Financially Led with Dr. Howard Polansky, DMD, MBA
Every practice owner carries some kind of debt, a mortgage, a practice buyout, a line of credit that's been open longer than anyone would like to admit. Most of it just gets paid down the slow way, month after month, without much of a plan behind it.
I met Howard in a networking group. He mentioned he'd spent 16 years as a practicing dentist before walking away to help other owners restructure debt and build real cash flow strategy, and once we started comparing notes, we realized we were solving different halves of the same problem. He looks at what you owe. I look at what you actually collect. Neither number tells the whole story on its own.
His take is simple. The interest rate on your debt isn't the thing costing you sleep, the payment is. Most owners have never had anyone sit down and ask whether that payment could be smaller.
We sat down together where I interviewed Howard. Watch it, or just put it on and listen when you have time on your drive home.
A couple lines from Howard during the conversation worth sitting with:
"The illusion is that the interest rate is the only thing that matters, but it is the fixed payment behind the interest rate which is causing the pressure."
"It boils down to three little words: is this it? Is this it, go to work, bust my ass, try to enjoy whatever money I have left with whatever little time I have left for the rest of the days I have on this spinning ball of dirt. Is this it, when I wake up at 2am in a cold sweat trying to figure out how I'm going to make payroll this week. Is this it, were the dreams and vision that you and your spouse had about your future, and every time they bring it up now, they see that face, and they know they just created a bigger knot in your stomach, so they stop bringing it up. That's the cost. That's the real cost. It's not the monetary cost, it's that you have a dream for your life, a vision for your life, and it feels so far away."
If you want to talk to Howard directly:
Watch More From Howard
Howard also put together a short breakdown of his framework, in his own words, Lift, Expand, Deploy.
