By Ross Martin, Accountancy Director at Hive Business.

Very often I find it hard to catch up with my clients on matters that I know they find important — big things like the numbers. Maybe there’s something about being a dental practice owner that demands a little too much from people at times.

It’s frustrating to witness but I get it, and I am not envious. How are you supposed to hit your practice revenue target when you have things like compliance, team building, mentoring and business strategy to think about, not to mention those clinical hours you’re still doing?

Things aren’t like this in other professions. At least barristers get clerks who take care of the nitty gritty invoicing, recruiting, training and supervising. Somehow it’s still normal for dental practice owners to saddle themselves with the weight of everything and, when the chips are down, still be expected to deliver as a clinician like Atticus Finch did in the courtroom.

Is it that dentists’ brains, whether by nurture or nature, are just too into the detail? You’re not going to get far running a business if you can’t step out of the decon room.

The Kolbe psychometric test, which a few people I know working with dentists often use, profiles people in terms of their predisposition for:

1. information gathering
2. follow through
3. taking risks
4. being artisanal

I bet you know which way dentists tend to go. They love gathering information, they are ambivalent about following through, they hate risk and they love making things.

So what does risk aversion combined with a craving for more and more information do to someone at the helm of the sort of business that has an ever increasing burden of compliance? (And, by the way, compliance costs have rocketed 1,086% in the past decade if you wanted a sense of the effect they might be having.)

It stops you doing the things that you know are important, the things you know you need to do. It might sound like I’m coming down hard on dentists but you are not alone. The phenomenon I am trying to describe has been well documented among people who go into skilled, technical careers and find themselves in control of businesses that provide those highly technical services.

Have a look at a book called The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What To Do About It by Michael Gerber. He published it in 1986 and then did editions for physicians, contractors, chiropractors and yes, in 2014, he even did one for dentists. The titles don’t really matter because he always delivers the same very powerful message which is essentially:

1. if you can’t take a step back like they do in franchising then you will end up snuffing out your business through your own love for it
2. stepping back is a particularly difficult task for technicians and artisans because they put so much of themselves into the service they provide or the widgets they produce

So, to answer my own question of why don’t practice owners ever have any time to talk to me about the things that they know really matter, I’d say it’s something to do with the rather tortuous role fate has allotted them. They are skilled artisans cursed with the burden of having to radically evolve to the point where they shed their intuitive passion for detail.

You have to learn to step back, however painful and counterintuitive that may seem, and it’s hard. If you’d like to talk about what’s holding your dental practice back, get in touch for a chat — and remember, you’re not alone! Call 01872 300232 or email 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.