CATEGORY 110 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST Name: Andrew Koranski Age: I was 53 when I sold Graduated: UQ, 1984. Practice Owned: Jimboomba QLD for 26 years. Why Sell? Looking back, I realise that when I went into dentistry and practice ownership, my expectations were based on my interactions with our family dentist growing up. He was a lovely, decent, principled fellow that our family trusted implicitly. I wanted to serve patients dutifully like him and was prepared to do anything I could to help them, but I was very unprepared for all of the business skills that were needed for business ownership. That was probably one of the reasons I sold my practice earlier than most (at 53 years old) and, while I wasn’t ready to retire, I knew I wouldn’t be a practice owner again. What have you been doing post sale? Post sale, I worked in a private practice outside of my restraint area. The owner was wonderful and it was a very positive experience. He had worked as a dentist for 45 years and owned his practice for 38. Within a few years of me working there, he had decided to sell and retire. He’d bought a 4-wheel drive and had started designing a caravan; he had plans to sail up and down the coast and drive around the country … and then suddenly, within a year of selling, IS THERE LIFE Is there life after dental practice ownership? Dentists often put off selling their practices because they are concerned about life after dentistry. What will they do with all those extra hours, how will they cope with leaving behind the identity that has defined them for decades? This series of articles explores the very busy lives of some of Practice Sale Search’s clients, former practice owners who have embraced post-sale life. he had passed away. All those aspirations and dreams for retirement life and he couldn’t fulfil them. It was a big wake up call for me. I was not ready to retire, or lose my identity as a dentist, but I also didn’t want to work full time anymore either. I had wonderful relationships with my patients, and they all said again and again, not to leave plans too late. My wife and I had always wanted to travel around the country and, within a short period of time, several aspects of our lives had coincidentally made that more possible. Our kids had moved out, our beloved old dogs passed away within six months of each other and my wife was wanting to finish up at her work. The timing seemed perfect. We decided to split our time going forward into 50% travel and for me to pick up locum positions the other 50% of the time. We rented out our home in Logan, then set off on our trip in May 2024. At this stage, with more than a year on the road under our belts, we have no intention of going home. We travel in a Prado, towing a 17foot, 10-inch off-road caravan – we have a queen-sized bed and kitchenette with caféstyle seating. We have a good-sized fridge, toilet and shower. It’s neither modest nor opulent. We can go off grid for a few days at a time if we need to. We have five solar panels on the roof of the van, lithium batteries, 180 litres of fresh water in our van. I have done seven locums – Warwick, two at Headland South, Broken Hill, back to Kingaroy, two locums in remote indigenous communities in the NT (these needed some flying to get to). We travelled anticlockwise around Australia, staying in dozens of towns, and explored countless places of interest along the way. One of the highlights was the Gibb River Road, a bucket-list journey that delivered three weeks of remote Kimberley country, dramatic gorges, flowing waterfalls and landscapes unreachable by sealed roads. A defining moment for us was Tunnel Creek, where we climbed down over rocks and waded – then swam – through a pitch-black limestone tunnel by torchlight, fully aware there were freshwater crocodiles in the water! So far, we’ve travelled around 45,000 kilometres, from the dinosaur trail of western Queensland to Kakadu in the Northern Territory, ancient, spectacular Karijini National Park in Western Australia to beaches in Esperance, across the Nullarbor Plain and through the far west region of NSW. What is the plan from here? After a brief pause to spend time with family, we’re back on the road again, now exploring the Border Ranges and northern New South Wales – adventure very much calling. We want to go to the tip of Cape York, and down to Tasmania. We’ve already gone up to NT, across Kimberly. What we haven’t done is up and down the east coast of Australia – once we’ve done that, we have all the interior that needs to be explored. We’re not nearly done. u
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