Built on decades of experience across hundreds of deals on all sides of the table, our proven 5-step process is designed to maximize your options, value and outcomes.
1
This step is designed for you to understand value before you test the market. We determine your practice’s value using a rigorous analysis of financial performance, operational quality, growth potential, and current market comparables. Just as important, we assess readiness: whether your practice is positioned to attract premium buyers today or whether value-enhancing steps should be taken first. This step establishes leverage, credibility, and confidence—before any buyer is ever contacted.
“Luck favors the prepared”
– Louis Pasteur
2
Exceptional outcomes are built long before buyers engage. Here we complete the foundational work that drives buyer conviction and deal velocity:
• A clear, compelling Confidential Information Presentation
• A highly targeted, customized buyer universe
• A clean, well-organized data room that anticipates diligence
Preparation is where uncertainty is eliminated and a critical step to being in the driver’s seat for the rest of the process.
“Measure twice, cut once.”
– John Florio, circa 1591
3
Control the process. Create competition. Maximize outcomes. With preparation complete, we initiate a disciplined, confidential outreach to qualified buyers. The objective is simple: generate informed demand and create competitive tension while preserving your control over timing, structure, and counterparties. Having led acquisitions from the buyer’s seat—including some of the largest medical groups and DSOs in the country—we understand how buyers think and what they are looking for.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”
-Wayne Gretzky, circa 1983
4
Where value is protected—or lost. Typically spanning 60–90 days, this phase includes confirmatory diligence and the negotiation of definitive agreements. This is where dozens of consequential decisions are made — the importance of which cannot be understated — on price adjustments, employment terms, rollover equity, representations, indemnities, and more. We remain deeply engaged to optimize economics, manage risk, and maintain momentum through closing.
“You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!”
– Dr. Seuss, circa 1990
5
Execution, certainty, and completion. The final step in the process, this is where Definitive documents are executed, funds are wired, and ownership transitions as planned. We remain involved through closing to ensure accuracy, clarity, and a smooth finish.
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting finished is persistence.”
—Mark Twain
Ellis and Associates is an industry leader in medical practice mergers and acquisitions. Our proven system helps medical practice owners navigate the selling process with clarity and confidence.
We provide tailored guidance and expert representation to specialty practice owners.
The M&A process is quite complex and typically a once-in-a-lifetime experience for medical practice owners. Ellis & Associates brings a focused sell-side approach to maximize value. We recognize the changing needs of buyers and sellers in today’s market as well as the factors that may affect deal terms.
We understand buyer behavior. With decades of top-level M&A experience, we have gained invaluable expertise. This enables us to support you from the beginning through the closing of your sale. Our dedicated firm helps practice owners evaluate their options and move forward with confidence.
Ellis & Associates is invested in the success of our clients.
We leverage our knowledge earned across hundreds of deals to help maximize your practice value.
We provide owners with clear guidance and thoughtful strategy to make the right moves.
Every step is designed to help physicians make smart decisions and understand the lasting impact of each one.
The firm works with healthcare practice owners who are considering a sale, retirement transition, partnership opportunity or private equity deal. This includes medical and dental specialties.
A practice sales advisor helps owners understand value, prepare the business for sale, and manage the sale in a highly structured process. Owners typically do far better financially with less risk involved.
The firm manages buyer outreach carefully and shares information only with qualified buyers under a highly structured process. This helps guard staff stability, patient trust, and daily business operations.
Practice owners should begin planning long before they are ready to sell. Early planning helps improve financial organization and put them in a better position before entering the market.
Yes. The firm helps owners understand the potential value of their practice by reviewing revenue, profitability, provider strength, patient base, operations, location and growth potential.
There is an old saying: if given the choice between eating well and sleeping well, choose to sleep well. To us, this means doing the right thing—especially when no one is watching. That philosophy aligns closely with Charlie Munger’s three enduring rules of business:
Read more below about our commitment to serving you in a way that would make our parents and children proud.
General Dentist
General Dentist
Radiologist
General Dentist
General Dentist
Radiologist
I come from a family of clinicians—dentists, radiologists, dermatologists, pathologists. One of my father’s guiding principles from residency was simple: Get the case right. It didn’t matter what it took or how long. Just get it right.
While many expected me to follow medicine, I fell in love first with math, then with finance. Years spent deep in spreadsheets built technical discipline, yet the real purpose of the work became clear over time: helping hard-working professionals navigate life-defining decisions with clarity and confidence.
Over the course of my career, I have sat on every side of the table:
• As a seller, raising capital and selling businesses
• As a buyer, acquiring practices within large corporate and private-equity-backed platforms
• As an investment banker, advising owners through complex, high-stakes transactions
That perspective matters. It informs how practices are positioned, how buyers think, which terms truly matter, and how value is preserved through closing.
Just as you have devoted decades to mastering dentistry, I have devoted my career to valuing and stewarding businesses like yours.
Born in Boston and raised in Detroit, I studied at the University of Michigan, lived in New York, spent a formative summer in my second favorite job – guiding whitewater rafting trips in Colorado. I ultimately settled in Chicago after the University of Chicago Booth School of Business—which I’ve been proud to call home now for more than 20 years. My interior designer wife, Jude, and our three sons keep life active and adventurous.
Pictures of Dentistry We Love! Submit other pics or video for us to consider adding to this collection! Best picture submitted each month wins $50 gift certificate to Amazon.
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Circa the turn of the 20th Century”
