Creating a Business Plan 

Prepare for Your Lender. Prepare for Your Business.

A business plan should help you understand the practice you want to build, explain it clearly to your lender, and make informed decisions once you own it. Whether you are starting from the ground up, purchasing a practice, adding a partner, or expanding, Dental Strategic helps turn the business in your mind into a practical plan supported by numbers, responsibilities, and a clear sequence of next steps.

Our goal is to help you become as prepared as possible for both your lender and your business. Your patients and staff will rely on you. We want you to keep your focus on the patient experience, with an advisor team that understands what needs to be done, who is responsible, and when each step needs to happen.

Business Planning: Define What You Want to Build

We start with your goals and challenge you to think through why you want to create this particular business. What kind of dentistry do you want to provide? Who do you want to serve? What should your team, schedule, income, and patient experience look like? Those answers shape the plan.

Together, we develop the executive summary, practice description, ownership and management structure, market assessment, staffing approach, and marketing strategy. The plan connects your vision to the people, space, equipment, systems, and funding needed to carry it out.

• Clarify your purpose: Why ownership, why this practice or location, and why now?
• Test your assumptions: What supports your expectations for patient demand, collections, staffing, and expenses?
• Define your priorities: Which decisions support the practice and lifestyle you want, and which tradeoffs are you willing to make?

Financial Projections You Can Work Through

Our projections are detailed down to individual expenses, so you can understand how staffing, rent, supplies, lab costs, financing, and other operating costs affect cash flow. We help you connect the project budget, working capital, expected collections, and debt payments to the amount available to operate the practice and support your personal needs.

You can change a number of variables and compare the results. What happens if patient growth is slower, construction takes longer, payroll increases, or collections fall short of expectations? What changes if you add a hygienist, expand your schedule, or adjust the financing terms? Working through those scenarios helps you understand the assumptions behind the numbers and prepare for the questions your lender will ask.

Transition Planning: Prepare for the Change in Ownership

A purchase, sale, partnership buy-in, or retirement transition changes more than the ownership paperwork. We help you think through timing, financing, the outgoing doctor’s role, provider capacity, staff communication, patient continuity, and the operating cash needed during the change.

We coordinate the business plan with the work of your lender, dental attorney, CPA, and other advisors. The goal is a clear path from the proposed transaction to the first months of operation, with responsibilities assigned and important decisions addressed before they become last-minute problems.

Growth Planning: Make Sure the Next Step Supports the Practice

Growth may mean adding an associate, expanding hygiene, equipping more operatories, relocating, introducing services, or opening another location. Before you commit, we help evaluate demand, capacity, staffing, project costs, and the expected effect on cash flow.

A growth plan should show what the investment needs to produce, how long the ramp-up may take, and how the practice will cover expenses along the way. We help establish practical milestones so you can compare actual results with the plan and adjust the pace as conditions change.

Bring a Clear, Supported Plan to Your Lender

We help organize the business narrative and financial information so your lender can understand the opportunity, the funding request, and the assumptions supporting repayment. Depending on the project, that may include acquisition or construction costs, equipment, working capital, sources and uses of funds, historical practice results, personal financial information, and projections.

The process also prepares you to explain your own plan. You should understand where the numbers came from, what could change them, and how you would respond. That preparation supports a more productive financing conversation and gives you a stronger foundation for running the business.

Keep the Advisor Work Moving While You Focus on Patients

You should not have to spend your patient care time chasing work that belongs with an advisor. We help establish the next steps, identify who owns each task, and coordinate the information your advisor team needs. You remain involved in the decisions that shape your practice, with a clearer view of what is complete and what still needs attention.

Your business plan is a working document. As your practice, market, goals, and results change, the plan should change with them. We want you to leave the process with more than a document for the bank: a plan you understand, believe in, and can use to guide the business you set out to create.