After speaking to Zuber Bagasi about how he launched one of the fastest growing dental groups, Synergy Dental, we went back to find out what his plans are for the future.
You completed an Ironman. Talk us through how that went and what was the idea behind that?
I’ve always been a great follower of Bruce Lee since childhood.
His ethos was not to just have a mechanical approach to life, but also a spiritual approach. He would weigh up the mind, body and soul balance.
His always wanted to make sure he would balance himself and I’ve adopted that from a young age.
Sport has always been something that is of great value to me.
Having sport in my life and being an inspiration to others was something I aspired to do.
There’s a higher and higher prevalence of things such a mental illness, depression, suicide amongst youngsters. Drug rates are going up.
So as a thought leader, an inspiration to the community, I wanted to give something back.
There’s never been anyone from my community that’s completed an Ironman. I’ve never done anything like that as well. I’d never completed a full marathon before.
It’s a challenge that goes right past my house. So, I thought this is a great idea to inspire others. Inspire other youngsters to be the best version of themselves.
It’s been absolutely great. The number of people who are now entering triathlons from the community, the number of cyclists who have come out, the number of guys that have taken up swimming, it’s really refreshing to see.
I also wanted to do it to show the profession around me that you have to balance out life with exercise and fitness. That’s the ultimate cure or prevention for mental conditions.
You’ve recently been acquiring practices under the joint partnership model. Can you talk us through this?
It was 2010 when we launched the first partnership practice.
Since then I have acquired practices independently because I just wanted to make sure the systems and processes were actually working. If they didn’t work, the only person that fails is me.
The joint venture partnership works in exactly the same way as we currently run all our practices.
It just means that a clinician enters into a partnership of up to 50%. They’ll carry on doing the things they love, and carry on going out to courses and upskilling themselves.
In the meantime the whole practice environment, both at practice level and centrally, is well led.
How many practices do you currently have in Synergy Dental under this joint venture partnership model?
Eight practices. And we have other acquisitions going through.
One argument might be that dentists feel like they’re losing control of their practice. What would you say to that?
They’ve still got clinical autonomy. You’ve got clinical freedom, you’ve got 50/50 equal voting rights.
They can exit when they want. They have 50% and if they do decide to move on, that’s their share. Or they offer that to Synergy.
But, if it’s not working, it means it’s not right. We haven’t set something up properly.
So if, after a month or after a year, the partner has to leave and something’s not worked out right, they should have the autonomy to sell their shares.
Are you still looking for practices at the moment to join the partnership model?
Absolutely. This is a great time.
They say it’s a dark time for existing practice owners, because of all the frustration that was behind us and all the unknown that’s in front of us.
It’s a great time to prop up these practices through the systems and processes via our joint venture partnership model.
Clinicians can continue to do what they want as clinicians, continue upskilling, and we can take care of everything else.
There’s two strands to this.
One is the joint venture partnership model. Where we would acquire an equity stake within the practice, so we will purchase shares within the practice.
Secondly it’s a joint venture management model. We don’t have any equity within the practice, but we could manage the practice for you. The same way that we manage our own partnership practices. But the owner maintains 100% equity within the practice and there is a management fee.
But it’s a way to help the profession, to get through these hard times.
For associates, it’s those who are wanting to step up and want to become part of our Synergy family and become practice owners, while continuing to develop their clinical careers. They might have identified practices themselves, they might have identified squat practice locations. We could acquire the practice together as part of our joint venture partnership model.
Let us take our years of experience with the systems and processes we have trialled and tested and know they work. You can leapfrog off that.
For more information about the Synergy Dental partnerships, simply visit synergydentalpartnerships.com.
