Doctor – Don’t Do This!

Hey Doc - why the heck would you ever want to do this? In this episode of The Dental Practice Fixers Podcast for dentists, Dr. Rich answers one of the most frequently asked questions, and that's the response....sort of. Then of course we do some mystery shopper calls, and miraculously someone almost gets it right!!   Richard H. Madow, DDS:   Hey there, I'm Dr. Richard Madow and welcome once again to The Dental Practice Fixers Podcast. We have a great question from a listener today. And of course, a mystery shopper calls and all kinds of other fun stuff. I think this question will lead to some very valuable advice for any dentist at any stage in their practice. So we're going to get right down to it in a second, but of course, first I want to remind you that at The Madow Center we love lowering our overhead and we love teaching other dentists how to lower their overheads too. And of course, one of the simplest things to do is switch your credit card processing to Stax, S-T-A-X because they don't charge that annoying percentage for processing. Just a low, flat monthly fee. Really low. We've saved thousands and thousands of dollars and you should too. Find out more, just go to madow.com/save. M-A-D-O-W dot com, slash S-A-V-E. Okay, over to our question. I feel like I get questions like this all the time. I probably handled a similar question on the podcast maybe a year ago or so, but I wanted to do it again because I think it's so important, and even if this doesn't apply directly to you, there's certainly plenty of lessons we can learn. Simple lessons. Okay, so here it is, it says: “Dear Rich, Love the podcast especially the Secret Shopper calls.” Well, thank you. Everyone seems to love the Secret Shopper calls. They don't want to hear me, just the secret shopper calls. Alright. “Thanks so much for doing this. Question for you. I'm a dentist, early 40s. Purchased what I would call a fledgling practice around six years ago. I'm definitely making a go of it, but things aren't great. In other words, it's doing better than it was when I purchased it, but I'm still not super busy and my income is not what I had hoped. There's a similar practice around 12 miles from mine that is for sale and I think I can grab it for a steal. I feel like I should purchase and try to build it up also, what do you think? That combined incomes could be exactly what I need. Thanks for your time. Midwest, DDS.” Wow, I like how you chose your own- because I would usually not read the names I kind of, you know, protect your anonymity or whatever. But I like how you just called yourself Midwest, DDS. Covers a lot of ground though. Okay, Midwest, DDS. Here's what I’m going to have to say to you. You've got one practice that's not doing as well as you want. Why would you ever, ever, ever want to double your overhead? More than double your overhead because you're going to- you can't be in two places at once. You're going to have to hire associates or just run each practice part time, which really kills your overhead. You will triple your frustration and you'll probably have two mediocre practices when you haven't even proven you can run one practice successfully. Do not buy this practice that's 12 miles away. Now let me back that up by saying this is totally different than an older dentist or for some reason someone very close to you has to retire and they're either selling the charts, so to speak, or they’re selling the practice at a fire sale price. And your intention is to blend the practices into one physical location. That's totally different. But 12 miles apart, you're talking about having two physical locations, you're going to try to run both of them. So again,