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I Became a Dentist 10 Years Ago (Was It Worth It?)
Description
📋 Free Download: Practice Evaluation Checklist https://practiceown.com/pdf
Was becoming a dentist worth it? If you had asked me during my first year out of dental school, my honest answer would have been no. In this episode I tell the whole story: why I chose dentistry over accounting, what associate life was really like, the practice I bought that turned out to be a serious mistake, and how ownership completely changed my answer. If you are not yet a dentist, this is the story I wish I had heard before dental school. If you already are one, it might change what you do next.
What we cover:
- The three criteria I judged every career on: lifestyle, pay, and a realistic path to ownership
- Why I dropped accounting for dentistry after one microeconomics class
- The associate job that moved me to a pediatric Medicaid office I never signed up for, with 5:30 a.m. starts nobody would fix
- Two friends, one startup and one acquisition, and how different they looked one year in
- The practice that collected about $1 million the year before I bought it for about $300,000
- The $300 crowns that revealed I had bought an office running on HMO plans
- Dropping the HMO plans on day one, losing 80% of the patients, and laying off half the staff
- Making about $700,000 my first year as an owner, more than triple my associate pay
- Selling that practice for more than double what I paid for it
- The client who collected over $2 million his first year of ownership and kept about half as profit
💼 Work with me: I help dentists evaluate dental practices before they buy. Every practice I evaluate gets compared against my database of 500+ evaluations.
📬 Questions? Reach out directly: chris@practiceown.com
0:00 The Story I Wish I'd Heard Before Dental School
0:47 Choosing A Career At 19
5:28 The Associate Years
8:20 Finding My First Practice
12:51 My First Day As An Owner
15:34 The Turnaround
18:38 How This Turned Into A Business
20:54 The Verdict