By Ross Martin, Accountancy Director at Hive Business.

Last year I wrote about the Hive matrix, our way of grasping where you are in terms of the clinical hours you put in versus your profit. I said: “the fool spends all his time in surgery for little or no profit… while the unicorn gets the best of both worlds; big profits for little or no clinical time.”

I’ve been reflecting on why so many dentists remain trapped in the fool box, so to speak, and I think risk aversion is the big one. This is a shame, because risk is usually a misunderstanding. When Richard Branson set up Virgin Airways he had a buy back deal with Boeing on his aircraft in case it failed. He made sure the risk reward ratio was stacked in his favour.

There’s a popular misconception that entrepreneurs are slightly tapped, but when you take a good look at any of them you’ll see they share a systematic approach to risk. They don’t do off the chart bets. The best hedge fund managers are better than anyone, and they’ll work out which investments have a four out of five chance of working and diversify their exposure to the one in five risk.

The UK dental market is in rude health at £7.1bn and rising, and so here’s a question: if you were to borrow £100k to accelerate your growth as a practice owner, can you think of how it might affect your life negatively? An obvious first thought might be: “I’ll lose £100k”. If things go really badly yes, you might not get a return and you might not even get all of your money back. But you won’t lose the lot. In the worst case scenario, where everything in your growth plan somehow bombs, let’s say you lose £50k. Could you service that debt?

Another thought might be: “I don’t have access to a £100k loan”. As a practice owner however that’s unlikely — banks are falling over each other to lend to dentists at the moment — and you won’t have to look far to get access to it. Those are the two hurdles that stop most people developing their business in a direction they want, towards investor and unicorn. One is about risk perception, the other’s a simple misconception about what’s possible. As we’ve seen, when you overcome these hurdles and it goes wrong, the worst case scenario is pretty manageable. When it goes right you most definitely start moving around the matrix — you can reasonably expect a £100k marketing investment to produce a £425k return.

Here’s another question: how much time do you dedicate to working on your business each week? I think you need a day for every £1m of revenue. Take another look at the matrix and consider where you sit on it right now. If you feel like you don’t have control, you have no time or you need permission to start thinking about change, you’re mistaken. The difference between people who achieve change and those who don’t is simply starting. And as it plays out in the UK dental market, to borrow Jack Welch’s phrase “change before you have to”.

Find out more by calling 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.