Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Official Podcast of the Dentists Who Invest platform. Talking all things investing, money and finance with a dental spin. Have you ever wondered how you can grow your wealth and protect your hard earned money as a Dentist? We've got you covered. Featuring famous guests such as Andrew Craig, Edward Zuckerberg and Benyamin Ahmed we delve deep into EVERY aspect of finance to educate and empower ALL Dentists.
Dentists Who Invest Podcast
How To Get Your 8 Figure Exit - Part 2 with Michael McCulloch
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Ready to unlock the secrets to a successful dental practice exit? In this episode, we’re diving into the nitty-gritty of transitioning out of your practice with expert insights from Michael McCulloch. We’ll guide you through the four main routes for exiting a dental practice: selling to a corporate group, partnering up, bringing in private equity, or stepping into a passive investor role. Each option has its pros and cons, and we’ll help you match your personal goals with the right strategy for a smooth transition. Plus, find out how giving management a stake in the business through equity shares can keep things growing even after you take a step back.
Michael, a pro in practice exits, reveals the world of private equity in dental businesses. What makes a practice attractive to investors? How can you tip the scales in your favour with a solid business model and strong management team? We’ll also touch on alternative options beyond a full sale, helping you understand whether you should sell completely or still have a hand in things post-exit.
Selling a dental practice isn’t just about the numbers—it’s a big emotional and financial move. That’s why planning is key. We’ll explore how to maximise your practice’s value through careful strategy, understanding the metrics that matter, and creating competition among potential buyers. Whether you’re looking to retire entirely or stay involved in a new role, this episode has everything you need to make your exit strategy a success.
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Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional.
This is part number two and we're talking about exits, specifically the corporate. So we were on a journey. We started out, we're the brand new associate, we're thinking about getting a practice. How can we put things in place for that big old exit someday, next avatar or persona? We explored with people who already have practices. What can they do? Now we're thinking more towards the end, the very end of our careers. When we're thinking more towards the end, the very end of our careers, when we're thinking ourselves right, okay, now it's an option for me to go ahead and sell at the price that I'd envisaged not that I have to, but at least it's our option, an option for that principle. What can we do? Or how should we be thinking? And I guess the first thing to ask Michael is how does it look if somebody wants to keep going at that stage if they've already got 10 dental practices? Because there's a bit of a glass ceiling there when it comes to funding.
Michael:Yeah, no, there absolutely is. And I think then you have to look at again some of that stuff talking about what you envisage is what you want to do. But again, let's take a real what can you do? What kind of exits can you kind of achieve at that stage? You've kind of got that kind of. What people envisage is that that full corporate kind of dental group transaction where kind of you sell up everything to a single person or a single group, you sell out 100, you kind of deliver a plan there, another one a little bit intermediate.
Michael:You, you do a partnership model with someone. Someone buys in a share of that share of that group and you can kind of deliver that could be. There's a, there's a couple of dental corporates which kind of deliver that kind of model at the minute and another alternative to that one is, again, we're not, you're not just delivering the kind of existing plan, but actually what about if, instead of you know someone with a private equity backed player coming into your business and they're all they do that and they buy you. You start becoming part of their business. What if that private equity provider was coming into your group? Right, you've got yourself some scale. You've got yourself a differentiated offering. You've got yourself actually a really attractive proposition. Is there a scenario where private equity backing for you looks like the right option? There's a lot of caveats to that and it has to really be one the right business, the right kind of person, with the right drive and ambition to actually achieve some of that stuff. Um, but that even potentially is another option again. Fourth option transition into just a full investor role from that perspective. You know, again, you have a management team, you got a management team and operating that dental group for you. You can sit back as a as a chairman type investor role.
Michael:The business operates itself. You carve out a relatively nice kind of compounding income from that, just on a dividend basis or whatever you like, right? It's a very passive kind of business model. Again, people really need to think about what kind of owner they are. Are they kind of I want to sit back? Passive income over a longer time. I can just sit on this. Get people in the business the right kind of people to drive it forward for them, but again, more passive. Are you that really aggressive growth person? That's like I want to get back and I want to grow this to the moon right again? Or do you want to actually crystallize value, take the risk away from yourself because, again, a lot of these people that own the businesses for years at this point they've taken on years of risk from that ownership. They've developed a lot of kind of equity value goodwill is what a lot of people talk around in that practice and do they want to take money off the table? I think those are four really good strategic options people can think about.
Dr James:Awesome. Just to recap, first option was private equity.
Michael:Full corporate sale or, if you want to go to private equity Number two You've got that full dental, full corporate sale.
Michael:Or if you want to go to private equity, yeah, number two. So you've got that full dental group transaction. You've got a partnership sales model, so a dental group would buy in at an agreed price now, with an agreed price later for growth. That's like a part sale now, part sale later. You've got private equity backing so they would come in and invest in you now with a share of the equity as well. Potentially, economic control there's, there's a, there's a home. You could do episodes just alone in private equity modeling. But you know there's that element but that's really predicated you driving huge amounts of growth, big ambition, lots of energy, lots of excitement, but challenging it to deliver. Or you've got that passive transition to investor role, but bring a strong management team into that business to operate it for you right.
Dr James:So number four is is not a exit in the sense that you're selling to somebody, you're just delegating to such a high level that you don't have to do anything?
Michael:precisely so. It's not an exit as a shareholder, but it might be an exit for you as an owner operator.
Dr James:Okay, Okay, fair enough, which makes sense and it can be done. It's just that there needs to be enough money on the table to get the right team doesn't it?
Michael:Exactly and typically the way you would do that is, you would incentivize people with the very same way that private equity incentivizes some of that senior management team with what they call a sweet equity pot. So you would be giving up about 10 to 20% of the equity in your business to be held by that key management team, which are the ones driving that further growth.
Dr James:for the business. Wow, exciting stuff. Okay, well, we could probably do a whole podcast on something like that in and of itself, or really kind of dissecting those different types of methods of exiting your business, so to speak. Let's talk about purely the private equity one for now. How viable is that? I'm just wondering how often does that happen across the UK, nationally? Every single year, because you very rarely hear of it.
Michael:How often does the private equity backer happen? Well, I mean, if you look at all of the dental groups, they're all private equity backed oh, sorry, sorry, I didn't ask that question the right way.
Dr James:What I mean is how many people each year successively reach that point where they've got their own mini corporate of dental practices and they get private equity back and there's a deal on the table. I mean, I get that the big guys are already. What I mean is new groups that private equity invest in every single year.
Michael:Yeah, I mean, it's not many, I'm not going to lie and the reason for that is the level of consolidation already in this space is quite high and they're competing Again. But what you need to understand as well is why is it like that? Well, private equity need people to back. They typically want a differentiated business model, a differentiated offering. What are you going to do that is different than what someone else is going to do? They need to look at what you can do, how you can deliver growth for them and how they can develop an exit strategy beyond that as well.
Michael:I think you're probably talking realistically one entrant a year if you look back over the last 10 years plus. But that doesn't mean that there's only one deal being looked at every year, I think, when you look back at the history of it. So I think there's a lot of people looking at deals which they want to get done, but these things do take some time. You've got to have the right management team, the right financial structure and the right plan in place to be able to execute it.
Dr James:And just out of curiosity, is it usually in around the 10 dental practice range that they would look at before they say yes to a decision like that, or is there any rule of thumb on that front in terms of sites or locations?
Michael:There is a few rules of thumb but it really depends on which private equity which you're backing. What is it they're doing? It really depends on the growth story and the journey which they're backing. I think there's a variety of different options. Whether you're looking at kind of that 10 group kind of practice. Whether you're looking at that 30 group kind of practice again both potentially viable. But even then there's other ways group kind of practice again both potentially viable, but even then there's other ways of kind of skinning the cat is, say, backing an existing management team which has done that kind of strategy before and is again then looking to replicate that kind of structure moving forward. So even then potentially they get backing to buy the first of a new group, but again that would take a very specific management team to be able to deliver that plan this is potentially a hard question to answer, something that just popped into my head, but I'm going to ask it anyway, just out of curiosity.
Dr James:in your experience, out of every 100 principals that get to that exit stage so we were talking about before how many often just go down and we're talking about guys who are guys and girls, who are on the bigger side here is, and they've got quite a few dental practices under their belt how many often just go down and we're talking about guys and girls who are on the bigger side here and they've got quite a few dental practices under their belt how many often just want to just do this, wash their hands of it and just sail off into the sunset and do a 100% equity deal to a big corporate? Versus how many often well, very few, as we've already established go down the private equity route? Or how many often would decide to continue but be in a less involved role or as a partnership, or maybe is it hard to say? Do you know the answers?
Michael:on that one, it's, it's, it's. It's difficult to give you actual numbers behind, but I would say the vast majority, if not nearly all principles. Probably when they get to that stage and they think about crystallising, realising value, they probably only really look at that let's just sell the whole business Almost. The other options are rarely considered and I think that's because there's two elements. Maybe you don't know that there are viable options, right.
Michael:There are a few of that Maybe the partial sale would be in viewed at earlier. I think that that that passive investor strategic role again for some people kind of that's a little bit more prestige. You can do it. But then as a financial investor, you would look and say, great, what is my return on how much this business is worth? And you start, if you start, looking at raw financial numbers, is you're, you're fully invested in that? You've not got a differentiated portfolio? Is that the right financial plan for you? I think typically that will come with someone that's built up a very strong brand, they've got a strong image and they love what they've created. Right? That's the kind of person that wants to hold on to that asset and realize I'm getting enough money out of the door. At the back end of the day, I'm happy with it, right?
Dr James:I think if you look from a cold financial number sense, chances are you're probably going to want the cash and and you know what you actually gave me the answer that I was hoping for with that question just to give me some idea. Just to give me and the audience some sort of idea of how, relatively frequently, each path is selected. So the majority of them just go ahead and say, right, pull the trigger, let's go, I'm out and sail off into the sunset, something along those lines cool, brilliant. So let's put ourselves in that person's shoe. This is the shoes. This is a really nice segue onto that.
Dr James:They've got to that stage. You're thinking about their exit. They've decided I don't want to continue in the business, I don't want to be involved in any way, I just want my cash and I want to check out, so to speak. So they're going to go to the negotiating table, potentially with a big, big, big group of practices. What do they need to know? What things do they need to have in place? How can they get the best deal? This is the real juicy stuff right here.
Michael:Yeah, I mean, if you look at what you're selling, when you're selling it, how you're selling it, I think the place where you need to put your mindset in is not great. I'm going to sell now Because, realistically, if you're running that business and thinking strategically about getting the best, take that thought process and move it back a year, move it back two years. There's an element there you need to make sure is the structuring of the company right from a tax perspective, that you're actually minimizing the tax cost that you're going to have as part of that deal and actually getting the best deal, whatever the shape of the deal comes right. Second of all, you probably want to work with kind of a specialist in the dental sector. I mean, mean like myself looking at that doesn't have to be me, but you know, I think getting professional, proper advice is so important for people because actually, even though people you know, even really well-informed people, people that know their business, know what's going on.
Michael:Getting that external third-party view can actually give you a lot of insight into actually how can you leverage, generate a little bit more value, what that business looks like. Again, think about what drives that value that someone's actually going to be crystallizing on an exit. Then now it comes, comes back to that, comes back to that strategic planning, strategic thought about what they're selling and you've kind of got your earnings and the profitability of that practice right. Again, revenue can typically you can kind of drive growth. You can do that, but actually it then comes down to the margins. What margins does it generate?
Michael:Whenever a dental group's going to be looking at a business to buy, they're always going to take that mindset similar to what was talking around about the financial mindset of I'm spending 5 million, 10 million, 20 million pounds on a group of practices. What's my return? How quickly am I getting that money back? Because that's really important metric. There is another metric which is important is I'm buying you for a set multiple of your profit. Great, I'm worth more than that because I've got a much bigger group. So there is a bit of extra value there, which we call arbitrage, and that value is really important when you're trying to grow that wider business. So I think, how do you do that? Have the right advice, again, as I was saying, the right people who can understand those performance metrics, the profitability, and actually manage it to get it to the highest number possible so that when it actually comes to sales you're maximizing that number.
Michael:Why is that important? Well, practice, sales are technically priced on an earnings multiple. So EBITDA is what we call earnings before interest, tax depreciation, amortization. Very accountant-heavy speak, I'm afraid, but profits normalized for what cash is multiplied by a number and that's an ebitda multiplier. So the two numbers combine to kind of generate what you is an enterprise value and that's the headline number which everyone bandies around and says that's the number your business is getting sold for.
Michael:So maximizing that profitability is one thing. Then what's the other part of that? It? So maximizing that profitability is one thing, then what's the other part of that? It's maximizing that multiple. Now, the only way you can really maximize that is, again, I would go back to get a specialist, get a proper advisor to run a process, because actually that's how you get the most, the best price possible. Again, competition in the marketplace, multiple offers coming in for a practice, which is one exciting One. It's a good quality, either a group of practices, that's good quality and that scale right. Getting that competition, getting people to bid for it, getting people to drive value, that's how you get the best deal.
Dr James:Brilliant. That's it in a nutshell, and obviously there's lots of things we could delve into within that.
Michael:So you really need someone on, someone on your side. Really, by the sounds of it, I would, I would, I would say so. And again you've got to look at what kind of process you want to run, how you actually want that transaction managed or you know if you want it managed properly. And again, that's something which, which kind of I do from a corporate finance perspective. I manage a food transaction process from end to end for people. I take off a lot of that from them, negotiate everything on their behalf, but again with the knowledge that I know what other deals happen in the market to a great degree. I've negotiated a lot of deals in the market to a great degree and I have a lot of knowledge from legal agreements and what gets agreed in those. So it's taking all of that information and applying it to get an individual the right deal for their group or for their practices brilliant, and then what that means is they can add an extra however much, onto that transaction deal.
Dr James:So it makes sense from that perspective. Okay, cool. So those are the things that how can we say this that the, the principal, the dentist who wants to exit the dental practice needs to know are certainly some things that they can look out for. What are the corporates looking for? Let's let's go to the other side of the table. What makes it do a deal really juicy for them?
Michael:I think what? What a dental group or dental corporate probably wants to look at is they want to look at that business and there's a couple of things. One, how well invested is it? Is it, you know, are they really well invested practice? Do they have good quality equipment? And how competent, how good is that team which actually fund those practices as well? You know, very important for them Well-run businesses, well-invested businesses typically a good sign that, whoever they're, buying from cares about those businesses.
Michael:So while those metrics are not really measurable, they're actually quite important from their perspective. It's really. There is a financial formula that will apply and kind of say this is is what the number, this is what the price is right. Make sure they understand all of those mechanics. But what else they want to see is that ability to drive even more growth in your business that they're buying. So I think if you've got, say you've got a group of 10 practices whereby every surgery is 95% utilized to the max capacity, everyone's doing it. Well, that's great because actually it's making the most money profitable.
Dr James:And what you'll get is you'll get a really good deal with a good pricing on it.
Michael:But driving extra value is difficult if there's a limited number of ways which someone else can drive additional growth. Because if you think I can buy a business, I can invest growth. Because if you think I can buy a business, I can invest. And again, this is where you need to balance that investment and infrastructure versus driving the best value for you. If someone comes in and thinks, oh, I could spend a couple of million quid and I can drive an extra couple of million quids worth of turnover per year, that's a really attractive proposition.
Michael:So I think that's one of the things that people do want to look for. They want to look for those opportunities to drive more growth. Whether that's one of the things that people do want to look for, they look. You want to look for those opportunities to drive more growth. Whether that's just more surgery time well, that's a new surgery whether that's increasing errors, whether it's doing x and y, the thing you can always do is you can always increase turnover, right, just increase your fees, depending on patient populations and stuff yeah, it's an interesting one because there's kind of a catch-22 there really that I can see from the seller's perspective.
Dr James:So they want to obviously make the business as profitable as possible, but in doing so they limit the scope to add more profitability to it, if I've understood correctly that's, that's, that's exactly right.
Michael:But what you then find is that when you've invested in the business to got the profitability to its highest possible level, you'll get a really good quality deal. But you probably won't end up getting that that kind of I guess opportunity value element that someone might pay a bit of strategic top end value for. But, for instance, what you might know is I've sold my business for 10 million quid, right, whereas I've sold my business for 9.5 million quid and about 750 grand of that's that opportunity value. You're never going to get to the same number because by the fact you've maximized profitability you're going to get the best deal, because actually that's all the way to the top, but what you've had to spend to get there has probably been higher than the person that spent on this side.
Dr James:Oh, that makes sense, because I was like I was trying to figure out what the balance is there, or where the logic was, and not just go on all guns blazing and maxing out profitability. That's the cost.
Michael:Yeah, profitability, that's the cost, yeah, it's the input cost of getting the business to the level where it is maxed out to delivering all of that again, to take it up to there, to nudge it on that extra million quid or whatever it would be, is you'd have to invest more money in the practices to be able to deliver it typically, and that's that's where. That's where you kind of see that little piece of of optimization interesting.
Dr James:So, by the sounds of it, you kind of want to find that sweet spot where you want to leave a little bit of money on the table in terms of profitability, only because chasing it is going to cost you this much, and what that would mean is that, well, it doesn't. It means that net overall, when you've accounted for all your expenses and the eventual practice sale, it's going to be less than what you would have had otherwise but potentially and again that comes into this there's the risk element of investing the amount to drive the numbers up to there again.
Michael:Do you get the return quicker enough to then make the business overall more value when you come to sell it? That's the.
Dr James:There's a timing element there as well. And obviously, listen, it's going to be really hard to call, isn't it? You know what I mean? And we're talking about slightly ethereal things here, aren't we do you know what I mean? We wouldn't want anybody to make a snap decision off what we've just said. It's interesting to know that that's. That's a thing yeah, no, absolutely.
Michael:And I think, if you put yourself in someone's shoes of if you're buying a practice and you've got a choice of two practices one which has got six surgeries set up right, or one which has got five surgeries space for surgery, but you can buy it for half a million pounds less well, that's quite attractive because you're not spending the money on the extra surgery. You've saved yourself half a million. You can invest a chunk of that into getting that surgery set up and then drive the growth naturally, organically yourself as well over time. But there's the other kicker it takes time, it's not instantaneous, whereas if you buy it it's instantaneous amazing right.
Dr James:Well, I've learned something today. Hopefully the audience has as well, mike, anything we need to know whenever it comes to exits to the corporates from either the buyer side or the seller side, any things that are good to be aware of.
Michael:I think probably timing. I think probably thinking about how long a transaction process might take is probably quite an interesting step to think about. It's not a case of you turn up and say, great, I want to sell my practice, great deal done, right, we'll cross the line when we get to it. There is a bit of a time consuming process to get the best value for it as well. I think again, talking about talk to people a couple of years before strategize, think about the best way to drive that business performance. But then when you actually come to a transaction process, there's probably four stages of it. There's this preparation, and almost can't stress what. What I find in terms of the way I advise all my clients is that preparation stuff is ultimately where I spend huge amounts of time, but it's where I end up adding the most value on a deal. So while I spend a lot of time here, all of that sets you up when you get to the negotiating stage to get the best deal at that point. But you need to do the prep work, you need to understand everything first. So, preparation once you've done the prep, you've got a nice sales document, things can go out. You then have that marketing process and that's going out to a range of of dental groups and dental buyers who are available in the market, who have funding available. Again, picking the right one with the right funding available is also important because, again, depending on who it is depends on how long that process is going to take. If someone is buying your dental group or number of practices needs to go to a bank to get funding because they don't have any funding available, well, that's not going to be a quick process. That's going to take time. Again, you go to one that's already pre-approved, with funding in place. That's going to be a much quicker process. So there's a few considerations about who the right buyer for you is, on that timing as well.
Michael:Once you've gone through that process, you've kind of got potentially indicative offers. There's then a round of negotiation to do, and what you want to do is you want to have the best out of all of those offers combined to give you the best possible suite of results. And that's where you get to, and then you select your buyer. You've got all the terms and then what you need to do is make sure that those terms you've agreed actually get translated into a legal agreement, and there's two elements to that. That's one where you want a lawyer to turn it into legal language, but two, you still want a proper advisor to make sure you're actually being guided on the commercial points included in the legal document as well.
Michael:You know, those are the four, the four stages, and they, they are time consuming. But you know, I think it's uh, it varies from deal to deal. Deals can take, you know god, they can take a long time. Let's just say I've had some they've taken over a year, from that start of that process all the way through to the end. I've had some which have taken five months, right, and there's a whole variety. And that's from the start of prep all the way through to execution and completion. So preparation, marketing, negotiation and execution.
Dr James:There we are and I just was curious, whenever it comes to the stage where the money changes hands and I know sometimes they have performance-related targets and they have earnouts and everything along those lines. So I know that this what I'm about to ask you there's probably a whole host of ways that this could look. However, what I'm curious to know, is it ever just the case where they'll agree a fee of like 10 million and then you shake hands and one day 10 million appears in your bank account?
Michael:I wish it would be that easy. Honestly, James, I really wish it would be that easy. Typically, typically no. And if that does happen, there will be one of two things which has either happened. One someone's grossly underpaying for your business because they're happy to pay all of that money over day. One or two you have such a strategically attractive business, they are willing to pay you whatever you want to get it Right. Those are the two scenarios where you're going to get to that situation.
Michael:Typically, what any buyer is going to want to do is they're going to want to pay you an amendment upfront. And again, there's elements here with what buyers want to do from a risk management perspective. But there's also an element from their funders perspective as well, where they may have banking covenants or they may have funding coven requirements where they are not allowed to spend a certain percentage more than X amounts upfront anyway at any given point across the range of different deals that they are delivering. Typically it's not deal to deal specific, but it will be a range of. We are buying this number of practices in this quarter. We need to spend X amount percent on those practices on a day, one kind of payment.
Michael:So it's usually not going to be all of it unless, again, the room strategic value. But typically you're going to be talking a large percentage up front when the deal happens. The caveat to that is if you're selling a practice which is growing and you want to get value for that growth and you've not gone down the private equity aggressive model, again, if you go into that model they're going to want about three times their money back for whatever they put in. So you know you have to deliver that. But looking at a dental corporate transaction, actually you're getting a huge chunk of money up front and then there'll be some kind of plan to actually phase payments into the future. But depends on how critical you are to that business, what the growth journey is and, again, what the kind of the strategic value is there for a corporate buyer depends on that structure really, and it it can be almost anything that you can imagine realistically there we are.
Dr James:I met. I once got a message from somebody and they said to me hey, James, you know what nobody tells you about when you sell your dental practice, whenever you have that exit, what nobody tells you about that. What the situation that you find yourself in beforehand? No one ever tells you that you don't have any cash flow after that point anymore I thought to myself yeah, you would just think that people would put you know, do the do their own math on that one.
Dr James:But I guess what that particular chap was getting at was that he found it even though he knew that that was going to occur. He found it strange having got used to some money coming into the bank account every single month, he all of a sudden had this big chunk but no river to sustain it, so to speak. I found that fascinating.
Michael:I like that analogy of the river kind of cutting into your bank account not not such a bad place to be, but but it is is a very transformational kind of thing which has happened. Fundamentally it's. It's why I love my job. To be honest with you. I get to help advise clients on, essentially, transactions which are, you know, once in their lifetime.
Dr James:So from my perspective that's an absolute joy to help advise on, because I'm helping someone deliver something which for them, is so transformationally important.
Michael:They commit so much of their kind, of their own input, their own time and their own energy into making sure that that happens. So helping someone deliver, that is usually an absolute treat.
Dr James:Excellent. And you know what can be very useful in situations like that as well when you do come to sell, no matter how much money is on the table, whether that's one practice or 50 practices a really good financial planner who can be like okay, right, you've got this much cash, this is how long you want it to last, this is how much you're spending, this is how much the markets can grow it by. Let's just crunch the numbers, figure out how to make this viable. That's a good thing you know, because people don't even know that that's possible no, and and again.
Michael:That's a really useful place to be is to get that kind of proper, sound financial advice from kind of someone that can actually tell you what a proper portfolio looks like, what age you're there at, what kind of investment needs to look like now to kind of generate that level of income that they want out of that kind a really important piece. I think it's not something I can do. I'm not registered or regulated by the right people to actually give that advice, but no, there are absolutely kind of people out in the market that can do that and do it really well. And again, understanding Okay, go back to the start. Start with the end in mind.
Dr James:That financial planner can help you understand what is the number you need to get to to allow you to achieve that right exit at the right time again that was the very next thing I was going to say how many people actually get a planner involved before they sell their dental practice, because that gives you so much clarity? Right, it works both ways. Like what, if you sell your practice for a million and then you sit down with a planner afterwards and it's like, oh man, you actually need one and a half to make it through to the end of your retirement, realistically. Well, you didn't have that clarity before the start, you know.
Dr James:Whereas if someone said to you, actually it's one and a half that you need, then you might think, okay, well, I'll keep at this for a few more years, I'll invest in the practice, I'll get it to that level. And then that I know that when I sell those extra two years for paying me dividends at the other end, because I've got an extra 10 years where I don't have to think about money and conversely, the other way that it works is I think there's this mindset that we all have as human beings that we just want to cling on for the highest number possible. But is that necessary? Like, are you prolonging? You're running the dental practice when actually, realistically, you could have sold a few years ago for a much smaller number that would have seen you through. But the reality is you don't have that clarity until you get a decent financial planner.
Michael:No, and that's true. But then the other part of that, James, to take the kind of person that's built a network of practices up to 10 practices, 15 practices, 20 practices, so on, you know, whatever scale is is that, is that the kind of person which you think is going to sell and think, oh, I'm just going to put my feet up now. I really don't. I really don't think it is it never works out like that.
Dr James:You know it's, and we were. We were actually saying this to each other just off camera, weren't we right? That stuff like that, it's like that energy that got you from zero to ten and ten to one hundred. It doesn't just stop. Whenever you sell, we all we tell ourselves that it will. Entrepreneurs are like, oh okay, well, you know it'll be the amazing sail off into the sunset and and then I'll be able to relax and put my feet up. Guarantee you do that for two days. You're gonna be bored, right, you just are. And it's because, it's because of who we are, it's not about any number or anything along those lines. So, yeah, that's completely true, and that's why we've got to, just got to look internal and think to ourselves right, how much is enough? Yeah, and what, what, what do I need to? What do I need to change about me to get my psychology and subconscious to realize that it's just as important?
Michael:yeah no, that's I mean that's, that's absolutely right. But again, you know a bit of that upfront planning and thought process. Where do I want to get to? What kind of? What kind of outcome do I want to achieve for me? And you need to start with that point and go great, that's what you're aiming for. The point of what you also find with people is, again, it's not just in debt transactions, in debt transactions across every sector people always have a number. It's really funny because people always go that's the number I want to achieve from this sale. That number is usually not based on anything except for I like the number 5 million, I like the number 10 million.
Dr James:I don't like this right. I like the thing. I put in the air.
Michael:Right, you have to then almost re-engineer everything to kind of go well, how on earth does that number make sense? And you have to look at, well, what's the business which helps a business sell for that kind of value? So you look at that and again you've got a financial planner telling you this is what you need to get. Talk to a good quality financial advisor, like an accountant, like a corporate finance advisor, whatever and then say, well, what's the type of business you need to sell to generate that sales value? Right, that's how you go down that chain. Go down that chain, great, now we need to work on the profitability and the practice performance to actually get the business to that level where I can achieve that outcome. You know it's like dominoes suddenly falling over when you get to that, but then what you'll find is great, I'm doing all the right steps. The right steps. Something goes wrong. The business has come back. What do steps? Something goes wrong.
Dr James:the business has come back what do I do?
Michael:The business maybe goes up. I'm doing so well, now I don't want to sell and there's never, ever going to be the right time to actually press the button on that. It's never going to be. But I think people tend to get to a point and go do you know what? Let's just do it. But what you end up finding is no one ever gets to exactly that kind of financial position aiming for that number and think, yes, I've done it, I'm going to get there, it's. It's never, ever happened like that. People are always kind of like oh, I'm not quite doing what I wanted to be. Or, you know, the business is absolutely soaring and they kind of don't want to sell at the time. They think they've had that kind of magic number it's really interesting.
Dr James:There you go and you, and words like that are really worth listening to. This is me speaking to the audience right now. Words like what Michael has just said are really worth listening to because Michael sees this stuff all day long, every single day, with his clients. You've seen people when it comes to that once-in-a-lifetime point where they're making this decision, so you have an innate understanding of their psychology as well, and that's why it's so useful to be able to talk about this stuff, because we can see in the future how we're going to feel in that moment. We have some episodes on the Dentists Who Invest podcast about financial plan and getting the right number whenever it comes to the exit for your dental practice as well, because, as Michael says it can, it can be useful to know that and work back from there. So you've got a good idea in terms of time frame. So that's a really good thing to look out for as well.
