Sarah Montgomery is focused on scaling Espire Dental during the next two years after stepping into a new role as the company's CFO.
Ms. Montgomery was appointed CFO after spending more than two years as senior vice president of finance and accounting for the Denver-based company, which supports 27 dental practices in four states.
She recently spoke with Becker's about her new role and initiatives for the company.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What made you interested in the CFO position?
Sarah Montgomery: I did public accounting for seven years and found a passion with my clients in that high growth stage. When I decided to make the leap from public accounting I knew I wanted to land in a place where I could help bring some strategy and scalability to the accounting and finance functions but that would also help me be a more well-rounded business professional. I get excited about the inorganic growth strategies as well as organic growth strategies, so Espire was the perfect marriage of the two.
Q: Do you have any specific goals in your new role?
SM: The next two years are going to be super fun for Espire. We took a little bit of a pause on our acquisitions in 2022 because we acquired about 10 practices in 2021, so we needed some time to integrate them and make sure our thesis on our inorganic growth strategy was still going to work moving forward and it also gave us a chance to build a little bit more of a team in the support center. For 2023 and 2024, we're focused not only on achieving the awesome organic growth that we have had in the last two years but also adding on partner practices to grow that inorganic footprint as well. We'll be looking into some new markets as well, so that's my big-ticket item for 2023.
Q: How does your previous role differ from being CFO?
SM: That role is certainly more hands-on and detailed as far as day-to-day accounting goes. Part of my accomplishments in that role was building out a rockstar accounting function that is set now to support probably another 10 practices of the size that we're at. I'm proud of my team, and it is one of my passions to grow and develop people, so it's been fun to put that together but also nice to step out of the day-to-day accounting piece.
Q: What challenges have you faced since starting your new role and are there any challenges you foresee yourself facing as CFO?
SM: We were pretty lucky with COVID and had a pretty epic bounce back after that, [but] we are definitely dealing with hygiene shortages. Hygienists are hard to attract and retain right now and there is a lot of pressure in the market. We really lean on our culture to overcome that and we provide an excellent team experience, which is one of our key foundations. We've been able to overcome a lot of that pressure and we feel pretty good about our turnover rate in hygiene.
The other big area for us is growing the production numbers and getting new patients in the door. Since we do have quite a high focus on cosmetic dentistry and more of those elective procedures, we're starting to see a little softness as consumer sentiments are a little nervous about what's going to happen with the economy in the coming months.
Q: What has been the most exciting part about your new role?
SM: I'm a lifetime learner, so to be exposed to new things that stretch my brain and help me think through things in different ways has been exciting. I'm a total strategy nerd, so I love dissecting what we've been doing, making sure it still makes sense and being able to pivot if we need to as we grow.
Q: What excites you about the dental industry today?
SM: It's a fun time to be in dentistry. As we look at more holistic health, dental is becoming more a part of the conversation, so it's fun to see new patients who would have otherwise skipped the dentist because of prior fears, bad experiences or those types of things. They are starting to understand how important it is just for the six-month check-ups, and we're able to turn that into a comprehensive treatment plan and an incredible experience for them.
I'm just grateful to be in this role and have the opportunity to help grow with Espire and fall deeper in love with the dental industry. It's a new industry for me and only two and a half years in, I'm starting to get why everybody sticks around for a while.