Startup Demographics – PART 1

About This Episode:

In this episode, Jayme will have a conversation with three of the country’s leading startup demographics experts to share some startup demographics strategies and theories that have created some of the most successful startup practices. Just about everybody would agree that demographics have a significant role to play in the success of a startup. They can either positively or negatively affect a startup. But here’s the problem. Most startup practices that struggle know how powerful demographics are, they know how to read the numbers on a demographics’ information report, and most of them have even attempted to get a great demographics’ ratio, but they still struggle.

That’s because they don’t know what strategies they should focus on or the theories that actually work for startup practices. There have been a lot of misconceptions about demographics and Jayme admits, for example, that a lot of it has been based on the demographics ratio and how it can help a startup practice grow. In his book, “Choosing the Right Practice Location”, he talks about the safest ratio for a startup practice being 2000:1, but he will highlight that an associate dentist cannot rely solely on the math equation around that because it doesn’t refer only to the population in an area.

Jayme’s guests will share the framework and guidance on what associate dentists should look for beyond the ratio including who is an area, who the competitors are, who the potential clients are, the kinds of patients one would actually enjoy to serve, and the kinds of procedures one likes to do. They’re also going to talk about demographics studies versus reports because understanding the difference is very critical. There are plenty of associate dentists who go to expensive courses, get tons of information about startups, and buy expensive demographics reports thinking that they can open a start-up practice based on the idea that the ratio will keep them safe, but a few months into the practice, they end up bankrupt. That’s the kind of experience Jayme hopes to protect every associate dentist from going through, so take your time to ingest the resourceful information in this episode, and then go out and implement it for your success in startup practice ownership.

Key Points Discussed:

An entirely new perspective on how demographics actually work for startups (01:50)
Misconceptions that have led associate dentists down a very dangerous path (05:23)
Even doctors who get into good demographics ratios and areas have incredible financial struggles (10:30)
Demographic reports versus studies, and their real impact (14:51)
A great example why the demographics’ ratio is not enough (21:00)
Eliminating options by not eliminating opportunities and the pool table demographics (24:48)
Looking beyond the ratios at who the competition is and what they’re doing (31:46)
The concept of the pajama dentist and what it all means (34:23)
How false positives in demographics mislead a lot of associate dentists (38:32)
Getting the decision right so you can be empowered for the next few decades (44:41)