Darab Business Advisors

10/05/2026

Every dollar leaves a trail. Follow it before it leaves you.

Most dentists check what they spend. Fewer check what they never collected.

When a dental office does a procedure, the fee goes into the computer. Sometimes part of that fee gets taken back out later. An insurance reduction. A discount. A write-off. It happens quietly, and it never shows up on the bank statement, because the money never arrived.

That's where a lot of money disappears.

One thing to try: ask your office for the "adjustments" report for the last three months. Then pull three months of bank and credit card statements and circle every recurring charge.

If you can't explain a line, it's worth a question.

09/14/2026

Growth eats cash before it feeds you.

Two kids, two lemonade stands, same recipe. Every cup sells for 50 cents and costs 60 cents to make. Both lose a dime a cup, and neither one knows.

The first kid spends birthday money from a jar. One Saturday she reaches in, and it's empty. No more lemons, no more stand.

The second kid gets an allowance. He's saving for a bike. When the stand comes up short, he covers it without thinking, so it never runs out of money. It runs all summer, and the next summer, and he gets better at it every year.

He never gets the bike.

You've seen this happen. A restaurant opens in a spot you drive past, and a year and a half later the windows are papered over, and something else is moving in. Then it happens again.

You have never once watched a dental practice do that.

Not because dentistry is a better business. A restaurant losing money on every plate is burning through the loan, and when that's gone, it's gone. A practice runs for decades because the owner covers it himself: his paycheck, his Saturdays, the retirement money that never quite got funded.

The practice doesn't fail. The retirement does.

Wrote up the whole thing, including the one number that tells you which side you're on:

https://darabadvisors.com/dental-practice-growing-but-no-cash-the-two-real-causes/

Your Practice Is Growing, and You Have No Cash. There Are Only Two Reasons. Production up eleven percent. Collections up nine. Line of credit drawn for the first time in four years. Your accountant says it was a good year. Your checking account disagrees. Two things happen, and only one is a problem...

08/31/2026

Nobody sends your overhead a memo when your margin slips.

Say a practice collects $1,000,000 and keeps $200,000 after everything is paid. Now the fee schedule slips 2%. That's $20,000 gone.

Same patients. Same hours. Same lab bills. Same payroll. Nothing about the day changed.

That $20,000 is 2% of what came in the door — and 10% of what the owner actually keeps.

The dollar didn't get bigger on the way down. Everything underneath it got smaller.

And here's the uncomfortable part: the tighter a practice already is, the more a slip hurts. A practice keeping 30 cents on the dollar loses about 7% of its profit. A practice keeping 10 cents loses 20%. Same 2%.

Working harder doesn't fix a rate you didn't set. It just runs the same thin margin more times.

Most owners look at this once a year, at tax time.

It changes every month.

Most owners don't need another plan. They need to know which problem they actually have.

The What's Next Assessment is free and takes about four minutes: darabadvisors.com/whats-next

08/21/2026

The number on the report and the number in the bank are not the same number.

I ran a practice for 33 years. For most of them, I could tell you my collections percentage without looking it up. It was good. I was proud of it.

What I couldn't tell you was how long it took the money to actually show up.

That turns out to be the more important question. A percentage tells you whether you got paid. It doesn't tell you when. And payroll doesn't run on percentages.

Here's a quick one you can do this week with numbers you already have:

Take your total accounts receivable. Divide it by your average monthly collections. Multiply by 30. That's roughly how many days a dollar of dentistry takes to turn into a dollar of money.

Do it for the last three months and look at the direction.

Flat or falling means the system is working. Climbing — while production stays about the same — means the practice is loaning out money it never decided to loan.

Nobody sends you a report about that. You have to go looking for it.

Curious What's Next? Find out more here...www.darabadvisors.com/whats-next Assessment

08/11/2026

The Two Ways a Busy Practice Runs Out of Money

Full schedule. Good month. Bank balance says otherwise.

Two causes worth checking first:

The money is late. Claims sitting unworked, balances aging, treatment accepted but never scheduled. You earned it — it just hasn't shown up.

The money is gone. Supplies creep up. Fees you haven't touched in years. Write-offs nobody questions.

They look identical from the operatory. They're fixed in completely opposite ways.

And they're connected: money that sits long enough stops being late and starts being gone.

Most owners guess. Guessing costs a year.

The What's-Next Assessment is free and takes ten minutes. It just tells you where you actually stand. → https://darabadvisors.com/whats-next/

CashFlowSurgeon

07/28/2026

You gave them a raise. They’re still thinking about leaving.

Most practice owners I talk to are frustrated — they did the right thing on wages and it still didn’t feel like enough. The data says why.

The August issue of What’s Next breaks it down.

Link below. 👇

07/23/2026

New series — one mental model for practice owners. This one runs first because it sits underneath all the others. Deferred decisions don't stay open forever. The market, a lease renewal, a health event, or a buyer eventually closes them for you — on terms you didn't pick. Worth asking this week: which decision is quietly being made for you right now?

07/06/2026

Most independent dentists don’t sell to private equity.

They sell quietly to another independent dentist. That buyer (and their bank) care way more about SDE, loan coverage, and take-home cash flow than one perfect EBITDA multiple.

Behind the scenes, your valuation professional will mix and match methods—SDE, EBITDA, DCF, book value, market comps—and often average several for private deals.

Before you chase “the best multiple,” ask: who’s my most likely buyer, and what numbers do they really care about?

If you want to quietly pressure-test your numbers, DM me ‘VALUATION’ and I’ll share how I walk independent dentists through this.

06/28/2026

Collections don’t pay your mortgage. What’s left after overhead does.

Most practice owners I talk to are working harder than ever — and scratching their heads at the end of the month, wondering where it all went.

The July issue of What’s Next breaks it down.

Link Below. 👇