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In this episode of the Shared Practices Podcast, Dr. Jim Simpson shares his journey of buying the right dental practice. From his decision-making process to evaluating opportunities and making the best choice, Dr. Simpson dives into the key factors...
Shared Practices is the go-to podcast for dental business owners who want to grow and elevate their practices. Whether you're an experienced practice owner or an aspiring entrepreneur, Shared Practices offers a wealth of resources tailored specifically to the dental industry.
Hosted by Dr. George Hariri, the podcast delivers fresh, relevant content every Monday. From practical advice and expert interviews to deep-dive discussions, Shared Practices gives dentists the insights they need to become better business owners. Whether you're scaling your practice or just getting started, you'll find valuable guidance here.
We're changing the way dentists approach practice ownership. Join us on this journey at sharedpractices.com/podcast.
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Welcome to Shared Practices 2.0. This is our second client update since the
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podcast has relaunched.
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And I'm excited because I think we get in trouble when we share the success
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stories because we set a fairly high bar for ourselves and for our listeners, unfortunately.
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People are like, I've only had 50% growth in the first year after buying a dental
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practice because they've heard too many of these episodes.
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So I apologize to our audience ahead of time. We have a pretty awesome journey
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from pre-purchase, finding the right practice, and first year of growth.
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So the jealousy, it's okay. But if you buy right, if you buy with growth in
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mind, it unlocks quite a bit of potential and is pretty incredible.
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So I'm going to introduce my co-host today, Danielle, one of our amazing coaches.
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Danielle, how's it going?
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It's going good. Yeah. It's always good on a Monday morning.
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I'm not in a hotel. No, I'm in my home office.
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Finding Wi-Fi and weird corners. So tell us a little bit about our guest today.
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Okay. So this is Dr. Jim Simpson.
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He and I went through the buyer rep program together.
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And then he jumped into this journey of coaching with me.
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We've been on this journey for just under a year together and his office is amazing.
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His growth has been tremendous. We've implemented and done a whole lot of things.
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And I don't want to share too much about his story or his office because he's
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sort of in this really weird situation right now, which is kind of a cool thing.
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So I want him to be able to share what all of that is. But he's an amazing doctor.
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He's an amazing boss to his team.
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And I think that that, I'm going to say leader, he's a leader in his office.
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And so he's been amazing to work with.
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Awesome. Jim, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me. And thank you for the great words there.
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You're welcome. Appreciate it.
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She's great at being a hype man. I'm just like, okay, a little pump here at
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the beginning of the session. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
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When did you graduate? What area of the country are you in?
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And just a smidge of kind of your pre-ownership journey.
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Yeah. So I am from a somewhat more rural area in Northern Kentucky,
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not too far outside of a big city, but graduated dental school in 2015.
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And then I started working as an associate for larger group practice with a
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doctor that I actually kind of mentored with.
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He mentored me while I was going through school and even before I got into dental school.
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And I stayed with him for pretty much close to eight years in the city. So...
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That's towards the end. Yeah, go on.
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Well, I was going to say class of 2015. So, you know, first off,
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very good, very good year.
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But I eight years at one office.
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I remember in the original season one of shared practices, we had someone on
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who talked about the fact that if someone is an associate for more than seven years,
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the likelihood of them making the jump to ownership drops off more drastically
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because it's just like making good money.
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Life is good you're settled you're comfortable so
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you know i think that's awesome that you made the jump despite
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having a good thing going and having a good relationship and it sounds like
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an opportunity that was worth sticking around for eight years what was the moment
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for you if you remember that you decided okay like it's time i want to do my
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own thing or was this just something you always knew and it was just now now you're ready yeah.
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So i actually remember that episode. And I knew I was approaching that timeframe too.
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And originally, obviously in dental school, I think everybody has the goal of
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ownership at some point.
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Because I had this established relationship already, I knew I definitely wanted
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to at least go get some experience with them.
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And it was a great associateship. I had a lot of really good experiences,
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got to learn a lot of as far as from dentistry and from the business aspect.
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I would say towards the end, within the last two years of being there,
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I started to... I don't know, I guess I just wanted more and got tired of like,
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I don't know, clocking in essentially and doing the same thing,
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like the lack of responsibility almost.
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And then there were, you know, there were some other changes that were happening
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and it was kind of like, I think it's time to, for the next step.
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And then oddly enough, I was out of town visiting one of my friends and we had
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just been like talking about the whole situation.
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And I'd been looking a little bit for a practice and a hygienist I knew messaged
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me about a doctor from my hometown.
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And that was kind of the start of it. Yeah.
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Did the hygienist know that you were looking or was it almost like out of the blue?
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She didn't know I was looking. Yeah. It was kind of out of the blue.
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She's, she messaged me a few times in the past. We never worked together or
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anything, but we were pretty good friends from college.
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Okay. Okay. Nice. So I love that.
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You know, I think that oftentimes there's just this sense of like, I want to call the shots.
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I love that you're just like bored. You're, you're, you were sitting there,
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this is a good gig, but at the end of the day, I want to do things my way.
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And that's part of the essential...
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Drive behind ownership is not only is there financial benefits,
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but you can have your own thing and really make the decisions.
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And there's something about making the decisions, even if they don't go the
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way you want them to, but you made the decision and you get to own the consequences,
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good and bad, and reach your potential.
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So super exciting. That's awesome that you didn't really have to grind for years
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to find this good opportunity.
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How early on did you start working with us on on the buyer's representation
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services versus like kind of knowing is this a good opportunity or not what
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was that timeline for you.
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So well so early on so i would say like two years before i had the the call
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i was like i was casually looking but not not very aggressively and so i was
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kind of looking at a couple different places trying to decide what i wanted
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i was used to i don't know producing i guess a decent bit and i was deciding,
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do I want this practice that are harder to find that already has that annual
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revenue or do I want something that I can help grow?
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And then when this came along, looking at the numbers, I'd met with the doctor
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a few times, actually, before contacting you guys.
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Went through schedules and just talked to him. He really wanted to find somebody
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that was particularly from the area, hometown.
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And so going in, seeing his schedule and looking through the numbers with him, he was very open.
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Then I would say it was probably like three, four months after kind of talking
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to him. It was very, very casual in the beginning.
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Well, and the relationship building of this, of like, you're from the area,
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there's an inherent trust and desire.
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You've got to leg up on anyone interested in this practice.
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And I think that's the way that you have to treat these off-market deals where
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it's a relationship with the dentist.
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Sometimes our listeners get into this mode of like, I need to know the numbers
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before I pursue anything further, before I really talk with this dentist.
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But just being patient and building a relationship and being open to that possibility,
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it might take an extra month or two.
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But if you're kind of courting them the correct way, and they're open and transparent,
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every time you ask for a little bit more, they're not withholding information or guarded,
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then eventually you get to the point where like, okay, let's get serious about
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this. So you start working with us,
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When you got that report back, the full detailed analysis of the practice, what stood out to you?
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And then I'll ask Danielle if she remembers anything from that after you respond.
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I would say just as far as some of the numbers go, his overhead was pretty fantastic.
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He had about 60%. And then revenue was good.
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I'd say he was doing, I don't know, close to 700,000 or so. And his schedule
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was fairly light, four days a week.
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And the area, I already knew the area, obviously. it's it's rural but it's it's
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developing very rapidly the only dentists that are out there are the same like
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three dentists that were there when i was a kid.
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Nice um.
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So i knew that i knew the potential was definitely there.
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I i love the developing edges of large metros where it's like you like the suburbs
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are expanding and you're like the next town out and and so it's like there's
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only one place that growth is going to go and you know that like over the next 5 10 15 20 years,
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there's just like a net influx of people who are building, who are commuting,
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the community is getting built up, like new stores are going in.
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And so being like, it's that perfect storm of like, okay, I know what is here,
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the competition here, and the growth that's possible here.
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That's awesome. Danielle, do you remember anything from that early,
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kind of looking at the practice before purchasing?
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Yeah, so I truly love looking at the demographics of a specific area because
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I like knowing what type of person are we going to have in this area?
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What is the growth going to look like?
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And then to the practice information, how many patients are actually there right
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now that we have to work with?
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System-wise, like what systems are we going to put in place right when we walk
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in the doors that maybe haven't been in place in the practice that we can see
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just from the reports that were given to him.
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So I think for me, those are the things that I look at right away.
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And that's a little bit of the special stuff that I want him to share with you
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guys about what's going on there. It's pretty cool.
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Well, one more anatomy piece, Jim, how many ops was the practice?
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Did you buy the real estate? Is it freestanding? Is this in a complex visibility,
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that kind of stuff? Tell us about the actual physical practice.
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Yeah. So I wasn't unfortunately able to buy the real estate off the bat,
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hopefully down the road, but it is a five op freestanding building.
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It's right next to a little strip mall and it's off basically the main road
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that goes straight through town and connects it to all the major highways.
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So as far as visibility goes, it's fantastic.
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I have a sign that's fairly close. The city won't let me put it actually on
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the road, but it's close enough.
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We cleaned up a lot of the landscaping and the amount of people early on that
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were saying they didn't realize it was even a dental practice was kind of mind-blowing.
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His sign was kind of his name and the script was all kind of goofy.
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Couldn't really read it from the road.
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So it's amazing how like the emphasis on like fancy font was like,
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you know, that that's what was important 30 years ago when when that sign went
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went up and it's like, no, I want this like cursive, you know, like I'm a dentist.
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Give me the cursive versus can someone tell I respect and also hate the signs
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that are just like dentist.
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Like yes they commit to like no i'm
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not going to like pretend that i'm anything other than
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a dentist and it's like dentist and phone number and just like pure utilitarian
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sign for for a dental office i i couldn't do it but i i respect those who have
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like the gumption to just put it out there that way um so you know upgrade the
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landscape upgrade the sign you're you're on the,
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Would you have the ability to expand if you wanted to?
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That's something I've been looking at. And I think it would be pretty difficult
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when the current layout, which is one of the current issues we have is we need another operatory.
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And there's just not really a good way to even add one, like feasibly, I think.
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So that's something for future thought as far as what I'm going to do building
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wise, because my end goal would be to have something a little bit larger where
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I can have another full-time doctor with me as well.
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Well, and I don't know if you've listened to the new episodes on on SP 2.0.
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One of the things we're talking about is some some different pathways to the
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million dollar practice.
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And one of the practices is that, you know, new avatar that we're talking about
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maximizing for income, the smart solo.
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So how can I get to a million dollars take home in a five op ideally situation
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with a low overhead and doing that like on cruise control? It's like,
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okay, I can sustain this for as long as I want to.
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It sounds like this practice would be well set up for that.
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And in fact, one of the Facebook questions was like, what do you think is faster,
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doing a startup to that million dollar smart solo or doing an acquisition?
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And I mean, my default is that like the right acquisition, I think is going
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to give you the faster path.
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So we're not going to press you and ask if you're at that million dollar take
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home number. But I do want to talk about your growth over the first year.
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So you take over the practice.
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Tell us a little bit, how nervous were you and any bumps in that early first couple months?
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Definitely nervous coming in because being an associate for so long,
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I was definitely part of some of the business aspect, but I didn't know a whole lot.
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I did have a lot of resources and people I could reach out to,
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though, along the way, aside from just having Danielle, which was fantastic.
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Coming in was a little bit slow, for sure. It was probably...
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So when I started, he had one assistant.
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And so hiring somebody right off the bat was obviously needed.
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But the first few weeks, we were doing a lot of the background,
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front desk paperwork, dealing with some of the insurance plans.
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There weren't even a whole lot of those to deal with, thankfully.
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But it was probably a good three to four weeks before I started seeing patients.
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Because we were... And then we started... I would work two days a week and he
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stayed on. He's still actually with me practicing on Monday and Tuesday.
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Oh, cool.
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Which has been fantastic to have. But we were basically splitting that one assistant
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until I could hire somebody, which was another just like the hygienist reaching
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out to me about the practice for sale.
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I had one of my old assistants contact me one night about another dentist in
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town she was going to go interview for.
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She got out of dental for a little bit. She was doing some other stuff,
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but she wants to go back to hygiene school.
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And so when she messaged me, it was like right after I had posted for an assistant.
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So I was like, well, how about me? Do you want to come in an interview with me.
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And so she came in the next day, pretty much. And I started the following week.
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That's, I mean, when you can find good people early on, I think that's another big accelerator.
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It's like when you inherit a team that's not on board, that's like resistant
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to changes, and then you can't, you know, it like takes a while to turn them
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over and find new people to replace them. That really impedes your growth.
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So it's like to have someone who's already highly competent,
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bring someone on who's also great and that you can kind of train up and there's
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no resistance to the new stuff and the growth, I think is a big deal.
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So you mentioned that the old doc is staying on Monday, Tuesday.
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Are you then working Wednesday, Thursday, Friday?
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I am there Tuesday as well. I just run one column. And then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
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We added a half day on Friday. He wasn't doing any Fridays before.
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Okay. Beautiful. Because I mean, that's once again, we're talking about the
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low overhead that you know, you inherited with this practice,
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adding one day does not add anything to your fixed costs, you know,
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other than the AC bill that you're running that day or whatever,
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but you can add a significant amount of revenue.
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So between you and this other doctor, sounds like you've got a pace that is
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very sustainable for you.
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Was there any resistance on his part of like, if he was used to running one
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assistant, you know, having a little bit busier of a Monday for him, how has he handled that?
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Has he liked it? Or is he just like, hey I'm going to do my pace I'm going to
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do my thing on Monday you do your thing Tuesday through Friday.
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Yeah, I pretty much let him keep his schedule the way he wants it.
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And Monday, he still just has his one assistant and two hygienists.
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So when I came in, there was eight hygiene days. Every day was two hygienists.
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And then within three months, I think it was January, I brought in another full-time
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hygienist and we opened up the Fridays, which then allowed me to add basically
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four and a half hygiene days because one of the other hygienists wanted to work Fridays as well.
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But as far as his schedule, yeah, he comes in Monday, does his thing normal.
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Tuesday is the same thing. I'm just there. I kind of keep a lower schedule.
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I try to keep it more productive.
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And then I help out with the hygiene so he's not too swamped having an extra
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hygienist than he's used to.
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I mean, I love this. This is like immediate eight to like 13 hygiene days or
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maybe even more because if one of those added the Friday as well.
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Danielle, what are your recollections of this first six months and any of the
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bumps, the early successes, coaching moments that you wouldn't mind sharing?
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Yeah. I like that Jim laughs because he knows probably what I'm going to say.
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We have had a lot of conversations and they happened early on up until last
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week about what do we want to do next?
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Because he has this really great organic growth that a lot of offices don't have.
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And when I say organic growth, I mean like 50 to 70 some new patients a month.
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With no marketing spend, I'm guessing.
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Zero marketing.
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Oh my goodness. How incredible. Yeah.
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It's so great. But then we're sort of like, you bring up that new avatar.
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And Jim is really in this position where he wants to be this producer doing different dentistry,
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but we can't get him out of the chair with like fillings and we can't get him
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out of the chair with these other things that are taking up a lot of time and all of the exams.
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And so it's really trying to figure out what the next step is.
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And then we're talking about a new space or expanding into this other op.
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So there's so many choices around just the fact that he has this like huge organic
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growth and we've had it since the beginning.
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And it's something that we can't shut off.
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It's just people keep coming, right?
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It's a problem. You're just like, this is our biggest problem is the new patients
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like pounding our door down.
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I can't imagine how many of our listeners are just like, shut up.
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Like, I don't want to listen to this.
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But the vision really is to cut back clinically, to be able to do the dentistry
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that he wants to do, to do more implants, to to implement sedation cases, to do things like that.
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And so it's really hard sometimes to, we talk a lot about that,
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like, how do we get here with what we're,
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currently doing at the office? How do we get to that goal when we currently
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have just tons of people coming in in the space that we have?
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So that really has been an issue from the beginning.
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And then getting the team involved
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with what it looks like to make that dentistry a possibility for him.
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So there's a lot of working parts in his office.
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And like I said in the beginning. Everyone is so amazing, but we're really trying
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to make his vision a reality for him.
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Well, and the question I'm going to ask here in a minute is about,
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you know, you mentioned that you didn't have to deal with too many insurances.
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So Jim, tell us about the insurance mix. How much is fee-for-service?
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How much is insurance driven?
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Yeah, I would say probably 60, 40, 40% being fee-for-service.
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The insurances are all PPOs. There was five plans when I came in,
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and then one of them was not paying any out-of-network.
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And so during the credentialing process, we ended up just dropping them anyways, which didn't hurt a lot.
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A couple people left, but quite a few of them ended up trying to find new insurances
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because since it's such a small town, everybody's so attached to the hygienists,
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which was one of the good things when I came in.
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They were pretty much fully booked out for six months, every single one of them.
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If somebody had to call to reschedule, we couldn't get anybody in for you know
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three four months at least which is was part of the driving factor for bringing
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in the the additional hygienist okay.
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So a great mix to start off with and then you dropped insurance and saw very
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little drop in demand or patient flow,
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So this is such a great opportunity that if you want to, to renegotiate with
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insurances, possibly drop insurances.
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Danielle, what's been the conversation on that front?
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So we've certainly talked about that. We are not quite there yet that that seems
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to be an option. We have talked that maybe come the new year,
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that conversation would come up again.
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And I don't think it's the patient flow that we're afraid of losing.
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Jim could step in here and say what that is.
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But I think it's more the security behind it that if we do want to grow into a larger space,
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which could mean purchasing something outside of where he is and not just expanding
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that space, then having that comfort of what this looks like and the people
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that are going to go with you needs to be there.
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And so I can understand that hesitation and fear.
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And so there's just working through this process. Like I said,
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I think coming the new year, we have decided to have that conversation again
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on what this would look like.
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If we don't have availability in the office, it's really hard to say, okay, what do we do next?
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We're jam-packed with people. What do we do?
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Yeah. Yeah. And with that, I think the episode drops this next Monday,
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a conversation between George and I, or maybe it's the Monday after,
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about this moment of you have a decision point.
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You've reached what is possible in one office.
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And do you push for growth now or do you push for overhead and income now?
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And so raising fees, dropping insurances, renegotiating insurances before you grow is
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Um, it does slow your growth because part of the reason you get so many new
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patients is that you are a network.
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And so if, if growth, rapid growth to the, your eventual size is your number
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one goal, then staying in network and just adding capacity is the way to go.
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If you're okay with slower growth and you want to optimize for income along
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the way, this is the moment to optimize, to drop insurances,
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renegotiate, raise fees.
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I know raising fees, like some people, there's like zero resistance to being
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like, okay, I'm going to raise fees.
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But there's also like a part of being a dentist and maybe this is only some dentist.
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I'm this way where it's like, sometimes you feel bad raising fees.
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Like, you know, it's a small town.
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There's a lot of dental needs. Like you don't want to have the reputation of
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being the greedy dentist.
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And so is there any of that coming up for you in this decision-making to get vulnerable on air?
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Yeah. I mean, there's definitely the hesitation just because of being in the first year still.
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And I am so set on wanting to see the consistency to make sure there's no,
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I don't know, some false growth from the beginning. I don't know why.
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The insurances I would definitely like to take a look at at the end of the year.
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And there is one in particular that I am definitely not opposed to getting rid of.
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As far as fees go, I think our fees are pretty reasonable for the area.
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I wouldn't say they're low by any means.
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There are a few services I offer because I enjoy doing them and I just want
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to make it more accessible for the area.
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And again, the area is growing. There's a lot of really nice neighborhoods coming
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in, but we're still... It's somewhat rural and we're very close to even more
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farmland and stuff where a lot of people are coming in.
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So I like to keep that growth going for now.
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I know there's going to be a bottleneck, which is one of the problems that we're
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going to face, in which case, we'll readdress and see what we want to do at that point, I think.
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Definitely want to stay where I'm at and maximize what I have and be as efficient
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and productive as we can before we start going elsewhere.
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But I think the goal would be in the next two-ish years, two to three years
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to start hopefully looking to build something close to maybe twice the size.
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I think if that's the goal...
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You will have time where you will have excess pressure for longer than you want.
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And renegotiating insurances takes time. You kind of often have to drop out of network.
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And then like while it's renegotiating and people are getting letters of like,
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your dentist is no longer in network and your team's kind of got to like reassure people.
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So like that's a great thing to do in the interim is it doesn't cost the patient
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anything for you to get higher fees from the insurance.
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So it'd be a good use of the excess demand that
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you have and i also think raising fees on the
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procedures that you don't love you know you've said i want to do
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more of these but there's also all the procedures that you're like
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man this is filling up my schedule maybe sometimes i'm
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annoyed at this these back-to-back mod's and you know
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whatever it may be raising the fees on those procedures
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that are tending to kind of fill up your schedule and prevent you from
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doing more of the stuff you want to do feels good
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because then it's like okay well at least i'm getting paid more to do
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the stuff that i don't want to do as much of so that
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would be you know an area for for you to like think about and consider as
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you look at what to do with that excess demand so so now i do want to ask about
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actual growth and jim was more modest and danielle was more forthcoming on the
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call beforehand as we were just talking but tell us about you know where our
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collections at now and like what are the what are the months that you're seeing these days jim yeah.
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So for the i'm I'm coming up on my 12 months in basically a month even,
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and we're at about 1.3, I believe, for the last 12 months.
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We just hit the million for the actual fiscal calendar year.
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So hopefully we'll be close to 1.5, if not a little bit over.
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Yep. This is why these types of episodes are dangerous. Because in the book,
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we talk about 37% growth or, you know, we have that record of like,
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hey, we're going to get everyone growth and it's going to be good.
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And then you come on air and it's like, well, you know, I bought a 700k practice
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and now it's going to hit 1.5 within the first year.
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And people start expecting more out of us. So this is a problem.
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Danielle, you know, what do you see as a driver of this kind of growth?
Track 3:
Yeah. So like I had said in the beginning, we recognized really quickly that
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there were some things that just weren't in place with systems, with the office.
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So right away, we started putting people in the right seats in the front office
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specifically and putting systems in place like re-care and reactivation for
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our hygiene patients and filling up our hygiene seats.
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And we did some schedule optimization to make sure that we were truly optimizing
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our doctor's time and that we were putting the right things in the appointments
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at the right time when we needed to.
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So exams and x-rays and things like that. So we were really kind of looking everywhere.
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We had a whole team meetings and we really talked about why pre-appointment
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was so important from hygiene because we're looking into the future and we don't
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want to be circling back and chasing people to put them on the schedule.
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So collections protocols, we really went through everything that was really
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important to the growth of the practice and to each individual seat in the practice.
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So not just the growth of the practice, but the growth of Jim's team.
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And it's paid off. It's really shown.
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That's incredible. And I love that it's like so
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many dentists are sitting on these opportunities they don't realize that
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if they'll just optimize these little things and focus
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on growth and be willing to add team members and train them appropriately like
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you can double your practice you he you know the the opportunity was here and
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they're great dentists they're at a pace they they want to be at but if you've
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got someone with a motor who wants to go and wants to grow and is willing to
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really take the reins and and,
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do it a lot as possible. So that's incredible. Jim, what do you see as some
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of the big drivers and the things that you're most grateful that you implemented
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with Danielle as you grew?
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Definitely the systems, because when I came in, it was kind of like one of those
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autopilot type offices where they were all kind of just doing their thing that they've been doing.
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And it was working for them, which was great.
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Everybody was very, they were attentive and ready to change and grow as well.
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As more people started coming in and we were seeing more volume though,
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they were quickly realizing some of the things they were doing that weren't working anymore.
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So I think that was more motivation to take in some of the change that we were
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in systems that we were putting into place.
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That's awesome. It's that order of operations.
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You got to get the systems in place as you grow. Otherwise the wheels fall off
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just due to growth and chaos and not having that in place, your team breaks,
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the systems rake, you lose patients.
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So you've been able to grow both. You grow your patient base,
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you grow your systems, you grow your team all at the same time.
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And that's how you get this opportunity that you have in front of you.
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So I love this. I'm super excited.
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I'm excited to hear if you are able to find another space.
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It's hard when you're right on Main Street, you've got great visibility right in the middle of town.
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And you're like, man, it's hard to give up the demographics of my specific location.
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But with the new growth, I'm sure there's going to be shopping centers,
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there's going to be new neighborhoods, new developments, and opportunities for
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you to kind of take your pick and build where you want to build.
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What other challenges do you see in the next three to six months that you're
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looking to overcome? Jim, I'll start with you and then go over to Danielle.
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Honestly, just the biggest thing is keeping, I guess, everyone on track as far
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as maintaining the goals, but then also the volume.
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Because we're still, it definitely ramped up from the beginning.
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The first five months or so was about 70, 75 new patients a month.
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We've kind of calmed down to around 45, 50.
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But maintaining that and making sure the schedule stays manageable from all aspects, I would say.
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Okay. Danielle, how about you? What do you see on upcoming challenges?
Track 3:
Yeah. I don't necessarily think it's a challenge. I think it's something that
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we face in almost every office is that we're constantly having to do...
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We have to check in with our team and we really have to check in with the systems
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that we've put in place just to make sure that we're all still good.
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And that's something that we've really had to make sure has been a thing with
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Jim's office is just saying, hey, are we feeling good with this?
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How's everything going here?
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We recognize when things aren't necessarily...
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You know, on the up and up on something. And so we, we do some training again,
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and we get everyone excited about the importance of something.
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And so I think it's not just his team that we're going to struggle with.
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I think it's all teams that we have to always have these constant reminders
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of the importance and why we're all working towards these goals.
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But it's, it's fun.
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Well, and especially when you add, you add a lot of systems.
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So it's like you've added, you know, this and this and this over the course of this three months,
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next three months, next three months you add a couple systems every
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three months and all of a sudden you're a year in and we're
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like okay we have to audit all of this and we have to be checking up
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on all of this otherwise as you get
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busier as the chaos hits as your short staff temporarily
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it's just natural like this is not ingrained into the dna quite yet of this
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practice it's like you're we're still building that like pattern recognition
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that muscle memory of all of these systems um so that that's what we all have to do.
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And auditing sometimes isn't fun and you get pushback and people feel bad and
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guilty and they hide and all those things.
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But if you can just do it in the right attitude of like, hey,
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no, we just want to make sure that we're able to take care of our patients and
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we want to make sure we're organized.
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We want to make sure you're not stressed as a dental assistant,
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as a front desk team member.
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Then I think people are on board with, okay, we got to circle back.
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We've got to make sure that we're doing things the right way.
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So anything else, Danielle, and then Jim, that you would say of this whole journey
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and this opportunity before we wrap things up today, Danielle, I'll start with you.
Track 3:
Yeah. Gosh, it's been great. I cannot wait to see what happens next.
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It's a huge amount of growth and I know more to come.
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So I'm truly excited to see what the next moves are in the game of this office.
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It's truly cool. I know, Jim,
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you laugh, but it's so fun figuring out what we do next to see the vision come
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to reality and working with the team to make all of this happen and working
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directly with Jim to make all of this happen.
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It's just fun. It's a fun little adventure.
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Jim, how about you? Anything to wrap us up here?
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Yeah, it's just been a whirlwind of a year. That's for sure.
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The constant evolving has been fantastic. And I really appreciate the team that's been there.
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I was very lucky with who I brought in with the acquisition and the new people
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that I brought in as well.
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Everybody's been very receptive and definitely been a big part of the success
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as well as obviously Danielle and everybody at Shared Practices that's been able to help.
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That's awesome.
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I appreciate it.
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Yeah, I if people want to extrapolate because I keep thinking back to this like
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conversation we've had on air, especially the surprise,
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not surprise, but like George and I were like, OK, we didn't have this as an
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avatar of the million dollar take home solo.
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And if people put together like your early overhead, maybe it's changed,
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maybe it's gotten worse or better what you're projected to do,
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they can start to like come up with their own conclusions of what's possible in your office.
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But I'm going to count this as a win for what Suzanne said, which is,
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Richard, we're already doing this.
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We just don't have this as a specific avatar.
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And also a win for acquisitions as a pathway to having a great take home and
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having options of, do I now optimize for growth?
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Do I now optimize for overhead and what production can be done in one office
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with one doctor sustainably?
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And I just love that you've added a doctor day, you've added hygienists,
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like you've done all the right moves to be able to expand what is truly possible
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out of this five op practice in a phenomenal growing semi rural area.
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So this is just, if we could copy and paste your situation for people like we would all day long,
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hopefully some of our listeners who are pre-owners maybe are thinking about
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like, okay, can I find this growing edge of a major metro, semi-rural type situation?
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And if they can stomach not living in the downtown of some major metro,
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there's a lot of opportunity.
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And then you just drive into town and spend a lot of money downtown anytime you want to.
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So this was awesome. And Jim, thank you for coming on the show.
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Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
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Danielle, this was great. Thank you so much for helping Dr. Simpson out over
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this year and helping him buy the right practice. I really appreciate everything you've done here.
Track 3:
Yeah, thank you as always.
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Awesome. Well, we will talk to you next time on the Shared Practices Podcast.