The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry

Ranked the #1 DSO Podcast!

Welcome to The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry!

With over 200 episodes and listeners in more than 100 countries, we dive deep into the current state of the DSO market and explore the various options available for doctors with large practices.

We welcome back Chip Fichtner, co-founder of Large Practice Sales, for his third appearance on the show. Chip shares his extensive background in finance and business, detailing how he transitioned into the dental industry and the unique approach of Large Practice Sales. He explains the concept of “invisible DSOs” and how they differ from traditional DSOs, highlighting the benefits they offer to doctors looking to grow their practices while maintaining autonomy.

In this episode, you’ll learn about:

The current trends in the DSO market in 2025
The importance of practice growth and its impact on valuation
The differences between partnering with invisible DSOs, traditional DSOs & doctor-to-doctor sales
The rapid consolidation in specialty practices, particularly in oral surgery and pediatrics
Key risks to practice values in the current economic climate

Whether you’re a seasoned practitioner or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable insights and advice for navigating the evolving landscape of group dentistry.

Don’t forget to visit https://largepracticesales.com/ to learn more about Chip and his team, and to schedule a confidential call to discuss the value of your practice.

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Choose your favorite listening app below and subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode! Full transcript is also provided below. See all of our podcasts HERE.

DSO podcast transcript:

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now show, the voice of the DSO industry. Join us as we talk with industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. With over 200 episodes and listeners in over 100 countries, we’re proud to be ranked the number one DSO podcast. For the latest DSO news, analysis, and events, and to subscribe to our DSO weekly e-newsletter, visit groupdentistrynow.com. We hope you enjoyed today’s show.

Bill Neumann: Welcome, everyone, to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann, and as always, we appreciate you watching us or listening to us, whether it’s on YouTube or on the GroupDentistryNow.com website, or maybe you are listening to us on Apple, Spotify or Google. Thanks for consuming this great content. We are over 200 episodes and we have brought back Chip Fichtner of Large Practice Snails. This is his third time back to the show and he always has great insights. I know the last podcast we did with you, Chip, I got a bunch of comments from people. They really want to get your thoughts on where the industry is, kind of figure out what are the best options for docs that have large practices, whether they partner with a DSO, whether they sell to another doc, or whether they partner with an invisible DSO. A lot of different options out there, and I think it can get kind of overwhelming, but great to have you back, Jeff.

Chip Fichtner: Hey, thanks for having me, Bill. This is my first time doing video with you. And many people say I have a face for radio, so I hope it doesn’t hurt us.

Bill Neumann: Now, this is great. This is going to be wonderful. And I think the timing’s right. We’re two months in, end of February, beginning of March of 2025. A lot of talk about this year being a change from the past couple of years. And so I want to get your insights on that. But first off, Maybe a little bit about your background. I knew you or I met you way before you started Large Practice Sales. So can you give the audience or people that don’t know you a little bit about your background and then how you came to be the co-founder of Large Practice Sales and a little bit about LPS?

Chip Fichtner: Sure. Absolutely. So, uh, unfortunately I will be 65 next month. So it’s been a, uh, a long career. Uh, I started early on with Merrill Lynch, uh, as a commodity trader and, uh, then became the youngest vice president in the history of Bear Stearns, may it rest in peace. And that was when I was 20 years old. So long time ago before color TV. back when my first home mortgage was 14%, which is kind of interesting to hear everybody complaining about seven today. And then I went on to buy, sell, start, take public, take private, multiple companies in a variety of industries ranging from pet food to video conferencing. I actually ran the largest video conferencing equipment manufacturing company in 1992. So a long time ago before the internet. And we got into dental about, oh, I don’t know, 12, 13 years ago. And then eight years ago, we started large practice sales with a A very simple goal, we said, we’re going to be the only guys in this industry that don’t get paid by the buyers. We are only paid by our doctor clients, which sort of set us apart from the dozens of other players in this industry. And we said, we’re only going to focus on the larger practices. And our definition of the larger practice is typically a GP practice that’s going to have at least a million eight in collections and a specialty practice that’s going to have a million five in collections. And fortunately that worked out and we have become the largest in the industry, probably bigger than our next five competitors combined. So it’s been an interesting eight years and in the last 24 months we’ve completed just over a billion dollars of what we call invisible DSO partnerships. An invisible DSO partnership is where a doctor sells anywhere between 51 and 80 percent of his practice to an invisible DSO for cash up front. The doctor retains ownership. and continues to lead the practice for years or decades. One of the interesting changes since COVID has been the number of younger doctors that are eager for invisible DSO partners. We’ve done about $150 million of transactions for doctors in their 30s in the last 24 months, which usually surprises a lot of people. And that’s really caused an interesting pressure on the doctors that are over 55. Because if an invisible DSO has the opportunity to partner with a doctor in their 30s or 40s, they become less interested in partnering with doctors of my advanced age.

Bill Neumann: So what is an invisible DSO for people that don’t understand the difference between a DSO and an invisible DSO?

Chip Fichtner: Absolutely. So an invisible DSO works on the basic theories as follows. Number one, they are interested in partnering with doctors and they do not buy 100% of any practice. They’re interested in partnering with great doctors in which their resources can help that doctor’s practice become bigger, better, faster, more profitable. and reduce headaches for the doctor. However, the invisible DSOs give the doctors full autonomy. If you choose the right invisible DSO, and there are over a thousand out there today, they’re not going to tell you what to do or how to do it or who to hire or what payers to take or procedures to perform or how to set your schedule. However, they will help you with things like taking over banking, accounting, payroll, benefits, benefits administration, compliance, credentialing, tax, legal, IT support and vendor and payer relationships. And so what’s interesting about the invisible DSOs is the doctors have skin in the game. They are still owners. And owner doctors think differently than employee doctors. So there are a thousand invisible DSOs and well over 10,000 invisible DSO partnered practices across the country. It’s not a new concept. It’s been around for 35 years. But it is the fastest growing part of what we’ll call the DSO business. You know, in a traditional DSO, a doctor might sell 100% of their practice and work for X number of years and then retire. And they will be operating under the playbook and probably the brand of the DSO. The invisible DSO is different. in that nobody in the community knows that the doctor has a new partner that’s gonna help them reduce their supplies cost by 30% or their team benefits cost by 10% or in what’s really interesting since COVID is many of the invisible DSOs are getting reimbursed at higher rates from the insurance payers than the independent doctors are. And that is a game changer from an EBITDA margin standpoint.

Bill Neumann: I think it’s probably a great point to just drop your URL here, largepracticesales.com, just in case you want to find out more. We want you to stay on though. We’ve got a lot more to talk about, but just keep that in the back of your mind. Let’s talk about state of the IDSO and DSO market today. We’re in, like I said, a couple of months in, beginning of March, 2025. Election’s over, still have inflation, a little bit of uncertainty still, but so what are you seeing right now in the market?

Chip Fichtner: You know, it’s interesting, 24 for us was a record year. We achieved a record number of transactions from a dollar value standpoint. And we did them at some record values. I mean, just in the third quarter of 24, we completed almost $200 million of invisible DSO partnerships and 115 million of that. was done at over nine times EBITDA. So if you have a practice that’s growing and you’re sub-60, let’s call it, the values that we’re getting today are pretty extraordinary. And part of what’s driving that is there was over $8 billion of new capital and new financing provided to invisible DSOs last year. And that money’s got to find a place to go. And so the thousand invisible DSOs, some of which got part of that $8 billion, are eagerly bidding on great practices. But because there are so many more doctors considering invisible DSO partnership today, they are becoming more selective. So the key to 2025 is growth. If your practice is growing, you will be attractive to an invisible DSO. If your practice is shrinking, you will not be. So the key risk to practice values in 2025, in my opinion, are going to be the growth rate of a practice. The faster you’re growing, the more valuable you’re going to be. If you’re flat, you can still do a deal. If you’re declining, you should wait and return to growth.

Bill Neumann: That’s actually another great point. So what are you seeing with some of these large practices out there? I mean, are some of them flat? I mean, we’ve heard that it’s been a challenging year for dental with some practices and groups. Are you kind of seeing some that are doing well, some that aren’t? What’s your experience?

Chip Fichtner: Yeah, I mean, they’re all over the map. You know, we did a deal for a practice that was about a 20 million in collections practice last year that grew 22% in the first quarter year over year. So when you have that kind of growth on that size practice, it becomes very valuable. And we got them over 11 times EBITDA. So the, the key is not just top line growth. You need to have top line growth, but you’ve got to watch what your margins are doing because as your costs have gone up, thanks to inflation and salaries and everything else, the reimbursement rates have not gone up. If you’re a practice that takes insurance. And a lot of doctors that are fee-for-service have been hesitant to raise their prices. If you think about it, overall prices of just about everything are up about 25% since Biden was inaugurated four years ago. And when we look at fee-for-service practices, we don’t find enough of them. that have kept up with inflation, so their margins have taken a hit. So it’s important to keep an eye on your costs. It’s important to not overstaff, although I know that’s tempting because it’s so difficult to hire people today or to hire great people today. So you’ve got to keep an eye on growing your top line, plus keep an eye on your bottom line. Sometimes that can be tough. One of the great benefits of the invisible DSO partners is there are some of them that have two dozen full-time employees in their headquarters just recruiting everything from front desk to associates for their partner practices across the country. And frankly, they’re better at it than you are, and they’re better at it than a whole lot of the recruiting firms. The other thing that the invisible DSOs provide as a benefit to their partners is their ability to drive new patients into a practice through marketing. These groups, again, some of them have two and three dozen people just focusing on driving new patients to their partner practices. And they’re not doing it the old school way. They have digital marketing experts that are helping their practices nationally. And these are not marketing consultants with no skin in the game. These are actual team members of the invisible DSOs who are compensated based on their ability to help their partner practices grow. So it’s a different dynamic. A lot of the invisible DSO partner practices have grown over the last three years, where we see a lot of practices, especially in ortho, for example, that have not grown. You know, ortho case starts nationally in 22, we’re down 8%, 23, down another 6%. And in 24, it looks like they were down about 5%. So orthos that are growing are really valuable because so many of them have been shrinking.

Bill Neumann: So let’s talk about value differentials. So we’ve got a couple of different scenarios, right? One is that a large practice partners with an invisible DSO. There’s the opportunity to partner with that traditional DSO that you talked about where they’re buying 100% of the practice. And then there’s really the doctor to doctor sale, large practice selling to another practice out there. And there’s probably other scenarios out there selling to private equity as well. But maybe kind of go through those different options and then what does that benefit or value look like to the large practice?

Chip Fichtner: You know, they’re significantly different, but let’s start with your mention of private equity. There is some misconception of doctors out there that private equity is the only investor in DSOs and invisible DSOs. And the reality is that’s not true. Certainly private equity has been a big driver of dental practice consolidation for the last 35 years. But in the last three years, we’ve probably done $400 million of transactions with family office-backed invisible DSOs. And sovereign wealth funds are today in the invisible DSO game, with one of them investing a billion dollars. in one of the oldest and largest invisible DSOs. And then here’s a little known fact, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with $13 trillion under management, has partnered with or invested in four invisible DSOs just in the last 30 months. This is big money that’s getting into this game, and it’s not just private equity. So the private equity certainly backs many of the invisible DSOs, but there are lots of other backers as well. So the invisible DSOs will achieve a high value for, and will achieve the highest value for a practice, but the doctor has to have a couple of elements to get those high values. Number one, they need to be growing. Number two, preferably you’re going to have multiple doctors. You don’t have to all the time. We’ve done plenty of single doctor practices in the last six months, but it needs to be of a size where they have at least a half a million dollars of operating income or EBITDA. And most importantly, it needs to be a doctor who is interested in staying for typically at least three to five years. And frankly, the most valuable doctors are those who say, I’m going to be here until I can’t be here. I love doing dentistry. And if you guys will take the admin headaches off my back, I may be here until I’m 75. So the key to an invisible DSO partnership and achieving the highest values is it’s got to be a doctor who wants to stick around. If a doctor says, hey, I’m in for a year and then I’m out, uh, that’s a doctor that I can’t help unless they have multiple associates that will step into his or her leadership role. Uh, but it’s, it’s a commitment. And part of the reason the invisible DSOs pay much higher values than a traditional 100% sale to a DSO is because the doctor is going to stick around and continue to grow their practice. So they’re, they’re paying up to get the future commitment of the doctor. In a typical DSO transaction, the doctor’s going to sell 100% and stick around for a year, two years, or three years. And they’re going to be micromanaged and the practice will be homogenized. And there’s nothing wrong with that because it’s a great short-term exit. And you might see a maximum value of 100% of collections. And same thing in a doc-to-doc transaction. Doc-to-doc transaction, depending on where it is and what the practice is, you know, it might achieve anywhere between 60 and 100% of collections in value. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The challenge is that for a larger practice, the doctors can’t get the financing to buy a larger practice. So if you have a practice with $3 million in collections and you’re willing to sell it for $3 million, it’s tough to find a doctor that’s going to step up to the line and take the personal liability to go to the bank to borrow $3 million to give to you. And so practices with $3 million in collections where a doctor is eager to exit should look at the traditional VSOs because they’re potentially going to get a higher value than a doc-to-doc transaction. And in the invisible DSO world, we’ve done 24, we probably did $150 million of transactions where the practices were valued at over 300% of collections or roughly three times the value that a doctor might’ve been able to achieve in a doc-to-doc transaction or 100% sale to a DSO. But it comes with those golden handcuffs for three to five years.

Bill Neumann: Interesting, for sure. So let’s talk about specialty. So right now we see, and I would say maybe in the past three, five years now, I’ve seen this growth in specialty DSOs, and in particular, oral surgery, OMS seems like it’s consolidating pretty quickly. Pediatric, maybe ortho, not as much. You talked about the growth rate as far as ortho starts being down a little bit. But can you talk about what you’re seeing with specialty DSOs? And there might be some large practices out there that don’t even know that some of those exist.

Chip Fichtner: Yeah. You know, specialty has changed dramatically in the last, let’s call it seven years. You know, it started with the first of our generation, big ortho only invisible DSO, which started about seven years ago. And today has 450 partner practices. And then there became 13 copycats. So today there are 14 ortho only invisible DSOs. And if you listen to the ADA, the most consolidated of all practice types is ortho. Now it’s interesting in that today we’re still getting some great values for orthos, but of those 14 ortho only invisible DSOs, 11 of them are on our blacklist. Now the LPS blacklist consists of the 900 invisible DSOs that we will not allow to bid on our clients for a variety of reasons, which leaves about 100 qualified bidders in our belief. And Ortho, because of the damage to their balance sheets over the last three years due to the case start decline, the Ortho only guys, 11 of the 14 we don’t consider qualified. You know, in oral surgery, it’s been even faster. Oral surgery is the fastest consolidating of all practice types today for the simple reason that they have trouble recruiting. So today there are 17 oral surgery only invisible DSOs in the U.S. Think about that. And that’s up from zero six years ago. So today you have 17 oral surgery only invisible DSOs eagerly recruiting the graduates. So the graduates in June of this year from residency, there were 250 of them. 25 of those went into public service, which we appreciate. and almost 150 of them joined the invisible DSOs. So that left about 75 oral surgeons across the U.S. to be recruited by the 5,000 independent oral surgery practices that are either looking for their exit or their replacement or are trying to grow. Some of our biggest oral surgery deals that we’ve done in the last couple of years have all been driven by the doctors’ inability to recruit other doctors to drive growth. And so invisible DSOs can solve the recruiting problem for oral surgery practices nationally. And unique opportunity there for oral surgeons because with the number of bidders, it’s a great opportunity to get a high value if you’re an oral surgery practice. It doesn’t matter where you are. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a single doc or you have 15 docs. The oral surgeons, the big guys have already consolidated over the last three years. And now the little doctors are beginning to look at it because the cost savings that some of these groups can bring are pretty significant. Most of the invisible DSOs are paying 50% less for implants. than independent oral surgeons are, and that’s a big number, because implants are not cheap. The other thing that’s driving consolidation are the two types of trifecta in visible DSOs. The first one is what I call the traditional dental trifecta, and these are groups of which there are about a dozen out there today, that are eager to partner only with pedo, ortho, and oral surgeons in the same communities. And what they’re trying to build is a locked-in referral network. Because if you’re an ortho, being able to get fed new patients from a pedo practice in the same family can be very valuable and can enable you to grow. And so the pedos and the orthos are also referring to the local oral surgeon. And the groups that we’ve seen execute the trifecta strategy can produce double-digit growth pretty much overnight. So if I partner with a pedo practice, and we did this recently in DC, pedo practice, ortho practice, oral surgery practices, All three of them are now experiencing double-digit growth. The second type of trifecta is what we call a surgical trifecta. And these are relatively new, but these are invisible DSOs that are eager to partner with perio, endo, and oral surgery in the same communities. So if you’re an oral surgeon, you’ve got a whole lot of options. If you’re an ortho, you certainly have the ortho-only groups. You have the pedo-ortho groups, of which there are a dozen or more. You then have the trifecta groups, and one of the largest partners of orthos in the country is a multi-specialty group that has over 160 ortho practices, which makes them the second largest. If they were ortho only, they’d be the second largest. So, a lot of activity in specialty across all of the specialties. And the most valuable practice type today in the country is a growing, larger pedo practice. Number one. That is the most valuable practice type in the U.S. today. And it doesn’t matter what your geography is. Certainly, if you’re in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, You’ll probably get a higher bid, but we did an extraordinary transaction for a big practice, Pedo Ortho, in Vermont last year at a big double-digit multiple of EBITDA. And one of our Pedo clients in Florida last year had 13 qualified bidders to choose from. One of our oral surgery practices down the street from them had 18 qualified bidders. That was a big practice. It was about 12 million in collections. And both of those groups ended up at a trifecta. So it pays to look around. There are a lot of eager bidders out there today. If you have a growing practice, you’re passionate about dentistry, and you have a plan for growth, that plan for growth is really important. And we spend a lot of time coaching our clients on how to communicate their plan and their vision to the potential bidders.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. We actually, I personally know one of the practices here in Pennsylvania, I won’t say who it was, that you helped coach to a successful partnership about, oh, maybe about a year, year and a half ago. So we’re very happy with how it’s going. Let me get back to specialty real fast, and then we can move on to a couple other points. Why is it that PETO is the most valuable practice type?

Chip Fichtner: Because there’s a gateway to all dentistry. Basically, you start your dental, your lifetime dental experience starts at a pediatric practice. And that pediatric practice is going to be the one who offers you the opportunity to get orthodontics. So a pedo can be very powerful to drive an ortho practice. And today, where it’s set up, if you have a large pedo practice, many of them are incorporating ortho into their practice, which may or may not be the right thing to do. But there are plenty of them that are referring millions of dollars of collections out to the orthos in their communities. And in return, they’re getting the big basket of fruit at Christmas. That’s it. So the ortho’s driving the Mercedes and the pedos are driving the Volkswagens and you get a basket of fruit. Well, when you’re a pedo practice and you join a trifecta group, you can functionally monetize those referrals to the ortho practices that are within the family. In other words, you’re both equity holders in the parent company. And so the pedo has a financial incentive to refer to orthos within the family, not to those outside of the family. And that can be very damaging to an ortho if you’re not in the family. So pedos are the gateway to all dentistry. They start the lifetime dental experience. And so, pedo practices that are growing, they can be taking Medicaid. It’s the only type of Medicaid that is sellable in my world. Adult Medicaid practices, honestly, we can’t give away. But pedo Medicaid is fine, and the pedo practices that are fee-for-service are really valuable.

Bill Neumann: Great, thanks for that. You touched on this earlier, biggest risk to practice values in 2025, and you talked a little bit about you have to continue to be growing. If you’re not growing, that can be a huge issue. What are some of the other risks that you see to practice values this year?

Chip Fichtner: You know, recruiting continues to be tough. We talk to doctors whose collections have declined because they haven’t been able to hire enough hygienists or enough assistants. And, you know, the costs of those team members are going up. I forget the official number, but double digit number of hygienists retired during the COVID adventure and they’re not being replaced fast enough. I don’t know what the actual number is, but I would bet based on my conversations with doctors, the cost of a great hygienist is up 40% in the last three years. And that’s a tough hit for a practice. It hurts your margins and it can hurt your top line. So the primary risk to practice values today is if you get If you experience a decline in collections for whatever reason, whether it’s a recession, whether it’s a war, whether it’s who knows what, but if you have a decline in collections, you go from having a valuable practice to, in my world, an unsellable practice. And that’s a pretty big risk because we live in a relatively risky, turmoil-filled environment at the moment. And I don’t think that turmoil is going away. And what I always tell people to look at is, you know, the real international fear gauge is called gold. And in the last 12 months, gold is up 44%. Now, certainly we’ve had a big boom in the S&P, and it’s up 21% in the last 12 months. But the reality is, if you look at the global fear gauge, it’s called gold, and it’s up 44%. So that’s telling you something that you should beware. The other thing that I tell doctors, and they hate it when I say this, is you are one heartbeat away from your practice being worth potentially nothing. And I say that only because we had a phenomenal client of ours, um, who was doing 7 million in collections by himself. This was an ortho practice and he was 47 years old and he died last week. Uh, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer about a year ago and we managed to get a deal done for him. And so I always say, you know, life is short and, uh, this is your primary asset. you may want to think about monetizing a part of it and diversifying.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, great, great, great point. Another thing you mentioned earlier, you said you’ve had a lot of 30, you know, somethings partnering with IDSOs. Let’s talk a little bit about age. You know, you could traditionally think of somebody in their late 50s, early 60s, even 70s, you know, selling, right, eventually. And that would be to a DSO where they would just take 100% and they’d stay on for a year or so. And that would be that. A lot of younger people partnering with IDSOs. Why do you feel that age actually matters more this year than maybe in years past?

Chip Fichtner: You know, it’s basically, it’s competition, right? As more and more doctors realize that IDSO partnership is not selling out to corporate, and it’s not signing yourself up for multiple years of somebody telling you what to do, because it’s not. The invisible DSOs are hands off, and they want to help, but they’re not going to dictate how you run your practice. And as more and more people are becoming educated on that reality, There are more and more practices that are eager to partner with invisible DSOs. So the younger doctors, interestingly, I think what’s driven younger doctors to do these transactions is number one, they realize it’s not selling out the corporate. That’s not what this is. And number two, younger doctors still have gas in the tank and they want to grow. There are a lot of younger doctors that go, you know, I’d like to expand my practice. I’d like to buy my competitor down the street. I’d like to open up a couple of de novo offices because my first one here in this community has grown like gangbusters. But I’m not sure I want to go to the bank and sign on the line and take all that liability. Well, in an invisible DSO partnership, that young doctor who’s eager to grow can partner with an invisible DSO that will provide all of that capital and take all of that risk. And the doctor gets to own, let’s call it 49% of whatever he’s able to build or buy using the invisible DSO’s capital. And so it’s a risk-free way to build an empire faster, better, less expensively, and make more money long term. So the younger doctors who are eager to grow look at the invisible DSOs as an opportunity to drive growth. And so if you’re an invisible DSO and you have the option of partnering with a doctor who’s my age, which is really old, or you can partner with a doctor who’s 40, you’re going to choose the doctor who’s 40 every single time. And as more and more of these doctors become interested in these partnerships, it’s squeezing the values of doctors who have a six in front of their age. And if you have a seven in front of your age and you don’t have a bunch of young associates, I can’t help you.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, great, great, great advice. As we wrap things up here, and this has been, as I expected, extremely informative, and I appreciate you being on, and I am sure I’m going to get those emails and texts after this goes out to people who really like your insights on things. And things are changing so rapidly, too. It’s great that we have this update from you. Any final thoughts? We want to make sure, again, that people reach out to you. You can go to, it’s easy to remember, largepracticesales.com, and you’ll be able to connect with, whether it’s Chip or somebody else at LPS to help you out. Definitely want to have a call with Chip to see what the value is of your practice and mention it again, Chip, because you’re really the only broker out there. You’re just representing the seller. You are not getting paid by any of these invisible DSOs, correct?

Chip Fichtner: Nope. And that’s, I think that’s, you know, the benefit of that is that we can bring more bidders to the table. The little guys who are getting paid on both sides can only bring bidders to the table that will also pay them a fee. And so you miss half of the bidders. And, you know, the value of multiple bidders is it certainly drives up values, but more importantly, it gives you the opportunity to consider multiple partnership options. You know, big ones, little ones, medium sized ones, because ultimately you’re making a lifetime decision. Whoever you choose as your partner, you’re hopefully going to spend the balance of your career with. So it pays to look at all of your options and then get counseled as to how to choose wisely. There are many of the invisible DSOs, and I hate to say this, but there are many of them that are going to fail. And so you’ve got to be really careful in how you choose your partner, not only because you want upside, but because you don’t want downside. You know, what I urge doctors to do is if you’re at least a million and a half in collection specialty or a million eight GP, contact us at lordpracticesales.com and we’ll schedule a call with me and it’ll be a 20 minute, no obligation, confidential introductory call. And I personally talk to every single doctor who schedule those meetings. Nobody else does. And my pitch to doctors is, I promise you, let’s have a 20 minute call and you’ll learn something. We have a generally pretty good idea of what’s going on in your community or your region, and you can learn something. And those doctors who are interested in understanding the value of their practice in invisible DSO partnerships, we’re happy to go through their numbers and give them an idea of what’s possible. Again, no cost, no obligation, confidential. And in that process, we can often identify areas that the doctor may want to focus on to improve their practice. They may not be ready to do something today, and it may not be next year or the year after, but we’ve been doing the list long enough that in January, I signed $22 million with the clients that I’ve been talking to for at least five years. get a value today. So it’ll give you an opportunity to potentially get to the value you want to be, be at in the future. So give us a call. Let’s have a conversation. I, I talked to doctors seven days a week and it’s fun for me because I learned something from every doctor I talked to.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. Wonderful. Thanks, Chip. Again, largepracticesales.com. You can schedule your call with Chip Fichtner. He is the co-founder of LPS. Great seeing you, first time on the video. You did well, and we’ll look forward to having you back on at a future time. And thanks everybody for listening in and watching us today. Without you, we would not have great guests like Chip and get this great insight. So until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.

Chip Fichtner: Bill, thank you for all you do for our industry.

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