Dentists Who Invest Podcast

How To Protect Profitability In Tough Economic Conditions with Johnny Minford [CPD Available]

• Dr. James Martin • Season 3 • Episode 374

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What makes a dental practice financially resilient during uncertain times? Expert accountant Johnny Minford joins us to break down exactly how to protect both your income and long-term practice value.

We explore the difference between capital and income resilience—and why strong cash flow matters more than ever when inflation eats away at your savings. Johnny shares how smart appointment scheduling, strategic patient retention, and effective treatment invitations can stabilise your income without compromising care.

From associate pay structures to patient demographics, hygienist contracts to specialist referrals, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Discover how the right systems, culture, and strategy can keep your practice thriving—no matter the market.

Plus, UK dentists can now earn free verifiable CPD. Just click the link in the show notes after listening.

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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, inde

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Dr James:

Today we're talking dental practice and associate resilience, and what we mean by that is what you can do to stay financially robust even when the markets are not that good. I'm joined by expert accountant Mr Johnny Minford. We're going to be going through the ins and outs of everything that you can do to put the power in your hands to stay safe and stay profitable during challenging financial times. I'm also happy to share that there is free verifiable CPD associated with this podcast episode. Whenever you finish the episode, all you have to do is click the link in the podcast description. It'll take you right through the Dentists Who Invest website. You'll be able to complete a short questionnaire and, once passed, you fill in your reflections and we'll go ahead and email over to you your verifiable CPD certificate, which is entirely free. What that means is this podcast episode will be able to contribute towards your verifiable CPD hours during this learning cycle right.

Johnny:

Well, I think what we're going to talk about today is is, uh, the factors that make a dental practice more resilient, yeah or not?

Dr James:

yeah, that's the thing, because I think resilience is a good thing resilience is absolutely a good thing, especially when people get nervous because there is economic gloom.

Johnny:

Insecurity, James, is the word you're looking for. Insecurity, there we go, and instability, and if there ever was a time, this is it. This is it. But the first thing, if we're looking at a dental practice resilience the first thing we have to have a look at is what do we mean by the word resilience? Is it resilience in capital value In other words, we're trying to do something that makes a practice look resilient to someone else if it comes to sale or is it resilience where we build in an income stream which is going to be a long-term thing, so that practice can carry on, and carry on month after month, year after year? And the two are slightly different. The good news is there's probably a lot of the same sort of things. That are the factors in that um, but how you deal with them, how you put them into the practice, is slightly different depending on whether you're looking for a capital resilience or an income resilience what was the first one?

Dr James:

what was the first one?

Johnny:

the capital resilience right, okay, yeah, so it's the capital value, trying to make that look sensible and obviously to somebody else, because you're doing that for a reason to sell it.

Dr James:

But I like this little distinction you were making, because I was kind of pondering this the other day. This was like a random shower thought I don't know where I was at the time, but I was like when inflation is really high and you have your wealth stored as cash capital, resilience goes out the window. But what's the one thing that protects you cash flow right in that, in that situation? Absolutely you have to have a good margin to protect it, and inflation has been kind of high.

Johnny:

The last bit absolutely, and I think that's why the uh, the values of dental practices are seem to be higher for those practices which have a regular guaranteed income stream, which is plan income or, um, nhs income, and that has supported and kept those values high, which is not always what the social media would want you to believe, but that's the reality and it's that strength of income stream which is the issue. One thing I would also say on this is what I'll talk about and what I'll say. It doesn't matter whether you're an NHS practice or private practice or whatever mix between the two. The same concepts apply. The only difference is, with either NHS or private, you have different levers that you can pull. Like, for example, in a private practice, if the answer to your problem is stick the fees up, you can do it. If you're an NHS practice, you can't. So that's a done deal, but it doesn't mean that one thing's better than the other. Some of the things that we're talking about just shows where we are and which levers and which tools we use are just slightly different in each. Well, we probably won't go into that today.

Johnny:

So I would say that there are two main factors that that affect the resilience. The one is the treatments that are offered now. I'm going to talk about that later, I'm not going to touch that just now. The other factor that is comes into this is patience, and when I say about the patients, there's a truism here that the more patients that you've got, the greater the number of people you want to buy from that are in your shop. So more patients, more mouths, more teeth, the more you've got in the shop, the more options that you have now. They may not all be in the shop wanting to buy, they may not be in buying mode, but at least they're there, they're in your shop, not somebody else's shop, and you have the options then to try and work with that and I with that, and I think that makes a certain amount of sense. So, taking a step beyond that, we've got to look at the, I suppose, on a sales point of view. Your customer, who is your customer, isn't the guy that walks in through the door and says I've got toothache. Your customer are probably other dental practices from whom you are trying to get a referral, and that's a different sort of marketplace and a different sort of thing that you need to do to get those customers into your shop and get those people into buying. If you're a GDP practice and it is the public that you're dealing with, direct, then that's something else, that's something a little bit different. You have to stimulate them to buy somehow. You need to stimulate who you've got on your list to buy, and that does apply whether you're a referral practice, a specialist practice, a general dental practice, whatever it might be. You need to stimulate them, get them through.

Johnny:

Now, however you look at this, the way I see it, you've got two ways, main ways, to get your patients into your shop, into the chair or into the buying room. The first one is through habit. So if they are in the habit of coming to you let's say, when you had a six-monthly checkup, or you have six-monthly checkup and three-monthly hygienist whatever If you've got them in the habit of coming in every three months six-monthly checkup and three-monthly hygienist whatever If you've got them in the habit of coming in every three months, every six months, every year, however it takes from, whatever your referral process is, if they're in the habit, then they're connected with you and they are going to come to your practice at some point on a regular basis. That's easy for you because those are, those are. Those are regular patients. You don't have to stimulate them too much. You might have to stimulate them to come a little bit more, but they're already there with you and they're not going somewhere else. I think that's one part of getting the patients in.

Johnny:

The other main way to get them in is by some sort of invitation. So whether that's targeted recalls, like I'm saying, if they don't come in for hygiene, you're going to target them to say, yeah, come in for hygiene every three months, every four months, whatever it might be. So you're targeting with an invitation. That's going to come down to what them trusting you as well. When you say to them, as their dentist, dentist, come in every three months for hygiene, they're going to do what you tell them because they trust you. Then that flows to other types of oral care, whereas you invite them in for straightening, whitening, some sort of smile makeover, cancer check, whatever it might be. But when you reach out to them with that invitation, they respond to it.

Johnny:

So that element of keeping trust between you and your patient is quite an important way to get them coming to the door, getting them into your reception and getting them into your chair without too much difficulty, or less difficulty if it's somebody completely new. Now the key to all of that, of course, is knowing your patient and having that connection with the patient and having that um, that, that that knowledge about who they are, what, what your patient base looks like, whether you've got a lot of you know 80% of what you do is band one NHS treatment. You know that's a different sort of marketplace, a different sort of patient base than a specialist that brings in half their work, half their income is coming in from, say, implants or Invisalign or something like that implants or Invisalign or something like that. So knowing the patient and knowing what stimulates them is the key to this Knowing what they want to buy. Knowing what they want to buy.

Johnny:

But the key on this is keeping the surgery space that you have used. That comes down to you as the owner, but it also comes down to your other clinicians that you have In the practice. You'll have associates, you may have hygiene, you may have therapists, and it's coming down to using those other clinicians.

Dr James:

Can I ask a really quick question on this exact thing that you're talking about, because it'd be interesting to get your take? Do you know in terms of how booked up a dental practice should be, as in the patient comes on the first day of the month, come and see the dentist, they have a checkup and they need to come back for a fill-in or a crown? Let's say how some people, some people uh, have like a six to eight week waiting list before they can come back. They have a six to eight week wait before that patient can be booked back in and they're like that's normal and for some dentists is next week and they think that's normal. Right, in your experience, where's the sweet spot? What's the perfect? I call it a waiting list. It's not really a waiting list but I know exactly what you mean waiting time?

Johnny:

I know exactly what you mean. Um, I think the sweet spot can depend on your patient base. If the patients are used to waiting for six or eight weeks, then you can get away with it. However, I would say that your waiting time should be a lot less than that, because if someone has a problem with their teeth, if it's a problem, you're going to fit them in, aren't you? And you need to keep some space in your diary clear for such as emergencies or things that aren't really emergencies, but it would be better to be seen.

Johnny:

But I think that should apply as much as you can with a lot of the treatments, because when someone comes and they sit down with you and they say I've got a problem, that's a stress purchase, and a stress purchase is always, always dealt with as soon as you can, because that stress turns into something different after a few weeks, that the stress of patient fees in a lot of cases gets transferred to the person who can actually help them and why you're not helping them. So that stress thing needs to be dealt with straight away. If it's something where it's an elective treatment, then that's the sort of thing you can push off a little bit more. But pushing it off means that the potential patient has enough time to change their mind. There's enough time to forget what the benefit is, because if you're selling an elective treatment, it means you've sold a benefit, and that benefit has to still be fresh in the patient's mind, or else they don't appreciate it enough.

Johnny:

Now you link that up with pricing. And again, if you're going to sell somebody a pretty good car, let's say you can't sell them a good car and say this is a fantastic car. Keep telling them that for six months, because when the time of six months is up, they're fed up with that and they don't have the same view of the cost of that after that period of time. So to me I think, organizing the diary, organizing the clinician element of it, it should be less than eight weeks. Really. You could go, you could go out more than more than one week, two weeks, if the practice can do it. You may not have the personnel it's so.

Dr James:

It's so fascinating because there's no listen. There's no listen. There's no rule book on this stuff. Right, that would be nice, but it's one. I've heard clinicians say three months is normal. I've heard clinicians say next week is normal.

Dr James:

I think again, listen, there's no right or wrong answer. But if I was to lick my finger and put it in there two, three weeks, I reckon something like that, because then they start to get the especially in there two, three weeks, I reckon something like that, because then they start to get the, especially the kind of, uh, you know, as you say, it depends on the patient. Say, you've got the instagram patients who want invisalign. They want to start yesterday, some of them. Do you know what I mean? Um, and as you say, if someone's got by the way, that two, three weeks, I said was for elective treatment, pain treatment, it's, it's yesterday, if it can be. Do you know? Know what I mean? It's as soon as it can. But no, I just wanted to. I deliberately didn't want to say my, what I believed my answer was because I wanted to hear your take on that. But anyway, I didn't mean to.

Johnny:

I think it's right because that is a sales thing, that is a marketing thing and a dental practice. When you're selling what could be high-ticket items to people, it fits the same bill as if you were selling something else. It's going to cost you a few hundred pounds, several hundred pounds, whatever it might be. You can't drag it on because that's not a good marketing. You sell it and you sell them the solution. And once you've done it, then you're going to bill them at the point of doing it, unless you take the money up front, and there's an old professional adage that says you bill them when the tears of gratitude are still in their eyes I've heard a variation on that pay the pay the worker, while the beads of sweat are still on their forehead.

Dr James:

So I guess it. I guess it works both ways. The principle, is absolutely the same they're billing the patients as the patients are getting emotional for the great treatment, but they're giving the associate share the straightaway right principles, Something like that. Anyway, something like that. I'm being slightly facetious, but you know what I mean. I know exactly what you mean, James.

Johnny:

I think that is something that we need to do, but a lot of that is to keep your clinicians happy and keep them focused and actually use that chair side time as best you can correct.

Dr James:

Anyway, that actually brings us full circle, because you were just talking about associates before I sidetracked the conversation you will ask me what percentage your associates get paid you know what's funny?

Dr James:

Before we shot this podcast, I said to Johnny Johnny, one thing we have to talk about because there is a lot of debate is one word you could use on social media at the minute about associate splits and, fair to say, it is a divisive topic. So before I pulled us on to waiting times, we were just talking about associates, which segues nicely into associate splits. Johnny, what's your take on this? What's your take on this?

Johnny:

Right, I wish there was a single answer, but if you were to say to me what does it depend on? I think, more than anything, it depends on the location.

Dr James:

Not always Was that location or vocation Location Location Actually, that's an interesting thing you should say.

Johnny:

But vocation as well. But location, I I think, is the thing. If you've got a practice in an area where you can attract associates and so on, people will try and tend to bring the bring the uh percentage that they get paid down or the UDA rate down Makes sense. That's not always a good thing, because your patient base likes to see the same dentist, they like to see the same person, they like a certain amount of consistency. And also, as time goes on and we found this after COVID if you treat your team badly and you screw them to the floor every chance you get, after two or three years you become known for that and it's difficult then to start to attract the people. And then you start to worry well, why am I not getting associates? Why can't I get hygienists or therapists?

Johnny:

Well, actually, the word's out there on the marketplace. And for a dentist to sort of say well, that's not true, believe me, it is true, the word gets around. So there is an element of balance that you need to do and you can pay people less. You can pay people less and treat them well and have them still appreciate you and want to work for you, because sometimes practice hasn't got the money to pay the big bucks. Sometimes the practice is in a place or in a location that it can't do, that it hasn't got that capability.

Johnny:

But sometimes for people, this is where we come to vocation. Sometimes you have people and, whether they are hygienists or nurses or associates or whatever they might be, sometimes they actually like working in that practice. For those patients, for that owner, in that particular way, it's a nice place to work. So it's not always about money. It can be about lifestyle, it can be what you get out of it, not just about money. So you've got that to factor in as well. The higher rates will often follow rural areas because the owners haven't always got a choice.

Johnny:

They've got to entice people right, but there it comes down again to what I'm saying about treating people well. This is a two-way street. The associates have to understand and get where the owner is and the burden that the owner is carrying, as well as the associate. So this happens both ways and I think you can get a balance where everybody's happy at what they get paid for the lifestyle that they have in that particular location. And, James, I think I've mentioned to you before I know, under the NASDAQ benchmarking statistics that we did for 2024, we find that of the sample that we had, it's the practices in central London who actually earned the less for their owners, the least for their owners.

Dr James:

Crazy, because that's where the lowest splits are as well, right.

Johnny:

It is, it is. And on that you will get owners trying to start their associates at a relatively low percentage rate, let's say 35 for example, but then the more they do, the more they get paid. So they go up in bandings. Um, once they get past a certain level which the owner can calculate pays for his overheads, then the associate actually can get up to 55% and 60% over that if they're high grocers, if they're high earners, because in that sort of thing everybody wins. So the owner gets more work coming through the door and the associates debts pay for it, whereas if you get someone coming in and doesn't do a fat lot, they're taking up surgery space and that surgery space could be used by someone who works faster, who works better. And you know this comes down to the. The owner, the proprietor is trying to do this to build their practice and I think that's something sometimes the associates don't always realize, sometimes the proprietors don't always realize it either.

Dr James:

I got, I was just going to say I got love for both sides of the debate. Yeah, because Because the principles you know. It's not an easy place to be in business where you're losing money and you're working 16 hours a day, Whereas the associates how it can come across to them is that the principle is overly money orientated, Whereas in reality they really don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So I've got empathy for both sides. I really do, and I feel like it starts. Better handling of that situation starts with empathy.

Johnny:

I agree with you. I agree, and there's no substitute for actually working as a team and having an understanding, rather than somebody turning up and saying, right, I'm here and I'll start at five past nine and finish it five to three and I'm off, where's my money?

Dr James:

without actually thinking of how that fits into the bigger picture and you know the curious thing about associates and principals both often think that they've got the better deal, because the associates tend to think that the business owners are all in money, and it's not. By the time everybody else is paid and the debt serviced and the overheads are paid for. It's not always the case, but anyway, if anybody wants to see some more interesting debate on this topic, that johnny and I are talking about some real raw and ready opinions, I think, is one way of saying it. Uh, have a look at the dennis who invest facebook group, some of the posts that are on there for the moment. And, as I say, we create these podcasts to help everybody understand and be more sympathetic to each other's positions. Any more to say on the numbers front, or do you think that's?

Johnny:

about it. Looking at that patient side of things, I think that, and the diary management, and once you've got the patients through the door, it's getting them in the right chair in front of the right clinician, whether it's a therapist or an associate or the owner that's important Now, that organization of patients and so on. That, to me, is the end of it, of creating resilience we talked about in a dental practice, because that efficiency effectively is resilience and whether you're trying to build a practice for sale or build a practice that's going to give you a steady income as an owner, a steady income as an owner month after month and year after year, it's the same thing. And if something happens, like COVID or something, or something happens to the practice, then you've got a little bit of slack if you're running the place. Efficiency, that is important to do that. Now. We haven't talked, James, about um, new patients, um, or new work, because that is something which is is the other side of the patient side. Now, if you are a specialist, then your patient, your, as it were, is a different person than the patients that you're seeing. So that's something that, as a specialist, as a referral practice, you've got to keep going, because if you don't keep it going, there'll be somebody else out in the marketplace that will be wanting to speak to your referral sources, and that's something that is important and that's a continuous thing that you have to do, that you have to build into the uh, into the how the workload flows month after month and, from a resilience point of view, you have that regular flow from your regular people plus others. That's important. That gives you the strength going forward.

Johnny:

If you're a general practice the GDP then that's more about well, two things really. It's about your presence in the local market, rather than being hidden away down an alley that nobody knows you're there apart from your patients. You need to have that presence to say I'm here. That comes back to James, to what you said about when can I be seen by my dentist.

Johnny:

And if you turn up to a new practice who's looking for new patients and you're told, yeah, well, we can see you in four months, you've just lost that patient, that potential new patient. It's not going to happen. That's important. But that and turning your existing patients into ambassadors for you, that's important. That's really important to keep that flow of new people coming through, because you are going to get people who want to move away get come back to location again here. If you're in a large housing estate where you've got a churn of families in and out all the time, you've got something naturally which is happening. If you're in a rural market town or something, you don't have that sort of churn, you've got to keep replacing your patients because some of them are going to die and you can't do much about that well, I mean, it's morbid to talk about, isn't it?

Dr James:

but I guess it's it's well, it's completely true. I mean, I think one sort of takeaway that I'm gathering from what you're saying is that I think that for some people, safety is seen in staying the same and stagnation, but actually that has inherent danger too. So there has to be a little bit of liquidity in the patients, liquidity in the business in terms of cash flow. That actually helps with the resilience side of things.

Johnny:

No, you're absolutely right, James. But the other factor, apart from patients, is the treatments that you give them. You know, with a specialist offering specialisms, now you can have a specialist who takes referrals only and simply does the referrals, say root canals, somebody who specializes in endo and doesn't have their patients, they take patients from somewhere else, have their patients, they take patients from somewhere else. Um, that is gotta keep that going because you've got to keep your referral sources running. If you've got specialists in a general practice, that's a slightly different sort of thing because you're marketing them to the general patient base as well as potentially to other referral practices, other referral sources. For that sort of work. The downside is you've got to keep doing it and it's a more personal thing so it's not easily as easily transferable on sale and people know that. Buyers know that. And for specialist treatments the number of buyers is always reduced because not everybody does endo or not everybody does Invisalign and nor do they want to. So your number of buyers is down. But the upside is it can be more profitable for you if you are working on that, selling that sort of treatment to your patient not always so.

Johnny:

The measure of that is if you're measuring KPIs.

Johnny:

The KPIs have to be measured after the direct costs because a lot of specialisms carry quite a heavy direct cost with them and it's easy to look at the top line what's coming in, particularly if you get paid up front.

Johnny:

Um, and it's easy to look at the top line of what's coming in, particularly if you get paid up front. It's easy to look at it and say this is fantastic, without actually knowing there's actually quite a lot of work to be done and quite a lot of cost to follow down the track a little bit. Those KPIs have got to be valued. It's like dealing with any of the patients. You've got to look at the KPI per hour and there's also if you're spacing your surgeries at the premium, you've got to look at the KPI per square meter, because sometimes an associate who comes in, for example, and does half day and then the practice is empty for the other half day, sometimes they can actually make less profit for the owner than if you had, say, a hygienist, for example, who is in there working all day, or two hygienists working filling that same space 10 hours a day. So you've got to look at those things in the particular practice as well and I think that's quite interesting.

Dr James:

Question Johnny and this is a little niche but still very useful Hygienist remuneration salaried or split?

Johnny:

The hygienist the remuneration, depending if it's a salary or if it's self-employed. Is that what you're asking?

Dr James:

Yeah, should you salary your staff, your hygienist, because I've seen people. This is another thing that people argue the hell over.

Johnny:

I'd be interested to hear your take Okay. The person who decides whether they're salaried or self-employed isn't you or me, it's the taxman. And the taxman has got certain what we call badges of self-employment and badges of employment that they will apply in this sort of situation. And the fact this is not a dental thing, this is right across business, and if you have the badges of self-employment, you can be self-employed.

Dr James:

If you don't, you are forced to be employed and your own, the owner of the practice, has to apply that so what you're saying is that when people debate this because I've seen people you know, I don't want to name names I've seen people say on facebook I pay my, I pay my hygienist a wage. That that's really ropey territory, because unless there's anything that distinguishes their hygienists from their associates, they're getting in a murky territory. Is that, have I understood?

Johnny:

that is that that is correct, and bear in mind that it's the proprietor that has to pick up the tab on this if it goes wrong, not the hygienist, because you are then into the world of employment law, where, if you are deemed to be employed, then your deemed employer is responsible for deducting the amount of tax and national insurance responsible for deducting the amount of tax and national insurance and if they have treated you as self-employed and they have not deducted tax and national insurance as employed, it's up to them to sort it out, not up to the hygienist.

Johnny:

Right, wow, which is frightening, which is why an awful lot of big places like hospitals and so on and so on. You don't have this argument you're employed, end off unless you can come up with the badges of one. They're not badges of employment, self-employment. There are a number of things which fit that, but I suspect that that is a different podcast, because we could go on and on on that one as to what to do to bring yourself into the realms of self-employment, because self-employment is better for the hygienist or the therapist or the associates, and it's also better for the proprietor and it's also better for the industry. The person that it's not better for is the taxman. So organizing your affairs to have these badges of self-employment is a really positive thing to do for everyone, but that's a different podcast, James.

Dr James:

It sounds like it the debate's almost settled there. In that case, it's less a money thing, more a staying on the right side of the law thing and not creating some sort of huge tax liability.

Johnny:

There's times to push the boundaries. Those sort of areas are probably not them, because it's pretty straightforward. As for the tax map, it's pretty straightforward, so and unless you jump through all the hoops all the time, you've got a problem. So that's the thing there. But coming back to treatments and where treatments are a factor, if you're a general dental practice, we talked earlier about knowing your patient and knowing your patient base. We talked earlier about knowing your patient and knowing your patient base. Being able to see what treatments you can market across your patient base is interesting and important to do that Because you can't go into a practice where the average age is 65 and start trying to say, well, I'm going to sell everybody Invisalign Not going to work. Similarly, there's the other side of the coin, and that's with all younger people. There's certain things you can market to them. There's other things that you can't. You're wasting your time. So you've got to know your patient base. If you were a hundred percent NHS practice, you've got a pretty obvious thing where you take your band one, two and three treatments and you split it up and see how many people are in each of those bands where you what sort of treatments you give every to everyone, uh, in a 12-month period, and that gives you an idea of just what you might be able to sell, maybe as private, maybe on top if you're a private practice um, I know sometimes we do in our practice. We're looking at practice and we would split, not a band, one, two and three, but we would have, say, five tiers of private work. So our tier one is pretty basic exam scale and polish through to tier five it's being some pretty heavy, like an implant or something like that, and you split them all in between. Then you can start saying whether there's an average cost or an average price for each of those types of things. Also, you've got to look at the time it takes to deliver it, because there's no point of having a super-duper big-ticket item that takes you five hours to deal with, whereas you could have something very simple but you can churn out 50 of them at the same time. This is going to take you having the big-ticket item and give you less stress.

Johnny:

We've also got to look at the clinicians. Come back to the clinicians. Not every clinician wants to do a heavy, heavy treatment every hour of the day. Sometimes they actually want to have a couple of hours where some pretty easy work to be done, and you've got to have that mix depending on the patient base and the clinicians and, of course, trying to maneuver that as best you can into your diary, the diary management. But that's the other side of trying to give a resilience to the practice.

Johnny:

Give a resilience to your practice whether you're trying to sell it or whether you're trying to create an income stream for it. You can't move everything down to band one or tier one and think that that's going to work for you, because a lot of your patients actually want some extras. They want something different. You have to be open to that or else your patients are going to drift away. So you can try and maneuver to change the types of treatments delivered and something which is more profitable or something which is more enjoyable for the dentist that's important. So the resilience of a dental practice, it's not just something for a practice, an objective practice, an object. It changes for everything. It has to work for you, either as the associate or as the owner, and it has to base on your goals, not just what some sort of offered loss is or what some sort of objective is that comes from somewhere else.

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Dr. James Martin

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