Roundtable · Why we do this
The Most Rewarding Part of Owning a Practice
What is the most rewarding thing about running a private practice?
Practice Mindshare Podcast, Episode 2 ·
The first roundtable was honest about how hard ownership is. This one is about why the co-founders keep doing it, and the answers have almost nothing to do with procedures.
Across medicine, chiropractic, optometry and dentistry, the same two rewards came up again and again: the feedback from the people you care for, and the freedom to build a place, and a team, that reflects who you are.
“Having an impact on a patient and making a difference for them is, quite honestly, what sustains you.”
For Dr. West the reward is the feedback loop: patients who come in smiling and share what the work has done for their lives, whether it is said in the office, in a thank-you note that arrives months or years later, or in a review on Google or Yelp.
Early in a career the technical side is gratifying, he said, but at some point it is not the procedures that sustain you. It is the change you can make in another person's life.
Dr. Jane Brewer
DC, DCCJP
“You get to create the environment you want to show up in every day, one that is reflective of who you are.”
Dr. Brewer called it an easy one. The biggest reward is the feedback from the people she takes care of, and the environment she gets to create. Being your own boss means you get to build the space you want to show up in every day, one that reflects your values as a person and as a provider, and then care for people inside it.
When patients feel that energy and give it back, and when the results of the care show up, that is the whole reward for her. Ten years in, she said, it has never gotten old.
“As a business owner you realize how many families you are accountable for. That can weigh on you, or it can make you soar.”
Dr. Rhue widened the frame from patients to the team. Owning a practice means realizing how many families you are accountable for. You can carry that as a weight, she said, or let it lift you. For her the reward is making the people around her successful and watching them flourish in the practice.
She has brought on two associates, having been an associate herself, and describes the job as letting them fly, letting them fall, and being there to pick them up. The same instinct drives her work sharing knowledge publicly: too many clinicians hold on to what they know instead of passing it on.
“It wasn't just the difference it made in their smile. It was the difference the difference makes.”
Dr. Harris summed it up in a phrase: the difference the difference makes. For years, as a cosmetic dentist, he talked about transforming smiles. Over time he saw that the real change was in how patients then showed up as a spouse, an employee, a friend, a parent, carrying a confidence that reached far beyond the smile itself.
“You build these teams and you learn and grow with each one. It changes, and it changes you.”
Dr. Ong put improving patients' lives first, then named a second reward that only shows up over decades: building teams. The team he has today is not the one he started with. Each one taught him something, each one changed, and each one changed him. That, he said, is its own reward.
What the panel agrees on
- The lasting reward is the change you make in a patient's life, and the feedback that proves it landed.
- Ownership lets you build an environment that reflects your values, and that is a reward in itself.
- Your team is part of the payoff. Growing associates and staff, and being accountable for their families, is the job at its best.
- Over a career, the teams you build change you as much as you change them.
Independent practices. Stronger together.
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