Today, practice owners increasingly find themselves facing a fork in the road. Do they keep going as a solo dentist or do what many of their peers are doing and sell to a DSO?
If that describes your situation, we know it’s often not an easy decision to make. But one expert says that a good place to start is by taking a little time to think about what problems you’re trying to solve by choosing one option or the other.
We recently spoke with Brian Mans, founder of Sell to a DSO, to get his take on the issue. Brian makes a living helping dentists, well, sell their practices to DSOs, and he suggested that an interested doctor ponder several key questions.
“[Ask yourself] what is really bad in your life?” he says. “What do you want to get rid of? What’s keeping you up at night?”
If your answers have a lot to do with the stress of trying to run a small business on top of doing clinical work, then you might want to seriously look into finding a DSO to work with. That kind of stress is incredibly common in our industry, especially as the level of entrepreneurship required to get ahead continues to rise.
On the other hand, if the source of any trouble you may feel is unrelated to your business, you’re probably doing just fine in private practice!
Brian also suggests keeping your answers in mind if you do start negotiating with DSOs. Your best bet is to find a DSO that genuinely cares about solving whatever concern is motivating you to sell.
“A lot of DSOs, they don’t focus on what’s really bringing that doctor to the table,” he tells us. “And at the end of the day, that’s a problem. So it’s really identifying, hey, which one of these DSOs actually cares about this doctor?”
Wise words in our book.