What if the smartest way to build a dental group right now is to keep your clinics close, your service boutique, and your metrics painfully simple? We sit down with Dr Smeeter Mera to unpack a practical blueprint for modern DSOs and independent groups that want strong EBITDA without losing their soul. The market looks different after COVID and Brexit, and old assumptions about city‑centre sites, rapid rollups, and one‑size‑fits‑all staffing no longer hold.

We start with geography as strategy: clusters within 30 minutes unlock shared teams, rotating specialists, and agile diaries. From there, we make the case for quality over headcount—grow capacity inside great locations before chasing more leases. Patient experience becomes the moat: a calm front of house, warm phone etiquette, and reception spaces that feel like an oasis rather than an ICU. Those small touches drive recall, reviews, and the signal clinicians trust most: consistently full books. When patients choose to rebook with the same dentist, revenue predictability follows.

Location strategy has shifted too. With hybrid work thinning city footfall, we favour high‑density residential areas, strong suburban high streets, and dependable anchors like supermarkets that never stopped trading. On staffing, flexibility wins: split shifts, school‑friendly mornings, and weekend crews widen the talent pool and cut churn. To scale without draining culture, plant owner‑operator energy in each site through meaningful incentives or equity. And skip the rookie mistake of single‑vendor convenience—triangulate every major spend and build a reliable supplier book.

If you’re weighing your first squat or tuning a growing group, this conversation lays out a clear, field‑tested path: cluster your sites, obsess over experience, measure recall and chair occupancy, and let full books be your north star. Enjoyed the episode? Follow, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review—what’s the one change you’d make to your patient journey this month?

If you require any help, don't hesitate to reach out to the Samera team at www.samera.co.uk. We are all here to help you!

Thank you,

The Samera Team

We share the DSO playbook that turns an owner-dependent practice into a resilient, associate-led group that buyers trust. From recruiting clinicians with special interests to building transparent financial systems, we show how consistency compounds value toward a 2030–2031 exit.

• removing key-person risk so the business runs without the owner
• keeping top clinicians busy through targeted marketing and triage
• building a complementary service mix to reduce revenue concentration
• creating a central backbone for finance and reporting
• proving consistent data over years to win buyer confidence
• planning a four to five year runway for a stronger sale

If you have any questions or need any help, do reach out to me or Smita and we'll go take it from there

If you require any help, don't hesitate to reach out to the Samera team at www.samera.co.uk. We are all here to help you!

Thank you,

The Samera Team

Trying to buy a £1 million dental practice without overpaying or overleveraging? We’ve got you. We break down the market forces shaping 2026—cooling interest rates, tighter supply, stronger buyer competition—and show how to turn that context into a smart acquisition strategy that protects cash flow and compounds long-term value.

We start with the number that decides your deal: EBITDA. You’ll hear how lenders underwrite dental practices, why net profit won’t cut it, and how to rebuild a normalised EBITDA that stands up to bank stress tests. We compare NHS, private, and mixed models through a lender’s lens, exploring where predictable income helps and where growth can stall. Then we get specific on costs: arrangement fees, RICS valuations, legal work for leases and NHS contracts, and the extras people forget when chasing a headline price. If you’re considering freehold plus goodwill, we map the two-loan reality, typical LTVs (often 90% for goodwill and up to 100% for freehold), 15 to 20-year terms, and the structuring that can set you up for a cleaner exit later.

Deal discipline is the throughline. We explain why sales brochures overstate value, how to sanity-check multiples, and when to bring in independent valuations and financial due diligence to test wages, labs, UDAs, and chair utilisation. If the numbers don’t match the story, renegotiate or walk—because you make your money when you buy, not when you sell. We also share realistic timelines: fast indicative terms in days, but six to twelve months to complete depending on CQC and NHS steps. And once the keys are yours, we talk post-completion optimisation: joining a buying group to cut consumables by 6–10%, adopting AI and digital workflows to lift margins, and tracking the KPIs that keep lenders and owners happy.

If you’re serious about owning rather than associating forever, this is your playbook to fund the right asset, at the right price, with the right structure. Subscribe, share with a colleague who’s hunting for a practice, and leave a review to tell us what financing or valuation question you want answered next.

If you require any help, don't hesitate to reach out to the Samera team at www.samera.co.uk. We are all here to help you!

Thank you,

The Samera Team