I bought a job

[Coldsteel70]

When I was a kid, I had a similar experience to MJ DeMarco and the Lamborghini. My Uncle came home in a Porsche 911. I was in awe. My uncle was a dentist, lived in a nice house on a golf course, had a pool, etc. Our family had a bicycle my Mom and I rode to the grocery store. She rode and I sat in the little seat on the back and held the bag of groceries on my lap on the way home. I decided very young that I was going to be a dentist and be just like my uncle.

Fast forward 30 years, and I am 36 years old sitting in my office in my dental practice. Unfortunately, for the last several years something has been nagging at the back of my mind. After I bought my dental practice and finally became “my own boss” I wanted to take a week off to spend camping with my wife and children.

I was faced with the uncomfortable truth that if I took a week off, I didn’t need to just calculate the cost of the vacation, I needed to calculate the cost of the lost production, plus add in the fixed overhead that doesn’t stop when I’m not there. My one week camping trip cost me $25,000. I began to put it together in my head that there was something wrong with my business model.

In my head I thought, “my business is a one-to-one business. So if I’m not there to produce, there is NO income. I haven’t bought a business. I’ve bought a job.

What I really need is a one-to-many business that keeps producing money even if I’m camping.” That was 5 years ago. I haven’t solved my problem yet, but I am working on it. During that time I read a lot of books. One of them recently was TMF .

I was shocked when MJ DeMarco said almost exactly what I had been thinking. He called it “The Commandment of Scale”. In reality, my scale is 1, because I can only serve one person at a time. Yes there is magnitude, which is why I make a good living. But it is “good money”. And anytime I am not in the office, the good money goes immediately to -$0-.

I don’t have freedom of choice.

All the debt I took on to go to college, then dental school, then buy a $500,000 dental practice means that I am a slave to my job. And the light at the end of the tunnel that means freedom and time is 25 years away. I joined the forum to change that. I’m not sure how yet, but I will. I look forward to becoming a part of this community and changing my road.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Wow, very poignant introduction, eloquently detailing the perils of being an entrepreneur that owns a job, albeit, I very well paid one.

Welcome aboard my friend. Glad TMF helped crystallize some things for you.

 

[The-J]

@Andy Black

Facebook for Local Business: Creative Ways to Grow : Social Media Examiner

She's a dentist, too, and created an income stream helping other dentists.

What can you do to turn your practice into something less hands-on? Maybe (1) set up a steady client acquisition process (probably you already did this), (2) set up a delivery process that doesn't so much include you (you're probably 50% done with this), (3) set up a business management process, then (4) resell the bitch and do something else.

You bought a practice. That dentist who had it before you sold it for a reason. What's stopping you from reselling it as a built dental services system in 3 years or something to another 36 year old dentist who just paid his/her debt and is sick of working under someone?

 

[Andy Black]

When I was a kid, I had a similar experience to MJ DeMarco and the Lamborghini. My Uncle came home in a Porsche 911. I was in awe. My uncle was a dentist, lived in a nice house on a golf course, had a pool, etc. Our family had a bicycle my Mom and I rode to the grocery store. She rode and I sat in the little seat on the back and held the bag of groceries on my lap on the way home. I decided very young that I was going to be a dentist and be just like my uncle.

Fast forward 30 years, and I am 36 years old sitting in my office in my dental practice. Unfortunately, for the last several years something has been nagging at the back of my mind. After I bought my dental practice and finally became “my own boss” I wanted to take a week off to spend camping with my wife and children.

I was faced with the uncomfortable truth that if I took a week off, I didn’t need to just calculate the cost of the vacation, I needed to calculate the cost of the lost production, plus add in the fixed overhead that doesn’t stop when I’m not there. My one week camping trip cost me $25,000. I began to put it together in my head that there was something wrong with my business model.

In my head I thought, “my business is a one-to-one business. So if I’m not there to produce, there is NO income. I haven’t bought a business. I’ve bought a job.

What I really need is a one-to-many business that keeps producing money even if I’m camping.” That was 5 years ago. I haven’t solved my problem yet, but I am working on it. During that time I read a lot of books. One of them recently was TMF .

I was shocked when MJ DeMarco said almost exactly what I had been thinking. He called it “The Commandment of Scale”. In reality, my scale is 1, because I can only serve one person at a time. Yes there is magnitude, which is why I make a good living. But it is “good money”. And anytime I am not in the office, the good money goes immediately to -$0-.

I don’t have freedom of choice.

All the debt I took on to go to college, then dental school, then buy a $500,000 dental practice means that I am a slave to my job. And the light at the end of the tunnel that means freedom and time is 25 years away. I joined the forum to change that. I’m not sure how yet, but I will. I look forward to becoming a part of this community and changing my road.

Welcome. Poignant intro indeed. Well done getting to where you are, and now wanting to take it to the next level.

Listen to that podcast @The-J linked to. She has a whole course on how to generate more leads for your business using Facebook, and even a FB group for dentists. It seems FB is a great platform to get a steady stream of new clients for dentists.

AdWords works well for dentists, but the beauty of what you do is that pretty much everyone needs to go to the dentist regularly, so FB plus ingenuity seems to work even better.



What would happen if you tripled the number of new clients walking in the door each month?

What would happen if you retained most of these new clients so they became repeat business for you? How big would your practice be after 1, 2, 5 years?

Would you need to hire other dentists to do some of the work?

Would this afford you some of the freedom you are looking for?

Would someone want to then buy that dental practice with its lead generation system and operational processes?



A good book to read is "Built to Sell". I did a quick video of my biggest takeaway from that book here:

• You're selling the wrong product (4 mins)

 

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[The-J]

Welcome. Poignant intro indeed. Well done getting to where you are, and now wanting to take it to the next level.

Listen to that podcast @The-J linked to. She has a whole course on how to generate more leads for your business using Facebook, and even a FB group for dentists. It seems FB is a great platform to get a steady stream of new clients for dentists.

AdWords works well for dentists, but the beauty of what you do is that pretty much everyone needs to go to the dentist regularly, so FB plus ingenuity seems to work even better.



What would happen if you tripled the number of new clients walking in the door each month?

What would happen if you retained most of these new clients so they became repeat business for you? How big would your practice be after 1, 2, 5 years?

Would you need to hire other dentists to do some of the work?

Would this afford you some of the freedom you are looking for?

Would someone want to then buy that dental practice with its lead generation system and operational processes?



A good book to read is "Built to Sell". I did a quick video of my biggest takeaway from that book here:

• You're selling the wrong product (4 mins)

You do words better than me

 

[Andy Black]

You do words better than me

You mean I talk a lot?


@Coldsteel70. Listen to the first radio interview in my signature.

Also, I've a dental client at the moment. Happy to have a chat if you want to pick my brains or have me review your competitive landscape on Google and how your website might be part of a paid search lead generation system for you. Maybe we can even record it and drop it into this thread to help others?

 

[ljean]

I assume you have hygienists in your office? My dentist takes a lot of vacations and the staff seem to keep the place humming along during his absences. Obviously there are no major procedures taking place when he is gone. But they can clean teeth, whiten, flouride, xray, etc without oversight.

 

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[Coldsteel70]

Wow, thank you all for the replies. I didn't expect to get so much help so quickly. I really appreciate you all taking the time.

@MJ DeMarco thank you for the personal welcome.

So first, let me outline my current plan. After reading TMF I now feel like it is inadequate, but it is a small start in the right direction. I tend to make posts too long and wordy, so I apologize in advance. I'll work on my brevity.

@Andy Black I will definitely listen to the pod cast and post again after I do. I think some of your suggestions are great, please see my current plan below. I welcome your critism.

@The-J Thank you for that insight. I am working on some of those things now. My brother is an orthodontist and I'm thinking that he and I can develop some of those systems together, package them, and create a passive income stream. Also, please see below, I welcome your critism.


First, the fastest way to improve my situation is to bring in another dentist to work for me. My current office space is limited in size and space, which precludes me from bringing in another dentist. I identified an office down the road that is for sale from a retiring medical doctor. It is priced $30k below market, it is in a good location, and will allow me to remodel it and have enough space to bring in a second doctor. This will effectively cut my fixed overhead by half while keeping my cash flow the same. @levijean It will also allow me to make better use of my hygienists. In Nevada, they can’t do much unless I am in the building to provide “indirect supervision”. They can clean and polish teeth, but the net profit from that is about $4 per patient. If I have another dentist in the office, they can do everything up to the limits of their license, not just polish teeth.

I signed the papers on the new office space this week. Once the build-out is complete, my next step will be to bring in an staff dentist. This won't solve the big problems, and it will still be human resources intensive, but it will afford me more time to work on my fast lane, and go camping more often with my kids. (I have 5 of those, ages 4 to 13). In the long-term the commercial space can eventually become a source of passive income.

So short term plan is expansion, long term plan is develop passive income streams.

 

[GameOver]

When I was a kid, I had a similar experience to MJ DeMarco and the Lamborghini. My Uncle came home in a Porsche 911. I was in awe. My uncle was a dentist, lived in a nice house on a golf course, had a pool, etc. Our family had a bicycle my Mom and I rode to the grocery store. She rode and I sat in the little seat on the back and held the bag of groceries on my lap on the way home. I decided very young that I was going to be a dentist and be just like my uncle.

Fast forward 30 years, and I am 36 years old sitting in my office in my dental practice. Unfortunately, for the last several years something has been nagging at the back of my mind. After I bought my dental practice and finally became “my own boss” I wanted to take a week off to spend camping with my wife and children.

I was faced with the uncomfortable truth that if I took a week off, I didn’t need to just calculate the cost of the vacation, I needed to calculate the cost of the lost production, plus add in the fixed overhead that doesn’t stop when I’m not there. My one week camping trip cost me $25,000. I began to put it together in my head that there was something wrong with my business model.

In my head I thought, “my business is a one-to-one business. So if I’m not there to produce, there is NO income. I haven’t bought a business. I’ve bought a job.

What I really need is a one-to-many business that keeps producing money even if I’m camping.” That was 5 years ago. I haven’t solved my problem yet, but I am working on it. During that time I read a lot of books. One of them recently was TMF .

I was shocked when MJ DeMarco said almost exactly what I had been thinking. He called it “The Commandment of Scale”. In reality, my scale is 1, because I can only serve one person at a time. Yes there is magnitude, which is why I make a good living. But it is “good money”. And anytime I am not in the office, the good money goes immediately to -$0-.

I don’t have freedom of choice.

All the debt I took on to go to college, then dental school, then buy a $500,000 dental practice means that I am a slave to my job. And the light at the end of the tunnel that means freedom and time is 25 years away. I joined the forum to change that. I’m not sure how yet, but I will. I look forward to becoming a part of this community and changing my road.

I forget what MJ calls it in his book, but there's a really strong concept throughout of being at the top of the food chain... being the franchisor, the ecosystem, or whatever that fundamental thing is for your industry.

You said you were still trying to find a way to freedom... have you ever thought about essentially being a dental office space that rents bays out to other dentists? Maybe get your private practice up to speed doing that, then once you've got a nack for it, copy it in another part of town? Do it again and again? There's a dentist in my local city who did this and has become extremely wealthy... and he is no longer a dentist, he's an entrepreneur. He picked a funny little motif for his places and ran with it. They're memorable and you pretty much know what you are getting into no matter what location you go to. He takes a slice of everyone's piece of the pie.

Don't know, just a thought.

 

[GameOver]

By the way if you do this you now owe me a beer, lol.

 

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