Episode summary
10 Questions To Ask Your Dental Broker Before Selling: Part Two
The Dentist Money Show
· · 7 min · Hosts: Matt Mulcock
Summary
Matt Mulcock closes out a two-part guide to choosing a dental broker by focusing on the transaction itself: who the broker sells to, how they protect confidentiality, how long a sale should realistically take, and how they help a dentist improve value before selling. He argues that a broker’s buyer base matters because a practice that is large, multi-location, or loaded with associates may need a DSO buyer or a structured buyout, while a smaller or simpler practice may fit an individual dentist.
He also says confidentiality is a core concern because dentists need control over how the process affects staff, patients, and timing. On timing, he warns against brokers promising a generic 60- or 90-day close and says the right answer should reflect the practice’s specific location and situation. Finally, he emphasizes that the best brokers should help maximize value well before a sale, ideally years in advance, by coaching the owner on the financial and operational factors buyers will scrutinize.
Key takeaways
- Matt Mulcock says dentists should ask whether a broker typically represents DSOs or individual dentists, because the answer can determine whether the practice is a fit for that buyer pool.
- Mulcock says confidentiality planning should protect staff, patients, and the seller’s timeline, not just satisfy a marketing process.
- He warns that a promised 60- or 90-day close is a red flag unless the broker can explain why the timeline fits the specific practice.
- Mulcock says dentists should think about maximizing practice value 5 to 7 years out, and even engaging a broker 3 years ahead is not too early.
- He says informed buyers usually want 3 years of financials, so the broker should help the seller prepare well before the transaction.
Notable quotes
“who is your typical buyer? A DSO or an individual dentist”
“How do you protect confidentiality while you market my practice”
“what's a realistic timeline to close the deal? Uh so, a red flag here right off the bat is like a promised 60- or 90-day close”
“what can I do to maximize my practice's value now”
“you should be thinking about this and engaging in a process 5 to 7 or even 10 years out”
How the episode opens
In this video, we're back for part two of questions to ask your dental broker before hiring them. Hey everybody, I'm Matt Mielke, one of the managing partners and senior advisors at Dennis Advisors, where we help dentists make work optional sooner. So, we did part one.
If you did not see part one, you can go back and check that out. We did the first six questions of questions to ask your dental broker. And in this part two, we're going to do the transaction itself.
Will your broker actually close the deal? And that And that first one was really about kind of preemptive things prior to the actual transaction. And this one we want to get to how they run their process.
Really critical to understand these things. So, question seven, question number one in this video, but question seven in part two, who is your typical buyer? A DSO or an individual dentist?
This is really, really critical, especially depending on where you are as far as who you want to sell to. If you know, we talked to a lot of dentists who have strong opinions one way or the other of you know, wanting to And let's be honest, sometimes the strong opinions usually comes down to I don't want to deal with DSOs. Well, if the broker you're talking to only deals with DSOs, that's going to be really informative for you to understand if you want to sell to an individual dentist.
And then vice versa, if you have a practice that's really large, that's I would say a multi- location, you are already kind of have built like a mini DSO yourself, a multi-location, multi-producers in the practice. Let's say you've got four or five associates, you're doing multiple seven figures in EBITDA.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- dental practice sale
- dental broker selection
- broker interview questions
- cfp advisors for dentists
- practice transaction planning
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Dentist Advisors
- Aquire Wealth Advisors, LLC
Watch the episode
Watch “10 Questions To Ask Your Dental Broker Before Selling: Part Two” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The Dentist Money Show, this episode and its artwork belong to Dentist Advisors - Financial Planning and Investment Management. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
