, there's no one else on the team that can do that. So you've got to have a healthy relationship with your doctor's if you have associates on board with you, in order to make that work. And I don't think you can wait to the last minute all of a sudden say, You know what, time to get an associate because I'm ready to exit like real soon. And I think that's probably too late. So and nobody knows what's ahead of them right in the future. So some of us are going to, unfortunately have some challenges where we're going to be forced to exit private practice well, before we were maybe mentally ready for it. And so as such, I think having that arm team ready to go, you know, at some point capacity is huge. I like that arm team in the hot money reference. So from a few minutes ago, I also haven't heard that before but like give me a chuckle.
I mean, the VSL private equity backed money is super hot. And I think prior to our real huge uptick in the in our interest rate market, or shall we say normalization of the interest rate environment. This was a place where a lot of that was just coming into chasing yield because they needed that to support their investment portfolios. And I think that was a huge push in dentistry is such a bastion of opportunity because it's I wouldn't call it recession proof, but it's kind of hard to mess it up financially unless you really try so they know there's a good ROI on that on that dollar. So that's probably why we call it hot money. It does have a history of high percentage of profitability, which is what's attractive to some of that hot money. Right. Dr. Cohn, we've had a nice lively conversation. Is there anything that we haven't touched on or hit on that you think would be important to convey before we wrap up today? No. I mean, I think inherently we as dentists are like technicians but there's several hats you have to wear if you're going to be an effective long term practice owner, and that's that CEO hat as well as your clinical hat. And they don't necessarily fit on the same head at any given moment in time. And you got to know which mode you're in at all times. But more importantly, as a leader of your organization, it's also appreciate the fact that the culture of your operation is really what you know, patients are going to be qualified to speak toward, and they feel like the moment they walk through the door, and so I think I always have to keep that although strategy and tactics are hugely important to the success of your business. We have to have a people first mentality if we're going to really, I think thrive in this, especially in this day and age more so than ever before. And so optimizing your operation means you gotta have great people on your team to help you along the way and get the boat rolling in all the oars going in the same direction at the same time. So I like Peter Drucker's quote and that's culture eats strategy for breakfast. I went on that. That's really good. It's interesting between podcast recording today I was posting in a central Facebook group. And the question was something to the effect of what will keep private dental practices going strong 10 years from now and the first thing that jumped out to me was the patient experience. I mean, we live in and as much as ever in the United States in an experiential economy. So it doesn't mean like you have to have Starbucks in the corner and get people manicures and pedicures while they get their teeth cleaned. But just I think culture goes a long way to the experience of what the patient feels when they're in the dental office. And so, just the name of the podcast is dentists puns, and money. Are you ready to roll with your best dental related bad jokes? I have two dad jokes. You know, one is dental related, the other one's finance related. So I try to fight down to you know, the one is, you know, the lawyer walked into a dental office and simply demanded for a retainer. That one's kind of a it's kind of pretty, pretty weak. I apologize in advance for this other one, but I just had to share it and that is how did the constipated account accountant fix his problems? I think I know the answer, but I'll leave the punchline to you. Okay. He worked them out. With a pencil.
It's kind of sorry, audience. Please forgive me for that one. I thought that was pretty funny, though. Let's get that it's a good one. Dr. Tom, for those listening that are interested in connecting with you. What's the best way that people get in touch with you? I'm a pretty open communicator, and I welcome text messages. So you can always text me or email me so my cell phone number is area code 303-906-4788. My email address is dr.pc read@gmail.com and I would invite any of you to come check out my coaching website which is dynamic Dental, ascension.com. All one word, dynamic dental ascension.com. All one word. Got it. That is Dr. Tom Reed owner, dentist at City Center Dental Group and Englewood, Colorado, Dr. Tom Thank you for sharing your story, your expertise, and for being a guest on this funding money. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening and following along. Are you a dentist nearing your retirement from clinical or have you already hung up your handpiece? Would you like a treatment plan or the financial components of your exit from clinical? Our company that does exit planning helps dentists like you reduce taxes in retirement and optimize how to best live off your assets, including the ideal time for you to start taking Social Security. If you'd like guidance on those critical pieces, or just a second opinion, schedule an initial consultation with us on our website. Our web address is dentists exit.com, and there's no obligation for your initial consultation, that website again dentists exit.com As a reminder that this Exit Planning and turtle advisors LLC is a registered investment advisor. Your information presented should not be interpreted or construed as investment, legal tax financial planning or wealth management advice. It does not substitute for personalized investment or financial planning from dentist Exit Planning or thorough Terrell advisors LLC. Please consult with your accountants and attorney for tax and legal advice. This podcast conveys the views and opinions of Shawn Terrell and his guests and the information herein should not be considered a solicitation to engage in a particular investment tax planning or financial planning strategy. information presented is for educational purposes only and past performance is not indicative of future results.
Keywords: dentists, associate, practice, mentor, dentistry, transition, mentorship, private practice, clinical, owner, people, worked, dental, patients, business, doctor, mentee, piece, organization, money.