Opening a dental practice means making a long list of decisions at once, most of them before the first patient sits down.
Dr. Diana Teverbaugh made one of them early. Before she opened Teverbaugh Dental in Fishers in 2013, she set up the financial side of the practice: accounting, payroll, and taxes, all in place before day one.
All of these years later, that’s still the decision she points to.
From Dental Assistant to Practice Owner
Dr. Teverbaugh grew up in Peru. Her mother was a nurse, and she knew early that she wanted to work in health care.
When she moved to the United States at 16, she worked as a dental assistant for her cousin’s office. She did a little of everything: sterilization, chairside assisting, and some time at the front desk.
"I learned about dentistry from all sides," she says, looking back.
From assisting, she went to IUPUI for a bachelor's in biology and on to the Indiana University School of Dentistry, graduating in 2009. She practiced for several years at pediatric offices, where the owners became her mentors.
"I saw another Latina woman, a business owner and a minority, build a beautiful practice," Dr. Teverbaugh says. "She inspired me.”
She decided she was ready. She wanted to make her own calls about how patients were treated and what kind of team she built around them.
In 2013, she opened her own practice.
What Dental School Doesn’t Teach
The clinical part comes naturally to most dentists. The rest doesn’t.
"Dental school teaches you everything about dentistry, but it doesn't teach you anything about how to run a business," Dr. Teverbaugh says. "When it comes to owning a business, you have to learn about different things: bookkeeping, payroll, accounting."
Patients see the dentistry. They don't see what sits behind it.
"There's so much behind it," she says. "Training, compliance, payroll, overhead, cash flow, equipment, technology. The list goes on."
The hardest part of starting and running her practice, she remembers, wasn't going to be the clinical work. It was building the team and creating the systems and processes that a practice needs to run smoothly.
Setting It Up Correctly from the Beginning
Dr. Teverbaugh knew what she wanted to spend her time on, and it wasn't accounting.
"I wanted to focus on what I love to do. I love dentistry, I love my patients," she says. "I didn't want to focus on understanding numbers. I didn't go to school for that."
She started working with an experienced team at TMA Accounting before she even opened. The bookkeeping, payroll, and taxes were set up correctly from the start of the practice, instead of becoming something to sort out down the road.
"When I wanted to open my practice," she says, "I wanted to make sure everything was set up correctly from day one. I'm glad I did it from the beginning. I don't know how it would have been if I'd started ten years later."
That choice paid off.
"They've seen me since day one and have grown with my business," she says. "They know my numbers, they understand my business, they know where I'm going."
Learning to Let Go
Teverbaugh Dental didn't stay small for long.
The practice went from two chairs to four, then six. Then a new building in Fishers with ten. Dr. Teverbaugh went from being the only dentist to leading a group of three, with a full staff around them.
Growth like that forces a decision: Either the owner keeps control of everything and becomes the bottleneck, or the owner learns to hand things off.
"I had to learn how to delegate and not try to be in control of everything," Dr. Teverbaugh says. "Having the right team and the right people to trust has been very important for the business to grow."
Letting go of the day-to-day is what created room for everything else: new technology, more continuing education, marketing, and the parts of running a practice that only the owner can do.
Her Advice to a Dentist Just Starting Out: Trust the Pros
Dr. Teverbaugh has watched other dentists take the opposite approach, and she doesn't recommend it.
"I've talked to a lot of them who say, 'I'm doing my own bookkeeping, my own QuickBooks,' and they're at home afterward doing all that instead of spending time with their kids," she says. "It's not worth it, just to save money. And then in the end you have to fix the mistakes you've made."
Her advice to anyone opening a practice is the same thing she did herself.
"Get the right team of people. The right accountant, the right lawyer, the right business coach," she says. "Create your team of advisors who will guide you from the beginning. They'll understand your business from day one, they'll help you grow, and they'll be with you throughout the journey, because you cannot do it by yourself."
For her, the investment and the people are the same decision.
“If you want to grow, you have to invest. And with the right people."
What She Built, and Who She Built It For
Today, Teverbaugh Dental serves a community that reflects the one Dr. Teverbaugh came from. The team is almost fully bilingual, and patients come from across Indianapolis.
"Being bilingual in healthcare is very important, because patients want to understand what's going on in their own language," she says. "I'm also very proud of the diversity we offer, from native Hoosiers to people from different parts of South America, Europe, the Middle East, everywhere."
Ask her what she's proudest of, and she doesn't talk about the building or the chairs.
"When I think about what we've built at Teverbaugh Dental, the things that run through my mind are my family, because they've supported me the whole way, my team, my team's families, and my patients who have trusted Teverbaugh Dental to take care of their smiles for so many years," she says. "We're not just taking care of their teeth. We're developing a relationship."
Asked what she would tell the 16-year-old version of herself who arrived from Peru, she didn’t hesitate.
"Don't see an obstacle," she says. "You need to always see an opportunity."
Thirteen years in, with three doctors, ten chairs, and a practice that grew about as fast as she could let it, Dr. Teverbaugh sums up what the financial side of it gave her in six words.
"TMA gave me the freedom to lead."
If you’re opening a practice or growing one, we’re here to help. Schedule a quick intro call, and we’ll talk through what setting up the financial side looks like for your business.
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