Welcome to Dental Unscripted

Welcome to Dental Unscripted, a podcast brand that meets doctors wherever they are at in their professional journey. We talk about starting a practice, buying a practice, and running a practice. We cover a lot of ground on this channel!

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Dental Unscripted

Thirty Percent Take-Home Means Zero Business Profit for Most Dental Practices

A 30% take-home on collections sounds like a profitable practice until you do the math. If you had to hire an associate to replace you, you'd pay them roughly the same 30–33% of collections. Your practice would net zero. That "business profit" is actually just your salary, and the business itself literally has no transferable value. This breakdown comes from a Dental Unscripted conversation between Michael Dinsio, Paula Quinn, and Omar Virjee, CPA and founder of Virjee Consulting, which works with over 600 dental practices nationwide.

1. The Golden Handcuffs Test for Dental Practice EBITDA

If you left for a year and hired an associate at 30–33% of adjusted production, what would your P&L look like? For many practice owners, the answer is zero profit and zero EBITDA. Nobody is buying that practice for anything meaningful because there's no real profit behind it without you there working. You've got golden handcuffs, not a business. Building wealth starts with generating true practice profit after paying yourself a market-rate clinical salary.

2. Your P&L Is Your Practice X-Ray, and Most Owners Misread It That X-Ray

Omar put it well on the show. Your P&L is like an X-ray of your practice. You wouldn't skip the X-ray and go straight to a crown prep, but that's what a lot of owners do with their financials. They check the bank account, see a number, and assume that's what they made. Depreciation, amortization, personal expenses running through the books — some are real costs, some are just tax tools. If you don't know the difference, you don't know how much money you're actually making.

• Dental-specific chart of accounts — work with a CPA who understands dental KPIs, not a generalist filing your taxes once a year.

• Real vs. non-cash expenses — depreciation reduces your tax bill but nobody shows up with a bill for it. That's money you keep.

• Discretionary add-backs — personal expenses, one-time purchases, and owner perks inflate your overhead on paper but aren't true operating costs.

3. Mid-Year Tax Planning Can Unlock $40K–$80K in Missed Deductions

Tax planning doesn't happen on April 15. By then your books are closed. Omar's firm schedules planning meetings between August and September, when there's still time to make moves. Stacking deductions, adjusting entity structure timing (S-Corp elections matter), and getting within range of qualified business income thresholds can unlock $40K or more in savings. At a 25–35% effective rate, that's a return no mutual fund is going to match.

4. Your Practice Delivers a Higher ROI Than the S&P 500

Omar's wealth-building advice landed somewhere I didn't expect. Instead of some exotic investment play, he came right back to your practice. A healthy practice generating 25% EBITDA means every dollar you reinvest for; consultants, equipment, marketing, technology. It can all returns at 25% annually. The S&P 500 averages about 10% over a decade. Commercial real estate runs around 7%. Your practice's profits can beats both.

The dentists who actually build wealth over time do it on a three-legged stool. They grow their practice value. They invest in index funds. They build some real estate exposure. Save $100K a year for ten years, invest it conservatively at 7–8%, and you're generating roughly $80K a year in passive income without touching the chair. Most dentists need about $200K a year to cover personal expenses outside of student loans. Once your investments are covering 40–50% of that number, you've got freedom, and you've got options that don't depend on you showing up Monday morning.