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How Not To Grow Your Dental Practice

How Not To Grow Your Dental Practice
by Colin Receveur

It might surprise you to learn that the basic principles for growing your practice are no different than for any other business. I know—that’s heresy, or something like it. But I’m completely serious, and I offer my own experience as an example.
 
I started remodeling houses as a kid. I worked for my dad. When I was 18, I went to college and tackled remodeling my first house, one that I bought from the estate of an older gentleman. After remodeling the house, I lived in it for a few years. Then, I sold the house and part of the ground it sat on to the city as part of an eminent domain action. I kept the remaining one acre of the ground and ended up selling that to Porter Paint for a significant profit five years later when they wanted to put a retail store in. Sounds like a total success story, right?

Nope.

I ended up flipping 8-10 other houses through the years. Let me say right here that hidden problems are the absolute bane of the flipper’s existence, and I missed a bunch of them on several projects. I learned really fast that cockiness is not an asset in the real estate game.

Some of the properties I bought were quick flips. Others were a remodel and then a rent or sell. I did okay on some, and others I broke even on. Along the way, I figured out what mistakes I made. The nice thing about real estate is if you buy right, or even just okay, your worst-case scenario is "break even."

Now I've found my sweet spot to be multiplex residential apartments, and I've really honed in on that as part of a "kids college plan" and "retirement plan" for myself. I told you all of that to tell you this: I made a lot of mistakes. I learned what worked and what didn’t work. I changed what didn’t work, and I got much better results. But I didn’t stay married to my mistakes.

You started your practice with the idea of helping dental patients. If this is your first attempt at running your own business, you’ve probably made a lot of mistakes, too. Maybe you’re still making them. If you’re going to take your practice to the next level, you’ve got to focus on what’s not working and change that. Here are some ideas about what you might be doing that’s keeping you from taking your practice to the next level.

Read full article on Dentistry iQ.