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Are you an aspiring practice owner feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of starting or buying your own practice? In this episode, Kevin Klingshirn offers indispensable guidance tailored just for you. Drawing from his vast experience, Kevin emphasizes the power of resilience, the importance of seeking mentorship, and the critical need for a clear vision of your ideal practice. We explore how Dentagraphics can be a game-changer in helping you make well-informed decisions by providing location and demographic insights.
We dive deep into the intricate challenges that come with starting a business, from spotting the right opportunities to understanding market dynamics. Kevin shares his wisdom on leveraging patient demographics and assessing competition, ensuring you’re well-prepared to build a thriving practice. This episode is a must-listen for anyone wanting to harness the power of vision, comprehensive market analysis, and strategic planning in their journey toward successful practice ownership.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
Don't miss this chance to turn your practice ownership dreams into reality. Tune in now!
Sponsors:
Studio 8E8: Dentistry’s story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.
We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true
You can reach out to Kevin Klingshirn here:
Website: https://www.dentagraphics.com/
Email: kevin@dentagraphics.com
Mentions and Links:
Businesses/Brands:
Software/Tools:
If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:
My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/
The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041
Michael: Hey, Kevin. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning,
Kevin: Monday morning piece of advice knowing your listeners, know, the primary audience is going to be. Young practice owners, and I'll gear this towards those that haven't started a practice or bought a practice, basically haven't entered practice ownership.
This is what we help doctors with. one piece of the big puzzle, right? We'll talk more about it in a bit, but demographics, we help doctors figure out like where to start a practice, where to buy a practice, if a location is good or not. We talk to a lot of nervous practice owners. So what I mean by that is.
They're going to be first time business owners. They're going to be serious business owners. The general practice is a serious thing. It's a big production. And it comes with a lot of responsibilities. My advice would be just get used to not knowing what you're doing. Get used to asking for help, get used to doing things that are really unfamiliar and you have no idea how they work.
The reason why I can relate to it is just because we started this business about 10 years ago now. Seems like a really long time when you say it out loud, but in those 10 years, just as a, a small business owner here at demographics, we've had to do a lot in terms of running a business, hiring operations, fulfillment of the reports and products that we offer, taxes.
everything that comes with just being a small business owner. I would guess the idea is, don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to not know, you're always going to be intimidated, but day. The course, why I want to loop this back is a lot of practice owners. They just won't jump in or they're scared to jump in.
it's scary. You're never completely ready. We probably weren't completely ready to. Started business when we started a business, but just with time, with talking to people, figuring out, who, good for your team, who's bad for your team, all the world works. that's the only way you're going to get through it.
And that's now how we've created a very successful businesses 10 years later. And I think there's a lot of parallels to practice ownership.
Michael: Nice, man. One thing you mentioned is, even if you feel like you're, like, completely unready, still you need to jump in, but what would you say if you're looking at two people who are potentially wanting to own a practice, and you tell them, hey, give it more time to one, and then you tell the other one, oh, no, you're ready, you're just overthinking it.
what are the signs of give it more time?
Kevin: our case, specifically, give it more time in somebody that just doesn't really know where they want to go. They don't know the type of practice that they want to eventually own.They don't have that vision currently laid out.
They maybe have just been almost like peer pressured into, I'm of the age where a lot of my peers are starting or buying dental practices. Therefore I should be as well. Everybody's path different. and this goes back to what I was talking about. You don't need to be ready to handle every part of running a business because you probably never will be.
somebody has been trained in a very specialized way through school. And then they do. An associate job for however many years. They still don't learn how to run a business. You'll never know exactly how to run a business, until you really just start doing it. But somebody who is ready versus somebody who's not is having a pretty clear vision for the type of practice that they want to do.
Own, they know where, and that's really what we help them with. somebody that doesn't, say, you know, type of patient that I want to work with anybody, where should I go anywhere? Well, I'll make money. That's probably not somebody that's quite ready to jump in.
Michael: Now, at Denti Graphics, do you see that a lot?
Do you see where people are like, Hey man, I'm just going to be peer pressured?
Kevin: The term peer pressure doesn't really come up because it's Negative scary. And maybe they don't want to admit that it is peer pressure, but people that just gone through the motion of school associate work, and now it's probably time to buy a practice or start a practice.
So that's what I should be doing, but they're just not ready for it.
Michael: Gotcha. Anything you recommend that we can like self evaluate? Because I'm sure some people are listening to this and then they're thinking, Snaps, maybe I've been peer pressured. Maybe I'm looking at my Facebook groups and I'm like, it's time for me to be a practice owner too.
Kevin: So for me, I just gauge it by talking to people and you can just tell who's ready, who's not, who's taking this seriously versus who's, just asking the questions that they maybe think they should be asking, or, you know, really green questions. Like, I don't know anything about this. I think I'm looking to start a practice for the first time or buy a practice for the first time.
and I guess I should start here. I would go back again to like, knowing generally the type of practice that you want to start or buy in the type of community where you want to start or buy in the general area where you want to start or buy.
things like that are what come to mind there.
Michael: Gotcha. Okay. And then you also mentioned to get used to asking for help when it comes to what y'all initially do, Is that how that kind of came out to be is like, Hey we'll find the right location, the exact specific thing because you felt that wasn't happening or,
Kevin: the business was started by my partner here, Kent, uh, 10 years ago, and his background was in like city planning and figuring out like where within a city might be a good place for a project to take place. my brother actually worked in the dental space. He still does. he was with Bank of America 10 years ago, and he was the one who said, Kent, you know, I think that there's an opportunity for this.
and I think you'd be really good at it. And Ken kind of checked it out and he's like, yeah, I do think I'd be really good at that. I jumped on board about a year and a half later, when the business got big enough where he couldn't do it all on his own, but it all started with just like identifying an opportunity.
It sounds a little cheesier, funny, but kind of with a focus on things like maps and data demographics. Figuring out like where within a city would be a good place do something. I've always been intrigued with like, how does Starbucks and Chipotle and target, how do they figure out where to put their stores?
So then when we had a target on the dental space. It was both, a good opportunity to tackle, and Kent had experience in it. I did not to be frank, but something that interests me, just from the job and everything's where I took off from there.
Michael: Nice man. Now I've heard of this and I've seen this and we've had a lot of, uh, people on the podcast who either have looked at a location and then they said, the demographics don't work, but I'm still going to do it.
Or they've gone the other way, right? Where doesn't work and I'm not going to do it. Now, the ones where it says, I'm still going to do it. What I guess to you, would you recommend if someone goes through this whole process and says, I still want to do it here and it's okay, then just do it.
Kevin: Sure.
Michael: But is there a, better solution or what do you think?
Kevin: I've always saw it. Cause we've talked to people like that. It's like, I'm from this quaint town in California. That's really competitive. And I'm going to start or buy a practice there. I'm going to start a practice there because there's no practices there to buy. If that's your mindset and that's what you want to do, you should do that.
doesn't matter how much competition there is. would say, look at, the type of practice that you want to start or buy. And presumably, if you're familiar with the community, you're familiar with the type of dentistry that you'd be doing there. But I think that the right practice owner can take a practice.
Really competitive, challenging market through the lines of a startup and make it work just by being driven, standing out, being different, good marketing. but it is our job to assess it and say like, Hey, based on what you want to do, this could either be tough or this looks like a. full go green light.
Now, when we do identify those opportunities where the doctor wants to be there, and then we look at it and it's like, Hey, this looks pretty good. got to think that you're gonna have a better shot there initially than a really competitive market. A lot of it comes down to just like supply and demand.
Supply of existing practices in an area demand through demand for dental care to kind of simple things that we want to measure to figure out if it's a good area, not considering what this, practice owner might want to do, but anybody that's just dead set on like, Hey, this area I'm from there.
This is where I'm going to open their dental practice. Good for you. You've already identified like, one piece of this vision puzzle that I Talked about initially where what's your vision? What's your goal? Like, What do you want to do? What kind of practice do you want to have? If you already know exactly where that practice is going to be, who am I to tell you that you can't have a successful practice there?
Michael: Yeah. Interesting, man. So does dendrographics kind of like you guys assess all that with the practice owner? Cause I always, I don't know why I always just thought like, Oh no, we're just going to find you your location and that's it. Kind of thing. Or like, we're going to look at your demographics and that's it.
But do you go through that whole background with them?
Kevin: We always want to start with describe to us your ideal patient base. And then how a typical process will look like is it's like, okay, I'm in, greater Charlotte. I'll start a practice anywhere in greater Charlotte that matches my ideal patient base.
So if this person tells us my ideal patient base is upper middle income homeowners that's a family centric area with strong home ownership and it's stable and high growth and everything like that. let's go out and find you a practical area. think like population density.
There's a large market there for dental care large enough. People living in the area, basically, let's not recommend that you start over a national park because there's no competition. And the few people that live there are in your target, patient profile, we find you a practical area that matches your ideal patient base.
That's also. Not hyper competitive relative to the area, the less competition, the better. If we can match those other two things, practicality, and then a fit with the patient base that you're going for.
Michael: So then in
Kevin: the case of like greater Charlotte, if we go through the entire area, we'll come back and we'll say, Hey, these top areas, they match what you're looking for the best.
Now it's part two of the job is then to go out and we don't know inventory of available. Real estate. Right. So can you go out and figure out where are there available properties in these areas like in greater Charlotte that matches what you're looking for that's in the areas where we've recommended and of course consider other things.
The terms of the real estate that you're looking at, uh, are you fond of the area? And that's all part of the site selection process until ideally in the very end, you find a location somewhere that you're fond of somewhere where the price is right. The terms are right. and then where we've generally recommended that you look when we assess the market at the beginning.
Michael: Gotcha. Okay, man. That's interesting. So all that kind of comes into, and then is that like a specific, if you don't mind me asking, Uh, for that, is it everybody's different or is it like a set thing or what does that look like?
Kevin: So in terms of our services or products we have two types. We have a platform software basically where somebody can go on there.
It's a little bit more DIY. And run their own research, work with us directly to like assess areas. So picture you get access to software and then you're working with me on the side to like do Google meets and look at different areas and assess locations. So that would be our subscription side of the business.
On the other side is what we call like our legacy business, and that's our custom reports. There's two reports that we sell. There's a single site study and there's an area analysis. The area analysis, that's the first one I laid out where doctors in greater Charlotte, they don't know where to go. We're going to recommend where we think are the top areas for them based on again, competition, ideal patient base, practicality.
That area analysis is 699. The site study, that's As in depth as we can get on one specific office location. So is one, two, three main street, Concord, North Carolina, good location for the startup dental practice that I want to get going here. So everything we can tell a doctor about one, two, three main street.
Is it a fit with your patient base from very weak to very strong? You know, How do we assess it? But between the. Software in the report side of the business, two different types that we, I would say at this point about equally, sell in terms of like what people buy, but it's, do you want to do it the more do it yourself route?
So this is people getting on our web app, running their own searches, we have a lot of cool tools in there. We wouldn't, you know, 15 minutes, unfortunately, wouldn't cover. A full like product overview, but like you can send mailers to off market dental practices. If you're looking to, purchase a dental practice, you can run an instant search on a location.
And we've even rolled out like a new tier, which is designed more for like the existing practice owner. It's called the grow tier, where. You can plot your patients at an active dental practice on a map. So like if I have two locations in greater Columbus, Ohio, and they're five miles apart, but I want to see like every patient down to the address level, like where they fall on a map within drive times, where they're coming from, if there's a part of Columbus where you're not getting a ton of patients, but you know, that's an area where.
the demographics match your preferred, like patient type. We can like market to those areas. And then there's also a direct mail tool now that we just wrote out it's targeted direct mail, where we can say like, all right, I'm in Columbus, Ohio, I want to target, a pediatric dentist in Columbus, Ohio, I want to go after new movers.
With children income of, this number and above how many households meet that criteria. And then directly through our app, send them direct mail at like 59 cents a piece. So it's really affordable. It's super targeted. And it's another tool that we've rolled out to help, not just those starting by doctors, which has primarily been over the past decade, our wheelhouse, but now to, Existing practice centers to help grow their practices.
So again, if we did like a total product overview, it would take a bit, but we've grown a lot since those legacy reports, the area analysis, the single site study don't sell a ton of them. But, uh, we're of course always looking for new ways to like fill in gaps where maybe we don't fit. We don't have a product that fits exactly what somebody is looking for.
can we create products to do that?
Michael: Yeah.
Kevin: all sort of under the umbrella of data analysis, competition, mapping, and things like that.
Michael: Awesome. Awesome, Kevin. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, where can they reach out to you directly?
Kevin: I am easy to get ahold of my emails.
Kevin at denta graphics. com. our website is denta graphics. com. You can book a demo on there just to meet one of us here and talk about where you're at in this process, how we can help discuss your search, things like But yeah, we're easy to get a hold of. So anybody that wants to reach out again, Kevin at dendrographics.
com is my email or the website's dendrographics. com.
Michael: Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. And Kevin, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.
Kevin: Thank you, Michael. Appreciate you having me here.