Create a Plan That Helps You Become Financially Independent & Set-up an Exit Strategy for Your Dental Practice
As the owner of a dental practice, have you created an exit strategy for when you want to retire?
No?
Don't worry. You are far from being the only one. Most dentists don't spend a lot of time thinking about their exit strategy. Maybe it's because "exiting" your dental practice or beginning to phase out seems completely unattainable at this time.
So you don't want to think about exit strategies just like you didn't want to approach that really pretty girl or hot guy in high school because you had this perception that he or she was somehow unattainable.
Today, we're going to change your mind set.
In this article I'm going to show you what it takes to really engineer an exit strategy. But before I reveal some of my hottest tips, I want you to understand that I've been really studying what it takes for people to be financially independent for a long, long time and have personally achieved it myself. I have been a business owner essentially since I was 18 years old. I literally have hundreds of dentists in my coaching programs. I am in the business of taking dentists and helping them work toward an exit. And here's how I get them started.
How to Create a Plan That Helps You Become Financially Independent & Set-up an Exit Strategy for Your Dental Practice
1. Know how much money you need to retire.
If you think about an exit, it means you leave something. So think just for a second about leaving your practice.
Here is the problem with leaving your practice. Number one, there's a thing called money. For most people, they have no idea how to answer the question of how much is enough. So the answer is always one more dollar. When you don't know how to answer that question, the truth is you always just need a little bit more. You never get closer to your ultimate goal – selling your dental practice and enjoying retirement.
2. Visualize the lifestyle you want to enjoy once you sell your dental practice.
Your exit strategy has to be crafted around the particular lifestyle you want to experience when you retire. Nine out of ten dentists who come to see me do not have clarity on this particular subject matter. And the reason they don't have clarity is because they cannot visualize what it is like to retire. They cannot visualize the exit date. They cannot visualize exactly what they need. They cannot visualize what it's going to take to be at peace with the decision to sell their dental practice. They just can't visualize retiring.
3. Work on your relationship with money.
When we put dentists through our program, one of the things we realize is that almost everyone's income is too small to retire. You have to know what assets you have now and understand how to make more money so you can become financially independent.
Before you focus on where you want to go, you have to know where you are right now. Look at your numbers and figure out if you just tried to live off the cash, do you have enough?
Do you see a problem? I'm going to assume you do.
The next number I want you to look at is how much money you save every month. Write that down.
Now, do some quick calculations and take how much you save times the number of years you have left to work and do your math. I'm willing to bet you that the numbers don't add up.
In order for you to sell your practice, you have to have a lot of cash saved and you have to have all of your real estate paid off.
4. Realize the trap that you're in.
If you go back to when you started your dental practice, you literally went up year after year. You might have gone up 20%, 30% or 40%. Then all of a sudden, your practice and your income hit a plateau, but your expenses keep rising. You feel the pinch and there's less and less margin.
You start doing things you don't want to do and making decisions you don't want to make. The next thing you know, you're cutting out staff bonuses or scaling back on marketing.
You start thinking, "I'm only going to work for so much longer and I don't want to make these investments." But the gap keeps closing between the expenses and the gross. That's when you get in trouble.
5. Make the necessary changes to become financially independent.
Change is coming if you want it or not. So why not go ahead and dictate the change? To be in control of the change is a lot more fun than a forced change.
Design and create the changes you want so you can "exit" when you want and live the lifestyle you want from then on
Start mapping out a plan that you have full control of and create your exit strategy so you'll become financially independent. Then when you're ready, sell your business and enjoy the retirement you dream of.
