This is as good a place to start as any.

I was already approved by Wells Fargo for my start-up loan and had already pinpointed Belleville, MI to be the ideal city to plant my start-up dental practice. I still didn’t have my dental license.  Much would transpire from this day on — as I already had both feet in the door and was ready to shut in behind me on another location.  If the landlord wasn’t a jerk – I would have signed a lease for a space down the street, much smaller, and I wouldn’t have ended up owning the outstanding piece of property this diamond in the rough would become.

Do I also need to mention that although Wells Fargo had approved my loan (before I had even graduated) I ended up dumping them in a catastrophically intense coin flip that would fortunately turn up heads in my favor?  But I digress…..

I recorded this video the first time I set foot into 187 Main Street, Belleville.  The space was completely dilapidated:

• There weren’t even any real floors.
• No walls. 
• No electrical wires. 
• No plumbing. 
• No HVAC infrastructure. 

It was a completely gutted space — ripe to be built out exactly how I wanted it to be.  The building exterior wasn’t much more impressive.  The paint on the doors was peeling off.  The formerly white vinyl siding, was now more a disgusting grey from the caked on mixture of dirt and insect ecosystems that can taken up residence in the much neglected structure.  But none of these things mattered.

None of these things mattered because the things that DID matter all checked out:

• This was one of two locales that checked out at the top of my demographic analysis.
• Ranked #1 on my competitive analysis grid.
• Dentist to population ratio outstanding.
• Traffic flow and visibility couldn’t be beat either.

Too many dentists hide their practices away in some medical compound or office building and wonder why patients don’t walk through their doors, they can’t find your office!  The things that mattered checked out — and the destitute nature of the building made me think of all the dollar signs I would save.

 

But the building was not for sale….

But the building wasn’t for sale….so how did I get it?  Leg work.  I drove the streets of the towns that my numbers told me were ideal.  The best deals are never advertised and the best practices are never for sale.  All I knew, was there was an abandoned building, with trash bags over its windows, and I wanted to put a dental practice right there…………..

 

-Kaizen.