Evicted from your own practice? One dentist who lost everything and built himself back up

 In a recent episode of Dentistry Unmasked, Pam and Brian sat down with Dr. Ashton Price to discuss his tumultuous career and how he navigated everything from being ousted from his practice and forced to start over to facing adversity in the workplace. 

How can you safeguard your career from abrupt or unexpected changes, especially those that threaten to tank your practice? Not everything is always routine, which is why it’s important to know how to navigate significant career challenges. In the following interview, Ashton explains how he did it, and how his experience may help other clinicians. 

Suddenly coming into ownership 

“I’m a third-generation dentist. My father and my grandfather are both orthodontists—dentistry is just kind of what we do. When I found a dentist that I wanted to start working with ... I jumped in, and the understanding at the time was ‘let’s maybe work for five or six years, and then I’ll sell the practice off to you, and then you can take it over from there.’” 

But 3 months into Ashton’s associateship, he discovers the owner’s health has rapidly declined and therefore needs to sell his practice. Despite being out of dental school for only a semester, Ashton takes a career leap; he purchases the practice and runs it without any prior experience.

Eviction and identity crisis 

“I was trying to figure out what I was doing, how I was going about it, not really understanding very much, but continuing my education, trying to gain as much confidence as I could in my own abilities, as well as learning things that I hadn’t learned before."

Although Ashton feels like he's gotten a handle on things,successfully running his new practice for roughly 13 years, the owner of the building suddenly drops a bomb on him.

"Then I got a notice from the landlord saying: ‘it’s time for you to move on. You need to find a new practice because I’m going to be selling the building to somebody else.’ 

And I came to realization very quickly that although I owned a practice, I didn’t actually own my land or my building that was there. I didn’t really have anything to back myself up, which was terrifying because that meant I'd have nothing. I couldn’t sell the practice to somebody else because I had no value at that point.”

Ashton began to doubt his future, wondering what he would do without an office to practice in. He ended up scraping together second-hand materials and working out of a friend’s small satellite practice. But what about the loyal patients he’d built relationships at his old location? Would they follow him? 

Patient retention and transparency 

Whether you're forced out of your building due to extraneous circumstances, upgrading to a bigger office, or just decideing to switch locations, the question of whether your patients will be willing to travel somewhere new is a legitamate concern. How many will you lose in the transition?

“You can anticipate that you’re going to lose a lot of patients, you know? That they just are not going to be able to carry on with you—these temporary offices, things like that. And I believe we lost about 3% of our clientele. To retain patients, you need to let them know what’s happening.  

You make a connection with these people ... they become your friends, almost like family at times. So throughout this entire process, you have family members that are kind of coming along with you, and they still joke along the lines of 'hey, how’s your wife doing?'

I thank them for sticking around. I feel like a lot of us talk about patients who say, ‘oh, you drive a car. I bet you I paid for that. Or oh, you’re going on vacation. I bet my one-surface amalgam paid for that.’ But they’re probably so proud of you to see where you’ve come and what you’ve built, and for them to be part of it. I think patients would want to be part of an evolving practice that’s growing and things are changing, and maybe new technology that you’re bringing into the practice that wasn’t in the other location or more parking or whatever it is that they get to see, or less parking.” 

How to stand out amid competition 

Although building a loyal patient base is one facet of practice success, navigating competiton from other local dental offices is another. How can you retain your current patients whilst simultaneously attracting new ones?

“Competition means that you need to set yourself apart. So how do you do that? Is it the technology? Is it the connection? Is it the personality? Is it the front office staff? Is it the building itself? 

My guess is it’s the way that you treat your patients and the ability to communicate with them, saying things like ‘let’s sit down and let’s go through what’s actually happening with your teeth. Here is all of the information. Here’s all the data I’vegathered. Here’s photographs of what you actually have going on. Let’s discuss this, and let’s figure out what works best for you’ as opposed to saying 'Well, you’ve got a broken tooth. You need to put a crown onto it. I’ll see you in two weeks.’"

Facing ugly truths and doing self-assessments 

Ashton mentions that his son’s health struggles caused him to take intentional moments of self-reflection to think about how much he and his practice have come, be appreciative of the small victories, and ruminate on the future of his career. 

“You might see some ugly truths or some things that might seem very daunting. And if you do, then that’s still okay. What it starts to build is confidence in yourself, which can then correlate into how it is that you actually run your practice and the things that you do.” 

Part of this includes keeping up to date on new technology and dental materials. What’s the best way to select new products that will work best for both your patients and your practice? 

"All these different companies are coming out with different materials or methods to be able to do things. One of the dumbest things that I’ve ever heard in my life was when a rep came into my office and said, ‘this is the last composite you will ever need to buy for the remainder of your career.’ 

“There’s so many podcasts and learning aspects and different things that are out on the internet and everywhere else that you can start to learn how to become better at what you’re doing. But to be able to actually implement those things that each person does just a little bit differently.” 

Ashton goes on to mention the value of trial and error—and how it’s a necessary part of learning and becoming a better dentist. Additionally, including those close to you, whether it be team members or family, in your self-assessments is key to making progress. 

"You have to include other people because not only do they assist you in all of these [decisions], but they are equally a part of your journey. They have to be there with you. So when you say no to things, let it be because you feel like you need to say no. When you say yes to it, let it be something that you feel like you can actually handle. And if you can’t be honest enough with yourself that you can handle it either way, because not everybody can.” 

You can listen to the entire episode here.