20/20 MONEY: The Business of Optometry Why Don't Young ODs Want to Buy Practices??
Hello, and welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Nathan Hayes.
Nathan is the Practice Finance Consultant at IDOC and has worked with countless practices to help them understand not only the financials of their practice but how to make strategic business decisions based on the financial health of the practice.
Our conversation was centralized around an Optometric Management Tip of the Week Article titled "3 Misconceptions About Buying Optometry Practices." I wanted to ask Nathan, based on his experience and conversations he's been having, why he feels this is happening and what current owners need to do a better job of doing to equip next gen ODs for practice ownership? We talk about the success of optometry as a business while also sharing a couple anecdotes of situations where practices have been run into the ground through bad management and leadership.
We then talk about the importance for the purchasing OD of having cash on hand and why having a healthy cash flow statement is more important than having a health balance sheet (but no cash) because of aggressively paying down student loan debt. We also talk about the calculation of understanding one's return on equity. That is to say making sure younger ODs understand not only what you're going to have to spend to buy into a practice, but the return that you'll expect to get on that equity purchase.
As a reminder, you can get all the information discussed in today's conversation by visiting our website at integratedpwm.com and clicking on the Learning Center. While there, you can also set up a 15min pre-discovery conversation to learn a little bit more about what it means to work with our firm or check out any number of ebooks that we've written and are available for download, including our most popular ebook called "Five Tips to Financial Freedom for Optometrists."
And with that introduction, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Nathan Hayes.
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