Becoming a dentist takes years of hard work and dedication. Chances are, you identified this as your career path early on. And then, with this destination in mind, you set out to get there: passed your GCSEs well, which allowed you to choose the right A-Levels and get the grades you needed, which allowed you to enter a competitive dental school. After training, you laid the foundations of your practice, honing your craft, perhaps even choosing a specialism. Now, most likely, you’re a confident dentist with happy patients and a healthy income.
But what comes next?
Becoming a dentist means following a well-defined route with clear markers for failure and success. Achieving your destination isn’t easy, and it’s only the best who can get there (so if you’re a dentist reading this, you’ve already won). Yet there’s a security in striving with a set goal in mind and knowing when you’ve met it. Beyond this, in the wide world of dental practice ownership, things are far less linear. You might not know what you should do next, or even what your markers for success will be when you do it.
At this metaphorical junction, there are two paths open to you. You could choose to work as a dental associate, or you could follow the route to becoming a practice owner. Both have their highs and lows, but making the “right” choice will depend entirely on knowing what you want out of it. The considerations are multi-faceted, ranging from the income and wealth you might generate to how you spend and value your time, and the gratification you get from your role.
The associate
Being an associate is a fantastic career choice: it’s challenging but financially solid, and offers both wealth and work-life balance.
As an associate, the things you’ll focus on are knowing your ADY and finding a good practice (which isn’t necessarily the one willing to pay the highest percentage). You’ll need to learn financial discipline and set up a limited company as a platform for building your wealth. Over time, you can invest in your pension, but also in building diversification – growing your balance through investments such as pension, stocks, buy-to-let properties, and cryptocurrency.
Here, the path is somewhat predictable, and you’re protected from the uncertainties that affect business owners, such as rising costs. In fact, as the minimum wage increases, along with other costs like electricity, owners may raise their prices to cover the shortfall, which in turn increases an associate’s pay. As an associate you can also afford to be more demanding. You can take holidays, work more flexibly, and walk away when you close the door at the end of the day. It’s an enviable position to be in.
The practice owner
Choosing to buy a practice means buying a business – and having to run it yourself. And, for most dentists, there’s very little in the training book to prepare you for this.
Making business decisions is entirely different to making informed treatment decisions. In your career path to date, there will always have been a right and wrong answer; a logical outcome. As a business owner, you can only ever make educated guesses. The decisions are yours; the responsibility is yours; and the risk? That’s yours, too.
Typically, an owner is paid less for their dentistry and nothing at all for running the business. There are also no guarantees around the growth you’ll achieve or the value your practice will ultimately have reached when you sell it. And while many business owners extol the virtues of “being your own boss”, you’ve only really replaced one boss with many: including your patients, your bank manager, and the government.
Which to choose?
Despite all this, I work with hundreds of dental practice owners who love what they do. And therein lies the key.
If you love everything that comes with being a business owner – dedicating your life to it, steering its direction, and pursuing something meaningful (with those glimmers of sunshine that appear along the way) – you’re probably a natural business owner. You’ll need to go in with your eyes wide open, but if you throw yourself into it, you could build a highly profitable practice and generate real wealth for yourself. However, if your heart’s not really in it, you’re unlikely to make any more money than you would as an associate.
Over the last ten years, practice values skyrocketed, but we’re now seeing these values slow and even decline, with NHS practices, for example, becoming a bit of a “hot potato”. In the past, practice owners could do two or three good things out of ten and succeed. Now, an owner will find themselves struggling if they do anything less than eight or nine things out of ten. This equates to an awful lot to think about, alongside the day-to-day business of dentistry. Fundamentally, you need to want to do all these things.
The simple truth is that practice ownership isn’t for everyone, and there’s no reason why you should take that step. Some dentists find they’ve become so specialised in their craft that it’s hard to flourish in an environment dominated by business leadership, finances, HR and marketing (to name a few). If you think being an associate is the best option for you, we can help you through our dedicated Associates’ Club, which provides access to training, education, and tax savings.
And, if you’re still not sure, we can help you choose the route that’s right for you. There’s no such thing as the best of both worlds, but we can explore how to align the many trade-offs that come with each option, so that you can make an informed decision.
