How to Get More of What You Actually Want

Here are 6 steps to grow your practice: 

1. Get more new patients. 
2. Increase case acceptance with existing patients. 
3. Bring on an associate. Add more operatories if needed.
4. Expand consumer hours. 
5. Let go of staff who are holding you back. Replace them with rockstars. 
6. Create incentives that make growth personal for the team.

If you do these 6 things. Your practice will grow. 

You might be thinking, ‘David, that’s obvious. But how do I do all of that?” 

You are a high achiever. I know this because you would not have achieved what you have in your life without being competitive, capable, and driven. 

I have no doubt that you can do it. 

But before you do, let me ask: 

Five years down the road, do you want to be spending more time behind the chair—or less?

When you successfully grow your practice… What do you want that growth to accomplish for your life?

What if you could get more of what you actually want without another five years of working as hard as you have for the last twenty?

Growth Toward What?

Most practice owners didn’t enter dentistry dreaming about EBITDA multiples.

Perhaps you wanted independence. Meaningful work. A good life for your family. Some control over your future.

Somewhere along the way, success introduced a scoreboard.

And scoreboards are seductive.

You hit $2 million. Why not $3 million?

Pretty soon, growth quietly stops being the vehicle and becomes the destination.

Revenue rises.
Complexity rises.
Responsibility rises.
Your calendar gets uglier.

Was that the plan?

Sometimes growth absolutely is the right move.

Maybe another associate buys back a clinical day.

Maybe greater profitability allows you to move capital outside the practice.

Maybe scale creates enough margin to build a leadership team so every decision no longer ricochets back to you.

That is growth with a job to do.

But growth for growth’s sake is just a luxury-branded treadmill.  

Bigger Is Not the Same as Better

Business makes certain things easy to measure.

• Collections.
• Margins.
• Locations.
• Valuation.

But the things that make a life worth living tend to resist spreadsheets.

• Dinner with your spouse.
• A Tuesday afternoon with your kid.
• Enough energy left at the end of the day to be pleasant to the people you love.
• The ability to leave town without running the practice from your phone.

There is a danger in allowing the easiest things to count to become the things that count most.

Sometimes the better strategy is subtraction.

One less clinical day. One less responsibility. One less part of the practice that only works because you keep rescuing it.

Perhaps the next breakthrough is not making the practice 30% larger.

Perhaps it is making the practice 30% less dependent on you.

That won’t win many bragging contests at a dental conference.

It may give you back 50 days of your life every year.

Choose your scoreboard carefully.

How to Turn Your Practice into a Freedom Engine 

Your practice does not have to become a bigger cage. It can become the vehicle that creates your freedom.

But that usually requires a different blueprint.

Most owners are taught how to grow production.

Far fewer are taught how to make the practice less dependent on them.

1. Know what “enough” looks like. How much income do you actually need? How much time do you want back? 
2. Reduce owner dependence. Build systems, leadership, and decision-making capacity that do not require you to be the answer to every question.
3. Work fewer days per week. This may seem counterintuitive. I have seen many docs reduce days in the office and ironically have their best year ever. You will find that you enjoy dentistry more and have a better quality of life. 
4. Minimize debt, create margin. Debt is a contract for your future labor. Focus instead on creating margin so that you can move cash flow your practice creates into assets and income streams that are not tied to your chair time.
5. Simplify. Reduce complexity. Subtract the aspects of practice ownership that drain you. 
6. Explore creative transition pathways. Associate buy-in. Partnership. A long term lifestyle practice. The goal is not to architect the perfect exit. It is to have choices.

Build a practice that gives you enough financial and operational freedom that you can live life on your own terms.

Start With the Life You Want

What do I want my life to look like five years from now?

Do I want to spend more time behind the chair—or less?

What work do I still want to be doing?

Who do I want more time with?

What do I want the freedom to say yes to?

And what do I finally want the freedom to say no to?

Then decide what the business needs to become.

Maybe you should grow. Simplify. Partner. Sell. 

Maybe you should keep practicing because you still love the work – but no longer need the paycheck.

That is the point of becoming exit-optional.

Not escape.

Choice.

Figure out what you want your life to stand for.

Figure out what you’re willing to bleed for.

Then build around that.

Growth is a powerful strategy.

Just don’t mistake it for the reason you’re here.

This is one of the conversations we’ll be having at the Exit-Optional Summit in Dallas, October 16–17—how to build the financial and operational freedom to decide whether you keep the practice, sell it, scale it, or step back. Would you like to join us? 

Reserve Your Seat