Ideas in the Wild: Emmet Scott Shares the Secrets He Used to Build His Dental Brand Into a $100 Million DSO
Dental practice owners and their teams often dream of growing a successful dental group or DSO. Then complexity sets in. Today, successful practitioners have to survive the world of business: Marketing, Messaging, HR, Finance, Compliance. It’s a lot for any team to manage.
But there are DSOs out there that have already overcome these challenges — DSOs that hold the secrets dental groups need. Emmet Scott is the host of the number-one dental group podcast, DSO Secrets™, and a partner of the leading coaching and training company for dental groups, The Dentist Entrepreneur Organization. He is the co-founder and CEO of Community Dental Partners (CDP) and has served as the President of the ADSO.
In his new book, DSO Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Building Your Dental Empire, he shares the secrets of success DSOs, walking readers step by step through the process of creating the doctor, team, and patient experience they’ve always wanted. Whether the goal is to be a top clinician in a single practice or to build a multi-practice portfolio, this book has the resources every dental practice owner is looking for. I caught up with Emmet to learn what inspired him to write the book, his favorite idea he shares, and how that idea has impacted his life.
What problem do you see people struggling with?
Dentists expect to emerge from school with a golden ticket. Instead, they emerge burdened with student loan debt into a world that has, unbeknownst to them, changed the rules of the game.
To ramp things up, to have the income and freedom, dentists were going to have to learn a new game of marketing and customer satisfaction, and, for the most ambitious, the ability to open additional practices, hire associates, and build entire company support systems.
But how? And what does it cost? A lot. The entrepreneurial journey that lets dentists scale up to increase income and freedom isn’t quick, and a wrong turn can leave you out of resources to go forward. A lot of would-be entrepreneurs get stuck, maybe at a level that would seem promising if only they knew exactly how to break through to the success and lifestyle they envisioned.
All they want is a good living without having to stay bent over someone’s teeth every day for the rest of their professional lives, but the intensity of doing it — of doing it all to have it all — is burning them out.
What’s an idea you share that really excites you?
When scaling up a dental practice, the most difficult leg of the journey comes next when passing through a phase I call the Dark Tunnel. The Dark Tunnel is a rite of passage that, unfortunately, no entrepreneur can avoid if they want to grow beyond a handful of offices. It’s a mostly unexpected leg of the journey, and it’s hard — hard enough to set you back on your heels and make you feel you’re about to lose everything.
It takes entrepreneurs by surprise because successfully juggling three to five offices makes them think that one more will be more or less the same game. But that one more scale-up attempt suddenly exceeds juggling capacity. The stress is the kind that can make your hair go gray and then fall out. It’s clearly not more of the same. It’s a totally different game.
Dentists scaling up their businesses will do so in a complicated, shifting setting. Understanding why is key to finding the right coping strategies — the best solutions — to safely come out on the other side of the Dark Tunnel.
Surviving the Dark Tunnel will first and foremost take humility. Scaling up will, at some point, force you to take on new ways of doing things. You’ll have to learn a lot around delegation and how to financially do it quickly and effectively.
You don’t have to travel through the Dark Tunnel alone. The whole reason Dental Support Organizations began to form was to support the unique problems clinicians have. The Dark Tunnel is long, but there is a light at the end. Once you get out into the light, you’ll discover something wonderful. If you’ve learned to be an executive, if you’re doing it right, it all gets easier.
How will following your suggestions improve your readers’ lives?
This book is generally focused on helping you — the dentist — and your business team find success at each stage of business development in building a dental empire. It will show you how to create your own DSO or partner with a DSO to achieve your personal vision of success.
Along the way, you’ll learn the stages you should expect to face and what you’ll experience during those stages. Each stage has its own lessons and mindsets you must take on in order to move through to the next milestone. Eventually, you’ll get to the one that represents the scope of success you desire.
You generally can’t leapfrog over these stages. Instead, you’ll need to learn the fundamental practices and tools you need to have in place to achieve a strong base of operations as you move forward. These stages train you to become a clinical leader as well as a full-fledged business professional who knows how to keep a business in the dental industry healthy and thriving.
