If You Are Thinking About Selling Your Practice, This Is the Conversation Nobody Is Having With You.

Let me be direct with you from the start.

This post is not going to tell you what you want to hear. It is going to tell you what you need to hear.

And if you are considering selling your practice at any point in the future, whether that is next year or ten years from now, what follows may be the most important thing you read before you make that decision.

The Landscape Has Changed. Significantly.

I just returned from a national society meeting where I had the opportunity to speak with practice owners, associates, managers, and representatives from DSOs and private equity groups. The conversations were candid, and the picture they painted was clear.

The landscape of practice sales and corporate dentistry has been evolving, iterating, and reformulating for the better part of five to eight years. Several years ago money was cheap. Interest rates were low. Some practitioners were able to cash out at valuations that were genuinely exceptional. That window has largely closed. Interest rates have more than doubled since that time, and the offers being made today are not what they were. The tide is shifting again as it relates to DSOs and private equity. Some of their models are changing, and the way those models are being viewed is changing. That is not inherently good or bad. It is just the current reality, and you need to understand it before you make any decisions.

I want to address something directly. Some would assume that someone in my role would spend every conversation talking clients out of selling to corporate groups or DSOs. That is not accurate, and it is not fair to the people I work with. Everything in life involves consequences, trade-offs, and compromises. My job is not to steer you toward a predetermined outcome. It is to help you evaluate your options clearly, understand what each one actually means for your life and your future, and then pursue the path that genuinely serves you best. I recently helped a client decide to join a DSO because I truly believed it was the best long-term outcome for him. I support that decision completely.

What I will not do is let you make a decision of this magnitude without the right information, the right representation, and the right process behind it.

The Questions You Need to Answer Before Anything Else

How long do you want to continue working?

This is the first question, and it is the one that shapes everything else. Some practitioners face a life event that requires them to sell sooner than they planned. Others reach a point where they simply decide it is time. The timeline you are working with dictates not only the type of buyer you should be pursuing but also the structure of the purchase agreement that will come together with the right buyer.

Several of my clients have decided they want to sell but they are not willing to work another five years under someone else's umbrella. That is a completely legitimate position, and it rules out certain buyers and certain deal structures immediately. Others are comfortable with a longer transition timeline in exchange for terms that better serve their financial goals. Neither answer is right or wrong. But you have to know your answer before the conversation with a buyer begins. If you do not, someone else's answer will fill the void.

What kind of relationship are you willing to have with the buyer after the sale?

Most people think about the closing day as the finish line. It is not. Depending on the structure of the deal, you may be working alongside or under the buyer for anywhere from a few months to five years or longer. That relationship matters. It matters professionally, personally, and practically.

Think about it this way. When most people consider getting married, they date numerous people over time before making that decision. And the time spent in that process is specifically designed to determine whether this is someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. You should apply the same thinking to a practice sale. You are entering a relationship with the buyer, and that relationship will shape your professional life for years after the ink is dry. There are a significant number of questions that need to be answered before you can genuinely know whether a specific buyer is someone you will be comfortable with five years from now. Do not skip that process because the offer looks attractive on a spreadsheet.

What Is Your Practice Actually Worth?

This one comes up constantly, and it is where some of the most expensive mistakes get made. Not just by sellers. By buyers too. And by the accountants, attorneys, and lenders on both sides of the table.

A spreadsheet manipulated by someone who has never fully evaluated the practice, who has not looked beyond the financial statements, and who is not accounting for the non-quantitative factors in the business is not a valuation. It is a number that creates the illusion of precision while leaving enormous value unaddressed.

I have handled this situation multiple times recently, where neither the buyer nor the seller had a true understanding of what the practice was actually worth. The result of that misalignment is predictable. Either no sale happens at all or the sale closes at a price that does not represent the real value of what was built. That can go in either direction. Too high and the buyer walks away from a deal that should have happened. Too low and the seller leaves money that belongs to them on the table without ever knowing it.

Getting an accurate, substantiated, defensible valuation is not optional. It is the foundation of the entire transaction.

The Legacy Factor

This is the element that sometimes gets completely overlooked in what can become a purely financial conversation. And for many of the practitioners I have worked with over decades, it is one of the most significant factors in the entire decision.

You have built something. Not just a revenue-generating asset. A practice with a reputation, a patient base, a team, and a standard of care that your community has come to depend on and trust. The legacy of what you built matters to you, and it should matter to the buyer evaluation process.

Many of my clients tell me they want to walk into their local grocery store years after the sale and run into a patient who tells them the practice is still doing great things under the new ownership. They want the next practitioner to carry that legacy forward and ideally take it further. That is not a soft consideration. It is a meaningful criterion for identifying the right buyer, and it belongs in the conversation.

The Emotional Reality Nobody Prepares You For

Not every factor in this decision is quantitative. And pretending otherwise sets people up for outcomes they did not anticipate.

Family situations shape the timeline in ways that logic does not fully account for. Health considerations drive urgency that the financial picture alone would not. Quality of life questions that have been quietly accumulating for years suddenly become primary. And then there are the outside influencers. Friends, family members, colleagues. They will all have opinions. Some of those opinions will be well-informed. Many will not be. All of them will feel significant in the moment.

Being aware of the emotional elements that are present in your decision does not mean surrendering to them. It means accounting for them honestly so they inform the process rather than hijack it.

Where the Process Has to Start

Every client I work with starts in the same place. We identify the ideal outcome first. What does a successful transition actually look like for you specifically? Not in the abstract. In your life. In your financial picture. In your professional identity after the sale.

We start there and then we build the process backward from that outcome. We find the right buyer for that outcome. We structure the deal to serve that outcome. We assemble the right team of professionals around that outcome and make sure every party involved is coordinated and accountable to it.

Selling a practice is not a transaction you hand off to a broker and wait for results. It is a deliberate process that requires experienced leadership at the center of it. Someone who coordinates the buyer, the seller, the attorneys, the accountants, the lenders, and every other party to the transaction. Someone who keeps communication flowing, keeps the transaction moving forward, and works to achieve an equitable closing where both sides walk away satisfied with the outcome.

When the seller's goals are met and the buyer's goals are met, that is a win. That is the only outcome worth working toward.

If you are thinking about selling, do not wait until the decision feels urgent. Start the conversation now.

Let's talk.