Travis sits down with client Dr. Melanie Vandenberg of Harbor Dental in Santa Cruz. She bought a small, shrinking practice that had sat on the market for years, one Travis’s own numbers said to pass on. She nearly doubled it in her first year. 

Here’s what we get into. 

• The numbers that worried Travis: declining collections around $380K, a heavy Delta Premier patient base facing a 30% haircut, no hygienist since COVID, and a listing that sat for years across multiple brokers
• Why a small practice turned out to be a feature: low debt, time to learn the business side, and room to grow without being buried on day one
• Year one results: $640K in collections, almost double the seller, while going out of network with Delta
• The “don’t rock the boat” approach: keeping the existing staff, learning the office’s systems before changing them, and respecting the seller’s dentistry with patients
• Hiring ahead of the need: adding a hygienist, front desk, assistant, and an associate day, because you can’t grow into capacity you don’t have
• Zero paid marketing: word of mouth, 98 five-star Google reviews, and referrals even from patients who left for an in-network office
• Year two on pace for about $900K, with overhead under 50% compared to the seller’s 62%
• The real time cost of ownership, a supportive spouse doing project research, and her experience in Glidewell’s Guiding Leaders program
• Bonus round: the accounts receivable headache, and why Travis now tells buyers to just buy the A/R

Proof that a bad-looking prospectus isn’t the end of the story. A lot of your success depends on you more than anything else. 

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