Some lessons from more than 50 years in dentistry
There is a question that seems to keep coming back to me, and it is one that I suspect many dentists eventually ask themselves:
“When is the right time to sell my dental practice?”
I have been thinking about this question from both sides of the profession.
I have watched younger dentists building their practices, worrying about their income, their patients, their staff and whether they are doing things the right way.
And I have watched dentists of my own generation reach the point where they begin to ask themselves:
“Is it time to let go?”
After more than 50 years in dentistry, I have learned that there is no simple answer.
The decision is not just about money.
It is about where you are in your life, where you are going professionally, what you have achieved, what you still want to achieve — and what you are going to do when the practice is no longer there.
I started without really knowing where I was going
My own journey began in the early 1970s.
I left Adelaide University and came to Melbourne, where I worked in a number of practices, including Hawthorn, Carlton and Brunswick East.
It was a very different world from dentistry today.
There were no computers in the surgery, no digital records, no Invisalign and none of the extraordinary technology that today’s young dentists have available to them.
More importantly, I was young and I was learning.
But there was a period of about 18 months when I had very little guidance.
I had no real mentor.
Nobody was sitting down with me and saying, “This is what you should be doing. This is where you should be heading.”
I was earning a reasonable living, but eventually I realised something that has stayed with me throughout my career:
I was earning money, but I wasn’t learning enough.
That was an important realisation for a young dentist.
It taught me that earning a good income isn’t necessarily a measure of professional success.
You can be busy.
You can be making money.
You can have patients coming through the door.
And yet you can still be standing still.
That was my first great lesson: always keep learning.
And, if possible, find somebody who knows more than you do and learn from them.
I was fortunate to find good people
Later in my career I was lucky enough to have a good banker, a good accountant and a good lawyer.
They were important people to have around me as I began to understand the business side of dentistry.
But I also realised something else.
A banker can help you with money.
An accountant can help you with figures.
A lawyer can protect you legally.
But none of them necessarily teaches you how to become a better dentist.
I knew I needed more clinical training.
So I went on to further study, including a Master’s program in Endodontics.
RMDSH was another important part of my development. I had good teachers and was exposed to practical dentistry — amalgams, dentures and many of the fundamental skills that formed the foundation of my career.
It wasn’t glamorous.
Yes, it was rough.
But when I look back, those experiences were enormously valuable.
They taught me that dentistry is not something you simply qualify in.
Dentistry is something you spend your career learning.
Then I decided I wanted my own practice
Eventually, like many dentists, I wanted to have my own practice.
The economic circumstances were favourable and I had the funds to make the move.
But I didn’t really know how much I didn’t know about running a business.
I bought a one-man dental practice in East Bentleigh.
I can still remember just how different dentistry was.
A surface amalgam was around $10.
An extraction was around $30.
A denture was around $90.
There was certainly no shortage of things to learn.
And suddenly I was not just a dentist.
I was the practice owner.
That meant patients, staff, accounts, equipment, suppliers, appointments, treatment planning and all the other things that go with running a business.
I quickly discovered that being a good dentist and running a successful dental practice were two different skills.
That distinction has remained one of the most important lessons of my career.
Then the years started to pass
One of the strange things about dentistry is that you can become so involved in your working life that you don’t notice the years going by.
You are always thinking about the next patient.
- The next appointment.
- The next staff problem.
- The next piece of equipment.
- The next treatment plan.
- The next month.
Then suddenly you look back and realise that decades have passed.
During those years, dentistry changed dramatically.
- I changed with it.
- Technology changed.
- Patient expectations changed.
- Practice management changed.
- Treatment changed.
- The business of dentistry changed.
- And I had to keep changing as well.
That became another important lesson:
A practice that doesn’t change eventually gets left behind.
But there comes a point in every dentist’s career when another question starts to emerge.
“Do I still want to keep changing?”
That is where the question of selling becomes much more complicated.
When the offer arrives
Eventually, many practice owners will have somebody approach them.
Perhaps it is a corporate group.
Perhaps another dentist.
Perhaps a private investor.
Perhaps someone who simply sees value in what you have spent decades building.
And suddenly there is a number in front of you.
It can be very tempting.
After all those years of hard work, somebody is offering to turn your practice into a substantial financial asset.
And there is nothing wrong with considering that.
But I would encourage any dentist to stop for a moment before looking only at the number.
Ask yourself:
“What am I actually selling?”
And then ask the question that is much harder:
“What am I going to do when I’ve sold it?”
I think we underestimate what a practice means to us
This is something I understand much better now than I did when I was younger.
- A dental practice becomes part of your identity.
- For decades, you introduce yourself as a dentist.
- People know you as their dentist.
- Your staff know you as the owner.
- Patients have trusted you for years.
- You have built relationships with families.
- You have created systems.
- You have solved problems.
- You have made mistakes.
- You have had successes.
- You have built something that didn’t exist before you started.
- Then one day, you hand it over.
- And what happens on Monday morning?
- You wake up and there is no practice to go to.
That can be much harder than people imagine.
The money isn’t necessarily the difficult part
I have seen people become very focused on the financial side of selling.
How much is the practice worth?
What multiple will I get?
What are the tax implications?
What will I have left after the sale?
All of these are important questions.
But there is another calculation that doesn’t appear on a balance sheet.
What is the value of having a purpose every morning?
For some people, selling will provide exactly what they want.
They will travel.
Spend time with their family.
Play golf.
Work in the garden.
Develop another business.
Or simply enjoy having no responsibilities.
But for others, the sudden loss of structure can be very difficult.
That is why I believe that you shouldn’t wait until after you sell to decide what comes next.
The practice can become part of your identity
This is something I don’t think we talk about enough in dentistry.
After decades of being a dentist and practice owner, it is easy to confuse what you do with who you are.
You don’t simply say:
“I own a dental practice.”
You say:
“I’m a dentist.”
And that identity can remain incredibly powerful even after the practice has gone.
That is why I believe the decision to sell should begin long before the actual sale.
You should start planning the next chapter while you are still enjoying the current one.
What comes next?
This is perhaps the most important question I would ask any dentist contemplating a sale.
What are you going to do with the next 10 or 20 years of your life?
For me, the answer has increasingly involved sharing what I have learned.
After more than five decades in dentistry, I don’t want all those experiences simply to disappear when I stop practising.
There are younger dentists who are clinically capable but may struggle with practice management.
There are dentists who are technically excellent but don’t know how to lead a team.
There are practice owners who need somebody to help them see the problem that is sitting directly in front of them.
And there are dentists who simply need somebody with experience to talk to.
That is where I believe the next chapter can become particularly rewarding.
You don’t necessarily stop contributing when you sell your practice.
You may simply contribute in a different way.
So, when is the right time to sell?
I don’t think there is a particular age.
I don’t think there is a particular dollar figure.
And I don’t think there is one answer that applies to every dentist.
For me, the decision comes down to several questions:
Have I achieved what I wanted to achieve?
Am I still enjoying what I do?
Do I still have the enthusiasm to adapt and change?
Are my personal circumstances changing?
Is the financial opportunity right?
And, perhaps most importantly:
Do I know what I want to do next?
Because selling isn’t really about ending something.
It is about deciding whether you are ready to begin something else.
Looking back
When I think about my own journey, I can see a series of decisions.
- Leaving Adelaide.
- Coming to Melbourne.
- Working in different practices.
- Realising that I needed better mentorship.
- Going back to further education.
- Buying my own practice.
- Learning how to run a business.
- Learning from good people.
- Making mistakes.
- Adapting to enormous changes in dentistry.
- And eventually asking myself what the next stage of my life should look like.
- I wouldn’t change the journey.
- Some parts were difficult.
- Some were exciting.
- Some were financially rewarding.
- Some were frustrating.
- But every stage taught me something.
And perhaps that is the greatest lesson I can pass on to another dentist.
Don’t simply build your practice. Build your future.
Because eventually there will come a day when the question is no longer:
“How do I make my practice bigger?”
It becomes:
“What do I want the rest of my life to look like?”
And when you can answer that question honestly, you may finally know when it is the right time to sell.