Replacing Yourself in Your Practice to Get More Time

Episode #377 with Dr. Sully Sullivan

Every dentist will one day reach their transition point. But replacing yourself doesn't mean you stop doing dentistry! And for insight into this process, Kirk Behrendt brings in Dr. Sully Sullivan, host and creator of the Millennial Dentist Podcast. He shares his eye-opening experiences and learnings about what it means to replace yourself in your practice, and how to do it effectively. For this millennial’s advice on planning for your future, listen to Episode 377 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

Build something that can buy you more time in life.

Don't get stuck in the hamster wheel of dentistry.

The sooner you build financial stability, the faster you can grow.

Don't be afraid to spend money on CE and technology.

Every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.

Replacing yourself doesn't mean you're no longer doing dentistry.

Mentorship needs to be scheduled in.

Quotes:

“We live in a social media world where you get on Instagram and you see people doing all this cool stuff, and you're like, ‘Gosh, I want to go and do that.’ But a lot of it is challenging because people either don't want to put the work in to go do it, or what I think is the bigger problem, is that we’re too busy doing other things. And so, when I say that, that could be you have clinical dentistry that's bogging you down, you have admin stuff that's bogging you down, personal stuff that's bogging you down.” (4:59—5:28)

“Ultimately, as I've grown in our practice and as our practice has gone from two docs to four docs, from 3,000 square feet to 11,000 square feet, from 12 team members to 20-something team members, the one big thing that I keep trying to buy more of is time. It’s bandwidth, because what I've found is that when I get more time, that allows me to actually look at the business as a business, not as a highly specialized monkey, which is, on some level, what we are. That, to me, was the biggest “why” behind it, was how can I get more time.” (5:28—6:08)

“What's the best way to grow a practice? Do you bring on more people to do the same amount of dentistry, or do you expand the offerings that you have? Do you put more items on your shelf? Are you going to sell the same stuff, or are you going to add more items to the shelf?” (7:10—7:24)

“I think the other challenge we have is, and I see this globally, that a lot of dentists will look to hire somebody to do stuff they feel uncomfortable doing. Take molar endo, for example. That's a hard thing to do that you're expecting some new grad to know how to do. That's difficult. And so, [my] dad really led the way. And even into his middle 50s and his late 50s, he was still clinically taking CE, going to Pikos, trying to push himself. So, then, all of a sudden, his idea was, ‘Okay, I'm going to stop doing dental school dentistry,’ and not giving me grunt work, but stopped doing the stuff that I knew how to do to do the things that I didn't know how to do. So, early on, I was exposed to this idea that we could grow the practice with the same number of patients by just replacing the dentistry he was doing with more dentistry that I would come in to fill the gaps.” (7:29—8:28)

“The start of 2017, I buy 50% of [my dad’s] practice. And at that point, all of a sudden, [my dad] delegated a huge chunk of the administrative duties to me. Over time, that became a huge bog-down for me, because all of a sudden, now he basically replaced the admin part and a lot of the stuff he didn't like to do to where now he’s getting to show up and just love the dentistry that he’s doing. And what a spot to be in, to show up every day and love everything that you're going to do. That's the dream, right?”...