Ep_51 How to Go From a Dental Grad to A Practice Owner with Dr. Lowe

SPEAKERS

Shawn Zajas, Mark House, Allison House

Welcome to the authentic dentist podcast join Dr. Allison house and house Dental in Scottsdale and Shawn Zajas, founder of zonna, a company helping dentists to extend their care beyond the chair as they lead dentists deeper along the journey of authenticity, to reach greater fulfillment in their professional lives, and to deliver remarkable patient experiences. At the core of the authentic dentist is a belief that the answer to the current challenges in dentistry is dentists discovering that their greatest asset and point of differentiation is their personal brand. And that forming that brand out of their authentic selves is the best strategy for success in dentistry today.

So this podcast is brought to you by sauna and sauna makes electric toothbrushes but it's more than that. They have a program that will grow your practice with their electric toothbrushes.

Hey guys, this is Sean and Dr. Allison house with the authentic dentist podcast. And today's a special day because we are podcasting at the voices of dentistry in Scottsdale, Arizona. And we just interviewed someone. But this interview I don't know. I just feel like it's special because we're going to interview shared practices. And the second that I met Dr. Richard Lowe. There's just this connection because as you're going to find out in this episode, there's just so much about the values, the way he sees dentistry and just the inspiration of what shared practices is doing that I'm so excited for you guys to find out about. So Hello, Dr. House and Hello, Dr. Lowe. Hey there.

We're so glad you got to talk to us today.

01:41

This is fun. Thanks for having me on you guys.

And you're you're a veteran in the podcasting world. How long have you been doing it?

01:47

Since August of 2016. So coming up on it'll be seven years this year. And before that I got to help Dr. Howard for ran produce his podcast when he first started his Wow. So you're like a trendsetter? I will know I begged dental town to employ me while I was still in dental school, I threw myself at them over and over until they hired me as a student intern. Because I got so much value out of learning from other dentists and like all the authentic stuff that they are posting good and bad. There's a lot of crap on dental town of just people complaining or struggling or whatever. But there's these gems where you'd read through these threads and you'd see their experience and like what's worked for them these little pearls and I could spend hours in dental school just reading through dental town. And so I wanted other dental students to do that. So I became a student intern, and I learned how to podcast at Howard friend's house, setting up his equipment and learning that he's just as crazy in person as he is online. And I love Howard

and Dr. House knows Howard very well do you?

02:47

I do I do. I just love him. He's amazing. He's fine. Yeah, fine.

02:51

It made me realize that you just have to have a vision and passion and be willing to take a risk. And that's what it takes to be an entrepreneur and be a business owner. And Howard was very inspirational for me on that.

But he's also that king of consistency. He is He doesn't stop and because he stuck with it. Like you just those those returns compound your efforts really are when you can think okay, so debate our listeners. Wait,

03:14

go. This was the first question. When I got to dental town. I was like who's doing Howard social media who's doing the 3am posts of like this dental meme or that? They're like, it's all handled. It's all Howard. I was like, oh, okay, he just This is him.

So I love Howard. If I call him he answers he does personally personally. Yeah, he'll talk to me for like 20 minutes until finally I'm like, Howard, I gotta go. That's great.

Okay, so here's, here's the bait, though. Here's the hook for the listeners. So you guys started a podcast, and then all of a sudden it morphed into now we're you're doing a ton of fun stuff, but you even own 16 practices.

03:49

We're at 18 I think, Oh, my bad. Sorry.

Scratch that from the record.

So how did you go from working for Howard? To 16 Practice 18 1818 practices. That's crazy.

04:00

It is it is insanity. And actually a lot of the people here at Voices of dentistry Mark Costas Allen Mead, I met those when I was working for Howard my senior year of dental school. And between Howard and all of them, they encouraged me to start my own podcast and I'm a new grad. I'm in the Army. I was doing the HPSP scholarship. And I'm thinking Who the heck is going to listen to a new grad podcast about anything? Like what do I have to bring to the table? I was like, Well, I guess the thing I have is I have a ton of questions about how to go from a new grad to being a practice owner that gap of how when why which practice to buy how to run it. Well. Is it worth it for me? Am I Am I right for practice ownership? Is it worth it to own a practice? And I had all these questions and I was like, You know what we could do? We could organize it into seasons and align it with the journey of a new grad. So season one was like should I own a dental practice? And that was I was coming on as a leader. and learner have like, I don't have all the answers. I don't have this figured out. But I'm going to talk to people. And really quickly, this caught on because this, this was clearly a need that like I wasn't alone. Other people had the same questions of like, how do I get into practice ownership seems so scary, and so much risk? But it seems like everyone who does it does well, so So what's the way to do it? Well, we we got a lot of traction early on. And people came back and they're like, I bought my dental practice because of your podcast. And that was really cool. Especially because I was still in the army. And I couldn't buy a practice at the time. And I was like, dang it, you guys are doing what I'm teaching and what we're learning. And I have another, you know, three or four years to like, get out of the army. And that's where it all began was just this. How can we solve this problem? For this current generation of dentists? Coming out of dental school? Lots of debt, lots of fear, lots of corporate pressure, insurance pressure? Is practice ownership alive and kicking? And if so, what's what's the playbook? How do we get there? And if and the hypothesis was, if you're going to do it, do it sooner rather than later, most people think, oh, you know what, I'll practice for someone else for like five to seven years, and then maybe I'll buy maybe I'll partner buy into a practice. And our hypothesis is no, if you identify in yourself that desire to own practice, get clinical confidence, whether that takes you six months, a year, two years, and start looking start start trying to find that practice. Because the sooner you can get into practice ownership, the more the returns, the lifestyle returns, the financial returns will compound and allow you to have that lifestyle and live the kind of practice you want and be that authentic dentist that's doing your thing, rather than driving someone else's ship in someone else's practice.

So you're coming from this from a unique perspective, you went to the military, so you have the scholarship, most dentists are graduating about half a million dollars in debt. And you're still saying this is a possibility?

06:53

Absolutely. And some of my favorite stories on the podcast that we captured very early on were people who bought straight out of dental school with current practice, or dental school debt. And, and very successfully, you know, and I, we had a dentist on the podcast, our second episode, he was two weeks into practice ownership as a new grad. So he'd only been been a dentist for two weeks. And he also was a practice owner for two weeks at that point, and share that like, sometimes I just go home and cry at night like he shared like they're very real. And we're very also authentic about like practice ownership is no joke. It's not that this is an easy thing. There is cost to it, there is stress, there is risk to owning your practice. But because he bought the right practice, and there was plenty of opportunity. Within a year he'd grown that practice double that practice, paid off his student loans, practice ownership was the vehicle that allowed him to get out of out of debt. And if that's if that's what you want to do practice ownership, even though it means going into more debt and having a little bit more risk. If you do it right, man, it opens up options. And we've had that over and over and over my my partner and co host Dr. Georgia Riri. He did the same thing. He bought a arrowhead family dentistry here in Phoenix, bought that practice, and within a few years, doubled the size of the practice and scaled it using metrics and analytics. And despite the debt levels of current dental school debt, was able to be very, very successful. With that practice as a new grad.

That is so inspiring. So tell us your story. How'd you buy your first practice?

08:29

So I bought five while I was still in the army, which I don't recommend anyone buy practices while you're still in the Army because number one, the army can deploy you. So normally, you're deployable, that is part of signing up. Number two banks won't lend to you while you're still active duty until you have that last form saying I'm I'm out of the army. However, I ended up in a non clinical position for the Army for my last two years of the army I got sent to Indianapolis where my my in laws are from my wife is from and where I had my dental license. And I got a really unique opportunity to be in a non deployable, non clinical role. found three practices with the help of some friends found these three practices that were for sale, it was a seller, and to associate dentists at these different locations in Indiana. And they were staying on board. So I wouldn't be stepping into a full time clinical schedule, because there was already three dentists at these three practices. I went to the banks and the bank said absolutely not you are a bundle of red flags, you have no liquidity you have no experience as an operator. You're still in the army, you can be deployed, you know, like all these things, I could not get lending to buy these three practices. And it was it was a lot of money. It was nearly $3 million to buy these three practices, which it's also funny when you're looking at a monthly payment of like 27k a month, all of a sudden your student loans feel like not as big of a deal as they used to, you know if you have them, but I found some partners and I with these partners, they were able to get the financing and we bought these practices together. And a few years later through COVID, realized that these partners were amazing people, they were awesome. The practices that I bought were awesome practices. But I realized like, with the podcast and shared practices, I like to change things, tinker and grow and experiment. And that wasn't happening as much I wasn't having kind of free rein to like knock down walls and expand and do all the kinds of stuff I wanted to do. So I ended up walking away from that partnership, I gifted my equity back my partner's refinance me off the debt, they waived my non compete, we left on great terms, they're still good friends. And that's one of the most amazing things is that if you buy a really good cash flowing asset, a dental practice that makes sense, you still have options. If you change your mind if you realize, man, I hate practice ownership. This sucks, I want to go back to just doing normal dentistry, you can pivot in your vision, you can change your mind and not be upside down on it because you bought a valuable asset. And oftentimes, if you then improve it, now you could walk away and sell it for more or have whatever option you want at that point. So that was my first three. I then bought two more before I got out of the Army's long story. There's a lot that's happened in these last six years, but I bought a denture practice and added implants and so now I mean a denture and implant office where we do a lot of all on for Overdentures immediate dentures, we've got an in house lab tech. So I am I'm not a tooth saver. Even though I love saving teeth. We're now like, Okay, let's get rid of these teeth, it's time to move on. You don't have any posterior occlusion, there's a lot of decay. There's a lot of infection like it's, they know that it's time to do something else. And we're doing that nationwide are opening new denture and implant offices. For dentists who are interested in this kind of like, different model of no hygiene, getting to do a lot of fun surgery getting to help a niche of the population that general dentists a lot of times don't want to touch down or dentures, they don't have the the team to do it all on four and have it go smoothly every time because they don't have an in house lab tech. So we've pivoted towards that being clinically and practice wise, is what I'm currently focusing on.

As I said not to like discourage the listeners. But I don't know if this is like a blueprint that people can follow. Because no seems like you are incredibly entrepreneurial. And that's not calm. That's not normal. So where did you get your business training? Like? Is this just intuition? Is this instinct? Is this like a family thing where you learn from? You know, yeah, mom and dad, like,

12:35

I think there's a spectrum that every dentist falls on of entrepreneur to clinician, and you can be both and you can be great at both. But everyone tends to lean in one direction over the other. Some people really kind of just get excited by the business side, entrepreneur side, and other people are like, no, just give me another CEE corps give me another procedure give me like, I want to be in the nitty gritty of the clinical. And knowing that about yourself, I think is a big factor on the size and scope of your practice. And I think that if you are that clinical dentist, we have found we've analyzed a lot of practices, coached a lot of practices, we use analytics, we use practice by numbers to like look at the insides of a practice, we have found that there's these sweet spots of practice avatars, of certain practice sizes and configurations that fit really well with a natural bent. So I think a clinically oriented dentist tends to do really well as a solo dentist. And we consider that a productive solo is what we call it. One dentist, two hygienists, two assistants in their front desk team. And that configuration, you don't have to be super fancy and do all the procedures, you can be a very bread and butter practice. But that ratio of hygienist to traditional GP dentistry, you can have a very profitable, healthy practice and not have a huge team, not take on a bunch of business risks, not take on a bunch of debt. And do that predictably, over and over and over. And so we help people buy those practices, we help people find that practice and identify is this practice right for me, because that's the hardest part before you buy the dental practice. You're looking at like five practices. And there's one that's like, kind of smaller, and it cost less, and you're like, maybe this is safer, or this bigger one that's closer to a million dollars. And you're like that seems scary. I don't know. That's the like, We love living in that space of helping figure out who are you and what's your vision, and find the practice that fits that both short term and long term and allows you to grow within that practice. And eventually if you want to if you're more on that entrepreneurial scale, I actually recommend patients or dentists not by multiple practices, multi practice ownership is like one of one of the things that I think gets romanticized in the podcast world in the online world. And it's really hard to do. Culture and leadership and all of these things really well at one office, and it doesn't scale naturally. Well, just because you have good culture and good systems at one office, I don't think it's a really easy stamp and repeat situation most of the time. And I would say, if you're on that entrepreneurial spectrum, growing into a multi dock single location, is the low hanging fruit, do that first, and then decide if you want to still be crazy and do multiple offices. So that's my, you know, I agree, what we're doing at shared practices on all these different funds is not very repeatable. But if you know where you are, we have seen over and over here is the sweet spot of we have something called PSs profitable, simple and sustainable. These models kind of fall into profitable, simple and sustainable that we can repeat and do over and over. And is and it's something that's not out of the ordinary for people to achieve. So I agree, you got to find what's right for you, rather than trying to follow some other crazy person like myself journey.

So you keep saying we how are you helping dentists?

16:04

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you. And shared

practices isn't just you, right? Like this is right, because got a pretty good team going on.

16:11

Yeah, you're the CEO. I'm the CEO. Currently, that might change week to week, we'll see. I have five other partners who are all dentists, four of us are all graduates from Midwestern Arizona. So you know, very, very Phoenix influenced crew here. We merged together. And we found each other because of the Podcast, the podcast was what brought us together, because the stuff that I was talking about, and the people I was interviewing attracted other entrepreneurial, like minded dentists who are just really good people. And that was really cool. Partnership is hard, because you're kind of marrying yourself, your business to this other person and their personal life and their quirks and problems and all the good and bad. So I'm very fortunate to have five partners that are also dentists. And we have two main sides of our company. We've got our podcast, coaching, consulting, education side of our company. So shared practices proper is what we call it is our podcast and coaching side of it. And we've got a team of nine coaches, who coach over 80 dentists nationwide, and help them in their journey to grow through that, that practice analytics. We help people buy practices, so we help people evaluate a potential practice. We've got attorneys that help them, like look at the leases and do all that paperwork. And then we coach them, we've got a mastermind that we meet together, we have in person courses that breaks down. Most people look at like 580 episodes, they're like, I don't think I want to listen to that much podcast content. And so we've taken the best of the best over our years of podcasting and consolidated it into a few different courses, including my favorite course right now is our office manager course because so often, the dentist listening to the podcast is the bottleneck of like, here's all these great ideas, and then none of it actually happens in the office. If you can get your om and elevate their leadership, their understanding of practice management, stuff actually gets done. And I'm the first one to say that I am the bottleneck in my practice right now. Like my office manager. I've got stuff in my head that like sometimes I have a hard time getting out and helping her see what I see and focus on on what we should be focusing on. So we've got a lineup of courses. We'd love people to come out to Phoenix, we've got our headquarters here in Scottsdale, and people can go to share practices.com If they're interested in coming to any of our events, we'd love to have now loved to have listened to podcasts. But yeah, that we have an amazing team. And we're doing a lot of crazy things. And then on the other side, we've got the group of denture implant offices.

Wow, very impressive. Very impressive

18:49

or crazy. I don't know which one, maybe a little bit about what it was

just really obvious to me. The second I met you, I'm like, Okay, this is not the most ordinary dentist and he's completely entrepreneurial, which is a blessing when executed correctly, but it can be a curse, because there's so much you want to do. Oh, yeah. Okay, so so just to close, though, I want to know, what was the most surprising or biggest failure that you encountered along the way? And what did you learn from it?

19:20

You know, I shared that I bought those three practices and ended up walking away. That was really hard in the moment that felt very difficult. And one of the things that allowed that transition to happen was having just like open honest dialogue with my partners, like there was like seven scenarios that we went through of like me buying them out or US splitting things up or this practice or that practice. I think the ability to have honest conversations with people whether that's a team member, another dentist and patient, and even when things get hard, like stay in that open can munication is a skill set that everyone needs to develop. And we all kind of suck at it because we tend to get emotional defensive, like blame or we want to win, rather than like finding like shared meaning. And I'm super fortunate my, my father, coached, there's this book in the system called Crucial Conversations by Vital Smarts. It's this like framework of how to have these really hard conversations. And I still suck at I still screw it up all the time. But that is something that getting good at being a leader requires a lot of humility, because you're just going to make mistakes, and it's going to be on stage, it's going to be in front of people all the time. And the goal should be how can I show people, whether as a office manager, fellow dentists, someone else, I'm having this difficult conversation, that I care about them, and that I want what's best for them even going into and through a difficult conversation. That is something that even if you screw up the specifics, if your heart is right, going into those conversations, people can sense that. And you can come out on the backside with with a better relationship. And I had an assistant who left me this fall, this past fall, and I was bummed because she was like our lead assistant, she was awesome. And I told her, I was like, Hey, you're exactly who we want our practice. Is there anything I can do to keep you? And she's like, No, I've already made the decision. And it's closer to home. It's got XYZ and, and I couldn't couldn't get her to stay. And I was like, Well, what can we do better? And she gave me some really brutal feedback. She gave me some like really honest, like, Hey, you're focusing on this other thing you've got going on, and the culture at our office has suffered as you've done that. And she also, you know, said to me some other things. And I told her, I said, Well, if you ever change your mind, we would love to have you back. We had like a very authentic, you know, it was like, dang, I wish we'd have this conversation three months ago, rather than as you were leaving. Well, the the happy part of that is two months later, she calls me back. She's like Dr. Lowe, I made a mistake. Can I come back? And like, Absolutely, please come back. But that's the kind of relationship and that ability to handle conflict and the ability to hold people accountable, but still in a way that shows that you care about them. That's one of the biggest takeaways that I'm still working on. And I'm still screwing it up. And I still have a long way to go. But if you can work on that, that's that's part of leadership.

That is really what the authentic dentist is all about. Yeah, we appreciate all your feedback. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you guys. Check out shared practices. Thank you so much, Dr. Love. Awesome. Thanks,

guys. Thank you for listening to the authentic dentist podcast. To join Allison and Sean on this journey. Hit the subscribe button to never miss an episode. Here's to your success. Express yourself fully. Live authentic.