When you live in Western Kansas (Hays, population 20,000) your options are limited for pulling equity out of your dental practice. My wife, Jana, and I built our practice from scratch. We bought the land 22 years ago, built the building and over time added 3 more operatories, growing from 5 employees to 18. It took a LOT of blood, sweat and tears to grow Lifetime Dental Care to what it is today. That being said, we knew that our practice was valuable . . . only to the extent that someone would be willing to buy it. In Kansas, the only entity that can own a dental practice is a dentist (who also must work in the practice 50% of the time it is open for business), unless you partner with a DSO. Enter GPS!! Before partnering with GPS we felt that our only option was to hope that an associate dentist would one day come along and buy in. You can guess how easy it is to attract an associate dentist to Western Kansas (in a state that doesn’t have any dental schools). Gratefully, Jana and I have been very well compensated for our legacy and the pressures of equity preservation are GONE!!!