Whether it’s when you’re laying in bed at night, or in between seeing patients during the day, the next time you find yourself fantasizing about starting your own dental practice, ask yourself ‘WHY’? If the answer is purely for financial reasons, then that might not actually be enough. Gone are the days when dentists could open dental clinics anywhere and have patients flock in.
Determining the core reason you want to start your own practice is critical to the longevity of the business you’re considering building. Starting your own business isn’t an easy feat, so if you don’t have a solid ‘why’, you might not be able to go the distance when times get tough – which during the early stages of your journey, is bound to happen.
In the modern dental era, you’re competing against the likes of corporates like Dental Corp (Bupa) and Australian Unity who have massive amounts of resources, vast networks and refined business processes behind them. That said, you also need to ensure you stand out among other independent dentists who also started their own practices. How do you ensure your practice stands out from the competition? The answer is to find your niche, or as they call it, your sub-specialisation. This can be a cultural advantage, a special interest in a specific field of dentistry or even a specific demographic or location. The key is to ensure your practice is unique enough that your ideal patients will pick you over your competitors. When you find your niche, you’ll never need to compete on price, because if you do, there will always be someone else willing to do it for less.
Whether you decide to start a dental practice from scratch or to buy into an existing practice, it’s important to ensure you don’t over capitalise. This could be performing a due diligence evaluation of an existing practice, or to do thorough demographic research on a new location. Learn to leverage the experience and knowledge of experts in the field to maximise your chances of succeeding and help you make the right decisions. Think of it this way: patients wouldn’t extract their own wisdom teeth, just as you wouldn’t build your own website!
It’s important to be smart when making decisions about which third party vendors to work with. An alternative to engaging with faceless large corporate suppliers who might not prioritise your needs might be smaller reputable boutique vendors who will value your business. (See ‘finding the right vendor’ blog).
Finally, it’s important to talk to your fellow peers and people who has been there and done that (opened their own successful practice) and pick their brains on their thoughts and experience. This is invaluable as you can learn from their success and mistakes (which is often more helpful).
At 20-80 Solutions we believe in helping dentists create unique dental practices that are as unique as the owners themselves. To accomplish this, we’ve partnered with industry leading experts and dental practice owners themselves to create a special one day event aimed to provide you all the necessary knowledge and resources to launch your own unique practice.
Check out: http://uniquedentalpractice.com.au for more details and register for the event on the Saturday 25th of March. Get your tickets early as it’s extremely limited to ensure the event is exclusive and intimate.