Associate or Owner: Which Path Is Right for You? | Brian Mills | MME

Are you a business-minded or clinical-minded dentist? In this Monday Morning Episode, we're bringing on Brian Mills to unpack the true nature of preparing for practice ownership. Brian emphasizes that while clinical skills are vital, being business-savvy is equally crucial. He dives deep into why adopting a do-it-yourself mindset for critical business operations like marketing and website development can set you up for failure, and why focusing on ROI can be your saving grace.

Brian also sheds light on the often-overlooked emotional and life-driven catalysts that typically prompt someone to own a practice. Is it a financial calculation or a significant life event that usually pushes the button? If you think owning a practice is the only route to professional success, think again. Brian reassures listeners that thriving as an associate can be just as rewarding, providing valuable insights for both aspiring practice owners and seasoned dentists.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why being business-savvy is as essential as clinical proficiency for practice owners.
• The risks of a DIY approach to critical business facets like marketing and website development.
• How to focus on ROI to navigate financial and operational challenges.
• Common life events or internal drives that lead to owning a practice.
• Why it's completely acceptable to excel as an associate and not own a practice.

Ready to discover if practice ownership is truly in your future? Tune in for a revealing conversation that might just change your perspective!

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Sponsors:

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For DSO integrations, startup solutions, and all your dental IT needs, let our sponsors, Darkhorse Tech, help out so you can focus on providing the amazing care that you do. For 1 month of FREE service, visit their link today! https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/darkhorse-deal/

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You can reach out to Brian Mills here:

Website: https://www.roamcommercialrealty.com/

Email: info@roamcommercialrealty.com

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If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:

My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/

The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍

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Michael: Ryan, talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning?

Brian: Oh, first of all, always be prepared for a video call and don't think it's just audio, but a better teacher on number one. Oh,

I may lose all my business with this piece of advice, but I'm going to tap some people in the chest and I would say, you got to grow up in the business world. I have too many great clinicians, great doctors who are amazing care side, what they do, they take their craft to the highest level clinically, but when it comes to business, they haven't matured whatsoever.

And when I say that, I mean, Don't take pride in doing your own website. Guess what? We can all tell Don't drive around and think, Oh, I'm going to go, look for a space by seeing what's cool out there. You're not maturing in the business world. You may be a great clinician, a great doctor, but your business mindset is not where it should be.

You are not functioning as a high level. If you're thinking about how do I. Save the most amount of money. You have to think about return on investment. that would be sort of my tap you in the chest advice and say, Hey, you got to grow up. You got to get serious about your business acumen.

Michael: So then. Brian, how do we start doing that, especially like we're fresh out, we want to do a startup or we're in that process and acquisition or whatever, right? And we're like, so Like I got to count my costs. I just took out a 500 plus thousand dollar loan and I have student loans and all these things and I need to count everything.

Brian: You may not be ready. If you're constantly thinking and having this anxiety and agita about the cost associated with it, it may not be your time. And guess what? I always say when I speak, you may never be ready and that's okay. you can be a great associate for the rest of your life and that doesn't make you a less than doctor, person, et cetera.

But if you can never get past that anxiety and you can never get past that fear, practice ownership may not be for you. There's always a healthy level of fear, but if you're always. Thinking about how do I cut corners to make it easier to save my way into success. That's not a good way to run a business.

That's not how any other business would operate. before we were on, we were speaking about multi practice owners and emerging groups and DSOs. That's not the mindset that they operate with. They're always thinking, how can I drive the most production? Where can I get the most ROI?

Not how do I success. Don't get me wrong. Overhead is very important and keeping your overhead contained within certain budgetary constraints and buckets is very important to a business, but it's not at the forefront of driving production and driving business.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. if you're

Brian: not prepared to do marketing and things like that, then you're not ready for it yet.

Again, you don't think, how do I create my own website? is your brand and you have to be able to lead with it. So you have to put the most force, the most effort, the most financial incentive you can behind your website, your marketing your technology.

Michael: Okay. So then if it may not be your time, what can I ask myself to know when it is my time and just to like swallow that pill and say, I got to outsource this to marketing.

Brian: I know I have enough, I just got to do it. usually there's some event that happens. You get tired of working at your corporate gig or there's something that, you want to do clinically or business wise that you're not able to do, and you feel sort of these constraints on you and people have that, and it's like this light bulb goes off or this moment we have clients that, Sort of boy with this idea for years, they'll sit down, we'll have two hours at Starbucks, they're ready to go. And then I never hear from them again. And I'm like what the heck happened? Did I do something? And then I'll see them at one of my seminars and then they'll call me like a year after that.

And I'm like, okay, now what's different from two years ago. And I can tell when they're really ready. Cause then they say, you know what, something happened and I'm just tired of it. I'm completely ready to go. So sometimes you have this life event that may be. in the negative. And it drives you into doing your own thing.

people always look at me for this magic pill. Like, Tell me something, Brian, that would give me this injection of confidence that will make me go do it. I think you have to come to it on your own. And sometimes, unfortunately it comes to it when you've just had your full of all the negative stuff or somebody telling you to do something that you don't want to do or, asking you to do something clinically that you don't feel comfortable with or whatever that may be.

But there's usually some sort of crossroads in your life where it's just like, all right. I've had enough I've got to get out and do my own thing or I'm actually going to go crazy.

Michael: Yeah. No, that's true. Have you ever seen someone who've has had the confidence, but they have no money?

Brian: Oh, yeah, lots.

Yeah, that's a little bit of crazy. That's my kind of crazy. I've had people who have had really big dreams. They can't get the financial support to do that. that's good. That's ultimately what keeps dentistry so safe is you have some people that graduate from dental school and they're like, I'm ready day one.

And I had this Amazing idea. And I just need a million dollars to go do it. And the bank's going to say we get it. But our job is to keep you safe. So let's wait a little bit, Let's get some experience under our belt and see if that idea that you had, upon graduation is the same in two years, or maybe, you've morphed or changed a little bit.

So it's great to have that passion and that energy, but it's also great to have it. Institutions behind you saying, Hey, we appreciate that, but we also want to keep you safe and there's some structure to these deals and that's what keeps the failure at almost, 0%.

Michael: So it sounds like it's better to have that.

Let's go get it. Confidence kind of thing. And then there's institutions that tell you like, Hey, slow it down. Right. There's little speed bumps instead of. You being the guy who's like, I'm going to take it super slow and safe and everything, but you'll still have institutions that say, slow it down, kind of a thing.

Brian: I'm a serial entrepreneur. You got to be a little bit crazy to be an entrepreneur, right? You have to be able to, at some point, throw caution to the wind and say, I don't know what's going to happen, but I feel like this is a mitigated risk. I've done everything that I can possibly do. And now I'm going to look over that edge and I'm going to make that leap of faith.

There has to be a point where you make a leap of faith. I would much rather have somebody be a little bit wired crazy and have. The lenders, people like me other institutions say, okay, I love the passion, but let's make sure that we're being responsible versus a lot of great doctors who have what we call paralysis by over analysis.

They're always analyzing everything to the nth degree and they're frozen in fear and they can never get off the starting blocks.

Michael: So then, in your experience, Ryan, specifically, if you can be like almost like a script, what do people normally say where you can tell like, You're not ready.

Brian: when they start focusing immediately on overhead, right? The conversation automatically goes back. Well, How much is the rent, How much is the build out cost? And we're not thinking about how do I drive business? Who's sitting in my chair? What's the demographic? How do I appeal to them?

What is my brand? What is my image? there has to be a passion that's driving this business. It can't be well, if I can keep my rent to, 2, 500 a month, I'll be successful. Do you know anybody who could do a website or half the price everything is brought back to how much is that going to cost?

That's how I know you're not ready. Cause it's going to cost what it's going to cost. Nobody ever gets an award for doing the cheapest startup or the cheapest practice. You never want to be cavalier or foolish with your dollars. but you have to think about where am I going to wisely invest my money and what's the biggest return I can gain from that when it always comes back to How much is that going to cost me?

How do I do it cheaper? You're not ready because you're not thinking about driving business. You're only thinking about overhead overhead, overhead, and your practice is going to suffer.

Michael: And so do you tell them that you tell them like, Hey, you're not ready. Or do you try to shift their focus in that moment?

Brian: I, Would hate to be the one that says you're not ready because maybe there's something inside that I'm not seeing. Maybe they go home and they do some soul searching or et cetera. But it is my job to educate and say, if we're solely focused on the overhead and not production, we're never going to be a high performing practice.

And I don't want you just to open. I want you to open and succeed at the highest level possible, I want you to make 10 times more money than I make. I want you to make. 50 times more money than you ever thought you could make. I want you to be a high performing startup. I don't want you to just check the box and say well, I opened my practice and I made as much as I did as an associate.

I want you to open your practice and say, wow, that was life changing for me and my family. So it's my job to say, I understand what you're saying. I understand why you're nervous. These are big figures. But we have to think, how are we going to drive business or you're going to miss the mark. And if you're not prepared to drive, business may not be something that I want to be associated with.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So make sure they have the confidence, make sure. They don't save their way into success. And then at the same time, if you feel like they don't have all that, then it may not be their time. They may not be ready. May never be ready, right? Kind of Never

Brian: be ready. And again, don't think of yourself as less than, you know,

You have colleagues out there who never open a practice. They're called physicians, Most physicians go work for a hospital network, and that's what they went to school for. least when I started in this business 25 years ago, most dentists went to dental school to own their own business.

But Just because you graduate today and you go work as a great associate at a corporate gig or private practice or something else doesn't mean that you're not a phenomenal doctor, clinician, person, et cetera. So don't do it just because you think that's the path that you're supposed to do. Do it because you have this drive within you and you feel like if I don't do it, it's going to eat me up when I look back on a life of regret.

There's nothing worse than a life of regret, but don't think that Somebody else's path has to be your path. If you're not wired to be an entrepreneur, don't do it. Go do something else that you're passionate about. But if it's eating you alive, just know that what you're about to embark on is the safest thing you can do.

You just have to approach it like a business and not purely from clinical standpoint, because it's a business first and foremost.

Michael: Gotcha. Awesome. Brian, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?

Brian: You can hit us up on our website, which is Rome, R O a M Rome commercial realty. com. You can email us directly info at Rome commercial realty. com.

Michael: So that's going to be in the show notes below and Brian, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode.

Brian: Thanks for having me.

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