What Should I Look For?
I’m going to make some assumptions before we get started here. I’m going to assume that you’re in one of three camps. 1. You’re from a small town and you want to go back to a small town to practice. 2. You are not from a small town, but you’ve wised up and see the writing on the wall. Dentistry in big cities is super congested and less profitable. You don’t want to hassle with the mess that practicing in a big city can create. 3. You’re who I used to be. You’ve slammed your head against the wall year in, year out hoping something will change. You have come to realize that it’s going to change, but that it’s going to change for the worse. You’ve decided to pull up stakes and move to the country. Truth be told, it doesn’t matter how you got to this point, but I congratulate you on getting here. Your future self will thank you.
Now the question becomes, where do I go? Either you are totally wide open and you are willing to explore all opportunities, nationwide, or you are somewhat selective and want to search a specific part of the country. Here’s my take on both. If you are wide open, that’s great, but you could suffer from paralysis by analysis in trying to find a practice. These opportunities are all over the country and it could take months to sift through every listing to find the “perfect practice.” Spoiler alert, practices are like potential spouses. There are no soul mates. There are any number of practices that you could be more than happy owning and practicing in, just like there are many potential spouses that you could get married to. I’m not a cynic. While I do believe that there could have been many different women that I could have married and been truly happy, now that I’ve been married for over 20 years I can’t imagine being married to anyone else besides my wife. Your practice is the same way. You could practice in numerous different places and situations and be happy, but once you chose a location and practice and dedicate yourself to working it, you can’t imaging it working out any other way.
If you are more narrow in your geographic search I will encourage you to expand beyond your level of comfort. Some practitioners what to “make a big move” and end up moving an hour from where they were and think that it’s going to be markedly different. I hate to tell you this, but it’s not going to be. If you want a major change in your income, you have to be willing to make a major change in your lifestyle. As much as we are bombarded by nonsense on the internet and social media, you can’t lose weight by doing nothing but taking a pill, you aren’t going to earn thousands of dollars a week by only working 5 hours weekly, and you aren’t going to be able to retire in 6 months using “their” proven formula. Your dental career is no different. You aren’t going to see life-changing results if you aren’t willing to make life-changing choices.
Again, regardless of how you arrived at this decision, you’re here. It’s time to pull up stakes and move somewhere else. So where do you go? The better question is, what should you be looking for? What set of circumstances are going to provide you with the best opportunity to succeed and be happy? The first item on that list should be competition. It’s not enough to just move somewhere smaller because it’s smaller. I know a ton of small communities that seemingly have more dentists than people, so it’s not enough for it to be a small geographic area. You need to find a spot that not only has little/no competition, but that also has a favorable future. When I moved to eastern Kentucky not only was there a shortage of dentists, but when I moved there I was the youngest dentist in town by at least a decade. I knew that before too long there were going to be multiple dentist wanting/needing to retire and no one was coming behind them to fill the void. My assumptions turned out to be correct. Within 4 years of moving there I owned 3 practices, and that was also with Covid shutting us down and having to recover from that. It’s great if you can find a spot where you’re the only game in town. That would have been way too small of a community for me and my family, but I feel like I found the next best thing.
The second thing you, or your spouse if you’re married, is going to think of is amenities. As we speak, my wife, 2 of my daughters, and one of my sons are on a shopping trip in Cincinnati. We are roughly 2 hours from either Cincy or Columbus and about 1.5 hours from Lexington. These cities are landmarks for my family because that’s where the closest Costcos are. For some it might feel like sacrilege to live that far away from a Costco, but this was one of the life-changing decisions we were willing to make. That being said, we live in a community that still provides us with all the amenities that we absolutely need. We have 2 Walmarts, almost all the regular fast-food options, we have a mall, various local restaurants, a couple of movie theaters, and the all-important Chick-fil-A. We have a Sam’s Club roughly 20 minutes from the house, and while I’m aware that it’s not as good as Costco, we can still buy toilet paper in bulk, so we’re good. There are 5 high schools in the town where we live. All of the amenities I thought I would miss by downsizing to a smaller, more rural community just became luxuries that I get to enjoy when we take a day trip. It’s fun to enjoy some of your favorite eateries and entertainments when you visit the big city. We find time to go to a Top Golf when we are in Columbus or we eat out at Jersey Mike’s when we go to Lexington, but we don’t need those places on a day-in, day-out basis. While having some amenities is important, you’d be surprise what you can do without when financial stability is the focus.
The third thing you are going to look for is a population to work on. This goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway, you need patients to work on. What I have found to be totally overrated is having to find an area where there’s tremendous growth. Dentists are great at rushing out and setting up shop in the next up-and-coming community. They love to be “original” and find that new area that “nobody knows about.” Hahahaha. Meanwhile, 30 other dentists had the same bright idea that guy had and they all follow each other out to the same place and ruin it. There are communities throughout the country that are not necessarily growth area, but they have plenty of potential patients to work on. The area that I currently practice in is not growing, in fact, it’s probably shrinking. For all the kids that go to high school here, few of them stay, especially those who go away to college. We even had a hospital in town close down. I didn’t know that was a thing. I’ve never seen a hospital announce it’s closure and just stop treating patients. You would think that these would be signs to stay away from this area. Quite the opposite. It’s not on anyone’s radar, but there are thousands of patients here that need, and can afford, dental care. My community isn’t a unicorn. I’m thoroughly convinced that there are communities like this all over the country, but you have to be looking for them.
Listen, it’s easy to find a job working for a DSO in whatever city you want to live in, but you live a more difficult life trying to make that work financially. It’s amazing how much less stress you live with when your practice is thriving and you don’t have to worry about having enough work to do. If you can find a community that is underserved(low competition), has enough amenities to sustain your day to day lifestyle, and has enough people to work on, then you should jump on that before someone else does.