Unlocking Group Practice Opportunities For A Solo Dentist - Part 1

Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap through Practice Ownership

Dr. George Hariri | Shared Practices Network

Business, Practicemanagement, Dental, Businessofdentistry, Management, Entrepreneurship, Dentalpractice, Dentist

4.9 • 559 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of Practice Underwater, Dr. George Hariri sits down with a dentist, Elizabeth, to discuss the initial hurdles she faced following an associate to owner transition.

They analyze her impressive growth as a new dentist, jumping from a projected $1.2M to a $1.4M finish within eight months, while exploring dental business strategies to manage a bursting 3,000-patient base with only 11 hygiene days.

The core strategic debate centers on whether to simplify the schedule via a fee-for-service model or expand into a multi-doctor setup by hiring another dentist, a dilemma complicated by real estate constraints discussed through a Shared Practices framework.

This is a must-listen for any dentist weighing the long-term flexibility of group practice against the streamlined profitability of staying solo.

In this episode:
• Scaling production from a projected $1.2M pace to over $1.4M.
• Managing a bottleneck of 3,000 patients with only 11 hygiene days.
• The strategic debate: dropping insurance versus hiring an associate.
• Evaluating real estate options for a growing team.
• Balancing clinical autonomy with family flexibility.

Whether navigating an associate to owner transition or vetting acquisitions in dentistry, this is your survival guide. Ready to scale your dental practice ownership? Visit https://sharedpractices.com/ for our "Free Look" service and follow our social channels for roadmap updates. Join the community and turn your clinical skills into a thriving business.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Practice Underwater. Today we have a guest that I am familiar with, but maybe not everyone in our audiences. Well, I would imagine no one in our audiences. This is our real doc fake name, Elizabeth. So Elizabeth, welcome to practice underwater.
0:17.7	Thank you. Thanks for having me. All right. So I'm familiar with Elizabeth because
0:21.5	she is a regular participator of our mastermind program that I run. So we have the, you know, we call it the
0:26.7	Ask George Mastermind. So I want to maybe take a minute here and get up to speed and acquainted with,
0:34.4	you know, Elizabeth's story for the rest of you guys in our audience. And so, Elizabeth,
0:38.9	maybe if you want to take our audience through a little bit of a backstory of you and your career,
0:43.8	how you got to where you are today, that might be a helpful introduction for them as they can
0:48.6	begin to get to know you. Yeah, sure. I am a general dentist in the Midwest. I graduated in 2019. And then I was an associate for six years at the same place before purchasing a practice, which I did a little less than eight months ago in a similar area. The practice is six stops. We have 11 hygiene days. And I'm the only doc right now, but looking for an associate
1:12.5	in the near future. Amazing. Okay. Yeah. I guess maybe walk me through like the practice that you
1:18.4	purchased, how you got the deal, you know, for our pre-owners who are listening, you know,
1:22.6	maybe kind of give them a little scoop into how you got into ownership. Yeah, sure. I was on
1:27.3	maternity leave with my second
1:28.6	kid when I decided it was some good downtime to hunt for a practice, went through a couple
1:34.8	brokers, and toured a couple offices that just weren't, didn't seem like a great fit or I had
1:40.1	been on the market for a long time and had some, you know, less than desirable numbers
1:44.9	when eventually a broker brought this one to my attention. It was a private practice,
1:50.1	kind of an interesting situation with the seller, but it was a private practice, PPO practice,
1:56.2	and the numbers looked good, so went and pursued it. And it was, you know, it took maybe, I started
2:04.9	looking at October and we purchased in July, so. Okay. And then that was coming up on a year ago now.
2:10.6	So you're like nine months in? Well, eight months, yeah. Maybe describe what about this practice
2:15.1	was appealing to you. So why did you pick this one? Yeah,
2:18.0	so it's in a great location. It's a suburb just outside of a major city in the Midwest.
	...

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