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This podcast covers from START to FINISH How to Acquire a Dental Practice. Michael Dinsio, founder of Next Level Consultants has literally seen hundreds of deals as a banker in the industry & he has personally consulted hundreds of dentists as a Buyers Representative. Michael talks with GUEST SPEAKERS about Due Diligence, Legal, Demographics, and more... He invites experts to the show to help you avoid those headaches and heartbreaks. So start at the TOP w/ Episode 01 and work your way through the transition process. We break it down step by step in a true #UNSCRIPTED and genuine way.
00:00
Oh yeah! Here we go! Practice acquisition! There are pitfalls throughout the entire process.
00:28
Inquisition Unscripted, the truth when buying and selling a dental practice.
00:36
And now your host, Michael Dinsio. All right, all right, guys. Another episode of Dental Acquisition Uncensored. As always, this is Mike Dinsio, your host. And today we've got a special guest of mine, friend, partner at Next Level. And we've got a great episode today talking about, like, as you all know, we're working through the process of an acquisition from start to finish. And
01:05
If you're just joining in, make sure you go to the top and you check out the episodes in the beginning of this program, because the whole purpose of this podcast is to walk you through an acquisition from literally the very beginning, working yourself through the process. And by the end, you'll be the best business owner you could possibly be. And so today we're focusing on the due diligence part of an acquisition.
01:33
As you know, we interviewed Art Wiederman, a legend in the industry. We went through all the numbers as a CPA, looking at a practice and everything with due diligence and everything you need to be looking at from a numbers perspective. But today's special, because it's really, we're going to focus on the clinical part. And as I always say, clinical is probably the biggest threat to an acquisition. So we're probably going to get a lot into that.
02:00
I'm just gonna get you right into it with my guest and friend, Paula Quinn, partner at Next Level Consultant. She's been a hygienist for, no, I'm not supposed to say how many years, Paula. She's gonna yell at me. Actually, why don't I hand it off and say welcome, Paula, why you introduce yourself?
02:17
Well, of all, I want to know. So if they watch this, they actually don't need us anymore. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, that's the whole point. Then I'll keep some back. I'll keep some. Yeah, hold it back, Paula. No, we don't hold back on this show. I know. I'm just kidding. Yeah. So my name, of course, is Paula Quinn, as Michael said, and I've been a hygienist. Yikes. I've lost count. A lot of years. 25 years. Been in dentistry my 32nd year in dentistry.
02:47
and there's nothing I haven't done except be the dentist. And sometimes I pretended like I was one. So that's my background and I'm ready to give you some info. Yeah, I think what's unique about Paula is as you all may or may not know, it's nearly impossible to own a dental practice as a non-dentist.
03:16
It's only a few states that you can do that. And Paula lives in one of them in Arizona. And she just not too, more recently, I suppose, if we're going to put a timestamp on this episode, she just sold. So we could get her perspective today on how to sell a practice, but that's not what we're doing. Today we're focusing on buying and she bought a practice and owned it herself and ran a successful practice. we could probably share some.
03:44
war stories about that, today's about the due diligence. And so let's get right into it. My first question for you, Paula, is, you know, when you went into that due diligence process, like, so put yourself in these buyer shoes and you're thinking like, okay, I'm buying this, well, I think I'm to buy this practice. We made an offer. It was accepted. And now we're going to go in and we're going to look under the hood and really see what
04:12
this practice is all about from a clinical perspective. What are some of the things that you would suggest, reports you would pull, how do you get yourself into that mentality from a clinical perspective going into due diligence? It's kind of a loaded question. We could kind of take it anywhere we want. Okay. So the first thing I want to do is, you know, pull a report to see what kind of dentistry they do, right? So I want to pull a report on codes. You know, if they're doing
04:39
You know, I'm a little bit different than a dentist, but I'll just pretend like I'm one because I've done that many of times. You know, if I'm not used to dropping implants, if I'm not even used to restoring implants, you know, there's just all kinds of things I want to see the kind of procedures they're doing and how many they're doing of each procedure. You know, if there's one denture and I don't love dentures, no big deal.
05:03
If they're doing 500 dentures, that might not be the practice for me. Same with implants and all the above. So production by code for each provider, as well as any clinician in the practice, you wanna know what kind of dentistry they're doing. I also wanna see how aggressive they are versus how conservative they are. So are they doing a lot of fillings? Are they doing a lot of crowns? What does that ratio look like?
05:30
And that also goes for obviously with along with the implants, if there's a lot of implants, you know, that's a little more, it's not aggressive in a bad way. So aggressive, conservative, neither one of those are bad words. It's just kind of where do they lie in the spectrum of their philosophy and the kind of dentistry they do. You want to look for unusual codes, you know, things that don't make sense. I know we're not going to get in too much of the weeds of my practice today, but I know one of the things that
05:59
was on mine that is that they upgraded. There can be some gray area in that, you so I have to know that if every single crown is upgraded, if I choose to do it a different way and follow different rules, then I'm going to lose that part of the revenue, that part of the production. So I have to be prepared for that situation. And
06:26
I like to look at unscheduled lists, like how many of their total active patients are on there, have their next appointment, are they good at getting patients back in? All of these things are kind of good things and bad things. It's the way you look at it. So some of it will look at it as an opportunity, right? So if half their patient base isn't back on the schedule, cool, I have an opportunity. But also you have to remember, and I'll talk about this a lot throughout our segment here is,
06:55
that also could be a bad thing because the patients aren't trained that way, right? So, now we have to change the mindset of our patients. And then this isn't really a report, but the schedule. I mean, I'm gonna study that schedule. I'm gonna see how far out people are booked. Are they booked? How full are they? know, what does that schedule look like? It's gonna tell me a lot about how the practices ran. Okay, wait. I just ran with that. Yeah, no, you did. You just dropped.
07:23
so much. I wanna just back up. Okay, back it up. Because folks, that could be the episode right there if you just pause and record and rewind and listen and start over. Like, all of that matters. I wanna put you in the mindset of, I'm going into this practice. The idea is for you to get an idea of what's this practice look like
07:52
outside of just the numbers. And you're looking for opportunity and then you're looking for some potential landmines, right? And so, the first thing that you said was the codes. And I don't think most doctors are too savvy about codes, but they do know the big ones, right? Any tips that maybe you could maybe...
08:21
oversimplify that code report, the production report by code. Any tips there? Get a buyer up. Hire us. You can Google most anything. There's CDT books out there you can purchase. I you're gonna need one when you buy anyway. Like what are the latest CDT codes so that you know how to, those have descriptions of what each procedure is. So you could just pre-buy one of those.
08:49
Or you could Google like, what is a code for a crown? What is the code for a filling and an ADA or a CDT code? Look those main things up that you want to go in and find out. Like if you're worried about something, implants, dentures, orthodontics, stuff like that, you wanna look that up because you wanna see how many of those they're doing. And then if there are things you're excited about.
09:14
You want to make sure that those are things that are being done in the practice. You're going to want to look those up and then just have an idea of that. Now, when you do run that report, it does have a mini description of each of those things too. can go, once you run the report, you can go through and look that way. You know, when you, I've looked at those reports thousands of times, pretty much, maybe not thousands, but it's definitely a high hundred number.
09:43
you're looking at count, right? But you're also looking at dollar amounts. And some of these reports, depending on the practice management software you're into, it makes it a lot, it's easy to pull that report. And sometimes it's hard, but sometimes practice brokers even give you a top 10 category, not category, but a top 10 procedure count by volume, like production. So, you sometimes, you know, like the preventative,
10:12
are gonna be a small production number, but you'll see really big counts. Like when you're looking at that, Paula, like what are some things like maybe a ratio or what do you look at from a hygiene perspective? Cause you're a hygienist, like are you looking for numbers that make sense ratio wise or anything like that?
10:37
Well, I think it all depends on the act of patient. So that's the first thing you're going to want to get right because, you know, in a perfect world, if you have, we'll just make it a thousand patients for simplicity. Technically, you should have roughly 2000 cleanings. Now, if you're doing periodontal therapy and you're doing other treatments, some of those patients will be in that program. So they'll fall under a different code. So 2000 would
11:03
almost be sad because that means you don't have anybody in Perio, right? However, you you want it to be a big number. You don't want it to be a thousand. That means you're not seeing your patients twice a year. You know, you want to, you kind of, mean, if you want to get really technical, you'd kind of have to say, how many days am I working? What would I want my production to be a day? Would I need two crowns a day to make?
11:29
my life happy and you kind of have to look, okay, if I divided this number of crowns that this doctor did by sort of the number of days I expect to work in a year, you could do a rough idea of is that supporting? But you also have to remember every dentist's philosophy is different. I think we're probably going to get to it later, but really it's, you know, there could be a lot of opportunity, which could also be good.
11:59
Yeah. However, when you get into practice, think one of the biggest, and I'm probably jumping ahead, some of the biggest pitfalls can be, if this dentist is too conservative, not doing things, that can also be harmful, right? Because now our patient base is not used to anything and we've got to go in and train the patients and probably the team because they haven't been doing it.
12:28
I mean, yeah, I mean, the result or the reason why you're digging in, hitting the microphone, the reason why you're digging in and looking at these numbers, you're trying to paint a picture or tell a story by the numbers. then you have to decide, okay, what's that mean? Rise above the numbers and say, okay, does the philosophy here make sense for me? Right. Am I gonna have to change something?
12:55
Day one is if I did that what's the impact and so there's a lot of if then kind of conversation so that that's why podcasting and articles and all this free stuff is you should never really live by it with a Bible be like a Bible because Because everybody's situation is different you as a provider is different than a practice that you're looking at it's different It's all puzzle that you have to piece together. So Paula we could keep going into that but
13:25
I think we have enough I just want to say one more thing, Michael, that just bounces off what you just said. mean, knowledge is power, right? So whatever the outcome of these reports, you know, it really depends on your personality and your philosophy, because you could get super excited, like, this is opportunity, this is amazing, or you could be like, holy crap, this, they don't do anything here. And this is going to be difficult to turn around. So I think it's I think it's just who you are.
13:52
But knowledge is definitely power. And I think that's what the whole point of due diligence is, is finding out what does the practice look like, where does it stand today, and does it align with what I can do? I love that. It's right. It's spot on. Of all of our clients, I've got the folks that are super scared about doing this, and I've got the folks that doesn't matter what I tell them.
14:18
They're doing it anyway. And there's everybody in between. And so I think I think you're right. The key is knowing what you're buying is is it whether you're scared of it or or you're excited, you know, and that that's that's the key. So we we are obviously big fans of of good hygiene departments. You taught you taught me that
14:47
that the hygiene department is a business within the business. It's your favorite thing that you say all the time. Starting to sound like a broken record with you and me in the room, because I start modeling you and saying the things you say. since you're so passionate about hygiene, my next question is like, how do you, a little bit of the same question, but how specifically on the hygiene department?
15:13
do you determine if it's a healthy hygiene department or not? And I'll say why I'm asking that question and you can answer it. Because to me, doctors, whether you believe this or not, the goodwill, in my opinion, in the majority of it's in the hygiene department. mean, a little story sidebar, Paula bought her practice, she went through seven dentists, I think, in her practice and she didn't, well, of course she lost some patients. Well, she did.
15:42
a few, but the truth of the matter is the practice grew in two years pretty quickly. And that was even with a lot of dentists. And so the point I'm saying to that is patients are comfortable with a location. They go to it for convenience. They go to it for familiarity. And so the team and the hygiene department really makes a transition sticky.
16:09
And if you don't have a strong hygiene or if you're not buying a practice that has a strong hygiene department, you might not be buying a sticky practice. That's the best way I could say that. So how do you determine if it's a strong hygiene department? Yeah, you're so right, Michael. Most people, when they call a practice, they call and say, can I get a cleaning? They don't call and say, can I get a filling? Now, don't get me wrong. There's some in pain or have been told and all of a sudden they come out of the woodwork and they're ready.
16:38
you know, majority of your patients that call are calling for that cleaning. They don't care about exam, they don't care about x-rays, they want their teeth cleaned. absolutely. And they do spend more time with a hygienist. We spend more time as their oral healthcare provider, their healthcare provider than any other provider out there because we are seeing them at least twice a year, hopefully, and we are seeing them for a full hour.
17:07
They get that time with us that they don't get with any other provider out there. So, they do get a relationship with us, right? And everybody wants a healthy, pretty white smile with good breath. let's just face it, we are the heartbeat of All right. Enough about.
17:27
Why you love hygiene? This is one, I get this one little segment here, so just let me love hygiene. Let you love it. Okay. Yeah, so first things first, the easiest thing, number one is obviously again, I mentioned it in the first question is look at the schedule, right? So, technically, we should always be scheduled six months out. We should be pretty full. Whoever I see today and yesterday, I will have scheduled six months out. Hopefully. We won't get into.
17:57
We won't get into leaving a little bit of room for growth, but we wanna see that schedule pretty full up to six months out. And so that's one thing I look at. Are they scheduled six months out and what does that look like? Their reappointment rate, right? And that kind of goes hand in hand. Anyone we see this week should be six months, three, four, six months out. So how many of my patients are rescheduling their appointment?
18:26
How much do they value getting back in? What is your hygienist saying to them also determines how strong the hygiene department is. Technology is huge, right? So again, this can be good or bad. Are there diode lasers? Is there advanced technology for oral cancer screening? Are they using interaural cameras? So...
18:49
The more advanced that is, the more advanced probably the hygiene program is and the more sticky it is because patients are being discussed like all the tools in the toolbox for their oral health care. So, you know, that's going to determine a lot. Do you need me to take a break? Because I know last time I just spit a bunch of stuff out. No, no, I was actually I mean, there's more. But how do you determine like I'm thinking reappointment rate?
19:18
And being in that moment of a due diligence, you could look at yesterday's schedule and you could click probably on each patient card or profile and see if they have another schedule. And then you could do a quick tally of like 10, a sample of 10, how many reappointed and it would be a kind of a small sample. Yeah. the moment. Yeah. And I think you can tell just by how full it is, you know, because if you even go, you know, back to November,
19:48
and then you look into May, you can get a pretty good pulse. If most hygienists, I would say from zero to two weeks, schedule within those two weeks, right? Most are trained to schedule six months in a day, some are more fancy and go six months in two weeks. So within that two weeks, that patient seen on November 10th is going to be...
20:13
somewhere between May 11th and let's call it May 25th, something like that. So- So looking at the density of the previous schedule, would you be concerned, I'm kind of leading the witness here, but would you be concerned if you went out three weeks? I've seen this before. And what would you think if you saw this? You go back a few weeks and it's jam packed. So that's good, right? They're filling the schedule. But then you go three weeks out
20:43
And even the hygiene is wide open, which means they're not on top of it and they're just kind of being a little bit reactive. Like how would that mess you up as an owner day one? Like I'm thinking like you, that would make me a little nervous not seeing the hygiene schedule packed, right?
21:06
Yeah. So, you know, basically, you know, they they say they are we they are we part of that? think we're part of that. OK. They every dollar in hygiene equals and nowadays it's really three dollars in restorative. Right. So we that's one of the reasons we are considered the heartbeat of the practice or the business within the business. All the different names that the hygiene department has is because we feed the dentist. Right.
21:36
Unless they have an emergency or somebody refers them for something, and usually if you're a specialist, that's not gonna happen. You aren't getting any dentistry. And I witnessed that firsthand, right? So I bought a broken, broken, broken practice during COVID and there was nobody on the schedule, right? So, you know, every time we were lucky enough to get a hygiene patient,
22:03
same-day dentistry was how we survived. you know, if you don't have that, you know, eight patients in hygiene, there's very little opportunity for diagnosing. I'm not saying everybody's going to have something, but somebody's going to have something. Yeah. So, you know, it would be scary for sure. You'd be a quasi startup. You'd be kind of starting, you know, fresh because the first thing you're going have to do is start
22:33
calling and filling that hygiene schedule. Yeah, I mean, you know, you can see the history and see that the practice is probably we've we've managed a couple of practices like this, Paula, where nothing was super proactive, but maybe the front office person was really good at filling every hole two weeks out. But a well oiled machine is is is booked out six months, like she said in the beginning of this episode. So.
23:01
I just want to piggyback off that as like, you know, actually how long should a dentist's schedule be booked out? Kind of in the same vein. Let me finish up that one thought. And what I would say too is if, yeah, there are some amazing front office out there and she can fill in a dime, but guess what she's doing all day, right? Filling, So it takes away from patients in the practice and other things. So you just have to remember that.
23:30
know, that's not an easy task. And if it's absorbing 90 % of your day, then, you know, they're not able to do other things, although that's helping the practice grow. not a horrible thing to focus on. It just takes up a lot of room. And as for the dentist, you know, I've seen him as little as two weeks. I've seen him as much as two months.
23:54
you know, if you're someone booked two months out, you want to make sure that you do save time, right, for emergencies or for patients that, you know, may be going on vacation, you know, losing their insurance, you know, you don't want to pack your schedule too full for two, for two months, you know, so, but I think pretty healthy is, is probably a good three weeks out. I mean, that's kind of how I survived and I felt very comfortable doing it. I think it also is just,
24:25
If you're booked, I would assume it goes hand in hand if you're booked that far out, you're getting enough patients, but you just want to make sure that obviously the consistency keeps happening because if you're only three weeks out and then you have a little on the schedule or something, then that can really affect that fourth or fifth week. So, it's just a balance of the number of patients that are coming in, how conservative the dentist is.
24:52
How good are we at getting them back in? Do patients say yes to treatment? So there's all kinds of things that go on to what's healthy and how far to be scheduling, to be scheduled out. But I live by the two to three week rule, and I did fine. I think if you're a couple of months out, it's probably a little bit less stressful for sure. The other thing I was thinking about was back to the fit.
25:19
the dentist that you're buying the practice from, their times for procedures, pay attention to. You Oh yeah, I was gonna get to that. Okay, well go there. because if you're looking Well, we were talking about the hygiene program. I know. Oh, she's taking me back to hygiene. Okay, Paula. All right. So we can stay on track here. We can get to back to hygiene.
25:46
Back to hygiene. Everybody stop thinking Dennis, let's go back to hygiene. Let's go back to- appreciate this. Okay, okay, so wait, back to hygiene, we talked about- The schedule. Schedule, frequency of cleanings. What else did I hear? I guess that was where we left The technology. Technology, yeah. And then I was gonna go into the Perio program itself. Of course you were.
26:13
I'm not sure. What percentage of perio that's in the practice? you know, lot of, Michael knows this about me and it's kind of a joke, but, you know, a lot of practices will be like, oh, I'm 35 % hygiene, that's perio, sorry, that's very, very healthy. And yes, it is. However, if you had a hygienist in there 10 years ago, that was a great diagnoser and you've got a lot of perio maintenance.
26:41
doesn't mean there's new perio coming through, right? So, I always look at it as, you know, 50 % sorry, getting dorky here, 50 % of the US 30 and older has periodontal disease. So, 50%. So, technically, that means four out of eight patients that are 30 and older that sit in your chair have the potential to have periodontal disease, right? And you go in these practices and they're diagnosing
27:10
maybe five patients a month and they're seeing hundreds. that's something, number one, we want a healthy perio program. If it's not healthy, there's a couple of things. Number one, there's an opportunity to put a perio program in place, but there's also those patients who you're gonna have a lot of resistance, right? Because Susie Q has been cleaning their teeth for 20 years, 10 years, 30 years, and she never told them. And now,
27:40
you're coming in and the rules are changing and it looks completely different. So, you know, it can be a real challenge if you don't have at least a decent Perio program. All right. I love that. Let's make this simple because because I'm used to Paula talking about this stuff all the time. So I am totally following her. For those of you in the car driving and heard that snippet and you're and you're trying to piece it together.
28:09
My thought is, okay, so you've got old Perio and new Perio, because you've taught me that. The new Perio would be associated to probably new patients. You should look at your new patient count and see how many back to the codes. What are those codes, Paula, for an actual scaling and root planning for a new
28:33
diagnosis for those that are listening? be either D4341 for full quadrants and D4342 for limited quadrants. Okay. And then 4910 is the regular maintenance. That's a maintenance. Yeah. Good job. Yeah. Yeah. See, I'm learning. Looking at that, I think every practice could do better in this department, 100%. The practice that you purchase
29:02
This is always a conversation of opportunity for me, 100%. It's an easy way to get a lift. It is important for you to scorecard the practice you're purchasing in this department. Whether it's bad or good, just scorecard it and know what you're buying. Again, knowledge is power. Anything else on hygiene? I'm sure there is. Wait, but I wanna say something about it though. If- Oh.
29:28
Yes, this is a little bit different of a scorecard because if it's non-existent or very, very low, and I'm a dentist with a philosophy and I'm definitely the younger dentist, I don't know if they just get more perio or more education on that, but I've noticed more and more that,
29:49
their mini periodontists, I hate to say that, they really, what I'm saying is they truly believe in it, right? They're not trying to perform the things that the periodontists do, but they really believe in it and they know it and they get it. And so they want to come in and they want to see that Perio program. And so it can just be, I'm not saying don't take it on. I'm not saying that it is an opportunity. I'm just saying, know that it will be a little bit more of a challenge. If you have an opportunity to bring
30:18
you know, a new clinician in provider hygienist, it might look a little different. But if you're buying one where the same people are staying and this is kind of their philosophy and belief, it can be a challenge that way for both the team and the patient. just saying. no. And we've seen that. We've seen with the world of a hygienist being not available,
30:47
you know, asking a hygienist to do something more than what they're used to doing can be challenging. Trying to say that as nice as I can. That's all right. You won't hurt my feelings. OK, any more else on on that piece? that, but I just have a couple more things with the hygiene department. A couple of other ways I evaluate if it's healthy or not. Clinical notes. So making sure that those protect both
31:15
the practice and the patient. Not saying I don't think I've ever seen it, but I inherited a practice where notes weren't real good, right? And then I have patients calling in and there's no information there to provide. I don't think lawsuit-wise you would have anything to worry about because it's not, you didn't perform it, but it's just a hassle, right? So just looking and again,
31:45
This is a change you can make very quickly once you took over, but just kind of looking through there and looking at the nodes and seeing how thorough those are and the templates. And then the last thing is just if things are current. So this is again, another good and bad opportunity. Radiographs, know, is there a particular frequency for them? So it could be great because it'd be a great opportunity for you to, you know, update everything.
32:11
but then you get the resistance of patients who haven't had radiographs in 10 years. And now you're asking them to take a full mouse set of x-rays. So, and the team, you get the resistance of the team. updated, how current are the radiographs? How current are the perio chartings? How current are the intraoral photos and just things like that? Like how current and up to date and how frequent does the practice currently do things is.
32:40
what I look up. Yeah. folks, just again, knowledge is power. We'll just keep repeating that. It's not a reason to not buy a practice or to buy a practice. It's to understand what you're going to face day one and having a plan for that. I never used this podcast as an outlet to sell our services.
33:09
However, our clients are prepared for all this going into it because we're looking at this kind of stuff and we're gonna say, hey, look, this is about what you're gonna deal with and we're here for you. And you can do all this stuff. You guys are super sharp. It's just getting into the details, getting that detective hat on when looking at, and don't go crazy folks. Let's back up. Let's back up because you could,
33:38
you could number death due diligence. You could spend 15 hours in that practice looking at it. It's not about, you want to know what you're buying, but like when someone's buying a car from you, they'd come over, they'd turn it on, they might drive around the block, they're going to look at the tires, maybe they're going to bring a friend and that friend's going to be a mechanic and they're going to pull all the wires and
34:06
But at the end of the day, they're not going to sit around for hours and like test all the fluids and like go crazy pants. You're gonna buy the car, you're not. And that's really this situation. It's really just putting a game plan in place. And Paul is telling you some things to look at so that you know and you can prepare for it. Bottom line, have a plan. Have a plan. Yeah. And I think, Michael, you know, what you said is great. And I'm going to piggyback on that. If you're buying a
34:36
$500,000 practice versus a million dollar practice, those things are gonna reflect that, right? Usually the million dollar practice, the hygiene program is stronger. There's more restorative coming out of it, know, that sometimes bigger cases, you know. So when you're buying a kind of a broken practice, you know, something that's limping along, these are things that you just have to know that are there.
35:05
Like you said, make a plan to execute and just know that there are going to be a little more struggle with either the team or the patients. But you're getting a deal. It's like then that's what reminded me of it when you said the car, right? So if you're buying a brand new, I don't know, what do people like these days? I'm going to say Lamborghini, even though I could care less about. Tesla for 70, $80,000. You expect
35:36
certain things. If you're buying a $500,000, $1,500 car. 10 year old Camry. Yeah, you still want to check it out, right? But you know it's broken and you're like, okay, cool. You just want to make sure at least it's, it is what it is. It says it is, you know? Yeah. Well, good, good point. Cause I have a lot of clients that come from really busy practices and then they're buying that 15 year old Camry.
36:05
quote, And they're expecting that. It's like, dude, that's not the practice you're purchasing right here. everything- can't remember if you told me or someone else told me when I bought my practice because the chairs were hideous. And I was just kind of embarrassed. It was the seller. And he said, no one, was it? I think so. And he said, no one looks at the chairs, Paula. And I'm like, well, I do.
36:33
And he's right. No looked at the chairs. Nobody. Nobody. Yeah. And your Patterson rep did. Yes. He wanted to sell you one. Oh, he may have been the one that told me. No, he said the opposite. Yeah. He's like, everybody looks at the chairs. That's right. Nobody cared. I was shocked. So, you're getting what you're paying for and you can do amazing things with it. That's all there is to it. Yeah.
37:04
Anything about the doctor side that we can sprinkle in? We don't have hours upon hours today to discuss this, from a doctor's perspective, remember, well, back to the hygiene that if you're gonna see that schedule completely built out, I want you to think like, okay,
37:29
If it's like this now, when I close on the practice, I'm going to have if there's two columns of eight patients a day for six months or whatever, that's how many opportunities, how many exams you get to sell your side. If the schedule is piece-milled together and it's sparse, same day dentistry.
37:56
I want you to think that way, folks. And it was like that with you, Paula. With your practice, you said it, same day dentistry. So, let's talk about the mindset of that because the stronger the hygiene, the more opportunities you're going to get to sell. The weaker the hygiene department or lack of active patients, another way of saying that, the less you're going to have to sell, right? And what was that mentality for you with that?
38:22
practice that you purchased walking into the first couple of weeks. Well, and you weren't the dentist, so you couldn't control what was diagnosed. Yeah. Well, one thing I was going to say a little bit toward the end, but I'm going to say it now is if you think you're going to come in and be a perfectionist, you need to kind of rethink that process because even a great practice, there's not always a ton of control, right?
38:51
You've got teams, you've got patients, you got a lot of human beings there. You got a lot of circumstances happening. So as a new buyer, new owner, like relax, right? Because you can't control it all. I think coming in, I was excited. I was excited. I like a challenge though. That's the way I work. I work better under, you know, throw something at me and tell me I can't do it, then I'm going to do it kind of person. So
39:20
That's what I was saying earlier. It depends on the mindset of the person. It doesn't mean the latter is worse or better. It's probably better because you don't take such crazy risk, but neither one of them is better. It's really who you are and what you can tackle. And I think that if you're buying something that maybe isn't,
39:45
a well oiled machine, you have to be prepared to roll your sleeves up too. And that's what I did. I rolled my sleeves up, I dug in and I went and helped get it because it does take a team when it's a little bit broken, when it is a little sparse, we all have to jump in and figure out how do we fill this. It's gonna take some marketing too, some marketing dollars. You can call on old ones,
40:14
But spending a little money and getting some new ones in there. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I couldn't echo that enough. That's actually a perfect transition point for our next episode, which is Paula and we're going to continue this conversation in the next episode, a part two of
40:44
of this idea of looking at a practice from a clinical perspective because I'm going to tell you folks, and we've talked about it a lot on this program, you could hire me, you could hire a CPA, a banker, attorney, all of these people to look at the numbers and grind into the business and tell you the cashflow and tell you the historicals and tell you if it's worth what they're saying it's worth and all these things.
41:13
But to me, that only covers 40 % of the risk. The other 60 % of the risk, in my opinion, is your ability to produce or mirror what the seller is doing. And so that's, we'll leave it at that. Paula, thanks so much for being on the program today. Let's keep it going for segment two. But thanks again for being a part of part one. All right, thank you.
41:42
Tune in next time for another truth-filled episode of Acquisition Unscripted. We want to hear from you. Interact with your host Michael Dinsio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Comment and subscribe.