 Hi everybody, Andrea Trowsky here. So I am a registered dental hygienist. I have started my own dental hygiene practice and I've had my own practice since 2018 and I cannot imagine working for anybody else at this point. I love having my own practice. Now if you're thinking about starting your own dental hygiene practice, whether it be a standalone location or you want to travel mobile to somebody's home, whether you want to bring in all of your equipment from your car into the client's home, if you want to have your own like mobile dental hygiene van of some kind, or if you want clients to come to you in your own home, maybe you'll have a room in your home where you can have your own dental hygiene setup. I want you to check to make sure with your local dental hygiene association, whoever you are under, check to make sure that is allowed because not all states, not all you can't have your own dental hygiene practice everywhere. So you really do have to be careful. In Ontario, for example, yes you can. In Manitoba, yes you can. But please double check with your specific area. I can only speak to Ontario and Manitoba because this is where I have lived before, so I know we can have our own practice. But let me give you guys a little kind of step-by-step of how you can start thinking about having your own practice and what are the steps that you need to do to start your own practice if you know you can. So basically you need to think about how much money are you going to need to start your own practice. So I'm a mobile dental hygienist, so I travel into clients' homes. My expenses are going to be much less than somebody who has their own physical dental hygiene practice, their own actual building or space that they rent out for clients to come in, or if I had a dental hygiene van, those expenses would be very different. So I took out approximately a $30,000 loan in order to start my own dental hygiene practice back in 2018. But you also need to think of, well what are you going to need? Masks, bibs, PPE. Are you going to have a dental hygiene software? You're going to need a sterilizer unless you can go to a dental office to sterilize your instruments. Are you going to need new instruments? Are you going to need a uniform? If you're mobile, you're going to need a patient chair. You're going to need a stool for you to sit in, some kind of cart or some kind of organizer. Think of all of these things. Now I talk about more of this inside my course, Mobile RDH Academy, because this topic is several modules long. So if you need to learn more or you're curious about all of that or you can start your own business and you want to and you need the help, then definitely check out my course, the Mobile RDH Academy. I'll leave the link for you guys down below. But you also have to think of things like, is this going to be the right step for you? Would you prefer to work for a dental office? Nine to five or eight to six, whatever it is. And then you leave the office, you don't think about patients, you don't think about anything for the rest of the day. You leave your work at work and home is home. Well, I can tell you having your own dental hygiene practice, I'm thinking about my practice constantly, but I like that. I don't mind that. I bring my laptop. I do my notes at home. I don't take my notes or charts into the client's home. So I do it when I come back home. I'm constantly thinking about marketing, advertising, where am I going to get the next client? I'm thinking about business cards. There's always business expenses. Does that sound okay for you? Or would you prefer to work for a dental office, work for somebody else, and you don't have to worry about all of that stuff? So think about that too. Now, once you start your practice, are you going to work at a dental office part-time still, or maybe even continue working at the dental office full-time while you're slowly getting together your own practice? I do highly recommend that because you're not going to get hundreds of patients right away. These things take time. And if you have bills to pay, it's a very good idea to continue working in the dental office and maybe start your mobile dental hygiene business or however you want to do it on the side. You know, evenings, weekends, if you have that option. But if you're able to quit your job at the dental office and just start and give 110% into your own practice, that's amazing too. I just didn't have that option at the time, so I did have to work at the dental office still. And I'm glad I did because I was able to save up money because you don't get as many patients as you think right away. And then more importantly, you know, think about things like, are you going to do a little bit of both? Do you have time to spend to work on your own business evenings, weekends, or would you prefer to only work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? The thing about that though is with your own business, you can do whatever you want as long as you can afford it of course. So that's kind of a nice perk as well. Now working in a dental office, you're not going to make nearly as much as if you have your own business, but you're also going to have more expenses. You really don't have expenses when you work for somebody else. But when you have your own business, there will be expenses, trust me, but it's absolutely worth it. I highly recommend it 110%. So this was just a quick video, things to start thinking about if you're looking to start up your own dental hygiene practice and if you're able to do so. So I hope this helped you guys. Let me know if any questions and there will be more videos like this here to come because I've been getting a lot of questions about dental hygienists who come across my business website at www.thetoothlady.com. So check me out Facebook, Instagram, I am there. People have come across me. People have heard of me and they want to start their own dental hygiene practice, but they don't know where to start. I am here to help because I've been there, done that and back in 2018, it wasn't really a thing. So it was really hard to find anybody to talk to. So I'm here to support you guys. So thank you guys for watching and I'll see you in the next one.