2 Big Retirement Mistakes that Dentists Make

You may not be as ready for retirement as you think you are. For example, have you talked to your spouse about what he or she will do with you being around the house more often? Kerry Straine, CPBA and CEO of Straine Consulting, says that this is one of two common retirement mistakes he sees dentists making. Discover the second, and how to avoid both, in this clip.

Interview Transcript (Modified for Readability)

“Over the last 30 years, we’ve worked with over 6,000 practices. In many cases, our clients have taken their practices all the way to a sale, toward retirement. The biggest mistake — there’s two of them – that I see that they’ve made: Number one, they sell it prematurely. I was on the phone with a former client of mine just two nights ago and he’s been retired for nine years. He’s 63 years of age, and he called me and says, ‘Is there something I can do? I need something to do. I’m bored.’

I can also think of another client who one time called me and said, ‘I’ve saved $5 million, I’m ready for retirement, and I’m 60.’ And I said to him, ‘Doctor, let’s talk to your spouse, your wife. Let’s have a conversation with her and see where she stands with respect to retirement.’ We got her on the phone, and certainly they had planned well economically. But, she said, ‘But I’m not ready for you to be around the house. I’ve got things I like to do, and I don’t have plans for us to travel the world for another five to seven years, so you just keep working.’

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I think people, number one, retire too early, and a lot of times were running away from something — the pain of being a business-owner, the pain of leading people, the pains of employee turnover. Just last night, I was speaking to a client of mine who’s got two practices, one in South Carolina and one in Connecticut. I said, ‘If you don’t have the stomach for employee turnover, don’t be a business-owner.’ People are going to come and people are going to go. People do things for their reason.

You need to be clear on your vision, consistent with your training, and your leading, and your monitoring, and your coaching, and persistent. Success comes from repetition, from doing things over and over again. You know, I was watching Malcom Gladwell, a very famous author of books like ‘Outlier,’ ‘Tipping Point,’ ‘David and Goliath,’ ‘Blink,’ and he said, ‘The key to success is persistence.’ That’s the 10,000-hour rule.

I find that there are things people are running away from in why they sell instead of defining what they’re running toward. Honestly, the fulfillment that my clients get from building a great team and having people say thank you for the time and attention you give in developing us and for creating a safe environment. And two, the positive feedback you get from patients is virtually irreplaceable. Knowing when you’re going to retire is a key step, and what you’re going to move toward next.

I’m having dinner next Monday night in Chicago with a client of mine, and she says, ‘If you want to live to be 100, there’s two things you have to do: Floss and keep working.

And the second thing is certainly the economics. I know that today’s return on investments are very low, and they’re not going to change. The government is almost $20 trillion in debt. How can our economy borrow at greater than 1 percent, hence, there’s not going to be any return out there for greater than 1 percent. We need to think through: What is our current living budget and determine what it’s going to be in retirement?

Most people should plan that they’re going to need in retirement 80-90 percent of what they live on in the three years just before they retire. You could argue that that’s just not going to happen, but it’s going to happen. I certainly remember when my parents retired and I helped my dad think through a budget. They lived in an apartment in El Dorado Hills, California, with two bedrooms and one car and it was still $83,000 a year. I think most people are going to have to come to terms with that and certainly Americans don’t. I would say what contributes to the good thing about that is, there’s a lot of studies about retirees coming back into the workforce, and they’re certainly dedicated people.

As we plan for sales of practices, thinking about what are you going to do, how much money you’re going to need, and probably the last thing is the legacy — picking the right person to take over on your behalf. A dentist has the unique experience of having a love relationship with their patients, and they want to pass that on to make sure that their patients and the employees who work for that doctor have the same type of leader with the same type of emotional intelligence to be able to step into a practice and confidently and lovingly continue to lead them on a safe path. When they do that, the future is safer for all.”

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