What Is the Lifecycle of a Dental Career?

By analyzing the life cycle of a dental career we know that the first 10 years make up a period known as the rapid growth phase. At the end of this phase most of the practice’s assets will have been depreciated down significently. The next 15 years will be the peak earning years. Around the 25th year in practice a dentist will experience a slow but steady decline due to his or her desire to work less. According to the past president of the CDA, only 6% of dentists will be able to retire at the age of 65 in a manner and standard to which they are accustomed.

Don't miss out on the most missed opportunity in dentistry, that of capturing the goodwill value of your practice more than once in your career. This is accomplished by selling your practice more than once. For example, by years 10 -15 you have substantially built-up most of your practice's goodwill value and you have depreciated down most of the value of your assets. Think about it, this is the time when your practice is at its optimum value to sell, not thirty years later when you have reduced your schedule and are generally slowing the practice down.

This does not mean that you would have to move from your community, as you could consider selling 1/2 of your practice or all of your practice and commuting to a different area outside of any restrictive geographic covenant.