Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Should the Selling Doc Stay or Go?
The episode explores the challenges dental practice owners face when the selling doctor remains involved post-sale, sharing the experience of a coaching client, who struggled to implement his vision due to interference from the previous owner. Key themes include establishing boundaries, the importance of clear communication, and the necessity of cultivating relationships with staff for a successful transition.
• Owning a dental practice means navigating complex relationships following a sale
• The selling doctor’s role can inadvertently create resistance to change
• Establishing a firm exit date aids in clear expectations
• Communication about roles should focus solely on patient relationships
• Building rapport with the team is crucial for successful transitions
• Accepting turnover as part of evolving a practice highlights growth opportunities
• Clarity and intentionality lead to thriving practice environments
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Imagine you just bought a beautiful new home. It is your dream house and you're ready to move in, decorate it and make it yours right. But there's just one catch the previous owners. They want to stay in the guest room for a few months just to help you adjust. So you say, of course that would be great. And now they're giving you tips on where you should put your furniture, they're advising you on the paint colors, and every time you try to make a decision they remind you of how they used to do.
Speaker 1:Things. Sounds frustrating, right? Well, that's often what happens when a selling doctor stays on as an associate after the sale of their practice. While it may seem like a good idea to keep them around for continuity, it can actually create significant challenges for the new owner. Let's dive into why this happens and how you can set yourself up for success. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started. How are you today? Thank you so much for joining me and I want to share a story from one of my coaching clients. I will call him Dr B so he can remain anonymous, but he bought his practice from Dr G and Dr G was really helpful during the sale. He was really easy to negotiate with, really easy to work with, very excited for the transition, and was really easy to negotiate with, really easy to work with, very excited for the transition, and he really wasn't sure that he even wanted to retire from dentistry at all. So him and the buyer decided that you know what, why don't we keep you on as an associate? And when you're ready, you just let me know and we'll finish that transition. You can help with the transition, make everything go good for the patients and for the team, and this sounded like a really good idea at the time.
Speaker 1:So this client reached out to me about a year after buying the practice because he was frustrated that he wasn't able to make any changes because the team just wasn't behind him. They were still going to the now ex-owner for all of the issues, for all the complaints. And the ex-owner would even chime in like at meetings with the new owner and explain that what he was trying to implement wasn't necessary, because they never needed to do it like that before and the way they did things already was fine enough. And essentially the ex-owner thought his practice was great, which most ex-owners do. And essentially the ex-owner thought his practice was great which most ex-owners do and they don't see the need to change anything. You ever heard that before? Can you relate to that? I'm sure you can. But the problem was that this was not the new owner, Dr B's vision. So Dr B then asked the ex-owner, Dr G hey, man, when are you planning on retiring? Like when's that going to be? And he was like yeah, I don't know. I'm still really enjoying what I'm doing. So Dr B was like okay, yeah, let me know. And that's about the point that I started working with him, working with his client. So we talked about this.
Speaker 1:The first order of business was that Dr B had to have the difficult conversation with the ex-owner and explain that he needed a date in the next two months, that he was going to retire. And, as you can imagine, this conversation did not go that well, but it ended with the owner saying he would be done in a few weeks. Not happily, but he said he would be done and he finally left and everybody was happy and we lived happily ever after, right? No, because one team member who ran nearly everything at the front was also the ex-owner's daughter. She didn't want to do things the new way either, and this ex-owner's daughter, who still worked at the front, had a lot of the team behind her, so he was really scared to do anything with her. So we just said, hey, man, you got to grow up her. So he was really scared to do anything with her. So we just said, hey, man, you got to grow up here, you got to get in there and you got to let them know what the expectations are and you got to hold them accountable.
Speaker 1:So Dr B then went in there, started having a lot of conversations about expectations. Within a few weeks she quit and a few people left with her. I think it was a hygienist and another front desk person. So they left and, as you can imagine, this doctor is now feeling like man, am I doing it wrong? I'm feeling so anxious. Am I a bad leader? Why are people leaving? Are people supposed to quit, Right? Doesn't that kind of sound like a horror story? Like here you are, you're all excited to have your practice and you're running it and a bunch of people are leaving and the selling doc's supposed to stay on and make it easy. But it really sounds great in theory, but in reality it really didn't work out that well, and I hear this a lot. So it sounds like it's gonna be great, but it's usually not. So I'll tell you how this story ends in a bit.
Speaker 1:But I want you to know that the transition with the selling doctor, if they're going to stay on and do dentistry, will likely get messy unless you do a few things before the sale. One you must be clear with the selling doctor about the chain of command once the transition is complete. On paper, you can be cool with them staying on, which I think is great, but they have to agree that they will deflect any complaints from the team to the new owner, that they have to be an employee of yours, Otherwise it's just not going to work. They have to be behind you or they have to resign immediately Now. Without this, the team dynamic is going to stay the same, because the selling doctor can rarely get out of the way. They love their practice, they loved the way that they did things. They have a relationship that's usually long term with their staff and they feel badly when the staff doesn't like the changes. So even when they try not to, they can still undermine your intentions just by projecting negative energy when that staff goes to them to complain. So they need to deflect that to you, Otherwise it's just not going to work. Now, if you don't do that, that could, it could still work out, but only if you want the exact same practice as the previous owner had, which is usually not the case, because we usually want to grow. We want to add associates, we want to cut back our clinical days, right, yeah, totally so.
Speaker 1:Number two you need to have a date that they are done and they are leaving. I would prefer this be six months or less. Personally, I would want them to retire on Friday and I come in on Monday when they're gone. But that's just me. I know a lot of people want them for that transition. So I'm not going to say that that can't work. You just need clarity. You need to have a date that they are done on that date. So you're thinking well, what about having like a six month contract that can be renewed? No, you need a date that they're going to leave. They're going to leave in six months or less.
Speaker 1:And if, for some reason, things are going just great and you love it and everybody's happy, you can now approach that doctor and say, hey, what do you think about staying? I really like you here, I really like this arrangement. Do you also like this arrangement? But it's so much easier if that date is already set, because that way you don't have to have the conversation with them. If it's not something that you want to do, I mean, the last thing that you want to do is like if you had it, where it's like a renewal period and it's coming up to there and you're hoping they're leaving and the doc's like, dude, I want to stay another year, this is great. And you're like, yeah about that. Yeah, you don't even have to have that conversation. You have the date that they're leaving, that's it. If you decide to change your mind, you can always approach them during that time and see if they want to stay.
Speaker 1:So the third thing is you need to make the focus of the selling doctor's role during the transition. All about patient transition only. Nothing about management, nothing about bills, nothing about leadership, nothing about calling any shots or contributing anything. They are there to be a dentist, they are there to be an employee and they are there to help with the patient transition only. And usually you want to have in the contract that you can terminate them at any time for any reason you want, Because usually, more times than not, you're going to get resistance.
Speaker 1:So if you are in the process of doing an acquisition, know that the first thing you need to do once you get in there is you have to start building relationships with the team. You need to get the team on your side, and then the next thing that so many buying docs fail to do is declare the vision for the office and start setting expectations. You might feel like you're failing as the team is leaving, but the thing is, if they are not down with the vision, they just aren't going to go with that new vision. So you need to start hiring immediately once you get in there, because chances are people are going to leave and that's okay and it's expected. Now there will be some team members that like your new vision. But if there's a big age gap between the selling dock and the buying dock, which there usually is, there are usually some cultural time kind of differences in the way that the selling dock and the new dock feels that dentistry should be delivered, and that often leads to resistance from the team and it's just not worth it.
Speaker 1:Don't feel like you have to convince people on your vision. You declare it, it's your practice and if they want to follow you, they'll get on your bus and they'll go driving with you, and if they don't, they are welcome to leave and that's okay. So more or less it all comes down to clarity. And if you aren't sure on what you need to be clear about, well, that's what the training on dentalpracticeheroescom is for Join the DPH Hero Collective. You can get some clarity there. You wanna have clarity with the selling doc, with what they are to do once the transition is over, how long they're going to stay and why that is so important to you. And ultimately the selling doctor just wants to know that you're going to take care of their patients after they leave. That's what they really care about. So if everything you do is because at your heart, in your heart. You want to provide exceptional service to their patients that are now yours. They shouldn't care about how you do it and that needs to be explicitly said before you sign the papers.
Speaker 1:And if you're wondering what happened to Dr B, all right, he got the ex-doc out, the ex-doc's daughter left and the other two people left, and then he started with his new vision. He doubled his revenues within a year. He had an associate, he cut back to three days a week and now currently he's adding his second associate, doing over 4 million per year right now. So it was a success. But it started with getting the selling doctor out of the practice. Next episode we are going to be talking about how to get through the hygienist shortage. It's not going away. So what are we supposed to do as practice owners? That's next time on Dental Practice Heroes. Happy holidays everybody. Take care.
