Our Story
Brian Offered to Buy
Jim’s Practices.
Jim Said No.
Years later, Brian Mans and Dr. Jim Arnold worked together to build a dental group. What happened after its recapitalization changed how both men think about representing a seller.
Watch Our Story
Hear It From Them.
Brian and Jim tell how they met, worked together, and came to build Foundation Dental Transitions. Two and a half minutes.
Chapter 1
The First No
Heartland Dental approached Jim before Brian entered the picture. Jim’s practices were doing well, and he saw no reason to sell. He said no.
A few years later, Brian Mans called. He’d worked on acquisitions for Heartland and had gotten approval for an offer he was eager to bring Jim.
Brian invited Jim to Effingham to talk it through. Jim went through the process and got to know him.
He said no again.
Jim was polite. Brian still remembers how hard that answer landed.
“I had the opportunity to make the largest offer Heartland had ever made for a practice. … And next thing I know, he’s politely telling me thanks, but no thanks, and broke my heart.”
Brian Mans
Chapter 2
The Chicago Meeting
In November 2014, Brian called Jim again. He’d left Heartland and become a partner in a new dental group. He thought Jim should join them.
Jim agreed to meet Brian’s partners. He expected to listen for thirty minutes, then politely decline. Instead, he stayed in the boardroom for three and a half hours without looking at his watch.
He spent the next month vetting the people and the proposal. Long emails. Long texts. Questions Brian had to answer before Jim would consider a decision this large.
Then Brian asked Jim to bring Sarah to dinner in Chicago. He knew Jim couldn’t repeat every answer at home, and Sarah needed the chance to ask her own questions. It was a family decision.
On the drive, Sarah wanted to turn around. They were going to say no, she told Jim. He kept driving because they’d agreed to meet.
Sixteen minutes into dinner, Sarah told him they should do it.
16Minutes
“It’s not even so much about what you say. It’s how you make people feel.”
Dr. Jim Arnold
Chapter 3
A Deal They Lived Through Together
Before the deal closed, the questions stopped being abstract. Jim’s top associate might have to move to Texas so her husband could get treatment. His other two associates were scared about what would change. Brian and Jim worked through those concerns together.
The night before closing, Jim’s fourteen-year-old daughter asked if he was sure. That was when the emotion hit. He and Brian were on opposite sides of the deal, but Jim remembers feeling aligned with him throughout the process.
Jim joined as a dentist partner and investor. Over the next three years, Brian led acquisitions, and Jim worked through many transactions with him. When dentists considering the group called, Jim told them what was working and what he wished were different. He’d made the decision himself, and he wouldn’t pretend everything was perfect.
In June 2018, the group completed a majority recapitalization. Its announced footprint at the time was more than 80 affiliated offices across ten states.
Jim rolled a significant part of his equity forward into the recapitalized group. Its value still depended on what happened next.
Chapter 4
What Happened Afterward
September 3, 2020 | 5:30 PM | 45 Seconds
Jim’s practices had been sold, and he had rolled equity forward. On March 13 of 2020, dentistry was shut down during Covid, and over dinner, he told his kids that they were bulletproof.
On the evening of September 3, 2020, he sat in his office for a call expecting an investor update. Ten dentists held equity in the group. Instead, he heard a 45-second recorded message. As Jim remembers it, the company had been mismanaged, the pandemic had shut down dentistry, and the bank had taken control. He remembers hearing, “There’s no recourse, and your money’s gone.”
He dropped the phone.
The equity that he had carried into the next ownership group was worth about $15 million, and it was gone. It felt like 24 years of hard work had been erased instantly. He went out to the kitchen to tell Sarah and could barely get the words out. She said that it was ridiculous and thought that he was joking. Unfortunately, he was serious, and the money was gone.
Brian had reinvested part of his own proceeds after the recapitalization. He lost that investment too.
A strong result at closing hadn’t settled the risk in what they kept. Retained equity still depended on who controlled the business, how it was financed, and what happened in the years that followed.
Jim spent the next four years rebuilding. He became clearer about the questions a dentist needs answered before signing. That experience became part of what he and Brian later brought to Foundation Dental Transitions.
Chapter 5
What Brian Saw
From the Buyer’s Side
For years, Brian’s job was to buy dental practices. His work took him through 26 states and, by his account, conversations with more than 5,000 dentists. Many of those conversations included their associates, teams, and spouses.
He heard the same concerns in Orlando, Chicago, and at the end of a two-mile driveway in southern Arkansas. He arrived with a sequence of questions and a buyer’s evaluation of the practice. Many dentists across from him were considering their first sale. Some came without representation or even a pen to take notes.
He also saw high offers take priority over whether the buyer and dentist would be a good fit. The price mattered, but so did the terms and the people the dentist would work with after closing. He saw what happened when those questions received too little attention: unhappy sellers and unhappy buyers.
Brian wanted dentists to have someone on their side who understood how a buyer reached its number, where it saw risk, and what questions needed asking before they signed.
“I end up knowing more about that practice than the doctor ever could. It was just unfair.”
Brian Mans
Chapter 6
Why They Built Foundation Dental Transitions
Brian
Brian knows how a buyer evaluates a practice, where it sees risk, how it structures terms, and how that assessment shapes an offer. He spent years on that side of the table, and he knows which questions an owner rarely thinks to ask.
Jim
Jim knows what the decision asks of the owner. He’s told his team and family, signed the agreement, worked inside the group that bought his practices, and lived with what happened to the equity he kept.
Brian sees the deal from 30,000 feet.
Jim feels it from three inches away.
Together, they ask the questions that need answers before a dentist signs:
- Is now the right time to sell?
- What would put the practice in a stronger position?
- Which buyer fits the people and the practice?
- What do the terms mean after closing?
- What does the owner want life to look like next?
Those answers take time with the owner, an honest look at the business, and a clear understanding of what the owner wants. That work can begin long before a sale. Jim spent years making his practices less dependent on him. Brian would rather meet an owner early than wait until retirement is close.
Foundation Dental Transitions isn’t a listing service or a matchmaking platform. Brian and Jim represent the dentist through the decisions and the diligence that lead to a deal.