How Any Dentist Can Achieve Great Success from Optimizing the Basics

For a new dentist, graduating with a load of school debt and facing the costs of starting in practice, it can seem like financial independence is a long way off.

But as I have often said, dentistry is one of the best professions you can get into if you are looking for a reliable return on your education investment. In fact, there is no reason why any dentist graduating today who commits to the fundamentals of patient value and commits to staying current with clinical skills cannot build a thriving million-dollar practice.

Let's let the numbers tell the story.

Being a Dentist: A Top Profession

First of all, using very conservative estimates, we can start with the assumption that an average patient, agreeing to just the most basic dentistry is will do about $10,000 worth of work over the course of 20 years—$4000 in regular hygiene and $6000 for restorative procedures. That's $500 a year.

Now, say you see 10 new patients a month, for a total of 1200 over 10 years. If you are able to retain those patients and get them to invite just one more patient each (a modest goal over 10 years) that adds up to 2400 patients at $500 a year—which translates into a $1.2 million-dollar annual operation. And that's just from regular hygiene and nuts and bolts dentistry.

Naturally, you're not going to achieve 100 percent retention, but even 85 percent (which is achievable for anyone) will bring phenomenal results. And we're not even beginning to factor in the more significant cases you will do along the way if you are truly invested in developing your clinical and value creation skills.

The point is, if you have a dental degree and you are diligent about always ensuring that you are thorough about the fundamentals with every patient, you can't help but achieve economic success—the kind of success that helps you, your team, and all of your patients discover even higher levels of care. In other words, there is a goldmine of opportunity in your practice, and you don't have to look very far to find it.

Every dentist should be acutely aware of possibilities like this, and the sooner the better. That's why I am so excited to be a part of the Hinman GOLD program (Graduates of the Last Decade) later this month, where there will be a slate of top-notch educators giving dentists in their first years of practice the wisdom of several lifetimes in dentistry. Be there if you can.



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