Owner, not operator.
How to build a profitable, associate-led dental practice, one that runs, and grows, without you in the chair.
An evening with Smita and Arun, the dentist and the accountant behind The Neem Tree Dental Group and Samera.
Over a drink, we'll share the actual structure behind a profitable associate-led practice: what to build, where practices lose time and money, and how to step back from the chair without the whole thing wobbling. A couple of hours. No lecture. Just the model, the mistakes, and what we'd do differently.
A weeknight evening · drinks & nibbles included · seats strictly limited
Your practice can't run without you. That's the problem.
If you stopped drilling tomorrow, what would happen to the income? For most owners, the honest answer is that it would fall off a cliff, because you are the practice. Your earnings are capped by your own two hands. Your diary is full of other people's patients. And the business you thought you owned turns out to be a very demanding job you can't step away from.
An associate-led practice flips that. The clinical work is delivered by a team you've built and kept. Your income comes from the practice running well, not from you running yourself into the ground. That's the difference between owning a job and owning an asset.
The whole model, in one evening.
We'll walk you through the structure of a profitable associate-led practice, every part of it, then show you the gaps most owners have, and where the fixes come from. Some of those fixes are systems. Some are numbers. Some are things we've built at Samera. All of them are things you can start on the Monday after.
For owners who want out of the chair, not out of the game.
Whether you run a single site and want to step back from clinical, or you're building towards a group, this evening is for practice owners and principals. Not associates. Not suppliers. Not vendors working the floor. Just owners who want their practice to work harder, so they don't have to.
Every corner of practice life, the parts that matter most.
We can't teach you the entire model in one evening. But we'll cover the pieces that move the needle.
Building the machine
- The associate-led model: how the structure actually works, and the maths that makes it profitable
- Associates: finding them, keeping them, and paying them in a way that works for both sides
- Time & admin: the operational load that keeps owners in the building, and how to lift it off
Where the money is
- The numbers that matter: the handful of figures that tell you a practice is healthy, and the ones that flatter to deceive
- The profit leaks: where money quietly escapes a practice, and how to plug it
- Growth, value & exit: what makes a practice worth buying, whether you sell in three years or thirteen
Owners who've done it, and got some of it wrong.
We built The Neem Tree into an associate-led group, sold a practice or three, and made plenty of mistakes along the way. You'll get the version with the scars showing, what worked, what it cost us, and what we'd do differently now.
Dr Smita Mehra
BDS MFGDPRCS · Founder, The Neem Tree Dental Group
A dentist with 25 years of clinical experience and co-founder of Neem Tree Dental, with practices in Wandsworth and Esher. Smita knows the chair, the clinical reality, the team, the patients, and the daily pull of being a clinician and the owner of a business at the same time.
Arun Mehra
FCA · Founder, Samera
A chartered accountant (ICAEW) who left PwC and Bank of America to build Samera from his late father's dining table in 2002. Twenty-five years on, it's a group spanning accountancy, tax, finance, practice sales and technology, built for the dental profession. Arun co-founded The Neem Tree with Smita and has coached hundreds of owners. He sees the practice through the numbers, where the profit is made, and where it leaks.
EBITDA · without the principal in the chair
A well-built associate-led practice can generate £300,000 or more in EBITDA without the principal in the chair. We don't say that to impress you, we say it because it's the target the structure is built around, and most owners have simply never been shown what that structure is. This evening is us showing you.
A weeknight, a room of owners, and a drink in your hand.
Wednesday 14 October
Central London · exact venue shared on booking
- £75 per seat, drinks and nibbles included
- 6:00pm to 9:00pm
- Practice owners and principals only
Timings indicative and subject to change.