The following is an excerpt from the new video series of the same name. For more videos, visit www.mcnultygroup.ca
Selling your practice might be the biggest decision you’ve ever made in your career, second only to the decision to become a dentist. You need to get it right.
The difference between being a successful dentist and selling your practice is significant. Becoming a successful dentist takes years of education, clinical training and experience. But when it comes to selling your practice, it’s likely you’ve had little to no education.
At some point you know you’ll be selling your practice. You only get one chance. Furthermore, there are many questions you need to answer before you do: How will I fund my lifestyle after the practice is sold? Should I associate after I sell? How can I minimize income tax on the practice sale and in retirement?
We have found that the best approach is to develop a “big picture” plan. There are a lot of moving parts in your practice and personal life. You need a plan that brings it all together.
We’ve done this a lot. At McNulty Group, we’ve been providing financial advice to dentists since 1982. In the late 90s, we decided to focus solely on practice and personal retirement planning for dentists. Since then, we’ve written hundreds of articles on the topic as well as four books, including the
most recent, The $6 Million Dentist.
Today, I am most proud of two things. First, we work with 114 families in Canada - 109 of these are dentists and all but six have now sold their
practices;practices, whereas, in the early 2000s, almost all of our clients were active practice owners. We are well-versed in this area. Secondly, our firm’s ability to maintain our clients’ retirement cash flow is excellent. Our eldest client is 95 years old and still spends the same amount of money we told him he could spend before the practice was sold. So, we’ve been able to maintain the retirement cash flow through the tech bubble, the great financial crisis of 2008, and now, a pandemic. To me, this is success!
Becoming a successful dentist takes years of education, clinical training and experience. But when it comes to selling your practice, it’s likely you’ve had little to no education.
We believe we are a valuable resource for most dentists at this critical stage in their careers. The decisions you make over the next few years will affect you and your family for the next third of your life. You need to get it right or you risk outliving your money. A friend and client, Dr. Ian Weir, recently told me that, “When it comes to my retirement, I want to go down the path most travelled.” When it comes to selling your practice and retiring, it’s likely you have no formal education. There is also very little information about how your colleagues have done it and more importantly, what mistakes have they made. I’ve always said it is much less expensive to learn from someone else’s financial mistakes than it is to make them yourself. That is what we’re going to talk about in this series. Our experience in working with dentists at this critical stage, what works and what doesn’t when it comes to selling your practice and retiring, or as Dr. Weir says: the path most travelled.
For more information on how to sell your practice and enjoy a great retirement visit www.mcnultygroup.ca.
