What I got wrong building three dental practices, and what each mistake cost

Every case study in dentistry is a highlight reel. Revenue up, patients delighted, founder smiling in a hard hat.

I have written those too. This is the other one.

Three practices, three expensive lessons, with the numbers attached. I am publishing them because you are going to make mistakes on your build regardless, and the only useful question is whether they are the cheap ones or the expensive ones.

Mistake 1: [THE LEASE OR SITE MISTAKE]

What happened: [YOUR NUMBER] [Describe the decision, the moment you realised, and what you had assumed that turned out to be wrong.]

What it cost: [£ figure, or the time cost translated into a £ figure]

What I do differently now: [The specific rule you now apply on every build. Make it concrete enough that a reader can copy it.]

Suggested angle if this fits your experience: something at heads of terms stage you did not push back on, because you wanted the site and did not want to be difficult. Almost every operator has this one.

Mistake 2: [THE SPEND OR SPECIFICATION MISTAKE]

What happened: [Describe it.]

What it cost: [£ figure]

What I do differently now: [The rule.]

Suggested angle if this fits: over-specifying something that made no difference to a patient, and under-specifying something that did. Or fitting out surgeries on day one that sat empty for a year.

Mistake 3: [THE TIMING OR COMPLIANCE MISTAKE]

What happened: [Describe it.]

What it cost: [£ figure, or weeks of rent and payroll with no trading]

What I do differently now: [The rule.]

Suggested angle if this fits: a sequencing error, where something that should have run in parallel ran sequentially, and the practice sat finished and empty.

The pattern in all three

[Write this once you have the three. There will be a pattern, and naming it is what turns this from a confessional into a useful article.]

Looking at them together, mine come down to the same thing every time: I made a decision at a stage where I did not have enough information, because I did not want to slow the project down. Every one of these mistakes was a week of extra work I did not do at the start, and every one of them cost me far more than a week later.

The uncomfortable version of that lesson is this. The parts of a build that feel like delays are usually the parts that pay. Surveying before you sign. Modelling before you commit. Sequencing the compliance work before you order equipment. None of it feels like progress, and all of it is.

Why I publish these

Because the alternative is what you currently get from this industry, which is a lot of people who have done this once, telling you it went brilliantly.

I have done it three times and sold one. It did not go brilliantly. It went well, eventually, after some expensive lessons, which is what building a business actually looks like.

If you would rather make different mistakes to mine, everything I learned is in the Dream Squat Club: the templates, the checklists, the cost model and the build diary I now make everyone keep so their mistakes are at least documented.

And if you would rather someone with the scar tissue was in the room while you make the decisions, that is what the 90-Day Programme is.