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The question almost always arrives sideways. We will be 40 minutes into a conversation about what a practice is worth, and the owner stops. Then some version of this: I’m not trying to retire. I like Tuesdays. I just don’t want to be the person who calls the payroll company anymore. That is not a…

The letter says they already have offices near you. Most owners read that as a threat. It is usually the opposite. When a buyer already runs thirty offices inside your metro, your practice is worth more to them than it is to a national group adding a pin to a map. Not because they like…

“They’re sending four people.” That was the entire message. He had signed a letter of intent on a Tuesday. By Friday he had a request list running to 71 numbered items and a calendar invite from an accounting firm he had never heard of. What he wanted to know was what they were looking for.…

The letter arrives on a Tuesday. It is warm, short, and signed by someone whose title includes the word “partnerships.” You read it twice. Then you do what every dentist does at nine that night, with the practice closed and a laptop open on the kitchen table. You type the name into Google. What comes…

An owner asked me this over lunch last year, and he was almost annoyed when he asked it. He had been told his whole career that only a dentist can own a dental practice. He believed it. He had built his own two offices inside that rule and never once thought to test it. Then…